«Дар освобождения», курс 2 «Прорыв к высшей реальности», занятие 25

[Говорящий 2] (0:03 - 2:09)
Watch with it, and come to the Gohinni. Try now to bring up a feeling of Nara, a feeling of contentment with the object, a kind of happiness to be there.

[Говорящий 1] (2:12 - 2:34)
If you have to fight agitation and dullness, it's tiring, especially in a late evening meditation. But if you can sort of slide into Nara without waking up agitation and dullness, then you can stay there for a long time effortlessly, happily.

[Говорящий 2] (2:35 - 18:57)
So try to bring up a kind of contentment. Hopefully, after this meditation week, you would have more capacity to sit quietly in a room without having to do a lot. Look at the sky at the moment.

Stay on the sky, no other object. Understand that staying on the sky will change your life and help many people to stay on the sky. The act of staying on one thing for more than a few minutes is profound.

Come down to the valley. Mountains in the distance. The valley between, covered with light.

Come into the golden room. Use your sheshin. Take an interest.

If your mind is wandering, or if it's not so sharp, then take the steps necessary to bring the mind down. If it's too hard for you, by thinking of the permanence of life, and uplift the mind if it feels tired by thinking of something, normally something virtuous and attractive, like how fortunate we are. All the people you have to thank in the world.

Keep applying those and we'll stay here for a bit. Ask your teacher to come. Gaze on their face.

Apply the corrections as needed. Don't be lazy. Don't think it doesn't matter.

And that's the way to this room. It's the way up here.

[Говорящий 1] (19:01 - 1:00:57)
So we were... We had gone off on a search. This is, by the way, the last section of the text.

On emptiness. We had gone off on a search of whether or not things could exist from their own side. Having determined that Nick doesn't.

And then we were going to check things that change and things that don't change. And then things that change, we were going to check three different kinds. Physical matter, the mind, and then other stuff that changes, like concepts or potentials and things like that.

So we're in the middle of trying to decide whether the mind comes from its own side. And this is a tricky question because it's the seeds firing in your own mind, the seeds going off in your own mind that would create your perception of the mind. And so it gets a little tricky.

And he's going to go again to that idea, the same idea that he used with Nick. Is there a Nick which is his parts, or is Nick somebody who possesses those parts? Like, is there another Nick who's not the parts, who possesses the parts?

Normally, we say Nick's body, Nick's mind. That means we think that Nick is something separate from them. And sort of the overseer of his body and mind.

Because if we meant, if when we said Nick we meant Nick's arm or leg, we'd be saying arm's arm or leg's leg when we said Nick's arm or Nick's leg. So I think mostly, normal people like us, rang re rang chags, we feel like there's some kind of Nick above and beyond his parts, who owns his parts. There's Nick, and then he owns his parts.

If we think about it a lot, we come up with Nick as a whole, who owns his parts. But if you're honest to yourself, when you think of, when I say Nick's arm and I say who's that Nick, if you're honest with yourself, it's not just some of the parts that you're thinking of. You're thinking of some other imaginary Nick who owns all his arms and parts, like that.

You're adding an extra Nick above and beyond the sum total of his parts. Some kind of idea of Nick, really, that owns his arms and legs. So we do the same thing with our mind.

We think, what's in my mind right now? What am I thinking right now? What's my mind thinking right now?

And then you follow your thoughts for a while. You don't think of your mind as those thoughts. You think of your mind as having those thoughts.

You say, I had thoughts in my mind. You don't say, I had thoughts in my thoughts. So that means you think there's some kind of mind other than the thoughts, got it?

Like who owns the thoughts, who has the thoughts. And that's more than just all the thoughts together, get it? All the thoughts together is your mind.

Those thoughts are in your mind in that they are some of the parts of the mind. But if you take away the thoughts and you take away the sum total of the thoughts, there's not like some other mind that has those thoughts. You see what I mean?

But we tend to think so. So here we go. Here's how he presents it.

If we think about our thoughts today, the thoughts we had today, our mind today. PHYIR RING GI ZHES PA means today's mind. LTA BU LA TSUN NA Let's just take that for an example.

DE SKYE GCIG SNGA PHYI BYA SHES RNAM DANG RANG SNGON NAS GCIG THA DE GANG ROL DU DGOS PA DANG Your mind over the course of today consisted of your thoughts at three o'clock, your thoughts at three o' one, your thoughts at three o' two. It is all those thoughts together over the course of the day that you call your thoughts today or your mind today. We can say for example, how was your mind today?

Was it clear? Was it compassionate? Did it have NAR?

Did it have distraction? We're talking about a big mind that had all those moments in it somehow. And we see, again, we're making up some kind of new mind that owned all those moments when really it was just a sum total of those moments taken in a certain way.

Taken in a certain way. My mind, the seeds going off in my own mind determine how I see my own mind, how I project my own mind onto the different thoughts I had today. In the same way that I project wood paneling onto those parts over there.

I also look at the parts of my mind which are the thoughts I had today and the feelings I had today. And then depending on how I treated others, I perceive my own mind as something happy or something miserable. And nobody else makes you miserable.

Nobody can. Nobody can make you unhappy. You can only make yourself unhappy.

It's not possible for someone to make you unhappy or happy. It's not possible. You collect seeds.

You are unkind to other people. Those seeds ripen and they cause you to see all the thoughts of your day-to-day as chaotic or unhappy or something like that. And then you are kind to someone else.

