Дебаты дьявола с ангелом, часть 13: Диалог об уме и медитации (2019, Аризона), занятие 1

[Speaker 1]
Wow. Blast from the past. Okay.

Hi, we just got back from a tour. We went to, first we went to Japan, and it was wonderful, and we were invited by a company that works there, and I don't know. It was kind of a strange thing.

They had me up on the stage with all these famous Japanese, what do you call it, motivational speakers. One guy sold 20 million books. Every third family has his book in Japan, and it was really nice, and then we spent time with a very famous diamond dealer, who's the largest private jewelry collection in the world, starting from 3,000 years ago, Mesopotamia, and that was really awesome, and Orit put on Queen Elizabeth's diamond, hundred million dollar diamond necklace, and but he wouldn't let her go home with it, and then we went to Shenzhen, South China, and we're doing a special program there called Action Pie, and then we went to Vienna, and we had a wonderful time there, and there's a, I think that's the sixth year. They're in the sixth year of DCI program, so they're halfway through, and they're just amazing.

It's called Dach, what do you call it, Deutschland Ostreich, and Schwest, all the German-speaking countries, so they all come there, and we have a good time, and it was just amazing, but we went around the world in ten days or something. It was kind of hard, physically, but the thing in China was interesting, because I was using this teaching, which is called Angel-Devil, right? Dangdzin Shangdip in Tibetan is called Dangdzin Shangdip.

It's about a 300 years old teaching, and it's given by the first Panchen Lama, who was a famous poet, great, great philosopher, one of the best in history, and a pacifist, a great pacifist, who personally prevented a war in Tibet, and so it's a cool book. Come in, handsome. Sit down.

Mark. Just kidding. And so I, you know, I'm supposed to come up with 12 DCI levels, and DCI is a business training organization, and we use the ancient wisdom to teach business people around the world.

So the team in China, this trip, has two million followers. It's a community of two million business people, and so we talked to the 40 top people, and it's amazing, and I was trying to get a new idea for them, you know, I like your hair, and then I was thinking this would be a really nice class to use there, because what this book is about, and it's very famous, and it hasn't really, there hasn't been a good translation, and I think we should do one. It needs a commentary.

It's poetry, and it's too difficult to understand without some kind of commentary, so when I have a free day, I'll write a commentary, and it's gonna be nice. I think it's a spiritual classic. I think it'll be like, I don't know, Dante's Inferno or something, and it's an amazing, amazing book, but it's basically an argument in one person's mind between understanding and misunderstanding.

So it's a very famous ... dang dzin means tendency to see things that aren't there. Shang dep means like, what do you call it, like a fierce argument, where they're tearing each other apart, and it's in one person's mind, okay?

So the whole argument, it's an argument within one person's mind, and it's amazing, and then it's, when he introduces it, he calls it, this is a book on Mahamudra, okay? What's the main emphasis of a Mahamudra book? Yeah, you're meditating on your own mind, and it's supposed to be better.

Do you remember why, anybody? Not the human computer, huh? It's always there, you don't have to buy a meditation object.

Yeah, it's the most interesting thing to people, and it's constantly changing, so it's interesting to watch. So those of you who are like me and bang your head on the closet when you fall asleep doing meditation, it's supposed to be a particularly effective meditation to use your own mind as the object of meditation, okay? And he starts out with that, he starts out with describing why it's a Mahamudra meditation, okay?

Mahamudra also refers to experiences you have as you die, okay? So as you die, then parts of your body open up, and you get flashes of insight by nature, not by training, okay? So it also refers to the direct perception of certain deeper truths while you're in the act of dying, okay?

So that's all called Path Mahamudra, okay? Sorry, She, Foundation Mahamudra, okay? And then, so what we've been using this text as, and it's a thing we call diamond mining, which Nick can tell you about tomorrow, maybe.

So upstairs here, we have a whole department, ancient book translation department, and I'm going to tell you about it tomorrow. I have a presentation tomorrow about it. But basically, we are translating the ancient classics of Buddhism, two and a half thousand years of classics.

And she's just amazed about it, and it's okay. And we think of it as snow on the mountain, on the top of the mountain. So in our college, the snow falls upstairs, and people sit up there, and we go through the ancient classics of Buddhism, and they're extremely difficult.

And we're going through them in an amazing way. I'll tell you more about it tomorrow. But then, we see it as the snow melts, and the water comes downstairs.

And then down here, we teach teachers, mainly right now, Diamond Cutter Institute teachers, which is business programs. But we base them on the ancient wisdom. So we have a constant flow of new snow upstairs, and we have constant flow of new ideas coming downstairs.

And I have two reasons to give these talks in Sedona. I mean, one is, some of the people who work here in the college, you know, they have moved here from all over the world. And we don't see each other very often, to be honest.

I think I'm here half the year, and when I'm here, I'm sleeping off the jet lag, and doing gardening, and trying to see my partner, and Veronica, and thanks for your nice note. And you know, so I have to, it's a, what do you call, delicate line to walk, like not being home enough. And when I'm home, I have to be home.

So then we just end up not seeing each other very much. So I thought it would be nice, I would like to give these talks three or four times a year. And I think it's nice that we just all see each other.

And people often move to Sedona thinking that they're going to see us. And then they move away, six months later, having never seen anyone. And you know, we're just all really, really busy doing sweet things.

Although Nick's falling asleep right now. He's building a yoga studio, and doing other things, and running the whole translation department. So anyway, the idea is we take the ancient wisdom, we go diamond mining, we pick out great ideas, and then we try to use it in real life.

And I think last year, 30,000 people came to DCI programs. We have a talk in Taipei in two weeks, I think. 3,000 people are signed up.

But I think if we do it here, two things happen. I think our community gets a little closer to each other. We get an excuse to see each other.

And I think, secondly, it helps me to have a little laboratory where I can test out new ideas. If you fall asleep right away, then I'll change the presentation slightly. And like that.

And it's been working. We had some nice experiences in China. We taught this, we taught what I taught you last, what was it?

December? November? I taught it in China for two days, and it was really cool.

We had a really, really good time. And so I think it's, my idea is to go on like that. So how do you use this text in your real life?

We all have an internal conversation, you know. And we have a, we've promised 12 DCI levels. We're on level, we just finished level 10, right?

Which is about managing anger. And then people keep asking me, what's level 11? We release the new level every November in Berlin, because Germany's where we started, the first level.

The first time the first level started. Kind of in Austria, right? Peter, where are you?

Yeah. You were the first organizer, I think, ever. He organized something in Vienna, and then a volcano blew up in Iceland, and there were no international flights.

And I was stuck in New York, and he had paid $8,000 for the Prince's Palace, and I couldn't go. And so that was the first DCI event ever. We finally got on the first flight out, and the president of Lufthansa was on the plane, because he swore it wouldn't fall down.

And he was willing to fly with us, you know. So we were like, okay. Then they flew to Africa and up.

And anyway, so every year the first level is held, and the new level is revealed in Germany. And I'm working on it, and it's called the inner conversation. And it's based on this text, okay?

Like how to monitor your inner conversation. I thought it was so original and cool, and then people showed me like 12 business books already called Inner Conversation. So that's okay.

And the idea is that there's a good part of your mind and a bad part of your mind, okay? And we have that little picture in America of the devil and talking to the angel. And the devil says, you know, I don't know, eat more chocolate.

And the angel says, that's not good for you. And then they argue in your mind, right? And so this whole text, written, I don't know, 400 years ago, it's a real angel versus devil talk, okay?

But it's different. It's a lot different. And they're talking about a battle between two states of mind, okay?

And most people don't have this battle, because it's the understanding of emptiness fighting the mind who doesn't understand emptiness, or who understands it partially, okay? Like a partial understanding. So he's picking on people who have a partial understanding of emptiness.

Slightly wrong. And then against that devil is the angel. And the angel is a perfect understanding of emptiness.

And the goal is, according to this idea, that if you understand emptiness, you would never have problems in your life. Especially with people, okay? And I use this inner conversation, I use the text myself.

I try to try it on myself, because I need it every day, because I meet irritating people every day, okay? Like word. And just kidding.

