Вордсмит — Книга 2: Трудные места школы «Ум только», занятие 67

[Speaker 1]
You'll answer it on my behalf. Oh, okay. Sounds good.

Here we go. Okay, try to keep it simple to make it answerable. Here we go.

According to Jason Koppel's poem, which is the root text by the way, when do you not temporarily have a negative conscious and when do you ultimately not have a negative consciousness? Nice question. When do you get rid of your negative consciousness permanently and when do you get rid of your negative consciousness for a while?

Exactly.

[Speaker 3]
When you're in single-pointed meditation, you have temporary...

[Speaker 1]
Kind of. If it's sensation meditation, then yes. When you're eating popcorn in the class or something.

Hopefully. I feel pretty good. Is it not the direct perception of emptiness?

[Speaker 3]
The temporary one?

[Speaker 1]
Ultimately, arhat? Yeah. And what's the other ultimately?

The other one. Yeah, arhat's one. Or what kind of arhat?

How about that?

[Speaker 3]
Bodhisattva flavor. That's not arhat. Yes.

[Speaker 1]
Okay.

[Speaker 3]
Wait, there is a bodhisattva behavior. I thought it was...

[Speaker 1]
Flavor. Flavor.

[Speaker 2]
Flavor. Flavor. Bodhisattva flavor of arhat.

[Speaker 1]
What does that even mean? It means you have no more mental afflictions on the eighth bodhisattva level. Isn't it like a bodhisattva who reaches nirvana actually a buddha?

No. Not necessarily, no. A bodhisattva who reaches a buddha is an arhat, but you don't have to be an arhat.

You don't have to be a buddha on the bodhisattva path to be arhat. I always thought that bodhisattvas don't get to nirvana. They actually just go straight to buddhahood.

No, eighth level. That's not in the ten bodhisattva bhumis? No.

Eighth level. On the eighth one up, you do get rid of your mental afflictions. Yep.

All right. What are the two aspects?

[Speaker 2]
Don't feel bad. You'll be a buddha soon, Rob. I know you're only the eighth level bodhisattva right now, but it's going to work out for you.

[Speaker 1]
You're like, wait, I thought I'd be a buddha now. I don't have mental afflictions.

[Speaker 2]
So close.

[Speaker 3]
Definitely thought that, yeah.

[Speaker 2]
No one gets discouraged and gives up at that point.

[Speaker 1]
What are the two aspects of the negative conscience according to the summary of the greater way by Arya Sangha? Oh my gosh, who remembers that? It's the two things it does, pretty much.

[Speaker 2]
It says me.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, it says me. And what's the other thing?

[Speaker 2]
Focuses on the Kunchina Vrishabha and says me.

[Speaker 1]
That's the first one. That's more specific to Oscar's answer. What's the second one?

[Speaker 2]
Is this the one that creates space for the after mind or something like that?

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, it basically creates a condition for the regular mental consciousness to function, which is our discussion. Okay, good. Why does the notion of not having a negative consciousness create a problem in terms of its functions?

The second one, for a hint. It's so fun practicing Dharma. Why would you want to get rid of it?

[Speaker 2]
Do we need a negative consciousness all the time so the general consciousness can exist?

[Speaker 1]
Basically, if you get rid of the yuni, and if it's a thing that supports your Iki Nampa Shepa, your mental consciousness to exist, what happens to it once your yuni is gone? What happens to it once you're in Arhat or if you're in those temporary states?

[Speaker 2]
Okay. What happens to the awareness of your own thoughts?

[Speaker 1]
What happens to your ability to think at all, pretty much?

[Speaker 2]
Oh, that's what happens.

[Speaker 1]
I think it's related to the sixth potato chip or something.

[Speaker 2]
Don't you reach nirvana at the eighth potato chip?

[Speaker 1]
No, I'm on ten. Not the immediately preceding condition? No.

Who said that? Nick? Yeah.

Wow. I think Jaru is whispering answers in your ear. Don't tell anybody.

Jaru sounds like Astro from the Jetsons. The meditation of a realized being. How did Geshe-la translate it in the poem?

[Speaker 3]
He penned an origination.

[Speaker 1]
The meditation. Exactly. Because it just says nam shak in the poem, that's why.

Oh, okay. Yeah, that's why. I think we used to say thoroughly afflictive.

Something like that. It just means like the bad side of things. Okay, again.

It makes me feel like I have to wash the dishes or something. The thoroughly stained. Again, we don't have to do all this.

I just did a whole quote, but we can just do part of what I did. Yeah, we got to talk about this because I spent weeks on this page. A couple weeks on this page and it's messed up.

