Углублённый курс ACI 01 — Учения будущего Будды: «Уттаратантра» Майтреи (2003, Аризона), занятие 8

[Говорящий 1]
Tonight, we're going to speak about the idea of Buddha nature from other schools. And this subject got bigger and bigger as I was working on it. I finished it about five minutes ago.

I was mainly going to speak about one special Tibetan school's idea of Buddha nature, which is very prevalent in the world, and has been very prevalent in Tibet for about 800 years. Then I saw that there was something on the lower Indian schools' idea of Buddha nature, like Abhidharma schools and Mainomi schools. So I thought to throw in some of that.

So we'll start there. The first is Abhidharma school. This is the lowest of the four great schools of ancient India, by Vashika, Detailist school.

And I thought to tell you what they think is Buddha nature. Each of these gives you... I wouldn't have done this probably in the original 18 courses, because a lot of today's lecture is on wrong ideas.

Because people would remember them, and maybe they'd get it blocked out for them. But I think in the in-depth courses, we can start to go into controversies and arguments between different schools. When I was in the monastery, it was very rare for one of my lamas to pull out an actual book from another school and let them speak for themselves.

In the monastery textbooks, they think such and such. It's often presented as sort of retarded. It's not so bad when you read it from the other textbooks.

What I've done is I've actually taken some other schools' textbooks, and you'll be getting a presentation from them. Let's start with the Amitabha. They say...

They talk a lot about this kind of Buddha nature. And there's a Sanskrit which you'll get in early October.

[Говорящий 2]
Right?

[Говорящий 1]
Say, Pape.

[Говорящий 2]
Pape.

[Говорящий 1]
Pape.

[Говорящий 2]
Pape. Pape. You should be able to translate that.

Yeah.

[Говорящий 1]
The Buddha nature of Vinaya. The Buddha seed of Vinaya, say. Of a person who has seen emptiness in emptiness.

And here's how they describe that Buddha seed. Say, Duncheng. Duncheng means...

I think you know this expression. I think we have it in one of the earlier courses. This is a very famous expression in the academic culture.

Duncheng means few wants. Few wants. Like, don't need much.

Chokshe means happy with whatever you get. Chokshe means satisfied. Samtosha.

Comes as one of the Niyamas in the Yama Sutra. And they pull this out of the Lotus Sutra. There are four kinds.

One is to be satisfied with whatever clothing you get. Like, just rags. One is to be satisfied with wherever you have to stay or sleep.

One is to be satisfied with whatever people put in your bowl. Like, whatever you have to eat. And then the last one is to be happy just sitting around all day doing Dhamma.

Like, Pomona Gawa means happy to work on your mental afflictions. Happy to study. Happy to do your practices.

Satisfied with those four things. Happy to do that. So why would that be Arya-siddhi?

Pure nature.

[Говорящий 2]
Yeah.

[Говорящий 1]
And further. You see? So, in fact, in some cases they might have described an Arya as being this kind of a person.

Rather than working on emptiness perception or something like that. So anyway, you get the idea that for them, a realization in the Hinayana schools, very monkish, Hinayesh, is satisfied with a little room in the corner and some rags to wear and whatever to eat and sit there and do your practices all day. That's basically Hinayana ideal.

And they say, the reason they call it Buddha-nature or Buddha-seed is that this is the sin-kwa-no. If you don't have this, you can't get anywhere else. That's just to be good.

Then they say, shin-tachi-mu means, needless to say, everything beyond that. But you've got to have this to start with or you're never going to even come to Diamond Mountain. By the way, they also say that the dogepas, the sutras, accept this.

So this is Buddha-nature according to the two lower schools. Now we'll get to my lonely presentation about Buddha-nature. So it's sakme, samdhi-sabha, sakme, samdhi-sabha.

Sakme means pure, undefiled. Samdhi-sabha means seed in the mind. Seed in the mind.

And undefiled mental seed. Pure mental seed. And there's basically three steps to developing a mental seed.

To sam gom. Learning, like what you're doing right now. Contemplation, which you should be doing in the car on the way home.

And then gom, meditation, which you should be doing tomorrow after your homework. It says meditate 15 minutes on such and such. Which I'm sure you're all doing.

That's sakme. Those three steps, to sam gom, are necessary for all Buddhist development. Start learning, then contemplation of what you've learned, and then meditation on what you've contemplated on.

You're even a bodhisattva now, right? But you have to do that. If this seed has not been developed through those three processes, but you have it, then that's the first kind of Buddha-nature.

Natural. Rangchandering. Natural Buddha-nature.

Innate Buddha-nature. One that everyone's born with. If this seed has not yet been acted upon through those Buddhist processes of learning, contemplation, meditation, then it's called natural Buddha-nature.

If the same seed has been acted upon in that way, it's called developable Buddha-nature, or developable. So they also make that distinction. The lower two schools don't make that distinction much.

But the mind-only school does make that distinction. That's a little bit different from what we have, right? And just to repeat what the Madhyamika had, right?

Pasindika, especially. The natural Buddha-nature was what?

[Говорящий 2]
The emptiness of the mind.

[Говорящий 1]
Mostly your own emptiness, mainly of your mind. Yeah, your own emptiness, mainly of your mind. And then the developable was things like path-seeing, or an intentic way even your five heaps could turn into.

So, see how it differs from the mind-only school's version. It's important for understanding what else we're going to talk about tonight. So get the difference straight.

Mind-only school thinks there's some little crystal seed inside of you. And then, if that's been acted upon, or whenever it's acted upon by learning, by the process we're going through right now, then that's going to help you develop into a Buddha. Insofar as it hasn't been acted upon, or the part that hasn't been acted upon, the part that's been with you all the time, well, that's natural Buddha-nature, you see?

It's kind of like a part which is being acted upon, and a part which is not being acted upon. And it's sort of like a crystal seed within you. So the native crystal seed that you've always had is natural.

Then the seed, as it starts to get acted upon, or develop, or cultivate in you, it appears, they believe, that that same seed becomes a kind of developable Buddha-nature. But I don't think they would say that you lose the first seed when you start on the second seed. Like, somehow you still got both of them.

And there's a lot of problems with this idea, and you'll see some debates in your reading. I stuck in some debates between Madhyamaka and Mind-only about why this is not such a great idea. Yeah, we'll talk about that.

Well, you can read about it in about four or five weeks. I'm really ambitious with the readings. They're going to end up huge.

I thought, I was reflecting that it's probably even good that instead of having this be your last entire chapter class, and then you don't get one until a week before you teach, that you get up, you get the readings, and then you'll read them, I'm sure, in between, and, you know, digest them as they come out. That's my real idea. Sorry?

[Говорящий 2]
Remember what he said? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Говорящий 1]
You can actually, if you're careful, you can find everything in the readings. They'll be couched in much more formal language and debates and arguments, and you can trash them up. Which brings us to Shendong.

This is now... Oh, the first thing I ever put up today was Vaibhashika and Sutras, sub-chapters. The next thing I put up was Mahayana.

Now we're on to Madhyamika, right? Which is, everybody in Tibet says they're Madhyamika, right? And Shendong, write it down first.

Shendong is an idea about emptiness that's spread in Tibet from about 1100 on. Its roots can be traced back to about 1100. And it became very popular.

The practice of Shendong as how to practice about emptiness became very prevalent in many schools, mainly in the Kagyu, to some extent in the Nyingma, even in some Sakyas. Shendong became the way to meditate on emptiness. And then it was attacked very seriously by Je Tsongkhapa, Gyaltsabje, and everybody after them as being very mistaken.

