Углублённый курс ACI 04 — Искусство толкования, часть 1 (1998, Билакуппе, Индия), занятие 22

[Говорящий 2]
What's the connection between Zen and Manjushri's Zen teachings? The Zen teachings of Manjushri are purely non-verbal. There's no connection between Zen and Manjushri's Zen teachings.

The Zen teachings of Manjushri are not available in the realm of Zen, but the Zen teachings of Manjushri are available in the realm of Zen. and the Zen teachings of Manjushri are also found in the world of the Great Patimokkha.

[Говорящий 1]
Just to recap for you, you don't have to write it. You can take a break from writing. Remember that the Mind-Only School came up and said all these things, especially dependent things are what we would call exist, they exist ultimately.

And the Mind-Only School didn't make any distinction between existing ultimately and ultimate truth, ultimate reality, okay? So they didn't make any distinction at all. Then somebody else came along and said, well, how can it be that changing things exist ultimately?

Because really it's all these unchanging things that exist ultimately. Confusing the issue between ultimately and ultimate reality, okay? And then they gave five different quotations to say to the Mind-Only School, you know, all these books say pretty much that if you're going to be an ultimate thing, you must be an unchanging thing.

Because these quotations are all like stressing that if something has come from its causes and conditions, it cannot be ultimate, the ultimate, and they're kind of fudging the difference between ultimate reality and existing ultimately, okay? And then somebody comes along, the Mind-Only School responds, and then there's a clarification by Jetsun Kappa saying, look, there's two ways of describing what it is to be ultimate. You know, there's two ways.

There's the first system of describing what it is, and then there's a second system of describing what it is to be ultimate. And then, by the way, there's also two systems of describing what it is to be deceptive or what it is to be nominal. So we finished all that the other day.

That was a recap of how the exchange had been going. We said there were five different scriptural references that these guys came up and laid on the Mind-Only School to indicate that only unchanging things were ultimate, right? And then on page 52, second line from the bottom, they're talking about ultimate reality having five different characteristics.

And Geshe-la says, we'll go back to page 52. You know, we've covered these five already, but I thought I just might go through them again for you to make sure that you have them firmly in your mind. So those are the five characteristics of ultimate reality, which are not the same as the five quotations that have been pulled out.

It's only one of those quotations. It's the one from the Jewel of the Sutras, the Sutralamkara, I believe it is. And the first of the five, we already had it yesterday.

We had a version of it. Now different thinkers have different ways of explaining this. But generally speaking, when we say it doesn't exist, even as one of the five characteristics, we're going to be saying it doesn't exist with its emptiness as one inseparable object.

They are separate things. The emptiness that pertains to something and the thing which the emptiness pertains to, these two things are not one solid thing. They are separate.

We wrote that down yesterday. We had it in that quotation from the Sutralamkara where he said, it's not true that things exist, it's not true that things don't exist, and it's not true that, okay? If you go back to that part yesterday, it might be more convenient, okay?

So, it's where they were talking about how the emptiness of a thing and the thing itself are not one thing, and then it was not that they are not related intimately and things are not one thing, and then it was not that they are not related intimately, and so on and so forth, and so forth, and so on, and so forth, and so on, and so forth, and so on, and so forth, and so on, and so forth, and so on, and so forth, and so on, and so forth, and so forth, and so on, and so forth, and so forth, and so on, and so forth, and so forth, and so forth, and so forth, and so forth, and so forth, and so forth, and so forth, and so forth, and so forth, and so forth, and so forth, and so forth, and so forth, and so forth, and so forth, and so forth, and so forth, and so forth, and so forth, and so forth, and so forth, and so forth, and so forth, and so forth, and so forth, and so forth, and so forth, and so forth, and so forth, and so forth,

[Говорящий 2]
and so forth, and so forth.

[Говорящий 1]
We had the first one already yesterday. If you stick them both together from the quotation, the first two from the quotation and say, that quality which is the quality of not being existing, and not being nonexistent, what it means is, it doesn't have a quality of existing as... But the emptiness and the thing that the emptiness pertains to are not one inseparable thing, but neither are they unrelated in the sense of means if you remove one, you must remove the other.

If you remove the thing that has the emptiness, its emptiness must go away also. So it's not that they are in one object, they are separate objects. They don't exist in that sense.

And it's not that they don't exist in the sense that they don't exist as things which are inseparably related, meaning if you move one, you remove the other. That's the first of the five characteristics, okay? There's another take on this expression, it is not something which exists, okay?

The first half of the characteristic that we just finished, there's another take on it. Some thinkers say, you know what it means? It's referring to totality, to the idea of emptiness according to the Mahayana school.

And what it's referring to is, totality is not something which exists in the way or with the nature of constructs, neither does it exist in the nature of dependent things, okay? So it neither has the nature of constructs nor does it have the nature of dependent things, meaning it doesn't have the nature, we're talking about emptiness itself, right? Totality.

Totality doesn't have the nature of constructs insofar as it is not simply a creation of the mind. It is not simply a projection of the mind, in this school, right? In the mind-only school.

Secondly, it does not have the nature of dependent things because it does not come from its causes and its conditions. Therefore we can say that when the text says, it is not something which exists, it's talking about totality from the point of view of the mind-only school, saying it does not exist in the way or with the nature that the other two groups of the mind-only school exist. And then the me-min, right, the second half of that characteristic which says, it is not something which doesn't exist, right?

It's to say, it is not something which doesn't exist as anything other than the simple absence of the thing which emptiness denies. It is not anything which doesn't exist as anything other than the simple absence of what emptiness denies. Totality.

Emptiness itself. Ready? One more time.

It is not anything other than the simple absence of a self-existing thing, basically, or the thing that emptiness denies. And that's what the, it is not something which doesn't exist, means. Got it?

That's a little greasy, okay? Nothing else. Nothing.

And you can take all of these, you know, these yu-min, me-min, I mean, nyi-ga-ma-yi. Na-ne, na-ne, na-ne. Na-sa, na-sa.

So if you think about it, there's not only just two distinctions here, you know, it is not something which does exist and it is not something which doesn't exist. Actually you're saying, it is not something which does exist in the way that dependent things and constructs exist, neither is it something that doesn't exist as anything other than the simple absence of the gaccha, right? Of the thing that emptiness denies.

So really you have three different qualities, or three different qualities described in these two different qualities which are actually one quality of the five, okay? So three becomes two becomes one, okay?

[Говорящий 2]
Okay.

[Говорящий 1]
Na-ne, na-ne, na-ne, na-ne, na-ne, na-ne, na-ne, na-ne, na-ne, na-ne, na-ne, na-ne, na-ne, na-ne, na-ne, na-ne, na-ne, na-ne, na-ne, na-ne, na-ne, na-ne, na-ne, na-ne, na-ne, na-ne, na-ne, na-ne, na-ne, na-ne, na-ne, na-ne, na-ne, na-ne, na-ne, na-ne, na-ne, na-ne, na-ne, na-ne, na-ne, na-ne, na-ne, na-ne, na-ne, na-ne, na-ne, na-ne, na-ne, na-ne, na-ne, na-ne. The root text here, the sutra I'm going to call out says, de shin min shin min, which means, And just so, it is not something other, some other kind of not, okay? Similarly, it is not some other kind of not, all right?

Okay? Now what that means, as Geshe-la is referring, this is a reference to the second of the five characteristics as we presented them way back when, okay? Remember it was five characteristics of ultimate reality or totality in this system, okay?

And what that refers to is, we call it the absence of one and separateness, okay? The absence of chittantare nimbarwa, chittantare mayimbarwa, which means the absence of oneness and separateness, okay? Absence of oneness refers to what we said the other day.

