ACI 18 (обзорный курс), Занятие 09 — стенограмма

Class Nine
Geshe Michael Roach
Transcribed by Angie Overy




[prayer: short mandala]
[prayer: refuge and bodhichitta]



[cut]
Okay, we’ll start.
[acknowledgements / announcements]
We are starting off on the last formal ACI course that there was. There was fifteen, okay.
And that was called “What the Buddha Really meant”, okay.
And in Tibetan, that’s called {tragne}. [cut]
Say {tragne} [repeat], {tragne} [tragne]. {tragne} is a very, very important subject. I think in
every religion, okay. I think it is the most important question in almost any religion.
And it’s the question of, when is the founder of the religion speaking literally, and when
were they speaking figuratively see what I mean?
Like, Lord Buddha, there’s a famous quotation by Lord Buddha, says ‘kill your father, kill
your mother’. Are we to take that literally [laughs] or figuratively you see what I mean?
And, obviously, you’re meant to take it figuratively. It means if you are not able to practice
well in the home atmosphere then leave it and get yourself to a monastery or go to another
place where you can study seriously. But that’s {tragne} is obviously important, you know.
If you didn’t have the study of {tragne} then people would go around killing their parents,
which is one of the five great bad deeds, okay.
So, I think in every religion {tragne} is really important. The beauty, I think, of Buddhism as
it’s been passed down to us through our lineage is that it’s a whole subject [sneezes],that was
literal [laughter]. It’s a whole subject of study. Like, there are rules set forth or there are
guidelines on how to interpret the Buddha, okay.
When was the Buddha speaking literally? When did the Buddha mean what he said and
when did the Buddha not mean what he said? Who gets to decide how do you decide? And
it’s extremely important in all kinds, in every religion, because of corruption, you know.
Like, the founder or the prophet’s words can be taken any way that people want to take them
to prove that it’s okay to do what they want to do you see what I mean.
Benjamin Franklin was a printer. He used these lead rods to keep the type jammed together
in the vices while they’re printing newspapers for [unclear] Almanac and things like that.
And he once decided to become vegetarian. He has an extraordinary life story. He kept a
book by the way, a very beautiful book of his personal virtues.
And then he got on a ship to go to England and off of Newfoundland they were what do you
call it?
Becalmed, or something like that, no wind. And there wasn’t anything to do so people
started fishing, you know, and they started pulling up these fish.
And, you know, he was a glutton basically and he really liked to eat. And he’s watching
them pull up these fish and then more and more fish coming up.
And they start making little fires on bricks on the deck and cooking the fish and he’s getting
really hungry and he really wants to eat them but he decided he’d be vegetarian.
Then he’s watching them clean the fish and they cut up the fish and these little fish come out.
So he said, it’s logical then, you know, the big fish eat the little fish so it’s okay for me to eat
the big fish.
And he started eating and he stuffed himself with fish. And then, finally, at the end he
realised it was just his desire that made him break the rules of logic you see what I mean or
misuse them.
He said it was like bending lead rules anyway you wanted to when you wanted to.
And so, there’s this tendency for people to take the Dharma and bend it to their own personal
desire you know what I mean?
And your personal afflictions that you came to Buddhism with you bend and twist the rules
of Buddhism so it fits what you want to do see what I mean. And pretty much you often see
people three years after their conversion to Tibetan Buddhism doing the same things they did
before but now they have proof of why it’s okay you know what I mean.
And that’s why you have to study {tragne}. {tragne} is really important for deciding what did
the Buddha really mean in each case, okay.
We study this subject in the monastery. We do, the classical course is twelve years of
‘Perfection of Wisdom’ and then following that is four years of Madhyamika, Middle Way
and in between there we study {tragne} for maybe six months to a year, okay.
And it’s a really beautiful thing.
We study the text by Je Tsongkapa. It’s called {lekshe nyingpo}. [cut]
And Je Tsongkapa’s dates you know, right.
