Дебаты дьявола с ангелом, часть 13: Диалог об уме и медитации (2019, Аризона), занятие 2

[Speaker 1]
Okay, welcome everybody. Thank you for coming, especially from Mexico, you guys. So, I had kind of an idea that I'd like to tell you about a project that we're working on that I think you don't know about because I also forgot about it.

So, let's start with that because it relates to the text that we're going to study, okay? And then we'll go to the angel-devil, okay? Hey, kitty.

Hi. Okay, how do you connect me to my computer?

[Speaker 2]
Yes.

[Speaker 1]
Oh, okay, good. Okay, so, let's see here. This is a project that Jigme and I have been working on since, I don't know, December of 2012, something like that?

About six, seven years. And the idea is that we would like to establish the English names for the Kangyur. So, the Kangyur is 1,000 books spoken by the Buddha.

And the biggest collection in the world that survives by the Buddha is in Tibet. So, Ka means speech of the Buddha. Gyur means translated into Tibetan from Sanskrit.

And then after that, India was attacked, taken over by the Mughals who built the Taj Mahal, for example. And that was like, I don't know, 500 years, 700 years. Then they were taken over by the British who also didn't much, they weren't much interested.

You don't have a chair? Come on. So, there was a problem.

There's a chair back there. And, yeah. So, anyway, the books were lost.

And they only survive in Tibet. We have a large team in South India, Kerala, and in Varanasi, and in Kathmandu, who are looking for the Sanskrit. Christina Kasica's working on that.

Vimla's working on that. And Aisha's been doing great work on that. And they recovered just about all that we're going to recover.

And we have a new team in Kathmandu who's looking for the Sanskrit texts in other scripts. And they're making good progress. But, basically, the only place you can get all of the Buddhist books is in Tibet.

Recently, I've become very familiar with the Chinese. And I think only 75 books started Chinese Buddhism. Okay?

Xuanzang, in the Tang Dynasty, Tang Chao, about the time of Kamalashila, walked through India for 17 years and came home with about 75 books in 900 fascicles. So then the tradition says he translated 900 books, but I decided it was 75 books in 900 fascicles. And that's all of Chinese Buddhism.

It started from that. And an earlier translation of one individual named Kumarajiva, who did the Heart Sutra and the Diamond Cutter. So, really, it's Tibet where you can find a thousand of the remaining works of the Buddha.

And then we decided to standardize the names of the thousand books because they're very confused. No one has ever named them in English. So the names are there in Tibetan.

And the Tibetans always put the Sanskrit name next to the Tibetan name at the front of the book for those thousand books. So we have the Sanskrit and we have the Tibetan. And then some of them have been named by people who translated them.

And we decided six years, seven years ago, we would name all of them. And so me and Jigme started in coffee shops. And it was really fun.

And we just do it every time we have time. We go to this little coffee shop. Yeah, which gets less and less in Geshe-la's life.

Yeah, 2018. And we won't talk about it, right? We didn't do it once, I think.

So anyway, we do it every time we have any time at all. And we finished about a third. We finished 400 titles.

And the problem is you have to read the book to translate the title. So sometimes you have to read 20, 30 pages to translate the title. And I put a couple of examples in here for you.

Gandavyuhasutra is very famous in the West. And it's traditionally translated as stocks in a ray. You know, vyuha means like in a pattern.

And ganda means stocks. And it has nothing to do with that. The book is about a magic house surrounded by trees that are all made of different jewels.

Like one tree of emerald and one tree of ruby. And it sings the Dharma. It has nothing to do with barley stocks.

You see what I mean? But that name has stuck. And the Diamond Sutra has stuck.

We were in Japan two weeks ago. And they're all like, what's Diamond Cutter? And I'm like, you don't know what's Diamond Cutter?

They're like, oh, Diamond Sutra. I said, it's not Diamond Sutra. It's Diamond Vajrachetika.

It's Diamond Cutter Sutra. And it's extremely important that you call it the cutter. And like that.

So we basically figured out that many, many of the names have been mistaken. So we've been naming them. And we plan to finish by 2029.

And we've covered about 34,000 pages so far. And we have now, it would take 700 years, traditionally, to translate those books into Tibetan from Sanskrit. Now, then I put in a section on how to speed up the work.

Basically, we need more people, which means we need more money. And it's a flat formula. More money, more people, we can finish.

No more money, no more people, cannot finish. It's very, what do you call it? Straightforward.

There's no debate about it. It's just how many people you have, you can finish. We'd like to do the tengyur, which is three times longer.

3,256 words. It's 206,150 pages. And that will take us, I will be 122 when we finish.

At this rate. But it's not a project that we talk about. And we've just been quietly doing it for six or seven years.

And I think we should give Jigme a hand. But it also involves fixing the Sanskrit titles. Because the Tibetans by then didn't know Sanskrit so well.

And it's no longer taught in Tibetan monasteries. So we have to fix the Sanskrit titles. So we've been doing both.

