Серия «Сутра Алмазного огранщика» — Мастер Камалашила: медитации на «Сутру Алмазного огранщика», часть третья: Слёзы арьи (Аризона, 2016), занятие 1

[Speaker 1]
Alright, welcome to part three of Master Kamalashila. He was a very famous Indian Buddhist who lived about ... Stanley, 700 AD?

750. 750 AD, so 1,200, 1,300 years ago. And in ancient India that we still have, there are only two commentaries to the Diamond Cutter Sutra, jing gan jing, and one was by Master Vasubandhu, and it's very short, it's kind of an outline, and then the other is by Master Kamalashila, and that one's quite long, it's 130 pages I think, but it's very very difficult, and I'm not aware that anyone has taught it since India, I don't know, for a thousand years okay, and so I just thought I would want to read it, and so I started reading and I couldn't understand anything, and then I just kept working on it, and now it's pretty good, and so my friends asked me to share it with them, and so I've been sharing it. He has some beautiful meditations that you can do, so I thought it would be nice to learn it in a retreat setting, and so every morning we'll get up early, we'll come down here and we'll do, I don't know, two three hours of explanation, and then you'll go home and just do it okay, and a lot of people just finished a retreat here, Lam Rim retreat, so you guys already look very calm, and now you're going to get more calm, and then you can go back home and you'll be behind in everything, and you can get nervous again.

So anyway, I really enjoyed teaching it. People have been re-teaching it around the world, John and Connie especially have been teaching it a lot, Michael and Melissa, and I appreciate that, and I think it's cool, and so I ... oh, Sarakni taught it, and I think it's cool, who else?

Vimala taught it. So, feel free to teach it okay, and you know, people can enjoy it. So, I split it into four parts, this is the third part, and we'll do the fourth part next October at Diamond Mountain okay?

People ask me what I want to do after that, I said I always wanted to teach Nagarjuna, so we'll do that a year from now okay? Alright, now, I didn't finish part two at Diamond Mountain, and I did some of it in Mexico, and I did some of it in Sedona, and I did some of it in New York, but just for the record I would like to finish part ... the second part.

So, we decided to have a short closing ceremony, a short lama chupa tonight, and then add a class tonight. So, I know you're tired, some of you've been traveling a lot, and I just want to say I really like it that you're exhausted, and you have jet lag instead of me, and just imagine it was every week like that okay? So, I'm going to cover a few meditations from part two, I'm guessing we won't start part three until maybe tomorrow if we're lucky, and I think everyone has part two ...

Nick, they have ... no, there was a abbreviated part two, just a ... that I sent Tim about three weeks ago.

No ... Okay, do you have the ... do you have the file?

Do you want me to give you the file? So you can project it? Okay, come on, that's unfortunate, I know I shouldn't finish things ahead of time.

PDF or Word file? PDF? Okay, bring me a flash drive.

We'll get the reading to you tomorrow, I hope. Also, Stanley's been working very hard on doing part three with the whole sutra, so, in four languages, Sanskrit, Chinese, Tibetan, and English, along with all the meditations, so, I'd like to thank Stanley for that, and he says Catherine helped a lot, and thank you for that. Stanley has built about a hundred translators in China, pretty cool.

This flash drive is not working, sir.

[Speaker 2]
You have another one? Hey, there you go, one more. Okay, there you go, it says ...

something.

[Speaker 1]
Alright, so the ... we're at a part in the Diamond Cutter Sutra, which ... you will get this whole sutra, part three of the sutra, in about three or four days, because I'm ...

well, let's say two or three days, because I still have to do some work on it. I found some mistakes in the Tibetan and the Sanskrit. So, I'll read you the sutra, it says, and then the Conqueror said, suppose O Subhuti, that some son or daughter of noble family ...

do you guys know where we are? It's 41, piece number 41, if you have the whole sutra, you don't have the whole sutra. Suppose Subhuti, that some son or daughter of noble family were to take all the planets of this great world system, a system with a thousand of a thousand of a thousand planets, and cover them with the seven kind of precious substances, and offer them to someone.

Suppose on the other hand that anyone held but a single verse of four lines from this particular presentation of the Dharma, and explained it to others, and taught it correctly. By doing the latter, a person were to create many more great mountains of merit than with the former. The mountains of their merit would be countless, beyond all calculation.

So he's saying, suppose if you covered a billion planets with gold and diamonds, and offered it even to the Buddha, or you taught somebody one verse from the Diamond Cutter Sutra, okay? He says the teaching would be infinitely greater good karma, okay? So we're on that part.

And then the meditation, which is number 19, is teaching from mountains to the body, and the body means the Dharma body. So, you guys know the Buddha has main ... to put it the most simple way, has two bodies.

One is their physical body, and one is their mental body, and the emptiness of them. So the mental body and the emptiness is called Dharma body, Dharmakaya, okay? And Kamalashila has an interesting thing you know, he says ...

he's got a big connection between, if you teach Dharma, you will get the Dharma body. So he connects the two meanings of Dharma, okay? One is emptiness, right?

Dharma body, and one is the teachings, the Dharma. And then he draws a line between the two, he says, if you teach the Dharma then it will act as a cause for the Dharma body, okay? We often sing a song based on Nagarjuna about this subject.

Nice! Living dictionary, gewa di ... at the end of class we always quote this thing based on Nagarjuna's Ratnamala, String of Precious Jewels, and we say, by this good karma may all beings complete the collection of merit and wisdom, right?

