Углублённый курс ACI 04 — Искусство толкования, часть 1 (1998, Билакуппе, Индия), занятие 11

[Говорящий 1]
There were two desserts we left over from last class. The first one is the one I taught last time. The second one is the one I taught last time.

The third one is the one I taught last time. The third one is the one I taught last time. The fourth one is the one I taught last time.

The fifth one is the one I taught last time. The sixth one is the one I taught last time. The seventh one is the one I taught last time.

The eighth one is the one I taught last time. The ninth one is the one I taught last time. The tenth one is the one I taught last time.

Okay, we're going to make some comments about those difficult points from yesterday. Please do not mix it up and make it seem in your notes as if we're going on to a new subject. Again, we are going back and resolving some issues about what came before, all the way from the beginning.

So, originally we spoke about three lacks of a nature. Lack of a nature of having any characteristics. Lack of a nature of having any birth.

And then, what was the third one? Lack of a nature of having any ultimate nature. And then we started off from that.

And then when we got to xian wang, we were trying to establish what it meant to be those three groups. And then we got into what... We were trying to identify what the three different groups were.

And when we got to dependent things, then again we had three characteristics. What was the first one? Yeah, three features of changing things.

Yeah, it was the arena in which constructs do their thing. That it was the thing which gets the label. And then finally that it was characterized by being a produced thing or something that has produced nature.

So then we went through all that and we talked about all those features. And we were trying to establish that those three qualities, general qualities, those three lacks of a nature, which meaning the three groups in general, applied to all existing phenomena. Then we got into describing in detail what it meant to be the group called those things which are dependent.

And then among the group of those things which are dependent, we had three features. The third of which was displays a quality of being a produced thing. And then we were trying to go through one by one.

We talked about the five heaps. We talked about, for example, the four arya truth. And we tried to establish all three groups with regard to each of those objects.

And we went through representative examples of each of the objects. We started with physical matter. We spent some time on the first arya truth of suffering.

And we went through and tried to describe how each of those three groups posited by the school applied to each of those objects. And we went through that and we did that pretty well. We spent some time on it in the last few days.

But then we came into a philosophical conundrum, like a problem. And that was when we get to something like the twelve ayatanas, the twelve doors of sense. And then when we get down into the door of sense of the mind, the mind sense, as opposed to the physical senses.

And then the object which the sense of the mind can hold, which is all those things which the sense of the mind can think of or focus on, among that group there were things called unchanging things, unchanging objects. And then we were sort of stuck on how difficult it was to establish those three groups with regard to an unchanging thing. How do you describe, how do you establish constructs, how do you establish dependent things, and how do you establish totality or emptiness itself with regard to an unchanging thing?

Especially how do you do that if one of the qualities of a produced thing is that it exhibits the qualities of a produced thing, which means that it had to be changing. So, we had that problem. We have a couple of problems here.

Now, Geshe-la says, it's not that I'm inventing these problems. It's not like I want to give you guys a headache. These problems really do come up in all presentations of this subject.

These are natural, difficult, and crucial points that arise in any presentation of this subject. So, we have to look at them, and we have to dig into them, and we have to find out what they're all about. And he's very adamant that he doesn't want you to mix this up with the flow of the teachings.

He wants to make sure that you're sensitive to the point that we are going backwards. We are revisiting something that we were working on before. And he doesn't want you to now start...

In your notes, he wants you to be very careful. On one hand, he doesn't want you to jam it all in and screw up your notes and make them illegible by going back and cramming it into some place where there's no place to put it. On the other hand, he doesn't want you to put it into your notes in such a way that it appears that Geshe Thubten Rinpoche taught this thing out of order, like in a confused way, like he was jumping around and like that.

He says, maybe it's even better if you start on a clean sheet in your notebook and say, this is an issue from before that we chose to go back and examine. And then don't stick it in the notes as you have them now. Make a separate sheet or a separate section and block it out and say, this is an issue that came from before, and this is not the flow of the teaching as Je Tsongkapa did it.

That's the way it is. Yes, that's right. He says, if you don't put it in the right place, you can't put it in the right place.

This is how it is. So where we are going back to is page twenty five, line five. And that's where they talk about, oh, this is the same three groups, the three attributes apply to all existing things, and then they go through and apply them to the remaining four heaps.

They've already talked about the heap of physical matter. Then they go on to the twelve doors of descent. Then they go on to the twelve links of dependent origination, and then he says it applies to the four kinds of sustenance, to the six categories, and to the eighteen categories.

And now when you think about it, if you go through all of those groups, there's a lot of groups that involve unchanging objects. For example, in the five heaps, among the five heaps, in the four truths, in the four Arya truths, there's a truth called the cessation of suffering. That cessation of suffering is an unchanging thing.

So in the four truths, we have one of the truths, truth number three, which is a problem, because it has unchanging things. So how do you establish that the three groups apply to it, when one of the three groups is those things which are called dependent, meaning those things which are changing, one of whose famous characteristics is to exhibit the nature of a changing thing or a produced thing. So how are you going to say that this applies?

How are you going to establish the three groups with regard to an unchanging thing, when one of the three groups is dependent things, and one of their three characteristics is that they are produced? So that's a problem with the third of the four Arya truths. It's also a problem with, as we've already pointed out, in the twelve doors of the sense.

When you get to the door of the sense, which is the object of the mind, and within that category, a door of sense, it's called door of sense, meaning inside of that category there are going to be unchanging things, because you do, with your mind, perceive unchanging things. So unchanging things are going to be in that category. When you get to the eighteen divisions, the eighteen categories, which are called dhatus, there is also one dhatu or one category which is called dharmadhatu.

Dharmadhatu is a fancy word for the object of the mind. So if you divide all the parts of a person out, then that group of things which the mind focuses on at any given time is called the dharmadhatu. And within the dharmadhatu you can have unchanging things.

So with three of the groups mentioned, four Arya truths, the twelve doors of sense, and the eighteen categories, within there you have a problem, because within each of them are unchanging things, which are said to... it's said that all three groups apply to everything, so all three groups apply to this unchanging thing. One of the groups is dependent things or changing things, and one of the three features of a changing thing is that it exhibits the qualities of a produced thing.

So you have a problem here. So we have to resolve this problem. Do you remember I told you to make some marks or make a star on your notes?

