Серия ежедневной практики, курс 02 — Истинный смысл прибежища (1995, Ваджрапани, Калифорния), занятие 1

[Speaker 2]
The Asian Classics Institute presents The Real Meaning of Refuge with Geshe Michael Roach Recorded live at Vajrapani in California session 1 SANGYE SHINDU MIKTEPO WAGYI ROKKUR NAMTA SHINGLA JAKAR SHOK PIDAMULU RADHA MANGALAKAM NIYATAKYAMI

[Speaker 1]
SANGYE CHODAM SANGGYE CHODNAM LA

[Speaker 2]
CHANG CHUNG PA DU DAG NI GYAT SU CHING DAG GI CHUNG YIN GYI PASEN NAM GYI

[Speaker 1]
DRO LA MEN CHIR SANGGYE DROP PAR SHOK SANGYE CHODAM SANGGYE CHODNAM LA

[Speaker 2]
CHANG CHUNG PA DU DAG NI GYAT SU CHING

[Speaker 1]
DAG GI CHUNG YIN GYI PASEN NAM GYI

[Speaker 2]
DRO LA MEN CHIR SANGGYE DROP PAR SHOK

[Speaker 1]
SANGYE CHODAM SANGGYE CHODNAM LA CHANG CHUNG PA DU DAG NI GYAT SU CHING DAG GI CHUNG YIN GYI PASEN NAM GYI

[Speaker 2]
DRO LA MEN CHIR SANGGYE DROP PAR SHOK

[Speaker 1]
Tonight I'm supposed to teach about refuge. My background is more in the monastery and debating and what we call Sanyipa. Sanyipa means a study of Buddhism through debating and philosophical studies and a lot of examinations and things like that.

It's opposed to Lamrimpa. Lamrimpa practices a lot, changes their heart through the Lamrim teachings and all throughout history there have been this parallel teachings going on side by side. In the monastery you're not even, you don't even study Lamrim very deeply until you finish about 18 years of Sanyi.

And it's considered an honor to study Lamrim. You don't even, there is no course in the monastery called Lamrim. It's only when you get to be with the Lama that you get heavy doses of Lamrim.

I think Lama Yeshe was very, he gave a very powerful thing in the West that he gave Lamrim, by the way. And it's a great blessing. So I thought you might be interested to see how the subject of going through refuge is taught in the monastery, even up to present time.

In the monastery we study five great books. The first one is Perfection of Wisdom from the Abhisamvankara of Maitreya. And inside that in the first chapter we study the subject of going through refuge.

That book takes us 12 years in the monastery. Then we do two years at Malvimukha, two years of Abhidharma, two years of Vinaya, and then two years of Lava Interspersed. So I'm going to present the taking refuge from the point of view of how a monk would study it in the monastery based on those five great books.

Actually the study of refuge, parts of it are all throughout those five great books. And I thought you might like to see how that came about. So I'll hand out something first.

This is from the textbook that is used at my monastery, Serame. Serame is the sister monastery of Saraje. The most famous Saraje Lama of modern times was Lama Yeshe.

We are great competitors of Saraje. But I have to admit they're pretty good. They actually have the best support in the West and that's due to Lama Yeshe's kindness.

And the Saraje monks are all big and strong. They study very well. Their study is actually the best in India.

And that's another great kindness that all of you have done. You don't know that, I think, very much. Or maybe you don't appreciate it unless you live there.

But all the other monasteries are struggling. People get tuberculosis all the time from not having enough food. The buildings are falling down.

There's five kids in a room. Saraje is doing very well. It's very strong.

There's over 2,000 monks now. And that's a lot due to Lama Yeshe's kindness and sister Yeshe's kindness. I see that you forgot.

Thank you. Gebdo. The Tibetan for going for refuge is Gebdo.

Geb comes from a word that actually comes from another word, keb. Keb means to cover something. So, even for example, in debating in the monastery, if you've ever seen people debate, they say, kebamachung.

Kebamachung means not necessarily so, which means that doesn't cover that. So, the word keb means to cover something. Gebdo means to go for cover, to run for cover.

So, the actual word for going for refuge is to run for cover. It has two meanings if you think about it. Gebdo or to go for protection or to go for refuge implies two things going on.

One is that there's some kind of danger. There's some kind of fear. You don't run for cover unless there's some kind of danger.

The second thing it implies is cover implies that something can help you, something can protect you. So, in the definition of Gebdo, in the monastery we say, yu shen la, which means, in some other object, ram tok gi, which means by its own power. Reva chala, which means, reva chala means you believe it can help you.

You believe this other thing can help you. So, the word for Gebdo itself, the word for refuge means you're afraid of something and you do believe that something else can help you. The classic refuge in the West is when you're a kid and you run to your mom.

Both parts are there. Something happened, like your brother hit you and you ran to your mother because you believe that that object can help you. So, everything's complete for going for refuge when you run to mommy.

Some kind of danger or pain, which is that your brother hit you, and then some kind of belief that somebody can help you, which is running to your mother. And all throughout our life we have going for refuge. The actual definition of going for refuge can cover all kinds of going for refuge.

Running to your mother because your brother hit you fits the definition of going for refuge, as stated by Maitreya. It does fit the definition. We have other refuges in life.

When the house starts to burn, you take refuge in the fire department. When you get sick, you take refuge in the doctor. When you want to learn something or you're afraid of your ignorance, you take refuge in your school teachers.

In other words, all throughout your life you're going for refuge. All throughout your life you're seeking protection in something or somebody. Later in your life you seek it in some kind of financial stability, like your career or your house.

You go for refuge in material things. So, all throughout your life you have fears, like not having enough money, not having enough food, not having a place to stay. And you go for refuge in your career or your friends or the places where you get your money from.

And those are all different kinds of refuge. They fit the definition of refuge in here. It's a yu shen la, which means something outside of yourself.

din le gyopay nirbay nirbay yi chen ne Because you believe it can help you, you go for refuge in that thing. And those are all kinds of refuge that you take. Buddhist refuge is different.

So, there's going for refuge and there's going for Buddhist refuge. There's two kinds of going for refuge. One is called ordinary going for refuge and one is called extraordinary going for refuge.

So, those are all the kinds of ordinary going for refuge. The question is, do they work? For example, if you get sick and you go to a doctor, will it work?

That's the question. Is it a good refuge? I mean, sometimes yes, sometimes no.

I mean, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. It works more often than not that we go for refuge to a doctor. So, that kind of refuge works.

If you call the fire station because your house is on fire, it normally works. Normally they can come and save your house. Apparently.

But ultimately, no. Ultimately they can't prevent you from losing your house. And that gets into the thing that you're afraid of in Buddhism.