And then normally merit, good karma, creates your physical body of a Buddha, and wisdom creates the Dharma body. But Kamalashila wants to push it, and he says, when you teach Dharma you're creating wisdom, so let's include it in the causes for the Dharma body, okay? And he knows it's a little controversial and he says, I don't care, that's why I like him, okay.

Then we had ... we started Kamalashila number two with a section called the Aspiration for the Physical Body, and we talked about the Buddha's marks and signs, and now we're on a section called the Aspiration to Achieve the Dharma Body, the mental body and the emptiness body of a Buddha, okay? And generally speaking, Master Kamalashila divides the whole sutra into 18 parts, and that's the part we're on now.

Then he says, in the verse he said, anyone who holds the diamond cutter, anyone who explains it, and anyone who teaches it correctly. So, somebody comes up to Master Kamalashila and says, what's the difference? And he's explained that a couple of times, and he changes his story every time, because he says all this repetition in the diamond cutter sutra is on purpose, and each time it has a different meaning, okay?

So, for many centuries people have wondered why the Buddha repeated himself, and Master Kamalashila always says, it's no mistake, he didn't forget that he taught it already. I was in Singapore, I told you this story, I taught the pen at the trade union hall to like 1,200 people, and then some guy, not Singaporean person, and from a different country, from France, came up and asked me, why do you teach this pen every time? Did you forget you taught it last time?

I'm like, yeah, maybe I forgot, you know. So, so Buddha never repeats themselves without purpose, right? Anyway, when he says hold the diamond cutter, Kamalashila says it means memorize pieces of it, you know, and be able to recite them, okay?

So, you don't have to try to memorize the whole diamond cutter, it's long, it's 40 pages in the Tibetan and Sanskrit, but you can memorize some cool parts, okay? It's good. My friend today gave me a little bucket for washing my feet, and recited some jing kang jing, and that's good, okay?

So, choose a part that you like, and learn it, learn to recite it. It's much better to teach it from your memory, okay? Then he says, then what does it mean to explain the diamond cutter sutra?

And he has, he says, oh the word explain means the words, explain the meaning of the words, like what's the Sanskrit word mean, what are the roots of the Sanskrit word, what are the pieces of it, and you know Tibetan, explain what the Tibetan words mean, I enjoy that kind of thing, right? And it's a tradition in Buddhism, so the second thing you do is explain the word DING, but not the meaning of the thing, just the words. So, make sure the student appreciates all the different flavors of each word.

Then finally, he said teach correctly, unfortunately the word correctly was in there, you only get these mountains a good car if you teach it correctly, but I think it could be pretty much correctly in our case, right? And he says, when Buddha said teach correctly, then he's talking about teaching the meaning of the diamond cutter sutra, okay? Hold four lines, explain the wording, and then teach the meaning, and then you've taught the diamond cutter, and that's a direct, that is the direct cause for the body of a Buddha, the mind of a Buddha, okay?

Alright, there's a more expanded list later on in Kamalashila, where he explains that, and it has ten parts, so here's ten different ways of teaching, or things involved with passing on the diamond cutter sutra, okay? Number one, just causing it to be printed or writing it, copying it, you know? The first time I taught in Mongolia, I think a thousand people came, and we gave a diamond cutter sutra to every person, and it was fun, and we printed them, then the first day I got there I got like 50 Mongolian women, and they all sewed bookcloth, each one did 20 bookcloth, and we gave a sutra to each person who came, for free, so that's a ...

reproducing the sutra, number one. Number two, helping to support that, spreading the diamond cutter, financially, helping to support it. Three, giving the teachings yourself, like John and Connie, or ...

who else was that? Chen Zong's been doing it. Number four, just reading the sutra.

That sutra you can read it over and over, and each time you see something new, okay? Number five, listening to it. Number six, memorizing it.

Number seven, giving lung. Lung means you just read it out loud to your friends as a transmission, oral transmission. Number eight, just reciting it every day.

A lot of Chinese people recite the Ching Kang Jing every day, that's a good custom. Number nine, number nine is where you just lay down on your bed and you think about it, you read one page and then you just think about it, okay? Not necessarily lay down, okay?

You can think about it sitting up also. And number ten, meditating about it, okay? These are ten ways you can relate to the Diamond Cutter.

Then Kamalashila goes further and says, if you really want to master the Diamond Cutter Sutra, you should come to as many teachings as you can, on all Buddhist subjects, like Lam Rim, okay? If you really want to understand the Diamond Cutter, you should come to many teachings, as many as you can, okay? And he calls it widespread learning, and then he said the habit of widespread learning causes the widespread side of the teachings, which is ...

yeah, bodhisattva mentality, bodhichitta, I want to save the world. Like DCI, I mean the goal is really to change the world, you know? We go around the world endlessly because we want to change the world, the whole world, okay?

Then, just for your information, every time he finishes a section or one important idea, he will classify it, he'll say this is the profound side, or this is the widespread side. Profound side means what? Yeah, this verse, or this section of the Diamond Cutter is talking about emptiness, mostly, and then he'll say, no, this part is talking about bodhisattva activities which are global, or multi-global, okay?

And this quotation he calls widespread, this has to do with bodhichitta, okay? Also, at the end of every section in his commentary, he will say that this section relates to this part of Sabuddhi's question, the question that started the sutra, okay? So, this sutra starts out with a question, the question has three parts, tell me any part.

