ACI 12 «Руководство к образу жизни бодхисаттвы, часть III», занятие 2

The Asian Classics Institute
Course XII. Guide to the Bodhisattva Way of Life, Part III
Class Two: “How to Turn a Pot of Tea into the Nectar of Immortality”
Geshe Michael Roach
Transcribed by Angie Overy




[prayer: mandala]
[prayer: refuge]
[cut] the secret teachings then it would be faster. You could finish in this lifetime.
And, by the way, the secret teachings work only because of emptiness and, and
they’re based on an understanding of emptiness but that’s something that’s
secret. So that’s the benefit of it. If, in this life, you can, you can make, hook up
with this thing for, like, twenty minutes, your suffering would be ended. You
would never have a bad day again. You would never be unhappy again. You
would never have any kind of negative emotions again. Your body, ultimately,
would never die again. You would change. The body would change into a body
of light and your world would change. You would enter a Buddha paradise.
These are the benefits of making contact with ultimate reality. Can you do it?
Yes. It just requires proper training. Is it easy? No.
Can you think you might have done it and you’re not sure? No. Okay.
Seriously. [laughter] No. Many people ask me. They say, well, I was meditating
one time and I felt a little giddy and something happened and there was this
whoosh, a yellow light of, was that it, you know? And, no, when it happens you
will know it, very, very, with absolute certainty you will know it. There’s no
doubt about it. And, and certain things happen to everyone who sees emptiness
directly. You will see your future lives. You will meet a Dharmakaya of the
Buddha directly. You will have a lot of other special realisations, fro example,
about the nature of a diamond and things like that. And then those are many
things that happen and, and you can confirm it by talking to someone whether
or not they happen. And one thing you, you know that you’ve done it and
there’s no question that you’ve done it. It’s called {tsema}, pramana, you know
that you’ve done it. There’s a certain kind of perception you have that is
undeniable even to yourself, okay. What happens? I want to describe a little bit
what happens going in to that experience, okay, and it relates to today’s lesson.
There are certain conditions that, that, that come before you see emptiness
directly. I’ll name some of them okay. One of them would be, for example, you
have found a good teacher. You are studying with that teacher very deeply. You
are collecting immense amounts of good, good merit, good virtue, good karma,
okay. You are serving that teacher. Maybe you are building that teacher a
house. Maybe you’re taking care of their medical needs, teaching them language
and stuff like that. Whatever they need you are doing. And, and that is the most
effective way to build up the energy that you need to see emptiness directly.



You must find some very important virtuous thing and then serve that, that
master and then, the good karma starts to come very, very quickly. Then, you
must be studying emptiness intellectually, you know. You must be hearing a lot
of classes about it. You must be getting a lot of instruction in it over and over
again. You must be meditating deeply. You must be meditating one to two
hours a day and able to go into a deep state of meditation. These are all
requirements. The final instructions you get would relate to mental images and
I’m not going to go into that now but, but the final instructions you would get,
and we’ll talk about it later, something called {chi jedrak} and something about
the nature of how the mind creates mental images.
And all of these things are, are building up to this crescendo and you start having
extraordinary realisations even before the day that you see emptiness directly.
For example, you would start having profound understandings of the nature of
impermanence, okay. Impermanence and emptiness are different things but
you would start to have deep understandings of the subtle nature of
impermanence in the few days before you see emptiness directly. That’s an
example, but other things are happening mentally. You’re having extraordinary
spiritual realisations are happening to you constantly going in to the, into that
process. The, let’s say it’s, like, nine o’clock in the morning. You’re standing
there, you know. It’s the summertime, something like that. And you’re
standing watching, you’re making a pot of tea for your lama. You know, you’re
making a cup of tea. And you put the water in a, in a pot and you put the pot on
the stove and you’re standing there looking at the pot, you know. And you’re
about to go into the temple to do your meditation, you know, you’re about to
go to your meditation place. And you’re standing there looking at the pot and
you, you’re, you realise that you’re not looking at a pot, okay. Something
happens to you and you realise that you’re only looking at parts of a pot, okay.
You’re only looking at some white colour, some black long thing, you’re only
really seeing shapes and colours. There’s no pot, okay, if you think about it. All
the eye is capable, the eye doesn’t see ‘pots’. Your eye can only see colours and
shapes. It’s your mind that organises the pot, okay. That’s pretty simple so far,
okay. Your mid is seeing some circle part and some long part and the circle part
is kind of got white coming on it, silvery colour. And the long part has a black
colour. And there’s only these colours and shapes being reported to your mind
by your eye consciousness, okay. Your eye is looking at the pot and it’s seeing
some details and, and it’s not yet calling it a pot, okay. It’s just seeing some
colours and shapes. You can buy that, right? That’s not, it’s a little weird but you
have to think like that, okay. Your eye doesn’t see pots. Your eye only sees
colours and shapes and it reports those colours and shapes to the mind. And the
mind has to decide what’s going on. The mind has to make sense about it, make
sense of it, okay. Then those information gets sent to the mind and the mind is
organising that shape, that clues, you can call them clues, okay. It’s getting hints.
This is round. This is white. This is long. This is black. And, and it says I think
‘pot’. I think it’s a pot. And then the mind makes a picture of a pot. And when
you look at a pot on the stove this is what happens to you: you’re looking at the
pot and, suddenly, you realise that you’re not looking at a pot. You’re looking at
a mental image of a pot that’s in your mind, okay. And you never were looking
at a pot in your whole life, okay. It’s something very profound, you know. You
figure out that you are watching a perfect tiny mental picture of a pot because
there’s no picture out there of a pot; there’s just some colours and shapes.



There’s just some random colours and shapes almost - round, silver, black, long -
and then your mind is, like, organising this into a little picture, and you’re
watching the picture in your mind and saying, ‘pot’, ‘pot’, okay. That’s what
they call imputation, labelling, whatever you want to call it, but this is what’s
really going on. Projection - it doesn’t matter what you call it. Your mind is
organising this data into something. And, at that moment, for the first time in
your millions of lives, you know, countless lifetimes you have seen emptiness or
not? It’s not emptiness, okay. You just caught yourself, you just realised what
deceptive reality was for the first time, okay.
We didn’t even get to emptiness yet you see what I mean? You just realised how
you’re creating reality for the first time ever. You caught yourself watching
deceptive reality, deceptive truth. That’s deceptive truth. That is the moment
that you establish the meaning of deceptive truth and that’s the first time you
ever figure out that it was deceptive. You’re not watching a pot on the stove.
You’re watching a picture of a pot in your mind, okay. And that’s, it’s like a big
step in, you’re about to see emptiness directly, you know. You’re, like, an hour
away but you just saw what? Deceptive reality? Deceptive truth? Is that the
first time you ever saw deceptive truth?
Huh? [laughs] it’s your life, okay, your mind, your body, your mother, your
father, your house, your job, your boss, New York City, America, the moon, the
sky. It’s all deceptive truth. You’ve been watching deceptive truth your whole
existence. That’s all your, all your thoughts, everyone you ever met. That’s
deceptive reality but you just figured it out that it’s deceptive for the first time.
You just saw deceptive truth as being deceptive for the first time. It’s a big
threshold, you know. It’s a big threshold. It’s called {jor lam, … chu chok}. {Chu
chok} means it’s the peak moment in your existence before you cross into seeing
emptiness directly, okay.
{Chu chok} means the final moments of your zillions of lives to where now you
finally understood what you were doing for the first time, okay. You saw
deceptive truth as deceptive truth. You saw deceptive reality as being deceptive
reality. And that’s the first time ever, directly. Okay, like, you can understand it
when I talk about it now but you’re not seeing that deceptive reality is deceptive.
It’ll happen some day. You have to have all those other conditions – big time
virtue. Do you have to have the five perfections? No, but big time virtue, really
intense virtue, okay; you must be, like, creating incredibly powerful karma by
serving the Dharma or something like that, you know. You must be doing that
and by studying deeply and by meditating deeply. And all that crescendos up to
this moment: you’re standing there, you’re looking at a pot and it’s, you see it
for what it is for the first time. That’s the recognition of deceptive reality. Then
you, you’re, like. freaked out for a few minutes, and then you stop, you know,
you go ahead and make the tea. You deliver it to your Lama. You go into your
meditation room and you go into a deep state of meditation and then, and then
because of all those conditions, you see emptiness directly.
What does it feel like? You cannot be aware of yourself. Why? You’re deceptive
reality, okay. You belong to the lower reality you see? The person seeing
emptiness belongs to the lower reality. So, you cannot have the thought, ‘I’m
seeing emptiness’ because that’s a lower reality. Okay. It’s just a pure direct
communion with emptiness, you know, and you’re not aware of anything
except emptiness. Your mind cannot have a conceptual thought at that time.
Impossible. Okay. Cannot do it. And, and just before that you went into a
meditation where your sense consciousness is shut down, you know. You’re not
hearing anything anymore. You can’t taste anything anymore. You can’t smell
anything. You can’t see anything anymore.
Your mind is in shamatha. It’s in deep single-pointed meditation. And then, you
go into the direct realisation of emptiness and you cannot, also, mark the passing
of time ‘cos, ‘cos that’s, that’s another deceptive reality. You cannot have a
perception of a deceptive reality at that moment. When you come out you don’t
know how long it’s been, you know. It happens to be, like, fifteen, twenty
minutes, okay. Then you start to come down. You have a physical sensation of
coming down which is not coming out of emptiness but it’s coming down from
that state of concentration which is required to see emptiness. And then a lot of
other things happen. A lot of other things happen during that day and I’m not
going to go into those things –maybe later.
