ACI 2 «Буддийское Прибежище», занятие 1

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NOTE: THERE ARE TWO TYPINGS OF CLASS TWO

Buddhist Refuge, Class 1
Buddhist Refuge and the Three Jewels
11/5/93

Week one is about the kinds of refuge according to the Madhyamika textbooks.
What is refuge and what is going for refuge? It’s a very important subject. It’s
what makes you a Buddhist. If you have refuge you re a Buddhist. If you don’t
you re not a Buddhist. Period. That’s the, that’s like the conformation of a
Buddhist. And it’s not the verbal refuge, it’s the mental attitude of refuge.
Week two is the wish for enlightenment, that’s bodhichitta and you ll learn
everything you wanted to know about it. It’s very, very detailed section about
bodhichitta. The, we’re gonna be studying from a monastic textbook which has
that, the most detailed treatment you ll, that exists on these subjects.
Week three is What is Nirvana.        I think if I … if I pass around a paper and
everybody wrote down their idea of what nirvana is I, I doubt there would be
one correct one. And, and you will learn what nirvana is. It’s very interesting.
And all the kinds of nirvana. And, and everything about nirvana. It’s very, very
beautiful. That is one of your goals. But maybe you don’t know what it is
[laughs] Okay.
Week four, Proofs for Emptiness.             This is a very famous section call
{cheekdadaw} and these are the arguments that are given in the support of the
idea of emptiness. I think if you pass a paper around most Buddhist centers and
ask them to give a good argument for emptiness you might not get a good
argument. But here you re gonna have all the arguments that are, were given
by Nagarjuna and Chandrakirit,          Ayurdeva.      These are the, the classical
arguments because this is the Asian Classics. Okay.
Um, who is Maitreya? This is a favorite subject of mine because this was my pre-
geshe debate, was this, they hand out slips of paper with your debate on it and
that was my debate. You know, who is Maitreya? And ah, so that’s one of my
favorite subjects. It’s a very holy subject because it is, I think, the only place that
I m aware of in, in the open teachings of Buddhism where the secret teachings
are justified. And it, and, and the reason for the secret teachings and how they
work is explained in terms of the open teachings. So that’s, that’s to me very
exciting when I, when I found that I found out
Week six is Conclusion and Finale examine. The, the way that works the old
students know. The homework comes from what I’ve taught in class except for
that thing about the thing about a {kalpa} [laughs]This is what I forgot to explain
something in class and I got about twenty phone calls. [laughs]And then the
quizzes come from the, directly from the homework. I just go to the computer
and chop off some of the questions. And then the finale comes directly from the
quizzes. So they, you know what to expect when you come to the classes. It’s
never anything, never any surprises, on purpose. All right.
So the first subject we’re gonna cover tonight is refuge, [unclear], read. We,
we’re gonna do the, we’re gonna try to do this right, okay? I m not supposed to
teach unless you ask and, so first we do...

[Student: and we’ll do the _?_ these three times? ]

Yeah, and then we do {mandala} So he s our, Tom is our {umjay}. {Umjay}
means chanting master. Okay? Somebody asked me if we could have some
kind of a, a, a tune to it but I ll, I ll bring you one, next time.

[Student: For those of you who aren’t familiar with it, I don’t know if anyone is
or isn’t, but it’s the first page in white with Tibetan writing on it in the book and
then we ll be doing the third page with Tibetan writing.].

Now these are out of order by the way. I had a very busy day. You should put
the mandala before the ngowa.

[Student: So make the third page in Tibetan writing the second page.]

Ah, you try to remember why you re taking this class. The basic reason for
mandala is to request the teaching. That’s your formal request for teaching.
Otherwise I can’t teach you. And then the third one is Dedication, which is
dedicating the good deed that you did to something higher, you know? Go
ahead.

[prayer: refuge]
[prayer:short mandala]

 Okay, subjects of the second course is The Perfection of Wisdom, okay,
Perfection of Wisdom. This … yeah? Too hot?

[student]

You could turn the thing off downstairs. Maybe John you ought to do it? You
know where it is? On the wall.
Okay sectoin on Wisdom was originally taught by the Buddha, all right,
Shakyamuni.
[silence]
 500BC, okay. In India, it’s one group of the sutras that He taught, all right and
those sutras, sutra means any … any teaching of the Buddha, an open teaching
of the Buddha, not a secret of the Buddha.              Okay.     And He taught
Prajnaparamita, 500BC, He taught many, many books of it, He taught it for fifty
years, fifty one years. We don’t have all those books. Mainly we have three left.
They are not only three but we normally refer to them the main three and those
are call {misum}, okay.
 Say {gye} [repeat] {Dring} [repeat] {du} [repeat] {sum) {repeat}. You guys don’t
have to learn the Tibetan. You are the English course, you re gonna learn
English and you re gonna teach it to your students in English. And that’s how
Buddhism in America will spread in English. But, anyway, I d like you to get this
seed in your mind for it. It’s a holy language and it’s good for you. Okay?
{Gye} means basically long.
{Dring} means middlely, middle.
And {du} means short. And {sum} means three. Okay? {gye dring du sum}

[Student: {Sum} means? I’m sorry]

Long means the, the longer sutra on the Perfection of Wisdom. And that has
one hundred thousand verses. Okay? That’s the long version. [laughs] Okay?
That’s actually the shortest version in India but the others are lost. [laughs] All
right? A hundred thousand verses. The middle, the middle length book about
the Perfection of Wisdom, the middle one is twenty thousand verses. We call it
{Meechie}. And the short one is {gye tomba} which means eight thousand
verses.
I, we ve put the second one and the third one in the computer already and I was
dying to know if whether it was verses or lines and I asked the computer
[laughs] last night, it took it about three hours and it’s, it’s interesting, it’s lines.
It’s not really verses. Everybody calls it the eight thousand verses but I was a
little suspicious cause it seemed too short. And it’s really just lines. So anyway...
 [student]
No. Ah, not really. And they’re surprising. They’re not like philosophical
literature. If you read them they are some very wonderful descriptions of
meditation and what certain people did to get wisdom. I think one of the most
famous stories that I enjoy from them is the, the bodhisattva who couldn’t stop
crying. He’s, he’s called the ever-weeping, {Dokenyu}. And how he gained
wisdom, you know, how he went to find his teacher. What he went through to
find his teacher. He’s crying not because of love of sentient beings, which is
what you always think when you read his name, he’s crying because he s trying
to sell his arms and his legs in the market to, to get money to offer his teacher to
learn the Perfection of Wisdom, and these
demons block his voice. So he’s screaming but no one can hear him. And he’s
crying out of frustration [laughs]. So that was what he was worth, that’s what it
was worth to him, you know, he, he didn’t have any money, he was gonna give
up his, he wanted to sell the, the flesh on his arms for the, for the, to learn the
Perfection of Wisdom. Something like that. So that’s {gye dring du sum}.

