Классика Алмазного огранщика: Верхний Срединный путь — Великие книги мудрости, занятие 6

[Speaker 1]
Sorry, so me and Nick were on tour in Taiwan and we had some extra time because it was a travel day and so we went ahead in his text a little bit. Then I want you to know, I want you to hear the whole book, every book, so I asked him to just read you the English of his translation which is already approved by me, already checked and cleared out, so I suggest you read it from here, because I might have changed a few words, I don't know. But maybe, just go for it, and up until the point where I start where you went on your own, and then we have to work on that.

Okay, here we go. So what are the causes to give up these wrong beliefs? There are a method which involves steps, a method of teaching the path which relates to a method of realization.

If you understand starting, then you will understand stopping. What's the purpose of it? I mean, you want to say anything about it?

[Speaker 2]
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Speaker 1]
I'll say something about it.

[Speaker 2]
Please, if that was even better.

[Speaker 1]
Don't give me, don't give me these two hyphens here. Okay, now I'm going to teach you guys to make an M dash. My version of Word doesn't do this.

You have to turn it on. So you turn on, you hit two dashes and then you hit any letter and a space, and then you delete the O, you see?

[Speaker 2]
Okay?

[Speaker 1]
And that's what it should look like. How do you turn it on? I don't know, you worry about it later.

[Speaker 2]
Alright, we'll do it later.

[Speaker 1]
I'll show you. Now, anything you want to say about it? I mean, why are we talking about this?

Okay, so this is the commentary on the Garjuna, and where we've got so far on the verses is that he's, I'm trying to remember, he's bowing down to the... I think we're past the bowing. I don't know.

Oh, no, no, you're right, he's still bowing. Yeah, he's bowing down to the Buddha. That's all.

Yeah, that's right, and part of the reason what he's saying is how amazing the Buddha's teaching is. Also that, you're going to learn five arguments for emptiness in ACI 2. This week, in ACI 2, you're going to learn five arguments for emptiness.

Most of them relate to starting and stopping, or many of them. Gen Gokgi Tenzing. Je Mung Gokgi, Gen Gokgi Tenzing.

So, apparently the examination of starting and stopping is a good place to understand emptiness. Now I remember where we're at in the text. He praises the Buddha, and he has a verse at the beginning of the book.

We call it an offering of praise. So, this is a standard way to start a Buddhist book. You bow down to somebody, and you thank them.

And within that, he talked about how the Buddha taught dependence, and that thing that eradicates your wrong understanding of starting and stopping. Oh, okay. What's the purpose of...

Oh, so I put a note like this when I want to change your translation. Who's the master here?

[Speaker 2]
Nagarjuna.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, so capital M when you're saying that master. If it's a specific master, capital M.

[Speaker 2]
Yeah, okay.

[Speaker 1]
By the way, I want you to check the carving. I think this might be misspelled. Oh, okay.

Okay, I'll go back and check it. What's the purpose of teaching it this way, one may ask? Because doing it in steps like this is meant to help the student.

All descriptions of what the Buddha did by teaching dependence. Hang on, I think I see something to complain about here. Yeah, I want two spaces after periods, and I don't want to fix them.

I'll just send it back to you. Two spaces after periods. Not here, because it's still part of a sentence.

Okay, here we go. All right, go. We can also say that we get rid of...

Oh, I'm sorry, I'm going to interrupt you again, and I'm ruthlessly interrupting you. You're going to change all these. I'm not going to do it this time, to something that looks more attractive to your reader.

Okay. Okay, that's the standard for a page number now. That's not the way they're input.

So you're going to... This is what it should look like in a book. Okay, all right.

F means folio, means these Tibetan pages like up here. Okay. What's the purpose of teaching it this way, one might ask?

Because doing it in stuff like this is meant to help the student. We can also say that we get rid of these things by using the method of the reasoning spoken in the Buddhist teachings, as will be explained by the Master himself further on. Now, I'm going to throw a curveball at you, which is very unusual for me.

Uh... What's the very distinctive thing about the 60 verses on reasoning? What distinctive way do we use the teachings of the Buddha to prove emptiness?

What's different about that than, say, the 70 verses on emptiness?

[Speaker 2]
He's using the lower school method.

[Speaker 1]
Exactly, okay? So, now, his book is special. In his book, Nagarjuna is arguing with lower schools who say Buddha never taught emptiness.

And Nagarjuna, being Nagarjuna, he uses their own books to prove to them that Buddha taught emptiness in their books. Okay, now there's a way of doing this. When we do the inter-monastery debates, we prepare for months.

We have special meetings at night. We put a guard at the door. And it's very heavy.

It's like the football teams that hide their plans, you know? And people spy on you. People try to figure out what your strategy is.

And, uh... I'm in there with a computer, that has made me popular. But, uh...

The point is, when you attack another monastery, you study their textbooks. And then, when you get to an important point and they're not agreeing, you say, Oh, the textbook writer from your monastery said, well, didn't he say, uh... You know, and you use his own books against him.

That's exactly what Nagarjuna is doing here. The whole book was written in response to lower schools who said Buddha didn't teach emptiness. And he uses the lower school's books to fight with the lower school's sutras by Lord Buddha to fight the lower school.

Okay? So, that's the whole theme of your book. Kind of negative.

Okay. So, when he says we're going to... when he promises you that Nagarjuna is going to be presenting some reasoning based on scriptures later, he's just telling you, we're going to screw you with your own books.

Okay? I'm sorry to use crude language, but... It boils down to that.

[Speaker 2]
Secondly, that suggests objections.

[Speaker 1]
Someone may come and ask, why did Nagarjuna include an offering of praise in this book without having included one in the 70 verses on emptiness or stopping all argument? This is a great question. You know, like, two of Nagarjuna's other great books, he doesn't bow down to the Buddha, he doesn't say, thank you, Buddha, but in this book he does.

