Бетси Грир — Книга 2: Интерлюдия о пустоте, занятие 76

[Speaker 1]
So happy together. There she is. We have an exciting class with Upala today.

And I'm looking forward, it's been a while since we've had your class with Geshe Michaels. It has. Yeah, I know.

I'm always really grateful to see how right and wrong we were. Right. Special thank you to all of our live translators, as Upala just said in the chat, and to Worldview Productions for doing our tech.

We're really, really grateful. I'm lucky for your help. There's Geshe Michael.

Hi, Geshe Michael. Good morning. Coming to us live from a secret location.

Somewhere in Rimrock area, maybe. Somewhere with not very good internet. I'm trying to get the screen working.

Can you hear me? We can hear you. Oh, yeah.

We're trying to get the big screen working. Cool. How are you feeling, Geshe Michael?

I'm good. Good. They're doing something like 14 vaccinations on me this week.

How are your eyeballs? Those are to be cut. Oh, to be cut.

Okay. Yeah, they got delayed. But my rear end is working neat, so.

I'm glad to hear it. I wasn't going to ask publicly. God bless all pleasures.

Could be worse, I suppose. Just think of that wasn't working. Yeah.

You good? Okay, we're ready to start Udpala, Venerable Udpala. Okay.

So thank you, everyone, for coming to this class on an interlude on emptiness by K. Trip J. And if you recall a few months ago, um, we were going through, uh, we were going through different commentators on Arya Nagarjuna's texts, and we came to a question about whether or not he had written a commentary on wisdom called Nothing to Fear, remember?

And K. Trip J. said that, uh, uh, no, that, that, that starts out, like, with a quotation from one of his students.

That just doesn't make sense. So that's where, that's where we were. So someone comes along to challenge him.

Does anybody remember what they said? It's a long time ago. I know, it's a long time ago.

Sorry about that, by the way. I'm, I'm happy to have time with you, whenever I can. They said, that's illogical, because Avalokiteśvara said it's not a commentary.

Uh, okay, okay. All right. So how did K.

Trip J. first respond in his usual way of dealing with such challenges? He called everybody an idiot, probably.

Close. He said, anyone who suspects that the omniscient Lord didn't consider that commentary is making themselves understood to be an utter fool. Okay.

[Speaker 3]
Okay.

[Speaker 1]
So then he goes on, and he provides several quotations from Nothing to Fear, related to wisdom, and highlighting inconsistencies with commentaries by masters Bhagaviveka, Buddhapalita, and Chandrakirti. What then did K. Trip J.

say about commentaries by those three scholars? Anatole said they are authoritative. Um, yes.

Yes. They are. Um, while those commentators, uh, quoted from some other auto commentary on stopping all arguments, many times they never quoted Nothing to Fear.

Okay. Very quick quiz, because we don't remember. Okay.

I don't.

[Speaker 3]
Attributed wrongly in this case.

[Speaker 1]
Yay, Oscar. Thank you. Attributed wrongly.

To borrow.

[Speaker 3]
Yeah.

[Speaker 1]
Yay. You're gonna get a gold star. Thank you.

What was that? To give. Oh, no, that's a different spelling.

It's a fool. Say again? The fool, right?

Yes. And such a fool. Hey, look, it's me.

I get the point. Okay, let's see. I will get now my.

By the way, Ben Kramer and his wife and his son are gonna teach in this next month. Be there or be scared. Thanks, boss.

We're, we're very excited. Kendra and Ezra are gonna teach and Ben's gonna run the tech, I think. Well, there's a good coffee place just a couple blocks away from the venue.

Perfect. In case it puts you to sleep. Thanks, boss.

We're, we're thrilled. Yeah, it's gonna be nice. Yeah, it is.

Okay. That's good. Utterly without examining words or meaning.

Yeah, good. Okay. It's perfect, actually.

I like it a lot. Okay. It's a very, Utpala, and it's very correct.

Somehow, there seems to be a reason why you ended up with K to J. I like it. It's fun.

It's great. Thank you. 470.

Yeah, and that comes along and says, well, they're in West Chandrakirti, the direct disciple of Ayin and Kachina. How could it be? Yeah, the yin or mayin just means, was he or wasn't he?

[Speaker 3]
Okay.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah. Okay, the rest is good. I think it's a little bit intriguing why, what, what's, if I, if I said there's a word missing in this sentence, what would you think it was?

[Speaker 3]
Upapa.

[Speaker 1]
Say again? Upapa, right? Yeah, I, personally, I think it's a little bit, as a, as a Buddhist, it's a little strange that he just mentions, Ming Jenpa.

Say Ming Jenpa. Ming Jenpa, that's a good name. He has referred to Chandrakirti as that guy, which is very unusual.

It's kind of improper. So I, I don't know why, but it's worth thinking about. Okay, normally you don't call Chandrakirti, hey Chandrakirti, you say, great master, wonderful, genius.

Chandrakirti, something like that, just by tradition. And he did it with Nagarjuna. He called him the Arya, but he didn't call, he didn't say, hey, let's keep going.

Okay. LHAG LHAG PA'I NGOS KYI BLO MAR BYAS PA BZHIN DU LEGS PA'I Good, okay. This is a little tricky.

BHO KYI UMAPA NGA MA The early who? Tibetan Madhyamakas. Yeah, the early middle wayers of Tibet, who are kind of famous for messing it up.

Oh, they're famous for messing it up. It was Rangdawa, Je Tsongkapa started the resurrection and Je Tsongkapa completed it. But before that, the Madhyamaka was pretty confused in Tibet.

So this could be a criticism almost. The early middle way messer-uppers, you see what I mean? No, I don't know.

Let's see. Yeah, they would say, no, be careful here. It's not LOB MA MA YIN, it's LOB MA YIN.

Oh. Yeah, he was a direct disciple. You see what I mean?

MA is the ending of the word student. It's not the negative here. So LOB MA means student.

YIN, he was the student. Somebody's saying he was. The early Madhyamaka guys in Tibet believed that Chandrakirti, Master Chandrakirti, was the direct disciple of Arya Nagarjuna.

Western scholars would say they are separated by three, four hundred years. But then every Tibetan is going to answer, well, he lived for 800 years, so what's the problem? Okay, okay.

DROD PA LA Okay, they said, according to them, yeah, DRAG PA, DRAG PA'I STAM GYU means, it's a little bit derogatory. Can you read it that way? Yeah, if I had to translate it into English, I'd say, there was some talk circulating.

DRAG PA means famous, right? There was some talk circulating among the early Middle Way guys of Tibet that he was the direct disciple. Why is it could be punished here?

Yeah, he said kirti. He used the verb kirti. He was Chandrakirti, was kirti, as being spoken of.