[Student: Is that a true story?]

Of course! [laughs] Ah, these are the three, the three great teach… books that we
have left about the Perfection of Wisdom. They’re in the {kangyur}, they’re in,
they are in the Tibetan, they don’t exist all of them in the sanskrit anymore.
Those were burned when the Muslims came to India around eight hundred. We
don’t have the original books except in Tibetan. Okay? Ah, {gye dring du sum}.
As is normal in, in Buddhism then you have somebody in the Middle Ages
making a commentary on matter. And that is... you know.

(silence)

Maitreya, all right. Maitreay is sometimes call the future Buddha. He’s …he’s
suppose to be the next Buddha who comse. We don’t say that there is just one
Buddha, we say there are thousands and He’s the next in this planet. He .. He
lives in a Buddha paradise, we can’t see him. Some people say he’s just a
bodhisattva, he’s not a Buddha and in fact that’s going to be the subject of our
last class, there’s a big fight about it.
You see in … in.. when the Buddha taught in India he had a student named
Maitreya and he was the bodhisattva, or appear to be a bodhisattva, so there is a
big debate about it. Anyway Maitreya taught a book to … Asanga.

(silence)

Asanga is a wonderful story about Asanga, we spoke about it last weekend.
There was a nun in India, we believe it was about three hundred A.D., or three
hundred and fifty A.D., so we, we believe that if, we don’t know, but Western
scholars guess that he, he lived around three-fifty A.D. His mother was a nun,
which is a contradiction in terms. She, she was a very good nun and she had a
vision that if she married the king and if she had a … children, that, that child
would be exceptional. Those children would be exceptional. So even though she
had no desire to live a family life she, she gave up her robes and she married the
king and they had two children. And one was Vasabhandu, who wrote the [b.
Abhidharmia- kosha. And the other wasAsanga who wrote down the five most,
five of the most famous books in Buddhism. So between those two twins you’ve
got most of the course in a Buddhist monastery [laughs] what’s written by one
of those two. Which is amazing, okay? And they were like incredible.

[Student: Can you write down the name of the sibling he...]

The other one? The Brother? Yeah. Can you see it by Goudwoller?

(silence)

[Student: Can you say the name of the book by Vasabhandu]

Yeah. Let me, I think I spelled that right but I d better check it. He wrote the
[b:Abhidharma]       the main text for [b: Abdhidharma]            It’s called the [b.
Abhidharmakosha.] And that’s, that’s the last subject that you will study.
Asanga wrote, wrote down the subject, the book that you re studying now,
which is, has a long name, and I won t put it in Sanskrit I ll put it in...

[silence]

It’s called [b. The Ornament of Realizations.]

[Student: That’s the book within (unclear)?]

Well, I m gonna explain it. This is this onion thing of Buddhist commentaries
[laughs], okay?     Onion skin. So you have the Buddha, five hundred BC,
speaking these three books. They weren t written down until much later.
People memorized them as he taught because people in the old days had better
minds than we have. Because we’re corrupted by, as you can see if you walk
outside [laughs], Okay? Ah, the Buddha taught b. {gye dring du sum}. He
taught those three books about the perfection of wisdom and then, we believe
around 300AD but you know, that’s but, you know, that’s a Western scholar
guess and really Western scholars we, we don’t have any idea actually, we just
guess. I mean it’s pretty much guess. Maitreya taught this book to Asanga. He
taught [b. The Ornament of Realizations], to Asanga. Okay. Western scholars
say, Asanga wrote it. Buddhists believe Asanga had a … had …and a, he, he
was able to meet Maitreya directly and Maitreya told him what to write. And if
you memorize that book which you are required to in the monastery it’s about
fifty pages, it’s incredible and the last chapter, the eighth chapter, is What is a
Buddha? And the verse, the … the beat changes, the rhythm changes and you
get this feeling that a Buddha wrote it. You know it’s very holy and... so, you
know if you ever get the chance to memorize it you ll see. Okay, so Maitreya,
we, we believe Maitreya taught it to Asanga. Yeah?

[Student: So the name of the commentary then is b. The Ornament of
Realization? ]

Yeah. So [b. The Ornament of Realizations] is a commentary on the, the original
sutras. The original books on the The Perfection of Wisdom, of which we have
mainly these three. There are more. There are five or six. Everybody got it
straight?
So Buddha taught those three {gyen dring du sum}, by the way the three are
called, these, if you wanna cheat, and you want one name for all of them.

(silence)

{Yum}, they’recalled {Yum}.

[Student: Doesn t that mean mother?]

Yeah. You know {yub yu} right? {Yubyum} means like holy husband and holy
wife. Like a spiritual husband and a spiritual wife. {yum}, so {yum} means wife
or mother. Okay? And, and we call it the, the, the original books taught by the
Buddha about the perfection of wisdom are called The Mother.              Okay?
They’recalled {yum}. So if somebody asks you what are you studying you say
Oh, {ym=um}.I’ms tudying {yum}. This is by the way, you have to know a little
bit Tibetan in case some Tibetan asks you what Michael Roach is teaching you.
[laughs] And this is called, we call this {Gyen}. Okay? Ornament of realizations
is called {gyen}. {Gyen} is the word in Tibetan for ornament.

(silence)

So these are thousands of pages. This is fifty pages. It’s written in code.
{[unclear]}. That’s the opening lines we ll talk about. So it’s a, it’s a beautiful
book Ah, you can’t understand it. It’s code. It’s written in code because it’s
easier to memorize. Okay? And then you learn the code from your teacher.
And that’s the way they teach Buddhism in monasteries. You, you memorize
this book in the monastery before you re twelve years old and then your teacher
unlocks it for you. So we can’t read it directly, we need a commentary, on the
commentary.

[student]

We’re gonna use the commentary by...

(silence)

Okay? Haribhadra. Haribhadra. By the way this is the only historical part I’ll
ever teach you so don’t get too bored. But it’s kind of frustrating, in a
monastery they don’t explain much of this to you. He lived about 850A.D.

[Student: He was Indian?]

Yeah. He wrote in Sanskrit. He s Indian. His lion, his name means pure lion.

[Student: Pure lion?]

Yeah.

(silence)

And he wrote a book ….

[silence]

He wrote couple of books, I mean long, but he wrote a short commentary on
The Ornament, called The Clarification. That book is too hard for us to study.
[laughs] [laughter]I, really, I, I promise you. So we need a commentary on that.
([aughter]

silence)

We’re running out of space here. And a, the, the great Tibetan commentaries
were written by Tsong Khapa and his students around fourteen hundred. I m
not gonna write that down because we’re not even gonna study those because
those are too hard. I m not kidding. Okay? We spend, we spend eighteen years
on Gyalsup Je’s commentary for example on logic and we never reach halfway
through the book. Okay? So you can’t study Tsong Khapa direct. You would
have trouble to study Tsong Khapa’s explanation. It’s about a thousand pages
probably. Ah, so, we ll skip right to [laughs]... {[unclear]}.

