ACI 15 «Что на самом деле имел в виду Будда», занятие 1

Class One: Testing the Buddha's Word
November 5, 1998
transcribed by: Martina Novakova



[cut] we had a very long trip, i think some of us were on the road for four month
or something like that, very strange happenings in very strange countries,
wonderful things and the, towards the end in Russia [unclear], who didn't get to
sleep for three month, who was, who never complains, she never saiz anything,
never anything, you know that, and she said "I think it's time to go
home" [laughter], so it did feel like that you know and it's really [unclear] you
knou it was a little hard to [unclear] welcome back to that and i wanted to thanks
all the people who wokred hard to find this place, i think Michael Wick, Anne
Lindsey and John Stilwell and a bunch of other people and we looked in some
really well places, but they were too expensive [laughs] so we ended up here and
i think it will work out well, we see how it goes. This is the last of the five year
course classes that we [unclear] a course. There is a few people here actually
who went thru the whole thing [unclear] have've been thru the whole study
[unclear] and than in ninety nine we review the whole seven years in one year
and that will be like rolocoster you know, and than we all take a long retreat.
And the reason i saved this subject for last was first of all it's the most difficult,
those of you who were in the logic course may not believe that [laughter], by the
way difficult in a sence of beautiful, it's about emptiness so, you know, it's not
difficult in sence of logic, okay, it's just in a sence of changing your way of
thinkink about things, it's difficult, okay, and it's not... that was the first reason.
Second reason was when my class [unclear] the subject and we were about to
study it abbot came to us and said "You are all promoted to the next class"
which means you skipp the whole year and we said "why" and he said "well, you
started out of sixty five and it's only about five left and in the class above you
there is only a few left too, so we decided to, [unclear]" so, this is common after
about ten years in a course at [unclear], so we were in a what's called "junior
class" which looses a whole year of study and the subject we lost was this subject,
so over the years i've tried to get Lamas to teach me it privately and rinpoche
taught it to us in Sera at our request, that was a group of us [unclear], and about
half [unclear] he got ill and than, we were fortunete enough to be at Sera about a
month and half ago and we studied this subject, which is very difficult, with the, i
would say the greatest scripture teacher in India right now, with geshe Thupten
Rinchen, and he agreed to give us a few lectures on it, which turned out to be, i
think [student: twenty five] twenty five lectures, it was about five hours a day,
and it was extraordinary, and i think about twenty people from this group or
that we picked up on the way to get there, ended up studying it. So, [unclear] is
going to be... i don't think anyone can get explanation like that, i don't believe
there is another person, around who is teaching this, who can get an explanation
like that, and so you are going to get pretty much by directly from what he
taught us which was extraordinary. People spend their lives, trying to figure out
this particular subject. Profesor Thurman spend about ten years on it [unclear]
and Jeffrey Hopkins has spend last eight years on it, trying to figure out what is
it about, and so you gonna get it [unclear] geshe Thupten Rinchen actualy and in
a very easy way and a beautiful way and a correct way and that's just beautiful,
that's very wonderful, so, we'll start. When you are in a monastery you spend,
the first course is twelve years long on a perfection of wisdom and about ten
years in to the course spend they start the {sukul}, {sukul} means a
"supplimentary subjects". For example they will cover dependent origination,
which means the study of wheel of life, and if you are intrested we will be doing
that on friday nights, we'll be going thru the whole painting of the wheel of life,
starting tomorrow, i think... and that takes maybe four months in a monastic
schedule, than you hear a thing called {drang nge} okay. So, you got to realize
you've been memorizing since you were seven until age of thirteen or fourteen
you were allowed to [unclear], and now you are something like twenty five, and
you have been studying the same school, which is Madhyamika for your whole
life, and than they hit you with {drang nge}. [cut] they say "what do you study
[unclear], not much just {drang nge}" and [laughs]. In {drang nge} they take
everything you know about emptiness, everything you studied for ten years,
fifteen years [unclear] throu it out and they say "now forger all of that" and now
you are in a diffrent school, okay, and it's basicaly the study of the mind only
school. And for the next year or two years you will, we say you put on a mind
only head, meaning, you forget your formal identity, it's like they give you a
new [unclear] name or something and they say, "okay, you are not Madhyamika
anymore, you are mind only". You can tell the guys who are studying {drang
nge}, they wonder around the debate ground, making crazy statements and you
know, like [unclear] for three years, you know, and it's a beautiful thing, because
they have very special ideas about emptiness and they help you clarify their
understanding emptiness. So, we're gonna enter the world of mind only school,
you will forget all the Madhyamika you ever had here, okay, and it's like to
starting to study emptiness all over again and that's how it is. Yeh [student, John
Stilwell: Before we [unclear] into that is it accurate to say that this is the better
or more correct or better description of emptiness or Madhyamika's [unclear]? ]
Don't ask me if this is the better or more correct description of emptiness than
the Middle way. They never tell you that kind of stuff [laughter]. We'll get to
that.
The word {drang nge} is made of two parts [silence] Say {drang dun} [repeat],
{nge dun} [repeat], {drang dun} [repeat], {nge dun} [repeat]. {drang dun}
[unclear] is a first part of {drang nge}, {drang dun} right, and {nge dun} is the
second part of {drang nge}. So {drang nge}, the word {drang nge} is made of
{drang} and {nge}. [silence], [cut] {drang dun} [repeat], {drang dun} [repeat].
Okay. {drang} means, ah, "something you have to interpret, something you have
to..." for example if someone is speaking literary or figuratively, {drang dun}
means "figuratively". For example the Buddha once said that you could, you
should kill your father and kill your mother, okay. Was he speaking literary or
figuratively? Okay, depends on who your father and mother are, yes but, not
really. Ah, he was speaking figuratively, ah, and, and {drang dun} means that,
basic meaning of {drang dun} means "figuratively". And, and what he meant
when he said "kill your father, kill your mother" was, when the time comes, if it's
nesseserly, if the home life becomes a distraction and you can't practice properly,
than leave it, you know, leave it, and leave it untill you settle spiritually and you
can go back. [student, Nina Vicari: Why did he say kill, why he didn't say leave?]
Why did he say kill, he is being, he is exaggerating for effect. Most famous
situation [unclear] Heart Sutra, "there is no eye, there is no ear, there is no nose",
he is pointing to his nose right, "no nose, no tounge", okay. Why did people ever
exaggerate? My... the Lama who taught us this course in Sera Mey
[unclear] if you have a student who is constantly dropping things and breaking
things and you give them a cup to go wash it for you and than he said "{katape
jogwa}" which means "and don't forget, would you please smash that cup in sink
for me" you know [laughter], this is a way of saying it without being borring,
you know, you broke that kind before, please be little more careful, like that,
there is a reason behind it, we call it {gongshi}, say
{gongshi} [repeat], {gongshi} [repeat]. {Gongshi} means that "what person has in
mind" you know, {gongshi} means "why did that person say that" you know,
what is it they really want from you, when they say "oh, could you please break
my most precious cup", you know, what do they want out of you, what do they
want you to think of, and that's called {gongshi}. So, in the study of {drang nge},
{gongshi} is [unclear], {gongshi} means "what did they really have in mind" when
they said something that wasn't true or that was exaggerated, okay. So, that's
the basic meaning of {drang dun}, it's "figurative". [Cut] "literar". And you can
describe it even {drang nge} in three diffrent ways, okay, i'll tell you the three.
The first is in words, okay, like my words can be literar or figurative, you know,
when i am speaking i can either mean what i say or i can mean something else,
okay. And often times parents will do this to help their children, right.
There is a story in Buddhism about...the Buddha saiz...there is some children
playing a game and...and their house catches on fire and the father rans in saiz
"You have to run out" and they say "No we don't want to" and than he saiz "I got
a better game outside, you know" and, and than they run out [unclear] so, this is
where the Buddha....there is no match between what the person said and what
the reality is, okay, and that's the first test.