{lekshe} means ‘eloquence’, well-spoken. Often in means, morally well spoken, but we’ll call
it eloquence. {nyingpo}means, ‘essence’, the essence of eloquence, okay.
And in this book Je Tsongkapa, the first half is basically devoted to the ideas of the Mind
Only School on emptiness. And then the second half of the book is devoted to the ideas of
the Middle Way school on emptiness.
So, basically, he’s presenting a punch-out, a big fight, between the Mind Only school and the
two halves of the Middle Way school on the subject of guess what?
What the Buddha meant when he talked about what subject though?
Emptiness. Okay.
So it’s really cool. The whole book is, you know, the Buddha taught emptiness basically six
different ways. Five of them are wrong, okay.
So why, you know, did Lord Buddha teach it five ways wrong and then finally get to the
right way? And who’s to say which is the right way? Okay.
How do you know what’s the right way?
For example, when he taught the Mind Only version of emptiness he taught it and then he
criticised the Middle Way version of emptiness taught by whom?
Himself. [laughs] Okay.
And he said, this time I’m really telling the truth, okay. I was wrong when I taught
emptiness the Middle Way way, you know, now I’ll tell you the truth. I was just kidding,
you know, that’s a nihilistic way to look at things. That kind of emptiness is too freaky. It’s
not like that at all. It’s much, much less than that.
It’s much, much easier than that. And he taught it in a much mellower form, okay.
Actually, as you know, the ultimate version is Middle Way, which is also accepted by tantric
schools, okay, it’s the whole basis for tantra.
It is the highest way.
But, when Lord Buddha taught the Mind Only school he not only taught it differently but in
the middle of his explanation he said, oh and by the way, that thing I said in the Middle Way
school was wrong and I didn’t mean it, okay.
Later, he said the opposite. He said, I did mean it when I taught it that way, okay.
What’s that tell you about how to interpret Lord Buddha?
What’s that tell you about the rules for interpreting Lord Buddha?
Can you take his own statements on interpretation to be literal?
Now, no. And that’s a problem you see. Then it gets very difficult.
Okay, get this. When Lord Buddha discusses how to judge whether he was being serious or
not you can’t take him seriously. How’s that? You see what I mean?
When Lord Buddha set forth his opinion on what he wanted us to take literally and
figuratively he was being?
Figurative.
He didn’t even mean that, okay. So Je Tsongkapa in his opening line of his book says we
have a problem here you see what I mean.
We’re trying to decide what the Buddha said that he really meant and what the Buddha said
that he didn’t really mean but when he said what he really meant, when he told us how to
decide what he really meant and what he didn’t really mean, he didn’t really mean it. Okay.
So, now what do you do you see what I mean? He says you’re stuck. You can’t even trust it
when the Buddha said that’s what I really meant and I was kidding all the other times
because he said that in the third turning of the Wheel when he was teaching Mind Only
school, okay.
So, now, everything’s out the window.
So Je Tsongkapa, I mean, this is the most beautiful and important part of this teaching, this
final teaching okay, which is today and next Tuesday I think. Okay.
The conclusion that Je Tsongkapa draws in the first few pages is very earthshaking.
He says you can’t even trust the word of the Buddha when the Buddha is saying that’s what I
really meant, okay, because he didn’t really mean it.
So, so guess what you have to trust?
Your own reasoning. Okay. Your own reasoning.
This is very profound. This is something amazing. What you have is the most important
Tibetan Buddhist who ever lived is saying, you don’t accept the Buddha’s words you accept
what’s logical to you that the Buddha said. Basically, that’s what he’s saying.
You don’t accept what the Buddha said unless it makes sense to you.
That’s very earthshaking.
What makes sense to a normal samsaric being is more valid than what an enlightened being
said he really means.
This is getting very heavy. Get it?
Us little schmucks, what we think makes sense, is more important and has more validity than
what the Buddha said, okay. And especially even when the Buddha said that’s what I meant
really, okay.
And the Buddha himself is adamant about this point. And I’m going to give you, this is
called ‘the three tests of a Dharma’, okay.
