Углублённый курс ACI 01 — Учения будущего Будды: «Уттаратантра» Майтреи (2003, Аризона), занятие 7

[Говорящий 1]
Today is Buddha Nature Day, so welcome. So far today you've had Buddha Nature in two different flavors. I mean, and it's kind of out of order a little bit, but normally the way I would do it is, first of all, I would go through the nine images of Maitreya from the Uttara Tantra.

I like the nine images. You know, anytime you use a metaphor or an analogy, an example, like a parable for a teaching, you remember it much more easily. I think that's why Jesus spoke mostly in parables or metaphors.

Jesus is always talking about farmers and grains and things like that, always giving it a solid image, like a real image that people could relate to in their everyday lives. And I think every time, you know, like if today you see a pregnant woman going down the street, you're going to think of that image about the pregnant woman who has no one to help her or protect her, and she doesn't know that the king of the world is in her womb. The child who will become emperor of the world is in her womb, but she's a poor woman and she doesn't know that.

And that's a metaphor for the Buddha nature inside of us. We are having this miserable life like the poor woman, and then inside of us is something that could protect us and make our lives incredibly, totally, perfectly happy. And we just have to give birth to it, you know, have to do some labor.

So, you know, images I think are very strong. So normally we teach the images first from the Uttara Tantra, and you've had those. Then we would go on to the more technical explanation of Buddha nature.

The images are nice, but anytime you use an image, there's always the danger of a misunderstanding, you see? An image is just something physical, something concrete that we can draw your attention to, like the diamond, right, as an image for emptiness. We can use the diamond as an image for emptiness.

But even in a single room in a single afternoon, much less over twenty centuries, images can be misunderstood, you know? The original images are always imperfect, you know? If they were the thing, you wouldn't need the image, you see?

So images are in some ways similar to what we're talking about, but there's always some kind of lack of an image. An image is always insufficient in some way. So it's important that you go from the images or the pictures, the icons, to the command line, right?

You go to the guts of the idea, like you go into the program and see how it works. And that's the monastic presentation, the one we do in the monastery. We might debate this subject, which in the monastery is called rik, for three months, every night, for four or five hours.

We would be debating this subject, tearing it apart, questioning it, getting down to it more exactly. So that would be the second step. And then thirdly, oftentimes a great lama will come and discuss all of the slightly mistaken ideas about the subject we're studying.

In the monastery, it's called kathigma. A lot of you are familiar with chung-e. But what it means is that, you know, over 20 centuries of time, many, many different people have come up with different angles or different ways of understanding Buddha nature.

And those are important to learn. It's important to learn them and compare them. And then it's important to be able to distinguish between their strong points and their weak points.

Each presentation will have a strong point, which makes it good to study. It makes it useful for us. But then it will have some weak points, like some points that are slightly wrong.

And we study those in the monastery a lot. And that was the reason to have a presentation this morning of many different viewpoints on Buddha nature. Each one of them, and this is very, very important to say, each one of those viewpoints, according to our idea, was spoken and taught by an enlightened being.

So, each version of Buddha nature that you've heard today was taught by an enlightened being, whether it was the Third Karmapa, or Jambgung Kongtrul Rinpoche, or Gyaltsabje, or Tsongkhapa, or Lord Buddha, or Arya Sangha. All the different versions you've heard, according to our belief, were all taught by a being who was omniscient, who knew all things. And then they tailored the presentation to their audience, which those of you who are teaching are beginning to appreciate, right?

I mean, depending on who walks in the class that night, you have to adjust your presentation. If you see His Holiness teach, you see this a lot. He comes to New York City, and he's Mr. Politically Correct, and Mr. Nice Guy. He goes to Seramay Monastery, he's like breathing fire at everybody. You never saw anyone so fierce and angry as when he's correcting the monks on their behavior, and on their viewpoints. But then he comes to New York, and he's this big smiley guy, and everything's okay.

So that's a good idea, that might be useful. And like that, you see? So it depends a lot on your audience, you see?

Who's in the audience that day? So all of those presentations are useful, but you have to look deeply into them and see what are their weak points, what are their strong points. Eventually, you should be able to teach all those presentations to different people with differing capacities.

But in your own mind, you should know very well, very clearly, why a particular idea might not be completely correct. That's a strong, important thing. And so we would go through that.

And then, in my mind, the last step. So far we've had three steps, I think. One was, you start with basic images that people can relate to.

Then you go to a more technical explanation. For people, we say, of sharp intellect. People who have the mind to grasp deeper ideas.

Then you go into slightly wrong and different ideas about the same subject, so people can begin to appreciate all the different flavors in which Buddha nature has been taught. And that sharpens your understanding of Buddha nature. Then I think there's a fourth point, which we'll do at the end of the class today.

Obviously, we have to apply this to our own lives. Obviously, there's one more step to make. How do you meditate on Buddha nature?

How are you going to go home on Tuesday and practice getting in touch with your own Buddha nature? How are you going to perceive your own Buddha nature? We have to talk about different forms of meditation, different forms of real practice, that you can go home and do to see your own Buddha nature.

To cover all that today, we've got to move. I'm going to start with... I don't usually throw in Sanskrit in a group like this, but when we talk about Buddha nature, you often hear people come up with Sanskrit words.

Oftentimes, you'll hear Sugata Garbha, or Tathagata Garbha, or Rig, or words like that. And I think it's important to go through those words, because a lot of times people don't translate them. You might go to a lecture by a lama, and they'll just talk about Sugata Garbha, and you don't know what that is.

So just at the beginning today, I'm going to do a little Sanskrit. Don't get nervous. I'm not trying to teach you Sanskrit.

It's not a big part of this general class, but it's also very auspicious. Sanskrit is the language spoken by all Buddhas after they become enlightened. When you get enlightened, you will speak in Sanskrit.

And then everybody will hear their own language. You see? Lithuanian, Yiddish, Spanish, border Spanish, whatever they need, they will hear.

So it's kind of auspicious to do a little Sanskrit with you. So here we go. I'm not going to write the Sanskrit words.

Your Sanskrit track teachers can do that. This is the short version. Say, deshek, nyingbo.

Deshek, nyingbo. Nyingbo means essence. Nying is also the word for heart.

Nyingbo means essence. Shek means gone. And de means that way.

The essence of those who have gone that way. The essence of those who have gone that way. So obviously essence means nature, like Buddha nature or Buddha essence.

Those who have gone that way is one of the words for Buddha. It's another word for Buddha. In Sanskrit, say tatagata.

Tatagata. The TH is just a TA. It's not a DA.

So say tatagata. Okay, good. Tatagata means person who has gone that way.

Tata came into English as that or that way. Ga is a Sanskrit root that comes into English in the words gone and come. Go and come.

The CO in come, the GO in go, and the GA are the same root. And TA, for those of you who are learning Sanskrit, corresponds to the ED at the end of English verbs. Those who have gone that way.

It's even the same dental. It came into English as ED. So those who have gone that way.

And then Nyingbo in this case is say garba. Garba. The Sanskrit root is grub.

And it came into English as grab, to grab. This is the Sanskrit word for a womb, the womb of a woman. And it's the same idea as the word conception, which means to take or to catch, you see.

And it means that the egg catches in the uterus. You see what I mean? Like conception means caught.

It catches and then it plants and it stays and then it starts to grow. Conception. So that's why the womb in Sanskrit is called garba.

The place where the egg is grabbed or caught on the wall of the uterus and then it starts to grow into a child, you see. So it's called the grab, you see. So garba.

So tathagata garba, say tathagata garba, means the womb of the Buddhas. And that's the most common word for Buddha nature. Tathagata garba.

Deishin shepe nyingbo. In Sanskrit. That's why you'll hear this thing like thatta thatta garba or something like that.

It means the womb of a Buddha. So here you get this feeling, right? You get this image again.

And that's important. Keep your mind on the image. It's a concrete image.

There's a womb. You have a womb. And in there you are growing your own Buddhahood.

Every living being from an amoeba to a whale to a grasshopper to an ant to a flea to Einstein has a womb. Those big football players have wombs. Everybody has this womb in them.

And we have to gestate our Buddha nature. That's where we all have to grow our child, which is us, our future Buddhahood. It's a very beautiful image to me.

Oftentimes you'll hear, instead of tathagata garba, you might hear sugata garba. Those of you who are studying Tibetan, it's devarshekpa. Say devar.

Shekpa. Devar. Shekpa.

Devar means happily, well, good. Shekpa means gone. They've gone to bliss.

They've gone happily. Sometimes it means they've gone smoothly to Buddhahood. And it's another word for Buddha.

