ACI 12 «Руководство к образу жизни бодхисаттвы, часть III», занятие 4

Course XII, Part III, class 4
Transcribed by Brian Smith.

[prayer]

Did everybody recover from the Mind Only school? [laughs] I thought it would
clear out a little bit, but, pretty good. Uh, any few questions about that any
more? No? No, I mean, any. . . nope. My lama would say, oh, you all
understood it perfectly. Yeah?

[student: inaudible]

Yeah, right, that’s a pretty good point. Uh, Leon said. . .

[student: inaudible]

Excuse me?

[student: inaudible]

Yeah, yeah. Leon said, uh, if you assume that the, that the object helps cause the
awareness of it, it’s called a {mikya} in Buddhist philosophy. It means, uh, a
perceptual condition, meaning that uh, you know, when you hold a pen up and
the awareness of the pen happens a minute later, a millisecond later, the pen has
to precede the perception of it. And, and I was talking about that because it was
one of the reasons why there’s no subject without a corresponding object. That’s
a tenet of Buddhism, that, you know, if there’s no object to be seen then you
can’t have a subject, OK? Subject’s state of mind. Um, so it does sound like if the
pen existed a millisecond before you saw it, then it’s not true that it’s a
projection, because the projection should come later, right? The projection is a
creation of the mind. So it seems to me contradictory. Um, you can say that the
data, the colors and shapes, uh, are projected a millisecond before the projection
of the pen, OK? Something like that. Alright? So you’re projecting. . . There’s a
{dakshi}, which means the data, the raw data, and then there’s a {dogche}, which
means the mind that organizes the data into an object, and then a second later
there’s a {dakchu}, which means an organized object such as the pen. So that
{dakshi} is the colors and shapes. Uh, the {dogche} is the state of mind that
projects onto it, or which, uh, I thought of a good word the other day. Umm. It
imputes or lays onto it, but there’s another word. Umm. Can’t remember.
Anyway, it imputes or lays onto it the idea of pen. And then a millisecond. . .
You can say ascribe. I, I, ascribe to me means this text is ascribed to Asanga but
we really know it’s by Nagarjuna, you know. So ascribe means, you know,
falsely imputed. This is {tsema}, {tsema} means it’s a reasonable ascription, you
see? Uh, it’s {tsema}, {tsema} means reasonable if not accurate. OK? I used to
try to convince my boss of the difference between, uh, a reasonable decision and
a correct decision. You know what I mean? [laughs] Based on what I knew I
made a correct decision that happened to be, worked out wrong later on, but
based on what I knew that’s all I could come up with. I, I made the best decision
possible, even though later it turned out to lose the company a lot of money.
Uh, you know, because according to all I knew at that time that was reasonable.
So {tsema} is “reasonable.” So to me ascribed means, you know, that there’s no
reason to ascribe it to Asanga, it’s really by Nagarjuna. But anyway, it’s {dog},
{dog} means “to label,” to put something, impose. I like the word “impose.”
You’re imposing “pen” upon those, that data. OK? All you really see is colors
and shapes. So colors and shapes precede the perception of colors and shapes,
and they help create the perception of colors and shapes, and then they’re
interpreted by the mind as a pen, and then a moment later, uh, a thing called a
pen exists, and then a moment later the perception of the pen exists. How’s that?
OK? So you get data, perception of data, organization of data, uh, you know,
imposed object, and then awareness of the imposed object. How’s that? Yeah?

[student: inaudible]

Oh, by the way, so Leon said, well, you know, on a one by one basis here all the
stuff you talk about sounds reasonable. But why is that suddenly eight-five
people in this room would all collectively perceive this thing as a pen. Um, that’s
just the result of common karma, what we call common karma. You know, and
it’s true that, generally speaking, uh, the big division is by the five {rk dorye duk}
or the five or six classes of beings. The big divisions are between them. Like,
bugs. The animal realm does not perceive things at all like the human realm
does. And that’s the only two realms that we accept in America. But hell realm
people and {pretas}, hungry ghosts, would perceive the same objects in a much,
much different way. But you can accept at least that an animal and a human
perceive the same object in a much different way. Uh, if we all happen to see a
pen, all the people in this room, it’s because we all had a similar karmic cause to
see the pen. And that’s, in fact, if you think about it carefully, that’s why there’s
six kinds of beings. It’s not the other way around. The fact that there’s six kinds
of beings is not self-existent. The reason we’re all called humans is that we’re all
having similar karmic ripenings in our minds, and that puts us all in the same
boat. It’s very interesting. It’s not that there’s a class of things called humans
independent of that fact. It’s the fact that we all see things in a similar way
because we all collected similar karma is why we’re called humans. You see? It’s
very delicate. Think about like that. But, but Master Shantideva would say, look,
that’s similar to the argument that, oh, this has been going on so long then
shouldn’t it be selfexistent, you know? I’ve been perceiving this so long that it
must have some reality. And then he says, look, you know, it’s all a dream. It
doesn’t matter whether the dream. . . .In a dream, you can dream something for,
that you, you can remember a day’s passing in a dream, or hundreds of years
passing in a dream, or a whole lifetime passing in a dream. But when you wake
up, the argument that one is more true because it’s been going on longer in your
dream is not valid. And the fact that more people are seeing something as
something doesn’t make it more self-existingly that way. I think he would argue
the same way. He does that about time, you know. So I would think he’d say
that about the number of people seeing things. We know it’s possible for large
masses of people to misperceive something like Hitler. You know, we know it’s
possible for millions of people to follow this crazy guy, because they’re all
having same karma at the same time to think he’s a great guy, or something like
that. It doesn’t make it right that. . . Or, you know, abortion. It doesn’t make it
right that many people think that way. Uh, see what I mean? It doesn’t make it
more right. In fact, you know, Buddhist are such a tiny minority and happen to
be completely right, and. . . [laughs]. Yeah?

[student: inaudible]

Yeah. I mean, yeah, assuming, uh, no two people are the emanation of one
being. Seriously, OK? Which is possible. It’s possible there’s eighty-four
emanations in here being projected by one Buddha and I’m the only non-Buddha
here, you know, seriously. [laughter] You know, yeah. But if there’s not, then
there’s eight-five mindstreams going on in here. And they will never mix
together, because . .

[student: inaudible]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Generally perceiving the same thing. You know,
generally, you can all say you’re seeing me. You’re seeing my shapes and colors.
You know, and apparently you all have the karma to see me as Michael Roach or
something.

[student: inaudible]
Excuse me? Because of the ripening of karma is an individual thing. It’s very
interesting, you know?

[student: inaudible]

Yeah, you are the sum total of the ripening of your karmic seeds. You see?
Even David Sax, for David Sax, is the sum total of the ripening of David Sax’s
karmic seeds, and it will always be that way. It’s funny. You think you’re a
person, and you’re right, just because so many seeds are going off at the same
time, they make you think like that. It will always be like that. Yeah?

[student: inaudible]

Uh, you’re talking about the pieces of the, the parts of the parts. Yeah, we’re
gonna get to that later on. I’ve been carefully avoiding it, because Master
Shantideva gets into it later. We will talk, I promise we’ll talk about it. If I keep
promising you some tidbits, you might come back, you know? Yeah?

[student: inaudible]

Um, we’re saying, the Madhyamika says the stuff is not there in the way you
thought it was, but it is there. How is it there? It’s there because you’re
projecting on to it what you see. OK? It’s not coming from its side the way it
looks like it is. That’s all. But it still functions. You can still get run over by a car,
even though it’s your projection, OK? One more question, and then we gotta
start, cause you guys will be here all night [laughs].

[student: inaudible]

Yeah. Who? No, they would say the same thing. They would say the same
thing. Uh, every school, even down to the lowest school. The Vaibhashika,
second chapter, Abhidharmakosha, sets forth five conditions, and that’s one of
them. Every Buddhist school accepts that the mind is a, one of the conditions for
the arisal of a state of mind is the presence of its object, so, you know.

[student: inaudible]

Uh, they say it comes from the same karmic seed, but I think they would say
that that one maybe comes a moment before, or something like that. How’s
that? You know, the same karmic seed makes that pew occur a millisecond
before my awareness of it, OK? Like, it’s not outside the law of karma that the
same karmic seed causes that a millisecond before it causes my perception of it.
Like that, OK? How’s that? We’d better get. . . Uh, in the debate ground they
teaches us when to change the subject. [laughs] OK. Uh, we’re through with the
Mind Only school, now they’re going on to different proofs for the existence of
emptiness and for the importance of emptiness. But no we start out with an
argument, mostly by two groups called “the listeners” and “the self-made
Buddhas.” These are two hinayana groups. These are two lower, I call them
lower way, {hina} means, {memba} in Tibetan means “lower,” {yana} means
“way.” Does it mean that they’re stupid? No, they’re brilliant. Does it mean
that we should reject them? No, we’re not allowed to reject them. That’s a
bodhisattva vow. Uh, does it mean that some of their explanations are wrong?
Yes. OK? Are all the people that are called Theravadins or hinayana not
concerned about saving all sentient beings? I doubt it. OK? Of course they’re
concerned about saving all sentient beings. So, so hinayana is a theoretical group
of people who are theoretically not interested in saving all sentient beings. They
would like to reach happiness themselves. And they’re not so concerned about
spreading it to other people. So this is a theoretical group of people that Master
Shantideva’s attacking. Probably they’re were people living in his time who said
that it was important to reach your individual nirvana but not to help all other
living begins, OK? Um, if you read the Abhidharmakosha, which is supposed to
be one of their books, it’s full of helping all sentient beings, so. . . OK, so we’re
talking about a theoretical thing, and I’m not putting down all the Theravada or
hinayana schools in the world. Yeah?

