Тайчжун, 2016, занятие 1

[Speaker 1]
My friends in Taiwan, they asked me to do a deeper teaching. So, me and Mr. Wu, we started Kamalashila last year, I think. In his monastery on the big mountain.

To get up there is very dangerous. Harder than Diamond Mountain. Then we had a beautiful time.

There's a beautiful monk up there. And we started Kamalashila. We only did a little bit.

Then I thought, oh, that would be nice to do in Taiwan. And then on the way, when we were in China, in Shanghai, and Zhengzhou, people said, can you teach something a little bit more deep? So I did some Kamalashila there.

But not much. Then here, we had two days. I only wanted to teach one quarter of it.

But we didn't finish. Only Mr. Wu noticed that we didn't finish. I thought nobody else noticed.

Then he said, you have to teach the rest of that. So after I saw this room, I thought I have to show off. Mr. Wu always impressing me, but I never get to impress him. So I said, yeah, I know the owner. Actually, I only met him a few times. But he heard we were coming, so he offered this place yesterday.

Then I thought the Dharma should be taught in a beautiful place like this. It feels like Mr. Wu's monastery. It's very beautiful.

I really like it. I want to take a photo of you guys. I don't know if I'll ever come back to this place.

I don't know that many people.

[Speaker 2]
Okay.

[Speaker 1]
So I think most of you don't have that paper. Oh, some of you do. Then I'll just show you from my computer.

But what I did, I took the first quarter of Kamashihara, and I put it into twenty-five pictures. And twenty-five meditations. And it really helped me a lot.

Because the text is very, very difficult. If I teach directly from the text, it would take five years maybe. So I took the ideas and I made it into twenty-five meditations.

And it follows the King Kong Ching sutra. And then myself, I chose twenty-five photos, and I took them on my iPhone. Like that.

[Speaker 2]
That's the first one. It's a diamond. Natural diamond.

[Speaker 1]
Then I go through the meditations like this. And I spend five minutes on each one. So that's about two hours.

But you can do fifteen minutes. So I spend five minutes on each meditation. And I use the five-minute timer.

I love this timer. Why? I get to hold my iPhone and do meditation.

Then I feel comfortable. And so I thought today, I'll review the ones which we did quickly. Mr. Wu Mei, you can tell me. I think we stopped at the caterpillar. We stopped at the butterfly, I think. Yeah, we stopped.

Yeah, good. Only he remembers. So I'll just review the first ones.

And then we'll go ahead. So the first meditation is about this diamond. Then Kamalashila asked the question, why is it called Diamond Sutra?

If there's no diamond in the sutra. And then he says it's called diamond because this is a very common shape of a diamond. It's a twin diamond.

They grow two diamonds together. And the grains, they go in like this. Nothing in the universe can break it.

And you can't cut this into diamond. The other diamond, you can cut it with the diamond, but this one, the grains, like on that wood, the grains grow together. Nothing can cut it.

So it means like, I don't know how he understood that. A lot of the great early diamonds in history came from India. Because India used to be connected to Africa.

South Africa has pipes. India has none. So the pipes blew up.

And the strongest diamonds survived came down to the rivers. And then the earth split. So the best and biggest diamonds reached India.

So I think they knew about it. That's where this Vajra comes from. People use the Vajra and the bell.

Kamalashila says it has five parts. One, two, three, four, five. And it represents the five paths.

How our life progressed. This is fatter because it's all the suffering we ever had.

[Speaker 2]
Billions of years.

[Speaker 1]
Then here, second part, someone explains kundalini to us. Intellectually. With a pen.

Or an aspirin. Or a stapler. This one in the middle is just tiny.

And that's seeing emptiness directly. 20 minutes. And then it gets bigger again.

When you use the kundalini which you saw to stop getting angry at your husband when he calls you stupid. Then this is the rest of time. And you're a Buddha.

So that's fatter. So past time, future time, big. And this is the time of the path.

In the middle. So that's a quick review of the first meditation. When you use that for meditation, you can think, where am I?

Did I reach? By the way, when you reach the second one, you can't go to a lower realm anymore. When you're three quarters through that second one.

At that point, you apply the pen to Stanley or to Michael or to Hasso. So you will say to yourself, if your name is Hasso, you'll say, Hasso also liked the pen. And if you get to a certain understanding of that, you cannot go bad after you die.

So let's do one, let's just do the first meditation. And then we'll go to the next one. It'll be five minutes.

My plan is to go for two hours. If you have to go to the bathroom, just get up and go. You don't have to be polite.

I also want to show off I have three bathrooms. Three people can go at the same time. The couples can go together.

We can do six people. So, just get up and go. At 11.30, I have a meeting with Mr. Wu and John. And we'll just relax for a few hours. And have some food. And then you guys are going right to the bus.

Right to the bus stop. So, it's important at 11.30, we'll just split. Because we have some important meetings.

And you have an important setup. And I'm really grateful that people have helped so much. This is the most helpful tour we ever had.

And people just doing everything. People say princes, princesses, and princes. Prince and princess.

It means that if you tell them, go on the floor and plug in the camera, they're like, oh, you can find someone else.

[Speaker 2]
I don't want to get dirty.

[Speaker 1]
And we don't have any prince and princesses. So, it's a great tour. And I'm very happy about that.

Scott, Adriana, and other people also offered to help with anything. If it gets warm, because all the bodies in here.

[Speaker 2]
Maybe it can be temperature control.

[Speaker 1]
Actually, it's right here. Or, I don't know. I don't know.

What do you think?

[Speaker 2]
It's going to get hot.

[Speaker 1]
You push the one on the left. Yeah, and wait, that's green. Yeah, that's cool.

And then you set the temperature. And the right one has to be, the very right one on the right has to be out. Push it in.

I think if you push it, it's on. I'm not sure. Oh, no, you're right.

Okay. So, we're going to do a five-minute meditation. That's illegal in the classical way.

And just check where you are. Which part of the diamond did I reach now? And where would I like to go?

You know? Where would I like to be going next? And that's all.

Just check where you are. And it gives you an image in your mind of how far you have to go. Ready?

By the way, the way you get on, the way you hit the second one, is you become aware of how painful your life is. So, if you're lucky, you have a disaster in your life. And then you start seeking for the pen.

Cell phone off, by the way. Keep your eyes closed. Three slow breaths.

[Speaker 2]
Okay.

[Speaker 1]
Avini, can you get us, like, I don't know how many people and that many bottles of water? Like, ask for room service. There's about five in the kitchen.

Okay. Next photo is... Let me sit back a little.

This... It's a person meditating in a garden. And Kamalashila asked, why did Buddha choose this place to give this teaching?

Then we talked about it already. The area, or the big city, is called Shravasti. Which means, in Tibetan, it's nyen nyew, which means a famous place.

It comes from shru, which means to listen. So, everybody heard about it. Shruti box.

Shruti box. Then, Ashravaka, listener. So, it means, he says it's famous for two reasons.

It was Buddha's... In English, we say hang out. It's like Starbucks for me.

I like to hang out at Starbucks. To work on my computer. It's called dinne in Tibetan.

