«Дар освобождения», курс 2 «Прорыв к высшей реальности», занятие 10

[Говорящий 2] (0:00 - 6:03)
OK, let's meditate. Watch your breath. Just the breath, just one thing.

Meditation means just one thing. Come to the golden moon. See the sky, blue.

See the mountains across the valley. Come back to the room. Sit with your teachers and look at their eyes.

Try to have a personal experience of your three friends.

[Говорящий 1] (6:03 - 6:12)
Let's start with, can you identify, can you isolate the part of your mind, sheshin, which catches you being distracted?

[Говорящий 2] (6:37 - 6:41)
Your awareness that you're not on the object, or that the object is not clear.

[Говорящий 1] (7:03 - 7:12)
Can you isolate your frame called jenpa, your ability to bring the mind back to the object? So fast, almost instantaneous.

[Говорящий 2] (7:12 - 7:16)
Can you catch yourself bringing your mind back to the object?

[Говорящий 1] (7:46 - 8:13)
And then your third friend, nara, the enjoyment of the object, contentment with it so deep that you could stay with it forever. You could stay with it for an hour or two hours. You wouldn't feel like leaving the object.

Deep enjoyment and pleasure in the object. If you can get to nara, you bypass the elephant and the monkey.

[Говорящий 2] (9:07 - 10:44)
Watch your contentment, be aware of your contentment and stay with the object. Take sustenance from the contentment. That's the real food of meditation that sustains your mind and body.

Feel like you're feeding on that feeling of contentment and presence. Come back slowly to the room.

[Говорящий 1] (10:47 - 21:58)
Okay, back to some emptiness. He's still talking about how the gaccha is under your nose. The gaccha is under your nose all the time.

And if we could, really if you could just have someone sit there with you with the pen for a few minutes, you would see the gaccha and then it wouldn't be such a problem, right? But people have wandered among the classical texts for years of their lives. You know, trying to grasp the gaccha.

And he's still making the point that it's under your nose all the time. It's right in front of you all the time. So here we go.

gaccha chume chik ngosin thupa chung na tendrel gikten dzik tabu rikpa re re sam kyi kyang den dzin ri rab tsam terwar chen ne toni topa la kale me tsu re gaccha chume chik ngosin thupa chung na Suppose you are able to really identify what the gaccha is. Just once. Let's go over gaccha.

Gaccha is a pen that's not there. Or Nick is easier. Where's Nick?

Yeah, you're easier. There's a Nick that's there. He raised his hand.

He has a nice smile. He worked really hard and built somebody's cabin single-handedly, pretty much. And he's there.

That Nick is there. Then if he gets accused of stealing the books from the bookstore, wrongly, then it's an unjust... We talked about unjust accusation.

And then we said there's no such thing. If someone accuses you of something, it's because you did it to someone else before. Life is made of perfect justice.

You can either suffer from that or you use it to get the things you want. So try to think of... If you're close to him, you can look at him.

Try to think of him as the Nick who doesn't deserve to be blamed. Try to picture sitting there, the spiritual gangster who doesn't deserve to be blamed when he's blamed. Got it?

Where is that Nick? Where's that Nick? He doesn't exist.

There's no such Nick. The Nick who got blamed when he didn't deserve to be blamed, there's no such Nick. You comfortable with that?

Because we deserve everything that happens to us. Because the person coming in your face... What do you call it?

You can't say. This is frustrating. The person who's in your face, blaming you, is coming directly from seeds in your own mind.

So if we tried really hard to look over there where Nick is and try to picture a Nick who didn't deserve to be blamed when he got blamed, we would come up with zero. That Nick is not there. There is a Nick which is there, which is the Nick who's sitting there and helped build the house and all that.

That Nick is there. But the Nick who didn't deserve to be blamed when he got blamed, that Nick's not there. That Nick is the gacca.

All right? Comfortable? That's a Nick which isn't there.

It's a Nick which never was there. It's a Nick which never will be there. It's a Nick which could not possibly be there ever, past, present, or future.

Never will be. Never could be. The Nick who didn't deserve to get blamed when he got blamed.

Okay? All right? So when you're looking for gacca, it's a little tricky, right?

Because you're looking for something that couldn't exist anyway. I like to call it the two-headed purple elephant. Two-headed, 17-foot purple elephant rampaging through this room at this very moment.

Is there an elephant in this room right now? I mean, a real elephant. I mean, nobody looked around, right?

It's big. It would be big. You would have seen it.

But that's not gacca, okay? The absence of elephant in this room is an existing thing. The absence of an Indian elephant in this room is an existing object.

There is an absence of elephant in this room. That absence truly exists, okay? But the gacca is more radical.

The gacca is, let's discuss whether Obama and his twin brother are here right now. Okay? And Obama doesn't have a twin brother, that I know of, okay?

So you're asking, does a thing which doesn't exist, is a thing which doesn't exist here in the room with us? You see, when you're looking for a gacca, it's more radical than something that's not here. Because an elephant cannot be here, and that's okay.

Elephants exist. You could have an elephant in here, but there just doesn't happen to be one here. Gacca is more radical.

Is there a two-headed purple elephant 17 feet high rampaging through this room? And you say no. And nobody even looked around, right?

Because it couldn't be. Because they don't exist. They just don't exist, right?

When we're looking for a nick, there's a nick which does exist, which is the one who's sitting there and nodding and smiling. And then there's a nick that doesn't exist, which is the one who didn't deserve to be blamed, because everybody deserves everything that happens to them. So there's a real example of gacca.

