Серия ежедневной практики, курс 08 — Сутра сердца: медитация на пустоту (2000, Сокел), занятие 1

[Speaker 2]
The Asian Classics Institute presents the Heart Sutra, a meditation on emptiness recorded live at Land of Medicine Buddha in February of 2000. Session one The Heart Sutra, a meditation on emptiness recorded live at Land of Medicine Buddha in February of 2000.

[Speaker 1]
Session two recorded live at Land of Medicine Buddha in February of 2000.

[Speaker 2]
The Heart Sutra, a meditation on emptiness recorded live at Land of Medicine Buddha in February of 2000. The Heart Sutra, a meditation on emptiness recorded live at Land of Medicine Buddha in February of 2000. The Heart Sutra, a meditation on emptiness recorded live at Land of Medicine Buddha in February of 2000.

Session three The Heart Sutra, a meditation on emptiness Session four The Heart Sutra, a meditation on emptiness recorded live at Land of Medicine Buddha in February of 2000. Session five The Heart Sutra, a meditation on emptiness recorded live at Land of Medicine Buddha in February of 2000. Session six The Heart Sutra, a meditation on emptiness recorded live at Land of Medicine Buddha in February of 2000.

Session seven The Heart Sutra, a meditation on emptiness recorded live at Land of Medicine Buddha in February of 2000. recorded live at Land of Medicine Buddha in February of 2000. The Heart Sutra, a meditation on emptiness recorded live at Land of Medicine Buddha in February of 2000.

The Heart Sutra, a meditation on emptiness recorded live at Land of Medicine Buddha in February of 2000. Session nine The Heart Sutra, a meditation on emptiness recorded live at Land of Medicine Buddha in February of 2000.

[Speaker 1]
All right, so we'll start. First I'd like to thank everybody who worked so hard to make this possible. I know it's very hard to get a teaching together for this many people and not have problems.

And, you know, every person has a special exception to the rules. And I know it's not easy. Also, financially, LMB, they work on this reverse principle that the bigger the teaching, the more they lose money.

So sorry for that. And then thank you for having us here. Thank you for...

This is the last formal teaching I'll give before Sri Retreat. And I thought it would be sweet to do it here because I feel a special connection to people here. And also I have this great attachment to the Heart Sutra.

And I thought it would be nice to have that be the last teaching. And also I think it's Valentine's Day soon. Or not.

Anyway, so it all seemed right. Then, the Heart Sutra, I remember before I learned it properly, it sounded like, it was very obscure. And it sounded very sexy, you know, like, I was aware that Lord Buddha said, nothing exists, your eye doesn't exist, your ear doesn't exist, your nose doesn't exist.

And, you know, I think that has made the sutra popular in the West especially because it sounds so much like an LSD trip, you know. Lord Buddha seems to be confirming our feeling that life doesn't mean anything and nothing's real and just this great feeling. And I have a feeling that over the centuries it's had the same attraction for people.

You know, like, a certain number of thinking people thought it was intriguing that somebody of Lord Buddha's stature would get up and say, none of this stuff really exists, you know. And it's also sort of tempting, you know, once you've tried all the things in the world to make yourself happy, and once you've been through so many different experiences, and, you know, the older you get, the more you've tried everything and it doesn't seem things don't seem to work out. And then some guy just comes along and says, all of that doesn't mean anything, you know.

And it seems like very comforting that somebody would say that's all meaningless or none of that exists. And so there's this feeling about the Heart Sutra like that. Then I remember when I was first learning the Heart Sutra, and I heard it from my Lama in about 1974, first time.

He taught it at Columbia. And I remember going through it, and it was very technical and there were lots of strange expressions. And so my first impression of the Heart Sutra was that it was a beautiful nihilistic piece.

And then my second impression was that it was a very complicated thing. And then along with that came this feeling that it was sort of arbitrary, you know, like sometimes you hear old sutras and it almost seems like Lord Buddha is just rambling on and going over different things. And then people, scholars, write later that Lord Buddha, that, you know, people mistook on the manuscript back in 700 A.D. and they wrote things twice and then somebody copied that wrong. And then by the time it got to us, it's this very confusing sutra and it seems like it has a lot of repetition in it. And it seems like, you know, maybe somebody, the scribe thought that there should be another few pages on it and added some things. And then I began to feel that way about the sutra, that it didn't seem to have a continuity to it.

