Углублённый курс ACI 01 — Учения будущего Будды: «Уттаратантра» Майтреи (2003, Аризона), занятие 6

[Говорящий 1]
Today is Buddha Nature Day, okay, which means today is going to be a wild ride. It's going to be a lot of information and it's going to be different worldviews colliding. We get the fun group, actually.

Shentong, what Winston La and John La did this morning, was the most difficult piece. Well, no, what Geshe-la is doing this afternoon also, but Shentong is a very difficult thing to tease out, as the people who went this morning probably heard, to tease out what's the differences between Prasangika Madhyamaka and Shentong and Mind Only, etc. So we're going to be doing something kind of pretty this morning.

We're going to be trying to get at what is our buddha nature. What is it that we already have that enable us to turn into a buddha, okay? We already have something.

Now, we've got to be careful. Here's the line we have to walk. First of all, we're going to say, you remember this?

This is the word for buddha nature. So say, calm. In Sanskrit, it's datu.

Say datu. I won't be saying most of the Sanskrit today because I can't pronounce it well and I don't want to teach you the wrong pronunciation. This is the idea of the buddha inside of you.

Did anybody see the Diamond Mountain website for Tara Tantra on the front page? It said no, right? It kind of sounded a little bit sexy and a little bit spooky.

Here comes John.

[Говорящий 2]
Yeah, maybe I'll sit on a chair.

[Говорящий 1]
It makes it easier. Okay. Bodhisattva wars.

Okay, so we're going to be working on what is our buddha nature. What is it inside of us already that becomes a buddha? Now, what's a very common, we would call it a dharma rumor.

If you went to the satsang last night, you heard some points of view that said that's no dharma rumor at all. There's a buddha inside of you, basically. Basically, we heard people saying that, right?

But the dharma rumor is, from our point of view, it's a rumor, is that there's a little buddha inside of you. You're already perfectly enlightened. That would be great.

You're already a perfectly enlightened being and all you have to do is polish it off. That's why David Sykes, the top of his head is shiny. He's been polishing off the core to reach the perfect buddha with it.

It sounds sweet, right? No, I'm teasing. I started a new dharma rumor.

But the idea that there's already a perfect buddha inside of you, we're going to end up blowing it out of the water. What is it inside of you that you keep all the way to buddhahood? What is it that gives you the potential to become a buddha?

What is it that you have? What does that mean? Anybody can ask me, according to whom?

Let's say Prasangika Madhyamaka. Let's just say that. Okay, according to the highest worldview, what is emptiness?

What does it mean? What does it mean? Nobody knows.

I said it too many times. Lee said it too many times. Are you tired?

I just want to make sure. You know what? How many people here have seen emptiness directly?

You're not going to tell me. If you haven't, or even if you have and you're pretending that you haven't, we say it until we get it. We keep repeating ourselves.

I invited a friend from work to one of Geshe-la's classes, the only friend from work that ever went, and afterward she said to me, he's kind of cool, but he repeats himself too much. And I'm like, what do you mean? He said, well, she listened very well.

He said it that way, then he said it this way, then he said it that way. I said, why do you think he did that? She goes, I don't know.

I got it the first time. I said, did you? With your mind or your heart?

She said, all right, I know. And then she ended up saying, I know what I'm supposed to do. I'm just, I want to play for a little while longer.

So we keep saying it. Emptiness is the absence of a David Sykes that is David Sykes from his own side. The absence of a Sykes that can walk into a room and everybody yells, hi, David.

You know, even though they've never met him before. Okay. Can we say it that way?

Is that okay? Now, having said that, how is it that we communicate the idea of our Buddha nature, our essence, our potential? How is it that holy beings try to get us to see the Buddha within us?

Because by the way, it is the Buddha. It's the Buddha you see when you see emptiness directly. You know, you've seen the Dharmakaya of a Buddha, the emptiness of a Buddha.

So there is a Buddha or a part of a Buddha inside of you. And the problem comes in, how do you communicate it? How does the holy beings get us to sort of see it, to feel it, to know it's there?

And what we're going to do this morning is go over nine images, nine visual pictures. And this is what you can imagine going through these pictures, why they start thinking of emptiness as a positive. Why it starts to feel like there is a little Buddha inside of you.

But they're metaphors. They're metaphors. So ready for image number one?

The pronunciation, as John pointed out yesterday, this is the way it's spelled in Tibetan. If you spell it in English letters, this is the way you would spell it. This is the way it's pronounced.

The second one. So say Sangay. Okay.

What's Sangay mean? Buddha. Yeah.

Okay. Like me. Anyone know what Pema is?

We did Om Mani Padme Hum this morning. Lotus. Very good.

Okay. Nyen La. La means inside.

Nyen means rotten, spoiled. Okay. So our first image that the holy ones give us is the image of a beautiful Buddha.

Picture a beautiful Buddha inside your heart. All the marks and signs of a Buddha, glowing, perfect, beautiful. You can't see him.

Why? Because he's wrapped in a lotus that's spoiled, in a lotus that's rotting. So we need to talk about that.

What does it mean? So can you see it? And it's like the lotus is never opened.

So the Buddha is completely obscured. And you can get a lot out of the image. First of all, have you seen a lotus flower?

When I was in India, it was really kind of cool. The kids were all like walking down the street. They weren't actually as pretty because by then they're kind of sat on and wilted.