Devarshekpa is another word for a Buddha. Sometimes it means gone to bliss. They've gone to a blissful state.

Devarshekpa. The Sanskrit is called sugata. I like su.

Su comes from Indo-European, which is an older language than Sanskrit and English. It comes from a root called su. Coming into Sanskrit, the e drops off, and it becomes su.

Coming into Greek, the s drops out, and it becomes u. You see it in the word euphony, euphemism, euthanasia, meaning good. And eurythmics.

Good rhythm. So whenever you see the su in Sanskrit, you remember the u in Greek. Remember eurythmics.

That's a nice image to remember. Solid. And then su means good.

So su up here means good. And gata again means go'd, went, gone. Ga meaning to go.

Ta meaning ed. So gone well. Gone to bliss.

Su, ga, ta. Sugata. So often you'll see sugata garbha.

So all the words I'm going to give you for Buddha nature, sometimes they start with tathagata, sometimes they start with sugata, but it means the same thing. Those who have gone that way, meaning to Buddhahood, or those who have gone well, or to bliss, meaning Buddhahood, is always the first half. So I'm not going to repeat that now.

You got the first half, right? Sometimes it'll be Buddha. Buddha or sugata or tathagata all means just Buddha.

Now we've got to get to all the words for nature, Buddha nature. We had one so far, which is garbha, the womb. Now here's another one.

Say nimbo. Nimbo. Nimbo means heart.

Nimbo means heart. Like the Heart Sutra is called, ksheragyapada rjuchenpay nimbo, prajnaparamita hrdaya, which means the heart of the perfection of wisdom. So the Heart Sutra's real name is the heart of the perfection of wisdom, nimbo.

So sometimes Buddha nature is called Buddha nimbo. They say nimbo. But didn't we already have that?

We just had that, right? What was the Sanskrit? Garbha, meaning womb.

Now sometimes the Tibetans use nimbo when they're translating the Sanskrit word for womb, garbha. Sometimes they use the word nimbo when they're translating the Sanskrit word hrdaya. Hrdaya, the H came into English as H.

The I came into English as EA. The R came into English as R. And the D came into English as T.

So the word heart comes directly from the Sanskrit word hrdaya. So that means heart. So now you get a different sense of it, right?

I get the sense of a core, of a crystal diamond core, right? Like you can either see it as the heart in the chest, meaning like the essence of you. I like to see it as a crystal pole, like a crystal core going from the chakra at the top of the head down to the chakra between the legs, okay?

Like a core. So hrdaya can mean heart, but it also means like this silver seed or this crystalline core within you, okay? Your Buddha nature.

And so that's another feeling, right? It's one way, it's one thing to think of having something in your belly, right? Something growing in your belly.

That's one feeling. But then to think of this crystal core passing through your body, your axis, the axis of your body, okay? Like the central channel in a way, okay?

This crystalline core. Or you could think of it as this light in your heart, you see? Now you get another, you get several more images for Buddha nature.

We can see why in the Sanskrit they use different words. And to me it's interesting, the Tibetans ran out of words. They used the same word, nyingbo.

So that's why it's useful sometimes to learn Sanskrit when you don't have anything else to do. You can go on and learn Sanskrit, okay? One more word for Buddha nature.

Say rik. Rik. Tibetans roll their R's.

I can't do it very well. Rik. Rik, like ruffles, right?

Rik. Rik means family or type, okay? Family.

And the Sanskrit word is gotra. Some of you have studied that already. We talked about it already.

Because of why? We talked about gotra already. It's one of the names of the book, okay?

This book is called the Uttaratantra. But it has another name which is Ratna Gotra Vibhaga, okay? Which means the divisions of the Buddha nature, of the jewels, okay?

The divisions of the nature of the jewels, okay? We saw gotra already. Sometimes this book is not called Uttaratantra.

It's called Ratna Gotra, okay? Go came into English as cow, okay? Go comes into English as cow.

Tra comes from a root ter, which means to cross over or to bring someone over. Like tara, liberates people, carries them across. The word nectar, the T-A-R in nectar, means to cross over death.

The nec means necrophilia, right? Death. And in this sense it means to protect somebody.

So a cow pen was called a gotra. Gotra means a cow pen. And then later it came to mean family, meaning one herd.

You know, like a discrete group of people that stay together in one place, okay? In one house, for example. That came to mean a family.

So this word was chosen to describe your buddha nature, okay? Anybody tell me where is THE RING SANGYE RIGSUKYE SANGYE SESODAGYATO DAG NI DAG GIS BYIN NI KYAN WRITTEN TO ME LAS TZAM STE Where does that come from? THE RING SANGYE RIGSUKYE SANGYE SESODAGYATO Huh?

Tundra, six sessions, okay? Which all of you do six times a day. THE RING SANGYE RIGSUKYE comes from Shantideva's famous book.

And it means, Today I am born into the rig of the buddhas, okay? Today I am born into the rig of the buddhas. Which means when you take your bodhisattva vows, you get to join the family.

It's like joining the mafia, okay? Like, now you're in the family. Okay, like, today I'm in the family, you know?

So rig means like in the family, okay? And what it means is that you all qualify to be members of buddha family. You have a rig.

You are buddha family. You're in the family, okay? Like, how did you get to be in the family?

Did you have to go through some initiation? Did you have to go shoot somebody? Did you have to steal a car?

How did you get to be in the family? How did you get to be in the family, rig? Somebody said go for refuge.

Somebody said bodhichitta. Huh? Buddha nature rig.

You always had it. You were born, okay? You were born.

You exist, okay? You have a mind, okay? And until you're a buddha, you have rig, okay?

You're in the family, alright? Just to have buddha nature, you're already in the family, okay? Everybody has rig.

Everybody's in the family, okay? So that's the sense of rig. So now we have three or four senses, right?

We have womb. We have heart in your chest. We have heart in the sense of your core.

And now we got family. You're in the family, okay? These are different words for buddha nature.

Your own buddha nature, okay? We got one more, I think. Hang on.

Say kam. Kam. We talked about this word already, like kamba means a person from that discreet area of East Tibet.

Kam gese means food that you bite into pieces. And so kam means like a discreet part, a discreet place or level, okay? And you are at that level.

In Sanskrit it's dhatu. Say dhatu. Dhatu means to set something down.

It comes from root da means to set something down. Oftentimes it changes to di. So the word samadhi, which means to stay in balanced meditation, comes from that.

The word doom comes from that. Set down in stone. The word dhara, the word deed as a written agreement, and to do, they all come from this root da, which means to set something down.

So dhatu means something set down in stone, in you, okay? Got a different feeling now, right? Buddha nature.

It has been inscribed in stone, in you. It is set down in you, dhatu, okay? And there's another sense here.

You know dharmadhatu, right? Famous name of a great dharma center, dharmadhatu. Dharmadhatu means the realm of reality, meaning emptiness, okay?

So dharmadhatu in this sense means emptiness itself. So now we have another flavor about your Buddha nature, right? Dhatu.

You have dhatu. It is inscribed in stone, in you. It is set down like a deed, okay?

Like your destiny, your doom, doom, see? It all comes from the same root. It is in you, written, that you will become a Buddha, okay?

And that's also emptiness itself, your true nature, okay? It's in you. You have that Buddha nature, okay?

Dhatu, all right? One more word that's not such a big deal, but you might see it some places. Say bansha.

Bansha. Bansha means like a kind of plant, like a species of plant or a genus of plant. And I like the word gene, you see?

I like the word g-e-n-e, gene, because gene to me means a seed that you have inside of you, right? That's a genetic defect, right? Or that's a genetic quality means that comes from a seed that you already have inside of you.

And genus means a type of plant or animal, right? Genus, like a family. So you see how these words for family and seed come together?

Genus, gene, kind, which is a family, you see? So again you have this feeling Buddha nature is some kind that's called bansha. And the Tibetans use the word rik again, which is family, okay?

But what it means is you have Buddha genes, okay? Like you got in you Buddha genes, all right? You are genetically a Buddha, okay?

You just have to develop it, right? You have to grow it. You have to bring it out.

You have to reveal it, okay? But genetically you are enlightened, okay? I like that, okay?

So now we have all these concrete images, a womb. Like you can touch your belly and think about your Buddha nature. Tathagata hṛdaya.

You have hṛdaya, heart. You have a Buddha nature. You have this core running through you, diamond core.

Buddha nature, right? You belong to the family, you see? You got that sense of family.

Tathu. It is set down in stone in you. You will become a Buddha, right?

And then bansha. You got the genes, right? They got the genes, you know?