Instead of thinking about yourself, you take some measure of concern in other people, how they're feeling, what they would like. You see? Which is a big stretch for people.

Try really hard to think what someone else would like right now. Or how others feel right now. Or how you can make them feel happier right now.

That plants seeds in your mind that when they ripen, you perceive your own mind as happy. And that's what it is to be happy. It's cool.

The condition of your own mind is a synthesis created by the seeds in your mind by taking care of other people. So the big leap to make is to stop thinking about yourself and just spend a little time thinking about somebody else. All the depressed people I know and all the unhappy people I know, by definition they sit down and start telling you about themselves and their problems.

You see what I mean? It's not like you meet unhappy people or depressed people and they're saying, Geshe-la, I'm really unhappy because Christine is having a hard time. They don't say that.

They say, I'm unhappy. I don't like the food. I can't get any sleep.

I don't like the people around me. It's always me. And then the happy people seem to be the opposite.

They're saying, oh, it's pretty cold in the other cabin. Do you think you could try to get them a heater? They're not talking about their cabin.

They're thinking about somebody else's cabin. And then those seeds are planted in their mind. Then when they look at their own mind, like a pen or a chew toy, they see a pen instead of a chew toy.

They see a happy mind instead of an unhappy mind. Because they've planted seeds by taking care of other people, thinking about other people. That's all.

Okay. PHYA SHES NAM RANG NGON NAS DE'I RJIG RANG PHYA SHES RANG NGON NAS PHYA THAR DER DUG NA If there were some nik other than his parts, or if there was some mind other than the mind's part, SNGA RDO DANG PHYIR DROD ZHES PA NI ZAL BA'I ZHUL NA This is difficult. The Tibetan is difficult.

SNGA RDO means morning, the earlier part of the day. ZHES DRO means the later part, latter part of the day. ZHES PA means your mind in the morning and your mind in the evening.

NI ZAL BA'I ZHUL NA ZAL BA means if you took away the state of mind earlier in the day, and the thoughts of the early part of the day, the thoughts of the middle part of the day, and the thoughts of the latter part of the day. If you took the goat and the sheep out of the room, ZAL BA'I ZHUL NA means, ZHUL NA means, very rare word, ZHUL NA means, then what would you have left? If you took away the thoughts of the morning, the middle part of the day and the evening, would you find a mind, would you have any mind left at the end?

You should because we think, because we say the thoughts in my mind. You see? We say that in English.

We say I have thoughts in my mind. That means you think there's a mind that's not the thoughts. So if you took away all the thoughts of the day, it should be like an empty bowl or something that had the thoughts.

You see what I mean? There should be something, ZHUL NA, ZAL BA'I ZHUL NA means there should, after the process of removing all the thoughts, there should be some container left. Because we feel that way.

We think that way. We believe there is one. And there's not.

The opposite is also not true. The opposite is also not true. It's not that there isn't any whole of the parts.

It's not that you cannot speak of your mind as being the sum total of all the thoughts of the day. Because that you can say. You can say that.

So the question is not, is your mind the sum total of all the parts of the thoughts you had today? Or does there exist a mind in which you had those thoughts all day that isn't those thoughts, that you would find if you removed all the thoughts, like if you took the goat and the sheep out and the cow was still there. It's actually not all the point.

That just raises a problem. It isn't what you thought. It doesn't make sense to say the thoughts in your mind because your mind is all the thoughts you ever had.

What we say in English doesn't make sense. We say thoughts in your mind. Your thoughts are your mind.

All your thoughts are your mind. You take away all the thoughts, there isn't any mind left. But the bigger question is, why do you experience your mind the way you do?

The separate thoughts are like the parts of the paneling. Then your mind interprets the thoughts of the day in a certain way and you feel depressed, or you feel unhappy, or you feel joyful. You know people have had miserable lives, tough lives.

I met a lady in Prescott the other day. She's 80 years old. She's Polish.

We got to get stuff from her bakery, okay? It's at Gurley and Montezuma. It's in a basement.

She's been in the basement for 21 years, baking stuff, and it's really good stuff. Okay? It's on the southwest corner in a basement.

You got to find it. It's on Gurley, but you got to work to find it. Gurley and Montezuma.

And then, I'm not hinting, I'm just saying. Then there's a funny stuff about you can't hint, you know, so I just try to be direct. Then I remember I went in and I said, do you sell bread?

Because I wanted to get some bread from the kids in the infirmary. And then she said, you know, I don't do bread. She was very, very kind and very gentle.

I said, all I see here is pastries, which is not a bad thing. And I said, do you have any bread? And she said, well, I haven't made bread for 15 years.

And I said, why? And she said, my hands are, it's too much pain. I can't knead the bread.

And then she said, but I'll tell you something. There's this bakery around the corner, and they're so good. It's so good there.

Everything is so yummy, and it's good prices, and the people are really nice. And the bread is like out of this world, and you've got to go there. If you want bread, that's the place to go.

And she was so kind. She was so uncompetitive. And she really wanted me to go and get a good loaf of bread.

So then I was like, I'll buy all your pies. Because my heart was like, God, a person who's not competitive, you know, and who really wants to help another person. And she was so, and she's in great pain, great physical pain, and obviously a hard life.

She had a jar there that said Grandma's, I think the bakery's called Grandma's Bakery or something. And there was a jar there that said Grandma's Retirement Fund. And it had like 26 cents in it, you know.

And I was like, God, you know. And she was like, she's like, yeah, I'm hoping I don't have to keep baking because it's getting a little hard to stand up. But she was so happy.

