«Дар освобождения», курс 2 «Прорыв к высшей реальности», занятие 21

[Говорящий 1] (0:00 - 0:27)
In ballet, they say the first few moves determine the whole practice. Like, if the first few moves are well done, then the rest goes well. And if the first few moves are lazily done, then the rest is poorly done.

Go right to your breath, very strong, single-pointed, focused on your breath.

[Говорящий 2] (1:43 - 3:38)
And go to the golden moon, and come to the blue sky. And I feel a good, everyone's feeling that feeling of contentment or satisfaction or surrender to where you are, and be happy, contented, stay in the sky.

[Говорящий 1] (3:38 - 3:54)
No need to go anywhere else. This is the best thing you can do to help all the people around you. Just stay in the sky right now.

Stay here where you are now, and that's the best service you can do for others.

[Говорящий 2] (6:11 - 8:57)
Then come to the mountains. Look at the mountains across the valley, and sunlight on the valley. Beautiful.

Come back to the golden moon. Ask your teacher to come. You can place your head on their chest, like a baby.

Just feel the comfort of having your head on their chest. Just stay there and embrace it, holding it like a baby. Let that be your single focus, like a child sleeping at her mother's breast.

Feel comfort, protection, and stay there in that feeling.

[Говорящий 1] (8:57 - 9:01)
Don't feel any need to come back here or any other place.

[Говорящий 2] (9:02 - 13:24)
Stay there in that feeling of safety and care of your teacher. And slowly come back to this room. And you can open your eyes slowly.

[Говорящий 1] (13:59 - 14:33)
The concentration feels really, really good. Really, really good. I think it's the best group I ever meditated with, actually.

Seriously. The previous record holder was the Wilcox 20 Years to Life prison. They're good.

Really. Honestly, they're really good. They don't have anywhere else to go.

Sorry, not Wilcox, Douglas. But that's one of the sweetest meditations I've had. You're doing really well.

[Говорящий 2] (14:37 - 14:38)
Okay.

[Говорящий 1] (14:51 - 20:55)
We got up to things being a product of names. Names meaning, in this philosophy, names meaning the images produced in your mind by the seeds of how you treated others in the past. So, kshen la rang ma le de tsuk tupa ching yin gupa na.

Which means that things are not as... He says, tsuk tupa, okay? Tsuk tupa is a very unusual word, and it means independent or self-standing.

So, Nick, for example, is not as concrete as we thought he was. He's more fluid. Or whoever you are, Uta, whoever you are, it doesn't matter.

You're not as fixed as you thought you were. You are as fluid as the seeds firing in your mind at any given moment. And then they will determine who you are and what you are.

Even what life form you are. So, we're not as fixed or... It's not that you die as a human and then get born as a dog, right?

It's that the same difference in the firing of the seeds that caused your last bite of dinner to go down could also turn you into a dog. It's that scary, okay? The seeds that went off to see you swallow are not much different than the seeds that would go off to see you as a dog for the next 15 years, you see?

It's the same process. The same thing. It's just seeds firing, you see?

And we have plenty of seeds to be a dog. We're just lucky they haven't gone off yet. We are not so fixed or concrete.

Southern, true, true, true, share, so, you can't do much, so, but, but, then, eh? Due to the... What do you call it?

Due to the confluence of many different factors and causes. For example, he says seed, water, fertilizer, heat, and moisture, right? I sort of object to that kind of language because he didn't put projection.

That seed he's talking about is like a corn seed or something. So, I think it's sort of dangerous to present dependent origination as just seeds and factors, you see? You've got to throw in at least one corn seed ripening because otherwise it's just conventional things.

It's not going to change how you lead your life. SOG PA LA BRTEN NAS SKYE BA'I GZHAN LA RAG LAS PA'I THOD DUG YIN PA RANG RER NGON GSUM DU THUB PA'I NA BRTEN CUNG YIN So, dependent origination means that things are THOD DUG. Those of you who know about Tibetan or want to learn Tibetan, BRTEN CUNG means occurs in reliance.

THOD DUG means happens in dependence. You see, there are synonyms. THOD DUG and BRTEN CUNG are synonyms.

Sometimes THOD DUG is given as sort of a definition of BRTEN CUNG. So, what they translate as dependent origination can be described as happening in reliance. THOD DUG YIN PA RANG RER NGON GSUM DU THUB PA'I NA BRTEN CUNG YIN LA You can see this going on all around you, that things depend on their causes.

But just to pause here, we misidentify the connection between the result and the cause. For example, with the aspirin. You see, we draw an artificial link between the headache going away and the presence of sumatriptin in the pill.

You see what I mean? We draw a false link of causation. We believe that the headache goes away because of some chemical in the pill.

And they're not related. The headache hasn't gone away because of the presence of some chemical in the pill. Because if that were the case, then every time you took that pill your headache would go away.

So, it's not that. We constantly draw false connections between what's happening to us or why a car goes. You draw a connection between the presence of gasoline and the car running.

And there's no such connection. So, we are constantly misunderstanding dependent origination. We're constantly drawing false links.

Just as a little hint from planet B to planet A, if the same causes are present and the same effect doesn't happen, then that ain't the cause. Got it? Okay.

You keep taking an aspirin in your head, it doesn't go away. Okay.

[Говорящий 2] (20:58 - 20:59)
It's kind of funny, right?

[Говорящий 1] (21:15 - 24:41)
Okay, now we get into the two ta's. Ta means... My Tibetan Lama's name was Kenripuche Geshe Losantarchen.

Serme Kenripuche Tharbageshe Losantarchen. And tar chin, his name, means gone to the limit. So, the edge of this platform is called ta.

So, ta means an edge. It can also mean a cliff. And then tar chin, his name was gone to the limit.

Gone to the end of enlightenment. Tar chin. So, now we're going to start talking about ta in the sense of an extreme that you could fall into.

And again, a good example would be when we got here, we didn't drive... We followed Google. What do you call it?

