ACI 2 «Буддийское Прибежище», занятие 6

Course II: Buddhist Refuge
Class Six: Divisions of Nirvana

Geshe Michael Roach

Transcribed by Angie Overy



[unclear; spelling comments to student]
Say, {hlak-che} [repeat] {nyang-de} [repeat]; {hlak che} [repeat] {nyan-gde}
[repeat]. Say, {hlak me} [repeat] {nyang-de} [repeat]; {hlak-me} [repeat] {nyan-
gde} [repeat], okay. {hlak} means something left over, remain; people call it
remainder. I like ‘left over’. Same thing [student: I’m sorry, lack [unclear] ], just
{hlak; hlak} by itself means something left over. What’s {thukpa}? You know
kind of {thukpa}? Yeah [laughter] it’s {thukpa}[unclear] It’s soup. [laughter] It’s
noodle soup. You say what’s for dinner tonight? You’ll say {thukhla} What’s
that mean? [students: unclear] {tho - } [students: unclear] Yeah, yeah, you hate
it, you know, [unclear] {thukpa}. {thukpa} means [unclear] {thukpa}. [laughs]
That’s what {hlakpa} means okay. It means, you know, [laughter] [unclear] knife
and fork. People, Tibetans hate it. They’re, like, {thukpa} again. [student:
unclear] That’s {hlakpa}. So that’s how you can remember {hlakpa}. {Hlak-che},
this {che} means, ‘having’, ‘possessing’; {nyang-de} means, ‘nirvana’. The long
form is? Anyone remember? {…} [student: past grief]. Yeah. Yeah. [unclear]
Okay, {nyang-de}.
{hlak-me} means? [student: unclear] Yeah. {me} means ‘nothing’. So these are the
second and third kinds of nirvana. We had one kind last week. What was that?
[student: natural] natural Nirvana. I forget to tell you the other synonyms for
that. They were in your reading. Did you notice? [student: yes] Kinda of nice:
natural nirvana, natural Dharmakaya, [student: Dharma body, ultimate truth,
natural perfection] You tell, well these are real nirvanas, okay. The first one was
not a real nirvana. By the way, why do they call the first one a, a nirvana at all is
this. I’ve seen it in a scripture. Does it, does it ever have any mental affliction? I
mean, is it ever involved with mental afflictions or natural nirvana? [student: no]
[student: unclear?] Right. [student: no] Yeah, first of all it’s not a mind [students]
but can it ever be involved with mental afflictions? [students] No, it’s the
antidote. So that’s why it’s nirvana. It’s, it’s in a sense, free of the mental
afflictions and their seeds from the beginning. [laughs] It’s never been involved
with them and it never will be involved with them. And they say {..}. {..} means,
for beginning-less time, you know, for trillions and trillions, countless trillions of
years, natural nirvana has never had anything to do with this nasty mental
afflictions; bad thoughts. [student] That’s very simple. Yeah. It’s permanent. It’s
unchanging. Mind is the opposite. Mind is changing all the time. So those are
some big differences. That’s why it could never [unclear] mind, but could it be
nirvana? Could it be a cessation? Is there anything, which is a cessation and
natural nirvana at the same time? [student] Yeah, the Dharmakaya. [student]
Yeah. And there’s a big debate about that. I mean, [unclear] one is a lack of
mental afflictions; one is a lack of self-existence so they’re not really the same in
the sense of what they lack but … I debated that once to this Geshe candidate.
He got [unclear] [laughter] [laughs] [unclear] [laughs] [laughter]
Anyway, so these are nirvanas number two and three, alright. These are real
nirvanas. What do you guess they mean? [student] That’s what you might
think but that’s not what it is. It’s a good guess. [student: okay] Yeah. [student]
Yeah, it’s like that. Yeah. I told you last time [student] you can achieve nirvana
tonight or you could have achieved it a year ago. I have no idea. By the way,
that’s true. I have no idea. That’s why I have to be careful around people.
[laughs] Okay. On my, my level of bad thoughts I wouldn’t be able to recognise
who you are so you could achieve it tonight but you still have dirty, you still
possess the skin and the dirt, you know, the blood and the, those parts of your,
of your body from before. They are, are they suffering from the viewpoint of
causes of suffering? Do you have any causes of suffering any more? No. You’re
not causing any more suffering, or from the viewpoint of [unclear] okay. You’re
not making any new suffering. In fact, they say that pretty much from the time
you perceive emptiness directly, there are some convincing arguments. We’ll
study it, that you abandon the Truth of Suffering altogether. So people say, well
if [unclear] the truth of suffering, I guess you don’t have suffering, right?
[unclear]
So, you’re not making, it’s impossible for you to create new causes for suffering
so you’ve given up suffering in that sense. But you can still have a horrible
death. Udrayana did. There were other arhats who had, you know, [students]
Past karma or past seeds, you know, there’s a big debate. First Dalai Lama -
[student], yeah, we’ll talk about it. We’ll talk about it okay. [student] The
definition, if you notice in the reading, if you dit it carefully. And the reason I
made the readings so short is that you do read it a couple of times ‘cos it’s hard.
The definition is the same as the other nirvana. What was the other nirvana? I
mean, what was the definition of nirvana in general? [students] [laughter] Yeah,
in their entirety; that part is the same. And then he says here, but where one still
has the suffering seeds that are the result of his past action and bad thoughts. So
you still have the seeds, the suffering seeds, they call {dukgnel de ..} which are
the result of his past bad thoughts and karma. [student] We’ll talk about it.