And there's a star up there somewhere. That was relative to page fourteen, something to do with page fourteen. You might be able to check it in your notes by correlating it to the page.

It was page fourteen. It was the seventh line from the bottom. I had asked you to make a mark there, so if you look for your marks, then find a mark that's on a page that relates to page fourteen, seventh line from the bottom.

I asked you to make a mark next to one of the arguments we had with Jonangpa. We had a couple of arguments with Jonangpa, and it's one of them. I did all this before, and you know all this, but maybe we'll just review it so you get a little bit firmer in your mind.

Okay? Remember that the omniscient Jnanambha had said, you know, emptiness or that quality called totality, it is not a negative thing. It is not, as you claimed it to be, a simple absence of a self-existent thing.

Rather, it is a positive thing. When you think about it, when you conceptualize it, you bring up a positive picture, and therefore a self-standing positive picture. So, when you bring that picture up, that shows that it's a positive thing.

The picture is a positive thing. Therefore, emptiness is a positive attribute and not a negative or a simple absence or lack of something. And then Jatakapa says, on this page 14, where he says, chuchen dujjhila chirgi dat, he says, no, no, look, you got to go through this process.

First you choose a particular object. In this case, he says, you choose a produced object, something which is produced. Then you think about it in terms of a construct which could be self-existent, right?

And then you go through the process of demonstrating that this self-existent thing, called the self-nature of objects, could never apply to this changing thing. And therefore, we can describe yongdrup, meaning totality or emptiness, as being the simple absence of that non-existent quality of self-nature about the changing thing, about this changing object. So, Jatakapa is adamant that you arrive at what we call totality or the emptiness of something by cancelling a self-existent thing which never could have existed anyway with a reference to a changing object.

So, Jatakapa is adamant that you arrive at what we call totality or the emptiness of something by cancelling a self-existent thing about the changing thing. So, Jatakapa is adamant that you arrive at what we call totality or the emptiness of something by cancelling a self-existent thing about the changing thing. So, Jatakapa is adamant that you arrive at what we call totality or the emptiness of something about the changing thing about the changing object.

So, Jatakapa is adamant that you arrive at what we call totality or the emptiness of something about the changing thing about the changing object. So, Jatakapa is adamant that you arrive at what we call totality or the emptiness of something about the changing thing about the changing object. So, Jatakapa is adamant that you arrive at what we call totality or the emptiness of something about the changing thing about the Nothing, nothing, nothing.

We are collecting different necessary information for resolving our issue, okay? So, first of all, we had gone back around page 25 to where it said, look, those three groups must apply to all these things. And having said that, since you and I know that among three of those groups there are unchanging things, first of all we've established that all three groups were definitely spoken by Lord Buddha to be applicable to all objects, changing or unchanging.

So now, that's where the first part of our problem, the first part of our issue has come from the fact that Lord Buddha has said that those three groups must apply, on page 25 he said, must apply to all those groups, all those categories, and then some of those categories are unchanging. That was our first problem. Secondly, we went back to where we were refuting one of the wrong ideas of Jonangpa, and we had made a special point to say that to really understand totality, to really understand emptiness, you must take as your basis a changing object.

You take as a basis your changing object, you think about it in terms of the constructs that apply to it, you think about the construct that couldn't exist, and the lack of that construct with regard to that changing object is what totality or emptiness is. And so that was the second piece of information that we needed to establish that. Now we go back to a third piece of information, all the way back to page 11, where we were saying, now what did the Buddha originally mean when he said, nothing has a nature of growing, nothing has a nature of growing?

And we decided that this was referring to that group called dependent things, or things which grow. So back there where we were talking about how to identify what the Buddha was talking about when he said, things don't have a nature of growing, we decided, we figured it out, that he was talking about Shenron, he was talking about dependent things. And then remember that he said, those dependent things could be characterized in two ways, one positive, one negative.

Way back on page 11, 10, 11, we decided that there had to be a positive way of describing those Shenrons, those dependent things, and there was a negative way of describing those dependent things. The positive way was to say, these things are dependent, or these things are produced, because they come from their causes and conditions. That was the positive way of saying it.

And the negative way of saying it was, they are not, they can also be characterized negatively by saying that they are not such that they do not come from their causes and conditions. Now all three bits of it you have now in your hands, all three bits of information that you need to resolve this issue. You've gone back to the first one where the Buddha said, everything must have Shenron, the quality of dependence, must refer to all existing objects.

That was his first thing. And secondly, you have this thing where to really understand yong drub, to really understand emptiness, you must go to dependent or changing objects. And then you have the third thing, way back on page 11 where he says, there's a positive aspect, which is that things which are dependent come from their causes and conditions, and there's a negative aspect where it says, things which are dependent are not such that they do not come from their causes and conditions.

You now have all three pieces of information you need to resolve this issue that we've been raising. Yes, yes. Yes, yes.

I'll consolidate for you, okay? We'll go over that again. So it's all kind of scattered out now, it's all spread out now.

We'll try to consolidate all this into one place. So now I want to describe four different bits of information we need. So, first one being back on page 11 where there was a positive aspect of dependent things and a negative aspect of dependent things.

Let's concentrate on the positive one. The positive one being the fact that dependent things come from their causes and conditions. So that's one thing.

Then go back to the place where we, on page 14, where we were hassling with Jonamba, and we decided that we established, we talked about establishing emptiness with regard to changing things, that it was the category of dependence which you had to use as a basis in order to establish dependence. Third bit of information. When we talked about the three characteristics of the group of things called dependent things, then the third of those was that the thing had to come from its causes and conditions, right?

So that's the third bit of information I'll give you. Fourth bit of information, page 23. This is a new one, okay?

Fourth line from the bottom, where we start describing what it is for something to be yongdrup or totality or emptiness. And in that very one, they go through how you need, what you need as a basis to establish emptiness or yongdrup, okay? What is it that can serve as the basis when you are going to look for the meaning of totality or emptiness?

Where do you have to go? What basis do you have to use? And at that point, we decided that the basis was changing things.

And in that scriptural quotation there, from the sutra where the Buddha describes the intent of his own sutras, right? Right there, he goes through the whole process. He says, okay, you want to know what emptiness is?

This is the point at which he is identifying among the three groups, he's identifying what he means when he says totality or emptiness. And he says, okay, first you take that group called changing things, okay? And then you look at it with regard to different constructs about it.