What do you call it? GPS thing. GPS thing, you know, said take four turns off of the last road there, which were all icebound.

And we got through two of them. Then we got into this weird thing where we couldn't go forward without sliding off the road, and we couldn't get back either. So, we just had to stop.

And then cars started to pile up in front of us and behind us, and they were quite irritated. You know, anyway. And then that guy came out and said, I'll drive your car down for you.

And I'm like... He says, don't worry, there's a ditch on either side, and they're big. But you can't see them because of the snow.

And I'm like, is this supposed to comfort me? You know, and I could just see him going off the road and amputating his leg, and I'm paying insurance for the rest of my life. I'm like, let's just stay here until the tow truck comes.

So, that's a ta. The two ditches are ta. Ta means you don't want to slide off into either cliff.

You don't want to fall off either cliff. What are the two cliffs? And this gets into one of the most beautiful statements in all of Buddhist scripture.

Okay? And it's Jetsu Gapa who did it, but there's a few opening acts. Okay?

dundre tenjung gi rigpa'am gyur tsen de khana ma tepa tsultu parang shing gi dupe thagapa ni We are seeking to deny the extreme that something could be existing in an independent or natural way. Which would imply that it existed without depending on any other thing. Now you know when I say that, meaning it existed without depending on your seeds firing, some seeds going off.

That's tenjung gi rigpa'am gyur tsen. That's what it means to use dependent origination as a reason or a justification that things are empty.

[Говорящий 2] (24:41 - 24:41)
Okay.

[Говорящий 1] (24:42 - 26:06)
That they are coming from your seeds. nangwa yu ta sel shing tenjung tongpay druk su shar shepa de yin And that's why in scripture we see those famous lines nangwa yu ta sel Say in your head, nangwa nangwa That's a big head. nangwa yu ta sel Okay, yu ta means the extreme of thinking things exist.

Okay. The extreme of thinking things exist. And it's one of the two ditches in life.

Okay. You don't want to slide into that. You don't want to think things exist.

Does that mean Nick doesn't exist? No. What would it be to fall into the extreme of thinking that Nick exists?

It would be to think that Nick was out there and that the way I see him is not coming from my own seeds. Okay. A Nick who existed without coming from my own seeds is the extreme of a Nick who exists.

[Говорящий 2] (26:06 - 26:06)
Okay.

[Говорящий 1] (26:07 - 34:19)
So you have to add the extra words. The extreme of Nick existing independent of the seeds in my own mind. That's called the extreme of thinking that things exist.

Does Nick exist? Yes. Can Nick shave?

No. We're not sure. We don't have any evidence either way.

Yeah, I mean, he can look in the mirror and he can, you know, let's say brush his teeth. He can. That's okay.

There's a Nick there. He is brushing his teeth. Okay.

To think there's a Nick in the mirror and you're brushing his teeth is not the extreme of thinking things exist. The extreme of thinking things exist would be to look in the mirror and say what you see is not coming from how you treat others. And the relative pleasantness of what you see is not specifically related to your ability to hold your temper.

Because that's the source of beauty. That's the karmic seed for beauty is the ability to hold your temper and not get upset or angry. If you want to make your face age fast or if conversely you want to save a lot of money on makeup.

Just be patient with people and don't get angry easily. All right. So we can say that nangway yuhtaselwa It's a very famous language in Nyantinus teachings.

nangway yuhtaselwa The appearance. The appearance of things. The appearance of things prevents us from falling into the ditch of saying things exist.

The appearance of things prevents us from falling into the ditch of saying things exist. So you now know that the appearance of things must here mean understanding that what appears around you is coming from seeds in your own mind which were planted by how good you were to others. And understanding that what appears around you is coming from how you treat others.

Which in the scripture is called appearance. Prevents you from believing in the nick that was never there. That was the nick who didn't deserve to be criticized.

Okay. So nangway yuhtaselwa, very famous. The appearance of things understood correctly prevents us from believing in the nick who was never there.

All right. The extreme of thinking things exist. Meaning a nick who isn't there.

shing tenjun tompay drog su sharwa Which is to say, he says, if you understand that the fact that things come from other things, if you understand that things come from other things, then you... Sorry. Can you come to a realization that understanding that things come from other things is the friend of emptiness?

It's the screen and the projector thing we talked about. They are different sides of the same coin. They are different sides of the same coin.

You look at the coin from one side, it's the blank screen. You look at the coin from the other side, it's the fact that your seeds are projecting with everything you see. And together they explain the existence of all things.

And if you understand if you understand how things are coming from your seeds, you won't fall into the trap of thinking that things exist the way you always thought they did. Cars run from gas. Work results in money.

Negotiating with your boyfriend makes him reasonable. No, they're all the same. Taking more pills will remove your headache.

Things like that. nyukul rang shing kyi drum na gyu khen gyi chur ser mi rung If something like a sprout coming up out of the ground, right, that first little sprout of a flower, it was really exciting. And in the whole next eight months there were wildflowers all over the front of my house.

Everywhere. And they went off at different times of the season. There's still some going off in the middle of winter.

But, you know, we planted them in a bare ground and then the excitement of the first not even open leaf, it comes up half, half, and then it opens like that and it was about this big. So the nyukul rang shing kyi drum na If that sprout existed in itself, remember in? When you get tired of Madhyamaka language, just say in.

I think it's very powerful. It's extremely... Normally the shorter is more powerful, right?

Miles Davis said... Less is more. Miles Davis said less is more.

So it's that way with Madhyamaka also. So if the sprout were in the sprout or if the sprout were coming from the sprout, then nothing could change the sprout. Because nothing would be acting on the sprout.

The sprout would be acting on itself. You see? If a sprout were in the sprout, it would be independent of all other conditions affecting it.

If the sprout is coming from seeds in your mind, you know, if the sprout is coming from how you treat other people, then you can change the sprout. And then a sprout can change. Because it's depending on other factors.