So today we're going to cover Shendong. First I'm going to cover Shendong as if I was a Shendong. And Shendong means emptiness of something else.

Shen means something else. Dong means empty. It's not only a view of emptiness.

It became a movement, you see? So Shendong is not only a name for a kind of emptiness. It's a name for a way of thinking about emptiness.

And it became a movement. And the movement was strong for a while, and then died for a while, and then came back, and then died again, and like that. You can say there were three even peaks of it in Tibet.

Say around 1300, and then around 1750, and then around 1870. Something like that. There were like peaks where it was defended very strongly.

And so, as I promised, you're going to get to hear from the textbooks, and most of the reading is from the other textbooks of other schools. I wanted to tell you which textbooks, so that you know it's authentic, and you know that. The first one is called say Samok?

Samok Nangden. Samok Nangden. Samok Nangden means the deep inner state.

Den means state, nang means inner, samok means deep or profound. Deep inner state. And it's a book about really chakras, channels, drops.

It's a beautiful roadmap of the inner body. And we're going to use it when we get to course 14 or whatever it is in the 10th exam. And there's a group of people working on it already.

It's a really, really good book on the inner body. And it's author is say Karma? Rangjun Dorje.

Karma here has nothing to do with karma in Sanskrit. It's karmapa. This is the karmapa.

This happens to be the third karmapa. The karmapas are one of the great traditions of the Kagyu tradition. And the fourth karmapa, for example, who's the most famous Kagyu winner?

[Говорящий 2]
Je Tsongkhapa.

[Говорящий 1]
Okay. Just like Jesus the Jew. Right.

He was a Kagyu. Je Tsongkhapa was a Kagyu. Although he had a great Sakya teaching right now also.

But the fourth karmapa actually is the one who gave Je Tsongkhapa his first vows back in East Tibet. So we have a very strong connection with him. Rangjun means happens all in itself.

Sundrup means self-produced. When you see Buddhas that, you showed me one, that come out of a rock. You know, like you just see a Buddha's outline or profile in a rock or a Tara comes out.

Those are called rangjun. Rangjun means just happened. Came out on its own.

And Dorje means diamond. It's an appropriate name for someone who's into Shendong. Which you'll find out later.

Because you could read this as self-produced wisdom of the diamond. So it's not a bad name for someone teaching Shendong. We're going to be studying.

We're going to be reading. The readings you get are actually from a commentary by someone named Jangun Kongto. Who died in 1899.

I'm going to write his name next because he's the author of the second text we're going to read. Which is different from the commentary to this text. He wrote two books that we're going to read.

The commentary to this one. And then his own book. And this part was translated by Winston Ho.

And it's really nice. It's a big section in the text. He's been working on it for a while.

[Говорящий 2]
Shendong.

[Говорящий 1]
Tachi. Shendong means again that special kind of emptiness which became the name for the whole school. Tawa.

Tawa means what? View or worldview especially. Chi means book of instruction.

Tachi is a special genre of Tibetan literature which is a book about emptiness. And there are lots of tachis. It just means a book about emptiness.

A book about emptiness. The version of emptiness called Shendong. Which means emptiness of something else.

Emptiness of other. I call it other emptiness in the reading. Sorry?

I call it other emptiness in the reading. Although I don't like weird words like that in general. Tawa means moon as you know.

Dorje means Dorje. Diamond. It means the diamond moon.

I translate it as the diamond moon. The moon is important to Shendong people because of the image of the mistaking the image of a moon in a quiet pond for being the moon itself. Like if you go to Alistair's house and you go out behind and there's this pond swimming pool.

On a quiet night you might look down and see the moon and for a second you think you're looking at the moon. So it's this idea of illusion. And the absence of that, the non-existence of the moon in the pond is emptiness.

You see? Which is the diamond. So it's an appropriate name that he gave his book.

The Moon of Diamond. Diamond Moon or something like that. I'm going to give you the author's name.

Jang Geun? Jang Geun was a very interesting figure. I mean to become so famous so early.

Usually you have to be dead for 400-500 years before you get famous in Tibet or before they carve your books. But he was some extraordinary thinker. He grew up in a very troubled time in Tibet.

There was a lot of fighting between different religious factions. He got caught in the middle of that in several instances. He was one of the rare Tibetans to become a real master of letters in his time.

I mean he became a great writer. Like out of 500 monks in Giron College and Sera Mae Monastery in 1959, there were only two who could write. But he was a pretty great writer.

To me his style looks a lot like Je Tsongkhapa's. I think he must have studied Je Tsongkhapa's scriptures a lot because he takes Je Tsongkhapa to task a lot. He has quite different views from Je Tsongkhapa.

But the way he presents things and his language is very similar. It's like someone who really absorbed Je Tsongkhapa and wanted to emulate Je Tsongkhapa. And I think because of the trouble that he had grown up in, he started a movement called Ri Mae.

Ri Mae means non-aligned movement. And they tried to sort of bring the sects together by drawing from different books. Like he drew a lot from Nyingma texts and he drew a lot from Kagyu texts.

And so a lot of the debate was going on between different sects of Kagyu. And that's a long story, but basically the Kagyus are split into four or five great lineages like Shambha Kagyu, Karma Kagyu, Jigung Kagyu, Dupa Kagyu. These are all like different groups of Kagyus.

And a historian I once spoke to, this is named Matthew Kapstein, who's a great Nyingma Kagyu scholar, said that he felt it was because of the geographical isolation of the different parts of eastern Tibet. The Kagyus were big in eastern Tibet. And then there were huge valleys like it took a lot of trouble to go over the pass into the next valley.

And so these lineages sort of took on their own characteristics. And there are a lot of differences between the presentations after a few hundred years. And then there came to be some friction.

And also just in general between all the schools, especially Galupas and Kagyus, in certain periods of Tibetan history, there were some bad times. So I think Jonathan Komtul and someone named Nipam, who lived about the same time, they were very interested in trying to heal this kind of division and trying to bring together the different philosophical ideas and trying to show how maybe they weren't so unacceptably different after all. And so he's known as a great master of the Re-Man Movement, which is, you can think of him as a synthesis between Kagyu and Nyingma, but mainly Kagyu.

He's also known as Yuen Ling Gyatso. There's also a Dalai Lama named Yuen Ling Gyatso, so I'm a bit confused. And Garouang Lodrotai.

I don't know if this is the god of Garchen or god of monastery, but I think it might be. Garouang would mean like prince of Gar. And I think Gar is an area in the east of it.

So we're going to study his, that's the author of the second book we're going to study. This book is really cool. I mean, I asked Gene Smith, who's a follower of Shendong himself, this is one of the greatest scholars in the West, I asked him give me the best book on Shendong because I want to put it in a reading.

So he sent me Jamblen Kongto's book. And I started to read it, and it's very beautiful because it's not very long, it's like 25 pages or something. The first half is all about Shendong theory.

And then the second half is how to put that into action in your daily meditations. So it's kind of a neat, I mean, the concept of the book I find very refreshing. The first half is all this philosophy and debating and argument.

And then the second half is, okay, suppose you actually want to get this view in your own mind. You know, well, here's some practical meditations you can do based on scriptures. So he made little meditations where you would recite something from his favorite book, which was from India, which might be what?

[Говорящий 2]
Tantra.

[Говорящий 1]
He's got all these sections from the entire tantra. You can't see the Buddha. You can't hear the Dharma.

You can't bow down to the Sangha. Now meditate on that. So he would take, maybe out of context, I don't know, but he would take pieces out of the entire tantra and say, okay, meditate on that for half an hour.

