Серия ежедневной практики, курс 02 — Истинный смысл прибежища (1995, Ваджрапани, Калифорния), занятие 3

[Speaker 1]
This is the continuation of session two. The minimum motivation has to be some concern about what's going to happen after you die. That's the lowest kind of refuge.

So we've been talking about karma for that, and the point is, and we'll stop with that, is that your mind must go on. We proved it. Your mind must go on.

There's many indications that it could go on, and there's no proof that it doesn't go on. It's true that the body stops moving, gets cold, the person stops talking, but what if it's just a malfunction of his apparatus and not his mind stopping? You know, the mouth stopped.

I mean, the mouth, the muscles are dead. He can't talk anymore. He's standing there trying to talk, and the body's not working anymore.

How do you know that's not true? You know, how do you know that his mind is not still there? He's struggling to say something to you.

He's trying to wave to you, and the body won't work anymore. You know, that's very possible. There's nothing to prove that it's not true.

And what decides what that person's going to see in the future? You know, where did your experiences come from in this life? You know, why?

Why do all kinds of people have different kinds of experiences? Where do they come from? You know, we had this thing in New York City.

It was very bad. Three of the pitchers on the baseball team, it wasn't a New York Mets or somebody, they're riding in a boat at night. They're all sitting in the front row together, three famous baseball players, and they're all drunk, and they're having a good time.

And the boat goes under a dock. They didn't see the dock. Two of them got their heads cut off.

One of them leaned over the second before they went under the dock, and he was fine. He's pitching nowadays. So, the question is, why does one person get, why does one person lean over at the last minute, and why do two people get decapitated?

Why? You know, it's a question you used to ask your mother. You know, why did those two guys get killed, and that guy leaned over at the last minute?

Why? And you can say, you know, he dropped his beer bottle or something, and he leaned over. That's not the answer.

You know, it's what, why did he drop his beer bottle and lean over? You know, why was it him that leaned over and the other two didn't? You know, everything has to have a cause.

There has to be an explanation of why one person experienced that event as a close call, and two people experienced that event as death. You know, why? Why?

Why does one person experience it one way, and two people experience it as something else? We'll cover that at 3.30, and it was two to three. Well, that's a long time to go.

I'm okay. Okay, so we'll start at 2 o'clock? I mean, couldn't it have a dad?

He seems to be more attached to the Jiva than you are. Well, according to the laws of karma, it's very interesting. It's interesting.

I like this. You know, morality in Buddhism is very simply defined. It's not, it's the right thing to do.

It's not, it's a thing which pleases a Supreme Being. It's not anything except, if you do that, it'll hurt you. And if you don't do it, it'll help you.

You know, the definition of good karma isn't anything except that which gives you a pleasure, physical or mental, later. And the definition of bad karma is namingi devo yuri myo nge kye wa, which means it'll produce a karmic result which is painful to you. So there's no, I mean, the basic reason, it sounds kind of selfish, but it's tu monwa, which means even Mahayana practitioners accept it and live on it, act on it.

You're just helping yourself when you're moral. The reason, the main reason to be moral, the basic reason, the most compelling reason is that any time you hurt someone, you will experience infinitely more suffering from that than anyone else will. It's just an ignorant thing to do, for your own interest.

The Dalai Lama calls it enlightened self-interest, you know. And it's not the ultimate reason to be moral, but basically the definition of good karma is something which brings you, personally, pleasure in the future. And the definition of bad karma is the opposite.

In the evening, we'll talk about how that works. And that's tied up with the, that's tied up with emptiness, the study of emptiness, and the study of perception. The study of perception comes from the Mahayana school, and the study of emptiness coming from the highest middle way school, and they come together.

They, everyone agrees at the end, you know, that those come together. Yeah. Meaning, by the way, Buddhas don't lose it.

When Buddhas become Buddhas, and they reach the highest evolution of the human mind, they never stop taking refuge. Buddhas go for refuge. In Tushita heaven, Buddhas go for refuge.

Why? They have no more pain. They have no reason to run to mommy.

Nobody's punching them. What it means is that even a Buddha maintains the lowest Buddhist motivation, which is trying to keep his rear end out of hell. You know, he never loses that motivation.

There's no Buddha in the universe who would like to go to hell and suffer there, you know, just for the sake of suffering. It's called tumo. Tumo means they don't give up that motivation.

They incorporate it into a higher motivation. But then, no Buddha gets to a state where he he doesn't want to stay out of hell. He wants to stay out of hell, you know.

He'd be willing to go there for others. That's another story. And he won't experience it as hell.

But, in fact, he can't go there. I mean, he can show himself there, but he can't experience hell. He's incapable of experiencing hell.

But, but he doesn't want to go there. If you ask the Buddha Shakyamuni, would you like to go to hell? He said, no, of course not, you know.

It's a, it's a, he still has going for refuge. He'd never lose that, yeah.

[Speaker 2]
Is there a mistranslation, then, of the refuge prayer of, I go for refuge in Tali and the light, and you go down in the sun?

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, technically. There's a big debate about it, you know. Like, who are they going to refuge to, themselves?

What are they trying to stay out of, something they could never experience again? But it says that they still have it. It's not a mistranslation.

It does say that. It says, sangyepadu dhanyim khyentse che, you know, until I become a Buddha. But it's, they do, they still, it's a big debate.

I mean, we debate it in the monastery a lot. They have no fear. Not the last time we do it.

But, but they generally, generally, that's the dhakti. There's different twists on that. I mean, with a slight, with a slight changing of the wording, you can say they don't need to take refuge.

They don't have refuge in the sense of needing to take refuge. But, but they do take refuge in the sense that they have absolutely no desire and no intention of ever doing anything again that would lead them to go to hell. They are quite interested in staying out of hell, and staying out of lower realms.

They never lose that motivation. It's part of Mahayana motivation. It's the basis of Mahayana motivation.

You build on it. You don't give it up. Hinayana motivation is part of Mahayana motivation.

It's incorporated. You don't give it up. You just, you just enhance it.

But you, it isn't that you, you get to a point where you say, I don't want to, I, I don't care if I go to hell anymore, you know. There's three levels of motivation, right? One is you want to keep yourself out of the, out of the lower realms.

I don't like to talk much about the lower realms, because we just barely proved them, right? Freddy and those monsters. It's not a joke.

You know, I mean, if karma is true, if your mind goes on, if minor thoughts planted in this life can twist like a huge redwood tree into this horrible, twisted, grotesque result of a million years living with these monsters in some dark place, that is conceivable. Given all that we said, it's totally conceivable. I don't say you have to believe it, but you can't deny it.

