ACI 6 «Сутра Алмазного Огранщика», занятие 6

Class Six: Direct Perception of Emptiness
April 6, 1995

Geshe Michael Roach

Transcribed by Angie Overy
Proof: Jaala

[cut] Buddha asks Subhuti, when a, when a stream-enterer enters the stream,
does he think to himself, ‘I’ve entered the stream?’ Subhuti says what?’

[student: No.]

[student: Subhuti says what?]

Subhuti says, ‘No, he doesn’t do that.’ Okay, so, stream-enterer, okay.

[student: I’m not sure [unclear] stream enterer.]

Entering the stream happens at the same time as something else. What?

[student: First perception of emptiness?]

Nah.

[student: No?]

[student: Path of seeing.]

What happens at the path of seeing?

[student: First direct perception…]

Oh, direct. Ah, okay. You didn’t say that the first time.

[student: I said it but not directly.] [laughter]
Not directly. And they change your name to what?

[students: Arya.]

Arya. Those all happen at the same instant, so, there’s this big division in the
universe, okay. You can take how many planets; we talked about it last time
right. You can take a billion planets in this particular system, with life on them,
with human beings living on them, and you could take all those living beings
and put them in one Star Trek ship or something, and you could divide them
into two types. There’s only two types of people in the whole universe. There’s
only two kinds of beings in the whole universe. This is the big division. It’s not
man, woman, animal, human, not human. It’s not smart, dumb. It’s not
Buddhist and non-Buddhist. What is it?’

[student: Realising emptiness.]

You’re either an Arya or you’re not, okay. And that’s the big, big division. In
the whole universe, the first question a Buddha would ask somebody if he met
him is which side are you on? Okay, are you an Arya or are you not an Arya?
It’s a big distinction. When you see emptiness directly you become a totally
different class of person. You are in a totally different group, you belong with
bodhisattvas, Buddhas, you are, you’re in a totally different group of peo…
family. And you’re totally different to what you were before, the moment
before that, okay. That’s called, Arya is called {pakpa} in Tibetan. And a non-
{pakpa} is called a {so so kyewa}. [laughter] {So so kyewa}’s just what it sounds
like. What do you guess?

[students: Sort of… [unclear]]

It’s what we call, we translate it as ‘normal being’, okay, ‘normal person’.
Sometimes they translate it as ‘common person’, ‘ordinary person’. I think
ordinary’s good, ordinary person. There are a lot of ordinary people that aren’t
normal. [laughter]    So, maybe ordinary’s better, okay.       {So so kyewa},
puttaccayana in Sanskrit, or Arya or {pakpa} in Tibetan.

[students: Puttacc…]]

Huh? Puttaccayana, anyway, an ordinary being. So, you’ve either seen
emptiness or you haven’t. Directly, sorry. And that puts you in a, up until that
moment, your career in samsara is unlimited. You can’t say how long you’ll stay
here. Up until the moment you perceive emptiness directly, you’re a {so so
kyewa}, you’re puttaccayana, you’re a normal person, ordinary person and if
you ask somebody, ‘Well, how long have I got to go in samsara?’ They say, ‘As
far as I can tell, it’s limitless. You’re gonna suffer endlessly, I can’t say how long
it will take. I can’t put a date or a limit on your experience of samsara. All beings
will become enlightened someday, but if you ask me in your particular case, if
you haven’t seen emptiness directly, I can’t answer that. It’s, it’s, it’s way off in
the future somewhere. No, no limit. No predictability much about it.’

[student: What about the Buddha? Don’t you say the Buddha knows
everything?]

I’m talking, {so so kyewa} well non-Buddhas, okay. {Pakpa} he’s on his way out,
he’s definitely on his way out. Fixed time, he knows how long it’s gonna take;
typical, is like, seven lives. But he is on his way out, it’s like he stepped on a
conveyor belt and he’s moving, what do you call it , inexorably to nirvana and
enlightenment. He must reach Buddhahood; he will reach Buddhahood in a
certain amount of time. Period. Okay, that’s the big difference and that’s why
he’s called a stream-enterer, that’s exactly what stream-enterer is. He’s stepped
onto the conveyor belt and he’s moving inexorably downstream and he will
reach Buddhahood in a fixed amount, given amount of time. Yeah?

[student, Tom: Also becomes a member of the sangha at that moment as well,
right?]

We’ll get there, okay.

[student: Michael, does stream enterer just refer to someone who has just seen
emptiness directly?]

We’ll talk about; we’ll talk about that too, okay. [laughs] All right. As Tom
pointed out, a big thing happens at this moment. You become two of the three
Ratnas. When you bec… when you’re a Buddhist what you pray to, you know,
what you bow down to is the three jewels. The three Ratnas, the three gems.
When you perceive emptiness directly, you’ve already become one of them, and
you have another one. So, when all the Buddhists around the world are doing
their morning prayers and praying, it’s to you they’re praying because you
become their Sangha Ratna. Sangha normally means ordained people but,
ultimately, it means anyone who’s perceived emptiness directly, is the real
sangha. Ordained people are called the nominal sangha but people who have
seen emptiness directly are the real community. They’re the real sangha. And
the Dharma Sangha, the Dharma Ratna, the jewel of the Dharma, is that
perception of emptiness in your mind, okay. That’s the true path; it’s a high
path. You become the Dharma Ratna. You don’t become the third Ratna, which
is what?

[students: Buddha.]

Buddha Ratna. You still got a ways to go. But, you’ve already attained the status
of two of the three precious Jewels. When Buddhists around the world pray, go
to their temples and pray, they’re praying to you.

[student: What is the praying to you thing, I’m sorry what is the two?]

You become two of the three Ratnas. You become a Sangha Ratna; you become
a member of the Sangha Ratna because you’ve seen emptiness directly. And
that’s what makes you real sangha. This is just what we call ‘representative
sangha’. I represent, these robes represent those people, but they are, you can
wear the robes and not be Sangha Ratna. And then Dharma Ratna, Dharma
Ratna is that realisation of emptiness in your mind, is the Dharma, is the real
Dharma.

[student: So would you say that’s the case only when you’re in the direct
perception of emptiness not when you are out of it?]

Forever after, in the first second, and forever after.

[student: Even though your not perceiving emptiness…?]

Yeah. Even though you’re not doing it directly at the moment. Anyone who has
had that path becomes a Dharma Ratna. So that’s a pretty big deal. And I
thought you might, I thought we might talk about what it takes to get to that
point, okay. What are the pre-requisites? How would people like you and me
reach that point? What kind of process would you have to go through? There,
the nice thing about the Tibetan tradition, which it comes purely from the Indian
tradition, it’s very, very specific. It’s very, very laid out. It’s {lam rim}, tell you
what to do, what you have to do, specifically, what you have to do. And you
just do it and you reach it.

[student: It’s the things you got to do to reach it?]
Yeah, pre-requisites.

[student: Prerequisites.]

Sine qua non. Say, {nyen jung} [repeat]

{Nyen jung} [repeat].