If it were self-contained, it would always be the same. If it were self-contained, it would never change. It would never open.

The two little leaves would never split. And then you'd never have a flower six months later. It's just not possible.

If it were self-contained. If it were relying on something outside of it, meaning your seeds in your mind, then all things are possible. Then a seed can grow.

Then a sprout can grow. Then you can have flowers in six months. Because they are not coming from the sprout.

They are coming from shifts in the seeds in your mind. What caused the wildflowers to flower in my garden throughout the summer and fall, and a few are still going off, is nothing to do with the seeds or the sprout under the ground. These are moment-to-moment ripenings of seeds in my own mind.

And that's the only way it could be. If it existed in the sprout, if the sprout were in the sprout, it would always be a sprout. It would never change to a flower.

It couldn't. It would always be a sprout. It would be stuck being a sprout.

If it existed the way you always felt it did.

[Говорящий 2] (34:20 - 34:20)
All right?

[Говорящий 1] (34:20 - 50:47)
Here we go. nyu ku rang shing le shen du min gyur shik gu na yang rang shing gi ma du pa yinpe So if the sprout were itself, and only itself, if it were self-contained, then it couldn't change. rang shing gi ma du pa yinpe but because it doesn't have its own nature.

Okay? That's a difficult expression, okay? Get used to it.

rang shing gi ma du pa means swabhava, right? swabhavena Does it exist through some nature of its own? Or does it have a nature of its own?

So what do you mean when you say that, Geshe-la? What do you mean when you say something has a nature of its own? Well, pick something that you can quickly identify its nature.

What's the nature of a fire? It's hot. Okay?

The nature of fire, basic nature of fire is that it's hot. In Buddhism, it's called sarsing sekpa. Mei tsen ni Definition of fire is that which is hot and burning.

So let's stick to hot, okay? The hotness of fire doesn't come from the fire. The hotness of fire doesn't come from the fire.

How hot fire feels to you is coming from you, okay? How hot... Even so basic a thing as the very characteristic which defines a fire is not natural to the fire.

It's coming from you. Which it means that someone could touch fire or put their hand in fire if they had special seeds and it wouldn't feel hot to them. So you know these pujaris in India, they just pick up coals.

And you're like... You know, they pick up all the fire. It's considered an important skill for a pujari.

I don't know what they do with all the kids who can't pick up fire. They probably get fired or something. But really, every good pujari, like in Kashi, in Varanasi, they just pick up the coals and then they blow on them and then they put them back.

And you're like, you can't even bear to watch them do it. But it means that they're not feeling the fire in the same way I would. For whatever reason.

Maybe they got calluses, I don't know. But that means the fire is not as hot to them. So even the characteristic which defines that object is not inherent to it.

Heat is not in fire. I like that, in. We got to go for that.

Heat is not in the fire. The capacity to take away your headache is not in the aspirin. There's nothing inherent in anything.

Where is that? rasikimadrupa yinpin na nukun nekap Therefore, because the sprout doesn't have a quality of being a sprout in it, it can change its... Nekap means, here it means its circumstances.

The circumstances of the sprout can change. How? It can slowly evolve eventually into hay or straw.

So they're just giving an extreme. You start with a sprout. It becomes grass.

It becomes older grass. It becomes grass which has died. And then that grass is scythed and brought into the barn and dried and becomes straw.

So all the way from seed to straw, each change that it can go through must be coming from your mind because if it were a sprout in a sprout, it would never stop being a sprout. It couldn't change because it's a sprout. And it's not straw.

That came later. So it must be coming from your mind. TAR TZAM ne kyi par All the way up to...

In Tibet, barley was important. So they say also barley. The two most important things.

Hay to feed your yaks and barley to eat yourself. ne kyi par ne kap shen du rim kyi gyur ne Things evolve. Things change.

mi dang dundro lung chupay par And then even up to the fact that animals or humans can eat them. cha che kyi nam jat pham che All those phases or seasons of objects, especially crops, for example, they're all thepa. Thepa means it's cool, it works, it happens.

It operates. If the sprout were the way... If it existed the way you always thought it did, then it would always be a sprout.

If it was coming from itself, it would always be itself. And then it would be a sprout forever. See, if it's coming from you, and from seeds firing in your mind, and if the seeds fire in a different order, or one seed fires and then wears out, and then another seed replaces it and fires, then you can perceive the sprout growing into a stalk, and then giving leaves, and then giving flowers, and then drying out, and then people...

What do you call it? Winnowing that stuff, and then people eating it. cha che kyi nam jat pham che It's all okay.

ten chung na nyepa jenpa ni tongpay me ta sel So now we have the other half of the equation. Before we had nangway yod ta sel. Now we have tongpay me ta sel.

Very famous. Yod ta again means the extreme of thinking that things existed the way you thought they did. You thought a sprout had some kind of magical power in it which allowed it to transform into a stem, which allowed it to transform into a leaf, and which allowed it to transform into a fruit.

But some sprouts die, and they never become fruit or grain. Why? And then a scientist wants to say it didn't have the right heat, or there wasn't enough rain, or it didn't have the right DNA, or anything like that.

But that also is coming from you. In the end, you have to explore why did this crop fail from lack of rain, and the other crop didn't fail from lack of rain. Even if you say it was the rain, well, who caused the rain?

Why did rain fall there and not there? Oh, there was a wind. Or there was...

And then scientists are just chasing their tails. Oh, there was a wind. Duh!

Why did the wind come up? Oh, the sun shone on that part of the ocean and didn't shine on the land. Why?

Because light came from the sun and didn't hit the water and hit the land. Why? How does light come from the sun?

We talked about it in yoga class the other day. There's no... Quantum physics has proven that it's impossible.

It's not possible for light to be coming from the sun. Light behaves in two contradictory ways according to where the observer is positioned. It could be either particles moving in a straight line or ripples moving out like that and canceling each other in a distinctive pattern that's only possible for ripples.