That’s the commentary on a commentary on a commentary on a commentary,
on commentary to the Buddha’s …

[student]

Oh no, that’s his name. That’s the author.

[student: commenting on the Clarification?}

He’s commenting on The Clarification and on Tsong Khapa but mostly on the
Clarification.
He … we know his dates. He was born the year after Columbus sail the
[unclear]

[student: which text is Tsong Khapa’s?

It’s call {[unclear]} I’m not going to write it, ‘cos I don’t want to overload you.
You are not responsible to know that. He s from the greatest Buddhist
monastery of all times, Sera Me. (laughter) [laughs] Right?

Student: Sera Je?

Not Sera Je And a, I, I said that to a monk from Sera Je recently and he said Oh,
yes, he had a great teacher. Cause his teacher was from Sera Je. [laughs] All
right? So, he ah, he s from my monastery. It’s one of the six great monasteries
in Tibet. There s three great monasteries according to Westerners but really
they’reall split into two monasteries and we, we don’t , we, we compete with
each other. And he wrote the textbooks that we study the [b. Perfection of
Wisdom ] from. We study it for twelve years in the monastery. You re gonna
study it for about a year-and-a-half, something like that. Okay. And he wrote a
book, we’re gonna write, study a book called the...

(silence)

He wrote a book called [b. The Analyses of The Perfection of Wisdom]. Okay?
(silence)

And I took that book and I chopped out the easy parts for you guys. [laughs]
What do I mean? I mean Gulugpa … my tradition o … in Tibet, we are accused
of being too scholastic, you know, too dry. Too boring. Don’t meditate enough
and we just debate about small points.        I’ll tell you, it’s, it’s, it doesn’t fit
everyone. Some people don’t want to know all this stuff and don’t need to
know all this stuff. They don’t have the, the patience or the, the aptitude for it.
This book was taught for Asanga. This book was only supposed to be read by
high level bodhisattvas. It was meant only to be read by great saints. So we’re
just kind-a peeking at it. The, the intended audience for that book, and it’says it
at the beginning of the book, is, is people who are already on a very, very high
level.

[Student: Which book?]

The {b:Abhisamayalamkara, The Ornament of Realizations], is, all, all of these
books are very difficult because they are teaching what, mainly?

[Student: Logic?]

Emptiness. Okay, they are teaching emptiness. They are very difficult. The
Buddha didn’t even teach emptiness to many of his disciples. Okay? He, he, he
didn’t even touch emptiness in most, in the case of, in the first his whole first
round of teachings that he gave in his life he did not mention emptiness. He did
not get into emptiness. Cause people couldn’t understand it. He didn’t, in fact
he didn’t even want to teach at all. I, I think at six weeks or eight weeks he
stayed in the forest [laughs] until, he didn’t wanna talk, talk to anybody. [laughs]
Ah, it’s difficult, it’s difficult. It takes some time and it takes some thinking and it
takes some training. And, ah, if you don’t do it you can go into meditation and
get some explanation from somebody and I, I would say probably you will not
understand emptiness. I, I, I can say, with some certainty, that you will not
perceive emptiness and then um, you can’t escape suffering. It’s the only
method to escape suffering. It’s the only real method, okay? There are other
methods to get out of pain in, in the short term. You know, do good deeds, love
other people, you know, as much as you can. And, and that’s true. It will
prevent you from hurting. But if you want
 to permanently stop suffering you must understand this subject. It’s, it’s the
only method that can, that can get you to what you would call paradise or the
end of your suffering. Okay? So it’s difficult. But if you take the time to learn it
you … then when you meditate, then when you go into meditation and you
have all this stuff in your head and you don’t have to bring a book with you, ah,
you, you will see some incredible things happening. You, you will truly
understand emptiness and then, if that happens to you, you, within the same half
hour, as you perceive emptiness directly in meditation, you meet Buddha. You
meet the Buddha. Directly. You perceive the Four Noble Truths which means
you perceive your past lives. Directly. In meditation. You know that you have
had, had a past life. You perceive your future and you know how many lives it
will take you to be out of this kind of life. You know? Like you can say okay
seven more lives, I know. I will not suffer during those seven lives. I will live in
a high family. I will have all the money I need. And at the end of those seven
lives I will finish all my suffering. It, I, I cannot stay in this kind of existence more
than seven more lives. Okay? Like that. I mean right now you don’t even
know if have a future life. You just sort of have a feeling about it. You, you
perceive all these things directly. A very important thing that happens to you at
that moment is that you see that you re not crazy. [laughs]You know you re
right. You know you re not hallucinating. And, and you can reach this point.
You can reach this stage. You can see these things. Okay? You, you will see
these things. But you need some training. Cannot do it without training.
According to Buddhism you ve been here a few million years without training.
[laughs] Okay? It, it will not happen without training. And, and if you are
fortunate, and if you are virtuous, you, you can see these things, and you will see
these things. And then there s no, what can you, what do you care about
anything if you know you re gonna live seven more lives and you know what’s
gonna happen in those lives. So what do you care? Who care tell you anything?
You know? Who, who can convince you of anything else if you saw them and
you know you re not crazy. If you know, you know, one thing if you see them
on LSD or something. [laughs] It’s a different thing if you see them and you
know you re correct. You saw them directly. And then, and then who, who can
tempt you, you know, with anything worldly, you know?

[Student: Just to be a bodhisattva to be.bodhisattva?]

No. You don’t have to be a bodhisattva.

[Student: What is it precisely that leads to this perception?]

Perceive emptiness directly. And you, and the method to perceive emptiness
directly is... contemplating emptiness in an intellectual way. Okay? You can’t
skip from no training to perceiving emptiness directly. [laughs] First you
perceive, you perceive it intellectually. You talk about it. You think about it.
You get a very good idea about it. And then the highest stages of that, there s a,
there s a stage called heat, which means you re getting hot. And, and you will
have the experience that ah, you will perceive how things are an illusion. Just
before you perceive emptiness directly you perceive what, there, students now
we’re building, okay? The students in the first class know dependent origination.
You perceive dependent origination for the first time. You know that this chair
is a product of your conceptions and, and just a picture in your mind. And you
see it directly for the first time. And then the next half hour you go into a state
of meditation and you perceive emptiness directly. That is a totally different
experience.

