Серия «Сутра Алмазного огранщика» — Мастер Камалашила: медитации на «Сутру Алмазного огранщика», часть первая (Аризона, 2016), занятие 5

[Speaker 2]
Have you finished the translation of Kamala Siwa's commentary?

[Speaker 1]
I would love to do it. If I just had some time, I can do it. Somebody else fundraise, I can translate.

But, you know, I didn't think I would, but I'm so interested in it, I think I could do it now. If I just had time. It's very difficult.

Okay, let's start. Then, of course, Buddha says, but if you take all these people to nirvana, you don't take anybody to nirvana. Okay, that's where the trouble starts.

If you take all these different beings to nirvana, nobody reaches nirvana. Then Master Kamala Siwa is like, yay, we finally reached the point. You know, kongshin, emptiness.

Lord Buddha finally reached the real meaning of the sutra, emptiness. When you reach nirvana, nobody reaches nirvana. Then he's so happy, Master Kamala Siwa, then he goes off on a long thing.

If you don't understand emptiness, you can't do anything. You can't become a Buddha, you can't reach nirvana, you also can't make money, have a good relationship, have good health, have peace of mind, and you can't help the world. He's just like a DCI teacher.

Okay? No, he goes through one by one, he says, you won't ever have prosperity, you will never have good relationships, you will never be healthy, you will never have peace of mind, and you cannot help the world if you don't understand emptiness. And that's why Buddha went straight to emptiness, okay?

In Course 15, ACI, it's called?

[Speaker 2]
Changye.

[Speaker 1]
This is the nge. That's what Buddha really wants to talk about. Everything else is just filler, okay?

He just wants to talk about emptiness, okay? So, the next meditation you have is to think about how it's going to help your financial, how it's going to help your health, how it's going to help your relationships, how it's going to help your inner peace of mind, and how it's going to help you help the world. And Kamalashila repeats exactly what Tsongkhapa was saying last week, you know, all those six perfections of a bodhisattva, do them with understanding emptiness, they are perfections.

Do them without understanding emptiness, you're just a nice guy and it's going to wear out. Okay? So, it's very clear, and Master Kamalashila is very excited.

For example, just with your finances, okay? If you understand the emptiness of money, why are you going to be successful? When you have money in your hand, and you understand it, you understand it came from?

[Speaker 2]
Giving.

[Speaker 1]
Giving. So, what do you want to do with it? Giving.

Yeah, okay, it's just like so simple, you know? Like a Buddhist, attitude towards money is completely different from another person's attitude towards money. You know, other people are thinking, I don't have $4,000 to pay for this orange juicer.

Then a Buddhist is thinking, okay, I'll do it. Not, I won't try, I'll do it, you know? Why?

I'm just going to get more, come on. You know, it's like the smartest investment you can make is to give it away, okay? Alright?

So, on a positive side, if you understand emptiness, generosity is easy, because you understand where money comes from. The minute you get something, you're like, hot potato. No, I got to get rid of this.

I got to give this to somebody, because I enjoy it. I can use it. I can buy Diamond Mountain orange juicer, $4,000 orange juicer, you know?

Like, I'm excited. You know, I got a chance to buy something for Diamond Mountain. I'm like, wow, great, you know?

Then I, next week it's just going to more, it's come to, people put money, my bag just collects money. Now I just gave her some big, where is that? She hid it already.

It's a big bag of money, and I'm like, I don't, I'm like, count it and let's get rid of it, you know? So, in a positive way, it's nice. Now, let's go to the negative way, okay?

Which the next photo in your meditations is. By the way, that's the luminous pen, that picture about the two pens, the first one is the little picture of a pen that came out of the karmic seed in your mind, okay? The first one, what I call the luminous pen, is the little picture of a pen that came out of your karmic seed, okay?

And then it became a pen, okay? So now you know what that picture is. What's the next picture?

The second husband, two husbands. Yeah, it's two, it's two, it's a couple having an argument, okay? It's a man and a woman having an argument, okay?

Thank you. So this is a famous DCI scene that we do on the stage. That's how I learned phantom, that's how I learned the word.

