Бетси Грир — Книга 2: Интерлюдия о пустоте, занятие 30

[Speaker 1]
Venerable Upala, would you like to explain what your book is about? Yeah, can I share my screen? Let me turn you up here.

Is your mic on? Yes. I don't think so.

Yes.

[Speaker 3]
What's your computer doing?

[Speaker 1]
My computer is doing wonderful things. How could others share a screen? Oh, okay, got it.

Oops. Come back.

[Speaker 3]
Okay, so that's correct. We did this before. What did you do?

[Speaker 1]
There was something up here that was funky. Oh, can you not hear me? Speaker here.

Yeah. I should use MacBooks. Yeah.

Okay, please speak, Upala. Hello. Can you hear me now?

Speak again. Hello. Hey.

Hey. The massive technical ability of your teacher. Hey.

Okay, so there's this mind map challenge, I guess you could call it. And here it is. It's asking me to do a mind map of K.

book is like asking an ant to describe the mental thought process of Einstein as he did his mathematical equations on relativity. But what I can do is talk about the structure of the book given the outline. So first we have setting the stage.

And he talked about Arya Nagarjuna's credentials, how he's been prophesied by the Buddha. He talked about the reason why we should look for the meaning of emptiness, which is we're not going to be able to get out of the realm of suffering if we don't know what emptiness is. The benefits of wishing to understand emptiness, which is that's what drives you to then understand it.

And the type of person qualified to study emptiness, which is a person who has planted the gazillion seeds to understand emptiness. So then we get into the topic of the book, which is emptiness. And the first question is, given that the Buddha had so many teachings about emptiness that on their face appeared to be contradictory, we need to understand which are figurative and which are literal.

And he's going to talk about this from the point of view of Arya Sangha, the mind only school. And then he's going to talk about it from the point of view of Arya Nagarjuna and the Middle Way. So we're in the midst of Arya Nagarjuna mind only.

So the first thing we talk about is the three wheel turnings. The first where the Buddha said that everything has some self nature. The second where he said nothing has any self nature.

And the third where he said some things do and some things don't have a self nature. So from the mind only school position, those first two are figurative. And the last is literal because it's only the latter that makes fine distinctions.

The first two throw everything into one bucket or the other bucket. Whereas the third makes fine distinctions between things. And what are those fine distinctions?

We talk about the three attributes of the mind only school, which are mental constructs, things dominated by other things, changing things, and established reality, young group. So what is it about these three that are different? The first doesn't truly exist.

The latter two truly exist. I know we started talking about a bunch of other stuff yet. And I think maybe hopefully eventually I'll understand the relationship between and among these things.

But there was this whole discussion about, well, how many vehicles to enlightenment are there? Are there one or are there three? There's three, according to the mind only school.

The like an illusion is used by both the middle way school and the mind only school. When mind only uses it, is it a unique understanding of that phrase or is it the same as the way the middle way uses that phrase? And it's unique when they say things are like an illusion.

It's if it's something that's not your kunshi, that that's the illusion, is duality in that sense, where that's not what the middle way says. Then there's this emptiness of other, which quite frankly, I got to spend a lot more time understanding. But the bottom line, K.J.'s response was, say what? And then there's the emptiness of self means you're empty of self, to which he said, are you bonkers? And then there was someone who said that Arya Asanga and Arya Nagarjuna, yeah, they taught the exact same thing. To which he said, oh, oh, oh, there.

Have you read even a single letter of their teachings? So that's where we were. And now.

Yeah. So enjoy the term. Nice.

Nice summary. Wow. Brings back memories.

Partial memories. Partial memories. All right.

No, you did a great job. Thank you. Here we go.

By the way, Venerable Utpal is working every day, all day to get the books ready for the Mixed Nuts. And we have a surprise for you guys coming up in a couple of days. Oh, that's right.

But I'm not going to tell them what it is, okay? Something cool is going to happen. I need permission to share my screen, you guys.