They are not just one, that's too short, chittantare mayimbarwa, means chittantare yin, nabhar, nabhar, nabhar, nabhar, nabhar, nabhar, nabhar, okay. Actually the wording is, it is not a not of oneness and separateness, okay? So, meaning it is a oneness and a separateness, okay?

So, de shin min, de shin... de shin min shin min means, it is also not another kind of notness, okay? And what that refers to is the quality of emptiness that it is one and many, okay?

One and separate. One and separate things. One thing and separate things.

Now that's a code word. The second characteristic is called being one and being separate. Being one thing and being separate things.

Then again, one thing means—back again, it's the reverse of what we had before— one thing means that the thing which possesses the emptiness and its emptiness have an inseparable relationship. If you remove one, then you remove the other. That's called lovaciki relationship.

Then when you say it's not separate—I'm sorry, it is separate—that means they are not just one clump of stuff. They are different identities. They have different identities.

In Tibetan, the word identity is very, very touchy. But anyway, they do have separate identities. They are not one and the same object.

They have separate identities. What? The thing which has the emptiness and the emptiness which the thing has.

But they are also one in the sense of being an inseparable pair. That if you remove one, you remove the other. So that's the meaning of the second characteristic which is called it is one and it is separate things.

It is one thing and it is separate things, meaning emptiness. Nothing else. So anyway, we'll give it a name of saying ciktaṃ tāde nyiṃ vṛttiṇi.

The second characteristic we'll call the characteristic of being both one thing and separate thing.

[Говорящий 2]
Ciktaṃ tāde nyiṃ vṛttiṇi. Tāde nyiṃ vṛttiṇi. Nāzār-lākṣa.

Ciktaṃ tāde nyiṃ vṛttiṇi.

[Говорящий 1]
When we say here one thing and many things, you guys, of course, are not thinking in general terms what it means to be one thing and many things. Now you know it means referring to the thing which has the emptiness and the emptiness which the thing has. Changing the name.

Changing name. Nothing. I gave you the next one yesterday when we went over the quotation from the Jewel of the Sutra.

It's called the Genji Mebitseni. The quality that totality has, that it doesn't exhibit any growing or stopping. It's unchanging.

So it neither grows nor stops.

[Говорящий 2]
It's unchanging, it's constant.

[Говорящий 1]
The next one, the next characteristic, which is what, number four, is that emptiness or totality does not exhibit any increase or decrease. Geshe-la says, remember the example we talked about yesterday. As your knowledge gets more and more, does the emptiness of that knowledge get fatter and fatter or something like that?

No. If your knowledge were to get less and less, would the emptiness of that knowledge somehow get skinnier and skinnier or something like that? No.

It's either empty or it's not empty. It can't be empty by degrees or in degrees. There's no degrees to emptiness.

[Говорящий 2]
Either something is purely empty or it's purely The fifth one is called, that thing which is, the fifth quality of totality is that it is neither pure nor is it going to be pure.

[Говорящий 1]
It is neither pure nor is it going to be pure. And there are two ways of interpreting this. The first way is that when you say it is not pure, it means at our stage as sentient beings.

Sentient being in Tibetan being a code word for non-Buddha. So, at our stage as sentient beings, we have certain obstacles which are preventing us from seeing emptiness directly. The problem of non-enlightened beings is that they can't be in a state of seeing emptiness all the time.

So, in that sense, we have these obstacles. We call them removable obstacles, or what do you call it? They are...adventitious is too long. They are like temporary obstacles or something like that. They are come and go obstacles. I mean, they are obstacles that are changeable or something like that.

They are temporal obstacles or something like that. Anyway, they're going to come and they're going to go. So, emptiness for us, we are in a state of non-purity of those obstacles, meaning we haven't removed those obstacles which are not part of nature itself.

What would you call that? Obstacles which are not part of your very nature, you see what I mean? Meaning they are removable or they are changeable or something like that.

Anyway, we have those kinds of obstacles. At this point, we do. Then later, they will change.

When you become an enlightened being, you don't have those kind of obstacles and they'll become for you something that you are pure of. So, those obstacles are something that right now you don't have a purity of, and later you will have a purity of, but still they won't be self-existent. So, they're called not something which you will have purity of or something like that.

You have a purity of them now. You don't have purity of them now in one sense. You will not have a purity of them later, meaning you will be able to get rid of them later.

I have to ask you a question about that. The second one for me is easier. Some other thinkers express it in a different way.

They say the characteristic of totality is that it doesn't have any purity now and it won't have any purity later. Meaning, I'm sorry, the actual wording in Tibetan is, it doesn't have any purity now and will not have any purity. And what they say it means is that the first one refers to the obstacles that we have now that are removable.

Removable obstacles. Obstacles that come and go. That means at our level, that's referring to obstacles that you can get rid of.

So, it's a quality of emptiness that it doesn't have purity, meaning right now we don't have the capacity to, we still have those obstacles, those temporary obstacles. Then there's what we call an innate purity, which means emptiness itself. There's something that we call an innate purity.

The Buddha nature, when we talk about the Buddha, there are two kinds of purity that the Buddha has. One is a kind of purity that they have achieved by removing those temporary obstacles. One is a kind of purity that they've always had and always will have, which is their emptiness.

So you can say, the first kind of obstacles which prevent us from seeing emptiness and which are changeable, we can describe as, they are not pure. We are not pure of them. We haven't purified ourselves of them.

And then the second one, those are a kind of purity that you can't achieve, a purity that you cannot achieve, meaning you've always had that purity. So that's what some thinkers say, what it means when you say about emptiness, that it is neither purity nor something that will be pure. Right now you are not pure of those temporary obstacles, the first half, and you never could be free.

The second is a purity that is not such that it will happen, because it's always been there. The purity that won't happen, meaning the purity that's always been there. So that's the way some thinkers describe it.

DGOS PA TSUD YOD RGYAS NGES RANG BZHIN GYIS LUS SUN YID DGOS PA TSUD YOD RGYAS NGES RANG BZHIN GYIS LUS SUN YID DGOS PA TSUD YOD RGYAS NGES RANG BZHIN GYIS LUS SUN YID DGOS PA TSUD YOD RGYAS NGES RANG BZHIN GYIS LUS SUN YID DGOS PA TSUD YOD RGYAS NGES

[Говорящий 2]
RANG BZHIN GYIS LUS SUN YID DGOS PA TSUD YOD RGYAS NGES RANG BZHIN GYIS RUS SUN YID

[Говорящий 1]
He just repeats the second one, the idea that you will never achieve purity, a natural purity. Because you've always had that purity, it's not something you can achieve. So he's more tending towards what I described as a second interpretation.

You are now not free of those temporary impurities which prevent you from seeing emptiness, and you will never be free of any other kind of obstacles to your natural purity, because they never happened anyway. You've always had natural purity. Those two, like that.

So, emptiness can be described as a lack of purity, and a lack of purity to come. He says, Kristi's head is expanding a little bit, so he'll try to clarify it a bit.

[Говорящий 2]
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes,

[Говорящий 1]
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes

[Говорящий 2]
ok, setava headset

[Говорящий 1]
headset eh okay, if you have a cloth and using the cloth to clean something up, like something greasy and you get a sort of grease stain on the cloth ok, and so now we can say this cloth is stained with some kind of grease stain, ok eh and if that stain were something that were inherent in the cause of the cloth in the material that you use to make the cloth. If that stain were part and parcel of the material that you use to make the cloth, and then you went and cleaned the stain, what would happen to the cloth?

If you remove the stain, what would happen to the cloth?

[Говорящий 2]
That's all, that's all.