You guys got lazy. {Nyen jung} means {nye jung} to ‘definitely come out’,
‘definitely come out’. We’ll explain it. {Nye} means ‘definitely come out’.
Ultimately, it refers to nirvana and Buddhahood, okay. Ultimately, it refers to
coming out of samsara and coming out of lower nirvana. It means nirvana and
Buddhahood. The ultimate {nyen jung} is nirvana and Buddhahood. That’s the
meaning of the word, the ultimate meaning of this word. To come out, means to
come out of your suffering, and to come out of this kind of life and reach nirvana
or Buddhahood. That’s one meaning; the second meaning is totally different.
The second meaning is very close to… {rabtu} means ‘really’. This is the same
root but it’s a different spelling. It means ‘left, gone away’. {Raptu chungwa}
means to leave the home life, okay. The classical meaning of {raptu chungwa} is
‘to leave the home life’. Before you become a full monk and before you become
a novice monk, when you decide to leave the home and come and live in the
monastery, you have to take a {raptu chungwa} vow. It’s before the other vows.
It’s a vow that says I agree to, to leave the home life. I will leave the home life. I
will come and stay in the monastery. It’s a requirement to become a novice or,
or a full monk.

[student: What’s {raptu chungwa}?]

Left, really left, the worldly life.

[student: Does that mean physically…mentally?]

We’ll talk about it. [laughs]

[student: Okay, all right]

It’s coming, okay. So, the second meaning of {nyen jung} is to leave the worldly
life, is to leave behind the worldly life. So {nyen jung} is the Tibetan word for the
first of the three Principal Paths. What’s that?
[students: Renunciation.]

It’s renunciation. Is true renunciation related to anyone of the five paths?

[student: Accumulation.]

Yeah, it is, it is reaching the first path, okay. Reaching the first path and getting
true renunciation are the synonyms. You can’t reach the first path without
renunciation. When you do reach the first path, it is, it is by getting renunciation
and that’s another meaning of {nyen jung}. So {nyen jung} means, in a sense,
{raptu chungwa} which means ‘to leave the worldly life’. And, and this is the
relationship between the first and the third path, okay. To see emptiness
directly, to see that thing directly, you, you will have to leave the worldly life,
okay. You’ll have to, you’ll have to leave the life of career or family or kids or
husband or ... You will have to. If you don’t, you, you can’t get to the third
path. You never will.

[student: Why is that?]

You won’t have the mental or physical time. Your mind will be devoted to the
worldly side of things instead of the spiritual side and your time, physically, will
be to, to maintain the worldly life you…, it takes time. It takes too much of your
time. You just can’t do it. You, you won’t be able to do it. Does it mean you
have to quit your job and divorce your wife? Buddha did. [laughs] No, it
doesn’t mean you have to. I mean, {nyen jung} is the, is the mental state and
many monks in the monastery, it’s said in the Scriptures have never even
approached {nyen jung} renunciation. And, many great laymen, like Dromton Je
or Naropa, people like that, never became monks, but mentally they left the
home, they left the worldly life, they left the home life. What I mean is, as long
as a good part of your mind is given over to your career, or your family life, you
won’t have mental or physical time. You won’t reach the third path. It’s just an
insurmountable obstacle. And, and you have to make a choice in your life. The
worldly efforts are useless. They’re meaningless, there’s no result. You just die
and get old. You lose whatever you were fighting to collect, whether it was a
house or cars or a family or a position at your company, you lose them all. It’s a
wasted effort. It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t work. It doesn’t mean that if it
comes to you, in a good way, you can’t be president of a big company. But it
means you shouldn’t give your mind to that. Or, you just can’t, you’ll never
reach the third path.
[student: Doesn’t it kind of like no longer defining yourself by these situations
and so forth, I mean you could be in them but so long as you know mentally just
really don’t define yourself like as being : this person’s sangha, this person’s
husband, this person’s boss or whatever?]

It’s just very dangerous. If you’re an extremely strong person, spiritually,
perhaps you could brush with those things and, and still survive spiritually and
not die spiritually. It’s very dangerous; it’s a very dangerous game, okay. You’ll
get sucked into it, you know. [laughs] It’s very hard to be, have a big position,
it’s very hard to have a big family, it’s very hard to own a lot of things and not
get, and not get, somehow, sidetracked spiritually. Very difficult. It’s, it can be
done and it’s a art, it’s an art to do it. But you, but be careful. And I’m just
talking as a friend, you know. I had a job also. I have commitments to people
also. But, between us, the less the better. And you really have to devote
yourself to the spiritual side if you want to see emptiness directly. The other side
is, is death. The other side you lose. There’s no meaningful result of that
activity. It’s, it’s, it’s doomed. And I can’t make…, I can’t change that you know.
I, to be, for me to be honest to you, and to really say what really is required, you
have to give that up. Most of it, maybe even really physically give it up. Parts of
it, you have to have a livelihood, that’s also Buddhism says that. You have to
have an honest livelihood and don’t grub off other people, it’s very clear and
you can’t abandon your commitments to your family and things like that. It’s,
it’s not proper. But you, mentally, you have to leave the world, you might as
well leave it now, you’re gonna leave it later anyway. Between now and then,
you might get some spirits, you might reach the third path. Otherwise you, it’s
just a wasted opportunity and who knows when it will come again, maybe it
won’t come again for many lives, this life is very finite. Your energy is lost
quickly. You know, you could have a heart attack or get sick any day. That’ll be
the end. You have to, you do have to give it up, you really do have to give it up.

[student: We said in the last class that the perfection of patience was the highest
austerity so if you … and better than being in a cave for five years, so then
would you want to stay in some form of the worldly life in order to have a
practice that you were tested in or something?]

Right, I think if you, if you’re career is truly symbolic, if the only reason you’re
working is to, as a laboratory, I truly believe that, like an office environment is
tremendous for spiritual practice. But you, it’s you’re flirting with danger, you
know. It’s very, very dangerous and all that stuff, ultimately, you have to give it
up, I… , you have to. You won’t have mental or time. Too much in your mind
will be devoted to it and, and your time, your physical time. Your short, useful,
healthy middle age will end soon. And then, and then all those other things that
you worked for, they go away anyway. You must lose them. Every one loses
them. I, I’m just being honest. I, I’ve never spoken to you quite like that. But
you have to do that or you won’t see it. You won’t see emptiness. Okay.
Second thing.

[student: Michael, I’m sorry you lost me are these {nyen jung} and {raptu
chungwa}, are they two parts or one is the subset of the other or what is the…?]

{Raptu chungwa} describes the second meaning of {nyen jung}. The first
meaning of {nyen jung} is nirvana itself, which means to come out of suffering.
The second meaning of {nyen jung} is renunciation, which means, which I’m
equating with {raptu chungwa} which means ‘leave the home life’. If you can,
physically, if you can’t, then mentally. And physically as far as you can. Number
two.

[student: Number two?]

Requirement number two.

[student: Is to reach Buddhahood?]

To see emptiness directly.

[student: Michael, so renunciation is the second?]

Renunciation is the second meaning of the first, the second meaning of the word
{nyen jung} which refers to the first path. Say {jor lam} [repeat]

{Jor lam} [repeat].

That’s requirement number two. It’s the second path you…, if you don’t reach it
you’ll never see emptiness directly. Impossible. That’s why there’s five paths,
that’s why the Buddha taught it.

[student: What is it?]

{Jor lam} - {jor} means preparation, {lam} means path. What, what happens on
the second path?