In Buddhism, when you take refuge, it's not that your house is on fire and it's not that you're sick. It's that you have the three kinds of suffering. Three kinds of suffering are very famous.

They're called dungel gi dungel, gyur-we dungel, and khyab-pa du-je gi dungel. The first one, dungel gi dungel, is defined as... They don't even define them.

Well, it's satya gi tso-la dungel, which means a sensation of pain. So, the pain... Dungel gi dungel, which means the suffering of suffering, or you could call it outright suffering, is just defined as a sensation of pain.

And those are the classic example in the scriptures, the ancient scriptures, is a backache or a headache. So, they had them then also. The classic example of dungel gi dungel or the suffering of suffering, or we could just say obvious suffering, is a headache or a backache.

And you get them from time to time. You get sick from time to time. I think one time, I had the honor to translate for the Dalai Lama's doctor, and he had a group of about 50 people listening.

And he said, they all looked like a normal group of people like you guys. And he said, anybody who has a medical problem, serious medical problem, can come tomorrow and I'll be here, and you can come. So, the next day, about 40 people showed up.

And I was shocked, you know. Normal group of people, they all look normal, you know. But everyone had some serious medical thing.

I think every one of us had some kind of medical problem going on. If you don't have it yet, it'll come. And it's there.

You have it. It will come. That's dungel gi dungel.

And that's not enough reason to go for refuge, I think. I mean, people say, when you kind of get to admit that in life you're going to have troubles, from time to time you're going to get sick. From time to time you're going to have a backache.

But it's not like you're in bed sick all the time. So, people put up with it. You're not running to Vajrapani to take Buddhist teachings because you're ill all the time.

You're not ill all the time. It's not enough to make you come here. Second kind of suffering maybe is.

Second kind of suffering is called gyur-we dungel. And that means the suffering of change. That's a very complicated kind of suffering.

It's defined as sac-che-kyi-tso-la-de-wa, which means impure feelings of happiness or pleasure. And that's pretty complicated. It's called the suffering of change.

I like to call it suffering waiting to happen. And it's anything good that happens to you, basically. Any good thing that happens in your life is the suffering of change.

Why? Because it's always attached. There's something always attached to it.

There's something always tied to the end of it. So, anything good that happens in your life, there's always an appendix attached to the back of it. There's always something that comes along with it, which is the end of it.

And the subsequent suffering. So, this should get into some big debates. And I understand them, because I'm a Westerner also.

People say, what about the look of a beautiful child's face, or the look of the sunset, or some kind of feeling of happiness that you have in your home. Those can't be suffering. I mean, I understand that they have to end.

And we would be immature people to think that they don't have to end. They do have to end. I understand that.

But it doesn't seem to me that therefore they are suffering. And Buddhism says no, that every event of anything good in this life is always attached to suffering. Suffering is always attached to the back of it.

In other words, any good thing you can name, which could be your health, it must, it's attached to illness. Illness will come after the health, or old age. Your body will deteriorate.

It's deteriorating as we talk. Your body will be less strong and less healthy by the time this talk is finished and when it's started. And that goes on without stopping.

Any health you ever have, which in Tibetan medicine is defined as, it's described as an accident. In Tibetan medicine, this condition of health is an abnormality. Illness is the normal state of the human body.

And anyone who is healthy, it's just an accident of a lot of good things come together temporarily and then the body goes back to its normal state, which is illness. So, every good thing you can name, your health, attached to your health is some kind of illness. Your health will always end in illness.

Any vigor you have, any strength you have, any good feeling you have in your body will always end in illness. Illness is attached to it. Or old age is attached to it.

The loss of your energy, which we all feel at our age, right? I mean, almost everybody in the room. You sense the loss of your energy.

You know it. And it's attached to the vitality you had as a youth. It's a necessary attachment.

It will always be connected to it. And you can say that about every other good thing in your life, in your career. You know, the career must end.

I work in a large corporation part of the year. I see people go up and go down. It's like a waterfall.

People work their way up to vice president. There's no place to go after that. They make a few big mistakes, then they fire them.

We counted up as 18 months average for a vice president in our company. And then we're disgraced, and they throw you out, and you lose your income. Every position that you can get ends that way.

In other words, the loss of the position, the loss of your money, is always connected to gaining money. Anytime you gain anything, anytime you get a position, losing it is attached to it. The minute you get the position, you get what's attached to it, which is the loss of it.

And that you can just see. I don't have to debate with you about that. You just know it's true.

And so it's almost not necessary to have a class about it. It's just true. You just need to think about it.

Every good thing that can happen to you, if you look nice, you will lose it. If you have good friends, you will lose them. If you have a nice family, if you have a wife or husband, you will lose them.

If you have children, you will lose them. If you live in a nice country, the country someday will be lost also. I mean, everything you can point to, this building, it's attached to the pleasure of having it, is always the loss of it.

It's always attached to it. So that's what they mean when they say the change of suffering. Suffering of change.

Every good thing you can ever get attached to the back of it is the loss of it. And there's nothing in our life that's not that way. Everything we have is not that.

That's the second kind of suffering. Third kind of suffering is khyapa dujjayi dunyam. Here you hear the word khyap.

It's the same word as the cover for or the shelter for going for refuge. Khyapa dujjayi dunyam means the kind of suffering that covers all the other kinds of suffering. And that's just the condition of your aging and death.

Your body, the human condition, your condition, my condition, is that we're all gone. And people won't remember. I mean, you're a guy and then after a few years no one will even remember you.

They'll throw out the pictures, they'll throw out the money. It's really funny, it's really weird that no matter... I mean, I had a kid ask me if I could not turn my head today.

And it just... Not only will you die, but the whole memory will be wiped out. And for you, a few minutes after you die, the whole memory will be wiped.

You won't remember anything about that whole long life you struggled through and all the things you tried to do and everything. You won't have any firm memory of it. It'll just be a big blur.

And you'll forget it within a few minutes, I would think, after you die. The whole thing is senseless after a few minutes. And that's it.

We're all headed for that. And those are the three kinds of suffering that you can see. I don't have to prove them to you.

I don't have to be a great wise man to say, it's happening because you can see it. There's no debate up to this point. These are all sufferings you can see in your life.

And you know that's the way it's going. And that's the beginning of Buddhist Refuge. The second kind of suffering...

Those are the three sufferings that you can see. There are supposedly other kinds of suffering that you can't see. That's where you get into Buddhism and into future lives.

Supposedly, you can't take refuge even at the lowest stage if you don't understand the other kinds of suffering. Those are the sufferings that I haven't even mentioned yet. Those are sufferings of the future life and what happens to you after you die.

