«Дар освобождения», курс 2 «Прорыв к высшей реальности», занятие 16

[Говорящий 2] (0:03 - 6:58)
Watch your breath, it's only one object in the world, it's your breath. Come to the golden room. Don't let your mind leave the golden room.

Look at the sky outside the window. Live. Stay with the sky.

Be contented to stay with the sky. Then drop your gaze to the mountains across the valley. Live with the last light of the day.

Then bring your mind into the golden room. Ask your dear, sweetheart teacher to come and feel their hands on your hands.

[Говорящий 1] (6:59 - 7:06)
That's all. The meditation object is the touch of their hand on your hand.

[Говорящий 2] (7:06 - 10:29)
Focus on that. Remember, keep the mind there not with a struggle, but by enjoying the sacred touch on your hands. Don't miss the touch on your hands.

Use your iron hook and your chain. Bring the mind back and enjoy. The only thing in the world is the touch of your teacher's hand.

The touch of your teacher's hand. Then bring yourself back to this room. Slowly open your eyes.

[Говорящий 1] (10:31 - 15:09)
In my experience, a few hours after meals is not a good time to meditate. It's difficult. It's like yoga.

I don't know. I think for about 15 years I didn't eat dinner. I didn't eat afternoon, or I didn't eat afternoon.

And so evening was a pretty good time to meditate. But in three-year retreat we found out that the quality of meditation degrades very quickly. As you get closer to bedtime.

Like it just goes down very sharply. The length of time you can meditate goes down very sharply, I don't know, in the evening for most people. So don't fight it.

What we've been trying to do this week was to start with a very short, high quality meditation and not worry about the length of the meditation. We weren't trying to pile up minutes meditating. We were trying to make it high quality.

And then that length will come by itself. You see, it did today, right? This afternoon it came by itself.

I didn't set a goal to like, oh, let's increase it to 20-25 minutes or something. But it came because the quality was good. I don't know about you, but just now I felt the quality wasn't so good for myself.

And then I was like, oh, I'll fight this. I'm going to not stop before 20 minutes or 25 minutes. That's a bad idea.

If you're tired, if you just ate, if it's been a long day, if you still have part of a cold, then wrap it up. And get to bed early. Take care of yourself.

And have a better one tomorrow, okay? What I mean is, don't get in the habit of having a bad meditation. Don't get in the habit of having a low quality meditation.

Because that's what happens to almost everybody who tries to meditate. They go on for an hour, and it's all low quality, and then they get used to it. Then they don't really ever have good meditations.

They don't know what it even feels like. So, say, oh, you can't say. They call it gukpa utsuk.

The people on the China tour know gukpa. Gukpa means idiot. Utsuk means insistence.

Idiot insistence. Gukpa utsuk. So, gukpa utsuk.

Don't do gukpa utsuk with your meditation. Don't just sit there and say, I'm going to go for ten o'clock, whether I'm on the object or off. That's like the opposite.

Stay on the object, and then, if it's ten minutes, okay. If it's an hour, okay. If it's five minutes, okay.

Just stay on the object. If you find you can't stay on the object, then stop. Because it just gets a bad habit.

It gets subtle dullness or gross dullness, or probably even forgetting the object. Like, I think in a lot of cases, it gets worse than dullness. What's worse than dullness?

Just losing the object. Just spending the whole meditation time thinking about something else. And then you get in that habit.

And then you sit down to meditate, you close your eyes, and you start thinking about something else right away. Because you have a habit of it. And then you stop even noticing that you're off the object.

I'm speaking from personal experience. All right. Here we go.

Neshipa denpe dendep denpe tutel ngepa ni So, okay, Nick. So, he's not the Nick. If he's not the Nick, if he's not the one Nick, who is the sum total of his parts, which we already, we just finished that.

That was point number three. So, we're at the point number four. Is Nick his parts?

Is Nick somehow divorced from his parts? Is there a Nick who's independent from his parts?

[Говорящий 2] (15:09 - 15:09)
Okay.

[Говорящий 1] (15:13 - 37:37)
So, here we go. Neshipa denpe tutel I should rather say, who is his parts? But here we go.

detar chikdrang ngepa la ten ne Once you get it straight that there can't be just one big Nick, dak tam pungpo nyi rang shing gi drub pa'i tha de lay wo min du nyam na well, then you might figure to yourself, well, if there's not one big Nick who owns the parts, then I guess he would have to be the parts themselves. If there's not a Nick who owns the body and owns the mind, then I guess the body and the mind must be Nick. The plurality is Nick.

Wo min du means it couldn't rightfully be anything else. Wo normally means to be worthy. Wo shok is a ballot, a voting ballot, a worthiness paper.

All right. So, wo min du means it wouldn't be right. Nothing else would be right except for Nick to be plural.

If he weren't the big boss of all his parts. Because he's got to be related to the parts somehow. He's either related to the parts or he's not related to the parts.

If he's related to the parts and he's not the big boss, then he can only be the parts. Wo min du nyam na wo na de tar rang shing gi tha de drub na So suppose then that there is a Nick who is separate from his parts. tsa she le Arya Nagarjuna's root text on wisdom says dag ni nye war lenpa le shen gyi thepa mayin te shen gyi yin na lenpa sung yu rik nang sung du me che pa tar dag ni nye war lenpa le shen gyi thepa mayin te It's not correct to say that Nick could be anything separate from his parts.

It's not correct to say that Nick could be anything separate from his parts. thepa mayin te shen gyi yin na lenpa The parts in Tibetan, the word for parts here being that which he took on at birth. The parts which he took on at birth.

