ACI 18 (обзорный курс), Занятие 05 — стенограмма

Class Five
Geshe Michael Roach
Transcribed by Angie Overy




Okay, we’ll start.
My attendants forgot to bring my robes to the meeting I was in, so you get me as dressed
normal tonight. I think it’s good once in a while so that especially, like, people who watch
these classes by correspondence course in Iowa five years from now will see that. There’s
also a use for a bodhisattva I think to appear in different ways in different times. And I think,
like Khen Rinpoche, when I, he sent me to New York and he sent me to go to work. And he
said, you know, wear your hair longer, wear a suit, look normal on the outside and then run
the company as a Buddhist on the inside. And there’s a benefit to that sometimes.
So anyway, they forgot my robes. [laughter]
Tonight we start the study of {tsema}. [cut]
Say {tsema}[repeat] {tsema}[repeat]. The Geshe course and the studies in the monastery are
divided into five great subjects. We spend first twelve years on {..}, Abhyisamayamkara,
which is Perfection of Wisdom.            Then we do four years on Madhyamika Avatara,
Chandrakirti {uma la drupa}, which is Middle Way philosophy, emptiness.
Then we spend two years on {dzu}, which is Abhidharmakosha, Vaibashika system. Then we
spend two years on {dulwa}, Vinaya. And every winter for about four months we study
{tsema}.
The Sanskrit for {tsema} is Pramana. Pramana means, valid perception, a normal perception,
valid perception, okay.
You have them all day long, okay. All day long you have pramanas, okay. And, you know,
they’ve been translated as ‘valid cognisers’ and stuff like that and, you know, very, very,
sounds like, gee, I don’t know if I’ve ever had a valid cogniser.
But all it means is a normal perception, okay. And you have them all throughout the day
over and over again. Every minute you have like a few hundred valid perceptions, normal
perceptions, okay.
What’s not a {tsema}? What’s a non-{tsema}? What’s a non-pramana? What’s an example of
a non-pramana?
Non-pramana, the one I like to say the most, when I’d be driving in New Jersey down Fifth
Street and it’s dusk and it’s in the autumn. And these leaves get blown across the road and
you see a blur off your peripheral vision. And then you slam on the brakes because you
think it’s a squirrel. There’s lots of squirrels there.
 And then you see it’s just a leaf being. That moment of false perception is called {tsemin gyi
lo}. That’s a non-pramana, you see. And those don’t happen very often.
Another example would be, at work you are jealous of someone or you think someone is out
after you. And then you come into work and there’s something bad has happened. And
then you get the whole thing in your mind that this person has done something to you. That
they planned it, that they executed it and this problem is happening to you because of this
person. And then you find out they quit the company three days ago. They’re not even
there anymore. It’s just your, it’s just a non valid perception, you know, it’s just your
paranoia because you don’t like this person.
And those are two very common examples. You’re jealous of somebody so every move they
make, everything they do seems to have meaning. You give it meaning, wrong meaning,
you know, what I mean, and that’s not a pramana either. Okay.
But ninety-nine point nine-nine percent of your perceptions are pramanas. And you go
around all day having pramanas, okay.
Why is pramana important? Why do we study it for three, four months every year for
eighteen years, you se what I mean? What’s so important about it?
It’s the science of learning how you know something. How do you know something is true?
How do you decide if something is true or not? And in every religion you need to
determine what is pramana, you know, how do you decide if something is true or false.
What are the means at your disposal to decide whether something is true or false?
For that you need pramana. You have to study what are the different ways of perceiving
something, okay.
So, really, pramana is the study of how you see things, how you perceive things, how do
you confirm that something is true. Okay.
And that’s the study of pramana. And we do it, it’s a big deal in Tibetan monasteries. The
first class that a young monk ever takes at age thirteen, in philosophy, is how to debate, how
to reason, how to think. And you do it for two years with your house teacher and then
you’re allowed to go to the debate ground and start serious debating, logic. Okay.
In debate, you know, three, four, five hours a day, usually in the evening, every other day in
the morning for a couple more hours, you go to a special garden with a wall around it and
you sit on these beautiful flagstones.
And at night it’s just so pleasant. In India the stars are out. We didn’t used to have electricity
at night.
And you walk into this walled courtyard and there’ll be about three hundred people there.
And it’s like a high school dance. You walk around, you know, and you kind of, you go
like that and the guy goes, [laughter] you know what I mean. And you around and try to
catch somebody’s eye that you’d like to debate with.
And the first hour or hour and a half is open one on one debating, meaning, you just walk
around until, oftentimes you’re just milling around and you just bump into a guy, you know.