It's really messed up. And so, you know. Let's go through it, but I still not completely decided about it.

Okay, here we go. I think the ray might be day. Should someone read first again?

Yeah, please go ahead. You want to choose somebody? I'll read the first one for fun.

Okay. Okay. Yeah, let's take it apart and see.

I think the ray is day. Because if you think about the shape of the letter, it's just a question of the vertical bar. Yeah, Ross can be confused for Taz.

[Speaker 3]
Yeah.

[Speaker 1]
So, by this, dra nyen no, I am listening to sound. When you think that, you have a rikmi tumba experience. You have a dissimilar experience, right?

You have a contradictory experience somehow. And then it doesn't have a contradiction. So, you have a type of experience which does not have any contradiction within it.

Something like that. Or a type of perception continues in a stream without any intervening type of perception. Something like that.

This is what they mean, Tun? Without any intervening. Without any, yeah, without any discordant type intervening.

Yeah. So, it doesn't mean a pure awareness of sound without any tactile perception intervening or something like that. And that continues up until the end of samsara, okay?

And I'll ask you to consider why this conversation is here, where this conversation is going. And there's a huge problem with this whole conversation. He's going to be quoting a sutra called What I Really Meant, right?

And then, if you go to that sutra and you look for that quotation, it's not there. There's nothing even close to it. And then it turns out that he is quoting it from Dönsang.

And I think Dönsang is by Vasubandhu. I mean, they say it was reported to be by Vasubandhu and it wasn't by Vasubandhu, somebody figured out. But as far as I can tell, the quality of the book is definitely Vasubandhu-ish.

And it turns out to be a big classic that Tsongkhapa really depended on. So, they're going to quote What I Really Meant, this ancient sutra, from the quotation found in the Tengger, right? Maybe by Vasubandhu.

And then there's nothing remotely similar to that quotation in the sutra. And I looked and looked and looked, and I looked on for about two months, and I can't find anything like that. There's nothing even similar.

Okay, so let's keep going, okay? That's about all we can do on this. Oh, the reason I brought it up was, I'm trying to think of why did he bring up this quotation about having a sense perception without any kind of intervening other perception.

And word, I think the point is, in the mind-only school, like, I rented a cabin and did a retreat a couple weeks ago, and they had a turntable there. And me and Veronica really enjoyed playing these 1960s albums, okay? And when they reached the end of the album, they start clicking, you know, and you have to turn it off.

You can't just hit the play again button or something like that. Now, according to the mind-only school, that album should go on forever, because there's no album. It's all coming out of my own consciousness.

You see what I mean? It's just coming from... It's not like it reaches the end of the record, because the music doesn't have to stop because of something in the outside physical world.

The sound of the music is coming from my own mind. You see what I mean? So there's no reason why a sound would stop if the sound is not out there.

According to this school, the sound is flowing out of your own seeds. Therefore, you wouldn't have to wait for the... You wouldn't have to wait for the conditions of the sound to continue.

It would just continue. You see what I mean? There's no intervening force.

Yeah. It's not like somebody could turn the sound off because it's not coming from the outside. Someone could turn off the record player and the sound would still continue, because it's coming from your seeds.

It's not coming from the outside. In this school. In this school.

So that implies that a sound could conceivably continue forever without any intervening sense perception, because it doesn't exist on the outside. I think it's something to do with that. Well, again, remember, I think it's still couched in the discussion about when the nuni starts and stops, etc.

Exactly, yeah. And it's important to say that's exactly true. We have to remember we are in the middle of a discussion of when can you shut down your negative state of mind.

So every time a strange sentence comes up, you have to ask yourself, what the heck does that have to do with shutting down my negative consciousness? And by the way, I don't think it's even clear that he's talking about that after a while. He even seems to be shifting over to kunshi, like shutting down kunshi.

And it seems like he wanders over to that somehow. So keep that in mind. It's a very, very difficult section.

My wife just came back from... Like I was whining all day about this class. Let's go to the next paragraph.

Okay, here we go. And we can stop my homework anytime, Gen, if you just want to do it yourself. I understand, but I don't mind.

Let's do it this way. I appreciate your work so hard. Okay, whatever works.

We went over this in our team class pretty in depth last time. It was actually pretty helpful. Okay, someone want to read this one?

Okay, I'm seeing a Roxanna.

[Speaker 3]
Okay, I got to see how he translates this.

[Speaker 1]
On the same matter, it also says in the secret meaning. Yeah, and again for everybody else, the secret meaning is a commentary on the mind-only school that is contained in the tengyur, which is all the ancient commentaries, and it's not clear who wrote it. And I'm tending towards Vasubandhu, but we're not sure.