So, we know why. Now, there's two problems here. You've got one space after the English translation.

There should be two. Okay? One space before, two line spaces after.

One line space before, two line spaces after. I'm not fixing it anymore. It drives me nuts.

It wastes my time. Hundreds of hours fixing these things. Okay?

It's called GRR. I send people GRR. Okay?

So, two spaces here. Two spaces after the English, one space before. Why did you capitalize praise here?

[Speaker 2]
Where? Sorry, offering of praise, I don't know.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, I'm not fixing it in the future. Okay? Okay, the rest is great.

You're probably drunk.

[Speaker 2]
Okay, just kidding. We don't drink.

[Speaker 1]
Okay, go ahead. The root text on wisdom and this book start off from the very beginning by presenting a touch of dependence. There are works which stand on their own and therefore he added an offering of praise to them.

Just a small comment, I would add a comma here. Now, people are asking me why do you use semicolons, why do you use colons? This is called a semicolon.

This is called a comma. The pause is longer here. The pause in a natural...

You've got to hear the sentence in your mind. If you're a great writer, you hear the sentence in your mind. The root text on wisdom and this book start off from the very beginning by presenting a touch of dependence.

There are works which stand on their own. Shorter breath, and therefore he added an offering of praise.

[Speaker 2]
Okay? It could kind of be a period actually, right?

[Speaker 1]
You could have, but I like the way you did it. Because what it boils... Because a period is a huge breath.

Period, huge breath, semicolon, half breath, colon, half breath, comma, quarter breath. Get into the... Get into the flow...

Feel the flow. People ask me why you put semicolons. Feel the sentence, and you'll hear a longer pause there.

Okay? And it's also a question of weight. So what comes after the semicolon here is of equal weight to what comes before.

If it had been a comma, the three elements would have been equal weight. But the last two pieces are meant to hang on together. You see what I mean?

So it's a quartering process. Halves, and then quarters. And I'll keep working on it with you guys.

[Speaker 2]
Okay, here we go.

[Speaker 1]
The former two are just an extension of the ideas expressed in the root text. They don't have a separate independent subject matter. So he did not give them an offering of praise.

Yeah, so he was de. Probably it's a Tibetan pronoun thing. But don't make me fix this stuff.

Come on, it's not fair. Okay, it was de. By the way, you can go through and look where where word didn't like something.

The program, not the person.

[Speaker 2]
Right, right, right.

[Speaker 1]
And here I would give it more of a, a more pause. I would give it a em dash. Okay.

Just because you have a semicolon coming up later, which is a pretty big pause already. So you can't use a semicolon. Okay, I like em dashes.

Okay, here we go. When you already have a semicolon, then put an em dash because you can't use a semicolon because you already used a semicolon. And two semicolons in a single sentence are inconvenient unless it's a listing of long elements.

Listing of short elements should be commas. Listing of long elements should be semicolons. Okay, except for the last.

Okay, here we go. Now, explain what he's saying here. Got it?

So, two of the books that Nagarjuna wrote are just continuations of ideas that he had in his big book, which is called Wisdom. His most famous book is called The Root Text on Wisdom, Prajna. So, two of his other famous books are just continuations of the ideas in that book.

So he doesn't have to write a separate praise of Lord Buddha in the beginning because they're just like footnotes. They're long footnotes. So they don't deserve their own...

They're called trpa. Trpa means an extension. They are just extensions of his big book.

They're not a new book really. So those guys don't deserve a praise. Because they're just supplements to his big book.

But some other books, like this one, they stand on their own. They are not extensions of his big book. Got it?

All right. Now he does something mean to us. Explain.

If you're wondering what parts of the root text they are extensions of, this information is in the commentary. How many commentaries do there exist to Prajna? Probably like a thousand.

Three or four thousand. Go look in the commentary if you want to know that point. Oh, thanks so much.

You're so helpful. Luckily we have a computer. Luckily we spent 31 years putting all the books on the computer.

Which, he's talking about the commentary to the 60 verses. Okay.

[Speaker 2]
Is there not the commentary to the 60 verses?

[Speaker 1]
He's not even talking about a commentary to this, which is even more of a bitch. I'm sorry. Oh, is there not a commentary to the 60 verses?

No, but there's a commentary by the Vasubandhu to the 60 verses. So it's not unreasonable that he said, go check the commentary. Because it's THE commentary, capital T.

It's like New York is THE city. How did I know? I went looking for commentaries to the root text and I didn't find anything.

So then I went and found a commentary to the 60 verses and I found it in there. And we found it on the bus and you didn't make a note of it and I spent extra time on it and I'm irritated. We did find it on the bus.

We thought it was Chandrakirti. It is Chandrakirti, his commentary to the 60 verses. Oh, it's Chandrakirti's commentary to the 60 verses?

Oh, Vasubandhu, sorry. No, it is Chandrakirti. I did make a note.

[Speaker 2]
But you didn't give me the note.

[Speaker 1]
It's not Jason Kappa, it's...

[Speaker 2]
No, this is Jason Kappa saying please look at someone else's commentary.

[Speaker 1]
No, the author, it's Gyaltsabje, which is the author of his book, is saying if you want to know... Okay, so these two books are just continuations of topics in his big book. If you want to know which topics, go check the commentary.

Like what part of the big book did he start the other two books, side books? Where did he start the side books from in the big book? I'm not going to tell you, but if you're interested, go check the commentary.

So this nasty guy here is Gyaltsabje. Yeah, he's a nasty guy. Wait a second, get to the...

Is the commentary to the 60 verses by Chandrakirti or Vasubandhu? Okay, now. Because...

Okay, first of all, we can erase this now. And I have a footnote in mind that I made. It was the last thing I...