You know, you can't give me any reason why it can't be true. You know, a small, twisted cause, painful, you know, of hurting someone, could result, according to everything we know, in the experience of many years in a horrible place surrounded by grotesque monsters trying to hurt you, you know. It's, it's, it's, it's conceivable.

There's no reason why it couldn't be true. If that's all true, then you'd want to, that's the lowest motivation. Second motivation is to want to get out of life altogether.

I mean, this kind of suffering life, which means the world where every good thing you ever get, you lose. I mean, you, you would like to not live in a world like that. There's this big debate in Buddhism.

Are those things pleasure or not? You know, to have a nice child, you know, to hug your child, is it a nice thing or not? Is it a nice thing or not?

Is it suffering? That's a, we should, we'll talk about that someday. That's not what it means not to cling, but we'll get into that someday.

But of course it's nice. It's nice to see, you know, it's good to see. It is a beautiful thing.

Is it a suffering right at this moment? Not at this, I mean, I don't think you can argue that right at this moment, when the child is healthy, the mother's hugging the child, they're, they're loving each other, that that's an ugly thing or a terrible thing. It's not.

It's, I mean, when you think of nirvana or Buddhahood or Buddha paradise, you, you imagine that people have that emotion there, that there is love going on there. It has a different nature. It doesn't have that nature of turning into something bad later on.

But it, this, this event must be very similar. It must be very similar. I mean, in two-seated paradise, the people are loving each other that way.

It's just that there's no attachment on the back of it. There's no final separation of these two, which will happen, or the death of each of them, or getting old of each of them. It's not, those things are not attached to that pleasure.

But the pleasure is very similar in content, I think. You know, the loving of people, of each other in two-seated paradise must be very similar. So there is a, I mean, when you, when you think of trying to reach a Buddha paradise, you'd like to be in a place where people are all loving each other like that.

But you just don't want to be in a place where they have to be ripped apart, or one of them has to die or something like that. So, so that's, the content of heaven is probably quite similar to the, to the current. So anyway, the second motivation is not to want to be in a place where that, that happens.

And then the third motivation is to, is to think of other people, and think that, I always tell people in New York, we're on a subway. The subway is a very bad experience in New York. You know, and you have to use it.

And it's dirty, and it stinks, and it's drunks, and there's violent people, and, and you just get on, it's like a trip in hell for five minutes while you're going somewhere. And every person on the subway is suffering, you know. When you go down the line of people on each side, sitting on each side, they're all, they're all suffering, whether they know it or not.

They're all going through the same thing that you, that you're going to go through. You know, somebody, everybody on the subway car will get cancer, or something. You know, everybody on the subway car will get old.

Everybody who's so concerned about these major business deals in New York City is going to die and be forgotten, and the business deal will be forgotten too. And they're all in the same boat. They're all in the same subway car.

And in some way, you get some sort of sympathy for all, everybody. That's the highest motivation. So that, you would take refuge for that, to try to help all of those people.

But that's a, those are the, we're going to talk about that tomorrow. So we'll come back at what, two o'clock?

[Speaker 2]
Okay. Chanting This is the end of session two. Session three.

Chanting Chanting Chanting It's a subject called chumbap, which means waterfall.

[Speaker 1]
And it derives from a quotation in a work by Chandrakirti, where it says, Pray to us, okay? Hungry ghosts. Can't see them.

I can't prove that they exist. Supposedly, there are beings around us who are spirits, and they have problems. Because in their last life, they were very attached to money, greedy.

In this life, they can't get anything. So they, or they were gluttons in their past lives. They didn't eat carefully.

And they just used food for, like, desire, instead of just to keep themselves healthy. So they, they're born as hungry spirits. And then hungry spirits, everything they see, like if they see a glass of water and they run up to it, it turns into pus, or blood, the minute they reach it.

And they're supposedly a being like this. You can believe it or not, it doesn't matter. But they, there's a quotation in Chandrakirti where it says, they look at a river of water, crystal clear water, and when they run up to the bank of it, it's just this ugly, disgusting pus, and rotten blood, and things like that.

Because of the karma of their past life, being attached to food, or misusing food. So, then there's a famous discussion about it. And they posit the following.

You put a round table in a room, you sit down a preta, a hungry ghost, on one side, human being on the other side, and then you throw in a deva. A deva is like a kind of birth you get to if you're very, very good in this life, but ignorantly. You don't, you're a good person, but you don't really understand what you're doing.

And that will lead you to a birth called a deva. A deva is like, I like to call them pleasure beings. They live in these realms that we can't see.

They live very, very blissful lives. They have beautiful fountains, beautiful parks. The boy deva and the girl devas are always having fun together, and it's like this temporary paradise heaven.

Then that karma wears out, and they always fall down to hell. Okay, this is according to the scriptures, okay? But suppose there are such beings, and you put around the table one preta, one hungry ghost, one human, and one deva, one pleasure being.

And then you bring in a glass of water. This is really good.

[Speaker 2]
I don't know who put this here, but unbelievable.

[Speaker 1]
Okay, always remember this glass of water, okay, if you don't remember anything else. So they come in and they put that, you put that glass of water down. The three beings have three different experiences of the glass of water, okay?

The human sees it as a glass of water. The preta sees it as a glass of disgusting, rotten blood and pus. And the deva sees it as what they call amrta, which means the nectar, the nectar of the gods.

Ambrosia. Okay, at the same time, okay, they all have the same perceptions. They all have different perceptions.

All three perceptions are what we call tamas or pramana. They're all pramana. They're all correct perceptions.

Three different beings seeing the same thing as three different things at once. And in Buddhism, according to Buddhism, each one is having a correct perception, valid perception. Okay, no one's mistaken in the way.

So what's going on, okay? That's used to prove the emptiness of the water. That's used to prove the emptiness of the liquid more properly, all right?

You can't even assume it's water. It's water to us, but it may not be water to somebody else. It's a liquid.

And three different people, three different beings are seeing it validly in three completely different ways. Is it possible for one glass of stuff to actually be disgusting blood and pus and water and the ambrosia of the gods all at once? I'll ask you that first.

Is it possible for one object to have three contradictory characteristics? Can something be purely red and purely blue? Can something be all red and all blue at the same time?

Don't ask me that. I don't know. I'm talking from the piece of paper side.

I'm talking from the piece of paper side. Can it be all blue and all red at the same time? I'm going to hit you with this paper.

I love that answer.

[Speaker 2]
I love those people, you know.

[Speaker 1]
I say, I got these zen mantras, you know, everything's empty. I say, come here, I got a dental drill, you know. I'm going to use this empty dental drill.

And when I hit you, empty dental nerve, I want to see what happens. I like that one. Okay, that's not what emptiness means, okay?