So at the same time it's rippling, at the same time it's shooting in a straight line. Which is not possible. Depending on where the observer is located.

So don't tell me it was the sun, the light from the sun hit the ocean which caused the wind, which caused the cloud, which caused the rain, which caused your crop to fail. You're just... You're just giving me an endless chain of things that don't explain the thing before it.

Okay. All right. And then when you get down to the primary cause of how matter itself moves, you can't explain it.

And then you tell me it can't be what it is. You chase your tail back to the point where you can't explain it anymore. You know.

Okay. Okay, so tombé metasa. Okay, very famous.

If one extreme is to think that Nick existed the way we thought he did, which was, if Nick seems irritable, it has nothing to do with me. Right? If Nick seems irritable, it has nothing to do with me.

That's how you used to think he existed. To believe he could be irritable and it has nothing to do with you is the extreme of thinking he exists. That's what it means to say the extreme of thinking he exists.

A Nick who could be irritable without my having been irritable in the past is a non-possibility. There's no such thing. That's the extreme of thinking Nick exists.

So what's the opposite? What's metta? What's the extreme of thinking Nick doesn't exist?

Okay. Statistically, the people who fall into Nick exists versus the people who fall into Nick doesn't exist are about 999,999 over here to one over here. Why?

This extreme means you went to a bad teaching about emptiness. And they said, Nick's not what you thought he was. And then you decide Nick doesn't exist.

Then if Nick's... If Nick who's irritable from his own side can't exist, then Nick can't exist. There's no such thing as Nick.

Everything's an illusion. I can cheat him. I can lie to him.

I can steal from him. It doesn't really matter, does it? And Lama Aura...

I think the baby was noisy tonight. Anyway, she told me this cute story. Her mother was the disciple of one famous rabbi.

I don't know. I don't remember his name. But he was a very charismatic teacher and she became his disciple.

And then, you know, the usual jealousy trips were going on between the leading disciples. And then... which I was very guilty of.

I had a 20-year jealousy trip. The only reason it's not going on now is I'm in a different state. But, you know, there was...

I forget what it was. Oh, yeah. So they were having a big dinner and all the close disciples were cooking.

And then her mother came out. I don't know, with a tray of potatoes and a glass tapioca thing. And then she slipped and dropped it.

You know. And then there was a big crash and the potatoes went all over the floor. And then the other leading disciple who was jealous of her said, Ha ha ha, karma!

You know. And then the guru came down the stairs and walked over to that lady and stamped on her foot and said, Ha ha ha, karma! Why did I bring that up?

Yeah. So, what is it? Yeah, lots of people fall into this one.

You know. Nick... The Nick as I see him is the one that's really there.

And he cannot be coming from my mind. Because I've never been that irritable. You're right.

The seed is always smaller than the result. You can always comfort yourself in every misery you encounter and every bad thing that someone does to you. You can always comfort yourself that whatever you did was less.

Okay? That doesn't really help though. So, if someone says, Nick is not the way you thought, Nick is just in your mind, right?

Then the other extreme is to say, well, then it doesn't matter what I do with him. I can do anything I want with Nick. Because he's just a mental apparition.

He's an apparition of my mind. And I can treat him any way I want. It's just karma.

Okay? I think that's why I brought that up. It's just karma.

It's just an apparition. So, that would be the other extreme. So, this extreme is relatively much less common than the other one.

This one we call kunta as opposed to fenke. Fenke means inborn mistake. Yuta is mostly an inborn mistake.

Most people have it when they're born. Then metta is a learned mistake. It's a result of bad learning.

It's a result... It's an acquired taste. Okay?

It's an acquired taste. So, then he says here, tongpay me... nangway yu ta sel, right?

The belief that Nick exists the way you thought he did is removed by understanding how he's coming from your seeds. The belief that Nick has no existence at all is removed by the understanding of emptiness. And that's very subtle.

And you've got to think about it. Okay? It would seem that the belief in emptiness would thrust you into believing nothing exists.

And it would seem that an understanding of how things are coming from your seeds would thrust you into a belief about how things exist. But it is rather the opposite. And you have to chew on that.

And I'm not going to give it to you. Okay? You have to chew on that.

Why would an understanding that things are coming from seeds remove your belief that things exist? And why would an understanding that things are empty remove your belief that things don't exist? Because the opposite would seem the case.

[Говорящий 2] (50:48 - 50:48)
Okay?

[Говорящий 1] (50:48 - 1:06:12)
And you have to chew on that. You have to think about it. Okay?

It took me a long time. I remember. me ta sel shing tongpa denjin di sharwa Emptiness will express itself as projection to a well-educated mind.

yin den di dag la gong ne ma drub pa shub pa do le kyang So there's a sutra. Sutras are usually named after the person who who brought up a question. paripraksha means who asked the question.

And then they're named after the person who asked the question. So there's a naga king named ma drub pa which means... Ah, it's a reference to the lake that he lives in and it's never warm.

ma drub pa So anyway, this naga king asked Lord Buddha a question. And then in that sutra the following lines come. khang shik khen la'i kye pa de ma kye de la gyeway rang shing yu ma yin khen la rak le kang re tongpa she kang gi tong ni she de pa yu yin When you're reading a quotation, you know, just for you Tibetan freaks, then you give it this little flourish with the tone of your voice at the end.

kang gi tong ni she de pa yu yin And that means a quote is ending. Or you can say pa yu yin pa yu yin which means pa yu yin ser pa yu yin So anyway, if you hear a lama being translated and then they'll say something like de la gyeway rang shing yu ma yin khen la rak le kang re tongpa she kang gi tong ni she de pa yu yin And it means he said. It means you're supposed to translate the lama said, okay?

So if it irritates you, you know where it's coming from. khang shik khen la'i kye pa de ma kye Anything that has been born from causes was never born. de la gyeway rang shing yu ma yin It has no nature of being born.

khen la rak le kang re tongpa she What does emptiness mean? Emptiness means that the thing came from its causes. That's beautiful.