Yeah, but you didn't give it to me, and I had to go find it again. Yeah, but somehow I was thinking about giving it away, so I don't...

[Speaker 2]
Okay, now look.

[Speaker 1]
I went and got it for you, so you can't complain. And I copied it here for you, okay? So it's rikpa juktu jupay jopa.

Okay, that's the name that I actually cut out of the text. So I do it very conservatively. I go get the name out of the book.

And then I go to the colophon, and I take the author's name out. So nobody can complain. I don't trust anybody.

I'm not looking at the hoku catalog. I'm not looking at the native catalog. I'm checking the book itself.

In the book itself, it says...

[Speaker 2]
It's Dalai Lama.

[Speaker 1]
It was written by Dalai Lama. I copied that out of the book. And then I went and got you the part in the black print here.

So if we wanted to spend a whole day on this, we'd have to do that. But I'm going to make it easy for you. Okay, so this is the part where Chandrakirti identifies where do these two side commentaries come from in the mother book.

Okay, this is the paragraph where he identifies where in Nagarjuna's most famous book are these two side books taken out of. Okay, so here we go. I'm not going to read the whole thing to you.

I'll do it quickly, okay? Okay. Mepa means, I'll tell you.

He's replying to a comment. Dong yi dun gyur pa, the 70 verses on emptiness. And tsupa dopa.

[Speaker 2]
Stopping all arguments.

[Speaker 1]
They are extensions of the Middle Way.

[Speaker 2]
Meaning the root text on wisdom.

[Speaker 1]
Good. So sometimes Nagarjuna's mother book, which is real name is Wisdom. And people give it all kinds of long names.

He's brilliant. He's an Arya. He's a real Arya.

And he called his book Wisdom. You know, he didn't say root text. He called his book Wisdom.

In later years people came to call it the Middle Way. So you have to know the Middle Way is a nickname for Wisdom which is his short, sweet name for his own masterpiece. Which we're going to study after Kamalashiva.

If everyone survives. Okay. Rang gi gyur kun na mepa.

Since they don't stand on their own. Lok shik tu tupa ma jod de. They don't have a separate offering of praise.

So actually now you find out Gyaltsabje was copying it from Chandrakirti. Which is very common. di tar tsupa dopa ni ngopo nang gi rang shen ni kye ma zang min rang gi ngopo ma yin de, shen gi ngopo yin de, tsupa dopa di man gyur ne.

So, tsupa dopa relates to this verse in the mother book.

[Speaker 2]
Starting here.

[Speaker 1]
ngopo nang gi rang shen ni, the nature of all things, kye la tsupa mepa de. I don't know. They have no causes.

rang gi ngopo yu min de. They don't have their own things. shen gi ngopo yin rey ken.

I don't know. tsupa dopa ni de la gyelwa la la len tapar gyur pey chir. Tsupa dopa, Nagarjuna's book called Stopping Argument, is a response to this argument.

So in his mother book, Nagarjuna presents an argument from somebody else. And in his mother book, he doesn't destroy it. He writes another book about it.

Wow. And they probably said some radical thing like things don't exist if they're empty. And then he wrote a whole book to respond to that.

So that book is a response. And this is an argument. This is their argument.

Silly argument. So if I was going to write a footnote, how much do you want to tell somebody? The author's intent was not to load down his reader with that information.

He said, go look at the book.

[Speaker 2]
Right.

[Speaker 1]
Okay? So you kind of have to honor the author's intention. He didn't want the book loaded down with extra stuff.

He could have done it, and he chose not to. So in my opinion, you would say, you could identify the verse or something and say this is the verse from which it, you know, quote Chandrakirti. Give the page number.

And say, you know, by the way, whenever I cut, I add a page number. So this is going from page 2A to 2B of Chandrakirti. So you can say, if you're interested, you can go to page 2A to 2B, folio 2A to 2B of Tohoku number blah blah blah.

The Tohoku number I always give you because I hit control X. Control X out of Gopher gives you the whole path. And it gives you the catalogue number.

So you can write a footnote easily. I'm not writing footnotes anymore for you guys. You're writing them yourselves.

You have many in your text already that I wrote for you. You can see how I did it. Do it the same way.

Give the people the same accuracy. That's what makes you different from other translators. Two things.

A, more accurate. B, more readable. Okay?

Normal English, but the footnote is enough to sink a ship. It's so heavy, you could sink a ship. Okay?

One footnote. Okay, so that's what I want.

[Speaker 2]
Okay.

[Speaker 1]
Study it. Okay, so I'm giving you this. This one's for free.

[Speaker 2]
Thank you, Geshe-la.

[Speaker 1]
This is a useful one.

[Speaker 2]
I didn't search for all this.

[Speaker 1]
It was very hard. It took me a while. And I was frustrated by the time I...

Because I remembered we did it on the bus. And I couldn't remember where it came from. I honestly don't remember actually finding this.

We did. We found it. Yeah.

Okay, now he's going to identify the other one, right? Secondly, the actual text that is to be composed will be covered with the following topics. Is that right?

No, no, no.

[Speaker 2]
I mean, we only got one of the two books. Oh, right, right, right.

[Speaker 1]
We got to go find the other one. What's the other one called? It's Tongbani Denjipa.

No, we just finished that.

[Speaker 2]
Oh, yeah, you're right.

[Speaker 1]
You're right. So now I'm going to... I'm just going to search for the number seven.

Here we go. Here he gives the... He gives the verse, okay?

jitar gilma milam shin Like an illusion, like a dream, trishe trung gyal jindawa Like the land of the pretas, the city of pretapuri, the city of the pretas, which is the New York hotel in Malaysia. I swear this is part of the pretas city. Don't tell Jenny.

Don't tell Jenny. Do tell Jenny. Do tell Jenny.

Don't tell Jenny. No, we were in a hotel. Everything was broken.

