«Дар освобождения», курс 2 «Прорыв к высшей реальности», занятие 23

[Говорящий 2] (0:00 - 11:23)
Watch your breath, and come to the golden moon, and watch the blue sky. Watch your mind. Leave the object.

Detect your mind leaving the object. Watch your mind bring it back. Blue sky, the only object.

Then you drop to the mountains in the valley, and come back to the golden moon. And ask your teacher to please come. And you feel them put their hands on your head in blessing.

Warm hands cupped around your head in the blessing. Just so the object of the meditation is only the warm hands of your teacher cupped on your head in blessing. And slowly come back to this one.

[Говорящий 1] (11:28 - 16:31)
Okay, we left off at Nick, and we finished Nick. So, typically the study of emptiness involves studying the emptiness of people, or myself, and then we go on to the emptiness of stuff, other stuff. So, we've reached that section in the text, and that's the final section on emptiness.

So, we'll discuss the emptiness of stuff in two different sections. And basically we're on to pens rather than Nick's, okay? We're just going to pens after being on Nick's for a while.

RANG BZHIN GYI MED PA BSTAN LA BAS PA SDU MA BYAS RANG BZHIN GYI MED PA BSTAN LA BAS PA'O We're going to establish that two different things don't exist naturally. RANG BZHIN GYI GRUB PA, naturally. One is called SDU BYED and one is called SDU MA BYAS.

SDU BYED means, SDU NAS BYAS PA'I PHYIR Something which is produced by the convening of causes and conditions. Something which is produced by other things, like chairs or cars or camps. Also people, okay?

I mean, technically people are in there because they're also produced by mommies and things like that. But we already covered those. So, SDU BYED KYI CHOS.

Then SDU MA BYAS KYI CHOS. SDU MA BYAS KYI CHOS means, it's careful if you're into Tibetan philosophy that you not say things which are not produced, okay? You have to be careful and say existing things that were not produced.

That's just a tradition. And there are very few of them. There are very few things in the world which have not been produced by causes and conditions.

Classically there are three. But basically you could say emptiness is one and space is one, empty space. We talked about empty space, okay?

Are those things also coming from my mind? And can I study that question in such a way that my life becomes radically more successful? You see?

Everything, financially, health-wise or relationship-wise, could I study the emptiness of the things around me and then make my life radically more successful? Could I make things work? Could pens always never run out?

Could cars never break down? Could relationships never fail? Is it possible to do those things?

If you understand the emptiness of them, you can. So we're going to discuss the emptiness of things that were produced and existing things that don't have causes and conditions. Dambo la sung.

Then the first of them, which is stuff that changes, okay? Stuff which is produced. He's going to talk about its emptiness in three different classical common categories, okay?

Which are sukha, shepa, and demenduchi. He's going to talk about the emptiness of the three big kinds of changing stuff in the world. The three big kinds of produced stuff in the world.

The first one is physical matter, okay? Is physical matter empty? The second one is the mind itself.

Is the mind empty? And then the third one will be demenduchi. Demenduchi means stuff which is changing but it's not mind or matter.

Like ideas, like America, okay? Concepts or personalities, like Joe. The idea Joe, or the idea America, or democracy, or concepts.

Ideas, like that, okay? I think there's an important one in there, but you can think about it.

[Говорящий 2] (16:33 - 16:34)
Potentials, okay?

[Говорящий 1] (16:34 - 33:33)
Things that could happen or might happen. Energies, which are not physical or mental. Dambo ni, so here's the first one.

DE LTAR NGAR SHES PA GZHAN GANG ZAG RANG BZHIN GYI GRUB PAS GRUB PA'I DUS LA NGES SHES NYES PA DE NYID CHOS GZHAN GANG RANG CHOS GZHAN GANG RANG SBYOR CHOG STE Whatever we have learned about Nick, whatever we have decided about Mike, whether Nick came from his own side, or whether Nick is coming from the seeds in my mind, whatever we have discovered now about Nick, we can apply to every other thing in the universe.

Whatever you have discovered about yourself, not coming from nowhere. I was singing that song, I mean illegally, right? Last night.

So somewhere in my youth or childhood I must have done something good. And then Anatole was over there and he said, he was like, nothing comes from nothing. It's part of the song.

The song says, nothing comes from nothing. He reminded me. I thought, oh, that's cool.

She's in love with some young man and she's saying, oh, she must have done something good to her when she was young that she doesn't remember that has brought this young man to her. Because nothing comes from nothing. That's in the song.

It's kind of cool. Anyway, why did I say that? Oh, so whatever you understand about Nick, you can apply to all of this stuff.

,RDO LAS, ,JI LTAR GYUR GYI, ,BDAG GIS DU ZHING NI, ,ZHES PA DE GZHAN KUN LA, ,LOD CHAR CHAR, So as Sutra says, as you now understand yourself, you can apply that to all other things. You can think about all other things in the same way. ,ZHES DANG, ,ZHIG YAB PA LAS KYANG, The 400 verses of Master Ayodeva, who was Arya Nagarjuna's close student, heart student.

They said, ,ZHIG GIS BDAG PO GANG YIN PA, ,DE NI KUN GYI BDAG PO YIN, ,ZHIG GIS STONG NI GANG YIN PA, ,DE NI KUN GYI STONG NI YIN, ,ZHIG GIS BDAG PO GANG YIN PA, The way we look at any one thing, ,DE NI KUN LA BDAG PO YIN, is the way we can look at every other thing. ,ZHIG GIS STONG NI GANG YIN PA, The emptiness of any one thing, ,DE NI KUN GYI STONG NI YIN, can help us understand the emptiness of all things. We started with MARG or NI, and now we can apply it to all the other stuff in our world.

,DE NA DANG PO GSUGS RANG BZHIN GYIS MED PAR BRTEN LA BAS PA NI, So he says, so let's go on to proving that physical matter is not coming from its own side. It has no natural existence. ,RANG CHAGS SOGS KYIS RNAMS KYIS RGYUR GYIS MA RIG PAS LAS PA'I ZHES PA LA, This is a beautiful word in Tibetan.

It's called LES PA. LES PA means infected or polluted. And it says, us people, RANG CHAGS, guys like us.

