ACI 6 «Сутра Алмазного Огранщика», занятие 1

Class One: Lineage/Overview
March 13, 1995

(Problem with rest of tape from mark #10 on Side 2 to end. Recording is very,
very faint - can only hear very faint hisses at highest volume.)

[cut] morning. Most people never do it. You're supposed to write the date and
the time that you did your meditation. I don't care if you miss one a week or
two a week because you got up late for work, okay? But you must fill that out
and you must do it. If you don't do it, you fail the whole mark and I'll, and I'll,
and after two of those you're, you're out of the class. I'm gonna be very strict this
time about it. People... if you're doing a {chumduk} and a {dakye}, then it
comes... you can do that during the part about the {yinde nyagde}, the mental
and verbal recitation. It goes in there, okay?

[student: What do you mean it goes... ]

During that...

[student: What do you mean it goes in?]

Whatever meditation I've assigned you, you can do during that point, at that
point in the {dakye}. So, so no excuse for people doing {dakye}'s awright? An'
I'm gonna be more strict about that. Then there'll be a... we're gonna have a
board meeting, of the board of, of this group. I believe people here on it are...
don't... Anigasarni... you're, you're on... I don't remember who's [laughs] on it
[laughter]. I think it's Margie, Ernst, Anigar, Michael [unclear] and then that, that
board will change every year and we'll have elections after this board finishes
and you probably will have a rule to be a member, a legal member, you, you
have to have finished three cl... courses [unclear]. Awright. An' that's all. You
can go on to the next page class syllabus, and I'll just go over with you quickly
what you're going to be subjected to. Awright, in the first class we're gonna
cover where did the book come from, who wrote the explanations, what's the
meaning of the title and what were the circumstances under which t he Buddha
taught this book that you're about to study. Class two, we're gonna talk about
how emptiness relates to bodhichitta, which is the wish for enlightenment, why
do they go together. Class three, emptiness and, and the bodies of a Buddha,
'kay. When you become a Buddha, you get like four bodies. Some books say
three. And we're gonna talk about how emptiness relates to that. This is, by the
way, the order in which [b: The Diamond-Cutter Sutra] covers them. Class four,
this, the Buddha in [b: The Diamond-Cutter Sutra] discusses the future of his own
teachings, an' we'll be covering that. Class five, how do emptiness and karma
interrelate, 'right? That's a very important subject. Some people think if
everything's empty, they can do what they want. And some people think that
they should keep morality carefully and emptiness is ridiculous. So those are
both extremes, an' we'll try to study about how emptiness and karma actually go
together. Class six is very important. That's about total [unclear]. That's the
stage, that's the experience at which you first perceive emptiness directly, which
is very, very... it's probably the most important moment in a person's practice.
An' we're gonna discuss that experience in detail. Number seven is how does
emptiness relate to getting rid of your mental afflictions, your bad thoughts,
awright, and that's very important. How does emptiness relate to becoming an
arhat in reaching nirvana. Number eight is em... emptiness and paradise. How
does emptiness relate to gaining a Buddhist paradise, and how does emptiness
relate to purification or cleaning yourself of bad karma. Number nine is
emptiness and the perfection of wisdom. You're gonna get the definition of the
perfection of wisdom and study that, and see why even it has to be empty. And
then we're gonna talk about the two extremes. Number ten is very important.
Even though things are empty they do function and they do matter, and we're
gonna cover that [unclear]. Class eleven, at the end of [b: The Diamond-Cutter
Sutra] is a very famous poem. Four lines, {          }, and all monks have to recite it
at every monk ceremony, it's very famous, very beautiful, so we'll cover that,
we'll cover that poem, and its meaning as far as impermanence and emptiness,
and then you get your review for your final exam, okay? And then class twelve
will be final exam. Final exam will be exactly one week after the review. And
not gonna let you take the exam when you want to because some are still
lingering from [laughs] last fall, awright? The, the, the only thing permanent is
the, the exam [laughter]. And, that'll be exactly that. I don't promise that we'll
end... next thing. The next page is... the next few pages... the first two of them
which is refuge and the next is offering the mandala, these are the things we
recite before class, so if you're new and you [cut] the teacher, to, to give the
teaching, and that mandala represents whole earth, and at the end of the
mandala you, you [unclear], you, you pray that that earth could become a
paradise for all living beings, so actually you're doing bodhichitta at the same
time, okay, so that's a great... those two are before class. I think I got the order
wrong here. You should pop it out. Okay, subject of your class is this. Say
{vajira} [repeat], {chedika} [repeat], {vagira} [repeat], {chedika} [repeat]. {Vagira}
means what? D' you know?
[student: Diamond.]

[student: Diamond.]

Okay, diamond. {Ched} is a, is a, this by the way, this is the Sanskrit name, okay,
not the Tibetan name. {Ched} means "to cut something", awright, "to cut". And
{ika} is just an ending, 'right. So {vagira chedika} means "diamond-cutter". An'
that's the name of the book you're gonna study. It's a sutra, which means it was
taught by an Enlightened Being, okay. It was taught by the Buddha, a Buddha,
okay. Something is a sutra is taught by a Buddha. There're some other teachings
called sutras, but are not really sutras like [b: The Vinaya Sutra], but normally
sutra means taught by an Enlightened Being, okay. So we're gonna study the [b:
Vagira Chedika Sutra]. Taught by Lord Buddha, Shakyamuni Buddha, five
hundred BC, and in Tibetan the name is this.

