Дебаты дьявола с ангелом, часть 10: Возможен ли совершенный мир, если люди хотят противоположного? (2014, Седона), занятие 1

[Speaker 1]
This is just a fun night. I told, we didn't have a lot of events scheduled in Phoenix because we've been very busy touring. So I thought, I have a lot of sexy stuff I'm working on nowadays.

One is Tsokhapa's, Tsokhapa was the teacher of the first dialogue. He wrote a very beautiful book about emptiness. I think it's the greatest book about emptiness.

And my teacher taught it to me for eight years. And so I feel obliged to finish that translation. So I've tried to do that a little bit every day.

And I'm in the section, a very beautiful section, which is a very long story. So I won't do it tonight. But it's a section about why, if you have negative emotions like anger, why just meditating will never solve them permanently.

So, you know, like doing yoga for an hour, it puts you in a better mood. And you're, for about an hour or two, because you're proud of being better for a couple hours, you're less likely to get angry or upset. But it doesn't change the capacity of getting upset.

It doesn't change the tendency to get upset. If people push you far enough, you will still get angry. And there's a beautiful section in Tsokhapa's book where he talks about why you have to see directly how reality works in order to overcome anger permanently.

And so that's a section I'm on now. If you want to be included on that, I think Adam's working on that. He made a website where you can see the progress of the translation as it goes.

At the current rate, it will take six more years. So I'm trying to speed it up a little bit. But it's very, very beautiful.

And so talk to Adam if you want to follow it. So I do a couple pages every day, I think. And it'll take a long time.

So I was kind of in the mood to teach you that because his arguments were so eloquent for why you have to understand where reality's coming from in order to stop anger permanently. And I have never seen such a long discussion of that. It's maybe 20 or 30 pages where he discusses that.

So I thought to do that because I'm working on it right now. It's so fun and cool. But then I thought we made a commitment.

It's been, I don't know how many years ago, five or six years ago, to work through a book by the first Panchen Lama. So he was born about 300 years ago. And he wrote a book called The Angel Debates the Devil.

And it's the story of misunderstanding, struggling with understanding inside of one person's mind. And in Tibetan it's called Dangzin Shangde. Say Dang.

[Speaker 2]
Dang.

[Speaker 1]
Xin. Xin. Shangde.

So Dangzin means the tendency to think that things are coming from their own side. And Shangde means, it's a very rare word, and it means a very ferocious argument or something like that. A big argument between understanding and misunderstanding in one person's mind.

And it's a cool book because you get the very strong feeling that he had that happening in his own mind. That he's describing events that took place in his own mind. He's describing a struggle that takes place within his own mind every day.

Between misunderstanding where things are coming from and understanding. By the way, I have the best view in the world right here. Maybe I should teach the opposite way.

But then you wouldn't listen. I think those are cathedral rock, right?

[Speaker 2]
I don't know.

[Speaker 1]
Two of the nicest. By the way, the bell rock, if you see the whole thing, it looks very much like the Kadampa city. So I have a theory that this was a former civilization that got melted or something.

So I thought, we're taking so long to get to Dangzin Shangde that we should really finish it. I think it's one of the classics of spiritual, world spiritual literature. I think when it's translated properly and when people have learned it, it'll be like Shantideva's, Master Shantideva's God in the voice of Maya.

Or it'll be like The Imitation of Christ or great books like that. So, I felt guilty skipping it and teaching some commentary. So I think we'll just keep going through that text.

And we'll try to... You have a reading. We're going to start at verse 129.

Right, Jingming? Or 128? So we're going to start at verse 129.

And goodness knows how long this is going to take us. I think another two years or so we'll get to it. But I don't know.

I don't feel anything needs to go through very fast. So we're on page 4. Verse 129.

By the way, this building is... is going to be the future Sedona College of International Management where we will train ACI teachers and DCI teachers. And we'll also try to finish the work we're doing for the last 27 years on preserving the Tibetan sacred literature which is about 200,000 books.

So we've finished 10 or 20,000 books and we still have about 180,000 to go. So a lot of that work will be done in these offices by a team of 12 people that we have a grant to pay some of the minimum... not some of the minimum wage, the minimum wage.

And they'll be working. Hopefully we can add more people to that team as time goes on. But we had our first formal work meeting today and we'll have two more days of orientation and then they'll start working.

And then we'll start offering courses here and training DCI teachers. And we'll have a more formal training for ACI teachers here. And this building was used for...

what do you call it? Acupuncture offices and stuff like that after it is the building. And we're going to tear out the inside and change it to a more Asian motif.

So it'll look like a Japanese... inside a Japanese tea house or something. And the first floor will have a large video production facility for online courses and free training courses that we have a grant to do 200 videos for giving free training and reading Tibetan and studying Tibetan literature.

So John and Connie will be working on tearing out... Nicole will be tearing out the building for, I don't know, 8 or 10 months, I think. And we have a sponsor...

we have a group of sponsors. That will be the total cost of this building would be 1.1 million by that time. And I'm happy to say we just got a grant received a few days ago for buying the lot in front of the building between this and the highway.

Because it just went up for sale suddenly and we were afraid someone would build a gas station. So we... John and Connie actually worked with some sponsors and got a grant of 350,000.

And so we bought that land. We'd like to put a coffee shop there. Because this coffee shop next door which is the only decent one on this side of town closes at 5 p.m. And I've talked to them many times and they're like, no, we're closing at 5. I'd like to have one that stays open till midnight and has music and a place where people can... A lot of people learn better in talking over coffee than they do in a formal classroom. So I think we'll have both...

the best of both worlds. We'll have our own coffee shop and we can leave it open till 10 in the morning. And then we'll have the formal college here.

And I think there'll be some synergy. Nice synergy between the two. And I'm happy also to say that John and Connie negotiated a grant for finishing the kitchen of Diamond Mountain which will also be over a million dollars.

And I think that money might come in the next 5 or 10 days. So we'll have a 200-seat cafeteria and kitchen there at Diamond Mountain. But not by October.

Probably take another six months, I hope. And it looks like we have a sponsor to pay for the parcel of land that invades our land at Diamond Mountain and crosses over one of our roads which is the Two Boots Gate, if you know Diamond Mountain. So it looks like we have a grant to purchase that.

So it's been a really exciting time. And I think this place will be very important for finishing the task which I think will take another 30 or 40 years to finish the task of preserving that sacred literature. And we put it up for free online.

After that begins the task of chancelling it. That took 700 years. And maybe we can shave off a few years.

I don't know. But we'll try. But I think it will be exciting.

And we're all very excited. We worked really hard to do it. So if you're interested in helping with any of that, talk to John Brady who's in charge of the activities here as far as scholarly activities and change programs.

And then Scott and Marie are in charge of the educational programs. ACI and DCI courses. ACI will be offered here more strictly than in other places in the past.

It'll have four modules. The first is what you did before which is 36 courses of about 20,000 pages of ancient materials. And then there'll be training on how to teach, how to be a teacher which we didn't do before and created some odd things.

And then we'll have a unit called professional conduct. And what we did was we threw... We have 303 ACI teachers around the world.

We just threw them into it. Some of them didn't know how to behave with students or how to do the finances and things like that. So we'll have training in how to be professional as a teacher.

And then finally how to organize a program, how to do an event which is like how to find a place to teach, how to let people know about the teaching and things like that. So I think we're very strong on the first and we're very weak in the other three areas. So this college's purpose is to create ACI teachers and DCI teachers who are strong in all four aspects.

Okay, so let's start. He's in a discussion of a proof of emptiness called Chitutao. Say chit.

Okay, so there are prepositions in Tibetan like in, on, at, for, while, during. And in Tibetan there are postpositions meaning they come after their noun. So instead of saying I go to the store you'd say I go for to.

And there are rules about what postposition or preposition can come after certain words. So if a word ends in ka for example which chit ends in, what's chit mean?

[Speaker 2]
One.

[Speaker 1]
Chit means number one. Okay, so after chit the word for as or at or in or on is tu. Okay, say tu.

Tu. First column if you know Tibetan, tu.

[Speaker 2]
Tu.

[Speaker 1]
So chit tu would mean in one. And then you should understand the word tau. Say tau.

Tau. Tau means to be without something. Okay, to be free of something.

It comes from an older word called phrel which is onomatopoeic. Because when you tear a piece of cloth listen, you hear phlo. And so they said phrel.

So the ancient Tibetan word for ripped in half is phrel. And then it became tau. Tau means I don't have something.

So amadang tau means I don't have a mom or my mom passed away or something like that. I'm bereft of mom. And in Tibetan classically you use the word dang which means and.

So you'd say mom and me separated. Or something like chit dang tau. So after the word chit the required particle is tu.

But this is misspelled as tu. Say tu. And there's a big fight about it in Tibetan literature.

Tu doesn't make sense after chit unless you understand that it means tuma which means many. Tuma is a word that means many. So chit tu tau is an abbreviation of a longer phrase.

It's chit dang tuma dang tau ma which means divorced of one or many. Or free of one or many. Without one or many.

So many Tibetans misspell this. And they correct the du to tu. And they mess it up.

So I have people do that with my courses all the time. So chit tu tau means things ain't one and things ain't many. And this is a way to this is a proof for why things don't come from their own side.

And I was trying to think of a practical example to give you tonight to discuss to sort of get you in the mood. And something came to my mind because we had an interesting trip to Ukraine. We flew out the day after the first airliner was shut down.