Okay. The point is within an hour or something, on the front end of the hour,
you saw deceptive reality for what it is. On the back end of that hour you saw
ultimate reality for what it was. And so, finally, you’ve seen the two truths, okay,
directly, for what they are. That twenty minutes of seeing emptiness directly has
the power to allow you to remove your mental afflictions. Like, in time, with
time, you’ll be eliminating your mental afflictions forever. You’ll not get angry
again, you’ll not be jealous again and like that. You’ll, if you’re on a bodhisattva
track you’ll start, by the way, if you’re on a bodhisattva track, right after that
you have a direct, a direct experience of bodhicitta, okay. And that’s another
story; won’t go into that. But, but that’s what it is to, that’s what it is. In twenty
minutes you’ve just gained the ability to reach enlightenment, and you see your
future enlightenment, and you know that you’ll be enlightened, and you’ll know
how long it will take. And it’s a short time. It’s not long.
And it’s some extraordinary emotion that comes from knowing that. Like, you
can never really worry again in your life at all. There’s nothing anyone can do to
hurt you or help you much after that. You’re just finished. Set. Called a ‘stream-
enterer’, okay. And that’s what the whole purpose of Buddhism is. At that
moment you understand, directly, the entire contents of the Scriptures. There’s
two hundred thousand Tibetan Scriptures. In that moment you understood all
of their contents, you know, in twenty minutes. And then you can, you will
spend the rest of your life, you know, living in those Scriptures and keeping
them ‘cos you realise that they’re very precious for other people, but you just
understood all of them, you know. It’s very interesting.
Anyway, that’s the experience of emptiness. What, when you switch over to that
other kind of person that you are after that, it’s a very weird existence, you
know. Nobody can tell you anything and you get very stubborn, right. I mean,
you know how your life is going to go, and you know how things are going to
be like, and you know how your enlightenment’s going to be, and, and your
course is clear. And also, if you’re on a bodhisattva track, you know exactly how
you’re going to serve other people and you know that you’re going to commit
your life to serving other people and you know you probably won’t do anything
else actually. And, and preserving the Dharma. Trying to keep the Dharma alive
in the world, especially, the books because they’re all true. At that moment you
realise that every single word, in every single Scripture, is absolutely true. And
so it becomes an obsession to save these things in the world, that they shouldn’t
be lost in the world.
There’s a couple of words to use to describe that kind of person. So I’m going to
give you those ‘cos they’re on your homework, okay.
Just write the first one, okay. Sure? Okay, go ahead. [student] You’ve gotten,
go ahead. [student] Any more questions? ‘Cos I want to answer it all in one
shot. [student]
Right. Are you talking about a person who’s seen emptiness directly? [student]
Okay. Okay. Nina asked this: do you, right after you see emptiness directly, do
you destroy all your mental afflictions?
And then, if not, for a person who’s seen emptiness directly, when a mental
affliction comes, how do they handle it? Is it like they have more power to direct
it a certain way or defuse it a certain way or beat it up a certain way or
something like that? Okay. You only lose three mental afflictions permanently
the day you see emptiness. We talked about it last week. Doubt about the
Buddhist path. And you can’t meet a Dharmakaya directly and see all your
future lives directly, you know, and see your own enlightenment directly and
ever doubt Buddhism again. You know, seriously. And, also see that you’re not
crazy, you see? All of these things happen. Forget it. Buddhism is perfect,
absolutely perfect path that works and it leads you to enlightenment. And you
can never ever can anyone make you have the slightest doubt about it ‘cos you
saw it directly. Period. You know, someone come up to you and say the sky’s
not blue you say, you know, okay, you know, who cares [laughs] you know
what I mean. I saw it you know. You don’t have any, you cannot ever have
doubt again about Buddhism. First thing.
Second thing, you cannot believe, what shall we say? You lose your tendency to
believe that things are self-existent, intellectually, forever. If somebody comes
up to you and says are your perceptions correct? Is the world the way it looks
like? You’ll say no, never. The world is not the way it looks like. Every single
perception I have is wrong. Every single way I think about the world is wrong.
And you know it, okay, but you can’t stop doing it yet okay. The day that
you’ve stopped doing it is the day you reach nirvana, okay. In the highest
school the day that you stop seeing things as self-existent is the day you reach
nirvana because it is the most subtle mental affliction. And when you destroy
your last little inch of mental affliction you reach nirvana. That’s what nirvana is.
So, you don’t have that one. You know, intellectually, you know that you’re
seeing everything wrong, but when you come out of the direct experience of
emptiness you start seeing them wrong again, and you know what you’re
doing. It’s like watching your, it’s like a schizophrenia, you know. You’re, like,
hey you’re wrong. Yeah, I know. Well why don’t you stop it? I can’t do that just
yet, you know. [laughs] [laughter]
You know? It’s like that. You know you’re wrong and you can’t stop it. Hang
on one sec.
And the third one is you can no longer believe in silly religious practices like
hurting your body would help you to get into nirvana or something like that. Or
going out and sitting in the snow for three hours is important practice or things
like that. It’s, you know, any, any thing that would involve immorality or
anything that would involve hurting yourself to get to some spiritual goal, you
realise is totally crazy. I mean, anything that’s not consistent with the Buddhist
path you realise is, is, is not useful.
And those are three mental afflictions and those are the only three. You still
have the other eighty-three thousand, nine hundred and ninety-seven varieties
of screwed up thoughts in your mind, okay. And it takes a period to get rid of
those.
Now, what happens to, how does a person who’s seen emptiness directly handle
their mental afflictions differently than a person who hasn’t seen emptiness
directly yet? That’s a whole another story. How do they use emptiness to stop
mental afflictions? We’ll talk about it. We’ll be talking about it, okay. It’s, it’s not
[student] no it’s still a, it’s still, there’s times still when they’re out of control.
There’s still times when they can’t stop themselves from having a mental
affliction otherwise they would already be achieve nirvana.
[student] Yeah. [student] Yeah. [student] Yeah. No, you’d still be compelled
[student] Yeah. You would still be compelled to do bad deeds. [student] Yeah.
Not at all. [student] Yeah. No, you would still collect bad karma but it would
never go off. [student] requires ignorance to go off and we’ll talk about it, okay.
You can no longer collect the bad karma that would project a new life, okay, but
you’re still wearing out old bad karma which is going to project no more than
typically seven lifetimes, okay.
[student]
Committed to what? [student] No it’s [student] you see the future directly,
okay.
Scriptures said so; I can show you, okay. Yeah? ]student] Yeah. No, that’s the
way it happens to be. And, if you practice the secret teachings, faster. Period. It
always works that way, okay. Yeah? Very brief, okay, ’cos we [student] As
what? [student] No. No. No. [student] No. No. No. [student]
It is the intellectual {jikta} but not the inborn {jikta}, okay. It’s an intellectual form
of {jkta}. Intellectually you know you’re wrong. [student] It is but it has two
flavours: inborn one which even bugs and germs have and the intellectual one.
You, at that point, can never again have the intellectual flavour but you can
definitely and you do have the inborn one. The day you get rid of that is the day
you reach nirvana, okay. Okay, what makes a {pakpa}? {Pakpa} is Sanskrit is
arya. Hitler used the word for superior person. It is a Sanskrit word that means
a superior person. Of course, Hitler used it totally, absolutely totally the
opposite of what it really means. Arya means a person who is superior or a
person who is higher. Why? They have seen emptiness directly. They have
seen ultimate reality directly. And, and this you have to get this, okay. There’s
only two kinds of people in the world. I like to, I mean, I compare it to virginity,
okay. I mean you either are or you’re not you know. There’s no other
possibility. And you lose it a certain point, okay. I mean you can look at your
life as a long string and you can pinpoint the day that you changed to the other
way. Permanently, you know. You’re either one or the other and, and arya and
non-arya’s exactly the same. You’ve either seen emptiness directly or you
haven’t seen emptiness directly. People who have are totally absolutely different
from other people, okay. They’re on their way out after countless lives, after
countless years of effort, they’ve drawn a line and they’re on the way out. They
know everything directly, you know. And then, there’s other people, we call
common people or regular people, haven’t seen it. And you have to think of the
whole universe as populated by only two kinds of beings. Have you seen
emptiness directly yet or haven’t you? And, and that’s arya or non-arya and
that’s the meaning of arya, okay. It becomes extremely important to you at that
point. And the ones who are aryas, unless you’re surrounded by some kind of
emanation, are extremely rare, okay. Frankly, if one person during a given
generation could see emptiness directly it would be, it would be very special, you
know. It’s extremely rare. It doesn’t mean that without correct training you
can’t do it but it’s extremely rare, okay. It’s extremely difficult but you have to
try okay and you have to get the right conditions. You can have all the
conditions but it’s not a common thing, okay.
What makes an arya an arya is {tong nyi ngunsum du tok nyong}. Is the Buddha
an arya? Oh, we’ll check.
Write the second one. Say {tong nyi}[repeat] {ngunsum du}[repeat]{tok nyong}
[repeat]; {tong nyi}[repeat] {ngunsum du}[repeat] {tok nyom}[repeat]. {tong nyi}
means emptiness, okay, {tongpa nyi} means emptiness, {tong pa nyi}, shunyata;
{ngunsum du} means directly, {ngunsum du} means directly, in a deep state of
meditation. The claims that you could have a direct experience of emptiness
without being in a deep state of meditation are false. You cannot. It’s impossible.