[silence]

Say {dorjay} [repeat], {cherpa} [repeat], {dorjay} [repeat], {cherpa} [repeat].
You've heard the word {dorjay} a lot if you, you know, if you've been around
Tibetan Buddhism at all. Okay. {Dorjay} means "diamond". The {do} part means
"stone". {Do} means "stone". {Jay} means "lord". So {dorjay} means "lord of
stones", "king of stones". The king of all stones is the diamond. Okay, {dorjay}.
And {cherpa} again means "to cut", awright, "to cut". You've had I think {genza
cherpa} before, "cutting that virtue root", remember? We had it in the karma
course. Same verb, okay, "to cut something", awright. So the name of the book
is [b: Dorjay Cherpa].

[student: Michael, is this modern Tibetan or is this ancient Tibetan, [unclear] is it
Tibetan?]

Tibetan hasn't changed much since they started writing it about eleven hundred
years ago, okay. It's changed very little. You can read scripture, you can
probably read a newspaper, roughly.

[student: So the spoken is different.]

Yeah, much different. There's three or four Tibetans. You don' wanna know.
Okay, so [b: Dorjay Cherpa] is the name of the book. Spoken by Lord Buddha
about five hundred BC. It, it was the first printed book in history. The Chinese
edition around eight hundred was the first printed book. First book used
printing and not manuscript writing. It's been very, very important book, in
China, Japan 'n Mongolia. I' was first translated in, into Chinese in, in the fourth
century in the three hundreds by Kumara I, Ibi, isn't it? And it's been very
important in China. The Mongolians, and even the Mongolians that I lived with,
still keep a copy in their house. It's one of the only two books that every
Mongolian keeps in their house. They call it [b: Jedbah], which is from the
{cherpa}, an' it's, it's been considered very important. It's been considered the
most, either their most, or one of the most important sutras studied in the Far
East. In Tibet, it's not studied per se in the monasteries by itself, but it's still
considered one of the most important sutras. There are two Indian explanations
to this sutra, okay. Two Indian, ancient Indian pandits wrote explanations. The
first one was Asanga

[silence]

three fifty AD. He wrote an explanation of this sutra. It's in the kengir, it's in the,
the Buddhist canon. It, it doesn't look like at that time this was called the [b:
Dorjay Cherpa], [b: The Diamond-Cutter]. It was called [b: The Three Hundred],
[b: The Perfection of Wisdom in Three Hundred]. And I, I used the computer, I
counted the lines, there's twelve hundred lines, that means three hundred verses,
although it's not in verse, but it was still call it [b: Three Hundred Shlankas], 'kay.
An' then there's a commentary by

[silence]

Master Kamalasheela. Kamalasheela. Say Kamalasheela [repeat]. He's very
famous because, mostly because of the debate he had in Tibet. He did reach
Tibet. He did teach in Tibet. He was invited to Tibet to engage in a debate. The
Tibetans weren't sure how to meditate. An' this was when they were first
becoming Buddhists. So there was a viewpoint that was brought in from China,
which was called Ji Ang Mer which means "think about nothing". They believe
that during meditation you should seek to just clear your mind of all thoughts
and not think about anything. And that was taught by a teacher named Hua
Shang. And Kamalasheela represented the traditional Indian viewpoint which
was that meditation should have some content, and that when you go into
meditation you can do a review meditation, you can do a meditation on outline,
you can do a meditation which involves logic, or you can do a meditation which
involves fixing the mind on an, on a visualized picture or on a philosophical
concept. But in any of those cases the mind should be focused on some, on some
good object, some meaningful object. So they, they, the Chinese representative
and the, Kamalasheela had a famous debate in the court of the Tibetan king, and
Kamalasheela won out. And the, the oldtime debates as I think Lee and Eria
were at that scores summer, the oldtime debates were very serious. The
winner's position would become the position of the whole country. And the
loser would be banned. And Ka, and Hua Shang was banned from Tibet. And
that viewpoint was banned from Tibet. So that's... ever since then Tibetans have
believed in Kamalasheela's viewpoint, so in that sense he's very important. His
commentary is very long, it's, it's mostly reflects the views of the mind only
score. He was a great scholar of that. Those are the only two Indian
commentaries. [cut] these days but you have to.

[silence]

Say Chornay [repeat], Japa [repeat], Sheru [repeat]. Chornay [repeat], Japa
[repeat], Sheru [repeat]. Okay, this is... Japa Sheru was a famous scholar from
Chornay. Chornay is in Amdo. Amdo is in east Tibet, okay. I think they say
that there's three great regions of Tibet. Kam, Amdo and Utzang. The people
from Utzang are great scholars, the people from Kam are great lawyers, and I, I
think the people from Amdo are s'pposed to be great salesmen or something
[laughter] [laughs]. But I... he, he was a very great Lama, a very, very great
scholar. He wrote about twelve volumes. His collected works are about twelve
volumes. And he was from the greatest Tibetan monastery of all...

[student: Sera Mey?]

