Классика Алмазного огранщика: Нижний Срединный путь — Анализ зависимости, занятие 39

[Speaker 1]
Sadhu Sadhu Sadhu Sadhu Sadhu Sadhu Chokyi Choknam La Jamshu Pardhu Dagni Khyap Suchi Daghi Chokyi Ngepe Sunam Gyi

[Speaker 2]
Dola Penchir Sange Dupar Shok Sange Chokyi Choknam La

[Speaker 1]
Jamshu Pardhu Dagni Khyap Suchi

[Speaker 2]
Daghi Chokyi Ngepe Sunam Gyi Dola Penchir Sange Dupar Shok Sange Chokyi Choknam La Jamshu Pardhu Dagni Khyap Suchi Daghi Chokyi Ngepe Sunam Gyi Dola Penchir Sange Dupar Shok

[Speaker 1]
I'd like to introduce a friend from Malaysia. She's the big boss of all the Malaysian organizations and she... Kuala Lumpur is the capital?

And they were consistently the first people to hit 2,000 people at an event in one city. And they repeat that in different cities. And I think Ben in Canada came one time and sang a beautiful song they had three minutes morning called When I Get Out that they wrote for their three-year retreat.

But she's a fundraising genius. She already has 1,200 people signed up for next year. Or this year.

This year. Well, yeah. So anyway, she's a good example for organizers everywhere of hard work and doing something.

Okay, so thank you very much. She's intense. When she's in...

When you go there, she's... She's like, get over there. Xiaoping, what does she have to do?

[Speaker 2]
You need to come up with a real-life application. A real-life tool. A real application of life.

And you need to do three things. First is to come up with a catchy name for photo. The second is the information needs to be authentic.

And you cannot make up anything wrong. And the third is irrelevant in life. That's it.

[Speaker 1]
Okay. Okay.

[Speaker 2]
Any questions?

[Speaker 1]
No.

[Speaker 2]
Okay. Okay. Recorded?

[Speaker 1]
Absolutely. Yeah, very welcome. And if you want to stay for the half of the next class, you're also welcome.

Okay, let's start. Under what circumstances will the sense power present in the Ling No. 6 and No.

7?

[Speaker 2]
Be present. Be present. Oh.

[Speaker 1]
Oh yeah. It's two different meanings.

[Speaker 2]
In all circumstances.

[Speaker 1]
It's a trick question. Come on, anybody. That's different sense.

[Speaker 2]
What's the question? Yeah, it's kind of... It presents itself as a person.

Since following the link six and seven, come...

[Speaker 1]
That's cool. from the previous will and not from the same will as they would have ended in link number five. Wait, explain your text a little something.

This is basically a commentary about the will of life written by Kedrap Kempadande who is the textbook writer for the Sarame Monastery. And we have already completed the discussion of the first five links and now we are going to link number six which is the contact. And this is pretty interesting.

Or rather, very interesting. Which we can see from question number two. That's so interesting.

Oh yeah, of course. I'm excited, you know. Which of the three components...

Actually, question number three will be more interesting but let's go from two first. Which of the three components touching each other for contact as link number six to occur?

[Speaker 2]
Consciousness, the sense powers, and the object. Yes.

[Speaker 1]
I'm glad you used the word touching each other. That's cool. Object, sense power, and awareness.

Well, it's tricky. State of mind. Awareness is fine.

No, awareness is fine. I'm thinking. And I have them all here.

Which is the feature question. Which is the feature question. Where does the contact as link number six of the triple links occur?

Is it physical, and in what state? Arizona.

[Speaker 2]
Are they physical? No. In what state?

Of mind? Yes, what state of mind? State of mind.

What's the answer to where? State of mind. Yeah, great.

How do you say from where does it occur?

[Speaker 1]
What? I don't know. In the mind, right?

Where? I don't know. Is where wrong?

[Speaker 2]
Is it as or in?

[Speaker 1]
It's okay. It's okay. I think it's okay.

Let me refine that further. Okay. Hey, that's not one word.

Yeah. That's right. Senses, contact, and feelings.

No, it doesn't have. It can have when it means to smell. In an ancient word.

It's an ancient word. It's not used much nowadays. Or it's a popular word to use when you want to say Tsongwa, and you want to confuse Geshe-la to look at the vow for another hour.

Okay.

[Speaker 2]
Object, sense, power, consciousness. Sense, power. No, no, no, for the next part.

[Speaker 1]
Oh, okay.

[Speaker 2]
It's also not one word.

[Speaker 1]
They appear together. They're contacting. What can you say?

Yeah, this is contact. What are they? I talked without answering you.