Not. But you know, I do, you know, we're so busy, and we meet so many people, and we work in so many countries, and we're tired, because we just got off the plane, and we had two hours of sleep or something. And so I do have personal challenges.

I do meet people who give me a hard time. And then if you understand emptiness, if you have a strong angel in your mind, you can turn it into a beautiful thing, you see? You can not just not get angry, but you can actually turn it into an almost divine experience, when you meet irritating people.

So that would be a nice thing to learn, right? So that's basically, that's what we're gonna do for three days, how to use an understanding of emptiness to, when you have challenges, basically, okay? You can use it for goals, of course, but I think each of us, the first motivation in life is to avoid suffering, irritating people.

And I think let's talk about it in that context, okay? Challenges with your health, or financial challenges, or personal problems. How do you use the inner conversation to deal with that, okay?

And we're pretty deep into the text. I've been teaching this text for six or seven years, off and on, more off than on. And my goal is to finish it.

I think I can finish by 2022, and if we go kind of at this rate. And so I think we're kind of halfway through, and I beg the patience of people who haven't come before, because if I review the whole thing as I did last time, and the time before, and the time before, and the time before, we won't get, we'll never finish, okay? So if you haven't been to this series in the last six, seven years, just relax, okay?

You can use the angel on me as the irritating person in your life tonight, and I'll teach you how to do it, okay? So don't get all excited, and don't give up. And it's, you know, he was a great philosopher.

He's going very deep, he's going very subtle. And I just want to jump into that. I don't want to review again the whole thing, which we did last time, okay?

Now, tools. I gave you some tools, okay? You're going to have a reading every night, which is about 25 more verses from his poem.

And we will never cover them, but at least you have it in your hand. And then there's my notes to the verses, because I don't think, without an explanation, I don't think you can see where it's going, okay? So I'm going to teach from the notes, and I'm not going to do this Geshe Michael thing of explaining every single Tibetan word, because I learned that over the course of the last five, six years, it's too much for people, and it goes too slow.

So I'm just kind of, kind of, I'm going to follow the flow of ideas. I'll tell you what verse we're on, then you go home and try to fit the verse to what I said, okay? And and I think that's the only way we'll ever get done with this text, okay?

He lived to a hundred. For me to finish this, I'm going to have to do the same. So I'm just saying, he said he lived to a hundred, which in old ...

you're talking about a country where people died at 40, and he was very unusual. He lived to 92 or something, but he's called the Hundred Year Lama. Okay, so here we go.

What is the state of mind that can protect you when you meet an irritating person, or you have a problem in your life? The landlord of your new yoga studio is a pain in the ass, and like, how can you use this internal conversation to deal with that problem, okay? And I do mean internal conversation, okay?

And this is a kind of meditation, all right? It's a meditation that you walk around with all day long, and as your mind talks to your mind, which it does, right? All the time.

You train an angel to step in and pick up the conversation, you see? And how often do you need to use it? About once every five minutes, okay?

And I'm not kidding. You know, I have a normal ... we all have our own work, we have our own life, we meet people.

Rosa's a famous fashion designer, and you meet people all day, and you have challenges all day. We all have. We equally have challenges.

So you can learn to use this angel in your head, okay? And he would say one more thing when he advertises. He would say, if you get it, if you manage to install the angel in your mind, where she can talk every five minutes, okay?

You will be a happy person for the rest of your life, and you will be super successful. And if you don't, you cannot be happy. So he's not saying you'll be happier.

He's not saying that. He's saying, if you don't understand where the world is coming from, you will never really be happy, okay? Things will conspire to make you unhappy, okay?

Every time you're unhappy, you are misunderstanding the world, okay? And so he's very radical. He's saying, I don't want to improve your life, you know?

Either you get an angel in your head, or you don't. If you do, your life is perfect. And if you don't, your life sucks.

And there's no in-between. He does not propose an in-between, okay? So, here we go.

So actually, we're going after angels who aren't quite great, okay? Nice, but not ... no cigar.

I was trying to explain this to a Chinese friend. Nice, but no cigar. He's like, what's a cigar got to do with it?

What does cigar have to do ... I don't know. But anyway, not quite perfect, okay?

So, he's going after meditations which are not quite perfect, okay? Which is good for people like most of you, who have been trying to meditate for 20 years or 25 years. And you know, he's pointing out subtle flaws in meditation, okay?

For us, okay? So, I think it's a good ... it's a good text for the people in this room.

I'd say the average meditation years in this room is about 20 that I'm aware of. 25? 50?

Okay, just kidding. Okay, I'm on verse ... I'm going to start at 117, which is where we left off last time.

And don't worry too much about looking at it, okay? I would encourage you to just listen. And take the text home and look at it at home, okay?

First, look at the notes. Then you'll remember what I said. And then look at the poetry and see how it matches the notes, okay?

See if you can figure that out. So, that's your homework, okay? And you can do it for the next few weeks, or ...

it doesn't matter. Take it home and, you know, like before you go to bed or something, just chew on it a little bit, okay? All right, here we go.

So, in verse 117, he's talking about a special meditation. In the structure of this book ... I wouldn't put it there.

Take it down, yeah. I don't ... no, they're gonna look at that and not listen.

Okay, read it at home. Figure out at home what I said, okay? But he's talking about ...

there's a huge section where he's going to talk about ideas of meditation that were popular in Tibet 400 years ago, okay? There were ... Tibet was ...

what do you call ... exploding with this new Buddhism stuff. And people were coming up with all kinds of meditations, you know?

And so, he ... the first part of his book is pointing out how they're not quite ... they're nice, but they're not ...

no cigar. Nice, but no cigar? Close, but no cigar, okay?

So, there ... he says, you know, that's nice. That's good that you're meditating.

But, you know, you could do better. So, he's kind of nitpicking people in his own culture. And in his culture, Buddhism exploded.

It was like every corner had a yoga studio, and there was a yoga teacher in every yoga studio who made up a meditation that they thought would be cool. And then he's critiquing them, okay? He goes through that.

It's ... I think it's 26 critiques of different kinds of meditation. And then he ...

Nick will be interested. He ... then he turns to the classic schools of meditation.

He turns to 2,000 years of Buddhist meditations, and he critiques those, starting with the schools that were popular in India before the Buddha, okay? So, he kind of does Ben Cramer's Siddhanta text, where he starts with the ancient schools of India before the Buddha came. He talks about what they think meditation is, and then he starts in on the Buddha schools, and he works his way up from the lower schools.

And I was wondering, you know, and I thought to pose it to you. And I've been doing this in China. I'll say, $500 for the best dancer.

I ... sometimes I lose like three, four thousand dollars every night. And Veronica told me it'd be tacky in the United States, right?

He won three thousand one day. Yeah, I'm not gonna do that. You guys are motivated.

But ... but I'll ask you a question. I'm curious.

Maybe Hector's ... Hector's into this kind of question, I think. Why does he do it this way?

I mean, if he's gonna talk about Mahamudra, like how to do a proper meditation on the emptiness of your mind, why ... why devote most of his book to faulty systems, you know? Nitpicking the local yoga teacher's meditation system, like why ...

and then he nitpicks all the great thinkers of Buddhism, one by one, who's not Nagarjuna, you know? So what do you think? Why did ...

why does he do it ... why did he write a book in a negative way? That's a ...

I'm just curious what you think. Bonnie? Yeah, I think that's one good answer.

I think ... and ... and they say all four ...

all the great schools of Buddhism were taught by the Buddha, because he was anticipating mistakes that we would make. So you can say, this book is not historical, this book is metaphorical, and it's a ... it's a review of all the mistakes that a normal person will make in their meditation.

And kind of by blaming it on some other school, he makes us feel better about ourselves, you know? You know, you ... in private, you're like, oh that ...

I was doing that yesterday. I was doing that meditation yesterday. I thought it was really good.

And then you're like, oh yeah, that school is not very good, you know? And ... anybody else?

Why is it ... I mean, it's kind of disturbing that it's negative. Peter?

Pyotr Veliky? Is it Pyotr Veliky? Masha?