But it's definitely something that would be fun for mixed nuts in the future. And the translation would be very weird. Okay, while our non-Buddha is in the balanced meditation, which is beyond the world, jikten le depa nyombar jukpa loppa nekab kyi yi kyi nombar shepa mongyepa Yeah, non-Buddha, right.

Good. Still studying, right? Yeah, still learning.

So gye ya, that very important expression here, it's referring to someone who's not a Buddha yet, which means they are still studying. So still studying in Buddhism is a synonym for someone who's not a Buddha yet. It's not the case that their mental consciousness is...

Yeah, it's not the case that their mental consciousness is unsure.

[Speaker 2]
Yeah, okay.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, and I think this word, it means since even the base consciousness is flowing out of seeds, it's just about uninterruptible, you know? It's not depending on outside objects, it's not depending on other conditions. If the seeds are there, this state of mind...

You see, this bothers me because it seems to me where he is shading over to, can you destroy kunshi? Yeah. Yeah, and that's not the subject that we're supposed to be on.

We're supposed to be on the subject of, can you destroy negative consciousness? Well, I don't think so, again. I think he set it up.

He said there's two aspects to the kunshi. Due to demak takpe ken. And so therefore the muni was kind of playing a role like a base consciousness for ikki nampar shepa.

So that's why it sounds like he's talking about kunshi. Okay, okay. So anyway, but it's a double negative again, right?

It's not the case that awareness of your thoughts can ever be uncertain, okay? And somehow awareness of your thoughts continues in any case, okay? Yeah, and yeah, he may be setting us up for the discussion of whether negative consciousness can stop.

Because the awareness of your thoughts cannot stop.

[Speaker 2]
Exactly.

[Speaker 1]
Okay, that's this sentence. Let's keep going. Geshe-la, briefly, what do you think of this ekirpa nepa?

How would you translate that? Ah, yeah. I would say the past tense of the ekirpa is the equivalent clause.

It's a clause for equivalence. So it means that thing which is the mind. Yeah.

That thing which is the mind continues on in any case. When we're talking about shutting down parts of the mind, which is the negative part of the mind, in any case the mind is going to continue on. That which is the mind.

So when you spell it without any prefix or head letters, it means it's a clause, it's a phrase, it's an adjectival phrase. That thing which is the mind. You see what I mean?

Yeah. Okay. Thank you again.

It continues on, it never stops. I was trying to determine if this was just yi or nyu-nyi. Oh yeah, I mean he's supposed to be on the subject of nyu-nyi.

And Tsongkhapa is famous for referring to nyu-nyi as yi, you know. So it's a coin toss right here. It could be saying, since you can't shut down consciousness, it may be difficult to shut down negative consciousness.

You know, something like that. Yeah, I'll have to work on this. It's a very difficult section, and this is one of those sections that I don't think we will figure it out completely until we do the final translation.

And oftentimes you have to finish the whole book before you can go back and see this section in context. Oh man. And there's parts like that in every book, and this is one of those parts.

I don't think we will totally understand this part until we get much further on in the book. Okay, good. Yeah, you put a note here too.

We don't know, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, thank you again.

Who wants to read this? T-Mac, is that correct? T-Mac?

[Speaker 3]
Yeah, that's me.

[Speaker 1]
Nice. So, do de gong jau, which means the sutra called What I Really Meant. This famous sutra which triggered the third turning of the wheel and gave birth to the mind-only school.

So he's going to be quoting it. And by the way, I believe Word, me and Stanley were working on it. If I'm not mistaken, this was translated from the Chinese.

Oh, oh, because it's Wenzhek? It's Wenzhek, right? I don't remember.

You got to ask Stanley. Or it was translated by Shenzong, I don't know. No, Master Wenzhek did gong jau.

Yeah, he did a huge commentary. But I'm not sure whether the original sutra might have been translated by Shenzong. I'm not sure.

But in any case, I believe, I think Stanley said it was translated not from the Sanskrit, but from the Chinese. And this is a reference to the Sanskrit text called The Secret Meaning, which we think might be by Vasubandhu. And it was using the original Sanskrit of the sutra, which by the time they translated it, didn't exist apparently.

Nobody had it. Hmm. So it may be, you know, some great scholar could try to piece together another what I really thought.

By the way, the sutra, what I really thought, what I was thinking, what I really meant, that sutra is coherent. It's not confusing. It doesn't feel like, it sounds like a good translation.

