Бетси Грир — Книга 2: Интерлюдия о пустоте, занятие 15

[Speaker 3]
I hope you guys have a great rest of your evening and we'll see you tomorrow at 7 a.m. Arizona time, the rest of us.

[Speaker 1]
Thanks, Nick.

[Speaker 3]
Thank you, thank you, bye-bye.

[Speaker 1]
Okay, should we just jump right into it?

[Speaker 2]
Just one hot second, let me get the translator set up.

[Speaker 3]
Venerable, don't forget the questions from Russia. Oh, shh. From Russia with love.

[Speaker 1]
From Russia with love. Or is it to Russia with love? I can never remember.

[Speaker 3]
Oh, okay, from and to.

[Speaker 1]
Maybe both.

[Speaker 2]
All right, cool, Betts. Looks like, yeah, so it's recording now. The translators are in their booths.

Oh, not, hold on just one more second. Forget putting Chinese in there. Right.

Oh, wait. Someone just told me that Emily is translating.

[Speaker 1]
Emily, yay.

[Speaker 2]
Sorry. Sorry, I just changed that, all right. Emily, okay, Emily, you got everything ready to record?

And Joy, you're in the translation channel, correct? Cool. I was.

Cool. All right, cool, Betsy, right, you can go now.

[Speaker 1]
Hi. So it looks like there's still a good number of people here, so maybe we just keep going. So first I'd like to thank, oh, who's translating in China?

Alisa and Berta for Spanish. And, oh, she's the co-host, Alisa's the co-host. And yeah, I thought, anyway.

So thank you for translating. Let's see if there are any, yeah, any questions you have. Joy is translating.

Any questions you have, please put them in the chat box so I can see. If I don't see anything, then I know that you all understand everything perfectly. And I should ask you questions.

People are leaving in droves, right? They're scared. No, I'm just kidding.

No questions? Ah, here we go. How to understand the emptiness of emptiness.

So I'll have to ask you, what is your understanding of emptiness? And you can answer. Pure gold aria.

Well, you're an aria, yes, you should tell us. So if emptiness means the absence of a way of existing that is independent from how we name it, how we perceive it, how we name it, then the emptiness of emptiness would be the same thing. If emptiness were not empty, if emptiness had some self-existence, oh, this is a good one, because I was about to say, you knew what I was gonna say, right?

How, if emptiness, if emptiness weren't empty, that means that the emptiness of, oh, you can't even see it, can you? The emptiness of this thing is totally independent of me in my experience of this thing. So then how could this thing ever ring?

How could someone ever call me? How could I ever take a photograph? How could I ever text someone?

How could it ever bounce when I drop it on the floor? Okay, I hope that helps, is helpful. So we have a question here in the chat about all beings being our mother.

I understand that they are like an old pair of jeans, favorite pair of jeans, yeah? My mother from past lives, doesn't look like my mother in this life, or my mothers from past lives don't look like my mother from this life, but they are the same mother. So this seems to be saying that all beings are my mother, not just that they were.

And if all beings are my mother, where do I fit? Because I'm one of all beings. Am I my own mother?

Let's do that last one first. It's kind of like the idea that the plant is inside the seed. You know, it already exists inside the seed and there's no growing of a tree.

The tree is already in the seed. That's what it reminds me of anyway, that idea. So in the practice of perceiving all beings as having been our mother, this is in the practices of developing bodhicitta or the wish to become enlightened in order to benefit all sentient beings.

And there are these steps we go through in order to generate, they say, this wish, capital W. And the step about perceiving all beings as having been our mother is we've already made them equal. The step zero is making everyone equal.

There's no friend, there's no enemy, there's no, what is the other one? The person you don't know and you don't think of at all. You know, you're pleasantly ignorant of them.

But you've made everyone equal. And what we do next is we think about all beings having been our mother because we wanna feel something towards all these beings that we've just made equal. And so if we think about all beings as having been our mother, we think about them having given us life, having given us an existence, having taken care of us while we were in their womb or in the egg they laid or however it was that they were a mother to us, how they took care of us when we were born, how they fed us, how they cleaned us, how they educated us, you know?

That's a pen, pen. We think about all those things so that we can feel some respect for them and to feel some gratitude for everything that they have given us. Had they not been there for us, you know, we would have died immediately.