But you know, these beautiful lotuses we've seen pictures of, right? It's beautiful. Does it bring happiness to someone who likes flowers, a lotus when it's fresh?

And then what happens to it? It dies. And actually, have you ever, like me, had somebody give you beautiful flowers and you forget about them and you leave them in the vase for a few days?

And they kind of die and they stink. So this lotus becomes a symbol. This dying lotus becomes a symbol.

The essence is ignorant liking. Ignorant liking. Liking things stupidly.

What does it mean to like things stupidly? Beautiful. Not realizing where they come from.

Not realizing where they come from. And because we don't realize where good things come from, where do we think they come from? Out there.

Sirtung. What? The paycheck.

Right. The paycheck. Sirtung.

We see things coming at us. Sirtung. We see things coming at us.

What do we do when we ignorantly like something? We grasp at it. I love the hand gestures today.

We grasp at it. We grasp it. We're, go ahead.

We do wrong things to get more. We do wrong things to hold on to it. And then what have we done?

Does the lotus, and then it looks sometimes, doesn't it look like sometimes, haven't you, you know, I used to work in a elementary school and the kids, the little ones would come and they'd say, Miss Penn, it was a former incarnation. I was married. You know, we got to talk to you.

My best friend hurt my feelings. And you like, she doesn't like me anymore. She likes so-and-so.

And I'm going to go tell her that so-and-so really said this about her behind her back. Is that a good example of ignorant liking? You're going to get your friend back by splitting apart the new friendship.

And they'll come back and I'll, you know, good counselor, talk to them about, you know, is that really going to work? And the kids nod. And then they argue with me.

Then they decide it won't really work. And then they go out at recess and try it anyway. Right.

And they come back the next day and said, my best friends, my best friend, you were wrong. Okay. So the lotus can look beautiful in the moment.

It looks like he got a good result. What's going to happen in the future? What's going to happen to our friendships?

They're going to fall apart. Yeah. So then the lotus is another good example of that.

It's something that can fool you because it looks like you get something beautiful out of something wrong. And it clobbers you later on. And in the meantime, it poisons you from seeing that beautiful Buddha with all the signs and marks.

And is it a Buddha inside of you inside of that lotus? Really? The picture is, we're going to give these out later.

This is Kala, who is Allison Day's daughter. This is her picture. Her picture.

Kala is 12 or 13. And she's Allison Day's daughter. And she went to class and she went home and she drew all the images.

So this is her drawing of the in the lotus. And see, this Buddha, he's getting impatient. He's popping out.

All right. But doesn't it, it obscures. How can we see the emptiness of things?

How can we see that things don't really come from outside of us if we're grabbing onto them and hurting others? Okay. Does that image make sense?

But is it a real Buddha inside? What are they really talking about inside the lotus? Emptiness.

Right. But it wouldn't be a very good image. But that emptiness is the potential to give birth to a Buddha with all the marks and signs.

Okay. That's image number one, just in case it asks on your homer. Okay.

By the way, this is not, this is your latent, your dormant desire to like things ignorantly. It's not when it comes up in the moment. It's not the moment it comes up.

These are the seeds that you've already planted to like things ignorantly. That's the rotten lotus, the dormant desire. So that's important.

Okay. The seeds. Let's see if I was supposed to say anything else.

There's a secret to this. Can anyone see inside of that spoiled lotus? Can any being look at us and know that we have the potential to become enlightened?

Is there a being that can look into the heart of every living being and see this potential, even in those beings in the hell realms, even in those beings that see themselves surrounded in flame? Is there a being who can do that? Buddhas.

Right. So that's the secret. Enlightened beings can see that inside of this rotten lotus is the potential for complete, full, perfect Buddhahood.

Okay. And what do we need? What do we need?

Because we don't get it. I mean, did you get this stuff? Did you figure out that the world was all coming from inside of you?

Did you figure that out by yourself? I didn't. Did you?

We figured it out because enlightened beings taught us. They spoke the words that have been taught to us. So that's another secret of it.

If you can get the teachings, you can start liking things wisely. You don't stop liking things. You just start realizing that everything you like came from you being a good person.

Okay. And then you can open up the lotus. Then the rotting lotus can fall away, and you can see the Buddha nature.

Okay. Image number one. Got it?

Any questions? This is so cute. Image number two.

The key to this image is, oh, by the way, liking things ignorantly is called, say, duchak. Duchak. Okay.

That means to like things ignorantly, to think they're out there somewhere, to think that if you take them away from someone else, you can actually have something good. I was laughing yesterday because I bought some of those, I'm going to buy some of those beautiful CDs that Anthony did in Australia. And I misheard Allison Day.

I didn't have my wallet. And I was like, Allison, can I put these? Because I'll forget.

Otherwise, can I put? And she put them in a bag. And I thought she said, take them with you.

Because there was confusion today, and that I could pay her today. And I got, I'm getting the Marriage of Karma and Emptiness is one, and Mahamudra is the other, which is all about emptiness, right? And I get home, and there's a panicked email from Allison saying, what CDs did you take?

I need to keep track. Did Anthony say you could have them for free? And I was like, it's 1230 at night.

And I'm sitting at my computer, writing her a note going, no, they're not for free. Yes, I do owe you money. These are the CDs, and I didn't steal them.

