Дебаты дьявола с ангелом, часть 12: Диалог о медитации и природе ума (2018, Аризона), занятие 4

[Speaker 1]
We thought to spice it up, get Michael so dry that we could insert angel-devil debates by you guys every 20 minutes or so, and we were thinking to start one right off the bat. Are you ready for that? Is there a volunteer who is ready for this?

Don't ask for volunteers, just assign them. Alright, and we're gonna start with one that we just recently workshopped. We're gonna start with Alex and Regina.

Hey Regina, how are you? Good. You know, I'm really not doing that well though.

I'm upset about some work problems that I have. Yeah, I've just been having a lot of trouble. You know, I'm a real estate agent, and I'm having trouble getting deals to come together that people say they want to buy, they pick out a property to buy, and then they don't follow through.

And especially this one guy, he picked out a four million dollar ranch. I'm really excited about it, and then when he came twice, flew in, looked at it, and then when we were supposed to talk about it together, and he didn't answer the phone.

[Speaker 2]
He said he was busy, then we made another appointment to talk on the phone about writing the offer. You don't have another place to sell? Well, you know, this is happening with every piece of property right now.

[Speaker 1]
I've got four different people who have picked out four different pieces of property, and none of them will commit. They say they want to buy it, then they offer too little money, and it's just terrible. I'm worried that I'm gonna lose my job.

Well, I call them, and I say, okay, are you ready? And I try to put some pressure on them, and I was thinking about maybe telling them that someone else wants the property, and they better hurry up and buy it. I really don't know what's gonna work.

I'm actually really nervous.

[Speaker 2]
I'm now a volunteer at Dananada, and they have a new system called the Karmic Seeds.

[Speaker 1]
Oh, is that something that could work for me? Because I'm really desperate.

[Speaker 2]
I think so. I think so. They said maybe you have done one similar thing, a small similar thing, so that you said, I will do this for you, and you didn't.

[Speaker 1]
I am so responsible about just following through with everything, I think, but I do have one bad habit of not paying a bill on time. It's an internet from my internet at my house, and it goes by on the email, and I see it go by, and then it just goes over there, and I forget about it for about a month.

[Speaker 2]
Yes, you can think so.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, I can pay my internet bill. How would that help with my problem?

[Speaker 2]
Maybe your money will come faster.

[Speaker 1]
Oh, but it's the people out there are the ones who aren't, they're not doing what they should be doing.

[Speaker 2]
That's a real problem.

[Speaker 1]
It is.

[Speaker 2]
They're terrible. I understand, but maybe you can, I think you had a lot of fear to lose your job, and you don't get fired.

[Speaker 1]
I'll get fired, exactly, exactly.

[Speaker 2]
Yeah, and maybe you can help someone else who has a similar problem.

[Speaker 1]
There's a shelter, a transitional housing shelter that I wanted to volunteer at where they help people who've lost their jobs or their houses, and they give them temporary housing, so maybe I could go there. I wanted to go there and help. In fact, I said I was going to, and then I didn't show up.

Oh, it looks like a very good idea, because do you have time to have that? I think I could do an hour a week, and you know, I want to do it. I think I'll try it.

If you say it could work, I'm willing to try it, because I'm desperate.

[Speaker 2]
Oh, these people say this will work, and you have to feel good about it if you do it, and you have to think, wow, that's fine. I can help people that have the same problem. Maybe it will fix.

[Speaker 1]
Okay, well, I'm willing to try. Thank you, Regina. Nice.

Which one was the angel? All right, we're going to continue with the text, and then we'll take a break somewhere in the middle, and before the break, we'll do another pair, and then, okay, we'll go like that. All right, so the devil just said, by the way, this is a segue to the Mahamudra meditations, okay?

We haven't had any Mahamudra meditations yet. We kind of had a general description by the angel, right? And now the devil says, some people say they will meditate and kick me out.

They say, I will meditate on the mind as it really is, okay? And this is a famous expression in Tibet. There are many schools that said, let's meditate on the mind as it really is, okay?

And then he goes off on that. All right, so here we go. And again, I think it's weird that the devil's talking for the whole rest of the text.

I don't know, the angels just went to sleep or something, okay? Okay, number one, which is verse 94, when you get to it, okay? And again, if you want the whole translation, talk to Jigme, she'll just send it to you by email.

There's a meditation that was called, No Hopes and No Reviewing the Past. No hopes about the future and no reviewing the past, okay? And it's called, just stay kind of, be here now, okay?

It's be here now meditation, okay? Just be here now. Don't worry about the past.

Don't worry about things that happened to you in the past. Don't worry about things that happened to you in the future. Just stay.

It's almost like a present moment. And it's called, No Complications and No Additions, okay? And this is the devil's first poke at Mahamudra meditations that don't work, okay?

And he, I was thinking to try to do it with you, but I'm afraid we'll get in the habit. Maybe I'll just criticize them obliquely. Okay, let's do that.

All right, I thought it'd be more fun to try them, but you want to try them? No. No?

Okay. Yeah, let's forget it. Okay.

Anyway, if someone comes up to you and says, don't think about, no hopes and no regrets. It's basically that, you know, just be here now. And then it's interesting that the devil critiques the meditation himself, right?

It's in his interest that you do it, right? Because it doesn't contradict him. You see what I mean?

He's interested in meditations that don't contradict the way he sees things, okay? And this is one. And he, in the beginning, when he first works through a few meditations, there's 26, right, that I count.

He kind of tells you why they're wrong, okay? So we'll spend a little more time on the first few, and then we'll spend less time on it, because the critiques are the same, all right? So here it is, verse 95.

But this is basically just a meditation on your mind, without thinking, you know, about the nature of the mind. It's just a meditation on the mind. And right now, your mind is defective.

So the more time you spend in the present moment with your defective mind, the stronger the devil's going to get, okay? Got it? So right now, your mind is defective.

Why? Related to the two husbands in the kitchen. Yeah, your mind automatically thinks that the husband decided to criticize you.

You know, when you think of why you're getting criticized, why did the husband call you stupid instead of giving you a hug, okay? Then your mind automatically goes to, he's had a bad day, he didn't get enough sleep, something's not going well in his work. You know, you blame it on his state of mind.

And this is human nature. This is why we're still here. And so, she's saying, if you focus your meditation on that state of mind, that state of mind is defective.

So, the longer you focus on the present moment of your mind that blames your husband, the more strong the devil's going to get. Okay, got it? It doesn't hurt him, it fortifies him.

Okay, got it? All right. So, that theme is going to be repeated with a number of the 26 attempted Mahamudra meditations.

The theme that just by focusing on the mind, if the mind is already making mistakes, you're going to strengthen that habit, okay? Again, what's the mistake? To think that the husband had a bad day, or the husband's not a happy person, and he's attacking you.

But that's not why he's attacking you. It's coming from your seeds from, in that example, what? Yeah, you yelled at your kids last week, and you planted the seeds to see the husband.

They opened when you walked in the kitchen, and they opened into your husband, okay? So, focusing on the state of mind with which you enter the kitchen is not helpful. It's not going to do anything to improve things.

Okay, got it? All right. And, verse 96, he says, and this is going to be a theme that's repeated, and that's called meditations which don't damage that first state of mind.

They don't damage the opinion. They don't hurt the opinion of the wife who comes into the kitchen, and he yells, and she says, he had a bad day, or something's wrong with him, okay? Or, he decided to yell at me.

Where did this yelling come from? He decided to yell at me. If you believe that, then how do you treat it?

You talk to him. You say, we got to talk. You got to respect me.

I'm not just someone you can yell at all day. Okay, like that. And there's different false approaches.

I like to joke about them in DCI talks. You can refuse him dinner. You can refuse him other things later on.

But the thing is, I always make a joke. He's going to go out for a pizza and take the pizza waitress out. He'll get both of the things he wants at the pizza place.

Yeah, so you see, it can backfire on you. If a system can backfire on you, it's not a good system, you see? You want a system which is fail-proof?