There’s no such thing. Perhaps, when those experiences are described, they
maybe talking about the direct understanding of deceptive reality.
But, you know, reports that you can be chopping wood or something like that
and, and see emptiness directly, are impossible. And there’s no Scripture in the
world that says that. There’s no Scripture that is spoken by the Buddha that said
anything like that, okay. You must be in a deep state of meditation. In fact, it’s a
certain part of the first dhyana level of the Form realm called {michok me}. You
actually have to be in that particular meditation to see emptiness directly;
impossible in any other condition.
Okay. Yeah? [student] That’s a good question. I, I, I don’t know. I would say
you could be in a meditation and see it, yeah. She asked if you could see
deceptive reality for what it is, directly. If you say deceptive reality directly, well
you’re doing it all the time, right? For what it is, directly, I’d say it’s, I’d say it’s,
theoretically, possible.
Yeah? [student] [laughs] [laughter] I, I don’t believe that the impetus that takes
you up to {jor lam chu chok}, which is the last moment before you see emptiness
directly, the final hours before, I don’t believe that the karma that got you there
could not take you over the top [unclear]. [student] I think it, I don’t think it’s
possible to stop at that moment. I don’t think it’s possible, you know. I don’t
think the karma to die, for example, could intervene at that moment, okay.
Okay. Yeah? [student] Say again. [student] She asked if there are people born
realised. You have to take seven more lives, I mean, that’s a very typical. So, as a
child you would be a person who had already perceived emptiness directly.
Would you remember it? Not necessarily until you reach a certain age where
you can conceptualise things properly but you do reconnect with that, that
realisation at a very early age. And, one of the details that you perceive, is that
throughout your future lives you’ll be surrounded by very, very competent
spiritual teachers, you know. You will never want for a spiritual teacher during
those seven lives. They will be around you constantly – like the way the Dalai
Lama was brought up or something like that. I mean from the time you’re an
infant you’ll be surrounded by spiritual teachers and, and then at a very early
age you’ll reconnect with that experience, okay.
Okay. {tong nyi} is emptiness; {ngunsum du} means directly. By the way, it’s not
impossible to achieve Buddhahood in the same life, before you die, and the
secret teachings are for that you know. And they work, okay. Okay.
{tong nyi} means emptiness; {ngunsum du} means directly; {tok} means to
perceive, to realise; {nyong} means has done it, has experienced that, okay.
That’s, that’s the description of what an arya is. That’s a description of what a
{pakpa} is. A person who has undergone the direct experience of emptiness,
okay, that’s what an arya is.
In the early days of your Arya-ness, you’re called a {gyun shuk}. [unclear], no
joke, do three prostrations fast, okay. Okay.
{gyun shuk} means stream-enterer, and what it means is you’re on your way out
of suffering. Period. Okay. It’s like, stream-enterer means you’re on your way
out and there’s no doubt. You’ve reached a point where you’re on your way out
and you know it and that’s called stream-enterer. So you’ve heard the expression
stream-enterer and that’s what it means. Is it the same as arya? There’s aryas -
aryas are always stream-enterers or have been stream-enterers but you go
beyond stream-enterer. There are three other stages you go through as you
reach nirvana. And so this, this describes the early part of your arya-hood, okay.
What do we call people who haven’t seen this thing directly? [student] [laughs]
Yeah, either one or the other. You’re either a {pakpa}, which is an arya. By the
way, I used to always mix up arya and arhat. I don’t know, you know, if you’re
just starting your study you’re probably going to mix them up too. Arya means
a person who has seen emptiness directly.

Arhat means a person who, because they saw emptiness a long time ago were
able to stop all their mental afflictions, and now they’ve reached nirvana. Okay.
That’s what arhat means. So, arhat comes way after arya, okay, unless Time
Magazine is right when it says [laughter] that nirvana is really cooler than
enlightenment, but that’s another thing, okay.
Say, {so-so}[repeat] {kyewo}[repeat].
I’m sorry. Did you have a question? [student]
Well I’m just saying it would be, I don’t want to be pessimistic and I, I want you
all to see emptiness directly [student] but, [laughter] but it would be very, it
would be a, it would be a, it would be more important than anything which ever
happened in the United States, if one person in this room saw emptiness in their
lifetime. Let’s put it like that. It’s very, it happens once in a generation maybe or
something. I mean, the goal is that we increase that number [laughs] you know
what I mean, but it’s very difficult and, and your karma has to be very, very
good. And you have to really, really undertake those activities that I mentioned
in a very sincere way. Especially, learning about emptiness and, and also
collecting good karma. And the good karma that you need, frankly, the most
powerful object is a spiritual teacher, you know, to serve a spiritual teacher. This
is taught throughout Buddhism and it sounds, like, suspicious, especially if the
spiritual teacher is telling you that. [laughter] [laughs] But, but it’s, it is true. And
I don’t mean, I don’t mean with money or flowers or anything like that – with
your life and with your practice, you know. What they really want out of you,
they have no need of money, you know. A person who’s reached that has
absolutely no need of anything you can give them in a material sense. They want
your practice, you know. They want you to develop compassion. They want
you to see emptiness directly. That’s the offering. That’s the highest offering.
And to truly serve them and offer them that, which is your life, that’s, that’s the
karma I’m talking about, okay.
{so-so},say {so-so kyewo}[repeat]{so-so kyewo}[repeat]. {so-so} means, so-so
[laughs] [laughter]. {so-so} means regular old dude, you know, plain old
person. You can call it like an ordinary person, okay. {Kyewo} means person, so
{so-so kyewo} means a normal person, regular person, a non-arya, someone
who has not perceived emptiness directly, okay. In Sanskrit it’s pudalgyana. A
synonym is {jipa}; {jipa} means a child, okay, an infant actually. It’s like, I, I
forget. There’s an outline of the stages of child development. I think it’s between
two and four or something like that. It’s an infant, okay. That’s another word
for a person who hasn’t seen emptiness directly.
{Tsur tong}, say, {tsur tong}[repeat]{tsur tong}[repeat]. I’ll let you write it.
{tsur} means, {tsur} is the opposite of {par}; you had a {‘par’} in {parul tu chinpa}.
It’s, {tsur} is the opposite of {parul}. {parul} means the other side and {tsurul}
means this side. Like the other side of a river and this side of a river, okay, and
{tsur tong} means people who only see this side, okay, and it means like near-
sighted or something. It means they haven’t seen emptiness yet. We searched a
hundred and fifteen thousand pages of Scriptures today to see if anyone ever
explained why, exactly, what ‘near’ means, near-sighted and there was just a few
references. It is always listed as a synonym for {so-so kyewo} but exactly why
they call it near-sighted it seems to be I forget. Do you guys remember?
Anyway, we’ll let you know later. Something that they’re only seeing in this
way and they don’t see ultimate reality; they’re only seeing relative, what we
call, deceptive reality, okay. Like that. And the only difference between an arya
and a non-arya is this little syllable here.

If you don’t want to write out the whole thing just put {ma} dot, dot, dot, okay:
{tong nyi ngunsum du tok ma nyong}, {ma nyong} means a normal person, a
regular person is a person who has not seen emptiness directly, okay. So the rest
is the same as what you just wrote down before. Just this one change, before
{nyong}, before {nyong} you put {ma}, which means, ‘not’. Have not had a direct
experience of emptiness, okay.
Is the direct experience of emptiness the same for all people? I mean if, if, if
person A sees emptiness directly and person B sees emptiness directly, and a
Buddha sees emptiness directly – which they’re doing all the time by the way
okay – is it the same? Does it feel the same? Okay. Is there any difference
between different people who see emptiness directly? Not one iota, okay,
exactly the same. You either see it or you don’t. And, if you do, you see it a
hundred percent pure absolute direct perception of direct perception of ultimate
reality. And you can’t have a ninety-five percent perception of it or thirty-three
percent perception of it or anything like that. Some lower schools say there’s
different degrees of emptiness. The higher school says, forget it. You either see
it or you don’t and if you see it your direct experience of emptiness is exactly the
same as the direct perception of emptiness by any other being in the universe.
Period. Because it’s only that: it’s only the direct communion with emptiness,
okay. And you’re lousy first moment of arya perception of emptiness is,
qualitatively, exactly the same as an enlightened being’s direct perception of
emptiness ‘cos you either see it or you don’t. And when you see it it’s a hundred
percent that. Period. Okay.
Does that mean that all people who have seen emptiness directly are the same?
No. Okay. There’s ten bodhisattva levels that start the day you see emptiness
directly if you’re on a bodhisattva track; what they call bodhisattva bhumis,
okay. There’s ten different stages that you have to get through to become a
Buddha, okay. Those begin the day you see emptiness directly. So the person
who’s at stage number two which is the second bodhisattva bhumi, the second
bodhisattva level, they obviously have a much more advanced state of mind
than the people at the first level. Are these people advanced? Yeah, like one in a
zillion, maybe, okay. They’ve seen emptiness directly but, when you get to
bodhisattva level number two, you actually outshine the people at bodhisattva
level number one, okay. If a person at bodhisattva level number two sees
emptiness directly is it any different from the perception of, of direct perception
of emptiness by somebody at bodhisattva level number one? No. No difference
at all. You either see it or you don’t. If you see it directly that’s it. There’s
nothing more to say about it but the rest of their mind is much more advanced,
you know. Their experience of the six perfections is much more advanced and,
specifically, they have gained certain mastery over the perfection of giving for
example, okay. They’ve, they’ve like, their, their understanding or their practice
of generosity is much higher than the practice of generosity of a person at the
first bodhisattva level, and it goes like that. Okay. So if the homework says
[laughter] - this is how I get people to pay attention, does everybody see it the
same? Yes. Does that mean all their mind states are the same? Not at all. Okay.
