Углублённый курс ACI 01 — Учения будущего Будды: «Уттаратантра» Майтреи (2003, Аризона), занятие 2

[Говорящий 1]
So, you've heard all about the story of Arya Sangha's visit to Paradise, right? And he went to, where was it? Tushita?

Heaven. And spent a morning there with Maitreya, learning about the perfection of wisdom. And the scene is like, he's just finished 12 years of retreat, trying to understand the perfection of wisdom, like trying to understand more about emptiness.

And because of his efforts in retreat, then he gets taken to Maitreya's place, the future Buddha's Paradise, and he's taught by Maitreya. And I think as you learned from your classes, Maitreya teaches him about emptiness, and then at the end of the trip, which is about 11 o'clock in the morning, right? He went around 9 o'clock in the morning.

And so, around 11 o'clock in the morning, he says to Maitreya, well, now that you've taught me everything about the perfection of wisdom, could I have some written documentation to take back to earth? And so, Maitreya grants him the five great books of Maitreya. And he comes back to earth with these five great books.

And I get this feeling that Arya Sangha spent the rest of his life trying to figure out the five books, you know? I mean, if you or I had been taken to heaven for a couple of hours, and some deity had given us all these books, which are quite short really, and then come back to earth, I think you would chew it for the rest of your life, you know? And Maitreya has designed the five books so that you go through them in an order.

Your understanding of emptiness gets more and more subtle as you go through the five books, which has led to big arguments about whether these books are mind-only school, which is a relatively lower school, or is it middle way school, which is a relatively higher school. And so, there are still great debates about whether the five books represent emptiness according to mind-only or according to the middle way school. But you can tell, I think, by studying Arya Sangha's writings about the books, that he has been struggling with this question.

And of course, Lord Buddha predicted him as someone who would clarify the differences between a lower understanding of emptiness and a higher understanding of emptiness. So, that seems to be his life work. He's so good at explaining the lower version that he becomes known as the innovator or like the Henry Ford of the mind-only school, the person who started, really he's recognized as the head or the beginner of the mind-only school.

Nagarjuna, Arya Nagarjuna being known as the founder of the middle way school. So, you can see he's so good at trying to figure out what Lord Buddha said that he gets declared later on the head of the mind-only school, the beginner of that lineage. And in my mind and in the history books I've read, and some of them I put in the reading, these are books written by the early historians of Tibet, Bhutan Rinpoche and Tharanatta.

They're trying to trace Arya Sangha's development. Like he has this pivotal experience where he goes to heaven. And that modern scholars debate whether Arya Sangha just didn't write the Uttara Tantra himself.

If you look at the Catalogue to the Tengyur, it's very clearly stated that the Uttara Tantra is by Maitreya, spoken by Maitreya. And then the commentary, the Vakya, which is what we have, is a commentary by Arya Sangha. So, Arya Sangha writes this long commentary trying to figure out what he was taught.

And we still have that commentary in Sanskrit, and we still have the Uttara Tantra in Sanskrit. So, for people who wish to study Sanskrit, it's a very good book to work on. It's also not too hard to read.

The meaning is very difficult, but the words are not too difficult. And, you know, so we jumped into this. I started to study this commentary by Arya Sangha.

He's struggling to explain this book. And again, I think your teachers told you, Arya Sangha, after his pivotal experience, goes off to a very, very hot, dusty, empty place without much trees or water. And he builds a little hermitage, and he sits down to try to figure it out.

And then slowly people wander out there, one by one, trying to work it out with him. So, one by one, people are attracted. It's almost like if you read about St. Francis, right?

He's out in this broken-down temple church, trying to rebuild it. And one by one, his friends come out to help him. And then slowly they start to build these monasteries.

So, the same sort of thing happened with Arya Sangha. And slowly people start to gather around him to discuss the meaning of the five books. And then you heard the story, I think, of him approaching the king.

And the king tests him with six very amazing questions. And then he passes the test, and the king decides to sponsor him. And then the whole thing gets bigger and bigger, like that.

Branches start to be built, east coast, west coast, things like that. Retreat centers and universities. And it starts to get bigger and bigger.

And then this lineage reaches up to Nalenda Monastery, which those of you who heard His Highness recently in New York, he spoke a lot about how Nalenda Monastery, which is really a university, became like the source of all the Tibetan traditions. All four of the great Tibetan lineages started from Nalenda Monastery. And then you have the Abbot of Nalenda, after Naropa, I believe, Naropala, who is that?

I mean, one of the abbots after Naropa. Atisha, Atisha, okay? So this is like 1000 AD.

This is one of the great teachers who brought Buddhism to Tibet. Our lineage, the Dalai Lama's lineage, Gelugpa lineage, traces itself back to Atisha's visit to Tibet. So the lineage of the Uttara Tantra goes up to this Nalenda University.

It's being debated and studied while Naropa, Master Naropa, and Atisha are there, and Maitreya. What's the connection between Lord Atisha and Maitreya? Maitreya also taught Marpa, who taught Milarepa, and that's how these things come down to us, especially our yoga systems, okay?

And our Vajrayogini systems. But anyway, what's the funny connection between Maitreya, Naropa's buddy, and Lord Atisha? Yeah, okay.

So Atisha, as abbot after Naropa, has had to discipline Maitreya for holding Vajrayogini Tsechu's a little too wild in the monastery. So Lord Atisha's playing like the tough guy, and Maitreya and Naropa are playing like the yogis, you see? And this has been the relationship.

It's a beautiful relationship. And there are some schools of Tibet which say that the Uttara Tantra came into Tibet through Maitreya, and that Maitreya hid away the Uttara Tantra in a stupa, and then later someone in Tibet found it, and there's a whole tradition like that. But according to the Tengyur, the catalogue to the Derge edition of the Tengyur that we have, Lord Atisha translated the Uttara Tantra into Tibetan, and it's commentary by Arya Sangha.

So anyway, the bottom line is, we're going to be using mainly a text that Lord Atisha translated, but the contents of that text, the Uttara Tantra teachings themselves, have been very influential in the tantric systems in Tibet. So you see sort of a crossover here between the straight guys and the yogis in the Uttara Tantra. And it was very interesting for me, opening the book and comparing the Tibetan and the Sanskrit.

In the Tibetan it says, saṅgye dhāncānti sambhād tam jīla cak ca lo, which means, I bow down to all the Buddhas and the bodhisattvas. So I'm looking over on the other side of the page to find the Sanskrit for that, and all it says is, om śrī nama-vajra-sattvāya, which means, I bow down to the being of diamond. So I'm already starting to wonder what's going on here, you see.

Normally the bow at the beginning of the book tells you what the book's about. And so bowing down to Buddhas and bodhisattvas is sort of a general, all-purpose, generic bow down. But to bow down to the being of diamond has a totally different flavor to me.

Vajra-sattva, the Tibetans translate it as warrior of diamond, Dorje Sempa. But in the Sanskrit it translates out normally as just diamond person, the diamond guy. I bow down to the diamond guy.

So already, in my mind, there's a precedent, there's a theme being set here of diamonds, you know, of diamonds, something important about the diamond. So I'm like that, and then I go on to the first verse of the Uttara Tantra. And it says, Dorje ne nampa dun, which means, these are the seven places of the diamond.

