Углублённый курс ACI 01 — Учения будущего Будды: «Уттаратантра» Майтреи (2003, Аризона), занятие 1

[Говорящий 1]
First of all, welcome to the first encounter in time general official classes. And I think you know today is the day of Lord Buddha's Sagrada. Lord Buddha was conceived today, enlightened today, and passed away today.

So all the virtue we do is like a million times more. I don't know how much longer I can say exactly. But it's a good day to have, I think, the first class of this particular series.

We've been in Tucson the last three or four days, getting poked and prodded by doctors and dentists and other kinds of things to see if you're still alive. And we had a chance to drive by the place where the teaching will take place in October. I think most of you know this course will be repeated in October over a four-day weekend, Columbus Day weekend.

And the crew, I think Gail is in charge of that, but they found a very nice place. And we found out where it was, and we decided to drive by it. And it's really beautiful.

It's called The Muse, right? And apparently it's an old YMCA on 5th Street right off of 4th Street in Tucson. 4th Street, I guess you know, but I just found out, it's like the happening street in Tucson.

It's where all the students come. It's like right across the street from where we're sitting. And it's like the mall in Santa Cruz or the East Village, except it's only a few blocks long.

And so we drove by, and it's really beautiful. The gym is really beautiful. It's not really a gym.

It's this huge, beautiful place. And it's broken up into different rooms now. And we also saw a big sign that said, rooms for late.

So we figured the three girls can go in there afterwards. Or maybe before. But we're going to talk about that tomorrow.

I think we already got the grants and everything. And I think it'd be a good area. We also, due to Doug's work, we did some newspaper and radio interviews about the three-year retreat.

And I guess the newspaper thing came out the last few days. And then we went to do a radio interview. And the guy was very excited.

He's going to run it for five days in a row. He did it like five times over the normal length. And then he wants to do it for a whole week.

And then he said in October, he'll do another long interview for the teaching in October. The reason I'm telling you all this is because you guys are going to be the teachers in October. And I've gotten a lot of letters from people.

And they've also been asked to put it in Tricycle and other places for that teaching. So we expect, I don't know. When you expect, you don't get that many.

So maybe, but I think there'll be at least two or three hundred people there. And we have to be, we'll be breaking out in the mornings. The classes in the mornings will be broken out into smaller classes.

Because we've gotten feedback from people that when they come into a class and there's 300 people there, you don't feel like you're getting any personal attention. And you can't ask questions and things like that. So what we're going to do in October in the morning classes, they'll be broken out into those little rooms in the muse space.

And they're very beautiful little rooms with nice hardwood floors. They're used for dance and things like that. And each one of you who survive the next ten classes will become a teacher.

And maybe we'll team up people in pairs. If you're shy, I don't know. But my idea is to break out the morning classes.

You go, you get assigned, you're going to have assigned to you five or ten or fifteen students each. And then you have to teach what I'm about to teach. So that's like an incentive for you guys to do it seriously now.

And I want everyone to try. I know a lot of you think, I'm not a teacher, I never did that. And I remember the night that Poonsaw came into New York.

Elmer was there. The New York class the first time. It was a really rainy night.

Only four people showed up for class. And this guy named Poonsaw, he wasn't called Poonsaw then, right? And he walks in and he says, I don't know anything about it.

I can't teach. I don't know anything about this stuff. Now he's got a regular Friday night class in New York with 70, 80 students coming.

And there are many people like that. So I want all of you to be in the frame of mind that you're going to be teaching this. And even people who listen to the tape or get the video two years from now, you have to be thinking in terms of teaching what I'm about to teach.

The whole idea is a lineage. And we have to continue the lineage. So please keep that in mind.

We're also going to get homeworks. And you'll also be responsible to do a quiz when you get into class on Wednesday night. We'll be going Wednesday night and Saturday afternoons.

And you should get the schedule from Kelly because there's a break there for some vacation and somebody named Donovan or something like that. And we'll be at Ken Ripache. He'll be busy with those things.

How many people weren't here for the first half of this class? Oh, boy. Really?

Raise your hand again. Ooh, OK. We'll have to do a short summary.

We did the first half of this first class just for good luck out on the lawn on the night when we got here, on the night we broke the three-year routine. But I'll just do a summary, I guess. And then we'll go ahead.

This class will be about an hour and then a break for, not necessarily about, a break for refreshments. And then we'll go for another hour. And then after that, we're going to have a dinner for everyone.

So you're invited to dinner, right? Is that right?

[Говорящий 2]
Yeah. OK.

[Говорящий 1]
And after that, from 6 to 7 or however late we go, we're going to do the great Sojong Summary. Sojong means to, once a year, Khenpo Rinpoche has instituted a purification ceremony. And this was done in the great tantric colleges in Tibet once a year.

And instead of the usual monk sojong, which takes place every twice a month, where you get to purify all the vows that you broke in the last two weeks, in Sojong Chamo you go through all your vows, which means your Pratyumoksha vows, your Bodhisattva vows, and your tantric vows. So what I'd like to ask is, during dinner, everyone write down six pieces of paper, six slips of paper. There'll be the three best things you did in the last year for your Pratyumoksha vows, your Bodhisattva vows, and your tantric vows.