Then he says SOGS KYIS. SOGS KYIS RGYUR GYUR GYIS MA RIG PAS LAS PA'I ZHES PA LA Which means someone who has not seen emptiness directly. Those of us who haven't seen emptiness directly, he seems to say.

,RANG CHAGS SOGS KYIS RNAMS KYIS RGYUR GYIS MA RIG PAS LAS PA'I ZHES PA LA, Our minds are infected by misunderstanding. ,RANG CHAGS SOGS KYIS RNAMS KYIS RGYUR GYIS MA RIG PAS LAS PA'I ZHES PA LA, ,RANG CHAGS SOGS KYIS RNAMS KYIS RGYUR GYIS MA RIG PAS LAS PA LA, The way the wall appears, makes its appearance to us. The way the wall appears to us, ,RANG BA'I TSAD, ,TSUL SOGS RANG BOS NAS GRUB PA'I RNAMS SU MTSAMS LAS, ,RNAMS SU GZHAN MI SBYUNG BA'I, When we look at the wall, we automatically believe that it's coming from itself, from its own side.

We believe that. Even after all these days of talking about it, when you look at the wall, you just automatically assume it's coming from the wall. ,RNAMS SU GZHAN MI SBYUNG BA'I, And we don't get any other impression.

We don't see anything else happening. Most people. ,MI SBYUNG BA'I SNANG BA NAS RGAGS CES SNANG TSUL YIN, And the way the wall appears to us at any given time is as a RGAGS CES, is as a self-existent wall, is as a wall that was coming from its own side.

How do we evaluate the content of the wall? As karmically. Did these particular walls come from something good or something bad?

You see? If you enjoy not having the roof follow you. Well, that's a test, you see?

This is a very, very delicate question. I mean, the test of what is moral in Buddhism. What kind of action would bring you a pleasant result?

You see? It's not so much like would it help or hurt somebody. It's interesting.

Okay, good or wrong. Right or wrong are mostly defined in Buddhism as an action which would cause you pain or pleasure later. And that's what right or wrong is.

I guess every wrong happens to hurt someone else. And that's why it causes you pain later, right? As far as content.

But in Buddhism, in examining whether an action is right or wrong, ultimately you say, will it come back to me as pleasure or pain? If it would come back to me as pain, it's wrong. If it would come back to me as pleasure, it's right.

So considering the wall, thinking about the content of the wall, if you like that 1970s paneling, it was occurring to me. I haven't seen it for a while. Rinpoche made me put it up all over his house.

I built, I helped build his house. I mostly built his house. And he wanted that paneling.

And it's weird stuff. You can't nail it because the nails bend. You gotta have special nails.

They won't go through it. And about half the nails fly off and hit you in the head. But if you enjoy that look, if it looks good to you, then that must have come from a good karma.

And if it looks ugly to you, then it came from a bad karma. So one wall could have come from good and bad karma in the room, depending on who's looking, how they feel about it. What if you don't feel good or bad about it?

What if it's just sort of there, background noise? Background noise, background wall. You don't care much for the design, which is also not repulsive to you.

It's just like, you don't care much about it. You didn't think about it until I brought it up. Background stuff, karmically, is caused by background ignorance, karmically.

If you wonder, if you ever wonder. Background stuff is caused by low-level continual ignorance in your mind. It's not too active.

It's not too active. It's just your general loose misunderstanding of everything causes all the background stuff in the world. It is a karma and it produces background stuff.

That you don't feel good or bad about. If you ever wondered. It's kind of an interesting question.

So to us, our minds are infected by ignorance. And the only way that the wall can appear to us is as if it is through the gacca. A wall that could come from itself without my having provided shelter to the poor is impossible.

A wall which is not coming from my having provided shelter to someone else doesn't exist. Then you get into this meal. How many meals have you eaten and how many meals have you given away?

That's an examination of your debit card. In theory, if you want to keep up, you have to give away as many meals as you eat. You have to provide others with housing.

You have to provide others with a night's place to stay for every night you sleep in your house or you will die. You will run out of house to stay in. If you don't feed, if you don't offer as many meals to the poor as you eat, you will die.

There will come a day when you can't eat anymore. That's why people die, by the way. They don't keep up on their debit card.

It's not a big deal. Every meal you eat, you have to give one away. Or else you go into the red and you die.

That's why you die. You have no more seats. That's kind of a simple formula for living a long time.

Okay. NANG BA DE LTAR DU GRUB PA DGOS DGOS Then we have to work to overcome the feeling we have that the wall is not coming from the number of people that we sheltered for a night. We have to overcome that feeling that the wall is not coming from the number of people we sheltered for a night.

Because we feel that. Deep down you feel that. Deep down you believe that.

The use of your debit card is invisible. The use of your debit card is transparent. You are using up your debit card by sleeping in your house at night.

And every night that you don't offer someone else a place to sleep, or provide another person with a place to sleep, you will get older. You will use up your life. ZHES PA LA DE YANG CHOS THAMS CAD RANG RANG GI BDAG GZHI CHA SHES GZHAN ZHIG LA BSTAN NAS BDAG GZHI BSTAN DU MING DE ZHAG PA TZAM DU BSTAN CUNG YIN YANG Again, as we said before, the case of that wall that I'm seeing, okay, the wall itself, there are indicators of a wall.

I know from the times that I was installing Rinpoche's paneling that it has a certain fake wood grain to it. And every third one has the same grain or something. And then there's certain lines.

You know why the lines are there? Because that's where you put the nails because it keeps them lower than the wall and it's also thin enough to drive a nail through, like that. So I have these indicators coming to me of paneling.

I, there's the line going down the center. There's the fake wood grain thing. And there's the general shape of it, which I know to be eight feet by four feet.

It's a standard wood paneling sheet. And then, so I see these indicators of a wood panel sheet. And then my mind, under the influence of having provided someone else with a wall, okay, a place to sleep, perceives a panel, perceives a wood panel wall, okay?

It's not there. It's not out there. There are indicators out there.

There are stripes. There are grain. There is a texture.

There's a rectangularness. But there's no panel out there. My mind is supplying the panel.

It didn't have to be a panel. I might have seen something else. If you're intelligent at this point and you haven't heard a lot of emptiness teachings in this tradition, you might ask, who put the line there?