So, on the, on the level of expression you can have figurative or literal...which
means "is there a match between, between two things", what two things?
[Student:[unclear]] Yeh, what they say and what they mean, okay, is there a
match between what they say and what they mean. In the...the Buddha, you
know, taught the...there were three great periods in the Buddha's omnition on
this planet. He went thru three great phases in his teaching career, he seems to
be all this diffrent people during each of those three great phases. Those are
known as three turnings of the wheel of the Dharma, okay. And in the first
turning of the wheel of the Dharma, for example, Lord Buddha said "All the
things around you which you see exist from their own side, they exist by their
own right, they have their own nature", okay.           And a few years later he got
up on Vultures peek and said, "That's not really the case, nothing has it's own
nature", okay, "Nothing exist from it's own side, nothing exist with any quality of
it's own, nothing at all". And than in the third turning of the wheel he said
something [unclear], so this is an example of... one of those or two of those has
to be figurarive, actually two of them, right, two of them have to be what he
didn't mean what he said and now is up to us to figure it out. That's an example
of expression. How about [cut] does the way an object appears to be and does
the way the object really is, do they match or not, okay. This appears to
be,...does the way this thing appears to you match what it really is. If it doesn't
we call it figurative, okay, {drang}, {drang dun}, if it does we call it {nge},
fig...literal {nge}, okay. And that's a test of figurative or literal in reality, you see,
not by expression, we are not talking something that somebody said, you know,
"please break this cup", "does he really want me to break the cup?", you know.
No, he wants you to be careful with the cup, okay. But the same is true with
objects. Is this object lying to you or not? Does the reality of this pen match
what it seems to you to be or not? And if it did match we would call it literar and
if it didn't match we would call it figurative, okay. So, {drang dun nge dun} can
extend to reality itself. In first case we're talking about wheather what you say is
what you mean, wheather what you say matches what you mean. Here we're
saying, does the way of things appears to you, does the way it appears to you
match the way it really is or not, or is something going on to decieve you, is
there an illusion here, okay. Is there a correspondance between the way it looks
to you and the way it really is or is it completely diffrent. And that's figurative
and literar in a sence of reality itself, got it? Third level of, of {drang nge} [cut]
This refferes to two states of mind, okay. Some of the older students have had it,
we go very briefly. [cut] say {tsema} [repeat], {tsema} [repeat]. {Tsema} means,
in sanskrit is {pramana}, most of you know it and it means "correct or accurate
perception". Technicaly it means "a valid perception", but we won't get into that.
"An accurate perception", it's called the {pramana} or {tsema}, okay. So for
example, if you are looking at this cylinder and happen to see this white and
black, you have a {tsema}, you have a {pramana}, okay. If you have a normal set
of fingers and you look at your hand and count five you have a {pramana},
okay. How many {pramanas} you have during the day? We say 65 or was it 64?
[laughs], anyway, sixty something for milisecond, okay, you are having
{pramanas}, okay. Non {pramanas} are [unclear], okay, i mean people call it
[unclear] it just means is it accurate or not, you know, is this, is this... are you
seeing it [unclear]. Now, if you are really drunk or on a drug or if you are very
angry or very jellous or something like that, it might actualy make you see
something that's not there, that's the opposite of
a {tsema}, okay. Sometimes emotions can do that, emotions can play tricks,
where you think you see something moving, you thing that [unclear] is moving
when you are moving or something like that, those are non {tsemas}. If you're
having a {tsema} about something we call it literar, on the level of perception or
understanding. This is the third level of figurative or literal, right. What was the
first level? Does what the guy saiz match what the guy means, [unclear]. What's
the second level of literar? Is, does the reality of that thing match the way it
appears to be, which is on level of reality, right. And the third one is on the level
of perception, you know. Does the way i think it is match what it is, is it really
white and black cylinder or am i on a acid trip or something, okay, okay, those
are the three levels of literar and figurative. [Student: [unclear]] It's called
[tsengni] but in a study of {drang nge} we use another word. [cut] {yi chu}
[repeat], {yi chu} [repeat]. {Yi chu} means aproximation, it's a state of mind
where you are sort of understanding something, okay. Like if i say, "Have you
seen emptiness directly?", you say, "No, i didn't have a direct
{tsema}, i didn't have a direct accurate perception of..., "Do you have a {yi chu}
about it, can you sort of, you know, fussy way aproximate [unclear] mind", "Yeh,
yeh, you taught that pen thing for so many days, you know, [laughter] you
know i have a some kind of fussy picture in my mind, that's called the {yi chu},
okay. So, the first is literar and the second one is figurative, all right, in a sence of
perception, okay. The first one what it sees and what the thing is match
perfectly, okay, the way it sees and the way it is match perfectly. In a second one
the way it sees and the way the thing is just kind fussy, fusilly related, all right,
three diffrent kinds of {drang nge}. We're gonna start...the most of the course
will be the {drang nge} in sence of verbs, words, okay, verbalizations. Did the
guy mean it what he said, when did the guy mean it what he said and when he
didn't mean it. Who is the guy? Lord Buddha, okay. What's the big [unclear]
that bothers people? [Student: [unclear]]. No, first he said, well besides killing
your parents, first he said, "Everything exist really, trully, the way it is, from it's
own side, by nature, by definition", than later on in his life he changed his mind.
He saiz, "Nothing {unclear}, nothing, nothing exist by definition", you know and
he gets more radical. So, what's gonna hapen at the end of his life? He is going
to meat certain people, like, [cut] {Dundam Yangdak Pak} [repeat], {Dundam
Yangdak Pak} [repeat]. We're going to call him the bodhisattva, okay, his whole
name is {[unclear]}, i have [unclear], you want me to call him {[unclear]} or shell
we call him the bodhisattva, let's call him the bodhisattva, okay. This is the
bodhisattva who meets the Buddha later on in his life. The Buddha has spend
years teaching that all sorts of things, especially you and everything about you,
the parts of you exist from their own side, they have their own of reality, they
do have some kind of nature. And than later on, you know, Lord Buddha gets
up on this big mountain, called {Rajagirha}, peak, Vulture's peak, and suddenly
he changes his tune and he saiz, "Nothing has any nature, nothing exist by
definition, nothing has any reality from it's own side. So what hapens in the
third period of his life? He is like geting old, he is [unclear] place called {Shabasti}
and people start to approach him and this is one of them, this is the bodhisattva
called {Dundam Yangdak Pak}. And he saiz, "You know, we really appreciated it
when you gave your first round of teachings, you know, your first wheel of the
Dharma", meaning he taught for a whole period of years certain subjects, he
taught like seven great subjects, "we apreciated all the subjects you taught, we
were very intrested, you taught about
five heeps, you taught about four Arya truth, you taught about the eight
[unclear], you know, you taught all these, the eighteen parts of a human beeing,
you know, you taught about twelve doors of sence, you taught us all these
beautiful ways of looking at the world, you know. " And then as you were
finishing, you always told us that they existed from their own side, that they had
some nature of their own, they had some reality of their own, okay". "Than you
got up on Vulture's peak, you know, we don't know what happend, but than
you started telling us, "Nothing exist by it's own side, nothing exist by nature,
nothing has any definition of it's own, all the things around you don't exist the
way you think they do, period, nothing", you know". So what is, what is this
bodhisattva asked the Buddha? He said, [laughs] [unclear], that's, that is by the
way what we call the bodhisattva's question, in this study of {drang nge}, this is
the whole start of the fight, okay. The whole start of this, you know, people
memorize this quote, you know, you get a special award in a monastery if you
memorize this, it's two hundret and thirty pages long, and many people
memorize this, because it's all important, and...here is the first opening [unclear]
you know, this poor bodhisattva is geting confused, you know, and he comes up
to the Buddha and saiz, "First you say one thing and than you say the exact
opposite, now can you tell us what do you mean", you know, "could you tell us
what's going on and why did you do that and which one is true if any or is it
something else, okay. Which by the way is possible, right. LIke it could be a
mix, right, [unclear] something that exist by nature and some don't, we don't
know what the Buddha is going to say, right, but this is later on in his career, this
is like wrapping up his career and this bodhisattva is encountering the Buddha
and saying, "Hey, you know, we know you are [unclear] and everything, you
never contradected....can not contradict yourself, but it really seems you did",
you know and [unclear] thinking, you know, the text goes like that, you know.