So it's kind of a neat book where the first half is like debates about philosophy, and then the second half is like practical meditations to do about Shendong. And mixed in there is some Chilam Vinyamsa, like what to do after your meditation until your next meditation, as you're walking around. So personally, I find that a really beautiful method of presenting Attachi.

And I haven't seen it much like that. It's kind of nice. You know, like there's a whole long section on how to meditate on this thing.

You see? Okay. Jonathan Kolchow in his book, first he goes through the history of Shendong.

And he says it traces its roots back to, guess who? Well, that person there. Maitreya.

And Maitreya's five books, and especially Maitreya's Uttara Tantra. Okay? And then he says, look, there were two great translators, which are called Sua and Sen.

And I like the way they interpreted Uttara Tantra. If you read the catalog of the Kanyo and Tengyo and other catalogs, these two translators were working on which text? Uttara Tantra.

Okay, like this was their specialty. Also, they were working on, in their lineage, were working on Kawachakra Tantra, which has a lot of connection with the inner body and the environment, as we spoke about at the Tiger Riding. There's a big presentation there about how your environment is a reflection of your own channels.

So it's natural that these lamas would be interested in the Kawachakra and interested in the Uttara Tantra. So, then he traces it up to Tibet, and then he says, look, there were three great lamas who really are the fathers of the Shendong tradition. I wanted you at least to know their names.

I'm not going to do them in Tibetan. I'm just going to write them in English. Okay?

So you don't have to do it in Tibetan on your homework. So, the first one we already had, actually. He's considered the far-father of all far-fathers.

Really? Okay, those are his days, and you already know about him. Didn't he already mention, say, Dugboa?

[Говорящий 2]
Dugboa.

[Говорящий 1]
Dugboa. There's something you have to know about him. He was a few...

Well, I'll tell you about that later. Anyway. Later on, this school gets another name.

The people who were in love with Shendong idea got called Jonangbas. Jonangbas. And oftentimes, in Galupa scriptures, especially in Je Tsongkhapa, you'll see, oh, the Jonangba says that, but you know.

Then he'll argue with him. So, the Jonangban, whenever you see the Jonangban, like the big Jonangba, it means one guy out of a school that went on for 800 years, right? It's number two here.

Whenever you see the Jonangba, whenever you say, oh, Jonangba says that, but who could believe that? It's by Je Tsongkhapa. Je Tsongkhapa's referring to Dugboa Sherab Gyatso.

We'll talk a little bit more about Jonangba, about the identity of Jonangba. Then, he's interesting because he was originally a Sakya master, and then he got converted to Jonangba. He got converted to Shendong.

He believed it, and he went for it. Then there's Longchen Rabjanba, who was a great Nyingma master, and got converted to Shendong. So, he's one of the most famous Nyingma scholars.

You'll often see Longchen Nintik, a famous book by Longchen. You'll see him in the reading as Chime Uzo, which is one of his other names. This is his days.

So, these are the important fathers of the Shendong tradition, listed by Kongtong Rinpoche. I'd like to talk a little bit about ... I just want you to know the history.

People ... You should know. I mean, every teacher you ever meet in the West will be from one of these traditions, and you should be able to know the differences.

I woke up ... Rinpoche got mad at his disciples one day. He said, What's the difference between Nyingma and Galupa?

And they said, Nyingma's wear a red hat. Galupa's wear a yellow hat. He's like ...

Yeah. Like, nothing on the ideas that are different. Just the hat, right?

And I'm afraid that a lot of people are like that. I'm afraid that a lot of us are like that. I'm not saying right or wrong, bad or good.

We're going to talk about that at the end. But you should know the differences, clearly. You should know what you're talking about.

You get in a room with some Kagyu students, and you start talking about common emptiness, they're going to get confused. They're going to say, I never heard about that. They're going to start talking about Shendong, and you're going to say, I never heard of that.

You should know the differences, and you should be able to argue the differences. That's a basic thing. Why do these differences exist?

Because people think of these things. So it's good to know all the ideas that people have thought about, because it might pop up in your head a year from now. And there might not be anybody to ask.

So it's good to anticipate the problems that your own students might have. The ideas about emptiness that might pop up in your own students' minds. I mean, sort of in America, luckily we've gotten beyond dark, the black abyss idea of emptiness.

Or that it means nothing at all, or something like that. But then we've got to overcome other ideas, like, oh, just think about nothing, and you'll get to emptiness, or something like that. You don't have to study.

You don't have to analyze. You don't have to think. Just close your eyes and float.

And emptiness will come to you. Don't think about anything. And we have to be able to talk about those ideas.

So I'm going to talk a little bit about the tradition called Janamba, through which the Shantung lineage passed. Then we'll get to the ideas. I've never been to Tibet, because I don't want to go until it's free.

But, um, probably it's like that. And, you know, here's Nepal, or Bhutan, I don't know. India's down here.

And, uh, pastures around here. And then right here there's a town called Shigatse. Shigatse.

Which is a famous, uh, town to stop in on the way to Hasa from India. You know, it's like the biggest city between Hasa and India. It's the only city.

And it's where the British attacked, for example, in the early 1900s, which is probably where the communists ended up attacking Tibet. And, um, right around here is a place called Jomolung. There's a pass called Jomolung, and a monastery was built there.

So they shortened it to Jomlung Monastery. Jomlung. Which means Jomlung Monastery.

Um, that was built, well, let me tell you first. the lineage goes like this. First is, Jomlung is the county.

It's like Kochi's county. And then, the log drops out when you make an adjective out of it. So if you want to say Kochi's county, Virginian, you just make it Jomlung.

So it means, originally it meant somebody from Jomlung. Somebody from the valley, or from the area of Jomlung. The county of Jomlung.

Of Jomlung, actually. Um, this lineage begins, the Jomlung lineage, in some text, okay, I mean the main text that I've read, it says that Yumo, say Yumo, Dorje, was the one who really started the Jomlung. They don't know his birth date or his passing date.

He lived to 82 or something like that. But he lived in the 10 hundreds, okay, 11th century. He wrote some books about Shentong, and pretty much got Shentong started.

It sort of spread slowly, and then a couple of generations later, comes along Say Kupang?

[Говорящий 2]
Kupang.

[Говорящий 1]
Kupang means gave up everything. Sometimes they call it, sometimes yogis are called that, hermits. People who go out and live in the wild place with no money and stuff like that.

They're called Kupang. Tukje Tsundu is his name. And he's the one who actually built Jomlung Monastery.

So he's like the second big guy in the Jomlung tradition. He said, this is worth building a monastery over. Probably they have three guys, four guys.

Now, I mean later it was a big monastery, but at the beginning it's just usually a 30 by 30 building or something. Whatever. He built the first monastery called Jomlung.

Then you have Say Tupua. Tupua. We just had him in the last list, okay.

1292, 1368, okay. The Jomlung Ban. He got so famous.

He was so persuasive. He was such a good debater. And he presented the Shantung system so well that it's practically named that.

He's given the name of Jomlung Ban. So when you read Jomlung Ban, the Jomlung Ban, we're talking about him, Tupua. So that's sort of the historical development of this particular monastery where Shantung thrived.

And where Shantung started to spread. From there. Then it goes into sort of a decline.

After the 1300s it goes into a decline. Until Taranata. Taranata is very famous.

He's Tibetan, okay, but he has an Indian name, okay. Like Taranata means Doma Protector. he's very well known for his history of Buddhism.

Your first reading had some excerpts from him. Which Alija had to type in. Okay.