People were saying, it means that. DRAG PA'I STAM means, people were saying that he was the direct disciple of Nagarjuna. But that's a little bit derogatory in a way.

They were saying that Rob was handsome. I might be a drag king. My end being lucid, if I'm a lucid person, it won't get mad at me if I say it.

Yeah, here's an extraordinary mistake in the carving. JE SU DANG means follow, to follow a certain viewpoint. And then it says DAG, which means myself.

And you have to split it into two pieces, which then means those who believe, those who follow. Okay, and that was a tough one to fix. DANG BA DANG, DE DANG DONG MA GYI, they believed that.

What's the MA?

[Speaker 3]
Admittedly.

[Speaker 1]
Admittedly. It means begrudgingly, I admit, people were talking like that. And it's always followed by, but.

Good, okay. And the but is where? I don't know.

Now I'm all, I don't know, I don't know. Wow. Whenever key appears at the end of a phrase or sentence, it means follow.

I thought you meant like, what is he saying? Yeah. What comes after the but?

Some people said that but, yeah. JE RINPO CHE DGOS LA SOGS PA Yeah, DGOS LA SOGS PA was the famous translator of Sanskrit into Tibetan. Okay, and he wrote a book called The Blue Annals, which is probably one of the best two or three history books of Buddhism.

It's this thick. It's huge and very detailed. And it's pretty correct, which is amazing for an Asian history book.

Okay, JE RINPO CHE DGOS LA SOGS PA DUS PA'I MA MA DAG This is very difficult because, yeah, you could say, this DUS PA means, the whole phrase, I was uncomfortable with it. It took me a while to figure it out. And I'll ask you a question.

Could they be saying that this Tibetan translator, translator of Sanskrit into Tibetan, the group that includes him and Chandrakirti were direct disciples? Could they be saying that? Could they be saying that this Tibetan translator, along with Chandrakirti, were direct disciples of Nagarjuna?

Anatole is saying probably not. Why? There's a big time gap.

The early Tibetan translations, roughly you can think 1000 AD, 800 to 1000 AD. And then Nagarjuna, 200 AD probably. By the way, I think contemporary with Patanjali, in my opinion.

But anyway, so it doesn't mean that. Rather, it means what? Yeah, you could say Lama dak, Lamas including.

So this DUS PA means Lamas including people like Je Rinpoche and Good Lord Zawa, the great translator Good, et cetera. They said, it's a shintu leg if you say he was Nukiloma. Yeah, they said it.

Shintu legpa. If you claim that Chandrakirti was a direct disciple of Nagarjuna, which no Westerner would ever say because they're like 400 years apart, they say that's great. Je Tsongkapa.

And somebody like, why did they quote Good Lord Zawa? Why not quote K.W.J.? Or sorry, we got our K.W.J. right here. Yeah, he was the most famous historian of all Tibetan Buddhism.

So if he got it wrong then, so if he thought Master Chandrakirti was Nagarjuna's direct disciple, and Tsongkapa also thought that, and a bunch of other Lamas, okay, Lama DUS PA means if there was a group of Lamas who all said the same thing and they included Tsongkapa and the greatest biographer of all time, then maybe he was the direct disciple, okay? Cool? All right.

Let's go to the next. By the way, there's a great Russian scholar, great Russian painter, Yori Ryori, George Rorik, his father Nicholas Rorik. And Nicholas Rorik is probably one of the greatest painters of Russian history.

And he went into Ganges, and he painted into Ganges. There's a beautiful painting of Narayapa by him. And then his son was born in North India in Kulu Valley, and he became a great Tibetan scholar.

And then he translated Good Lord Sala's Blue Annals. And it's two volumes like that. So he sat there in Northern India near near Damsel, actually, and he translated in the maybe in the 1930s, 1940s, like that.

And there's still a museum dedicated to Nicholas from in New York City. And there's a his son has a great library in Moscow, which hasn't, we haven't been able to catalog it yet. We're still trying after 30 years or something.

Okay, yeah. You got, oh, did you go to Shendu Min? I did.

Okay, good, okay. Can we go back up? I want to look at that paragraph above.

What, Anatole had a question. What was the question? Yeah, very, very frequently.

Yeah, you know. What was his question? Well, it was like, would you say, you know, I admit that some people said this or that, but these other guys said something else.

But there is a little bit of problem. There is a problem that Anatole has caught why would it, why would someone say he was the direct disciple, but Tsongkhapa thinks he was? Right.

Yeah, and that's why, and then that makes your original mistranslation maybe correct. And maybe there was two mas originally. Uh-huh.

Lobma Mayin. Yeah. So, we got to check it in some better carving, but I think, I think your instinct, Utpala, was correct.

You know, you don't say he was the direct disciple, but Tsongkhapa and Gung-ho Tsang say he was. You see what I mean? Yeah.

Okay. So, I think instinctively you said the right thing, but we have to prove it. We have to define the carving.

Someone took out one of the mas. Yeah. I'm sorry, cancel that.

Yeah, if you read ngulop as one word, Right. which means direct disciple, then you pause and say Mayin. He was not a direct disciple.

Okay. That's correct. So, I don't think there is a carving mistake, and you were correct in the first place, Utpala.

Okay. Logically. Some people say there was talk among the early Madhyamakans in Tibet that they were not direct teacher and disciple, but Tsongkhapa and Gung-ho Tsang had a different opinion.

Okay, cool. Yeah, okay. Well, thank you.

You had it right in the first place. 478. Now, here's a proper title for somebody.

The Lord, the Great One, the Glorious, Atisha. Okay. He said, lu drub lo ma da drang gi yin chen du gyur si yin nge gar chu tsangpa de la gyipay mengag la tsang nge mikso, from him.

sanggye yuk gi shen du min. Yeah, okay. The third line here, sanggye yuk gi shen du min.

sanggye means Buddha. yuk means is there. There is.

shen du min means there's no other way. And I went looking for this quotation and nowadays it's not like that. Okay, the third line is not like that.

Okay. Here's my footnote. Yeah, repeatedly it's not like that.

And it doesn't make a lot of sense. Anyway, so the third line that we found in the database, and God bless John Brady and all his team for the database, chu ni denpa topar gyur. What's that mean, Udpala?

You'll come to realize the truth of reality? Yep. Yeah.

If you follow the advices that come from them, okay, the first line says, the direct disciple of Nagarjuna was Chandrakirti. If you follow their teachings, you will see emptiness. That's a nice comprehensible thought, okay?

It makes a lot more sense. Yeah, it makes a lot more sense. And somebody has changed it.

