Вордсмит — Книга 2: Трудные места школы «Ум только», занятие 68

[Speaker 1]
Anyone? No one. Okay, Alaya has a question, or Laya, I don't know how you pronounce your name, Laya Jher, I guess.

As far as tie-dye, do you think, what tie-dye? Are you talking about the tie-dye in my, um, my Noli book? I'm not sure what you're referring to.

Somebody has to translate the um, Chinese. Uh, let me see. Yeah, I don't know all those characters.

Someone has to translate it. Any, any other questions? Oh, oh, how to learn in an orderly manner.

Okay, um, thanks for the translation. Uh, you just have to learn all of them. Um, you just have to take all the courses and learn all of them.

It takes a little time, actually. There's a thing called Mahamudra, um, and that discusses, that's just a class on the foundation, foundational, foundational thought of each school of thought. So, that's possible.

That could be a good way to start. Those courses are online, Mahamudra. Geshe-la teaches them.

He's got a, a course on that. And yeah, what, okay, here's the tie-dye thing. But what tie-dye?

What do you mean? Is tie-dye fabric? I, I don't understand the question.

Yeah, I think you're referring to something specific, and that's what I'm asking. What are you referring to? Uh, any other questions?

You can say them out loud. Okay. Yeah, I'm in the regular channel.

Can somebody translate for me? I didn't catch the beginning. Xiexie, thank you for your question.

Did anyone catch it? No? I'll help you.

Thank you. It's too late for that. Duoduo, can you translate for me, please?

Yeah, um, he was just saying that, um, for some school, or maybe for the high school, you, um, uh, look into your next life within, uh, uh, 165th of a second. But, uh, um, others might say that it would take another 49 days. So these, um, you know, they are contradictory to each other.

What's your angle on this, basically? Oh, yeah, they're, okay, they're not contradictory. Yeah, I'll say more.

Don't worry. Uh, it doesn't matter how many days it takes, because the karmic ripening itself, regardless of the amount of days, happens in 165th of a second. So the point isn't more or less days.

The point is how things really work, which is a ripening of karma. So no matter how many days it seems, or you see, what is happening is a shifting of the seeds appearing at the rate of 165th per second. And so even if it's 49 days, when it does shift, it is in 165th of a second that it occurs.

No matter if it happened 165th of a second after the death, or, you know, 40, 48 days and, you know, 23 hours and 60, 59 minutes and, I don't know, like that 59 seconds and what, and 64, 65th, the last moment, the last 65th would still be a ripening in 165th of a second. That's the point. Not how many days it takes.

There's no contradiction. Thank you. Okay, that was a good question.

I like that one. I've never said it out loud before, but I've thought about it. Okay, more questions.

This is the time to ask me questions. Not texting me. I do have a discussion.

May I? Yeah, that's me. It's your personal discussion?

No, it's actually a follow-up question about, you know, 65 seeds per kshana or per second. Okay, yeah, there's like a million questions in the chat too. So, sure, follow-up, fine.

You want me to go ahead? Go ahead, yeah. Okay, so I've been wondering if, you know, 65 is the ultimate world view, you know, because, well, this is what we usually hear from, you know, the teacher, you know, within every 65th of a second, everything is static, right?

Like you are just connecting dots instead of, you know, living in a stream of something. But if that is true, that means, you know, within that, there's the smallest period of time in which everything is static, and that means we won't be able to detect any smaller amount of time than one 65th of a second, something like that, you know. It's not necessarily the case that just because things happen at one 65th of a second, it can appear that things are happening in a more minute period of time that you witness in one 65th of a second.

Yeah, I think that's, I don't know. Oh, it's true. You can see something appearing to happen in a millionth of a second in one 65th of a second.

[Speaker 2]
Well, and I put another way, but if 65th in every one 65th of a second, things are static, that means motion is not continuous.

[Speaker 1]
Like, you know, take light, the traveling of light, for example. So within one 65th of a second, it goes a long way, right? So if, yeah, in each one 65th of a second, everything is static, that means light doesn't travel in a stream in the universe, it just flips from one place to another, without any continuous existence in between.

No, not as Kabba Majum. Yeah. There's a whole bunch of things here, okay?

Somebody asked me this question in September 2012. So I know this argument, it's pretty deep. But basically, one 65th of a second is Abhidharma school, it doesn't have to be the ultimate.

And if you talk about light, light is the worst example you could use, because light is both a particle and a wave simultaneously, according to physics. So it does not move, there is no indication that light moves. You can't directly witness light moving, because it's based on the perceiver, how light actually appears.