It says I don't. I mean, I could go home. It's okay.

No, no, no, no, no, please don't. Unless Jigme is driving and you can work in the car and save yourself from there. Let me try again.

No, it's still not letting me.

[Speaker 3]
Okay.

[Speaker 1]
Take your time. So Geshe-la, I wanted to dedicate all the work that I do this term for a friend of mine who I found out just before term is in the hospital with severe illness. Oh, I'm sorry.

And then yesterday he died. I'm very sorry. It was all so sudden.

So it's like every single moment has to be used because it can all disappear in an instant. Yeah, cool, cool. Yeah, I think the same thing.

I try to live that way. It irritates my friends. I still can't share.

Take your time. Did I share? No, then I can't take notes.

What do you do when you can't teach your class? Sign contracts. Sign contracts.

Good. Okay. Okay, let me try.

Hang on. Yay, okay, here we go. All right, this is Venerable Utpala's text called An Interlude on Emptiness.

If you have studied the Lion's Dance, I took it from here because this was such an extraordinary presentation. And this book is like that. You know, every time you come across something really sexy, it's in this book.

A really good explanation. Not that we've gotten to the good sexy stuff yet, but you know. Come on, yes you did.

All right, just a short review of what we plan to do with this book. This book will be about five books of four to five hundred pages each. And I say we could finish classes for the first book in about a year.

This is Venerable Utpala's second book that she's working on. And the first book, called Emptiness Meditations, is the best book ever translated about emptiness meditation. And you should be there or be square.

If you don't get that book, there's something wrong with your brain. It's a brilliant, it's an incredible book for emptiness meditation. If I was going to go to Diamond Mountain for a 30-day memory, I would take that book with me and just use it.

Or if it was my birthday tomorrow, I would probably bring the book and take quotations out of it for predicting the future of my life. Okay. Someone in the chat would like to have physical copies of the book.

That would be really nice. Yeah, it's coming soon. There's a world paper shortage, which is causing us some trouble.

Oh, okay. Thank you. We're working on it.

Wait, I got to pick someone to pick on you. Mr. Kramer, can you pick on her? Okay, cheer.

Good. Okay. This book was written by Aryadeva, who is the close disciple of Nagarjuna.

Okay. It says a state of mind which is freed, jowa, from sung dan dzinpa, that which is held, for example, blue, and the holder, for example, the kunshi. Okay.

That kind of mind, which is beyond those distinctions, is what we say is ultimate reality. Okay. That's ultimate reality.

What? That the mind is really beyond things held outside of the mind, because they are occurring inside the refrigerator. Blue is occurring inside the refrigerator.

Ignorance in the mind-only school, one of the kinds of ignorance, is to think that blue is outside. And the absence of blue on the outside is emptiness. Okay.

All right. loy tsu paro chenpa yi If there are certain books which go to the other side of the great ocean, which is the definition of prajna paramita, right? param itta param itta It occurs in what English word?

Exit. Exit. That's why we have a big one right here.

So itta means to go on. This means go out. X means out.

And then param means other side of the ocean. So he's making a pun here. We're not going to the other side of the ocean of suffering.

This particular school went to the other side of the ocean of lo, the mind. The mind. It's very sexy.

Arya Deva is describing the mind-only school and he says, these guys, their param itta wasn't wisdom. They didn't cross the ocean of samsara. They crossed the ocean of the mind.

It's cool, right? And which books did that? shung dru drak means everybody...

We call those books nyal dru chepa, yoga chara, which is a synonym for chittamatra, mind-only. What do we call them? What's our translation of that?

Not the yogaists. The deep practitioners. Deep practitioners.

Okay, good. Shei Tsumba Yeno. So he's describing...

Don't forget the general topic we're in is he's reviewing different schools and he's describing how the mind-only school interprets the third turning of the wheel. And they like to describe it in terms of the three qualities of the mind-only school, which is... What are they?

Concepts? No, what's the three words, three qualities? Yung druk, shen wang, kun tak.

