Углублённый курс ACI 04 — Искусство толкования, часть 1 (1998, Билакуппе, Индия), занятие 5

[Говорящий 1]
So we finished explaining how three different groups of things don't have any nature of their own. And we started with the lack of a definitive self-nature, a definitive nature of having some kind of characteristics, the way the Buddha called it, with regard to things which were... What was the first one?

Guntat. Constructs, right? And then we went on to the second one, which is to prove that there is no nature of having started, with regard to things which are dependent or come from causes or other conditions.

And then we proved a lack of nature of ultimate, of being ultimate, with regard to two of the groups, which was with regard to dependent things and with regard to yongdrup, or the empty things, emptiness itself. So those three descriptions of things that don't have a nature have already been finished. That's kind of a review of what we did yesterday.

Then as you recall, yesterday evening we talked about some kind of slight misconception that the omniscient Jal Nambah had, and we're going to go back to that. Remember we just introduced it, and now we're going to go back and explain it in more detail.

[Говорящий 2]
So what we're going to do is we're going to go back and explain it in more detail, and then we're going to go back and explain it in more detail, and then we're going to go back and explain it in more detail, and then we're going to go back and explain it in more detail, and then we're going to go back and explain it in more detail, and then we're going to go back and explain it in more detail, and then we're going to go back and explain it in more detail, and then we're going to go back and explain it in more detail, and then we're going to go back and explain it in more detail, and then we're going to go back and explain it in more detail, and then we're going to go back and explain it in more detail, and then we're going to go back and explain it in more detail, and then we're going to go back and explain it in more detail, and then we're going to go back and explain it in more detail, and then we're going to go back and explain it in more detail, and then we're going to go back and explain it in more detail, and then we're going to go back and explain it in more detail, and then we're going to go back and explain it in more detail, and then we're going to go back and explain it in more detail, and then we're going to go back and explain it in more detail, and then we're going to go back and explain it in more detail, and then we're going to go back and explain it in more detail, and then we're going to

[Говорящий 1]
look for a reference while I'm translating that he's looking for. So, we go on to Je Tsongkapa's refutation of Omniscient Jonampa's idea that, remember what it was yesterday? Je Tsongkapa is expressing the position that emptiness or yongdru, what we call total existence or something like that, is the exact flip-flop, is the exact opposite of a self-existent thing, and not just something which is other than that.

And then Jonampa says, I don't like that way of interpreting it because when you think of emptiness, you think of a positive object in the same way that you do when you think of a vase. So I think emptiness should be a positive thing and not a negative thing. It's not a simple absence of something, it's a presence of something.

And this is a very famous misconception. Then Je Tsongkapa, he uses two different scriptural authorities to show Omniscient Jonampa that this is incorrect. The first one is from Doddigongdao itself, from the book in which the Buddha explains what he meant when he taught his other books, okay?

And in that one it says, he specifically says, in here it's page 14, line 8, something like that, 7, line 7, he uses the expression dag meypa tsam dang ngo nyi meypa tsam nyid dun dam pa tsen nyi yin And the most important word here is tsam. Tsam means simple in the expression, simple lack of something or the simple absence of something. So he says, Lord Buddha is using the same language.

He doesn't say positive thing or positive thing. He's saying it's a simple lack of something. So the word simple is the one that Je Tsongkapa points out to Jonampa and says, look, this is the most important word here.

This is referring to the idea of emptiness being a simple absence or a simple lack of something and not a positive object. Then Je Tsongkapa goes on to point out an illustration in scripture that the Lord Buddha himself uses to describe emptiness, and he says it's like space. And in Tibetan the word for space is nam or namkha, and that also means sky.

So he says, Geshe-la is careful to point out that when we say space, we don't mean the sky. When I say nam or namkha I'm not referring to this blue thing out here. Space means the simple absence of obstruction.

So what we mean by the word space is the simple lack or simple absence of something. So the Buddha himself used that as an illustration to demonstrate how emptiness is. So the Buddha himself is using a simple lack or a simple absence of something as an illustration of emptiness.

So Je Tsongkapa says to Jonampa, the Buddha himself, in both a scriptural authority from the explanation of what the sutras mean, and in another scriptural authority where he compares emptiness to empty space, or a simple lack of obstruction, he says in those two references the Buddha is clearly saying that it's a simple absence of something, a simple lack of something, and not a positive object.

[Говорящий 2]
Yes sir.

[Говорящий 1]
The reason Geshe-la couldn't find it is he was looking too far down in the book, and here it was right on the next page. The next page it says on the 10th line from the top, he says, dun dam yang dak pak, it comes from the same book, from the explanation of the meaning of the sutras, and he says, oh, dun dam yang dak pak, this is how it is, I'll give you an example. Space itself is a simple lack of obstructable form, and that's what sets it off.