You know, what happens to you the moment after your consciousness blanks out in this life. To take refuge as a Buddhist which is called the Khyamro Khyapa Chen, the kind of refuge that makes you a Buddhist is the one that... the lowest kind of refuge is the one that is concerned about what happens the moment after your breath stops.

If you don't have that, you don't have refuge. If you don't have refuge, you're not a Buddhist. There's a joke in monastery in India that one monk, a hundred years ago, he had the ability to read people's minds.

And this one monk worked his way up to Abbot of the monastery. So, he's sitting up on this high throne and everyone's bowing down to him. And this monk who has the ability to read minds says, wait a minute, he's not a Buddhist.

He's Abbot of the monastery, he's not a Buddhist. He said, come on, you're crazy. He's been here 50 years.

He's Abbot of the monastery. He says, no, he doesn't have refuge. He's not doing anything.

None of what he does is motivated by a concern about his death or what's going to happen after his death. So, he's not a Buddhist. Because if you don't have the lowest form of refuge, going for refuge, then technically you're not a Buddhist.

It's like baptism or confirmation in Christianity. If you don't have... Except in Buddhism it's not a ritual.

There is a ritual to proclaim it, but it's actually a state of mind and you can read that in this text also. It's the state of mind of worrying about what's going to happen after your death, the moment after your death. If you don't have that, you're not a Buddhist.

And it doesn't matter if you're a religious or anything. You can take all the Buddhist vows, they won't actually form. You're not a Buddhist.

So that's... We have to talk about that kind of refuge. We have to talk about what happens the moment after you die.

It's very popular nowadays to pull out these old texts which are actually not approved of by the tradition and describe what's going to happen to you after death and talk about them for a long time and get into them very deeply. But actually if you are honest, you don't know if those are true. You can't confirm those.

If you're really honest, you have to say, unless you are not what you seem to be, and I don't know, but unless you have the ability to see into the future or unless you have reached a state in your meditation where you can see what's going to happen after death or where you can actually see the stage of death, you don't know if those books are true. You can't confirm it. So if you're doing Tsengyipo way, you have to say, I don't know.

I understand that there are these Buddhist books. I understand that they're particularly popular nowadays. I understand that there are different kinds of them.

Some seem to be more, maybe more logical and some less logical. But I can't confirm any of them. If you're really honest, you have to say that.

You have to say, I don't really know. They sound good. There are some people teaching them.

I don't know if they're true. So in the monastery for Tsengyipo, we're not allowed to accept them yet. We have to try to establish those things by reasoning, by thinking.

And that's as valid as seeing them. In other words, if you were able to meditate very deeply and somehow see what's going to happen after your death, and you can do that, you will reach a stage like that. At some point in your Dharma career, I don't know, this life or another life, you will reach a stage where you can see your death and what happens after it directly.

You will know how many lives you've got left, you will see your future lives. And then you won't have any doubts about it, you won't have any questions about it. You can do that.

But it's just as valid and it's just as proper to try to establish them logically. In other words, can you prove to your own self, in your own mind, that there is a future life? Because if you can't, then you can't take refuge.

Because refuge is a concern for what's going to happen to you after you die. If you think you're just going to dissolve after you die, or if that's what you really feel in your heart, no matter what you say, then you can't take refuge. Then you don't have refuge.

If you haven't reached that state of meditation where you can see your death directly, and what's going to happen after it directly, then you have to try to establish whether or not you're going to go on, and whether or not you came from someplace else. And so, I think the most interesting thing would be to start from that. So, we're going to cover that.

It'll start tonight and we'll go into the next class after that. In other words, try to establish to a normal thinking person and no humble mumbo-jumbo, no voodoo. You know, I can't show you your future life directly.

So, if I had even seen it, you couldn't believe me, for sure. I mean, you wouldn't know if I was really being honest or not. If I say, look, I did see your future life, how can you confirm that?

You can't. So, according to the tradition of Buddhism, Tibetan Buddhism especially, you can't, even if I could see your future life and describe them to you, I'm not allowed to. Because you can't believe it.

You can't check it out. You can't confirm it. It's better if I could give you something based on your own experience that you could somehow consider it carefully and decide, yeah, probably there is a future life.

So, we'll try to do that. There are very few books in Buddhism that try to prove a future life. Why do you think so?

Everybody believed it in India. I mean, Buddhism grew up out of Hinduism and all the Hindus believed it already. So, it wasn't necessary for somebody to come and try to prove it.

It's actually pretty hard to find in Buddhist literature any really long discussion of trying to prove a future life because everybody believed in it already. They didn't know why. It was just their mom and dad told them.

The same way we got told a lot of stuff but now we're questioning it. But for no better reason they believed in a future life and a past life. And even Tibetan Buddhists and Tibetans in India believe in a future life and a past life.

If you ask them to prove it, they can't give you a shred of evidence for it. But they just believe it. But that's not healthy.

So, it's hard to find in Buddhist literature any proof of a future life. There was a group of Hindus who lived in India about 1200 years ago. They didn't believe in a future life.

They believed that the mind was located somewhere in the body and that there was maybe in the brain or the heart and when you gave that brain, when you hit the person hard in the head or when you stabbed him in the heart then the mind would stop and that there was no future life. And the minute the body was burned in a funeral or the body stopped breathing that the mind stopped. And they were very much a minority in India.

But they were this very strange people, this very strange little sect of Hindus who said when the body stops breathing the mind stops and there's no more person and nobody goes on and it's all over. One life to live. Might as well make it back.

I mean, you know. And there was a group like that. They're called, they're like different gangbusters like that.

So, Dharmakirti, who was a very famous Buddhist philosopher, he lived about 750, 650 AD, about the 17th century. He wrote a, he wrote a reputation of them. He wrote an argument for future lives.

It's very famous. It's in his book called Pramanavarttika, which is still used in Tibetan Buddhist monasteries. It's the basis for all Tibetan debating logic and also the study of perception.

How does the mind work? It all comes from that book. In the second chapter of that book, we reach the argument where Dharmakirti tries to prove that there is a future life.

Most monks never reach that because you don't get to about your 16th year of your status. You don't reach the second chapter of that book till about your 16th year of your status. So he debates this and he tries to prove that there's a future life.

And the way he does it is also used by somebody named K. Dukje, who was one of the most famous disciples of Tsongkhapa. So I'm going to give you that paper tomorrow.

There's an argument by K. Dukje. And I'll start it tonight and we'll go into it tomorrow.

Tomorrow you've got to give me a blackboard, okay? Alright. And by the way, we'll take a break.

It's my custom to take a break at about... What time is it now?

[Speaker 2]
We're only going till 9.

[Speaker 1]
We're going till 9?