And who put the wood grain there? And who put the rectangle shape there? Do those exist out there for me to put a picture on, for me to synthesize into a wood panel?

Where did those come from? And then, I don't know, in the diamond business, when you check a stone, especially under a microscope, a high quality stone, a very expensive stone. So you have this, what do you call it?

The knob on the microscope, right? And you start at the table, it's called the table, the top flat part of the stone. And you check it to see if there are any pits in the top of the stone.

And then you start to move the focus, what do you call it? Focus point down with this thing. And you move down through the stone, slowly.

And then at each level you stop and you see if there's any black spots or chips or cracks, right? And or included crystals, stuff like that. And you keep going down.

And then at some point you hit the culet, which is the tip, right? And then you check the culet to see if it's chipped from the top. You go down with the microscope and you see a good diamond cutter wheel.

The last thing he does is he takes the diamond and he goes like on the wheel. The wheel's going like 2,500 RPM. Then he touches it like that.

And it flattens out that sharp tip so it won't break if somebody drops it or somebody hits it. So some stones break at that point, which is really exciting. After three weeks of work or something.

You have a special little thing that looks like a pen and it has the claws on it and you just stone it and you go like ding, and it takes it. So you have to go down and check the culet and see if the guy put it on right. So you go down to the whole thing.

In discussing the paneling, we're talking about the emptiness of the panel and the fact that the panel is a synthesis forced, a synthesis which is forced on the wall by my seeds going off in my mind. The seeds firing in my mind make me organize those parts into a panel. And then the question came, right?

Somebody said, what about the parts? Are they out there? Because as I described it, they are, right?

I said, you take the parts and you organize them. If you want me to talk about the parts, this is the way you answer that question, okay? If you want to talk about the parts, you have to turn the knob, okay?

You turn the knob down to the parts. You want to talk about where the grain came from, where the design in the wood came from? Okay, let's go down to that one.

And you go down into the stone, right? You go down to the panel grain and then that has its own parts. There's the top of the grain, there's the bottom of the grain, there's the left side of the grain, there's the right side of the grain.

There's certain angles, there's certain changes in the hue of that ugly green or brown green something. And then those become the new parts and the grain becomes the new thing that you're synthesizing, all right? So you just go down and come back with your microscope, okay?

So it's not that the parts are out there because there's nothing that's out there.

[Говорящий 2] (33:33 - 33:33)
All right?

[Говорящий 1] (33:34 - 42:20)
But when you're making a panel, the parts are out there because your mind is projecting those out there to make the panel from. Okay? Same with the grain.

Okay. nangwa tar du drup gu de yang chok tam je rang rang gi dak shing cha she shik la tenay dak shing So really everything in the world is just pictures synthesized from parts, okay? By forced on you, you are compelled to see it that way by seeds firing in your mind.

And those were put there by doing something good or bad to somebody else. If you find the paneling ugly, it was something bad. If you find the paneling attractive, it was something good.

If you don't care either way about the paneling, it was just your background ignorance about everything. bunpa tabur tsun na Let's take the case of a water pitcher, right? We said that every room in a Tibetan monastery in the old days would have a water pitcher because there's no plumbing.

All right. tawa nga ma nye pa'i sok kye nang gi shepa'i ngor dunpa rang gi dak shing la tape dak chod tsam du min nang wa dak shing dang tape yer me drepa tabur Okay, this is a little bit tough. If I've been trained in emptiness, then I understand, although I can't catch myself till later, okay?

You'll be able to catch yourself later. If you meditate well, you'll be able to catch yourself doing it. Until then, you can't catch yourself doing it.

I can explain it to you, but you can't catch yourself doing it. So what do you mean doing? You see parts that would suggest wood paneling, and then your mind makes a tiny little picture in the back of your head, okay?

There's no paneling out there. You're watching a picture in your own mind, okay? And it's tiny.

The wood paneling is about this big in the back of my head, okay? I mean, the sensation of it when you catch yourself is that. Of course, it doesn't have a size.

But the feeling of it when you catch yourself is like, oh, it's a little picture in the back of my head. And then you're aware that you've always been looking at little pictures that were then laid on the parts, okay? So a person who has studied emptiness in their better moments, they understand where the paneling, they understand it's a picture in their mind, okay?

Everybody else is mixing up the parts and the final product, okay? Dak shi is the part, the thing you are labeling. The thing you are labeling.

The thing you are synthesizing into an object. The parts are called dak shi. Dak chu means the product of the process.

I looked at parts. A seed fired in my mind. A seed produced an image in my mind.

And I laid that image over the parts, okay? Almost everybody in the world is mixing up the product and the parts, okay? They don't see it as a picture in their mind, okay?

They see it as the whole of its parts, right? But they wouldn't say that the whole is a picture that's coming from their mind, okay? Is the paneling the sum total of its parts?

Yes. If you ask anybody, is the paneling the sum total of its parts? Yes.

So is the whole panel a sum of certain parts? Then the normal person would say yes. But then if you push them further and you said, is that whole coming from your mind?

Is that image coming from your mind? They'd say, of course not. It's over there.

It really exists. You can go slam your hand on it. It's there, okay?

All right? So they mix up the whole that's really there and the whole that they can't see, all right? Then unless you are consciously thinking of the wall, unless you are consciously thinking of the paneling as being a seed firing in your mind, you are watching the gaccha.

You are looking at paneling that doesn't even exist, okay? Then what would... How could you...

Are there any danger signs, warning signs that could help me realize that I'm doing this gaccha thing, that I'm looking at paneling that doesn't really exist? Are there any typical warning signs? Right?

There are. Could you get upset about the paneling? Could you get angry about the paneling?

Could you want the paneling? Would you be willing to steal the paneling? I mean, all these thoughts cannot come without misunderstanding the paneling, okay?

You can't be angry about the paneling being damaged if you understood that if it was damaged, that was also coming from you. That was coming because you damaged other people's stuff. If you own this building and someone came and...

What do you call it? They put graffiti on the paneling, right? And then the test of whether you were watching a gaccha or not would be how upset you got.

If you were heavy into gacchas... I was up in my building. We had a building in Tribeca.