And she wrote me a note back saying, oh, sweetie, I didn't think so, you know. But I was laughing at the idea that I could steal a teaching on karma and emptiness. And emptiness, you know, I was like, you could, I guess.

But then would you get it? My computer would probably break trying to play. You know, so it was, and she didn't think I did, but she's trying to keep track of inventory, so I don't want to.

But it was funny, because it made me think about what gets in our way. The thought, and we can laugh at that one, because it's so obvious. But is it so obvious when Holy John Roadhouse and Winston run late, and I get worried about finishing class on time?

I have to fussy, right? And I get irritated. And I think somehow my irritation will change things, or the fact that this class is going to be shrunk shorter isn't because I've squeezed other people for time, right?

I squeezed other people for time. I've kept other people waiting, you know? What's the cause?

Is it that John and Winston are so interesting and enthralling? Yeah, they might be, but if people have the seats. Or is it because of...

Well, I was going to say the amazing thing is that having that insight, then you boycott the emotion, the feeling of anger, irritation, whatever the equation, whatever the effective emotion is. It gets cut. Eventually, if you're sitting right next to your llama who's saying Well, you're practicing.

I mean, every time it comes up, every time it comes up as if you think it's coming from me, that's one more cut in my habitual pattern that it's coming from out there. Yeah. And it doesn't matter in a way.

You know, it takes sometimes an hour to catch yourself, right? Or even the next day, especially when we get to the next one. Ignorant liking.

Well, actually, it's sneakier. Ignorant disliking is the next thing we're going to talk about, the next image. It gets sneaky.

Sometimes it takes a while, catch it anyway. You know, if it takes a half an hour, if it takes like, you know, your llama sitting next to you and going, it's okay. You know, your llama in your heart.

It's okay. You're catching it. And you're going to unravel the Buddha in the lotus.

Okay, so the second one, second image. That's not it. I didn't number the pages.

It's here, down here. So say, trung, ma, la, trung, si. This is like a retroflex.

Okay. If I tell you that what's inside of this is trung, can you tell me what trung is? Honey, trung si, actually.

Okay. Trung si is honey, nectar, trung si. Trung, trung, what's, what's trung?

Bees. Okay. So the second image is that of bees and honey.

I'm sorry, just blank. Where are we? Wait.

No, that's okay. La, trung ma, okay, is the bee. La is in or on or inside or, you know, from or la is a preposition and it can be a lot of different things.

Trung si is the honey, the nectar within. Um, yeah, bee and honey, bees and honey. So if I tell you that this is the image whose inner meaning is ignorant disliking, does it make sense?

Ignorant disliking, anger, say she dang, she dang, hatred, anger, ignorant disliking, liking things stupidly. How can we relate that to the idea of this sweetness surrounded by bees? You blame the bees and what do the bees do?

You ever try to reach into a hive? They, they, right. They prevent you from getting it.

They sting you. They cause a lot of pain. It's like a swarm of bees around the sweet honey of our Buddha nature.

Our anger, our ignorant, liking things ignorantly is like that swarm of bees and it completely obscures our inner emptiness. And honey is a good image for a lot of reasons. I said our inner emptiness, which is the honey, our Buddha nature.

I should keep saying Buddha nature, Buddha nature. It obscures our Buddha nature. The bees represent our mental afflictions, our latent seeds, our dormant seeds for liking things stupidly.

The seeds that we've planted by doing it over and over again. Again, because if we like things stupidly, where are we seeing them coming from? The irritating people in our lives?

Where are they coming from? It's harder. Well, okay.

So we'll putting the debaters in another room. Stop them from irritating us. Stop our irritation.

It's really interesting. It's not that you shouldn't try things like, well, if groups are going to be debating and noisy, you could try putting them in another room, but the noise will only stop if what? Yeah.

Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. My biggest thing was, you know, in my old job, which I had in New York before I moved here, I was a clinical supervisor for a school-based counseling program. And my supervisory group was everybody, no one else wanted to supervise.

Okay. I worked for the Archdiocese of New York. I had all the nuns.

I mean the tough nuns. They screamed at me a whole lot because they were so frustrated. And I was middle management, you know, squeezed from both sides, middle management.

I had the screamers in my group. I had the people who didn't get their paperwork done. I had the people who were sure that the only reason they couldn't help every child in New York was because of the idiot administration, you know.

And I was one of them. And I was the one they could talk to. I got screamed at a lot.

I cried a lot. So I leave, right? And it was great because the supervisors then got together in a supervisory group.

And the other supervisors kept saying, you have to learn to get angry. And at the same time, I was going at night to Geshe Michael saying, you have to stop getting angry. It was really cool.

Of course, they could have been angels who were saying, you have to pretend to be angry so that people don't plant the seed of abusing you, right? So you don't know. You don't know.

But anyway, so I left. I left. I gave up my job and I moved to Arizona in the middle of the desert.

Where's the angry supervisory group? Where's the bad morale? Where's the being stuck in the middle?

Well, guess what? I was a caretaker and a board member of Diamond Mountain. Middle management.

The same number of people said to me, you know, we're poor volunteers and you don't treat us well enough and you don't give us the jobs we want. And and you're keeping us down. And if it wasn't for you, you know, I cook better than you anyway.

What the heck are you supposed to be doing as a care? Which is true. You know, what are you doing as a care person?

