ACI 1 «Основные учения буддизма», занятие 10

Class Ten: Karma and Emptiness: The Nature of Wisdom and Liberation
Transcribed by Angie Overy
Proofread: Su Foo



[cut]
[laughter] [students: one…okay, most important one, Prasangika…that school
says things exist because independence upon the way that you name them and
think of them in your mind, right? And if you don’t think of the name then they
don’t exist outside of your mind?]
There’s a thing, the Tibetan word for ‘existence’ is {she ja}; {she ja} means that
thing which is not. And so there’s a big debate in the… you know you get into
this if the tree falls down in the forest and nobody’s there to see it, [students]
does it exist?
[laughter]
They say, well it’s {she ja}. [student: what’s that?] It is a {she ja}. {she ja} is the
Tibetan word for existence, it’s the Buddhist word for existence, ‘that which is
perceived’, okay. And, and, I finally saw it in one text one day. It said {nam
….she ja} The Buddha sees the trees in the forest. [student: so it does exist even if
you don’t…so it does exist] [laughter] [unclear]
So Pluto…when Pluto, something happens in Pluto, in the back of Pluto, it’s a
{she ja} Buddha see. [student: and the other thing is Savtantrika said their
position wasn’t completely correct because there’re things which exist
independent on their parts and not [unclear]]
Yeah, ah, No [student:[unclear] ] He didn’t say their position was wrong, if you
read the text carefully, in Tibetan he uses the word {trowa}. He says, he says, the
second position, is a little bit better than the first, is the words he uses. And the
third position he says is more subtle than the others. [student: so whereas the
first position is outright flaw, an outright flaw..] Has a flaw. The second, the
second one, he doesn’t, he doesn’t say it has a flaw, he just says the third one is
more subtle than that. [student: and the last question was you said that we can
only see emptiness in deep meditation but I heard that..] Directly, directly.
[student: I heard that a lot of people gain directly realization, emptiness during
debate] Impossible. Impossible. Your mind has to be in, and we’ll get to that,
it’s stated in many scriptures especially the Abhidharma; your mind is on a level
called {michok me}which is in the Form Realm, and you’re not conscious of any
sense objects. You can’t be conscious of a sense object and see emptiness during
that time. It’s impossible. And you can’t even have a decent Desire Realm
meditation, you gotta have, your mind is actually in a different realm while your
body’s sitting here. You’re not aware of your body. Your sense organs are…
you’re not watching through your sense organs. You couldn’t be aware. If
someone spoke to you, at that moment, you wouldn’t hear them. Your mind is
not [unclear]
Yeah, he says here, the way the last group decides what something.. that
something is interdependent is subtler than all the rest. He doesn’t say wrong.
[student: so it is correct…what you said last week things, Implication School,
things exist because they depend on your calling them and thinking of them as
you do. That to me means if you don’t call them or think of them then they
don’t exist] Right. [student: is there some other way to say it?] Ah, no that’s
okay. [laughs] they can’t exist. Anything that… Chandrakirti’s famous line you
know, anything that didn’t depend on your naming them or thinking of them in
a certain way, if such a thing did exist, it would be self-existent. That’s what the
{dak} would be like if it existed. [student: that’s why I’ve a problem because if I’m
not thinking of it, naming on it, it still exist] Not for you. [student: not for me
but it does exist] Oh yeah, for the Buddha [student: that’s the thing, that’s
confusing] Yeah, yeah. [student: for me it doesn’t it but it does exist} [student:
you should say knowable rather than know] The word is ‘knowable thing’, but
it means known. The verb is the present.. is the future participle, it’s like
knowable, but in the sense of known. Which is being known. [student: that
would cover both the Buddha’s perception and your own] Yeah, it’s possible for
you to know something [unclear]
Okay, let’s go on. We’re on page sixty-five. The number looks like that.
We are four lines from the bottom.
{nang-wa ten-drel lu-wa me-pa dang tong-pa ke-len drel-way go-wa nyi}
[repeats] Okay. {nang-wa} is a synonym for {kundzob denpa}, deceptive reality,
okay. {nang-wa} is a synonym for that. How many things in this room are
{kundzob denpa}, are {nang-wa}? How many things, in this room, are deceptive
reality?
Everything. How about the emptinesses in this room? Are they also, are they
also a reality or like…every object in this room is deceptive reality. Every object
in this room has ultimate reality, as a characteristic of it. Are those ultimate
realities, deceptive reality? [student: are ultimate reality of each object
deceptive?] Yeah [student: no only part of it is reality]. How so? Isn’t it ultimate
reality, aren’t they two different things? Aren’t the emptinesses of each object in
this room, ultimate reality? [student: but the emptiness of each object is empty
itself] So? So it’s ultimate. You should have said the emptiness of each object is
[unclear] [student: is dependent?] Yeah, I mean, are you perceiving the
emptiness of the lamp? [student: no] I mean, if I ask you, is the lamp empty,
you say what? [student: yes] Yes. So you just perceived its emptiness, right?
Not directly, of course, but with your mind, with your {kundzob} mind [laughs].
At that moment, isn’t that emptiness {kundzob denpa}?                    Aren’t you
misperceiving [student: [unclear]]         Yeah, I mean [student: because you’re
conceiving that which you’re putting your name on it you’re…] Yeah, yeah,
actually what you are perceiving is an image of that thing [student: it’s a directly
perception it’s not real...]. There’s a big debate in the monastery. Okay. anyway
{nang-wa} means appearance, appearances. Appearances. It’s a synonym for
deceptive reality. {nang-wa} means appearances. Oftentimes, they’ll just call it
{nang-wa}. You don’t know exactly what it means but it refers to deceptive
reality, okay. {tendrel} you know: dependent origination. The fact, that things
depend on other things, with which they are related, and that’s why it’s called
dependent origination. Actually, in Tibetan, it’s ‘dependent relationship’.
[student: How about ‘interdependent’?] I like it. [student: it’s the same right?]
Yeah. I try to avoid the word ‘origination’ because it, it, it gives the meaning of
starting, and in two of the schools that’s doesn’t cover enough things, right?
Starting can only imply [unclear].
{tendrel lu-wa mepa}, {lu-wa} means ‘tricky’ [laughs] okay. Tricky or fails, like
never fails. {lu-wa mepa} means ‘never fails’ You can say, never fails. The word
in Tibetan {lu-wa} means to cheat somebody, to trick somebody, or to fail in the
sense of not work, not hold true, never fails, okay. {nang-wa ten drel} never
fails. {mepa} means ‘doesn’t’, {lu-wa} means ‘fail’ or ‘trick’, in this case it means
fail. So, what it’s saying is, the appearances around us, which is another word for
deceptive reality, and they are dependent, they originating, which means what?
They depend on my giving them… my perception of them. They are, they
never fail. They never fail. You can interpret this line to mean: karma never
fails. What was the first quality of karma? {nyepa} Some people missed what it
meant to be definite [student: that the seed you planted definite to your similar
result] Yeah, good, good, good. Definite doesn’t mean it’s certain to give a
result, it means it’s certain to give a similar result, okay. So you can think of that
here. {nang-wa tendrel lu-wa me-pa} means karma is is…karma never fails,
okay. Karma never fails. What you see around you, the appearance, everything
that appears around you, whether it’s pleasant or painful for you, comes from
your past deeds. It never fails. Never fails, okay.
And, okay…it’s like a big number one right, there’s a big number one. And
{tong-pa} what’s {tong-pa} mean? [student: emptiness] Emptiness, okay. In
Sanskrit? [student: shunyaya] Shunyata. Did I go through that with you guys?
