Углублённый курс ACI 04 — Искусство толкования, часть 1 (1998, Билакуппе, Индия), занятие 26

[Говорящий 1]
He says he feels a little embarrassed that, Geshe-la says he feels a little embarrassed that he hasn't even learned your names, you know, he was planning at the outset he was going to give each seat a number like that's number one, that's number two, that's number three, and then he was later he's going to connect the number to a name and then he got down to thinking number one, number two, number three, then you all moved around. He hasn't learned anyone's name and he's sorry for that, he's embarrassed about that, this is too many foreign names to remember.

[Говорящий 2]
He hasn't learned anyone's name, he's embarrassed about that, he's sorry for that, this is too He hasn't learned anyone's name, he's embarrassed about that, this is too many foreign names He hasn't learned anyone's name, he's embarrassed about that, this is too many foreign names to remember. He hasn't learned anyone's name, he's embarrassed about that, this is too many foreign names to remember. He hasn't learned anyone's name, he's embarrassed about that, this is too many foreign names to remember.

to remember. He hasn't learned anyone's name, he's embarrassed about that, this is too many foreign names He hasn't learned anyone's name, he's embarrassed about that, this is too many foreign names to remember.

[Говорящий 1]
He hasn't learned anyone's name, he's embarrassed about that, this is too many foreign names He hasn't learned anyone's name, he's embarrassed about that, this is too many foreign names to remember. He hasn't learned anyone's name, he's embarrassed about that, this is too many foreign names to remember.

[Говорящий 2]
He hasn't learned anyone's name, he's embarrassed about that, this is too many foreign names to remember. He hasn't learned anyone's name, he's embarrassed about that, this is too many foreign names He hasn't learned anyone's name, he's embarrassed about that, this is too many foreign names to remember. He hasn't learned anyone's name, he's embarrassed about that, this is too many foreign names to remember.

[Говорящий 1]
to remember. He hasn't learned anyone's name, he's embarrassed about that, this is too many foreign names to remember. we never had today was a new textbook about four concepts that we had of what it is to exist deceptively.

We had three new ones. They were called something like existing deceptively through labels, existing deceptively as something mental and then existing deceptively as something of expression, something like that. And then it was easy, they correlated each one of those to one of the three attributes of the mind-only school.

So, being deceptive through labels referred to constructs, deceptive state of mind referred to, among all Shenlongs or dependent objects, it referred to those mental ones and specifically to the main one being the tendency to hold things as truly existing. And then finally we had what we call the deceptive expression. And that was the hardest one, if you remember, because expression here refers actually to totality or emptiness in the mind-only school.

So, then we were trying to get into, you know, somebody asked me, why would the word expression have anything to do with emptiness? Why would emptiness be described in anybody's school as expression? And then he went into, you know, normally it's beyond expression, but we try to give it expression.

So you can think of this describing emptiness as expression as meaning something we try to express. You know, we try to call it emptiness, we try to call it lack of self-existence, we try to call it different names, totality. And what it all means is that this is something we're struggling to give a name.

And we're trying to conceive of it, but our conceptions of it are almost incomplete. So, when we think about it, mostly we are doing so through some kind of flimsy constructions, and that's where we get the deceptiveness of it, okay? So really, emptiness is described as deceptive in that it's similar to nominal things, it's similar to constructs, in that for us to think about it, we have to be making very, almost flimsy conceptions about it.

And that's why it's described as being deceptive. Geshe-la points out that, remember that in the second turning of the wheel, Buddha said that everything was, existed as deceptive, okay? And he said that not only, all three of those groups in the second turning of the wheel were said to exist deceptively.

It's very easy to understand about the first two groups, right? It's easy to see how changing things are deceptive, sorry, labeled things are deceptive, constructs, because they are just something you make up in your mind. It's also easy to see how the main form of dependent things, which is the tendency to hold things as true when they're not, is deceptive or deceived.

But how can we describe the last of the three groups, meaning emptiness itself, as deceptive? Because technically it's not deceptive reality, is it? So again, we're not talking here in this case about it being deceptive reality because it's ultimate reality.

What we're talking about is that it's similar, or the way that we relate to it at our level, with these flimsy conceptions about it, is something almost deceptive. Our way of thinking about it is something almost deceptive. So Geshe-la repeats that we're not referring to emptiness as an example of deceptive reality.

Rather, it's an example of ultimate reality. But we tend to think of it in constructs that are almost deceptive or in conceptions that are almost deceptive or deceptive. They don't really represent what the real thing is.

And in that sense you can call it deceptive. So now there's a whole new category and meaning of deceptive in the Mind-Only School.

[Говорящий 2]
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[Говорящий 1]
And going to page 61, second line where it says ceto. Here, Jetsun Kappa, having finished this rather complicated explanation of what it is to exist deceptively, what it means to exist ultimately, talking about all different systems, talking to all different kinds of descriptions of what those words can mean, what different phrases can mean, having talked about what it means to exist substantially, having talked about what it means to exist nominally or something like that, having gone through labels, having gone through all of that, here he gives us some advice. He's wrapping up a section.

He's about to hit a whole brand new major section. And having finished his whole presentation, now it's like, we had this a couple of times before where Jetsun Kappa stops and takes a breathing spell and says, OK, now here's something that you guys who are trying to study this subject should know. And what he says is the following.

You have to realize that we've talked about many different philosophical systems. We've talked about the detailist system. We've talked about the sutra system.

They attacked the Middle Way school. In the Middle Way school, you had different subgroups and groups, and they all had different ideas about what? About what it is to exist deceptively, about what it is to exist ultimately, about what it is to exist substantially or through labels.

And then we got the mind-only school. All of this was pivoting around the mind-only school. Mind-only school got to come, and playing against the other groups, the other schools, they got to make their presentation.

And through the play with the other schools, we got a clarification of what it meant, really. And Jetsun Kappa says, you can notice here that those phrases or those terms, ultimate, deceptive, substantial, labeled, these are all, as you now can appreciate, meaning much different things in different schools. So really, to become a student of these subjects, to understand what it is to be ultimate truth or ultimate reality, deceptive reality, to become really good at this, it now should be obvious to you that you have to become an expert in being able to describe, Oh, that's what that school believes.

That's what that school believes. That's the difference between that school and that school. That's what divides that school from that other school.

This is their belief, and this is how it differs from other people. And you have to be able to make those distinctions if you're going to be successful in understanding emptiness. So Jetsun Kappa is taking this little section here to give us some personal advice on how to think about these things.

He says, don't think it's nitpicking. To understand emptiness clearly, you have to be able to make these distinctions between the different schools, in your own mind, because the different schools represent different ideas that will naturally come up in people's minds about what emptiness is or isn't. OK.

Yes.

[Говорящий 2]
Yes. Yes. Yes.

[Говорящий 1]
Yes.

[Говорящий 2]
Yes. Yes. Yes.

[Говорящий 1]
Yes. Yes. Or explaining them just off the top of your head, whatever sounds good to you, and you'll be stuck like that.

And then it will be...you'll never understand emptiness yourself either. OK. Listen.

[Говорящий 2]
Listen. Listen. Right.

Right. Right. Right.

Nothing.

[Говорящий 1]
He's trying to explain the expression gāla-tsaṃ, which is difficult for me. Gāla means to be happy or to like something. Tsaṃ means nothing more than that.

So he says, I'll give you an example that might clarify the meaning of this expression. Nothing more than what you like. Nothing more than what you like.

What it really means in this case. OK. Let's say that...do you guys remember that before you became Buddhist or you were on the verge of becoming a Buddhist and you were thinking about what Buddhism is. You know, like you had some... felicitous... I don't know.

Felicity. There's a word in English. Felicitous idea.

Meaning, you know, some happy idea about maybe what it was. You know, like you're just thinking, oh, maybe Buddhism's like that. In particular, you heard about the system in the monastery.

You know, in the monastery, they do everything by logic. These guys are working, you know, very precisely. They're debating the fine points.

They are ripping apart everything very clearly. We call it śūnyipa. Śūnyipa means like almost doing it through the system of a logician or someone who's ripping things apart the thinker's way.

OK. And you heard about this kind of Buddhism and you kind of got attracted to it. But if someone had asked you to describe it at that point, before you were ever exposed to it directly, then your description of it would be gāwatam.

OK. Gāwatam, whatever you could think of. OK.

I guess that's a good translation for it. It would have been whatever you could think of at that point because you didn't have any direct contact with that lineage that you could say, oh yeah, this is how they rip things apart. This is what they really do.

This is what they really mean in the different schools of Buddhism. At that point, in your own personal lives, your understanding of Buddhism, and in particular this kind of precision Buddhism, was gāwatam. It was just, you know, whatever you could think of.

OK.

[Говорящий 2]
OK.

[Говорящий 1]
So I'll give you an example and we can continue with this illustration, right? So let's say like you walked into this room like 15, 14 days ago, right? And you heard there's something between the mind-only school and the middle-way school and you had some vague idea of what they were or the differences were or something like that.

Then we had this exchange, you know, we started debating it, we started ripping it apart. We went through it, we described it, we taught it. You asked questions, I asked you questions, we clarified everything.

And now that big balloon head that you came in here with, you know, has now shrunk down to some kind of precision, you know, about these ideas, you know. Like you came in with this big foggy idea, you know, and now it's crystallized into some kind of, you know, clear understanding of these points. You know, and I don't know how because I don't know anything about this stuff, and I'm just, you know, who am I?

