«Дар освобождения», курс 38 «Становясь бодхисаттвой: шаги к порождению желания достичь просветления», занятие 12

[Говорящий 1]
Welcome to session 12 of the Lam Rim. We've been talking about the place that compassion has in the five steps for getting to this bodhisattva vision, bodhichitta. And we reached the fifth step, which is compassion.

And we kind of are pausing here to see how compassion is like the center of the propeller, like all the other steps of the seven steps, they revolve around compassion. Somehow compassion is at the root of beautiful love and at the root of recognizing the people have been my mom, thinking about what they did, thinking to repay them. Somehow compassion is at the center of all these seven steps for getting to bodhichitta in the system of Atisha, Lord Atisha.

So we're going to continue on that theme. And here at the beginning, we're going to get a quotation from Master Chandrakirti. So Pabongka Rinpoche, he's going to pull out a quotation from Master Chandrakirti.

And I've been working on a great, great commentary by Je Tsongkapa on this book by Chandrakirti called Entering the Middle Way. And Tsongkapa's book is called Gompa Rabso, which means clarifying or illuminating the true thought of Chandrakirti. So to get into this topic, let's talk about a special vision that Je Tsongkapa had.

Here's a picture of it. This is, I wrote a long history of Tsongkapa. It took me many years.

And this particular scene is 1397. You can see Je Tsongkapa sitting at the bottom in the yellow robe. And he's having a vision.

I think if my dating is correct, it's the autumn of 1397. And Je Tsongkapa goes into this awesome vision where he sees all the great teachers of emptiness in history, the major teachers. So you can see here Nagarjuna at the top.

And then we're going to have Buddha Palita who wrote commentaries on Nagarjuna. Then we're going to have probably Baba Viveka who complained about Buddha Palita's commentary. And then Chandrakirti who complained to Baba Viveka for complaining about Buddha Palita's commentary.

So anyway, you're going to have all the great teachers of the emptiness lineage here in this vision. And there's a tradition that says that this is when Je Tsongkapa saw emptiness directly. So people often ask me, was Tsongkapa an Arya?

And the only mention of the question is in this scene, in commentaries to this part of his life, this moment in his life, that in conjunction with... And apparently he saw the book Buddha Palita written across the sky or something. And then they say that during that period he had the direct perception of emptiness.

So that's a tradition. So I thought since Pabongka Rinpoche is going to explain the role of compassion by going to Chandrakirti's great book, Entering the Middle Way, why don't we go to Je Tsongkapa's commentary on this verse? Because I've been working on that commentary for about seven years and it's very cool.

So here we go. PHYANG LDAN BDAG BA'I KYANG The Glorious Chandrakirti, SBYUGS PA TZAM PA'I THOB MAR When he first started to write his great classic Madhyamaka Avatara, Entering the Middle Way. And by the way, middle way in that case doesn't mean philosophical middle way.

It means Nagarjuna's root text called Wisdom. So Chandrakirti says, GANG PHYIR BRTZE NYID RGYAL BA'I BLO RTOG PHUN SROM GYI SA BON DANG NYID DPA' LA CHUN DANG YIN RING DU SNONG PHYIR GNAS LA MYIN PA LTA BU'I SDUG BSGYUR PA DE PHYIR BDAG GIS THOB MAR SNYING RJE RTOG PA RGYI At the beginning of his greatest book, one of the greatest books ever written on emptiness, Chandrakirti, Master Chandrakirti does not bow down to emptiness. And he does not bow down to wisdom.

And he does not bow down to bodhichitta. He bows down to compassion. And he says, there's a reason.

And so it fits into the lam rim so sweetly that the lam rim guy stole that verse for lam rim. So Chandrakirti says, you want to understand emptiness? Then get compassion.

Then everybody's like, what? I thought I was supposed to meditate on shamatha and vipasyana. No, get compassion.

So why and how we're going to go through it today. That's what our goal is. GANG PHYIR means because, TSE NYID, love and love alone is the seed, sabun in the second line, for RGYAL BA'I LO RTOG DPON TSOGS DI for these luscious, generous crops of the Buddhas.

And it's like the seed for planting the crops of enlightenment. But it's also like the water that you add. So we had yesterday THOG MTHA' BAR TZAM.

I'm sure you guys remember. THOG MTHA' BAR TZAM, beginning, ending, and in between. So Chandrakirti is saying, look, why is compassion the center of the seven?