So diamond is already, I'm already enjoying this book, as a former diamond dealer. I'm already thinking, this book looks interesting. Whenever I see a book and the guy's got diamonds in the first pages like five times, I'm thinking, this person knows something, this person has seen something.

And so the first verse of the Uttara Tantra, you know, the job of the teachers this afternoon, they're going to be the set-up guys, then I'm going to do the punch-out, you see. they set you up with the history and how the book got into our hands, right? So Arya Sangha, by the way, how long did he spend there?

A morning, right? But when he got back, it was 50 years later, human time, right? So time goes differently.

But now we have to discuss the book itself. And I think it's important that you know what you're learning. Like the whole point of the classes that I like to teach is that they are authentic, you know, that you are going back to the real books and the real sources and an authentic lineage.

I just feel very strongly about lineage. And so you're going to get these long, dry readings from which we extract, hopefully, an interesting class. But you get those big piles of readings so that you know it's authentic and it's not something that I made up or something like that.

So obviously we have a book written by someone with a diamond fetish, right? And what does he say about the diamond? How does he get into the diamond?

He introduces his book. Lord Maitreya is introducing his book through seven diamond-like visions. I'll put the Tibetan up here.

And I think I'll save the Sanskrit for those of you taking the Sanskrit. Some people are taking Sanskrit track. If you want to take Sanskrit track, contact Gail.

And I think there are two Sanskrit track teachers here. Which reminds me, before I forget, this is really a ten-class course, but we only have eight periods to have classes in. So I took out the two toughest classes, which are not directly related to the Uttara Tantra.

They're more like special interest classes. One of them is devoted to a special kind of emptiness that was taught in Tibet very widely and which is still followed by several of the Tibetan schools. The Kagyu, Nyingma, Rime schools still follow this special kind of emptiness teaching called Shentong.

And if you were at His Holiness' teaching in New York this last month, he spoke about it. He spoke about it in detail. And I thought since that comes up so often that it'd be very helpful.

It's really a theory which is derived from the Uttara Tantra. It comes from the Uttara Tantra. And it's very big in many schools.

Even some Sakya schools started to teach it like that. It's not accepted as correct in our lineage. And it's not correct according to the highest systems of Buddhism.

But it's a very interesting and very useful concept. So I thought that it'd be very beautiful to go over it in detail so that you could understand it deeply, understand its virtues, understand its weaknesses, and ultimately why it's not accepted as being highest middle way. And I felt bad about just throwing that class out.

So what I did was I asked two of the teachers here, which is John Roadhouse and Winston McCullough. I asked them if in the morning on Sunday they could... Those of you who want to skip a yoga class, which is what I like to do, if you wanted to have a Shantung class about that theory, those two will be here teaching that at what time?

Nine o'clock? So that's one of the classes that got dropped. So if you want to come to that, you're welcome to come to that.

And then there'll be a class on Monday about the theory called Tathagatakpacik. Tathagatakpacik means are all paths ultimately in the end the same? Do all paths lead to the same result?

And that was a big debate in Tibet and Uttaratantra was one of the books that that debate came from. And that's one of the subjects debated in the Uttaratantra. So if you'd like to hear more about that, which is very technical.

It involves three kind of tricky ideas about different kinds of emptiness. I think the same crew, Winston? Anybody else?

Winston on his own will be teaching that Monday morning at nine o'clock. Okay, that class. So if you want to catch those two classes.

If you're really into it, they're very technical, they're going to be difficult. And if you're interested in emptiness, I think it's a good thing to hear, if you want. Where will it be, here?

Here in the back, amidst the grunts and groans. So anyway, say, DORJE THABU NAMPA DUN DORJE THABU NAMPA DUN What's DORJE? Diamond, why?

Lord of stones. JE means lord, DO means stone. Like Je Tsongkhapa means lord Tsongkhapa.

DO means stone, so DORJE means lord of stones. THABU means like a DORJE, like a diamond. And then NAMPA DUN, the seven visions.

NAMPA means like a vision, and DUN means seven. This is the subject of the whole Uttara Tantra. So if you take the whole Uttara Tantra, you can break it up into seven diamond-like visions.

Well, first of all, we know what a diamond represents, right? What does it represent? Emptiness.

Emptiness, okay? In what three ways? Do you guys remember?

It's from the Diamond Cutter. Three ways. Give me one.

It's ultimate. I mean, that's the most important thing, okay? If you think about it, in the whole world, you can't find anything that's ultimate, you see?

There's nothing that's 100% anything, like the best of anything, the tallest anything, the longest anything. You see, the longest, you can always add one more inch, right? There is no longest in the world.

Shortest, you can always cut something by half, right? If it has width, if it has a measure, you can reduce it. You know, what's the sweetest thing?

There is no such thing. You can always add more sugar, as I know. There isn't anything that's the most of anything, okay?

Nothing. But a diamond is very close, okay? Diamond is almost ultimate.

A diamond is the hardest thing in the universe, okay? Nothing can scratch a diamond. It's very interesting.

Like, when I went to cut diamonds, I went into this dark room up on the 15th floor of a building on Diamond Street, 47th Street, New York. There are all these Hasidic guys, and I'm going to learn diamond cutting, and I go in there, and there's a screaming sound of the diamond wheels. You know, they're spinning at 1,500 rpm.

And then you shove the diamond down onto the steel, and you try to hold it there, and it's jumping like that, and you're like jamming it down. And then it sounds like all the subway cars in New York in one room. It's like unbelievable.

It like drives you crazy the first few weeks. Then later you don't hear it anymore. And then I'm like, wow, the steel's cutting the diamond.

They said, no, if you don't put diamond powder on the wheel, the diamond will just go straight through the wheel. It'll just split the wheel in half like that. So you take these old lousy diamonds, like the yellow diamonds, and you crush them into powder.

And then you mix that with olive oil, and you spread it on the wheel. And then it's very cool. Diamond has grains like wood does.

And just by random orientation, some of the pieces of powder will be lined up according to the long grain. And then you try to set your diamond on the wheel so that it's cutting across the side grain, like across this way, across the grain. And then the sharp pieces that ever hit it can cut it, but only a diamond can cut a diamond.

There's nothing else that can cut a diamond. Nothing in the world, no physical substance can scratch a diamond. So in a way, diamond is close to being ultimate.

Why is that important to us? Because one day you will see ultimate reality. There's a reality that is truly beyond everything.

It is higher than everything. If you spend 20 minutes seeing it, you can become, within a short time, a being who can go to all places in the universe and help all beings that there are. So, you know, we go to the prison once a month and we teach these guys meditation.

And they're so grateful. And you feel so good when you get out. You feel like dynamite.

Because it's so nice to help somebody who's really in need. But if you could do that on countless planets at the same time, if you could go to countless beings and serve them all at the same time, then that would fulfill your life. That's what happiness is.

I mean, everybody's here because they think they're going to be a little happier when they get out of here, or maybe when the quizzes are over. But everyone's here because they think they might be a little happier when they come out of this place than when they came in. And I propose that the thing that would make us all happiest is if we could take care of other people in an ultimate way, you see?