It is a simple absence, it is a... rab tu chewa means like a simple lack of something, devoid of something, and then he says, that's exactly the way in which I want to describe to you the lack of self to things, that's exactly the same way it is, and so there's the example itself. Yes sir.

So from this description that you find on page 15, from the previous description on page 14, it's obvious that emptiness, or what we call total existence, or yong drup, that it is a simple lack of the self-existence of things, and it's a simple flip-flop from a self-existent thing, which doesn't exist, that the simple absence of that, the simple lack of that, is what yong drup, or emptiness, is. Better make a mark on that last part, because we're going to come to something later on that might give us a headache like we had yesterday on this one.

[Говорящий 2]
Yes sir. Narasimha.

[Говорящий 1]
Narasimha.

[Говорящий 2]
Narayana.

[Говорящий 1]
Narasimha.

[Говорящий 2]
Narayana.

[Говорящий 1]
For those of you who know Tibetan, page 14, line 5, this is where a hassle, a big hassle is going to come later. So you might want to even make a little mark, a mental note or a mental note in your notes, page 14, line 5. On that line, Lord Buddha describes the third group, right?

The mind-only school's third group, which is called total existence or something. We have to find a better translation when we get to a better description of it. But that is described as the lack of a self-nature to things which are du-che.

Du-che has a couple meanings, but in this case, in the sutra, the word means factors, in the sense of a cause, something which brings about something else. That's called a du-che. And those are always changing things.

So you have to realize that, you have to be sensitive to the fact that when the Buddha describes emptiness or yong drub in the third category, he's describing it as the lack of self to things which act as causes. Then when Je Tsongkapa gets to explaining it, which is on page 14, the eighth line from the bottom, he says that thing which Lord Buddha is pointing out as empty, when he describes the third category, which is emptiness or total existence or something like that, that thing which he is describing as being empty is all things which have been produced, which is more like the past tense of producing. You see, when the Buddha describes it as the lack of self-nature, he says the lack of self-nature of things which act as causes or act as factors.

Then when Je Tsongkapa gets to explaining it, he says the Buddha takes as the object which is empty all those things which have been produced, using the past tense. Then I asked Geshe-la if the point is that those two words are present tense and past tense, agent and result. And he said that's not the main point here, because really those cover the same objects.

But the big question here will come about of why do they take changing things or caused things or even causes, which are all the same category, they're all the same group of stuff, why do they take all those as being what it is, which is explained as being empty, and when you say that those don't have a self, you arrive at group number three? The fact that Lord Buddha has taken this group as being the thing which is empty of self-existence, in order to get the third group, is significant and there's going to be a hassle about it later.

[Говорящий 2]
So this is what I'm trying to say, I'm not trying to say that the Buddha took as the object which is empty of self-existence, That's it. That's it.

[Говорящий 1]
And then Je Tsongkapa is finishing him off on page fourteen, fifth line from the bottom, where he says, now listen, Jonangwa. Jonangwa or Jonambah? Jonambah.

Jonambah. Jonambah. As I recall, you accept that this particular sutra, Meaning, the sutra in which the Buddha explains the intent of his other sutras, right?

As being ngedun, which means literal, right? Remember what we were talking about the whole book, right? What's literal and what's figurative?

He says, as I remember, you believe that this particular sutra is literal, right? And he has to say, yes, I believe it's literal. Meaning, I have to take it on face value.

Whatever it says, I have to take it literally, and not, I can't interpret it as something else. Whatever... If I accept that this sutra is literal, then I have to say that the precise wording here is what the Buddha really meant, and I'm not allowed to interpret it into something else.

So then he says, and here we have two specific references in the book that you say is literal. First, where the Buddha says that emptiness, or what we call in total existence, is the simple reverse, or the simple absence of the ultimate self-existent thing, which is what we call parts, okay? The self-existence of dharma means the self-existence of your parts, as opposed to the self-existence of you.

So when we refer to the self-existence of objects, remember that that means mainly the parts of yourself, as opposed to yourself. So he says, remember that we've all agreed that the self-existence of objects, the lack of that, this book says, is what the third group is, first of all. Second of all, in the example that the Buddha used in his description of empty space as being a good example for emptiness, he kept using the word sam.

All throughout here he's used the word sam, which means simple, simple meaning, implying simple absence of something, simple lack of something. So he says, first of all, on one hand you're accepting that this sutra is literal, and then on the other hand you're saying, oh, but emptiness is a positive thing, self-standing positive thing, it's a discrete positive object. So on one hand you're accepting that emptiness is a discrete positive object, on the other hand you're accepting that this sutra is literal, and this sutra says that emptiness is a simple lack of something, so you are completely contradicting yourself.

