ACI 5 «Как работает карма», занятие 6

Class Six: Karma and Emptiness HOW KARMA WORKS -- 1994

November 7, 1994

 ...and I think the connection between them is not very often brought out. And I
think a lot of people get confused. If someone s teaching emptiness and they are
not speaking about karma, or if they re speaking about karma and they re not
speaking about emptiness at the same time, then they don t know how they
work together. And you ll see why tonight. You re going to get a presentation
mainly from Chandrakirti.        Do you know him? His Tibetan name is {Je
Tsongkapa} and in Sanskrit it s Chandrakirti. And he wrote the most famous,
well, the main text on the Middle Way that we study in the monastery, the
Middle Way in the highest school, the highest part of the Middle Way,
Madhyamika Prasangika. He wrote the root text. The root text is called [bk:
Entering the Middle Way]. Getting into the Middle Way, Entering the Middle
Way. He lived about 650 A.D. So we re going to study his point of view tonight,
and along with his point of view we re going to study Kampa s. What s Kampa
mean? Je Tsongkapa? In Sanskrit what? Maitreya. He and Vasubandhu s
brother, right. Vasubandhu s who? Wrote the Abidharma... dumb question,
right? [laughter]. He and Vasubandhu s brother Asanga collaborated on it.
Maitreya s becoming a Buddha and you know the debate about that, whether he
s a real Buddha yet or not, if you were in some of the other courses. He lives in a
paradise. Asanga went to that paradise. They wrote five great books. Asanga
brought back five great books. And one of them is called [bk: Gyur Lama]. The
name in Sanskrit is ....

[student: Michael, is this Kampa like the guy who [unclear]] [laughter]

Yeah, yeah, it s a very common Tibetan name. It happened to be the name of
the abbot of Sera Me for twelve years and the abbot makes new monks, and the
new monks get the Abbot s first name, so half the monks in the monastery are
called Kampa.

[student: How do they distinguish themselves?]

By the second name. Kampa [unclear] from this college, and there are probably
five who answer, then Kampa [unclear] from this college.
[student: Who did you say went to the paradise?]

Asanga, Vasubandhu s half-brother. Their mother was a nun. {Uttara Tantra}.
It s not a tantra, it s called tantra. {Uttara Tantra} means Higher Line, Higher
Lineage. That s the name of his book. Higher Line. I m not quite sure what
higher line means.

[student: So he went to a heaven and he met Maitreya...]

And Maitreya dictated to him five great books.

[student: And they are?]

[bk: Wen do Gyen], which is...

[student: I mean anything we re going to study or anything...]

You ve already studied parts of the first one. And this one is very popular. It s
not one of the great five books that we studied in the monastery but it s a very
great text, so actually we re going to talk about that text.

[student: That s by Vasubandhu?]

No, by Asanga. Asanga was the scribe. Maitreya was the author.

[student: Can you go through the whole...] [laughter]

[laughs] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Maitreya was in Paradise and Asanga went to that
paradise and Maitreya dictated to him five great books of which this one, called
the [bk: The Higher Line, {Gyur Lama}] is one of them.

[student: And Maitreya is the Buddha that s supposed to be coming...]

Maitreya is the Buddha of the future. Whether or not he s a Buddha already is a
big debate in the monastery.

[student: Whether he s a Buddha already means is he a living being now?]

According to some points of view he s already a Buddha.
[student: In a regular body, or in another form?]

No, in a paradise. Some people say he s not yet a Buddha. Some people say he s
going to be a Buddha, and he ll be the next Buddha.

[student: So he could be one of us.]

[student: Dream a little bit.]

[student: This Chandrakirti translated [bk: Gyur Lama]. Is that what you said?

No, no, no, no. No connection between the two.

[student: So [bk: Gyur Lama] is up there...]

The reason [bk: Gyur Lama] is up here is that I want to give you a little reading
from [bk: Gyur Lama] which appears in a commentary of Chandrakirti, but don
t worry about it, okay? What you re going to get right now is from [bk: Gyur
Lama]. And we ll go back to Chandrakirti later.

[student: So who wrote [bk: Gyur Lama]?]

It s a book about emptiness mainly. And it s written by Maitreya.

[student: So it s the same as [bk: Uttara Tantra]?]

Yeah, Uttara Tantra is the Sanskrit name and it s not a tantric word. The word
tantra means many other things. Tantra means live, like the sacred thread that a
Brahman wears is a tantra.

[student: How do you spell Asanga?]

[silence]

It means {top me}. {top me}. A is the negative in Sanskrit. Asanga means... if
you have very good wisdom, he cuts through knowable things like a hot knife
through butter. That s why they called him Asanga. Nothing can stop it.
Anyway, like a hot knife through butter. I can t think of any other word in
English. That s what his name means. Okay, what did he write? He wrote a
very beautiful description. I m sorry, Asanga wrote it down, Maitreya spoke it
and it appears in the [bk: Uttara Tantra], Higher Line. Asanga went to that
paradise and met Maitreya. Western scholars go crazy trying to date all of them
because they don t know what s going on. There s two Vasubandhus and three
Asangas, a Nagarjuna after seven hundred years... they don t know what s
going on. Okay, so he wrote a lot about the relationship between emptiness and
karma. So I want to give you a little bit of a... there s a very famous section that s
in your reading. It s in the first few pages of the reading. And he described how
karma is created by a lack of understanding of emptiness. And I m going to go
through that. He described six steps. He gives it six steps, like sort of a chain
reaction. He says if you have this, you have this, if you have this, you have this,
if you have this, you have this. The first of them is a {bakchak}.

[silence]

[student: When you say how karma is created, you mean bad karma is created
through lack of understanding?]

Both. Six steps of how... well, you ll see how emptiness and karma are related.
How they cause trouble. [laughs]. All right? So, {bakchak}. What s a {bakchak}?

[student: A mental seed.]

They can be a couple of kinds. You had a {le ki bakchak}. What s a le?

[student: Karma.]

We were talking about karmic {bakchaks}. There are also ignorance {bakchaks}.
Much different, right? A {le ki bakchak} planted in your brain is going to sprout
up as what?

[student: A label?]

Well, a good experience or a bad experience, okay? An ignorance {bakchak} if it
springs up is going to do what? It s going to create what? Suppose there s been
some latent seed in your mind for a kind of ignorance and the {bakchak} grows,
then what happens? You take something to be self-existent, you take something
to happen to your self. To have a real nature. We ll talk about what that means.
So it all starts with a {bakchak}. Where does the {bakchak} come from?
[student: Deed, karma.]

It s not a karmic {bakchak} really. It s more of a...well, ultimately, yeah. But it
really comes from your past lives. I mean, you ve been carrying that {bakchak}
for many jillions of lives. We saw that in the last course. If you can prove one
most previous life, then the lives are endless, beginningless. So you ve had that
{bakchak} for time without beginning.

[student: What does this {bakchak} [unclear]]

Is it physical or mental? It s in between. According to Buddhism, there s three
kinds of changing objects. Physical objects, mental objects and those changing
things which are neither physical nor mental. And that s the name of it, you
know, scholars go crazy trying to translate them. But it means, examples
are...Fran. Fran is neither Fran s mind nor Fran s body. Fran is a concept. And
this is an energy that resides... we talked about it last class... we had a long talk
about this last class. But it resides within you and it ripens at a certain time and
then you get that either as the result of karma if its a karmic {bakchak}, or you
get what? You get manifestations of ignorance in your mind, if it was a
{bakchak} of ignorance.

[student: You re saying it s a concept, like Fran?]

No. I m saying that Fran, or John, is one example of a changing thing which is
neither physical nor mental, and a {bakchak} is another example, if you want to
know how to categorize {bakchaks}. There s a big debate about it. They stay in
the mind. We talked about it. So first you have a {bakchak} for that kind of
ignorance. There s 2 kinds of ignorance. Those 2 kinds of ignorance come out.
That s number 2.

[silence]

[student: Michael, are you just happening to use ignorance as an example, or is
this is how it works for all situations?]

[unclear] By the time I get to the text....