[Говорящий 1]
That's all. And the point here in the second half of the description is that emptiness itself doesn't have any kind of what you would call natural obstacles applying to it. Because if it did from the beginning have some kind of natural obstacles applying to it, and you remove those obstacles, then you'd be removing the emptiness.

So it's like that. So the second half of that is to say, meaning there will be no purity to come, or there will be no purity later or something like that. There is no purity to come means it doesn't have any, it is naturally pure.

From that sense, emptiness itself is naturally pure. That's not a purity that you can impart to it later or something like that. And it's not a purity which results from removing some kind of obstacle that was inherent in emptiness from the beginning.

When we talk about emptiness here in the fifth description of emptiness, Geshe-la says it'll help you more to understand the point. He says, you know, I tend to go on. You get me on to a subject, I keep going on it.

Sorry. We'll go ahead with this subject. We'll go a little more on this subject.

When we talk about emptiness in terms of the fifth description, we're not talking about emptiness in general. We're talking about specifically the emptiness of any particular person's mind. We're talking about the emptiness of your mind.

And that emptiness has a relationship with the mind, and in another way it doesn't have a relationship with the mind. For example, if the mind is stained with a temporary impurity or a temporary obstacle, meaning a mental affliction. Suppose you get angry or you get jealous or you want something very bad or something like that in a wrong way.

As those mental afflictions begin to stain the mind in the way that the spot stained the cloth, does it also stain the emptiness of the mind? Does it also dirty the emptiness of the mind? Is it that there is some kind of obstacle or impurity has infected the emptiness of the mind?

He says, no. That emptiness is naturally pure. That emptiness never had impurity and will not have impurity.

And that's how you can think of it here. Emptiness, especially the emptiness of the mind, is such that it never did have any impurity of the mental afflictions. When you get mad, the emptiness of your mind doesn't get mad.

When you get jealous, the emptiness of your mind doesn't get jealous. Those impurities are something that don't infect the natural purity of the mind. So it's the same example here.

When you think of the cloth, if the impurity that stained the cloth later were an impurity that was inherent in the material that makes the cloth, then when you purified yourself and you removed those stains, the cloth itself would be removed. You'd have to be getting rid of the cloth. You'd have to be removing the cloth itself.

And if those stains were inherent in the emptiness of the mind, then somehow, if you purified yourself and became enlightened, then the emptiness of your mind would disappear, something like that. So we have to distinguish between natural purity of that emptiness and the achieved purity of the mind that you get by removing those obstacles which are temporary, which are not inherent. So an example now of when you talk about the cloth getting dirty or a spot forming on the cloth, it's not as if the spot were there when the cloth was made, right?

The cloth was made and you brought the cloth in the room and there was a spill on the table and you used the cloth to remove the spill. Then the stain got on the cloth and later on if you work on it and you wash it, you can remove it. This is a sign that those stains can be described with the Tibetan word loburwa.

Loburwa means what I've been struggling with, you know, something that's temporary or comes and goes. And he says, what does loburwa mean? It means this.

It means it wasn't in the cloth in the first place. Later on, certain circumstances occurred, certain things happened, and the stain entered the cloth. And if you washed it hard and if you worked on it, that stain could be removed from the cloth.

That's a sign that that stain is what we call loburwa in Tibetan. Sometimes it's there, sometimes it's not there. And that's what we mean when we say, how about temporary, or something like that.

So something that is not part and parcel of the cloth, it is something that came later. It's not part of the identity of the cloth. It's something that was added later and can be removed later by the proper antidotes.

And that's the description of those kinds of what we call temporary obstacles.

[Говорящий 2]
In the past, when I was a kid, I used to go to school. I used to go to school. I used to go to school.

I used to go to school. I used to go to school. I used to go to school.

[Говорящий 1]
I used to go to school. I used to go to school. I used to go to school.

When we say, there's an expression in Tibetan, covered by temporary obstacles, covered by temporary blocks, hidden by temporary blocks or something like that. So I don't want you to think that emptiness has a skin on it. Like here's emptiness and here's this physical skin over it, and you can't see the emptiness because emptiness itself has some kind of skin on it, and that's like those temporary obstacles.

What are the temporary obstacles? Things like liking things in the wrong way, disliking things in the wrong way, having ignorance about things. It's not as if those things are covering the emptiness itself.

These are blocks that are in our mind, and these are blocks between our perception of emptiness and emptiness itself. There's a cloak or a curtain between those two, and blocks or these hindrances to seeing emptiness are part of our mind. They're not part of the emptiness, they're part of the mind, and they are occurring between our vision of emptiness and emptiness, and those blocks are created by those mental afflictions.

That's what I mean when we say covered or draped in. The word in Tibetan is like draped with obstacles or something, or draped in obstacles. Don't think draping means that's a part of the emptiness.

That's actually a part of your mind, which is like a curtain between you and the emptiness. Has your head shrunk a bit? Does it get better?

Is it better? Is it all right? Got it?

Hello? Yes. Yes.

Okay. All right. They like it if you respond, okay?

Huh?

[Говорящий 2]
Oh, the very first one of the five?

[Говорящий 1]
Yeah, that's the one we talked about. The object, say a water pitcher and its emptiness, right, are neither one nor separate, meaning they are neither one thing, one object only, nor are they such that they are not connected intimately, so that if you moved one, you'd have to move the other. So they are neither one nor the other.

Was that it? That was the first question. I don't think...

Yeah, I don't think so.

[Говорящий 2]
You were forty-five, right? Forty-five.

[Говорящий 1]
Forty-five.

[Говорящий 2]
How did that move get you here?

[Говорящий 1]
You were forty-five, right? Could you do that? Yes, I can.

Now, if you connect them, the Dapa and the Gyawa are already there. Yes. Yes.

Yes. Yes. Yes.

Yes.

[Говорящий 2]
Yes. Yes.

[Говорящий 1]
Yeah, there are two interpretations. The first one I didn't say very clearly because I didn't get it. Now here's the first one.

The first one is, there is no impurity, sorry, there is no purity and there is no thing which is going to be pure. In this case it means this. At the time of your ascension being, a non-enlightened being, then you have in your mind things which are temporary obstacles.

So in that sense you don't have purity. Of those temporary obstacles. When you reach enlightenment, you do have purity of those temporary obstacles.

So you cannot say about the emptiness when you get enlightened that there is some purity to come because you have already reached that purity of the temporary obstacle. So in that sense the emptiness, and especially the emptiness of your mind, is marked at two different occasions by a lack of purity and by a lack of purity to come because the purity has already come. And that's the first interpretation, which both relate to the temporary obstacles.

And then in the second interpretation, the first one relates to the temporary obstacles, and the second one relates to the non-existence of any inherent obstacle. How's that? Okay, that's decent, that's decent.

Geshe-la says it's basically an issue of past tense and future tense. It's basically an issue of past and future, Dr. Tilton. He says, I'll give you an example.

On the 21st of October, your crew, before you leave the monastery, can be characterized as those ones who are going to go, those ones to be traveling. But then when you get to the outskirts of Bangalore, we can no longer characterize you as those who are going to be traveling, because you will have traveled. He says, to really be accurate here, you'd better pinpoint location.

When you get to Bangalore, you will no longer be a person, you will be then a person who has gone from Sara. You will no longer be a person who is in transit from Sara. You better make it that way.

We can't call you at Bangalore necessarily a person who is no longer the person who is going to be traveling, because you might be traveling on somewhere else. So you have to pinpoint it by position. When you reach the outskirts of Bangalore, you are no longer a person who is going to be traveling from Sara.

But I can't say that you are no longer a person who is going to be traveling, because you might be traveling somewhere else. If at the moment you cross the Bangalore city limit, you were still to be characterized as a person who is to be going from Sara, you would still be sniffling and coughing. You would still be coughing and sniffling with your Sara blessings.

