Серия ежедневной практики, курс 08 — Сутра сердца: медитация на пустоту (1998, Годстоу), занятие 7

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

[Speaker 1]
I think everybody's tired and you've got to buckle down a little bit, okay? Very precious time. Me too, okay?

And don't miss this part. And then we'll stop early so that you can get to bed early. And I'm sure you won't stay up all night not talking to your friends.

Now starts, you know, you have to again see the Heart Sutra as a textbook on the five paths. He never mentions the five paths in particular. Actually he doesn't mention them at all.

And if you didn't have a good commentary you wouldn't know that the reason he seems to be wandering around a little bit is he's going in a very fine order through the five paths. And now again he calls Charipu. That's an alert that he's reached the next path, okay?

We finished the path of seeing. We also finished the path of habituation. We're up to the path of no more learning, which is at least nirvana and oftentimes enlightenment itself.

If you don't have ultimate compassion, when you reach the fifth path, you become an arhat and your mental afflictions are finished. If you do have ultimate compassion and you reach the fifth path, you're automatically enlightened, okay? So it's Buddhahood itself.

Since we're talking Bodhisattvas here, the next section of the Heart Sutra is describing the process of enlightenment itself, okay? So that's kind of cool. Then he gets to the mantra, all right?

Choney Lama divides it into, he says, look, part of this sentence is informing you that enlightenment is possible. And then the other half is telling you how to do it, okay? Where does it split?

We're on page five, third line. It says, Detawina means, since that's the case, since this is the case. And Choney Lama says, what's the case?

What's the case means, since you've just perfected all four paths. By the way, the fifth one is what we call result path. It's not really a path in the sense of a way, because it is being enlightened.

So really it's the first four paths where you do the work. And then the fifth path is the result of the work. So he says, listen, detawina means, since that's the case, that you now know how to practice the first four paths, how to get to enlightenment, well now I'll tell you what enlightenment's like, okay?

Bodhisattvas don't attain anything, okay? What does he mean by that? In one sense, bodhisattvas who are perceiving emptiness directly, to their state of mind that's perceiving emptiness directly, nothing else can appear, not even the attainment of enlightenment, okay?

I mean, like a Buddha's body could not appear to a normal, non-Buddha bodhisattva while they're in the direct perception of emptiness. The attainment of reaching your goals is something that is not emptiness itself, so it cannot appear to their mind at that moment, okay? Which is a fancy way of saying, the day you become a Buddha, it won't be anything but a projection either, okay?

What is it like, what does it mean to be projecting a Buddha? I mean, look at your hand, you know, and you're seeing a certain kind of appendage, you're seeing a certain kind of hand because of the karmas in your mind. By the way, if your hand is not well, if your hand is sick, it's again a projection and you're being forced by your karma to see it that way.

It doesn't have to be that way, but you have certain seeds in your mind that are making you see it that way. You can remove those seeds and you'll get better, okay? Why do some people get better when they go to the doctor and some people don't?

Because that's not why they get better, okay? If you go to the doctor and get better, it's because the seeds to see your hand as sick have worn out. If you go to the doctor and they don't figure out what's wrong with you, it's because the seeds to see your hand as sick have not worn out, okay?

And that's why medicine doesn't work all the time for different people, and that's why different doctors, some doctors can help you, okay? It's your karma, it's your seeds in your mind, you can remove those seeds, and that's the point of meditation and Buddhist practice. But anyway, one day you'll wake up and the karma will force you to see this arm as gleaming in light, giving off light, and we call it the rainbow body, and no more blood, no more veins, no more nerves, no more skin or bones, beautiful body of radiant light, and you will look down and your karma will force you to see that.

But if that ever happens, it won't be because it turned into light from its own side, it'll be because your mind shifted. There's not an enlightened angel's body of light factory either, okay? You know what I mean?

It's not like they're turning out these bodies and waiting for bardo beings to show up, you know, and say, hey, here's an empty one, you can go in there. I mean, but you think like that, right? It's not like the body is existing there, it's a perception, you know?