Shu – you see how she pronounces it as ‘su’? ‘shu’ is the, is the form, is the root
in Sanskrit. And, in Sanskrit, when you make a vowel stronger it’s called ‘verdi’,
it changes to ‘showa’; and when it gets to Latin, and then Western languages, the
‘u’ changes to ‘v’. And, the initial ‘sha’ changes to a hard ‘k’, as in the word
‘century’ and [unclear], so, this word comes directly from shunyata. The word
‘cavity’ and ‘cave’ meaning, you know, an empty place, comes from the word
for emptiness. Same is true of the word, this one, ‘guru’ coming from ‘guru’,
changing to ‘grou’, and then, into English with a ‘v’ – heavy, your lama is a
heavy [laughs] okay, these are interesting. I mean, most of our language comes
from Sanskrit, ultimately. It took our scholars a long time to see it. Now they
see it. [student: what does {dang} mean?] Excuse me? [student: what does
{dang} mean in the previous line?] {dang} means ‘and’. So this whole first part
here, starting here and ending here, is the law of karma, is the law of
appearances; why things appear to be something. Why does the guy, why does
the guy who’s otherwise blank appear to be nasty to you at work today?
[student: is it correct to say deceptive reality and dependent origination don’t
fail? Those sentence] Yeah, karma. John, meaning Mr Stilwell, never fails, I
mean, equal, are positives.
Now, {tong-pa, tong-pa} means ‘emptiness’, {ke-len, drel-way, ke-len drel-way}
means ‘beyond any position’, beyond any position. You can’t say it is and you
can’t say it’s not.
Some one comes up to you and says does a {dak} exist? What? What’s your
answer? Does the self exist? [student: no] [student: not the way you think
[unclear]] Right, if you say ‘no’, you’re in trouble, ‘cos they’ll say well who are
you? [laughter] You seem to be teaching this class [laughs] you seem to be
Michael himself. And, if you say, yes the {dak} exists, they’ll say, well then
everything I saw before was right and there’s no emptiness. So, it’s a grease-pig,
right? It’s a fish hook, it’s trying to catch [student] Hard to catch. So, actually,
there is a position. We can take a position, and it’s beautiful in the book. I’ll see
if I can find it. Oh, this is nice: “Nothing exists naturally, but that’s not to say that
nothing exists at all. Everything exists merely by convention, but everything
exists without existing naturally”. So, there’s four, there’s two exist and two not
exists. That’s a famous, that’s a famous line[student:[unclear]]. They exist, in a
sense, by illusion. He appears to be angry by himself. The truth is that he’s a
blank, he has no nature and I’m supplying an angry man there. In that case, in
that sense it’s an illusion. That’s the only sense that’s an illusion. [student: the
reason that I can’t forget, my or the concept of ultimate reality is [unclear] to
time so whatever can last forever is truth. Whatever last only a certain amount
of time is false in the sense that tomorrow will not be here] Different Buddhist
school’s say similar things like that. Like the Mind Only School has an idea
similar to that. It’s actually the opposite, but we’ll, we’ll get to that. [laughs]
That’ll take many years. So, {tong-pa ke-len drel-way} means, that’s that second
idea: emptiness. Okay. Emptiness. Those two ideas. Which are what? Karma
never fails. Where all this stuff is coming from. And then {tong-pa} the fact that
it’s not there by itself. If I hadn’t collected bad karma, this blank note book, this
blank blackboard, would’ve been much nicer. [student: your anger example
[unclear] that person appears to be angry…] Right. [student: from their own
side, that’s what you said] to me. If you say, ‘look Michael, where’s that angry
…I used to have this with [unclear], we used to have long discussions about this
you know. And she’d say, ‘no, the guy at work he really doesn’t like me. He’s
really an angry man.’ And I’d say, ‘well where’s it coming from?’ And she’d say,
‘well, I don’t know. Maybe his wife yelled at him, or he had a bad day, or he’s
just a bad person, or, I don’t know.’ I’d say, ‘no, it’s coming from you.’ And the,
yeah, the first idea is wrong. [student: right but if you see somebody at work
screaming and yelling at you and you think that, that the person is angry with
me from their side independent of..] yeah my perceptions and my naming it
[student: yeah, that’s right. That’s incorrect] that’s incorrect [student: however if
you say, somebody appears to be angry on their side with me and that’s why
they’re waving their arms and screaming and yelling, that’s a correct
perception?] Yeah. [student: to himself?] You keep asking me that and I, you
don’t know what he sees from his side. You just can’t tell. He might be a
bodhisattva. You have no idea how he perceives himself Can’t [unclear].
[student: so, so then the only two choices would be either that person appears to
themselves to be angry with me or is wishing to put on a display with an
appearance of anger to me?]           Right, that’s true [student: one of those two
things] oh no, he, by the way, how does he see himself at that moment? Not as
an angry man necessarily. He might see him as a righteous man trying to help
Tom Kylie, straighten him out, you know [laughter] I’ve been telling this guy a
hundred times, I’m just trying to make him go away. He doesn’t, maybe almost
by definition he doesn’t see himself as you do, you know. He sees himself as
some… [student: or sometimes they say, ‘you make angry’] [laughs] Yeah, who
made him angry? Oh, yeah, yeah [student] Okay. So, those two concepts, okay,
those those two concepts {go-wa nyi}, those two concepts, those two
understandings. {go-wa} means ‘understanding’, {nyi} means ‘two’. Okay.
Those two understandings. {ji-si} means ‘as long as’, as long as; {so-sor} means
‘unconnected’, unconnected; {nang-wa} means ‘appears’, I should say ‘appear’,
okay, appear. [student: so appears, is that a verb? Down there appears and up
there is appearances?] Plural. Right. ‘appears’ a noun, here it’s a verb, ‘to
appear’. [student: weird language] It’s a beautiful, it’s a very good language for
philosophy. It’s maybe the best, I mean if you, you wouldn’t expect it from a, it’s
a nomad’s language. [student: is it because every word can have multiple
meanings which you need, depending on what you need?] [laughs] I don’t
know why, ‘cos Sanskrit, Sanskrit is precise [student:[unclear] ] Sanskrit is really
precise somehow this is more beautiful, I don’t know. [student] We’ll talk about
it. [student: is there a different word for true appearances?]            No. True
appearance? [student: well in the sense that there’re appearances, I mean if
you’re Buddha, for example.. ] Oh no, they’re two different words, yeah, yeah.]
Oh, no that’s a different word, yeah it’s a different word. [unclear] What appears
to the mind of a Buddha and what appears to our mind is …
{de-si-du} means ‘for that long’ [student: for that long?] for that long. In English
you don’t have to say, ‘as long as you have this emotion, then for that long
you’ll be unhappy’. We don’t have to have the second part anyway., We just
say, ‘as long as you have that emotion you’re gonna be unhappy’. But in
Tibetan, you have to say, ‘as long as you have that emotion, for that long, you’re
gonna be unhappy’. In Tibetan you have to say both. So, as long as what
appear to be unconnected? What’s your guess? [student: appearance and
emptiness] Good, yeah, as long as those two understandings: karma is infallible.
Karma never fails, and emptiness. Which is some kind of… I can’t say it ‘is’ and
can’t say it ‘isn’t’, okay.         And it’s, you can’t blame people for thing it’s
unconnected, okay. One is a very strange thing. One is saying I don’t know if
you exist or not [laughs] okay. And the other one is, your karma is sure: if you
do something good you get something good. If you do something bad you get
something bad. It seems like those two ideas are not connected much. It seems
like that. But as long as it seems like that to you [student: the connection
between them [unclear]] what’s the connection between interdependence and
emptiness [unclear] [student:[unclear]] That’s not the point. I mean it is true, but
the point is that [student: but they’re not [unclear]] no, not at all. One is negative
and one is positive. One is an absence [student: no, no, no. I mean between
karma and [unclear]] Oh, in this case he’s using it for [unclear]. What is karma?