So if you see ultimate reality, just once, for 20 minutes, in a deep state of meditation, then you can become a person who can help all other beings. You're on the fast track to become enlightened. So that's one of the important meanings of diamond.

When you come out of that experience and you try to imagine something ultimate, the only image is of a diamond. And there's two parts to that. One is that, oh, the closest thing I can think of is a diamond, because it's ultimate.

It's ultimately hard. Even if you've had no interest in diamonds, even if you never knew about diamonds, you always have this perception afterwards. And then you think, but a diamond's not so close either.

It's just the closest thing, but it's not perfect. That's why that other great book is called The Diamond Cutter Sutra and not The Diamond Sutra. The cutter is more important than the diamond almost, you see?

The point is that it's close but no cigar. Like a diamond is close to emptiness, but it can be cut. They're cutting the diamond, meaning a diamond is a good example, a good metaphor, but not exact.

So if you were going to say some visions had to do with a diamond, you'd have to add a word between diamond and vision, like what? Dabu. Dabu means sort of like.

Sort of like. Sort of like a diamond. So when you see in this book, Dorje Dabu Nambha, I get a great respect for the book.

Oh, someone in this immediate lineage has seen emptiness directly. The author of this book understands emptiness in a direct way. So you see that and you're like excited.

So Dorje Dabu. What's two more meanings of diamond? Clear.

Diamond is perfectly, visibly, I mean it's the highest refractive index of any gemstone or any transparent or translucent object in the universe, which is why it's so popular as a gem. It sends back more light to your eye than any other substance can. But it's totally clear.

It's totally pure. If there was a wall of diamond between you and me right now, you wouldn't see it. You couldn't see it.

And so emptiness is around you all the time. The thing that if you see it for 20 minutes, shoots you very close up to Buddhahood, is around you all the time. Every object in this room has emptiness.

Every hair on every eyebrow in this room has its own emptiness. Every grain in the floor, every little design in the pattern of the wood has its own emptiness. And you have your own emptiness, and the city of Tucson has its own emptiness, and the world has its own emptiness, and the universe has its own emptiness.

There are countless emptinesses around you. If you could see it for 20 minutes, you would be very close to being a Buddha. But you can't see it.

It's difficult to see. You have to be in a state of deep meditation. You have to have proper training beforehand.

What's the third point of the diamond? Yeah, all diamonds are pure diamond. I mean, some of them have a little more iron or not, and that makes them yellow or not, okay?

Because it absorbs the red and the blue, but that's another story. The point is that all diamonds everywhere have the same structure atomically. The lead in a pencil lead is also pure carbon, but it's messed up structurally.

It's very good in one direction, and it's very weak in another direction. And when you write with a pencil, then slabs of carbon slide off like slate, and they stick to the paper. But in a diamond, the atomic structure is pure both ways.

So it's just totally unbreakable, and it's pure. And every diamond in the world has exactly the same structure. Just like that, the emptiness of my head, the emptiness of my stomach, the emptiness of my left ear, the emptiness of this room, the emptiness of the universe all have exactly the same quality.

They are 100% emptiness. Totally pure, sheer emptiness. They're all the same.

So in those three senses, diamond is very important. So in this book, we're going to have the seven diamond-like visions, which suggest that Maitreya is trying to get us into what vision? Diamond vision, path of seeing.

The book, I suggest, has been written to get us to the path of seeing. The book has been written to help us see emptiness directly. And the messenger who carried the book, you see, if he was having trouble understanding, if he was interested in emptiness, and if he had the courage to go into a cave for 12 years, but he couldn't get emptiness, then what path was he on?

Yeah, he's on the path of preparation, which is the second of the five paths. Your spiritual career will have five levels. You will go through five major changes during your spiritual career, everybody.

The second one is marked by trying to figure out emptiness intellectually. What does emptiness mean? And then at some point you go into that 20-minute thing and you reach the third path.

So Arya Sangha, just before he goes to heaven, is obviously on the second path. He's struggling. He's struggling to see emptiness directly.

He's struggling with ideas about emptiness. So if you was Maitreya, what kind of book would you give him? You'd give him a book that was trying to push him up to the third path.

You'd try to get him over the edge into the direct perception of emptiness. You'd start to talk about diamonds with him. You see?

So that's why Maitreya has written a book that has seven diamond-like visions in it. And that's the structure of the Atara Tantra. The book is divided into five chapters.

But there are seven visions. Okay? So visions one through four, they get into chapter one.

And then vision number five gets into chapter two. Six is the subject of chapter three. Seven is the subject of chapter four, which means I made a boo-boo.

Right? No. Chapter five is a little tiny chapter called The Benefits of This Book.

Okay? So that's not covered in the seven visions. Chapter five is about the benefits of the book, the benefits of seeing emptiness.

Okay? It's a final sales job by Maitreya. Seeing emptiness is cool.

You know? All these things will happen to you. He's selling the idea of seeing emptiness.

But that's the whole structure of the Atara Tantra. It has four great chapters, one additional chapter. Each of the three last chapters relates to the last three of the diamond-like visions.

And then chapter one includes the first four of the diamond-like visions. There's a big line between chapter one and chapters two, three, and four. There's a big line between the first four visions and the last three visions.

Those of you who have had this teaching, right? Those of you who are teaching, I don't think we covered this. Maybe we did.

But I'm going to ask you a question. Why would he stick the first four visions together? And why would he put the last three visions separately?

What's the difference between the first four visions and the last three visions? Especially with relation to the main subject of the Atara Tantra, which is what? Buddha nature, okay?

Why are we sitting here in Tucson, Arizona, right? What are we talking about? What's the cool subject?

Why is Atara Tantra a great book to study? The whole book is about Buddha nature, you know? Supposedly you have some kind of seed in you that's going to make you into a Buddha.

Every living creature, bug, ants, amoebas, whales, Iraqis, Americans, everybody, we all have a seed in us called Buddha nature, okay? And I just think that's cool. I mean, the idea is cool.

And then if there's something we can learn about it to make it grow faster, like, okay, I got this Buddha seed, but I don't see it's been doing much the last 30, 40 years. Can I do anything to accelerate this thing? You got to learn more about the seed and make it grow faster, right?

So the whole book, I love this book. I was thinking we should change the name of the course to Buddha nature or something, right? The Buddha within you, something like that.

We have to do that later. Chukyila, right? Change the name of the course to The Buddha Within You.

That's the whole point of this book. So I go back to this question. With regard to Buddha nature, why would you split the first four off?

The rest of you don't know the seven yet, so you're off the hook, okay? Until tomorrow afternoon. Why would you stick the first four together and the last three together?

Those of you who've had this, any ideas? Say again? She said cause and result.

That's not too bad. Michael Brannan would know this one because he was so into understanding Buddha nature, right? It's the one which is still...

Yeah, what's the main Buddha nature we've been talking about in our class? Yeah, cool. There's his definition of Buddha nature.

And don't worry, we'll get to it, okay? It's not like some wah-wah-wah-wah, woo-wee-woo-wee stuff, okay? It's very clear.

By the end of the course, okay? By Monday it's clear, okay? So don't get anxiety attack yet.

