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

[Говорящий 1]
Okay, tonight's a big night. We do RIG GAM, Buddha Nature, Buddha Essence, and we got a lot to cover tonight. So I'm going to kind of go fast, and we might go a little bit late, sorry.

But tonight we actually do the RANG LUG, our own system on what is Buddha Nature. So again, to remind you, this month, class number six was ideas from the Uttara Tantra about Buddha Nature, and how it's concealed, and why it's concealed, and angles from which it's concealed, and angles from which it's revealed. And then this class, the second of the three, is about RIG, meaning what is the classical presentation, our classical presentation, of Buddha Nature.

So that'll be covered in four parts. What is the proof from scripture about the idea of Buddha Nature? Like, where do you get this idea of Buddha Nature from scripture?

The second part was, what was that? Definitions of Buddha Nature. You know, like classical presentation of Buddha Nature.

I missed something in there. Well, we'll figure it out. Then the third part would be, what was that?

Let me look. The fourth one I can tell you. Anyway, the fourth one is going to be, there's a very interesting tantric presentation of Buddha Nature.

So I thought let's throw that in. And then, what was the third one? Let me see.

Oh, okay, what did I say was the first one? Yeah, that's not the first one. First one is different names for Buddha Nature.

Like, in the scriptures you see a whole bunch of different names for Buddha Nature. So I thought I'd go over them. So first we get different names for Buddha Nature.

Then we get classical scriptural references, both by the Buddha and by later people. And then thirdly, we get the classical presentation, what are the different types of Buddha Nature, stuff like that. And then fourth one will be sort of a special tantric take on Buddha Nature.

Okay, how Buddha Nature is developed. Okay, well anyway, names for Buddha Nature, generally they're going to have two parts, each one of them. And the first part is pretty interchangeable.

It's like three different words for Buddha, right? But really, what we're really interested in is all the different names for nature. But you might get Buddha Nature, those who have gone thus nature, those who have gone to bliss nature.

And so the first three names are pretty much interchangeable. So I'm just going to write them. Well, we'll start with the first one.

I'm going to put also the Sanskrit pronunciation, and then you'll get the Sanskrit writing from Christy Lau, who's going to do the Sanskrit for this class and the last class a week from tonight, 6 o'clock p.m. Okay? So you come in early next Wednesday, which will be the next and last class of this month on Uttara Tantra. You come an hour early if you want the Sanskrit.

And you'll get two classes of Sanskrit, okay? So I'll just put the pronunciation. And this is just, if you're teaching Rick in Tucson in October, come, right?

You should know the different words, and then you should know the Sanskrit. They come up a lot. You see them.

A lot of people, because it's so hard to come up with a English word for Buddha nature, or Buddha essence, or Buddha seed, or whatever, people sometimes just say tattagata garba. The accent is actually long here, so it's tatagata garba. Say, tatagata garba.

Tatagata garba. TH is an unfortunate transliteration of Sanskrit ta, as opposed to ta. See?

This is ta. This is ta. It's not ta, okay?

It's not tatagata, or tathagata, or Geshe Tharchin, okay? It's tatagata garba. Say one more time, tatagata garba.

Okay, good. de shin, which is tatta, means like that. Just that way.

Just that way. Gata, which is shekpe, means gone. Gone that way, okay?

Then nyingpo, which means, I'm going to translate it tonight as essence, means garba. It's for garba, okay? This is the nyingpo that you see in the Heart Sutra, Sherab Nyingpo, for example, and it can be translated as heart or essence, okay?

And we're going to talk more about that in a minute. But garba, I thought you'd like to know the literal sense of it, because then, if you know the Sanskrit, you get a better sense of it. Garb, what would you guess the English cognate is?

Keep the B sound. Maybe, but I don't know. Put the G in the R.

Put the R after the G. Grab, okay? Gra, grab.

Grab, in Sanskrit, means to grab. And what it means, it came from an ancient word for womb. And the idea is that the seed is, what do you call it, catches in the womb, and then the baby starts to grow.

Like, we say in English, I think, catch, the seed catches in the womb. And then there's, what do you call it? Yeah, when the, what do you call it, at the very beginning?

Conception. Yeah, the moment of conception. Well, conceptio, right?

Is to grab. It means you catch, and then you start to grow, okay? So, the idea is that garba means womb, you see?