If, if, when I say karma you should be thinking, the fact that I’m being forced to
have these perceptions. That’s what I mean when I say karma. I mean, you
have to think of karma that way. The fact that you are forced to have the
perceptions that paint in the empty guy. He’s a blank screen and, we were
calling in the other class, Mr Karma comes along and turns on the projector. In
your mind is this blank screen making you see this thing. [student]: but all
karma…]             I’m sorry, the mind is more like the projector. [student: all
interdependent is karma?] No.
Okay, so {da-dung} means, I’m sorry, I missed that, I left out {da-dung} means
‘still’, s-t-i-l-l, {tu-pay} means Shakyamuni, the Buddha [student: it means Buddha
or does it Shayamuni] It means Muni, and it’s plural really, the Buddhas’.
{gong-pa}real idea, true idea. You guys have {tu-pay} {tu-pay} means Buddha,
Buddhas’, plural. {tok-pa} means ‘to realize’, ‘understand’. It’s a synonym for
what? {lam}Path, okay. The three Principal Paths, it’s the three principal
realisations. That’s why I can’t stand when they say, ‘aspects of the path’, it
doesn’t refer to that. The three principal paths.
{tok-pa me} {tok-pa me}, {me} means what? What are all those ‘m’ words in
Tibetan? [student: negatvie] Yeah, you haven’t figured it out yet; you still don’t
understand what the Buddha meant. You still haven’t realized the ultimate
thought of the Buddhas as long as what? [student: [u] As long as those two
understandings seem to be, yeah, unconnected. [student: still haven’t realized the
ultimate…] Thought, or the true intention, of the Buddha, of the Buddhas’. As
long as you think that the idea of karma and the idea of emptiness are somehow
unconnected. If you think about karma and you lose emptiness ,or if you think
about emptiness and you lose karma, you still don’t understand what the
Buddha meant. [student: is that tenth verse?] Yeah, I think it is. [student:
[unclear]] Ninth? [student: later. No…I think…I mean I don’t know. I thought
I had it memorized maybe I didn’t [unclear]]
Oh, it’s eleven. It’s number eleven. [student] It’s number eleven, page one
twenty- seven.
So, you still haven’t, you still don’t understand what the Buddha meant as long
as you think that karma, when you accept karma you have to give up accepting
emptiness, or when you accept emptiness you have to give up accepting karma.
This is that, this lady said in the other class that she had heard some teacher say
that [cut] Emptiness means ‘nothing’ and therefore you can do what you want.
That’s very bad. That’s poison. Everything is empty therefore you must follow
morality. [student: maybe your karma cause you perceive…] [laughs] [laughter]
[unclear] it is, it is. Disrespecting your Lama in the past, you will meet those
lamas. [student: [unclear]] You will meet those lamas. [student: if you disrespect
your lama then you’ll meet …] then you will meet these strange lamas [student:
who say strange things?] who say poison. And then you do what they say and
you’re really in trouble, you know. [laughs] [students] Even that would be
karma [laughs] [student: morality, I remember [unclear] years ago and you were
talking about [unclear] by the mass, by the society [unclear] now you use the
word morality. And then that person then after having worked on himself
through meditation or [unclear] achieve some freedom so [unclear] in that sense
he’s free from the mass morality of the society. And of course it doesn’t mean
that become [unclear] but that by its own side [unclear]]
Yeah, I would say the opposite. I would say, I mean I would say what you’re
getting at is true. It’s true that when you become, when you study morality, you
find out that a lot of the things which are acceptable in your society are just
wrong: pornography, sex in the movies, abortion, alcohol, drugs. Those things
are acceptable in our society and they’re wrong. Why are they wrong? They
hurt you. [student: can I ask you a question..] Yeah [student: about [unclear] is
that often translated as beyond existing or non existence?] Ah, Nagarjuna said
something like that but he did not mean, obviously things do exist ‘cos if you
doubt it I’ll hit you on the head with this vase [laughter] [laughs] and obviously,
they don’t exist in the way you thought they did because if they do, there’s no
nirvana and you might as well go home now. [student: right but is that…is that
because [unclear]..] Yeah they do say [unclear] [student] [unclear] I mean not
really, I mean [student: but that’s the same one they’re referring to..] Not exactly
the same words, no. But the same concept [student: but when they’re saying
that which sounds like something like really high, and hard to understand and
what it really means is that you can’t say that’s something… you can’t defend
either position] that’s what Nagarjuna [unclear] [student] Yeah, you can.. If you
don’t, if you go beyond, if you accept things as self-existent then you’re in
trouble. You can’t say exist and you can’t say [unclear] if you say they’re
interdependent then you can say they do exist or not. And that’s what he meant
by his four-fold: two exists and two not exists. They don’t exist the way you
thought but of course they exist. [student: so another to way this is [unclear],
another way to say this that here understanding of emptiness is dependent upon
the laws of karma, your karma] Well what it is, is very, very beautiful. I mean,
I struggled with this for years. By the way, I saw it in some book and finally
understood it. So, big deal I understand emptiness. How does that help me?
What happens to me? You know, I’ve asked many Buddhist teachers, you
know , okay, if I understood emptiness tomorrow, perfectly, what would
happen to me, you know? Would the dentist’s drill still hurt, or my boss still
seem like a nasty guy, if he is? I mean would, would I still enjoy movies? You
know, what would I be like if I understood emptiness? What’s the connection
between emptiness and, and me reaching beyond pain, you know? What’s the
point? I don’t understand it. And they would explain to me emptiness means,
oh John Stilwell is just atoms, and you’re just making him up. So, I’d say, well, if
I understood that perfectly then how would that help me tomorrow, you know,
at work?




[laughs] I don’t wanna have anymore pain. I don’t wanna be upset anymore at
work. How’s that gonna help me? What it means is that the guy at work who’s
angry at you, you, you take me through it. I mean, the guy at work is angry at
you, he starts screaming at you, what should you do now that you understand
emptiness? [John Stillwell: so you should…] The first thought you should have?
The very first thought in like five words. Remember [student: remember you
create the cause] go further back [student: Oh, oh] You know, you’re down
there with the first group [student: remember all beings is being equal] No, no,
no, no I mean first group of the emptiness positions, dependent origination.
First, remember that he is empty [student: he’s a projection of my…] that’s the
second. The first one is that he’s empty. He’s not… he has no nature. He’s not
an angry man, he’s not a happy man, he’s nothing. He’s nothing. He has no
nature. He has no nature of his own. This is gonna help you at work, okay.
[student: [unclear]] [laughs] Okay and then what do you think? [student: and
you think that this is my mental concept and label of the situation] it’s a
perception. It’s a perception.
So, this is the order: He’s empty and he’s just a perception. Then, what next?
[student: after I understand he’s a perception of my mind then I choose to not to
create the causes to experience this again?] I think there should be a step called,
you know, what is the nature of this perception? Is it voluntary or is it forced on
you? [student: is forced on you] Yeah. Can I choose at the moment, you see so
many people explain emptiness, in my opinion, wrong: Oh if you understood
emptiness, he would seem pleasant to you at that moment, forget it [laughs]
[student: you have to accept, accept the situation] No, not even, well in a sense,
what I mean is the third thing is that this is not a voluntary perception. This
perception is forced on you. I have no choice right now. [student: you say, okay
that’s the way it is..] He’s empty. I understand he’s empty. I understand his
wife likes the way he looks, but he sure looks ugly to me [laughs]. I can’t stop it
you know, [unclear] he is. By the way, he is angry, he is ugly at that moment,
okay. So the perception is forced on me. He’s empty. It’s just my perception.
