Серия ежедневной практики, курс 08 — Сутра сердца: медитация на пустоту (1998, Годстоу), занятие 4

[Speaker 1]
This is the continuation of session three then he says, chen mi si wang chuk, wang chuk means lord of power and In this case, he says he has total power. He's a lord He's a great master of the Dharma, chukyi wang chuk, yinpe na wang chuk. So he's called Ishvara Which means power being of great power Because he's a Master of the Dharma.

So abba lok, lok means to look, abba means down Lokka means the He who looks down. Ishvara means Lord of power and when abba lokka bumps into Ishvara in Sanskrit, it has to change to e. So it's abba lokke Teshvara, okay So it says there it's saying, chandu semba semba chenpo papa chen mi si wang chuk yin Shergiparuduchemba samanyi na nambartashing.

Shergiparuduchemba samanyi means the profound perfection of wisdom Nambartashing means he looked upon it. Okay, he saw it Literally it means he looked upon it and I always wondered what it meant, you know, and it's not very clear Okay, so he looked upon it. What's that mean?

You know, he can't be in meditating on emptiness because he's about to talk He can't be perceiving emptiness directly, so what does it mean he's looking at emptiness, you know, and he says ten ye ki kyang tenpa dinah sherab ke nambartashing means I mean if you take it Him to be not a normal bodhisattva and if you take him to be something more than that Which we can't technically do in a sutra teaching Then he is in meditation and he chani dharpa shergip says Timber down timber as much as the Buddha is he is also Engaging his mind in emptiness. Okay, so if you take him to be someone Special he is engaging his mind in emptiness just as much as the Buddha is and that's one way to read this line Okay number dashing If you take him to be a bodhisattva, which is how we have to take him in a sutra teaching He is he is starting to think about emptiness, okay, and that's what it means when they say he looked upon emptiness Okay, he's like starting to think hey, I wonder about this emptiness thing. Okay Don't we need a number dashing?

Okay Dashing Pumbo Ngapo de da na yang ma shing gi dom pa nam pa tau And then he's also starting to look at Pumbo Ngapo. Okay, he's starting to examine the real nature of Pumbo Ngapo These are the five parts of a person Okay, you have five Components that you are made of Each one is no simple single thing. Each one is a huge pile of things and so they're called skandhas Okay, and that's all skandha means the five heaps.

Okay, each one of the five parts of you is made up of Jillions of other things so we call them heaps. I mean from the Abhidharmakosha, so Those five heaps are your physical body your physical world Your capacity to feel things good or bad or neutral which never stops Okay, you may be in neutral for a while, but it's not that your feelings aren't running, okay Your capacity to discriminate between things. This is good.

This is bad. I like this. I don't like that you you make distinctions between things I'll skip number four and go to number five Your raw awareness, you know the fact that you are not unconscious the fact that you're not dead in Western terms Okay, the fact that you are still aware in general your general consciousness.

Okay, and in all the other parts of you Your anger your jealousy your compassion your concentration your love Your identity There are parts of you and they don't fit in anywhere else. So number four is called the grab bag Okay, and it's exactly what Abhidharma says Do Jai Pumbho Sri Leshen All the other parts of you throw into number four, okay, and then the Western scholars struggle to name it something, you know compositional factors Okay It's just the other parts of you. Okay, it's defined as in the Abhidharmakosha Which is the place where it's defined in the first chapter as all the other parts of hey The rest of that stuff throw it in number four.

Okay, Pumbho Sri Leshen Okay But he says now Avalokiteshvara is going to go into a meditation and Examination of the five heaps of the five parts of a person and you already started one this morning actually last night Okay, you are doing the same meditation. That is the same meditation Okay, you started with your physical world To do that you have to go through your five senses and that's that's what we started already. We're gonna concentrate on The first one which is the visual sense and and that we'll be concentrating on that when you do your emptiness meditation Don't wander all over the place, you know, even the Buddha and Avalokiteshvara picked one Okay, it's probably okay for us, you know, you know pick pick one and concentrate on it visual form is very very important Okay, when you see emptiness directly for the first time it may well be triggered by an understanding about the visual World around you because we live in that most we live in it so much That the first skanda the first heap is called visual form You know, there's this big debate about it.