Then I thought you guys, you could appreciate today's, this weekend's talk better. If you understood the structure of the Kengur. What's left from Lord Buddha.

So I thought, tonight I would talk about the structure of the Kengur. Because our author has been covering 26 lousy kinds of meditation. 26 kinds of meditation that are slightly defective.

And subtly defective. So he's going to cover 26. Then he takes a little break to whine about things.

And then he goes off on the traditional schools of Buddhism. Starting with Siddhanta. Siddhanta means you traditionally start with the Hindu schools that the Buddha came out of.

In the way that Jesus came out of the Jewish schools, you see. So traditionally you cover the meditations of the Hindu schools. They're grouped into two groups.

One doesn't believe in karma, doesn't believe in future lives. They're called nihilists. And then there's what, Ning?

You look better today. You didn't lift concrete sacks all day. Just dogs.

Eternalists. Which would say there's a soul. That we have a soul.

And different ideas about eternal soul. And then once you get through that, you start with the lower Buddhist schools. And you work up to the lower Buddhist schools.

And then you reach the higher school. And our author, the first Panchen Lama, is going to do that process. He's going to go through that process.

First he picks on 26 kinds of meditation that were popular in Tibet in the 17th century. And then he picks on the Buddhist schools, the lower Buddhist schools. After picking on the Hindu schools.

So you pretty much get a review of all the kinds of meditation that have been done in the world. Except for Far East, like China or Japan. So if you stick with this book, which so far has been seven years, and we have, I think, another seven years to go.

I don't know. I'm trying to finish in five more years. And I have to choose, me and Veronica, we have to choose a date.

In the break maybe or something. For the next series. For the next installment.

Which comes out of her home time. Which is why I'm embarrassing in front of everybody. Okay, so here's the breakdown of the Kangyur.

And so you can appreciate Buddhism. All Buddhism in this world comes from the Kangyur. All that's left in this world comes from the Kangyur.

Then, guess where I'm going to go? Into the Tengyur, which is the explanations of the Buddha's speech. Then where am I going to go?

Then I'm going to go into our translation work to clarify the Tengyur. Which is where we're at upstairs. Which is what we do upstairs.

We try to cover all the schools of Buddhism. With a total team of about 100 translators. 10 primary translators and about 90 secondary translators.

In different languages. We have Mandarin, French, Arabic, Spanish, Russian, German, Bahasa, Indonesian, and like that. So there's a huge team around the world working to translate.

So here's the breakdown of the Kangyur. And Nick's in charge of that. I think we should give him a hand.

And he's in charge of other things too. So the first section in the Kangyur is Vow of Morality. It's a 7 titles and 13 volumes.

Which means some of the titles are more than one volume. It's about 12,000 pages. 8 kinds of morality.

8 kinds of moral codes. Taken by vow. Which is called Vinaya.

That's the first section of the traditional 1,000 books. Yeah! And then the second section is called Shatasahasrika Prajnaparamita.

Which means a perfection of wisdom in 100,000 lines. This is one title in 12 volumes. Over 11,000 pages.

It's a single book about emptiness. And it's the Buddha teaching emptiness in 100,000 lines. Of Sanskrit.

Which in Tibetan works out to about 200,000 lines. The next section is called Niti in Tibetan. Which means 20,000.

And if you're cool, you know it means 25. Which is Vinshati. Pancha Vinshati.

Which means 25,000 lines. This is misspelled. Sahasrika.

And that's 2 volumes of 1,900 pages. These have all been completed. Me and Jigme have finished these.

Not translating. Just naming. The next one is the 8,000 lines.

And this is probably the most famous of all the perfection of wisdom sutras. It's often printed as a separate book. In most cases, these books are rarely printed separately from the kundra.

They are just part of the kundra. If your book made it into the kundra, it survived for the last 600 years. If it didn't make it into the kundra, it died.

And it disappeared in Tibet. You see? Translations.

This is the 8,000 lines. It's amazing. And when you study emptiness like we are doing here, it's dry and it's hard.

It's going to be dry and hard tonight. But in the old days, it was science fiction. And it reads like a science fiction book.

And it's really, really cool. Basically, a young man has a voice in his head telling him to walk east. And he just takes off and walks.

And he keeps having these, what do you call them? Like a flashback? Future flashback?

He sees his teacher teaching a group of disciples for like 10 seconds. And then he's like, who is that? What are they doing?

And the teacher is teaching emptiness to his disciples. And he starts having these visions of what's really going on in this faraway city. And he's just drawn to the teacher like a magnet.

And it's a beautiful, beautiful story. His name is Dr. Mu. Do you know?

Yeah, nice. I'm glad I didn't bet any money on that. By the way, Peter, I have to give you the money from last night.

Yeah, his name is Saasroot or something. Always weeping. And the story is, when he reached the town where his teacher was teaching his disciples, he thought that he couldn't go without an offering.