Why did Tsongkhapa present compassion as the center of the seven steps to Bodhichitta? Why did he present it as the central theme or the middle of the whole machine? He says, well, there's three reasons.

THOG MTHA' BAR In the beginning, you need compassion. In the middle, you need compassion. And at the end, you need compassion.

And in his opening lines of his famous book on emptiness, Chandrakirti says, it's like the seed, it's like the water, and it's like the fruit. It's like the seed, it's like the water, and it's like the fruit. The seed of the fruit tree that you plant, it's like the water that you pour on the tree before it grows fruit.

And it's like the fruit that you can enjoy once the tree grows and produces fruit. So compassion has a place, THOG MTHA' BAR, in the beginning of all this process, like the seed. In the middle of the process, like watering your garden every day.

And then at the end of the process, like eating the fruits that grow out of your garden. And then Chandrakirti says, that's why I'm not bowing down to wisdom. I'm not bowing down to emptiness.

At the beginning of my book, I'm bowing down to compassion. Because it's the seed, it's the water, and it's the fruit. CHUN DAG YON RING DU LONGS SPYOD NAS LA LONGS SPYOD NAS LA And you're going to enjoy it, eating it later.

SMIN PA LTA BUR SDUG BSGYUR PA It's like the maturation of the fruit. DE'I PHYIR, for that reason, BDAG GIS THOG MAR SNYING RJE LTOS PAR GYI I'm going to bow down to compassion. All right, now I thought it would be fun, since this Lam Rim is going so fast, if we added some more stuff.

So let's go look at what Tsongkapa has to say about this verse by Chandrakirti. Let's go look at Tsongkapa's explanation. And again, I added this part.

This is GOMS PA RAB ZAL. GOMS PA RAB ZAL Tsongkapa's Illumination of the True Thought. And let's read it together.

Because this Lam Rim is going too fast. We're going to finish in 15, 20 years. Let's slow it down a little bit.

NYID PA NI, BYANG CHUB KYI SEMS DANG NYID SU MED PA'I YE SHES GNYIS KYI RTZA BA YANG SNYING RJE YIN PAS NA Look, there's two important spiritual goals we have with this book by Chandrakirti, by Master Chandrakirti. What are they? BYANG CHUB KYI SEMS We want to get to that bodhisattva vision.

We want to get to the wishful enlightenment. And we want the NYID SU MED PA'I YE SHES. We want the indivisible wisdom.

The wisdom which is free of two things. The wisdom which is free of two things. And people call it non-duality or something like that.

And I feel a little uncomfortable with the word. People think it means when you see emptiness, there's no me and there's no emptiness. No duality.

I sink into the emptiness. There's no perceiver and there's no perceived. And people say, oh, that's non-duality.

That's not non-duality. Non-duality means discrepancy. Discrepancy.

What's discrepancy mean? It means there's a difference between the way this guy acts and the way he really is. There's a discrepancy.

He says he's a Lam Rim teacher and he never meditates. That's a discrepancy. That's a discrepancy.

So discrepancy means it looks like one way and it's really a different way. And that's what duality means in Buddhism. It means discrepancy.

It means they don't match. The way things are and the way things look don't match. It looks like your husband is upset in the kitchen because he had a hard day at his job.

But what's really happening is you yelled at your kids last week. So they don't fit. There's a discrepancy between the way it looks and the way it is.

When you catch the discrepancy, when you realize how hard was his job today has nothing to do with his mood. His mood is coming from how you treated your kids last week. Then you free yourself of this duality.

That's all. The way it looks and the way it really is don't match. That's called non-duality.

When you figure it out, we call it non-dual wisdom. It doesn't see two different things anymore. It sees one thing.

I yelled at my kids. It doesn't see a husband who's upset because he's hungry or something like that. Although husbands do get upset when they're hungry.

At least this husband does. Okay, so don't forget when I say non-duality, it means the way he looks and the way he really is are going to match now. Non-duality.

Now they're going to match. Oh, he's upset because I yelled at my kids last week. Oh, now it matches up.

So he says two great spiritual goals here are bodhichitta, the wish to become a Buddha to help all beings, dance between planets, and this wisdom which no longer, now this wisdom which sees what's really going on. Then he says an interesting thing. This is Chandrakirti.