But when Nick is blamed, under pressure, when someone's in your face blaming you and there's an emotion that comes up and you feel angry, then the invisible, impossible Nick gets really big, especially to Nick. Like, how could he blame me? I didn't do it.

So there's even two nicks there, two extra nicks that don't exist. I didn't do it, that Nick. And why is he blaming me?

Those two nicks aren't there. But they get really big when you're upset. Those get really big when you're upset.

Okay, so then he says, gacca pumi. If you're able to just grasp what a gacca would be like, you have to say it that way, right? You can't say what the gacca is, because they don't exist.

You have to say what the gacca would be. People send me Buddhist translations or Buddhist writings by modern scholars. I open it up at any page.

It says, the gacca is... I just throw it away. I've never gotten through one of them.

I can't say the gacca. There's no such thing. You have to say, if the gacca existed, conditional terms, there's no such thing, right?

If it existed, then what would it be like? It would be a Nick who didn't deserve to be blamed. So if you can identify what the gacca would be, what the gacca would be, cenditenda, then if someone comes up with some proof of emptiness, right?

And they say, nyugul chod chen... Let me see. Denmei de tenda yinpe chod You can say, take a plant, take one of these trees out here.

It's empty because it's dependently originating. Okay? That's a classical proof for emptiness.

If you've already grasped what the gacca is, could be, then all those Buddhist proofs are easy for you. You see? You can struggle through all the Buddhist proofs.

There's like 20, 30 of them for emptiness. Or you could just understand the gacca of Nick or the gacca of a pen, then go back to those 20 or 30 proofs and they're just a piece of cake because they're all the same. So here we go.

tenzin tabo riba re re tsam gyi kyang tenzin gyi riba tsam telwar che Then you can use those Buddhist reasonings. You can learn them. And then he says, you can take the mountain of your misunderstanding of your world and reduce it to dust.

I like it. You can take the mountain of your misunderstanding of your world and reduce it to dust. Telwar lok.

Sanskrit's really beautiful. I forget what that is. Basmi kuru.

Basmi kuru. What's basma? Basma's that, when you burn a dead body in Varanasi, you get basma.

But it means dust, tiny pieces of ash. So in Sanskrit, the word for that is like giri basma kuru, smash the mountain to, to smaller than dust, to powder. That's that powder you use on your head like that.

Basma. Okay. I love that word.

re riba telwar che ne, ton mi tokpa la ka le me tsu re Then you wouldn't have any trouble seeing emptiness. ton mi tokpa la ka le me tsu re me tsu re is a little tricky. It's very, very colloquial.

And it would mean something like, I want to get a nice English one. You pretty much wouldn't have any trouble seeing emptiness. me tsu re You pretty much wouldn't have any problem seeing emptiness.

That's a main guy. Pretty much means, you might have. He's like hedging his bets there.

You pretty much wouldn't have any trouble seeing emptiness. Yeah, right. jang kya re rinpoche kyang So jang kya re rinpoche also said, so jang kya re rinpoche is quoting jang kya re rinpoche.

Got it? sul gu mi duk te sul ken rang yin Very beautiful. You can break silence.

Ready? sul gu sul gu mi duk te mi duk te sul ken sul ken rang yin rang yin Okay, go back to silence. sul gu mi duk te says, you don't got to look for the gaccha.

The gaccha is the person looking for the gaccha.

[Говорящий 2] (22:04 - 22:05)
Okay.

[Говорящий 1] (22:05 - 36:30)
You don't got to look for the gaccha. The gaccha is the person looking for the gaccha. You don't have to go any further than the person looking for the gaccha.

It's beautiful, right? Really sexy. Okay, that's my kind of sexy.

Anyway, she tog me ni dey thal rinpo ne sul gu mi duk You don't got to go looking far away for the gaccha. sul ken rang dang hen chitur nepa It is cohabitating with you. It's cohabitating with the looker.

The Tibetan means it's cohabitating with the looker. Wherever the looker for the gaccha goes, the gaccha, like you go to sleep, the gaccha goes to sleep. You have breakfast, the gaccha loves to have breakfast.

You are co, what do you call it? You can't say. All right.

I got to find all my own words now. de na gaccha ngun dzin chik pur yan lo da drang ne gompa chao End of big section. We just ended a big section.

Therefore, gaccha ngun dzin chik pur You could spend years, months, years or months of your life just devoted to trying to find the gaccha and that would be a good use of your time. Just, if you want to see emptiness, start with just getting clear on what the gaccha is. Try to get good at identifying the gacchas in your life.

They will be more pronounced when you're under pressure. Someone's blaming you or someone's criticizing you or when you want something really bad. Let's explore that.

Let's explore that. So you really like maple-covered donuts. Let's say you really like maple-covered donuts.

And then there's only one left in the cafeteria. And then you hit the door at the same time as somebody else who hits the door that you know who really likes maple-covered donuts. You both hit the door at the same time.

If you rush forward to grasp the last maple-covered donut, you must by definition be grasping the gaccha. Under the influence of desire, you can't think straight. A donut which you could get by being the first one there doesn't exist.

But under the, there's a Celtic word, glamour. They call it glamour. Glamour in Celtic means like a magic spell.

Under the spell of desire for the donut, you rush to get to it first. The donut you're rushing to get to first doesn't even exist. That's gaccha.