[student] No. [student] Yeah, we’ll talk about it. [student] Yeah. Yeah. As I
understand it. I’ll, I’ll make sure [unclear] It’s good. All the questions you ask me
I go to Rinpoche and I ask for clarifications. I got a [unclear] but it’s, it’s, that’s
{hlak-che}. That’s the idea. What you have left over is what is still in, what do
you call that? The enertia, you know, of, of your past bad deeds is still throwing,
that energy is still throwing, is still supporting this body, is still, is still making
this body go forward into time. But, when that wears out then you won’t, you
won’t have [unclear] [student] That’s a point, it’s a good point. [student] There’s
a big debate. It’s not an easy question. The First Dalai lama when he wrote his
book on the Abhidharmakosha, he said, you know, he gives a couple of
examples of arhats who had horrible deaths. One had his head chopped off.
Udrayana [student] I know about and I read that book. I translated that book.
It’s here. He, he, he was murdered by his son. And, and it’s interesting because
at, at the, at the moment of his death he tries to preform a miracle to fly, to go
up in the air away from the assassins. And he’s blocked by his past karma ‘cos
he wants to prevent his son from committing two of the five bad deeds: killing
an arhat and killing his father. And his son is always quoted as a person who
managed to do three [laughs] out of the five. [laughter] [unclear] killed his father
and killed an arhat. He sent someone to kill his father. So it appears to be from
my reading that you can [student] suffer but we say you’ve abandoned the truth
of suffering. [students]       That’s the argument [students] No, that I doubt,
[students] doubt that it would be the same sort of thing. But when Udrayana
goes, he, he has given up his throne and gone to live with the Buddha after he
got the Wheel of Life painting as a present. He said, okay, I’m, forget it, I’m
going. [laughs] And, and then he stays with the Buddha and then he hears that
his son is acting up and causing suffering for his old subjects. So he’s, he decides
to go back. And he, he says to the Buddha, you know, I’ve, you know, please
excuse me I want to go back and advise my son not to hurt the subjects. And,
and then it says, driven by, you know there’s a nice word in Tibetan, it’s
‘propelled by his karma’, driven by his karma to the final episode of being
assassinated. You know that he’s, the whole incident of him going to the Buddha
and the Buddha can see what’s going to happen. And the Buddha says go, you
know, your karma is driving you to this, to a certain [laughs]. You’re going to
meet something there. Your karma is driving you there and, and it’s [students].
Oh, yeah, yeah [student] he starts to escape, to, to create a miracle and rise up
[students] was compassion. Yeah, it was compassionate. [student] I, I can’t
imagine it yeah. I can’t imagine that [unclear] It would be hard to imagine that
[students] Also, there’s Mahayana arhats and then [unclear] learned how to do
this [unclear]. It’s hard to imagine [unclear] had that kind of [student] Yeah, if
you know that four powers then supposedly a car accident turns into a headache
[unclear] and stuff like that. [students] Why didn’t he stop him? [student]
[unclear] have the power to stop someone’s karma [student] If he did he would
have stopped ours. [student] I don’t think so. [student] That’s the, yeah, that’s
the [student] idea but maybe he saw that, you know, a year later he would have,
the same thing would have happened. I don’t know. There’s a story that
Buddha’s own people were wiped out under his, in his room. I mean, people
took refuge in his room and soldiers came in and [unclear] couldn’t protect them;
his own tribe [student] [unclear]. Yeah. All around him, [unclear]. He had no
power to affect their karma. There’s a story that one of them tried to hide, you
know, near him. [students]
No. Left over meaning those, the karma and the bad thoughts are gone
because, because they are causes. Once the result comes out those causes have
gone. You don’t, you don’t have any causes per se. You have seeds. You do
have seeds. They were created by karma and [student] bad thoughts. [student]
Yeah. And those karma and that thoughts must be gone now ‘cos the seeds have
already been planted. Meaning the action, those were created by your actions
and your bad thoughts up to that point that you became an arhat. [student] No,
you still have them. And there’s a thing called, there’s a very nasty little thing
called {.. lempa}, which is something bad that an arhat has that a Buddha doesn’t
have [laughs] and I’m not quite clear about it. It’s some kind of propensity like
that. [student] In fact, the whole story’s in there, what he did to be murdered.
And that’s the purpose of the, of those, that’s from a Sutra. That came from a
Sutra. That’s the purpose of those sutras [unclear] [student] There’s a story
about that too, yeah [student]
That’s also a karmic result of having gotten into a bad habit in your past life and
not respecting life, you know. That’s another kind of karmic result [student]
There’s four kinds of karmic results. I mean, one is that you, one is that you get
killed. Then another one is that you get the habit of not respecting life. So, the
son got the second and the father got the [unclear] yeah. [student] Then the son
got the second maybe [laughs] but that’s another story. [student] No beginning.
No beginning because then you have it, you have taking life if it’s that, if it has
come from a past life then that habit was created by another life. I mean those
are involved with the proof that there is no beginning and we’ll get into that. In
New Jersey on Wednesday nights if anyone has time he’s going to discuss the
proofs for past and future lives starting this Wednesday, yeah, six o’clock.
[students] That’s the root of all, all, all bad deeds. [students] That’s the [laughter]
[students] that’s the main root [students] the main root is, is as we’ve said many
times. We’re going to get to that in a later class. So we’ll talk about that in a later
class.
So those are, those are two kinds of – {hlak-me nyang-de} means when you have
no remainder of those dirty deeds, okay, those nasty things. And that’s when
you die [unclear] in your last life. [student] Somebody asked me that. You, you
do have seeds in your mental consciousness. You have seeds in your mind
stream. Some of those seeds, they can’t create a new body. They will never
create a new body or any new suffering but you do have, like, seeds for
somebody to send you out of that tradition so you go to Mahayana later. You
have some deep-planted energy in your mind stream that it will happen that you
can’t stay in that tradition forever. Something will happen to trigger you to
want to go up to the Mahayana [student]
I don’t think they’re the same. No, those are good seeds ‘cos those are seeds for
someone to, for you to think someone is [unclear] and go up to Mahayana path.