If Nick were somehow separate from the parts which he took on at birth, then there wouldn't have been any taking and there wouldn't have been any holding because there would be nothing to hold. So that's Arya Nagarjuna. Here's the explanation of it.

ra luk lang sung le ra luk ni lok suk kawa sung du lang di she du gyur yupa tar This is, you know, I don't know if you appreciate, but Tibet is the repository of the highest knowledge of mankind for the last thousand years. Seriously. Before Buddhism got there, they were all yak herders.

There was no writing. They didn't have a written language. They were all just sitting on the sides of barren 25,000 feet high mountain, rocks, herding a few goats and sheep and yaks.

And that was it. A lot of the examples you find in scripture relate to critters. ra luk lang sung Suppose you got a goat, a sheep, and a cow.

Suppose you got a goat, a sheep, and a cow. And then you take out the goat and the sheep. Well, what do you got left?

You guessed it. A cow. So, like, if you got these three critters and you take away two of them, then you end up with a cow, right?

So, but is it also that way with the five parts to a person's... you know, the person. What are the five parts?

We'll go over them one more time. Like, suk, tsorwa, dushe, tamiduche, namshe, right? So, suk means the physical parts of a person, which are the body of the person.

The physical parts of a person. Suk is the first skanda or heap. Why are they called heaps?

Why are the parts of a person called heaps? pung dang kye go re kyi dung, pungpo kye je gam nang yin, first chapter of the Abhidharmakosha. They're called heaps because they are piles of different things.

Like the heap of the body is composed of all the arms and legs. It's a pile of stuff. So they're called piles or skandas.

We're just saying parts of the person, okay? But be aware that each part is made of many components and that's why they're called piles. gyal te pungpo nang ne shen, pungpa tsen So, could you do the same exercise with the five parts of a person?

Well, let's do the five parts. Your physical body, your feelings, your capacity to divide between things or discriminate between things, okay? Number three.

Number four, the other functions of your mind, which are, what are they? 51 or depends on what school you're in. 46, something, I think that's it.

There are certain functions of the mind. So then the Abhidharma says, why did they take two of the functions out and make them separate heaps? Why did they just say body and mind?

Why did they say body and feelings, discrimination, other functions of the mind and consciousness? Why did they split them out? korway gyur gyur rim gyur gyur pungpo nang ne, tsor don du shi lo shi pungpo shak That's the first chapter of Abhidharma also.

We separate out two of the heaps, feeling and discrimination, because they are the cause of our suffering. I like how that feels. So I like him.

I like him because he makes me feel good. I don't like her because she doesn't make me feel good. So we divide based on feelings.

We make discriminations based on feelings. So because those, korway tsawa, because those two mental functions are the root of all suffering, they are in the study of the parts of person, they are separated out into their own categories, because they're so important. in causing suffering.

So is it the case that as we did with the sheep, the goat and the cow, that we could just take out of the room the body, the feelings, the discrimination, the other mental functions and raw awareness itself, and then would we find ni? That's the question. Is there a ni which is separate from his pieces?

And we're getting more sophisticated than saying ni and his arms and legs, right? We're saying ni, his body, his feelings, his capacity to discriminate, the other parts of his mind, and his capacity for awareness at all. If we strip away the five parts, the five classical parts of a person, will we find ni?

Will ni be left over in the way that the cow is left over when we take away the goat and the sheep? That's all, got it? Yeah, and Akasha's thing, no, it doesn't work that way.

It's not the case. It doesn't, so the ergo, there doesn't seem to be an independent ni who is independent from his parts, because it's not like the sheep and the goat and the cow. Which reminds me of the rabbi and the goat story, but we don't have time for that.

There's lots of good stories in the diamond business. So you would expect that if nic were somehow, if there were a separate nic who owned his parts, because that's what we really think, right? Nic's leg, nic's ear, nic's mind, then nic must be something different than nic's ear.

He must somehow be the possessor of all of them. But if we eliminate one by one all those parts, then we try to find a nic that we can't find one. Okay.

DBYANG MA'I GCIG DNGON DZIN GYI MED PAR GYUR TSA SHES LE, GAL TE PHUNG PO RNAM DLA'I GZHAN, PHUNG PA DRTZE NI MED PAR GYUR ZHES PA LTAR Then he starts listing problems with this idea that there's a nic who is separate from his parts. TSA SHES LE, GAL TE PHUNG PO RNAM DLA'I GZHAN, PHUNG PA DRTZE NI MED PAR GYUR If nic were something other than his five classical parts, then he would lack the defining quality, the defining characteristics of those parts. What does that mean?

Here's the explanation. And you have to know Abhidharma to appreciate it. DAG LA PHUNG PO DRTZE SU TSUN PA'I TSEN GYI KHYEN GCIG SOGS MIN DEN PA DANG PHUNG PO LA SKYE DGA' NA'I PHYI CHUNG BA YANG DAG LA SKYE DGA' NA'I PHYI SOGS MIN CHUNG BA DANG So, in the Abhidharma they describe the defining characteristics of a changing thing.

The defining characteristics of a changing thing. Changing things are big in Buddhism, right? Because everything is changing, everything is impermanent, right?

So, there are certain qualities that if you see them in a thing you can say it's unchanging. All changing things exhibit certain qualities. What are they?

Here are some. TSEN GYI KHYEN GCIG SOGS MIN DEN PA KHYE DGE BA GCIG PA Starting and stopping. Starting and stopping.

Then he said LA SOGS PA and you got to really appreciate that he's a master of Abhidharma. He said, and so on. Because in Abhidharma there's a big debate.

Because some schools of Abhidharma say all changing things exhibit three modes. Starting, staying, and stopping. And then some more radical Abhidharma schools say, come on, things don't really stay, do they?

For even an instant, there's no staying. There's just starting and stopping. And then people say, oh well, Buddha taught that there were three.

Starting, staying, and stopping. And then the reply comes, well, he was just trying not to freak people out. But in truth, everything is dying from the moment it starts.

Everything is stopping from the moment it starts. The starting of a thing kills it. The birth of a human being kills the human being.

So Buddha was careful not to emphasize staying, because people would get complacent. They'd say, well, at least I can stay for a while. But then Buddha said, let's cut out the staying.

Because lots of kids die in the womb. They don't get to stay. Like that.

So anyway, then there's beautiful debates in the Abhidharma if you really want to know, which you don't, but it's okay. About whether the starting has a starting and a stopping. And whether the starting stays at all.

And then it gets pretty wild, but I won't go there. ken chen so min tenpa, thunpo la kye ga na chi chung yin, dan la kye ga na So, Arya Nagarjuna is saying, if you were separate from your parts, if there were a nick that we could find after we had taken away the sheep and the cow, you know, the sheep and the goat, if there were a nick that we could find like that, then he wouldn't exhibit the qualities that his parts exhibit. Meaning, he wouldn't stop and start.

He would be eternally there. He would never get more or less nick. Because he's independent from those changing things.

You take away the changing things, he's still there. Like the cow is still there after you take away the sheep and the goat. So then his nature would be radically different from the nature of his parts.

The nature of his parts is to exhibit these defining qualities of a changing thing. Starting, stopping, staying. So, if he were completely independent of those parts, it'd be like when my mom used to say, soul, you're soul.

And then you'd say, mom, what do you mean by soul? And they would say, well, it's a part of you inside of you that doesn't change. And it goes to heaven after you die.

That's how I was brought up. I don't know how you heard soul. I don't know what kind of soul thing they gave you.

That's the one I got. And you know what, I had a feeling for a long time about what my soul was. It was like a core of my being.

And like a little stone inside my body. And that would not die when the body died. There was a part of me that was, a core part of me that was still mine.

That after I died, it would be safe somewhere. And it would go somewhere. And I'd eternally be okay.

So, this nick begins to sound a little bit like that, I think. If you say there's a nick beyond his mind and body, then I guess you might say soul. And it would also not exhibit the qualities of mortality and the qualities of worldly impermanence.

It would be somehow transcendent from the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. You know what I mean? It would be above all that, and it wouldn't change.

So, it's similar to what we're saying here. If there were a nick that you could find after you took away all his changing parts, then that nick would have to be like unchanging, eternal, would not exhibit the qualities of mortality. PHUNG PO LA SKYE RGA NA CI CHUNG BA YANG LTA LA SKYE RGA NA CI SO MIN BYUNG BA Also, since the parts of any given person exhibit the qualities of, the famous Buddhist qualities of SKYE RGA NA CI.

So, say SKYE RGA NA CI in your mind. Oh, you got the CI wrong. SKYE RGA NA CI.

SKYE RGA NA CI is very, very famous. These are the four sufferings of life. SKYE is to be born.

To be born is suffering. You don't remember because it's been a while, but it was a hassle. They were squishing your head and everything.

RGA is getting old, which started the day you were born. NA, the illness that comes to people, sickness. And then CIWA, death.

So these are the four great sufferings that Lord Buddha came to help us overcome. SKYE RGA NA CI SO If Nick were totally divorced and independent of his parts, then since those parts have SKYE RGA NA CI, he wouldn't have SKYE RGA NA CI because he's radically different. He's radically above.

He transcends his parts. He owns the parts. Nick's body, Nick's mind.

So Nick is some kind of eternal, unchanging, crystalline thing. I used to think his soul was crystalline a little bit. He's like some crystalline thing.

He would not exhibit SKYE RGA NA CI. Nick would never die. Nick would never get old.

Nick would never get sick. His body would, and his mind would. But since he is separate from them and transcends them and owns them, he wouldn't exhibit those.

Nick's body would get old, but Nick wouldn't. PHUNG PO LA PHEN GNOD KYI DA LA PHEN GNOD MED PAR RGYUR BA SOG Also, this is very famous in examining the relationship between things. PHEN GNOD means either help or hurt.

And oftentimes it's physical. So PHEN would be like give somebody a massage. GNOD would be like punching them.

So if Nick were substantially independent or different from Nick's parts, then you could stick a knife in the body and it wouldn't hurt Nick because they're not related substantially. Or you could give a massage to the body and Nick wouldn't necessarily feel good because Nick's just above all that. Nick owns the body and he's separate from the body.

So if the body... You could hurt or harm his body and Nick wouldn't feel anything either way. If he were essentially separate from his body and mind, which we've decided is necessary because we already decided he wasn't the same as Nick, if you remember.

Okay. You can look this part over again for about 23 years and you'll figure it out. GYUR BA SOGS GYUR BA SOGS JIG RTEN GYI THA GNYED DU MA DANG RGYAL This is very, very important for those of you who want to be...

You want to understand scripture. You've got to learn this expression. JIG RTEN GYI THA GNYED DU MA DANG RGYAL JIG RTEN GYI THA GNYED...

JIG RTEN means the world, loka. JIG RTEN is a translation of loka, which comes from roj, which means to shine. They're from the same root.

Loj and roj. So I guess Sanskrit was invented by a Thai person. But anyway, JIG RTEN means...

I had an office in Thailand. I had a starting office in Thailand. And we had three main suppliers of rubies and sapphires.

And they were real gems, lure gems, and rare gems. But when the secretary called me, she'd say, loj gems is here. Because all the Rs and Ls are loj gems.

So I'd say, which loj gems? So anyway, Rs and Ls are... What do you call them?

Inter... Interchangeable in Sanskrit. In general, they're interchangeable in Sanskrit.

So anyway, MING RGYAL means... JIG RTEN means loka. THA GNYED DU means in the parlance of the world.

In the parlance of the world. Parlance is a really beautiful word for THA GNYED here. In the normal speech of the world.

In the normal usage of the world. We say things like, Nick got sick. Or we say, Nick got cut.

Right? And we say things like, Nick has changed since yesterday. Or we say things like, Nick was born.

So in the parlance of the world, we can say those things. But that doesn't mean that the word Nick got old. Or the word Nick got caught.

Or the word Nick, you know, exhibited the quality of starting or stopping. You see what I mean? In the way we normally view Nick, you can say Nick got caught.

But then you don't see Nick changed to ick. You see what I mean? No, I'm serious.

I'm serious. When you say Nick got cut, you mean Nick's body got cut. You don't mean Nick got cut.

Right? Nick is something else. Right?

When you think about it, it's not that Nick got cut, it's that Nick's body got cut.

[Говорящий 2] (37:38 - 37:38)
Okay?

[Говорящий 1] (37:39 - 56:44)
Or when you say Nick got upset, it's not that Nick got upset, it's Nick's mind got upset. Okay? If Nick was body and mind together, then when Nick got upset, his body would get upset.

Or when you cut his finger, he'd forget six words. You see what I mean? Seriously.

Okay? So his body and mind aren't mixed together, but we tend to think there's some kind of Nick above his body and mind who owns them. And we think of that Nick as undamageable.

You don't say ick or Nick got cut, you know, like that. Nick is the same. Nick is a word.

Nick is an idea. And Nick lasts from the time he's born to the time he dies. And you don't change the word.

You don't call him Nick in 1983 or Nick in 1996. You know, it's just Nick. Okay?

I'm just going to get sick of this. Anyway. PHUNG PO MED PA'I SHI LA'ANG So anyway, you are contradicting the parlance of the world.

If you say that, if you go around saying Nick's body got hurt, Nick's body got cut, right? The common parlance of the world says what? Nick got cut.

And that implies some kind of connection between Nick and his parts. Because actually only his body got cut. So you say, we don't have to say Nick's body got cut.

We just say Nick got cut because everybody understands that Nick's body is part of Nick. Or Nick's body is Nick. But then this guy who's presenting part four, he said, I decided that Nick is separate from his parts.

Then you would be contradicting how the whole world talks about Nick. Very, very, very, very famous, okay? You're all too young.

Was anybody around during Woodstock? Okay. Anyway.

So there's this guy, Max Yazger, right? He's very famous. They expected like a couple hundred people to show up at this rock festival.

And then a million or something showed up? Like a half a million people showed up. And they all took off their clothes and smoked dope and stuff like that.

And then they were having a really good time. And then this guy got up. The guy who owned the, they held an event on some farmland, some meadows, some huge meadows.

And so I don't know why they were bored between acts or something. And somebody put the guy, the owner of the farm, they got him up on the microphone to say hi. And he's got these suspenders on.

And he's this old chubby fat guy. And he gets up after Jimi Hendrix and before Janis Joplin. And he grabs the mic and he says, I'm, he's scared to death.

It's like half a million people are staring at him. And he's like, I'm Max. I'm a farmer.

And then everybody, they roar. They roar at him. Why am I talking about that?

Somebody asked Arya Nagarjuna one time, what school of philosophy do you represent? And he said, I'm a farmer. That's all.

He said, nga shing bayi. I'm a farmer. And then people said, what do you mean?

And he said, whatever farmers say, I also say. You know? What do farmers say, Nagarjuna?

What do farmers say? If you plant a seed, a plant will grow. That's it.

Nothing more complicated than that. I'm a farmer. Whatever farmers say, I say too.

And I'm never going to contradict the farmers. Don't expect me to contradict a farmer. Whatever a farmer says is okay with me.

And then people were just blown away. They were hoping for some, you know, new school of philosophy. And all he said was, I go along with whatever farmers say.

That's called jigten gi thanyi. That's the parlance of... What he meant was parlance of the world.

If a farmer says a plant grows from a seed, I also use that language and I believe it. If people in the world choose to say Nick got cut, rather than saying Nick's body got cut, that's fine with me. And you shouldn't contradict the parlance of the world.

Or you're getting unreal. So here it says, jigten gi thanyi duma dhan gyal. Gyal means contradict.

So if you try to say there's a Nick who's independent of his body and mind, then you're going to be disagreeing with farmers. The expressions you use and the words you use will contradict the way farmers talk. And that's an allusion to nāgārjuna.

Then you're contradicting who? I mean, you're basically... If you contradict the parlance of the world, you are contradicting the person who brought emptiness to this world.

That's what they're... I mean, if you know, then that's... It's a heavy accusation to say to somebody, you are contradicting the way the world talks.

All right? Whatever you decide, whatever you come up with in your search for ultimate reality should be expressible in the common words of the world. Or you have it wrong.

You should be able to express it in common, understandable language. Like the pen thing. Without reference to schools of philosophy.

In fact, in China we have this thing. We can't be religious there. We can't...

I can't wear robes. We can't talk about religious subjects. We have to stick to business and relationships.

But we speak about emptiness extensively. And we speak about karma extensively. We don't use the words.

And people get it. We are just using the language of the world. And that's the way it should be.

Anyway, PHUNG PO MED PAS ZHI LA NGA'O NYAM PA BYUNG BAR GYUR If Nick, if there was a Nick who owns his body and mind, then in a place where his body and mind aren't, we should be able to have a Nick sometimes, if we want. Okay? If there's a Nick who owns his body and mind, which means who is independent from his body and mind, then we could say Nick's over there.

Even when his body and mind are over here. Because he's independent of them. He doesn't depend on them.

So we could say Nick's could be over there when his body and mind are over here. All right? You get what I should do.

LAS BYAS PA CHOS SA BA DANG MA BYAS PA DANG MA BYAS PA DANG PHRAD PAR GYUR BA'I GYUR NGAR BZHIN PABS SO You would also have the logical... What do they call in English? You can't say.

Logical problem, right? GYUR in Tibetan is GYUR. Logical problem.

Why? You could also have a case where a person committed a karma and never had to experience its result. It just went away.

Somebody did something and there was no... What do you call it? Payback.

A karma without a payback. All right? A boomerang that never flew back.

That's what you would have if there were a Nick who owned his body and mind. Separate from his body and mind in the way that the cow is separate from the sheep and the goat. LAS BYAS PA CHOS SA BA MA BYAS PA DANG PHRAD PAR Also, then there would have to be Nicks who encountered consequences of their actions that they hadn't committed.

Consequences of actions that they hadn't committed. Which are both unfair and not allowable. GYUR BA SOG NGAR BZHIN As we mentioned earlier.

SOG GI NUR BYED DU MA BYUNG BA NUR BYED is a good, nice word. NUR BYED means harmer and it means problems with a position. Harmer means problems with a position in Buddhist logic.

Meaning, if you say Nick is not his body and mind, if you say there's a big Nick who owns his body and mind, then there's lots of things that hurt that idea. There's lots of things you could bring up that would disprove that idea. Boy, you guys are sleepy.

It's going to get worse. Should I do this? I think we'll keep going.

DAG PUR MO RANG BZHIN GYI GYUR PA'I THA DUR DU MED THAG CHOD RE RE NYAM DU NGES PA NYES PA NI So you should decide in your mind right now that there's no Nick who is separate from his body and mind. There isn't any Nick. So we have a problem here.

You have to try to appreciate it. These last few... These are hard, and I went through them because they're in the book.

If I wasn't going straight through a book, I would have skipped them or something. I wouldn't have talked about them. But I feel like I'm supposed to be giving you the whole transmission of a certain book.

These last few pages are very difficult. And it's hard to make them relevant. But what I would say is go back to the pen.

Somebody give me a pen. Go back to the pen. Just go back to the pen.

When you're not sure, go back to the pen. Is the pen coming that way or this way? Something in my mind is creating the pen.

Why? Because when a puppy dog comes in, they don't write with it. They don't even try.

They just chew on it. So that means they don't see a pen. They see a chew toy.

So it means the pen is not announcing itself. It means the pen must be coming from me. Just remember that.

But does it appear naturally to normal people that the pen is coming from the pen? To normal people. If I said, is penness coming from the pen?

They would say, yeah. They wouldn't say pen is made up by my mind or something like that. If I had it up, I'd say, is this a pen?

They'd say, yeah, it's a pen. I'd say, where's it coming from? They'd say, well, it's just a pen.

It's coming from itself. They don't think that they're creating the pen as they go. On the fly?

What's that thing in programming? On the fly? I think it's on the fly.

It's doing calculations on the fly. They don't think it's your mind creating the thing on the fly. But there does appear a pen that comes from its own side, right?

Now get this. I'm not going to let you be sleepy, okay? Get this.

There's an appearance of a pen that comes from its own side coming from the pen. There is an appearance of a pen that came from its own side that's flowing from the pen. And from my side there's an old bad habit that accepts that appearance, okay?

There's something, there's a lie coming from the pen and there's an acceptance of the lie coming from me. And they meet in the middle somewhere and then I believe the pen came from itself. Why does this matter to you?

The next person who yells at you, whether it's your spouse or your lama, you have to think they're not coming from themselves. They're coming from me. Why?

I must have yelled at someone before and planted a seed in my mind and that's why I'm seeing them yell. Well, if you don't like people yelling at you, what should you do? Well, you can start by not yelling back, okay?

Do you not yell back because it's a noble thing not to yell back? No. Do you not yell back because they're not stupid?

No, they're stupid. All bosses and husbands are stupid. Okay, you know that.

It's just that if you call them stupid then you'll have people calling you stupid for weeks. So it's just a matter of self-preservation. It's not noble or right or moral or...

It's just unpleasant to have people yelling at you all the time. So don't yell back, okay? Then you stop them.

Anyway, so we've been examining. Have we been examining whether a pen is the sum total of its parts? Sorry.

Have we been examining whether a pen is the sum collection of its parts or whether it owns those parts? Or something like, have we been examining that? Have we been examining whether a pen is related to its parts?

Be careful. You've got to go back to what we were talking... You see, we're not actually talking...

The question has not been for these many painful hours whether the pen was the sum of its parts. That wasn't the question. The question was whether what you think the pen is is the sum of its parts.

Okay? I'll say it again. Is the pen which is coming from its own side...

Eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh... You know, I'm already... Your mind...

Your mind should say... You might just say, right there you might just say, but Geshe-la, that doesn't exist. Now you want to examine how it relates to the world?

You know, how does an honest politician relate to the world? You know, there's no use talking about it. There's no such thing.

Okay? So, we've been examining whether the pen that comes from its own side was one with its parts, or wasn't one with its parts, and the whole discussion was fruitless, because it doesn't exist. It can't be the same as its parts.

We can discuss whether Nick has his parts, but that's not what we've been discussing. We've been discussing whether the Nick who came from his own side was one with his parts, which is a useless discussion, because either way you take it, it's going to be wrong. Okay?

Is the Nick which comes from his own side one thing or many things? You should say, eh, eh, eh, eh, okay? It's a dumb question.

There's no such thing. What's the example in scripture? Two famous examples in scripture.