I found the other version someplace, but it still doesn't make sense to me, okay? But it does make sense if you're trying to prove that early Tibetan Middle Way people, who we know to be suspect, Phiran Dawa, Middle Way guys in Tibet, who thought that Chandrakirti was not Arya Nagarjuna's direct disciple, they got it wrong, but Jatsangkapa and Gurlothawa got it right. And after all, Atisha said, Chandrakirti was Nagarjuna's disciple.

And if you follow the advices that come down from those two guys, you will see reality, okay? Now, if I had to read the replacement line here, okay, let's go back up. Sangye Yogi.

Yeah, if I had to read the replacement line, I would read it as, you could get enlightened, but otherwise you could not. That kind of makes sense. Chandrakirti was the direct disciple of Nagarjuna.

If you follow the advices that came down through those guys, you can get enlightened, but otherwise not. So that kind of makes sense, okay? But that's not the way, those lines appear differently in the Tengyur several places.

All right, and by the way, we put together a nice team of translators. Nick and I worked really hard on it last week together in San Diego. So there's 3,300 or 3,700 Tengyur books.

These are ancient commentaries from India. And they were compiled in several different locations in Tibet. And that's called the Tengyur.

And so there were different Tengyurs compiled in different monasteries across the whole width of Tibet, from Choney to Nartang. So that's like 1,000 or 1,500 miles. And so they differ.

They differ slightly. And so we have a team, Oscar is helping, Word is helping, Anatole is helping, Aisha is helping, some other guys are helping. And we are, those have all been input.

A whole second Tengyur, which is a quarter million pages, have been input by our input center. It takes about 10, 15 years. And they finished it.

And now we're splitting it up. And now we can compare them. We can compare these versions.

When Dawa sponsored three of those Nartang Tengyurs, with the money he got from the two kings. Somebody offered him gold robes. Somebody else offered him a chest of Kashmir saffron threads, like 500 pounds, which is worth more than gold.

And he sold it immediately and had three Tengyurs made by hand. So that was the three quarters of a million pages that he paid for, which is cool. All right.

Let's go to my version of your text. Here we go. I think so.

Okay. Yeah, so what I'm saying is we have another version to look at. And also I found a version by the First Pension Lama, who wrote Devil Angel.

Yeah, the devil of the bank. He has a version here. Yeah, he likes the version that our author used.

So the First Pension Lama, who's a pretty cool dude, late mid 1600s, say 200 years, 250 years after Tsongkhapa, he still likes that. He likes that version. All right.

Who's going to read, Utpala? Because Oscar won the gold star, if you could please read.

[Speaker 3]
Yeah, thank you. ,SKYE BA BDAG PA'I LDAN DGOR BYED SEMS PA, ,DU DE DAG BA DRAG PA'I RIM SHING ZHES BYED DANG, Nice.

[Speaker 1]
Okay. So there's a couple of DRIN cells. I got misled.

I went looking in the wrong one. Later I found the correct one. So it happens to be DRIN MA SEL BAR BYED PA, which is the clarification of the lamp.

By Chandrakirti himself. So there's a quotation from Chandrakirti himself. So it's not Blazing Light.

Sorry? So it's not Blazing Light. No.

It's a weird word. It's a weird title. It's called Illuminating the Lamp.

Okay. And it's a commentary on the lamp. But it's a joke.

The author was being cute. Chandrakirti. Okay.

I'm going to illuminate the lamp. I'm going to use a flashlight and shine it on the light bulb. That's what it means.

And it's a little, I don't know, typical Buddhist color. Okay. ,SANGS RGYAS KUN GYI RIM NI GNAS KYI RGYAS BTAB DE NI, The one who took the two rimbas of all the Buddhas and sealed, put the seal on them, meaning the understanding of emptiness, was Rudra.

May God bless you. I need that. Rimbas often means kirim and dzong rim.

Okay. And this is a book from the tantras. It is a ten-year commentary from the tantras.

So that could be. So if you want to know who put the real seal on things as being empty, right? That was Nagarjuna.

And then, BTAB DE, Word? Bow. I spend my whole life trying to find a word that word doesn't know.

Oh, sorry. Okay. It means to continue, to carry on a tradition, something like that, to connect to another thing.

Who carried it on? Who carried on the tradition of Vajrasattva? It was Chandrakirti.

So our authors imply they must have been disciple and teacher. But they're in the context of the secret teachings. And Nagarjuna, we don't think of him as a great tantric teacher, but he was probably the greatest, on top of being the greatest emptiness teacher.

And Venerable Jigme and I found a super duper secret catalog to the ten-year. And they actually show that the structure of the ten-year for the tantra, which is about a hundred volumes, is logical. It follows a very sophisticated school system presentation.

And then if you know that, you can see it. But if you don't know it, you can't see it. So the order of the tantras in the ten-year is not random.

There's a deep, deep logic to it, which is very cool. And we figured it out. We broke the code.

It was like the Da Vinci code, but nobody made a movie. And it's kind of cool that in that structure of the ten-year, they isolate all the books relating to Nagarjuna's opinions on tantra. So that's kind of cool.

And we're quoting that. We're quoting a place for that. And there's the quotation, and it's the same, which is refreshing after a lot of difficult ones.

When you find ones that are the same, you just skip. You just keep going. So who's going to read 480?

Well, it seems like Venerable Jigme won the gold star for figuring out why the ten-year is ordered the way it is. Actually, I had nothing to do with it. Now, may I correct you?

We were sitting in that coffee shop covered with roaches on the table, which became the local bar later, down in McGuire Mills. Right? Okay.

Seems likely. Or it became the local bar. Please read.

Okay, nice. Kelendapa sounds like a typical Tibetan name, but it appears to be an author who has books in the tantra's tenure. He's not...

His name is glossed as Bhavya Kirti, which you could kind of read as Kelendapa, but it's not. He said, pel den lu drub, what's that mean, you guys?

[Speaker 3]
The glorious...

[Speaker 1]
Oh dear, is that me or is that... I think it's not you. I think it's the local rimrock.

Someone please in the room pull out your cell phone and give us coverage, connection to the internet. What are you complaining about? We lost you for a minute there, guys.

You're back? Yeah, you're back. Are we back?

Intermittently. No. Maybe someone has a better cell phone connection to the internet.

We are? Okay. I'm sorry Geshe Michael.

Your internet connection is going in and out very quickly. I'm sorry. That's rimrock.

[Speaker 3]
Yeah, we're struggling, I'm afraid to hear you.

[Speaker 1]
If you're on the internet, please get off the internet. Okay, so-sok teng kyi. But that's a discounted kyi.

Means what? But he was a direct disciple. Chandrakirti was a direct disciple of Nagarjuna, but he wasn't gyu peng loma.

Not an individual lineage of teachers. No, he wasn't indirect. Gyu means indirect.