[student: You gain, you gain intellectual familiarity.]

Intellectual realizations of emptiness, okay. Not direct, but it’s from study, from
contemplation, from a lot of class hours, you start to grasp emptiness in a, in an
intellectual way, not in a direct experience, meditational way. And there’s one
concept which defines {jor lam}, if you understand this concept you will reach
{jor lam}. It’s a very difficult concept. It’s a big, big subject in the monastery,
you start learning it, a monk in a monastery starts getting it when he’s about
thirteen. They start him on that and maybe much later, it, it flowers in his mind,
okay. It’s not what you might expect. Second path before what?

[students: Seeing emptiness.]

Direct perception of emptiness. [laughs] That’s the whole idea tonight, it’s to see
what’s, how you get there.

[student: So the first path is the path of accumulation?]

Yeah, and you can call it renunciation. You could call it leaving the worldly life,
which you must do. Say, {chi} [repeat]

{Chedrak} [repeat]

{Chi} [repeat]

{Chedrak} [repeat]

It’s difficult, okay. {Chi} means, some people translate this, by translating it
literally, it’s, it’s helpful but it’s not the main meaning. It’s very difficult and, and
you’ll see, but I’ll explain it and you’ll catch it and maybe tomorrow, you’ll see
emptiness, directly. [laughter]

[student: Michael are you saying all these, this breakdown, is the translation
that’s literal but not...?]

What I’m saying is when you achieve the path of preparation you will
understand that these words refer to these two things called ‘quality’ and
‘characteristic’. Most western scholars, in books, translate them this way, which
is helpful but is not the real meaning. The idea of a {chi} is very, you have to
know it. There’s four types of {chi}’s. I’m gonna tell you the least important one
first. You don’t have to write the Tibetan. You can, maybe the sounds would be
useful for you, but it’s gonna be a wild class so you gotta, you gotta move, okay.
Say {tsok chi} [repeat]

{Tsok chi} [repeat].

{Tsok} means what? You just had it, {tsok la} right.

[student: Collection.]

It means collection. {Chi} means ‘general’, a quality. This refers to a whole
composed of parts, a whole composed of parts. An example would be a human
body, okay. What are the parts?

[student: Arms, legs..]

Arms, legs, torso, okay. Arms, legs, torso and head, those are parts. All that
together is called a {tsok chi}, it’s called the whole. That’s one kind of {chi}, that’s
one kind of {chi} and what’s the example?

[student: Car.]

You can say ‘car’, but I’m saving car for something else, okay. . [laughs]

[student: Body.]

I want to keep it consistent. Body and its parts: two arms, two legs, torso and a
head and a {tsok chi} of all those parts together is called a human body. And
now, we’re getting into the really important one, that one’s not so important
okay. The second one is very important. Say {rik chi} [repeat]

{Rik chi} [repeat]

That means ‘quality’, that one means ‘quality.’ An example is, and the char…,
the thing which is characteristic of car, is Chevrolet, okay. Chevrolet is one kind
of car, any time you have a Chevrolet you have a…?

[students: Car.]
Anytime you have a car, you have a…?

[student: {Rik chi}.]

[student: No.]

[student: No, you have a car.]

Anything in the universe can be a {rik chi} but that’s another subject. You have
a… you don’t necessarily have a Chevrolet, right. That’s the nature of a
characteristic. There are many objects which share the quality ‘car’. There’s
Fords, there’s Toyotas, there’s Nissans.

[student: {Chi} means body?]

No. {chi} means quality or general and {rik} means ‘type’, ‘kind’. Chevrolet is a
kind of car. Car is a {rik shi}, Chevrolet is the {chedrak}, its characteristic, it has
the characteristic ‘car’. The question is this: when you go out on the street and
you see a taxi cab bearing down on you, okay, when you see a taxi cab, how do
you know it’s a taxi?

[student: It’s yellow?]

Huh? Or when I look at Bunyan how do I know he’s a person? What is it, what
is it that makes me recognise him as a person? What makes me identify him as a
person?

[student: General characteristics.]

If it’s just his characteristics then anyone would recognise him as a person.

[student: Your projection?]

It’s, it’s very, very difficult, okay. The non-Buddhist schools believe that there’s a
separate entity called Bunyan’s identity and it cloaks him like a coat. And when I
look at him I understand that he’s a man or a human being because that thing is
recognised by some part of my mind that I’m not even aware of, okay, meaning
something, that’s not correct.
[student: When you say his…certain general characteristics and you have the
karma to perceive those characteristics as…?]

Not getting into that really. But how, how is it that when I look at him, what,
what happens that I recognise him as a human being? He’s, he’s a particular
human being. He’s one kind of human being. His humanness is a general
quality of him. He’s typical of humans but what is it about, why when I look at
him, do I think ‘human’? ‘Cos I’m focussing on Banyun, why do I think
‘human’? What is it about him that allows me to identify him as a human? This
is a real big question in Buddhist philosophy in the Dharmakirti we debate it for
months and months. When you look at the parts of a cow, what is it that allows
you to recognise ‘cow’? ‘Cow’. ‘Human’. ‘Human’.

[student: It’s a collection of parts that is unique to one particular kind of a
collection and that collection we distinguish as a human collection.]

We distinguish but why? How?

[student: Because of your karma.]

[student: Because there are, there’s no other collections like it.]

[student: It’s a convention.]

[student: It’s a projection, your karma.]

Think about it, cook it okay, it’s very, very important and it’s… don’t just give
the answer that you heard in class, you know. Go home, you’re gonna have to
meditate about this, it’s a deep question. It’s very important for perceiving
emptiness. Why is it that I see human? Why is it that I identify him? That’s his
{chi}.

[student: It’s memory, isn’t it? I mean its memory.]

[student: It’s thought.]

[student: Or conception.]

[student: Cows. It’s karma. Cows.]
Two kinds.

[student: Exclusive of car or Chevrolet could you use other words to describe
this {rig chi}?]

General and characteristic, this is the true {chi}. This {chi} is similar; it’s obviously
not the same. Your leg is not you but a Chevrolet is a car, big difference. They
are both kinds of generals, [unclear] is a general for the parts but second subset;
cars and Chevrolets is a whole different kind of relationship.

[student: So you would say subset is an accurate way…?]

I don’t…, think about calling characteristic, there’s something important there,
okay. Say {dun chi}. [repeat]

{Dun chi}[repeat]

{Dun chi}{Chi} here is a mental picture you get when I mention something that
you’ve seen before. If I say what does Rusty look like? What does the white
dog over there look like, who just barked, okay? What does he look like? If I
say, ‘Rusty’s barking.’ you, when I say ‘Rusty’, something pops into your mind:
maybe it’s the dog that bit you [laughs] most people. That’s a {dun chi}, okay.
That’s a {dun chi} it’s a mental image of something that you have experienced
directly. {Dun} means ‘actual object’, okay. {Dun} means “the actual object’; {chi}
means ‘a mental picture you get of that actual object’. When I say, ‘What does
Rusty look like?’ and this, you know, fuzzy, white thing pops up in your mind,
that’s a {dun chi}.

[student: Can you say, I mean generally, what enables you to do this is your,
your ability to conceptualise?]

You have to cook it, okay.

[student: That’s a lot of cooking.]