I can't teach this stuff very well. But anyway, you know, you came in and now you have some kind of precise ideas about these things. And now we can say that your understanding is not gāwatam anymore about this.

You are now clearly about these things. You're not just... If someone asks you to describe the difference between mind-only school and what the mind-only school believes, now you're in a position where you can say with precision, Oh, this is what it means, this is what it means, this is how they differ from that.

You're in a position to where you can do that. And now you've reached a point in which... This is the point to which Jetsun Kappa is speaking, you know.

He's advising us in this little section. He's giving personal advice, you know, Jetsun Kappa is saying, I want you guys to come to some precision in your thinking about the mind-only school and particularly about the distinctions between the schools on these points of what's ultimate and what's deceptive. That's a huge section finished and you can roll the film forward.

[Говорящий 2]
That's it.

[Говорящий 1]
We're reaching a whole big new section here. You may remember it from above. It says the way in which other scriptures explain these points.

Now, I want to point out, says Geshe-la, that you've already heard most of these points, you know. In the process of reading what we have up to this point, we've actually referred back to most of the points that are about to come here. We've talked about them in some detail.

You've gotten now some takes by Master Asanga and by Master Vasubandhu on what the Buddha meant in the second turn of the wheel. Remember, in the second turn of the wheel, the Buddha said nothing exists by definition. In the first turn of the wheel, he went through all these things and said they did exist by definition.

In the third turn of the wheel, which is specifically that sutra in which the Buddha explained the real intent of his other sutras, right? In that sutra, Lord Buddha went through and said, by the way, what I meant in the second turn of the wheel was not literal, you know. When I said that these things didn't exist by definition, I meant it.

But when I said these things didn't exist by definition, I didn't mean it. And they really do exist by definition. And then he went into dividing, things like that.

The sections that have immediately proceeded here have been Master Asanga, Master Vasubandhu, and some other takes on what that meant. We had basically two books by Master Asanga and some comments by Master Vasubandhu in which we tried to describe how in the third turn of the wheel in that sutra, Lord Buddha explains himself as speaking figuratively when he said during the second turn of the wheel, nothing exists by definition. So we've gotten all that down, and you've heard all that.

Now we've reached this third section in which other people will be coming up, other people will be rising to give their ideas on the third turning of the wheel as relates to the second turning of the wheel, okay? You've had all the content of this. They're not going to say anything much different.

There will be some minor, in Tibetan they're called miksa. Miksa means like special cases will be mentioned where they will go on to some new points or some new information. But basically everything from here on down in part three here, which begins page 61, second line, you've heard this and you will be quickly able to understand it.

You'll say, oh, I know what they're talking about because we had that same point before from those original scriptures that they were mentioning. So my suggestion is we'll go through this like, what do you guys call it, those kind of trains, express trains, okay? They don't stop in every town.

They go like straight from Bangalore to Delhi or something like that. So we're going to take an express train through the next section.

[Говорящий 2]
Okay.

[Говорящий 1]
We're going to cover two scriptures here, both by Maitreya, okay? Both of them were written by Maitreya. The first one is called the Jewel of the Sutra, Sutra Alamkara.

And the second one is called, we are going to use again, but here formally we're going to start using the distinction between the middle and the extremes, between the medium and the extremes, which is Madhyanta, Vibhanga, and Sanskrit. So we're going to study those two. We're going to be going through those two.

First of all, we'll go through the Jewel of the Sutras. First we'll be presenting its take on what Lord Buddha was talking about during the second turn of the wheel when he said so radically that nothing in the universe exists by definition.

[Говорящий 2]
That's all.

[Говорящий 1]
Pompeii. That's all, that's all.

[Говорящий 2]
That's all. That's all.

[Говорящий 1]
That's all, that's all.

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

[Говорящий 1]
That's all, that's all. Now, this is the take by the Jewel of the Sutras by Arya Asanga, I'm sorry, by Maitreya, written down by Arya Asanga, right? Which is going to explain what the Buddha really meant.

Okay, goshi means, what did he really have in mind when Lord Buddha made this blanket statement, you know, nothing in the universe exists by definition. Now, what did he really have in mind? According to the Mainali school, right?

In the quotation from the Jewel of the Sutras is as follows. That thing which is neither itself, that thing which is neither its characteristics, that thing which neither exists as itself, that thing which doesn't exist as its characteristics, that thing which cannot be found in its essence, and that thing which is not as you hold it, or something like that. Now, there's going to be explanations of those phrases, but we have four characterizations of what it was that Lord Buddha had in mind when he said nothing exists by definition.

So those four phrases in the Jewel of the Sutras are going to be clarifying what Lord Buddha really had in mind when he said during the second turn of the wheel that nothing in the universe has any nature of its own or exists by definition. And then Geshe-la says, it's talking about what we call the three characteristics of produced things, okay? So there's our new idea coming up here, okay?

The three characteristics of produced things. And Geshe-la says, think of it in terms of a... We always take a water picture because in ancient India there was a water picture on the table somewhere or something like that.

The teacher would be pointing to something in the room and it would always be one of those big water vases that you had a faucet on the bottom and that's how you drank water. There weren't any pipes and stuff. So this is just an example.

In front of you is a water picture. Think about the water picture. Think about the water picture in the present tense, in the present time, okay?

As we are looking at it. Now, relative to that water picture in the present time, there is a past time of the water picture, okay? There's a present time water picture and because of that, and based on the presentness of this water picture, we can talk about the past of the water picture, the water picture past, or the past of the water picture.

And based on the water picture at this moment, you know, relative to this current water picture at this, you know, time, in this particular time, we can talk about the water picture of the future or the future of the water picture. Now, Geshe-la wants to go into those three water pictures, those three tenses, those three times of the water picture. And these are the three, what are called the three characteristics of produced things.

So, ask you a question about the past of the water picture, okay? The picture, the water picture of the past, okay? Was it such that by the time of the current, is it the case that the current water picture consists of the past water picture?

Is it the case that the past water picture is the current water picture now in the current tense? Is it the case that the current water picture is made of the past water picture? No, it's not, because it's gone, okay?

The past water picture is gone. So, in that case, you can say the pastness of the water picture no longer exists, or something like that. Pastness of the water picture is no longer there, meaning that in the current time, the current water picture no longer embodies the past water picture, okay?

Now, now think about the current water picture. Has it come about, is it something that doesn't have to come about through its causes and conditions? Is the current water picture something that did not come about through its conditions and causes?

No. So, in that sense, we can say there's no current water picture, meaning, as we had many times before, there's no current water picture which is not a production of its causes and conditions, right? So, now we have the lack of a water picture of the past in the present water picture, right?

And now we have the lack of no causation in the current water picture. And we can also say about the future water picture, the water picture in the next few minutes, right? A few minutes from now.

Is that water picture such that it will not have come from its causes and conditions? No. So, we can say that there's a lack of existence about the future water picture, meaning there does not exist a future water picture which will not have come about through its causes and conditions.

So, these are called the three characteristics of produced things. Okay? And none of them exist.

Okay? So, you know, those kinds of non-existence apply to the three water pictures of the three times. Now we'll tie it to the actual wording of the three lines here, which are very weird, you know, two lines.

We'll actually tie the words down. Four lines, actually. Three.

We're on the fifth line from the top on page 61. No, sir. The word rang, which means itself, fifth line, fifth line from the bottom of page 61, itself and rangdang means the water picture of the future.

We're talking about the water picture of the future. That's the water picture which will not have come about without causes and conditions. Okay?

Don't forget that we have to carry the meh, the is not existing or doesn't exist from the beginning of the second line and we have to distribute it to all of these, right? So, first you're saying, what it's saying in essence, the first one is it doesn't exist, meaning the future water picture will not have come about without its causes and conditions. And when you say rangdzenim du meh, it means it doesn't exist as its characteristics refers to the past water picture.

That refers to the water picture of the past which will not become the water picture of the present. Okay? And Geshe-la clarifies that statement a little bit by saying it will not, in the future, in the present time, relative to the present time water picture, exhibit its qualities because it will have disappeared by then.

Okay? So, in the present, it will not reach the present time being a water picture because by definition it'll be past by then, meaning it'll be gone by then. So, we can say it will not exhibit its qualities, meaning relative to the current time, or you always have to say relative, by the way, when you're fooling around with these things, you always have to say relative.

Relative to the current water picture, by the time it reached the current water picture, it didn't exist anymore, so it didn't exhibit any of its characteristics by the time of the current water picture. Talking now about the past water picture. He says, come on, this is easy stuff, this is not so hard.

If you can't get it, look, I'll just give you an easy example, okay? You go into a restaurant, you order a meal, they serve you this delicious meal. You sit there and stuff yourself with it, okay?

And then you're sitting there with your belly full and you're looking at the table. Will that delicious meal suddenly appear again? You see?

And you're sitting there It's past, right? If it did suddenly appear again, it would be really good because everything would be cheaper, okay? Life would be less expensive.

That's not the way it works. Once it's eaten and gone, it doesn't just simply appear again in what is now the present time. Exactly the same example.

[Говорящий 2]
Right. Now we have the third description here.

[Говорящий 1]
You have to read across the lines. You have to join the end of the second line to the beginning of the third line. Sometimes that happens in translating Sanskrit, okay?