It means the hold, the hold. Even in the Heart Sutra, where's the Heart Sutra taught? Yeah, Raja Gur.

Gur has the same root, which means the keep of the king, or the hold of the king. Raja Gur means the king's, the place where the king holds power. Raja Gur.

And reg comes from Raja, and regal, and royal, and all those words. So, anyway, garba means the womb, the Buddha womb, okay? Get the feeling of it?

And then the Tibetans chose to translate that as ningmo, meaning essence or heart, okay? So, you start to get a feeling of what all the meanings that are floating around here. It's nice to see the Sanskrit and the Tibetan.

Okay, here's number two. You're going to be asked on the homework to give three of them out of five. So, you can turn off after the third one.

Oh, it's going to be something like that. You can, you can mix them, mix and match, okay? Yeah.

Oh, I didn't put the Tibetan there. Oops. Okay.

The master has a boo-boo. That's why it's hot in here. Kami.

That's the kamir bird. Kami. Say dewar, shekpe, ningbo.

The last one was what in Tibetan? De shin shekpe ningbo. And now we got dewar shekpe ningbo.

Almost the same, right? A little bit different. In Sanskrit, sugata garba.

Say sugata. Garba. Okay.

Garba, again, is the same sense of the womb. Sugata means gone well or gone to happiness. And it can mean either went somewhere in an easy way or a flow, nice flow.

This is a name for the Buddhas, right? De shin shekpe and tathagata are just names for Buddhas. Those who have gone that way.

Those who have gone to happiness. Those who have gone to bliss. Those who have gone well.

So, su means well. Gata means gone. Ga came into English through gum, became cum.

And then su came into... In the Indo-European it's esu, E-S-U. The S dropped out of Greek and it became...

the U in euthanasia, euphonic, eurythmics. So this is found in Greek as eu, because it came from an old Indo-European E-S-U. So it means good gone, womb.

And the Tibetans translated that as the essence of those who have gone happily or well. I'm going to keep calling it essence, okay?

[Говорящий 2]
Shekpe is a...

[Говорящий 1]
Gone. Like gata. Gata is gati gati para gati para sang gati pada soha.

You know, gone, gone, really gone. That's the Heart Sutra mantra, right? Okay, that was the second one, right?

Here's the third one. Ew, that's a mess. Oh, okay.

Here's the third one. Shekpe. Say it, dey shin.

Shekpe. Ningbo. Sound familiar?

Okay, now you get something really interesting. This is my advertisement. I spent last week at Art's house.

We really had a good time. In Howell. And he's like adamant that people should get some Sanskrit under their belt.

You know, as if it's not enough to spend 20 years on your Tibetan. But this is a case where the Tibetans used the same translation for a different Sanskrit word. You see, the Tibetans only had one word for heart and essence, whereas the Sanskrit was two different words.

So here you get a nice feeling for how cool it will be like in the tantric course when we get to the... We're going to do a lot of the tantric course in Sanskrit, from Sanskrit originals. And then you'll get more of a gut feeling for it, because our language comes from Sanskrit.

So, Tathagata is the same, gone that way, meaning Buddhas. And then Hridaya. Guess what word comes from this part of it.

Heart. Directly comes from Hridaya. Heart.

The heart of the Buddhas. So now you've got a new word for Buddha nature. Heart.

Buddha heart. Buddha heart. Literally.

The Sherab Nyingbo is called Prajnaparamita Hridaya. The heart of the perfection of wisdom is the real name of the Heart Sutra. And that's straight from Hridaya.

Okay. But the rest is all the same in Tibetan, right? So here you have a case where...

Which is actually not that common. Where if you know the Tibetan... Sanskrit could have been two different things.

And you might hear two different words. And then you really get a different feel, don't you? I mean, a womb and a heart is a different thing in a way.

But in a way they're the same, aren't they? So, kind of cool. Is that bliss?

No, this is the one that means, they have gone that way. The tatha. Tatha means gone that way.

[Говорящий 2]
In Tibetan?

[Говорящий 1]
Oh, te shin. Sorry, yeah. It means like that.

Like that. Let me see what's the next one. Who's that girl?

Who's that lazy girl? I hear you. Okay, number four.

Say, rik. You've got to roll the R. Ruffles have ridges.

I can't do it, though. Rik. Yeah, it's not done with your front teeth on your lower lip.

It's done by flopping your tongue inside. Rik. Yeah, good.