[Speaker 2]
It's a very rare word. Called R-V-I-P.

[Speaker 1]
Called R-V-I-P. G-T-I... No, sorry, S-T-I.

G-N-A-S. S-T-I-G-N-A-S. It's a rare word, but it means a favorite hangout.

And then also, that place became famous later in history because the Buddha taught the Gengkang Sutra. So, he says it's a famous city for two reasons. Then, there's a park outside the city.

I spent some time there. It's called Jetavana. Vana means Gunpa, Nak, or Self.

There's three different words. Gunpa means like Vihara. Means like a Buddhist place for gardening and monastery.

And Gunpa means monastery. And Sel means a garden. So, Vana has all those meanings.

And Jeta was a famous politician and a businessman. And he bought the park for Buddha by covering it with enough diamonds that the owner cannot see the grass. Then Jeta, the name means victorious.

They say Jai Ram, Jai Ram. Ram conquers. Then, one corner of that park is called Anathapindada.

So, a in Sanskrit is called in the beginning, it's a negative. Like apathetic or atheistic. Which comes from Greek because Greek's more related to Sanskrit.

And then Nata means protector. Oftentimes, Maitreya is called Nata. And I made a mistake in the teaching.

I said it was Nataraja, but that's a different Nata. That's a dancing. That means dancing.

And Pinda means food. And the last da means to give. That's the root of all the words for like dana, to give, first paramita.

Or donation.

[Speaker 2]
Those all come from da.

[Speaker 1]
So, Anathapindada means give the food to the people who have no other resources, no protector. So, that's the place inside the Jetavana near to Shravasti where Buddha gave the teaching. Then Kamalashila has a long explanation.

Why do they pin the place down with these three words? And he said, well, first of all, people will believe the sutra more because it sounds like a news show in Taichung in the Howard Hotel on the 13th floor. This is what happened.

And then people will believe the sutra more. But then he says it also shows two kinds of balance. One is between business and politics and power.

And peace and quiet and personal development. So, instead we should try to find a balance. Jeta represents power and politics.

Then Anathapindada represents compassion for the poor and helping people. And he says we have to balance these two. And then he says in your personal life.

Because in the sutra it says 2,500 high bodhisattvas came. They like attacked the garden. Like this place was peaceful an hour ago.

But then he says a Buddhist person's life should be like that. You know, in the morning they're doing their meditation practice. And then they serve people.

And the more the better. They go from silence and solitude to crowds of people. And it should be that balance.

Both are good. Then he says be careful to check your balance. I think sometimes people like me we get too much into the crowds and stuff.

We don't spend enough time on being quiet. And then some people don't like crowds of people so they're just quiet all the time and they don't serve people. So I think it's very cool Kamalashila says that's why Buddha taught there.

He wants to show we have to balance service and solitude. I'm not going to meditate on these because we don't have time. And we covered them.

We already did them. But some of you weren't there. And then in the next photo I chose a small boy with a wooden bowl because the next thing in the sutra is the Buddha goes begging for food.

I think Kamalashila has a long story about that. Why did Buddha go begging for food if he doesn't have to eat? Because his body is made of light.

Buddhists don't have poo-poo pee-pee. They don't have to eat. Then he said he gives many reasons.

In India in those days women were not encouraged to go outside to public teaching. So he will ask for food and he will say a few teachings to them. Or sick people or old people.

Then he said an interesting thing but it had many students who were poor. And that if Buddha goes out to beg for food if Buddha begs for food the poor students feel comfortable. Oh, he's also broke like us.

Like that. And it shows a simple lifestyle. Actually they only eat only one big meal a day before noon.

And then you have to stop. You cannot eat again during the day. I went to Sri Lanka for business and my friend knew I was a monk.

He took me to the monastery for one day. And it's in the middle of an arboretum which is a tree park. I went for a walk in the tree.

There are beautiful trees, like 150 feet high. The guy was coming on a bicycle. I had my robes on.

He jumped off his bike. He did three prostrations. Then he got back on the bike and went.

I felt so cool. Then I went back to the house. In Tibet, when you become a monk you can make a commitment to keep this rule, don't eat after twelve o'clock.

Temporarily. You can keep it for six weeks. So I kept it for 15 years, all the time in my diamond business.

I didn't eat afternoon. And it's very healthy. And you have great energy.

Then I started to do yoga in the morning. I couldn't eat before noon. So then I started to eat dinner.

But this lifestyle, just eat one big meal a day, it's a very good example. So, Kamalashila says, the Buddha is giving us an example how to eat. Because eating is a big part of spiritual practice.

If you eat good food, and not too much, then your practice is much better. It's one of the most important things about practice, how you eat. So, Kamalashila says, he's giving us a good example.

Then the next one, he said the Buddha set aside his bowl. And it means no more eating. No snacking.

There's a monk vow against snacking. You're supposed to eat once, and the food which you beg, you're not allowed to spread it out. So, it's like, no snacking.

Some people have to snack. My doctor told V, she should snack. To keep the blood sugar equal.

To keep the sugar in the mouth. Otherwise, you'll feel tired, and then you'll feel a little bit sick. Then the Buddha goes into meditation.

He does his morning practice in the Jingang Jing. So, of course, that's a message for us. You should meditate every day.

And he talks about his posture. The sutra mentions some of the eight parts of Vairochana's method. These two.

This makes you sleepy. This makes you agitated. And in the sutra, it says Buddha set up strength.

It means keep a good meditation posture. If you follow this little practice, you know, for a couple months, twenty-five meditations, I have this cool thing. I put the earphones on, like on the airplane.

Then I bring up the photo. I took the photo off the screen. Then I put on the meditation top.

I do five minutes like on the airplane. It's good for Mr. Wu. Everybody thinks I'm listening to music.

And nobody bothers me. And it goes ding. Then I look at which photo I'm on.

I just meditate on the plane. And then when you're done, it goes ding. Then you go to the pictures again.

And you enjoy the next meditation. It's very cool. And then you get your phone in your hand.

Then, next, number five, is all the monks come, and Subhuti is sitting in the front. All the monks come, and Subhuti is sitting in the front. Then Kamla Sher talks about his name.

Su means good. It comes from an Indo-European, this is an ancient, ancient, ancient language, Indo-European. It comes from a root, E-S-U.

So it used to be E-S-U. And in Sanskrit, the E drop out. And it means good.

[Speaker 2]
Like sukha.

[Speaker 1]
Sukha means good wagon wheel hoe. It means it flows well. And it's the Buddhist word for happiness.

Then in Greek, the S drop out. And it becomes the E-U. And in Greek, that means good.

Euthanasia means a good killing. Rhythmic means good rhythm. Euphonic means good sound.

In Greek. So Su means good. Buti means came out.

And bu means ... bu came into English as to be. Or become.

So in Tibetan, it's rab tu jungwa or rab tu jungwa. Yeah, and then rab tu jungwa means came out very well. Like out of the house.

And it's the word for a person who took their first vows of ordination. So there's a full monk's vow. Baby monk's vow.

Layman's vow. Then there's just a vow. I vow not to have a family.