Someone called me a phantom on the stage. It means you're tired, you work hard, you come home, you're hoping your husband is in a good mood and will give you a nice hug, and you open the door, and the husband starts screaming at you because you didn't make dinner, you know? Actually, you worked late, you were buying groceries, and you came home, and you're tired, and you're hoping he's going to give you a nice hug.

But instead, he starts screaming at you, why didn't you prepare dinner? A Buddhist, at that point, has to understand there are two husbands in the room. There are two husbands in the room, okay?

In philosophical terms, me gyu dak, you gyu dak, and it has an agyekui. Me gyu dak, you gyu dak, okay? The gyu is spelled R-G-Y-U, meaning cause.

But in this case, it means cause to be. So, there's two husbands in the room. Whenever you feel tense, whenever you feel anger, whenever you feel friction with somebody else, you're facing two people.

One is gyu gyu dak, one is me gyu dak. Me gyu dak means the one who's not there, really. The one who's not there, really, okay?

The gyu gyu dak is the one who is there. There's always two. Anytime you have a negative emotion, there's two of the person you're looking at.

Always, okay? Me gyu dak means the one who's not there. How do we describe the one who's not there?

Yeah, I like that. He's yelling at me, for no reason at all. It's one word, right?

For no reason at all. I just got home. I was working all day.

All I did was open the door. And he starts screaming at me, for no reason at all. Okay?

For no reason at all. For no reason at all. I didn't do anything.

I didn't do anything. I just got home. I just opened the door.

I didn't do anything yet. I didn't do anything. For no reason at all.

It's like two words. I didn't do anything.

[Speaker 2]
Okay?

[Speaker 1]
Then, the husband who yells at you, because you didn't do anything, doesn't exist, never existed, cannot exist, and will never exist in the future. All four. Impossible.

Totally impossible. Okay? It's not my fault.

I didn't do anything. You know? Okay?

That kind of husband isn't there. And the terrible tragedy and irony of life is that every time you ever felt upset at anybody, you were upset at nobody. They weren't there.

Okay? You can't be upset unless you think someone's there who cannot be there. Okay?

It's very terrible. It's very terrible. All of the suffering in the world comes from phantoms, things that were never there.

Couldn't be there, were not there, will never be there. Okay? A husband who's, I didn't do anything.

It's my fault. Okay? There's no such husband.

Why? He's popping out of a seed in your mind like the pen in the last picture. A luminous little husband's coming out of your mind.

Who planted the seed in your mind? Me. I did.

How did you plant it, Nick, in that DCI story? Do you remember? Yeah, you yelled at your kids last week.

You said, Mom has to go to work early. She has to be at work at 8. Please be ready at 8.

Please be ready at 7.45. You told your kids. You walk in the bedroom. They're jumping on the bed.

They're still in their pajamas. And you say, You are the stupidest kids in Guangzhou. You know?

You are the stupidest kids in Guangzhou. Then you plant a karmic seed. A week later, you come home, and, for noise and all, your husband says, You are so stupid.

You are so stupid. The end of the story is, how do you prove that you're stupid? If you want to prove you're really stupid, what will you do then?

No, you're stupid. Okay? Then you plant another seed.

Then next week, the kids are bad again. And that's called... Samsara.

Samsara. Okay? Samsara isn't this grand, rebirth, 12-part wheel.

Samsara is taking place. Many samsaras in your life are... Many wheels are happening...

Wheels of life are happening every day. You know? Your husband's yelling, because you yelled at the kids.

You yelled at your husband. Should you... Is he stupid?

He is. But don't say it. Because then you have to see another stupid husband.

Okay? If you don't like stupid husbands, don't answer. Don't say something bad.

It's okay to sit him down, when things are calmed down, and say, Look, you know, it's okay to explain what happened. You know, I was at the store. You know, I had to take the kids to the doctor.

I didn't have time to make dinner. Please don't yell at me. That's fine.

That's okay. That's alright. Whether it works or not, depends on whether you've been reasonable last week.

Okay? But it's still good to give a reasonable explanation. It's not wrong to take an aspirin when you're sick.

Okay? If it works or not, we don't know. It depends on were you reasonable last week.

Okay? But it's not wrong to say, Look, it hurts my feelings when I open the door and you yell at me. When things are calmed down, explain yourself.

But whether the explanation works or not, it's going to depend on whether you were reasonable last week. Okay? It's all cycles.