Why did they call the first skanda rupa or Form meaning shapes and colors It's a word that normally means shapes and colors When they name the five heaps It refers to everything you smell everything you hear everything you taste everything you touch and everything you see. Why did they use? Everything you see to name all the physical parts of you because that's 95% of your world You know your physical world is 95% you live in the visual Okay, when somebody asks you about your world you're thinking about what you see Okay And So we'll concentrate on that when we do the emptiness meditation we could have done smells But they're just harder Like where did that onions You know, it's just harder there's not as many choices and not as much variety normally, okay So let's have a little He says an interesting thing and I always used to wonder about it. I love Johnny dump shooter for that He's very his thinking is very the Amdos think that way. Okay, they write their commentaries that way The Utsang the people from middle Tibet They're much more mystical They're much they much They're not so interested in the words They go straight for the meaning and they give you a long commentary on the heart sutra without mentioning any of the words And that's good Jetson coppers like that, but but you know, since we are foreigners and we don't know the words very well It's kind of nice to have an Amdo sometimes to explain them. Okay he says there it's a time to semba semba Chumbo Papa whichever is he want you key Come on, I'll put it on a young machine in number.

Oh, oh means Look at it. You see tower top. Oh means You should look at it.

It's almost the imperative. You see doll and in and in a lot of additions, it's a star chowl, okay, and and Choney llama the llama from Choney Choney. Llama says I Don't know why he did that.

You know a lot of the editions say should look Should look upon the heap of form etc. Should look upon the five heaps and he says frankly, I don't know You know, I like it when a commentator says sometimes Me then yum-yum I'm not sure. It's the right wording Peltier late data tune, but most of the editions say that to a doc This doc means you you check I can't figure it That means we have to look into this It's like when a commentator reaches a point.

I don't know you guys figure it out later. Okay thought Okay, we'll do a little bit more on this sutra. Mm-hmm We're we're on the second page the fourth line at the very end Young dead say Chandra Sima Sima Chumbo Papa to me.

She wants you should I get part of Jim so much chip and number Some much of a number time. Okay, and this if you know Tibetan this is a little confusing. Okay, so much of a number time He looked upon the profound activity.

Okay, he looked upon the deep actions, okay, so much of a number time and Johnny Lama says Dear summer to be shared a gumball a summer to appreciate a day When the text says He looked upon profound activity the profound activity mentioned here is some with Dominique Lagomba, which means meditating on profound emptiness, so when they say He engaged in profound activity. It means he he also went into a kind of an intellectual meditation on emptiness Okay, if you take him to be a bodhisattva, okay Um Did Donna to touch her name in Gellar some so and Johnny Lama says hey when you think about it they've added the word for Tawa and Chippa Tawa and Chippa Tawa normally means when it's opposed to Chippa like in Samatha wig you and Gatcha and Chippa you the two great lineages It's the lineage of profound Viewpoint how bodhisattvas think especially about emptiness and then there's this which comes down from Manjushri in general and And and and joins itself in in Lord Atisha And then on the other side you have this great lineage about compassion that's in this picture over here. Also those the on the left and the right are the two great lineages of activity and viewpoint, you know one great lineage of how to think about emptiness and all the great teachers are pictured there and then another great lineage of how to engage in bodhisattva activities, especially compassion so wisdom and compassion in two groups of Lamas who have taught it since the time of the Buddha So generally these two are opposed even in the picture. They are the lineage for the profound and the lineage for activities, but he's Somebody's pulling something on us here Some are chippa nila number ta, you know, he looked upon the profound activity and Choney Lama says hey Did you notice he's trying to fuse them?

He's trying to say. Hey, there's a union here between the way you act like a bodhisattva and the way you think like a bodhisattva between The activities of a bodhisattva and the viewpoint of a bodhisattva. Did you notice that in this sentence?

He's jamming them together Okay, it's kind of cool The next line at The end of line seven. Okay, we've covered everything down to to that DNA sanghiki to tell them a shot shot it boo By the way, the way we memorize it in the monastery I we have input in the computer that the prayer books for some major monasteries, which are different and Over hundreds and hundreds of years there one translation becomes more popular among a certain lineage Generally, they're all correct and they all go back to some translator who translated a certain way slight differences Very very slight the way we recited it Sarah May here It says Danny sanghiki to it. Say the name of Shari poo Here, it's a shadow to a tipu.

They're the same thing But that's why I put both versions in there you have one that was done earlier last year version and Then the one you have in your hand, which we're using that is from the Canon itself. It's taken It's much older from the Canon itself But and Tony Dr. Sheriff is commenting on canonical version so I want you to have both, okay Sanghi Danny sanghiki to set a number Sharipu DNA means and then okay Those of you who transcribed Rinpoche's tapes And you wanted to know what the DNA? DNA It means well, then Okay.

