Серия ежедневной практики, курс 02 — Истинный смысл прибежища (1995, Ваджрапани, Калифорния), занятие 4

[Speaker 2]
This is the continuation of session three.

[Speaker 1]
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?

One of the three jewels is people who've seen emptiness directly, that's all. Sangha, don't forget it now, whenever you take refuge, that's really what you're taking refuge to. It's not to the people walking around in robes.

It's to any being, layman or ordained, who has seen emptiness directly.

[Speaker 2]
But then how is it, I mean, like, today, on this tent, how many hours I'm walking around? I mean, I have no clue.

[Speaker 1]
You can't say, you know, I mean, one thing the texts all agree on is that you shouldn't try to judge other people. Nga dang nga'e ma yinpa, shen gyi tsu suma mi jante, nyam par gyur tare. It's the first thing a kid has to learn in the debate ground.

You know, if you're not a Buddha, don't try to judge other people. You will mess up. Quotation from the Buddha.

Who knows? By the way, I found this story in the computer, okay, where he said that, and actually he had criticized another monk for his behavior, a thousand lifetimes ago, and then he had taken a thousand lifetimes as some horrible hell being, the Buddha himself, in a form of life. So, first of all, I say I can't say for sure.

For all I know, you're all Buddhas. I really can't say for sure.

[Speaker 2]
Do all of them ask themselves?

[Speaker 1]
Cannot. Cannot. Yeah.

But I...

[Speaker 2]
Do they all know who they are?

[Speaker 1]
Excuse me?

[Speaker 2]
Do they know who they are?

[Speaker 1]
Absolutely. Do they know each other? No, one of the...

No, one of the things about the experience is that you know it's really happened. I mean, you'd have absolutely no doubt about it. There's a side perception, there's a side pramana, a side sema, a side correct perception that you know you did it.

So, if you have any doubts, if you think you almost saw Sunyata, or you kind of think you saw Sunyata, or you had some kind of experience and you wonder if you saw Sunyata, then you didn't. Okay? You know.

You know. You have no doubts. You will see your future lives.

You will see Buddhas. If you didn't see those, you didn't see Sunyata.

[Speaker 2]
Okay?

[Speaker 1]
Then what do you mean you can't say something? It's just a... It's an...

It's an unwritten code. You know, that they don't say that directly. But it's extremely rare.

It's extremely rare. And there are certain signs of a person who did that.

[Speaker 2]
They say they've seen Buddhas or something?

[Speaker 1]
They directly... I'll get into it. It's coming.

It will come today. They see the Dharmakaya of the Buddha directly. In Manhattan?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a beautiful course. It's the course...

It was designed pretty much by Tsongkhapa. And it's in the Five Great Classics of Buddhism. And I spoke a little bit about it last night.

But it's Perfection of Wisdom. Twelve years. Four years in Madhyamaka.

Two years in Abhidharma. Two years in Vinaya. Every winter for three months, you have to debate Madhu.

The short form in five years is like 25... It's like 25 six-week courses on... Twice a night.

Two nights a week. Yeah. If someone just only become a body, do they have any perception of emptiness?

It's a good question, okay? To perceive emptiness directly... By the way, you've perceived emptiness intellectually today.

Okay? It's not the same thing. When we talked about the lady at work, you perceived her emptiness.

I think everyone in the room got some kind of intellectual understanding of how she didn't have inherently either a nature of being good or bad. But to perceive it directly is much more difficult. And to perceive emptiness directly, you must be...

Your mind must be in the form realm. There's three realms. Desire realm, form realm, formless realm.

Your mind cannot be in the desire realm and still see emptiness directly. It's very interesting. You must be in deep meditation to see emptiness directly.

There's a support, which is what you call calm abiding, on which that perception of emptiness has to rest Without that support, it can't occur. It'll never occur. To reach that state of meditation is not perceiving emptiness directly.

But it's required atmosphere, what do you call it, ambience, for the perception to happen. You must be able to get to that realm mentally. Your mind has to be able to...

While your body is sitting here in the desire realm, your mind has to reach a level called samten dompo myo chok me which is... It's a certain level of the form realm where you have really perfect concentration. And your mind's not even in this realm anymore.

And based on that quietude, calm abiding, you have a chance to see emptiness directly if you have the knowledge of how to start. And an interesting thing, and I didn't want to get into all this, is that same day, prior to seeing emptiness directly, you reach the highest stages of the second path which is called jor lam, path of preparation. The highest state of that path is called chod chok, which means highest state.

And at that state you see for the first time directly relative truth. What it is to be relative truth. And that's very interesting.

You perceive directly how you are actually projecting everything. And that's called... Sometimes it's called heat.

You know, you're getting hot. Sometimes it's called chod chok, the ultimate state in pre-arya life. And you directly perceive the fact that you are projecting everything.

And until that you don't perceive even that. Now I can explain to you that you're projecting to the lady at work. But it's a different thing to directly perceive yourself projecting it and realizing that that lady is not even there.

That's it. That in itself is a deep realization and it's not the realization of emptiness. It's just the realization of how you've really been doing everything all along.

Emptiness is the opposite of that. That's a long story. So anyway, when you take refuge, it's in the community of people who have perceived emptiness directly.

The Buddha is in arya. You don't lose arya when you reach arhat. There's this thing of arya, arhat, Buddha.

There's plain people, which is called sosukhevo, pratyajana. There's normal people. There's people who've seen emptiness directly.

And inside of people who've seen emptiness directly, there's aryas, arhats, and Buddhas. And you're either one or the other. You've either seen emptiness directly or you haven't seen emptiness directly.

The people who have seen it directly are our refuge. They are the refuge. They are your protection.

That's the first of the three jewels. That's very interesting. So I don't know what fuzzy ideas we had about what sangha was.

That's what sangha is, defined by Maitreya, okay? Maitreya's a Buddha. He should know.

Okay? What's the dharma jewel? Okay.

It's the cessations and the perception of emptiness. Okay? The nominal dharma, the apparent dharma, is all the books.

Okay? lung tok gi chö Either the books or the teachings going on verbally. That's dharma.

I mean, that's not what you go to refuge to. It's not the real dharma. It's called apparent dharma.

kun dzok. kun dzok gi chö kun chok That's the same word that's used for deceptive reality. kun dzok means fake.

And there's a big debate in the monastery about how can you have fake reality. What does fake truth mean? What does fake real mean?