She was really, really happy. You see, if you took all the sensations of her day separately, each one is some kind of pain. Arthritis, you know, kids having died off.

You know, it's cold. It's really cold down there. And she has to pay this rent and all this stuff, you know.

So if you took the individual sensations of her day, I suspect most of them are painful, even physically painful. But she's happy. The way she, she's making a pen out of the parts and not a chew toy, you know, because she's helping the other bakery.

She's helping the, she's interested in helping the other bakery. She's thinking about somebody else other than herself. And then that creates powerful seeds in her mind.

And then she interprets a long string of arthritic moments as a good day and as a happy day. You see, the pain is not in the arthritic moments. The pain is in your selfishness and how you take it.

She's having one problem moment after another. But she interprets it as a happy day. You see, her mind interprets it as a happy day, as a fulfilling day.

And she's so beautiful. You guys will see her, okay? Her name's Grandma.

Just ask around. All right. Yeah.

CI ZHES PA DE'I NGA'I CI ZHES PA LAS DEN PA'I THA DE'I DU LA GRUB DE RIN GYI ZHES PA DE'I NGA'I GRUB ZHES PA DANG PHYIR DU ZHES PA NI DANG DEN PA'I PHYIR DU GRUB NA DE NI DU MA YIN PA SHIN DU He gets, I don't know. I think the way he goes is a little difficult. But I'll say it just for completeness, okay?

But I think we kind of said it already, okay? He's still stuck on this single and multiple thing. All right?

DE RIN GYI ZHES PA DE'I NGA'I GRUB ZHES PA DANG PHYIR DU ZHES PA NI DANG DEN PA'I PHYIR DU GRUB NA If there were a mind that had the thoughts of the morning and had the thoughts of the evening and they were one in a real way, in a natural way, which is impossible, okay? DE NI DU MA YIN PA SHIN DU Then because the thoughts are multiple, DE RIN GYI ZHES PA NI KYANG DU MAR THAL BA DANG then you would have had to have multiple minds during the day. DE RIN GYI ZHES PA NGA'I GRUB ZHES PA SHIN DU PHYIR DU ZHES PA YANG NGA'I GRUB ZHES PA THAL BA Also, the way in which the mind, today's mind was occurring in the morning, okay?

If today's mind were occurring in the morning and if that mind were naturally one with the thoughts, then in the evening you would also be having the thoughts of the morning. CHUNG BAR THAL I'm sorry. Then the thoughts of the evening would be happening in the morning.

YANG NA PHYIR DU ZHES PA NGA'I GRUB NGA'I GRUB MIN BYUNG BA SHIN DU But if it were the case that the evening's thoughts were not happening in the morning, DE RIN GYI ZHES PA NGA'I GRUB MED PAR THAL then you'd have to say you didn't have any thought, any mind in the morning. If they were naturally one. SOGS KYIS RANG NYID RANG GI CHA SHES DANG BSTAN PA'I PHYIR THA DE DU DU'ANG MA GRUB PA'I PHYIR NA So you can't say there's a mind which is either one with the separate thoughts of the day or which is unrelated to the separate thoughts of the day.

Neither one is possible. PHYIR NA, DEN MED DU NGES PA NYES PA'I TSUL LA BAS DGOS You have to try to grasp how your mind is also coming from you. How you interpret your mind is coming from you.

Which means that every unhappiness you have in your life is just coming from you. And there's no sense, there's no use to... If it were coming from other people, then grandma would be unhappy.

And she's not. Because she has a bad life. She has a hard life.

Life has not been good to her. She should be unhappy. But she's not.

So good. GZHAN YANG ZHES PA'I KHOR SUM DEN PA'I PHYIR DU GRUB NA CHA BYED PHYIR DU THAL BA'I KHYUN DU GYUR ZHIG This is Khor Sum. A lot of you know the idea of Khor Sum.

Khor Sum means the three elements in any act. Khor means element. Sum means three.

Khor Sum means the three elements in any act. It could be, for example, an act of giving where there is a giver and a gift and someone who receives the gift. Sometimes they say a giver, a person who receives the gift, and the act of giving itself.

Sometimes they say it that way. The three elements of an act of giving. But what about the three elements of an act of thought?

An act of the mind. Then there's the mind, and there's the thought, and there's the thinking of the thought. There's the mind, there's the thought, and there's the thinking of the thought.

Khor Sum. DEN PA'I PHYIR DU GRUB NA CHA BYAS CIG TU THAL BA'I SKYEN If they were one naturally, DEN PA'I PHYIR DU GRUB NA CHA BYAS CIG TU THAL BA'I SKYEN then the thought and the thinker of the thought would have to be the same. The thought and the thinker of the thought would have to be the same.

It would have to be one thing. SKYEN DU GYUR ZHING DEN PA'I THAL BA'I DU GRUB NA If the thought, the thinker, and the thinking were all separate and not related, then ZHES BYA MED NA'ANG ZHES BYAS THEG PA You should be able to have a thinker without anything it thinks about. If they were all separate.

If they had separate existence, you should be able to have a thinker who's not thinking anything, who has no thought. If they were one, if they were one, then the thinking and the thought and the thinker would all have to be the same thing. If they were one naturally, from their own side.

