ACI 9 «Этическая жизнь», занятие 2

ACI 9, Class 2
The Ethical Life
A Synopsis of the Sutra on Discipline

Proofread by: Summer Moore

114a.txt
8-1-96



We're gonna go over the whole [b: Vinaya Sutra] in one hour [laughs] no, I
thought you'd like to see... I was always curious to know how much I didn't
know about Vinaya so, I was reading a commentary to get ready for this course
and, uhm, that's the commentary by {Chone Drakpa Shedrup} Chone lama,
sometimes he's just called Chone Lama which is like saying Kansas lama, okay?
Chone is a pa... is a little place in Amdo like Kansas and, sometimes he's just
called Chone Lama but, he undertook in a hundred and fifty folios to explain the
whole [b: Vinaya Sutra] like sixteen thousand pages down to, you know, the
whole [b: Vinaya Sutra]'s not that long but the whole subject of Vinaya, he he
abbreviated into a very, short work... relatively short work. So I thought you
might like to just get a whole... I mean to me it was very interesting to get a
whole grasp of the whole Vinaya and, we can't fill it all in tonight, that's not the
point. So I'm not trying to teach you the subject of Vinaya so much tonight, as
the scope of Vinaya. So you just see from the beginning to the end where it
goes, and we'll go as deep into the outline as we can, Tibetans love to outline
texts and, he does it that way and I'll just start and and we'll see how far we get...
but I thought, you know in in one hour, one and a half hours you could get a
whole grasp of where does... how far does Vinaya stretch and then we'll get into
more deit... detail on each subject when we cover Je Tsongkapa's commentary
which we'll start the next class. Alright, so we're gonna go over the whole [b:
Vinaya Sutra]. Acc... according to the commentary of Chone Lama, he'll have a
few points that are not covered in the [b: Vinaya Sutra], the first part he covers in
a very prelimin... he calls it the preliminary overview, okay? So you could do
like... I'll d... I'll give you an outline like this. You you have it in your reading
but... he gives a very preliminary overview and what he ends up doing is
covering the life of Shakyamuni Buddha. He describes and most of the Vinaya
texts describe the process through which the Buddha that came in this world
became a Buddha, and it's a long story. It's like three countless eons, how long is
a countless eon? I mean we did that...
[student: Ten to the sixtieth power times three times ... [unclear]]

Ten to the sixtieth power times three times jillions of years, okay? And it
basically outlines the major stages in his spiritual like, you know, how long it
took him, how m... you know, over trillions years of being reborn and
experimenting with paths to find the right path and then to follow it properly
and, , in different texts it it goes through different stages, but basically you can
think of it... of him reaching the first bodhisattva bhumi and then getting up to
the higher levels of the bodhisattva bhumis, bodhisattva bhumis basically relate
to the sixth perfections. You get on the first bodhisattva bumi when you see
emptiness directly for the first time. So, this is his whole spiritual life, is outlined.
Then, Chone Drakpa Shedrup goes through the specific years in which the
Buddha did certain things which is really nice, you know, we know according to
the sixty year cycle of animals and elements like twelve times five elements. We
know basically, exactly the years in which he decided to leave the palace, we
know what year he began meditating in the forest, we know what year he gave
his first teaching and they, they... Chone Drakpa Shedrup goes through each of
the events in his life that way... he covers the years in which he gave his teaching.
Then he he gets into the statement by the Buddha that we covered last time that,
if you wanted to get the whole essence of Buddhism, it would be enough just to
have the Vinaya scriptures. If you had the teachings of Vinaya, that that stands
for the teachings of the Buddha and he explains those quotations and he goes
through that, then Chone Drakpa Shedrup which is not very common for
Tibetans, goes through all of the literature, he explains the whole thing that we,
we did it in a rough way but he goes through the entire literature, he says here's
the two root texts here's the four explanatory tan... sutras and then goes through
all the, relevant sutras and he goes through all of the commentaries by ancient
Indians and then he starts to explain a little bit about the Tibetan commentaries
but that's very unusual and it's nice to have. So that's his whole overview, he
gives the whole overview, it's important to know why he spends so much time
on Shakyamuni Buddha, you know, what's the point?                     Is it just that
Shakyamunni Buddha te... taught this Vinaya for the first time or why, why does
he spend so much time on on Shakyamuni Buddha? And it's very beautiful, he
explains that especially at the beginning of the text why we mention Shakyamuni
Buddha is that the workings of karma which are called {len-dre} [pause] he says
basically w... when you're talking about Vinaya you're talking about good deeds
and bad deeds and this is the subject of karma and it's consequences, {lay} means
"karma" or the things that you do or say or think and {dre} means the
consequences that you get from those things. We're gonna spend... I forgot to
go over the syllabus with you, but towards the end of the course we're gonna
take a reading from Je Tsongkapa's [b: Lam Rim Chemo] which is the great lam
rim, the greatest book ever written in Tibetan, probably and we're going to cut
out the section on this subject... exactly what consequences do you get from
keeping or not keeping which vows, and Je Tsong Khapa goes through it very
beautifully. So basically there's a b... there's a connection between what you do,
what you say and what you think and your whole world, your whole world is
determined tha... by that, if you don't like your office then blame yourself, if you
don't New York then blame yourself, you know, if you're not as pretty or as
handsome as you would like to be, you got one person to blame, and and, if you
study the correlation's between what you do and what you say and what you
think and w... and how your world turned out, then then it's a great subject, you
know that's very useful for a person to know where everything in their world
came from because the implication is is that you can fix it in the future, you
know, you can't change it by wishing it now, you know, I can't be handsome by
wishing it, but if I know for example that leading a moral life might cause that in
the future then I could, I could actually, start to affect my future and if I perfect
that process I could determine my whole future, the whole future world that I
lived in would be determined by me quite consciously. But the connection
between what you do and what you say and what you think and what's
happening to you on a day to day level, you know, why did, our customer
complain to me today and, I got in trouble and, my boss re... yelled at me and all
this you kn... exactly why, why did each event happen, you know, why during
each twenty minutes of my day today was something screwing up or, you know
what, what caused it, you know [laughs] you know I mean it's very curious you
can't control it I mean you get to a certain age you realize that it's out of your
control basically, you do the right thing your boss yells at you, you do the
wrong thing they give you a medal and raise, you know. And you know, so
why? Why do these things happen? If you study the connection between karma
and consequences, you can understand that and then you can actually control
your future, you know. It doesn't come through will power it doesn't come
through being intelligent, apparently, it doesn't come through lucky because it...
luck changes. What makes the world run the way it does? It's {len dre} okay?
That, leads us to a subject called the three levels of reality which you have to
know. [pause]

[Student: Is that the stories of libo? [unclear]]

Yeah. We're trying to bridge between the overview and the text, the text starts
with, I mean after the title, they bow down to who? They bow down to
Shakyamuni Buddha. Why? I'm trying to connect you between the overview
and the beginning of the text, okay? Which is important, mm... three levels of
reality, first one called {Nyun gyur} [pause] say {Nyun gyur} [repeat] {Nyun
gyur} [repeat]. {Nyun gyur} means that level of reality which you can perceive
directly, for example, with you senses, things that you do not need to figure out,
things that you could see right in front of your face, okay, colors are a good
example, shapes are a good example, even you can have direct perception of
certain thoughts like when you're thinking of something directly and you're not
using a process of reasoning, those things are obvious to you... you could call
this obvious reality. Is your obvious reality obvious reality for everyone else?
Example. Let's take colors and shapes. Yeah, I mean if you're blind or color
blind, uhm, colors, certain colors are not {Nyun gyur} for you, so you can
already see that these categories are sort of fluid depending on...

[Student: [unclear] Your karma, your...]