He couldn't interrupt the class unless he had an offering. But by that time he was broke because he had been walking across the country of India. And then he decided to sell his body, to sell pieces of his meat at the butcher shop.

So he went to the butcher, he said, can I sell pieces of my arm, my leg? And the butcher said, yeah, it's your thing, man. And so he cut his flesh.

And he was selling pounds of flesh. By the way, it's not a traditional practice. You're not supposed to do it.

No, people do stupid things. Then the demons blocked the sound of his voice. So he said, flesh for sale, flesh for sale.

And he was like, what's that guy trying to say? Nobody knows. And out of frustration, he starts to weep.

And he's weeping. And then later he became known as Mr. Crybaby or something. Because he was crying.

Do you know what the story is? Do you know what happens to him? Huh?

Come on. You're close, come on, give it to me. Yeah, there's a rich merchant whose beautiful daughter is out signing herself on the top of a building around the square where the butcher shop is.

And she sees him. And she's attracted to him. So she comes downstairs and introduces herself.

And he says, I need money for offering. She says, I'm rich, you know, here. And then he says, you want to come with me?

And she says, yeah. And they both became disciples. And they lived happily ever after.

OK, that's the 8,000%. But it's amazing. The book is amazing.

It reads like science fiction. OK? The next one is the Perfection of Wisdom, 18,000 Lines.

Ashtadaha Sahasrika. And it's 2,850 pages. We completed that section.

The next one, with the cat, is the Perfection of Wisdom in 10,000 Lines. So we have five sections devoted to, and thousands and thousands of lines devoted just to emptiness. OK?

So you want to know what the Buddha thought was important. It was emptiness. And he just kept doing it over again.

OK? 10,000 lines, 18,000 lines, 25,000 lines, 100,000 lines. OK?

And it's amazing. And they're all quite similar, and they're often quoted later. OK?

Next one. This is called Other Teachings on the Perfection of Wisdom. Vicitra Prajna Paramita.

And it's 31 books. But this is where the Heart Sutra is. And this is where the Diamond Cutter Sutra is.

These are the short books on emptiness. The short classics on emptiness are here. So I think that's ...

It's called Sherchen Natsok in Tibetan. This is the super sexy section. Like short, digestible presentations of emptiness.

And amazing. Totally amazing. OK?

But they're all sort of abbreviations of those other books that might be 12 volumes long. OK? I like this one.

It's called Ratnakuta, Pile of Jewels. 49 books. These are short reference sutras that are often used.

The Meeting of the Father and Son is there. Oftentimes they are requested by a bodhisattva. Sometimes they're considered a single work with different sections.

OK? But 49 major sections. OK?

The Meeting of the Father and Son, where Lord Buddha goes to teach his father after his father died, is there. And it's a Buddhist holiday the day he came back, which is called Lhabap Duchen. Which means that God fell down.

God fell. God dropped in again. OK?

Lhabap. God dropped down. God returned.

OK? Next one is called Avatamsaka. Very famous.

Pelchen in Tibetan. And it means majority. And we figured it out one day.

We found the only reference in a million pages that explains why it's called the majority. And then we lost it. And I can't tell you.

It's 52 books. 5,000 pages. The Ten Bodhisattva Novels book is there.

The Prayer of Samantabhadra is there. These are very, very important later. The next is Section 10, is the Collection of Sutras.

I was thinking of forcing the translators to memorize all these things. But they kind of resist stuff like that. They just want to translate.

And I can't blame them. So anyway, it's 265 sutras out of 1,000 books. Right?

So this is 25% of the current year. And this is where you find the great sutras. OK?

The great sutras of all time. And I just put the Lotus Sutra. There's a sutra called Do Dzang Lung, which means the Sutra of the Wise and the Foolish.

Very cool. Often quoted in the Lam Rim. Journey to Lanka, which is a very important sutra for emptiness and the mind-only school.

And Gom Barab Sa, which is... What is that? Sundari Nirmal Chara?

Yeah. What I really meant. Sandhi Nirmal Chama.

And this is where a bodhisattva confronts Lord Buddha and says, Why have you been teaching different things? Sometimes you say everything is empty. Sometimes you say it's not.

ACI Course 15. OK? Tsongkhapa.

It's a reply to the question of when a teacher teaches contradictory things, is it always that they're crazy or is there some deeper reason? And a bodhisattva confronts Lord Buddha and says, Explain yourself. OK?

And we are working on that in China. I'll talk about it later. OK.

Section 11 is called Nyangde, which means Nirvana. And these are teachings that Lord Buddha gave in the last weeks of his life. And they're very bittersweet.

They're very sweet. And it's two great sections here. OK?

Two great books. Almost a thousand pages. OK?

The last one is called Vajrayana. This is Tantra, secret teachings. And there are 730 books, OK, in the Kangyur.

What percent of the Kangyur is Tantra? Come on. Out of a thousand books, 730.

[Speaker 2]
Seventy-three percent.