So we were very nervous taking off. And you know Ukraine is very tense right now. And we were there during the tensest it's still very tense.

And there are 40,000 Russian troops massed on the border. Russia just sent an aid convoy of 300 trucks into the eastern Ukraine which may have weapons in the trucks. I don't know.

But things are very tense. The Russian public is being told that ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine are being slaughtered and poisoned with poison gas. That's what the newspapers in Russia are saying.

So the public in Russia says we have to save them. Let's intervene. Let's attack.

Because they really believe that their friends are being murdered in eastern Ukraine. And the Ukrainians just see it as an invasion. And they already lost one of the most important parts of their country which was just stolen.

And so there's this very tense thing going on. And we were in a very interesting position because two of the national TV channels in Ukraine asked us to give an interview about how would a Buddhist deal with an attack of your country. The way one of the interviewers put it to me was if a guy breaks into your house with a gun what does a Buddhist do?

What do you suggest that we do? And she put this question to me. She was very tough.

And she said we're not talking theory. We're talking real. Someone has broken down our door and has walked in with a gun.

What would you do? What do you suggest that we do? And then yesterday we did an interview with one of the largest Russian newspapers which is reporting the opposite.

They're reporting how Russians are being killed in Ukraine. So they're like should we intervene further in Ukraine? So we're getting the opposite question.

It's very funny. Within a few weeks of each other we are being asked how do we stop these people from taking away our country? I had very poignant conversations.

Some Ukrainians came up to me and said you live with Tibetans, right? And I said yeah. And they said how did they deal with losing their country?

Because we want to know how we should deal with it when we lose our country. They're planning on having their country taken away. And they're like how do we get away?

How do we live? What should we do? It was so sad to hear friends of ours that we've worked with for several years ask us oh you've been involved with people who lost their country.

What should we plan on? What should we pack when we run after they take our country? And then we get this newspaper interview from the Russians saying should we intervene further?

Or what's moral? So you've got this very interesting situation where you have one thing being perceived in two opposite ways by two different parties. And you know the Russians are seeing it as a genocide of Russians in Ukraine.

And Ukrainians are seeing it as an attack an annexation of their territory. And then the question is is there any resolution? Can there be a resolution without conflict?

And it applies to Tutudo. So tonight we're talking about this idea of how things are not one and how things are not many. And then the question is can you have a solution which satisfies both parties complete, entirely?

Is it possible to have a solution without a compromise? So what Buddhism suggests is very radical. And I don't think you hear it from many Buddhist teachers.

But what Buddhism suggests is that there's a very practical way that you can describe on television in Kiev and you can write about in an interview from Moscow in which both sides get everything they want. You see? And that's to be frank with you and to try to push your envelope a little bit what we're going to talk about tonight is a solution where each party gets 100% of what they want.

You see what I mean? So as a Buddhist you should look at things that way. I know there's a...

what do you call it? Touchy-feely Buddhist teachings they say, you know, they should meet at a Starbucks and kind of hug each other and, you know, like that. But his approach that one of the greatest Lamas that ever lived in Tibet is much more radical.

It's that due to how reality works both sides can get everything they want and then there's no conflict. There's no possibility of conflict because both sides got everything they want. Russia gets their naval base which they desperately need which is why they took the Crimea and then the Ukraine keeps its territory at the same time.

That's what we're talking about. So we keep that in mind, okay? You're talking about a radical solution to life's problems and it could be with a boyfriend.

You know? It could be that the... I gave an example on tour, do you remember?

The wife says, is there a way to get my husband to wash all the dishes all the time? And then the husband comes up and says... listens to my suggestion and says, if I do that can I make her wash the dishes all the time?

And then somebody asks the natural question which is... if we both use your approach who's going to end up washing the dishes? Like, if I can find the courage at least to force my partner to wash the dishes every night but if they also try the same thing is there going to be some cosmic explosion?

What do you call an unstoppable force and an irresistible force and an unimmovable object? Like, what happens if both sides plant karmic seeds to make opposite things happen? Because that's what you're talking about with a very serious international issue in which hundreds of people have already died.

So, the answer is in this poem which again is about the fight within one person's mind. So we're going to go through this poem. He's reached a place where the angel and the devil are fighting over a proof of emptiness a proof of reality called Cittadel.

So Cittadel means... it's a question. Is this pen one or many?

No, I mean, don't think too much. Don't be a Buddhist. It's one.

It's one pen. It's not two pens. It's not three pens.

It's a single pen. It's one pen. So if I ask you is this pen either one or many what would you say?

No, I mean, without... If I ask a person on the street Yes, it's one. It's not many.

It's one. Okay? But Buddhists would say it's neither.

Cittadel means it's not one and it's not more than one. At the same time the pen is not one and the pen is not more than one. That assumes a certain kind of one and a certain kind of many which is one.

One that's coming from its own side. A pen that's coming from its own side could neither be single or many. Why?

Because a pen that came from its own side doesn't exist. If I ask you how long... The famous question in Buddhism is how long is the horns that grow on a rabbit?

Are they six inches or twelve inches? That's the same question. And you say, well, neither one because they don't exist.

So what does it mean to say that one pen is not here and multiple pens are not here? I always go to the example which has probably happened to many of you. You're away at work all day.

You have a really hard day. I worked in a corporation for 19 years. That was brutal.

It was a brutal day. He worked how many years? 17 and a half.

17 and a half. That's what happened to our hair. It's brutal.

It's really hard. And you come home and you're just totally wiped out. So you come home, you open the door and you really got this vision in your mind that when you open the door you're going to set down your briefcase and you're going to take off your coat if you're in New York and you're going to get a big hug from your partner, you know.

And then in reality what often happens is you open the door, you set down your stuff and they start bickering at you. For no reason at all. You just got home.

You're totally exhausted. The one thing you really want is a hug. Or you want them to tell you oh, you look tired.

Is the boss really difficult today? And you say, yeah, you know, you're really bad. And you want someone to commiserate with, right?

So you're expecting this big hug and commiseration. And then instead of that they start attacking you like where's dinner? And you say, I just got home I was hoping you would have dinner ready for me.

And then you get into who was supposed to make dinner fight which I'm sure you've never had. And for no reason at all this person is attacking you. So we say Buddhism says there's a husband in the kitchen that you walked into which is not there.

And there's another husband in the kitchen who is there. Describe to me the husband who is not there. The one for no reason at all.

The one that didn't come from me. The one that didn't come from me. How come from me?

Last week I was unreasonable to somebody else. Like my kids. I yelled at the kids.

They were supposed to get ready for school and they didn't get ready for school. And, you know, they're supposed to tie their shoes and they're just playing and we're late for school and I scream at them, right? Then that, according to Buddhism when I hear myself scream at the kids.

But we got some cool thing. There's a thing in Tibetan called lang je jog je. Say lang je.

Lang je jog je. Lang je jog je. We don't know this word.

Lak means lakpa. Hen. Je means the one that means after.

Like anu in Sanskrit. Jesu means afterwards. Like a gender gives a suffix letter.

The one that comes after. So lang je means the aftermath of the hen. But it refers to a...

It's the word in Tibetan for an imprint. Like this change in the color of my palm when I press it really hard. And the indent stays there for a little while.

That's called a lang je. So it gets prenasal for some reason because it shouldn't. Lang je.

And then you say jog je. Jog je means sets. Or makes it.

Jog means to enter or to... Not enter but to establish. Jog je means establishes the imprint.

Lang je jog je means the sound of my own voice as I attack my partner. Sorry, the kids. The week before.

So when I yell at the kids, I hear my sound. And that lang je jog je, that sound coming into my auditory nerve, into my consciousness, presses on my mind. And it makes a...

That's what we call a vasana. What's a vasana? A mental scene.

A bhaktya. Or a mental scene, okay? That sabhan, sun.

Sun is short for sabhan. So it makes an imprint on my mind. And then that imprint sort of infects into a seed.

And then that seed stays below my subconscious. So I'm yelling at the kids the week before. And then when I get home and open the door, what happens?

The seed opens, okay? How does it open in the mind? And if you know that, you can accept karma more easily.

You can buy karma more easily if you really understand how the seed opens. And it's very sexy. If you meditate a lot, you can watch one open, okay?

But it's very difficult. It happens at Chitra. Just before you see emptiness directly, you are able to see a seed opening in the mind.

Which is very difficult. Because it takes how long? One sixty-fifth of a second, okay?

So inside your mind, unless you're meditating really well, it's not going to happen, a seed opens, and a... what do you call it? A luminous form comes out.

A luminous picture comes out of your mind. So when I hold up a pen, and I wave a pen in front of you, where is the pen? When I go like this, in the moment that I go like this, a karmic seed opens up in your mind, which is the result of the impression.

And a small luminous picture of a pen comes up in your mind. And then the mind applies that to the pen. The mind shows that over the pen.

And like a dog would have a different seed, and they would see something that looks good to chew. So when I walk in after work, and I open the door, then my husband yells at me about dinner. That's actually a tiny luminous image about this high, of a yelling husband, flying out of my mind at the rate of 65 images per second, making it a nice film.

And I see him yelling at me. But it came from yelling at the kids. For how long?

Much less. Because seeds double in power every 24 hours. Which if you...