So you have to read this across the line. All right? So it looks like it would say rāṅgī-ngo-la by itself at the end of the second line and then at the beginning of the third line it says mi-ne-chir.

So you have to read it as rāṅgī-ngo-la-mi-nepa which means it does not stay in its nature. It doesn't remain in its nature. What this means, this is referring to the water picture of the present tense.

It's referring to the water picture now. If you think about the water picture now, it is something which is which is coming in and out of existence by the millisecond, okay? It is changing by the millisecond.

It never stays in one place. It is constantly approaching destruction quicker and quicker, you know? It is constantly coming closer and closer to destruction meaning becoming the past, right?

So the water picture of the present is constantly moving, constantly in motion. It never stays in its nature and that's what it means when we say in the text it doesn't stay in a nature because it's constantly on the move towards its destruction. That's it.

You know, I can give you another example from real life, you know, and you have to say, that's right, you know. These guys showed up in my room like on the 4th of October, was it, or something and at that time there was this big chunk of time in front of them and then suddenly it was the 5th, you know, and there was one day down and there was other days to go but suddenly there was the 6th, you know, and then suddenly it's moving closer and closer to today. That's a real life example, he says.

Now the Mind-Only School is going to apply this to what they're talking about, okay? Here's what we're referring to, here's why we brought this thing up in the first place. Look at all these negative verbs in here, you know.

He says, doesn't exist twice, I mean he says it once but referring to two different things, right? So he got all these, doesn't exist, doesn't exist, doesn't exist, rolling around. Then we got mine, mine, mine, okay, it means, you know, it doesn't stay, it doesn't stay.

He keeps repeating all these negatives. He says, doesn't exist, doesn't exist, doesn't stay, and he keeps repeating all these negative words. What are we talking about?

Don't forget that we're talking with reference to the second turn of the wheel where Lord Buddha came up and said, you know, oh, nothing exists by definition, nothing exists ultimately, nothing exists like that, nothing exists like that. He's trying to point out what it was that Lord Buddha was talking about during the second turn of the wheel when Lord Buddha kept denying something, okay? Denying what?

Denying that things existed by definition. So all of these, in effect, are explaining the real intent, right? Because they think the second turn of the wheel is something that Lord Buddha did not mean figuratively.

So now the reason they're... I'm sorry, did not mean literally, okay? Sorry.

So they're saying, you know, this is why Lord Buddha said not, not, not, and this is what he meant when he was talking about that. And that's all the second turn of the wheel means, okay? So it's a little bit different take, right, than we've had before on what Lord Buddha meant in all his denials during the second turn of the wheel.

He says, did somebody bring some chocolate that they're chewing on? Are you chewing on your penis? I don't know.

Nothing.

[Говорящий 2]
Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

[Говорящий 1]
You know, when you think about it, we've left one out, right? We said there were four here, that there were four characterizations mentioned here. One of them kind of got stuck out on its own.

One of them becomes like a special case, okay? This fourth one. We're at the, on the fifth line from the top, page 61, where it says, you have to read again across the lines.

Read across the end of the third line to the beginning of the fourth line. What does this refer to? This is referring to four different things, okay?

The fourth one refers to four different things. Literally what it says here in the Tibetan is, it does not exist as you hold it to be, okay? It does not exist as you hold it to be.

Now, how do you read that? We're talking about the, they're called cinchilokshi in Tibetan. These are called the four backwards thoughts, okay?

The four totally backwards thoughts. What are the four backwards thoughts? We have a tendency to think of our bodies, you can think about it as referring to our bodies.

When we look at our bodies, we have this sort of inherent tendency to think of them as something pure and beautiful and wonderful like that, okay? That's called, in reality, they are dying and suffering and pain and everything else. But we have this tendency to look at our body and think, oh, that's a pretty cool thing, you know?

That's the first of the four backwards thoughts. The second one is to think that whatever we think feels good on the body is really something good, you know? If it lasted forever, if it didn't stop, it would be good.

But as it is now, any good thing that can happen to our body has to end and end in a bad way. So in that sense, those things we take to feel good are not really good at all, okay? And that's the second misperception we have about our body.

The third one is that somehow we are permanent or not changing, okay? Our body is somehow going to be around all the time just like it is, that it's not getting older by the moment, you know? We don't really believe that.

We look at our body and think, oh, you know, it hasn't changed a lot recently, you know, and I'm still pretty much the same as I was, okay? Geshe-la says if somebody challenged you logically, you know, and they said, you know, can you logically defend your tendency to think of your body as unchanging, you know? You'd have to say, no, obviously I am changing.

I mean, I don't technically think I'm permanent or unchanging, but he says there's this undercurrent or this general belief that you have, unexamined belief, illogical belief, automatic tendency to think of yourself as not changing so much for a moment. You know, you think, oh, I'm pretty much the same as I was a week ago or a month ago or something like that. You have this tendency to think of yourself as not changing so much.

That's the third backwards thought. It's totally wrong. The truth is the opposite.

The truth is absolutely the opposite. You are changing by the millisecond. You are getting old every minute, okay?

You are getting older and older. You are reaching ugly old age every moment. And then the fourth one is you tend to think of yourself, and now Geshe-la says you can switch from body to yourself, right?

So far we've been talking about your body. Now we can kind of focus more on yourself, but you think of yourself as existing through your own nature. You think of yourself as existing in truth from its own side or through some nature of its own, and that's the fourth of the wrong ideas.

You don't exist at all objectively from your own side through some nature of your own, but you have this automatic tendency to believe that, and you believe in that. So these are the four misconceptions that people have, and they are the opposites of another group of four which are called, not Geshe-la, which means, this is a very famous expression which I forgot, okay? Which are the generally described...

These are very famous. These four are very famous. The actual case is that we are impermanent.

The actual case is that we are suffering all the time. The actual case is that we are empty of any self-nature. And the actual case is that we don't have any self-existence as people or as persons.

And those are the opposite four. So you have to read line number six, page 61. Read it across the end of the third line, into the beginning of the fourth line of this verse, and take it as meaning you are not, you don't exist in the way that you hold yourself to exist.

You have this automatic tendency to think of yourself as existing in these four ways, and you don't. And that's what, says Maitreya, Lord Buddha really had in mind during the second turning of the wheel when he went through all these denials. He was just denying...

Now this one, this fourth one is like off on a special case of its own, right? The other three hang together. Now this fourth one is Lord Buddha was denying that it's correct to hold things as you think they are, okay?

Don't think that you are correct when you have this automatic tendency to hold yourself in those four wrong ways, because it's not. And that's all Lord Buddha meant when he went around during the second turn of the wheel denying that anything existed by definition. Okay, totally different take on what Lord Buddha meant.

The reason I stumbled on the second group of four is that I couldn't think mentally of what the correlations were between the four and the four, right? And he says it's a little hard, it's a little tricky, okay? Remember that these four were that our body's not as clean as we take it to be, it is not as happy as we take it to be, it is not as permanent as we take it to be, and it doesn't have a self that we think it has.

And then over here you had, what was it? Impermanent, suffering, empty, and doesn't have a self nature. Okay, now how do those four relate to each other, okay?

Let's see if we can get it right. What's the first one over here? Impermanent obviously relates to number three over here, okay?

So the real fact is that it's impermanent, I'm sorry, yeah, impermanent, and that's the opposite of thinking it's permanent, okay? The second one was what? Suffering, which is the opposite of number two, okay?

So we are in truth suffering badly, but we think that the body is pretty cool and pretty nice and things like that. And then the third one over here was empty, which is the opposite of, I don't know. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Vishal says I better get into the clean one later. We have to leave the clean one, okay? The clean one needs some explanation, he says.

The opposite of clean requires some explanation. So it looks like he's going to leave emptiness alone for a while, and he's going to leave clean alone for a while, okay? Now what's the fourth of the others?

It has a self nature, and that's obviously the opposite of number four, which is to think that you have a self nature. So we've left over here empty, I'm sorry. Then we got has no self nature, just to connect with number four, right?

Which does have enough self nature. So over here you've left out what? Emptiness.

And over here you've left out clean. So Geshe-la says now the correlation between those two we better talk. This is a separate subject, okay?

Now I'm going to tell you about how those two correlate. Now here's how thinking of yourself as being, you know, clean, something clean, right? And then thinking of yourself as being empty are opposite.

Geshe-la says an example would be, you know, you're about to go in and have a nice meal, but you've got to go outside and do some work first, you have to go in the bathroom and do some work first, or something like that, and you're cleaning up something, or you're working outside in the yard or something, and suddenly you get this crap all over your arm, you know, like whatever it is, like mud or poo-poo or whatever.

And then you know that you're about to go in and eat a nice meal, you know, so you're like staring at your arm and you're saying, ew, you know, this arm is so ugly and dirty, you know, I got to wash this off, I have to make it clean before I go in to eat, this is really bad, you know, my arm is dirty, the arm is dirty, okay? And then you create this separation between me and my body, okay? You're thinking, ew, ew, that's inappropriate, the arm is dirty, you know, right then you're sort of distancing yourself from this dirty arm, you feel like it's not quite you to have really filthy hands, especially when you're going to go in and eat something nice.