Ah, okay. Yes, object, sense, power. Consciousness, awareness, or mental.

And, awareness. And finally, Tsongdan.

[Speaker 2]
Mentaling.

[Speaker 1]
Between what and what?

[Speaker 2]
Between the object, sense, power. No, the mental function. Yeah, and the main mind.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, good. It's always stated like that. It's the connection between the main mind and the mental function.

No, not the same thing. Ah, wait, it is. Tsongdan, yeah.

You can't say that. Okay, thank you very much.

[Speaker 2]
Yay!

[Speaker 1]
Yay, the homework's over. All right then. Here we go.

Go back to the remoteness. Okay, his text is in debating format. So it's always argument.

Just like husband and wife. Okay. Are you ready?

Dr. Kramer has to explain. Okay. I saw you in the grocery store yesterday.

Yeah, it's cute. You look like, what's the guy? Bruce Willis.

Oh, handsome, huh? Not thirteen. ...

... ... ...

Yeah, this gets a little hard, okay? Uh... kacig nare means what?

Yeah, somebody comes and makes a proposal. Uh... ...

...

[Speaker 2]
... , par snare ...

[Speaker 1]
Windows 3 come together, dupa Latene-dudu that coming together. Uh... Give a special meaning here.

Uh... It's got a apostrophe s before it, so it gives your clue.

[Speaker 2]
Apostrophe, Chetan?

[Speaker 1]
No. It must be a John's book, John's ...

[Speaker 2]
It must be a noun.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, if there's a possessive before it, it has to be a noun. So it doesn't, you know, 99.999% it's a verb. But here it's a noun.

[Speaker 2]
So that object's coming into existence?

[Speaker 1]
Come on.

[Speaker 2]
It's transformation?

[Speaker 1]
We said ze, ze and nam dang is similar.

[Speaker 2]
Synonyms.

[Speaker 1]
No, it's phases. Yeah, the changes it goes through. First the coffee cup's full, then the coffee cup is less full, and then the coffee cup's empty.

Those are gyurwa and the coffee cup, that are observed by the contact. Rang top gi, without relying on another mental function in the same brain at the same time. And I gave you the example of resentment and anger.

See, resentment is not rang top gi. It needs anger to depend upon. That's a rough example.

There are certain mental functions that are self-standing and certain that aren't. This one is, it operates on its own. It doesn't require another.

It doesn't always require another mental function to be with it. Chipay.

[Speaker 2]
Examination.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah. Sempa.

[Speaker 2]
The mind which is in movement of the mind. Be careful, right?

[Speaker 1]
Sempa. Chaita instead of chitta. Sorry.

That's a different thing.

[Speaker 2]
Chaitana.

[Speaker 1]
Chaitana. Chaita is sempa. So anyway, a movement of the mind which examines of its own accord the phases of the object through dependence on the coming together, convening of these three, the object, the sense power, and the consciousness, is the definition, which is not a bad definition so far.

I don't see a big deal wrong with it. Is the definition of, here's tendrel means what?

[Speaker 2]
Link.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, link. It doesn't mean dependent origination. The link of contact which is a member of the 12 links.

It's a pretty tight definition. It's a pretty tight definition. But there must be something wrong with it.

You see, because somebody comes up and said, and then we're going to tell him, no, no, you left out something. But it's a pretty tight definition. And the idea is to take the hundred dollars to the dollar store, right?

When he teaches level six, it's going to be deeper than when we teach level six, because he's going to be thinking about this when he's talking about addiction to beer or betting or gambling, okay? So here comes our, serna means if you say that, if you claim that, then we're going to reply with some kind of criticism, okay? Here we go.

sang gyepakpe gyukyi nikyi gyukte rekpa chod chen sunja dertao, dertao, sang gyepakpe gyukyi nikyi gyukte rekpa chod chen dertao. dertao, sunja dertao. No, it goes down.

Sarcastic. sunja dertao, sang gyepakpe gyukyi nikyi gyukte rekpa chod chen dertao. Okay, good.

Let's consider chechen, the contact which involves, okay? And I prefer instrumental here, which is taken in by or something like that, but I went and checked Vasubandhu, and he likes the genitives. Few people use the instrumental.

I have corrected texts, and now I guess I should uncorrect them. I think it's more correct, but it seems to be tradition. Okay, but where, which is involved with the I-sense power of a, in the mind of a?

Arya. Arya, okay. Who's a who?

An Arya who is a Buddha. So there you learn something. Not all Aryas are...

You can be an Arya and a Buddha. Because when you become a Buddha, you're still a person who saw emptiness directly. So, we say there are enlightened Aryas, and there are non-enlightened Aryas, okay?