Okay. So, who do you take to Nirvana? Nobody.

Meaning, the job for a Nirvanicizer is to find people who are suffering and get them out of suffering. We say, people who are fettered, people who have the chains of suffering, those are the people who are yelling at their husbands. Those people who are in chains, who are still creating cycles, we say they are chained.

They're in jail. That's the next photo. Okay?

It's a guy in jail. Okay? I think his hands are hanging out.

Yeah. Okay? So, a person who wants to be a Buddha and help other people reach Nirvana has to find people who don't know about the husband thing.

And they should go on tours around the world and try to get as many people as they can in the room and tell them about that the husband was never there. That's what a bodhisattva does. Just try to get people to understand.

But they have to find people who are in the jail of thinking they should scream back at the husband and who think that it was for no reason at all that the husband yelled at them. Okay? But who created those people?

Yeah, you got to understand. Okay? When you save somebody, the reason you're seeing a person who's ignorant is because you're ignorant.

Okay? If you were never ignorant, you would be ngepa ngan den. Ngepa ngan den.

It's the definition of the paradise body of a Buddha. It's the definition of the paradise body of a Buddha. Fixed.

Five things are fixed. Okay? One thing, they're always surrounded by pleasant, high-level bodhisattvas.

Why? Because they are. Okay?

If you yell at the kids, you'll be surrounded by yelling husbands. If you're a perfectly enlightened person, you'll be surrounded by enlightened people. Okay?

So, when the bodhisattva is trying to help somebody, they got to understand that the reason they're seeing somebody who's reacting wrongly is that they did it for so long themselves. Okay? When they're saving somebody, they're trying to get somebody out of the jail of samsara.

But at the same time, they understand that this person's coming from them. Okay? And then you can be a real bodhisattva.

Maha bodhisattva. Okay? There's a big debate in Kamalashila.

Do lower schools have bodhisattvas? Do Hinayana schools have bodhisattvas? He says yes.

Why? He said why? Because bodhi means enlightenment.

Sattva means a seeker of enlightenment. Right? Sattva literally means, has two meanings, but one is courage.

Sattva means courage. That's why they call it in Tibetan. Chanju said pa.

Pa means pao. Pao means virasana? Vira.

Warrior. Okay? So, do lower school practitioners have courage to try to reach their own enlightenment?

Their tracks in enlightenment. Yes. So he says they are bodhisattvas.

That's why the bodhisattvas in the Dhammakara Sutra are always called maha bodhisattvas.

[Speaker 2]
Okay?

[Speaker 1]
They want to reach enlightenment for everybody. Okay? Which brings me to my next subject.

While you're helping those people, if you conceive of them, Dushe, right, Beth? If you conceive of them as people, we can't call you a bodhisattva. Whoo!

Okay? While you're helping those people, if you think of them as people, I'm not even going to call you a bodhisattva. I can't call you a bodhisattva.

Okay? That's really confusing. Okay?

Like, I'm supposed to help somebody, but I'm not supposed to think of them as a person. Okay? And then, Master Kamalashila goes off.

He goes off on it. Okay? Because Buddha says, he mentions three things.

He says, if you see them as a, as a conscious being, you're no bodhisattva. I'm not going to call you. If you see the people you're helping as a conscious being, I cannot call you a bodhisattva.

You're not a bodhisattva. Nobody's going to call you a bodhisattva. If you see them as a conscious being, that's in Tibetan, sem chen, which the Sanskrit is sattva.

Okay? But it's a different sattva. That sattva means an existing being, a thinking being.

Okay? If you see them as a sattva, you're no bodhisattva. Then he says, if you see them as a jiva, if you see them as a jiva, a living being, sok.

The sutra says sok. If I had translated it into Tibetan, I would have used a different Tibetan word called sok chak, which means a living being. Sok is confusing.

It's not ayus here. It's jivan, like jivan mukti, living. Okay?

Living person. Okay? So if you think they, if you see a person and you believe they're a thinking being and you try to take them to nirvana, you're no bodhisattva.

If you see a person and you think they're a living being and you try to take them to nirvana, you're no bodhisattva. Okay? Last one, if you think they're a pudgala, if you think they're a person, an individual, you're no bodhisattva.

[Speaker 2]
Okay?