We bought a building in Tribeca. Fifteen million dollars. And we used to sit up...

We had a boardroom on the Hudson River, right? We would look at the river. The boardroom's all glass.

And of course, in a boardroom, meaning you're bored. So you're looking out the window. Everybody's looking out the window.

The owner is talking. And then you see these kids going along. They go along on these bicycles.

Like, what do you call those? I don't know. They're kind of small bicycles.

And then they ride down the street and they check door handles as they go. They can ride with one hand driving and they can flip door handles. They're going pretty fast.

They're just seeing if the car's locked or not. And you watch them going down the street like this. And then they find one that's not locked and then they open it and they get into it.

So we're sitting up there giggling and we're not listening to the owner and all that. And all these VPs, you know, because we're bored to death. And then one day, one of the VPs bought a new car, of course.

And it was down on the street, you know. And the kids came along with this thing and they opened this car. And then he was like, hold on, you know.

And then he's like, he's jumping up in the boardroom. He's trying to get on six floors out of three man traps. Armored rooms, armored lobbies, you know, of a diamond building.

He's trying to get fast out of three armored lobbies. And then he gets out and they're already gone. And you see, that was Gaccha, you see.

Then there was Gaccha up here, you see. Then it was my car, you know. And his Gaccha was strong, right?

So you couldn't get that freaked out. If you were really a good emptiness expert, you know, then you would look at your car and you'd say, gee, Wally, you know, I have to be more careful about wasting the company's time by looking out the window at the board meeting, which is stealing, okay. For a VP to look out the window during the board meeting and not listen to what's going on is stealing.

So they would look at their car being broken into and probably they'd still get out and try to stop the person. But they wouldn't feel so wronged like the Nick who stole the book. Did you steal the poster tubes, by the way?

[Говорящий 2] (42:21 - 42:25)
They've been, you know, the guy, we were walking here.

[Говорящий 1] (42:25 - 57:49)
And we were walking here and the camp guy came up. He said, I got a delivery for you. We're like, yeah, we've been waiting for those.

And he said, those? And we said, yeah, the poster tubes. He said, tubes?

And then he's like, yeah, FedEx came and they delivered one tube. I signed for it. He said I signed for it.

Then I said, was Nick around? Yeah. So anyway, this feeling of being accused, right?

That feeling of being accused. Or my car is broken into, okay? Then the gaccha lingewa.

Lingewa means the gaccha car is very strong. The gaccha car is very, very strong. A car which didn't deserve to be broken into, okay?

A car which was not broken into because you were wasting the company's time looking out the window at your car. Okay, all right. Got it?

It's very subtle. GZHAG PA TZAM GYIS So that's it. BUG PA LTA BUG LA TSUN NA LTA BA MA NYE PA'I SOGS KYI RNAM YID GZHAG PA'I SNOR BUM PA DRAG ZHIG LENG YIN GZHAG PA'I SNOR DRAG ZHIG LENG YIN GZHAG PA'I SNOR BUM PA LENG YIN GZHAG PA'I SNOR BUG PA DRAG ZHIG LENG YIN DE LTAR NANG YANG DAG ZHIG DANG DAG ZHIG THA DE PA'I RGYUD TSEN GYIS DEN DRIN LHEN GYI RDZIN DANG LTAR GYI BUG PA RANG GI DAG ZHIG DANG LDAN PAR GRUB PA'I PHYIG TU MA GRUB LA Then you'd have to go into that exam. Okay, you ready?

Here we're going to do an emptiness examination. Is the car which doesn't deserve to be broken into, what's its relationship to the parts of the car? Is it those parts or is it the sum of those parts?

The car which doesn't deserve to be broken into. Okay, okay. We can just skip that page.

I like that. You guys are good. I don't know what's happening.

Maybe it's something in the snow or I don't know. But it's working. Okay.

YANG BUM PA'I DAG ZHIG LOGS SU SEL BA'I ZHUL NA BUG PA NI DI ZHES SO DO NANG TSUL MED PA Or could you just... Is there a vase, a water pitcher you could find if you took the goat and the sheep out of the room? No, and then the cow would still be there.

Could you take away the top of the pitcher? Could you take away the bottom of the pitcher and the handle of the pitcher and then would there be some Uber pitcher that was there independent of those pieces? Yeah, there would be the image in your mind.

Right? Okay. SOGS SOGS PA'I DAG ZHIG TSE MA LA BSTAN NAS BUG PA NI DAG NAS PA'I TSE MA LA NANG ZHING But is there a vase?

Even understanding that the parts are being synthesized by your mind. If I just ask you, but is there a water pitcher? Can you bring me some water?

You would say yes. Why can you bring me some water? Probably because you installed the plumbing at Sarah Mae 15 years ago and you get to have some water.

Okay, something like that. KUN SROG TZAM DU YOD PAR SBYOR DGOS PA'I BUM PA RANG DAG ZHIG DANG BRTAN PAR GRUB PA'I THA DE DU MA GRUB So it's not that the water pitcher that's not coming from me is either in its parts or not in its parts. Because it doesn't have any relationship anyway.

Because it doesn't exist. We had a beautiful debate. You know, I was over in the intramural reading the scripture on a bed on my back like this.

And I learned that from one of my classmates in the monastery. He was, everybody was younger than me. I got there.

They put me in the middle way class, which is like 12th year. The first night they put me in the 12th year class. They said, you studied with Khen Rinpoche for like 10 years.

You can be in the 12th year class. So they said, you debate this guy. That guy was Kyumei Khenchen Rinpoche.

Okay, that was my first debate. He became the next throne holder of Tsongkhapa. Okay, later.

But they stuck me with him. And then we started debating, you know. And then I was like, I think I need to drop down a few classes.

So I started, I said, put me with the first graders. Put me back to first class. Forget the 10 years.

Put me back to first class. So everybody was 15 years younger than me. So anyway, one of the guys used to sit there and he would always put on rock and roll, which is illegal in the monastery.

And he had rock and roll on his earphones. And then he would lie down on his bed and maybe he would look at the scripture. And then, this was at the winter debates.

These are like inter-monastic competitions, you know. So anyway, he was on our team. So then the abbot of Tashi Humbo, the abbot of one of the four great monasteries, the fourth of the three, there's three great and there's one extra.

