Стэнли Чен — Книга 2: Красноречивые слова о сути океана высшего знания (Гьялцаб Чже о «Своде высшего знания» — Абхидхарма-самуччае), занятие 26

[Speaker 2]
Good luck in school, Kitty. Thanks. Hasta pronto.

So we have an exciting class coming now with Professor Dr. Stanley. Are you there, Stanley? Yes, yes, yes, yes.

Hello, hello. Hey. Can you hear me?

Yes. You're getting dialed in. I'll announce you a little bit.

Stanley is planning to lead his class in Chinese language. So if you don't, if you speak Chinese, stay right where you are. If you don't speak Chinese, please join the English channel so that you can listen in English.

Uh-oh. It appears that either my or Stanley's internet might be slow. Stanley, you might need to try Tim's room.

Okay. I can hear you clearly, but can you not hear him? No, your audio is breaking up a little bit and your video is.

Perhaps if you turn off your video, you will have sufficient bandwidth. Okay. Maybe I can switch to my phone.

Now I can hear you clearly. Okay. It's still not clear for me.

All right, let's bear. Okay. He appears to be trying to use his phone.

[Speaker 1]
Creo que está utilizando su celular. A ver, apágalo.

[Speaker 2]
Sí. So we'll give him a moment here. Thank you, Stanley.

[Speaker 1]
Vamos a darle un poquito de unos minutos.

[Speaker 2]
Yo creo que el canal de español está en inglés.

[Speaker 1]
Creo que el canal.

[Speaker 2]
Thank you. Thank you. No, we got it worked out.

Hey, Stanley, are you there? Yeah. ¿Caí ma?

¿Caí ma? Hello. ¿Caí?

¿Caí? ¿Caí? ¿Caí?

¿Caí? ¿Caí? ¿Caí?

¿Caí? ¿Caí? ¿Caí?

¿Caí? ¿Caí? ¿Caí?

¿Caí? ¿Caí? So we'll try our best.

If I stop, the signals not stop working, then you can just jump in please and show off your Chinese. Okay. Hi.

[Speaker 1]
Welcome to the Shenzhen Towers class.

[Speaker 2]
I am Stanley. Can you hear me clearly?

[Speaker 1]
I believe a lot of Asian students are online at this time. There is a surprise for the Chinese speaking audience today because today we are speaking in Chinese. The main reason is because my Tibetan is not good, so I can only teach in Chinese.

We will first briefly do a review. And by the way, there are a lot of non-Chinese speaking audience, so I will speak slower. If I am speaking too fast, may the interpreter remind me.

Back to the last class, the last team class without Geshe Michael. We were talking about the main disciple of Master Xuanzang's commentary on Abhidharma Samachaya, especially on the parts where we learned about the five heaps. Like the five heaps, the eighteen categories, and the twelve doors of sense.

These three main categories, these main three topics, which is the most important topic in Abhidharma, and also the basics of our Asian wisdom, especially when we are learning a lot of different knowledge. For example, Middle Way, Mantra of Holy, Lamrim, even Diamond Way. These are all based on such information.

For example, the five heaps of Abhidharma as the fundamentals. So last time, we looked at the information from Tang Dynasty, especially Mai Dongli in Tang Dynasty. We looked at the five heaps from this angle.

Because it's been some time already, for myself, I've already forgotten something. Do you still remember? A lot of people are showing a shy smile.

Right? Everyone has forgotten everything, correct?

[Speaker 2]
No problem.

[Speaker 1]
I have made some preparation to do a small review. When I was doing my class preparation, I also forgotten everything. We can take a look.

We talked about the five heaps last time. These five heaps, we didn't go into details of each heap. We only talked about why Gautama had to teach the five heaps in his first teaching.

What we discussed last time is what's the reason for Abhidharma to exist. Why do we teach Abhidharma? Why do we discuss about Abhidharma?

The core essence is five heaps and you can see this sentence. There are 18 categories and 12 stores of senses. So these three main topics are talking about all existing things.

How are they categorized in the universe? In Chinese, the word dharma has a lot of meanings. But in this context, this word means existing stuff, existing things.

Does anyone remember what is the definition of dharma? If we are not talking about the teaching, the wisdom, actually we are talking about existing things. And this dharma has a definition.

[Speaker 2]
Does anyone remember?

[Speaker 1]
You can take a guess. I remember you mentioned about not method. Yes, but if we are talking about existing things, we have physical dharma or mental or neither physical nor mental.