How should we live? How should we think? And how should we ...

yeah, how should we live, how should we practice, and how should we think? That was the question that began the sutra, and the whole sutra is an answer to that question. So, every time Buddha says something else, Kamalashila likes to say, oh, he's answering this part of the question, or he's answering that part of the question, you see, one of the three parts of the question.

What's the ... well, I'll remind you what Buddha's short answer was to the three questions. How should we live means, we should live in hope that we can achieve the qualities of a Buddha, and we can get rid of our negative qualities.

That's how to live, live in hope. The second one was, how should we practice? And he said, focus on your practice, concentrate your practice especially on emptiness.

And then Subuddhi said, well, how how should we focus? And Buddha says, focus on emptiness in your interactions with other people, and don't get distracted by ... yeah, the gac cha, the second husband, don't get distracted by things that seem to be coming from themselves, like when your partner criticizes you, okay?

Like, when your partner is very close to you, you live with them all the time, you're very linked in with each other, and then when one criticizes the other, you get especially hurt, or it feels especially bad, and then it would be easy in those moments to be distracted. YENG BA is the classical fault in meditation, is to think about a hamburger when you're trying to concentrate on your Lama's face, okay? So, but in the Diamond Cutter Sutra, distraction means you slip, and you think your partner is coming from their side, okay?

You forget that they are criticizing you because you criticized somebody last week, okay? So, that's what distraction means in the Diamond Cutter Sutra. Distraction during meditation means slipping with your partner at home in the kitchen when they criticize you, okay?

That's just ... that's distraction. Not falling for that, focusing is the answer to the third question.

What was the third question? Yeah, how should we focus, right? How should we think?

And the answer is, just remember that things are coming from you, that's how you should think. The answer to the second question was learn about how things are coming from you, emptiness, and the answer to the third question is, when you get in a tight situation, emotional situation, your husband criticizes you very strongly, then remember, don't get distracted, don't forget, okay? That's Buddha's short answer, the sutra is the long answer, okay?

And as I said, Master Kamalasiddha likes to connect every section of the sutra to one third of the answer, he says, oh this section is about your husband, or this section is about learning emptiness, okay? Or this section is about hope for the future, okay? And he splits up the diamond cutter in a certain way, and I have followed it, so ...

and I put a reference number on each part. So, the Bible, the Christian Bible was around for a long time, the New Testament, three books, Synoptic Gospels plus John, and this preacher, horse ... riding around on a horse in New England in the ...

I don't know, 1700s? 1800s? He put numbers on them, so when he went to different farms people could remember which one he talked about, so they said Mark 3 verse 12, things like that.

So, it's very helpful, so I did it in the Three Treasures Prayer Book, so even if they're doing it in Spanish or Chinese or English you can see where we are, and I did it for the Diamond Cutter Sutra, okay? So, we're following the numbers of Kamalashila, okay? So, if you want to talk to your friends you could say, let's talk about part 78, we have to be on part 44 right now I think, okay?

By the way, the third answer, which was what? I'm just checking your retention. Yes, stay focused, okay?

What do we call it if in a moment of tension with your partner you remember that they're coming from you? It's taking refuge, that's the real meaning in Buddhism of protection, it protects you, then you don't tell your husband he's stupid even if he is, and then you don't have to hear him call you stupid again, because you stopped, and you protected yourself, okay? So, that's refuge.

We just finished, you know, we've been studying refuge in the Lam Rim for months, okay? Alright, I'm giving you a summary of Kamalashila's comments, and don't forget they all relate to this one meditation, you know? You are going to teach the Diamond Cutter Sutra, each person in this room is going to teach the Diamond Cutter Sutra.

It might be in your friend's kitchen, when their husband comes in and says something bad, you can teach him very quickly the Diamond Cutter Sutra, and they won't say something bad to their husband, you see what I mean? Or it might be in front of, I don't know, Nick was just in front of 500, 600 people in Xiamen teaching them this stuff, okay? Mosquito net?

No, just kidding. So, maybe you're teaching somebody in their kitchen, and maybe you're teaching 600 people, you know? It's up to you, but you should all teach, that's the meaning of the first meditation.

So, when you do this meditation, this will be the first meditation you do tomorrow, think about how can I share this thing, right? Not preach, don't tell people, but share, right? Don't bother people.

On the plane home, don't tell the person next to you about the Diamond Cutter Sutra, if they want to sleep. Okay? Now, next thing Kamalashila says is, by the way, not only is that the most powerful karma to teach the Diamond Cutter, and not only does that karma create the Dharma body of a Buddha quickly, but it also has an effect on your negative seeds, right?

Like if you made mistakes in the past, and you want to defuse them, short-circuit them, teach the Diamond Cutter to people, and the good karma will deactivate the bad karma, okay? So, there's an effect on your negative seeds also. Alright, then in the next section you know, somebody says to Buddha, oh really?

The karma is that big? You know, just one verse taught poorly in my house to somebody, is more good karma than covering a billion planets with gold and offering it to Buddha? He says ...

then in the next section Buddha says, I'm not exaggerating, okay? I'm not, you know, just trying to impress you, it's actually true, because if the result is the Dharma body, the cause must be unbelievable, it must be beyond imagination, okay? If you can create the highest thing in the universe with a karma, it's got to be the coolest karma in the world, sharing emptiness with another person, teaching the GYIN GANG PHYING.