Lord Buddha is saying, I’m going to give you three tests for Dharma to check whether a
teaching is true or not. And, if anything I ever said doesn’t fit that reject it, okay.
And that’s one of the most attractive things to me about Buddhism is that the founder of
Buddhism gets up in front of all the Buddhists of the world and says, you can’t believe
everything I say. You have to check it. And if you can’t confirm it and you can’t find that
it’s logical according to these three tests including your own experience then don’t accept it.
Don’t do it.
I think that everybody who’s in this room now is here because they did that to the religion
they were in before you see what I mean.
Each person who is sitting here applied certain tests of personal experience and logic to
whatever beliefs they grew up with and you’re here because you questioned them you see
what I mean.
And so, in a way, you’re already {tragne}scholars. You’re already practitioners of {tragne}.
You’re here because you applied certain tests of logic or common sense or what makes sense
to you, the beliefs that you grew up with and you said, no it’s not enough. And that’s why
you’re here you see what I mean.
You found some fault with them. You didn’t just take the authority of someone who said,
oh, it’s like that.
So these are called the three tests.
The Buddha said if a scripture or a teaching or a worldview or an opinion in the world
doesn’t fit these three tests then reject it. Even if I said it. Okay.
Here they are.
[cut]
Say {jepa sum}[repeat]. Lord Buddha said if you find a piece of, somebody’s trying to sell you
a piece of metal as gold. You know, you grew up in America or some country like that and
we have all these standards. But, in ancient India and the whole rest of history, if some one
came up to you with a yellow hunk of something and said that’s gold, it’s a problem you see
what I mean.
You have to test it. You have to check it. You know, there is no standard. There is no king.
There is no, you know, institute on national standards or something.
Somebody is offering to trade your cornfield for this little piece of metal, yellow metal and
you have to figure out whether it’s gold or not.
I mean, in the old days this was something important. You could trade your whole assets,
your whole estate for these hunks of yellow metal. They could turn out to be useless you see
what I mean.
Everybody has to know how to check gold in ancient times. This is important, right.
So he says, you check gold with three tests. You cut it. You check it out. You see if there’s
lead on the inside.
You melt it to see if it works right.
And you use a certain kind of file. In the gold business we still do that. There’s a special file
and it tells you what the caratage is, what percentage of it is gold, what percentage of it is
alloy. And we still do it that way or we use certain acids and things like that.
He said, use three tests on what I teach you and if it doesn’t pass it, reject it. Don’t follow it,
okay.
Here’s the first one. [cut]
Buddha gets up and gives a teaching and the first test you have to use is, does it match my
personal experience?
Now for me, people ask me why did you become a Buddhist?
One of the first events that made me a Buddhist was suffering, you know, death of my
mother, death of my father, death of my brother, in one year you know.
And then I’d meet, I come across this really bad translation of a sutra, but it’s clear that this
guy is talking about suffering. And saying that if the world is really like this every event in
the world is connected to your eventual dying and losing everything you had and losing
every possession and every friend and every relative you ever had.
That’s the manifest destiny of all mankind at all times in all histories in all countries of all
economic levels, then what’s it mean to be alive? What’s the point of being alive you know?
If you can’t do something about that then what’s the point to stay here?
If something got rather difficult you just shoot yourself you see what I mean.
Why try to be here if it’s obvious from the beginning that nothing you ever work for will
survive, you know, including yourself?
So that was the first, for me that matched my personal experience of that year so well that I
was very attracted to Buddhism see what I mean.
So it passed my first test.
I was having trouble with those questions. They were not answered in my old belief system.
It didn’t make sense why people should die or suffer if there were somebody who made them
and who was compassionate and who didn’t have to make them with cancer.
It didn’t make sense. It didn’t pass.
But this one, oh yeah, that fits what I’m experiencing personally. That fits what I’m seeing
happening in my own life, okay.
That’s the first test. Okay.
Number two. [cut]
Does it make sense means, does it fit my logical perceptions, okay. These are direct
perceptions. Okay.
