Серия ежедневной практики, курс 08 — Сутра сердца: медитация на пустоту (2000, Сокел), занятие 6

[Speaker 2]
Session Four One last note from yesterday.

[Speaker 1]
Because what I'd like to do is give you both the practical meaning of the sutra, and then I'd like you to also be able to go through the sutra and know all the technical meanings of it. I'm more worried that you know how to use it, but I think it's also good to be able to tell somebody what each word means, and why it's there, and things like that. So there's one that I left off yesterday, when we were in the path of seeing, and so I want to draw your attention to the sutra on page three, at the last paragraph.

And there's something here that you should, there's a technical thing you should know, okay? Just so you can say you've been through the Heart Sutra technically, and you've been through the meaning of the Heart Sutra, as far as a roadmap for your life, okay? So here's a technical thing.

And don't worry too much about it, but I think you should know. Say, namthar? Gosung.

Namthar? Gosung. Namthar means nambah tarpa.

Tarpa, you know, means freedom, moksha, liberation, okay? Namthar means freedom. Go means a door or a gateway.

And then sum means three. So these are the three gateways to freedom, all right? And this is a very, very obscure idea in Buddhist philosophy, and I'll try to explain it simply.

It's just something you should know if you've read this sutra, okay? On the bottom of page three, Chenrezig says to Shariputra, and thus we can say, Shariputra, that every existing thing is emptiness. Did you find that?

The door of freedom named emptiness. Nambah tarpa gotongpa nyi means, the first of the three doors to freedom is called the door of emptiness, okay? The first of the three doors to freedom is called the door of emptiness.

And it's referred to by that sentence, every existing thing is emptiness. So you can make a circle around that, every existing thing is emptiness. That's door to freedom number one.

This is a technical term, and it has different meanings throughout the four great schools of ancient India. And what that refers to is the emptiness of a given object, like the emptiness of a pot, would be called the door to freedom called emptiness. Okay?

The door to freedom, door to freedom number one, which is called the door of emptiness, all right? So that's just like the first kind of emptiness that you could ever really understand or appreciate. You're looking at the pot, and then you realize that it's not a pot from its own side.

You are making a mental image of a pot, based on a few hints you got from Mr. Eye, you know, calling up to Mr. Brain. We got a black stick down here, we got some curve, we got some sheen, and then mind, under the influence of what? Your past deeds, calls back to eyeball and says, let's interpret it as a pot.

Okay? And then you see a pot. The fact that that pot is not something out there on the stove from its own side, is the door of emptiness.

[Speaker 2]
Okay?

[Speaker 1]
And that's what Chenrezig is talking about when he says, every existing thing is emptiness. Okay? That's the first one.

That's the easiest one. Okay? Here's the second one.

When Chenrezig says, nothing has any characteristic of its own, nothing ever begins, nothing ever ends, nothing is impure, and nothing ever becomes pure. All the way down to there, okay? From nothing has any characteristic, down to nothing ever becomes pure.

That's the second door to freedom. He's referring to the second door to freedom. And it's just this, okay?

Nothing very complicated. Causes have their own emptiness. Okay?

Causes have their own emptiness. That, it means, what causes money? Yeah, now get this, okay?

There's three viewpoints on this. There's three viewpoints on this. Number one, invest wisely, work hard, and make money.

Okay? That's viewpoint number one. That's cause and effect viewpoint number one.

Number two, do good karma for other people, when you feel like it, and work hard, too. Okay? I mean, you gotta have to do both.

Okay? Like, you're gonna have to go to work, start a business, but if you want the business to succeed, you're gonna have to do a reasonable amount of charity for other people. Okay?

That you can call... The first one is worldview, worldly worldview, worldly worldview. Second one is half karma, half worldly worldview.

Okay? No, and many, many Buddhists want to hang on to the second one. And then the third one is money only comes from giving to other people.

Money only comes from giving to other people. Okay? I mean, are you suggesting that if I just engaged in a generous state of mind for an extended period of time, that I would get rich without doing anything?

Yeah, that's right. Okay? That's exactly right.

People would just send you checks in the mail. Okay? People would just come up to you and offer you money.

Period. No matter what you did, if you worked, didn't work, or worked half-time, you'd still become wealthy. It wouldn't matter.

You see what I mean? Because wealth is a projection of your mind. There is no external wealth.

The economies of the world don't work on any other principle, except the projections of the minds of the people who use that money. There is no externally existing wealth. Okay?

The cause of all wealth is only one thing, generosity. Well, then I'm in trouble, because I've got no money, and in fact my credit cards are all run over, which Elie is going to find out the day I go into retreat. You know, and...

You know, so I can't be generous, right? So I can't become wealthy. That's not true, you see.

Generosity is a state of mind. There is this famous debate in Master Shantideva. You know, did the Buddhists perfect generosity?

Yes. Are they perfect? Yes.

Do they give perfectly? Yes. Are there still poor people in the world?

Yes. Okay, so... So they didn't perfect generosity, right?

That's not the point, okay? It's a state of mind. The thing about Jesus and the penny, the lady with the penny gave everything, and then the rich man could only give half or something.

That's the same principle. The woman who gives everything she has, even though it's only a penny, collects much greater karma than the man who gives half his substantial wealth. Because her generosity is total.

Her state of mind is total. So, the real cause... And this gets into a whole worldview war.

Okay? Time Magazine, New York Times, ABC, CNN are fighting with Lama Tsepa for your mind. You know?

And they're fighting for your worldview. On this side you've got your whole culture, and all the history of your culture. You've got a whole Judeo-Christian culture on this side, like a huge tidal wave.

And over here there's a few tiny little lamas, and little books, and they're trying to hold back this tidal wave. And the war is for your worldview. Where do you think things come from?

How do you get what you want? How do you get rid of things you don't like? You change your vows.

You keep your vows. You keep your morality. You follow a sweet and pure way of life.