But in Abhidharma, there is a definition for the word dharma. You have made a good guess. But the key is, for this second group, we are talking about caused things, not uncaused things.

For things that obstruct is the definition of physical things. Maybe you have forgotten.

[Speaker 2]
The definition of dharma is things that maintain its own nature, which is the definition of dharma.

[Speaker 1]
So when we are talking about heaps, five heaps are five types of things that can maintain its own nature. If we translate it into English, we use the word existence, meaning existing things. If we use existing things instead of existence, sometimes it doesn't include people because we use things.

And let us take a look at why did we talk about the five heaps, which is on this sentence. If anyone has any question, you can raise it anytime. Because as students, our way of learning is to discuss together.

We can debate and discuss. This time I am teaching in Chinese, so I could not discuss with Nick and Ben like last time. But for those who speak Chinese, we can do more discussion.

Last time, why did we talk about five heaps? From the mind only point of view in the Tang Dynasty is on this sentence. It is to manifest five types of things, is to show five types of things.

[Speaker 2]
These five things is the five heaps, which is around me, but not to confirm me.

[Speaker 1]
Instead, it is to eliminate me. If we speak in modern terms, talking about five heaps is for understanding emptiness. And the most important emptiness is the emptiness of me.

[Speaker 2]
Like when we go to the path of seeing, the thing that we see.

[Speaker 1]
Please remember to mute your mic. This is what we discussed last time. And today I have a surprise for you.

Because last time we talked about five heaps, how to get into the emptiness of me.

[Speaker 2]
And today I am thinking of going into more details about these five heaps.

[Speaker 1]
You know that the two most important authors of Abhidharma are Master Vasubandhu and Master Asanga. We can say that Master Vasubandhu is a scholarly type.

[Speaker 2]
He is a very good scholar.

[Speaker 1]
And for Master Asanga, if we say in the modern terms, Master Vasubandhu is a top researcher or top scholar. He had a lot of works. And he should be that type of person who has a lot of Ph.D. degrees. And he had many disciples. He had a lot of influence. And for Master Asanga, he is well known about his deep retreat.

He told a story of having 12 years retreat. When Master Vasubandhu was writing his works, what did Master Asanga do? He was in deep retreat.

Because of his deep retreat, we can say he innovated a new... We can say we started a new school in the whole history, the mind only. And later, which was passed into China in the Tang Dynasty.

It's Master Asanga who brought the beliefs of Maitreya into China. So he's a very important person. And very interesting is that his brothers both believe that five heaps is very important.

Why? Because his brothers both wrote some works dedicated to the five heaps. So today, I'd like to learn with you together more details about the five heaps.

Because we are the detail school. There's another name for Abhidharma school, the detailist. In English, the name of Abhidharma is detail, which means details.

So let us go into more details of five heaps. And we will use the work of Master Vasubandhu about five heaps. So this is my plan for today.

Can you see my work here? The Mahayana Five Heaps. The book on Mahayana Five Heaps.

[Speaker 2]
Okay, good.

[Speaker 1]
It's written by Master Vasubandhu. And in this work, the first sentence by Master Vasubandhu was on five heaps. There was no introduction, nothing.

And it started right away with five heaps. I planned to talk about this work originally. But after I took a look into it, I found that it's still not detailed enough.

I think it doesn't get into enough details for us, the detailist group. So later, I looked for another book. The name is the book on Mahayana Five Heaps.

I don't know how he will tell me. I say this name. It's a great book on Mahayana Five Heaps.

[Speaker 2]
Do you still remember this person?

[Speaker 1]
Suryamati has a lot of things to do with Abhidharma.

[Speaker 2]
Do you remember her?

[Speaker 1]
Yes, she is the author of the Mahayana Abhidharma books. Her commentary is about the Abhidharma Samuccaya. One of the commentaries for Abhidharma Samuccaya is by Suryamati.

You all remember that Master Vasubandhu is the half-brother of Master Asvanga and also his student. What is the relationship between Suryamati and Vasubandhu? Someone says teacher and student.

Yes, Suryamati and Dignaga. Dignaga is the very important teacher in logic. They have four main disciples.

They are the disciples of Vasubandhu. Suryamati is one of the four important disciples.

[Speaker 2]
Dignaga learned the logic and Suryamati learned the Abhidharma.

[Speaker 1]
So we can say he is the lineage holder of Abhidharma in this lineage.