What are you talking about? That's a long story, okay? But anyway, apparent dharma, or the dharma that, you know, represents dharma, is the books and the teachings.

It's not the dharma you go to refuge to. That dharma, ultimate dharma, the refuge of dharma, is the perception of emptiness, directly, period. That's the dharma.

And that, you can read it in the reading from the first note. That is the dharma jewel. That's the, it's not the dharma, but it's the dharma jewel.

The real dharma jewel that you're going to refuge to is the perception of emptiness.

[Speaker 2]
When you die, if you retain this perception, is that something that you're always carrying on?

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, you never, it's a good question. It comes up a lot, you know. So you're reborn.

Are you always, are you reborn or not? There's four kinds of people who perceive emptiness directly. There's gyun-shuk, which means stream-enterer, chir-ong, which means has to come back one time, chir-myong, which means doesn't have to come back, and there's ja-chomba, which means arhat.

To answer your question, there's four possibilities. If in one life you can get up to arhat, you won't be reborn into samsara that way again. If you don't make it that far, you might have to come back to the desire realm once.

If you make it pretty far, you'll have to be reborn, but never again in the desire realm. By the way, anybody who perceives emptiness directly will never have a lousy life again, period. You know, you'll always be comfortable.

You'll always be surrounded by lamas. You'll be born in a situation where there's Vajrapanis in every town, you know, and that's the way your life will be, and you perceive that, you know. It's like knowing all the lottery numbers.

So, you know, who cares anymore? You'll always live that way. So, anyway, that's the dharma.

That's what you take refuge to. It's actually the direct perception of emptiness. It's the only thing that can help you.

Okay, Buddha. What's Buddha got to do with all this? If you read in the Tenrim, which is the mother of the Lamrim Chenmo, 300 years before, when he gets to this section, he says, obviously, there's no fake Buddha.

I mean, you're either the Buddha or you're not the Buddha. It's not, you can't say there's a parallel with the Buddha jewel, with the Buddha ratna. But when we talk about the Buddha ratna to which you go for refuge, the Buddha jewel to which you go for refuge, we're speaking mainly of the Dharmakaya.

That's the emptiness of the Buddha. It's the emptiness of his other three bodies. Okay, it's very interesting.

So, you're actually going for refuge to the emptiness which is perceived by those people. So, what's this all three jewels stuff? It's either a perception of emptiness or that emptiness itself, in every case.

It's all focused on perceiving emptiness directly. That's what you're going for refuge to. Nobody else can help you.

Nothing else can help you. That's the ultimate refuge. The Buddha can communicate it to you and that's his main function.

The reason for a Buddha to be around is not even so much his physical or his mental activity, it's his verbal activity. The only way a Buddha can help you is to talk to you. That's the only communication.

That's the only use a Buddha is to you. You know, people say, well, what good is it to me? The only use of having a Buddha around the universe is that he can say something to us.

And that's classic. First Dalai Lama, opening pages, Abhidharmakosha Commentary, Thailam Samse, he says, the Buddha... he quotes this famous sutra.

It says, Buddha doesn't help you by putting his hand on your head. Buddha doesn't help you by pouring holy water on your face. All the Buddha can do is talk to you.

That's the only way he can help you. He can just tell you about Dharma. And then you, based on that, you can practice and perceive those things yourself.

That's all he can do. He's powerless otherwise. He has no power otherwise.

There's nothing he can do.

[Speaker 2]
How is it that somehow I got the idea that I pray to a child to help me practice? Because I heard something about wiping your karma and that child helped me.

[Speaker 1]
We talked about it during the break with Gelongla. That's a good question. Okay.

It's called sundep. Sundep. Sundep means supplication, requesting a blessing.

And of all of Tsongkhapa's activities, frankly, I think he spent the most time on that. You know, if you read his biography, and there's a huge biography called Namta Chamo. The whole thing is, it almost gets boring, you know, because he spends his whole life supplicating to the lamas, you know.

And you say, what's the big deal, you know? If they can't do anything for you, what's the use of supplicating to them? Ultimately, it's the karma of the supplication.

Okay. All right. What's the, for example, what's the use of offering flowers on an altar?

I mean, does the Buddha come down and smell them? Does he come down and sip the water, you know? I remember when I saw my dad eating the Santa Claus cookies that we had put out, you know.

It was like a big disappointment, you know. I mean, he doesn't need it, you know. The Buddha, he doesn't need it.

He can't even do it, you know. I mean, the point is, it's for you. It's the karma of supplicating in faith.

The karma of the faith makes things happen. It changes your karma. It's very interesting, you know.

And that's also one of the great anchors of the secret teachings, is that. And that's another subject. A lot of the reason they work is that it's sort of an accelerated karmic payback due to the intense feelings of devotion and faith.

And it's real and it works. It's for real. It will work.

And Tsongkhapa spent, I mean, otherwise he wouldn't have spent all that time doing it. There's a famous supplication he did. This is kind of an advertisement, okay.

He went to Radreng Monastery, which is where Atisha and his main disciple, Dombdunche, used to hang out a lot. And there was a statue of Atisha there. And Tsongkhapa went there and he made a prayer.

He made a supplication, like you said, sundep. And he did a sundep to the lamas of the lineage. And he went into a vision.

And it lasted on and off for a month. And at the end of the vision, Atisha came to him and put his hand on his head and said, Okay, now I want you to do something great for people, okay. Do something great.

And then he went and wrote the Lamrim Chemo in one shot. Okay. He sat down and wrote the Lamrim Chemo.

It doesn't take more than a year of his biography. And the supplication he made is called That's the essence of it. It's a supplication to the lamas of the lineage.

And I'm going to teach that at Medicine Buddha next weekend. So, that supplication. It's a very powerful supplication.

In the middle of the supplication, Tsongkhapa puts a whole Lamrim. It's the shortest Lamrim around. And he packs it into the middle of the supplication.

It's very beautiful. But that was the supplication he did. And he spent his whole life making supplications like that.

So anyway, those are the three jewels. That's the essence of the three jewels. It all revolves around the perception of emptiness directly.

And that's your protection. Why? I mean, even an intellectual understanding of emptiness.

What can it do for you? Can it stop a disaster in your life? I mean, that's the whole point of taking refuge.

Some kind of protection.

[Speaker 2]
Yes, it would. It would change the future. It would change your reaction to it.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, nice. Nice, nice, nice. That's about...

I mean, mainly that's the material you have to work with, which is the future. The past... The present is already a result.