But that's a very serious point, you know, but the point is one thing can't be both at once. It cannot be. I mean, I mean, talking normal terms.

I'm not talking, it's no zen trick, okay? And I love zen, by the way. I'm not, I'm not talking bad about zen.

But it's not a trick. I mean, one thing can't be two things, two different things, two contradictory things at once, okay? I love it.

I love it, okay? I love it. I love the question.

And I always use the lady at work, the guy or the lady at work, okay? I say the lady at work. And I work in a big office.

Anybody who's worked anywhere, unless you're, unless you haven't been on this planet, okay? I mean, in any office, there's good people, there's bad people, there's nice people, there's lousy people, you know, you know. And you know there's difficult people in the office.

So, you can take anybody in my office. I can think of a lady in my office, okay? And to me, she looks fine.

I feel neutral towards her. I don't feel, when I look at her or think about her, I don't think that she's a good person or a bad person. I just, I don't think about her that much.

And I have people who come up to me and try to convince me how bad she is, you know. I say, she's really a bad person. She's really a hateful, despicable, bad person, okay?

And then I have other people come up to me and explain to me how, what a wonderful person she is, and how nice she is, okay? And, and is it possible for her to be both? Now, can she have the qualities, simultaneously, of being a good person and a bad person, at the same time?

Is it, aren't those, I'm talking contradictory qualities. I'm not talking, sometimes nice, sometimes bad. I'm talking one object at the same moment, put in front of three different beings, three contradictory qualities, you know, like totally cold and totally hot, or totally tall and totally short, and totally hard and totally soft.

Can something be both at the same time? Can the lady at work be really despicable and really nice at the same time? I'm talking from her, from her side.

From her side. That's the whole point of the glass of water, okay? And I, I'm going to give it to you.

Uh, this is, this is the actual discussion, and you can read it at your leisure. Um, I, I took it out of a larger thing. It was like too long to print.

Um, so it's, you only start on page two, all right? And it doesn't stop at the end, but you can read it. This is Chandrakirti's, this is Chandrakirti's discussion, but the bottom line is that, the bottom line is, that's a proof for the emptiness of the lady at work.

That's a classical Chandrakirti proof for the emptiness of the lady at work, and that's what her emptiness means. That, that's what emptiness means. It doesn't mean any of the other weird things you might have ever heard.

Okay? Her emptiness is that, because she can't, from her side, have two opposite qualities, they are not her qualities. They don't belong to her.

They're not qualities that belong to her. Being nice or being bad, being very sweet and being very despicable, insofar as they are opposite and contradictory qualities, cannot both be her at the same time. It's impossible.

It's just impossible. One object can't be blood and water and ambrosia at the same time. It's impossible.

So that's not a quality of that object. It doesn't belong to that object. It's not a quality which exists from its side.

There's a clue. So why, why does it have, why does it appear to have this quality, contradictory quality? Where is it coming from?

Where's the appearance of, of a, of a nasty lady and a, and a sweet lady? It's coming from, by the way, that's, that's just a very simple, clear, true, and, and as you will see by the end of this stuff, useful truth about her emptiness. She doesn't have any of those qualities.

None of those qualities are her qualities. They, they are coming from your side. Okay?

There, there are, that's a good question, and it's a very, very classic question. Is there any data coming from her side which would suggest badness or goodness, you know? Isn't it true that her face is all screwed up, or isn't it true that she's smiling warmly, that I could have some data that I could interpret it, that she's a nice person and an all-good person?

It's a difficult question. Ultimately not, but, but you, it's a long, long story. When you focus on her niceness and you think you see niceness coming from her, it's because you perceive a smile.

That's true. And you really do perceive a smile from her side. There is a smile coming to your eyes from her side.

When you change the level of your focus and you focus on a smile, that's again your interpretation, and it's based on two points and some red. And when you go deeper than that and look into the red, there's the left side of the red and the right side of the red being presented to your eyes. And so you can keep going down into different levels, and you'll never find a smile.

And that's the classic, that's one of the exercises for perceiving her emptiness. But it's too, it's too much right now. There is sense data coming to you which you properly interpret as a smile and that she's nice, but that too is your own projection, ultimately.

So, so she's your projection. She doesn't have any qualities of her own. She is your projection.

It's proved by the fact that two different people who are not crazy, they're not unreasonable people, see her as having totally contradictory qualities. Two qualities that one person cannot embody at the same time, yet they see it. That's a, that is a kind of proof of her emptiness, and you can read it from Chandrakirti in this, in this reading.

So, That's another, ultimately, no, ultimately it's, I always tell the people in New York, we'll get to it before the end of the five years, you know. I don't have that, that opportunity here. But let's, let's talk about, so that's her, that's her emptiness.

What's the nature of your projection? You are projecting something. You, you believe that she's nice.

Let's talk about that projection. Once you understand it's a projection, okay, once you've established that it's a projection, we did it very lightly here, this is like Bud Light, you know, how much can you do in three days? Okay, once you've established it's a projection, I ask you a question.

Can you go to the office tomorrow, and the next time she's obnoxious to you, can you just say to yourself, oh, it's just a projection, and can you leave it at that? Will, will she no longer be obnoxious? Can you go to the office tomorrow?

Let me rephrase it. I'll start over. Can you go to the office tomorrow and say, I understood from that talk yesterday that this is only my projection, that I see her as being so obnoxious.

From now on, I'm going to perceive her as a nice person. Can you do that? What is, what is, when you first walk in the office, she says, fuck you.

And she probably will, by the way. Now, what I mean to say is, you know, and I know, you know in your heart, you can go ahead and confirm it on Monday, okay? Go into the office, decide that you're going to have a nice projection.

Or next time you go to the dentist, you know, say, I'm going to perceive this drill as a flower. You know, I, I understand that the drill is empty. I understand that its ability to cause me intense pain is, is only a projection.

Therefore, I choose to have a different projection today, and it will feel like cotton candy today. Can you do that? Do you expect that it will work?

[Speaker 2]
No.

[Speaker 1]
It just doesn't work. It's not the nature of the, well, it tells you something about the nature of those projections. Are they voluntary or not?

Well, I have a question about this. It seems like there has to be a date for the projections for that thing. I, I, that's her question again.

It's called Tanitābhidhātuṁ so'etanaṁ nyepe ece. It's very famous in the debate. Tanitābhidhātuṁ so'etanaṁ nyepe ece.

Tanitābhidhātuṁ so'etanaṁ nyepe ece. Tanitābhidhātuṁ means, when you look for the thing that you were labeling onto the basis of your projection. I admit that I, that my interpretation of her as a nice lady is a projection.

But isn't there really a smile there on which I am projecting my interpretation? I mean, there is some essence there. And then I'm interpreting onto it.