This is going to develop into a Buddha, you know? Genetically enlightened, all right? So you get all these concrete images, okay?

On top of that you got those nine images you got this afternoon earlier, right? Like the gold in the cesspool and the pregnant lady who's got the world emperor in her belly and the Buddha image wrapped up in a cloth that's just thrown on the side of the road. You have all these concrete images, all right?

Now you have nine plus, I guess, six, seven more here. Sixteen images something, I don't know. The next thing is to say they're all wrong, okay?

They're all wrong, okay? They are all wrong, okay? Like you got to remember that, okay?

If you're speaking to a group of people that you feel cannot follow you further, you have to stop here, you see? You go on to how to meditate, okay? Just go on to how to meditate.

How to get in touch with your Buddha nature. See this little Buddha inside of you, you see? If your audience is not capable of going further, you stop here, okay?

So do we go on? No, we go on. You're all citta-jao, dul-jao, ang-bo-num-bo.

You are Uttaratantra special students. You're the students for whom the Uttaratantra was designed, all right? So you don't stop here.

These images, these words for Buddha nature, womb, heart, core, data, genes, family, those are all for people of lesser capacity, okay? Lord Buddha taught them, yes. Lord Buddha meant them, yes.

They are helpful, yes. They are useful, yes. Are they absolutely correct?

No, okay? They give a wrong image of Buddha nature. They don't address your real Buddha nature, okay?

They are helpful for people who are not ready to go one more step, okay? But you guys are. Even though you're tired, it's day three, getting a little...

I think it's time for lineage restorer pills. I'll pep you up a bit. Where are those?

We got them? Okay, these are special pills. When you take one, you become a person who's going to keep this lineage strong in the world, okay?

We had them made in Tibet, was it, I think. And take a few, and it'll pep you up. But when you eat it, you have to remember, this makes you a restorer of the lineage.

You're going to bring this lineage back into the world strong. Also, it'll keep you fresh for the following confusing presentation. Okay, I need one too.

Okay, we're going to go back to the original places where Lord Buddha taught Buddha nature, okay? I mean, we're going to go straight back to the... Get it from the horse's mouth, in a sense, okay?

Not that I'm calling Lord Buddha a horse, okay? But we're going to get it from the mouth of the founder of Buddhism. How did Lord Buddha himself describe Buddha nature, okay?

How did Lord Buddha describe Buddha nature? And here is probably one of the most classical presentations. You carve, I'll eat.

Say, nam khe? Je me. I'm just making it short.

Those of you who had it before, don't worry, okay? Nam khe means sky, in the sky. This je, which is not the je in Je Tsongkhapa, right?

Means, this one's longer, right? Je. Means footprint.

What do you call those things that jet planes leave behind? What are they called? Contrail?

Condon trail? Yeah. What do you call, is there an easier word?

Huh? Vapor trail. Vapor trail.

Okay, anyway, you know the white thing that comes out of a jet when it flies over the sky. That's called a je. Like a footprint or a track, right?

Track. And then me means there isn't any, okay? There isn't any.

This comes from a larger statement in the Middle Length Sutra on the Perfection of Wisdom, where Lord Buddha says to his favorite student, subhuti, okay? The same guy as the Diamond Cutter Sutra. The fall guy, right?

Who's really who? Some people say he's Manjushri, Tantric deity already. But he's like the most irritating student in the class who keeps asking those nude-knit questions, okay?

So be careful in your classes, okay? But anyway, Rabjor, nam khala jai je me, mi mikpa yin, okay? Which is the long form, okay?

It means mi mikpa. Who knows mi mikpa? mik me tsewe What is that?

Yeah. Invisible, can't see. Why is Je Tsongkhapa in his mantra called doesn't see anything?

Is he blind or, you know? Why is he called mik me tsewe? Why is the founder of our lineage in Tibet, the teacher of the first Dalai Lama, called compassion with nothing it sees?

It means can love people but see their emptiness at the same time, okay? Can love people and see their emptiness at the same time. That word has been used for two and a half thousand years.

So it's actually in this longer form of this sentence. Subuddhi, when a bird flies across the sky, they don't leave a track. Mi mikpa, you can't see a thing, okay?

That's it. That's all he says. A bird doesn't leave a track when it crosses the sky.

But Lord Buddha has been talking in that sutra about the path of preparation, okay? We talked briefly. There are five great levels in your spiritual development, okay?

The first one is that you get fed up with things, like 9-11 happens, okay? 9-11 happens. Wake up call, okay?

The world is a violent place. People die. You can go to work today and die, okay?

They'll be digging your Mercedes out, you know, and trying to figure out whose it was. I heard there were cars like months later still in New York with bricks on top of them that nobody came to drive home, okay? So path number one is the wake up call.

Path number two is you start studying emptiness because you got the wake up call. You know, you go to some lecture in Tucson and the guy says, you can't help anybody. You can never help yourself if you don't see emptiness, okay?

You can build people houses to live in. They'll die in those houses. The houses will fall down.

You can feed people. It just turns into poop. Tomorrow they're hungry again, okay?

You can go to a hospital, fix people up. The nurses I know say the most depressing thing about being a nurse is that whatever abuse that person was doing to their body before they operated on them, they do the day after they get operated on. If it's overeating or smoking or drinking or drugs or whatever it is, they just come back in six months, right?

You can fix somebody up. The nature of the body is you'll be back in the hospital later anyway, okay? That's the way it is, okay?

But if you can teach someone to see emptiness, that's a permanent solution. They can become enlightened. Body.

The body itself can change in this lifetime, okay? Get younger. Slowly get younger.

And then change into light completely, okay? You can do it. You can pull it off in this lifetime.

And then you can achieve or fulfill your real destiny. You were not meant to sit on a planet and consume food and sex and go to work like a slave for 50 weeks a year so you get two weeks vacation. What kind of deal is that?

I mean, after 10 years of corporate life, it finally dawned on me, you know? I'm like negotiating diamond deals all day. I'm supposed to be a sharp negotiator.

I mean, suddenly it dawns on me they're giving me two weeks for 50 weeks, you know? And it's like, bad deal, you know? I mean, we weren't meant to do that.

We were meant to get enlightened. You and I were meant to take care of every other living being, okay? You can start with the people around you.

But you and I were meant to... bigger things, you know? You and I were meant to take care of every single sentient creature in the entire universe at the same time.

This is your life's work. This is what you will become. This is why you have to study Buddha nature, okay?

You will become that. You are the next Buddha, okay? This is your destiny.

But you have to see emptiness to fulfill it, okay? You have to see emptiness, all right? So, when you first get your ideas about emptiness from a class, okay?

Not direct thing, no meditation yet, just from a class. Some guys out there talking about emptiness. When you start thinking about that, Lord Buddha says, ,,Nam-kha-la-je-me," Concentrate on the lack of a track in the sky when a bird flies across the sky.

Like, Lord Buddha is struggling to communicate Buddha nature, okay? And in the end, it's Buddha nature that you're focusing on when you think about emptiness, got it? Now, for the first time, we are tying emptiness to Buddha nature.

No more womb, belly. No more heart, chest. No more core, head.

No more family, you know, big group of people. No more genes, vamsa, right? Now he's talking about, like, Lord Buddha is struggling to give you the real image.

And he says, ,,Look up in the sky one minute after a bird has passed over. What do you see? Nothing, okay?

Nothing, okay? Nothing there, okay? And it wouldn't be there, right?

I mean, that's the point. Because birds don't leave trails. It's not like it was there for five minutes and went away.

So in a way, Contrail is not a very good example, okay? A bird flies across the sky. A sparrow goes over your head in Tucson, in this blue sky.

And there's nothing there a minute later. There's nothing there an hour later. There never was, is, or will be anything there, okay?

It's just empty, right? Lord Buddha is now giving you the real thing. This is the real image.

Nothing, okay? Nothing's there, all right? And that's the point of this first quotation from scripture.

Lord Buddha is talking about the emptiness that you will grasp as you struggle after this class to try to understand emptiness. We're not talking about direct perception yet. And then Lord Buddha goes on to give other images.

He goes through... This sutra has a lot of images. That's only the first one, okay?

And I'm not going to give you all of them. But it's enough to establish one thing. The real Buddha nature, the ultimate Buddha nature, is not something you can touch, not something you can hold, not something you can point to.

It's just the absence of something, okay? That gets harder. You lost half your audience in a normal lecture.

You see? Oh, I got a little Buddha inside of me. I just have to uncover it.

I have to wipe the poo-poo off the gold in the cesspool. You know, I can understand that. But now, your real Buddha nature is something like sheer emptiness.