That donut is gaccha. A donut you could get by getting a donut first doesn't exist. All donuts you ever got in your life, assuming they tasted good to you, be careful there, assuming they were tasting good to you, have come from sharing the donuts you liked with other people.

That's the only way to get a donut. When you look at a donut and you think, you're a real Buddhist, what do you call it? Glutton.

An enlightened glutton like me. I like that. That's the name of my next album.

The Enlightened Glutton. So you look at the donut and because you want it so much, you split it with everybody in the room. And I do that, right?

Because I'm an enlightened glutton. I want more donuts. I like donuts.

So I share it with everybody. Just as a matter of, now it's a matter of habit. So when I look at a donut and because I wanted, with an enlightened wanting, decide to share it, is that a gacca?

Is that donut a gacca? No, it's the opposite. That's a real donut.

Because I am acknowledging the fact that I can only get it by sharing. That kind of donut exists on the table. That kind of donut exists on the table.

The same object, if I approach it with the feeling that I got to get to it first for me to get it, that same object becomes a phantom and it doesn't exist. That donut doesn't exist. It's very tricky, right?

It's very tricky. In any given donut, there's two donuts. In any given pen, we said yesterday, there's two pens.

There's one that doesn't exist and there's one that does exist. And the one that doesn't exist causes you all your suffering. You grab for the gacca donut, you take it home, you eat the gacca donut, and then your karma to have a donut is exhausted and you don't get a donut next time, which is dumb.

So gaccas cause us all our trouble. And if you get good at weeding out gaccas from real things, you got to get good at weeding out the gaccas from the real things, then your life is successful and happy and enlightened. You can have everything you want.

I pretty much have everything I want. To the extent that I don't, it's because I'm still grabbing to gaccas. So he says it would be worth weeks or months or years of your life just to find the gacca, just to identify the gacca.

And the barometer for a gacca is how upset or craving you feel. When you feel upset, or when you feel craving, I distinguish between craving and wanting. It's fine to want a donut.

It's wrong to crave a donut. Craving means you eat two or three or four or five. You eat the whole bag of potatoes.

Wanting is like you open up the bag, you take out one or two, you eat them, you enjoy them. That's okay, right? To the extent that you have compulsive eating, to the extent that you feel angry or upset at the people around you, you are swimming in gaccas.

Because you can't feel upset or angry, and you can't want to eat compulsively if you understand the thing. It's not possible. So anytime you're screwed up emotionally, you're swimming in gaccas.

I must say that here somewhere. ne nyipa kyapa ngepa ni That was the first of four crucial points that were used to analyze the fact that Mike doesn't have a self. Mike is not Mike.

Let's put it that way. Rather than saying Mike has no self, I think it's clearer in English to say Mike is not Mike. It's what it means.

That's what no self means. Mike is not Mike. For me to understand that Mike is not Mike, it will take four subjects, right?

Four things we have to discuss. We just finished the first one. It was long.

It was called gaccha, the gaccha of Mike. Identifying the Mike that isn't there. We finished that.

Now we have to go to another question which is how, what do you call it? How pervasive is the gaccha? How pervasive is the gaccha?

How far does the gaccha go? Is everything a gaccha? No.

Nick over there looking at me like, or smiling, that Nick exists. The Nick that got blamed wrongly doesn't exist. So we have to get good at identifying the breadth of the gaccha.

You see what I mean? How far does it go? And where does it doesn't go?

Where does it not go? Gaccha doesn't reach to the Nick over there, who's sitting there. But it does reach to the Nick who shouldn't have got blamed, didn't deserve to get blamed.

So it's difficult to cut the borders, to demarcate the borders of the gaccha. It's difficult. So that's our next subject.

What is the breadth of the gaccha? How far does it extend? And where does it not extend?

Okay. If you're able to pick up a pen or a donut, right? A donut.

And immediately strip off the gaccha donut. If you're that good at it. Again, what is the gaccha donut?

The one that if you got to first, you could have it. Because such a thing doesn't exist. But you got to strip that off the donut which is there.

Which you can pick up in two because of your past karma, that you shared donut. They are in the same donut. That's the problem.

If you get it straight in your mind, and you can put your mind on the gaccha easily. Then we'll start an exercise. Very difficult exercise.

It has been mistaught for thousands of years. Over the years. Some people taught it right, some people didn't teach it right.

So it's pretty muddled now. By now it's pretty muddled. Let's go for it.

Is this a pen? You can just nod. Is it coming this way or is it coming this way?

You can just wave your hand. Yeah, it's coming this way. Is there a pen which seems to be coming this way?

To a normal person. You can say yeah, there is a pen which seems to be coming this way. There's a phantom or an apparition or an appearance of a pen that seems to be coming this way.

Try to grasp onto that one. Try to isolate that one in your mind. A pen which comes from itself.

A pen which comes from itself. It's just an imaginary thing. It's like the two-headed purple elephant.

It has as much existence as a two-headed purple elephant. It doesn't exist. But you can imagine it, right?

You can imagine things that don't exist. That doesn't make them real. It makes the imagination real.

Try to hold your mind on the pen that's not there. You could say the pen that you could buy. The pen that you got by buying it.

Is there such a pen? No such thing. You only get pens by giving them to others.

That's the only way to get a pen. But that's not right, Geshe Michael. I went and bought a pen.

If you go to a store and they have pens, do you always get them? No, sometimes you don't have money. If you have money and you go to a store, will you always get a pen?