Well, how about a really fast spaceship? Yeah, it doesn't matter. Yeah, that's fine.

You always have the same problem. And Master Shantideva said, oh, well, are things like an army, like a big group? Or is that how it's happening?

Or are things happening like a mala, like consecutively? Which one is it? Well, I have to say, I have to say, you can perceive things in both ways.

Like water, right? Both are impossible. Both are impossible.

Okay, I'll briefly describe why. If things are sequential, as discrete packets of reality, okay, we'll say as time, then there's no moment in which they can touch. And if there's no moment in which they touch, there's no flow, and there's no continuity, and therefore nothing happens, nothing can happen.

It's actually impossible. It's impossible that things are happening at all, which is what Arya Nagarjuna said. Things do not start, and things do not stop.

Things do not come, things do not go. It's all impossible. If you think there's any self-existence to starting, stopping, coming, or going, or happening, period, which means anything changing, anything happening, then it's impossible.

There's no way to describe something as happening, either. Okay, and so what's the opposite? Hold on.

I haven't had this argument in a while. So if things are just the present moment, right? If they aren't discrete, if it is some kind of flow, then nothing can happen either, because the moment itself could never change to another moment, because it's just the moment.

So either way, there is no flow of time or substance, physicality or temporality. Both are impossible, and they don't happen. Nothing is happening, truly.

It's just karma popping out and appearing to happen, and then you put it together via another seed as a thing, occurring as a thing, with some continuity to it. Contiguity, like togetherness. I might need to sit on it.

No, seriously, if you think about it long enough, you could get very close to seeing emptiness. I've been thinking about it for hours, but thank you. Yeah, you just need shamatha then.

Good question, though. I thought about that one a lot about 13 years ago. ACI 16, when you talked about it, or 17.

Okay, good question. Very good question. Okay, I'm looking at the chat.

Somebody translated for me. Thank you. How can one contemplate emptiness and the emptiness of the three spheres every day?

Oh, the best way is your own actions, I think. Because if you see emptiness directly, the thing you see is the emptiness of yourself, which is the most important emptiness there is, because that's the one that causes all your suffering. The thinking you and your stuff, your house, your wife, your arm, your leg, your life, thinking those things exist self-existently is what causes all the suffering in the world, according to the Buddha.

First, you contemplate dependent origination. Oh, why is my next-door neighbor so annoying? Why is my boss so angry?

And then you say, well, that means I did something annoying or irritating, or I was angry. So therefore, my boss is empty of having those qualities, as is my neighbor. And that's the emptiness and dependent origination, which you usually should contemplate together.

And then the three spheres is, okay, my boss is annoying. My boss is empty of being annoying. I'm empty of being annoyed.

And the situation itself is empty of being annoying. Meaning, if a different karmic seed arose, dependent origination, then it wouldn't be annoying. That's why my boss either is not annoying all the time, or his level of annoying, or her level, or their level of annoyingness fluctuates.

If it fluctuates even in one degree, that means it has to be coming from causes, because any degree of fluctuation means any difference means the power which is powering that difference is changing. So that's the three spheres. It's best to do it all day.

It's, you know, maybe not every second, but especially with things that are difficult, like strong mental afflictions. And eventually, they'll stop being so strong. And you'll slowly and slowly get closer to Jorlam Tsepa, mastery, they call it, right?

Where you can't go to a lower realm, you can't really do really bad things. And you're very close to seeing emptiness directly. That's what I think you should contemplate, how you should contemplate emptiness and the three spheres.

All right. So someone has a question. Ananda.

Ananda. Sorry if I butchered your name. How can I get an accounting job without the company cheating on taxes?

What seed should I sell? I don't know exactly what you mean, Ananda. Like, how can you get an accounting job and not have to cheat on taxes because the company asked you to, maybe?

You should be honest to a fault. Okay? Like, extremely honest.

And never cheat on your taxes. Okay? I think I overpay sometimes, but I would rather.

I'm just like, I don't care. They cannot say I did not pay. I paid more.

All right. Yeah. That's the seeds I would sow.

Yeah. Especially with people like, very close to you, like your mother, father, spouse, children, et cetera. Teacher.

Okay. Another question translated by Catherine. Thank you, Catherine.

How to better help the elderly people in the family to go to a better world? I don't know. It depends on the person.

Okay? But with a lot of people, you have to trick them into doing good things for themselves. I don't know why it's hard for people to do good things for themselves.

