The Dalai Lama teaching on the Heart Sutra was live-stream broadcast on the internet and taped for later viewing. You can find all 3 teaching sections – each one well over 2 hours – on-line at http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/6858067

Session 1 has a no-sound glitch for the first 12 minutes. You get to “watch me talk” as I introduce the Dalai Lama and the program. (Test out your ninja lip-reading skills!)

In Session 1 at around the 20 minute mark, my voice comes on and I introduce the Dalai Lama after the Michael Fitzpatrick musical piece.

There are links on that web page to watch Session 2 and then Session 3 as well. They let me speak with full voice in those broadcasts, too.

Want to see how the Heart Sutra and its “all appearances are empty of intrinsic existence” (or “every thing, situation, or person is formed and defined by interdependent relationships”) looks as advanced martial arts technique?

Here’s a hint. Less grind and struggle, and more recognizing and using the energy. The bad ending of “He’s got me in a headlock!” becomes the powerful beginning of “He’s set himself up for unconsciousness from my body drop choke-out” – if you are good enough and have studied with the right teachers. That’s the magic of wisdom. That’s the magic of our To-Shin Do.

Find the Heart of Wisdom DVD at our SKH Quest on-line store.

I failed my second belt test in the martial arts.

That was back in the mid-1960s. I was a teenager. I trained harder and more diligently than most every other member of the class. I was good, maybe very good.

To qualify for my second belt (what would be Yellow & Black Belt in what I teach now), I had learned a set of 3 sequences of power punching and kicking techniques. I had drilled those sets over and over. I knew 1-2-3 so well I did not even have to think about them.

I stepped in front of the belt testing board of judges. They called out, “Set One” in an Asian language. I performed what had to be a perfect Yellow & Black Belt Set One. The audience exploded in applause and cheers.

I repositioned in front of the belt testing board of judges. They called out, “Set Three” in an Asian language. I performed what had to be a perfect Yellow & Black Belt Set Two. The audience froze in pained silence.
“Sit down,” said the judges. “Try again at the next testing.”

Huh? I was good, maybe very good. What had happened?

“You did Set Two. They asked for Set Three,” said a friend sympathetically.

That’s how I failed my second belt test. I was not paying attention. I went from habit. 1-2-3. As skilled as any of my techniques may have been, it did not matter because I had failed to be in touch with the situation and what was called for.

I did not like failing a belt test when I was a teenager. I was embarrassed, a little angry, and maybe I felt a little cheated. But I had nonetheless failed because I was not – it turns out – good enough. My habitual mind and perhaps ego defeated me. I did it myself.

What an important lesson to learn. Good thing my teachers cared for me enough to be blunt and uncompromising. My becoming stronger was more important to them than my feeling happy at that moment.

Forty-five years later, I am pledged to helping others learn. My latest lesson offering deals directly with that tendency for the mind to be in the wrong place at a crucial time. I call it the “Here and Now Focus Meditation”. Try it out at http://www.skhquest.com/meditation/ where it says, “Here. Now” .

I want to see you pass all your belt tests right on time. Don’t do it the way I did.

I just got home from a meditation retreat hosted by a senior Tibetan teacher.

While there, we participants spent hours each day tucked in side by side on Asian style meditation cushion seats on the floor.

At one point I looked around at my fellow American participants and noticed an odd unstated discomfort. People did their best to wiggle around and find needed space.

Check this out the next time you have an opportunity:

Look at the size of the standard Japanese or Tibetan meditation cushion seat.

Look at the size of the typical older generation Asian person’s bottom and leg length.

Look at the size of the typical American person’s bottom and leg length.

Ask yourself, “What is wrong with this picture?”

Ask yourself, “Which should we adjust? Should we adjust the program to where the cushions fit the Americans here in America, or should we adjust the Americans to where they fit on Asian floor cushion seats?”

Next, think about how and what you are studying in your martial arts school and ask yourself a similar question. ”Which should we adjust? Should we adjust the program to where the lessons fit the Americans here in America, or should we adjust the Americans to where they fit into Asian training situations?”

One of my friends at the Sakya Pema Ts’al Monastic Institute, just outside Pokhara, Nepal, sent me some photos of senior students of the shedra (monk college) in their computer training class.

As from a description of meditation for beginners, they sit in perfect upright posture, focused in unswerving meditative concentration, letting go of the previous moment’s self and becoming yet a new and expanded version of themselves. Right there in front of the tiny screen.

These are my monk friends who live south of the forbidden Tibet border at the foot of the Himalayas. They and their head abbot Lama Kunga Dhondup are my coaches, trainers, and teachers in my study of the Vajrakilaya tantra practices, a set of powerful mind transformation methods in which the image of a sacred 3-edged dagger is a symbol of the power of awakening depth consciousness as to how human weaknesses can become enlightened powers.

These highest yoga tantra methods are said to be invisible to those not ready to grasp them. They dwell secretly in plain sight in a way that those unprepared will not even think of seeking their insights into power. These practices seem so out of the ordinary, so unfathomable, so ungraspable by conventional Western thought processes, that few of my friends and students have ever even asked me what they entail and what I am getting out of it.

Odd how many martial arts professionals my age feel the same way about computer technology. “It’s all superstition and voodoo to me,” replied one friend when I gently probed the rationale behind the design of his school’s ugly and discouraging web site.

You have to be ready to learn and advance.  Without the proper motivation such growth can be seen as a chore or a bore, and the power of the technology to bring you needed benefits – either Eastern inner technology or Western outer technology – remains a mystery.

Pema Ts’al Monastery senior students study arcane Western technological mind to mind knowledge transfer technique

My dear friends Lama Pema Wangdak of New York Palden Sakya Centers, and Lama Kunga Dhondup, ritual master of Pema Ts’al School in Pokhara, Nepal, joined us in Dayton for an initiation and teaching in the spiritual practice of White Tara longevity meditation. SKH Quest Center instructors travelled from as far away as Florida, Colorado, and North Carolina to be a part of the illumination in Dayton.