No, they don't come from money. It sounds like a dumb proof, but it's a total absolute proof. Put your mind on the pen that you got from buying it.

Where is it? Be careful. Where is it?

Put your mind on the pen that you got from purchasing it or the pen that was made in a factory. Where is that pen? Just point to it.

It's okay. Nancy went like this. I can only imagine it.

It doesn't exist. It doesn't exist. I can imagine it, but it doesn't exist.

Where's the two-headed purple elephant? You can only go like this. It's just in your imagination.

It does exist there, but not in a real sense. It can't gore you or something. Now consider the parts of this pen.

Top, barrel, what do you call the thing inside? No, you can't say, right? Anyway, that thing that holds the ink.

I didn't hear you anyway, so it's okay. Now, grasp this and we're okay. Grasp this and we can make it through the next five pages or so.

I dare say there are very few monks who have ever made it through the next five pages. But you can do it, because you got it already. Consider all the parts of this pen.

What's the relationship between all those parts and the pen that you could purchase in a store? I didn't ask where are they. The parts are here.

The parts are out here. The pen that you could purchase in a store is where? In your head.

[Говорящий 2] (36:30 - 36:32)
What's the relationship between the two?

[Говорящий 1] (36:41 - 50:19)
We have to discuss the idea of relationship. It's a fundamental principle of all logic that for two things to have a relationship, they must both exist. They must both exist.

That's just basic. If you want to know, which you didn't, but I'm going to tell you anyway, there's only two possible relationships. One is a possession, the top of the pen.

And one is identity, the black cylinder and the pen. But in either case, the two elements that share a relationship must both exist. You can't talk about the relationship between this book and the two-headed purple elephant in this room.

Because one of them doesn't exist. You can't tie a rope between two things if one of them doesn't exist. So now I'll ask you again, and now you'll give me a better answer.

What's the relationship between all the parts of this pen, and you can even say the whole, what do you call it? The whole, right? You can either say parts, or you can say the sum of the parts.

You can either say the individual parts, or you can say the sum of the parts. But what's the relationship between the parts and the sum of the parts, and that pen that I bought in a store? No relationship.

It cannot be a relationship. It can't have a relationship. Because the second one doesn't exist.

You can't find a pen that you bought in a store. All pens that ever, I should rather say, a pen that came to you because you bought it in a store. That doesn't exist.

There's no such thing. Pens only come to you because you share pens with others. That's why you can go to the store and not get the pen you want when you have the money.

It's so simple. The explanation for human failure over the last 50,000 years is rather simple. We just have to stop doing it.

Then everything you do is successful. It's cool. If you understand that, we can go on.

Then we can discuss whether the pen that was never there is the whole, the sum of the parts, or the parts. Got it? Is the pen that was never there in the parts or in the sum of the parts?

He's diamond dealing you, honey. You want the black diamond or the yellow one? You got to say, I'm not buying it.

I'm not buying it. The pen that was never there is neither in the parts of the pen, nor is it even in the sum of the parts of the pen. It just ain't there.

You just understood the next five pages. Very few monks understand it. Got it?

They go off on these weird things and they get really confused. But you got it. Now, be careful.

This is Buddhist debate. Be careful. Is there a pen here?

Does a pen exist here? Is the pen which really does exist here? It does exist here.

There is a pen here. If you don't believe me, come up, get your Saddam Hussein mustache. Is the pen which exists here, does it have a relationship to its parts?

Yeah. It must have some relationship to its parts. You take away the parts, you can't write anything.

There must be a relationship. We can say that the whole pen depends on its parts. The sum of the parts is the pen.

We can say that. But the pen which is not coming from me, the pen which is not coming from my kindness to other people, is it the parts of the pen or is it the sum of the parts of the pen? Then you just got to go like that.

I'm not buying that one. I'm not buying that one. I don't want the yellow diamond.

I don't want the black one. Give me the white one. Give me the deflawless.

What is the deflawless of pens? Yeah, there's a pen that depends on its parts. But it's the pen that I have synthesized from the seeds in my own mind which were planted there when I showed preferred kindness to other people in some way with a pen.

That pen is, that's the deflawless pen. That pen exists. That pen, that's the only pen that ever was there.

The pen which has come from your kindness is the only pen that ever was there. The only thing holding up this ceiling, I like this thing. When I rewrite science, I'm going to use this.

Science is like 90% cool. It just needs a little tweaking, okay? I'm not kidding.

That's my next project. But you consider the structural beams, right? The structural pillars which are helping to hold up, they're kind of cute, right?

Which are holding up the roof, okay? They are holding up the roof, right? And then you ask anybody, engineer, what is it in the wood that's holding up the roof?

And they'll say there's some, what do you call it? Structural strength, right? Tensile strength of the wood.

The atoms of the wood are aligned in such a way that there's a tensile strength along that angle which allows it to hold up the roof. If that tensile strength goes under the strength required to hold up that much weight, then the roof will fall. That's how we, in our world, Planet A, that's how we understand roofs falling down, okay?

But what lends the tensile strength to the wood? Why did that wood have that strength? Who put it there?

You see? Your kindness. Your kindness, okay?

You supported someone else. You housed another person who needed housing, okay? Some people came to, some people from Diamond Mountain came to grub your spare bedroom for the next six years.

And you put up with it happily. And then that creates in your mind a seed to perceive tensile strength in the wood, okay? That's where the tensile strength came from.

So we can reasonably say, in a future Planet A, that the force which is holding up the building is not the atomic structure of the elements in the wood. It's the kindness you have shown to others. And then you get some thrill up your spine, right?