Everything. The doors were broken. The bathtub was broken.

The shower was broken. The curtains are broken. The elevator is broken.

There's no... The toilet paper is... It's unbelievable.

The toilet paper was made in... I don't know where. Okay, anyway.

dey shing kye dang dey shing ne Starting, staying, and stopping. Starting, staying, and stopping are the same as these illusory cities, as these dreams, as these illusions. Shek.

dun chup la gyalwa la lam thabwa gyurwa chen dey la chupa yinpang guno So, dom ni dun chupa dang The book called The Seventy Verses on Emptiness is a treatment in response to this verse of the argument that was raised by this verse. So, it chupa. It's an extension from that part.

So, if you want to look smart, which you should, you can mention the verses.

[Speaker 2]
Okay.

[Speaker 1]
You know.

[Speaker 2]
Oh, really?

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, then you'd have to translate those two verses.

[Speaker 2]
So, the footnote's going to be like a page.

[Speaker 1]
That's okay. Because this was hard to find. It's worth it.

And, so there's your other one. Okay. There's your other one.

Okay. And then he has some little more discussion about it. Okay.

Which you don't have to worry about. Thank you for finding it again.

[Speaker 2]
Yeah.

[Speaker 1]
I mean, that's the kind of stuff I want you guys to start doing so to save me time. Because I had to drop my translation for the last six months. I'm not working on Tsongkhapa, his book on emptiness.

And that would be a shame if I never finished it. But I couldn't touch it for six months because I was doing this stuff. Okay.

So, don't feel guilty about it, but just work as hard as you can not to make me spend time. Okay. Secondly, the actual text that is to be composed will be covered with the following topics.

Yeah, and I want to point out, and it's good that we're checking someone's translation. You know, you guys got to start putting your headers in. Okay.

You got to start coming up with headers. An English book needs breathing space. An English reader wants at the end of a section...

I read a lot of science fiction. The most popular books have short chapters because the reader... You know, you're in the bathroom reading and you can't go 20 pages.

And, you know, but you want to reach a place where something ends, you know. If you have a kid, you do 20 pages. A baby, a three-year-old.

[Speaker 2]
Sorry, I ate something weird.

[Speaker 1]
But you need a place to stop. You need a place to rest.

[Speaker 2]
Yeah.

[Speaker 1]
And you don't feel guilty that you stopped in the middle of a chapter. So, don't overdo it. Do it wisely, but give me some give me some chapter headings.

So now you're authorized, you know, to do chapter headings. That's something that doesn't exist in an ancient Sanskrit text. They don't put chapter headings.

It's very frustrating. Okay, here we go.

[Speaker 2]
Geshe-la, is it...

[Speaker 1]
Yeah.

[Speaker 2]
I wouldn't know how to separate out a book until I've read it, until I know what it says.

[Speaker 1]
Well, I agree. I agree. Sometimes I go...

I'll go 20 pages and then I'll go back and put in the headers. Because then I see maybe he's only spent one sentence on this division. So don't trust their divisions.

Their divisions are not logical. First division has one sentence. Second division has 50 pages.

So don't... do not use their divisions. Okay?

Go back. I agree. Do five pages, then go back and look it over and see where this...

where could a header fit. And make them interesting headers, you know, you're not restricted to... And make them short and sweet.

Don't make them these long, boring things, you know. Sometimes I... I spice them up a little bit.

Okay. Alright. Keep going, Nick, and I'll interrupt you shortly.

Secondly, the actual text of this to be composed will be covered with the following topics. The teaching that dependence is free of the two extremes. Establishing the statements about the parts of a person and so on were figurative.

Problems of attachment to the parts of a person and the benefits of freedom. Okay, now, Nick and I made it important. We were curious whether this was three topics or four.

And I remember sitting on the bus and discussing this comma. Right. Okay?

We spent some time on the comma. Is it four elements or is it three? He's used the word dung, which means and.

Here he's got two dungs. So he's got one element, and, second element, and, third element with a dung in the middle.

[Speaker 2]
Yeah.

[Speaker 1]
So did he intend the third element to be 3A, 3B? This is very legal. She's a lawyer.

She's like, yeah, I got it. This is how we write contracts. Is it meant to be 3A, 3B?

Or is it meant to be 3, 4, and somebody forgot the comma? And we went and studied it. We looked it up in the text, and it is treated as a separate topic, which thematically sounds logical.

Benefits of freedom and the problems of attachment to parts of a person, they're like different topics, but they didn't put a comma. So this is our curly brace percent sign means I found a mistake in the text, in the original text. And we're using, again, we're using this weird combination of things so that your graduate students will go fix the database, because I don't have time.

I'm not going to go to the database, look up this sentence, add a comma, and then try to make sure it's in the, that I own the database on that date. Because if I don't, it's never going to get in the database anyway. So then it's too much.

I'm like, I'm going on. I'll put this little mark, your graduate students can figure it out. Okay, now, I want to draw, I want to point out a really, I almost used a bad word like bitch or something, but I want to point out something really irritating here.

And it's very deep. It's very deep. He flirts with two ideas.

Gyaltsabje is flirting with two ideas, okay? One, and you've got to buckle your seatbelt. You got your seatbelt buckled?

Yeah, okay. Stanley did his chest belt. So your subject of your book is dependence.

I don't call it dependent origination because I have what I call the waiter test. I take Allison and some friends to a local restaurant. I say, Allison, ask the waiter if he can explain dependent origination to you.

Say, I'm from China. I heard this word the other day. What's it mean?

And the waiter, if they have a nice young lady, they're like, yeah, I can tell you. And I say, what's the word? And she'll say dependent origination.

Then they go, I never heard of that. Okay, so I don't want to use words that a waiter can't explain. You see what I mean?

It's just a weird word. So I call it dependence nowadays. What's dependence?