Now then DNA Some jar what they do keep it off. He says he's just making a bridge in Composition it's important in in Sanskrit and Tibetan and in English, you know, you set up your reader it's start of a new paragraph in English and then Sangha key to Sangha key to means by the power of the Buddha by the mystic power of the Buddha Okay, sangha key to the word to is very loaded in modern Tibetan to me Means almost like voodoo like to get means to curse somebody So to mean some kind of extraordinary magical power, you know by the power of the Buddha sangha key to Say it on them by shoddy pool by the way, so I get you to Tony Lama says he's meant to indicate that You can forget about shoddy putra acting on his own volition after this point you know, he is a puppet in the hands of the Buddha the Buddha's in deep meditation and He's running shoddy putra, okay, I'm gonna send you to Why is he called said on demo I used to worry about it, you know said on demo and Johnny Lama is very funny here He says what's that? Said on demon mean it by the way.

It's an endemic means that he who has life, okay? And he shoddy putra is called here. He who has life.

Okay, he says chairman say Well know that in general he who has life means he probably hasn't died yet But that's probably not what the point is Doing up She's a capital It's meant shesa means as a term of respect or a term of praise You know, it means the honorable and the venerable. Okay, he who has he who has time technically in the Vinaya Said on Demba is used for junior monks. Okay, and I don't know why maybe it means they have a lot of time to go Because it not the word says they have time, you know And you would think it would mean senior and it used to confuse me a lot.

But in Vinaya It's a term used to address a junior monk. I don't know if that's the point here, but Tony Lama says to put the main point is that it's a it's it's a term of honor Okay, they're using this the venerable Shariputra, okay Mas Sharakipu Inbena Sharipu That's kind of cool, I always wondered why he was called Sharipu, okay in Sanskrit Shariputra. Putra means son Who's Shari, you know, it's like, you know, and he says by the way, his mother's name was Sharika and That's why he's called Sharipu.

Okay. He's the son of Shari. Okay, the son of Shari But we'll get to Sharatwatipu later.

Okay, and I always used to wonder why they weren't the same sometimes in this sutra He's called Sharipu Sometimes he's called Sharatwatipu and we'll see the difference later. Okay Di ngopo la nyen te, tse nyi ma yin te Di ngopo la, ngopo generally means functioning thing in a more General way, it means object and in Amdo colloquial ngopo la means In reality, okay, ngopo la, in reality, nyen tu tse nyi pa ma yin te, he's no Normal person. He's not just a normal disciple, tse nyi pa ma yin te, dren sel le drip sel ki tupa Drip sel ki tupa yin bar shepa e so, a very famous commentary On the Abhisamvankara and it says in there it says hey This guy is an emanation.

Okay, so it's an emanation of a Buddha in the control of a Buddha, okay And that often happens in sutra you saw in the Diamond Cutter Sutra Subuddhi is considered to be a tantric deity Subuddhi, who goes and asks another enlightened being a question for our benefit, okay Dike chenme so, Dike chenme so again means spoke the following, the whole thing that I'm about to explain Was spoken, okay, Shariputra Shariputra dike chenme so and And Shariputra Is about to ask a question of Avalokiteshvara, okay, so the Buddha is putting, it's a, what do you call it? In comedy, there's the There's the other guy, the fog guy, straight, the straight guy, anyway They're both like enlightened beings and they're like one guy's gonna play the straight guy and one guy's gonna ask a question, okay and so So he's Shariputra is about to ask a question to Avalokiteshvara, okay Rikipu kanlala, rikipu kanlala, shiragipada shirma samacchupa chupa dupa de, chittar lapan cha And he starts out by saying rikipu Rikipu is a difficult word. I always wondered what it meant.

Rik means family or type Spelled with a sa, okay, without the sa it means mind Rikipu means son or daughter of type, of family and He says here chur sam chanchu gyi riksu kye pa te Okay, he is They are called son or daughter of type because they are Someone who has been born into the family of the Dharma and more specifically the family of bodhisattvas So they are, I like to translate it as a child of noble family Meaning you're, you are now Due to your own efforts in your life.

You have taken a kind of rebirth. You are a new person. You're born again Buddhist And You've been born into a new family and by studying Dharma and by practicing Dharma You're now born into the Dharma.

You are now a son or daughter of noble family. That's rikipu Okay Some texts here say rikipu am rikipu mo And then some texts don't say rikipu am rikipu mo. Okay, rikipu means son of noble family.