See, that's the point he's trying to get us to. The point where you get confused about the two sides of the coin. Somebody comes up to you and says, what is emptiness?

You say, it's things that are coming from the seeds in your mind. Is that true? No.

Emptiness is an absence of something. But it means you understand emptiness so well that when somebody asks you what emptiness is, you go straight to dependent origination. What's emptiness, Geshe Michael?

The pen's coming from you. kang re tongpa she de pa gyur yin Anyone who grasps emptiness this deeply is pa gyur. Now we're going to get on to another subject.

We're going to get on to a whole new subject. We got time for this? pa gyur is an expression that means to be careful.

pa gyur means to be careful. It derives from an old word, bhagma. bhagma means a newly wedded bride.

bhagma means a newly wedded woman. In Tibet in ancient times, there was this whole ritual. You would decide to get married to a girl, or the parents would decide.

She would have to move from her family to her husband's family, to their yurt or to their... I mean, that's what it was. And then there was this whole procession thing where the man's brothers would get on horses and go get the lady and bring her back and install her in the house, you know, where she became the slave of his mother forever, until the mother passed away from natural...

hopefully natural causes. So, that was the system. And she just became the slave of the family.

She was lower than everybody and she had to do everybody's dirty work. And she wasn't supposed to talk. She's just supposed to do what she's told to do.

And so bhagma, to be a newly wedded bride, became the word you use to describe someone who was like, I don't know, wasn't allowed to talk, or was timid. It became a word for timid. And then it became a word for extremely mindful, like never say anything in front of the mother-in-law.

So bhagya later came to mean careful. And then later, in Madhyamika, it came to mean aware of what's really going on, like quietly observant of what's really going on. So bhagya came to mean wise, like quietly observant of what's going on.

So what the scripture is saying, whoever understands that emptiness expresses itself as the seeds in your mind, that person has the capacity to act properly. So now bhagya has come to mean they're careful about what they do. They're careful about what they do.

Get this. I'll tell you the punchline and then we'll go through the joke. If you've gotten a correct teaching on emptiness, what does your attitude about collecting karma become?

How's your belief in seeds? Is it strengthened or is it weakened? The fact of emptiness justifies the theory of seeds.

A person who really understands emptiness becomes seed anal. Then they're like keeping a book. They say six times, forget it, I'm doing 12 times.

I want a 12-time book or a 36-time book. Let's get serious here. Everything's coming from my seeds.

Everything's coming from my seeds. And then the greater your understanding of emptiness, the greater your interest in ethical living. And the greater your interest in being kind to others and taking care of others.

How a person acts from hour to hour is a direct reflection of how well they understand emptiness. If they are being unkind to others, demanding, lying, hurting others, abrupt with others, unkind, undiplomatic, anything, any kind of negative behavior, even the slightest towards another person, then that person doesn't understand emptiness. Or they may understand it and not be aware of it.

The greater your understanding of emptiness, the kinder, more graceful, more considerate, more neat, more everything you become. And they're just a direct correlation. You can tell if a sage understands emptiness from how they treat other people.

If there's any kind of roughness or impoliteness or any kind of misbehavior, then they don't understand emptiness. And you don't hear that very often. It's only the really great masters who really grasp emptiness, that they become seed freaks.

They're all concerned about, what kind of seed is it going to make if I blow my nose too loud and it bothers the person next to me? What kind of seed does that make? What kind of karmic result does that have?

They become obsessed by not disturbing others in the slightest way. A person who understands seeds gets up in the cabin and tiptoes to their bathroom and turns the knob slowly. No, I'm not kidding.

I'm really not kidding. And they open it as silent as a cat. And then they go in.

If you're a boy, you sit down to pee. I'm not kidding. I'm not kidding.

Because it might disturb someone. And you don't want that seed. You just don't want that seed.

And so a person who really understands emptiness becomes bakya about karma. They become like a newlywed bride. They're afraid to do anything wrong.

They're totally sensitive to how their actions are going to... What do you call it? Impinge on others.

Totally, totally sensitive all the time. So basically they're moving to the world in this graceful dance. This graceful, kind, considerate dance.

I think the big word that would describe a person who understood emptiness well would be considerate. They would be highly considerate of others all the time. And that's a barometer of your emptiness understanding.

DONG PO ZHES DONG NI ZHES Anybody who understands emptiness, bakya yin. They are bakya. They are considerate to others.

Okay. TSAR SHES LAS GANG PHYIR BSTAN BYUNG MA YIN PAS PHYIR DGAR YOD PA MA YIN NO DE PHYIR STONG PA MA YIN PAS PHYIR DGAR YOD PA MA YIN NO And then Nagarjuna, Arya Nagarjuna said the same thing in his scripture, the root text on wisdom, Mula Pragnya. He said, GANG PHYIR BSTAN BYUNG MA YIN PAS PHYIR DGAR YOD PA MA YIN NO If it's the case that there's nothing in the world which is not coming from your seeds, then DE PHYIR STONG PA MA YIN PAS PHYIR DGAR YOD PA MA YIN NO If it's the case that there's nothing in the world that's not coming from your seeds, then it's also the case that there's nothing in the world which is not emptiness.

That's an overstatement, okay? That's an exaggeration. But he's trying to make a point, okay?

I'll say it again. If it's the case that there's nothing in the world that's not coming from seeds, then it's the case that there's nothing in the world that's not emptiness itself. What they're trying to do is get you to draw a close connection between emptiness and karmic seeds.

Like, you've got to start thinking of them as flip sides of the same coin. And you just can't think of one without the other. Seeds don't mean nothing if there's no place for them to project.