You just, you’re standing there looking at each other and you might not even know him and
you say, okay, you want to go at it, you know. He says, yeah.
So, one guy sits down, one guy stands up and you just start.
Usually they’re not in the same class as you. There’s about fifteen classes in the monastery
that you move up through. It’s like freshman, sophomore, junior, but they have their own
name. Like, those who get to wear the wool tunics, you know, that’s like year number
sixteen or something.
And then you start. And one guy stands up; one guy sits down. You get a rosary. Do you
have a rosary?
And you say, you go like this, you know, and you think of something real fast, okay. And
the other guy’s sitting down. I’ll just show you a little bit. I don’t want to disrupt you or
anything. [laughter]
Ready, Pelma? [laughs]
This is how it really goes. You go up and the first move is very respectful. {dhi chitar
chuchen}. And {dhi} there’s two interpretations of {dhi}. {dhi} means either {dhi} meaning
wisdom or knowledge in Sanskrit, {dhi}.
Some people say {dhi} means {di chitar chuchen}, what about this? In Tibetan {di} means
‘this’, you see.
{dhi chitar chuchen}. And then you say, {…}. Means, I guess that quotation at the beginning
of the pramana book, the logic book, that says people like me, if you’re not a person like me
you shouldn’t try to judge other people, doesn’t have any meaning at all.
{…} [laughter] {…}
It’s like, oh, you worthless thing, you know. Okay. [laughs] And it’s so fun. [laughter] It’s
like the most fun thing, [laughter] you know.
And you do that for five, six hours. Your hand starts to split, blood is spraying in his face,
you know. And it’s really fun.
And, you know, you’re a twenty year old guy and you’re celibate and, you know [laughter].
You’re like, and they’ve got these big muscles, you know and they love it. And it’s really
good for a monk, you know. It’s really, really good for energy.
And everything is from memory. You cannot take a book in the debate ground. You’d be
embarrassed forever, you know. Everything has to be, you have to memorise page after
page after page.
And then you start. And you make a very subtle wrong statement, you know, just a little bit
wrong.
And then they have to come back at you. And there’s just this, you learn confidence, you
know.
Guys, thirteen year old, fifteen year old guys go in there, you know, {..} [laughter]. And then
their teacher grabs them and takes them back and shows them how to, [laughter] you know.
It’s beautiful. And you can imagine three hundred guys, you know, a hundred and fifty
screaming guys. [laughter]
And then the guy is, like, {du, …}, you know, like, you idiot anyone can see that, you know.
No.
Yes.
No.
Yes.
Maybe.
No.
Yes.
And you got to be like that quick. And he’s throwing logic at you, you know, thing after
thing. And you go on for hours and hours.
It’s, like, unbelievable. By the end of the night you know what you’re studying perfectly.
And every morning you get about two or three hours of class and every night you’re
debating it. So then by the next day you’re loaded, you know, like you’ve already, you
know it backwards and forwards, okay.
And that’s the whole goal of, that custom hasn’t changed since the day of the Buddha.
In the Buddha’s time was very serious. If you lost the debate you had to join the other guy’s
religion. Okay.
If the Baptists and the Catholics had a debate and the king and his cabinet would watch and
they’d say we consider this guy has stopped speaking, you know. This guy has nowhere to
go and everyone in the whole courtyard can see it, you know. You don’t have to be a
Buddhist or a philosopher. This guy can’t say anything else. He’s checkmated. You have to
join the other religion.
And they would take off their robes and they would join the other religion, you know. The
stakes were very high in the old days.
And it was who could prove something, you see, how can you prove it.
It’s also very good if you’re going to be a teacher. You learn to take heat. You learn to be
under pressure. You learn to, you know, you learn to think ahead. You’re usually thinking
four, five moves ahead of the other guy. It’s like a chess game.
And there’s a flowchart. You’re at each of those five permutations and you’re ready any way
he goes, you know.
When you do your Geshe debate and your pre-Geshe debate you actually have to write out
the flowchart of every possible answer for, like, an hour.
And you go into the cornfield. You get a huge roll of rice paper and you start writing tiny
little flowcharts and then you pin it to your door and you memorise it for three, four months,
you know. Like, and that’s one of your Geshe debates, you know, and it’s really beautiful.
You hire a calligrapher to do the final thing, you know. And people keep them for the rest of
the lives. It’s like a college degree or something.
Anyway, pramana’s for that.
The classic use of pramana in the beginning {…..}. Buddha says, don’t judge other people if
you don’t really know what they’re thinking. If you can’t tread their minds then don’t judge
them.
And it refers to an ancient story of a bodhisattva who left the monastery during the day to go
teach lay people in the city. And then one other monk was jealous of him and started
rumours about his behaviour.