And then there'll be the worst three things you did in the last year for the same thing. If you don't have tantric vows or Bodhisattva vows, then just write it down for your Pratyumoksha vows. If you don't even have Pratyumoksha vows, just the best of the ten non-virtues that you avoided, and the worst of the ten non-virtues that you did.

And we'll burn them in the fireplace from 6 to 7. And then from 7 o'clock on, I think we have some kind of a celebration, starring Sid and Mercedes, and something like that. So, that's the schedule for today.

So I guess it looks like I have to go over a little bit of the last class. And that's just to summarize how we got the book that you're about to study. I better give you the title of the book first.

There's going to be, as you know, the ACI courses are English chat, or English and Tibetan chat. So I'll be writing Tibetan words on here. You're not responsible for them if you don't want to be.

But, you know, most of us have found out that when you get under pressure at the muse space in Tucson, and some smart guy from Fairbanks, Alaska is asking you a question, you can spit out some Tibetan and answer him. And he doesn't know what it means, and you don't know what it means. He kicks you off the hook, see?

So it might be useful to write down a little bit of it, just to cover yourself. So I'll be doing the Tibetan. And now, since we're kind of into Sanskrit, especially as we're starting the tantric series next year, and a lot of the text that we'll be using for the 5 to 7 year tantric series will be Sanskrit, which didn't reach Tibet.

So I'm going to be writing Sanskrit also. And you should just start getting used to it. So there'll be a Sanskrit track, too.

Some people might want to do Sanskrit only, and English. Some people might want to do English and Tibetan. Some people might want to do all three.

If the guy from Fairbanks knows Tibetan, you can throw out some Sanskrit. And get him off your back. Is that cool?

[Говорящий 2]
Yeah, it should be really good. He's getting cold.

[Говорящий 1]
I'll say that Sanskrit and Tibetan, and I'd like you to repeat it. It puts a seed in your mind. And even if you don't get into Sanskrit track this lifetime, it might be a nice time in five times.

Say uttara. And you have to get used to the difference in... When you're doing Sanskrit, the difference between ah and ah is very important.

Listen to how I say it. I don't say uttara. I say uttara.

I say uttara. I don't say tantra. I say tantra.

And it becomes important because the rest of the name of the scripture is shastra. Say shastra. It's like ah instead of ah.

I'll tell you why. Shastra means commentary. Shastra means a sword that you kill somebody with.

So you wouldn't want to teach somebody uttara, tantra, shastra. You'd want to teach them uttara, tantra, shastra. Okay?

Because you don't want to kill them. You want to teach them. But that's a very good example for distinguishing between what we call Mahayana and Shurda.

And we'll get better at that as the time goes. There's a word before uttara, tantra, which is mahayana. And I'll do it in Sanskrit this time.

For those of you who are feeling brave for this Sanskrit. Tell me if I'm doing anything wrong. This Sanskrit's not as good.

Say maha. Maha. Yana.

[Говорящий 2]
Yana.

[Говорящий 1]
And then when a comes into you it changes to mahayano.

[Говорящий 2]
Mahayano.

[Говорящий 1]
Tantra. Tantra. I'm sorry.

Uttara.

[Говорящий 2]
Uttara.

[Говорящий 1]
Tantra. Tantra. That's in Sanskrit.

I'm going to write the Tibetan for you. Say gyu. Gyu.

It gets cut off a bit. I might as well teach you right. We're out here in the desert.

Nobody's listening. Gyu. Gyu.

Lama. Lama. Gyu.

Gyu. Lama.

[Говорящий 2]
Lama.

[Говорящий 1]
You might notice that the Tibetan's a little short. I'm not going to give you the full Tibetan in a minute. But just to go through the words.

Mahayano, you know, means big vehicle. Take the Tamil. Big capacity.

You're going to get a commentary by one of Je Tsongkhapa's students, Gyatsabje. I'm going to give you a reading. You don't get the reading today because I couldn't finish it because of the doctors and dentists and everything else.

But Gyatsabje says it's maha because of seven different reasons. The big means seven different things. So this book is all about the big capacity people.

Basically, it's people who are willing to work for the happiness of every living creature in the universe. And aren't concerned only with themselves. So you go from one to infinite number of beings if you step onto Mahayana.

So that's the meaning of Mahayana. Mahayana. Uttara means lama.

And that's the same as guru lama. Lama means what? Teacher.

But literally it means higher one. Higher one. So uttara means higher one.

Gyatsabje, when he explains uttara in his commentary, he says it's anuttara. Anuttara. Anuttara, some of you may know, is the name of the highest tantric teachings, the highest group of tantric teachings out of the four.

And it means lama mepa. Above lama. Meaning there's nobody lama above this book.

This is the highest book, lama. So uttara means anuttara. It means nothing higher than that.

Tantra here, which is gyu in Tibetan. And that's the gyu in Gyumei Tantric College and Gyuju Tantric College, which means a lineage. Or it can mean tantra also.

Tantra usually means the secret teachings of Buddhism as opposed to the open teachings of Buddhism. Here it has nothing to do with that. We're not teaching secret books today.