Who you are [laughs] okay? You know, like, for most of us colors and shapes
are {Nyun gyur} like if you had a certain kind of color blindness or something,
you could only understand colors and shapes from other people's explanations
of them and then they would be on a different kind of reality for you, it would
be some kind of more abstruse reality, some kind of more deep reality, so the
second kind of reality we call {kok gyur} [pause] I'll call it deep reality, you can
call it just about anything, abstruse is a very good word but its... you don't see it
in the New York Times very much, so I don't like to use it. Say {kok gyur}
[repeat] {kok gyur} [repeat] , {kok gyur} means something which is deep
enough that for most people it can only be perceived logical... by a process of
logical reasoning. It cannot be perceived directly by most people, you, you
would have to think it over to perceive this thing, it's not something that you
could ever see with your eyes or your ears or your nose or your hands, it's
something that's pretty difficult to see and you can only perceive it normally
under normal circumstances with some kind of reasoning. An example of a {kok
gyur} object for most of us is emptiness, okay, emptiness is in category number
two, for most of us, at this stage in our l... lives, at this stage a... in most people's
lives, emptiness would be an object which they only can see right now by
thinking about it and by reasoning about it, okay? By contemplating about it,
cannot see it directly, most people, okay, most meaning ninety nine point nine,
nine, nine, nine, nine, nine per cent, okay? [laughs] Third category... by the way
if you ever saw emptiness directly it would change to...

[student: [unclear]]
{Nyun gyur} if you had a yogic... what they call yogic direct perception, if you
had a... in deep meditation. It only happens once in, in in countless lifetimes, I
mean the first time only happens after al... literally countless lifetimes, you would
see it directly, then it... that emptiness during that five minutes would be {Nyun
gyur} to you, when you come out of that meditation it switches back to {kok
gyur}, okay? [pause] By the way, eh... if you feel hot, I don't what's the best thing
to do, usually this causes a fight [laughter] we could turn it on and you won't be
able to hear me so well, we could open the windows, I don't know how that'll
work, what would you guys like to try? Do you wanna try opening the
windows?

[Student: Yeah.]

Let's try that, let's just see how it works, okay? Be careful of the glass things,
they, they ff... they fall off [laughs] they rotate they just push them or something
like that. [pause] W... we'll try that for a while, I think it might be... okay, we'll
see. All right, {Shintu kok gyur} the example would be, mm... the subtle
workings of {len dre} okay? The subtle workings of karma and its consequences,
the real connections, between what you do say or think and what happens to
you, okay? A Buddha could explain to you very easily why each bump is on this
brick and explain why, why this is here, you know, I... I mean he could go into
e... he said three thousand years ago, you know you were looking at the wall
and you thought something and that's why this, this bump is there in the
masonry here. I mean they could explain to you clearly, you know, why this... I
have this, this thread on my eyebrow that grows out, you know and [laughs] I
mean, I always wondered where it came from, I mean a Buddha could sit there
and say, yeah you know you you made a joke about this guy a million years ago
and and that... that's why that hair is growing out, you know and, and stuff like
that. I mean but that kind of thing is called {Shintu kok gyur, Shintu kok gyur}
means extremely deep reality, so the subtle workings of karma and it's
consequences, you know, you had thousands, you had tens of thousands of
distinct thoughts today, most of mine were like crazy at work, you know like
very busy, very wild, people screaming, you know everything, people want
their checks, stuff like that [laughs] and just wild, and I had tens of thousands of
thoughts today, each one of those is going to have its own discrete result, each
one of those will contribute to my future reality, and the reality around you
know with all of those millions of different objects, all those cracks in the wall, all
those wrinkles on the {tangkhas} everything around you has been created by a
different discreet karma. You did something and that's why you have that piece
in your world, that thing, so, fo... for you to really understand where it all came
from you have to understand the subtle workings of karma and its
consequences, there's only one being that perceive {Shintu kok gyur}, who do
you guess?

[Student: Buddha. ] {laughter]

I mean Buddha [laughs] okay? All right, so if you're going to write a sutra, a
book, not a real sutra, right? About Vinaya how to behave, you know, how to
collect good karma, how to avoid bad karma, if you're gonna write a book about
that you have to depend on... the Buddha and you have to... mainly {Shintu kok
gyur} can only be understood by means of studying what has been spoken by
an omniscient being. Okay? We cannot see directly the connection between
telling a white lie at work and having the taxi driver steal...five dollars or
something. I mean we can't, we can't get out of the cab and say, oh geez that
was three thousand four hundred years ago [laughter] shouldn't have done that,
you know. [laughs] We can't, we just don't have that ability, we have to depend
on the words of a being who knows these things and its only an omniscient
being, it's so vast, the interconnections between every single atom in your life
and everything that might have been done in history by you, are so subtle and
so vast only an omniscient being can see them, so when you're... when you start
out studying the Vinaya the first thing you do is explain the life history of?

[student: [unclear] Buddha.]