You find a construct which doesn't exist with reference to changing things, which is its ultimate gaccha, right? Which is the emptiness. And that is what we call the self-nature of objects.

And when we deny that with reference to changing things, then we have arrived at yongdrup, which is the emptiness or the lack of self-nature to changing things. So take those four bits of information, that in a positive sense, changing things come from their causes and conditions. The part around the dispute with Jonamba where we pointed out that to really establish emptiness, you had to do it with regard to changing things.

The third point which I don't remember... Oh, that the third feature is that changing things have a nature of being produced. And then the fourth thing, here from the sutra itself, where it goes through that process for you of identifying the basis on which we establish emptiness, which is changing things or yongdrup things.

So those four bits of information, to consolidate for you, or to summarize for you, the whole point here is that up to now, to establish the meaning of emptiness or yongdrup, we have constantly been taking as our basis, shenwang, changing things, produced things, dependent things. So that's been the big emphasis throughout the whole text up to now, on all these different pages. So now, how are we going to do it with regard to unchanging things?

Okay. That's one guess.

[Говорящий 2]
That's one guess.

[Говорящий 1]
That's one guess. So now, question for you. Given all that we've been through, given all the explanations we've been through in the last few days, when you are trying to establish the meaning of the third group, when you are trying to establish what it is to be yongdrup, or totality or emptiness, on what kinds of basis, with regard to what kinds of objects have we been trying to establish it?

What kind of objects have we been using to establish the meaning of emptiness? What were the objects that were empty that we were talking about so far? So, yeah, that's right, and if you need a little more, Dad, I'll give you a bit more, okay?

Here's a little more. Let's jump to page 120. One more bit of information to help you on this issue.

Okay. Okay. Okay.

Yes, sir.

[Говорящий 2]
Yes, sir.

[Говорящий 1]
We're skipping to page 120. This is actually the presentation by the Middle Way School, okay, the higher half of the Middle Way School, the Consequence Group, Prasangika Group of the Middle Way School. They are making a point on page 120, line 3, where they say, if what we call dependent things, shenwang things, okay, if they did not exist by nature, if they were to be such that they did not exist by nature, then the ultimate quality that they have, which is their yongduk, right, then their ultimate nature, meaning their emptiness, would also be something that did not exist by nature.

I'll say it again. Here in the Middle Way School, they are saying, now look, if it's true that changing things or depending things, shenwangs, did not exist by nature, then it would also have to be true that their emptiness, their yongduk, could not exist by nature. And then it says here, even that last school would agree with that.

Last school meaning, from this point of view, who? The mind-only school, okay, because we're now into the Middle Way School part. So, in the Middle Way School part, the Middle Way School people say, even those old guys, meaning even those mind-only people, would agree that if the basis that was empty existed by definition, I'm sorry, didn't exist by definition, then the quality of emptiness about it couldn't exist by definition either.

And even that school would agree with that. And then the Middle Way people say, and we'll quote scripture to prove that. And first they're going to quote Arya Nagarjuna's root verses on emptiness, and then they're going to quote a sutra.

So, first they go to the root verses on emptiness, which say, duje ratu madhubhe dumaceni jitardhum, which means, essentially, if duje, meaning if produced things, and here it refers to shenwang things, okay, here it refers to what we've been calling caused things. So, Arya Nagarjuna uses the wording produced things, but you can also apply it to shenwang things, which means things which are dependent in this school, in the mind-only school's groupings, right? So, when Arya Nagarjuna talks about produced things, you can take it as referring to the group in the mind-only school when they talk about dependent things.

And this says, if produced things didn't exist, meaning self-existently, meaning by nature, right? Then how on earth could non-produced things exist by nature, meaning the emptiness which applies to them, the emptiness which they have? So, if the basis for the emptiness, meaning produced things, didn't have any nature of its own, then how could the emptiness, which is its quality, which adheres to it, how could that have any quality of existing by definition?

That's one quotation they used to prove that if the basis didn't exist by definition, then neither could the quality that it has. Then, secondly, he quotes from Do, from Sutra. Now they're quoting from another sutra which says, if physical matter itself were not to exist self-existently, then how on earth could the very nature of physical matter exist self-existently, meaning its emptiness?

So, here's a section, here's a chunk from the middle-way school where they are saying, look, even those mind-only people would have to agree that if the basis, meaning Shenlong's here, meaning the group of dependent things, if the basis were empty, then how on earth could its ultimate nature not be empty? It would also have to be empty. So, this is another piece of information for helping to solve our problem.

You've got the thing which is empty, if that exists by definition, then the thing which is not empty would also have to exist by definition. Okay. Here we have basically three repetitions of the same point.

We have Jetsun Kapa saying that if the basis for emptiness didn't exist by definition, then neither could the emptiness which applied to it, which adhered to it. He says it in a logical way. Then he quotes Arya Nagarjuna who says basically exactly the same thing.

Then he says, if Arya Nagarjuna is not good enough for you, how about Lord Buddha? Then he quotes Lord Buddha saying the same thing. So, even though the wording is different or the phrasing is different in these three steps, Jetsun Kapa's reasoning, Arya Nagarjuna's statement, Lord Buddha's statement, even though there seem to be three different things here, it's actually just repeating the same thing three times for those stick-headed guys to try to get them to understand the same point.

Let's just junk it all together and come down to the bottom line here. The bottom line is that if that object which has the emptiness, meaning in this case dependent things, the Shenmongs, if that thing did not exist by definition, then the emptiness that applied to it or adhered to it, which here is called totality, could never exist by definition, period. That's all you have to think about.

If Shenmongs didn't exist by definition, the young dudes couldn't exist by definition. Nothing. And Jetsun Kapa points out here that even the guys from that last school would have to accept that, right?

Now they don't happen to accept that those things do exist by nature, right? I mean don't exist by nature. They don't accept that those things don't exist by nature.

But they would have to agree that if one of them didn't exist by nature, then the other one would have to not exist by nature. Even in their school they'd have to say that. If one were not such that they believed, then the other would have to be not such as they believed either.

And so even in the other school, meaning the mind-only school, they'd have to agree that if it were true that dependent things didn't exist by nature, then the emptiness which adheres to them or which applies to them couldn't exist by definition either. Even that last school would have to agree with that, says Jetsun Kapa. If I keep going on with more and more evidence and more and more clues and more and more information to resolve our issue, probably you get all confused.