And then in Sanskrit, gotra. Yeah. Yeah.

Rik means in Tibetan, like family or type.

[Говорящий 2]
Born into a family.

[Говорящий 1]
Yeah, where does it come from? Bodhisattva Tara. It's found in the Tunduk.

We cite six times a day, right? And... Okay?

And it's the basis for when you take bodhisattva vows. You say, de ring sang gi rik su kye. Today I've been born into the rik of the Buddhas, meaning the family of the Buddhas.

Sang gi se su dag gi to. Thus I have become a child of the Buddhas. This is the dang sang stuff here.

Now, no matter what, from today, I will try to act in accordance with my family. I'll try not to embarrass my family, basically. Gotra.

Now, let's see how they got that from gotra, right? Gotra means a cattle pen. Go means cow.

Okay? Gwa came into English as cow. Also as...

What's another word for... Bovine is connected to this. And then tra means to protect.

And it's found in the root for Tara. Tara meaning the one who carries you out of trouble. Droma.

Okay? So it's the same root. So gotra means a cow protection.

Which means a... A pen or a fence. Yeah.

And then over the centuries it became a word for family. You see? Because it was everyone in the same pen.

You see? Yeah. Same herd or something like that.

The word Gautama. Buddha. Gautama means highest goal.

Highest cow. And that's an idea of the head bull of the herd. Which if you ever met one at Diamond Mountain West, you'd understand.

You know, like the other cows are about this tall. Maybe this tall? On the back.

But the bull out there was like this, like I think five feet tall and his back was five feet tall. And like if you ran into him one night, it was really scary. But Gautama means that.

Head bull. So gotra means... It came to mean family.

You see? And when the Tibetan translators in 1000 AD had to struggle with a word, they said, Rik. Family.

Okay? Like Buddha family. Okay?

I like to call it maybe... I'm going to call it family seed. Okay?

I'll tell you why. We're going to come up with a lot of problems with translating Rik tonight. Rik is a big subject tonight.

Rik and Kam are synonyms. Okay? I mean, in most Buddhist scriptures you'll see Kam.

I think Maitreya needed to cut syllables. But you'll see more common is Rik than Kam. Okay?

Okay. Next one. I'm going to go back one page because I want to add something.

Okay? Ready? Remember Geshe Tutun Rinchen?

Go back one page. Leave three blank pages. Six days from now we'll get back to that.

Up here I want to add Sangye Kyi. Say Sangye Kyi. Rik.

Sangye Kyi. Rik. Now we get a third word to put in front of the front part of Buddha nature, right?

We had, you know, essence of those gone thus, essence of those gone to bliss, and now we have essence of Buddha. Okay? Or family seed of Buddha or something like that.

Okay? What I'm saying is that you can replace any of the first three. You could say Buddha.

You could say those gone to bliss. You could say those gone that way. It doesn't matter.

You can mix them up. It doesn't matter. But that's the third one.

Okay? I'm going to stop putting the first half now. Okay?

So we're up to Kam. Say Kam. Dato.

Dato. Dato. Not much to say.

I would call it Buddha... I'm just kind of artificially trying to distinguish them from each other. Buddha part maybe.

Buddha part. Da means to set down something. We find it in the word deep, like a written document that's been set down and agreed to by everybody.

We find it in the word fact. When you get from Sanskrit to Greek, the DH changes to F. So you find words that mean like set down, fixed, finished.

It's like the part in you which is a Buddha. Here you should get this kind of vision of marble under the earth or something. Something really substantial under your flesh.

That's the idea. The steel core of your being, the diamond core of your being, is like Dato. Come.

And from that, the Buddha will grow. That'll trigger the growth of the Buddha, of your Buddhahood. There's one more.

What was that? This is just another Sanskrit word for rik. Say rik.

Vansha. Vansha. Vansha means, it's an old word for bamboo and for a certain kind of plant.

And so it means a plant family. Mercedes suggested me the word genus. G-E-N-U-S.

What would be a word, David? I don't know. A group of, a botanical group.

Families. Yeah, family or species. Yeah.

Species would be the last. It's almost like a species. No, it wouldn't be species, right?

It'd be a family. Like a plant family or an animal family or a type or a genus. But there you get the feeling.

Vansha came from a word for a group of plants that were grouped together into a family. So again, it's this idea of a genus or genealogy or a group. So a family, but also the seed from which this family springs.