Ye, yeah [laughter] [laughs]. Which just happens to be my home monastery.
He, he was from Sera Mey Monastery. Sera Mey is one of the... is part of one of
the three great monasteries in Lhasa. There were about ten thousand monks
there up until nineteen fiftynine. A hundred of them survived the Chinese
invasion. A hundred of them reached India, hundred an' eight, hundred an'
seven, sorry. So he was from Sera Mey Monastery. He has written the only
commentary in Tibetan to [b: The Diamond Sutra]. Tibetans have written up
probably about a hundred and fifty commentaries and so far we haven't been
able to locate any other commentary. And this one was very exciting. We
located it in Saint Petersburg. It was missing, and we found it during the
cataloguing of the, the materials in Saint Petersburg. So this is... just been
rediscovered, this has just been found. We knew that it existed, but we thought
it... all the copies had been burned. All the copies were kept in the Sera
Monastery library an' that was hit by a... direct hit by a artillery shell, and
burned. We didn't want other people to see the commentary and then it ended
up to be a stupid thing. So we lost all the copies and it took about forty years to
find the... find one. So it's very... you're very fortunate. We're gonna study the
newly rediscovered... the only Tibetan commentary and it's a really great
commentary. An' it's about forty pages long. An' it's very, it's very good detail
an', an' otherwise [b: The Diamond Sutra] is pretty hard to read. It sounds a little
crazy, you know, it keeps repeating itself, an' if you don't know what's going on
you think, "Oh, people must have just added things on over the years," an' things
like that. It's not like that. It has a very concrete structure. And Danpoche Duk...
he really defines that structure very well. So you're gonna get readings from this
commentary, and from the original, and that's about the only way you could
ever study [b: The Diamond Sutra].              The... in, in Tibetan... the Sanskrit
commentaries... the one by Kamashi is very long, very difficult. I think it would
be very hard to get through it. It's, it's very high philosophy and hard, hard to
study. We do have the Sanskrit text of [b: The Diamond-Cutter Sutra] and it's
available... there're... two editions were found, and we have those. So we can,
we can check the Sanskrit when we need to. Okay.

[student, John: Michael, what was this commentary called?]

That's on your homework by the way [laughs]. The, the short name is [b:
Sunlight on the Path of Freedom]. And it means like, suppose you're in the dark
an' you don't know where to go an' then suddenly the sun, suddenly popped up
in the sky and the whole day came an' you could see exactly where to go. That's,
that's the idea. If you didn't have the commentary it would be very, very hard to
understand [b: The Diamond-Cutter Sutra]. Read the commentary. It's like
having the sun shi... suddenly rise up in the sky an' you can suddenly see
everything... very... very clear. Say prajna paramita [repeat], prajna paramita
[repeat]. This is Sanskrit for "perfection of wisdom", awright. This is the general
name for all of the books which teach about emptiness and [b: The Diamond-
Cutter Sutra] is one of them. [b: The Diamond-Cutter Sutra] belongs to the
group of books called prajna paramita. It's, it's one of the prajna paramita books,
which means "perfection of wisdom", it's the sixth perfection. We had a
definition, I don' know if anybody remembers it. Anybody remembered that
[unclear] paramita? Techin sindi di sindi tomi, tomi tomi mishin?

[student, John: [unclear] that wisdom [unclear] to nirvana?]

Naah. Don' remember it? We had it a while back. Couple courses ago. It's the,
it's "the perception of emptiness under the influence of bodhichitta", okay. It's
"the perception of emptiness under the influence of bodhichitta".
[cut] [repeat: tendam], {demba} [repeat], {tendam} [repeat], {demba} [repeat],
{tendam demba} [repeat]. {Tendam} means 'ultimate", and {demba} means
"truth", "ultimate truth". Which is the same thing as "emptiness". So the wor... the
word "diamond", and the idea of a diamond represents ultimate truth, represents
emptiness. Why? You have to get in... you have to explain that. This relates to
the path of seeing? What happens on the path of seeing?
[student, Fran: You have to see emptiness.]