And that actually changes the reality around you. It has nothing to do with strategy A, strategy B, working hard at this, working hard at that, doing this, doing that, deciding whether to do... The whole world is trying to decide whether to risk their investments, or be conservative in their investments.

You see what I mean? And ignorance has got them barking up the wrong tree. They see only two choices.

Do a risky investment, or do a conservative investment. And the truth is something totally different. Just be generous.

Oh, then I can't be rich. Yeah, you can be rich and be generous too. You see what I mean?

You can be wealthy and be generous too. The wealthiest man in Tibet was the Dalai Lama. I mean, come on.

You know what I mean? So, you can have it and be generous also. So, it's not a question of should you take this job, or should you take this job.

It's not a question of should you work hard, or shouldn't you work hard. It's not a question of should you risk this investment, or should you be conservative. It's not any of the economic theories, communism, socialism, capitalism, anything else.

They're all wrong. They're all 100% wrong. And that's why people go crazy.

That's why 30 economists go through the White House in one year. You know what I mean? It has nothing to do with any of the above.

If people are generous, they will live comfortably. If they get cheap-minded, they will suffer. They won't have enough money.

And that's all. That's where wealth comes from. So, the emptiness of causes of wealth, for example, the emptiness of things as causes, is the second door to freedom.

And it's called... It has a very weird technical name. What is that?

It's called freedom from characteristics. nampa-tharpa-god-senyi-myapa means the door called freedom from characteristics. Now, you know, it's a very technical word.

Nobody explains it right. Each of the four schools has a different explanation. The point is this.

Things aren't caused by what you thought they were. Okay? You can get everything you wanted perfectly by following the laws of karma.

And that's it. I always said about this new airline. I was on a new airline.

They told... We called the... We called the air ticket company and we said, we have enough miles for free tickets to California.

They said, yeah, you do. But you have to go to Islip. And then, Ora is like...

She was on the phone. She says, Iceland, we don't want to go to Iceland. We're going to California, you know.

And they said, no, you have to go to Islip. She says, no, California. And they said, no, Islip, Long Island, you know.

And like, oh, Islip, Long Island. So, there's this obscure landing field like an hour from New York City and there's one little weird airline that takes off there. But you can get for free.

So, you go to the... You go to the door, you know, and you stand there and the stewardess says, welcome to, you know, Islip Airlines. And, just sign this waiver.

I told you this story before. And you say, what's the waiver for? And they said, you can't sue us if the plane falls down.

And I had a cab driver on the way. He was really funny that morning. He says, why do you have to pay for airline tickets before you fly?

He says, you know. He said, you know. He says, I'm paying after I get there.

He says, that puts pressure on them to get me there alive. You know. He was very funny.

You know. So, anyway, there's a waiver. You know, like, we don't know what causes this plane to fly.

And sometimes it flies and sometimes it falls down. So, please just sign here and then you can come on the plane. Then you wouldn't get on that plane.

You really wouldn't. You would pay the extra money and go back to JFK. You know what I mean?

But you do that your entire life. Your entire life is spent trying to make things happen and not understanding why they happen. And then they don't happen how you want them to happen.

And you've been going like that for your whole life. Okay? Everything you try to do during the day is useless.

It's wrong. It won't get you what you want. You say, I mean, why?

Because things are projections. Okay? You're trying to manipulate these external factors.

You're trying to get this job to get this promotion and this person and talk to them and get around this person and, you know, talk to the supervisor. And you're trying to manipulate these external things. It has nothing to do with whether you get a promotion or not.

And didn't you notice it by now? I mean, didn't you notice by now? That's what makes people crazy.

It makes you frustrated. You know, you think all these conditions are in line, you know. And then suddenly they choose somebody else for the promotion.

And you're like, I can't believe that. I can't believe it happened, you know. It's because it has nothing to do with that.

Okay? It's very interesting. And people continue to try to manipulate their external reality and they think that things are going to work.

They didn't work 20 years ago. They're not working for you now. And why do you keep doing it?

You know, why do you keep trying to get what you want this way? Because it doesn't... It's like getting on a plane and having somebody tell you it might fall down.

We don't know why it flies. You know what I mean? But you keep doing that your whole life.

This thing is infallible. You know, they say, oh, karma is infallible. And then, what do they mean?

You know, what the hell does it mean karma is infallible? It means, if you figure out this emptiness stuff, and if you really understand what causes other things to happen, you can make anything happen you want. Period.

You get everything you want. Up to that thing with Bernard Shaw and what's her name? Okay?

No, really. You can... It's just a whole...

It's what mankind has always wanted, which was to control what happens to you. You can just design it and you can make it happen. Okay?

But you have to understand emptiness. The last sentence there on page 3 is, nothing ever gets less and nothing ever becomes more. This is called the door of freedom, called freedom from wishing.

Okay? Freedom from wishing. Don't try to figure out what the words mean.

This is a very, very technical thing. The bottom line is, results have their own emptiness. Okay?

Results have their own emptiness. Meaning, we talked about how you can get causes, things are caused in a way that you didn't expect, and things result in a way that you don't expect. That's all.

The way things happen as results is also determined by emptiness and karma. The way things are caused depends on emptiness and karma. The things themselves depend on emptiness and karma.

That's all. Those are called the three doors of freedom. If you understand that, you can make things happen the way you want.

The fact that you can make things happen, causes and results the way you want, all depends on that picture of the guy with the balloon coming out of his head and the pot and the balloon. The fact that that's how things exist, the fact that that's true, is why you can get anything you want. Because there is no pot on the stove.

Okay? There's no pot on the stove because you're seeing a pot because your mind is making you see a pot. If you wanted to see a pot of gold, okay, you just have to collect different karma and you would see a pot of gold there.

Okay? That's all. So really it's a war of worldviews.

Okay? Buddhist worldview says, you understand emptiness, you understand about good karma, and you can make anything happen you want. That's all.