Old sutras often seem to be disjuncted or disjointed and the thing just goes on. So A, it seems like Lord Buddha might be rambling a little and then maybe they didn't write it down right because you know that Lord Buddha was probably coherent, you know. And then later, not really, and then you feel like it doesn't feel comfortable to you.

And then there's this thing that has survived over all these years and in Tibet it came to be used only for, in some cases it was used almost like an amulet against evil, you know. And the way that some Tibetans would tear little pieces of Sanskrit manuscripts and eat them or, you know, they did. And many manuscripts were destroyed.

Just the holiness of the sutra was considered, you just recited it and it didn't matter if you understood it or not. And if you were having trouble with spirits, like sickness or you had other problems, that you just recite the sutra and everything's all right. And in the monastery, my experience with the Heart Sutra in the monastery was mostly in the debate ground.

We had to recite it 21 times before debating and you did 20 of them really fast and then the last one you did really, really, really slow and it's really beautiful. It's one of the most beautiful chants in the monastery. It goes higher and higher and higher until finally they're just screaming in soprano pitch, you know, all these 2,000, 3,000 monks and then it goes really, really high and then suddenly it just stops.

And it's really beautiful. But then I don't know if anyone was thinking about the meaning of it or, you know, you just had to do it like 21 times. And then, you know, it was neat to do the last crescendo because the temple would start to shake and you felt like the power of it.

But we didn't really understand it, you know what I mean? And so what I'd like to do now is give you a feeling for what's really going on. It is sort of an acid trip.

You know, it's a very, very unusual sutra. For one thing, Lord Buddha doesn't say anything in the whole sutra except, right. You know, at the end he says, right.

And he doesn't get to say anything during the whole sutra, you know, which makes it a little bit strange sutra to begin with. The Lord Buddha's most popular sutra only gets to say a few words, one word, right, you know. And so what's going on, you know?

And is it really just this disjuncted thing? And can you actually use this sutra for your life? You see, I mean, to me that's an interesting test of a Buddhist teaching.

You know, it's a thing of beauty, philosophical beauty. You know, you can tear it apart for years. But can you actually use it for anything?

You know, can you use it on Monday at work? Can you use the Heart Sutra? Or is it just some magic thing that you recite?

And my contention is, if you understand the sutra well, and get this, okay, this is the main thing for tonight. It is a roadmap for your whole spiritual career, okay. I mean, the Heart Sutra is Lord Buddha giving you, in three pages or four pages in the Tibetan, he's giving you an outline of your entire spiritual path, okay.

Everybody here could just use the Heart Sutra to reach their own enlightenment. And you could use it as a roadmap for your own life. For the rest of your life, you can use the Heart Sutra to live your life and to lead your life.

And it's really designed that way. Inside the Heart Sutra, there are the five great levels that you have to pass through during your life. So I thought I'd talk about those first.

And then we'll actually get into the sutra. So I mean, just so you get the overall idea of what's going on in the sutra. The sutra is Lord Buddha giving you an outline of the five big parts of your spiritual path, your spiritual career that you have to learn, and you have to get through.

And they're almost like Buddhism, as you start to learn more and more about Buddhism, it's like, I always think of those horses in England, they're doing, I don't know what they call them, they jump over steeples, bushes, and steeplechase or something? Is it a steeple? I don't know.

Is it a steeplechase? Yeah. Anyway, it's like in your Buddhist career, before you die, if you don't want to die, you've got to get over five hurdles.

And you have to be able to do that. And within those five, there are maybe, I don't know, maybe a hundred lesser steps that you have to get through. Like Buddhism is this constant experience of going through one door and thinking you did pretty well, and then there's another door, you know, on the other side of the room, and you go over there and you fiddle around with the lock for a long time, and then you get it open, and then there's another door you've got to get through.

And if you especially are going to get enlightened in this lifetime, there are all these steeples you've got to jump over, and you have to go deeper and deeper. So, here are the five major ones, okay? And they go through the sutra.

And then, I think, as you go through it in your own life, there are certain milestones, spiritually, that you have to get through in order to get enlightened in this lifetime. So, here they are, roughly. First one is...

You can say... I'm not going to give you the technical names until we get into the sutra. Okay, the first one is just tired of this kind of life, okay?

Just tired of this kind of life. And I'm not going to give you a hell realm speech until two in the morning, like some people we know. But...

[Speaker 2]
Okay.

[Speaker 1]
But... You know, you know... You know how life goes, you know?

And I... It speaks for itself. You don't have to be alive more than past age 15 or 20, and you start to notice that things just don't go right, you know?