And the womb and the essence and the heart. And those are all the words for Buddha nature and you have to explore them. Go home and think about it.

All those feelings of a diamond core, a womb, a heart, essence, family seed, family. I like gene for Rick. Because it gives both feelings of a genus and a seed.

A family and the seed from which the family grows. You see what I mean? So all of those are Buddha nature.

You start to get a feeling for what Buddha nature means in the native languages. You also get an interesting insight into the limitations that the Tibetans were faced with sometimes. Like sometimes they clarified one Sanskrit word by splitting it into three different Tibetan words.

Sometimes they were faced with two different Sanskrit words and didn't have different words and used one word and then we lost something when that happened. You see? When it came down to us in a foreign language.

So it's good to have both available. Especially when you get into tantra. Especially when you get into the inner body.

It's very useful to have this Sanskrit because it's like 17 kinds of words for snow in Eskimo. You know, like slush snow, second level slushy snow, third level slush snow, snow mixed with water. And when you get to tantra it's like 10 different distinctions of your central channel that are made in Sanskrit but not necessarily in Tibetan.

So as you'll find this weekend we'll be getting into a lot of the older sources for our tantric studies. Okay, now I want to go into sources for Buddha nature. You know, this is all setting up for next week, right?

Which is what? What's the third part of this class on Buddha nature going to be? We're going to have arguments from other schools.

And I thought, I found, I also pulled out arguments from ancient India. You're going to get the Vaibhashika or the Abhidharma version of Buddha nature. Then you're going to get the sutra or the logic school version of Buddha nature.

Then you're going to get the mind-only version of Buddha nature, which are all different from the one you're studying tonight, which is the ultimate version, right? Then we're going to throw in early Tibetan wise sages, their version of Buddha nature and emptiness that carried on in a strong tradition up to the present time in some of the Tibetan traditions. So three ancient schools on Buddha nature and one very strong Tibetan school that was competing with Je Tsongkhapa's presentation of emptiness.

And I thought it would be good for you to get it from the horse's mouth. So you'll be reading the original texts by those schools. You'll get their own texts.

They get to speak for themselves, which is not always the case in a debate in the monastery. And so if you're on our side, which we get to be tonight, right? It's called Rangluk.

We're wearing galukpa hat tonight, yellow hat tonight. You want to be able to pull out original scriptural proofs for Buddha nature, being emptiness. And then later we'll get into the logical proofs.

But we start with scriptural proofs. Lord Buddha said this. Arya Sangha Maitreya said this.

Haribhadra, who wrote the greatest commentary on Maitreya's works about 600 years after a sangha, you're going to get his version. These three are all accepted by all Tibetan schools. So if you get in a debate, you can either pull the logic hat out, or you can pull out the scriptural proof hat.

But if somebody says, oh, Buddha nature is not something negative, you're going to have three kinds of ammunition to pull out. Lord Buddha, 500 B.C. Maitreya, 350 A.D. Master Haribhadra, 800s, sometime in the 800s. And then after that, Buddhism comes to Tibet, and then we can't argue anymore because that's our own, you know, that would be like starting to get into Jetsun Kappa's version.

So, like when we debate inter-monastery debate, like Drebung versus Sarah, we can't use Sarah textbooks, you see. We can only use earlier texts by Jetsun Kappa or earlier, you see. So it depends on what group you're in, you've got to be able to go back to sources which are accepted by both parties.

So that's what we're going through next. We're going to go through three sources accepted by all Tibetan parties. So if you ever get in a hot argument with somebody from another tradition about, is Buddha nature emptiness?

Or is Buddha nature an already existing Buddha inside of you? Or is Buddha nature something physical thing, like some kind of blue light inside of you? Stuff like that.

You can say, no, look, look, look, we had that back in the Tao Tantra course. Here's the reading. Here's three quotations from Lord Buddha, Aya Sangha.

Okay, we're going to go through those. I want you to memorize them if you're doing Tibetan Tantra. They're not very long, they're just like little tiny sentences.

They're very short. So here's the first one. This is from the 20,000 verses, which equals the middle length sutra on the perfection of wisdom.

Any? Say, rab jor, nam kha la, jai je, me ching, mi mik so. This is the famous place where Lord Buddha begins to talk about Buddha nature.

Okay, in the perfection of wisdom. What's the shorter length sutra? How long is that?