You have no feet to stand on, your position is wiped out. So now the next point, we're moving on to... Remember that we described emptiness, or the third group in the mind-only school, as being the simple lack or the reverse of a self-existent thing, the gaccha, the thing that we deny, and that we've just established with Jonama, for example, that it is the simple lack or the simple absence of the thing which we deny.

But remember that there's a difference between how the mind-only school identifies the thing that emptiness is empty of, and there's a difference in the way that the middle-way school explains what the thing is that emptiness is empty of. So obviously, yong drub, or emptiness itself, according to each school, is going to be different. Why?

Because the thing that they deny, the thing that emptiness is empty of, they have different ways of identifying that. So Je Tsongkapa is going to go on to say that, look, you mind-only school people, you don't really know how to identify the thing which is self-existent correctly, and then that leads you to misidentify what emptiness is, because emptiness, or yong drub, that total existence thing, is the reverse, or the absence, of that thing. So you don't know how to establish really what the third group is, because you don't know how to establish clearly what the thing is that we deny when we speak of emptiness as not having something.

So here's the very key at this point, the key here, is the crucial point, is that the identification of what emptiness is empty of, the identification of what it is that we deny, it differs between the mind-only school and the middle-way school, and that's the key here. The mind-only school is saying that they do describe an emptiness, they do describe an emptiness, for example, of a water pitcher, they do say that it's the lack of that self-nature of the water pitcher, but the way in which they describe the thing which they deny will be talked about much more later, that's coming much more later, how they specifically identify the thing it is that we say emptiness is empty of.

But in the Madhyamika Prasangika school, in the higher school, they are describing it as the lack of any definitive nature, or the lack of any nature of existing by definition. They use the same wording. But what it means in the Madhyamika school, what it means in the middle-way school, for something to exist by definition, is something totally different.

At this point, Je Tsongkapa is saying, you mind-only school, even though we haven't identified how they identify, even though we haven't described yet precisely how they identify the thing that doesn't exist, that we're denying, he's still saying at this point, you don't know how to identify it correctly. Now, why that is, how that is, is going to come later. We haven't yet really gotten into clearly what the object which we deny when we speak of emptiness is for the mind-only school.

Now, at this point in our class, you guys are starting to get some kind of feeling or some kind of instinct that how they identify it and how the middle-way identifies it must be different. You've got a clear feeling that, oh, there must be some boo-boo here, you know, there must be some discrepancy about how they identify what emptiness is empty of and how the middle-way describes what emptiness is empty of. Although we haven't gone through in specific detail how the mind-only school identifies what it is that emptiness is empty of, what a self-existent thing would be like.

But anyway, the point here, the only point here is that you start getting a feeling or sensitivity to the fact that they're going to identify them differently.

[Говорящий 2]
I think it is very helpful. Nice.

[Говорящий 1]
In these pages, in this section, Jetsun Kapa is constantly using language like, in your system, or according to you, or this is the way that you guys posit it. and the implication there is that he doesn't accept it, and that later on he's going to be describing to you a different system, which is his own system, which is the middle way system. So Geshe-la points out that throughout this section, and especially in these last few lines, when Je Tsongkapa is saying, that's how you guys describe it, that's how you guys establish it, this is your system, that by implication he's saying, my system's coming later, I believe in the Manimika system, that's the right system, and you're going to get this system later.

For example, if you have a person who's wandering around India, and he meets other people, and he's always saying to them, oh, you're Indian, aren't you? Or, oh, you're Tibetan, aren't you? Or, you know, you're from this country, India, right?

Anyone who goes around saying that, is automatically implying that they're not from India. You see what I mean? They're implying that they are some other kind of people, some other kind of nation's people.

So it's the same thing here, Je Tsongkapa's going around saying, oh, you believe that, yeah? You believe that, yeah? Oh, your position is that, right?

And the implication is exactly the same. That's not my belief, that's not my system.

[Говорящий 2]
Tip group K, K, K, To Bunny Krishnamo谢谢 Reason Reason Reason Reason Last time I went to a temple, and I was very happy to see the Jambalaya Temple. I was very happy! I was very happy to see the Jambalaya Temple!

When I went to the temple, I saw a lot of people, and I was very happy to see them. When I was young, I didn't know how to do it, but now I know how to do it. When I was young, I didn't know how to do it, but now I know how to do it.

I didn't know how to do it, but now I know how to do it. When I was young, I didn't know how to do it, but now I know how to do it. When I was young, I didn't know how to do it, but now I know how to do it.