Pyotr Veliky. Okay, go.

[Speaker 2]
We have never experienced true Mahabharata, and it's extremely difficult to get there. So we must have the tendency to be half-happy with something which is not the whole thing, and then we give up. We stay there and we don't go to the end.

[Speaker 1]
Okay, good. Yeah, so we ... we want to get it, and we try, and then what we do isn't cigar.

And then we get discouraged and quit. Something like that. Okay.

Anybody else? I mean, why the negative approach? Well, I think you said it already.

Okay. If we're going to succeed, we have to capture our own mind in all the many different ways it's going to fail, right?

[Speaker 2]
So, I mean, that's basically what it's about. It's pointing out all those places, so it's ... for those failures.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah. Yeah. I'll talk about that for a second, and then I'll come back to you, okay?

Well, that's the practice of Buddhism, is to find our mind where it is mistaken, and apply the antidote. Okay. That's the whole thing.

That's the whole approach. Nick? The more subtle our misunderstanding gets, the more we think we're right.

[Speaker 2]
Yeah.

[Speaker 1]
Somebody over here. Alex.

[Speaker 2]
Process of elimination. Nice.

[Speaker 1]
I like that. Yeah. Yeah.

I think, so far, what I've read, I've only read like three quarters of everybody's ... It's about 50 different wrong meditations. So, yeah, how many can we do?

I don't know. Michael?

[Speaker 2]
If you don't know what it is, you can't beat it.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, good. Yeah, it's a Buddhist principle that to defeat a negativity, you have to know what it looks like. And, by the way, he's going to have a beautiful verse about that.

Diamond mining when you never saw a diamond. Lisa? Difficult to speak the truth, so say what is not neti-neti.

Yeah, cool. Okay. Yeah, go at it that way.

It'd also be a really short book if he just talked about ... Hector, you got an idea?

[Speaker 2]
I think it's speeding our progress. Instead of taking eons to get those understandings, it's saying, look at the vast ocean of human thought about what reality is inside and out, particularly in your mind. And so investigate this one.

Investigate this one. And then you go, but this is Buddhism. This one has those four seals.

This is, look, we're all Buddhists. And then it moves you up there and up there. And so it's the answer that everyone begs, really.

It's like pushing us to the edges, the misunderstanding, the dark chairs. But it's speeding up. If I had to do that on my own, it would take me lifetimes beyond measure.

Yeah, cool. So it's having all the thoughts of mind.

[Speaker 1]
Cool. I haven't read the last quarter. Like, I don't know if he keeps being negative or ...

I don't know what happens at the end. Word. I didn't offer any money, but you can answer anyway.

Fine. Well, I have a simple answer. He's a galoop who answers debate texts.

Yeah, he's of the Buddhist School of Tibet, which especially appreciated the ancient tradition of debate. But he's also given the wrong answer, like, seven times. Yeah, and that's a principle in debate.

Like, when you start a debate, you always say something slightly wrong. Slightly wrong. And then you let the other guy try to prove you wrong.

Especially if you're a senior monk trying to train a junior monk. Instead of saying, this is what's correct, this is what's correct, you say, is this correct? And you give them a slightly wrong idea.

And they know it's supposed to be slightly wrong. And they have to beat you, you know. They have to find what's slightly wrong.

And that's how Buddhist education goes. What's it called? The Three Steps.

Buddhist Pedagogy. Pedagogy? Yeah.

Sorry, yeah.

[Speaker 2]
Shenlugapa.

[Speaker 1]
Rangushapa. Okay. Shenlugapa means?

Nick, wake up. You gotta, man. You gotta take some drugs before you come here.

Yeah. So, in the classic Buddhist method of education, you don't write a textbook. You write a book of wrong ideas.

And the student studies that first. Shenlugapa. And then?

Presentation of power. Then you present the correct position. Then what do you do?

Then you let the other guy, who's really us, come back.

[Speaker 2]
Not really us.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, then you let the other guy come back. And then you destroy him. Yeah, he gets to counterattack, you see.

So, and then, by listening to all the wrong ideas, you learn something. Okay? Which is how life goes, right?

You screw up, and then you... I wrote a book with a Russian friend, right? He's Becky's friend.

He's Mirza Karim Yakov. And he has sold 30 million books. Which is like...

I haven't sold 1 million books. And... And...

So, he came to one of my lectures in Europe. And we decided to write a book together. Because of the anti-Muslim stuff going on in this country.

So, I thought it'd be cool to write a book with a Muslim author. Maria helped us a lot. And...

We made a pact that we would write a book called The 10 Biggest Mistakes in Life and How Not to Make Them or something like that. Because he's the same age as me and he's a rascal. We have a DCI joke.

I don't know why I have to meet these people. And... So, then we both wrote for 6 months.

And then he called me back. He got back to me. I forget if he ever sent me his email.

He said, Look, 5 mistakes in my life ain't gonna make it. I got like 100, you know. Can we change the name of the book?

So... The book is still called 10 Biggest Mistakes in Your Life. But the first half is his mistakes.

And then you turn the book over. And then there's my 10. So we got 20.

But we still kept the book title. Make sense? Okay.

Anyway, I started reading his finally. It's good. So, yeah.

If you start from mistakes, it's better, I think. Okay. Ready for some mistakes?

Okay. This is bad meditation number 12. I didn't want to call him bad because it's bad to call people bad.

So I called it ineffective meditation number 12. Okay. And that's...

He proposes... This other guy proposes, sit down, close your eyes, and watch thoughts pop up on your mind. And that will take you to happiness.

You know. That's a way that you can deal with unpleasant people. Okay.

Is there any... I'm gonna ask you two questions. Okay.

Number one, is there any benefit you can see to that approach? And two, is it ultimate? Does it fix the problem?

Number one, is there anything good about that approach?

[Speaker 2]
What?

[Speaker 1]
Yeah. Yeah. Cool.

Yeah. And... Well, don't forget what we're talking about is a state of mind that you hold all day.

The inner conversation. It's a monitor. Somebody...

For a hundred... No. I can't say that.

There's two important tools in all meditation practices. Dhrenpa and Shishin. Okay.

Dhrenpa and Shishin. Yeah, but which one comes first? Shishin.

Yeah. Shishin, which is a smoke alarm. Okay.

It's a smoke alarm. And it's a state of mind that you train in your meditation mind to go off. Beep.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

If you start thinking about something else. Right? What are the two classic things you...

other things you start thinking about? Food and sex. Food and...

Sleep. Food and sex. Yeah.

Sorry. Yeah. It's...

What do we call it? Ching-guh, right? What's ching-guh?

Ching-guh. Yeah. Like your mind gets too busy.

Which means... I like to say you're thinking about lunch. Okay.

And then ching-guh? Yeah. You get sleepy, which is the result of lunch.

If you try to eat before meditating. Okay. So these are the two classic faults of meditation.

Somebody tell me what's a samapatti? Equal staying in between those two faults. Yeah.

It's the Sanskrit word. One of the many Sanskrit words for meditation is samapatti, which means a state of balance. Which means you are watching not getting sleepy and you're watching not getting too high.

And it's compared to... Driving a car. Driving a car.

Yeah. Like if you watch a good driver, their hands are moving constantly. And a person who's a good meditator, they're constantly correcting themselves as they go.

Okay. Between those two. Now, that's not...

What we're... But... Yeah.

So the positive part of this meditation number 12. Other guys' meditation. The good part is that you would become sensitive to your own mind.

Your what would become strong? Sheshing. Sheshing.

Yeah. Your ability to turn on the fire alarm when your mind starts wondering. Okay.

So that's the positive thing. What's the negative thing? It's not ultimate.

Yeah. You're just aware that you're irritated. You see what I mean?

You're like, Wow. Look. Irritated thoughts.

Asshole. You know. You're like, Wow.

Look. My mind is irritated. You know.

But it doesn't fix it. You see. Probably it's a necessary first step, right?

You have to know your mind's out of control to control it. But... Okay.

So that's our criticism of that meditation. It's nice to sit and watch your mind. Thoughts pop up.

