Углублённый курс ACI 01 — Учения будущего Будды: «Уттаратантра» Майтреи (2003, Аризона), занятие 4

[Говорящий 1]
Okay, I think this morning, or this afternoon, your teachers went through the first of the seven diamond-like visions, which is what? Sangye, Buddha. The Buddha that you will become, right?

And then that Buddha has to teach something, which is the Dharma, which is the holy teachings. And then we get into the relationship between Buddha and Dharma. And Gyaltsabje says it's like a yawn.

Gyaltsabje says it's like the expression, and it was hard to translate into English, but I'll give you the closest thing in English. Opening her mouth, she sleeps. Okay?

Opening her mouth, she sleeps. And then, if you think about it, you could take it two ways, which is what? Yeah, she yawns and falls asleep.

I like that. Anyway, she yawns and falls asleep. I mean, that's one way you can take it.

And Gyaltsabje says, well, that's one way you can take the step between vision number one and vision number two. First you achieve Buddhahood, and then you can teach the Dharma. So Buddhahood is like a yawn, and then teaching the Dharma is like falling asleep.

So there's a progression in time. First you yawn, then you go to sleep. Opening her mouth, she sleeps.

But what's the other way you can take it? Yeah, she's sleeping and goobering. And you can take it that way too, right?

So Gyaltsabje says you can take it that way too, meaning the moment you become a fully enlightened Buddha, your mind reaches what we call the ultimate Dharma. Like the teaching, the books, is what we call the apparent Dharma, not the real Dharma. And then the real Dharma is like certain levels that you reach within your own mind, like perceiving emptiness, for example.

So you could say that the ultimate level of realization is achieved at the same moment that you achieve Buddhahood. So Diamond-like Vision number one and Diamond-like Vision number two can happen one after the other. If we're talking about Dharma as books and teachings and stuff like that, because first you get enlightened, then you go write your first book for Doubleday or something like that.

Just kidding. Or it could be at the same moment if you take Dharma to mean your mental state and the realizations that you've achieved. So that would be simultaneous.

And we're going to be talking about Dharma in its ultimate sense today. So today I'm going to concentrate on the second vision, which is Dharma, in its ultimate sense. And when the Uttara Tantra gets to this part, they start talking about Dharma in relation to the four Arya Truths.

These are the four great truths which were stated by Lord Buddha the first time he ever taught. So after the Buddha became enlightened, and as you're going to learn on Monday afternoon, he waited for 49 days, seven weeks, before he taught. He said to himself, nobody could ever get this.

Then after 49 days he changed his mind and he started to teach. And the first thing he taught was what's usually called the Four Noble Truths. And as many of you know, Noble is a bad translation of Arya, which means a person who has seen emptiness directly.

And these four truths, these four principles, are called the Arya Truths because just after you see emptiness directly, when you come out of that experience, which might take 20 minutes, then you understand these four things directly, these four truths. Two of the truths are necessary to understand what the Dharma means. The jewel of the Dharma, or the Dharma that can protect us, is often defined in terms of two of the Four Noble Truths, or Arya Truths.

So, in preparing this particular class, I thought it would be important to review the Four Noble Truths, or Arya Truths. And luckily, there's a section in the fourth chapter, towards the end of the book, which is probably the most famous verse on the Four Noble Truths that's ever been written, after the Buddha's time. So, what I did was, in preparing this reading, I went straight to the back of the book, got out the Four Arya Truths, so you could review them.

And then we'll move on to how they apply to the Dharma, the vision of the Dharma. I think some of you may know, in the monastery, in the Geshe course, for the great monasteries, the three great monasteries of Tibet, Sera, Jebung, and Ganden, in the Gelugpa tradition, in the Dalai Lama's tradition, we don't study Uttaratantra. That's not one of the books in the curriculum.

We take one of the five books of Maitreya, which is the Abhisamaya Alankara, the Ornament of Realizations, the Jewel of Realizations. And that forms the first twelve years of the Geshe course. It's only fifty pages long.

We study four pages a year, for twelve years. So, there's not much time to go on to Uttaratantra and still finish in one lifetime. So, actually, Uttaratantra is not studied in the curriculum of the great monasteries.

It is a major text used at Namgyal Monastery, which is sort of the private monastery of His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Now it's located in Dharamsala, a much smaller monastery. But we do, in the great monasteries, called the Densasum, the three great monasteries, we debate a lot.

We debate maybe four or five hours a day. And Uttaratantra often comes up in the debates. Like, we'll quote famous parts of the Uttaratantra.

And the verse I'm going to give you now, or I'm going to go over with you now about the four truths, is maybe the one that comes up the most often in the debates. So, if you ask any Geshe, what do you know about Uttaratantra, you're likely to get this verse from them. So, without further ado, we'll go through that verse.

I'm going to put a number one on it. Please repeat. NE NI SHESA Those of you who are doing Sanskrit track, your teachers will cover this during their class.

You have to put Sanskrit on your homework. But anyway, NE means sickness or illness. NI is sort of an emphasizer.

It's like, now, illness, like the word now, and then the way you change the tone of your voice in English. Now, illness, NI, is a SHESA. SHESA means something you have to figure out, something you have to realize is going on.

I taught a class, I started teaching in New York, maybe 1983, something like that. I mean, the first tiny classes in people's apartments. And I distinctly remember, there was a lady named Kay Merrick, and I taught in her apartment.

And we left the door open, and there were people out in the hallway, going down the hallway to the stairs, because there wasn't enough room. And this guy shows up, and everyone else looks like a Dharma bum, and this guy's got this immaculate clothing on, healthy, extremely handsome. He's Chinese, and just graceful.

And I'm like, something's wrong. What's this guy doing here? Because normally, you've got to have a disaster in your life to go to a Dharma class.

You have to be somehow driven, or broken, or abused, or life has to have done something to you to go to a Dharma class. But this guy looks like everything's going perfect. And I'm like, I couldn't figure it out for two years.

And he was pretty regular. And then finally he came to me one day, and he said, I got AIDS. And I just found out.

I've had it for ten years. And I didn't know. And in the meantime, he's been the director of the Brussels Ballet.

He's been a principal dancer in Europe. He's been in charge of St. John Cathedral dance program. And all this.

He's very famous. And it's just perfect. But now he's in Dharma class.

Because he found out that something was wrong. And he's basically putting this trip on me. Can you get me out of this in a year or six months?

Can you teach me what I need to know in six months or a year? And so I tried. We worked hard.

And he made a lot of progress. And then he got very sick. Both his parents were physicians.