[student: That pen is not working.]

Not too good?
[silence]

These are 2 kinds of ignorance and you should know them. You don t have to
know them in Tibetan. Say {kanza ki}[repeat] {dak zin} [repeat] and {chu ki dak
zin} [repeat]. {dak zin} is a very important word. {dak} means self . {zin} means
to grasp . So {dak zin} is the tendency to grasp the self. Is that good enough? Is
that a bad thing? That ignorance? If someone steals the Buddha s begging bowl
just because they saw it was a [unclear] bowl? Yes. So you have to clarify them a
bit, right? It s not wrong to think that you are yourself. Of course you are
yourself. That s a [unclear]. You are yourself. {dak zin} holds that self to be
truly existing, existing the way it seems to exist.

[student: [unclear]]

Didn t get to that yet. [laughs] {Ganza} means me , person . So the first kind of
ignorance translates as a tendency to grasp to some self-nature of a person . The
reason we say some self-nature is because there s no such thing. It s grasping
something about me which is false.

[student: Self-existent nature? You said self-nature?]

You could say self-existent. I mean, when people say that Buddhists deny the
self, that they deny the atman, that they believe in an-atman , it doesn t mean...
obviously you re here, you can t deny it, that would be silly, stupid. That s why
people rack their brains trying to figure it out. Sounds very mysterious, right? It
attracts a lot of people to Buddhism. Of course you re here, of course you re
there, of course you are yourself. And the word atman or dak ... you know, the
chair is itself, the wall is itself, the building is itself, that s all okay. {dak zin}
means to grasp at some self that doesn t exist. Self-nature. Self-nature.

[student: Are you talking about interdependence?]

Later. [laughs] Of me, okay? It grasps to some self-existence of me. It focuses on
who? Your {ganza ki dak} focuses on you. Yours focuses on you, yours focuses
on you. This is focussing on your self, and interpreting yourself to be self-
existent. Self-existent means not being interdependently arising. That word itself
has four different interpretations, there are different levels of self, of
sophistication. We saw that in the first course. That s a long story. But basically
it looks at me and takes me to be self-existent. What does that mean? What
would that be like? In the case of the guy at work?

[student: Best boss you could ever hope for.]

No, I mean, let s say it focuses on you, you don t like something about yourself
and...well, we re going to talk about it. Anyway, it focuses on you and it has
some kind of wrong idea about you. That s what {ganza ki dak} means. It
thinks, it believes that you have some kind of self- existence. We don t know
what that is. {chu ki dak zin} means the tendency to grasp to a self- nature of
dharmas, and in this case it s very important to understand that dharmas means
my , my , me . Dharmas, which generally means all existing phenomena, and
also means the teachings of the Buddhas, in this case means something totally
different, means things that belong to you.

[student: Your things?]

Your nose, your ear, your mind, your legs.         So the first kind of ignorance is
focussing on what?

[student: Your self.]

John Stillwell. By John Stillwell. And Helen Kuntzler is focussing on Helen
Kuntzler. And John is focussing on John s hand, John s leg, John s own mind,
John s eyes, and for other people, it s focussing on the other parts of the... their
own parts, in their mind.

[student: So one is the whole and one is the parts?]

You could say that. One is me and the rest is mine . I, me, mine, we have the
song...

[student: So my house, too?]

Yeah, normally it s restricted to parts to do with the self.

[student: This happens all the time, I mean like...]

It s defined as {niguro} which means what belongs to you . But then it says, all
the examples it gives are personal parts, like your mind, your nose, your ears,
your body, your thoughts. It s pretty much focussed on you. This is the one
that gives you the most trouble. When you reach {toma}, when you see
emptiness for the first time directly, it is the emptiness of your self. And when
you come out of that, you ll say Oh Gee, when I become a Buddha, they won t
call me Michael Roach anymore. Some kind of understanding about self that
you have. The first time that you perceive emptiness directly it s concerning
your self. So what s happening so far? You re carrying a seed for those two
kinds of misperceptions from your past life. Then in this life they start to grow,
these two kinds of ignorance start to grow. These are the main two kinds of
ignorance that even exist in the world. There s other kinds of ignorance like
about karma and stuff like that. But when you talk about the ignorance that
causes suffering, this is it. It s one of these two.

[student: What about the ignorance that sees other people as self-existent?]

That s not the first link of who we look like. There is such an ignorance, you
know, that focusses on Janet s eye, and there are some monastic scriptures that
say Well, that s a kind of grasping to self because it s someone else s self. But
mainly just think of the main emptiness that you don t understand and the one
that s going to get you into trouble is the emptiness of yourself.

[student: What is the source of the original {bakchak} of ignorance?]

The last ignorance you had in your last life.

[student: Self-existent perception?]

Yeah. The idea that things had their own nature. And those came from their
own {bakchaks}, and those came from their own {bakchaks} and those
{bakchaks} came from something else, and there s no end. There s no beginning,
actually. You saw in the last class that we had that if the proofs for future lives
are correct and there was a past life, and if there was one past life because what
triggers a life is the life before it it has to be beginningless. In Buddhism we don t
believe that your mind had any beginning. You can t point to a point in time and
say your mind began at that time. You can t. Because as a {unclear}, the material
cause, the thing that turns into mind has to be the mind of the moment before.

[student: And these {bakchaks} [unclear]...]

Are you any worse than you were a million years ago? I don t remember seeing
that. You know, you can have bad million year spans when you re really
narrow, really thick, no, really, and I think they just go like that. They re always
strong enough to keep you in the suffering life.                  But I think they
would...depending on whether you met a teacher or not, whether you had any
exposure to good ideas. But I don t see this kind of cosmic thing where they get
worse as the eons go on. They seem to go up and down.

[student: Could you give a definition of {chu ki dak zin}?]

{chu ki dak zin}.. I ll give you the technical definition. Ah, I m so glad somebody
asked. {nga yi walla nying me}, focussing on the parts of yourself, or what you
call mind , {deba du ba jig me}, the state of mind which believes that thing to be
self-existent, those objects to be self- existent. What self-existent means is a big
story. So any way, these two are the ones that cause you trouble. These two are
the first link of the Wheel of Life.

[student: By saying that it s beginningless, the causes for these, or it came from a
previous one, that sounds like it precludes a state that any mind ever had before
where it was without ignorance, and then it sort of fell into ignorance...]

Yeah, right, no, we ve never not had ignorance. We wouldn t be here.

[student: Either that or [unclear]].

Yeah. True. All right. Number three.... yeah?

[student: Are you saying that all minds have ignorance from the very beginning?
So mind came into existence, if you were to say that, through ignorance?]

It never started.

[student: Okay, had no beginning, and it was with ignorance?]

Yeah. The mind has always had ignorance. You ve always perceived things the
wrong way. When you see emptiness for the first time you ll realize that every
perception you ve ever had in your life was mistaken, every few minutes, every
few seconds, every millisecond of perception you ve ever had was ignorance.

[student: Assuming that your mind [unclear]]

[laughs}. They re not.
[student: They re not?]

Not according to Buddhism. Humans are in the best shape. There are pleasure
beings above us, physically they have more fun. But because they re having so
much fun, they can t think as clearly as we do. The suffering with which our life
is spiced keeps us sharp. Supposedly the best form to be born in is human.

[student: But what if you re not ... what if there are beings that are not [unclear]..
there s a huge universe...]

Well, there are six realms. Every being in the universe has to fall into one of
these six according to Buddhism, according to the Omniscient Ones who see all
universes, all planets.

[student: So maybe if there s other life on other planets and there are beings...]

There is. There s whole maps of them in the Abidharma.

[student: Okay, so these people would be considered to be in the human realm?]

If they... actually, we ll talk about that later. It ll be very interesting. Okay.

[silence]

Okay, say {lok chenchi lok} [repeat] {lok chenchi lok} [repeat]. {lok chenchi lok}
is... {chenchi lok} means backwards . And it focuses on two things it focuses on
pleasant experiences and it focusses on unpleasant experiences. Now what is a
{chenchi lok}? What do you think? Keep some kind of flow between what
happened before.