That's okay. But it's not going to fix the problem. Okay.

It's a first step. And that's okay. All of these meditations I think to get in this book, you have to have something good about your meditation.

To get kicked out of... To get... To get your butt kicked in this book is an honor.

And you have to have a decent... You have to have a decent fake meditation. Okay.

Now, second one. And this is worth a hundred dollars. Who's my treasurer?

Peter? Okay. I'll give you like a pile of money before class.

Then you have to give it out. Okay. Keep a list.

If you lose a few names it's okay. He's on human computer. Look over there.

Look over there. Shiva Chukulamkara. Shiva Chukulamkara.

You guys who spent seven years going to 20,000 pages of Vajrayana at Diamond Mountain. Sometimes I think no one ever heard anything. You should pay me.

Shiva. Shiva. Death Chukula.

This lady with the white hair. A hundred bucks. You got to pay me back.

Take me out to dinner. Okay. Shiva Chukulamkara.

Okay. This is a tantric practice. Okay.

This is a hard tantric practice. But he refers to it so I can talk about it. Now, the next meditation is that some people say if you watch your thoughts fade away.

Okay. The first guys want to watch their thoughts pop up. The other guys say watching your thoughts fade away is Chukulamkara.

Say Chukulamkara. And this is a very important tantric principle. Okay.

And he mentioned it so I can talk about it. Chukul means the Dharma body. So the Buddha supposedly when you become a Buddha you have three or four different bodies.

Okay. Which are not real bodies. They're just called bodies.

It means parts of you. Okay. So call them the four parts of you.

Okay. Chukul means what? Chukulamkara.

Chukulamkara. I know but... Emptiness of the other bodies.

Yeah, you can say the emptiness of you. After Nick becomes Buddha Nick like Saint Nicholas. Emptiness.

Yeah, the emptiness of Nick is the core of that Buddha. Okay. And we'll talk about it.

Okay. What's... Yeah, then there's Pardo.

Say Pardo. Pardo. Longgu.

Longgu. Lamkara. Lamkara.

Pardo. Pardo. Longgu.

Longgu. Lamkara. Lamkara.

What's Pardo? Yeah, after you die. Spirit life up to 49 days.

Okay. In the spirit realm, Pardo is the Longgu. Longgu.

Yeah, the body in heaven. Okay. The heaven body.

So according to Buddhism when you become a Buddha part of you parts in the heaven. There's a part of you that parts your physical body in heaven. This, you know, the kind of body you see in the paintings of a Buddha.

It's not so bad. But some kind of divine form. Right?

And you hang out in your own heaven with this form. It's called Longgu which means body of enjoyment. And that's compared to the Pardo.

Okay. That's compared to the Pardo. Because death itself in a tantric presentation is kind of like entering emptiness.

Okay. It's kind of like entering emptiness. And then you can ride it if you're trained.

Okay. You can ride the death experience to emptiness if you're trained properly. And we did it in the Lamrim course for, I don't know, 10 days.

And I'm not doing it over for another year or two. And you've been through all that. But you can, as you die, you can carry it to a higher reality.

Okay. And that's called Chiwa Chukwu. Okay.

Using death as a ticket. Lam khyer means what for $100? Oh no, you did it already.

I'm sorry. Lam means path, path. Okay.

Care, he means use it. It means to carry something like a donkey would care something. But it, it, it means to use the death experience for something higher.

Transform it. It means to transform it. Okay.

Into a path. Okay. To use it as a path.

Okay. So that's Chiwa Chukwu Lam khyer. Okay.

What's the next one? Bardo. Longgu.

Longgu Lam khyer. Use the bardo experience as taking on a, a super beautiful, sexy angel's body. Why does it relate to bardo, to the bardo?

You take on an ephemeral body during the bardo. You take on a temporary form. You take on like a spirit form.

It's almost angelic in that you can't cut it with a knife and things like that. It's almost, it's similar to this rainbow body in, in the heaven. Okay.

It's, it's similar to this kind of exquisite heavenly form. Okay. Which, if you put your hand through it, your hand would go through.

Which is why they call it a rainbow. So if you ever tried to walk to a rainbow, it just kind of takes you in and you never, yeah. Okay.

So that's bardo LOM KUL LAM GYUR and then what's gyewa? I know, but come on Nick. Yeah, chukul, yeah, emanation body.

Okay, so every Buddha, Seiji got it right, but I didn't bet anything. Every Buddha has to, one of the reasons to become a Buddha is that you have the power to send avatars, send bodies to other worlds. you can be, I like to say you can be on the bus in LA next to an elderly lady helping her and at the same time you can be in Beijing as someone's peaking dog and making that elderly person happy.

You see? And but multiplied times countless billions at the same time. So you have the power to send out bodies.

It's almost as if you are reborn every second. Okay, gyewa, say gyewa. Gyewa.

Chukul. Chukul. Lamkya.

Okay. So now you got the principle, right? And you have to be extremely well educated in the classics to read this poem.

Because he just says chukul lamkya. He doesn't explain it. And there's no commentary.

He never wrote a commentary. So, and what he's what he's saying is he's trying to compare it to the opposite of the last meditation. Who can tell me?

That, no. That was watching what? Yeah, good.

Watching your thoughts fade. And and there's a school that developed in Tibet of just trying to bring up random thoughts during meditation and watch them fade. And then each time they fade you go through the death process.

You go through chiwa chukul lamkya, pardo lamkul lamkya, gyewa chukul lamkya. Okay? Cool?

Is it useless? I think it's sexy. I have I have designed these meditations on the ones he's complaining about.

To be frank, like present moment meditation was one of his first complaints. So yeah, they're useful. They're okay.

You can use it. It's okay. It's alright.

But it's incomplete. There's something it's beautiful. It could be useful.

It has problems. Okay? It has some problems.

Now, you want to know one of the problems. Okay? And by the way, I am going to give you a break in about 20 minutes.

So, stop complaining in your head. This is a big theme throughout his whole poem is that your mind is mistaken all the time. Okay?

Not sometimes. In fact, in Prasangika you never have a schema until you see emptiness directly. Never.

Okay? You never saw anything correctly in your whole life. Physical, mental, anything.

Everything was mistaken. Poison. Okay?

So, what he's saying here, okay, ready? Every time you're aware of your own mind and you're not thinking about the emptiness of it, you are throwing more poison in the well. You are reinforcing a bad habit that has been going for time with no beginning.

Every time you get irritated at someone, it has to be that you're misunderstanding them. If you misunderstand them, you are reinforcing the state of mind that put you in this world. Okay?

It's scary. You see? What it means is every hour that goes by that you don't have an internal conversation, debate, about something, you are reinforcing your negativities.

Okay? And they'll get stronger and stronger. Okay?

It's nasty. What do you call that? Pernicious.

Exactly. It's nasty. Okay?

It gets worse. Just being alive makes you a worse person. How's that?

Okay? If you don't have angel talking in your head. Okay?

That's what he's saying. He says, that's a cute idea. You go to Tantra in your meditation.

You imagine as the thought disappears into emptiness that this is the emptiness body of a Buddha. And it's kind of cool, you know, but in the end you are just watching your thoughts and your thoughts are wrong. Okay?

Your thoughts are infected. And the longer you watch them the worse you'll get. Okay?

Watching your mind without thinking about where it's coming from poisons the watcher and the mind being watched. Okay? Got it?

It's depressing. Alright. Okay.

Let's go to the next depressing one. I don't know why he goes there. Okay?

He's been there. He's going to go there again. And I took a...

The four spaces meditation came from here. Okay? The four wrong ideas about space.

Okay. So, emptiness meditation is sometimes called nam kathabu. Space...

Space-like meditation. You know, so that name itself caused a lot of problems. People close their eyes and try to see blue.

And then more advanced people close their eyes and try to see black. And then more advanced people close their eyes and try to see... Yeah.

The space in which the chair is standing which is more subtle can only be seen with your third eye. Okay? It can only be seen with logic and clear thinking.

I like to call it clear thinking nowadays. Sometimes. Okay?