My perception is forced on me, [student: by karma?] Yeah, by my karma. Then
what happens. What would think next? Now you [student: then you choose not
to create the cause to have the perception force on you again in the future]
Yeah, understanding his nature, which is wisdom, now, now, now, says you,
okay, now you have a choice how to react to him [student: what if your
perception is already reacting to it?] don’t go [unclear] [students] [laughter] it’s
not a karma yet. [student: pardon me?] It’s not a karma yet. [student: but I
thought you said just thinking..] [student: the act of perceiving…] It’s not a
good karma or a bad karma. But for me now to, now how am I gonna react?
That’s the big deal. That’s the big deal [student: so perceiving him as empty does
not create any kind of karma. It’s only the reaction to the perception?] In a
sense. So now, what do you choose? [student: that’s the choice?] I mean, no, if
you are angry, you, you just gonna, you now realize, while you’re…while he’s
screaming, you’re, you have wisdom. You have wisdom. And now wisdom
says, look, he came from your past anger, [student: [unclear]] so what are you
gonna do now? [laughs] At least be neutral, at best be virtuous. At least, the
Dalai Lama always says, “If you can’t help, just don’t hurt people”. I mean if you
can’t do anything good for them, okay but please don’t hurt them [laughs]
[laughter]
Okay, so, so that wisdom now is saying, oh, oh, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. He
came from, the reason that you are forced to see him as angry, by the way, he’s
not angry, he’s blank- his wife likes him – is your past deeds, so please don’t get
angry now. As he’s screaming at you, please don’t get angry now. And then, at
that moment, will he be pleasant? [student: no] It takes time for the karma to
kick in, okay. It takes time. And that’s the purification of your karma. And, and
when it’s complete, [student: those things won’t happen] you won’t meet him
anymore. You’ll never see him anymore. You’ll never see anymore. [student:
so when you say it’s your karma to experience this…put another way it’s saying
to be that you have patterned your mind to interpret this experience as
unpleasant?] I, I know what you mean [student: therefore your karma is to
experience it as unpleasant] don’t….there, there, what you’re talking about, and
we talked about it in the other class, is a distinction between tendencies that you
get in this life, karmic, the word in Sanskrit is paccedi, the results of karmic
cooking, okay [laughs] the word in paccedi…for a karmic result in Sanskrit
means something that has cooked, a wine which has mellowed over a long time
and now it’s flowering, now it’s coming out. Don’t think of your seeing him as
angry as a tendency which you have in the life because you’ve been lazy
mentally. It’s not that. It’s much more, it’s much more concrete than that. It’s
actually an event, which is flowering now, that could have been planted
thousands of years ago. It’s not a result of your mental tendencies in this life, so
much. [student: so when I think of karma I think it’s the way in which my mind
is developed] Yeah, if it were just a mental tendency, then you could, you could
clean it out pretty easily [students] by trying to be happy or [student: a therapist
could…] yeah, a psychiatrist thing [student: and it would really work which
doesn’t] yeah [laughter] well it works in the sense that they get a hundred
dollars whether you get cured on not. [laughs] Anyway [student: but you say
your karma is more than your mental, emotional [unclear] predisposition, react
in certain way] Yeah, yeah, right. It’s much more… I’m searching for the
word…it’s much more [student: fatalistic than that] not fatalistic. It’s much more
evolutionary than that. It’s much more, you know, universe thing than that.
It’s, it’s a flowering or a cooking out [student: I thought you said before though
there’re you know…this is where confuse me because I thought you said that
there aren’t these concrete almost karmic things floating around…] Oh, right, oh
right , no the way they ripen is mental, is in your mental continuum [student: but
there is some concrete thing that’s planted….] Yeah, and they cook, cook, cook,
cook, cook and then they come out like a…. like a ugly, terrible flower that pops
out of the ground [student: so it’s not really your…] it’s not just your emotional
tendencies of this life [student: it’s not that reaction,] that make you see this
man. [student: that composition of your mind right now?]] No, no. If it were,
you could clean it out by, you know, sessions, therapy sessions, talking, you
know, trying not to see things as bad. It doesn’t matter how much you try not
to see things as bad, they’re gonna come [laughs] you know, it doesn’t matter
how [student: the only way of, of [unclear] experience, if you think that you’re
dealing with that forced experience and modifying it as it happens that’s an
illusion. Only that is also some sort of mix perception that was started a long
time ago] that’s exactly …[student: there’s no hope of dealing with it right now,
the only thing you could do is to deal with the future] Right. [student: and then
after the perception which is forced upon you comes the reaction to it which
there’s no hope [unclear] that either or that’s free will?] That’s why you’re in the
class. [student: things seems... ] Wisdom [unclear] The debate, there’s a horrible
debate in the monastery {korwa …..}you know {korwa….} Does samsara have a
beginning? {Tibetan} Does it have an end? {Tibetan} You say, of course it has
an end, because there’s wisdom. And that is a powerful antidote, {nyingpo
tupten} means it’s an explosive antidote [student: which can do nothing about
the perception only the reaction to the perception at the present moment?] Yeah
[student: when the Buddha said that the…you mean the reason…] But think of
your purification; think of your nirvana as something that you now begin to
create, by not reacting badly. And just be aware that anytime you have a
negative feeling, even if it’s just an anxiety, or some kind of fears or some kind
of mild upset with the rain even, that’s a bad karma, you know. And, and it’s an
ignorant reaction to, to, to the angry man, you know. You can have regret, and
that’s a virtue. To say, okay I now understand that this guy who has been
screaming at me all these years and who’s going to continue to scream at me for
a while, is a result of what I did before, and I’m sorry and I will not do it,
especially with him ever again. That sadness is a virtue. But any other kind of
anger about him, or even anger about physical world is, is a bad karma.
[student: the thing that seems funky to me is we’re saying that we’re creating…
we’re breaking the circle through wisdom by applying a mental predisposition.
We to be wise you know, we’re saying, I’m going to train my mind to react in
this way to create virtue.] Train my mind in the sense, like, why? He just
understands what’s going on. [student: oh yeah, yeah] it’s that neat? It’s just,
it’s just…finally I understand what’s going on, you know, [laughs] yeah, yeah,
before, you’re like, you didn’t know what’s going on [student: but it’s still a
mental predisposition to behave this way, to create virtue] Yeah, and you have
to pray for that to happen [student: and yet the past negative karma is not from
a mental predisposition is what you’re saying] Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah [student:
they’re not related so much] the wisdom is {sang chung} very flimsy, very
fragile, very weak. It is only a mental disposition , mainly [student: but how is
the main karma from the past not a mental disposition] Oh, no, karma that
you’re disposed to wisdom, is, yeah. [student: the negative karma that….] The
fact that you’re receptive, so receptive to what I say tonight, that’s a good
karma. That’s the result of a good karma. But the [student] Oh no, that’s not, it’s
mainly a karmic result. Your enjoying or your taking to what I say, is a, is a
karmic result [student: I’m talking about the negative karma] But, but the…
[student: I’m saying the virtue is wisdom, is a mental predisposition, if negative
karma …] It’s not…no, it’s mainly a karmic [unclear] , [student: [unclear] not a
mental disposition] You’re, you’re enjoying or you’re taking to what I say, is a
karma… [student: rather than just a mental disposition] Yeah, no, it’s not a
result of having heard it a lot in this life. I could say it a hundred times to
someone else and he’d, every time I said it he’d say I was foolish. We invited
some of our neighbors to the talk the other day and they, you know, they said,
‘this is nice, ‘ and then they left after five minutes ‘cos nothing of value there for
them. [student: so creating a virtue is not a mental predisposition. Apply the
wisdom and…] Well, it becomes, it is both. It is both. And the, it is a mental
tendency that you are trying to make become a karma. [student: so wouldn’t
that be the same as past negative karma also] Ah, not, no. The fact that you
have wisdom is from karma. How, how you grow… how your wisdom, how
your wisdom gets stronger through the next few months and years, is, is, is
from education. [student: and how the wisdom got started…[unclear] floating
around] [laughter] [student: will force all those negative stuff so wherever the
wisdom [unclear] is by sheer luck] Oh, you’re one in a, you’re one in a million,
literally. One in, one in thirty million. [student: so Michael the process that
you’re forced to have this perception, right, most people don’t realize that. They
think that’s far from being forced perception to reality that they are in] Yeah, the
guy is really angry [student: [unclear] ] if my fellow workers could just realize it,
you know. When someone goes off to lunch with you, they say, why did that
guy look kind of angry today? You say, yeah did you notice, he really is a bad
guy. You like the confirmation from other people, you know.[laughs] And
when your friends say, oh he doesn’t look that angry to me, you get real upset
[laughter] [laughs] [student: yeah all right. So, so there’s this forced perception.