[student: inaudible]

No. The Mind Only school is a Mahayana school, and the other two schools, uh,
the Vaibhashika and Sautrantika, are hinayana schools, OK? Uh, so anyway.
There’s some hinayanists, OK, theoretical hinayanists, who come to Master
Shantideva, and they say, look, uh, you can start trying to prove emptiness to us,
but, uh why? What’s the use of it? You don’t need to see emptiness to get to
nirvana and Buddhahood. OK? They say that. Not necessary. So then Master
Shantideva says, well what do you have to see to get to nirvana and
Buddhahood? And they say. . .

[student: Is that a “K”?]

Yeah, it’s not self-existent, cause I see it as a “K” but you don’t. OK? Say {midok
sop chudup, midok sop chudup} [class repeats] {midok} means “impermanent”
or “changing,” OK? Changing. {sop} means “et cetera.” {Chudup} means
“sixteen.” {Chudup} means “sixteen.” The number sixteen, OK? These are
known as the sixteen aspects of the four so-called noble truths, OK? The four,
the four noble truths. The way it really happens is like this. I’ve mentioned it
before, but I’ll go through it again. Uh, I’ll start with staring at the pot on the
stove, which we’ve been talking about, right? So you’re standing there staring at
the pot on the stove, and suddenly you, you get it that you’re not watching a
pot, you’re watching a bunch of colors and shapes. And that there never was a
pot out there. And what’s making it a pot is your own mind. And your own
mind, forced by you past karma, is seeing, is organizing those colors and shapes
into a perfect little picture of a pot, which is only about that big, and is
somewhere back here, OK? It’s not there on the stove. All these years you’ve
only been watching pictures of pots in your mind. Your eye never saw a pot.
Your eye can only see colors and shapes. We got that out already. You go into
the temple an hour later, you go into a deep state of meditation, and you see
emptiness directly for like about twenty minutes. You come down out of that
meditation, and it’s like a physical sensation of coming down from another
realm, because, that state of meditation is related to the form realm, OK? Uh,
and there’s a physical sensation of coming down out of the meditation. Um,
then you’re back to seeing normal things again. And you begin to have a series
of extraordinary experiences for the rest of the day, like even up to the evening.
And you realize, you have deep spiritual realizations which are not the
perception of emptiness, OK?, uh, throughout the whole day. Uh, the moment
you see emptiness, the first instant of the twenty minutes, you are already a, an
Arya, {papa} in Tibetan, meaning “you are a person who has seen emptiness
directly,” OK? So from the very first instant, from the first millisecond of seeing
emptiness directly, you have changed status. You are now a different kind of
being. You are now what we call a realized being, OK? Um, the word {arya} can
be translated as “noble,” OK? “Noble one” or, it literally means “higher one,”
OK? Not “noble.” Noble to me means virtuous or self-sacrificing or like that. It
has nothing to do with that in the direct perception of emptiness. You are a
higher being now. You are a different kind of being. You are one in a billion,
you know, you are one in maybe a billion, or more, OK? You are one of those
people who has seen emptiness directly. After living countless lifetimes, within
typically seven lifetimes you will now be enlightened. So you’re a totally
different kind of being. Thats what {arya} means. It doesn’t mean “noble,” OK?
Uh, all those ideas that you get, all those great spiritual perceptions that you get
after that, after you come down out of emptiness, for the rest of the day, OK?,
some of them sitting still on your meditation seat and other ones happening
while you’re walking around afterwards, all of those things are called “the four
arya truths,” the four truths that are seen by a person who has just seen
emptiness directly, OK? So I don’t think that they should be called “noble.”
That’s a mistranslaton that came from some earlier Western translations, and
hopefully we can stamp it out, but it looks like we might get stuck with it.
They’re the four arya truths, OK? Uh, typically they can be grouped into like
sixteen different great ideas that you get, and these are the sixteen aspects of
impermanence et cetera, OK? You can divide all of those experiences into four
big groups. Oh, I finally understood suffering, I finally understood where it’s
coming from, I finally understood that you could shut it off, I finally understood
that, how you could shut it off. And those are the four arya truths. And then
inside of each of them is four different ideas happening, OK? Now the lowest
schools, for example the Abhidharma schools, they, they got mixed up, OK?
They think that you perceive, for example, fifteen of those sixteen aspects during
the direct perception of emptiness. They think that there’s nothing more to the
path of seeing than seeing those sixteen aspects or those fifteen aspects, OK?
They think that, and they think each one takes a moment, or something like that.
They believe the whole path of seeing is over in fifteen or sixteen seconds and
that during each one of those you see one aspect of the four noble truths. So
somebody from that school would say, you don’t have to see emptiness directly.
All you have to do is understand those four noble truths and you can get rid of
your mental afflictions, OK? Um, they’ve confused what we call {je tobyeshe}
with {tong ye mung se topa}, they’ve confused the period of when you’re seeing
emptiness directly with what we call “subsequent knowledge,” which is what
happens to you following the perception, the direct perception of emptiness,
after you come out, after you’ve come down. OK, they’ve confused those two.
So they say to Master Shantideva, why do you have to see emptiness directly? If
you understand these fifteen or sixteen aspects of the four arya truths,
everything’s OK, OK? You can get rid of your mental afflictions. And anyone,
uh, I’m not sure they would say this, but generally they’re saying that anyone,
whether they’ve seen emptiness directly or not, if they understand these,
impermanence and other spiritual, great spiritual ideas, then they can get rid of
their mental afflictions, OK? And they can get to be an arhat, which means
reaching nirvana. They can reach nirvana, OK? Uh, let me get your homework
out to make sure. But by the way it is true that during the time that you’re
understanding the sixteen aspects deeply, by the way, you never understand
them directly until after you’ve seen emptiness directly, OK? You never really
understand suffering, the way it really is, until you’ve seen emptiness directly,
until right after that. You really don’t understanad impermanence directly until
after you come out of the direct perception of emptiness, OK? Uh, but they
would say . . . Let me put it up on the board for you. It is true that you can, if
you have those great ideas, you can repress your mental afflictions temporarily,
OK? And this whole book by Master Shantideva so far has been explaining to
you how you can repress your mental afflictions, OK? Which mental afflictions?
There’s two kinds of mental afflictions. And you have to know that to do this.
Say {lungyerwa} and {baklanyelwa}, {lungyerwa}, {baklanyelwa} [class repeats].
OK. These are the two kinds of mental afflictions. I mean there’s many ways to
divide mental afflictions, like “root” and “secondary,” et cetera. But these, these
are important in our discussion tonight. {lunyerwa} means “manifest,” I’d
translate it as “manifest.” Manifest means “it’s in your mind right now,” OK?
It’s upfront in your mind right now. For example, when the boss is screaming at
you and you’re angry, that’s called {lungyerwa}, OK? That’s a, manifested in
your mind. What would you say? It’s directly existing in your mind, or it’s
appearing in your mind actively. Like, you’re angry. So that would be
{lungyerwa}. The mental affliction of anger would be present in your mind in a
manifest form. {baklanyelwa} means “you’re not angry right now, but you have
the bakchak,” OK, {bakchak} means “a potential in your mind,” it’s an energy in
your mind. {Bakchak} can be shortened to {bak}, and {nirwa}, those who know
the {kirim, kirim ba chupchik no nyel dundun dutinon}, {nyel} means? {nyel},
{nyel dundun dutinon}. What’s the first {kirim}? Sleeping, OK? So {baklanyelwa}
means “it’s sleeping as a potential,” OK? It’s sleeping, it’s dormant. How about
“dormant,” OK? {baklanyelwa} means “dormant,” and {lungyerwa}’s the
opposite, like “active in your mind,” OK? The concept is this, you know. Uh,
you can’t say that you’ve eliminated anger from your mind just because you’re
not mad right now, this moment, OK? Because you have tons of anger
{baklanyelwa}, dormant in your mind. The capacity for anger you’ve not got rid
of yet, OK? You can go test it, you know, go to work, screw up some major task
that your boss gave you, and check if you have any {baklanyelwa} anger. Uh,
you know what I mean? And by the way, that’s the concept of the monastery,
you know, I mean, the first stage of treating your mental affliction disease, for, if
you can’t control yourself, is to remove yourself from the things that might
incite it, you know, it’s to remove yourself from the things that might trigger it.
So, so if you can’t get rid of your anger any other way with a particular person,
Buddhism says, avoid them. It’s the worst remedy. It’s the lowest level remedy.
But at least it keeps you from collecting a lot of bad karma. You know, there are
times when the best antidote, if you just can’t handle that mental affliction,
whether it’s jealousy, desire, or anger or whatever, is to just not get into that
person’s way. You know, just avoid seeing that person, or don
’t exposure yourself to that object that you desire, OK? And that’s, it’s a very low
level of method to get rid of, to stop that mental affliction. But are you stopping
that mental affliction? That’s my question. You’re stopping the {lungyerwa},
OK? You’re stopping the direct manifestation of that mental affliction. But
{baklanyelwa}? It’s still there, it’s still dormant. And until you can get rid of the
{bakchak}, you know, the affliction in its dormant form, you can’t say that
you’ve reached nirvana, OK? Nirvana is eliminating manifest mental afflictions
and also the dormant ones. Cause what’s the point? I mean you could just go
lock yourself in a room somewhere and try not to think of your enemy, OK, and
you wouldn’t get angry. Right? And that is the basic concept of the monastery,
you know, it has to be so many fathoms from the nearest town. You just won’t
see anything you desire or anything that makes you very angry, you know.
That’s the basic concept, is to just lock yourself out of the things that might. . .
But eventually you have to face it. Eventually you have to get rid of the
potential, or the seed in your mind, and you have to be able to stand there in
front of the person you most hate and not get angry at all. Uh, OK? And that’s
the difference. Now, Master Shantideva admits to the hinayana guys, I admit
that if you see those sixteen aspects, like if you, if your mother dies, you know,
and suddenly you’re thrust into this temporary realization of impermanence, it’s
very hard to be angry at the funereal, you know? It’s very angry to think of that
girl’s legs at the funereal of your mother, you know? So, I mean, during the
temporary state of the understanding of impermanence, you know, it’s very
difficult to have a strong mental affliction. But does it last? No. OK, it will come
back. What have you removed for the period that it’s lasting, you know, during
your grief, you know, for the two or three days during your grief, what have
you removed? The manifestation, OK? You’re not going to have extreme anger
or extreme desire come up active in your mind, but you haven’t done anything
to the seeds, he says. So he’s complaining to the hinayana people, look, you can
have a deep understanding of the sixteen aspects, OK, but that ain’t gonna affect
the dormant mental afflictions, the seed for the mental afflictions, the potential
for the mental afflictions. You can’t say that that’s enough. You must, what?
See emptiness directly, OK? You must see emptiness directly. And by the way,
you don’t really see those sixteen aspects until, you know, five minutes after you
see emptiness directly, OK? After you come out, you start seeing them directly.
So Master Shantideva says, look, your argument is dumb. Don’t tell me you
don’t have to see emptiness because you can see impermanence and those other
things, OK? I admit that they help for a while. But you can’t get rid of the seeds
of them in your mind unless you see emptiness directly. By the way, if you ever
read Nagarjuna, uh, Arya Nagarjuna as he’s called, his favorite, uh, name, uh . . .
We translated a commentary on one of his works by Je Tsongkapa’s teacher,
named [book: The Sakyarendowa]. And, uh, it’s an interesting book. It’s called
“Letter to a Friend,” “Friendly Letter,” {sorlekha} in Sanskrit. And, uh, the first,
uh, half of it is all these tricks about how not to get desire. It’s written for monks
and kings, you know, how not to get angry. It’s all these great advices, like
think of the lady as your sister and you won’t get desire, you know. Think of
the enemy as your friend and you won’t feel angry. And then about half way
through, he says, by the way, none of this stuff works. [laughs] And then
somebody says, well, what works, you know. And then he says, seeing
emptiness of course, directly. And then they say, well how do you do that. And
then the rest of the book is really cool. It’s about, you know, it’s about seeing
emptiness directly.