And there are Aryas who are... You can be an Arya who's reached nirvana and not in Buddhahood, right? That's also possible.

Okay, so anyway, they're still called Arya. So we say enlightened Arya, okay? Let's take his I...

the contact involving his I-power, okay? Are you telling me it's what you're defining? What's he defining?

What was being defined in the... Contact as a link, okay? Are you telling me that's contact as a link in the Wheel of Life?

Why? Sannyadeja here. Because your definition fits his contact.

Your definition fits a Buddha's contact, okay? Does it fit a Buddha's contact? Yeah, I guess it does.

Yeah, nobody... Yeah, good. Nobody said stained, okay?

So let's take a Buddha's I-power. According to you, it must be the twelfth link. Sorry, the sixth link, because it fits your definition.

It means he left out something in his definition. Chir, sang-gye-pak-pay-gyu-kye-rek-pa-yin-be-ye-chir. It is because it's included into an Arya Buddha, okay?

Dön-na, which means, okay, I agree. It is what I'm defining. It is the sixth link in the Wheel of Life.

Then we say...

[Speaker 2]
What is the truth of suffering?

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, dön-ga-dön-pa-yin-pa-tao. Then it is a form of suffering, okay? Yeah, we say truth of suffering, but that means a form of suffering, okay?

Why? Dön-pa-ye-chir. Because you said it was a link in the Wheel.

What do we learn about all links in the Wheel? They are all suffering. They're all the truth of suffering.

Doesn't matter which link you're talking about. They're all suffering. So your definition of the link better reflect suffering somehow, okay?

Then he says, yeah, I guess they do have dön-ga-dön-pa. I guess Buddhists do have suffering. Then we say...

You can't say that. sang-gye-pak-pe-gyu-kyi-she-pa-yin-pe-ye-chir which says... You can't mean it.

Mean it. You do mean it. You cannot...

Yeah, you can't agree with that.

[Speaker 2]
You can't agree on that.

[Speaker 1]
You can't say Buddhists have truth of suffering. Why not?

[Speaker 2]
Because... Because they're Arya Buddhists.

[Speaker 1]
No, this is a state of mind. Which is in the being of an Arya who's a Buddha. You can't say it's suffering.

You can't say it's a truth of suffering. Okay? Okay.

Was it she-pa, by the way?

[Speaker 2]
Uh, no. I don't think so.

[Speaker 1]
I guess it's the re-pa is a sem-pa. So it's she-pa, I guess. Okay?

[Speaker 2]
That's what we're learning.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah. So here's another confirmation. That contact doesn't refer to the coming together.

It refers to the state of mind at that time. Contact is a she-pa. Yeah, contact is a sem-pa, which is a kind of she-pa.

And she-pa divides into sem and sem-chun. And this is a sem-pa, it's one of the sem-chuns. Kun-do.

Omnipresent. Who do we have... Whose text?

That was in words text.

[Speaker 2]
Yeah, we have. Yeah.

[Speaker 1]
All right, here we go. So the other guy lost the debate. It's very unusual.

It always happens. He always loses. We always say, no, it's not like that.

Okay, go ahead. You guys tell me. The link of the...

The link of the empty sense organs, before they do anything.

[Speaker 2]
Okay.

[Speaker 1]
And the link of...

[Speaker 2]
Rek-pa.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah. Are present. Complete.

Sang-wa means complete. Both of them complete. In people of all three realms.

Yeah, sang means complete. Sang can also mean a nest of ants and a nest of monks. The word, the Tibetan word for monastery is tra-tsam, which means a nest of monks.

Okay. Okay, so can you have the sense organs and the contact of those sense organs with the outside world in all three realms? He says you can.

So he's always wrong. So now we know you can't. Okay, this is how it goes.

This is how a Tibetan text goes. All right. Good.

That can't be right. Okay, cool. Yeah, that's a huh.

You got it. I think you got it. So, he's going to discuss the formless realm first, and then he's going to discuss the form realm.

And about the formless realm, he says, look, the only thing you have there is yukti keche. The sense power. The mental sense power.

The awareness of your...

[Speaker 2]
Thoughts.

[Speaker 1]
Well, your thoughts. I would call it your thoughts. But we can think about it.

What you listen to. And... And this tendrel means link, right?

And the... And the mind itself, okay? The thoughts itself.

I'm sorry, the contact involving those thoughts. Okay? See?

[Speaker 2]
Yeah.

[Speaker 1]
All you have is a contact, and the organ involved with the contact. Okay? Okay.

And there would also be chukyakam. The... Dharmadhatu.

Yeah, the thought. The dharmadhatu that the thoughts think about. Anyway, matok.