[Speaker 2]
Do you realize the relationship between these two books?

[Speaker 1]
Which means Master Vasubandhu wrote the book on Mahayana Five-Hips and Suryamati wrote the great book on Mahayana Five-Hips. Think about it. Why did he do that?

If your teacher wrote a book on Mahayana Five-Hips and you are his student and you learned from him, then you write a book which is the great book on Mahayana Five-Hips. Why do you do that? I realized later that these two books have a relationship.

It's a very good passing on of information. I do not dare to say the student writes a better book than the teacher because this rarely happens. But of course, Master Tsongkhapa did it.

For example, one of the teachers of Tsongkhapa is Rendawa. And later, Master Tsongkhapa became the teacher of his own teacher. But this rarely happens.

But as a student, of course, you want to pass on the wisdom of your teacher. Because as a student, you are very lucky to be able to get close to your teacher and learn from them. So, of course, your teacher would ask you, saying that you have learned so much, you know what to do.

Of course, you want to pass it on. So, what I guess is, Master De Mati is doing what Master Vasubandhu asked him to do. Like Geshe Michael, a good teacher will give you a lot of chances to shine and do what you are good at.

Because the teacher cannot finish everything. So, a good teacher will leave a lot of very good opportunities for the students. Like a teacher will start some teaching and the students will continue teaching them.

So, this is my guess. A good teacher like Master Vasubandhu, a real master, would create opportunities for their students to continue the teaching. So, I am thinking today we should learn this book, the great book on the Mahayana Five Heaps.

Because from this we will learn a lot of the thinkings of Master Vasubandhu. And I am thinking in such a team class today, because of this type of class, team class, meaning we don't have Geshe Michael with us, in this team class I will talk about this book. Because myself, I am very happy to learn about Five Heaps.

Every time I get very excited. Every time when we talk about Abhidharma, we have not gone into great details of the Five Heaps. So, I was also thinking why Geshe Michael did not talk in great details of the Five Heaps, because he is giving us the chance to do it.

And very recently I changed my plan again. Because in this great book, I started with Five Heaps again. The Buddha talked about Five Heaps, etc.

And when I was doing my class preparation, I asked myself a question. What content from this is the good facts of Master Vasubandhu? Which part is some supplementary information from Srimati?

Because we have to compare the great with the normal one. The normal one is the original book by Master Vasubandhu. And there is a brief book.

Why do we say that Srimati's book is the great book, but Geshe Michael's book is the brief book? Why? Why not we read both books together?

Let us look into the root text of Master Vasubandhu, and then we will take a look into this great book and compare the two books, and see how did he write the commentary. And this is very meaningful for us to learn the wisdom of the ancient masters. And when I thought I have come up with a very good innovative idea of teaching this class, then some senior student told me, I found that some senior teacher had already done this before.

When I thought that I would want to do it this way, comparing two books, and I was like doing copy and paste of every paragraph, first Master Vasubandhu's format version, and then Srimati's version, when I was doing the copy and paste, and I was thinking this is such a meaningful thing. And suddenly I remember, one of the teachers that we really love, Choney Lama, one text from Choney Lama, we have translated a lot of Choney Lama's books in Mixed Nuts, and Choney Lama wrote a book on five heaps. And when I looked into his book, I found that he didn't write any commentary.

Instead, he did it already. He compared Master Vasubandhu's and Master Srimati's five heaps. He had done it already, and this is what I wanted to do.

So the point is, Choney Lama had already finished that. So in the end, we don't need to do the copy and paste ourselves. Choney Lama had already done that for us.

So in the end, we just need to look into Choney Lama's five heaps. What he did is he put together Master Vasubandhu and Master Srimati's books on five heaps. This, again, shows to us that's why Cheney Lama likes Choney Lama so much, because he is really cool.

So after a big circle, we circle back to this text, which is Choney Lama's text on the comparison between Master Vasubandhu and Srimati's five heaps. Don't forget why we are talking about five heaps. Just to remind you again, especially in Mahayana Abhidharma system, meaning the mind only system on Abhidharma, five heaps are to help us cut into the door of emptiness.

Like in the Heart Sutra, in the very beginning, it talked about five heaps and emptiness. So five heaps and emptiness has a very deep relationship. And today we can learn together and contemplate together what's the story in it.

The original text of Choney Lama is in Tibetan, and beneath it is the Chinese translation. So in the very beginning, he already said very clearly that he is doing only copy and paste. What is he copying and pasting?