[Говорящий 2]
Just kidding.

[Говорящий 1]
Okay, let's go. Last night we got to kind of a heavy issue at the very end, and I took the can of worms and I screwed the top on and I put it under there and said we're not going to work on that, we'll just bulldoze through it in a rough way and we'll get back to it tomorrow. So now the time has come to open up the can of worms, let a few worms out, and dig into issues.

There are issues about this next section that you cannot leave unresolved. If you did, you wouldn't be covering the book carefully. You have to cover it carefully, you have to dig into the details.

So I'm going to revisit all these issues, and it's going to go slow, because it's a lot of issues and it's a big pain in the butt. It's a lot of detail here, we've got to dig into it.

[Говорящий 2]
So now we're going to go through here.

[Говорящий 1]
Question in Japanese We had this very difficult expression yesterday, page 54, it's on the third line, and then down towards the bottom of the page. And it was the following, you could say, that consciousness which is intimately familiar with expressions. And then you could say, That consciousness which is devoid of any such familiarity with expressions.

And then what Geshe-la said is, the consciousness which has an intimate familiarity with expressions refers to... Remember it referred to imagining blue? As an example, the imagination of blue, like thinking of a blue in your mind.

The mind which constructs the idea of blue and is thinking about a blue. That mind can be described as being intimately familiar with expressions. Expressions here meaning like some kind of mental constructs or labels.

And then later down in the bottom it says, that state of mind or that consciousness which is devoid or free or clear. It uses the word clear, right? That state of consciousness which is clear of any such familiarity, being intimately familiar with expressions.

Meaning the direct perception of blue. A consciousness in which you are directly looking at blue. So there was a distinction made between those two kinds of consciousness.

Now does the mind-only school make that distinction? Is that a distinction that the mind-only school wants to make or what is this? Is this a classical distinction made by the mind-only school or not?

[Говорящий 2]
Yes, I understand.

[Говорящий 1]
My comma... Nothing, nothing. The answer is...

Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing. Better make sure that your notes go down and don't mix this with what we just did, okay? Now he's talking about a different take on these two expressions.

But if you really think about it... Okay, this is a little tough. If you really think about it, the idea...

If you really think about it, the idea of a consciousness which is intimately familiar with... What do we say? With expressions, okay?

Should be in the mind-only school, in the classical purest presentation of the mind-only school, should itself refer to the perception of blue. The sense perception of blue, okay? Now I hope he's going to explain that, all right?

So he says that distinction that was just made can't call it classical mind-only school because if you think about the classical mind-only school, a take on what it means to be intimately familiar with expressions should be just on normal sense consciousnesses. Don't forget to keep this down separately from that last interpretation, okay? Don't mix it up with the last one.

[Говорящий 2]
Okay.

[Говорящий 1]
Okay, that's all. The reason why, now in this new interpretation, okay? You left a space in your notes, right?

In the mind-only school's classical presentation of things, the sense perception of blue... Oh, hey, let's say water pitcher, okay? Let's make it easier, okay?

When you're looking at a water pitcher in this school, that state of consciousness can be described as a state of consciousness which is intimately familiar with expressions, meaning, which is intimately intermixed with bhaksas, mental seeds, okay? The reason it's seeing different things, the reason different things are appearing to that state of consciousness is only because of its intimate mixing or the fact that it's intimately involved with different mental seeds that you've put in your mind earlier. And that's why you're seeing blue and that's why you're seeing a vase is because here expressions is being used in the sense of mental seeds, bhaksas.

So, if we describe your visual consciousness of a water pitcher in the classic presentation of the mind-only school, it should be described as that consciousness which is intimately familiar with expressions, if you take expressions to mean mental seeds or bhaksas, and if you take intimately familiar to mean intimately mixed up or intertwined with those mental seeds, because it's those mental seeds ripening that makes the visual consciousness believe that it sees what it sees.

[Говорящий 2]
Okay?

[Говорящий 1]
When you talk about the way in which an object appears to consciousness, okay, the way in which an object appears, get that phrase in your mind, okay, the way in which things appear, how things appear, the means through which things appear. In the mind-only school system, we can talk about four distinct separate ways of things appearing or how things appear. Two of them are described as correct, two of them are described as incorrect, two of them are described as good, and two of them are described as wrong, right and wrong.

Okay, let's say that. Two are described as right, two are described as wrong.

[Говорящий 2]
Okay.

[Говорящий 1]
Here are the two right ones, okay, the two better ones, okay. One is the fact that the vase appears to be a vase to that visual consciousness. That's the first one, okay.

The fact that the vase, the water pitcher appears to be a water pitcher to that consciousness is the first way of appearing, and that's a good one. Secondly, the fact that the water pitcher appears to that consciousness to be what water pitcher refers to is a correct one, okay. And I'll say it again.

The fact that the water pitcher appears to be what water pitcher refers to, the appearance of that to the visual consciousness is also a good appearance. That's a correct one. Those are the two.

And here are the two wrong ones, okay. Let me get this straight. The first one, the first wrong one is that...

The first one is that the appearance to the visual consciousness that that water pitcher exists as an external object. Okay, that's the first one. The first wrong one, okay, is that the water pitcher appears to that visual consciousness to be existing as an external object, okay.

The second one is that it appears to that visual consciousness that the fact that the water pitcher is what's called water pitcher is something that exists naturally from its own side through its own unique way of being, okay. I'll say it again. The second wrong one is the appearance to that visual consciousness that the fact that a water pitcher is what is given the name water pitcher should be something which is very natural, which exists from its own side through its own unique way of being, okay.

Which is to say, by definition, in this school, right? And Geshe-la says, don't forget, don't forget, don't forget, we're in Mainomi school. We're talking Mainomi school, okay.

So those are the four, according to Mainomi school. No matter which one of the four of these ways of appearing happens to be occurring at any given time, right? As you are watching a water pitcher, no matter which of these four happens to be arising in your mind or appearing in your mind at any given time, all of them, in the Mainomi school, are caused, are triggered by the ripening of mental seeds, by bhaktya, okay.

And based on this fact, the Mainomi school divides all bhaktya, or all mental seeds, into four different types. Based on these four ways of appearing, they go and divide mental seeds themselves into four different categories. Rikteni bhaktya.

[Говорящий 2]
Rikteni bhaktya.

[Говорящий 1]
The first one is called the, what is it called? Similar, we say the mental seed of similarity, okay. The mental seed of similarity.

Meaning, suppose you saw a water pitcher a month ago and then you didn't see one for a whole month and then you came across another one. And some kind of thing triggers in your mind or ripens in your mind that allows you to identify the second thing as a water pitcher, right? Remember the first one was the appearance of a water pitcher as a water pitcher?

So, the fact that later on, after not having seen it for a while, you can still identify what a water pitcher is, as being a water pitcher, is due to a mental seed placed in your mind on the first occasion, a month ago, when you saw a water pitcher. That's called the, they call that a mental seed of similarity, or a mental seed of a similar type, something like that.

[Говорящий 2]
Mm. Mental. Mm.

[Говорящий 1]
Mm. Mm.

[Говорящий 2]
Mm. Mm. Mm.

[Говорящий 1]
Mm.

[Говорящий 2]
Mm. Mm. Mm.

Mm.

[Говорящий 1]
Mm. Mm. This is really cool.

The second one, remember the second one, the second way of appearing was where you look at a vase and you realize that it's the thing that should be given the name vase, right? This is the thing that we give the name water pitcher, okay? How does that come about?

That comes about through a mental seed called a mental seed for expression. And there's the word expression that we've been flirting with, okay? A mental seed of expression.