"We know you are [unclear], so it can't be that you say on monday that
everything is "A" and on tuesday you say that everything is "B", what were you
trying to do, you know, why did you say that, what was the point", okay. And
that's called the bodhisatva question, okay. The question is so famous, that the
chapter got named "The chapter of the bodhisattva's question", so {Dundam
Yangdak Pak} and than you can put take this out and you can call it {shupay leu}.
[cut] it means, {shupay} is [unclear] "to ask a question", it's like to [unclear] a
question", it's very high language, bodhisattva [unclear] a question. {Shupay
leu}, {leu} means "this is just a one chapter out of banch of chapters in a
importancy, okay, so {leu} means "chapter". So if people say what's the root text,
which you are studying, you know, the ultimate source what you're studying,
you gonna say "Oh, it's a chapter that was requested by the bodhisattva
{Dundam Yangdak Pak}, okay, {[unclear]}, it's the... we call the bodhisatva, okay,
it's easy. And this is the chapter requested by bodhisattva. Why is it called "The
chapter requested by the bodhisatva"? [unclear] he saiz, "Hey, first you taught
[unclear], we know you can't contradict yourself, you are a smart guy, what does
it mean, what point are you geting there, why did you do that, which one is true,
or is, are neither one true, okay, and that's how the whole point starts. Now, if
you are mind-only school, person, you like this book a lot, because this is the
source for mind-only school, okay. So, you know, it's an exuse to go out and
explain the mind-only school, all right. This is their two great sources for
explaining what the Buddha really meant, okay. And this is one of them. If you
belong to the mind-only school, you like this book. Who wrote this book? Who
wrote the chapter requested by {Dundam Yangdak Pak}? I give you a clue, it's in
[unclear]. [Laughs], Lord Buddha, okay, Lord Buddha, all right. It's like the
Heart sutra or something like that...written by Lord Buddha. And if you are in
mind-only school this is the one...if somebody saiz, "What did the Buddha really
mean?", you know, "How are we suppose to interpret this seemingly
contradicing statements, first he saiz, "Everything isn't empty" and than he saiz,
"Everything is empty", well how are we suppose to take that?" If you are mind-
only school person you say, "Oh, we got to go to this sutra, this piece of the sutra
called, {Dundam Yangdak Pak Shupay Leu} and in fact they build their whole
system from the answer that the Buddha is about to give, the whole mind-only
system is based on this answer. I'll talk a little bit about what mind-only means.
There are four great schools of antient India and don't confuse them with the
four Tibetan traditions, okay, sometimes people do that, they go out and say,
"Michael Roach was criticizing the four [unclear] schools, you know and hope
there is not [unclear] Lamas that can [unclear] out tonight, you know. These
people died centuries ago, okay, these are four great schools of antient India and
don't confuse them with [unclear], okay, not so good. First one is the highest, is
the middle way, second is mind-only, third is called sutrist, [cut] logic and
perceptual theories schools and than you have the abhidharma schools of higher
knowledge. Traditionaly they were devided like this, everybody above the
scribely line is higher way, mahayana and everybody below the scribely line is
hinayana, [unclear], okay. People say, "What's your opinion of hinayana or
[unclear], you know few Tibetans respect [unclear]. We spent ten years on
abhidarma kosha, it's not the first time [unclear], you know what i mean, so, yeh,
they take it very seriously and they studied very well, they don't [unclear] at all,
okay. Sutrist school, mind-only school, midle way school and what differentiate
them the most is how they explain emptiness, okay, the way [unclear]. The big
diffrence between all four schools is how they explain emptiness. Lord Buddha
taught how many of these schools? [student: All four.] All four, all right. He
taught four diffrent schools, three and half of them are wrong about emptiness,
okay, three and half of them are wrong about emptiness. So, what's wrong with
this Buddha, you know, so why is he doing that, you see. And that's, that
becomes another question, all right. What's the use of teaching it those others
three and half ways? And...it's to sharpen your thinking about emptiness, okay.
And, and in a monastery if you can not explain the way these four schools
explain emptiness, they know you don't understand emptiness.           They say,
"Give me the second school of [unclear]". And people say, "I don't know". They
say, "Well, than do you think you understand emptiness?" You say, "Well, that
was two tousand years ago, [unclear], i'am living in 1998, i don't need to know
what people who have been dead two tousand years taught about emptiness the
way it was wrong, you know. But that's not why the Buddha taugth that. The
Buddha taught each of these schools, because in any human audience, 25% of
people will think about emptiness the way abhidharma people did, 25% of
people will thing about it the way the sutra people did, 25% of people will
automaticaly start to come out with mind-only idea and 25% of people, or less
will start thinking as midle way school. It's very intresting. The Buddha taught
four schools because there are four personality types, there are four ways of
thinking. And you are in one of those four, okay, you're already in one of those
four, you are already naturaly thinking about emptiness in certain ways, by...just
before you walk in to it, before you learned buddhism at all, you were already
thinking about emptiness in certain way. And, and it will be easy to categorize
any of those four if you knew emptiness properly, if you knew about emptiness
well. So it's very cool that you can actually help any kind of person if you know
the four schools, you know what i mean. You can find in any human mind and
also in any non human mind, four diffrent ways of thinking about emptiness and
three and half of them are wrong, okay. What's the big deal about knowing
emptiness? We're going to go to quotation from Lord Buddha, which, which...Je
Tsongkapa answers the same question. We're gonna study [unclear] Je
Tsongkapa and somebody saiz, "Okay, there is four ways of understanding
emptiness, big deal, i mean one is okay for me, you know, i don't really care
which one, just give me one of them and i...you know, maybe the easier one will
be better for me, you konw, okay". And than Je Tsongkapa pulls out quotation.