Then hopefully we get ourselves when we realize rather than the reality it’s this
forced perception.       Now lets try to deal with the reaction to the forced
perception] Yeah [student: to a neutral reaction] At best, at worst [student: at
worst] I mean, at worst, at minimum [student: virtuous reaction] or at [unclear]
not virtuous [student: and once we get pretty good at that then, then what? I
mean, now we’re trying to generate what kind of perception is that? unforced
perception or is there such a thing as unselective perception or even the…we just
have to make our forced perceptions more pleasant ones, is that it?] Virtuous.
[student: but they’ll still be forced nontheless] Sure. Buddha is forced to see
himself in paradise. Poor guy. [laughs] His paradise is empty and he’s forced to
see it the way he does [student: and there’s not..] [student: is it?] but he
understands how to make himself, force himself more [student: right and
there’s…] and continue it. [student: so there’s…in the moment while these
perceptions are going on there’s no absolutely no hope of, of, the forced means
no matter how much you want you’re not going to be able to [unclear]] Yeah,
will power has almost nothing to do with it. Wanting, desire to please, I mean
didn’t you notice your whole life, when you don’t want a pain to continue, it
normally does. Not wanting it to continue has no effect on its continuing or not.
[student: so in a moment you can have control over your response but you
won’t have control over your perception] No and I don’t claim that and don’t
expect it and don’t quit if it doesn’t happen [laughs]. I’m telling you it won’t.
[student: the only way to do it is to throw [unclear] the cause is for better
perceptions [unclear]] And doesn’t it make sense? [student] yeah, doesn’t it
make sense? I mean, doesn’t that correspond with what you’ve experienced in
your life, you know? Isn’t it your experience in your life when you’re wanting
something to change from bad, you know, wanting, wishing, what the
Christians call praying, you know, it doesn’t happen. And didn’t you notice yet?
Doesn’t, it isn’t a function of your wanting it to stop when you have a bad pain in
your body, your hand or your back. You want it to stop, you pray for it to stop,
you can’t think about anything else but it doesn’t make it stop. [student:
[unclear] positive energy you generate helps [unclear]] get off, come on, I mean,
you know, I mean give me the Zen master that says that and I’m gonna take a
pin and stick him in the bottom and say, come on you know, let’s see [laughs] It
doesn’t work. I, I, I lived with a Japanese monk who said my master is, he, he
can sit in the snow and meditate, you know, he meditated for three days in the
snow. And he said, we’re gonna go to the airport and meet him. I said, well,
let’s do it, you know [laughter] and we went and [laughs] off the plane comes
this [laughter] [laughs] old guy, you know [student: [unclear]]. He’s an old
decrepit man, you know. I’m sure if he sat on the snow for ten minutes he’d die,
you know. And he died the next year, you know. And I thought, so what if he
sat in the snow for three hours, you know, he died. He got old, it’s not, you
can’t through will-power. It just doesn’t happen. You can’t do it. No one’s ever
done it. [student: can’t you overcome disease like..] If you do, it’s because of
your [student: past good karma] yeah, you’re forced to see yourself. By the
way, that’s why a miracle can happen. That’s why miracles…if things weren’t
empty miracles couldn’t happen. Because things are empty, miracles are quite
plausible. [students] They’re not miracles. Everyone seeing the miracle has the
karma to see the miracle and therefore, the miracle can happen. It does happen.
[students] And there’ll be guys who say, there’s what’s his name, [unclear: lakar]
what’s his name? Lakar, he lived with the Buddha for twelve years. He said, ‘I
don’t see anything special. I don’t know what you’re all so hot about.’ He was
his servant for twelve years. ‘ He’s got this glow coming out of his head, it’s all I
can see. I don’t know what [unclear]’ [laughter] They say that. It’s very famous.
It’s a very depressing Sutra to read. My Lama, he didn’t want me to read it. And
I, I, so I wanted to read it [laughter] [student: of course you want to read it] It
was very depressing [laughs] [student: before you said something that I didn’t
realize before that the…our mind… I mean our mental formation…] Oh excuse
me, I want to interrupt now. Is there another step? After you decided not to be
angry back, at least be neutral, at least control yourself and just, you know. At
best, try to fix things, in a worldly way, you know what I mean; in a temporary
way. But, but is there another step? Is there anything happens, does anything
happen immediately? Does he change immediately? [student: I mean…coming
back to you, finishing yelling at you and walk away] Yeah, but I’ll tell you one
thing that happens. You just missed five minutes of anger. You’ll go home
much more peaceful. Your mind will be happy. I’m talking short-term. I’m
talking no Buddhism. Forget karma, it just happens to be a better way to act
anyway. And it makes it happier, you know [laughs] You’ll see if you get good
at it and you keep missing these opportunities for anger and you keep missing
these opportunities for desire then you start to eat this fudge upstairs which I’m
thinking about [laughter] and you, you just let it go. If you do that often enough
during the day, you go home feeling quite fresh, relaxed, clean [student: not
abuse and beat by angry [unclear]] [laughs] Yeah I mean, even short term, it’s a
pleasant way to live. It’s probably the right way to live even if Buddhism, even if
there’s no nirvana or Buddhahood, it’s probably still a better way to spend your
day. [student: I think in a short term too when people don’t respond at you,
being angry as much, I mean, they still may be strangers react that way but…]
Yeah, yeah. You don’t feed it [student: so there’s no fun anymore, right?] They
know you’re not [unclear] [students] [laughter] [student] No, they’re not
normally, not normally. Normally, I mean, I’m talking about flippant non-anger
that makes people angry. Instead of getting angry, you say, ‘Oh yeah, [student:
[unclear]] [laughter] [unclear] but if you’re just respectful, and you say, ’yeah, I
understand it and they [unclear] [laughter]
[cut]
Side B
[cut]
[laughter] [student: anger] [student: Michael, like you were saying [unclear]
we’ve been a lot of other people before in the past, right?                 So since
we….everybody else was other mother and us we were everybody’s else too, I
guess, right, so this karma… which kind of basis does he have in thinking that
the karma is an individual result that you’re paying off right now? I mean, I
don’t get it too much because you said then mental formation is not the result…
is not all the result of the karma, much more is left behind. So which kind of
opportunity do we have to work as individual [unclear] much better than being
[unclear] but we have been everybody else. We have collected so much karma;
we’re a social result of masses of people and killing each other or help each other
[unclear]. As an individual I don’t see how much I can do against all this mass of
actions that I have accumulated [unclear]] Oh yeah, the odds against you are,
are, that’s why he uses the example of the blind turtle. Do you remember it? I
mean, a blind turtle [unclear] one every million years he pops his head out, and
this thing is floating, this little inner tube is floating around not at a pond, it’s
floating around in the entire Atlantic ocean. And there’s only one turtle sand
he’s pokes his head out every hundred years. What are the odds that he’ll poke
his head out through the inner tube? We are in that situation now. Yeah, we are
like, Rinpoche says it’s like winning the lottery. [laughs] [student: there was
there…for saying that being born as human being is that miraculous and that’…]
Yeah, much less someone who cares about Dharma [student: but about this
karma thing right now you know, if I feel that I have been everybody else then
my tendency is not to…the feeling of not wanting to pay the bill as an individual
because [unclear] I have so much in the past and I have done millions of other
forms you know, why me now that I have to collect this bad karma? And
how…which kind of [unclear] that I have to work against these millions of
reincarnation that we have before when I was everybody else.] No, then the
debate is that. The answer is {Tibetan} means, just understanding what we just
talked about, just understanding it finally and seeing what’s really going on, is
more powerful than all the bad karma you collected, yeah. It’s {nyam ….} it’s the
proof in Buddhist Scripture for the end of samsara, for the end of {korwa} for
the, proof of the end of suffering. It’s not to say, oh, every one will collect good
karma sooner or later and then we’ll all be out. It’s not that. It’s understand
what’s happening when the guy gets angry at you. If you just understand
what’s happening, you, you’re on your way out. The understanding is more
powerful than the whole situation. That’s wisdom. That’s why the big deal
about wisdom.