So, he's covered that. Okay? I don't know why he brings it up here but he says, look, there's some people who said, as you watch the thought disappear, reflect on how it's not physical.

Because that's a negative and emptiness is a negative. Is emptiness a negative? Yeah.

Give me a credit card example. Tell the whole story. Make it right.

I got taken John Brady to Kuchina.

[Speaker 2]
Come on, you've never did that. Okay, okay, okay.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, come on, don't be shy. And we have... Okay.

So, in the village Oak Creek we have like one restaurant and it's called Kuchina Rustica. Okay? It's a full name and it's a really nice restaurant and we go there pretty often and so Lama John Brady's doing something amazing for ACIP like paying me and so I'm like, oh, let me give some of this money to take Lama John out and so we take him to the oh, we take him to the restaurant and we have a good time and we laugh and cry and everything and it comes time to pay the bill so I'm like, oh, no, no, no, Lama, I wouldn't dream of you paying so I go in my pocket to go for my credit card but here's the thing, the credit card that I was going to go for was a discover card oh, oh, yeah, so I go for it and I only have like one pair of pants if you guys hadn't noticed already after five years two pairs of pants and so I put the wrong ones on so I'm like, oh, don't worry, I'll pay for it and I go oh, I start searching I'm like, oh, oh, oh, and I don't have the credit card on me and so that's like emptiness because it's an absence of something but if you really understand emptiness you realize that the thing that emptiness is empty of never could exist in the first place so the thing about the card that I was going for is that it was a discover card which is not really a credit card anyway alright yeah so emptiness means something's not there that you thought was there but the trick is the thing you thought was there should be something that couldn't exist it has to be something that couldn't exist okay so thinking that it's a good meditation to think about how your thoughts are not physical is a problem why?

physical exist yeah you're canceling something that does exist okay Peter you and Maria are going to do the two husbands thing can you? no? you want to?

she's like no you don't have to be you want to? quick can you do it quick? no only if you want to but it'd be nice I need another husband come on quick quick you want to try?

yeah do it for the do it for people not for not because it's comfortable okay wait who's going to be the other husband? JB wants to okay you guys want to take a moment and prepare you want to no it's totally up to you guys you get it ready you tell me when you're ready okay and I'll keep stalling all right okay so if the thing was ever there and you cancel it that's not that's not emptiness okay isn't a physical thought the same thing as a pink elephant? it doesn't exist that's true too you're yeah that's kind of a cute argument I'll give you some monopoly money for that you guys ready?

okay can you just be loud or maybe Maria and use the microphone all right okay don't be shy we need two children also right?

[Speaker 2]
yeah who want to be two children actually it's always those do you want to be the children? they're busy can two children volunteer who sit in these two chairs?

[Speaker 1]
yeah

[Speaker 2]
thank you well the story is about how do we create things right and it incorporates both emptiness what is not there and how things do exist so I'm the wife these are two husbands I'm coming home one night after a long day at work and I even bought food for the dinner and I'm just happy that I come home to my husband and the only thing that I really want is a hug because I'm just exhausted and so as I come home I open the door I step in I'm looking for my husband can I do it later? yeah before I came home two days before that three days before that the evening before I have an assignment at my work my boss tells me that the next day in the morning I have to be earlier at work because there's a Skype call probably with the Germans and so I come home and I tell my two children who are very attentive and ask them can you please tomorrow morning get up one hour earlier dress up put your shoes on put your clothes on and then be ready to go at 7 and not at 8 is that ok?

otherwise we assign you for adoption ok they say yes they're super happy about that next day in the morning I wake up one hour earlier I get ready to leave for the office I come down I get into the room and what do I see? the two children jumping on the bed they're not dressed they're not ready to go and I get really frustrated and because I forget the angel in my head that we're going to learn about today I'm saying you two are the stupidest kids in Sedona and then I wrap them up go to the office and forget about the whole thing two days later or a week later I come home to the situation I described before where I'm just tired and exhausted from work buying dinner and my expectation as I open the door is that my husband is going to give me at least a hug and as I open the door and I step in and I'm kind of waiting for the hug you're stupid my husband who's not doing anything else but except to give me hugs in the evening sometimes he's not even doing that anymore and I get totally upset because I didn't do anything and that's the example like the discovery card where it is is it true that I didn't do anything? no, right? and what's the connection?

you yelled at the children so I assume where we're going tonight I don't know but the angel in the head would probably have to tell me in that very difficult and crucial moment that anything that happens to me must have a cause and when I step in why are there two? we're getting there and I expect a hug and he's saying you are stupid I have to remember that there are two husbands in the kitchen why are there two? because it's you in this case it's okay because you have two children because it's okay because it's me?

because it's me? yeah, you're the jerk telling yourself that you were oh, I see that's one possibility any other ideas? why are there two husbands there?

because one does not exist exactly one does not exist there is one husband in the kitchen who does exist and one husband who doesn't exist what's the husband that does exist? say again? exactly is that husband also yelling at me?

yes so there is a yelling husband it does exist but it comes from because I've created him in the past how about the second one? the one with the long blonde hair? that doesn't exist at all right?

because that's a husband that could exist from his side in this case it could be a husband that is not created by my own actions and which one of the two husbands do I get angry about? the long blonde hair husband who doesn't exist at all because husbands don't have long blonde hair, right? sometimes they don't so what is the right reaction in this case?

what is the F effect of the angel in my mind when I understand the theory of these teachings and can apply them in the practical moment which is so difficult for at least me I get into I get home I forgot the story of the kids long time ago and it doesn't matter at that moment I step in I expect something good to happen this is time slowed down I'm like wait a moment this is not nice I don't like it what should I do now? I really hate it actually and if I have the angel in my mind the angel will say because you really hate it you are just going to accept it and you are not going to yield back you are going to go to the real husband and say I'm sorry I had a bad day that's ok honey and all is good thank you yeah so the point of the which meditation was it?

[Speaker 1]
13 kind of 13 no 14 anyway forget it yeah it's kind of half of 13 ok second half of 13 second it's verse number 119 because because the guy went on a detour and said that emptiness is that your thoughts are not physical ok but that can't be emptiness because physical things do exist ok so emptiness means and think about the difference ok if someone called you stupid in the kitchen when you came home and you got mad at your husband and he turned around and it turns out to be your neighbor right what happens to your anger? yeah it just I like to give the example it's kind of a depressing example because I've actually been there but so your girlfriend or your partner is on the phone like this you know you come in and she's like hehehe and you're like what are you doing and she's like oh nothing you know and you're like by the way this is a long time ago ok and you're like well who are you texting and you're like oh nothing nothing you know and then you get kind of you start to worry that she has another boyfriend right and then you so you're cool though and you don't say anything but that night when she's asleep you get the phone and you and you check right and it turns out to be she was buying you a birthday present on Amazon and it was a secret ok and that's why she she hid the phone ok so where is the new boyfriend yeah completely non-existent you see what I mean so then how do you feel about him you just feel stupid ok like so we're not talking about that you picked up her you thought it was Fred and you pick up the phone and it was John instead and you were slightly mistaken ok it's not a case in Tibetan of mayim it's not a case of mistaken identity it's not that you thought she was texting this guy who might be her boyfriend but she was texting a different guy who who might be her boyfriend ok that's not emptiness emptiness is you find out she was ordering you a birthday present on Amazon and the whole boyfriend thing what do you call that it's how do you make it more dramatic than that implodes is pretty good it just dissolves that's emptiness ok and that's what it does to your heart yeah you just oh man that's so weird I thought it was a boyfriend oh she bought me a birthday present you know like it's a totally opposite thing ok so if you're going to do an emptiness meditation on someone who irritates you the result should be some kind of joy and not some kind of oh mistaken identity it's not not who I thought it was that's not it it's that he dissolves the problem dissolves ok if you are trying to deal with a problem as a Buddhist and you're trying to use emptiness and that problem doesn't dissolve in front of you you aren't you don't have an angel in your head and you don't understand Buddhism and you're not practicing ok at this level ok we're not talking watch your breath Buddhism is it Buddhism? it is Buddha taught watching breath ok what's it called there's some Sanskrit name in Tibetan it's called ukjumuk ok ukjumuk say uk jumuk the Abhidharmakosha 350 AD Master Vasubandhu watch your breath ok that's ok that's a Buddhist meditation but it's not gonna make you happy it's not gonna make the guy dissolve the boyfriend dissolve you see and you feel like this intense relaxation after the boyfriend dissolves you see so if you don't get it straight the angel emptiness meditation where the person who's irritating you or the obstacle in your life doesn't dissolve you're not doing meditation on emptiness you're doing some lesser meditation ok and you're not really a complete Buddhist ok so now you have new thing to be depressed about ok we got five minutes I'm gonna give you a break ok so don't stress now Bex are we on? or not? did you get my email?