[student: We re attracted to pleasure and... pleasant experiences]

Yeah, it s just misperceiving pleasure and pain. But what s it thinking about the
pleasure? What s it thinking about the guy at the office?

[student: If it s good ... [unclear] it s pleasure.]

More profound than that. [laughter]
[student: It s real, it s self-existent.]

Well, it s real or else you wouldn t be experiencing... we re going to go into that
later. That s self-existent. What does self-existent mean here? It s that it exists...
this is the ultimate meaning of self-existent, and there are many other meanings
of self-existent, and you have to learn all of them, in the lower schools. In the
higher schools, the highest viewpoint is that a thing is self- existent if it exists
without mind conceiving of it and creating it in a way, by my conceptions. If it
exists independent of the process of being conceptualized, then it s self-existent.
So that s the next step. You have a seed for ignorance and then ignorance grows
in your mind and then ignorance focuses on pleasant things and unpleasant
things and thinks of them the wrong way. It thinks that if the guy at work yells
at me, then what I should do to remove that unpleasantness is to yell back and to
somehow overcome him, and then he ll leave and then that s what caused him to
get out of my life. That s a {chenchi lok}, to perceive him as being something
outside of the product of my own karma and my own conceptions. It s my own
problem and it s got nothing to do with yelling at him. It s totally unconnected.
The ignorant thing to do is to respond. Totally no relation...if you do something
and you get rid of him, or if you do something and it doesn t get rid of him,
which you know happens, both of them happen, so it doesn t work, right? You
say something, or do something... this is {chenchi lok}. The perception of him is
the perception you have of everything in your life. You think it s pleasant or
unpleasant by its own nature and not because of your own projections.

[students: Can you give us a small definition for that?]

Yeah, I would say that these are all steps of a long process by which you get
screwed up. You have a seed in your mind when you re born for ignorance.
Ignorance manifests, grows, it springs up in your mind. You look at pleasant
and unpleasant objects and take that the wrong way. That s {chenchi lok}. Very
simple. What s happening is perfectly simple. You have it about every object in
your life. Especially pleasant and unpleasant objects. You respond to them
totally wrong. You have a totally wrong perception of them. If you get
something pleasant, my God, give it away to somebody. That s how to keep it.
[laughs] [laughter] If you want more, if you like it, give it away. Cause it for
other people, serve other people, that s the road to pleasure. The moment you
consume it, you ve screwed up.

[student: Michael, I ve had a lot of trouble understanding the Mind-Only School s
explanation of karma....]
I think it s kind of cool actually.

[student: But I don t understand... like what do they say about interdependence
and how would they define self-existence?]

That s a long story. Yeah, yeah, they define emptiness and this is not to do with
tonight s class, but just for you as the absence of a separate seed for the perceiver
and the perceived. That s emptiness according to the Mind-Only School. The
absence of any separate seed that creates the perceiver and the perceived thing is
emptiness and that makes sense, because their big deal is that, you know, I did a
good karma, so actually my visual consciousness now has been created by that
seed of good karma, and I m watching you, and if I enjoy it, then they are both
created by the same karmic seed, a good karma. And you re not out there. You
re part of my own mind and I m looking at you. That s the Mind-Only School.
For me to believe that those two things are not produced by the same {bakchak}
growing out of the {laya vignana} is to hold it to be self-existent. And that causes
me trouble.

[student: How do they explain interdependence.]

That s a long story. That s the main meaning of interdependence. I ll show you
a book about it. There are four great interpretations of interdependence. We
did them in the first course. We ll do them again some time. You must know
those things. Otherwise you take a lower interpretation of them rather than the
ultimate one and you try to base your behavior on that and it doesn t work.
People say to you... what was this argument? People say to me, Oh you shouldn
t be attracted to girls because they re just atoms. That s their interdependence.
Well, it didn t help me, you know, I know they re just atoms but [laughs] I still
had this problem. It didn t help me, I didn t understand how that was supposed
to... how, okay, I understand that she grew from the food that she ate, and I
understand that she s all carbon atoms and I understand that she dyed her hair
or she s wearing make-up and wearing clothes, and I understand that they re all
artificial and that they re all interdependent, but she still looks attractive to me,
you know, that doesn t help me remove my desire. There s something else.
That is one [unclear] explanation of interdependence but it doesn t help me. You
have to know the higher way. Okay. So {lo chinchi lok} is where you take those
pleasant and unpleasant things the wrong way. You think that they re just
happening. But actually they re your projections on a blank screen.
[student: So can you explain, when you have someone to deal with, for instance
an incompetent cop who writes you a ticket, and you write him up and you get
him fired. [laughter] That s not...]

No, I mean, this is your....

[student: [unclear] related?]

If you write... it s a long story. It s a long story. But basically it doesn t mean
that you shouldn t do something. You should resist the dumb thing he s going
to do. You should fire incompetent people [unclear] and all that. That s all true.
It s where did you think they came from? We saw last week where does a world
of nincompoops come from? [laughter] No, it s the {dak be}.                 It s the
environmental result of...must be something, I don t know. Not studying
wisdom or something. Then you have to be surrounded by incompetent people.
This is where it came from. You made it. That s [unclear]. The whole thing of
environmental result, if you really weren t blown away by it, you didn t catch it.
All the people around you in your office are {dak jes}, environmental results of
what you did. You wouldn t have to be with them if you hadn t collected
together the karma. They re coming from your karma. You d be surrounded
by brilliant, helpful monks who cook you lunches [laughs] [laughter].

[student: So tonight we re back in the highest school, right?]

Yes, we are. I mean, that book, there s a debate about whether it s strict Mind-
Only or Prasangika. Don t worry about it. Abidharma s anything but Mind-
Only. Abidharma s way down in the first school. We ve been out of Abidharma
for two classes. Why? You must know these things or you can t buy karma. If
you know these things, you must buy karma. It s actually a question of whether
you can behave well or not, based on your knowing. I can t do anything beyond
the classroom door, you know, even for myself. Based on that misperception,
what do you guess happens next? Because you don t understand the guy s
nature at work, and you don t understand the nature of Fran s spouse, what
would you do?

[student: You d yell at him.]

[laughs] You d scream at the one guy and you d go after the other one. So {de
jak} is desire. We saw before that it s the wish not to lose something desirable,
not to lose something pleasant. The next thing that happens in this chain of
events, how you get into trouble, is because you misunderstood the object. She
looks pretty, you don t realize that if you touch her or something you ll burn in
hell for thousands of years. You re not thinking about it. And he looks bad and
you scream at him. And the first one is {del min de}. You don t want to lose a
pleasant object. And we said many times, we talked about it before, I mean of
course, the reason you re in Buddhism course is to get out of this suffering. You
want to lose the unpleasant objects. Did that kind of desire come from this
process?

[student: The desire to lose an unpleasant object?]

The wish to get out of samsara. The wish to get out of this suffering life. Did it
come about due to this process? Not really. I mean, it s true that your
conceptions are messed up all the time, and it s true that your perception of
samsara, your own suffering, is messed up. But it s a noble desire. It s not at all
a result of this kind of chain of causation. You want to reach a state where you
permanently don t have these kinds of suffering.

[student: This relates to one of the things I was thinking about, whether your
entire mind is {bakchak} [unclear], or is there a part, you know, like a side that s
searching for the truth, you know...]

You have good {bakchaks}. {Bakchaks} don t have to be bad. Your desire to
come to class is from a... your attraction to Buddhism was from a {bakchak}.

[student: Actually the process seems very similar, the basic difference being the
belief in a self- existent beings or objects or people or what have you, if you take
that part out, the desire to achieve Buddhahood is reached the same way, right?
It s just that...]

[student: But they sort of believe that Buddhahood is self-existent.]

Oh yeah, right now everything... as I said, you still are under the.. when you
think of Buddhahood, or when you think of Nirvana, even when you think of
emptiness, even when an Arya thinks of emptiness, after he comes out of the
direct perception of emptiness, his mind is screwed up.

[student: He s [unclear] his perceptions.]