A guy who go there and, and you want to explain how he got there because
that's very relevant, because it's only by studying what he's talks about that you
can succeed in keeping your vows, your pratimoksha vows, your... you're
depending on a person who sees all things, because we can't, you know, if it was
left up to us we would never come up with the idea that, I, I, I didn't get a raise at
work, I must have stolen something, you know. The place that I live in New
York has bad smells, I must have committed adultery, you know, I mean, those
connections wou... just wouldn't occur to us. We, we don't have the minds to
perceive these things, some very, very good people maybe slightly have an
instinct for it but, but we have to depend on a person who is omniscient. And
then the sixteen thousand pages of Vinaya, or whatever it is in the cannon are all
this guy explaining the connections between what you do, what you say, what
you think and then why your world is the way it is... if you don't like your
world, study Vinaya. You know, it's very cool, you can turn it around, Vinaya is
not the study, it's not the boring thing thing of studying all these stupid rules
which just restrict your life. It's the science of constructing your future reality.
You know, it's working backwards, it's very interesting, you know. I'm not
going to get up here and describe three and sixty four nun vows, two hundred
and fifty three monk's vows, thirty something lay... you know it's not point, the
point is figure out what caused each part of your reality and then work
backwards, and avoid the things that caused the parts that you don't like. Okay,
I have to figure out why this customer rejected this order today, that's my job,
okay? [laughs] That's {Shintu kok gyur} that's that's the reason why at beginning
of all the Vinaya texts, they are bowing down to the Buddha. Cause... we have
to rely on the Buddha, for the study of, of morality, for the study of ethics, we're
not just talking about the effect of lying on your present life, we're talking about
the long term effect on your reality. You have to learn which parts of your
reality were created by what kinds of deeds in the past, people are always... I...
there's these... I won't say exactly who... people wandering around America
telling people, oh, I see you las... past life, you were a, a knight in England, you
know, and you had this armor and you know, they describe to you your past
life, you know. I've actually had students come in this class and say tell me about
my past life and if you can't, I'm not interested in this class, you know and, and
and Geshe, we had a, a fortune teller used to wander around our residences in
India, we lived in these little rooms and, this fortune teller used to come 'round
and tell everybody's fortune from the palm of their hands, you know, and one
day I saw the Geshe who was teaching us, Geshe Nagawan Dargye, he was
peeping at us out the window, you know, so I knew we were going to get some
heat the next day. [laughs] [laughter] And, he gets up the next day in class and
he says, you don't need a fortune teller, you don't have to waste your ten rupees,
okay? On a on a fortune teller who comes and lies to you about your past, you
know, if you wanna know where this all came from study Vinaya, I mean study
the vows...study karma and it's consequences, you can figure out where your
whole life came from, you know, you can see your past life as {kok gyur} by
using reasoning and these are as good as eyes, you know. Reasoning is as good
as eye balls. You know, you can quite clearly figure out who you were and what
you were doing mostly. And you can very clearly figure out what's gonna
happen to you in the future. You don't need a fortune teller for either one. You
know? You can tell you own future from ex... from exactly what you're doing
now and by the end of this course you'll be able to tell exactly what your future's
gonna be. Weather or not you can change it is a... is a matter of personal will
power. You know, but, you're gonna learn all the connections, but it takes an
omniscient being to lay them out, we have to study it from an omniscient being,
okay? That's the first part. Next he gets on to the... actual explanation of the root
text. So that's actually number two. [pause] The first part is called... [pause] So
most of the preliminary, most of the overview was devoted to the Buddha,
talking about the Buddha and the he, he gave a, a review of all the texts about
Vinaya. Now he's gonna actually start to explain the text and the first thing he
does is explain the name of the title. {Tsen gyi dun} means the "name of the title,"
the title, he explains what Vinaya means, he explains what sutra means. You've
already been through that, okay? You know what Vinaya means, Vinaya
controls two things... Vinaya's called Vinaya because you control two things by
studying Vinaya. Okay? So we don't have to go through the meaning of the
name. Then he goes through... [pause] Say {gyur gyi chak} [repeat] {gyur gyi
chak} [repeat]. {Gyur} means translat... sion, and {chak} means a prostration. So,
at the beginning of almost... well at the beginning of any text which was
translated from Sanskrit into Tibetan, we start out... normally you have the
name of the text in Sanskrit, then you have the name of the text in Tibetan and
then you have some kind of a prostration, they'll say, I bow down to Manjushri
or I bow down to the Buddha. I bow down to this or that... as we studied in one
of our translation classes this was a requirement that was set up by some of the
early Tibetan kings. When the ... first translations were done from Sanskrit into
Tibetan, the Tibetan kings said, let's do a prostration at the beginning, it's a nice
thi... it's a good thing to do. It has allot of benefits and then also it helps, they...
they set up rules to identify the subject matter from who you did the pra...
prostration to. So like if you're doing a prostration to Manjushri at the beginning
of a text you know the main subject matter is wisdom or emptiness or
something like that. In this case in the Vinaya scriptures, the translator is is
bowing down to... the Buddha, Shakyamuni Buddha, okay? Because he's the
person who understands the subtle workings of karma, okay? The subtle
connections. [pause] The third part of the beginning is [pause] say {gu sok}
[repeat] {chu shi} [repeat] {gu sok} [repeat] {chu shi} [repeat] Mmm.... {gu}
means, in this case, goal, goal, g, o, a, l, okay? {Sok} means "etceteras" {chu shi}
means the "four points," the four points, the fours dharmas meaning the four
points. This is a very common preliminary, or it's a very common opening of
almost every Buddhist text and this involves proving that this text is worth
studying, okay? It's a demonstration that this... that if you study this book it will,
be relevant to your own reaching nirvana, it will be relevant to you own
stopping your own suffering, okay? In Buddhism if a book doesn't have {gu sok
chu shi} then forget it, your life is too short to waste time on, on another kind of
book. In Buddhism reading a book is, is not, picking it up, staying with it a
coupla weeks, you know after work, drinking tea and enjoying it. It's not like
that. I mean the whole relation to the thing called a book is different. I mean
normally you memorize it first because so important so valuable, so vital for
your future, the, the way you relate to a book is completely different, a book is
not a book it's an experience, you know? It's a whole lifetime's relationship, it's
like getting married, when you pick up a book in Buddhism, you're creating a
relationship with this thing that's gonna enlighten you and it's not just reading it,
it's like experiencing it. You know you memorize it? You debate it over and
over, you read it over and over, you read hundreds of commentaries, or
hundreds... [laughs] you read dozens of commentaries on it. It becomes like a
lifetime companion, the knowledge in that book becomes like life time
companion. It's not a book in the way we think of a book that you just read it
and then you put it the shelf and next year it's it's not on the best seller list any
more. You know. A book is an experience, a book is lifetime intimate
relationship that you have with something and it becomes a lifetime friend, if
you study, for example the [b: Vinaya Sutra] well, or say the [b:Abidharmaosha]
we spent ten years on the [b: Abidharmakosha] and it just becomes part of your
life, it becomes like a good friend of yours or something, it's not like a book, it's a
whole entity with which you're going to spend your life and you never finish
with it, you just get deeper, , so {gu shok chu shi} means a Buddhist book should
have four qualities, I'm not gonna go through them tonight, I mean, my object is
not to teach you all these subjects it's just to tell you what the [b: Vinaya Sutra] is
talking about, but basically the {gu sok chu shi} proves that this book is worth
becoming your life long companion, okay? It ... it will save you, it will give you
nirvana, if you relate to it in the proper way you can reach nirvana with this
book and Buddhahood. It's, it's very beautiful and basically, a Buddhist who
know the score shouldn't waste their time on anything less, your mind is
precious, it's... extremely difficult to get to the point of being a human being
who's intelligent, who's getting enough food, who has leisure time to study and
don't waste your... that real estate on anything less... don't be satisfied with
anything less, I mean I'm not saying don't read the newspaper... the Sunday
Times cause it's bad, I'm not saying that, I'm saying these books can become
your lifetime companion and lead you to total happiness and compared to that,
you know reading the New York Times Sunday, you know I have allot of
friends who waste the first half of Sunday on the... on the Times, and and
sometimes the second half too [laughs] and part of the week as well [laughter]
and, it's just not worth it. It just can't help you much. I mean if your brain is
fried from work or something, okay, read, read part of the magazine or
something, but, but then set it down and come to these life long friends who can
lead you to something holy and, and, and ultimate experience. Reserve your
mental real estate for these things because it's very brief, you know, the stage of
your life when you can think straight and intelligently is, is, very brief, it will end
soon. And, you don't have much space, you don't have much time, so fill it up
with something that has {gu sok chu shi} if it doesn't have that don't waste your
time with it. Waste a little time but not much. Okay? [pause] Then he gets into
the actual subject matter and that has three parts. [pause] Say {dompa} [repeat]
{matoppa} [repeat] {topje} [repeat] okay. {Dompa} means "vows," {dompa}
means "vows," the word {dom} is very interested in, in Tibetan, it means to, tie
somebody up, to restrain somebody, to restrain somebody, , and vows are
keeping you outta trouble, okay, we'll talk more about it, I mean you... your idea
or your conception of vows has to change a little bit, it's almost like the idea of a
book, you know, when you really grasp, the idea of a holy book in Tibetan it's
like a person that you're marrying, it's a... it's gonna be a life time relationship
with this thing and it's gonna affect you deeply. Vows are the same thing. I
mean, when I say vows in English it's like you think of... I don't know what you
think of but I think most of you think of restriction or you think of limitation or
something like that, but think of it more of as, wings or something, you know,
these are things which are gonna let you fly. You know? These are something
beautiful that if you can grow them strong enough you can fly, you really can
fly, I mean they give you a certain kind of power that you could never have
without them, you can do the same things with... before you take your vows
and the do the same things after you take your vows and they change. If you
are under vows and do the same good deeds that you used to do goo... before
the whole experience totally change. They, they are not the same thing, it's a
completely different experience, if you take vows and then keep them, it's a
totally different thing than if you didn't have the vows. So the first subject of the
Vinaya, the first study, after you get through all of those preliminaries, is
{dompa matoppa, matoppa} is means if you don't have them, {topje} means how
to get them. Okay? So obviously, the first subject of Vinaya is, if you don't have
vows, well then how do you get them, how can you, how can you get a hold of
these vows. In the [b: Vinaya Sutra] there are four subjects covered here.
Obviously here the first one is the rights of ordination, you know, how do you
take vows, by the way it doesn't have to be monk or nun, you can take one day
vows, we'll talk about it. You can take lifetime layman's vows, the first three sets
of vows are for people who don't wanna commit themselves to robes and, and
those are beautiful, they're wonderful, everybody should take them.               No
obligation, not too hard, you know, and totally change your life. And that whole
process by which you get those vows, you know, what is the proper way in
which to take them properly the... there's a whole kinds of circumstances, there
has to be a certain attitude there, there has to be a certain ceremony there. It... to
receive a vow purely in the lineage of Shakyamuni Buddha, you know, to get
really the real thing, in the correct way, it, it's a little, tricky, and you have to
know how to do it properly, you know, there's all these people going around
doing things which are strange and stuff like that, I mean but to get the pure,
lineage vows in the proper way so that they actually form in your being,
properly and then you really have them and they have the real effect on you,
that's a whole science in itself, and that's the first subject of Vinaya, how to, how
to get those vows, what are the ... ritual, what is the proper ritual, what is the
proper attitude that you have to have, who should be there to give you the
vows, who... who's qualified to give you vows, what should you be like, this is
the first subject of Vinaya. How to get the vows. That's called, the ordination
ceremonies are called the... the later, the earlier and the later ceremonies, okay?
There's earlier ceremonies and later ceremonies. What does that mean? For the
first few years of his teaching career, the Buddha ordained people by, like say
come here Tess, and the hair would sh... fall of and the ho... robes would form.
[laughs] You know like {laughter] You know he had this power, miracle power,
he could ordain in many different ways, I mean for the first five years or so of
the Buddha's career it was very wild, the way he ordained people, you know, it
was like come on, I mean the way Jesus is going up to the lake and saying, you
know don't be a fisherman, come with me, and that would be ordained
ordination in those days that was... those were the first ordinations. And that
had the full power of ordination, for example if you perceive certain objects, you
are automatically ordained, these are, these are deep things. Later on, after, you
know, five six years... it became formal and there begin to be a ceremony and
the monks would say certain things and you would think certain things and then
you would get the ordination and that is what is what has come up to the
present time. Those ordination ceremonies have come up to the present time.
We have lost, some of them, some of them have been broken, the lineage has
been broken, we cannot, for example, we cannot ordain a full nun any more, in
the Tibetan tradition. It was broken during... during the reign of a certain king
and there were not enough nuns and monks, he, he wiped out most of the
monks and nuns in Tibet at that time and it got so few, it takes allot more nuns
to ordain a nun than to... monks to ordain a monk. And it's very difficult to
ordain a full monk and the lineage broke, we don't have the lineage in Tibet, any
more, so for example that lineage has broken. The ordination ceremony has to
be carried out in a certain way by certain people and it requires a certain quorum
of qualified people and that whole subject is the first subject of the [b: Vinaya
Sutra] okay? After that they get in... I'm just naming some of the subjects under
here, there's a study about [pause] say {khenpo} [repeat] {loppon} [repeat]
{khenpo} [repeat] {loppon} [repeat] okay. {Khenpo} is word that you... I'm just
putting up here cause I want you to know about it. {Khenpo} has come to mean
in modern Tibet especially in Gelukpa monasteries, the abbot of the monastery,
so they say the {khenpo} who's the {khenpo} the word for ex is {sur} so what's a
{khen sur}? It's a ex-abbot, so Rinpoche out in New Jersey technically he's {khen
sur} of Sera monastery, he's {khenpo} of Rashi Gyenpo Ling, little Mongolian
temple, all four of us monks there and, that's why we call him Khen Rinpoche, so
Khen Rinpoche means precious abbot, precious {khenpo}, in some traditions
{khenpo} means like geshe. {Khenpo} has come to mean in other traditions, a
person who has passed a certain course of study and then they're called
{khenpo}, but in the Vinaya it has a totally different meaning, okay? And a
{khenpo} is the person who grants the vows, that's the, that's the what do you
call it? There's some French word for the main guy.
[Student: [unclear] [laughter]]
He's the master of ceremonies, I mean he runs the show, he's the... he runs the
show at an ordination, that's the {khenpo} there's many different forms of
{khenpos} the qualifications of a {khenpo} are very strict and very complicated,
you know?         He has to have rather extraordinary qualities and rather
extraordinary personal history as a monk, you know? It's very difficult to be a
k... a proper {khenpo} in a, in an ordination ceremony, so {khenpo} if somebody
says to you what's {khenpo} mean you have to say you talking Vinaya, you
talking monastery, or you talking Kagyu? You know what I mean? [laughter]
You have to ask. And then they say, oh he knows Buddhism, okay? {Loppon} in
the Sanskrit is called acharya, it has come to mean in India anyone who's good at
something like a, am, a, a, an archery {loppon} is a, is an archery master, so it
means like a master, a tea ceremony {loppon} but in the Vinaya, {loppon} has a
different meaning. In the Vinaya {loppon} means, the monks who take other
important roles during the ordination ceremony, you know, they each, there has
to be certain kinds of monks there, they have to have certain qualities, they have
to perform certain important functions or roles during the ordination ceremony,
so the next subject in the Vinaya under this category is, who can be a {khenpo}
what are the {khenpos}, how many {khenpos} are there, you know, what's your
relationship to your {khenpo} later on?         What's your relationship to you
{loppons} there's many kinds of {loppons} during the ceremony. What is their
job what are they doing what is each one supposed to be what kind of
qualifications do they have to have? This is the whole thing of creating pure
vows in the mental stream of a new person. You know, and it's a very difficult...
and we have the pure lineage has come down to the present, you know. If we
study these things nicely, we can keep it going. Two and a half thousand years,
these ceremonies have been strictly performed, strictly watched, all the attitude
is there, the monks are pure enough, everything is right and the person gets
their vows. Very important, you know, how do you do create this thing called....
we're gonna talk about it next, class. How do you form that thing called a vow
within another person's heart, you know do you inject it? [laughs] You know
what I mean? How do you get this invisible thing to form within a person. And
it's very cool how it's done, it's very nice it's very pure, very interesting how by
this process you actually create this new thing within a person called vows. It's,
it's very beautiful... okay next. Next they cover the different types of vows very
briefly. There are eight different, sets of vows that you can take in the Vinaya,
okay? And we'll be going through that in detail but that's the next subject in the
[b: Vinaya Sutra] so I'm just showing you the topics, I'm not going to I'm not
trying to explain the whole [b: Vinaya Sutra] cause we don't have, fifteen years,
okay? Next, Chone Drakpa Shedrup in the [b: Vinaya Sutra] goes into the
measurement of time, how do we measure the years, how do we measure
months, how do we measure days? What's the point of spending page after
page on the proper measurement of months and days? In the Vinaya it's very
important to time your ordination. At the end of the ordination one of the last
things in the ritual is that the {khenpo} has to figure out exactly what month date
and moment it is, and then they say, you were ordained on the fourth month
during the rising of the... moon... during the waxing of the moon in the fourth
day, at exactly six hours and thirteen minutes after noon, you know, and that's it,
your, your ordination is timed, it's a very important thing in the Vinaya, why?
Well, for one thing it, it, it creates seniority levels [laughter] [laughs] like even if a
person's much younger than me, if he was ordained before me, then they're all
these... there's all this protocol within the monastery, you know. Technically if
he has taken his full monk's ordination before me, then, there... there's all this
protocol that takes place and it's much more strict in in, in different countries but
you ... for ever after you have to respect this person in a different way, and, so
it's very important to time the ordination that way. That's also true of you
bodhisattva vows although most people ignore it, okay? You shouldn't ignore it,
it's very important, okay? But that's a long story, okay? It's one of your vows,
by the way. Okay, second major subject, and then we'll probably take a break
shortly after that. I, I say that to keep you awake. Okay? [pause] Say {toppa}
[repeat] {mi nyampa} [repeat] {toppa} [repeat] {mi nyampa} [repeat] , if tell you
that the first section of the [b: Vinaya Sutra]... Vinaya scriptures is always how to
get the vows if you didn't have the vows, what do you guess the second subject
is?