So you look at your hands, you almost disassociate from your hands, and this distance between you and your hands, right, meaning I'm over here, I'm a separate, self-standing, independent entity, and then my body, my hands out there, those dirty hands are something far away, and something distant, and something disconnected to me. And then you have this feeling about there being a self-existent me over here, and a dirty hand over there, right? And in actuality, what's the case?

You are devoid of any such thing, meaning empty, okay? And that's the connection between clean, the misperception of your body as clean, and emptiness itself, okay? When you are looking at your hand, and you're looking at your hand, and you're saying, ew, those hands are so dirty, you know, those hands are so muddy, or filthy, or something like that, what's the implication?

The implication is I'm clean, you know, this is not me, you know what I mean? Like, I'm a clean, you know, and the hands are dirty, you know, and somehow it seems inappropriate that the hands are dirty, because I am supposed to be clean, you know? So, like, then you get into this thing, or this obsession about washing them, right?

You say, I've got to wash them, because my nature is to be clean, I'm clean. And then when you say, I'm clean, and the hands are dirty, you're creating this distance between what you perceive as the self, or yourself, and your hands, your dirty hands. So, what's going on here?

What is the relationship between you, then, and your body? You could say that, but a distance, a separateness, you know, I am somehow separate from my body. I mean, by implication, when you say, I'm clean, they're dirty, then what you're saying is, there's a separation between you and your body.

But in truth, you are devoid of any such separation. You are empty of any such separation. And that's the connection between the idea of clean and the idea of emptiness here.

You know, emptiness is the opposite of thinking that it's clean. You're creating a separation between me and the body, where in truth, they are indivisibly related, okay? So, when you think about something that's indivisibly related, and conceive of it as being two separate things, the emptiness of that is that those two things are empty of being separate.

They are devoid of being separate. And that's what emptiness means in this case, okay? Right.

Geshe-la says, I want to refine this a little bit further, okay? I don't want you getting a wrong idea about this, you know? Is, for example, Anton separate from Anton's hand?

Are you two different things? Is Anton's hand... Yeah, there is a thing called Anton, and there is a thing called Anton's hand, and they are different things, okay?

That's not a mistake to think that. You are different from your hand, okay? You are a separate thing from your hand, okay?

But are you related? Are you separate in the sense of being an unrelated separate? No, you are an intimately related separate.

If you remove Anton's hand, you remove Anton, or a big part of Anton, okay? If you remove Anton, you remove Anton's hand. There's a relationship between these two things.

There's an almost indivisible relationship between them. But don't think I'm going so radical as to say they're not separate. There are two separate things here, Anton and Anton's hand, right?

There are those two separate things. So when I say devoid of being separate, what I mean is devoid of being separate things that are not intimately related to each other. That's what we mean here by devoid, or voidness, okay?

Again, Geshe-la says, we have to say that Anton and Anton's hand are separate things. Obviously, they are separate things. But are they an unconnected separate?

Are they an unrelated separate? If they were, then when Anton cut his hand, he wouldn't say, I cut my hand. You see what I mean?

You see what I mean? He wouldn't say, I cut my hand. You see what I mean?

You'd say, the hand is cut. You say, oh, look, the hand is cut. You don't say that.

You don't say, oh, the hand is hurt. You say, ouch, I hurt. You know, like that.

So obviously, this indicates a relationship between Anton and Anton's hand. They are two separate things, but they are not two unrelated separate things. For example, what was this example?

There are two separate kinds of relationships. In general, we can describe two kinds. In the universe, things can be related in only two ways.

One is what we call a cause and effect relationship. Something relates to another thing in that it is its cause or it is its result. And that's one of the two kinds of relationships that are possible in the universe.

The second kind of relationship that's possible in the universe is what we call a relationship of identity, meaning if you remove A, then B has to go away. So A is related to B in such a manner that they are related in their identity. So these are the two possible relationships that things have.

Anton and Anton's hand are related by identity, meaning that if you removed Anton, then you'd have to be removing Anton's hand. But, which is also true of cause and effect, right? If you remove the cause, the effect never happens.

But the additional factor is that in a cause and effect relationship, by the time at any given point where one of them is present and existing, the other one is either gone or yet to come. They are never existing in the same time. So either the seed is around and the result hasn't come out yet, or the result has come out and the seed is gone already, okay?

But are Anton and Anton's hand like that? Okay, yeah, you can't say, you know, by the time Anton's here, Anton's hand has disappeared, okay? Something like that, okay?

So obviously they bear a relationship. There's only two possible relationships they could bear. They don't bear a relationship such that part of Anton is gone, but a part of Anton has come.

So ergo, by default, they must have the relationship that we call a relationship of identity, meaning if you removed Anton, then Anton's hand would have to go away.

[Говорящий 2]
But if you remove my hand...

[Говорящий 1]
That's a little tricky. That's a little tricky. Yeah, I started to say that and I corrected myself.

That kind of relationship, or what we call a relationship of identity, there are two kinds of those. One which is called, we call it a one-way street, and one which is called a two-way street. And you gotta, you gotta make that distinction.

Okay. He's describing what it means, what I call a one-way street and a two-way street, okay? When the coverage of those things is equal, for example, the extent or the comprehensiveness of what we call per-impermanent things or produced things, those are two equal sets.

They cover the territory exactly. Everything that's impermanent is produced. Everything that's produced is impermanent.

We call equal coverage or equal extent of those two groups. Those two sets have exactly the same amount of members. So that's an indication that they bear a two-way street relationship, meaning if you got rid of all the changing things in the world, you'd also have to be removing all the produced things in the world.

If you removed all the produced things in the world, you'd have to be removing all the changing things in the world. And there's no difference in the coverage. Now what about a particular type of a thing and the group in which that thing exists?

For example, if we had a group of changing things and we took a water pitcher or water pitchers, is it true that if you removed all the water pitchers in the universe, you would be removing all the changing things in the universe? No, it's only a subset. So if you remove the subset, you don't remove the set, you know, by definition.

But if you remove the set, you do remove the set. That is called a one-way relationship of identity. Otherwise, if you threw out all the vases in a room, you'd be in danger of losing everything in the room and all the changing things in the room.

So again, to go back to where we were, you're reading across the end of the third line of the verse to the beginning of the fourth line of the verse, and it says, things don't exist in the way you hold them, meaning we take things to be clean, to be beautiful, to be unchanging, and to have a self-nature, whereas in reality, they don't. So if you think about it, Lord Buddha is saying, when he denies those four qualities, being clean and the other three, why are we referring to these? We're trying to explain what Lord Buddha meant during the middle turning of the wheel when he said, nothing exists, or he said, nothing exists by definition.

And these guys are saying, oh, come on, don't take him literally, you know. What he meant was, those four ways of looking at things are wrong. Things don't exist in those four ways.

So Geshe-la if you think about it, we now have seven things that the Buddha really meant when he said, nothing existed during the second turning of the wheel. One out of seven. We have those three characteristics of produced things that we already had past, present, and future things, not existing in certain ways.

And now we have these four things that we think wrongly about that don't exist as we hold them to exist. So if you think about it, in these few lines, we now have seven different things that Lord Buddha was talking about when he said, during the second turning of the wheel, nothing exists, or nothing exists by definition. We're going to throw in one more for good measure.

We got seven, right? Seven things that Lord Buddha meant when he said, nothing exists, or nothing exists by definition during the second turning of the wheel. Let's throw in one more thing.

What's that? It's the tendency to hold those objects as being external. Remember what it means in this school?

We talked about it yesterday. The tendency to hold certain things as being external. We have a tendency to do that, whereas in fact they do not exist as external to ourselves.

And that's another case of the fourth case. That's another case of holding something in a way, of something not existing in the way you hold it, which is the wording of the root text here. So if you think about it, this is now a fifth case of holding something in a way in which it's not.

We had clean, et cetera, being fourth, and now we have a fifth one. So he says that fourth general thing referred to in this case, which is the fact that things don't exist the way you hold them to be, it refers to those four on one hand, and that one on the other hand, and now you have a total of five in the fourth of the characterizations here. So you got three being the three times, right?

That thing about the three times. Then in the fourth one you divide it into four of cleanliness, et cetera, and one of thinking that things don't exist as external objects, but you think of them as existing as external objects, and that way you get a total of eight. The fourth group embodying five.

Okay. This is easy. This is just math, he said.

So in a debate, somebody says, how many things was the Buddha thinking about during the Second Term of the Wheel when he was denying everything, according to the Jewel of the Sutras?

[Говорящий 2]
And you're limbo.

[Говорящий 1]
Now you have another quotation. By the way, Geshe-la wraps up the last one before he goes on this new one, and he says, the text here says in the ninth line or tenth line from the bottom, things don't, it is, it is, Buddha, Lord Buddha was, when he said that nothing existed by nature during the Second Term of the Wheel, what he was thinking about was this idea that things are not as infants take them. There's a word in Tibetan called infant, meaning a person who hasn't seen emptiness directly or a person who is spiritually not well-developed yet.

He says, things are not in the way, things don't, when the Buddha said nothing has any nature of its own, what Lord Buddha meant was things are not as infants take them to be. Okay, so that wraps up that quotation from the Jewel of the Sutras. Now we go on to a book called the Abhidharma Samuccaya, which is the, which is called the Compendium of Abhidharma or the Compendium of Higher Knowledge, and this is written by Arya Sangha.

Okay, so here we have another text, this one by Arya Sangha. Okay, and in there, Arya Sangha is going to start talking about those two. Okay, what are those two?