Ngu is the opposite of gyu. Okay, so this author, who's in the tenure, says they were direct teacher and disciple. They were- Hindi specifically says they were not- there was nobody between them.

Okay, all right. And there's the quotation. It's correct.

We don't have to look at it. Can I- give us one more. Can you hear me, Udpala?

It seems to be better now, thank you. Okay, who's going to read 481? I would like Venerable Chodson, please.

Can you do it with a Brooklyn accent? I'm not from Brooklyn. I'm from New York, Lower East Side.

Lower East Side. Go see that. Lower East Side.

[Speaker 3]
Yeah, good.

[Speaker 1]
This sentence is a little difficult. So, they say, chamsay, brahman, Hindu priest, okay, brahman, drachen dzin, rahula. So, rahula means the dark planet, which causes eclipses.

Okay, drachen dzin. And it was the name of the Buddha's son, I guess. But anyway, this other person named the beautiful rahula.

And then our author says, that refers to Saraha. Yeah, he says, when they talk about the brahman, who was the rahula sambho? What is sambho?

Say again? Bhadra. Bhadra, B-H-A-D-R-A.

Bhadra, yeah, Bhadra. Yeah, so you could call him Rahula Bhadra or something like that, okay. This person that he's quoting says, when you say Rahula Bhadra, they're really talking about Saraha.

Which was the teacher of Nagarjuna, okay. And Sarani's name, her real name is Sarahni, which is the feminine of Saraha, okay. Saraha B, Ludwubla Sheba.

So, Saraha says that, Saraha says that the name Brahman Rahula Bhadra is a reference to Nagarjuna. Okay, that's all. This long name refers to Nagarjuna, okay.

Somebody said. But, and some people say it refers to Dawa Drakpa. Chandrakirti.

Chandrakirti. Yeah, and then they misspelled the name of the source. Dron Nama, which doesn't make any sense, which is really Dron Ma, okay.

Dron Nama here in the carving is Dron Ma. And how it went on for 600 years miscarved is a question. There's all of these miscarvings.

How did they teach it and how, what did people understand? I don't know. But it means, they're going to quote a book, okay, about it.

Here's the quote. Is this the same book that we just... I found it and it's not.

It's not, okay. It's a history book by Simba Kembo, who's similar to Guru Lodzawa. They are both ancient historians.

So he's using ancient historians to prove lineage. Cool. And the history of Buddhism is largely lineages.

They'll say he was the, it's like the Jesus, the way they introduced Jesus in the Bible is the 60 generations before him. It's to prove that they are special people. Okay.

Who's going to read that one? Utpala? Venerable Gyelse, are you available?

She's on her way. Yay. Probably from North Rimland.

Yeah. So the meter doesn't work out if you read it the way it is in the carving. You can't say, ,GONG KA NA'I PHRUNG KHYOD DU, ,GAL GYI RIG PA'I TSE MO'I TU, See what I mean?

So I looked it up and originally it wasn't joined together. So, ,GONG KA NA'I PHRUNG KHYOD DU, In the, what? In the town of...

City of GONG KA. GONG KA NA, okay. Which is close to BEL GYI RIG PA'I TSE MO'I TU, ,GAL GYI RIG PA'I TSE MO'I TU, the Glorious Peak.

And by the way, place names in ancient books of India are pretty fluid. In the old GONG KA NA, where the Glorious Mountain at the tip of that, there was a NE, a place that was ,GAL GYI RIG PA'I TSE MO'I TU, free of others. Yeah, nobody lived there.

Empty. Unpopulated peak of Mount Glorious. And DANG PHOR adverb, at the beginning, that's where he stayed.

,GNAS CAN GYI, He stayed there. We don't know who they're talking about yet. Probably, ,GANG NI GYUR ZHIG YOD NA GANG ZHIG NA, Okay.

Probably. Are you sure? Could it be where he first made his home?

Exactly. It probably is. Yeah.

Who's he? We don't know yet. Yeah.

This is a history by Sumbak, who's from 1700s. Okay. And it's a pretty good history book.

It's one of the top two or three in Tibetan. They're all corrupt and they're all crazy, but you can get some information from them. Asian history is, you know, that wasn't their specialty.

I asked him, you know, when did Atisha live exactly? And he said, somewhere between Nagarjuna and Tsongkhapa, which is 1200 years. And I'm like, okay.

Okay. I mean, that's just, that's just, that's as exact as they do. Which is why we're in this section today, because trying to figure out something that's probably difficult to figure out.

It'd be nice to say that Chandrakirti was Nagarjuna's direct disciple, but, you know, proving it with those history books is a little crunchy. Okay. All right.

Keep going.

[Speaker 3]
MI DANG LA YI DAG POR TSUNG TSUNG TSUNG Yeah.

[Speaker 1]
It's probably supposed to be a word. It's probably supposed to be Right? Or saten dila.

Anyway, the meter doesn't work out. MI DANG LA Humans and Humans and gods.

[Speaker 3]
Humans and gods.

[Speaker 1]
DAG POR means the Lord. In this case, TSUNG means he was equal to the Lord of gods and men. All right.

Somebody really special. And he was the best of all. Sorry, he taught Dharma, which was the best of all.

Okay. And his name was JA CHEN ZIN RA HULA RA HULA THING MA'I TI SA RA NA Okay. Nagarjuna's teacher.

ZHEL NGAN NAS From his mouth, from his lips, it's probably saten dila gyel gyur chik. I got to make a note. This is, saten dila means in this world, may he ever, what do you call it?

May he be victorious. May the teachings of this person be victorious. So far, he's just called Mr. Eclipser.

[Speaker 3]
RA HULA Okay, RA HULA.

[Speaker 1]
We don't know exactly who he is. We could do two more here, Utpala. Yes, please.

Okay, she's up for it. What is that first word?

[Speaker 3]
NGES PA NGES PA DE LAS DE NYID NI THEG CHEN GNAL GYUR PA THUB PA'I SA THUB GZHAN GYIS DUN LA BTZUN PHAL DAN LUD GRUB GYEL GYUR CHIK Lovely.

[Speaker 1]
NGES PA literally means found. NGES PA DE LAS DE NYID NI What we, teachings we have received, maybe from him, is THEG CHEN GNAL GYUR, Mahayana yogi. THUB PA'I If you can listen to those teachings, you will SA THUB.

Or this person reached, who's SA THUB? Probably the first level of the Bodhisattva levels. It's probably a reference to Nagarjuna, who was famous for reaching the first Bodhisattva level.

First direct contact with emptiness. That's his claim to fame. SA THUB GZHAN GYIS DUN LA BTZUN He got to the first Bodhisattva level, touched emptiness directly, and then started to BTZUN for GZHAN GYIS DUN.

He started to work hard for the sake of others. Who is that? The glorious one.