Fail-suit. Cannot fail. Full-proof, that's it.

Yeah, stupid-proof. By the way, there's a joke in DCI. How did the wife prove she was stupid?

She yelled back. Okay, she yelled back. Then what the husband said turned out to be correct.

Okay, all right. So, two common objections to this that we've already had in the first wrong Mahamudra meditation. Number one, just focus on your mind.

No, no, no. Your current state of mind is defective. Focus on that and you're just going to get more defective, okay?

Then what's the second thing here? What's the second problem with the meditation? It doesn't in any way damage that first opinion.

It doesn't even address it, you see? The opinion that the husband is yelling because he had a bad day or he decided to, okay? If a meditation doesn't do any damage to the opinion that things are coming this way, it is not a useful meditation.

And if you want to extend it to your whole day, internal conversations are useless unless they're talking about seeds. Which means 99% of our own internal conversations, even people who talk about it all day, are useless. They're just useless.

There's no point to them. You have wasted your brain, what do you call it? Battery.

I mean, it's just wasted, you know? You are cogitating things to do, to get things or to avoid things that have nothing to do with those things, okay? And if you learn to have an awareness of how you're thinking, right?

If you learn to watch the discussion in your mind, you will be dismayed. You'll say, oh my God, you know? I've been spending all day trying to figure out this problem in two different self-existent ways, neither of which is going to work, you know?

Which means I just wasted my whole brain capacity for the whole day, you know? So, if as a result of these three days' classes you can do 1% seed thinking, Alex, no, sorry, Regina thinking, okay? If you can think like that, for just 1% of the time, your life will improve double.

The happy things in your life, the successes in your life will double if you just give 1% more time to thinking about seeds, okay? That's the effect, okay? It really is, okay?

Those of us who work for DCI or, you know, we spend all day talking about it, we have what you would call successful lives, but that's just because we're doing it 1% of the time. I can't even imagine what would happen if you did it 3% of the time, but we don't, okay? We're also normal people, okay?

All right, that's the two classic complaints about many Mahamudra meditations. Number one, you are just focusing on the thought process, and that's not going to improve anything. That's just becoming more aware of your mind.

And then secondly, it doesn't hurt that wrong opinion. And there's a big thing in Buddhism about clear thinking hurting unclear thinking. You see what I mean?

It's called nöpa, right? We have trouble translating it. I think you could say damage, okay?

So, like 10 minutes of clear thinking damages an hour of unclear thinking, you see? It does something to damage its power, you see what I mean? And then all those emotions that flow out of the first state of mind, the negative state of mind, they just kind of bleed away, they just kind of grind down to a halt, you see what I mean?

All other negative emotions are feeding off the devil. If you hit the devil, Seiji's killing point, right? If you strike at the devil, if you strike at the feeling that things are coming this way, and then when the husband yells at you, it's coming this way, if you strike there, even just a feeble, you know, then huge consequences in your life, huge changes in your life, okay?

Because all negativity feeds from that one idea, that things are happening to you, okay? Got it? All right, ineffective...

I call this a list of ineffective meditations, okay? Ineffective meditation. Ineffective meditation number two, which is verse 97.

This is famous mistaken meditation, ineffective meditation, which means... By the way, I say ineffective because I don't want to fight with all the yoga teachers who are teaching this. You know, I just say, look, I'm not fighting with you, but I don't think it's very effective, okay?

I don't want to tell them it's just crazy or stupid, you know, because I don't want people calling me crazy and stupid more. So, just say it's not very effective, okay? The second meditation that the devil criticizes, okay, is emptying the mind, okay?

Empty the mind. Don't think about anything, okay? Try to empty the mind, you know.

Try to let go into the void, you know. This is not the meaning of the void at all. It has nothing to do with the meaning of the void.

It's just a 25th century mistake that has been made over and over and over again, okay, where people think emptiness means don't think about anything, you know. And I don't know. I don't know.

It's like... I don't know. It's like putting root beer in your gas tank or something.

It just messes things up, you know. It's like... It's just foolish, you know.

It doesn't do anything. It just... You know the karmic result of emptying your mind meditation.

It's very interesting. In the ancient scriptures, you become forgetful. You leave your phone at different places.

You can't find your car keys. I hate this new car. The key's not where it should be.

You just leave the key anywhere in the car, and then you go and... And then, you know, I wish they could have a little holder for the key where the ignition used to be. And then I know where the key is when I get out of the car, you see what I mean?

But this thing of meditating and trying to think about nothing, the karmic result of that is that you become a spaced-out person, okay? Absent-minded professor, okay? You just become a kind of ineffective person, okay?

All right. There was a meditation in Tibet in the Panchen Lama's time that said... Okay, this is ineffective meditation number three, because I don't want to call them stupid meditations because that's an unkind word.

But they are. Okay. So number three, there was a meditation where you just focused on how the mind is not a physical thing, okay?

So the mind... You close your eyes and you cancel all the physical stuff in the room, all the colors, all the shapes, all the things you can touch, and you cancel them, and then what's left in the room is the mind, and you meditate on that, okay? So you can imagine, you know, like you kind of melt away all the room and the people and the floor and the cars and the parking lot and the chair, and you just go into the mind.

What would be wrong with that? Just focusing on how the mind is not physical. What problems?

A, it doesn't contradict the way you misunderstand the husband, you see what I mean? And two, you are focusing on... Yeah, you are getting deeper into a mind which is defective, okay?

You're snuggling up with a defective mind, okay? And it's going to leak out on you, okay, got it? You don't want to focus on the current state of mind, which is wrapped up with making a mistake.

You want to go into new territory, a new state of mind that says, things are coming from me. Things are coming from how I treat people, okay? All right, ineffective meditation number four, verse 99, okay?

And this was an ancient meditation from Tibet. And there was a big New Age movement in Tibet a thousand years ago, okay? And it lasted about 350 years, okay?

And people just did anything, all kinds of weird stuff. So then there became a meditation called Meditate on the raw mind, the untouched mind, okay? Like the mind, the essence of the mind.

Go deep to the heart of the mind and meditate on the center of the mind, okay? And that was called raw awareness. It's called jimba.

It's the same word for salad, uncooked vegetable, okay? So do the uncooked vegetable mind thing. Go to the uncooked vegetable part of your mind and just hang out there in the center of the mind, okay?

And that was called spending time with your raw awareness, okay? What problems? Same two problems, okay?

It doesn't hurt the wife's impression that the husband decided to yell at her. It doesn't do anything to address her misperceptions. You see what I mean?

It doesn't hurt at all the root of the problem. The devil, there's a joke later. He said, I dance on top of all these meditations.

I dance on the person's head while they're doing them, okay? Okay, number five. Just let your mind ramble.

Don't try to control it. Don't try to stop it. Don't try to direct it.

Just observe it, you know? Let the mind blah, blah and enjoy, you know? Go into deep state of meditation and listen to the mind blah, blah.

You can call it blah, blah. Okay, number five. Blah, blah meditation.

And never try to direct or block thoughts. Just let them go to their nature, okay? Same two problems, okay?

Same two problems. Yeah, there'd probably be that one too. You'd think you were doing something, yeah.

Yeah, it would reinforce ignorance, yeah. Okay, number six. He loves, number six, to a lot of uneducated meditations.

It means no one trained you. You had an inspiration, you know, when you were having French fries and you came up with some kind of new meditation. And in the Buddhist tradition, it's foolish not to take advantage of the hundred generations of great lamas, you know, of great teachers from the Buddha's time.

It's foolish to try to reinvent the wheel yourself, you know. There have been, like Christina Kasica, yeah, how many books in Mongolian? Yeah, so we have a new project in Mongolia.

She raised a million dollars for it. We should give her a hand. And there's 200,000 to 400,000 scriptures there.

And they'll call half of them useless, which they're not. They're perfect. But, you know, that leaves 100,000 to 200,000.