Rikipu mo means daughter of noble family and and Buddhism is sometimes accused of being very patriarchal When you get to the secret teachings it changes completely to the opposite So forget that objection, okay, and I can't explain it to you right now But it's very silly. Okay Anyway, here's somebody from the 1600s saying Hey, we see this written both ways. Some of the texts say son of noble family What does it mean there and he says You can either take The text that say daughter of noble family as a as a corruption Or you can take it as something else Okay, so some of them say son or daughter.

Some of them only say son So he says if you think it's a corruption that it says daughter then you should read son of noble family as as Evocative meaning Oh son of noble family referring to Avalokiteshvara, you see And then the objection is gone. Anyway, so he's saying Oh son of noble family. What are we to do?

You know, how are we to practice? And if you read it The original sutra is saying only son of noble family. Choney Dabhashekhar says then he's talking to Avalokiteshvara Okay, and he's calling him.

Oh son of noble family Kachi Gyape la de Rikipu shed duk che sungwa dana Some people say that in the Chinese version. He says it says here clearly son or daughter of noble family and in fact in the Canon in the Hasa carving of the canon. It does say Son or daughter of noble family and he says if you read it that way, okay Just Some with our session dilapidated Kepa don't put me in a juggles.

Oh, then you have to interpret this line as me. Oh Avalokiteshvara if we are any man or woman who is interested in studying the perfection of wisdom What are we supposed to do? Okay, and then you can read it that way he says He says anyway for those of you who think it doesn't refer to women you're wrong Because the next word is Khang Lala Khang Lala means all of us at all any one of us at all.

And so this is 300 years ago And he's addressing the question. Okay, and he says whether you take it to be Oh Avalokiteshvara or whether you follow the additions that say noble son or daughter It don't matter because the next line the next word is all of us whoever we may be Okay Say Jackie, I don't know shit. I get parted.

She was so much. It wasn't me Chip, but they do, but I always used to wonder it says here Some more chippa chippa Some more chippa chippa day some more chippa chippa. He repeats the word activity and Tony Doppel sugar says how come he repeats the word?

He says the first one is a noun activity the second one is a verb Act to act the activity To walk the talk or something, you know Okay to do the activity and then he says by the way that the verb here means to strive in your personal practice, okay, so You know, how are we supposed to practice? What are we supposed to do? You know, he's asking Shariputra is asking Avalokiteshvara those of us who want to see emptiness What should we do, okay, how should we work on our daily practice, okay?

Cheetah Lapa Ja, he says is loaded The word how are we to train ourselves? What are we supposed to learn? He says the real question.

He's asking is how are we supposed to learn the five paths? And here is the first mention that the heart sutra is a textbook in the five paths And if you don't have a commentary, you might not ever figure that out Okay, the heart sutra is a textbook on how to go through the five paths and you all know Sok, Jor, Tong, Gom, Mi, Lo. Okay.

Sorry, you can't repeat things while you're here. Anyway, it's nice Sok, Jor, Tong, Gom, Mi, Lo. Okay, Sok, Jor, Tong, Gom, Mi, Lo.

These are the five great spiritual levels You have to go through accumulation and it's generally marked by true renunciation Tired of the ups and downs, tired of the relationships falling apart, tired of your body getting old. Okay, Sok, Jor Starting to understand emptiness intellectually. Tong, the profound intense 15-20 minute direct experience of emptiness upon which time you see your future lives, you see your own enlightenment Your whole reality changes, like we spoke about last night You become aware of a whole 50% of the universe that you didn't know about and that you didn't have any proof for and then suddenly You know, there's twice as much stuff to think about.

There's a whole nother realm that you didn't even really believe about Gom, you use your knowledge of emptiness to eliminate your mental afflictions If you're on a bodhisattva track, you also develop your compassion to such a high point that Path number five is enlightenment. Okay, so Mi, Lob, Lob, Lob. So here's the first time Chittar Lopar Jha You know, Shariputra is asking Avalokiteshvara How are we supposed to train ourselves in the five paths?

Chittar Lopar Jha De, Ke, Che, Me, Padang. He doesn't even leave the quotation marks alone. Okay De, Ke, Che, Me, Padang means...