Michael said it's the emptiness in the mind of all living beings, right? But then he added something, which was what? Which still has impurity, which is still mixed up with impurity, okay?

That gives us a clue about how to make Buddha seed grow. Okay, you have a Buddha seed, but there's something obstructing it. There's something stopping its growth.

There's like a stone sitting on top of the seed, you see? There's something that blocks the growth of the Buddha seed. So the classical definition of Buddha nature is the Buddha seed which is still screwed up, still covered, still obscured, still blocked by something, okay?

So those of you who have studied the book already, the first four of the seven diamond-like visions relate to that Buddha seed, okay? Which is still like obstructed, still like blocked. It's the reason why we're still here in this lousy realm, instead of in some paradise, okay?

It's the reason why we still have to live in a violent world and a difficult world, okay? It's because that seed is still blocked or obstructed. So the first four visions, and the reason why they all got stuck into chapter one, is that they all relate to that seed which is still blocked, still obstructed.

There's still a rock sitting over the seed, okay? That implies that the last three are talking about some Buddha nature or something like a Buddha nature which is not obstructed, okay? It's already freed.

It's already pure, okay? And that's the difference there. Let's start going through the seven diamond-like visions.

Say, saṅgye. Saṅgye. Saṅg means woke up.

Gye means like grew in a beautiful way. And the Tibetans were faced with this word, what, in Sanskrit? Buddha.

And they were struggling with how to translate it. Bud means to wake up. But it also means to get better.

So they translated it as, you know, got cleared. Saṅg means to wake up or to get cleared away. And then gye means to get better or to grow.

So the Tibetans chose a word, saṅgye. The saṅg part means they got rid of all their bad qualities. Like Buddha got rid of anger.

Buddha got rid of envy. Buddha got rid of ignorance, okay? And then gye means they developed all their good qualities.

Oh, they have compassion to the ultimate extent. They have kindness. They have love.

They have knowledge. They have ability. All of these things are grown, gye.

They woke up, saṅg, or they cleared away all their bad dreams, right? And then gye, they got up and got big, you know, grew really nice. So that's the meaning of the word saṅgye.

And that's the first of the seven diamond-like visions. It's about saṅgye. Last night we did a meditation.

Those of you who were at the U of A, we were meditating on a rose inside of your heart. How big? Like I said, if you can do it, you know, you can do a grapefruit if it's an afternoon and it's hot and you didn't have a break, okay?

You can do as big as an orange if you're a little sharper, like around five. You can do as big as a marble if it's around seven. If it's in the morning, you can do as big as a pea.

And if you're feeling really sharp, like, I don't know, 8 a.m., 7 a.m., you can make it as big as a grain of sand in your heart, deep in your heart. And then on that rose you put a Buddha. You place a Buddha.

And then we had this long talk last night about why make the Buddha Oriental, you know? Why can't Buddha be Caucasian or whatever else you are, okay? And then why does Buddha have to be a guy, you know?

I mean, Buddha could be a woman, right? Just as well. There's no reason why not.

But then we got into one more distinction. What was it? Yeah.

Why think of it as somebody else, you see? Why not think of it as the Buddha that you're going to be? If you have a Buddha seed, according to Buddhism, every being in this room is destined to be the fully enlightened one who comes to the world and helps everybody, you see?

Every person in this room will be the next Buddha. Who is the next Buddha? Maitreya.

Who wrote the book? Maitreya. Who are you?

You see? I mean, Maitreya is the coming Buddha, right? Maitreya is supposed to happen very soon, right?

And frankly, if you got this far to be in this room, to be hearing after 2,000 years Maitreya's book, then your seed is very far developed, you see? Like, you think you're a plain old schmuck or schmuckus, right? But the point is, your Buddha seed is highly developed.

If your karma has brought you back to this book that you studied many previous lifetimes, I'm just reminding you, right? I'm just here to remind you. But if your karma has brought you this far, to be in a room in a country where nobody ever talks about this book, you're the first people, I think, to study this book in detail, aside from the people who were lucky enough to hear it from Kirti Tendulkar Rinpoche a few weeks ago in California.

But there seems to be a comeback of this book, right? You have studied this book many times. You know this book.

I'm just reminding you. Those of you who studied it in the last few thousand lives will do well on your quizzes. Those of you who had a gap of a few thousand lifetimes will find the quizzes irksome.

But either way, you'll do your quizzes, right? So, it's just a question of how long it's been since you heard this book. But if you have the karma to be here and hear this book after so many years, so many centuries, your Buddha seed is very, very strong.

The seed is very well developed. You are very, very close. And the reason I'm teaching it, the reason I come, it's not so much to make you a Buddhist scholar.

It's not so much that you come out knowing some Tibetan words or Sanskrit words. It's not even that you practice that meditation we learned last night, over and over. It's that we are trying to make you the next Buddha.

We are trying to make you the next Buddha. And then everybody's thinking, it's going to be sort of crowded next time. All these Buddhists coming to the world.

I mean, the last one was lucky. It was just one. We've got like a hundred people here.

If you understand emptiness, you know how it's going to work out. So don't worry about overpopulation of Buddhists or anything. You will be the next Buddha in this world.

Each of you is Maitreya. We're just reminding you. We're just trying to trigger that process.

And it will be triggered. No matter how this class seems to you, no matter what your impression of it is, you are being groomed to be the next Buddha in this world. That's why I'm here.

That's what we're doing here. So it will get boring and hot and long, and there will be strange words and ideas. But the point is that we are trying to bakchak serpa.

Say bakchak. Serpa. This serpa means to reawaken a seed inside of you.

You have a seed inside of you. We are struggling to break it open. The purpose of this class, the purpose of going over the incredibly holy words of Maitreya is to remind you who you are, to break the seed open.

Then you will be the next Buddha on this planet. You will be Maitreya. And don't forget it.

That's all the real point of this course is. We're just trying to get you... We're like your mom combing your hair and getting you dressed up for going to school.

Everybody's waiting. So you have to work really hard. That's the sangye in the seven diamond-like visions.

It doesn't mean some other person who became a Buddha two and a half thousand years ago. We're not talking about that. We're talking about you being the next Buddha.

That's the first vision. Why would that relate to the path of seeing? Alistair.

Good. He said because one of the realizations you have in the aftermath of that direct perception of emptiness is that you see directly your own enlightenment, which is really, really cool. Really, really cool.

To see that you will be a Buddha. To see that Buddha. I mean, if you ever...

For one thing, I mean, you'd sort of be... You'd sort of tend more to believe in Buddhism, right? If you saw yourself as the next Buddha.

You see? It's very interesting. It's a very powerful experience.

And then really, you can't be really miserable your whole life. I mean, you can have bad days. You can have bad weeks.

You can have bad months. But you've seen where you're headed, right? You know you're going to be the next Buddha.

So you can... Schwarzenegger? Whatever problems he has in the next couple months, he knows he's going to be governor of California.

You know what I mean? He's already got the lungtenpa. He's already got the confirmation, you see?

And so, whenever he wakes up and he's grumpy or his muscles hurt from his old weightlifting days or whatever, he can still think to himself, but God damn it, I'm going to be the governor, you know? And it's the same with us, you know? Like, if you've seen it directly, it's even harder to have a bad day.