No, the Penchen Lama's monastery is almost like Ivy League. Okay, so he came from Tashi. The abbot of Tashi Humbo came.

Geshe Thubten Rinchen's teacher. His tantric master. Okay, my greatest teacher's tantric master, you know, came.

And this kid got up defending, you know. And there's this argument going on about whether nothing exists. Okay, does nothing exist?

Of course it exists. Or emptiness wouldn't exist. There is no self-existent thing in this room.

There's nothing in this room coming from itself. Does that exist? The fact that nothing in this room is coming from itself, does that exist?

Does the fact that something doesn't exist, exist? Yeah, if it doesn't exist. If it does exist, then the fact that it doesn't exist, doesn't exist.

Okay, so we were debating this, you know. And then the abbot of Tashi Humbo got up, you know, and he was upset because his monks were losing to our team, you know. And then he gets up, you know, and he's like, and he's like, it's not true that nothing exists, you know.

And our guy, the rock and roll guy, he's like, of course it's true nothing exists, you know. And he defended it. And he won.

And the abbot, he took off his hat, and he's like 80 years old. And he's like, oh, you did it, man. So anyway.

Why did I bring it up? Oh, because it's on the Upajogupa. CHOS YUN NA GCIG DANG THAG PA'I GANG RTOG YOD DGOS Generally speaking, if something did exist, it would either have to be one or many.

THAG LDAN PAR GRUB NANG And if something existed naturally, it should exist as either one natural thing or several natural things. And there's no other choice, okay. If the nekru didn't deserve to get blamed existed, he'd either have to be one or many.

DE NYID GANG RUNG DU MED NA BSTAN PA'I MED DGOS PA'I RGYUD DZIN GYIS BUM PA SOGS BSTAN PA'I MA GRUB PA YIN So we can establish that a vase doesn't exist truly, okay. Naturally. From its own side.

It exists through seeds planted in my mind, okay. A vase that could have existed without the seeds in my mind, does that exist? Does the fact that it doesn't exist, exist?

That's the debate. Okay, you got that. All right.

In fact, the fact that it doesn't exist is the most important fact in the world. Because thinking that it does exist causes us all our suffering. To defend a nekru who doesn't deserve to get blamed, to run down, to stop a kid from ruining your car that didn't deserve to get ruined because you were wasting the company's money, that's suffering.

Those cause suffering. Those cause karma and those cause suffering. SDO NA BUM PA'I TSUN GZUGS SOGS KYI CHOS THAMS CAD DAG ZHIG LA BSTAN DGOS ZHING RANG TSUL THUB PA'I BSTAN PA'I MED TE So we can say that not only water pitchers or cars don't exist from their own side, we can say that about all physical things.

There is no physical thing which you ever encounter which is not coming from you. And then that becomes interesting with things like I was standing in Sri Lanka at the southernmost tip. And it was cool because I was like the whole world of water was ahead of me.

I was standing on the three square feet that was the end of the southernmost part of the Indian subcontinent. That three feet. And then just looking out on the water and the sun was shining and there were billions of diamond things going on the water.

There's something weird about the water. It was like all these diamond sparkles. Every single one was coming from my mind.

Okay, every grain of snow outside is a product of something that you did in the past. Okay, I like to, it amazes me or I find it, I don't know, intriguing how my mind is creating nature. I mean, houses I don't have such a problem with.

But how it creates the great variety of nature and the seemingly random nature of nature. How my mind is creating that. But what did I do to make all the pine needles on the trees here?

I think it's really nice to think about sometimes, okay? ,ZHIG RGYAL PAR, ,DE KUN RANG BWANG MED PA STE, ,DE NA DAG NI YOD MA YIN, ,ZHES RUNG, ,ZHIG RGYAL PAR, Nothing is fixed. Nothing is self-standing.

He says, ,RANG BWANG MED PA, Nothing is independent. Okay, there is no independent thing in the world. Nothing stands on its own accord.

,RANG BWANG MED PA STE, ,DE NA DAG NI YOD MA YIN, Therefore we can say there's no self. How do I prefer to say it? Therefore we can say that nothing is itself.

The vase is not the vase. The car is not the car. The wall is not the wall.

That's a tradition in the study of emptiness that you should overstate it to rattle people's minds. How did the Buddha do that? ,GSOGS MED, ,TSOR MED, ,DUS MED, ,DUS MED, ,NAM PAR ZHIG BAR MI MED, ,NA BA MED NA MED, ,TSE MED LUS MED YID MED, ,GSOGS MED DAG MED TSE MED, ,RANG MED DE LAS BYA MED, ,CHOS MED RO, He's like, nothing, man, nothing.

What you see, what you taste, what you see, what you hear, what you feel, anything to feel, anything to see, anything to taste. It's the mind that thinks it's seeing, tasting. He's like, it's nothing.

That's the Heart Sutra, right? It's really beautiful if you really get the feeling of it. He's like, nothing, man, nothing.

And then he keeps listing stuff. Not that, not that, not that, okay? You got to get that feeling.

Nothing is itself. The wall is not itself. The wall is not the wall.

The pen is not the pen. Nick is not Nick. ,DE NA YANG MED, ,GZHAN YANG, ,PHYIR BUM PA DE GCIG YIN YANG, ,RANG GI CHA SHES SDUG MA LAS BSTAN DGOS PAS, ,GCIG YIN PA RANG BZHIN GYI MA GRUB, Generally speaking, one water pitcher is a single water pitcher.

But it is a singularity. It is a single thing which depends on multiple parts. It must depend on multiple parts.

,DGOS PAS GCIG YIN PA RANG BZHIN GYI MA GRUB, Therefore, the fact that it is one is nothing natural. It comes from its parts. The fact that it is one comes from the fact that it is many.

And it's not natural. ,BUM PA DE RGA BA DANG THA DE YIN NA, ,DGOS PAS GCIG YIN PA RANG BZHIN GYI MA GRUB, A water pitcher is different or separate from a pillar. So the other common example in the monastery you'll say water pitcher because every room has a water pitcher.

And then you'll say pillar because all rooms in monasteries had to be held up by a pillar every few feet because they didn't have structural... Tibet didn't have much wood, that much wood. So there'd be little pieces of wood and there had to be pillars everywhere.