[Speaker 2]
Okay.

[Speaker 1]
Well, maybe we won't take a break till after this. If it's a 2 hour, I'd like to take a break. We'll have some snacks tomorrow, halfway through.

It keeps people awake. Alright. Dharmakirti said the following.

He said, I'll prove to you the existence of your future life. You don't have to meditate and see it. And you don't have to take anybody's word for it.

In fact, in Buddhist logic, we're not allowed to prove anything without using what you accept already. In other words, we can only use what you believe already to prove to you something. So how do we prove the future life?

We talk about the first moment of your mind. You can imagine it. You can't remember it.

But you can imagine it. So close your eyes, go back to the first moment in your mother's womb. You know, according to Western science, according to what our parents told us, according to everything we know, we must have had our first thought in this life.

There must have been your first thought in this life. And you can imagine it. You know, you have to go back a long way.

Your thoughts are a train of thoughts. Each thought triggers the next thought. Everyone believes that.

That's why they have first grade before second grade. Because whatever you learn in first grade is supposed to stream on in the mind until second grade. So we believe that.

There is a continuum of the mind. And it does collect stuff. Because supposedly you get smarter from first grade to senior in high school.

And that's why your parents send you there because they're hoping it will collect. Sometimes it doesn't, but anyway. So you're going through this, the mind is a continuum.

There must have been a first moment of your mind. Each second of your mind triggers the next second of your mind. So there must have been a first second in this life.

What was it like? You try to imagine it. What was your first thought?

It wasn't very complicated. Something like, it's hot in here.

[Speaker 2]
It's wet. It's wet.

[Speaker 1]
It had to be something like that. Probably some kind of discomfort. According to Buddhist books, it was some kind of discomfort.

Some kind of thought like, this is too hot. Some kind of painful thought. This is uncomfortable.

But you did have your first thought. I suppose we can all agree that it happened in your mother's womb. It doesn't matter.

Or when you started screaming when the doctor hit you. But you had your first thought. There was your first thought.

Where did that come from? What triggered that thought? And we're looking for a certain kind of cause.

Buddhism has five or six different kinds of causes. That's studied in the second chapter of the Abhidharmakosha. But basically you can divide them into two, which is called gyu and kin.

Gyu means the main cause of something. And kin means the factors that help cause something. So, we can talk about nirlanggi gyu, which means the stuff that turned into the thing.

And then we can talk about kin, which means the other conditions that help something grow. So, we'll talk about nirlanggi gyu. What's the nirlanggi gyu for a oak tree?

Where I live there are oak trees. Where you live there are redwood trees. Oak tree is the acorn.

The nirlanggi gyu, the direct cause, what we call the material cause, is the acorn. The acorn, the stuff in the acorn turns into the oak tree. The stuff in the acorn, we say, in Buddhism also they say, flops over into the oak tree.

The acorn goes, dig, dig, dig, dig, dig, and then it flops over into an oak tree. The first little sprout that comes up. So, the stuff in the acorn becomes the stuff in the oak tree.

That's called the stuff cause. Material cause. Nirlanggi gyu.

The stuff that turned into the oak tree. The main stuff was the acorn. And that's actually the material that converts into the oak tree.

There are other kinds of causes. There are lots of other kinds of causes. There's got to be sunlight.

There's got to be water. There's got to be fertile ground. There's got to be a lot of other causes.

Those are conditions. Those are what we call khyens. Those are called hansik je khyen.

Hansik je khyen means contributing factor. But nirlanggi gyu means that stuff cause. The material that turns into the oak tree.

And everything has that. The nirlanggi gyu for a vase is the glass or the clay. That's the main stuff that the person used.

And that stuff, the minute the pot was finished and fired, then that became the vase. But that, it went through time. That stuff went dig, dig, dig, dig.

And then it turned into a vase. So, that's the main material cause. So, we're looking for the main material cause.

There must have been a main cause for that first moment inside your mom. OK. That first thought.

The very first thought you had. And Dharmakirti, when he gives this argument, and I can't remember the name of the school. Anyway, I'll get it.

When he makes this argument, he says, What was the nirlanggi gyu of the first moment of your mind? There must have been one. There's always a nirlanggi gyu for any cause thing.

So, he says, what was the nirlanggi gyu? What stuff turned into the first thought you had? What was the thing that went dig, dig, dig, dig and then flopped over into the first moment of your mind in this life?

What caused it? What was the main cause? What was the material cause?

So, he says, get back into, think about that first moment in your mind. Get back into it. And let's take all the possibilities.

It's a very beautiful proof. Then, K.W.J. refines it up around 1400. You know, 700 years later, this great Tibetan scholar, he writes it all out into it.

He's got a nice chart, more or less. It's a chart of existence. That's presented in the first chapter of the Abhidharmakosha.

Let's break down every existing possibility. We'll do it by elimination. He says, let's do it by elimination.

Let's decide what the stuff was that provided the nirlanggi gyu that turned into the first moment of your mind in this life. Let's go through all the possibilities. So, the first division, now, for this, you've got to get this big breakdown of all the stuff in the universe.

And it's nice to have a drawing. I'll do it tomorrow. It starts out like this.

Objects, knowable things, existing objects. They either are changing or unchanging. What's called permanent or impermanent, which are not, they're a little bit difficult translations.

Changing and unchanging is better. Caused or uncaused. So, everything in the universe is either caused or uncaused.

[Speaker 2]
OK?

[Speaker 1]
Everything in the universe has to be like that. What's the stuff that caused the first moment of your mind? Was it something unchanging?

Was it something over on this side? How many unchanging things are there? Can you name any?

No, uncaused, unchanging things. Can you name any? There's only two or three, actually.

Space. Space is a tough one. Space is a very tough one.

Space doesn't mean where the Apollo went. Space doesn't mean what's between your ears. Space doesn't mean what's between the walls, either.

It's a very difficult concept. Space means place. It means the place where this table is, for example.

The place where this table is, if I took the table out of that place, would the place still be there? Yeah. And when I reinsert the table, is there still a place where the table is?

Yeah. The place never changes. This earth can dissolve.

The whole sun can burn out. But there will always be this place. Whether or not it's still one inch above, one foot above the earth, when the earth is gone, who knows?

But the place will be here. The place never changes. There's this big argument in Buddhism.

If I put something into it, and take it out of it, and move things in and out of it, doesn't it change? No, it doesn't change. Space is there.

It's either full or not full, but it doesn't change. And it always will be there. And it always was there.

It's just space. But it doesn't change. So that's it.

More questions?

[Speaker 2]
It is a little bit difficult to explain because it's just a general term that we use there.