[Speaker 1]
Seventy-three percent. OK. So almost three quarters of the Kangyur is secret teachings.

And so when people say the secret teachings are not valid or weird or something like that, you've got to understand that Buddha taught over 700 of them directly. And they're beautiful and they're amazing and they're sweet and they're pure. OK?

And if you're lucky, you get to study them. OK? And that's 20,000 pages of Tantra.

So don't tell me Tantra is weird or Buddha didn't teach it. OK? It's 20,000 pages of the Kangyur.

It's by far the largest section in the Kangyur. OK? All right.

Then I was going to show you a breakdown of the Kangyur. Kangyur's commentary is written on the Buddha's teaching. We had a blackout period, 500 B.C. to about 100 A.D., six or seven hundred years. There was a blackout period and there wasn't much original work done. That's the Abhidharma period. In Buddhism, it's considered a period of darkness where people forgot what emptiness meant and they taught a much lower version of emptiness for 700 years.

And it's very dry. I spent 12 years on it. I memorized a lot of it.

And it's very dry. And a lot of it is, the emptiness parts are incorrect, but the karma parts are famously correct. And all later presentations of karma come from that.

So a lot of DCI material comes from those times. So I thought to give you a breakdown of the Kangyur just so you could appreciate the scope of what me and Jigme have to do in the next 60 years if we're going to finish. Or we need help.

And again, help just comes down to money. People like Nick, they have this bad habit of eating every single day. And we tried for a long time to do it with volunteers.

It doesn't work. It just doesn't work. People need a salary.

People need to have a place to live. They need to have a place to put their puppies and stuff. And that's the reality of it.

And so we just, a lot of my life is fundraising nowadays. A lot of my time is spent fundraising. And it's just the reality.

We need to do it. Anyway, if you feel inspired by my talk, you can help us. And it doesn't mean you have to give money.

Okay? Helping to fundraise is a glorious activity. Christina and John just raised a million dollars.

Where's John? Yeah, for cataloging without me. I didn't do one minute of work on it, which was the first time in my life that I haven't had to do it.

And it was a million dollars. And because of that, we are cataloging three to five hundred thousand books in Mongolia. Okay?

And it's amazing. It's totally amazing. And it's going, and the government's excited, and everyone's excited about it.

And it's amazing. Indiana Jones Brady. Okay.

So here's the breakdown of the thing, okay? And what I did was I sprinkled in translations that we're working on to show you the strategy we have of covering all the major schools of ancient India. So the translations are spread out to all the major schools of ancient India because each major school has a different vocabulary because they occupied different centuries.

One not a prilla, with the shortest sota, the drokta of March, hath Paris et Devorota, and Balda de Vrivain, and Swishlakur, of which Virtu and Gedug is the flur. Chaucer. Okay?

But you have to teach people. This is, you know, you have to have a Chaucer expert, then you have to have a Shakespeare expert, then you have to have, I don't know, Somerset and, you've got to have different experts. So we, I wanted you to see the structure of all Buddhism and how we're covering it in the translation room because it's a huge strategy globally.

We have people working in many, many countries and it's expensive, and it's cool, and it's working, and we're paying for it. It's about, I don't know, it's close to a million dollars a year. Here we go.

The first section of Tengyur. Explanations. How many years of Tengyur are there?

Start 100 AD, go up to around 850, yeah, call it 800 years of Tengyur, okay? 3,300 books. Something like that, 3,000 something.

Okay, first it's called Stotra, which is songs of praise, and this is like, usually it's to Lord Buddha, and you're so cool, it's like Beatles songs dedicated to the Buddha. Okay? And we're not translating those because, I don't know, we don't have time.

The next one is Vajrayana, which is 2,600 books, okay? Out of the 3,700 books in the Tengyur, two-thirds are Tantra, okay? So don't tell me Tantra is not valid or something like that, okay?

Or else two-thirds of Buddhism is invalid, okay? So anyway, oops, handsome Dan. Now I put Seiji's photo there just because he's handsome.

No, he was the last person to join the translation team. We didn't intend to have him on the translation team. He begged to be on the translation team.

We noticed he was really good with languages. And then I was in Vienna, and two Austrians approached me and said, We want your team to translate a book on karmic correlations. Do this, get this.

And I said, Well, there's two famous books. One is by the Buddha called Karma Vibhanga, which means all the kinds of karma. And Buddha says, in that sutra, Buddha says, You want to look nice?

Here's the karma. You want to have money? Here's the karma.

You want your wife to wash the dishes? Here's the karma. Okay?

He breaks it down, karma by karma. Then a thousand, no, fifteen hundred years later, fifteen centuries later, a dude named Atisha is headed for Tibet to teach. And his teacher, Dharmaraksita, says, You know, I got some advice for you because the Tibetans are bullheaded people.

You know, I got a book. I wrote you a book. And when he's leaving for Tibet, his teacher hands him a book of poetry.