[student: What is the {dun}?]

{Dun} means the actual object; {chi} means a mental picture. In this case it means
a generalization, an idealization in your mind.
[student: Is this only visual?]

No, any object. I could say ‘love’, and you’d get a {dun chi} if you’ve ever felt it,
directly. Say {dra}. [repeat]

{Chi} [repeat]

{Dra chi} [repeat].

{Dra} means a word; {dra} means a word here. It means ‘sound’; here it means
‘word’. {Chi} means what?

[student: A mental image.]

In this case, a mental image, a general, in sense of, in the sense of an idealization
in your mind. {Dra chi} refers to… if I say… what’s a good example? Anybody
ever been to the Taj Mahal? I know you have. [laughter] Okay, suppose you’ve
never been to the Taj Mahal and I say ‘Taj Mahal’, you get some kind of mental
image. You know, I say, when I said, ‘Have you ever been to the Taj Mahal?’
you checked your mental image. You had a mental image of this thing and then
you checked it against your memory and you said, “Nah, I’ve never been there.
I, I heard about it.’ Heard about it is {dra}. The {chi} you get in your mind from
hearing about it is a {dra chi} and it implies that you’ve never seen the thing
directly.

[student: So if you had seen it it would be a {dun chi}?]

Yeah, it would be a {dun chi} for you. For those of you who have seen the Taj
Mahal and I say ‘Taj Mahal’ you get a {dun chi}, yeah.

[student: You get a {dun chi}.]

But those of you who’ve never, I’ve never seen the Eiffel Tower, okay. When
you say ‘Eiffel Tower’, even though I’ve seen pictures, movies, drawings, but I
don’t have a {dun chi}. I’ve never experienced it directly myself.

[student:[unclear]]

That would be, for me, a {dra chi}. Taj Mahal is a {dra chi} for me; I’ve never seen
the Taj Mahal.
[student: So a {dun chi} is mental image based on a direct perception and a {dra
chi}…]

A direct experience of that thing, it could be a logical direct, a logical perception.

[student: Well a {dra chi} could be logical as well if someone’s explained it to you
right, I mean that’s how you get a logical perception of [unclear] for instance]

{Dra chi} doesn’t involve a process of reasoning, it’s just that some one’s
described it to you and you have a picture of it, that’s all.

[student: So it’s an image based on anything but an experience?]

You can say that.

[student: Direct experience.]

[student: Is {dra chi} the checking process or the conclusion?]

It’s not checking or anything. You’ve heard about the Taj Mahal. Somebody
says ‘There’s this big building in India; it’s all white, it’s got ….’ and you start to
form a mental image. That’s all. That’s a {dra chi}.

[student: It’s not a, for example, what you had about seeing the picture?]

No, you do have a {dun chi} about a picture of the Taj Mahal, okay. You have
had a direct experience with your eyeballs of a picture of the Taj Mahal, but, the
Taj Mahal itself, for you, is just a something that some one described for you,
some pictures.

[student: It’s not even you doing a picture in your head?]

It is doing with a picture in your head based on the words of somebody or
indirect experiences.

[student: Is it like doing visualisation?]

Well, if you’ve ever seen Tara, and you’re visualizing that, that’s a {dun chi}. If
you’ve never met her, that’s a {dra chi}. [laughter]
[student: That’s good.]

Something is, there’s a point in your spiritual career, if you ever get to that,
because you gotta get over which mountain first?

[students: Leaving the world.] [laughter]

Worldly life, okay. If you ever get over the first mountain, in this life okay, if in
this life you ever truly leave the world, if you ever truly while you’re still healthy
enough to do it, give up on this world, then you got another mountain to get
over. And that’s the path of preparation. And you must grasp what’s going on
with {chi}’s, okay. And what’s going on is, every object you experience, let’s say
visually okay, when you’re making a cup of tea and you see a pot on the stove,
there is no pot out there, there is no pot out there. You see some roundness,
you see some white reflection from the silver in the back, you see part of the
black handle. You never see the whole pot but your mind takes those clues,
pastes them together and idealizes it into the thing called ‘pot’. And when you,
when you think you’re seeing pot, and when you interact with the pot, when
you make a pot of tea, all you’re ever seeing is what?

[student: The assembly?]

Is that idealization, is that mental picture and you are constantly mistaking it
for…?

[students: A pot.]

A pot out there. Now you understand that intellectually, I’ll say it again. When
you look at a pot and you think to yourself ‘pot’, when you look at Bunyan and
you think ‘human being’, it’s never because you’ve perceived a whole, perfect
human being out there. It’s because you’ve taken some of the indications – I
can’t see the back of him. For all I know, he’s Terminator Three [laughs]
[laughter] and he’s got a big key in the back. [laughter] But, but on the clues I
have and by the way, I can never have more than a few at a time. Take one
from there and then my eye goes tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick – I take the
hand, I take the pen in the hand, I take the sitting up, I take the head and I, and I
glue it all together mentally and in my mind I have a nice perfect Banyun, human
being. I think, ‘person’. I think to myself ‘person’ but actually, what I’m
focussing on, is that mental {dun chi} okay. I’m focussing on that mental picture;
there isn’t that thing out there. I’m taking those clues and I’m, and I’m
visualizing Banyun in my mind and I’m thinking ‘person’ and I’m always
mistaking that mental image for, for the real thing out there. For a, quote, ‘real
thing out there’, I’m always doing that. Do you understand that intellectually?

[student: Yep.]

[student: It’s like connecting the dots?]

Yep. How you connect them depends on your karma, she asked for it okay.
[laughter] I will explain it right now. {Chu} means what?

[student: Dharma.]

Dharma.

[student: Subsets of the other ones?]

We’ll get there, don’t worry, don’t worry. {Chu chok} means ‘supreme Dharma’,
{chu chok} means supreme Dharma. It is the final stage of the second path.
There are four major stages in the second path and {chu chok} consists of the last
few hours of the second path. It’s called {chu chok} because it’s the highest state
you will ever be in as a…?

[students:. {So so kyewo}.]

{So so kyewo}[laughter], as an ordinary being, because, right after that, what
happens?

[student: You see…]

You perceive emptiness directly, okay. {Chu chok}’s name, it’s not the supreme
Dharma right? What is the supreme Dharma? Buddhahood, okay. But, as a, as
a ordinary being, as a non-Arya, as a non-realized person, and I use ‘realized’ as
not enlightened, okay. Realized meaning someone who’s realized emptiness
directly. This is the big moment of your life; this is the highest level you’ll ever
get to as a non-Arya before you perceive emptiness directly. This is your day;
it’s the final hours of the path of preparation. You will have got over the first
mountain, which was what?
[students: Renunciation.]

Leaving this world. You got up very high on the second mountain because you
started to study generals and characteristics. You got higher and higher and
higher and you’re just about to reach the peak, that’s {chu chok}. When you get
over that peak, it’s the big valley of seeing emptiness directly, okay. You reach
the golden land, okay. It’s at this moment, in the last hours of the path of
preparation, that you figure out what you’re doing with those {dun chi}’s. At
that moment, for the first time ever that you perceive directly, clearly, perfectly,
that there is no Banyun out there and that you are looking at a mental picture of
him that you’ve pasted together from some indications. In fact, you have just
then understood perfectly the nature of what?