In a week, I don't know how much, but it's like 10,000 times more. He will yell at you for an hour if you yell at the kids for a minute. Now, why are we talking about that?

We said, when you open the door, there's a husband who's not there. Who's that? Yeah, I said an expression, and nobody stopped me.

You should have stopped me. What did I say? For no reason at all.

Yeah, for no reason at all. I like that. It's like one word.

For no reason at all. My husband yelled at me, why? For no reason at all.

There should be one word in the dictionary. For no reason at all. It means I didn't do anything.

Sometimes we say, I didn't do anything. I didn't do anything, and you started yelling at me. I just got home.

And it's happened to you countless times. You just walk in the door, and someone starts attacking you. Or for anything, people start attacking you.

And that husband, who's coming after you for no reason at all, doesn't exist. According to Buddhism, doesn't exist. So now, you can get the point I'm making about the pen, if I ask you, is that husband one husband, or more than one husband?

The one who's yelling at you, for no reason at all. Is that husband one, or plural? Neither.

It doesn't exist. The one who's not your fault isn't there in the kitchen. So anytime you're having an issue with anybody, and somebody asked me in a talk last month, if I love somebody, is it the same?

If I'm having love for that person, is it the same? If I think they're coming from themselves, who can make me happy, make me happy, how many husbands are there, the one who can make you happy? One or two?

There's no such thing. They can't make you happy. Right?

If the husband does something that makes you happy, it's coming from you. OK? There's no such thing as making anybody happy.

It's not possible. OK? So, how many pens are here?

You should ask me. Now, when you're in a debate with somebody, there are rules of engagement, right? You have actually three choices.

Four choices. You can say, you can say one, you can say many, you can refuse to answer, which is sometimes a valid practice. You have to just sit there.

You know in the argument with your partner, oftentimes, you know, like, that's a valid answer. OK. OK.

What's the other choice? There's a classic fourth choice. Do you roll your eyes?

No, you can ask for a clarification. And in some debates, you must ask for clarification. OK, how many pens are there?

Then you have to say, what kind of pen are you talking about? The one that's not my fault, or the one that's coming from me? So, I'll now ask you, a pen which you didn't create, and which is not coming from your own mind, because you gave pens to others in the past, or helped somebody with communication, right?

How many of those pens are in my hand?

[Speaker 2]
None.

[Speaker 1]
None. Got it? Are there two of those in my hand?

[Speaker 2]
No.

[Speaker 1]
No. OK, good, OK. That's cheat your job.

OK, there's neither one, nor multiple pens, coming from, not coming from how you treated others in the past. Not coming from how kind you were to others in the past. OK, you can put it that way.

Now, if I ask the question again, I say, how many pens are in my hand? And you say, clarify what you mean by pen. And I say, pens that you are seeing because a luminous image of a pen has cracked out of a seed in your mind, which you planted when you gave a pen to someone three weeks ago.

How many of those pens are in my hand?

[Speaker 2]
One.

[Speaker 1]
You can say one. Got it? So this whole reasoning is called chit-to-dao, and it's meant to get you thinking about Ukraine and Russia.

Got it? Should Ukraine do what they want, or should Russia do what they want? What do you say?

Both. They should both do what they want. But how can they?

Because they want opposite things. It's irreconcilable.

[Speaker 2]
Irreconcilable.

[Speaker 1]
Huh?

[Speaker 2]
Irreconcilable.

[Speaker 1]
If the Crimea Peninsula is coming from a seed in their mind, then they can both have Crimea. Got it? Okay.

And try to say that on a TV show where they say, you got 15 years. That was cool, but we did it, I think. Yes?

[Speaker 2]
Is that because they're perceiving different things?

[Speaker 1]
People are always perceiving different things.

[Speaker 2]
And is that why they're able to both achieve what they want?

[Speaker 1]
I mean, if you want me to quit the talk now...

[Speaker 2]
No, please.

[Speaker 1]
No. No, people are always seeing different things. I don't know what you're seeing when I hold this up.

I have no idea. Okay? Probably we all see something at least subtly different.

Definitely we all have different feelings about it. Yeah. At least different feelings.

Okay. Let's go to the text. He's on the subject of now you know their context.

And because I have to repeat it every time I give a talk in Crimea, we never gain there in this text. Okay. Verse 129.

I'm just going to do this in Tibetan to use up the time. I mean, so you can go deeper. Lala means some people.

Okay? Lale means if you put a sa on any noun, it means by some people. It's instrumental.

A gentle case. By some people. Chik.

[Speaker 2]
One.

[Speaker 1]
Dung. And. Yeah, but in the negative, it means or.

Or. Divorced from. From.

Chik dung tu. Tu ma. Tu ma means many.

Tu ma. Tu ma means it's divorced up. This pen is neither one nor many.

Some do that chik tu dung thing. Some people hear the argument. Chik tu dung.

Yeah? They hear the argument. Chik tu dung.

Ki. Chik pe tak le. And they examine that this tak means what?

In logic, what's tak?

[Speaker 2]
Reason.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, a reason or a proof. But sometimes you can refer to the whole syllogism. to the whole proof itself.

So from this examination, from this reasoning in which we examine whether the pen is one or many, they decide, le, from that reasoning, they decide, na, the I. Na-ni means the I. The I is almost like a third thing.

Na-ni, welcome down the mountain here. You are the heroes of the show. Thank you for not knowing.

I think we should give her a hand. We might be a bit late. It's a six hour drive, right?

You guys can take it. Na-ni, denpa nepa. Nepa.

Nepa means to perceive, OK? Nepa means to perceive. Usually it means definite, like chun-me, fixed meaning.

But here it means to perceive. Tu nepa means to perceive. Why?

DEMBA ME What's DEMBA ME mean?

[Speaker 2]
Untrue.

[Speaker 1]
Not real. Sometimes DEMBA can be translated as real. So they perceive that the me is not real.

Is that correct or not? Is Geshe Michael real? Yes.

[Speaker 2]
Good!

[Speaker 1]
Whoever is that rich boy God bless him. Is the Geshe Michael who is not coming from you real? No.

No. Not real. It doesn't even exist.

How about the Geshe Michael that's coming from you? No. So if you like this talk, it's coming from me.

If you don't like this talk, it's coming from me. OK. DEMBA ME FA NGE FA YI NGE SHE means that state of mind in which you perceive that.

DE YI GYUN LA NI What's GYU or GYU mean? Cause. That's GYU.

It's a stream. I cut it short. It can also mean TANTRA.

Because it's a stream of teaching or thread of teaching. So GYU. Like that sacred thread is also called GYU.

So the stream. LA NI. They focus on the stream of the thought process.

Of what? It's a thought process that says Geshe Michael, which pen are you talking about? If you're talking about the one that's not coming from me.

Yes, it's chosen. If you're talking about the one that is coming from me. It's one, but it's not many.

That whole thought process. Rather than focusing on the result of the thought process. They focus on the thought process itself.

On the GYU. On the stream of thoughts. The stream of consciousness that goes through that understanding that we just talked about.

You have that GYU for the last 20 minutes or so. You've had that GYU. So they will go into deep meditation and they'll focus on how their mind is working out this problem.

GYU LA NI. NYAMBA SHAK means NYAM SHAK.

[Speaker 2]
Deep meditation.

[Speaker 1]
Or NYAM SHAK. What is it in Samadhi? Samadhi.

Samadhi or Samadhi. They focus on that. What does it mean?

NYAMBA SAMA means even, right? Even between what and what?

[Speaker 2]
Agitation. Yeah, CHING WA and GYOPA.

[Speaker 1]
CHING WA means you got sleepy because you ate too much Thai food. And GYOPA means you're thinking about breakfast. Both are related to food in my case.

So NYAMBA means you're steering the mind between the two extremes of feeling sleepy or thinking about what you're going to do tomorrow. That's the Tibetan word for meditation. Steering between the two.

It's called NYAM SHAK. They are steering between the two but the focus of their meditation is what? On the way things are.

On the way things are.

[Speaker 2]
On the thought process.

[Speaker 1]
They're focusing on figuring out the problem. They're focusing on how their mind figures out the problem. Oh, I hear my mind.

It's saying if he's talking about the one that's better for me it could be one of many. And since it's only one, I guess it's one. But if he's talking about the one that's not coming for me well, then it wouldn't be one or many.

That series of thoughts is the focus of their meditation. They're listening to the thoughts in their mind. And they think that's NELUK.

NELUK, DUH means what? To desire. DUH comes from desire.

But in logic, DUH means to believe something. Or to accept that. What do they accept that as being?

NELUK. NE means to stay. And LUK means system.

Staying system means the way things are. And that's a synonym for ultimate reality. It's a synonym for emptiness itself.

NELUK is a synonym for emptiness itself. So let's go through this sentence. Some people, they go through that whole reasoning process and from that they conclude that the I isn't real.

And they have that perception. But they're focusing on how their mind figured it out. They're focusing on the thoughts as they hear the thoughts in their mind.

And they believe that that's a meditation on emptiness. Is it or not?

[Speaker 2]
No. No. It's a meditation.

It's pointing. It's more dependent. It's a meditation on a perception of emptiness.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, good. I mean there are two realities which are ultimate and what's called deceptive reality. Why is it called deceptive reality?

Is it deceptive to everybody? No. Like under pressure the husband thing will fool you.