And, and Madhyamika Prasangika, the highest Prasangika, said, no. Tanitābhidhātuṁ so'etanaṁ nyepe ece. When you look for the thing which was given the label or the projection, you'll never find, ultimately you'll never find it.

If she smiles at me and I say, oh, she likes me. And then, and I say, no, no, that's my projection. Let's look at the smile.

And then I see that the smile consists of the left side and the right side. It was reasonable that I called it a smile because there were two points lifted up. Then I go into the nature of the left side and the right side.

You'll never find, ultimately you, you'll keep going down to the level of things that you were interpreting and you'll never find anything. Ultimately there is nothing. Nominally, there is something.

Nominally, there is something. Nominally, the thing hurts, like hell, when you get a drill in your tooth. Okay, so what I'm saying is, go back to my question.

Is it voluntary or not? It's not. It's absolutely not voluntary.

Okay, the projection is not voluntary. The projection is forced upon you. You can understand it's a projection.

You can understand that this lady at work, from her own side, is not inherently nice or evil. And you can understand that anytime she appears to be nice to you, it's your own projection. But can you do anything about it?

Is it going to make her any less nice or evil to you? It's a very good answer. Okay, we'll get into that.

That's a great answer. But she is. She is and she intends to.

She is and she intends to. And she does. And that's the point.

The dentist, it hurts you. I mean, it hurts you. It really does hurt.

You can understand that it's a projection. By the way, is anything, inherently anything, isn't a dentist drill always inherently painful? Is there anyone who takes pleasure out of your tooth getting drilled down to the nerve?

Is there anyone in that situation who could possibly take any pleasure out of it? Go to India. I don't know if you've ever been in Karnataka.

They're called the Dentist in Karnataka. They will drill the wrong tooth on purpose. So that you have to come back in about a week and you get double the fee.

So as they're drilling, to them, it's the greatest thing in the world. Here's a big fat foreigner can pay me $200 to fix one tooth. It's possible.

Every event can be interpreted by two different people in a totally different way. Therefore, they're all empty. Okay, back to the projection.

Can you voluntarily change the projection? I mean, aside from the reaction part, in other words, which is a great point, you know, how do you respond to it? How do you react to it?

Is there anything you can do about the event itself at that moment? Yeah, can you change the projection on will? At will?

You cannot. But you can get more information. You can understand it more deeply, but it's still going to hurt.

The dentist drill is still going to hurt. I promise you. Next time you go, remember.

What exactly is happening is that I think that two examples, like Kripalina Srivastava and Ramana Maharshi, both of them have changed the form of cancer and both of them received no pain medicine and didn't need it. We'll talk about it. I'll get to it.

Yeah, it's not on willpower, though. It's not on willpower. Not for anybody.

It's not an act of will. That is like the one that involves something like physical pain. I mean, it's very easy when you go down the steps, you go like, oh, yeah, this is a really nice cake, and then someone says, oh, they're blah, blah, blah inside, and you go, oh, yuck, I don't want this.

I mean, that's very, you can change that very fast. Okay. But if you ate it, could you make it?

The basic principle, though, we accept now, right? I mean, next time you go to the dentist, check it out. Can you, I mean, as a normal person, and even as an extraordinary person, but we'll get to that, can you, by willpower, you understand it's a projection.

You understand that someone could be taking great pleasure out of this event. Like who? Like a greedy dentist, okay?

And you understand also that you're having great pain, and you understand that, therefore, it's neither good, it's neither painful nor pleasant, necessarily, from its own side. It is a projection. It really is a projection.

Okay, you're projecting it as painful. He's projecting it as another hundred dollars, okay? The drilling of your tooth is empty.

Therefore, okay, so, I mean, I used to sweat about this. It used to drive me crazy. What good is understanding emptiness?

Well, what the hell? You know, who cares? You know, the thing is empty.

According to Nagarjuna, it still works. It still functions. Even though the drill is empty, it still hurts.

It's absolutely true. Nagarjuna is adamant about it. Sankappa is adamant about it.

You know, the drill is empty, and the drill hurts you. So, what's the use of saying it's emptiness? I just couldn't get it, you know.

It's just reactions. That's exactly what she said, okay? It's reactions.

It's reactions, okay? What it means is, when you understand it's emptiness, the first thing to do when something, I wanted to say a bad word, but, lousy happens, okay?

[Speaker 2]
To you.

[Speaker 1]
Uh, what do you normally do? I mean, when a lady at work screams at you, what do you normally do? What's the normal reaction?

Any human being. I mean, almost. You, you, you do something worse.

You, you get back. I don't get mad, I get even, right? That's what they say.

Uh, I mean, it's the natural reaction. It's the most natural reaction. If you understood the emptiness of it, if you understood the emptiness of this yelling lady, where did she come from?

What's her nature, first of all? What's the nature of her yelling? Of her ear, of her, what do you call it?

Yeah, it's bold. Anyway, of her ugliness at that moment, where is it coming from? Karma, which means from whom?

From whose side? Uh, don't mean it like that. I don't mean it like that.

I mean, uh, Not for her, she's obviously not happy. Not that, not that either. Um, I'm saying totally, forget Mahayana stuff, okay?

She was, she's screaming at you, okay? Um, that, that screaming at you, uh, is it coming from her side or your side? Ultimately.

I mean, she, first of all, we're trying to figure out if emptiness is going to do any good at the office on Monday, all right? I don't have to go. You probably have to go some of you.

Okay? I have to go maybe the week after or something. It seems like it's easier if it's not a person that we're up against, like it's a job.

Like stubbing your toe or something. That's, that's, but, but what if a lady comes up to you at work and starts screaming at you? What good does it, does it do to understand your emptiness?

And I, and I, in terms of reaction, You don't need to read that shit. Why not?

[Speaker 2]
Well, it's not there. It's not all her fault.

[Speaker 1]
It's not, it doesn't, the reason she's screaming at you is because you screamed at somebody. What's going to happen if you scream back? It's the last thing you'd want to do if you were an educated Buddhist.

If you were an educated Buddhist. The last thing in the universe that you'd want to do to someone screaming at you would be to show any kind of bad reaction to the person because that's where they came from. You tell me now.

No, not to... They are really doing a bad thing. They really are doing a bad thing.

It is really bad. But are you going to scream back at them in anger? I'm not talking out of compassion or something.

We could maybe get to a point where we could answer. No, no, no, no. No, but, but what would be the...

Any kind of negative reaction is going to cause a lot. Sempa. Lele jikten napa.

Demi-sempa. Sempa. The movement of the mind.

If you let the mind move to a bad thought at that moment, what is it? It's bad karma. It's bad karma.

