Серия ежедневной практики, курс 08 — Сутра сердца: медитация на пустоту (2000, Сокел), занятие 3

[Speaker 2]
Session 2 Heart Sutra Okay, we had talked about...

[Speaker 1]
So far in the Heart Sutra, Lord Buddha has checked out. Okay, Lord Buddha went into samma-mangala, which means perception of emptiness. And then, due to his effects, we say two of his students, almost like puppets, are going to have a conversation.

So Lord Buddha is in deep meditation, and two of his disciples are about to have a conversation, which is Avalokiteshvara, which in the translation says loving eyes, and then Shariputra, which is another great disciple of Lord Buddha. And Lord Buddha goes into meditation and forces them to have a discussion with each other. Then, as we said yesterday, the only thing that Lord Buddha ever says in the sutra is at the end he says, oh, very good, about the conversation that he made them have.

And we talked yesterday about this apparently incoherent sutra, meaning it just seems to jump around and not have much sense to it and have a lot of different ideas mixed up in it. Actually, there's a whole master plan. Lord Buddha has a very important plan for the whole sutra, and it's the layout of your life, your spiritual life.

Your normal life has to go through certain things like grade school, high school, college if you did it, and then dropping out for a while, and then maybe coming back, maybe not. And then having a family, getting old, retiring, going to the nursing home, and dying. That's your physical life.

And then Lord Buddha in the Heart Sutra is laying out your spiritual life, five milestones of your spiritual life. You can start at 20, you can start at 50, but you have to get through these five milestones. The first one we talked about yesterday was called Soglam.

Soglam means you decide that things are bad enough that you want to try something different. We said you had two choices. You could kill yourself or try to move up to a different spiritual level.

Otherwise, life as it appears is hopeless. I mean, you can't succeed here. Nothing works out here.

The good things in your life will go away and the rest is all bad already. So you really only have two choices. Try to practice something and move up to a different level, or just check out.

There's basically only two choices you can have. Or sit there, and what do they say? Lives of quiet desperation.

You know, like, sit there and try to be happy when you know you're not, and when you know you can't be, but you're afraid to check out and you don't know any Dharma, so you just try to get by. If you reach that point where you realize life is like that, then you start at Soglam. Soglam means path of accumulation.

Accumulating what? We just got through in Serra Monastery with my teacher, an incredible teacher, and he was like, what do you think? And if you don't say anything, he's like, oh, I don't mean it.

So, what do you think, Mercedes? Collect what? Path of accumulation.

Accumulating what? Yeah, mostly collecting what?

[Speaker 2]
Enough good karma to...

[Speaker 1]
to start to understand it, to start to get emptiness, okay? And then we talked about it yesterday. You have to get to the point where you glom onto a good lama.

You know, it's like, if you're going to learn piano, you must have a good piano teacher. And those of you who've learned something well, whether it's Tai Chi or yoga or anything, piano, musical instrument, carpentry, anything, you have to... I mean, you get to a certain age where you realize that if you find a real expert and hang around them, then you'll get really good.

And if you don't, you won't. And spiritual things are the same. You have to find someone who's really good at it and then be near them a lot, okay?

And that was the basis of tsogla. That's the basis of the path of accumulation. We see it in the sutra.

Why? Because Sariputra is standing there in front of whom? Who's meditating right next to him?

It's Lord Buddha. You see, I mean, he's got... Obviously, he's gone...

By the time the sutra starts, Sariputra has left his old life behind. He's not... We don't know what he was, you know what I mean?

Like Jesus, you know, so-and-so was a fisherman, so-and-so was a tax collector. But Sariputra, all you know is that he's already left whatever life he had behind. He's been wandering on foot around Bihar state, which you can appreciate now, with Lord Buddha.

And he's close to Lord Buddha, okay? He's already made those decisions, and he's already entrusted himself to this Master. And so the whole point that he's on that path is reflected in that he's asking the question standing next to Lord Buddha, okay?

So he's already done what you have to do. He's already made that kind of decision that he's left behind whatever he was before. We don't even know what he was before.

And he's following around this guy. And don't forget what the real Vinaya is, okay? What the real monk's thing is.

They are going around with no money, and no, what do you call it, no security net, you know? If nobody gives them some food in their bowl that morning, they don't have any food that day. You see what I mean?

They have taken their clothes out of the garbage. The rule was, take it out of the garbage, don't use pieces larger than that. And that's what these patches are on the ropes.

You know what I mean? Like nowadays you buy an expensive piece of cloth and you cut it up, and you sew it back together. But really in the old days you were required to take little pieces out of the garbage and sew them together.

That's why the patches are here. Now these fancy patches, you have to do them just right. They're very complicated.

But these guys have no money. They're just walking around Bihar State following Lord Buddha with these ragged robes on. I think in our times, hopefully it will come down to what it used to be.

It'll be old blue jeans and an old shirt, and it'll be clean, but it'll be simple, and you won't own more than that. You know what I mean? And that's the main thing.

They are free in the sense that they don't own anything. They've given up everything, physical things, family, owning other people. And they're just walking around with Lord Buddha and trying to see emptiness, which is the heart of the Buddha's teachings, which is why this is called the Heart Sutra.

That's why it's called Heart Sutra. They're just trying to see emptiness. So first step is already finished, and sooner or later in your lifetime you have to make the same decision.

Sooner or later in your lifetime, at some point in your life, you have to go for it. I'm not saying right now because I'll be blamed for all the unemployment rate and everything. And I don't mean that you have to give up your job.