One more question then I gotta [unclear] [student] [laughter] I collected some
karma there. [student: it seems [unclear] that sequence at all?] yourself? Yeah,
eventually it’s very important. [student: eventually but not now?] Not in that
case. Eventually, you have to figure out why I have to see myself get old, why I
have to see myself die. Is there anything I can do about it? Is there anything
about that, is that perception gonna be forced on me or not? That’s the question,
you know. That’s the fifty , sixty thousand dollar question, okay[laughs]
[students] Try to avoid that forced perception. Okay bye. Go, go. [laughter]
[students]
{nam-shik} means ‘at some point’, {nam-shik} means at some point; {ren-jok}
means ‘unrelated’; {me-pa} means ‘not’, not; {chik-char-du} means ‘almost as
one’. I should change that. You can say, ‘at once’, at once yeah [student: at
once?] yeah; {ten-drel} means, you know, ‘dependent origination’; { mi-lup}
means ‘never fails’, that’s the same thing again, never fails; {tong-wa} means ‘to
see’: {tsam-nyi-ne} means ‘just by [unclear]’ [students] [dogs barking!!] [laughter]
[students] [laughter]
[cut]
{nge-shey} is a very hard word to explain. Means, in this case, ‘certainty’,
certainty; {yul} means ‘object’; {dzin-tang} means ‘the way it holds’, the way it
holds; {kun jik-na} means ‘it dissolves’, it dissolves.
So, what he’s got so far is this: At some point, those two ideas will no longer be
unrelated. They will appear to you at once. What does that mean? It means, the
minute you think he’s empty, you start to think what? If he’s empty, then where
did the anger come from? Where did his appearance come from? Yeah. And
when you think of, yeah it’s just the appearance, then what are you thinking?
Emptiness. So, every time you have one thought, the other one pops up. Every
time you have the other one the other one pops up. This is supposed to be a
very desirable point. [laughs] The minute he starts screaming at you, you say,
‘Oh he doesn’t have any nature of being angry’. And then, the question comes
in your mind, well then why does he seem to be angry? Oh, I’m, I’m supplying
the angry look, it’s coming from my mind. And then, and then later you say,
‘Oh he’s screaming at me. It’s just because it appears to my mind to be that way,
but it’s really not that. That’s emptiness.’
So, every time you have one idea, the other one kicks in. Every time you have
one idea, the other idea comes. Those two ideas are so friendly, those two ideas
are so close, that every time you get one idea the other one comes automatically.
[student: till eventually they’re not two ideas] They are two ideas. I mean
they’re separate ideas. [student: always?] Oh yeah, one is negative and one is
positive [student: it’s like in some psychedelic…] One is what it’s not and one is
what it is. He’s not angry by himself [student: it’s like some psychedelic
experience where you experience the projection of your own mind and you see
[unclear] but you know that they’re empty basically they can’t exist but it’s just
projection of yourself] Those two ideas, I mean, when you first started studying
Dharma and you heard about karma, you, you grasped onto it. This is easy to
understand. If I hurt somebody I’m gonna get hurt back. If I’m good to
somebody I’m gonna get good back. And then, later, you heard about this idea
about emptiness, you know, nothing’s this. And you have a lot of trouble with
this and then somebody tells you, look, these two are married. These two are
two sides of the same coin. And you say, well I don’t really see much
connection. I mean, this one tells me I have to be good and this one tells me
nothing exist [laughs] I don’t see any connection. You know, that’s the first
verse that he described, that he was talking about. When you, when they just
seem to be totally no, no relation between these two ideas. Now, now you get
to a point where the minute the guy’s angry at you, you think ‘empty’. What’s
empty mean? It means he doesn’t have a nature. Why’s he appearing? I’m
supplying it. Then, the two ideas of karma and emptiness are just always
coming together. The minute you get one, the reason you get one is when
you’re in trouble. When you’re getting angry or you’re having desire or you’re
having an emotional problem, you think well what’s the emptiness going on
here? And then that brings you to think, Oh, oh I’m supplying something
because of my past karma. When you get to that point, you’re, it’s quite nice.
Then you’re getting close. [student: I see how the karma [unclear] emptiness and
how we’ve…] When you think he’s, if I come up to you and say this guy has no
nature of being angry, well then you said, but he appears angry to me. And I
say, where is it coming from? Oh, I’m supplying it. [student: that’s what I’m
saying.     You see the emptiness first and then the karma is kind the
explanation…] Oh, but sometimes he says, here he says {tendrel ….} okay. Just
by seeing, the minute you understand that karma is infallible, that dependent
origination – here we’re using karma - is infallible, never fails, well then you
know emptiness. What does that mean? What I mean to say is, I’ll say this, very
interesting. You can’t understand karma unless you understand emptiness. The
way, we call a baby understanding of karma, is where the Dalai Lama comes to
one village in India, these resettlement villages and there’s all these old Tibetans
come with their rosaries, you know. Really sad, you know. There’s one who
circles our monastery. He can only go like this, his bones are all crushed by the
Chinese from prison. And he walks around the monastery for months, like he
can only go about this fast, and the Dalai Lama says, “don’t do bad things, you’ll
get bad results’. And he goes yeah, yeah, I believe, I believe, you know. That’s
not enough. You can’t, you won’t change your behaviour based on that. It’s not
understanding. It’s faith. It won’t work. It’ll break down. First time you get a
bad pain, first time you want something really bad, you’ll break down, you
know [laughing] [student] Yeah, yeah [unclear] it’ll break down, it’ll break
down. Has to be with the understanding of emptiness. It’s the only way that
you can truly observe the laws of karma, because then you understand how
they work. So, let me go on now.