Why aren't I one? Right. The same number of people.

I was laughing. I woke up one morning in my tent. We were staying in tents, right?

I had a little tiny tent. It was very secure. I felt like my body could hold the tent down at first.

I woke up one morning in my tent and I just burst out laughing because I realized I had the same number of people who hated me. I had the same number of people who loved me. And I was middle management again.

In the middle of the desert. It was really weird. So those are the bees and they don't go away.

Right. Just by wishing them away or by moving or by quitting or by right. The bees cover the honey, which is the Buddha nature, the sweetness of our potential for enlightenment.

A skilled yogi can see the honey and figure out how to get around the bees. Or maybe even how to use the bees to get to the honey. That's really skillful means.

That's really skillful means. And honey, basically all honey tastes the same. I know there's buckwheat flour honey and there's, you know, all kinds of different honey.

They basically taste the same. Just so is Buddha nature. Christi's Buddha nature, my Buddha nature, John's Buddha nature, Laura's Buddha nature.

They're the same taste. They're the same taste. So honey's a nice image for that.

Okay. Again, the remedy is that enlightened beings like a skilled yogi can see the honey under the bees and can teach us how to stop reacting when someone yells at us, how not to yell back. It's really hard.

I mean, I hold out for maybe, you know, like last night I got three hours sleep. All bets are off. You know, don't try to irritate me.

It'll be very easy. I mean, it'll be like fair game, right? So actually skilled yogi also knows how to take care of themselves because those bees do sting, despite our wisdom, despite holy beings teaching us.

Okay, so that's the second one.

[Говорящий 2]
What about, let's say someone's in a negative situation and they think, well it's because of my karma I'm in this situation, I should just stick it out.

[Говорящий 1]
Oh, what are you doing to the other being who's harming you? If they're not a Buddha, what seeds are they planting? What do you think, John?

I want to hear you on this.

[Говорящий 2]
I think this is a great question. I think it's wonderful.

[Говорящий 1]
We were at dinner with Geshe-la the other night and we were talking about relationships and and about this, about karma and emptiness in the context of relationships. And so that question you raised, I raised in our discussion and said, you know, when we teach this, we need to teach the hard situations. You know, I'm married to an abuser.

I'm in a physically abusive relationship. Do I stay there because I know it's coming for me? And so every time I get hit, it's one more opportunity to, you know, purify my karma?

Is that what we're talking about? I don't think so. On the other hand, you know, if we think that by leaving this relationship, we're going to find ultimate happiness in the next relationship.

Is that correct? I don't think so. How do you burn off the hitting?

Well, A, you don't hit back. You know, A, you don't hit back. Many, in my experience, many people who have been abused have a tremendous sense of anger and resentment and negativity towards the abuser.

That, that's simply, that action of mind, it could be just a thought, but we're talking about body, speech, and mind. Maybe they didn't hit him back. Maybe they didn't yell at him.

But in their heart, they're harboring this incredible antagonism. Right? So that's going to sow the seed, that action of thought, of mind, is going to sow the seed to see it again.

If you get to the point where you can get away, and you get away, then you have, your seed is gone and you're not seeing yourself being abused anymore. But it doesn't mean that you waste this precious human life and this precious human body by letting it get beat up by somebody who's merely accumulated a whole lot more negative karma on his side. Maybe, we don't know, but maybe.

And so the skill, the skillfulness is seeing when is when. Right? When is when?

When is enough? Do you get the idea that a lot of this is about our mental continuum, what we think? You know, even more than what we do.

What we think is our raw karma, it becomes what we do and say. And it's about your state of mind. You could stay, wouldn't suggest it, precious human body, there are vows about that too.

You know? You could hit back. You could leave.

But the result isn't going to be from that action. The future result will be from your actions in the present. One of the most profound, you know, AA is a wonderful model for working with some of these ideas.

And one of the most profound teachings in AA is the teaching about enabling. Right? And so Al-Anon is this organization and one of the things one learns in Al-Anon, which is the person in relationship with the identified alcoholic, is the ways in which I enable, unconsciously, not intentionally, actions which are harmful to that other person and also harmful to myself.

So it brings it back to us. Yeah. Beautiful.

Yeah. As does Buddhism. It brings us back to us.

Okay. So this is the bee in the honey. Remember, it's kind of easy to remember, represents the dormant seed of ignorant disliking.

So what you don't want to do is respond with anger. You might do it. I mean, I had some of these things happen to me as an adult.

Anger arises like that sometimes. It's what you do with it. And then slowly it won't arise anymore because that's a habit also.

Okay, so get it a skilled yogi can get around the bees and a Buddha can see the honey. Teach us to find it. All right.

Ready for picture number three. She had more trouble with this. This is empty.

I keep thinking watermelon. It's not. It's supposed to be.

Let's see. I didn't write this one down. So just say it with me.

Say bun, la, mingpo. Bun means a hull or a husk. This is supposed to be like wheat or barley inside a husk.

I couldn't draw that. I couldn't draw that. She was trying to draw seeds inside of something.

I think it's great. Okay. Yeah, like a seed of grain of barley of wheat inside a husk.

Bun la. La here standing for inside. Mingpo means essence, essence.

Here it means like the grain, the essence of the seed. So you get the idea. Can you eat?