So he says, I wasn't exaggerating, because the result of ... look at the result of that karma, if it makes you a Buddha, if it gives you a Dharma body, then it must be the best karma there is. He runs it backwards, got it?

Alright, just nod if you don't, okay? Then somebody starts complaining to him, you know, really, making good karma ... SON NAMS MYED ZHIG RTZO RDZO BZHIN, SON NAMS MYED ZHIG LAS CHUNG BA'I DANG PO KUN NYID RTOGS PAR BZHIN, right?

The cause of ... the cause of the physical body of the Buddha is collecting good karma. If you make good karma from teaching Dharma, it should cause the physical body of the Buddha.

Then Kamaleśvara says no, and the person says why? And he says, well first of all, you're teaching Dharma, so you're getting the ... Dharmakaya.

Duh! Like, he makes sort of a cool connection, okay? Then he says, the result of teaching is everyone gets more wisdom, and that's the classical cause of the Dharmakaya, okay?

Then he says ... by the way, who would think that the physical body of a Buddha is the Buddha? It's not, it's the part that's thinking it's the Buddha, got it?

Okay, the mind of the Buddha is the real Buddha, he said the rest is just a reflection, you know? When you talk to somebody, would you rather have their body or their mind? I mean, except your husband, okay?

He's like, don't listen to you anyway. I just mean, you know, if the body didn't have a mind, you could talk to it for all day and it wouldn't answer you, right? But if you have the mind without the body, you can text them, you see?

You don't have ... the body's not next to you, but you can text them. He says, of course, the main part of Buddha is the mind of the Buddha, Dharmakaya, okay?

Got it? Alright. Then somebody says, but wait a minute, Dharma, Dharma ...

Dharma means everything, I mean, what's the sikshe? What's sikshe, Nick? What's the sikshe of Dharma?

Yeah, what's the etymological ... yeah, the root is DER, DER means to hold, and the definition of a Dharma etymological is anything which holds its own essence. RANG GI NGO'I RDZIN PA'I NA CHOS, anything that holds its own nature is DER, anything that DERs its own nature is DER MA, DER MA, okay?

What are some English cognates? True, tree, Dhruvid, truth here, Dhruvid, okay? These are the classical cognates of DER, okay?

Meaning firm, like a tree, you know, can't shake it, okay? True, true comes from DER, tree comes from DER, okay? Alright, mmm ...

so they complained to him, he says, well everything's Dharma, and the whole Buddha must be Dharmakaya, and he said, yeah yeah, that's not what we're talking about, okay. Now somebody comes up to Kamalashila and says, wait a minute, you know, you said alternately speaking there's no Dharma, already said in the sutra, and ultimately speaking there's no enlightenment, there's no Buddhahood. Now, how can there be a connection between the two?

How can I collect karma that makes me a Buddha if there's no Buddha and there's no Dharma? How can I teach Dharma, which doesn't exist, and that's going to make me a Buddha that doesn't exist, and how can there be any connection between two zeros, you know? Okay, somebody's complaining like that.

So, we're going to go to the idea of NISHKAYA, say NISHKAYA. This is a hard, hard Sanskrit word in Kamalashila, and you don't see it anyplace else, NISHKAYA means ... you ready?

I call it disembodied karma triggers, I like that, I think it's sexy okay, disembodied karma triggers okay, NISH means not, KAYA means body okay, so ... by the way, it could have been like six different words, I chose NISHKAYA, I don't have the Sanskrit of Kamalashila, it's missing. Okay, somebody found it recently and I got all excited, I was with Dr. Wu, and we were in Sedona, and I said, one of my students found the Kamalashila, yay!

We got all excited, then we read the first page carefully and it said ... I translated this from the Tibetan, back to Sanskrit, I just threw it out, I said throw it out, they said no no, I said no, just throw it out, it's okay. Okay, anyway, he talks about ...

how can teaching Dharma, the karma, trigger the Dharma body okay, if they are both disembodied okay, what's that mean? There's no substance to them okay, how can an action trigger a part of the Buddha if they never touch each other? Okay, do the cause and the result exist at the same time?

They cannot. Cause comes first, you teach Dharma in Guangzhou, you teach Djinganjing in Guangzhou, Kamalashila, you bring it back to China okay, and then you know, next year you have a Dharma body, you can come and show us okay, look I got a Dharma body, but that's next year you see, by the time the Dharma body is there you finish teaching right? When you're teaching the body is not there yet, they come at different times, so by the time you have the body the teaching is finished and gone, and while you're teaching the body is not there yet, so how can something that's not there be caused by something which is there, and how can something which is not there anymore, teaching, cause something which is there?

They should exist at the same time, if I tickle V, you know, then her side and my finger have to be at the same time you see, otherwise you can't tickle somebody. So, how's their cause and effect? The teaching is gone by the time you have the body, they're not exist, there's no contact, they are dis-embodied, they're both not real, they don't touch, they never touch each other, the cause never touches the result ever, nothing, then okay, that's what dis means.

What's the other thing there? The emptiness of the space between the trigger and the result okay? There's a space between the trigger and the result okay?

There has to be a time gap, the teaching finishes and then you get a Dharma body later, by the time you get the Dharma body the teaching is not there, but it's tickling the Dharma body, but it doesn't exist okay? Got it? That's a proof that it's coming from your mind, that's a proof that things are coming from your mind okay?