You can't turn a result. I remember Goenka came to Dharamsala and taught 20 years ago. And he told the story of a...

The guy was crying because his father was sick or something. And he said... The Buddhist master said, come with me.

And he put him in a rowboat and they rode out in the middle of the lake and he took a pot and he filled it up with something and he threw it overboard. And then he gave the guy a long stick. He said, break the pot, you know.

And he can't reach down. It's too late, you know. It's too late to change it.

By the time the result occurs, you can't change it. You know, by the time you are having a bad time, by the time your plane's going down or your car's in a wreck or you're having a divorce or whatever it is, okay? It's too late.

The result is coming out. Buddhism doesn't... Buddhism is all...

Why is Buddhism so obsessed with causes and results, with dependent origination? It's too late then. There's nothing to do then.

You can... How... Once the lady is screaming at you at work, it's too late to do anything.

Any kind of wishful thinking in the world is not going to make her go away. And you know that because you've tried. It's not making it happen again.

Isn't it possible, though, if you make a prayer, you're creating the coffee, you could experience the result right then? Very... It does happen because of the intensity of the faith, because of the good deed of the faith.

And that, again, that's one of the principles of the higher teachings, of the secret teachings. That's one of the reasons why they work. But it doesn't break the laws of karma.

If it broke the laws of karma, it would be invalid. It wouldn't... It couldn't happen if it broke the laws of karma.

Okay, I think we'll stop. Yeah.

[Speaker 2]
What's the definition of the Buddhist Jewel?

[Speaker 1]
Which means, according to Dronlungpa, okay, in the Tenrim Chenmo, the emptiness of the Buddha. The emptiness of the Buddha is his Dharmakaya. Okay, Svabhavakaya.

It's his... It's his essence body. Buddha has four bodies, two physical, two non-physical.

He has his... What I like to call his movie body. It's the body he shows on earth, okay, for the benefit of people.

Like the Dalai Lama, maybe. And then there's the... the form body that exists in his paradise.

Those are his two physical forms. Body is a bad word, I think. I like...

I think Thubten Jima, the Dalai Lama's translator, stopped using body. The word is body, but it means it's part of him. I mean, he has two physical parts, one mental part, and one other part.

The two physical parts are the body he shows on this planet, or on countless other planets. The body he enjoys the use of in his paradise. And then he has a mental part, which is his mind, his omniscience.

And then he has one more part. What is that part? It's called Svabhavakaya.

That's his essence body. That's the emptiness of his other three bodies. The two physical bodies and the one mental body.

The emptiness of them is his fourth body. And that's a difficult question. It's the emptiness of his mind.

By the way, will your mind turn into a Buddha's mind? Every mind in this room, if it's not already a Buddha, will become a Buddha's mind. Will.

That's why you're here. OK. Wait.

One sec. Will become a Buddha's mind. Is your mind...

No, it's your ultimate evolution of every living being.

[Speaker 2]
Yeah.

[Speaker 1]
Every mind in the universe will become a Buddha's mind.

[Speaker 2]
That's a guarantee.

[Speaker 1]
Absolutely. It just might take a little longer.

[Speaker 2]
Sooner or later.

[Speaker 1]
I didn't. I said Buddha's Buddha. OK.

I'm not really getting into apparent Buddhism. You can say the images. OK.

You can say the pictures of Shakyamuni. OK. But, but the ultimate Buddha is, is the empty...

So, what I wanted to say was, is your present mind empty? In the sense of, in the sense of not having its own nature. Yeah.

OK. Because it's an object. Every object in the universe has that.

Emptiness itself is empty. OK. Every object in the universe has its own emptiness.

In that sense, part of you, you already have a part of the Buddha with you. OK. The Buddha that you are going to become will have a mind.

That Buddha's mind, her mind, will have an emptiness. That emptiness is no different from the emptiness of your mind now. So, in a sense, isn't it true that you already have a component of you, the Buddha?

OK. That's what Buddha nature means. That's the only Buddha nature you have.

And that's no big deal. OK. It's not that you're a Buddha inside and you just got to peel the skin off and find it.

It's a big mistake to think that. That's a whole other subject you have to study. It's Buddha nature.

That's the meaning, ultimately, of Buddha nature. What they call the Buddha seed inside of everyone or something like that. That's no big shakes.

It doesn't help you much. It just doesn't... It happens to be the same now as it's going to be then, which is just the emptiness of your mind.

And that's another story. So, three jewels that you go for refuge to. One is Sangha, which is what?

[Speaker 2]
Yeah.

[Speaker 1]
Anyone who's seen emptiness directly. Could be a lot of people around us. We don't know.

By the way, one little detail about your question. What happens when you die and you're born? Do you remember that you were an Arya?

No. Okay. No.

No. You don't remember. But we call Bacchak Sepa.

It means quickly it comes up. Like before you're 15 or 20, you already remember. But not as an infant.

Not like that. Okay. That's part of the idea of all those...

All during the period from the first direct perception of emptiness until the day you reach Nirvana or Buddhahood, you are either having direct perceptions of emptiness or you are basing your actions on remembering what you saw. And mainly remembering what you saw. But you can repeat it.

But that whole period could be very long. You would...

[Speaker 2]
You could... I wouldn't see emptiness.

[Speaker 1]
I don't... They go through a... They start to study Dharma.

They will always have a Dharma teacher. A good Dharma teacher at a very early age. And quickly the seed will...

will just ripen like that. If you look at the present Pabongka Rinpoche, it's like he was a real goofball, frankly, during his early years. And then there was some, you know, thing happened and now he's...

he's great. So, it's like they have a thing called Bacchak Sepa. The seed in their mind just suddenly comes out.

That's the idea of a Trukhul, of Lama Uso. And, you know... Because after the first direct perception of emptiness, whenever that I mean, to then meditate...

Does he see... No. It's still difficult to do.

It doesn't happen all the time. He... It would be nice.

But it's difficult. But he never forget. Obviously, he never forget it.

What he sees is very simple. I mean, there's a lot of... to say about it.

But it's... There's a metaphor of the diamond. The metaphor of the diamond is very important at that point.

But that's a moment story. I think that's a good time to stop.

[Speaker 2]
I think that's a good time to stop. This is the end of Session 3. This is the end of Session 3.

Session 4. Session 5. Session 6.

Session 7. Session 9. Session 15.

Session 16.

[Speaker 1]
Session 17. And then we go back to the first reading. I don't know if you have it, but it was the one that started out from the presentation on the two refuges.