And it sounds like it's a clean text. But maybe there was an older version, or maybe there were other versions. I don't know.

Wait, so again, are you saying because Dunsang was translated from the Sanskrit, and Master Wen Sek's book was translated from the Chinese, is it possible that we can't pin these quotes down because they were translated from different languages into Tibet? Yeah, exactly. The version of Dodegondrel, if I'm not mistaken, in the Tengyur, in the Kangyur, was translated from the Chinese, I think.

And the version of the same sutra that Vasubandhu was using seven or eight hundred years before that, was the original Sanskrit. And they're not the same. And that's frustrating.

And it's interesting that Tsongkhapa thought it was important to use the original. Or that he... This section heavily depends on the original original.

And we don't have it, and it's hard to translate. So anyway. ,DGONG PO NGES POR BRAL BA'I MDO LAS, ,REN DANG NI GCIG DANG STE, ,GANG GI TSE YID DANG ZHIG CHEN PO, Yeah, I mean, it doesn't mean anything.

I can't understand it. But yeah, that sutra says... By the way, yeah, I think the R.E.S. here is correct. Because it's commonly used before Ga. Yeah, and it means alternately, or on and off. How do you say that?

Adventitiously? Or intermittently? Intermittent, yeah.

Normally it means intermittent, yeah. ,REN DANG NI GCIG DANG STE, ,GANG GI TSE YID DANG ZHIG CHEN PO, Intermittently it is one. And I think what it's referring to is that the awareness of your thought, your mental awareness, continues on in any case.

Sense awarenesses may come and go. But the thought itself continues on unbroken. Okay?

And that has implications. That has implications on whether or not you can shut down nyunyi. Yeah?

So apparently yi itself cannot be shut down. Okay? But nyunyi can be shut down.

That's what it's leading up to, supposedly. Okay? So if you treat mind as a single entity, if you treat the thought as a single entity, you know, that's yi.

But then the next sentence is amazingly mistaken. Now it's incredible. And I fixed it, but it took me like a week, you know.

Okay. Somebody should read it. Okay.

Who wants to read it? Oscar? You just leave?

Lam? Yep. Lorona.

Nice. So Tsongkapa's... the carving of Tsongkapa's text has an extremely important mistake in it.

And it should say, nyi dang te yi dang yi kyi nampa shepa. See that word? And someone changed...

it's supposed to be two things, and someone changed it to one a thousand years ago. You know, 400 years ago. And messed it up.

So we fixed that, and it makes a lot more sense. It doesn't say, renga nyi nyi dang te yi kyi nampa shepa. It doesn't say that.

It says, renga nyi nyi dang te yi dang yi kyi nampa shepa. Okay. Which means, your thoughts and your awareness of your thoughts.

You see what I mean? Mm-hmm. And I think that gets into an interesting question, you see?

Is it the case that your thoughts are always flowing, and then your awareness of your thoughts comes and goes? Right, right. It's something like that.

It's talking about that, you see? Sometimes you're in one state of mind, which means your awareness is continuing on. You never stop your awareness completely until you die.

But, you come and go, your awareness of your awareness comes and goes. And it's talking about the awareness of... It is talking about the sixth consciousness, which is the awareness of the sense organ of your thoughts.

Okay. And somehow, I think in English at least, you get this feeling that your thoughts go on all the time. And then sometimes you check into them, and sometimes you don't, you know?

And I think that's the point here. Geshe-la, I have a question. Yeah.

It's a grammar question, but I think it's pertinent. This chik dang and this ni dang, isn't that quite strange? Yeah, I take the dang as meaning total.

Oh, in all, in total? Yeah, total of two and total of one. Oh, that's cool.

Yeah. You know they use dang in sums of figures? They do.

Sum dang sum dang dru. You know what I mean? So maybe it means total of.

Yeah. But I'll tell you anyway, if you go to check it in the original sutra, you will not find it. And it's very frustrating.

It's impossible to go further with this section, because the original text is gone completely. There's no such text. Did you just search for ni and chik?

Did you try that again? I did crazy things. You have no idea.

You have no idea. I've been working on this for weeks, and I did really crazy things. I took the sutra out.

I did really obscure proximity checks. Every time there was a word one near the word two, I checked every single occurrence in the sutra, and there's nothing there. It's not there.

It's just really not there. And it's not anywhere else either. I mean, I checked the whole samsambha.

And it's very frustrating. It's gonna be cool when we figure it out. Okay, who's gonna read?

Okay, thank you again. Thanks for all your hard work. I was complaining the whole time, okay?

Thanks for all your complaining. Anatole, you wanna read?