You can divide your whole life's experience into things that went wrong and things that went right. And then, the things that went wrong are obviously bad. And then the things that are going right will collapse.

So, there's no... I mean, something has to change. And you have to get...

I don't believe you'd be sitting here tonight all hot and wet if you didn't believe that. I mean, you're probably over that pretty well. Something has to change.

Something's not going very well with your life. Slowly, as we speak, your body is starting to collapse. Your health is collapsing as we talk.

Whatever good things have ever happened to you, like if you're intelligent, you will lose that. If you're healthy, you will lose that. If you have good friends, even lamas, you know, everything you possess that's going halfway right will collapse also.

And that's just the way it is. And you have to admit that sooner or later. And you can either kill yourself or try to go to a higher level.

I mean, those are the two choices. I mean, in my mind, my brother killed himself. And I was very...

at a very young age. And he was very intelligent and he did so very purposefully. You know, it wasn't like in a fit of anger or something like that.

He just decided it wasn't going to work out. And he was very healthy and very intelligent and all that. But he just, on an intellectual and on a very calm level, decided this isn't going to work out.

And he just saw that life wasn't going to work out. And I think if you're really, really brave and intelligent, you either choose that or you try to move to a different level. Because to stay as we are, it won't work out.

You know what I mean? To stay as you are now, if you are who you seem to be, and I have no idea, it just won't work out. There's no future to what we are now.

You just eventually will get older and tireder. And the good things you have will drop out of your life one by one. You know, you have enough now that you're not so desperate.

You've got like ten things going for you. Then when it gets down to four or five, you feel a little desperate. And then when you lose the last one or two, you know, and that's all.

Hell realms or no hell realms, life is just not going to work. This life doesn't work. It just doesn't work out.

And you can either just leave, which is also, according to Buddhism, dangerous. Your mind doesn't stop. You don't go to a better place.

I mean, if your mind stopped when you killed yourself, it might be a good choice. You know? You could just kill yourself when things got bad.

You know what I mean? But your mind doesn't stop. If there's a chance, your mind doesn't stop.

I think Hamlet decides that. He's like, to be or not to be. And then he says, I forget how it goes, but he says, but to dream.

And then he says, uh-oh, what if I go on? And it stays his hand. He decides not to kill himself which is smart, because your mind does go on.

And he wisely chooses not to kill himself. But if your mind does go on, then what are you going to do? Can you stop this kind of existence?

You know? Is it possible to get out of this kind of existence? And can a normal person do it, or do you have to be Milarepa or Jetsun Kappa?

I mean, there are stories in Tibetan Buddhist literature of a few people who did it. But we don't have that kind of intelligence. We don't have that kind of training.

We don't have that kind of teachers. Do we actually have a chance? You know what I mean?

In the West, a normal person. If it's only people like Milarepa or Jetsun Kappa who in the last 2,000 years have made it, have moved to a different level of existence. And if we can't really confirm any of them, there are rumors, you know.

So-and-so in Dharamsala, I think, might be a Bodhisattva. Or so-and-so in Tibet, they say he got enlightened. And then you say, well, show me this guy.

He's always busy. Or, you know, you can never quite actually confirm this guy. And then when you meet him, sometimes it's very disappointing.

It just seems like a normal person. And usually they're kind of old. And maybe you see them get angry at one of their attendants or something.

And then you're like, I don't know if he's really enlightened. You know what I mean? And that's about the limit of what we can see.

So we don't have any confirmed reports or people we can meet that we can obviously confirm that they are enlightened. And so is there really hope for a normal person? The Heart Sutra is an explanation of what you have to do to make it.

And I think in my presentation, the goal of my presentation is to prove to you that you can do it. And that a normal Western person maybe has a unique opportunity. I think maybe unique in that you didn't grow up as a Buddhist, most of us.

So you can approach something like a Heart Sutra. It's not something you heard your dad and mom recite at night. It's not something monks recite at church.

It's something that, as a first generation Buddhist, you actually think might be an instruction book for you to get enlightened. So in a way I think we have an advantage over the people who grew up with this as their culture. Because when they hear the Heart Sutra, it's like you hearing a Christmas song, a carol, you know, and you just see pine trees and presents under the tree and you smell peppermint and cookies and eggnog.

But you don't think about Jesus getting enlightened or something. You know what I mean? So we don't have all that baggage.