we're on? ok now we have a translation team upstairs 10 primary translators about 80 secondary translators and they are translating the classics and the book now goes to a famous emptiness meditation called Chik Tudel say chik tu tel chik tudel and recently up in the enlightenment cavern Bex's text Venerable Utpala's text reached his next point ok so he's gonna talk about a famous emptiness meditation called Chik Tudel neither one nor many neither one nor many ok very famous but her book the presentation of it is the best presentation I ever saw in in I don't know 40 years or 35 years ok it's the best so I she's supposed to teach it tomorrow and I said can I borrow it and you teach something else and she graciously said ok ok so I thought since we're going through this text so fast we might want to take a detour to her book and it's the best presentation I ever saw of this particular emptiness meditation ok so it's called Chik Tudel now it's called one or many the emptiness of one or many and it's very famous and his presentation in her book Choney Lama is the best I've ever seen and I just wanna steal it and she said go for it so thank you for that and I really wanted to do it so I'm grateful to you I'll give I'll I'll pay you back somehow someday ok so here we go I'm just gonna teach it straight from the text ok and we went through it and she translated it and it's amazing ok so here we go we're going to an emptiness meditation text this is her text from the authors from 1648 to 1721 if I'm not mistaken maybe I am mistaken 1675 to 1748 I was mistaken anyway it's about 300 years ago and a beautiful presentation of this meditation now guess why he brings up that meditation here beautiful yeah someone's messing it up ok someone's tried to do this ancient emptiness meditation and they're doing it slightly wrong ok that's his thing right he's gonna present it slightly wrong but you can't appreciate it if you don't know it in the first place so I have to go through it you ready and and this is the best presentation I ever saw that's a good place to take a break right ok well ok one minute yeah so there's something wrong about stuff like when I look at Gelse I look at her arms and her head and her legs and her torso and I my mind puts it together as a person ok this is her parts is she one is she one person yes or no looks like ok but how do I see the one person I gotta have parts there's gotta be parts you can't see a person without looking at their parts first you know you look one arm other arm one leg other leg head torso ok person ok so we're trying to prove that there's no one ok why is that done before proving there's no many that's an option left who said that yeah many's are made of oneses many's are made of oneses if there's no one Gelse in the chair there can't be more than one ok now if there's neither one Gelse nor multiple Gelses there's no Gelse ok that's the classic proof and it sounds stupid but because it's so profound ok if I can prove that there's not one computer up here on the lectern ok and then I allow you to discuss if there's two ok if I can prove there's not one then proving there's not two is easy proving there's not more than one is easy ok because there's not one because if you don't have one you can't have two ok so if there's one object in the universe which doesn't have emptiness ok then there can't be sorry if there's no object in the universe that doesn't have emptiness there can't be multiple objects in the universe ok got it so the many just cancel it now ok forget it I mean I'll say it again if this is not empty ok and I say did I have ten of those up here would there be something empty you say no I mean because one's not empty ok so all I have to prove is one so forget the many ok we're going to go to the one we're going to come back to this meditation tonight I guess depending on how long you pee pee I don't know or what number you have to do but we're going to come back and see how you can miss meditate that's a good word for this book yeah how can you miss meditate ok and on this emptiness meditation this is one of the most famous emptiness one of the top five emptiness meditations ok so let's do it when you get back come back by 8.30 alright so to appreciate the next meditations in the book you have to understand this ancient argument for emptiness ok to understand that ancient argument of emptiness there are many many presentations but the one in Utpala's book is the best one I've ever seen and I'm stealing it shamelessly ok so on our Dutran so he's going to prove that things have parts and then we'll talk about why if things have parts they have to be empty ok got it so he's very thorough which is why we love him how many of our books are from him Ben Sugeng no not Sugeng Stanley Stanley, Ben and Utpala three no there's some more what's your commentary yeah so say we're translating this is a great lama called Choney Lama from about 300 years ago right human computer yeah ok so anyway here's his way of proving that things have parts ok and he does it DCI level 7 thing he does a DCI level 7 thing DCI level 7 is you go through all the categories of existence ok so we're going to take a quick trip through all the categories of existence ok we're going to prove why each one of them has to have parts when we finish that we'll prove why if it has parts it has to be empty ok ready here we go so we start with physical stuff ok and science says that this microphone is made up of small atoms of like call it carbon and iron and oxygen and atoms ok I like to teach it this way atom is Sanskrit means not like atheist or apathetic agnostic where did you find that?