The Master Vasubandhu and Master Srimati's books on five heaps.

[Speaker 2]
So this is the title.

[Speaker 1]
I warn you in advance, because I believe we cannot finish today, so our plan is to continue talking about this book in the future team classes. So may I ask pure gold translators to record our progress. As the Conqueror discussed the five heaps briefly, the physical stuff, the feelings, discrimination, other factors and consciousness.

So may I ask him who wrote the first sentence with the bigger fonts? The bigger fonts are by Master Vasubandhu. And you can see that the Chinese layout is also very politically correct.

He put the text of the student in a smaller font. So the smaller fonts are by Master Srimati. The Buddha talked about five heaps, the physical, feelings, discrimination, other factors and consciousness.

So you can see that this first sentence, there is no explanation, it's just a summary. He directly talked about the five heaps. There are five heaps.

Which five heaps? And next, we start to see something interesting. We start to see details.

Welcome anyone to raise your point of view or questions if you have any. Why physical? Why the physical heap?

What is the physical heap? The four main elements and the physical things created by the four elements. So when we talk about physical heap, we can dissect it into two.

What is physical? Do you still remember? Yes, everything physical.

All physical existing things. Heap is accumulation. So we call this the physical heap.

The physical heap, we can break it down into two. The first is the four elements and the second is the product of the four elements. Four elements and the product of four elements, together they are the physical heap.

And for Master Siddharmati, it's also very brief. Why physical heap? It's four elements and the physical things created by the four elements.

And why do we break them down into the four elements and the product of the four elements? This was our thinking. I've forgotten which year we talked about the book Wisdom in which we talked about the emptiness of the four elements.

It was very amazing content. But at least we know what's the meaning of the four elements and the product of the four elements. They are the basics of all physical stuff.

When we talk about physical stuff, we can think about the four elements. And what are the four elements?

[Speaker 2]
Now, four new words appear.

[Speaker 1]
The earth, water, fire and wind.

[Speaker 2]
Earth realm, water realm, fire realm and wind realm.

[Speaker 1]
And Siddharmati also didn't explain much. What I want to raise is, you see that when we are learning wisdom, one important thing is, especially if we learn in Chinese, one word has a lot of meanings. It's commonly seen.

So why do we see this word realm? Someone says it's the same word of the world. Word realm is also the same word used in the world.

And for the world, it means space and time. And Dordo also mentioned about 18 categories, which is also the same word.

[Speaker 2]
So we have to know which meaning it refers to.

[Speaker 1]
And like the desire realm, formless realm, also use the same word. And what does this word realm mean here? First, we keep this question in mind and we continue looking into the text.

Why the four elements? Don't forget that all physical elements have these four elements. Does it mean that there is fire in water?

There is wind in water? If we say there is water in water, I can understand. But can we say that there is fire or there is wind in the water?

Or can we say that there is earth in the water? If there is fire in water, how does water put out fire? So here we have to ask the question.

In fact, what does it mean for this earth, water, fire and wind? Because actually there should not be fire in water. And what does it mean here?

[Speaker 2]
Including wind, there are also four elements.

[Speaker 1]
There are also earth, water, fire and wind.

[Speaker 2]
Let's look down. What is the earth realm? Let's start with the earth.

[Speaker 1]
Someone said fire.

[Speaker 2]
This Chinese is too difficult.

[Speaker 1]
Earth, what is the element of earth? It means solidity. This is by Master Vasubandhu.

He said it means solidity.

[Speaker 2]
Let us take a look at what did Dharmati say. He said earth is solid.

[Speaker 1]
What do we mean by earth element? It is solid. It is kind of a nature.

Don't forget this nature. When we are talking about Dharma, it is the thing that can maintain its own nature. When we dissect physical stuff into the smallest one, we can say that every thing has the four elements.

And here he used the word thing, nature. He is saying earth has the nature of solid. May I ask you, is solidity expressed in the water, in the ocean?

Of course. If you have drops of water consistently, it can make a hole in the rock, right? So this is the meaning of earth.

Everything in the universe has solidity. Even in wind, such soft invisible thing, does it have its solidity? Yes, of course.

Try to stay in Diamond Mountain in a retreat, and in Diamond Mountain, there is only some 200 miles per hour wind speed. And this is what we mean by the solidity of wind, because it can blow away your tent, if you sit in the tent.

[Speaker 2]
Let me have a look.