And nothing else works. There is no economic theory in the world which works. Period.

At all. Except this one, the Buddhist one. Okay?

It's very, very interesting. Okay? So what about the sharing of wealth?

Is it necessary to share wealth now? Is it necessary to make systems by which the limited resources of the world are shared? Where does wealth really come from?

Generosity. So how many people can be Bill Gates at the same time on this planet? Everybody.

It's awesome. It's awesome. You see?

Are you telling me that, you know, just by people's attitudes that like in two years there could be something happen that suddenly creates like 200 billion dollars more of wealth every year? Yeah. Well, let's call it the web.

Okay? After two or three years of sales, this now reached 170 billion dollars of business is done on the web. 170 billion dollars of business is now done per year, and it'll be a hundred times more by the time I get out of retreat.

No, really. A lot of that is just brand new wealth. You see what I mean?

Caused by a bunch of electrons moving the way they didn't used to move. You know what I mean? Where did that come from?

You know? Why is there suddenly this newly created wealth? It's not like...

It's not like they had to deprive somebody of electricity to make the web. It runs on almost nothing. Who made it?

Where did it come from? You see what I mean? You got to think like that.

A few inventions like that and everybody's rich in the world. And they're invented by your karma. They come into existence because of your karma.

Okay? All right. Now we'll get to the real class.

Yeah. Okay.

[Speaker 2]
Why did there... Everything is a projection. Yeah.

[Speaker 1]
Anila said, if everything is a projection, then when you talk to somebody, you're talking to yourself. Okay? Get this.

By the way, that's what the Mind-Only School would say. Mind-Only School would say, when you talk to somebody, you're just talking to an extension of your own mind. But Madhyamika says, you project yourself as the talker, and you project the other person as the person you're talking to.

So there is a separate person talking and a separate person being talked to, even though they're both projections. Okay? Does the Mind-Only School believe that external things exist?

No. How does the Madhyamika School answer them? Yeah.

That pillar exists outside. Why? Because my mind is projecting it as outside.

So it's outside. Okay? Is it just a projection of my mind?

Yes. Is it external of myself? Yeah.

Why? Because I'm projecting it that way. Okay?

That's no problem. Okay? No problem.

You've got to think about it. So it's not like you're going around talking to yourself all the time. Don't think like that.

You are projecting all the beings in your reality, and they are separate from you, because you're projecting them separate from you. Okay? Get used to it.

All right. Don't feel lonely. Okay.

It's true. And then you have to save all those beings that you're projecting. Okay?

All right? Okay. And then you get to be a Buddha.

All right. Now we go into like one of the sexiest parts of the Sutra. It says, ,,Shari-phu de-tao-yi na."

We're on page 4. ,,GSUG ME'A TSOR ME'A, ,,GDUG ZHIG ME'A, ,,GDUG ZHIG ME'A ME'A," ,,NAM PAR ZHIG PA ME," ,,MI ME NA'A ME," ,,NAM PAR DRIN PA'I ROL ME," ,,YID MI DRIN PA'I DRIN PA'I ROL ME," ,,RIN PAR DRIN PA'I DROL ME," Mīkikāṃ mebbene, ikkikāṃ me, ikkidambarśepe, kāṃgīpāru, yāmeddhō. That's the first three quarters of this page, okay?

Basically, he's going through the three great ways of dividing all reality, okay? All reality can be divided in three different ways. This is the subject of the Abhidharmakosha, one of the great early Buddhist books.

This is the great Buddhist book used by all Hinayana Buddhist traditions, okay? Like Thailand or Sri Lanka. The Abhidharmakosha is one of their two great books, okay?

And actually, the Tibetans study it extremely thoroughly. We spent ten years on Abhidharmakosha in the monastery. The first ten years was on Abhidharma, okay?

And it teaches you, in the first chapter, the three great ways of dividing all the stuff in the world. What's the first one? We had it already.

Your five heaps, okay? Five parts of you, okay? So you can...

you know, they say for very intelligent students, five is enough, okay? You can divide everything into your body, those two mental functions that give you all the trouble, your raw awareness, and then the grab bag, skanda, number four, okay? That has everything else in it.

But you can also divide everything into twelve, which is called doors of sense, or ayatana. And you can divide everything into eighteen. How do you get twelve?

In the Abhidharma it says, go down your body, like eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, and then mind, okay? In Tibet, right? Mind.

So those are your six senses. I'll say it again, eye, ear, nose, tongue, touch, and mind. Okay, these are six ways in which you perceive things.

And then there are the objects which those things perceive. Visible things, sounds, smells, tastes, touches, tangible objects, and thoughts, okay? Those, roughly, those six, plus six, is called the twelve doors of sense, okay?

If you want to get fancy, you can split the subject into the eye and the awareness of the eye, the ear and the awareness of the ear, the nose and the awareness of the nose, the tongue and the awareness of the tongue, the body and the awareness of the body, and the thoughts and the awareness of your thoughts, okay? You can divide it that way. That would come out with how many?

Eighteen. So they're called five skandhas, twelve ayadhanas, eighteen dhatus. Or you could say, the five heaps, the twelve doors of sense, or the eighteen categories.

They call them the eighteen categories. What's it got to do with anything? In the Heart Sutra, and this is like everybody's favorite part, Buddha says, you ain't got no eye, you ain't got no ear, you ain't got no nose, you ain't got no mouth, you ain't got no body, you ain't got no brain.

You can't see anything, you can't hear anything, you can't smell anything, you can't taste anything, you can't feel anything, you can't think of anything. And there's nothing to see, nothing to hear, nothing to smell, nothing to taste, nothing to feel, and nothing to think anyway. Okay?

And then over the centuries, people have misunderstood this, passed on their misunderstanding in a beautiful lineage to other people. You know, oh, nothing exists, nothing matters. And then you get this famous thing, Joanna, what's her name?