Directly. Okay? The path of seeing which is th... there's five levels that you go
through, in your career, in your spiritual career. You reach the first level when
you gain pure renunciation, pure renunciation. When you're truly... are fed up
with this life, in a, in a really deep way profound way, an' you really wanna get
out of it, get out of the bad parts. That's when you reach the first of the five
paths. You reach the second of the five paths when you start to understand
emptiness intellectually. Okay? Having gained renunciation, when you start to
understand emptiness very well intellectually, you've reached the second path,
an' there's four levels inside that. Then comes a big moment in your career. In
your, in your career, awright? It's called the path of seeing, third path. Path by
the way just means realization. In Buddhism {lam}, {topa}, {mwento}, {denchi},
they're all the same, awright? "Realization", "understanding", "path" all mean the
same thing. Definition of a, a path is a "realization". Okay. When you reach the
path of seeing it's like I, I say it's like losing your virginity, okay, but it's a
different thing. It only happens once in your mental stream over the period of,
of eternity. You have been alive... according to Buddhism, you've had a mind for
time with no beginning. You... your mind has existed for all eternity back into
the past. There's no first moment of your mind. Your mind is, is timeless. Your
mind has existed... I say it's like the big spaghetti noodle, but it never stops, back
into the past, okay. Your mind will also continue into the future endlessly.
We've proved it in the fourth course, or we tried [laughter]. Some people say I
didn't prove it, okay. But any rate, your mind is beginningless and it's gonna be
endless, even after Buddhahood your mind continues.                 You will become
enlightened, your mind will never end. An', an' the path of seeing, that third
path, occurs once, okay. It only occurs once. An' before that moment you're
considered... it's called {chiba}. {Chiba} means "infant", protakyana in Sanskrit.
You are considered a, a child. And after that moment you are what's called an
arya. An' that defines an arya. Arya means "realized being", okay, not an
enlightened being, but you are realized. 'Cause you've realized the most
important thing. So that, that moment is... in... is gonna be a big milestone in
your countless lives [laughs] awright. It only happens once. An' it happens
through the influence of teaching. You reach a stage of very ripe, ripeness
through the process of going through correct Buddhist teaching. Someone
teaches you clearly the meaning of emptiness, an', an' specifically they cover all
the necessary points for you to understand emptiness. An' it's, it's like a big
threshold, it's like a big blister bursting, y' know, you get more an' more
teaching, you're... it... assuming clear teaching an' not... there are, there are
countless wrong teachings on emptiness, not just in the West, in Tibetan history
there have been countless wrong teachings, in Sanskrit books i... of Buddhism
there were countless mistaken or, or incomplete teachings on emptiness. If you
get a good teaching on emptiness, and, an' you follow that teaching, you think
about it, you contemplate on it carefully, you meditate on it, 'kay, you reach a
sort of a threshold. You go into a deep meditation, it has to be a deep
meditation, an' then you perceive emptiness directly. An' that's... then you've
reach the path of seeing. During that time that it goes on it might be three, four
minutes. You've... you're not aware of anything except the emptiness. You
cannot be. 'Cause emptiness... we cannot perceive emptiness and, and this room
at the same time. They are completely different objects. So while you're
perceiving emptiness, you can't perceive any other object. You don't even
realize you're perceiving emptiness. Because you are no... you are not an
ultimate object. You're also a nonultimate object. So while that's going on you're
not a... you're not aware... even, even yourself perceiving emptiness. Then you
come out of that. An' you reach the second half of the path of seeing. Th' second
half of the path of seeing takes maybe half an hour. An' you perceive... you, you
understand what you just do. You understand that it's correct and you're not
hallucinating. You understand that what you saw is actually the body of the
Buddha. It's the dharmakara, it's the dharma... it is one of the parts of the
Buddha. You understand that. Then you go through the four noble truths, okay,
the four arya truths. You, you understand clearly that you really have had
countless past lives. You understand how many lives it will take for you to
become enlightened, an' you understand what you will be like when you
become enlightened. You understand what it will be like. You understand
exactly how many births it's gonna take, an' seven births is typical. An' you
understand that during those seven births you will have no problems. You'll
always meet dharma teachers, you'll have pleasant lives, you'll be wealthy, you
wo... you won't have any major problems during those seven lives. You
perceive that the tankas, the correct tankas really do represent the body of the
Buddha. An', an' after that you respect them in that way. And you also perceive
that the truth of the Buddhist teachings, the correct sutras, the canon, is totally
correct, y' know. Turns out you're in the right religion, okay [laughs]. I mean
not to put down other religions, but at that moment you perceive the truth of
that. You perceive that, that you... you know by good luck, whatever, you've
met a tradition which is totally correct. The books are totally correct. An' you get
this mania for protecting the books. Y' must protect them, y' must keep them in
the world, y' must keep those teachings pure, an' must transmit them to the ma...
next generation, very important. These all go on during the path... right after
the path of seeing, it's called jaytoviation, it's a kind of wisdom. An' all those
perceptions constitute the f... the four arya truths. Arya truths meaning they
were triggered by your perception of emptiness. An' that's the only time you
perceive the real nature of the four arya truths. It's the first time you perceive
the real nature of the four arya truths, an' that's why they're called the four arya
truths. The word "noble" is a bad translation of... parts of... translation of arya.
An arya is a person who's seen emptiness directly. That all goes on during the
moments after the path of seeing. One very important realization you get at
that moment, is that there's no worldly representation of emptiness. Nothing
can approach it. There's been no object in your experience which, which is like
emptiness. It's a totally different object, it's ultimate. But the closest thing is a
diamond. Very closest thing is a diamond, for many reasons, okay? Diamond is
clear, and it'd be expensive, but if you could make a wall of diamond around
yourself, and if it were oriented correctly, if you were looking straight into the
diamond, you couldn't see it, you wouldn' be able to see it. So there could be a
diamond wall all around you, and you could look through it an' you wouldn't see
it, okay. That's the first meaning of diamond, okay? Diamond represents
ultimate truth because it's totally clear. An' what it means is emptiness is around
you all the time. Every single object in the universe has emptiness as one of its
qualities, an' we'll g... we'll get into that, we'll explain why. Every single object in
the universe has its own emptiness. So there's emptiness been going around you
all the time. You are empty, an' your mind is empty. It's been around you all the
time. You have not ever seen it, directly, okay, if you're not an arya, an' I don't
know who in this room might be an arya, okay, that's another [laughs] point. I
don't have a... ability to read your mind right now. So, could be all of you are,
could be none of you are, could be one of us, could be more, I don' know. But,
but it's all around you an' you've never seen it if you're not an arya. Emptiness
is, is part of every object. Every object has its own emptiness, an' it's been
around you since you were a little baby and you never saw it. That's the first
meaning of the diamond. The second thing is that a diamond is ultimate in the
sense that physically it's the hardest thing in the universe. Nothing can scratch a
diamond. That's just the physical reality. There's nothing in the, in the universe
that can scratch a diamond. You can split a diamond, you can rub a diamond
with another diamond an' make it into the shape that you think of as a diamond,
an' nothing can scratch a diamond. It is an... close to being an ultimate, it's not a
real ultimate. An' that's the second meaning of diamond. Third meaning of
diamond is that if you cut a diamond... diamond is pure carbon, I mean they
knew it, the Buddha knew it, it's, it's totally pure atomically. It's a totally perfect
relationship. That's why pencil lead, which is pure carbon, rubs off in little layers
as you write on a piece of paper. It just slides off. It's, it's structure is imperfect.
But a diamond's
structure is totally perfect inside. Which means if you smash a diamond, which
you can do, every little piece of the diamond is pure diamond, and that's very
important, okay. Every piece is called... it's called {dorjay segma} in Buddhist
philosophy. Every piece of a diamond is as pure as every other piece, totally
pure. It's not like one part of a diamond is more pure than another. Every piece
of diamond is totally pure diamond. That's the nature of a diamond. An' that's
similar to ultimate reality. Ultimate truth or emptiness... the emptiness of every
object is totally e... equivalent. An' we'll get into that. It's one of the points in [b:
the Diamond-Cutter Sutra]. We'll cover that. So that's the meaning of diamond.
Anyone who perceives emptiness directly has this experience about a diamond.
A diamond comes to be very important for them, okay. A person might even
go to work in a diamond company so he wouldn't forget it [laughter]. Stick one
in his tooth or something [laughter]. 'S very important, 's very, very important,
and it's an experiment, an', an' you would... it would be worth your whole life to
stay in a company just not to forget it, just to... every time you wonder why the
hell you're there, you would think about it. So it's very, very important. That's
the meaning of a diamond. An' that's why diamond appears so often in
[unclear]. It represents ultimate reality. An' that's... that's a good place to start.
Come an' have some tea. Don't be shy, okay. Some people stay in here an' they
don' wanna go an'.... They [cut]