GYEL GYUR CHIK means may he ever reign. May he ever be glorious. Let's go one more.

[Speaker 3]
DE LIS DE NI RIN CHEN MI RTOG PA'I GCIG RTEN GSUNG DU DRAG DUG PA'I RGYA TSOG PA'O ROL CHEN DAG DRAG GZAL BYAS GYEL GYUR CHIK Yeah.

[Speaker 1]
Okay, good. Somebody got a RIN CHEN from him. GZHUL Somebody got some GZHUL teachings from Nagarjuna, which was someone who was CHOG PA in the three realms.

Yeah, and again, it's a reference to Kirti, Chandrakirti. There's somebody who was so Kirti in the whole universe, okay? And he got those precious teachings from Nagarjuna, who apparently got them from Bahula, which is another name for Saraha.

Okay, and so this author is saying it's a direct lineage between three people. Saraha, Nagarjuna, and Chandrakirti. RTOG PA'I GCIG RTEN GSUNG DU DRAG DUG PA'I RGYA TSOG PA'O ROL CHEN This DUG PA you could read about 20 different ways.

I don't know. All including ocean, okay, of the PA'O ROL CHEN MAS. Yeah, the perfections.

RTOG PA'I GCIG RTEN GSUNG DU DRAG DUG PA'I Chandrakirti, you are the SELWAR CHEN PA. The clarifier. You're the one who brings light.

RGYAL GYUR CHI Yeah, may you always reign, may you always prevail. May you always prevail. Yeah, and again, there's references to the Saraha as being called Rahula.

And I'm not sure this quotation is from Sumbakemo, I'm not sure. Oh, here's the quotation. Yeah, it's from a tantra in the tenure.

Okay. So because it's from a tantra, Geshe Michael, would that dupa then be referring to Samaja, Guhyasamaja? You're correct in that this quotation is found in the Guhyasamaja section of the tenure, yeah.

It could be that, yeah. It could be Samaja. Probably is Samaja.

The ocean? Yeah, say again? The ocean?

The ocean of teachings on Guhyasamaja. Yeah, something like that. Probably, it probably means that.

Okay. We got five more minutes, then grandpa will sit down with his honey bunny and we'll have a 15 minute discussion about how you can use this in your real life. Good luck.

And then we'll have the news and then we'll finish for the day, okay. So who's going to read the next one? Venerable Khading, are you online?

She's here. Oh, she's there. Could you read please?

[Speaker 3]
Aloud?

[Speaker 1]
Kepa. Kepa, Bhiksham Karai Loma Pandita Kumare Chang Didak Gini Kludup Ludup. Ludup.

Ludup Kishel Nga Nekhi Loma Yimpa Nyi Khi Man Ngak Tang Denpa Nyi Durab Tu Ten To She She Do Yeah, so some commentator on this quotation from the tenure says, this is all indicating that Chandrakirti was a direct disciple of Arya Nagarjuna, okay. And that he therefore has the mengak from Nagarjuna himself. Yeah, so mengak means like the personal dope.

The real story, okay. He got the real story from the master. Okay, that's the implication of this quotation here, which is supporting the idea that Chandrakirti is- Direct disciple.

If he got the mengak, if he got the personal lineage from Nagarjuna, then he was a direct disciple. They're saying how someone else read the quotation we just read. Okay, all right.

We got three minutes, never waste it. You want to try some more? Yeah, and there's the author I was looking at.

Okay, his real name is Lakshmikara. Lakshmikara, and this is all messed up. I think it's Lakshmikara, okay.

Anyway, Lakshmi is commonly misspelled by Tibetans. All right. You want to try that one?

The whole paragraph? Or you could do this one. No, do this one, you can do it.

De na. De na, drup chen nagpo chupa pa thang naropa thang, ngag dak me tripa thang, aveya kara thang, thuk je pel shab thang, kache lakshmi thang, thupa pel zang ho thang, kel den drak pa thang, ku ma ra thang, ku la da ra thang, ta ta ga ta, rak shi ta thang, li la za ra vajra, khob khun kyi kyang la pe shab, daway, daway, kyang daway. Yeah, kyang daway shab.

Okay. La chakpa thang, drapa ye chepay ne su cin la. Yeah, so he's just overdoing it, okay.

Also, these other guys support my opinion. Krishna, nagpo chupa, Krishna Charya, naropa, himself, my tripa, aveya kara, pel shab, kache lakshmi kara, thupa pel zang ho, kel den drak pa, ku ma ra thang. These are all early Tantricists.

Ta ta ga, rak shi ta, li la, vajra. Everybody agrees. Daway shab la.

This shab means, yeah, so he finally used an honorific for Chandrakirti. Maybe he's just making up, okay. Which means at the beautiful feet of the moon, Chandra.

Drakpa thang, drapa ye chepay ne su cin la. All of those ancient writers consider, they all consider Kirti, Chandrakirti to have the juju of the bhakpa, the Arya. They all consider him to have the force of the Arya.

Okay, all those guys, what he's implying is everyone agrees with me that he must have been a direct disciple of Nagarjuna because he holds the menga. He holds the personal, he holds the personal instructions from Nagarjuna, which they couldn't do if they weren't direct. You see what I mean?

Cool? Say again? You could say that, yeah.

You could say what? Mouth to ear. Mouth to ear transmission.

Okay, I've got to disappear. We got to mark where we are. And what should I do for next time, Geshe Michael?

Yeah, I want to give you something coherent. Thank you. Today's the 15th?

15th. Let me see what's useful. Yeah, I'd say 48, 49, and 490, okay?

Okay. All right. Okay, good luck, you guys.

I'm going to disappear. Thank you so much, Geshe Michael. Thank you.

Pleasure. Yeah, okay. By the way, Nick and I sat down for two hours.

We held a table at a busy restaurant, which was not a good idea. Wow. And we went through all the translators and estimated when their next book will come out.

And maybe we'll cover that in the next class, okay?

[Speaker 3]
Why is there a sad, sad?

[Speaker 1]
Sad? Is that Amelie? Yeah, say hi, Geshe Michael.

Hi, Amelie. And that's the theory that beauty skips every other generation, yeah. Well, not this time.

Just skip dad. Thank you, Geshe Michael. He has your cheeks, it looks like.

That's true. Yeah, that's true. Gosh, guys, what are we going to talk about for 12 minutes?

So I guess like when we hear people talking about other people, giving opinions about other people, before we accept, I guess, what they say is true, we need to go check sources that we ourselves consider as worthy. What do you think, Lindsay? I just wanted to, I was thinking about what lasts and what doesn't last.