But I'm not saying you can't have a bad day. But all you guys have seen it indirectly, right? Like, you know the purpose of this course.

We will be going over and over again how your Buddhist seed is going to grow. And so, sometimes you should just kick back and enjoy the fact that you're going to be the next Jesus on this planet, you see? And that sounds sort of, what do you call it, megalomaniacal or whatever.

But it happens to be true, okay? Because things are empty. So, stick with this course for a few more days, okay?

Learn how that's going to happen. And rejoice sometimes. Like, just kick back and understand that you will be helping countless people all at the same time.

You will have the power to be on every bus in every city in the world, sitting next to every grumpy guy that needs someone to smile at them, you see? You'll have the power to do that all in one moment, all at the same time. And that's what this class is for.

That's why we're having this course, okay? So, whenever you feel down or grumpy, think about that. That's who you're going to be.

That's what this course is for. That's what your destiny is. Whether you know it or not, whether you walk out of here at the break, which is about to happen, or whether you stick it out, you're still going to be the next Buddha in this world.

So, even if you leave this afternoon and you never come back, a week from now, a month from now, when you're not feeling so well or something bad happens, just kick back. Remember, you will be that, okay? You have that Buddha seed.

You have that seed in you, okay? We're on to the second diamond-like vision. I like teaching Maitreya because in all the statues of Maitreya, he has one foot down, one foot up.

It means he's halfway here. So, I get to sit like a foreigner, like a westerner. Say, Chö.

Chö. Chö means Dharma, okay? The teachings.

And the idea is the reason why you want to get enlightened, the reason why we want to become a Buddha, the reason why you will be the next Buddha is that you want to help people. You want to help people. It's not just this thing of being able to appear simultaneously on countless planets at the same time.

I mean, you can almost do that with the web now, right? But the idea is that you've got to do something when you get there and help people, serve people, take care of people, right? Take care of people.

And you can feed them, you can give them houses, you can sit with them and talk about their problems. But in the end, you have to bring them to their destiny. And their destiny is the same as yours, right?

You have to help them become the next Buddha. I mean, that's what everybody wants to be. Everybody wants to learn to take care of other people in an ultimate way.

So, naturally, the second diamond-like vision is the Dharma or the teaching that you will give people after you get enlightened. So, you know, enlightened beings, they go to many planets, they show up as audiences for neurotic teachers. They show up as the guy next to you on a bus when you need some companionship or friend.

They show up as your dog, as your child, as your parent, as your spouse. And they act in many ways. But in the end, the only way to help someone else is to teach them the Dharma.

And the Uttaratantra is very clear about that. I mean, you will see many of the verses in reading six, if you ever get it. And it will say that, yeah, we have to clear away your Buddha nature, like filth removed from a gold coin, right?

But then there's always this sentence, Gyaltsabje always throws in this sentence, but you got to do it yourself, you know? Like, I can only teach you, you know? In the end, you have to do it yourself.

So, the best thing you can do for people is to teach them Dharma. But in the end, each of us has to do it ourselves, right? I can't collect karma for you, you can't collect karma for me.

People can run around and do errands for me if I'm the teacher, right? Unfortunately, they can't do karma for me. One of my holy yoga teachers, David Swenson, he said he's invented a pill that people can take instead of doing their yoga practice every morning.

You know? And I was, like, amazed. You know, I said, this is what everybody wants, you know?

And he says, yeah, and on the instructions it says, take this pill, do these exercises for an hour, and something like that. But it doesn't work, right? I mean, it's like yoga, that you have to do yourself.

In the end, you have to do it yourself. But somebody has to teach you. So, again, this teaching is Gautama Buddha, Shakyamuni Buddha's teaching, or what?

Who's teaching this Dharma? It's the second diamond-like vision. You are.

Okay? This is future, the Dharma to come. The Dharma in this world, when you come back to help the rest of us.

All right? So, this is not just any old Dharma. This is the Dharma you're going to teach.

Okay? Based on your imperfect notes from the Uttara Tantra. So, be careful.

All right? No, it's really cool. This is the Dharma you're going to teach.

This is the teachings you're going to give. And think about it, you know. I was in the college last night, the University of Arizona.

I haven't been in a college in God knows how many years. And then I suddenly realized, I have no idea how these people think. They're like aliens to me.

I thought that since I was in a college when I was twenty-something, that I would just be able to relate to everybody. But then it suddenly dawned on me, I don't know at all what these people are thinking. You have to change your teaching, right?

So, you got to start thinking about those issues now. For when you come back as a Buddha. What am I going to teach?

How am I going to relate to people? How am I going to make this relevant to people, to real people? And that's a big decision to make.

You have to start thinking about that now. What's going to happen after you teach them? Say, tsok.

Tsok. Tsok means sangha, okay? Sangha means...

Well, actually, san in Sanskrit came into English as kan. And ga came into English as words like gra. And so, congregation, congregate is directly related to sangha.

You see, it means congregation really, literally. So, sangha means what in the higher sense? In one sense, it means all the monks and nuns.

It means all the people who are ordained in Buddhism, right? The priestly caste, the priests, right? But what does it mean on a higher level?

Anyone who has seen emptiness directly, okay? So, if you go through that 20-minute meditation, which takes years of preparation to get to, right? Proper training.

But once you go through that, then you are what we call sangha or tsok. Then you are among the community of people who have seen emptiness, people who are about to become enlightened, okay? So, the idea of the first three visions is very beautiful.

And here's the progression, right? We go through the visions in a progression. I want to become an angel who can reach all planets at the same moment.

When I get there, I'm going to teach people dharma in whatever package works. If I got to do it with yoga, I'll do it with yoga. If I got to do it with bowling, I'll do it with bowling.

If I got to do it with business, I'll do it with business. If I have to look like a hippie, I'll look like a hippie. If I have to look like a monk, I'll look like a monk.

If I have to look like a normal person, I'll look like a normal person, you know? Whatever package works, I will teach the dharma, right? And the goal will be tsok.

I want to get them to the point where they see emptiness directly. I want to get them into the community of people who have seen emptiness directly. So, that's the logic behind the first three visions, okay?

There's only one small drawback, which is we ain't Buddhas yet, okay? We have Buddha nature, but it's like covered. It's like mucked up.

I mean, mucked up comes directly from the Uttara Tantra, okay? There's a whole section on it. I'll talk to you about it, okay?

So, number four means we got to get in touch with our kam. We have to get in touch with our kam. Say kam.

Kam. Kam means a separate place or a separate thing. Like there's a separate state of Tibet out the east called kam.

The people there are called kambas, and they're like the cowboys of Tibet. They're the rough guys. And then food is sometimes called kam gese.

Kam means bite-size. And then kam as a philosophical term means a division of existing things. But in this teaching, in the Uttara Tantra, it has a totally different meaning.

And that's Tathagatagarbha. Your Buddha nature is called kam, okay? I like to translate it as essence, or Buddha essence.

It's your Buddha nature is called your kam, okay? And since we taught this out at Diamond Mountain, out in Bui, everybody's been running around and saying, what's your kam, what's your kam, you know? It means like in common terms, kam means what's your potential, what's your aptitude, what interests you?