ZHES BYA MED KYANG THEG CHA BA THEG PA SOGS KYI KHYEN DU GYUR BA Also, if you didn't have a... You could have a thought without a thinker and you could have a thinker without a thought. THEG PA SOGS KYI KHYEN DU GYUR BA ZHES PA'I KHOR ZIN RANG LUNG NAS GRUB PA MED PA LA Therefore, a thought and what it thinks and the act of thinking are not coming from themselves.

The thinker and the thought that they think and the act of thinking itself are not coming from itself. I kind of prefer to stick with grammar. I kind of prefer to stick with grammar.

I think it's more relevant to our life. Next time you feel unhappy or depressed or you feel like people are being bad to you, you have to understand that grandma wasn't unhappy in the same circumstances. So it's not coming from the people.

Nobody can make you unhappy. Just by being selfish, you plant seeds that make you experience your mind as unhappy. If it were the collection of negative sensations that made the mind unhappy, imposed by other people, then grandma wouldn't...

The 81-year-old Polish grandma who you can go meet in Prescott. Go check it out. Her hands are all marled.

Fingers are scarcely usable. She's happy. She's deeply happy.

This is very important. If there are thoughts, earlier thoughts and later thoughts, right? Earlier thoughts of the day and later thoughts of the day.

And if you take those as parts or indicators of a mind in the way that you take the pieces of the paneling as indicators of a piece of paneling, and if the seeds fire in your mind, if the seeds go off in your mind and force you to see those otherwise disconnected thoughts as a single person's mind. You see? That's how your mind really happens.

That's how a human mind really happens. Your thoughts of the morning and your thoughts of the day do not necessarily have a connection. Necessarily means naturally, right?

They're not necessarily connected into one mind, okay? It's how you treat others that determines how you synthesize my mind of the whole day from just thoughts, okay? In the same way that you choose to make a piece of paneling.

If a caveman came here and looked at the same indicators, or if a dog came and saw the pieces of a pen, they don't create the same object out of it as we do, because their seeds are different, okay? So, what he's trying to say is it wasn't necessarily the case that the string of thoughts you had today should have been called Darcy's mind. It needed to be called Darcy's mind.

It couldn't be called something else. And they didn't have to be called an unhappy mind or a happy mind, okay? They're just strings of thoughts.

Your mind glues them together and says, that was my mind during the day. And your mind interprets them as happy or sad. Even when they are objectively a string of painful sensations in grandma's hands and back, okay?

And feet, okay? SAM GZIG LA BDAG ZHIG CHEN NUS RIG PA SHES PA THAN NYID TZAM PHYIR PA DAG TZAM GYI SHES PA DE LA KHOR GSUM GYI CHA CHE THAM GYI Therefore, because your own mind is only a picture in your mind, therefore, because your own mind is only a picture in your mind, it's perfectly reasonable that you can have a thought and you can be a thinker and there can be an act of thinking. Those three elements, okay?

Only because it's coming from you. If it were not coming from you, you couldn't have those three things. So, are you thinking?

Yes. Is there a mind which thinks? Yes.

Does it have a thought? Yes. Is there thinking going on?

Yes. Is there a thinking and a thought? Yes.

Is it coming from its own side? No. Why not?

Because a pen's not coming from its own side. And it's the same, okay? I see a pen because I'm joining those parts together.

As a pen. No, it's a pen by its own side. Well, then a dog should write.

Okay? Well, then your mind should be unhappy if you have a string of painful experiences during the day. That's not the case, right?

It's not coming from your mind. It's coming from your mind. Okay?

Yeah, you can quote that one. Okay. Coming from your seeds, right?

Maybe I should say that. The mind is not coming from the mind's side. The mind is coming from the seeds in the mind, going off and making you see the mind in a certain way.

That same mind could have been seen the opposite by another person with different seeds. If I had the experiences of Grandma in a single day, and I had bad seeds because I was selfish, then I would say I'm having a miserable life. And I had a bad day.

And everybody was mean to me. Okay? Like that.

The same thoughts, the same pen, the same barrel, the same black stick, looked upon by a person with bad seeds, selfish seeds. Then they would see a mind that was in suffering all day, wallowing in Grandma's pain all day. Different people can see the same sets of thoughts and have totally opposite experiences of those thoughts.

That's the emptiness of the mind. And you know that. You spend a day with someone, right?

You spend a day with anybody. And you're like, God, such a miracle today. The whole day was such a miracle.

And they say, What? And they say, God, we had like three hours of emptiness teaching. And then we meditated for three hours.

And then a cook who's never cooked anything but steaks makes us this awesome veggie meal. And then we had an unbelievable yoga class. And the sky is so beautiful.

And the weather was perfectly clear. And there were no cars beeping or pollution. And there was this beautiful snow covering everything, like frosting.

And the trees are so beautiful and stately. And they're like, I didn't like this. There's too much salt on the tofu.

And the people around me were mean to me today. And it was cold in my room. And the toilet didn't work right.

They can be side by side with you walking through the same day. And they're experiencing it as a disaster or as something to be very unhappy about. And then you're like, What's going on?

Can't you see what's happening? It's a miracle. Today was a miracle.

Yesterday was the ultimate miracle. And they're just like, Yeah, but they don't have toilet paper. I didn't like that.

Somebody said something to me today. I didn't like that. It's like, it's just seeds going off in your mind.

It's your seeds. And when you complain, you make them worse. Then the next day is bad too.

sung pa den min du che rang shing gi me par ten lab sem pa ni By the way, was the day miraculous or was the day schmucky? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Is it a pen or is it a tie?