He'll say, oh, that's if I have kids and they depend on me. The waiter can answer you in two minutes. Okay, so that's called the waiter test.

So anyway, in this book, Gyaltsabje and Nagarjuna are doing something radical. They say, the meaning of dependence, tendrel kyi dun, tongpa yin, emptiness. Now, there's two ways to look at that.

He's either saying, dependent origination has its own emptiness. That's the mild way to take it. Or he's saying, the real meaning of dependence is emptiness.

And he flirts between the two. Finally, about five pages from now, he's going to say, it is. It is emptiness.

Now, when I go back and see what he was talking about before, I can see he's preparing us for that. Because he doesn't say, tendrel kyi tongpa. He doesn't say the emptiness of dependent origination.

He says, tendrel kyi dun, tongpa yin. Yeah, the point of dependence is emptiness. You see, it's the two sides of the coin thing.

They are not the same. One is, you know... Positive thing and the other is an absence.

Yeah, one is an absence, one is a positive. But he wants to push your buttons. He wants to...

It's like Buddha, sabway ko, ko boy so, sojich ko, ko jishya, shoshan krikshin, ipurushin. He wants to freak you out. Everything's empty.

Nothing exists. You know, then Gyaltsabje, down below, and Nagarjuna, he's going to say, dependent origination is emptiness. Sorry, emptiness is dependent origination.

Okay, you want to know what's dependent origination? Emptiness.

[Speaker 2]
So it's back to higher middle way, higher. Yeah.

[Speaker 1]
That's something that Jason Copland famously said, right? Well, we are in higher middle way, arguing against low, low schools, almost Abhidharma presentation of emptiness, okay? Now, so what I'm saying is, be sensitive to that point, even from here.

Because what I'm saying is, you can say dependence is free of the two extremes, or you can say... Dependence is the freedom from the two extremes. Yeah, dependence is the general absence of the two extremes.

[Speaker 2]
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Speaker 1]
You see what I mean? Do you get this difference?

[Speaker 2]
Yeah, for sure. It's very subtle.

[Speaker 1]
It's very subtle. Knowing where he's going, you've got to figure it. Maybe I'll leave it like this for this part, and then later on...

Okay. I mean, I don't know. I think I won't know until we get that far in the book.

Here's the Tibetan, okay? And I'm going to stick on the point for a few minutes, because it's really the guts of your book. It's really the essence of your book, right here.

Why? Because the first turning of the wheel focused on tendo.

[Speaker 2]
Uh-huh, yeah, yeah.

[Speaker 1]
You see what I mean?

[Speaker 2]
But he's trying to show that it is...

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, yeah. So, this little phrase is the guts of his book. This little phrase is the guts of his whole book.

When he says tendo, he's talking about the first turning of the wheel. That was the main subject. What were the two main subjects?

Four are your truths and dependent origination. First turning of the wheel. And in that style of presentation, he implied that things were self-existent.

You see? Heaps... Four truths and twelve links.

And in that presentation, in the first turning, the first time he taught, the first period of Lord Buddha's teaching career, he implied all those things were self-existent. So, what's an important thing that has to happen in this book?

[Speaker 2]
He has to show it to us.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah. So, right here, here it is. And then I'll let it go, okay?

tendrel thadrel du tenpa Is he saying, demonstrate... Okay, I would use demonstrate instead of teaching, okay? Is he saying, demonstrate that dependence doesn't have extremes?

Choice one. Demonstrate that dependence itself is free of extremes. Okay?

Meaning, meaning, meaning, dependence has its own emptiness. Or, are we to read this Dini grammar case as saying, dependence is the absence of the two extremes? Which is to say, dependence is emptiness.

Because you can read it either way. So, based on what you said, that he's going to reveal about five pages...

[Speaker 2]
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Speaker 1]
So, maybe I will change it then. Well, maybe we don't. I don't know.

I mean, I think we'll be able to decide the flow when we get to that point in the book more easily, because we'll see how we want to make it progress. I believe he's being purposely ambiguous here.

[Speaker 2]
So, how do you do that?

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, now that's a translator. That's a master translator.

[Speaker 2]
I'm going to put it in red here.

[Speaker 1]
How do you make it, how do you make it could be either?

[Speaker 2]
You can do that. You'll find a way to do that.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, find a way.

[Speaker 2]
You're the guy for the job.

[Speaker 1]
So, I'm going to change it to demonstrating, and I now own the mother copy, by the way.

[Speaker 2]
Oh, right. So, you'll send it to me.

[Speaker 1]
Yes, exactly. So, I'm going to change the date, which I always do, and I beg you guys to do. So, now it's, I'm not even going to say, it's now going to be called 60 verses commentary.

Then I want you to name your files like this. Who's got the mother copy, and what's the date? And change it every day.

Even if you change one word, change the title of the file, okay? Got it? So, now it's no longer Nick's update.

It's the mother, okay? The mother. Okay, it's the mother copy.

Now, I added, I changed teaching to demonstrating, because that's the point. Demba can mean teaching, or demba can mean demonstrating. In this case, it's demonstrating.

Okay. He's not, he's not. No, well, that's a different, because that, in that, the way it was teaching was a noun.

The teaching was a noun.

[Speaker 2]
Oh, yeah, you can say demonstrating. Demonstration?

[Speaker 1]
No, you can say demonstrating. Oh, okay. It should be parallel, ing, ing, ing.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You say as far as you can, as far as it allows. Demonstrating.

Demonstrating that dependence is free. And then, then, okay, so you got to deal with this. I'm going to leave this little thing in.

[Speaker 2]
Right, I'll deal with it.

[Speaker 1]
Does everybody get the difference? Saying that dependence is free of the two extremes is to say dependence has emptiness. Saying that dependence is the freedom from the two extremes is to say it is emptiness, which is an overstatement, which is like Heart Sutra.