And says, You're going to need this. If you're going to deal with those crazy yak farmers who don't even have an alphabet, you know, you're going to need this book of instructions. And it's a very beautiful book of karmas.

It's a book of karmas. And I used it for my business book. I stole everything from there.

I think I even credited him. so anyway, we decided that Seiji would be the person. Two Austrians agreed to fund him.

His salary. And we started. We started on that second book.

And then Mr. Wu took the first book. And we went on a two-volume karmic correlations deal-whopper. And it's amazing.

It's just amazing. And we found a commentary to Atisha's teacher's text, which is a public teaching, which is a public teaching by a lama. How many years ago?

Like 300 years ago? Something like that. 300 years ago.

And then the lama goes, we didn't know it, but the lama goes off on tantra half the time. So then, you know, in class, everyone's getting a big dose of secret teachings upstairs. And everyone's jealous of Seiji.

Everyone says, I want a dad book. You know. Anyway, so I put his book in the secret section because it's a tradition in Tibetan Buddhism that if a book has a significant amount of tantra in it, it has to be cataloged in the secret teachings.

Okay? It's a tradition. So your book is tantra.

I'm sorry. All right. But it's also a huge amount of lojong, which is just how to be a good person, how to develop kindness, basic kindness, compassion.

Okay? All right. Section three is the lower middle way, which contradictorily, in the Kangyur and Tengyur, is called Prajnaparamita.

You see? So when you say Prajnaparamita in the Kangyur, it means all teachings on emptiness by the Buddha. When you say Prajnaparamita in the Tengyur, it means only lower middle way.

Okay? Only the lower middle way. Okay?

So it's confusing. Okay? To represent that, by the way, the main writer there is a sangha, Arya Sangha, who lived 17 centuries ago.

And one of his most famous books is Abhisama Ankara, Mantoken, Jewel of Realizations. Okay? And maybe the most famous line is Dene...

Dene Sengye Namgyenpae Tengye Dze Nonyong Shukpe Tenjin Dreljung Luthudang Lumi Thunla Dopa Jey Very famous. It says, what? Do the lion's dance meditation.

Learn the lion's dance meditation. And then you will... Come on.

Luk Tung Luk Ngok Yeah. You'll know how we get in trouble. And you'll know how to get out of trouble.

Good. Put the car in reverse. Okay?

So we've been doing that at the Lam Rim Teachings for, I don't know, two years. I think we started in Mexico. The lion's dance has five classical parts taught by a sangha to...

Sorry. Taught by Maitreya to a sangha in his heaven. And then he brought it back.

Okay? And we've been going through it part by part. I think we're on the last part.

We're going to do it in July in Mexico. But it's a preparation meditation for emptiness. Very powerful.

Okay? So there's a whole book about it. And Sugeng Shi, who's a Chinese extraction from Singapore and Indonesia, he's translating that book.

And he's also a very talented linguist. He worked in Sony Corporation in Japan for years. Or Hitachi.

Somebody like that. And so his Japanese is very good. His Chinese is fluent.

And his Indonesian is his mother tongue. And Singlish. Oh, his English is quite good.

He's a linguist. So he's doing that book. Higher Middle Way, which is called Madhyamaka, in the Tengyur, okay?

It's called Madhyamaka, okay? Although technically, Sugeng would be Madhyamaka also, okay? But in the Tengyur, it's not laid out that way.

157 books. 17 volumes. 16,000 pages.

The first book I want to talk about is Nick's book, Sixty Verses on Reasoning. You want to describe it in two sentences. Take lots of breath.

It's one of the great books in Nagarjuna, which proves to the lower schools, I described it this afternoon.

[Speaker 2]
Okay.

[Speaker 1]
Proves to the lower schools that they already accept the higher schools' idea of emptiness. And that's two sentences. Yeah.

And the person who wrote the commentary is Gyaltsabje, Tsongkhapa's disciple, who, when he met the greatest master of Buddhism ever, was already a high master himself, specializing in logic. So, formal logic, syllogism, the study of syllogism, which is how you see emptiness. And it's extremely difficult.

And we're having fun frustrating ourselves with that book. Next we have Ben Kramer. He's doing a book called Siddhanta, in which we cover all the schools of Buddhism.

It's a survey of all the schools of thought, starting with the Hindu schools of thought, out of which Buddhism grew. And we're going to be going through it tonight and tomorrow in this book called Angel and Devil. The Angel Debates the Devil.

I want to just point out the completion dates here. Seiji, 2023. Sugeng, 2022.

Nick, 2022. And we're putting out a series of 108 books. These will be in the series.

You're welcome to be one of the five people who buys one. We're expecting about five sales. I'll do four, okay?

And then Ben's is 2021. He's up pretty soon. Venerable Utpala is translating.

This is a genre called Ta-Chi. Say Ta-Chi. Ta means view of emptiness.

Chi means special instructions. And it's a whole book dedicated to emptiness meditations. And we did some of it last night.