Like, I mean, I could figure it out if I thought about it, I guess. But like, eating well and those things are hard for people sometimes. So, I would get them to let go of grudges.

Like, help them let go of grudges. And anything like that. Like, being upset with people for a long time before they die.

Of course, if they could just learn the pen or farm in emptiness or something, that's a given. But if they don't want to know that or they don't, they're not into this, yeah, just talk to them and get them thinking about these different ideas. Help them plant seeds by helping you, maybe.

Stuff like that. Yeah, can you give me some money for this teaching? Or can you try, like, I don't know.

Yeah, could somehow support me in getting a teaching. That's a good way. Or make it about you, you know, if they're like, your family, they might be interested in you, you know.

Okay. That's what I think. Okay, question three.

Sophie translated it, Sophie Huang. Somebody, I guess Emma asked, can you please explain the three spheres of the five spheres of emptiness taught by Kani and Borobudur? I don't know what Kaniha taught.

I'm sorry. It might be the koshas. If you tell me what they are, then I can tell you.

But maybe you're asking that. It could be the koshas. They don't usually say spheres for koshas.

They say sleeves or something like that. Kosha means like a sleeve or treasury. You have to tell me what she taught.

I didn't go to that teaching. So I can't answer your question. I'm sorry about that.

Vivian Ying translated. Somebody asked, how to better plant seeds using emptiness? I like to call it not nots.

Not not. Not not. It's not that things aren't one way.

They're not not that way. Right. So let me see.

Yeah, I'm word, but, and I'm not, but I'm not not word, meaning I'm empty of being someone in word. Okay. And I could be something else if I had different seeds.

So if you think like that, you can think of powerful things and happen really fast. And so when you plant a seed, you dedicate it like say you're, I don't know, say you want to get a partner or something. Right.

And then you are taking care of a lonely person, planting a seed like that. So after you take care of this nice, lonely person in a nice way, you, you say, well, I'm not single. And I'm not single self-existently.

Okay. I'm not my singleness. My lack of a partner is coming from my seeds.

So I'm not not single. Right. I'm empty of being not single anyway.

Yeah. And then you dedicate it to that with the understanding of emptiness as you do it. Yeah.

That's how eventually it does. It doesn't have to be so I don't know, clunky. It's just like, you just understand it a little bit.

And then it just, that's the way it happens. You're like, okay, of course I plan to see because nothing exists of self-existently and I want to have something to happen. Done.

Okay. Good question. Okay.

Someone asked, I guess, John D. Lynn, I guess. Yeah.

They asked, how to better help the elder. Oh, oh no. We already answered that one.

Okay. Sorry. Okay.

We answered that and that. Oh, okay. Here's another one from Choy Lee, maybe.

Hi, teacher. I know you teach Chinese medicine. Can you briefly share with us the main theories?

Does it use the elements of water, fire, wind, space and earth? You want me to explain Chinese medicine briefly? Okay.

No, it doesn't use water, fire, wind, space and earth. It uses the five phases, which are, I don't think I can say them right in Chinese. I don't think I have the tones right, but they're water, fire, wind, earth and metal.

Jin. Okay. My tones could be wrong.

I'm sorry about that. And there are five phases, and actually they're emptiness. The five phases are based on emptiness.

Seriously. It's, so the, did I say, I feel like I said something wrong. Not wind, wood.

I apologize. Wood, which is mu, not wind. So the wood phase is the phase in which things start.

Okay. And listen to what the ancients in Chinese medicine say. They say, how can a thing ever start?

How can it literally, how does a sprout ever become a sprout? So it's not, it's not, it's not the sprout that is the energy of the wood element. It's the sprouting, which is impossible.

Sprouting is impossible. Okay. That's what the Taoists say, right?

They say, but they say everything's impossible. They say the Tao makes everything possible, even though it's impossible. Yeah.

Tao means emptiness. Okay. It means, it means nothingness.

Okay. But it means emptiness. It means the nothingness that everything comes from.

Tao, duh. Tao duh. Duh means virtue, but it, it, it more literally means the things you do, like karma, like whatever you duh on the Tao becomes your life.

Yeah. All right. I can't give a Dao De Jing commentary right now, but that's my understanding.

If you think I'm, my understanding is wrong, by the way, try to use another understanding. Seriously, it doesn't function. Not for the ultimate, but we can argue later if you want.

Okay. Good question. But Chinese medicine is quite vast.

Okay. There's many different theories. There's Yin and Yang theory.

There's the eight Baguan, I don't know, eight characteristics.

[Speaker 3]
Uh, okay.