You can approach the Heart Sutra as a person who just intellectually sees that life's not going to work out. And then you can really look at it and say, maybe I could do it myself. Maybe I could actually get out of, maybe I could go to a higher level in this existence.

And it should be your goal. And if you have an intellectual presentation of the Heart Sutra and, you know, I don't care if you know all the intellectual, technical details of the Heart Sutra. I want to see, I want you to get the feeling that it's a list, it's a road map for a normal American person to get themselves enlightened.

And then hopefully after this week you can use the Heart Sutra in your life So that's why I would like to talk about the Heart Sutra. So first you have to be tired of this kind of life and I think if you're not already then, you know, go to work next week. No, something will happen.

And that's all. That's the first step you have to get over. By the way, I'll give you the technical name for that one.

That's called Tsoglam. People have said it in Tibetan and then it puts a seed in your mind and three lifetimes from now I can torture you with Tibetan grammar. Say it, Tsoglam?

Tsoglam. Tsog means collecting. Lam means path.

And the first of the five spiritual levels you have to get through in this lifetime is called Tsoglam. It begins with being very tired of this life. Deciding that you're not happy with the way things go.

And I'll tell you two examples. For me personally, the first was death in my family. You know, I was signed up for Episcopal Seminary.

You know, I went to a very good university and ostensibly everything was going well. And then we had six people in my family, four brothers, two parents. And then in one year, in about one year, my mother died, my brother died, and then my father died.

And then I was like, and we were not a perfect family but we were a pretty happy family like anybody else. And it was, I didn't go around crying all the time or something like that and partly it was wondering where they were, wondering if they were okay, wondering what happened to them. Partly it was how could God let this happen?

You know what I mean? Like it didn't bother me up to that point that other people died because it was only a few people's grandfathers or something. But then the idea that my own family could die and then trying to understand why, why any being, omnipotent being would want that to happen and why somebody would cause that to happen.

And then I think very deep down inside it was the knowledge that I could die. You know what I mean? I'm embarrassed to say maybe that was the strongest one.

That you see three people close to you die and it starts to dawn on you that you're next or something. And then there's this feeling of why this thing is going. That was the first one.

The second one was more like, I always say high school girlfriends. And you know, I as a normal kid, I grew up in Arizona. I went to a big high school, a public high school.

And there was this experience of when I became like a sophomore, junior in high school, you start dating girls seriously and then you go through finding out like five girls that you think are cute and then finding some excuse to meet them and then asking them out, trying to get a decent car. It's very important in Arizona. And you know, and then getting to know them, getting intimate with them.

And then there would always be this this descent from that. You know, there'd always be this, it would go up like that and then it would go down like that. And then being very mean to them and starting to argue with them and jealousy and unhappiness.

And then finally, this thing that was so fresh and new and exciting and intriguing, becoming very much a drag and trying to escape from them. And you know, and they're trying to escape from you. And it going over and over again.

Like first you think you picked the wrong one. And so you go after another one. And then you start to realize it's not, has to do with them.

You know what I mean? It's something to do. Then you start thinking it's you, but then you see everybody else doing the same thing.

So, you know, if I'm messed up, everybody else in the world is messed up. The divorce rate is 50%. Maybe the other 50%, you know, didn't do it because it was financially the wrong thing to do is to have a divorce.

I don't know. But, you know, they just see it all around you. So you begin to think, you kind of think, well, it's not me, it must be the real, that must be something wrong with life itself.

And, you know, people joke with me and they say, are you equating the death of your parents with losing your first high school girlfriend or something? And I say, yeah, it's the same thing, really. And it was just as disturbing to me to see that ugly side of myself and it was very depressing to me to see that.

And my own parents, before they died, got divorced. It was very messy. They were fighting with each other violently.

And then to see how people could go through love and then descend into some kind of either distaste or outright hatred for each other and how it could be repeated over and over and over and over again, even among reasonable, normal people is very depressing for me. And I just thought, well, this is like one of the only ways that people can be happy together and they make each other unhappy quickly. And why?

Why is that? So I think all that goes into it gets you, I think, death. And for me, the failure of normal personal relationships was enough to make me want to see could we move it up to a different level?

You know, is there a higher level that you could get to or is there a lower level Soklam, that's the beginning of the sutra. At the beginning of the sutra, we are getting into soklam. We are getting into, this is, by the way, you can call it the path of accumulation or something like that, path of accumulation.

It means that the hero of the sutra has the brains comes up to Avalokiteshvara and says, you know, what are we supposed to do? And obviously by that time he's already reached soklam, I think. The point is that he's already tired of how life is going and he doesn't like how life is going.