I mean, you're supposed to have an honest living, but at some point you have to give up that as your principal focus and focus primarily on trying to see emptiness. So that's how far we got in the sutra. Out of the five milestones, Shariputra, by virtue of asking the question, has already passed the first.

He's already at Lord Buddha's side. He's already asking, how do I practice emptiness? What do I do?

And that's where we are in the sutra. Then the answer comes. sharipu rikyapuram rikyapurmo kalala sherakyapavitu chenpo sammo chepa chupa dupa te titthannambar dawa cha te Lord Buddha says...

I'm sorry, it's not Lord Buddha, right? Avalokiteshvara answers Shariputra. We're on page three, okay?

And we're in the first paragraph. Here Shariputra is what any son or daughter of noble family should see who hopes to follow the deep practice of the perfection of wisdom. So Avalokiteshvara is answering Shariputra.

Shariputra said, what am I supposed to do to see emptiness? And Avalokiteshvara is answering and saying, this is what you have to do. Then here's the first part of the answer.

phunpo ngapo dera la yang nga shing gi tongpa nampa yang dapa je suktao suk tongpa o, tongpa nyi sukso suk lai tongpa nyi shemayang tongpa nyi le kyang suk shemayang And he starts out by saying, see first all five heaps, all five parts to a person as being empty of any essence of their own. Your body is empty. Emptiness is your body.

Emptiness is nothing but your body. And your body is nothing but emptiness. This is the most famous part of the sutra.

We call it sammo shidur. Lord Buddha starts out by saying, your body and the other four parts of you are empty. You have to see that they are empty of any essence of their own.

You have to see that your body and your other four heaps are empty of any essence of their own. And then he says, your body is empty. Emptiness is your body.

Emptiness is nothing but your body. And your body is nothing but emptiness. I'm going to go to the hard part first.

I was calculating that after about an hour you start to lose your ability to concentrate, I think. Especially when it's warm and humid and everything. So I thought I'd go to the hard part first.

And then we'll do the easy part after a break. The easy part will be, I'll tell you what the five heaps are, the five parts of a person. It's important.

It's not as important as the emptiness part. Anyway, you have five parts. The first one that we're going to talk about is your body.

It's just your body. And that's where we'll start out. Body in this sense can also refer to everything around you that you see.

Don't think of body as limited by your skin. Your body includes your eyes, for example, which go to the end of the wall. You see what I mean?

Your body includes your nose, which extends down to the kitchen. You see what I mean? Don't think of your body...

I mean, we'll go through the five skandhas, but don't have this idea that your body ends at the edge of your skin. That's where the tangible part of your body ends, but not where the visual part, or the audible part, or the smellable part, or anything like that. So we'll talk about that later.

We're supposed to right now talk about these four weird ideas. He says, your body's empty, that's number one. You might want to make a note.

There's a better word for the four weird ideas, but let's call them four weird ideas right now. They're actually called the four profound statements. The first one is your body is empty.

So we have to figure out what these four mean. First one, in the second paragraph on page three, is your body is empty. And then he says, emptiness is your body.

That's number two. Then he says, emptiness is nothing but your body. That's number three.

And then he says, your body is nothing but emptiness, and that's number four. And I'll give you the name in Tibetan for these four. They're not called the four weird ideas.

Say, sabmo. Sabmo. Shi gyor.

Shi gyor. Sabmo. Sabmo.

Shi gyor. Shi gyor. Sabmo means profound, profound.

Shi means four, number four. And then gyor means, here it means like a statement, four profound statements, okay? Your body is empty, first.

Emptiness is your body, second. Emptiness is nothing but your body, three. Your body is nothing but emptiness, four.

And we'll go through these four. The first one is, and this is the hardest one, your body is empty, okay? Your body is empty.

What does that mean? I wanted to make it, can you do that one? We run to something called gyor lam, the second milestone, okay?

The second milestone. The first milestone was path of accumulation. Accumulating what?

Enough good karma to understand emptiness, okay? The second path, or the second milestone is called gyor lam. Say gyor.

Lam. Gyor lam. Gyor lam.

Gyor lam, gyor means preparation. Lam means path, like lam rim, okay? Path of preparation.

Preparing to do what? Guess. Yeah, see emptiness directly, okay?

See emptiness directly, which will happen at the third milestone, okay? Like, your physical life has to involve getting born, growing up, getting educated, having a career, having a family, getting old and dying, okay? Those are the milestones of your physical life.

Your spiritual life must have these five milestones. You must have these five. They don't occur at a certain age, as the other milestones occur.

They occur at a certain spiritual maturity. And they could happen at different times for different people. Some people could get through the whole thing before age 25.

Some people, they might not start on the path of accumulation until they're already 50. You see what I mean? This just depends on your spiritual IQ.

But you, you know, you can do without the physical life milestones, you know? It doesn't matter if you make it through college. It doesn't matter if you have a good career.

It doesn't matter when you go to the nursing home or you don't, okay? But you've got to get through these milestones, okay? These milestones take precedence over the other milestones.

Let those other things take care of themselves. If you don't get through these milestones, you will just die. And then your mind will wander on to somewhere else, okay?

You have to, you know, the whole world is obsessed with getting through physical milestones in their life. I must, you know, get married. I must have children.

I must, you know, get a career, have money, have a house. These are the milestones, your first Frigidaire. You know what I mean?

But you have to get through these five spiritual milestones. Sooner or later, everybody has to get through them. And you have to do it while you're young and healthy enough to do it.

It takes a lot of effort. It takes a lot of wisdom and concentration, okay? So jor lam is path of preparation, getting ready to see emptiness, okay?

Getting ready to see emptiness. And it involves a lot of the things we talked about last night. You're going to have to find a teacher.