See, in Tibetan there are no quotation marks You don't know where somebody stops talking and where another person starts talking and in the sutra they say De, Ke, Che, Me, Padang means thus did he speak and He says that's just a way to let you know he's through speaking here. That's the quotation line. Okay, De, Ke, Che, Me, Padang Three, the second line at the end Chandra Sambha Sambha Chamba, Papa Chandra Sivam Chuky, Sena Nama Shariputra, De, Ke, Che, Me, So And then Avalokiteshvara Responded to Shariputra in the following words, okay Then he responds and says Rigi Puam Rigi Puum Mukha Lama Shariputra, Chema Sambha, Chepa Chepa Dupa De, Dita Nama Dar Chak De O Shariputra Any noble now he really does say any noble son or noble daughter, son or daughter of noble family who wishes to engage in the perfection of wisdom and see emptiness should train themselves as follows. And then there's this debate about, does the as follows, right, chao te, mean the first two paths or all five paths? And Choney Lama says, I'm on the five path side, okay.

He's explaining, he's saying train yourself as follows in the five paths. Train yourself as follows all the way up to the end of this sutra, okay. As follows refers to all the five paths up to the end of the sutra.

Pumungabodera kyang, ngo nyi gyi tomba nama jesa dao, jesu dao. Pumungabodera layang, rangshin gyi tomba nama yantaba, jesu dao. These are two different versions, okay, depending on which ones you've memorized, but it means the same thing.

Ngo nyi gyi tomba and rangshin gyi tomba means the same thing, okay. It doesn't have any nature of its own. And then he's going to go into the meaning of that.

Pumungabodera kyang, we're now on the fourth line from the bottom. So he has answered Shariputra and he said, everybody should train themselves like this. Everybody should try to look at things like this.

And what he's doing is he's starting to give him an emptiness meditation. And this is the same thing that you're going to be doing. And Kedrup Jei bases his on the Heart Sutra and you're doing the same thing, okay.

He says, you want to see emptiness? Well start thinking about it like this, okay. Pumungabodera kyang, pumungabo means the five parts of yourself, the five heaps, the five skandhas.

Pumungabodera kyang. Kyang used to bother me, I used to say, why he said kyang here? Kyang means also, but he didn't mention anything yet, you know, it's like you should also see the five heaps.

You know, and I'm like, but you didn't say anything else yet, so why are you saying also? Pumungabodera kyang. And Choney Lama is very thorough, of course, and he says, by the way, the kyang means, when he starts out his answer by saying the five heaps or the five parts of yourself, he's referring to them one by one.

Your body, your feelings, your capacity to tell the difference between things, your awareness and all that other stuff, individually, one by one, you have to see as being empty. And when he says kyang, which means also, he's referring to all five together, and that's why he said also, okay. So he's saying, you should also see the five heaps as a group, as being empty, and when he says also, it's a mayinga, it's implying another thing, meaning, oh, by the way, you should also see them one by one, okay, and that's why the kyang is there, and I like that.

He explains the kyang. Pumungabodera kyang. Mo nyi gyi tongpa jesu tong.

And basically it says, you should see the five parts of yourself as being empty of having any nature of their own, okay. And here you get into the meaning of emptiness, the word emptiness. I think it might have been better, although it's too late to change it, if they had said blank or something, you know what I mean?

Empty is a loaded word, you know. Empty can mean, my life is empty, meaning it has no meaning, you know, and that's not the point. I think the word emptiness is a little dangerous.

Blank might be better. Tabula rasa, you know, empty screen in a movie theater or something like, that's the point. The point is that empty or devoid of any nature of its own, until you start projecting onto it.

You see what I mean? So the base reality is blank, and what you see is being determined by other factors. They don't have a nature from their own side, they are like a, you know, I got to the movie late two nights ago, early, for the first time in history, and you know, I got screwed up on the time, and I was like an hour early.

First they wouldn't let me, first they didn't want to let me in, because if I would sleep in the floor of the theater or something, and stare at this empty screen, you know. And it's like that, you know, reality has no, there is no nature of it, and that's what emptiness means. Think of it as blank, you know.

The starting point is zero. Reality is blank until you start projecting onto it, okay, and that's what tomba means. It means the simple absence of anything other than that, and tomba means an absence of something.

They don't have any nature of their own, okay. You can tell about songs, for example, I mean, people, or artwork, or movies, you know. Some people say that was a really lousy movie, some people say it was a really good movie.

It's not a good movie from its own side, and it's not a lousy movie from its own side. And the critics can argue all day long, and they'll never decide. It truly and validly does seem good to some people, and it truly and validly does seem bad to other people.

And so from one point of view, meaning from the point of view of two different people, you can say that simultaneously a movie is, the Titanic was lousy and great, you know. And to sit there and argue about whether from its own side it was lousy or great is useless, and it doesn't have a nature of being good from its own side, or from being lousy from its own side. It's not coming from the Titanic, you know, it's coming from somewhere else, obviously.