Got it? It doesn't exist out there this way, teaching and body and their connection cannot exist out there, it must be coming from you. Who makes the connection between teaching and getting Buddha body?

It's you, it's coming from you okay? Who made causation? I should wear my t-shirt right?

YIN GOS, YIN GOS, YIN GOS, who made the connection? You make the connection, it's so cool, you make the connection okay? You, you make the teaching cause the Dharma body okay?

The teaching didn't ... teaching didn't give you a fish taco, teaching didn't get you some fish to eat, you see what I mean? There's a connection, teaching is kindness, getting a Dharma body is the result of kindness, who made the connection?

You did, it's very cool okay? That's what he's talking about, it's very difficult, it's very difficult. Who said that teaching should give you a body, Dharma body, and not a yo-tao?

Who said that? Who decided? Yeah, who decided the laws of karma?

You did, you mean they could be different? Yeah, they could be crazy, they could be crazy, you could do nice things to people and get shot or something, or you could shoot people and have people say you're a great man, make movies about you, you see? It would be crazy, you made the connection, you made dependent origination, got it?

Cool. If you're going to study DCI, the answer to everything is ... four stamps okay?

If you're going to study Diamond Cutter, whatever somebody says you say, oh yeah, it's coming from me, okay? Same, the answer's always ... the punchline is always the same, okay?

The punchline is so always the same that Sabuddhi halfway through the sutra starts crying. He says, this is goddamn amazing, you know? Anytime anybody asks you a question, you always twist it around to emptiness, you know?

There's a whole sutra, there's not a single word in the sutra that you don't start teaching emptiness, you know? He's just so amazing Buddha, and he starts to cry. So, I call this course Arya's Tears, okay?

There's a verse where he just starts to cry, he says, you didn't say a single normal word in this sutra. Then somebody came to Kamalashila and said, no, there is a normal word in the sutra. He said, what?

He says, the Buddha says, morning, in the morning. Then Kamalashila writes a three-page explanation of why that's emptiness, and I'm going to teach you, it's so sexy, me and Veronica are talking about it, it's cool, but we'll do that later, okay? That'll be like Wednesday or something, okay?

Anyway, so really, this is about how things cannot touch each other, okay? And I remember in my Surya retreat, I gave a talk, I don't know if you remember but, when you look at the ... when you're in Diamond Mountain Retreat Valley tomorrow morning, and you get up and you see the dawn come up, and you see the sun come over the mountain, where's the line that separates the mountain from the sun, you see?

Where does the sunlight touch the mountain? Where does the mountain stop and the sun begins? And you can't find that place, okay?

You can say there must be one atom touching one atom, if you could use a microscope and the sun and the mountain, where do they touch? You will never find a place, there's no such place, you see? And cause and result, they never touch, okay?

You think there must be a place where there's an atom of light, and there's an atom of mountain, and that the left side of the light atom is touching the right side of the mountain atom, that's where they touch, but that's not possible, it's a single point, there's no width to it, it can't be a space shared between two atoms, it's not possible, there's no such thing. In math, if you ask your teacher what's a point, you know, and they say here, take your pencil and make a point, and then they say, but there's not really a point, because the point has no width, right? There's no such thing, got it?

Okay, that ... when you look ... when the wind touches some leaves and moves the leaves, we ...

sometimes we have small winds here, by the way it's very rare, it only happens when people come here from Germany and stuff and stuff. So, what makes the leaf move, you know, in the tree? Where does the wind touch the leaf?

You can't find it, you really can't find it, that's proof that it's coming from your mind, okay? The wind is not touching the leaf, okay? And we're going to talk about ...

when we start kamalashiyo three, probably ... it's getting late right? Probably the day after tomorrow.

Buddha goes into the connection between tiny things and galactic things. In science it's called quantum theory, as opposed to the general theory of gravity or relativity. In science they study big things to understand small things, and they study small things to understand big things, and Buddha did it two and a half thousand years ago, and it's in the Diamond Cutter Sutra, okay?

We study how do atoms work so we understand how planets work, and we watch the ... I don't know ... the bending of light around Mercury to understand how atoms work, okay?

Alright, mmm ... by the way, I've also been studying the Wheel of Life commentary by Vasubandhu, right? I told you that, and it's very long, it's hundreds of pages, and as I said, in the Abhidharma Kosha, which is the most famous book by Vasubandhu, he ...

it's a long dry book about, you know, 18 divisions of this, and 81 divisions of this, and then in his Wheel of Life book you see him ... the real Vasubandhu, and he's funny, and it's brilliant, and it's controversial, and it's cool. It's like a different person, you know, totally different person.

But in that book he says, how the hell you think link number one causes link number two? How can not understanding kongshing make karma? Where do they touch?

They don't. Link number one doesn't cause link number two, link number two doesn't cause link number three, link number three doesn't cause link number four, he goes into a long story, they never touch, how could they? Okay, alright, mmm ...

you, by the way, in your meditation, so I think we're going to get one meditation done today, you might think about ... okay, there are the four laws of karma right? According to this idea, you created them, okay?

Karma in your world is consistent. What's the first law of karma? Shikwa makes shikwa, you know, if you're nice to people you get good things, if you hurt people you get bad things, who made that?

Who made that law? You see? Or does that just exist?

Is the world runs that way or did you make it? You know, I made it, it's very interesting. How?

You think about it, you know, in this meditation, think about it, okay? Who made consistency? Who created cause and effect?