[student: Emptiness.]

What? It’s not emptiness. That comes later.

[student: Conceptualising?]

[student: Relative reality?]

Dependent origination itself, this is dependent, this is relative truth. You have
lived in relative truth for endless, for beginningless time. You’ve been in relative
reality since beginningless time.         You have lived many trillions of lives
surrounded by these objects and you have never once understood what they
were.     You’ve never understood their dependent origination, ever.            This
moment, in the last stages of the path of preparation, you catch yourself doing it.
You realize what it is to be projecting. For the first time, you realize it directly.
You can understand it intellectually all this time, yet at {chu chok}, at the final
moments, you finally catch yourself creating relative truth, dependent
origination. You finally figure out what you’ve been doing all this time, for the
first time. It’s the big moment. Really, you have just perceived deceptive reality
for what it is for the first time, directly. You understand it tonight because I’m
describing it generally and you’re understanding it generally. At that moment,
you see there’s no pot on the stove. You see directly that it’s all part of your
mental idealizations. You see that directly. You have just perceived the truth of
deceptive truth, of deceptive reality. You have just perceived what it is to be
dependently originated, for the first time, then, you go… Yeah.

[student: Is that like seeing emptiness directly that it will only happen once?]
Yeah. {Chu chok} only happens once. Then you go into deep meditation and
your mind must leave this realm. Your mind must reach a level of concentration
called the ‘form realm’. In fact, it’s a certain level of the form realm and a certain
stage within that level. It’s called {nyi cho me} but you, don’t worry about it. So,
that brings us, that implies another pre-requisite. What?

[student: Concentration.]

Yeah. Just to be in the right frame of mind to perceive emptiness directly, just to
have that foundation to stand on, to stand up and see emptiness directly, just to
ever be in the state of concentration required to see emptiness directly, your
mind has to actually leave this realm. Your body doesn’t go anywhere. Your
body’s in meditation posture, you learned it. Your mind, actually, you get a
physical sensation of the mind going up to the form realm, your mind is on a
different level. Totally different level. Now, something about the pre-requisite
part. You cannot ever reach that state if you don’t meditate about an hour a day.
Totally, completely, impossible. So, if you don’t want to see emptiness directly
and you enjoy this suffering [laughter] skip your mediations regularly and don’t
write them on your homework, okay.

[student: Watch TV.]

[student: Could it be considered perfect concentration yet for at least a moment
or so?]

It is {shi ne} it is {shi ne}, it’s shamatha. You must have shamatha and you cannot
reach it unless you spend an hour a day in deep meditation. You cannot. Not
straight. Somebody asked me that in another class. It doesn’t have to be
straight, but you’re not – she means unbroken concentration for a whole hour.
No, you don’t need that. But, if you’re not practising it specifically for about an
hour a day, getting into deep meditation on any virtuous object, it doesn’t
matter; you cannot reach the path of seeing. You never will. You will always
suffer. You’ll die in some hospital or in some old folks home and it’ll be over,
okay. You have to be fairly young and healthy to reach that. So, so we’re
reaching the threshold of where it would be very difficult for us to do it, if you’re
my age, okay. If you’re young, Stilwell’s a little younger maybe, I don’t know,
he’s only eighteen. [laughter] So [laughter] if you just can’t reach it, you never
will. So, for God’s sake, start now, okay. Please, you have to, you really have to.
Please, please start now, okay. You must. It’s very convenient to have an
assignment every week. If you get this class tonight and you don’t do anything,
the second time you hear it you won’t do anything either. Guaranteed, okay.
Seriously, that’s the nature of, sometimes I regret teaching so much, because the
second time you hear it, you think I already heard that and it doesn’t affect you.
In Tibetan it’s called {tep to} it’s a spiritual phenomenon which happens to all
students. The more you hear it the less you are likely to change. If you don’t
change in the first few times of hearing something, the odds later are almost
none. You must do it now. You must start now. If you don’t start you cannot
see emptiness directly. So, we have three pre-requisites already. They’re kind of
difficult. You have to leave the world; you must explore the meaning of general
and characteristic; and you must be meditating about an hour a day in deep
meditation. You can meditate, the Sakyas, great holy Sakya masters have said
seven minutes on, few minutes off, seven minutes on, few minutes, that’s okay.
But, deep, deep, pure, nice meditation, and you have to understand those things
about mental pictures. You must understand what you’re doing when you look
at Banyun and you see this perfect Banyun in your mind. You think he’s out
there right? You think he’s sitting next to you. You wouldn’t say he’s inside
you… [cut] the capacity to put your mind in that state because if you can’t, you’ll
never see emptiness. It’s impossible, directly. Impossible. A mind in a normal
working… if your mind is in the desire realm, which means the realm of the five
senses, it’s impossible to see emptiness directly. Cannot ever happen. Will not
ever happen. Yeah?

[student: These four types of qualities that you wrote down for us is this in the
way of saying there are four ways of looking at emptiness, four ways of
describing it?]

No, not at all, they are ways of looking at mental images. I gave you three pre-
requisites for seeing emptiness directly: you must give up the worldly life; you
must understand mental images and what you’re doing with mental images –
how you mistake them for real things; and then thirdly, you must practise deep
state of meditation on any virtuous object you choose, that doesn’t matter. You
had a question?

[student: Why is it an hour?]

I’m just telling you it’s an hour, okay. It really is.

[student: At least or an hour?]
Minimum. If you die next week you’ve got seven days to see emptiness directly
and if you do see it, you will forever after, have pleasant lives and you will be a
Buddha within seven lives. I mean, you would get your arse [laughs] to your
meditation room and start working, right. And you might even do it. Say {chu
la} [repeat]

{Chu shakpa} [repeat]

{Chu la} [repeat]

{Chu shakpa} [repeat]

{Chu} means what? You guys know? Water. {La} means ‘in’; {chu} means what?

[student: Water poured into water.]

Pouring water into the water. Now, you have to listen very carefully, okay. You
have that experience of {chu chok} you go to the kitchen to make a cup of tea.
You’re standing; you’re making a cup of tea for Rinpoche, you’re standing in
that kitchen in Fifth street [unclear] New Jersey you look down at the stove, you
look down at the pot, you’ve been studying {chi chedrak} intensely, you’ve been
meditating at least an hour a day, you’ve already left the world a long time ago.
You’re looking at the pot and suddenly you realize that there’s no pot out there
and that it’s, it’s an idealization that you’re making up by seeing certain parts of
the pot. You perceive relative truth. You know what you’re doing now. You
know that you’ve been doing that all along and that there never was anything
out there. That’s not emptiness. You go to the temple, you sit down. Your
mind goes up to the form realm, it’s a physical sensation and then you see
emptiness directly, okay. What is it like? It’s indescribable. No person can
describe it to you.        And there’s something very important: while you’re
perceiving emptiness directly, you cannot have any other thought because that
would not be ultimate reality. That is a relative reality. So, what can’t you think
while you’re seeing emptiness directly?

[student: That…what you’re doing?]

You can’t be aware that you’re seeing it. You can’t say to yourself, ‘My God,
finally, here’s the big moment.’ [laughter] You can’t even think, and it’s a very,
very important basic thing, you can’t even have, you cannot frame the thought
‘I’m seeing emptiness.’ You can’t do it, okay.
[student: So you’re not self aware?]

