Бетси Грир — Книга 2: Интерлюдия о пустоте, занятие 43

[Speaker 2]
Hello, we've got some a few questions in the chat.

[Speaker 1]
So first of all, I just want to say thank you for your interest in the teachings and your interest in practicing the Dharma, making it real in your life and in your hearts. I think it's, um, I mean, that's what it's all about, right? The Buddha didn't teach just to hear himself speak.

He taught so that we could remove suffering from our lives and reach our very highest potential. And so, um, he's not here right now. And so we have each other.

And I'm so grateful for that. So thank you. Um, see, so I hope that there is some benefit or some help that I can give, give you share with you from my experience.

So the first question is, in ALO2 meditation, which I have to tell you, I don't know what that is. I've never heard that before. But why do we visualize the external ice cream, and then cover it with the chocolate illumination picture to become what we want?

What does the external ice cream mean? And how should we think about the external things? So even though I don't know this meditation, I can sort of guess.

[Speaker 3]
Yeah, actually, she's mentioned about DCI advanced level two.

[Speaker 1]
Okay, yeah, I haven't taken any DCI courses. So I'll just do my best. Um, so if you think about all of our perceptions, come to us through our sense powers, our eyes, our ears, our nose, our mouth, our fingers, our skin.

And so sort of the process of perception of what it is we're perceiving is that our, let's take a visual perception as an example. So our eyes see colors and shapes. So what comes into us is, let's say, where's my pen?

I mean, where's my, um, I got to put in front of my face. What come into through our eyes is like this long, thin shape. And this color of smoky, clear and black.

That's all that comes in through our eyeball. And when we, what was the word you used here? The luminous picture.

So the luminous picture is the ripening of the karmic seed to see this the way that we do. So I have the karma to see this as a pen. Now, if I want to see this as a stick of diamond instead of a pen, then I need to start creating the seeds to see diamond with my eyes.

Right. Now, is this thing going to change into a diamond? Yeah, you know, probably not because it already, this karma is kind of like, um, I mean, we talked about it in my class last night.

I've made the, the association or the connections between the visual aspect of this thing, how this thing appears to me and the word pen. And I've been doing that forever and ever, and ever and ever for time with no beginning, countless time. And so to, to change, I don't know, what do you call it?

Change that karma. It's a very strong propensity to call this thing a pen and to change it into calling it a diamond is going to take a lot of work. I'm going to have to plant a lot of seeds and, and really be deliberate in how I do so.

So I hope that's helpful to your questions. Yin-Yin. A person has a very serious question about an ex-partner who is violent emotionally and verbally.

He's not keeping up his end of the bargain in terms of paying for child support or caring for their son. So she says, sometimes I tell myself to love the person who hurt me. So I will just let it be.

However, sometimes I remember that the system doesn't tell us to be bullied, but to take action. Then I would think about taking him to court. Can you help me to understand this more?

How should I approach this issue? Also, I feel that he is mentally troubled and what seed should I plant to change what I see? So the first thing I'd want to say is that when, when we experience things like being threatened, while it is true that that threat that we are experiencing comes from us.

We created having that experience by threatening others in the past. We need to remember that that doesn't mean they can't harm us just because we created it. So what, what I'm trying to say is even though things are not coming at me, they're coming from me.

I need to remember that that's all I have. That's all my world is for me to experience. It's, is what I've created in the past.

And that's what I have to work with. And I need to work with it. Even when I keep the understanding that it's coming from me, I need to A, protect my children.

I need to B, protect my life as well. So I just wanted to make sure that was clear. Now in terms of like what exactly to do, there's, here's the thing.

There's no right answers. None. They don't exist.

What will work? I don't know. I think one of the reasons they call this practicing the teachings is that we, we try different things.

You know, what exactly did we do in the past to create this kind of a person in our lives? We don't know precisely. An enlightened being knows, but at our level, assuming you're like me, uh, we don't know exactly what we did.

And so we don't know exactly what to do to change the experience quickly. So think about the laws of karma. You know, that we know the general laws that if you do things that please others, you will get a pleasant result.

Um, we know that karma grows, right? Uh, if we do, if I, if I give Venerable Gyalse this pen this morning and the seed sits around for a long time, you know, in a year, I'm going to get back, you know, boxes of pens or something. Karma grows.

Um, if, if I don't want to experience the results, I shouldn't plant the seed, right? And if I've planted the seed, I am going to experience the result. But then there's also, uh, like ways that karma works that we can take advantage of.