He knows he does. Then you get {chang du}. {Chang du} means what? What s
the opposite of desire? We call it hatred...it s called hatred, it s the snake in the
middle of the Wheel of Life picture over there.

[student: Is this number five?]

No, we re still on number four. Sorry, [unclear].

[student: So there s two parts to this?]

Yeah, of course there s two parts. You know that. Liking things and disliking
things. Ignorantly. [student: Is disliking something hatred? Is that what you
were saying?]

What I m saying is... hatred... I don t agree with that translation. I think it s a
very poor translation. I haven t hated anybody today, I mean, but I had
{shetham} all day long. Forget it. Of course I m collecting karma all day long. It
can even be a slight irritation with someone. It s this... if you misunderstand the
object. Everything from slight irritation to tremendous fury in your personality
is all very bad karma and very ignorant. And you wouldn t have it if you
understood the objects that they were focussed on.

[student: But if they were emotions...]

You wouldn t have any of them.

[student: But if you have these emotions, right...]

They are just...then you have to understand that...]

[student: Are they supposedly.. do they come from the mind first? I mean, it
seems to me that you re giggling, you re laughing, you know...]

We have it here. I m trying to explain...they re based on a misperception. The
misperception came from a wrong way of...from ignorance, and the ignorance
came from your past seeds in your mind. This is the process by which you get
irritated. And it s also the process by which you murder someone out of fury. I
mean, we re talking about different degrees of the same desire to get away from
something. {Dang du} is the desire to get away from something. This mental
function that they call hatred in the books on Buddhism, desire, come on, I didn t
have desire today, I didn t run after some girl on the street and I didn t have
hatred or anger where I blew up at Pelma just because... well, you know, so, it
wasn t like that. But I had these two emotions all day long. Very subtly, I
wanted things and I didn t things all day long. As long as I misunderstand the
objects of those, they will cause me trouble. How will they cause trouble? That s
number five.

[student: Would you say attachment and aversion are accurate translations of
these?]

That s pretty good, but aversion is like, you know, when s the last time you had
aversion?

[student: When you don t want something, you don t want it, you don t like it.]

That s all right. To me, aversion is a little strong. I have an aversion to... I don t
know. Aversion is pretty strong. I don t know... you could say aversion, but it s
not a word that people use. You don t see it in the New York Post or the Daily
News.

[laughter]

[student: Then why would anybody choose to do one thing or another, a
Buddha?]

Ah. I tried to clarify it and I ll clarify it again. These are not the simple wanting
to get away from something, not to lose something and the simple wanting to
get away something. They are wanting not to lose something and wanting to
get away from something based on ignorance of the objects.                      They
misunderstand the objects upon which they are focussed. And naturally that will
make them number five. And you know what it is.

[silence]

[student: Based on thinking that it s within the object itself, and not in your own
mind?]

In the Mind Only School, but not in this school. In this school, based on thinking
that it didn t come from your own projections. That was [unclear]. So suppose
out of ignorance of the object, suppose you don t understand the asshole at
work... [laughter]. Okay, you really don t understand his nature and you want
to get away from him {chang duh}. You want to get away from him, you want
to avoid him. So you will what? You ll shut him down. What s it called? Put him
down. You know, I mean, you ll try to do some action at the office which will
permanently get him out of your way for a .... I mean, you ll try, you really do
try, it s not that you go stabbing him with a knife or something, but you know,
you try to arrange something so that he gets moved out of your section or, you
know, you try to discredit it with your friends, you try to make sure he doesn t
have any authority at work, you try to just contain him because you don t like
him. That s {le sak}. {Le} means what?

[students: {Karma.}]

Karma. {sak} means to collect. You collect karma. The minute you do
something like that, the minute you talk back to him, the minute you answer his
violence with violence, {le sak}, you collected karma.

[student: In a practical sense, how do you administer [unclear] and you re trying
to avoid...]

I might be...there s a famous quotation, I love it. It s... if a person tries to do you
violence, and violence can be a harsh word at work, right?

[student: Turn the other cheek?]

[laughter].

No. But turn it knowingly, turn it out of self-interest. That s another story. It
says if your mother came at you with a knife, if your mother went crazy, you
know, she just took something and suddenly she freaked out and she came at
you with a knife, would you stab her? No, since it s your mother and not one of
these guys out here on Ninth Avenue [laughter], since it s your mother, you
would watch her carefully, when you got a chance you d grab her and hug her
and try to get the knife away from her, you wouldn t think to hurt her. You
would even maybe let her give you a little cut if you thought you could grab her
the right way and try to restrain her. And that s the idea. It doesn t mean you
can t resist evil, but resist evil as if the person doing it was your mother and you
really don t want to hurt her. And there maybe a thing when you have to take
very strong measures, but I don t think that most of the violence that people do
even in an office or even militarily is done with the conception of that Saddam
Hussein is my mom, you know. You wouldn t consider assassinating your mom
or dad, you d just try to catch her and put her in a padded cell somewhere.
[laughs]. You know, something like that.

[student: We have the example earlier of the incompetent person. So that s a less
drastic example than the jerk at work [unclear].]

Where did it come from?

[student: Wait a minute! Wait! So he s coming... he doesn t really exist as an
incompetent person, it s merely ascribing all this incompetence [unclear]]

I never said that. I never said that. Because you ascribe it, he really exists as an
incompetent person. That s what I said.

[student: Yes, and if we understand that, then his incompetence doesn t matter to
me, but the company still loses money. I mean, am I supposed to explain to my
boss, this person appears to me to be an incompetent person?] [laughter]. You
do! The person will be going out the door, you know, but really it s just the way
it appears to us. We have to act on these appearances. Now acting and knowing
[unclear] is what we re talking about tonight? As opposed to acting in a blind
fashion. That that person is truly incompetent has nothing to do with the karma
that

involves having to see that person and to be interacting with that person under
these

circumstances.

I have the same problem. You know, I had an employee that was worse than
that. [laughs] [laughter] [unclear] bankrupting me. And I wanted to yell, and I
wanted to get rid of the person and I wanted to... there s a difference between
taking the proper step within the proper milieu of your culture without hurting
the person, and there s a difference between that and ending up getting angry,
hating the person, wanting to cut the person out of the company, or wanting
to... there s a big difference between those two things. It s what I m saying
about your mother, if your mother came at you with a knife. But ultimately,
that ain t the way to get rid of that person.

[student: It s the Jimmy Carter school of diplomacy, what he did with [unclear]].
I don t know, I don t know, that s a great karma. But anyway...

[student: We have to act, I mean, we have to do things and that we understand
all this is....]

Well, I ll... I agree, it s true, it s the most radical thing I m saying to you. And this,
I don t want to go this far, you can t do it yet. The way to remove that person is
to remove the karma that makes you see that person. It s not to remove the
person.

[student: You mean stand there and get bankrupt time and time until there s
nothing left to become bankrupt with?]

Maybe.

[student: Well, my boss isn t going to [unclear].] [laughs] [laughter]

That s desire.

[student: How do you survive in the business world? How do you survive in the
business world which is nasty enough?]

You know, I ve been in business for a long time. You don t have to be nasty.

[laughter]

[student: Okay, well, most of it is, may be you aren t [laughter]].

I don t think so.

[student: Most of what I ve found is...]

You could be honorable and I d say that in the long run you normally get richer.

[student: [unclear] As a matter of fact, you can sit the person down and say, look,
you re a great person, you just happen to be incompetent and we re not going to
be in business if you stay. It s nothing personal, I think you re great otherwise,
you have to leave.]

That s all right. You know, you grab your mother, you stop her. You don t let
her kill you. But the attitude that you have to... ultimately...

[student: Also it has a lot to do with motivation.]

The causation of the bankruptcy of the company has nothing to do with
removing that person or not removing that person.

[student: So don t remove him.          Just stand there and watch the [unclear]
happen.]

Do the kindest thing, do the right thing. I mean, what we are discussing is very
fundamental, it s very radical, very... where did the company come from that it
could be bankrupted by this person? What caused that?