You know? The sheer absence of something is your Buddha nature. The fact that you don't have something is your Buddha nature, okay?

We got to talk about that. We'll talk about it more. But you see, obviously, that here Lord Buddha has explicitly stated what he believes Buddha nature is, okay?

Now, that's not enough in the debate ground. That won't hold you for five hours, okay? You got to have a few that you can pull out of your hat.

So, we get another one. I'm going to give you another quotation. This is about 800 years later.

This is from the Jewel of Realizations, okay? Written by Maitreya. It's one of the five books, okay?

So, here we hear from another of the five books. Uttaratantra is one. Jewel of Realizations is another one.

But it's still the same person talking, Maitreya. Here's the quotation. I just want you to say the lines because it's auspicious.

THOB PA YI NI CHU RU JUG PAS BSTEN LA RIG ZHE JA You want to know what a rig is? It's the foundation for the six ideas, okay? The foundation for the six ideas.

JUG PA means getting an idea. BSTEN means the foundation, okay? The foundation for getting a certain idea.

Six ideas means, as you move through those spiritual levels, you will have six different levels of understanding emptiness, okay? So, in a sense, emptiness is the foundation for those understandings. The object which you perceive is often called in Buddhism the foundation of that perception, okay?

In a sense, when you look at this machine here, your eye consciousness is resting on that foundation, you see? And in that sense, we call object the foundation of a perception, okay? What's the object that you're going to see which liberates you?

Emptiness, okay? So, JUG PAS BSTEN means the foundation that all your realizations rely upon is emptiness. And then Maitreya says, DE LA RIG ZHE JA That's what I mean when I say Buddha nature, okay?

That's what I'm talking about when I say Buddha nature. When I say Buddha nature, I'm talking about emptiness, okay? Which is the foundation for all great ideas.

All great realizations are founded on emptiness. You want to know what Buddha nature is? That's it, okay?

So, now you've got two ancient Indian sources that say that Buddha nature is a kind of emptiness, okay? Buddha nature is a kind of emptiness. It's not some solid image, okay?

It's not like a womb or a heart or a core, okay? It's the fact that something ain't there that you thought was there, okay? It's like you go to the restaurant, you invite a bunch of friends, you know?

You want to impress them, you know? They think you're this starving Dharma bum, you know? You got like a hundred bucks that you've been squirreling away, okay?

And you go to the restaurant, you know? And then you say, Oh, I'm treating today, you know? Get whatever you want, you know?

And then you're hoping everybody's under like $12. And then everybody orders something and the bill comes and it's like $93. And you say, Oh, I got it.

You make sure they see the amount on the bill. Then you put your hand in your pocket, you know? And you change your pants, you know?

And you're like... And you see, that's emptiness, okay? Now, that's a good example, you see?

Seriously, it's kind of seriously. Something you thought was there, ain't there, okay? And it's that same sense of discovery, you know?

Okay, really, when you see emptiness, when you grasp it, it's that same sense of discovery. Wow, nothing there, you know? It's like this wow, you know?

Like, wow, something I thought was there, isn't there, okay? And that's Buddha nature, okay? We're getting closer to real Buddha nature, okay?

That feeling of putting your hand in your pocket and... You know, like... Like, nothing there.

You know, that's very close to the idea of when you see emptiness, okay? Some people say green light, red light, yellow light. Forget that.

Nothing to do with that. Totally wrong, okay? Completely wrong.

They are struggling to find an image. They are struggling to convey it to you in an image. I mean, that's a start, right?

But it's really that sense of reaching down and finding that something ain't there that you thought was there, you see? It's that sense of discovery of the sudden unexpected absence of something you thought was there, you see? That's emptiness.

And that's Buddha nature, okay? That's the feeling you get when you finally contact Buddha nature, okay? Gone.

Something I thought was there is not there, okay? All right. So now we have two quotations.

I'll do one more and then we'll take a break. I know it's hot and I know it... You know, three, four days of this, this much is a lot.

It's like a dharma overdose. You got to hang in there for one more day, okay? Say, CHU YING KHO NA RIG CHU YING KHO NA RIG I'm shortening it, okay?

I'm shortening it because we only have a couple of hours, okay? CHU YING YING is a Tibetan word. You do it with a special feeling, you see?

You don't say YING, like Ying Ying. It's not like that. It's YING.

Say YING. YING, okay? And you pronounce it that way in Tibetan.

It's not a normal YI. It's just a YING. And it means that HOO.

Got it? When you stick your hand in your pocket, okay? It's that YING.

You know, it's okay. It's that. It's on a mud up here, okay?

It's like HOO. HOO. You know?

It's that HOO. Okay? And CHU means dharma, right?

So dharma YING means like the ether or the empty or the the WOO of the dharma, okay? That's all. You can't really translate it.

I don't know how to translate it. It's like the WOO of the dharma, you know? Of the dharma.

You put your hand in your pocket and WOO. YING. Okay?

So it's like some people translate the realm of dharma, the ether of dharma, the essence of dharma. It's like untranslatable. It's the WOO of dharma, okay?

KONA means that's all. KONA means that's all. Okay?

RIG means that's dharma nature. That's Buddha nature, okay? This is a quotation from the 9th century, okay?

This is a quotation from 12 centuries ago. By Senge Sangbo or Haribhadra. He is considered like one of the greatest Indian gurus, teachers of the perfection of wisdom.

Like he spent his whole career explaining emptiness, the perfection of wisdom, okay? He's known to be like one of the greatest masters of India about emptiness or the perfection of wisdom. And then he says in his great commentary, You want to know what Buddha nature is?

It's only the WOOP, okay? Nothing more, nothing less, okay? It's not the womb.

It's not the heart. It's not the core. It's not some light, okay?

It's not some seed, okay? We're jumping now. We're making a big leap.

Get it, okay? You've got to leap, okay? Ready?

It's not a seed anymore. It's a WOOP, okay? I've got to see the transcript when this comes out.

It's just WOOP, okay? It's that something you thought was there is not there, and that's your Buddha nature, okay? Go beyond the idea of a seed.

Go beyond the idea of a womb. Go beyond the idea of a light, okay? It's the idea that something you thought was there ain't there anymore, okay?

That's all, okay? Nothing more. Kona.

Like he's very tough, right? He's not leaving any room. As a debater, he's not leaving any room for argument, okay?

Now, what does that mean? What does it mean to say your emptiness, your WOOP, is your Buddha nature, okay? We've got to do that after the break, because you've got to have some break to digest that.

We're going to do two short things. First is the real Buddha nature. What is the real Buddha nature?

The emptiness. What does that mean, that your Buddha nature is your emptiness? And then I think we can't go home without a little talk about how to meditate on it, how to actually practice and find it inside of you.

So, I'm going to put up here, this is the definition in the monastery. If you say, give me the definition of Buddha nature, this is what you've got to give the guy. Say, SANGS RGYAS SU GYUR RUNG Say it fast, SANGS RGYAS SU GYUR RUNG SANGS RGYAS SU GYUR RUNG Nice.

You're much better than New Yorkers. But anyway, you knew that. Sorry.

SANGS RGYAS means, well, I mean more lightly, okay? Not better. SANGS RGYAS means Buddha, okay?

SU means into. GYUR RUNG means anything which can turn. So, the whole thing means anything which can turn into a Buddha.

Anything which can turn into a Buddha. Any part of you which will turn into a Buddha is your Buddha nature, okay? And there are two basic kinds.

Sometimes people say three. I'm going to write them. Say RANG BZHIN, NAS RIG RANG BZHIN, NAS RIG RANG BZHIN means by nature, natural.

NAS means stays. RIG means Buddha nature. The Buddha nature that's in you naturally, the one that you have naturally, everybody has it.

Everybody's always had it. No matter how bad you are, no matter how good you are, no matter how small you are, no matter how big you are, you have RANG BZHIN NAS RIG. You have your own innate, natural Buddha nature, okay?

Your own Buddha nature. And we'll talk more about that. The second kind, say GYENG YUR, KYI RIG GYENG YUR KYI RIG GYENG YUR means which can be developed and RIG means, KYI RIG means Buddha nature.

So, the Buddha nature which needs developing, okay? Developable Buddha nature, okay? I'm going to talk about that one first and then we'll talk about RANG BZHIN NAS RIG, okay?

We'll talk about developable Buddha nature. There's parts of your mind which are not very good, okay? There's parts of your mind, let's take body and mind, right?

You have a body, you have a mind, okay? I mean, most of your body, this body is not desirable, okay? And we have to get used to that, okay?