Some things you can’t see with your eyes but you can figure them out. Now, the things that
I figured out that way, does what Lord Buddha taught make sense.
I haven’t seen my death in this lifetime yet. I haven’t perceived the loss of all my possessions
and things like that. But based on deduction of what’s happened to everybody else I ever
heard of in this desire realm it’s going to be pretty bad you know what I mean.
So, yeah, Lord Buddha says, you yourself are going to die, you yourself are going to lose all
your possessions. Can I see that directly right now?
No.
But does it make sense given the New York Times obituary to know that?
I mean, it makes sense. Every person I’ve ever heard of, every person I’ve ever met, every
person that I’ve ever had contact with says the same thing.
Everybody who comes into this life has to die. Everybody who comes into this life has to
lose everything.
So, based on deduction, I know that’s true.
I haven’t seen my own death directly now ‘cos I haven’t died yet, okay. And I don’t have
the ability to see the future for that right now.
So, does it make sense that I probably am going to die? For example, when you do a death
meditation, does it make sense to do that?
You say, yeah, it does.
Oh, why, ‘cos you died yesterday?
No, but logically I know it’s going to happen. Okay. That’s all.
It fits my, not only my direct experience, but it makes sense logically, what I understand with
my own sense of reason, what lord Buddha said makes sense. Okay.
Even on the things I don’t quite understand yet like emptiness or something like that. Even
on those things, what I do understand makes sense, okay.
Number three. [cut]
Is it authoritative, meaning credible?
This is a third test, okay. And the test goes like this. A person gets up and says something
that you’re not sure about, okay, but you’ve known that person long enough that you
believe them you see what I mean.
You’ve tested the person so exhaustively so that on the subject of something that you cannot
perceive directly you believe them ‘cos you believe the source, okay.
You know, there are certain people in your life that if they come and tell you I heard this is
going to happen tomorrow, you say, yeah, yeah, okay you know.
And then there’s other people who don’t, who never say anything that’s BS you know what I
mean. Everything they ever told you in your life was true. And then they tell you
something very important and, you know, you can’t check it out yourself, but because
they’ve spoken to you truly your whole life and because you believe in them then you take
it, you know. That’s the third test.
It passes the test of credibility. It’s coming from a person who’s credible, okay.
So even though I might not be able to check it out with my own personal eyes, which would
be the first test, and even though I can’t figure it out logically, which would be the second
test, this person, this particular person, I’ve had many, many exchanges with them, I’ve
talked to them countless times, they’ve told me countless things; every single time it was true.
Now they’ve said something incredible I tend to want to take it, accept it. It passes my third
test, okay.
And that’s the whole thing where you have to, in Buddhism can you establish that the
Buddha is credible you see what I mean?
Once you’ve figured out that this particular scripture was definitely written by Lord Buddha,
spoken by Lord Buddha, then you just have to decide am I going to believe everything Lord
Buddha said or not?
Can I believe what Lord Buddha said or not?
Is it important to check out or not see what I mean? How do you test if Lord Buddha is
capable of lying or not, you know? Like, Tibetan Buddhists will tell you Lord Buddha is
{tsema}. {tsema}means pramana. Pramana, in this case, means a person who cannot lie.
Okay. They say, {tseme kyebu}, a person who cannot lie.
But how do you establish that? How do you establish that a person is a person who cannot
lie?
You know, one way is to study a lot of Tibetan Buddhism or Buddhist scripture until you’re
satisfied to the point where if I know this scripture was truly spoken by Lord Buddha, since
every other one I read was believable, credible, then I will accept this one now and I’ll act
on it. That’s one way to do it.
But, it’s very interesting, in the scriptures they say the main way to establish Lord Buddha is a
person who’s credible, authoritative, this is really cool and it sold me, okay. It was credible
to me. It said, he’s the only one who can describe your suffering correctly you see what I
mean?
He’s the only person you’ve ever run into who could describe to you honestly how bad
you’re suffering, how bad things are, you see what I mean.