Have you ever like tried to eat an inedible like people eat edamame, which is soybeans inside, you know, and you forget that it's not a sweet pea or something. And you try to eat the outside and it's inedible. It's worthless.

You know, it'll make your stomach hurt if you try. So you get the idea of something nourishing, something healthy inside of a useless husk. So that husk represents, we've had ignorant liking, ignorant disliking, dormant versions.

So what's this the dormant version of? If you think of the wheel of life, what's in the center of the wheel? Hatred and ignorance.

So this is ignorance itself. Ignorance itself. The husk is our ignorance, our dormant seeds for thinking that the world is out there coming at us.

For thinking, if David Sykes looks bored, it's because I'm boring him. You've got to really ask great questions. Yeah, you've got to ask really intelligent questions.

Like she's asking. There's a lot of pressure. So the ignorance is represented by the seed or by the husk?

By the husk. The seed is nourishing, right? Oh, the seed is your Buddha nature.

[Говорящий 2]
Yeah, right. You've got it.

[Говорящий 1]
The seed is your Buddha nature. So the metaphor doesn't extend to the husk having been a useful thing for the seed in the past. It doesn't extend that far.

[Говорящий 2]
Oh, we'll get there with another image.

[Говорящий 1]
I said useless. I thought, well... It protected the seed, right?

It's what the seed ate. Very sweet. Very sweet.

But this is a dried out husk. So now it's useless. Okay.

Very good. I like that. Okay.

The husk keeps us from being nourished by our Buddha nature. Okay. So teachers, we need a teacher.

Get the theme. We need a teacher to show us that there's a grain in there. There's nourishment in there.

And you have to strip the husk before you can get to the sweetness of the grain. So that's the image. The Tibetan for ignorance itself is Timu.

Say Timu. Timu. All right.

Now we're on image number four. So we've had ignorant liking, ignorant disliking, ignorance itself, all dormant seeds.

[Говорящий 2]
What was the Tibetan for the disliking? We had Duchak and we have Timu. Shedong.

[Говорящий 1]
Shedong. Okay. Number four.

This is really cute. This is the picture for number four. That's a cesspool.

That's a cesspool. Okay. Okay.

This one I think I wrote down. Here we go. Say Sa.

La. Ter. Sa means earth.

The earth. Like you'll hear it in earth element. Oops, I screwed up.

I'm like, wait a second. That's not what we want to be talking about. I didn't write this one down either.

Sorry, I did this at five in the morning. Something's got. All right.

Let's see. Okay. We're doing the gold.

So say Mitsang. Nang. Na.

Ser. Nang Na. Ser.

Mitsang means something unclean, a cesspool.

[Говорящий 2]
It's my shower.

[Говорящий 1]
Oh, wonderful. Mitsang. Nang Na.

Nang Na means inside. Ser means inside. Ser means gold.

So gold inside the cesspool. For me, because I lived in several houses where we had trouble with the whole backyard turned into a bomb. Filthy smells, right?

I was eight. It must have been past life. You know, so I have a really vivid image.

This is all the poisons put together. Ignorant liking, ignorant disliking. And ignorance itself.

Manifest form. It's manifest form. It's happening now.

Have you ever felt like that? Especially after Dharma teaching, you know, Geshe Michael says, on your way out, you're going to meet an irritating person. And you're sitting there going, I'm not going to get irritated.

I just heard this holy teaching. I'm not going to get upset. And you walk out, and somebody says something to you, and you're mad.

Like that. Right? Because you're all strung out, and you're tired, and you've been concentrating.

And you get mad. You see the thing coming at you. You want it away.

You see a friend coming towards you, and you're like, ah, they'll rescue me. You're ignorantly seeing everything come at you. That's the cesspool.

So what's the theme here? What's the goal? What's the gold coin?

Your Buddha nature. Your Buddha nature. Now, the kind of cool thing is, if you throw a gold coin in a cesspool and leave it, what will happen to the gold coin?

Nothing. It can't be defiled, right? If you can pluck out that gold coin and wash it off, it's pure gold.

Right? You cannot lose your potential for Buddhahood. You can't.

You can keep it defiled. You can keep it shrouded. But you can't lose the purity of it.

So, if someone comes along with special powers, and they can see under the muck and show us where the gold coin is, can we fish it out, clean it off, and be rich? Yes. You're supposed to say yes out loud.

So, in that way, we rely on the teachings. The teachings are the ones who point to us and say, you've got gold inside. You can become a Buddha.

And they say it over and over again. Right? Until we get it.

Until we're so sick of hearing it, that we're afflicted enough to do something about our afflictions.

[Говорящий 2]
Right?

[Говорящий 1]
Okay. Okay, now here's the Tibetan that I sprung on you before. Here's this image.

This is one of the most famous images of the nine. This is number five. Actually, this is interesting.

This is number five. He looks very happy. But he's actually a really poor guy.

He's got a cane. Is he a blind guy? He's got a cane.

See, he's got a leaky roof. He's got a cane. Maybe he's blind.

He's poor. There's something. X marks the spot here.

And that's what we need to talk about. Okay. So, now say, La.

Ter. Sa la ter. Okay.

Sa means earth. La means inside or under. And ter means right.

What word comes from it that we may have heard? Terma. Like hidden treasure.

Like these Buddhists that appear, Agnus and Bhabha, and hid all these treasures, right? And then people are finding them. What we talked about this morning was a tertan.