Okay, so at this ineffective meditation, number six, the Panchen Lama says, look, you know, take advantage of the resources you have. You know, and I spend a certain time of my day, Veronica knows, like most of the morning, I like to sit with those guys, you know. They're dead, unfortunately, but I still have their books, you know.

And I kind of hang out with them in the morning. And I feel like they're there, you know. I guess they are, right?

And I just enjoy being with them part of the day, you know. And it kind of grounds me. And it gives me comfort somehow.

It gives me a deep comfort. If I don't get that hit every day, I feel a little weird. I don't feel quite like I'm going to have a good day, you know.

So I don't mean, like, sit there and study. Study is so boring, you know. But sit with those guys, you know.

Just hang out with them. Read the stuff lightly, you know. There's nothing.

There's not a single line in any of those 400,000 books which will not bring you some help and some comfort and some wisdom, okay? So open the stupid book anywhere and read something, you know. And just don't be a fanatic, you know.

Like, don't say, what's the third line of Nagarjuna's 48th verse? You know, don't go like that. Just enjoy hanging out with these wonderful people.

And then your whole day is kind of more, makes more sense. And then when you wake up, it kind of went away again. And then just read some more.

And the night, you know, I remember when I went to the monastery, I got very frustrated because I was from Princeton, right? And I always understood what was going on in the class, you know. I always understood.

And then there were many days in the monastery when I didn't understand a single thing that the guy was talking about for two hours, you know. And I'm like, I can't do this, you know. This is really uncomfortable for me.

You know, I went to one of my scripture teachers. So I had 12 scripture teachers. And I went to one of them.

I said, I can't do this, you know. I can't sit in this class for two hours and I don't understand a single thing you're talking about. You know, it's really uncomfortable for me.

Then he said, okay, I'm giving you this assignment B. Assignment B is every other class, you spend it in the next class up. If you're a freshman, then every other class you go to a sophomore class, you know.

Then you really don't know what the hell they're talking about, you know. And I'm like, I came back. This is the thing about the, what was that?

The rabbi's advice to the guy, he said he can't stand living with his wife and kids. It's too insane. There's no peace and quiet in the whole house the whole day.

And the rabbi said, buy a goat and bring it in the house and tie it in the house and keep it in the house, you know. And then the guy's like, keeps the goat in his house for three weeks, you know. And then the rabbi calls him again.

He says, how you doing? And he says, it's worse, it's insane. You know, the goat makes noise, poops everywhere, eats everything.

It's crazy. And the rabbi said, OK, take the goat out. And the guy takes the goat out, you know.

And then the rabbi calls him after two days. How's your family life? It's perfect.

Everything's perfect. It's so nice, you know. It's really nice.

Yeah. So tackle those difficult bugs, you know. Try to understand one sentence.

It's a tradition in the monastery that you... And by the way, every night in the debate ground, the first half hour to 45 minutes, you are required to debate with a person who's two classes up. And you have no idea what he's saying, you know.

And then, but when you get there, suddenly, it's easy. You see what I mean? Because of the seeds you planted, you see.

So sit with those guys. Sit with the Garjuna. I sent it out to a lot of you.

If you didn't get it, talk to Jiggy, OK? I sent it out this morning because I wanted to show off. I don't really care about your welfare.

Well, I'm hoping it will also happen. But sit with it. Just open it, OK?

Print it out and open it sometimes. On the plane, John. Yeah, OK, before you watch a movie.

OK, yeah. Then the movie seems more interesting. OK.

OK, so number six was kind of uneducated meditation. You know, I'm going to just make something up. You know, I got the idea.

You close your eyes and you think about something. So I was just going to design one that the Buddha didn't think of. OK?

OK? You hear that a lot, you know. I went to a yoga studio near her mom's house.

We go to visit her mom in Phoenix every month or something. She goes more often. And we went into the yoga class and the teacher started teaching tonglen.

You know, perfect. And I was like, yeah, that's better. OK, anyway, I don't know them.

They don't know me. I was just sitting there. They said, this is from some guy.

And I was like, yeah. OK. OK, meditation number seven.

This is a meditation that was popular in Tibet 400 years ago. And you just go into your mind and you pretend that everything's OK. Like the mind is pure.

You know, the purity of the mind. You know, so, yes. Does your mind blame your husband when he yells?

Yes, yes. But when you meditate, don't worry about it. Just appreciate your mind, you know.

Just decide it's pure, you know. It's not pure. Or you wouldn't have trouble with your husband in the first place, OK?

But it's called hiding under the blanket meditation. Did you ever notice that? Kids do that.

I don't know, V, did your kids do that? If they're doing something wrong, like if they're supposed to be asleep and you come in and they're playing with a toy or something, they think that if they put the blanket over them and they can't see you, then it's OK. You see what I mean?

So that's, you can call it hiding under the blanket meditation, OK? Somehow kids, you know, you can be standing next to the bed and looking at them, but if they can't see you, then somehow you're not seeing them. You see what I mean?

Got it? So it would be to sit in the mind and pretend the mind's OK when the mind is not OK. All right.

Then he says, those meditations that I've given you so far are my holy deeds. You know, it took me years to mess up this mind to where it is now. Just give me the credit, OK?

I'm the one. I have messed up the mind in the first place and I've messed up the meditations and spread them around the world. And really, I should get some credit, you know.

I'm doing good work, better than an angel of wisdom, you know. Like, nobody's doing her meditations. Everybody's doing my meditations.

Now, I should get some credit, you know. If everyone's doing these wrong meditations, who do you think's fault it is? It's me.

C'est moi. OK? All right.

And saying that, saying you're going to kick me out of the mind with these things, k'emun ne. Yeah, that's a joke, you know. Laughing matter.

K'emun ne means a point of laughter. Similar to your ne, OK? Your striking point.

It's a point of laughter. It's a joke. We say it's a joke.

OK. All right. Which one we're on?

Number eight. OK. I'm going to stop Tim at four, and we'll have another debate, and then we'll have refreshments, which I'm sure are here.

I didn't see them. It worries me. OK.

If they're no good, I'm going home. All right. I know they're no good from my side, but it's still the same.

OK. Ineffective meditation number eight. And this is called over-analysis, OK?

Taking the analysis too far. Like you keep analyzing, and there's several variations of it, OK? Which is verse 104, 105, and 106, OK?

So verse 104 is focusing on analysis, which is a good thing in Buddhism, you know? Where did my husband really come from? Analyze what you might have done to plant the seed for your husband yelling.

That kind of analysis is useful, OK? But ineffective meditation number eight is to spend all your time analyzing other people's mistakes in meditation, which we could easily fall into, right? So he says, be aware of the pitfalls, traps, meditation traps, and then let it go, you know?

Don't make that your meditation, OK? Don't spend all your time criticizing the schools which are not as smart as you are, OK? And that's the first version.

The second version of the same meditation, OK? Eight A, eight B. Eight B is over-analyzing things and not applying it to you, or to your life, or to your real estate company, OK?

So Buddhism as a study, without it being applied to your work, is not Buddhism, OK? It's not Buddhism, OK? Just talk about Buddhism and debate about Buddhism and write books about Buddhism and then don't apply it at home, in the kitchen, when the husband yells at you, or don't apply it to your real estate company, then it's not Buddhism.

And a meditation is not a meditation unless you apply it to your life, OK? Eight B. Eight C.

There's a special variant. It's called Analyze the Analyzer. OK?

So you analyze the meditation, then you analyze the you, OK? Then you analyze the you, where you came from, and then you analyze the you, where the you, where the you came from, and it's called Infinite Regression, OK? And that's a meditation.

Some people do it, OK? There's other kinds of meditations that are similar. Kadam Tigle Chudug, the 16 Drops of the Kadampa School, that's very profound.

You know, you go into a... you see a being in your heart, and that has an effect on your concentration, because the smaller the meditation object, the better the concentration. So that's a regression, but it's a useful one, OK?