The first Noble Truth. The first thing Lord Buddha ever said, you know, everything {duche ..
dukgnel wa}everything is suffering, you know.
And then, you know, other people will tell you, fifty percent is suffering, twenty-five percent
is suffering, ten percent is suffering, but to come up and say everything is suffering. The face
of a beautiful child is suffering. A beautiful sunset is suffering. A nice Mexican dinner is
suffering. Okay. To be healthy is suffering. To have a nice relationship is suffering. To have
a good position and money and health is suffering. You know, come on, you know what I
mean.
And by the way, I don’t think you’ve seen it anywhere else see what I mean.
But if you have one person who has the hutspa to stand up and say, everything is suffering,
everything in your life is pain, you know. Everything is either pain or pain waiting to
happen. Period. You have to lose everything. Every good thing you can give me on a list
of what’s going right in your life will be destroyed in a year you know what I mean. Period.
And it’s just, the main method of establishing that Lord Buddha is a credible person is that he
said that, okay.
And to me, when I think about it, that matches my personal experience you know. In
college I came across this Buddhist book and I’m like this guy knows what he’s talking
about. Why? Because he can describe the problem at least and no one else I ever met is see
what I mean. And it was just, to me it was just like wow, you know.
I said the first thing was the death of my family. The second thing was my high school
girlfriend, okay.
Meaning, why is it that these relationships always turn sour, you know? Why is it that the
person you’re most attracted to turns out to be the one you’d most like to get away from? It’s
just a matter of time you know what I mean. Why is it that there’s always this curve like this,
you know for most personal relationships? It was driving me crazy you know.
And then Lord Buddha has a very simple answer. It’s destroyed because it’s started, you
know. It will end because it had a beginning you know what I mean.
And it’s, like, profound, you know.
Things go wrong because they started, okay, and nothing else is necessary. They say {…}
meaning, without any other outer factors necessary at all everything you live for will be
destroyed. Okay.
It doesn’t take a car accident or an atomic bomb or AIDS or anything else to ruin your life.
What ruins your life is your birth you see what I mean.
And this is profound to me. Someone who can describe the condition so perfectly to me
that’s a big step towards being a person that I can believe, okay.
So that’s a third test. Those are the big three tests.
I think you had a question.
[student]
[laughs] He said how can you consider the Buddha credible when he contradicts himself?
If a person could give compelling reasons why they must contradict themselves to help other
people I think you can consider them credible see what I mean. But he better give some
good explanations why you know what I mean. That’s all.
By the way, if you had to debate anything tonight would be the night ‘cos there’s so many
debates here. Did he mean it when he said this for example you know what I mean?
Yeah. Oh, by the way, test it with the three to see, okay. [laughs]
Yeah.
[student]
Oh, yeah, definitely hard. You have to go up to number two. That takes number two.
Yeah, on things which are {kokyur}, meaning things which are for you hidden right now it’s
important to go straight to number two.
[student]
Yeah, but it’s important with number two, even with something like emptiness you have to
go straight to number two, it’s still important to use number one to check if the way they
explain it is contradicted by anything in your personal experience you see what I mean.
Even though you can’t see emptiness directly is there anything you can see which would
discount emptiness as Lord Buddha explained it you see what I mean. That might be
something you can establish with your eyes you know. And that’s okay. What I’m saying is
you can use direct personal experience to come up with a no objection so far you see.
I can’t confirm emptiness with my direct personal experience but I can’t disconfirm it either.
I use this a lot about future lives. You know, I am one of the first American Buddhist
teachers, right. So, people always asking me in our culture prove future lives to me you
know.
And then one day it just dawned on me. I said, you prove to me there aren’t any future lives,
you know. I’m tired of proving it, you know. You give me one shred of evidence that the
mind doesn’t go on when the body dies, okay.
Ninety-nine percent of the arguments against future lives are ‘the body stops moving’.
I didn’t debate that the body stopped. I agreed that the body stops.
We’re talking about the mind, okay. So, the driver dies because the truck breaks down?