Emptiness don't mean nothing if there's no seeds to project onto it. YIN NA LTAR BCUG PA DANG ZHIG SBYUG PA LAS Chandrakirti also said, Master Chandrakirti also said in his Madhyamaka Avatar, GANG PHYIR DNGOS PO BRTEN NAS RAB BYUNG BA'I RTOG PA DE DAG LTAG PAR MI NUS PA DE PHYIR RTEN CUNG RIG PA DI YIN NI DANG YIN DRA BA THAG DAG BCUG PA BYED DANG GANG PHYIR DNGOS PO BRTEN NAS RAB BYUNG BA'I All things that do anything are coming from certain causes, such as your behavior towards others. The seeds created by your behavior towards others. RTOG PA DE DAG LTAG PAR MI NUS PA The dream images that you believed in the past are indefensible.

The nick that is irritable, not because you've been irritable, is indefensible. There's no way to defend that idea. DE PHYIR RTEN CUNG RIG PA DI YIN NI DANG YIN DRA BA THAG DAG BCUG PA BYED Therefore, the simple reasoning which says that all things are coming from your karmic seeds, it cuts all...

DRA BA means nets, like the kind of nets you use to catch birds or something. You know these, what do you call, twine? In China, there are special nets, and then you throw them up in the air and you catch birds.

I went to a forest in a place called Umeshan. It's a 20-mile walk down the cliffs. It takes two days, and your knees don't work again forever.

And I didn't see a single life form. I didn't see a bird, I didn't see a lizard, I didn't see a squirrel. It was a normal forest, it was a jungle, and I didn't see a single moving thing because they use these nets, and they eat everything, and they catch everything, flying, crawling, anything.

Swimming. After thousands of years, there's no... I don't know who eats the leaves and stuff, I don't know.

I didn't see anything. I didn't see a living thing. So DRA BA means a...

DRA BA sometimes in Sanskrit, a net. Okay. So if you understand how emptiness appears as projections, you can cut the nets which entrap you.

Okay. Two more minutes. Chöpa che.

We got to the quotation by Je Tsongkhapa. I could answer questions or I could do that. I'd rather someone had a heart attack tonight that you heard this.

[Говорящий 2] (1:06:13 - 1:06:13)
Okay.

[Говорящий 1] (1:06:14 - 1:14:29)
Very, very, very, very beautiful. Maybe the most beautiful words in all of scripture, I think. And it took me a lifetime to understand them.

It's very, very beautiful. NAM ZHIG REN BYO ME BAR, GCIG BYAR DU, DEN DANG MI LUR THONG BA TZAM MI ME, NGES SHES YUL KYI, DZIN DANG KUN JIG NA, DE TSE LTA BA'I BRGYAD PA, TSOR PA LAG, ZHEN YANG, NANG BA'I YOD TA ZEL BA DANG, DONG PA'I ME TA ZEL ZHING, DONG PA NI RGYUR NANG DRAB PAR, CHAR BA'I TSUL ZHING NA, THAR TZAM LTA BA'I PHYOG PAR MI RGYUR ROL. Very, very famous.

I think it's the Lam Tsun Lam Tsun, the three principal paths. So here we go. So, this is how Jetsun Karpa summarized all these points.

And I think it's the greatest summary ever written. Here we go. NAM SHIG REN JO MED PAR GCIG BYA RTU At some point in your spiritual career, the idea that nothing has any nature of its own, and the idea that whatever you see and things is coming from your mind will stop alternating.

We have trouble holding our minds on both ideas at the same time. Either I understand that Nick's not coming from himself, or I understand that he's coming from the seeds in my mind. But those understandings alternate in a normal person.

You can think for a while how there's a Nick that wasn't really there, which is emptiness, right? And then you can think how the Nick you do see is coming from you. But somehow you can't hold both those ideas at the same time.

They kind of have to toggle. Then he says, NAM SHIG REN JO MED PAR GCIG BYA RTU At some point the toggling will stop. At some point the toggling will stop.

BSTEN BRAL MI LURR THONG BAR TZAM NYID NAS NGES SHIG YUL GYI DZIN DANG KUN GCIG PA Just by understanding how Nick is coming from the seeds in your mind, NGES SHIG YUL GYI DZIN DANG KUN GCIG NA the way you used to look at him in the past will be destroyed. The way you used to see him in the past. What's the way you used to see him in the past?

When Nick was irritable, it was because of him, and not because of me. And that's the cause of all your suffering. You blame it on the other person.

NGES SHIG YUL GYI DZIN DANG KUN GCIG NA Once you understand MI LURR We'll start at MI LURR, right? MI LURR Without fail, without exception, that he's always coming from you. Okay?

Always. NGES SHIG YUL GYI DZIN DANG KUN GCIG NA That will destroy the way you used to look at Nick. DE'I TSE LTA BA'I BYAS PA TSOG PA LAG When you reach that point, the development of your worldview is complete.

The development of your worldview is complete. He's not what I thought he was. That's the white screen.

But rather, he's coming from how I treat other people. That's the projection of a Nick. And when they become one thing, and you no longer toggle between those two understandings, DE'I TSE LTA BA'I BYAS PA TSOG PA LAG your worldview is perfect.

You can rest. You got it right. That's a pretty big deal.

GZHAN YANG Now, here's the clincher. Moreover, SNANG BA'I YOD THA SA WA DANG Understanding how he really came to be will eliminate your tendency to think he exists. I told you you had to figure that out.

That's not my problem. It should have been the opposite. It should have been the opposite.

Understanding how he's my projection should have prevented me from thinking he doesn't exist, but that's not how it goes. Understanding that he's my projection prevents me from thinking he does exist. You have to chew on that.

You have to cook it. STONG PA'I ME THA SA And the understanding that he's not who I thought he was will prevent you from thinking he doesn't exist. And it should have been the opposite.

You know, it's very... It's a core. You have to think about it.

Struggle with it, okay? The understanding that he's empty of being who I thought he was will prevent me from thinking he's nobody. Okay?