I vow not to have a house. I vow not to have a family. And usually nowadays, you take it at the same time as you take the baby monk's vow.

So it got confused. There's no separation on this. But his name means, I left.

Then Kamalashila has a very interesting discussion. If you leave the family life and you don't have a family, you don't have a house, are you subhuti? Then he said, no.

There are many monks who are very attached to their room and money. There are many family people who are not attached to their family. Then he says, what does it mean, attached?

Then he has a long discussion. It's very beautiful, very famous. You are attached to your husband if you think he comes from his side, and that's the deepest meaning.

And you are not attached to your husband if you understand he comes from your seed. Because then you can reach nirvana and Buddhahood inside the family with your husband. And that's more fun.

So, he said, subhuti left the world, but the world he left was the world which you think is coming from its own side. And then he reached a new world, which is where he understands everything coming from him. So you can do that, and own a company, and have a big family, and have a big house.

Then possessions and family won't slow you down. They speed up your practice. Because everything you own, all the family you have, you can develop more because you can think of how to make them perfect.

So you are creating Amitabha's paradise in your home. Then, the first thing subhuti says is, thank you. He's supposed to ask a question.

Most sutras start with a question from the student. And many sutras are named by the person who asked the question. In Sanskrit it's called pariparcha, pariparcha.

Ask the question. Me and Jigme with Mr. Wu's help, we are translating the names of the 990 books spoken by the Buddha into English for the first time. No one ever did it.

And the Mexico team they are translating that into Spanish. And the Chinese team is translating it into modern Chinese so people know what it says. I think we've finished about ...

we've been working for about five years now. We've finished a few hundred. It will take another seven, eight years I think.

Because many of the names are very difficult. And you have to read the sutra to understand the name. There's a very famous sutra called Gandavyuha.

Usually ganda means ... ganda can mean a big piece of grass. The stalks of grass.

The fat part. Then vyuha means arranged. For many years, for a hundred years, people in America in the West they called the books named Stalks in Arrangement.

Then that name always bothered me. What's it mean? So when we reach that one we have to read the sutra.

And that's very slow. In the middle of the sutra there's a magic house. And around it is these beautiful trees.

One is pure ruby, one is pure emerald, one is pure diamond. And they represent the five buddhas. So the name of the book is really the circle of jewel trees.

So we are fixing all those things. But when we reach Paripraja it's very easy. The book was asked by John or asked by Nick.

So, Subuddhi is supposed to ask a question. But he doesn't. First he says, thank you so much.

Thank your teacher. Thank you so much. I think it's very beautiful.

The first thing he says is thank you so much. That's how we're supposed to feel about teaching. Then he says, why I'm thanking you?

You tell us what to do. And you help us. Then Kabla Sheel says, what did he tell him to do?

Then Lian Hua Jie asks, what did the Buddha tell Subuddhi to do? That's the next meditation. Sixth meditation.

What did the Buddha tell people to do? And Kala Sheel says three things. First thing he said, go get a teacher.

Who fits you. Most of the people in this room are a little naughty. Pretty smart people.

Everyone has to find their own teacher who fits them. Then the second thing he said, go and learn about emptiness. And the third thing he said, then spend your life helping people.

So when Subuddhi says to Buddha, you tell us what to do. Thank you for that. He means those three things.

You told us, go get a teacher. Go learn kong shing. And then go help people.

Thank you for this good advice. So I made a meditation about it. You can do it.

Maybe someone can photograph all these and send them to, I don't know. I'll do it. I'll put it on the website.

You have your earphones. Your APP. And your Ding APP.

And then you have your meditation. Anywhere you go you can do this. And it really improved my meditation.

Because it's addicting. Anything on the iPhone is addicting.

[Speaker 2]
Anyway, that was fun.

[Speaker 1]
Let me do another one. Instead of feeling guilty about your practice, I only did 26 minutes today. It becomes like a video game.

It becomes like a video game. Okay, then next meditation. I'm splitting the time in half.

I'm trying to split the time in half. What we did before. Wu Ming Feng Pali Purcha.

He asked a question. So Buddha asked three questions. Or his question has three parts.

He's finished thanking the Buddha. Then he says, I have three questions. How should we live?

And that word in Sanskrit is sthita. It came into English as station. Sitting.

How do we stay? Stay also comes from that. How do we stay?

How do we live? It means how to live. And sthita.

How do we practice? And then third question is how do we think? So he asked these three questions.

Then Kamalashila says, the rest of the sutra is the answer.

[Speaker 2]
To the end.

[Speaker 1]
It's the answer to these three questions. Then he says, briefly, the answer to those three, or the initial answer, the first answer, is number one, live in hope and vision. And a dream.

To help all people. That's how you should live. Sooner or later, I should help all people.

So, it's bodhichitta, right? That's the vision that ... In terms of DCI, which most of you are involved with, I feel it this way.

We do Shizuoka, Tokyo, and then Taiwan, Taichung. Go to many, many cities. It's exhausting.

Mr. Wu is like, trying to keep my body ... He's like, here's a business class ticket. Keep your body.

Don't kill your body. But I think you have to kill your body until you have enough cities. And then they start to go like this.

They start connecting with each other. Like Seiji met Jeffrey last week. And then it starts the connection.

Like a network. And that's my dream. We go to enough cities, people will start to connect with each other.

Indonesia connects with Germany, and Russia, and then the whole thing starts to connect. And then we help the whole world. So, that's how to live.

Have this vision. How to practice? He just says one thing.

See kongxing. Learn to see kongxing. By the way, the first one implies love.

And then the second one is kongxing. Then how to think. Third question.

He's very cool. He says thinking means focus. Focus means focus means not having distraction.

And for a diamond-cutter person, it means you don't lose your vision of emptiness when bad things happen. It's easy to remember kongxing when you're having breakfast. If it's a good breakfast.

But if someone's scream at you, if someone hurts you, it's easy to lose the understanding it's coming from me. So, for him, meditation, focus, means when someone's hurting you, you can hold your kongxing and you don't lose it. If you lose it, you broke your meditation.

So, your whole life is a meditation. In my meditation, oftentimes I think about my next meal. So, that's my usual distraction.

But for a jingangjing person, the whole day is a meditation. If they forget kongxing, and get angry at something, they thought about breakfast. Breakfast came into the meditation, and it disturbed them.

Okay, got it? I like it. So, that's the short answer.

The long answer is the rest of the sutra. Then it's cool. Buddha says he listened to the question.

By the way, in the question, Subuddhi praised the Buddha by using high words for him. He called him Sugata, Tathagata, Bhagavan. He uses these high words.

These are different names for Buddha. They all mean Mr. Super Cool. Yeah.

But he uses many, and he repeats them. Then he gives a beautiful explanation of those names. And they're super cool.

And he explains the word bhikshu, monk, in a very cool way. What's the other one? Sangha.

He explains the word sangha. Like he said, Buddha, Dharma, Sangha. I never saw this explanation.

Ga means to come. It used to be gawa. So it's the source of the word avenue.

It's the source of where to go. It's also the source of the word to come. Then san means together.