You say, oh, this person has a kam for photography. This person has a kam for eating. This person has a kam for Sanskrit.

You know, they hear a couple of words and they learn it right away. So kam in that sense means like genetic propensity, you know? Like what do you have inside of you that makes you attracted towards something?

It's really a bhaktyak or a vasana in Sanskrit. It's a seed in your mind from many, many, many past lives. And so kam in this sense means your Buddha potential, your Buddha seed is called kam.

Supposedly you have Buddha potential in you. Supposedly that potential is blocked or covered or obscured. And so the task becomes to uncover that Buddha nature, okay?

To find that Buddha nature. That's what this course is about, okay? So again, you see a progression through the diamond-like visions.

I want to become a Buddha so I can help everybody. Number one. Number two.

When I become a Buddha, I'm going to emanate out to billions of planets and teach people what they need to know. Number three. Then they'll all become Aryas or people who have seen emptiness directly.

Ah, but first I have to locate or identify my own Buddha nature and uncover it, okay? That's called kam. Can you uncover it on your own?

Not really. I mean, it's sort of like learning to play concert piano on your own. I mean, theoretically it might be possible.

It might take a few lifetimes, you know? It's like if you want to be really good at something, you need a really good teacher. And as you get older in life, you realize that if you want to learn something, go find the best at it, you know?

Like we were... It's so funny. We were in New York.

Christie and me have been studying ballet in retreat because it helps your alignment and we believe it helps your central channel and things like that. It's a very serious exercise for us. So we go to New York and we're trying to cop a class and Nanette is...

Where's Nanette? Where'd she go? Anyway, I saw her.

Yeah. Oh, she's shy. She's over there somewhere.

So we say, Nanette, find us a ballet teacher that can help us for now, you know? She goes to Lincoln Center. She goes to the head of the New York City Ballet, the head of the teachers, the most famous ballet teacher maybe in the world, you know?

And says, These crazy two people who are really uncoordinated and stupid and clumsy want to have a class with you. And she says, Great. And she opens Lincoln Center for us to have a class.

The security is running up and saying, What the hell are you doing? She says, We're having a class. Go away.

So if you want to learn something well, find the best. Find the best. Half an hour with a teacher like that is worth about six months with anybody else.

Just like that. They just see right into you. They start telling you, Oh, you must have had an accident three years ago with your left toe on your third, you know?

And they know things like that. They just look at you and they know what you need like, Boom! You know, like that.

So, if you want to uncover your Buddha nature, if you want to reveal your Buddha nature, right? Find it. You got to go find what?

Good teacher. Perfect teacher. Okay?

This leads us back to, say, Changchun. Changchun. This means Buddha.

Now Gyaltsabje is a logician, right? You're studying a commentary by Je Tsongkhapa's most famous student, Gyaltsabje. That's going to be the basis of this whole course.

Now, would a logician have a problem by now with the seven diamond-like visions? Or anybody else? Huh?

You don't have a problem yet? There's two Buddhas already. Come on.

You know? Number one was Buddha. I mean, it's a different word, right?

Sangye. Sangye translates into Sanskrit as Buddha. And then Changchun translates as Bodhi.

But it's the same thing. I mean, it's a Buddha. So why has he got a Buddha as number five?

You know? He already covered Buddha. You tell me.

In the progression. Yeah. Cool.

Cool. Kendall said, number one is the Buddha you're going to be. The one who's coming next, right?

Then we'll go through the progression again, right? You're going to teach the Dharma to make people see emptiness. But to do that, you've got to uncover your Buddha nature.

And to do that, you've got to go find someone who's already a Buddha. So number one and number five are not at all the same. Two different guys.

Number one is future Buddha you. Number five is the Buddha you've got to go find to help you, teach you. Or as close as you can get, as Pabongka Rinpoche would say.

Okay? You can't find a Buddha to try to find one of us other schmucks who knows something even though we're not perfect. Okay.

Number six. Say yünden. Yünden.

Yünden means good quality, high quality, high spiritual quality. Okay? You want to find someone who's a Buddha.

You want to find someone who has high qualities. Okay? Whether they're a Buddha or not, you want to find someone who has real spiritual realization.

Somebody who has real spiritual progress. Somebody who obviously can teach you something. Okay?

They have to have good qualities, high qualities. Okay? And with a Buddha, we normally divide these into two types.

I mean, one is just the progress you made by getting rid of your bad qualities. All of your negative qualities. Jealousy, anger, hatred, desire.

Okay? Those kinds of qualities. So we call them chö yünden.

Chö yünden means good quality in the sense that you just dropped one of your bad qualities. You know? What do they say?

There's a cartoon, and the guy says, I've been meditating for 15 years. And the other guy says, how has it changed you? Have you gotten better?

And the third frame says, no, I'm the same as before. And in the fourth frame, the guy says, well, that's not much progress. And then the fifth frame says, yeah, but think how bad I would have been if I wasn't meditating.

A lot of us feel like that. So in the first sense, yünden is just the progress you make by getting rid of your bad qualities. And Buddhas have done that to an ultimate degree.

And then, of course, there are good qualities that they've developed, like compassion, love, qualities like that. All right, good question. Kendall said, is yünden qualities of the outside teacher or the qualities that you're going to have after you get enlightened?

It's the outside teacher's qualities. Because the first four all relate to your Buddha nature, which is still covered. And the last three relate to other people's Buddha nature, or what we call Buddha nature, which is uncovered.

You see what I mean? So number six is good qualities of a person who's already enlightened. Say chenle.

Chenle. This is a common Tibetan name. One of my early lamas is Chenle, Tenzin Chenle Shep, from the Dake.

He's in the Vajrayogini lineage. Chenle means enlightened activities of a Buddha. Like when you gain the ability to emanate in a couple of hundred cities at the same time and sit on the bus next to a person who's lonely, we call that chenle.

Chenle means enlightened activities. Amazing. The Sanskrit is balda karma, like stuff that a Buddha does.

So that's chenle. And you're looking for someone who can chenle you. You're looking for someone that can emanate and teach you.

And again, the way to get a good teacher is not to... You don't have to travel around. You don't have to spend a lot of money necessarily.

You can bring them to you by helping others. This is how you find your heart lama. Practice well.

Meditate well. Care for other people. Take care of other people.

And then the lama has to come to you. They will come to you. Like they'll come to your...

Wherever your neighborhood is, they'll come to you. So this is chenle. This is why we need chenle.

And those are the seven steps. We have a few minutes left and there's one more thing on your homework I wanted to cover, okay? We're going to talk about the first three alone.

Say sangye, chö, tso. Buddha, Dharma, Sangha, right? Buddha, Dharma, Sangha.

Gyaltsabje and Maitreya, Lord Maitreya, they go into a beautiful section here. I really like it. And it comes from an old sutra.

It comes from a sutra that is in the... We still have it. It's called the Sutra on Haksam Namda.

What's Haksam Namda? Yeah. Haksam means where you say, I don't care if nobody helps me.

I'm going to help other people. I'm going to get enlightened. I don't care what other people think.

I don't care how weird other people think I am. I'm going to do what I have to do to get enlightened as fast as I can. And then that attitude has to get stronger and stronger in you as the years go by.