Student] Yeah, well what I’m saying is that this Wednesday, and he’s reaching a
point in a book, which is the only place that I’m aware, and the only argument
for future lives and past lives. He’s just reached that, second chapter of the
Pramanavartika by Dharmakirti. [student] They do tape it all the time, yeah.
[student] Which brings me to the subject [laughs] [student] Yeah. Hang on one
second before I forget. I’ve got to talk about this. Rinpoche’s, one of Rinpoche’s
main goals in his life is that we take his tape-recorded lectures and transcribe
them and then put books out. And all of his books are like that and he’d like to
do some more. And I thought it would be very appropriate if we helped. And
what I thought was, between courses, if anybody here has time and types well
and has a computer. If you don’t have a computer I can even supply one and we
have transcribing machines. You hit it with your foot and it stops and it goes
back a little bit so you’re always, it never gets ahead of you. And we bought a
few tonight. And then Ariel’s agreed to organise that in the New York area so
they’re, the tapes that we’ve chosen, we went to him and asked him what he
would like is. And one beautiful series of lectures on the bodhisattva vows, see
‘cos we rarely see them explained anywhere. Then there’s a Kadampa, on
mental training text that he’s going to do. And then, there’s the First Panchen
Lama, that debate in the mind between the angel and the devil in one mind. It’s
beautiful. It’s really beautiful. [student] We didn’t know about that book until he
taught it. [student] Oh no, there’s most of the stuff is tantric. Many of the things
are tantric or things that we’ve already translated so we’re not going to work on
those things. And there was one more. Do you remember the last one?
[student] Oh, there’s one prayer to Manjushri, for wisdom, which is only one
thing. So, those are the four targets and if anyone want, next Tuesday, next
Monday after this class, if you want to stay, anyone who wants to work on that.
And that’ll be between courses so it’s not, like, on top of your homework, okay.
Like, this will be the month of January. [student] I have a computer you can take
home; little laptop, very light [unclear]. It’s, we’ve already [student] Yeah, but
it’s always [unclear].
You asked about suffering [student]. Yeah. Okay. There are five heaps to a
person. [student] This is just an answer to her question and people had this in
the first course but it doesn’t hurt to go over it again. And I’ll go over it very
quickly. Five heaps meaning the five parts to a person. [student]
H-E-A-P; meaning pile.
And the Abhidharmakosha says, {…..} which means, the reason we call the five
heaps are that they, each part, each of those five parts is made up of many parts
so they’re called ‘heaps’. And, and heap is a good translation, you know.
Usually I have a problem about translations but it does mean to pile something
up. It’s what you do to leaves in the Autumn. Nowadays, we’re {pung}ing the
leaves. What’s the three great monasteries in Tibet? [student] Sera, I mean, the
greatest is Sera. [laughter] [student] [unclear] Well it’s Sera in general; Ganden
[students] and Drepung. {Pung} means, so {pung} means, you know, we always
say to the Drepungs, you know, Sera means ‘hail’ and you know, you put a pile
of rice out in a hailstorm [student] we’ll wipe you out. [laughs]
So, heap. Heap means something with many parts. And the five heaps are, the
first one is the physical parts of your being. All the, all the physical parts of who
you are, of you. [student] No, any living being has, [student] yeah. There are
beings in the formless realm who don’t have a first [unclear] so it’s possible to
live on four heaps. They don’t have any, they don’t have any physical body.
They’re mental beings. So, so the first heap is the physical body. The second
heap is feeling; the mental function of feeling which accompanies every state of
mind. You always have feeling. [student] These are the skandhas. [student]
Skandha means heap. [student] Excuse me? [student] No, this is a mental
function of, of feeling things and it’s always going. That raw wire is never
covered. You’re always sensing. You’re always feeling good, bad or neutral.
[student] There’s two mentals and there’s, there’s, you can divide it into three,
which is, pain, pleasure and neutral. Or you can divide it into mental pain,
physical pain, mental pleasure, physical pleasure and neutral. So you can divide
it into three or you can divide it into five. Yeah. No, mental pain is [unclear]
[students]
So that’s feeling. That’s a mental function. Number three is discrimination.
You’ll see many different translations for these. I can, I can back up the ones I
use with quoting the Abhidharmakosha. So, and I don’t think some [laughs]
[unclear] translations are [student] they’re very poor. They’re very [student]
poor. Well on these five they often use different words. But, but you can, you’re
in, you’re one of those, you have those three qualities of a good student. What
were they? [laughs] [student] No what were they? Guess. Do you know any of
them? [students] [laughter]
{…} means there’s a strong desire to study, to study these holy things. What
were the other two? Intelligent. And, impartial. Willing to listen. And the
intelligent one means you can, you can divide gibberish from something sensible
without a lot of teaching. I mean you can sit down and say, come on what is
motivational [unclear] factors, you know what I mean. [laughs] If it sounds like
gibberish it probably is. The guy probably doesn’t understand it. Okay.
Discrimination means the ability to what? Distinguish between two things. This
is good. This is bad. This is my friend. This is my enemy. This is a boy. This is a
girl. This is red. This is blue. That’s the function of that mental function. It’s also
a mental function. [student] It can be sensory also, you know, blue and red. It
can be judgemental. This is good. This is bad. That’s all done by that heap- that
part. Number four is called ‘other factors’. They call it compositional factors.