Like we have all the teachings of Nagarjuna and Chandrakirti and all these people, but we don't know for sure if they knew each other. And it's funny, like that's probably gonna happen to us. Like maybe in a thousand years, we'll be, people will be talking like, did Rob Heger ever meet Geshe Michael, was shocking, like his direct disciple, like, yeah, yeah.

But it's funny because what really matters probably was what was passed on. And we can think about that like in our own lives too. Like we maybe don't remember who was our teacher in our last life, but we still retain some of the wisdom and like that's what will persist and that's what's the most important to pursue.

Beautiful, thank you. This also leads me to think, Geshe Michael, it's the question for him, but I hope that he's still in the room. I hope someone is writing his biography so we have all the connections for him.

Does anyone else have ideas about how to apply what we just talked about to your life? Everyone wants cinnamon rolls. Everyone wants to go on to the peach tree world.

Oh, there's word, yay. Yeah, I thought it was interesting, today's discussion. Yeah, in terms of, yeah, the power of lineage.

I mean, all of this, like Geshe was saying, they don't even track the dates or anything classically. And so all of this, so they felt lineage was more important than dates or anything kind of. I mean, it's one of the things that's most emphasized in our lineage.

So yeah, I mean, why is KJPJ even focusing so much on this? I mean, in a way you could consider it like irrelevant to the topic, right? I mean, this isn't- Well, my guess is that he's gonna rely on Master Chandrakirti a lot in the next part of his book.

Yeah, yeah, I mean, in the sense that this must be super important to him, you know, and to show the power of, of his words and like the authenticity, you know? So there's something there of like, what's your source, you know? Where is all this coming from?

Is it coming from something that's like rooted in something deep and powerful that we can trust? Because there's, I don't know, doubt might be one of the, I mean, it's the top six worst mental afflictions, right? And it could be the thing that stops us from reaching all these goals.

So it's like, he's making sure that there's no doubt. He's like, and I think that's super powerful because even people who are wrong, when they don't doubt themselves, they seem to like be successful. So, you know, so there's a power in it, right?

Even just thinking we're like on the right track or something. So I think that's some of the power of this discretion. That's great.

Thank you so much, Boyd. Okay, Geshe-la, something to add. Oh, oh.

I have something to add. Hi, grandpa. I'm thinking of something is that I just spent 12 years on, you know, Tsongkhapa's commentary on Nagarjuna and Tsongkhapa's commentary on Chandrakirti.

And what's striking after all those years is that Chandrakirti does not sound like a commentary on Nagarjuna. He doesn't quote it directly. You know, he doesn't go through the wisdom.

It's supposed to be entering the middle way, right? Which is entering the book, the main book by Nagarjuna. But he does not quote Nagarjuna in any kind of direct way, really.

He just kind of goes off on a completely different book. So to discuss the lineage between the two is a little bit tricky, I think. Just so you think about it.

It's kind of strange how little he references Nagarjuna. Oh, that's interesting. Jessica in the chat says, I have a strong belief that we can connect with our great teachers in our lineage if we have enough good karma.

In meditation, for example, we can receive messages from them sent to us to guide us on the way to enlightenment. That sounds very sweet. Hello there, Sarah.

Hello, Venerable Upala. Along those same lines, I was thinking about how the connection between teacher and student can ban our normal ideas of space and time. And maybe what makes someone a teacher or a student is just whether or not you take their advice and apply it in your life.

And then at that point, they're your teacher. So it doesn't matter if it came from a book or from sitting in a classroom with them. If it helps you and it changes your life, then they taught you something.

[Speaker 3]
I thought I'd add that.

[Speaker 1]
Great, thank you so much. More ideas? Ben, you gotta somehow wrap this up into serving others and all that.

[Speaker 2]
Wait, we have another hand.

[Speaker 1]
Oh, we do. Irivor, is that how I should say your name? Oh, you're on a different channel.

If we're in the English channel? No, he's in a different channel. We can't hear you.

Oh, he's in the Spanish channel.

[Speaker 2]
I guess I would just put in a pitch for those who are doing the Five Houses or people who are learning about the diamond way that there's this, you get this sense of knowing who your teachers are.

[Speaker 1]
To be able to go back 40 generations or more at a moment's note to know off the top of your head who your teachers, teachers, teachers, teachers, teachers, teachers, teachers, teacher was. And it just gives you this incredible confidence.

[Speaker 2]
It just feels so good. There's so many people making up things and maybe they're right. Maybe people do have new cool ideas, but I don't know.

I don't know how to judge that. And to know that you have an unbroken lineage just gives you this incredible confidence. Something has stuck around because it works.

It was effective enough to be handed down over and over again. And those things exist in this world. You can find unbroken lineages and I just feel so lucky.

And it's beautiful and it matters to me. It's a nice help. Anything you're not sure about, you hear something, find out who they heard it from and who that person heard it from.

And then you find these streams in life of information you can count on. And it just gives you an incredible, gives me an incredible confidence in my life because I know where to look for help and I need a lot of help.

[Speaker 1]
And it's incredibly reassuring to have a system, to know where to look. Beautiful. Thank you.

I knew you'd deliver. I have confidence in you. You may not have confidence in you, but I do.

Everyone can send me.

[Speaker 2]
Can you hear me?

[Speaker 3]
Yes.

[Speaker 2]
Yes.

[Speaker 3]
We've got one minute left.

[Speaker 2]
Thank you. Yes, I want to add, it's so beautiful because it sounds like the proof of, authority proof that Nagarjuna lives at least 500 years.

[Speaker 1]
We know it's 900 years old.

[Speaker 2]
So it's very beautiful. And it's more than a kind of a tantric commentary anyway. Or for one who have to update, we can leave or try to use this teaching for, live eternally in another paradise.

And about the commentary of G.H. Michael, maybe a great disciple continue the work of his master.

[Speaker 1]
So I don't know. I think, I don't think this is a problem. Entering the middle way is a different book of wisdom.

I think it's the continuation, no? It's like wisdom entering the middle way and both are at Madhyamika Prasangika school. So I think it's very beautiful this class.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you everyone for your attention in this class.

And please don't forget to dedicate, the time spent learning these precious teachings towards whatever highest goal you may think of. Thank you so much.

[Speaker 3]
Mr. Aso.

[Speaker 2]
Thank you, T'Pala. Thank you very much, Ben. And Yiribor as well.

Yiribor today saved the day because the Spanish translator couldn't come and he covered. So thank you, Yiribor. The way Yiribor is helping us a lot with many projects in Latin America with translation.

And he does amazing things online too. He knows how to use AI, very cool. So thank you, Yiribor.

And all of you from Chile. He's from Chile, unfortunately, but no, just kidding. Just kidding.

Thank you, Yiribor. And yeah, today is a very special day and you'll see in a moment why. Actually, yesterday was very special.