You become less concerned about convention and you become more concerned with what's the fastest way I can help all living beings? What's the quickest way I can become an enlightened being? And then you work very hard on that.

So this is called the Sutra on Haksam Namda. The full name is Haksam Namda Ki Kuwe Do. And it has a very beautiful line, which I think I put it in your reading.

It's in Arya Sangha's auto-commentary. And it says, you can't see the Buddha. And then it says, you can't hear the Dharma.

And then it says, you can't pay your respects to the Sangha, to the monks and nuns. You can't see a Buddha. You can't hear the Dharma.

And you can't pay your respects to the Sangha. That's impossible. Will never happen.

And obviously, then you have to have some clarification of that. If you can't see a Buddha, then what's the use of me becoming a Buddha? And I really like this section.

What it's talking about, we begin to distinguish between the real Buddha and what you could call the apparent Buddha. The real Buddha. And the just sort of nominal Buddha.

Like the, I don't know, representation of the Buddha as opposed to the Buddha. And on a gross level, it means the following. We put up these paintings of enlightened beings.

Like there's paintings up there of people who are already enlightened. That's not an enlightened being. That's all.

You can't see the Buddha like that. Don't go looking at a picture and think that that's the Buddha. It's almost a lot like Islam, where they say they're not allowed to make an image of Muhammad.

Because that's not a holy being. People then would be getting into, and then you have the Ten Commandments, what do you call it, the rule against bowing to graven images. And that's a very beautiful rule.

It means don't think that the pictures are the Buddha. Don't think that the statue is the Buddha. Don't get into this obsessive thing with what are just representations of an enlightened being.

Don't get obsessed with a lower level of practice, where you are just, I don't know, people who are just interested in pictures and paintings and altars. Not that an altar is a bad thing. An altar is a very good thing and a holy thing, and you should have one.

But we are not worshipping that altar. We are not worshipping that picture. That's not an enlightened being.

That's a piece of wood or a piece of paper or something like that. It's paint, right? And you shouldn't get into this attitude where that becomes your main practice, of somehow thinking that the image is Buddha or something like that.

It's not like that. You want to go for the essence. You want to go for the real Buddha.

And that's why in the next section of the Uttaratantra there's a big deal about the apparent Buddha and the real thing. You see what I mean? They call it the ultimate Buddha and then the apparent Buddha.

Why? Why is that an important distinction? This gets into protection.

Buddhists are always talking about refuge, refuge, refuge. You can call it protection. You can go to a picture of a Buddha.

You can have a picture of a Buddha in your house. You can have huge temples. You can have billion-dollar temples with 900-foot tall statues in them.

It can't help you. Not protection. No protection there.

It doesn't help you. How many... I mean, Tibetans were machine-gunned in the Jolkang temple of Hasa.

There were hundreds of monks sought protection in the temple and the Chinese just came in and machine-gunned them. Just shot them like that. Just mowed them down like that.

There's no protection in a building or a statue. You see, it can't help you. And the real Buddha, the real thing, is like that understanding.

You know, Gyaltsabje and Arya Sangha and Maitreya get so radical. They even say, look, the Buddha as you see them on planet Earth is not the Buddha. Okay?

Like that guy with the bump on his head and long ears and sat under the Bodhi tree in India, that ain't the Buddha either. You know? This image, this picture, these colors and shapes, these are not the Buddha.

The Buddha is the emptiness of the Buddha. You see? That's like really powerful.

You know? So, they're like saying, Buddha's picture is not Buddha. No protection there.

The physical Buddha sitting there under a tree is not protection. There's no protection. You can't see the real Buddha.

Remember the sutra? The real Buddha is something you can't see. And what they're talking about is the emptiness of the Buddha.

Okay? The emptiness of the Buddha. And those of you, this is your first class or your second class or you...

We got to talk about emptiness. You got to come back tomorrow, okay? Like if you leave here tonight thinking that a black hole is the Buddha, it's not very auspicious, you see?

Especially if you paint it, right? So, there is a Buddha, the main Buddha, the most important Buddha, what we call Dharmakaya, the truth body of a Buddha, the real Buddha. And you meet it when you see emptiness directly.

Right after that, you realize that you have seen the Buddha in the Buddha's purest form. The real thing, the real Buddha, is emptiness. The real Buddha is this body of emptiness.

And there's even like a... You even get a location in your mind. Like, it might be to your left side and back a little bit or something like that.

You even get a sense of location to a Buddha, to Dharmakaya, where you're sitting in meditation. Like you could get a direct perception of that. You would see the Dharmakaya.

This is the real Buddha. This is the real protection. Why?

I mean, those of you who don't know emptiness, I'll just bring up an example. This is a quick and dirty emptiness teaching, okay? And it's old.

The other people know it. It's old, okay? It's really old.

It comes from my diamond business days. So I'm sitting there on my chair. And in the diamond business, you sit at a counter.

And there might be 20 people in a row. And you're all facing the wall because they don't want you talking to each other. And everybody has a light like this.

It's a special light, a certain kind of frequency of light. So you can see the color of the diamonds better. And then everybody's got this pair of tweezers.

And everybody's got this glass that you hold up to your eye, right? And then everybody's got about 3,000 diamonds in a pile in front of them. And then all day long, you pick it up with your tweezers, hold it up to your eye, and then throw it one way or the other.

These are the good ones. These are the bad ones. And you sit there, like hour after hour, just like this.

And all you can hear in a big diamond company, there might be 200 people working there, you just hear this. It's really kind of cool. This is not where you cut them.

This is where you sort them, right? It happened to me one day that the boss came in and started screaming at me because I screwed up an order for JCPenney, right? Like, the ad is already out in 50 newspapers.

Diamond engagement ring, come to Penny's, sale, $200 off. The ad is already out. People are already rushing into the store.

And the diamond is still sitting on my desk. It hasn't even gone to the jewelry factory yet. So the boss comes in, and he's screaming at me.

You screwed up. You went to that Buddhist teaching last weekend. You didn't do what you're supposed to do.

I gave you that time off. Now look, the order's screwed up. $200,000 order messed up because of you.

I'm sick of this Buddhism stuff. And then there's one guy next to here. To me, his name is Kishan Gandhi, right?

He's my diamond buying partner. He loves me. He's like, Oh no, Geshe Michael's getting in trouble.

Actually, it wasn't Geshe Michael. It was that stupid guy, Michael. Then over here is another person who I won't name.

And they don't like me, right? They're like competing with me for a job or something. So to them, the boss looks great.

Finally, he's laying down the line to this guy who never does what he has to do, that I have to carry his work for him. So you see, that's the emptiness of the boss. And that's all you need to know about emptiness.

That's the emptiness of the boss. What? He's not right and he's not wrong by himself, right?

By himself, he's just a yelling, what do you call it? Decibels. Just noise.

White noise. By himself, he's just white noise at that moment. To this guy over here, he looks like a bad guy.

He's hurting Michael. To this guy over here, he looks like a great guy. Ah, Michael's getting what he deserves.

But what is that boss by himself? Good or bad? He's just there.

From his own side, he's not good or bad. This guy sees him as good. This guy sees him as bad.