It's difficult. STONG PA'I ME RGYUD DANG DE BAR CHA RUI TSOR ZHIN NA STONG PA'I ME RGYUD DANG DE BAR CHA RUI TSOR ZHIN NA If you finally grasp how emptiness expresses itself as things causing other things, if you understand how emptiness expresses itself as certain things causing other things, specifically your seeds causing things, right? If you understand how emptiness expresses itself that way, you will never...

Your view will never be stolen away. Your correct view will never be lost. You will never have your correct view purloined.

That's not so good. Your correct view of the world will never be stolen away. Okay?

You'll never be robbed of your correct view. And you will... THAR ZIN LTA BA means you will never fall into those two extremes.

Okay? So you got to go over that. You got to chew on that.

You got to think about that. If you want to look it up in the English, it would be page 374. B.

Right there is where the quote breaks, okay? I'm not sure how the person I'm jealous of had translated it, but I'm sure it's okay. But...

DE LTAR LTONG DANG, RTEN CUNG NYID RGYAL MED GCIG DROG SOS GCIG DROG BA'I TSOR NGES PA NYID NA RGYON DRE SOG CHA CHE BSTEN DE LA NGES SHES TANG TSI CHOG CHE RU SONG MED Okay, this is where it gets into the point we were talking about. DE LTAR LTONG DANG, RTEN CUNG NYID RGYAL MED A person who understands that emptiness and the way their world is projected by their seeds are actually not only not contradictory, but they are necessary sides of the same coin. They complement each other.

The fact that things are not what you thought and the fact that they are coming from your seeds are not only not contradictory, they complement each other, okay? DROG SOS GCIG GCIG CHAG DU DROG GCIG DROG BA'I TSOR At some point, you'll see that there's a union of those two and they become one thing. Like the blank screen and the movie projected onto it, which is not difficult to imagine, right?

As one single unit, the projected image and the white screen, creating a movie. Okay? One thing.

NYES PA NYES NA If you can get to that point, DRE SOG CHA CHE BSTEN DE LA NGES SHES TANG then you will gain a faith in the process of cause and effect, meaning, the fact that things are coming from the seeds in your mind. Okay? The process of cause and effect.

I don't care that seeds make watermelons. That's not what cause and effect is talking about. It's a form of cause and effect.

It's not the one we're talking about. We're talking about you're mean to somebody and then people seem mean to you.

[Говорящий 2] (1:14:30 - 1:14:30)
Okay?

[Говорящий 1] (1:14:31 - 1:22:07)
Right? Very simple. TSIG SBYOG CHER SOG Okay, that's the one I wanted to get to before 9.30 and I did it. TSIG SBYOG CHER SOG TSIG SBYOG means... I want to say it right. Let me think.

Your life will... You will lay a greater importance than ever on ethical behavior. You will lay a greater importance than ever on ethical behavior if you understand emptiness.

The more you understand emptiness, the more ethical you have to be because you're making... because that's the projective. TSIG SBYOG CHER SOG Ethical, I mean morality, okay?

It's just don't bug other people. Don't impinge on other people. You know?

Be considerate. Put yourself in their place and don't do anything you wouldn't want them to do to you. Okay.

CHER SOG NI DIG PONG RGYUD DUG CI Generally speaking, you'll become more interested in not doing things that hurt other people and you'll get more interested in doing things which help them. DIG PONG RGYUD DUG CI CHAM NYING RJE CHANG CHUG GI SEMS LAG CHA DANG BYAS PA LAG NEN LA BDEB GANG THUB BYAS PA And you will get more interested in following the teachings and perfecting the teachings on how to develop compassion, how to develop love, how to develop bodhicitta and the related vows. Okay?

The vows, the bodhisattva vows. You'll get much more interested in those. If you what?

Understand emptiness. The more you understand emptiness, the more interest you'll take in your bodhisattva vows. LAG LEN BDEB GANG THUB BYAS PA'I THAB SHES YANG MA BRAL BA'I NYAM LEN LA BRTZON PA ZHIG DBANG THAB SHES YANG MA BRAL BA'I THAB SHES means what?

THAB SHES can mean skillful means. You could misread this as skillful means. THAB KHAS THAB SHES You could read it as meaning to know the way, to know the method.

THAB SHES THAB KHAS You could read it as skillful means. That would be wrong. Here THAB SHES means THAB DANG SHES RAB.

THAB DANG SHES RAB Okay? What's THAB? The first three-and-a-half perfections.

What's SHERAB? The second two-and-a-half perfections. There are six perfections.

The first three or the first four, or I like to say the first three-and-a-half, relate to what you do. And the last two-and-a-half relate to how you understand what you do. For example, if you give...

This is very typical. In a DCI presentation, we'll be overseas. We'll get up in front of a big crowd of businessmen.

Sun Island, okay? We're at Sun Island. You were there?

Yeah. So it's just like corporate resort, and they do corporate retreats, and they have the whole corporate staff there. They were tough.

They start out like this, you know. I think the corporate staff was required to go, which is always bad. And so here's this cuckoo American guy talking about, you know, if you give away your money, you'll make more money.

You know? And then naturally, when you take off on that tangent, you will get more money if you help others with your money more. Then of course the objection arises in any normal person's mind, well, I've seen lots of people give away money and they're all broke.

They're broke as a result of giving away money. Or I've seen people be generous and people just took advantage of them. So what about that?

They should be rich. So then, that's tough without shira. They did the right thing, but they didn't understand what they were doing.

And that means, yama-dawa means, yama-dawa in the second line here means they cannot be divorced from each other. Yama-dawa means divorce. Yama-dawa means they cannot be divorced from each other.

What? You can't do good deeds without understanding what's going on. Otherwise they don't work so good.

They will work. They will work extremely slowly and they'll work to a very small extent. You will get an extra 25 cents just before you die.

And you won't even connect it to what you did 30 years before. The irony of uninformed generosity is that the result comes so late that you can't relate it to what you did to get it. You don't remember the kindness you paid to get the result now because it was so poorly executed that the time gap was huge.