This tantra is not a tantra. This book is called a tantra because of the meaning of series. Tantra means a series, like a lineage.

So when you say gyubei lama, for example, which is a different spelling, it means the lamas of our lineage. So tantra means that. And as we mentioned, in English the word tan has come into the words tenuous, and tenacity, and tended, and extension, meaning stretched out into a series or a line.

Shastra. Shastra means a cutter, which means a commentary, an explainer of analysis. It breaks the meaning up.

So really what this book is about is an explanation of the series, which is uttara, and which is about helping all living creatures, Mahayana. So it's a commentary on the series, which is uttara, and it's about helping a big vehicle, big capacity. People who can help all the people in the world.

By the way, ma comes into English with a prenasal ma. The h changes to g, and the end to its conclusion. You get magnitude out of here, magna carta, magnificent, things like that.

From the mind of it. Now we've got to go to the uttara. Why is it called pious?

And you see some people, even like 500 years ago, they're saying, oh, it's the best book of all. So it's called uttara tantra. That's not what Gyaltsabje says.

Gyaltsabje says, think of pious in terms of ultimate, and think of ultimate in terms of the thing that comes at the end. Like we have penultimate in English, and ultimate, meaning the thing just before the end, and the thing at the end. So think of uttara as ultimate, but in the sense of the very last teaching, the very last teaching.

So really, this is an explanation of the latter part of the teaching. That's the meaning of the name of this book. What teaching is he talking about?

We talked about it already, right? You guys already know. You know that Lord Buddha turned the wheel three times.

The first time, Lord Buddha appeared as a... Is it three times? Yes.

No fourth? Let's see. The first time he turned the wheel as a...

Mainly, just after he became enlightened, he taught the Four Noble Truths about suffering and how to get out of suffering, and that kind of thing. He didn't say much about emptiness. The second time he turned the wheel, he came on big time on emptiness.

He said, everything's empty. Nothing in the world has any quality on its own. This pen doesn't have any quality on its own.

You don't have any quality on your own. Your mind doesn't have any quality on its own. The world doesn't have any quality on its own.

Nothing has any quality on its own. So, Winston, you could be a Buddha or a Buddha. This pen is not blue, right?

Not blue. Oh, it's not blue. So it is blue.

So it has the characteristics of being blue, right? It doesn't have the characteristics of being blue. Oh, it doesn't have any characteristics...

It doesn't have any quality that belongs to itself. So the blue doesn't belong to the pen. So the pen's not blue.

He's getting rid of me. He's getting rid of me. Anyway, he said it doesn't have any characteristics on it.

And obviously Lord Buddha meant the blueness of this pen is coming from you. From each person here. How could it be coming from me if everybody sees it the same?

How could it be coming from you if everybody sees it the blue? We all share the same karma to see it as blue. Yeah, you all did the same action in the past to see it as blue.

So that means that there could be a person without that karma? Yes. Like who?

Sure. If there were a blind person in the room.

[Говорящий 2]
Yeah, blind.

[Говорящий 1]
Or a colorblind person. They just would see it as gray. That's because they have something wrong with them and not because it's not blue, you see?

So that proves in a way that the blue is coming from you. It's very interesting. It's very profound.

So then in the third turn of the wheel, Lord Buddha said, Ah, I'm sorry, I didn't mean that. Some stuff has its own characteristics and some stuff doesn't. Like pens are obviously blue.

And especially the fact that it writes. It must have a quality of writing in it, right? Being able to write must be in the pen.

If it works. If I can draw something with it, the ability to write something should be inside this plastic cylinder, right? Like Lord Buddha, how do you say it?

He did a New York Times correction? Have you ever seen on the third page of the New York Times they have a little column and they say, We made these booboos last year? It's very honest in a way.

People don't normally do that, right? And so, Lord Buddha said, Oh, I made a mistake. People came up to him.

Some of the people from the second turn of the wheel came up to him and said, This is too much. Are you telling me this pen doesn't write by itself? And he said, He judged this student and he said, This student can't handle what I'm teaching.

I better back off. And he backed off of it. So he said, Yeah, you're right.

The pen is blue. The characteristic of being blue belongs to the pen. Writing belongs to the pen.

I'm sorry, I was just being figurative. I was just trying to shake everybody up a bit. And then he passed away.

He left it like that. Then for two and a half thousand years, people have to figure out, Did he mean it when he said he didn't mean it? Or did he mean it when he said he meant it?

And for two and a half thousand years, people have struggled with this question. So, we have a Manjushri Buddha Tantra. That's a real Tantra.

That's the root Tantra of an angel called We call it Gentle Horse. And in that book it says, There'll be a monk named Asanga who will come along and he'll straighten everything out. He'll say, Lord Buddha did mean that or didn't mean that.

Or, you know, Lord Buddha was telling the truth in the second turning wheel. Or Lord Buddha was telling the truth in the third turning wheel. But you notice nobody has much trouble with the first turning wheel line.

He didn't really talk so explicitly about emptiness. Lord Buddha didn't really... Emptiness is where people get screwed up, before they hit Tantra.