Those two refers, now you're lucky to Geshe-la has glossed for you the last group, right? What was the last group that we talked about before? Yeah, the four wrong concepts and then the one, yeah, and then non-existing as external objects, right?

Yeah, it was the whole category called things, that things don't exist the way you think they are or the way you take them to be. And inside there we had four plus one, right? We had these four over here and this one over here.

So when Arya Sangha in the Abhidharma Samuccaya starts out by saying, Buddha, during the second turn of the wheel when he denied all that stuff, was talking about those two. That's all it says, okay? He's talking about the four and the one.

Okay, so those two means the four misconceptions. It refers all to the fourth of the four, right? Meaning taking things the wrong way.

Okay, things don't exist the way you take them. So when Master Sangha talks about those two, he's talking about the four and the one, okay? Which are parts of the fourth, right?

Okay, so that's what Master Sangha is talking about. And then he says those three lacks of a self-nature. Those are what Lord Buddha was talking about when he denied that things existed naturally.

Now, what are those three lacks of a self-nature? Here we're talking about the original three groups that we started out with long, long ago. You know, what did the mind-only school say that Lord Buddha was talking about when he denied that anything existed by definition?

Oh, Lord Buddha was talking about three different groups of things, okay? What? Constructs, dependent things, and totality, emptiness.

And that, oh, what Lord Buddha meant to, what he really meant was divide things into these two groups. And then to go further and say, oh, these exist by definition and these don't exist by definition. So what you've got here is like those two, meaning the four and the one, and then they say, and the three lacks of a self-nature, meaning the lack of a self-nature those three categories, okay?

Those three categories referred to as lack of self-nature. And Geshe-la says, you know, I didn't quite get the last thing he said, and here it is over again, okay? He said, what did he say about those last three groups?

Why did he refer to them as not existing by definition, okay? Why did he say, how is it that you can interpret those statements as figurative by bringing up those three groups, you know? Lord Buddha, what did he say?

Nothing exists by definition. So how does that clarify those three groups? How, if you bring up the three groups, can you explain what he meant when he said nothing exists by definition, right?

In the first case, it's easy, okay? Constructs really don't exist by definition in the minority school. So he was speaking about concepts.

When he talked about concepts, he was saying they don't exist by definition. That's what he meant about concepts, okay? When he got to changing things, remember there were two interpretations of what he meant when they don't exist by definition, and we'll go for the easier one, which is that it's not true of dependent things that they do not grow without their causes and conditions, remember?

That's what he said about them. And that's what Lord Buddha meant, according to the minority school, when he said about dependent things that they don't exist by definition, okay? And now what about the third group when we get to young groups, right?

Emptiness itself. What did he mean when he said it didn't exist by definition? He meant it is the absence of that thing which exists self-existently, the gaccha.

It is the absence of that thing of which emptiness is empty. And that's why you can speak of emptiness as something that doesn't exist by definition. You have to interpret it, okay?

He didn't mean it doesn't exist by definition, as the minority school believes that to exist, right?

[Говорящий 2]
Does that mean it relies on that other thing?

[Говорящий 1]
It doesn't so much talk about that reliance. All it's saying is that when the Buddha said that emptiness or totality doesn't exist by definition, because in this school it does exist by definition, right? What he really meant was it is non-existent.

What do you mean by that? It is the simple lack of that subtle thing which emptiness denies. That's all.

It's a negative. That's all Buddha was trying to say was it's an absence of something. When he said it doesn't exist by definition, he meant doesn't exist, by which he meant doesn't have, by which he meant doesn't possess a self-existent object.

You know, it is the absence of a self-existent object. Right. Totality or emptiness is defined as the absence of something.

It is derived by cancelling something else. And that is what? A self-existent object.

And in that sense, Lord Buddha denied the existence of emptiness. And all he meant was it's the absence of something. Absence of what?

Absence of a self-existent thing. That's all. He says, hey, you can save yourself some time.

Right here he says, those two and those three we talked about before, you know, you just make a note here. Oh, the three lacks of the self-nature that the whole book started with way back in the beginning from the Sutra on the Intent of the Sutras. And you don't have to write all this stuff.

Just say, refer back to the page on which we described the three lacks of self-nature. In some of the commentaries on this book, meaning Essence of Eloquence on the Art of Interpretation, in some commentaries on this, they say, so we can say that if we had to classify all the things that Lord Buddha was denying, really denying, when he spoke in the Second Turn of the Wheel that nothing exists by definition, what he really had in mind was how many different things? Eleven.

Yeah, because you got eight from the Jewel of the Sutras, and here you got two repeated, and you got three extra ones. So that's eleven. So when Lord Buddha said in the Second Turn of the Wheel that nothing exists by definition, he's talking about the eight from the Jewel of the Sutras and the three new ones from the Abhidharma Samuccaya, the compendium of Abhidharma, of higher knowledge, which are just the three lacks of a self-nature that we started out with on the first day here.

Let's go on the express. Now Je Tsongkhapa is trying to explain a little bit of difficult wording from the first quotation from the Jewel of the Sutras. Remember we talked about a water pitcher of the future will not, without its causes and conditions, become a water pitcher, right?

And the wording there was something like, it does not have its own essence, or it doesn't have its own essence, right? And that was supposed to be referring to the water pitcher of the future not occurring without its causes and conditions. So here Je Tsongkhapa is helping you.

He says, anything that, that thing which doesn't have its own essence refers to that thing which does not exist independently, which means it must depend on other causes and conditions to occur. And he's explaining to you the meaning of that line up there that talked about that object in the future which would not occur without its causes and conditions. And he clarifies a little more, which is kind of cool.

He says, if you think about the object in the future, it is moving toward the present, okay? It is approaching the present, okay? So, but it's not going to do so without someone to instigate it, okay?

Something's going to have to push it to get closer to the present. And when it finally gets to the present, then you can say, and in a sense, Geshe-la has given a new twist on it. He says, things don't approach the present from the future without their causes and conditions.

Okay, so it's a cool way to think about it. Geshe-la says there's a similar reference or similar quotation from a book called The Lamp of the Middle Way or something like that, okay? The Light of the Middle Way, how's that?

And The Light of the Middle Way is written by Master Kamalashila, and it has a very similar intent and very similar quotation. Should I give it to you or not? Is it a waste of time or not?

Let's do it. Okay. Page 61, third line from the bottom, he rips out some lines that mean, and things which have stopped do not have a nature either, meaning they don't have a nature of coming again in the present, and that's what it means when we say they don't have a nature, okay?

Things that have stopped, meaning that water pitcher of the past doesn't have any quality of sneaking back into the present and happening again, okay? And that's what those two lines mean. You don't have to write that, we talked about it already.

Okay. And Jetsa Kapha is still helping you with that quotation from The Jewel of the Sutra. He says, what did that mean when it said it didn't have its own characteristics or something like that?

What that refers to is that, I'm sorry, it was something like it doesn't remain in its own essence. I blew that one, okay? So the wording in the original is that it doesn't remain in its essence.

And here we're talking about a present tense thing, the water pitcher in the present tense that doesn't stay. It can't just stay, it has to keep on the move. It's always on the move towards the past, right?

It's always on the move, about to be destroyed. So he says, here's where Jetsa Kapha explains that wording as meaning that, in the last two lines of page 61. And Jetsa Kapha wraps it up for you.

We've already talked about it, I already gave it to you, you already understand it. Page 62, first line, Jetsa Kapha says, hey, to put it briefly, okay, a future tense sprout, right, coming out of a seed, like a little sprout coming out of a seed. A future tense sprout is not something that's going to grow independently.

It's not just going to happen independent of anything else. It's not just going to pop up by itself, okay? And a sprout which is past tense is not going to come back and revisit you, okay?

It's gone, okay? And a sprout which is now in the present will not be staying here in the present relative to itself, right, for very long. It's constantly on the move, it's constantly changing, and it never stays in one place.

Therefore, we can say that the Buddha, during the second turn of the wheel, said that nothing has any self-nature. What he meant by nothing has any self-nature is that these three objects of these three times don't have those natures, okay?

[Говорящий 2]
Right, right.

[Говорящий 1]
The meaning of the fourth one, right, which means things don't exist in the way you hold them to be, things don't exist in the way you take them to be, means that infants, meaning people who haven't seen emptiness directly or people who are spiritually undeveloped yet, they take things to be tsang de dak dak, right, which means clean, beautiful, permanent, and having some nature of their own, okay? Young people always say infants take them to be that way, and also they take things as, also they have a belief in things as being, what it says here, the very essence of labels, which here means existing as external objects, okay?

So when it says they have a tendency to take things as having the very essence of labels or something like that, what it means here is they have a tendency to think of things as being external objects. And the fact that the way they take it to be is not true. The fact that those five things, four plus one, don't exist in the way that those infants take them to be is a kind of lack of nature, and that's what Lord Buddha was talking about in the second turning of the wheel, when he said things don't have any nature of their own.

That's all he was talking about, is that they don't have a nature of existing in the way that those undeveloped people think they exist, okay? And this, says Geshe-la, Je Tsongkhapa is saying, look, it's not only was it stated that way in the Jewel of the Sutras, hey, by Maitreya, and not only did Master Asanga talk about it, Master Vasubandhu talked about it too, and that's six lines from the top on page 62. This same statement was made by Master Vasubandhu.

