Серия ежедневной практики, курс 09 — Пустота ума (махамудра) (1999, Сокел), занятие 5

[Speaker 1]
Session 3 Satsang with Mooji So, we'll start a meditation, alright? Are you still full of lunch? Should we do class first?

Yeah, me too. Okay, we'll do class first. We'll give it some time to go down, okay?

Say, gākjā. Gākjā. There are certain words that Westerners remember easily, like bakchak, or lelo.

Gākjā is one of them. Gākjā means the thing that emptiness is empty of. Okay, the thing that doesn't exist.

Okay, emptiness means that something doesn't exist, right? That's what really emptiness... It should have been called blankness, or voidness, or absence of something, okay?

You could just call it the absence of something. The absence of something that never did exist, never will exist, doesn't exist now, but which, because you believe in it, causes you all your trouble, okay? So, that's gākjā.

In the first flavor of emptiness, what was the gākjā? Basically. Yeah, something that's gonna last forever, okay?

Now, some things do, that's like empty space, or emptiness itself, but that's different. We're talking about your dog, or your car, or your house, or your boyfriend, okay? A boyfriend which could last forever, you know?

A car which would never break down, stuff like that, okay? A job that would go on forever without any problems, you know what I mean? Like that, stuff like that.

Your body being healthy all the time, those are gākjās, they don't exist, okay? And the first emptiness was emptiness of those things, okay? They don't exist, you thought they existed, so, the first one was something, understanding about impermanence, right?

The second one, second kind of flavor of emptiness? Hmm? Ownership.

Yeah, okay? The idea that you could own something. Specifically, in the teachings on emptiness, it refers to you think that you own your body and mind, like you can control them.

Like you think you're not gonna get sick, like you think you can stop having a mental affliction two hours from now, okay? Like, you know, you think you can control it, really? That's a wrong idea.

You can't control that one, you really can't control mental afflictions either. Now, does that mean you can't reach Nirvana? We gotta talk about it, okay?

But definitely, it's obvious you can't control your body. You can't tell if you're gonna be healthy next week or not, okay? That's a lie.

And you obviously can't control your possessions, or you'd never have problems with other people about your possessions, okay? So that's ownership. The lie of ownership.

Third one? Hmm? Yeah, no accidents, okay?

No accidents. The things around you are caused by certain karmic causes that also brought you to this place, okay? If you don't like your boss at work, there's only two problems.

You made him, and you made you. Okay? The rest is okay.

Okay? You put him there, and you put you there. Okay?

No accidents. That things come from the same cause, or have the same karmic trunk, the same... Yeah, technically that's what the meaning of it is.

It's that you and your boss are coming from the same karmic force, which...

[Speaker 2]
Is that they're inseparable, or they're not at all?

[Speaker 1]
It doesn't mean they're inseparable at all. They're totally different. You know, if you don't think so, stick a...

hit your head with a brick, and see if your boss goes, Ouch! You see what I mean? You know...

No, they're separate, okay? There's a big difference between, you know, ze ta de, and ta de. Big difference.

It's, you know, big difference. Okay? Still, they're still separate.

Non-duality is a big misconception, Dharma rumor, thousand different things. Like, somehow I'm supposed to think I'm my boss, or something like that, or I'm supposed to think I'm the chair, or somehow I could melt into the chair, or something like that. Those of you who took the Diamond Cutter course, we discussed non-duality.

It means two things. One, during the direct perception of emptiness, you cannot distinguish between subject and object. In other words, you can't separate yourself from the emptiness.

Why? Very simple reason. It's not that you melt together.

Because emptiness is an absence, or a negative thing, and you are a positive thing. Okay? So, never the twain shall meet.

They could never become the same thing. They're totally different. But there's a non-duality at that moment, which is what?

You can't distinguish you from the emptiness. Why?

[Speaker 2]
Because you're in direct perception.

[Speaker 1]
Because you're in the direct perception of emptiness, and you can only perceive ultimate reality. Now, between you and ultimate reality, one of them isn't ultimate reality. Which one?

You. Okay? So, if you could have a perception of you during the direct perception of ultimate reality, you would have to be emptiness.

And you're not. Okay? So, therefore, there's a kind of non-duality there.

Meaning, you can't distinguish between yourself and the object. Okay? That's the basic meaning of non-duality.

Another meaning of non-duality is that things appear to be self-existent, but they're not. Okay? And at some point, when you see emptiness directly, the appearance and the reality are the same.

There's a non-duality there. There's a concordance between the appearance and the reality. And that's the only time in the history of your brain where things match what you think they are.

Okay? And there's a non-duality there, or something like that. Okay?

But the idea that you somehow melt into emptiness, or you become the object, or that thinking that you're separate from the thing you're looking at is wrong. Of course you're separate. You are separate.

Does that mean you come from separate seeds? No. Okay?