[Student: So you have to be able to be able to... ]

You, you have to have the heat before you get the vision, you know? You have
to have that training. Of course you have to have that training. It’s very difficult
to see this thing. If you, if it wasn t difficult to see you wouldn t be here cause it
is the antidote for this life. It’s what stops this life. If it wasn’t difficult you
wouldn t be here. We, we d be gone. We d be in a much nicer place, okay? The,
the proof of us not having seen emptiness is that we’re here. Okay? And before
you perceive that you, you need much training of the body. So we say, the, the
classic, in all the Buddhist texts it says meditation and before that contemplation
and before that study. Classroom hours. You know? I think Rinpoche is, we
counted up, now recently in fact, four thousand hours he taught since he came
here. And, and that, I’d say that’s about what it takes. [laughs] Something like
that No it just takes, and it’s not just understanding intellectually the first time.
You have to hear it over and over again. You, it starts to affect your being. And
then, and then suddenly one day things start to happen. You cannot do it
without learning. You cannot do it without training. It’s very difficult to do it.
It’s much harder then running a three-minute mile or, or any another
understanding, Einstein or, it’s, it’s much more important. And it’s, and it’s much
more foreign to our, to our state of mind. [laughs] So it takes training. So it’s not
a waste of time to sit here and learn all the fine details. And I would say that
without doing that you probably can’t perceive it. Unless you have done it in
your past life and then, you know, and you were very close to doing it. You
know? Okay? So this is the bo
ok we ll be, these are the, this is the, I like to call it the onion skin. You know the
Buddha’s speech is in the middle and, in the center, and then there s the early
Indian, then there s the later Indians, then there s the early Tibetans and there’s
the later Tibetans, sometimes there s a nineteen century; twenty century Tibetan
and then there’s us Americans trying too, you have to go back through the
commentaries. You cannot understand this. I swear you cannot understand this.
You, you can’t read this and you can’t understand Tsong Khapa. I, I, I’ll give you
some Tsong Khapa. I, there s some sutra here, it’s, it’s a, you know [laughs], you
need to go back this way. It’s very wonderful. Some Western scholars like to
try and skip all those and it’s kind-a funny what they come up with.
Okay, now we’re on to The Perfection of Wisdom. What is The Perfection of
Wisdom? Any guesses? What, what do you think The Perfection of Wisdom is?
It’s very famous. {Prajnaparamita}, Perfection of Wisdom.
[student]
That’s what the word mean, okay. The word that we translate in … in English as
perfection means ‘to go beyond’ that’s not … that’s not right.

[student]

anymore?

[student]

Okay, any more gueses? There are all …

[student]

Yeah, okay, do you have to be Buddha to get it? Is it the knowledge in a
Buddha’s mind?
All.. all partially … I mean all close, okay. But, no, it’s define as {[unclear]} which
means, basically it’s the perception of emptiness linked with the desire to help all
other living beings.
[student]

That’s what the Perfection of Wisdom is. And … and that’s a precious little
knowledge, okay. You’ll hear this word use by … for the rest of your life in
Buddhist magazines and stuff like that, what are they talking about? They don’t
don’t, I think. The definition is, perceiving emptiness under the influence of love.

[student; Whose definition is that?]

Maitreya and the Buddha’s.. That’s a nice thing, you’re getting … what I teach is
not my idea, it[‘s not even a Tibetan’s idea, it’s not even a Sanskrit author’s idea,
it’s sutra, it’s Buddha’s own speech.

You have to turn it off from up there. it’s okay? It’s kind of cranky.

[student]:



Oh, yeah. It’s the, it’s the perception of emptiness, okay? It’s to see emptiness
with, under the influence of the desire to help all living beings. Okay?

(silence)

Why do they say under the influence? Because at that moment, as you are
perceiving emptiness, you, you can’t have any other emotion directly. You can’t
have love in your… you can’t have love in your mind when you re perceiving
emptiness. It’s such a in, it’s a different experience. They call it {chulachushappa}l
water poured into water. The, the perception you have that that moment is
totally different than any perception you have ever had. And at that moment
you can’t perceive your friends, you can’t even perceive yourself. You can’t
even think about yourself. I mean you come out of it and you try to explain it to
other people, you can’t. Okay. So, but your mind never loses that love. The
love is there and it’s… in Tibetan
it’s called holding your mind. Your mind is, your mind is imbued, your mind is
soaked with love. You’re perceiving emptiness directly. But, but the whole time,
the reason you’re doing it, what you want to do when you get out, that whole
experience is for other people. For other beings You know?

Student: You re talking about {Prajnaparamita} as opposed to experiencing
emptiness without it being linked to bodhichitta?

Right. So that’s the definition of {unclear}.

Student: You don’t mean to say that anyone who perceives emptiness has …..

Achieved Prajanaparamita? No.

[Student: right. So you re distinguishing between someone else who would
perceive emptiness without bodhichitta]

Without love.
]Student: And {Prajnaparamita}].

Yeah, yeah. It’s not, it’s not the perfection of wisdom if you don’t have the
motivation and the desire to be helping all other people.

[Student: What is it?]

[student:But that’s bodhichitta.]

Oh, it’s just a perception of emptiness. [laughs] We ll get into it. It’s a long story.
It, it’s the subject of our text.

[Student: Can someone who is a Hinayana achieve The Perfection of Wisdom? ]

No. They can achieve wisdom.

[Student; So Hinayana predated Mahayana so how did it come to pass that the
Buddha said this directly and this was before Mahayana was invented?]

Mahayana wasn t invented. The Buddha spoke Mahayana. Okay? The Buddha,
there are, we’ll study that’s ubject during this course. There are three great
phases in the Buddha’s teaching career. And they are each, they’re separate.
And the first phase was Hinayana. But the, The Perfection of Wisdom is, is
Mahayana. Okay? Now can’they become an rrhat? Can’they achieve nirvana
without this? Yes. Can they become a Buddha without this? No. And you d
know that if you took the first course. Hopefully. [laughs]

Okay. Perfection of Wisdom.         The, the perception of {shunyata}, under the
influence of bodhichitta, in the mind, okay, of a bodhisattva arya. In the mind of
an arya-bodhisattva, okay? Two things there. Bodhisattva and ayra. Okay?
What does aria mean? Anybody remember? What does it, how do you get to
be an aria? It doesn t mean what Hitler said, okay? [laughs] It was a couple of
thousand years before that. What does it mean? Aiiya! It’s, it’s a...

[Student: It Catch twenty-two here, it?

Student: (unclear) by being a bodhisattva.

Huh? No. Aiiya. Maybe we didn’t have it. Aiya is anyone who has perceived
emptiness directly.

[student]

We ll go over it...

[Student: You talking about Arhats?]

No. I ll talk about three words, okay?