And he's also very famous because he went to Mongolia and taught Buddhism there. He was one of the big figures in Mongolian history. So when you talk about Buddhism in Mongolia and about their view of emptiness, you get a big Jomlung Ban push in Mongolians' views of emptiness.

There's a modern Lama, say Jetsun Domba? I told you the story in the phone call I got, right? The guy says, I'm the Dalai Lama of Mongolia.

And I'm like, sure. No, I'm like, I've never heard of you. He said, I'm Jetsun Domba.

And I said, well, where's your monastery? He said, I've never been to Mongolia. And I'm like, okay.

Well, what monastery are you from? He says, well, I never became a monk. And I'm like, you knew the Dalai Lama of Mongolia?

He says, yeah. I said, well, he wanted to meet me in New York. Somebody wanted him to meet me.

And I'm like, well, I'm kind of busy. Maybe we can meet sometime. And I went home and told Rinpoche about it.

He says, oh, you made a big mistake. He is Jetsun Domba. He is the Dalai Lama of Mongolia.

And he was living in a small village in southern India his whole life after the fall of Tibet. And his holiness recognized him but kept it secret. It kept him secret because they feared for his life.

Because Mongolia became communist and if he had returned, it would have been a big problem. And he had children. He had a wife and children.

He never became a monk. And his kids were in Pyongyang in my house. And we used to debate together.

And one of them was the monastery truck driver. And one of them was the first diamond factory manager. But he is considered the reincarnation of Jetsun Domba.

And when we got to Mongolia, we saw this huge palace near the highway. And I said, whose is that? And they said, that's Jetsun Domba's house.

And he had never lived there. And recently he was able to go back and spend some time there. Now he is considered the main Lama in Mongolia.

And I just thought you'd like to see how Theranatha comes out. This is considered a Galupa reincarnation. It sort of shifts into a Galupa reincarnation.

So now that you know what Jelunga means. It's a place. Monastery got named after it.

Famous guy from that monastery got called Jelunga. And then it kind of died out. And then kind of revived.

When I mentioned a revival in 1700, I meant a revival in 1575. I made a mistake at the beginning. I couldn't remember time off the stage.

But he spearheaded the big revival in the early 1600s. I'd like to talk about Shentong and what it means. And here we get to the nitty-gritty.

And we're finished with the background stuff. I was very anxious to get this book from Gene Smith because I thought I'd dive in and find an explanation of why Shentong is called Shentong. Because I know the Galupa version but I thought it would be really interesting to see the Kandu remake version.

And then I've gone through the text pretty carefully. I don't think he ever says why Shentong is called Shentong. So I was sort of disappointed.

But then I found another very definitive reference. And then cross-checking, I think it's the best one I've seen. I think it's a really good one.

And just to say, there's three... You've got to know something about the Shentong people. They consider...

I mean, some of them consider... I think you could say they consider that the three turnings of the wheel are not the way you always learned it from Winston. As far as figurative and literal.

They think it's different. They have a different take on it. Very interesting.

And this is a big debate with Je Tsongkhapa. First turning of the wheel, we all agree was figurative or literal. Figurative, by anybody's standards.

Lord Buddha didn't talk much about emptiness, didn't clarify anything. Second turning of the wheel, Lord Buddha said nothing has any nature of its own. Literal, according to Madhyamika, right?

But the Jonamas would say mixed. Literal and figurative. And then they get to the third turning of the wheel and they say definitely literal.

Because they're very big into minority. And you can see how they're sort of coming out of the minority school. They are really fixated on uttara tantra.

They really believe in uttara tantra. They really believe in the five books of Maitreya as being a message that the world is minority. But they don't call themselves minority.

They believe in the minority school, but they don't call themselves minority. They believe in Madhyamika. If you ask a Shantung person, are you minority or Madhyamika, they say we're Madhyamika.

We're the great Madhyamika. And they distinguish between the plain old Madhyamika and the great Madhyamika. We speak great Madhyamika.

Even those old Madhyamikas back in India are just regular Madhyamikas. We're the great Madhyamikas. And they do draw their system from Indian sources.

They say, we believe in the uttara tantra especially, and we believe that Maitreya thus brought it to Tibetans. Who is Maitreya? He was one of the other guys hanging out in Nalenda a while.

Guess who was there? Naropa. I believe Maitreya was even one of the guards of the gates, as Naropa was.

But anyway, they were hanging out together in Nalenda monastery. After Naropa went away as a yogi, resigned from the Abbasid, he was taken over later by his student. Guess who?

He was sort of a stickler. Yeah, he was a little more conservative. Lord Atisha.

So you've got Lord Atisha and Maitreya in the same monastery. Maitreya was this great Tantric yogi who really liked to do a wild senshu. And we have records that he was actually disciplined by Lord Atisha for his wild senshu.

He kind of said, you know, then one of Marpa's teachers, whenever Marpa wasn't around Naropa, he would go hang out with Maitreya. And Maitreya also taught him tantra. So anyway, if you ask a Shantung or a Jonamba, who's the big Indian scholar you follow?

They say, oh, we're straight Maitreya. Maitreya's version of the entire tantra is what we're studying. And the entire tantra is Madhyamika.

But the way it's presented is pure Mahayana. So that's, you start to get a feel. So what is the basic, what are the most Winston, no, just somebody else.

What are the most important two ideas in the Mahayana school? Whoa, whoa. Say again?

Kuntak.

[Говорящий 2]
Shimu. Yondu.

[Говорящий 1]
Those of you studying Geshe Tutankhamen, it's a mantra, right? Kuntak, Shimu, Yondu. Okay, okay.

Here's us. Here's them. What's kuntak mean?

Ah, somebody else. In what words? The consciousness?

Constructs. Imaginary things. Things that are in your mind.

You say constructs. Mental constructs. Like, there could be a person who irritates me that wasn't coming from my side.

It's a construct. The person who irritates you, who wasn't created by you. Okay?

The person who shocks you or bothers you who didn't come from you. Okay? It's a construct.

Two kinds of constructs. Some do exist and some don't exist. That one doesn't have to exist.

That's just a plain old mental fabrication. You can think of this as a mental fabrication. No such thing exists.

Shenlong. So kuntak happens to mean like nominal, construct, fabrication of the mind. How about Shenlong?

Anybody? Yeah. Shen means other.

Long means power. It means under the power of other things. You can call it dependent things or changing things.

Anything that's caused by another thing and therefore depends on another thing for its existence. In the way that a tree depends on its seed.

[Говорящий 2]
Okay?

[Говорящий 1]
So we can call it dependent things. We're going to call it causing things through our changing.

[Говорящий 2]
You don't want to call it other power?

[Говорящий 1]
I don't know. It gets a little weird. People forget what it means.

But you can when you teach it. You can call it that and then explain it. It depends on how much of a lingo you want to invent.

[Говорящий 2]
Just for another power?

[Говорящий 1]
Yeah. And I just want to say that the more you go into another lingo to present ideas the more people you lose. When Buddhism becomes a a lingo that you have to learn that the English is and goes with his to talk to you know, and then you already got three words and you don't have a word yet that an English speaker would know.

And then they're just like you gotta remember that. Words that are familiar to you after five years or ten years of study your students aren't going to know necessarily. So you want to back up into normal English as far as you can.

Okay. So depending things cause their changing things. Yondu?

Anybody? Emptiness. It means totality, right?

Because what? Say again? It's all related?

All pervasive. Good. Yeah.

Yeah. It covers everything. Emptiness is called totality because it covers the totality of all things.