You know, when we got to the four and the one, right, the four was obvious in this last quotation, but when they got to the one they talked about, they believed it to be otherwise, to be the definitive characteristic of constructs, or something like that. And so Je Tsongkhapa is like, oh boy, this is obscure, I better help you with this, okay? I'm going to help you with that phrase.

He says that phrase, which means they believe that it is otherwise, meaning the characteristic of constructs, right? What that refers to is they believe that this word other, he says, that other thing that they believe, who? Undeveloped people, right?

Spiritually undeveloped. That quote, other thing that they believe, refers to, and now we're on the seventh line down, page 62, refers to their belief that for example that the visual consciousness that's holding to the color blue and the blue to which it's holding are separate, meaning that they come from a separate karmic seed, okay? In other words, it's our tendency to think that one thing is out there and one thing is in here, right?

That my consciousness of a certain color and that color out there have not been created by the same energy, okay? And to hold that or to believe that is in essence to believe what? In external objects, to believe that objects exist external to you.

So that's what it means when he says children have the tendency to think that they exist, that the characteristics of construction exist as something else. And there's that difficult phrase, and Jatakoff says, hey look, it just means as external objects, meaning they take them to exist due to a separate energy and not that they came from exactly the same karmic seed. So therefore when we talk about 11 things that Lord Buddha had in mind, we're talking about 11 things that Lord Buddha really had in mind when he said during the second or the middle turning of the wheel, nothing exists by definition.

Okay, got a question for you guys, wake up, got to answer a question, all right? We've gone through 11 different things that Lord Buddha had in mind when during the second turn of the wheel, the middle turn of the wheel, he said nothing exists by definition. Now you guys remember that we're back in the beginning, we had a quotation from the sutra in which the Buddha explains the meaning of his sutras, and in there there was a discussion about the different subject matters of the second turn of the wheel, and what Lord Buddha was talking about during the second turn of the wheel, and all that stuff.

Now do you think, okay here's the question, in your opinion, did he cover everything, do you cover everything that the Buddha was talking about during the second turn of the wheel when you say he was thinking about these 11 different things? That's what he really had in mind was these 11 different things when he taught the whole second turn of the wheel. Do these 11 cover everything that was brought up earlier as the subject matter of the second turn of the wheel?

Glad I don't have to answer that. Anything left out or not? Did he cover everything or not?

If you just answer and say, well this covers all existing objects, right, all existing things. He says that I won't yell too loud at you because you weren't here during those opening pages, but you other guys were, and we want to know if with this... He says no, I'm digging back into your notes.

Does he cover the subject matter of the second turn of the wheel when you say that he had these 11 things in mind when Lord Buddha said during the second turn of the wheel? He says you're starting with him. My question boils down to this.

You know there's two kinds of books. There's the books you're holding in your hand and there's the books you have in your mind. And my question is about the book you have in your mind.

[Говорящий 2]
Okay, I don't care which book you're holding now.

[Говорящий 1]
Give me an answer. Does he cover everything or doesn't he cover everything?

[Говорящий 2]
If he says he doesn't know any papers, does he cover all of them? And the other 8 seem to be extra.

[Говорящий 1]
メルセラー scientific name ポタ(?) The other two guys Take a picamer In a minute we're gonna take a shot On the other side of the room How many was it like? Seven different groups of things was it Wasn't it? I don't remember What's that, the second turn of the wheel?

[Говорящий 2]
Yeah, the second turn of the wheel.

[Говорящий 1]
Why don't you take a shot on that and say, hey, there's seven groups and, you know.

[Говорящий 2]
The last turn of the wheel.

[Говорящий 1]
Uh... He says, uh, I appreciate that you took a shot on the seven groups. I appreciate that you know that the last of the seven groups is the place I'm going.

I appreciate that you know some others of the groups. But time's running out. I'll just give them to you, okay?

I'm not going to play the whole tape. I'm going to show you the box. Meaning, we don't have much time.

I'll give you a summary.

[Говорящий 2]
Mm.

[Говорящий 1]
Right. That's it. Don't you remember that, in the beginning, there were two categories of the outline?

And the first one was, what the Buddha really meant when he said there was no nature to things. And then the second category was, what the Buddha meant when he said things didn't grow, etc. Meaning, the other four.

Right? So, let's go back to there. The answer is there, he said.

That's how it is. Do you remember these categories? And do you care to take a shot at it, since I've brought up the categories, relative to these categories?

Yeah. They don't start, they don't stop, in a state of peace. So, how does that relate to the comprehensiveness of the eleven?

Okay, what's up, what's up? What do you guys come up with? I shared the corner of the box, and then Ian started playing the tape a little bit.

He likes it. Okay, he likes your answer. Yeah, he said, who gave me that answer?

He said Ian did. Okay. Anybody else left out here?

Any others left out? Is that all, that wasn't covered? What do you think?

[Говорящий 2]
Huh?

[Говорящий 1]
That's easy, that's easy. What about the rest, the other four, anybody else got left out? Anybody else, did anybody else get left out or not, of the one plus the four?

Ian said the last two of the four got left out. I mean, basically asking, did the first two of the four get left out?

[Говорящий 2]
Huh? Didn't cover it. Yeah.

[Говорящий 1]
Yeah, okay. So, what's left over, what got left out? Huh?

No, one of you never got covered. In the middle turning of the wheel, the Buddha said that every existing phenomena had certain features. How many features was that?

He said that certain features applied to all existing phenomena. Five, it was five. Yeah.

[Говорящий 2]
What are they?

[Говорящий 1]
Doesn't have a self-nature, doesn't start, doesn't stop. Peace from the beginning and transcendent beyond grief. Those are the five.

Right? This is actually, if you think about it, we left out all four, you see? We are mainly focusing on those eleven.

Those eleven are explaining what the Buddha meant when he said nothing exists but definitions. It's like a case where once everyone has said it, I can say it too or not. Anyway, yeah, you're right.

[Говорящий 2]
Okay.

[Говорящий 1]
Nani, nani. Nasa, nasa. Nasa, nasa.

So, remember that when we talked about the original sutra, about the antenna of the sutras, It had five different characteristics, five different things that Lord Buddha was talking about in the second turn of the wheel. And so far, all the stuff from the Jewelry of the Sutras and all those other books is only covering what did Buddha really mean when he said nothing had any nature of its own. That's all that's coming.

We haven't touched on the latter four. We haven't touched on what it means when he said, oh, they don't grow, they don't starve, they are at peace from the beginning, and they are transcendent beyond grief. We didn't touch on those four.

So we still have to do those four. Those four got left. So back in the Sutra on the Intent of the Sutras, we covered all five, we clarified it, we cleaned it up, we worked on it, and it's all neat and tidy, okay?

But now we got to the Jewel of the Sutras, we've only covered one of the five. Jewel of the Sutras, now down in this section, we've only covered one of the five, which is what Lord Buddha meant in the second turn of the wheel when he said nothing had any nature of its own. And in general, the latter four we can discuss or we can describe in exactly the same way as they were described above.

Okay, those last four can be described exactly in the same way as above. Master, I was kind of tripping you up with a trick question, and we got to these four by sort of a difficult process, but generally they're not hard at all, and we can cover them in a minute, they're just something you can cover right away. So basically, what has happened so far, we've got the real meaning of what Lord Buddha meant when he said nothing exists by definition during the middle turn of the wheel, where does it all boil down to?

I mean, come on, it all boils down to, if you think about it, everything we've said so far about the first characteristic, about the first feature, which is when Buddha said nothing exists by definition and nothing has any nature of its own, it all boils down to they don't exist by definition in the sense of not existing as external objects, okay? They don't exist by definition in the sense of existing as external objects, okay? So, got that as the main meaning of what he meant when he said they don't exist by nature, or they don't have any nature of their own, meaning they don't exist by nature in the sense of existing as external objects.

Take that same phrasing, glue it on to the other four, and you're covered. Easy, okay? They don't have a nature of starting, which is a nature of existing by definition as an external object, okay?

Yeah, they don't stop as external objects, and they are not peace from the very beginning as an external object, and they are not transcending beyond grief, right? Those are positives, yeah, yeah, as an external object, okay? They are not a transcendence beyond grief, which could exist as an external object.

How's that? Something like that. Yeah, well, you could say they are peace from the beginning in the sense of not being an external object, okay?

He points out that he agrees with you, Chilton, and he likes the way you said it, and he's going to do it in a very similar way. He says the last two refer to absences of self-existent things, absences of the gaccha, absences of what emptiness is emptying out. So he starts with the one that talks about nirvana, which is, it has a nature of being transcending grief or being beyond grief.

If you take grief here as meaning the gaccha, okay, as meaning the thing which emptiness is empty of, we can say that all these things transcend the state of existing in a self-nature as an external object, okay? They transcend that state. Their nature is to transcend the state of being a self-existent object.

Their nature is to transcend the state of being something that could exist as an external object, as we think it to be, okay? And then the one about peace, you know, peace from the beginning means extinction, right, really. They have been for all time and always will be and are now and forevermore the extinction of a self-existent object or the absence of a self-existent object.

They are free and have always been free of being an external object, okay? And that's their take on the last four. The last four are really easy.

[Говорящий 2]
With three, you just take the first one as the beginning and the last one as the end.

[Говорящий 1]
Okay?