You can have one today, you know, if you could clean out your mind, and the whole idea of tantra is that you could pull it off very quickly, you know, and you would look down and you would see, and your body wouldn't be like this anymore, and you can do it, honest, you can do it, okay? Everybody in this room can do it. And the options are very scary.

You know, I would hate personally, and all of us will hate to see one of us die and go some other way, you see what I mean? There's only two ways, and it will feel really bad to say, that person was at the Heart Sutra, and they didn't do it, and they're dead today. And it will feel really lousy, you know?

Much nicer to have everybody in this room, you know, say, okay, October 3rd, 1999, woke up, no book, you know? Really, it's the Kafka thing in reverse, you know? Woke up and looked down and there was a body of light, you know?

And you can do it, you really can do it, and that's like some joyful, beautiful, fantastic thing that you've waited your whole life to happen, and then the opposite is very, very scary, and you don't stop when you die, and you go to some horrible thing, and those are the two choices, and you've got to work on it. And it's not so hard, honest, if you keep your book, if you keep your vows, it becomes a habit, as much as jealousy becomes a habit, and you just slowly start to stop, and it's very, very sweet, and it's not easy, and it's not complicated. The Buddha figured out which are the best vows to keep, you have a list, and you just check them every couple hours, honestly, and then after a while, they become second nature, and your body starts to change.

Rome wasn't built in a day, it doesn't really happen in one night, okay? You start to get flashes, and then you get more and more, and then it starts to become obvious, okay? If I reached the body of light, would you see it?

Maybe not, you see? Because you'd have to have almost as much virtue as me, you see what I mean? If I keep my book really well, and I do all these things very sincerely, if I sincerely examine my heart every few hours, and by doing that in my small, lousy way, day after day, I become an angel, you see?

And would you necessarily see the same thing I see? No, not at all. Why do you think that if you didn't keep your book?

You probably have to see me the old way, you know, poor people, okay? You know what I mean? Seriously, don't take your failure to see these beings as any proof that they don't exist, it mostly just proves that your book is lousy, you know?

Seriously, okay? It's logical. I'm not just, you know, defending something because it doesn't work or something like that.

Try it and it works. The nice thing about Buddhist vows is that if you keep them in a gentle, honest, regular way, you must get results, and you will see results, and that's really cool, you know? You just get used to it after a while, and it's really nice, you really do change, okay?

Everybody wants to be a good person, we can't do it. If you check it every few hours, it happens, okay? Anyway, because that body of light that I'm getting there doesn't exist from its own side, topa mebe chir, cut the sentence there, says Choney Lama, okay?

Topa mebe chir means, that states the potential for enlightenment. When the Buddha says, getting to that body is a projection. Getting to that body doesn't exist from its own side.

Aha! Enlightenment is possible, you know? And like you're supposed to say, cool, now tell me more.

So then, he says, topa mebe chir, shiro gyi paro du chokpa la ten, chen ne de sem la drubpa me chokpa dapa me ten. This is a really cool part where he says, Buddhist sattvas depend on the perfection of wisdom, and by residing in the perfection of wisdom on a regular basis, which is doing your Ketub Jey meditation, okay? Everybody complains to me, Jeffrey Hopkins wrote, Meditation on Emptiness, it's 2,000 pages.

I can't do it, could you just teach me Meditation on Emptiness, you know? And it's sparse, you know, good meditations on emptiness are sparse, you know? Somebody come along and say, examine your parts, you know?

And I'm like, okay, I got two ears, I got nose, you know? What am I supposed to do now, you know? And this one's much sweeter, you know, that one's, I think, to me, Ketub Jey makes sense, you know?

It's a lot easier. It gives you results, especially when you go from three to four. You pull the rug out on number three and go to number four.

You got to practice that, okay? If it gets weird or disorienting, go back to compassion. Immediately stop and use your breath to give somebody some comfort, you know?