Even with training. If you're hungry and tired enough and he starts yelling at you, you will lose your understanding where he's coming from and you'll get angry. And you'll say to him the only thing I could make is with her again.

Okay, so that kind of that's not it. It's that emptiness to see. To focus on how you're thinking about him is not to focus on emptiness.

The mind itself is it deceptive reality or is it ultimate reality? It's deceptive. One side of that is that the mind is constantly changing.

Anything which is constantly changing cannot be ultimate reality. Because ultimate reality is constant. It never gets massed on more.

Is there a two-headed 18-foot purple elephant in this room? No. No, I mean you can look around.

If you want to, you can look around. If I said is there an elephant in this room, you could... The people over here might check over there because there would be room for it.

But if I say is there a thing in this room which can't exist? You don't have to look around. You can just say no, there's no such thing here.

So in the case of emptiness you can with confidence say no, it doesn't exist. A husband who is yelling at me because I didn't do anything doesn't exist. You can say that.

You don't have to think about it too much. It doesn't exist. So what they're talking about here is let me say when you see that he's not there that doesn't change.

It cannot change. You can't say a two-headed purple elephant is halfway into the room or is quarter way into the room or kind of doesn't exist or sometimes could exist and sometimes couldn't exist. If I said is there an elephant in this room, you say no.

If I said is that constant in this room, you could possibly say well, I mean if you had a small elephant but you gave up that little skinny stupid staircase that we're going to tear out the first thing, right? Yeah, there could be one in here. Then it wouldn't be constant.

The lack of elephant in this room wouldn't be constant. But the lack of elephants that could never exist in this room is constant. It never gets more or less true.

It's always 100% true. If something is not like that it cannot be emptiness. It cannot be ultimate reality.

Because it cannot shift or change. Okay? You want to go further?

[Speaker 2]
Yeah.

[Speaker 1]
Could it go out of existence?

[Speaker 2]
Sure.

[Speaker 1]
Would it go out of existence without changing?

[Speaker 2]
No.

[Speaker 1]
Without varying. Emptiness? Yeah.

You could say that in a second it goes out of existence. But it doesn't get less or more empty. Got it?

Alright. Like if you destroyed this building the lack of a two-headed purple elephant in this room would be destroyed. Okay?

But it doesn't make it more or less a lack. Got it? That's a tricky point.

You're alright with that. It doesn't slide out of existence. It doesn't degenerate and then go out of existence.

It just slices off. And it goes out of existence.

[Speaker 2]
It gets closer and closer to its demise.

[Speaker 1]
You can say that and there's no problem. It doesn't vary during that process. Its quality doesn't vary during that process.

So the point is if something is varying like if you're feeling better or worse as this talk goes on or your bladder, you know then that perceiver of your bladder or this talk cannot be intimate. Why are we talking about that? Because they're thinking about whether their thinking Right.

They're thinking about how they're thinking. They're focusing on their mind as their mind works it out. What's a lesson for us as a meditator?

What's a lesson for us? When you hit emptiness it's not you actually will not be aware of your own mind. So people come up to me all the time and say you know I felt really good the other day and just like I had a big Snickers bar but everything was blue and did I see emptiness and if it's you're focused on a feeling then you didn't get to emptiness.

When you're focused on emptiness you cannot be aware of your mind or yourself because both of those things are changing. A sign that you didn't reach emptiness is if you're focused on the process of thinking about it. So is it should we just skip the process?

[Speaker 2]
No, it gets you there.

[Speaker 1]
It kicks you into it and then you leave it behind. That's why they say you leave the boat behind when you reach Japan. Don't drive the boat across China.

Go from America to Japan, drop the boat and keep going. So drop the thought process and then go into emptiness. But if you're still hearing thoughts you didn't get there yet.

You're not there yet. Now I have a very deep question for you if you want to go deeper. Can you make a conscious decision when you got really deep into this thought process of thinking about whether the husband who yelled at you was kind to you or not.

Or whether it was one husband or two husbands. But how many husbands in the kitchen? I would say two.

I like to say two because it kind of challenges people. I'd say there's a husband who's not there in the kitchen. There's a husband in the kitchen who's not there.

And there's a husband in the kitchen who is there. Just as there's a Geshe Michael up here who is here. And there's a Geshe Michael up here who's not here.

What kind of Geshe Michael up here is not here? The one that's not coming from you sharing what you understand with other people. And then the one who is coming from that is up here.

So you can say there's two Geshe Michaels up here. I think it's a useful way to think. So in the kitchen there are two husbands.

So you're thinking about that process. But at some point can you just decide in your meditation, okay I understand that. Now I just want to exist like water poured into water.

Chuba chushapa. Chuba chushapa.

[Speaker 2]
Chushapa.

[Speaker 1]
Like pouring water into a glass of water. I just want to skip straight to that experience. I got the thing you talked about with the husband.

I understand it. If that's all emptiness is then I'll think about that for five minutes and then in the sixth minute I'll go into chula chushapa. And I'll stay there, you know, half an hour and then I'll be an artist.

That's what we'd like to say. So my question to you is, can that be a conscious decision? In minute number six I will drop into chula chushapa beyond any awareness of my own thoughts.

[Speaker 2]
If you plant the seeds.

[Speaker 1]
That's a good answer, okay. You have to plant the seeds. So you have to understand that what happens to you during deep meditation is not up to your current control.

You cannot control it. That's like telling depressed people, don't be sad. Rinpoche used to do that all the time.

I would yell at him, that's the person left, I'd say, Rinpoche, the person's going to kill themselves, you know, and they came and asked you what to do about their depression and you said, just be happy. Rinpoche said, they can't be happy, that's why they came to ask you a question, you know. You cannot, a human being cannot put your mind into whatever state you want in the next five minutes, you cannot.

That depends on, what you hear your mind doing depends on how well you were considerate of others' feelings for the last week or so. How considerate were you not to disturb other people's state of mind in the last week. And if you were very considerate, as that opens, as that calming seed opens, you will hear peace in your own mind and you might go into chula chushapa.

That's the only way. You cannot do it as a conscious choice. You cannot say, okay, at 7.30 I'm going to drop into emptiness. And you know, I mean, people spend three years, three months, three days trying, you know. You have to plant the seeds, that's the only way to do it, okay? Okay, so he's criticizing, these are not stupid people.

We're at a very subtle level. These are people who already understand husbanding. But they're kind of focusing on how their mind sounds as they think about that thing, okay?

And he's saying, go deeper. Don't be satisfied. Follow the thought process and then try to drop off into direct perception of emptiness in which you won't hear anything, okay?

You're just observing an absence of something which doesn't sound like anything. Okay, next. Verse 130.

But there isn't any difference between this and the position we just described before. Before he was talking about how the two realities and how mind itself, how you hear your own mind, which means seeds popping open in your mind that you hear your mind. And that's an old quandary, right?

Are you the witness or are you the talker when you hear yourself talking? Or what would it be to sit and talk?

[Speaker 2]
Yes. No, you're the listener. You're the listener.

[Speaker 1]
You're at the mercy of the thoughts popping out of your calming seeds. You cannot control your mind. Forget Master Shantideva's chapter on patience.

You cannot stop your mind from being angry. If you get angry thoughts popping out of seeds in your mind, you planted those last week. It's too late to be patient.

Okay. So we should just give up, right? That's right.

To say that it contradicts the way I... It's absurd to say that it contradicts the way that I see things. Who is I?

The speaker of verse 130 is the devil. And he's saying, you know, yeah, you can watch your mind even as you figure out emptiness. But that doesn't contradict the way I see things.

Why? Because it's just watching. Go deeper.

Is it possible to watch your mind and not misunderstand?

[Speaker 2]
Yes.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, like a Buddha or an artist on a good day. So why does he accuse this person? This person was just thinking about whether the pen was one or many or how many husbands there were in the kitchen, right?

And we said that's wrong. And he confirmed. The devil said, that's not going to hurt me because it doesn't contradict the way I think.

Well, it's one thing, but... What's it assume about the person watching their thoughts? They're not seeing their thoughts as popping up out of their mind from how they...

How considerate they were to people last week. Got it? The person in a deep meditation, Buddhist well-trained person, is in a deep meditation.

They're watching their mind as their mind works out the problem of emptiness using one pen or two pens. And then they make a mistake about their own mind as they're watching it, which is what? The same mistake that you made at your husband.

Which is what? Their thinking, their thinking. Got it?

Their thinking, their thinking. What they're really doing is hearing seeds pop open with words popping out that were planted by how nice you were last week. Got it?

So you're just following your mind and hearing words come out of your big mouth last week. Big mouth. We keep struggling for a name for our new trio.

How about Last Week Big Mouth? Is it better than Bump and Chicken? Bump of Chicken?

Oh, Bump of Chicken. That's what they named speed bumps in Japan. They had Bump of Chicken sign.

What's Bump of Chicken? They were thinking to name our band Bump of Chicken. Last Month's Big Mouth.

Last Week's Big Mouth. Anyway, what I'm saying is that this person who's meditating on emptiness is watching their mind and believing and making the same mistake that we made about the husband we walked in the kitchen. Holding that those thoughts are being thought by them.

And probably taking credit for it. Look how good I'm doing on my emptiness training. It wasn't you, okay?

It was Last Week's Mind. And, you know, he was nice to someone. He stopped explaining something to them.

And so you get to hear him have a good thought this week. But it ain't you, honey. Isn't that cool?