I mean, in America, we have medical facilities, we have good food, we have access to food, we are taught to exercise. Mainly, we have a chance as very few countries in history have had. If you want to be healthy, you can be healthy in this country.

I mean, basically, your body is something you can take care of. But from a Buddhist point of view, it's a lost cause, you see? It's a war you can't win.

Sooner or later, it will die. Sooner or later, it will catch something, okay? It's just a question of time, okay?

And I know you don't want to think about it and we go into denial about it, but sooner or later, no matter how much yoga you do, no matter how well you eat, no matter if you eat organic all the time, how many vitamins you take, how young you are, how handsome or pretty you are, you have to lose it. It has to fall apart. Doctors like Dr. Yuri and Michala, they are just trying to keep it together for you a little longer. But ultimately, in the end, you will lose it. And it will get old, it will get weak, it will start to bend over, or it will be hit by something, or it will catch some kind of cancer or something, and you will lose it. This is not Sangye Sikkim, got it?

This is not Buddha nature. It's not going to... This itself is not going to be there when you become a Buddha.

You can't take this with you, got it? Can't take this with you. This you got to leave behind, okay?

Now, if you practice tantra, and you will, sooner or later, before you become a Buddha, this will turn into light. You will have the same outline, general human outline. You will look like the most beautiful thing you can imagine or better.

As I said to the class at the university, Thursday night, sometimes Christy and I buy a Vogue magazine, and we go through and pick out which angel we want to look like, you see? What we're going to look like. We just go through and say, okay, I'll have her hair.

I'll have her slenderness. I'll probably wear clothes like that. And you just go through and you pick out what you're going to be.

You will be the most splendid thing you can imagine when you become enlightened. You can appear as anything, right? Anything you want.

But that won't be this body. This body gets left behind. This body is a lost cause.

This body is not going to... You don't want to take this with you, okay? Then your mind...

I mean, in your mind, there's parts that would be nice to take along, and there's parts that aren't necessary to take along. For example, during this class, hopefully, during these four days in Tucson, you have gained some knowledge about Buddha nature. That is something, that's like a seed that you can cultivate into the wisdom of a Buddha.

You see? That's a good thing. That's a pure thing.

That's a thing that, in a sense, you can cultivate and grow stronger and stronger until it becomes a Buddha's wisdom. You see? So that kind of thing, what we call a realization, what we call a path in Buddhism, good parts of your mind, those can be developed into a Buddha.

So, the body is not gengyur gyurik. The body is not rik at all. The body is not Buddha nature at all.

Can't take any part of this body up to Buddhahood, this gross body. But certain parts of your mind, certain sweet ideas, compassion, love, working for the Buoy School, even though your kid doesn't go there. Okay?

These are all things that you can properly, what do you call it, when you put water and fertilizer on? Yeah, properly cultivated. These can become a Buddha's mind.

You see? So we call them gengyur gyurik. Okay?

So like sweet thoughts, sweet understandings, good emotions. These are all things that if you take care of it, if you cultivate it in a careful way, it can become the ultimate compassion of an enlightened being. So those are what we call your developable Buddha nature.

That was the second one we talked about. So that one's not too hard, okay? That one's not too hard.

There's a third kind of Buddha nature that I'm not going to talk about too much. It's called the other Buddha nature. Okay?

It's called number three, you know? And it's to cover very weird cases of things that you will have when you become a Buddha but that aren't developable. Okay?

And I'll give you an example. When you see emptiness directly in the hours after you come out of that experience, you see the Buddha directly. You see a Buddha directly.

Okay? You meet a Buddha directly. Okay?

You can talk about Buddhism. You can teach Buddhism. You can study Buddhism.

You and I don't know that there was a Buddha. You know? We have some old books.

There's teachers, tradition, lineage in that poster that you bought. You know? And there's all these indications that there was a Buddha.

I mean, you can't really prove it, right? I mean, you can't say for sure there was a Buddha. So in the back of your mind you might have some subtle doubt, right?

That even there was a person called Buddha. But on that day that you see emptiness directly, in the hours after that, you come into direct contact. You know that you have made direct contact with Buddha, enlightened being.

And it happens to be the Dharmakaya, the emptiness body of the Buddha. You achieve that. You attain that.

So what happens to that little part of your mind that says, I'm not sure a Buddha exists? It's just gone. Okay?

It's gone. It's what we called yesterday a cessation. We talked yesterday about the cessation of the idea of Santa Claus.

Okay? Like the night I saw my father dressing up as Santa Claus. Like he had everything on but the beard and he was sticking the beard on.

And I recognized him because of his glasses. And then my belief in Santa Claus went poof! And I never got it back.

You know, that was a cessation for a belief in Santa Claus. The question is the non-existence of my belief in Santa Claus. Okay?

The non-existence of my belief in Santa Claus. The non-existence of my doubt whether Buddha exists, you know, directly. Right?

Do I get to take those with me when I become enlightened? Sure. It's one kind of thing, right?

The absence of the belief in Santa Claus. The absence of the doubt about Buddha. Can I take that to the bank?

Yeah. Yeah. I'll still think that when I'm a Buddha, right?

And it'll still be true. But can you develop that further? You don't really need to, you see.

It's just the absence of something, you see. You either believe or you don't believe, you see. I mean, once you see Santa Claus doesn't exist, it's not like you're going to believe it more later or something like that, you see.

It's not something you can develop. That's Buddha nature number three, okay? If anyone asks you on a homework or something, it'll never come up again, don't worry about it.

Okay? It's an unchanging thing, can't be further developed, but it's still with you when you become enlightened. Okay?

So, in a sense, it can become part of the Buddha. Which only leaves Buddha nature number one to talk about. Okay?

Buddha nature number one. Your natural Buddha nature. Okay?

Your natural Buddha nature. This takes some explanation. Let me see.

Just real quick. When you become a Buddha you get four bodies, right? I mean, there's four parts of a Buddha.

Okay? Four parts of a Buddha. This is just so you can get through your homework, sorry.

Then I'm going to drop it. Okay, there's two physical parts, there's one mental part, and there's one emptiness part. Okay?

There's two physical parts, one mental part, one emptiness part. The two physical parts are, the first one is how you will look in your own Buddha paradise. You know?

That Vogue Magazine Buddha Michael. Okay? How you're going to look in your own paradise.

Okay? The form, you know, your basic identity, physically, what you're going to look like when you become enlightened. The angel that you will become physically in your own enlightened paradise.

We call that Sambhogakaya, the enjoyment body. Then, you know, the reason to be in this class is to learn how to send out bodies to countless beings in countless planets. Right?

You want to take care of everybody. Like, it's fun to take care of one person, right? It's fun.

I mean, if you've ever been a nurse for someone who's sick, it's fun. I mean, it's very, what do you call it? Gratifying.

You feel really good. When you go to the prison and teach the prisoners, I feel so good when I get home. You know?

They're so grateful, and they're so hungry, and they're so sad, and they're so bored, you know, that you teach them and you feel like a million dollars when you get back. I mean, we were built to take care of other people. I always think of Terminator for some reason.

Schwarzenegger's on my mind. I don't know why. But he was built for a certain mission, right?

To come into the past and destroy this guy. What's his name? John, right?

John Connor, sorry. Oh, which reminds me, I always try to correct myself if I make a mistake in a teaching. Like, I like the New York Times thing where the next day they have a list of all the mistakes they made the day before.

So I've got to make a correction from yesterday. I was talking about beating yourself up like Gollum in the Lord of the Rings movies, but I made a boo-boo. That was meant to be the house elf Dobby in the Harry Potter movie, okay?

So I got confused, okay? So that's a correction. Okay, where was I?

Oh, Buddha bodies. So yeah, the Buddha bodies you're going to send out to take care of all beings are called nirmanakaya, nirmanakaya, okay? Now, in one presentation, the Buddha nature that you have that becomes those two physical parts is the developable Buddha nature because those are changing things and that Buddha nature is changing things, okay?

That's in one presentation. Now, you're also going to have this mind, omniscient mind. You'll be able to see everything in the whole universe at the same time.

By the way, if you start meditating properly, you can get that now, okay? I mean, you can get taste of it. You can start to...

If you meditate properly, you can do anything in the world. It's amazing. All the projects you ever want to do work out.

It's incredible. Because actually you're seeing a little bit into the future. Like, if you meditate really well, if you train yourself really well, you have a sense or a general sense of the next six months or the next year.

You can sense it. And then you just do the right thing all the time, you see? You always get into the right thing like six months before everybody else.

So, it's a very useful thing, you know? Especially if you want to be helpful to people. If you meditate well, you naturally develop this more and more.