(silence)

I used to get these confused too. So you re in good company. [laughs] [laughter]

Student: The first one you said an aria by (unclear)?

Yeah, I m saying that my description of what The Perfection of Wisdom is, it
must be in the mind of an arya-bodhisattva. He must be an aria and he must be
a bodhisattva. What is an arya and what is a bodhisattva, okay? An arya is
anyone who has seen emptiness directly in a deep state of meditation. Have you
perceived emptiness? You have, tonight. Okay? I said the word emptiness, you
had some perception of it. You did not perceive emptiness directly. You have an
intellectual perception of emptiness tonight. But you have not perceived it
directly, I guess. I can’t tell. I don’t know. Okay.

(silence)

We ll skip to bodhisattva. A bodhisattva is any being who has the genuine desire
to become a Buddha to help other, all other, all other living beings.

(silence)

So can you be one without the other?

[Student: Sure.]

Yeah, we talked about, we did talk about that.

[student]
Bodhisattva... okay, okay. Bodhisattva is easier to reach than ar… well it’s a long
story...

[student]

You can, you can reach a desire to help all other living beings and not see
emptiness yet. Okay? It’s a, you can have that love before you have that
perception of emptiness. You can also have the opposite happen. You can
perceive emptiness first and later move up to Mahayana.

(silence)

So bodhisattva is anyone who has that real desire to help other people. And
aryas is anyone who has seen emptiness directly. And arhat is a person who has
reached nirvana.

[Student: So isn t it redundant to say that {prajnaparakita} can only happen in the
mind of a arya bodhisattva because you can’t be an arya bodhisattva unless you
perceive {prajnaparamita]

Yeah that’s true and unless your mind is embued with that.

[student: in other words anybody who … you                    couldn’t experience
{prajnaparamita} unless you were a arya bodhisattva]

But they have other state of mind and _?_ state of mind. Okay.

[student: Michael how can .. the different between arya and arhat, what would it
be because …?]

No, you can percieve emptiness directly but it takes many, many … it takes a lot
of training after that to use that emptiness to stop all your bad thoughts. An
arhat is person who has stopped permanently his anger, his desire, his jealousy,
all those other emotions. He cannot have them any more. To do that you must
perceive emptiness. You can hold back your anger and your jealousy and desire,
with other kinds of method and that’s what the Dalai Lama was talking about in
Arizona, mainly, you can use a lot of little mental tricks to try to control yourself
but it’s only controlling yourself. If you understood emptiness you would not
have those, that’s the way to stop them permanently. Stopping them
permanently, never getting angry again is nirvana. Nice … it’s a nice thing to
work for.

[student]

Is the kettle boiling it? No, I doubt it. We have to dump some tea in it later. I
just spices in it but no tea. And I think she has tea on the .. near the sink the
there.

Okay

[student: why did you say, unless I wrote the wrong definition, it says, one who
has seen, arya and one who has seen emptiness directly in a deep state of
meditation but then you refer to us as, when we trying to figure out what
emptiness was, you are an arya]

No, you’ve understood emptiness in an intellectual way

[student: but we are not an arya then?]

You have some idea about what emptiness means, because we’ve been talking
about it but you haven’t perceive it directly because of that. Okay. There is a
joke in Tibetan, you know, you do the {kyabdro semkye} before class, so do you
have .. did you reach {semkye}, did you reach bodhicitta, because you recited
[unclear]? Okay.

[student: I think there is an important distinction always made between
intellectual understanding and the direct perception of … right?]

Yeah.

[student: wait, I am sorry, I must have misunderstood.       We are not an arya
then?]

No. I don’t think so.

[student: he said that we’ve perceived emptiness but not directly]

It’s like I can talk about, who is a famous person that you know … [Richard
Geer} [laughs] I fan talk about a famous person who’ve not met personally, that
you’ve not seen directly. When I start talking about him, you get a mental
picture of him. In that sense you understand Richard Geer but you haven’t
experienced him directly. When you meet him face to face, that’s the direct
perception of Richard Geer.
All right that’s the perfection of wisdom. There are three different levels of the
Perfection of Wisdom and I will just say it quickly.
One is call the path, the Perfection of Wisdom in the path. That’s the Perfection
of Wisdom in the mind of a person who has not a Buddha. Okay. He’s not
perfect yet but he saw emptiness directly and he has that love. Yeah, taken _?_,
Mahayana _?_, but you don’t need to know that.
The second kind of Perfection of Wisdom is the one that Laura is talking about.
The one in the mind of the Buddha, okay, a person who sees all things. That’s
the second kind of Perfection of Wisdom. At the same time, she sees emptiness
directly and she perceives every single thing in the universe that ever was and
ever will be. And he perceives the thing itself at the same thing, which no one
else can do. When you percieve directly the emptiness of John, you can’t see
John at that moment but his mind is different. He can’t … he can see every
thought in the mind of every being who ever lived and ever will live in one
moment.

[student]

Yeah this is call result, okay. This is the Perfection of Wisdom of the result.
That’s the one we are trying to get.

[student]

As he perceive his emptiness. And we can’t do that.

[student]

Yeah. He sees the way it looks to us and he sees the way it really is at the same
time, which we can’t do. We either seen one or the other. But that’s a … it is a
long story, you don’t need to know thatl
The final Perfection of Wisdom is books about the perfection. The books, the
few sutras. Those are called the Perfection of Wisdom, right? There are all the
Prajanaparamita sutra. They are the books about wisdom. Are they the
Perfection of Wisdom really? Are they really the Perfection of Wisdom? Are the
Perfection of Wisdom sutra that the Buddha taught, the middle one, the short
one and the long one, are they the Perfection of Wisdom?
No, they are not. Why not?
What’s the big … when you are debating, what do you say? Okay. If you think
it’s Perfection of Wisdom then show me the definition of Perfection of Wisdom.
No it’s easy. There is only two things you need. No only two things you need.
What is the Perfection of Wisdom? What’s the Perfection of Wisdom? Only two
things. What?

[student]

You’ve perceived emptiness and you have this love.                The perception of
emptiness under the influence of this unbearable love, is Perfection of Wisdom.
Yeah, it can’t be a book. The book is something you can see and touch.
Perfection of Wisdom is what, mental or physical? It’s mental. It’s a mental
state. It’s like jealousy, right? [laughs] It’s like anger, I mean it’s a mental state,
you can’t see it, you can’t touch it, you can’t taste it. You undergo it, you feel it,
you have it in your mind.
So really the third Perfection of Wisdom is not the Perfection of Wisdom, it’s the
book, okay. Actually in Buddhism we say, we don’t say book, we say it’s sound
because it’s really the word, as the Buddha spoke it’s those sound that people
heard.

[student: I guess what I was getting at when I said that, was that the fact that …
the fact that the Buddha spoke it and they were sound and the Buddha Himself
achieved that, was that [unclear]]

Oh sure.