[Speaker 1]
Then Kamalashila is like so happy because he's in his element. You know? This is what he's been waiting for.

You know? Now he discusses three ways in which a person is not a person. He discusses three ways in which a person is not a person.

He doesn't directly tie them to those three different Sanskrit words. Thinking being, living being, individual being. But I think we can, we can do it.

I think it must be an earlier source. Okay? There's one reason why a thinking being is not a thinking being.

There's a second reason why a living being is not a living being. And there's a third reason why an individual being is not an individual being. Okay?

So, he gives three. So I'll give you the three and then we can stop in like 10 minutes, 15 minutes. Then the punchline comes tomorrow.

Which means you have to come back tomorrow. No, it's okay. You should have some tension in the teaching.

Sometimes you should confuse the student because when you, when they figure it out they feel so happy. There's a drama to it. It's very, it's a good way to teach.

You shouldn't tell all the answers. It's not a Buddhist way. Let them figure it out.

Okay, so I'll give you the three questions. The first one starts with the picture of the guy in the jail. Number...

13. Okay. Okay.

Buddhism says anatman. Buddhism says anatman. There is no Michael.

Okay? There is no permanent, self-standing, separate Michael. Okay?

There's no such thing. Buddhism says no such thing. Okay.

There's no, like, crystal, invisible thing called Michael.

[Speaker 2]
Okay?

[Speaker 1]
In three senses, there's no Michael. Okay? First sense.

Because the non-Buddhists say there is a Michael. Okay? Independent Michael.

Okay? What does that mean? We'll get into it.

Okay? But, but the Buddhist, Buddha stood up and said there's no Michael. Then the other guys freak out.

They're like, well, okay, there's three problems with that. Number one. How does the Michael who was in the jail of samsara become the Michael who's outside the jail of samsara, if there's no Michael?

You know? In, in 2016, Michael is in the prison of samsara. He's still yelling at his partner and saying, snowies and all.

Okay? And then he works, works hard, works hard. He goes to Diamond Mountain.

He does many retreats on his own. And then suddenly he's outside of the jail of samsara. Right?

Are they connected? Are they, is it still Michael? Okay?

The guy who got nirvana, the guy who went to nirvana due to the efforts of some other bodhisattva, right? Is it still Michael? And if it is, then how, if there's no Michael?

If there's no permanent, separate, lasting, individual, independent Michael, then how can the guy who was still in samsara in 2016, who got to nirvana in 2019, what connects them? If there's no Atman, if there's no Michael, if there's no independent Michael, then why isn't it Fred in 2019? You know?

You could just become somebody else suddenly. If there's no Michael that, that stretches from one to the other, then, then why isn't it Gyelse? You see, in 2019, just turn down to Gyelse.

You know? What keeps you Michael? What made you Michael?

What kept you Michael? Who connects the Michael who was in samsara to the Michael who got out? What connects them?

Okay? If there's no Michael, if there's no independent thing called Michael, what connects them? Okay, that's the first conundrum, the first question.

Second, what's the picture? Next picture.

[Speaker 2]
Postman.

[Speaker 1]
Postman. I love this picture. It took me so long to, it takes me so long to find these pictures.

Postman. I always think, you know, I live in Rimrock, Arizona. It's a little bit bigger than Bowie.

Me and my friends, once we sat in a convenience store, I said, we were, we were having a soda or something. I said, just for fun, let's count how many bottles of beer leave this place while we're waiting. It was 420.

And we were there for like 20 minutes or 30 minutes, okay? That's where I live. And so, and the post office is a junk, okay?

They won't even deliver mail to my house because I'm on a dirt road. So, they say, you can't have mail delivery, you know. So, you know, and if, so, sometimes, just as a joke, you can write a letter to Geshe Michael.

I can write a letter to Geshe Michael, say you're stupid, you know, okay? Then I fold it up and I go to the post office and deliver it. Then, I don't know, in Rimrod, maybe 10 days later, the guy will come to your house.

Suppose you have mail delivery and he says, I have a letter for you, you know, and you say, thank you, you know, and you open it up. What does it say? You're stupid.

And, and, and if we are stupid, we get angry at the postman. Why did you bring me this letter, you know? You stupid, you know, you're the worst postman in Rimrod.