A tertan is one who discovers terma. Yeah. Special beings who know where to go.

And sometimes the treasure is written in code. And only the tertan can read it, yeah? Or someone else as well.

Okay, so what we've got is this image of a poor man's house. And he's broke. And he's poor.

And he has no idea that his havel, with the hole in the roof, and the leaky ceiling, and the no protection, is actually been built above the ruins of a palace. And inside the dirt is gold. Right?

A treasure that would make him wealthy beyond his wildest dreams. He doesn't know he's standing right on top of it. He can't see it.

Right? So we got the theme here. Now this time the dirt represents the mental seeds of our ignorance and the different levels that we have of ignorance.

Okay? And this guy, he's always been poor. Just like we've always been poor.

We haven't fulfilled our spiritual heritage since beginningless time we've been suffering. We haven't found a way out. Okay?

And just like him, we have the potential to get rich. What does he need in order to get rich? He needs to dig.

But what does he need in order to know whether he should be digging or not? Metal detectors.

[Говорящий 2]
Someone just pointed at the metal detector. It's beautiful.

[Говорящий 1]
A dividing line. Somebody to point out where the gold is. We have to be told to do it.

Now if the guy's karma ripens, maybe somebody tears it down. You know, you can imagine somebody who's, this poor guy moves away, his house is torn down, and as they're digging it up, the rich guy who bought the property finds the gold. That's not part of the story.

[Говорящий 2]
There was a guy here in the States somewhere who found there was an emerald mine in his backyard. And he was just like digging a hole for some plants one day, and he discovered all these jewels.

[Говорящий 1]
Amazing. Isn't that cool? The beer is diamond mines in South Africa.

Right? Same idea. It's interesting, the metaphor.

I've told people before that when I discovered the Dharma, it was like finding out that there was a basement underneath my house that was already there, that was endless and full of amazing, beautiful things that I was continually discovering. Like you do in dreams when you find a room that you didn't know was in your house. That's interesting.

It fits with that. Yeah, I'd like this one too, because I used to have these transition dreams where I'd dream that I was in my familiar house, and I'd open a door I hadn't seen before, and there were ten more rooms. I used to have that occasionally.

Here's the next one. Just plant the seed with the image here. And here's the Tibetan.

And the Sanskrit. I did write the Sanskrit so you could see it and have the seed planted. I really don't pronounce well, so I didn't want to say it.

Here's the Tibetan. Say, nyuk sok. Dre chung.

Nyuk sok. Dre chung. Dre chung.

Nyuk. Nyuk means sprout. Sprout.

Sok means etc. You see sok a lot.

[Говорящий 2]
Etc.

[Говорящий 1]
Jin sok.

[Говорящий 2]
Jin sok. Jin means giving.

[Говорящий 1]
Giving. Jin sok means all the Yeah. The flat.

The six.

[Говорящий 2]
Correct.

[Говорящий 1]
Jin sok. Sok means etc. Dre.

Dre. Dre bu. Dre bu may sound familiar.

Dre bu means result. Dre means fruit. Fruit.

That's the result of a harvest. Chung means small. So this is what I pictured.

You picture a tree laden with fruit. Apricots. Because we have those in the Diamond Mountains.

And an apricot ripens and falls to the ground. And it begins to rot. The flesh begins to rot away.

The pit gets exposed. It's blown over with soil. It gets summery.

This is Diamond Mountain, Arizona. It gets sunlight. Lots of it.

And a sprout begins to come up. Okay? The nuke begins to arrive.

Now this is really cool. This image is of the path ripening in us. The fruit, the rotting fruit represents our mental conditions.

Which are destroyed. Which begin the root of our negativity. Not all of our negativities.

But the root of our negativities is wiped out when we accomplish one very important thing that until you've done it, you've never seen things correctly at all. So what is that one thing? Seeing emptiness directly.

[Говорящий 2]
Excuse me?

[Говорящий 1]
Okay. The seed. No, that's okay.

We're getting to it. This is a ripening. A sprout's beginning to grow.

So this represents the negativities that are eliminated when you see emptiness directly.

[Говорящий 2]
Yes, she did. That was that. That was that.

[Говорящий 1]
The negativities that are eliminated through the path of seeing. That's the third of the five paths. Which there's only three.

And what do you think the Buddha nature is here?

[Говорящий 2]
The sprout?

[Говорящий 1]
The seed? The watered and fertilized seed and sprout? And it represents the things that are eliminated when you see emptiness directly.

When you achieve the path of seeing. And what do we think of as the sunlight and the fertilizer for this? Say tu, sam, gom.

Does that sound familiar? What does it mean? Tu.

Study. Sam. Study or hearing.

Contemplation. Meditation. The water, the fertilizer and the sun are your hard study.

What does emptiness mean? Oh, we're tired of saying it. But we're going to think it one more time.

It is that. Over and over and over again. Contemplating, meditating, debating.

The other day, you know, Sykes said to me, you're getting close to a cliff, tricky log, you go down that path, you're going to say that we can just do anything. Right? That's what you do.

You pick apart. You wrestle with your friends and with yourself and each other and that's the sunlight, the water and the fertilizer for this image. Okay?

The Buddha nature would be the sprouting from the seed. The covering, the fruit is negativity. You know what's interesting to me about this and what I really like about this is first of all, there's a cycle here.