[student: in some respect it was the Perfection of Wisdom, that was I[unclear]]

[cut]

Perfection of Wisdom call the mother, the mother of all [unclear], it’s mother of
the Buddha.

[student: what do you mean, the mother of Buddha?]

It’s what produces Buddha. At the … in this verse, in the opening lines of the
book it says, {[unclear]} I bow down to next Buddha, okay. Usually at the
beginning of a book, you bow down to the Buddha, or you bow down to some
bodhisattva but this book is special, at the beginning of this book, they bow
down to the mother.
[student: what about the father?}

[laughs] Comes later. Six years. [laughs] Seriously, okay. Just the mother, all
right. The mother of Buddhas. In fact that’s the name of Heart Sutra, the real
name of Heart Sutra? It’s [unclear] Bhagavarti, a female Buddha. Okay. The
words of the Heart Sutra is a feminine, okay. It’s the mother. Wisdom is the
mother. Wisdom … the baby of wisdom is the Buddha. And the Buddha bows
down to what made Him a Buddha. Okay. That’s why it’s call the mother. And
it’s obvious, right, third path, third Mahayana path, how do you get to number
five, you got to have number three, number three is mother of number five.

That’s all, take about a ten minute break. There is … somebody should open up
all the stuff. Ani-la [unclear] you should thank her, she really worked hard to
clean up, all that stuff,.

[cut]

Basically refuge means that … there are three kinds of refuge. What doest
refuge mean? Refuge means very simply, we are going to take about it next
week. Two things have to present for refuge, okay. Two things have to present.
You guess, you tell me. What do you think are two things that are necessary for
refuge to happen?

[student: renunciation]

Yeah. We call it ‘be scared’. You got to be scared. You have to be frighten, all
right. You know when you run to mommy that’s the first [unclear] , right, it’s
because you are scared, because something is hurting you, all right. So the first
requirement of refuge is something bad, something that you are afraid of. In
Buddhism is what? Suffering, it’s the very fact of life, okay, and we talked about
it many times. You can say what you want, you can try to find who you want
but no one is really happy in this life, all right. Everyone is suffering. Your
relationships fall about; you get sick; you get old; there is nothing to look
forward to, you know. First you can’t get a job, then you get the job, then you
don’t like the job [laughter] right? And then even if you like the job, you lose it.
{[unclear]} etc. you know there is no happy ending in this life. Some people
realize that at fifteen, some people realize it when they are twenty, some people
realize it at forty, almost everybody who makes it sixty or seventy realizes it.
It’s messed up, okay. Your body itself is a time bomb. It’s just waiting for
something to go wrong. Dr [unclear], dharma’s doctor says, health is an
accident. He said that. It’s temporary balance that three things that aren’t
suppose to be balance and it will go out of … it should go out of wag, you should
get sick and get old. There is no … there is no .. I mean you have to be crazy not
to notice it as a certain point. You have relationships, they’re always messed up.
Your body … it’s not your fault, it’s the nature of the … it’s the nature of the
thing. It’s nature of thing. Even if you have a perfect relationship, one of you
die. And the other one is lonely, okay. [laughs] No that’s the only way it’s
going to happen, there is no other ending. I mean, tell me another ending.

[student]

No, it’s lousy. There is no other … I mean face it, be fine(?), you know be
truthful about it. There is no other way out. Every job you ever did, you will
lose. Everything healthy about you, you’ll get sick. Everything you love, will go
away. And that’s life. That’s true. I love Buddhism for that reason, you know,
no one can .. it’s a silent room, no one say ‘but’ [laughs, laughter]

[student]

So what’s the second thing you need for refuge?

[student]

No. What happens when you running to mommy? I mean two things going on,
fear and ..??

[student: protection?]

Yeah you think she can help you. You think she has some ability to do
somethint for you. You don’t go running to little sister. You go running to
mommy ‘cos she can fix things.

[student]

You have to have some kind of shelter, protection. You believe that the person
or the thing has protection, the power to protect you. So when you sick, who do
you call? You call a doctor. The sickness is the pain and the doctor is the object
of refuge because you believe he can fix you and when someone steals
something from you, mugs you, you go to the police because you have that bad
experience and you have some thing can … you believe that that object can help
you. When you have a complain with your landlord you go to the court because
you believe that the judge or the court can help you and .. and it’s a bad
experience. So basically protection or refuge consist of a bad experience and
then going to somebody that you believe has the power to help you.

And we are going to talk about the three things that the Buddhist goes to refuge
for. So, by te way, I … I … within thirty seconds I [unclear] cancel all the refuges
of the world, forget it. You know what I mean? What is there? Who can protect
you, you know, nothing. None o fhte normal things that people think. Your
money can’t help you. Howard Hughes … who is that River Phoenix, right?
He’s rich, why didn’t he just … why did he die in front of night club at [unclear]
25-30 years old, what is that? Money can’t help you. Health and youth and fame
can’t help you. Intelligence can’t help you per se. No police can help you; no
doctor can help you. When your time to die, no doctor can do anything. There
is no … none of the objects money, emotional comfort of your friends, nothing
can help, nothing will help. There is no refuge in the world. . there just is not.
That’s just … in itself [unclear] good reason to become a Buddhist and realizing
that is what makes you a Buddhist.
So we say the Three Jeweo, Buddha, Dharma, Sangha, okay.
The first refuge is Buddha. The refuge of Buddha, and I am going to quote from
the book, you get to read the back, there are seven pages in the back, you read
the English as your homework as part of your homework, that’s your reading
assignment
[cut]

side B

There is famous line {[unclear]} it’s the opening of the logic book, written about
fifteen centuries ago. And it says, it says .. it’s about taking refuge in a person
who has satisfied both needs. What are both of the needs? Your needs and
other people’s needs, okay. That’s what both needs mean. Everything you need
and everything other people need. Very famous idea in Buddhism. You are
working for both supposedly.

[student: when you say, you, you mean your own?}

Yeah you are trying to get what you yourself need and you are trying to get
what other people need. The Buddha supposedly has gotten everything that
everybody needs. He’s gotten what he needs and he’s gotten what other people
needs. Is that true? We have big debates in the monastery. Obviously He’s
achieved His own needs. He’s got His own needs still. He’s a Buddha, He’s
enligthened. He has no more problem. He has no more suffering. He has a
different kind of body. It looks like diamond. He has no suffering anymore. He
lives in a paradise, permanently. So He has fulfillned His own need. But what
about … what about my needs? My needs are so unfilled, no? That’s a big
debate in the monastery. The Buddha has filled our needs. That’s a very
interesting idea.