And then, and then, you know, other monks started to judge this person and then, finally,
they threw him out of the monastery or he had to leave the monastery.
And Lord Buddha is reciting this tale because he was the person who was the nasty monk
who judged the other monk. And because of that he lost his robes in five hundred lifetimes.
He was born as a dog for five hundred lifetimes.
And then he’s giving advice, you know. Learn pramana because if you learn pramana you
know what’s true and you know what’s not true. And especially you know that ypu can’t
judge other people ‘cos you can’t read anyone’s mind around you so just forget it. Take care
of your mental afflictions don’t try to manage other people’s mental afflictions.
There’s this whole art of managing other people’s bad deeds and mental afflictions, you
know. It’s like, I think the book is a good example. Would you go to somebody and say,
you know, I know your bad deeds better than you. Can I do your book for you today? You
know what I mean? [laughs] can I keep track of your bad deeds for you? I mean, you’d
never do that. You’d never say that but you do it all day long. You know what I mean.
You’re constantly judging other people. Constantly believing you that know what they think
or why they’re acting how they’re acting, even what they’re doing.
Especially as you practice more and more your whole perceptions change radically. If
Buddhist practice works then, for example, my perception of my reality is much different than
it was twenty-five years ago.
If Buddhist practice doesn’t work then I’m seeing the world the same way I did twenty-five
years ago, see what I mean.
Even if I’ve given it a little effort I’m seeing the world in a radically different way after
twenty-five years of Buddhist practice.
So how do you know how people are thinking or perceiving things or seeing things?
You can’t.
And the study of pramana is for that.
I want to talk a little bit about the logic side of pramana and then we’ll talk a little bit about
one of the most famous applications of pramana in perceiving emptiness, okay.
So, we’re talking about what makes, what makes a pramana. What are the kinds of
pramana?
Basically, two types of pramana, very simply. And we study hundreds and hundreds of
pages but I’m just shortening it like that, okay.
One, the things you see with your eyes, and ears and nose and tongue; direct perceptions.
Thoughts you have, directly, in your mind when you hear [unclear] talking in your mind.
You know what I mean.
When you hear your mind talking. Those are direct perceptions, okay. And those are
correct except for when the leaf is crossing the road or something like that.
Secondly, we have what we call deductive perceptions. Meaning, you know, can you see
this pen?
Yeah.
Did you hear anything drop behind me?
No. I hope not.
What do I have behind my back?
A pen, okay.
Is that a pramana? Is your perception of that pen a pramana?
We say, yes, deductive perception, okay.
So in Buddhism, what you have to appreciate in Buddhism, is that seeing it with your eyes
and seeing it with your mind, are equally valid, equally valid, okay.
And it’s as good as seeing it with your eyes.
And there are many spiritual truths, there are many kinds of reality that you cannot see right
now. You can only figure them out. Okay.
You can figure out that they’re there. Later, you can see them directly. But, hey, don’t deny
yourself the benefits of understanding that it’s there before you see it directly.
It’s like certain types of physics or astronomy where you can’t see the object itself but you see
its traces so you know it’s there. It’s the same thing.
It’s the study of perceiving objects with reasoning, okay. And you have to realise that in
Buddhism that counts as good as your eyes, okay.
If you see emptiness with your reasoning it’s as good as your eyes.
What’s the pint of all this, you see?
It’ll be a long time before you can see, if you are whom you seem to be and I don’t know,
it’ll be a long time before you can see emptiness or before you can, especially, see how
karma works, directly, okay.
But if you figure out that karma makes sense, then you can do this thing of, the most difficult
thing for a Buddhist to do, knowing that karma is true.
Like, if your boss says will you go out and lie to this supplier so that I can save a thousand
dollars on the next bill, tell him this diamond is only worth so and so. And if it works, okay,
we made a thousand bucks. I might even give you a dollar at your Christmas bonus, you
know. But the company will make more money and if it doesn’t work we’ll just pay him
what it’s worth, so it’s okay.
So he tells you to lie. You go out. You lie. And it works. And he sells the thing to you for
a thousand dollars under value, okay.
Did it work? See, that’s the big thing in Buddhism. Did it really work? You know,
according to Buddhism, it’s impossible for a lie to produce a thousand dollars.
According to Buddhism the thousand dollars was created because you were generous in the
past and the lie is gonna result in something like nobody believing you in the future.
And the fact that the lie came just before the thousand dollars, there’s no connection at all; it’s
a total illusion, see what I mean.
You can understand that intellectually. At a certain point in your Buddhist practice you can
live on that basis, you see what I mean. You can refuse to do negative actions because you
know they can’t help.