And thinking you can do it without a teacher is impossible. It's like learning piano well without a teacher. Seeing emptiness directly is about like learning piano very well.

And I don't know how many hours it takes to learn piano well, but with a very fine teacher, I guess it would take three or four hours of practice a day for maybe five to ten years or something. Don't think that emptiness is anything less than that. It's going to take about that kind of effort.

And you must be close to a person who has seen it or who is very well versed in it and who can teach you what to do. Or it's just, it's unlikely. And many scriptures say that.

The scriptures say nobody got enlightened reading books. You have to read books, but under the guidance of a human being. You have to do that.

Find a teacher. Then we said serve them. Not because they need it.

If they saw emptiness, they probably don't need it. It's probably more trouble for them than not getting served by you. But for you to collect the right karma, help them.

And it doesn't mean like overfeed them or give them your bank book or grovel at their feet or stuff like that. That's not the point. In their holy activities, like Lama Tsong Khapa is an extraordinary example.

He needs help. His vision is too big to be completed by one person. So you throw yourself into helping them.

And you help them help other people. That's the main thing. It's not that Lama Tsong Khapa needs 50 Rolls Royces or anything like silk robes.

He can hardly keep his robes on because he keeps giving them away to people. But he's got these beautiful projects to help thousands and hundreds of thousands of people. And you help them.

Serve the needy. Sick people, elderly. I think in our society, the most common is people who are depressed, people who have anxiety, people who are stressed out from life, people with substance addictions, like that.

I mean, those are unlimited supply. My Lama used to say, He said, liquor business is great. And I said, why?

And he said, think about it. If people are really happy, they drink. If people are sad, they drink.

It's an unlimited supply of customers. If you're in the Dharma business, it's the same. There's no shortage of miserable people.

You can always find a miserable person within about 20 feet of you. Go help them. Take somebody, especially an old person, go help them with their groceries for free.

Find somebody in your building or somebody nearby or somebody who's sick or somebody who's got trouble. And I don't mean all day long, because you need your time to study and meditate. But have somebody that you kind of adopt and take care of them.

That's very important for seeing emptiness directly. Then study like hell. I'll say like crazy.

Study like crazy, many, many hours. And you have no excuses. You have 18 ACI courses, 10 meditation modules.

Michael and Bonnie Moore are here. You can order them. You don't have to pay for them if you don't want to.

Do them. It's the complete Geshe course. Then there's 10 meditation courses that go along with them.

And after you get good at that, John Brady will give you the CD-ROM with the 3,000 Tibetan books on it, and you can start reading those. And, you know, it's enough. You have everything you need.

So you study like crazy. I would say to see emptiness, 500 to 1,000 hours of classroom time with a qualified lama. And go back again and again and again.

Don't say, I heard the Diamond Cutter twice already. When you've heard it like 100 times, you can move on to the next one. The nature of spiritual learning is that it just sinks in and sinks in and sinks in, deeper and deeper and deeper.

Tibetans don't read a book and put it on a shelf and go on to the next book. They live with the book their whole life. You know, something like the Diamond Cutter would become a lifelong friend.

And it wouldn't be something that you go from cover to cover and then put it up on the shelf. You would walk around with this book for the rest of your life. You would have it in your briefcase or your purse for the rest of your life.

And just take it out and look at a few sentences every time you can. Like that. Learn to meditate.

Must reach a point of shamatha. You know, I think there's all these rumors about shamatha. It's like some big sexy thing.

Only Milarepa reached shamatha. Only Je Tsongkapa reached shamatha. Normal American people are too stupid or the wrong color to reach shamatha or something like that.

It's not true at all. A normal American person with normal effort can reach shamatha under plain old normal conditions in six months or a year or something like that. What I emphasize is what I talked about yesterday.

You need about one to two hours in deep meditation per day. And it has to be every day. You can't expect to do it every other day or three days a week or four days a week.

It won't work. And what I like is same time every day. Okay?

It's seven o'clock, eight o'clock, ten o'clock, but same time every day. So it gets to be like, I worked for this company for 16 years. We had lunchtime at one o'clock.

Then on my days off, at one o'clock, I'd have this intense hunger. You know, just because that was my feeding time, you know what I mean? It's the same with meditation.

If you do it at the same time every day, then it becomes a pleasure. It becomes easy. And you just go into meditation at that time every day.

Okay? This is very important. Then as I said yesterday, really, really important to maintain a state of meditation for the rest of the day.

Okay? You can't be on your cushion one or two hours a day and then abuse your mind and your body for the other 23 hours and expect to be able to meditate the next morning. Okay?

You can't do it. So, what does it mean to abuse your mind? gu je nyi, right?

We talked about it yesterday. Living in the past or living in the future, okay? I used to be so handsome.

I used to have hair. I used to be able to surf. I had all these neat girlfriends, you know?

And, you know, living in the past, what you did in the past, or living in the future, you know? Today, it's 2 o'clock. At 4 o'clock, I have this to do.

At 6 o'clock, I have this to do. Tomorrow, I have this to do. I have this other project.

And then somebody says, well, what are you doing at 2 o'clock? I'm worrying about 4 o'clock, you know? And at 4 o'clock, you're worrying about 6 o'clock.

You see what I mean? And you're just living in another time zone. You're never in your own time zone.

You see what I mean? And that's the first... That's the first way to abuse your mind, that you won't be able to meditate so well the next morning.

Okay? To live in the past or to live in the future. Okay?

The second one is called nyi muk gyi, to not get enough sleep or to eat too much. Okay? Which makes your mind stupid.

Okay? So, you're too heavy. Your body's too heavy.