It comes into Greek as the s-y-n, sin. So it's interesting that the word synagogue, which is a Jewish church, that's a Greek word, and it means sangha. It's exactly the same word.

But I was always disturbed by this word because the ga is spelled wrong. It's g-h-a, which is not the root for go. But everyone explained, they come together, they go together, it's called sangha.

But the spelling is wrong. It's g-h-a. And in Sanskrit, g is not at all the same as g-h-a.

Like dharma is different from dharma. It's completely different. So, Kamleshiva says, sure, it's not ga.

It's gaha. And gaha is a form of the verb han, h-a-n. Which means to hurt.

Like ahinsa comes from that. And the word gun comes from that. From han.

Gahan. Which is why the h-a changed to a u, but you don't care. So, he said it's hurt together.

Then he says, why are they called hurt together? He says it used to be samagha, which means cannot be hurt if you're together. So, sangha means we support each other.

Like all the DCI organizers. We are sangha if we support each other. Then no one can hurt it.

It's very beautiful. He explains the sangha. It's very sexy.

I like words. Anyway, he says, so Buddha answers. He says, listen, and I will explain.

And then Kamleshiva says, like in English, listen can mean to hear or to obey. In English, the mother says to the kids, you never listen to me. It means you don't do what I say.

Kamleshiva says, this listen is both. You hear what I'm teaching you, but you better do it. And when he says, listen, and I will explain, it means, you invented this system.

To turn off the cell phone. He says, listen, and I will explain. In Buddhist logic, we call it mayinga.

It's the implication of a negative by a positive stated in a certain way. So, what's the implication? Yeah, if you don't listen, I won't explain.

If I think you're not going to follow it, I'm not going to talk. You waste my breath. Then Kamleshiva goes into this long explanation of what's the proper way to listen.

I love this photo I found. I call it the three teacups. And it means, this is a teaching which came all the way into the lam rim of the Tibetans.

And it means, there are three possible problems of the teacup. One, the teacup is upside down. It means the student's not open to see him.

So generally in Buddhism, we don't teach someone if they don't want to listen. And then the second cup, I found a great example. It's when you want to have some coffee, or I'm having Indian tea.

But by accident, you pour coffee into the tea. And I've tried many times to drink it. Because I'm always thinking about something else, and I pour the coffee into the tea.

It's the worst taste in the world. And there's no possible way to drink it. So he said, tea is already in the cup.

Old tea with a terrible top on it. That represents the student who heard some stupid ideas before and cannot give them up. Like this, hey, hey, hey.

Okay, so if you pour in a good Starbucks coffee, cappuccino, on top of this old stinky tea, it can't drink it. It's terrible. It means that students ...

then they start to teach that. They heard some strange thing from a movie, or from a book, and then they start to teach it. They start to teach, close your eyes and see the black.

And then where do the seeds come from? You know, like, mix them together. And it tastes like coffee and tea mixed together.

The third one is the tea cup which has a small crack. I had a cup like that. It was Sophie's wedding cup when Sophie got married in Mexico.

She gave me and Vy a cup. I guess it's a custom, I don't know. But they didn't glaze, they didn't coat the whole thing.

The bottom wasn't glazed. But it was a beautiful cup. Then I used it for coffee for a long time.

Every time there's a little bit on the table and drip, drip, drip. But it's not covered on the bottom. Finally I just put it in the back of my cabinet.

This is a happy wedding, Sophie. You know, I like it. That means the student who sits in the class but tomorrow they can't remember anything.

And it just leaks out. Okay, next one. Number nine.

What's the impure motivation of listening dharma? Does it apply to the three caps? That's a good question.

I would say it's the... which word? The second one.

So, previous bad ideas. I'm sorry? Previous bad ideas.

[Speaker 2]
So, previous bad ideas.

[Speaker 1]
But also bad motivation. If I learn a lot of Sanskrit I can impress my students on the 13th floor of the Harvard. Okay, like that.

I know this one. Okay, next one is very beautiful. And the Buddha starts to give his answer.

And he says, he says, listen, I will explain. And I guess Subuddhi nodded. The sutra doesn't say, but I think Subuddhi said, okay, I'll listen.

And then the Buddha starts to explain. And he says, how you should live and practice and think, you should bring everyone to Nirvana. Then Buddha makes a new word.

You should Nirvana-cize everyone.

[Speaker 2]
I love it.

[Speaker 1]
I love this word. I send it to him to translate. And I'm waiting for this email.

It took him a long time. And finally I got the email. From Stanley Chang.

I know what this email says before I open it. Geshe-la, I couldn't find Nirvana-cize in the dictionary. Is that like a new word?

Or is it a mistake? It's not my fault.

[Speaker 2]
It's the Buddha.

[Speaker 1]
Nirvana in Tibetan is or in the long form is nyang-en-le-de-pa So he says, nyang-en-le-da-wa He makes a verb. Let's Nirvana-cize everyone. Then this I can't explain today because it will take the rest of the time.

But Buddha gives ten different groups that you should Nirvana-cize. I'll just say the group's names. Anyone born as bacteria is born from warmth and moisture on a piece of bread or tiny creatures.

In Buddhism we say born from warmth and moisture. Which was an old European idea also. It's called spontaneous generation.

And then anyone born from an egg. Anyone born from a mother's womb. Anyone born miraculous from the middle of a lotus.

Anyone in a normal state of mind. Anyone in a deep state of meditation. Anyone in a spaced out meditation.

And then anyone born into the three realms which are a result of those three states of mind. Which is, the desire realm is the result of a normal cognitive state of mind. This world, this busy world comes from a busy mind.

And then you can call form realm, but nowadays I kind of like the body realm. Body realm. Because the word means body, rupa.

You can trace rupa to corpse, by the way. You could coverp. But anyway.

They call form realm, but I think body realm would be Because the point is that people in that realm have extraordinary bodies. And they are huge. They can reach out and take a planet and smash it.

If the light's too much and they can't sleep, they can blow out sun.

[Speaker 2]
Really?

[Speaker 1]
Just like that. You get to be born like that if you meditate your whole life. Without understanding kundalini.

And it's a bad rebirth, because after that you use a bio-karma and you're always going to hell. Then there's a higher rebirth called body-less realm. Because where you die, your mind takes birth immediately.

And you have no gross body. You have very subtle problems. But they call body-less.

So he says you have to help all these people. There's a very deep teaching in there about how the differences you perceive between people are coming from you. And there's a very sophisticated discussion of how you can't really be equal to all people until you see that the differences are coming from you.

So an ideal in the modern world is I should treat Singaporeans and Mexicans and Swedish people the same but Kamla Shilla says it's not possible to treat different races and different countries' people the same until you understand the differences are coming from you. And I love that. Very cool.

Okay, but we don't have time to talk. Next one, ten. Here Kamla Shilla gets into two kinds of attitudes.

When I decide to Nirvana-size everybody, how strong is that attitude? The word bodhichitta is not precise because there are three levels of enlightenment. The first two are lower.

They are only Nirvana. And the third one is Buddha. So when you say I wish to achieve enlightenment, bodhichitta, it can be any one of three motivations.