A first day arya’s mind level and a Buddha’s mind level are totally different,
okay, but their experience of emptiness is the same. So they say, in Buddhist
philosophy, and Master Shantideva and Gyaltseb Je in these readings will be
describing how each one puts down the one below it. Each experience, in a sense,
disproves the experience below it. For example, the lower schools of Buddhism,
there’s a school called those people who think that things that work exist truly
and the beliefs that they have are disproved by people belonging to the
Madhyamika or Middle Way school. And, inside the Middle Way school, those
who’ve seen emptiness directly their lives disproves the lives of others.
They call it ‘disproves’, okay. It just means it shines ten zillion times stronger
than the people below them. And then, those on the second bodhisattva level,
their lives or their states of mind are totally out shine those on the first level and
like that.
So there’s this pecking order and Master Shantideva and Gyaltseb Je they get
into the pecking order. Why? The people at the bottom of the pecking order
don’t understand emptiness. The beliefs that the people at the bottom [cut]
okay, and a lot of what we’re going to do now, starting now, is describing a
bunch of wrong ideas about emptiness. And then we’ll get to, if I can describe to
you successfully why they’re wrong, you won’t have that mistake and then you
can see emptiness faster, okay. You can skip that stupid idea and go to the next
one. What’s the stupidest idea you can imagine? Oh, emptiness means nothing,
you know. Emptiness and black space are the same. Close my eyes, imagine
black space – that’s emptiness. That’s stupid idea number one. We’re not even
going to talk about it, [laughter] okay.
Stupid idea, number two: emptiness is the absence of all things. You know, I’ll
just close my eyes and pretend that my boss, my wife, my house, my city, the
subways, Mayor Guiliani, and everything else don’t exist, [laughter] you know,
and that’s emptiness. No, you will do it you know. In your meditation when you
try to imagine emptiness you’ll start doing something like that. And that’s not
emptiness.
How about ultimate lousy emptiness meditation, the worst one? Okay. The
worst of the worse alright. Oh, everything’s empty so I can do whatever I want.
There’s no morality, there’s no good deeds, there’s no bad deeds. I’m above all
that. I saw emptiness directly. I’m a tantrika, you know, I can do all those bad
deeds. I’ll convert them into goodness you know. I’ll, I’ll, I’ll do any kind of
weird bad deed and it’ll be okay you know ‘cos I’m a tantrika. I understand
emptiness you know. This is like, Je Tsongkhapa says that’s like going to Kansas
and destroying every, all the corn in Kansas and then putting some kind of toxic
waste on the ground that made sure it could never grow again, you know. He
said those beliefs are very similar to that, you know. To think that there’s no
good deeds and no bad deeds because everything is empty is the ultimate stupid
idea. We’ll get into that one a little bit tonight, okay, but these are all like, these
don’t even count in the pecking order. These are like down here. I think they’re
kind of like American or western or, or, you know, some people in Tibet have
that too. Very few, but it did come in Tibet you know, these really stupid ideas
about emptiness. So don’t, we won’t even, don’t, they don’t even deserve to be
talked about seriously okay. We’ll just leave them alright.
What do you call the people, let’s get some more sophisticate wrong ideas.
Say {ngupo}[repeat]{mawa}[repeat]{ngupo}[repeat]{mawa}[repeat]. Got it? Not
yet. {ngupo} means, generally speaking it means ‘a thing’; more specifically in
Buddhist philosophy it means ‘a thing that does anything’. Is this a {ngupo}?
Yeah. Why? You can write with it, okay. Is a car a {ngupo}? Yeah. Is the pew a
{ngupo}? Yeah, you can sit on it, you know. Are my fingers {ngupo}? Yeah,
they do something, you know. Is fire a {ngupo}? Yeah, you can burn your toast
with it, you know. Like that. Okay. I mean that proves they’re {ngupos}. They
do something. Anything that does something is a {ngupo}. {Ngupor} means, I’ll
get to the {ra} later; {mawa} means they, they perfect something about {ngupos}.
They say something about {ngupos}. You can call them {ngupo}-ists, okay.
[laughs] I call them functionalists, okay. I call them functionalists. They believe
something about things that do things, okay. They say something about things
that do things. What do they say? {ngupo} here means a thing that does
something. Like a car, a toaster, your fingers, your eyes, your nose, your shoes,
the chair, okay, most of the objects in your world do something, okay. {ngupo}.
{denpa, denpar} means ‘exist truly’.
They really exist, really. {druppa} means ‘exist’. What do these guys go around
saying? By the way, these poor guys are at the bottom of the pecking order,
okay. They are Buddhists but they got it all wrong about emptiness, okay.
They’re down here.
There were four great schools of Buddhism in ancient India. The Abhidharma
Schools, which we call, Detailists; the Logic Schools which are called, Sutrists and
then the Mind Only School and then the Middle Way School, okay. The three
bottom schools, all together, are called {ngupo mawa}, okay. The three lower
schools, they all get dumped together as Functionalists. Why this big name?
What do they believe? It’s very simple. They say, look, don’t tell me this
camera’s not real. It does something. Okay. It works, okay. Anything that
works is real. So why do you guys go around talking about emptiness: things
are not real, things are like an illusion? What are you talking about? Why are
you telling me this camera’s not real? You know, he turns it on, it does
something, then we have a video tape comes out of it. It does something. It
works. So why are you telling me it’s not real? They say, basically, because
things work they must be real, okay, and that’s a wrong idea. Okay. Now, why,
we’ve got to talk about it. Okay. Why, it’s a different thing, but they say come
on your Madhyamika guys, come on you emptiness guys, it works. What do
you mean it isn’t real? You, you emptiness guys, you Middle Way School, you
Madhyamika guys, you go stand out in front of a New York cab, you know, a
functional entity, a thing that does something that you say is unreal, and see if it
runs you over or not. And then, you know, when you get out of hospital, come
back and tell me that it’s not real or you know. They say that because you can
get to point A and point B in a New York taxicab and because it can smash your
leg if it runs into you, it’s real okay. It sounds reasonable, right? I mean they are
Buddhists and they’re not stupid, okay. I mean it’s a very profound school the
Mind Only School. Mainly, this is the Mind Only School.
Gyaltseb Je and Master Shantideva spend a lot of the sixth chapter, ninth chapter,
trying to explain why they’re wrong but it sounds good doesn’t it? I mean be
honest. You can pretend to be a Madhyamika [laughter] but, you know,
Khedrup Je would say tell me in five minutes or less, you know, why they’re
wrong and I’ll give you a medal, you know. You can’t, you know. Why is it
wrong to say the thing works so it’s real, you know? It seems pretty reasonable.
So they’re called the thing works school, okay, {ngupo, ngupo mawa}, alright.
Really. You can call them Functionalists if you want to make a university length
word but it just means these guys say if the thing does something it’s real, okay.
Yeah?
[student]
say again.
[student]
Oh, the {ra} means ‘as being true’, you see? Now we see that this little {ra} here
stands for {denpar}, those of you who care about the Tibetan, okay. That little ‘r’
translates to {denpar}, okay. And that’s not very obvious and you’d have trouble
with that if you didn’t know Tibetan well and you didn’t have good training
about it, okay.
Did they just assert the existence of things that work? No. They assert that
things that work are real. And, sounds good to me, okay.
By the way, I’ll write the names of the three schools in English, okay. It would
be the, I like to call them, Detailists, which, if you know, is the Abhidharma
Schools, okay. School number one: lowest school, which is called {… mawa} in
Tibetan and Vaibashika in Sanskrit. Sutrists.
I’m not, this is not on your homework. It’s just for your FYI - for your
information. I had a student who asked me to give them three words a day and
I had all these FYIs and it came up to nineteen words a day but anyway.
Sutrists means {do depa}, means Sautrantika, which is not the same as
Svatantrika, which has nothing to do with tantra, okay, and that’s school number
two.
And then the Mind Only. These three schools together are called the guys who
think that things that work must be real. Sounds okay to me, right? Alright?
Maybe that’s a good place to give you a break so you can think about it; if those
cookies and stuff are real [laughter] when they fill your stomach, you know? I
mean they perform a function, right? So, examine, no I’m serious, when you’re
eating them
and drinking the functional refreshments there, think about whether they’re real
or not and get back to me when you come back in about ten minutes, okay.
I have a couple of other announcements. [announcements]
What’s the opposite of a {ngupo mawa}? What’s the opposite of these three
lower schools who say, oh anything that works is real? The opposite of them is
called, I’m going to write it here, okay, forget – I’m going to write it right here.
It, it didn’t get on the transparency. Say, {umapa}[repeat]{umapa}[repeat];
{umapa} means Madhyamika, means Middle Way School, Middle Way, Middle
Way; middle-way between what, halfway between what and what? Halfway
between the two wrong ideas of think either noting exists or everything exists
the way you thought it did, okay. They’re halfway between those two ideas. I’ll
state them again. They’re halfway between the wrong idea that nothings exists
at all and the other wrong idea of thinking that everything exists the way you
thought it did or the way it looks, okay. They are in the middle of those two
ideas. Well, what do they believe? It’s right here. This is very important. Say,
{chu}[repeat]. Did everybody write it yet? If you didn’t write it, write it okay.