[Speaker 2]
That would be the object in a sense?

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Yeah. And it's sometimes described as the thoughts of the previous moment.

And you are aware of them. Anyway, matok shen na me. There's no other?

Yeah, you can't have eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, consciousness at that time. No contact. The only contact is...

Okay? The debater said, you have all of them, tang. Okay?

You have all of the kinds of contact. And we say no. In that realm, you only have this one kind of contact involving the mind.

Okay? Not the other senses. Not the five physical senses.

[Speaker 2]
But there's a formless realm.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, it's the formless realm. Now we're going to talk about... shen na me means...

Yeah, you don't have the other ones, except for matok, the contact involving the mind.

[Speaker 2]
Okay?

[Speaker 1]
Now, what you might not know, and this is an Abhidharma thing, in the sukham, na che gyutte rekpa me.

[Speaker 2]
You don't have smell or taste.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, you cannot have smell or taste, because they are mainly directed at food, which is a desire realm thing.

[Speaker 2]
Okay.

[Speaker 1]
Uh... It's interesting, you can't have... Those two senses don't function in the desire realm, in the form realm.

Okay, sorry. He's allergic to the... Okay?

So this is talking about touch related to... Uh, yeah. You cannot have contact involving the nose or the tongue in the form realm.

Not possible. Uh, there's... There's no sense of smell, and there's no sense of taste in the form realm, because your mind is beyond food.

So you probably can't be a male, I don't think. What? Uh...

We talk about two uses of soup.

[Speaker 2]
Oh, yeah.

[Speaker 1]
As one of the heats, and then as one of the types of soup. Yeah.

[Speaker 2]
This seems to imply that when we say sukham, maybe we're referring more to visible form.

[Speaker 1]
Exactly, yeah. Yeah, it's often... You know, for a while, I experimented for like a week of translating it as the realm of beauty.

Because that's really what it means. It just means Thor, and, you know, Captain America, and, you know... It means people who are extraordinarily attractive and powerful.

Geshe-la, why do you talk about sukham? They call it sukhi. Sukhi chok, the highest manifestation of form, as far as beauty.

[Speaker 2]
Sorry?

[Speaker 1]
Why do we talk about sukham, and at the bottom we talk about sukha? Because this guy said all three realms. I see.

And you do have... They are sung in the desire realm. So we're not going to attack him on that.

All the kinds of contact are present in the desire realm, but not in the other two realms.

[Speaker 2]
So we are talking about these two realms.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, and then we eliminate the other two realms.

[Speaker 2]
Oh, okay. So there is no smell and taste in the form realm?

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, that's correct. Mainly because you have overcome even the conception of food, you know, physical food, kham kishe, physical food.

[Speaker 2]
So, na and che, there are smell and taste, and not nose and tongue?

[Speaker 1]
Uh... They would be beautiful. No, you identify contact by the sense organ involved, although all three are there, right?

Yul, wangpo, and nam she are there. But when you name them, you say involved with, and then you name the power. That's just a tradition.

That's a convention.

[Speaker 2]
So, i.e., at the end the che is involved with?

[Speaker 1]
Of. And that's where I wanted to put an instrumental.

[Speaker 2]
Right.

[Speaker 1]
But they don't do it. A few authors do, and I prefer it. But I was outvoted, and Vasubandhu outvoted.

[Speaker 2]
No contact of nose and tongue.

[Speaker 1]
Right, yeah. No gathering together of nose and tongue, which is kind of weird.

[Speaker 2]
Okay.

[Speaker 1]
But sometimes just be aware that an instrumental drops out in favor of a... because the following words have become a common idiom, almost a noun. So, you know, it just happens sometimes.

It's slovenly, but it's okay. There's a famous Sanskrit grammar, grammarian, who called these things slovenly. Slovenly in English means very sloppy.

You know. So, but Vasubandhu did it, so it's okay. Or whoever translated Vasubandhu did it.

Okay, here we go. Yeah. sukme kam na sukme peyi che.

Yeah, now Dambodharatam means it is true that there's only these mental organs in this formless realm, because in the formless realm, there's no form. Okay. Then he addresses, the guy says, well I don't believe what you said about the form realm.

And we say, okay, please read. By the way, when you see these words, it's like yesterday when these two scholars reached a comfortable place in their book. They reached the halfway point in their books yesterday, after two years, those two guys.

And we had a party. And now he's reaching, rang lu. Yeah.

Okay, go. chima derta. Now about the form realm, there's no nose and tongue.

chima dertao sukme peyi so-so kye-wo nam dri ro-la ngyur chak ngyur wa-dang derl wei chi. derl wei chi. Translate it.