They will try to convince other people that the boss is good or bad from his own side. But we all know his wife loves him or used to, right? And then somebody else might hate him.

His competitors hate him. So he's empty. That's all emptiness means.

It doesn't mean he's a black hole. It doesn't mean he's not there. It doesn't mean he's empty space or something like that.

It just means that he's not nice or mean from his own side. It's a perception, right? It's just a perception.

The words are the same. The scolding I got was the same, right? That's emptiness.

Why would that protect you? Yeah, I mean, if you realize that badness is not coming from the thing, but it's coming from your perception of the thing, then you can't get angry. I made him bad.

I've seen him as bad because of me, right? You can't get mad at him. He didn't make himself bad.

You made him bad. Okay, I mean, that's the basic idea of emptiness. Now, you need to cook that.

You need to hear it about 10,000 times. You need to hear it about 50,000 times to act differently. But sooner or later, you might act differently.

You might react differently, right? Oh, I'm seeing him as mean. That's my perception.

I made that. Maybe I can fix that, you see? That's protection.

That's protection, you see? So Buddha pictures don't protect you. You can hold a Buddha picture in your hand and get machine gunned, right?

Even physical Buddhas who come to this planet, like some big Lama, I always feel bad. I read these things in magazines. Oh, so-and-so was so lucky.

They died with some Lama holding their hand. I'd rather not die and have the Lama holding my hand. You see what I mean?

You know what I mean? No, I'm serious. It's a good thing to die with the Lama holding your hand, relatively, if you have to die.

But in general, the fact that you have to say he or she died with the Lama holding their hand is already, to me, a bad thing, you see? It's a bad thing. They can't protect you.

They can't keep you from dying. If you said that we called the Lama, he came and he fixed the lady and she didn't have to die, that would be interesting. But to say, oh, as the person was dying, it's already a bad scene, you see, to me.

What I mean to say is, I mean, a Lama can teach you Dharma and help you in that way, but the physical presence of a Lama is not going to protect you. Many people have died. Many people died in Lord Buddha's time in the same room with Lord Buddha.

There were people who were touching Lord Buddha who were killed. So, even the physical presence of a Buddha can't help you, you see, directly. But the emptiness, you see, the emptiness, that's protection, you see.

If you understand about emptiness, you can get real protection. So, if on your homework it says, what's the real Buddha, you're going to say, emptiness of the Buddha, because it protects you. And if they say, what's the apparent Buddha, you'll say, well, you could say either the pictures or you could say the people who appear as Buddhas in this planet, okay?

That's okay. How does that relate to Dharma? Understanding that your boss is empty can help you, you see.

Oh, I'm making that boss that way. I have to fix what? Myself.

I mean, Buddhism is really, really hard. Buddhism is a really hard path. I think of Jesus saying, what did he say?

My path is light. My yoke is light or something like that. And all the disciples are like, yeah, right.

I mean, in one sense it's very easy. You just have to understand that the boss is coming from you. From another point of view, it's extremely difficult.

Every screwy thing in the world is your fault. You know, you have to fix it. Nobody else can fix it, you see.

That puts a lot of responsibility on you. And it gets very, almost, I don't know, you despair sometimes, you know. Like, couldn't somebody else just fix something?

I can't do it right now. I can't manage right now, you know. I can't manage the situation right now.

I know I created it. I know it's coming from me. But I sure wish I could have some divine intervention right now, you know.

And in Buddhism, forget it. You never get it. There's no such thing.

You made everything. If you don't like it, you fix it, you know. Like, I used to come home and tell my lama, God damn, I had such a hard time at the diamond business today.

And he'd say, you made it, you fix it. Quit complaining, you know. Like, he wouldn't let me ever complain.

It was very frustrating, you know. You made it, you fix it, you know. I can't do anything for you.

So, real dharma is understanding emptiness. That's the real dharma. This thing is not good or bad from its own side.

I'm making it that way. I have to fix my mind. I have to fix my own karma.

That's the real dharma. Then the apparent dharma is these books, and these teachings, these tapes, these MP3s, the CDs. The stuff on the web.

That's all just apparent dharma. What we call apparent dharma. It can help you.

I mean, it conveys the ideas. But it's the ideas themselves that save you. That's the protection.

Ideas. Number three. And I think then we're done today.

Right on time, which is kind of weird. Maybe I should go on a while. Sangha.

Sangha means everybody who's seen emptiness directly. You see? Everybody who's seen emptiness directly.

That's the real sangha. That's the real community. Then the apparent one, the representation of the sangha, the nominal sangha, is all these ladies and men in the red suits.

That's sangha. They represent people who have seen emptiness directly. Like there might be ten people in here who are not ordained who have seen emptiness directly.

It might be that all the people who are ordained here haven't seen emptiness directly. You see what I mean? But we represent people who have seen emptiness directly.

That's our only claim to fame. Now, we're wearing a red suit to pretend or to kind of represent all the people who have seen emptiness directly. The real protection, though, is people who have seen emptiness directly, whether they are ordained or not.

So nominally, apparently, in representational terms only, the people who are wearing robes are the sangha. In a bigger sense, in the real sense of the word, who can really protect you, is anyone who's seen emptiness directly. They can protect you.

They can help you by explaining emptiness. That's real protection. So, one big teaching.

Did I give you guys this teaching back in 1994? I mean, those of you who were there. I think it's in the second course that we ever taught.

There's a difference between the dharma jewel that's real and the apparent dharma jewel. There's a difference between the real community, the real sangha and the apparent sangha. There's a difference between the real Buddha, the emptiness of the Buddha, and then the Buddha pictures and the Buddhas who come to this planet and stuff like that.

There's a difference. There's the real one that can help you, help you help yourself. And then there's the apparent one, which kind of just acts to remind us of the other one.

And I just wanted to say, if you ever wondered where that teaching really came from, this is it. It comes from the Uttara Tantra. And it comes from that sutra about ultimate responsibility.

And that's where that teaching has come from. And now you can teach it in more detail to people. And we'll get into more about that tomorrow.

Your teachers tomorrow afternoon will be going into the different forms of the Buddha jewel, if I'm right. Right? Yeah?

Okay. So, we're going to stop on time so they can cram. And keep in mind, as you're doing the homework, it's a little silly.

It seems like a lot of detail. Who cares who wrote the book? Who cares what year it was written?

Keep in mind that this is all just an excuse to crack open the Buddha seed in you and get you going to where you're supposed to be, to be the next Buddha on this planet. And you have to remember that and keep that in mind. That's why you're here.

That's what we're doing. This is all a big setup to try to crack open the seed in your own mind. And we will.

Okay? Okay. We'll do some little prayers.

If you don't know them, they're in your book, I think. First, we offer the universe to the holy lamas of the lineage who have passed this knowledge to us. And then, secondly, we dedicate all the good karma we did today to other people.

We give the good karma away to other people. Okay? So that's the two prayers we're going to do now.

[Говорящий 2]
IDAM GURU RATNAMANDALAKAM NIRYATAYAMI DING YI GYE WUKUNG SONAMI SHESO TSANG SHING SONAMI SHESO ME CHUNG WE RANG BAKUNI THOBA SHUNG