I didn't know how to do it, but now I know how to do it. I didn't know how to do it, but now I know how to do it.

[Говорящий 1]
So, whether or not you guys ever get to the bottom of the book, points out that he's asking a question to himself. This is like a rhetorical question. Okay, so Je Tsongkapa is asking a question to Je Tsongkapa.

And the lines here say, now we have seen in the text that you've written how the idea of what is literal and what is figurative and how to distinguish between the two is covered or is treated in the great two systems, meaning the great systems of the two great innovators, meaning the mind only school and the middle way school. And then there are Gomba Kepa Womo. Now we have seen how different people, you've gone through how many, many different people, even among the mind only school and even among the middle way school.

For example, in the Swatantrika, the independent group, the lower part of the Madhyamika, you've described in detail all the different divisions, all the different ways that people look upon the question of how to distinguish between what is literal and what is figurative. And among all those, there are two... Gondel Khenpo means, in this case, Khenpo normally means an abbot or the person who gives you your monastic vows.

So here it just means big shot, you know, big men. So the two big men who are trying to explain what the Buddha meant when he's talking about, this is what I really meant in the scriptures, in that book. Okay, so there are many people who follow either one or the other of them.

There are many ways of describing what is figurative and what is literal. And now, please, at the very end, can you tell me which one do you choose to follow? Which one of these two great innovators or which one of these two great systems are you, Jetsun Krapa?

Which one do you claim to follow? Okay, and then he says, ti na means, if you ask me that question. Then he breaks off into this beautiful poetry.

His answer to himself, he breaks off into these beautiful lines of poetry. And it's something like, you know, I must admit that from the very depths of my heart, I have infinite respect for all the eloquent words of all the great masters, Buddhist masters, who have ever come in this world. So first he starts off by saying, in my heart, deep in my heart, I have total respect and love for all the incredible teachings of all the great Buddhist masters who have ever come in this world.

But, okay, there is a system where they use a very, very beautiful explanation of dependent origination, what it means for something to be dependent. And they base everything on this explanation, what it means for something to be dependent. And they use that reasoning to destroy all our tendencies to see things as self-existent.

So he says, there's one system that uses that method very effectively. He says, we can open that Madhyamaka door a little bit, okay? Just that when we get to these verses, you can peek in there a little bit, okay?

This is sort of, in Tibetan they say dende. Dende means very auspicious, to go to the end, and let you peek in at the end, and peek in at the system of the Madhyamaka, and it's just auspicious that you will end up being there, okay? So then he says, there's one system that uses dependent origination to destroy all our tendencies to hold things as self-existent.

Now we're on to page 288, and that is the beautiful, cool moonlight that comes from Chandrakirti. And chandra means moon, right? So he's the great explainer of the Middle Way in the books that we use in the monastery.

So your moonlight has come down and opened the eyes of my kunda. Kunda is a kind of a lotus, or a kind of a rare flower that only blooms at night. So this is a beautiful example, you know, he's saying, my eyes, my kunda, lotus, night-flowering eyes, have been opened by the moonlight, referring to Chandrakirti, okay?

And I've laid eyes now, I've been able to see the path set forth by him and by Buddha Palita, who explained Chandrakirti, okay? And so, having seen this, anyone who's had that moonlight come down to their eyes, and see that way, and that unique path which uses dependent origination, a good, a deep interpretation of dependent origination, not just, oh, things come from their causes and their conditions, but somebody who explains it in the ultimate way, that the Prasangika does, meaning projections, right? So anyone who's seen that path, in that moonlight, and had their eyes opened in that way, then you'd be...where could you ever find anybody who wouldn't follow Arya Nagarjuna's system, once they'd seen all that? So he says, that's my answer, that's my answer to your question. Whose question? Jetson Koppa's own answer to himself, question to himself.

Since we skipped to the back of the book, don't go mixing up the mind-only school here, okay?

[Говорящий 2]
I mean, take your mind out of the mind-only school, and don't forget that these words are being spoken from a totally different viewpoint.

[Говорящий 1]
The only reason I skipped to the back of the book and gave you this particular section, is that I wanted you to appreciate Jetson Koppa's, you know, making asp...what do you call it? Aspirations? Aspersions.