[Speaker 1]
It's an interesting thing in Buddhism. Permanent doesn't mean eternal. Permanent in Buddhism doesn't mean eternal.

That's why I don't particularly like the translation permanent. It does not mean eternal. Eternal.

It doesn't mean that. For example, it doesn't mean that. It does not mean that.

It just means unchanging. Uncaused. There's an idea of the emptiness of this table, for example, which we won't get into.

But when you destroy the table, its emptiness is gone. But its emptiness never changes. What it means is that quality of this table doesn't go through a process like that.

It doesn't start, start, start, start, start, start, start, start, reach its peak and then start dying like that. It never does. If you're there or not, the minute it's there, it's fully grown.

The minute it's not there, it's fully gone. And while it's fully there, it never lasts for more than. It never varies.

It never changes. But when you destroy the table, it's gone. It's no longer there.

It doesn't go out, though, like this. It's just not there. And that's the key to understanding subtle impermanence.

And that's a long story in itself. And the day that you, in meditation or something, you perceive subtle impermanence, that's something you grasp, is that there's qualities of the table that are in existence or out of existence, but never change while they're in existence. But they neither grow nor perish.

Because they don't go through this process like that. What's that mean? That means that anything that does go through a process like that is not unchanging.

Its cause is not unchanging. So what can we say about the mind? Does your mind change?

Of course. That's what we're trying to do. I'm sorry.

If your mind ever changes, you know, if you ever feel good and then bad, then the causes behind it change. The forces holding it up got weaker or stronger. See, your mind got happier or sadder, and your mind got clearer or darker, and your mind got wider or more...

Tibetans call it narrow. But all those emotions indicate that your mind is caused by something what? Changes.

The cause has to be changing. Because the mind itself varies. Anything that varies is caused by something that's changing.

Because as the cause gets more or less strong, then the thing goes through this, like our mind's doing, like that. They go through waves. So that's an indication, says KGB, that your mind is not caused by something unchanging.

So we can rule out you can change... all existing phenomena, what we call dharmas, are either changing or unchanging. Super-changing and unchanging.

And we just ruled out this one. Now we only have to worry about... Now we have to worry about this side.

He's going to get you to a point where you can't deny that your mind was caused by a previous moment of mind. Then you're stuck. Because if that's true, what was his cause?

The minute you accept one millisecond of mind existing before the first moment in this life, you're stuck with a past life. And if you're stuck with a past life, you're stuck with another one in the future, too. It's very interesting.

If he can trick you this way, this is a process of elimination. He goes through every single possibility with you, slowly. And this happens in the monastery when you're debating, you know.

If you're not shot, if you don't feel too clear that night, you just keep agreeing to the guy who puts you into a corner and goes, checkmate. Now you have to agree with me, right? Everybody, there's 500 people looking at you and you've got to say, yeah, you got me.

So he's leading you slowly along and he's going to trap you into saying, yeah, there can't be anything else. So how many changing things are there? Basically two.

What do you guess? Yeah. There's actually two, but...

There will be more, but two basic divisions. All changing things fall into one of two categories. Basically, there's a third category.

Might and may.

[Speaker 2]
Yeah.

[Speaker 1]
Show me anything that's not... Yeah, that's the... There is a third one, by the way.

It's called concepts like you. Like demon or you, to... It's a concept.

It's not mind itself which is having the concept. And it's not a physical thing. It's a concept of a person.

A person is neither physical nor mental. It's an idea that's imposed on a combination of physical and mental things. But...

I'm sneaking out of that one. Mind doesn't matter, OK? I mean, we're scientists, OK?

[Speaker 2]
Mind doesn't matter.

[Speaker 1]
So then he says, you can divide matter into basically two types. What do you guess? I mean, what's your natural guesses dividing matter into two different types?

You could say that. I think that would be a classic guess anyway. What is your guess?

It's inner and outer meaning. Living tissue. Organic and inorganic.

Living tissue and then dead thing. You know, just dead matter. Atoms, he says.

He means non-living tissue. What it is, it's a sense... He calls it sensory matter.

This is organic. And then inorganic, OK? And what would you call it?

Let's say organic and inorganic, OK? I don't know. I didn't have much advantage.

Organic and inorganic, OK? Organic is... According to Buddhism, it's five types.

I mean, it's basically anything that senses. The sense powers, they call them in Buddhism. Five sense powers.

Heart, fruit, citrus. And it goes down your... It goes down your body in the Abhidharma kosha, the first chapter.

So it goes down your body. Eye, ear, nose, tongue, and body. In the estimation of the physical senses, they identify receptor cells.

They say in Abhidharma kosha, written 1600 years ago, there are cells at the back of your eyeball, a certain patch of cells that are sensitive to light, and as the light changes, then those cells change and they transmit information to the mind. And those are the sense powers, they're called quang bo, and those are the organic matter. All organic, all sense, all sense energy, sentient matter, is in one of those five categories.

You're only aware of matter by way of your eyes, your ears, your nose, your tongue, or your gutter, and that's that. So Ketaji says, let's look at those first. And he has an interesting trick, it's a little difficult to follow, but he says, do you think they all cause the mind together, or do you think one by one they could cause the mind?

Could any individual one cause the mind at the first moment in your mother's womb, or is it all five together that cause the mind? And we're not talking about a condition, we're talking about a nearly-debut, the stuff caused, the stuff that swapped over into the first moment of the mind. So is it any one of your sense powers?

Is it any one of those receptive cells? He says, could they cause the mind? And he says, first of all, let's consider them all together.

Suppose all five of them. Suppose you need all five kinds of cells there for the mind to occur. Then, when you poke a guy's eye out, his mind could disappear.

Because there's no longer, let's say he's five years old, and you poke his eye out on his fifth birthday, the day after his fifth birthday, his mind could disappear, right? Because the thing that would cause the mind to continue, in the energy field of the mind, is gone. If a child is born blind, he should also never have a mind.

Because the cells that would cause his mind to occur are not there. And then the guy says, oh no, I don't agree. I say any one of them could cause the mind.

Then he says, well then, we all agree that causes and results should have some similarity. So then, the mind, the consciousness of your thoughts, should see objects as well as your eyes do. And that's difficult.

That's a little difficult. But it's like this. When you close your eyes and you imagine something, you see in a way, but it's always very fuzzy.

Anyone who tries to visualize 64 tantric deities can tell you. I never got past the first one's head. It's very difficult.

If that mind were caused by visual cells, and if visual cells were the main cause and the only main cause, right? He's saying one by one. Then the mind, the consciousness of your thoughts, by the way, we're not talking about the consciousness of your eyesight.

There are six consciousnesses, and we're talking about the mental consciousness, the main mental consciousness. It's the one that hears you thinking. It's the guy who hears your thoughts.