Shinjin, he's trying to be extreme. He's trying to cause trouble. Which one would Nagarjuna do?

[Speaker 2]
Cause trouble.

[Speaker 1]
He would cause some, he would throw some bees into the car and shut the door, and see what happens.

[Speaker 2]
He's like an M-Dash, right? Demonstrating dependence is free of the two extremes.

[Speaker 1]
You guys decide. Let's go on. You cook it.

[Speaker 2]
Okay.

[Speaker 1]
My suggestion is, when you have a very, very crucial point and you're trying to make a decision, sleep on it. Don't make a, don't make a snap decision. The next, the next, you wake up at four o'clock, you go, damn, I got it.

Your mind will crank it. Okay, good. The rest is okay.

This says, here's a point for you. Start ending section. When you get Dambos, Nipah, Sumbas, you better have a second header.

What I will do, on a provisional translation, I will put a dollar sign here. And it means, it's a note to myself, go back and add a header here, with Utpala's point, when you know more about, how, no, I mean, he'll say, the first has three, the first has four, the first of those has six, and then finally, he'll get to his subject. So then you gotta go back and change the header.

Okay, so, okay. All right.

[Speaker 2]
The first topic has three parts. Defeating the extreme view.

[Speaker 1]
What was the first topic? Demonstrating that dependence is free of the two, or, is freedom from the two. Great, I love it.

I will kiss you, but your wife is there.

[Speaker 2]
Okay.

[Speaker 1]
She'll kiss me for you.

[Speaker 2]
All right.

[Speaker 1]
You agree?

[Speaker 2]
All right.

[Speaker 1]
She says she'll take that responsibility. The first topic has three parts. Refuting the extreme view that things exist.

Refuting arguments in favor of the two extreme views. Refuting the essence of the two extreme views. I put an end in there, if you don't mind.

Ah, okay.

[Speaker 2]
Yeah. I don't mind.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, I mean, it's possible to do it the other way, but it's a little hard on the reader.

[Speaker 2]
Uh-huh.

[Speaker 1]
Okay.

[Speaker 2]
Yeah, okay. I agree.

[Speaker 1]
And the fact that I didn't change anything else in that sentence is pretty amazing. That means you're coming along. Okay.

That's pretty wild. I know. By the way, I like that you used three gerunds, ing, ing, and ing.

So, when you have a list, if it's parallel, that's good. Ing, ing, and ing.

[Speaker 2]
Well, it's the normal versus the what of the two extreme views. Sorry. No, no, you're great.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, it's a weird, uh, it's a weird, it's a weird sentence.

[Speaker 2]
versus the normal. Yeah, it's a weird, yeah. Yeah.

Cool.

[Speaker 1]
I like how you said arguments for Drupchain. That was a good move. Okay.

I don't want to, I don't want to praise you too much. Okay. That's good.

That's really good. First of these parts, now this was, like, would you do a, would you do a heading and then a heading? No, you see, that's what I'm saying.

Okay.

[Speaker 2]
Because there was already a heading. It gets distracting. Okay, that gets me too.

[Speaker 1]
When he gets to his point, put that heading.

[Speaker 2]
Okay.

[Speaker 1]
Uh, and I call it a linear, a linear headings. They're not, It's like an outline. Buddhist headings are not weighted equally.

They'll have a heading for one sentence and then they'll have a heading for 50 pages. Right. So you, so you, you got to step in and Make it balanced in English?

Yeah, make it balanced. Exactly. Yeah.

Okay. The first of these parts has two divisions of its own. Who is it that realizes that dependence is free of elaboration and the reasoning that we use to refute the extreme view that things could exist?

And that's the same question. Uh-huh. And I just, no, I mean, look up here.

Yeah, the reasoning, uh, Is it that dependence is free of elaboration or is it freedom from elaboration? It is the freedom from elaboration. So I'll put, uh, Okay, you deal with it.

I haven't known already.

[Speaker 2]
I'm excited.

[Speaker 1]
I own the mother copy. And you're gonna give me that? Okay.

Yeah. So it's up to you. See just below means he's gonna hit that topic, possibly today, but probably we don't have time.

He's gonna hit the topic where he throws his bomb.

[Speaker 2]
Uh-huh.

[Speaker 1]
He says dependence is emptiness. Okay.

[Speaker 2]
We're just...

[Speaker 1]
He's getting the discussion. He's about to throw it. Let's see if we get there.

Okay, go. The first division has two steps. The actual explanation followed by advice that we rely on and understanding of the profound.

I like it. Uh-huh. The only thing here is that the original carving was misspelled.

And I would confirm that in a carving because ten B-S-T-A-N is possible but unlikely.

[Speaker 2]
I think I checked.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah. I think we checked below when it came.

[Speaker 2]
Uh-huh.

[Speaker 1]
It's a building fart. Fart? Building fart.

Okay, let's keep going. I guess it's okay. A fart, not a fire.

Maybe someone is fixing something.

[Speaker 2]
Or they're breaking something. Somebody got indigestion.

[Speaker 1]
Oh, this is sexy. Ben will like this. Yeah.

Just as it's a contradiction in terms to say that a woman without a baby has had a baby, it is also a contradiction in terms to say that the meaning of dependence is that nothing starts or stops. That sentence you could... This is a brain buster.

Yeah, you could sit with that sentence for a couple of hours. You could meditate on that. When I sit here and try to...

Is it weird to say a barren woman had a baby? Quite. It doesn't make sense.

Something that could not. Barren means didn't have a baby or couldn't have a baby. Like the lady in Shanghai.

The lady with the pink baby in Shanghai. We can say a barren woman had a baby, but is that... is that a contradiction to say that?

[Speaker 2]
When did she come back home? When did she stop being barren? Yeah, yeah.