[student: inaudible]

Uh, it gives you the ammunition to get rid of the seeds, OK? And we’ll talk
about how, uh, before this night is over, alright? But you have to understand
this distinction: What they claim, that if you understood impermanence, you
know, during that what we call “goosebump renunciation,” because it doesn’t
last much longer, after your mother dies, you’re a very good Buddhist for like a
week, or a month, or six months, you know, because you really feel suffering,
and then it starts to wear off, OK? And so he says, he says that’s not enough. It
won’t get rid of the {bakchaks} of mental afflictions. It won’t get rid of mental
afflictions which are deep inside of you. You have to be able to stand in front of
the thing that most triggers your mental afflictions and just have totally joy
standing in front of them. And then you can say that you got rid of your mental
afflictions, OK? And it should last forever. It’s not like because your mother
died, or someone’s very ill, or you just heard that you have AIDS or something,
that you’re compassionate towards everybody for like a week, OK? It doesn’t
happen like that. OK? Yeah?

[student: inaudible]

Uh, a little bit, little bit. But, uh, again it’s just temporary. That’s the problem.
It’s just temporary. You don’t want a temporary solution to your mental
afflictions. Why? They’ll continue to create bad karma for you, and your world
will continue to be terrible as long as you do. OK, let me go on a little bit, OK?
Um, so that’s Master Shantideva’s answer to those guys. By the way, he then
gets into, look, anyway, sutra says, the Buddha said you have to see emptiness
directly, even to get to nirvana, much less Buddhahood. To get to nirvana, you
must see emptiness directly. And the hinayana people say, where does it say
that? Where did he say that? Show us. So Master Shantideva pulls out
{yungidowa}, OK? Uh. . . What the {yung} in {yubyung}? {yubyung} is like
“male/female,” right? And the {yung} means the “woman part,” the “mother
part,” it’s called “mother.” If you see “Seven Years in Tibet,” it’s the honorific,
by the way, so His Holiness’s mother, every Dalai Lama’s mother is called “the
{yung}” of the country, you know, she’s the big {yung}. When you talk about
your lama’s mother you say {yung}. You don’t say {amma} or {ma}, OK? You
say {yung}, alright? Uh, {yungido}, {do} means “sutra.” The “mother sutras” or
“the mother sutra” are the sutras on the perfection of wisdom. OK? Why?
Huh?

[students: inaudible]

Yeah. They give birth to Buddhas, OK? The perfection of wisdom’s like a big
mommy that, uh, whose child or baby, you know, it’s always going around
pregnant and always producing enlightened beings, OK? That’s why we call it
the mommy, the mother, the {yung}, OK? Wisdom is called the {yung}, OK?
Even at the beginning of the Heart Sutra, uh, {bhagavati}, you know, “the female
Buddha.” Why? Always giving kids. What kids? Enlightened beings, Aryas and
other enlightened beings, OK? Alright, so it’s called the mother. Alright. The
trick here is, and I ask you a question, is that mahayana sutra or a hinayana
sutra?

[students: inaudible]