[student: How to keep them [unclear]]

Yeah. Okay? [laughs] How to keep your vows. {Toppa} means after you...
after you have gotten vows, {mi nyampa} means how to keep them from being
damaged. It's a, it's a, there's this concept in, in the Vinaya of you vows getting
damaged. Okay? [pause] There's four main parts here and I'll just put them in
English. [pause] And this subject centers around, by the way this is outer support
to keep the vows, they're gonna be four sections here, the first one is you've got
some form of out, outward support, someone outside of you to help you keep
your vows and that's called a {ne lama}. [pause]

[student:[unclear]]

Yeah, yeah. Say {ne} [repeat] {lama} [repeat] {ne lama} [repeat]. Okay, {ne, ne}
means like resident, {lama} means "lama," teacher, spiritual guide, okay? I've
translated it in your outline as, preceptor, monastic preceptor, oh, did I say
preceptor? Yeah. Meaning a person who guides you, who guides a young
monk. A {ne lama} you're supposed to keep for... well for, you have to keep for
a minimum of ten years, in other words for ten years, for the first ten years of
your ordination, you are under the strict guidance of an older monk, and that's a
{ne lama} that's your {ne lama}. It doesn't have to be your spiritual teacher, it
doesn't have to be your scripture teacher, it may not be your root lama, but it's
the older monk who has agreed to take you on and for ten years... I mean if you
keep the Vinaya strictly, the only things you can do without, it... consulting him
or her is, brush your teeth and go to the bathroom [laughs] also that too. It's
very strict, for ten years you are very ah... you're under the very strict, guidance
of a, of a private monastic preceptor, male or female depending on, you know, if
you're a monk or a nun. Yeah?