They say a person who really gets it, they feel this shiver up their spine, right now. You know, like, ooh, yeah. What if kindness were holding up everything?

What if all physical support of all physical things was the product of kindness towards others? Then what kind of world would we have? What if people understood that?

Then you'd never have a root fall down, for example. But basically everybody would be nice to everybody, which is pretty awesome, I think. You'd have to be.

Remember that, okay? I think that's so... Remember the kindness thing, okay?

All right, it's also putting the power into your food and into your medicines. It's what drives your car. Gasoline doesn't drive a car.

These are profound things. If the world comes to understand them, the world will become a paradise, okay? All right.

And that's what we're doing every time. We're going blah, blah, blah, blah. We're offering that paradise that was created when everybody got it, okay?

Here we go. Yeah, so he says, look, the way Pabongka Rinpoche chooses to teach the concept of the comprehensiveness of the gaccha, how far does the gaccha go, the way he chooses to teach it is through what we just said. Is the pen which doesn't exist, does that lie within its parts, or does it lie within the sum of its parts, okay?

That's how he interprets the word, how comprehensive is the gaccha, okay? All right? If the pen which was not coming from your kindness existed, can we reasonably say that it must either be in the parts of the pen or in the sum of the parts of the pen?

Can we say that? Have we covered all possibilities? I'll say it again.

If the pen which wasn't coming from our kindness, how much does that pen exist? Zero. But if it did exist, can we say it would either be in its parts or in the sum of its parts?

Or is there a third possibility? Is there a pungsumbha? See?

Could anything in the world which exists not be either its parts or the sum of its parts? Can we say that? I'll say it again.

You guys have too much lunch. I knew that was going to happen. If a thing exists, can we say it is either its parts or it is either the sum of its parts and no other is possible?

It's okay. Okay? If Geshe Michael exists, can we say he's either the sum of his parts or he's one of his parts?

Can we say that? We could say that. Which one does he happen to be?

The Geshe Michael that does exist happens to be the sum of his parts. Especially if you throw in that part about him coming from your seats. All right?

All he's trying to say is if we were going to explore the existence of a thing, we could look for it in its parts or we could look for it in the sum of its parts. And if we didn't find it in either one, then we could conclusively say it didn't exist. That's all.

Okay? Got it? It's got to be one or the other.

Now, that got lazy-sized. I just made a new verb. That got lay-lo-ized.

That got lay-lo-ized in modern Tibetan Buddhist monasteries. Now they just say one or many. Self-existent one or many.

It's either one. Everything in the world has to be either one or many. The two clocks are many.

The one clock is one. Everything in the world has to be either singular or plural. Can we say that?

Everything in the world is either singular or plural. Can we say that? So if we take any particular object and examine it to see whether it's one and we decide it's not one and then we examine it to see if it's plural and we decide it's not plural, can we say it doesn't exist?

Yeah, because that's the only two possibilities. That's all. We're just trying to find two possibilities.

Now, it got lay-lo-ized in modern Tibetan monasteries. They discuss it that way. Is the clock one from its own side?

No. Is the clock two from its own side? No.

So the clock doesn't exist from its own side. Because everything has to be either one or plural. That's all.

That's the way they say it nowadays. But it was more difficult in the old days. It was harder.

What's the relationship between a real pen and its parts? Is it its parts individually or is it the sum of its parts? It's the sum of its parts.

The pen is not the top of the pen. The pen is not the tip of the pen. The pen is all the parts put together.

The pen is the sum of the parts. So if we wanted to determine whether something were a pen, stay with me, if we wanted to determine if something were a pen, could we check in two places? Could we say either it's parts individually or it's all of the parts of a pen together?

Can we say that? And if it's not either one of those, we can safely say it's not a pen. Okay, that's all.

They say you have a house. You're a Tibetan farmer. You have a house.

It only has two rooms, okay? You have one goat. The goat has wandered into the house.

All right? Or someone said the goat, I saw the goat wander into the house. So you check one room.

Leaving it, you lock the doors and windows.

[Говорящий 2] (50:19 - 50:20)
Okay?

[Говорящий 1] (50:20 - 51:41)
Then you go to the other room. Check the second room. The goat's not there.

All right? Can we say then the goat is not in the house? Yes, because there's only two rooms.

All right? In the house. The goat's not in the first room.

The goat's not in the second room. And you locked the first one so he couldn't have gotten into the first one and you locked him in the second one around the back or something. All right?

Does the Nick who got wrongly blamed for stealing the books in the... There's some seed being formed now. I'm sorry.

Does the Nick who got wrongly blamed, you know, blah, blah. Is he his ear or his arm or his leg individually? No.

Now here's the hard one. Is the Nick who got wrongly blamed for stealing the books the sum of all the parts of Nick the goat? No.

Is there any other possibility to find the Nick who got blamed wrongly somewhere else? Like in her parts or in her parts? Can you say we could look somewhere else?

No, there's only two rooms. Okay? There's only Nick's parts or the collection of Nick's parts.

Okay, got it? That's all. If you get that, we can go on if we had any time.

No. Let's do some meditation. Because you got it.

I just want you to rest a bit. You go to the golden room and rest a bit.

[Говорящий 2] (51:42 - 51:43)
Here we go.

[Говорящий 1] (51:56 - 52:08)
By the way, the parts thing is the plural thing and the sum of the whole, the sum total is the one thing and that's the way it used to be explained. And then it got simplified into one or many.