It’s mahayana. It’s “bigger way,” OK? So is it a good argument to give to these
guys, the Buddha said so in the {yungido}? Huh? It’s not. What do they think of
the mahayana? They reject it completely, OK? They say, all those mahayana
books are false, you know. They were not spoken by the Buddha, we don’t
admit that they were spoken by the Buddha. And whoever spoke them, they’re
not correct anyway. OK? That’s what they say. All those books are wrong. So
here’s Master Shantideva trying to convince a bunch of hinayana people that he’s
right when he says, what? You have to see emptiness even to reach nirvana.
OK. Even to reach nirvana. Which, by the way, is their main goal, right? Not
Buddhahood. He says, you have to see emptiness directly to reach nirvana, even
the nirvana that you guys want to reach. And they say, why? He says, the
Buddha said so. Where? In the Mother Sutras. That’s your books, not our
books, OK? That’s a mahayana book, that’s not a hinayana book. We don’t
even accept it’s true, OK? That’s a cool argument, it starts off this cool argument.
So Master Shantideva says, well, uh, are your books true? What books? The
hinayana sutras, OK, the hinayana texts. What are the main three hinayana
groups? I mean, you can say {dulwa}, which is what? Vinaya, OK? The
monastic vows. Vowed morality. OK? Which is [unclear] morality. And then
what’s another one? Abhidharma. OK? Which mainly treats wisdom, uh,
higher knowledge. And then sutra in the sense of the hinayana sutras, OK.
{goingsak} and then there’s other ones, OK? So these three groups are accepted
by the hinayana people to be great books. The Buddha spoke them. So Master
Shantideva say, um, why are your books true and ours aren’t? And they start off
by saying, well, you accept that they’re true, and we accept that they’re true, so
they’re true. OK? Both of us. Two of us accept they’re true, so they must be
true, right? Because the people who are in mahayana, including everybody in
this room, we also accepted that the hinayana sutras are the speech of the
Buddha. They are the word of the Buddha. And they’re true. So the first
argument to Master Shantideva is, well, we both agree they’re true, so they must
be true. If two people agree they’re true, they must be true, you know. Uh,
then he says, well, I guess the Rg Veda is true, the Vedas. What’s the Vedas?
The Vedas are the holy books of ancient India, the ancient Indians, Hindus,
which are not accepted by any Buddhist school as being true. And, they say,
why do you say that? He says, well you can find two people that think they’re
true, OK? [laughs] If it’s just that you and me agree that it’s true makes it true,
which means anything that’s made true by consensus doesn’t mean that it’s true,
OK? Just saying consensus says, if a group of people say it’s true is a stupid
argument to say that your books are true, OK? You can always find a group of
people who will think anything is true, and it’s not. For example, the Vedas.
According to Buddhism, they’re not true. So just saying that you can find two
folks, walking down the street, who say something is true, or any kind of
consensus, doesn’t make something true. Can you come up with something
better to prove that your hinayana books are true?            And then they say
something like, oh, our lamas told us that they were true, OK? And also they fit
in with our three groups of our scripture, you know, the ideas are OK. The
Buddha said in a certain book that you can check if something is my speech or
not if teaches about the three trainings: morality, concentration, and wisdom. If
a book covers morality, concentration, and wisdom, in a Buddhist way, if it talks
about the subject matter of the Vinaya, the Abhidharma, and the Sutra, of the
three groups of scriptures that we accept, then we can say it’s the word of the
Buddha. And Master Shantideva just steps back and says, lemme ask you a
question, you know? When you were born, when you were five years old, did
you accept the hinayana sutras? And they say, no, I didn’t know anything about
the hinayana sutras. I was five years old. What do you want? OK? So he says,
at some point in your life you decided that they were OK, right? You know, at
some point in your life you decided that your books were true. And they say,
yeah, we did. And he says, how did you do it? And they say, well, we studied
them, and we checked them with our own experience and we found that they
were logical. We checked them with our own experience and we found them to
be true. We checked them totally and we couldn’t find any inconsistencies in
them. You know, we think they’re true. They fit the test that the Buddha spoke
that a book should be true. They talk about morality, concentration and wisdom
in a Buddhist way, the three trainings. Therefore they’re true. So Master
Shantideva says, well, then, the Sutra of the Mother is true. And they say, why?
And he says, same thing. You know, it wasn’t like when you were born, when
we were born we thought they were true. We came to a point in our lives
where we checked them against our own experience, which is what you’re doing
now, right? You’re here because you’ve checked it against your own experience.
You may not be able to accept everything I’ve said in these classes, but I don’t
think you can challenge any of it directly, you see what I mean? Like you don’t
have to accept everything I say, but there hasn’t been anything that rubbed you
so bad that you left yet. OK, I mean, it all seemed to be partly logically at least,
OK? And hopefully I haven’t said anything that contradicts something I’ve said
at another time, you know what I mean? Hopefully what I’ve said is internally
consistent, OK? It checks out with your experiences and it’s internally logical. So
you’re still here. You’re still here. So they say, look, we use the same test you
used. It wasn’t like when we were kids we automatically believed in all these
books. We checked them against our own experience. We checked to see if they
taught Buddhist principles of morality, concentration, and wisdom, and we
decided that they were true. So we’re using the same test you’re using. So you
have to accept our sutras, you know. Check them. Test them. You’ll find the
same thing. You’re just believing what you believe because mommy and daddy
said that, OK? I always call it the Mrs. Melvin syndrome, OK? Mrs. Melvin was
my first grade teacher. Uh, recently I went to my elementary school. I saw the
room where she used to . . . you know, I remember. And she had this, she was
just like the thing on “The Far Side,” she had this hair up like that, and she had
those glasses like that, and I still remember. And, uh, she would tell us about
reality. She was our teacher. So anything she said we believed. And then there
was Mrs. Butts in the fifth grade. And I don’t have to tell you what we called her.
OK? And, and here’s two ladies, they’re just normal ladies, they don’t know
much more than anyone else. They play bridge with their friends on the
weekend, you know, just normal ladies in Phoenix, Arizona, but they have,
between them, determined my whole belief systems, you know. Two old ladies
who, uh, had no more knowledge about reality than anybody else, just grew up
in Phoenix, Arizona, and believed whatever their teachers told them, and their
parents told them, my whole belief system’s based on this. I mean, a great part
of what I believed to be true came from Mrs. Melvin and Mrs. Butts, OK?
[laughter] No, really, I’m not kidding. And so is it with you. It’s the same thing.
Most of, like fifty percentage of what you believe, you don’t have any better
reason to believe except that your parents said so, or the New York Times said
so, or Mrs. Butts said so, you know what I mean? And, and Master Shantideva is
picking on the hinayana for acting like that, you know. Just because you ran into
a teacher who was teaching hinayana, or your parents were hinayana, should
you, should you reject the mahayana? Did you check it out? Did you test it
against your own experiences? Did you check it to see if it was internally
consistent? Did you check it to see if it works in your own life, you know? And
don’t believe anything else, you know. Check it. Otherwise it’s like Santa Claus,
you know, it’s just like Santa Claus. OK, they talked about Santa Claus. At some
point, it didn’t match reality, you know. And most of what we believe is similar.
Most of what you grew up with is similar. What he’s saying is applicable on a
wider scale. Don’t believe what you believe in the West because Mrs. Butts said
so, you know? Think about it. Uh, check out what Buddhism’s teaching, and if it
makes sense then follow it. If it doesn’t make sense, then reject it. But that’s his
argument back to the hinayana, OK? Did you have a question?

[student: inaudible]

Uh. . .

[student: inaudible]

Um, he said, is that similar to the distinction between seeing emptiness directly
and understanding it intellectually before that. Uh, acccording to Buddhism, a
deductive understanding counts the same as a direct perception, OK? Do you
see the pen? What’s behind my back? Your perception of the pen now,
according to Buddhism, is just as valid as that perception of the pen, OK? That’s
why we spend so much time on logic in Buddhism, OK? You didn’t hear
anything hit the floor, I was very obvious about it. According to Buddhism, if
you can see the pen with the eyes of reasoning, you know, correct reasoning, it’s
the same as seeing it, it’s as valid as seeing it directly, OK? That’s a tenet of
Buddhism, OK?       Uh, does it mean that the intellectual understanding of
emptiness is the same as the direct? Not at all. And does it have the same effect
on you, of freeing you from your mental afflictions forever, no. OK? But it’s still
valid, OK? By the way you’re still, at that point, you’re seeing ultimate truth in a
deceptive way, OK? You’re not seeing ultimate truth. But that’s a whole
argument. I won’t get into it. Um, let’s see. I think we’ll take a break there,
because I want to do an important thing after that, OK? So take like a ten minute
break, OK?
[pause]