[Speaker 2]
Sure. Okay. gal te yam te se gyur pa yam yid ma yin pa shik du gyur na ni di la yam yid ma yin pa gyur wa ni ge du re nga ni chik dang te gang gi se yid gi nam par shey pa dang shey kyang shey par gyur wo Okay, nice.

[Speaker 1]
We can go through the pieces just for our students. Let's go through the pieces. And then let's talk about why it doesn't make any sense.

Gal te if? Yeah, de tse. At that time, or that time.

Yeah, gyur pa, it becomes, but it doesn't make any sense. The grammar doesn't make any sense. So, if the consciousness of the thoughts became yid ma yin pa.

Became without thoughts? Yeah, if the mind became not mind. Shey te gyur na.

And then the tengyur doesn't say la. And that's very important. So, whether Tsongkhapa's right or the teacher's right, we don't know.

De la yang, yid minpa gyur wa. He's talking about, is it possible, I think he's basically talking about, is it possible for your thoughts to stop? Yeah.

Okay. Yeah, if it became without thoughts, yeah. Yeah, now listen, if the gyur wa ends in wa, it's an ending.

If the gyur wa ends in la, it means there's more to come on the same subject. So, it really matters. It really matters.

We don't know who's correct. We don't know who's correct in quoting the sutra, because they are quoting a different translation of the sutra that doesn't exist anymore. Okay?

Okay? Yeah. This does seem like la again, because it seems like this is some kind of disjunctive.

Like we're saying, but... Yeah, yeah, it feels to me like it should be a disjunctive, exactly. It should be, but, yeah.

Di kye du. Some people say. Yeah, those words.

Rengga ni chik dang te. Yeah, rengga means alternating. Intermittently?

Yeah, or even alternating. So, I mean, we're supposed to be on the subject of, can you shut down your mind? We're supposed to be on the subject of, can you shut down your negative part of your mind?

But this seems to be talking about, can you shut down the mind in general? And is there a difference between shutting down the thoughts and shutting down your listening to your thoughts? And I think you can fade out of listening to your thoughts and fade back into listening to your thoughts.

Yi kye nambar shepa. But I don't think the yi itself can stop. I think those thoughts go on in any case, right?

Because there's a flow. So, I believe that in some books even, the continuation of your thoughts is your life, is your life force. You know?

So, it's not like your thoughts can just take a break and stop for a while, you know? Your awareness of your thoughts can stop for a while. But your thoughts keep going.

Your mind keeps going. We're on this. I think he's going deeper into the idea, can you shut down your mind?

Again, isn't the statement missing a verb? Yeah, it totally is. Totally missing.

It's got all kinds of problems. It's got all kinds of problems. There's no verb.

There's no subject. There's nothing. Even if you sit with it for a few months, the translation is going to have to be creative.

Yeah, yeah. It feels disjointed or something to me. I don't know.

Yeah, and creative translations make me nervous. It means something's wrong. No, it means there's a page missing or, you know.

But we'll finish the book, and we'll come back to it, and we'll make a decision. But it sure is not comfortable. Okay, let's go to the next paragraph.

The one way to thresh out a paragraph is to ignore it and move on. I do it all the time. Who's going to read this one?

By the way, this is one of the worst ones, okay? Just so you know. Okay, thank you again.

Okay, read. How this? Do you want to try?

[Speaker 3]
Yeah, thank you.

[Speaker 1]
Okay. This is the real, well, we don't know, but go on.

[Speaker 3]
Yeah. Okay.

[Speaker 1]
Nice. Nice reading. Wow.

Okay, really nice reading. By the way, word, here's an extraordinary mistake, okay? Yeah, I saw it.

Yeah, if it says gyelwa, it means victorious Buddha. If the tenger is correct, it means once in a while you see a cow. And there's a little difference between those two.

Well, it's not, gyelwa means victorious Buddha. Gyelpa, that doesn't mean anything, does it? No, it doesn't mean anything, but even assuming that...

By the way, it just occurred to me that if it means once in a hundred, if it's really gyala, it should be spelled b-r-g-y-a, I think. A hundred, yes, Gen, yeah. This means wide.

Yeah, so it still doesn't make sense. I'm taking it... So do we take this sentence as referring to a state of mind in which you are perceiving a cow?

Okay. Okay. How else do you read it?

Gyelwa is Buddha, you know? But what's the point of talking about a consciousness that engages in a Buddha? Okay, and I think the point of this section is going on to talk about...