[student: Which are old, ordinational or? [unclear]]

Ordinational, but, wisd... the, the requirement, by the way the requirement for
{ne, ne lama} are the next subject of the [b: Vinaya Sutra] and they are extensive,
I mean, I think there's a hundred and five qualities, and they're very difficult to
fulfill, I mean this person has to be really extraordinary, this person has to be,
you know, very wise, very well trained, very pure, there the whole... I mean the
list is a hundred and five items long, it's very difficult to be a real {ne lama} you
know, it's a, it requires a very high degree of, of purity as a monk to be a {ne
lama} and then your relationship to that {ne lama} is very strict, after ten years
you gain some kind of ability to act on your own, more frequently, that's, that's
the... in, in the monastic system that's called a {ne lama} okay? In this section
they also go through the ordination, some of the ordination details, referring to
the student's det... what the students should be like and then they talk some...
even in the [b: Vinaya Sutra] about the ordination of nuns, so they do cover that
in this section in the [b: Vinaya Sutra]. [pause] This is called the inner support, it's
called {sampa namdak} we talked about it when we had the course on the
bodhisattva vows, basically this is keeping in mind throughout your life why
you took your vows, you know try to remember the attitude you had when you
walked in that room, I still remember, you know, the ceremonies when I took
my lay vows, and then when I took my monk's vows, I mean, you remember
forever sitting in front of this person and swearing to keep these vows and that's
called the inner support, I mean the... remembering, the, the reason you took
your vows, remembering the state of mind you were in when you knelt before
that person and swore never to break these things is very powerful and that...
you know, there's certain things that an outside person can help you to do to
keep your vows, but on the inside you have to have these... you have to keep,
some kind of awareness of the intentions with which you took your vows,
ideally, perfectly, during the ordination ceremony you must at least once cross
your mind that this life is suffering, and, and that there's nothing good about this
life as it stands now, and... and I, during that ceremony at some point there must
be some realization that I'm taking these vows to get out of this, you know, I'm
taking these vows to get to nirvana, you know, that's why I'm here, that's why
I'm taking these vows, ideally during the... there must be during the ceremony
that even if just for a short time that crosses your mind. You must have that in
mind, for the vows to form and, and throughout your life, until you die, because
pratimoksha vows finish when you die, you loose them when you die, not like
bodhisattva vows, bodhisattva vows stay in your mental stream even after
death. Pratimoksha vows, the Vinaya vows they, they disappear when you die.
Okay? So, but from the moment you take them to the moment you die, you
have to keep reminding yourself why you took them, and, and that just thinking
about why you took them if you took them for the right reasons will help you
keep them, okay? [pause] This is called {mi tun chok} say {mi tun} [repeat]
{chok} [repeat] {mitun chok} [repeat]. Obviously one of the best ways to keep
your vows from being damaged is to know them, okay, [laughs] and you know
I was out in California, I was teaching the bodhisattva vows and sixty four vows
and some of those people had been there twenty twenty five years, they did not
know their vows, you know they didn't know what they had vowed and they
do it every couple years, you know they take these vows every couple years
but, but the best way to keep them is to know what they are, okay [laughs]
okay, I mean it seems like pretty simple, but many, I would say ninety percent of
Americans who take bodhisattva vows have, have no clue what most of them
are, and, and, one of the most important things obviously th... one of the most
important ways to keep your vows is to very very clearly understand what you
agreed to do and what would be breaking them and what's not breaking them,
you know you have to study that, that's a very important study, okay? That's...
as you can guess is the major part of [b: Vinaya Sutra], you know, is the study of,
well what the heck are the vows, you know, when do I break them, when do I
not break them , when can I stretch them, when can I not stretch them, you
know, which ones are forever for all situations which can be, which must be
modified in certain situations and that's the whole study of the vows, inside here
in the [b: Vinaya Sutra] you get five different classes of vows, okay? You study...
at this point they're beginning to talk mainly about monk's vows and in... inside
the monk's vows it's two hundred and fifty three vows and there five groups of
vows they range from extremely serious to very serious to medium serious to
you know and then they're hundred and twelve lighter ones you know, four
very very grave ones, and then you have to study all five groups and that is the
main subject of the [b: Vinaya sutra] that whole part you'll won't hear from me, I
can't teach that to you, I can't teach that to you, all I can do is say there's... there's
five groups of vows there's two hundred and fifty three vows ranging from
extremely serious to, to pretty light very light you know, and that is obviously a
big chunk of the [b: Vinaya Sutra] we won't even go into that. Let's see if he says
anything in, inside there also he explains how you can loose your vows, okay,
and we will cover that also, okay, in here about understanding what works
against your vows is the study of how, how do you lose pratimoksha vows, how
do you loose the vows that we're talking about here okay, what can make you
loose those vows and it's pretty interesting and Je Tsongkapa's gonna over it,
okay? They then, by the way way they also then get into ethical conundrums,
wh... is that how you pronoun..?

[Student: Yes.]

       Yeah? You know like if you're supposed to do that but you're not allowed
to do that but you have to do that to do that, what're you supposed to do? You
know? And that's a big part of the [b: Vinaya Sutra] you know? What are you
supposed to do when two vows have conflicting demands on you, you know
and if you take bodhisattva vows and then you go ahead and take the secret
vows this becomes a very important subject 'cause sometimes they're they're,
sometimes th.. they.. it's the study of prioritization, you know? Which vow takes
priority over which other vow and it's a very difficult subject, it takes a lot of
study, you have to study that very carefully. Also in that general category of
things is a thing called {dor du, dordu} means, it's a subject in the Vinaya where
given a whole different culture, you know, if Buddhism has reaches a new
culture, if Buddhism has reached a new culture, then under what circumstances
can we do something different and still be keeping our pratimoksha vows, this a
whole study within the [b: Vinaya Sutra] and it's a very, obviously for us cause
we're involved in the transition of Buddhism from Asia to the West it's very
important to know the ground rules for when you can a... adjust things for
different situations and that whole study is called {dor du} and that's that's
another section here. Then finally they get into extenuating circumstances like if
a monk goes crazy and he does something bad did break his vows did he loose
his vows, what happened? You know what I mean? What... what about
extenuating circumstances like, and they get.. they actually get into the question
of temporary insanity and things like that you know, if the person accidentally
takes a drug or something and does something wild then did they, have they
committed that, that have they broken that vow or not and what's gonna be the
circu... the, the result of that, okay? The last section here and then we'll take a
break. [pause] There's a thing called {shi}. In Sanskrit vastu, there are seventeen
{shi, shi} means like a monastic practice, seventeen monastic practices, they can
d... also be divided into a hundred or something rites of monasticism. But
basically the most important ones are three and those I can tell you but I can't
describe them much, okay? First one is {sojong, sojong} means the practice of
monks meeting together twice a month to do a ritual of purification and
confession, okay? Twice a month all the monks and nuns must meet together
and then, we a have ritual by which we purify anything wrong we might have
done, okay, that' called {sojong} okay?

[Student: How do you spell that?]