Even if they seem to help they don’t help, you see what I mean. By the way, I’m not trying
to prove that tonight, but what’s the proof anyway that lies don’t produce profits?
They don’t always work, you see. They don’t always work.
Are you telling me that generosity always works?
Yeah. Yeah. Every time you’re generous to someone you get hundreds of times more back.
Period. And it’s the only thing that works.
And if you happen to get more money right after you told a lie, it’s just happening next to
each other and there’s no cause and effect there, okay.
Now, once you’ve figured it out through hundreds of hours of Buddhist classes that this is
probably correct, you know, once you’re satisfied that this is correct, you’ve had a deductive
pramana, a deductive perception of the truth of this thing. And then you start living by it
even before you can directly see the future or your future lives. You start living by it now.
That’s the use of pramana; that’s the use of deduction, you see what I mean.
You start living a totally pure life now because you’re convinced by deduction that it works
but you can’t perceive it, you know.
I can’t see that if I give this pen away to Pelma, I gave it to her last class, I still didn’t have
any pens this week, you know. I don’t believe it, you know, or something like that.
By deduction I believe it, you see. And the reason to study deduction in Buddhism, the
reason to study logic, is for that, okay.
It’s to get you acting on that basis and getting yourself into a tantric paradise because you’ve
reasoned it out that this is correct before you can see directly that money leads to money and
bad deeds lead to bad results, you know. On deduction you figured it out that it’s probably
true and act on that, you see what I mean.
That’s the great benefit.       And we’re gonna talk about perceiving emptiness through
deduction. You have to see it first by reasoning and then later you have this immense twenty
minutes that stops your suffering forever, you know.
You become an enlightened being because of that twenty minutes, you see what I mean.
First you have to see it with reasoning, deduction. And then, later, you see it directly. But
you have to go through this process. So you need pramana.
Yeah. [student]
Oh, those are kinds of pramana, yeah. Those are kind of deductions. There’s three kinds of
deduction and this is a whole lifetime of study. You could spend a lifetime on it, okay.
And it’s beautiful. I only put one course in the syllabus for logic ‘cos I was afraid most
people wouldn’t like it. But I think in Arizona, after three years, we’ll get really serious about
it.
We’ll have a English debating and go over the real, the real course in logic would take you
five or six years to finish, you know what I mean.
And it’s beautiful and it’s intense and it’s, you know, it’s just incredible, okay.
I’m gonna give you a taste of it, okay. Ready?
It’s something that I was not attracted to and I did not like and I thought was worthless.
And, you know, Khen Rinpoche kindly convinced me to study it and now it’s like the most
precious thing.
Gyaltseb Je, I believe it was, said that the kindest think that Je Tsongkapa ever did for him
was to teach him logic.
[cut]
Say {tak si kuppa}[repeat]. It’s like a mantra in the debate ground, {tak si kuppa tak kyi
tsennyi yinpa tel}. Okay. {tak si kuppa} means, anything which is put forth as a reason;
anything which is posited by the opponent as a reason is a reason, okay.
The sky is blue because potatoes are twenty feet high.
What’s the {tak}? What’s the reason?
Potatoes are twenty feet high.
Is it a reason?
Yes.
Why? It’s false.
It doesn’t matter. {tak si kuppa tak kyi tsennyi}, anything that you put forward as the reason is
the reason, okay.
I didn’t say ‘good reason’ did I? Okay. {…} means, it doesn’t matter if the thing exists or not,
everything is a reason. Everything you can choose is a reason, okay. Choose anything.
Because rabbit’s horns are thirteen inches long except in the winter, okay, is a reason.
Everything is a reason {..} anything existing or not existing can be used as a reason. Because
somebody can say my reason for saying this is that rabbits have horns that are thirteen inches
long. And that’s enough to be a reason.
That’s all you need to be a reason, okay. I didn’t say ‘good reason’, okay.
Maybe we should go onto good reason. Okay.
[cut]
Say { tsul sum}[repeat] {yinpa}[repeat] {tak yangdak}[repeat], okay. {tsul sum} means, the three
relationships; the three necessary relationships, okay. {tsul} means, relationship here, {sum}
means three, {yinpa} means that reason with which the three relationships hold in which they
are true, okay. That reason in which the three relationships hold is the definition of {tak
yangdak}. {tak yangdak} means correct reason, okay, correct reason.
So a correct reason always has, enjoys three relationships with other parts of your statement
and we’re gonna go through them now. Because I would be embarrassed if somebody said,
oh, this is a Geshe that graduated from ACI but they don’t know {tsul sum}, okay.