What's shen wang to start with? Any changing thing. Any cause thing is shen wang, okay?

Then we should go to kun tak, which means imaginary things that are not there. In the kitchen, who's the kun tak?

[Speaker 2]
The husband.

[Speaker 1]
The husband who's not my fault is called kun tak, okay? And if you subtract him from the equation, you reach yung druk, which is called... Yung druk means the total that you arrive at.

The sum that you arrive at through the subtraction. Start with changing things. Subtract husbands who come from themselves, and you arrive at emptiness.

Okay, cool? So we're talking about those. There's the quotation.

And there's a difference. There's a... I'm trying to see.

sung dang dzinpa ne jung we, nam she dangpay dun du yung. Yeah, that's the difference. Yeah, okay.

The quotation according to KTJ. And by the way, you can cut him some slack because the tenure... Well, it wasn't digitized then.

It wasn't finalized, really, in his generation, okay? Tsongkhapa was using a single copy that somebody had put together, Bhutan Rinpoche. And so you can forgive these guys if they're using some other translations, okay?

Which disappeared once everything was carved. I'm sure the Mixed Nuts translations will be the ones chosen for the future. All right, so...

But is there a difference in the meaning? There is a difference in the meaning, I have to say. The Tenggyur says, a state of mind which is beyond objects and subjects exists ultimately.

A state of mind which is beyond subjects and objects exists ultimately. But the way KTJ translated it, the Sanskrit, it says a state of mind which is beyond subjects and objects is ultimate reality, or something like that, okay? It's different.

It's a little different, okay? And didn't we have a discussion earlier in this book, actually, that those two things mean different things? They're not synonymous.

Completely different things, yeah. So you're going to have to study those two versions carefully when you translate this. And it might be worth a foot...

It's certainly worth a footnote to point out that the translations are different. And this is not uncommon. Tsongkhapa, maybe 10% of the time, says, I don't like the translation that they chose for the Tenggyur, here's my translation, okay?

Which is so, so common. All right. Please read.

And Stanley... Stanley, are you in Vancouver or Singapore?

[Speaker 2]
Singapore.

[Speaker 1]
Somewhere else. A peacock attacked their hotel. Seiji, was that you?

I don't know. Geshe-la, the peacock can fly. Yeah, and he was just running around your hotel, right?

It's kind of cool. All right. Good.

The Tsongkhapa, the Mind-Only School, when they think about the middle turning of the wheel, the second turning of the wheel, give me a couple of books from the second turning of the wheel. The Heart Sutra, Diamond Cutter Sutra. Probably published by them next month.

Diamond Cutter Commentary, the Heart Sutra Commentary. Okay. They say, when the middle turning of the wheel states, tsung, that everything in the universe has no nature of its own, they said, that should not be mirungwa, taken literally, darje shindu.

Mind-Only School. The second turning of the wheel, you cannot consider it on face value. You cannot take it literally.

There's something wrong with that. And they not only say that, they benedruit for $50. They make great efforts to establish that.

Yeah, they really... 50 bucks, okay? Collected from your friend, okay?

Benedruit means, it doesn't mean they just say that. It means they spend all day saying that. They work hard.

They say it over and over again. Benedruit means they work so hard to keep saying that. All right.

Please read Ann Rob Harady from the Coffee Capital of the World. Sorry, I got lost. Oh.

You want to do it again? Yeah. I can't even say that wrong.

Sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

Is that nunchuck or not? It's nunchuck. JI NYES GCIG BYAS PA'I THAMS CAD KYIS BYAS PA'I THAMS CAD KYIS PHYI'I KHAGS BDUN GYIS RTZO BO NYID Okay, good.

GONG BRAL means, DO DE GONG BRAL means what, Utpala? Unraveling the true thought, or what I really meant, the sutra. Who wrote that commentary?

Shakyamuni Buddha. Yeah, and is it in the collection of commentaries? The collection of commentaries?

Tenggir. No. No, it's in the Kangyur.