Your body is filled with food like 12 hours out of the day. You know, that's why monks in the old days used to not eat afternoon. It was just that you don't have your body weighted down during a certain part of the day.

You can't meditate well if your body's weighted down. And just the whole American thing of snacking constantly and always being filled with food, then your mind never has a chance to clear. So, you know, eat a couple of nice huge meals and then give your body a chance to rest and then your meditation will be sharp.

And get enough sleep. Okay? We're not all like Lama Zopa.

The rest of us need to sleep. And figure out what kind of sleep you need and do it. Because if you don't get enough sleep, you can't meditate.

You just forget it. You won't be able to meditate. The other one is nirsam.

Don't... I'm sorry. Duba la dumba means don't feed your mind too much stimulation during the day.

This means too much thinking about sex. Some is okay. But just if it gets to be an obsession, it'll disturb your meditation the next day.

Stop thinking so much about food. Get yourself down to a basic diet that you need to keep yourself going. That's fine.

It doesn't mean you can't go out to a Mexican restaurant once in a while and splurge. Okay? But just in moderation as the Greeks would say.

And then not too much music so that all day long you're just listening to music indiscriminately and then the next morning you're trying to meditate and all these stupid songs come into your mind. Okay? Listen to your favorite songs and then give your ear a rest so that they don't pop up into your meditation.

Things like that. Okay? Magazines.

Newspapers. Find out the news for 10 minutes and then drop it. TV.

Radio. See a news program and then turn it off. Okay?

If you don't then that kind of stimulation will just ruin your meditation. You'll never be able to get into deep meditation. Okay?

So if you're disciplined enough, you can have a family, you can have a normal job, you can have a normal life but you have to be disciplined about these objects, about this stimulation. Whether it's food or sex or music or newspapers or radio or television. You have to be disciplined enough to keep it from bothering your mind so that it would come up in your meditation.

Okay? It'll subtly disturb your meditation. Okay?

Notice them. Avoid during those 23 hours being angry at other people, having an incident with other people, having tension or anxieties with other people. That's a special harm to your meditation.

The next morning or one week later and you don't know why your meditation is not going so well. One good blow up with another person is enough to ruin your meditation for about a week. And you won't know why.

You'll be trying to meditate and you won't be able to meditate. And you won't know why you can't meditate. And that's one of the reasons.

Okay? And then the last thing is a tenso. Meaning you can't...

you have these unresolved doubts about things. And by the way, they're not healthy doubts. Healthy doubts are healthy doubts in Buddhism like, I'm not sure about future lives.

I'm waiting for more information. Okay? That's a healthy doubt.

Stupid doubt means, gee, I don't know if I should meditate today. I'm pretty busy. Are you going to die today or not?

Oh, maybe, but probably not. Maybe I didn't die yesterday. You know what I mean?

And that kind of stupid thinking, like doubts about your spiritual life. Come on, get real. Every person before you has died.

Billions of people have died on this planet. Were you some kind of exception? And look at your grandparents.

You're going to end up just like that. Every young person I ever met thought they were going to be an exception. I will not eat roast beef the way my grandmother did.

That's what made her like that. You know what I mean? And come on, get serious.

Whatever they did to abuse themselves, you can avoid that and you might look a little better at their age, but you'll look like them two years after that. So it doesn't matter. You will be just like that.

You will be unable to think clearly, unable to see, unable to walk. Come on, don't have this kind of doubt. This kind of doubt is just laziness.

You didn't investigate the matter by opening up the newspaper to the obituaries. Come on. You think you're not going to be there?

Make up your mind. Are you going to be a Dharma student or are you going to be a dabbler? What do you call it?

A dilettante. Dharma dilettante. Make up your mind.

You're either going to do it or don't do it. Either go be a pleasure seeker in the Budweiser sense or get serious. Come on.

Be good at what you're doing. Be good at it. Get good at it.

But don't sit there on the fence and say, I'll do half day eating and half day practicing or something like that. It doesn't work like that. Just make up your mind.

Those are the obstacles in the 23 or 24 hours that you're sorry, 22 hours that you're not meditating. Those are the things that will ruin your meditation for the next week or two weeks from now. What I mean to say is you have to stay in a state of meditation all day long or you won't make it to see emptiness.

You have to get to this point where your life is under control and your activities are under control and your practice time is under control that you are pretty much mellowed out. You're in a pretty mellow state of semi meditation all day long. You have to be able to do that or you won't see emptiness directly.

This is all good things to do in jorlam. Now I'd like to talk about the last moment of jorlam. Then we can understand what the Buddha meant when he said your body is emptiness.

Emptiness is your body. Emptiness is nothing but your body. Your body is nothing but emptiness.

Like that. Those four statements. You can't understand that until we talk about the final moments of the path of preparation.

Ready? Say chö chok. Chö chok.

We talked about two of the five milestones. First milestone was come on, wake up. Life is not going to get better and you're going to die anyway.

Do something. Try something to get out. Second milestone was path of preparation.

Get to a good lama. Study emptiness. Get yourself ready to see emptiness directly.

Do what you have to do. Get serious is the second milestone. Commit a major part of your life to your spiritual life and forget about the physical milestones.

They just collapse anyway. So get through the spiritual milestones of a person's life. Now there comes a time during the last minutes of the path of preparation.

I'm talking the final hours of the path of preparation. Path of preparation might go on for five, ten years. We're talking about the last day.

You've been studying hard. You've been thinking about emptiness. You've been serving lama.

You've been serving people who need things physically. You've dedicated your life to these things. And then finally, you're about to cross into the third milestone to see emptiness directly.