Rinpoche had a sweet student from Washington DC named Susan Manheim. He christened
her ‘tsul sum’ ‘cos he heard ‘Susan’ as ‘tsul sum’. So we call McKenna {tsul sum}, that’s why
McKenna, okay. Where are you? [laughter] Okay. So, don’t worry about it. That’s just a
joke, okay. [laughs]
Okay, I’m gonna give you the three relationships. It takes in the monastery maybe two
months to thrash out these three, right. We’ll do it. [cut]
{… tsennyi}, you know. I haven’t done it for like six, seven years, but it’s like a mantra,
okay. {chok chu} means the relationship between the reason and the subject holds, okay.
So, I’ll tell you what the reason and the subject is.
The classical argument for all logic is {dra …} which means, take sounds, it’s a changing
thing, because it’s made. You can say, it’s a made thing.
When they teach logic to baby monks it’s always {dra …}, you know, and they go around,
you know. They’re really good at all the hand stuff and then they don’t remember what to
say sometimes. [laughter] [laughs]
But it’s really cute to see, like, two seven-year old monks, you know, going at it. Anyway.
This is a response to non-Buddhist schools of ancient India that said that OM was eternal and
that OM didn’t change. You see what I mean.
But the sound OM lasted forever and didn’t change. Okay. Which, according to Buddhism,
is silly because you have to breathe to say it so it changes. You see what I mean?
Anything that has a cause changes which is a long story. I’m not going to get into it now.
But {chok chu} means that the subject, which in this case is sound, and the reason, which in
this case is a made thing, do have a relationship. Sound is a made thing. Okay.
This is a, so far, this is a good logical statement to give to someone as a proof for something
because the subject and the reason have a relationship.
The reason applies to the subject, okay. It’s true that sound is a made thing. That’s {chok
chu}, okay.
So you can define {chok chu} as the relationship between the subject and the reason, okay. It
holds.
The first proof, the first test of a good proof holds, which is that sound is a made thing, okay.
So the first one is okay. We’re one third of the way of proving this logical statement.
Okay, number two. The first {tsul} holds. [cut]
Say {je kyap}[repeat], {je kyap} literally means ‘reverse necessity’, okay. Reverse necessity,
wow. And by the way, logic is a whole separate language in Tibetan.
There’s probably five hundred unique words in the study of logic and, you know, they’re
very, very, you need a good teacher and you need to study it for a long time.
What does ‘reverse necessity’ mean?
It’s very simple. If something is a made thing it must be a changing thing. You see, you’re
just going backwards in the proof.
Now I’m going to use this mark, okay. If something is a made thing it must be a changing
thing. Is that true? If something has been created by causes must it be changing all the time?
Yeah, because the cause has a certain energy that it imparts to the result and the result varies
as the cause has put energy into it, you see. You hit the white ball with pool cue and it hits
the eight ball and then the energy is transferred to that. And because the energy of the white
ball is not infinite what happens to the black ball?
Hopefully it stops short of the pocket. You see what I mean. The energy wears out.
Everything’s like that. Everything’s like that. All caused things are like that.
The cause imparts a certain energy to the result and because the cause’s energy is finite,
sooner or later, the result slows down. And it slows down incrementally all the time. So it’s
always changing.
Anything which has ever been produced is necessarily changing all the time ‘cos its energy is
getting lost. You know that if you’re over forty, okay. Like, you’re losing your energy ‘cos
the cause is wearing out.
What’s the cause?
Your karma; your perception of health and vitality is wearing out. Okay.
So, anything that was ever made is always changing. That’s the {je kyap}.
So, relationship number two holds. {tsul sum} number two holds, okay. Necessity means,
‘must be’, okay.
If it’s number three it must be number two. [cut]
Sorry. [student] Ah, {drupte chu}. [laughs] The thing to be proven. The quality to be
proven, okay. The changing thing part.
Say {dokyap}[repeat]; {do kyap} means, if something’s not number two it can’t be number
three. And it’s just another test of veracity. It’s another truth test. If something cannot be
number two, if something is not number two it cannot be number three. Which is just to say,
if something is not a changing thing it cannot be a made thing. Okay. If it weren’t changing
it couldn’t be made.
If you really think about {je kyap} and {do kyap}, if {je kyap} holds for something {do kyap}
has to hold. And there’s some exotic exceptions but anyway it’s like a confirmation step. It’s
a verification step. okay.
If these three relationships hold, {chok chu} being, one is three, {je kyap} being, if something
is two, I’m sorry, if something is three must be what? Two. And then, {do kyap} if
something is not two cannot be three, okay.
If you’ve tested a statement and if those three relationships hold true then the statement must
be true, okay. And that’s the test of a correct reason.
So, we’ve gone from reason, which was what? Defined as what?
Anything you want to say as a reason, you know.