You see what I mean? What kind of sense is that? What kind of argument is that?
That’s the only argument. The brainwaves stop. Okay, the physical manifestation of the
mind has stopped. Does that mean the mind has stopped? You see what I mean?
There’s no proof at all.
By the way, I’ll take you backwards okay. This is illegal logic. Your mind doesn’t stop.
Forget it. The mind does not stop. It just doesn’t stop.
Now work backwards. Try to give me one shred of proof that indicates that it does stop. It
doesn’t, okay. There is no proof.
I mean, I’ll tell you from the beginning. You can believe me if you have perception number
three here, okay [laughs] those of you who I haven’t robbed or cheated yet. [laughter]
But [laughs] okay. Let’s say the mind doesn’t stop. Think about it. Now, go backwards.
Pull up all the proofs you ever had that the mind stops and they’re just ridiculous. They’re
really ridiculous. They don’t make any sense at all.
If you were really {su nyerpa},which means, if you were really unbiased, if you weren’t
sitting in two thousand years of your own bias in the west, you would just say, oh yeah
there is no proof. Come to think of it the body just stops but it doesn’t prove anything about
the mind. God knows what the mind, god knows what the guy’s thinking. I don’t know if
the guy’s thinking you know.
 The body’s sitting there all cold. Come to think of it, it doesn’t prove a goddamn thing
about where his mind is you see what I mean. And there isn’t any proof that there’s no
future life at all.
So what I’m saying is, yeah, for emptiness there’s nothing in your personal experience that
could contradict the teachings on emptiness although you can’t confirm them.
So there’s a difference between not being able to contradict them and not yet being able to
confirm them. Okay. Two different things.
So those are the three tests of whether something is literal or figurative.
Question two, nowadays some people say that a knowledge of emptiness, people come up to
you and say, we experience emptiness through, this is a small wrong view of a small segment
of American Buddhists, western Buddhists. We experience emptiness through some kind of,
you know, lucky experience, satori or something, you know. We just have, we’re just
standing there chopping wood one day and it just happens to us.
No, no, you read that, you know. And we just know it you see what I mean. And you get
this flash and it’s just triggered and you don’t have to study. This whole thing of Tibetan
Buddhism you’re so hung up on, oh, Michael Roach says you need three thousand hours of
studying emptiness to get it through the original scriptures of Buddhism, come on, you can
just have this flash and you get this insight into it. It’s like [unclear] you just do it.
There’s a very famous argument like that. Lord Buddha gave a, he said, ‘beings must wander
here’, quote ‘in suffering life’ quote ‘because they have no knowledge of the ways of
emptiness’ and those with compassion, meaning Buddhas and others, quote ‘use skilful means
and millions of different reasonings’, arguments, logical arguments to bring them to a
perception of emptiness. Okay.
That’s from the Sutra Requested by Rashtapala, okay. In that sutra Lord Buddha mentions
{tup- kepo}okay. [cut]
Say {tupke}[repeat]. I like this word. {tupke} means skilful means, okay. It’s always a
{mayingak} in Tibetan. {mayin gak} means it’s always more than meets the eye, okay.
{tupke} means, skilful means, means ‘unexpected means’. Okay.
Like what?
Oh, like punching a student in the head. Okay. Really. That’s called {tupkyepo}. If the time
is right and if it’s the only way to get the student to wake up, and if you have compassion,
and if your compassion outweighs your worries about how the person’s going to see you,
you punch them you see what I mean.
If you can be more compassionate than proud you see. You’re more worried about their
benefit than how they’re going to think about you you punch them you see what I mean.
That’s {tupke}. {tupke} means, extraordinary means for extraordinary times for extraordinarily
stubborn students, okay, or stuff like that.
Unexpected methods of getting them to see what they have to see okay. And that’s called
{tupkepo}.
And there’s this whole realm of {tupkepos} where even Lord Buddha is doing weird things
because those particular students can only learn it that way okay.
What are the weird things that we’re talking about in this context?