I want to reach Nirvana to be happy myself. Or I want to reach Buddhahood. And in the Lam Rim, that became the three motivations.

So Buddha says, which one are you? All three can be called bodhichitta. And the persons who have them, all three can be called bodhisattvas.

Because bodhi means enlightenment. And sattva in Sanskrit means courage. Commitment.

So all three of these guys are bodhisattvas. They all made a commitment to reach their own enlightenment. But the bodhisattvas who came to the Anathapindana Park in the Jetavana Extravasthi, they were Mahabodhisattvas.

Big bodhisattvas. And that's always the third one. And they have Mahabodhichitta.

They have good bodhichitta. And then Kamalashila says, what's the difference? And he said, he says it's very beautiful.

The whole thing is beautiful. I'm telling you one percent. These two levels, I will do the best I can.

And this guy, I'm going to reach nirvana. I'm going to do it. I don't care.

If everyone fights me, I don't care. If no one agrees with me, I don't care. If the internet says bad thing about me, I don't care.

I'm Buddha. I'm going to become a Buddha. And I'm not waiting for anybody else.

And I love that. It means super commitment. When I got to that part, I have all these big projects.

In the last few months, there's been a chance to step up to a much higher level. Touch a million people. And now I'm a little bit like, wow, I don't know if I can take that many people in my bed.

He knows pressure. It's a lot of pressure. He has a hundred thousand followers.

I don't know. It's a lot of pressure. But Buddhists like step up.

In English, we say step up. I can do it. Take me to a higher level.

So, he says, in Tibetan, what's that called? Plaksa Namban. Those neurons are firing up there somewhere.

Okay, next, he talks about kong shing. During his time in Indian history, in Kamalashila's time, there were starting discussions about the possibility that there are different levels of emptiness, different kinds of emptiness. Like 50% emptiness.

We can call 50% emptiness his mind-only school. Me, and haso, me and what I see, are coming from one seed which splits open. Because we had an interaction two lifetimes ago.

Probably he pushed me on the bus. So we get to meet each other. But the haso which comes out, he exists out there.

And doesn't depend on my current mind. And if you cut him up, there are atoms, you will find atoms. You can reduce him to ...

the smallest part of him is called the atom. In the higher school, the smallest part of him is my seed opening. In modern science, since Newton and since Aristotle, they believe the smallest part of him is his atoms.

His chemicals. But now physicists are starting to understand that it's coming from your mind. In atomic physics, the presence of an observer changes the atom.

How it moves through a refraction grating. Good luck. Grating means that.

That's a grating. That air conditioning thing with those many holes like that, we call grating. That design.

This is a grating. Then when you make a tiny grating which is only like as wide as like several ... A couple of electrons.

And you send photons through it. They behave differently if a person is watching. And science cannot explain it.

And it's called, I don't know, uncertainty principle. So anyway, that's 50% He has atoms. You can cure cancer if you break it into small atoms and you study all the atoms and you can cure cancer.

You can call it 50% emptiness. Because they do understand if we two split from one seed. Then the lower middle way is called svatantrika.

They believe 75% emptiness. Okay, like I create hustle. There are pieces there which I'm not creating.

And then my mind puts them together and creates hustle. So mostly he's coming from me. But some of him's not coming from me.

So it's like 75%. And it's very interesting that the main person who started that school was Kamalashila's teacher. Or one of them.

Probably Venka is the main guy. Shantarakshita is a big proponent of it. He was the teacher of Kamalashila.

But Kamalashila doesn't fall into it. He says hustle is 100% coming from me. On this level, my mind puts a...

a seed opens, image comes out of hustle, and goes on all the parts. But when I look at the parts, just his hand, that's also coming from me. So when I go down with the microscope to each of his parts, that's also coming from me.

So the lower middle way school will say the parts are there. The higher middle way school will say I'm also making the parts. Okay, got it?

But that's 100% his land. Same, just another part. Just another part.

He's going to talk about it if we have time. It's a good question. So anyway, Kamalashila has a beautiful discussion.

There's a big section in Tsongkapa's book on emptiness, which is a direct commentary on Chandrakirti. That's Chandrakirti. Somebody asks a deep question.

If a businessman, Chandrakirti talks about it, if a businessman learns kongshing, understands seeds, and they just want to make money, and they have no intention to help anybody, will it work? Will the seed work? And Chandrakirti quotes the Buddha.

The Buddha said, yeah. Don't touch that white one. That's dangerous.

Just kidding. If a bad person drops this, or a good person drops this, it's still going to drop the same. He calls cruel-hearted businessmen plants seeds.

They'll get rich. It doesn't matter. But, but, but, but, but, the habit of thinking about kongshing plants a new seed, which always causes them to bump into an Arya.

They will always meet a person who saw kongshing directly. Because they committed their business life to seeds. And then that Arya will teach them real.

So the question comes here. When a businessman uses kongshing and succeeds using the seeds, what school do they belong to? Which of those three kinds of emptiness are they following?

A hundred percent. And that's very important. Very deep.

Don't think the guy with the lousy motivation is using a lower emptiness. Because if he was, he wouldn't have gotten one dollar. Cool?

So, even the lowest motivation people and the Buddha have the same idea about kongshing. You either see it, or you don't. There's no percentage.

During your kongshing education, the Buddha will teach you minority school first. And then the Buddha will take you up to lower middle way. And finally the Buddha will take you up to the highest emptiness.

And if you're stupid, he'll teach you Abhidharma. The kongshing in Abhidharma is crude. Crude means roughly simple.

In Abhidharma, kongshing is very crude, very inaccurate. The rest of the Abhidharma is great. Chi, Sampa, Jawa, Tantra, these are good stuff.

Okay, next. Then Lord Buddha says, but when you reach, when you Nirvana-ize those people, nobody reaches Nirvana. Then, oh my god, that starts a long, long, long, like hundred page discussion.

Very difficult. Very sophisticated. And just to make it simple, it means the same thing that we talked about last night when we said there are two husbands in the living room.

There's one who exists, and there's one who doesn't exist. The one who exists is the one you understand is coming from how you treated the kids last week. The one who doesn't exist is the one who's not your fault.

Which means every husband is your fault. No, they have a good marriage. So, of course, what Buddha means is nobody reaches Nirvana.

He means, if you become teacher, and if you spend a lot of time helping the student, and the student comes out good, and they even reach Nirvana, that's coming from you also, from your seeds. By the way, he's very clear that there's two kinds of Nirvana, right? One is the ...

because he goes off on this thing in the sutra, Lord Buddha said, among all living beings, there's not one who exists. Then he says, okay, let's talk about it. Of course, it was misunderstood by some lower schools.

And they said, when you reach Nirvana, your body disappears. And your mind disappears. And that's a lower idea.

There's a famous question to those people who say that. Can people reach Nirvana? Yes.

What do we call them? Arhat. Enemy destroyer.

You know? So, hey dude, if the body disappears, and the mind disappears, where's the arhat? Who's the arhat?

Yeah, so they're like, okay, that's lower school. Higher school, you don't lose your body and mind. You purify them.