You don't come from separate seeds. You are devoid of coming from separate seeds, and that's emptiness according to the mind-only school.

[Speaker 2]
But there's no inherent anything.

[Speaker 1]
You see what I mean? Yeah, there's no inherent separateness, and there's no inherent oneness. This pen is not itself inherently, and this pen is not you inherently.

You see what I mean? So that applies to everything. Okay, number four.

[Speaker 2]
Nothing comes from its own side?

[Speaker 1]
Didn't get there yet. It's coming. Yeah, it's like judgments.

Okay? It's like a statement about judgments. Okay, you don't...

Judgments are constructs. Judgments are... Judgments are our own creations.

And don't forget it. Okay? Judgments are void of not being creations.

Okay? That's what number four is. Labeling things, what you call things, doesn't come from their side, it comes from your side.

That's all. Okay? If you decide this pen is good, or you decide this pen is bad, that's not coming from the pen's side, that's coming from your side.

Okay? Value judgments are made from your side. Okay?

That should eliminate a lot of mental afflictions. Okay? If you keep in mind that...

You know, C.S. Lewis wrote a beautiful thing about the fish knife thing, where you go to your... You're six years old, and you go to your friend's house, and they have a fish knife. And they call it a fish knife, but it doesn't quite look like what your parent's fish knife looks like.

So you have this debate with your childhood friend, you know, that's not a fish knife. And they say, yeah, that's a fish knife. And you say, no it's not, it's not what's a fish knife in my family.

In our house we have a fish knife, it doesn't look like that. And then they go through this thing of explaining to you that, you know, this is also a fish knife. This is what we call a fish knife in our house, even though it doesn't quite look like the fish knife in your house.

You know what I mean? And then you learn, at a certain age, that what one person might label something is not what you might label it. How does this apply to your mental afflictions?

Favorite songs. What you and I should do this afternoon. Which movie we should go to.

You see what I mean? Things like that. How should we spend our time?

I want to do this, I want to do this. No, no, you don't understand, this is better. You know what I mean?

But this is better as a construct. You have to... The Mind Only School is saying, that's something you have created in your mind, and to you it's better.

But that doesn't mean to someone else it's better. And that's very helpful for eliminating mental afflictions, and not judging other people. In the study of emptiness itself, you know, which one is better?

Which one is best? Of the six?

[Speaker 2]
Bad answer. The one that helps you be happy.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, the one that helps the particular person at their level. Otherwise the Buddha wouldn't have turned the first turning of the wheel and the third turning of the wheel. There would have been just one turning of the wheel, which is the second, where he taught number six.

Okay, what I mean? That's all. Which is better?

Whichever one fits that person at that time. Which one is correct? Number six.

Okay? It's the difference between valid and correct. That's a big thing in Buddhism.

Okay, we're up to number five. Emptiness flavor number five. Okay, ready?

Say, Lo Nirmala Nave Wanggi Shaktam Mayimbar Yu Ranggi Duluksu Tulpe Tor One more time. Lo Nirmala Nave Wanggi Shaktam Mayimbar Yu Ranggi Duluksu Tulpe Tor Okay, that's emptiness according to the lower half of the middle way school. The Svatantrika.

Tantrika doesn't have anything to do with tantra, okay? It's just a... it has a different meaning here.

It's an idea they have about certain logical terms. Okay? Svatantrika.

You can call them the independent school. Okay? They believe in a certain self-existence of the effectiveness of certain types of logic.

So they're called independent. The independent school. Okay?

I call them the independent group within the Madhyamika school. How's that? Four schools.

And in the four school, Madhyamika or middle way, there's two groups. The lower group and the higher group. So we're up to the lower group of the middle way school.

They're called the independent group. Okay? Svatantrika.

Okay? Not to be confused with Svatantrika, which is number two. School number two.

And Tibetan lamas pronounce them the same, and then it can be really confusing, so you've got to know that. Okay? We'll go through each part of it, and then we'll talk about it.

Lo means mind. Another word for mind, like lobsang means pure mind. Nirmah means unaffected.

Nirmah means unaffected. I'll go up to here. Unaffected in...

in the study of... of perception in Buddhism means chagatrugyu dham... phugatrugyu.

Chagatrugyu means unaffected by temporary circumstances. For example, you're not on LSD. You're not totally drunk.

You're not overcome by jealousy. And you're not in a train that's moving a certain way that makes it look like the other train is moving, or something like that. You see what I mean?

These are all called chagatrugyu, meaning they can affect your perception in a short term. Okay, so... so when we have this definition, and we're saying, your mind is not screwed up at the moment we're talking about it.

Okay? It's not affected by other conditions right now. Normal state of mind.

Lo nirmah means unaffected state of mind. You're not drunk. You're not crazy.

You're not madly jealous so that the world looks different than it is. Okay? Lo nirmah.