. . .try, and you shouldn’t. Uh, leave the root text as it is, and go find Gyeltsen
Jeba to explain it to you, you see what I mean? So that’s my approach, OK, so
the root text is supposed to sound very, very short and almost crazy in places.
Sometimes Gyaltsen Jeba will even put a negative, he’ll change it 180 degrees
around to get it to, to explain it the right way, and he’s right, he’s correct, OK?
Uh, so, that’s why the root text doesn’t seem to match what you later find out it
is, and that’s a very good example. Of course you reach nirvana when you
remove your mental afflictions. Master Shantideva says in the ninth chapter
you don’t reach nirvana when you remove your mental afflictions. He’s talking
about the way of removing your mental afflictions that those hinayana schools
were talking about, because they thought that just by seeing impermanence you
could remove your mental afflictions forever, but everybody knows you only
remove your manifest mental afflictions temporarily, so don’t pick on the root
text, OK? Alright. Uh, Master Shantideva then sort of complains to the hinayana
schools and says, look, I agree that you can get rid of your mental afflictions for
a while if you understand impermanence, you know, if you, if you have a death
in your family, you all know that you can be very compassionate for a while
after something terrible happens to you. And then it wears off, doesn’t it? And
this is the verse where he explains how it wears off, so I’m just giving you this as
an example, OK? These are two lines from the root text. OK, please say {dakpa
layan kegyur ke}, there’s a thumbtack here, uh {dushe mepe numjib shin} [class
repeats]. That’s really bad karma. No. Anyway. Uh, {dakpa} means “to stop
something,” OK? In this case, it refers to the idea of the hinayana people we’ve
been talking about, who said, you know, if you really have a great awareness of
impermanence you can stop your mental afflictions. So this is talking about that
temporary stopping of the mental afflictions. Like if someone close to you dies,
for two or three days you’re kind to everybody, and then it wears off, OK? It’s
that kind of {dakpa}. Any mental affliction which is {dakpa}or stopped that way,
{layan} means “once more,” “once again.” {layan} means “come back again,”
OK? {kegye} means “they will arise again to haunt you,” OK? [laughs] OK? They
will rise again. And you know that. Every time you thought you had overcome
jealousy, uh, because you had a bad experience with it, and like a month later it
came up again, OK? Because you didn’t use emptiness to get rid of it, OK? It will
always come back. That’s the point, OK? You can have any kind of wonderful
experience or terrible experience, you can think, I’m never gonna be jealous
again, you know, I shot my girlfriend, it was really bad, uh. . . [laughter] And
you can have all the resolutions you want. Until the day that you see emptiness
directly, it will raise its ugly head again, OK? Uh, you know, you get divorced
again and you think, oh, I’ll never go through that again, I’ll never fall in love
again, you know, and then, you know, two years later you do it over again, OK?
Desire, right? And, uh, until the day that you see emptiness directly you’ll
continue to make the same mistakes, OK? They will come back, {layan kegyete}.
{dushe mepe}, {dushe mepa}. {dushe} is one of the five {skandhas}or one of the
five heaps. The poor word has been abused by all kinds of translators, uh, it just
means “discrimination,” OK? {dushe} means discrimination. In the Abhidharma,
first chapter, it’s the capacity of the mind to say, this is short, this is long, this is
good, this is bad, this is red, this is blue, this my friend, this is my enemy. It’s the
ability to make distinction, OK? {dushe tsema zimbe lo}, that’s the root text from
the Abhidharmakosha, OK? It’s the capacity to make distinctions, OK? {dushe
mepa} means “you lose that capacity.” You don’t have that capacity. {mepa}
means “don’t have,” {mepe}. {yungjuk} refers to a very deep state of meditation,
{yungjuk}. I’ve translated just easily as “a deep state of meditation.” The words
mean “equilibrium,” so some people call it “meditative equilibrium.” I don’t like
to use words more than twelve syllables or so, OK? Uh, deep meditation. Why
is it called equilibrium? You are in a very nice halfway state between thinking
about too many things and falling asleep, OK? [laughs] And you are, you are
balancing between those two. We call it like driving a car, right? You’re
constantly correcting, you know. And as long as you’re not drunk and you’re
going down the New Jersey turnpike straight, we call it {yungjuk}, OK? Because
you’re driving a straight course between two extremes of dullness and
restlessness. Uh, and by the way, when you’re looking at a good movie you’re
there. It’s just that. It’s not some mystical thing, OK? It’s that really good
attention span, you know, that really high tuned, intense attention towards an
object. And you have it when you’re watching a movie you really like, or you’re
reading a book that you really like, OK? That’s called {yungjuk}. {shin} means
“it’s like that,” “it’s like that.” So Master Shantideva is comparing this temporary
repression of your direct mental afflictions to what we call the deep meditation
where you lose the capacity to discriminate, OK? There is a kind of meditation
where for a short period of time, say like for an hour or a half an hour, you
almost lose the ability to discriminate. And that meditation is called “the deep
meditation where you do lose the ability to discriminate.” And there’s this huge
debate in the monastery, you know. And I’ll just tell you the end, OK? You can
never turn off your discrimination totally. It just reaches a very, very subtle
level, OK? But the name of the meditation is “the meditation where you lose the
ability to discriminate.” It’s still there, and you are discriminating, or else you
wouldn’t have five {skandhas}, by the way. You’re down to four right then. Uh,
and anyway, it’s just where the discrimination is down to such a subtle level that
it’s almost nothing, OK? When you come out of that meditation, what happens
to your ability to discriminate between things? It comes back with a violence,
what do you call it? With a vengenance, OK? It’s like, boom, you’re back to
discriminating just the same way you were before, maybe even worse. It’s a
very famous example in Buddhist scripture for, like, hibernating mentally. You
see what I mean? You go into that meditation and then you almost, it’s almost
like being on heroin or something, you know? Your mind is like down to almost
nothing. But then when you come out of it, you’re right back where you were
before. Master Shantideva accuses the hinayana of saying, he says, look, your
idea of getting rid of mental afflictions is as bad as this meditation, you know.
Big deal, you know. So somebody died in your family and for like two weeks
you’re a really nice guy, and then it wears off. It’s the same thing as that
meditation. It just comes back the same old way. What’s the point? Of course
you have to see emptiness. Don’t give me this stuff you don’t have to see
emptiness because you can repress your mental afflictions for a while, OK? Not
a good argument, OK? I think one more easy homework question. No, will do
that one later. I think what question should come up in your mind now is, and it
came up in my mind for ten or fifteen years, what’s the connection between
seeing emptiness and getting rid of my mental afflictions? OK? Like Master
Shantideva’s been arguing to them, you have to see emptiness to get rid of your
mental afflictions. I used to say, why? What’s the connection between twenty
minutes, you know, off in outer space somewhere, and getting rid of my
jealousy, which torments me, OK? I hate my jealousy, you know? It still comes
all the time. I hate it. I write it in my book, you know, it’s like a constant thing,
you know. I hate it. I want to stop it. What’s the connection between seeing
emptiness and getting rid of my jealousy? I was very frustrated, uh, through
years of Buddhist study, that even in this text it’s not clearly explained, uh, the
connection between seeing emptiness directly and getting rid of my jealousy.
Cause I want to get rid of my jealousy. I don’t care if enlightenment exists, I
don’t care if nirvana exists, it doesn’t matter. I would really like not to have
jealousy. What’s the connection between seeing emptiness directly and not
having jealousy? Uh, it comes in the Madhyamika textbooks of Sera Mey, uh, it’s
quoted from a certain dude named Maitreya, OK? If you haven’t had secret
teachings yet, he’s a high, high, high bodhisattva. If you have had secret
teachings and that initiation, he’s a Buddha. Anyway, at least he’s the next
Buddha. At best, he’s a Buddha already, OK? Pretty good resource, OK?
[laughs] I don’t think I’ve ever gone through this in this class formally. I’ve done
it in the Friday night classes and, uh, other places, but to me this one of the
holiest teachings of Buddhism, you know? So try to listen I know it’s late, I
know you had a lot of work to do. I mean, you’ve been to work and you’ve
commuted and all that stuff. But try and
catch this six steps that Maitreya puts forth in his Uttaratantra, called {gyilama}
which means “the higher light.” It’s called a tantra. It’s not a tantra, OK? It’s
one of the five books of Maitreya. But in that book, in the commentary to that
book especially, it’s clarified, the six steps of why if you don’t see emptiness
directly you can’t get rid of your mental afflictions. And I loved that. To me, I
was waiting my whole life to hear that. So here it is, OK? And I’ll ask you to
memorize this. It’s important, OK? Your life depends on it, actually. Here’s step
number one. Now you gotta learn this, OK? [laughs] No, this one’s important,
OK? I appreciate it. That’s the John Stilwell thing. Say {danzin nikye bakchak},
did you have time to write it? Sorry. OK go ahead. OK {danzin}, {danzin} is the
tendency to see things as self-existent, OK? It’s the tendency to believe that this
is a pen from its own side, that its penness is not being imposed on it by your
mind, OK? If you think about it, all this is is a black and white stick. It’s your
mind which is imposing penness on it. If that were not the case, then a dog who
came in here would think, oh look, a nice magic marker, OK? If the penness
were coming from its side. But it’s being imposed by your mind, uh, due to your
past karma. Your karma’s forcing you to impose it on this, OK? {danzin} is the
state of mind that believes that this thing has a nature of being a pen from its
own side, OK? That tendency to see things as self-existent, {ni} means “two.”
There’s two kinds. In this case, by the way, it’s talking about the habit of
thinking that Michael Roach is self-existent, and the habit of thinking that Michael
Roach’s parts, his fingers, his arms, and his thoughts, and everything else about
him, is self-existent. That’s what the two tendencies to see things as self-existent.
What are they? One is aimed at me. By the way, “me” is neither your body nor
your mind. It’s some kind of idea that you’ve imposed upon your body and
your mind, OK? But you believe that to be self-existent. You believe that Michael
Roach is Michael Roach from his own side, independent of me imposing that idea
on these two scraggly things. OK? Uh, I also hold each part to be that way. So
those are the two kind of holding things to be self-existent. One is focussed on
me, and one is focussed on my parts. Now how come they don’t talk about my
tendency to see that chair as self-existent? Because that tendency doesn’t get me
into trouble so much as thinking about myself as self-existent. This one is the
first link of the twelve steps in samsara. This one, which is focussed on me, is the
trouble maker. This is the one that is responsible for every form of suffering
that mankind endures, OK? So this is the important one, OK? Those two
tendencies to see things as self-existent. {bakchak} means “a potential in your
mind to see it that way.” Some kind of seed in your mind to see it that way.
{yul} means “you got them,” you have those two seeds. From where? It’s the
Buddhist original sin, OK? You carried it from your past life, OK? In your
mother’s womb, at the moment of conception, you had them. Your mind, at the
first instance of life in this realm had these two seeds in it. So don’t blame
yourself, OK? Your mind had these two seeds the moment you were conceived,
OK? Too bad. That’s the way it is, alright? You can’t help it now. You had,
when you’re born in this realm, because you had them you’re born here. Ergo,
if you are born here you had them. Unless you’re an emanation of some
Buddha, and I don’t know who’s who, OK? That’s the first step in the problem.
Step number two.

[student: inaudible}

Excuse me? {yul} means “you had them.” OK? {ki} is “of,” and, I’ll skip the {ki}s a
lot because we don’t need to say so many “ofs” in English, OK? The seed of
those two tendencies, OK? {ki} means “of,” OK? Yeah?

[student: inaudible]

Yeah, I call it “potential.” I used to say “mental seed,” and then today I saw a
scripture that said “mental seeds” and “mental potentials” are not the same, so
I’m fixing it immediately. Think of it as a mental seed, OK?

[student: inaudible]

Uh, you are born with the seeds of the two tendencies to see things as self-
existent. You have the seed of seeing things as self-existent just by being born in
this realm. Say {denzin}, I’m sorry {dungzin mi ke} {dangzin mi ke} [students
repeat]. OK, {dungzin} means “that habit of seeing things as selfexistent,” OK?
That tendency to see things as self-existent. {mi} means “those two.” What are
the two? One thinks that Michael Roach is self-existent. One thinks that Michael
Roach’s arms and legs and thoughts are self-existent, OK? {ke} means “they
grow.” Why? Why? You were born with the seeds, OK? You were born with
the seeds. So they grow. OK? And you spend your whole life seeing things as
self-existent. [break] Who, what? Me, and my parts, OK? And that’s responsible
for all your suffering. Why? We’ll get to it, OK? Those two tendencies grow.
By the way, even bugs have them. Even birds have them. Dogs have them.
Your stupid boss has them. OK? Every being has this tendency, that when they
look at something they think it’s existing from its side, and not as something
created by their own mind. Yeah?

[student: inaudible]
Yeah, yeah. OK? Good question. OK, step number three. It’s kinda long but I
did shorten them up as much as I could.