I don’t like you because, you know, ice cream is too sweet, you know. It’s a reason.
Doe sit have the three {tsuls}?
Is ice cream sweet?
Yes.
Is something being sweet the reason not to like somebody?
No.
If you like somebody are they always not sweet?
No.
So it’s a bad reason?
Right. Okay. That’s all. And these are the three tests of a good reason.
Now I’ll tell you the neat punch line and then we’ll go to an actual thing. A good opponent,
a worthy opponent, a proper opponent in a debate must already accept that it has all three.
Okay. Not allowed to give an argument to somebody unless they already accept all three.
Okay.
You mean I can’t give this argument sound is a changing thing because it’s a made thing to
anybody unless they have already seen that the three parts are true?
Right.
What do they have to see?
Sound is made thing. If something is made it has to be changing. If it’s not changing it can’t
be made.
And if he doesn’t say, I agree, I agree, I agree, to all three, you have given him a bad reason.
It’s very beautiful.
In Buddhist logic if your opponent doesn’t already accept the truth of all three parts you’ve
given him a false reason.
You see, the test of falsity is not universally true or false. The test of falsity is have you chosen
the right reason to give to this opponent, okay.
It’s very beautiful.
Why do we have to talk about this? What’s the point? You want me to put you asleep with
the other details of logic, you know. [laughs] We can go on. And, by the way, the book is
that thick. I just finished, like, eighty more pages of the readings, you know, ‘cos I wanted to
give you all the basics of logic in one notebook, okay.
But the point is, in America you are going to be teachers. Whether it’s at your job, whether
it’s with people you talk with, whether it’s your family, whether it’s with a small group of
people in the future, whether it’s five hundred people in a hall somewhere in the future, you
guys are gonna be the teachers in America.
You are the lineage holders. It’s your job.
People ask me is it okay to teach. I’m like, no, it’s not okay not to teach. Okay. ‘Cos I’m,
that’s the way it works. You pass on the lineage, okay.
The interesting thing is that more than other people in history you will be called upon to
prove what you believe, you know.
People will challenge you all the way from the beginning of the Lam Rim up to the highest
tantric practices. People will question you. And they do.
Americans are, well- educated Americans are sceptical. Americans have mostly rejected
whatever religions they grew up with. And they are not gonna believe it unless you can
prove it. And you have to follow this, you have to know the rules of proving something and
you have to honour them or you’re not a good Buddhist teacher. You see what I mean.
What it means on the bottom line is you can only give someone an argument that they
already accept but they haven’t figured it out. Okay. That’s the bottom line.
That’s what I’m trying to say, you see?
You say, do you think that?
They say, yeah.
Do you think that?
Yeah, yeah, I believe that.
So, necessarily, you believe that?
Oh, god, I never thought of that. I guess I do.
You see what I mean. Very good with like creator god, you know.
You don’t go up to somebody and say, do you believe god made the world?
They say, yeah,you know.
You say, well they didn’t, you know. [laughter] And you know, that’s not a Buddhist debate,
okay.
You say something like, if you could make anything you wanted, would you make it nice?
If you could make a person would you make him nice or would you make him with AIDS,
you know?
They say, you know I’m not crazy, I’d make him nice, you know.
And then you’d say, well, you know, do normal people have AIDS?
And they say, yeah.
So, they weren’t made by a nice person, right?
I never thought of that.
You see what I mean?
They say, okay so you can agree with me [unclear] making people who have AIDS. It’s not
like there’s this sadistic guy with this long white beard who says, oh, half the people should
have AIDS, two month old kids should inherit AIDS from their parents, you know.
But they just never thought of it that way. You see what I mean. So the trick is to provide
the same information that they already know in a different package, so when you lower the
boom, they have to go, oh yeah, I guess that’s right. You see what I mean. But you set it up,
okay, as a logical statement. You get them to agree to the three parts and then you sit back
and let them have their conclusion, you know.
And you don’t sit there and argue. If you’re arguing you’ve gone too many steps ahead. If
you’re in an argument with another person to try to convince them of something, if it gets to
an argument, you’ve broken the rules of Buddhist logic already, okay.
What I’m trying to say is you just cruise along on what they believe point after point after
point. And you lead them to the conclusion and then you just step back, you know. And
then if they say no, no, you know, then you say {…}, well I’m not gonna debate with crazy
people, okay. [laughs]
No, I mean, you take them up to the point where you say, do you believe this?
Yeah.
Do you believe that?
Yeah.
Well, don’t you think that?
You know, and it’s at that point they say I still don’t believe that, you know. And then you
say, okay, I’ll see you later. Okay. Like that.
Why are you trying to convince them, okay?