[student]

It’s not like that so much as … well think about it, cook it. We’ll talk about it.
Lets talk about it next week. Is it true that the Buddha has filled all your needs,
the day He became a Buddha? That’s the question. But that’s the definition of
the Buddha, of the Buddha, right?

[student]

Okay, Buddha by Himself is no use to you, okay. Okay, so some guy is perfect,
who care? If He can’t come and see … teach you there is no point to it. So the
second jewel is Dharma Jewel, okay, Dharma means the teaching, the teaching.
The Buddha is useless if He doesn’t say anything to us, in words that we can
understand. These are the teachings. There are two kinds of teachings, one is
the teachings in the book and the teachings that the teachers say, and the other
teaching is the teachings in people’s heart, in people’s mind. In fact Asanga’s
brother, Vasabhandu, we spoke about the two twins, at the end of his great
book, he talks about when the teachings will die in the world, he gives the date.
I mean, even the Buddha’s teaching is impermanent. He says, on such and such
a time, the books will disappear. Such and such a time, no one will ever have
these thoughts anymore, and the Buddha’s teaching will be dead.

[student: you said the teachings in people’s heart, you mean they embody the
teachings or they …]

No I am about the describe it, okay. There are two types and you have to know
them. And I will … this is the … [unclear] definition of the Dharma Jewel, and it
says, the Dharma Jewel, what’s the difference between dharma and Dharma
Jewel? Dharma Jewel is the one you are going for protection. And it says, the
enlightened side of truth, the pure side of truth, as a cessation or as a path, and
we have to talk about those. As a cessation .. yeah it’s in the book and you will
get it.
Okay, what does mean? It means you can divide everything in the world into
suffering or the enlightened side of the world. There are Four Noble Truths, we
won’t go into it but basically every object in the world is either pain, or they way
to get of pain. There is only two … two choices. On the good side of things, the
side that’s without pain, there are two kinds. One is the path and one is
cessation.
What is a path?

[student]

What are the three principle path?

[student]

renunciation, what is renunciation, roughly.    You can if when you get
renunciation, when you know you have renunciation.

[student]

When you constantly obsess with getting out of this lousy kind of life. Okay, it’s
renunciation. That .. that idea, that thought is the path. Right? Second path?

[student: one who [unclear] free all sentient beings from the suffering]

By becoming the Buddha. And then third path.

[student]

Yeah, mainly emptiness, okay. Those are the three great paths. Those are
Dharma. That’s what the Dharma Jewel is. Any path is the Dharma Jewel,
mainly the ones that lead you out of … those three. Those are the Dharma
Jewel.
So what is the real protection? Is it some guy? Is it the Buddha?

[student]

Yeah, it’s the idea. That’s the real protection. That’s the only thing that can really
help you and that makes good sense, you know, the poor people in the world
struggling with … with these beliefs that they to take refuge in some guy that
they will never, he can never do anything for them but he could do everything
for them if he wanted to do everything for them or he doesn’t do anything for
them and they are in pain and the guy never comes or who is he, they don’t
know or what. It’s not a refuge. Refuge means those paths – to be good, to be
moral is refuge. It will protect you.

[student]

Yeah you could say that, with the understanding that if you are good you won’t
suffer. That is the refuge. That’s the real refuge. That is the real refuge. The ten
commandments if you want to call it.

[student]

Oh no, they have, they have. But I don’t know how many people will say, you
know, I bow down and pray to goodness [laughs] you know, that’s true. That’s
correct. That’s refuge. If you are not good, you won’t get refuge, that’s the
difference. You can’t be bad and have a refuge at the same time, then the refuge
doesn’t work, because the refuge is being good. Is being moral.

[student: but a person may think they are good, you know, they even, you
know, say, oh I am very sensitive and I am very … I feel so bad when I see
people suffering and then hurt other people, so .. you know what I mean?

It’s a mix karma. The desire to help people and feeling upset about pain of other
people, is the goodness and then acting bad after that is badness, they are
separate things. There is a kind of ignorance. In India there was a religion that
believed that we should meditate on reaching heaven and then you should stab
youself with a knife, kill yourself and then you go to heaven. The Buddhist
believe that from the point of view of the motivation, is a virtue; from the point
of the deed is a very deed to kill yourself. So that’s mix, you have to … in
morality you have to separate things, you know, but no time, no time. Lets go.
So that’s the first kind of Dharma Jewel is actually those ideas in your mind. We
call them path. Path doesn’t mean, you know, like [unclear], thank goodness. It
means [laughs] it means those ideas can protect you, all right. And the other
kind of Dharma is call cessation. What is cessation?
Cessation is a very difficult idea. It means when something has stopped
permanently in you.         That’s what cessation means, you get this word in
Buddhism, nobody knows what it really means. It’s the second half of the
Dharma Jewel.
[student]

Stop inside you – anger at your boss. No, the day that you realize, the day that
you realize that there is … that the boss that you are getting at is your own
problems, you created it, it’s your fault hundred percent your fault, you made
him, you created him and that every second of anger at him is creating a future
one. The day that you finally realize that and …and then you are not angry any
more now because you’re controlling yourself, because it’s crazy to be angry
‘cos it’s going to get … you gonna meet him again. When you .. when you
finally realize that, by the way, that's realizing his emptiness, you have a
cessation for anger. You cannot angry again, it’s impossible. It’s like burning
your finger with a match, you know, you stand and say, oh that’s stupid, now
I’ve figured out the fire hurts my finger and you just won’t do anymore.
Yeah, by the way, it don’t have to be permanent but the best ones are. It’s a
long story. All cessations are unchanging. They may end. I can’t explain it now,
okay. [laughs]
Cessation means the stopping of that quality in you.

[student]

Oh when you stop all of them permanently that’s nirvana.

[student: oh you can stop them one by one?]

Oh sure you have to. You have to.

[student]

Yeah you can but that’s not a real cessation, I mean, a true cessation …

[student]

Only wisdom can.

[student]

Only wisdom can.

[student]
That’s a long story. Generally you can say it’s permanent.         And nirvana is
permanent. In nirvana the cessation is permanent.

[student]

You can have a cessation that’s not permament. If you have cessation that ends,
but generally if you think of them it’s not _?_, for example if you reach a point
where you don’t believe in Santa Claus anymore that’s the cessation of your
belief in Santa Claus, you see what I’m saying? That’s a cessation. Is it a virtue?
No. Is that a big deal? No. But you stopped believing…

[student]

But that is a cessation. It’s an ending of an emotion within you, for example.
There are many other kinds. The ending of ignorance is a huge [unclear]
Anyway that’s a Dharma Jewel. What are you working for? What are taking
refuge in, you know, what’s your protection? If you can end anger in your
heart, that’s protection. That’s … and doesn’t that make sense, I mean, doesn’t
your instinct tell you, oh yeah, now you are talking something good. They use
to say I had to go and bow down three times and say, I take refuge in Buddha,
Dharma, Sangha, I don’t know where this guy is, I don’t know who is the
Sangha, where is the Dharma, you know. The books are going to help me, you
know, what is it? It’s the actually attitude and actual ending of the wrong things
inside you because of that, that’s the protection, that’s whay protect you.