Is a rabbit with antlers. Are the antlers on a rabbit's head six inches long? Or twelve inches long?

And then you should just say, eh, eh, eh, okay? Is a flower which grows in mid-air with no means of sustenance, no earth, no water, no sunlight, no sea. Does it smell good or bad?

You see, those are famous examples in scripture. What's our example? A Nick who came from his own side.

Why are we interested in that? Because Nick got blamed for stealing. That's how we got here.

Nick got blamed for stealing books, okay? And then Nick had this big extra Nick who didn't deserve to get blamed, right? And that Nick was the same as Casper the Ghost.

There was no Nick like that. And it got bigger and bigger the more he got blamed for stealing the books, okay? Does the Nick who got blamed wrongly for stealing the books, right?

Is he one with his parts or is he separate from his parts? Yeah, I mean, Geshe-la just saved me the life. Could you just put the other five pages away?

Just take him out of the book. And future generations won't have to go through this for the next couple of days. We'll just put a little note there that says, you know, this Nick never existed anyway, so we're going to skip the discussion of whether he's one or not with his parts.

Got it? Because if you're going to look into whether Nick is one with his parts, well then that's... he is.

He is the sum of his parts, okay? He is. There is a Nick which is the sum of his parts, okay?

That's all. But not the Nick that didn't deserve to get blamed, okay? No such thing.

Hopefully we're at the end of these four parts. Let's see. How are we doing on time?

Am I supposed to stop at 9.30, right? No. What's it say over there?

9.30? Does it say 9.30? Okay.

Let's do some questions, okay? And I'll hit you with some more. Let me see if we got anything else here.

[Говорящий 2] (57:01 - 57:07)
Yeah, let's stop there.

[Говорящий 1] (57:08 - 1:09:33)
Who's picking? Is Giselle picking? Okay.

This is a panda's hat. No, seriously, a panda's hat with a single point on the top. Why?

It represents Ekagra. That's why those skinny... We call them dunce hats.

Whoa. That's a good question. Can we...

There are nine levels of meditation. There are five problems in meditation. But nowhere in the poster did they actually link the problems to this nine...

You know? The five problems and the nine states. So, could we do that?

There's a reason why they didn't. Let's chat. What's the first problem?

It's not feeling like meditating. Which... Okay, here's another Nick question.

Here's another Nick question. Which of the nine levels would that relate to? Be careful.

Where do you find the... On which of the nine levels do you not feel like meditating? Again, there's no such thing.

Because you're meditating by the first... The first level is you're already in meditation. Very lousy, poor, fly-on-the-cow-pie meditation.

But you're meditating. So, to answer the question as far as problem number one, that happens before the first level of meditation. How about the second problem?

Which was losing the object completely. That would happen all the way up to, what? The fourth level or something?

You would lose the object completely. But in increasingly less times. In the first two stages, you're off it more than you're on it.

So, problem number two is occurring more than problem number two is not occurring. And then when you get to level three, it starts to switch around. How about the third problem?

What's the third problem? Cingur nyik. Dullness and agitation.

All the way up to... All the way up to there, right? All the way up to eight, is it?

I think it's eight. All the way up to there, you have them. Cingur nyik, the mental mode where you are being harassed by and interrupted and, you know, this thing by dullness and agitation.

I think it's up to eight, right? What about problem number three? Failing to take action when you should have taken action.

I would say we're still there, right? You could still say it applies even at nine, perhaps. If it's action to fix dullness and agitation, then only up to seven.

Then what about overacting? Like trying to fix it when it ain't broken. Seven and eight?

I think it could happen almost anywhere, you know? Like you could be trying to fix dullness when you don't have dullness or something. I don't know.

But yeah, mainly it's up high. It's up around eight and nine. When you're on cruise control and you shouldn't fiddle with the accelerator.

Just leave things alone. It's cruising at its own speed. So it's true that in the scripture they don't actually do this exercise and it's a smart question.

It's a really good question. It means the person is thinking about it. Their handwriting looks to me French.

Am I right? Okay. There's a benefit to being on planes all your life.

Okay. Let's do, yeah. Yeah.

Question mark. Okay, let's skip that part. Yeah, this is pretty bad.

I like this one. I'll do the whole thing. Enormous thanks for your inspirational guidance.

I will forever be in your debt. Number two. Is it true that you only rarely get past meditation level number three?

It gets better, it gets better. It gets better. It's really cute.

I suspect that you are using this as an educational technique to place yourself at our level. However, I personally find it discouraging to know that after 20 or 30 years of meditation, it gets better. After 20 or 30 years of meditating, and in parentheses, properly and following the instructions, that I would still be at level three.

And then it ends with, should I shoot myself now? I mean, if you want me to be frank, I did have better meditation a long time ago. And I think it was bhagyakasepa.

You see what I mean? It wasn't due to any efforts in this life. I think I came in with certain mental seeds.

And typically those kinds of seeds ripen in the late teens and the twenties. And after that you are on your own. Meaning whatever efforts you make in this life.

You see what I mean? So you get kind of the main debit credit that if you've had a good past life, then the main time that you benefit from that, normally, in many aspects, is your late teens and your twenties. And then you're just running on the seeds that you've created in this life.

And we don't normally create great seeds between, you know, in our high school years. No, seriously. It's not like you spend your high school years in deep meditation or something.

Normally. You are enjoying the ripening of good seeds from your past life. So you drink and you party and you meet girls.

You see, that's good seeds ripening from your past life, but it's not creating any new good seeds. That comes with just hard work. And the hard work doesn't start until you start the dharma, right?

Until someone teaches you meditation and you start working hard, you're running on past life seeds, mainly. And those wear out. Personally, in my own case, I think it was mostly past life seeds that I did have an extraordinary meditation in my twenties.

And then after that, I was on my current life seeds. So I had to overcome Washington High School seeds. Seriously.

And I had to work back to where I am now. So in my own case, that's what's happening. Some of the seeds from my past life I think are ripening now, late.

And very beautiful, important things are happening. So just be aware of that with your own self. You won't have great meditation until you've had time to collect the seeds for it.

And that will take some time. All right. So yes, oftentimes I am on level three or less.

Cool. This is a reaction to the statement that you are creating the pages of the book as you turn it, right? So if that's true, that as I turn the pages of a book, my mind is laying down the next words.

That's the case. Then how did I come to write this book? Why am I hearing this book?

If I am the author, how could I have written this book because I don't understand it? No, no, no. Something like that.

I mean, there's high thoughts that I haven't thought about in my life. So how could it be that I've written it? That's not a big...

You know that's not a big problem, right? Like, you did some extraordinary goodness. One of the cool things about seeing emptiness directly, which is not much talked about, is that the karma of seeing emptiness directly assures that you will never be without fantastic teachers, ever, again.

That's one of the cool side... What do you call it? Side effects of seeing emptiness directly.

It creates a special karma that you will never not be in the hands of very, very high teachers. But you see, that's an example. You didn't set out to create the karma to be in the hands of high teachers.

You did some extraordinary goodness, and that will manifest in multiple different ways. And one of them is teachers who know more than you could ever know. And it's not that you have to know that to manifest them.

Why? The seed is... You know, shikwa.

Shikwa seed is always smaller than the shikwa. Shikwa means watermelon, right? It was very popular in the DCI talks in China.

Because people really relate to watermelons in China. People eat them... Dessert in China is a piece of watermelon.

It's not like six pieces of pie or something. No, they relate to shikwa. So, it's possible that you have done a slight kindness to someone else to help them understand something, and that has created a text which is beyond your ken, which is beyond your understanding.

Because shikwas grow from small seeds. That's okay. That's easy.

How about one more? These are fun and the book is hard. This one has a Buddha on it.

[Говорящий 2] (1:09:44 - 1:10:01)
Okay, good.

[Говорящий 1] (1:10:02 - 1:25:46)
It's a nice question. I am having experience that I am not sure where it fits into the map. When I am focused on my teacher, I feel a rush of energy.

This initially feels wonderful, however, soon my body tightens down and I feel like I am having a seizure. This feels like too much, so I have been softening my intensity when I begin to feel the rush, but then I slip into what feels like a dullness by comparison. Does that rush have any place in where we are trying to go?

Is there a way to ride the rush without having a seizure? This is why we've been doing yoga. I mean, in the yoga, we've been talking about the inner body.

The very most important, well, yeah, probably the most important teaching on the inner body, which is given in the Tibetan tradition of yoga, is Lung Semjugpa Cipa, right? So you've heard that. Lung, you can't say it.

Dang. Lung Semjugpa Cipa. Lung means prana.

Lung means the chi in your body. Sem means your mind, your thoughts. Jugpa Cipa means they always ride in tandem.

They always come in tandem. Your thoughts are always tied to your prana, and your prana is always tied to your thoughts. Your prana is like the horse, and the thoughts are like the horse rider.

And it's an interesting relationship if you reflect on it. Sometimes the horse is the boss, and sometimes the rider is the boss, right? I mean, people said, oh, Geshe-la, you're from Arizona.

I said, yeah. They said, oh, you must be good with horses. I said, yeah, I rode them twice.

And they said, well, why only twice? I said, well, the first time they gave me this half-dead animal that was old, and they put a saddle on it, and they put me on there, and it kind of like, kind of like, I don't know, tottered down the trail. And it was a good time.

I was scared, but I rode on it. I was like ten or something. And then later in college, somebody put me on a race horse, and it took off.

And then I just went like this, you know. And then it stopped right there. And then I flew like an amazing distance.

And then I never got on a horse again. So sometimes the horse directs the show. And then in theory, the rider can tell the horse where to go.

And it's the same with the inner body. So because lung-sem jupa-jipa, because the prana and the thoughts ride in tandem, and the thoughts are riding on the prana, you can, normally, you can direct the prana with your thoughts. So in Niguma's yoga, you direct the prana to the inside of the chakras by focusing there.

And then that brings the prana there. But the opposite is also true. So normally the horse rider tells the horse where to go.

But the principle behind yoga in Tibet, and in ancient India, is that you take advantage of the relationship to direct the thoughts by directing the prana. So you direct the prana through certain movements, asanas. And then knowing which channels relate to which emotions, you can elicit emotions by moving prana.

So in that case, you're moving the horse to move the rider. You get the horse to go right, and the rider, being on the horse, has no choice but to go right. So you can work the relationship both ways.

What does it have to do with meditation? In meditation, you are focusing the mind in a way which it is never focused in normal life. You are bringing the mind in, pratyahara.

You are focusing the mind inwards, which has a corresponding effect on the prana. If you concentrate the mind inward, if you draw the mind inward to a core, then that's necessarily drawing the prana also into a core, because of lungsam jupacikpa, because they ride in turn. If the horse is brought into the middle of the barn, the rider must come.

So in meditation, the rider is going into the middle of the barn, so the horse has to go with the rider. Assuming they are like glued together with crazy glue or something, which is the case. They are never separated.

So when you focus the mind inward during meditation, it would be very much to be expected that you should have certain rushes caused by movements of prana, because the prana is linked to the thoughts which are now being concentrated into the core of the mind. So you would have some kind of... You could expect some rushes.

You might feel jolts, or you might feel thrills up your spine, or you might get these things, you know, like that, and that's a normal result of the thoughts being concentrated. So when you are meditating on your teacher, and you have some kind of rush of prana like that, whatever mistakes you make in the meditation, whatever dullness you have, or whatever agitation you have, you'll have a corresponding pranic feeling in your body. So if you, for example, I believe the person who wrote it is over-concentrating the mind, right?

And we talked about it. And that leads to subtle agitation. That leads to gross and subtle agitation.

So I would say that the person has overly brought the mind in, and then there's been a reaction of the mind of over-excitement, over, what do you call it, stimulation, and then they've had a corresponding pranic experience. So how do you fix it? Which leads us to the question of lung, which we should talk about.

We have four minutes. Lung is the Tibetan word for prana, okay? We should talk about it longer.

I'll start tonight and we'll continue tomorrow. Lung is the Tibetan word for prana. It also means wind in Tibet.

It's also the element wind, like that. Those are the different meanings of lung. It's the word that the Tibetans chose to use to translate prana, the word prana.

But if you know about the vayus, the five vayus in the yoga schools, there's not only a prana, there's all the prana of the body. When the body needs to do something, like digest food, or poop, or send blood out to the limbs, or cough, then prana, the general prana of the body will collect in that area to perform its function. When the prana collects in a specific area to perform a bodily function, we call that a vayu.

All those pranas joining together in a particular area of the body to enunciate words, for example, udana vayu. Those individual pranas collecting here, that becomes a vayu, udana vayu, and that projects words, for example, or spit, or breath, exhalation of breath. So, when...

What is this called? There's a thing called prana vayu. So you have to distinguish, you have to learn to distinguish between prana vayu and prana.

Prana vayu is one of the five vayus around the heart area. But prana is all the energy in the whole body. So prana vayu is different from prana.

Unfortunately in Tibetan they don't have separate words for prana and vayu. So they end up calling prana vayu the wind of wind. And prana is called wind.

General prana is called wind. The vayus are also called wind. And the prana vayu is called the wind of wind.

So it gets terrible. When you have a disorder, because you have concentrated the mind too strongly inside, without proper training, or without proper breaks, or without seeing some kind of vast sky or something, if you concentrate the mind in too far, you get a disorder which is also called lung. It's given the same name.

The disorder of the wind of the wind is called the wind. So you can get the wind of the wind of the wind. And it's all called lung.

And then it's really confusing. But luckily the Sanskrit words are all different. So anyway, a disorder of the prana vayu is called lung.

It comes from improperly meditating. Usually meditating too hard, trying too hard, concentrating the mind in too hard, without a feeling of expansiveness or pleasure. It's where you feel uptight.

You are trying to meditate and you're uptight. And rather than feeling ngar, you are feeling anxiety that you haven't got 28 minutes of meditation done yet. It's that.

It's that kind of guilt and anxiety and nervousness. And then it manifests in a whole pile of different ways. The reason we've been doing the massages, for example, was to try to be proactive about that and try not to let people have it.

That's why we've been getting up later than four o'clock. And that's a judgment called by the teacher. If the teacher sees that the students are all exhausted from three months of dying at Diamond Mountain, then they don't get up at four o'clock because then everybody would get prana vayu disorder.

So maybe the next retreat we will, when you're all recovered. But then you'll be exhausted from building the temple in Phoenix. So what the person is describing, the rush with their teacher, and could they ride the rush with their teacher?

I would guess that the feeling of seizure that they described is the overactivity of the prana caused by too much concentration of the mind and feeling anxiety over meditating good enough, or something like that. So then the fix for that would be some kind of spaciousness. So I would say, if I were having that kind of rush with my teacher, in the visualization of my teacher, then I would try to lighten up.

They described that they were lightening up, but then they felt they went into dullness. That's normal. You turn the wheel and you go too far, and then you come back.

So you just have to get good at, what do you call it? There's a word, compensation. It's like when you do a twist and you take a, what do they call it?

You take a twist to make up for the first twist. You hold this twist for five breaths, and then you do a... I don't know.

Anyway. I'll think of it by tomorrow. Counter-twist.

So you would have to do that with your mind, you see. You would have to do a counter... You have to keep doing counter-twists.

So that person, I would say, I would guess that your main problem is trying too hard. And then look at the blue sky. Look at the valley.

Take yourself to the sky. That's why we do it in the room with the valley and the sky. Because whenever you feel a seizure coming on, you can look at the sky.

And that's a traditional method of expansiveness. Counter-act is the counter-twist to over-concentration of the mind. So try that.

And then when you get... Then when you start to get dull from that, come back to the golden room. So you do this thing.

But definitely don't stay anywhere that's painful or causing anxiety. You've got to take action, right? If you stay in a place of anxiety or pain or trouble or feeling tightness in your chest and you don't take action, then you've committed problem number four.

You're required to do something about it. You're not allowed to sit in a meditation and feel bad. That's not allowed.

You're supposed to do something. So that means you have to be able to diagnose your own problem and then give yourself a prescription. Alright?

And you should learn to do that. You should be able to diagnose, oh, I'm having subtle dullness. Now, what was the fix for that?

Oh, I was supposed to uplift my mind. How was I supposed to do that? Oh, you could either have just a mental image of golden light or you could start thinking about how lucky you are to be here and to have a teacher like that.

Just thinking how lucky you are to have the teacher that you have should be enough to uplift you anytime. So like that. You've got to know the problems and you've got to know the antidotes and that's why we're going through them.

Okay. We'll come back to this difficult part of scripture tomorrow. Maybe it will change.

Right? If you do yoga, it'll probably change. Good questions, though.

Really good questions. Very classical questions. They've been asked for 2,000 years.

Are you? Can you do it? Okay.

[Говорящий 2] (1:25:58 - 1:26:41)
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