Season 3, Ep. 1 School for Yogis, Class 1 Bodhicitta

The lowly yogi shares the first of seven classes done in the basement of a tattoo parlor for those who could find him.

Class 1, Bodhicitta.  lowly yogi shares his understanding of Bodhicitta.

Transcript

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Earth, mother and friends, you cross our heart. Hello, hello, hello, and welcome back to the Lowly Yogi Tales and Other Stuff podcast. Welcome to season three. Here we are. Past the darkest nights of the year and back into the light and on we go. I was looking through some, uh, old content and I found something that I thought was quite auspicious and the perfect way to begin our season. Because we've been talking about, what are these ideas? And I found a class that I had taught called The School for Yogis so many moons ago. And I thought, well, that's perfect. And the first class is on bodhichitta. And people have been asking me, bodhichitta, what is this word? And so today, on the Lowly Yogi Tales and Other Stuff Podcast, Wherever you find yourself vibrating, attune this way, and let's check out the School for Yogi's together. Class One. Bodhichitta. I'm like a caveman with technical tools. It's amazing I get as much done as I do, because it's like I poke them. You stick. Yeah. So, uh, I was sharing that I was out in Boulder recently and while I was out there, I got a chance to hang out with, um, another fellow yogi and friend of mine. You've heard his name, Max. Oh yeah. Monkey Max is, uh, what I call him. And, we wander. Max and I wander as yogis. And this is what I hope that we can start to do. Is really wander and trust auspicious coincidence together. Or, apart. I like wandering with another person. I always have. I don't like wandering alone. Um, I feel that when I'm wandering with another yogi we always have each other's back. No matter what's happening. No matter what we meet. You know, someone is watching the larger environment while the other person is directly meeting whatever auspicious coincidence is arising. And while I was out in Boulder, we were wandering and I went to this, the last unshiny place in Boulder, the, the Manshell. And Boulder has had 80 billion dollars move in, so literally everything is shiny. So the band shell is kind of the last, and it's been there since I was a child. I remember it. I used to play on the old train that's right next to it. We used to all hurt ourselves on the train. You know, that kind of stuff. And while I was there, I had this extraordinary experience where I walked onto the stage, because the band shell's a stage, and this homeless guy, this African American guy, wild eyes, you know, probably had been drinking. Because he was, he was, uh, altered. You have to meet everything with Bodhichitta. You have to. If you don't, you become it. And that's what we've been talking about all along. Now, I'm on the stage and this homeless guy comes out of nowhere. He says, what you doing up there? And I said, I'm gonna, I'm gonna say a poem. And he says, a poem? What do you mean a poem? I said, I'm gonna say a poem to Reverend Friendly. And he stops. And he looks me right in the eye and says, I've been waiting for you. And he comes around and he comes up on the stage and I start saying this poem. And I, to be quite honest, what came out, I'm not sure. But, but it was really about loving kindness. About Reverend Friendly's wildness. About his fearlessness. Uh, in regards to teaching Dharma in the middle of a homeless shelter. And having everybody wrapped. in attention as he literally would go into city and spout pages of dharma to these folks. And as we were talking about last week, in the dark ages, the only real place you find kindness is with the poor, you know, with those who don't have. We're working together to bring about the golden age for that very reason. It's time for things to shift. But, That being said, this guy comes up onto the stage, and he starts this rap poem that I wish I had recorded, but I did not. Um, and it was all the most beautiful devotion I had ever experienced. It was like he was absolutely devoted in me. And he was just, I mean, it was just pure love and devotion. coming off of him. To the point where I actually took his hand and put it to my forehead. Because I could feel how much love was coming off of him. And my friend Max, who had been wandering with me, he had stayed out of it, you know, he had just watched the whole thing. And I asked him why he didn't come up and he said, Well, it looked like you were receiving an empowerment. And I didn't want to interrupt it. It actually really felt as though I was. That this homeless man had been waiting to give me this empowerment. And there I was. And he did. And the empowerment really was that feeling of bodhichitta. I talk about bodhichitta a lot. But what I realized tonight as I was thinking about it is one has to understand the feeling of it. to really work with. When we go as yogis to the charnel grounds and we've been talking about that what we're working to do is to actually trick ourselves