It's already bad karma. Even if you hold your tongue, it's already bad karma. Just to have a thought that you hate her.

Not hate her, but you just... Eww, go away, you know. That thought in itself is already a karma.

And what will it cause? On another empty woman in the future. On another blank screen in the future.

You'll have to see this thing again. Exactly the same woman coming back. You'll be forced.

You can sit there all day and say it's a projection. But it's loud. And it's red.

And it's not fun. And you know that. That's the whole essence.

That's exactly the essence. That's our emptiness. The reaction time.

What you said. The only thing that emptiness helps about is in the reaction. It's too late to do anything about the loneliness.

It's too late. And she's coming because you made a cause a long time ago. You can't change it.

There's nothing in the universe you can do about it. You can understand it. If you've got certain karmic seeds, you could even take it as kind of a the way a bodhisattva would like to come off the world.

You know, you can do that. But that's also a result of karma. If you happen to be able to transform it into a flower.

The classical instance is when Mara shoots the arrows at the Buddha sitting under the bodhi tree. And what happens? They turn into flowers.

And that's how miracles can occur. Miracles can occur. I mean, according to the theory of emptiness and karma, miracles are totally okay.

They're possible because of the karma. Anything can happen. If things are empty, anything can happen.

If things don't have a nature of their own, and if they depend on your projections, and if your projections are dictated, forced upon you by your past deeds, then anything can happen. But if you want to, all you can do in a lousy situation at our level is what? I mean, at minimum not react, but at maximum, what would be the most intelligent thing to do?

After you see emptiness. She's empty. I know the yelling looks very real.

By the way, it is real. That's as real as anything ever gets. Just don't respond that way.

I mean, it's not even just patience. If you respond with some kind of positive energy, happy energy, helpful energy. You know, this lady's screaming because you messed up on something.

Normally. She's not totally crazy. And you just try to help.

You just do anything you can to help her. Whatever she wants, you supply. As long as it's not immoral or something like that.

But whatever it is that she needs, you happily supply it. That's the best thing to do. What's that?

That's a symbol. It's another symbol, but it's a good symbol. And it's going to create what?

In the future, you'll see it. You'll meet another empty object, and you'll see the thing as as something beautiful. You'll meet the same lady, and because she's a tabula rasa, because she's empty, because she's a blank screen, you'll see her as a nice person.

If the objects in the universe were not just blank screens, then all of this morality and stuff wouldn't work at all. There'd be no point to it. Blank screens, meaning any object you bump into, me, this room, this country, your friends, your cat, it's blank.

Emptiness, I don't like the word emptiness. I mean, the Tibetan word is more like blank, and the Sanskrit word is more like blank. Shunya.

Shu came into Latin as with a hard K. SH in Sanskrit changes to K in Latin. It came in as ku.

And in its strengthened form is kau. And the U changes to V. And when it hits English, it becomes cavity.

The word cavity comes directly from shunya. But what it means is blank. Just blank.

Things are blank. Imagine everything you run into as being blank. And then you project something onto it.

And that's how things work. But I have a question about emptiness. What you just said was very, very clearly, very good.

But my question is that we don't have the same reaction to everything. And so, I thought of Melvin in my mind. Melvin and I, there was a podcast with Judith Sarkozy and emptiness.

And it seems like that sort of explains it to me, but maybe I'm incorrect. That, you know, some people have their projections too. But their projections produce this archetype that my projection hooks into in certain ways.

So I meet one person and I feel very pleased with them. And I meet another person and I feel very displeased with them. Someone else would have a reverse reaction.

But it seems to me that it is borrowed and it's not really blind. Their basic projections are to hook in. So I felt like I'm making a statement but I'm really making a question.

Now I like it, and it means this. It goes back to her question. If it's difficult, it'll come up again and again.

And you have to think about it. Any good presentation of emptiness like Pabongka's presentation in that Nittles and Copper book, it's really, really excellent. And he says, there is data presented to your eyes.

No one said there wasn't any data presented to your eyes. In the case of the glass of water, if you read that, there's a huge debate. What is the data presented to your eyes?

Ultimately, they have to come down to some kind of liquid. They don't say water. They never say.

The glass of water seems to be blood to the preta. You can't say that. The liquid seems to be blood to the preta.

There is a basis. There is sense data. There is something out there being presented to you, and that's a liquid.

And in three different beings interpreted as three different things. That's true. That really is true.

There really is something being presented to you. It may be an archetype in your mind, what we call dunchy. That's a whole other subject, and I won't get into it, but it actually is.

It's not even out there. Ultimately, it's in your mind. That's another point.

That's a long story. Okay? Don't want to get into it right now.

But, there is data being presented to you. But, when you focus on the data, when you're looking at the liquid and not the water, then it's wet and flowing. The definition of liquid in Buddhism.

Okay? You're focusing on wetness and fluidity, and you are interpreting it as a liquid. And when you focus on the wetness, then you see it's endless.

There is data being presented to you, but each level you drop down and try to focus on that data, it becomes another projection on the data behind that. And it's endless. And when you struggle to find something that's really there, you never find anything.

And that's an exercise for perceiving emptiness. That's a really classical exercise. It's called looking for the thing you gave a name, and never finding it.

And you can do that. Does it mean you can do anything you want? Does anything I said about blankness today imply, did anything I say lead anybody in the room to think you can do whatever the hell you want now?

Because nothing matters. I don't like your answer. You should be saying quite the opposite, please.

Right? Quite the opposite. Okay?

Quite the opposite. Yeah, but because I said something different. I said the lady is blank.

But the projection is coming from what? Being forced on you by what? Your karma.

Your own karma. Being forced on you by your karma. So the last thing you'd want to do, the last thing you'd want to be doing, if things are empty, if it's true that no objects have their own nature, the last thing in the universe you'd want to be doing is what?

Bad karma. I mean, it'd be ridiculous. I mean, it's a good test when you get a teacher on emptiness.

See if the teacher brings up karma within the next ten minutes.

[Speaker 2]
Okay?

[Speaker 1]
Really. Seriously. Because if not, then it's not valid.

They're not really getting to the point. Why would the Buddha teach half his life devoted to teaching morality and then in the other breath talk about emptiness? What's the deal?

There must be some connection between the two. Why would a person spend 51 years teaching morality and emptiness at the same time? If emptiness means anything, then it's something intimately connected with morality.

If you are empty, if things are empty, then the last thing you want to do in the world is collect any bad karma because empty means blank and blank means if you've got bad karma in your mind forcing you to have a projection of something evil, I mean, that's, the last thing you'd want to do is do anything bad. If you really understood karma, it would be like that thing about the roaches, you know, where if you when you start to squeeze them, to kill them, that your own ribs start to break. I mean, if you really understood emptiness, the last thing you'd want to do would be to do anything bad.