And I'm offering no money today. Because I think the human computer can get it.

[Speaker 2]
Isn't just the latter is so true?

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, chima dertao, chima dertao. Oh no, we just confirmed the formless realm. And now we're going to confirm what we said about the form realm.

Okay, chima dertao. It is true what I said about the form realm, because what is it? Are you asleep or what?

[Speaker 2]
What?

[Speaker 1]
Good. Non-aryas in the form realm, in the form realm. No.

[Speaker 2]
Tell.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, they're free of—say free of. Yeah, they're free of gross forms of desire, attraction, towards smells and tastes.

[Speaker 2]
Okay.

[Speaker 1]
So he, he really, he really—what do you call it? He limited it. What do you call that?

Yeah.

[Speaker 2]
Narrowed it down.

[Speaker 1]
He narrowed it down. He said, well, first of all, I'm going to talk about non-aryas. So it looks like not— it sounds like maybe aryas can smell things and taste things in the form realm.

Okay. And then he said, they, they don't have gross or very obvious forms of smell and taste, which implies maybe they have subtle forms of smell and taste.

[Speaker 2]
Okay. That's a strictly clinical question. Yeah.

I mean, we talk about desire realm, being obsessed with food and sex.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah. I mean, is— Well, there's this thing called the sukhi dushi, the, the conception of physicality. Okay.

And you lose it. Well, that's between the form realm and the form realm. Right, right.

[Speaker 2]
But— You would think that there would still be that functioning in the form realm, by the way we're seeing it described?

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, you would think so. They still see things, they still hear things, they still touch things. But the, the main point is, you can't— the main point is, to get there, you must maintain a state of meditation in which someone could put french fries in front of your nose and you wouldn't smell it.

And then the place where you go as a karmic result is said to be imbued with the same kind of consciousness as you had when you created the place. So, you're not in meditation there, but the aspects of your state of mind are still free of french fries. What is this non-dreamy aurora?

These people, this is plural, these people, these non-Aryans, sosokyo, normal people, have desire for smells and tastes, kshima, kshima and ro. These are the objects of the nose and the tongue. And these are the two qualities of food that are attractive to people.

There's the same story of the Roman wealthy guy who hired a lady to cook food and he paid— oh, she was renting a room from him or an apartment from him and he said, leave your door open and you don't have to pay rent. Because he just liked the smell. He didn't eat the food.

Anyway. Okay, yay! We're at Rang Luk.

By the way, this is Rang Luk probably with regard to a few of the links. Yeah, like the first one here is number five. I think it's just five and six.

Okay, we'll see. But it's somewhere in the middle of the twelve links. So, we're going to have a different section about the later links.

And some of the links are not treated traditionally. And they get treated later. I think in the Abhidharma they, by convention, they're treated later and they don't treat them in the twelve.

So, they may hold here. I don't know. Go ahead.

. . .

Okay, good. So this is our official definition. And there has to be a lot of qualifiers.

There has to be a lot of limitations, you know, to make it correct. And the other guys left out some. And the idea of the Tibetan pedagogical system, shen luk gakpa, rang luk shakpa, tsu pa pongwa, what's that mean?

[Speaker 2]
Shen luk gakpa?

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, the structure of a textbook is first, the other guy comes and gives wrong ideas. And maybe there's a black tool in there, I don't know. But when you teach, when you're in the monastery, the first thing you teach the student is what's wrong.

You teach him the wrong way. And then you say that's wrong. But you don't teach him the right way.

Shen luk gakpa. And then, rang luk shakpa. Yeah, then you actually give him the correct one.

Now, in an American school, and I don't know about China or other Malaysia, but in an American school, they'll just give you this. They'll just say, this is the way it is. So then the kids don't think about it.

They just say, okay, you know, and you're supposed to memorize it, and then you take an examination, and then you go on. But in the Tibetan system, they will slightly mistake a definition, and then they'll teach the student why it's slightly wrong. And then they'll keep giving them slightly wrong definitions over and over and over, until, by the time you reach the second stage, when we actually tell you what's correct, you should be able to write the definition yourself, ahead of time.

Because you understood why each piece is there. We've already defended each piece. And that's just a traditional thing.

And it's a beautiful system. When you start a debate, what do you say? In general.

No, but what do you, what you say is false, subtly false. When you want to start an argument with your wife, you just say something a little bit wrong. And that's a tradition in the monastery.

Because your job, as the person who starts a debate, is to help the other person understand something. So you say something slightly wrong. And the best debaters in the monastery are the guys who can slightly say something wrong.