[student: inaudible]

Oh, good. He said what’s the difference between one and two. Number one is
just the seed for it, looking at things that way, and then number two is when the
seed grows in your mind and you start really looking at things that way, OK?
Say it, {ralane} [students repeat]. Are you done? No? I’ll wait. I thought it was
self-existently written on your paper. The rest are all shorter, I promise. OK,
let’s try again. {ralane dupe yerola dan ye niyom tu sumin nyiche ke} [students
repeat] I’m not gonna go in the order of the words, so, you know, stay aware of
where I am, OK? Let’s work of {nyiche} first, OK? {nyiche} {nyiche} is a mental
function called {yile jepa along se jepa} and it means “to focus on something,”
OK? “To focus on something.” It means “to move the mind to an object,” “to
focus on something.” OK? Focus on what? Let’s go up to {yerola}. {ye} means
“mind,” “ola” means “calms.” {yerola} means “pretty,” OK? “Comes to your
mind.” It means it’s “attractive,” OK? You can think of “attractive,” or
“pleasant,” OK? “Pleasant.” “Nice.” {yerola} means like something pretty or
something attractive. It’s called {yerola}. Steals your heart away, OK? We say
“steals your heart away.” In Tibetan they say “it calms your mind,” OK? Steals
your heart away. {dan} means “and.” {yerola} is that {eola} only with a negative
in it, so what’s it mean? Unpleasant, unattractive, ugly, bad, gross, turns out.
OK? {ye dumiwala, yimala}, OK? By the way, we are describing here the process
by which your whole existence is screwed up, OK? I mean, the Christians say it
was some mistake about a snake and an apple and all that stuff, OK? Or
whatever. I’m not criticizing, I’m just saying. We say, these six steps are the way
that all pain in the world comes from, OK? So it’s very important. So far, what
we have is, you see some things as pleasant, and you see other things as
unpleasant. Is that a problem? Is that in any way wrong? Use logic. Don’t try
to guess what I’m trying to get you to say. If I stood up here and said, look,
some things look nice and some things look bad, OK?, I’d rather have a protein
shake here than a cup of pee-pee, OK? Can I say that one is nice and one is not
so nice to drink, OK?         Yes, OK?      Nothing wrong about it.      It’s not a
misperception, there’s nothing crazy, I don’t need Madhyamika to tell the
difference, OK? No problem so far, no problem so far. But we have some other
words that we didn’t cover yet, OK? What are they? {sumin} {sumin} means
“wrong way.” It’s looking at them the wrong way, OK? It’s looking at the
protein shake and, I dunno, what is it? Something you don’t like to drink. Let’s
not use the other one. Ummm. Like fruit juice or something. Sorry. [laughs]
OK, how about. . . motor oil, OK? [laughs] Alright? So, it’s looking at the cup of
motor oil, and it’s looking at the protein shake, but it’s looking at them the
wrong way, OK? One looks to be nice, the other one looks to be bad to drink,
but it’s looking at them in the wrong way. How so? That’s the last words here.
{meluma dupa} That’s one big idiom in Buddhism, {muluma dupa}(mulume
dupe}. {rao} means “it’s own,” {nu} means “side,” {me dupa} means “it comes
from its own side.” {mulume dupe}, it should be like a mantra. If you wanna
debate {mulume dupe, chi cha}, you know what I mean. It should come off your
tongue like that, {mulume dupa}. OK? The pen comes from its own side. It’s a
magic marker on its own. The next roach that crawls around in the Quaker
house here will see it as a pen, because it’s a pen from its own side, independent
of me imposing “pen” on it, OK? I don’t like this pen, which exists from its own
side as a pen. I like this pen, which exists from its own side as a pen. It looks
good to me from its own side. It looks bad to me from its own side. It is good
or bad independent of me, OK? It is self-existently good or bad. It is self-
existently a nice pen or a bad pen. And it doesn’t depend on what I think about
it. It’s coming from its own side. That’s step number three. That’s crucial, OK?
What’s it focussing on? The things you think are nice and the things you think
are not so nice. And it’s believing in the wrong way, it’s focussing on them in the
wrong way, and it’s thinking, being nice or being bad is coming from its side, not
from me. OK? That guy at work that I don’t like is bad from his side, not from
my side. Well, how come his wife likes him. She’s crazy. You know what I
mean? You really believe it’s coming from him. Well, how come the guy next to
you thinks he’s a great boss? I dunno, sooner or later he’ll agree with me. He’ll
come to see the truth. He’s bad from his own side, not from me. I didn’t do
anything. OK? It’s not that it’s coming from me. He’s bad from his own side.
And you believe it, OK? You really hold it. That’s essential. Things looks as
though they’re good or bad from their own side, OK, mistakenly, {sumin}.
What’s that. . . By the way, each of these builds on the next. Each one of these
creates the next. It’s a chain, it’s a chain reaction. It takes about a second to
happen. It takes about the time it takes for your boss to get like four nasty
words out of his mouth before you’ve gone through all six steps. Seriously.
Seriously. These six steps occur in the space of about less than five seconds, OK?
What’s number four? Say {dujop dan chedang ke}, {dujop dan chedang ke}
[students repeat] {dujop} means “liking something.” It’s been translated as
“desire,” {chedang}’s been translated as “anger.” That’s not the point here. How
often do you get desire? I mean, what I call desire, you know, Playboy
magazine desire, you know, how, how [laughter]. If you’re not that precise,
how often do you get this attack of desire? You know, like what? Once a week,
once a day, something like that. We’re not talking about that. OK? {dujop} is
defined as “the wish not to be separated from an attractive object.” How often
do you have that? About once every second, OK? I mean, in very subtle ways,
you know? I like this, I like this, I like this, you know. It’s not like this desire
attack, OK? You can call it “liking things,” OK? I like to say “ignorantly.”
You’re doing it all day long. You’re doing it many, many times every minute of
the day. You’re constantly evaluating the things around you and saying, I like
this, I don’t like this, I like this, I don’t like this, OK? Based on an ignorant
perception of them as good or bad from their own side, OK? And that’s trouble.
That is the snake and the rooster that’s coming out of the mouth of the pig in the
middle of the wheel of life picture. Every temple, said the Buddha, should have
this picture at the door. And Leon, being a good temple-keeper, has put one at
the door. OK? So if you go upstairs, you’ll see in there. Buddha said, I want one
at the front of every temple. Why? This is the key to enlightenment, those three
animals, OK? The snake is disliking that things that look to you from their own
side to be nice. I’m sorry. Ugly, bad, OK? And the rooster is the habit of liking
things that seem to you to be from their own side nice, OK? Where did it come
from? Out of the mind of the pig. I mean if it’s drawn properly, in the ancient
way, they’re both coming out of the mouth of the pig. What’s a pig? Ignorance.
Misperceiving good and bad things. You think they come from their own side.
Is it wrong to like something and to dislike something? Is it wrong for me to
dislike drinking motor oil and to like drinking protein shakes? Why don’t you
drink the motor oil, OK? [laughs] I’ll bring some next week, or maybe the other
thing. [laughter] [unclear]       Uh, anyway, do Buddhist like things and dislike
things? Let’s ask that. Of course. If you’ve ever seen the Dalai Lama eat
something or listen to Richie Havens, you know, I saw him. Uh. Of course, of
course, you know, of course. Buddhas love to see people get enlightened. They
hate to see people in the house getting burned, OK? Of course they like things,
and of course they dislike things. It’s not like the ultimate goal of Buddhism to
become like a vegetable somewhere in a corner, you know. Oohh. I don’t like
anything, I don’t dislike anything. No, you know, many people explain it that
way. And you feel guilty, you know, that Protestant thing comes back, you
know. I like something. I dislike something. Buddha said don’t like anything,
don’t dislike anything. And you start to feel, you know, you want to have
something to feel guilty about, you know. Oh, I’m guilty but I like Two-Bits
Pizza, you know? Um, you know, it’s not like that. Of course you can be a great
lama and enjoy things and dislike the suffering of people. Of course. This is not
talking about that. {dechang} means liking things ignorantly, stupidly, OK?
{chedang} means hating things or disliking other things ignorantly or stupidly.
How often do you do it? These are {duksum}, these are two of the three
poisons. They’re in your bloodstream all the time. You’re doing it constantly.
Every second of the day you’re saying, I like this, I don’t like that, I like this, I
don’t like that. Is that wrong? Not by itself, OK? The Buddha’s also sitting there
and every instant thinking, I don’t like people being in
hell. I would love people to be in a Buddha paradise, OK? It’s not wrong. It is
happening every second of the day. What makes it wrong? We’ll talk about it,
OK? This is the bad one, OK? {ke} means “they start,” “they grow.” {dan} means
“and.” It’s only if you misunderstand the nature of your boss, if it’s, only if you
think that he’s nasty from his own side, that you can get this kind of disliking
him, OK? If you saw that it was your mind making him bad, who would you get
mad at? Mr. Karma, OK? You’d get mad at your own karma. You couldn’t get
mad at your boss, OK? The only reason you could get mad at the boss is that
you’re choosing, if you’re a good Buddhist, to ignore the fact that you created
this guy. And am I just being metaphorical? No, not at all. You have literally
created the reality of this man walking on the planet, for you. You created him.
And I’m not being metaphorical. I’m not saying that. His very existence
depends on your mind, much less his unpleasantness, OK? If you’re going to
blame anybody or get mad at anybody there’s only one person. OK? And
there’s only one person who can fix it. Because he was not created by God or
Thor or The Big Bang or the Creator. Those are cancelled. He was created by
you, OK? We had that last class, right? What happens when you start to get
mad at your boss because you think that he’s an asshole from his own side? OK?
[laughter]

[student: inaudible]

I thought you were gonna ask me to translate the other word, uh [laughter].
Actually, my lama said, don’t use bad words in class. I apologize. OK? {dechak}
means, oh, it means, due to number three you develop the habit of liking some
things and disliking other things, ignorantly, please. OK? Ignorantly. Does it say
“ignorantly”? No. But it better say that, and you better say that on the
homework. Otherwise, who’s in this six steps of suffering who shouldn’t be
there? The Buddha. His Holiness. Khen Rinpoche, OK? They’re not there. But
do they like things? Of course. Do they dislike other things? Of course. OK?
Alright? But not ignorantly, OK? Say {le sak} {le sak} [students repeat] {le}
means “karma,” {sak} means “you do it,” “you collect karma.” Meaning, by the
way, number five is, if you want to write it down simply, you yell back at your
boss, angrily, OK? You yell back at your boss, OK? {le sak}, you commit karma.
Yeah?
[student: inaudible]