Doesn’t mean anything. [student] It’s called compositional factors. Bad
translation. It doesn’t have any meaning. The definition of the fourth heap is
{pungpo shi le shin} in the Abhidharmakosha.                If it’s good enough for
Vasubandhu it’s good enough for me, three fifty AD. [student] AD.
He said the definition of the fourth heap is that heap which includes all the parts
of you that aren’t in the other four heaps. [laughs] [students]
It’s pretty easy you know. So you can call it what you want you know what I
mean. You can make up any fancy word. It’s just {pungpo shi le shin}. It’s, it’s,
it’s everything about Regina that doesn’t come in the other four numbers. That’s
a heap. It’s got a lot of stuff in there, come on. Forty-four mental functions,
anger, jealousy, love, attention. [student] Yeah. I didn’t give yo number five yet.
I’m trying to give them to you in their proper order. [student] Number five is
main mind. Main mind: your consciousness. And you, you’re familiar a little bit
with that now. [student] Main mind-s. You don’t even [unclear] yeah. It’s six
really: mental awareness, eye awareness, ear awareness, nose awareness, taste
awareness, touch awareness. [student]           That’s a long story.      [unclear]
abhidharma in about nineteen ninety-seven. [laughs] If we arrive. [student] Oh
you get a [unclear] hat [unclear] point on it. [students] [laughter] Fifth one is
[students] oh no, fifth one is your, your [students] your mind. [students] No,
number five includes six different kinds of consciousnesses. Your main mind
breaks down into six types. Just your raw awareness of things you see you can
break it down. This is also a raw, you know, being aware of being touched is, is
main mind. [student] Your body contains the nerves which allow your main
mind to sense. [student] Yeah, the nerves, even the nerves; the optic nerve, the
auditory nerve. Those are all part of heap number one but the awareness that is
triggered by those faculties is, is main mind. [student] Well, yeah [student]. Well
it implies a person. That’s no longer a person. These are the parts of a person.
A body is no longer a person. [students] Yeah. No just stuff [student] physical
stuff, the physical stuff. [student]. Just matter as opposed to mind. Atoms, as
opposed to, that invisible stuff you call mind. [student] Now I’m going to
answer a few questions about the five heaps. I didn’t intend to but it’s an
interesting subject. Kylie, why do they, do you remember why they take out of,
why don’t they have three heaps? Why don’t they call it body, main mind and
all the little thoughts that go on in the mind? Why don’t they have just three
heaps? Why did they make feelings and discrimination separate from the other
heaps? Why did they take out of forty-six mental functions, why did they throw
forty-four of them into the fourth heap and pull out two of them and make
them, give them the status of their own heap? Remember? [student]
In the Abhidharma it says, {…} it means, sorry {….}, which means, the reason
you take out those two particular functions of the mind and leave all the other
ones in that number four grab-bag is that they are causes of samsara, okay.
[student] They’re always ]students] [unclear] You say this is this and that is that.
And I like that and I don’t like that and then you get in trouble. [laughs]
[students] Those two mental functions are troublemakers. [students] I like this –
feeling and discrimination. He’s my friend. He’s my enemy. I like him. I don’t
like him. Those are the, and there’s a beautiful description in the Abhidharma.
The Abhidharma is dry but when it gets to that paragraph it’s very lyrical. It
says, you know, farmers fight for their crops you know, wives fight for their
husbands, monks fight for their school you know and their philosophical view
point and it’s all because of these two mental functions you know. Those are the
trouble [students] Yep. [laughs] I [unclear] know this is just answer to her
question. Now why are they suffering? They’re impure. They have been
created by your bad deeds in the past and you bad thoughts, basically, the ones
you were born with if you are who you seem to be okay. [student] Just got to
sit around until they wear out, you know. [laughs] [student] You’ll have a new
set of five heaps after you lose these. [student] Yep. Isn’t that true? I mean
[unclear, student talking over Geshe la!] get depressed and upset and [students,
laughter] [unclear] of karma. [laughter] [students] Until [unclear].
Okay. So you still have those dirty deeds, dirty mind, dirty body. The body is,
forget it, useless. I mean, no future, it’s got to end up in a hospital somewhere if
you’re lucky it’s going to [unclear] [student] [laughter] [students] We’ve got to
talk about it. She has a debate for me. Okay now [student] There is, [student] it
depends on what school you’re in [student]. Big debate. Big problem; lots of
problems there. We’re not going to get into it. I mean, I’m not even going to
think about it until we get to that ‘cos it’s really -. Rinpoche told me don’t teach
them all that stuff; just make it easy. [laughs] Okay.
I’ll just tell you one little detail. The highest school, we’re in the lower part of the
highest school right? But the higher part of the highest school says that these
two nirvanas happen in the reverse. They say, {hlak-che} comes first. I’m sorry,
{hlak-me} comes first and then you get {hlak-che}. [students] Their idea is that
{hlak- me nyang de}, nirvana with something over, with leftover and nirvana
with still something left, left is reversed. [students] It comes back. Remember all
those dirty things come back. Sorry, I’m just, you don’t have to write this down
and you don’t have to know it. Just be aware that they think ‘no remainder’
means no remaining perceptual thoughts which occurs in a direct perception of
emptiness. And then, when you come out of that, it starts sinking again. You’re
kind of reverting to {hlak-che} but, but we’ll get to that in a couple of years.
[students]
Yeah, we’re up to number four now. Ready? And then we’ll take a break after
that. Somebody asked me, we had those three tracks that complicated thing that
Kylie did a good job on but I haven’t finished for you yet but somebody asked
me if the two lower nirvanas were any different from each other and Rinpoche –
I asked him today – and he said, not much, you know. [student]
He said there’s a difference in the power of how they’re attained. You see from
the point of view of how they’re attained there is a big difference but the quality
of that nirvana I, I can’t think of much difference. [student]
That’s what we, we’re going to talk about that, yeah. This school says that, okay
[unclear]. [student] Good question. Oh, I love this question [unclear] good
question [laughter] [students] [unclear] good question.