It's called aspersions in English. Like he's saying, that's their system, this is how they describe it, this is what they think, you know, and I wanted to make it clear to you that what Jetson Koppa is doing here, in those oblique references, is that, that's not my system, I got my own system, and here is his description of what he believes the system is. So I just wanted to take you from mind-only...his saying, that's the mind-only school, that's what they think, to the back where he says, and here's what I...this is...if you ask me what system I am, here's the system I am. Nowadays in the world mind-only school is very popular, especially among the Western scholars, and I've had people come in my room and say, Jetson Koppa's real viewpoint is mind-only school, he doesn't...that's what Jetson Koppa really believes, and I say, no he didn't, and I stick this in their face, and I say, look this is what he said, and he didn't say that, he said he's mind-amika, and I use that nowadays for all those people who are going around saying that, you know, the real true teaching is the mind-only school. You might have a tendency as a Western Buddhist, or just normal Buddhist, and say, some people come up to you and say, oh some scholar comes up to you and says, oh the teaching of Jetson Koppa is really mind-only school, what Jetson Koppa really believed in was the mind-only school, and then you might have this tendency to say that, oh no, no, he was the great Jetson Koppa, he was the wonderful Jetson Koppa, he's our great root lama of our tradition, you know, he couldn't have been, he must have been a mind-amika prasangika, he must have been the highest mind-amika school, you know, and I don't want you to answer like that, that's a dumb way to answer, that's not how we should answer that question. Somebody comes up to you and says that Jetson Koppa believes in mind-only school, or he represents mind-only school, I want you to stick this reference in their face, you know, and say, look it says in his book, he says that's not my system, what I am is mind-amika prasangika, I follow Chandrakirti, I follow Nagarjuna, that's my system. That was a cookie that I gave you as a treat, and now we're going back to the main text.

The next section, section number three, is an illustration. These are illustrations to illustrate the truth of how those three groups of things lack any self-nature. So we got through saying that nominal things, what do you call it, we've been calling it constructs, don't have any nature of their own, they don't have any nature of being, what was it, of having characteristics, the Lord Buddha said.

And then when he got on to things that are dependent, things that come from their causes, then he said that they don't have any nature of growing. And then when he got on to things, emptiness itself, to calling total existence or something like that, doesn't have any nature of being, what was the third one? Ultimate, of being ultimate.

So those were the three statements that Lord Buddha made, that's how he covered those three groups, and now we're going to get an illustration that will help us understand what, you know, that fact. There'll be some kind of metaphor, some kind of concrete illustration that will help us remember what those three are. The three examples that are used for the three groups of the minority school are coming up are, the first one is what we call constructs, and the example here is what we call a flower that grows in midair, like no dirt, no water, no nothing, it just starts to grow there in the middle of, in the midair.

Okay, that's the first example, that's the example for constructs, which is the first of the three groups. The example for the second one is something like a magic show or an illusion, for example, Geshe-la says a movie, for example. The reality, the relative reality of a movie is an example for number two.

And then the example for number three, which we've already mentioned, the example for emptiness is empty space itself, space itself. It could be translated as place maybe, but space itself. We already finished explaining the third example for emptiness, right?

We already explained the space one. When we talk about a flower that grows in mid-air as being a good example of something which is a construct, we're talking about the quality that a flower that grows in mid-air has that its existence, its only existence, is as an imagined object. It's just something that you have imagined, that you have created in your imagination.

The point of the illustration here is that a flower that could just appear in mid-air without any dirt, no water, no seed, could just, boom, come out in mid-air, is an example. The point here is that it's an example of something which is imaginary, something which has been created in your mind and is projected out there, and whose only existence is in your own mind. The minute you tell somebody the word, flower that grows in mid-air, they do have some kind of mental image of something growing in mid-air.

That's the main point here, that there's some kind of coming from the mind, that it's created by your own imagination. That's the point of it here. There's another quality of flowers that grow in mid-air, that they don't exist at all.

They have no existence at all. Oftentimes they're used to illustrate something which has no existence at all. But that's not the point here.

It's not the point here that we're using a flower that grows in mid-air as an example for something that doesn't exist at all. The point here is that from the mind-only point of view, here is an object which does exist, but it does not have any unique existence from its own side, which is how they're kind of defining concrete reality, right? Something that's out there and has its own way of being, unique way of being from its own side and not dependent on me.

So here we have a totally different category of stuff. Constructs are something that exists only as something that exists by virtue of our imagination, by virtue of our mental images. So please don't confuse it here with the other places where it's used as an example for something that doesn't have any existence at all.

That's not the point at all. The point here is that the first group of stuff, which is called constructs, is similar to a flower that grows in mid-air in that it's simply a creation of our minds, of our imagination.

[Говорящий 2]
When you say that it's a creation of our imagination, it's not just a creation of our imagination.

[Говорящий 1]
Geshe-la says, I'll explain to you now. Geshe-la says, I'll explain to you now. How it happens is this.

In the Mind Only School, they believe that... In the Mind Only School, they believe that... By the way, we're talking about all cause things.