This one is trying to analyze the analyzer, and then analyze the analyzer, the analyzer, and then it just gets anal, you know, and there's no benefit to it, OK? Apparently that was popular at some point. I could, you know, in those 200,000 books, we could find the source of these if we had nothing else to do, but I have other stuff to do, so I'm OK to treat these as generic mistakes that anybody will make for every couple hundred years.

They'll be repeated. These mistakes will be repeated every hundred years. So it's good to learn all the possible mistakes that have been made.

Some will apply to you, but many will apply to people that you teach, you see? So as a teacher, you want to have a big toolkit, right? So, you know, you study these in the possibility that you might meet a person who needs to talk about this one, OK?

So there's a big emphasis in Buddhism when you're trying to help other people. Bodhisattvas, there's a big deal in Shantideva. Bodhisattvas learn how to fix cars.

They learn about carburetors. They learn about spark plugs. They get interested in fan belts, you know, because it might help someone someday.

Even if you're not interested in how a car works, learn it. You know, learn carpentry. Learn to do stuff.

Learn how everything at your house works and learn to fix it, OK? It's something we did in Boy Scouts. We got a merit badge for every electricity, canoe fixing.

You know, but by the time you ended Eagle, you got to have 21, right? It is 21. But you learn how to fix everything in your house at the age of 12 or 13.

You should, because you... Bodhisattvas do that kind of stuff, OK? Bodhisattvas do that kind of stuff because it might help somebody else later.

So they learn the 26 variations on meditation mistakes, OK? All right. Now, I call it intermission comments, OK?

The devil makes some intermission comments. I don't know why he breaks here. He takes a break, OK?

He's about a third of the way through and he takes a little break to make some obnoxious comments. These are all wrong meditation objects. They're either picking just the mind with a big component of misunderstanding in it, or they're meditating on nothing at all, or they meditate on the mind thinking on nothing at all, OK?

And so, to find a meditation in one of these first eight which does any damage to me is like a star which is bright during the day. And that's a famous Buddhist expression for impossible, OK? A star which is like brighter than the sun during the day, OK?

And that's just a famous nyi me karma, you know? A star during the day. It doesn't happen, OK?

Then he says, you are as rare as the cobalt lotus, OK? There's a special blue lotus. It opens once a Buddha.

It opens. It's in some paradise. It's a special lotus.

Every time a Buddha comes to this world, it opens. So far in this world, for the last zillion years, there's only been three or four Buddhas, OK? It opens as a, what do you call it?

As a sign that the Buddha is coming, OK? Omen, yeah. This blue lotus suddenly opens in paradise.

And then everybody says, oh, another Buddha is on their way. OK, so it's opened like three times in the last zillion years. He says, for someone, this is verse 108, by the way, for someone to suddenly have an insight into why their husband is yelling at them is as frequent as a cobalt lotus.

OK, got it? And then he says something very interesting. And he says, you may wonder why a cobalt lotus realization would suddenly happen to somebody.

Like, what triggered that? And he said, proximity to a lama. You know, like they were on the same plane as some lama.

A real lama, you know, a really wise person. And they, you know, like they bumped into... I ran into my logic teacher, who's also my yoga, tantric yoga teacher, who's also the head of Gumen Tantric College and could be the next holder of Tsongkhapa's throne.

It's always taken from one of those two positions. I ran into him at the baggage area in San Francisco, right? I just, boom!

We just ran into each other physically, you know? OK, so if that happens to you, it's a blue cobalt... it's a cobalt lotus moment, OK?

And in the next day, you might have some insight into why your husband's yelling, OK? But it'll go away, OK? You have to bump into them every day, and it doesn't happen, OK?

So, it's interesting that in the middle of a philosophical text, the devil would have the insight that having a brush with a lama, a real lama, is enough that you would understand briefly why your husband's yelling, and then you would forget again. OK, got it? It's kind of beautiful.

He's kind of making a statement about guru devotion, which is a big subject of Lama Cipa, which is the most famous ritual from Tibet. And it was written by the same author. It was written by the same author.

I think he couldn't hold himself back from throwing in a little lama devotion there. OK, got it? He doesn't do it much in the text that I've finished so far, but maybe he comes later.

He calls it, the cobalt lotus springing up in your mind is an accident caused by a brush with a lama, OK, a real lama, OK, which is cool. Then he says, in 109, I am the king of this mind, you know? I am the king.

He calls the resident lord. I am the resident lord. I am the...

Yeah. I'm the lord of the mandala. I'm the tantric lord of this mandala, OK?

And there's only one thing that can unseat me, and that's the understanding that the husband is coming from you. But it hasn't happened, has it? OK, like blue lotus is happening every once in a while, but they just kind of fade away.

And here I am, OK? He calls himself, he's like being very modest, the lord of the mandala, you know, head of the Buddha families, you know? It's called khyab dak, OK?

I'm the khyab dak of this mind, OK? It's kind of... Modesty isn't one of his faults, OK?

Then 110, he says, and I'm going to probably remain here because people are resistant to new solutions. Human nature is to resist a really innovative solution to your life's problems, OK? And we see that with DCI.

Sometimes we have to tone down DCI to get more people to come. If we really hit them with the real thing, it's like people get, whoa. You know, people are uncomfortable with a radically new solution, even if they can see that the people teaching it are extremely successful.

They still... It's still hard for them to embrace something radically new, OK? And there is a tradition in Buddhism to water your message down until the student is ready.

It's called the three lower schools, OK? And Buddha did it. Buddha taught Abhidharma.

Buddha taught Sutra school. Buddha taught Mainomi school. They're all teachings of the Buddha, but they are watered down to reach people who resist radical solutions, OK?

So the devil is saying here, people avoid... Human nature is to avoid a radically new solution, you know? So people feel more comfortable with the old ones, you know?

I should talk to my husband. I should withhold dinner until such time as he apologizes. If it gets really bad, I'll withhold other things and I'll gain his respect this way.

You see what I mean? I will fight him for respect. I will demand respect, OK?

And it doesn't work. We all know it doesn't work. It frequently doesn't work, and we know that.

We all know that. But it's more comfortable to keep doing what we were doing before, OK? It's uncomfortable to embrace a new solution, OK?

And I think as a teacher, you have to keep that in mind, OK? Like, don't grind it in people's faces, you know? Sometimes they come and say, Yeah, but can I just talk to my husband?

Blah, blah, blah. Yeah, OK, yeah, OK. That'll help.

Yeah, I won't fix him dinner. Yeah, OK. Do that.

Try that. In the meantime, think about seeds, OK? With all the free time you have from not cooking.

You know? It's called upaya. What's upaya?

Yeah, like trick them, you know? Yeah, don't cook dinner during the hour that you saved, and think about seeds, OK? All right.

Eight more minutes, and then we'll take a break. Ineffective meditation number nine, verse 111, OK? Don't have any concepts at all in the mind, OK?

Just raw experience, OK? Don't have conceptual thinking. Avoid conceptual thinking.

Don't think about things. Don't think about solutions. Don't think about ideas.

We need to cool the room down a little bit. We have a principle in DCI that we keep from freezing. We keep people freezing.

And they get sick, and they pay attention. They get sick later, and they pay attention during the class. So it's worth it, OK?

Don't think of any concepts. Go into the mind and destroy all concepts. Don't have any concepts going in the mind.

He's going to talk more about that later, OK? Actually, to understand where the husband is really coming from requires conceptual thought. If you cancel all conceptual thought in your mind, you will never figure out because figure out means concept.

OK? So his only comment on this meditation where you free your mind from all concepts, all thinking about things, is, OK, ready? This one's so bad, I can't stop laughing about it.

OK, he says that in Tibetan. The devil's like, this one, it's not just a kemane, right? It's not just a joke.

It's like a half-hour show by a really good comedian, Louis C.K., doing a half-hour comedy routine. It's like, I can't stop laughing. From the moment they start meditation to the moment they stop meditating, and they're trying not to think of any concepts which could damage me.

It's so goddamn funny to me. It's so fun to see someone spend an hour meditating like that. It's like the most cool thing I can imagine.