Did you ever wonder who it was? Who's listening to those thoughts? If they're my thoughts, they can't be me.

I must be listening to them. That's your mental consciousness. It's what you lose when Mike Tyson punches you.

It's your nyi kyi nam she. That's your general awareness. That's what you call your mind.

Then that mental consciousness should see things. When I visualize a cup of tea or something, it should be perfect, because it's caused by visual receptor cells are its main cause. Kenny just said that that's not true.

That's not true. When this bogs down, I usually just keep going and don't let anybody argue. Okay, we talked about organics.

Now we're up to inorganic. He says that's very simple. I mean, Buddhism has this concept of a sac-chu-me-lung.

Sac-chu-me-lung are the four elements, okay? The four, jung-wa-shi. Jung-wa-shi means the four elements.

All physical matter has four kinds of elements behind it. I remember when I first heard about the elements, I thought it was like some kind of primitive concept of explaining physical matter. I remember thinking that it was kind of primitive, and maybe 2,000 years ago they didn't understand about atoms and stuff like that.

I didn't really like it. I resisted the idea of the four elements. But if you read the Abhidharmakosha and you study it carefully, it makes a lot of sense.

What it means is, and it says in the Abhidharmakosha, the four elements are not earth, water, fire, and wind. That's what they are called, sac-chu-me-lung, earth, water, fire, and wind. He says they are not those four physical objects.

In other words, fire itself or water itself is not the element of water or fire. The element of fire or the element of water is totally different from what we call water. So it's not that the Buddha himself was supposed to be omniscient, which we also can't confirm right now, that he thought there was some water hiding in...

If you cracked a rock real hard, that some water would jump out. According to Buddhism, all physical entities have all four elements in them. So what does it mean?

Is there little pools of water inside of everything? It's not what the elements mean. The elements mean the functions of the elements that underlie all physical matter.

In other words, all physical matter behind... Underneath all physical matter, in all physical matter, there is some element of solidity. In the smallest piece of physical matter, there is some factor of solidity.

It does have some solidity. Even water has some solidity. Even air has some solidity.

I mean, I got here half an hour early and she couldn't find me at the airport because all that air solidity was pushing the plane faster. And we got here half an hour early. Air has solidity.

Air also has some element of liquidity in it. So it's the energies within matter that they have, of being able to move or being stable, being able to be cohesive. Those are called the four elements.

Now I got you to agree to the four elements? So he says, is it the four elements? Is it...

Not good enough. Is it inorganic matter, basically? Is it atoms?

Is it atoms that causes what? The first moment in your mommy's tummy that said, Oh, it's hot in here. And there was just a conscious thought, some thought of, this is unpleasant or something like that.

This is warm or this is wet or something. Can't breathe very well. There was some kind of a thought.

Did it come from physical atoms? And he says, well, I'll give you the same argument. Is it all of them together or is it any one of them individually?

And it's the same argument. If it has to be all of them together, then anytime you remove one, then the mind should disappear. If it has to be any one of them, like fire, then what, is the mind hot?

You know, the fact is that the mind is... The nature of the mind is totally different than the nature of matter. It's totally different.

Matter can be divided physically. Always. You can't divide the mind.

Forget it. You're going to cut the mind into three pieces or four pieces. You can't do it.

We tend to confuse the mind and the brain. We tend to confuse... When I said mind, you started to think of that thing with all the wrinkles on it and stuff.

Don't confuse the two. Mind is invisible. You cannot see my mind, I cannot see your mind.

For all I know, you're all Buddhists. I'm not. I can't see your minds.

I can't perceive your minds. They're clear. You can't divide your mind.

And you cannot... We have no evidence, and this is a very important point. You have no real evidence that you can destroy the mind.

You can't prove to me that the mind can be destroyed. The best you can do is say, the body stops flopping around and gets cold. So I say, what's that got to do with the mind?

The mind is something clear. It's ineffable. I could set off an atom bomb next to you.

I have no proof that your mind is destroyed. I don't have any proof. I'm assuming it, because you stop moving.

But you don't have any proof that your mind stops. And you have to agree that the qualities of the mind are totally different from the qualities of physical matter. You can't see it.

You can't divide it. You can't weigh it. You can't locate it.

It covers up to the edge of your finger or not? No, I can see my room right now. My mind can go to my room.

My mind can imagine my room. It's not restricted to my skin. I mean, that's a pretty primitive idea.

The mind is much different stuff. Totally different stuff. It doesn't depend on atoms.

It's not caused by... It's stuff caused. The thing that turns into the first moment of the mind in my mommy's tummy has nothing to do with matter.

It's not hot. It's not cold. It's not warm.

It doesn't run. It doesn't stop. It doesn't do any of those things.

It's invisible. And it knows. And that's the definition of mind in Buddhism.

SEL SHING RIG PA It's invisible and it knows. And that's all you can say about it. You have some kind of light called mind.

And it lets you know things. But it has nothing to do with... It has nothing to do with physical form.

So it says neither the atoms individually, the elements individually, or the four elements together causes it. Now how about mental stuff? Could mind have caused it?

Nobody complained. Good. I already got you.

Two kinds of mind. Two possibilities. Two possibilities with mind.

What do you think? What do you guess? I'll give you...

We might go on a little too long. It says your own mind or somebody else's mind. OK.

Yours or somebody else's? Or someone else? OK.

That's someone else. OK. Yours or someone else's mind?

OK. Was it your mind that flopped over into your mind? Or was it someone else's mind?

The argument in those days of the Charvakas, I remember their name now, was that it was your parents' mind. When they got down into this corner, they went for this one because they said it's your parents' mind. They said your parents' mind somehow in the womb is communicated to those cells and you take on...

you start thinking because it's your parents' mind acts as a cause for you to have a thought. So, K.W.J. says, is there any similarity between the abilities and talents of your parents and yours? Is it always the case that Einstein's...

You never hear of Einstein's son. And you know many... I mean, in my high school it was always the minister's son who were the worst.

And you know that. In other words, the talents or the predilections of the parents are in no way passed on to the child. Some genetical traits, like a tendency towards diabetes and things like that, which are carried on through the physical cells.

But mentally, you don't see anything. Mentally, there's no necessity at all that the child shares any of the predilections or the talents of the parents. It's just not true.

You know it. You see it. So, K.W.J. says, not the case. Not that. Not your parents. He says, what do you got left?

I mean, it seems like a little bit simplistic. And you know, you're not going to run out tonight and take refuge because of that. But maybe you should.

In other words, every other possibility is truly, honestly. I mean, you had a few reservations as I spoke. Each person had his own doubts.