Normal unaffected state of mind. La, to that state of mind, nangwa... nangwa means, the object appears to your state of mind.

Okay? You're having a plain old normal state of mind, and this pen is appearing to it. Okay?

Nangwa means, the pen is appearing to your mind. Okay? Wang gi means by virtue of that.

Okay? Wang gi means by virtue of that. Shakpa.

Shakpa means, we can say it exists. Okay? We can say something exists by virtue solely of it appearing to a normal state of mind.

I think, therefore I am. You know, something like that. All right?

The thing is there, it's appearing to my... Two conditions are there. The pen is appearing to my mind, and my mind is seeing it.

Okay? Then you can say something exists. Okay?

This is a little bit more subtle than the mind-only school that was saying, the pen is existing totally from its own side, through its own unique way of being. Okay? Whether I'm there or not, it's the tree in the forest thing.

Okay? What would a mind-only school person say? If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, does the sound exist?

They'd say yes. Now what would an independent group person of the middle way school say? No.

Okay? There has to be both. It has to be, there has to be lo nu me, contributing from its side, and then there has to be the object appearing to the mind.

There have to be two conditions there to shock. Shock means to say that this thing exists. Okay?

To joke or to shock, to say that this object can be established as existing, requires the participation of two things. The object has to do its part. Thank you, Mr. Object. Then your unaffected, unscrewed-up state of mind has to do its part. Oh, there's a pen. Okay?

So there has to be a pen appearing as a pen, and there has to be a mind thinking of it as a pen, and then there's a pen. Then you can say a pen exists. Shakpa.

You know, you can say it exists. Tsam. Tsam means that's all you need, you don't need anything else.

Okay? It's not necessary that the object exists 100% from its own side. Okay?

It only has to be appearing as a pen, in a way, and then 50% has to come from me, and I think of it as a pen. Okay? Shaktsam.

That's all you need. Now, what would a self-existent thing be like? What would a gaccha be like?

[Speaker 2]
It doesn't need the perceiver.

[Speaker 1]
It'd be the opposite. Right. She said, wouldn't need the perceiver.

It'd be the opposite. Mayimbar means, suppose you had a thing that wasn't that way. Mayimbar means, suppose you had a thing that wasn't that way.

What way? Suppose you had a thing that wasn't something that required 50% you seeing it, and 50% it appearing a certain way. Then what would that be like?

He's about to describe a... Gaccha. A self-existent thing.

The thing that emptiness says does not exist. Okay? He's about to describe that.

What is it? You. You means the object, the thing, let's say a pen, okay?

The pen. Ranggit Duluksu. Ranggit Duluksu means, from its own side, through its own unique way of being, through its own way of being, from its own side, alone.

Okay? Ranggit Duluksu means, through some identity that it has, inherent identity that it has. Duluksu, drupah, we're up to drup, okay?

Does such a thing exist according to the lower half of the middle way school? Can the pen exist from its own side alone? No.

You got to have somebody's mind looking at it and saying, pen. And then it says, hey, don't I look like a pen? You say, yes.

Okay, then there's a pen. All right? There's got to be both.

It's 50-50. All right? My lower school, it's just a pen from its own side.

Okay? It's just a pen from its own side. Okay?

Now it may have come from one karmic seed as me, but when we pop out from our same karmic seed, then we are separate, and it's existing from its side, and I'm existing from my side. Okay? Got it?

We admitted we do come from the same karmic seed. Admittedly, there's no accidents. But I am separate from the pen.

It has its own existence from its own side. I have my own existence from my own side. Okay?

Now you get to independent group, a little bit different. It's existing from its side. It's appearing as a pen, and I'm thinking of it as a pen.

And then there's a pen. Okay? They give an example, okay?

They call it the example of the magic show. And this is a thing in India. If you've ever seen somebody do it, it's kind of cool.

They take a stick. They call it a dew. It's a special stick.

It looks about like a magic marker. And it's like this special-shaped stick like that. And they go like this, you know, and then a bunch of people gather around.

In India, you see these little knots of people staring at, you know, trying to see a magician do his thing, and the kids are going underneath people's legs, and it's really fun. And they're out... they usually have a dhammaru, and they're making noise, and...

and they're doing some kind of magic show. So they... they throw the stick on the ground.

And then they do some kind of mantra, like some magic words, okay? And then they have some fairy dust or something, and they spray it. Okay?

It's called ngak idze. Ngak and ngak idze. Ngak means mantra.

We had it last night. Ngak, Luke, right? Tantra, mantra.

So they say some magic words, and then they sprinkle some magic dust in your eyes. And then suddenly you see... the whole crowd backs off, you know, because there's this big elephant there.

You know what I mean? People are running back. And you're like crushed if you're in the back.