8,000 verses. What's the longer length version? 100,000.

They say that those were all the short ones in the old days, and they lost the others. 100,000 verse presentation of perfection of wisdom is what used to be the short one. Then it got lost.

So now that's all we have. Okay, that's enough. Tell me who's the rab jor?

Sabuddhi, okay? From the Diamond Cutter. He's like the fall guy for Lord Buddha, right?

Who is he in disguise? Manjushri. Manjushri in disguise, right?

So Lord Buddha is addressing, probably Sabuddhi has asked a question, and Lord Buddha is saying rab jor, which means sabuddhi. Okay, nam kha? Sky, la.

Jai, I don't think you know. Jai means a footprint, or a track, or a trail left by a jet plane, or what do you call those things? Contrail.

It means like that. Or a deer track is called a jai, or a footprint is called a jai, or there's places where you see the Lord Buddha has put his hand like the Chinese restaurant in Hollywood. You know, those are all called jai.

Jai, okay? Sometimes they're called lak jai, jok jai means handprint, okay? Jai, I'm sorry, oh jai, this jai, I'm sorry, this jai means birds.

Bird apostrophe s. Bird's track, bird's trail. Trail of a bird who's flying through the sky.

Right? The contrail left by a bird who's flying through the sky, okay? Me.

Doesn't exist. You can't see anything. It doesn't exist.

Ching end. Mi mik so. Invisible.

Can't see it. Can't see it. It doesn't exist and you can't see it.

So the second jai here doesn't mean bird? The first jai means of a bird, and the second jai means track. Okay?

Those of you who know Tibetan, it's the word after, right? Like jai tumpa or something like that. Jai su.

Jai su yi rang for anu. But anyway, now I've got to tell you what Lord Buddha is referring to. Lord Buddha is referring to the path of preparation, okay?

Lord Buddha is referring to the path of preparation. More specifically, Lord Buddha is referring to the first of the four steps in the path of preparation. First of the four levels, which is called...

Say it. What's the last one? Say it again.

I mean, Rinpoche taught it to us so many times, it's just like a mantra in my brain. I don't even have to think about it. Tru means inner heat.

It means you're getting hot. It means... For what?

Yeah, seeing emptiness directly. Getting hot, warming up, okay? So Lord Buddha is talking about the first of those levels.

He goes on through 12 more levels, okay? But I'll just tell you the first six, because that's easy. Okay?

Yeah, he's talking about heat level from the path of preparation. He could just as well have been talking about peak, which is the second level. Mastery, which is the third level.

Highest thing in the universe, which is the fourth level. Then what comes after that? Path of seeing, number five.

And then path of habituation, number six. Let's stick with those six. He goes through seven more, but I don't want to do it tonight, okay?

I'll say it again. Six deep realizations you can have in your spiritual career. This thing about the bird not leaving any track, contrail, in the sky when they pass by, is talking about the first of those six, which is heat.

What's happening at heat? What's happening at the path of preparation? Intellectual understandings of emptiness.

Not direct. But you're thinking about emptiness. You're starting to get it from these classes.

You get pretty good jorlan preparation from these classes. Okay, I got it. I understand what emptiness is not, and I understand what emptiness is.

Especially with objects and subjects. During the path of preparation, you're starting to get hot. You're getting close.

Hot, like that. Let's talk about the emptiness. Do you perceive emptiness?

[Говорящий 2]
Intellectually.

[Говорящий 1]
You got to say, yeah, you do, intellectually. Somebody says, do you perceive emptiness in preparation? You go, yeah.

And then you let them squirm. You know, let them peruse you, why not. Yeah, you perceive it, but logically.

Logically, through thinking, through contemplation. Any special kind of emptiness? We never got into that.

We never got into that. There's two schools of thought. I mean, there's a big debate about it, but one is, oh, just kind of emptiness in general.

Like, when I stand up here and talk about emptiness, you are perceiving emptiness. You're having an inkling of emptiness. That's a correct perception for that mental picture of emptiness that you have.

It's not the direct perception of emptiness, but it's correct. It's okay. It's pretty good.

It's airtight, logically. General emptiness. But then some schools say, when you are thinking about emptiness, and you're perceiving emptiness in a way, can we say you're perceiving the emptiness of your thinking about emptiness?

Why not? How about as an intellectual thing? Can I say that when you think about emptiness, could you be thinking about the emptiness of that thought?