[cut] {Mi shepe} [repeat], {drowa} [repeat], {kyam} [repeat], {mi shepe} [repeat],
{drowa} [repeat], {kyam} [repeat]. There is a word that comes before that i didn't
write here, which is {tonla}, okay, {tonla} means "emptiness". So the real
quotation it's a whole line, it's a big whole big verse, i didn't want to give you the
whole verse. {Tonla} means "emptiness", {mi shepe} means "because you don't
understand it", "because they don't understand it", {drowa} means "people",
"living beeins", {kyam} means "they wander around hopelesly in suffering",
{kyam} means "to wander around like dazed, like you know banch of razor
blades or something", you know it's a very horrible word actually, okay. But,
because they don't understand emptiness, people just wander around in life,
hurting themself, every day, every hour, okay. And, this is like...i was just sick
for four days in bed, it's really [unclear], didn't have to wash any dishes, and it
was very, very, very painful and, and the idea of buddhism, the whole point of
buddhism is that there is a way to stop it. If you understand how to stop it you
can stop it, you don't have to question that. Sooner or later everybody in this
room will end up horizontaly in some bed, somewhere, with children you know
they don't want to take care of you or some attendent in a nursing home who
would rather you didn't yell and probebly [laughs], will probebly let you know
that and that's what you have to look forward to, every person sitting here will
be in a bed, no matter how [unclear] or how smart you are, how much money
you have, what kinds of friends you have, how beautiful your life has been till
now, all right, you will end up in a bed. And rhe question is "Do you have to or
not?" This text, this quotation is saying, the reason you do that is because you
don't understand emptiness. So, you know, at the very beggining of this book,
which you are about to study, Je Tsongkapa saiz, "Look, this is why you get old,
this is why you get sick, this is why your body starts to loose it's energy and
your eyes, your mind and everything else, there is a reason for that and it's that
because you don't understand emptiness". Some people were accusing him,
saying, you know, "You are just the [unclear], phylosophical [unclear], you
know, why you're gonna write this huge book about what five diffrent people
think about emptiness, who cares, let's go meditate or something", you know
what i mean. And he quotes, this is a quotation by Lord Buddha, it's from a
Sutra requested by [unclear], okay and it's in your reading. And Je Tsongkapa
saiz, "You don't get it, you know, Buddha himself said, Lord Buddha himself said,
"It's, it's because people don't understand emptiness, that they have to suffer,
okay. So, so what we're gonna do...you know, i have been in classes where they
explain mind-only school system, i remember being in India, being bored to
death, i was only like a week old buddhist and this great western schoolar came
who covered the boredom with this weird stuff and i was bored to death,
[unclear], and i said, "What's going on, you know, what's this guy doing this
point, you know, what's the point, you know". And, and it just seemed like a
waste of time or he was just trying to show wheather he knew forty four
sanskrit [unclear] or something, you know, and, and it strikes you like that,
okay. But Lord...Je Tsongkapa say, "You have to know emptiness and it's not
mine, i'm not saying that, Buddha was saying that, you have to know emptiness
well". If you get to understand the mind-only school's about emptiness, idea
about emptiness, than your understanding about emptiness will be realy, realy
sweet, okay. Your understanding of the middle way school way, Madhyamika,
will be ten times clearer, it's trick, okay. The whole mind-only school system is
not true, okay, or is it. Was spoken by Lord Buddha to trick you to thinking
more about emptiness, okay. He spent years, decades of his life talking about
something which is false or isn't, okay and he is trying to get you to think about
emptiness more, okay. Like mind only is a very nice step between where you
are now and where you want to be, you know. It's very, very intresting
[unclear] of what you think now and what you should be thinking later, you
know, it's like going across the bridge and it's very, very beautiful for that
reason. So you have to study...we're gonna study emptiness acording to mind-
only school and Sal can be raising his arm saying, "That's not what you said in the
emptiness class before" and i will say, "We'll have, you have...in monastery they
say, "Don't forget to keep your mind-only hat on that, you know, [laughter], it's
like a [unclear] not as long and [unclear] and they say, "Don't forget what hat
you have on", you know, and, and when you are in mind-only school class in a
monastery you can't talk about these schools...our teacher in monastery, Geshe,
Geshe Thupten Rinchen kept saying what?, "Close that Madhyamika door, close
that middle way door, i don't want to hear"...sometimes one student will
[unclear] and he would say, "No, no we closed that door", [laughs], okay, you're
not...in the mind only school, very beautiful school, very exclusive school, all
right. So, because they don't understant...it's not true that you can just reach
happines or something like that by meditating all the time or...it's important, you
have to, you can't see emptiness directly without meditating and it's not true that
you can percieve it just doing prayers all the time or, or, or you know, sitting
and watching your breath, it's not true and it's not a galukpa idea it's not a
tibetan idea, this is quotation. The four quotation in your [unclear] and it's by
Lord Buddha himself and it saiz, "You have to understand emptiness", you have
to come to understand...compassion is good and you gonna need compassion,
but if you don't understand emptiness you will never stop suffering. You must
understand emptiness to stop your death and your aging and you can, you
know, you can stop those processes but you have to understand emptiness.
Yeh, [student: So, are you saying that if you don't understand any of the schools
teachings on emptiness they don't have to [unclear] understand emptiness]. Yeh,
he said if you don't understand any of the schools teaching on emptiness than
you don't understand emptiness really, that's a [unclear], okay, [laughter]. I
mean, when you get really good you be, should be able to say, "This is how the
first school thinks emptiness is and this is what the second school thinks and this
is what the third school thinks and this is what the lower Madhyamika [unclear].
And it's not just for showing up what you know, because each of those lower
three and a half are ideas that any normal person will have during their career
when they are trying to understand emptiness, it's very intresting. After you get
good at it you can, you can listen to some guy describe emptiness in a lecture hall
and say, "Oh, yeh, he got into number two, right, it's not bad", you know, "Oh,
he is at number three, that's, that's, that's very good, you know, mind-only, you
know and, and also when you hear a bad explanation of emptiness you will be
able to pinpointed, you will be able to say, "Yeh, i mean in a development of a
normal person thoughts, this guy is exactly half a way to what emptiness really
is". You can just say, "Yeh, you got to go two more stages and you got to
meditate a lot and you will see emptiness directly", you know what i mean. So,
it's important to know the four schools. It's not just a phylosophical game. The
point is to get your own mind up to those four schools, so that you reach the last
one. And than if you don't want to die in this life you use the last one to practice
tantra, that's the whole point, that's the whole point. All right, last thing, right,
before the break. The people who went with me to Sera found out where the
"last thing" came from [laughter]. The lama there, two hours before finishing
was saying, "Last point" [laugter]. [Silence] Say {tap tsul} [repeat], {tap tsul}
[repeat]. The whole verse saiz, by the way, i'll read it from the book, "{gompa
shiva gelwa menpe tsul mi shepe [unclear]} it means "the Buddhas know that
people have to see emptinessor else they will continue to suffer", you know.
Buddhas know that if you can see emptiness directly in this life, you can stop
your suffering. And i am not talking unhappiness, i am talking actual physical
aging and death or things like that. They know if you saw those things you
could begin with process of stoping, even your aging and even in your, even
your death and definetely all the screwing things in your life, okay, all the things
that are going wrong, you can stop them. They know that. So how do they get
people to study emptiness, you know. How do they, do they drag them into a
public school at [unclear] and with a lap top and say, okay we're going to study
Prasagnika, you sit down, you gonna get Negogena's top theory, five hundret
pages, takes seven years, okay. And you say "No, i don't want to do it, i got a
date tonight [laughter], you know what i mean, nobody will put up with that.
Sothey use {tap tsul}. {Tap tsul} in here means [unclear] "skilful means", they trick
you into studying that, they trick you into studying that. {Tap tsul} means
[unclear] "skilful means" means "doing something highly unusal to get a student
to think, teach them to [cut] really good [unclear], they wiil teach you something,
make sure you are comfortable with it and suddenly there is [unclear] something
else, you know what i mean. The minute you are comfortable, finely with
something than they will say, "No, no forget all that, now i'll give you something
else, you know, we are going to do something totaly diffrent, you know what i
mean. And suddenly you are [unclear] to another thing, to make you
think, you know. And {tap tsul} means "out of compassion", the verse saiz, "Out
of compassion the Buddhas trick, try to trick people into, into coming to the
correct idea of emptiness". They can't handle 100% emptiness, so what do you
do, "Oh, teach them some other system that's close to emptiness and than teach
them another system that's closer to emptiness when they get more readdy and
when they are really ready hit them on top with 100% emptiness and than after
that teach them tantra, you see what i mean, and keep moving them up thru the
levels, you know what i mean, and that's the idea of it. So {tap tsul} means "The
Buddha himself said, "This is the best idea"," okay, you know, first i teach you
something that tou can relate to, when you are comfortable with it than i kick
out the chair again and say, "No, [unclear] up here", you know and when you get
comfortable with that i am going to cut down and start again and when you get
comfortable with that you move on, you force them up the lether like that, that's
the idea of {tap tsul}, {tap tsul} means that. The second part here is {rikpa gya}
[cut] {rikpa} [repeat], {gya} [repeat], {rikpa gya} [repeat]. {Rikpa} means, "good",
what's the name, "good reasons", "good reasons". And {gya} here means "a
hundret" but it's standing for {kayepa}, say {kayepa} [repeat], {kayepa} means
"countless", okay, like we say zillions sometimes or [unclear] tibetans say
hundret, okay or nine [laughter], i don't know why, there are [unclear] in
diffrent languages, you know, when they say {semsingul} or something, it
means, nine people means ultimately [unclear] or [unclear] say {gampe han
gyano}, you know, hundret deites [unclear], there is bilions there, they are
just...it's a number for a lot, zillions [unclear] zillions, okay, but anyway it's stated
in this quotation by Lord Buddha himself that he will use two methods to induce
people to understand emptiness. One, he will trick you with all diffrent kinds of
school systems, okay, he'll go thru ten years of explaining something certain way
and than at year number eleven he will say, "By the way, none of that is true but
now you are ready to give them better one", okay, and that's very typical for the
Buddha. That's called {tap tsul}, all right. The second one {rikpa gya} means, he
will present you with hundrets and hundrets of diffrent logical ways of
understanding emptiness, okay. And, and here Je Tsongkapa is refering to that
idea that, you know, you can go home and eat a special kind of a twinkie and,
and hope to see something about emptiness [unclear] no, you have to think, you
know. Someone has to explain it to you over and over and over again in
hundrets and hundrets and hundrets of diffrent ways, diffrent angles, diffrent
reasons, diffrent proofs, diffrent discriptions, you know, diffrent ways of getting
out the same goal, getting you to see emptiness directly. How long does it take
to see emptiness directly? Some 20 minutes, okay, 20 minutes. How long does it
take you to get to that 20 minutes? Something like 76 milions years, okay,
something...seriously, i mean it's a long time. And during that time you have to
think and someone have to give you diffrent explanations of emptiness and you
have to understand them and than they have to say, "[unclear], go to the next
one", and you keep building up your [unclear] understanding of emptines, okay.