[student]

It would be abnormal but it would be enlightened. [laughs]

[student]

We’ll talk abou it. Basically if I understood the true causes of why you ever came
to burn my house down and why you exist in my life, no I wouldn’t be angry. It
will hurt me but I wouldn’t be angry. It’s a long story. Okay

Sangha. What’s the Sangha Jewel. Sangha is very bad, confusing word. There
are some dharma groups that call any kind of group of students sangha. That’s a
nice concept but they are communities. Sangha means coming together. {sang
gha}    means coming together but it’s not what sangha means.          Sangha
technically means a group of … quarrum of monks, okay. And that’s … at least
five, to do certain rituals but it’s not even that. Even that’s not the real Sangha.
The real Sangha is any person who has percieved emptiness directly. It’s the
Sangha Jewel. Okay. That’s the one who can help you.

[student: with or without bodhicitta?]

Yeah. Basically you become … by the way, if you could see emptiness directly,
how many Jewels do you become? How many shelter do you become? Yeah,
automatically you are two, you are two. People are taking refuge to you then.
Okay, because you are Sangha Jewel, you have … you did perceive emptiness
directly and you have Dharma in your mind. You have the cessation of … what?
Ignorance, okay, I mean not the ultimate cessation of ignorance but you put a
big hole in it. In Buddhism they say {[unclear]} You ripped it. You tore the
[unclear] of ignorance, the reality.

[student]

Oh no, in .. in… we’ll talk about it next week. There is real Sangha and an
apparent sangha. And you’ll see it in your reading, by the way the reading that
you’re goingt to be asked to do, is very confusing and very difficult, cook it. It’s
only … if you take the Tibetan out of it, it’s three pages. Meditate on it. Read it
over and over again. Think about it. It’s very difficult. I took out the easiest
part from the book, okay, all right, it’s difficult especially the first two
paragraphs which we are not even going to talk about, right now. They are
very difficult but just cook it, you know, this is the way you learn. In Buddhism
you don’t learn everything at once. You feel uncomfortable, it hurts, Sakya
Pandita says, {[unclear]} means wise people suffer while they learn. My teacher
taught this first, why people suffer while they learn {[unclear]} If you want to be
comfortable, forget about becoming wise. {[unclear]} People who are attached
to small pleasures, don’t get bigs ones. [laughs] all right.

Let me see I’ve covered all the homework.

[student]

All right, last thing, what’s an ultimate refuge? And it’s define in the book as,
any refuge where the journey along the path has reached its final goal. Ultimate
refuge, ultimate protection. Any refuge where the path … the journey along the
path has reached its final goal.
[student]

Yeah, I have to say it that way, why, because it doesn’t refer only to a person. I
can’t say the person who’s reached the final goal. The process … what it means
it a Buddha or something about a Buddha, okay, that’s the real shelter. That’s
the only ultimate shelter. So that’s all tongith. It’s very .. now you are in …
you’ve passed the lam rim world, okay. You are now into … the first course was
the easy one, okay. Now … now if you really want to learn this is it, and it is
difficult, okay, and it is precise. And it’s … and it’s … and it takes some thinking.
Don’t give up. Don’t think it’s not worth it. There are very few people who can
go through these books. There are very few Tibetans who can go through these
books. But if you go through them, it’s incredible. Then when you meditate,
something will happen because you know precisely what you are doing.
So I repeat, okay, what are we talking about? Protection, protection. From
what? I mean, what are afraid of, to go to mommy? Suffering, okay. There is
nobody in this room who doesn’t have it. I translated for Dr [unclear] many
years ago and he … at the end of the lecture he said, anybody who’s got a
medical problem, please see me afterwards, nobody left. [laughs] Anybody who
has a serious medical problem see me afterwards. Nobody left. And I was
shock, you know I said, boy they look like normal people but everyone’s got
something with them. This .. it’s suffering, if you’re not sick now, you’re gonna
be, okay. If you are not old now, you will be. If your joints and all your bones
don’t hurt now, don’t worry, it’s coming. [laughs, laughter] if you are happy in
your job, don’t worry, you know, doesn’t … arse-hole will come along and ruin
your day, I swear, this is the nature of this life. There is no … no happiness.
{korwa …..} on the tip of the needle of this life, there is no [unclear], that’s
famous Buddhist … there is no happiness. I mean there are brief time when you
say things are going pretty well and [unclear] collapse again, okay [laughs]
Don’t worry it’s not your fault. It’s a nature of this world. No one’s happy.
Okay, unless they are a saint, unless they are really understanding religion well.
The other people are … don’t worry, no one who looks happy is really happy,
okay [laughs] it’s not. If you are not understadning these things, if you are not
understanding the spirit of things then you won’t be happy, it’s impossible,
because of the nature of life, not because of you. And what can help you is only
those .. actually this is the only direct help, is the Dharma, it’s those attitude in
your heart. You know when you really care for other people, when you really
understand the trouble that you are in, when you really see that your boss that
you hate is coming from you. Then that’s protection, then you can stop the
suffering. There is no other way. You actually have no choice but to go for
refuge

[student: is the Dharma Jewel is having these teachings in your heart?]

The real Dharma Jewel is the attitude, the path and I gave you three paths, Laura
gave you three paths and the cessation. Meaning the end of anger in your heart,
in your mind, we say in your mental stream, whatever you want to say. You’ll
know it when you got it. All right?

That’s all. So I wil give you some homework. I don’t think … that covered
everything on the homework. And you have to do the whole thing. Read the
whole think carefully. I … I .. sometimes when I put two or more questions in
one question, people answer the first part and don’t answer the rest. Please read
the whole question, all right. And[unclear] back, I made a rule I wouldn’t but I
had to.

This is due next week. Your grade is, I think, it’s two thirds or three quarters
from the class work [unclear] class work what you do every week in a regular
basis. And then the final is like a quarter.

Please be on time and I’ll try to end [unclear] .

Please come on time and we’ll try to … we’ll try to stop on time. And don’t … if
you feel confuse, [unclear] too much for you, it’s a good sign, it means you are
learning something, okay. It means, if I sat here and said something you already
knew you’d feel quite comfortable and you won’t be learning anything.

[student]

Why we have to say process because like the knowledge in a Buddha’s heart is
not the person [unclear] but it is a thing which is [unclear].

[student]

[cut]
TYPING ONE OF CLASS TWO: