«Различение явлений и их истинной природы» (Дхармадхарматавибхага)

[Говорящий 1]
First of all, welcome to the first Uttaratantra official class here. And I think you know today is the day of Lord Buddha's Isagandhava. Lord Buddha was conceived today, enlightened today, and passed from this earth on today.

So all the virtue we do is like a million times more. I don't know, Lama Silver could tell you exactly the number. But it's a good day to have, I think, the first class of this particular series.

We were in Tucson the last three or four days, getting poked and prodded by doctors and dentists and other kinds of things to see if we were still alive. And we had a chance to drive by the place where the teaching will take place in October. I think most of you know this course will be repeated in October over a four-day weekend, Columbus Day weekend.

And the crew, I think Gail is in charge of that, but they found a very nice place. And we found out where it was and we decided to drive by it. And it's really beautiful.

It's called the Muse, right? And apparently it's an old YMCA on 5th Street right off of 4th Street in Tucson. 4th Street, I guess you know, but I just found out, it's like the happening street in Tucson.

It's where all the students come. It's like right across the street from the university. And it's like the mall in Santa Cruz or the East Village, except it's only a few blocks long.

And so we drove by and it's really beautiful. The gym is really beautiful. It's not really a gym, it's this huge beautiful place.

And it's broken up into different rooms now. And we also saw a big sign that said rooms for rent. So we figured the Three Jewels can go in there afterwards, or maybe before.

But we're going to talk about that tomorrow maybe. Anyway, we got the rent and everything. And I think it'd be a good area.

We also, due to Doug's work, we did some newspaper and radio interviews about the three-year retreat. And I guess the newspaper thing came out the last few days. And then we went to do a radio interview and the guy was very excited.

He's going to run it for five days in a row. He did it like five times over the normal length and then he wants to do it for a whole week. And then he said in October he'll do another long interview for the teaching in October.

The reason I'm telling you all this is because you guys are going to be the teachers in October. And I've gotten a lot of letters from people and there have also been ads put in Tricycle and other places for that teaching. So we expect, I don't know, when you expect you don't get that many.

So maybe, but I think there will be at least two or three hundred people there. And we have to be, we'll be breaking out in the mornings. The classes in the mornings will be broken out into smaller classes because we've gotten feedback from people that when they come into a class and there's three hundred people there you don't feel like you're getting any personal attention and you can't ask questions and things like that.

So what we're going to do in October in the morning classes, they'll be broken out into those little rooms in the muse space. And they're very beautiful little rooms with nice hardwood floors. They're used for dance and things like that.

And each one of you who survive the next ten classes will become a teacher. And maybe we'll team up people in Paris. If you're shy, I don't know.

But my idea is to break out the morning classes. You go, you get assigned, you're going to have assigned to you five or ten or fifteen students each. And then you have to teach what I'm about to teach.

So that's kind of an incentive for you guys to do it seriously now. And I want everyone to try. I know a lot of you think I'm not a teacher or I never did that.

I remember the night that Phun Tso came into New York. Thelma was there, the New York class the first time. It was a really rainy night.

Only four people showed up for class. And this guy named Phun Tso, he wasn't called Phun Tso Bin, right? And he walks in and he says, I don't know any Tibetan, I can't teach, I don't know anything about this stuff.

Now he's got a regular Friday night class in New York with 70, 80 students coming. And there are many people like that. So I want all of you to be in the frame of mind that you're going to be teaching this.

And even people who listen to the tape or get the video two years from now, you have to be thinking in terms of teaching what I'm about to teach. The whole idea is a lineage. And we have to continue the lineage.

So please keep that in mind. You're also going to get homework. And you'll also be responsible to do a quiz when you get into class on Wednesday night.

We'll be going Wednesday night and Saturday afternoon. And you should get the schedule from Ellie because there's a break there for some vacation. And somebody named Dalai Lama or something like that.

And we'll be busy with those things. How many people weren't here for the first half of this class? Oh boy.

Really? Raise your hand again. Okay, we'll have to do a short summary.

We did the first half of this first class just for good luck out on the lawn on the night we got here. On the night we broke the three-year retreat. But I'll just do a summary I guess.

And then we'll go ahead. This class will be about an hour and then a break for... Notice I said an about.

A break for refreshments. And then we'll go for another hour. And then after that, we're going to have a dinner for everyone.

So you're invited to dinner, right? Is that right?

[Говорящий 2]
Yeah.

[Говорящий 1]
Okay. And after that from six to seven or however late we go, we're going to do the Great Sojong Ceremony. Sojong means to...

Once a year, Khen Rinpoche has instituted a purification ceremony. And this was done in the great tantric colleges in Tibet once a year. And instead of the usual monk sojong, which takes place every twice a month, where you get to purify all the vows that you broke in the last two weeks, in Sojong Chenmo you go through all your vows, which means your Pratimoksha vows, your Bodhisattva vows, and your tantric vows.

So what I'd like to ask is during dinner, everyone write down six pieces of paper, six slips of paper. There'll be the three best things you did in the last year for your Pratimoksha vows, your Bodhisattva vows, and your tantric vows. And then there'll be the worst three things you did in the last year for the same thing.

If you don't have tantric vows or Bodhisattva vows, then just write it down for your Pratimoksha vows. If you don't even have Pratimoksha vows, just the best of the ten non-virtues that you avoided, and the worst of the ten non-virtues that you did. And we'll burn them in the fireplace from six to seven.

And then from seven o'clock on, I think we have some kind of a celebration starring Sid and Mercedes and something like that. Blah, blah, blah. So that's the schedule for today.

So I guess it looks like I have to go over a little bit of the last class. And that's just to summarize how we got the book that you're about to study. I better give you the title of the book first.

There's going to be, as you know, the ACI courses are English tracks or English and Tibetan tracks. So I'll be writing Tibetan words up here. You're not responsible for them if you don't want to be.

But most of us have found out that when you get under pressure at the news space in Tucson and some smart guy from Fairbanks, Alaska is asking you a question, you can spit out some Tibetan and answer him. And he doesn't know what it means and you don't know what it means, but it gets you off the hook, see? So it might be useful to write down a little bit of it just to recover yourself.

So I'll be doing the Tibetan. And now, since we're kind of into Sanskrit, especially that we're starting the Tantric series next year, and a lot of the text that we'll be using for the five to seven year Tantra series will be Sanskrit, which didn't reach Tibet. So I'm going to be writing Sanskrit also.

You should just start getting used to it. So there'll be a Sanskrit track too. Some people might want to do Sanskrit only and English.

Some people might want to do English and Tibetan. Some people might want to do all three. If the guy from Fairbanks knows Tibetan, you can throw out some Sanskrit and get him off your back.

I'll say there was Sanskrit and Tibetan and then I'd like you to repeat it. If it puts a seed in your mind, and even if you don't get into Sanskrit track this lifetime, it might be next lifetime. Say uttara.

Listen to how I say it. I don't say uttara. I say uttara.

Say uttara. And I don't say tantra. I say tantra.

Yeah. But that's a very good example for distinguishing between what we call long A and short A. And we'll get better at that as the time goes.

There's a word before uttara tantra, which is mahayana. And I'll do it in Sanskrit just for those of you feeling brave for the Sanskrit. Tell me if I do anything wrong.

My Sanskrit is not as good as my Tibetan. Say maha. Maha.

Yana.

[Говорящий 2]
Yana.

[Говорящий 1]
And then when A bumps into U it changes to O. Mahayano.

[Говорящий 2]
Mahayano.

[Говорящий 1]
Tantra. Tantra. I'm sorry.

Uttara. Uttara. Tantra.

[Говорящий 2]
Tantra. Shastra. Shastra.

[Говорящий 1]
OK, that's in Sanskrit. I'm going to write the Tibetan for you. Say gyut.

[Говорящий 2]
Gyut.

[Говорящий 1]
It gets cut off a bit. I might as well teach you right. I mean, we're out here in the desert and nobody's listening.

Gyut. Gyut. Lama.

[Говорящий 2]
Lama. Gyut. Gyut.

Lama. Lama.

[Говорящий 1]
OK, good. You might notice that the Tibetan is a little shorter. And I'm going to give you the full Tibetan in a minute.

But just to go through the words. Mahayano, you know, means big vehicle. Thekpa chenpo.

Big capacity. You're going to get a commentary by one of Jetsun Kapa's students, Gyeltsabje. I'm going to give you the reading.

You don't get the reading today because I couldn't finish it because of the doctors and dentists and everything else. But Gyeltsabje says it's maha because of seven different reasons. The big means seven different things.

So this book is all about the big capacity people. Basically, it's people who are willing to work for the happiness of every living creature in the universe and aren't concerned only with themselves. OK, so you go from one to infinite number of beings if you step onto Mahayana.

So that's the meaning of Mahayana. Mahayana. Uttara means lama.

And that's the same as guru lama. Lama means what? Teacher.

But literally it means higher one. Higher one. So uttara means higher one.

Gyeltsabje, when he explains uttara in his commentary, he says it's anuttara. Anuttara. Anuttara, some of you may know, is the name of the highest tantric teachings, the highest group of tantric teachings out of the four.

And it means lama mepa. Above lama. Meaning there's nobody lama above this book.

This is the highest book, lama. So uttara means anuttara, means nothing higher than that. Tantra here, which is gyu in Tibetan, and that's the gyu in Gyumei Tantric College and Gyudu Tantric College, which means a lineage.

Or it can mean tantra also. Tantra usually means the secret teachings of Buddhism as opposed to the open teachings of Buddhism. Here it has nothing to do with that.

We're not teaching secret books today. This tantra is not a tantra. This book is called a tantra because of the meaning of series.

Tantra means a series, like a lineage. So when you say gyupei lama, for example, which is a different spelling, it means the lamas of our lineage. So tantra means that.

And as we mentioned, in English, the word tan has come into the words tenuous and tenacity and tendon and extension, meaning stretched out into a series or a line. Shastra. Shastra means a cutter, which means a commentary, an explainer of analysis.

It breaks the meaning up. So really what this book is about, it's an explanation of the series, which is uttara, and which is about helping all living creatures. Mahayana.

So it's a commentary on the series, which is uttara, and it's about helping a big vehicle, big capacity, people who can help all the people in the world. By the way, ma comes into English with a prenasal, ma. The h changes to g, and the n, which you get magnitude out of here, magna carta, magnificent, things like that, from the Mahayana.

Now we've got to go to the uttara. Why is it called highest? And you see some people, even like 500 years ago, they're saying, oh, it's the best book of all, so it's called uttara tantra.

That's not what Gyaltsabje says. Gyaltsabje says, think of highest in terms of ultimate, and think of ultimate in terms of the thing that comes at the end. Like we have penultimate in English, and ultimate, meaning the thing just before the end, and the thing at the end.

So think of uttara as ultimate, but in the sense of the very last teaching, the very last teaching. So really this is an explanation of the latter part of the teaching. That's the meaning of the name of this book.

What teaching is he talking about? We talked about it already, right? You guys already know.

You know that Lord Buddha turned the wheel three times. The first time, Lord Buddha appeared as a... Is it three times?

No fourth? We'll see. The first time he turned the wheel as...

Mainly he taught... Just after he became enlightened, he taught the Four Noble Truths about suffering and how to get out of suffering and that kind of thing. He didn't say much about emptiness.

The second turning of the wheel, he came on big time on emptiness. He said, everything is empty. Nothing in the world has any quality of its own.

This pen doesn't have any quality of its own. You don't have any quality of your own. Your mind doesn't have any quality of its own.

The world doesn't have any quality of its own. Nothing has any quality of its own. So, Winston.

You could do... This pen is not blue, right? So it is blue.

So it has a characteristic of being blue, right? It doesn't have a characteristic of being blue. Oh, it doesn't have any characteristic of...

Oh! Oh, it doesn't have any quality that belongs to itself. So the blue doesn't belong to the pen?

So the pen's not blue?

[Говорящий 2]
Oh, he's getting good.

[Говорящий 1]
Forget it. Forget it. We'll go to the next thing.

Anyway, it looks blue to me. Anyway, he said it doesn't have any characteristic of its own. And obviously Lord Buddha meant that the blueness of this pen is coming from you.

From each person here. How could it be coming from me if everybody sees it the same? Ted Lemon.

How could it be coming from you if everybody sees it the blue?

[Говорящий 2]
We all share the same karma to see it as blue.

[Говорящий 1]
Yeah, you all did the same action in the past to see it as blue. So that means that there could be a person without that karma?

[Говорящий 2]
Yeah.

[Говорящий 1]
Like who?

[Говорящий 2]
Yeah, a blind person.

[Говорящий 1]
Or a colorblind person. They just would see it as gray. That's because they have something wrong with them and not because it's not blue, you see?

So that proves in a way that the blue is coming from you. It's very interesting. It's very profound.

So then in the third turning of the wheel, Lord Buddha said, Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't mean that. Some stuff has its own characteristics and some stuff doesn't. Like pens are obviously blue.

And especially the fact that it writes. It must have a quality of writing in it, right? Being able to write must be in the pen.

If it works, if I can draw something with it, the ability to write something should be inside this plastic cylinder, right? Like Lord Buddha, how do you say it? He did a New York Times correction.

If you've ever seen on the third page of the New York Times, they have a little column and they say, We made these boo-boos last week. It's very honest in a way, because people don't normally do that, right? So Lord Buddha said, Oh, I made a mistake.

People came up to him, some of the people from the second turning of the wheel came up to him and said, This is too much. Are you telling me this pen doesn't write by itself? And he said, He judged the student and he said, This student can't handle what I'm teaching.

I'd better back off. And he backed off a bit. So he said, Yeah, you're right.

The pen is blue. The characteristic of being blue belongs to the pen. Writing belongs to the pen.

I'm sorry. I was just being figurative. I was just trying to shake everybody up a bit.

And then he passed away and he left it like that. Then for two and a half thousand years, people have to figure out, Did he mean it when he said he didn't mean it? Or did he mean it when he said he meant it?

You see? And for two and a half thousand years, people have struggled with this question. So we have a Manjushri Mula Tantra.

That's a real tantra. That's the root tantra of the angel called Jambalyang, or what do you call it? Gentle voice.

And in that book it says, There'll be a monk named Asanga will come along and he'll straighten everything out. You know? He'll say, Lord Buddha did mean that or didn't mean that.

Or, you know, Lord Buddha was telling the truth in the second turning of the wheel. Or Lord Buddha was telling the truth in the third turning of the wheel. But you notice nobody has much trouble with the first turning of the wheel.

Why? He didn't really talk so explicitly about emptiness. Lord Buddha didn't really...

Emptiness is where people get screwed up. Right? Before they hit tantra.

Right? But emptiness is where people get confused. So Lord Buddha taught emptiness in the second and the third turning of the wheel.

[Говорящий 2]
OK?

[Говорящий 1]
So if you wanted to write a book about clarifying that series of teachings, first, second, third turning of the wheels, what would you call the book? Uttara Tantra Shastra. The latter part, the ultimate part of the series, meaning those series of three turnings of the wheel.

So I think if you ask a thousand people, you might not hear this explanation once. It's very beautiful in Gyaltsabje. And it's hard to get out of Gyaltsabje.

And it'll be in your reading if the reading ever occurs. But you'll see. So in a way, Gyaltsabje, a sangha, a master sangha, is offering to explain the confusing latter part of that series.

And that's why it's called what? Mahayana Uttara Tantra Shastra. Which of the three turnings of the wheels is Mahayana?

ko lo sum kyi nang ne, tepo chenpo kang yin. Which one of the three is Mahayana? Huh?

Waa, pah. den shi chung go chu chen, tepo chenpo yin ma pa. You're telling me the teaching on the fortress is Mahayana?

Waa, pah. Included in Mahayana, you know, Mahayana yin kya ta. So everything included in Mahayana is Mahayana?

[Говорящий 2]
Waa, pah.

[Говорящий 1]
tepo chung go kang sak yin lam chu chen, nam kyi renpo chu chen. Let's take the series of the paths that are intended for people of lesser capacity. Mahayana yin ma pa.

So I guess it's Mahayana, huh? Well, right, because it's included in Mahayana, right? Waa, pah.

Nam kyi ya ta. So we're supposed to practice that by itself?

[Говорящий 2]
No.

[Говорящий 1]
Yin pa ta, Mahayana. Yin de yin. Yeah, because it's Mahayana.

Oh, it's not Mahayana just because it's included in Mahayana? Is your Mahayana full? OK, OK, OK.

Anyway, Mahayana was stressed in the last two turns, right? I mean, if you take the four great schools of ancient India, the two Mahayana schools are treated in the last. So it would make sense to add a word to the title of our book, which is Mahayana Uttaratantra Shastra.

And he's explaining. Shastra means he's trying to clarify what happened in the latter part of the Buddhist teachings. We had another explanation of this series thing.

Anybody remember? What was it?

[Говорящий 2]
Say again? Chang'e.

[Говорящий 1]
Was it the Chang'e thing? Yeah, I think five books would be good. We're going to talk a little bit about how this book came to be, how this book came into our world, the Uttaratantra.

So everybody calls it Uttaratantra, but you know that that's just the short name, right? Like people in Tibetan call it Gyulama. Say Gyulama.

But that just means the latter part of the series. It leaves out Mahayana and it leaves out explanation. So people get confused about what the name means.

But everybody in Tibet calls it Gyulama. Say Gyulama. Gyulama.

Gyulama. Uttaratantra. Uttaratantra.

OK. It's one of the five great books of Maitreya. Maitreya gave Arya Sangha five great books when Arya Sangha showed up in his heaven one day.

And you guys know the story. I think I'll run over it real fast, but I think the people who weren't here should get a tape or something because the whole story is kind of cute. But to put it briefly, Arya Sangha tried for 12 years.

He didn't do a three-year retreat. He did a 12-year retreat, which is really supposed to be ideal. But we were afraid that caretakers would die.

And in those 12 years, he stayed in solitude in a cave. And he tried to get a vision. He tried to meet Maitreya.

And he worked really hard to meet Maitreya. At the end of the retreat, he still hadn't seen Maitreya. He gave up.

He went out. He went to the nearest town. On the way to town, he saw a dog that had been run over by a cart.

And it was cut here, like squished halfway. And the lower part of the body had been completely eaten away by maggots. And they were starting to attack the upper part of the body.

And then he knelt down, and he looked at the maggots, and he said, I've got to get the maggots off the dog, or the dog's going to die. Then he had a thought. If I take the maggots off, the maggots are going to die.

So he said, you know what I'll do? I'll get a knife. I'll cut a big piece of flesh out of my thigh.

And I'll set it on the ground, and then I'll put the maggots on the flesh. And they won't die, and then the dog will be cured. So he goes to town and gets a big razor blade.

He cuts a big piece of meat off his thigh. And he sets it on the ground. And he starts to reach for the maggots.

And he says, if I pick them up, I'll crush them with my fingers. So he says, I'll just lick them off. But he's kind of grossed out, so he closes his eyes.

And he puts his pen down. And he goes down. And then, you know the end of the story.

He hits the ground. And he looks up, and there's Maitreya. And he says to, it's interesting.

Arya Sangha's reaction is sort of interesting. He gives him a line of verse, which is to say, where the hell have you been for 12 years? He's not all lovey-dovey with Maitreya.

He's sort of pissed off with Maitreya. You could have come to me the first week. 12 years later, and now you're showing, I'm already out of the retreat.

I've left retreat. Now you're showing yourself to me? And Maitreya says, you couldn't see me.

I was there the whole time. I was sitting right next to you. Sometimes when you cleared your throat and spat during the mantras, you spit on me.

I had to dodge around all the time. And Arya Sangha says, well, I don't believe you're in the cave. If you're in the cave, I would have seen you.

And Maitreya says, oh, so everybody sees things the same way, right? And Asanga says, I think so. I would have seen you if you were there.

So Maitreya says, OK, well, then you take me up on your shoulders. And you dance around town with me on your shoulders. And let's see.

Let's see what happens. And he does that. And he dances around town.

And you know the story. Everyone thinks Arya Sangha is crazy because he's dancing around town with nothing on his shoulders. And he's saying, look at my shoulders.

Look at my shoulders. I got Maitreya on my shoulders. And you know the story.

One old lady, one bar maid sees a puppy, just a little puppy on one shoulder. And one construction laborer sees, what did he see? I don't remember.

Oh, he sees his toe hanging off right here. And as a result, they both reach some high tantric level or something, you know? But in a way, the story of how.

Oh, and then the story goes that Maitreya said, now that you believe me? And Asanga says, yeah, OK, I believe you. And he says, well, why were you trying to get to me anyway?

What did you want? And Asanga says, I was trying to figure out emptiness, the perfection of wisdom sutras. And I couldn't do it.

I couldn't figure it out. I figured out all those other books. I understand the Hinayana books.

I understand all the other Mahayana books. I just can't get this emptiness thing. So Maitreya says, OK, grab onto my ropes, and we'll take a trip.

And he flies into Tushita heaven. I just read a book this morning that says, but Arya Asanga was able to get back on his own. So he flies to this heaven.

He spends part of a morning there, and 50 years pass in human time. And during that time, Maitreya teaches him these five great books of Maitreya. Because Arya Asanga says, how am I going to teach everybody what you taught me?

Because Maitreya teaches him the whole perfection of wisdom sutras, which is like, it's about 25, 30 volumes. It's like 3,000 pages or something in an hour in the morning. So he says, how can I go back to earth and teach people this?

Can you give me something shorter? So he gives him these five very short books. I thought I would list them again.

Well, I don't know if we have time. Yeah, let's do it anyway. OK.

I'm shortening the names for your convenience, OK? Say, chuh.

[Говорящий 2]
Chuh.

[Говорящий 1]
Chuh-ni. Chuh-ni.

[Говорящий 2]
Nam-je. Nam-je. Chuh.

Chuh. Chuh-ni. Chuh-ni.

Nam-je. Nam-je.

[Говорящий 1]
Uh, Amber, chuh? Dharma. Chuh means dharma, which means, here it means things.

Things. OK? Chuh-ni means dharma-ta.

Can you say that? Yeah, emptiness or the way things are. You see, when you add ni to it, it means the way things are.

So you've got things and the way things are. OK? Nam-je means distinguishing.

Like, this is the things and this is the way things are. OK? So it's a book about distinguishing things from the way things are.

I'm going to go through the progression of the five books. Maitreya taught the five books to Arya Sangha in an order. And the purpose of the order is to get your mind from simple emptiness up to ultimate emptiness.

OK? So we're going from sort of a... What do you call it?

Friendly interpretation of emptiness up to the real one through the five books. And I'm going to be quoting from Gyaltsevje's commentary. And we'll talk about who he is later.

But he's a student of Je Tsongkhapa. He says, if you want to know what things means here, it means the things that appear to you. Things as they appear to you.

Like, Mr. Ben, am I separate from you? Yes? Ultimately or conventionally?

Good, good, good. Good, good, good. It's a great question, but it starts a debate.

Let's pretend you didn't say that. So we are separate or not conventionally? OK, so I'm over here and you're over there.

Yeah, that's a good way to say it. Conventionally you can say I'm over here and he's over there. And we're separate.

And there's nothing wrong with that. I can't build a house. Ben can build a house.

We can't be the same person or else I could just go out and build a house. So we're separate. But are we separate in an ultimate sense?

Why not? And the answer in the lower schools, we're talking mind-only school, is that this person that I'm seeing is a result of a seed in my own mind. In that sense, we're not separate.

I see a person. There's a functioning, real, talking, working, living person out there. And I'm over here and I'm different.

But I see that person because of a seed in my own mind. So in a sense, that person is a projection of my own mind. In that sense, we're not separate.

So chö here means what Ben called conventionally separate. I mean, we seem to be separate from each other. There's space between us.

That's the way things look. And then chö-nyi means the way things really are, which is that even though it seems that I'm separate from Ben, everything about Ben, every single characteristic of Ben and Ben himself is a projection of my own mind because I want to project that, right? We always have to say forced to.

My karmic seeds, how I treated people in the past is forcing me to see a person, good, bad, mixed, like that. It's totally up to my own, how I treated other people. And that's the chö-nyi of the things that just seem to appear around us.

So chö means the way things appear. Chö-nyi means the real situation. Why is nam jade a good word to put in here?

Anybody. You've got to distinguish between that. You see?

You've got to distinguish between that. Like if you get angry at somebody, you fail to distinguish. You think that person exists there.

You don't realize it's coming out of your own mind. And if you get angry, what's going to happen? Another one's going to come, you know.

You goddamn well better be able to differentiate nam jade between the way things look and the way things really are. So that's a great book, right? I think.

What else do you say about that? Okay, that's the first book. By the way, if you went up to Arya Sangha and said, when you say Ben and you are separate conventionally, is it real, you know?

Is Ben real? So is Ben real? And it depends on how you define real, right?

If real means the way I think of him normally or usually as I go through my day, would you say he's real? I think no. If you can still get upset by anybody, the answer is no.

Okay? Meaning you don't really understand how they are. So in this first book, Maitreya didn't clarify the meaning of real as far as me and Ben.

Okay? He kind of fudged it. He kind of fudged it, you know?

He said, the appearance is, you could say it's real. Oh, real in every way? You could sort of say that.

Okay, so you see where Maitreya is trying to, he tried to put out his first book a little more, what do you call it? Double-day instead of MSTP. He's trying to reach a broad audience that, and he's watering it down a little bit for the broad audience.

Okay? And that's the way an author would do that, right? He's got to present it in an easy way.

So when people got into, you know, is Ben real or not? He said, well, yeah, pretty real. Okay.

Okay, say utthannam je.

[Говорящий 2]
Utthannam je.

[Говорящий 1]
U means the center of something. And especially of a, along a line. Like the center of a line.

So it's like left-wing politicians and right-wing politicians, and then what do you call in the middle? Moderates. Yeah.

As opposed to center. You see, center means, as opposed to center in the meaning of the center of a circle. This is not that.

Whenever we say U, in this sense, it means the center of two extremes. Like on a horizontal line. Ta means the extremes.

Okay? The two extremes. Nam je means?

Distinguishing between the center and the extremes. Okay. What's the center and what are the extremes?

Let's see what Council J says. Oh, okay. In this book, Maitreya goes one more step.

And he says, you know that thing I talked about in the last book I wrote? I want to clarify it a little bit. I want to clarify it a little bit.

Some things have their own characteristics and some things don't. Let's divide it into three. Okay?

So those of you who studied the Chang'e course with Winston, or the ACI 15 course, these are the three, what we call the three characteristics of things that are taught by the mind-only school. And I'll just go through them very briefly. You know?

Does this thing really work the way it seems, according to the mind-only school, Mr. Stump? Yes. Yeah.

It writes. It writes on the board. So it's real in that sense.

It's true. It exists truly. It's real in that sense.

It writes. Okay? Emptiness itself, Mr. Stump. If you see emptiness, can it really allow you to get enlightened quickly and see your future lives, for example? Yes. Yeah.

So it functions. So those two things, ultimate reality and working things, changing things, normal stuff in the world, we lump them together. And in this book, Maitreya says they exist truly, really.

You know? They really exist. But now, what about the root beer float that's waiting for me behind this blackboard?

[Говорящий 2]
You know?

[Говорящий 1]
What about the root beer float that Christy will let me drink that's waiting for me behind this blackboard? Where does that... How unreal is that?

Even if it was there, I couldn't drink it. You know? I wouldn't be able to drink it.

So that's what we call an imaginary thing. And in the mind-only school, those don't count as being real, true, having their own characteristics, etc. So we divide all things into three.

We divide between the center and the extremes. You know? It would be too extreme to say nothing exists.

It would be too extreme to say nothing has its own characteristic. Okay? Pens have their own...

And all the other stuff we normally deal with has their own characteristics. Emptiness must have some kind of power, some kind of characteristic, because when you see it, all this great stuff happens to you. But what use is a root beer float that you're just thinking of that you know is not there?

No function, no benefit. That we throw into unreal things. So that's dividing the middle from the extremes, in this case.

So Lord Maitreya introduces those three ideas of the mind-only school. Some stuff really exists, some stuff doesn't really exist. So we're still in the mind-only school with these two books, the first two books.

We're getting people to emptiness gradually, which means we're accepting which one of the three turnings of the wheel, Mr. Sin? Remember the first turning of the wheel, he just sat down with his five guys, who had been his tiger cub friends in his past life, and he said, look, this is a real bad life, we've got to get out of this thing. Then in the second turning of the wheel, he says, everything's empty.

This pen's not blue. Then in the third wheel, he backs up and says, I'm sorry, yeah, of course it's blue. What was my original question?

Oh, which turning of the wheel are we in now? The third, because he's waffling. He's waffling.

He's saying, some things are, some things aren't, you know? Lord Buddha didn't mean it in the second turning of the wheel. Lord Buddha was just being extreme.

Why? Shake people up a little bit, wake them up. Okay.

Sometimes that's necessary. Okay. According to that school, yeah.

[Говорящий 2]
Those are two things, things that exist and things that don't. What's the first thing?

[Говорящий 1]
Now, two of the groups really exist, which is A, changing things, and B, emptiness. And then one of the groups doesn't really exist, which is my root beer shake. Yeah.

Of course, we could change that, you know? We'll see, I don't know if they come out with it. Yeah, never mind.

Say do re gen. Do re gen. Do means sutras, meaning the teachings of Lord Buddha.

Especially the open teachings. Do re means more or less the sutra pitaka, meaning the basket. The whole collection of open teachings.

Gen means an ornament like this bracelet. That would be a gen. And sometimes when you write a book explaining someone else's teachings, you call it like a jewel for those teachings, meaning, you know, who am I to make Lord Buddha's sutras better?

But I can sort of pretty him up a little bit with my explanation, okay? And that's why it's called do re gen. Sutra Alamkara.

I'm thinking Krishnidhara can make the Sanskrit words for everybody who wants them, and then we can just pass them out, because I don't think we have time to do three classes in one, okay? But anybody who wants the Sanskrit, then you put pressure on her. I still think it's good for you to have in your pocket when you walk into the YMCA in Tucson, and there's like five sharp guys, like Brian Smith students you've got to watch out for.

We'll stick them all with Wilson. Winston. Sorry.

There's another Wilson there. Now, this is how Gyaltsabje describes it. We're on the third book.

This is how Gyaltsabje describes it. Ni nan denpa dupa makak. It says, in the third book, Maitreya didn't deny that Ben was real, okay?

But now the wording has changed, right? In the first two books, he's saying he is real. Like he's a changing thing, he's like a pen.

It has its own characteristics. But his description of the third book is, in the third book, Maitreya doesn't deny it's real. Meaning what?

It's a Mahinga. Meaning what? He doesn't say it's real.

You see? In the first two books, he says Michael's real. You know?

As I see him, he's real. But when he gets to the third book, now we're on the third book, he doesn't deny he's real, which implies he doesn't say he's real. Okay?

That's like a typical monk thing. Okay. Then he says, denpa chenpa riksepa chepa tabne sungte.

Then he starts to teach, Maitreya starts to teach, how can you wake up the compassion in your own mind? How can you wake up bodhicitta in your own mind? So he's getting heavily into bodhisattva.

How do you become a bodhisattva? Riksepa means everybody has that seed in them. And that's the big subject of the book we're going to study.

If someone comes up to you the first day in the YMCA and says, well, what are we going to study? You can say, oh, Buddha nature. You know, this book's all about Buddha nature.

There's a Buddha inside of you. Okay? How do you wake it up?

How do you realize it? Okay. Riksepa.

Then he says, chandu sempitopa khorne khorndu khyepa du doi tsul. How do you get your bodhisattva qualities to get bigger and bigger, higher and higher? Okay.

That's another subject of this third book. dulja shen jesu dzinpitab gyepa tenla pep means, what are some sneaky ways of collecting students and attracting them to these ideas? Okay.

Like movies, or music, or yoga, or business. Okay. This beautiful desert.

How do you attract students? Okay. Then he says an interesting thing.

Yaltubje says, shung sumbo de dakhi ni dulje sampad la dupe dindam pad samsik tenki. He says, the first three books of Maitreya present the ultimate in a way which is comfortable for the student. Okay.

Like they present the ultimate, but in a way which is comfortable for those particular people. Ki, but, but they don't clearly talk about emptiness in the sense that nothing's got any quality of its own. Now that in itself is an implication of what?

What's he implying? The last two do. He says, now the first three, they mention the ultimate reality, but just in sort of a schmoozy way, in a fluffy way, because the student couldn't handle it.

But they don't clearly state, look, nothing's got any quality of its own. This thing's not blue by itself. This thing's only blue because you're seeing it blue.

Okay. Anything you see about me is coming from you. Okay.

Anything you see about what I say or how I act is coming from you. Same with the pen, same with your own mind, same with your world, same with the last guy who cut you off in traffic. Okay.

Why get mad at him? Take care of the real thing. Shantideva said, don't get mad at the baseball bat, get mad at the guy who's swinging it.

Come on. You know what I mean? Which is who?

Me. Okay. We got two more books to go.

Let's see. By the way, this is all the history part. It's a little boring, but we'll get to the fun stuff next class, right?

Maybe it's not so boring. Say, nguntuk gen.

[Говорящий 2]
Nguntuk gen.

[Говорящий 1]
In Sanskrit, it's Abhisamaya Alankara. This book by Maitreya, we study for the first 12 years in the monastery. When you enter the Geshe course, and around age 15, you're taught, at 13 to 15, you're taught basic logic and how to debate.

And then when you're deemed fit to enter the debating ground, you're allowed to start studying the first book. And this is the first book we study. 12 years on this book.

It's 50 pages long. Okay? You cover an average of 4 pages a year.

And you spend about 10 hours a day working on it. Okay? It's really intense.

I mean, this book is really intense. What does book number 4... Oh, if you translated it, it would be the ornament or the jewel of realizations.

Nguntuk means realizations. And gen means the jewel. Again, like an ornament.

I'll just quote Gyatsobje. Gyatsobje. Tombanyikitala tartupa.

The ultimate view of emptiness. World view. That's what we call our organization, right?

And that's what it means. All the other organizations are all under this thing called world view. Tartukitala means the ultimate world view.

Yangda yangdusum. This book talks about the ultimate world view over and over and over again. Okay?

This book talks about the ultimate world view of emptiness and karma over and over and over again. Mökyi. Mökyi means...

But... But... But what, Gyatsobje?

Then he goes on to say, look, but the main thing that this book teaches is a peculiar idea about three shades of emptiness. We haven't gotten to it. We're not going to get to it in this course.

But there's an idea that there are three kind of like degrees of emptiness, three shades of emptiness. Like the emptiness of a person in its subtle form and its gross form. And the emptiness of this house in its gross form and its subtle form.

That you could put sort of shades of emptiness. And then you could divide everybody in the world into those people who can see the easiest kind of emptiness. And those people who can see the medium kind of emptiness.

And those bodhisattvas who can see the ultimate kind of emptiness. And you can kind of shade emptiness into three different paths, three different ways. What we call listener, self-made Buddha, and bodhisattva.

And this book is mainly devoted to that idea. Is that a Madhyamika idea? Yeah, it is a high school idea.

But is it the highest part of the high school idea?

[Говорящий 2]
No.

[Говорящий 1]
It's the lower half of the high school. Which is called, do you remember? Svatantrika.

Meaning, what do we call them?

[Говорящий 2]
Independent school.

[Говорящий 1]
Those courses are bad. Independent school. So they accept this idea of three shades of emptiness.

But the highest, highest, highest school, Prasangika, the consequent school, they don't accept that. Which probably means, what's book number five going to be? Yeah, Gyalama.

Gyalama. Just say Gyalama. Gyalama really presents emptiness in its right form.

Highest emptiness. I'll quote Gyaltsabje again. This is from the ACIP database.

The Mahayana Tantra Shastra, Gyalama, is presented for people who are already used to the mind-only ideas. Like, if you've been studying all those mind-only books, the first three books, right, of the five, and you got used to the idea of emptiness in a sort of easy way, fluffy way, then you've been set up for the Gyalama. So Gyalama is for them.

It says, something which should be taught later on to people who have already been dragged through the first three books. They understand emptiness roughly. They understand the thing about being created by the seeds in my mind.

And in that sense, we're not separate. That's a lower emptiness. That's a lower emptiness.

Why? Guess? It has to do with kunshi.

Yeah, nice. Okay, I'll say it again. The mind-only school, the first three books, they only get as far as Ben's being projected by the seeds in my mind.

But the assumption is, the seeds in my mind are real. The projector is real. Okay, everything I'm seeing, everything I experience, even myself, that's a projection.

But that special box out of which reality is pouring in my own mind, that box has got to be real. That much has got to be real. Okay?

And then, in the fifth book, they come along and say, uh-uh, even that box is your projection. The projector is your projection. Okay?

And then we got to get, we got to talk about that. That's a big argument in the Gyu-Lama. That's a big subject in the Gyu-Lama.

And the point is that half the people you teach at the YMCA, they never heard of this idea of stuff coming out of a box in your mind. And you got to judge the people. You got to say, am I going to present Gyu-Lama the way the first three books were presented, or maybe even before that, you know?

And you got to, you'll be stuck in the same situation as Lord Buddha. You'll be stuck with five or ten students from Kansas, maybe, or wherever. Except now the people I meet from Kansas are really smart, but anyway.

You know, and you got to judge, right on the spot, you'll start to say, now look, Gyu-Lama is talking about this Kunshi thing, and you know the Kunshi is just a projection too, and it's a projector, and they're going to be like, you know, and then you're going to have to back up, at the third turning of the wheel, back up, right? Oh, yeah, yeah, I'm sorry, I didn't mean that. Well, there's this Buddhism thing, you know, and you got to be nice to people, and you know, and Gyu-Lama helps you out with that, and yeah, yeah.

See, you got, yeah, you got to take out your pen and start. And you know, you'll be stuck in that position, like, boom, from the first moment, you look in their faces, you start to talk about Gyu-Lama, and then you'll adjust, you know, you'll do Chang'e, you'll go to the, to wherever their level is, you'll have to adjust to that, you know, that's part of our job, that's what we do for a living, right? We just adjust to the audience at the moment.

So anyway, Gyu-Lama, in the fifth book, Maitreya says, look, even the projector is a projection, even the projector is a projection, and then he really begins to describe what's literal and what's not literal in the fifth book, OK? So since you guys are so great, we're going straight to the fifth book, which is Gyu-Lama. We're going to take a break, but just before that, I want to say one more thing.

When Arya Sangha came back to Earth, and all his friends were dead, he's like Rip Van Winkle, right? I was only gone for three years, and half of them were dead, but anyway, then he comes back and he says, how am I going to teach this to people, you know? And he gets eight good students, and they go out in the middle of nowhere, like Bui, Arizona, you know?

He says, I don't care, eight good students is enough. He takes them out in the middle of nowhere, it's a forest in Magadha State in India, and they go out in the forest, they go out in the middle, like just a tent in the middle of a mesquite, and he says, I'll get these eight people to understand what this is all about. And he really works hard on them.

He gets them up to Sutta, which is almost up to seeing emptiness directly, and he gets them up to where they can read other people's minds. And, you know, it's not like you wake up one morning and can read what somebody else wants for breakfast directly, but you wake up and you have a sense, it's just like a sense, like you're kind of thinking, maybe Pema would like tuna fish for lunch, you know? And it's just a sense that you have, you know?

And you make it, and then she's really happy, and it's like the beginning of Shensen Shepa, which is reading other people's minds. And then as you practice more and more and more, it becomes more and more clear in your own mind, to where you can actually hear them talking in their own mind. But it starts with some kind of an instinct about what other people need or want, and if you're going to teach people, like at the YMCA, it's really helpful.

You can imagine how helpful it would be. Before you walk into the room, you know whether you're going to have to back up or not. You see what I mean?

And so for a teacher, it's really useful. So Arya Sangha was working really hard on his first aid students to get them up to this level where they could at least have a strong instinct for what those people need, their students need. And you know the story, eventually he got invited to a king's palace.

The king wants to test him because he doesn't believe he's such a great yogi. And he puts him through these tests. And you know some of the tests, but I'll repeat one.

He gets a golden urn made of pure gold. And inside he puts a bunch of snot and pus and poo-poo and pee-pee. And then on the top, he puts about an inch of honey.

And then he says to Arya Sangha, guess what I got in the pot? And Arya Sangha says, I know what's in the pot and I wouldn't eat it. And so the king is like, well, anybody could tell that kind of thing.

And then the king asks Arya Sangha six questions, mentally, in his mind, about the Perfection of Wisdom Sutra. Like he beams six questions to Arya Sangha. We're going to cover those after the break.

So you've got to come back, right? So take a break for 10, 15 minutes and just relax and go to the bathroom. And there's a big thing of cookies in the refrigerator.

You can spread those. And then just relax and come back in 10, 15 minutes. I've often told the story of meeting His Holiness' teacher in a train station in India.

And he asked me what I was studying. I didn't know the name of it. And I'm just trying to prevent that with your own students in October, don't forget.

Say gyulatik. Gyulatik.

[Говорящий 2]
Gyulatik.

[Говорящий 1]
Gyula means gyulama, means uttara tantra, right? The gyula is the short name for the uttara tantra in Tibetan, gyula. Tik means commentary.

It comes from Sanskrit, tika. And the author of the Tibetan, now it's a Tibetan book, Tibetan commentary, has chosen to name his book, Gyulatik, which means tika on the gyulama, which means commentary on the gyulama. So if somebody says, what's the main book you're studying for your class?

You just say, I'm studying gyulatik. Who wrote it? Oh, Gyaltsabje.

Say Gyaltsabje. Gyaltsab means, what do you call it? Regent.

It means the person to whom the crown gets passed on to when the king goes away. So, Je Tsongkhapa, before he passed away, he passed on the lineage to Gyaltsabje. That's his right-hand man.

Whenever you see a painting of Je Tsongkhapa with his two disciples, the one on his right, which is your left, is always Gyaltsabje. So Gyaltsabje means, Je means the great or the lord, like Je Tsongkhapa, and Gyaltsab means Yuva Raja, young king. In Sanskrit, which means the regent.

Okay? The regent. So Gyaltsabje is the first holder of the throne of Je Tsongkhapa after Je Tsongkhapa passed away.

And basically, the thing with Je Tsongkhapa and his students was, he would say, look, I don't have time to write a commentary on Gyaltsabje, so you do it. You know? So you'll see that all the major commentaries done by Je Tsongkhapa's students, like the Abhidharma Kosha commentary by the first Dalai Lama, they are handling the places where Je Tsongkhapa was too busy.

And he said, you take care of Gyaltsabje, I'll take care of it. There's an interesting coincidence here. I'm sure it's just a coincidence.

Gyaltsab means regent. Gyaltsab means the person to whom you hand over the kingdom after you leave. And, I don't know if you know, but we are in what's called the kalpa or the aeon of light.

It's called Dume Kalpa, which means we are in a fortunate time during billion years of, there's this span of the world, of the universe. The universe contracts, explodes, destroys, and then it comes back into being. And that takes billions upon billions and billions of years.

It's called tongkal. Say tongkal. Tongkal.

Tongkal is like billions and billions of years in which the universe is empty. And then there's chakgyal. Say chakgyal.

Chakgyal. Chakgyal means the universe starts to form. And then there's neygyal.

Neygyal. Neygyal means the universe is staying for a while. And then say jiggyal.

Jiggyal. Jiggyal means for billions of years it takes for the universe to die out and just reduce to dust again. So this whole process takes billions upon billions and billions of years.

And there's this sine wave like this of reality, I mean going on during that time. And only on one of the upswings, sorry, one of the downswings, does a Buddha ever appear in the world. Like only when things are going bad.

Like when there's violence in the world, wars in the world, terrorist attacks in the world, pestilence, plagues. Then that's a good time for religion. That's a good time.

People start wondering about life. People start going to church again. And only during that tiny bit of time does a Buddha ever appear.

And then a thousand appear at once if you're lucky. And that's called a durme kalpa. It's a kalpa of light.

And a thousand Buddhas will appear on this downswing now that we're on. A thousand Buddhas. Shakyamuni Buddha, the one who came to India two and a half thousand years ago, was number three.

He was number three. And the next one coming is Maitreya. So Maitreya is the coming Buddha.

He's staying up in Tushita Paradise. And he's called the... what?

He's the Gyaltsab. He's the Gyaltsab. He's the regent.

Before Shakyamuni Buddha comes to this planet, he turns over Tushita Paradise to Maitreya. And then he leaves. You see?

So I thought it's sort of an interesting coincidence that Gyaltsabje, the regent, wrote the book about the regent's book. And people ask me how long will it take for Maitreya to show up. In Pabongkha Rinpoche's Lam Rim, it says 49 billion years.

Okay. But there are other books. You see, there's an argument about Maitreya.

And now I'm going to talk a little bit about Maitreya. See, Maitreya is said to be... He was a bodhisattva during the time of Lord Buddha.

He was just a plain old bodhisattva, right? He was one of Nyewe Sege, means one of the eight great sons of Lord Buddha, bodhisattvas. And then he saw emptiness and he started to work up the bodhisattva bhumis, the bodhisattva levels.

And it's said that he reached bodhisattva level number ten and that he's a tenth level bodhisattva and he's sitting in Tushita Paradise and he's about to reach this world. He's about to come into this world. And then there are other books, tantras, secret books.

They say, look, oh, Maitreya, he was enlightened a long time ago. He was enlightened billions of years ago. He's already a Buddha.

And I guess what I wanted to say in this regard is that it's less than 500 years. The next Buddha is less than 500 years from now. And to be frank, each one of you is close enough.

You will be the next Buddha, okay? And I can say that and you can say, yeah, yeah, you know, I'm busy. But I'll be very honest.

If you're at this cusp in history, if you're on this particular location at this particular time, I say quite frankly, and I'm not just trying to be poetical or something like that. If you just keep going at your normal pace at this time, you will be Maitreya. You will be the next Buddha.

Like you're that close. You're extremely close. You're extremely close.

Each person here is extremely close. And you should think in terms of those, when you think about your life and you feel dissatisfied with your life or you feel like you're not doing much or you feel like, you know, just everyday life is too much of a struggle, you should stop that thought. And you should say, how can I set up the world now for me, for me to come into this world, you see?

You have to think, when you walk around Bui or Tucson or wherever, your house, you have to think, what can I do today to prepare the world for my, this is going to be my world to teach in. You will be coming to this world as the teacher, as Maitreya. And it's hard to believe and you think, oh, you know, I'm busy and you don't really believe it.

You think Maitreya is some guy up in the heaven somewhere and he's got Chinese eyes for sure and must be a lot more advanced than me or I don't see how I could be the next Buddha. But you will be. And that's just the way it works.

And I tell you that. And now when you go out in the world and you get, as you work, at your job or even as you're with your family, when you wake up, you have to think, how do I, what's the best way I can prepare the world for me? I have to come, you know.

I've got a job to do on this planet. I will be coming to this planet. I will be coming to more than this planet.

How can I, in my lifetime, prepare things? What can I do to do the best preparation for myself? Because you will be coming.

And that's the way it is. And you'll see it unfold. And I can tell you and you kind of don't believe me and you think, somebody wrote an email to Ellie, I think Geshe Michael needs a psychiatric exam, you know, he's acting weird.

Maybe. But it's true. It's true.

Now how can there be so many Maitreyas on one planet at one time? You know. Six questions of the king.

This is not like a normal subject that's taught. But I love, I saw, I read them over again, I said, God, we've got to put this in the course. This has got to be part of the course.

So we don't have much time. We'll go through them a little fast. But in my mind, they've got to be on, they're not a mistake at all and they're not like some historical blip or something.

They're really the whole essence of the Gilamas in the questions, the six questions. So I'm going to read them. This is from a history book written by a historian named Taranata who did a big, one of his biggest contributions was to bring Buddhism to Mongolia.

So all those who've been to Mongolia, it was really Taranata who did most of the work. Oh, I forgot. I wanted to spell Maitreya's name for you before we get to the six questions.

Say Jampa? When you become a monk, when they give you your vows, your first name is normally the first name of the person who gave you your vows. Normally the abbot of the monastery gives all the vows in the monastery.

And normally the abbot is elected for like a three-year term. So our abbot, when I was there in my early years, was named Jampa Dinya and he got re-elected four times. So for 12 years, every monk in the monastery who got vows was named Jampa.

So I've made like a hundred Jampas running around the monastery. People say, I'm Jampa 73, you know. And the Jampa in Hau is one of those Jampas, just so you know.

Jampa Lungrik. So Jampa means love. Jampa means love.

It's the desire to give people everything they need. It's the desire to give people everything they hope for. That's called Jampa.

So his name, Maitreya, Maitreya means love. We talked about it in the Yoga Sutra, but Maitreya comes from a root, Mith, which means to mix or to be friendly. And like Kalyana Mitra, the old Sanskrit word for Geshe, which means spiritual friend, means that.

That came into Latin as Mingeri, from Ming, Ming. And then it means to mingle or to get mixed together. So it means to be friendly or to mix with people.

And Maitreya does just that. Sometimes he's called Jambun. Say Jambun?

Jambun. Like some of you have heard people, Tibetan lamas, with the word Jambun in front of them. Jambun means gentle.

It means the loving one, Jampa. Gun means protector, the protector. And in Sanskrit, it's Maitreyanatha.

But it means the protector. So you might see Jampa's name, Maitreya's name, sometimes in books, it's the protector, Maitreya. Jambun.

Sometimes he's called Mipham. Mipham means unbeatable. Undefeatable?

And that's Ajita. Like I had a diamond dealer friend named Ajit, and it means undefeatable. These are different names that you might see used for Maitreya.

These are all different names for Maitreya. I thought I'd throw in a Sangha's name. By the way, it's good to have children here.

So if any of you have children, and you want to bring them, it's very good. It's a class. Anytime.

We might gag them. No, but it's very good for the children, and it helps the class too. So anytime.

Say Togme. Togme. Togme is a Sangha's name in Tibetan.

He's called Togme. Tog, as we mentioned the other night, is to strike an obstacle that you can't get through. That's called Togpa.

And Togme means you just pass through it like the wind. Togme means, I like to call it hot knife through butter. Just whoop and you're through.

So Togme means passes through obstacles like air. And that's what a Sangha's name means. A means may, means not.

Sangha means to get stopped trying to get through something. And his mind was so powerful that he was called a Sangha. Nothing could stop him.

No problem could stop his mind. He just whoop, go right through it. His name is Mr. Whoop. Lived around 350 AD. I just wanted to say that something about his position in our lineage. I think you know, you can split the Lamrim.

All the teachers of the Lamrim, the Lamas of the Lamrim can be basically divided into Gyatjan Chöpa, which means Bodhisattva activity side of the lineage. And then Samyotagi, which means the emptiness side of the lineage. And this side of the lineage comes down from Lord Buddha through Manjushri and then Nagarjuna, mainly.

This side of the lineage comes down through mainly Avalokitesvara, Chenrezig and then a Sangha. Or you can say Maitreya. But it divides that way.

So in one sense, a Sangha, Arya Sangha represents the whole Bodhisattva side of our Lamrim lineage. So he's looked upon as like the forefather of that. You can also split all the high schools.

You can split the highest schools into middle way and minor only. And there's this big deal called the inventors, you know, the two inventors. Like there are only two people in history before Jetsun Kappa that were considered so important in the world as to be considered like a second Buddha in the world.

And they are Nagarjuna and a Sangha. So Nagarjuna is considered the founder of the middle way school in modern times after the Buddha. And then a Sangha is considered like the founder of the minor only school.

Which makes a Sangha a minor only practitioner, right? Yeah. Okay.

He's not. He's not. You know, he was predicted, right?

He would clean up the mess about the second and third turnings of the wheel. He would clarify what the Buddha really meant, what the Buddha didn't really mean, you know. But in so doing, he clarifies the lower version of emptiness, mind only.

So he's remembered for done. So his name is attached to this side of the family. So that's two ways to look at Arya Sangha.

How do we know he's an Arya? How do we know he saw emptiness directly? There's a big debate in the scriptures, you know.

And I've been reading some of the histories of Sangha. But some books say that when he got to Tushita, he gained chugyun gyi tingen dzin. Say chugyun.

Chugyun. Gyi. Gyi.

Tingen dzin. Tingen dzin. You know what it is?

Not chugyun. Chugyun? Yeah.

It's a kind of samadhi. It's a kind of concentration. When you reach this level, you remember all the Dharma teachings you've ever had for all your lifetimes.

Just boom. And it's very noticeable. Like you start to recall stuff you heard three or four years ago.

And then five years ago. Then ten years ago. And then you can trace it back to the beginning of your life.

Things that you were taught. But you get some kind of deep samadhi where just everything you ever heard, like every ACI course you ever heard, you can quote pages from it. And you know, people here, a lot of people here have pieces of it.

You have hints of it. Like just things pop in your mind and you're able to roll things off your tongue. You've got a little taste of chugyun gyi tingen dzin.

Some of the retreatants in three-year retreat were getting it. It was very sweet to see. It was really powerful.

Like there were people who didn't know Tibetan and then towards the end of retreat they got two weeks training and they were able to just read it. The sounds. Like that, you know.

And I felt like they were getting chugyun gyi tingen dzin. But it's a powerful sign and it comes, do you know when? Jolam su.

Say jolam su.

[Говорящий 2]
Jolam su.

[Говорящий 1]
Chö tsemo chö. I'm sorry. Chö tsemo supa.

Yeah. Chö tsemo supa chö chok. There's four levels to jolam.

There's four levels to the path just before you see emptiness directly. When you reach the third one you get this kind of concentration where you can recall things. Or you're like super sensitive to dharma and you get it right away.

Everything just flows into your mind. People say that Arya Sangha got that when he stepped into Tushita paradise. Which makes sense because then he was able to hear Maitreya.

But that also implies what? Yeah, it implies he wasn't in Arya when he got to Tushita. He had not seen emptiness directly yet.

And I believe that's the case. Later, other texts say he went on to reach the first bodhisattva level and see emptiness directly after he was teaching for a while after he came back. And then most books agree that by the end of his life he had reached the third bodhisattva level.

They say by comparison Nagarjuna reached the first bodhisattva level. And Maitreya in his current condition has reached the tenth. That will be in your reading.

You'll see some of the readings for that. But that's about how rare that is. It's extremely rare.

And that's the kind of... That's kind of the amount of people who do it. So we call him Arya Sangha.

We never just call him a Sangha. So whenever you speak about him to your students you should always say Arya Sangha. In Tibetan it's Pagpa Thogme.

Pagpa Thogme. I think master is okay but Pagpa is more rare, you see. Arya is even better.

I know there's a little thing about Arya and Nazis and all that but you can explain to people, right? So I think that's all right. I wanted to say one more thing.

So we'll be studying Gyaltsabje's book. But also Arya Sangha, later in his life he thought it would be good to write a commentary on Gyulama. And so he did write a commentary.

And it exists in Sanskrit. We still have the Sanskrit and of course we have the Tibetan. So I'll be teaching you a lot from master Sangha's commentary to what he heard directly from Maitreya.

So you'll be getting Gyaltsabje's commentary which is based heavily on Arya Sangha's commentary. And then how do you present a 12-year course in 10 weekends? You know, we use the Gyulama in the debate ground in Sereme.

We use it, not a lot, but we use it on special occasions in certain difficult subjects. You pull out a Gyulama quotation. Papa got to know it.

You start quoting Gyulama. Like Gyulama is particularly known in Sereme, the best monastery in the universe for being effective in certain arguments. You know, there's certain places where Gyulama really tells you the bottom line on something.

So what I thought for this course is we'd pull out those parts. And so you're going to get the parts of Gyulama based on Arya Sangha's text, based on Gyaltsabje's text, but pulled out from the places where if you were a monk at Sereme monastery, you'd be arguing from Gyulama. You see?

Because on those questions, Gyulama is most powerful. So we're going to be pulling the course, we're going to be extracting the course out of where Gyulama comes up in a typical Tibetan monastery most often with really powerful debates, especially about Buddha nature. You know, are you a Buddha already or not?

What's the nature of the Buddha inside of you? You know, and we'll be debating that a lot. Okay, back to the six questions of the king.

I'm just going to read them from Theranatha's text. Ram means the question mark, okay? The king is beaming this ESP question to Arya Sangha.

Can you hear me? Can you answer this question? Okay, the question is, somebody came up to Lord Buddha and said, Bodhisattva, the word Bodhisattva is a word for something else, right?

What is it a word for? These are, as you remember from the other night, the first three questions are about what? The wording of the Perfection of Wisdom Sutras.

And the last three questions are about the meaning of the Perfection of Wisdom Sutras. So now we're on the words, right? So somebody's asking Lord Buddha, you mentioned Bodhisattva.

Is that a word for something else? Did you mean something else? What's that a word for?

And Lord Buddha says, Chantusambhaya Yantabha Jesu Matong means don't even, don't even think that you can see a Bodhisattva. There's no Bodhisattvas around. You can't see a Bodhisattva.

Somebody asked him, what's Bodhisattva a word for? He says, don't even think you can see a Bodhisattva. Then they say, Lentapa Luma Tempe Tawa Mingyuram means was Lord Buddha giving one of those non-answers?

Okay. We call them the 14 non-answers. Lord Buddha got asked 14 questions in his lifetime that he refused to answer.

Okay. So they're proposing, like is that number 15 or something? Okay.

Why did Lord Buddha refuse to answer? Is this a pen? Actually, Ben did a Lungma Ten this morning, earlier in the class.

I said, are you separate from me? And what did he say? Yeah, he came back with a question, which is a debating tactic, which is, you see, Lungma Ten means if he just sat there and refused to answer, he'd be telling us, you asked the wrong question.

The question is unanswerable. As your question stands, it can't be answered yes or no. Okay.

Is Ben separate from me? Okay. You can't answer that yes or no until the person says, ultimately, or conventionally, or apparently, or something like that.

Okay. So they're called unanswered questions. So the king's first question is, when Lord Buddha refused to answer this question about Bodhisattvas, or said, you can't see Bodhisattvas anyway, was he giving a new unanswerable question?

And Master Sangha says, no, he wasn't. He was just talking about the fact that inside you are empty. Inside.

Meaning that Bodhisattvas are empty. Okay. Is it really true you can't see a Bodhisattva?

No. Is it really true you can't see a pen? No.

Ultimately, is it true you can't see a pen? Yes. That's all.

So he was talking about the emptiness of a person, of Bodhisattvas. That's all. That's what he's talking about.

Second question. And... Lord Buddha was talking about some big bird.

He's got wingspan of 500 yojana, which is 750 miles. Okay. What was Lord Buddha really talking about?

Okay. And the answer on the next page. He was saying, look, if you want to get into the business of dealing with emptiness, you're going to need a hell of a lot of good karma.

Your karmic wings have to be 750 miles wide. Or you can't even... You'll sit here and you'll get bored to death and you won't come back.

I mean, it's not only that reason, but... But in general, to listen to emptiness, to understand emptiness, to give the right answer about the pen, to have the karma to do that is extremely rare. Extremely rare.

And you guys all have it. Okay. You all have it.

Last question. Last of the three questions. Check this out.

That's why I couldn't remember it the other night. When you see... When you no longer see any sign of the mountains and the forests.

Okay. When you no longer see any sign of the mountains in the forest, you will know you're close to the ocean. What is the line at which you can see the sign?

What is the line at which you can still see the sign? I'll say it again. When you can no longer see any sign of the forest, of the mountains and the forest, you know you are approaching the ocean.

What is the line at which you still see the sign? Just take a shot. Who wants to take a shot?

What's he talking about? You want me to say it again? What did I say?

Oh, when you no longer see any sign of the mountains and the forest, you know you're getting close to the ocean. What's the line at which you still see the signs? Close.

Ah, Ted and Chucky lost it.

[Говорящий 2]
Is it Chucho?

[Говорящий 1]
What's Chucho? Anybody? What's Chucho?

Chucho. Chucho, yeah. Yeah, which happens...

[Говорящий 2]
Just before you see a penis, right?

[Говорящий 1]
Yeah, in the minutes. Like hour. Like the hour that you see a penis directly, you reach Chucho.

And specifically, you reach what we call Chucho Chewa. Chucho Chewa means big stage Chucho. Like there's a lower stage Chucho, medium stage Chucho, and big stage Chucho.

Lower stage Chucho is like two hours before. Middle stage is like an hour and a half before. Chucho Chewa occurs like the...

That's the moment you see the penitentiation of the pot directly.

[Говорящий 2]
Are those three of the four parts of Jorlam?

[Говорящий 1]
It's the three parts of the fourth part of Jorlam. Yeah. Yeah.

So in Jorlam, when you get to big, big level Jorlam, it's just before you see emptiness directly. Okay? Would you still be seeing the signs?

Signs means in Madhyamika language, still seeing things that are self-existent. Would you still see the signs? Yeah.

But you're getting close to the ocean. And that's the line. That's where the line is.

Like you're just coming out of the mountains and the forest, onto the beach, and you're just about to lay eyes on the ocean. Okay? Let's see what Arya Sangha said.

The answer to the third question is Chucho Chewa. They gave the answer. They gave the right answer.

That's exactly what Arya Sangha said. That was his answer to the key.

[Говорящий 2]
Yeah.

[Говорящий 1]
Yeah. Last moments of Jorlam. Last moments of the path of preparation.

Just before you see emptiness. So Arya Sangha answered that one. Now we go on to the meaning.

This is a little harder, okay? We'll see how you guys do. I fudged it the other night over here because everybody looked tired and wanted pizza.

Okay? Not me, of course. Let me find the question.

I said the first question about the meaning of... By the way, this is the last part of the class, so don't lose hope. This will be the last part of the class.

But I say you've got to go back and kick ass on studying this stuff or you're not going to make it with your own students. This first class is a little hard. I said I require that you not only do the homework and quiz, but that sometime before the next class you discuss this class with one other person.

Okay? Could be Andrea. Could be Chukyla.

You know. But so now you've got three jobs. You've got to prepare for a quiz.

You've got to do a homework. And you have to discuss this class with one other person. I don't care.

Say ten minutes, but you'll end up doing it for an hour. And it's really, really cool. It's really, really cool.

And then I'll... You'll get a quiz at the beginning of the next class. Okay?

And you should finish all ten classes. You know, the same old rules apply. You know that.

Miss more than two classes, you don't get a certificate for this course. And I don't want you teaching at the YMCA because you won't know what you're teaching about. So, you know, it's really good if you can make all ten classes because now you've got extra pressure on you to do...

You've got to teach people this. The last class is like a week before the YMCA happens. So you've got to be ready.

Yes?

[Говорящий 2]
You could say... Yeah.

[Говорящий 1]
Yeah. Yeah. It's okay.

If you are in a barbarian land like Illinois or Indiana... Illinois. Talk to me.

Talk to me. I mean, exceptions for extraordinary things. Like some people are flying to Hull to get...

to hear His Holiness Rinpoche's teachings. And if you... You know, talk to me about exceptions.

But no exceptions. But talk to me about it. That's the way it usually goes, right?

KUN CI NAM PAR ZHESU YOD TAM ME I said the other night, does storehouse consciousness exist or not? But the real question was, does storehouse consciousness exist in a material way or not? The King was more sophisticated.

Like asking Arya Sangha if storehouse consciousness exists is easy. Asking whether it exists really is a whole another ballgame, right? And it's the Ben question.

It's the Ben question, okay? Does the projector exist? Is there a place in your mind that seeds are ripening and spewing out your reality?

By the way, it comes from a dot at the horn, smaller than the point of a needle. It comes from a tiny dot, Mishigbe Tigle, at the heart. It's spewing forth your whole universe.

There's a piece in your own heart, in the chakra in the heart, that is spewing forth every detail of this universe as we speak, okay? Does that exist? Does the spewer exist?

I mean, that's the... Of course. Because?

We're here. Okay, we're here. That proves it.

But the King was more sophisticated than that. He said, does it exist really, materially, substantially? What do you think Arya Sangha said?

He's very cool. I'll read it to you. It's a very cool answer.

It's a little complicated, but it's okay. Kun dzob tu dzesu yu. The answer is, kun dzob tu dzesu yu.

In a deceptive way, in a deceptive way, it exists substantially. Okay? In an apparent way, it really exists.

That's a cool way to get out of it. It's about what Ben said. It's about the same thing.

Dun dampe rikshe ki dun me. Dun dampe rikshe ki dun me. In an ultimate way, rikshe me.

Which means what? There's no state of mind that exists ultimately. You know.

In a deceptive way, in an apparent way, it exists substantially. In an ultimate way, come on. There's no thought in the world that exists that way.

What are you asking me for? You know. Okay?

He gave a really good answer. It's exactly what Ben said when he said, Are you talking conventional or ultimate? Okay.

Now you guys got to be able to explain that to a plain old Joe that shows up to YMCA. Right? If they can get to the projector part.

Is there a part of your mind that's projecting this room? Yeah. Is there a part of your mind that's projecting everybody in this room?

Yeah. But are you also projecting that projector? Yeah.

Okay. Is there any part of your mind that's not being projected? No.

Come on. Why did you ask me that for? Okay.