I hope so. And then the devil goes further. He says, by the way, that's not going to contradict the way I see things.

How does the devil see things? How does the devil see the husband in the kitchen? Coming from his own side.

From where he grew up. From where he grew up. That's how the devil sees the husband.

Then the devil here is saying the way you're seeing your mind at that moment and the way I see your mind Buddies. Buddies. No problem.

You're the same. Because the devil believes that they are thinking the thoughts. And not that they're hearing thoughts and they're coming out of karmic seeds depending on how nice they were last week to people.

Got it? So he's like, yeah, you can do that meditation. You can flirt with emptiness but you're still helping me.

Got it? He's very subtle. Like real devils are extremely subtle.

They're not like very easy to recognize. A good devil is someone you take to be almost an angel. You're flirting with emptiness.

You're about to see emptiness directly. And you're focused on the right and difficult thought process of how things aren't one or many. But you're focused on your mind and you're feeling your feeling about it is that the mind is thinking.

You're thinking, but you're wrong. So you don't contradict me. If you don't contradict in a meditation the way that the devil sees things what's happening?

Yeah, you're perpetuating it. Because every moment you have those thoughts, you're planting new seeds. In a deep meditation on emptiness when you're understanding one and many but you think that your meditation is coming from you, you're planting new seeds for him.

It's terrible. It's almost an inescapable cycle. Got it?

Call it what? Call it what? Sun sign.

Sun sign. Sam sign. In fact, you're meditating on nothing else but me.

You're just focusing on the devil. How on earth could you ever call it a meditation of wisdom? So don't call those meditations a meditation of emptiness.

They're not. He's like, you can't even call it a meditation of emptiness because you're focusing on me. Very sexy.

Very profound. And difficult to translate. Alright, next.

Next verse, 131. Others do an analysis of the fact that things are neither one nor many, and based on this reasoning perceive that the I is nothing that is real. 129.

Others do an analysis of the fact that things are neither one nor many, and based on this reasoning come to an understanding that the I is nothing real. Notice anything? He repeated the same opening line.

Got it? He repeated the same opening line. Some people get it during meditation.

Okay? But, now the second part is different. They fail to understand that the simple absence of things where they themselves are gone, and for their meditation they seek some other emptiness that they can focus on.

So, you know, I have this video that I found of my Geshe exam final. Somebody found a video of the final questions, and after 20 years someone found it. So I show it everywhere I go just to prove I'm a Geshe.

And it's real good because it's all messed up and old. And one of the final questions I got was this question. When you perceive emptiness, do you first perceive the emptiness of yourself, or the emptiness of your parts?

How should I put it? Yourself. Your own mind?

A mind or a part? Directly.

[Speaker 2]
Yeah, good question.

[Speaker 1]
He asked for a clarification, which is one of our allowed techniques, right? Responses. Are you talking about the first time you see emptiness directly, or are you talking about the periods when you're trying to work out the idea of emptiness intellectually?

Why are you asking that? Because that's pretty obvious. You know, it's the perfect answer because when you're working it out intellectually, you have to start with parts.

Your parts. Is my arm empty? Is my mind empty?

Are my friends empty? Which are part of you, by the way. Is my world empty?

Is the pen empty? These are all parts of you. Everything you see is part of you also.

So don't get messed up on that. When we say parts of the person, we're also talking about everything you can perceive. If you're going at emptiness from that, it's intellectual.

It's deductive. It's reasoning. But, when you see emptiness directly, it's mine.

It's always mine. Or Kendra, or Ben, or Phil. It's always whatever you're called.

Mark. It's always... It's not even me.

It's Mark. I'm just getting you used to the idea. If you see emptiness directly, for the first moment, the first direct perception of emptiness is always Mike.

The emptiness of Mike, or Kendra, or Ben. So, why are we talking about that? They fail to understand the simple practice of things where they themselves are on.

They themselves means Anatoly. Fill in your name. Don't even think me.

Don't say the word me. Use your own name. The first day you see emptiness directly, it will be the emptiness of you.

Nick. Alright? And you will know after you come out.

So, he's saying they fail. They don't get to this point where they see, I'm not there. Mike's not there.

Mike's not what I thought Mike was. People figure out the pen thing. But then they're trying to examine the emptiness of somebody else, or something else.

Mike's mind. Mike's thoughts. Mike's friends.

Mike's building. Mike's past. Mike's future.

But they're not focused on Mike. The absence of Mike. And therefore, they're not seeing the emptiness directly.

For the first time. Okay? Got it?

That's what he's talking about in this point. And that was a question posed to me in my final, one of the final questions. It's a good question.

Okay. And for their meditation they seek some other emptiness that they can focus on. How many emptinesses are there?

[Speaker 2]
How many emptinesses are there?

[Speaker 1]
As many as there are things that are emptinesses. Why? Because whatever he said about the husband applies to every object in this room.

If you're looking at a blackboard which is not coming from you, then you're looking at a blackboard that isn't there. And if you understand it's not there, that's the emptiness of the blackboard. And so the blackboard has an emptiness in every other object.

The frame of the blackboard has an emptiness. The left side of the blackboard has an emptiness. Everything you can think of has an emptiness.

So when you're trying to see emptiness directly, where should you probably go? Get Nick in front of your face. Get Ann in front of your face.

Work on that one. Because that's the one that you'll see the emptiness of first. You might as well be focusing on that one.

He's saying, people get really far and then they get distracted. They say, let me think about the emptiness of my boss. My husband.

The pan. They go to the pan, but then they don't shift over to Mike. Shift over to Mike and there's a chance you can drop off into water pool.

Got it? That's cool. That's cool advice.

Just before you're ready to take off, focus on Rebecca. Bring Rebecca to Mike. Got it?

It's always like that. Anyone who ever saw emptiness directly saw the emptiness of Mike. Alright then.

I'm going to go another half hour without a break because I understand a lot of people go to Jamaica and Toronto when Phoenix people are 45. Can we just go straight? There's refreshments afterwards.

If you have time, you don't need to drive back to Phoenix. You can stay and watch. I'm still a little confused about who is Anatole.

Thanks.

[Speaker 2]
That's good. That's good.

[Speaker 1]
You said that first of all we're establishing that the things like the pan are coming from our mind. By that point I've already established that everything is coming from my mind.

[Speaker 2]
The only thing left to call Anatole would be something in the mind. It's the mental thing at that point.

[Speaker 1]
We would say it's the result of the process of Anatole looking at the parts of Anatole and thinking of Anatole. That's true. It's what you come out with when you focus on the parts of Anatole and the seeds open and put Anatole on Anatole.

And that product, the end product of that process is coming from the mind. Yeah. Obviously it involves your body too.

[Speaker 2]
But at that point do I see my body as a mental... Haven't I reached that point already?

[Speaker 1]
Not really. You are physical. Anatole's body is physical.

But it's projected as physical. I think I would try to get all the feeling I have of me. And they say as a practical exercise, sometimes you can try to identify who it is that gets hurt when someone punches you or yells at you or makes you feel ill because there's no human being up here.

The person that you get upset about or the object of your upsetness is that Anatole. All right. Sometimes they say go to a jr.

or go to some scary place like go sit on one of these sedona chairs and have someone go like this on your shoulders and the thing that comes up in that moment is Anatole. I don't know. They say that.

I'm not sure about that. But you can imagine that it's the strongest human emotion. The attachment to Anatole.

For Anatole. It's the strongest of all human emotions. Stronger than love for another person.

Love even for a child. Or the love of Anatole by Anatole. That's why Geena can watch the video over here.

All right. Verse number 132. People like this are uniquely far from emptiness.

They possess a state of mind which holds emptiness itself to be a thing that's real. Thus their meditation is in fact meditating on me.

[Speaker 2]
Uniquely far.

[Speaker 1]
By the way, the Tibetan there is Gyangche. So Gyangche means separated by a vast continent or something like that. It's a very unusual expression in Tibetan.

Gyangche means a zillion miles away from an understanding of emptiness. It's a very strong term. Gyangche.

So, Chittu here explains to me what it means uniquely and not one or many. Good. He's playing with us.

He's showing off. The first Dhanchala has used the tu instead of the tu. Chittu means in one meaning uniquely.

One we. He's playing with us. Some of the Tibetans misspelled this idea as chittu.

He used the proper word chittu meaning uniquely. And he's playing with us. He's showing off.

Of course I know it's chittu. Here's a chittu for you. Can you get it?

Chittu means they are uniquely. They are singularly removed from correct terms. It's very sexy.

He's very cool. You know, to make it good in English you'd have to say one we removed. It doesn't come out.

He's making a joke. Singularly? Okay.

So anyway. Why are they uniquely far from emptiness? People who are focusing on their mind as it works out emptiness and thinking that that's emptiness.

Why are they in a uniquely difficult situation?

[Speaker 2]
Because they're so god damn close.

[Speaker 1]
They're so, so close. No one's as far away as someone who needs to go one more second to see emptiness directly. And they're focused on the wrong thing and then they're just never going to break through.

They're never going to break through. The one second they are from the direct perception of emptiness is farther away than the people who have the yelling husband. Because how do you break through that last second of misunderstanding?

They're misunderstanding how they understand emptiness. So, you know, there's a joke in Tibet. I don't understand.

There's a word for it. Like you're screwed up on your screw-up. Or something like that.