It's confusing. It's a commentary, it's an auto-commentary by Lord Buddha. It's confusing because it's a commentary, but it's not in the commentary.

Okay, GONG BRAL NAS, when you say BRAL, you're looking at Tenggir, but you're mistaken. Okay, GSUM NAS NGO NYID GSUM LA, it describes three kinds of things that things don't have, three kinds of essences. RANG GIS GZHAN GYI'I RGYUD MAR BRUL Some of them exist on their own.

Some of them don't exist on their own. TSUL DAG GIS GZHAN PA'I PHYIR PA'I RNAM ZHIG GYIS NAS PHYIR PA'I THAMS CAD If you take the third turning of the wheel as being correct, and if you want, GAB DUN means each of the meanings of each of the separate sections. GAB DUN, the meaning of each of the separate sections.

TSUL NI, what he's saying in this sentence is, according to the mind-only school, according to the third turning of the wheel, what's the main point here? What's the most important point? GAB DUN, TSUL, TSUL means what's the main one?

Like LAM TSUL, LAM TSUL, three principal paths, right? Okay, what's the... Here it is.

Please read and... But isn't it... Sorry?

Wasn't there somewhere in here that it's skillful to take it as literal, the way that... Oh, when you take... I took a stab at this, that it's skillful to take as literal, as set in unraveling the true thought, the way to distinguish whether the three essential natures exist by definition or not.

Would the mind-only school take the third turning of the wheel as being literal?

[Speaker 3]
Yeah.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, that's the main point here. Okay. Please read and Tim is gonna...

Do you wanna sit up here? Tim's gonna do it on his own machine. Okay, go.

Please read. Great. LUK TEE DAK ME TEN LA BAP PA KHAENG KHAEK PA LA RAK LE PAY DROD NDOK DANG KURN DEP KEE CHOK LEK PAR NGU TSIN NE DER DAK TSUL JEE THAR KAK PAY GO NEY DAK ME NEE JEE THAR NAM PAR JOK PA DANG DE'I MDRA BA'I DAK ME NEE GOM PAR JEE PA'I DROD PA'I KHAENG PANG PAY NGRE BU DZANG DROD KHAENG NGON DU DROD PA'I SHES PA NYID YIN NO Good, okay.

NYID YIN NO Okay, good. And by the way, we're gonna get to these two points. One is DROD NDOK and one is KURN DEP.

KURN DEP is in Section 238. DROD NDOK is in Section 239. So in this system, in this mind-only school, when they are trying to decide what is a lack of self-nature, DAK ME TEN LA BAP PA, what are they trying to kick?

GAR. What are they trying to negate? Well, what are they trying to negate?

Okay, the whole presentation of either you overestimated reality or you underestimated reality, DROD NDOK or KURN DEP, CHOG, identifying what it is to overestimate reality and identifying what it is to underestimate reality depends on refusing the correct non-existent thing. Okay? The self-nature, okay?

DE DAG TSUL JI LTAR RGAGS PA'I DGONG NAS They have a certain way of denying, overestimating and underestimating. And that's how they come to the two kinds of no self-nature, which is no self-nature of... People and things.

Okay, that's how they get there. Number jumping down. And they say that if you're able to identify those two kinds of no self-existence, person and things, things meaning the parts of the person, if you are able to KOM PA'I PHYIR, here means if you get used to those ideas, those two kinds of emptinesses, PHYIR PA'I KHANGS PA'I DE, you can get rid of your obstacles, okay?

And then you can get to the DER BA, which is what? You can get to the result, which is... Final goal.

Final goal. KHANGS RUNG DU BYAS PA ZHES PA GNYIS NO Meaning, how did they identify Buddhahood? What does it mean in the mind-only school to reach Buddhahood?

What's Buddhahood look like to the mind-only school? Okay? That's what he's saying.

Okay, now we're going to talk about the idea of underestimating and overestimating, okay? Underestimating and overestimating. Here we go.