This is the root of all emptiness books in Tibet. Chandrakirti. And he says the root of those two is compassion.

They're like, what? Okay, I understand bodhichitta. I understand that compassion can be the root of bodhichitta.

I understand that. That makes sense. You got to have compassion, step number five of the seven steps to get to this vision of a bodhisattva.

But why does compassion lead you to understand your husband in the kitchen? Now that part I don't get. But Chandrakirti is insistent.

In the beginning lines of my book about emptiness, I'm not going to talk about emptiness. I'm going to talk about the cause of emptiness because that's more important. What's the cause?

Compassion. What? Well, can't Laura Arhats get confused?

So we're going to explore that in this class. We're going to explore that in this class. And I'm not going to tell you an answer.

I want you to think about it. I want you guys to figure it out. This is your homework for the next 10 years or so.

Chandrakirti refuses to bow down to wisdom. He refuses to bow down to the perception of emptiness. He says, no, compassion is the cause of that, seeing emptiness directly.

So let's bow down to that. And by the way, it's also the cause of bodhisattva. And by the way, he takes it one more step.

Compassion causes bodhichitta and the perception of emptiness and they create arhats and buddhas. So he goes like that. Compassion causes emptiness understanding and bodhichitta and they create buddhas and arhats.

Like that, he has a flow like that. Now I'm going to read you Tsongkapa and you're going to figure out why does he bow down to compassion and says it creates wisdom? That's confusing.

DE GSUM GYI RNAMS NAS SNYING RJE'I RTZO BA NYID DU BRTAN PA ZHES NAS Chandrakirti wants to say that of bodhichitta and the direct perception of emptiness and compassion, compassion is the most important. That's the root. RTZO BA NYID means like, we have it in MAM TSOGS RNAMS GSUNGS, Three Principal Paths.

The main one is compassion. ZHES NAS GANG PHYIR ZHES SOGS GSUNGS SO That's why he wrote this verse. We can see a picture here of a tree with a bunch of big roots.

I was trying to find a thing. It's like the one root which leads to the two roots which leads to the tree. The tree is Buddhahood and nirvana.

The two roots are perceiving emptiness and bodhichitta and the root of those is compassion. Great. So I'm trying to find a picture for that.

Good luck. This is the closest I could find. All right, now let's go back to the text.

Then Tsongkapa uses the verse. He quotes the verse. Now I'm going to skip the GANG GIS PHYIR.

GANG GIS PHYIR, you got it? GANG GIS PHYIR SNYING RTZE BA NI RGYAL BA'I BLO RTOG PHUN TSUL TSUL DI You can think of Buddhas as the crops. You can think of Buddha as the fruit tree.

Pachi, what was the main trees you guys planted in Costa Rica? Is it any fruit trees? Coffee trees?

No. Mix of everything. Let's do coffee tree because I'm in the mood.

Okay, coffee tree or coffee bush really? Bush, I guess. Okay, so Buddhahood is the coffee bush, I guess.

Yeah, it doesn't quite fit. It's more like crops. Okay, let's say corn.

RTOG MAR SKYES PA LA GAL CHE BA SA BON DANG NI DRA If you want, the first thing you need for a tree is a seed. Therefore, you need compassion. BAR DU, in the middle, GONG NAS GONG DU SPEL BA LA CHOD DANG DRA In between, compassion is important because it's like the water that you put on the seed.

THA MAR DU BYED YON RING DU LONGS SPYOD PA'I GNAS LA And in the end, after the fruit tree grows, people can eat those mangoes forever. Buddhahood. GNAS LA BDE BA SMIN PA LTA BUR BDOD PA NI RGYUD PA'I PHYIR BDAG BA'I ZHABS KYIS NYAN RANG DANG SANGS RGYAS DANG BYANG CHUB SEMS PA DE'I RGYUR GZHAN NYID NAS KYANG THOB MAR RANG BRTAN CHOS TSON PA'I THOB MAR SNYING RJE CHEN PO LA THOB PA RGYUR I'm going to, Chandrakirti is saying, I'm bowing down at the beginning of my book, not to the perception of emptiness, and not to bodhichitta, but to the cause for both of those, which is compassion. All right. Because this is the opening verse of that book, which is the mother book of all emptiness books in Tibet.