And that's what triggers the sutra. The sutra is beginning with one young man's quest asking this bodhisattva what are we supposed to do? Because it doesn't seem to be working out right.

Life doesn't seem to be working out very well. And that's the beginning of the sutra. Chenrezig, Avalokiteshvara here, by the way, there's two people like Avalokiteshvara or Maitreya in the early sutras are bodhisattvas.

In the tantric teachings they are already enlightened beings. But in the open teachings Avalokiteshvara is just a plain old bodhisattva of Lord Buddha, like a normal student of Lord Buddha. So I guess one thing to say at the beginning is that when you hear Avalokiteshvara, which I've translated as loving eyes, and his Chenrezig means to, Chen means eye, re means to look at someone like, you know, with love, and sig means to look, you see.

So it means to look with loving eyes or something like that. So if someone's in pain and you're looking at them like, you know how Lama Sopa looks at you sometimes, right? You know, he says, oh, this poor creature is in total pain and causing themselves more pain every day.

you know, like that. That's Chenrezig. That's what Chenrezig means.

Some people have translated it as rag eyes or something like that. That's a missed spelling of the name. They didn't understand the spelling of the name.

So that's Avalokiteshvara. So Shariputra, which is another close disciple of Lord Buddha, comes up to Avalokiteshvara and says, rikipuram rikipumo khala rasenagopala duchim samachepa nila chitta lapa ja chitta lapa ja means how are we supposed to do it? You know, what are we supposed to do?

And he says, rikipuram rikipumo. Rikipuram rikipumo means, do you have one I can borrow? Do you have just a paper?

Okay. We're on page, let me see, page two. Okay.

And if you'd like to follow, I'd like to give this commentary based on the English, okay? And I think it'd be, so you can make notes about the English part and then you can follow that. So we're on page two of the root text of the sutra itself.

Everybody got it? At the top it says, at a certain moment. And we're talking about the second paragraph.

And it says, and then by the power of the enlightened one, the junior monk named Shariputra turned and asked the question of the great warrior loving eyes. By the way, great warrior means chandrasemba semba chenpo. Chandrasemba, great warrior means, great, warrior is a word for bodhisattva.

And great means that someone who's willing to work for other people. Chandrasemba semba chenpo, the great warrior means skilled at fighting their own mental afflictions. And also, if you read the Tibetan in a different way, the word warrior can mean is obsessed with the idea of getting out of here.

And that's called bodhisattva. And then he's called a great bodhisattva because great warrior means thinking all the time about other people. And you have to be great to want to do that.

Very few people can focus on anything except themselves. And great here means somebody who's willing to think about other people. Loving eyes, I told you, that's chenrezig or avalokiteshvara.

Realized one means Arya. Here, it's a translation for Arya. Arya means anyone who has seen emptiness directly before.

And then lord of power is a reference to Ishvara. It's a Hindu deity known for power. And what it means in this context is powerful at teaching the Dharma.

Or Ishvara can mean master of the Dharma, absolute lord of the Dharma. And powerful in knowing how to teach, when to teach, what to teach. And he says, if any son or daughter of noble family hoped to follow the deep practice of the perfection of wisdom, what would they have to do?

And there's a note in the commentary, the original sutras about noble family. And then when avalokiteshvara gives his answer, he says, any son or daughter should. And then there's a debate in the Tibetan monasteries.

And the commentary that we're going to use, he says, I believe the Chinese version says son or daughter in the question. And definitely in the answer, all the Tibetan versions also say son or daughter. They have said it should be son or daughter, even in the question.

But there could be a reason either way. As we're going to see, wisdom, which is the whole subject of this book, is a feminine attribute. It's the woman side of things, it's the wisdom side of things.

The real name of this sutra is the conquering woman, or the lady of conquering. And we'll talk about the title. But the question is posed as males, you see, in the old manuscripts.

And then the answer comes back, son or daughter of noble family. Noble family here means family of bodhisattvas. Noble meaning people who have the intelligence to think about what other people need.

And that's why they're called noble family. So son or daughter of noble family means anyone who would, is in that select group of people who are noble enough to devote their lives to others. And that's why it's called noble family.

Then we'll talk about the perfection of wisdom. So that's the question. And by that point, Shariputra has already gotten to the first of the five hurdles that you have to get over.

He's already gone far enough to ask the question, to ask the right question. What are we supposed to do? Should we just kill ourselves or is there anything we can do?