Who's up? I'm going to pick on somebody fun. Who?

Daniel. Okay, let's go Daniel. You ready?

Are you there? Daniel.

[Speaker 2]
I am here, but I can't speak Tibetan.

[Speaker 1]
Listen, the rule is interrupt the person on every third word. And say, I can't...

[Speaker 2]
Okay, I can do that.

[Speaker 1]
Okay, here we go.

[Speaker 2]
Not really sure.

[Speaker 1]
DE LA KUN DEBS NI RIGS TE ZHAG PA KHO NA THANG DE YANG RANG DE NGO BO NI MED PAR MA WE RIGS SU NGAR ZHES PA DE LTA BU NAM STE KUN DEBS KYIS ZHAG DE NYID LA RGAGS PA DONG PAS DGOS JI LTA BU YIN PA SOGS NI NGAR ZHES PA'I ZHAG BSAM DGOS BAR NUS SO Yeah, so let's take it to the kitchen, okay? What's... Why are you whining about the kitchen?

Well, because I want to translate these words. Understand them first and then easy to translate. Okay, what's overestimating in the kitchen?

Thinking that the husband ate too much food and that's why he's grumpy. What's underestimating in the kitchen? If he didn't eat too much food, if he didn't exist that way, then he doesn't exist at all.

Good, if that's not the real husband, then there is... Then there's no husband, yes. That's called underestimating, okay?

Now, it's a famous principle of these discussions that the underestimating extreme is really only possible with a person who has misunderstood Buddhist philosophy. And that's the point I'm trying to make. That's why I brought the kitchen here, okay?

KUN BDEBS NI, DUB DE BZHAG PA KHO NA It's only... The idea that the stuff around you is not real, it only really happens with people who misunderstood a Buddhist teaching, okay? Oh, nothing's real.

I can do anything I want. The many, many people... I've heard many people say that.

Nothing's real. I can do any kind of immoral thing I want. It's not real anywhere.

So it's only people who are DUB DE BZHAG PA who have been influenced by philosophical schools, bad explanations of emptiness. They are the ones who tend to say nothing's there. I can do anything I want, okay?

They are...

[Speaker 2]
Is that called nihilism most of the time?

[Speaker 1]
I'm sorry, say again?

[Speaker 2]
Is that referred to as nihilism most of the time?

[Speaker 1]
I think you could say that. Yeah, you could say that. In fact, the word nihilism is a philosophical group word.

Okay. It's not something you hear in the restaurant, except about the tip. Okay, Deon, why don't you take a look at this?

Okay, so those people who say that there is no essence to thing, who's that? Which turning of the wheel? The second.

Yeah, good. Those guys who say nothing's real and nothing has any nature, ngo-wa-nyi-me-pa, as I explained before, those are the guys we're talking about when we say kun-deb-drup-te-shak-pa. What does that mean?

People who are influenced by philosophy to think that nothing exists. Good, yeah. According to the mind-only people, the middle-weight people fall in that category.

They are deluded. They are crazy. Okay, and they're crazy because they were taught some weird Buddhism called the second turning of the wheel.

Okay, called the Dharmakaya Sutra. Okay, ma-way-luk-mi-ngar-she-pa-dey-ta-pa-nam-te. kun-deb-drup-te-shak-pa de-nyi-la gak-pa-de-go-chi-ta-po-yin-pa-so-ngar-she-pa-chok-sam-kor-nu Look, how does the mind-only school reject gak-pa?

This version of underrating, meaning the middle-weight school people underrating things, how does the mind-only school reject them or fight against them? dun-pe-go-chi-ta-po-yin-pa If you want to know about that, if you read carefully the sections up to now, you can figure it out yourself. chok-sam-kor-nu-so If you just read what we covered carefully, you can imagine how the mind-only school would attack the middle-weight school.

I don't have to go into it. If you have a good understanding of mind-only school, you can imagine how they say that the middle-weight school is underrating reality and how they try to attack them. I don't need to go into it.