So there are basically five kinds of taking refuge outlined there. The meaning of refuge, we said before, you have to have two things. One is some kind of fear.

And then one is some kind of belief that someone can help you. So actually the definition of refuge in the Perfection of Wisdom is se yu shen la. Oh man, sleepy.

Me too. Se yu shen la.

[Speaker 2]
Ram top gi. Pung nyen du. Re wa.

Cha we. Sem ba.

[Speaker 1]
Sem ba you remember, right? It's just any movement of the mind. Yu shen la means to some object outside of yourself.

Yu means a place and shen means some other place. La means to that other place. Yu shen la.

Ram top gi means of its own power, on its own power, by its own accord. It's used with, it's a long story, but mental functions are two types. Some types of mental functions depend on other mental functions to operate and some don't.

This is the kind that runs on its own accord. Pung nyen du. Pung nyen du.

Pung means shoulder. Nyen means a friend or relative. Pung nyen means someone you can lean on.

Meaning someone close that you can lean on. Pung nyen du. Re wa cha wa is a very rare verb.

Re wa cha wa means to put all your hopes into something. To put all your dreams, all your hopes into that object. Re wa cha wa.

And then sen ba is a thought. Any time your mind shifts a little bit and you have some kind of a tiny thought, that's a sen ba. So it's a tiny little thought that puts all its hopes on its own accord into some other object as someone you can lean on.

Meaning someone who can protect you. And then there are three kinds. Buddha jewel, Dharma jewel, Sangha jewel.

The Buddha jewel is a little bit different from Buddha in general. And Dharma jewel is a little bit different from Dharma in general. We spoke about that yesterday.

Especially Dharma. When you think of Dharma, you think of the teachings, verbal or written. And in this case, we're talking about the perfection of wisdom.

Perfection of wisdom can be a lot of different kinds. Do you know what the definition of perfection of wisdom is? Good.

Pretty much. The perfection of wisdom is the perception of emptiness under the influence of bodhichitta. Okay?

You got to have those two. Which is the perception of emptiness. It doesn't say direct.

Okay? So you can have perfection of wisdom and you don't have to be an Arya. Thay chen sem gye gyi sem pa means under the influence of bodhichitta.

Under the influence means you can't have bodhichitta directly in your thoughts in certain periods of your Dharma career. For example, when you're seeing emptiness directly. Why?

You can't. And it's focused on what? What is what is bodhichitta focused on?

Yeah. Sem chen tam chen la ming ne That's the beginning of that definition. It's focused on other sentient beings.

So you can't focus on other sentient beings while you're perceiving emptiness. Other sentient beings are are relative objects. They also require that process of projection.

When you're perceiving emptiness directly you can't you can't focus on those objects. So does that mean that bodhisattvas in the highest moment of their life while they're perceiving emptiness directly don't have perfection of wisdom? No.

That's why they say thay chen sem gye gyi sem pa which means you're under the influence of bodhichitta. It's in your mind. Your mind is soaked in it but it's not it's not manifested in your conscious thoughts at that moment.

You have it but it's not in your conscious thoughts at that moment. So that's the definition of the perfection of wisdom. And when you go for refuge you're actually going for refuge to the Buddha in the form of a person who has completed the perfection of wisdom.

Perfection has two meanings. By the way are you practicing the perfection of giving for example? Do you try?

Can you? Before your bodhisattva?

[Speaker 2]
Yeah.

[Speaker 1]
No, you can. I mean, we do. After you take dompa sem kye after you take your bodhisattva vows then you're you're supposed to try to do the six perfections.

So at that point are they perfections? No. They're called perfections param tu chenpa param ittha which means gone to the other side but at that point you haven't gone to the other side.

When you get to the other side meaning Buddhahood they're real perfections. Until then they're really technically param tu chenpa which means things that make you perfect. So we're practicing the six things that make us perfect and not the six perfections.

A Buddha is the opposite of that. The quality of a Buddha is that he has param tu chenpa which means he's perfected the six perfections. He has the highest form of the six perfections.

He has the definition of the Buddha jewel is any being who has the two who's accomplished the two goals. What do you guess they are? When you go for refuge this is who you're supposed to go for refuge to.

Anyone who's accomplished two goals. What's that?

[Speaker 2]
No.

[Speaker 1]
It's Rangjun Punthok and Shendun Punthok. Rangjun Punthok means he's accomplished everything he needs for himself. And then Shendun Punthok means he's accomplished everything he needs for everything everyone else needs.

And that's the definition of the Buddha jewel. The Buddha jewel the short definition there's a long definition but has accomplished two goals. He's accomplished everything he needs and he's accomplished everything everybody else needs.

And you can think of that in terms of his four bodies. He's got four bodies. What are they?

Do you remember? Yes? Any one of them.

Huh? Yeah, that's called the nirmanakaya. Okay, the body he sends down to this planet.

The body that he has in his own paradise. Okay. His omniscience, his mind.

The emptiness of the other three. Okay. That's his called his essence body.

Svabhavakaya. So he has those those four bodies. Which of the bodies do you think I'll give you a clue.

Two of them relate to perfecting others needs and two of them relate to having perfected his own needs. So what do you guess? How about the body he sends down to earth and other planets?

Yeah, that that shows that he's achieved the culmination of other people's benefit. That that body is incredible. That the nature of that body is called sundrup.

Which means it's totally spontaneous. The Buddha never has a conscious thought that he would like to appear on earth 500 B.C. and help people. The minute there's enough people who have enough good karma to see him his nirmanakaya appears there.

And that's a a result it's a direct result of his doing three countless eons of virtue. A countless an eon in Buddhism is almost can't be measured in years. It's there's no measurement of a kalpa or an eon in Buddhism in years.

There's a discussion of all the kalpas in the Abhidharma in the third chapter when they discuss atoms and other things. But it's basically the period of time in which a whole planet goes through a whole evolution of people being of a certain age, people going through ethical, moral training, life spans going up to some huge length and then shrinking down again. And that whole process I don't know some Bhutan Rinpoche tried to estimate and edit millions of years.

The Buddha practiced virtue for 10 to the 60th power times that three times. And because of that virtue he's able he doesn't have to think to appear on planet Earth. Because of the good deed he did it's automatic.

It's called sundrup. They say it's like the moon doesn't have to decide it's going to appear in every body of water on the Earth on a clear night. It just does.