[Speaker 1]
Yes, Upala is a three-year retreatant. She understands. Because the wind at Diamond Mountain is really strong.

Recently, we are preparing for the IR program in October at Diamond Mountain. In the beginning, we wanted to increase more places, more space. And we were talking with two nuns to build some tents.

But in the end, we found it is not workable, because the wind is too fierce. And later, we talked about glamping some kind of tents with wooden structure to increase more spaces. Because last time, some few very brave people stayed in some tents at Diamond Mountain, but really the wind was too strong.

So for anything, what I want to say is for anything, anything has all the four elements. Let us look at what is water. Diamond Mountain can show you a lot of things about the four elements.

What is the element of water? It is fluidity. You can see that Vasubandhu and Srimati are somehow different.

Vasubandhu explains it in fluidity and humidity. It is two things. One is fluidity, one is wetness.

But for Srimati, he only mentioned about wetness. Because in Chinese, fluidity and wetness are definitely different. According to what Bruce Lee said, like water, water is fluid, is moving, is flowing.

But when we talk about the wetness, water can nurture everything.

[Speaker 2]
It is about the wetness.

[Speaker 1]
And everything has the water element. Even the hardest rock in Diamond Mountain in Arizona, even the hardest rock, it also has the water element. If there is no fluidity or the wetness in it, there can't be any change.

Then it would not be possible for you to look into the rocks and caves. And here, what is fire? This definition is what I have not seen in the previous Abhidharma.

What Srimati said is, everything has temperature and warmth in it, including extremely cold existence. For example, ice. Is there fire in ice?

Is there fire in ice? If we learn five heaps today, we will say yes. So next time you can talk with your friends about fire in ice.

Because the four elements exist in everything. Having fire inside doesn't mean there is a flame inside. But there is warmth, there is temperature.

But for ice, the temperature is very low. So is ice. But even for things below zero degrees, it has warmth.

For things which are physical existence, there is warmth. So there is fire. You know a person, Fei Xiang, he is a master.

He has a very famous saying. He is saying in winter, there is fire in my heart. So from Abhidharma's point of view, can we have fire in our heart?

If you are talking about the heart in our body, yes, because it is physical stuff.

[Speaker 2]
But if we are talking about something mental, then can it have fire?

[Speaker 1]
No, because we are talking about the four elements exist in all physical things. Geshe Michael likes to use the word energy. He is saying the energy does exist in all physical stuff.

By the way, the word heart, when we are mentioning about the mind, the heart, the mind and the consciousness, things are very subtle. These three things are different. In Mahayana Abhidharma and Hinayana Abhidharma, these three things are different.

But when we are talking like in colloquial ways, we don't differentiate these three very much. We are saying that the seeds exist in your mind. But especially in the Mahayana Abhidharma, we say that it doesn't exist in your mind, it is in your heart.

Like we use the word the heart-mind. But it is really not accurate. Because heart and mind, these two are different.

So every time when I try to understand the difference between the heart, the mind and the consciousness, it is actually three aspects. And in our daily communication, we don't differentiate that much. And next, we are talking about wind.

What is the wind element? What is wind? Wind, it means lightness and mobility.

It is the saying of Pasupandu. And for Srimati, he also said lightness and mobility. But it is a little bit different from Pasupandu's explanation.

And in Krishnamurti's English, he normally translates it into mobility. He placed emphasis on the movement, the mobility. I am not a yoga teacher.

I am not very sure. But I have learned a bit of the Ayurveda system in India. There is a detail about wind and about that teaching.

If a person has more wind, normally his mind is more mobile. And this person, it is easy for them to have ADD. They move a lot.

Especially when you are young, you are in your 20s, you have a lot of wind. But later when you get into your 30s, your wind may lower down. Or maybe your earth will increase.

But in the Abhidharma system, wind means mobility. All things have their mobility. They move.

To be honest, if there is no mobility in our modern day science, a lot of the energy generated in very, very small subtle things, for example, nuclear fission, such things won't happen. Because even in these very, very small things, very small energies, there are a lot of movements. So you can talk about the four elements.

They are very interesting. And we asked the question, what is the meaning of this word here? I don't know how to translate this word here into other languages.

We can say it's the tree of world or realm of category. Or now even these four elements, we use the same word too. And you see that for this word tree, there is an explanation here.

What is here?

[Speaker 2]
It is something that can maintain its nature and cost.