Okay, cool? kor-nu means you can figure it out. All right.

Okay, 239. Alex Rivas. All right.

[Speaker 3]
Yeah.

[Speaker 1]
dom-do-pla-kun-tak-tang-kwen-ke-yi-la kun-tak-ni-shen-te-rang-de-jun-sum-ra-yi-gi-luk-so Ma? Ma. Thank you.

Ma-ni-gi-luk-so Now, there's an important thing in this sentence. Kun-tak has two completely different meanings. In the mind-only school, it means the blue which is outside.

It means the gaccha, made-up thing, kun-tak. Kun-tak means totally imaginary. So, in the mind-only school and the three characteristics of the mind-only school, kun-tak refers to the gaccha, that which is impossible.

Meaning, a husband who is physically outside of you or a husband who has to be called good or bad on his own side, right? That's the two kind of mind-only gacchas, okay? Mainly.

But, when you talk about a bad habit, like marikpa, misunderstanding things, that's also described in two categories of kun-tak and chen-kye. And that kun-tak has nothing to do with the first kun-tak. When you say kun-tak as far as marikpa, it means, did you learn the marikpa later in life or was it chen-kye?

Was it inborn? Were you born with it? Was it installed in the factory?

Or did you pick it up later? So, kun-tak, unfortunately, the word has two completely different meanings. One means, did you learn it later in life from somebody?

And the other means, you just picked it up, like a rabbit with horns or something like that, okay? That's called kun-tak, an imaginary thing, okay? So, try to keep that in mind when you read these sentences.

So, jong-do, the habit of overestimating, the habit of believing that the husband is upset because he didn't get a good dinner yet, okay? Jong-do, putting extra stuff on top of it that doesn't belong there, that can be divided into kun-tak and chen-kye. Okay.

That could be, yeah. Into what you've learned from some philosophical school? Yeah, you pick it up later in life or you're born with it, okay?

But kun-dat, underestimating is always... Learned, kun-tak. Learned, kun-tak, okay?

It's always learned from a bad explanation of emptiness. Nothing exists, okay? So, kun-tak, sorry.

Kun-dat, underestimating, is always learned. And jong-do, sorry. Jong-do, overestimating, can either be natural, you were born with it, or it was a problem that you learned later on in your life.

Okay, got it? He's making that distinction. Ni yon-lak.

Kun-tak di shen de dang dang de dun ma ni kyi duk so. And when you talk about kun-tak, when you talk about how it was learned later, it could have been learned from shen-des or rang-des. When you say it's a result of bad spiritual education, that could mean...

Your own community or other communities. Bad Buddhist explanations or bad non-Buddhist explanations. Okay, which are all bad.

But anyway. And then, dun ma, who's the problem in our own school? What do you mean our own school?

Buddhist schools, okay? Oh. Rang-de.

Who are the Buddhists who have trouble, who mis-explain things, and then everyone goes around overestimating? It depends on who's speaking. Here he says dun ma-wa.

Dun ma-wa, okay? Dun ma-wa. And I take it to be ngupa ma-wa, which means what?

The detailists. Functionalists. Well, the first three and a half schools.

Okay, the first three and a half schools. To some extent, they believe that functioning things come from the outside. Nobody made a bean a pea round.

Nobody made a fire hot. Anything that does something, does it from its own side, okay? And he's identifying the people in our Buddhist schools who have a problem with these tendencies.

Learned tendencies to overestimate. Learned tendencies to overestimate are linked to Buddhist schools. How many are going to go to parties now?

Someone is playing music. Could you please, thank you. Man, it's hard to pick that up.

I thought it was the heavenly angels. That's what I thought. Reading with me.

I'll say it again. The way you pick up drondo, the habit of overestimating things, in a kundak way, in a learned way, in a rangde way, in a Buddhist context, is that you hang out with those guys who say that fire is hot from its own side. When something does something, it does it from its own side.