When you talk about whether you can shut down the negative mind or not, in a sense the mind is shut down when it's not perceiving an object. You know, the mind in general is shut down. Where it goes, whether it stays in some kind of subconscious state, I don't know.

But I think he's talking... jukpa I think means referring to engaging in an object. Okay, so suppose you have a state of mind, but it only operates when an object is presented to it.

Where does it stay in the meantime? Right, again, in Golden Key we had jukpa nampar shepa, meaning the engaging consciousnesses, as opposed to kunshi, which doesn't engage, that you can actually utilize. It could be that.

It could be that. It could refer to that. And then you got the extra added problem in the mind-only school.

If you're talking about consciousness continuing on, between objects, like, okay, you see a fish and then somebody takes the fish away, and then five minutes later you see a car. And where does the consciousness stay in between objects? Is it just dormant?

You see what I mean? Can you say it's been shut down? And then don't forget in this school there are no objects.

You see what I mean? So, you're talking... The question is, does the mind...

Do the thoughts continue on between objects? And there's an extra complication, that when objects come up, they're just warts on the mind. Okay.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay. So anyway, let's go on. Now that we don't know anything, let's go again.

Nambashepe tsok. So, the word tsok is usually a trigger for... In the discussion Nambashepa, it's often a code word for what?

Word tsok. In relation to the mind-only school and Nambashepa. Well, we use it for collections of consciousness, but...

Yeah, it usually refers to the six. Yeah, the six. When they use the word Nambashepa near the word tsok, it often...

And I say almost always, it refers to the six. Yeah, and those are the engaging ones, Gen. Those are the ones you can turn off and on at will, as it were.

And their arisal depends on the presence of their object. You see what I mean? Smells, tastes, colors, shapes.

Okay. Good. Now it says, mi nye wichir.

If you're not close to an object, if an object does not produce... If the object does not present itself, is the consciousness gyun che? Does that make sense?

Does it stop? Yeah. I mean, one phrase here makes sense.

And maybe this is going to help us a lot. Does... It seems like consciousness is interrupted between objects.

It seems like that. Okay? Yeah?

Yes. And I think if he's staying on his topic, he's supposed to tie this into the possibility of shutting down the negative state of your mind forever. Again, we didn't talk about it much, but I think that's why he keeps saying korwa ji sipa.

Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, until samsara ends.

Because when nyunyi ends, samsara will end in mind-only school. That's true. Yeah.

I think... So I propose we go to my notes now, okay? Okay again, of course.

Thank you. And you did a great job, and this is a fruitless section. I'm glad I worked on it so hard.

It's you and not me. I know I worked on it for weeks, and it was very frustrating. Let's see, where are you?

Here we go. Okay. I think we'll get it.

Well, we always do, you know? In the end, we always do. Yeah, the light will go off.

Something will happen. Yeah, let me get... Can you guys see my screen?

Yes, Ken. Okay, this is your card. My wife gets a headache when I scroll like this.

This is three weeks of notes here. Okay. There we are.

We just finished that one again. Yeah, okay. So here's some of my notes, and I'm not going to go through all my notes, but I'm going to mention some of them, because I worked so hard on them.

I'm saying, I think I'm allergic to this text. I have a rash. I've had this rash for eight years.

Yeah, well, maybe I need a rash. We have to pay close attention to differences between the quotation of this sutra in Vasubandhu, or whoever it was, and in Tsongkhapa. And it's possible that sometimes Tsongkhapa's wrong, and sometimes Vasubandhu's wrong.

It's possible. It's possible he was using a different translation that was better, and it's possible that someone messed up their carving. I think we have both going on, which makes things interesting.

So here's the quotation from Dönsang, right? This is the quotation from what I really meant, as quoted by Vasubandhu in a mindfully text almost 2,000 years ago. And the sentences he quotes from the sutra do not exist in the current sutra.

And then Tsongkhapa, as you can see here, he adds things, he takes things out. Like here, there's a whole rigna. You see, he added, somebody added it.

Here's a dung somebody added. Here's a chong, which means to hold. And it's supposed to be che, which means to cut.

Cut the flow of the mind. Okay, and here's this mysterious ko. I thought it meant understand there, Geshe-la.

I mean, I wish it did, but I've never seen it used like that. I was so desperate, I thought maybe it was cow in Sanskrit. So anyway, here's my notes, and they don't help much.

Okay, but I was really desperate, and I found pieces. There's even a piece in Sugeng's text. Okay, and there's two versions of Sugeng's text in the Kangyur.

And sorry, yeah, anyway, in the Kangyur, sorry. Anyway, and they are relevant. They seem to be relevant to our discussion.