And in Tantra, we have five skandhas, right? Five fields. You purify each of them.

And he taught it in Mexico. Each one becomes a different Buddha. Amitabha is only one.

And Amogha Siddhi, and the other four buddhas, Narottama, and Akshobya. These five buddhas. Five colors.

And each one is the purification of one part of you. So, Kamalashila wants to make sure that we understand when you Nirvana-ize them, you are not making them disappear. You are making each part of them become a Buddha.

Okay, then he gets into that long conversation. And it has three parts. If you don't save anybody, what do you think about this?

Yeah, okay, we can say it this way. If you don't get... If you cannot bring people out of the jail of samsara, when you say nobody gets out of the jail, no one is liberated, then there's a couple of problems.

Our Buddhist people say there's no connection. Between the person who was in the jail yesterday and the person who got out of the jail today. What's the connection?

It's very subtle. If I was in the jail yesterday, samsara, and today I get out, which means Seiji Nirvana-ized me.

[Speaker 2]
Okay, okay.

[Speaker 1]
Then in jail, in jail, in jail, in jail, in jail, out of jail. Then at what point are you out of jail? And is there a person who was in jail?

Is there a connection between the person who didn't reach nirvana yet and the person who did reach nirvana? Then of course there's a connection. Because we say Michael used to be in jail.

So, Michael. Then we go into Michael. Who's Michael?

Because he stretches from jail up to now. And there has to be a connection between the Michael who was in jail and the Michael who got out of jail. Because if the Michael who got out of jail is not connected to the Michael who was in jail, then the Michael who got out of jail maybe was the Stanley who was in jail.

You see, if there's no connection, then in Buddhism, the connection has to be ... when you say connection, both of the things connected must exist. You cannot have a connection between a rabbit's horn and John Brady's nose.

His nose exists. But the horn of a rabbit doesn't exist. So there cannot be connection between them.

You can't say we tied the rabbit horn to his nose. Because one doesn't exist. So, in Buddhism, there are two kinds of relationships.

In Buddhist logic. But in either case, they both have to exist. Or you cannot have a relation.

So now we have two things. If there's no connection between the Michael who got out of jail and the Michael who was in the jail, then the Michael who got out of jail could have been the Stanley who was in jail. Because it's a new form.

Because there's no connection. It could be anybody. If there is a connection, they both have to exist.

But at the time of the Michael who got out of jail, there is no Michael who is in jail. Because he's past. Past means doesn't exist anymore.

So, how can we say, I used to be in jail? And how can Buddha tell you, get everybody out of jail? Okay, then there's a problem.

Second problem. Is there a connection between the person who makes karma and the person who gets the result? And Kamalashilam invents two new words.

He finished all the Buddhist books from India, all of them. It took 25 years. 4,600 books.

They're all in the computer. They're all free. Online.

But you can't get them. We'll talk about it later. I'm studying him.

So, I checked all those 4,600 books. We can search it in about 10 seconds. We have an application.

We have an application. And nobody else ever used these words. Only Kamalashilam.

And he invented two words. He calls it the cake baker and the cake eater. He calls doer and eater.

Then the carving was mistaken. It took me a long time to figure it out. Everything I'm telling you takes like, I don't know, a week to figure out.

That's what I'm doing in the car all the time. Okay, sorry, I made a mistake. One is doer, one is eater.

One guy makes the karma. The later guy has to eat the karma. Like, I don't know.

In the talk, we said you push somebody on the subway. And then three weeks later, somebody kicks you in the butt. Then is there a connection between the pusher and the kiki?

When you do this meditation on the plane with your earphones, you're going to meditate on this postman. He's delivering your karma letter to you, which you mail to yourself. But we're always getting upset at the postman.

My husband mistreated me. No, he's just postman. He's delivering the letter which you wrote to yourself.

The return address says doer. The person who did, doer. And then the addressee, the person to whom the letter is addressed, is called the eater.

And they're both you. But one is past. So how can there be a person?

Because the one in the past is gone by the time the one in the future is eating. And at the time of cooking the cake, there's no eater. So one must not exist when the other does exist.

It has to be. So how can there be a connection? He's talking about the emptiness of person.

Later, he will say, bodhisattvas don't stay in things. And if you stay in things, you ain't no bodhisattva. And that's your question.

So, when he gets to that part later, he's talking about the kongshin of your mind, the kongshin of your body, the kongshin of things outside, and sexy, sexy, sexy. He gets into the kongshin of kongshin. The kongshin of kongshin.

That's coming. Maybe today, I'm going to be late, Scott. It's okay, right?

So, second part here, how can there be a connection between the doer and the eater? Third part of this question, we call it chöpa. It's being generated by the statement that nobody reaches nirvana.

If you feel hot, you can close the curtain. Japan is cold right now, right? Third part of this question has two parts.

And I think it's very cool He says, if you get older and you see your mom, and I put the picture of mom, I put a mom picture. If you get older and you see your mom, I don't know, she's sixty-something, which is not really old. How do you recognize her?

It must be you saw her earlier. When you were a kid, she said, hi, I'm your mom. You need anything to eat?

Can I help you? And then you saw, for the first time that you remember, you saw her face. And now, many years later, you go to take her to the shopping.

And you look at, there's three women in the room, and you check their face. This was my mom. How can you do that?

Because the one you saw, the person who saw the mom when they were a kid, they're gone. So, how can what they saw affect the person later? The seeing the mom when you were five years old, is the cause of recognizing the mom when you're fifty years old.

But again, there has to be a connection between cause and effect. If no connection, then recognizing your mom can be caused by having a cappuccino ten years ago. If there's no connection necessary, then anything can cause you to recognize your mom.

But if you do recognize your mom, it must be that there's a connection with the person who was a kid. But who made that connection? And how can there be a connection because that one's gone?

Then the sexy, sexy, sexy. I like it. It's called the kakun.

And that was hard to figure out. Then there's this, you know, first there's a caterpillar. And then, I don't know, he makes something out of his mouth, and he makes a little house.

And he crawls in there. JB says two or three months later, I don't know. The little house opens, and a butterfly comes out.

So, Kamalashila's solution to this three problems is that somebody made kakuns. The person who was in the jail, and the person who got out of the jail, are connected by a tube of time. And that's like a kakun.

And the guy who was suffering ten years ago, he crawled into the kakun. Then you Nirvana-sized him, and then the butterfly came out. You made the butterfly.

Then who connects that guy, the caterpillar with the butterfly, is the kakun. Where did the kakun come from? You made it.

The person made it. The person who got out of the jail made a kakun, and then when he got out of the jail, he's still connected to the person who was in the jail by a kakun. Check it out.

The moments of consciousness, one after another, sixty-five per second, are united, those moments are united by you, by your seeds. You have the seeds to be, you have the seeds to see yourself as a continuous, as a continuity. There's no natural connection between karma and karma itself.

It's not the law of the universe. He says there is no law of the universe. This explains karma itself.

It's really sexy. Who made karma? Who made the law of karma?

Four laws of karma. Who wrote them? You did.

There's seeds in your mind which connect pushing the guy on the subway to getting kicked in your butt. There are seeds in your mind which connect the seeds to the result of the seeds. So who invented karma?