So let's just stop there and go and clarify the issue and finish it. Didn't we say in the fourth of those last things that we talked about, right? I gave you four kinds of evidence you could work off of, four facts or four clues to work off, and the last one was that basically they kept saying that, in fact it was the sutra that said that, when you're trying to establish totality or emptiness, what you have to use to establish it with is changing things.

By focusing on a changing thing or a dependent thing, then you can go about this process of establishing that it is empty or that totality applies to it. Do you remember that? Got that?

So does it come in your mind clearly, do you get a clear picture that when we say that the object which we are focusing on when we establish emptiness or totality is a thing which comes from its causes and conditions, is that clear in your mind? When we say that the object that we speak about having emptiness, so far in that fourth piece of evidence, is an object which comes from its own causes and conditions, that's clear in your mind, right? When we say changing thing or produced thing, in your mind, do you see something coming from its causes and conditions?

So you got that, the fourth one is clear in your mind, the fourth point is clear in your mind. It is changing things, things which come from their causes and conditions, which we need to use when we establish emptiness or totality. So, you get that.

You get that, the fourth one is clear in your mind, so far in that fourth piece of evidence. When we say that the object which we are focusing on is an object which comes from its own causes and conditions, is that clear in your mind? When we say that the object which we are focusing on has its own causes and conditions, I see where he's going, this is going to be a problem.

And then you jump to page 120, and you have Je Tsongkapa saying that even the mind-only school would agree that if the basis which we are establishing as being empty existed by definition, existed by definition, didn't exist by definition, didn't exist by definition, then neither could the emptiness which applies to it, implying that they believe that the basis does exist by definition, okay, implying that they believe that the basis of emptiness does exist by definition.

See, because Je Tsongkapa goes to the extreme of saying even they would believe that if it didn't exist by definition, then the emptiness that applied to it couldn't exist by definition. So, forget Madhyamika for now, forget that that comes from the Madhyamika section. Je Tsongkapa is referring to the mind-only when he says that even they would agree that if the basis didn't exist by definition, neither could the emptiness that adheres to that basis exist by definition, implying that they believe that the basis exists by definition.

Got it? He's setting you up, you know. Got it, you know?

Okay, got it? So, the basis has to exist by definition, got it? Got it.

Yeah. Checkmate. Okay.

Take that thing that you just agreed to, that the basis has to exist by definition, right? Put it in your pocket, walk back to that section where Buddha said, oh, this applies to all twelve of the doors of sense. Walk into that little place called the door of sense, which is the object of the mind.

Bump into that thing called unchanging thing, and tell me how it applies there. Tell me if there doesn't come some little problem in your mind. Not yoke-la-lang-la-lang.

Yoke-la-lang-la-lang. Lang-la-lang-la-lang. So, you're faced with two problems now, you know, faced with two bad choices.

Once you go there, you know, we don't have to talk about the twelve doors of sense and blah, blah, blah. Let's just say an unchanging thing, okay? So, you've approached this unchanging thing.

You're carrying this information from page 120 that you just got. So, either you're going to have to say that the unchanging thing, as the basis of a yong-drup, of emptiness, right, doesn't exist by definition. Doesn't exist.

Doesn't exist by definition. Wait a minute. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're going to have to say, you're either going to have to say it does exist by definition.

No, yeah, that it does exist by definition. Or you're going to have another problem of saying that the emptiness which adheres to it doesn't exist by definition. So, you're going to have these two problems.

You bump up against this unchanging thing. You're faced with these two. Either you're going to have to accept that because it's the basis of its own emptiness, it exists by definition.

Or you're going to have to say that the emptiness which applies to it doesn't exist by definition. Because they've got to match. They have to match.

Yeah, tell me. Mm-hmm. So don't forget where we're coming from.

Don't forget. But keep in your mind that view of the mind-only school, that one fact about them that's coming from page 120. Keep in your mind the fact that they must agree that, according to the lines on 120, that there has to be a correspondence.

If the thing which is empty exists by definition, then its emptiness is going to have to exist by definition. If the thing which is empty doesn't exist by definition, then its emptiness can't exist by definition. Keep that in mind.

Hold that in mind. Keep that line. Hold that line.

Now go back to an unchanging thing and focus on it and say, okay, either this unchanging thing, when we describe it as having its own emptiness, right, its own yong drup, either we have to say that the unchanging thing exists by definition, in which case its emptiness would have to exist by definition, or we say that the unchanging thing doesn't exist by definition, or you could say that its emptiness doesn't exist by definition, therefore the unchanging thing doesn't exist by definition, something like that.

Either way you'd have a problem. You'd have a problem of saying that yong drup doesn't exist by definition, emptiness doesn't exist by definition, and you have the problem of saying that an unchanging thing does exist by definition, neither of which the mind-only school is ready to say, because in the mind-only school, and then Geshe-la goes on to say, it is a primary tenet. I mean, this is the whole guts of their school, this is the whole foundation stone of their school, you know, is to say that, the whole guts of the mind-only school is to say that those unchanging things don't exist by definition.

I mean, this is their whole thing, this is the whole core of what they believe. So you're actually, the core is crumbling if you have to accept either one of those things. There's some huge problem that's coming in the mind-only school if you have to say that unchanging things exist by definition.

Because as you all know, unchanging things have to go into the category of constants. Things that are made up of the mind, right? They can't exist by definition.

The problem here is that, you know, as we mentioned the other day, once you get into all those unchanging things, empty space, other kinds of unchanging things, the whole problem is arising with them, isn't it? All this problem, all this hassle is that, with that little kind of category that we've been ignoring, we left off to the corner there, which is unchanging things like empty space. We left it off to the corner, we didn't want to talk about it, and now that's where we're having all our problems.

All our problems are standing around that category of stuff. Don't forget, we are in the mind-only school. Everything that we're saying this morning is from the viewpoint of the mind-only school.

A priori, we are in the mind-only school. Don't forget, we are in the mind-only school. We are taking off all this is being said from the viewpoint of a person in the mind-only school.

That's it. That's why we are in the mind-only school. That's it.

That's all, that's all. That's it, that's it. That's it.

[Говорящий 2]
That's all, that's all.