The cause is the tree gives rise to the fruit which falls to the ground and becomes the cause of a tree. You know? And it's like turning this cycle from negative, where the cause of our suffering is us doing harm.

Right? And the more harm, the more suffering and we continue. It turns the cycle.

When you see emptiness directly, when you see where things truly are coming from, you've ripped the roots out of the tree of suffering and you're reaping the fruit that will move you to enlightenment. So our very negativities can give birth if we understand them properly, if we know where they came from and work to remove them, can give birth to our enlightenment. I kind of like that.

[Говорящий 2]
The fruit itself becomes...

[Говорящий 1]
The rotten fruit becomes the fertilizer.

[Говорящий 2]
Yeah.

[Говорящий 1]
The rotten fruit becomes the fertilizer. It's like that image of manure that's been dumped.

[Говорящий 2]
You don't take the manure out and throw it away.

[Говорящий 1]
You actually spread it on your fields because that's the richness that enables things to grow. You actually can walk on your negativities. Beautiful.

I like that. Because people, especially in the launchpad, almost everyone I know after the honeymoon gets really impressed. Because they realize, they can see all these things in their mind that they know are planting the seeds for something.

And what Kristin just said is, hey, this is cool. This is like you can take the manure of your mental afflictions and make it ripen into something beautiful. It's like instead of getting angry, we could rejoice that we even see what we're creating, that we're working towards stopping, and that can give us the energy It's like when my mind fills with jealousy now, I can't take it.

Before I'd find a thousand reasons to justify it, but now I can't take it. So that's going to push me towards getting there, you see? So the very rottenness of our negativities can help us.

If we see it that way. Beautiful. It's like saying you can start wherever you begin with, wherever you are, because what else would you begin with but what you bring any particular moment in there is that goal.

One of my favorite people wrote a book called Start Where You Are. Okay. So, important to think the theme of image number six.

That was image number six? The theme of it is the negativities that are eliminated at the path of seeing. Because you're going to see a theme as we go up.

We're moving up now, you get the idea? We're going from the grossest form of ignorance to actually beginning to internalize the path. Okay, so we're going to keep going up.

Here's number seven. Here's the picture. Those are not designs.

Okay. And it's this one. It's this bottom Tibetan.

In the very bottom. Say, Okay. Gu means cloth.

This is cloth. Krul is one of those, what do you call a word that sounds like what it is? I can't think of it.

Yeah, I couldn't pronounce it actually. I had the word in my mind but I thought, I'm not going to even try to say it. Somebody can say it for me.

Krul is like to shred, to rip cloth. I always think of that scene in Khundu, where Norbu is with Khundu and he's teaching him how to bite a cloth and then rip it. Krul.

Okay. So the idea is a beautiful statue of the victor, Gyal. Gyal means victors.

Ku means holy body. We have a lu, or I do anyway, an impure body. A ku is a holy body.

Okay. So Gyal is short for victor. Ku is the holy body of a victor.

Nangna means inside. We had that. Gu means cloth and Krul means like a shredded cloth.

So get the idea. What's happening to Buddha nature? It's now inside.

It's not inside a rotten lotus closed up. It's inside a shredded cloth. It's getting thinner, yeah?

You're further along. I think of the cloth. It's got holes all through it.

Because once you've seen emptiness directly, there's no going back. Once you've experienced your Buddha nature, you've experienced your capacity directly, there's no going back. But you still see things wrong, right?

And you only get rid of how many mental afflictions after you see emptiness directly? There's like three. How many mental afflictions are there?

84,000. 84,000. That leaves 83,997 to go.

Okay. They will be eliminated because you've ripped the roots out. And they'll be eliminated on what path?

Path of what? 83,997.

[Говорящий 2]
Yeah. Path of habituation. Well, they'll be eliminated.

[Говорящий 1]
If they start to be eliminated, you could go on a journey or have a normal returning day. Yeah, so we're talking about mental afflictions being eliminated. They're eliminated on the path of habituation.

What are you habituating yourself to? What you saw. You're getting used to the idea that the world now you know does not exist the way you thought it did.

So the cloth is shredded and your nature is peeking out and you know you're near victory. Okay. And the idea of the ripped cloth.

Actually, I didn't draw a vivid enough picture. It's like there's a rag around a priceless statue and it's laying on the side of a busy road, a busy highway, highway number 10. And some deity comes and they can see in the rag and they see this priceless statue and they say, hey, hey, they stopped somebody.

You know, they put their thumb out. Somebody stops and they say, look, look, there's something priceless. And it's right there.

You can see it peeking out. So again, those who can see can see this beautiful nature inside of every single being. Bugs have it.

Animals have it. People have it. Every being.

This is number eight. Very cute. She's very, this is, she's 12.

You'll get it. This is amazing.

[Говорящий 2]
Future. This is the future of, what's this?

[Говорящий 1]
What does she look? She's pregnant. That's the future.

What does he look like? Or a king. Okay.

Say bume. Bume means woman. What it means in some, what it means in some is picture this pregnant woman.

She's poor. She's impoverished. She is unprotected.

And if you can picture this image was born in India. Women alone in India, especially in the past, but even in the present, are in danger. A woman without protection is a very scary thing in India.

They still, you know, I remember some Indian friends warning us when we were traveling. We got to Goa, which is this beautiful place. It's like creepy.