Pick somebody who's having a problem. Could be you in an hour, by the way. Those of you who studied Dong Lin, you know you can do it on yourself.

And give them some comfort, and then go back to the emptiness meditation, okay? La tene, sem la jipa medhin, jipa medhin. You won't have any more obstacles in your mind, and you won't have any more fears, okay?

No more fear. And I was always wondering, you know, what kind of fears do bodhisattvas have anyway, you know? Why is he saying that?

Jipa medhin means, as I said last night, every mind in this room, every person in this room, innately, by the nature of things, you have the potential to be omniscient. You want to know the lottery numbers on every planet in the universe? You know, you have the mind, you already have the equipment, there's like short circuits in it.

You fix them and you're done, you know? You can do that. Your mind already has this capacity.

But you have to study emptiness. And then jipa medhin means, you fix those obstacles, mental obstacles, you remove them. And then suddenly the real nature of the mind can assert itself, which is omniscience, you know?

And in the meantime, until you get rid of those, there are two kinds of obstacles. One is negative thoughts, anger, jealousy, hatred, okay? And the other is the inability to see every object in the universe.

And both of those obstacles are torn down by studying emptiness, okay? These people, the bodhisattvas he's describing, have been studying emptiness thoroughly, and in a gradual process, not only does your body change, but your mind changes. And it's very cool.

Your body starts to un-get old, what do you call it? It starts to go backwards, okay? And then mentally, you just get smarter and smarter and smarter, and sweeter and holier.

And you can understand problems, you can fix things, you understand deep things that you couldn't understand before. Your mind is getting younger and more pure, and more strong and more powerful, because it's a projection, okay? Similar, Drupal mentioned dharpa meddho.

That frees you from all kinds of, I mean, think how it would feel to know you are in control, and you are reversing both of those processes, you know? Dharpa meddho means no more fear, you know? I know how to do it, and I'm doing it.

And I don't have to worry about anything, you know? In fact, I have seen the day of my enlightenment. I know when it will be.

So, what do I need, you know? Who can bother me? Who can threaten me?

Who can cause me a problem? Who can make me upset? You know, whatever.

At that point, who cares, you know? You really don't care, you know? You're like, you know, call me crazy, call me smart, I don't care.

I'm out of here, on such and such a day, you know? And I know it. And it's cool, okay?

So, like that. Chintu dene nirguna deva tar chinda. Chinchi log le chintu dene means...

Chinchi log le chintu dene. This is kind of confusing. If you know Tibetan, it says, they have transcended the ass backwards, you know?

Okay. It's like, what are you talking about, you know? Chinchi log means, you thought it was north, and it turns out to be south.

You see, I mean, chinchi log means not just to go on the wrong highway, it means to end up in L.A. rather than San Francisco, or something like that, you know? It means to go the diametrically wrong way. So, chinchi log means that.

Dene means they have transcended that mistake. And then, Choney Lama says, hey, chinchi log here means, tsang de dak dak, okay? Tsang de dak dak.

These are the four big ass backwards, okay? Tibetans love, Buddhists love the four this and the five that, you know, and the six that. These are the four ass backwards, okay?

Tsang means, tsang means clean, beautiful. Some people were doing the firing off for today, and I said, tsang de, right? You have to keep tsang de.

When you do sacred things like that kind of thing, everything has to be surgical level clean. You have to wash your hands. Everything has to be clean.

All the instruments have to be clean. That's why sometimes they wear a mask when they're doing those offerings. Everything has to be tsang de.

So, tsang means beautiful, clean, like that. And he says, chinchi log, ass backwards, means those things which are filthy, we take to be clean to turn this life, like this kind of body, okay? I mean, at its current level, to think that this is something, you know, you read The Miracle of the Human Body, you know.

Yeah, thanks, you know, it gets cancer. It's built to self-destruct, you know. It's built to get old.