Now we’re talking about this line right here. Scratch this. Say, chu}[repeat]
{tamche}[repeat]{rangshin kyi}[repeat]{ma druppa}[repeat], okay; {chu} means
dharma, means thing, okay, thing, dharma, existing thing, okay; {tamche} means
all of them and then, since this sentence is a negative sentence, we can say, none
of them, okay. No thing in the world, no thing in the universe, so far okay, {chu
tamche, rangshin kyi ma druppa} means has any nature of its own. Nothing in
the universe has any nature of its own. No object in the universe has any nature
of its own. {Rangshin} means nature, {ma druppa} means they don’t have in this
case, okay. No object in the universe has any nature of its own. What does that
mean? Okay. What does that mean? We got two people going to punch it out
in the next few weeks okay. Who are they? These people who say if it works,
it’s real and these people who say nothing in the universe has any nature of its
own. And, somehow, there’s a big fight between them, okay. Somehow,
they’re saying the opposite thing. They’re saying things are not real the way you
thought they were although they do exist and these people are saying things are
real because they work. And there’s going to be this big shoot-out between
these two parties, okay. These are {ngupo mawa}, these are the people who say
things that work really exist, and then these people here, who say nothing has
any nature of its own. What’s that mean?
Nothing has any nature of it’s own. Let’s go back to the pot. You’re standing
there watching the pot, okay. You’re standing there watching the pot. What are
you really looking at?
[student]
Some colours and shapes. Your eye cannot see ‘pot’. Your eye only sees colours
and shapes. That’s what the eyeball does, okay. That’s the job of the eyeball.
What do the hands do? They can feel the hardness of the steel. They can feel the
roundness in a sense you know what I mean? They can feel the plastic handle
but they can’t tell it’s a handle. That takes the mind. The mind has to interpret it,
okay. So your eye, all the eye, can pick up is colours and shapes, okay. That’s all
the mind, the eye can do. So, do those colours ad shapes have the nature of
being a pot? That’s the sixty-four thousand dollar question. Okay. Do those
colours and shapes, from their side only, have any nature of being anything like
a pot? And the answer is no, okay. No.
Okay. They suggest pot. They hint pot. They’re, like, indicating pot but they
are not ‘pot’ and those colours and those shapes don’t have any nature of being
a pot themselves. Their ‘pot-ness’ comes from your mind. It’s your mind that
organises those colours and shapes and says, oh, that’s a pot. Let’s call it a pot,
okay. They do not, from their side, have any nature of being a pot. The ‘pot-
ness’ is being supplied from [student] your mind.
What if you were a roach climbing up the stove at that very moment, okay? I
love roaches you know. [laughter] Rinpoche says they’re my people [laughter]
[laughs] okay. Okay, so this roach is climbing up the side of the stove. You
know, he makes contact with the same colours and shapes, right? He’s making
contact with the same colours and shapes but what he [cut]…. just like a hell
realm, you know. Hell realm. In the hells the floor is made of steel and it’s just
red-hot and you’re just running with no place else to go. So, for him, it’s just a
hell realm. Is it a pot for the roach? Does it function in any way as a pot for the
roach? No. Is it the same colours and shapes?
But his mind, or her mind, is interpreting the same colours and shapes in a
different way, right? Like, for some reason, they’re interpreting those colours
and shapes as a horrible insurmountable obstacle – dangerous, life-threatening
obstacle - and my mind is interpreting it as the source of a nice jolly warm cup of
tea, you know. For me it’s like a pleasant thing, for them it’s like the worst thing
they can imagine. What is it in their mind that is making them see it that way?
And what is it in my mind that makes me see it the other way? Karma. Okay.
Karma. Your past deeds. Your past deeds, okay. Your own, what you’ve said
in the past, what you thought in the past, what you did in the past is absolutely
dictating to you, it’s forcing you, to organise these colours and shapes in a
different way. You don’t have any choice, okay. You can stand there all day and
say this is a red-hot mountain hell floor, you know, but you can’t experience it
that way. And a roach can sit there all day and say I’d like a nice cup of tea
[laughter] but it’s not going to happen, you know. Your karma is merciless.
Your karma is relentless. Your karma cannot be avoided, you know. Your
karma is calling the shots. And, your karma and your mind says, today, these
colours and these shapes are going to be called, ‘pot’. And you think of them as
‘pot’ and karma makes you have that image of ‘pot’ in your mind, okay. There is
no nature of ‘pot’ in those colours and shapes. There’s no such thing as a pot the
way you used to think, okay. It’s very interesting. And when the pot tips over,
you know, the roach is running for its life. It’s a tidal wave now, you know.
[laughs] When the pot tips over, did a pot tip over on the stove? No. Your
perception’s changed. Why? Your karma changed.
Did you lose a cup of tea? Yes. Was the karma good or bad? Bad. Okay.
Nothing tipped over out there. There is no pot that tipped over. Your karma
screwed up. Like, you, you started to make tea for somebody twenty years ago
and then you changed your mind, okay. Seriously. It’s very profound. Those
things don’t exist out there. They do not have a nature of their own.

The Madhyamika, the Middle Way, people are right and things are not real the
way you thought they were and these guys, where were they? These guys are
wrong. Okay. Which one were they?
Anyway, the people who say because things work they are real, were wrong.
Okay. Does a pot work? Yes. Is it real in the sense that you can get a cup of tea
out of it? Yes. But, is it real the way you thought it was? No. Is it, necessarily, a
pot from its side? No. Why not? Roach. Okay. You have to get used to that.
You have to get used to that. If you understand this thing and you understand
emptiness you can reach nirvana and if you don’t understand it you can’t reach
nirvana so you’ve got to work hard on that, okay. I’ll say it again. Middle Way,
this is the big shoot-out it’s going to happen [cut] [end side A]
[side B]
[cut] forced on you by karma, you know. The way it’s organised is forced on
you by your past karma. That’s why you want to do good karma, okay, which
makes sense. Buddha spent half his life talking about doing good things for
other people. He spent the other half of his life talking about emptiness. I
wonder if there’s a connection? Daah. Okay. [laughter] You know what I mean?
Okay? Really.
Because things are empty you must do good deeds, you must help other people.
And then, over here is the people who say, because it works it must be real.
These people say, no, because it works it’s unreal and it’s empty and I can change
it, okay, if I change my karma. It’s very profound. Okay, that’s going to be the
fight. You’ve got to get used to it alright?
Yeah?
[student]
John asked if the, I think what John is asking is, when the pot tips over, do the
colours and shapes change? [student] Whatever’s out there. [laughter] It’s, it’s
a very profound question. We’re going to get to it. It’s called the emptiness of
the parts of the parts. Okay. [laughter] And we’ll get there. The basic answer,
just so you’re happy about it, is that as soon as you’re focussing on the parts,
when you go down one level, it’s again your mind interpreting the parts from
parts of the parts and it’s endless, okay, but we – lot of blank stares on that one,
okay. [laughter]
Yeah? [student]
But, does the data change, self-existently, from its side whether or not ..? No.
And, how does that happen? We’ll get into it. Okay. It’s as empty as the pot.
The colours and shapes of the pot are as empty as the pot.
[student]
The Buddha would say, no answer because you stared with a falsity. You said,
‘something out there’. The Buddha had fourteen questions he refused to answer
because everybody started out with, ah, that something out there. He said, oh, I
don’t want to hear about it [laughter] you know. [laughs] Okay, be careful.
Emptiness is like a greased-pig, okay. [laughs] [laughter]
Yeah?
[student]
[unclear], okay, the other ones.
[student]
She said, why not get into electron physics rather than talk about roaches and
humans? You know, I’ve read physics books that said you’re never stepping on
the floor. You never touch the floor. Seriously. You know, you never make
contact with any reality and stuff like that. That’s true but they don’t go the
extra step of explaining why am I seeing the floor, you know. Admitted that it’s
just a bunch of atoms, they don’t go the extra step of saying why am I
experiencing those random atoms as the floor, which is, karma. You have to
bring in karma. That’s where western science falls down, okay. Yeah, I agree
that AIDS is caused by a certain virus but why did that virus happen? You know,
and why me, you know?
I’m going to go on just a bit and if you’re really serious we’ll do it after class,
okay, so that people who need to go can go ‘cos we’ve got a lot to go alright.
We’re, like, on the second question or something. I shouldn’t depress you
maybe, okay.
So, you can kind of see that people who have the viewpoint of the
Madhyamika’s are going to get to be aryas. See? They’re going to see
emptiness. And the people who have the viewpoint of those other guys are
going to stay {so-so kyewos} for a while. They’re going to be regular people for
a while. As long as you hold that, their viewpoint that everything is just the way
it looks like, you’re not going to get there. You have to go over to the
Madhyamikas. You have to go to Middle Way. You have to start seeing this
thing doesn’t exist out there the way it seems,something else is going on. It may
take you a while and a few hours of these classes to figure out what’s going on
but at least get ready to become a madhyamika, okay. Say to yourself,
something’s going on, you know. I have to figure out how things work, you
know. Why is my life so crappy, you know? Why is it that no matter what kind
of exercise I get and no matter how I rearrange my occupation, and no matter
how many spouses I go through, I just can’t find happiness? You know what I
mean? Why is that? You know, I don’t understand how to make things happen.
You know, what really causes dollars? What is the true cause of dollars? Like,
everyone in the world, in America, in New York City is seeking the true cause of
dollars, you know. Is it working hard? No. Lazy people get rich sometimes.