[Говорящий 2]
Okay.

[Говорящий 1]
Okay. Okay. With three, you just take the first one and join it down to the other two, right?

With the three, meaning it doesn't have any nature of its own, doesn't start, doesn't stop, right? You just take your description of that one and hang it on the other two, right? And those are sort of like, so if you say about this one that not existing by definition means not existing as an external object, then you say, you just glue it on these two and you say, its beginning doesn't exist as an external object and its stopping doesn't exist as an external object.

And in those cases, it doesn't exist by definition or doesn't have any nature of its own. Then when you get to the last two, you're positing two non-existent things and saying that these are the absences or these are the voidness of those two things. In the one case, extinction, meaning the extinction or the absence of a self-existent object that never was, meaning an external object that never was.

And in this case, going beyond grief, transcending grief, which is the Tibetan word for nirvana, right? Sometimes we call it natural nirvana. Emptiness is sometimes called natural nirvana.

It is going beyond grief in the sense that it has transcended a state of being a self-existent object in the sense of not being an external object. It has transcended any nature of being an external object. It is going beyond grief in the sense that it has transcended a state of being a self-existent We can say that it doesn't have a nature of existing by definition as a person, right?

Simply because it's not a person. So what I'm really asking about is personness, right? You've got to remember that.

I'm asking about its personness.

[Говорящий 2]
That's important. Some people think it's a minus, some people think it's a plus.

[Говорящий 1]
So it has a characteristic of not being a person which exists by definition, right? It has a characteristic of not being a person that exists by definition, right? So can we say that it also doesn't have a quality of starting as a person that exists by definition?

Yeah, we're not allowed to, we're not allowed. So we're not allowed to? So if I say it doesn't have a nature of being a person that's going by definition, no...

Right, right. And where is the crux of my question? Really, when you say no, what you're thinking is, it's not a person who exists by definition.

So how could it ever be a person that was growing by definition? Or a person who exists by definition who's growing? You've already in your mind canceled that it's a person that exists by definition, right?

So if I come along and ask you, is this pen something which is growing as a person that exists by definition, what can you say? Automatically. No.

Why? Because you've already canceled its being a person that exists by definition. Same thing, exactly the same thing.

Remember, we're twisting everything around the first of the five features, which is that it doesn't exist by definition. So now if I come along and say to you, does it have a growing that exists by definition? You can automatically say, no, about everything.

Don't forget, I'm not asking you, did the pen start or not? If I ask you, did the pen start, you have to say, yeah, but did the pen start as a person that exists by definition? No.

So if you say that about this pen, that it is not in a person that exists by definition and started, can you say about this pen that it... So if we establish that this pen is not a thing that has ever grown as a person who exists by definition, can we further state that, oh, tomorrow or the next day or next month, can we further state that in the future it will also never be something that stops as a person who exists by definition? So we've already covered three, did you notice?

It's not a person that exists by definition, it's not a person that starts... a person that exists by definition and starts, and a person that exists by definition that stops. We've already covered three, it's easy.

The key here, the thing you have to keep focusing on is something which is a person, right? Keep cancelling that in your mind, you know? Keep thinking, when I say, is it a person who exists by definition and is growing?

Is it a person who exists by definition and is stopping? The thing you have to focus on is that, is it a person, right? If it's not that, the rest is easy, right?

If you lose that point that it's not a person in the first place, you're going to get mixed up with the rest, you know? Focus on the main point, is it or isn't it a person? Same thing, remember we're twisting everything around the first of the five features, which is that it doesn't exist by definition.

So now if I come along and say to you, does it have a growing that exists by definition? You can automatically say, no, about everything. Don't forget I'm asking you, I'm not asking you did the pen start or not.

If I ask you did the pen start, you have to say, yeah, but did the pen start as a person that exists by definition? No. So if you say that about this pen that it is not in a person that exists by definition and started, can you say about this pen that it...

[Говорящий 2]
Nothing, nothing.

[Говорящий 1]
So if we establish that this pen is not a thing that has ever grown as a person who exists by definition, can we further state that, oh, tomorrow or the next day or next month, can we further state that in the future it will also never be something that stops as a person who exists by definition? So we've already covered three, did you notice? It's not a person that exists by definition, it's not a person that exists by definition and starts, and neither is it a person that exists by definition that stops.

We've already covered three, it's easy.

[Говорящий 2]
Nothing, nothing.

[Говорящий 1]
The key here, the thing you have to keep focusing on is something which is a person, right? Keep casting that in your mind, you know? Keep thinking, when I say is it a person who exists by definition and is growing?

Is it a person who exists by definition and is stopping? The thing you have to focus on is that, is it a person, right? If it's not that, the rest is easy, right?

If you lose that point that it's not a person in the first place, you're going to get mixed up with the rest, you know? Focus on the main point, is it or isn't it a person? So once you've cancelled that it's a person, isn't it easy to slide into those others?

You know? Once you've cancelled that it's a person, once you've denied that it's a person that exists by definition, it's easy to say it's not a person that exists by definition since it's starting. It's not a person that exists by definition since it's stopping, okay?

Like that. Okay, so now forget about me describing the pen as a person, okay? A pen as a person.

We had a pen, we had a pen as a person, we had a pen as a self-existent person, or a person that exists by definition. Now, isolate the pen as a person that exists by definition. Isolate as a person that exists by definition.

As a person that exists by definition. By the way, it doesn't exist anyway. But let's just isolate that idea out and stick it over there.

As a person that exists by definition. Take that quality out there, as a person that exists by definition. And over here is the pen.

Does that apply to this? So we can say that it transcends that quality, right? That it is beyond that quality.

That it has gone beyond that quality, meaning it doesn't have that quality, right? So it has transcended, right?

[Говорящий 2]
Nothing.

[Говорящий 1]
Nothing. And now, think about how it has transcended that quality, right? This quality doesn't exist, right?

It's being a person that exists by definition, right? This quality doesn't even exist, okay? For how long has the pen not had that quality?

[Говорящий 2]
Forever.

[Говорящий 1]
Okay? Since the beginning. Did the Buddha just make it up?

Is it a new quality that it has? Is it some post-reconstructed quality or something like that? No.

It never had that quality since the beginning. So now we go out of the illustration back to the original meaning of the thing, right? Over here you put the quality of existing by definition.

You call it grief. And you say, we have transcended grief. What do you mean?

Things don't possess that quality, okay? Things don't possess that quality. They have gone beyond that quality, meaning they don't possess that quality.

Do things transcend that type of grief? Yeah. No, no, no.

This is a non-existent existing by definition. Meaning as an external object, if you wish.

[Говорящий 2]
Of course. So can we keep saying about this thing, you know, that it's not a person?

[Говорящий 1]
Can we keep using negatives about it? It's not. It's not.

It's not. It never was. Can we say, oh, it never was.

It never was. It never was. Can we say that?

Now forget the panda and take your five heaps. Or your body, okay? Is your body permanent?

Okay. Consider the body which is permanent in the same way you considered the panda which was a person. Okay?

Now consider the body which is permanent, okay? The permanent body. And take permanent in the sense of a permanent body now.

Now do you get it? Now does it make a little more sense? We're talking about something that doesn't exist anyway, right?

And then we're talking about details of something that doesn't exist anyway. Okay. Now I'll ask you another question.

Does this pen exist as an external object? Come on, this is a mind-only meeting. We're having a mind-only meeting here, you know.

These are all mind-only people. Of course we're talking mind-only. Are we having a mind-only meeting or are we having a middle way meeting here?

Since I'm in front of you. Yeah, yeah. A priori, we're talking about the mind-only school.

No, it doesn't exist.

[Говорящий 2]
So when you talk about existing as an external thing, it doesn't exist at all, right?

[Говорящий 1]
As an external thing. I mean external things don't exist. In this school, external things don't exist.

So can you say that when the Buddha said nothing exists by definition, what he was saying was they don't exist as external things that exist by definition. Yes. So given the fact that you've already established that it is not an external thing which could exist by definition, can you say it is not an external thing which could exist by definition that could start?

So there's no such starting, right? There's no such starting. Of a thing that was an external thing that existed by definition.

So now can we see how we can slide into those other ones or not? No sir, no sir. So now separate its existing as an external object from the pen.

Okay, it doesn't exist, right? Its existing as an external doesn't even exist. But just for the sake of conversation, let's rip off of it, its quality of existing as an external object and set it over there.

Okay, there is its quality of existing as an external object and here is the pen. Can we say that the pen is the extinction or the absence of that particular existence as an external object? From the beginning.

[Говорящий 2]
Forever.

[Говорящий 1]
Now take that thing, you know, we ripped off its existence as an external object, its quality of existing as an external object. That quality of existing as an external object was put over there. Now can you say that this thing transcends that quality?

That's grief, this is going beyond grief, right? Which is the Tibetan word for nirvana itself. Here natural nirvana meaning emptiness, okay?

Can we say that it goes beyond that kind of grief? If you can say yes, yes about that, then you better... Listen here, you damn well better be able to say about the other eleven, okay?

Then you say yes, yes, and then say it about the other eleven too, got it? Okay. Is it okay?

[Говорящий 2]
Got it?

[Говорящий 1]
Okay with you?

[Говорящий 2]
So when we say... I'm trying to think of like the quality of the practice of thinking of something as impure and deemed pure. How are we going to relate that in this case?