And then you don't draw a connection between getting the extra 25 cents and having been generous in the past. What's more ideal is that someone understands the mechanics of giving and then it will come fast. In an extreme case, and we've seen it in our little personal lives, we will sweat over a decision to take a loss on a talk or something, like this retreat.

We'll sweat over a decision to take a loss on the retreat and not even mention it to people, just we'll take the loss. We'll all empty our bank accounts, we'll all load up our credit cards and we'll just take the loss and we won't tell anybody. And then we sweat over that kind of thing because it happens about every other day.

And then at seven o'clock we'll have an epiphany and we'll say, okay, let's just take... It happened in Guangzhou big time. We were going to lose $50,000 or something.

And then we said, what the hell, let's just let everybody come to the retreat. Lose money, lose money. So we decide we'll take the loss.

We're in Guangzhou, we decide we'll take the loss. And we take the loss and we get on the plane and we have to stop in Taipei on the way home. Somebody says, can I have a meeting with you in the airport on the way home?

And we're like, come on, I mean, we've been on the road a month, it's 4 a.m. for us in the morning and you want us to have a meeting in the airport with you? And they said, please, please. And we're like, okay.

So we land in the airport, we meet these people. We're laying on the table like that and they're all perky. And then they hand us the money that we lost a few hours before.

They just hand it to us. They say, you know, do you need $30,000?

[Говорящий 2] (1:22:07 - 1:22:10)
And we're like...

[Говорящий 1] (1:22:12 - 1:29:18)
In an extreme example, if you understand karmic seeds well, if you have shirab to go with tap, if you have wisdom to go with method, if you have knowledge to accompany your good deeds, then the results are very fast. Then the results are very, very fast. So he's saying here, never let them be divorced from each other.

Practice them, exert yourself in practicing them together. Meaning, understand the emptiness of what you're doing and it will work faster. That's all.

He's saying people who understand emptiness are not only more considerate and more moral, but also stuff happens faster for them. They do everything with the knowledge of where things are really coming from. And then stuff works for them.

And they have weird... The night we started ACI Phoenix, a $150,000 check came in the mail. The night we started the first program.

We didn't have any money for the program in Phoenix. We didn't have any money. We just did it.

And then the check came that night. Some guy passed away and left us $150,000. Anyway.

Okay. DE MIN GA ZHIG GI LEN DE TSI BA SOG LE DANG PO BA'I CHOSU GSUNG DE Unfortunately, there are people in the world who consider the teachings on morality to be Dharma simpleton stuff. If you have a bunch of students who can't understand emptiness or they're never going to get through the nine levels of meditation, then teach them not to hurt other people.

Stick to that kind of stupid stuff. There are people who believe that the teachings on treating others with care are naive. And what do you call them?

They're for tender feet. They're for green horns. They're for beginners.

They're not for advanced tantric arts. It's like PO BA'I CHOSU GSUNG DE RANG RANG GI LOMA DAG LA MANG NGAG KHYAD PAR CHEN GYI LUS SU BYAS NAS And then they go to their students and they say, look, I have a secret high tantric instruction to give you. What?

NA'IN DE MED PAR There is no need to be ethical. You're beyond that. You're in the realm of the is.

You are operating in sheer emptiness. So why do you have to obey all those ethical rules? You're beyond them.

They like take the student aside and say, you're really special and I hereby release you from karma in effect. You're above all that. NA'IN DE MED PAR CHEN GYI LUS SU BYAS NAS NA'IN DE MED PAR BRTEN PA SOGS NA MU DE RGYAL PHEN PA DANG KHYAD PAR MA ZHUG PA YIN GSUNG You are no different from a Charvaka.

What's a Charvaka? Charvaka was a school in ancient India. Of all the schools of ancient India, Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist, Christian, Jew, there were lots of Jews on the southwest coast, the Malabar coast.

There are still toras carved on brass that exist in those places. You know, St. Thomas made it to northwestern India, Taxila. Somebody I was talking to, Caroline, right?

Caroline? We were talking, she went to Taxila recently. So anyway, there were all those great holy religions in India, but there was a sect called the Charvaka.

They said there's no need for morality. There's no karma, and there's no consequences of karma. You can do whatever you want, and it's not going to have any effect on you.

And they also denied future lives. They said, you know, the way you act towards others has no effect on what happens to you after you die. So they were considered the, I don't know, the stupidest of all sects to ever appear in the 5,000 years since the Vedas, you know?

They were considered the dumbheads of the dumbheads. So then Thabongkar Rinpoche is saying, these big tantrikas who get up and tell their students, you know, you are beyond morality. They are worse than the Charvaka.

They are worse than that. They are high Tibetan lamas, and they're worse than the dumbheads of history. ma shukpa yin sum Okay, that's a good place to stop.

Because next is, nipa chokyi dagme tenla bepa la yi We have completed the proof that Nick is not Nick. You are finally free. Okay?

Yay! But that also applies to Laura is not Laura, and Miriam is not Miriam, Amy is not, okay? Ami is not Ami.

You have to understand that we're talking about yourself. We were just picking on Nick because he was sitting right there. So we finished proving that you are not yourself.

Okay? Now we have to go on to prove that stuff is not stuff. Okay?

We did it with you, and now we got to talk about the rest of stuff in the world. So we're going to go carefully through the rest of stuff in the world and check whether it is what it seems to be. And then we're finished.

People and stuff. And then we pretty much covered everything. It is extremely good karma, and it's extremely rare to have a group of people who would even want to hear this or would listen with such attention and, I think, intention to carry it out.

Attention and intention. So thank you for that. And you're amazing.

It's a rare karma. Extremely rare karma. And I haven't taught this in my whole life.

It has happened. It has come together. And you are worthy of it.

And it's nice. And I feel really happy. Extremely happy.

Like, extremely happy. Thank you. Here we go.

Got one? You got one?

[Говорящий 2] (1:30:26 - 1:30:28)
Okay. Good.