Macy wrote in her book, you know, one of her books, she said she was at this Buddhist conference at a hotel in Oregon, and they're coming down after the thing to check out, and the lady next to her sets down her suitcase, and it breaks open, and all the hotel's towels come out. You know, and this Buddhist, you know, philosopher lady is like that. And then she says, well, everything's empty anyway.

You know what I mean? Which is the ultimate stupid statement in Buddhism, you know. Because things are empty, you have to be moral, okay?

You want to have good perceptions, good projections, they're put there by your morality. So the stupidest thing in the world to say is, things are empty, so I don't have to be moral. Come on.

Because things are empty, because the world around you is a blank screen, you goddamn well better put some good karma in your head, because that's going to determine what you see. You see what I mean? And to say the opposite is just totally, completely crazy, okay?

So it's not right to interpret the Heart Sutra at this point and say, oh, Lord Buddha is the ultimate nihilist, you know. Lord Buddha said nothing exists, so I can go around spaced out all the time, and I don't have to worry about my responsibilities, because I'm a Buddhist, you know. It's completely the opposite of what's right, okay?

So you can't interpret it that way. So what is Lord Buddha talking about? Give me some guesses.

He just went through and said, all the things that you normally experience don't exist. What's he mean? What's he really mean?

[Speaker 2]
Say again?

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, out there by themselves they don't exist. And the commentators say, Lord Buddha gave you the necessary adverb earlier. Let me see if I can find it for you.

You got page 3 there? Do I got page 3 there? Look at page 3.

Paragraph 2. He says, see the five heaps, the five parts of a person, as being empty of any essence of their own. Got that?

Paragraph 2. Lord Buddha meant you to take empty of any essence of your own, and apply that through the rest of the sutra. So he didn't go through the whole sutra and say, now we're on page 4.

He didn't say, there are no eyes which exist through an essence of their own. There are no ears which have an essence of their own. There's no nose which has an essence of its own.

There's no tongue which has an essence of its own. It gets boring, right? I mean, it's a lot better to say, And it sounds cooler in Tibetan and Sanskrit.

So, he didn't feel it was necessary to go through and say, there don't exist from their own side, through their own essence, your ears. And there don't exist from their own side, through their own essence, your nose. And he just says, no ears, no nose, no tongue.

Okay, it's more powerful, right? And then, it caused a lot of trouble over the last 2,000 years. People said, oh, he's a nihilist.

He thinks my body is illusory. So therefore I can do whatever I want. You know what I mean?

That's a common misreading. Okay. By the way, some commentators have even a deeper way of interpreting this.

I'll give you a clue. And then you tell me what it means when he says, no eyes, no ears, no nose, okay? Etc.

They said, link it back to the path of seeing. The third milestone. What's happening at the path of seeing?

Yeah, while you're in the direct perception of emptiness, what about your eyes and your ears and your nose and all that? You cannot perceive them. You cannot perceive them.

Impossible, okay? There's ultimate reality. Say, dundam.

Dundam. Dhamma. Dhamma.

Kunzop. Kunzop. Dhamma.

Dhamma. Dundam. Dhamma.

Dhamma. Kunzop. Kunzop.

Dhamma. Dundam dhamma means ultimate reality. Okay, ultimate reality.

Emptiness itself. Kunzop dhamma means normal reality. Normal reality.

The word kunzop means deceptive, meaning, normally it fakes you out. Most people are tricked by normal reality. So it's called deceptive reality.

These are called the two truths or the two realities. I don't like to call them truths much, because truth implies a value judgment or something, and it doesn't refer to the truth of those realities, it refers to the actual realities themselves. This is kunzop dhamma.

This is kunzop dhamma. This is normal reality. These are objects within normal reality.

So calling it the two truths is a little deceptive, I think. And then ultimate reality is emptiness itself. While you are perceiving emptiness directly, while you are in that 20 to 30 minutes of direct perception of emptiness, we said that you're looking at all objects in the universe, but what is appearing to you?

Yeah, sheer emptiness. You're looking... It's like looking at a group of people, but only seeing...

I'll give you a better example. When a kid is watching TV, or you're watching TV and it's a very boring show, but somebody's cooking chocolate chip cookies in the kitchen, and your eyes are on the TV, but your mind is on your nose. And if somebody asks you later, what was on TV, you say, I don't know.

That's an example. You're looking at all existing objects, but all that you're seeing is emptiness. All that's presenting itself to your mind is sheer emptiness.

And you cannot have another thought. You can't think, I'm looking at emptiness. Oh wow, I finally did it.

Wait till I tell my friends. Or something like that. You can't think like that.

You can't hear anything. You can't feel anything. Because those are normal reality.

And during this 20 minutes, you are in direct communion with ultimate reality. Nothing else can appear in your mind. So can we say that at that moment, page 4, no eyes, no ears, no nose, no tongue.

You see what I mean? And that's another way of reading the sutra here. In the direct perception of emptiness, you are unaware of everything else in the world.

And that's the second meaning of the sutra here. This brings us up to... So that covers the first three paragraphs on page 4.

Why Lord Buddha goes through listing everything in the world and saying they don't exist. So you're not going to believe anymore when somebody gets up and says, Lord Buddha said none of this stuff exists. Lord Buddha never said that.

Somebody comes up to you and says, Lord Buddha said the things that you see don't exist. Then show them a hammer and say, Can you see this? You say, Yes.

Bam! You know, and then check. Check in with them, okay?

Okay? No, I mean, it's obviously false. And the fact that so many people take that seriously is amazing.

You know what I mean? Lord Buddha never said that, never meant that. The bump on your head after I hit you with the hammer is a perception.

It's a projection that swelled up due to something you did in the past. All right? And by the way, I want to say one thing about that.

There's a thing called, say, depe jendang rikpe jendang depe jendang rikpe jendang depe jendang means people who believe in karma because they believe in their teacher. Okay? Literally, it means they follow faith.

Followers after faith. Rikpe jendang means I believe in karma because I understand karma. I understand emptiness, and I understand projections.