[Говорящий 2] (52:08 - 52:08)
Okay?

[Говорящий 1] (52:09 - 52:11)
You got that? Yeah. Okay, here we go.

[Говорящий 2] (52:14 - 1:01:58)
Watch your breath. Your breath is the only thing in the world. Even Nick's not there anymore.

Just the breath. Check the corners of your mouth for tension. Check your forehead for tension.

Check the upper eyelids for tension and release it. Come to that beautiful golden room. Start to go into your contentment even now and you can skip the agitation and the dullness from the beginning.

Be happy and content to be in that golden room even before your teacher comes with some sense of anticipation. Look out at the blue sky. Enjoy the sky.

Let your eyes drop from the sky to the mountains and the valley that separates you and the mountains. You can come into the golden room and request your teacher to come. The golden sunlight is coming through the windows and it's warm on your body and it's warm on their body.

Warm and liquid gold bright. Just sit with them quietly, doing nothing and feel the warmth of the gold sunlight on your body. Every once in a while, every once in a while use your shishun to check in on your nara.

Do you still feel contented and happy in the room? Do you still feel nara? I'm your shishun.

Stay happy, contented. No need to move. Come slowly back to the seat.

Relax and open your eyes.

[Говорящий 1] (1:02:14 - 1:24:17)
I think without noticing it, you're up to 15 minutes of high quality meditation. You see, get the quality first and then the time will come. You can do an hour, but work on the quality first.

Then the hour comes naturally. All right. We have about another 15 minutes.

I would let you ask questions, but you can't. If you want to write questions before the evening sessions about today's class, I'll answer those, okay? And I have questions from last night about, or this morning, about meditation questions.

So we'll cover those both in the evening class, okay? I suppose 3.30, right? RANG BZHIN GYI GRUB NA BDAG GZHI'I PHUNG PO DANG NGO BO GCIG DANG THA LAS GANG NA DU GRUB DGOS If the mind, let's say if the nick who were unjustly blamed, okay, if he existed, then he should either be his parts separately or the sum total of his parts.

Can we say that? No other choice. PHUNG GSUM PA There's PHUNG GSUM PA used in a scripture, okay?

We often use the word PHUNG GSUM PA at Diamond Mountain or other places to describe a third possibility. PHUNG GSUM PA means a third choice. So normally people are, normally people confront themselves with two untenable choices.

And then we encourage them, say in a business setting, we encourage them to think of an unexpected solution, which would be called a PHUNG GSUM PA or a third alternative, okay? So here it is used in a scripture. Is there a PHUNG GSUM PA between if Nick existed, he would either have to be his ear or his arm or his leg, or he'd have to be the sum total of all those parts.

Is there a third possibility? Like could he be her arms and ears? Is there a PHUNG GSUM PA?

You have to say no, okay? There's no other option. You could say other option, okay?

Either he's his parts individually or he's the sum total of his parts, because it'd be ridiculous to say that he was Miriam's parts or something like that. It'd be ridiculous to go searching elsewhere in someone else's eyes and ears and, you know, okay? PHUNG GSUM PA MI SRID, not possible.

CHIR CHUD DE YON NA CI TAN DU MA KHA RUNG DU YUG DGOS SHING Generally speaking, every object that exists in the universe should either be singular or plural. Okay, what about shoes? Ah, that's mean, okay.

Pants. CI LA DE LTAR KHYAB PA GRUB NA CI LA BDEN PA YOD NANG BDEN PA'I CI TAN DU MA KHA RUNG DU YUG DGOS PA'I KHYAB PA THAR CHOS PA'I If it's generally true that everything in the world should be either singular or plural, then it should be true, okay, now here's a new, he's throwing in a new thing, all right? If Nick existed from his own side, okay?

If Nick existed from his own side, and if he wasn't, if my perception of him wasn't coming from me, okay? If he existed somehow from his own side, then can we say that due to his relationship with his parts, then his arms should also exist from its own side, and his ears should also exist from its own side. Can we say that?

Yeah, you can, right? So if, you know, if his head were, I'm sorry, if Nick was a two-headed purple elephant, because we're talking impossibilities, right? You've got to appreciate that.

You've got to stay there. If Nick were a two-headed purple elephant, then Nick's arm would be a two-headed purple elephant, okay? If Nick were coming from his own side, then his arm would also be coming from his own side.

It's the same statement, okay? Just the second one feels more comfortable, because he's not purple. Okay, RGYUN NA CHUD LTA GANG RUNG DU SGRUB DGOS KYIS PHYING RGYUN DU RGYUN DU THAG CHOD PAS Decide that that's the way it is.

RGYUN NA CHUD LTA GANG RUNG DU SGRUB DGOS KYIS PHYING RGYUN DU RGYUN DU THAG CHOD PAS Decide that that's the way it is. It wouldn't be reasonable to say that If Nick were coming from his own side, then his parts wouldn't be coming from their own, ok. We would have to say, if Nick were coming from his own side, then the parts of Nick would have to be coming from their own, ok.

We could also say that if Nick were coming from his own side, there would either have to be one Nick coming from his own side or multiple Nicks coming from his own side because everything is either one or many, ok. Except for shoes. I don't know.

Don't worry about that. You can really confuse some young monk in the monastery in the debate ground. You throw the shoe thing at him, and he just walks away.