You got it. It's not that they're wrong. They did have a sucky day.

It's just that they didn't have to have a sucky day. Everything can be either one. Which one do you want to be in?

Which would you rather? Where would you rather be? In heaven or having your crisis?

I'm not saying that one is not real. They're equally real. The pen and the chuta are equally real.

Do you want to chew or do you want to write poetry? I like to chew anyway. People ask me, people say, is that Geshe-la's pen and people check the end of it to see if it's chewed?

sumpa den min du che rang shing gi me par ten lab sem pa ni We're on to things which are neither physical nor mental but which are still changing. They're called den min du che. What's an example of of something which is changing but which is not physical and not mental?

He's going to give a beautiful example. And this is a very, very deep subject which we won't get into. It's time.

It's time. See, time is not technically a physical thing and it's not a mental thing. It's a concept.

It's an idea. So he's going to take time itself which is beautiful. What is the emptiness of time?

By the way, I can save you a couple pages. You go to the dentist, right? Time slows down.

Alright? Time slows down. It's like you can't believe he's not done yet.

You know? And he's like, we didn't even shoot you with Novocain yet. You know?

And you're like, yeah, but isn't my hour up? And time slows down in the dentist's chair. Then when you're making out with your high school boyfriend or girlfriend, time speeds up.

And then, you know, did you ever have a dawn break when you were making out? I don't know. Then you're like, what's going on?

He said, I don't know. There's this really weird light. What do you think it is?

And then you're like, I don't know. It kind of looks like the sun. You know?

And then you're, you know, your dad and your mom are, you know about that. I'm kidding. So time, time is also a projection, right?

I mean, that proves it, but let's go through the scriptural proof. I like high school proofs better. Dear Dulajana, if we were to take the example of time, we take 12 months, we put them together, and then the mind creates a thing called a year.

You see, the mind, under the influence of the seeds, calls it a year. It's artificial. There's a huge problem in Vinaya, because in Vinaya, time is important.

For example, in marking the moment that a monk or a nun received their ordination, if a person is 21 years old and they were ordained in, if they received full ordination in 2011 on January 7th, right? But another person is 60 years old, but they don't receive their ordination until January 8th, the 21-year-old is senior forever in the monastery. They are senior, because they took their vows earlier.

So it became very important to mark the time of a person's ordination in ancient India before they had clocks. It's a very beautiful system, but they have a stellar time, solar time, and lunar time. So you mark it according to the constellations, according to the position of the sun, and according to the phase of the moon, just to nail it down, so there's no complaints later.

Because somebody got ordained in Madras, and somebody got ordained in Delhi, and then you'll know who's senior. So anyway, you decide that 12 months is a year. It's not as if 12 months was always a year.

12 is weird, right? It's some Roman screw-up, right? Jupiter and...

I forget. It's all a big mess. You know?

And then every ascendant culture on the planet decides to change it to their emperor or their king or their gods. AD, BC. Okay?

It'll change the next culture that comes up. I don't know who it'll be. But they'll decide what we call how many months it's going to be, and what we call their...

It's not naturally June and July, and it's not naturally 12 months, and it's not naturally 7 days. Then none of them works anyway. No, that's why you have leap years and stuff.

Okay? It's confusing. It's confusing.

But we tend to get used to taking a year as a natural thing. 12 months is a natural thing. 7 days is a natural thing.

I'll get back to you next week. There's no reason why 7 days. There's nothing about 7 days.

It was just some guy made it up. Okay? A year is not naturally one with its 12 months in its 12 months because if it were in its 12 months, then every 12 months would be 12 years.

If it were naturally its parts, then it would be 12. 12 years to 12 months. Or else, since there's only one year, there would only be one month.

If they had a relationship which was self-existent, which was natural. If they didn't have any natural connection between them, if you took away that 12 months, you wouldn't find a year. Same.

Same rationale. If you took away 12 months one by one, there wouldn't be a year. We say a month of the year.

It doesn't make any sense. It's like saying thoughts in your mind when your mind is the collection of the thoughts. It's not that there's a separate bowl of the mind.

You can't say months of the year because the months are the year. Got it? It doesn't make sense.

What we do and what we say doesn't make sense. We say months. So we can establish that what we call a year is simply a fabrication of the mind.

We decide what a year is going to be. We say it's going to be 12 months. And we decide to call that a year.

It's not that the year is naturally inside of 12 months. MA TOG PA ZHIG MA TOG DE KHE SNANG NAS SOG DROD PA ZHIG BRTEN NAS MED There is no such thing as a year which is coming from every 12 months. We label the 12 months a year.

Why did we choose 12 months? Is there 12 Roman deities or something? 12 constellations?

12 phases of the moon? Something about the solar... One time around the moon.

Around the sun, sorry.

[Говорящий 2] (1:00:59 - 1:01:00)
It's okay.

[Говорящий 1] (1:01:01 - 1:01:24)
No, it's okay. It's okay. No, it's not so bad.

It's not so bad. That's the trouble, that we have a moon and a sun. No, I mean, a month is...

A month goes by the moon, but the year goes by the sun. Moon, they're both moon. But month means moon.

It came from moon. Moon.

[Говорящий 2] (1:01:26 - 1:01:27)
Okay.

[Говорящий 1] (1:01:31 - 1:04:57)
And stars get in there somewhere. I think we can safely say, though, that a year doesn't come from itself. That it's a human fabrication.

That's not emptiness, and that's not dependent origination. You have to go further. Some of these texts don't go far enough.