There's no fix for a person who's one second away from emptiness. There's nothing you can do to help them. Another person you can say, you can explain it to them.

If they got the husband thing and they understood it and they're already up to that point, but they're focused on how they're thinking rather than on emptiness itself. How do you nudge them the last... That last second might as well be a thousand years for them.

Because you'll never get them over it. It's easier to explain to a person who doesn't know anything how to see emptiness than to explain it to a person who's one second away from it. And they can't get past that very soon.

That's what he's saying. Okay. Well...

They hold emptiness itself to be a thing that's real. What does that mean? It sounds like he's saying that they're uniquely far away because they don't even get the idea that it's a lack.

You know, like he just said in this last verse. You can say that too. Yeah.

Like you're looking for a thing you're alive at a simple lack and then you're looking for something.

[Speaker 2]
Yeah.

[Speaker 1]
What would it be like though to describe to me somebody what it would be like to think that emptiness is carried from its own side. You don't realize it's carried from your kindness. I think that's pretty good.

Yeah. That's actually... Now, a question for you.

And this is a very subtle question. And I got messed up on it for years. We said that emptiness cannot vary.

It cannot get more empty or less empty. Okay. So it has to be unchanging.

Right? Can it therefore be a product of your mind? Because all products are changing.

No. It cannot be a product of your mind. But is it a product of your mind?

[Speaker 2]
It has to be. It has to be.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, it has to be coming from the skin of your mind. It has to be coming from the skin of your mind. But that doesn't imply that it has to be changing.

All things which are all things which are spit out of the sea have a life span. Because that's kind of a power. It's like a billiard ball.

You know, depending on how hard you hit it it's going to stop at some point. There's an energy imparted to the object and then that energy wears out. All objects have a start all changing objects have an energy which impels them and then they go through this sine wave and then they stop.

So isn't emptiness itself coming from your mind? A seed in your mind? And shouldn't it thereby vary?

Thinking of it definitely varies. Understanding it definitely varies. Nobody would debate that.

So what about the object of that understanding? Does it vary?

[Speaker 2]
No.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah. If it doesn't vary it cannot come out of the cosmic sea. If it doesn't come out of the cosmic sea it can't exist.

But if it does vary it's not emptiness. We just said that.

[Speaker 2]
If it comes from a produced thing in my heart then it's a changing thing. Yeah.

[Speaker 1]
Therefore it can't be emptiness. Emptiness is unbearing. It cannot get more or less.

It cannot get all.

[Speaker 2]
But you said emptiness of a thing can come in and out of existence.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, that's a good point.

[Speaker 2]
So my experience of emptiness can come in and out of existence or the object which is empty can come out in and out of existence. But the emptiness itself remains.

[Speaker 1]
It never varies.

[Speaker 2]
The object is your experience of emptiness but it's not emptiness itself.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, she's right. Once again? The non-variable truth that the thing is not coming from nothing will end when the thing ends.

It will go out of existence. We don't say end, we can't say end. You can't say born and you can't say end.

You have to say it stops existing.

[Speaker 2]
So when you're in the direct perception of emptiness, you don't have an object?

[Speaker 1]
I didn't say that. The object is emptiness.

[Speaker 2]
Which comes from the seed ripening from your mind.

[Speaker 1]
That's my question.

[Speaker 2]
But it's a lack. The experience of emptiness is a lack.

[Speaker 1]
The lack is different, right?

[Speaker 2]
How can it change to be something that exists?

[Speaker 1]
The only way a lack can change is that it exists. The only way a lack can change is what? It doesn't exist.

It doesn't exist. She's saying the lack itself is existence. The only other state it can be in is the presence of something.

[Speaker 2]
The presence of something.

[Speaker 1]
Okay, anyway. You can chew on that one. The only thing I can tell you is to say cook it.

My teacher used to say cook it. I think it was just me who was tired of doing it. I think it's time for a black moon.

Thus, a person, even who's very deeply focused on meditating on emptiness, meditating on the devil, if they're not understanding that even the emptiness is kind of a perception of emptiness. Now, perhaps you can give it some thought and decide whether or not this practice is an antidote which contradicts the way that I see it. If, during a deep state of meditation on emptiness, you are thinking of the emptiness while your mind is not coming from your past consciousness, then you tell me whether that can work against the way I see it.

[Speaker 2]
You're saying that it's not clear, but it could be an answer.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, it's still in line with the way I see things. I meet the devil. It's cool because the devil is claiming that he doesn't understand things, but he's very good at explaining why we misunderstand.

Okay. Alright, next verse. The reason why this is the case is that they fail to understand and are seeking some kind of emptiness which exists in some other place.

In the fact that they don't exist. Okay, what's that a reference to? They're looking for emptiness in things other than themselves.

[Speaker 2]
Don't say themselves. Nick.

[Speaker 1]
Got it? Get used to saying that because it'll serve you well later. It'll serve you well later.

Always look for a good emptiness. They are looking for some other emptiness than Nick. Than the emptiness of Nick.

Okay. Always say it that way. That's a hard advice.

Get used to saying it that way. Never say it another way. And it'll have a powerful, bright meaning later.

Okay. There may be lots of people around talking all kinds of big talk, but the fact is that there are very few who know how to meditate on the fact that the I is not there. The Nick's not there.

You should say, you got a feeling that Nick's not there. Why do you say the Nick instead of Nick? The Nick.

[Speaker 2]
Because...

[Speaker 1]
Nick is there. Nick is the one that comes from... If I say Nick's not there...

You can say yes. Do you get the feeling that Nick existed or not? Nick's not here tonight.

Does Nick exist in general? Yes. Yes.

If I say the Nick's not here tonight.

[Speaker 2]
The Nick which is not coming from...

[Speaker 1]
Like if I refer to Nick as something that is impossible. The so-called Nick is not here tonight. That's why when you're translating emptiness to the, you gotta be super sensitive.

If you don't say the here, you're in trouble. If you say I am not here, you're wrong. You gotta say the I.

You could even put quotation marks and you'd be closer. But... Yeah, yeah, right.

The Ben. The so-called Ben. You gotta think so-called.

Not here. Because Nick is here. And my crew coming from you is here.

You're standing here. But the Mike who was supposed to have been here didn't come tonight. And never could have.

Got it? So if you're really good... I open up books, translation, I just throw them out.

I have a garbage can. I open up a book. I just throw it out.

It means the whole book is wrong. That one declarative is missing. And then the whole book is wrong.

I don't even want to think about it. It means they don't understand what they're writing about. None of it.

Because Nick is here. Got it? When we put quotation marks around Nick...

By the way, you can do that in your mind when you think about the Nick you're going to cancel when you reach him today. What do the quotation marks mean? He said he was a, quote, good man.

He said he was a, quote, honest cardinal agent. What's the quote mean? What's this mudra?

This is the quote mudra. I think... This mudra means...

This mudra means... Yeah, he's standing with the garbage can. Got it?

Be careful about that. Let's go another verse. This is funny.

We got it. We can do a few more. There are others who do an analysis on the fact that things are neither one nor many.

Is anything wrong yet?

[Speaker 2]
That's...

[Speaker 1]
That's okay. It is a fact. It's a fact that this pen is neither one nor many.

The one that's not coming from me. That's assumed. Assuming that they're talking about the pen that's not coming from me.

Is it a fact that it's neither one nor many? Yeah, it is. Good.

That is a fact. By the way, all facts are unchanging. Okay.

Like that. Okay. And based on this reasoning, come to an understanding that the I is nothing real.

Anything wrong yet? We use the I. We use properly the neg.

Quote neg. Quote me. Quote my.

Everything's fine so far. Am I right? I say we're right.

So far we're good. But then he says... Then they meditate for as long as they possibly can on the flow of how these thoughts consider things to be.

Oh, right. On the flow.

[Speaker 2]
What was it before? Let's see if something comes out of it. They're meditating on their own understanding of it.

[Speaker 1]
Well, I'll give you a... I'll give you a problem here, okay? Go to the Tibetan.

Go to the next and last line above the number 1, 3, 4. And what's the first word there? Gyu.

With an N. And gyu... What's the one before with a D?

[Speaker 2]
No. It was also gyu.

[Speaker 1]
I don't know.

[Speaker 2]
129, page 4. Yeah, page 4. Gyunla.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, gyunla. Gyun, you're right. Okay, he used gyun in each case.

So it's the same word. Chi thug means as much as they can. Thug means able, right?

Chi means as much. Nyambar jog means to meditate on it. Dela nega gomadu.

And they say this is meditation. How is that different from the last one? I'll tell you how it's different, okay?

How did I translate it differently? That Chi is in the last line of the English one, page 7. What does that say?

Consider things to be. Okay, so... Well, this is a very tricky thing in Tibetan.

Those of you who care and you want to learn something new, learn the word... Where are we? Page 7, yeah.

Learn the phrase in the fourth line towards the end called zintang. Zintang. Say zin.

Tang. So generally, you know the word tang meaning to send. The present tense is tong.

And you know it in tonglen. Sending and receiving. Giving and taking.

Tonglen. So when I say tang, 99% of the time, well, tang means to send, okay? But this spelling is different, okay?

Sa-ta-ta-tang, I say tang. Say sa. Sa-ta-ta-tang.

This tang means the gait of a horse when it's galloping. It means the...

[Speaker 2]
The...