[Speaker 1]
For this nature, we said, actually this definition of here is the same as dharma. Because it says here, it maintains its own nature. The nature of water is fluidity.

The nature of wind is mobility. The nature of earth is solidity. And the nature of fire is warmth.

Why we call them here? There is also another reason. Because it can create more products.

With the four elements, all existing things are created, especially physical things. So now you know what are the four elements. And why do we say that the four elements create all physical things?

After we discuss about the four elements, why do we talk about the products that these four elements create now? Do you still remember what is our context here? What are we discussing about?

The physical heap. The first heap in the five heaps. The physical heap.

Because we were talking about the definition of the physical heap. What is the definition of physical things? The four elements and the products of the four elements.

So just now, we finished talking about the four elements. We finished the definition of everyone. We talked about the definition of all the four elements.

So next, what should we talk about? Their products.

[Speaker 2]
What do they create?

[Speaker 1]
What are the objects that they create? Now we talk about the physical things created by the four elements. You mentioned about physical things.

So all the physical things that was created by the four elements, what are them? And the next sentence is very typical of Abhidharma. Abhidharma likes to list.

It's nice if you cannot get into bed easily. We used to count the stars or lamps. But now after we learn Abhidharma, you know what you can count.

You can say five heaps, physical, feeling, discrimination, other factors. And what are the source of sense? Eyes, ears, nose, etc.

And also the respective objects, the source of sense. And the non-communicating form. So there are eleven here.

This is a very typical way of classifying in Abhidharma. After learning Abhidharma for seven years, seven or eight years. It's my eighth year.

My sleep has really improved. Especially if I take a look at the Abhidharma text before bed. Because it's really boring.

It's like the books of other teachers. They have sexy books. And for Abhidharma, I just look at the power of eyes, the power of ears, the power of nose, the power of the tongue, the power of the body, and the physical objects, sound, smell, etc.

And including the non-communicating physical things, there are eleven. It's really important that if it's your first time to read this in the Abhidharma, you will have a lot of questions. What is the meaning of power?

When we are talking about physical things, we see power. It's not... This zhen means root.

That also means power. But it doesn't mean the roots of a plant. So you will find it very weird.

If you put away your understanding in the past, and this is the first time you read Master Vasubandhi's book on the five heat, then when you read this eye power, ear power, you find it very weird. If you talk about eye, ear, it's very clear. I can understand.

But why the power? Why zhen or power or root? It's really weird.

And the second point is what is non-communicating form? If you did not express your attitude, what does it mean? This form, does it mean color or physical things?

You will have a lot of questions. Then Srimati come and say, don't worry, I'm here. I'm here to explain it to you.

What does it mean for this zhen, power or root?

[Speaker 2]
Let us take a look.

[Speaker 1]
When we read this smaller font, the smaller fonts are from the great book of Srimati. So this is where the great is. Because he is giving explanation, the first sentence is the same as what Master Vasubandhi said.

[Speaker 2]
There are 11 things.

[Speaker 1]
And this gives some explanation. This paragraph is very valuable for us, for us beginners or latecomers. And this is where the great book of Srimati has a study.

[Speaker 2]
First, why we say caused form? Caused.

[Speaker 1]
Why do we say caused form?

[Speaker 2]
Caused means there is a cause, which is the four elements.

[Speaker 1]
And the products are the results. So here is emphasizing on the cause and effect relationship. Not saying that someone is doing some action.

Not saying that the four elements are like four people doing some actions to create some products. But we are saying that the four elements are the cause, and the things caused are the results. And we talked about the word zhen, power or root.

Why do we say year, power, etc? When you are spending your time in the Chinese New Year very happily, I go into deep retreat. So my six powers are very quiet.

So why do we use this word zhen here? Zhen, root or power means?

[Speaker 2]
Zui sheng zi zai. What does it mean? Zu, what does it mean?

Zeng shang, what does it mean? OK? You may have some questions.

What does it mean? This is the main point. Who is the main?

Who is the main?

[Speaker 1]
Which is the...

[Speaker 2]
Let's look at the main first.

[Speaker 1]
Let us take a look at this part, the main meaning. Why do we call it zhen or root? Why do we say the root of I?

Because the I is the main power. Which one is the master? Here it is saying the I, the power of I and the consciousness of the I are the master causing the consciousness, the I-consciousness.

Because there is the power or root, so the consciousness can be caused. So there is the I, so the I-consciousness can be caused. So the I is the master, without the I, there cannot be I-consciousness.