[Говорящий 2]
Sure.

[Говорящий 1]
That would be almost very natural, right? If the first emptiness you ever see directly is the emptiness of me, then it might be natural to say that the first emptiness you see on the path of preparation is the emptiness of your thinking about emptiness. The emptiness of your own mind.

The emptiness of your own thoughts. And in that sense, we could say that that emptiness provides the foundation for Mahayana achievements, for Mahayana spiritual realizations. And that's how emptiness is presented with regard to Rick.

I'll say it again. That emptiness, which provides the foundation for all the realizations you get on the five paths, can be called Rick, in a way. That's the emptiness that you're thinking about.

Really, what he's trying to say is, the best kind of emptiness that you can think about when you're thinking about emptiness is how about you thinking about emptiness, and your emptiness, and the emptiness of your own thoughts as you're thinking about emptiness. Why am I having this thought about emptiness? Or I have the virtue.

I'm projecting this thought about it. I got enough virtue. Goddamn massive virtue.

I got that much virtue to be projecting myself thinking about emptiness. Like, if you get in a fight about emptiness with somebody, you're already into 99.999999% of anyone who ever lived, lucky. Because then you're thinking about it.

To be projecting, for Michael to project Michael sitting around the table with coffee talking about emptiness to somebody is extraordinary virtue, extraordinary projection. So let's talk about that emptiness. That's empty too.

You could have been talking about last week's movies. You could have been talking about TV shows. God, I did three weeks of this.

AOL comes up, new movie star, new TV star, new movie, new TV star, rock and roll star. Over and over, and there's nothing else. How many new TV stars can you have?

Oh, they're endless. They just keep like this. What's the emptiness of thinking about emptiness?

It's so cool to have that projection. If you want to think about emptiness, think about how cool it is to be thinking about emptiness. That's a good emptiness.

Thinking about that emptiness would provide a basis for all Mahayana achievements. So, whenever Lord Buddha talked about emptiness with regard to come, Buddha nature, he talked about the emptiness that you're looking at as you go through those six incredible levels. Heat, peak, mastery, highest dharma, path of seeing, path of habituation.

What's the emptiness of those? What's the emptiness of your state of mind? Which if you're really in it, if you're really up for it, if you're really in it, you should be looking at the emptiness of that thought itself.

And that's Buddha nature. That's so cool. That's really what is a womb for Buddha.

That's the heart of Buddha. You want some place to gestate your Buddha? Man!

Think about the emptiness of thinking about the emptiness. And that's called drupad-den. Say drupad-den.

Foundation of all Mahayana attainments. Take chen drupad-den. And it's a big subject in our Sangha.

It's one of the Sangha's favorite subjects. What is the foundation for all higher realizations? Think about emptiness.

What emptiness? Which emptiness? The emptiness of those realizations.

I'll say it again. Where's a good place to, where's a good womb in which to gestate, conceive and gestate your Buddha? Buddha you, to come.

Think about the emptiness of your thoughts of emptiness. Think about the emptiness of your thoughts of emptiness, which is to say think about your own emptiness. That provides the foundation for all spiritual attainments.

It's the emptiness of thinking about emptiness that is the real seed for Buddhahood. Because that thinking about emptiness can change into the direct perception of emptiness. Yeah, later changes into the Buddha's body.

So that's the real womb. That's so cool. So that's whenever it comes up, it comes up in this context.

What's the emptiness of those six realizations? What's the emptiness of those six stages? What's the emptiness of my own mind when I'm thinking about emptiness?

What's the emptiness of me when I'm thinking about emptiness? And that's rik. See it's so cool, it just comes back on itself like that.

If you want something that's going to trigger Buddhahood in you, that's it. Think about your own emptiness as you're thinking about emptiness. That's what this refers to.

There's no trail. There's no, you can't see it. What's ming may tseway darchen chenway si?

Non-objectifying compassion. Yeah. Which is the first part of Je Tsongkapa's mantra.

I bow to the person with love that sees nothing. Sees nothing. What do you mean sees nothing?

It looks at sentient beings and sees their emptiness. So mimik is a code word ever since Buddha, two and a half thousand years ago, for what? Don't see anything.

For emptiness. For the perception of emptiness. Ever since two and a half thousand years ago.

Mimik may. Mimik. Same thing.

You don't see anything. Look up. Lots of birds travel between the spring and somewhere down there.