We would have been born and we couldn't take care of ourselves. We would just die. So thinking about all beings having been our mother is that step to generate a desire, a very strong desire to want to pay them back for this kindness that they have given us.

So can we say that all beings have been my mother, really? All beings have really been my mother. I guess it depends on what hat you're wearing, what philosophical school you're talking about.

And the word mother, I mean, I'll just leave that for you to think about if that's possible. And then the word mother, okay, let's say that all beings have been your mother, which means there are countless, really countless, almost unimaginable instances of mother. And then what that phrase means to you in relationship with this other person.

Like my idea of mother, even just in my lifetime, has changed. When I was very young, mother was a protector, you know, savior, the one I went to when the cat was clawing me, like that. When I was a teenager, unfortunately, mother was the one who was upset when I wanted to go play with my friends all night long.

And then later, mother became someone very dear and close to me. And then mother became dead. So there's all these different meanings of mother just to me in this, so far in this life.

So then times that by the incalculable number of mothers. So there's not a mother. So we couldn't really confuse one for another.

So I don't know that you could say they're all the same mother, except in the sense of, if you just think about mother as the one who gave you life. So they would be the same in that way, but they're not the same person, the same continuation of mind and body over time and many births, because you've been mother to countless times, to all those beings countless times. You know, to say all beings are my mother, like right now, all beings are my mother, not that all beings were my mother, all beings are my mother.

I mean, regardless of whether that's true or not, having that point of view could allow a whole different relationship with each being on the planet, right? Like to the little, we call these little bugs that are coming around these days, we call them no-see-ums. They're so tiny, you can't really see them, but you can feel them as they're like bouncing around and trying to get in your eyes or up your nose, you know, these little teeny bugs, which can be annoying, right?

Get away, get away. But if all those little guys are my mother, are my mother, like, oh, hi. Can I give you something to drink?

Can I take care of you? Can I at least not swat you away so that you're hurt? So that has some benefit, regardless of whether it's true that they all are my mother right now.

I don't know if this is helpful. I hope so. Am I my own mother?

Well, that one's kind of hard. That's, well, I already talked about that one. That'd be like me, yeah, me giving birth to myself.

So who, how could I give birth to myself because I wasn't born yet? And if I was born, why would I need to give birth to myself? Okay.

Okay, let's see. So here's a question from Russian Nuts. Ha, ha, ha, ha.

That's great, Catherine. Thank you. Okay.

Could you please explain the three qualities of the mind-only school using the husband in the kitchen, if possible? Okay, so what are the, I call them attributes of the mind-only school. So the first one is called kuntak.

And kuntak means like a concept or like Geshe Michael just talked about in words class it's like an illusion, an imaginary thing. So that's the first one. The second one is shenwang.

And that means something that's under the power of other forces. And then the third one is established reality or totality. And Geshe Michael likes to talk about how if you take everything and you subtract the kuntaks, the imaginary things, then that's what you have left.

Is that right? I think that's right but then it seems like it would just be shenwang. So I could be wrong about that.

Anyway, if we were to look at the kitchen, being in the kitchen, so I walk in, I see a husband who is yelling at me for no reason at all. Had nothing to do with me. So that husband is the kuntak.

That's the imaginary thing, the illusion. Then we have the shenwang is the husband who's in the kitchen that I very rarely ever see because I'm always interacting with the illusory one, the kuntak one. The one, my label that I project onto him, angry husband, has nothing to do with me.

But that husband that gets that label, that's a shenwang. That's the one that's under the power of other forces. You could also say that me, who has a perception of my husband, I am under the power of other forces.

I'm dominated by other forces. What's dominating me? That I yelled at my kids last week and I planted the seeds to be yelled at.

So I planted those seeds, that karma ripens. I am forced to see the husband that's not real, the kuntak husband. So then the yangdrup, I didn't say that before, but the yangdrupa is the lack of the illusory one a husband that didn't have anything to do with me.

So those are the three and the kitchen. Did I miss anything from the kitchen? Okay, good.

All right, so then there's a follow-up question. Okay, so, oh, that's the next question is the follow-up question. So we did not really understand why in the sutra on unraveling the true thought or the sutra on what I really meant.

It starts with three things that have no nature as it was taught during the second turning of the wheel that are changing things, constructs or kuntaks and yangdrupas, yangdrupas, totality. And then the Buddha says that two of them have some nature unless we misunderstood. So this will be on your quiz in two days.