It wasn't Buddha. There's many Buddhist books that say Buddha didn't invent karma. You invented karma.

And you still do. And your mind does every moment. And it connects the person who was in the jail to the person who got out of the jail, the butterfly.

And it connects the person who did the thing and got the result later to the result. Remember the past. Wait, wait, wait.

What's the third one? Yeah, the person who saw mom and the person who remembers mom later. He says remember or recognize, same thing.

Those are connected by a cocoon. That's coming out of your mind. You made that.

You made yourself. Yes. If something is created by your mind, is it necessarily changeable?

It's a difficult question. The nearest I got in the scriptures and my own thinking, there's a question about the way of life. There are five or six possible rebirths.

Then I asked my lama, why not a million? There should be animals and spookus and dibus and bakalus. Why five?

Why six? And it's something to do with statistics or possibilities. There are 84,000 different ways to do something.

And the permutations, the possible combinations can only result in six kinds of birth. Just patterns, patterns. You said years ago that this is ...

Is this what you meant when you said something can be empty, but it still can be constant?

[Speaker 2]
Yeah.

[Speaker 1]
It can be fixed, but empty. We can say that karma always behaves the same. But that doesn't mean it's not coming from your seeds.

But then, that also ... By the way, that's important because it means you can't hurt somebody and get a good result. Even though karma is coming from your mind.

Which seems to imply it could be changed. But it's not. Do you have a question?

So emptiness doesn't mean that something can change necessarily? If something is empty, it can be different. Yeah.

[Speaker 2]
No, that's the same.

[Speaker 1]
Even though things are empty, even though things are coming from your seeds, there can be patterns which cannot be broken. So those patterns are not ... They're empty, and they cannot be broken.

[Speaker 2]
That's what we're saying.

[Speaker 1]
So, the fact that it's coming from you doesn't mean it could be anything. Because of the total number of possible combinations of karma. And the fact that this teaching is also empty means that later I could hear something different, or not?

You could hear something different. It wouldn't be true. If you ask me a question, we can't do the rest.

Which do you want? Because Mr. Woo, we just reached his part. Let's go fifteen more minutes, okay?

[Speaker 2]
Fifteen more.

[Speaker 1]
I'll skim through this. Now the subject changes. Buddha says, he finished saying when you bring them to nirvana, nobody got to nirvana.

And then he says, and by the way, anyone who thinks someone did reach nirvana is living in things. And you cannot call them bodhisattva. So, if you live in things, we cannot call you a bodhisattva.

Then the word, call, is crucial. Buddha didn't say, if you think anyone got, if you think anyone reached nirvana, you're not a bodhisattva. He didn't say that.

He's making a joke. Why? He's saying bodhisattvas are also coming from your mind.

They're also coming from seeds. They're not a bodhisattva because they're a bodhisattva. They're a bodhisattva because you call them a bodhisattva because your mind has the seeds to call them a bodhisattva.

And in Buddhism, the process of calling haso, is intimately related to seeds opening. So, Buddha said, things exist only through names and signs. Names and signs.

Indicators. Like stop signs. So, in the monastery, we have to struggle, what's the difference between names and signs?

They both mean coming from seeds. So, in Buddhism, the process of naming is very related to the process of seeds opening. So, if you stay in things, you are no bodhisattva.

Then, because of the last thing the Buddha said, nobody reaches nirvana. Kamala Shila already discussed the emptiness of people with those three examples. Eater and maker.

[Speaker 2]
Makers make me better. Maker, eater.

[Speaker 1]
And a kid, a person who remembers their mom, a person who used to be in jail, a person who got out of jail. So, he says, we don't have to talk about that again. When we say, don't stay in things, actually, people are one of the things in the world.

But we finished that. Because we talked about the person who didn't reach nirvana. So, let's talk about other stuff.

So, he talks about physical things, and he talks about mental things. So, now we're on 17, meditation 17, we're starting mental things. And then, I showed a happy lady.

I like that photo. She seems very happy. So, Kamala Shila says, what does it mean to say she is staying in things?

And he says, let's start with her mind. If I stay in Vivian's mind the wrong way, which means I'm thinking about your mind the wrong way, what's that look like? Okay, ready?

He said, three possibilities. When she's happy. In English, I don't know Chinese, but I so much want to learn Chinese.

But I have to work to do it. There are three possibilities. Number one, in English, you say, I'm happy.

I am happy. Okay, that means that means Vivian, or her mind, and the happiness are equal. I am happy.

Okay, we say it in English. Or, in English, second possibility. So, first possibility, I am happy.

Second possibility, I feel happy. Or you can say, I have happiness. Then, Vivian's one thing, the happiness is another thing, and she has it.

In the first possibility, she is the happiness. I am happy. In the second possibility, she feels the happiness out there, and she feels it.

So, somehow she's not the happiness. Like a cell phone, she has it. The implication is she can lose it.

And it's true, right? You're happy today, and you're sad tomorrow. Okay, and then the third possibility, I got happy.

I got happy nowadays. It means I made the happiness. I found happiness.

I did something, and that caused happiness to come to me. So, in Buddhism, these reflect the three possible relationships. Three possibilities.

Two of them are relationships. First is equivalence. I am happy.

You say, how do you feel today? I'm happy. That means I am the happiness.

Then the second possibility, how do you feel? I feel happy. The happiness is out there, and I feel it.

Third possibility, I got happy. Meaning, I did something yesterday, and today I'm happy. I went for a walk, and I got happy.

Those are our three possibilities. In the first one, there's no difference between Vivian's mind and the happiness. In the second possibility, her mind is here, and the happiness is here, and her mind has the happiness.

And the other relationship possible is cause and effect. The third possibility is cause and effect. The second one is simultaneous.

You're my happiness. I'm Michael. I feel you.

You're a different thing from me, and I feel you. I have you in the moment. The other is cause and effect.

I went for a walk, so I feel happy now. I acquired happiness. if Vivian's happy, it has to be one of the three.

And we're talking about the kongshin of her mind. Because in Buddhism, feeling is mental. It can come through physical means, but it's mental.

It's a mental thing. So, Kamleshi is talking about the emptiness of your mind. So, let's go through the three possibilities.

Number one, if you can really say, I'm happy, then 100% of your mind happy. And you can't think about your daughter. You can't think about lunch.

You can't say, Hey, it's three o'clock. There's only one thought in your mind happy. Your mind equals happy.

In that case, she'll be happy all the time. She'll never think of anything else, and she'll never get sad. So, that's not true.

If I think that, I must be staying in her mind. If I think that way, I'll stay in her mind. And then you can't call me, you can't call me a bodhisattva.

You want to go deeper. Kamleshiva says, by the way, when you say we can't call you a bodhisattva, we ain't talking about normal bodhisattva. Then he makes another new word.

Ultimate bodhisattva. You are not an ultimate bodhisattva. Because technically, you can be a bodhisattva without seeing emptiness.

Adam, are you ready? Definition of bodhichitta. It's a definition, isn't it, Jerry?