Let's go to the next line, the next paragraph. DE YANG DAG GZOD LTOS PA MIN GYIS DE MA DAG TU RGYAL BA'I LO RTOG BRJUN PA LA THOB LTAR BAR GSUM GAL CHE BAR BSTAN PA DE NYID DE NYID GYI BRJE NYID PA'I SKABS SU PHYIR LO RTOG LA THOB LTAR BAR GSUM GAL CHE BAR BSTAN PA The point of this next paragraph is that Chandrakirti says, love and only love is the main word. Love and only love is the main word.

And what he means is, yes, I'm comparing love to three stages in the growth of a fruit tree. I'm comparing love to three stages in the growth of a fruit tree. But please remember, I'm talking about the same love.

The seed is the love, the water is the love, the fruit of the tree is the love. All three are love. All three, sorry, compassion.

All right, all right. I'm going to start the next paragraph. Oh, you have a picture here of a tree and some fruits, or some flowers on the tree.

Yeah, I took this picture at my house a few days ago. And I planted a peach tree. I planted two peach trees at the Blackwell, I mean the Peach Tree Cafe.

And then I had an extra one, so I took it home and I planted it there. And it just grew very well. And this is the first year.

Usually you don't get fruit the first year, but it flowered, the whole tree flowered the first year. So it's a baby, baby, baby tree. But these are the flowers.

So when you look at that picture, you can think about the flowers are like the fruit of the tree. The tree is the... And then there's the water that I put on the tree all winter.

And then there's the seed, the peach pit from which we grew the tree. All right, we're going to start now, with THOG MAR. It's the paragraph that begins with THOG MAR.

THOG MAR GAL BYAS BA LA THOG MAR GAL BYAS BA LA SA BON DANG PO YIN TSUL What's important at the beginning is you got to have a seed. DE LTAR SNYING RJE CHEN PO CHEN NI, SEMS CAN GYI SDUG BSNGAL GYI SDUG BSNGAL BA'I, SDUG BSNGAL CHEN GYI SEMS CAN THAMS CAD SKYES PA'I PHYIR DU If you want to take care of all living beings who are suffering like your mom, who's blind and went crazy and is about to fall off a cliff. BDAG GIS SEMS CAN DU'I THAMS CAD GOR BA'I SDUG BSNGAL NAS BSTON TE I'm going to get all of these living beings out of samsara.

SANGS RGYAS LA NGES PAR BYA BAR BYA BA I will get them to enlightenment. BYA BA LA MIG PAS SEMS BSKYED LA So isn't that the essence of bodhichitta? So that's easy.

You have to want to get people out of pain if you want to reach Buddhahood to help all living beings. First you have to want to get them out of trouble. Then you can have bodhichitta.

So first you got to have compassion and then you can have bodhichitta. And I would say, first you have to feel their pain before you can want to get them out of their pain. First you have to feel, first you have to feel what the other person is feeling before you want to save them.

So bodhichitta is like you want to save them. But first you have to feel what they are feeling. Otherwise you won't want to save them.

You have to imagine what it's like to be crazy and blind and up on a mountain cliff before you can try to help your mom. You have to imagine how she feels, how it feels to be your mom. All right, but we are waiting for...

I don't know about you, Pabongka Pachi, Christina. I'm waiting to see, how's he going to connect it to seeing emptiness? I can understand the bodhichitta part.

Okay, let's keep going. DE YANG RANG GIS SANGS RGYAS THOB PA LA RAG LAS PAR MTHONG NAS Well, if I really want to help my mom, I have to have the power to help my mom. And for that, I need to become a Buddha.

BDAG GIS BDIN RNAMS KYI BRDON DU LA MED CAN GCOD CI NAS KYANG THOB PA BYA'O So I'm going to have to become a Buddha. Okay, that's clear. CAN GCOD LA MED PAS SEMS NGES PAR BSKYED DO So don't forget, sometimes bodhichitta is called the state of mind with two focuses.

What are they? I'm focused on others and I want to achieve Buddhahood. So it's called the mind with two focuses.

Sometimes bodhichitta is called the mind with two focuses. Now, as far as this part about achieving Buddhahood, okay, I want to help everybody, so I'm going to have to achieve Buddhahood. Next paragraph.

I have this picture I found. I don't know. It's kind of pushing it, right?

In DCI, we call it, what do you call that? Reverse engineering. And I used to go to Switzerland for jewelry shows and there will be 10,000 people there showing jewelry.