So Geshe-la says, we can't really describe how every cause thing in the universe is like a magic trick. Let's take one cause thing to be the representative. And he uses a joke in Tibetan meaning the government representative, the legally elected representative of all changing things.

All changing things in the universe, all functional things in the universe are going to be represented by this one guy named Vaith, or Water Pitcher. are going to be represented by this one guy named Vaith, or Water Pitcher. Water Pitcher is going to be our example.

How is it that a Water Pitcher is like a magic trick according to the Mind Only School? In the Mind Only School, remember that they think their main thing about this is that they think their main thing about this is that the Water Pitcher and the eye consciousness which perceives the water picture, okay? The seer of the water picture and the water picture itself are coming from what we call one substance.

They are made of one thing. It says zeci means they are made of the same stuff. Okay, so in the Maitreya school they say that the water picture and the perception or the visual consciousness of the water picture are made of the same stuff.

And in this school, made of the same stuff has a unique meaning. It means that they come from one bhaktya or one mental seed. So there is one mental seed which when it ripens is producing both the water picture and the visual consciousness of the water picture.

Now does it seem that way to us? Does it seem that way to us on a normal basis? Do we go around saying, oh look, there is a water picture which has been created by one karmic seed which has also created my perception of the water picture.

Do we think that normally? Do you go around saying that? He says, well, no you don't.

You go around thinking that there is a water picture out there, totally separate from me. I am over here. I am not the water picture.

The perceiver and the water picture are two totally different things. He says, by the way, in the school that precedes the Maitreya school, which is called the Sutras school, the second of the four schools, they say that the main trip going on here is that the water picture is actually the cause or one of the conditions for the arisal of the perception of the water picture. But here in the Maitreya school, the take is a little bit different.

It is one karmic seed producing simultaneously, in a way, the thing which you are perceiving and the thing which is perceiving it. But it doesn't look that way to you, does it? I mean, to a normal person it looks like that is out there, I am over here.

That couldn't be being produced by the same seed that I am being produced by. So there is an illusion here. There is an illusion here.

The way it is and the way it seems to be are different. The mind is taking something which really is there, which means the fact that they are both coming from the same karmic seed, and saying that is not there. And when the mind says that something that really is there is not there, then you have what we call an illusion.

Or then you have what we call a deception. And the mind is being fooled. So in the mind-only school, this is what they mean when they say cause things or functional things are like an illusion or like a magic trick.

That's the main point of the example when you say that cause things or functional things are like an illusion or like a magic trick. Okay? A little bit tough.

Don't forget that Je Tsongkapa said I'll explain this later. And hopefully in this class, if we get that far, we'll get to that later too. So I suggest you make a little mark here and say this is something that Je Tsongkapa said he was going to get to later.

And it's my hope, who knows, that we can get that far and we'll actually get to the point where he starts to discuss that.

[Говорящий 2]
Here on the left hand side, we have a lot of people who are in the same situation as you. Yes sir, yes sir.

[Говорящий 1]
Here on the last line of page 15, Here on the last line of page 15, in the first half of the last line there, he says, shenwang gi ma na dak tsu ni che bar gyur means, I'll tell you about later why cause things are similar to a magic trick. And there he's finished with that one. That's where he actually says that.

Then he goes on to say, la means whereas, yong rung gi pe rin ni the meaning of the example that was given for emptiness, right, the third group, Kyunasello means you can get that, it's a natural outflow. Kyun means like an outflow, or a stream, or a bridge, and he says, that's a natural outflow from the sutra that you just had. And between the last line of page 15 and the upper part of page 15, the Buddha himself has given empty space as an example.

And Je Tsongkapa is saying, look, you can get that, but your understanding that sutra is a natural outflow of reading that sutra. I don't have to go and explain to you separately. You just read that passage which I just gave you, and it'll just come automatically in a steady flow, the meaning will come to you from that.

I'm not going to treat that separately. What does the Buddha say in that section? Geshe-la repeats again, that empty space is the simple absence of anything which would block something.

And in the same way, emptiness itself, or that third category, total existence, or whatever you want to call it, is a simple absence of a self-nature to the parts of a person, or just to objects. And that's a simple absence also. So, you got that from the scripture itself.

Simple absence, simple lack of something, simple fact that something is not there, is the meaning of yong rup. That's why it's similar to empty space, and I don't have to go into any bigger explanation about it.

[Говорящий 2]
Geshe-la asks a question in Tibetan. Geshe-la asks a question in Tibetan.

[Говорящий 1]
Don't forget what we've been speaking about in general. We said that in the sutra, it said that things don't have a nature of having characteristics or definitive existence. Things don't have a nature of growing.