He says, just seeing why things never fail, just realizing the dependent
origination of something, then your old way of holding it will melt away. Your
old way of perceiving that guy will melt away, okay. The {dzin-tang} the way of
holding the object of your certainty, right, before you were certain he was angry
and on his own. That kind of certainty, the way, the way that that holds its
object, will melt away. There is no such thing. [students] I’ll say it this way,
something very interesting, something very interesting is does the self exist or
not? [students] [laughter, laughs] No, let’s say no. I mean a self meaning
something that could exist independent of my perceptions, doesn’t exist, okay.
Now, I’ll tell you something very interesting, anytime you have a bad emotion,
any of those eight worldly dharmas – being happy about getting something,
mad about not getting something; happy about feeling good, sad about not
feeling good; happy about having people say, oh Michael Roach and having
people say, who’s Michael Roach?; and, being happy about having people say,
Oh nice job Mr Stilwell and being sad when they say, Oh man you really screwed
up didn’t you. Those, those emotions are aimed at a {dak}, at a self. Those
emotions are always aimed at a self. You have to be misunderstanding the
object to have those emotions. If you understood the object, you would not
have those emotions. Any, ergo, therefore, anytime you have an emotion like
that, your ignorance is in control. You are perceiving a self. You are holding
onto a self. Your {nge-shey} your certainty, has a way of holding that object. If
you’re angry about someone at work, during the height of your anger, you are
grasping to an object which does not exist. If you understood that you could not
be angry. It’s just not possible. We call… there’s a very beautiful phrase in the
debating: the state of mind in which you understand his nature, and anger, can’t
be in the same mind at the same time. They are incompatible mental functions.
No mind, no state of mind in the universe can have anger and also understand
the object’s nature at the same time. It’s impossible. [student: is that because you
can only fix on one object in your mind at a given time?] Not only that but just
that they are {dzin-tang} the way they grasp onto their objects is contradictory.
It’s like you couldn’t hold the object to be hot and cold at the same time. The
state of mind that holds something as being hot, and the state of mind which
holds something as being cold, are incompatible within one mind at one time
towards one object. So, what I say is very interesting, when you get angry and
when you get happy, when you get sad – we’re talking attachment – the thing
that you’re angry about does not exist. That object doesn’t exist. When you
understand where that object’s coming from, my past anger, it melts away.
That’s what Tsongkapa’s saying. It melts away. The way you used to hold it
melts away. Once you understand that he’s coming from your past anger, you
can no longer hold him as existing from his own side. And the way you used to
grab onto him, it just dissolves. It just dissipates. [student: would it be true
happiness also?] Yeah, your old perceptions of happiness. The kind of a
happiness you have that you get sad about when it goes away [laughs] yeah
[student: temporary happiness] [student: so you’re not responsible for his
anger, are you?] No, ultimately not. Ultimately, if he had the right karma, you
could try to punch him in the face, and he would have a wonderful sensation.
That’s the whole story of the Buddha at the foot of the tree, the Bodhi tree.
He’s…he’s in the last moments before his enlightenment and these demons are
really upset, and they come with these arrows and spears and rocks and
everything and they throw them at him. So what does he perceive? [student:
flowers] A rain of flowers. They, they perceive weapons. And he perceives this,
how do you think it happened? It did happen. That’s a beautiful story about
emptiness. [student: so those demons get great karma for throwing flowers at
the Buddha?] No [laughter] [student: which is my point, I mean, you know, this
guy is at work he’s screaming at me because I just said that he did something
wrong and you know, I get no bad karma for making this guy scream because
he’s not really angry in the first place, you know, how does this work? It seems
like [unclear] both ways. How can you get bad karma from this person having
which seems to be an angry response [unclear], it’s really.. it’s not…it’s really
some karma that he’s having that’s ripening from the past seemingly unrelated
just like when you made the profit or what seems to a profit, from the shady
deal, right?] [student: in other words it’s not a one way street, right? [student:
well I don’t know, now I thought that I’m not suppose make…quote unquote,
make people suffer because that brings on bad karma but what I keep learning
here is that we don’t really don’t make suffer.] You can’t make person suffer.
[student: each of us determine our…] [students] You cannot make a person
suffer. You cannot make a person suffer. But you cannot make a person happy.
It’s impossible. [student: but you can get bad karma for, for appearing to have
made someone suffer]        From hoping to, wanting to. [student: so if you had
good intentions and somebody because of their karma can’t see those good
intentions and can only interpret your intentions are being harmful and they get
angry with you, you’re not going to get the bad karma for that?] [student: it
depends on your intentions though doenst….] [students] [student: if, if you’re
going to pull [unclear] at somebody’s finger and they’re going to die if you don’t
you know, they think that you just hate them or something. You’re causing
them all these pain] Yeah. No. Everything’s the same way. Everything’s the
same way. [student: this is a way… what you saying makes a log of sense, I’ve
been in a lot of situation…] And that’s why [unclear] so upset if you try to do
good and something bad happens. And then people say, well look, see that
proves that doing good, doing good is useless. You can never know the ultimate
results of your being good. Perhaps you’ve been good to childhood Adolf
Hitler, and he would have died and now you’ve saved his life and now he’s
gonna go kill [laughter] therefore, you shouldn’t try to be good. That’s an
argument. People say that. [unclear] Or, conversely, you do something with
evil intent, things work out okay and you’ve just created a lot of bad stuff, you
know, okay [student: for yourself but maybe…] yeah, something nice came but
not connected to you doing something bad. Cannot be. Ultimately, you can’t
hurt anyone. [student: because I find myself, I mean …] if they’re hurt it’s their
karma. Does that mean you can go round hurting people? No. [student: no, no.
I find myself right now in situations where I’m doing you know, maybe things
that are difficult to do and because of the way people are seeing me they can’t
understand me doing it in any other way unless I was angry which I’m not. But
they tell me that I am or reacting that way.] Yeah, it’s a very strange thing.
Very difficult for me to, you’re trying to get me to do this [unclear] [student:
trying to put it together that’s all] Think of it like this. The minute you see that,
that he is your karma, that you’re seeing him this way because of your karma, at
that moment you can no longer hold him as being angry from his own side. The
way you used to grasp him melts.             Those two states of mind are, are
incompatible with each other. Understanding that he has come from your past
anger, and holding him to be angry really, by his own nature, are incompatible.
Which is to say that, once wisdom takes root in your mind, once wisdom is
there, ignorance can’t be there. It’s a very weird thing. Wisdom and ignorance
hold their objects in, in mutually exclusive manners. We call it {dzin-tang gelwa}.