So typical debate is, is a water pitcher separate from a pillar? And you say, it is. ,BUM PA DE RGA BA DANG THA DE YIN NA, ,DE NYID THA DE DU SHAR PA DE YANG, ,CIG GZHI LA BSTAN NAS CIG GZHI DE, ,DE LAS THA DE BU SHAR PA TZAM LAS, ,GA PO NYID RANG GI NGON NAS THA DE PA YIN PA MA GRUB, The fact that they are separate from each other is being demarcated by your own mind, by your own seeds.

They're not separate from each other naturally. He pulls out this, what do you call? He pulls out an argument which I don't like.

Okay? And that's common in some, I've seen it in some New Age books. That the pillar is separate from a water pitcher because without one, somehow you need one to have the other.

That's a false reasoning, okay? That's not true. It's separate from the pillar because your mind is seeing it that way under the influence of your kindness towards others.

It has nothing to do with... Relativity doesn't have a place here. It's not that this room feels hot right now because it's been cold for three days.

That's not the case, okay? It feels hot right now because you made someone hot in the past. Okay?

That's all, okay? It could have been cold for a month and then you walked in here and if you didn't have those seeds, you wouldn't feel hot. Okay?

So it has nothing to do with relativity. That's a wrong idea.

[Говорящий 2] (57:50 - 57:50)
Okay?

[Говорящий 1] (57:51 - 1:03:34)
That the room feels hot because you've been cold for a while, that's a falsity, all right? If the pillar could be separate from the water vase from their own side, then the water vase by itself would be separate. You're supposed to say from what?

But you can't talk. From nothing, you see? Okay.

If it were separate from its own side, it would be separate without anything else to be separate from. Okay, that's all. If Nick were...

If the Nick that was wrongly blamed had antlers, they should be 12 inches long. It's all like the same argument. Once you say, if it didn't come from your seeds, then you can say anything.

If the pillar and the water vase were not separate because of my seeds, then you can just stop right there. You can say anything. It doesn't matter.

Because it's not possible. DE NYID RIN PAS GCIG MIN PA'I KHYEN CHUNG You'd have that kind of problem. They wouldn't be one anymore, they would be separate by themselves.

A single pillar would be separate if it were separate from its own side from the water vase. But it would also not be separate. And it would also be a three-headed purple elephant.

And there would also be... You know, anyway. DE NA BUM PA'I DE'I DKA' BA DANG THA DE YIN YANG Although it's the case that a water vase is separate from a pillar, BUM PA'I DE GCIG RANG YIN PAS BUM PA'I DE GCIG RANG YIN PAS THA DE YIN YANG RTOG RTAG TZAM LAS RANG DGOS NAS MA GRUL Even though a water pitcher is separate from a pillar, the water pitcher by itself is one.

And whether you see it as one or whether you see it as separate from something else, those are all coming from your seeds in your mind and they don't exist from their own side. Even the fact that something is one thing or two things is coming from you. Even such a basic thing as something being one thing or something being two things is coming from you.

DE YANG TSAR SHES LE And again, you get into that... I forget the name of it, but there's some radical perceptual disorders where people just... Their mind groups stuff differently.

They would look at a car next to a tree and think of them as one thing. I taught yoga to an autistic boy. His mother thought maybe I could help him.

So I tried. And I tried to teach yoga to him. He couldn't conceive of the poses.

He couldn't conceptualize a pose. He didn't see anything there. He couldn't understand that we wanted him to do a pose.

We would do the pose in front of him and he wouldn't see it. And then it just didn't work out. And then we got bored after a while and I was tired.

And I was kind of frustrated. And then he stood up and he walked over to this piano and he played a Chopin piece perfectly from memory. He's like, wow.

That he conceptualized. That he could conceptualize, you see? And I was like, I was all freaked out.

And then I asked his mom, you know, why do you want to mess around with him? Just leave him like that. He can play piano.

And I don't know. Anyway, we have this need to impose on others our way of demarcating the world, right? You must spell words the way I do, even though I understand perfectly well what you want to say when you misspell it.

You know? Okay. Spelling is a good example of that.

People can't conceptualize how the word is spelled differently. Well, this is cool. Okay, you ready?

Listen to the Tibetan, okay? This is ayah nagarjuna. The word shen you can replace for anya.

Anya means other, right? Shen means other. Shen ni, shen la, ten de shen.

Shen me pa ni, shen min gyur. Kel te, shen ni, shen le shen. They'd say, shen me pa, shen gyur.

Okay, that's a typical nagarjuna, okay? This is cool. Let me see if I can get it.

To do nagarjuna right, you either have to have a glass of red wine, or you have to have really good karma. No, it's weird. You can stare at it all day.

That's another autistic thing, right? You can stare at it all day and you will never get it. And I've tried to help people translate nagarjuna.

They insisted on translating nagarjuna, and I'm like, it's not like that. Nagarjuna is not in the words. Nagarjuna is like a state of mind.

And if you have it, you can translate it. If you don't, don't even try. I have big fights with some people.

[Говорящий 2] (1:03:35 - 1:03:35)
Anyway.

[Говорящий 1] (1:03:37 - 1:09:58)
Shen ni, shen la, ten de shen. That which is other than something else is other than something else because it depends on something else. Shen mey par ne, shen min gyur.

If it weren't something else, then it couldn't have been something else. Kel te shen ni, shen mey shen. If something is other than something else because it is something which is other than something else, they'd say, shen mey par shen gyur.

In that case, it would be something else which wasn't something else. You cook it. Even for something to be something else depends on something else.

Meaning you're a seed. That's all. That's the trick.

If you get that, you can eat it. Something to be other than something else. For Nyingma to be different from mercy requires something else.

For him to be somebody else, then mercy requires something else, which is my seed. That's all. That's all he's saying.

I'll try it again. Probably be completely different. Shen ney shen la, shen ney shen.

Things which are different are different because of something different. Shen mey par ne, shen min gyur. Without that other thing, nothing could be other than anything else.

Meaning you're a seed. Kel te shen ney, shen ney shen. If something were other just because it were different than something other, meaning from its own side, der te shen ney par shen gyur, then it would have to be an other which wasn't another.