And that's a big question. Before you get too old, can you move up to a different level? To where death doesn't happen that way and high school girlfriends don't work that way.

And is there any way to change those things? That's the question. He's already gotten to that point.

The second hurdle you have to get over. You could do it as a line between here's enlightenment and here's you. And then there's like five hurdles.

So this one here is tired. Tired of the way things work. And you know you have good parts in your life.

Buddha said everything is suffering. Then you say, yeah, but what about my last race? I mean there are good things that happen to you and they're deceptive.

You ride on them. You know what I mean? You say this thing's going pretty cool.

At least something's going right and then it collapses. Sooner or later it collapses. So you have to get over this one.

Between you and enlightenment there are five obstacles. First one is you have to be tired of life and that gets you into the first path. This would be path number one.

They call it accumulation. We'll talk about it. So you have to even to get to the first Buddhist path you have to decide that life is not going very well.

You have to just decide that. And this is where the sutra begins. Shariputra asked the question.

It means he's tired. It means he's tired of life. If you've been to Bihar right, Michael Moore?

You'd be tired of life too. Second one. Understand emptiness.

Certain ideas about emptiness. You have to start getting certain ideas about emptiness. You have to be able to get what emptiness means.

And I'm going to quote you a quote that's on your homework. I'll do the Tibetan first and then I'll do the English. It says ,,,, This is by Nagarjuna.

Arya Nagarjuna. The second Buddha. And he said What does it say?

Anyone who doesn't understand emptiness has no hope of freedom at all. Anyone who knows not emptiness has no hope of freedom at all. I'll say it one more time.

Anyone who knows not emptiness has no hope of freedom at all. Left in darkness, they will circle in the prison six realms of pain. Left in darkness, they will circle in the prison six realms of pain.

And that's Nagarjuna. That's like, they call him the second Buddha. One of the greatest Buddhists that ever lived.

And he said If you can't get an understanding of emptiness, just give it up. You know, you will suffer. And I mean, it's okay if it's just one...

People always ask me My mother is really sick. She's asked me to help kill her if she gets really bad. And what should I do?

You know, and I say Do you think she's going to stop the moment you kill her? And the assumption is yes. If someone is asking me the question, right?

She's got really bad cancer. Should I help her die? And it's like a trick question to a lama.

Because, you know, you're not supposed to say kill them because you're supposed to be in favor of life, right? And then you're not supposed to say don't kill them because you're supposed to be compassionate, right? And so it's like a trick question.

And then you're supposed to ooh and ahh and then, you know, fudge it or something. But it's quite clear actually. The whole question revolves around the idea that you stop being conscious as soon as they kill you.

And that's not true. You see what I mean? Your mind doesn't stop.

Your body stops. But that doesn't prove anything about your mind stopping. You see, that's an old, old, old argument in India.

Oh, the guy, the Carvaka said to the Buddhist, you know, the mind stops when the body dies, you know. And the Buddhist said prove it. You know, and they said well the body stops moving.

Which nowadays would be the equivalent of saying, you know, you get a flat line on the electrical readout. You say, so what's that proof about the mind? You know, the mind is ineffable.

The mind is not electricity. The mind's activity reflects itself in electricity of the body. If the body breaks, the electricity won't exhibit itself.

But that doesn't prove that the mind is dead. You see what I mean? It proves that the body has lost its ability to express itself, which we knew because it was sitting there all flat.

You know what I mean? But that doesn't prove anything about where the mind is right now. Okay?

It just is an indication that the machine's broken. And we knew that already. Okay?

But that, it actually proves nothing about the state of the mind. You can't say definitely, right? You can theorize or you can postulate that the mind has stopped.

But you can't prove that. You don't have any proof for that. Well, no dead people came and told me they died.

They can't. The body broke. Get it?

They can't open their mouths anymore because the body stopped working. So does that prove that, you know, if you see a car on the street, should you should you crush it because the person inside must be dead already because the car's not moving? You know what I mean?

It's just, you know, philosophically, it's ridiculous. You just say that because your mom said that. Or your parents, you know, or your school teachers told you that.

But if your school teacher had said, yeah, the body dies but the mind still goes on, you'd believe that too. Ketub Jey, this great disciple of Je Tsongkhapa said, all the Buddhists believe in, all the Tibetans believe in a future life. I never met one who could explain to me why there should be a future life.

They just say what their mom said. You know what I mean? And that's all.