In Tibetan medicine, health is considered an accident. Health, the condition of the four elements being in balance, is considered abnormal. It's not the glorious, wonderful human body, you know.

It's a time bomb that's going to kill me. And we take it to be something pretty or attractive or something like that. By the way, I'm not talking about its potential tantrically, which is tsang, which is wonderful, which is fantastic.

You know, it does have certain features which can get me enlightened in this lifetime. You know, certain channels, etc., which are extremely valuable and will save me many lifetimes. You know, if I use them right, I can get enlightened in one lifetime.

I'm not talking about that. You know, what most people are attracted to or like or find pretty, money, house, wife, family, possessions, these are all filthy. They're not clean and beautiful and shining like they seem to be.

And sooner or later, they kill you. And they always leave you. And you can't keep them.

And why try, okay? Find something better. Day means what the world takes to be pleasure and what the world thinks is great, you know.

It just seems this weird contradiction between half of our culture is hung up on pleasures of the senses and then when you engage in them, especially if you're the president or something, it's not romantic at all. You see what I mean? But if you go to the movies and it is romantic, you know what I mean?

And they make a movie about it and how romantic it is. And people take that to be pleasure. And bodhisattvas are running away from the same objects, you know.

The food that you eat too much, the other pleasures that you engage in too much, they enhance your suffering. They take it to a new level, you know, of overeating it or trying to get things that you can't get and being frustrated or trying to look thinner than you should be. And all of those things that we take for pleasure are just, the effort that goes into them to look young is an added dimension of suffering.

Life's bad enough already. Don't tell me I have to have a certain waist size, you know what I mean? You know what I mean?

It's like adding another suffering totally imposed by Madison Avenue, you know, that I have to look a certain way. On top of not dying, you know, stuff like that. What the world takes to be beautiful and wonderful is additional suffering imposed upon ourselves.

[Speaker 2]
Okay.

[Speaker 1]
Tak means you think things are going to last and they never will. You know, you're always thinking, if I could just find the right balance of vitamins and health food, you know, if I could just jog a little more, you know, if I could just get another hour off of work, you know, if I could just earn five thousand more dollars, you know, and nothing works, you know. The worst, you know, the worst torture you can have is to get all the things you dreamed of and then realize that it doesn't matter if you get two more hours of sleep, you still get ugly and old, you know.

It doesn't matter if you... I always like to say the time you spend at the health food store is two more hours off your lifespan. So you're two hours older when you come out.

And if you keep doing that your whole life, then, you know, you die from going to the health food store, okay. And I'm not kidding. These are cinchilog.

Cinchilog means don't put your hope in those things. It doesn't mean eat unhealthily. You have to take good care of your channels and your drops and your chakras.

These are holy things. You have to take good care of them. You must take good care of them.

You should eat health food, okay. Don't tell sutra. But you have to see it as the way or the path, you know.

You have to keep it going for as long as you can responsibly. But don't put your hopes in it because it will kill you. Dhag.

Dhag is the last asked backward, okay. Dhag means don't think that things have any nature of their own when in truth they don't, okay. Don't kid yourself.

Don't think those things are coming from their side. They're not. They're coming from your side.

Next time you meet a person that you don't like, don't come to me and complain about them because there's only one person to blame and that's you, okay. If you want to come and complain to me about yourself, I don't mind, all right. Okay, seriously.

But you know, you made those things. You live with it. If you don't like it, stop it.

But don't think they're coming from their own side. And Choney Lama says, listen, when the Buddha says, chenji lo le shin tu de ne, they have gone beyond the four S backwards, what he's really talking about is number four, okay. These bodhisattvas have transcended the habit of believing that the bad things that happen to them are coming from somebody else.

You know, there's probably an uncomfortable situation and irritating people factory that cranks them out and sends them to your life. Where do you think they come from? You know, is there some like infernal demon legion that is creating them and sending them to your life, you know?

Where did you think they came from, you know? Where did you think, was it, where? You know, where did they come from?