So he got the most extreme and advanced treatments you could get. They kept him alive probably a year longer than anyone else. And then at the end, people like Poonchokla and Anipalma, we were taking turns covering him 24 hours a day in his apartment.

He couldn't talk. He couldn't get up. He would just pee all over you the minute you touched him.

And it was very difficult. And then he passed away. Anipalma and I were there.

And we tried to help him. But you see, he found out too late. In a way, he was putting pressure on me.

Can you teach me what to do when I die in six months or a year? And we went as far as we could. We really worked hard for a year.

And he made good progress. And I think he had a good death. But we're like that.

We have a great illness. And the very first task of each person here is just to know you have it. Seja means you've got to figure out that you have it.

And then you can do something about it. But if you're in this state of complacency, or what do you call it when you refuse to admit a problem? Denial.

If you're in a sense of denial, which I think is what we are most in, then you won't do anything. You won't act. So the first step is the first noble truth.

The first Ayah truth is you have to figure out that you're sick. You're sick. You have a problem.

And if you're in denial, if you refuse to admit the problem, then there's nothing anybody can do for you. Nobody can help you. And I saw that in New York this last trip.

New York is such a difficult place to do Dharma in. In one sense, it attracts the most talented people in the world, I think. And in that sense, it's a pleasure to teach there because people get it like that and they have this energy.

In another sense, New York City itself is very deceptive. The skyscrapers give it such a feeling of stability or strength and the financial strength of the markets there. Everything gives you this sense of reality or stability or strength, you see.

Some kind of substantialness of life. Just from the buildings, you know. And I used to think about that.

We bought a building when I was in the diamond business. We bought a huge building to put our factory and our business in. And I used to wonder how many people died who had been in my office.

How many people sat in the chair where I sat and had died before? But most people in New York don't think that. The buildings have always given you in New York a sense of substantialness or safety, you see.

Things are strong. Things are real. Things are solid.

Solidity, right? And then the thing happened with 9-11 and then the whole scene has changed. Every time someone looks up at a building now, especially a large building, a tall building, there's this sense of instability, or it gives you a sense of danger almost.

And that's the way it always was, you see. That's the way. Just seja.

The 9-11 incident created an awareness of what's been there all along, which is our mortality, you see. Nothing is safe. America itself is an illusion, you know.

It doesn't take much to throw an empire over the cliff, you see. It doesn't take a big deal. One nuclear weapon in one city, maybe two.

And then the whole process starts. The way Rome fell, the way Greece fell, the way Babylonia fell, the way the British Empire fell. It doesn't take much to push a whole civilization over the cliff.

And then you're back to very much insecurity, trouble, danger, revolution, violence in your country. The conditions we have now are temporary. The wealth, the stability, the lack of war in our own country is very abnormal.

It's gone on for longer than is normal. And it will end. And so you have to realize that.

You have to know there's a problem. If it doesn't end on a larger scale, it will end on a personal scale. You will get cancer.

You will get a heart attack. You will get old. You don't know how many people I've seen.

I just got a piece of paper in my mail. I opened up three years of mail the night before I came here from Diamond Mountain. And there's an announcement for this diamond dealer.

He's my best friend in the diamond business. I wanted to go visit him. I was thinking to call him.

Then I'm opening up this mail, two years old. It says, so-and-so died. He's had a heart attack.

Come to the funeral home, such-and-such address. And I'm like, that's the way we all are. That's the way we all are.

The whole idea that you are healthy is a temporary condition. You have to realize what danger we are in. We have to realize that we are about to go to another realm.

In Buddhism, it doesn't end here. And most of the realms that you can go to when you die are chaos, chaotic, violent, terribly violent. And no choice is there.

You can't call the police or complain to the Chamber of Commerce or something like that. You're in a realm that's just violent, dangerous, deadly. So we are inexorably headed there.

Our bodies are getting old. There's this joke. Every hour you do yoga to stay healthy, you're an hour closer to your death.

Actually, that hour has been spent coming closer to your own death. So we have to struggle to keep aware, to keep mindful of the fact that we don't have much time. We have to realize there's a problem.

You can't deny it. You can't be in denial about the problem. And that's the First Noble Truth.

That's the First Arya Truth. Here's the second. Say, ne kyi gyu ni pang ja.

Ne kyi gyu ni pang ja. Ne means what? Illness.

Kyi gyu means the cause of illness. Pang ja means you have to get rid of it. You have to eliminate it.

You have to stop it. This is the big, big, big thing in Buddhism. We talk about prevention and not reaction.

You have to prevent the cause from happening. Once a tree has grown up out of the ground, it's too late to complain about the tree. You can't push a tree back in the ground.

Once a tree has grown to its full height, I'm thinking of an oak tree, you can't push it over or push it back in the ground or anything like that. Our current condition, today's suffering in this room, it's too late to do anything about it. It's what I call hard cement.

The cement is already hard. We struggle. Like, if you meet a person who's giving you a hard time, if you're angry at someone, you're in a room with someone and someone is causing you trouble, it's too late.

According to Buddhism, it's too late to do anything about it. The thing has already occurred. It's too late.

You can't push a tree back into the ground. It's strong. It's substantial.

It can't be stopped at that point. Buddhists are in the business of stopping causes. You see?

Stopping causes. Find the cause, the gyu and pang. Stop it.

Don't struggle robochlorically. Don't struggle wildly against the current suffering. It's too late.

You can't stop it. You can't stop the suffering that's going on right now. You get all these versions of Buddhism that says, think of your enemy as your friend.

Think of the person who irritates you as a chance to practice patience. That's all very nice. Personally, I'd rather the person just didn't happen in the first place.

That's what Buddhism is about. There are what I call band-aids. There are temporary ways of coping.

But Buddhism is not about coping. Buddhism is about making sure it doesn't happen in the first place. You see?

There's a big difference. You can cope with the fact that you are dying. You can cope with the fact that it's a violent world.

You can cope with the economy. You can cope with violence, right? But why not just set up the causes that it wouldn't happen?

You see? Like prevent the causes of it. Stop it from ever happening.

Then you don't have to struggle about, how am I going to cope with it? The whole question of, do we fight back or do we not fight back, is what in the Yoga Sutras is called a duality, right? Tato dvan dvan anubhigata.

It's too late. Your mind goes to this duality. Should I fight back?

Should I not fight back? It's too late. If you're asking the question, it's too late.

Violence has already been done to you, you see? The question is how to cope with violence in the future. How do you stop it from ever happening so you don't have to get in this quandary about, do I do A or B?

It's not a question of coping. It's a question that it never occurred to you, see? So in Buddhism we deal with causes.