I'm the only Rimrod. You know, why did you bring me this letter, okay? That's like yelling at your...

Husband. Husband, okay? He's just the postman.

Who wrote the letter? You did when you yelled at your kids. You did when you yelled at your kids.

He's delivering to you the letter which you wrote to yourself. Okay? But we yell at the postman, right?

That's why I put a postman. Okay? Who's the postman?

Every person you were ever angry at in your whole life was a postman. They were just delivering you your own letter that you wrote to yourself last week when you called your husband stupid last week. Although he is stupid, I agree.

But don't say it, okay? If you don't want the letter, okay? Now, so, personally, I would connect the first one, right?

The Michael who was in jail and the Michael who got out, to the, to the statement that if you think a thinking individual, if you think you're taking a thinking individual to nirvana, you're no bodhisattva. I think he's talking about the first one. The, the connection between the guy who was in jail and the guy who got out of jail, what connects them if there's no Michael?

Second one was Jiva, living being, okay? A living being. The one, he has a new word.

It doesn't exist anywhere in the scriptures. He calls chepapo and sawapo.

[Speaker 2]
Doer and?

[Speaker 1]
Sawapo.

[Speaker 2]
Earth experience?

[Speaker 1]
That's, I've made great efforts to say, saw.

[Speaker 2]
Eater?

[Speaker 1]
Yeah. Good. He calls it the doer and the eater.

The doer and the eater. The doer is the one who wrote the letter. The eater is the one who received the letter.

And he made up a new language for it. You know? Doer was two weeks ago you yelled at somebody.

Eater is the person who got yelled at two weeks later. Okay? You're both.

You're the doer and you're the eater. It means you, you mail the karma and you receive the karma. Okay?

He calls it chepapo, sawapo. And it's very confusing. And they carved it wrong.

They put sub, submo. Profounder or something. They misspelled it.

That's, that's how hard it is to translate. So, there's the, the person who commits the karma, you know, pushes somebody on the bus, and then the person who gets hit by somebody two weeks later. Okay?

What's, what's the guy gonna ask Buddha? Hmm?

[Speaker 2]
If there's no Michael.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah. Who connects them? If there's no Michael, then Michael can push somebody on the bus and Gyaltsen will get punched by somebody two weeks later.

Okay? If there's no Michael, if there's no permanent, lasting, independent, solid, thing called Michael, then who connects those two?

[Speaker 2]
You know? Yeah, but...

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, who connects them? How, how come I always get back what I did? How come I don't get back what Uda did?

You see what I mean? Oh, why can't word take the last bad karma I did? And it goes to him.

Why can't the detour, you know, why does the connection have to come to me? If there's no Michael. Who's saying this?

The opponent. The questioner. They're questioning.

What is this Diamond Cutter Sutra stuff? You know, what's so confusing? You know, what do you mean you can mail a karma and receive it if there's no Michael?

You know, what are you talking about, Lord Buddha? You take someone to Nirvana, but you don't take anybody to Nirvana, so who's the connection? Between the eater and the doer.

Okay, got it? We're almost done. Third question, which I think relates to the third part of the last, part of the sutra, which was about an individual being, buddhgala, individual being.

Because they said, when you take somebody to Nirvana, you don't take anybody to Nirvana. And if you think you do, you're not a... Did he say that?

Did he say that? You're not a bodhisattva? Did he say that?

He said something more subtle. Yeah. Yeah, we can't name you a bodhisattva.

We can't call you a bodhisattva. That's also emptiness, right? What does naming mean in Buddhism?

Karmic seed opens, picture comes out, goes onto the thing, the pen. Pen picture comes out, karmic seed opens, pen picture pops out, goes on the person. That's called naming.

So it's very profound that he doesn't say, you're no bodhisattva. He says, I can't call you a bodhisattva. It's very profound.

He's talking about emptiness again. So, third one. Then I can go home and have something delicious.

Uh... Then as a child, you're brought up by your parents, you know, and your mom, like, takes care of you, you know, like, you hurt your knee, your mom takes care of you, you have a class photo, your mom makes you a new dress, you know, like, your mom takes care of you when you're a kid, right? Then you grow up, you go away to college, you know, you start living in New Jersey, and, uh, you know, you see your mom every 10 years or 12 years or...