And I think the whole conversation goes back to the Journey to Lankas. And that's quoted by the Mind Only guys. It has a section that sounds like this material.

And then I thought maybe he misquoted the wrong book, you see? Yeah. Because there's a couple of references in the Journey to Lankas which are similar.

More sutra stuff. Here's what I really meant, and it sounds like it could be relevant, but it's not. And then we get to the next section.

Yay! Yay! Okay, so let's go on.

And honestly, I cannot... He concludes his section, and to me it's inconclusive. I don't see that he answered the question.

By the way, word, I'm going to do something here. I'm going to give everybody a headache. These are just my notes for this few sentences.

But I think it was very useful that you took us back to what we're supposed to be talking about. And this section is supposed to be talking... Here's the relevant root text by Tsongkhapa.

And we're supposed to be talking about how you can stop negative consciousness. And so I went to the Golden Key, which is by this genius scholar translation. And I took the verse out.

You see what I mean? And it relates directly to Sugeng's book today. The negative consciousness is temporarily stopped during cessation, when you stop mind and mental functions temporarily, and in the meditation on emptiness directly.

And then when you become an arhat, it is finally stopped permanently. Okay? And then there was another verse.

So we're supposed to be talking... I mean, however you interpret the weird verses we just had, that was supposed to be a refutation. Sorry, that was supposed to be a presentation on when do you stop negative consciousness.

Okay? Which is unfortunate. Where are we here?

We already did that, Ken. Yeah, okay. Again, the ray, in my opinion, is probably day.

Which makes a huge difference. And there's the quotation from... It seems to say there are parts of your mind which continue on, and then you check in and check out of it.

It's weird. This section has many tongs that end a line. Yeah.

And then here's that unbelievable lacuna. There's a very important section left out of everybody's verse, everybody's version. Supposed to be two things after the word two, and for hundreds of years it's been one thing.

Okay? All right. And then we don't know if this is Buddhas, or we don't know if it's cows.

Oh, and I made some more notes here. I was trying to guess what word ends with dok. You know?

Yeah. You know? I think it was a dokho.

You see dokho, 90% of the time dokho comes after a word that ends in G. You see what I mean? If it doesn't say ko-wa, meaning understanding, when it stands by itself, 90% of the time you can check.

It's after a word that ends in G. As a terminating particle? Yeah, and I think it was dokho.

I think the word dropped out, you know? Dokho stopped. Yeah.

And that means that the flow was cut off, gyun che. You see what I mean? I see.

So in the database, 90% of the ko's, G-O by itself, not as a verb, are terminated particles after a G. So it's possible a syllable is missing here, and it would make more sense if it was there. And that's a really obscure decision, you know?

And dokho comes a lot in this discussion. It does. Yeah.

Can you stop the flow? Exactly. I think it might have been dokho, but we have no way to know, unless we find old carvings of Tsongkhapa.

Yeah. It might be worth it to find more carvings. And you know, here's more and more research I've done, and there's nothing that really helps, okay?

It's many pages of research, and it doesn't help. What really helps is to go on to a new section that we can read. Yay!

Who's gonna do that, Worden? I don't know. Let's see.

Oh, yeah. How this?

[Speaker 3]
Thank you, Dr. Ola.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah.

[Speaker 3]
Okay.

[Speaker 2]
Okay. Thank you, Dr. Ola. Thank you, Grandpa.

[Speaker 1]
Beautiful. Amazing. Amazing.

Nice. Nice. What do you call it?

Perseverance. So we're on to part two. Worden, here's part two.

You want to read it and translate it in the big letters here? Yi De. Sure.

Part two. Yi De Tsakpa Tang Che Ma Che Che Pa. This is an examination of whether the mind, I guess, yuni, the negative consciousness, whether it is stained or unstained.

Yeah, and by the way, just to repeat what Worden said, unfortunately, Je Tsongkapa refers to negative consciousness often by just calling it the thought. And we never know exactly which one he's talking about. Okay.

Even in the title of his book. So this is the second part. What was the first part, Worden?

I guess an examination of when it starts and when it stops. Nyam shag na. Is that yi yu or me?

Oh, okay. Nyam shag na. Oh yeah, during the meditation, does the yuni exist or not?

Yeah, either during deep meditation on emptiness or during deep meditation in general, does that yi, and again I think it's negative mind, does your negative mind go away when you're having a good meditation? And does your negative mind go away when you're seeing emptiness directly? Okay, those two states.

That was the question. And then now we're going to discuss the question of whether, is negative mind inherently defective or not? Is it inherently stained or not?