It's like complaining about the water coming out of the faucet. You don't try to push it back into the shower head, right? If you don't like the water coming out of the shower head, you don't struggle and put the water in the palms of your hands and try to push it back through those little holes in the shower head.

You reach for the cause and you shut it, you see? And you can't do anything about the water that already came out, you see? But you're stopping the rest of the water from coming out.

And that's what Buddhism is all about. Find the real cause. Shut it off.

And then tomorrow will be a better day, like that. He yam dukham anugatam, from the Yoga Sutra. All that we can do is deal with the future suffering and shut it off.

By future, I don't mean that you can't stop the suffering of your body. It's not too late to stop the suffering of your body. You don't have to grow old.

You will go into a different body. And you'll see that in one of your readings. I forget which one it is.

There's a tantric presentation of how that's possible. It's very beautiful. I might be reading number five.

I don't know. You'll see. It's actually one that you're going to get.

Noble truth number three, Arya truth number three. Say, DE NAS THOB BYA DE NAS THOB BYA DE means feeling good, sukha in Sanskrit, feeling good. NAS means the condition of feeling good.

And DE NAS is an ancient word for health, being healthy. THOB BYA means we want to achieve that. We want to reach that.

So if you notice, each of the four noble truths, Arya truths, is being framed as BLAH BLAH is to be BLAH BLAH. You see? BLAH BLAH X is to be Y.

Like that. So far we've had suffering is something you have to realize you have. The cause of something is something you have to get rid of.

And then health is something we wish to achieve, something you want to achieve. The condition of being healthy. In the traditional, what this image of health is representing is what we call cessations.

I didn't like the word cessation. I keep trying to find a better word for it. It just means stopping something, ending something.

You want to stop something. And in Buddhism it's very, very beautiful. It's very, very, very beautiful.

There's a huge debate about cessations. Health here refers to the quality of cessation. Cessation means, is it possible to stop all the undesirable parts of you?

Can you actually do some kind of radical surgery on your brain and remove all the undesirable parts of yourself? Could you do some kind of spiritual surgery on your physical body and remove the mortality without removing the body? You see?

It's very radical. The Buddhist presentation is very radical. We're not talking about coping, okay?

And you know, I'm always on this, it's one of my pet peeves about Buddhist teachings. This class is not about learning to cope, being a nicer person, you know, smiling while your body goes downhill, you know, being cheerful despite your breast cancer. You know what I mean?

I don't subscribe to that. I don't believe Lord Buddha ever subscribed to that. The point is, can you use spiritual practices to transform your body and mind so that you no longer are even eligible to get sick?

You see? Can you make your body into light? Can you make your mind totally pure?

You know? And that's such a radical idea. I mean, for example, we're in a town where, I don't know, 30,000 young people are going to university near here to learn things, you know?

Like, I want to learn to be an accountant. There's a huge dance program. There's 100 professional people.

There's 200 or 300 people learning to dance, you see? They want to learn to dance at the university. And then there are other people learning other things, architecture, other things like that.

But there's no course there. There's no, like, formal course called, you know, getting rid of your anger forever, you see? Like, getting rid of anger forever.

Reaching a place where you would be totally incapable of ever getting angry or irritated again, you see? And that's just not a subject that is taught in the United States. You might go to a seminar that's about how to cope with your anger or how to be less angry or how to be happy while you're angry, how to express your anger successfully.

But there's no, like, class where they sit you down and they say, when you graduate from this course, you'll get a certificate that says you are physically incapable of getting angry again, you see? And Buddhism's claim is that you can take such a course, you know? You can learn such a thing.

You could get a degree, a no-angry degree. You could be a PhD in no anger, you see? And then from then on, the moment you get that certificate from Dr. Taylor, you just can't get mad ever again. No person in the world can irritate you. No person in the world can annoy you, period, you know? Buddhism claims that.

The day you get that degree is called a cessation, okay? And you go through your Buddhist practices, you go through different levels, and at a certain point you reach a place where you reach a cessation for anger. You can never get angry again, period, okay?

That takes a knowledge of emptiness. According to Buddhism, the only method to do that is a knowledge of emptiness. It's the only thing that can do it.

That's how we differ from every other school of thought in the universe, okay? Part of my life's goal, my life's dream, and which many of you are helping with, is to kind of insinuate that into our culture, you know? It doesn't have to be called Buddhism in my mind.

It doesn't matter, you see? It doesn't matter to me whether every American has a photo of some bald-headed chubby guy on their wall. That's not going to help everybody.

It's not a big thing. I don't care, you see? But if the art of removing anger, surgical incision to remove anger from your brain permanently, could become part of our culture, that would be an incredible thing to me.

I think that's what we're trying to do. That's the whole object of all the courses and all the other activities and projects, is that should become part of our culture. Whether you call it religion or not, I don't see it matters much to me.

I kind of subscribe to what His Holiness always says. People should go on sort of with their traditional ethnic religion, whatever it is, you know? I told the people in Ireland, you have children, right?

This is Kevin Thornton. He says, yes, because you might have children, you know? And I'm like, so when she gets married, are you going to put up a big poster of a six-headed blue chakrasamvara or something and get her married there?

And he said, of course not. We're going to the cathedral, you know? And are they going to bang cymbals and drums and toot those horns?

And he said, no, they're going to play organ music and the choir is going to sing, you know? So keep that, that's okay. His Holiness is always saying that.

You're not going to respond to horns and cymbals the way you respond to a nice Bach canticle, you know? But the head, inside, the purpose, the vision should be different. I can remove anger forever from my mind, you see?

With these practices. Whatever you call them, it doesn't matter, you see? So we have to achieve that kind of health and that's what a cessation means.

Now we go on to the fourth of the truth. Say, men ni tenja. Men ni tenja.

Men means medicine, okay? Medicine. Again, the image from the Uttaratantra is of a sick person.

So, so far we've had sickness. You have to realize you're sick, right? Then you have to, you know, every time you get sick, I mean, when I go home and my stomach feels bad, you start to wonder what?

I mean, you start to review everything you ate that day, right? Or the day before. And that's the thing, that's seeking the cause, right?

The cause is to be sought out and eliminated. I'm not going to eat in that particular restaurant again, you see? And then you seek to become healthy and then you have to take some medicine, like Pepto-Bismol or whatever, okay?

So men means Pepto-Bismol. Tenja means you have to use it. You have to take it.

You have to use it, okay? Tenja means you have to use it. So you have to use the medicine.

The medicine, the real medicine comes from deep meditation. You have to be in a state of deep meditation. The ultimate forms of medicine, seeing emptiness directly, they have to occur in deep meditation.