But emptiness is where people get confused. So, Lord Buddha taught emptiness in the second and the third turning wheel. So if you wanted to write a book about clarifying that series of teachings, first, second, third, turning wheel, what would you call the book?

The Tantra Shastra. The Tantra Shastra. I'm going to explain the latter part, the ultimate part, of the series.

Meaning those series of three turnings of the wheel. So, I think if you ask a thousand people, you might not hear this explanation once. It's very beautiful in Gyaltsabje.

And it's hard to get out of Gyaltsabje. And it'll be in your reading if you're reading out my curse. But you'll see.

So in a way, Gyaltsabje Asanga, Master Asanga is offering to explain the confusing latter part of that series. And that's why it's called what?

[Говорящий 2]
Mahajita.

[Говорящий 1]
Mahayana Tantra Shastra. Which of the three turnings of the wheels is Mahayana? Which one of the three is Mahayana?

All three included Mahayana. Right. Can you teach me what you're saying?

You're telling me that the teaching on the four truths is Mahayana? Yes, it's included Mahayana. Right.

Included in Mahayana is Mahayana. Everything included in Mahayana is Mahayana? I would think so.

Let's take the series of the paths that are intended for people in lesser capacity. Mahayana. So I guess it's Mahayana.

It's included in Mahayana. Well, right, because it's included in Mahayana, right? Yeah.

So we're supposed to practice that by itself? No. Mahayana.

Yeah, because it's Mahayana. No. Oh, it's not Mahayana because it's included in Mahayana?

Oh, thank God. Is your foot part of your body? Does that cut you a little after you still have a body?

[Говорящий 2]
I don't know.

[Говорящий 1]
Anyway, Mahayana was stressed in the last picture. I mean, if you take the four great schools of ancient India, the two Mahayana schools I treated in the last picture. So it would make sense to add a word to the title of our book, which is Mahayana Uttapa.

And he's explaining. Shastra means he's trying to clarify what happened in the latter part of the British teaching. We have another explanation of this serious statement.

Do any of you remember? What was it?

[Говорящий 2]
Changde.

[Говорящий 1]
Was it the Changde? Yeah, I think Changde said it. We're going to talk a little bit about how this book came to be.

How this book came into our world. So everybody calls it Uttapa Changde. But you know that that's just a short name, right?

When people in Tibet call it Gilama, they say Gilama. But that just means the latter part of the series. It leaves out Mahayana.

It leaves out explanation. So people get confused about what the name is. But everybody in Tibet calls it Gilama.

[Говорящий 2]
Gilama.

[Говорящий 1]
Uttapa Changde. It's one of the five great books of Maitreya. Maitreya gave Arya Sanga five great books.

Arya Sanga showed up in his heaven one day. And you guys know the story. I think...

I'll run it over real fast. I think the people who weren't here should get it straight. Because the whole story is kind of cute.

But to put it briefly, Arya Sanga tried for 12 years. He didn't go three years or anything. He did a 12-year retreat.

Which is really supposed to be ideal. But we were afraid the filmmakers would die. And he, in those 12 years, he stayed in solitary and he tried to get a vision.

He tried to meet Maitreya. And he worked really hard to meet Maitreya. At the end of the retreat, he still hadn't seen Maitreya.

He gave up. He went out. He went to the nearest town.

On the way to town, he saw a dog that had been run over by a cart. And it was cut here. Halfway.

And the lower part of the body had been completely eaten away by maggots. And they were starting to attack the... They were starting to attack the upper part of the body.

And then he knelt down and he looked at the maggots. He said, I gotta get the maggots off the dog. And the dog didn't die.

Then he had a thought. If I take the maggots off, the maggots are gonna die. So...

He said, you know what I'll do? I'll get a knife. I'll cut a big piece of flesh out of my thigh.

And I'll set it on the ground. And then I'll put the maggots on the flesh. And they won't die.

And then the dog will be cured. So he goes to town and gets a big razor blade. He cuts a big piece of meat off his thigh.

And he sets it on the ground. And he starts to reach for the maggots. And he says, if I pick them up, I'll crush them with my fingers.

So he says, I'll just lick them all. But he's kind of grossed out. So he goes inside.

And he puts his hand out. And he goes down. And then you know the end of the story.

He hits the ground. And he looks up and there's my chair. And he says to...

It's interesting. Arya Asanga's reaction is sort of interesting. He gives him a line of verse which used to say, you know, where the hell have you been for 12 years?

You know? He's not all like lovey-dovey with my chair. He's sort of pissed off with my chair.

He's like, you know, you could have come to me the first week. You know? Like, 12 years later.

Arya's showing, I'm already out of the retreat. I've left the retreat. Now you're showing something?

And my chair says, you couldn't see me. I was there the whole time. I was sitting right next to you.

Sometimes when you create your show during mantras, you stare at me. You know? I had to like dodge around all the time.

And Arya Asanga says, I don't believe you're in the cave. If you're in the cave, I would have seen you. And my chair says, oh, so everybody sees things the same way, right?

Arya Asanga says, I think so. I would have seen you. So my chair says, okay, well then you take me up on your shoulders and you dance around town with me on your shoulders.