Yeah. Straight from Maitreya. He said, get bodhichitta, and that's what bodhichitta is.

The definition of bodhisattva is just a person who wants to reach the Buddha to help other people. Sorry, reach Buddhahood to help other people. So, it's not necessary that person saw emptiness yet.

But, Kamleshiva says, don't forget, in this case, when Buddha says, we cannot call you a bodhisattva if you stay in things like our mind. He's not talking about regular bodhisattva. He's talking about ultimate bodhisattva.

There's a technical term in Buddhism called ultimate bodhichitta. And it means it's a bodhichitta which is combined with understanding emptiness. Okay?

So, anyway, so she is not her happiness. You can say, I am happy. But, technically, it's not possible.

She can't be all happy. Okay, maybe I am. But then you wouldn't have anything else in your mind.

No memory, no attention, no other mental function. You have 51 mental functions. 50 of them wouldn't be in her mind.

So, the next possibility, she has happiness. Sorry, she feels happiness. Yeah.

Then you can't say Vivian's happy. You can only say Vivian has happiness. Now it gets more difficult.

And this is really difficult. And it comes in number 19 also. When I see blue, when I look at the sky, when I see blue, how much of my mind sees blue?

And where is the rest of my mind? So, this is a Buddhist idea called nampa. It means the aspect of the mind.

And that example comes in the Yoga Sutra also. Some people explain the mind as like a clear crystal or glass. And when you put it on top of something blue, when you put it on top of something blue, the bottle looks blue.

We say the bottle takes on a blue aspect. And when the mind sees blue, when your eyes see blue, and your mind perceives, your consciousness perceives it, there's a bluish cast to your mind. In English, cast means aspect.

Your mind is bluish. Probably say I got the blues. I don't know.

So, let's talk about that and we can finish. Because that will cover the rest. Most of the rest.

It's the emptiness of the mind. So, now we're not talking about blue. We're talking about happy.

For me, it's the waffle I'm going to have shortly. When I think about it, and how it's going to taste, I feel happy. So, my mind has a happy aspect, like the blue in the bottle.

So, in this case, my mind, which is like a mirror, it's not blue. But it has blue in it. Part of it is bluish.

But we're not talking about blue. We're talking about happy. So, this is tough.

This is hard. So, that means some percent of her mind feels something. It's like infected by that color.

So, the mind, the definition of mind is clear and knowing.

[Speaker 2]
So, it's just clear.

[Speaker 1]
But then, you put an object in front of it, and it gets pink. But in this case, it's your happiness. So, we can say that happiness is in the mind.

Now you have to think of her mind like a cup. Okay? Then Vivian's mind became like a cup.

And this is called Vivian's mind. Then, the happiness... Question for you.

And then we can stop. Is the happiness part of the cup? Vivian's mind?

Or is it in the cup? In the cup. Then it's not part of your mind.

Okay? If you take the happiness out, do you take out part of your mind? Do you amputate part of the brain if you get sad?

Do you amputate part of the brain if you get sad? Do you or not? So, it's not part of her mind.

So, there's no connection between her mind and the happiness. The mind is here, and the happiness is separate. Is the happiness which she feels part of her mind or not?

Yes. Yes. If it's part of her mind, then she can never lose it because it's like 10% of her mind.

This one's part, okay?

[Speaker 2]
This one's part.

[Speaker 1]
So, it's not part of your mind. If it's not part of your mind, then what connects her mind to the happiness?

[Speaker 2]
Cocoons.

[Speaker 1]
Cocoons. You can use cocoons again, okay? But it's difficult.

It's difficult. I'll show you one more. Is this Michael or not?

Is Michael's hand Michael? No, no, no. Meaning, is her mind...

Can we say, Vivian is happy? No, I mean, this is only one part of you. Okay?

So, Michael, in the mind of a person who doesn't understand kongshin, is some kind of coating, outline, you know? And it holds Michael. All the parts are held together.

So, in... Let's go to a car. Is a car equal to its parts?

If you take all the parts of a car apart and you lay it on the floor, can you start driving it to the retreat twenty-three minutes ago? No, cannot. Now, next question.

Cell phone part. If you put all the parts together, can you drive that to the retreat? No.

And in Buddhism, we say no.

[Speaker 2]
Why?

[Speaker 1]
Because Eskimo who live... You know Eskimo? Live in the North Pole.

[Speaker 2]
Eskimo.

[Speaker 1]
They never saw any human beings. Just snow their whole life. Then, you put a car in front of them and you say, drive to the retreat.

They don't recognize it as a car. Then Buddhism says, until you recognize it as a car, it's not a car. Buddhism says, the mind unifies the parts because of a seed.

Then that's like a cocoon. And if your seeds to make those cocoons start getting lost, which happens with Alzheimer's, Buddhism would say the cause of Alzheimer's is that the cocoon-making seeds are being used up. And the person cannot unify things anymore.

So their own son comes in the hospital and you're like, ah, I know. Who are you? No more recognition.

Because their mind is not tying their current self to the child who saw the mother. And then there's kids who have cognitive problems. They can't, what do you call autism?

Their seeds to unify objects are broken. So, when we say Vivian's happy, the connection between the cup and the tea, her mind and the happiness, the one that connects them is also a seed. The glue is also a seed.

And without that, there's no connection between happiness and happiness. It's not her mind. The happiness cannot be her mind.

The happiness cannot be in her mind. If the happiness is not her mind. Okay, it's delicate.

It's difficult. Can you cut my hand off? Am I still Michael?

Then, if you say yes, is it okay to say Michael's hand was lost? You can't, because Michael is the whole thing. If you take off one part, it should be Michael's not there anymore.

If Michael is all his parts together, there can't be a Michael left after you cut his hand. The idea that you can possess something, the idea that you can be something, or the idea that you can make something, are all coming from seeds. The three possible relations of all things, she is happy, she has happiness, she made herself happy, by taking a walk.

All three are impossible, unless seeds are uniformly made. Which means, do you want to go deeper? Which means that all language is wrong.

You cannot say, she is happy. And you cannot say, she feels happy. And you cannot say, she got happy by taking a walk.

They're all impossible. The only thing that makes it possible is the seed in your mind. So, if you think that Vivian can be happy without seeds, Buddha will say, you are staying in things.

And then you can't be a bodhisattva. Why? Because then you can't help, you can't make her happy.

You say, my husband doesn't make me happy. How can your husband make you happy? It's coming from you.

So, our language is wrong. Then because we use it all the time, we can't help but thinking wrong. All ways to say you are happy are wrong.

I am happy. I feel happy. Or my husband makes me happy.

They're all impossible. Okay? Comfortable?

[Speaker 2]
So, when did our language go wrong? When did our thinking go wrong?

[Speaker 1]
Which came first, the chicken or the egg? What's Buddhism say?

[Speaker 2]
Beginningless time.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, there was no beginning. And when scientists say there was a beginning, and the natural feeling you have that things must have a beginning, according to Buddhism, it's a mistake. There can be no beginning.

Because what happens to you has to happen from what you did before, and what you did before has to happen from what you did before. All you did before. It needs to be all things that you think about now.