How about five different schools on emptiness that are wrong? Okay. Why does Lord
Buddha go through teach the Vaibashika school, the Sautrantika school, the Chittamatra
school and the Svatantrika Madhyamika school and then two versions of that? Why?
They’re all wrong. Okay.
Four and a half of the classical, sorry, three and a half of the four classical schools of India are
wrong in their presentation of emptiness.
That’s {tupke}, okay, {tupke}.
You have a modern example in His Holiness the Dalai Lama. You know, He comes to New
York City. You know, people ask Him hard questions: euthanasia, homosexuality, mercy
killing, you know, questions like that.
And He’s like, oh, you know, you have to reach out and talk about it, maybe in special cases
that would be alright or something like that. You know, go to India, hear what He says in
the monastery. You know, it’s like, are you crazy, you know, of course not. Here’s twenty-
six scriptural references that say that’s the wrong thing to do, you know.
So, is He lying?
We say, no, it’s {tupkepo}. Okay. If His Holiness really stood up, I saw the front page in
England after He spoke in London. You know, two hour beautiful talk but they only picked
up on one sentence.
You can guess it was something about one of those subjects you see what I mean.
They missed the whole two hours because He touches on one thing like abortion that
Buddhism says is wrong, okay, that the person is alive. If He talks for two hours on this
subject when He reaches New York everyone’s going to walk out. So He just skips it or says
maybe it’s okay or something like that.
And that’s {tupke}. Okay. {tupkepo} means, given the minds of the students in that audience,
that person can only teach it that way. Okay. And that’s {tupkepo}.
What happens when you get a whole bunch of lamas doing this? You know, what happens
when you get a lama in so and so city saying one thing and a lama in another city saying
another thing? What’s the implication here?
No, what I mean, what I’m saying is that to an untrained person, to a naïve student, to a
student who doesn’t have enough virtue, it will seem like these two lamas are contradicting
each other. And then they will start to have, what do you call it, sectarianism, you know.
They’ll say, my lama’s right, your lama’s wrong, you know. My lama says this way. Your
lama says that way you know what I mean. My lama says that’s totally wrong. Yeah, well
my lama says you’re totally wrong you know what I mean.
And what they don’t get is that the lama might even be the same being, probably very likely
would be the same being emanating in two different cities, teaching two different teachings
for two different levels of disciples because they need it, okay.
And then, a lot of the conflict that people see, either conflict in what one lama has said, or
conflict between what two lamas have said, if there are two lamas who are close to you the
odds that they’re one being are very high, okay. So, why are they not saying the same
thing?
Well why do you think they had to emanate two lamas in the first place? [laughter] Okay.
Don’t you get it? Okay. That emanation is to take care of that part of your training and that
emanation’s to take care of that part of your training. And if they emanate as the same person
and said the same things why would they have to emanate you see what I mean. You don’t
get it you see what I mean.
It’s a very beautiful thing. That’s why {tragne} is so important, okay.
If you really take it to its highest level you will get very careful about judging not only two
lamas who seem to be disagreeing about something but also just normal people in your life,
you know.
Who knows why this other person is doing something to you, you know.
Me and my brother lived in Hawaii ‘cos we liked surfing, you know. And we surfed there
for like six months. And he was studying aikido and I was studying taikwando
or something like that. And we had this deal that when we woke up if the surf was small we
would just make pancakes and then we would try to hit each other when the other person
wasn’t looking [laughs]
So you walk around the house all day like in a heightened sense of awareness you see ‘cos
the idea was the other person could hit you on the head and you wouldn’t block them right
you see what I mean. This is [unclear] twenty years old or something.
And you see that was a kindness. You see? That kind of constant test, the spectre of that kind
of test hanging over you all day. If you want to be good at martial arts it’s great, you know,
it’s instant reflexes all the time because this guy might be hitting you any time. [laughs]
So, it’s the same thing in life, okay.