You don't come home very often. You see them 10 years later after you go to college or something. In America, we don't stay so close to our parents.

Most people. They go to college, they say goodbye. And then you see them once a year or once every three years or something like that.

Not every New Year's, okay? So, the other guy says to Kamalashila, you saw your mother when you're a child, you come back home, how do you recognize her? How do you recognize her?

That's my mom. There's three women in your house when you come home. You're like, Mom!

Okay, like, how do you recognize your mother if there's no Michael? If there's no connection between the person that, that mom helped him when he got hurt and then 20 years later he comes home and he sees three women and he says to one of them, Oh, mom, it's so good to see you. How can he recognize her?

Okay? He asked two questions. One is, yeah, how do you recognize things and how do you remember things?

So, the third one has two parts. How do you remember things and how do you recognize things, you know? How do you say, Mom, thank you for helping me when I hurt my knee when I was a little kid.

How do you, how can there be a rememberer of an incident when you're a child if there's no Michael? Okay? Because according to you, nobody goes to Nirvana when they go to Nirvana, okay?

Okay? The other guy is complaining. They want to have a Michael who's like real and exists out there and is independent of other stuff.

You know? Michael eats, but there's still Michael. Michael loves, but there's still Michael.

You know, Michael goes through experiences year after year, but that's still Michael. Then there's a feeling in the human heart that there must be a me which is like a ball, you know, like a permanent thing. And then things happen to it.

And, you know, they meet people, they love people, they lose people. Things happen to them, but there's a ball. There's a Michael who's permanent, lasting, independent, okay?

That idea is the cause of all suffering.

[Speaker 2]
Okay?

[Speaker 1]
According to Buddhism, that idea is the cause of all suffering.

[Speaker 2]
Okay?

[Speaker 1]
It doesn't mean, by the way, that there's no soul or no spirit. The living mind of Michael is infinite into the past and into the future. It's infinite.

There is a Michael who lasts forever. Yeah. I mean, there is one thing which is like a soul or a spirit.

There is such a thing. And that exists. But the one we're thinking about is different.

Okay? It doesn't come from how I treat other people. It's independent.

Things happen to it. It loses things. It collects things.

It loses it. But it's permanent. But yeah, you continue forever.

You will never stop. And you have no beginning. Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

Both. Okay? Yeah, you've seen everything.

You've done everything. You've been everything. You've been Miss America not billions of times, countless times.

Okay? Countless times. Alright?

You've been everything. You've been Hitler. You've killed millions of people countless times.

Okay? But who is that? Who is that me?

Where does it come from? How can we make it enlightened? Okay?

We'll talk about it tomorrow. What connects the person who was in jail to the person who got free in nirvana? What connects the doer to the eater of the karma?

And what connects the incident when you were a kid to the remembering it or recognizing your mom later? What connects them? Who is Michael?

What is Michael really? Where does Michael really come from? Okay?

And we'll talk about it tomorrow. Alright? But meditate on those.

I think you have six new meditations if you don't count the Buddha in the sky. Five? Five.

Five. What's the first one? No, there was some...

[Speaker 2]
Oh, yeah.

[Speaker 1]
What was the first one today? Oh, the pen.

[Speaker 2]
Okay.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, emptiness is the only thing that matters. And then there's no second husband in the room. And then three questions of connection.

Three questions. Those come together. If you want to have fun today at home, take the Diamond Cutter Sutra and figure out where we are.

Because we are following it very closely. And we will only get to a quarter this week. Okay?

And I would love to do it again. We should go through the whole thing. But this is the first quarter.

It's just the first quarter. But you figure out which meditation relates to each statement here. Okay?

And you'll see that we're following it very closely. Okay? But it's not obvious.

Okay. All right. Then you're going to know the Diamond Cutter Sutra better than anybody in China knew the Diamond Cutter Sutra for about 500 years.

Seriously. Okay? And then you should teach it to other people.

And the way to teach it is with the pictures. You know? They look like just pictures, but they're following the sutra very closely.

They're following the meaning of the sutra very, very closely. So you today, at home, before you meditate on one of the pictures, say, where does that picture fit in here? And you'll find it.

And then you can teach it to other people. You can teach the real meaning of the oldest book in the world.