S, o, j, o, n, g {sojong}. Like allot of our classes are going to be canceled due to
{sojong} okay? [laughs] As you may have noticed and it's on the lunar calendar,
you know, it depends on the, it's it's according to the position of the moon at a
certain time so that all over India all the monks were doing {sojong} on the same
night, monks and nuns, it's done together with the monks and nuns,                 that's
{sojong}. The next {shi}, of the b... top three is called {yar ne} say {yar ne} [repeat]
{yar ne} [repeat] {Yar ne} means there was a custom in India of undertaking a
retreat that all the members of the sangha, each year in the summer {yar} means
"summer" should do a summer retreat together. Normally it was three months
long and it was a very strict thing of... in fact our {yar ne} started two days ago.
Normally you would say I'm not going out of this block for the next three
months and there's a whole ritual where they give you a bed and they give you
a mat and they choose someone to cook the food for three months and then you
all agree to stay quietly and to study Vinaya, to study the scriptures and to
meditate for three months, so that's {yar ne} that's the second of the great three
{shi} there's seventeen total but I'm talking top three. The next one's called
{galye} say {galye} [repeat] {galye} is the release of the summer retreat the
summer retreat lets out. In the monastery nowadays, it's a time for celebration
and goofing off. And it's great custom, it's very good custom, because you've
been, you know working very hard you've been studying very hard for three
months you've been restricted for three months and during {galye} everything
is... I mean you can't do anything bad bad but you can listen to listen to radio
you can go to movies you can play games, you know, things like that, the whole
monastery loosens up, there's no classes, there's no debating there's no anything,
everyone just relaxes, and enjoys themselves after this time of intense study and
meditation and then... it's very nice to feel the... and you even see the {khenpo}
meaning "abbot" playing games with the little kids and you you know play pool
and stuff and ka... karem? And and things like that, I mean it's a very nice
custom where the whole place lets up and I think it's necessary sometimes,
speaking of which, veggie, sushi, and kung fu extravaganza, you all know about
that, right? You got that blurb already, I was supposed to announce it again
Saturday five to twelve One Forty One East Third Street. Somebody'll write it on
the board, it's a fund raiser you have to pay twenty dollars, you get to eat sushi
all night and watch kung fu movies [laughter] that's {galye}, American {ga ye}
{laughter]

[Student: [unclear How long is it in the monastery?]

 Oh, in the monastery it's about two three weeks something like that, I don't
know... you know. You know and then they go back to really hard study, they
work very hard in the monastery. I mean, the day in the monasteries are
eighteen hours long and it's very, very difficult, so {galye} is like a well deserved
rest and it's important, in Buddhism it's recognized that there's a time and a place
for for resting and relaxing. And that's the other one. Finally they talk about,
the proper ways to do {sojong} and also there's, not only restoring your vows if
you happen to damage your vows but there's a whole section in the [b: Vinaya
Sutra] at this point of how to restore unity inside the monastery in case of a split,
in case of some problems, I mean, the reason people go to a monastery is that
they're not perfect and the purpose of a monastery and the purpose of taking
these vows is to improve yourself but by definition if you're a Buddhist and by
definition if you're sitting in this world in samsara, m, you're not perfect, a...
already, you... because you didn't reach nirvana you have ... mental afflictions,
by definition, that's the definition. So people are in the monastery in order to
reach some kind of nirvana, but by definition if they haven't reached it yet they
have mental afflictions, and even in the Buddha's time, you know, quarrels
between the different people in that sangha, fights, splits different kinds of
disagreements, very common, I mean if you get to the point where you can read
the sutras well, allot of them would start out with... by the Buddha saying you
guys have been quarreling with each other a lot nowadays so I'm gonna tell you
a story and then he'll go into this long story about this guy who was a
bodhisattva and someone else criticized him for what was apparently wrong
behavior and then it turned out to be pure behavior and then the guy who
criticized him ended up hells for fifty thousand lives and then the Buddha... this is
and actual story, and then the Buddha at the end will say, the guy who did the
criticizing was me so I know, so I'm telling you don't quarrel with each other,
you know [laughs] So the the, the las... this the last part of this section of the [b:
Vinaya Sutra] is how do you bring the monks back together if there's been some
problem, you know, how do you keep the monks... how do you keep the unity
among the sangha, because there will always be problems, in any dharma group
in any group of more than one person and even sometimes in a group of one
person [laughs] [laughter] you know, you have problems because we have
ment... we live on mental afflictions and it groups it gets worse so this is whole
study and it's recognized as an important part of the Vinaya, you know, how do
you keep a group together when all of us are crazy, laughs] you know, and and
that's a whole study and then how do you patch things up when things go bad
and and that's a whole study in the Vinaya. Take a break come back in a bout
ten minutes we got a little bit to go, not much, I alw... [cut] I don't think I made it
clear that we just went over the third part, the third major part, the first one was
getting vows, the second one was keeping them from getting damaged and the
third one would be [pause] if they are damaged how to fix them [laughs] okay?
[pause] And that's where we get into the, the {sojong} ceremony? And that's
where we get into the restoration rituals or the rituals for bringing the sangha
back together to restoring unity, so there's really two subjects there, you know,
how to do your confessions and your purifications if you do mess up which is
assumed we will. I mean the purpose of taking vows is to control behavior
which otherwise we normally do, so it's very likely that you're gonna be
breaking them to some extent that you're gonna be damaging them from... to
some extent, so the whole concept of how to do a good purification and to
restore your vows is very important and that's a whole subject of the [b: Vinaya
Sutra] very important subject and then how to patch up things if there's fights
within the group or quarrels within the group and things like that, okay. The
next section in the outline which we're gonna hand out at the end, is called
ancillary points, you know, it's like other stuff to know and in there they get into,
for example, the construction of a monastery, you know, what should be in a
monastery, what what different how should the walls be, what what kind of
foundation should it have, how far away from the nearest lay people does it
have to be, five hundred {yang draks} by the way [laughter] and things like that
details like that inside there is what I consider to be one of the most important
subjects in the [b: Vinaya Sutra] which is how to draw the required painting in
the foyer of your temple and what is that painting ... it’s the wheel of life paining
that we have here at the a... foot of the steps and I love that, I love that to to, you
know here it is the last part of the [b: Vinaya Sutra] one of the last subjects is, by
the way, when you finish the temple don't forget to draw the wheel of life at the
at the at the door, you know, everybody should see it as they come in, if you
study the painting of the wheel of life there are two stories of how it first was
painted, it was painted on two occasions by the Buddha, it was designed by the
Buddha himself, to talk about samsara and nirvana and, one of the most famous,
I mean, one of the events was that one of his disciples when became a monk he
was still attached to his former wife... to his former pleasures, so the Buddha
decided it would be a good exercise to take him to hell and show him what it was
like, you know then he'd would get renunciation and he'd wanna be a monk, and
he did he'd... it's like Dante it's very similar to Dante, I mean it's eerks... it's eerily
similar to Dante, I mean the experiences that he goes through what he sees
there, what the Buddha shows him... according to the [b:Abidharma] a person
with certain powers can take another person to these realms, you know, and he
did and when he got back and the guy was you know, shaken up [laughs] and
he said now I want you to draw what you saw and we'll put it at the at the at the
door of every temple, okay? So I thought, we'll go through, I would like to go
through there are about seven components of that painting that the Bu... that the
[b: Vinaya Sutra] says you must have, it it tells you how to draw the painting,
and we'll go through those seven real quick. By the way the quotation, the
opening line of this section is, I'm gonna write that cause it's on your, homework.
You don't have to do it in Tibetan but [pause] it's good just to say it, okay? It's
just a blessing to say the words of it say {gokang} [repeat] {du} [repeat] {korway}
[repeat] {korlo o} [repeat] {cha ngapar} [repeat] {ja o} [repeat] okay {go kang du}
means "at the foyer," "in the foyer" {go kang} means "place where the door is,"
okay, at the at the entrance to the temple {go kang du} this {korwa, korway}
means "of samsara," okay? "The circle of suffering life," okay {korwa} and then
{korlo o} means {korlo} means "the wheel," okay? Nowadays, that wheel is
called what? In, do you know the Tibetan word? {Sipay korlo, sipay korlo}
means... it's another word for samsara, I think they changed the name because
{korway korlo} they probably got confused, you know, because this {korwa}
means "the circle of suffering life" and this {korlo} means "the circle" so it's like the
circle of the circle and people probably got confused so they, later on they called
it {sipay korlo} same thing, exactly the same thing, so what it is an {o} is like and
instruction it's like an, an ending, this is how the [b: Vinaya Sutra] reads it's like
build the temple. Put the the painting. Make it five parts. [laughter] You know
[laughs] it's like, the whole thing reads like that, the original sutra, so, so this is
{go kang du, korway korlu... korlo o} you know, put that, put that painting of
the wheel of life, of the wheel of suffering life in the foyer, okay? And then it
says {cha ngapar ja o. Cha, cha} means "part," {ngapar} means "five" {chawo}
means "make it," okay? Make it five parts, give it five parts. Okay? That's the
opening line and now we're gonna go through the seven components of the
wheel and then we're done for tonight, okay? This is, I thought you like it
because this is the perscription of the Buddha, you know, this is the way the ...
the wheel was originally drawn, okay? And I think it's good to know. [pause]
The study of the twelve links around the wheel is a part of the study of the
perfection of wisdom which comes in the monastery when you study
Madhyamika, you know, we're not gonna get to that tonight. That's a very deep
subject. I think we could devote a whole course to it actually. We did it up in
Boston it took three days. So we're just gonna... we're not gonna go through the
meaning of the wheel we're gonna go through what did the Buddha say had to
be in the wheel, okay? Seven... parts, first one is, he said {cha nga} [pause] {cha
gna par cha o} Okay, first thing you need in the wheel is the main wheel, you
know? It's that part, by the way, it's that part [pause] here, [laughs] I didn't do it
quite right but, it's this part from here to here and this represents what, the five
parts are? It's the five realms of existence, okay? It's the five types of beings, it's
the five choices after you die. You're gonna go to one of them unless you work
really hard in this life, unless you become the summa cum laud graduate of ACI
who finishes all of his or her tantric practices and gets out of it in this life, okay
something like that, which is the goal. If you don't make it you've gotta stay in
one of these five, you don't have any choice you will end up in one of these five.
Here there's what I call pleasure beings which are these ... by the way I'm not
sure exactly you gotta check it out but, you can divide it into better realms and
lower realms, okay? In the better realms you've got two, in the lower realms
you have three, okay? I'm not necessarily putting them in the right location, I'm,
I don't remember actually but, pleasure beings up there, which is a temporary
heavenly state and after that you usually go down and then human beings and
then down here you have hell realms and then what we call hungry gh... they're
called hungry ghosts or craving spirits and then animals, so traditionally th... the
painting should have five parts here, allot of paintings nowadays have?