Now there's all these amazing things that happen just in the final hours. And I'm going to describe that. That level is called chö chok.

Say chö chok. Chö means thing. Dharma.

Here it means thing. Chok means best. Best thing in the world.

If something is the best thing, is it the best of all things? Chö chok chö chen. Chö gyi chok yin ma thang.

So you're telling me the best thing is the best of all things? Ma yin.

[Speaker 2]
Ma yin.

[Speaker 1]
You should be embarrassed to say that. Let's go back again. Now that you've contradicted yourself.

Chö chok yin. Chö gyi chok yin ma thang. You're telling me that the best thing is not the best of all things?

Duh. Ma yin de. Why the hell not?

[Speaker 2]
Because direct perception of higher.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, good.

[Speaker 2]
Chok yin de. Okay.

[Speaker 1]
What does that mean?

[Speaker 2]
The direct perception of higher is more supreme.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, the direct perception of emptiness would be better. This is not the direct perception of emptiness. This is at the end of the second milestone.

It's called best thing. But it's not the best of all things. Chö chok ma yin ma thang.

Chö gyi chok ma yin ma thang. So it's not the best of all things?

[Speaker 2]
It is.

[Speaker 1]
No, no, no. Just say yes or no. You know the rules.

No, in a debate, you reach truth by just saying yes or no. If the questions are phrased in a logical order, you will reach truth. Now it might take four hours, but that's not a big deal.

Chö gyi chok ma yin ma thang. See, tell me this is not the best of all things. Chö gyi chok ma yin ma thang.

[Speaker 2]
It is the best of all things.

[Speaker 1]
The best of all things. Chö gyi chok ma yin ma thang.

[Speaker 2]
Yes.

[Speaker 1]
Good? So to see the emptiness directly is not better than this?

[Speaker 2]
It is.

[Speaker 1]
So it's not the best of all things. Chö gyi chok ma yin ma thang. By the way, the audience is supposed to go like that.

When they hesitate, let's practice. Say cheer at the end. Don't get nervous, OK?

Chö gyi chok ma yin ma thang. So it's not the best of all possible things. Just say yes or no.

Mayavatar. So it's not the best of all possible things.

[Speaker 2]
It is the best of all possible things.

[Speaker 1]
So tong yi tong me lo. Di chok mayavatar. So seeing emptiness directly is not better than not.

[Speaker 2]
It is better than not.

[Speaker 1]
So it's not the best of all possible things.

[Speaker 2]
It is the best of all things for the person on the path of speculation.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, OK. You should have said if I said best of all possible things, you should have said Right, it's not the best of all possible things. And then I would say, so it's not best of things.

And then you'd say, why does, I didn't say that. Chi chir, okay, ready? So that's how it goes in Tibetan.

Chir kyi chok mayamata. So you tell me it's not the best of all possible things? You say duh.

[Speaker 2]
Duh.

[Speaker 1]
Right, it's not the best of all possible things. So it's not called best thing?

[Speaker 2]
It is called best thing.

[Speaker 1]
Then you say chi chir.

[Speaker 2]
Chi chir.

[Speaker 1]
Which means, why do you, I didn't say that. Okay, it's called best thing, but it's not the best of things, okay? That's all.

So why is it called best thing?

[Speaker 2]
Because it's the best thing for somebody who's at work, so.

[Speaker 1]
Good, good. So it's because it's the best thing for someone who hasn't seen emptiness yet, directly. That's why it's called best thing, okay?

That's all. It's name is best of all things. But it's not the best of all things.

It's just best of all things before you see emptiness directly. Okay, so we're talking about the final hours, just before you see emptiness directly. Okay, by the way, I'm not gonna talk about seeing emptiness directly in this class.

It's gonna be the next class, or the next class. But anyway, the point is, the moment you see emptiness directly, 20 minutes in the direct perception of emptiness, you are out of here. You know, you can forget getting old.

You can forget death. You can forget all the suffering you ever had. You are on your way out.

Okay, it's called gyunshupa, stream enterer. Meaning, you have stepped on the conveyor belt. You cannot, you will not come back.

Everything's fine after that, okay? You just have to get to that point, okay? Every person in this room can do it.

Every person in this room has to do it. That's what the Heart Sutra is meant to do. It's meant to get you to number three.

If you get to milestone number three, everything's okay, okay? You have to, you know? In your physical life, you have all these milestones in the back of your head.

I want to learn Tibetan. I want to, you know, get married. I want to have a family.

I want to own a house. I want to pay my car off. Stuff like that.

Those are physical milestones. You have to get to this spiritual milestone. You have to see emptiness directly, okay?

Then everything is taken care of. You see your future lives directly. You know the day you're going to be enlightened.

I mean, imagine what it's like for a person to walk around, you know, knowing they're going to get enlightened at such and such a time. And knowing what's going to happen in their whole future. So what do you tell a person like that?

I mean, they become very stubborn, okay? I mean, they just become, you can't stop them. You can't talk to them.

You can't do anything. They know, you know? So what are you going to do?

Are they going to get nervous for something? Or are they going to get doubts about their life? Or are they going to be, you know, somehow unclear about what they need or what they want or what they're going to accomplish?

What can you tell this person? You know what I mean? How would you feel if you saw your own enlightenment directly and you know when it's going to take place and you know how many lives it might be or you know what those lives are going to be like?

So who's going to tell you anything? You become like this very, you know, what's an obdurate person? Like you become a real, like a person who doesn't listen to anybody, actually.

Okay. That doesn't necessarily mean that people who won't listen to anybody are all just in emptiness. Okay.