So this is a preview of your quiz. So the kuntak, the construct, mental construct has a lack of an essential nature that is a lack of quality. It has no, it possesses no qualities.

Why? Because it's imaginary. It's a mental construct.

It doesn't have anything. Then there's the changing things, the things under the power of other things. Those have a lack of an essential nature that is an absence of starting.

And then yangdrupas or totalities or established reality, those are, have a lack of, an essential nature that is the lack of being ultimate. So as Geshe Michael said in my class today, we have to be very careful and not confuse literal and figurative with real and unreal. Or, right?

Like we wanna conflate or let fall together this idea that if something, I'm not gonna speak more because I need to get this clear in my head. I would just be flailing about. It's like, I get it like, ah, ah, but I don't get it enough to put it all out for you.

So hopefully next time. I'll be able to do so. I mean, it's only been a few hours, right?

Okay, let's see. Other questions. You guys are so smart, yay.

Did we have too long of a break? The two days was too much. Oh, I know you had Ben last, right?

Ben answered all your questions. He's so smart. Too smart to think of any questions.

That's what Catherine says. Or you're all hungry for breakfast or dinner. Oh, here's a question.

Is not existing the same with no self nature? So I'm gonna ask, do you mean the same as not having a self nature? Is that what you mean?

Or that self existing means, okay, that not existing is the same as no self nature. So I will say that first, it is true that there is nothing that has a self nature. So in that sense, yes.

Not existing means the same as no self nature. Or should, oh no, it's the opposite. Sorry, I thought it was like self nature.

So anyway, that's all wrong. So erase that. So no, non-existing means it's not an existing thing.

And what's an existing thing? That which can be perceived with an accurate perception. So those are all the existing things.

A purple elephant with two heads and wearing a little yellow tutu is not running behind me right now. That's a non-existing thing. We can't say it has a self nature or doesn't have a self nature because it doesn't exist.

We're not talking about anything. Does the idea that you had in your mind, the kundak, the mental image you had in your mind when I said a purple two-headed elephant with a yellow tutu was not running behind me in my room. You had to think first, well, what would a purple two-headed pink elephant with a yellow tutu look like running through her room?

So that mental image you had of the purple two-headed elephant with a yellow tutu that's not running behind me, that is empty. That does not, that mental image, that concept does not have a self nature. Does that get to what you were asking about?

Let me first, hopefully the other person is satisfied at least for the time being. Okay, so the Yu Ying Ying. Could I share how we can apply the ideas in the book I am working on?

I mean, so, so far this term we've been talking about or KJJ has been talking about that in order to reach enlightenment, we need to rely on the teachings of the Buddha and where that becomes challenging for us is that he taught so many different things in various ways, in different ways. And on the face of them, they appear to be contradictory. And so what we're slowly going through now is, is, okay, how can you tell what we should take on face value and what needs to be interpreted of what the Buddha taught?

And what we've learned so far is that the listener vehicle, some of them have the idea that everything the Buddha said was what he meant to say, exactly how he meant to say it. And that anything identified as having come from the Mahayana vehicle, the greater vehicle, that's not the word of the Buddha. So don't worry about it.

Just read the sutras of our vehicle and that's all you need to know. And then the Mahayana says, you know, now that was the word of the Buddha. And here, you know, here are the sutras that we're talking about.

But they have two different ways of thinking about what it is we should accept as being exactly what the Buddha meant to say and what we need to interpret in order to understand its true meaning. So I think like the main thing so far is that, and maybe this is because I'm also teaching ACI course 13, the art of reasoning, that what this shows us is that we have to be able to analyze things just by virtue of the fact there are so many different ways so far presented to us of how to interpret things, how to even approach interpreting things, right? We need to be able to analyze what's said so that we can practice correctly.

So, I mean, the topic of K.J.'s book is, in a nutshell, okay, let's talk about what emptiness is so that you can see it directly and get the heck out of this wheel of suffering and get enlightened. As for like day-to-day life, oh, this is so hard for me because my day-to-day life is sitting in front of the computer translating. That's my day-to-day life.

So I don't have to like get up, get dressed, go to work. Well, I have to do those things, but it's all in my house. Yeah, Venerable Kadding says what to give up and what to take up.