[Speaker 1]
When did she stop being barren? She was a woman that the doctor said could not have a baby. So, she was a barren woman.

And then she had a baby. Now, got it? How weird it is?

Now, nothing starts and stops, but everything depends on everything else. It's the same thing. That's what Gyaltsabje is saying.

How can there be dependence, dependent origination? How can things grow from other things if nothing starts and stops? It's like a contradiction already.

You already... Nagarjuna, you already messed up. You know?

That's like saying a barren woman had a baby. Got it? It's really cool.

No, he has a kachi. He has somebody come and complain.

[Speaker 2]
Come on, Gyaltsabje.

[Speaker 1]
How can you say that the meaning of dependence, now we're getting closer to that, is that nothing starts or stops, which is emptiness. If you say the meaning of dependence is that nothing starts or stops, then it's like a barren woman had a baby. Give me a break.

Someone's complaining to Gyaltsabje. Somebody's complaining to Nagarjuna. By the way, Nagarjuna's task in this book is to take a teaching from the First Turning of the Wheel and show that it's really an emptiness teaching.

Okay? By using the First Turning of the Wheel book. He's kind of like doing...

He's kind of like this guy, he's very Nagarjuna. He says, I'm going to do the impossible. I don't want to just write a book.

I want to show that these lower teachings themselves prove that the lower teachings teach emptiness. That's very Nagarjuna. Okay?

All right. Let's keep going. If you're going to use...

This is his reply, I suppose. If you're going to use that infant's mind here to imagine that there's some kind of contradiction here, then go ahead. For us, there's no such problem.

I really like the way you translated this. I have to say it's correctly sarcastic and insulting. That's really easy for me.

Why is there the ampersand there?

[Speaker 2]
It's good. Your...

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, why capitalize your? Did I do that?

[Speaker 2]
You did.

[Speaker 1]
No. Okay. What it means is go back and read your own stuff later.

Don't make me correct these things. Okay? It's just...

It's your responsibility. And I'm talking to everybody. I'm not just talking to Nick.

Don't make me go back and correct comments and stuff like that. Come on. It's something you should...

I'll do it the first term as a gift. But after that, I'm being a hard-ass. Okay, here we go.

No, this is okay.

[Speaker 2]
This is correct. This is correct.

[Speaker 1]
Oh, can we use contractions in a literary work? I say yes if you're... if you're calling someone an asshole.

[Speaker 2]
You know?

[Speaker 1]
You don't have time to say, if you are.

[Speaker 2]
You know?

[Speaker 1]
You say, Jesus is an idiot. You know? I mean, you got to get the feeling of the book.

Yeah, but it's a good point. In general, too many contractions makes the book look not scholarly or not serious. But sometimes, it's better...

You have to be... I think Phil has this sense of rhythm. You know, you have to feel the rhythm of the sentence.

And sometimes, two syllables breaks the rhythm. Okay. And in Tibetan, they do it too.

No. No.

[Speaker 2]
Yeah. It's a no.

[Speaker 1]
No. Okay. When infants hear no more than the word dependence, they immediately hold on to the idea of having...

I mean, having some sort of self-nature. No. Teach that as if you're standing there in Diamond Mountain, Vancouver.

That one sentence. Actually, I'd be thirsty. No, just...

That's a... That's a blockbuster sentence. What's he saying?

When he's using the word infants, he's talking about people who haven't yet seen emptiness directly. I think he's being more general. I think he's just saying any idiot...

But he's saying something very radical here. He's saying that... They're saying that it's not.

They start to think of dependence as being the real way that things are, and that it has some sort of self-nature, that it's not empty, and that it exists in and of itself. What this sentence is saying is that as you explain the pen, the listener is taking the pen as self-existent and the teaching as self-existent, and they don't realize the person explaining the pen is coming from them. So even while they're getting a teaching on the pen, they are looking at Michael and saying...

Got it? That's what he's saying in this sentence. When Buddha, in the first turning of the wheel, this radical teaching, all things come from dependence, then people are listening and they're saying, Oh, Buddha's out there, coming from his own side, telling me that things are coming from their side, you know, from my students.

You see what I mean? Got it? This is a very radical sentence, very important sentence.

People who don't get it, even while you're teaching it to them, they still don't get it. They're not getting it about getting it. Got it?

[Speaker 2]
That's it. Yeah, the whole thing.

[Speaker 1]
And yet, he's using this concept, so the radical people will not be able to accept the idea. Yeah, yeah. They went through the whole first turning of the wheel, and at the end of the first turning of the wheel, they thought the teaching on dependence, which was the first turning of the wheel, came from its own side.

[Speaker 2]
So, I mean, so this sentence is...

[Speaker 1]
I don't think he's trying to convince, I think he's just insulting.

[Speaker 2]
Especially it's after 8.45. Let's finish this sentence.

[Speaker 1]
And so we can ourselves conclude with absolute clarity that relative to the way of realizing... You had an option. Yeah, I threw it in there.

I like the relative to. So I just want you to know, I'm going to cut this out. I vote for your relative to.

Your first instinct was correct, in my opinion. By the way, I wasn't thinking that this was the final version. I left a lot of notes in there.

I was going to correct it, I promise. Thinking that you'll have time to go back later is a fallacy. A fallacy?

It's a mistake to think I can go back and correct it. Yeah, I mean, whenever you can, whenever you can, finish it. Don't say, I'll come back to this later.

Unless you don't understand it, then come back to it later. Okay.

[Speaker 2]
If I could use the perspective, I mean, I did this to point out, because I wasn't helpful, I just made trouble, but relative to seems like...

[Speaker 1]
I don't mind from the perspective of a way that real life speech is.

[Speaker 2]
You guys argue it.

[Speaker 1]
Some things I want the translators to decide between each other. But I'll accept that if that's what you choose. Let me think about it.