Things don't have a nature of being ultimate. And all throughout there, we've been saying that things don't have a nature. In the higher school, in the Middle Way, you'd have to say that things don't have a nature means things don't have a nature of existing.

And we'd have to describe it in the Middle Way school's idea of what it is to not exist by definition. But if you do that in the Mind-Only school, if you describe all three categories together, all three groups together, and lump them together and say, this is what it means not to have a nature. What it means not to have a nature is not to have a nature of existing by definition.

If you just do it that simply, if you cover all three with that single characterization, in the Mind-Only school, you'd have a problem. He only used that wording with the first group, which is the imaginary things or constructed things. So he says, if you use that specific wording, it's kind of reserved in the Mind-Only school for the first group.

And if you use that wording to describe what they mean when the Buddha said they don't have any nature, which he did say for all three groups, if you use those words to describe what it means not to have any nature, you're going to get in trouble within the Mind-Only school. So I'm going to ask you guys a question. We're going to stick to the Mind-Only school.

Don't forget, you are not allowed to go to that other door, to the Madhyamaka school. I'm going to ask you a Mind-Only school question. In the Mind-Only school, if they characterize the meaning of things don't have any nature, those three groups don't have any nature, and if they said the meaning of not having any nature is that they don't have any nature which exists by definition, or a nature of existing by definition, do you think there'd be a problem in this school if they said that?

You're quite young, right? So we're talking about... When you talk about the path we're going to travel, meaning I think he's closing up, right?

And he's saying the path that we have to travel now is the question of, in the second turning of the wheel, according to the Mind-Only school, who cannot accept it as being literal, who are forced to accept it as not being literal, then what did the Buddha have in mind? What was the Buddha thinking? What was the Buddha's true intent when he spoke during the second turning of the wheel about these four things, not having any nature of existing by their own?

And I want to give you an example of what it means when a person says something and has a different thing in mind. Like when they say something that they are saying, but they don't mean it to be taken literally, and there's something else they have in mind that they're trying to communicate to someone else. So let's take the example, you know, I'm a monk, we're monks around here, let's take the example of a monk.

Now, monks, we might have a student, you know, there's a teacher who has a student, and he's got this kind of a cup on his table, and he's talking to the student, he says to the student, could you go wash that cup out for me, you know? And then the student goes over to the bathroom, and you hear him banging around in the sink, and then you hear this big crash. And he dropped the cup, but he didn't break the cup, okay?

And then if the teacher calls out to him and says, excuse me, could you break that cup for me? The teacher isn't meaning it to be taken literally. He's got some kind of other message he's trying to communicate to that student, okay?

So that would be a true example, that would be a good example of the concept of a person saying something and wanting to communicate a different message. And the student is thinking, ah, aha, the teacher told me, break that cup! But what he means is, goddammit, don't break that cup!

Totally the opposite.

[Говорящий 2]
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[Говорящий 1]
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[Говорящий 2]
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[Говорящий 1]
So, it's the same thing with the secondary and the wheel. If you are a person who is sitting in the Maitreya school, If you're a member of the mind-only school, and you are reading about the second turn of the wheel, and Lord Buddha keeps saying, nothing has any nature of its own, nothing has any nature of existing by definition, none of these things have any nature of their own, and you keep hearing Lord Buddha say this over and over and over again, you begin thinking, he must have something in mind, he must have some other message he's trying to communicate to me when he says, nothing has any nature of its own. It's just like the teacher saying, don't break it.

It's just like the message of, don't break it, or break it. There must be some message, some real message, that the Buddha had in mind when he made those statements about nothing having any nature of having any definitive existence. There must be some message in mind like the teacher's message of, don't break it, which is an implied message, or the true intention of the teacher when he says, break it.

When he says, break it, what he means is, don't break it, there must be some other message that Lord Buddha was trying to communicate to us, like in that example. How many real messages do you think are contained in the second turning of the wheel? How many were the real messages he was trying to convey?

What are the real messages that Lord Buddha was trying to convey during the second turning of the wheel to a minority person? Well, when you say the real message you're implying a minority person, I added that because when you say real message you must be speaking from the point of view of the minority school because it's only, you say the word's real message only when you believe that he wasn't speaking literally. What was he really trying to communicate?

How many things was he really trying to communicate? I'm just asking you, you know, what do you generally think about it? I'm not, you know, I don't need a real, I'm just, let's just have a, what is he saying?

It's an open question. Give me an open answer. What are the two that you think?

What are the two real messages? I've shut the door to the middle way. We don't want to go over there into the middle way room, okay?