That's all. It's not so weird, right? She sung pa taro.

Which brings us to part two. We have a few minutes. Hang in there.

It's warm and everybody's tired. You're already thinking about your girlfriend. You know who my girlfriend is?

She's kind of short, black, flat. She's a vile laptop. So I know you're hankering for your girlfriend, but it's coming.

Nyi pa shepa rang shing gi mey par ten la bepa ni. Now let's talk about, this is an important one. This is a little bit more delicate and more important.

Somehow it's important. Does your own mind exist naturally? We've been talking about pans and people and water vases and cars and wood paneling.

Let's talk about the thoughts in your own head. Are you projecting those also? Are the thoughts in your own head coming at you uncontrollably from the ripening of seeds that you planted by how you treated others in the past?

Are you a helpless witness to thoughts coming up in your mind? Are you the person who verbalizes those thoughts? Or are you the person who helplessly listens to your head chattering all day?

I used to have such a small center in New York that I used to interview everyone who came to join the classes. So I would take everybody out to lunch. We had like 20 students or something.

So some guy came and he said, he said he wanted to join the class. Then I said, well, I have to interview you. So I took him out to lunch.

Some of you heard this story already. I said, why do you want to join the class? And he said, I'm a heroin addict.

And I said, well, why does that qualify you to come to? I'd never met a heroin addict. And I was like, well, what is it?

Why do you want to come to the class? And he said, you want to know why I do heroin? And I said, no, tell me, I don't know why.

And he said, my mind talks all day and it drives me crazy. I can't stand my mind talking all day. He said, I can't control the thoughts coming up in my mind and it makes me crazy.

And the only way I've ever found to shut it up was to do heroin. And then for the time that I'm high, I don't hear the thoughts talking in my head because it drives me crazy. And that's why I do heroin.

And I'm hoping that maybe you could teach me some kind of meditation that I wouldn't have to do heroin. So that's why he came. So we can start this section by saying, are the thoughts in your own mind firing, coming to you as seeds firing in your mind, which would imply that you don't have a current control over those thoughts.

You see? Okay, that's kind of scary, okay. Because anybody who's sitting here in a few seconds would realize then that to get out is very difficult.

To get out then would be very difficult because I could plant future thoughts in my mind that are more like the thoughts I would like to be having, but to have the thought to do so, I would have had to plant some other ones before when I didn't have any control over it. You know what I mean? Then people would come up to you and say, Geshe-la, that would make enlightenment almost impossible.

And that's exactly what Buddha said. Said it's almost impossible. And what you think is true.

The thoughts in your own mind, the understanding you have at this moment of this text is not coming from me or the text. It's coming from the degree to which you try to help other people understand something. Helpful, right?

So if you have been helping other people understand things or took an interest in people's befuddlement, then you'll be able to understand the text and it will seem important to you and you'll be able to use it next week. And if you haven't done that, then you won't understand the text. And worst of all, it won't seem like you can apply it to your life next week.

[Говорящий 2] (1:09:58 - 1:09:59)
Okay?

[Говорящий 1] (1:10:00 - 1:11:07)
So you have to have done something good to even get the class, to even understand the class. You see, your own thoughts are not under your conscious control. Your own understanding is not under your conscious.

I can talk all day and if you haven't helped other people, you won't understand what I say. And it would just seem like BS and you'll get tired and you'll leave. Which proves that it's not my fault.

Okay. So anyway, we're about to embark on a very, very important question. Is your mind coming from its own side?

And if not, I mean the big thing is what can you do about it? For example, in the case of depression, this becomes a very crucial or uncontrollable anger or sexual, what do you call, people who are obsessed with sex or whatever. Then it becomes a very important question.

Can you change it? Is it coming from its own side or is it coming from you? Are the seeds in your mind coming from the seeds in your mind?

[Говорящий 2] (1:11:08 - 1:11:08)
Okay.

[Говорящий 1] (1:11:08 - 1:16:21)
Ready? Here we go. YUL LA SBYUG PA'I SEL RIG YIN MUR MU PO ZHIG LA ZHES PA SEL First he takes care to define what the mind is.

He takes care to define his terms. When I say mind, what do I mean? Is your mind also empty?

Is your mind also coming from seeds that you created? And he says, YUL LA SBYUG PA'I SEL RIG YIN MUR MU PO That functioning thing which engages in an object and which is clear and knowing. SEL ZHING RIG PA ZHES PA'I TSE NI This is very famous.

The mind is defined as something which is clear and aware. Clear and aware. Clear you could take to be invisible.

Clear you could take to be conscious. Probably invisible, I guess. Because the conscious is covered in the other half.

SEL ZHING RIG PA Ineffable and knowing. How's that? Ineffable and knowing.

DE LA SEMS DANG SEMS CUNG SOGS KYI NAM DANG PHYIR BZHIN DU MANG LA DE DAG THAMS CAD KYANG YUL GYI NGO BO DANG KHYAD PAR NYONG BA'I CHA NA'I The mind itself can be divided even conventionally into many different categories. There's your raw awareness. There's your general awareness of the world which most people never get in touch with.

They are so busy being aware that they're not aware they're aware. If you lose your awareness, if you have a very bad accident and you're, what do you call it? Comatose?

Coma? You go into a coma and then you come out. You appreciate your awareness.

Then you become aware of awareness. We just take it for granted. I'm alive.

You can call it being alive. You can call it being aware. I have it.

I can see things. I feel things. I do things.

I eat. I'm aware of the world. That in itself is a very precious karma to be aware.

There are beings who are not aware or barely aware. So it's a big deal to just be conscious. Forget whether you're smart or stupid.

To be conscious is a big achievement. All right. TELA SEM CHUNG SEM CHUNG means separate parts of the mind, functions of the mind.

46 or 52, 51? I don't remember. Anyway.

Like anger, jealousy, compassion, intellect, memory, attention. These are different functions of the mind. NAM DANG PHYI'I PHYIN DU MANG NA There's a lot of different parts to the mind.