you're brilliant who's brilliant? one of those guys ok yeah this is DCI level 7 so the definition of existence in Buddhism is anything you can perceive with a correct perception then it's real ok then it exists there are two kinds of things in the universe those that exist and change and those that exist and don't change ok those are the two divisions of all things in the universe uh who's teaching the Abhidharma tomorrow? oh good luck honey I'm sorry Sakche Sapa Me Chu Nam Lama Dobe Du Je Nam Sakche Khansur Dera La Sa Nam Kundu Gyabur Gyur Sa Me Lam Gyi Denpa Dang Tungpa Chen Nam Sum Yam Te Nam Kha Dande Gopa Nyi very famous the opening lines of Abhidharma Kosha and 99.999% of stuff in the world is in the left side the red left side and then only three things uh are in the right side ok classically and then uh changing things uh you got physical things and then you got things that change that aren't physical or mental and then you got mental things ok this is the outline of Buddhism uh the outline of the universe ok if we can prove each one has parts then we prove that all things are empty I'll take you there ok so don't get nervous Tahiya she's not nervous ok here we go uh so physical things we're gonna start with the left hand box ok physical things do they have parts? and we go to uh you know we go to to stuff has the chair has legs has arms ok and then the plastic has molecules and the molecules have atoms ok and the atoms have quark and spin and other parts ok uh subatomic particles but uh atam at means not, right? tam means divisible and the word that comes from it in English is temple because the temple was divided from the village in the old days so it was called set apart temple means set apart from the village and so atam means cannot be split the thing which cannot be split which which in science is reflected in the periodic table of the elements ok meaning element so what does element mean in science? it means this substance uh is the smallest you can get and it retains its qualities ok so iron is still hard and I don't know oxygen is still airy and things like that, ok so if you break it H2O into H and O it loses the quality of you can't drink it anymore ok it's so when you go below an element uh you lose the identity of the thing and that's why it's called an element that's why there's only a hundred and I don't know sixteen something like that uh elements because a piece of it won't act like the whole anymore ok like a a quark all quarks are the same all electrons protons neutrons act the same it's only in a certain configuration in certain kind of shells in the atomic structure that it will act as an element ok when you take away one piece it doesn't act the same anymore ok so that's what element means that's the idea of an atom ok then then there's an idea that an atom cannot be split we now we split atoms but you cannot split it and still retain its identity that's not possible ok it won't be hard anymore or it won't flow anymore ok so atom then he he wants to talk about atomic theory now this is considered the crudest form of philosophy in buddhism is atomic theory it's considered the most stupid one the lowest one and it's the one that we believe it's science ok so stuff is made of little pieces and those pieces have an identity ok and then in the ancient times they'd say they are the smallest thing they cannot be divided they are a pump mic ok so so here's Choney Lama ok he says ok let's take this atom that you can't split anymore because it wouldn't act the same so it would it has to be one thing but it can't be divisible right so then he says the way he puts it is in his in your book is so you have an atom here then you have an atom to the west and you have an atom to the east ok so I was going to bring some tennis balls but I didn't have time and I didn't have any tennis balls but but so three tennis balls ok and Choney Lama is like does the middle ball touch the ball on this side yes or no yes now does the ball on this side touch the ball on this side no no ok which means that this ball must have a right side and a left side right because there's a place if if this ball touched this ball where this ball touched this ball then this ball is inside of this ball got it ok you alright I'll say it again three balls if this ball touches this ball right and then if this ball touches this ball then they would have to touch it here and then this ball would have to be in the same place as this ball ok so the one on the left would now be in the place of the one in the middle ok for the one on the left to touch the one on the right got it then the guy says come on that's stupid the one in the middle is is blocking it you see the one over here can't touch the one over here because there's one in the middle don't be stupid it's not necessary that this one has to touch this one because this one's in the middle and he says yeah then it's not a tam ing then it has a right side and a left side then you can split it you see ok got it and that's all and in classical Buddhism you'd say four directions and up and down six directions and you'd say it can't be ok so either this one is occupying the same space as this one ok ok got it then if you piled up atoms to make the chair how big would the chair be it couldn't be bigger than an atom ok if atoms take the same space then you can't make a chair out of it if you can make a chair out of it you don't have a tam ok then there's no elements or oh no no Geshe-la there are little balls and their unique identity they have a little unique identity right right but when you split them they don't ok so ok so the left side of the atom acts the same as the right side does a part of the atom act the same as another part of the atom sure no but but then it can't be hard anymore yes because neutrons are generic all of them have neutrons all of them have electrons all of them have protons they all have spin they all have quark they all have it but they aren't hard ok you gotta have them the whole thing to have hard ok and if the atoms are only touching pieces of each other they can't be hard anymore ok got it unless they're in the same ball in which case the chair is one atom wide ok now if I'm Nagarjuna I will say something's going on ok and you just never thought about it and I'm not trying to convince you of Buddhist philosophy I'm not I'm saying there's something weird going on there's something not possible going on that's all ok now let's go to some other box hmm I think he goes to the one in the middle next yeah ok so there's stuff in the world that changes that's not your mind and it's not physical and there's a couple of examples there's not a lot of stuff in that box one is Earl ok Earl crawled into this box the middle box ok the person is in this box because Earl is not Earl's body and Earl is not Earl's mind ok Earl says I have a headache it means he doesn't say I am a headache I mean he is a headache but no he doesn't say I am a headache so he's not his mind but he has a mind right so he says I have a headache that means Earl is not his mind and then he says or I broke my finger then that means he owns a finger but the finger is not Earl got it Earl has a body Earl has a mind Earl the concept Earl is in the middle box ok people are in the middle box ok give me another thing that's in the middle box seeds mental seeds ok when Peter yelled at his two kids how was the seed planted karmic seed vasana yeah when you hear yourself talk it makes an imprint on your brain it makes an imprint on your mind that becomes a seed after like an hour or two ok that becomes a karma seed mental seed karma same thing ok are those mind yes or no and tell me why for a hundred dollars they're not mine they're not mine because they're not aware who said it first know things good ok a hundred bucks for him Peter don't tell V ok she says it's crass in the United States ok but I find greed everyone yeah people always give a good answer ok so what he said was seeds stay in the mind and there's a common mistake made by Buddhists who hear that they will say well the seed is in the mind so the seed is part of the mind but that's a mistake ok and the classic argument is that the seed doesn't know anything you see so the definition of mind for zero dollars satsang nikpa ineffable and aware and seeds are not aware they don't think they don't feel they don't have impressions ok so seeds belong in the mind but they're not mental stuff and they're obviously not physical ok why because you have billions of seeds in your heart chakra and you didn't get your chest didn't explode ok right and you have countless karma seeds in your heart chakra but they don't you know pile up they're not physical they are a state of potential ok karma karma ok another example come on Choney Lama example in his text time who said that you are so awesome you cheat I don't know you're probably listening to one of those videos ah yeah time itself time time is in there it's not physical it's not mental it's a concept concepts are mostly there ok now Choney Lama wants to take some of those concepts and prove that they have parts that's our game today we're trying to finish it by 9 o'clock I don't know what's going to happen we're trying to finish one verse out of 110 ok so here we go ah why why does the person according to Choney Lama have parts I don't know if you remember they stand up they sit down they walk around Nick walks Nick sits Nick stands so Nick has parts ok there's different aspects of Nick faces?

he has parts whatever ok so that's the person for zero dollars time has parts because you have past present and future but more interestingly if yeah if you perceive if you think of time as tennis balls ok then there's got to be an ass end of the first moment and a front end of the first moment you see what I mean and the butt end of the first moment has to touch the front end of the second moment so moments have pieces also got it because there's sequential time time goes on in sequence so the back end of the first moment has to be touching the front end of the second moment that means every moment is divisible if the front end if the back end of the first moment are you ready?

doesn't touch the front end of the second moment and all of the first moment touches the second moment and they're not and you don't want to talk about front end and back end of a moment then all reality is one moment and it just ends in one moment okay got it? it's easy it's like the atom thing okay all right mental things they're sexy super sexy what do you say do you remember I read it over again today twice so nice nice there's only two kinds of minds in the universe either you saw emptiness or you didn't you have the angel in your mind perfectly or you don't and that's all he says another thing I forget when he says one more thing time time of the flow of the mind okay and he that's okay same principle okay the time of the flow of the mind but anyway the mind you have parts in your mind that understand emptiness to some extent and then you have parts in your mind that don't so your mind has parts okay ready?

now we go more deep which is why I like his presentation I told you now the diamond shaped red box okay things that exist but don't change give me some especially Abhidharma yeah empty space okay is one example yeah the two kinds of cessation and facts is close you're second school emptiness okay okay three things that don't change okay let let's do the most easy one first and then we'll go to more difficult ones okay so the emptiness the empty space that the chair occupies okay got it?

so the chair even if I pull the chair over here there will still be a place where it was okay empty space so that doesn't change as long as the chair is there it doesn't change if you pull the chair over here the empty space also remains you can occupy it or you can absent it vacate it vacate it exactly but it don't change in either case if this whole world explodes what happened with Trump and the guy how did it go? not well no but did it mess up or was it just like nothing?

[Speaker 2]
sometimes you have to walk away that's it all?

[Speaker 1]
I just wondered if I'm going to be gardening tomorrow or not that's the thing so it went okay anyway okay I can tell you that's why it wasn't in the news okay I can't get it from you either yeah occupy the space so the space doesn't change now does the space have parts? yeah there's the two spaces here okay there's the space that that chair is in and there's the space that that chair is in so space in general has parts okay there's the space yeah directions but he says it more sexy he says the space that this chair vacates and the space that that chair vacates when you pull them both out are different spaces okay so space in general has parts empty space has parts okay And it's cool. Next one. The two cessations, okay?

Cessation. What's a cessation? How are you going to define it?

Not something though. Yeah, a negative state of mind. Okay, so Buddhism is fascinating.

The whole purpose of Buddhism is, can you get to a place where your kids or your partner cannot make you angry ever again? Like, is it even theoretically possible? Rick's like, I don't know.

She's like hitting him. See? There it is right there.

But he always smiles. He's got that Buddhism thing down. Yeah, two cessations.

Okay, if we go Abhidharma way, if we go Abhidharma way, it means the permanent ending of a negativity. You can never be made angry again. I remember when I was a kid, it was my little brother's goal to make me angry.

And he would actually say that. He'd say, I'm gonna make you angry today. I'd say, okay, try it.

And he usually could do it. Okay, why two kinds of cessation? What's the two in the Abhidharma?

So-so tango, so-so tango. You can say it that way. That's one way to say it.

You stop your gross thought processes. That's a cessation. And then at a deeper level, you see emptiness and you stop anger forever, for example.

Something like that. But there's another way. Yeah, meaning, okay, if you understand emptiness theoretically from the pen, you achieve what?

Jorlam Sutta, which means if you die today, you cannot go to a better place. It's not universe possible. It's not possible that you can be born in a bad place, okay?