Let's see. Let's see what happens. And he does that and he dances around town.

And you know the story. Everyone thinks Arya Asanga is crazy because he's dancing around town with nothing on his shoulders. And he's saying, look at my shoulders, look at my shoulders.

I've got my chair on my shoulders. And you know the story. One old lady, one bar maid sees a puppy, just a little puppy on one shoulder.

And one like laborer, construction laborer, sees what did he say? Oh, he sees his toe hanging off right here. And as a result they both made some high-tempered outbursts.

But in a way the story of how, oh, and then the story goes that my chair says, now that you believe me, and Asanga says, yeah, I can't believe you. And he says, well, why were you trying to get to me anyway? What did you want?

And Asanga says, I was trying to figure out emptiness, the perfectionism, and I couldn't do it. I couldn't figure it out. I figured out all those other words.

I understand the other words. I understand all the other words. I just can't get this emptiness thing.

So my chair says, okay, grab onto my arms and we'll take a trip. And he flies in to see it happen. I just read a book this morning that says that Arya Asanga was able to get back on his own.

So he flies in to see it happen. And he spends part of a morning there, and 50 years pass in human time. And during that time, my chair teaches him these five great books that my chair because Arya Asanga says, how am I going to teach everybody what you taught me?

Because my chair teaches him the whole Perfectionism Sutra, which is like, it's about 25, 30 volumes. It's like 3,000 pages or something in an hour in the morning. So he says, how can I go back to Earth and teach people this?

Can you give me something shorter? So he gives him these five very short books. I thought I would list them again.

Well, I don't know if we have time to list them. Yeah, let's do it anyway. I'm shortening the names for your convenience.

Say, Chi. Chi. Chi Ni.

[Говорящий 2]
Nam Jae.

[Говорящий 1]
Nam Jae.

[Говорящий 2]
Chi. Chi. Chi Ni.

Nam Jae. Nam Jae.

[Говорящий 1]
Dharma. Chi. Dharma.

Dharma. Chi means Dharma, which means here it means things. Chi Ni means Dharma Da.

Yeah, emptyness or the way things are. When you add Ni to it, it means the way things are. So you've got things and the way things are.

Nam Jae means distinguishing. Like, this is the things and this is the way things are. So it's a book about distinguishing things from the way things are.

I'm going to go through the progression of the five books. Maitreya taught the five books to Ayya Sangha in an order. And the purpose of the order is to get your mind from simple emptiness up to ultimate emptiness.

So we're going from sort of a, what do you call it? Friendly interpretation of emptiness, up to the real one. Through the five books.

Remember that the quoting from Gyatso Gyatso is coming to him. And we'll talk about who he is later. But he's a student of Gyatso Gyatso.

He says, if you want to know what things means here, it means the things that appear to you. Things as they appear to you. Like Mr. Ben, am I separate from you?

Yes. No. Yes.

Ultimately or conventionally? Good, good, good. It's a great question but it stops the debate.

You can say that. So we are separate or not conventionally? Separate.

Okay, so I'm over here and you're over there. Yeah, that's a good way to say it. Conventionally you can say I'm over here and he's over there.

And we're separate. And there's nothing wrong with that. I can't build a house.

Ben can build a house. That's separate. We can't be the same person or else I can just call and build a house.

So we're separate. But are we separate in an ultimate sense? Why not?

And the answer in the lower schools we're talking minority school is that this person that I'm seeing is a result of a seed in my own mind. In that sense we're not separate. I see a person there's a functioning, real, talking, working, living person out there and I'm over here and I'm different.

But I see that person because of a seed in my own mind. So in a sense that person is a projection in my own mind. In that sense we're not separate.

So chilla here means what Ben called conventionally separate. I mean, we seem to be separate from each other, right? There's space between us.

That's the way things look. And then chi ni means the way things really are, which is that even though it seems that I'm separate from Ben everything about Ben, every single characteristic of Ben and Ben himself is a projection of my own mind because I want to protect that, right? We always have to say forced to.

We always have to say forced to. My karma seed, how I treated people in the past is forcing me to see a person good, bad, mixed, like that. It's totally up to my own, how I treated other people.

And that's the chi ni of the things that just seem to appear around us. So chi ni is the way things appear. Chi ni means the way the real situation.

Why is nam je a good word to put in here? Anybody. You've got to distinguish between that.

You see? You've got to distinguish between that. Like if you get angry at somebody, you fail to distinguish.

You think that person exists there. You don't realize it's coming out of your own mind. And if you get angry, what's going to happen?

[Говорящий 2]
It's going to happen.

[Говорящий 1]
You've got to well better be able to differentiate nam je between the way things look and the way things really are. So that's a great book, right? I think.

What else did I say? Okay, that's the first book. By the way, if you went up to Arya Sangha and said, when you say Ben and you are separate conventionally, is it real?

Is Ben real? So is Ben real? And it depends on how you define real, right?

If real means the way I think of him normally, or usually as I go see my Ben, would you say it's real? I think no. If you can still get upset by anybody, the answer is no.