[laughter] Is it being smart? No. Stupid people get rich sometimes. [laughter] Is
it being risky with your investments? Cautious people get rich sometimes. Well,
then it’s being cautious? No. Risky people get rich sometimes. No, it should be
being nice? No but nice people, lots of poor nice students in this class, you know.
[laughter]
So, what is it that makes money? You know, what is the real cause of things?
You haven’t figured it out yet. It’s deeply related to emptiness, okay. That’s why
we’re here. We’re not just talking about emptiness because it sounds, like, cool
to talk about it while you’re dying and getting old, you know. It’s not that. It
has profound effects on your life. When you figure out emptiness you can
pretty much make whatever you want happen, happen, and that’s cool. You see
what I mean? That would be very interesting, you know. You could, finally, get
all those things you really wanted, you know, so we’ll talk about it. Okay.
Let me see if I did all the homework questions; just a couple of easy homework
questions after that. That’s a hard one. Did that. Did that. I think [unclear]
[comment to student]
Copy that. There was lady in New Jersey, her grader was, should I tell them
Mandy? No. [laughter] [laughs] She demanded her certificate even though she
had done none of the work and you’ve got to work for it, okay. Okay, punch-
out starts now; the shoot-out between the two schools. It’s the three lower
schools against the higher school; three to one, okay, not very fair. These guys
believes if something works it must be real. These guys say nothing has any
nature of its own. And that’s a big fight. These guys make the opening salvo,
okay. These guys take the first shot. They swing the first punch. What’s the first
punch is right here.
{ngupo} means things that do something, right? {ngupo} means a pen, your
shoes, car, house, your nose, things that do something.

{Rangshin gyi me na} means if they don’t have any nature of their own, if they
don’t have any nature of their own, {ye me du gyur} means they must not exist
at all; {ye me du gyur} means they must not exist at all. This is their first punch,
okay. This is their first attack. I’ll say it again. If things don’t have any nature of
their own then they can’t exist at all. Okay. If that white colour, silvery colour
and the round shape and the black thing, don’t have any ‘pot-ness’ about them,
then they must not exist at all. There must be no pot at all, okay. You’ve got to
‘cook it’ alright, as Rinpoche would say alright. I’ll state it again. They’re
complaining to the Middle Way guys saying, look, if those colours don’t have
anything ‘pot’ about them from their side without me thinking anything then no
pot exists at all, okay. Then there’s no pot at all. Which is wrong, okay. Is there
a pot the way you thought it used to be? The way you used to think it was? No.
Is there a pot out there on its own side? No. Are those round colours, round
shapes, white colour, black thing – are they ‘pot’ from their side? No. If they
were the roach would be having a cup of tea, okay. So are they non-existent at
all? Is there no pot at all? Of course there’s a pot. I’m making tea. I’m going to
drink the tea. Okay. Where is the pot? It’s a bunch of colours that my mind is
organising in a certain way and that’s fine. I can use that. It works. That’s the
important thing. That’s the whole lesson tonight, okay.
Does the thing exist the way you thought it did? No. Does it exist out there on
the stove by itself? No. Does it exist without me organising it in a certain way?
No.
So, it doesn’t exist at all, right? No, stupid, I’m making a cup of tea. I’ve been
drinking tea a lot, you know. It must work. I’m evidence of it, you know. I’ve
got these yellow teeth from drinking Tibetan tea all my whole life, you know.
It’s proof that there’s Tibetan tea. It’s proof that I drank it, you know. It must
exist. It must have some existence, you know. It does. It does have existence.
Is it the way you thought it was? No. Does it have a nature of its own? No.
Well, does it have a nature of being forced on you by your karma and make you
see this thing as a pot? Yes. Can you make tea with that? Of course, okay, no
problem. Okay. But they make the mistake of saying if it doesn’t exist, from its
side, as a pot, it can’t be a pot.
And we say that’s stupid. We’ve been drinking tea all, all these years okay.
That’s their first mistake. Second mistake: {yuna}[repeat], {shing} means ‘and]’
by the way. {yuna} means if it existed, if the pot exists, {yuna} if the pot exists,
{rangshin gyi yu gu}, it must have a nature. It must have a nature. So there’s
two different punches. They’re doing, I don’t know what you’d call it, you
know, like a jab and a, and a hook, you know. First they try a jab and then they
try a hook. What was the jab? The jab was if it doesn’t have a nature it can’t
exist at all and then the hook is if, and then we say, come on, it exits. So then they
say, so it must have a nature, right? And we say, no. Okay. That’s their two
shots. They take two shots at the madhyamika. First one: if it doesn’t have a
nature it can’t exist at all. Come on stupid, what do you think we’re drinking?
Well if it exists it must have a nature of its own. Oh, so I guess every bug that
crawls on the stove is having a cup of tea? Okay. And that’s all. Those are the
two big mistakes they make. All the other debates that we’re going to have
tonight in the rest of the class is based on this stupid idea. So you’ve got to
appreciate this one and you have to learn it. And it’s a little bit long and don’t
worry about it. It makes all the other ones shorter, okay.
What’s the two stupid ideas they have? If it doesn’t have a nature of being a ot
from its own side it can’t exist at all. Wrong. I’ve been drinking out of it all these
years. Well then, if it does exist, it must have a nature of its own. No it doesn’t.
If it had its own nature of being a pot then every kind of being that entered this
room would have to enjoy it and use it exactly the way a human does, which is
not true. Okay.
That’s all. By the way, that’s proof that it doesn’t have any ‘pot-ness’ about it.
That a, that a roach can’t use it as a pot, okay, frankly, but you’ve got to get used
to that, alright. What’s that got to do with me? I don’t care if it really has its own
nature or not. All I want’s a cup of tea. Why should I come to these bullshit
classes and talking about whether or not it has its own nature? I’ve been using it
to have tea all this time, no problem. Why are you getting into all stuff? It’s
very profound. It’s very profound. I can teach you the method to see that stuff
as the nectar of immortality, forever, because it’s empty. If it had a nature of its
own, if it was tea from its own side, we’re stuck in this shitty reality, okay. But,
because it’s empty, if you improve your karma by learning what’s good deeds
or bad deeds, and taking all these vows - tantric vows, bodhisattva vows - and
keeping a nice book about them, then, because that thing doesn’t have a nature
of being a pot of tea, it will turn into a pot of the nectar of immortality.
Seriously. No joke. Okay. If it had its own nature this is not possible but
because it doesn’t have its own nature everything’s possible. Everyone in this
room can enter a Buddha paradise in this lifetime. Which is cool, okay. That’s
why we’re talking about emptiness. Emptiness is not just some, like, mental
masturbation, okay. It has a point that if you understand emptiness then you
can manipulate your reality and you can create a Buddha paradise. And that
would be amazing. And you can’t even dream what it’s like. You can even
dream right now what it would be like, you know. If you really did all this stuff,
if you really kept your bodhisattva vows and your monk’s vows and your
tantric vows perfectly or pretty good, you know, and keep your book during
the day and do all this meditation stuff, then you can’t even imagine what it
would be like to enter that reality, you know. You can’t even picture it now.
You can’t even guess what it would be like, what would be in the pot, you know.
You can’t, you can’t know, imagine it, okay, what would happen and how your
life would be. But it’s all possible because this thing is empty. So you have to
study emptiness. You have to understand its emptiness. It has every [cut] ….
must be from Brooklyn or something, okay. Sorry Drolma [laughter] [laughs].
If it works, it’s real, you know. And then these [unclear] say, no, it doesn’t have
any nature of its own. It’s unreal. It’s illusory, okay, but leave it like that. Okay.
So that’s, that’s question number five. Question number five is kind of fuzzy -
just answer it like this, you know. It says, ‘explain why good and bad deeds are
like an illusion but they still function perfectly well.’ It means that, okay, when
you come up here and make offerings to the Buddhas and you put out water-
bowls, okay, is everything there, is it a water-bowl from its own side? No.
Okay.
When you wrap up a nice gift for your mom on Mother’s Day and present it to
her, which is extremely powerful karma, good karma, and give it to her, is that a
pleasant gift from its own side? No. She might find it repulsive, okay. Seriously.
It doesn’t have any nature of its own, okay. So, how can something like that get
you to nirvana, you know? How can you have good deeds from things that
don’t have any nature of their own? You know, you’re offering something to
something, something to somebody that doesn’t have any nature of its own,
how can it be, how can it give you good karma to offer something that doesn’t
have any nature of its own? This school is trying to take another, it’s like upper-
cut, okay. Like, I don’t know, they have a jab and then they have a, I don’t
know, a hook right. Now they’re going this way, you know. You madhyamika
people, how the hell are you going to get to Buddhahood? You’re offering
things that don’t have any nature, you know. When you’re offering these nice
water-bowls and you’re offering these nice candles and these flowers - they
don’t have any nature of being a flower - so how can you get good karma out of
it? That’s a little tough, okay, but your mind is perceiving it as a flower. Your
mind is forcing you to see those colours as a flower and that’s good enough. It
works, okay. And, if you offer that thing that’s giving you a picture of a flower
in your mind, you do collect good karma. And, by the way, you never did
anything else, okay. That’s all that ever was happening. Master Shantideva says,
and Gyaltseb Je says, by the way, they work just as good as they did before I
told you about all this stuff. Think of it that way he says. When you offer a
flower, when you offered a flower before this class happened and you thought
I’m going to get some good karma out of this, well, what you thought was
going to happen is exactly what does happen but it don’t happen for the reason
that you thought, okay. So, Gyaltseb Je’s answer and Master Shantideva’s
answer, at this point, is good karma works just the way you thought it did but
not for the reason you thought it did, okay. And you’ve got to cook it, okay,
you’ve got to cook it. That’s why you can offer a flower, that’s not a flower
from its own side, and you still get good, good karma out of it. In fact, I should
rather say, it’s only because it has no nature that you can get good karma out of
it and you’ve got to cook that. It’s only because it’s not a flower from its own
side that you can get good karma from it. You’ve got to think about it, okay.