Karma it's like, we're a machine in a way, you know, it's not that we have karma. We are karma. Um, and so we need to work the machine.

So what makes karma ripen more quickly? Uh, it's when we understand how things work, why things work. Oh, this is not what it is from its own side.

It comes from me. Um, this comes from me having helped other people communicate in the past, or I gave them a pen. So understanding that mechanism, keeping that in conscious awareness at the forefront of our minds, we say in English, um, as we act in the world in whatever we do makes our actions create a more powerful seed, having the motivation in the morning, especially wake up, you know, may, may everything I do today be of the highest benefit to whoever I talk to, to whoever sees me on the street, to whoever mentions my name, uh, to whoever hears my voice or hears me moving around the kitchen or whatever.

Um, if we set the motivation that everything I do today is for the benefit of others, that they no longer have suffering is that they reach the highest goals. That makes what I do during the day more powerful because I've set that motivation firmly in my mind. I keep firmly in my mind, the mechanism of how, how this machine works.

And now like in, in your example, their purses, um, if you want to, I mean, think, think clearly about what it is you want to see, um, define it. And I, there was a group of us who, who wanted to try and experiment with working with karma. And we, we knew a person who was having a hard time, um, getting angry very easily, uh, someone who's a practitioner that we know.

And so it was like, Oh, he's, he's having a very hard time. And so we, we, we look to see, because we all know that this is our past actions ripening in front of us. Right.

Um, from each of our perspectives, we looked at the situation to examine what it is that's going on and like what the problem might be, what the thing might be, what, what part of the teaching might be forgotten in the moment that allowed the anger to arise? Like, what is the thing that if I remembered this right now, I would be able to not get angry. Right.

Like we were talking about in, um, in, uh, Gibson's text. Um, so we thought about, Oh, I need to know about this teaching about, uh, the perfection of not getting angry. And then we each looked in our own lives and our own experience.

What are the times in my life where I applied this teaching, what was going on? Who was it with what happened? How did I apply the teaching and, and how did it function in, in, you know, controlling me being able to control myself.

So we each thought about that. And then we shared with each other, Oh, you know, this time here, I was in this situation and this person walked in the room and I did this. So we each shared those times and then we rejoiced about it.

How wonderful, you know, here's a specific instance where I'm, I was able to apply the teachings and then we dedicated it may made this experience or these experiences. Cause we're each sharing, um, maybe these experiences result in us seeing, uh, no one get angry ever again. We let be the end of anger.

That's it finished done. So we, we met a few times over, I don't know, a few days and golly, if we didn't change our experience, that person, it was like something just felt like whatever obstacle it was, uh, from being able to be not get angry, uh, was gone. And they were the most pleasant and calm and composed person ever.

Now, can I say, uh, definitely that our group, what we did was the cause of this person no longer getting angry. No, I cannot. I am not an enlightened being.

Can I say that my experience was that we did this. And then I had a different experience of this person later that I kept these things in mind about the machine, how the machine works. And then I applied them very purposely.

Um, I can say, well, that, you know, that's, that's my experience. So you could give, you could give that a try. You know, if you know, you know, this person well, so maybe, you know, um, something about like what his issue may be and, and you can think in your own life about times you have worked karma successfully about that issue.

Be very deep, very specific, very detailed and, and rejoice and dedicate towards, um, that person being, you know, kind or friendly or loving or whatever it is you want to see like that.

[Speaker 2]
I hope that's helpful.

[Speaker 1]
Oh, and, uh, that's a very difficult question. How does the pen explanation vary depending on which school you're applying? I'm interested in the difference between the mind only explanation and the lower middle way.

Uh, I, uh, I only know at a rather superficial level. So that's the only way I'll be able to address it. So from my only point of view, um, there's, there's a, as we talked about last night, there's this longstanding mental habit of calling this thing a pen.

And so when this, when this propensity ripens into an experience, it ripened into me. Uh, it ripens into this thing in my hand and it ripens into me. Uh, experiencing it.

So it's all my, uh, it's all coming from that seed. There's nothing outside. It's all, it's all coming from this seed that ripened from my mind, from the lower middle way perspective.

I mean, I need to study the lower middle way more because I have this sort of crazy idea that it, it seems like a step backwards. You know, I see mind only seems so very close to higher middle way. So very close.

And then lower middle way says, well, hang on a minute. Hold on. There's gotta be something about this thing that suggests pen.

There has to be something coming this way or something about this that's pen, a little bit pen. And, and they have to come together. They have to meet.