And that's, that's, the...Je Tsongkapa is gonna say, "Look Lord Buddha did that,
he, he [unclear], he told us he would do that, he said he [unclear] diffrent systems
and than he said, "By the way i'll show you a thousant diffrent ways to think
about emptiness and only than can you stop your own suffering, only than can
you see emptiness by itself. So the idea here is to learn some new ideas of how
to think about emptiness. You haven't heard these ideas much yet, okay. There
gonna be some fresh ideas of how to think about emptiness. The sylibus goes
like this, okay. We go thru that mind-only school system for about seven or
eight classes. In a nineth we tell you the [unclear] and we go to Lord
Madhyamika, okay. And in the tenth class [unclear] and we go to upper
Madhyamika, we'll see if there is any other classes after that, okay, all right.
That's a general structure of the sylibus. We'll go thru, tonight is what's called
"bodhisattwa's question". Now you know ruffly the contenst of this question.
First you taught that, than you taught that, well we know you are not crazy
because you are Lord Buddha, you know, what did you have in mind, what
were you trying to do, okay and that's the initial question. And Je Tsongkapa
gives this text, ends up teaching mind-only and middle way at the same time.
He gives this mind-only as a trick to get you to [unclear], okay. I would like to
take a break there and we'll start again about five, ten minutes. There is [cut] so
if you are fanatic [cut] than comes up to Je Tsongkapa and saiz, "How do you
know when the Buddha was saying what he meant and how do you know when
he wasn't saying what he meant, you know, what do you use to judge" and Je
Tsongkapa saiz, "Well, let me ask you a question. Do you think we judge it from
what he said. Like when the Buddha finely sat down and said, "Here is what i
really meant". Do we use that to figure out what he really meant or not?" What
do you guess? [Student: No] No, okay [laughs] Why? [unclear], all right, you
got to get used to that, you know. You don't use the Buddha's speach to figure
out if the Buddha was literar or not. Even if the Buddha saiz, "This time i promise
i am giving you [unclear], okay, all right, you can't do that. Because each time he
taught emptiness to each group of students he said, "Now, here is the way, this is
really [unclear] and he taught emptiness to them. Because if he said, "Okay, i am
going to teach you emptiness for about three weaks and it's all wrong, okay", he
can't do that, all right. You can't use...the first thing Je Tsongkapa [unclear] is
"You can't use the Buddha saying, "Okay, this time i am being literar" to decide
wheather or not he is beeing literar, okay, can't do that. That's the first rule of
{drang nge}, okay. Even when he saiz he is beeing literar you can't be sure. So
what do you use?, okay. What do you use to decide if he is beeing {tap tsul},
which means what? [Student: skilful means] If the Buddha is beeing skilful
means, which means, you know, maybe he is, maybe half of he is [unclear]
about emptiness is not true at all, he is just trying to move you up little more
step, than you understand it, right. If he is doing that, how do you know, how
can you catch him doing it? How do you know when a teacher is doing that or
not? How can you figure out that he doesn't mean what he said on that
particular day about...he was just trying to symplify for us or something like
that. How do you know, what do you use to judge. And this becomes a big fight
throught buddhism, all right. Even on the question...obviously the mind-only
school and the middle way school, right, they are not going to agree on what
emptiness means, right. But they can't even agree and they will not agree and
you will see that they don't agree on when did the Buddha mean what he saiz
and how do you know when he meant what he said, you see. So in {drang nge}
we not only gonna study what two diffrent people think when he taught diffrent
kind of emptiness, you'll also gonna get two diffrent stories on how to tell when
the Buddha is telling it literary, okay. Each school is gonna have their own idea
about what literar means and each school is gonna have their own idea what
figurative means, okay, and very important, very important. So, they're not
even gonna agree on what it means when the Buddha was beeing figurative or
literar. Much less agree on what he said, okay. Than we gonna learn two diffrent
things there. Is this a valid, is this a valid exercise, you know, isn't it sort of
insulting to Lord Buddha to say, "We don't trust anything you say, [laughter],
you know, we have to develop methods of figuring out what you really mean
because you just seem to wander all over the place", you know. "We, we
developed a method called {drang nge}, "The art of interpretation" to gigure out
what you really mean", you know. Is this some kind of insult to Lord Buddha, i
mean...let's say His Holiness gives some lectures in New York and at the end,
you know, professor Thurman or someone got up and said, "We apretiate your
lecture, you know, but in the first two lectures you said one thing and in the
second two lectures you said something else, you know, could you enlighten us,
you know, what do you mean, what do you [unclear], we know you are'nt
going to contradict yoourself, but would you mind explaining what you really
mean, i mean, could you just tell us which one is rigth [laughs], you know, if
any", okay. And when that seem like some kind of...you know, people are
saying to Je Tsongkapa [unclear]you know, to say you better figure out why the
Buddha seem to contradict himself all the time. Than Je Tsongkapa gives his
answer and it's in your reading. It's one of the most beautiful quotations of all
buddhism and i think for westerners it's, it's maybe one of the most important
quotations and i think you should know it. I'am not gonna write the whole
thing, it would take too long, but
you have the whole thing in your reading, it's on page nine. [cut] {nga yi ka}
[repeat], {nga yi ka} [ repeat]. This is Lord Buddha himself talking in a sutra,
very famous sutra. The first thing he saiz is, the first piece is {nga yi ka}. {Nga}
means "me", {yi} means "my", {ka} means "what i teach you, the things i teach
you, the words that i speak", {nga yi ka}. I'm gonna skip to the third line, okay.
Say {ser shin} [repeat], {ser shin} repeat]. {Ser} means "gold, gold", {shin} means
"treated like gold". You have to apretiate ancient India, you know, you have to
apretiate India in 1998, okay [laughter]. Hasn't changed. People weare gold all
over their faces, their arms, their ankles, their braceles, everywhere. It's
beautiful. It's not just for beauty. Woman in the fields are working in a rice pod
with their gold on, why? Can't trust the bank, they might collaps any day,
[unclear] like Russia, you know. I have all these friends in Russia [unclear] credit
cards and they throu them around like frisbie because they don't work anymore
because of [unclear] and something like that, you know. And you can't trust the
bank anymore so you, you don't put your money in the bank so where do you
put it? In your house? You live in a mud shed, you can't lock the door, you
know. So you weare it all the time and you attach it to yourself, you know. And
the, gold is important, gold is very important in India, it's your life, you know, if
you need to eat or something happens you take it off and you sell it, okay. And
if you are a buyer you don't just take it, you don't just take it [unclear] this is
gold, you know, we're talking India, right. [Unclear] to cheat somebody on the
gold. And, and what you do, the first thing you do is you burn it, you apply,
you melt some and you see if it's really [unclear] gold, okay. That's called {sek},
okay, {sek ngi ser}. [Unclear] say in the Buddha's time, okay, two and a half
thousand years ago, things aren't changed there. {Sek} means "to burn", "to melt
it" actually. {Che}, you know from the {bodi chupa} same word, which means "to
cut", okay, take some, you know, what do you call it, snips and cut it, cut it in few
places to see if there is anything inside, you know, see if it's hollow, see if there is
other metals inside like that. {Dar} means "touch stone" or "wittnes test" or
something like that. Take a special stone, rub the gold on it and see if [unclear].