[Student: Six.]

Six and if you look at the one at foot of the stairs it has six, okay? That's because
the broke off in the pleasure beings the lesser pleasure beings, there's full
pleasure beings, there's and lesser pleasure beings. And they split them off and
they made six, which is okay. But traditionally the instruction were {cha nga par
jao} make it five parts. So the first component of the wheel is those five parts,
second component [pause] Say {bardowa} [repeat] {bardowa} [repeat] also you
can say {dzu kye} [repeat] say {dzu kye} [repeat] the instructions only say {dzu
kye} okay? They don't say {bardowa} so I want you to know that, it says {dzu te
key way sem jen, so chung gyu ma shin du chipowa dang kye wa dand kyang
gno} which means {dzu kye kyewe dang sem chen} means "those beings who
are born miraculously," miraculously means the just show up there. Like the
first human beings on this planet according to Buddhism, they just appeared.
When you're born in hell, you don't have a hell mommy and hell daddy you just
show up there, I mean you die here you go through the bardo then you take
birth in the hell and and in a second you are there with a whole body and
someone's about to smash you with some kind of a weapon and and you know,
you o... you o... you're just there, suddenly you're just there and somebody's
smashing you and killing you and then you're first reaction is to struggle against
them and then your whole career there is spent in this Hades, you know, it's
spent in this insanity of people just trying to slaughter each other, so from the
very first moment that you're conscious there, you know you just show up and
someone's attacking you already and that's, that goes on for the whole time
you're there and that's called {dzu kye} so {dzu kye} means a being who's born
that way. The classic being who is born that way is a bardo, what's a bardo?

[Student: [unclear]]

It's it's a some kind of a spirit being between the death and rebirth, okay? And
we went through the whole thing in the last course, the last course was devoted
to that. You need to take some kind of birth through which you can reach your
next destination and that's called the bardo, okay?           I wasn't aware of this
instruction in the Vinaya, the instruction, the full instructions say, "Paint them in
a chain to demonstrate that they are swirling around and taking birth again and
again in death... death and birth, death and birth, death and birth" and that's
where you see, I assume that it's in that inner part of the wheel there and if you
look carefully there's, there's like these evil spirits dragging people down and
there's these holy spirits bringing them up and I take it to be that that chain of
beings here, that's also supported by the fact that bardos are included where in
the five realms? Do you remember from the last course? They're not included
[laughs] you know. So you gotta get 'em in there somewhere, they're in, they're
in samsara, we gotta include everybody here right? So I assume that this refers
to that inner wheel because they are circling around and I guess they are parking
in different locations, you know, they are going out and coming out here or
coming here and then I've never thought of it that way but that appears to be
the intent of the [b: Vinaya Sutra] okay? The next instruction is [pause] I'll just
put {duk sum} [pause] say {duk sum} [repeat] {duk sum} the three poisons of the
mind which make us suffer our whole lives. {Duk} means "poison" {sum} means
"the three." [pause] I think somebody burned a chappatti. [laughs] [laughter]
{Duk sum} this is those three animals in the middle of the picture, okay? We,
you know them, the ...

[student: Hatred, anger, and desire. [unclear]]

Yeah, and we, they say hatred, anger and desire, but you know from our past
discussions that, the... there's a there's a for ex... we'll start with the snake the
snake is easy, there's a... well let's start with where the susu... sutra starts, they
say start with the, desire, okay? And desire normally you think of a rooster in
the middle, there's a rooster in this area here and we chch... we drawn it before,
right? Very badly and, that represents desire. I don't like the translation desire
so much because it implies like, you know, something very strong and and...
only happens once a week or something. It is liking things, okay? It is liking
things ignorantly, okay, is it wrong to like things? Well, yes and no. Should you
like anything in this world, I mean, should you like the fact that you're strong?
That's just stupid, you know, the last thing you want to do is get attached to this
hunk of meat where the only future is bad, you know, you don't want t... that
kind of liking. Should you like nirvana? Of course, you know. But this is
ignorant liking, okay? This is liking samsaric things that can never make you
happy anyway, okay? It's that emotion of wanting, okay? Second animal is? Oh
by the way, in the original text it doesn't say rooster, it says pigeon [laughter]
which I never knew, you know, nowadays they... they draw a rooster but the
original sk... the early ancient text they say pigeon because apparently pigeons
had, apparently they... had some kind of desirous behavior, okay? Yeah, okay
and you have here a... You have a snake, okay? The snake represents, disliking
things. In other words these three poisons are not something that comes up in
your mind every time you... every time you go off into a fit of fury every three
weeks it's not like that, they are operating continuously in your mind. These
three poisons are are are in your brain constantly, they are acting in you
constantly. So I don't like the translation anger, I mean I don't get angry except
when the customers hassle me, but, but disliking and liking ignorantly I have a...
we have it all day long, we live on it, it makes us unhappy, it's our main mental
afflictions, we, we live on that, it's our whole life story it's those three poisons
going on in your mind. We have very little vacation from those three, they
make us unhappy our whole lives, most people are unhappy the whole length of
their lives and it's these three poisons cooking there the whole time and just
making you miserable. They... they pull you from one direction to the other, I
want this I don't want that, and your whole life is spent struggling like that, that's
the three poisons. So don't think of them as you know "Playboy" magazine and
screaming at somebody, they're more subtle than that. They're in your... there its
the poison that's in your blood stream your whole life, okay? Then it says draw
the pig and he... the [b: Vinaya Sutra] says be sure to draw the pig... the tail of
those two coming out of the pig's mouth, the pig should be eating the other two.
Okay. And if you see ancient pictures of the wheel of life, that's the way it is,
nowadays they draw it as the three animals eating each other. But in the very
old pictures you'll see the pig and then the other two animals coming out of its
mouth, why?