And it's amazing. It's extraordinary. So after Seiji's class, everybody says they want Seiji's book.

But then after Utpala has a class, everyone says they want her book. No one says that after Abhidharma. Okay.

Section 5, Commentaries on Sutra. So this is where they actually take a sutra and they go through it word by word, in the Tengra. And there's 38 titles there.

We're working on two of them. One is Kamalashila's Commentary to the Diamond Cutter, which has never been taught, that I'm aware of. And has never been translated since it was first translated.

And it's the longest commentary to the Diamond Cutter. It's 130 pages total. And I taught it for five years.

And I'm translating it for another three, four years. And it'll be done. And it's an extraordinary commentary.

It's extremely difficult. There are no commentaries on it. And I think some of it was translated from Sanskrit by a guy who was drunk.

And I mean, it's really extremely difficult. So anyway. When I was in college, I had to do a report on Edgar Allan Poe, who claimed that he wrote most of his stuff drunk.

And so I thought to write about that. Okay. Then we talked about the famous sutra called Gomorapsa, which is where the Buddha says what I really meant.

You can translate the title as what I really meant. It's probably one of the most important sutras of all time. And it's very interesting.

You see, all the tengyur, the 3,500 books, call it, is written in Sanskrit, right? And translated into Tibetan, except for one book. And that's a commentary on what the Buddha really meant, written in Chinese, okay?

And the Tibetans considered it so important that they translated it with the tengyur. And this was written in the time of Xuanzang, which is around 700 A.D., 750 A.D., okay? And it's 1,475 pages long.

It'll be 8,000 English pages, okay? And I plan to finish it in 2034. So we're working on it with a Chinese team.

Some of the Chinese still exists, and some of it doesn't. Tsongkhapa used it for his great work on interpretation. So we threw Tsongkhapa into the translation.

So we're doing the sutra, we're doing the Chinese commentary, which will be 7,000 pages, and then we're doing Tsongkhapa. We're just throwing them all together, okay? And we're making good progress.

We're about a couple hundred pages into it. That's the foundation of a program in China called China Soft Power. We sold it to the AIIB, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, which was funded by the Chinese government for $100 billion.

They took all their U.S. bonds and put it into this bank. It's the third world bank in the world, after the IMF and the World Bank. They are building infrastructure from Asia to Europe.

They are building a new Silk Road, and they're spending $100 billion. It's unbelievable. Basically, Europe and Asia will become one unit by the time they're finished.

So we sold them on the idea of training people to use their ancient culture to be more kind, gentle, thoughtful, do good karma while you're out there taking over the world, okay? All right. So we're translating that book as the foundation of that program, and all the people in the program are in the translation class also, which is really cool.

And the Chinese government is happy with it because we're recovering a book that they lost. All right. We don't say much that Yuan Tze was from...

The author was born in Korea. He was Korean, but that's okay. He wrote in Chinese.

No, as a young man, he came to China, and he never went back home. But his disciples started Buddhism in Korea, okay? All right.

Mind Only School is the most handsome translator. There are 66 books there, and Word picked a book. I know he talked about it today.

I don't have to say much about it. It's by Tsongkhapa. It's called Difficult Points in the Mind Only School.

We thought it would be a nice survey of the Mind Only School. It turns out to be Difficult Points in the Mind Only School. And we had a very rocky start.

Then we found a commentary to it, a more recent commentary in the last three, four hundred years, and it's great. And we're working through that, and it's amazing. It's totally amazing, okay?

Mind Only School is big in China because when Chinese Buddhism went to China from India, Mind Only was the school of India. So, you know, the Chinese 1.4 billion people really enjoy his work, and they're very appreciative of his work. Okay.

Section 7, Abhidharma. Dry, dry. 700 years of dryness.

And Stanley Chan is working on that, and it's going to finish in 2042. And we're on schedule, okay? And this is, what I'm trying to say is, this is the kind of planning we have to do at this institution.

We are working for generations. We are planning, John's work will be done in another 50 generations, okay? He's about 5% finished after 31 years, okay?

And the translation will take about 30 generations, okay? And we are thinking that way here. That's what we do here.

We are thinking on a very large scale of how to protect this wisdom in this planet and how to spread it in this planet in a non-religious way, in a way that everyone can use. We have, last year, I think, 3,000 Muslims came to programs and Communist Party members in China, and we taught in the Congress of Mexico to Catholics, and hardcore Catholics. And it's just, we're taking this wisdom and exporting it to each country in a way that they can enjoy and that they can use for themselves, okay?

Without having to sign up for Buddhism, okay? So that's Stanley Chen. We picked the youngest translator to do the 2042.

He will be... How old is he? He'll be...

He'll be 50-something when he finishes. And he's into it. He's really getting into it.

He's found the Chinese commentaries, and he's really into it now. It was a little bit of a rocky start. He really didn't want to do it.