Not now, okay.

[student: You’re talking about not self aware?]

No other experience but pure emptiness. Cannot describe it in words, it’s not
something that you could describe. It’s called {chu la chu shakpa}, it’s called like
‘pouring water into water’.

[student: What’s the water going into what water?]

Pure, clear crystal water poured into pure, crystal water. That refers to the
subject and the object at that time. It refers to you and emptiness. And it’s
called; say {nyi nang}. [repeat]

{Nyi nang nyerpa} [repeat].

{Nyi} means ‘two’, two things; {nang} means ‘appearing’, {nang} means
‘appearing’. {Nyerpa} means ‘disappears’; {nyerpa} means ‘disappears’. What it
means is ‘the appearance of two things disappears’, you and what you are
seeing, okay. The awareness of you, and the emptiness that you are seeing
directly at the moment that whole awareness disappears. That’s what western
scholars translate as non-duality. Non-duality is a very, very dangerous word. I,
I don’t believe it’s understood by ninety percent of people who hear that word.
And it’s on your homework, okay. Non-duality does not mean that you and the
object are somehow one, okay. It does not mean that you melt into the object.
You are a positive, changing thing; emptiness is a negative, unchanging thing.
You cannot melt into that object. Your natures are totally, completely opposite,
different. It doesn’t mean that, okay. {Chu la chu shakpa}, pouring water into
water, has nothing to do with you somehow becoming that object, or you
somehow inter-mixing with that object, or your essence being that and you
going home to your essence or some crap like that. Doesn’t mean that. It
doesn’t mean that. Really, it’s a dangerous, stupid idea. There’s two true
meanings of this. The first one I already said which is what?

[student: Appearance of two things disappears.]

You just can’t be aware of subject and object, they don’t go away. It’s not that
they don’t exist. Because the subject, in this case, is a relative object, you just
can’t be aware of it at that moment. You can’t perceive your hair or your ears or
your breathing or the taste in your mouth, you just can’t. You’re focussed on a
different type of reality; you don’t live in that reality [laughs] okay. You can’t
see anything else, you can’t see anything from your old reality about {dun chi}’s
‘cos you’re perceiving pure, pure reality, ultimate reality, which is a much higher
reality, okay. You can’t. That’s the first meaning of non-duality, if you want to
use the word. Second meaning is {nyam nyi}.

[student: So would you say you’re not perceiving the duality because you’re not
perceiving …?]

Because you can’t.

[student: Because you’re not perceiving anything, because you’re not perceiving
any difference with anything?]

Right.

[student: Because your not perceiving anything, period.]

Right. Perceiving any relative truth only. Say {nyam nyi}. [repeat]

{Nyam nyi} [repeat].

It’s a tongue twister, okay. {Nyam nyi} [repeat].

{Nyam} means ‘equal’; {nyam nyi} means ‘totally equal’- the second meaning of
non-duality, if you want to use that word, okay. What was the first meaning?

[student: You can’t be aware of a subject and object.]

You can’t be aware of a division between subject and object, it does not mean
that the division doesn’t exist. You just can’t be aware of it. Second meaning is,
yeah, ‘you and the object are one’, you and the object are one, but only in that
one sense. What’s that sense?

[student: The sense that you are perceiving in your mind, or not.]

Nah. In what way are you equal to every other object?
[students: Emptiness.]

In your emptiness, okay. Every object in the universe has its own emptiness. So
you are totally equal to all other things in the universe in that you are both,
what?

[students: Empty.]

Empty. Your emptiness is one quality that you share; emptiness is a quality that
you share with every object in the universe. In that sense, non-duality, okay. So,
we got three different things here. Non-duality doesn’t mean what?

[student: You merge.]

You merge in the object, you are the object, you’re the essence is the essence and
you go back to the big hole in the sky where you come from, and all those other
bullshit books, okay. Number two [laughter] what is the first meaning that’s
correct, is what? You just can’t see subject and object at that moment ‘cos that’s
relative and object and your mind is focussed on a totally higher reality, where
those things don’t exist, so you can’t be aware of it. It doesn’t mean it went
away or anything like that. Third meaning is what? You and the object are
equal, totally equal, in one sense only. You both have, that always was that way.

[student: There are different emptinesses. You have your emptinesses…]

You can define each emptiness by the object which has it and only that. The
quality of the emptinesses is perfectly equal, totally equal. Your emptiness and
my emptiness are totally equal. Mine is attached to a different basis and yours is
attached to a different basis, but the nature of those two emptinesses is totally,
purely, equal. Like diamond bits. That’s all I’m gonna say about the actual
experience of emptiness directly, you can’t say much more than that. It goes on
for a few minutes. It goes on for five minutes at most, okay. Much shorter time.
You’re not aware of the passage of time but I mean, when you come out, you
look at the clock and it’s three, four, five minutes gone. Very short. It is the
essence of all the books you ever read in your life about Buddhism.

[student: It sounds scary.]

It’s not scary.
[student: When do you see your lives?]

We’re gonna talk about that. But what I mean is, we realize, as you come out,
we’ll talk about what happens when you come out. But that experience is the
essence of all Buddhist literature. And that’s why Nagarjuna called it a puddle.
He said if you walk over that puddle, you’ve walked over all the oceans of the
world, okay. There’s nothing in the books on Buddhism that you don’t clearly
know from that few minutes. All right, take a break.

{Jetob yeshe} [repeat]

{Jetob}} [repeat]

{Yeshe} [repeat].

{Jetob}means, {Yeshe} you know, very common Tibetan word.             What does it
mean?

[student: Wisdom.]

Wisdom. We’re gonna go a little late tonight, so just forget about it, okay. We
have to finish this and I’ll make it up to you some other way. That’s what we say
in the diamond business [laughs] [laughter] when you underpay some guy,
okay. ‘Wisdom that you see afterwards’; you see emptiness directly, it only goes
on for a few minutes and then you have a sensation of your mind coming down
out of, out of the form realm, okay. You actually have a sensation of descending
from the form realm. If you saw emptiness directly in mid-morning, the {jetob
yeshe} goes on for the rest of the day until you sleep, until late at night, okay.
All day long, for the rest of that day, you are having incredible realizations.
That’s called {jetob yeshe}. That’s part two of the path of seeing. I haven’t talked
too much about that. There’s two parts to the path of seeing. Not all the period
in the path of seeing is spent seeing emptiness directly. There’s this other period,
it goes on ‘til the end of that day that you have all these incredible
understandings, all these incredible kinds of knowledge go on the whole rest of
the day. They start while you’re actually still in your mediation posture. They
go on the whole rest of the day while you’re walking around and, and in other
activities during that day, okay. I’m gonna give you a few examples, okay. I
can’t cover all of them. I can’t cover everything that you will understand that
day.
[student: [unclear] be here all night and never be warm.]

Okay, truth of suffering. I left out a word. What is that? Noble.

[student: Arya.]

Arya, okay. The real translation is Arya. Noble is a mistake made by early
British translators. Arya -truth of suffering. Why called Arya?

[students: Because only Arya’s see it.]