If there are enlightened beings around you, and if they’re trying to help you get enlightened,
you can have this new Buddhist mental illness. It’ll be the opposite of paranoia. I don’t
know, you want to call it “benanoia”, you know, some kind of beneficial paranoia where
you begin to believe that everyone is out to get you enlightened. Everybody. Everybody
around you is already enlightened and they’re all made this, they get, every morning they get
up before you do and they have a big meeting about who’s going to see you, who’s going to
be waiting for you where, who’s going to try to piss you off, who’s going to try to cheat
you, who’s going to trip you, you know, who’s going to say something bad about you,
who’s going to make you feel better later, you know what I mean.
And the whole thing is ‘Truman’s World’, you know. The whole thing is planned out every
morning. Everyone takes their positions. You wake up, you know, that’s {tupkepo}.
If there are any enlightened beings in the universe, if you believe that it’s possible there’s one
enlightened being, they can emanate a whole planet full of people. That’s no problem for
them, okay.
And half the people you ever meet could be emanations or all of them, okay. And {tupkepo},
they’re doing things to you to try to help you, to try to move you along.
So you get in a total opposite worldview from thinking oh this person’s bad, this person’s
fighting with that person, I believe, you know, this, you don’t need to do that any more
okay. That’s {tupkepo}.
If the Buddha would take the trouble to teach five wrong kinds of emptiness would he stop
there?
I mean, is there a restriction on Buddhas where they can’t, a lot of people think that Buddhas
can’t emanate western faces, they can only do Tibetan faces you know what I mean. A lot of
people think that. A lot of people think that, you know. They can only do eastern faces and
they can’t be under thirty, that’s impossible. They can’t be women especially see what I
mean. That’s totally, they’d never do that. They can’t do that. They never do that. They
always show up as Tibetans between fifty and sixty, you know. [laughter] And they’re men,
you know. They’re always men you know what I mean. And no, people have this natural
feeling that that’s, what do you think, Buddha can’t do more than that?
And do you think that if he taught five wrong kinds of emptiness then could he be running
the local Hindu centre or the local Moslem mosque or anything like that. Or does he stop at
Buddhist, he can only teach wrong Buddhist ideas you see what I mean? So we can judge
these people but we can’t judge our own side you see what I mean. Is that how it works?
Does he have a problem being a Christian minister in an American Protestant church or
something? They can’t emanate that? They can’t give a lecture that you can learn something
from if you go sit in a church you know? They have a problem with that?
They can do Sautrantikas and Chittamatras in ancient India but they can’t do modern
Protestant priest who might teach you something useful see what I mean?
That’s a wrong view.
So the idea of {tragne}, the bottom line and I have to stop ‘cos the sergeant is waving at me
okay. The bottom line is this, don’t trust anything, don’t believe in anything just because
somebody said it or didn’t say it or what.
You have to check everything.
You have to check everything a lama tells you. You have to check everything your root
lama tells you.
Anything they say might be {tupke}.
Anything they say might be something you’re supposed to check and do the opposite if you
use your brain. Okay.
And that’s very uncomfortable for a lot of people.
You have sole responsibility to check the truthfulness of any teaching you ever get and only
then put it into your life and practice.
And don’t think that any particular lama’s not going to test you. It’s their job to test you
okay. It’s their job to push you and make sure that you do something because you figured it
out and not because you like the way they look or something like that okay.
So it’s very uncomfortable. I’m going to leave you like that, okay.
Ultimately, the only authority is what makes sense to you, you know, what seems right to
you using logic and using your good sense about what’s good or bad or what’s right or
wrong or what you should do or you shouldn’t do.
And that’s the study of {tragne}. Okay.
Next week we’ll get into I’m going to give you a short survey of all the five kinds of
emptiness, okay, which will make you appreciate number six.
Those people who did Mahamudra got a good dose of it and we’ll go over that one more
time especially for people who didn’t get it, okay/.
So, see you after refreshments, okay.

[student comments]
[side B]
[student comments]
[unclear]
[cut]
The Asian Classics Institute
Course XVIII: Great Ideas of Buddhism