I never know where they're going, but they go by this house like crazy all day long. It's very beautiful. Bright yellow, bright white, red.

They pass and you don't see anything after they've gone. There's nothing there anymore. Buddha is saying, your nature is like that.

You can't see it. You just can't see it. It's like the trail of a bird.

It's emptiness. So from the very beginning, Lord Buddha spoke about Buddha nature in terms of can't see anything, and it's connected to each of the six paths. In the reading you'll get the other thirteen, twelve, or five.

I'm making it short tonight. The first six are the biggies. But then you'll get a beautiful comparison for the emptiness of your mind at second level of path of preparation.

Then the emptiness of your mind at third level of path of preparation. Then the emptiness of your mind at the fourth level of path of preparation. The last of the thirteen total is the emptiness of rik, the emptiness of Buddha nature.

So obviously we're on the right track. This is where the Buddha mentioned these things from the Prajnaparamita Sutra. Yeah, yeah.

Emptiness is a negative. It's an absence. There ain't no track there.

Okay, like that. Yeah.

[Говорящий 2]
Geshe-la, could you just put together the translation of the Tibetan?

[Говорящий 1]
Oh yeah, I'm sorry. Let's go through it. Osubudi.

Osubudi. Okay. I'm just going to do a free translation.

Osubudi. When a bird flies through the sky, it doesn't leave any track. You can't see any track.

That's all. That's a reference to the emptiness of your mind at the first level of the path of preparation. What did I promise you next?

What authority would satisfy anybody? Past Buddha is pretty good. How about a future Buddha?

Okay. This is from my portrayal. This is from the Ornament of Realizations.

It's one of the what? One of the five books that was given by whom to whom? Maitreya Sangha during his trip to Tushita.

Which took how long? You get the reading tonight, by the way. 50 to 53 years human time.

A morning god time. God realm time. This is for Abhisama Angkara, for those of you who care.

And he says, we had to memorize this when I was a kid. Okay, here we go. tokpa yini chudu jukpay tenla rik sheja sheja tokpa means what?

Realization. It's a synonym for lam lam and tokpa are synonyms. When we say five paths, we're really talking about five stages of realization.

But he says chudu. What's tundu? Succession yoga.

chudu means the six the six dharmas. Okay. If you want to get into those things, those six realizations.

Here chud just means things. juk means get into it. If you want to get into those six realizations.

Which six? Sound familiar? Yeah.

trul tse mu, supa chod chok, tong lam, gom lam. Four stages of the path of preparation, path of seeing, path of habituation. To start, again there's seven more, which is the dot, dot, dot there.

I left it out because I didn't want you to be here till midnight. Ten o'clock is okay. There's seven more.

The last one happens to be the wicked self. But anyway, jukpay. If you want to get into those six realizations, you need a foundation.

Then you need some place that everything is based on. Those realizations are based on something. You have to realize that in Tibetan, in Buddhist perceptual theory, foundation is a word for what?

Objects. Objects. Because the perception rests on the object.

You see? Like if there's a glass of lemonade with ice, and your visual perception rests on it, you see? It's there and then you come along and you perceive it.

Right? So you can't have the perception without the glass of lemonade. Okay?

Once you got the lemonade, the perception is triggered. So in a sense, the perception rests upon the lemonade, on the object. So ten often means like foundation, but also the object.

Of course, if you're in tantric, if you're in... What did we talk about last class? Samoth, Noyman.

Which came first, the visual consciousness or the glass of lemonade? Is it like everybody thinks that the lemonade is there, and then it triggers your perception of it? Or is it that you're projecting the lemonade after the consciousness?

And in a sense, the awareness of the lemonade creates the lemonade. You see? That makes tantra possible.

You see? You're not perceiving Vajrayogini, you're projecting her. That makes Vajrayogini...

That makes it possible for us to become Vajrayogini. But anyway, we're in sutra right now, so I can't talk about that. By the way, my idea, I was thinking about it, that the in-depth courses should be like halfway to tantra, and then you just naturally bridge to the tantric series from that, but we'll talk about that.

So I'm thinking that in the in-depth courses, which would be like, I don't know how many, but there's the 18 basic courses, sutra, open courses. But then by the time you get to the in-depth courses, I think you should be mixing in a little bit of tantra. And then you go all the way with the 18 tantric courses.

So I've been doing that. You might have noticed. Foundation la rik.