And what this means is that way back when, before you knew what a water pitcher was, somebody took you by the hand, took you into a room and said, okay, see this thing that has this big round belly? By the way, this is the definition of a water pitcher in Buddhist logic, okay? See this thing that has this big round belly and this spout thing and this support platform on the bottom of it that prevents it from rolling around?

And that thing is what we call a water pitcher. That thing that holds water and looks like that is what we call a water pitcher. Also you could say when someone learns a new language and someone's saying, okay, in English, which you don't know yet, okay, suppose you're Tibetan, you know, and they say, okay, you know that thing we call Bumba in Tibetan?

Well, in English they call it a water pitcher, you know? And they say, could you say that again? And they say, water pitcher, water pitcher.

Got it? Say water pitcher. And the guy says, water pitcher, you know?

And he's learning the word water pitcher, water pitcher. And they keep repeating it. That's exactly the meaning of the word expression here.

Lumbar japa means to keep saying it over and over again, to say it, express it over and over again. Oh, water pitcher, water pitcher, water pitcher. And then finally there's some kind of bak chok put in your mind.

Either in the first case, in your own language, right, when you were a kid, oh, thing called water pitcher, you know? Or if you're learning a foreign language later on in your life, somebody says, okay, now there's a new word you have to learn for this. It's Bumba, Bumba, Bumba, you know?

And you keep saying Bumba, Bumba, Bumba over and over again. So either your mother told you Bumba, Bumba over again, or your English teacher told you, your Tibetan teacher told you Bumba, Bumba, Bumba over again. And that puts some kind of mental seed in your mind.

Then later on when you bump across, bump Bumba into one of these Bumbas, right? You say, oh, Bumba, you know? And it just comes right into your mind, the word Bumba or the word water pitcher if you're learning a language.

So that's called, that's the second, that's the mental seed, according to the Maino school, that creates the possibility for the second kind of appearance, you see, in which you say, oh, this is the thing that is given the name water pitcher. This is the object which we name water pitcher. You see, when you look, you see, you see, you see, you see, you see, you see, you see, you see, you see, you see, you see, you see, you see, you see, you see, you see, you see, you see, you see, you see, you see, you see, you see, you see...

This is a tricky one. Remember that we got two wrong ones left, right? Two wrong ways of appearing left.

They are both triggered by a mental seed which is called the mental seed for seeing one's self, or for seeing a self. How's that? The mental seed for seeing a self, okay?

And this is the following. Due to your innate tendency to see things, if you were going to say it in the Madhyamika school's way as being self-existent or existing by definition, right? If you were going to express it in the way that the Middle Way school expresses it, your tendency to see things as truly existing, your tendency to see things as existing by definition, right?

Which we can call, it has two flavors, right? It can be focused towards yourself, in which case it's the tendency to believe in the self-nature of a person, or it can be described as the tendency to believe in the self-nature of objects or things, which normally refers then to the parts of a person, right? So let's take it as the second one, the tendency to believe that objects are self-existent, okay?

Which we can describe as a belief in the self, okay? A belief in the self, seeing a self-nature. Now this is something, there's two flavors of that also.

One of them is inherent, okay? Everybody has it, all creatures have it from the beginning. It's not something that you develop later on in life.

From the moment of your conception, you have this tendency to see things as existing truly. This puts in your mind constantly seeds for seeing things as existing self-existently, right? So as you go on, these seeds are already there.

These mental seeds have been planted in your mind from the beginning of this time and are re-planted from the beginning, you know, for many, many years. And what do they do? When they ripen, what happens, okay?

You're looking at a water pitcher and when these seeds ripen, these particular seeds, these particular bhagyaksa or mental seeds, when they ripen, you tend to see a water pitcher in the last two wrong ways, both of them, okay? So this particular kind of seed, called the mental seed for seeing a self, okay, is the cause for both of the latter two wrong, for the latter two ways of appearing, the ways of an object appearing, which are both wrong, which are both mistaken. What are they?

The first one was to automatically think that that water pitcher exists as an external object, right? And then the second one was to automatically think that the fact that the pitcher is what's called a pitcher must be something that exists by definition, okay? The fact that the pitcher is what's called a pitcher must be something that exists by definition.

Those two are both classified... Here's an important point. In the mind-only school, they say that both of those represent the tendency to see a self-nature of objects, okay?

What we call ignorance, actually, okay? The tendency to believe or to perceive a self-nature of objects. Both of those are lumped together as wrong perceptions, which are called the tendency to see things as having a self-nature.

And they are both triggered by mental seeds from the past that are called mental seeds for seeing a self. Just to repeat that both of those latter two ways of seeing things, which are both wrong, to see the water pitcher as existing as an external object and to see the water pitcher as something which is called the water pitcher by definition, are both triggered by those mental seeds called mental seeds for seeing a self. Why are they called a mental seed for seeing a self, right?

It's because when you look upon a water pitcher and you think to yourself automatically, oh, this water pitcher is an external object. But when you look upon a water pitcher and think to yourself automatically, this water pitcher is something that's named a water pitcher by definition. When you have either one of those thoughts, it comes into your mind, right?

And Geshe-la says, you know, this is supposed to be, according to the Mind-Knowing School, our problem. This is our big problem. This is what we have in us that gives us problems, right?

These two states of mind are triggered by the same mental seed. And that's why the mental seed is given the name seeing a self, or seeing some self, because what it refers to is seeing some self-nature of objects. And both of those conditions, a vase which could exist as an external object, a vase which could exist as what's called a vase by definition, which are non-existent, right?

But both of those things are what we call the self of objects. That doesn't exist, okay? This state of mind is grasping to both of those, and that's why the bhātyaks, the mental seeds that create that state of mind, are called mental seeds for seeing a self.

The fourth kind of mental seed is called the Sipa Yanaki Bhakta. Chupa Sipa, Yana, Chupa, Sipa, Sipa, Sipa, Yama, Yana, Chupa, Sipa, Sipa, Sipa, Sipa, Yama... Na Nen, De Nen, Chupa Sipa So, the fourth mental state, which is not really relevant here, okay?

He just wants to be complete in his presentation, okay? So, it doesn't really bear a lot of relevance here, but let's talk about it anyway. It's called the mental seed for the component of, what should we call it?

Samsara, okay? Sipa, okay? Continued existence of the wheel of suffering.

How's that? Okay? The seed for the component of the cycle of suffering.

The cycle, how's that? The seed for the component of the cycle, all right? So, you can call the fourth mental seed that.

Now, what does that refer to? Don't forget that in the mind-only school and in the independent group of the middle way school, they accept that karma is mental. Karma is made of mind, okay?

Karma is made of mind. So, they say, now when you get to the Madhyamika Prasangika, to the consequence group in the middle way school, they say that karma is the actions of hitting somebody, lying, doing something like that, they refer to those actions. But remember that in the mind-only school and in the independent part of the middle way school, they describe karma exclusively as mental, okay?

It is made of something mental, okay? And they don't describe it as being any other way. Then they get into this problem of saying, what happens when you do something good that's going to take you to a good rebirth, or you do something bad that's going to take you to a bad rebirth?

How does that happen? Because the mind itself is momentary, right? The mind itself is being destroyed moment by moment.

The mind itself is coming in and out of existence moment to moment. So, if karma is described as being mental stuff only, you know, the mental stuff, then every time another moment passes, it should have gone out of existence and you wouldn't have any more karma, right? But what happens is that karma leaves its trail, leaves its footprint, leaves its impression on the mind, its imprint on the mind.

So, the thought, the karma occurs and then goes out of existence, but it leaves its imprint or its impression on the mind, okay? And in the mind-only school, that's how it's explained. You have all these impressions in your mind.