But I own the mother copy, I'm just warning you. No, I mean, I'll send it to you, but don't make corrections on that and think it's in the final. Right, right, I know.

Okay, here we go. Dependence has no nature of its own. In order to convey this thought, Master Nagarjuna gives us the next verse of the root text.

Okay.

[Speaker 2]
Wait a minute, is he doing the other one now? Now he's saying, dependence has no nature of its own, but it's not necessarily, as opposed to saying dependence is.

[Speaker 1]
He's about to throw the bombshell.

[Speaker 2]
Okay, okay. Now... Seven.

[Speaker 1]
Now, just something about the Sanskrit. It looks good to me, I didn't check it thoroughly, but I don't see any reason to capitalize every word. It just looks weird.

Now, what I do, which is kind of artificial, to make it easier for a foreigner, is I will... I'll make it look like a sentence, even though it's not. You mean leave lowercase at the end?

In fact... No, I'll put a period at the end. Which doesn't exist in Sanskrit, there's no reason for a period there.

I'll capitalize the first word, I'll put a period at the end. It's just to make an English reader more comfortable. It's artificial.

It doesn't exist in Sanskrit. There's no capital demonography. But I just want to make people feel comfortable.

[Speaker 2]
Which fonts are you using for the diacritics that are not found in Palatino?

[Speaker 1]
I just go ahead and do it and it's a good point and if you can find a way out of it, I'm happy. The problem is, in Palatino Linotype... Who keeps giving me Palatino stuff?

John Brady. We're in a font called Palatino Linotype. We're not in Palatino.

So, you got to know a little bit about fonts when you're going to be a writer. Palatino is Unicode. I don't know.

We're using Palatino Linotype. Anyway, sometimes when you put a diacritic on a Palatino Linotype word, it'll change to Roman and it looks ugly.

[Speaker 2]
It looks ugly.

[Speaker 1]
So, you guys work it out.

[Speaker 2]
Will there come a time in the future when Palatino Linotype will be obsolete?

[Speaker 1]
No, they'll make a Unicode version of it.

[Speaker 2]
Will they? If you drive that horse, it may happen.

[Speaker 1]
Now, I just want to... I just want to put something in your head. Does...

The Tibetan is in verse. Equal syllable lines for... Oh, I guess the Sanskrit is two lines, right?

[Speaker 2]
Right.

[Speaker 1]
Okay. If it were me, if it were my text, I would count syllables. ASTIN ASTIVYATI KRANTA BUDDHA RYESHAM NIRRA SHRAYA Okay.

So, we got 33, I think. No. 5, 10, 11.

Was it 11? GAM BHIR ASTAR NIRRA GAM BHIR ASTAR NIRRA LAM PA PRAGNYAYATO VIBHAVYATE Yeah.

[Speaker 2]
We're good.

[Speaker 1]
So, put it in four lines instead of...

[Speaker 2]
No, we're good. Oh, okay.

[Speaker 1]
Tibetans put four lines for two lines of Sanskrit. Right, right, right. Okay.

But if it were me, if it were my book, even if I couldn't read the Sanskrit very well, I would count the syllables to make sure there's not something missing. By the way, his book is not to a total extent in Sanskrit, right? But he's supplying parts of it that have been found in other books, quoted in other books.

So, scholars over the years have put together the quotations from other books, and they've put back together some of the Sanskrit, but we don't have the original. I didn't do it. Some Chinese guy did it when he was doing his Ph.D. thesis. Yeah, thank God for Ph.D. And Stanley helped me figure out which parts of it, because it's all written in Chinese, because they actually reconstructed the Sanskrit from the Tibetan also, so some of it is reconstructed.

[Speaker 2]
Yeah, which I threw out.

[Speaker 1]
I don't want Sanskrit reconstruction of Tibetan. I want the original. And if we can't find it, we should go find it.

And we have two teams working on that every day, looking for these books. But I don't want to untranslate it and hope that we got it right. So I threw that out.

I don't want it in our books. Okay.

[Speaker 2]
Should we finish there, Guy?

[Speaker 1]
Yeah. Yeah, I like it when you put it in bold, okay? Put things in...

You're going to change this to... Right. Once again, I was going to do as I promised.

I wasn't... Yeah, no, I don't mind. Just...

That's in the style sheet.

[Speaker 2]
Yeah.

[Speaker 1]
Okay. And we're going to stop right here. Okay, so I put three dollar signs.

It means that's where I want to pick up next time. Cool.

[Speaker 2]
Cool, thank you.

[Speaker 1]
And then it gets more radical. Then you get...

[Speaker 2]
That's even better than three dollar signs.

[Speaker 1]
Next class is wild. Next class is going to be wild. That's where he throws his bombshell.

And something cool happens. One of the five original disciples who were the tiger cubs teaches Shariputra a verse, and Shariputra has a mystical experience. I understood that.

But I'll tell you, I went... It took me about three hours to find it.

[Speaker 2]
It's a verse.

[Speaker 1]
It's a verse.

[Speaker 2]
And there's no commas.

[Speaker 1]
There's no division into verses. I figured it out. And Shariputra is not called Shariputra.

He's called something else. No, no, no. His mother's name was Sharika.

He's called... Anyway, I'll tell you next time. He's referred to with his original name and not his monk's name.

So it's very confusing. And then I figured it all out. Okay, anyway.

Are you ready? All right. One thing I'd like to say about it, though, was that Nick had the initiative to keep his translation going.

So in between terms, he tried. And he worked really... He spent a lot of hours trying to translate.

His is probably the most difficult text except for words. So I just really liked that he tried. And then he really bothered me to check it.

And I really didn't want to do it. But he got me trapped on the bus. He sat on the outside seat.

I was on the inside seat. I couldn't get away. And I like the persistence.

I like it. So you guys should take a lesson from that.