And unbelievable, Basel, Switzerland, every year. And people will go there to buy jewelry, but manufacturers will go there to buy other companies' jewelry and steal it. So you go to the trade show, all the audiences are massing in front of one new product and you go and buy one.

Even though it helps your competition, you buy one. Even if it's $10,000, you buy one and you take it home and you take it apart and you figure out how did they make it. That's called reverse engineering.

And it's very, very common in everything, every kind of product. You go buy the latest printer and then you take it apart and you figure out how to copy it. So anyway, that's called reverse engineering.

So what I'm saying is, let's start with enlightenment and let's work backwards to bodhichitta and emptiness perception. And then we'll work backwards to compassion. All right.

,RTEN DAG BA'I DANG CA DE YANG NYID SU MED PA'I YOD ZHIG GIS, ,CHEN PAS BRJAN SOGS KYI SPYOD PA RTOR NA SMRUG PA, You cannot... Now here's the emptiness one. $100 to whoever can tell it to me first.

You ready? By the way, I'm not offering it to everybody at home. I'm just offering it to the people here.

Okay, $100. Here's the sentence where Tsongkapa explains our question, but it's not obvious. ,RTEN DAG BA'I DANG CA BA DE, Look, you made a promise, right?

What? I'm going to achieve enlightenment for all my moms. Okay.

Well, for that, you're going to have to practice the six perfections. Therefore, emptiness. Come on, $100, $100, come on.

Just say something. You might...

[Говорящий 2]
Do you really understand emptiness?

[Говорящий 1]
I'll say it again. Here's what he says. To fulfill the wish of bodhichitta, you're going to have to become a Buddha.

To become a Buddha, you're going to have to follow the six perfections. That's why seeing emptiness is the root.

[Говорящий 2]
See, because you're not a Buddha and emptiness makes all the physical world work.

[Говорящий 1]
Connected to the perfection.

[Говорящий 2]
So, one builds on another. No. Do you know how to see emptiness?

[Говорящий 1]
No. Okay, for $50, the six perfections is said to be the result... Sorry, the first five perfections are said to be the result of the six perfections.

Practicing giving, for example, is only a perfection if you do it with emptiness. Yay! So that's a $20 answer.

Okay, $20 answer. Isn't that cool? So he says, ah, the mystery is solved.

What mystery? Supposedly, compassion is the root of seeing emptiness. Yeah.

Why? Compassion wants to become a Buddha. Okay, but that means compassion wants to practice the six perfections.

Okay, but a perfection is not a perfection unless you do it with emptiness perception. Therefore, compassion leads to emptiness perception because compassion leads to the intention of practicing emptiness so you can become a Buddha. Got it?

Yay! Okay, the mystery is solved. KHO NA'ANG RGYUD PA YIN MED We can skip the rest of that sentence.

Let's go to the last line here. The last verse here. And he's going back to Arya Nagarjuna's String of Jewels, right?

Ratnavali, right? Vali or Valiya? I don't know.

Okay, we're going back to the String of Precious Jewels by Arya Nagarjuna. And here's a final verse for our class. BSTAN DI LA BSGOMS NAS RIN CHEN THAL BAR MA'I Arya Nagarjuna is talking about this same idea in his String of Precious Jewels when he says, THEG PA CHEN PO'I GANG ZHIG LAS SNYING RJE'I SNGON DANG BCOD KUN DANG YES SHES PHYI MA MED SHES PA SEMS YOD SU SHES DE LA SMOS He says, you guys, if you have any brains at all, this is Arya Nagarjuna, the last line, SEMS YOD, SEMS YOD If you have any brains at all, you should study the Mahayana. You should go straight to the compassion vehicle. And what's that one?

Oh, it includes compassion and wisdom. It includes compassion and wisdom. That's what Mahayana is, just wisdom married to compassion.

That's all. THEG PA CHEN PO'I GANG ZHIG LAS And if you think that's a dumb idea, you ain't got any brains. SEMS YOD, SU SHES DE LA SMOS means if you think it's a dumb idea to combine wisdom with compassion to reach Buddhahood and bodhichitta, then I'm afraid you don't got any brains at all.

All right, we finished the class. Good job, you guys. Good job on the text side and the Sanskrit side.

Thank you. And we'll see you guys in the next class.