How do we talk about... We say that things that are impure were never pure. They didn't start as pure.

[Говорящий 1]
That's going to be a hard one because that's the one that's in the evidence. That's the one I was thinking of, right? Okay, okay.

That's dope to you. That's easy.

[Говорящий 2]
That's easy.

[Говорящий 1]
What?

[Говорящий 2]
What?

[Говорящий 1]
What? So I'm going to ask you a question, okay? I understand your question.

Ah, that's easy, okay? Now I'll give you a question in return, okay? Are you something which does not bear an indivisible relationship with your partner?

Is Robert Chilton something that is not related to Robert Chilton's hand? Maré. Don't want to make him maré.

No. So now I ask you another thing. Are you...

Is Robert Chilton something unrelated to his hand in a... I'm sorry. Does Robert Chilton not relate to his hand in a way that exists by definition?

Yeah, because it's not even true that you don't relate to your hand. So when you glue on the expression by definition, you can automatically say no because it's not even true that you don't relate to your hand, okay? That's all.

So did you agree that they... You never agreed, right, that they were unrelated, that they were not intimately related? So it's not something that is not related intimately or indivisibly, right?

Please remember that we're talking about the opposites of things, okay? I think part of your problem might be that you're thinking about it as it is, you know, like you're thinking about it as a positive aspect. Think about it as an opposite.

Think about all eleven as being denials or something. Think about denials or reversals.

[Говорящий 2]
In this one, the last question was denial of things being pure, after denial of things being cheap.

[Говорящий 1]
We're getting there. We're getting to the clean one, okay? When I say concentrate on the reversal, right, I want you to concentrate on the one that never existed, couldn't exist, doesn't exist, right?

Which is that Robert Chilton doesn't bear a relationship to Robert Chilton's hand. Focus on that one. So, we're talking about your hand and you existing by definition.

Do those two things which exist by definition bear a relationship or not? No, they are... what should we say?

Yeah, but concentrate on the negative, right? Concentrate on the negative. They are not something which exists.

They are not separate by nature, okay? Or they are not essentially separate or something like that. Now, do those things...

does a Robert Chilton and a Robert Chilton's hand who don't bear a relationship to each other, could they start?

[Говорящий 2]
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So, we've gone two steps out of the five.

[Говорящий 1]
We've taken two of the five steps. What's the first one? We first denied that Robert Chilton and Robert Chilton's hand had a lack of a relationship that existed by definition.

Okay? I'll say it again. Robert Chilton and Robert Chilton's hand...

We've denied that Robert Chilton and Robert Chilton's hand had a lack of a relationship which could exist by definition. And now we're denying that Robert Chilton and Robert Chilton's hand could have a lack of a relationship that started. Okay?

That's all.

[Говорящий 2]
Mm-hmm.

[Говорящий 1]
And since the lack of relationship between Robert Chilton and Robert Chilton's hand could not have any starting which existed by itself or by definition, neither could they have any stopping that existed by definition.

[Говорящий 2]
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

[Говорящий 1]
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

[Говорящий 2]
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

[Говорящий 1]
So now can we say... Now let's separate from Robert Chilton the self-existent fact, right? That Robert Chilton and Robert Chilton's hand don't bear any relationship.

And I think I have to clarify it. I'm not sure the English has been very good here. Okay?

And I have to clarify it. Okay? Let's separate from this discussion.

Let's put down on the bed here. Let's separate out this thing called existing by definition in the form of Robert Chilton and Robert Chilton's hand having no relationship. I should have said it that way.

I think I haven't been very clear that way. I'll say it again. Let's take away from this object, Robert Chilton, Robert Chilton's existing by definition in the form of Robert Chilton and Robert Chilton's hand not having any intimate relationship.

Okay? Now can we say that Robert Chilton is free of that from the beginning? That he is the extinction of that quality from the beginning?

[Говорящий 2]
Okay.

[Говорящий 1]
And now we go to the last one, okay? Can we out there put Robert Chilton's existing by definition in the form of Robert Chilton bearing no intimate relationship with Robert Chilton's hand? Can we say that you have transcended that nature, meaning you don't have that nature?

Don't forget that I think your problem is coming up from you're not thinking in terms of the things that don't exist. You see, you have to be focusing on those impossible things, right? Those theoretical things.

We're talking about whether or not some nonexistent thing applies to you. We keep talking in terms of something which is absent, right? You have to be focusing not on something which is true or positive or does pertain to you.

We keep talking about does this nonexistent thing have this quality? Does this nonexistent thing have this quality? Does this thing that never could exist, never did exist, never will exist have this quality or not?

Don't forget that you have to be thinking in terms of things that never existed, okay? Or the absences of things and not in terms of something that is a positive quality. In your mind, you have to go via the way of things that are denied and not via the way of things that are asserted.

I think the idea is that you take the purity which you've never had. You have to concentrate on that, on the denial of purity. Well, that's because we're talking in terms of the four misperceptions.

So we're assuming that you're talking about that.

[Говорящий 2]
Yes, yes.

[Говорящий 1]
You've got to think in the case of pure, in the case of clean, okay? You have to think of it. When you think of the word clean, and when you say the word clean in this context, you have to think of a Robert Chilton who is disconnected from Robert Chilton's head.

Are you clean in that sense of clean?

[Говорящий 2]
That's a clean being, isn't it?

[Говорящий 1]
Yeah.

[Говорящий 2]
Is that like a code word?

[Говорящий 1]
Yeah, yeah. Yes, he was a clean one. yes, yes, yes, that's the way it has to be, that's the way it has to be.

I can't hear you, Kailasa. The Kansas and the Pumarins are in the Tadebe Seya. I am not going to go there.

I am going to go to the Sang Seya. You go to the Sang Seya...

[Говорящий 2]
I have to go to the bank to get the money. I have to go to the bank, but you don't need to go. I am going to go to the Sang Seya.

[Говорящий 1]
Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're caught by the fact that it's so easy to blurt these words out, okay? I mean, you say thang de dak dak, you know, clean, cool, permanent, self-nature. You know, it's so easy to say those four words, and it's so easy to blurt out the word clean, you know?

But you've got to remember that when we say clean, we're talking about an arm that's dirty and a self who is clean. And that gap that's created, that distance which is created, that artificial distance, that artificial non-connectedness between the hand and the self, okay? And that's, you have to be, the word clean has to take you to unclean me and clean arm, I'm sorry, clean me and unclean arm, and which then takes you on to a me who is separate from the arm and not connected intimately to the arm and not related intimately to the arm.

Don't forget it's a two-step process, okay? It's a two-step process. When I say clean, you're thinking about clean, and the way you conceptualize the word clean has to be a two-step process.

One is the thought, I'm clean and my arm is dirty, okay? I'm clean, but my arm is not clean. That's step number one.

Step number two is, therefore, my arm is not an intimately related thing to myself, you know? You could remove myself and the arm wouldn't be removed or something like that. They don't bear that kind of relationship.

Two-step process when you think about the word clean. That's what you have to think of when we say clean. Okay.

[Говорящий 2]
Okay. Okay. Okay.

[Говорящий 1]
Okay.

[Говорящий 2]
Okay. Okay. Okay.

[Говорящий 1]
Okay. Okay. Okay.

[Говорящий 2]
Okay. Okay. Okay.

Okay. Okay. Okay.

[Говорящий 1]
Okay. Okay.

[Говорящий 2]
Okay. Okay. Okay.

Okay. Okay. Okay.

[Говорящий 1]
Okay. Okay. Okay.

Okay. Okay. Okay.

Because number one is true, number two is true, because number two is true, number three is true. And they were going down one by one. It was a process that was proceeding in an accumulative manner.

Because one is true, two has to be true. Because two is true, three has to be true. What are they?

What is the first of the five features? Things don't have any nature of their own. Therefore, they don't start by themselves.

And therefore, they don't start by themselves. And Jetsun Kapi is pointing out this domino effect now of the implications of each proceeding one. OK?

And here we have Jetsun Kapi saying, look, I didn't make this up, OK? This progressive thing, or this domino effect, right, of one triggering the next is from scripture itself. I'll tell you what, I'll quote the scripture.

It's the jewel of the sutra. And in the jewel of the sutra, it says, now we're on the seventh line from the bottom on page 62. Each one acts as the basis of the next one, meaning each following one is established due to each previous one.

OK, if the previous one is true, meaning, for example, things don't start by any nature of their own, right, then it's automatically true that they don't stop through any definite nature of now. And that continues on to being extinct from the beginning. And that continues on to having transcended grief, having a nature of that.

So each one, he says, look, you can go to this statement from the jewel of the sutra, and it backs me up right there. What's on here? What?

No, you're touching that. But then it says, and I've already explained all that above, right? He did go into the domino effect thing above.

And in the next syllable, fifth line from the bottom, page 62, is, moreover, and Geshe-la says, where would be a better place to leave these classes than at the word moreover, because that means we have to come back and continue them. That's like an auspicious place. If we leave it at moreover, it means we've got to come back to the rest of that.

It's very auspicious because Kristi has started her next tape at moreover, so you can just pick up on that same tape when you come back. So we'll stop there for the time being. Then I'd like to formally ask him to continue.

I think, do you want to? Okay, we'll try. This is called the Tungrak Mandala, which means the Mandala of Thanksgiving.

Tungrak Mandala