I mean, the Titanic is the proof of it, you know. Some people go to New York and see these posters all over the place of this nice blonde guy, you know, and they're like, oh, what, it's disgusting, you know, and then other people are like, oh, it's so wonderful, you know. And it doesn't have a nature of its own, and it's useless to fight over it.

You will see what your karma forces you to see, and it doesn't have any nature of its own. So it's easy to see about whether a movie is good or bad, it's right nature, it's nature, you know. And like that, I missed it, but...

By the way, it doesn't, that proves it, actually, okay. I didn't see it. You know, I paid, and I paid the f***, it doesn't have its own nature.

I didn't see it, you see. For me, it doesn't exist, in a sense. Even the colors and shapes moving on the screen, it's easy to see that whether or not it's a good movie is not coming from its own side, but its very existence doesn't come from its own side, either.

And the proof is that I didn't get to see it, you know, the first five minutes. So you have to think about that. Not only is its content about that, right.

So he says all things, including your body, your five heaps are empty. And when you think emptiness, you do so from the point of view of your five heaps, and you do it individually. You go through the emptiness of physical objects, for example, or you go through the emptiness of a pot on the stove or something like that.

When you are doing it intellectually, you go through that. When you see emptiness for the first time directly, it is always the emptiness of you yourself. For Janice, it will be the emptiness of Janice.

For Al, it will be the emptiness of Al. When you see it directly for the first time, it's always your own personal emptiness. And that's why he mentions the five.

That's why he's starting. He wants you to intellectually study the five heaps. And when the day comes to see it directly, it will be of yourself.

Now he's going to start what we call Samo Si Djor. Samo Si Djor. Samo means profound.

Si means four. Djor means applications. So he's going to start now the four profound applications.

He's going to say about each of the five heaps, he's going to make four statements. He's going to say four things about each of the five heaps. And I'd like to take a break here.

[Speaker 2]
This is the end of session three. Session four.

[Speaker 1]
Session five. Session six. Session seven.

Okay, get ready to meditate. And start watching your breath. And in your mind start working from left to right as if you were turning your head all the way to the left.

Don't twist your neck. And move your mind around the room from the left to the right. And look at all the colors, everything you remember about this room.

And slowly be aware of all the colors and shapes, the trees outside, the grass, the sky. And then the wall, the balcony, the other people. And scan from left to right.

Very slow. When you get to the end then look down at your lap and your knees and your head. Don't try to examine anything.

Don't try to analyze anything. You're just looking at it. Like a child.

That's step one. And don't forget it. When you do your own emptiness meditation at home then that'll be the first step.

And the second step is to try to get in touch with your feelings about those colors and shapes. Try to get in touch with your feelings about this room and the people in it and the things you see outside. Out the window.

And the feeling, the automatic feeling you have that those things exist out there from their own side. And prove it to yourself. This is your ignorant self, okay?

And prove it. I can reach out and touch it. If I spit it will hit something.

If I left the room it's not like this room would disappear. All those arguments that your mind would make automatically to prove that those things exist outside. Out there.

From their own side. And now look at the same things. Move your eyes and your mind from left to right across the room.

Scan the room. But instead of scanning it like a child then now scan it like a person who's been asked, is this stuff existing out there or is it just part of your mind or something like that? And your automatic reaction is of course it exists out there.

If I picked up my meditation cushion and threw it out the window it would break. And that's not from my side, that's from it's side. And scan the room thinking about how you feel about it in that way.

How you feel that it's out there and that everything is existing from it's own side. It's impinging on you and not you on it. It's looking at you.

It's existing towards you. Higher school of Madhyamika says that all of those things you're looking at are dependent origination. So you have to figure out what's the difference between a thing...

What does it mean when something exists as dependent origination? And those of you who have taken the courses you know the lower schools of Buddhism say something is dependently arising or something is dependent origination when it comes from it's own causes. And that's useful to think about.

And people are very excited nowadays. People write books about how the Buddhist idea of dependent origination and other ideas of relationships or modern ideas of society and relationships that everything is interlinked and everything is helping to cause everything else and there's a great ecology. And it's a very popular Buddhist theme right now in books about Buddhism and you know codependent arising or systems theory.

That is along the lines of the lowest interpretation of Buddhism. It's not... by itself it won't get you enlightened.

That's one interpretation of what dependent origination means. That things come from their causes. But for example scientists understand that very well and they use it but it doesn't make them enlightened.