It spreads to all things. Everything's got its own emptiness. Everything's got its own emptiness.

How many of these things are deceptive reality and how many are ultimate reality? According to us, say, Magamuka. Palupa Magamuka.

[Говорящий 2]
Yeah.

[Говорящий 1]
These two are normal reality. Let's call it normal or deceptive reality. This all has a point.

Don't worry. And this one this one is ultimate reality. Now we get to them.

Now we get to them. Yondu, according to Kama Ranjun Boze and everybody else is the wisdom. Okay?

Get used to it. Get used to it. We're wearing Shendong hat tonight.

You gotta defend it like it's your life. What's Yondu? Wisdom of non-duality.

Non-duality of what? Subject and object. What do you mean by non-duality?

They're the same thing. There's no separate subject and object. Okay?

And the wisdom that perceives that perceives clear light. And that wisdom is clear light. Wisdom A mixture of clear light is Yondu.

[Говорящий 2]
Hmm. How did they figure out that they were mistaken and misdirected?

[Говорящий 1]
We'll get into that. Okay. Got it?

I mean, this is the big crack in the head, right? Winston's gone.

[Говорящий 2]
Okay, alright.

[Говорящий 1]
So, this is ultimate reality. And it is devoid of deceptive reality. Shendong.

These two things are Shendong. Sorry, that's Shendong. Normal reality, which deceives you, okay?

Everything in this room that you can see on a normal day, if you're like me, okay, is the other in emptiness of I. And this wisdom mixed somehow with emptiness, which they would call clear light. This wisdom mixed with their emptiness that they call clear light is other Shendong than these two things.

So it's empty of normal stuff. It's empty of normal stuff. And that's the real meaning of Shendong.

That's the real meaning of Shendong. To put it very basically, wisdom or emptiness in our terms, or wisdom plus emptiness somehow, is defined as that which is empty of all the other stuff. That which is devoid of all normal stuff is ultimate wisdom plus emptiness.

Now here's the punchline, you ready? What's it got to do with our course? What are we studying in this course?

Where are we at right now in the seven diamond-like visions? We're at Kham. We're at Buddha nature.

What's this whole presentation got to do with today? Geshe Michael, why'd you bring this up? This is all very interesting.

We always want to know the history of the I can't even remember what it's called. But what's it got to do with our class? Why'd you bring that up at this point?

Because Gyaltsabje brought it up at this point. Because Gyaltsabje brings it up at this point. Because, according to the Jonlangbas, this is, guess what?

Buddha nature. This is Buddha nature. Come on, you guys.

And by the way, well, let me read it to you directly. I'm not making fun. Big mistake.

This is very serious. Hundreds of thousands of people believed in this for 800 years. So the homework question said how does the idea of other emptiness or shantung relate to the Buddha nature which is the subject of our class?

Here's the answer. As noted above, other emptiness refers to the wisdom or state of mind or wisdom which perceives that subjects and objects are not separate, non-dual. Somehow mixed with emptiness.

Here's how His Highness the Third Karmapa describes it in, according to Jambden Kongtung. This is Jambden Kongtung paraphrasing the Third Karmapa in his book. He says that primordial mind, the state of indivisible ether and wisdom, ether meaning like emptiness, which is like a reflection of the moon in water.

I'll say it again, beyond all true or false, that which cannot ever be identified and beyond all names. That's how the beginner of the shantung system describes Buddha nature. Are you ready?

I'll say it again. The primordial mind, and you can read it in the reading. This is what Winston's been working on.

The state of indivisible ether and wisdom which is like a reflection of the moon in water, beyond all true or false, that which cannot ever be identified and beyond all names. And later he gets more poetic. I mean, Kondo Rinpoche says, not big, not small, not here, not there, can't be seen, can't be described.

There is a unit, what? What does that go? What is that song?

What is that song? Mercedes said it yesterday.

[Говорящий 2]
What is it?

[Говорящий 1]
No, no, it was Alison Cohen. She was driving through Texas. She hears this song on the radio.

She gets it for us. We get this tape. There is a universe that can't be seen.

Anyway, it's some guy from Texas. There's a universe that can't be seen, can't be explained, can't be beyond all sense. You know, it's like beyond.

Okay, anyway. So you immediately see one problem that any school of India would have with this idea, which is what? It's contained here.

They say that this thing has been in beings since beginningless time. Okay? This purity has been in beings since beginningless time.

This wisdom has no mental afflictions. It is pure. And it's been in you since beginningless time.

And it is emptiness also. It is the clear light. Meaning, emptiness.

Beautiful. Beautiful. Okay?

So Ted says, so it's both the changing and the unchanging thing? Why? What's the changing thing?

What's the unchanging thing? The changing thing would be the mind. The wisdom.

The unchanging thing is the emptiness. So it's already a contradiction of terms. It's like saying, it's like very weird.

It's like, to say it in Tibetan is tapen lopo. Tapen lopo means unchanging, functioning thing. A thing that could do its thing.

A thing which could affect other objects. A pen which could write, a car which could drive, food which could feed you, without changing. Because by doing something to somebody, you what?

You change. Energy is transferred. Whenever you do something, you change.

So the idea here is of an unchanging functional thing. A thing that works but never changes. And that's like a big no-no in what?

Course 13. Come on. I mean, big no-no since ancient India.

A functioning thing that never changes. What's the other example we have in Shantideva for that? A functioning thing that made a lot of stuff but didn't change.

[Говорящий 2]
God.

[Говорящий 1]
We have a problem with that. We have a problem with that. Never changes.

Made everything. Okay. I mean, that's just the same idea.

So anyway, that's one of the first problems that we have with Shantideva. I wanted to rub that in by quoting John Dunbar. Who's John Dunbar?

Yeah, Sheriff Johnson. Here's his version of what it is to be Shantung or buddha nature, right? They're now what?

They're now like synonyms. That's why Shantung relates to buddha nature. Buddha heart, right?

Buddha essence. Here's how John Dunbar himself describes the two kinds of buddha nature. Ready?

What are the two kinds of buddha nature? Raksha nirika, which is like your natural buddha nature that you were born with and it's always been there. And the other one?

Stuff that can turn into buddha, right? Developable stuff. But here's his definition.

Get it? The natural or innate buddha nature is an actual buddha complete with the 32 qualities of enlightenment. Like 32 marks of enlightenment or you can say the 32 high spiritual qualities of enlightenment.

There's 64 total actually. Which has existed for all time as a component part of every suffering living being. Sentient, right?

I'll say it again. Innate buddha nature is an actual buddha complete with all the qualities of enlightenment. Which has existed for all time as a component part of every suffering living being.

You have a little buddha inside of you. 100% buddha. Already buddha.

And you've had it there for all time. Developable buddha nature then consists of new occasions of buddha nature which are created as one engages in learning and other activities. So developable buddha nature consists of new occasions of buddha nature which are created.

Like you can think of them as new seeds that I put in your mind for my talk tonight. That's not such a weird idea, right? I'm talking tonight.

You're getting certain ideas. They are certain seeds in your mind. They're going to help you grow into a buddha.

They're going to develop into a buddha. That one's not so crazy. The other one is the idea that you already have part and parcel with you a fully enlightened buddha.

I'm going to give you Gyaltsabje at the end but I think I'll throw him in as the things go on. Gyaltsabje says look, so that means it's Svabhamakaya, right? I mean the big one, Dharmakaya, right?

The body of essence, the essence body of a buddha, right? It's in you already, right? So it's got the two kinds of purity, right?

Yeah. What are the two kinds of purity? A.