And not because I made it hot, okay? Fire is not hot because I made it hot. Swords are not sharp because I made them sharp.

Peas are not round because I made them round. And Sthiramati, it was his fault at the Tara Stupa. Right?

Right? Yeah. Yeah, the peas rolled because he made them round.

Yeah, he made them round. That's his fault. If I was Tara, that's what I would tell him.

All right, let's go. Who we got here? I'm wishing he would give us a little clue that when he's gonna put the middle way hat on.

Yeah, no. Because when he does speak about mind only, he speaks mind only talk. Yeah.

He's a good writer because when he presents the mind only school, you believe he is mind only.

[Speaker 3]
Right.

[Speaker 1]
Feels like mind only. He's so passionate about it. And then he drops out of that so easily and attacks it.

And what Venerable Utpal is saying, it's kind of weird and it's hard to know where he is. I'll tell you, Sugeng's presentation of the Wheel of Life is fascinating this way because Vasubandhu drops out of disguise, gets out of the closet as a mind only. And he forgets the Abhidharma stuff.

Here's the Wheel of Life according to the mind only, plus some middle way. That's why Sugeng's second Wheel of Life commentary is so sexy because you've got Vasubandhu dropping his disguise for the first time, the only time. And he sounds like his brother.

All right, anyway, here we go. Please read. All right.

CHEG PA LAS ZHES PAR GYUR RO Okay, so I talked to you about KUN THAG, which means learn the bad habits about seeing things as self-existent. But let's talk about GZHAN GYES. Let's talk about the...

The inborn tendency to see things as self-existent? Yeah. When we talk about the one that was installed at the factory before you were born, okay?

There's two forms of it, overestimating the GANG ZAG and overestimating the CHEG. Yeah, the person and things. Yeah, the person and the parts of the person, okay?

So when you talk about an inborn habit of seeing too much as real, there's two versions of it. One is people and one is things, okay? By the way, traditionally, the things one is harder to overcome.

CHOS KYI BDAG MA'I SBYONG RTOG PA NYID LAS DANG PO JI LTAR PA YUN NO How is the first one? How do we misperceive people? How do we think people are more than they really are in an inborn way?

Okay? And how do you deny that? How do you stop that habit, which is called GANG ZAG KYI BDAG MA'I?

How do you see that the person has no self-existence? JI LTA BU NI YIN PA NI LUG DI This system, what's this system right now? Mind-only.

Yeah, in this system, in the mind-only school, and in the UMA RANG RGYUD PA system, lower middle way, lower middle way. Lower middle way. NI, those two, their SHES PA, their position, MIN DRA BA CHER MED No big differences.

There's no big distinction. What they both think is a self-existent person is very similar. The mind-only school and the lower middle way school.

Okay, got it? CHER MED DE DE'ANG PHYOGS TZAM And if you want to know a little bit about it, PHYOGS TZAM, if you want to know a little bit about it, OK TU CHE $20 We'll talk about it a little later. Yeah, 20 bucks, okay?

It's classic getting out of it by a teacher when he's got five minutes to go. Let's talk about it next time. He says, OK TU CHE PA means, I'll tell you more about it later.

What? How the mind-only school and the lower middle way school are similar in what they think is a self-existent person. We'll talk about it more later.

SHES PA RGYUR RO And you will understand it. Got it? You will understand it from my coming explanation.

All right, keep going. Wait, who's checking you? Venerable Jigme is begging me to be allowed to check you.

You ready? Sure. Here you go, first line here.

Okay, Venerable Pa, go for it. PHYOGS KYI BDAG TU DRON DROG PA LUGS NI JI LTA BU ZHIG LA BDE PA DANG DE DROG PAR BSKYED PA'I PHYOGS KYI BDAG ME JI LTA BU ZHIG LA BDE PA NI SHIN TU DROG PAR DKA' BA'I NI THAR THUGS PA YIN LA Wow, PHYOGS KYI BDAG TU DRON DROG PA When you talk about the emptiness of things and not the person, okay? Or when you talk about the nature of things and not the self-nature of the person.