[Speaker 1]
Thank you. I got the end on the English channel. Can Thomas send me the beginning of the question, please?

I hope, um, basically it was saying, um, anything can be, or anything must be an emanation body of, um, Lord Buddha. And since I've been in this, in the cycle, uh, for, um, millions of lifetimes, and I've been, uh, that means I've been following, um, the Buddha's teaching for millions of, um, lifetimes, including informants of my surroundings, my parents. And since, um, you know, I have been interacting with enlightened beings all the time and been planting seeds.

Why am I still not enlightened? Because you also planted infinite seeds for bad things in those lifetimes. But the main problem is you haven't seen emptiness.

That's the main problem. Seriously. Everything is the Buddha.

It has to be. But not to you. To the Buddha, but not to you necessarily.

Right? So therefore the only thing stopping you from seeing everything as the Buddha is the amount of good karma you have. And the only thing stopping you from having better karma is your understanding of emptiness.

And once you see emptiness directly, uh, then no problem. Yeah, Buddha's everywhere. Until then, it's a little difficult.

But I know your question. I asked the same question. One of my teachers, uh, I don't know, 10 years ago.

Yeah. I had the same question. And what do you, do you want to know their answer?

Well, my question was slightly different. My question was, if everything is the Buddha, what isn't my, if everything could emanate as the Buddha, how come my physical body is not emanation of the Buddha? Because why is my physical body any different than anything else?

The wind or a tree or anything? Right? I took it one step further.

And they said, uh, oh, well, the Buddha can't be suffering heaps. So it can't be your body. But if I didn't have suffering heaps, then the Buddha would be my body.

Or I would be a Buddha in a Buddha body. I don't know. Yeah.

So I don't know. Think about it.

[Speaker 3]
Yeah.

[Speaker 1]
I just heard. Yeah. I heard 2,500 years ago.

He's basically asking why the Lord Buddha manifested as having the five heaps since 2,500 years ago. Lord Buddha to you manifested as having the five heaps 2,500 years ago to you. That's the key thing.

Lord Buddha. What did Lord Buddha manifest as himself as having? We don't know.

Everything we know is just our perspective, which comes from our karma. So the only way to change our reality is to change our karma. That's the only option.

I know it's annoying. It's a lot of work.

[Speaker 2]
I heard from a DCI teacher that after renouncing emptiness, we still need to renounce the Buddha. But my teacher, Mr. Connie, said that if we renounce emptiness, we can become a Buddha in a lifetime. That is, renouncing emptiness means that we are still on the third path, the path of renunciation.

Then, if we become a Buddha in a lifetime, isn't it the path of no-learning?

[Speaker 3]
What's the question?

[Speaker 1]
I got everything. I heard everything up until the last part. Oh, sorry.

No, thank you, Duoduo. I listened to the question, but the last part, I didn't hear the last part. Basically, it's something about, are we saying that in the Nygma Yoga system, we go directly from the path of seeing, and all the way up the ten bodhisattva levels to the path of no more learning?

Yes. There's a sutra way, and there's a secret way. But either way, in the lifetime you see emptiness directly, it doesn't have to take seven lifetimes.

It's just seven lifetimes or less, meaning you could do it in that life, too. Seven lifetimes or less. It's not seven lifetimes, it's seven lifetimes or less.

You can do Lady Nygma Yoga, which is kind of secret practice. But you still have to meditate. But it will speed things up a lot.

But you'll purify a lot, which is difficult. But you can do it in one lifetime. Either way, it's one life.

And yes, you'll go to the last one, the path of no more learning, the fifth path. You have to work really hard, though. Okay, good question.

Good luck. Thank you, teacher. You're welcome.

One second. We have a Buddha here to answer questions. I don't understand the question exactly.

Can you repeat the question? Oh, it doesn't mean we became a Buddha right after we saw emptiness? Or, no, not right after.

But we're very close at that point. Yeah. Does that make sense?

Yeah, if we see emptiness directly, we are very close to having a body of light. And they call it stream enter, but you can think of it like a conveyor belt or something. That means between you and your light body is unstoppable.

It has to happen. It would just take a little bit of time, depending on what you do with that. And then, yes, you will have a body of light.

So I hope that answers your question. Okay, good questions. Elmira has a question.

She says, for the law of karma states that if maybe the fourth law of karma, if there's a seed, there will be fruit. Is it not contrary to this law that virtue is destroyed by anger? No, not necessarily.

You can have an intervening force. Talked about that in the Lam Rim like 10 years ago. It's just an intervening force.