I was going to get to that but I thought I’d let you write this down first. There
are Buddhist schools, and we don’t have time to go into it, that say when you
achieve nirvana, especially nirvana without remainder, it means that your
physical continuum and your mental continuum discontinue. Chopped off.
They say that, the lowest Abhidharma says [student] and some schools say that
when you reach nirvana without remainder it’s just the end of you. I’m sorry, I
should say the end of your mind and the end of your body. They say it’s, it’s
called {…} which literally means the discontinuation of the stream of your
physical parts and your mental parts. [student] Well then the highest school will
say, well is there an arhat [student]. Yes, there is an arhat. Well, does he have a
mind or a body? Ah, no [laughter] [laughs]
Who gets this nirvana? Who’s around to have this nirvana? [students] [laughter]
And then they, they get stuck [unclear] they hung up. That’s how the higher
schools debate that point. [student] They say there’s a, a person. It’s very
complicated. I mean the Abhidharma system is very complicated but basically
there’s, there’s a cessation held by a person; person has a cessation but the mind
and body are gone. [laughter] [students] They call it {…}. It’s a person living in a
state of cessation. [students] They say there’s still a person. [student] That’s the
western idea of nirvana right? [student] Westerners tend to think nirvana
means that and they’re not [student] and there are, there are, there are Buddhist
schools that say something like that. So it’s not so, it is a little bit understandable
that western people have heard that. [student] Right {gyun che} means, it means
this thing’s being going on in them [student]
That’s, by the way, that’s a wrong idea. That’s a lower school idea. [student]
Yeah. Yeah. It’s a small, it’s a lower school tenant. It’s not a higher [unclear].
I’m sorry. So say {mi ne pay}[repeat] {nyang-de}[repeat]; {mi ne pay}[repeat]
{nyang-de}[repeat]
By the way, the power schools are not dumb and they’re not useless and blah,
blah, blah. We will study, it’s a whole subject in Buddhism, why do the whole of
the lower schools exist. Why did, the Buddha taught those things. Why did the
Buddha contradict himself? And we’re going to study it. [student] Oh, it’s a
beautiful book by Tsongkhapa. It’s two hundred and thirty pages long. A lot of
people in the monastery memorise it. It’s, it’s, it’s how do you know, and what
were his motivations, and how are we to know when we get a teaching, you
know, is this A or B you know? Is this the simplified version or is this the real
thing? How do we know? Okay.
{mi ne pay nyang-de}; {mi} means what in Tibetan? Not. {nepa}, remember? We
had it the other night. [unclear] Friday night class. {nepa} means, to stay, okay,
to abide. We had it in the Friday night class. And then {nyang-de} is nirvana.
This is the fourth and last type of {nyang-de}. So, you can guess whose it is.
[students]
The Buddha’s nirvana. Okay. The {nepa} means the nirvana which does not
remain, does not stay. Stay where? It doesn’t mean it doesn’t stick around
obviously ‘cos he still has it. It doesn’t stay in {si-ta} and doesn’t stay in {shi-ta},
okay. Where doesn’t it stay? It doesn’t stay in {si-ta} and it doesn’t stay in {shi-
ta}. What is {si-ta} and what is {shi-ta}?
These are, {ta} means what, do you know? What’s the {ta} mean in Rinpoche’s
name? You know {chin} means gone right? From {sherub tu parul tu chinpa},
Prajnaparamita. It’s the ‘ita’ in paramita, gone. What does {ta} mean? {Ta}
means, to the end, to the extreme. So these two words, {ta} and here, {ta} here
they mean the end of something, the final edge. This is the {ta} of the table. If I
put the pen beyond that {ta} it falls off. That’s {ta}, an, an edge, an extreme.
Okay. {Si}means, {si} is a synonym for samsara. There are a lot of words for
samsara. The wheel of life, what they call the wheel of life, that life there is {si};
{sipa korlo}.
This is the extreme that we are in now if you are who you seem to be, okay.
That’s, that’s the extreme of, of staying here. Staying where? Staying in this
lousy life, okay. No future. [laughs] You get a new job, you get anything, you
always lose it. No choice. No other option, okay. Yeah. Okay. Now we’ve got to
{shi-ta}. {shi-ta} would be great if you could get there. {Shi} means, peace, peace,
p-e-a-c-e. Okay. What do you guess is the {shi-ta}? What’s peace? Yeah, lower
nirvana okay, lower nirvana. Just hanging out in that pleasant state [laughs]
that’s {shi-ta}. Not bad. [students] Yeah, the extreme of peace and the extreme
of suffering life; those are the two extremes. This is the {si-ta} is the extreme of
this suffering life that we have; {shi-ta} is the extreme of reaching a lower nirvana
and just staying there. [student] Yeah, higher nirvana meaning Buddhahood.
But just staying there in the condition where what have you ended? Two things:
afflictions and their seeds. Just, you know, enjoying yourself there. [student]
Sure, no not for those, okay. [student] Yeah, yeah. Just to stay there is {shi-ta}.