[cut] because you're on your way out. Stream anter means "on your way out",
okay. It'll be seven lives, it'll be one life, it'll be half a life, it'll be sixteen lives, but
you're on your way out. Once you've seen that directly, first of all you'll never
suffer in a major way after that. An' then second on the... you achieve nirvana
and Buddhahood within a predictable short time. Otherwise it could be millions
of years, okay. That's a very important moment. So diamond is very important
to the title, an' somebody put this title on the book, we, we don' know who,
maybe the Buddha did, don' know. Yeah.

[student: Then, I read this book on the mandala offering, it said [unclear] and
[unclear] kapero are the same mental continuum, an' if that's so, then how come
[unclear] kapa [unclear] it took him forty years until he had...]
Buddha... according to Mahayana, Lord Shakyamunibudhi was enlightened
before he was born.

[student: [unclear]]

An' he just went through the motions so that we knew... we would find out what
to do. That's the Mahayana viewpoint, so.... That's it. Okay. We covered
diamond. We didn't cover {chepa}. {Chepa} means "cutter". Cutter means this.
When you have that experience, when you come out, you realize that all the
perceptions you ever had in your life, every thought you ever had in your life,
everything you ever saw in your life, everything you ever heard in your life,
everything you ever had any perception of y... in your whole life, was a mistake.
According to the higher schools of Buddhism. Ma[unclear]yika, every single
perception you had up to that moment, every moment of thought you had, was
a mistake. An' you don' know that until you see emptiness directly. You can
understand it logically, but you, you can't know it until... with direct perception,
until you see that. An' it's interesting that when you come out of the direct
perception of emptiness, the mistaken perception starts again. Okay? [laughs]
Y... you're still under the influence of that old mind, and the moment you come
down out of that, the mistaken perceptions begin again.              So what's the
difference?

[student: You know they're mistaken.]