It reflects in a teardrop. It reflects in a puddle. It reflects in the Pacific Ocean.

But it doesn't have to the moon doesn't think oh I think I'll go down to the Pacific tonight and reflect there. It's just natural. And it's just natural when the Buddha appears on this planet.

People have to have the virtue to see him. Only people who have special kinds of virtue can meet that body in its full form. It can come in a lot of other forms.

It could be the person sitting next to you. You have no way to know that it's not. Buddhas are very patient.

They could wait up there for a long time and if it would help you for 30 seconds they can come on a bus and sit next to you and say something to you. Very very possible. That's very typical of what they do.

Time doesn't have any much meaning for them. They perceive all objects in all times in one moment. So it doesn't mean much to them.

They can wait a thousand years to say something to you on a bus. So that's nirmanakaya. What about the sambhogakaya which is the is the form body up in his own paradise?

Generally it is. I think it is because it's that's defined as having it's the body that has five characteristics. Five definite characteristics and one of them is that it's always surrounded by bodhisattva aryas of a high level.

Which means that there are people who can go to those paradises and learn from those Buddhas and so in that case that body is is helping them. Another characteristic of that body is that it doesn't go away until the end of samsara. Until until the last sentient being becomes a Buddha that body will stay there.

So that implies that it's there for somebody else's benefit I guess. How about the omniscience? That's mainly his own that's his own for his own benefit.

I mean it helps him to know the minds of his students perfectly. I mean he knows he knows what you're going to do exactly 23 years from now on the three hours after midnight and that helps to know what to teach you now. So that's that's also for others' benefit.

Mainly it's his own realizations. He's gained the highest realizations he can. How about the emptiness of his mind?

I'm sorry, go ahead. Sorry, this question is I'm sorry it's kind of is the Buddhist still with you? I'm sorry I keep saying that.

He or she. Actually at that point you're sexless. I mean you don't have a sex at that point.

Some of your bodies look like a man and some of your bodies look like a woman but he doesn't have the you know the 21 powers in the human body.

[Speaker 2]
So when you're saying he or he so you're talking about that he or she and you are basically American I'm talking about the Buddha in general.

[Speaker 1]
The four bodies taken together. And I as I said yesterday the word body is a little tricky because it's it's not four separate bodies running around. It's one being and these bodies are different aspects of one being.

Did you have a question?

[Speaker 2]
Yeah you know it's always been like America to me saying someone's an omniscient Buddha and she can see the mind of her students perfectly well and see that she's going to be 23 years from now but then if a teacher will that change her mind now and the subsequent 23 years or can I see what she'll be doing 23 years from now and including the effect of my teaching on her.

[Speaker 1]
Did you have a question? Who's the person you want to know about? The Buddha him or herself?

Which model is the vision of the teachers that the vision that includes or excludes the effects what I as the Buddha will be doing? Oh yeah there's a big debate in the Abhidharmakosha and it's the debate there is can the Buddha perceive is he is he or she I'm going to say because it's just easier for me if he's he How about they? Can we have one Buddha?

Is this B? Okay Okay Is this Say she then Say she Say she Is she I'll say she I like she Let's say she I lost my train of thought There's a debate in the Abhidharmakosha They say Can she Does she really perceive the future or does she extrapolate the future? In other words Does she Does she look at the present and based on some kind of incredible intelligence figure out what has to happen in 23 years from now or does she actually directly perceive the future and the answer is directly perceives The Buddha directly perceives in in every instant every single object in the universe that ever was ever will be and is now and that's the nature of her omniscience Okay That's So the answer is is the answer in the scriptures is that you reach a point where you can do that

[Speaker 2]
So if I look at my student as Buddha and I see her future then I know I have to teach her now so that that can come true basically so that I also know what I'm which role I'm supposed to have right now