So obviously you have to learn to meditate and you have to take time to meditate. But the real progress towards, for example, eliminating anger can only happen in deep meditation. So the medicine has to be found, used in deep meditation.

To do that, according to Buddhism, you have to be able to contemplate. I mean, to go into a state of deep meditation, first you have to learn contemplation, which is more intellectual, you see? It's more like trying to figure things out.

It's like when you're driving around Tucson trying to figure out why this particular person has shown up in your life who irritates you, you see? Meditation is deeper. Contemplation is like trying to figure things out, okay?

And before that, you need study, okay? You can only get into contemplation by first studying. And this three-fold process is the foundation of all Buddhist practice.

It's called tösam gom. Say, tösam gom. The idea is so important that it's part of the name of Serra Monastery.

I mean, they call it tösam gom ke ling, right? The jewel island of tösam and gom. Tösam means you need hours of classroom study.

You just need raw hours of classroom study. You have to hear something over and over and over, several hundred hours of just raw study, okay? Over and over again.

It doesn't sink in the first time, you know? It doesn't sink in. Our heads are like oak wood, you know?

And it's like trying to drip water through a plank of oak, you know? And it's just going to take time, you know? Intellectually, on a very shallow level, you can understand all the ideas of the entire tantra by Monday evening, right?

But on a, what do you call it, internalizing it, it takes years and years. You have to go to these classes over and over and over again. Luckily, they're free, right?

I'm not trying to get more money out of you, right? You just have to keep going over and over. You have to hear it over and over and over.

And then slowly it sinks into your being. It sinks into your inner being. And by the way, about the chart, I mean, we ask for help, right?

They ask you when you register for some daily thing, but it's never required, okay? So, you know, I'm quite happy if you refuse to help, okay? That's okay too.

You're never required to give anything. I mean, the class should be free. It helps us cope with the rental of this place and books like that and things like that.

But if there's any reason why you can't or don't want to help, then don't ever feel like it's a requirement. You can always just come and like that. That's the way it should be.

So anyway, those three steps are very necessary. Study, then think about what you learned, and then meditate on it. And that's the medicine.

The meditation is the medicine, okay? Those are the four truths. And that's the classical verse from the Uttara Tantra.

Perhaps it's the first or second most quoted verse from the whole Uttara Tantra. Again, from the fourth chapter, okay? Now we skip back up to the first chapter.

We were on the second of the seven visions, right? The seven diamond-like visions. We were talking about the Dharma, the vision of the Dharma.

And what I wanted to say, and then I think we might start to take a break. The third and the fourth truths, which are what? Cessation and path, you see?

This fourth one represents the truth of the path. The third one is the end of suffering. So number four, I'd like to think of it this way.

Truth number one is suffering. We are suffering. Truth number two is, that suffering has an identifiable cause.

Truth number three is, you can stop suffering. Truth number four is, there is a path or a method to stop the suffering. That's the logic of the four truths.

And by suffering, again, I mean the whole condition of this world. Death, violence, the fact that things are impermanent, all forms of trouble, all forms of pain, from small personal doubts up to international wars, are all covered by the four truths. We're talking about the whole gamut of suffering, from small irritation on your butt right now to international war.

That whole range of suffering is addressed by the four truths. And the last two truths, number three and number four, you can stop the suffering and there is a path to stop that suffering. Those two things are the real Dharma.

When we talk about the diamond-like vision of the Dharma, when we talk about the Dharma, we're talking about those two things. What does that mean to you on a personal level? What does that mean to you on a personal level?

In its highest form, it means that you can reach a point where you have stopped all negative emotions forever. Okay? A radical surgical clashemectomy.

Okay? All right? Without destroying the mind, you can remove every negative thought from the mind, permanently.

Okay? You can do an incision spiritually and separate from your mind all undesirable qualities of the mind. It's possible.

You can do it. The Tathātantra verses, which you'll get tomorrow, they say that. I mean, after a long story, it's 50 pages long, you're going to get a 50-page reading, I think, tomorrow or whatever.

The end result, the last sentence by Gyaltsabje is, you know, these mental afflictions, these emotions are removable. They are not an intrinsic part of our nature. You know, they are separable from the mind.

Like, you can cut them out and your mind will be fine. You can cut them out forever and your mind will be fine. So, cutting them out forever is truth number three.

The path to do that, the way to do that, is truth number four. And there's nothing more powerful than seeing emptiness directly. Okay?

There's nothing more powerful than seeing emptiness directly. It is the only method of achieving any kind of peace, internationally or personally. Okay?

You must see emptiness directly. And we'll talk more about that. Again, that's the reason why this book was written.

Uttaratantra and the other four books of my chair were handed to a person who was about to see emptiness directly, in order that he could see emptiness directly. Okay? And it's being handed to you for the same reason.

Okay. We've been talking about the Dharma, the vision of the Dharma, second of the Diamond-like Visions. And we said it consists of two of the four Noble or Arya Truths, which is the end of all suffering or the end of negative emotions, and then the way to get to that end, the path.

And we said that in its highest form, or one of its high forms, it's the direct perception of emptiness, is the path. And then the cessations that you get from that. Cessation meaning, for example, just after you see emptiness directly, you can meet Buddha directly.

Okay? You can come in direct contact with the Buddha. And, you know, that's a little difficult to talk about.

I mean, if you actually met a Buddha, right? I mean, if a Buddha walked in here right now and you met them and recognized them as a Buddha, then you would never doubt the Dharma again. You see?

No matter what happened in your life, successful, not successful, happy, sad, you know, sick, healthy, rich, poor, whatever, you could say, I met a Buddha. I believe they exist. Because I saw one.

I just saw one. So there's no question in my mind that they exist. That's a cessation, see?

Get it? That's a cessation. Like you can never have doubt again about that.

You know? You can never have doubt again about that once you've seen it. I remember the Christmas Eve on 723 Flynn Lane in Phoenix, Arizona when I was six and walked out and caught my father putting on the Santa Claus hat costume.

You know? You know what I mean? Like, I remember.

I remember where he was sitting, you know? And I got a cessation. You see?

My belief in Santa Claus ceased. You see? Forever.

You know? Like, it never came back, you see? And that's a cessation, you see?

It's a mental quality. It's a belief that just stops, you see? Forever.

So like doubt that there is an enlightened being, that it's possible to reach that, when you meet them directly, it'll be gone forever. You'll just never believe in it again. Impossible, you see?

No matter how long you live, whatever happens in your life, good or bad, up or down, you'll never doubt that thing again, you see? Forever. That's a cessation.

That's an example of a cessation. Now, I'm going to go deeper into the idea of cessation and it's a setup for tomorrow. It's a setup for tomorrow.