So, in a sense, here's the punchline. Maybe I can go home tonight. In a sense, that's your best protection, isn't it?

That knowledge is your best protection. That simple understanding, that single understanding is your best protection. I almost said projections.

Projections too. But it's your protection. That's your best protection.

You can't find protection better than that. And only by that. And only by that.

You cannot change an event once it's happened. And you go through life being frustrated because you can't. And you know that.

You don't need me to tell you that. You can confirm that personally. You know, you're in a very bad situation, like you're sitting under the dental chair, or I was in a plane that said it was going to crash.

And I'm praying to the lamas, and praying to the Buddhists, and praying that it wouldn't hurt anymore. And it's too late. The result has already come out.

It's too late to change that. There's nobody in the world, Lord Buddha, who can't keep you from being cut out by a soldier standing next to you. Him.

It's too late. You will have a projection of this guy cutting you. It's too late to do anything.

He can't do anything. No one in the universe can change that.

[Speaker 2]
Is it possible for a Buddha to observe good karma at all?

[Speaker 1]
It's a big debate. And we had a... I teach these courses.

They go up to six weeks in New York. We collect questions like that. Then I go to the monastery, and I ask all the great lamas in the monastery.

That was one of them on the last course. And we went to all these great lamas, and we asked them this question. According to what anyone ever says, then the act of taking on someone else's suffering doesn't make much sense at all.

But according to... You know, we all know that there are stories of great lamas taking on people's suffering. Generally speaking, I mean, there are stories of great lamas coming up and sucking the suffering out of somebody.

You know, and they get sick, but the other person gets cured. Like, almost like, what do you call that? There's some kind of ritual thing.

You cast out the spirits and so on. Like an exorcism. I mean, there are stories like that.

Okay. Let me go back to something. You say knowledge is the way of perfection.

Let me answer a question first. One second. What he said, what the lamas said, was under extraordinary circumstances, due to an extraordinarily close karmic relation between a student and a teacher and other karmic things going on, without breaking the laws of karma and emptiness, it happens.

But normally, impossible. If it were possible to take the slightest sliver of another person's karma onto yourself, the Buddha, being all compassionate, would have taken ours long ago. The fact that we are still here is proof that he can't.

It's classic proof in Buddhism. We're still here suffering. Therefore the Buddha can't do it.

If he could have done it, why the hell would he wait? You know, sadistic or something? You know, letting us go through life like this?

He can't do it. He cannot take our suffering. Yeah, 99-99-99.

I mean, for as much of the time as it doesn't ever happen to him, he can't do it. I'm sorry, go ahead. I'm about to say it's the only one.

You're equating, why would I go for refuge to be non-prominent? Is it because they're the fount of knowledge? We're going to talk about it.

I was going to save it for tomorrow, but maybe we'll do it now, if you want. I understand. No, I like it.

Only protection. What time do you have? Okay, I'll give a short answer, then we'll break, because I know that it's really good to break when it's kind of interesting, rather than when it's on the way down.

To answer that, you have to get in what is the nature of the three wetnesses. What is the nature of the three gems? And I'll do it, okay?

I'm going to hold it until tomorrow. But when you take refuge, you're taking refuge in the three jewels. Guru Dharmasada.

You're taking refuge in those three things. So, the question is, there's two questions. What are you afraid of, that you're taking refuge?

And then, what can they do for you? So, first I ask you, when we talked about refuge during the discussion period, I heard, I remember when I was in a plane, that's when you really find out what religion you are, when the plane starts to go down, you start going, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, and your childhood thing comes back. and, it's true.

You start taking refuge. You start taking refuge, because nothing else can help you. It's at the point where nothing else can help you as soon as you start taking refuge, spiritual refuge, religious refuge.

So, some people say, oh God, my God, famous last words on all the cockpit recorders, you know. It's, that's a real state of mind of refuge. That is a real refuge mind.

That's what we're supposed to have all the time. The mind in that pilot's, that state of mind in the pilot's last moment is that. That's true refuge.

That's real refuge. He really believes that he's in trouble, and he really believes that no other force in the universe can help him at that moment. He truly has those two requirements for refuge.

So, the question is, what are you afraid of, and who do you think can help when you take religious refuge? So, first question to you. Before I can answer your question, I want to clarify.

It's one of the few ways in which we're allowed to answer a question in debate, you know. Clarify your question. What do you mean by refuge?

What are you afraid of in the first place? What are you taking refuge from? Where are you running away from?

Did your brother punch you? No, we're talking, I don't know if you were here last night. Technically speaking, running to your mommy because your brother punched you when you were five years old is an act of refuge.

Not Buddhist refuge, but it's an act of refuge. It fits the definition of an act of refuge. It's, uh, you should, uh, come here and tell me something.

Well, in Buddhist refuge, what are you trying to escape? Uh, you mean lies, or do you mean things that aren't ultimate truth? Things that aren't ultimate truth.

Okay. There's two truths in Buddhism. Ultimate truth and relative truth.

Relative reality, for example, is what's going on in this room right now. What you perceive in this room right now. If you're a normal person, which I can't confirm.

Not that you're not a Buddha, okay? Which I can't confirm. But it's, if you're a normal person, then the events in this room at this moment are what we call relative truth, which I don't like the translation.

It's deceptive reality. It's the real meaning of the word. It's a reality.

It really does exist. It affects you. It's all valid.

And it's deceptive. At every perception you have in this room at this time, you are making kind of a subtle error all the time. So in that sense, it's deceptive reality.

But it's valid. And there's no reason to run away from it. The Buddha's own mind is deceptive reality.

The Buddha's own nirmanakaya, his own body, his two rupakayas, his nirmanakaya, the one that he sends to planet Earth, and the paradise body that he has, are both deceptive reality. So, you don't want to run away from those. They're not ultimate reality.

His mind is also deceptive reality. His jnana-dharmakaya. The only thing about him which is not deceptive reality is his dharmakaya, the emptiness of his mind.

That's all. So, you've got to clarify more for me. What are you afraid of when you're taking Buddhist refuge?

What are you trying to get away from? Why are you in the Buddhism class? Well, I just know exactly what I'm trying to get away from in the sense I know what I'm wanting as far as a spiritual teacher.

And so that, developing all of that, that criteria, that's why I became a Buddhist. But what do you seek out of your Buddhism? What do you want?

Oh, I've read a lot of books that were talking about masters of old and masters of old who could do this and who could do that and who had reached a level of development. And I looked around and I saw a lot of people calling themselves masters and I said, no, no, no, no. And they told me masters existed a long time ago.