You know they're mistaken. So I always say you're like... who was it? Ulysses?
They went by the land of the sirens. He wanted to hear what they sounded like.
So he told his men in the ship to put wax in their ears so they wouldn't hear it.
Because they would sings beautiful song an' then all the people would row into
the cliff an' they would die. An' he wanted to hear the songs. So he said, "Tie me
to the mast, don't put wax in my ears, an' don't listen to anything I say [laughs].
Whatever I order you to do, don't do it after that." And, and it's this thing where
you know you're wrong, but you can't stop yourself, you know. You, you know
your perceptions are mistaken, an' that's the meaning of illusion in Buddhism.
That's, that's called {yumatabl}. After that moment, you know that things are
illusory, an'... but you still see them that way. An' you can't stop yourself. The
day that you do stop yourself, the do... the day that you remove the mental
seeds for seeing things wrongly is the day you become enlightened, an' you
reach nirvana, okay, then you've reached the fifth path. So we missed a path
right? Path number four, is, is from the time that you leave the place where you
had your direct perception of emptiness, or all the way up until the time that you
removed the last, tiny habit of seeing things that way, an' that could take
lifetimes, that could take seven lives, 'kay. So the diamond means... the diamond
is ultimate truth, but it, it can't... the image of a diamond, a physical diamond, is
only a representation of ultimate truth. It cannot touch ultimate truth. What
you see during those moments of direct perception of emptiness and all your
other perceptions forever after unless you're in the direct perception of
emptiness, everything else seems like, you know, wheat before a diamond. You
know it seems like cotton candy before a diamond. 'kay I mean a diamond is
like incr... ultimate, an' that, an' that... it just would go through the cotton candy.
It's like that comparison. But the diamond itself... the image of a diamond is
not... it can't compare really with ultimate reality. That's the why they say
"cutter". So... I'll, I'll make it a little clearer here [laughs]. "Cutter" means that
although diamond does represent ultimate reality very closely, it's totally... the
diamond is totally insufficient [laughs] to describe what, what you see. Okay, it's
the closest thing... I mean you could use it to remind yourself of what happened,
but it's, it's, it's just totally insufficient, an' that's what the "cutter" means, 'kay.
You could have called this sutra [b: Insufficient Diamond], okay. You could have
called it [b: Nearly...], diamonds are near, diamonds are close, 'kay. But ultimate
reality crushes the, the metaphor of a diamond. There is no comparison. It's the
closest thing in your whole experience to emptiness. It's... if you had to remind
yourself of it... what you saw, you would want to be around diamonds all the
time. But it, it just does not compare. Totally doesn't compare, and that's why
the word "cutter" is in that title. An' that's why it's very, very wrong to translate
it as [b: Diamond Sutra], okay. The point is that diamonds are insufficient, 'kay.
The point is that diamonds are close, an' diamonds aren't... are not very close
[laughs], okay. Diamonds are the closest thing, but diamonds aren't... totally
insufficient to describe what you see. 'Right, so if you had to keep something
worldly or physical around you to remind you of what you saw, diamond would
be good. But, but even the highest form of what we call relative truth, relative
reality, is not... it's not anywhere close to what you saw, I mean that reality is on
a totally separate plane. Ultimate reality is on a totally separate level. An', an'
that's another realization you have. I mean everything... all the other objects
you ever seen in your life are, are nothing compared to that. But the diamonds
are the closest so, so that's why we say "it cuts the diamond". It's not just the
metaphor of a diamond. Diamond is, is the closest thing, but totally [laughs] far
away, okay. That's why the, the word "cutter" has to be in the title. You have to
include that word in the title, 'cause diamond... it's [b: Dorjay Cherpa], it's [b:
Vajira Chedika], okay. It's not [b: Diamond Sutra], okay. It has a very, very
important meaning. That's the meaning of the "cutter", 'kay. It's very, very vital.
They didn't know how to cut diamonds when this sutra was [unclear], 'kay.
Okay, any questions? I will take questions, yeah?

[student, John: You said when you... after you had a direct perception of
emptiness, an' come out of it, you s... all of your future seven lives, or whatever,
would be... ]

No great suffering...

[student, John: Right... ]

Good circumstances. Lots of dharma teachings... an' there was something else...

[student, John: [unclear]]

More comfortable... also you would keep your morality and stuff like that. You,
you will not have major lapses in your practice.

[student, John: So my question is, if that's the case, what... why do High Lamas
seem to suffer so?]

The Buddha himself... there's a... the Buddha himself wa... there's a story of
Davadava, his jealous half-brother, who shot a catapult out here. And with a...
there was a boulder... he was very jealous of his, of his half-brother, and it hit his
foot, and it made a small cut, an' there's this tremendous debates in the, in the
scriptures about how could the Buddha get a cut. And there w... the conclusion is
that he pretended to get a cut. An' he pretended to die, like Rinpoche's
pretending to be sick an' stay in the hospital an' have these horrible things an'
people poking him and cutting him an'... why would he do it, y' know. But when
you're his student for twenty years or something an' you go see him helpless on
the bed an' people cutting him open an' you, y... you... it reminds you of your
own impermanence. That's, that's why Lamas pretend to be hurt, if they are
Enlightened Beings. 'F they're not, they're not High Lamas [laughs]. I can't judge,
I don' know. But there's a precedent for it. The Lama Buddha did it.

[student, John: Not having, you know... being impoverished, all these
circumstances, it's just... ]

Also you will read a section to answer that question. There will be a section in [b:
The Diamond-Cutter Sutra] where it says, "Anyone who reads this sutra, an'
studies this sutra, will therefore go through great problems directly
afterwards." [laughter] It's stated in the sutra. An', an' there's a reason for that, it
has to do with purification. I, I know that... like Robin was in Dharamsala. In the
early years of the first western students to study in Dharamsala where the Dalai
Lama was an', people used to die, people used to... one lady set herself on fire I
mean, things were... horrible things were happening, an' the m... and... it seemed
like the best students would have the worst things [laughs] happen to them.
There's a process of purification. We'll talk about it when we get to that part
[unclear] [laughter]. After that, the class will be in [unclear] [laughs] [laughter].
The idea is that a really tremendously bad karma is just going to the three lower
realms or something. If you understand this sutra fairly well, y' can be purified
in this life, and it would ripen rather quickly. So you would have some small,
small-time bad experience compared to, you know, millions of years in hell, or
some... you know, or you'd have a headache, I mean, that's the scripture says
you'd have a bad headache, or you could get a backache or something, so... it's
actually stated in [b: The Diamond-Cutter Sutra], it's probably the source for that
teaching. Yeah.