You know, you're like, what's wrong, what's wrong? And they say, an elephant, an elephant, you know, and really it's just a magic. They have some kind of way that...

there's just magic, okay? There's no real elephant there. So how is that elephant appearing?

Two things have to be there. What? I mean, from...

there has to be a stick. They need some kind of a basis or foundation to do the magic. There has to be something that they throw on the ground.

There has to be a thing that looks like an elephant, okay? And then the second thing, the people in the audience, their minds have to be... buying into it.

They have to be participating. Their mind, due to the mantra and the... the dust, okay?

They... they have to be in the mood to see something. It's like he gives them LSD or something, okay?

And then... but there has to be something that you're looking at, okay? So this is very interesting.

In the lower half of the middle way school, there has to be... a cylinder, appearing pen-ly, okay? A pen-ish cylinder, okay?

It has to look pen-y, alright? And then from your mind, you have to be in the... in the frame of mind, or the mood, you have to have the karma to think pen.

And then there's a pen. Then you can use the pen, then there's a pen, then it works, okay? If either one of those was absent, okay?

What? If the magician didn't throw the stick down, meaning if there was no cylinder, if nothing was appearing to your mind, you couldn't have a pen, on the one hand, okay? On the other hand, if you didn't...

if you were like, came later, they say in the scripture, suppose somebody comes later, after he's thrown the dust, and after he said the magic words, and they're like, what's going on, man? You know, he said, look, there's an elephant. He says, I don't know, I just see a stick, okay?

Because he didn't get the... the LSD or whatever in his head, okay? He just sees a stick.

That would be... that would be the example of... of trying to see a pen without having any karma to see a pen, or without...

without being able to cognize a pen. So, in the middle way, in the independent group, two things have to be there, the stick, and the magic stuff, okay? Meaning, the cylinder, and your mind thinking of it as a pen, two things have to be there.

Without that, there cannot be a pen, okay? There's certainly no pen existing from its own side, like those lower schools think. Who's lower?

Mind only, Sutras, and Abhidharma schools, okay? Those are the three lower. They all believe in the...

that it must have some existence from its own side, exclusively from its own side. And in the... the lower half of the middle way school is like, wimpy.

They're like, can't go either way. They want to say, nothing has any existence from its own side, but they don't want to say it exists from its own side. So they say, okay, well, it half exists from its own side, and then half of it's coming from you.

Okay? When an object exists, half of it's coming from the object, and half of it's coming from you. Okay?

Did you have a question? Yeah, it seems to me that it... this lower school says that both things have to exist, and support each other in existing.

And the mind only school would say, well, then it's existing before it's existing. Saying it has to be there existing, in order to come into existence. Well, think of it this way.

The mind only school and the other two lower schools below it, which are Abhidharma schools and the Sutra schools, they would say, the logic schools, they would say, all three of them would say that, yeah, there's a pen there. Before you thought about it, before anything, there was a pen there, from its own side, exclusively from its own side. All it needs is to exist from its own.

There's a pen there. Okay? It doesn't depend on how you think of it at all.

If you were dumb, blind, idiot, never heard of a pen, दजङ्गि क्येबो मएयंब means, if you never heard of a pen, and you're like Eskimo from the 13th century, and you walked in, and I'm holding this thing up, it would still be a pen. Okay? Whether you could cognize it or not.

Because it's a pen. And then lower half of the middle way school says, No, no, no. You have to be able to cognize it as a pen.

It's not a pen for a 12th century Eskimo who comes into this room. A cylinder. It's just a black and white cylinder.

Okay? Get that, okay? So if you're an independent group in the middle way school, this is just a black and white cylinder, until you think of it as a pen.

But they would say it's appearing pennish. It's suggesting pen to you. It's crying out.

Don't you think I could be a pen? And then you're saying, Yes, you are. And then there's a pen.

Then you can use it, then there's a pen there. What kind of mental affliction would this address? We're starting to get into very cool levels of reality and thinking.

And from here it gets sexier and sexier. You got to come tomorrow too. Lama Tsongkhapa wrote a wonderful book transforming problems into happiness.

That's the level of practice that this is addressing. Like a problem happens to you. Something bad happens.

You get fired. A friend of mine got fired recently. Maybe in this room.

Most of my friends can't get fired because they're already unemployed. So you get fired. And that's like the pen.

And then there's this perception of it. How do you take it? You see, how are you going to take that?

This is a lojong. You get into lojong, what they call mind training, which is really how to develop a good heart, how to develop compassion. How could I see this thing in a way that's going to develop my personal practice?

50% of what's going on there is coming from your side. Whether this is going to be an opportunity or a disaster is up in the air. Does there exist a problem?

I mean, what did Lama Tsopa name his book? Transforming Problems. You see, when you say problems, you're already assuming that there does exist a cylinder out there.

Okay? He's not debating whether there are problems or not. He's saying, you've got a problem already.