It’s like, anger and love. They’re {dzin-tang}, the way they hold their objects is
contradictory. You can’t have anger and love towards the same object at the
same time. The manner of holding that object is contradictory. Same thing with
understanding that he’s coming from your past anger and holding him to be
angry on his own. [student: can you simplify saying that everything is your own
projection and you’re so [unclear] everything is your projection] Sure, sure. So,
all you can do is be sad about what you did. All, the only bad emotion, negative
emotion you can have – it’s not actually negative. The only unpleasant emotion
you can have is, is regret that you did it, that you caused this. [student: now is
this a….is he speaking of an intellectual understanding or is he speaking like a
profound spontaneous [unclear] ]          No, no.       We’re talking straight, raw,
understanding, intellectual, that’s why it’s so hard for wisdom to overcome your
past habits. Your, your, your natural human tendency is to fight back. Your
natural tendency is to hurt back and, and wisdom has to, wisdom is a, wisdom is
of such a pure nature, because it’s based on truth, that it can overcome all those
aeons of lousy emotions, lousy natural human reactions, because it’s based on
truth. [student; but he’s talking about a kind of rational…] Yeah, yeah, [student:
kind of reasoning ] at the moment the guy is screaming at you. [student: if you
just reason with yourself and say, look I know it’s just…] Reasoning, this is the,
all the books talk, all those Buddhist books talk about wisdom. You know, high
knowledge, blah, blah, blah, {sherab, yeshe} whatever. This is it. This is all there
is to it. And, and that’s the function of wisdom. [student: thanks Michael]
[laughter] No I’m not saying, no, doesn’t it make sense that it’s this that can free
you from suffering? Use this rational moment at that, when the shit hits the fan,
and you go, no, I, I, I can’t be angry back. I must not be. Today my boss asked
me, oh I shouldn’t say, somebody asked me to do something slightly [student:
irregular] yeah, asked me [student: non virtuous] to write an appraisal for a
piece of jewellery that I never saw, actually, four pieces [laughter] [students] By
the way, I did it [laughs] [laughter] But, I thought you know, it’s my boss, you
know any one else would do this. It’s the right thing in business to do. He’s,
he’s not lying to me. He checked and he knows they’re a certain quality and I
believe him. [student: why is he…why doesn’t he write it?] He can’t because he
was involved in the sale, that’s a conflict of interest. So, so I’m… as I was writing
it I was thinking, god I’m teaching a class tonight on [unclear] relation to this
stuff [laughs] [laughter] I’m going to a bad result from this. [student: what’s the
bad result? Are you lying? You’re not lying?] I am lying, yeah. I’m saying that
I saw it [student: he’s lying] [student: oh you said you saw it] [student: he’s
testifying it] [student: but you totally trust this person’s…] Oh, I do. And
otherwise, in a sense I justified it to myself that way but it’s still wrong. [student:
it’s not a justification] It’s still wrong. I said I saw it and I didn’t see it. [student:
so Michael your natural reaction is to hurt back but the illusion is that you
couldn’t back if you had to] That’s true too. That’s true too but, but, leave it,
don’t go far [laughs]. What’s practical is not hurting [student: but the intent
causes further karma for you…] Absolutely, [student: to experience what
appears to be hurting toward you.] yeah, yeah. That’s true, absolutely true.
{detse} okay. The moment you think about oh, it’s just my projection of my
anger, then that old way of holding him – oh, he’s a bad man, he’s a bad, he’s
really a bad man. I wish everybody else in the office would see it. I don’t know
what’s wrong with everybody else, okay [laughs] Isn’t that common, right?
That, that melts away and that, when those two thoughts are always coming one
from another, you think he’s empty. What’s that mean? I’m supplying it. He’s
not really angry by himself. Or, you can think, I’m supplying it, well then what’s
his real nature? Nothing, empty. And those two ideas keep, keep going like
this. Every time you think of one you think of the other. Every time you think
of the other you think of the one. When those two ideas are, like, married,
{detse} means ‘at that point in time’, at that point in time; {taway} is the third
path. What’s that? View. Correct View. {taway} {chepa} means, ‘examination’;
{dzokpa lak} means ‘totally complete’, {dzokpa lak} {dzokpa} means complete
and {lak} means ‘boom’, it is. [student: does the {lak} means totally?] {lak}
means, {lak} is an ancient word for ‘it is’. That’s the {lak} when you call some
{lak, geshe lak}, your ‘isness’, is, is, {lak} yeah {lak}
Okay, so when you have the one idea and it gives you the other idea and when
you have the other you get the other idea, then you’ve got the third path.
You’re finished. Now you understand the third path. Finished. And that’s the,
that’s the key to nirvana. What is nirvana? Definition of nirvana? [student:
cessation of [unclear]] Cessation of bad emotions. And now you, now you see
the, this is the only way to do it. There is no other way. [student: it’s so strange
that there’s not some high mysterious concept that …] Yeah, yeah, you were
thinking what I was thinking you know. You thought, I’ll perceive emptiness
some day, and the next morning every thing will be different. I’ll be different,
my body will be different, the world will be different. It’s not like that. You
gotta work on it. You earn it. [laughs]
[cut] it’s a little bit selfish ]laughs] Isn’t it funny? You, I, I always tell people,
think of the most pleasant, single, I mean, take one minute and think of the most
pleasant experience you ever had in your life. So, that’s one object in your world
on that day was that pleasant. Now, now imagine if every object in this world,
all the time, could give you that same emotion or that same sensation, all the
time. You know, that, that one feeling of pleasure towards one object in the
world for one minute or five minutes or how ever long it was, occurred because
you were extremely good for that long, or less time right, towards one object.
So if you want every object in the world, and specifically, every person in your
world, every living being in your world, to be an angel, say, okay, totally pure,
beautiful, pleasant, good to you and around you, then how many objects do you
have to collect your karma towards? [laughs] As many as there are people. It’s
why it’s called {tseme} ‘the four immeasurables’, when they get to explaining
them and they say why are they called immeasurable?                  They are called
immeasurable because you focus them on every single living being. And that’s
why ‘great compassion’ is called ‘great compassion’. There’s regular compassion
and there’s great compassion. The Abhidharma says, great compassion is
focussed towards every living thing. So, what’s the karma of doing something
nice for every living thing? [student: you receive the [unclear]] You live in a
world where every living thing is pleasant. [student: so that’s the compassion
aspect of wisdom and compassion leading to bliss? ] Yeah, [student: you have to
be compassionate to everyone?] what if you’re selective, you know, you’re
compassionate to your friends and you’re not compassionate to your boss
[laughs]     [student: and you have to have wisdom to know how to be
compassionate.] yeah and oh by the way you’ll get to it when you get to that in
Madhyamika when you study – I don’t have the book here – but when you
study Middle Way, the first subject is how to have compassion without seeing
things as self-existent.        Very interesting. [student: [unclear] there’s no
compassion] Well it is but it’s not [unclear] you still perceive those objects as not
[student] [unclear] That’s the whole first subject of Madhyamika.
[student: it’s trick] [student: apparently that’s not coming from having done or
having worked on this in the past. It has to start from something other than
itself otherwise [unclear] right? So it’s possible to say that you went around the
stupa and this is the result of it or you offered something to somebody just
because it seems like a good thing to do, everyone is doing it…] You know the
principles of karma, you tell me. [student: but the results are like their causes.
So…] Results are bigger than their causes. [student: so we’re forced to uh…] be
thinking about wisdom [student: forced to react a certain way] mainly you
taught it to somebody. What little you knew, which was less, you taught to
some one, you tried to help some one. Or, you respected it or you copied it.
They say, the Diamond Cutter Sutra says, just reproducing the book is causing
the physical Dharma to stay in the world. Breaking your morality is the
opposite. It actually can cause you to not, to lose whatever understanding you
have of those things. You can degenerate in this life for, it’s interesting, by being
bad morally your wisdom gets [student: but there would have been a choice to,
to break your morality as…] [laughs] [laughter] [students] Good night. a self-
existent question [laughter] [student: self existent question?] Yeah [unclear] give
an answer to a self existent question. [student: oh I thought you said, such a
stupid question] [laughter] [student: self existent question, what does that
mean?]      You’re taking the question and you’re anticipating my answer,
whatever it is, you’re gonna take it self-existently, so I refuse to answer. This is
what the Buddha did. There are fourteen questions he wouldn’t answer.
[student: fourteen? Is that one of them?] {nge ma ten du shi} Like, some Hindus
asked him, does the world have an end? Did the world have a beginning? He
said, I can’t answer. They said, well you don’t know everything? Of course I
know everything. But if I say yes you’ll take it as a self-existent yes, if I say no
you’ll take it self-existent no, so I can’t give you the [unclear]. Either way, you’ll
get the wrong answer. Nice way to cop out, right, okay. What’s the next one?
[cut]
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