[student: Didn't you say that some great teacher went directly from a lower hell
to enlightenment?]

The Buddha? I mean the Buddha... there's a lot of debate about it, but the
Buddha himself... according to one scripture, he developed bodhichitta in the
hell. He reached that stage, he reached the first bodhisattva, the first moment of
bodhichitta in hell. Awright, that's probably what I was talking about. It's a long
story. Okay.

[student: [unclear] I remember we don't have to understand how [unclear] in an
effort to understand four lines of it.]

There's a big debate about that too [laughter] [laughs]. There's some additions of
the sutra which say that at the end. And... it's not in the original.

[student: Could we hear the question [unclear]?]

He said, "There's a part in the sutra which says, 'If you understand four lines of
the sutra,' you know, 'that's enough to reach enlightenment'". And we'll get to
that, we'll talk about that, 'kay. Awright, that's [unclear]. That's probably the
most important hour that you'll get in this whole five years, okay. Remember
what I said, okay, [unclear]. Awright. Meet Sabudhi.
[silence]

[student: What's this noise?]

M'hmm?

[student: What's this noise?]

Bad light. One of these...

[student:... transformer... ]

... blue column light...

[student:... transformer...]

Yeah.

[student: There's not gonna be any exposure or anything, I mean this karma is
not gonna [unclear] [laughter] [Geshe Michael laughs] yet.]

[unclear] I'm not writing that fast. Say Sabudhi [repeat]. His Tibetan name is
Rabjor [repeat], Rabjor [repeat]. Okay. Now I'm gonna tell you how the sutra
starts. An' that's all we're gonna do tonight, we'll actually get out a little early.
There's a monk named Sabudhi. The Buddha, Lord Buddha is... there's a
description in the sutra... he, he gets up, he goes for his morning sunyo, sunyo
means a real Buddhist monk in a real Buddhist country is not allowed to touch
money or to keep money or to keep food. And he would go out every morning
and beg for his food. The Sanskrit word for monk is bichshu and it comes from
the word bich which means "to beg". And he would have to go out and ask
other people if they think he's... it's worth it that he should be around [laughs],
you know, and they express that by giving him some food.                   An' that's
traditionally how a monk should live. So he would... he goes out, he does his
morning food-taking, an' he... and there's this debate in the commentary, why
would he do that, I mean. Buddhists don't have to eat anymore. But he, he does
it for the benefit of the people giving him the food, so they can collect some
[unclear], awright. An' that's the same with offering things, when you make
offerings on an altar, they don't drink he water, they don't eat the rice, they don't
need an apple, it's mainly the virtue of your offering it. An' you, you're just...
Abonka says you're... farmers never plant fields for the benefit of the dirt, you
know, it's, it's for their own benefit, okay, not thinking, "Oh, I'd like the dirt to be
happy," you know. You go out an' work for you own benefit. This is, this...
when you make offerings, they don't eat it, they... but it's, it's the act of making
offerings. So the Buddha doesn't have to go out an' collect his food, but in the
sutra he goes out, he does his sunyo, he comes back, he washes his mouth, you
know, before teaching the teacher makes his mouth clean. An' then he sits down
to give the teaching. An' the first thing that ha... there're hundreds of monks
around, and the monk named Sabudhi approaches him, he bows down, he, he...
even now in the debate you saw it when we did the demonstration thing, you
take, you take your shawl down, your upper robe as a, as a position of respect
for the other person. So the... Sabudhi comes to the Buddha, he gets down on
his knees, he, he takes off his upper shawl, and drops it, and he requests the
Buddha for a teaching. And the Buddha... he, he says to the Buddha, "How
should a Buddha, bodhisattva live?             How should bodhisattvas conduct
themselves?" And that's the beginning for the whole sutra, 'kay. So Sabudhi has
come up, and he's made abeyance, and then he asks the Buddha to... this
question. He says, "How should, how should bodhisattvas conduct themselves?
What should bodhisattvas... how should bodhisattvas live?" An' the whole [b:
Diamond-Cutter Sutra] is the, is the Buddha's answer. If you cut it into answers
and questions, there's a hundred and twenty-nine. And the..., an' there's an
exchange going on, between Sabudhi an', an' Lord Buddha, so, Sabudhi plays a
major role. This is one of the ways that sutras are taught, is at someone's
request. It's a classic way, that someone request the teaching. So Sabudhi is
asking Lord Buddha a question, an' then they continue to have this conversation.
Sabudhi ask questions, the Buddha ask questions of Sabudhi, an' they, they give
each other answers... of questions an' answers back and forth. It's a very, very
beautiful... it's really beautiful. An' you have this exchange going on. You know
[b: The Heart Sutra]. Who taught [b: The Heart Sutra]? This is a big debate at
the monastery. Who taught [b: The Heart Sutra]? Sutra, right? Buddha. So he
says, "Buddha," okay. Who spoke [b: The Heart Sutra]? Buddha. He doesn't say
anything.       At the end he says, "{Legsaw, legsaw, dedeshinah, dedeshinah
[unclear]}". He doesn't say anything. He's in meditation during the whole sutra.
It's, it's two of his students talking with each other, okay, the whole [b: Heart
Sutra]. But actually they're like puppets. He's running the show, mentally. With
his mental power, he's, he's making one ask questions, an' he's making th' other
one answer. They're like dolls. They're not... they're under his control mentally...