Why is it true if you hurt somebody you get something bad? You think about it, I'll give you a clue, it's consistent, okay? And it's rational, you hurt, you get hurt, you give, you get money, right?

You stay loyal to your partner, you keep your partner, you see what I mean? Okay? Alright, mmm ...

you want to go deeper? You don't want to go to the second meditation from last time? Alright, I'll just throw another thing at you okay?

You can think about it, I mean if you understood where karma is coming from, that would be a big thing, right? Who made, what's the law of karma? I did, okay?

Before I knew about it. He says ... Kamalashila asked this question, he goes deeper, you ready?

By the way, this is Kamalashila 3, it's not Kamalashila 1, okay? It's not DCI, I get to go as deep as I want, I'm in Diamond Mountain, I get to wear robes, okay? I get to be a Buddhist for a couple weeks, okay?

And I don't care if you don't understand, okay? You should go back to Kamalashila number one. We're on three, these are the tough people, okay?

He says, how do we distinguish between the act of enlightenment and the person who gets enlightened? What's the difference between getting enlightened and being enlightened, or being the person who gets enlightened, okay? How do you recognize that you're a Buddha?

I'll ask you a question, be careful, don't forget Kamalashila 2. If you see the 112 signs on your body that only a Buddha has, do you know you're a Buddha? So, Buddha said no, no way, okay?

Got it? Just because you have the signs on your body that only Buddhas have, doesn't mean you're a Buddha. Why?

Someone has to glue it together, someone has to glue it together, okay? You can have a wheel, and a steering wheel, and a window, and four doors, and it's not a car, it's just pieces of a car. Your mind has to make a car out of the pieces.

People with ... what do you call that? Alzheimer's.

When I forget the word permanently I'll have it. They can't glue things together anymore, okay? They see like a sock, and they see a shoe, and they don't connect them you know, and ...

so, are the parts of a car a car? No, one more ... one more part is necessary, one more part is always necessary, the part that glues them together, and that's the karmic seed that opened in your mind and a picture came out.

How did you get that seed? You gave people rides to Tucson Airport, or you help people get from the temple to their cabin, okay? Many times.

And you made a car a car from that, from pieces of a car. Who made the pieces? Well, that's another story, okay?

But, the pieces of a car are not a car until the karma opens in your mind, and a picture comes out and puts them all together, and then you can drive it, okay? That karma is giving other people help to go someplace, like pay for the translator's trip to Diamond Mountain or something, the airplane, okay? That makes car work, got it?

You want to go deeper? Therefore, what ... the building blocks of all things is not atoms, it's kindness, it's helping other people, okay?

You are not atomists, you are karmaists, okay? Okay? Got it?

Are there atoms? Yes. Who put them together?

You did. Why? You were nice to other people, okay?

Okay? That's the real building block of reality, okay? Alright, one more thing ...

by the way, last thing Kamalashila says about this idea ... oh, we're on number two right? ...

about the disembodied karma triggers? No, we're not ... we're still on disembodied karma triggers.

I know it's frustrating. Go back, yeah there you go. The last thing he says about this is that ...

so, the sutra started out with how to be a bodhisattva, and the first perfection of a bodhisattva is giving, okay? Like, the sutra started out with a discussion of giving, and then he said there's two kinds of giving, okay? One kind of giving results in things, you get money, you give money, you get money, you help other people make money, you get money, okay?

And I'll tell you something cool, you meditate about it okay? It's not simple, you have to write down what I'm saying, if you don't write down what I'm saying you're gonna go to your cabinet and say, what am I supposed to do? Okay?

Everything that I'm talking about you're supposed to think about, okay? Here's a cool one, okay? If you understand those gaps between cause and effect, when you give things to other people, it never ends, the result never ends.

I'll say it again, if you understand how something which never touches another thing can still cause it, then when you give things, the wealth you get back will be a Buddha paradise, unending wealth, unending happiness, okay? Unending beauty, okay? And if you don't understand that gap, okay?

If you just ignore it, if you say Geshe-la I don't really care, let me just give people rides and I'll get a Mercedes Benz even in Singapore or Hong Kong, where it costs five times every place else, okay? Just teach me how to do that, I don't care about how it causes, I don't need to know, okay? If you don't want to know, that car will end, that car will break down, somebody will steal it, okay?

It will break down, okay? Got it? If you worry about how can teaching Dharma create a Dharma body if they never touch each other, if you worry about that in your meditation at Diamond Mountain, then when you give people money, it will come back forever.

It's different, okay? The first one is called sansara, suffering, life. The second one is called paradise, heaven, okay?

Now, you meditate about it, worry about that, Geshe-la said if I understand those gaps, money will come back forever, if he said if I don't understand the gaps, just come back once and then cause me trouble. I don't understand, that's why you're doing retreat, okay? You're supposed to worry about it in retreat, and because you're quiet and you're not going to talk after tonight, by the way you can talk in the class, you can ask questions, if you decide to talk to somebody and they decide to talk back to you, that's your business, you are adults, I'm not gonna, you know, sneak into your house and see if you're talking, although maybe I will, but you won't have a good retreat, you won't understand these karmic triggers, and you'll go home the same, and you wasted your effort, okay?

That's up to you, if you want to have a good time, don't talk, if you want to have a bad time, use your cell phone, if you want to waste the whole trip, use your cell phone, okay? I don't, I can't, you know, my cell phone usage place is secret, nobody can go in there, except sometimes a squirrel comes in there to watch me poo-poo, I don't know why, but you know, it's up to you, you want to have a good retreat? Be strict, okay?