And he's just sitting there like... Okay. DE NYID GANG RUNG LA MED KHO MED PA THAG CHEN YONG DU NGES PA BSTAN PA KHYAB PA NGES PA GNYIS If Nick were coming from his own side, then Nick would either have to be one thing that was coming from his own side or multiple things that was coming from his own side.

Can we say that? If we determined that he was neither, could we say that he wasn't coming from his own side? That's all.

That's all. And you can do that with anything, okay? You can do that with anything.

Any quality in the world. You can say, everything that's blue and everything that's not blue. Or you could say everything that's cold and everything that's not cold.

Or you could say everything that's the bunion on my left foot and everything that's not the bunion on my left foot. Then you examine them both. You go to the two rooms to see if the goat is there.

That's all. You go to the bunion and you check if it's coming from its own side. You say no.

Then you check everything that's not the bunion and see if they're coming from their own side. You say no. Then you can say nothing comes from its own side.

That's right. It's just artificial. You can use any division you want.

It doesn't matter. You can use bunions. You can use sky.

You can use parts. That's all. Multiple, singular, it doesn't matter.

You can use anything. Okay, ne yin. ne di lang nyin re nyi tsam min bar, nye pa tenpo We'll do that again.

ne di lang nyin re nyi tsam min bar nye pa tenpo ma nge gyi par du gom go He says, you have to chew on these ideas. nyin re nyi tsam min bar means not for a day or two. But, nye pa tenpo ma nge gyi par du until you feel really confident about these ideas.

You can't chew on them for a day or two and go back to Cincinnati and forget about it and expect to make any progress. You're going to have to chew on these thoughts for a long time. Again, you got to be like, do you know in Tibet they say a goose, I think it's a goose.

A goose has the capacity to take a bowl in which you have poured by, we lost the pen, in which you have, don't worry, don't worry. Don't look for it. You won't find it.

I think it's a peacock. I'm not sure. Anyway, in my tradition, there's an animal which can take a bowl of milk and water.

What is it? Is it a peacock? Yeah, it's a peacock.

Then they can separate out, they can drink all the milk and leave the water somehow. We have to do the same thing. Like now, for the rest of your life, you have to approach objects like maple-covered donuts or nixes.

Then you have to look at them and say, what part of this guy doesn't exist and what part of this guy does exist? What part of this guy doesn't exist? The nick who is friendly from his own side doesn't exist either.

He is friendly. If you like that he's friendly, then you got to sustain that friendliness by being friendly to others. That's all.

So approach Nick with knowledge. I like Nick. He's friendly.

Well then, gosh, you better be friendly to people more or else he'll stop being friendly. Got it? Because it'll wear out.

All seeds wear out. That's all. And then if you approach Nick and he's mean to you and you want to say something back to him, you can stop because saying something back to him is what made him mean in the first place.

So don't ever engage in a relationship with a Nick that's not there because you'll have trouble. There'll be trouble. The Nick who's mean to me not because I was mean to others doesn't exist.

And there's no good way you can relate to the Nick who's mean to you not because you were mean to others. Got it? You can't have any meaningful relationship with the Nick who's mean to you not because you were mean to others because that Nick don't exist.

And then if you try to have a relationship with that Nick, you're going to have trouble. And that's what happens. People are trying to have a relationship with a phantom.

That's what maya means. That's what illusion means. You want to know illusion and maya and all that crap?

It's trying to have a relationship. Try to relate to the Nick who's mean to you not because you were mean to others. And then you get into choices and decisions.

Should I try to negotiate with him or should I just punch him? And your whole life is taken up by choosing between two options which are both untenable because he doesn't exist. You're punching someone who doesn't exist and you're negotiating with someone who doesn't exist.

When you're trying to talk him out of being mean to you or you're trying to show that you're not going to take it. In each case, you're relating to a thing that doesn't exist. You are showing who that you're not going to take it.

A two-headed purple elephant. And who is it that you're going to reason with so he does not mean to you anymore? A two-headed purple elephant.

So stop reasoning with him. Stop punching him. Stop thinking those are the only two options and start being nice to other people and then he won't be mean to you anymore.

And then you don't have to worry about whether you negotiate with him or punch him because they don't work. They just don't work. They don't work because they don't always work.

Rather, we should say they don't work because they never did work. When they did seem to work it was something else going on. All right.

That's a pretty good place to stop, I'd say. But then again, let's get out of time. You know, to get us all in one place and not dead from pneumonia yet and still able to hear, that's pretty rare.

Let's take a couple more minutes. DE YOD CHEN PHYIR PHUNG PO RANG RANG BZHIG GI GRUB PA'I CHIG DANG THAR BA'I GANG RUNG LAS DGOS He threw in a nasty thing. He was mean.

Should I even tell you? No, it's too confusing. Later.

DE NYID GANG RUNG MED CHENG MED CHEN GYI GANG RUNG MED PA'I Yeah, okay. So we're going on to the third one. The third of the four crucial points, okay?

The first one was identifying who's the nick who's not there? And we finished that. The nick who was mean to me not because I was mean to others ain't there.

That's the gopchang nick. The nick who's mean to me is there. Got it?

The nick who's mean to me is there. That's the water. The nick who's mean to me not because I was mean to others is not there, and that's the milk.

And can you divide them in any given stressful situation? Because you'll have to. All right.

Then the second one was, look, if that nick existed, he'd either have to be Nick's part or he'd have to be the sum of Nick's parts. And we decided, there's only two rooms to look for the goat. Third one.