That's called {dar}. {Dar} means put it on the touch stone. Literary {dar} means
to file something, okay. So the Buddha in this very famous quotation is saying,
"Don't believe what i say", okay, "Anything i ever say don't believe it". This is
one of the thing that attracted me to buddhism, i don't know about you, but that,
that the Buddha himself, the leader of the religion is telling you, "Look, just
because i said it...okay, say {gu chir min} [repeat], {gu chir min} [repeat]. {Gu
chir} means "out of respect for me, Lord Buddha, the omnition one", okay, {gu
chir} means "out of respect for me, the highest beeing in the universe, the
omnition one". {Min} means what? [students: Not] "Don't", okay, "don't believe
what i say", okay. So, don't, don't just say, "Oh, Lord Buddha said it, we have to
follow it", because that's the last kind of buddhist i want. I don't want buddhists
like that, you know. {Gu chir min} means, i don't want people who say, "Oh, you
know, someone so said so, Lord Buddha said so, The Dalai Lama said so, it must
be okay, it must be true", i don't want that, you know. I want {sek che dar}. Say
{sek} [repeat], {che} [repeat], {dar} [repeat]. {Sek} means, you know "burn it, cut
it, test it", you know, check what i say and check it, check what i say and examine
it, analyze it, rip it appart, turn it appart, criticize me, attack me, question me,
you know. "If i can satisfy you [unclear] accept it, if i can't, than don't", you
know. I love...that was one of the most beautiful things about buddhism you
need, it's that, you know, Lord Buddha is telling you in the beggining, "You have
to do that, you must [unclear], okay. What is {sek che dar} mean, you know. It's
kind of hard to burn that words, okay. {Sek} here means check it against your
own immediate personal experience, okay, burn here or melt it means, it's a code
word for check it against your own direct experience, what you can see, what
you can hear, what you can think about in a direct way, okay. Whatever i teach
you check it against it, your own direct experience, around you, the things that
you can experience right around you, check it against that. First, first test. Than
you have to what? Cut it, okay {che}, you have to cut it. Cut here means check
it against everything you understand ligicaly, okay. Is there a pen here? Hallo?
[Student: Yes] Is there a pen here? Boy, if you were in Geshe Thupten Rinchen
class and you [unclear] you can ask Winston, okay [laughs]. He, he tortured
some of those americans, okay [laughter]. This is a pen, right, okay. And than,
you know, what i have in my hand. It's a pen. And you are perc...acording to
buddhism you are percieving the pen just as well as with your eyes, okay. Just
as well. So does buddhism, does what the Buddha saiz fit everithing you can
think of, okay, much less what you know to be true directly. And how about
everything you can figure out, you know. Okay, i haven't seen the bottom of
the Eiffel tower or something but i, i still understand some things about it, you
know what i mean. Does what Lord Buddha said make sence, okay, or not,
logicaly, okay. This can be internal logic or external logic, okay. Meaning does
he contradict himself or not. And does what he saiz match what i know to be
true even though maybe i can't see it with my eyeballs, okay. That's the second
test. Third test was what? {Dar}, okay. {Dar} here means does what he said
contradict something you know to be true, because you heard it from someone
you believe implicitly, okay. Meaning, let's say that over many years you've
gonne to His Holiness [unclear] or Lama Zopa or great Lamas, Khen Rinpoche
and after many, many years of beeing with this person, beeing close to this
person, you know beeing intimate with this person, you unerstand that, that
they must be telling the truth all the time, okay. Basicaly, you know [unclear]
right, they are not that kind of person who is gonna purposely mislead you to
hurt [unclear] or they are not gonna say something when they don't know it,
you know. And, and over the years you build up this relationship with
somebody, with a great Lama or something like that. And does what Lord
Buddha said match those things what you yourself can think of or you yourself
can not understand, but you know great people who said that, you know what i
mean. Does it contradict what we know was spoken by Holy beeings that we
trust about things that we can not see [unclear] we can not understand what they
are, okay. Those are the three tests. So three tests of anything that the Buddha
said. First one. Does it contradict your own direct experience. Second one.
Does it contradict what you can figure out to be true even though you can't see it
directly. And than thirdly. Does it contradict the words of somebody that you
take to be a beeing who can not lie, who can not [unclear] okay, about deep,
deep things that you, you haven't experience them yet, okay, like that. These are
the three tests. And Lord Buddha saiz, "Do not accept ever what i say just
because i'am good guy, Lord Bubbha said so, i don't want to hear that", you
know. By the way here Je Tsongkapa ends up saying, "Look basicaly there is
one test to something beeing literar or figurative. How do you know what the
Buddha really meant? Can you, can you say, "Oh, because Lord Buddha said so".
You can't, he said don't, right, he said don't do that, you have to figure it out, you
have to see what's logical, you have to figure it out. Especially about emptiness,
okay. At the beggining you can't see emptiness directly, you have to see it with
your mind, you have to see it with your reasoning, you have to figure out what
emptiness means, okay. And Lord Buddha is saying, "At the beggining you
gonna have to do that. If you want to know if i was telling the truth on the first
turning of the wheel or was it the second turning of the wheel or was it the third
turning of the wheel or non of the above, sorry, you have to figure it out. That's
his answer, okay. And that's what each person here have to decide. Lord
Buddha taught emptiness many diffrent ways and Lord Buddha said many
things that don't seem to [unclear] i mean it goes thru three occasions. First one
he said, what? Everything is real just the way it looks to you, your body is really
there, you know, look it bands, it makes noise, you know, it must be real, you
know. I don't know who ever say anything else, okay. And the second turn of
the wheel he's like, hey look, nothing really is here at all, isn't there, you know,
get it, okay. And than in the third turning of the wheel, by the way who triggers
the third turning of the wheel? [students: [unclear]] It's the bodhisattwa. How
does he trigger it? Hey man, what did you mean with those [unclear] [laughs]
And that becomes the third turning of the wheel, got it, it's really cool. Third
turning of the wheel was when the Buddha kind of like [unclear], okay.
First turning of the wheel we call like "The wheel about four noble truth" or
something like that. And the second...turning of the wheel by the way means
the whole decades of teachings on certain subjects by Lord Buddha with a certain
flavour, you know with a certain emptiness way. And than...they didn't
nesseserly take place like very neat historical events, like he might have swing
into the third one on the second one or during the first one, you see, you can't
just talk [unclear] two thousand, you know 538BC last time he said that
everything was selfexistent and than...it's not like that. But in general all those
teachings where he said yes, everything is real are called the first turning of the
wheel. And when he got to say no, no nothing is real, those are called the
second turning of the wheel. And finely this bodhisattwa [unclear] what, which
one is right, what did you mean when you said that, you know, that becomes
the third turning of the wheel, his explanation, his words become the third
turning of the wheel, okay. And he saiz, "Don't believe what i say just because i
said it". The only way to figure out what emptiness really means is not [unclear]
to just pick up a Lam Rim or Negodgena text or the Dalai Lama text, can't do it,
Lord Buddha said no, okay. Lord Buddha himself said no. He said ultimately
you got to believe the guy that you can figure out he is correct. That's very
intresting, you know. That's very intresting for, for lives, you see. People can
give you...i mean it's very common in [unclear] he say, " Oh, this guy is teaching
emptiness, they don't know what they are talking about, you know what i mean.