Those imprints in your mind are those mental seeds which are called mental seeds for the component of the cycle, meaning more suffering in the cycle, meaning a rebirth, basically. These are mental seeds for taking a rebirth. They will cause you to take a rebirth, whether it's a rebirth going up, whether it's a rebirth going down.

These are seeds that are placed in your mind that are going to cause a rebirth. And then I was trying to get at, you know, the meaning of component with Geshe-la, because, you know, those twelve links in the wheel are called components. Those links are called by the same words.

I said, is it referring to the link called cycle? There's a... link number ten is called the cycle.

He says, well, you know, really it's referring to that whole process of link number two, link number eight, link number nine, link number ten. Link number two in the Wheel of Life is fresh karma or newly committed karma, okay? Link numbers eight and nine are kinds of mental afflictions that water the karma or make the karma more and more mature.

And then when you hit link number ten, the karma has become extremely volatile. Okay, so number ten you can describe as volatile karma. Its name is the cycle.

Its meaning is volatile karma, loaded karma, armed karma, okay? Armed by the mental afflictions that occurred in number eight and number nine. So he says, yeah, yeah, you can describe it that way, but that's not the main point here, okay?

That's not the main meaning of component here. What we're really talking about here is basically a mental seed that's going to cause you to take a higher birth or a lower birth, and that's the fourth kind of mental seed. But I don't think...

apparently he's not saying that that mental seed applies to any one of those four appearances directly. He hasn't said that. See what I mean?

He said mental seed one goes to number one, mental seed two goes to number two, mental seed three goes to three and four, and then he said, by the way, for completeness I'll tell you what mental seed number four is, okay? It's not... the fourth mental seed is not really relevant here.

I just wanted to give it to you for completeness. Did somebody over here have an issue? Did something occur in your mind to ask?

[Говорящий 2]
Well, my problem is that when I read the twelve links, the number ten wasn't called cycle, and I'm just trying to figure out what I know that to be.

[Говорящий 1]
Its name is Sipa. Sipa is a synonym for korwa.

[Говорящий 2]
Are they becoming?

[Говорящий 1]
Yeah, they translate it as becoming, which is a very bad translation. Yeah, I know, I know. It's translated as becoming.

It can mean that in other situations, but in the presentation of the twelve links it always means loaded karma, armed karma, which is about to cause you to take a rebirth. You could call it loaded karma. In GYI RTOG NAS, NGES MA NGES MA DANG, NGES MA NGES MA DE'I RGYUR DU DANG LAS, CHUG PA SRID PA ZER GYI SRID PA YOD NA BA, KHO TZAM NOR BA RE, SRID PA DANG MI SRID PA GYI, DE YONGS SRID GYI MA RE ZER GYI SRID PA GYI, DE'I BRAS DE YOD NA BA RE, KHO TZAM LO NA LAS, CAN I SAY, CHUG PA SRID PA DE'I DANG, NGES MA NGES MA DE'I RGYUR ZHAG PA GYI, YONGS SRID PA GYI SRID PA DANG, YONGS MI SRID PA GYI SRID PA GYI, YONGS SIGMA RE means that could never come, that's impossible.

And so the people who first translated into English, becoming is sort of a mistake based on the idea of possibility or something coming into being or something. It's a mistranslation based on the other meaning of the word Sipa. So Geshe-la says, but you know it is true that it's almost certain, Sipa, that the tenth link, Sipa, will come to you.

So he's, like, punning you, okay? He says, yeah, yeah, I've heard about translations like that into English. For example, there was a book about the ten bodhisattva levels, and it was describing the ten bodhisattvas.

And the first bodhisattva level, which is the perfection of giving, right, is where your giving reaches new heights. The name, the literal name for it is happy place, you know, most joy, or big joy, right? So it being a level, right, sa, bodhisattva, bhumi, bhumi can also mean place.

So the first translators, he heard that the first English translators translated the name of the first bodhisattva, bhumi, as a pleasant place with lots of nice trees, and nice picnic places up on the side of the hills, and stuff like that, and he said, yeah, you have to be careful about those old translations. It'd be nice to take a vacation at that bodhisattva bhumi. So, now we've gone through this whole spiel, you know, like this long story, now I'm going to ask you a question.

You ready? Okay, when you look at blue, okay, when blue is appearing to you, which one of those four ways of appearing is active at that time?

[Говорящий 2]
Who are you? Mind-only school.

[Говорящий 1]
Mind-only school, shishache. I'll send some shishache.

[Говорящий 2]
I mean, are you a sentient being, or are you...

[Говорящий 1]
Daga kam nishiyachi, yes. Sentient yinpa shisha, sangye yinpa shisha. Nirmala, Nirmala Thakhe, namashepade.

Sentient yinpa namashepade, sangye yinpa namashepade. Sentient yinpa namashepade, sangye yinpa namashepade. I don't know if you translated it, Michael, but I kept saying, you know, us guys is consciousness, you know, the consciousness that you and I would likely to have.

Are you implying that there's Buddhas hiding among us? Because he said, us guys, you know.

[Говорящий 2]
Because he's thinking of you.

[Говорящий 1]
That game is starting to get interesting. Okay, okay, sentient beings, sentient beings. Assume we're talking about non-enlightened beings, okay?

Assume we're talking about beings who are not enlightened. nge ma bunpa tongnyin shisha nangyo re, nge ma bunpa matongnyin shisha nangyo re. Let's assume we're talking about someone who has seen a water picture before.

nge ma bunpa tongnyin shisha nangyo re, nge ma bunpa tongnyin shisha nangyo re. We're talking about you guys and us guys, right? We've seen pictures before, right?

Pictures, pictures, pictures, pictures, you know.

[Говорящий 2]
Why?

[Говорящий 1]
shigalo shagare su. nangso shigalo shagare su. I'm sorry, his question was a little different.

What will cause those four to appear? What will cause those four ways of appearing? bakchak se du galanti shagare su.

nangso shigalo shagare se du galanti shagare su. Bakchak se ne nawa re. So, can we say that those four ways of appearing are triggered by mental seize?

[Говорящий 2]
Yes.

[Говорящий 1]
Nothing, nothing. So, you guys have agreed that when people like yous and mes, okay, when we see the color blue, right, we're saying that it's occurring through the power of mental seeds. So we have to say that it's due to an intimate familiarity with the expressions that we are seeing blue, right?

Remember where we came from today? This very weird Tibetan phrase. And a second interpretation of that phrase that didn't at all match the earlier interpretation of that phrase.

Can't you say, therefore, that it's due to an intimate familiarity with the expressions, meaning mental seeds, that we see blue? Until one reaches enlightenment, we have doubts. We all have doubts.

Until one reaches enlightenment, we all have doubts. Okay, give us your doubt. There's no power, does that matter to anybody?

[Говорящий 2]
If you're perceiving something that you haven't a name for, and you're still somehow perceiving it, but there's no name going on because you don't have a name, then what's happening in terms of the expression? I mean, I don't know, I mean, if I'm taking the expression, it's just a label.

[Говорящий 1]
Yeah, no, it's not. It's the bhaksa. Here, expression is a code word for bhaksas, in that they come from the constant expressing of it to you.

This is what a bhuman is, this is what a bhuman is. If you're perceiving something that you haven't ever heard expressed, then what's happening in terms of the expression? That's it, that's it.

Yeah, he says, you can take Lumbajapa in like three different senses, right? It can be the constant expressing of it to you by your teacher or your mother that creates that seed. It could refer to the seed itself.

It could also refer to the constructing state of mind. Anyway, you know, after all is said and done, the expression here, intimately acquainted with the expressions, means coming from bhaksas, coming from mental seeds. Is that okay?