OK? All right, one more. So when I was studying Sanskrit, I studied at Princeton with a very esteemed teacher.

His teacher was Franklin Edgerton, who discovered Buddhist Sanskrit, hybrid Sanskrit. And his teacher was Dwight Whitney, who invented Sanskrit grammar in the modern times. And he used to go off on loka.

OK? So there's a verbal root called loch, and it's also roch, because the R and L are interchangeable in Sanskrit as an initial. So ra and la.

If you ever talk to a Thai person, you understand. Wow, really good. OK?

So loka, which means the world. Right? The word for the world in Sanskrit is loka, but it means the shining.

OK? The word for the world means the shining. And the idea is that...

And there's an ancient theme in Sanskrit grammar, or derivation of words, that the world is shining from your brain. Your mind is in... lights up the world.

Your mind lights up the world. So the old word for world is that which is lit up. Loka.

And the lochana is your mind, and it is lighting up the world, like the way a flashlight would light up something outside at night. OK? Your mind is like a flashlight.

So it's kind of similar to the idea that things are coming from you. OK? So there's this idea, and it's not bad.

Awareness, which is almost the same as life, is so much a part of our life from the moment we're born that we don't notice the awareness. You see what I mean? We don't notice that we're aware.

If something radical happens and you lose awareness, like you're very, very ill or something, and you come back, then you have some appreciation of it. But every human being, mind, is lighting up the world. And we aren't aware of it because it's all the time.

Things that are happening all the time we aren't aware of. We stop being aware of. It's the same as the conversation in your mind.

It's been going on so long that you don't listen anymore. You just let it go. But the world is being lit up by the mind.

OK? You can call it, selsen rikpa, clear and knowing, definition of the mind, definition of awareness. So, there's a meditation that someone invented where you just focus on that fact of awareness, the mind's light, and you stay in there.

You stay in the light of the mind. And they think that's a great meditation. You become aware of the effulgent nature of consciousness and you sit there in the light.

You know, the light. You stay in the light. Got it?

OK, that's number, number ten. OK? And they think that's the emptiness of the mind.

OK? And they also think that's the meaning of illusion. OK?

Somehow. But, it's not. OK?

All right. OK. And it's not emptiness, for sure.

And you hear people say that. Oh, Geshe-la, I saw emptiness. Well, what's it like?

Oh, it's the light, you know. There's a joke in the debate ground. There's a 300-year joke.

People still remember some student who said, emptiness is a dark green color. And it's been a joke in the debate ground for 300 years. Like, I'd hate to be the guy who said that.

Like, nobody knows his name, but he's famous, you know. Yeah, the guy who said emptiness was green, was a green light, you know. But you hear stuff like that, you know.

I had a satori. I saw a golden light. You know, I went into the golden light.

It's not an absence of something. It cannot be emptiness. It's a presence of a color.

It's the opposite of emptiness. It cannot be emptiness. But you hear that.

You hear people say that. So, you know, that's good to have in your toolkit. To say, oh, you're having mistake number 10.

Go to verse 112. Okay? That's not emptiness.

And it's not useful. Okay? Again, you are focusing on the nature of the mind.

And right now, the nature of the mind is defective. The more close you get to it, the longer it's going to take you to fix it. Okay?

Got it? Now, 113. He makes a side comment, and then we'll do another internal discussion.

You got something in mind, Tim? Okay. Okay.

Now, 113. A slight comment by the devil. A very, very insightful one.

Okay? As I said, real devils are not stupid. You know?

C.S. Lewis says, don't go looking for people with horns. Okay? Real devils are the people who say, you know, I respect that you went this afternoon to the class.

I respect that you want to review it. You know, it's a good thing. It's just that the restaurant's having a special tonight, and there's a wine that you can't get any other night.

And I agree that the study's important. I think it's a good thing. I'm glad you're doing this Buddhism thing.

It's a good thing. But, you know, you can't do it all the time. You know, let's just go out tonight, and you hit it tomorrow morning.

Okay? And C.S. Lewis says, that's the devil. Okay?

The devil is sophisticated, elegant, intelligent, you know, cosmopolitan. The devil's not a fool. The devil doesn't ever look like the devil.

Okay? Got it? Now, at this point, the devil, who's so sophisticated, he says, you know what would mess me up, but it's never gonna, is if someone understood that I'm not, that I don't come from myself.

You know? If anyone ever got it, that I'm also coming from their seeds. Now that would mess me up.

But, it's not gonna happen, is it? He's like very, what do you call him, cynical. But he's right, right?

He says, he's just like, he makes an offhand comment, you know? Verse 113. He's like, you know what would mess me up?

He's been talking about loka, right? Like the effulgent awareness, you know? And then he says, he's like just thinking out loud.

Verse 113, and he says, you know what would really mess me up? If anyone ever figured out that I was coming from their seeds. But, you know, who's gonna do that, you know?

And then he goes on to 114, okay? And by the way, 114 marks a segue into a series of meditational mistakes based on the idea of empty space, okay? So there's an important Buddhist meditation called space-like meditation.

And I took this section and turned it into a meditation called the four spaces meditation. I took this section and turned it into a four spaces meditation because three of them seem like emptiness but are not. So I threw in the real one and the three that people mistake for emptiness and I lumped them all together.

So if you take DCI, I don't know what level it is, seven, you do these three wrong ones based on space, empty space. Because people over centuries have mistaken them for the real one. And then you do the real one, okay?

So, and it was really hard to teach the teachers because they kept getting confused, you know? They're like, well, what's number three? What's number two, you know?

And this is where it comes from, okay? Because the devil is happy that people have mistaken the word space-like meditation for empty space or other kinds of space, okay? So I'll tell you the first one because it's super stupid.

And this is an old Abhidharma mistake, okay? Space-like meditation is blue. You focus on blue because the sky is blue, okay?

So the word for space, nam-ga-akasa, the word in Sanskrit or Tibetan is the same for outer space and blue space and the space that an object occupies. Those three kinds of space, the word in Buddhism is the same. So that's a problem.

And there's a word for space used for emptiness, okay? So there's four kinds of space. This is where the discussion begins, okay?

And it's good to go through them so you don't get caught thinking that one of them is emptiness when it's not. So the obvious one is emptiness, not blue sky, okay? When they call emptiness meditation space-like meditation, they're not referring to space in the sense of the canopy over the earth that's blue, okay?

That one's easy. I'll give you the easy one for free, okay? Tim, you ready?

I'm hungry. I mean, I want to hear the next debate. The next group is going to be Aaron and Nick.

Let's give them a round of applause and welcome them up. We need the microphone, Tim. Oh, okay.

[Speaker 2]
Hey, how's it going?

[Speaker 1]
It's going okay.

[Speaker 2]
It doesn't look like everything's going okay. Is everything all right?

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, it's fine.

[Speaker 2]
What's wrong? It seems like something's wrong.

[Speaker 1]
Oh, well, to be honest, something came up at work. We had a contract with one of our clients and it just doesn't seem like they're going to pay the whole thing.

[Speaker 2]
Oh, man, that's rough. What are you going to do?

[Speaker 1]
I don't know.

[Speaker 2]
I have an idea. Why don't you write him a mean email?

[Speaker 1]
Oh, I have an idea. I think I'm going to write, like, a threatening and angry email. I'm going to threaten to sue.

I'm going to tell him you're breaking the contract. I'm going to come at him with everything we've got. I'm going to scare him.

What do you think?

[Speaker 2]
Oh, I see, like in the movies, right? That always works. Just threaten him.

Just sue him.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah.

[Speaker 2]
That always gets the money, right?

[Speaker 1]
Maybe I won't do that. I'm not sure. I don't know.

[Speaker 2]
All right, I got it. You just got to reason with him. Just be practical.

Just lay it all out, and if you put it all in the right words, he'll pay you.

[Speaker 1]
You know, I got an idea. I'm going to use logic. I'm going to reason with him.