The bridge between Dharma vision and Buddha nature comes like this. There are two kinds of cessation. We talked about cessation.

We talked about the loss of my belief in Santa Claus. That was a cessation. See?

Mental cessation. Some mental thing that I believed is gone forever, separated from my mind forever, you see? And there are two kinds of cessation like that.

And that's a segue into Buddha nature tomorrow. So I'm going to give you those two kinds of cessation in the mind. Ready?

Say RANG BZHIN, NAM DAT. RANG BZHIN, NAM DAT. This is a cessation that you've always had.

Okay? Like, at a certain age, six years old, on December 24th in the evening, I lost, I gained a cessation for my belief in Santa Claus. Okay?

Like I gained a cessation for that belief. Right? But there's other kinds of cessations that you've always had.

Okay? You've always had. RANG BZHIN means natural, part of you, forever.

You've always had it. According to Buddhism, countless lives. You've always had this.

NAM DAT means purity, natural purity. There's a kind of purity that you've always had. You don't have to learn it.

You don't have to achieve it. You don't have to work hard to get it. You have always had it.

You've always had this Buddha nature. This kind of natural purity. Okay?

I'm going to describe it. Okay? You ready?

What's this thing? Pen. Some fools had a pen.

[Говорящий 2]
Okay?

[Говорящий 1]
Okay? Thank you. Somebody said pen.

Magic marker, pen. And then, you know the story. If a dog trotted in here, where's the...

We have one, right? Anyway, if a puppy came in here and jumped up on the stage, and I held this out to the puppy, they would not take it in their paw and try to write with it, right? They don't conceive of it as a pen.

You see? In a sense, you can say that there are two realms, there are two parallel universes running in this room. You see?

Like it's not science fiction, right? You don't have to believe in New Age stuff or whatever. There are two parallel universes running, even now, in this room.

And the pen is just an example of that. The humans in this room are seeing this as a pen. The dog in this room would see this as something to chew on, right?

It is of no practical use for a dog except possibly as a toy to chew on, okay? So the question... I'm just trying to get you to emptiness, okay?

This is... Especially for people who have not been here before or are not familiar with emptiness, this is a very simple way of thinking about emptiness. Which one is right?

Is it a pen or is it something to chew on? Which one is right? Somebody said neither, somebody said both.

I mean, they're both okay, right? You can't say it's either one, right? I mean, both.

It's a pen. Obviously, watch. Ta-da!

Okay? Watch. I mean, it's both, okay?

It's both. Okay? By itself, it is neither.

By itself, in and of itself, it's neither. Okay? To a dog, it's a chewable thing.

To a human, it's something to write with. Okay? But by itself, it's neither one.

That's emptiness. Okay? You don't have to get more complicated than that.

You don't have to go to university for that. I'll save you the fees. Okay?

That's all. That's the emptiness of this what? Good.

Cylinder. White and black cylinder. Thank God you didn't say pen or dog toy.

Okay? Right? That's the emptiness of this white and black cylinder.

Okay, that's all. Emptiness is no more mystical than that. Sorry.

If you see it directly as it applies to every person and especially yourself, it can catapult you into near Buddhahood in 20 minutes. Okay? In a deep state of meditation.

If you see this idea which I've just presented to you in an intellectual way, if you see it directly, you will be Maitreya in a very short time. Extremely fast. You will be the next Buddha.

That's why it's so important. Okay? First, just get it intellectually.

First, just get it. Okay, what is this? It's just a white and black object.

Okay? To me, it's a pen. To the dog, it's something to chew on.

By itself, it's empty of anything. You see? From its own side, it's empty of being a pen, of being a chew thing.

Okay? It's empty. Okay?

You can practice that. Okay, ready? See it as a white and black cylinder.

Close your eyes. You're getting sleepy. You know?

You are an Eskimo from the 1600s. Okay? It's just a very smooth black and white stick.

Very interesting. You see? Okay?

It's just a black and white stick. Incredibly smooth. You know?

Okay? I wonder how they made it like that. You know?

Okay? That's all. I mean, to somebody from another culture, from another time, it's just a very well-fashioned stick.

You know? Unbelievably smooth. You know?

Okay? And now suddenly change it. It's a pen.

Okay? We're going to write the rest of the class with it. Hopefully there won't be much.

I can get to dinner. Okay? I mean, look at it as a pen.

Now switch back. See it as a cylinder. See it as a pen.

See it as a cylinder. See it as a cylinder. Pretend you're a dog.

If you're salivating, you know you got it. If you have this uncontrollable urge to run up here and grab it out of my hand and chew on it. You see?

That's a very light version of how we are laying ideas on this object. You see? You're laying your own chip on that object.

Okay? It's not a pen from its own side. You're laying that on the object.

Okay? That's coming from you. It's not a pen from its own side.

Get used to that. It's not a pen from its own side. If it was a pen from its own side, the dog would be struggling to write with it.

Okay? Seriously. I'm not joking.

If there were some pen-ness, what do you call it? If there were some undeniable, you know, irresistible, irresistible. If there was some irresistible pen-ness seeping from this object, then the dog would be trying to write with it.

You see what I mean? I mean, the dog would be all frustrated. You know?

It's not like that. You see? There's nothing pen-ness seeping out of this thing at you.

You know? It's you who's making it a pen. Okay?

And the dog thing proves it. You see? If pen-ness was pouring out of this object, then the dog would be struggling to write.

You see? And it's not. It just picks it up and wants to chew on it.

You see? Okay? That's the proof that it's empty of being a pen.

Okay? So, is it a pen or not? Whoever thinks not, I always say, come up, I'll make a Hitler mustache.

I'll give you a Hitler. I guess nowadays you'd say a Saddam Hussein mustache. Who wants a Saddam Hussein?

Who says the pen is not a pen? Come on. Okay?

Come on. Let me give you that mustache. Especially the ladies.

Okay, anyway. Of course it's a pen. Is it a pen from its own side?

No. Okay. What's it got to do with anything?

I mean, who cares? Right? I can use it.

It works. Okay. You know, this is just philosophy, right?

It's just this useless philosophy. Who cares if it's not a pen from its own side? I can pick it up.

I can use it. I can use this object, which is not in and of itself a pen. I can use it to communicate ideas to you.

It functions. It works. You see?

So who cares if it's coming from me or from the pen? You see? It doesn't matter, does it?

We got to get into that. That's what we're going to get into now. Natural purity.

Okay? Natural purity. RANG BZHIN RNAM DAG is the fact that your own mind is like this pen.

Okay? The fact that your own mind is like this pen is natural purity. Okay?