[Speaker 1]
If the person were a Buddha if the teacher was a Buddha yeah

[Speaker 2]
yeah

[Speaker 1]
So those are the qualities of the Buddha refuge and you could you could take another I mean to go from your question there are two aspects of refuge One is you can take refuge in the Buddhas that are here now and that's what you mostly think of when you take refuge you're normally taking refuge in the Buddhas who exist at this time that's called cause refuge and depending on what level of motivation you have you can have three kinds of cause refuge cause refuge means you're still not a Buddha and you're still working on the causes to become a Buddha so you could focus on three different goals one would be that you just don't want to suffer anymore you don't want to go to the three lower realms after you die that would be the minimum one that you you understand what we said yesterday about karma that it's possible that if the mind goes on does the mind go on first of all I ask you I mean fairly well established okay don't have to say you believe it but let's say that based on what we said the mind goes on let's say you cannot destroy mind let's say it's true that the mind is a totally different material than the body and that the mind cannot be destroyed by any by any physical thing which is pretty much pretty acceptable you can't see your mind you your awareness is your mind the body stops moving that doesn't prove that the mind stops maybe the body just got tired ran out of juice maybe the mind is very frustrated and wants to keep moving but the body won't cooperate maybe the mind is still there quite possible then there's this this rules of karma that we talked about I mean you know what happens when you you build a huge building and you make a small defect in the in the foundation I have a friend who's a builder he he makes the concrete a little bit wrong put too much sand in it so you you make the foundation bad by a small mistake then you build like five six stories it takes you all summer and then by the time winter comes the whole foundation crumbles and the house collapses I mean one tiny defect in the in the foundation of something or the seed of something as the thing grows can become a grotesque mistake a huge mistake and the same with natural plants one small defect in the seed a redwood tree grows for I don't know how many years and then the whole tree is twisted a huge twisted mistake from a defective seed so it's the same with mental seeds you can't you can see it from I mean like nowadays in the new in the treatment of people with with different kinds of self-esteem problems or things like that and they finally trace it back to some small incident that happened as a child I mean a very traumatic incident somebody did abuse them in some way or somebody said something and from that one three minute period in their in their childhood then the whole lifetime is is wasted it's and that's a mental event you know that's that's an example of a small mental event that twenty thirty years later has has grown into something that ruins the person's mind it's the same with karma you plant a seed after your death it's quite possible that there are places called hell and and that all these movies like Freddy I keep using that example but they're really very good you know you kill the thing you kill it kill it kill it it lays down you think you're okay and then it starts to get up again you know and that's exactly the description of the of the lightest hell you you go there there are all these monsters there things are slashing at you things are ripping at you you finally have the good fortune to die and then you just wait I mean you go unconscious but then because of your karma you your consciousness comes right back again and and you keep going through this process of falling down unconscious and then getting back up again and then they rip you up again and you fall down again I mean that's you can't see it I can't prove it to you I haven't seen it but but we can assume logically that it's possible basically if the mind goes on and if some twisted seed is put in the mind now we can we can say that it's possible the lowest kind of refuge cause refuge would be I hope that doesn't happen to me I'm going to make sure that I don't put those seeds in my mind or if by some accident I do that I purify them before I die yeah well I was really struck yesterday by your talking about how because I didn't know that Buddhists believe in hell so I went and I read the Lam Rim last night about it and we have specific hells but there's this hell 16 two are excellent so I wondered if that's the Buddha talking about hell or if or if it's like you said it's just this logical progression I mean did the Buddha say there's a hell or no yeah the Buddha saw it directly the Buddha's omniscience by the way we have this computer project we put we put in the scriptures in India we have 60-70 monks typing all day and so they're putting in all the ancient scriptures we put in like 50,000 pages something and you can search it for these things you can find the day that he said it and you can prove that he said it and it's very nice you know you don't have to say I think he said it he said he said it on this day in this scripture on this page he described the hells and it's even the the things that you would think came from Tibetan lamas like the Georgia you know the preliminary practices things like that they were spoken directly by the Buddha there are sutras called the preliminary practices and and things like that you can go all the way back and and find them there there's very I don't think there's anything in Lamrim that doesn't come from the Indian commentators and there's nothing in there that didn't come from the sutras and you can just show it to people anything we had a big argument in my class in New York we had a celebration and we pulled out some alcohol-less wine and we poured it out and everybody was ready to drink and somebody noticed that it wasn't really alcohol-free it was 0.5% and so I said you have to throw it out and everybody said no come on you know 0.5% and so you can show it in the Abhidharmakosha quotes the sutra the Buddha he he's sitting in a class like this and he he takes he picks a piece of grass like that and he says anybody who drinks enough alcohol that you can put on the tip of this plate of grass or who gives it to another person don't call yourself a Buddhist you're not my follower I'm not interested in you okay it's very clear and you can just show it to someone so actually he did describe the hells they're not like a metaphor they're not like psychological state in this life this the the heaviest pain of being burnt in this life is supposed to be nothing compared to the lightest moment in hell and time moves more slowly there time in the deva realms moves very slow time in the hells moves much slower than that uh and that's in the Abhidharma to the third chapter that describes exactly how time appears to move for those beings so the lowest excuse me what are the reasons though for not calling you can't call yourself a Buddhist um this is a there's two kinds of bad deeds one is called Rangshingi Kanamatoa and one is called Jepe Kanamatoa Rangshingi Kanamatoa means uh a bad deed by nature natural bad deed killing stealing lying obviously they hurt other people directly um those are called natural misdeeds natural bad deeds drinking alcohol is not a natural bad deed it's called a Jepe Kanamatoa Jepe Kanamatoa means there was some incident occurring during the Buddha's lifetime that uh required him to make that rule he it was not a natural rule and then at some point uh during his career on this earth he there was an incident normally it was this monk called Charaka who was always getting into he he's responsible for all these limitations on us but he would screw up somehow and then the Buddha would have to make a rule against him so uh there was somebody got drunk and did something bad and then and then the Buddha thought about it and then he said okay look drinking itself is not bad I mean maybe if you drink way too much it hurts your body in and of itself it's not bad but it lowers your inhibitions and anything that lowers your inhibitions uh is is going to lead you into other problems so really the only reason uh that alcohol is not allowed for Buddhists is that it just it lowers your inhibitions and and you can say well I can control the lowering of my inhibitions you know but Buddha I mean he about about morality which could be a whole course in itself um about how karma works some of the things are not obvious to a a normal person you have to be you have to be able to see the future to to be able to know exactly why some points of morality are that way um long story but in briefly in in Dharmakirti Paramatvatika there are three levels of reality one is called the munsum which means uh these colors for you they are munsum in other words anybody can see these colors you don't have to be a genius to see these colors uh it's a it's something you can perceive directly without any kind of intellect or anything the second level of reality is called is called kokyar. Kokyar means hidden or deep. Excuse me?

Kokyar means, the classic example is emptiness itself. In other words, it's so deep that a normal person can only perceive it through logic. It's only through discussing emptiness together that you can have any kind of clear understanding of emptiness.

It's so deep that a normal person can't just sit here and say, oh, emptiness, I see it. I mean, as we said yesterday, in a deep state of meditation, after much training, you can see it directly. But for a normal person, no training, regular old guy or girl, you can only see emptiness by logic or by reasoning, by thinking about it, and in that way that is not as direct.

Then there's this thing called shindukokyar. Shindukokyar means very, very, very deep. It's the third level of reality.

And the only object, one of the only objects there is the workings of karma. In other words, why is this corner of this blackboard shaped just like that? Why is there a little, you can't see it, there's a little dent here.

Where'd that dent come from? Karmically. I mean, we know something hit it.

Why did something hit this corner on this blackboard to have this tiny little dent in it? What karmic event a thousand years ago, a million years ago occurred that this blackboard corner should have a tiny millimeter of a dent in it? What happened?

It's something you can only perceive if you're the Buddha, basically. We can only perceive it by some kind of educated belief in the Buddha. Based on all his other great statements that we can confirm, we accept what he said about this, even though we can't confirm it with our own senses.

That's the third level of reality, very, very deep level of reality. All the workings of karma are there. All the reasons why we can't do certain things morally, ethically, in Buddhism.

To see all the ramifications, to see the ultimate consequences of any deed you could do is beyond us. I mean, and the Buddha frankly said that. He said, generally, you have to test what I say.

You can't just accept what I say. You have to reason it out. You have to perceive it yourself.

But the very deep workings of karma, you know why, if you take one teaspoon of alcohol today, a thousand years from now, it could give you a very bad result. I can't show you. I can't explain to you.

This is another subject. But you can. You can confirm it.

And that's, it's also in Dharmakirti. Dharmakirti was a great Buddhist logician. And what you do is you try to investigate the logic behind him saying that and the odds of him wanting to lie at that point.

You know. It's really that kind of a logic. And it takes a while.

You can study it. But it's investigating. It's called Samargyopa.

Samargyopa means investigating the odds that the Buddha would have wanted to lie at that point. And what advantage would there have been for him to lie at that point. You know.