Okay. Anyway, you never know. Chod chok.

So what's chod chok like? Okay, here we go. Ready?

You've been serving your Lama intensely. You've been studying intensely. You know the story.

You wake up, you make some tea for your Lama. Okay, so here's the, I'm not a very good artist, but here's the stove, okay? And there's some, and there's a burner, okay?

Here's the burner. And the fire's burning. And then you're standing here.

I'm just going to draw a big head, okay? And you're looking at it. And, okay.

And you're like looking at the stove, okay? Like you're standing there looking at the stove, okay? Okay, no, I'm sorry.

what, huh? And, I know, I bet Ellie's is worse, okay. This is hard.

You got to draw it like that, okay? Now your eye, okay? You've got a pot of water on the stove.

You're making tea for your Lama, okay? And this is a real example, okay? This could really happen to somebody.

And you go into chod chok. It's like, it is the holiest, most sacred experience a normal person can go into. And you're, is it the direct perception of emptiness?

No. Okay, get that clear. This is not the perception of emptiness.

This is just before that, okay? And I think over two and a half thousand years, there have been many accounts of people who reach chod chok by chopping wood or something that were misreported as seeing emptiness, okay? They're not.

To see emptiness directly, you have to be in a state of deep meditation. That comes later, okay? But chod chok, the ultimate level of the path of preparation, the last few minutes or last few hours of that path of preparation.

You are looking, for example, at the stove. And don't forget that your eye cannot see a pot of water. Okay, just technically speaking, the eye, E-Y-E, okay, can only detect shapes and colors, okay?

The eyeball, the eye faculty, the ability to see does not evaluate what a thing is. Get it? It just sees shapes and colors.

It does not say pot or water. That's a mental, that's something your mind does. The eye can only detect shapes and colors, okay?

That's all. Eyeball doesn't make decisions. It's like a camera.

It's just transmitting information to the brain. We got a black stick over here, okay? We got some shiny silvery stuff up in the right-hand corner.

And I detect an angle, a curve down at the bottom here. What do you think this thing is? Okay, that's what the eye is doing now.

E-Y-E is sending information to the brain. So we got a curve down here. We got a silver curve down here.

We got some flashes of white. And we got a black horizontal stick sticking right into that. What do you think we got down here?

You know, like T-M-O, okay? And I'm not kidding, I'm not kidding. So get out, get used to the idea that your eye doesn't see a pot.

Your eye detects, okay? Your eye detects colors and shapes, okay? I mean, that's all.

It doesn't form images or, you know, that's up to your brain to decide what this thing is, okay? Then your brain, okay, this is gonna think something, sees a perfect pot, okay? Your brain forms this image of a pot, and it's perfect.

Meaning, this is what Jung called an archetype or things like that. It's a mental image. It's a perfect little pot.

It's about this big. I'm not kidding. I mean, if you really become aware of what your brain is doing, you get a feeling of about this big, you see?

It's like some part, of course it's not actually in a part of your mind or someplace like that, but if you ever were focusing on your image of the pot, it's about, it would feel about that big, and it's this perfect little thing. It's ridiculously perfect, you see what I mean? Like you can see the back and the front at the same time.

You know, it's not a flat image where you have to touch the back and make sure there's pot over there too, you know what I mean? Or jump to the other side and look at the back and then get to the front and make sure that both sides have bottoms to them. You see what I mean?

Your mind forms this perfect, impossibly perfect little pot, okay? It's perfect. It's the perfect color.

It's just like out of a Jane and Dick reader or something. It's just a perfect little pot, you know? And your mind sees this pot.

And, but there's a trick here, and that's that your mind makes you see the pot out here. Okay? Like actually the pot is here in your mind, okay?

But there's this trick going on that you think it's out there on the stove. Okay, what's on the stove, by the way? What has your eye detected on the stove?

A couple of indicators. A couple of parts, some raw data. You can call it raw data, okay?

That's all that you can honestly say is out there. Mr. Brain calling Mr. Eye, what do you got out there? We got a horizontal black stick.

We got a curve, a metal colored curve, and we got some sheen up towards the top. And you notice that Eye doesn't say we have a pot. That's all he knows how to say, okay?

But, and then Mr. Mind creates this nice pot. And then there's a trick in the middle. This is very, very important.

There's a trick in the middle. This Mind takes this perfect pot and lays it over those parts. They call it imputation, right?

Like a overhead projector, what do you call it? A transparency. It lays that perfect pot on those parts, okay?

Okay, it lays it over there so well that you think you're looking at a pot, okay? I mean, you swear the pot is out there on the stove. Your mind is doing it so perfectly, so flawlessly, so seamlessly, that you believe the pot is out there, okay?

You believe that all the time, 24 hours a day. Your mind is doing this. It's just making these images and then setting the image between your eye and the pieces and the data, and it's making this thing a pot, okay?

It's doing that all day long, okay? All day long. In reality, this one doesn't exist, okay?

We'll just go like this, okay? That's emptiness, all right? That's what they mean when they say emptiness, okay?

There is no pot that doesn't exist, only because this idea is being stuck on these parts. There is no pot on the stove, okay? There is no pot on the stove.

Okay, in Choo Chok, at the highest, in the final hours of thousands and thousands and thousands of lifetimes of trying, okay? And if you're sitting here, you've been trying for thousands and thousands and thousands of lifetimes. You didn't get here by accident.

There's no accidents. You got here because you've been studying this for probably millions of lifetimes, okay? And you have a shot now for it to be your last lifetime.