[student: The philosophical grid that goes a zillion gazillion years... and now we
re at this point, right now, you see some document that was signed the wrong
way, and if you don t act, that will bankrupt the company. So you re going to
stand there and say.... gee, you know, this thing has happened...]

I didn t say that. I said grab your mother and stop her, do it kindly. Without
violence. But ultimately, why did that occur? Why is the company such that it
can be bankrupted by one person?

[student: Why is the company such at all? Why is any company such at all?]

This is what we re talking about.

[student: Right.]

Ultimately, if you follow my reasoning to the ultimate end, which is what you ve
just done, and you ve tried to do a {teng yu}, that s Prasangika, you tried to
show that it would be observed to act that way at a certain point. It s not. But I
m not really... I m not suggesting...

[student: And what way is that? I mean, you have to act. Even not acting is an
act.]

Didn t... leave it like that. Imagine that every detail of your world comes from
those karmas. Environmental results. And the way to change those results can
only be to accept the karmas.
 [student: And we re producing new causes every time we re react, so we react
without the ignorance of thinking that this is all happening out there concretely
on its own.]

You can say that, yes, we re going to talk about that.

[student: I understand that. To act without that still doesn t mean that you don t
act with justice

or with a sense of propriety in that situation, to the person and to everything
else.]

Oh no, you re not....ultimately where it came from and how to fix it.. I ll tell you
why, it s very radical. Firing the person, or trying to get rid of the person, doesn
t always remove the problem. Sometimes they sue you. We met a guy the
other day at the restaurant. He sued his boss who d fired him. Sometimes it has
repercussions that go way beyond what the potential loss of the person was. If
you remove the person with the correct means, preventing [unclear] to the
company, should it work some of the time, or all of the time?

[student: Well, the....]

Yes or no, all the time or some of the time?

[student: It should work all of the time, but it doesn t.]

It doesn t, so that s not the true cause. Leave it, leave it.

[student: I just want to get the translation for {shedang drondu}.]

Yes, {shedang} means dislike and it s what most people translate as hatred, and it
does mean, there is a meaning that s used colloquially that means to get angry.

[student: And {drondu}?]

{Drondu} means the desire to avoid something. Based on your misperceptions,
you take steps to get rid of the thing you don t like. In an ignorant way, in an
ignorant manner, and therefore you collect karma.
[student: So is number four that you perceive it and you take steps, or just that
you perceive it?]

No. Number three was that you perceived the guy in the wrong way.

[student: Then you have the attachment and the aversion.]

Then you perceive that nice thing or ugly thing in the wrong... you take it the
wrong way.

[student: Self-existence.]

You think it s coming from its side and not from your own projections, therefore
you can, therefore you re capable of, these wrong emotions towards the object.
If there ever came a day... you can twist this around...if there ever came a day in
which you truly understood the nature of every object around you, you would
be incapable of these two emotions. You would never get angry and you would
never get desire. You would never get hatred.

[student: So is the point that you have to act, you don t have to act except for.. it
doesn t matter?]

Action comes way out in number 5. Based on not understanding him or her or
whatever it is, you want to avoid it in an ignorant way and you act ignorantly,
and that s called karma. That s collecting karma.

[student: So this is saying you collect karma based simply upon attachment and
aversion?]

Based upon the two emotions.

[student: You don t have to do anything? Just having these two emotions...]

Oh, no, no. Mainly it refers to doing something. It refers to doing... that s why it
s a separate step. Because of these two emotions, which run your life, you take
actions. And you collect karma.

[student: Even if you didn t take action, you would still collect karma from
having....]
Technically, yeah. That s a long story.

[student: In taking action, it s these two things that cause them to be good or
bad, or relatively...]

{sembe lay} and {sampe lay}, right? We had it before.

[student: Mind has gotten stuck...]

The karma which is the thinking and the karma which is the thing you think to
do.

[student: So if you have a good, you know, say you like the person, you re
attracted to the person, and you do something nice for them. So does that bring
you karma?]

Yeah, yeah, that s collecting karma. It s good temporary karma. Temporary
good result. So then you collect karma, based on this.

[student: So {sam} means to collect karma?]

{Le sak} means to collect karma. Based on karma, what s number 6? What s the
last one?

[student: Create a {bakchak}.]

We call it {kor wa kor}. Say {kor wa kor}. Repeat. You circle around in the circle
of life. {kor wa kor} means...the word circle is the Tibetan translation of the
Sanskrit word samsara . Because you collected karma, you must undergo
suffering. This suffering life.

[student: {kor wa kor} translates into...]

{kor wa} means in the circle . {kor} means to circle. To circle around the circle.
Spin around in the wheel. And that s the whole process. You know, if you
wanted to stop these classes tonight, just go home and do it. That s it. That s all
you need to know. That s where it s all coming from. This is a very profound...
it s a Buddha saying this, it s a Buddha giving this. That s his outline of his whole
way karma is collected. How s it related to emptiness?
[student: You understand emptiness with [unclear]]

Absolutely. And I almost put a number seven because that was his next
sentence. He said and the reason why you never understood {deshin ship ene
mo}... {deshin ship ene mo} means the heart of, the essence of all Buddhas. And
then in the next sentence he says, that means emptiness.

[student: Could you repeat that?]

[laughs] In the next sentence he says, and the reason all this happens is because
you haven t understood emptiness, which is the essence of the Buddhas. He
calls it the heart of the Buddhas.

[student: And the reason is because you specifically would not have step three?]

Right, right, yeah, that s a good point, that s probably where you break this.

[student: So can you say that the reason why...]

[laughs] So the reason why these things occur is that you didn t understand
emptiness. So there s where karma plays a... there s where emptiness plays a
role, in the collection of karma. That s very clear, okay? It s a negative role,
right? Because you don t understand emptiness, this whole process can take
place. And that s where emptiness and karma fit together in this negative sense.
We ll take a break now and when you come back, we ll talk about the positive
sense. And that s a very very profound [unclear] from Chandrakirti. It s a
really... I ll say what it is... it s called the glass of water.

[student: This is?]

The next thing I say, after the break.         This is Maitreya.     Next you get
Chandrakirti talking about the glass of water. You set a glass of water down on
a table and you call a hungry...one of those craving... I call them craving spirits...
hungry ghosts, and you call a person from the human realm, and you call a
person from the... I call them pleasure beings, people call them deities, they re
not like tantric deities, they re temporarily up for a while, they come back down
later. So you take a pleasure being, a craving spirit and a human and you put
them around a table and put a glass of water on the table. What happens? They
all see totally different things. A human sees a glass of water, a hungry ghost
sees a glass of blood and pus, a pleasure being sees a glass of ambrosia, and then,
what s going on there? What s that say about the emptiness of the glass of water
and about the karma of the beings sitting around the table? We ll talk about that
when you come back.

[silence]

[student: [unclear]]

It s tempting to say waterfall, but it s not a waterfall, it s a stream of water. It s a
famous section in Madhyamika, it s a very very important part of Madhyamika,
Middle-Way, and it means when those three beings look at the same glass of
liquid, the human sees water, the hungry ghost, the craving spirit sees pus and
blood and the pleasure being sees ambrosia. Generally speaking, you have to
understand the nature of a hungry ghost. A hungry ghost is a person who was a
cheapskate in his past life. Craving things, wanting to collect things, people who
couldn t control their appetites in any way. And then they take a rebirth as a
person who... you cannot see them. According to Buddhism, you cannot see
them. According to Buddhism, they have a very subtle form and if they were
around in this room as they probably are, you couldn t see them.

[student: Can they see us?]

I don t think so. What they see is strange. Because any time... generally, the
only thing... if they see a nice cool glass of water and they reach out for it and
start to drink it, it turns into blood or pus. And then if you spit, or poop, they
can only.. they have some special problem that they can only see that, they can
only find that, that s all they can ever eat. And they have, there are certain of
them that have problems, they have little tiny mouths and they have huge
stomachs, and no matter how much... maybe they find some food but they can t
stuff it in fast enough to feel good. And this is all... when they do get something
and they pour it down their throats, it turns into fire. It s all from being too...it s
all from craving too much in this life.