Stick yourselves to the mind only school. What was it that the Buddha had in mind when he got up and said nothing has any nature of its own? Nothing has any nature of existence?

Or give me one. How many? How many?

I want some numbers.

[Говорящий 2]
Well, like, what would be his number?

[Говорящий 1]
Shen Wang, Shen Wang, that's what Dundar Maheswari said, too, right? You're kind of being clever with me. You know, I asked you how many and you gave me one.

[Говорящий 2]
How many?

[Говорящий 1]
This is really good for people to tell the future with those dice because they can say maybe you'll die on the first, maybe you'll die on the third. You guys make up your mind. I'm not a diviner, you know, I'm not doing predictions.

You know, yeah. You said you thought that what it was, but thinking that what it was is not quite knowing what it was, is it? Just kidding, it really is three.

[Говорящий 2]
Yes, yes, yes. Maybe like...

[Говорящий 1]
You're right, it is three. With the first one, it's sort of directly what he said. With the first one, which is imaginary objects or constructs, it's exactly what he said, they don't have a nature of existing by definition.

And so, from the point of view of the first of the three groups, yeah, what he was saying when he said they don't have a nature of existing by definition, is pretty much what he meant. Meaning that imaginary objects don't have a nature of having any definitive existence, okay? But then when he got to the second one, and he said things that are dependent or things that are caused don't have any nature of growing, right?

Don't have any nature of starting, then what he meant to deny was that they don't have a nature of not having causes. So when he said they don't have a nature of existing by definition, what he meant was not that they don't have a nature of existing by definition, but they don't have a nature of occurring without any causes, okay? And then when he said of the third group, it doesn't have any nature, right, emptiness itself.

When he said it doesn't have any nature of existing by definition, what he meant was it doesn't have any nature of existing in the way of a self-existent self. Of existing in the manner of the Gaccha. It doesn't have any nature of existing in the way of a thing that could exist on its own, by itself, like that, okay?

And that's what he was denying. He said in his words, literally what he said was emptiness doesn't have a nature of occurring without any causes. How many?

How many? I want some numbers.

[Говорящий 2]
For example, what would you say is the cause of emptiness for everyone? I'm sure quite a way to decrease, you know.

[Говорящий 1]
You're kind of being clever with me. You know, I asked you how many and you gave me one.

[Говорящий 2]
How many?

[Говорящий 1]
This is really good for people who tell the future with those dice, because they can say, maybe you'll die on the first, maybe you'll die on the third, you know. You guys make up your mind. I'm not a diviner, you know, I'm not doing projections.

You said you thought that's what it was, but thinking about that, what it was, it's not quite knowing what it was, is it? Just kidding, it really is three.

[Говорящий 2]
I don't want to mislead you. You're right, it is three.

[Говорящий 1]
You're right, there is three. With the first one, it's sort of directly what he said. With the first one, which is imaginary objects or constructs, it's exactly what he said, they don't have a nature of existing by definition.

And so, from the point of view of the first of the three groups, yeah, what he was saying when he said they don't have a nature of existing by definition is pretty much what he meant, meaning that imaginary objects don't have a nature of having any definitive existence. But then when he got to the second one, and he said things that are dependent or things that are caused don't have any nature of growing, don't have any nature of starting, then what he meant to deny was that they don't have a nature of not having causes. So when he said they don't have a nature of existing by definition, what he meant was not that they don't have a nature of existing by definition, but they don't have a nature of occurring without any causes.

And then when he said of the third group, it doesn't have any nature, right, emptiness itself, when he said it doesn't have any nature of existing by definition, what he meant was it doesn't have any nature of existing in the way of a self-existent self, of existing in the manner of the gaccha. It doesn't have any nature of existing in the way of a thing that could exist on its own by itself like that. And that's what he was denying.

He said in his words, literally what he said was, emptiness doesn't have a nature of existing by definition. But what he meant was, emptiness does not have a nature of existing in the way that something would exist that existed on its own or by itself, in the way, within this school of the ultimate object which we are denying when we talk about emptiness. That's what he meant.

When he said about emptiness that it doesn't have a nature of existing by definition, what he meant was emptiness doesn't have a nature of existing in the way of a self-existent thing. That's what he meant. I'm trying to package things for you.

I'm trying to take all these disparate subjects, all these disparate ideas, and put them into little packages for you because, you know, you spent 10, 11 days in Belakopi, South India. You heard all this stuff. But then if I don't package it properly for you and stick it in your suitcase for you, you'll go back there and you won't have anything when you get there, if we just spread it all out like that.

So what I'm trying to do is consolidate things for you into little packages so that you can take them back and keep them like that. That's what I'm doing. And we'll finish now.