[Говорящий 1]
So we have this big philosophical problem that we've been setting up so far this whole morning. Now we come to the resolution of the issue. And he says, some great thinkers have said that when you talk about an unchanging thing, and now we'll take like empty space, okay?

Because it's clear to you, do they understand, do they know that empty space is not yongdub, right? It's not in the category of totality or emptiness. I said, yeah, yeah, they know that.

They know it's an unchanging thing. They know it doesn't belong to the category called totality or emptiness. Which means that it has to belong to the category called constructs, right?

So they get that, you know. We're going to talk about unchanging space. How is it that you describe the emptiness or the totality of unchanging, I'm sorry, uncreated space, what's it called?

Empty space, okay? Empty space as an unchanging thing. How is it that you describe its totality since you do not have a basis which is changing, okay?

Which is normally what you have to have to describe totality, right? To describe the emptiness of something, up to now, you've had to have a changing thing as the basis of a discussion to talk about. When you get to unchanging empty space, you have a problem, because you don't have a changing thing to talk about.

So some thinkers of the past have said, poor old empty space needs a helper. He needs a partner. He needs a buddy, okay?

Let's take the state of mind which is perceiving empty space, okay? Which is a changing thing, okay? Let's link them together, okay?

When we discuss the emptiness or the totality or the yongdrup of an unchanging object like empty space, oh, let's go and... He needs a buddy to be with. He needs a companion.

And then we can do it, you see? So we'll go to the state of mind which is perceiving empty space. And that state of mind, as you know, is a shenlong, is a cause thing, is a dependent thing.

So we'll treat them together, okay? And we'll link them before we discuss establishing the emptiness of empty space. Some great thinkers of the past have used this method to resolve this issue, and then the issue is clearly easily resolved.

When we discuss the emptiness of empty space, we need to think of the state of mind which is perceiving empty space. When we think of the state of mind which is perceiving emptiness, we need to think of the state of mind which is perceiving emptiness. When we think of the state of mind which is perceiving emptiness, we need to think of the state of mind which is perceiving emptiness.

When we think of the state of mind which is perceiving emptiness, we need to think of the state of mind which is perceiving emptiness. When we think of the state of mind which is perceiving emptiness, We need to focus our attention on this concealed state of mind which is perceiving emptiness. So this state of mind which is perceiving emptiness which is perceiving emptiness is clearly visible later.

When we create this state of mind which is perceiving emptiness the emptiness of this mind is gone. So because this state of mind is creating this state of emptiness **Chanting in Tibetan** and we'll be able to understand what thefamous speech of the Buddha is. So you can say that, I'm not a Buddha, I'm the example of an example to you, but I can say that the Buddha is the example to you.

I'm so honoured. Thank you very much. Thank you so much.

Not at all, thank you. I know you will say like this, you will also say like that. The uh, dangdzin kwayang dzinme gacha, dangdzin, nasa, nasa nanay nanay, nanay nanay nanay nanay nanay nanay nanay nanay nasa, nasa nanay nanay Nane, nane.

Nane, nane. Okay. This is tough.

All right, according ... now, there's another group of thinkers that criticize the first group of thinkers and they say your approach is not going to work, okay? Make it a little bit separate, okay?

So, there's another group of thinkers ... make sure you distinguish between these two groups of thinkers. The second group of thinkers comes up to the first group of thinkers and says, okay, you say that in order to arrive at a nice shenwang, a nice dependent thing, so that we can describe the yongdrup, the emptiness of an unchanging thing, you say, let's lump the state of mind which perceives that unchanging thing with the unchanging thing, so that we have a nice changing thing with which to describe its emptiness or its yongdrup. Because so far we've said that it's more convenient.

So far, all the totalities or all the emptinesses we've described, we've described with regard to a changing thing. So, the approach of the first group of thinkers was to lump together the state of mind perceiving the unchanging thing with the unchanging thing, in order to arrive at a nice convenient dependent thing, which is a changing thing, in order to describe the emptiness or the yongdrup of the unchanging thing that it was focused on. And then the second group of thinkers comes along and says, okay, now we're going to ask you a question.

Is there a state of mind which focuses on that unchanging thing, let's say empty space, and says about it that this is self-existent? Is there a state of mind which holds that space, empty space, and looks at it and says, this thing is self-existent? Meaning, is there a state of mind that could come along, look at empty space and say, and be focusing on a self-nature of objects with regard to empty space, meaning the subtle self-nature, the subtle form, the subtle flavor of a self-nature, which doesn't exist at all anyway, right?

The subtle form of the self-nature of that empty space. Is there a state of mind that could come along and think that about empty space, that could look at empty space and say, it does have a subtle self-nature, meaning the self-nature of what we call objects, okay? And the other guys say, yeah, of course it could.

And then they say, but wouldn't it then be grasping on simultaneously to a subtle self-nature of the state of mind that's looking at empty space at the same time? You see what I mean? So, not only would it be focusing, if what you say is true, and if we have to lump these two together, empty space and the state of mind which perceives empty space, then when a state of mind comes along which misunderstands the nature of empty space, and thinks it sees some subtle self-nature to empty space, isn't it actually seeing a subtle self-nature to the state of mind which is perceiving empty space? Okay, and then you have a problem there.

So, it's not the state of mind which is holding empty space to be self-existent, it's actually also focusing on the state of mind which is focused on empty space, and holding that to have some self-existent nature. So you have a problem there, because actually it's not holding on to the subtle self-nature, quote, self-nature of empty space, it's actually grasping on to the subtle self-nature of the state of mind which is focusing on empty space, and there you have a problem, because those are actually two different so-called subtle self-natures. So, that's a problem with your presentation, says the second group of thinkers, to the first group of thinkers.

This is getting a little complicated, isn't it? I'll give you an example. This guy's kind of big and complicated, we'll try to make it smaller and more simple, okay?

So, you know about water pictures, you know, think about a water picture. And when you say, when someone comes along and decides about a water picture, oh, water pictures are impermanent, water pictures are changing things, constantly changing things, then what does that do to the state of mind which focuses on a water picture and says, this is an unchanging thing, or it doesn't change instant by instant, okay? There is a state of mind which looks at a water picture and says about it, this thing is not changing instant by instant.