And you just say that because your mom said that. You really didn't think about it. You have no shred of proof that your mind doesn't go on.

You just say, oh, the body stopped flopping. Okay, so it's broken. It doesn't say anything about the mind, you see.

So anyway, Nagarjuna said, sooner or later you have to understand emptiness or you cannot get out. Okay? You cannot stop suffering.

Nothing will work. You can't. You must understand emptiness.

Okay? So you've got to get into an intellectual understanding of emptiness. That's the second part of your spiritual career.

So, picture your whole life, you know, 70 years long. Somewhere in that 70 years you have to get fed up with life enough to do something about it. Okay?

If you're lucky, you have a major disaster that doesn't kill you. You know what I mean? Like you get some cancer that gives you a good scare and then they cut it out of you and you still have time.

You see what I mean? Or somebody dies right next to you or something like that. It takes something like that.

The most serious Buddhists I know, all of them had some major problem that scared them and then they woke up and then they got it. But sooner or later in 70 years of lifetime you have to figure out that things are not working. Okay?

And that should lead you to have enough strength to concentrate on your spiritual life for a while. Okay? Like you're going to have to leave your normal life for the duration.

Until you figure things out you're going to have to say you know I'm leaving that stuff for the time being. There has to be some kind of incident and then sooner or later you got to say I'm checking out for a while from all this normal family stuff, work stuff, everything else. I'm checking out for a while until I can figure out why people die and things like that.

Then you know if I can figure that out I'll come back later. You know but at some point mentally, and I don't mean that you got to get divorced or desert your family or you know try to live off welfare for the rest of your life. I don't mean that.

I mean in a responsible way you have to delegate your worldly life to your spiritual life. And you have to make this, you must make that decision that the most important thing for me right now is to figure things out. And then maybe I'll go back to full time you know job or full time family stuff.

But right, I have to figure this out first. You must reach this state. In 70 years of life there's got to come a time when you just decide that's it I'm going to stop now and figure it out.

You know I mean of course you should make enough money honestly to eat and to live so you can practice right? And you shouldn't just dump your family and I mean that's a kind of violence also. They're not going to get enlightened by dumping all your responsibilities but in a proper way in a very controlled way you withdraw from those things.

Sooner or later you have to make that decision. That's represented in this sutra by Shariputra's question. He says what do I do now?

Like he's been alive for I don't know 30 years 40 years already and he's going up to Avalokiteshvara and saying what do I do now? What am I supposed to do now? So he got there.

Then in the early part of the sutra we're going to understand emptiness. We're going to get some information about emptiness. And that's where Avalokiteshvara starts making extraordinary statements like meaning your body is empty and emptiness is your body.

And then stuff like that. We're going to get into that. He's starting to understand emptiness.

So for this to happen you must give up your worldly focus. You must you have to give up on that being your primary focus. You cannot you will not be able to give up concentrate enough to learn emptiness if you don't get over the first hurdle.

These are like you don't get to number 2 until you get over number 1. So let's say you get over number 2. Then right here is see emptiness directly.

And those of you who have been in my classes you know the whole spiel. I'll say it again in case there's one or two people that are new okay. It takes an extraordinary amount of training.

Meaning you have to spend hundreds of hours studying it after you got fed up with this life right. And then the whole experience of the direct perception of emptiness is maybe 20 minutes or something like that. It takes about 20 or 30 minutes of direct perception of emptiness.

And we'll talk about it okay. It would be crazy not to talk about it. But you have to get to this point where you see emptiness directly.

Then for the next maybe 10 hours you have all these extraordinary realizations of ultimate reality sorry of different subjects related to emptiness okay. Meaning after you come down out of the direct perception of emptiness for the next 10 hours you see the day of your enlightenment directly. You see your future lives.

You know that you have met Buddha directly, direct contact with enlightened beings and things like that. You might have direct experience of bodhicitta, of ultimate compassion. And all of those things are happening here during that day.

It's actually all over in a 24 hour period. The direct perception takes like 20 minutes 30 minutes and then the next the rest of that waking day is extraordinary understandings of reality. Those are all grouped into the four what they call the four noble truths.

And that's the real meaning of noble truth. Arya truth means what a person has understood right after they saw emptiness directly. So that all takes place here.

That doesn't happen unless you get intellectual understandings of emptiness. That doesn't happen unless you leave the home life in a sense. And again that could be mentally leave it mostly.