Your mind and you have a natural purity. Okay? You never was anything from your own side.

Okay? That's natural. You were born with that.

Nobody awarded it to you. You didn't have to go to school to get that. It's not like you had to have a Bar Mitzvah to get that.

Okay? You've always had it. Okay?

You are not from your own side who you are. You're just like this pen. And specifically your mind is just like this pen.

[Говорящий 2]
Okay?

[Говорящий 1]
If you are experiencing yourself as sad, that's not coming from you. That's coming from your own mind. See?

If you're experiencing yourself as tall, it's because of your own mind is putting that on that object. You see? You're not anyway one way or the other from your own side.

Okay? That's your natural purity. Okay?

That's your natural purity. You are not one way or the other from your own side. Who cares?

What's the point? What's the point? There's something making you see yourself one way or the other.

There's something making you see yourself one way or the other. And that can be changed. Because you are empty, because you don't come from your own side, all things are possible.

Okay? All things are possible. Because one object can be perceived in two completely different ways, all things are possible.

Okay? We'll talk more about that. Let's leave it there.

So, you have this thing. Why do they call it a cessation then? What was ceased?

What was ceased? I mean, we talked about believing in Santa Claus, right? And that got ceased from my mind.

What about your natural cessation? What was ceased? Being one way or the other.

Okay? From your own side. Okay?

I said it once, you'll get used to it. Okay, I'll say it again. You have never ever been one way or the other from your own side.

Never ever. That's your natural purity. And it's the reason you can become a Buddha.

You see? It's very, very lucky that you have natural purity. Okay?

You are not who you are from your own side any more than this is. Okay? There are reasons why you see yourself the way you do.

And those can be changed because you are not coming from your own side. Okay? That's all.

You are eligible, therefore, to become an enlightened being. Your body can, in one lifetime, become an angel's body of light because you have natural purity. Okay?

That's cessation. When did it cease? When did you cease to be one way or the other?

You've always been that way. Okay? I don't know if they should call it a cessation.

It's almost not fair, right? You've always been that way. Okay?

They just call it cessation. Okay? You've always been that way.

You've always been neither one way or the other from your own side. Okay? Got it?

Cook it. Okay? Go to sleep on it.

Have a nice taco dinner. Sleep on it. Okay?

By tomorrow you'll be set up for Buddha nature. Okay? That's enough.

We don't have to go further. There's something about every living creature. There's a natural purity meaning a natural absence of some quality which every living being has.

And that's why we can become enlightened. That's why you can become an angel in this lifetime. Okay?

Your natural purity. The fact that you have always ceased to be one way or the other. Okay?

We'll talk more about it tomorrow. It's a difficult subject. Okay?

This subject is difficult. This book is difficult. This is a difficult teaching.

Okay, that's your natural purity. Let's go on to the easier one. Say, lobur namda.

Lobur namda. This is a kind of purity. Lobur means you have to achieve it.

You have to develop it. You see? So we have two kinds of purity.

Every living creature has two kinds of purity. One, you've always had. From the day you were born, you've had a natural purity.

Meaning, you were never one way or the other from your own side. Just like this cylinder. Is it a pen or a chew toy from its own side?

No. So it is pure of being one or the other. Get it?

It has this natural purity of being either one. Okay? You could say void, empty, pure.

Same thing. You have that natural purity. Then there's another purity that you have to develop.

You see? What's that? Let's put it simply.

You have anger. If you are who you seem to be, I don't know. You seem to have anger.

You seem to have jealousy. You seem to have desire. Right?

You seem to have pride. Okay? You have to work on those.

You have to use the Buddhist methods to work on those. And then someday you'll get this achieved purity, this developed purity. Okay?

That kind of purity you have to develop over the length of your life. That's called lobur namdhak. Okay?

Lobur namdhak means developed purity or achieved purity. You have to work hard your whole life to purify yourself of those negativities. If you work hard your whole life, you can get rid of those things forever.

And then that kind of purity is something you've achieved. That's called lobur. Okay?

Lobur means that. You worked and you got to that kind of purity. Okay?

So guess what's kind of the definition of a Buddha? Actually, Dharmakaya. Lobur namdhak.

I'm sorry. Namdhak nindengi. Ku.

Say namdhak. Nindengi. Ku.

Jukoy teni. The definition of Dharmakaya, the highest body of the Buddha, is that body which has those two purities. Okay?

One we already have, right? We all have. We're all pure from the beginning.

We don't have any quality of being one way or the other. But the other kind of purity is a different story. It's a lifetime of effort.

Struggling to get rid of anger. Struggling to get rid of desire. Struggling to get over pride and envy.

Getting them out of your system. And then finally at the end, you have that second kind of purity. Okay?

Those two purities are the real dharma. Are the real cessation. Those are cessation.

Two kinds of cessation. One has been ceased since forever. The other has been ceased when you get over your anger, get over your desire, get over your jealousy.

So those are the two cessations which are half of your dharma. What's the other half? The path, right?

The last two noble truths. All right. Yeah.

She said, is this just in reference to the song part of sanghya? You can say that. Yeah, you can say that.

You can say that. Another presentation is like this. When you become a Buddha, you'll be able to show yourself on countless planets.

That's something you have to develop. That's mainly something developed. Your physical bodies, when you become enlightened, the body of light in your paradise and the body that comes to earth to help others, those are something we can say are developed.

Those are more on the developed side. Then your essential nature body, like your dharmakaya, your emptiness body, that's something that springs out of your natural purity. Natural purity eventually becomes the emptiness of the Buddha, dharmakaya, in that sense.

Then your developed purity is more along the lines of the body you will have, the physical form you will have, the light, the body of light. That's how that goes. Let me see.

Here's a tough question, but it's on your homework. I got to cover it. Give the three qualities of the natural purity.

Three qualities, natural purity. I'm going to go over that kind of fast. First, it's a kind of emptiness, you see?

It's an emptiness. It's your emptiness. Mainly the emptiness of your mind.

As such, it cannot be perceived by a normal state of mind. That's the first quality. You can't perceive your natural purity directly unless you are in a state of deep meditation, because it's emptiness.

A normal state of mind in what we call duality. What's duality mean? Does it mean I'm not the object that I'm looking at?

Me and Michael Moore is not separate things? Me and Michael Moore are the same? How come he's not called Michael Roach?

You see what I mean? That's a bad idea. That's a dumb idea.

Of course he's different from me, sitting over there. I'm over here. It doesn't mean duality in that sense.

Is he separate from me in the sense that he's not coming from me? No. See, he is coming from me.

That person, sweet, holy person, helping many people, I have the honor to see, because I made him. Good job. Do you want to pat somebody on the back?