Got it?

[Говорящий 2]
Yes, yes, yes. That's it, that's it.

[Говорящий 1]
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes I asked him, you know, what really you wanted to know, which is a question that often arises in the West, people often ask me those questions, you know. If you don't know the expression water pitcher, and you've never been acquainted with a water pitcher, and no one's ever introduced a water pitcher to you, and you have no concept of water pitcher, and you come in the room and you look at a water pitcher, then what do you see, and how do you see it, and how are you conceptualizing it, you know, how is it that you conceptualize it?

What's happening there? There is no intimate familiarity with the expression, meaning any kind of seeds in that sense, mental seeds in that sense for the thing, so what is it, how do you experience that thing with no previous familiarity with what it's called, or its function, or anything else, but still you tend to conceptualize a thing there, quite readily, right? That's a big question you get in the West a lot, and he says, there's no such thing, he says, that question is posited from the point of view of modern science, or modern beliefs, or modern way of looking at things.

From a Buddha's point of view, this is a moot point. Why? There's no such thing as a lack of familiarity with things.

There's no such thing as a lack of mental seeds for things. Because so much of what we do, so much of what we see is determined by our former mental seeds. The fact that you can come into this world and immediately recognize certain things, and immediately start doing certain things, and immediately exhibit certain kinds of behavior.

For example, some kids are born right away without studying, they seem to show talent, they seem to be like child geniuses, and they start writing at an early age. Nobody has to teach them much, they hear a word once or twice, they already can say it, they're already good at drawing things. Some kids are really good at drawing things already at a very young age.

And then there's other kids who are the opposite, you keep telling them, you keep teaching them, they can't get anything, they don't have any mental seed for the thing. I think the profound part of what he's saying is that everything around you, all the things that you do recognize now, are a result of repeated exposure to those things in the past. Almost everything that you are doing, almost everything that you are saying, or seeing, or able to do, or able to think, is the evidence of repeated, repeated, repeated exposure to those things in the past.

It's not like you're just having the first experience of anything nowadays. And he says, for example, you see, he says, oh boy, this is easy with puppies and with calves, okay? Puppies and calves, you know, nobody took them outside and said, okay, here's a milk teat, you know, of a mother cow or a mother dog, you know, a bitch, you know, and this is how this works.

You know, nipple goes like that and you hold up your mouth and you suck it and then milk comes out and that's how it works. Now you go and do it with your mom, okay? It's not like that.

They have all these mental seeds immediately for that kind of behavior. Immediately they're lifting up their mouth and searching for the teat and trying to get milk, you know, and this is coming from a... This is evidence, according to Buddhism, of many, many, many prior exposures to this concept and to this thing and to this activity and this behavior.

And that's evidence, he says, of the fact that it's very, very difficult in Buddhism to posit even one example of something that you've never been exposed to. You have mental seeds for all kinds of stuff. That's his answer.

And that's why, I mean, I think what he's saying is that that's why when you come in and you look at a vase, even if you've never seen one and no one's ever explained its function to you, you are still conceptualizing it a certain way. You still have a bāchāk or a mental seed for conceptualizing it in a certain way, even before you learn its formal name or function. Okay.

Not only are calves obviously got some kind of mental seed in their minds for wanting to drink and trying to drink, right? But they even have a seed in their mind for demanding drink. They have this thing where if they lift up their mouth and try to take a drink and there's no milk forthcoming, they know how to bang their head on the mother's udder and say, come on, let's go, time for some milk.

It's not like someone took them out and showed them some other calf somewhere that was banging their head on the mother's udder. They just automatically do it. It's what we call in English instinct.

So there's no such thing as instinct. Or instinct is the effects of former mental seeds. If you follow my line of reasoning here, you cannot say that the behavior such as that can be explained only as something that was learned in this life.

You can't. It's impossible.

[Говорящий 2]
...

[Говорящий 1]
This is very subtle. With things like a vase, with objects like a water pitcher, you can talk about... there's an expression in Tibetan called familiarity with the term.

Exposure to the term. Meaning, someone comes up to you over and over again and says, this is what we call a boomba, this is what we call a boomba, and then you get familiar with the term and you begin calling it boomba, right? But think about blue.

Think about blue. Or you can say green. In Tibetan the word is the same.

You go out and you see the green of a tree. Somebody tells you this is green. Greenness.

The thing, greenness. You're exposed to greenness with a tree. Then you're exposed to greenness with a rock.

And already, when you open the book and see green paper, you think green. Not a verbalization, but the concept green. So that's just totally familiarity from a former life.

Not the naming of it green, which is something... Okay, he's talking about familiarity or exposure to the term. But exposure to green.

The fact that you recognize green. That you can say the color of the tree, the color of the wall, and the color of this paper is the same thing. And the concept greenness is almost...

It's so automatic or so instinctual that you think it's almost non-self-existent, you know what I mean? But that's indicating a high degree of previous exposure. A high degree of mental seeds involved with green.

[Говорящий 2]
You said that the word for green and blue is the same word?

[Говорящий 1]
There's a word in Tibetan that covers both the shade of leaves and certain shades of blue.

[Говорящий 2]
Yes, and if it's the same word, how is it conceptualized in words? When it applies to two things that are different?

[Говорящий 1]
That's according to your bhakti text, isn't it? Exactly. That's a good question.

It's a long story, but I'll tell you a little bit. For example, there's a tree in India called Loma. And there's a tree in Namkha.

There are two trees in Namkha. There are two trees in Namkha. One is called Janggu.

The other is called Tingga. There are two trees in India. In India, there are two trees.

The one on the left is called Green, and the other is called Janggu. The one on the left is called Tingga, and the one on the right is called Loma. That's how it is conceptualized.

In India, there are two trees. The one on the left is called Loma, and the one on the right is called Lombo. That's it.

Okay. Okay.

[Говорящий 2]
Okay.

[Говорящий 1]
Okay. Okay. Okay.

Okay. Okay. Okay.

Okay. His point was not so much the verbalizations and he says, you know, there are Tibetan words for the distinguish between green and blue, they're like painter's colors. in painting or in tantric visualization, the words are different.

There is a specific word for green and there is a specific word for blue. But it's not so much that I'm talking about the verbalizations, I'm talking about the conceptualization, that when you see one thing and then you look at another thing that's of the same color, you're thinking of them as the same color. It's so automatic that you take it for granted.

But that automaticness is proof of a previous exposure to color. The automaticness of seeing a similarity between those two colors is, those two objects of the same color, is evidence of huge piles of botchacks in your mind for color that are so much a part of your being that you just take it for granted. What I'm talking about, says Geshe-la to Camilla, is that there are so many different colors.

One person can come along, look at the tree, and see a certain color of the leaves. And then they can pick up this business card and see this little clover with the same color and say, aha, these are the same color. They recognize it as being the same color.

It's not so much that they recognize it as being, quote, green. And if somebody came along and asked you, is this jangu, which is the specific Tibetan word for green, you'd say, jangu? They'd say, yeah, is it jangu?

You'd say, jangu, is that something to eat? Is that something I can yell and chew on? You'd say, no, no, no, that's not what I'm asking.

So he isn't familiar, he hasn't been exposed to the meaning of the term jangu, but he still is able to say, that color and this color match. And that's what we're talking about, the mental seed that causes that, which is very, very interesting. You know, he's talking about his own, just to speak from my own personal experience, you know, I came across this picture of the Statue of Liberty, and I said, oh, it looks like a person, you know, it has a nose, it has ears, it has a mouth, you know, and I recognized it as some kind of figurine of some kind of person, right?