Okay? I'll give you an example of the first kind of person. Some Tibetan in an elementary school in Tibet, 1945 or something, you know, and Mrs. Melvin, the first grade teacher, says, don't step on bugs, Tashi, Johnny. You know, and then Johnny says, why? He says, because you might get born as a bug. They say, oh, okay, I'll stop stepping on bugs.

Okay, that's called depe jendang. They don't understand, and most Tibetans are like that. I mean, they don't really understand karma or emptiness.

They're just doing it because their lamas have told them that century after century. They are not stepping on bugs, but they don't know why they're not stepping on bugs. You see what I mean?

And then rigpa jendang means, don't step on a bug. Why? Because when you have the perception of your foot coming down on a bug, a seed is planted in your mind.

And then later, when you look at this blank cylinder, that seed will force you to see it as a bug's leg. Get it? There's a big difference between those two.

Huge difference. You see what I mean? One is wisdom.

One is just believing what somebody told you.

[Speaker 2]
Okay?

[Speaker 1]
I'll say it again. Don't step on bugs, Johnny. Why?

Because first grade teacher told you not to. Okay, I won't step on bugs, because I don't want to be a bug. That's one level of believing in karma, and you don't understand it at all.

The second one is, I understand this thing is just a cylinder. I understand that. My eye can only be seeing a cylinder.

It cannot be interpreting this as a human arm. That's impossible. The eyeball does not interpret things.

Now, there's something in my mind that's making an image of a human arm, and laying it over this cylinder, in such a smooth way that I think it's outside. I think it's out there. It's so smooth.

It's so perfect. It's too perfect, actually. I mean, even imagine you can see the back, but you never see the back.

Okay? And it's making you believe that that thing is a human arm. And when that karma runs out, it'll change to something else.

And you could see a bug's leg on the same cylinder. You see what I mean? The same data, the same...

Remember we had those three pieces of data? We had the silver part, and the circle, and the stick. They're still the same data.

They're still a cylinder, and some appendages. And then, if you didn't have the same karma that you're having right now, you would see me as a real Michael Roach. Okay?

All right. All right. No, really.

Okay? Your karma would force you to see an animal's leg. You see what I mean?

So, really, the only thing that's keeping you out of the bug's world, right now, is some very, very flimsy mental dots flashing through your mind right now. And they could end any moment. You know what I mean?

This rebirth stuff is real. This rebirth stuff is true. You know, if it was that you die, and your spirit goes to some holding tank, and then they take you out, and zip open a dog, and put you in, and zip it shut, and they let you go.

Then, I mean, that's... Come on. That's...

That's hard to accept. But if I say to you, you know, you're perceiving a human arm on a cylinder that your eyeball could not be seeing as a human arm, only because you have some kind of imprints in your mind to see it as a human arm. And those imprints are dying as we speak.

Every time you see your arm for a minute, you use up 65 times 60 imprints. Okay? 3,600 something imprints are used up every minute you see your arm as human.

And you only have a finite quality of those imprints. Okay? They will wear out.

And then you'll see something else. Next karma in line will come up to your conscious mind, and you'll see something else. You'll see it first as dead, and then you'll see it as something else.

That's what rebirth really means. You see what I mean? The thing about the pot means on one hand, you can become a tantric deity.

You can become Tara in this lifetime. On the other side, if you don't, then you must become something else. You know?

You must see it as something else. Why? Because it's empty.

[Speaker 2]
Okay?

[Speaker 1]
Why? Because it's a projection. There is no arm.

Okay? I mean, the rebirth stuff gets very serious when you understand it clearly. It's very, very serious.

So that's the difference between a person who's not squishing bugs because mom said so, or Lama Zopa said so, and then there's other people who are not squishing bugs because they understand that by putting that imprint in their own mind, they would have to see this as an animal later. And they don't want that. They understand how karma really works.

And that... that makes people very moral. You see, I mean, that kind of threat, understanding that kind of threat clearly would make you a very nice person to bugs and everything else.

Okay? All right. Now we get to a part in the sutra, which I think is the most beautiful part.

This is the Wheel of Life. I think you've probably seen the painting. Do we have any more?

No. Just one. I'm sorry.

I didn't warn her. She asks me every day, do I need something? I say no.

Anyway, Wheel of Life. And you should look at it from time to time. In the sutra, at this point, on page 4, next to the last paragraph.

Yeah. In Hong Kong, he held it up for 34 minutes. I'm going to see if he can break his old record.

[Speaker 2]
Okay.

[Speaker 1]
In the sutra, page 4, second paragraph from the bottom, is Lord Buddha starts to talk about the next spiritual milestone. Okay? So the stuff up to there, you can throw it into Path of Seeing, or third milestone, or fourth milestone.

But we're going to go definitely on to the fourth milestone now. Say gom lam. Gom lam.

This is the fourth milestone. Okay, I'm going to go over the other three milestones. We've been through them.

You know, in your life, physically you have to get through birth, childhood, you know, high school, college, career, marriage, you know, etc. These are your external milestones. But a Buddhist has to go through five internal milestones.

You must get through these five. Okay? First one, tsog lam.

You are tired of not knowing why you're sitting here suffering. You're tired of this situation. You finally get fed up.

You say, I want to know what's going on. Okay? Where in the sutra does that happen?

Shakyaputra asks a question. He says, you know, what am I supposed to do? You know, and it implies he's already gotten to his lama, he's already committed himself to his lama, he's already committed himself to studying, he's meditating, he's near Lord Buddha.

I mean, he's already taken care of all that. He's already left his old life behind. And at some point you have to.

Okay? And left behind his old life, and gone on to a serious quest for what the hell is going on. Okay?

That's tsog lam. It could happen at age 15, it could happen at age 50, it could never happen at all. You see what I mean?

That's the first milestone you got to get over. Okay? Second milestone, understanding emptiness intellectually.