And that's why you feel confused a little bit sometimes. He's not going far enough. The question is, why did we choose 12 months?

And that's just a seed in your mind. I don't know. You got hung up on 12s with somebody?

You see, everything's like that. You have to explain everything in terms of seeds in your mind. It was a neutral karma.

It was a background ignorance karma. It wasn't like you hurt somebody 12 times, or you gave somebody 12 gifts at Christmas or something. Okay?

It was that, you know, you were talking with 12s about somebody and had some background ignorance, and then that ripened as calling a year 12 months instead of 13 or 11. You see? I mean, okay, they should be saying that.

They don't quite go far enough. Okay? Yeah, sometimes they don't go far enough, and then it gets confusing.

It gets uncomfortable. All right. If you noticed, how are we doing?

Okay, we got a little more time. We got 15 more minutes. By the way, we're doing really good.

It's a kind of miracle we'll finish the book when we finish the retreat. We'll finish this section. Then we got nine and a half years to go.

I think it's kind of fun, though. Okay, here we go. Nipa dumache rangshin gyi merpa tenla bepa ni.

What about stuff that exists but doesn't change? What about stuff that exists but never started or stopped? I shouldn't say that, but anyway.

Let's say it doesn't change and not produced. I'll throw something in just as a teaser, okay? There's a thing called subtle impermanence.

They say that if you can understand subtle impermanence, then you are close to seeing emptiness itself. It's not treated in this book at this point. Just nod or shake your head.

Does every object have its own emptiness? Yeah, okay. Every object has a quality of not coming from its own side, and that's its emptiness.

Everything in the world has its own emptiness. Every object in this room has its own emptiness. Why?

Because every object in this room equally possesses the fact that it doesn't come from itself. Stated negatively. Stated positively, everything in this room is coming from seeds firing in your own head.

[Говорящий 2] (1:04:58 - 1:04:59)
That we know.

[Говорящий 1] (1:05:07 - 1:16:52)
Does this clock have its own emptiness? Yeah. I mean, what's it mean to say it has its own emptiness?

I mean, someone could perceive this as a weapon. I mean, people hook them up to two AAA batteries and they go put explosives on themselves, and they use a very similar thing to this as a method to kill people and themselves, right? And then we look at it and we perceive it as an enemy in the morning.

No, I mean, everyone has a different perception of this object, okay? That's its emptiness, okay? It's not either, it's not a weapon, and it's not an aid to getting to work on time from its own side.

It could be either. Chew toy or pen, okay? So this clock does have its own emptiness.

It's neither one naturally. It depends on how your seeds choose to interpret it, right? So we can say that it has its own emptiness.

Did that emptiness have a cause, and does that emptiness change? Let's start with the change. Let's start with the change.

Does it ever get more or less empty, you see? Can you say, it's more coming from me today than yesterday, you see? No, you have to grasp that.

Emptiness is a constant, okay? It doesn't get more or less empty. It's either one or the other.

It's either not coming from its side, or it is coming from its side, and there's no like 50-50 or 70-30 or anything like that, okay? It's either empty or it's not. It happens to be empty.

It's 100% void of coming from its own side. There's no part of it that ever came from its own side or ever will. It's 100% void.

That voidness is unchanging, unvarying, okay? Does that imply that it can't go out of existence? That's a tricky point.

Then you're learning a little bit about subtle impermanence, okay? Could the emptiness of the clock, even though it was not produced, and even though it doesn't vary, is it eternal? No.

Why? If you smash the clock or melt the clock or burn the clock, then its emptiness passes out of existence. But we don't say it stopped, and we don't say it started.

It passed in and out of existence. You have to try to struggle with that, okay? It never grew, okay?

It didn't have a gradual starting. The moment the clock existed, in that same millisecond, the clock never came from its own side. 100% didn't come from its...

It's not like the emptiness had to do a sun salutation to get warm, okay? The moment the clock was created, in that same millisecond, it had its own emptiness. But the emptiness didn't stop.

It was just there. And then when the clock is destroyed, it's just not there. And if you can grasp that distinction, you can get closer to seeing emptiness, okay?

So here we go. And it's a good thing to think about sometimes. If you think, oh, I don't understand emptiness, or I'm not progressing in my emptiness understanding, then struggle with that subtle impermanence, okay?

Some people say subtle impermanence is the fact that the clock is changing faster than I can see it change, okay? In between 9.22 and 9.23, it's one minute older, but it looks the same to me, okay? There must be tiny changes going on constantly in the clock.

It's not like a wrinkle forms on your face at age 48 that wasn't there at 30. It doesn't just pop out on your face when you look in the mirror on your 48th birthday, okay? It must be gradually digging in, you know?

Every time you frown at an emptiness, you know, what do you say? It must... And then each little frown must have an earlier part of the frown, a later part of the frown.

And then you can go into the emptiness of a wrinkle. See? Okay.

Some people say that's subtle impermanence, but they don't get it, okay? Like the impermanence that's going on between obvious changes in your wrinkles. The wrinkle must be getting deeper every second of your life from age 30 to 48.

It's not like the wrinkle decides to pop out at 48. There must be little tiny progressions of the wrinkle going on. And they say that's subtle impermanence.

Imperceptible deepenings of the wrinkle by the minute, in the minutes from age 30 to 48. And they call that subtle impermanence, but they don't get it, okay? Go this way.

Go the thing about what happens to the emptiness of the cloth. But that's another story. That's not in this book.