That’s also an undesirable state of, it’s in Mahayana Buddhism they say, ho what
a big waste of time [laughs]
You’ve got to go up to the third path and all that work anyway, you might as
well go straight there, you know. You’re just wasting time. Staying in that
condition very long time where you are having a good time but other people are
still suffering is, is, is an extreme to be abandoned by Mahayana practitioners, to
be avoided yeah. [students]
Well you can say to have them and not have them watered there’s, like, we’ll get
into that. Actually, I’ll talk about it tonight. So, {si-ta} and {shi-ta}; {mi nepa} not
staying, the nirvana that’s not staying, is the nirvana that’s not staying in either
one of these two conditions. And that means the nirvana of a Buddha. He’s not
staying in the world of suffering and he’s not staying in a, in a lower nirvana
where it’s just he’s happy. Yeah. [student]
Yeah, there is [student] yeah, they say don’t, don’t, they say anyway you’re
going to be compelled, at some point, to get out of that state and go into
Mahayana. You might as well go Mahayana first. [students] That lower nirvana
[student] Oh, they say there’s a, it’s a very beautiful subject. We’ll study it. What
is the process by which you have some seeds in your mental stream that force
[unclear] to come out and go up, you know. And it’s very beautiful. So that’s
nirvana of [unclear]. Let me see if it says anything else here. Oh, and obviously
what you’ve done at that time is that you’ve, what obstacles have you
abandoned, have you eliminated? You’ve obviously eliminated the first kind of
obstacles- bad thoughts. And there’s, what’s the second kind of obstacles? Yeah,
what we call obstacles to knowledge. So, in, in the definition of nirvana that you
had to write about in the quiz tonight, the person had abandoned or eliminated
bad thoughts and their seeds. But in this nirvana he’s eliminated the other kind
of obstacles which are obstacles to, to omniscience.             Don’t say wisdom.
Omniscience. Obstacles to total knowledge. And that’s really the function of
those last three bodhisattva levels that we talk about. That’s where he gets rid of
his inability to know all things. [student] Yeah. [student] Long story. You mean,
there are eight things, there are eight beliefs that separate the two Mahayanas –
the two Madhyamika schools. There’re eight points of difference between the
two schools and, and we’re not going to study them right now. But, one of them
concerns what is a mental affliction. Is ignorance a mental affliction? What is it
that you’re abandoning at the final stages, just before Buddhahood? And, and
those are some of the differences that separate the two schools. [student] It’s, it’s
Mahayana, of the two schools, the bottom two are Hinayana, the top two are
Mahayana. And the top school has two parts in it, and we’re in the lower part of
that. [laughs] [student] Huh? [student] Yeah, he is. [student] What they say I
don’t want to get into. We’ll study it. [student] Yeah, I know. [laughs] There’s
two Svatantrika schools, alright. Have a break and then when we come back
we’ll do a short [unclear]. [student]
[cut] {..} means , ‘no-self’. [unclear] got this one in the final. Is there a ‘self’ or
not? [unclear] Is there a self or not? Is there a Michael Roach? Of course there is.
So, what does ‘no-self’ mean? Yeah, no Michael Roach that exists from his own
side, independent of you calling him Michael Roach because you are forced to
call him Michael Roach because of your own past deeds. [laughter] [students]
Yeah, yeah, yeah. There’s no Michael Roach that comes [unclear] [laughter]
There’s, no-self means no self nature, no nature of my own [student]. In fact, I
have no quality of my own. Every thing is imputed by you or me ‘cos of my or
your past deeds. [student] Doesn’t exist actually, no existence of its own.
And, and the word ‘self’ is tricky because this, this also has {dak me}, you see. It,
it’s self you say in English, right? The altar itself. That’s what that self means. It
can refer to things also. Self-nature I think would be a better translation. There’s
no quality that it has which it has itself. [students]
There’s a big debate about that. [laughter] Nagarjuna said, I don’t have to say
inherently [students] Michael Roach has no features. Michael Roach has no
qualities. [student]
{Tokpa} means, you know what {tokpa} means.                 What’s {tokpa?}     Yeah.
Realisation. At least we have a few {hlak –che} from the first course. Still
leftover. [laughs] [laughter]
{Sherab} you know. [students] Yeah, wisdom; {kyi} means ‘of’. It’s the same as
{sherab kyi parul tu chinpa}, ‘of wisdom’, right?
But this is {lap-pa} and not perfection, okay; {lap-pa} means, ‘training’. [student]
{lap-pa} [students] Genetive. [student] I’ll show you. You read it always
backwards, right.
Ready? The perfection, I’m sorry, the training of wisdom which realises that
nothing has any nature of its own.
The training of wisdom that realises that nothing has a nature of its own and no
nature of its own. We talk, always talk about the guy at work thing, empty of
being nice or being any quality of its own. [student]
We’re getting there. [laughs] This is, what are we talking about? We’re talking
about the way to get to nirvana. That’s our last subject. We have finished the
definition of nirvana. We have finished the divisions of nirvana and the four
types. And, now, we’re talking about how to get to nirvana/. And the book
[student] hey, good question. Let’s say, the one which is defined in general,
which we [unclear] last week. Anyone of the last three nirvanas. [students]
Yeah. Yeah. [students] Any [unclear] Yeah. That’s all, it’s true, I’ll, I’ll concede
that, okay. [unclear] [laughs]
So, first you, you need three basic things to reach nirvana. Three things have to
be going on. This is the first one. You have to have a training of wisdom which
is perceiving that nothing has any nature of its own. This is what I call the engine
theory. I don’t know if anybody were ever, any of you were in that lecture.
[unclear] spiritual things are like an engine – all the parts must be there. It’s, it’s,
it’s the same as in the physical world. The spiritual things are the same as the
physical world. If you have a path or a system or a religion, which doesn’t have
certain crucial elements, you can never achieve the highest goals. It won’t work.