They still die, they still get old. So the Buddha taught it. But then he said if you're strong enough, if you have kelva, if you're a good student then you can think of dependent origination in a higher way.

And that's the next school of Buddhism, the lower Madhyamika school, the Svatantrika. And they would say things are dependently originating when they depend on their parts. And that's what it means to be dependently originating.

And then that's helpful. Again it's one more step and it covers more things than the cause thing because some things don't have causes but they exist. For example, empty space, objects like that, the lack of an elephant in this room.

They exist. The lack of an elephant in this room is a thing. But it doesn't have causes.

Nothing made it happen, it just happened. So that idea is even more sophisticated. But the highest one and the one that gets you liberated is Madhyamika Prasangika.

That's the system of the Buddha, it's the system of Nagarjuna, it's the system of Jetsun Kappa and all the Dalai Lamas. The highest school of Buddhism says that things are dependent origination when you realize that really everything is just a blank screen, the world is a blank screen, and your mind is making you see something. Your mind is forcing you to see something there.

And that's what dependent origination means. When you look around this room from left to right, every single object you see, you see because your mind is forcing you to see it and not because they exist out there from their side. And that's the ultimate.

By the way, I'm not talking about emptiness yet, right? I'm talking about the apparent truth around this, the appearance of things around this, what causes it. It's not coming from their side, it's coming from your mind's side.

And the reason why each one of us is experiencing this room a little differently is that each one of us has a slightly different karma that's forcing our mind to see something. And the reason why some people in this room love the Titanic and some people hated it is that each person has different karma to see the same thing in a different way. And the reason we can talk about the Titanic being good or bad is that you and I did have the same karma to see the movie.

So sometimes we share the same karma and we can enjoy a movie together, but it's still a movie which is being projected by you and me independently, but in a very similar way, so we can talk about it. We don't have to debate whether or not the movie was on the screen because we're both in the same realm and we have the same karma to be in the same realm and we have the same karma to be in the same movie theater. And sometimes you have the same karma with someone else to enjoy the movie in the same way, and that's no contradiction.

But still each one of you is seeing only what their karma forces them to see. So take your eyes around the room from left to right, and this is the third step of Ketupjaya's meditation. You start from the left, go to the right, try to imagine those colors and shapes as being the way they are because of your own mind.

And if you start being a very good person, if you can clean up your speech and your thoughts and your actions, one proof of things is that even the colors and shapes of things around you will become more beautiful. The colors become more clear, sharp. The feel of the wind on your body is more pleasant.

Things that you eat become more luscious and tasty, and music that you hear becomes more intense. And this is all a result of virtue, of goodness working on your mind. So go around the room from left to right now, and try to imagine that everything is coming, that the reason you're seeing it this way is from your own mind, and that's the dependent origination.

We didn't reach emptiness yet. So the third step is to see. Instead of going around the room and assuming that everything you see exists from its side, now go around the room and entertain the possibility that the reason it looks that way to you is coming from you.

So now look around the room again, and let your mind float from object to object. Stop on one, like a tree, and think if it could be coming from your side. It's very important to point out at this juncture that Buddhism is not saying that you're living in your head or something like that.

There are objects out there. There is something green. There is something brown.

There is a round part and a straight part. But how you interpret that data, how you organize it mentally, and what you think is there, and I think most modern psychology would agree, is completely dependent on your state of mind. Then go back to seeing it the second way.

You know, take your eyes from left to right. This is called, in meditation manuals, it's called jumping. You go forward through a meditation, and then you go backwards, and then you go forward again, and then you go backwards, and then you do number one and number three, and then you go to two, and then you go to three again, and back to one.

It sharpens your mind. It sharpens your meditation. So go back to number two now.

Take your eyes around the room, and try to get in touch with your automatic feeling that the things exist out there. Jump back to number one. You're just a child.

You're cute, and they brought you into this big room. You're looking from left to right around the room. You're just looking at colors and shapes.

You're not worrying about where it comes from, or if it exists out there, or my karma is making me see it. You're not worrying about if your karma is making you see it. You're not worrying about any of those things.

You're just enjoying the view. And go back to number two. Get in touch with the feeling that you have that those things really do exist out there.

Jump to number three fast. These things are coming from my mind. My mind is forcing me to see these things this way.

If I just hadn't said that thing to my boss last week, the colors might be better in this room today. Okay, and then relax for a minute. Okay, we'll do a little bit of commentary.

I think the part coming up here is the hardest part of the Heart Sutra. Rinpoche used to call it the Hard Sutra, okay? It's the most misunderstood and the most abused part of the Heart Sutra.