But the idea of a thing that doesn't change is in this book, okay? Of a thing that never varies. So people mistranslate this as permanent.

Which would mean internal. And it doesn't mean that. It's a huge error.

And almost every Buddhist translation uses it because they haven't thought about it, okay? It's an extremely serious error. Nobody ever said the emptiness of the cloth was eternal.

The emptiness goes out of being when the cloth is destroyed. We're not talking permanent. We're talking changing or unchanging.

Varying or unvarying, okay? That's the point. It's not that it's permanent.

The whole use of the word impermanence in Buddhism is probably one of the top five words in translating Buddhist scripture is wrong. And it means they just didn't think about it. Anyway, that's pretty disturbing.

Okay, so we're on DUM BYED RANG BZHIN GYI MED PAR BSTAN LA How do we establish that things that never change are empty, are not natural, okay? Normally when you teach emptiness in the world, when you go to China on a DCI tour and you're trying to help the people in that country, right? I think you should be concentrating on functionality.

Which works better to make money, investing in property or investing in real estate? Chinese people love to save money. So where you invest your money, they're not like Americans.

They're the opposite. You know, it's very typical for a young lady to come up to me in a talk and say, I'm saving for my marriage. Can you help me?

You know, like that. You know, I'm saving for my child's college education. And I say, well, where's your husband?

She says, well, I'm not married yet. You know, I mean, that's, it's interesting. So anyway, it's kind of nice.

So is it better? I mean, I would prefer to deal with functional things in trying to help people. Is it better to invest in real estate or is it better to invest in stocks?

You see? Is it better to use Lancôme or is it better to use, give me another one, Estée Lauder? Estée Lauder.

You know, I mean, people ask. People ask. I mean, it sounds funny, but that's really what people would like to know.

You know, Geshe-la, should I use Lancôme or Estée Lauder? How do I get a boy? What's the best way to get a boy?

Or should I do yoga or should I jog? You see? Or should I do Tai Chi?

I mean, these are typical questions. To me, those are much more important than discussing whether space has emptiness or not. Okay?

No, really. I mean, I want to work with functionality. What makes a lipstick work to attract a guy?

Seriously. And what makes yoga work to make you healthier? And what makes an investment in stocks work better than an investment in property at any given time?

It's not in the stocks. Stocks go down all the time. It's not in the Lancôme.

People with Lancôme don't get boys all the time. It's not in the yoga, because people come out of yoga class with broken neck. You know?

It must be somewhere else. Or an aspirin. The reason it works must be somewhere else.

I believe that in the grand plan of things, your interest starting tomorrow or the next day has to be, how can I help people with this stuff? You're not going to sit them down, and you're going to say, you know, I can show you how to make an investment work. Or I can save you a lot of money.

We can go to Kmart and buy cosmetics instead of Sephora, and it will work. You know? You just got to load it with the right seeds.

You see? To me, that's the whole point of this whole week. You want to help people get what they want in life and help them be happy.

That's the reason to talk about all this stuff. There's a few people you can lay the scripture on them, but I don't think you have to lay it on most people. I think in a talk in Shanghai, people could grasp about 50% of all they need to know in two days.

If you grasp the seed thing, and you grasp the plant thing, well, then you're already on your way. If you grasp that watermelons make watermelons and not mangoes, then you're okay. Everything you need to know is there.

You want money? Share money. Share your resources with other people.

And then invest wherever you want. Invest in property that will go up. Invest in stocks that will go up.

Don't share your money. And then invest in stocks and invest in property that will go down. It's not the stocks and it's not the property.

To me, the practical applications of emptiness are where it's at. Because the reason to study it is to make the world happy and successful. The same talk that inspired you was painful to other people.

As far as the lipstick, I mean, if you want a boy, go help an elderly person in a nursing home. Because the reason you want a boy is that you don't want to be lonely. So to plant the seed for that, you have to go help a lonely person.

Help a lonely person, then go to Sephora, just close your eyes and grab any lipstick.

[Говорящий 2] (1:16:53 - 1:16:54)
You know?

[Говорящий 1] (1:16:54 - 1:21:00)
No, instead of spending hours, like, it's so weird. You try them on your... You try them on your arm.

The perfumes are worse. How many perfumes can you smell in one day? They all get confused, right?

You spray your arm and then your arm stinks like that the whole day. And then... Visit an elderly person regularly.

And then go buy any color you want and any brand you want and it will work, you see? That's how functionality is imparted to objects. Not by factories and not by atoms and not by anything else, but by human kindness.

But by human kindness, you see? Turn people on to that. But before that, you have to explain why it's empty, right?

Did you notice that some girls use Lancome and don't get a guy? Some girls use Lancome and do get a guy. Same shade.

And some girls use Estee Lauder and get a guy and some guys use Estee Lauder and don't get a guy and some people invest in stocks and lose money and some people invest in stocks and lose money and some people invest in property and lose money. Did you notice that why it works is not coming from the thing? I mean, it's so duh.

It's so tremendously, tragically duh. The whole world is duh. Nobody figured it out.

It's in your face constantly and people don't get it. So if you can explain that the lipstick has no power, the color doesn't matter, you're going to meet some guy who's going to say, I prefer the natural look. I don't even want to wear lipstick.

You see what I mean? The lipstick doesn't do anything. It doesn't help.

But sometimes it does help. When it does help, why does it help? Because you helped a lonely person.