It already exists as a problem. Now can you look at it a different way and turn it into something else? You see what I mean?

By some kind of different thinking about it. And that's using a kind of emptiness. That's using the fifth flavor of emptiness.

Is it real emptiness? No. Okay.

Does it have its limitations? Obviously. Okay, you know what I mean?

Is it unhelpful or unuseful? No, it's wonderful. It's fantastic.

And you can, you know, to a point. You see what I mean? I mean, you can keep, you can say, you can say, you know, I'll use this as a practice.

You know, I got fired. This liberates me to go find a better paying job. Thank you.

Okay, like that. And you can do that. And you can try to think of it that way.

Now if you don't find a better paying job, and you find a worse one with a worse boss, it didn't work exactly. You see what I mean? It has...

Okay. I mean, it's the idea that there is, it's almost saying that the problem exists from its side. And then you're trying to think of it a certain way.

And that's very independent Madhyamika thinking. You see what I mean? That very much fits their idea of emptiness.

Whether or not this thing eventually turns out to be a godsend or a disaster, is going to depend 50% on, on how you think of it. You see what I mean? Okay, there is a, there is a ostensibly bad thing has happened.

Now, whether it turns out to be a real bad thing, or whether you can kind of push it towards being a good thing or an opportunity, depends on you. So, 50% of the reality is coming from the side of the problem. And then 50% of it is going to be transformed by you.

So, transformation. Okay? The fifth flavor of emptiness allows for transformation.

Yeah?

[Speaker 2]
Isn't it being bad or good already a construct of the mind, and therefore it is?

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, it is. It is. But they don't, they don't, this is the kind of, these kind of emptinesses don't, what do you call it?

They can overlap. Okay? Yeah.

Each one fits into the framework of the previous one, really. This is really just another version of number four, was it? Or three?

[Speaker 2]
Three.

[Speaker 1]
Three. Okay. I mean, this is just an...

I mean, and when you get to number six, you're going to see it's really just a modification of all the other five. You see what I mean? So, they're not like...

In debate, they would say they're not legally separated. They're just, they do overlap. Okay?

So, but this is stressing the idea of taking a problem, taking something bad, taking a person who irritates you and saying, this is my holy teacher. Thank you. You know, thank you for testing me in my patience practice.

They... Shantideva calls it... What do they call it?

Strategic alliance. He uses a Buddhist... He uses an ancient Sanskrit term that is like a strategic alliance.

You supply the object of irritation, I'll supply the patience. We'll get my ass to enlightenment.

[Speaker 2]
Okay? You know?

[Speaker 1]
Thank you. You know? Okay.

Like that. So, you're going to supply 50%, I'm going to supply 50%. So, so the idea is that in transformation, this is a useful idea, a useful way of looking at things.

Also for creativity, I mean, in general. If you've been around great lamas, like my lama, Khen Rinpoche, you know, they... they're constantly using things for things that they're not supposed to be used for in a very cool way.

This is called taptsul, skillful means, or something like that. Like some... some kind of normal object, like your car breaks down and...

and you don't know what to do, and they'll untie their shoelace and... and it doesn't seem unnatural at all to them, because they're... they're sensitive to the idea that 50% of the reality of the shoelace is coming from your side.

You can transform it into a... a piece of wire to keep the accelerator down, or something like... you know what I mean?

They don't... they don't see things so much as being from their own side, that thing, you know? And therefore, they're able to be very creative.

And if you get into doing Mahamudra, meditation, this fifth one, you know what I mean? If you get into doing that, it's very cool, you know, in your work, in your life, in your personal relationships, in your business, in whatever you choose to do, if you're an artist, dancer, businessman, it doesn't matter. If you get into seeing this kind of emptiness, you can...

you can make all kinds of things out of all kinds of things, you know? Anytime there's a disaster at work, suddenly, you've turned it around. I used to have people accuse me at work of engineering the disaster, so that...

so that we could turn that way and make more money, you see what I mean? And... and I'd say, no, no, I really didn't intend it.

Until the disaster happened, I wasn't thinking about it. But then after everything collapsed, I thought, well, why not go this... why not use it as an excuse to go this way and make some more money or something, you know?

And... and it's really good for your personal life, you know? Also personal relationships, you know what I mean?

If something... disaster happens, you can turn it into a... a way.

This is what Lama Tsopa's book is all about. It's a Kadampa practice. It's a...

it's an ancient practice of the early Buddhists of Tibet, okay? To... to use this fifth kind of emptiness, to see that 50% of the disaster is coming from its side.

But 50% of whether you get upset with it, or you accept it as a disaster, or... or like that, if you choose to look at it a different way, you can change it. Does it work all the time?

No. That's an indication that it's not the ultimate kind of emptiness, okay? It's...

it's cool. It's very useful. Does it get you to enlightenment and nirvana?