These poor sutras get abused by Westerners a lot. But we'll correct that. We'll probably have a Sutra Abuse Prevention Society or something.

But it says, su tombo tomo ni suso, su le tomo ni shenmo yin, tomo ni le gyan su shenmo yin, Okay? Those are the... They're called the sammasiddhara.

These are the four statements that the Buddha now makes about every single object. But he starts with the things you see. And that's where we started.

So he's starting in the same place. Concentrating on the first heap, the first part of a person, and concentrating on mainly visual things, okay? And he's saying, the things you see are emptiness.

Emptiness is the things you see. Emptiness is nothing other than the things you see. And the things you see are nothing other than emptiness.

Those are the four applications. They're called the four applications. The four applications of profundity.

su tombo Everything you see is emptiness. tomo ni suso Emptiness is everything you see. su le tomo ni shenmo yin What you see is nothing other than emptiness.

tomo ni le gyan su shenmo yin no And emptiness is nothing other than what you see. These are the four applications. And he continues that.

So if you get the first one, you get the rest. So you have to concentrate on the first one. And then we can just skip to the rest.

He says the same thing about everything else in the universe. The four applications. It's lucky we had a logic course for two or three months.

Now I can use all of those terms at will and I won't get so many blank stares. And that's why we study logic. And this is where it pays off.

First of all, as you know if you studied logic, it cannot be true that su tombo tomo ni suso su le tomo ni shenmo yin tomo ni le gyan su shenmo yin It cannot be true. The Buddha taught... Everything that the Buddha ever taught can be divided into two different categories.

When the things he taught and he meant what he said and the things he taught when he didn't mean what he said. The things he taught which are literal were meant literally and the things he taught which were meant figuratively. And they're using some words nowadays which are really weird.

I don't remember what they are. That's all it means. Figurative and literal.

Sometimes he's literal like when he said the world is suffering. That's literal and if you don't believe it just live a little more. Then he said kill your father and mother.

Meaning, if it's necessary, leave your home behind and devote yourself to your spiritual practice in order to help your father and mother. You know what I mean? In order to serve them.

Or something like that. But of course the Buddha would never advise you to hurt another sentient being. That's figurative.

The first one is literal. What is the evidence that he's speaking figuratively here when he says what you see is emptiness and emptiness is what you see. Now I can use the terms from the class we had.

And automatically you can destroy a lot of the uneducated teachings going on about emptiness in the next five minutes. First of all, what you see is a positive thing. It's what we call dupa.

You studied dupa and kapha. What you see around you is positive. You can touch it, you can feel it, you can look at it, you can eat it.

It fills your stomach. It's something positive. Emptiness is the absence of something.

And I like to compare it to the absence in this room. The absence of a two-headed, 14-foot, full-sized purple elephant in this room. I'll say it again.

Is there a two-headed, 14-foot, or was it 15? Full-sized, purple, live, rampaging elephant in this very room in which we sit. Is there such a thing in this room?

And you say no. Is the absence of that elephant in this room an event? Does it have some reality?

Does it exist? You have to say yes. That exists in this room.

It's one of the characteristics of this room that it is not currently housing. A two-headed, 15-foot, purple, full-sized, breathing, rampaging elephant. It's a characteristic of this room.

That's the emptiness of a two-headed, 15-foot, purple, rampaging elephant in this room. Seriously. And it doesn't mean anything more than that.

It just means it's not here. That thing ain't here. That's emptiness of that thing.

It's absence from this room. Why did I use a 15-foot, or was it 14-foot, two-headed, purple, full-sized, rampaging elephant? Why didn't I just say the lack of an elephant in this room?

I wanted to emphasize the fact that emptiness is the absence of something which never did exist, never will exist, and never could exist in this room. The gacca, the thing that emptiness denies, the thing we say don't exist, never could have existed. And you have to get used to that.

It's an impossibility. So why worry so much about something that could never exist? Because every moment of your day, you do believe that it exists.

And that causes you all your suffering. All suffering of a creature in this realm is directly brought about by their belief that something that doesn't even exist and which could never exist is here. So that becomes important.

That thing which never existed, never could exist, and doesn't exist becomes crucial because I'm tired of my life going up and down. I'm just tired of it. If there's some way to stop it, I would appreciate it.

I don't want to lose all my friends. I love all of you. I want to stay with those people.

I want all the good stuff, and I don't want any of the bad stuff. Is it possible? Is it possible?

And it all boils down to that. So it becomes crucial to understand that object.