And when you talk about overestimating the self-nature of things, what does this school, meaning... Mind-only. Mind-only school believe, okay?

And how do you fight against it successfully? ZOG PA, okay? How do you totally blow it away?

ZOG PA SKYED PA'I PHYOGS KYI BDAG ME What does the no-self-existence of things look like as opposed to the no-self-existence of the person? The person in these two schools, mind-only, normal way, is relatively easy. The part, the things, that BDAG ME, how it is, DOG PAR BKA'O.

Very difficult. Their DIPA is DOG PAR BKA'O. Their position.

Their position is very difficult. On the lack of self-nature to things is extremely difficult to get straight, okay? In fact, you could call it, DOG PAR BKA'O BA'I ME THAR BU'O.

So, the ultimate difficult thing to understand. I thought that was Adam's text. Okay?

You can say it's the hardest thing of all to understand. What's the position of these two schools on the lack of a self to things? By the way- Are we talking, we're talking about mind-only and lower middle way still?

Yep. And let me say one thing. In BDAG ME THAR RAG TSUM, say BDAG ME.

BDAG ME. THAR RAG. THAR RAG.

Lower middle way. The gross lack of a self-nature to the person, the subtle lack of a self-nature to the person, and the lack of self-nature to things is three levels of emptiness according to these schools. They are different.

And smart people see the third, and the second, and the first. Some people only see the first. Some people only see the first two.

So they say you work your way up through different kinds of emptiness. And the difference in their mind between the ultimate version of emptiness and the halfway version of emptiness and the one-third version of emptiness, to understand those clearly is very difficult. And it's not really very difficult.

It's pretty easy. So we'll get to it. Okay.

All right. But I mean, if you're very interested, which nobody will be, but we did a book about it. It's the first book Rinpoche ever printed, which was called, what's it called?

What's it called? What's it called? Levels of...

No, there was a book before that. What's it called? Sai Namshat, Namgyun Namshat.

Sang Namgyun Namshat, Levels and Paths. It's called Levels and Paths.

[Speaker 3]
Oh, Levels and Paths.

[Speaker 1]
A good presentation of the three flavors of emptiness.

[Speaker 2]
Does that still exist somewhere?

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, I bet you can find it. It's like $2,000 on Amazon or something.

[Speaker 3]
Bargain.

[Speaker 1]
I knew, somebody knew Kramer would be looking for it. It's called, what's it called? I'll look for it, okay?

I have it around here somewhere. But it's a brilliant presentation by Rinpoche of the difference between those three kinds of emptiness. Sang Nam Topso, Methods of Achieving the Paths.

Methods of Achieving the Paths. All right. Okay, I think we're at time.

Am I right? It's true. Yes, unfortunately.

Would you please give me some homework? Yeah. I love 242.

Do 242. Do you? Okay, good.

Thank you. You're very welcome. It's my pleasure.

I hope I always can do it. Okay. I hope you can too.

Sashi me. Give me some. Sashi you.

All right, see you tomorrow morning. Get some sleep. Don't stay up.

Don't Netflix. Thank you, Geshe-la.

[Speaker 3]
Thanks, Geshe-la.

[Speaker 1]
Thanks so much. Thank you. Thanks, everybody.

Eat yoga tomorrow. And everyone rejoice in the number of seeds you just planted in the past 55 minutes to see emptiness directly. Thank you.

Hey, Nick, me and the gang, we might work out at the gym tomorrow, but I'll let you know. All right. Well, we have a class scheduled for four either way.

So for anyone who wants to attend for yoga. Okay. Okay.

Cool, cool.

[Speaker 3]
Thank you, Geshe-la.

[Speaker 1]
All right. Thank you so much. See you later, alligator.

Thank you, Geshe-la. I love you. Hey.

Hey, Geshe-la. Shukola. Shukola.

[Speaker 2]
Shukola.

[Speaker 3]
Shukola.