And then later on somebody sent me a letter from America, and there was a stamp on the letter, and here's this guy again, you know, and then not knowing who the guy is, you know, not knowing what the Statue of Liberty is, not even knowing the word for Statue of Liberty, I did recognize that that thing on the stamp and that thing I saw a picture of were the same thing, you know, I did make a, I was able to make a connection between the two.

And where is that coming from? Statue of Liberty said, rangwang lumpa gyi ku, rangwang gyi ku. Oh, no, no, he wants to know if that's modeled after an actual person.

He doesn't, he still doesn't know if that was, if that was, you know, if that represents like some famous guy in America or what is that thing?

[Говорящий 2]
A model after a French version that's life-size after a real person, a real French person.

[Говорящий 1]
To tell you the absolute truth, my first impression was that this must have been one of the first kings of America. This must be a statue of one of the first kings of America. That's like someone coming up to you and saying, Is this jungle or not?

You say, Is that something to eat? Same thing. Okay, joke's over, let's move on.

Okay, back to our two consciousnesses, okay? Have we, to your satisfaction, completed the idea of a consciousness which is intimately familiar with the expressions? Meaning, now in the second interpretation, the simple visual perception of blue.

Now we left one, right? We've left the second one now, which is that one which is clear of a familiarity with the expressions, meaning devoid of.

[Говорящий 2]
That's right, that's right.

[Говорящий 1]
The second consciousness here is referring to, Geshe-la starts out by saying, a very unique concept of the mind-only school. And then he says, well, you know, it's not really unique only to the mind-only school, but it's very much an emphasis of the mind-only school. And he says, when we talk about a state of mind which is clear or devoid of any such familiarity with expressions or mental seeds, we are talking in the mind-only school about, in science they call it apperception.

It's the ability of the mind to perceive itself in one moment. So it's self-awareness in a sense, true self-awareness. Meaning, being aware that you're seeing as you're seeing.

Not only seeing, but being aware that you're seeing at the same instant that you're seeing, which in other schools is said to be impossible. But in this school it's said, at the same time that you are aware of blue, you're aware of yourself being aware of blue. Now that state of mind in this school does not come through the force of mental seeds.

It is not something that comes through the force of bhaktyaks, through mental seeds. So that particular state of mind in this school can be said to be clear of, or be devoid of, an intimate familiarity with the expressions. Meaning, it is not intimately caught up with the process of the ripening of mental seeds.

And that's what they're referring to when they talk about the second one. When I say that the second phrase, which is those states of consciousness which are not intimately wrapped up, or which are clear of being wrapped up with bhaktyaks, right? I am talking about guys like you and me, okay?

I'm not talking about enlightened beings. Now enlightened beings' perception of blue, or enlightened beings' perceptions, we're not talking in terms of those. You could call them, you could characterize them as being free of, or being devoid of, any intimate familiarity with the expressions.

But that's not the ones I'm talking about here. I'm mainly talking about regular people's apperception, the quality of the self-awareness, or being aware of your awareness as you're being aware. That's what we're talking about here.

Nasa, nasa. Nasa, nasa. Don't forget where we were yesterday, okay?

To go way back there. We were talking not about those two consciousnesses, really. We were talking about the objects which those two consciousnesses hold, okay?

Don't forget that the wording in both cases on page fifty-four is that state of consciousness which is intimately familiar with the expressions, holding its object, the object which is held by that consciousness. And then we said, and in the second case, the object which is held by the consciousness which is not intimately familiar, or which is devoid of any intimate familiarity with the expression. So don't forget in each case, the whole question, the whole point here, is revolving not around those consciousnesses, but is revolving around their respective objects.

Nasa, nasa. Nasa. So, two places where the object is being referred to explicitly.

Line four on page fifty-four, where it says, nambar shebe mikpa su, okay? That physical form, or those visual objects, which are the object which that first state of mind is focusing on. And then in the ninth line, page fifty-four, again in members, it mentions specifically that object which the consciousness, which is clear or devoid of any intimate familiarity with the expressions, is focused on.

So again, here are two explicit references to the objects of these two consciousnesses. Nasa, nasa. Nasa, nasa.

Don't forget what we said the other night, time's running out, I've got to start consolidating things for you, okay? It's a little hard for me, but he's going to do it this way, we'll talk more about it later. The object of the first one, the object of the first consciousness, is said to be an object which exists through labeling, not a substantial object.

And it is said to be an object which is not existing ultimately, but rather which is existing nominally or deceptively. And the object of the second one is the opposite. It is said to be something which exists in a substantial way as opposed to a labeled way, and it is said to be something which exists in an ultimate way, and which does not exist in a nominal or a deceptive way, okay?

Now what that means and how we go from there is yet to be seen. Geshe-la says, now you may have... it should have been an issue come up in your mind just now.

We, essentially, we just reversed the meaning of the two consciousnesses, okay? Compared to what we did last evening, the meaning of those two consciousnesses is effectively reversed now. Now we're saying the first one refers to the actual perception of blue, and the second one refers to more like the imaging of blue, right?

And last night was the reverse, but we have not reversed the objects, have we? We're still saying the first object is the labeled one and the insubstantial one, and we're still saying that the second one is the substantial one, is the one that exists ultimately. Looks like there's going to be an issue here.

If you just look at it on face value, you get the can of worms that we had last night, which was nicely shut, and there was no problems, okay? And now today, having gone through all this in a mind-only light, we've opened a can of worms. Now we've got a big can of worms.

Now we've opened this can of worms, and things are coming out. So now we have issues to resolve due to this new interpretation of those two consciousnesses. Of the two interpretations last night and today's, if you were to come up and ask me, which one is the mind-only real interpretation, I'd have to say it's the second one.

It's the one we did today. We talked about those two objects of those two consciousnesses. I gave them to you in a very rough form, in a very abbreviated form.

But we're going to have to dig down into those. We're going to have to dig into those two objects and see what's going on here, because there's some kind of issue here. So when we get back, we'll be opening that can of worms about those two objects, and we'll be digging into the real meaning of them.

And we'll stop there today.

[Говорящий 2]
Can I ask a question? I'm not sure about this. Is it possible to have the first bhakta, which is an interesting familiarity, and not have the second one, which is the one of expression?

For example, when he saw, for the first time, the Statue of Liberty, is it possible that then he had the state of familiarity without having any way to express what he saw? Yes, it's possible.

[Говорящий 1]
As you said, my experience of the Statue of Liberty is very similar. It's exactly what you said. I did have a mental seed of similarity, meaning the second time I saw it on the stamp, I connected it to the first one I saw.

So I did have that kind of seed. But neither in the first case nor in the second case of seeing it did I know its actual name. In fact, he says, I still didn't get what you called it.

So I still don't have any mental seed for calling it the Statue of Liberty, because I didn't understand what you meant with the Statue of Liberty. So I don't have that second kind of seed with regard to that. And he says, let's restrict it to one life.

So in one life, with one person, with a certain object, you can say that that person might have a seed for similarity, for recognizing similarity, how's that? But not have a seed for understanding the expression or knowing the expression, or having the expression reappear in the mind due to previous exposure to that expression.

[Говорящий 2]
Okay.

[Говорящий 1]
But... Okay, there's a but here. But when it occurred in my mind and I said to myself, this must be the likeness of some person.

Right? And I called it in my mind the likeness of a person. That appearance or that thought arising in my mind was the result of a mental seed for expression.

Because I did call it, oh, quote, this is the likeness of a person. So that much, but I didn't have a mental seed for expression for calling it the Statue of Liberty. That's true.

That's true. Okay. Ready, Arina?

Thank you. Dedication. Prayer.

Prayer. He says, I hope that someday you'll be doing all these things in your life. When you do your dedication and you do your mandala.

I look forward to the day you do your mandala.