Okay? Hours and hours of practice, hours and hours of study, learning to meditate properly, serving sick people, old people, crazy people, people with addictions, serving your lama, serving a Dharma center, path of preparation. And then in the final moments of that path, what?

The pot thing. The pot on the stove thing. You know?

You just saw directly... dependent origination. Good.

You didn't fall for my trick. You people say, emptiness. No, that's not.

Okay? So, second milestone. You just figured out the thing with the pot.

There never was a cup on this table. There never was a cup on this table. This thing that looks so solid in my hand, this thing that looks so concrete in my hand, is an image in your own mind.

You can't be seeing this thing. I mean, think about it for two seconds. You can't be seeing this thing.

How can you see a whole pot? It's impossible. You can't see a whole top if you don't look at the bottom.

Well, where is the top going when you look at the bottom? I mean, the top of the top. Okay?

You can't be looking at the top and the bottom at the same time. Your eye is going... Check out somebody's eye, you know?

Sit next to them, and their eye is going, you know, dig, dig, dig, dig, dig, dig. And your mind is filling in the blanks. Okay?

This perfect little... I mean, that's just an indication. It's impossible to be seeing this whole thing at once.

It's just impossible. It's impossible to seeing it over a course of time. All these things are impossible.

Okay? When does a plant grow out of a seed? You know what I mean?

At what point? And then you take that moment and you examine the beginning of the moment and the end of the moment. Well, at which one of those moments does the thing start to grow?

Oh, the beginning. What about the beginning of the beginning and the beginning and the end of the beginning? At the beginning of the beginning.

Well, what about the beginning of the beginning of the beginning and the end of the beginning of the beginning? I guess I'd have to say it's at the beginning of the beginning. I mean, the bottom line is, you can't be seeing this thing.

It's impossible. You know? It can't be that I...

I pulled it out. It can't be. When's the first second of that?

When did that first happen? You see, it can't be happening. You see, you can't be seeing a whole top.

It's impossible. You've got to see the bottom to see the whole thing. Then you've got to see the top to see the whole thing.

You can't be seeing the whole thing. Because you can't see both... You can't, like, look down here and then look up here at the same time.

Your mind must be filling something in. I mean, these are just clues. Okay?

These are just clues. Trying to figure out when it was that you first started to get depressed. You know?

There is no beginning. I mean, you can't pinpoint it. There's no...

You can't pinpoint anything. It's impossible. Okay?

The very passage of time is impossible. It's not technically possible. Your mind is filling all this stuff in.

It's your own mind. Don't think there's something concrete in my hand. There's not.

Okay? It's an image in your mind. And then, when you catch yourself...

Oh, by the way, then if you wanted to get things and didn't want to get other things, what do you do? Fix your mind. Okay?

Don't go, you know, I don't like this pot. Let's break it. You know?

Just fix your mind. You'll like it by tomorrow. Or a week from now.

You see what I mean? Master Shantideva taught emptiness mainly in the patience chapter. Okay?

Why? When people get a check in the mail they didn't expect, do they pull out their hair and say, Why me? Why me?

You know? No, they don't, you know. But when you get a letter from the IRS, you know, six and a half thousand dollars, we decided to charge you 25% penalty for being a couple days late.

You know? Okay? No, then you pull out your hair and say, Why me?

Why me? Or you get in a car accident, or you get cancer, and you're like, Why me? Why me?

That's when you begin to be interested in reality. Where do things come from? You know?

What produced this thing? And that's when you figure things out. Okay?

That's when you figure things out. So you got past that, then you saw emptiness directly, right? Now the whole next seven lifetimes is called gomlam.

Say gomlam. Gom means getting used to what you saw. When?

In the twenty minutes, okay? And also in the next ten hours, okay? Gom is the ancient Tibetan word for getting used to something or meditating.

Okay? But here it means getting used to. It's called path of habituation.

Getting used to what you saw. You know? Using what you saw to get enlightened.

Okay? Figuring out the way things really work. Okay?

What creates money? What creates money? Like figuring out what really creates money would be an example.

Okay? And we're gonna get back... What I'd like to do now is take a break.

I have one short announcement before that. The ceremony at 2.30 is to take refuge. And if you wish, to take lifetime layman's vows.

And I'll just give you a quick rundown. And then tomorrow, I'll give you a very detailed rundown, like an hour preparation, and explain carefully each vow to you. Refuge means, basically, a very interesting thing.

Now I can tell you, because you studied emptiness a little bit. Okay? It's not going to a picture of Dalai Lama and saying, Oh, please help me.

You know? Please protect me. I'm having a really bad time at work.

You know? And you touch the picture, and you... Namo Buddhaya.

And... Oh, please help me. Picture.

You know? I think that's why the Muslims don't let people make pictures of Muhammad. You know?

So you don't get fooled into going into a temple and believing that this picture is gonna, like, help you. You know what I mean? It can't.

Okay? That's not refuge. Buddhist refuge is committing yourself to a way of life in which you try to understand emptiness.

Like, somebody's being bad to you consistently. There's somebody in your life who irritates you consistently. Refuge is making the right decision about how to get rid of this person.

Okay? That's all. Do you yell at them?

Do you reason with them? Which one? Yell or reason?

You can yell or reason. It doesn't matter. You see?

To get rid of them, you have to stop being angry at other people. That's all. As long as you're not angry back at this person, then you can do whatever you want.

Yell at them, or reason with them. But if you're angry when you reason with them, you didn't take refuge. Okay?

Because you just made them come back to you again. You're gonna have to see them again. Okay?

What's the real reason why this irritating person has showed up in your life? Okay? Because you were irritating to other people.

So what's the way to get rid of this person? Stop irritating other people. Okay?

It doesn't matter whether A or B. Stop thinking like that. It doesn't matter whether you reason with them, or fight with them.

It doesn't matter. You have to stop being irritated. And then you don't have to see them anymore.