Okay. And let's translate quickly. I know we're out of time, but I don't care.

Number two. So we're supposed to be answering the question, we're supposed to be doing an examination of whether the negative state of mind is permanently stained or not. How's that?

And sak che sak me chepa la. Is the original state of the negative awareness stained or unstained? Okay?

Yes. The two great Neldo Chepa Lopans... The two masters of...

Yogacharya masters, probably Master Vasubandhu and Arya Sangha. I would agree. Lugdambo ni, according to the first view, which is that negative consciousness is stained.

Okay? Or he may be talking about mind in general, we don't know. Nyam chak gi tse.

Yeah, during the meditation or... Yeah. Mind, which we still don't know if it's referring to negative mind or mind in general.

It is sak me. It doesn't have any stain or pollution. Yeah.

The original state of the mind, especially in meditation, is that it has no stains. And that's a mind-only position accepted by the two great masters of the mind only. And there seems to be other mind-only people who have a different opinion.

nyamongpa dak sab me gyi shepa gyu chik la du chik du jukpab mi si. It's impossible to have a flow of state of mind which is both negative and inherently pure at the same time. Both flows cannot be going on.

Is somehow the original state of negative mind immaculate in its original state? He seems to be saying that, okay? yi gyun chepa yang min ching.

What's that mean, word? The yi gyun is never chepa. Yeah, the mind or negative consciousness...

Um, I guess it has to be mind here again. I don't know. You're supposed to be talking about negative consciousness.

Doesn't it end? I don't know. Yeah, it never takes a break.

It's always flowing, okay? And then he mentions the view of the village which is Sugeng's specialty. And it says the four.

Yeah, these are the... Yeah. Nowhere in this text does he identify the four.

In the Golden Key he did identify the four, okay? And here, I put them here, word. We had them from Master Sthiramatsi's commentary on the 30 verses.

Dzigdza. Dzigdza. Those negativities are staying in the mind but only as sabban.

Seeds. Yeah, that's all. Apparently there's an argument by the two greatest mind-only scholars that the original state of even the negative state of mind is pure.

And then these other things are living there as potential. It seems like he's saying that. Yeah.

You're going to translate the next three paragraphs. I am? Yeah.

Okay. Anyway, thank you. And I'm sorry, you know, it's really hard, I have to say.

And I came back to it many times and then I retreated many times. Yeah. I took a couple cracks at it too.

Sometimes you have to get away from it for a while and come back. Usually when I come back I can understand it but not this time. Is there commentaries on this commentary again?

I checked. I did check that. You know, Banglung Losang Thugje from a certain great play.

Yes. He talks about some of this stuff. And there was a great geshe in Switzerland.

What's his name? Who passed away.

[Speaker 2]
Dreyfus?

[Speaker 1]
He was my teacher's generation. And he wrote a good commentary. Well, no, he wrote a commentary on Chang'e.

But it includes these points. Geshe Rupten. So.

But I did try the sungbum. It wasn't much help. Nobody bit off this part.

And by the way, the Golden Key guy kind of... If it got nasty, he skipped it. Yeah.

Which is why we went to read him first. Exactly. Do you guys have any closing things to talk about?

Oh, not really. Thank you, Geshe Michael. Thank you, word.

That's it for today. And Saturday we will have a team class. Please come.

It's going to be a lot of fun. We've been having a blast. It's not the same as with Geshe Michael, but we have fun.

Maybe make more wisecracks. So please come. And I apologize.

I have a very major mouth surgery the day before.

[Speaker 3]
Yeah.

[Speaker 1]
I think I, you know, I don't think I'll be able to talk very well for a couple of days. Of course, Geshe-la. Thank you so much for everything that you do and coming and teaching us as much as you do.

And please rest and please heal quickly. Yay. We can make a video of you coming out of the medication and give it to Peachtree World News.

You know, last time Stanley and Allison picked me up after they pulled out the last one and all they wanted to know was, could they get the tooth? It's a good question. We'll sell them in the Good Night Book Club.

Membership is for an additional donation. You can get this extra tooth. Diamond Cutter Classics claims these ones.

We can put it in the stupa. Yeah. No, we got to sell.

Are you kidding? We need it for salary money. Thank you so much, everybody.

Okay. Thank you again. I love you.

Say hi to all those beautiful girls you live with. I only have two. You got four or five.

I don't know. One was spotted recently at a children's museum. Veronica met your wife and your daughter at the kids museum.

Cool. We're members. All right, I'll see you later, guys.

Nice job, Ward. Nice job. Thank you for all the good students.

Oh, you're welcome. Thank you. All right.