Every day, every month of retreat that you do, you develop this sense about what's going to happen in the next six months or the year or the next two years. You can get a sense of what's happening in other places, other parts of the country, what other people are thinking, which will keep you up at night sometimes, okay? But you can do this with meditation.

These are things that you can develop, okay? I mean, obviously you don't just wake up one morning like Franz Kafka and you're enlightened, you see? It starts in a gradual process.

It comes slow and it starts. You start to get it more and more, okay? This is developable mental nature, okay?

From now up to the time you become a Buddha, you are working on becoming omniscient, knowing all things in the universe at one moment, okay? Those three parts of an enlightened being, your omniscience, the Vogue magazine body that you have in your paradise, and then all those other bodies you send out to help people, which could be a dog, which could be a cat, which could be a wife or a husband or a child or a grandparent, those are all mainly a product of your developable Buddha nature. They are the final evolution of your mind and other developable parts of you, okay?

Then there's a part of you called the natural Buddha nature, and that's the last thing we have to talk about today. You have a natural Buddha nature, okay? You have a Buddha nature that you were born with.

That's the tough one, right? That's the one we got to talk about, okay? It's this emptiness thing, okay?

How does emptiness relate to you? And by the way, those of you who are keeping track, that Buddha nature turns into the fourth body of a Buddha. That Buddha nature turns into the fourth part of a Buddha, which is the emptiness of a Buddha, what they call the essence body of a Buddha, the svabhavakaya, as opposed to the sambhogakaya, which is your paradise body, okay?

And I wanted to talk about that mainly today, and then we'll stop. And I'm not going to cover the last homework question, okay? The last homework question is a tantric question.

It's a very high teaching by Je Tsongkhapa's teacher, whose name was Lama Umapa. Lama Umapa was like a sheepherder. But at a very young age, he got initiated into Manjushri practice, which Lama Kunga will be doing, okay?

Lama Kunga, Tuesday? Wednesday? Tuesday.

We'll be giving you the very beginning of that practice, not the secret practice, but the introduction to that practice, okay? Like what we call a jinlap, or just a blessing into that practice. Lama Umapa did that, got that initiation as a young person, as a sheepherder, and then got to the point where he could speak with Manjushri directly, direct contact with Manjushri, right?

And later on, Je Tsongkhapa had a lot of questions about emptiness, so he heard Lama Umapa could help him. And he went to Lama Umapa and said, and every time he asked Lama Umapa a question, Lama Umapa said, hold on, let me ask Manjushri. And then he turned back to Je Tsongkhapa and, I can't do it, but I'm just giving an example.

I can't do it. Not like that. So anyway, he tells Je Tsongkhapa, that's what Manjushri says.

And then he used to be the go-between, like that. And then later he taught Je Tsongkhapa how to meet Manjushri himself, and then that's the whole story, right? Anyway, Lama Umapa didn't write much.

He was a sheepherder. But he did write a beautiful book about Buddha nature, and what part of you will become what part of the Buddha, if you get rid of what bad emotion, you see? It's a nice little chart.

What part of you will become what part of an enlightened being, if you can only get rid of your envy, or your cheapness, or stuff like that. Your stinginess. I'm going to save that for tomorrow, because we're going late.

It's been a hard time, I know. It's a long day. It's a very long day.

We'll save that for tomorrow, but I'm just hooking you for tomorrow. We'll do that tomorrow evening. Maybe last thing would be nice.

So just a little bit about your Buddha nature. What's the emptiness of this thing? Say again?

Yeah, you could say it's ultimate nature. But how would you teach it to somebody? You go like this.

Is this a pen? Some people say yes. Say again?

Yeah, what would a dog say? A dog would just try to eat it, you see? A dog would try to chew on it.

So which is it? Is it something to chew on? Or is it something to write with?

I'm just repeating from yesterday. Yeah. Both and neither in a way, right?

Of course it's both, right? You can't say it's not something to chew on. And that would be failing to honor animal rights, right?

And then you can't say it's not a pen because people have a say too, right? So you can't say it's not a pen. You can't say it's not something to chew on, right?

It's both. It's both. Which means it's neither, right?

Got it? Which means it's neither. In and of itself.

Gotta say that. Gotta say that. Never forget it.

In and of itself. From its own side. It's neither a pen, nor something to chew on.

I mean, I tend to do both, chew on my pens, but that's another, okay? From its own side, it is neither. From its own side, it's only a white and black cylinder.

Got it? We say in the diamond business, I think a lot of you know, mazal, say mazal. Mazal.

Diamond business, I'm talking big business, 50,000 diamonds at a time, right? In these huge bags, right? And when you make a deal with another diamond dealer, there's no contracts.

Nobody signs anything. You just say, I'll pay you 4 million dollars on December 3rd. And he says mazal.

Then you say mazal. And it's a sacred bond in the big diamond business, you see? It's a sacred word.

It's an old Hebrew word. It's a Yiddish word. Mazal ubercha.

It means, wear it with good health. And once you say that, you can't break it. It's like a sacred bond, you see?

There's no written contracts in the diamond business. It's so cool. And you're not allowed if you join the diamond dealer's club, which is like this big initiation.

I was the only Irish guy in the whole club. They're all mazookas, right? And once you get in, you can't go to a lawyer.

You have to go to the Board of Rabbis, you see? And there's no expense. It's so cool.

No lawyers, you see? It's just your word of honor. Mazal, okay?

So I want your mazal. Ready? Is it true that this is not a pen nor a dog chew toy from its own side?

Mazal? Mazal. Okay, I gotcha, right?

I gotcha. Better than a written contract, okay? Now, this body, okay?

This body, all right? Is it a certain way from its own side? Is it, for example, unattractive or attractive from its own side?

I mean, a Buddha comes in this room, and you say, Michael looks pretty healthy after three-year retreat. Before that, he looked like a wreck, right? But he had time to do yoga and all that stuff, so he looks pretty healthy.

And a Buddha would say, Are you crazy? It's dead meat, you know? It's just dead meat.

It's worm food. Come on, get off it. What do you think?

What, so you're going to live another six months or something? You'll be healthier when the cancer takes you? What are you talking about?

So here we have two different perceptions, right? I mean, one body. Two opposite perceptions, right?

One person says, dead meat. One person says, Oh, doing yoga got thinner, right? Okay, so like two different perceptions.

Which is correct? Both. Which is right?

Which is it? Neither. Got it?

Got it? Okay, that's the emptiness of my body. That's the emptiness of my physical appearance.

Remember, please remember, emptiness is not a black hole. Emptiness doesn't have color. Emptiness is not a kind of light.

Emptiness is not some kind of darkness. And for God's sake, emptiness is not sitting down and trying to think about nothing. It's not that at all.

It's just what we just said. It's that my body isn't attractive or dead meat from its own side. It just depends on your perception.

It just depends on your perception. What it is by itself is neither. That's emptiness.

That's all that emptiness means. Now, if I get to see myself as healthy, it's because then it's coming from my mind, right? Maza?

Wow. Maza? Right.

Coming from my mind, right? If I get to see myself as healthy, that's got to be a perception coming from my mind. If someone walks in here and says dead meat, is that coming from their mind?

Maza? Maza. Okay?

Got to be. What am I by myself, in and of myself? Just a blank screen, like this thing up here.

It's wonderful we have this thing here. No, really. Everything's like that.

That's what emptiness means. Everything is a blank screen. You are projecting onto it what you want.

I mean, sorry. What your mind sees is being projected onto it. You see me as healthy?

That's because you're projecting it. You see me as something that's going to be in a coffin tomorrow, or next week, or next month. That's your perception.

I'm like the screen. My body is like the screen. That's its emptiness.

What's it got to do with my life? I mean, okay, that's cool. That's interesting.

What's it got to do with my own life? You see? How does that apply to my own life?

If we could figure out the forces behind the creation of the world, if we could figure out what makes you perceive something one way or the other, then we're in fat city. You see? Then the game is all over with.

We did it. Enlightenment. You see?

Immortality. Buddha body. We can go take care of countless beings tomorrow.

Be what we always wanted to be. Be what we were meant to be. And emptiness makes it possible.

Get it? You see? Emptiness makes it possible.

This body can turn into light, because it's like that screen. Maza? You see?

You see? Maza. You see?

You see? That's my... What do you call it?

Eligibility form. You see? That makes me eligible.

You see? If my body was naturally ugly, if my body was naturally attractive, then I can't become a Buddha. You see?

It will never turn into light. You see? But the fact is, this body is just a blank screen.

We proved it already, right? You gave maza on this. You can't go back now.

Okay? You can't go back now. And you gave maza on my body.