That's Arya Sangha's answer. So you can explain that to people, right? I think what's really important, what's really, really important, don't leave people with some philosophical bolt.

You know. Don't leave them with that. You know.

Say, what's this got to do with anything? Well, when you walk out of this room and you go over to 4th Street to get your Mexican dinner and lunch after this class and the guy spills coke on your lap just before going back to class and teach the other people, right? You've got to think about the projection.

You've got to think about the projection. You know. I'm projecting this incompetent because I've been incompetent to others.

You know. And if I get mad at his incompetence, I'll come back tomorrow and get another coke spilled on me. You know.

So, I'm going to help him clean it up and I'm going to be calm and I'll go back and explain to people about projected coke stains on my room. And that's the point of talking about projections. That's the point of talking about projections.

I mean, you've got to take people to the next step, right? I think that's what distinguishes ACI from other, you know, presentations. Sooner or later, people get tired of this intellectual BS about, oh, everything's a projection or not a projection or it exists or doesn't exist.

It doesn't matter. But if it's applied to your real life, you know, if you could clean up your world like taking a sponge and cleaning up the coke, you know, then it's worth it to go through all these classes, you know. Then it's worth it.

No more irritating people in my life. That's a holy goal, you know. That's worth everything, you know.

And that's really what people want. Last question. No.

How many we got?

[Говорящий 2]
Oh, that was four.

[Говорящий 1]
That was four. Oh, sorry we're going so slow. But, gee, it happens.

Lord Buddha said that all things... Lord Buddha said that no existing object has any nature of its own. Was he also implying that not having any nature of your own didn't have any nature of its own?

I'll say it again. Lord Buddha said no existing object has any nature of its own. Was he therefore implying that not having any nature of your own doesn't have any nature of its own?

That's a no-brainer, you know. Is emptiness empty? Yeah, of course.

Okay. I'll prove it. I mean, you can get up and talk about emptiness and a certain percentage of people in the room will fall asleep.

See, they're perceiving it as a boring, irrelevant, uninteresting thing. You know, somebody else in the room suddenly... they suddenly grasped it after the tenth or hundredth time hearing it from Geshe Michael that this could be applied to that irritating person that they live with.

You know, like suddenly it just dawns on them, you know. After all these years, you know, they're talking about the person I'm staying with. You know, I could apply this in my own house, you know.

My roommate is empty. I don't have to see them like this, you know. I could see them as divine being if I could just be more patient myself, you know.

The fact that two different people in the room can get two completely opposite understandings of emptiness proves that emptiness is...

[Говорящий 2]
Empty.

[Говорящий 1]
Okay, so that's a no-brainer. Everyone's got that one, right? Don't forget to bring it up to the waiter who spills coke on you.

This one's tough. Good place to stop. Lord Buddha explained that it's not emptiness that makes everything empty.

Lord Buddha said it's not emptiness that makes everything else empty. And the question is who is it that doesn't make it empty and what kind of empty doesn't it make? Okay, I'll say it again.

I'll say it again. These were tough questions. He was a pretty cool king, I think.

Lord Buddha said that there's nothing which makes emptiness empty. Who is it that doesn't make emptiness empty and what kind of emptiness doesn't it make empty? Need it one more time?

One more time. Lord Buddha said there's nothing that makes emptiness empty. I'm sorry.

I gotta change that. Lord Buddha said it's not emptiness that makes emptiness empty. I'll say it again.

Lord Buddha said it's not emptiness that makes emptiness empty. What kind of emptiness was he talking about that doesn't make emptiness empty? Yeah.

And what kind of emptiness is not made empty? Let's put it this way. Here's an emptiness that is not making things empty.

Here's an emptiness which is not making things empty. Lord Buddha said that emptiness doesn't make things empty. Lord Buddha said emptiness doesn't make things empty.

The question of the king was what's the emptiness that doesn't make things empty and what's the emptiness that it doesn't make empty? Got it? Got it?

And what kind of emptiness that is not made empty by it? You okay? You guys okay?

I'll say it one more time. Emptiness, said Lord Buddha, doesn't make things empty. The question of the king was what kind of emptiness is it that doesn't make things empty and what kind of emptiness is it that it doesn't make empty?

Now you see why people didn't include this in the later commentaries. I'll say it one last time. Lord Buddha said emptiness don't make emptiness empty.

The question of the king was what kind of emptiness was it that didn't make things empty and what kind of emptiness was it that it wasn't making? Okay? Before you lose it.

Before you lose it. Let me see. I'm going to check it out myself.

When we talk about the emptiness that doesn't make things empty, we're talking, this one here is the perception of emptiness. It's the mind that sees emptiness. Okay?

Lord Buddha forgot to say the mind that sees. He just said emptiness doesn't make emptiness empty. He should have said the perception of emptiness doesn't make emptiness empty.

Okay? So this one over here, the one that doesn't make emptiness empty, what Lord Buddha meant was the mind which sees emptiness doesn't make emptiness empty. Okay?

The mind which sees emptiness doesn't make emptiness empty. It doesn't make things empty. The mind which sees emptiness of things, I'm going to shade it over until you catch it.

You'll catch it. The mind which sees emptiness directly isn't what made those things empty. Getting closer?

So what's the next natural step? Not what's the state of mind. Okay?

I'll say it again. It's not the perception of emptiness that makes things empty. Now where would I go from there?

Now the natural question between there would be well then what is it that makes things empty? If it's not the perception of emptiness that makes things empty, then what makes things empty? There's no cause.

It's always been that way. He's the Arya Sangha of the last question. And I'll state it from the text here.

Where is it? Hmm... Chi me pa...

I'm sorry. Ngar yu chi me pe tsu ni kar go pa yin no. Ngar yu chi me pe tsu ni kar go pa yin no means emptiness is not something that didn't used to exist and it started to exist because you saw it.

That's all. That's what Alistair said. Come on, everything's been empty for forever.

Nothing makes emptiness empty. Emptiness has always been empty. Okay?

Arya Sangha's like, come on, that's a trick question. That's why Lord Buddha said what? What was the original weird quotation from Lord Buddha?

[Говорящий 2]
Yeah.

[Говорящий 1]
Yeah, okay. Okay, we'll go over it again. Rebecca's like, that's how I felt in the car coming over here from the three-year retreat.

Lord Buddha makes the statement, it ain't emptiness that makes emptiness empty. The king says, what the hell was he talking about? Arya Sangha says, well, first of all, the first emptiness he mentioned was the perception of emptiness, was understanding the emptiness of the pen and the waiter who spills the coke on you.

Okay? And that doesn't make things empty.

[Говорящий 2]
So the mind that sees emptiness does not make things empty.

[Говорящий 1]
Right, because they've been empty...

[Говорящий 2]
Always.

[Говорящий 1]
Always, come on man. What are you talking about making emptiness empty? Come on.

Things have been empty all along. So the king clarifies the third question. Alistair did it, right?

God, we had two Arya Sanghas. Three. It's amazing.

Yeah. Wow. Of course it's a prediction.

Debate him. So wasn't it made by your mind? Debate him.

You debate him. I don't mean to be honest. It's a good debate.

You take it home and debate it.

[Говорящий 2]
Okay?

[Говорящий 1]
That's the kind of question that in a monastery the teacher would say, keep that in your mind, go to debate ground tonight and cause a lot of trouble and let me know what happens.

[Говорящий 2]
You know?

[Говорящий 1]
That's exactly the kind of thing you should take to your conversation that you're going to have with somebody. And that's what the conversation should be. There shouldn't be, oh, when did Geshe Michael say first?

When did Geshe Michael say second? You should go to the controversies. Why the hell did he say that?

You know? Of course emptiness is made. It's a projection.

You know? When an Arya sees emptiness in the first moment of their direct perception of emptiness, where's it coming from? Their mind.

So the mind is making it, right? So emptiness is made by the mind that perceives emptiness, right? So Lord Buddha didn't say that emptiness didn't make emptiness, right?

And then you give people, that's how you debate. We'll have a nice debate park in Diamond Mountain East.

[Говорящий 2]
Yeah.

[Говорящий 1]
Yeah. Yeah. We'll stop there.

Yeah.

[Говорящий 2]
Actually, isn't there a difference between seeing emptiness directly and perception?

[Говорящий 1]
I don't think so. We can debate that. Cool.

I think that's a good place to end. On next class, second class, the one reason why I'm very interested in this text, it's all based on the seven diamond-like visions. The whole text, the whole structure of this whole book is called the seven diamond-like visions.

Like this is one of the only books I've ever seen that explicitly mentions diamond-like. And the whole book is debated, is dedicated, devoted to seven diamond-ish visions. That's going to be the whole structure of the text.

And just to see that, then I have a lot more faith in this text. So I think, you know, stick around for the second. The second class will start to go through the structure and the seven diamond-like visions.

It's appropriate for Diamond Mountain, I guess. Yeah. The Buddha's Teachings You know, people on this day, they make big butter sculptures and they pile the altars with things and people make satsas.

And I think the greatest offering you can make on this day is to talk about emptiness. And I think you've just made the greatest offering you can make on Buddha, Lord Buddha's day. So, be happy and have a nice dinner, right?

It's dinner time. It's a lot more powerful if you think about how you just offered Lord Buddha. Probably, in my mind, the best offering Lord Buddha would like on a day like today.

I'm not into piling up altars with stuff. We just had a heavy class about emptiness, and I think if you mentally offer that to Lord Buddha, like happy birthday, there's no better offering than that. Congratulations.