But then when someone comes along and says, hey, water pictures are changing instant by instant, what does that do to the state of mind which was thinking this thing is not changing instant by instant? It damages it. You could say it conversely, which is that, if you focused on the state of mind which believes that a water picture is unchanging, and if you were able to stop it from thinking of it that way, then in a sense it would become a state of mind that was thinking that it was changing all the time, okay?

So, you could do it conversely. You could take the state of mind which is holding the water picture to be unchanging, and if you could sort of reverse it, or stop it, or stop that state of mind, then you could come to the conclusion that the water picture is something which is changing. You guys all know and you're all sensitive to the fact that a water picture is something that is changing moment by moment, okay?

But if you had a state of mind which was holding it and thinking about a water picture in such a way as to say, this thing is not changing moment by moment, now if you could cancel that state of mind, what would result? You'd have a state of mind which was sure that the thing was changing moment by moment. So, if you took the state of mind which thought that a water picture was not changing, it was like believing that a water picture was not changing moment by moment, if you destroyed it, then what would you come out with?

You'd come out with a state of mind that held that the water picture was changing moment by moment. Got that? Clear?

Okay? Now, think about a water picture. A water picture is something which is changing moment by moment.

A water picture is something which is not changing moment by moment. A water picture is something which is not changing moment by moment. A water picture is something which is not changing moment by moment.

A water picture is something which is not changing moment by moment. A water picture is something which is not changing moment by moment. A water picture is something which is not changing moment by moment.

Now, think about the Pramana or the Tsema or the correct perception which is holding, it's just perceiving a water picture, okay? There's a water picture and here's a correct perception of the water picture. If you come along and Okay, got a picture, got a water picture, have a pramana or a tsema or a correct perception which is seeing the water picture, that's all, okay, but if you don't focus on the picture but rather you focus on the perception of the picture, right, and you're thinking about and you have a wrong idea about the perception of the picture, you're saying, I think perceptions of pictures are unchanging things, okay, so now you're focusing on the perception of the picture, not the picture, this is a correct perception of the picture, of the water picture, and you're looking at the perception of the water picture and you're saying, I think this is an unchanging thing, wrongly you are thinking that. Now question for you, are you thereby thinking about the water picture itself as an unchanging thing?

This is just an illustration, this is a good illustration, there is a quality to the perception of the water picture which is that it is a changing thing, consider its changing quality. Now consider the changing quality of the picture, are those two the same thing or not? Yes, they are the same thing, they are the same thing, they are the same thing, they are the same thing, they are the same thing, they are the same thing, they are the same thing, they are the same thing, they are the same thing, they are the same thing, they are the same thing, they are the same thing, they are the same thing, they are the same thing, they are the same thing, they are the same thing, they are the same thing, they are the same thing, they are the same thing, they are the same thing, they are the same thing, they are the same thing, they are the same thing, they are the same thing.

Take the same example and you'll be able to understand more clearly what we are talking about when the one group of thinkers complains about the first group of thinkers, right? Because the second group of thinkers says to the first group of thinkers, then what What you're saying, in essence, is that when there's a state of mind which misunderstands space itself, when there's a state of mind which believes wrongly that it sees a subtle self-nature to space itself, then that same state of mind is misunderstanding the perception of empty space, and holding that the perception of empty space has a subtle nature of having a self itself also. It's exactly the same example. What you're saying then is that the same state of mind which misunderstands the object is thereby misunderstanding the subject, because you said they had to be lumped together.

So that's exactly the same example, exactly the same problem. So the first group of thinkers makes this very nice reputation of the second group of thinkers. That's what we mean.

So what do you guys think? I'm sorry, when the second group of thinkers goes to the first group of thinkers and says, �Look, you have a problem. You're lumping these two things together.

And by lumping these two things together, you incur a new problem. What's that problem? There's a state of mind which holds that space has a subtle self-nature.

And then there's another state of mind that holds that the perception of space has a subtle self-nature. And you're saying that the state of mind which holds that space has a subtle self-nature then is automatically holding that the state of mind which is holding on to space has its own subtle self-nature. In a sense, you're lumping them together and saying that the misperception that they have a subtle self-nature is thinking that about both of them.

Now, do you guys think that's That is a problem. I mean, some people say that. He says, �Some people say that by establishing, what you're really only doing is establishing the emptiness or the totality of the perception of empty space, and you are not really establishing the totality of empty space got to get a dependent thing in here somehow.

And so, what do you want us to do? We have to find a dependent thing to come up with in order to describe the totality of empty space, and that's what we came up with. So, what do you want us to do?

We've got to find a dependent thing to come up with in order to describe the totality of empty space, and that's what we came up with. And so, what do you want us to do? We've got to find a dependent thing to come up with in order to describe the totality of empty space, and that's what we came up with.

In Tibetan, there's an example that's used to describe how the first group of thinkers is complaining about the second group of thinkers. And you could say that the first group of thinkers are saying, you know, you just like that story about the guy who was sick, okay, there was some guy lying in bed and he was sick, and he's sick in a room like this, and the room has two doors, one to the west, one to the east, okay, an eastern opening to the room and a western opening to the room. And then this guy sitting on the bed calls his lama, you know, and he's like a layman, right, and he calls his lama and he says, could you please, you know, use your supernatural powers and figure out how come I'm sick, you know, and the lama does this thing and says, oh, you know, there's a harmful spirit, what we call an illness spirit in Tibetan.

And he's hanging around the eastern door here, he's been coming in the eastern door and he lives out there, outside the east door, and he keeps coming in and causing you to be sick and to be ill. So you have to do what's called, there's some kind of like a trauma offering to the spirit, which is called a ransom, okay, it's like, it's called, the name of it is a ransom. So you should put together one of these little ransom offerings and go stick it outside the east door and take care of it, you know, he'll take the ransom offering and you'll get better.

So the guy who's sick, you know, he orders somebody to make this offering, and then instead of taking the trauma out to the east door, they go and put it in the wrong door, they go and stick it outside the west side door. And so the seekers who are complaining about the seekers who want to lump together space and the perception space say, you're just like that guy, you know, you're going the wrong way, you know, you're taking your solution and putting it in the wrong, your solution is a misapplied, okay, it's a misapplication, it's not a good solution. The point here is that the one group of thinkers is going to criticize the other group of thinkers, and he says, you don't have to think of it in terms of sickness and ransoms and all that, think of it in terms of a thief that keeps breaking into your house.