You can get to Choo Chok, and you're just sitting there looking at the pot, and suddenly, in Choo Chok, you say, my God, there is no pot out there, okay? It's just a bunch of pieces. It's just a bunch of indicators, and there's a pot in my mind, and what I thought was there is not there and never was there, and that's emptiness, okay?

That's the emptiness of the pot. And at that moment, you realize it for the first time. Now, I can describe it to you.

I can tell you about it, but you're not getting Choo Chok right now. You have to go through Tsog Lam. You have to find a Lama.

You have to serve the Dharma. You have to serve sick people, old people, needy people. You have to keep your vows, morality.

You have to study like a madman, a madwoman, okay? You have to learn to meditate, and you have to stay in a state of meditation most of the day, which means don't abuse your mind and your body with newspapers, radios, music, food, sex, in excess, okay? And then you'll be able to see this thing, okay?

But at that moment, you realize, in this flash of understanding, that you have never seen a pot, and there has never been a pot on this door, and all you ever saw was some indicators, and your mind put this image on it called pot, and it exists only in your mind, okay? And it's just this intense moment of recognition, okay? Hang on one sec, okay?

What you have just perceived is not emptiness, okay? Emptiness is this absence of this pot. That's not the emphasis here.

What you've just perceived is that what you thought was a pot all these years was just a collection of things, pieces, and then your mind jumped to the conclusion pot, made a pot in your mind, overlaid it on that thing, and you're watching a pot, and you believe that pot's on the stone, okay? That's, for the first time in millions of lifetimes, you have just seen a thing called dependent origination. Very famous word in Buddhism.

I like to re-translate all these old words. This is like an early translation of that word, but I happen to agree with it for once, okay? It's not a bad translation, okay?

Meaning, things occur in dependence on other things. Di jungway na di chung. That's how the Buddha said it.

This occurs because that other thing happened. A is happening because B happened already. That's all.

Now, you always heard it was cause and effect, or the thing and its parts, or something like that. Those are lower schools interpretation of dependent origination. The ultimate meaning of dependent origination is what you see at the last moments before you see emptiness directly.

In the final hours of millions of lifetimes of work, and in the final hours of your second milestone, spiritual milestone, right? You've got to a Lama. That was number one, right?

You had a disaster in your life, if you're lucky. Lots of people died in your family. You got cancer, then you got over it, or something like that.

If you're lucky, you have a strong disaster in your life. It pushes you to wake up. Then you study like crazy, meditate like crazy.

Then at the final hours of that process, my God, there never was a part there. It's like, boom, and then you've seen dependent origination. Why do they call it dependent origination?

That part that you thought you saw depended on these pieces and this idea. Now, where does the idea come from? We're gonna talk about that after we see emptiness directly.

[Speaker 2]
Okay?

[Speaker 1]
That comes later in the Heart Sutra. Why did this particular thought pop up in your mind and not a horse or a cow or something like that? That's another story, okay?

But you have this intense realization that you're living in a world of ideas or images, mental images, and you are collecting data from the outside. Okay, there's a stick and a little part of a circle and some qi. And then your mind says, let's call it a pot.

What do you think? And then, boom, it's a pot. It's a perfect pot.

You can even see the back, which is impossible, right? And you think you see a pot. Okay, you've just caught yourself doing dependent origination.

Okay? That is the ultimate meaning of dependent origination. Okay?

Did you have a question?

[Speaker 2]
Yes. So, when you're in this state, when you realize you're not seeing a pot, are you seeing the indicators? And how do the indicators differ from seeing a pot?

Seeing indicators has a...

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, mostly you're perceiving, you're aware. The intense awareness at this moment is that what you've always thought of was the pot on the stove is a mental image in your own mind. That's the main emphasis here.

Now, you're not refocusing on the pot or something like that. What happens personally, you know, emotionally, is that you're like, wow, that pot never existed out there on the stove. It was always a perfect, pretty, little mental image in my mind that I imposed on that stick and that half a circle and that shine.

[Speaker 2]
Would it be correct then to say, so I see the circle and that's not there either, No, that's a long story, that's a long story.

[Speaker 1]
And I'll answer it, but I don't want to go off into it. If then you focus on the circle, if you're very, very careful, you can catch yourself making a mental image of a circle from a few pieces of circle. But that's a whole other story.

That means the parts also have their dependent origination. But that's a whole other story. I don't want to go too far into that.

I don't want you to get lost. By the way, in practical terms, if you stick your hand into the middle of this silver, will it be burnt? Yeah, so don't go spacing out on me.

You know what I mean? If you leave this class now, if you go away this afternoon and never come back, don't go on the internet and say, Yeshe Michael said the pot didn't exist. And then everyone goes putting their hands in pots.

You know what I mean? It's not true. Okay?

It is a projection. It is a mental image. And it goddamn works.

Okay? It has its own reality. Okay?

And that's why it can burn you. Okay? And that's a whole, we're going to get to that after we see emptiness directly.

Okay? So don't, don't doubt. And I always say in New York City, go stand in front of a non-existent taxi cab driven by a wild Pakistani down the street.

You know? And watch it hit your non-existent illusory legs and break them. And then write us a non-existent illusory postcard from the non-existent illusory hospital, you know, about how your non-existent illusory legs got broken.

Okay? They are illusory, but they have their own reality. Okay?

Don't, don't, I never said they didn't. They neither did Lord Buddha. Okay?

So, so at the, there are two statements being made with respect to the second milestone. Okay? And they are in the answer of, of Avalokiteshvara to Shariputra.

He goes, Sharipu rikipo rikipo mo khanlana shreya gipar dujjhim samacchepa chepa dupa te. He says, Shariputra, anybody that wants to practice emptiness or perfectionist wisdom, dita nama tar chak te. You have to see one thing.

sudasabhi pumungam namadakar ye jesu tavo. You have to see that the things around you are empty.