I think i even said that tonight probebly somewhere. You know [unclear] Does
that mean they are invalid, does it mean they are wrong, John asked at the
begining tonight, you know, he said, "Which one is right?" Which one is right?
The one that's right for that student on that day is always right, okay, you have
to get used to that, you have to get used to that. Lord Buddha will eminate on
thia planet and teach emptiness in a hundret diffrent ways and ninety nine will
be wrong, okay. Andyou have to thanks those ninety nine, you see what i
mean. You have to go to them and say, "Thank you for bringing me one step
further in my understanding...you know some guy gets up and say, "Emptiness
is this yellow halo around your head", you know. And, you know, three people
will believe him and than they'll stick around for another class and [laugter] And
than next time he will say something little more correct and he will keep
bringing them [unclear] further. That's a method of the Buddha. What it means
is...one of the...the most important bodhisattwa vow, what is the first
bodhisattwa vow? The easy answer is praising itself and criticizing others. What
does it really reffer to? [unclear] what does it really reffer to? Is it just praising
anybody, i mean, praising ourselvs anytime in a day, we break it every day, we
break it every five minutes [students: [unclear]]. It's specificaly criticizing
another bodhisattwa, another mahayana teacher or dharma group, you know.
That's how you can smash your first bodhisattwa vow, you know. To, to
criticize out of certain bad motivations another dharma group or another
dharma teacher. Than you just [unclear] your first bodhisattwa vow, you know.
And, and the point is, the whole point of this class really in the end is you don't
know that they are not just Lord Buddha in school number five or school
number six, how do you know. The Buddha did it all the time, the Buddha spend
his whole career [unclear] pretending that the mind-only school's system was
true and he knew it wasn't true, but he taught it for years, you know. And than
he taught the abhidharma system, that was wrong too but it helped people, you
see what i mean. So i mean, for us {drang nge} it's veryintresting. You don't
know who those people are, you know, you don't know who they are. You
have to be very carefull. I think the ultimate study of {drang nge} is not just
what emptiness is or isn't, it's that if Lord Buddha can pretend the whole four
diffrent schools during his lifetime, there was the [unclear], you know. And, and,
and who are you to criticize this [unclear]. By the way you break your first
bodhisattwa vow [unclear]. Does that mean you should stay quiet and not, and
not debate them when the good time comes, when the proper time comes. Not
at all, you shouldn't, okay. And, and you can take one side and they can take,
pretend take the other side and you can beat them, they let you beat them and
than everybody will learn something. This is very common in monastery. The
wise older geshes come into the debate ground and pretend to forget
something. And they make some statement that's wrong, you know. And they
got this...they are like [unclear] thirty years old geshe's , you know. They are
like, "Oh, that's wrong, you know", they say, "Oh, really", and they say "Yeh" and
they say, "How do you prove that", you know. And than the guy will run arond
the circle for like a hour right now not get it right. And than finely he'll beat the
older geshe,you know, and the geshe is' "Oh, oh you're right, you know, you got
me there [laughter]. I've seen it happened [unclear] to one of my classmates
[unclear] laughter] it's just, it's just {drang nge}, you see. He knows that's not a
competition but he just taught a hundret people something new, you know. So
and what it means is the ultimate {drang nge} is you have to be very carefull
[unclear]. You don't know if the person next to you is not a Buddha. And you
don't know that the people teaching some weird kind of emptiness are not
trying to help people, you know. If it seems harmfull to people, if they are
teaching, emptiness means you can do whatever the hell you want in your
behaviour, than you should go out and prove them wrong, okay. Tha't your
duty, in a happy way. But don't judge them, be carefull not to judge them. You
don't know who they are, you don't know why are they teaching it that way,
okay, something like that. You have to teach it the right way. Which one is the
right way? [laughter] I don't know. Okay, last thing [laughter] Oh, i thought
you might want to know what book you are studying. [silence] [cut] [laughter]
Say {drang nge} [repeat], {lekshe} [repeat], {nyingpo} [repeat], {drang nge}
[repeat], {lekshe} [repeat], {nyingpo} [repeat]. {Drang nge} is {drang nge}. I have
to translate it as "the art of interpretation", meaning how, how do you interpret
the Buddha, okay. If you want to you can translate it as the figurative and the
literar, okay, {drang nge}. For those of you who are studying tibetan sometimes
two [unclear] to create a new quality. Like {tsaram}, hot cold means temperature.
{Chiyan}, heavy light means weight. And some of the [unclear] here. {Drang
nge} beeing study of interpretation, how to interpret the words of holy being.
What happens if you don't get it right, by the way. Than you get these fanatical
fights within a certain sect, you see what i mean. If you don't have proper
[unclear] for deciding what the founder of the religion meant and when he
meant what he said and when he didn't mean what he said, that's when you get
real problems amongs religion, you know, that's when you get severe problems
in religions, you know. Somebody saiz, he said that, you know, Buddha said
that, you have...Buddha said, monks and nuns can't own piece of cloth more than
nine days, period. You say, no, no, that was when he taught [unclear] when he
taught the bodhisattwa vows he said, if somebody gives you a warehouse cloth
you have to keep it for nine years if it takes that long to find some poor people
who can use it. And than they say, no, no, no, when did he say that, you know.
You have to be able to know when to interpret, you know. It's very important
in their religion and when not to interpret. Lot of people interpret the Buddha
when he got [unclear] nowdays, okay. Okay, [unclear]. {Lekshe}, say {lekshe}
[repeat]. {Lekshe} means "well spoken". You can say "eloquence", some people
will translate it as eloquence. I don't like elequence so much although i use it
because eloquence means spoken sweetly or poeticaly or something like that.
That's not the point. It means it's "spoken rightly", you see what i mean. {Lekshe
nyingpo}, yeh, what you say is true, spoken true, okay. {Nyingpo} means
"heart" or "essence", okay. So if somebody saiz, "What do you study nowdays at
that underground caffeteria, you know, what you guys're doing down there?",
you know. Say, "Oh, we do {Drang nge lekshe nyingpo}. Say {drange nge}
[repeat], {lekshe} [repeat], {nyingpo} [repeat], {drang nge} [repeat], {lekshe}
[repeat], {nyingpo} [repeat]. "The essence of eloquence on the art of
interpretation", okay. "The essence of eloquence on the art of interpretation".
That's what we're studying. I mean anyone who does anything about [unclear]
"Oh, my god, are you all right" [unclear]. Who wrote it? [cut] {Je} [repeat],
{Tsongkapa} [repeat], his name is [unclear]. {Je} means "lord", like {dorje}, which
means lord of [unclear] and {Tsongkapa} is a great, the greatest tibetat monk and
thinker [unclear] and the teacher of the first Dalai Lama. This book is called "The
essence of his {lekshe}", okay. When
we say essence of well spoken stuff or something like that, we're talking about
his writings. How many pages did he write? Ten thousand pages, okay. In a
monastery you can...we often debate a single page for a month. It takes a
month sometimes to understand a single page, debating it almost all day, you
know. This guy wrote ten thousand pages of that in his life. People say he was
taking dictation [unclear] teacher. Other people say he was Manjushri, okay. I, i
don't know, i can't decide, i don't know but if you read this stuff it's [unclear],
okay. And this is suppose to be the {nyingpo} of all that stuff. This little book is
suppose to be the essence of everything he ever taught [unclear] the heart, okay.