It just won’t work. There’s no reason to believe that spiritual things would be
any different from physical things. If you go to your car and open it up and just
take out one of the things and say probably I don’t need this one. Most likely
you’ll take out something that will prevent it from running and you won’t be
able to get anywhere. Spiritual, there’s no reason to believe that spiritual things
are any different. They are exactly the same. There are certain amount of
elements that have to be there for you to get a result from a religion and if
they’re, and if, if, any important one is missing, forget it. It won’t work. You
know it might look like an engine. It might have a lot – people like to say, yeah,
but this religion has a lot of stuff that Buddhism has in it. Maybe. But I mean,
[students] [unclear] so you’ll get into a plane that has most of the parts of a
plane? [laughter] [students] No, I mean, it’s even dangerous to have an engine
that looks like a good engine but some, you know, deep down inside some
essential part is missing, it’s as bad as not having an engine. It might as well be a
lump of clay. It doesn’t matter. It won’t get you anywhere. It won’t start. It can’t
get you there. What I’m saying is, I don’t, I don’t say that you have to believe
this now but I assert, I say it’s possible that in the spiritual world it’s the same as
the physical world. If some element is missing you can’t achieve it. You won’t
achieve any great results. You won’t achieve ultimate results. Impossible. I
assert that it’s possible that that’s true. You don’t have to believe it now but
what we call {lam rim}, the steps of Buddhahood, if any central one, any major
one is missing, forget it that engine won’t work. You won’t get there. [student] I
don’t know. I’m just saying think about it. It’s possible [student] For nirvana
[laughter] you’ve got to have three things going on, three elements, three parts
in that engine. [student] Same thing, attain, right. It’s the training of wisdom that
perceives emptiness. That’s actually the third training. There are two other
trainings. What’s [unclear], training. By the way, just as a side point, you don’t
have to write this down, the reason it’s a training and not a perfection is you can
have the trainings before the first path. You can have all three trainings before
the first path. [student] Absolutely [unclear] [student] [laughs] [unclear] It’s a
highly developed level {…}, we’ll look at that some day. But what I’m trying to
say is {lap-pa} means, you probably have some form of this {lap-pa} now, okay.
{Lap-pa} is just when you’re really trying [laughs] [unclear].
{Lap-pa} is not like, you don’t have to get to the first path to have {lap-pa}.
[student] Even before you get to renunciation which is what gets you onto the
first path you can have all the three {lap-pas}. You can be studying these three
things.
What are those three things? {Lap-pa}, {danpo} means first and {nyi} means two,
t-w-o. {…} means, [unclear] in here, under the influence of, under the influence
of. [student] Yeah, {…}
So, what it means is not only must you be perceiving that nothing has any
nature of its own but that perception, that realisation must be under the
influence of alcohol? No. [laughter] I want you to think of that. Under the
influence of alcohol is that so long as you are drunk, you know, you’re, you’re
doing something else bad, it’s influencing, it’s spreading throughout your body
and it’s causing some other bad thing. Here, it’s that wisdom is got the alcohol
of these two other trainings running around in its mind. What are the two other
trainings? The first two trainings, okay, so this means under the influence of the
first two trainings. The first two trainings are what? Wisdom is the third. What
are the first two? Do you know what they are? [students] Trainings. Now we’ve
got something new.         Okay.     First one’s morality and the second one is
concentration. [student] I mean, the more you study the more you begin to see
that they’re all flowing [unclear] [student]
You can think of morality as keeping those ten, avoiding those ten bad deeds
that are in the [unclear]. What it means, as you go to work tomorrow you’re
really making an effort not to say anything bad, not to take anything. We’re not
going to, you know, we’re not going to break into your boss’s drawer of his
desk and steal money. You might make a phone call that you’re not supposed to
make. That’s just plain stealing, you know. You can say, well, there’s
circumstances. I needed to do it. I wanted to do it. These are the classical reasons
for embezzling and [unclear] [student] [unclear] [laughs] You have to be careful
with these ten. [student]Literally to sit for one hour without breaking it if you
want to develop concentration and, and there’s no other way. It’s like that, this
is like dieting or jogging or weightlifting or anything, or music. You must do it
everyday. You must practice it everyday. It has no effect if you do it every third
day or something like that. It just won’t, you can’t do it, you know. It’s
something you have to do everyday. So make time [student] Well, eventually
though, you’re going to have to get to about a solid hour everyday somehow.
And you just have to [student] well I’m trying to get you to fifteen [laughs]
[student] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. [students] Yeah. I also agree, what I’m saying is, it’s
not good to sit down the first day and try to do one hour. That’s impossible.
You won’t. It’s like trying to lift two hundred pounds the first day you start
weightlifting. So you want to build up to do a straight hour. So, do ten minutes,
take a break, read a book then go back for ten minutes. What I’m saying is in
one sitting try, try to [unclear] one hour. If you don’t you can’t get
concentration. [student] Any kind of meditation; except analytical you can do,
analytical you can do in a chair [unclear] and you can be interrupted and that’s
alright. [student] Analytical means what are the arguments for, why do I need
morality [laughs] why should I get morality down to that point? And think it
over. Yeah. It’s just analytical meditation and [student] I’m talking about what
you, what will lead to shamatha, yeah, samadhi which is meditative
concentration, in meditation. Which is the training. [student] Daily practice,
yeah. [student] Practice it, practice concentrating on one object in a, in a formal
meditation posture. You must otherwise you can’t. I, I don’t think you can do it
otherwise, you know. That’s minimum. I mean, ideal [cut]
[side B]
[student] one pointed [student] right, right [student] It’s a, it’s a wonderful
preliminary. If, you know, chess players have this analytical meditation [student]
Yeah. And that’s, they are still having, they’re not focussing on one picture in
their mind. Concentration is defined as a single-pointed mind. My boss has
concentration on money when he has it. [laughter] He has incredible powers of
concentration. He can, you know, we were with him in Japan and he didn’t eat
for twenty-four hours and he didn’t sleep and, you know. We went to the coffee
shop and we were hoping he would give us to eat and he drank the coffee and
ate like twelve packs of sugar and then he got up and kept going. [laughs] And
he has concentration. It’s not [unclear]. It’s not useful. Okay [unclear]
[cut] {Tok} means what? Nah. Yeah. Realisation; {sin} we had up here, same
word different meaning okay. This {sin} means already. {Gompa} means to get
used to, to habituate your self. This is the root for the word for meditation, not
spelled the same, {kompa} and the other one is {gompa}. {gompa} means to get
used to something, to habituate yourself to something. Does that relate to any
one of the paths? Habituation, okay. So, this last part of the method for getting
to nirvana [student] well the last of the three things you need to reach nirvana.