Not exactly. Not quite in that packaging. You've got to go up to the sixth kind of emptiness, okay?

We're going to have to go up to Prasangika, which is the higher half of the middle way school, okay? Prasangika is a word that means consequence. Consequence.

And it's a... it's a logic term. It means absurd...

absurd consequence. The name of the highest school of emptiness thinking, the higher half of the middle way school, which is accepted by whom? As the highest.

Lord Buddha, Nagarjuna, Chandrakirti, Je Tsongkapa, Lama Serpa, Lama Yeshe, Ken Rinpoche, you know what I mean? And all tantric schools. You see what I mean?

That's the one, okay? That's the... that's the one you have to get to, okay?

That... that one is going to be something a little bit higher. There's going to have to be one more step you make, okay?

And... and they believe in the highest school that if you go up to somebody and you said, Did you really think this thing existed from its own side? You see, that's a...

that's a prasangika. That's a logical method. It's like, you just ask somebody a question, okay?

Did you... Did you really think this thing existed from its own side? And you don't say anything else.

They say that that's enough to convey an end understanding of emptiness to somebody. So other people said, Well, if you think that, we'll call your school prasangika. Because that's that logical method of asking someone a question.

Do you honestly believe that that exists from its own side? And just the question itself starts you, triggers your thinking. Well, maybe it doesn't.

What's he trying to accuse me of? Okay? And so they named their school after that method.

The method is a prasangika. I just presented you a prasangika. And that's one way of understanding emptiness.

So their school was named Consequence, or Absurd Consequence School. Okay? We're going to do that one this evening, because night time is a very auspicious time to do emptiness.

Night time is a feminine energy. Emptiness is a feminine energy. Compassion is a male energy.

Daytime is a male energy. So, it's really good to hit number six in the night time. Okay?

So we'll do that tonight. We'll do a meditation now. I think take a small break.

Walk around for a minute. And then we'll do a... Come back in like five, ten minutes, and we'll do a...

We'll do a Mahamudra meditation on that. Did you have a question?

[Speaker 2]
Yes. How do you define drupad again?

[Speaker 1]
Drupad means to exist in that way.

[Speaker 2]
What is tongwa?

[Speaker 1]
Oh, tongwa means empty. Okay? Tongwa means...

By the way, it's the verb. Tongpa is the noun emptiness, like tongpa-nyi, shunyata. Tongwa means empty, meaning things don't exist that way.

Okay? I'll say the whole sentence. It's not true that things exist from their own side, through some unique identity of their own.

Rather... Here's the rather right here, the r. Okay?

Seriously. Rather, they exist by virtue of appearing to an unaffected state of mind. See what I mean?

I'll say it again. Things are void of existing from their own side, through some unique nature of their own. Rather...

Here's the r. Rather, they exist by appearing to an unaffected state of mind. Okay?

You appear to me, and I'll think of you that way, and we'll come out with a pen. All right? Yeah?

[Speaker 2]
Something's there. I turn into a pen.

[Speaker 1]
You are an independent group. Yes.

[Speaker 2]
Cool. Yeah.

[Speaker 1]
I mean, if your mind demands that there must be something there, at least, come on, at least there's a cylinder there. I say, yeah, a priority, there's a cylinder. And then you think of it as a pen, and then we have a pen.

You're a perfect independent group. Okay, how are we going to get higher than that? We got to think about it.

Okay? Yeah, cylinder exists, a priority. There is a cylinder there.

And then I think of it as a pen, and we have a pen. By the way, they would also say it has to look pennish. I mean, you couldn't hold a brick out there and say, okay, think of it as a pen.

Okay, it's got to be penny. It's got to be a little penny. It has to be screaming out, don't I look like a pen?

Don't you think I'd make a good pen? And then your mind has to say, hey, I think you'd make a good pen. Then there's a pen.

Somewhere in the middle there's a pen. Yeah?

[Speaker 2]
Is the fifth one called transformation?

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, transformation. It allows for the process of transformation. Problems don't have to be problems from their own side.

That's what Lama Tsongkhapa's book is about. If you... 50% is coming from your side.

If you try to look at them from a different angle... This really works, okay? I mean, in business it's amazing.

You can have major disaster at 4 o'clock on the stock market. By 4.15, the George Soros's have turned it into money-making opportunity. He made a billion dollars in a month from England's currency disaster.

For him it was goldmine. You see what I mean? All the people in England are suffering.

I think each person paid him three or four pounds in a few weeks, out of the English treasury. Because he saw a way to use it and trade the currencies in the right way. So, you know, a whole country is suffering and he's making a billion dollars in one month.

Because he saw a way to short it or something like that. You see what I mean? So, I mean, it's a real way of looking at...

And you can do it in your personal life. A disaster happens, she breaks up with you. He goes out with somebody else.