I wanted to...first the structure of this book is that he goes to mind-only schools
idea of when the Buddha was meant what he said and when he didn't mean what
he said and than he goes thru the middle way schools idea how when the
Buddha meant what he said and when he didn't mean what he said, okay. So his
whole book is devided into two big pieces. So if you belong to the mind-only
school and you want to say, "Oh this is what the Buddha meant, that's not what
he meant", you go to which one? You go to that chapter spoken by the
bodhisattwa...requested by the bodhisattwa, okay. By the way the whole book
has a name and you schould know it. [cut] the chapter requested by the
bodhisattwa. Remember that the whole fight is going to start out when this
bodhisattwa say, you know, "We know you are not crazy so why did you say
two diffrent things", okay. That, that comes from a certain book, that's called ,
"The beggining of a chapter requested by a such and such bodhisattwa", okay.
That's where we take the question from but that's only a little piece of a much
bigger book and this is the whole book again. Say {dode} [repeat], {gongdrel}
[repeat], {dode} [repeat], {gongdrel} [repeat]. Very very famous. All of the
mind-only schools teachings come from {dode gongdrel}. So, you know if you
want to say, "I understand mind-only school" they gonna say, "Oh, you are very
familiar with {dode gongdrel} right". And you say, "Actually i never heard of
it" [laughter], okay. [Unclear] lots of people in America [unclear] figuratively but
they have some weirdest ideas about the mind-only school. The name mind-
only school does not mean what it saiz, it's figurative. They don't believe that
everything is one big green [unclear] or something, they don't think that. That's
figurative also but we have to talk about that. They don't think everything is the
mind. [Unclear]. {Dode} means "Sutras", meaning all the Sutras that Lord Buddha
taught, all those books, all those teachings that Lord Buddha taught. Specificaly
in the first and second turnings of the wheel where he seems to become
schizophrenic, right. First [unclear] he is like, "everything exist real" and the
second turning he is like, "nothing exist real", okay. So {dode} means "those
Sutras". {Gong}, {gong} means "what did he really had in mind", you know,
"what was his true intent", {gong} means that. {Drel} means "a commentary",
{dre} means "a commentary". So you can translate it as, as "The commentary on
the true intent of the Sutras". It's an explanation of what the Sutras really mean,
okay. Up to date you have hundrets and hundrets and hundrets of Sutras
taught. Remember Sutra is like brief [unclear] or a brief talk. I mean tonight's
lecture [unclear] the Buddha would be a Sutra, okay. And, and you have
hundrets of them going on before that and now you have a book called "The
commentary where [unclear] reveal the true intent of all these Sutras". Yeh, did
you have a question? [Student: What's the diffrence between what you're talking
about now and "The essence of eloquence on the art of interpretation"?] Oh,
okay. "Essence of eloquence on the art of interpretation" is a study done by Je
Tsongkapa two thousand years later, trying to figure out his book [laughs],
okay, okay. And, and he studied {drang nge} [unclear]
by Je Tsongkapa. He was the one who really, really opened it up. Je Tsongkapa
was disturbed by the question "how do you know when the Buddha was
speaking the truth or not", what are the rules, we better set some rules, you
know. Or people gonna wonder forever in, in suffering and die because they
can't understand emptiness. Because how do you know which...he taught it a
hundret diffrent ways, how do you know which one is the right one. If you
really study the Sutras it's very confusing, you know. If you go to ten Dharma
lectures in New York city it's very confusing [laughter], it's the same thing, you
know. [Student: So, is this the the Buddha's commentary or?] It's a good
question, i have been waiting for someone to ask this question. She said, "So is
that the Buddha's commentary". I mean when i used to try to find this book i
used look in all compandium which is a commentaries to the Buddha, you know,
i [unclear] couldn't find it in there, this is before computers, right. I had been
waiting for years, you know, and finely one day i came across [unclear] Sutras.
It's the Sutra in which The Buddha gives a commentary on his own Sutras
explaining what he really meant, okay. You can call it "The Sutra where the
Buddha explains the Sutra". And, and paradoxicaly it's called the commentary,
you know. It's not a, it's not a [unclear] it's not a classical commentary, it is a
Sutra. It's the Sutra where the Buddha said "This is what i really meant when i
taught these other Sutras", how is that. Yeh. [Student: [unclear]]. He said "root
text or [unclear]. Like if i have to do homework on this and [unclear] saiz "what's
the root text for studying {drang nge}" [laughter] i would put...if i want to cover
my basis right [laughter], would i put the mind-only schools root text or would i
put the middle way schools root text, because they are diffrent root texts. There
is diffrent rools in the two schools. Mind only school saiz "This is what he really
meant when he said that". And than the middle way school saiz "No eh, this is
what he really meant when he said it". "But i can prove it i've got this reason".
And i can prove it i've got this reason", you know. So what's [unclear] which
one? [Students: Both] Both? That's [unclear] do that. No, they are both base,
they are the base [unclear]. [Student: Lobsang Drakpa]. Yeh, use Lobsang
Drakpa, okay [laughter]. Especially if it saiz what his date is, you know.
[Unclear] answers two questions, okay. [Unclear], figuratively. Okay. So, so this
is the root text for who? [Students: Mind-only] Mind-only, yeh, mind-only. And
it includes that chapter where the bodhisattwa asked the question. Because that
bodhisattwa is, he is trying to exite Lord Buddha to give a mind-only answer,
you know, Lord Buddha [unclear], okay. He is gonna give the whole mind-only
answer. This bodhisattwa is [unclear] what did you mean. And that he is going
to give him an answer from the mind-only school. And that the whole place
where we're gonna to be, we are not gonna go to the other text [laughter] but
you better know it's name. And than we are done, we really are done. It's not
figurative, it's literar [laughter]. [cut] quiz just do this much, okay. Sometimes
[unclear]. [cut] {misepe} [repeat], {shupay} [repeat], {do} [repeat], {pakpa}
[repeat] , {lodru} [repeat], {misepe} [repeat], {shupay} [repeat], {do} [repeat].
{Pakpa} means "someone who has seen emptiness directly". In sanskrit is "arya".
{Lodru} means "wisdom". {Misepe} means "never ending". {Shupay} means
"requested by this guy, this bodhisattwa". {Do} means "Sutra", "Sutra". So we can
translate this line as a "A Sutra which was requested by the arya named Never
Ending Wisdom", okay. This is somebody's name. Sometimes they call this
Sutra "Never Ending Wisdom", okay. But i don't...i want you to know [unclear],
okay. This is the Sutra who uses to explain what the Buddha really meant?
[Student: Middle way.] Yeh, middle way, okay. We won't get to that, all right.
Because you already had Madhyamika, we'll touch on it but you already had it
pure [unclear], okay. And in a monastery we finished the [unclear] for that
second part, we covered the first part. Yeh. [Student: I just have a quick question
on...is this similar what [unclear] mean [unclear]] He asked, "Is this similar to
what Master Vasabandu had in [unclear] There are what we call two great
[unclear] or two great original thinkers on this planet. One is Negojena and one
is Asangha, Master [unclear] and Master Asangha. And Master Negojena is the
one who illusidated or reillusidated the middle way school in this planet. And
than Master Asangha is the one who illusidated or reillusidated the mindonly
school in this planet, okay. Yeh, Master Asangha is a half brother of Vasabandu.
And they collaborated well and they, they...Master Vasabandu did write two
diffrent sets of books. In one set of books he was Abhidharma, he was writing
from the Abhidharma viewpoint. By the way in those books he saiz, "I am just
reporting what those stupid guys say", okay. And he doesn't call them stupid.
And than...but he does beautiful, beautiful books about the mind-only school,
okay. [Unclear] and we will be studying some of his books in this class about,
about the mind-only system, okay. So, so we gonna get to the next class...by the
way i forgot there is no class tuesday, okay, so on thursday's class we'll get
into...what is the next logical thing that happen to be in a class, in a Sutra? What
happens to [unclear] Yeh, he needed Lord Buddha to answer, okay. This
bodhisattwa is like "Are you crazy, you know, first you say one thing and than
you say another", you know. And now we are gonna get Lord Buddha's
response, okay. We'll do a short prayer [cut]
What the Buddha Really Meant