Like you can purify or something, but you'd have to do something to purify the thing. Yeah, you can have an intervening force. Elmira?

[Speaker 2]
Thank you very much. The question is about that we have the fourth law of karma. And it says that if we plant something, we have fruit.

It is a law. But also we know that we can destroy our virtues, our good seeds by anger. So we can destroy all good virtue by what we have done during a very long time, just by one second of anger.

So is it not contrary to this fourth law of karma?

[Speaker 1]
No, I just answered it. Intervening force. You can intervene.

Yeah. If the fruit comes up at the same time as you smash the fruit, then there's no fruit. Oh, yes.

Thank you. That's what I think. It makes sense.

Karma just means like what makes sense. It's just logic, cause and effect. Good question.

All right. Okay, question 12. If every track in the end leads to the ultimate track, Middle Way, then what do you think?

How Mind Only's teaching you lead you to Middle Way's thinking? How does Middle Way lead to Mind Only? Mind Only is Middle Way.

They're all Middle Way. If you study all the... It's just like a step.

If you have a staircase, is the first step on the staircase not the staircase? Yes or no? Anybody?

Is the first step of a staircase not part of the staircase? How about that? No answer?

The first step on the staircase is not part of the staircase?

[Speaker 3]
No, the first step of a staircase is part of the staircase.

[Speaker 1]
Not truly. Of course it is. It's part of the staircase.

Vibhashika school is just the first step on your way to Middle Way or something, and Mind Only passes through there. If you're driving from Pennsylvania to Maryland, you have to go through Delaware. I mean, you don't.

You could cut through Maryland, I guess. Right? It's just on the path, but it's the same.

It's just foundational. If you look closely at the six Gakjas, the six objects denied by each school creating the Mahamudra practice, you can see the one above always encompasses the one below. So by the time you get to Middle Way, it encompasses all the thoughts below it.

The one below is just a less subtle version of the one above, essentially. Yeah, that's it. Mind Only is cool for flushing out questions about Middle Way, actually.

Because it talks about things that aren't always discussed in the Middle Way text. That's all. But it is Middle Way.

There's no real difference. They believe in a Kunshi, which Middle Way doesn't. But if you call yourself Middle Way, you still believe, and you haven't seen emptiness directly, you do believe in a self-existent mind to some degree.

And that's Kunshi. So Mind Only is a lot of your versions of Middle Way, my version of Middle Way. You don't completely understand it yet.

I hope that answers the question. That's what I think after studying Mind Only for like 10 years or something. Okay.

Do children choose their parents, or do parents choose their children? Yes. That's what I think.

It's both. All right. I don't see any other questions.

I might have missed one, though. Oh, the tie-dye question? Yeah.

That's what I was asking you, Leah. What tie-dye were you talking about? Tie-dye is a handicraft.

Do you think it's a kind of metaphor that emptiness is? I don't think so. She asked, do you think it's a tie-dye metaphor in my Golden Key book?

I'll try to explain it. We don't have much time, but I think the original is from Master Vasubandhu, actually. They talk about tsegu.

Tsegu is like an apricot seed. No one wanted it this way. Joe Biden is a good man, a good American, a great president.

[Speaker 3]
A time and the burden of the off.

[Speaker 1]
I think that was my computer. Random ads started playing. Sorry about that.

Political ads. Okay. What was I saying?

Oh, tsegu, apricot seed. Yeah, it's saying, yeah, apricot seed. If you do a tie-dye thing with the apricot seed, then how the pattern displays itself is a metaphor for how things can manifest.

I haven't studied it in a couple of years. I'm sorry. I forget all the precise details, but do I think it is a perpetual motion machine?

No, I don't think so. I think it's just saying that the way things manifest from one thing appears in various ways once that thing is broadcast on reality or something like that. Yeah.

It's saying everything could be one substance, and it appears to be all these different things because of how when that one substance is manifest, how it manifests in a variety of shape, sizes, and colors. Like light through a prism or something. A white light through a prism will appear like red, orange, yellow, blue, indigo, violet, but it's still just one light ray or something.

If you split light, then it looks like a bunch of different things. Yeah. Good question.

I have to review it to tell you more, but that's how I recall. All right. Good question.

We only have one minute. We have one short question. Can somebody put one in the chat?

That's my answer. There's no self-existent version of reality. There's no story.

There's no one story. It depends on you. All right?

That's it. Everything depends on you. Even when you're learning the pen thing, you're thinking about a self-existent pen.

Okay.