I'm going to just speak to him rationally. I'm going to lay it out just how it is, and if I do it like that, he's definitely going to pay. You know, I'm just going to explain to him, this is the situation.

If we don't get this exact amount of money, the company can't even function. I think as long as he understands that, he's totally going to pay, right?

[Speaker 2]
Oh my gosh, you're so right. Every time I use reasoning, like rational thinking with someone, they always do what I want. Don't you have that same experience?

[Speaker 1]
Well, you know, I am married, so I guess I think I catch what you're saying. Yeah. Reasoning doesn't always work.

I'm going to have to think about this a little bit more. I don't know. All right.

[Speaker 2]
I have an idea. You should tell him all of the things that are going to happen if you don't get that money. Explain to him your kids.

What are your kids going to do? They have to eat. Your wife, your mom who's sick.

You got to make him have pity on you.

[Speaker 1]
Oh, I got an idea. I totally have an idea. I'm going to write him a letter, and I'm going to explain.

I'm going to make him feel sorry for us. I'm going to explain my mom is sick, and the dog has to go to the vet, and the kid little Jimmy needs a new foot. I got to explain to him everything, you know?

And then he's going to feel sorry for us, and he's totally going to want to give us the money, right? That's a good idea.

[Speaker 2]
Hold on. Hold on a second. You think if you make him feel sorry for you and have pity on you, then he's going to want to give you all his money?

[Speaker 1]
Maybe not. Maybe that's not such a good idea.

[Speaker 2]
No. Okay, I have this idea. It's totally out of left field, and it's not even related to what we're talking about, but have you ever thought about whether or not you actually pay your bills on time or pay people who you owe?

[Speaker 1]
Of course I always pay people who I owe on time, except for the catering company that was a couple weeks ago, though, and I'm only a few weeks late on it, is what I mean. But other than that, I always pay my bills on time, except for that production company who does our events. And okay, I see where you're going with this.

I'll take that into consideration.

[Speaker 2]
Good idea.

[Speaker 1]
Thank you.

[Speaker 2]
No problem. Thank you.

[Speaker 1]
So it's great to see you in Sedona. How are things going back where you work and live?

[Speaker 2]
It's a struggle. Yeah? Yeah.

What's going on? Well, I just have this boss, and she just doesn't listen to anybody, and she just wants to do it all her way, and she disrespects other people, and I just feel like I'm unwanted there, and there's no gratitude. Wow.

It's really hard.

[Speaker 1]
Really hard.

[Speaker 2]
What are you doing about it? Well, I've tried to talk to her, and I talk to other people about her. I complain.

We all commiserate. Well, not all of us, but some of us commiserate together. So do you think everybody sees this woman the same way?

No. She gets on with other people really well. Really?

Yeah. It's like, why doesn't she get on with me? But she doesn't get on with a few other people too, right?

It appears that way, yeah. Yeah, so do you ever talk to them about it and try to help them through their day? Yeah.

Okay, that's nice, yeah.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, I do.

[Speaker 2]
So anything changed? Any improvement? Oh, you know what?

Yeah. After I, well, I'm a little embarrassed to say this, but... Go ahead.

We're friends. I felt like a pressure cooker, and things kept building up, and then one day, I just exploded at her, and I basically threw a temper tantrum. Temper tantrum.

Yeah. Those are good, yeah.

[Speaker 1]
And then things got better.

[Speaker 2]
Really? Things got better after that.

[Speaker 1]
Things got better after that. Yeah.

[Speaker 2]
She started consulting me, and I felt like I was being listened to, and things got better. Great, great. So have you had a lot of luck in your past with temper tantrums?

A fair amount. Yeah?

[Speaker 1]
Always? Every time? It works?

[Speaker 2]
No, once I got grounded.

[Speaker 1]
Oh, okay. Only once, huh? Right.

[Speaker 2]
Once that I remember, but you know, we don't necessarily like to remember those kinds of things. No, we don't. But it sounds like anger may not be an effective way of addressing this woman and her problems with you.

Well, it works a good part of the time. It works sometimes, right.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah.

[Speaker 2]
And there was an improvement after the temper tantrum, and you're pretty sure it was as a result of that temper tantrum. Yes. Okay.

So did you ever consider that maybe you said you talked with some of the people there about their bad days with this woman? Do you think maybe the improvement could have had another cause? I guess it's possible.

Anything's possible. You going to think about that? Yeah, I'll try that out.

All right.

[Speaker 1]
Okay. Okay. What?

Questions? Any questions? Microphone.

Thank you.

[Speaker 2]
I wanted to ask you about number seven. So verse 102, which is go into your mind and pretend that everything is okay and believe you have the pure mind. And the Nyingmas, I believe, teach pure from the side of you're already pure and you just need to recognize that.

And so I wondered what the difference between this and what they teach of being a pure mind.

[Speaker 1]
Earlier we had the angel saying that you did have an inherent part of your mind which is your Buddha nature. So I think that's where that tradition comes from. And I think it's probably grounded on a correct thing.

You know, every tradition, including the one we're in, people have taken correct statements and made weird traditions out of them. And it happens to everybody. It happens to all traditions.

But I think the basis of it, I don't think this is talking about that. I think that's probably well-founded in the idea that the emptiness of you or of your mind is the basis of your enlightenment. And so I think that's probably a good tradition.

Of course, some people probably didn't understand it and made it weird. But they've done that with everything. Probably they'll do it with this text.

Then somehow, you know, it's not very clear what this one, but he calls it pretend misunderstanding doesn't exist. So it's like somehow you recognize it and you pretend it's not there. Okay, so that's all.

A lot of these, we don't have more information about them. I think what a translator should do is try to find an archetype which fits that description, you know, like a typical mistake that many people make. And I guess you could say kind of this cheerful thing where people say, you're all right, just recognize you're all right and don't worry about it.

And, you know, your problem is that you think something's wrong with you, but really everything's fine and you're okay. And just recognize that you're okay and things will be all right. Okay?

Which is not true. Okay. All right.

How's that? Other question? Utpala.

[Speaker 2]
Thank you for teaching, Geshe-la. And this kind of is related to Summer's question, but I can't recall the number of the meditation, but it was about the nature of the mind and described as being clear and aware. And there's no mistaken concept in the qualities clear and aware.

And so I'm wondering how that one fits supporting the devil.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, good. Okay. The theory presented at the beginning of the whole string of meditations is that if you just focus on the mind, you're focusing on something which has an inherent mistake in it, that's always been mistaken.

So it might reinforce it if you just meditate on the fact that the mind is aware, that somehow... And it's true, there's no... You would think it was a neutral meditation.

It'd be like meditating on a stone or something, that it's made of rock or something. And it shouldn't hurt you. But, you know, I think the argument is that the longer you don't recognize the nature of your mind, the more ingrained it becomes.

And that almost shades in to Shantideva's accusation that you are hurting seven billion people because you didn't get enlightened today. But that's a little too much. Okay.

One more.

[Speaker 2]
So, verse 106, analyzing the analyzer.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah.

[Speaker 2]
And this infinite regression, doesn't it have a value of because of that regression you can get to a realization that it never ever really existed?

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, I think it could be used that way. Yeah. I think he's criticizing stopping there or keeping going.

When I read the Tibetan, it feels like he was criticizing someone who was trying to be cute and saying, look, you can find the looker at the looker and you can find the looker at the looker at the looker and it just went on and on and it didn't resolve. And the person didn't intend to resolve it. It felt like he was criticizing someone who was trying to be cute.

Veronica has a question that Manny left with us because he had to catch a plane. So, here we go. He asks, last night you described how a continuous flow of karma creates a special form of karmic arising that doesn't start, peak and fade away but rather is a constant arising that has always been and will always be.

[Speaker 2]
As I understand it, karma arises in the mind. This seems to be circular logic to me, i.e., the mind creating itself. My understanding is that a thing can't come from itself.

Can you please explain?