If you understand emptiness theoretically, correctly, well, from a pen, not in meditation, you cannot be born in a bad place. So you guys should learn how to teach the pen. You should teach the pen.

You should teach it to people on the airplane sitting next to you who ask you what you do. I do it. I do it because I think maybe I saved this person from the hell realms, you know.

You know, why not? He just thinks I'm weird. It's okay.

I'm used to that. Okay, all right? So that's okay.

And then, of course, there's seeing emptiness theoretically, okay? All right. Now, let's take the cessations.

Why would it have parts? The ending of a negativity would have parts. Why?

Yeah, no, different negativities. Look, I got an end of my jealousy. Look, I have an end of my anger.

Look, I have an end of my desire, okay? These are separate entities, okay? Unchanging.

They will never come back. They will never change, okay? The loss, permanent loss, cessation is a weird word, right?

You don't use cessation in English. We have a cessation of my girlfriend and me. Something like that, okay?

But it means permanent loss. You can't, like John and me's hair, okay? I don't know.

Maybe we'll come back, but I'm not holding my breath, okay? Stem cells, yeah. We'll work on it.

Okay, so anyway, that's a permanent loss, okay? But there are different permanent losses, that's all. So there's parts to permanent loss, got it?

Now, we just have to go to emptiness and we're done. And it's right on time, okay? I'm gonna stop in four minutes.

Anyone can tell me to wait for a hundred dollars. Don't tell me, okay? Peter raises his hand before I ask the question.

It's like, I'll take a shot, Geshe-la. No, I'm not, it's not that easy, okay? I want you to explain to me why emptiness can have parts.

And in doing it, I want you to explain why there's another kind of idea about emptiness having parts, which is wrong. And you guys had it upstairs, when the snow hit the ... Wait, you weren't in the class, forget it, it's impossible.

No, this is very difficult. Come on, Choney Lama's example was faulty. Yeah, give me more, give me more.

You gave up to 20 bucks. 19, 18. Come on, you can split it if you guys get it right, but it might take the whole year.

He said the space in a coffee cup, right? That's on that desk, and the space in a coffee cup that's on that desk, okay? Is that emptiness?

No, it's just the distance between two things, okay? Don't think that's emptiness, that's a big mistake. It doesn't help you.

You cannot build, I don't know, the largest diamond jewelry company in the world based on how wide is the cup. It doesn't, that's not emptiness, okay? Emptiness should be something you can use to make cool stuff, to make anything happen, okay?

If it's not that, it's not emptiness, okay? Emptiness is supposed to be the key to the universe, okay? So, that was the wrong one, what's the right one?

Nick had it. 33 bucks each, 30 cents for Utpala, because it's her turn. Yeah, why?

Okay, she gets 33. You're representing her. Tell Aaron, okay.

More? Yeah, come on. No, she asked me, she asked you to do it for her.

She'll pay you 33. I'll pay her.

[Speaker 2]
Okay.

[Speaker 1]
So, where were we? Each thing has its own emptiness. Yeah, good.

And there's no just emptiness that would exist independent of the thing to be empty, something has to be empty. Yeah, last thing, okay? 100 bucks again.

Don't tell Vee. Don't even tell her I didn't, don't tell her I told you not to tell her. Okay, this is another 100 bucks.

Let me get the question right. How does that relate to the two husbands? The second husband is the distance between things.

Oh, but you don't say anything. Oh, I know. It was never there, so you can't even say that it's empty.

That's okay. You can say that. That's not bad.

Okay, so 50-50.

[Speaker 2]
50-50.

[Speaker 1]
Now, okay, last thing, then we're done for tonight, and I'm ending on time. The angel in your head has to say, that was never there in the first place. She was buying me a gift on Amazon.

There was no boyfriend. It has to dissolve. That's emptiness.

You see, the person you thought was there, the husband who decided to be mean to you, Say it the classic way. Could never exist, never will exist, doesn't exist now, never existed in the past, cannot exist now, and will never exist in the future. But, I'll bet you $500, you'll get upset tomorrow.

Okay?

[Speaker 2]
Yeah, yeah.

[Speaker 1]
Because we know, but we can't do it, and I'm talking to myself too. You know, I've had a rough week that way, and it don't exist. The person who's getting you upset, who decided to say something to you, don't exist.

Never existed, okay? Got it? Utpala?

I've been struggling with this concept of how to dissolve. Does that... Implies it was there?

[Speaker 2]
Implies that it was there. Yeah, that's a good...

[Speaker 1]
I'm thinking about if it's like a mirage... Describe it to me in the case of the telephone. Describe the process in your mind.

You, no, you, she falls asleep. You wait for her to get asleep. You find out her secret code.

You sneak around the bed. You keep down low. You reach up and get the phone.

And you, then you open the phone, right? And you want to read the message from the boyfriend. If you do all that, she should break up with you.

Right? No, I'm just saying, no, you tell me. Because during the grabbing of the phone, during the waiting for her to sleep, during the sneaking around the bed, you have something in your mind.

You have an image of a boyfriend. Yeah, a whole... But the hero of the story, the villain is there.

You know, he's slightly more handsome than you. He's got more hair. You know?

And then he's strong here, you know? And then you open her phone, and you see Amazon order number 574 on a new bicycle. And that was her last thing that she was texting, exactly that moment.

So, you tell me what happens to the boyfriend. But she doesn't want to say dissolve, because her position is that he was never there. Well, it's totally replaced with the true sense, right?

Yeah, it poofs. Let's say it poofs. Let's say it poofs.

Poof. Okay? Agree?

[Speaker 2]
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Speaker 1]
If you get the angel, if this class causes you to introduce the angel into your head, then no one can make you unhappy anymore. It's not possible. We're not talking about treating anger.

We're not talking about making it better. We're talking about... That's what I'm saying.

That's what I'm trying to say. So, he's... In the end, the whole poem is to criticize lesser antidotes.

He wants poof. Okay? He wants boyfriend gone.

He doesn't want, oh, try to deal with the boyfriend, or try to understand the boyfriend also wants somebody. He's not talking about that. He's saying poof.

And then you just feel stupid, because you thought she was texting somebody. Yes, irritate me. You're going to make me break it in the first minute after the talk.

Okay, you didn't. What? Yeah.

That's true. I would say that. That's pretty subtle.

That's pretty subtle. But I think it would be the... Yeah.

But... The definition of the first link of the wheel of life is holds to me and mine, and the husband is mine. What's not mine if your husband's not yours?

No, no, no. Outside things are part of you. Yeah, well, my school.

[Speaker 2]
Okay. Hector, you want to do this thing?

[Speaker 1]
Okay, we have a tradition to offer a mandala at the end of class. And you can do it this way if you don't know the finger thing. Or you can look stupid and try to figure it out.

But... No, it's kind of cute in class when somebody's... Just learn it from somebody.

But you can do it this way. And you are offering the world, okay? The point is, this is the payment of the class.

This is the traditional payment of the class. Money is not enough. You have to offer a perfect world.

What's happening in a perfect world? Everyone has the angel in their head. So, at the end of this class, as payment for the class, you are offering your imagination of a world where every single person has the angel in their head and all the boyfriends want poof.

I mean, except for the one you want. Okay.

[Speaker 2]
Okay.

[Speaker 1]
Oh. Probably not. I mean, on your computer?

No, don't worry about it. Picture of my teacher with the globe? Touching the globe?

I don't know. Anyway, so we found a new picture of my teacher taken at MacDougall Street, which is the place where he taught in New York, briefly. And it's a beautiful photo because he's got his hand on top of the world.

And I remember somebody asked a question. Oh, I heard. Yeah, I was there, actually.

And they said, Rinpoche, what do all the Buddhists do when they get enlightened? You know what I mean? Like, what do they do?

What do they talk about? And he's like, well, they just get together and talk about emptiness and stuff. Anyway, even though they know what each other's going to say before they say it.

So... So anyway, it's a pleasure to be in a room with so many people who spent so many years to learn these things. And I feel like it's just Buddhists talking to Buddhists.

But it's still something worthwhile doing, right? Okay, so thank you for coming. And see you tomorrow.

Okay.