And I've seen these great Geshes, and I said it before, they will get up and they'll, they got these tons of robes on and all these awards, and they go, you know, they will take a freshman, you know, they'll take a little kid, not a kid, like a 15-year-old, and they will fiercely defend something, a wrong idea, the Geshe, as if he didn't get it. And then the kid's like, No! And then the Geshe says, Why not?

You know, and they play this game. They defend this wrong idea very fiercely. And the kid's like, No, that's not it.

And then finally the kid wins, and everybody goes, Yay! And the kid's like, I did it! And the Geshe's like, Oh man, you beat me.

And it's all a big game. The best Geshes are the best, they're actually the most modest ones. And they let the kids beat them.

And then they go, Oh man, you convinced me, you're so good. And this is the style. So the kid has to think.

So that's the same style. What's the third part?

[Speaker 2]
What's it mean? We let them come and debate our ideas.

[Speaker 1]
Which is also very cool. You see, the other guy gets to come back and say, criticize our definitions. He gets a chance to come back.

We call it rebuttal, right? He gets to come back. So you prove he's wrong, but the debate's not over, because he can say, Oh, I don't like your definition.

It also has some small problems. And he gets to come back. And then you really refine the definition.

Because he gets to come back and attack it, you know. So it's like the Geshe would come back and say, Yeah, but you're, you're the one with the little problems. When you say the Geshe is defending the wrong ideas.

Purposely. Is he the one sitting, or the one standing? Usually standing.

Because the stander starts the debate. The stander starts the debate. So the stander will, has to think of today's subject, and say something a little bit wrong.

And if he's a good Geshe, or if he's a good debater, he'll say something wrong about what he's not sure about. So he can learn something. And that takes courage.

It takes courage to, like if you don't understand why they mentioned Sakye. That it has to be impure. Then he'll say, he'll leave Sakye out of the, out of the definition, so that the other person can teach him.

And so he's not interested in winning. He's interested in, in learning more. So he will, he'll go to the parts he's not sure about.

And he'll say something wrong. And he'll, and he's hoping the other guy can embarrass him. And this is how you learn.

So the greatest Geshes are the most modest. They're not these flashy guys who are always right, who want to be right. The best Geshes are the guys who go for the parts they don't understand.

And then by the time they leave the debate ground, they understand it. And that's a beautiful... Yeah.

And my best teachers were people like that. There's one in Australia. He moved to Australia.

He's still there. But he was famous for this. They call him Buddha.

He became the debate master. And you're supposed to whip the students with... You're supposed to hit the students.

And he couldn't do it. He'd go like... And then he'd go, please don't do that, you know.

And everybody said, ah, he's Buddha. It was a, it was, it was a put-down. I mean, he couldn't hit the students.

Only the monastic could ever do this.

[Speaker 2]
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Speaker 1]
He's like, don't worry, Buddha never hit me.

[Speaker 2]
Just do anything. Okay.

[Speaker 1]
Tenzin, Tenzin, Tipten Tenzin. Tipten Tenzin.

[Speaker 2]
Yeah, yeah.

[Speaker 1]
He lives in a small town in the north. Not a big city. He's being wasted there.

Okay. Somebody should go study with him. Okay, Rangyu.

Okay, translate. Rangyu. Oh, so in defining a link, oftentimes we will say, it's the link that comes after the other one finished.

And then we'll say, and which comes before the link that didn't come yet. And so we will define a link by positioning it between two other links. And that's what's going on here.

Okay. So Rangyu, its cause is the Ming-Suk. What's name and form mean in the wheel?

[Speaker 2]
Body and mind.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, the body and mind. Good. How many heaps in the Ming?

[Speaker 2]
Five.

[Speaker 1]
Four. And Suk is fifth.

[Speaker 2]
Okay.

[Speaker 1]
Okay. Well... No, I don't want to...

Oh, how many in the Ming? Yeah, yeah.

[Speaker 2]
How many in the name of four?

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, anyway, as the child, that's the end of the womb. Okay, in the womb. Okay, so the part about the womb, relative to Wangju Chepa, Tarchit.

[Speaker 2]
A single turning.

[Speaker 1]
Nice, a single turning of the wheel. Explain why that's important.

[Speaker 2]
Because, the whole twelve links occur over the course of three wheels in one lifetime.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, so you got a picture, as three wheels go, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, it's one twelfth. See? How many in the first wheel?

[Speaker 2]
Two.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, misunderstanding and karma you collect in the first lifetime. And they trigger...

[Speaker 2]
Three through ten. Three through nine.

[Speaker 1]
Three through ten. Which means, you enter the womb, you go through a whole life. Okay, and then the last one, which is a whole life and a death in the third life, in the third lifetime.