By the way, when you make that decision, in the heat of the moment, which usually happens half an hour afterwards, when you make the decision, you know, you really bother me. I mean, I'm supposed to love you. I don't really.

You know? I'm supposed to think you're my spiritual teacher. You really are.

You know? Because you really irritate me. I mean, and it's not like there's some kind of emptiness here, where if you had a joyful state of mind, you could see this irritating person as being sweet.

They're not. Okay? That's reality.

You're having a perception of them as irritating, and that's reality. Okay? But what's the way to deal with them?

What's the way to get rid of them? Stop being irritating to other people. And definitely don't respond to this person with irritating.

That's a true act of refuge. That's the meaning of refuge. That's the only meaning of refuge.

Okay? It's not to go to some picture and say, Oh, Dalai Lama, I have this irritating person, you know, please remove them from my life. You know?

It's not like that. It's like... It's like to understand where irritating people come from.

And it's from your projections, because of the pot thing. And if you don't like them, then stop being irritating to other people, and they'll go away. Master Shantideva says, I swear they'll go away.

That's an act of refuge. So, when you take this refuge vow tomorrow, you get down on the floor with your knee down there, and you're like, I take refuge in Kang-Ni-Nam-Gi-Chok, you know, in the highest of all two-legged people. And like that.

The only deal you're making is to think like this. Okay? And that helps you.

That protects you. Nothing else can protect you. Picture can't do anything.

One million Tibetans were slaughtered, sitting many of them in front of Buddha images. You know, it doesn't help. So, that's taking refuge.

[Speaker 2]
Can we take the layman's vows more than once?

[Speaker 1]
Oh, let me tell you this. Once you've taken refuge once, refuge vow, you cannot take it again. Okay?

Unless you gave it up after that. You see, I mean, it's a lifetime vow. Ji-Si-Tso-Yip-Pa-Du means, for as long as I live.

So, it's a Pratimoksha vow. You cannot take a Pratimoksha vow... I was talking about the layman's vows.

Ah, we're gonna get to it. We're gonna get to it. So, I want to say, if you already have refuge vows, you don't need to take them again.

You're very welcome to come. You're very welcome to see the holy event of people becoming a Buddhist, right? In their minds.

But, once you've taken them once, they last for your whole lifetime. Unless you formally rejected them, you know, in the interim, you have them. Okay?

You don't lose them. Same with lifetime layman's vows. Okay?

Once you have them, you can only lose them by giving them up formally, or dying. Dong-pa-tong-ay-gi-la-nyi means, you gotta either give them back formally, or die, or take a higher vow, for example. So, if you take monk's vows, you lose your layman's vows.

[Speaker 2]
Okay?

[Speaker 1]
Then, if you give up your monk's vows, you can go back again and take layman's vows. Okay? But one, if you have nice, clean, healthy, semi-damaged layman's vows, Okay?

Which is fine. You still have them. Okay?

Unless you formally give them up, you don't lose them. Okay? You can't...

The only way you can lose them is to give them back formally, or to die. Now, if you've taken less than all of the vows, there are five layman's vows, there's a small print in the contract that says, You know, in extraordinary cases, a person can take less than all of them. They can take three or four, or two or one.

Okay? Then you're welcome to come and take the rest with me tomorrow. Okay?

Like, if you held back on the intoxicant one, which is 90% of the people, Okay? And you've decided that it's cheaper to live without it, you're welcome to come tomorrow and take it. Take it with me.

Okay? Now, from my side, I only give all five at once. Okay?

I don't do the, you know, I don't like to give them in pieces. Okay? So, I just want to let you know what you would be committing to if you take them tomorrow.

No killing a human or a human fetus. Okay? I mean, obviously you shouldn't hurt other creatures, but the vow which you're formally committing to do for your whole life is not to kill a human or a human fetus.

Okay? Now, nobody in this room is going to go around killing humans or human fetuses normally. So, why should I take a vow if I'm not going to do that anyway?

If you take the vow, the karma is much, much more powerful. For example, the karmic result of keeping the vow of respecting life is that you become healthier. If you take a vow to do that, you'll be much healthier your whole life than if you had not taken the vow.

[Speaker 2]
Okay?

[Speaker 1]
Taking the vow, making the commitment formally is much more powerful karma. Okay? No stealing anything of value.

Okay? There's many opinions on what value is. The one I think is closest is the cost of a decent sweater.

Okay? I mean, that was the... that was the line.

Okay? Can you steal a pen from work? It's okay, you don't break your lifetime layman's vow.

But if you knowingly, you know, remove someone's coat from the work coat room, then you've broken your vow. Okay? Sexual misconduct in the form of adultery with another person's sworn mate, you know, sworn spouse, meaning they've taken a formal vow of marriage, and you commit...

you commit a sexual act with either one, then you have broken the third one. So people ask my Lama, what if they're divorced? If they both...

if they're legally divorced, no problem, it's not adultery. If they're separated, no problem if they both consider themselves divorced. You see what I mean?

If they're separated and one person still thinks they're married, it's adultery. And that's the... And what if they have boy...

what if they're boyfriend and girlfriend and you're cheating on your boyfriend or girlfriend? You haven't broken this vow, but you've done a very serious bad karma. Okay?

But you can still do that and not break your lifetime layman's vows. Okay? Not that you'd want to, but I'm just saying these are the technical lines.

Okay? So what I'm saying is it's not so hard to keep. No lying about your spiritual life.

Okay? And specifically, no claiming that you've seen emptiness when you haven't. No claiming that you've seen tantric deities when you haven't.

No claiming that you've recognized so-and-so as a tantric deity when you don't have the equipment to do that. And... because those things all imply having seen emptiness directly.

The ultimate lie is to say you've seen emptiness directly. And there's a sort of a unwritten protocol among Aryas, people who've seen emptiness directly, they will not admit it directly. They won't stand there and say, I saw it on July 28th, 1975.