[Speaker 1]
The style. It also refers to dance. In dance, it's...

Tang is the method of moving your body. It's called tang. The way you move is called tang.

So zintang is a very rare word. And zintang is a very common word. And it means how you think something is.

And then, you get into... When you... When you debate pramana, you get into yo, shen-yo, zintang-yi-yo, zinpe-yo.

There are many, many objects that your mind is holding onto. Let's talk about some of them, okay? Yo is just desha in Sanskrit.

Like Bangladesh. Bangladesh. It just means the place.

Or the country. Yo in Tibetan means place. So yo means the object of your perception.

Like the pen. Let's say shen-yo. Shen-yo.

Shen-yo means the thing you think is there. Shen-lo-tong. You had shen-ba-shi-do in the lo-tong course.

Whoa. Whoa. Shen-ba-shi-do.

It was a famous Sakya module. Priyat for... Shen-ba means lo-tong.

Shen-ba means to be attached. Or to grasp on something. So shen-yo means what you think is there.

But you... Huh? Yeah, almost always implied to be wrong.

It can also mean open love for a child or something like that. Open love for a child. Attachment.

That's the real word for attachment. Shen-ba. So shen-yo.

Does it exist or not? No. We say no.

Does the yo exist?

[Speaker 2]
Yes.

[Speaker 1]
Jin-tang-yi-yo is even different. Jin-tang means how you consider something. Like when you're thinking about something, that's called a jin-tang-yi-yo.

So they are not focusing on their train of thoughts. They're focusing on how they feel about their train of thoughts. And that's the difference between this one and the last one.

And I translate it as consider things to be. I threw in the consider. So compare the English current translation.

I hope you didn't put in the consider. Huh? There's no consider in the last one?

No. They're not meditating on the train of thought. They're meditating on the feeling of the train of thought.

It's subtle. It's a subtle difference. Like you could say the difference between focusing on a pizza when you're neither hungry or full and focusing on a pizza when you're really hungry.

A jin-tang-yi-yo is pizza. How you feel about the pizza. The pizza as you feel about it is pizza.

The pizza as you consider it is pizza. So they're focusing on their feeling about what? About the train of thought.

[Speaker 2]
Nick.

[Speaker 1]
So they're getting close. They're not just watching how they think about Nick being there or not. But they're also getting confused about interpreting how they feel about the yaoi husband.

What kind of feeling is it in the jin-tang-yi-yo. And I believe in the Mamsa Mamsa, True Principal Path, there's a line in there about how you hold things to be disappears. That's jin-tang-yi-yo.

If you check it, it's the same It's the same Slightly different from Ben. Thinking about whether Ben is one or many. They are thinking about how they feel about Ben being one or many.

That's the slight difference between this and the other. Got out of that one. Alright.

Obviously when I was counseling I was wondering why I would repeat the same thing every day. And this they claim is how to meditate on great things in life. Let's do one more verse.

These folks are a little better than all the other ones. They're watching how they feel or the manner in which they're viewing the idea that things aren't one or many. Rather than just focusing on their thinking about one or many.

They're focusing on how they're thinking about it rather than thinking about it. So they're a little bit better than the ones I've talked about before. Why?

They do manage to inflict some small damage on me. Why? They're examining how they look at the things.

They're examining how they think rather than the thinking. The object of their meditation is how the thought process is going rather than the thought process itself. So they're a little bit closer to emptiness.

They could come to start asking where's that coming from? What? The thought process.

They're examining the feeling of the thought process. So it's possible they could ask the question are these thoughts mine? Or are they popping out of what I did last week?

So they're getting... They're troublesome. They could hurt me if they kept that up for a while.

They could get to the point where they realize that the thoughts about emptiness are coming up out of kindness that they showed to people last week. So then I'd be in trouble. So these people are more dangerous to me.

Who's me? The devil. These people are more dangerous to me because they're thinking how do I think?

Got it? I admit those people they could hurt me.

[Speaker 2]
So you want to be asking do you want to be looking for watching the seeds opening? Yeah.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, you will. Just before you see it in the hours before you see emptiness directly you always see how things are coming out of the seed. You always will see your mind focusing on a luminous pen or pot or or seer.

You will always do that. It always comes just before you see emptiness directly. The karma to see emptiness directly is very similar to the karma to see what?

Dependent to me. It's a few hours before. Within an hour or two before.

Cool? Did you have a question?

[Speaker 2]
Yeah, I have a kitchen. Yeah, yeah. So when you walk into the kitchen and you think that that person yelling at you is coming from their side that's a kind of ignorance.

[Speaker 1]
What about when you have a reaction of anger inside yourself?

[Speaker 2]
So are you talking here that you're actually seeing that that labeling or that understanding of your anger as being as coming from its side rather than that's also something that you're seeing yourself as being angry because you did something in the past to someone else.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, if you start You look at your own emotions Yeah, if you start asking where the emotion comes from too much you're flirting with seeds and then you can hurt the guy. And he doesn't want you to go there. He's saying they're inflicting some damage on me but how could they ever smash me totally?

The only way to smash him totally is to let yourself go into the darkness of it. Then you smash him. Totally.

Can you smash him un-totally? Before that. So if you understood that your husband's coming from what you did.

You know if you the barometer the thermometer that you're close is when you don't get mad at your husband anymore. The strength of your negative emotions is a reflection of how close you are to seeing your fear. Because that's the purpose of seeing your fear.

Because you would reach nirvana which is the permanent cessation of your anger. So if you feel yourself getting more control because when they yell at you you automatically start thinking, did I yell at the kids last week? Then you're closer to seeing your fear.

And then you're damaging it. But you didn't stop it. When you first perceive emptiness directly you see the emptiness of a bad end.

But when you first perceive emptiness deductively is it necessarily of me or my parts? That's what I was trying to make a point earlier. There's a beautiful clarification in the Abhidharma literature that the heap of form includes everything outside of me.

Everything around me. The color of my hand and the color of the pen and the color of the carpet are all Michael's skanda of form. That's very beautiful clarification.

Because some texts say it has to be gingidupa which means I have to be able to feel a pinch when you pinch it. And there's a huge debate. They get into hair, okay?

He's got my skanda. This is what Abhidharma would be. But basically a deeper understanding of the five skandas is that most things outside of you are included into the first heap.

Some are included into the heap of other factors because they are concepts. You know, like you have a peripheral awareness of the sky right now even though you can't see them. They are not for you an object of your vision.

They are an object of your imagination. But they are also part of Ben. Doesn't that sometimes include Ben?

Isn't Ben as Ben thinks he is? A Ben that you imagine to be real exists as an imagined being in the same way that you can imagine a round of horns. So the mental picture of a round of horns in fact has to exist for you to appreciate the joke.

[Speaker 2]
Do you have the direct conception of an imagination as a mental thing?

[Speaker 1]
You always do. It's always ignorant.

[Speaker 2]
Can it be like you in meditation on your own thoughts rather than like an object on the stove?

[Speaker 1]
I don't know and you'll never find it in the scripture. But I have a feeling. My instinct is to say it's probably going to be some visual outside form.

Those are considered to be about 95% of all perceptions are visual. Which is why blind people make such good musicians. But that's another thing.

[Speaker 2]
Could you talk about the difference between understanding the emptiness of me and understanding the emptiness of Rebecca? You said that you see the emptiness of Rebecca not the emptiness of me. You said it was better to concentrate on the emptiness of Rebecca instead of the emptiness of me?

[Speaker 1]
Yeah. It makes it more personal. It is the first one you will see.

[Speaker 2]
But could you explain the difference between me and me?

[Speaker 1]
And wouldn't that be the most liberating one to break?

[Speaker 2]
So what's the difference between me and Rebecca?

[Speaker 1]
Because she can also say me.

[Speaker 2]
Okay.

[Speaker 1]
We've got one more verse to go. 136. Why is this the case?

What is the case? It could damage me but not smash me. Why is this the case?

The state of mind that thinks that's me comes up in us based on nothing more than the collection of our parts. And when it looks at this me it believes it exists in truth. This gets into another question which is kind of complicated.

But we'll just flirt with it and then we'll pick it up next time. God knows when that will be. Because we're booked, right?

November 1st.

[Speaker 2]
October 31st through November.

[Speaker 1]
We will have an angel devil in November. But we're thinking to do a general addiction talk in Phoenix. Oh yeah.

It might be fun to try. Anyway. Are you the sum of your parts?

I mean that's the question that's coming to me. Are you the sum of your parts? Like if you took apart a car and the wheels were all there and all the parts were laid out on the parking lot is the car just that?

[Speaker 2]
Yeah, good.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah. Your tendency to unify those parts should be included as one of the parts. Because if you don't have that you don't have a car.

And that's what happens to mental diseases. Autism. Psycho-autism.

[Speaker 2]
Asperger's.

[Speaker 1]
They're unable to unify parts in the way that we do. By the way, which is just a different karma. Oh, dementia.

[Speaker 2]
Alzheimer's.

[Speaker 1]
They just feel they can no longer unify things the way we unify things. So when they see all the parts of the car that's not autism. I think they throw the wheel in with the parking lot and then they're like what is that thing?

The habit of the mind to unify certain parts into a whole is a karma. And you lose it. So what Kendra said is true.

In Buddhism we say that parts the sum of the parts is the whole. If you include the habit the tendency of the mind to unify parts in a certain way. Because without that it is not a car.