[student: So you mean if you re overweight, like myself, I m going to go to a...
[laughter] What are you trying to say, Michael?]

I like [unclear] too. I think you have to be.. I think that watching... there s a very
famous line by of all people Nagarjuna that we say as a prayer. He says eat to
keep yourself healthy, eat to keep yourself fit, don t eat for other reasons. It s
good to be moderate. It s healthy, it tastes better. This is a precious body, you
shouldn t damage it. If you overfed it, you might damage it. You shouldn t...
you have to take care of it. If it gave you a heart attack or if it made your life
shorter, it would be... dharmically it would be irresponsible. You have to help a
lot of people. You can t die quickly, you have to stay around, as long as this
body as this body can stay around you have to do the best thing you can to feed
it properly.

[student: Why do you leave offerings to a hungry ghost?]

Why to do it? If you do certain prayers, supposedly they can actually see it when
they couldn t see it before. And there s all different kinds of offerings. But that s
a long story. So that s the three kinds of beings looking at the same thing. So
there s all these arguments. I got into it, I translated a whole section. That s why
it s 31 pages long. It s too much for you. I mean, there s this whole argument in
the Mind-Only School.... you can read it, but don t get lost in it, you know, if you
re really into it, spend a couple of , you know, spend four, five days and read it
slowly. It s a debate, it s in the very difficult... it s a dialectic, it s two people
debating with each other. So you can read the whole thing. But at some point
what s nice is that you get all the objections that a person would normally have.
So one person comes up and says, well, then you can t say that anything is really
anything else. You can t say that anything is one way or another way. Because
if someone looks at it, s going to be good, if someone else looks at it, it s going to
be bad. The guy at work... you can t say he s good or bad, you can t say
anything in the world is good or bad, and then the debate that goes back to him
is... you would think it s kind of parochial, but the Buddhists say, well then are
you saying that there s no difference between Buddhism and other beliefs? Are
you saying it s all the same? Are you saying it doesn t matter what you believe?
And are you saying that the Buddha is the same as every other person who ever
lived? Any other teacher around? Is he the same? There s no difference? What he
said is not something much better, or pure Buddhism is not something that s
very important and much better than less correct beliefs? Are you saying there s
no such difference? And the person says, well, I didn t... he flip flops on that.
And then they quote, just so you know the quotation that comes in the book, in
the reading, where it says, oh, now I understand that the Buddha is a great
teacher, I understand that Buddhism is correct. You will see that, by the way,
when you see emptiness directly. A few seconds after coming out you realize
that every Buddhist book you ever read was correct. And that s something you
can t know until that time. And I can t say it and it doesn t matter. You have to
see it. But in the meantime, there s this quotation in the reading. Whose
quotation is that? They don t say, but you should know, it s in the {ten gyu}, it s
in the canon, and it was written by a Hindu who had criticized the Buddha and
then he turned around and changed his mind. That was written by him. So it s
not like some Buddhist, you know, it s not like some Buddhist showing off that
we re great. It was actually written by a non- Buddhist who became a Buddhist.
Yeah?

[student: So what the Buddha has to say is self-existently great?]

I didn t say that.

[student: Ah?]

I didn t say that.

[student: Then it s greatness depends on the person receiving it.]

Maybe. But does that mean that the teachings are neither great or not? Is it great
or not?

[student: Well, you seem to be implying that it s self-existently great.]

Well, that s something [unclear] says in the Abidharma. No it s not. It s self-
existently great... if you follow it, you get a good result. If you don t follow it,
you get a bad result. I don t know, it functions that way. That s what he s
saying. So think about it. These debates are very subtle. You can read them for
ten years, fifteen years, and you still have some....they re called {tsim sums}.
{tsim sums} means where do you draw the line? What s the truth? It s very
difficult. But the point of the monastic text books is that they bring up all these
difficult things, they don t just avoid them. They dig into the difficult parts, they
leave the easy parts out, you won t find them in there. They bring up all the
tough questions. So anyway, I m only telling you what the book says. You ve
gotta cook it. If someone comes up to you and says, because of your beliefs
about emptiness, is it correct to say that nothing is one way or the other? You
can say, well, according to the book it says that Buddhism is good, to know
Buddhism, it works that way. Does that contradict the idea of emptiness? No.
You gotta cook it.

[student: So what is {chim bak }]?]

 {Chim bak } is a study.       {Chim bak } is a whole class that you do in the
monastery. It might take you eight weeks or twelve weeks and it s dedicated to
the idea of this glass of water. {Chim

 bak } means stream and there s a quotation from the scriptures that talks about
a stream of water and when a hungry spirit comes up and looks at it, he sees
blood. He doesn t see it as a nice stream.

[student: So what does a Buddha think?]

Paradise.

[student: When he looks at a glass of water?]

Well he understands that it s only emptiness.

[student: Can he choose what he wants to see though? I mean, in a certain
sense?]

He can see what we think we see. He knows that. But no, he s forced to have a
perception of it as ultimate pleasure. And a glass of water for him gives him the
ultimate pleasure that you could ever have.

[student: So he s not free in a certain way?]

No, not at all. He s at the mercy of his own good karma.

[laughter]

[student: So there is no such thing as a free being in that sense?]

No, not free of karma. You re a willing victim of your good karma and you re
forced to see yourself as an endless pleasure.

[student: Now since you ve gone on to this fascinating subject of the karma of
the Buddhas, then the Buddha is producing more good karma all the time as
well, right?]

Well, he dedicates everything and he has to have more. And that s, by the way,
the trick of staying a Buddha. Okay, so that s the {chim bak }, that was the first
debate that comes up in the... and if we had time we could debate it. Are all
those beings having a {pramana}? That s a very difficult question. You know, if
you accept the emptiness of that glass of water, what are you going to say to this
person who comes up to you and says, well are all three beings having a
{pramana}? What s a {pramana}?

[student: Valid perception.]

In Madhyamika Prasangika we say it s a valid perception. Correct is a little
tricky. Valid perception. Is it correct? Is it really what they re seeing? Are they
seeing it the right way? Are they all having a {pramana}?

[student: Yes.] [student: Yes.]

[student: Yes.] [laughter]

What, what? What do you say?

[student: Well, you said valid too...]

[student: All the time.]

All the time. Well, a Buddha is an ultimately {pramana} person. He always has,
he only has {pramanas}. We have {pramanas} all the time. 99% of your
perceptions are {pramanas}. The only non-{pramanas} you have are when you
are very jealous of some friend of your husband and you think they re after
them. They actually don t care at all, but your own jealousy makes you see
something. Or someone s competing with you at work and you impute all this
stuff on them that s not even true at all. There are extraordinary cases... you re
driving a car and a leaf comes across and you think it s a squirrel and you slam
on the brake. Those are non- {pramanas}. But most of what you do is
{pramana} all the time. So are they {pramanas}?

[student: Yes.]

But there s a principle about {pramanas}. If two... you can t have two {pramanas}
for one object which are seemingly different. There s no such thing possible. It s
either water or blood. To be water, to be blood, are contradictory causes, it s got
to be one or the other.

[student: I thought the idea was that {pramana} was relative to each person.]
[student: Or class, in this case. Class of being.]

No.

[student: So it s not a {pramana} for me which is different than your {pramana}
of the same event.]

No. {Pramanas} can t be contradictory. I can t perceive it as water and you
perceive it as not water and we are both having a {pramana}. It s impossible. So
what s going on? Now this is very interesting. And according to Chandrakirti,
you ve got to ask these questions. You have to understand what s going on
when the three beings look at the water. It s impossible for three beings to look
at a glass of liquid and all see something contradictory and all of them be having
a {pramana}. It s impossible for me to look at a wall and see it as yellow and you
look at it and see it as red and one of us is not mistaken. It s not possible.

[student: [unclear] with its emptiness.]