Yeah, we need to know what to give up, what to take up. I think that Liu Ying, when we get to the point in the text when they present logical arguments to us, the syllogisms, I think we'll have a little more content to work with in our day-to-day life. I hope that helps.

But what would you say? How do you use this so far in your day-to-day life? Does anyone wanna share?

Okay, I'll take that as a no. Okay, here's a note from Jasmine. And she says, Geshe Michael said, according to her notes, that the two lacks of a self nature is no truly existing husband and no truly existing wife.

That's true. There's also no truly existing yelling and no truly existing yelling husband, no truly existing kids, no truly existing two weeks ago when you yelled at them, no truly existing kids who didn't do what you asked them to do. No truly existing kitchen.

Yeah, we can't stop with that one, can we? Thank you, Jasmine. Catherine, I would like to ask how to properly deal with the intimate relationship between husband and wife.

That is to say, how to remove the love desire which leads to the wheel of suffering, but still maintain a good relationship or with compassion in between. So remember the thing which keeps us in the wheel of suffering is this mistaken idea about a self. We think there is some me here and some mine.

So if we think about my husband, a passionate love is not necessarily one tainted with this ignorance grasping to a self. The mistake in thinking there is some me here that exists independent of the way I think about it. And some other person there, some husband there who exists independently of me and how I think of him.

It is possible to love without grasping to the self or grasping to the other person or with a desire. So what is desire? This desire that they talk about in the center of the wheel of life, that desire, that is an ignorant liking.

So what is an ignorant liking? I mean, it could be many different things, but it's attributing to this object. So in our case here, this husband, some quality that it doesn't have, that this person exists independently of me.

There's someone out there who loves me this way. When what's really happening is we created this husband, we created this love. So I think that, I mean, I'm a nun, right?

So as a nun, I'm a nun. Asking a nun about relationships is always kind of dicey. But I think it's possible.

I think it's possible that you can love without grasping. Now, is it possible for someone like me who has not yet seen emptiness directly? No, not possible.

So in the meantime, it's like we have to meditate on what it means that things don't have a self nature, every day. And also throughout the day, remind ourselves, oh, right, yeah, this doesn't have, yeah, this is coming from me. Yeah, this, what looks to be a monitor sitting in front of me is like a window to Mexico and China and Diamond Mountain.

No, those aren't places out there and on the other side of the world. This is coming from me. So remembering that throughout the day helps because what we wanna do is create the habit of seeing things as coming from how I have experienced them.

Acted and thought and spoke in the past. So it's not like we flip the switch, like, oh, I come across the Buddhist teachings. Oh, I better stop, whatever it is that we do.

We just need to increase our awareness of how we can bring the teachings into our life and keep reinforcing, increasing our understanding and reinforcing that every day. What does Geshe Michael say? Cool man, cool man.

He said that in China a lot, I remember. Cool man. So we have a question from anonymous.

The learning coming from bad experiences cannot be direct karma because a good result cannot come from a bad seed or bad deed, sorry. So how does it work that from suffering comes learning? So it is, while we are in a state of being that is not enlightened or is not an Arya, not one who has seen emptiness directly, then every thought we have is mistaken.

And I think you're asking, well, how is it possible we can get out of this situation? So even learning is mistaken. Even learning the correct view of what it means that things have no nature of their own before we see emptiness directly, we have an incorrect understanding.

All we can do is to take what we hear and experience and like try our best to practice them. We have to, when it comes down to, we have to evaluate for ourselves whether something is true or not. Is this gonna get me out of the wheel of suffering or not?

And while I think it's a good idea to remember that not only is there no self that's independent of me naming it, but there's no teacher independent of me naming teacher. There's no Buddha independent of me naming a Buddha. There's no Dharma independent of me having created it from seeds in the past.

There's no Sangha independent of me having created Sangha in the past. And at the same time, we need to do stuff. Right?

We have to, we are that kind of being that does things. We think, we act, we speak. That's what we do.

So we try it out. We try the teachings. We evaluate them.

I don't know if that's helpful. It's a challenging question. You know, there's the story.

Usually how this is answered is, well, it's like, you know, there's this turtle in the Pacific Ocean and he lives at the bottom of the ocean. And every 1000 years, he swims to the surface of the ocean. And while this turtle is down here, there is this float.