Yeah, yeah. Um, I mean, it’s a pretty, it’s a great question. Uh, if the Buddha is
always in a state of bliss, and as I said every single millimeter of every single
object in this room would be creating total ecstasy if you were an enlightened
being and sitting in this room, then how can they be liking some things and
disliking other things? Aren’t you implying that when they look at the house,
and they see beings suffering in the house, shouldn’t that give them ecstasy?
OK? And that, I was, I often like to say, [unclear] about the fact, I was assigned
to be the first questioner during the geshe examinations of the third Bapok
Rinpoche, OK? Like I was the first debater, cause I was at the time the senior
{nang} geshe of our college, OK? So I asked him the same question, you know, I
said, if the Buddha’s perceiving people in the house, you know, suffering and
they don’t like that then something in the universe is not creating ecstasy in
them, right? You know, and there’s a huge debate, you know, it went on for like
two hours. Uh, the bottom line is they can be aware that you are perceiving it
that way, OK? They can be aware that you’re not having a good time about the
same objects that are creating bliss in them. They cannot directly experience a
hell realm. They’re in paradise all the time. But they’re aware that you don’t see
it that way, OK? They’re aware that you don’t see it that way. Do they feel some
kind of bad feeling, in the sense of being upset or suffering? No. They feel some
kind of tender love for you. Even that love is, is ecstasy for them. You know,
compassion or mercy or, it’s a kind of ecstasy for them. The object is suffering,
and they don’t like that. Uh, but they also understand that it’s only you
perceiving it that way. OK? They’re not perceiving it that way. Alright? It’s
subtle, [unclear]. OK. So {le sak} means you do something bad, you yell back,
OK? Yeah, Andy?

[student: unclear]

Uh, even long before that, but. . . Uh, by the way, as you’re a Buddha you’re
sitting there saying, gee, the Quaker House looks like a Buddha paradise to me
tonight. I wonder why? Oh, it’s just an illusion. I collected the karma and now
I’m forced to see it this way. And, so even while they’re experiencing it they’re
totally aware that they created it, and it does not make it less functional. It does
not make it less real. If you don’t think so, go out in front and stand in front of
that illusory Pakistani taxi, and, you know, see if it breaks your illusory legs
when it hits you. Of course it’s uh, it’s not real in the sense of having its own
nature. But the experience is totally real, you know.
[student: inaudible]

Um, they can read your mind perfectly. Your mind is a {cheja}, your mind is a
knowable object, and they know it, because they know all knowable objects.
They know how you’re perceiving reality, although they’re not perceiving it any
more that way. OK? It’s very subtle, you know. They can be perceiving
themselves as a tantric god, and you can be perceiving them as a plain old
schmuck. And that’s not contradictory. And they can be aware that you’re
perceiving them as a plain old schmuck, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t
see themselves as a tantric god. OK? No contradiction. Yeah?

[student: inaudible]

[laughs] Yeah, we’re talking about it right now, OK? Last thing. Step number
six. Say {korwar kor, korwar kor} [students repeat] He’s making a pun, hear it?
{korwar kor}, OK? [laughs] {korwar} is the Tibetan word for {samsara}, meaning
“the cycle of suffering.” {kor} means, the verb, “to wander around in a big
circle,” OK? {korwar kor} means “you’re circling around in the big circle of
suffering.” OK? If you wanna put it in plain English, you have just perpetuated
your suffering. You have just perpetuated your suffering. Why? Because you
{le sak}. What’s {le sak}? You yelled back at the boss, OK? Why? Because you
dislike him ignorantly. Why? He looked to be bad from his own side. Why?
Because you have that kind of ignorance. Why? It’s not your fault, you were
born with those seeds in your mind, OK? That’s the whole thing backwards. We
call it {lungjun} and {lungdop}. You can go either way. You know, it’s fun to go
through it bup bup bup and the dup dup dup. You know what I mean? It’s a
mental meditation, it’s in your meditation, OK? In the monastery we do the
twelve links, we go {unclear}. You know, we debate it that way, back/forth,
back/forth, and you should do it that way too. Why does your boss exist?
Because you yelled at a boss in the past. Well, why did you yell at a boss in the
past? Because you didn’t like him, ignorantly. Well, why didn’t you like him
ignorantly? Why did you dislike him ignorantly? Well, because he looked to me
to be bad from his own side. Well, why did he do that? Because I had ignorance.
Why? Because I was born with the seed for it and then it grew in my mind. I
can’t help it. OK? Alright? You gotta go back and forth like that. OK? And then
that perpetuates the thing. What is the only possible way to have an ugly, stupid
boss reappear in your life in the future, according to Buddhism? Yell at him.
That’s {korwa kor}, that’s perpetuating the cycle. And that’s why Master
Shantideva in the last class said, kiss, kiss those ugly things in your life goodbye.
Why did he say that? Cause if you stop doing this, they’re gonna get less and
less in your life. And you can check it out. Check it out. You know, watch your
behavior during the day. I suggest that you keep this little book. OK? Which
we’ll talk about on Monday nights if you want to come, OK? Uh, how to do the
book. It will come up in the next few weeks, but. . . Monitor your own behavior,
you know. Catch yourself commiting stupid karma, and then work backwards,
and eventually the lousy things in your life will start to disappear. Statistically,
they will get less. It’s very interesting. You know, instead of meeting a bad
person every five minutes it will be every ten minutes, seriously. And then it
will get to be once a day, and then it will get to be once a week, and then you
swear to god that New York is full of these these sweet, charming people, you
know, and people will come here from out of town who didn’t do this practice
will swear to god that New York is full of these crazy, insane people, you know.
But your personal experience of New York City will start to become a Buddha
paradise, honestly. Seriously. No problem. You’ll never meet those bad people.
They’ll get less. That’s the whole idea. Was Rome built in a day? No. You have
to start, once you start not responding to your boss, they start to get less and
less. It’s a gradual process. Towards the end you start having glimpses of a
Buddha paradise. You know, like once a week. And then twice a week. And
then three times a week. And then it’s half the day. And then it’s three quarters
of the day. And then it gets to be, uh, really amazing. OK? Yeah?

[student: inaudible}

Uh, the difference between three and four is that, number three is just the
perception that this pen is nice from its own side. And then number four,
coming after that, is I like this pen, OK? Hang on one second. Yeah?

[student: inaudible]

Nuns first, OK?

[student: inaudible]

Uh, Elly-la said, you know, really if you think about it, if you have a good
intellectual understanding of your boss’s emptiness, then you could slowly start
to change your behavior and he would start to disappear. So why is it you have
to have this totally powerful direct perception of emptiness? I can’t give you a
really good answer to that except to say that, um, the understanding of his
emptiness after that is totally different than an intellectual understanding. I
mean, it’s a totally different level. It’s totally, totally, it’s much, much deeper. It’s
infinitely deeper. And also you just. . . I guess it’s the effect of all these things,
like seeing your future lives, seeing the day of your enlightenment, things like
that. What, according to the definition of nirvana, is that stop your mental
afflictions permanently because you saw the sixteen aspects, because you saw
emptiness directly. So it’s apparently, your experience of those sixteen aspects is
totally different after you’ve seen emptiness directly than before that. And that
has much more power. Does it work . . .

[student: inaudible}

It won’t destroy your mental afflictions permanently.            They can reassert
themselves, OK?

[student: inaudible]

No, I gave a long, I gave a long refutation of that idea. Right? The Buddha likes
things, the Buddha doesn’t like things. Does the Buddha respond to bad things
by taking some action? Yes. Does the Buddha respond, did the Buddha kill
somebody in a past life to save other people’s lives? Yes. Or actually in order to
protect that person from something terrible. You can take very forceful action, I
mean, it may be appropriate, even if you’re an enlightened being, if you’re
sitting in my particular office, and the boss comes in and screams, it may be
totally the correct action to scream back at him, but never with ignorance and
never with anger, you see? It may be the correct thing to forcibly stop that
person, and that’s a bodhisattva code, in fact. You have to protect other people’s
lives and property, for example. It may be very appropriate to act forcibly
towards someone, but never with a negative emotion. Because that’s just
straight old bad karma, OK? Yeah?

[student: inaudible]

I, I didn’t quite catch it. You said, I couldn’t hear anything. You said rent-free
apartment, and then?

[student: inaudible]

People. Oh, that you’ve known in the past or something. OK.

[student: inaudible]
Yeah, right. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, OK. The question is, like you have a cycle
of anger, right? Like you feel angry about somebody, and then it makes you
more angry, and then you have more anger, and how do you stop it. Uh,
Buddhism says, understanding. You know. Buddhism says, to understand these
six steps is powerful, is extremely powerful, you know. There’s a great emphasis
in Buddhism that just understanding what’s going on, which is called the
perfection of wisdom, just understanding what’s going on is enough to stop it,
OK? I mean, the whole idea of Buddhism, the whole idea of the Buddha coming
to teach on this planet, was that if he could explain to a normal, intelligent
American what they’re doing wrong, they can stop it, you know. And that’s
what we truly believe. We don’t believe that they can bless you with their
hands, we don’t believe you can pour water on their head. The first Dalai Lama
in his commentary to the Abhidharmakosha goes through a list of stuff that
doesn’t work. And he includes washing people on their head, you know,
transferring your knowledge to another person through ESP, uh, blessing
somebody by putting your hands on their head, he said, it doesn’t work that
way. The only way to get out of suffering is to understand these six points, to
understand where it’s coming from. And, and the human mind, a normal, plain
old, intelligent, half way intelligent American person, if they hear these six steps
enough can get themselves out of suffering. And that’s what the Buddha said.
Yeah?