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, okay. This is called the cocoon question in Kamalashila, okay? And it's that if I do something in the morning and then I do something in the afternoon and I do something in the evening, it's that those seem to be three different things, right?

There's Michael's mind in the morning, Michael's mind in the afternoon, and Michael's mind in the evening. And then there's an argument against the idea that there's no self-nature which says, if there's no Michael, then Michael cannot experience the results of his deeds, you see? If Michael hurts somebody on Tuesday and Michael gets that result on Wednesday, well, there has to be a self called Michael because it isn't that Utpala gets hurt on Wednesday when Geshe-la makes a mistake on Tuesday.

So there must be some common denominator between Michael on Tuesday and Michael on Wednesday. And that common denominator should be a self-existent thing. And then Kamalashila gets asked this question.

And then he says, that's true, but your seeds connect the two. And then he compares it to a cocoon. He says, your seeds start a cocoon on Tuesday and end the cocoon on Wednesday.

You see what I mean? So your seeds, you have connector seeds that connect Michael on Tuesday to Michael on Wednesday. And that's a separate karmic ripening of Michael over time.

So there's a, something glues Michael together from Tuesday morning to Wednesday afternoon. And that's also coming from seeds. So some schools of ancient India have said, because karma is experienced from what you did before, then Michael must exist independent of karma.

But then Kamalashila is like, no, that proves karma. Because karma is the thing that, what do you call it, glues together the Michael on Tuesday and the Michael on Wednesday. No, Michael's mind is also a gluing together.

And there's two kinds of emptiness. There's the emptiness of a pen, which is the fact that something is gluing the pieces together in a static moment, in a single moment. But then there's the emptiness of Michael over time.

So when you're discussing the pen, you break down the pieces of the pen. When you're discussing Michael, you break down the moments of Michael's stream, the stream of Michael. And that's also empty.

So there are streams of, there are moments of consciousness, but what ties them together is a seed coming from your mind. And I like to talk about Alzheimer's. Me and David were talking about Alzheimer's.

We decided that the sign that you have Alzheimer's is you can't remember what the word means. But the idea is that if those seeds fail, you get a discontinuity in your consciousness. You can't remember what happened this morning, or you can't remember your own children, there's a karma for continuity.

There's a different, separate karma for being continuous over time. And so it's not the case that the morning's mind is the same as the mind in the afternoon. They're not the same thing.

The morning's mind has created the mind in the afternoon, but by making seeds that glue it to the mind in the afternoon. Cool? And the question about emptiness coming from your seeds, okay?

That's a problem. I'll repeat it again. And I'll go at it from a different angle.

Here's a famous angle. The mind is known in Buddhism to change instant by instant. Even if you're not married, you still can understand that, okay?

Or you don't have certain sponsors, or whatever. Things change. Wait, we just fixed that problem.

I take it back. So things change instant to instant, right? And there's a debate about the direct perception of emptiness, because emptiness is constant and cannot change.

It never changes. Its quality never changes. But the quality of the mind is super changing, like even more than other things.

It is moments of santana. So before the band, there was a Sanskrit name called santana. And it means the moments of consciousness coming one after another.

And it's very changing in quality every moment. But then the question comes, how can a mind whose nature is to constantly be in and out and like this, how can it focus on an unchanging thing? How is that even possible?

And then if you say, aren't there things that don't come from karmic seeds? Because aren't there things that don't change? And isn't it true that all things that come from seeds get bigger and then decline?

Isn't it true that there's this sine wave with all things that change? So how can emptiness, if a person's in the direct perception of emptiness, how can it be that their mind's seeds are creating the emptiness like the first husband in the kitchen? How can it be that the mind that's perceiving emptiness directly is producing that emptiness from its seeds in the way your mind produces the husband, the real husband in the kitchen?

Because wouldn't that mean that emptiness changes from instant to instant? And there's a difference between the word change and constant. Constant in its quality, okay?

Constant in its quality is different from the idea of change, okay? So, is there a two-headed purple elephant in this room, full size? There isn't, okay?

Now, does that lack of a two-headed purple elephant in this room ever get more or less? Does it vary? No, because if it did, you'd have his foot would appear.

You see, if he was less gone than he was five minutes ago, if he was less gone, it would mean parts of him would start to appear. If he was more gone, then we couldn't even imagine a purple elephant. You see what I mean?

He doesn't get more or less gone. He's just gone, okay? And then in the monastery, the kids, the 13-year-olds in the debate ground who always cause trouble, they're like, when if the elephant is halfway in the room, but he's halfway out of the room?

We get these arguments. So anyway, absences can be constant, because if they were not constant, then little pieces of the elephant would show up in the room. Got it?

Okay? So emptiness is constant, but the same pattern is repeating over and over. It doesn't get more or less.

Okay? And it's still coming from your mind. Okay?

Or what's the fault of saying it doesn't come from your mind? Then emptiness would not have emptiness. Okay?

Then emptiness would not have emptiness. And all things must have emptiness. Okay?

Got it? All right. Let's do a little more for fun.

We'll just do it for good luck. Okay? We have like seven more minutes.

All right. Okay. Here's a few more silly ones.

Okay? So, ineffective meditation number 11. Meditate on empty space.

Okay? And that's... So let's go through the four kinds of space.

Okay? And maybe that's a good place to stop. Okay?

Because next, he's going on to the most important meditation on emptiness, which is one and many. But you could also say parts and wholes. Okay?

So that's a good place to start in March. Okay? March 1st, 2nd, and 3rd.

Same place. I kind of like it here in this room. Do you?

The couch is more comfortable. The food is more comfortable. Okay.

So let's just decide if we're all around. Okay. So, there's four kinds of space.

Okay? The problem came because nam kha tabu ting ngen zin. Say nam kha.

Tabu. Ting ngen zin. Meditation that is similar to space.

Space-like meditation. Okay? So, what I like to do is instead of fighting with people, don't do the wrong space meditation.

I did something clever. I think it was clever. I always think I'm clever.

Right, me? So rather than keep reminding people and correcting people, I require them to do all four. You know?

Then they don't mess up. Okay? So, here's a meditation you can do.

We teach it in DCII level. I don't know. So we, first we, and we take you up on a grassy knoll, which is near Beaver Creek, actually, where we once had a meeting, if you remember.

Grassy place. And you go there, and you lay down on your back, and you look at the sky. Okay?

And it's important not to have any trees in your line of sight. So you're just looking at the blue sky. So that's the first meditation on space, which is, you know, the word again, the word for sky, and the word for outer space, and the word for absence of place is the same in Sanskrit and Tibetan.

Okay? Nam-kha or akasha. So, in the meditation, you lie on your back on a nice green field, and you just look at the blue sky.

And that's, you know, it's calming. Does it hurt the devil? No.

Okay? Then you imagine that, this also comes from an experience we had, you imagine that it's getting dark. Okay?

Like you're out in the woods, and it's getting dark. So then the sky gets more gray. The blue turns to, shifts to gray, and you're still staring at the blue.

It shifts to gray, and then it goes to black. Okay? And then you're kind of looking at what?

Outer space. Okay? In English we call it outer space.

So again, in Tibetan and Sanskrit, the word is the same. Okay? So rather than looking at the blue canopy, you're imagining the place where the stars sit.

Okay? The black velvet where the stars sit. Okay?

Endless, infinite outer space. Okay? And that, if you do these four spaces in a row, it kind of sets you up for the real one.

It's not bad. It's not bad. So then you meditate.

You just, on your back, it turned night, and you're staring at the black. Okay? And that's the second meaning of space.

Okay? Which is the outer space. Okay?

The place between planets. Okay? Then you can shift to, ready?

The place where your body is resting. Okay? I don't mean the grass under your back.

I mean the space you are occupying. Okay? The space you are occupying.

Okay? Which is empty. That's, that's real philosophical empty space, and it cannot be perceived with the eye.

It cannot be perceived with these two eyes. You need the third eye of logic. You see?