DE DAG THAMS CAD KYANG YUL KYI NGO DANG SKYES PAR NYONG BA'I CHA NAS The difference between your raw awareness and your mental functions in Buddhism is drawn from the question of are you generally aware or are you aware of some particular quality of the object that you're focused on? If you're thinking about how irritating the other person is, that's a detail. Let's call it detail.

Are you looking at details or are you looking at just big, broad things? If it's big, broad things, we call that consciousness. If you're focusing on details, this guy irritates me, I love this girl, whatever, then that's called a mental function.

We divide between general consciousness and mental function on the question of whether it's seeing stuff in general or whether it's homing in on a detail of the object. CHA NAS SKYE PHYI'I NGA'I PHYI'I CHA MANG PO ZHIG TSOGS TE DAG ZHIG STENG NAS RTOG PA'I DAG TZAM Okay, basic thing, then we'll stop for this afternoon. Let's go with the paneling because we've been on the paneling.

There's parts out there. There are, and they're static, okay? At 3.32, there are certain parts out there. Rectangular object. Rectangular outline. Grains.

Design, grains of design. Design grains. Certain kind of soft wood color.

There are lines which are put into the paneling to make it easier to nail. There are indicators of a panel. Then my mind, under the influence of my having provided housing to others in the past, perceives it as a wall.

Could you perceive it as a mountain? Yeah, I mean, try being a fruit fly climbing up that thing. Okay?

It's a mountain. It's a very terrible mountain. Okay?

So slick. Okay.

[Говорящий 2] (1:16:22 - 1:16:22)
All right.

[Говорящий 1] (1:16:23 - 1:19:38)
Yeah, it's a painting, okay? It's not a wood panel, okay? Don't assume it's a wood panel.

It's not. To a lot of people, it's a different thing. So anyway, my mind takes the parts or the indicators of an object and then it synthesizes them into a wood panel sheet.

A sheet of wood paneling. But how do we do that with our own mind? See, what is the way in which we do it with our own mind?

And you can either look at it from a static point of view or you can look at it from a point of view of the flow of consciousness. And then we'll stop. Okay, I'll lay it on you and we'll stop.

Your mind is full of different functions. Anger, jealousy, intellect, attention. There is a sentisa mangchu.

There are ten mental functions which are always going on. The ability of, the capacity for attention, for example, or the capacity for feeling. Or the capacity for discrimination.

These accompany all states of mind, even sleeping states of mind, even unconscious states of mind. There's some capacity to discriminate. There's some capacity to maintain attention over a few seconds' time.

These are, there's some capacity, there's all, certain mental functions are always going on in the mind. Others are, they're in a latent state and they pop up when you see somebody you don't like or you see a girl that you're attracted to or you, somebody in your group gets some credit and you don't get credit. And then other, then mental, you know, what do you call it?

Optional mental functions will arise. Ten in the Abhidharma school are omnipresent. They always accompany all states of consciousness.

So we can say that Thad's mind is a, is a whole composed of certain parts. He has awareness, he has feelings, he has the capacity for attention, he has the capacity for discrimination. And then those things are indicators of a human mind.

In the way that the pieces of the panel are the indicators of a panel. His own mind sees those pieces. He sees himself having feelings.

He sees himself able to pay attention to something. He sees himself having intellect or discrimination. And then his own mind, under the influence of what kind of karma?

I don't know. We're going to talk about it. Perceives his own awareness.

His own mind perceives his own mind. His own mind perceives himself as having a mind. His own mind is coming not from his mind.

His mind is coming from seeds firing in his mind. Okay? It's very beautiful.

In a static sense, at any given time, okay? His mind is a synthesis forced on him by seeds in his mind of the parts of his mind. This is something called a mind.

[Говорящий 2] (1:19:38 - 1:19:38)
Okay?

[Говорящий 1] (1:19:39 - 1:23:50)
And if he didn't have those seeds, he would have serious cognitive problems. He'd be like a dysfunctional person. He'd be, we would call him insane or autistic or something like that.

But pieces as far as a mind can also be looked at over a duration of time, over a period of time. You can say Tad's emotions at four o'clock and Tad's emotions at five o'clock and Tad's emotions at six o'clock. And you can look back at those indicators at three different hours of the day and your mind can think of them as my mind on the 7th of January.

Okay? And that's again a synthesis. Your mind, due to seeds going off in your own mind, seeds are firing in your own mind and they they give you the impression of consciousness over a day.

They give you the impression of having lived a day, of being aware of a day. So to summarize, we're not done with the mind yet, okay? But to summarize, to the most important point here, let's say, let's take it to real things, okay?

I prefer that all emptiness discussions should, like rivers should flow to the sea, right? All emptiness discussions should lead to a real life example that matters to most of us. So let's talk about depression, okay?

So you have depression. The reason it's so frustrating is that truly you are not in control of it, okay? Your mind, under the influence of making other people sad, seeds which you collected by making other people sad are in your mind.

And then, and then they synthesized parts of your thought stream into depression. And you perceive your mind as a chew toy rather than a pen, got it? It's the same principle.

It applies to black sticks and it applies to ineffable knowing things. Okay, your own, the seeds in your own mind are firing off and requiring you to see depression in your own mind, okay? Which, which, which all would have interesting implications for psychologists, right?

I mean, it would be interesting. I kind of, nowadays I feel so sexy about writing a better history of time, but wouldn't it be fun to really try to apply these principles in psychology, for example? Uh, I was talking to someone the other day about alcoholism.

I mean, what do you call it? Addictions. The applications to addiction are interesting because if these ideas are correct, then the way to stop an addiction, maybe the only way to stop an addiction would be to serve others who have that same addiction.

And that's exactly what AA is all about, you see? And, and I think that's why it's so, so effective, relatively more, much more effective than other approaches, is that there's this thing where you become a sponsor and then you help somebody else and, and even in the structure of the group, you are, you are talking. You, you come to a group to kind of give support to other guys or other ladies who have alcohol problems.

So karmic, you know, emptiness teaching way, this should work. It should be a good way to treat addiction. But then I think you could refine it with the study of karma.

You know, shi sampa jor tatu. You could refine it by understanding how to make karma more powerful. You could refine the process to make it more conscious.

And then it would be a very, very powerful tool for the treatment of addiction, because the mind is also coming from the sea. So somebody asked, that's an assignment for like 10 people. Okay.