There must be at least one around who exists today. And if there is, I want to meet that master and become that master's student. For what purpose?

[Speaker 2]
Because they said that they had some kind of spiritual attainment to masters of old. And so I wanted that spiritual attainment.

[Speaker 1]
So it's more of a positive thing. You're more seeking out some great goal. That's not refuge.

Well, I don't know because they sent it over to Swedish and now I have to take refuge. No, it's true. It is true.

[Speaker 2]
It is, ultimately, it's true. It is ultimately true. It's okay.

[Speaker 1]
No, by the way, the reading you will distinguish if you read it, the one that we did last night, is between verbal refuge and real refuge. Verbal refuge is the one where you do the refuge prayer and that's the act of verbally taking refuge. But taking refuge is a mental state.

Oh, I know, but half the way around the world I can think of I feel like there is that kind of protection of my own mind at that moment in time. Protection from what? What is the thing you want?

Do you have an idea? What are you trying to get away from? You want to avoid meeting things that you don't like.

You want to avoid being ripped away from your loved ones and from the good things in your life. You want to avoid death. You want to avoid, ultimately you want to avoid that kind of existence where every nice thing in the world is always attached to a lousy ending.

That's really what you want to avoid. I mean, that's the minimum, really. This is, samsara means, suffering means that every single nice thing in our life is always attached to a lousy ending.

And that's really what refuge means. You want to get out of that. You want to reach a world where things don't act like that.

Where objects are not such that they are either outright suffering or when they are nice they are always attached to it, suffering at the end. You don't want that anymore. The point of Buddhism is very interesting.

It's not to reach some kind of centered state where nothing disturbs you anymore. And it's not to learn to put up with a shitty world. And it's not to get old but gracefully.

And it's not to be calm in the face of chaos in the world. It's to actually live in a world where those things don't happen anymore. And where there's not even a word for those things.

But that's not in this lifetime. It is in this lifetime. Because when I was thinking of this and doing this a long time ago, I was thinking I want peace of mind.

I knew that all the philosophers and everybody else talk about harmony. They talk about beauty. They talk about states of mind.

They complete these kind of conditions. And I wanted that. What's the use of peace?

I stayed in a temple. I won't say what tradition it was. And they said the master is coming from overseas.

He's going to arrive on a jet. This guy sat in the snow for three days and didn't budge his meditation. He is incredible.

I said, oh yeah, okay. I'm waiting. We get to the airport.

Here comes this old man, you know, off the plane. I'm like, I don't want to get like that. I don't care if he sat in the snow for three days.

And after that he died. He died shortly after that. We asked what the goal was.

We were talking about it before. No, it's a totally different thing. The goal of Buddhist practice, at a minimum, is to go to a world where things don't work that way.

Oh, right, another world, but not this one. Now you tell me, is this world empty or not? Do we have to change women at work for her to ever become nice?

Does she have to go home and another lady comes? You're saying it's just from the perceiver's side. I'm not so sure about that, though.

It goes against the whole thing of emptiness if you're using emptiness as blank, because it somehow has to be from that, her side, too. There has to be some existence. There has to be something coming from her side.

Right, it can't just be blank. You are a Madhyamaka Svatantrika. They are only school number two.

They couldn't get over that bump. They never made it to Prasangika. You know?

It's a classic. I mean, you're in good company. You know, Baba Viveka, great scholars like that, you know, they said, I can agree that things have no self, but there must be Rangunagrupa.

There must be something coming from their side. They demanded, they insisted that emptiness did not include not coming from its own side. And Chandrakirti, Nagarjuna, and Tsongkhapa said, well, that's...

But it's such a classic error that it is the final error that a person can make. It's what distinguishes you from lower Madhyamaka to higher Madhyamaka. That's the main point.

Wait, we'll take a break. Okay, just a brief one, because I don't want to make Paul's name on that.

[Speaker 2]
Okay, go ahead. Go ahead.

[Speaker 1]
I'll answer very briefly and then cook it. My Lama would have cut it off a minute ago and said, oh, just cook it. He'd say, that's his answer when he doesn't want to answer.

Just cook it. I mean, just think about it more. But this is it.

Her mind, to herself, as she hears herself thinking, is also blank. It's also a projection. Your mind, your own awareness of your own thoughts is also a projection onto a blank screen, as is every object in the universe.

Cook that. Yeah, yeah. To her, I didn't say anything about what's going on in her mind.

How she sees herself, God knows. That's another thing going on. We're talking from your point of view.

She perceives, how she perceives herself is also, she is also empty to herself. There is also data being presented to her. It's also a blank screen being presented to her.

And she also is interpreting that blank screen in her own way. Break. What is it about Buddha, Dharma, Sangha that's of any use to us?

When you go for refuge, when you try to do refuge, what use could it be to you? What help could it ever give you from what we're running away from? What we're running away from is suffering.

And I would say, specifically, the kind of life where every nice thing that ever happens is always attached to a lousy ending. I mean, to me, that's the essence of suffering. It's the second kind of suffering.

Obviously, pain is suffering. I don't have to talk about that. And obviously, we're going to get old and die.

But just the fact that every nice thing in this world is always attached to some kind of horrible ending, that to me is dissatisfactory. That's something to take refuge away from. That's something to try to avoid.

So how can Buddha, Dharma, Sangha ever give you any help for that problem? If they can't, then there's no use to take refuge. I don't see any big use to it.

If they can't help with that problem, then there's no big thing about going for refuge. Everybody in the room takes refuge in their own way, but does it work? Did it ever help you?

Did you ever get any concrete result from it? Did it ever prevent a single problem that you had? That's what we have to look into.

Otherwise, it's voodoo. Otherwise, it might as well be, I don't take it lightly, but the idea that many people have of God. It's praying to this thing that may or may not ever help you according to his wishes.

Might as well do that if that's all refuge is. Is the Buddha, Dharma, Sangha any different from that? And that's the big question.

So what is the quality of the Buddha and the Dharma and the Sangha? I think you have to start with, when they discuss the three jewels in the Perfection of Wisdom, and I gave it to you last night, they distinguish between real three jewels and apparent three jewels. There's an apparent Sangha, there's something that appears to be Sangha, and there's something that appears to be Dharma.

Buddha is Buddha. There are not real Sangha and Dharma. So what is the real Dharma and what is the apparent Dharma?

And what is the real Sangha and what's the apparent Sangha? The apparent Sangha is people who wear robes, people who have taken vows, ordination. That's what we call the apparent Sangha.

I mean, when you talk about Sangha normally, you think of the community of ordained people. That's the meaning of Sangha. But that's not the meaning of the refuge Sangha.

That's not the meaning of the Sangha which is one of the three jewels. It doesn't mean that. It's not what you're taking refuge in.