Today is still very special. You'll see why. But let me tell you what's happening today.

Amazing news, Errol is visiting town and it's an honor to have him around even if it's just for a weekend or something. So thank you, Errol, for being around. It's great that you came with great news.

We want to share a little bit of what Maria sent me. So he just came back from a course in Turkey. We can start with the pictures.

I don't see. Yeah, I will move the thing so you can see the baby Pichiquino here. Yeah, so the event went from November 1st to the 7th in Turkey.

That is not important. Pichiquino is the thing. All right.

We'll have it here. And then, yeah, Maria was sharing very cool pictures. There's a longer video I will share with you, but on Monday.

Today, just a little taste of how it was. The beautiful hotel, people having a lot of fun. The YSI teachers there spending some time at the beach.

So this is some of the teachers that were producing and teaching the classes. Nicole, Benji, Peter, Maria, Karina, Teresa. Next picture, please.

And of course, President Connie, La and Errol, Director. Thank you so much for what you did. And there is a just short video for today.

The longer video will be on Monday. So Marina, please. There you go.

A lot of fun, a lot of energy. Congratulations. This is the first time, as far as I know, that a big event like this teaches Lady Niguma 3.

Now there is level 3, imagine. Who knows what's gonna happen next year? What else?

Now, that was Turkey. Upcoming events, to me, the most biggest one shining in the sky that I know about is the one in Kyoto coming up super, super soon. Many things are gonna be happening in Kyoto, but one of them is the Five Houses event.

It's gonna run from the 11th, actually, to the 15th of December. I hear from the director, Tim Longhub, they're still taking people. If you are interested, you can still come.

I think it's gonna be very amazing. I keep talking with people. Are you gonna come?

And they are all very excited to come. Just so you know, during this event, Ben and Kendra are going to be teaching a debate class, and they prepare a video for us. The audience of Monday already watched the video, but I want the Saturday audience to also see this video because I'm personally, these days, in Kyoto.

Yes. No, I'm very interested in learning more about Pramana, about logic, about debate, and it really excites me what they're about to do. So we want to share with you this video, and hopefully you get inspired with it, and come to Japan.

Now, Marina has it ready. We hope.

[Speaker 3]
Hello.

[Speaker 1]
Ben and Kendra here.

[Speaker 2]
We wanted to talk to you about the December program in Kyoto. We're going to do a shtick together about debate, and we're excited. We had a big influence in our lives from debating a lot at Diamond Mountain.

It was something that we did twice a week after our classes.

[Speaker 3]
We would learn so much amazing concepts and ideas, but then we would take it to the debate ground and see if it rang true in our own hearts, and we would try to disprove it to see if it made sense to us.

[Speaker 2]
I think it's maybe one of the main things that helped me to come to whatever understanding of emptiness I can say that I have, was talking about it with my friends, and debate is like a high form of talking about it with your friends, an efficient, powerful, profound way of talking about it with your friends or your wife. It is so fun. It's so much fun, and it's just a wonderful way to sharpen your mind and to give you greater tools for listening to people and hearing maybe the fallacies in arguments so that you can strengthen your own beliefs.

And we want to try and bring that tradition back, so we're going to try and kick that off in Kyoto, and my favorite debate partner's coming with me, and then our little guy, we'll see if we can get him to teach child debate or something. We have to teach him, but we're excited to share it with you.

[Speaker 3]
We're so excited.

[Speaker 1]
We're so unbelievably thrilled.

[Speaker 2]
It's one of our favorite things, and you can have healthy debate in a healthy marriage. I think also you just, even if they prove a point, you still don't have to do it, as it turns out. We'll talk about that.

[Speaker 3]
Okay, we love you. We'll see you soon. We're really looking forward to it.

Okay, bye-bye.

[Speaker 2]
So there you go. Try to come, and I keep telling Ben, I hope we can broadcast this internationally and have recordings just for those people who may not be able to come. But if you can come, come.

And now, speaking of people who want to come, we, oh no, not yet. In a moment, we'll talk about people who want to come. Also, a reminder that before this Five Houses event, there is going to be the SCA event, which is like the annual meeting of the Sedona College of International Management.

Pretty much the talks and conferences is gonna be led by Professor John Brady and Professor Connie and Professor Sugeng. This is just a general poster that will give you general information, but if you wanna hear more about it, go ahead, contact Sugeng. He's super happy to receive your questions and give you information about it.

Next picture is a little map of what's gonna happen during those three days. That's gonna be 8th, 9th, and 10th of December. And then same place at the Prince Hotel in Kyoto.

Prince, yes. And at the next day, the Five Houses event starts at the same venue. So you can say you hear it here.

Okay, yeah, first. Actually, Sugeng came to talk about it last session. No, they are the Prince, yeah.

They say they wanted to be as cool as the Five Houses people, so they also moved there. All right. Now, for those of you, there is a special thing.

It got authorized, it's coming. There is a project we're trying to do. It's called the Petrie World News Volunteer Program, where this time, if you happen to be coming to Japan, you definitely can help us with many different activities.

And what we are cooking, it's almost ready, depending on how many people are interested and actually can come, we may be able to provide with accommodation for you. Not the fly this time, not the program this time, but little by little, we'll be building up. Maybe you get accommodation and one or two cookies.

We'll see. Yeah, simple. Just reach out and we'll see.

I'll talk to you and let's see what can we do. But there is a form you can fill up if you're interested. Just do it.

We really can use your help. And I think it's gonna be very fun. We'll try to make it fun for you as well.

Okay, now the time to really celebrate. Next picture, please. We are so happy and honored and grateful to have a beautiful teacher in our lives that happens to be a geisha as well.

And he just turned 30 years of becoming a geisha yesterday. And I think it has been very beautiful in my experience. Thank you so much.

And thank you. I will say from my side, thank you so much because even if finishing your five houses homework is difficult, imagine how difficult like doing the geisha program. So thank you for having done it and sharing it with us for all the hard work.

And because of that, we have Jikme N online. She wants to share a few words. Then the Diamond Cutter Classics directors want to share some words.

And then you're welcome, Geisha, if you wish to share anything or not, we have cake. So if tech table could help me to spotlight Jikme, because she was there and then it was fun. Actually, she helped me to organize this.

It was, maybe it was basically her idea. Then she just convinced me to produce it. But I'm so happy.

And then she told me some stories about those days she had the chance to be there around. So Jikme, what would you like to say to the world? What does the world want to know about this?

What were the most interesting questions during the debate? I don't know.

[Speaker 1]
I can't even remember because we were sitting ups up above. So we weren't in the temple and everything was also in Tibetan, but I did get some footage of it later. And what happened was, so there was one guy debating with him and he was sitting there with his hat on, you know, the Geisha hat.