His partner, Allison Zhou, is working on Vinaya, and we are working through the full nun's vows, which have been lost in Tibet for 1,000 years. And it's amazing, and the work is extraordinary. The work is like, I don't know, going to another planet, because no one has worked on this for 1,000 years.

And the vows are amazing, and we're recovering them. We have, I don't know, 100 commentaries in John Brady's database from 2,500 years ago. So we are putting it back together.

And nuns will be able to keep all the many more vows now. Okay? The next section, I'm going to the tengyur, okay?

It's called Jataka, which is the stories of the birth of the Buddha. Why are we doing this tonight? Somebody remind me.

Because the author is going to do it. He's going to go through each of these schools, and I want you to know, I want to say, this is Stanley's, this part's Stanley, this part's Allison. I want you to say, oh yeah, you told us about that.

Right? You're not going to forget it before tomorrow, okay? The day after is okay.

So this is where the Buddha explains karma. And Dr. Wu is working on it, which is very, very cool, because the Chinese still exist. So we're able to cross-reference the Chinese.

The Sanskrit still exists, and the Tibetan still exists. And Aisha found the Sanskrit. And we should give her a hand.

And... Levi, Levi. Anyway, it's amazing.

So we're able to use all three languages, and we have experts in all three languages. And Yan Tang, which is his assistant, is working on it with him. And they're doing a nice job.

The story of the boy who gets shipwrecked and goes to, you know, who kicked his mother by accident, that comes from there. Which is the basis of Seiji's book. So there's starting to be this, what do you call it?

Incest. Holy incest. All these great books are starting to overlap.

You know, like Vinaya, emptiness comes up in Vinaya, and then, you know, Abhidharma is treating karma, and then karma is being taught downstairs here on the same day in the DCI teacher training. And there's amazing stuff going on. We're using all of it.

And what's going on at this school is going at a thousand miles an hour. You know, people who haven't been here for a year come in, they say, what's going on? You know, we're like, yeah, we found some more stuff upstairs.

And we use it immediately in DCI programs. Like, we just got back from Vienna and Japan, and we used the new text. We used the Gang's text in Japan and China and Vienna.

And we just threw a whole new thing. And it's really cool. So it's like a moving target, okay?

And I meet friends who came to my classes in the 80s and 90s, and they're like, what? Okay. Section 10, Epistles, Lekha.

And these are letters written by saints to mostly kings. And we just closed a deal with a Japanese publisher to translate three of them, which are to Greek and Indian kings, two by Nagarjuna and one by Nagasena. And they are amazing.

And they're amazing for their effect on Greek culture. Taught to Greek kings in India by Buddhist monks. And the story of emptiness of the cart comes from there, and things like that.

Amazing things that we use every day in DCI, okay? And we'll be working on those. God bless.

Section 11 is School Number 2, which is what? Sautrantika, which is ... It's called logic, but I hate to call it that, because people fall asleep.

I just say the word logic and they fall asleep. But it's clear thinking. Nowadays I like to call it clear thinking.

How to think clearly. And Adam's working on that book. He'll be done in 2032.

And it is the greatest book on Dharmakirti. He's translating the greatest commentary on this subject, which is called The Key to Emptiness. It is said in Buddhist circles that if you don't understand how to think clearly, you cannot see emptiness.

You have to study this topic to see emptiness directly, okay? And we teach that in DCI Level 7. We use it extensively.

We use that commentary extensively, okay? Okay, now then, there's a couple of sections that are not ... We're not translating.

We're studying Sanskrit language studies, which are really obscure. And you're better off studying a grammar by one of the modern grammarians, Dwight Whitney, from Yale, who was my teacher's teacher's teacher in the 1800s. He wrote the best book.

You don't need this book. It's a better presentation of Sanskrit than yours, okay? Medicine, Chikitsa Vidya.

It's interesting because Tibet is halfway between China. As far as medicinal theory, classical Chinese medicine and Ayurveda, Tibet is a mixture. And it's quite interesting.

And there are great commentaries. I studied it, I translated it for the Dalai Lama's doctor for a couple of years. And they're amazing.

They're very, very beautiful. We don't have time to work on it. We have more money.

Fine arts, painting, sculpture, architecture. Some great classics there. And then Nitya Shastra, which means worldly topics.

My favorite book there is a book on ... What do you call it? Not Kama Sutra.

There's a book on how to evaluate gemstones that I really enjoy. But generally, they're not like books that we want to spend most of our life on. And then there's a book.

There's a whole section of 118 books called Stuff We Didn't Know Where to Put It. And it's really cute. And there's all kinds of weird stuff in there.

Okay. So that's to show you how the schools that you're going to go through in this text are being covered in this institution, by this college. And the plans go up to about 2042.

And we're working through it. So I thought you would ... Maybe you'd like to get involved on some level.

Anyone in this room can get involved. Talk to Nick if you'd like to. You don't have to be a Sanskrit translator.

You can help. There's tons of stuff to do. There's a whole lifetime of stuff to do.