You’ve got to think about it. Are flowers pleasant? Ask Khen Rinpoche, you
know. You get a bunch of flowers near him, he can’t breathe. He’s got these
allergies to flowers. To him a flower is a very unpleasant object. People offer
him flowers all the time, you know. He’s, like, thanks, could you take it over
there. [laughter] [laughs] Right? It’s not self-existent. It doesn’t have a nature of
being pleasant on its own, okay. If it had a nature of being pleasant everybody
would find it pleasant. The pleasant-ness is not coming from the flower. It’s
coming from your mind. Well, let’s think of everything as pleasant. I have to go
to the dentist, like, next week. I’ll just think of it as pleasant, you know. It don’t
work that way. It’s forced on you by your past karma, okay. It is imputed. It is
made up by your mind but you don’t have a choice right now. You can set the
good karma in motion now and, and eat your dessert later, but you can’t do it in
the moment, okay. Next question. They’re taking another punch, okay. I don’t
know, what do you call this? I don’t know if there’s a word for it. Maybe it’s just
kicking him, okay. [laughs] Low-blow, okay. They say, hey, Gyaltseb Je, you
know, hey, Master Shantideva, if beings, if you and me are like an illusion, you
know, if you and me have no nature of being Michael Roach or Winston or
Tessie or anything else, how can you take rebirth? Who’s taking rebirth, you
know? There must not be any rebirth. If I’m not Michael Roach, from my side,
you know, then who takes rebirth? So, Gyaltseb Je says, listen, let’s talk about it.
Let’s talk about, I don’t know, we’ll pick on somebody. Brooks. [laughs]
Anyway, is he himself from his own side? No.
Is he being forced by his mind to see those colours and shapes as himself? Yes.
Am I being forced to see the same thing? Yes. Okay. Can that person that we’re
being forced to see that way take rebirth and become another person that we’re
being forced to see that way? Of course, no problem, okay. He says what are
you talking about rebirth? What’s the big problem about rebirth? Rebirth is the
mind shifting. You don’t take rebirth. There’s nothing out there taking rebirth.
Colours and shapes are being interpreted by the mind as a change to another
body. This arm, with different karma, I could see as an antennae, okay. It’s not
that the arm changed into an antennae; my karma shifted, and my perception
shifted, and I’m forced to see the same colours and shapes as an antennae. It’s
very interesting. You don’t take a rebirth. Your mind goes through the
thoughts of a rebirth, which is the same thing as taking a rebirth, okay. So I don’t
have to do the Heart Sutra. That’s the whole thing, okay. You don’t take a
rebirth. Your mind sees yourself taking a rebirth and so you do take a rebirth,
see what I mean? That’s what taking a rebirth is. It’s just shifts in your
perception, okay. So Gyaltseb Je says, get this. If you can be forced by your
karma to see yourself as a human sitting here right now then what’s the big deal
about being forced to see yourself as a different being a hundred years from
now? What’s the big deal? Why do you have a problem with rebirth, you
know? If you understand what I’m saying about you now it applies to the other
guy. It’s the same thing. He’sjust farther down the road, okay. And Gyaltseb Je
gives an example, okay. In India, if you’ve ever been in India and seen them do
their magic, it’s pretty amazing. They have what they call a [unclear], means it’s
a little stick like that. And they say, these people crowd around, you always
know there’s a magician in town in a village in India ‘cos there’s a big crowd.
And you’re, like, got to force your way in, you know. And in the middle there’s
some guy and making, like, phallic jokes about the [?] and stuff and then he says,
okay, watch this [?]. And he throws it on the ground and, suddenly, you see a
horse, you know. And it’s like an illusion. It’s like some amazing thing that they
do, you know. Because he set it up in your mind; they do certain things in your
mind. You see some kind of animal or something and then he, he, like, snaps his
fingers and then there’s just a stick there, you know. This is a thing that they can
do. It’s pretty cool. Does that horse have a mind? No. Is it a living being? No.
It’s just an illusion that you have, okay. So Gyaltseb Je says, well you think it’s
such a big deal? You’re asking a stupid question. How could a person who’s
empty, who has no nature take a rebirth? That’s like asking how come the stick
can’t be a cow? Okay. You’ve got to cook it alright.
The guy could have made a cow if he wants to make a cow. He will make a cow
later on, okay. The same colours and shapes with different kinds of karma you
could see as another person later. No problem. The same stick can have the
illusion of being a horse and then being a cow. No problem. You’ve got to cook
it, okay. That’s his answer. The basic point is this: anything that can happen
once can happen twice, in a different format, okay. It’s all right. It’s all right.
You can take rebirth. You will take rebirth unless you get out now.
Yeah? Quick.
[student]
[unclear] same thing, exactly same thing. You’re asking me can I make it a
donkey, come on. Okay. [laughs]
[student] Huh?
[student] It’s another shift of course. Everything’s another shift. Everything’s
another shift. Nothing exists. Okay.
Last thing. Okay.
[student]
Have I ever,personally, seen it happen? I’ve seen them do amazing things. I’ve
never seen them, to be honest, I’ve never seen them throw a stick down and see
an elephant. But I’ve seen them do things you couldn’t believe, you know.
[student]
Yeah, well I guess in ancient days the magicians were better or something.
[laughter] Yeah, it doesn’t, it doesn’t mean that that particular magic trick has to
exist for this to be a good argument. It’s any kind of illusion. You could say a
movie and it’s the same thing. A movie is just really a lot of shapes and colours.
It’s a bunch of actors acting like the Dalai Lama and, you know, if you saw
“Seven Years in Tibet”. It’s an illusion, you know. They pay these guys seventy
million dollars and came out with this illusion, you know. It’s not real. That’s the
same thing. It’s the same example. They could have been playing civil war
characters, you see. Shatideva says, you know, don’t ask me stupid questions,
you know. Why is it, could, could these same characters play another role? Of
course. Given different costumes, given different conditions – meaning, different
karma from your mind – of course, they could have been civil war movie, you
know. And they probably will play a civil war movie next year, you know.
That’s no problem. If you can accept that “Seven Years in Tibet” is an illusion, in
the sense that it’s not the real attack of Tibet, it’s players playing it, actors playing
it, if you can accept that about the present movie, then why are you giving me a
hard time about next year’s movie, you know? Why are you making this big
deal about reincarnation? Of course there’ll be another being there. Of course
those same actors will play another play and it will be just as unreal as the ones
playing today. Why is it unreal? Because they don’t have the nature of being the
Dalai Lama and His friends, okay. It’s being supplied by the, by the guy, by the
director and by the advertising and by the costumes and everything else. But
they are not the Dalai Lama and His friends. It’s the same thing. Okay. It’s the
conditions, which are creating the illusion of the Dalai Lama and His friends, but
nobody would say, oh, that’s the Dalai Lama, you know. Okay?
Same thing. Is the pot a pot from its own side? Oh, is the guy who plays the
Dalai Lama the Dalai Lama? Same question. No. Does he look like the Dalai
Lama? Yes. Well, him because he’s got the right costume and the right hairdo
and everything else or lack of hairdo. And, and the other guy, and the pot, why?
Because my karma is supplying all this stuff; my karma is forcing me to see these
pictures, these colours and shapes, as a, …. . What I’m trying to say is, it doesn’t
matter that people don’t do that nowadays. It’s just an example for an illusion.
They also use the example of a dream or a drama, you know, a theatre, a
theatrical performance. It doesn’t matter. Just any kind of example to show the
idea of an illusion and “Seven Years in Tibet” is a good example, okay. Same
thing.
Last question. This is the last point. I’ll get you home, out of here, by nine-thirty,
okay. It looks like emptiness classes take half an hour longer even though they
have no nature of their own. [laughter]
Say,{rangshin gyi}[repeat]{nyangde}[repeat]{rangshin gyi} [repeat]{nyangde}
[repeat]. This {rangshin} also means nature, okay, nature. Here, it means
natural, {rangshin gyi} means natural; {nyangde} means nirvana. It’s the Tibetan
word for nirvana, {rangshin gyi nyangde}. It’s called natural nirvana. The first
thing you have to say about natural nirvana is that it’s not nirvana. [laughs]
Okay. By the way, this nature and the other nature are totally different, okay.
When I say does a pot have a nature of its own you have to say no. But this is
the nature like in ‘natural beauty’ or ‘natural trees’ or something like that, okay.
It’s a different natural, alright. Don’t get confused. This {rangshin} means
natural, natural nirvana. It’s the nirvana that all things have already, okay. It’s
the nirvana that all things have already. I saw this wrong view repeated in a
magazine today. Like, another magazine about Buddhism came out today and,
and it said, it was some stupid idea. What was it? Mmmmm. Oh, we’re all
Buddhas and we just ave to uncover it, you know. It’s not true. We all do have a
Buddha-nature and you have to develop it or, or you have to utilise it, but that’s
another story. Natural nirvana is the same thing. Natural nirvana is defined as
the emptiness of all objects, okay. It’s right here. I’m going to cut this, okay.