He's always breaking into the eastern door and he's never coming to the west door. So instead of locking this door and making it tight, you go to the west door and make sure you have lots of locks on that door, you can think of it that way. So the first group of thinkers is going to the other group of thinkers and saying, in fact it sounds now almost like he's talking about a third group of thinkers, but anyway, some group of thinkers is complaining about the second group of thinkers and here it is on page 92 is where they issue their complaint.

... ... ...

...

[Говорящий 2]
...

[Говорящий 1]
Here, Je Tsongkapa has made a statement on page 92, fifth line from the bottom, where it says, de na jikten na, and other thinkers have come along and said, this supports the view of the first group of thinkers who criticize the second group of thinkers, because Je Tsongkapa here, these lines by Je Tsongkapa support the idea, support the first group of thinkers when they criticize the second group of thinkers, because in these lines Je Tsongkapa says, therefore, even in everyday worldly activities, if somebody comes along and tells you to put the peace offering at the east door, and you put the peace offering at the west door, that's the expression in Tibetan, and they're saying, you shouldn't do like that, rather you should go to find what it is that people tend to think is self-existent, and that is dependent things. So you should go to dependent things, don't go grouping things together, go to dependent things themselves, which are the things that people often take to be self-existent, and prove, go about establishing emptiness with regard to those changing things. Now that's what Je Tsongkapa says, and he says any other way of identifying what emptiness is, or totality is, will not be of benefit in damaging the tendency to hold things as self-existent.

Now Je Tsongkapa only says that, but this one group of thinkers says, here's the evidence that Je Tsongkapa did not agree with your idea of lumping those two things together. So they say that the meaning of this section here with Je Tsongkapa is that, Je Tsongkapa is saying, look you guys, when you want to establish the emptiness or the totality of an unchanging thing like empty space, don't go try to establish the emptiness or totality of some other thing, meaning the perception of empty space. So go ahead and try to establish it with regard to an unchanging thing, don't go try to throw in an extra changing thing, and try to establish totality or emptiness with regard to the changing thing.

Go ahead on the basis of the unchanging thing alone, and try to establish the totality or emptiness of that. Don't go bringing in another thing which is changing in order to establish this. So wouldn't you agree that if we really look at this quotation, this particular section of Je Tsongkapa's text, that he seems to be saying, look, the totality or the emptiness of empty space, which is an unchanging thing, unproduced thing, and then the totality or emptiness of the produced thing, which is the perception which is holding on to empty space, the perception of empty space, don't you have to agree that they are different things, they are different emptinesses, these are two different emptinesses, and doesn't it, in light of this particular section of Je Tsongkapa's text, become a little bit uncomfortable to say that the emptiness of the perception of space is the same as the emptiness of space itself.

Doesn't it become sort of weird to try to establish the emptiness of space by throwing in the emptiness of the perception of space. Don't you agree, in light of these words? Da guna ne, da guna ne.

That's me Deva Dosa. Now you have a new philosophical problem. Now you have a new issue arising.

In the earlier part of the text, Je Tsongkapa is going to great lengths, three, four, even five times, to point out that the basis for establishing emptiness, the most convenient basis, the correct basis, is changing things, things which are dependent. He goes through that, he goes through three, four, five sections, he keeps bringing it up, he keeps revisiting it, he keeps talking about it, and now he gets down here on page 92 and starts to say, no, no, no, when you're establishing the emptiness of empty space, of space itself, don't go throwing in those changing things. We're talking about unchanging things.

You don't have to go bringing up those changing things to establish emptiness with regard to an unchanging thing, an unproduced thing. So now we have a new philosophical problem. Je Tsongkapa is seeming to say one thing in the beginning section, now saying a different thing in the second section, and now you have new schools of thinkers growing up around this issue.

So you really now have a clear expression of the two different schools of thought, the original two schools of thought, okay? The first thinkers coming along, and Utpune, right? They're coming along out of desperation, or just demanding or insisting that given all what Je Tsongkapa said before, there must be some kind of changing thing that we can throw in here when we want to establish the emptiness of empty space, of space itself, okay?

So there's this first school, given everything that Je Tsongkapa says, they are desperately trying to insert some kind of changing thing. And then you have the second school saying, look, Je Tsongkapa said himself, you know, each different thing in the world, each different object in the world, be it changing, unchanging, produced, unproduced, each different object in the world has its own emptiness. Each different object in the world can be established as having its own totality in and of itself.

You don't have to go lumping other things with it, you know. We should be able to establish with regard to every object in the world, its particular yongdru, its particular totality or emptiness. Those are the two schools.

Okay. On this single issue, we've just about blown our two hours, haven't we, so far? Today it's been a big hassle, a big lot of issue.

This one issue has been very consuming and almost used up our period, didn't it? That's...okay. Okay. I'm just turning off.

For purposes of illustration only, okay? Don't forget you're a mind-only school. But for purposes of illustration only, we will open up this door of Madhyamika.

Because I know you've had some teachings on Madhyamika, and I know that you're more familiar, actually, with Madhyamika. So for purposes of illustration only, we will allow you to slip back to that door there. Now, when you're thinking about establishing the emptiness of a water pitcher, okay?

When you're thinking about a water pitcher and trying to figure out what it means for a water pitcher to be empty, then you sit there hour after hour thinking about water pitchers, thinking about its emptiness, thinking about why it's empty, thinking about how it's empty. It's a sort of a positive state of mind, right? Trying to figure something out about a water pitcher.

But if you truly think about it, isn't it really that you are undertaking the task of removing a mistaken state of mind, you see? It's not so much that you are sitting there thinking about, in positive terms, oh, this is what the emptiness of a water pitcher would be, this is what it would be. Actually, the task you're undertaking at that moment is to destroy, or to stop, a state of mind which does believe that the water pitcher is not empty, isn't it?

What? I'm asking a question about the water pitcher. I'm asking a question about the water pitcher.

What kind of mistaken idea do you think you are trying to stop at that point? How would you characterize that mistaken idea? What is that mistaken idea?

I think it's the thought of the water pitcher. I think it's the thought of the water pitcher. The thought of the water pitcher.

But you become a fool and you think, I don't want to hear this, I don't want to hear this. Oh boy, here we go. When you are sitting there and focusing on the picture and thinking of reasons why it's not self-existent, right?