Empty from the beginning. B. Free of all mental afflictions, etc.

From the beginning. So if you already have a fully developed buddha inside you then your mind is already free already in the two ways. What are the two ways?

1. Empty. 2.

No mental afflictions. Come on! Why'd you write your book?

That Gyaltsabje was hot. And then you can debate. If this were a real Diamond Mountain in September 2004, you'd have an assignment to go home to the debate ground and let them defend themselves a little bit.

Don't leave it at that. And what would he say? He'd say, It's there, but it's covered.

It's just covered. You've got to save that for the debate ground. Which arise as you hear a class.

To a samgung. And that's not such a strange idea. You're getting seeds planted tonight that will contribute to your enlightenment, I hope.

And that's developable. That's going to develop and get better and better and then it's going to help you become a Buddha. That's okay.

The first one that we have a problem with. There's a Buddha already inside of you. Complete with the two kinds of purity.

Meaning, complete with no mental afflictions. The mind has no mental afflictions. Then we're like, just to let you know, I mean, Joseph J is really getting upset.

Do you know why Buddha nature comes up at this point in the text of the entire tantra? We didn't cover that. You'll see it in the reading.

They say, Joseph J says, How did we get to come? How did we get to Buddha nature in a discussion of, it happens to be a discussion of the qualities of a Buddha. You see?

Of the things you have to learn to become a Buddha. He says, well the idea is that all this stuff that you learn purifies your Buddha nature. Your Buddha nature is all mixed up, right?

He said, You have an emptiness of your mind but it's stained. It's tainted. And you have to go about purifying it.

You have to go about purifying it. So, you know, there's a debate in the entire tantra. Why does calm come up here?

Why are you talking about Buddha nature here? Because we're talking about purification. What's that have to do with calm?

What do you think you're purifying? You're purifying your calm. You're purifying your Buddha nature.

Your Buddha nature is stained. Your Buddha nature is tainted by these other things. So if you start talking about purifying, of course you're already talking about Buddha nature, calm.

So that's how the whole argument starts, right? So now you're going to have to get into, well, do you have anything... So let me get this straight.

We talked about it, Chrissy and I talked about it. We were trying to thrash this out, right? We decided that Rick, for this guy, is a crystal golf ball.

Crystal golf ball. And it's got, like, mud around it. You know?

So, what he's trying to... What he's saying is that, look, the crystal golf ball is pure. But it's, like, covered with mud.

Now, where would that idea come from?

[Говорящий 2]
Number 9.

[Говорящий 1]
That's not so weird. The entire Tangra said that. Buddha image, gold, jewels, and covered with mud.

And then, if you could just get the mud off, you could find the true Buddha inside you, right? That's where this is all coming from. So you can feel how it's coming.

True Buddha or true Buddha nature?

[Говорящий 2]
Can't ask me.

[Говорящий 1]
It's the same thing. But I give you this thought, and then I'll let you have a break. I'm sorry.

Because I'm really into this.

[Говорящий 2]
I give you this thought.

[Говорящий 1]
See how easy it is to slip from an image into a wrong idea of emptiness. See how... When you want to describe emptiness to somebody, you might say diamond, right?

It was like a diamond. And then they start getting this picture of a diamond. And then, after a few centuries, emptiness is a diamond.

Like Diamond Mountain, Diamond Bay, Diamond... It must be... I think he was saying it was like a gem, you know, a clear gem, a solid thing.

Because the mind can't hold on to the idea of Buddha nature being the simple absence of something. It's so hard for the mind. It's so hard for the human mind.

And 95% of people who ever hear about emptiness are still holding on to some kind of black, or some kind of diamond, or some kind of clear light, you see? Instead of... Instead of whatever I got in my hand.

And it's that simple absence. You know? It's that simple absence.

The simple feeling of, oh, gone. You know? It's not there.

That's all. But how do you communicate that to somebody, you see? Without them making an image out of it.

You know? Like, that's the big thing in Islam, right? Don't make an image out of me.

I'm not like that. You know? Do not make to yourself any greater image.

I'm not like that. I'm a demigod. I'm just...

You know? But you attach to images, you know? The colonel in the sea.

The world emperor in the womb. And then you get schools going on for a thousand years. People thinking that Buddha nature is a seed, in the sense of a positive thing.

Because it's so hard to hold on to the greatest call you have. It's the fact that you ain't got something that you never could have had anyway. Or did you think you had?

Okay? Now hold on to that. Try to teach that for hundreds of years.

It just doesn't go. You need something solid, you know? And I think that's very...

You know, just a tiny snip in your worldview, you're here. Just a tiny snip. It's not like something crazy.

It's like a tiny snip. You start thinking of Buddha nature as a seed, rather than an absence. I've even used the word seed over and over in these classes.

Just to kind of communicate it. You know? And then it gets spread that way.

I think we'll stop there. Did you have a question?

[Говорящий 2]
If it's an absence, then how do you... What needs to be... Nothing.

You didn't mention anything, I think. Ummm... The obscurations of trauma, maybe.

Ah, things start sounding like trauma.

[Говорящий 1]
Yeah, things start sounding like trauma. You debated it. You debated it?

No, it's a good point. Would we say that things obscured are attached to the Buddha nature that obscured it? Or is it your own perceptions that obscured it?

I think that's what you mean.

[Говорящий 2]
But if we would say that Buddha nature is something that needs to be purified and become a Buddha, then it can't be so much as you think.

[Говорящий 1]
Yeah, but what does purified mean? Can 100% emptiness... Can the 100% absence of something be made any more absent?

You see? So that can't be what purification means.

[Говорящий 2]
Right.

[Говорящий 1]
So it has to mean something else to us.

[Говорящий 2]
Or we're thinking of Buddha nature as some sort of object.

[Говорящий 1]
Yeah.

[Говорящий 2]
We'll take a break.

[Говорящий 1]
I'm sorry. The Janamba school... I just want to go on to one more thing.

The Janamba school... It was kind of shocking to me when I read it. But they say, we're the great Madhyamikas.

And then those other Madhyamikas back in India were the regular Madhyamikas. And I wanted to explain to you why. They go into an explanation of why.

[Говорящий 2]
All right.

[Говорящий 1]
And Gyatso Je picks on them for calling themselves great Madhyamikas. Later, as you might guess. So, here we go.

Those regular followers of Madhyamika are always saying that all existing objects are empty of any essence of their own. Rangimuotomo. Those regular Madhyamika guys are always saying that all objects are emptiness of any essence of their own.

Which is what the Madhyamika schools do say. What's the big version of emptiness for the mind-only, by the way? Do you remember?

Suntsinghi Jetonga? Who is that?

[Говорящий 2]
Yeah.

[Говорящий 1]
Subject and object are empty of coming from a separate seed. Which everybody can relate to. One seed has created me to stand here.

One seed has created Michael for me to see. So, in a sense, we are one essence. One substance.

Which is not at all to say, I'm Michael and Michael's me, or there's no difference between us. When we say object and subject are not different, we mean not different seed. But we are different in the normal ways.

In the imputed ways. But if you didn't understand the mind-only school, you might think that that was the main idea of emptiness. That me and Michael, there's no duality between subject and object.

Somehow, I am Michael, Michael is me. And the illusion is that he seems to be separate from himself. Well, they would say separate, you see?

Separate seed, I don't have a problem with. Separate from me, I have a problem with. You see?

They slipped. We slipped, you see? You know, you hear that so often, and it's so indefensible, and you don't go anywhere with that.

Okay, so I'm Michael, where do I go now? You know? How do I practice that?