Arya’s see them, okay. Do they see the truth of suffering while they’re
perceiving emptiness directly?

[students: No.]

Cannot. Cannot. It happens afterwards. I’ll give you three examples of each
truth. As you come out, you see directly your death; you understand that death
is real. For the first time in your life, you clearly and directly, understand your
death. Until that time you really don’t. You really, directly, understand how,
how inevitable it is that you will die. Number two: for that day, you can read
other people’s minds directly; you can see what other people are thinking.
Directly, okay. You can go to a store, let’s say that you saw emptiness directly,
and you decided that you had to buy a diamond and the only money you had
was a car that someone had given you. You, you, you would go and sell the car
and walk home. And well you tell the guy; ‘I’ll sell you this car for anything. I
don’t care. Give me anything.’ And the guy is quite pleased because he really
understands that he found someone who’s gonna sell him a car for half of what
it’s worth or a tenth. And he offers you two hundred dollars for a two thousand
dollar car. And you know it’s enough to buy a diamond, so you say, ‘Okay.’
And all the time, he’s thinking how he’s cheating you and he’s talking about
something, you know, ‘Hey you look like a nice guy, what are you doing, you
know, where do you work?’ you know, blah, blah, blah. And you can read his
mind and you know, you know that he’s thinking about cheating you. And you
see the mental afflictions in his mind, directly. And you don’t say anything to
him but you can read his mind at that time.

[cut] [end side A]
[side B]

That’s an example of the truth of suffering. You see the suffering in his mind,
directly. You know, you know exactly what he’s thinking. You hear, you hear
and know what he’s thinking.

[student: Hear?]

No.

[student: Michael, on death do you mean you actually see the death processes? Is
that what you mean?]

No, you know your death [laughs] [unclear] that experience; you understand
that you never had a correct perception in your whole life. Not in any of the
moments of consciousness that you’ve had, in all of those lives, and specifically,
in your most recent life, you’ve never had a correct perception. Never, ever
seen anything correctly.

[student: What about the [unclear]]

Not in Prasangika. Not, not, no [laughs] okay. We’ll talk about it. You realize
that no perception you ever had was right, was correct. It’s related to that
general thing.

[student: Excuse me, Michael?]

Later. Don’t interrupt please. You see the truth of utility. Utility means this: you
see it’s true that you’ve never undertaken an action in your life that wasn’t
meant to benefit you directly. For your own use. Any relationships you have,
anytime you did any good deed, it was all pretty much aimed at getting
something. Even the good actions - offerings, praying, reciting something out
loud, - it was all like mixed up with selfishness. You don’t engage in any
relationship at all without getting something out of it and you realize that. It’s
very cold, it’s very sad and you, and you realize that. As you come down out of
that, you realize that you have seen the Buddha directly. Which part of the
Buddha?

[student: Essence.]
His essence, okay. You see that. You know that you have seen the Buddha
directly.

[student: What do you mean by essence?]

His emptiness; which is his main body. If you ever have to meet the Buddha
that’s the only…. then you can say that you met the Buddha directly and you
know that when you come out of it that you have met the Buddha directly.
Your future Buddhahood; you know how many lives it will take. Seven is very,
very typical [unclear] when you become a Buddha they will not refer to you with
your name. They won’t call you, ‘Mike’. And I don’t mean that just ‘cos you
change into some other person or something like that. There’s a meaning to the
process of names. You won’t be called by a name that like anymore.

[student: Excuse me, whose they?]

Anyone in the world. You get a very clear, strong experience of bodhicitta. And
it expresses itself as a physical sensation. And you, you see or you feel a kind of
energy or light coming out of your heart and going out to all beings in the
world. And you understand, that for the rest of your life, you will dedicate it to
the good of other people.

[Student: Is it just physical?]

I mean you understand that but you also get this very specific physical sensation
of light coming out of your heart and going out to other people, all other beings.

[student: [unclear]]

The rest of the activity in your life to help other beings, you, you, you know it
and it happens to you. You understand, directly, the need to prostrate and when
you get up out of your meditation cushion, you get down on your face. You
throw yourself down on your face because you understand, prostration is really
that. If you ever met, if Jesus walked in this room and you really understood
who he was and you really knew who he was, you would throw yourself flat on
the ground and you wouldn’t get up until he pulled you off the ground, okay. If
you really understood that object, if you really met the Buddha, you would
throw yourself on the ground and you would be down flat on the ground out of
awe. And it happens to you. You must do it and you will do it. You just get
down on your face in front of that object. You understand prostration and
offering, okay. You, you make, for the first time in your life, a real offering
which is not mixed up in anyway with self-interest. You don’t care if anyone
ever knows that you made it. You would spend every last cent you had to make
it. You don’t care if anyone ever sees you make it or understands that you made
it and you offer a diamond.

[student: Diamond?]

Because the diamond is the, you understand at that moment, the meaning of
diamond.      The really very direct and important relationship between the
metaphor of a diamond, right, the un… the insufficient metaphor of a diamond,
and what you saw. It’s the only thing that comes anywhere near it. You
understand images of the Buddha, which means, you gain a new understanding
of what a thangka means, what a picture of the Buddha means. You met the
Buddha and it occurs to you at that moment that someone saw Tara, you know.
Someone saw her. There’s a, there’s a message in this painting. There’s
something important there. Someone saw her. The first person who painted it
and then, people since then maybe have copied it, but this is a lineage, okay.
You realize that a painting is a lineage going back to the first person who saw
her. Somebody saw her; somebody painted what she looked like. If the artists
haven’t messed up since then, which Buddhist artists, Tibetan Buddhist artist are
not allowed to do, they’re not allowed to change a single detail of a Buddha’s
image. And the image is laid out in the [b: Abhisamayamkara] there’s certain
dimensions, there’s certain proportions. A Tibetan Buddhist painter is not
allowed to change that ever because someone saw her and that’s what she really
looks like. And you get a new respect for thangkas. Thangkas are not just
artwork anymore. They represent the truth that someone had direct contact
with Tara and that’s the evidence of it. That’s what paintings mean to you after
that. [unclear] not a popular term. If you’re a liberal and modern person you’re
not supposed to say that, okay. You, you then understand that all the books of
Buddhism are totally correct. It’s all for real. There really is a Buddha, there
really is an enlightenment, there really is a way to get to that enlightenment,
emptiness is really true, if you perceive emptiness directly you really will become
enlightened. You, you perceive all those things directly. There’s no question
anymore. No one could ever say anything to you again that could make you
doubt it. You saw it directly. It is the true religion. I won’t say that in Central
Park to two thousand people, okay. But, between friends, it’s true. And those
books are perfectly true. All of those books are perfectly true. You must
preserve those books. And it’s like the paintings; you must not screw around
with them, okay. They contain the information that people need to reach
enlightenment and escape suffering and they are perfectly correct in their
original form. You must not change them. You must not mess around with
them. You must not interpret them. You must not try to update them for the
modern world. They are pure and perfectly correct. And they work. And you
see that. Last thing. [laughter]

[student: Thank heavens.]