Was it that he owned a stock in Coca-Cola or something? You know. Non-alcoholic drinks.

You know. You know. It's like that.

You go into a logic like that. But you try to establish that the Buddha, in that particular case, given what you know he taught in other cases, had any particular reason or likelihood of not telling the truth. Or of not knowing what he was talking about.

That's what the Buddha said in the sutra. I'm not aware of any sutra where he ever said you could drink alcohol. I'm not aware of any Buddhist text.

And I don't think you find it in the Buddhist text.

[Speaker 2]
But on Brandy's point there, we hear stories that to some the Buddha taught the existence of a self.

[Speaker 1]
That's another study. And there's a subject. It's a beautiful subject.

It's called Chang'e. Chang'e means the art of interpretation. In fact, a great commentary is written by a Sarah J.

on it. And we edited it and printed it. And he's passed away about 20 years ago.

But they had some tapes left. And it's been printed now. It's a great book.

It's a small great book. Losang Wangchuk. And Chang'e means the art of interpretation.

How do you know when the Buddha was speaking literally? And how do you know when he was just speaking figuratively? What are the ground rules for determining when you should accept something literally?

And when should you say, Oh, the Buddha was just... He was in an AA meeting that night. And he said, Don't drink a single drop of alcohol.

I mean, for them, it was the right thing to say. In general, he didn't mean it, that everyone should practice that. That's a whole different study.

It's a beautiful subject. We studied it for about six months in the monastery. Tsongkhapa wrote the greatest book about it, Chang'e Lekshen Yunpo.

It's 230 pages long. If you memorize it in the monastery, you get an award. I didn't get it.

[Speaker 2]
How does one find middle way in doing things in moderation? I mean, is there any way?

[Speaker 1]
Well, I don't want to get into that, per se. But I mean, what I want to say, and what I want you to remember from... Because the gray areas you can debate like crazy.

Whether or not a glass of wine at dinner is okay, or things like that, you can debate like crazy. But I always like to say, as far as Buddhist morality, it's not the gray areas that trip us up. It's not the gray areas that are going to send you to the hells in your next life.

It's the areas where you know very well that you're not doing the right thing and you can't stop yourself. It's like when you get really angry at someone and scream. I mean, when you talk about keeping your morality, I don't know if...

If you study it for a long time, like Vinaya, you have to read all the exceptions, you have to know all the rules. You have to know every little detail of every little exception. But in general, when we talk about going for refuge and what's going to help you or protect you, you know the things you do that are bad.

And you know... They're not questionable. Not talking about the borderline things like certain sexual practices or certain kinds of wine or things like that.

Those are not the main thing. You know very well what you do that hurts other people all the time. And work on those.

If you work on those, you'll keep out of... When you get those all cleaned up, we can debate the gray points. But I might not be there because I don't have those cleaned up either.

You know, yeah.

[Speaker 2]
I'm interested in all the documentation practices...

[Speaker 1]
Ah, it would be nice. We'll try. We'll try a little bit.

Something back to going for refuge. The Buddha has... The Buddha is that...

So when you take cause refuge in its lowest form, you are interested in staying out of hell realm, animal realm, and the hungry ghost realm. And all of Buddhist philosophy says I cannot show you the hell realm and the hungry ghost realm. I admit it.

If I said I could, I'd be a liar. If I said I know they exist, I'd be a liar. Except for by logic.

And that I know that the Buddha said it and the Dalai Lama said it. And people that I can believe. But otherwise, you just have to try to consider the possibility of it knowing that the mind does go on and knowing that tiny seeds create huge, grotesque, bizarre results.

And that you know that. So it's a possibility. The second level of cause refuge is where you just want to get out of this kind of existence in general.

And I think, you know, that's the easiest one for me to focus on. I have trouble, like you do, much thinking about five minutes after I die and fighting off Freddy's in hell. You know, it's hard for me to concentrate on...

It's hard for me to motivate my practice with only that in mind. But the second level I think is pretty much... And that's where you just don't want anymore to be in a world like this.

You don't want to be in a world where every nice thing is attached to a suffering. And that's just... That's just as you get older or as you get more mature and you see more horrible things of parents losing their children or really nice people getting killed or your friends getting AIDS or things like that.

As you go through life and you see all these things that are just heartbreaking that you naturally, you'd like to prevent that in the world. You would like to see a world where that didn't happen. Where every nice thing, every time a nice thing happens, somebody has a child, lifestyle, they have to lose that child.

Or every time someone is healthy or pretty or anything, that eventually they're losing it. But you just don't want to be in a world like that anymore. Or you want to stop that.

You'd like to be in a world where that doesn't exist. And that's really the goal of Buddhist practice. Sometimes I think we get hung up on whether or not we feel calm at a particular period at work or whether or not we feel bright and happy today or whether or not we feel devotion today or we feel dry today or all these things.

But the ultimate goal is that, just to be in a world where they don't exist. I have a Christian friend who said that's very selfish. You're going to leave all these people in this world and go to a world where it doesn't exist.

And there are other friends who say, Oh, that would be boring. That's the spike of life when things go bad. If we were happy all the time it wouldn't be much fun.

Then I say, Can I drill your teeth? It wouldn't be boring. It wouldn't be like that.

It would just be people happy. People not having the separations and the sufferings, especially the mental sufferings that we have. And then the highest level of cause-refugee is where you just wish that for everybody.

And I think that's natural. I think it'd be very weird to wish that you could be in a world where the good things were really good and they weren't always mixed up with some kind of suffering. And then everybody else was in a world where they were suffering.

That would be kind of a strange existence, I think. You wouldn't want that. And that's where your refuge is mixed up with bodhicitta.

You would like to be in a world where the nice things aren't mixed up with suffering. And obviously you wish it for everybody else as well. You really do wish that for everybody else.

So those are the three kinds of cause-refuge. And there are supposedly three different kinds of Buddhist practitioners. There's śrāvakas, called listeners.

There are people who, if they could just get to nirvana, that would be enough. And when they go for refuge, they just think about nirvana. Nirvana is a state where you yourself no longer have that kind of suffering that we talked about.

You don't have that anymore. Yeah. Yeah.

When you achieve nirvana, and when you achieve full destroyer, and the permanent cessation of your bad thoughts, the permanent ending in your heart of jealousy, anger, desire, that's nirvana. That is nirvana. You can achieve nirvana tonight or not.

[Speaker 2]
No, probably not. No.