[student] It’s not a training no. We’re not defining the trainings. The first part of
our paths to get to nirvana, we talked about the third training. And then, in the
second part, we talked about the second training. We said that the first training
has to be under the influence of the other two trainings. And then the third one
is that you have to get used to what you perceived, you have to get used to what
you realised, what you already realised. You have to get used to what you
already realised. [students] Right. So he’s mainly talking about which path?
Right, and before the path of no more learning. He’s talking about the fourth
path. So, the fourth path is defined essentially as getting used to what you
perceived, what you realised when? [students] Exactly, yeah. Okay. The whole
period between that, that beautiful few minutes or whatever that you perceive
emptiness directly for the first time and then the period that you finally get rid of
all your bad thoughts, that whole period is, is this. It’s getting used to what you
saw before directly. It’s getting, running over it again and again and reviewing it
again and again and using that realisation in your daily life. [student] That’s how
it’s described [student] It’s, it’s, it’s , it is largely that also but, but technically it’s,
it’s defined as getting, it does involve going back into that deep state and seeing
that directly again but [student] this is not just that. This is also in your daily life,
applying it in your daily life, you know. [student] Yeah. [student] What will be
your main thought during that time according to those four bodhichittas we
talked about? He, he can no longer see or think, what, what, what? [student]
During this period [student] it’s even before that [student] No. During that
period does he believe in what he seeing? [student]
No. He doesn’t believe he’s right. He believes it’s wrong. He understands that
he’s wrong but does he still see it? This is what we call illusion and that’s the only
meaning of illusion. I mean, this is the principle meaning of illusion in Buddhism.
All that other stuff is, you know, sounds nice doesn’t mean anything, okay.
[laughs] This is the main meaning of illusion. He knows he’s crazy. He knows
he’s not seeing things right. He doesn’t believe what he’s seeing anymore and
he’s getting used to that idea and he’s using that to be more moral. And he’s
using that to get rid of his ignorance. [student] Let’s call it the four kinds of
bodhichitta. We got in trouble with [unclear] [student]
No, it’s not that he perceives emptiness directly all the time. It’s that he no
longer sees things as self-existent. [students] At the second one he no longer
believes himself. At the third one he no longer sees it either. [student] Does he
see them as not existing? That’s a good question. I got to think about that.
[students] [unclear] [students] Yeah. That’s a good point. I’ll have to ask [student]
Right. [student] She’s saying if he doesn’t have the seeds [student] if the seeds
aren’t doing anything then can he still perceive relative reality? [student] I’ve got
to ask [students] Not at all. No. [student] What you want, you have a thing in
logic called proofs [unclear] [student] He’s not seeing them as empty and he’s
not seeing them wrong anymore, what’s left? What is it? What’s going on?
[students] He’s talking about bhumis eight, nine and ten. [student] he’s talking
about, he’s talking about bodhisattva levels eight, nine and ten. It’s a good
question. Let me cook it.
By the way, part of the answer I know. Part of the answer is that, in this school,
he’s, when I told you about the last three levels is, is mostly Prasangika. [student]
Right. What I told you is mostly [unclear] Svatrantika, according to Rinpoche, I
asked him, I mean they, they still believe he has some kind of seeing things as
self-existent but I don’t want to get into it. Leave it. Yeah. [student]
Is he in meditation on the last three bhumis all the time? I don’t know. I’ll have to
think about it. [student] Maybe not. Let me ask Rinpoche. That’s a tough
question. That’s a good question. [student]
Does he re-see the four noble truths is what you’re saying, right? Does he go
through that process when he comes down out of that perception? I don’t
know. [student] No, not like that. He doesn’t stand there and say you will
become a Buddha. You understand that it’s going to take that many lives. It’s
one of the knowledges you get but it’s not that the Buddha comes, we call {…}.
It’s not that he appears to you in some vision and he says, hey Michael only
seven lives left, not like that. You perceive the Buddha’s Dharmakaya mainly.
[student]
Directly? [unclear] [student] I assume you can. [student] Yeah. But I don’t think
[unclear] Dharmakaya is emptiness. [student] You’re still seeing emptiness. You
don’t know it’s emptiness until you come out.
Alright, we should go. Any other questions? [students] Excuse me? [student] It’s
my personal experience that it’s very preferable to make it the same time
everyday ‘cos your friends get to learn, your friends get to know that if they call
you and no body will answer the phone. If they bang on your door you’re not
going to answer it. You get in the habit of not delaying it to the end of the day
when you’re tired and exhausted and [unclear] have any results. If you do it the
same time every day for years, just, Benjamin Franklin said, Oh let the world
adjust to my schedule. [laughter] [laughs] I’m tired of adjusting. The world is
endless [unclear] there’s always a problem to be addressed. There’s always a
phone call, [unclear] [student] I know. And I did it at the last minute ‘cos I need
a hand. [students] You can punch them if you want [students] It is. I got to go
turn that alarm off [students] [laughter] [unclear]
Goodnight.
[cut]