To that, we she. We what? She.

Call. That's what we call rik. You want to know what rik is?

It's that object which is based on... You can get into those six perceptions. Those six realizations.

You want to know what buddha nature is? You want to know what we call buddha nature? We give that name, tu la, that object or foundation which provides the basis for those six realizations, which is what?

The emptiness of those six realizations. The emptiness of your own mind. You want to know what buddha nature is?

It's that emptiness which is the foundation of those other six realizations. Is Asanga coming up with this on his own, or is he pulling it out of somewhere? Ostensibly, he's getting it from Maitreya.

Yeah. But Maitreya, as you'll notice, is drawing a lot on Gautama. From the 20,000 verses especially.

A lot of what Maitreya ever taught can be found in the 20,000 verses. I think he was trying to honor the previous buddha, you see? It's almost like his guru, the last buddha.

He's like honoring the last buddha. So for Maitreya, Gautama is the last buddha. So anyway, you can see how this comes directly from the quotation before.

This is a take on the previous quotation. Especially because there are 13 different realizations mentioned. I only gave you the first six.

The dot, dot, dot is the missing seven. Okay? Which are in your reading when you get it.

Okay. Yeah. Oh, juk means get into.

Enter. What's bodhisattvacharya avatar? Chun juk.

Entering the ways of the bodhisattva. Okay? You okay?

Got anything? Okay. Okay, I'm going to give you one more scriptural quotation to blow away your friends with.

Of course they use their own quotations, right? But we don't have to talk much about that. Here's this last one.

And then we'll take a break. We'll have some lemonade, if you can create it. Oh, I'm sorry.

Say, chuk gi yin. Say, yin.

[Говорящий 2]
Yin.

[Говорящий 1]
It's like, boom, you know? That da, bao, ya, ta, ya, gi, gu, yin. Yin.

It looks like ja, right? But it changes to ya under certain circumstances. So it's yin.

Chuk gi yin. Gi. Ngo.

Ni. Konala. Rikshay.

What we call Buddha nature, same thing as the last quotation, right? What we call Buddha nature refers la, kona, only to the essence. The very essence.

I'll say it again. What we call Buddha nature refers only, kona, to the very essence, ngo, ni. The very essence of the chuk gi yin.

Chuk gi yin is dharmadhatu. That's dharmadhatu. It means the ether of all things, the realm of all things.

It's a word for emptiness. It's a word for emptiness. The yin of all things.

And it was meant to be onomatopoeic. Yin. Dhatu.

So that's pretty blunt. You want to know what rik is? It's emptiness.

It's emptiness. Only. Nothing else.

Who said that? Haribhadra. I'll write it for you.

800s. We don't know exactly when, but in Tibetan, senggye sangpo. Senggye is an interesting word.

It's a corruption of a Sanskrit word, what? Singha. Which is the word where Singapore comes from.

Pur means town or village. Yeah, lion. The village of the lion.

Singha. Senggye sangpo. Anyway, Haribhadra.

He's famous because he wrote the greatest explanation of Arya Sangha and Maitreya that ever existed. He wrote two commentaries, called the Great Commentary and the Lesser Commentary. Any Indian who ever wrote about, after Asanga, whoever wrote about Asanga and Maitreya, it was Haribhadra.

And the lineage is like that. You get Lord Buddha teaching the Perfection of Wisdom. Then you get Maitreya teaching it, going over it with Arya Sangha.

Okay, get it straight now. Then Haribhadra comments on that. Then Je Tsongkapa comments on them.

And then you get our textbooks. Saramay textbooks, Sarajay textbooks, other great textbooks. But that's the Perfection of Wisdom lineage.

So what we're doing is we've gone up through all the Indian sources that would be accepted by all Tibetan schools. So that's pretty clear. So that ends the sources.

And next we'll go on to Rangluk. If you open up a Saramay textbook and you study the section called Buddha Nature, what's the definition of Buddha Nature? How many kinds of Buddha Nature are there?

What are the examples of Buddha Nature? Okay, we'll go through that. And then to keep you awake, because it will be late by then, we'll go through the tantric presentation of Buddha Nature, which is kind of cool.

I'm not going to give you the whole thing, but just sort of a, what do you call it, cookie, cookie, teaser. Yeah, teaser is good. Okay, so we'll have a break.

You want to do a little mandala? Okay. Okay, have a nice break.