So, a normal wheel takes Tarchit, but here it's Tarchit. Tarchit one. Relative to one.

And Wangju Chepa means relative to a single wheel, a single... Turning. Component or...

Single wheel. Component wheel. Wow.

Okay. Wangju Chepa you call it? Yeah, Wangju Chepa is an idiom that means relative to.

Oh, okay. Regarding... Ah, so the...

the child entering the womb in one... in one spin. Spin.

Second spin, actually. Ah, Kangrun could tend to absorb. Completely.

Yeah, and what does Kangrun mean for fifty dollars? Ah, both.

[Speaker 2]
Whatever you can call. I know. All of them.

All or both.

[Speaker 1]
We all know that. What's it mean here? I'm not paying money for that.

Why is it thrown in here? Is there one thing followed by a second thing?

[Speaker 2]
Yeah.

[Speaker 1]
Usually it's blah, blah, blah, Kangrun, blah, blah, blah. Any one of the things in the... in the fourth link?

Ming and or su. That's kind of weak. Any one of the...

[Speaker 2]
Oh, the heaps, yeah. Any one or all of the heaps. Then we don't know.

[Speaker 1]
I say fifty dollars, okay? Everybody agree? Okay.

It could be Ming. It could be su. It could be Ming su.

Why?

[Speaker 2]
Why?

[Speaker 1]
Because any of them could be responsible for... What if you're going into the formalism? What's the Ming su?

It's just Ming. Okay, got it. That's why he said.

Either both or one. Meaning, if you're going into the formless realm, when you enter the womb, you don't have a physical body. It's called mind and body, but you don't have a body.

So he's being cute. He's saying, you know, whether it's one or both. Can you have the su without the Ming?

I don't think so. I mean, if the baby died, and it's still in the womb, or something, I don't know. The mind is gone, but the body is still there.

They're kind of weird. Okay. Anyway, he's being cute.

Okay, so, he's doing this classical way of defining a Ling by saying, so far, that the fourth Ling, sorry, Sipa Ming su, yeah, the fourth Ling has finished. So fourth Ling is complete, and what's he going to say next? Don't look.

[Speaker 2]
The sixth Ling hasn't come.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, nice. The fourth Ling is done, and the sixth Ling hasn't come. That's the fifth Ling.

Oh, that's brilliant. Okay, here he goes, here he goes. Yeah, thanks a lot.

Okay, Rekpe, Tendrel, Madrup.

[Speaker 2]
Okay. Yeah, contact hasn't happened yet.

[Speaker 1]
Contact hasn't happened yet. And until such time as it does, Kong, okay, until then, Kong ji, the sak je, the stained seeds, stained pumbos, oh, the stained heaps. Yeah, the heaps, the five parts of the person, which are of the nature of a karmic maturation, impure, impure karmic maturation, is the definition of the sense powers.

Geshe-la, what does it mean? It's nature, those parts of the person whose nature is, so it just means nature, whose nature is that they are karmic ripening, they are karmic ripening of impure karma, which excludes who? The Buddha Arya, right?

It excludes the Buddha Arya. So we had a better definition. We put in words which exclude Buddhas, because they are not in the wheel of life, okay?

They are outside pointing to the moon, right? They don't even call it karma. No, they don't call it karma, they call it collecting the two collections, gewa, di, jang wo kun, okay.

Which one is the karmic ripening, Geshe-la? Namban, namban mimba, and that's in your class downstairs, that's the spelling. Mimba means ripening like with fruits, like when you say the mangoes, not mimba.

It means that, it means ripe. And namban, namban means vipaka. And again, the Sanskrit root is related to the Spanish words for kitchen and stuff, like cooking.

Cooking comes from this. Yeah, cake. Okay.

All right, and that's his definition of the keche, which is interesting, because... Somebody tell me what's the... I mean, how many pumbas you got?

[Speaker 2]
Five.

[Speaker 1]
Is the keche physical or mental?

[Speaker 2]
Mental.

[Speaker 1]
No, keche.

[Speaker 2]
Oh, keche. The doors of sense.

[Speaker 1]
The doors of sense. It's both. It's both.

Yeah, I guess it is.

[Speaker 2]
Because it includes the consciousness.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, I guess it does. I mean, normally we don't say that.

[Speaker 2]
I thought the keche is the twelve... It has to be.

[Speaker 1]
The five. The five sense organs.

[Speaker 2]
But six is under consciousnesses.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, but I guess you got to throw in the sixth one here. Okay. Where is it now?

Or, or we could say what? Which is a point I made in his last class. At each of the twelve links you have...

Consciousness.