So this idea of pen coming here and this karma ripening of, of experiencing a pen, you know, they have to match. And then, and then you have like a correct identification and experience of pen. And they, you know, they do say that the dog is going to see the chew toy because there's something about this thing that has chew toy in it as well.

And there's something about this thing that has stick of diamond in it too, but I don't have the karma that matches it. That's it. So that's my superficial rush.

[Speaker 2]
Okay. And this is from Shijun.

[Speaker 1]
Why is it said that the archetype is transient and unchanging?

[Speaker 2]
Those two words don't seem to match. So, so transient means it's not permanent.

[Speaker 1]
Transient means it lasts only for a short time. Is that, so why, why is the archetype last for only a short time, but is unchanging? How does my consciousness make the archetype of car from the first car?

If at the first time my mom pointed at a car and told me wrongly, it's a ship, then how does my consciousness work? So this is when we use the word archetype, that's usually that's like, that's coming from the Sutra philosophical school. The one that we're using for Adam's text.

When we talk about whether something is an archetype or a manifestation of something and our, our mental picture, the archetype, the idea, the mental concept, pen or car is the ripening of a karmic seed. I think we have to remember that all the Buddhist philosophical schools hold that there is no beginning to time. There, there is no first time.

There may be a first time in this life, but there's not a first time in, in, I say this life, in this personality's life, in this particular combination of personality and body and mind. But this, this life, if you think about it, you step back out of this personality in this particular combination of skin and bones. Life has, there was no first moment of life.

There's no last moment of life. It just has no beginning, has no end. So I don't know if you can say the first time you ever saw a car, but you know, if your mom tells you that a car is a ship, you know, it depends on what your karma is, right?

It may be that you call it a ship for like the first five years of this particular life, this personality, body, bag of bones. You call it a ship. Look, mommy, ship.

And then the first day you go to school with other kids and you say, look, that's my favorite ship. And they're all like laughing at you. That's not a ship.

That's a car. And you hear that enough times and you get very embarrassed and you go home, mommy, mommy, is it a ship or a car? People say it's a car.

Then, you know, like either mom figures out, oops, oops, I made a mistake. It really is called car. And then you call it a car, but there's nothing about the thing as car.

There is no thing called car. It's just a word. It's just a label.

It's just an idea.

[Speaker 2]
How does consciousness work?

[Speaker 1]
Well, my goodness, I really don't. I mean, it's a really good question.

[Speaker 2]
Because all consciousness is, is being aware, clear and aware, conscious of, aware of.

[Speaker 1]
And so what we experience, what our awareness, what we are aware of is, is like coming through this, these particular portals or doors of sense, they call them, of this bag of bones. And, and so we're, what we can experience or be conscious of is very limited. My eyes can only see a certain range of color.

They can only see a certain distance away. They can't see back here. They only point this way.

So if I want to see something over there, I got to move my head. You know, I'm very limited in, in what I can experience based on this bag of bones. And so I could be like a bird.

We know that, like, for example, that they've done these scientific experiments where they figured out what colors birds see. And they see color much differently than human beings see color. And they've created these pictures that simulate what the world looks like to birds.

And it's like, wow, it's so colorful and beautiful. And it's so different than what I experienced. So consciousness is just clear and aware.

And we, there's nothing that could limit what it could be aware of other than what we create the causes for. So because we know how the machine works, we can create the causes to experience diamond sticks, or, you know, a beautiful, colorful world, or people who are generous and friendly and loving everywhere we go. That, oh, the color blue tastes delicious.

[Speaker 2]
Right? We can experience anything. I hope that helps.

[Speaker 1]
And I'll come back to your question later. I want to give other people opportunity if that's okay. Elmira asks, there are three appearances of blue.

There's being blue. There's being seen as blue, visibility, and started as blue. How can the third position be understood?

Okay, so these are just three examples. The first one, being blue, is its essential, so-called essential nature. It's null.

So this is according to what we've been studying in the mind only school, right? Or we should, I should step back and say KJJ, who's a higher middle way practitioner, is writing about what Jason Kappa, a higher middle way practitioner, said about the mind only school. So we have to, like, keep all that in mind.

So that's its essential nature is blue. This is blue. I don't have anything blue.

Oh, yes, I do. No, that's purple. Sorry, I don't have anything blue to hold up.

[Speaker 2]
But anyway, this is a visible thing. Yeah.

[Speaker 1]
So Catherine's holding a blue thing, and it's visible. It's something that can be seen, as opposed to heard or tasted. She's touching it.