It’s not that Buddhist church is going to get more contributions than other people. Because
once you convince them of a Buddhist lifestyle they don’t have any money anyway, okay.
[laughs] Okay. It’s not like that.
It’s that if you can get them to understand emptiness and karma they can reach a tantric
paradise in this lifetime. And that’s all.
You’re just trying to give them something that will save their lives in a very non-missionary,
I’m talking someone who’s willing to engage with you on a happy, you know, not talking
going to work and trying to, you know, fight with people like that.
Buddhists presentation is moving along at a very acceptable ides, acceptable idea, acceptable
idea, acceptable idea and then, boom, you know what, then you must have to accept that.
Oh boy. I guess so. You see what I mean? And then you take them through a bunch of
times like that.
I had a Baptist, a life long Baptist, a life long Catholic came up to my retreat cabin in Flagstaff
one time, childhood friend. And after three days of, we hadn’t seen each other since third
grade or something. I mean, we met in third grade. We hadn’t seen each other since twelfth
grade. And then after three days they were both, like, yeah, I can accept everything you say.
No problem. I believe in past, future lives. I believe in karma. I believe in emptiness. I’ll
keep that Buddhist vows and I’ll stay a Catholic and a Baptist, you know. That’s cool. Like
that.
Sarge, I got one more thing, okay. Alright.
The application is in your life. You will be called upon from hour to hour to help people.
Help that at a certain rate of speed at which you never use anything that they haven’t already
accepted to help show them.
All you’re doing is just showing them what they already have to, would have accepted if
they thought about it. You see what I mean?
That’s the art of Buddhist logic, okay.
One more thing. [cut]
Say {chi}[repeat] {jedrak}[repeat]. There’s this thing called {dura}. {Dura}is somebody went
through the ancient books on logic and pramana and they collected together all the neat little
arguments and they made a book called {dura}. {Dura} is baby logic. Every young monk
does it for three, four years. You do it with your house teacher. House teacher’s like your
den mother. Your parents come, they drop you off at the monastery. You get a house
teacher, you know. They teach you how to eat. They teach you how to put your robes on.
They teach you stuff like that.
Then they teach you {dura}, you know, which is like collected topics of logic. And they start
you on the baby stuff, you know. This is blue. This is yellow. If something’s blue, all blue,
it can’t be yellow. Blue and yellow are contradictory. That’s what contradiction means.
And then you teach them from that, at age, like, thirteen they start. And then, you know,
later the get to do formal logic and after that they get to do perceptual theory and then they’re
about sixteen, seventeen they start doing that.
So it’s common in the monastery, in monastic circles, to say what are you working on now
days.
And someone will say, {dura}.
And they say, oh boy, back to thirteen-year old stuff, you know what I mean.
I had a lama, a Mongolian lama, Geshe {..}. He was eighty something. He had tuberculosis.
One lung was cut out. He was dying in Howell, in the back where lama lives now. And
he’s on his deathbed and he’s propped up on the pillows and he’s reading {dura}. He’s
reading elementary logic and perceptual theory.
I’m, like, Geshe la, are you sure you don’t want to do some tantric ritual or anything? And
he’s like, are you kidding? {Dura’s} the most important thing in the world, you know.
And I’m like, why, you know.
And he says, oh man, {dura} you can see emptiness if you know {dura}. You know, I want to
set up my next life. You know, I’m setting up my next life, you know. And he gave me that
book. I have it. It’s at Michael [unclear] house I think.
He gave me his logic book and he died like that, you know, studying {dura}.
This is really the key for seeing emptiness, {chi jedrak}. This is one of the {dura} topics, okay.
{chi} means, we’re going to call it ‘quality’ and {jedrak} means ‘characteristic’.
[cut]
And if you really want to see emptiness directly, twenty minutes in which you see your
enlightenment, you see your future lives, you never need another thing in your whole life.
Nothing. Your life is finished. Your enlightenment is certain. You know it. You see it.
Nobody in the world can really give you a problem. You see what I mean. Anything can
happen. Anyone can think anything of you. But you know what you saw and you saw it
and you’re on your way. And you know it.
You can do it if you understand {chi jedrak}, okay. You have to understand {chi jedrak}.
So, quality, you can say, “car-ness”; the quality called “car”, car with quotation marks.
And, very importantly, you have to write this sentence, okay: thing which is characteristic of
“car-ness”, sorry [laughter] of “cars” [cut] which equals ‘a car’, for example, a Chevy.
My father hated Fords for some reason and everything had to be a Chevy. It was a big thing
when I was a kid, you know. I don’t know why [laughs] okay. Okay.