If you don't want to have a good retreat, if you want to waste your money, waste your time, waste my time, then blah blah, WeChat, okay? We used to take away people's cell phones, then I lost one, I had to pay for it and I stopped doing it. Okay, anyway, some people have two.

Okay, we have 15 more minutes okay? We're gonna do one more. Okay, Kamarashila divides the Diamond Cutter Sutra into 18 parts.

We reached the fifth one, okay? We reached the fifth one. The fifth one is called, don't have delusions about your practice, okay?

Don't have wrong ideas about your own success in meditation, okay? It's a very subtle section, okay? If you have a little success in your meditation, don't get abhimana, abhimana.

Abhimana means ... I found a cool translation, what was it? Hyper mind, hyper slash mind, okay?

Don't get all excited, ah, now I'm an Arya, yay! The minute you think I'm an Arya, you become an un-Arya, okay? It's very subtle.

The moment you have certain ideas about your own spiritual success, you mess it up, okay? It doesn't mean you can't be happy, you should be happy. If your husband yells at you the day you get back from this retreat, and you remember this retreat, and you don't say anything, you just took refuge, and the retreat was a success for you, even if you get angry the next day, okay?

You had a good retreat, okay? You stopped one karma seed, that's okay. So, this one is very subtle, like, how to have a proper attitude when you get someplace cool in your meditation.

Avoid this big mind, big mind. What's big mind? You think it's coming from you, sorry, from inside, sorry, okay?

Because you got excited you forgot it's coming from helping other people, okay? Alright, so that's the section we're on, you know, like understanding it when you have success in your practice, okay? Here's the quotation from the sutra, now subhuti, what do you think?

When people enter the stream, do they think to themselves, I did it, I entered the stream. And then, it's called srotapata, I entered the stream, okay? Srot ...

SR comes in the English as FL, don't ask me why, what is it? Flow, okay? Stream enter, okay?

So, stream enter is a nickname for someone who just saw emptiness directly, okay? You entered the stream. I always like to compare it to Jackie Chan in what movie?

The Myth, yeah, and he and this bad guy are fighting in a glue factory, and there's a conveyor belt, and he gets stuck on the conveyor belt and his girlfriend, his Indian girlfriend, gets stuck on the conveyor belt and she's gonna die when she gets to the chopper. Anyway, that's a perfect image for stream enter, okay? It's a conveyor belt, when you see emptiness directly, you get glued to a thing that's moving, to enlightenment, nothing can stop you, and it's within a certain amount of time, okay?

That's it, you made it, stream, you're gonna reach the ocean like in two days. Stream enter, okay? Srotapada, okay?

Okay, now Buddha says to Sabuddhi, if someone reaches stream enter, they just saw emptiness directly, okay? Do they think to themselves, I'm a stream enter? And yeah, no, they don't, okay, well what's that mean?

So, I put a picture of a lady, she's entered the stream and she's trying to help you get into it also, okay? It says, know me during, know me after, or I would lose it, okay? So, here's a question for you, while you're seeing emptiness directly, if Penny is in meditation because he used his meditation app that he's writing for DCI, he's writing a cool meditation app, okay, let's say he used it, he tested it himself, and then he saw emptiness directly because of his meditation app, which may have something to do with helping hundreds of thousands of other people meditate, let's say he sees emptiness, okay?

So, he's inside the direct perception of emptiness for like 20 minutes, okay? After zillions of lifetimes. Can he think to himself, I did it?

Why not? Because Penny is not kongshing, and during those 20 minutes you are swimming inside kongshing, you can't see anything else. If Penny saw Penny while he was in kongshing, it would spit him out of kongshing, okay?

It's very interesting, get out Penny, you just thought about yourself, whoop! Okay, then you couldn't stay inside, okay? So, during stream-enter, the first part ...

look, Siri likes stream-enter. During the first part, seeing emptiness directly, Penny cannot think about Penny, okay? Alright?

If he thinks I did it, he spit out of emptiness, because he's not emptiness. He's emptiness ... if you want to say simple way, emptiness is negative, Penny's positive, okay?

Emptiness is something missing. Penny's is something's here. Penny cannot be emptiness.

If Penny starts to think about Penny in the middle of emptiness, he will lose emptiness, okay? Also, Penny's changing every second, emptiness never changes, okay? So, they're incompatible, got it?

Now, big question is, when he comes out of the stream, he's still, we call him ... now he's an established stream-enter, okay? Then, does he think about Penny?

He does, okay? Does he think about Penny the way he used to? That's a difference, okay?

But, he knows he's thinking the wrong way, okay? He came out of emptiness, they start thinking, oh Penny did it, I did it, you know? Then he says, oh, but Penny's not what I thought Penny was.

Now, I still see Penny as Penny, but I know Penny's not Penny, okay? So, Penny's not Penny, Penny's not what I thought it was. Maybe I'll try to get Arhat, then I won't think about Penny wrong way anymore, okay?

So, still he doesn't think 100% wrong way anymore, but 90% wrong, okay? Alright, sorry Penny, then you have to make another app. Okay, then somebody comes up to Buddha, okay?