And then you say, Ah, opportunity, you know? Like that. You can...

You look at it in a new way. Now I can go do that three-month retreat with Lama Senpai. Right.

Okay, have a... take a break. Thank you.

By the way, I wanted to thank all the people. The reading... The people did...

Apparently the Xerox machine freaked out and nobody noticed it. And it copied, I don't know how many thousand sheets without collating it last night. Gail and a bunch of her crew were up, I think till two o'clock, hand collating it.

Okay, so I'd like to thank them. I'd like to introduce some of the people from New York who helped. I'll just go around.

Ora, who's there, she does all the layout of all the whole... I do a rough translation and the Tibetan in Roman letters and then she does all the layout. She converts everything.

She works out the translation. And she's working very hard on a website where you can download any of these classes that you want, the audio, the video, the homework. Seamus, who's next to her, is our sound man.

He's a very famous sound man. He's done Madonna and President Clinton or ex-President Clinton, whoever. And he does all those people.

And then kindly he has dedicated himself to... He makes the sound work in New York. We have...

We teach in odd places that we can get a place, so we don't have a big place like this. And he's very good at wiring it up and working it out. Christy helps run...

We do a computer entry of ancient texts for the last 10 years and she helps run... We have an operation in Russia and about 20 in India and she helps run those, supply them books from different libraries, get them their money, make excuses when we don't have any money. Rob helps with all the sound equipment and he's been working on an imaging project in Russia and Mongolia of ancient texts, like doing the digital photography and stuff like that.

Debbie Bai is a refugee that we picked up in Australia. Ian back there, his present project, he's working on a hypertext dictionary, meaning someday you'll be able to click on water bowls and it would go to the day that it was explained by some great Lama and it would give you the Tibetan and it would pronounce the Tibetan for you. So he's working on that.

And he's also working on a reception with Mercedes. They're working on the CD-ROM release. We have a new CD-ROM coming out with 2,500 scriptures on it.

And we gave Lama Sepa a pre-release and then we haven't been able to release the release but we're working on it. So they're working on that release. Winston here is in charge of the three-year retreat, purchasing the property, putting up some buildings.

And also he has, he's responsible and his wife for most of the correspondence courses. So they have a factory in their basement. They made one kid and 3,000 correspondence courses, which is, it's about a half a million, I don't know, it's about, 50,000 tapes have gone out, more than half a million pages of stuff.

He's done a lot of that. That whole thing was designed and executed by John Stuel, who's here somewhere, and who's responsible for all the classes in New York, running all the classes in New York. And then Ani Palma, who's hiding here, who just got out of bed, she's been sick for a couple of days, runs our, we have a combination library, a bookshop, tea shop, and a very interesting new idea that she just got some major funding for is free Dharma articles, meaning that if a student needs a bell or a Dorje, there's money, she's got capital, that it gets bought in India, it goes to the student, and then they just pay for whatever it costs in India, and there's no profit. So then, because we're a Sangha, and we don't want to make money, so she worked out this really nice system where you get it as if you were in New Delhi, and you just get it for a price like that.

So she's developed that idea, she does a lot of prison work, a very successful AA program at her place, and stuff like that. So, I think that's everybody, all the refugees from New York. We'll do a...

We'll do a... And that's why you're getting homeworks and stuff like that. Also, Maya, I don't know, Maya Farrell lives here, but she did all the design of the CD-ROM artwork and all the layout, 800-page manual, 10,000 changes, without going crazy, that I knew about.

Okay, we're going to do meditation. We'll go through the preliminaries, and then we'll do the actual meditation, okay? So get comfortable, and please don't move after that.

If you have to stick your legs out, stick your legs out. Blow your nose now, and forever hold your peace. After this, if you get a scratch, don't scratch it.

Watch it, it's kind of cool, they kind of fade away after a while. If your legs hurt, don't move, they fall asleep after a while. Okay, first watch your breath, which means put your mind on the tips of your nose, the nostrils, and watch it.

Personally, I find it very useful to try to tune in to the blood sound in my ears, and then it brings the breath down. There's a kind of a whoosh of the blood. If you're quiet, you can hear it on your eardrums, or you can hear the air hitting your eardrums.

And then that brings your breath down real fast. Okay. And next step is to take refuge.

I'd say, you can mix it up, you know, you can take refuge in different ones of the Three Jewels. How about take refuge in your root Lama, Lama Serpa. Think about Bodhicitta.

Some specific person you know who has a problem today. Invite your Lama to come sit before you, or any other holy being that you feel close to. Try to visualize them nicely.

Try not to visualize a photograph or a thangka. Try to visualize a real person. Then bow down to them.

Mentally, it means think about at least one amazing quality that they have. Now make them an offering, especially something good about your practice, or some little promise to practice something later on today. Something specific that you can offer them.