And you can't drive it. You have all the parts laying out on the ground but you couldn't drive it. It's your mind unifying it.

How does it unify it?

[Speaker 2]
By calling it by seeing it as by seeing the collection of parts as Kendra.

[Speaker 1]
But how does that happen?

[Speaker 2]
Through an understanding that it's just a label from my own mind.

[Speaker 1]
No, I mean a person who's never studied. How do they see a car? This is, by the way, the whole subject of Pramana.

This is the Pramana Margika. This is what the whole thing is about.

[Speaker 2]
Four wheels. Four wheels.

[Speaker 1]
Why do some people manage to unify a car? Or you could say Steve Jobs had the karma to unify an iPhone out of parts of an iPhone where we wouldn't have that capacity. Why?

Why could he do it? Yeah, he helped other people communicate in the past. So a mental picture popped up of Karmic Steve and he saw an iPhone where nobody else saw an iPhone.

So this is also the key to creativity which is kind of cool. He unified parts in a different way. The parts existed.

The chemicals, the metals, the plastics. They all existed. His mind unified them in a separate way.

We're autistic compared to him as far as iPhones. And it's just that we didn't have that Karmic Steve. So you have to throw in the parts as a whole only if you consider the Karmic Steve that opens with a luminous picture coming out which is thrown onto the object by the mind.

Or actually mistaken for the object by the mind. But that's another story. We're always doing that when we think now this is tricky.

When Nick thinks of Nick, he's always doing that. You have a karma to unify the parts of Nick into Nick and you could lose them. That's also a karma.

So these people in a deep meditation they're not appreciating the fact that their self-awareness is also a projection. It's also a viewing of a luminous photo, picture onto their legs and arms and thoughts. They're not appreciating that while they're in meditation, so therefore they're on the devil's side.

Enough for tonight. There is a self. Don't tell me there's no self.

I'm not an unspoken. Michael's here. He's about to eat dessert.

Well, it alternates very rapidly with your awareness of this thought process of one image. I'm meditating. You think that.

You have a sense that Ben's meditating on one image. So he's describing that you might get distracted by Ben. And here he puts a quotation mark on it.

Cool? No, I think it's... No, I should save it.

It's important to save it. Well, he's going to get into can you ever reach a state in your spiritual evolution where things don't appear to be not coming to you? Sorry.

Can you ever reach a point where things don't appear to be coming to you? Yeah. But it's a very high bodhisattva level.

Some people say 8th. Some people say 10th. It depends on how you think about it.

The seeds for it aren't illuminated until the 10th. How do you think about it? Is that something different?

Different to think about it. I'll tell you one more thing, OK? So...

I'm going to get to the Tsongkhapa that I'm translating by hook or crook. So an excuse just came up. In the middle of the first chapter of the Madhyamaka Avatar which treats the 10th bodhisattva level, the first chapter treating the first bodhisattva level, how do you get to the first bodhisattva level?

You tell me. You see emptiness directly. Yeah, you see emptiness directly with a desire to save the world.

With a desire to save the world. You see emptiness directly. Then the whole question comes up.

Is it possible to see emptiness directly without a desire to save the world? And there's a big, ferocious debate about it because you would think that the most difficult thing in the world should meet the best karma in the world which is to save everybody else. But it's not true.

We believe, Buddhism believes, the higher schools of Buddhism believe that you can understand reality and not care about other people. In the way, for example, a very good physicist might understand how things are imputed. You see?

They might get to a point... I've read today these books that say that you never touch the ground when you walk on it. And that's...

They're pretty close to emptiness. So... Then in the opening lines of Chandrakirti, Master Chandrakirti's book on emptiness, which is one of the most famous ones, right?

He says, the person who reaches the first bodhisattva level outshines other people by virtue of their new family. And he compares it to a child who is born as a prince to a king and a queen who from the first day has more rights than the senior ministers of the king who are infinitely more wise. You know, the child is not able to talk yet, but that child, by virtue of his family, is superior even to the senior ministers of the kingdom by virtue of the family into which he was born.

And the other example is a guru, but that's another story. Then, in his explanation of the first chapter, Master Chandrakirti skips to the seventh bodhisattva level and says, if you're interested to know, at the seventh bodhisattva level they are superior by virtue of their state of mind to arhats of other tracts, of lower tracts. Why would he throw that into the first chapter?

That's the huge debate. Why would he skip to the seventh bodhisattva level? They call it rupa chulwa.

It means to screw up the order. It's considered a very bad compositional mistake. To get off on the seventh chapter when you're in the first chapter.

Why would he go on to say only at the seventh level are they superior in their state of mind? To point out that they're still seeing the same emptiness. Not to think that the first level bodhisattva is superior because of the emptiness that they saw, because that's not always superior.

Yeah, good. So, the point is that a bodhisattva who is seeing emptiness is not superior by virtue of their state of mind to lower arhats who have no desire to save the world. To their perception of emptiness it's the same.

Their perception of emptiness is 100% the same. They are not superior by what they have just seen. So they must be superior by what?

[Speaker 2]
Family.

[Speaker 1]
Family means buddha family means they want to help the whole world. Then the question becomes why did he throw in the seventh level in the discussion of the first level and say when they hit the seventh level then they are superior to the ministers. By virtue of their own thought processes.

They're wiser than the ministers. Meaning the lower arhats. So it has to be to master the...

That's one, that's a pretty good answer. Because between the seventh and eighth bodhisattva levels you achieve nirvana. Oh, right.

Which is to destroy the seeds of it. In the beginning of the book he wants to point out the qualities of love and how it's superior to everything else. Yeah.

Family. Noble family. Wants to help the whole world.

And really to conclude that's what this building is all about. I resisted owning property for many, many years. We have never owned property.

The dharma was purchased when I was in junior retreat and I did not approve it. And I never want to own things or property. I think it can be a real distraction and you can work just as well in a coffee shop.

But we consciously bought this place because I believe we can do really powerful things here. I think the synergy of a group of hardcore people who are working together most days for a couple hours a week. Most of us are traveling a lot.

We won't always be working together. But generally we'll be working together. And the synergy of a lot of people who are very intent on helping stuff like Ukraine versus Russia and who have some real solution to it.

But we didn't cover that, did we?

[Speaker 2]
No.

[Speaker 1]
So it's quite possible for both sides to get everything according to this theory because the Crimea peninsula is coming from the right. And for the Russians it could be part of Russia and for the Ukrainians it could be part of Ukraine. And never the two will not mix.

Got it? So definitely a solution. A Buddhist solution exists to all territorial disputes.

And interpersonal disputes.

[Speaker 2]
Doesn't it go a little farther maybe in that what is this from another's perspective? That's still my projection.

[Speaker 1]
Say again, I don't understand.

[Speaker 2]
Another's, you know, from their perspective they see this, from their perspective they see this. From my perspective, I'm projecting both of them projecting their projections.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, John Brady did a nice meditation this morning for those of the staff here. And he was taking us through how those mountains have come from my you know, giving beauty to other people and things like that. And really this is kind of cool to think about.

The state of the world today like the terrible events in Gaza or Ukraine or planes falling down or things like that. You know, terrible violence, terrible cruelty of people is somewhere inside each of us or we wouldn't be seeing it. Somehow we have some kind of tendency like that.

Or we would not be seeing it. So that's good for us to think about. That's the lesson.

Ultimately that's the lesson. There's a reason why we seem to fight over Ukraine. Which is that we haven't resolved our own issues with people that we love.

So fix it.

[Speaker 2]
Okay, good night.

[Speaker 1]
Oh, you want to do that thing? This is a dedication where we give you a big crown of the clasp for the whole world. And pray for peace in the world.

I think especially, we have a lot of dear friends now in both Ukraine and Russia. And the Russians flew into the Ukrainian teaching and apologized. They stood up and apologized.

It's pretty powerful. And it's a very long process. It's like getting Obama to sign something.

so on September 8th he'll be enthroned and we've been invited to send two representatives which is Rebecca and Nick. We'll be going to the ceremony. It's very bad manners not to send some money, to be frank.

To put it bluntly. So we're trying to raise, I don't know, $5,000 or something. In the old days we would have spent $20,000 or something.

But the economy is bad. But we'll start a GoFundMe, right? You'll start a GoFundMe.

And it's just a tradition that the students and grand-students of a high Lama should contribute to the child's upkeep. And that's just food and clothing and stuff. So you are forever and the rest of your life expected.

If something should happen to me, you should know to help him. And you know, frankly, I grew up, I mean, in my years in the monastery, I met all these little reincarnated Lamas and they're mostly just a pain in the ass. Especially Thich Nhat Hanh, the Dalai Lama's teacher.

I spent a lot of time around him. He ran me over in his bike one day, walking around the stupa. I came around one way, he came around the wrong way in his bike and ran me over and just rode off.

And everyone cobbles them, you know. And I was like, okay, too cool. Then I went home and he called me, he sent me, he called me to his room.

It was the first time I'd ever been called to his room. And he was like eight or something? And he looks at me and he says, you need to learn more about money.

And then I was like, wow, maybe this isn't special. So they, just when you think they're not special, they really are special. At least they have the karma to be recognized as Lamas.

So it's a tradition almost as an act of understanding or faith to support them. Just their basic food and stuff. So I hope all of you give something to America.

It's just Lama etiquette in our religion. Thank you.