You got to do this a lot. People tend to talk about karma, like I'm responsible for my asshole neighbor and stuff like that. But you're also responsible for all the neat people you ever meet.

Think about that sometimes. You made the Dalai Lama. Good job.

Cool. I made the Dalai Lama. I made Dalai Lama in my world.

That's a good thing. That's a good job. So is he separate from me?

Is Michael Moore separate from me in that sense? No. There's no duality in that sense.

I've created him in my world from my good deeds, from helping others. I get to enjoy seeing someone help other people. So in that sense, no duality.

As long as the mind is in the state of duality, meaning I think he's out there and he's not being created by me, that kind of state of mind cannot perceive natural purity. That's the first quality of natural purity. A mind that's stuck in that kind of dualism can't see natural purity.

That's the first one. Then the text says it cannot be perceived through another. The text of the Uttaratantra says the second quality of natural purity is that you cannot see it through another.

And then there's like two interpretations of what another means. The first is that another person's words cannot communicate it to you directly. If you have seen natural purity, then you have seen emptiness directly.

And that cannot be communicated to another person. I can describe it to you hour after hour, week after week, year after year. I can attempt to describe it to you.

But I can never give you the real thing in your mind through whatever I ever say. I can't do it. You have to see it on your own.

A person who has seen it directly can describe the process, say things about what happened, describe what happened afterwards, tell you all this neat stuff over and over again. But they cannot convey the actual experience directly through words. So in that sense it cannot be described by another, by another, perceived by another.

And in some texts, in some parts of the Atahatantra they say another here means another way of thinking. You see? Another way of thinking.

Thinking through words, thinking through concepts. Emptiness cannot be perceived that way. Your natural purity cannot be perceived that way.

Also some people say, let's give up all these stupid classes, all these words, words, words, MP3 after MP3 of words. It's getting to be too much. Let's just go simple.

Let's go direct. Forget all the words. Throw out the books.

Throw out the tapes. Throw out the CDs. Stop these classes.

Let's all just sit down and meditate. And in the end you see it that way, by sitting down and meditating. But it takes years and years and years of classes.

You have to struggle through it intellectually first. You don't have the ammunition. You don't have the, I don't know, the means, you see, to see it directly until your mind has been, my Lama used to say, softened.

I'm just softening your mind. Year after year, softening that oak wood head. You see?

Until it's ready to see emptiness. It takes years and years of study. It takes hundreds of hours in a class.

You go home and think about it. And then you go into deep meditation and you see it directly. But to think that you could play concert piano without a class is insane.

And seeing emptiness directly is much more difficult than that. You need formal training from a highly qualified person. Okay, last one.

It is only perceived by a mind which is free from dualism. That's pretty much just the opposite of number one. That's easy, right?

Your natural purity, which is your emptiness, can only be perceived by a mind which is no longer caught up in thinking that Michael Moore is not being sent from my mind. You see? Michael Moore is not a projection from my mind.

Okay? Natural purity can only be perceived by a state of mind which is free of thinking that way. Okay?

Directly. That finishes natural purity. Last thing.

We're going to talk about achieved purity. The purity that you develop, right? I'm going to talk about how you develop it.

Six steps, okay? One of my lamas, Geshe Thubten Rinchen, he'd say, look you, you, you over there. Get a blank piece of paper.

Write down six numbers right now. Okay? Six blank numbers, okay?

I want to see the paper with six numbers on it. Okay. Who's got it?

Gail, show me that paper with six numbers on it. Yeah, alright. Alright, okay.

Now here we go. Okay. Six steps to develop natural purity.

I'm sorry. Developed purity. Natural purity you don't have to develop, right?

You had it all along. Six steps to getting natural purity from the uttara tantra. Okay, here we go.

Achieved. I'm sorry. Good.

Somebody makes you upset. Very rare occurrence. Somebody irritates you.

Somebody annoys you. You should know that in addition to arranging teachers for your afternoon sessions, I have secretly arranged one person in this room to irritate each of you during these four days. Okay?

It took incredible amount of coordination. We have a database. And we've arranged, trained one person in this room, at least, maybe more in some cases for the oakheads.

But there's one person in this room that we've assigned to irritate you. Okay? So, here are the six ways to develop developable purity with this person the moment we stop this class and start walking out.

Okay? When they come up to you and annoy you. Don't forget you guys who are in charge of annoying.

I think it's the colored spots on the tags. Okay. First step.

Struggle to see that they are not coming from their side. Okay? See that they are not coming from their side.

This irritating person is not coming from their side. Start to think like that. It's hard.

It's hard. It takes practice. Okay?

The minute they start to annoy you, put on your armor. And your armor is thinking, this person is not coming from their side. They are coming from my side.

And then suddenly you're going to remember Geshe Michael waving the cylinder. Okay? So, that's step number one.

Step number two. Stop liking them or disliking them. Stupidly.

Stupidly. Stupidly means this. I mean, it's okay to dislike things.

Do Buddhas dislike things? Sure. People are suffering.

People died in the World Trade Center. People are dying in Iraq as we speak. Do they like that or do they dislike it?

They dislike it. It's not like they're in some kind of space-style equanimity where they don't care. Right?

They're aware. They're omniscient. They know people are dying.

They don't like it. But the way they don't like it is smart. You see?

They know how to change it. They know how to fix it. The way we don't like people is different.

Okay? The way we don't like things is different. So step number two is, okay, there's this irritating person in my life.

But what's the natural kind of emotion that's going to come out of it if you realize you're making them? You see? Are you going to get upset at them or at you?

You see? That's what makes Buddhism such a hard path. It's such a hard path.

It's your fault. Okay? It's your fault.

It's my fault. I meet an irritating person. Step number two.

Don't like them or dislike them coming from their own side. You see? Realize that you've made them.

Then you won't have the stupid feelings of like and dislike where you struggle with them, where you try to convince them not to be annoying. Okay? Which doesn't work.

Did you notice after 40, 50 years? Okay? No kind of convincing.

Makes an annoying person less annoying. You see? Give it up.

You can do it if you want. It doesn't help. You can keep, what do they call it in Hebrew?

What's that thing? Kvetching. You can keep kvetching, but it doesn't work.

I mean, if it makes you feel good, do it. Okay? But it doesn't help.

You can't sit there and say, could you please be less annoying? This thing that you do annoys me. Could you stop that?

If they were doing it from their own side, maybe that would work, but it doesn't work, does it? So they're not doing it from their own side. If you don't like annoying people, stop being annoying.

That's the hardest thing in the world. That's the hardest approach in the world, and it's the only one that works. Okay, so second one is don't like them or dislike them ignorantly.