The real Sangha, the ultimate Sangha, is Arya. Arya means the person who has seen emptiness directly. The moment you perceive emptiness directly for the first time, which is a big point in your lives, okay, there comes a day on which you sit down after much training, you go into a deep meditation, you perceive emptiness directly.

From that moment on, you're no longer a normal person. You are a totally different type of being. You are called gyunshupa, which is stream-enterer, and there's a reason.

Because from that point on, you're on your way out. You're on the conveyor belt, and it's going, and sooner or later it's going to drop you off at Nirvana and Buddhahood. And you're not on that.

In other words, there's a fixed limit to the point at which you're going to achieve Nirvana and Buddhahood. After you perceive emptiness directly for the first moment, your lifetimes are fixed. Your future is set.

It's all over. So, within a certain amount of time, you're going to be a Buddha. It's all over.

Just perceive emptiness directly, that's it. That's why it's called stream-enterer. That's the real sangha.

The community of people who have seen emptiness directly are the sangha. That is the sangha to whom you're going for refuge. That's the meaning of the sangha jewel.

The people who are running around in red robes represent those people and they are metaphors for those people, but there's no connection. They could be wearing robes or not wearing robes. You don't have to be ordained to see emptiness directly.

There's no connection. It's helpful, but it's not necessary at all to be ordained to see emptiness directly. Not necessary at all.

So you become what makes you the sangha that you go for refuge to and not the sangha that the Vinaya describes. These are different things. The sangha to whom you're going for refuge is anyone who's seen emptiness directly.

Good question. On the first occurrence of your experience of emptiness directly, it takes maybe 20 minutes. It's all over in about 20 minutes, something like that.

Then you come out of it and then you're seeing relative existence again. And until you reach Buddhahood, you can't perceive both at the same time. They are two completely different objects.

You can't perceive emptiness unless if you're a non-Buddha. Non-Buddha shirshak. In a debate we say, we start out a debate, we say, OK, listen, I'm not talking about Buddhas, OK?

Sangha maya shirshak, OK? It means, forget the Buddhas. They complicate stuff.

Forget Buddhas. Normal people, non-Buddhas. It's impossible to perceive emptiness directly while you're having other experiences.

Impossible. For one thing, emptiness is a negative object. And this world, for the whole, is a positive object.

That's just one simple distinction. You can't perceive the two things at one time. Impossible.

These are relative objects and emptiness is an ultimate object. Unless you're a Buddha, you cannot perceive the two at the same time. Impossible.

And it doesn't go on for very long. Then you come out of it and you have all these other experiences. The path of seeing, which is the whole event of seeing emptiness directly, has two parts.

The first part is the direct perception of emptiness. The second part is for the rest of the day, say, if you saw emptiness in mid-morning, up until the end of the day you have a lot of other ancillary accompanying realizations. And that's when you perceive the Four Noble Truths.

That's the first time that you ever see the Four Noble Truths directly. Noble is a bad translation of what? Arya.

Why is it called Arya? Why are they Arya Truths? Because you don't see them until you're an Arya.

Okay? You see emptiness directly. An Arya is anybody who's seen emptiness directly.

Hitler misused it, okay? Forget that. Forget the people who attacked Northern India in 503.

Arya means bhagva. In Buddhism it means anyone who's seen emptiness directly. Period.

That's the definition. Abhidharmakosha, second chapter. The moment you see emptiness directly, you are an Arya.

That's what an Arya is. And when you come out of it and then perceive the Four Noble Truths, Arya Truths, directly, that's why they're Arya Truths. And that happens for the rest of that day.

Then you have a long stretch to go until Nirvana. Because the whole rest, what's the definition of Nirvana? Say, it's good luck, okay?

Nindut means bad thoughts. Okay? The obstructions caused by your bad thoughts.

Malupa means in their entirety. Every single one. Pangbe means you eliminated them.

Sosotangok is cessation, with a little word soso on it. Okay? It doesn't mean soso, okay?

It's the soso and sosotapa, which is prati, okay? Pratimoksha. But what it means is one by one.

What does it mean one by one? It means based on your perception of the Four Arya Truths one by one, you are able to eliminate your bad thoughts. Okay?

You can't see the Four Arya Truths directly until you see emptiness directly. Based on your understanding of the Four Arya Truths, you're able to eliminate your bad thoughts. The process of getting rid of your bad thoughts because you finally saw emptiness directly takes a hell of a long time.

Okay? And that's called goma. It's the fourth path and it's a long story.

And one by one you get rid of your bad thoughts based on your understanding of emptiness. Okay? What's that got to do with refuge?

Okay.

[Speaker 2]
Arya beings aren't ordinary beings. They perceive emptiness directly. They're still suffering.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah. Arya, they don't collect any new causes. There's a big debate whether they collect any new causes for suffering.

They are still suffering. Absolutely. But Arya means a person who has seen emptiness directly.

When you go for refuge, you're going to the to the Sangha. And the Sangha is any person who's seen emptiness directly. That's all.

Patpa and Arya mean the same. Patpa means elevated. And it means anyone who's I mean, there's only two kinds of beings in the world.

I always say it's like virginity. Okay? I mean, there's a time in your life when you have your first sexual experience.

After that, you're no longer a virgin. I mean, you're either a virgin or you're not a virgin. There's no other possibility.

Every person, normal human in the universe is one or the other. And there's a point in your life when that happens and you either lose it or you don't lose it. And after that, you're a different kind of being.

That's the way it is with an Arya. The whole universe divides into Aryas and non-Aryas. You either saw emptiness directly or you didn't.

And once you do, you're a totally different kind of person. You're totally superior. And that's the meaning of Arya.

Even in Tibetan and even in Sanskrit. But not superior in the sense of racially superior. Superior in the sense that you're on your way out.

You're a stream-enterer. What you saw is going to enable you to eliminate your mental afflictions. And nothing else can.

No tricks in the world. No method in the universe aside from perceiving emptiness directly can permanently remove your bad thoughts. It's very interesting.

All the things in Shantideva's Guide to the Blissful Way of Life, up to the 9th chapter, they're all useless until you see emptiness directly. They're all just band-aids. They work for a while.

They can work under certain circumstances. They cannot remove your bad thoughts permanently. Nagarjuna does the same thing in his writings.

He presents all the things you need to stay out of trouble. Out of big trouble until the point that you see emptiness directly. But the only thing that can remove your bad thoughts permanently is to see emptiness directly.

That's why nirvana is defined as a cessation of your bad thoughts permanently and in their entirety due to your understanding of emptiness, due to your direct perception of emptiness. That's the definition of nirvana. So, what's it got to do with refuge?