You were kind to a lonely person and that gives the lipstick its power. You see? And then people are like, you don't know how many people thanked me the second time I go to a country.

All these women line up to thank me for the guy they met. You know? It's really cool.

It's really fun. You know? They say, yeah, yeah, I went to the nursing home and I say, are you still going to the nursing home?

They say, no, I got the guy. I say, he's going to run off on you. You have to keep planting seeds because the seeds wear out every moment you're with the guy.

So now you and the guy have to go visit the old lady. Okay? They got to grasp that too, how to sustain the seeds because meeting the guy uses up the seeds to meet the guy.

And then naturally the relationship should go downhill. A relationship which is not consciously sustained by visiting elderly or lonely people must go downhill, must get old, must get boring, must get tiring, must devolve into arguing. You see?

Has to. Because the seed is worn out by meeting the guy. And every hour you're with him, you're wearing out seeds.

And if you don't replace them, something's going to go wrong, must go wrong. So many people are suffering. So many people, I don't know what the divorce rate is, but it must be more than that are miserable, right?

I met this lady, I won't tell you even which country because you might guess who she is. And it was not America. And usually she looks harassed and tired and old.

And then I saw her and she looked just like 16 years old. And I said, God, you look really great. And she said, Yeah, I feel great.

I said, Well, what's happening in your life? She said, My husband died. And you know, I felt really bad.

[Говорящий 2] (1:21:00 - 1:21:05)
I was like...

[Говорящий 1] (1:21:05 - 1:27:42)
And she didn't say it totally directly, but pretty much directly, that it was 30 years of suffering to be with him. And so what I'm saying is that there's a divorce rate, but there's probably, if you added all the people who are unhappy in their relationship who didn't get divorced for one reason or another, usually kids, right? Then it would be very high.

And then it's very disturbing. It's very disturbing. The phenomenon of relationships going sour is very disturbing, right?

I mean, you think, I'm a nice person. They're a nice person. We really loved each other.

I still care for them a lot. And we just can't get along. It's just no fun, or it's getting boring, or he doesn't like me anymore, or something like that.

And then the amount of human suffering produced by this question is almost mind-boggling. Billions of unhappy people because of this one thing, because they don't understand the emptiness of their relationship. They think the relationship is coming from the relationship.

It's not. It's coming from the amount of kindness they've both shown to other people in the past. It's coming from visiting lonely people.

And that's why you find someone to make you less lonely. It's because you've helped lonely people. It's so simple, right?

If you could teach them that emptiness of a relationship, and then teach them the dependent origination of a relationship, which is plant the right seeds, and it will continue indefinitely, fresh, exciting, every day more interesting than the last, after many decades. If you could teach people that kind of emptiness, and if you could turn them on to that kind of seeds, then that's a huge contribution to human happiness. You say you're a bodhisattva.

You say you want to have bodhicitta. Well, there you are. If you spread this kind of thinking, you could erase a huge amount of suffering in the planet.

Just spreading this kind of thinking, much less mention the old lady who got visited. She's also happy. We didn't even talk about her.

She also likes this system. That's why we're not going to get to the emptiness of unchanging things tonight. I want you to try to struggle with using this to help normal people through normal pain.

That's maybe the biggest one that's going down, is relationships. It's a tragedy because it's unnecessary pain. If it were necessary pain, it'd be okay.

If it were unavoidable, it would be okay. Since it is unavoidable, it's a huge tragedy. None of that pain needed to happen for the last 50,000 years.

Every relationship that ever went bad was just a boo-boo. The same is true of death itself, but we won't go there because it's too late. You know?

That's also an avoidable tragedy. But that we'll get to. We're not just talking about some philosophical book, right?

Struggle to find applications to people's lives. Struggle to make people happy with what you're learning. It's seeds.

It's all seeds. We have teachers from Diamond Mountain that come with us on DCI tours. We put them in situations where they're supposed to advise other people.

Then we have a pep talk just before we go to the tour. We have a pep talk the night before and we say, tomorrow we're going to put you all on question and answer panels in front of hundreds or thousands of people. They're like, okay, I'm ready.

You say, there's only one answer I want out of you. They're like, what? I said, talk about seeds.

I don't care what. Somebody asks you, should I invest in property or should I invest in stocks? Don't fall for the trap.

Don't start thinking about whether stocks are better. We've seen it on some people who are not very well trained. Somebody will say, should I invest in stocks?

They're in a breakout group in Argentina next week. Somebody says, should I invest in stocks or should I invest in property? Sometimes the teacher will fall for it.

They'll go, well, stocks are down, but there's a chance. Don't go there. Anytime anyone comes to you with a personal problem, you're in a position to help them.

Start talking about seeds. Just remember that. You can help anybody in the world immensely.

Just go to seeds. Should I talk to my husband or should I leave him? You see?

Take care of the seeds, honey. Just take care of the seeds. Don't ask me about that.

Then he'll go away if he's supposed to go away and he'll stay if he'll stay, but you'll be happy either way. Like that. Should I do chemotherapy or should I try some kind of vitamin supplements?

Then you say, bad question. Help other people with a similar problem and then do what you want to do and it will work. Like that.

Just always go to seeds. Then you can really serve people. That's why we're studying.

That's why we're here. All right. Tomorrow, I suggest, I was going to say we could talk when we get up, but I have another suggestion.

How about we start talking after the meditation? Is that okay? Okay.

And the schedule's a little different tomorrow. You ready? We have to shorten the day because we're doing a celebration in the evening.