{Chu} means thing here, dharma, thing; {tamche} is all, {tamche] means all;
{rangshin gyi tongpa} means they are void of any nature of their own. They
don’t have any nature of their own. That’s a synonym for? Emptiness. That’s
what emptiness means, okay. The emptiness of everything in this room, the fact
that nothing in this room has any nature of its own.
By the way, everything you’re looking at is just a bunch of colours and shapes.
Why are you seeing Marvin and the rest of us? Your karma. Good or bad?
Well, [laughter] are you enjoying it or not, okay? Are you enjoying it or not? If
you’re enjoying it it’s the result of good karma. If you’re not enjoying it it’s the
result of bad karma. If you don’t care much about it it’s the result of some kind
of dim ignorance in your past, okay. It’s called neutral karma.
So there’s a thing called natural nirvana. Every object has it. It’s the fact that that
particular object doesn’t have any nature of its own. And that’s its natural
nirvana, okay. That’s a little tricky. The emptiness of each object in this room is
called natural nirvana. Is it nirvana? What is nirvana? It’s getting rid of all your
bad emotions forever, all your negative emotions forever. That’s nirvana. Does
that chair have nirvana? No. It never had any bad emotions anyway. Like,
congratulations, you know, you [laughs] you overcame, you’ve got nirvana cos
you don’t have any bad emotions anymore. It’s not like that. Okay. He never
had it, never will have it. It’s a piece of wood, okay. Does it have natural
nirvana? Yes. Why? It’s empty. It has emptiness. Is its natural nirvana in any
way a kind or nirvana? No. Why? ‘Cos it never had a mind. It never had a
dirty mind. It never had to work with Buddhist practice – meditation, studying,
thinking, going to all these stupid classes to get rid of this anger, okay. He didn’t
have to do that ‘cos he never had any so he can’t reach nirvana. So does he have
nirvana? No. Could he ever have nirvana? No. Does he have natural nirvana?
Yes, because that’s a totally different thing called emptiness. Why did I bring this
up? Okay. [laughs] It happens to be the next thing in the text, okay. And here,
the, the, these guys, the Functionalists, are doing a really trick on Shantideva, on
Master Shantideva. They’ll, like, trying to trip him when he’s walking back to his
corner or something, okay. It’slike they’re trying to push him. He’s already
walking back. The madhyamika’s already walking back to their corner and this
guy comes up and punches him in the back, okay, with this low stupid blow.
You know, oh you madhyamika guys, you think the Buddha is still suffering,
okay. You think the Buddha is still suffering. And the madhyamika guy, you
know, he’s like, you know, why, what are you talking about? He says, ‘cos you
think the Buddha, how to say it, is still in samsara. Is still in the cycle of suffering.
You think the Buddha is still in the world of suffering. And the madhyamika’s
say what are you talking about? I don’t know what you’re talking about. And
they say, well, because you think that nirvana and samsara are the same thing,
you know. You think that this world in which you and I have to put up with our
lousy bosses and our lousy New York City negative things and other stuff, you
think that’s nirvana. So you think the Buddha’s still wandering around in New
York having to get on dirty subways, you know, having people push him on the
sidewalks, having to see bad things happen, having people yell at him, like your
[unclear] as I got on the way [laughter], you know. You say the Buddha’s still
wandering around New York City like that. Why do you say that? Because you
say that samsara and nirvana are all mixed up together. And madhyamika says I
have no idea what you’re talking about, [laughter] you know. He says, yes you
do, because you think samsara has natural nirvana. Okay. You think that all the
suffering in the world has natural nirvana, right? It’s just a low blow, right.
Natural nirvana’s got nothing to do with nirvana. Natural nirvana is what?
Emptiness. Does suffering have natural nirvana? It better or else we can’t
change it, okay. It, it better have emptiness or else we’re in trouble, okay. So
he’s, he’s purposely cheating. It’s like a low blow. He’s cheating. He’s saying,
you think that suffering and nirvana are mixed up. Why do you say that?
Because you think that suffering has its own emptiness. Of course we think
suffering has its own emptiness or you couldn’t change it into the pleasure of a
Buddha paradise. Well, well then you think suffering has its own nirvana right?
No, I didn’t say anything like that. Well, isn’t emptiness natural nirvana? Okay.
He’s just mixing, he’s just, what is it, semantic thing, okay. We call emptiness
natural nirvana and of course, everything has natural nirvana, you know. Like,
getting the flu has natural nirvana. That doesn’t mean that everyone who ever
entered nirvana has the flu, alright? That’s all. Flu has its own emptiness so the
flu has its natural nirvana but that doesn’t mean that every dude who’s
wandering around in nirvana has the flu, okay. And that’s just a, it’s just a game
that they’re playing. They’re trying one last desperate thing, which you do see
in the debate ground in the monastery, you know. Like, you’re walking away
and the guy got demolished, you know, and he’s like, yeah but, you know, and
he comes up with some stupid thing, you know. [laughs] This is like the last
gasp of this school for tonight, okay. That’s their last argument. Let me see if
there’s anything else.
By the way, this is the other kind of nirvana and you should know its proper
name. And then we’re done. Then you will have the projection of leaving, okay.
Say, {lo bur} [repeat] {namdak} [repeat] {gi} [repeat] {nyangde}, {lo bur} [repeat]
{namdak}[repeat] {gi} [repeat] {nyangde} [repeat]. This is the real nirvana, okay.
This is the nirvana that we usually talk about, okay. {Lo bur} is a very unusual
word. {lo bur} normally means suddenly, okay. It normally means suddenly.
Here it means through some kind of circumstances. What circumstances? You
practice your ass off. That’s the {lo bur} here. You worked really hard. That’s
the {lo bur}, you know. Something’s going to happen but only because you
worked at the path for a long time. It’s called {lam komba}, you know, you
worked at the path for a long time. So something is going to happen. {lo bur}
means it wasn’t that way before and now it changed. By the way, what about
the other kind of nirvana, that natural nirvana? Is it {lo bur}? Was it one way
before and then got a different way? Forget it. Emptiness has always been
emptiness. Does it get more or less empty? No. I mean you’re either empty or
you’re not. Okay. Is there a two-headed six foot pink full-sized elephant in this
room? No. Could it be sixty percent not in this room? No. It just never was,
okay. Emptiness is the same, okay. There never was a pot that had a nature of
its own. And there never has been and there never will be. So that’s a hundred
percent empty all the time, okay. But there’s another kind of nirvana where
you’re getting rid of your mental afflictions. Did you have them before? Yes.
Did you get rid of them later? Yes. There’s a change. That’s {lo bur}, okay, {lo
bur} means that. {Namdak} means purity, purity. Is there a kind of purity to
emptiness? Yes. In what way is it pure? It’s pure of that non-existent self-
existent pot. The pot that never was. It’s pure in that sense. What are we
talking about here? What kind of purity are we talking about here? Of your
mental afflictions. No more anger, no more jealousy, no more hatred, no more
being upset, in a little tiny bit being upset, nothing. Perfectly happy all the time,
okay, {namdak},pure. {Namdak gi nyangde} means nirvana, okay. Nirvana,
where you are pure because you worked at it, and that’s a description of the
other kind of nirvana, okay.
Are there any masochists here? It is the village after all. I’m going to put up the
full description of that, okay. It’s on your homework. Forget it, okay. You
don’t have to do it. I’ll put it up here. Tibetan people can do it. Put the general
description on your homework. What’s the homework say? Describe it briefly.
Describe the second kind of nirvana briefly. That’s okay. It’s the permanent
ending of your mental afflictions. Why? Because you saw emptiness directly.
That’s part of the definition of nirvana, {…} you stopped your mental afflictions
permanently because you were able to see emptiness directly. How long?
Twenty minutes. That’s a very important twenty minutes to get to, okay. The
full thing is here for those monks over there and people like that, okay.
And I’m not gong to ask you to put that on your homework, okay. For your
information, it says, {…. korwa kor}, you have been circling around in this kind
of life, being born and dying, in an endless stream, {…}. This kind of nirvana
comes from cutting off that stream, okay. {…..}, this is a kind of nirvana you get
by practising the path and by suddenly, or at some point, getting rid of your
mental afflictions forever, okay. I mean that’s the full description of nirvana.
Everybody’s eyes are glazed over. [laughter] You don’t have to memorise that,
okay. [laughs] Alright. So what do we have so far? You’ve got these two ideas
about existence. These guys say, if it works it must be real. These guys say,
come on, it doesn’t have any nature of its own, and therefore, everything is
possible. We can reach a Buddha paradise. Therefore, every object can become
paradisical, you know. And that’s very profound and that’s the whole point of
studying emptiness: how to turn that pot of water into the nectar of immortality,
which it can become. It will become, okay. That’s the whole point.
So that the shoot-out is between these two guys. These people saying, no if it
works it’s real and that’s the only way it can ever be. A pot is a pot. It can only
be a pot, you know. It could never be anything else, okay. Pot is pot. It’s out
there. It’s a pot. You can wish whatever you want. You can do whatever karma
you want. You ain’t going to change it. It’s a pot, okay. They think that ‘cos it
works like a pot, for me. I mean it’s a real parochial view, right? Doesn’t even
account for roaches. And then, these people are saying, it doesn’t have any
nature of its own and, therefore, we can turn it into a Buddha paradise. Okay.
How? Change your karma, okay, do good deeds and help other people. Like
that. Be compassionate, okay. Like that. Okay. We’ll go straight into the
prayers.
[prayer: mandala]
[prayer: dedication]