Okay? That leads to step number three. You will stop reacting badly.

Okay? You will stop reacting badly. To put it in Buddhist terms, you'll stop making bad karma.

You'll stop making bad karma. Okay? What's the use of yelling at the person who annoys you if you realize that you're making them?

Okay? Okay? Like if you slam your own finger in the car door, you don't start hitting yourself, right?

If someone else slams your finger in the car door, you might get angry at them. But the moment you realize you did it yourself, to yourself, you don't get angry, right? And definitely, you don't engage in violence like that.

Like you're not like Gollum in the... Is it Gollum, right? In the Three Rings, where he's punching himself, right?

The Lord of the Rings, right? It's not like that, you know what I mean? I mean, most people, once you realize it was you who slammed the door on your finger, you're like, okay, I'll just try to get a band-aid.

You know, it's not like you start screaming at yourself, okay? Because you know it's yourself, you see? But everything else is also.

Every irritating person you ever met was coming from you. So no use to get mad and no use to retaliate, okay? I mean, what step are we on, four?

Three, no retaliation. Karma is finished. Bad karma, the cycle is starting to wind down.

Unilateral de-armification. Disarmification? I don't know.

Whatever. Disarmament. Okay, unilateral disarmament, you know?

I won't fight anymore. No use. I made the thing.

It's like shooting my own toe, okay? It doesn't help anything. Step number four.

Then slowly, if you keep practicing that, your habit of thinking that things are coming from the other side will stop, okay? The habit of thinking that things are coming from their side will gradually stop. If you keep doing that, gradually, you'll start believing that anything comes from its own side.

Normally, when you're more upset, these principles are harder to apply. When you're less upset, they are easier to apply. Stage number four, you're getting so good at it that even when you're very upset, you can still see that these things are coming from your side.

So that's the difference, you see, between number one and number four. Number one, you're just getting used to the idea, oh, maybe this thing's coming from its side and not from me. Sorry, from me and not from its side.

Then number four is like, no matter how annoying somebody gets, somebody slams your finger in the car door, within one second you're already thinking, I did that. That's coming from my side. And you don't get angry like that.

Next step, five, you have seeds in your mind from your past life for believing that this thing comes from its own side. From the moment you were born, you started to believe that things came from their own side, the source of all suffering, the source of all trouble. You have a seed deep within your mind to believe that everything comes from its own side.

You have a seed for that. Now, if you do step number four long enough, which is what? Yeah, stop seeing things coming from their own side.

Tsultung, right? From God stone. No more tsultung, okay?

Like, you're getting over that habit of seeing things. Then step number five, the seed starts to dissolve in your mind. It's very cool.

Old seeds start to dissolve in your mind. That seed that you were born with, that guy that pisses me off is coming from his side. It's not coming from me.

The seed that makes you think that way, which according to Buddhism has been carried through countless lifetimes, it starts to dissolve in your mind. The seed itself starts to dissolve. See, very powerful.

And then obviously you're not creating new ones, you see? That seed is perpetuated every time you think something that makes you angry is coming from its side. So if you start working on not seeing things that way, the old seeds start to dissolve.

And no more new seeds, you see? No more new seeds. Last step, step number six.

Then the whole cycle breaks down. The whole negative cycle, downward cycle breaks down. Samsara is broken, okay?

The negative cycle, you know? I get mad. I think he's irritating from his side.

I say something bad. I collect karma, okay? And then I see more and more is coming from his side.

Then I put more seeds in my mind to see it that way. And then tomorrow I have even worse problems seeing people coming from their side, you know? Last step, step number six.

It's all broken. It's all broken. Developed purity, you see?

What subject are we on? Developed purity, okay? Then you got developed purity, okay?

Lobhurnamda. Lobhurnamda. Those are the six steps to get developed purity.

You have developed a kind of purity then. You are pure of negativity and its cause, which is seeing things the wrong way. That's called developed purity.

So that teaching on the six steps of Maitreya, which comes from the Uttaratantra, that's where it comes from. That's the punchline for those of you who've had classes before here. We keep talking over the years about the six steps of Maitreya.

This is the source of them, okay? That's where they came from. This is the source, as it's presented in the Uttaratantra, which is how you shut down samsara, okay?

How to shut down the perpetuated cycle. The way you've always learned it was the other way around, which was what? How the downward cycle starts and gets triggered and how it progresses.

Here in the Uttaratantra, now in the teaching on developed purity, you get this exciting thing. This is the opposite, how to shut it down. The same six steps in a different order, how to shut down the cycle, how to shut down violence, pain, suffering from its root, you see, and achieve purity, okay?

So now I'm going to go backwards with you through the class, and we'll see how it all ties together. These six steps are how to achieve a kind of purity in your being, and you will become an enlightened being, able to help countless people. That's only possible because you have a different kind of purity, which is your natural purity, okay?

So you have a natural purity now and an achieved purity, okay? And these are two parts of what we call the truth of cessation. These are two parts of the fourth law spoken by Lord Buddha the first time he opened his mouth, okay?

These are two parts of the fourth law spoken by Lord Buddha the first time he opened his mouth, okay? That and the path to cessation, that and the path to cessation constitute what? The Dharma.

That's the Dharma. That's the second diamond-like vision, okay? And that's what we started with today.

See, I just went through the class backwards. I'll do it again forwards. You wanted to go have dinner, right?

We're studying the second diamond-like vision, which is the Dharma. It consists of the last two noble truths, which are the end of suffering and the path to that end, right? And then the end of suffering itself can be divided into your natural purity and your achieved purity.

And if you want to get to achieved purity, you've got to go through six steps. The first is stop thinking things come from their own side. The second one is stop liking them or disliking them stupidly.

The third one is stop reacting to them stupidly when you dislike or like them stupidly. The fourth one is keep thinking this way and you'll get out of the habit of seeing that things come from their own side. That, on step number five, will remove the seeds in your mind for doing that and prevent you from creating new seeds.

And step number six is then you'll break the negative cycle and you'll get enlightened and achieve achieved purity, okay? Like in the debate ground, you do that like 20 times in a night, okay? That's the Dharma.

We finish the Dharma, okay? I NAM GUNG DU RANG NAM MAN DANG NAM GUNG MYUR YAT THA YANG WHA DI RGYUR BKUR SON NAM YOD SHING TSOR TSOR SHING SON NAM YOD SHING NE CHUNG WE DANG PA KUN NYID DUG PAR SHOK Okay, so, Irritators, get ready. Irritatees, put on your armor.

I will not see this person coming from their own side. Ready? Okay, go.