Now we ve got to get to the next phase. This is very complicated. How do we
explain what s going on here? It s very difficult. There s this glass of water, this
glass of liquid. The way to explain it is this. It s very difficult. We had a {yen ye
ki gyu} and we had a {penche ki gyu} when we talked about karma. The cause
of mind, the cause of the first moment of your mind in your mommy s stomach.
What was the {unclear}? What was that? The stuff that turned into your mind? It
had to be ... no, wait, the stuff that went on and it slopped over into your mind
was mind itself. And that s called the material cause. So you have to talk about
material cause.

[student: In relationship to?]

What s happening with the three beings looking at the glass of liquid? Material
cause, you know,

what was the stuff that the water came from?

[student: The rain.]

[laughs] Water. I mean, liquid, water. That was the material.           When I say
material cause I mean what stuff did it come from. Water.
[student: According to us.]

[laughs] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Actually in all three cases, but we ll talk about it. And
then you say...

[student: Michael, you mean water or liquid?]

Well, the person who wrote the commentary kind of uses them... he sort of
tends toward liquid towards the end. By the way, he calls liquid wet and
flowing, right? Don t worry if you see that in your translations. That s the
Tibetan word. Contributing factor. The contributing factor in this case...what do
you get? What s this course about?

[student: Karma.]

The karma of each being, the different karma of each being. So let s talk about
the human. When the human sees the water, when he sees a glass of water,
where does the water come from? What was the water a few minutes ago?

[student: Water.]

Water. And then water provided the stuff that turned into the water that he s
now seeing. And his karma gets into the act and causes what we call a
contributing factor. It causes him to see the water as water. Causes him to see
water.

[student: And is that a valid perception?]

Yes. And what they say is, this is the catch, okay? And it has to be this way. This
is just..I m just saying this because you have to, in your mind, understand karma.
You have to understand why the guy looks bad to you and looks good to the
other person. At the moment that those three beings look at the liquid, when
those three beings from three different backgrounds karmically look at the
liquid, there s three parts. At that moment, when the three beings start looking
at the liquid, it now has three parts. One part is acting as the material cause for
water and the contributing factor is the human being s karma and the result of
both of those, the result of those two causes, what? One-third of the water
appearing... part of the water.. part of the liquid that appears, and his own
karma, get together causally and the result is what? He sees water. And that s
the process. Did the water have three parts ten minutes before the three beings
came into the room?

[student: No.]

No.

[student: Why does it have three parts? I don t understand that. It doesn t make
any sense.]

Why does it need three parts? I m going through that. The one part of the three
is acting as a material cause. It s what turns into the water that the human sees
as he sits around the table. The water has to have three parts. Why? I ll give you
two good reasons, all right? Now this is very serious. This is what s going on
with the guy at work. It s not a light thing. And if you don t explain it this way,
you can t explain it. The water cannot be... one object cannot be water, blood
and ambrosia at the same time. Impossible.

[student: Well, one object can t be three different things either.]

It can t. No it cannot. There s even another reason why....]

[student: But you say it has three parts. What do you mean by that?]

He says, in the same way that you have an arm and a leg and a hand. And your
arms and your legs and your head can all be performing a different function, and
then you say, well that person is performing five different functions.

[student: So there s three different functions that are going on with that water?]

No, there s three different parts.

[student: Parts [unclear]]

[student: So when the Buddha drinks a glass of ambrosia, he just doesn t taste
the part that s pus, but it s there.]

If there s no preta, if there s no hungry ghost sitting with him at the table, there
is no second part.
[student: And then you re saying that the perception is going to influence what
they taste?]

By the way, the other thing they say, Kiley, is that when the hungry ghost
reaches out for the glass of liquid, and he touches it to his lips, it no longer has
two parts. It s blood.

[student: Well, to them, but if the human s looking at it at the same time...]

Oh, if it s a common object of three different beings, it has three parts. When it
ceases to be a common object, and becomes the object of only one of them, it
only has one part.

[student: So you have, Michael, you have a...]

So you re talking about whether the object is held, is shared by three beings or
not. When the object is shared simultaneously by three beings, it has three parts.
As soon as one of those beings starts to partake of it himself, and the other two
look away, it s only blood.]

[student: What do you mean by parts? ]

In the same way as your arms and your head are parts of your body.

[student: Yeah, but they re distinct physical separations.      There s no distinct
physical separation in the water.]

He doesn t say.

[student: No, they re connected by your...]

It gets physical.

[student: You have one {preta}, you have one god and you have ten humans
looking at the glass. Are there now twelve parts? Or are there three because of
the three different classes of beings?]

Twelve parts and ten of them are looking at water.

[student: [unclear] object depending how many beings are looking at it.]
[student: But does the part exist in the water or does the... where does the part
exist?]

It s part of the water. Part of the glass of water.

[student: It exists in the water?]

It exists.... the glass of water has three parts as soon as the three beings focus on
it.

[student: I don t understand...]

It ceases to have three parts as soon as three people stop looking at it or if one...

[student: It also has two parts of one being s looking at the top part of it or the
bottom part of it.]

Those are different parts. Different kinds of parts.

[student: Michael, you said the first part is the material cause, the second one is
the contributing factor, what s the third one?]

[student: Thank you.]

Yeah, right. First one is the fact.. oh, the third one is the fact that it has three
parts.

[student: Why do you call that a fact?]

[laughter]

[student: Say that again?]

There are three things contributing to this perception. One is the fact that there s
three parts there now. As soon as three different beings are looking at it, there s
three parts to the water, to the liquid.

[student: To the liquid itself?]
And as soon as they, as soon as two of them walk out of the room and one of
them picks it up, it s not got three parts.

[student: What disappears then? Is it the material cause or the contributing
factor?]

The only way to explain the fact is... by the way, all three perceptions are valid.

[student: It s like an accounting [unclear] that they have on those balance sheets,
right?]

It really is blood, it really is water, and it really is ambrosia.

[student: But what if it...]

Is it one thing which is three things at once? No. It has three parts.

[student: If there s a glass of water and three people are looking at it, one has
blue glasses on, one has red glasses on, and one has green glasses on, do we say
that the water has three parts, there s the blue part... or do we just say it s all the
same thing, it s just the perspective of the onlooker that makes it look like it s
different.]

But what is it?

[student: Why do we have to all of a sudden split the water into three parts, one
blue, one green and one red?]

It s not water. What are you splitting?

[student: [unclear]]

[student: Why do we have to go so far as to impute it on to the glass of water
and why can t we say it s just a conception that s being labeled upon it by the
onlooker?]

He gets into that later. He talks about a {preta} which comes up to a stream and
starts to drink and then suddenly all he sees is a dry river bed. Was there a
stream there that he doesn t see as a stream? What s going on? And then you ll
get a.... you should read the reading, you have to read the reading, there s some
more details about it. But I m trying to explain to you what the highest schools...
this is what they say. And this is what they say is going on when two people...

[student: So where do the...I understood that it was a valid perception. I mean,
only in a conventional... you know, I always thought that when you said
{pramana}...]

But what is it really?

[student: Nothing, empty. No? Isn t it?]

It s empty, but it s something. [laughs] It s empty of its own nature, it has no
nature of its own.

[student: I don t understand how...]

[student: So because it has no nature of its own, you would think that the hungry
ghost would see it as blood, and...]

[unclear] And it s genuine blood at that moment. That s [unclear].

[student: I don t understand how having three parts makes it a valid perception.]

Then you don t have one thing being three things at once.

[student: How... so what do you have?]

You have one thing with three parts, and each part is being something different
to a different being.

[student: So each person is perceiving a different aspect of that same object? Is
that what you re saying?]

No. Yeah. You could say that. A completely different part though. You could
see that. They also say it s different. [laughs] [laughter] You have to cook it. I
mean, I m just telling you what Chandrakirti said. And it s true. And you have
to raise these questions, or else you can t figure out what emptiness is.

[student: So then you re saying, in this case, a glass of water has the potential to
have part of pus, or nectar, water.]
As many as there are karmas...

[student: So to extrapolate that, every existing thing has the potential to be pain,
pleasure, pus, blood, nectar...]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[student: This may be mixing apples and oranges, but last week we learned that
the mind is the main cause of the world. And now we re learning that the mind
is a contributing factor.]