Your main task that you're undertaking is to remove or to stop or prevent that state of mind which holds the base to be self-existent, okay? And when you manage to damage or destroy the idea that the water picture itself is self-existent, are you in any way damaging the idea that the state of mind which is holding the water picture is itself self-existent? I don't think so.

I don't think so at all. I think I don't think so at all. I don't think so.

And when you were sitting there working very hard on trying to understand the emptiness of the water picture, was it your intention, you know, when you sat down to do that job and started to consider very carefully the emptiness of the water picture, was it your idea, I'm going to try to stop the state of mind that holds the water picture to be self-existent? Or were you thinking, I want to stop the state of mind that holds the water picture to be self-existent? Now which one was it?

[Говорящий 2]
First one.

[Говорящий 1]
Take that illustration from the middle way school, middle way thinking. Now grab that illustration, come back to the mind-only school. Now in the mind-only school, when you were focusing on empty space, and when you were attempting to establish its yongdrup, or its emptiness, in order to remove your tendency to think that it had some self-existence, in order to remove that tendency, and you were trying to establish the emptiness of empty space, were you, at that time, trying very hard, directly, were you attempting to prevent the state of mind that focused on the perception of empty space, and were you trying to remove the state of mind that focused on that perception of empty space, and thought of it as being self-existent? Were you doing that? Bring the same reason here, I'll restate it.

I'll say it again. When you were trying to stop the state of mind that thought that space was self-existent, were you, at that time, directly trying to stop the state of mind that thought the perception of empty space was self-existent? No.

That's exactly the complaint they have for them. Hey, look, we were not trying to establish, we were not trying to prevent the state of mind that was focusing on the perception of empty space, and thought it was self-existent in a subtle way. We were trying to stop the state of mind that was focusing on empty space, and thinking it was self-existent in some subtle way.

And that's exactly the same thing. The illustration holds. The first group of thinkers is criticizing the second group of thinkers in exactly that way.

What did they do? What did they do? Now they're going to continue, continue, continue.

No, it depends. I guess it's just a big waste of time, everything we did today, and I don't know if it will help you anything that much, but, you know, you know, we had to do it, and you know... I know it didn't help much.

It's probably just a big waste of time.

[Говорящий 2]
Thank you.

[Говорящий 1]
This exact argument, these exact points, are going to appear on page 25. That's why he's been doing it. Now he's going back to the text.

How? How?

[Говорящий 2]
How?

[Говорящий 1]
How? How? How?

How? How? How?

How? How? How?

How? How? How?

Then he says... So now the text says, you have to talk about the object... the object which is being labeled, right?

The object that we're thinking about, with context, right? With constructs. in the same way with the truth of suffering as as we did before okay so as we did before you have to find the thing it is that we're focusing on to establish so for example the three groups okay so there are two ways of thinking about this you know some people say when he said as before he was talking about the Gnashin Seyadey chikdi la kyepo sum le ja re.

Page 25, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 lines from the bottom. I lost it okay. Page 25, eighth line from the bottom, it says you have to talk about, you have to establish the object that we're discussing the object that we're focusing on when we establish the three groups especially emptiness for example in the way that we did it before when you talk about the noble the Arya truth of suffering then you have to establish the the thing that you use to establish the three groups in the same way as before and now there are two different takes on that word as we did before okay there are two different takes on it some people say that it refers to the idea that it refers back to the three features of dependent things remember that it was the arena that was the thing getting labeled and that it was growing from its cosmic condition and some people say this as it was before is referring to the fact that whatever you take as the object to discuss its emptiness you have to go back to those three characteristics before that we mentioned when we talked about dependent things dependent things that's one take on this phrase here when it says you have to go back and think about the thing which you're trying to establish as empty or trying to establish as having those three groups apply to it in the same way as we did before some people say that means go back to the three features and establish that it through those three features but other people have come along and said no no that's not what it means that's not what as before means when you're talking about figuring out the thing it is that you're trying to establish has those three groups okay they say remember before when they were trying to they were establishing the three groups with regard to physical matter physical objects your physical body the first of the five heaps in that case when they had to talk about the three groups with the four about the five heaps they took the five heaps as the object and then discuss the three groups with relation to them they tried to establish how the three groups applied to the object that they were talking about and now now that you've gotten to the first truth of the first truth the truth truth of suffering the point here is that when you're talking about the three groups about the three truth about the first truth of suffering you take that same thing as the object of your discussion and you look at you look about the three what it means as before means now switch to the new object and discuss the three attributes with regard to that object and that's what it means to do it as we did before so as we did before it's taken in two ways one is got to go back to the three features of Shen one the other is the point when they say as before that what they're saying is that take that same object and look at it as as to whether or not it has the three attributes as before we took the the heap of physical matter now it's your under the first noble truth is first are you truth take the first are your truth is what you're going to talk about and that's what it means when he says do it as before that whole thing today was it was a what do you call it tangent right I mean we went back out to the previous part of text we started there we went on this whole issue about this pieces now you can start a new now just go down to the very bottom of your notes you know and we're going on to a new subject okay so don't get your notes messed up don't get your notes confused now go down to the next fresh page open page and we are about to continue on in our discussion after having made this huge detour okay now we're back to the original and now to keep your notes straight please go back to the to fresh paper okay go down to fresh paper come to think of it you might want to go back and see if we left out any if we left any empty space if I told you leave in this empty space back around pages 30 and 31 especially 31 like in the area did we go did we jump ahead to 33 what seems to me we've been over this part before and I wonder if there's you have anything in your notes that says go up to page 30 31 and take this from page from the area around 30 31 I think I might have inserted something from down here when we talked about the first and second turning of the wheels being something that had something better than that that had an opening that had that were figurative and that had a point of dispute about them do you remember that was it when I was discussing the first returning of the wheel in that light did I skip up to page 30 31 and insert something or throw something in from things to me that we that we did discuss the the opposites of the of the first to the characterization of the first two and then we spent four or five lives discussing the opposites of those characterizations didn't we just before as Christie says we got to the names of the of the three wheels or something like that that's where we'll pick up I think he's saying that's what we'll pick up later okay on the next it's not clear to me whether my whole discussion with you this morning has made your brains frozen or superheated possible that some people's brains were overheated possible that some people's brains froze