Where did they come from? Who made them? You see, they don't come from nowhere.

Science proved that, right? So, that's the final, they don't have that problem anymore. Chetsan, Semla Dipa mentioned tapo medde.

Tapo medde means they don't have to worry anymore because they don't see things that way anymore. They understand how things work and they know how to fix it. And their body is changing and their mind is changing and they're in control of it.

That's very cool. They don't have to worry anymore. Tapo medde means they don't have to worry anymore.

Last line and then we'll stop. Tapo medde cinji lo le shintu dene nyang ne depe tar chinto. Because they don't have those fears and because they're in control of the process and they understand that collecting virtue is the way to stop death.

Nyang ne depe tar chinto, they get to nirvana, okay? They reach nirvana and buddhahood, okay? Then Choney Lama, I like it.

He's a namdo, right? Why do they call nirvana nyang ne depa? Okay?

I like that. Nirvana in Sanskrit probably means something like to blow something out, nirvan. Van came into Latin and came into English as ventilation and it means to blow something out, nirvan.

So why did the Tibetans translate it as to pass beyond grief, okay? Nyang ne depa. And he says, chir chire du che pa gashe la nyang ne depa she ser yang.

Some people call the act of dying nirvana, you know? Like they say parinirvana of the Buddha and everybody thinks it means he died or something like that. It's supposed to be a euphemism for good old Buddha reached his parinirvana, meaning he died, he kicked the bucket, you know?

And he says, okay, I admit some people say that. She ser means some dumbheads say that, you know what I mean? She ser means she ser yang.

Dir tarpa la nyang de sam, nyang ne depa tanya je pa tang yin kyi. But here we're not talking about death, we're talking about the state of nirvana and omniscience. When we say going beyond grief, we're talking about nirvana and omniscience.

Nga ma min la, that other interpretation is completely wrong. Nyang du kun ni la chen ne. Grief, when you say nirvana is passing beyond grief, means the condition of the suffering of your life and the bad thoughts in your head that are going to keep it going.

That's grief. Grief means present suffering and all the thoughts you're having, they're going to assure your future suffering, okay? We call it result suffering and causal suffering, okay?

You are in a body which is suffering, and the thoughts you're having most of the day are going to assure that you continue to suffer, and that's grief. De le depa ni pang pe du no. To go beyond that means you finish it off, you stop it, okay?

You stop it. And that's what nirvana means, okay? He's an amdo, he wants you to know what each part of the word means.

Nirvana means stopping the condition of suffering and stopping the thoughts that keep you suffering in the future, okay? And then he goes into another section. Tomorrow, we'll get to du sum du nama suprasange tam jay kyang, sura gyi pa du chum la ten te.

He's going to talk about the process of enlightenment itself. I'm sorry we didn't get to the mantra, I was just tricking you. It is on page five, the last line there, you can see.

And we'll get to it tomorrow, okay? So go to bed early, okay? And be here at five.

Very, very holy vows. Very, very powerful. It's a Mahayana vow, one-day vow, and I'll explain.

It's easy to take. It involves, for one whole day, keeping your mind very strict and keeping your thoughts very strict. And it's like a warm-up for when you become an arhat, okay?

And try it, you know. If nothing else, I had a friend in Howell who, it broke his pattern of overeating because you can't eat afternoon, and he became thin and beautiful, and he always credited these vows. Anyway, I hope that's not the only benefit, you know.

Be here by 5.30. We'll start on time, okay? You're supposed to finish, or you're supposed to be well into it before you can see the lines on your palm in natural light of the day. And then you keep them until the next morning when you can see the lines on your palm from the daylight.

And you can't eat afternoon. So there's a rumor, he denies it, but I think it's true, that Dr. Taylor in Washington was caught at the window in the morning, just before dawn, with a pack of cookies. I don't know.

Don't spread the rumor, okay?

[Speaker 2]
Okay. This is the end of session six.