Yeah, that sounded good, but I wasn't quite sure. At that point, he pushed a little bit and then he went on. I guess he was afraid to stay there.

And you know, I admit it. Everyone in the room had some doubts about this process. But mostly, mainly, on the whole, roughly, you have to agree that pretty much we got down to here.

It had to have a cause. The first moment of your mind in this life had to have a cause. It had to be physical or mental.

It's not physical. It has nothing to do with the physical matter. There are other proofs in Buddhism.

Well, all the rocks might as well have minds. As long as you get the right chemicals in the right place, a mind should occur. It just doesn't happen.

It hasn't happened for millions of years. It comes from mind, which is quite natural. The causes of the things should be very, very similar to it.

Especially when you talk about nirvana. We admit and we agree that physical matter underlies the mind. In other words, supports it.

It acts as a handicap, like the water and the sunlight and the soil. They do contribute. Obviously, if you slash yourself on the arm, you tend to get upset.

It tends to upset your mind. Not necessarily, by the way, which is another proof of Dharmakirti. He says, heroes in battle, in his time, he had seen people get cut badly and it only made them more strong and more daring.

They saw their own blood. He says, some people see their own blood and faint. Some people see their own blood and get more heroic.

So it proves that the mind is not... It's based on the body, but it's not caused by the body. That's a distinction.

When you get drunk, it affects your mind. The physical body changes and the mind which is resting on the physical body gets stupid. But it doesn't mean that mind comes from the physical body.

Obviously, there's a relationship. Obviously, the physical body is helping to support the mind, but the mind doesn't come from the physical body. It's not related.

It has to be something similar. Mind has to come from something very, very similar. The stuff cause, the main cause, the nirlinggi gyu has to be mind.

And it's not your parents' mind. It doesn't resemble your parents' mind. It has its own habits.

It has its own predilection. It has its own thoughts. It has its own tendencies and habits.

It's coming from somebody else. And that was the mind of the last moment of your last life. It has to...

There's no choice. There's no other way to go. There's no other existing object in the universe.

I mean, this... It looks kind of simple, but you actually cover every object in the universe this way. There's no object you can name to me which is not covered in this outline.

And we got down to the one it had to be. It's your mind. It comes from your own mind from the past life.

So, where did the mind come before that? What about the first moment of mind in that last life? Where did it come from?

From the life before. So, how many... But wasn't there a first life?

And Buddhism says no. There is no first life. There is no first life.

It's very interesting. The mind is a long spaghetti noodle that goes back endlessly. It's like this long spaghetti.

They say, show me the first moment. Show me a moment in your mind that didn't have a cause. Are you crazy?

If it didn't have a cause, it would never change. It can't. You can't show me the first moment in your mind.

You cannot postulate to me the first moment of your mind. It's crazy. It's silly.

Of course you didn't have a first moment in your mind. Your mind is beginningless. Can we ask some questions?

[Speaker 2]
No, sure. Yeah, yeah. No, sure.

[Speaker 1]
I'm just about to run out.

[Speaker 2]
You better ask some questions. It's like knowing the nature of the mind. It changes?

[Speaker 1]
Oh, yeah. The tenue doesn't have to change. Actually, in the school of logic, the relationship between the definition and the thing it defines, they don't change.

That relationship doesn't change. You know, fire is hot. That's a kind of permanent thing.

That's a kind of unchanging thing. The nature of the mind is unchanging. As long as there ever is a mind, it will always be knowing and clear.

[Speaker 2]
So, it's on the other side of the...

[Speaker 1]
The relationship between the mind and its qualities is here. The fact that mind is always knowing and clear is over here. Mind is over here.

No, big difference. Totally different. The fact that mind is always knowing and mind itself are on different sides of the line.

Totally. But that's a very... In debating, that's a 15-year-old thing.

Come on, man. I'm not talking about the fact. I'm talking about the thing itself.

The fact that whenever you have a mind, it's knowing and mind itself are two totally different things. The fact that red things are always red and redness are totally different things. It is.

The fact that the mind is clearing knowing is the instance of the thing. So, what you can say is, you can close your eyes and imagine that apples are red. I mean, I don't know, some sort of species of apple that's always red.

Washington apples are red. I mean, once you have a Washington apple, it's always red. That's permanent.

That fact is permanent. Anything caused by karma and bad thoughts is suffering. That fact is permanent.

But suffering is not permanent. The whole practice of Buddhism is to remove it, is to stop it. You see?

The fact that anything with those causes behind it is suffering, it'll always be that way. As long as there's something suffering, there was always bad thoughts behind it. That doesn't mean you can't stop suffering.

You see what I mean? The fact of something being something is permanent. And the thing itself is impermanent.

That's interesting. My Lama would say, you got to cook it. I don't know.

It's another example. The fact that Harrison Ford is handsome and Harrison Ford are different things. One is a fact and one is this guy who's going to die.

That's a different thing. The fact of something being something is permanent, normally. And the thing itself can be impermanent.

That's a distinction. Can't think of another. Yeah.

The fact that the mind changes is permanent. How's that? The fact that the mind is impermanent is permanent.

The mind itself is not permanent. The quality of the mind being impermanent is permanent. That quality will never change.

As long as there's ever a mind in the universe, it will always be changing. That fact is always unchanging. But the mind itself is changing all the time.

Unfortunately.

[Speaker 2]
It's changing all the time, but it's true nature.

[Speaker 1]
That's another subject. That's another subject. If you mean it's ultimate nature, which means it's emptiness, there's two kinds of cells.

Cell means clear. There's the clear light nature of the mind and there's the clear nature of the mind. And they both have the same word.

Celsior Rigpa, meaning the definition of mind as being clear and knowing, clear and sentient, that's impermanent. Those qualities are impermanent. But the quality of the mind that it's not such that it doesn't depend on its causes is permanent.

That's its emptiness. And that's called clear light sometimes. Is that changing or unchanging?

Unchanging. And that's not a fact. No, it's not unchanging because it's a fact.

It's unchanging because it's an object. It doesn't change. And those are two different kinds of clear.

Two different meanings of the word clear. One clear means invisible. And the other clear means empty.

Not empty like my pockets and stuff like that. Yeah. Two different meanings of the word clear.

And mind can be in the bridge or a rock. The Buddha...

[Speaker 2]
Like we hear stories of Bodhisattvas thinking...

[Speaker 1]
The Buddha can emanate... There are extraordinary cases where, for example, a Buddha can emanate as a tree or as a bridge. And that's the form body of the Buddha.

That's nirmanakaya. There's two nirmanakayas. One is choky tuku and one is tuku.

Tuku means plain old nirmanakaya. Choky tuku means the ultimate nirmanakaya. The ultimate nirmanakaya always has 112 sides and always looks like the Buddha.