What do you call those things? A little tube, like an inner tube that's floating on the surface of the ocean. Now this, you know, the surface of the ocean is vast, wide.

And here's this little tube and it's floating around. Us getting out of the realm of suffering goes this story, is like this turtle who comes up once every 1000 years and happens to come right through the inner tube. But what's the inner tube that this turtle comes upon?

I think it's the teacher and the teachings. And that's what we have. That's all we have to work with.

Those are my thoughts. As to a specific result coming from a specific action, they call that shintukokyo, shintukokyo. Kokyo means hidden.

And shintu means very hidden. We can't see that. Only an enlightened being, a fully enlightened, awakened being, can see that, oh, this picking up of the phone will lead to this precise result.

Or, you know, the little squiggles on the wall, that comes from, oh, that particular thing you did 45,000 lifetimes ago when you stirred your coffee. So to say exactly what the bad result is that you're going to get from learning and contemplating and meditating on the Buddha's teachings while you're still in this suffering world, you know, it's being negative, maybe something that could be like, I don't know, in the future, you have an itch on your nose when you're trying to meditate or something like that, you know. We don't know.

They say something about bodhisattvas, which I've always found to be just so beautiful, and that is that bodhisattvas, you know, they're called fearless, and they're called fearless because they don't care about results. They care only about planting seeds. So everything they do to benefit all other beings doesn't matter if the other person yells at them or doesn't hear them or does the exact opposite or gets mad or does it even.

Beautifully, it doesn't matter because all they're doing is planting seeds for a perfect world. So that really helps me in terms of, like all I can do in any one moment is plant, I don't know, the good seed that I plant. It's the best for the moment.

So if I'm having a bad day, it may be different than what I can, this kind of seed I can plant when I'm having a good day. We just do the best we can do at the moment, and that's the best. Dedicate, dedicate, dedicate.

That's how you make sure it doesn't end up being an itch on your nose or whatever. You know, whatever you do, turn it into dedicating it towards the result you wanna see. So even if you tried and it didn't work, benefit, dedicate the trying.

Even if you have misunderstanding, dedicate that, hey, I stuck with it, and may this be the cause that everyone understands everything perfectly. Yeah, that's all we can do. Anything else?

Okay, so should we take a rest or go on to the rest of our day? Oh, there's a question. Just in the nick of time.

Is the fundamental difference between the Hinayana and the Mahayana the bodhicitta? So the way that the lores, the Hinayana and the Mahayana, that division, so one way to talk about it is that it's based on your motivation. And the Hinayana being your motivation is to become liberated from the circle of suffering.

And that the Mahayana vehicle is motivated to become liberated from the cycle of suffering, but the whole distinction of nirvana samsara, be liberated from that for the benefit of being able to lead every single other being to that state. So that would be bodhicitta, right? That motivation.

But there's another distinction, and that is the philosophical view of what it means to say that nothing has its own nature. And the two vehicles, philosophical schools within each of the two vehicles have very different ideas about what that means. That said, I mean, it's just so interesting.

From the point of view of the highest philosophical school in the Mahayana, the higher or the great vehicle, is that it's not possible for anyone on, in any vehicle, to reach the intended goal of that vehicle, whether it's to become enlightened, fully enlightened, or to get out of the realm of suffering, become an arhat. You have to see emptiness directly. And that every person on every vehicle sees the same thing.

That being a lack, an absence of self. So from that point of view, from the consequence branch of the middle way school, yeah, the only difference is bodhicitta. That's not what people from other schools would say.

Okay, everyone's saying thank you. So that must mean it's time to go. So thank you for your, oh, thank you for your interest.

Thank you for being here. This stuff is so exciting. And these teachings are, I've been to many, many teachings over the past 25 years.

From my experience, there is absolutely nothing like what's going on here. This is so precious. It's more precious than a turtle coming up every thousand years.

And sometime in many, many eons coming through the inner tube. Far more precious. Anyway, thank you.

Thank Zoom for allowing this to happen. Thanks the planet for having foundation for us and the air. Thank you translators for translating these words so that I can communicate with and hear from people who don't speak my language.

Thank you Geshe Michael for teaching so clearly. And everyone have a great day. We'll see you in a few hours.

Thank you, Venerable Upala. My pleasure. See you soon.

Bye. Okay, bye.