[Speaker 1]
No, is it possible? It's possible. Would you look any different to us tomorrow, like if we had a class tomorrow morning?

I'll give you the definition again. It's just the permanent... It's the permanent cessation of your bad thoughts.

It can happen at, I mean, in theory it could happen at any time in your life, and you wouldn't look any different. You would certainly act differently. And your own perception of the world would be totally different than how we see the world.

But you wouldn't necessarily, your face and things wouldn't change. You still have a body which is created by your past karma, you know. And that body is...

The lower schools, they talk change, left over. It'll go through a process of aging and dying. But you're free.

You're already free. That's tarpa. That's moksha, liberation, freedom, namdula.

All those words are synonyms. Stopping your bad thoughts permanently, reaching nirvana, reaching freedom, reaching liberation, reaching arhat, protostar. It's all the same thing.

So they're really looking... They're taking refuge because they want to reach that. When they think of what they're taking refuge in, they think of someone who has reached that.

And then when a Mahayana person thinks about refuge, they think about reaching a place, a point where, or going for refuge to a being who is a full Buddha, fully enlightened Buddha, who can help other beings perfectly. And that's... Those are cause refuge.

There's a really neat refuge called result refuge. What do you guess that is? Jeff?

It's where you take refuge in your own Buddhahood. It's where you take refuge in yourself when you become a Buddha. It's very beautiful.

So you're actually taking refuge in yourself in the future. It's called result refuge. And that's a very useful thing sometimes too.

Sometimes when they teach lamrim, they start from the back and they teach you what it would be like to be a Buddha. And they spend days and days and days on trying to imagine yourself as a being who could help every other being in the universe spontaneously. And then who had more love for every being in the universe than anyone has for anyone.

All at the same time. And they take you through this exercise where you try to imagine it. So result refuge is where you take refuge in your future Buddhahood.

And when you go for refuge, you're actually going for refuge in your own future Buddhahood. And that's another kind of refuge. There's really five kinds.

There's those three different kinds of practitioner. He's going for refuge to the concept of not going to the lower realms. The other one's going for refuge in the concept of not living in a world where every good thing is mixed up with a painful ending.

The third one is going for refuge in the concept of a being who could really help everyone achieve that. Those are all a kind of a causal refuge. And then there's a result refuge where you're actually imagining how it is when you'll be a Buddha and you're taking refuge in him or her.

And that's an interesting kind of refuge. Those are the five kinds of refuge. What does it mean in a practical sense?

You know, how do you take refuge day to day? Is it only in the morning when you do your practices? Or when do you take refuge?

We talked about refuge yesterday, going for refuge, and everybody gave a different idea. So we've established the pain that you want to get away from. Those are all the different varieties of suffering that you'd like to get away from.

But what would you, what do you take refuge in? When you get in a tight spot at work, which is when I usually take refuge, I mean, when someone's screaming in my face, okay, when the lady at work, and you know who she is because you have one at your office, and she's in your face, and she's screaming at you, and she's saying something bad to you, and what happens? If you took refuge, what would it be like?

How would it help? What good would it do? If refuge has a function, then it's a thing.

If it doesn't do anything, it's not a thing. That's a classic Buddhist line. If it's not doing anything, it's not a thing.

Performing a function is the definition of a thing. What are you going to do? How do you...

What does it mean to take refuge at that moment? I would say this. Focus on her emptiness first.

Okay? No, focus on her emptiness first. Does it mean she's not there?

That's disproven by tsema, pramana, by your direct, valid perception. She is there, and she is yelling in your face, and she is irritating. It's a tsema.

Tsema means... Very important study in Buddhist logic. You are perceiving her.

You're not drunk. You're not crazy. You're not influenced by any other things, like any other strong emotions that might make you misperceive the event.

She really is there. She's yelling at you, and your tsema, or your pramana, confirms it. Therefore, it exists.

That's the definition of existence in Buddhism. If you can perceive her, and you're not crazy, and you're not drunk, and you're not on LSD, and everything else, she exists, and she's real. So she's yelling at you.

What does it mean to see her emptiness? So it doesn't mean to pretend she's not there, because your own direct tsema disproves this. That's the opposite side of the coin.

That's the opposite side of the coin. It's very close, and some people get it mixed up. The way you said it was positive.

You said, what she is depends on my perceptions. That's a relative truth. That's her dependent origination.

That's why those two things are the same. Opposite sides of the same coin. That's why they're brothers, or sisters.

They get along like that. The fact that she is your projection is very close to her emptiness, but not enough. That's her dependent origination.

What's her emptiness? The fact that she's not anything yet.

[Speaker 2]
The fact that she's not what?

[Speaker 1]
That she's not your projection. Emptiness is that. She's anything but not your projection.

She's everything except not your projection. What does that mean? You can think of it that way.

Just think of it as if I took away my projections and everybody else's, where would she be? She wouldn't be. Independent of my projections, she doesn't exist.

And when you study gaccha, which means a self-existent thing, there's a whole exercise of trying to identify a self-existent thing. It's hard to do because they don't exist. But you can imagine a self-existent thing.

It would be a lady at work who was irritating, independent of my projections. Without me around to project it, she would be irritating. That doesn't exist.

That's a self-existent thing. So the first thing to do is just look at her and say, I mean, usually you don't have time, right? You get angry right away.

So I think what's very useful, and why did the Buddha spend all those years teaching emptiness? It must be important. Just remember she's empty.

I mean, if you don't remember anything else from this weekend, when you take refuge, at that moment, taking refuge starts with, she's empty. It doesn't mean she's not there. And it doesn't mean that she's not yelling at you.

And it doesn't mean that the yelling is not irritating. It means that if my projections weren't here, she wouldn't be irritating at this moment. What's the next natural thought?

When it comes into your mind, okay, she's empty, but where did this come from?

[Speaker 2]
Yeah.

[Speaker 1]
Where did this appearance come from? Okay. It really is a mental overlay.

It really is a projection. I mean, you can't perceive that at that moment. It's very difficult.

You can't notice yourself projecting. But you have to study it, and you have to contemplate on it, and you have to meditate on it. It is your projection.

It is a mental projection. It is a mental overlay on something that's not that way. And you have to recognize where it's coming from.

So far we have two thoughts going on in the microseconds as you start to respond to her. She's empty. Yeah, right, sure.

That's why we have to practice. You'll probably remember about a half hour later after you scream at her. She's empty.

It's a projection coming from my side. Is the projection voluntary or is it forced upon you?