So you, it can only be perceived through a process of logic. You know? The place you are occupying right now.

Okay? The place, the space you are occupying right now. Okay?

And I don't mean the absence of air. Okay? And then, what do we always say in DCI?

Do you remember at this point? We say it's not like displacing water in a bathtub. It's not that.

Okay? It doesn't mean that. It doesn't mean if I move over there, oxygen molecules have to get out of the way.

You see what I mean? It doesn't mean that. It means the space I occupy, philosophically speaking, is empty.

Okay? If it weren't, I could, I cannot enter this space. You see?

Because it's occupying that space. So, it's exclusive. You can, somebody, only one thing can be in it at the same time.

Okay? So, that lack of, they call it togreg, togreg meba, togreg kakpa. Yeah, they call it, yeah, asanga, asanga, a lack of obstruction.

It's asanga's name because his mind was there as unstoppable. It means unstoppable. So, you know, there's, it's occupying space.

Now, a test, if you're teaching this to your students, okay, a test to see if they got it right is to ask them if they blew up this planet, you know, which, you know, if we work hard, we can do it. If we blew up the whole planet into dust, you know, would this space that the chair is occupying, would it remain or not? It would.

Okay? It wouldn't be on the planet anymore. The dust would be going, you know, go everywhere else.

But that space would always be there. Okay? In that sense, okay, if you want to go deeper, Yes!

Okay. Thank you. In that sense, ah, no, I forgot.

The space will stay if everything is destroyed. Oh, in that sense, empty space, which is the third space now, okay, we had blue sky, we had black outer space, both visual, and now we have theoretical space, that's almost equivalent to location. It's almost equivalent to location.

You see, this is occupying a location. So those coordinates, right, X, Y, and Z axes will not change if this planet blows up. You know, and even as the whole galaxy moves away from the Big Bang, that location, in theory, right, those three lines intersecting, that will always be here.

That will stay here. Okay? So that's, that's empty space.

Okay? So now so far we have sky, outer space, in English terms, okay, sky, outer space, and empty space. Okay?

The third one has often been mistaken for emptiness. And that's the point of the text here. Because meditation number 11, verse 114, the other guy misunderstands the reference space-like meditation, namkathabuddhi ngintsen.

He misunderstands the meaning of space-like, and he takes it to mean empty space. Okay? What are the, well, what's the problem, what's wrong with that meditation?

It does nothing to hurt the devil. Okay? It doesn't touch him at all.

But, I think it can be twisted into a useful meditation if you take the person to the next one. Okay? So that's why I like to teach the four together, because people avoid making the first three mistakes.

Okay? So oftentimes it's useful to teach someone a mistaken meditation so they can experience it. And that's what he's doing here with the book.

He wants us to go through the list of mistaken meditations in case one day we go to a class and someone tries to talk us into, this is meditation, this is emptiness. Okay? Then we'll remember, oh no, that was number 14.

You know, that's just number 14. That's not an emptiness meditation. Okay?

Okay, the last one is, what I like to do is sit, I'm still on my back. I like to teach the meditation as you're still on your back because it keeps people calm. There's no movement.

You're still laying on your back. And then think about the planet behind your back. Okay?

Think about the planet that's touching the skin on your back. And where did, who made the planet? You see?

And then people will say, oh, there was a big bang. It was like throwing a pie in most curly space. And little pieces of pie flew everywhere.

And then we're just on one of those pieces. The piece behind your back that's a piece of pie going out infinitely after the big bang, it's just another piece of the big bang. So it was kind of created by the big bang.

Who made the big bang? And eventually it's kind of cool to lead a student into the question of if all things are coming from them. And you can call it a big bang, you just can't call it unique.

You can't call it a singularity. That's a mistake. But there could have been a big bang that was triggered by another bang before.

That's okay. But who created the one? I think it's 50 million years ago.

I mean, who created that one? Who did that one? According to us.

Who did that one? Yeah, you did. Then I think it's useful to teach people, you know, the pen is okay, right?

The pen's okay. Teach the pen. That's coming from you.

Teach the husband who's yelling at you. It's coming from you. But if your students want to go deeper, explore, if the big bang is coming from you, okay?

And in the end, in this school, you have to say, it is. Does that imply I was there? Yes.

I mean, you can, the memory of the big bang, you know, or the logical conclusion that there was a big bang, that's a current event. But the original big bang, 50 million years ago, if that's the right number, I don't remember. 50 billion, oh, sorry.

I was there, and I did create it, okay? It was a present perception at the time, okay? I was there, you see?

And you can lead people back there. It's kind of cool, you see? You didn't just create your wife or your husband, and you didn't just create the pen, but the earth you're standing on, you also created it, okay?

You also created that. You must have, okay? Got it?

Okay. So the emptiness, the fourth space, is an easy way to teach it, okay? If you're in a group of 500 or 3,000 people, ask everybody to raise their hand.

I like to say left hand, because it's a tantric thing. I say, raise your left hand. Everybody, raise your left hand, and then I say, point your first finger, and they say, point your first finger.

And then I say, point to one thing in this room that's not coming from you, from your seeds. And then when you're teaching it, you can go like drama. You can go...

I like to go this way at the end, okay? And that's emptiness, okay? Then they reach the emptiness, okay?

That's all. It's called tendu mepa. It's a Buddhist method of reaching emptiness.

It's called tendu mepa. This ten is B-S-T-A-N, which means cannot be demonstrated. You point to.

You cannot point to a thing that is not coming from your mind. And in that way, you reach emptiness. A crowd of a thousand people can get pretty close to emptiness with this little finger thing.

First finger. Okay, got it? It's kind of cool.

So the fourth space is the... Again, it's a space you cannot see with your eyes. You see it with your third eye.

And it's what's left when you're looking for things you didn't create, okay? It's what you come to at the end, which is a special kind of nothing, okay? Got it?

And that's Ketubje's thing, if you're into that, okay? All right? So that's a useful way to choose the four spaces.

Next time, we'll pick up at 1.17. And he's about to go into a correct Buddhist meditation called one or many. And that's basically founded on the first chapter of Nāgārjuna, which again, I encourage you to chew on. It's something you can definitely spend some useful hours with until March, okay?

And you will be confused. And you will say, this sounds ridiculous. You know, this guy's like drunk or something.

You know, you will think that. But I urge you, I beg you, keep at it. Just chip away at it.

Asanga? The second time he quit and left his retreat? Yeah, but what's the other one?

I like the other one. No, the one... Oh, what was it before that?

What was the first one? Yeah, there was a guy with an anvil. There was a guy with an anvil between his legs.

You know, this is how they fix shoes in India. They hold them with their feet. He's got an anvil between his feet.

And he's rubbing at it with a cotton cloth. And Asanga just left his retreat cave and he said, Dadao was this, you know? Four years, I think.

Three years. Three years. And he meets this guy at the bottom of the mountain.

He says, What are you doing? He just looks at him. He's this old guy.

He says, Oh, I'm just making a needle. And Asanga's like, Now that's persistent. And he gets ashamed.

And he turns around and he goes back to the cave. Okay, got it? So while you're trying to read Nagarjuna, it's like rubbing at an anvil with a soft cotton cloth.

All right? But just do it. I swear your mind will explode in a good way.

Okay? Just dig at it. Don't stop.

I think you guys are ready. You had the background. And it'll seem confusing.

And then hang in there. And he's not repeating himself. And he's not...

None of it is BS. It's all extraordinary. Okay?

And I believe the sign that he really was an Arya is that he only uses simple words. And he writes in poetry. He always writes in poetry.

And they're weird poetry The goer is not the going. The going is not the going. You know, it's just like...

It's like a song. But he never uses big words. It's very similar to Jesus in a way.

He never uses philosophy. He uses tiny, short words. And I believe that's a sign that he was an Arya.

Because he's so... With four lines of that, you can fruitfully spend a month on it. Okay?

So, go for it. Okay? Alright, see you in March.

I'd like to thank Tim and Jigme for working so hard.