And whenever he said something, all the guys around him would look at him and laugh. So, you know, it was, it wasn't a, I mean, it was obviously serious, but it was also very lighthearted. And probably about 10 of his friends and students went with him.

So that was kind of fun because we, you know, it kind of gave us this closeness to what the origins of all these teachings are. And it was really interesting to see where these people were living, you know, like the mud streets, because every time it rained, it would turn to mud. And they were cooking in these humongous pots.

You could cook like three humans in there or maybe a whole cow. And it's just like really difficult living situation. And anyway, what comes of it is amazing.

And it's crucial, you know, that this is like the very tenuous connection that brought us these teachings. You know, if it weren't for this system, then these teachings would very likely have been lost.

[Speaker 2]
Thank you, Jakeman, for sharing with us and for bringing up this idea of celebrating this day. Now, next we have Ben and Nick regarding on behalf of Diamond Core Classics to share some words before we move on to the cake.

[Speaker 1]
Oh, hi.

[Speaker 2]
All right, let me ask you, what has been for you as translators to have a Geshe as a teacher? Well, you can say whatever you want.

[Speaker 1]
I feel like we're pretty lucky. I mean, 99% of what we're learning in Diamond Core Classics, we could only learn from somebody with the experience that Geshe Michael has. So, you know, Diamond Cutter Classics wouldn't exist.

But beyond that, he's a pretty special Geshe and that he can translate it to us in a way that is so understandable and practical for all of us, which is just amazing. And there's nobody like that, you know. It's funny though, sometimes I feel like I work hard and I'll just say something.

And sometimes I'll offer myself excuses of why I can't learn, you know, the language or the philosophical ideas fast enough. And then one of my friends who is probably here said, oh yeah, it's hard. I mean, you know, Geshe Michael started, he only just started a diamond company that grew to $250 million while completely memorizing the canon of literature.

And getting a Geshe, it's inspiring.

[Speaker 2]
What do you think, Ben? Is it true what Nick's saying?

[Speaker 1]
You know, we just had this class about how to recognize a lineage and how to know if someone's in the lineage.

[Speaker 2]
And I see it in a lot of ways as a gift to me that our teacher did this thing for us because there are other reasons to rely in him. But I don't have enough of an understanding as an ordinary person to recognize who in this world I can trust and who I can't trust. I found him because he achieved this degree, because he was someone from my culture who had achieved this degree.

And that's how I found him. And that's how I learned that he was someone very special for other reasons for me to listen to. But by achieving this degree, he made a gift to all of us that those of us who can't understand the deeper reasons why he's a special sort of a teacher, we would know to come to him, that we would have an understanding, a sort of ordinary understanding of his achievements in this world to come to find a reliable source to listen to.

[Speaker 1]
And I've never left since. I came with some curiosity because I knew that this fella from my culture had this degree, but I've stayed for the rest of my life because of the incredible power of the gifts that he's been giving me constantly, every day, all day.

[Speaker 2]
Hey. Okay, so now we have the special cake to celebrate. And I would like to invite you, if you would like to share, you as well.

Okay. Thank you so much for being here. Yeah, okay.

And stay here with us.

[Speaker 1]
Are you gonna send us cake? Oh, I took my time.

[Speaker 2]
You'll have to come. So, there you go.

[Speaker 1]
Okay. I was thinking two things that I'd like to say, and then I think that's enough. One is, I never thought of getting a geshe degree.

I never was thinking about it. I just wanted to learn everything. So, you know, I just kept studying with my teacher.

And one day they said, you know, you can get a geshe if you want. And I'm like, oh, okay. I mean, I wasn't trying to get a geshe degree.

And I just was so having fun with my teacher and learning all this stuff with my teacher. And I think maybe that's how you get a geshe degree. You don't worry about it.

You don't think about it. And then one day they say, okay, come to the temple. You can debate and get a geshe degree.

And you're like, okay. So, I think the main thing is to have fun with your teacher and your friends and have a lot of fun studying that. That's one thing.

The other is, recently I was writing the biography of Randhawa, who was Tsongkhapa's teacher. And, you know, seeing how he put together the geshe course. So, really Tsongkhapa was following his teacher who studied the major five books of the geshe course and passed it on with Je Tsongkhapa.

And then I was just thinking how lucky we are after 2,000 years, 2,500 years, that these books survived in this world. It's some kind of very strange karma. I don't think this kind of understanding or wisdom could have survived through some kind of institution or something like that.

It survived through raw karma. People's karma kept it alive for 2,500 years. And so, I think sometimes, so those two things.

Number one, have fun and don't worry about where you are. Just have a lot of fun with it. And then secondly, be grateful that people have kept this alive for 2,500 years.

And do what you can do to keep it alive. Because that's what it takes. For 43 generations, people have kept it alive.

And now it's on us. Now it's our responsibility. So, do your best to help.

Dedicate your life to keep this knowledge in the world. It's not geshe, it's the knowledge should stay in this world. So far, it's safe.

So far, the knowledge of the five great schools is alive and well. Last thing. There's a disconnect between the ancient monasteries and modern life.

We go there, we study. There's probably 15,000 people in those monasteries. They are studying these classics.

But I think there's a little disconnect between them and the real world. There was a joke in my monastery that one geshe went to ride the bus to North India and visit a friend, and he couldn't count the change in the bus station. He couldn't do the math to figure out how much money he should pay.

I think there's a little bit of I don't know, it's isolated. The wisdom is isolated from the real world. And normal Tibetans, normal Tibetan people have no connection with the monasteries.

They have no, they never go there. They never study there. They never learn anything from there.

I think there's some kind of disconnect. So I think we have a special place in the world to bring this wisdom out of the monasteries into the real world. And especially things like DCI or things like that.

I think it's amazing. And I think it's never happened in history. And so I think we're living in amazing times when we can have normal people translating the classics and printing the books about the classics, and then going to Kyoto with their wife and their child.

Normal people. I mean, Ben's kind of normal. And teaching this wisdom to normal people in the normal world, I think it's a miracle.

And I think we're living in very unusual times in the world and this knowledge is coming into the normal world. And that's unbelievable. Thanks to Peacetree World News.

[Speaker 3]
Okay.

[Speaker 2]
Okay, there you go. So if you want some cake, you'll have to come. Or I don't know.

I guess that's the only option so far. Unless you want to pay us to send you some, maybe. All right.

Thank you very much, Geshe-la. Really, Veronica, thank you for having come today. And all the live audience, thank you so much for spending the time.

We get together pretty much every Monday, every Saturday, you know, online as well. So if everything goes well, see you Monday for more exciting news and teachings.

[Speaker 1]
Thanks, everybody. See you on Monday.

[Speaker 2]
Whole foods.