[student: Wow.]

... and it's th... the beauty of the whole [b: Heart Sutra], he's running the show,
okay. So it's actually one Enlightened Being getting two humans to talk to each
other.

[cut] and you, you really [unclear] around [laughs]. This sutra is very similar,
okay. Their Tibetan commentator says that Sabudhi's Manjushri, okay. Sabudhi
is a tantric deity. So essentially you have one Enlightened Being pretending to be
a bodhisattva, and asking questions to another Enlightened Being, alright? And,
and that's how the sutra goes. The, the, the evidence of that is that Sabudhi
speaks many of the prasanparamita sutras. The Buddha at the beginning says,
"Sabudhi, wha' d' you think?" And Sabudhi starts talking. And they are the
prasanparamita sutras.        They're recorded, and they're added to this... the
prasanparamita literature. And they're, they're perfect. The meaning is perfect
an'... you know, you can recognize them. Sounds like [laughs], y' know what I
mean? Yeah?

[student: 'Scuse me, but the Tibetan commentator is Choni Chakpa Sedju?]

Yeah, yeah, sometimes called Chorni Lama.

[student: Chorni Lama?]

Yeah, which means the Lama from Chorni. That was his birthplace. So that's,
that's the scene. And... we're gonna stop there. I have to hand out one more
thing. Lemme get your homework. But you... you've got the... you've got the
scene set there, and we'll start the sutra next class. Lemme make sure I've
covered everything, [unclear]. Okay, that's it. In your meditation, when a... we
study in the monastery from nine to twelve years we study [b:
Abhisamanankara], Maitreya's work on perfection of wisdom. An' then we do a
special ceremony, an' then you go in a... you, you're s'ppose to do a special
meditation retreat to build up enough virtue t' study this subject, t' study
emptiness, before you're allowed to crack a madyamika book. Before you're
allowed to study a book about emptiness, you have to finish nine to twelve
years of study in the monastery, an' then you have to go into a, a meditation
retreat, just to get the virtue to study this book. And, so what I'd like you to do
in your meditation is just to do a... what we call a, a sundap. [laughter] Sundap
means during your meditation fifteen minutes this week, just sit down and pray
to the Lamas who have taught this subject, okay. Means it goes back to Sabudhi
and Buddha, okay. If you're interested you can get a list of the Lamas... the
Gurus and the Lamas in the chain. It's called Samal Dara Gyu. The whole chain
of teachers, the person that I learned it from, the person that he learned it from...
it goes back to the Buddha. There is an unbroken chain, with this teaching back
to the Buddha. So, as you do your meditation... there is no meditation, just pray
to them, okay. Just, just try to imagine those beings, Nagarjuna, an' the people
who came af... Tsunkapa, people who came after [unclear], try to ask them for
their blessing, okay. This subject is very tricky. Majanmika, emptiness, when
you study these books it's very tricky. Hundred people can read the same book,
they can have the same teaching, fifty of them don' know what the heck it's all
about, fifty of them they sit there an' nothing happens. They, they... it sounds
interesting, or it sounds boring, but nothing clicks. An' then in a certain number
it just clicks, an' they just blow up, n' something happens. In the, in the sut... in
the... Chandikirti says you start weeping, or th' s'... the... your spine tingles or
your hairs rise up, I mean, if you have a jinlah, you'll catch it, an' something will
happen. If you don' have a jinlah, nothing will happen. This is a jinlah. Jinlah
means you, really make a true request this week, spend fifteen minutes in the
morning, you know, you spend that much time on breakfast or going to the
bathroom whatever, okay, it's not much time. Fifteen minutes is nothing. But
spend fifteen minutes, and just be qu... just mentally request for the, for the
blessing to, to catch it, 'kay. An' if you catch it, it's fantastic. If you don't catch it,
you know, you got a seed anyway, awright. If... to do this meditation you have
to have a book that most people have, it's called [b: The Indishagerma] or [b:
Source of All My Good}. You have to read that before you do that request. If
you don't have it, take one from here, okay. It's ten pages long, it's in here, I
think most people have a copy, awright. If you don't have a copy, take one.
You don't have... you can read the English translation here. Just read it out loud
before you do your meditation, very important.                    Okay, let's... chanting
meditation, are ready. And this is probably the only time you'll get out early.
[laughs] [laughter]. [cut]



     (Problem with rest of tape from mark #10 on Side 2 to end. Recording is
very,          very faint - can only hear very faint hisses at highest volume.)
950320-1.aaa

3/20/98
Diamond-Cutter Sutra