Yeah, right, and they ask that question too. It comes at the end. They quote
Shantideva. Shantideva says the mind... no one made hell. In fact you re
supposed to memorize it for your homework. Nobody made hell, nobody
made heaven. You made it. Your mind made heaven. Your mind made hell. So
they say, well, how could it be... if the mind is the maker... they get into that
problem. And then they say, well, Shantideva s trying to say that there s no
creator god. He wasn t trying to say that it wasn t, that it doesn t, exist, or that it
s just an illusion or something.

[student: But I just mean... in what sense is it a contributing factor because it
sounds like a secondary...]

Well, you re talking about the cause of the water. Prasangika, the highest school,
says, what turned into water was in the past water, liquid. What makes the
liquid appear one way or the other is your karma. They re not saying that the
water itself comes from a {nye ling ke gyu}, a material cause of mind.

[student: Would the Mind-Only School say that?]

The mind does not turn into physical matter.

[student: But the Mind-Only School would say that, right?]

They d say there is no physical matter outside the mind. We re talking
Madhyamika s view. What they re trying to get out of the problem, and they
do, is that mind cannot turn into physical stuff. The physical stuff came from
some physical stuff from before. The reason it looks like water to you, and is
water to you, and is validly water to you, is your own karma.
[student: But why use such a complicated example? If you just used the example
of the boss at work, and how the boss is perceived differently by his friends, and
his...]

That s a good question. It s very important and its very difficult. If I see the boss
as bad, and you see the boss as good, we both have valid perceptions. He can t
be both good and bad. Those are contradictory qualities. And yet what we have
to assume is that the {pramana} is correct. Anything established by a {pramana},
what? Exists. That s the definition of existence. If I see it and I m not crazy, it
exists.

[student: So the boss has twenty different parts?]

So how can he be a bad boss and a good boss [unclear].

[student: [unclear} is what you re saying then?]

Yes. There s a part of the boss appearing to the...

[student: So up to now we ve been saying that the boss is empty, he can t be
both, now we re saying he has to be both.]

He is both. I didn t say he is both. He has a good part and a bad part.

[student: Well, he has to be composed of...]

The liquid is not simultaneously blood, ambrosia and water. One part acts as a
material cause. The karma of that person acts as a contributing factor and he
sees blood. And it is blood.

[student: So the same thing is true of the boss. One part of the boss is the
material cause and your karma is a contributing factor.]

Right. Yes. He s a bad boss. And he really is.

But there has to be some bad-bossness in there to be the material cause.

[laughs] Okay. Let me make sure [unclear]. Words.. it says here, what happens
to the three parts when the craving spirit starts to drink that stuff.
[laughter]

[student: We hope the other three will walk out of the room.] [laughter]

No. It no longer has three parts.

[student: Yeah, but which part, which two parts disappear, though?]

The one that the human was... the one that was acting as the cause from the
human side. And the one that was acting as the cause for what the god saw, the
deity saw, are no longer there.

[student: So what are you left with? The contributing factor?]

You no longer have three parts. It s only one part, it s only one thing.

[student: So suddenly the human and deity see blood?]

They re gone.

[student: No, they re not gone, they re just...]

No, no, we re assuming... when we say walked out, we say they re not looking
at it any more.

[student: So what if they are looking at it?]

Then they d have three parts.

[student: Even when he touches it to drink it.]

As a visual object, three parts. As a drinking object, one part.

[student: Because they re not all drinking at the same time.]

[student: What if they share it?]

They all share it to their tongue.
[student: What if they all had a straw?]

[laughter]

Right.

[student: Yeah, but one straw would be poking down into one side, and then
another straw would be in the other side of it...]

[student: This doesn t make sense to me.]

[student: You have to have one straw....]

Well, then how do you explain it?

[student: It doesn t make sense.]

It has to.

[student: Well, I never got to...]

Cook it. Nobody ever got this far with you. That s what s bothering you.

[student: Well, I know, I guess I get the whole idea about karma, that something
is a valid perception. I just thought it exists in a conventional way. Not in a...]

Not at all. He has a {pramana}, it s real blood, but...by the way, the last question
is: Is it real blood and pus? It is. He has a {pramana} for it. Not only that, it
functions as pus and blood, blood and pus. If you have to go, go. You guys.. if
you ve got to go, go. So, if it s acting as blood and pus, it is really blood and pus
and there s two reasons why. There s a {pramana} towards blood. There s a
correct valid perception to seeing blood and pus. That s the first one. And the
second reason is functioning as blood and pus. How do blood and pus function
to a {preta}?

[student: As water to us.]

Yeah, he drinks it. And what happens when he drinks it? It burns him like fire.
Even if he finds it, it burns him.
[student: But on the other hand, we find pus and blood to be something
unpleasant to drink. So does the {preta}?]

Oh yeah.

[student: So that s in common, that part s not different, right? We would both
say uggh. It s just that we wouldn t drink it, and they have no choice.]

We don t see pus.

[student: I understand that, but the concept of blood and pus is equally repulsive
to them. When they first see the river, it s pure water. When they run up to it, it
s blood and pus. And then they are...]

[student: So as different as the parts might be, we agree on one thing, that they
re unpleasant.]

[laughter]

No, the human sees the very pleasant part. Give me another choice, let s do it,
let s debate.

[student: How can they be.... can we finish maybe, and then debate after?]

That s all. That s all I have to do. I ll give you homework. But then if you want
to debate it, I m quite happy.

[laughter]

One reason that I did the whole [unclear] is that hopefully among all of us...they
give like twenty debate [unclear] and I think if you read all twenty of those you ll
get something out of it. That s for sure. You have to explain it. If you don t
explain it, then...

[student: I just don t see it as trying to.... three different things...they re not... pus
is not the same substance chemically as water.]

No, not at all.

[student: So how can they be valid?]
That s what he s trying to explain. There cannot be one thing which is three
different values.

[student: [unclear]]

It cannot be. And by the way, in another argument, since you want to stay,
[laughter] water is a {tok che}. {tok che} means... if I had a computer here and I
wanted to put this in the same space, the computer has to go out. So if there s
blood in the cup and you want water to be in the cup, blood has to leave the cup.
It can t coexist in the same space at the same time. That s the nature of it. That s
what s going on. It is real blood, it is real water.

[student: How can it be both?]

It isn t both.

[laughter]

And it s not one thing, it s three parts of one thing.

[student: But then it sounds like anything could be anything and it just depends
on your perception of it.]

[student: That s right.]

That s the whole point. So wait, let me do the last one and then you can jump in
and talk. What s the whole point of {nyu no}? No, I mean, we said before,
ignorance is the one that focuses on you. John Stillwell s ignorance focussing on
John Stillwell. So the thing you really don t like and the thing that you really do
like about yourself.... you want to be able to... how do you get rid of the guy at
work is not such a big question as how do you get rid of the cancer that s going
to come in to you, or the senility, or the loss of your health and your happiness
and your good looks. How do you stop that? It s tied up with the question of
the glass of water. Ultimately the way you become a Buddha is that you just
perceive yourself as a Buddha and then it has to... you are providing the material
cause. And your karma is going to provide the contributing factor that makes
you see yourself as a Buddha. And that s all. That s the key, that s the clue. And
how will other people see you.
[student: What if some people see you as a jerk?]

[laughter]

They might want to nail you up in a coffin. They may hate your guts. Or they
might want to shoot a big rock at you or something. The Buddha s brother tried
to kill him. Oh yeah.

[student: So you re saying becoming a Buddha is seeing yourself as a Buddha.]

Absolutely. And that s all there ever was to anything else.

[student: And so the idea is that seeing yourself as a Buddha...]

By being forced to see a blank self as a Buddha, by your karma.

[student: So it s different than volunteering to see yourself as a Buddha?]

No, not [unclear]. Boy, if you could volunteer we wouldn t have such [unclear]
[laughter]

[student: You have to volunteer yourself first, put a hold on it [unclear]]

All right. I m sorry to keep you in class. I could see it coming when we would
spend too much time on this.

End.
941110-1.aaa

HOW KARMA WORKS