Right? You gave maza. So now you got to say it's true that that blankness, right?

The blank screenness of me makes me eligible to become a person who can take care of every sentient being. You see? That's so cool.

That's Buddha nature. Okay? That's all.

That's Buddha nature. It's the eligibility. You see?

It's the blank. It's the emptiness. Now you got to taste for it, right?

You got to taste for it. It's true. Okay?

Now, tough part. Then you get to go home. This is really hard.

If it applies to the cylinder, I almost said pen. If it applies to the cylinder, and if it applies to my body, can we say it applies to everything? Mazal or no mazal?

Mazal. I mean, it's logical. Okay.

If it applies to the pen, which was a no-brainer, if it applies to the body, which was a little tougher, does it apply to everything? Mazal. Right?

So, I got you now. This is like in a debate. This is the sweet moment for the debater.

He's just savoring that moment before he pops it on the guy. So, does it apply to your own mind? Mazal.

You got to say mazal. Sorry. You're in a corner.

You got to say mazal. Your mind is a thing. Your mind is a thing.

If you studied the six questions of the King, right? The last one? Was what?

Yeah. Is emptiness empty? Aha!

Is the screen empty? You got to say mazal. Okay?

It's a thing. It's one more thing, right? Which means, if you see it as empty, if you see it as empty or not, depends on your mind, you see?

If you get what I'm talking about, that depends on your mind, you see? That's the emptiness of emptiness, got it? See, emptiness itself is not showing itself as emptiness.

You're interpreting it. You're making it empty, you see? Even emptiness is something that only comes through perceptions of people, you see?

Whether you get what I'm talking about at this moment is the emptiness of emptiness, got it? But let's go back to your mind. That's easier.

So your mind is empty, and not because it's hot and you're tired and everything. Your mind is empty. What does that mean?

It means that how your mind sounds to you is being projected by you. Got it? The way the pen looks is being laid on this cylinder by you.

It's coming from you. The way your body looks is something you're laying on your body. It's coming from you.

And the way your mind sounds to you isn't coming from your mind. It's being projected onto it. Okay?

It's a projection. From what? Very simple.

Here's the punchline. Ready? Write this down.

From how you treated other people. Period. End of sentence.

End of teaching. Okay? The projection is coming from how you treated other people.

That's all. You can call it karma. Okay?

But the bottom line is whatever seeds are in your mind from how you've treated others, that's how you will see the world. Okay? That's how you will see the world.

If you don't like the way the world's going, if you don't like 9-11, if you don't like violence, if you don't like the economy, there's only one thing to do. You have to treat other people better. Okay?

You can say I'm a normal person. I don't go beating up people. I don't push old women who are trying to cross the street.

I'm just a normal person. I haven't got arrested recently. And I'm a pretty normal person.

I'm not real mean. I'm not real nice. If 9-11 happened in your world, you've got to work harder.

Okay? You're not working hard enough. If it could happen to you, if it could happen to you, you have seeds of violence in your own mind.

You have to be kinder or you're not going to make it. You know? If the economy is slow, if it's hard to find work, you have to be more generous.

You have to be more generous. You have to give more. I mean, the natural reaction is to give less, right?

When things get tough. A Buddhist says, Oh God, jobs are scarce. Let me give away my last money.

You see? Okay? A person who really understands emptiness, a real Buddhist, right, who understands how the world works, times are tough.

So I'll... go to the Buddhist school system and help him. You see?

All right? Got it? Because the world is empty.

Because things are empty. All right? So, last thing.

The key to meditating on your Buddha nature. Now I'm just on to practical stuff, okay? You can put the books away.

It doesn't matter. Practical stuff. How are you going to do this?

How are you going to pull this thing off? How are you going to see your Buddha nature? I've been on a retreat now.

We've been on a retreat for... about three months. Three months?

No. Four. Anyway, I forget.

Anyway. Seems like a long time. I can tell you already, immediately, the first thing you guys need to do if you want to see your Buddha nature, which means emptiness, right?

You've got to cut down on your things. Okay? You've got to get rid of things.

Okay? Declare war on things. Okay?

I told you that a couple of years ago. Some people made progress. Brian Smith, to embarrass him.

Sorry. I went to his house. He let me stay there for a couple of weeks while we were teaching in LA.

Looks like a monk's house, you know? Like there's nothing miscellaneous in the house. There's no knickknacks.

There's no unread books. There's no magazines lying around. There's no food that he's not going to eat immediately.

There's two pairs of shoes. And no more. There's like three pairs of pants.

And that's it. And I said to him, Is this for real or did you set this up because you know I was coming? Like, is this all stuffed down in Lauren's apartment?

No, that's where I live. He got it. Then I went to like, I don't know, somebody asked me, Come see me in retreat.

I've got to see him in retreat. My God, it looks like Walmart. It looks like a Walmart.

I mean, if you've ever gone into a real retreat, sometimes you have to go to Walmart before to get all your stuff. And you come out, you're like nauseous, like you're about to throw up. Like all this stuff.

And then on top of that, they've got these TVs blurring. Go over there. Run over there and get this stuff.

And you're like, Well, okay, I'm just trying to get some tinfoil. And really, for God's sake, go home. Go home after this weekend.

Take half the stuff in your house and throw it out. You can't concentrate. You can't meditate.

I don't care if you are like the Dalai Lama. If your house looks like that, you'll never get into deep concentration. It just won't happen.

Get rid of half of the stuff that you never use. This is the first essential, really, from my heart, thing about getting in touch with your Buddha nature. Clean up.

I don't even mean clean up. Throw out from your house. Just throw out half of the stuff.

Go home. Count your things. You've got 200 things.

Throw out 100 of them. You won't miss it a bit. We went into our yurts at three-year retreat.

We didn't have anything. We didn't have anything. Two years later, we got 25 boxes of stuff.

I don't know how they got in the yurt. You know? Like the rabbit was scaring the man or something.

I don't know how it was. So we get out of the yurt. We pack our 25 boxes.

We're waiting for our new yurt to get fixed, right? We didn't open those boxes for four months. I think we just threw them out.

Don't even... I need the books. But anyway.

Really, I mean, and it just dawns on you. We've been living out of this little suitcase for four months. And it just dawns on you.

I didn't even open those 25 boxes for four months. Maybe I could just do without them forever. If you want to get into deep meditation on your Buddha nature, first thing, throw out half the stuff in your house.

Really. And that applies to what you do. That applies to your activities.

Okay? Throw out half your activities. You don't have time to do all that stuff.

That's why you're always late. Okay? You don't have time to do all that stuff.

Just drop it. You know? I haven't seen a TV.

I haven't really watched a TV since Ken Ripley's baseball games in 1985 or something. You know? I mean, I haven't...

I don't miss it. You know? I...

Don't... Just cancel all those subscriptions to magazines. Magazines are like the devil's work.

They're like... They're just like cotton candy. You eat it, and it's gone, and you don't remember anything.

You can't tell me what you read in a magazine last week. You know? You can't tell me three days after you read through the whole Sunday New York Times what was in there.

You know? It's just kind of... It's like eating too much.

You see? It's just like a sensation that helps you at the moment, and it doesn't help you. So, you don't need to read all that.

You don't need to know what the president ate for breakfast. You know? You don't need to know half that stuff.

It's not... You don't need to. You don't need it.

Don't... I mean, personally, honestly, if you want to learn deep meditation, you can't look at magazines or television, news, or stuff like that. Just forget it.

You know? You got to make a choice. You know?

There's deep concentration, and there's all this futz of the world. You know? And I think the big new demon is the web.

And it's computers. You know? I mean, they are taking over your lives.

We went to see family during July, and we couldn't speak to anyone under 20, because they were busy with their computer. You know? Like, you can say, here's Aunt Christy.

She's back after three years meditating in the desert. And they're like... You know?

And... And they won't even turn around to look at you. You know?

They won't even turn around in the chair off the web. You know? And then we go to someone else's house in the East Coast, and the daughter is very nice.

Like... She's like, oh, you know, she talks nice. She's very considerate.

We eat dinner together. She excuses herself very politely. She goes into their room, and then there's this blue glow coming out from under the door until two in the morning.

You know? And this is with everybody. You know?

And it's just worthless stuff. It's just meaningless stuff. You know?

I mean, if you need to know how to get to the news or something, look it up on the web. I mean... But I'm thinking 90% of that stuff, you don't need it.

And it's just killing you. You know? It's killing your concentration.

It also kills you physically. I mean, the whole physical thing of computers is going to hurt everybody. You know?

There'll be a big business in yoga just fixing bodies that were ruined by computers when kids were 20, right? No. It'll come.