into giving rise to bodhichitta. The suffering, the sheer suffering. That we are encountering is like an alchemical trick that forces our body, that forces our energetic and physical system into a reaction. To survive, we must give birth to bodhichitta. My hope is you've all experienced it, and in experiencing it in glimpses, that it becomes larger and larger glimpses, until you are literally a hundred percent this vibration. That is enlightenment. A great teacher who recently passed into his parinirvana taught me, Mahamudra. is 100 percent Bodhichitta. The Great Seal, the absolute Vajra Palace, is 100 percent Bodhichitta. This homeless man, two homeless men, had given me the purest shot, if you will, inoculation of Bodhichitta. And the most profound thing to me is, it was absolutely protected. Because, only someone who was willing to touch the hand of a homeless man, could receive it. If you weren't willing to go to that place, you would never ever get it. I still don't know what was on his hand. I'm, God, who knows? But I'm okay. It doesn't matter. I'm kind of joking because it doesn't matter. I mean, it was so beautiful. I mean, his hand was so soft. And it was like he was a spirit that just appeared out of nowhere. And the most fascinating thing is that he said to me as I was leaving, he said, I'll clean up the banjo. I'll take care of it. I'll clean this all up. Don't worry. I'll make sure it's okay. And it was like almost in return and empowerment that that was his to take care of. That was his practice space and he would take care of that. Well, he wanted to give it to you as a gift too because he knew it was important to you. Like you said, that was the place you remember as a child that wasn't the shiny new place. That's right. And he wanted to, it was, it was such a beautiful exchange. I realized, I was thinking about this today, how to talk about bodhichitta. It's so secret that most Buddhists don't know it. If you were to go into pretty much any Buddhist community and ask them, What is bodhichitta? The answers would surprise you. You would not hear. You would not hear anything about vibration at all. You would not hear anything about yoga. You would hear, oh, that's Buddha mind, that's Buddha heart. Yes. And what's bodhichitta? That doesn't answer my question. It is the sweetness that a mother feels for her child. The sweetness in the moment of exchange where you have given something to someone that truly needs it and truly receives it. It is that which meets everything. It is secret only because it is without agenda. It doesn't need you. It doesn't need anything from you. It is okay. Just as it is. Everything else in this realm needs something from you. Wants something from you. Has to have something from you. We're in the realm of karma. That's its nature. Bodhichitta's not. And that's why it's secret. It is absolutely full. Absolutely complete. Bodhichitta. Absolutely sweet. You know, as I said, that if you're going to do this, you could do it fast like Christ in a week, or you can do it at a slower pace, and I recommend the slower pace really, if you're doing it right. It will take you between 12 and 14 years to really walk this path to its fruition. If you meet everything that arises in front of you with bodhichitta, it will take about 12 to 14 years. That's not good, because it will take you probably about 12 years to realize the vibration of bodhichitta, and then it will take you a few weeks to meet it. Once you have the true vibration of bodhichitta, it goes very quickly. Because you know what to hold. You know how to hold it. You've trained your mind for that long on holding that vibration. So the process can actually unfold quite quickly. Don't forget the bodhicitta. In all this realm of love, don't forget the bodhicitta. I cried and said those words. You can choose to wander a yogi's path, where it is about the practice. Not the people, the power, the being better than somebody else. I can't tell you how many times I've heard that. I have this practice and this empowerment, so I'm better than you. So it wasn't about having the thingy. And that's where bodhichitta gets lost. If you feel like you need something from somebody, you don't have bodhichitta. Bodhichitta doesn't mean anything. Bodhichitta is complete. If you are manifesting bodhichitta, you don't need anything. You're complete. I teach bodhichitta. Because that's what I teach. That's all I'm ever going to teach. If you want something else, don't come to me. Because I have come to realize that that is all I am interested in teaching. Keep it simple. Keep it simple. One thing. Bodhichitta. What do I want with my life? I had this realization. I came to my own personal realization that what I want in my life is bodhichitta. I want that for myself. I want that for my family. I want that for everybody who has karmic contact with me. I want that for my community. I want that for my city. I want that for the world. But most importantly, I want that for me. The other stuff is other stuff. Now, I'm not saying that I don't want patronage, and