And all those other nirmanakayas that he also sends out can look like anything. But they don't have mind. His mind is behind them.

His mind sends them out. But they are physical. They are in the rupakaya side of his existence.

They are all physical. It's not his mind. There's a mind behind it.

Let's put it that way. Got all that one. Sometimes in the debating you just try to move the subject down.

Before the guy figures out that you didn't come here. Any more questions? No, that's real.

That's the real answer. OK. So, what does that got to do with taking refuge?

It's like this. You have to... Then you have to study what's going to determine the content of your mind next life.

So, you determine that your mind is indestructible. That's really the position of Buddhism. Your mind is indestructible.

Ultimately your mind will become the mind of a Buddha. Sooner or later, you know. The lazier you are, the longer.

But sooner or later your mind will become the mind of a Buddha. It's indestructible. Even after it becomes a Buddha's mind, it'll keep changing.

The Buddha's mind does change. Its quality is that it's always moving. It's always changing.

But it always has the same content. The content of that mind is paradise. That mind is subjected.

And that mind is forced to perceive paradise forever. And that's where we get into the content of the mind. What will the mind be seeing in your next life?

And then you have to get into the principles of karma. And there are four principles of karma. How are we doing on time?

OK? OK. I'll just start them and then you can cook them.

And this is basically the similar causes and similar results. In other words, your actions, what your actions lead to is like every other kind of cause. And it's funny.

When we get to our actions, we stop being logical. But up to that point, we will agree that if you have good watermelon seeds and you take care of them properly, you're going to get good watermelons out of it. And if you have good corn seeds and you take good care of them, you'll get good corn plants out of it.

You need to have good seeds to have good results. And lousy seeds, seeds which are genetically defective, seeds which are rotten, seeds which have holes in them, seeds which are in any way deficient can't give you a good plant. It's impossible.

The quality of the seed always resembles the result. No farmer takes corn seeds and plants them and prays for wheat to come up. It's impossible.

And it'd be silly to say that. It'd be silly to say, Oh, here's some watermelon seeds. I wonder what's going to grow next year from these seeds.

You don't wonder. No farmer sits all night sleepless. I wonder what kind of plants are going to come up.

It would be silly. You laugh because it's silly. It's silly to think that the cause and the result could be very much different.

It's silly. It's funny. And the same with your deeds.

I mean, if the content of your actions is bad, if it hurts somebody, the result has to hurt. That's just the first principle of karma. It's absolutely the first principle of karma.

If the deed is harmful, the result has to be bad. Suffering. There's a lot of reasons why.

And it's a very, very beautiful subject. It's covered in Madhyamaka. It's covered in the fourth chapter of the Abhidharmakosha.

It's something you could explain to somebody in about two or three days and no matter what religion they were, they would accept it. It's very interesting. It has to do with your perceptions.

It has to do with how you perceive things. As you commit a karma, you perceive yourself committing the karma. And that starts the process of the carrying of the karma through your mind stream.

And that whole thing is laid out in the scriptures. It's very clear. It's very acceptable.

It's very cool. You can accept it right away. It's a long story.

You have to study it for a while. But you can prove why if you harm somebody, you will get suffering back. You can prove it.

It's a question of the content. The causes and the results must be similar. They always will be similar.

You can prove why if you study the nature of the continuum of the mind and the nature of the perceptual event of committing a bad deed. You can prove it. So the cause and the result must be similar.

You don't get pleasure out of a bad action, out of a harmful action. So I'm in the diamond business. Half the year I do diamond business.

We do 3 million stones a year or something. I don't own the company, which I did. But it's very common in diamond business that the dealer will come with a big package of diamonds and he'll say, I want $3,000 a carat.

And you say, no, I can only pay $2,500. It's a lie. You know it's worth $3,000.

You say, no, my limit is $2,500. My boss will kill me if I pay $3,000. And he knows you're lying, but he has to play this game.

So he says, okay, $2,700. And you say, no, $2,600. It's all I can pay.

I won't tell my boss. I'll cover the $100 myself. And all these stories, they go back and forth, back and forth.

Then suddenly he gives in to you. You've lied very persuasively. You've really given him a good story.

And he gives in to you. And you make an extra $100. What was the cause?

I mean, what did I do to get the $100? What did I do?

[Speaker 2]
I lied.

[Speaker 1]
What was the result? I got another $100. So that's a bad cause.

Harmful cause. Lying. Bad deed.

And the result is $100 extra. And it happens all the time. I swear.

And I'm not lying. It happens all the time. So does it break this law of karma?

Does it break the first law of karma? No.

[Speaker 2]
Let's say yes. I want to say yes. I want to hear your argument.

[Speaker 1]
Well, I would say it's exceedingly likely. Well, I'd say this. You would be in some situation and sometimes lie to yourself.

[Speaker 2]
You can't get rid of it. You are very hot-tempered. I want to say that $100 is the direct result of lying.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah. Of the bad lie. Of the lie.

OK.

[Speaker 2]
I think you fixed that.

[Speaker 1]
Let's start with that one. Cause and effect means this. It's a very interesting thing.

It's always the same. In a laboratory experiment, we all know. It's a basis of science.

It's a basis of western science. When you repeat all the steps of an experiment the same way, you always get the same result. That's the whole idea.

You replicate your experiment. And if somebody does an experiment in France, they prove that you can do this with the AIDS virus. And somebody over in America does exactly the same steps and what happens?

He gets exactly the same result. He must. If he doesn't, they say, the French guy was crazy.

That's not the reason. It's not the correct causes. It doesn't work that way.

It's not scientific. It means if you collect the right conditions, you follow the same steps. That's how recipes work.

Supposed to come out the same. That's the whole idea. So suppose they have figured out how to make airplanes fly.

But they weren't quite sure. So they tell you at the airport, you have to sign this waiver. Because we super understand why airplanes fly, but we're not 100% sure.

And every once in a while, they fall down. It doesn't replicate. It doesn't always work the same way.

99% of the time, it works great. And 1% of the time, we just don't know why it doesn't follow the same rules. It's not like that.

It's really not like that. Something extraordinary can happen. But if all the causes are there, if all the parts are there properly, it has to fly.

That's the rule. So now I ask you, and I know from experience, did I get $100 profit every time I lied in a diamond deal? I'm the same liar saying, honest.

I'm very good at it. My boss caught me for 15 years. Same persuasive line.

It doesn't. It really doesn't. No, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.

You know that. In your heart, you know that. You really do know that.

Sometimes you repeat the same bad deed and you don't get what you wanted. It backfires. And you actually did something bad.

So are they cause and effect?