Kamala Shila, he says, look, Kamala Shila, get real. Do you know this idiom? It means, stop being ...

anyway, you know, get real means, you know, try to understand something, okay? Get real man, get real. So, Buddha never said, in my former life, when I was King Suradatta, I did this, and that's why I'm a Buddha now.

Because if Kamala Shila says, yes, Buddha did say, in his former life he was King Suradatta, and he did this, and it helped him become a Buddha, if he says, I was King Suradatta, then it's the same as your bodhisattva who says, I'm a bodhisattva, or the stream enterer says, I'm a stream enterer, then he kicked out of Buddhahood also. If Buddha says, I was former life King Suradatta, which he said, in a sutra, which sutra? Mmm, I looked it up, Samadhi Raja, okay?

Which is a favorite sutra of Kamala Shila, because it's a source of meditation, okay? That's why I mentioned it. In that sutra, Buddha told the story of his former life as King Suradatta, and he says, I was King Suradatta, and the other guy says, whoa, wait a minute, if stream enterer says, I'm a King Suradatta before, then he's not Buddha, okay?

Anyway, does Buddha, when Buddha talks about himself, does Buddha talk about himself? Yeah, he says, I used to be this king, and I did this thing, and I became a Buddha, okay? So, can a bodhisattva talk about themselves?

Yes. Can a stream enterer say, I'm a stream enterer? If not, then Buddha shouldn't talk about his former life, that's the point, okay?

If it's wrong, then why did Buddha do it? If it's wrong to talk about yourself, because you will misunderstand yourself, then why did Buddha talk about he was King Suradatta in the past life, you know? Is he wrong?

Is Buddha wrong? There must be a good way of talking about yourself, and a bad way of talking about yourself. You meditate on it, I'm not going to tell you the answer.

But I am going to tell you the story, because I think it's cool, I went and got it for you from the Samadhi Rajasitra, okay? This is the story of King Suradatta, okay? And I'll make it short, okay?

There was a large group of bodhisattvas practicing in an empty place, very similar to Diamond Mountain, and one of them was named Supushpa Chandra, and they all made a promise to each other, they will stay out in the empty land, away from the city, and they will meditate, they will do retreat, they will try to see emptiness, okay? They made a deal with each other, we will do a long retreat, we will stay here in Diamond Mountain, empty place, for I don't know, one year or three years, but they made a deal to stay together in the empty place and do retreat, okay? Then the one whose name is Supushpa Chandra, which means beautiful moon like a flower, okay?

He, in his meditation, he saw, if I go back to the cities, if I leave Diamond Mountain and I go back to Singapore, or I go back to Beijing, or I go back to Guangzhou, okay? And I teach people, they have a chance, real chance to reach Buddhahood. Because of what I understood in my retreat, if I leave the retreat and I share with people in my city, in the city, then there's a good chance they will become Buddha, okay?

So, he told his ... he told his friends, I'm going to the city. Then they said, you promised to stay here, you know, now you want to go, you know, and when you get to the city, those city people are going to change you, you're not going to change the city people, they're going to change you, you know, you start getting interested in cars, and girls, and bars, and malls, and you know, they're going to change you, okay?

Then he went to the city and ... what was that? I forget the story, but I think he stood outside the King's Palace for many days and everybody ignored him, and then some cool things happened, and he started teaching people, and many of them saw emptiness, and then a thousand, and then five thousand, and then ten thousand people start come to his teaching and they see emptiness, okay?

Then the king got jealous, okay? Suradatta, the king, got jealous, because he became popular with his queens also. Then he told his soldiers to kill him, you know, and they took him, and they cut off his arms and legs, and they dug out his eyes, okay?

And they threw the parts of him in different places, and then suddenly all the parts start making light, like the Sun, you know, his leg is making light over there, his arm is making light over there, you know, and then you could start to see the signs of Buddha on those parts, you know, you know, now it became clear, he has those parts. Then the king said, oops, I made boo-boo, okay? And also, he saw that after a week the parts are still there, making light, you know, then he said, oh I made a mistake, you know.

Then he heard a voice from the sky and said, you are going to hell. Then he decided he would become Buddhist, and he started to practice very hard, and guess what happened to him? In the later life he became our Buddha, Shakyamuni, okay?

That was our Buddha, former life, okay? So, Buddha always ends those stories, he says don't think it was somebody else, it was me who made this mistake, it was my fault, I did the mistake, okay? So anyway, if the Buddha talked that long in the Samadhi Raja Sutra about himself, and a stream-enterer talked about himself, then how come Buddha doesn't get kicked out of Buddhahood?

That's the question, okay? You have to think about it. We're almost finished, three minutes.

Master Kamachanda has a nice explanation of tonglam, what's tonglam? Path of Seeing, darshana marga, okay, darshana marga, darshana means seeing, marga means path, darshana marga, okay, and he says, once you see emptiness directly, the city of nirvana is in sight. I just thought it was kind of cool.

Normally we say it means what? Seeing emptiness directly, but he says it can also, you can say, now the time before you reach nirvana or Buddhahood is fixed, 500 years, then you can see the end, you know? Then that's path of seeing, okay?

He explains it that way. I'm going to do the rest tomorrow because it's kind of difficult and it's not a good thing to do it at night when you just traveled, okay? Okay.

It's kind of, it's a long proof of why it's wrong to say, I achieved stream-enter. Okay, we'll talk about it tomorrow. I think we won't even get to Kama Shastra 3.

How many, we finished it, we're on the third one, I think. That's okay.