So, there’s this quality called “car-ness” or “car” and there are things in the world which are
typical of that or characteristic of that. And that’s what I mean when I say, ‘characteristic’,
and don’t forget it.
It’s one of the most important things I can ever teach you.
There’s a thing about this subject. Like so many things in Buddhism you cannot understand
what I’m about to say unless you have {kelwa}. Say {kelwa}[repeat]; {kelwa} means ‘virtue
power’ in your heart from helping other people, from serving your lama, from thinking kind
thoughts, from doing good day after day, year after year. You collect this thing called
{kelwa}.
If you have {kelwa} you get it. If you don’t have {kelwa} you don’t get it. And there’s no
other way to get it, okay. And it goes all the way up to tantra.
You can stand there and tell somebody, look, look, this is a deity. I’m telling you this is a
deity. And they look, you know, and they say, looks like a normal schmuck to me, you
know. They don’t have {kelwa}, you see. Even if they thought it was polite to agree with
you they don’t see it. They don’t have {kelwa}. You see what I mean?
And it causes a lot of problems in the world, you know. You go around saying things to
people without {kelwa} and they’re, like, oh you’re crazy or you’re dirty or mad or you’re
something because they don’t have {kelwa}, you see what I mean. You got to have {kelwa}
to see this.
You have to have {kelwa} to see emptiness.
Rinpoche, before he went into Madhyamika class and traditionally in Sera Me, they went off
for six months or a year or meditation to recite mantras or to do something to get good
karma. Help the poor, raise money for the poor, stuff like that and then they were allowed to
enter madhyamika class ‘cos you got to have {kelwa}, okay.
So here it goes. If it seems irrelevant then go and get some more {kelwa}, alright. [laughs]
[laughter]
If you really understood it you would see emptiness directly. It goes like this. You
understand subtle impermanence directly. You understand {chi jedrak} directly. Then you
see dependent origination. And then, that same day, you see emptiness directly. Period.
Okay.
You can’t do it without {kelwa}. You’ve got to have {kelwa}, okay.
So, there’s a thing called {chi}, which is, “car-ness” or I’ll just say it, ready?
“Car”.
 Okay. Remember people like that? It’s quote “car”, the idea “car”, the concept “car”, the
thing you see in your mind when you close your eyes “car”, when you hear the word “car”;
“car-ness”, okay, “car-ity”.
It’s what allows you to recognise a thing as a car. You go out on the street, you look at this
shape and this circles and you think, oh, it’s a car.
And the pramana schools were obsessed with this. How do people know it’s an ox when
they look at those four sticks and this barrel? What is it, you know?
What makes people understand that? How come they see that, its “ox-ness”? Get it?
You know, you make something in your mind called “ox-ness”. There’s something in your
mind that says “ox-ness”, you know.
There’s an idea of “ox-ness”. There’s a quality of “ox-ness”.
And when you see this thing you say, oh, that’s an ox. Okay. And that’s {jedrak}.
A car. A car and “car” are different, right?
A car and “car” are different, okay. A car is characteristic of the quality “car-ness”.
A car is characteristic of “car”, okay.
So you got to sit there and practise it. You got to think about it. It’s not something I can
explain any further - especially with him waving his arms, okay.
Which means, no, from then on its {kelwa}. You go to meditate on it. You got to think.
Within this single page is contained the key to see emptiness directly and be out of here. You
just have to cook it, okay. You have to meditate on it and you have to collect some good
karma.
Go do some {kelwa}. Help somebody, do anything, okay, heavy-duty karma and then sit
there and worry about this thing.
My god, he said this was important somehow. I don’t get it, you know.
It’s absolutely, you will see emptiness a few days after you really get this page, okay.
You have to think about it, okay.
You have a question. [student]
You can say archetype or whatever. [student]
Oh, I think everybody will have a different idea about it but herein lies the key.
It is the most precious teaching on logic. You have to figure it out. I can’t do anything else
than that.
Yeah. [student]
[laughs] You guys got to debate that, okay. [laughs]
Alright, take a break and we’ll do some more logic next time. Okay.
[end side A]
[side B]
[student] [unclear] [student: on Mongolia]
So that’s another thing you can do during the three years. And I think it’s one of the four
pillars of Tibetan Buddhism, was it, meditation, retreat, study, I’m sorry, meditation and
retreat, daily practice, study and then serve somebody. Help ‘somebody, you see what I
mean.
I want to thank Thomas especially. He didn’t know what he was getting into. [laughter] He
broke his leg just before he got on the plane.               He came anyway, on crutches.
[acknowledgement / discussion]
We’ll do a prayer.
[prayer: short mandala]
[prayer: dedication]
The Asian Classics Institute
Course XVIII: Great Ideas of Buddhism