So from this point of view, the I is the master, so is the root. And what is this increasing? What does this mean?

[Speaker 2]
Increasing or...

[Speaker 1]
I really want the Anhui Bodhisattva to explain these terms for us, but he didn't.

[Speaker 2]
We don't really understand these. Why does it say increasing? Why does it say increasing?

[Speaker 1]
Is this supreme freedom?

[Speaker 2]
I think it's expressing something that has a leading role.

[Speaker 1]
I think so.

[Speaker 2]
I guess it's in other debates, like the Jusheng Debate. But here it only talks about the principle of the word, not the other two.

[Speaker 1]
So you can see that it talks about the main meaning, but it didn't explain the other two meanings.

[Speaker 2]
This supreme independence means independence.

[Speaker 1]
It is independent. And if we look at this term literally, it is supreme independence. It doesn't rely on other things.

If I'm the master, of course, I don't rely on you. If I'm the master, of course, I make the decision. So from this point of view, maybe these three terms are synonyms, and maybe they are using different terms to explain the same meaning.

[Speaker 2]
I think time is nearly up.

[Speaker 1]
Today we talked about the four elements and the physical form caused by the four elements. And we talked about the power of eye, the power of ear, the power of nose, etc. And the smell form, etc., and non-communicating form. And we talked about the meaning of cause. We will talk about each power in detail. There are 11.

The power of eye, what does it mean? How do we define it? It's very interesting.

And how do we understand the power of ear? And we will talk about all the five powers. And after talking about the eye, ear, nose, etc., after we talk about these, we will talk about their objects. What will they focus on? Like for the eye, we see form here. What is the meaning of form?

It is the object for the eye. And it is also divided into communicating form, color, form, and communicating, color, shape, and communicating form.

[Speaker 2]
Colors and shapes are also divided into four basic categories. And the form is divided into long, short, or square, etc.

[Speaker 1]
There are a lot of details in color and shape. Black shapes can have different shapes. After talking about the six powers, when we are talking about the six objects, in the six objects, there is a communicating form.

The definition here is the object that the eye can focus on.

[Speaker 2]
Can the eye see shape and colors?

[Speaker 1]
Can the eye see communicating form? And why does non-communicating form not put here? Have you thought about it?

Here it is dividing communicating form and non-communicating form. The communicating form is included in this part for the eye. And the non-communicating form is not put here.

Non-communicating form means that physical stuff that does not express its intention. A very typical example is the foul, the aura around your body after you have taken the foul. This is a very typical example for non-communicating form, which is something that the eye cannot see.

Because the eye cannot see, so it is not included here. So, if you analyze Abhidharma, it is very organized. Classification is very cool.

Cool to a degree that you cannot find any faults logically. Cool to a point that you will get into sleep very easily if you read it before bed. Because it is really accurate and precise in logic.

But I am always thinking why do I have to learn this? Until today, I am still thinking about this question. I am just kidding.

I believe everyone who learns wisdom has to learn Abhidharma.

[Speaker 2]
Because it is a very important basic to help us understand this world more in a more organized way.

[Speaker 1]
There is a saying that first you have to understand the category of everything. You have to first understand everything in different categories. Then you get to understand the emptiness of everything.

According to this saying, you first understand the shape and color set that your eye perceives. Then later, Natarjuna tells you actually your eyes cannot see colors and your eyes cannot see shapes. When you see a pot on the stove, a round silver thing on the stove, it is not something that your eye sees.

It is not something that your eye perceives. It is ultimately empty. From there, you can understand the system of dependent origination and emptiness.

From this point of view, first understanding Abhidharma is very important. Because Abhidharma is really the foundation that you really have to build strongly. Before you can build a skyscraper on it.

So this is what I really respect about Master Xuanzang. He said that you really have to learn the basics before you can learn mind only. And myself, I think I had a lot of benefits from it.

Because I appreciate Geshe Michael's arrangement for me to learn the Abhidharma. And I really had a lot of appreciation for him. So I hope you all can build a strong foundation on this basic knowledge before you can really go up and learn higher stuff.

From this point of view, Abhidharma is really, really cool. And our time is up here. And I'd like to thank our translator, all the translators.

This content is really difficult to translate. I really like to thank all of you.

[Speaker 2]
Is Nick still there? Anything? Nick has run away because too much Chinese.

[Speaker 1]
If Nick is not here, then it's okay. See you next time. Have a good day.