[student: inaudible]

Yeah, Veena, Veena said there’s people who may understand this theory very
well but can’t put it into their actual life’s practice. Of course that’s true. It starts
with understanding. If you don’t do anything about it, of course nothing will
happen. That’s true. But the understanding has to come first, yeah. But of
course if you don’t act on it, nothing will happen, OK? But it’s very difficult to
keep understanding it, [unclear], and not do something about it, OK? It’s very
difficult. Although it’s possible, right? The Surgeon General has determined that
this stuff kills you, and, uh, [laughter], people go on smoking it. That’s true.
That’s true. Yeah?

[student: inaudible]

Oh, great. Uh, what about anger you’re experiencing in a dream. What
happens? There’s a couple of viewpoints about that. For example, monks have
a vow of celibacy. So there’s a question in the Vinaya. If you dream about
breaking your vow of celibacy, are there any implications, are there any
repercussions on your vows, and it says no. OK. It’s not a reality, it’s not real.
So it does not have any repercussions. Your vows are not damaged in any way,
OK? So as far as murdering somebody in a dream, you don’t have to go and, it
may be useful to confess that you had a dream like that, but you don’t have to
confess murdering anybody, OK? You can confess thinking about it in a dream
or something like that. Uh, any time, the first chapter of the Abhidharmakosha
says {lele jedta lasam ke, dene samba dan deche}, “the essence of karma is any
thought, any time you have a thought.” The essence of karma. [unclear]
concentrate, like Coca Cola concentrate? Uh, concentrate karma is thinking, you
know. {deche luda ladule}, means, “and then [unclear] and actions come later.”
But it’s the driver is up hear, you know. Just having a thought has repercussions
on your mindstream. And it’s true even of dreams, you know. Just having a
dream of about doing something really bad has a very, very weak but very
certain effect on your consciousness. So, yeah, it is a kind of, you do collect some
kind of karma because you have a thought. It’s very, very feeble. It’s very, very
weak. It won’t have much repercussions. Most of the requirements for what we
call {leke lam}, “a total karma,” are not there. But of course just having the
thought affects you slightly. And the opposite is very famous, you know. Your
Buddhist practice gets to the point where you’ll be starting to lie in your dream
and you’ll stop. You know, and if you’ve got to that point it’s very cool, you
know. You’ll be starting to do something bad in your dream and you say, wait a
minute, I’ll have to write that in my book [laughs]. And, uh, you’ll find yourself,
even in your dreams, you won’t do bad things. If you practice gets sweet, you’ll
find that you’ll even be dreaming Buddhist practice, you know. Yeah?

[student: inaudible]

Uh, is it possible to change what?

[student: inaudible]

Uh, yeah. John said, is it possible to change the karma that comes up and, you
know, affect it. Um, Patricia Duffet, no. [laughs] Tricycle Magazine is coming out
with a, next issue, a whole issue on purification of karma, and, uh, and there’s a
little part in there on the, called the Sutra on the Four Forces, how to purify that
karma. You know, if it’s coming up how to stop it, and if it did come up how to
clean it off your mind. And you can read it when it comes out, OK? Uh, yeah go
ahead.

[student: inaudible]
Yeah, what it means is, if you see emptiness directly you have bashed number
two. If you see emptiness directly enough, you destroy number one. OK?
Seeing emptiness directly, and the habit of seeing things as self-existent, cannot
co-exist in the same mind. OK, so for twenty minutes you’re not having it, OK?
What happens when you come out? The habit is still there. How do you destroy
that habit? You continue to meditate on emptiness. Directly? Not necessarily.
But remember what happened to you and constantly applying it to your life,
eventually you get rid of your mental afflictions, OK? So it’s really going for the
jugular of samsara, you know? Which is what? It’s that tendency to see things
as self-existent. That’s the whole point. By stopping the earlier causes, the rest
collapses like a house of cards. OK? Uh, one more question, then we gotta. . two
more minutes [unclear].

[student: inaudible]

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. By the way, I remember in India going to a sermon in a
church, when I first got there I was a Christian, you know, and, uh, I went to a
sermon in a church and there was this Indian minister there and he was covering
a text from the Bible called “why do the wicked prosper.” You know. Why does
it seem that when you’re doing good things, you’re getting lousy results, and
when you’re doing lousy things you seem to be doing quite well, and why is it
that these creeps in business seem to make a lot of money, and the nice guys
seem not to make a lot of money, and stuff like that. Buddhism explains it
perfectly. I mean, you can be a saint in the present moment and be experiencing
all the lousy karma you did before that. And in fact in this reading you’ll see
some of that. It’s no contradiction in Buddhism that in 1997 you’re suffering a lot
from the bad deeds you did from 1955 to 1997, and from 1997 on things are
going to get better, because you stopped doing them, you know, but the old bad
deeds are still there. And they will continue to haunt you for a while. But you
can purify them, if you know purification, and you can also, also you’re going to
stop doing them, so, Master Shantideva didn’t say the day after you start
practicing patients you won’t meet any assholes, OK? He just said, if you start
practicing patience in a serious way, they’ll get less and less until one day they
disappear, OK? OK, last thing. There’s kind of a cool section at the end here.
And somebody comes up to Master Shantideva and says, I like what you said
about emptiness. I get it. I’m not like those hinayana guys. You convinced me.
But I went to my room and I tried to meditate on emptiness and I got scared,
you know. It was kinda scary, you know. I’m not sure that I can do it. It be
really weird to go around thinking about everything, you know. Like my whole
day at work would be ruined, you know, it’d be changed completely if I couldn’t
yell at my boss, if I had to see my boss as my projection. This guy’s coming
from me. It gets kinda weird. Life becomes weird. It’s a little scary, OK? I don’t
know if I can do it. And Master Shantideva answers him, OK. Last thing. Say
{demba zimba doonyu keje donyi dopa dinye shije} [students repeat]. OK, this is
a paraphrase of the verse. You’ll see that the verse is a little bit different, OK?
Uh, {demba zimba} means “that tendency to see things as self-existent.” OK?
{demba zimba} is the tendency to see things as selfexistent. To think that your
boss’s ugliness is coming from him and not from you, OK? {doonyu} means “all
the pain you ever had,” {doonyu). {keje} means “it causes all the pain you ever
had,” OK? That single act of thinking that the bad things in your life are self-
existent, and not that they’re created by you, is the source of all your suffering.
Why? Because then you react to them negatively, and you collect more bad
karma, OK?         When you get serious about Buddhism and understanding
emptiness, you can’t even be grumpy anymore, OK? By the way, if Buddhism
was all wrong, and emptiness was a big lie, and if there was no enlightenment
and no nirvana, it would still be more fun not to be grumpy all day. OK?
Alright? I mean, Buddhism is still valid in my mind, even if all that stuff about
being enlightened and [unclear] Buddha paradise is all a big lie, it’s telling you
you can’t even be grumpy without collecting some bad karma, sorry, you can’t
even have a [unclear] day, you know, you have to be bright and cheerful, joyful,
maintain your joy, even under the heaviest crap you can imagine, you know.
You cannot react to even low level, excuse me, crap in your life, uh, with
anything less than joy. Because then you’re just perpetuating it. It’s very
interesting. OK? You can’t even have like a grumpy day, really. OK? It’s very
interesting. Uh, say {tungi dopa dewe chuje} [students repeat]. {tungi dopa}
means “realizing emptiness.” In this case, seeing emptiness directly. OK? Seeing
emptiness directly. {dewe} means “all that suffering in your life,” “everything
lousy in your life,” {dewe}. {chuje}. {chuje} means “it stops it.” “It stops it,” OK?
“It stops it.” So Master Shantideva comes up to you and says, dude, don’t you
get it? All the suffering in your life, everything that you can be, that could be
pain for you, which means all the things that scare you about your life, they’re all
coming from your inability to see emptiness. So don’t get scared about seeing
emptiness. This is gonna stop all the things that you’re afraid of. It’s very cool.
If you read the verse, it’s very cool. He says, look, I admit you might get a little
uncomfortable meditating about emptiness once in a while. But what’s really
scary in your life is your life, you know? And your life exists because you don’t
understand emptiness. So if you really want to stop things that are scary,
meaning your age, your aging process, you know, the ups and downs of your
life, the fact that you’re gonna be dead in a couple of years, that’s scary. Now
that’s scary. And the fact that every day you’re getting weaker and uglier, that’s
scary. The only way you can fix it is to see emptiness directly, so don’t come to
me and tell me you’re nervous about meditating on emptiness [laughs]. OK?
It’s the only way you can get out of it, OK? Alright? It’s very cool. You can read
it. He gives a very cool answer. What’s scary is living like we have been living.
You know. That’s the scary part. If you have to put up with a little weirdness
while you’re meditating on emptiness don’t worry about it, OK? You’re getting
rid of the rest by doing that, OK? Alright.

[prayer]

The transcriber wishes to dedicate all merit to the well-being of all sentient
beings.