Not a joke, okay. Number (f) okay. Not a joke. One of the side perceptions you
have while you’re perceiving the four noble truths directly, Arya truths, is that
you understand that you’re not crazy. You understand that you are having
{tsema}, okay. You understand that you are, correctly perceiving reality and that
this is all true. What happened to you is absolutely true and all those realizations
you are having for that day are absolutely true and that’s just the side
confirmation. You know, everything that’s going on that day, is totally true.
You have a perception of its truth. If you didn’t, then the whole other things
would be questionable, right. But you have a perception that it’s true and you’re
not crazy. Say {gyu ma tapo} [repeat]

{Gya ma tapo} [repeat]

This is the true meaning of ‘like an illusion’, all right. You’d never know it until
this time. What it means is when you come out of that experience, something
reasserts itself. What? Something that was missing for the first time comes back.

[student: Conventional perceptions.]

Your, your perception of things as self-existent, it comes back again, okay. It
takes hold of you again. As soon as you start perceiving anything except
emptiness it comes back. But, there’s a big difference now. What?

[students: You know it’s not…]

You know you’re screwed up, okay. You know you’re seeing things wrong.
You’re sure of it. Can you stop it?

[students: No.]

You cannot, you cannot, so it’s a very weird state of life, okay. You know you’re
wrong but you can’t stop it. That’s what the meaning of illusion is in Buddhism;
it has no other meaning, okay. It has no other meaning. None of those nice,
sexy, meanings that you read in the books, okay. That’s the only meaning.
That’s exactly what it means. The state of life after that until you get rid of that
tendency is called {gyu ma tap}. Life is like an illusion after that and you know it.
You perceive it as an illusion.

[student: Did you say after that or before that?]

After the last second of the direct perception of emptiness, up to the time you
reach nirvana or Buddhahood. All that period is {gya ma tap}. So, so there’s…,
people ask me, you know, do Aryas suffer anymore? Do Aryas have bad
thoughts anymore? What do you think?

[students: Yes.]

They have both, okay. There’s only two bad thoughts you lose forever when
you see emptiness directly. What do you guess?

[student: Wrong view?]

One is a belief in self-existence, okay. An intellectual belief in self-existence, okay.
People can ask you forever, after that, ‘Are you perceiving the world correctly?’
and you will say, ‘ No, I’m not. But at least I know it, okay.’ So, intellectually,
you can never again believe that you are seeing things, what? Correctly. You
know your mind is defective. [laughs] You know that your perceptions are
defective. No one can ever convince you again, you… you know. You lost your
intellectual belief that you are seeing everything correctly. What’s the second
thing you lose forever?

[student: Doubt.]

Doubt, okay. Doubt in the path. You’ve seen a Buddha directly; you’ve seen
your future enlightenment directly; you’ve seen that all the books of Buddhism
are totally correct, so who’s gonna convince you – by the way, you also see that
your future seven lives are gonna be quite pleasant. It doesn’t mean that you
might not have a horrible accident ‘cos you still have karma. But what it means
is, generally speaking, those next seven lives will be spent in perfect conditions.
You will be exposed to Dharma, you will never be hungry, you’ll never have
want of a job, you’ll always have a nice income, you’ll be born into a good
family, you will be the cream of the people on the planet at that time. You
know, the way we are, in this room. We are the top one thousandth’s of
humanity. We have money, we have food, we have places to stay, we have
Dharma. We are, we are la crème de la crème. We are one in a million, literally.
And you will be that for the other seven lives that you still have to stay there.
And that’s something to look forward to. That’s another reason to [laughs] do
those three pre-requisites, okay. And I swear you can get to that. And, and, and
then you will, what, what, what do you care then after that? What do you care
about it? You know what’s gonna happen and you know how it’s gonna be. Be
careful [laughs] are you sure you want to ask the question? Okay, go ahead.
[laughs] I won’t yell at you, I’m sorry. [laughs]

[student: You don’t have to (unclear)if you don’t want to.]

Go ahead.

[student: After this happens you go to your next life do you remember that as a
child?]

Not as a child. Not directly. {Bakchak se} at a certain age, maybe sixteen,
seventeen, the, the {bakchak} will assert itself and you’ll know everything.

[student: You don’t perceive it again directly? [Unclear]]

You do perceive emptiness again directly during that period. Okay. That period
is called the path of what? What’s the fourth path?

[students: Habituation.]

What’s, what’s your job on the fourth path?

[students: To remember.] [laughter]

No, it’s to use your understanding of emptiness, it’s to use it to do what? Two
things basically.

[student: Do only virtue and purify negatives.]

You remove your mental afflictions. To get rid of the rest of the eighty-three
thousand, nine hundred and ninety-eight mental afflictions, okay. You use your
understanding of emptiness, on a day-to-day basis, to get rid of your bad
emotions. And that’s the only way that you can get rid of your bad emotions
because the definition of nirvana is what? {Nyende ma lupa …} based on your
understanding of the four noble truths, those things I just listed, you start to
overcome your bad emotions, forever. The day that you do you reach nirvana.
Without that ammunition of seeing emptiness directly you never will. You
cannot. It’s impossible. What’s the second thing you get rid of? What’s the
second job on the path of habituation? By the way, habituation means getting
used to what you saw, right, for a whole lifetime. The path of habituation goes
on for the rest of your life until, until you achieve nirvana or Buddhahood, or the
next seven lives.

[student: With continuous perception of emptiness or not necessarily another
one in that whole life?]

Not necessarily.

[student: Then why is it called habitation?]

That’s why it’s called habituation, getting used to, getting, getting, getting used
to what you saw, putting it into your every day life.

[student: Is the task continuous going to…?]

Right, okay. What’s the second job on the path of habituation? What else do
you need to reach Buddhahood? To get rid of your bad thoughts you reach
nirvana but not Buddhahood. What do you need to become a Buddha?

[students: Omniscience.]

Omniscience, okay. There are certain obstacles to omniscience and you have to
overcome them. All of this is predicated on losing a certain tendency that
reasserted it at the beginning of the path of habituation, which was what?

[student: Seeing things as self existent.]

Seeing things as self-existent. So one, the big time, the final stages of the path of
habituation are when you lose your tendency to see things as self-existent – the
inborn tendency, the innate tendency, the tendency which amoebas and bugs
and worms and elephants and Einstein have, okay. When you lose that; you’re a
Buddha. That’s how you get to be a Buddha. That’s all. So, I mean, the purpose
of coming to this class, I mean, most of us I think, it’s kinda like an experience of
collecting some knowledge or becoming more knowledgeable or feeling like
we’re doing something about our lives, but there you have it, that’s all of
Buddhism. That’s the whole process to becoming enlightened. You have to
work on it. Initially, you have to overcome those three; you have to get over
those three mountains. You must leave this world. You must develop the ability
to meditate deeply or you never will see emptiness directly. And, and thirdly,
you must mull over the meaning, you must try to come to see how you’re not
perceiving anything that you thought you were. You’re only seeing your
mental picture of it. You have to contemplate that, then you can reach it,
otherwise no. Will never. If you want to disqualify [laughs] yourself from this
race, you know, ignore one of those three, okay. All right. Thanks. I’m sorry if
I got a little angry. [laughs]

[student: Can we ask questions now?]

[student: What about the homework?]

We’ll do a prayer and then I’ll hand out homework.

[cut]

[end side B]
The Asian Classics Institute

Course VI: The Diamond Cutter Sutra
Geshe Michael Roach