So I'm the wall. There's no difference between me and the wall. So where do you go with that?

How do you develop yourself? How do you practice Buddhism with that? And then people get frustrated and just kind of leave it, you know?

They're looking for something else. They're looking for something that has an application in your life. Yeah, the wall's not as separate as I thought it used to be.

The wall is a projection of my past karma. If I wanted a nicer wall, I could maybe provide housing for other people who come to guide me on. You know?

That has applications, you see? That could lead to a Buddha paradise. Anyway, all those regular Madhyamaka guys, they say all existing things are empty in the essence of the realm.

And the lower schools, I think he's talking about the first two schools, Abhidharma and Mani. They talk about the lack of self to a person, right? And they say there's a lack of truth to objects.

Lack of self to a person, lack of truth to objects. They talk about that individually, but they never get up to where we are. And those yoga systems, they speak about the wisdom that's beyond the realm.

They talk about it. But because all these views are still mistaken, I'm quoting Shendong Thakur. I'm quoting Janggung Khunto's text.

They are far from enlightenment. Like, they got a long way to go. The only people who can really have any experience of the wisdom free of duality are either people who are perceiving it directly, or those whose minds are trained to meditating on nothing at all, or on empty space.

Forget the Abhidharma school. Forget the Sutra school. Forget the mind-only school.

Forget the old Manu Mika school. You gotta get up to the great Manu Mika. Why?

Because only we have the real experience of non-reality. How? We put our minds into a state of nothing.

Forget this study. Forget this analysis. Forget this, like, you know, they say stop grinding your nose.

Stop putting your nose to the grinding mill. They say that. Just cool it.

Just take it easy. Close your eyes. Meditate on it.

There's no big or small. There's no sub-saharan nirvana. There's no antidote.

There's no problem. Just put your mind into empty space. We're the only ones who understand that.

So we're the great Manu Mika. Okay? The idea that analysis or contemplation and emptiness could be useful is a delusion.

That's a quotation. Now, if you're in a debate ground and you were playing the jananga, you'd probably want to respond to that. You know, all I meant, and he says it later on, he says another thing, he says, look, there's this guy.

They never mention him, okay? Jetha Kapala. He keeps talking about enamelizing stuff, thinking hard about stuff, ripping stuff apart.

You know, if you try to find this object that doesn't exist, you'll never find it. It's too much sweat, too much logic, too much thinking. Just get down and get into nondescript stuff.

That stuff is not meditation. That's not meditation. And there's scriptural foundation for that.

We had it in the yoga sutra. These four kinds of meditation just get you to the former. Trying to calm your mind down, trying to feel better, trying to talk to your knee, vittaka and vichara.

You know, kind of looking at the object deeply, looking at the object not so deeply, but there's still no emptiness content to that. You're still in discursive mental thought process. No matter how far you go, without bringing up emptiness, you're still going to get caught in samsara.

You're just feeling better. You feel better, but you're not getting out of samsara. You don't have that emptiness element.

Which everyone agrees is necessary to get out of samsara. So it's not like a crazy accusation. Like they are taking this from the ancient scriptures.

Just put your mind on nothing. Just don't think about anything. Empty space.

And you see that. Even like western authors of karya lineages, you see that. Even in modern books you see, calm down, don't be so tense, just relax, sit quietly, go on your breath, and then just empty space.

And when you get a problem with somebody, or something comes up, just let go. And it's a very common, that's where it's all coming from. It's all from old Jodhana.

Yeah.

[Говорящий 2]
Isn't that the same argument with Kamalashila in the Chinese?

[Говорящий 1]
Yeah. It is. Right.

It is. The fact that they had the debate, and the fact that Vashana almost won, it tells you that it's a common, and it's not crazy. There's a place where you have to take reasoning and then get to the object, and then there's a difference between cegom and jogom.

Analyze, analyze, analyze, analyze, conclusion, emptiness, jogom, fixed on it. You know what I mean? There is a place for that.

But they were very frustrated with Je Tsongkhapa. What's this cegom stuff? Right?

What's an analytical meditation? What are you talking about? Meditation is a time for sitting and not thinking about anything.

And that was their, that's what distinguishes Great Madhyamaka from the others. They got all these theories, all these ideas, and they debate them, and they think about them, and rip them apart. But we, we sit down, we think about empty space.

And that's it. Anybody else is far from Buddhahood? This is a quotation.

We're just about done. I wanted to state formally for Gyaltsabje's complaints about Shantung. When he gets to the end of Shantung, he says, you know, I'm sorry to go so long on this Shantung idea, but so many people are thinking about it nowadays that I felt obliged.

When you read Komtum, Jangun Komtum's defense of Shantung, he says, so many people are attacking Shantung nowadays, I thought I should stop for a moment and just clarify it. So, it's kind of cool you get both sides of that. Both of them are apologizing for going on, but they feel like it's necessary.

So we're going to give four of Gyaltsabje's complaints. The wisdom which perceives that there's, well, I'm just going to say non-dual wisdom, right? Wisdom that sees that me and Michael are not separate is Buddhahood, is unchanging Buddhahood.

That's Gyaltsabje's first complaint. We already talked about it, right? We already talked about that.

The second is, we also went over already, if my mind is already the Buddha, from the beginning, then it must possess the two kinds of purity. One, it's pure of self-existent things from the beginning, we all agree to that. Two, is it pure of all bad thoughts, negative thoughts?

They have to say what? Yes, it's Buddha. That's the definition of the Sambhogakaya.

The body which has the two purities. So, then they're forced into saying my mind, from the beginning of this line, has not had mental afflictions. So, we're already Buddhas.

Here comes an interesting one. What's the Shen in Shendong? But what is that?

Shenmong is a good dog. Everything in the room, whether they exist or not. You know, like, ideas that you have, concepts that you have, and also all the stuff that you can see.

And Buddha nature, or Shendong, is that which is other than those things. That which is empty of those other things. That's Shen.

Buddha nature is the state of mind which perceives non-duality and is other than those things. It doesn't possess those things anymore. So, Gyatso Jei says, so, let me get this straight.

You're saying that this wisdom which perceives non-duality is free of normal stuff. And they say, that's what, yeah. Yeah.

Ultimate reality is the absence of deceptive reality. So he says, now let me get this straight. Do you mean Yerba or Yimba?

In Tibetan it's a big difference. Are you saying it's not involved in deceptive reality? Or are you saying it isn't deceptive reality?

Something other than deceptive reality? Is that what the Shen, is that what you're trying to get at? So it gives them two choices, right?

It's a diamond deal. Two bad choices, right? I'll say it again.

Are you saying that your version of ultimate reality is just not involved with normal stuff? Right? Like, Gyatso Jei.

Or are you saying it's not normal stuff? Yimba. Like, which one are you talking about?

It has to be one of the two. And if they say, oh, ultimate reality means, empty of other meaning, it's just not involved at all with normal stuff anymore. It's beyond.

So he says, okay. So, uh, it's not Buddha nature anymore, right? Why'd you say that?

Of course it's Buddha nature. Oh, so does it spread to every living creature? Does every living creature have it within them as part of their being from the beginningless time?

Well, yeah. Well, are they deceptive reality or ultimate reality? Well, they're deceptive reality.

So is it, like, intimately linked with deceptive reality things since beginningless time? What do you mean it's empty of other things? Okay, so that's his first problem.

You got it? You okay on that one? Okay.

What do you mean? What do you mean ultimate reality has got, is empty of normal reality in the sense that they're not related at all? And he says, right, that's what I mean.