I saw emptiness directly. You know, they won't do something like that. They wouldn't make a statement like that.

Okay? It's a very private thing, and there are many reasons why they don't make direct statements like that. Fifth one is no use of intoxicants, alcohol or drugs of any kind.

Can you use cough syrup? Yes. Can you take anesthesia?

Yes. Can you drink coffee and tea? Yes.

Can you use wine in cooking? If it boils off, but it's not a good idea because it gets you used to the taste. You know what I mean?

Something like that. The vow is, does it lower your inhibitions? Okay?

Or if you continue to sip it, would it lower your inhibitions? You know. So those are the vows to commit to if you take Lifetime Mindfulness.

Bodhisattva vows can be taken in two forms, which that will be in the evening tomorrow. One is a commitment to think like a bodhisattva. Okay?

I will pretend to dedicate my life to other people for the rest of my life. You know? I understand.

I will pretend to decide that I want to become enlightened to help other people. I will reach... It's funny.

I always see it like... I always imagine a guy in a courtroom, you know, and here's a Bible, right? And he's got his hand on the Bible, you know, and they say, Do you promise to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth?

He says, Yes, I do. Then, Do you promise to take bodhisattva vows? Yes.

Okay, so repeat after me. Okay. I swear.

I swear. Try. I swear.

I'm not, just practice, okay? I swear... I swear...

to reach... to reach... total...

total... exquisite... exquisite...

bliss... bliss... bliss...

bliss... bliss... bliss...

bliss... bliss... bliss...

bliss... bliss... bliss...

bliss... bliss... bliss...

bliss... bliss... bliss...

bliss... bliss... bliss...

I'm supposed to give a book's... What do you call it? Blurb.

This is Lama Tsopa's new book. And... It's amazing.

They got it out in a year, this thing. And it's a record of the very holy comments that Lama Tsopa made during the three-month bodhisattva retreat here, okay? Because its subject is bodhisattva, it's tantric, you're not allowed to own it or read it unless you have that initiation and unless you're doing that practice, and unless you respect that practice, okay?

So... But I very much encourage you to... to get a copy.

I think, are there copies here? Yeah. So it's...

It's a beautiful, beautiful book. And... And I was peeking through it and it's very beautiful.

It's very readable and Lama gives very many beautiful... It reads like someone talking. And...

It's very sweet. A lot of stories about great lamas that he's met and how they were keeping their vows and things like that. And...

So I encourage you to get that. Now I get to plug my own book. At some point, Doubleday publishers came and said, will you do a book on Buddhism?

And I said, yeah. And that was about three years ago. And then they got...

It got finished. And... I always wanted to do a book about Buddhism that did not mention Buddhism.

So this book doesn't say... It doesn't have the word Buddhism in it. It doesn't have the word Buddha in it.

There's no Sanskrit or... There's one Tibetan word, which is kapse, which means what? It's a Tibetan donut.

Okay? And... I always wanted to make a book that I could give to my friends who are not Buddhists and who will never be Buddhists, especially family, like my brothers or something, you know.

And, you know, something that they don't think you're trying to proselytize them, but something that has all the beautiful holy ideas of Buddhism anyway. So this is like a story called The Garden. And it presents all the great ideas of Buddhism without saying the word Buddhism.

So I think it's very useful for parents who don't understand you or brothers who don't understand you or anything. I think it's really good for that purpose. The cover was changed at the last minute.

They actually stopped the press and put this cover on. A Mongolian read this book in manuscript form, and the greatest Tanka painter in Mongolia offered to do the cover. And so he did the final scene where the guy is having this thing happen to him.

But I'm not going to tell you what. Okay. And...

This book is called The Diamond Cutter Buddha on Strategies for Managing Your Business in Your Life. And Doubleday came to me and said, you know, it's really cute that you have this obsession with The Diamond Cutter Sutra and you worked in the diamond business for 15 years. Why don't you do a book that combines the two?

And so this is a very practical book for people who work in an office, in a normal office. And it just... Based on Lojong and The Diamond Cutter Sutra, it teaches you a lot about the things we've been talking about.

It tells you what to do in the office when you're having trouble. How to run a business on Bodhisattva principles. How to get...

There's three parts. How to get rich on these principles. B, how to be healthy mentally and physically while you're doing it.

Which means, you know, strategies for avoiding mental afflictions. And how to do retreats. When you're a businessman, as a business executive, how to do retreats that would help you be happier with the money.

And then the last part is how to make your life meaningful in business. You know, like, it talks about the end of your career and how to end up your career nicely, how to look back on your business career and see it as something meaningful. And you know, I helped start a business.

We were three people in the beginning. We had a $50,000 loan from somebody. I'm not an owner, but I was one of the three founders of this business.

And then now it sells $175 million a year. And we just started on a rented desk with three people. And so this is sort of a story about how you can actually change your reality by using the principles we talked about.

And it's for real. You know, Forbes magazine reviewed it. Amazon reviewed it today.

Time magazine spent two days on it last week. And it's for real. You see, the stuff I'm talking about is not...

I'm not just saying for, you know, what do you call it? Sentimental Buddhist reasons. You can actually turn it into cold cash, okay?

And... No, I'm not kidding. And then you have to use it for other people.

You see what I mean? There's no contradiction there, okay? It's very, very in keeping.

The greatest kings of the Kalachakra teachings, for example, they were hugely wealthy. And they got more wealthy using the tantric knowledge that they learned. And then they dedicated it all to other people.

They used all of that knowledge to help other people. There's no contradiction there, at all. You know what I mean?

You do... You can't get rich unless you're very ethical in business. And then you take the money and you use it for other people.

And then the whole world's happier. So, the idea is like that. All the money...

They gave me a nice advance, and I've signed over all the proceeds to Sara Monastery. And they'll be using the money for supporting the monks there. We support about 2,000 monks now.

So, all the money will be going there. Okay? Have a break, and then we'll start again.