So... So... So, I mean, simplify.

Cut down. And then do your daily practice. Okay?

Got to do your daily practice. Okay? One hour of meditation a day.

If you don't know how to meditate right, talk to somebody here. Okay? Talk to one of the ACI teachers.

Get a nice course on meditation.

[Говорящий 2]
Okay?

[Говорящий 1]
Then you got to do your book. Book means you can learn... Talk to ACI teachers about how to keep a diary.

It's a custom where you check it six times a day. Like, how am I treating others? Am I taking care of others?

Six times a day. You stop. You know, after coming out of retreat, I meet people that I haven't known at all or I meet people that I haven't seen for three years.

I can tell whether they're keeping a diary. I can tell. You know, I can tell within half an hour.

Ten minutes. Just by the way they act. Whether they're checking themselves six times a day or not.

This is a very holy practice. This is the highest tantric practice. This is the primary general vow of tantra.

This is the tantric, highest tantric vow. You know? You must stop six times a day.

Check yourself. How am I... Am I taking care of others or not?

Okay? It's a very holy practice. And you know, all the people who are cheating, all the people who are not doing it, I can tell from how you act within five minutes, ten minutes.

You know, you don't have to tell me anymore. You don't have to hand me the book. Okay?

I can tell. It just makes you a sweeter person. Okay?

It just makes you a finer person. And it doesn't cost anything. It's easy.

It takes like a minute. Okay? And learn how to do that.

Okay? So now you got that. Now the actual meditation for Buddha nature.

[Говорящий 2]
Okay?

[Говорящий 1]
The actual meditation for your Buddha nature. Okay? We'll do one.

Okay, we'll do the easy one tonight. We'll do the more difficult one tomorrow. You ready?

So sit up straight. This is just two minutes and then we'll go home. Hands like that.

Thumb, first finger touching back of your hands on your knees. Or wherever they are once you get your back straight. Okay?

Close your eyes. Put your mind like a guard Put your mind at your nostrils. Put your mind at the ring of skin around the nostrils on your nose.

Feel the breath coming in and out. Keep your mind there. We'll do it for about two minutes.

Now picture a rose in your heart. Beautiful red rose. A red rose in your heart.

Shrink that rose to the size of a marble. Shrink it down to the size of a marble in your heart. Shrink it down to the size of a pea.

Shrink the rose down to the size of a pea. Shrink it to the size of a grain of sand. Shrink the rose down to the size of a grain of sand in your heart.

Picture a Buddha. Beautiful Buddha sitting on the rose. Only as large as a grain of sand.

Change that Buddha now into a tantric angel. The most beautiful, exquisite angel you can imagine. And she's sitting on the rose.

Now believe that she is you. The exquisite angel in your heart as big as a grain of sand is you. She has a tiny spot of blue light at her heart.

At her heart there's a tiny spot of blue light. Light sky blue light. When I snap my finger, I want you to send a ray of light out and connect that blue spot to the spot of blue light in someone else's heart in this room.

So there'll be a bridge between your hearts. A ray of blue light. I'm going to clap my hand and then there'll be a bridge of blue light between the spot of blue light in every heart in this room.

There'll be a network of highway of blue lights connecting your heart with the heart of every other person in this room. When I clap my hand. Then when I clap my hand again, there will be blue lights connecting your heart with the heart of every other living creature in the entire universe.

[Говорящий 2]
Hold it. Don't let it slip away. Hold it.

Hold it. Slowly bring back all the blue lights to your heart. Then open your eyes.

[Говорящий 1]
That's a basic level. Buddha nature. And then tomorrow we'll add a little more spice to it.

But practice that. Something to take home. Four days is not much.

You have to practice every day. Just practice it a little bit. Anytime.

It takes a few minutes. Last thing. Tomorrow night is Monday, right?

Last day. Tomorrow night we have a dinner, a special dinner. Lama Kunga, the great Sakya Lama will be coming.

He has agreed to come bless the land at Diamond Mountain on Tuesday. Special ceremony. The reason I asked Lama Kunga to come, Lama Kunga helped Christy and I prepare for retreat.

The Sakyas are great holders of the early Vajrayogini teachings. But there's another reason. During retreat you have time to think about all your weaknesses.

And I think one of my most serious weaknesses, personally, is some kind of envy or competitive feeling, especially about other Dharma centers, other Dharma teachers. So I sort of made a resolution to myself that when I got out of retreat, I would do the best I could to foster unity, like a brother feeling, harmony, between different teachers, different centers, even different religions. So in a way I'm trying to fulfill sort of a, what do you call it, like four powers, like a confession or purification of my own weaknesses.

So that was sort of part of the motivation. And there's a, what do you call it, a protocol that I want to encourage you to follow. In Tibet, in India, we have to honor a teacher who comes.

We have to pay them honor. And in fact, you'll learn tomorrow that the way Lord Buddha got enlightened was mainly by honoring other teachers. You see, 75,000, 76,000, and 77,000 teachers.

At the end of the 77,000th teacher, he got enlightened by honoring a teacher. So the protocol, if you come to dinner tomorrow, please bring something to offer. Bring a flower, okay?

We call it lak tong, lak pa tong. Say lak pa tong. It means empty-handed.

Don't come empty-handed to a lama. So if a flower is all you can do, bring some flowers. If you want to write a poem, write a poem.

If you bring a drawing, bring a drawing. If it's a CD of Neil Young, bring a CD of Neil Young. Something like that.

It's very cool to offer kunga dundrup. Kunga dundrup. Kunga means everybody likes it.

Dundrup means siddhartha, gets everything done. It's a word for money. Bring an envelope.

Put five bucks. It doesn't matter. It's just good luck.

It's just classy into that. You don't go to a lama. Then it's like liquid virtue.

They can use it for any virtuous thing they want. So I'm not talking $1,000 in an envelope. I'm just saying come with something in an envelope and offer it to Lama Kunga.

If you can. If you want to. And then it helps them with their work.

They have holy work to do. And it also encourages them. People care about what I'm doing.

So if you can get a hold of a white scarf katha, that would be nice too. If you're not coming to dinner tomorrow night, Tuesday, you can do it Tuesday. When he gets out of the car at Diamond Mountain, run up to him and shower him with something.

But don't come locked on to a lama. Don't come locked on to a lama. Then yesterday, the day before today, we had a much higher lama came here.

Who was that? I don't know if everybody saw them. Were you in the breakout groups?

Yeah. Say yes. The person who teaches you Dharma directly, personally, is higher than the Dalai Lama, for you.

This is Tibetan tradition. This is Indian tradition. The person who sits down with you and grades your homework, the person who sweats through the night before trying to remember the 14 categories of this or that so they can get it straight with you, for you, is more functional than the Dalai Lama.

In the Tibetan tradition, the person who is sweating in your breakout group of 5, 6, 10 students and struggling to teach you these ideas, for you, is a direct doorway to enlightenment. And you have to honor them. Don't think that because they are not Tibetan, you don't have to honor them.

Don't think that because they don't have a red robe on, that you don't have to honor them. You should honor them as you would Lama Kunga or as you would the Dalai Lama or Ken Rinpoche if they came here, Lama Sipa Rinpoche. You have to honor them.

In our tradition, for you to get the most karmic return on your investment this weekend, honor them. That means think of them. When you meet them, bow, honor them.

Tomorrow, frankly, they are all totally broke. Most of them, 99%. They are struggling to learn and teach for free.

They aren't getting paid. They've spent hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hours learning what they're teaching. They're doing it out of the kindness of their hearts.

They get no degree. They get no position. They get no salary.

Some of them are living in a car, out in the desert, and they're just trying to serve us and help us. So honor them as you would any Lama. Then you show that you understand our tradition, our path.

So, you know, offer them something tomorrow. Bring something sweet from your heart. If it's a poem, if it's a flower, if it's some fruit.

Especially, Kunga Dundrup is helpful. Because that they can take to the store. And help them.

Honor them. This is a very sweet, serious tradition. If you want to.

There's no obligation. But I think it's a very beautiful tradition. I think we should keep up that tradition of honoring those who teach us.

So don't come locked on to your Lamas tomorrow. Here we go.

[Говорящий 2]
SRI BUDDHI JOSHI METHA THAM RIG RAB BING SHI NINDE GYEN PA SANGYE SHIN DU MED TE DRO KUN NAMNA SHINGDRA CHAL PA SHOK YIDAM GUNG DRI GYEN WONG KUN SANGYE SHIN CHO CHO SHING SANGYE SHIN RE CHUNG HE DANG PA KUN NI THO PA SHOK