[Speaker 2]
Okay?

[Speaker 1]
That's his first statement. You have to see that the things around you are, he says your body, et cetera. What's that mean?

Those of you who are at Sara monastery. What does your body, et cetera, refer to? Huh?

No, it's a bigger et cetera than that.

[Speaker 2]
All material things.

[Speaker 1]
All existing things. Not just material things. All existing objects.

When they say pumpa la sopa, when he says su la sopa, he means suk ne nam khen gipar. From your body up to the state of omniscience of a Buddha with all the bugs and other stuff between. Okay?

Everything from A to Z. Okay? He's talking.

And he says, toma, it's empty. Okay? Now, if you answer me two questions, you can go home.

No, go have a break. In what way does the pot not exist? Yeah, independent of this thing.

Yeah, from its own side. Where is the one that exists from its own side?

[Speaker 2]
No, on the drawing.

[Speaker 1]
Where's the one that exists from its own side? It got erased. It's the one that used to be here.

Okay? Seriously. That's why I drew it so poorly.

I just wanted you to get that feeling. Get that feeling, okay? There's the, one of the pots we were talking about.

The one that you always thought was there. Okay? It just isn't there.

Okay? Is it just not there at that moment? It's never been there.

For millions and millions of years that you've been suffering. For millions and millions of years that you've been taking on bodies and shucking them off. You know, with whole lifetimes of hopes and plans and disasters between them.

Okay? Millions upon millions of those bodies. It was never there.

Okay? Never. Madhyamika Prasangika High School of Middle Way says you have never, up until a few hours after this moment, seen anything correctly.

Never. Okay? Out of the millions of objects that you've seen in your lifetime, you didn't see one of them correctly.

You were always thinking there was a pot on the stove. You think I'm here now. You think the board is here now.

That's a little image in your mind. Get used to it. Work on it.

Practice it. Okay? It's one thing to go to a lecture and then put the book away on the shelf with your other ACI notebooks to keep the shelf from getting dusty.

Okay? But it's another thing to sit there during a lecture and say, hey, you know what? Let's do it with that guy.

You know? Hey, it's just a round thing and a couple of slits there. And my mind is coming up with this guy and this perfect little picture in my mind.

Try to catch yourself doing it at this moment. Okay? And that one doesn't exist.

So if I say, what's the pot that doesn't exist? You're gonna say the pot that was independent from its own side out there on the stove without this pretty little mental picture I had imposed on a couple of... By the way, these parts you can call suggestive parts.

Okay? They are calling out to be called pot. Okay?

I'm not saying they're not pot-like. They are pot-like. Okay?

They do look a little bit... I mean, they suggest pot to your mind. Hey, look, I'm a black stick.

I got this silver half circle. I got a sheen over here. Guess what I am?

You know, and your mind says, pot? It's just, yes! You know?

And, you know, okay? And what I'm saying is that the data makes sense. We call it sema, pramana.

Means valid perception. Means you drew a reasonable conclusion. Okay?

It looked like a pot and you thought of it as a pot. But there was no pot by itself until you walked up with your mind and made it a pot. Okay?

There is no pot by itself. So what's the pot that doesn't exist? One that could exist independent of your mind.

Okay? And the way your mind organizes those parts. That kind of pot doesn't exist.

Never did. That's emptiness. Now, in what sense does a pot really exist?

A pot that, A, looks like a pot? And a pot which, B, my mind thinks of as a pot is a pot in which I can make my morning tea. Okay, got it?

I'll say it again. In what sense does a pot not exist? There's no pot out there independent of my mind from its own side.

In which sense does the pot really does exist? Oh, there's parts of a pot and I think of it as a pot and therefore use it as a pot. And that kind of pot I can cook my morning tea in.

Okay? And I can prove it because I had tea this morning. Okay?

We're not living in some kind of illusory world where nothing exists. I had Earl Grey tea this morning. It was made in an illusory pot.

Okay? The pot wasn't what I thought it was, but the pot existed. Okay?

Because my mind thought of it as a pot. Okay? And that's enough to be a pot.

Got it? Now we can get on to the four profound statements. All right?

Now that you've got this, in what sense is there no pot?

[Speaker 2]
From its own side.

[Speaker 1]
There's no pot from its own side. Your projection's onto the pot. There is no pot and there ain't nothing.

Okay? Get used to it. I'm standing up here only because you're projecting me.

Okay? Otherwise I'm just a bunch of pieces. I'm four sticks and some kind of oval and a sphere.

A sphere, oval, and four sticks. Okay? It's your mind making you see me.

Okay? I'm not Geshe Michael from my side. You're making Geshe Michael.

Really. From four sticks, one oval, and one sphere. Okay?

Because that's all your eye can see. Your eye can't see Geshe Michael. Geshe Michael's an idea.

Okay? Your eye can't see ideas. Your eye can only report sticks and balls.

[Speaker 2]
Okay?

[Speaker 1]
And then your mind is making me what I am. For you. Okay?

So, I'll say it one more time, then you get to have your refreshments. Okay? In what sense does the pot not exist?

It doesn't exist out there, independent of your mind making it into a pot. In what sense does it exist? Dependently.

Dependent on what? Your projections. And a couple of some raw data.

Okay? Those two things. Parts, and your projections.

Okay? Got it? Okay.

All right, think about it. Cook it for a while. We'll take a break.

Come back in 10, 15 minutes. Okay? Come on.

[Speaker 2]
Session two continues on the next CD.