Meaning you don't really understand how they are. So in this first book, Maitreya didn't clarify the meaning of real as far as being Ben. He kind of fudged it.

He said the appearance is you can say it's real. Oh, real in every way? You can sort of say that.

So you see where Maitreya is trying to put out his first book a little more, what do you call it, double-baked instead of mystique. He's trying to reach a broad audience and he's watering it down a little bit for the broad audience. And that's the way I often would do that.

He's kind of presenting it in an easy way. So when people got into, you know, is Ben real or not? He said, well, yeah, pretty real.

Okay. Okay, say utandamdi.

[Говорящий 2]
Utandamdi.

[Говорящий 1]
U means the center of something. And especially along a line. Like the center of a line.

It's like left-wing politicians and right-wing politicians and what do you call the middle? Moderate.

[Говорящий 2]
Yeah.

[Говорящий 1]
As opposed to central. As opposed to centering the meaning of the center of a circle. This is not that.

Whenever we say u, in this sense it means the center of two extremes. Like on a horizontal line. Ta means the extremes.

Okay, the two extremes. Namde means? Distinguishing between the center and the extremes.

What's the center and what are the extremes? Let's do it. Got some reasons.

Well, okay. In this book, my trainer goes one more step. And he says, you know that thing I talked about in the last book I wrote?

I want to clarify it a little bit. I want to clarify it a little bit. Some things have their own characteristics and some things don't.

Let's divide it into three. Okay? So those of you who studied the Chinese course at Western, or the ACI 15 course, these are the three, what we call the three characteristics of things that are taught by the mind-only school.

And I'll just go through them very briefly. Does this thing really work the way it seems? According to the mind-only school in the system?

Yes. It does. So it's real in that sense.

It's true. It exists truly. It's real in that sense.

It writes. Emptiness itself, Mr. Stone, if you see emptiness, can it really allow you to get light quickly and see your future life, for example? Yes.

So it functions. So those two things, ultimate reality and working things, changing things, normal stuff in the world, we lump them together, and in this book, my chair says, they exist truly, really. They really exist.

But now, what about the root beer float that's waiting for me behind this blackboard? What about the root beer float that Christie will let me drink that's waiting for me behind this blackboard? Where is that?

How real is that? I don't see it. That's what we call an imaginary thing.

And in the mind-only school, those don't count as being real, true, having your own characteristics, etc. So we divide all things into three. We divide between the center and the extremes.

It would be too extreme to say nothing exists. It would be too extreme to say nothing has its own characteristics. Pens have their own, and all the other stuff we normally deal with has their own characteristics.

Emptiness must have some kind of power, some kind of characteristic, because when you see it, all this great stuff happens to you. But what use is a root beer float that you're just thinking of, but you know is not there? No function, no benefit.

That we throw into unreal things. So that's dividing the middle from the extremes, in this case. So Lord Maitreya introduces those three ideas of the mind-only school.

Some stuff really exists, some stuff doesn't really exist. So we're still in the mind-only school in these two books, the first two books. We're getting people to emptiness gradually.

Which means we're accepting which one of the three turns of the wheel, Mr. C? Remember the first turn of the wheel, he just sat down with his four, five guys who had been his tiger cub friends in his past life, and he said, look, this is a real bad luck, we gotta get out of this thing. In the second turn of the wheel, he says, everything's empty.

This pen's not blue. Then in the third wheel he talks, he says, I'm sorry, yeah, of course it's blue. What was my original question?

Oh, which turn of the wheel are we in now? The third. Because he's waffling.

He's waffling. He's saying, something's there, something's there, you know? Lord Buddha didn't mean it in the second turn of the wheel.

Lord Buddha was just being extreme. Why? Check people out a little bit, wake them up.

Okay. Sometimes that's necessary. Yes, you want to?

Yeah. You said that there are three things covered, and then you wanted to say that some stuff exists and some stuff doesn't. According to that school.

Those are two things. Things that exist and things that don't. What's the third thing?

Two of the groups really exist, which is A, changing things, and B, emptiness. And then one of the groups doesn't really exist, which is my root fear. Yeah, of course we could change that, you know?

It gives you a ton of seed for it. Let's see, I don't know. You can come out with it.

Paranormal. Say dode gen. Dode gen.

Do means sutras, meaning the teachings of our Buddha. Especially the open teachings. Dode means more or less the sutra pitaka, meaning the basket.

The whole collection of open teachings. Gen means an ornament like this bracelet. That would be a gen.

And sometimes when you write a book explaining someone else's teachings, you call it like a jewel for those teachings. Meaning, you know, who am I to make more Buddha sutras better? But I can sort of pretty them up a little bit with my explanation.

And that's why it's called dode gen. Sutra Alankara. I'm thinking Krishnika can make the Sanskrit words for everybody who wants them.

And then we can just pass them out because I don't think we have time to do three classes at the moment. But anybody who wants a Sanskrit, can you put pressure on her? I still think it's good for you to have in your pocket when you walk into the YMCA in Tucson, and there's like five sharp guys, like Brian Smith thinks you've got to watch out for him.

Let's stick the law of Wilson. Bispin. Now, this is how Gyaltsen Thierry describes it.