Why is that going? What's wrong with this picture? My mind would wrap itself around the world and the water.

And somebody said, be careful. Tell your, you know, I didn't go swimming. I didn't have a swimsuit.

Tell your friends, watch what they wear on the beach. The other day, I went swimming down the river in the Indian sea. And it's just like, what just happened?

Here's the place that looks like the river. So it's unprotected. A pregnant woman with no protection.

She thinks she has no protection, but what she doesn't realize is it's a pregnant woman who's pregnant with a world emperor. A world emperor is a being with the karma for the whole world to beg them to take charge. The ultimate worldly protector is right inside of her.

Right there. She's like eight and a half months pregnant. And she feels unprotected.

Moral of the story, anybody? Where's our protection? That's what I said last night.

I said, you know, after John left, this gentleman I was debating with last night, I said, you gotta go to Shentong tomorrow. You gotta go to that class. He said, I don't have to go anywhere except inside of myself.

[Говорящий 2]
And I was like, you win.

[Говорящий 1]
End of debate. Right. The protection is our Buddha nature.

The protection is our emperor nature. Now the woman, this impoverished, ugly, by the way, she's ugly. She's got everything going against her.

She's poor, she's ugly, she's unpredictable. The woman, sorry. And we're all assuming the world emperor is a man.

It could be a girl. World empress.

[Говорящий 2]
World empress.

[Говорящий 1]
The woman represents the impurities on the first seven levels of the bodhisattva boon. So you know, you're well into it. It's the subtle impurities you're working on now.

An impure level. Seven impure levels. What are these stained with?

They're stained with the innate belief in self-existence.

[Говорящий 2]
You know you're wrong.

[Говорящий 1]
Intellectually, your belief in self-existence has been destroyed. But your innate belief is still there. And you have a subtle belief in self-existence.

But you still see things wrong. So the woman is like this. But very soon, the protection inside of her will ripen.

[Говорящий 2]
Why is she pushing a shopping cart full of folders in that picture? Oh, she's meant to be a bag lady.

[Говорящий 1]
She's a bag lady.

[Говорящий 2]
This is a modern, yeah.

[Говорящий 1]
Beautiful. Very good. This is a 12-year-old listening to a class on buddhism.

[Говорящий 2]
She got it.

[Говорящий 1]
No protection. Okay, we've got one more. Number nine.

Say sa. La. Rinchen.

Su. Sa la. Rinchen.

Sa is earth, right? And la inside the earth. Rinchen means precious.

[Говорящий 2]
Like Rinpoche. Rinchen means precious.

[Говорящий 1]
Grace. Hugely precious. Suk means body.

Precious form. So this is like, you could say, a statue made out of pure gold. And then it's covered with a thin layer of mud.

[Говорящий 2]
This is cool.

[Говорящий 1]
What can you see? Unlike that first one where the mud is hiding all over, you can see the precious statue. Gold is peeking out.

It's just a thin layer of clay.

[Говорящий 2]
So the clay represents the subtle obscurations to our missions. The last things that need to be cleared away.

[Говорящий 1]
On the last three levels. It's subtle. Isn't it cool?

[Говорящий 2]
You can see the gold.

[Говорящий 1]
They're really beautiful. Yeah, the subtle levels are obscurity.

[Говорящий 2]
Obstacles.

[Говорящий 1]
There are more subtle obstacles in there on the last three levels, which are called the pure levels, because you reach nirvana. You reach nirvana, so you've gotten rid of all, you've permanently seized your mental obscurations, but you still have obscurations. Okay?

So this is, that clay is that last little bit that needs to be scrubbed off. And what's going to be, what's going to emerge? And what's, actually your Buddha would at that point, right?

[Говорящий 2]
But you're right.

[Говорящий 1]
The statue represents your Buddha. All that's left is to use your wisdom. This is the end of gomlam, right?

You're going to flip over into miloblam, the path of no more learning. Pure, total, complete Buddha. Questions, comments?

That's a comment. Debates? One of the nice images that actually comes out of the Shentong view is the image of water that has mud in it.

Right? And so the mud doesn't contaminate the essence of the purity of the water. So as the mud settles, the water is pure.

What I would suggest to, how many of you sort of torment yourself about your mental obscurations? Especially parents, I know moms do this. You know, the days where they communicate with their kids.

It's like getting run over with a truck. Remember that that inner Buddha nature can't be sullied by anything. It's like the sky and clouds be temporarily obscured, but it can't be sullied.

So I started playing this game with myself. I don't know whether it will help at all. I had a tendency to beat myself up badly.

I still do a bit if I get stressed or exhausted. And then I call John Roadhouse or I email him and then Christy sort of talks to him. Anyway, it's like this health.

But what I've learned is when I'm not completely stressed and it starts to overwhelm me, I just look at it and I can't stop it. I'm jealous. I'm angry.

I'm depressed. I'm in a hole. And I like look at it and say, you know what?

All you are is seeds. I planted you there a long time ago. You're ripened.

I can't do much about you. But enjoy your day because tomorrow is another day. You're going to go away and you're not going to change the fact that I can become a Buddha.

And just a little gentleness to throw in there for people that are too rough on themselves. It tends to be women, but I think the guys here tend to do that too. Eating up yourself.

Parting yourself is as bad as parting someone else.