But you're not going to make it to the understandings of emptiness intellectually if you don't make some major commitment of your time and your life. If you don't make a life decision at this point to get out to do something to move to a different level you won't get because of the responsibilities you have because of the amount of mental space it takes to be fully engaged in the world. You won't be able to understand emptiness well.

It's just not possible. And then you get to the this is some understandings of emptiness that you get after you've committed yourself to a spiritual way of life as your main activity. And then you'd be able to see emptiness directly.

The next peak is to use what you saw. Use what you saw. This whole gap here you know getting over this mountain typically takes seven lifetimes after you see emptiness directly.

To here takes it's measured in the trillions of years. Okay? Much more.

And by the way you're probably close to here. If you are who you seem to be you're over those trillion lifetimes or something. If you're in this room and if you're who you seem to be you have a you have a good chance of making this.

You're close to the cusp of these three paths can occur in one lifetime. You know this one and this one and this one might occur in the period of even five years or three years or something like that. I mean to go from this level to this level you are very likely you know given your lamas, given the situation you're in, given your interests I know many of you you're very likely here.

It seems weird you know after billions of lifetimes that we'd all be about at the same level at the same moment but karmically it makes sense you know that we'd be in the same room and that we'd all have the same interest to talk about the Hartsutra or something like that. So you know it's not weird to say it took you a billion lifetimes to get here. It's not weird to say you could pull it all off in this lifetime.

It's not weird to say that after you see emptiness directly it's only seven more. What's seven as opposed to billions? You see I mean it's actually extraordinary.

If there were even one person walking this planet who had seen emptiness directly if there were one person walking on this planet who could say I know I have seven or less lifetimes to go that would be incredible. I mean the odds against that are infinite almost so given that it's not weird to say that any of us here could do it. Then you use what you saw to get enlightened and that's a whole process to overcome your own negativities and there really are only four because the last one is enlightenment itself.

I mean really this is the you could say this one is the enlightenment and you could forget this one but this is enlightenment then you get to enlightenment if you want you could say this is nirvana and this one is enlightenment how's that? It's a little more symmetrical but technically there are only five paths and only four obstacles to get over. The fifth path is not really a path it's the state of enlightenment itself.

The Heart Sutra is a guidebook for how to do these five. The Heart Sutra is an explanation of how to get over these five obstacles. So really it's not just some LSD trip and it's not as disorganized as it first seems.

It's a very very well thought out very concise summary of everything you need to do in your lifetime to get enlightened and if you go through the Heart Sutra slowly and nicely you will have enough information to get enlightened okay? And you can use it for that. You know don't just sit there and use it before class or use it to get demons out of your closet or things like that.

You know I mean it wasn't meant for that. It was meant to be a book that teaches you what to do to get enlightened in this lifetime. So we'll start going through the sutra now but that's giving you the whole all this information is hidden in the Heart Sutra.

The Heart Sutra so we're going to go through it in like five classes and we'll be going through path by path. There are five paths and we'll go through one path in each class and by the end you'll be able to use the Heart Sutra as a personal book that you use every day to go over the things you have to do to get enlightened okay? And then hopefully you just go through the Heart Sutra.

Even the mantra in the Heart Sutra there are two kinds of mantras. There are secret mantras and there are open mantras okay? That's an open mantra.

It's called that gati gati paragati parasangati bodhi soha gati gati paragati parasangati bodhi soha five, these five levels gati gati paragati parasangati bodhi soha you see what I mean? that's a mantra for the five levels that you have to get to in your own lifetime. So every time you say that mantra you know you say gati I'm tired gati I gotta understand emptiness paragati I saw emptiness parasangati I used what I saw and I got to bodhi soha

[Speaker 2]
you know

[Speaker 1]
soha is like not really that's the meaning soha means and God did it man you know it's called shitsuk shitsuk means bam done deal ok soha means done deal you know and uh and then some of the versions have om at the beginning om is like let's start a mantra here ok no really it's called goje goje ngake goje means mantra starter ok so om gati gati paragati parasangati bodhi soha ok it's like that that's the meaning of the mantra it's an open mantra ok and now when you say it you understand it's actually a a statement of the five levels you gotta get through in this lifetime ok um I'd like to take a break there five ten minutes uh you know have something to drink or relax and then we'll start again and we'll do just a I think it's important that you know a little bit of technical stuff like where's Rajagrha and why is it vulture's peak and uh you know who wrote the book and stuff like that we'll do all the boring stuff later ok so please take a break ok

[Speaker 2]
ok session one continues on the next CD