We're in the third book. This is how Gyaltsen Thierry describes it. It says in the third book, my cha didn't deny that Ben was real.

Okay? But now the wording has changed, right? In the first two books, he's saying he is real.

You know? Like, he's a changing thing, he's like a pattern. It has its own characteristics.

But his description of the third book is in the third book, my cha doesn't deny it's real. Meaning what? It's a mainga.

Meaning what? It probably is, but it's a double negative. He doesn't say it's real.

You see? In the first two books, he says Michael's breathing. You know?

As I see him, he's breathing. But when he gets to the third book, now in the third book, he doesn't deny he's real. Which implies he doesn't say he's real.

Okay? That's like a typical monk thing. Okay.

Then he says, then he starts to teach, my cha starts to teach, how can you wake up the compassion in your own mind? How can you wake up bodhicitta in your own mind? So he's getting heavily into bodhisattva.

How do you become bodhisattva? Riksepa means, everybody has that seed in them. And that's the big subject of the book we're going to study.

If someone comes up to you the first day in the YMCA and says, well, what are we going to study? You say, oh, Buddha nature. This book's all about Buddha nature.

There's a Buddha inside you. How do you wake it up? How do you realize it?

Riksepa. Then he says, how do you get your bodhisattva qualities to get bigger and bigger, higher and higher? That's another subject of this third book.

What are some sneaky ways of collecting students and attracting them to these ideas? Like movies or music or yoga or business? Just beautiful.

Desert? How do you attract students? Then he says an interesting thing.

He says, the first three books of Maitreya present the ultimate in a way which is comfortable for the student. They present the ultimate but in a way which is comfortable for those particular people. But they don't clearly talk about emptiness in the sense that that's got any quality or something.

Now that in itself is an implication. What's the implication? What's he implying?

[Говорящий 2]
The last two.

[Говорящий 1]
He says, now the first three they mention the ultimate reality but just in sort of a schmoozy way. In a fluffy way. Because the student couldn't handle it.

But they don't clearly state look, nothing's got any quality. This thing's not blue by itself. This thing's only blue because you're seeing it.

Anything you see about me is coming from me. Anything you see about what I say or how I act is coming from you. Same with your own mind.

Same with your world. Same with the last guy who cut you off in traffic. Why get mad at him?

Take care of the real thing. Shantideva says, don't get mad at the baseball bat. Get mad at the guy who's swinging it.

Come on. You know what I mean? Which is who?

Me? Okay. We've got two more books to go.

This is all the history part. It's a little boring, but we'll get to the fun stuff in the next class, right? Maybe it's not so great.

Say, no talking. No talking. In Sanskrit it's abhisamaya alankara.

This book by Maitreya we studied for the first 12 years in the monastery. When you enter the Geshe course at around age 15, at 13 to 15 you're taught basic logic and how to debate. And then when you're deemed fit to enter the debating ground, you're allowed to start studying the first book.

And this is the first book we studied. 12 years on this book. It's 50 pages long.

You cover an average of four pages a year. And you spend about ten hours a day working on it. It's really intense.

I mean, this book is really intense. What does book number four Oh, if you translated it, it would be the ornament or the jewel of realizations. Wintel means realizations, and gen means the jewel, gen like an ornament.

I'll just quote Gyatso Khe. The ultimate view of emptiness, world view, that's what we call our organization, right? That's what it means.

All the other organizations are all under this thing called world view. The ultimate world view. This book talks about the ultimate world view over and over and over again.

This book talks about the ultimate world view of emptiness and karma over and over and over again. Möki Möki means but but what, Gyatso Khe? Then he goes on to say, look, but the main thing that this book teaches is a peculiar idea about three shades of emptiness.

We haven't gotten to it. We're not going to get to it in this course. But there's an idea that there are three degrees of emptiness, three shades of emptiness.

Like the emptiness of a person in its subtle form and its gross form and the emptiness of this house in its gross form and its subtle form that you could put sort of shades of emptiness. And then you could divide everybody in the world into those people who can see the easiest kind of emptiness and those people who can see the medium kind of emptiness and those bodhisattvas who can see the ultimate kind of emptiness. And you can kind of shade emptiness into three different paths.

Three different ways. What we call listener, self-made Buddha, bodhisattva. And this book is mainly devoted to that idea.

Is that a Majjhimika idea? Yeah, it is a high school idea. But is it the highest part of the high school idea?

No. It's the lower half of the high school which is called Svatantrika. Svatantrika.

Meaning, what do we call it? Independent school. Independent school.

So they accept this idea of three shades of emptiness. But the highest, highest, highest school of Prasangika, the consequent school, we don't accept that. Which probably means what book number five is going to be.

Yeah, Gyulama. Just say Gyulama.

[Говорящий 2]
Gyulama.

[Говорящий 1]
Gyulama really presents emptiness in it's right form. Highest emptiness. I'll call it Gyulama again.

This is from the 8th century. Tepechabha Gyulama Tenchu Denyi the Mayan Tantra Shastra, Gyulama, Nirmaripa Tsamgitsubha Kombe is presented for people who are already used to the mind-only ideas. Like, if you've been studying all those mind-only books, the first three books, right, and you got used to the idea of emptiness in a sort of easy way, talking way?