But I think she's touching cup and not blue. But anyway, now starting is blue. Well, we just experienced a stopping.

We no longer see blue. Catherine put the cup down, and blue stopped. So it started when she picked it up.

And my eye was looking away, so I missed the starting. So your starting, if you were looking at Catherine, was at a different time than my starting, because I was looking over here and turned my head. And that's the characteristic of that blue.

Does that help? I mean, generally, when Arya Nagarjuna, for example, in his book on wisdom, he talks about how things starting, things staying, and things stopping. I should use these three.

And that's like, in general, the way we talk about things that change. They come they come into existence, they exist for a while, and then they stop existing. So that's just when they talk about, hey, what's a characteristic mean of a thing?

They say, oh, yeah, it's the starting and the staying and the stopping.

[Speaker 2]
I hope that helps. Things stopping and stopping, right? What's that?

It's just, it's just like a process. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. Thank you.

[Speaker 1]
Um, Jasmine asks, can those who see emptiness plants, a soulmate seed to have a soulmate in a month?

[Speaker 2]
I'm going to say something funny. Show me where your soul is.

[Speaker 1]
Okay, never mind. I know what you mean. Um, can is it possible?

Sure, it's possible. Is it likely? You know, I have not, what does it depend on for, for a karmic seed to ripen into an experience?

Remembering that we have lived countless lives? You know, how many seeds have we planted to have the experience of a soulmate? And how deeply or, you know, how strongly did we plant them?

How strong are those seeds? How clear is our understanding of emptiness? How, how well are we keeping our vows?

How skillfully are we creating causes for a partner? You know, are we helping the little old lady who's in a nursing home and lonely? Are we helping her just so we can get a partner?

Or do we get that my experience of a little old lady sitting alone in a room and, and being lonely. That's me. I created that.

And I can't stand to see that exist in my world anymore. I can't stand to see lonely people. There's so many of us, we can all be with each other.

We can all love each other. We can all help each other. If you have, is that the motivation?

No more loneliness, period. That may be a stronger motivation than a partner. I want a partner.

[Speaker 2]
So yeah, it's possible. Possible.

[Speaker 1]
And there's something, I can't remember what text it was from, but years ago, studying Bodhisattvas, there was this idea that Bodhisattvas act in the world without, without concern for result. They are 100% concentrated on creating causes. That's it.

I'm creating causes. I'm creating causes. I'm creating causes.

I'm not looking for results. I'm creating causes. I'm creating causes.

When that focus goes off of, I want to experience this result and goes on to, I want to create the causes for this to happen everywhere, for everybody. Things happen quickly. We have to take ourselves, me, this me, this little me, this cause of all of our problems and crush it.

We have to like, no, it, yeah, we have to broaden our motivation. I don't know. I hope that helps.

Claudia says, in my experience as a nun, do I have an advice on how, how to protect life when there's a difficult situation? Oh, a dog with ticks sucked to her and we didn't notice till later. I know there's a way to take them out from the dog so it does not hurt the ticks, but what to do after I take them out?

Normally if we put them in the park or in nature around a lonely place in the city, they are going to stick to someone else and it's kind of animal can transmit diseases. What do you think the seed to experience that kind of situation and how can I change it? Yeah, that's a, that's a very tough one.

So we've got this poor being who her life is just about sucking blood from other people or other beings. And this being has to find ways to, to harm. This being can only exist through harming others, stealing from others, taking their life force.

Man, what a, an awful situation. And isn't that the one we're all in?

[Speaker 2]
Really? We're almost forced to hurt people, to grow our food.

[Speaker 1]
You know, forget, even if we're a vegetarian to grow our food, we're killing being when we harvest it, when we clean it. So there, I guess what I'm trying to say is there's no perfect, there's no way to be perfect in protecting life until you create the causes to be able to be perfect in protecting life. And so just do what you're able to, what your experience allows you to do.

It's like we have this saying, I can only do the best that I can do at the moment. That best may change over time because of my practice. I may be able to do more better later because I've created the cause to do more and better.

So do the best you can to protect life. You know, you're protecting your dog. You want to protect other people.

You want to protect that little tick from creating the karma to experience that kind of life over and over, right? Harming people. So motivation is very important.

And then, and rejoicing in what you're able to do and dedicating it. Those are very important aspects to creating the karma for things.

[Speaker 2]
That's how this machine works. Motivation, action, rejoicing, and dedication.

[Speaker 1]
I hope that helped. I wish there were like the right answer. Just do this and it's fine.