GSUM PA BSTAN PA'I GCIG RGYAL DU NGES PA'I MED NI The third crucial point is where you go to the one room and you conclusively determine that the nick who's mean not because I was mean to others is not plural. Then the fourth point is going to be you're going to go to the other room and look for the nick who's mean to you not because you were mean to others and decide that he's not a single thing. Wait.

Sorry. The single one goes first and the plural one goes second. If the nick who's mean to me not because I was mean to others existed, he'd have to be in either room.

He'd either have to be one thing or he'd have to be many things. And it's just obvious that he's one thing. He's not two nicks.

But this is just a way that you could check banyans and non-banyans. It doesn't matter. If the nick who's mean to me not because I was mean to others existed, he'd either have to be one nick like that or he'd have to be two nicks like that.

Then I'm going to check each possibility. That's the next two parts. Okay, we'll just do a little bit.

DBYIN GNYIS NYES PA NI RIGS RGAGS CAN NAS TSUL ZAL ZLAB STE BDAG DANG PHUNG PO NYID NANG TSUL DE LTAR BRTAN STENG NAS GRUB PA'I GCIG YIN NA BLO LA THAG PA'I DANG NANG RGYU MED PA DANG Whoa. Is my singular or plural? You can't say, right?

You can go like that. Yeah, mic is singular. You don't say mics, okay?

Mic is singular. And the RGAGS CAN mic is singular from its own side. Can we say that?

Mic is singular. Can we say that? Can we say if the mic that doesn't exist did exist, it'd have to be singular.

Can we say that? Okay, good. The mic that we grab onto, the pens that you ever saw in your life so far, were they real?

Did you think they were real? You did think they were real, and they were real, okay? If a thing were really singular, would it always appear to be singular?

Yeah, I mean, that's what real implies, okay? Real implies that it is the way it appears, okay? So, can we say that if mic was just one, he should always appear as one, especially if he were existing from his own side, okay?

All right, I mean, it gets kind of weird, right? If I was a two-headed purple owl, you know, should I have snot in my trunk or not? You know, I mean, the whole discussion gets a little weird, okay, because the thing doesn't exist, got it?

But if the mic, if the nick that was mean, not because I was mean to others, existed, would he be one? And you'd say yes, because he's only one nick. But then the next question is, would he appear to be one to us?

And you'd have to say yes, because we're dealing with the impossibility of a thing which comes from its own side and is not subjective, it's objective, okay? If he were one, he'd have to appear to be one and not many, okay? Because he's real.

That's what real means. Real means, and we'll stop there, okay? I'm going to throw the meaning of real at you, and then we'll stop there, because you can digest it along with your dinner, or I don't know what comes after that.

Oh, we do a meditation thing after that, okay. Here we go. The test of a thing, if the thing is real or not, in Buddhist philosophy, is that does it exist in the way that it appears?

Does the way it appears and the way it is, do those two things match or not? That's all. That's the test of reality in Buddhism, okay?

When you take the example of a mirage, okay, on the road, what do you call those things? Mirage, on the road from a distance? The appearance is of water.

The reality is of asphalt, okay? Do they match? That's a test of the reality of the mirage, okay?

If the way it appears doesn't match the way it is, then we can say it's not real. The leaf that crossed the road in Holland, New Jersey in 1976 or something, and the appearance of a mouth. It appeared to be a mouth.

It was a leaf. Was it a real mouth? See, then you say no, because the appearance and the reality didn't match.

That's all, okay? So the test of reality, I'm going to leave you with that. The test of whether a thing is real or not is whether its appearance matches the way it is.

It appears that a Nick who is mean to you is being mean to you because he wants to be mean to you and no other reason. The fact is that he's being mean to you because you've been mean to others. So can we say that to most people that meanness is sort of illusory?

You see, the way it seems to be and the way it really is don't match. So can we say that for most people they are living in a world of illusion? You see, there's an unreality there.

What they're seeing and what's there don't match. They're seeing a Nick who's mean because he wants to be mean, but the reality is that he's mean because I was mean to somebody else in the past, and those don't match. Therefore, the Nick that I'm holding to be mean to me when I misunderstand Nick is an illusion, and it's not real, okay?

That's a test of a thing's unreality, okay? It's not real. And then to try to interact with unreal things is just frustrating, okay?

Trying to get a car to start, trying to get your boyfriend to act the way you want, you know, it's not going to happen because they're not real. The boyfriend you're dealing with is not real. The boyfriend you see is not real.

If you saw a boyfriend who's being unreasonable with you because you've been unreasonable in the past, now that boyfriend exists, okay? And you can deal, you can relate to that boyfriend and you can fix him by fixing your seats, okay? But the other kind of boyfriend, the boyfriend who's mean, who's unreasonable to you, not because you've been unreasonable.

That boyfriend, you can't, there's no meaningful thing you can do with him because he doesn't exist. You can't affect a thing that doesn't exist. You can't throw rocks at a thing or shoot a thing that doesn't exist or slap a thing that doesn't exist.

He's not there, okay? So if you do any of those things, it's going to fail, okay? Because the object that you're acting towards doesn't exist, okay?

You are corralling two-headed purple elephants into the corner of the room. Okay. All right.

Ah, who did I pick on? Jeff and...

[Говорящий 2] (1:24:19 - 1:25:23)
CHANTING CHANTING Cool.

[Говорящий 1] (1:25:24 - 1:25:30)
Very, very heavy-duty karma to be here. So you should be happy.