Then you've been set up for the Gyulama. So Gyulama is for them. It says something which should be taught later on to people who have already been dragged through the first three books.

They understand emptiness well, they understand the thing about them being created by the seeds in my mind. And in that sense we're not separate. That's a lower emptiness.

That's a lower emptiness. Okay? Why?

Guess? It has to do with kunshi. Yeah, nice.

Okay? I'll say it again. The mind-only school, the first three books, they only get as far as Venn's being projected by the seeds in my mind.

Okay? But the assumption is the seeds in my mind are real. The projector is real.

Okay? Everything I'm seeing, everything I experience, even myself, that's a projection. But that special box out of which reality is pouring in my own mind, that box has got to be real.

That much has got to be real. Okay? And then in the fifth book, they come along and say, uh-uh, even that box is your projection.

The projector is your projection. Okay? And then we got to get, we got to talk about that.

That's a big argument in the Dhyalama. That's a big subject in the Dhyalama. And the point is that half the people you teach at the YMCA, they never heard of this idea of stuff coming out of a box in your mind.

And you got to judge the people. You got to say, am I going to present Dhyalama the way the first three books were presented? Or maybe even before that, you know?

And you got to, you'll be stuck in the same situation as Lord Buddha. You'll be stuck with five or ten students from Kansas, maybe, or wherever. Except now the people I meet from Kansas are really smart, but anyway.

You know, and you got to judge, right on the spot, you'll start to say, now look, Dhyalama is talking about this Kunti thing, and you know, the Kunti is just a projection too, it's a projection, but anyway. And then you're going to have to back up. Third turning of the wheel, back up, right?

Oh, yeah, yeah, I'm sorry, I didn't mean that. Well, there's this Buddhism thing, you know, and you got to be nice to people, and you know, Dhyalama helps you out with that. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. You got to take out your pen and start. And you know, you'll be stuck in that position, like, boom, from the first moment, you look in their faces, you start to talk about Dhyalama, and then you'll adjust.

You know, you'll do tonguing. You'll go to the, to wherever their level is, you'll have to adjust to that. That's part of our job.

That's what we do for a living. We just adjust to the audience at the moment. So anyway, Dhyalama, in the fifth book, Maitreya says, look, even the projectors are projected.

Even the projectors are projected. And then he really begins to describe what's literal and what's not literal, in the fifth book. So since you guys are so great, we're going straight to the fifth book, which is Dhyalama.

We're going to take a break, but just before that I want to say one more thing. When Arya Sangha came back to earth, and all his friends were dead. He's like Rip Van Winkle, right?

I was only gone for three years, and half of them were dead. But he comes back and he says, how am I going to teach this to people? And he gets eight good students, and they go out in the middle of nowhere, like Bui, Arizona.

He says, I don't care. Eight good students is enough. He takes them out in the middle of nowhere.

It's a forest in Magadha state in India. And they go out in the forest. There's just a tent in the middle of the mesquite.

And he says, I'll get these eight people to understand what this is all about. And he really works hard on them. He gets them up to serpa, which is almost up to seeing emptiness directly.

And he gets them up to where they can read other people's minds. And, you know, it's not like you wake up one morning and you can read what somebody else wants for breakfast directly. But you wake up and you have a sense.

It's just like a sense. Like, you're kind of thinking, maybe Thelma would like tuna fish for lunch. You know?

And it's just a sense that you have. You know? And you make it and then she's really happy.

And it's like the beginning of shensen serpa, which is reading other people's minds. And then as you practice more and more and more, it becomes more and more clear in your own mind to where you can actually hear them talking in their own mind. But it starts with some kind of instinct about what other people need or want.

And if you're going to teach people, like at the YMCA, it's really helpful. You can imagine how helpful it would be. Like, before you walk into the room, you know whether you're going to have to back up or not.

You see what I mean? And so for a teacher, it's really useful. So Arya Asanga was working really hard on his first-age students to get them up to this level where they could at least have a strong instinct for what those people need, their students need.

And you know the story, eventually he got invited to a king's palace. The king wants to test him because he doesn't believe he's such a great yogi. And he puts him through these tests.

And you know some of the tests, but I'll repeat one. He gets a golden urn, made of pure gold. And inside he puts a bunch of snot and pus and poopoo and peepee.

And then on the top, he puts about an inch of honey. And then he, like, says to Arya Asanga, guess what I got in the pot? And Arya Asanga says, I know it's in the pot, but I wouldn't eat it.

And so the king is like, well, anybody could tell that kind of thing. And then the king asks Arya Asanga six questions, mentally, in his mind, about the perfection of wisdom sutras. And he beams six questions to Arya Asanga.

We're going to cover those after the break, so you've got to come back, right? So take a break for 10-15 minutes, and just relax and go to the bathroom.

[Говорящий 2]
It's ice cold out.

[Говорящий 1]
Yeah, and there's a big thing of cookies in the kitchen. And we'll just relax and come back in 10-15 minutes. Okay.