Come on. You're saying that this is Buddha nature. You're saying Buddha nature spreads to every suffering living creature since beginningless time.

What do you think they are? They're normal reality. It's, what do you call it?

It impregnates, how do you say it? Pervades every single existing being. You can't say it's not connected to anything.

You can't say it's empty of other, right? Empty of normal things. He says, okay, I take, I'm sorry.

Let's take it back. Let's go the other way. It's empty of being.

Ultimate reality is empty of being normal reality. That's what Shendong means. Then Gyatso Jay says, did you have to write all these books just for that?

You know, I mean, you say that you are great Mahayamikas, right? So you say that your disciples have somehow perceived something that other people couldn't perceive. That they are Chittijo and Dujo.

They are spiritually advanced intellectual disciples. So do you have to go through this whole thing to tell them ultimate reality is not normal reality? I mean, if it just means empty of normal reality, did you have to go through writing all these books just so they'd know that?

Of course it's empty of normal reality. Of course it's different from normal reality. Shendong, I can buy that.

Ultimate reality is different from normal reality. Then why do you call yourselves big Mahayamikas? Why do you say that everybody else didn't get it right and your disciples did it right?

That's a no-brainer. He's just saying, come on, that's a no-brainer. Of course ultimate reality is empty of normal reality.

Last one. You say that thinking and analysis are of no benefit in reaching the wisdom which is free of all duality, which can only be reached through thoughtless meditation. Why then do you undertake, for example, to explain your Shendong to people?

If analysis and contemplation of emptiness is of no value, and if emptiness can only be approached in a mindless state of deep meditation, why'd you write your book? Why are you trying to explain it to them? All right.

By the way, to be really fair, you've got to have a Shendong person here to defend themselves. I'm sure they'd have answers. And then you'd have to go deeper.

It's kind of mean to pick on somebody who's not there. I threw in two more points in the reading because I thought they were really beautiful. We've been picking on Shendong tonight, but there's a beautiful part at the end of Janggung Kongchul's text that I thought it would be beautiful to include in the reading.

Janggung Kongchul was no dummy. He was an extremely talented, brilliant writer, probably a Buddha. Lama.

And he says, these are his final advice for practice on the last few pages of the practical part of the book. He says, look, feel deep love and belief that the lama who imparts these essential instructions to you is the Dharmakaya himself. Like, just believe.

The last thing after all this debate, philosophy, stuff like this, you get up out of your morning meditation, you go meet your lama, you say, I meet the Dharmakaya. This is the Dharmakaya. This is emptiness.

Right there. With great love and belief. I'm in the presence of the Dharmakaya.

That's technically illegal and practically perfect. Right? I'm in the presence of the Dharmakaya.

And then I love the next one. He says, reflect to yourself that since all living beings possess the Buddha nature, then, whether you are able at this point to recognize it or not, they all ultimately combine within themselves all the qualities of an enlightened being. It just means, come on, the purpose of talking about Buddha nature, practically speaking, whatever you call it, it doesn't matter.

When you meet other people, just concentrate on them. This is an enlightened being about to happen. This is an enlightened being about to go on.

Especially if they're sitting in a class like this. Like, when you get into a group like this and you're sitting with a bunch of people like this, just appreciate where you're all at. Look at them and say, my God, we've got 20, 30 people here about to break into enlightenment.

On the cusp. And enjoy it. Enjoy it.

Walk around saying, God damn it, those people on Tucson City Street, they got Buddha nature. Sanjay Trivikshi, you bitch. Everybody walking around the streets got Buddha nature.

I'm lucky. We're lucky. This is unbelievable.

And you've got to think like that. Then he calls it Daparamja. Daparamja means like that bodhisattva vow.

140? See everything as pure. Just stop worrying about little differences between us.

Come on. Everybody walking around has got Buddha nature. The Iraqis have Buddha nature.

The terrorists have Buddha nature. The Jomnambas have Buddha nature. We all got Buddha nature.

So just be happy and enjoy. It's amazing. It's like, come on.

Don't stick your head up your butt. Sometimes I think a lot of Buddhists have their head up their butt. It's like, come on.

Look where we're at. Everybody in this room's got Buddha nature. We're just about to become right.

Have a good time. Somebody asked me this. When would you figure out that this view is wrong if you held it?

The bodhisattva vows. The first one especially, Dr. Shinran. You can't criticize especially other schools of Buddhism.

If anybody's a deity on this planet, I'm sure Govinda Rinpoche was a deity. I mean, what are the odds? Somebody writes all this stuff, goes so deep, affects so many hundreds of thousands of people, and he's not a Buddha?

Or he's not somebody special? So, the question comes up in the monastery. Why do people like Maitreya present a mind-only school?

It's mistaken. It's slightly wrong. Why do you get Maitreya teaching these wrong ideas?

Even about Buddha nature. Why would Lord Maitreya do that? And there's a clue on the first page of Jambavan Kanta's scripture, and I kind of like it.

There's a clue right there on the front page. It's kind of beautiful. He says, I'm going to quote him.

It's not that we make this distinction between literal and figurative teachings, because there's any chance that some part of Lord Buddha's teachings could be intentional lies. It's not like we say this is literal and this is figurative because we think Lord Buddha was a liar, or that he's trying to mislead us. But what do you think?

It's just that different people have different capacities. To see what the deepest teaching is. Different people have different capacities.

You know, this whole three wheels thing, three turning of the wheel thing, he says, it's just like, what does he say? Bukkase-nyupa. Say Bukkase-nyupa.

And I didn't know this word. I looked it up in a dictionary. And it says, when a mother is trying to feed a piece of fruit, for example, to a child, and they can't stick it in their mouth and they can't bite it.

They have to mash it. They have to make it all mushed, like Gerber's baby food. And then they have to spoon it in.

That's what Lord Buddha's doing. Come on, don't you get it? You're being spoon-fed the baby grubby stuff at first.

You know. It's not that Lord Buddha's trying to lie or mislead you about Buddha nature when he talks about this clear light stuff and all that. He's just mashing it up for you so you can digest it.

And then later you can get to song. So, the fact that he says that on the front page and then goes on to like 25 pages of indefensible emptiness teachings that are very attractive to many people is, I think, he's trying to say something. That's my take on it.

Okay.

[Говорящий 2]
Still, what if you spend your whole life studying this and say, this is what things are, etc, etc. Would that preclude you from the direct perception of emptiness because you're spending your time spacing out on this shit?

[Говорящий 1]
I think it could be very dangerous. It could be very dangerous. But maybe for a person they say he doesn't have to kill one.

You just don't have enough virtue. So you get them to do other things. At the end he says, I don't care what you do.

Just go make some waterfall offerings. Go build a stupa. Go do something physical.

And dedicate it to seeing Rick. You see? He has a whole list of activities and he says, if you don't, if Rick doesn't come to you easily, you have to go do some other things first and then Rick will come to you.

And he actually there mentions for the first and only time, Ganga Guru. He says, you've got to develop it. So, yeah, I think, somebody told me, somebody at Vajrapani, which is a Vigalupa center in the United States, that the former director said, it wasn't him, but a good friend of his, I never would have gotten into Buddhism if Trungpa Rinpoche hadn't taken me to all those drinking pubs.

You know? People say bad things about, at least they used to, about Trungpa Rinpoche. You know, like 30 years ago, it was like a big scandal.

Trungpa Rinpoche is just alcoholic. And doing weird things. But you don't know, he said, you don't know how many people ended up going there for the party.

And then, you know, six months later, they're like, starting money again. So, you don't know. You can't say.

All right.