I don't want money, and I don't want all those things. I want wealthy patrons to come and support the School for Yogis. Absolutely. I want People with great means and great power to start seeing what we have to offer and start saying, I want to build this world with you, without a doubt. But, it will be a world of bodhichitta. The means that comes in will be used for that, not the other way around. That is, if you choose, the journey that you can take with me. And if you don't, I fully understand. I will be walking it anyway. I don't mind walking it alone, but I do really enjoy the company. It's more fun when you have people to go sit on rocks so, really, to clarify again, bodhicitta is that nature of mind that surrounds and manifests everything else. It is that ocean of love and kindness that we exist with. Okay, the Buddha teaching at Raja Gha Vulture, Pete is the teaching of the project of Armita, and in it he talks about, well, actually he does it. He goes into retreat and uh, Shari Ra asks Alva how to Practice Project Par. And Vera's response is, all dharmas are emptiness. That you have to see all of existence as emptiness. Now, one of the things we've talked about together is what is a Dharma? And it's important to clarify that, because again, if you were to go into a Buddhist community now and you say, well, what's a Dharma? And they would really respond, well, the Dharma is the Buddha Dharma. Okay, well, thank you very much, but the dharma, a dharma, is a yoga, is a karmic construct. So, when Avalokiteshvara said to Shariputra, all dharmas are emptiness, all karmic constructs are emptiness, all yogas are emptiness, that shifts things. Because we start to understand our round nature is emptiness. Form is emptiness. Emptiness is form. Form is no other than emptiness. Emptiness is no other than form. They're the same. What he was pointing at, and important not to look at the finger, but look at what he was pointing at, was that the ground nature of all of these dharmas is bodhichitta. That is the profound awareness emptiness that manifests in all. And so what he was saying is that if we drop all of it, if we fully relax, we will literally become one with bodhichitta. Traditionally, the great Nyingma texts, Nyingma is the old school in Tibetan Buddhism, and they're very fast. They're not about doing this slowly. You know, the Kagyu, they'll give you years of practice and they'll say, Okay, you know, you sit like a pig, really do it. The Nyingma is like, you're ready, BAM! You're enlightened. And the Nyingma school basically talks about it in this way. When I first received this empowerment, I also received it with all of the Nyingma lineage. Because the guy, fellow, who was teaching me, said, I can teach you this in 30 seconds, but you won't believe me. You won't believe what I have to say. It's real, and so you won't practice it. So I'm going to take 4 hours to teach you the entire lineage, and then I'm going to give it to you. And what it comes down to is what we've talked about all along, that all of existence surrounding us, everything that's around us, is bodhicitta, love, and kindness. We are caught, trapped within our karmic construct. As we give birth to bodhicitta, it grows within us. As it grows bigger, it burns up all of our karma. As it burns up all of our karma, child and mother become one. That's all. Isn't that it? There's nothing else. Trust that enough to give it a try. Actually literally letting the child and the mother It's worthwhile on every level Thank you again for joining this Loli Yogi and the Loli Yogi Tales podcast. I do enjoy your company. If you're enjoying these stories, do please feel free to share them. Spread the word. Spread the wealth. And if you want to spread the wealth even further, do please feel free to support the Loli Yogi Tales and other stuff. By sending some yogi cash this way. We do that through supporting the show. Simple and straightforward, and I do really appreciate any and all support that might come towards making these sacred works a reality. Thank you again, and I do hope that you have a week filled with joy, a week filled with plenty, and a week filled with glorious. Take care of yourselves, and Monkey Max, play us out. Play us out. Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy Earth mother and friends, You cross our hearth at last. Long have we grieved, While the king of demons had his way. But no longer, no longer, It's time to dance and sing. This is the time when the golden age begins As we welcome love and peace and ease may it never cease Welcome joy and bliss in all the eyes of serpents kiss Welcome mother, welcome child, welcome body tender and mild. Welcome protection, and welcome friends. It's been a long wait, but now the golden age begins. Welcome spring, summer, and fall. Winter is Persephone's and sweetest of all. Welcome immortality. Welcome all, it's time to dance and sing, as the golden age begins. Welcome all you yogis, and we call you in. Welcome all you protectors, and we call you in. Welcome all you yogis, as the golden age begins.