Think of the most negative thing you did today. Thought, word, most negative thing, and purify it. The best way to purify it is to admit how dumb it was and play it back a few times.

Watch yourself say that thing or think that thing a few times. It's usually embarrassing to watch it play a few times. Now do the opposite with just as much effort.

Think of the best thing you've done today and be happy about it. Two more steps. First one, ask for teachings, which means ask your Lama for the blessing to understand whatever teachings you get at the deepest level.

And then lastly, ask your Lamas to stay with you and ask your Dharma friends and anyone else who may not be a Buddhist, but who, when you're around them, they improve your behavior. They make you more gentle or more noble. Those are the preliminaries.

This is a good place to shift if you have to shift or scratch something or blow something. And then when you're ready, go back to your breath. Then focus your mind on your favorite physical object, the thing that you own that you like the most.

Maybe it's a... maybe it's my laptop, maybe it's your stereo, maybe it's your car, piece of clothing, piece of jewelry, some gift that someone gave you that you value very much. And without taking your eyes off that object, then slip between your eyes and the object your worldview.

In this case, your tendency to see the object as something durable, something that will last, something permanent. And see it through those rose-colored glasses. It's your first level of your ignorance.

Catch yourself thinking of that object as something you're going to have for a while. Now strip that away and see it for what it really is. Take the gākjā away and the emptiness of that gākjā, the absence of that self-existent thing that doesn't exist, is an object that you're going to lose quite soon.

It's passing through your life at a high rate of speed and you'll lose it soon. You'll be separated soon. Look at it that way.

Now go back to just looking at it, just focusing on the object by itself. Now look at it through the rose-colored glasses of ownership that you own it, meaning you control where it goes, you control who uses it, you control where it's put in your house, you control whether it leaves your house. That's ownership.

Look at it like in that light as if you own it and get the emotion or the feeling of what it is to own it. And then strip away that gākjā, that non-existent ownership that doesn't exist and look at the object again truly as being empty of ownership. You don't own it.

You don't control it. You can't tell me where it'll be tomorrow. It could be taken from you at any time by forces way beyond you.

Now we'll go to Emptiness Flavor 3. Focus back on the object again without thinking anything about it. Just look at it.

And now try to picture you and the object. So, you know, like my laptop sitting on my lap or that ring on your finger. So try to get you, a picture of you and the object, both.

And then, very subtle, try to tune in on your own feeling about where those two things came from. If you really check carefully, you have this gut feeling that the laptop came from some factory, plastics, resistors, things like that, all these parts, and then it came to the store and I went to the store and I bought it. And that's how we met.

And then I was born in a certain place and I moved around this country and I ended up in a certain place and then I ended up in that store and I met the laptop and that's how we met each other. Get that feeling that that's how you believe it happened. It's a kind of random thing.

Now strip away that gac cha, that self-existent thing, the non-truth about that meeting. Actually, what really happened was you did something in the past that brought you to that store and you also did something in the past that brought the computer to that store. There's no accidents in life.

There's no randomness at all. Every single object you encounter, every thought you encounter is a creation of your own karma from the past. The laptop coming to the store and being created at all and you being in the store to buy it have both come from the same karma.

There are no accidents. Go back to the laptop. Sorry, your favorite object.

And then try to get in tune with your... another flavor of your ignorance about it which is that when you look at it it has this warm fuzzy glow about it that it's inherently a good thing, that any reasonable person would find it beautiful and meaningful. And even if they didn't enjoy it as much as you did, that any person in their right mind would find this a very beautiful and valuable thing.

Now strip away that gaccha. See that that's not true. Strip away that warm fuzzy feeling you have about it.

Strip away your bias about it. Try specifically to think of someone who might think that's the ugliest thing in the world or the most useless thing in the world. Like your wife might think that about your laptop.

And that's the end of that meditation. Now focus back on the lama or the person who's sitting with you. Ask them to come into you and bless your mind.

And they start to rise up in the air and they get smaller and smaller and they come and rest on the top of your head and they turn the same way that you're facing. They're like three inches high. And then they come straight down into your heart.

They get smaller and smaller as they come until they're in a small chamber about the size of a pea at the level of your heart but behind your heart, closer to your backbone. And then when your mind goes inside the pea, it's a big place and there's lots of space and there's beautiful light and your lama is sitting on a great lotus flower and on top of the flower is a white disc made of light and they're sitting on top of that, very happy. Then just talking about emptiness is one of the holiest things you can do.

So, a lot of good karma we collected and we'll reinvest it now. So, imagine a light coming out of that lama's heart, coming out of your heart and then it's touching people across the whole country that they might hear about emptiness in this lifetime. Okay, then we'll do a dedication prayer.

Yeah, okay. I've just done a little wisdom asking that all the bodies that merit to understand it. Okay, thank you.