Find ways to, if you can't protect the tick's life, find another life you can protect and dedicate it towards beings like that, beings like ticks. Finding some other way to exist than harming people. You know, be creative in your motivation and your dedication and what you do.

You can take anything you do and turn it into a powerful practice. I mean, we kind of think that, oh, practice is just about like when I'm on the cushion or when I've got some big, important thing to do. But no, you can make walking down the street a powerful practice.

I'm being aware as I walk down the streets of the beings I can see. I know I can't see all beings, but I can see ants and I can see spiders and so on. I'm in the desert, right?

So, we've got a lot of those crawling around. And as I, each step, each step, each step is protecting life. Each step and made that protect all life.

So, walking half a block can create a huge amount of karma. I think that's what the Bodhisattvas are. It's very skillful in every moment using it as working the machine, just working the machine.

Michael asks, does the shape and color come from the seed too? Or it's just that our eyes can catch it. So, yeah, there's nothing that does not come from seeds or everything comes from seeds.

A little more powerful to say there is nothing that does not come from seeds. I mean, that's a great meditation. There's this meditation called, it's called Dhamkatadu.

It's an empty space-like meditation. And you picture yourself lying on the ground in a nice meadow under a tree, or maybe not under a tree because you want to see the sky. You're on a nice meadow and you look up and you, this is all in your meditation.

And you look up and you can see, you have super sight and you can see out into space. So, you can, you just be in outer space, black space, empty space. And then you come in a little and you look at the sky, our atmosphere, our tiny little atmosphere over the earth.

And you contemplate how that is empty. And then you consider how everything, the meadow underneath you, the sensation of the meadow underneath your back, in the back of your legs and the sound of the birds and the sweet smell of flowers nearby and how all of those things, how none of those things is not coming from you.

[Speaker 2]
Like that.

[Speaker 1]
Svetlana asks, how could we enhance our coffee meditation and dedicate good seeds to make better intellectual understanding of emptiness and seeing emptiness directly to make it much closer to the current moment? How could we better and stronger purify the obstacles from direct perception of emptiness? So, thinking about, yeah, coffee meditation is super, super important or the rejoicing aspect over good things we have done.

So, and thank you for bringing this up because I should be doing this like every night after classes is rejoicing in any time in my experience that I can remember where I have helped someone understand something. Any time I've done that, whether it was teaching someone how to play piano or helping someone whose birth language is different from mine, helping them read English or any little thing. How to work like, oh, this particular kitchen gadget, it works like this.

You know, any time I've helped someone understand something, think about those things, those times, and then rejoice that I helped someone understand something and dedicate it towards everyone having pure understanding that no one have misunderstanding. That misunderstanding, poof, it's gone from the world by what I've done. So, really make it make it powerful, powerful, powerful by how detailed you are in your remembrance of what you've done and then in how big you make your dedication.

You know, find opportunities to teach what you know to others when they want to know it, right? We don't like smarty pants. And then the other aspect is not just the understanding of the intellectual material, but it's the ability to keep our mind single-pointed on an object without distraction and without for as long as we want to.

We have to be at that place in our meditation in order to see emptiness directly. And so, to be able to meditate like that, we need to, you know, to support that, we should be keeping our ethical vows purely and cleaning away any obstacles we have created through breaking vows. And we need to behave in an ethical way with other people.

Keep, you know, refrain ourselves from doing any little thing that would harm someone else or create an uncomfortable situation for ourselves in the future. Because meditation requires this, this peaceful, calm, platform. And it's very difficult to get there when we're not behaving well.

Oh gosh, we're at eight o'clock already. And there's 35 new messages. Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry.

I'm sorry I wasn't able to get to everyone's question. I hope that these questions were helpful to you, or this discussion. Thank you for your interest.

Thank you for your dedication, for your practice. Thank your families for allowing you to spend the time to be here. Thank, I'm grateful for Geshe Michael for clearly teaching for us.

I'm grateful for all the other translators. I'm grateful for all those who are translating my very fast, sorry, speaking into languages you can understand. And I'm very grateful for everyone who makes sure that the Zoom thing works for all of us.

I'm very grateful that, you know, for Apple and for whoever it is that created your computer or your phone or whoever that allows you to, for us to connect. We're all over the world. It's amazing.

We're on different sides of the planet. And we're connecting. It's just really, I mean, 50 years ago, this could not have happened.

This is new. We created this. It's amazing.

Rejoice, be happy. And I could go on and on, but then we would be here until the next class and we need a break. Okay.

Thank you very much. Take good care. Thank you again for your practice and see you later.