[student: Ignorance.]

Yeah, it's because we don't understand emptiness and we don't understand ethics
and we don't understand the marriage between ethics and emptiness that makes
liking and disliking happen. If you understood emptiness... well and if you
understood ethics to be the... the holy sister of emptiness, you wouldn't have the
other two. You wouldn't have liking and disliking in the way that we have them
now. You would be free, you'd have reached nirvana already, okay? If you kill
the pig you kill the other two. Okay, very important. Okay number four.
[pause] I'll cheat, I'll put, a number [pause]

[Student: [unclear]]

Excuse me?
[Student: What does the pig represent again?]

Ignorance. The pig is ignorance, it's {yen lak} y, e, n, l, a, k, twelve, okay?
[laughs] I cheated, I'm gettin' tired tonight I had rough day, so [laughs] {yen lak}
twelve, [laughs] okay? These are the twelve links of dependent origination which
are to be drawn around the outside. [pause] Twelve pictures which describe the
mechanism which trigger rebirth, okay? The mechanism by which we stay in
this world, you know, what thing triggers what thing which trigger what thing,
what trigger what thing, what triggers what things, it's this domino thing that
once you get it started you're gonna be here forever, they they continue to
trigger each other in a circle, okay? You must study the twelve links, it's a long
story, we don't have time. [laughter] [laugh] But we will do it sometime and
Rinpoche did a very beautiful... he taught it to us very carefully and, it's part of
the study of the perfection of wisdom, okay? Asanga went over it, Maitreya
taught it very nicely. [pause] Mr. Wick, John can you do me a favor? Find me a
{sojong} book if anybody has one, in Tibetan. And, I have a painting of the wheel
of life on my b... under my bed I think.

[student: A {sojong} book.]

Yeah, in Tibetan if anybody has one. If not it's okay. Say... this one is important
so I wanna make sure you got this one, say {tamche} [repeat] {mitakpa} [repeat]
{nyi kyi} [repeat] {sung} [repeat] okay. {Tamche} means "the whole thing," okay?
{Tamche} means "the whole thing."               {mitakpa nyi kyi} means "by
impermanence," capitol I, by Impermanence {sum} means, "in the clutches of. "
Draw everything in the clutches of impermanence,” okay? And that's where you
have, what? You have that monster that cookie monster [pause] okay? The
whole thing is in the grasp of this monster, okay? You know, I take people to
the... round the temple in New Jersey all the time and they see this painting and
they say, "Oh, Buddhists believe in these demons and stuff." I said no. It's always
described in scriptures as as the event inside you of death, know, working since
the day you were born, you know he's biting biting biting, you know, chewing
chewing, you know he's scratching, he's taking out more and more from the
nth... inside, he's working his way out from the inside and he's ripping up your
your insides and then sooner or later he'll reach something vital and then you'll
die, it'll be called death. This monster is inside, it's the fact of your own
impermanence, okay, they don't believe it's some little guy that jumps out after
you die, or something like that. It's the own imp... it's your own impermanence
which is killing you day by day moment by moment working to kill you from
the inside, that's {mitakpa nyi kyi sungo} [pause] Say {dawa} [repeat] {dawa}
[repeat] this is very abbreviated, okay? Cause it's so late. The full thing is
{tengdu sang gye yangen le depe kingor kappo nyewar tumbao} and that
means, {tengdu} means "on top," okay? {tengdu} means, thank you, "on top" and
{sangye} means what?

[student: Buddha. [unclear]]

The Buddha, {nyangen de} means {nyangde}? This is not a real great version,
okay? Now you know, this is the Buddha, up here and it says {kingor kappo
newar tumbao} “he should be pointing to a white heavenly body”, okay? It
doesn't specifically say moon, {dawa} means "moon" but is says he should be
pointing to a white heavenly body, which here is, I guess it's this one, but
normally it's a, it's a full moon, normally it's a big white full moon. If you look at
the one in the temple down in New Jersey, it's... it's, this part is better and you
can see ...the Buddha pointing and then the moon... normally there's a big full
moon over here. That represents the Buddha showing the way to nirvana. The
moon is nirvana and the Buddha is showing the way, okay? Why didn't they
paint him down here which some people do nowadays?

[Student: Because he's outside of...]

He ain't in the clutches of impermanence, okay? He's out, he got out. Okay?
He's not in there any more. I mean some people nowadays, they paint Buddhas
around all over the place, teaching, stuff like that it's considered very
inauspicious in... among those who, who know about this painting. He should
be outside and he should be showing the way to nirvana, that's what the original
scripture says. By the way you can see here that it's not, no here it is painted
correctly. Sometimes you'll see them in a chain but here it's painted correctly and
then here are the bardo beings and here you got six instead of five. So, they
they didn't do {cha nga par jawo} okay? They did get the twelve links as it
should be, the last instruction and that's the last thing tonight.
[Student: [unclear]] [pause] Yeah, it's here. The last instruction is at the bottom of
the painting “add the two verses”, okay, add the two verses. It has not been
added to this painting. You... in in more traditional paintings you can see it. I
think the one on the cover of the wheel of life book has the... you can see the
verses down at the bottom in the... in the right place. And I... since it's late I'm
going to read you the verses, okay? Iit's it's two verses of four lines each, first...
it starts out by, and it's auspicious to say it, okay? Ready? {tsampar ja} [repeat]
{shing} [repeat] {yung war ja} [repeat] {sangye tenla} [repeat] {jupar cha} [repeat]
{dambu kimla} [repeat] {lang chen shin} [repeat] {chidag de nyi} [repeat]
{shaombar cha} [repeat] {kang shin rab du} [repeat] {payu pay} [repeat] {chun
dul di la} [repeat] {chu gyurpa} [repeat] {kye we korwa} [repeat] {rapang ne}
[repeat] {dugnel tamar} [repeat] {chepar gyur} [repeat] and monks are required
to recite that at the end of every {sojong}. So, it says this {tsampar ja shi nyi war
ja} means, "take it up and give it up," take it up and give it up, what it means is,
learn the things you should do and the learn the things you shouldn't do, okay?
Take up the things you should do, give up the things you shouldn't do. {Sangye
tenla juppar ja}, "enter the teachings of the Buddha." You know, get into the
teachings of the Buddha. [pause] {Dambu kimla langjen shin}, {dumbu kim} is a
very difficult word but what it means is a "house made of reeds" you know those
very skinny weak reeds, a hut made of reeds. {Langchen shin} means "like an
elephant," okay? Like a bulll in a china shop, okay? Same thing [laughs] okay.
Like an... like an elephant who squashes a, a little hut made of little sticks, okay. I
mean in India that's a b... powerful thing. {Chi dag de nyi shombar ja} “destroy
the lord of death in the same way.” Smash the lord of death in the same way.
Meaning if you study this paining and you understand it, then you'll be able to
smash death itself. You don't have to die the kind of death that you've seen
everyone else die in this world. You are among a very few people who have an
option now, if you study these things properly you don't have to go through
that process like that. And that's the point. Okay. {Kang shin rapdu payu pay}
means “anybody who with the proper care,” okay? Anybody who with the
proper care, {chun du dila chu gyurpa} “practices this dharma which is {dul}” ...
what's {dulwa}?

[Student: What you're teaching us. [unclear]]

Vinaya, okay? [laughs] Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay. “Anybody who practices this
disciplining dharma,” okay? And I... obviously it's an... an allusion to the Vinaya,
okay? {Kyewe korwa rappang ne} “they will give up the they will be able to,
leave behind the wheel of rebirth“okay? {Dukgnel tamar jepar gyur} “and they
will put an end to their suffering.” [pause] So meditate for a few minutes, okay?

[student: [unclear]

[unclear] [cut]
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116a.txt
Course IX: The Ethical Life