[Speaker 2]
Actually, you have the rest of them.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, it's just emphasizing, you know, when we get to the link of contact, you still have the link of your eye, and you have the coming link of your awareness. So it's just emphasizing one part of you at that point in the wheel. During every part of the wheel, you have most of the other parts in the wheel in that part.

But we're emphasizing this part. Okay? So that's an important point.

[Speaker 2]
In his text, don't we use the word keche to refer to the sense along with the sense power? Or is it different to that?

[Speaker 1]
We do. You're correct. Yeah, the twelve ayatanas.

[Speaker 2]
Yeah.

[Speaker 1]
Keche. Keche chuni. It's not the same as the keche ma.

But here he's got keche du. Okay.

[Speaker 2]
Yeah. It's one of the twelve divisions. Yeah.

[Speaker 1]
Keche has a link, and keche has one of the twelve, one of the divisions of reality. It's completely different. It's a good point.

It's a very good point. Thank you.

[Speaker 2]
I wonder, I get confused between this text and the Tibetan.

[Speaker 1]
Ayatana.

[Speaker 2]
Ayatana. Ayatana? Yeah.

Keche, yeah. What's the Tibetan for the eight points?

[Speaker 1]
The comma is tattva, eighteen tattvas, twelve ayatanas, five pumbhas. And these three divisions are the classical subject matter of the first chapter of the Abhidharmakosha. How do you divide reality?

Oh, simply into five parts. More detailed into twelve. Basically the awarenesses and the objects.

And then the sense powers get thrown in with the objects. Or you could split out the objects and the sense powers, and you get eighteen.

[Speaker 2]
In which case we call them kham.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, tattva. Yeah, kham.

[Speaker 2]
Tattva is ayatana. Ayatana is called keche.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, and then there's some debate whether the five includes everything in the twelve or the eighteen. Which means, do you include your outside physical world? Asuki.

Asuki, pumbha. Yeah. And sophisticated thinkers do.

[Speaker 2]
And in tantra you can, right?

[Speaker 1]
In tantra you can. You must. In tantra it gets really weird.

I mean, I went to Lama Tsongkhapa just before I did my three-year retreat, you know, and I asked him for advice. Because I was teaching in any center in Bulgaria. And he was there.

And they said, come at ten. Of course I went at three. He doesn't sleep.

And then he had a stroke, so I don't know if it's a good idea. So he calls me at three o'clock, and I said, okay, what's your suggestion? And he said, never forget, your keche is the man.

The cup is the female. The meeting is tantric union. Okay, go.

[Speaker 2]
I'm like, whoa, whoa, wait.

[Speaker 1]
I'm like, wait, I don't understand. He said, think about it. So I'm like, okay.

But it was very beautiful. Yeah, so it has heavy connotations in tantra. The whole function of the senses and their contact with, and then the picture takes on new meaning.

So it's very interesting. It was an interesting subject to meditate about. Our class?

Dang. Stop telling stories, Geshe Michael. Okay, anyway, these are the, he gave a definition of keche kirtanda.

How many are there? Yeah, okay, good luck. Here is the definition of the link of sense organs.

As one of the twelve links of the Wheel of Life, number one, its cause, which is the mind and body, okay, which has come before it, and which relates to a single turning of the wheel, and I should say either mind or body, okay, or both. Yeah, has already occurred and finished, period. But the next link in that same single turning, okay, which is the link of contact, has not yet come about, okay, and all the heaps that the person happens to have, which, you know, if they're in the formless realm, it's going to be different, are of the nature of a maturing of a karma which is impure.

Okay, and that's the definition. So, it's a very long definition. To make it smooth, it's going to be a challenge.

To make it one sentence, it's going to be a challenge. Then he goes into the qualities of it, okay, is it good karma, is it bad karma, do you eliminate it when you see emptiness directly, do you eliminate it later when you reach nirvana, when do you get rid of this, you see? He'll discuss those.

Do I still have it? Okay. So, it's typical after you define a link, to give its features.

They're called the kicca features, okay. Stopped here, what's the date, 1-26? Okay.

Okay. I forgot to mention, Tsokteng manages 30 reading groups? Or 50?

About 30. 30, 35? 35 different DCI groups in different cities in Malaysia.

Or different groups in large cities. She works hard. Not like other people.

Just kidding. He has a lot in Indonesia also. They're already in 8 cities, right?

Yeah, 8 cities. They started 2 years ago? 4.

More? 4 years ago. 4 years ago.

But anyway, that's pretty cool. And they have 3 kids. Yeah, yeah.

They manage 3 kids too, which is more work than 30 reading groups. That's tougher than the cities. Now I feel it all around.

Yeah, those kids are cool. Okay, thank you.