And we don't leave it on the library shelves. We interpret it for the modern world, and we bring it down here, and we teach it to 30,000 people every year. And the Mexican team, who's cut here.

Welcome. We should give them a hand. They've been working with a crew of people, Marco Cardelli and some other people, who have gotten the Congress of Mexico to pass a law that good eating, good stretching, and seed thinking from DCI must be taught in 130,000 Mexican schools to 23 million children.

So Connie's in charge of that project. And if you guys do a good job, you could affect more people than I have in my whole life. You see?

If you guys just do a good job, we're going to have a big meeting tomorrow, you would affect more people than we've ever been able to touch. You see? And we're working on obesity and bullying, and self-esteem, and good health, good eating, and treating people according to the golden rule.

So I think it's going to be, you basically have a chance to remake a country if you work hard. So that's kind of cool. Okay?

So all right. Let's go back to the text. I'll do 15 minutes of text.

We'll take a break. Okay? And I'm going to have a meeting upstairs during the break with some of you, and I'll let you know who.

Okay? Okay. So here we go to the text, which you can take me off the screen, Peter.

I don't know if that's, or you guys can do that. I prefer that you hear the text verbally, which is the ancient tradition. And then I've translated the text for you, and you have that.

And then I've also written a flow chart of the ideas, because unless you're very familiar with all the subjects we just talked about, you can't see any flow to this book, and there is no commentary. Okay? So here we go.

All right? Last night we were studying a famous proof of emptiness called neither one nor many. Okay?

Things are neither one nor many. And the way they get, and let me clarify, okay? Don't get lost, okay?

Nagarjuna, after 700 dark years of Abhidharma, 200 A.D., he shows up, in Nick's book, and his system is cool. His whole life, okay? First of all, he's called the Arya.

His nickname is Padma, which is just the dude who saw emptiness directly. That's his unofficial name. What's his other unofficial name?

The second Buddha to walk this earth. So he was amazing, and he's famous for having seen emptiness directly. And his main thrust of his teaching was to say, there's something screwy going on.

Didn't you notice? You see? Okay?

And when you really study Nagarjuna, and you spend years on Nagarjuna, frustrated years, trying to break through Nagarjuna, then you realize his big shtick is, didn't you notice? There's something weird going on. You know, like the way we think about stuff, it doesn't work exactly right.

You see? And his first thing is to attack the idea of one thing. Okay?

Like he says, there's something weird about one thing. You know, and we're like, what? And he says, there's something weird going on.

You know, what? So, it's called the argument of things are not one. Okay?

And things are not more than one. You can say one and many, but I think a better translation is things are not one. No thing in the universe is a single thing, nor is it more.

Okay? And then you're like, come on. My stomach's a thing.

I fill it up every day. You know, donuts are a thing. Pizzas are, you know, all the important stuff is they're one thing.

And then Nagarjuna's like, you haven't been looking closely. Something weird's going on. You know?

So he devoted his life to trying to shake up people. Say, look, it ain't the way it looks. You know?

It's not what you think. You know, there's signs of problems. And one of them is that nothing's one thing.

And then you're like, come on. What are you talking about? Okay?

So we did it last night. Okay? And we didn't finish.

We covered all the major categories of existence. We covered changing things and unchanging things. Inside of changing things, we covered physical things, mental things, and changing things that are either mental or physical.

Then we went to unchanging things and went deep because we covered three different kinds. Empty space, which never changes. Yes.

Cessation is permanent endings of negativities. The end of anger in the human soul. Okay?

Like, never changes. Okay? And is it one thing?

You see? And is empty space one thing? What was the third example?

Emptiness itself. Okay? So he covers every major category of existence and he examines them to see if things are one thing.

Okay? And he says, no. And we went in depth in the atom thing.

But you could do the mind flow thing. You could do the emptiness of different objects in this room. What's the border between the emptiness of Barney and the emptiness of Rick?

Where's the border? You can't find it. And you live with that.

Like, you don't get upset. You don't... Like, they come in, Rick and Barney, and you're like, Hi, Rick and Barney.

I can't see the border between your emptinesses. You know? Like, no one freaked out when they came.

You know? So I can't see the border between your emptinesses. Because we got used to it.

You see? We got used to just fuzzy. I can't see the back of Rick right now.

For all I know, he's a robot. And there's a big key in the back. And she turns it every morning.

You know? No, I mean, but my mind fills in. My mind fills in the rest of Rick.

You see? And then I take that as Rick. But based on the parts, I only can see a few parts now.

By the way, if you see his right arm, you can't see his left arm at the same time. Okay? You cannot.

You ready? And you cannot see his right arm unless you see his fingers. Okay?

Right? I mean, just be kind of a stick. Right?

And you can't see his fingers unless you see the five fingers. Or four, whatever he's got. Certified.

He's got five. But you can't see the thumb unless you see the little finger. You see?

You can't certify five unless you see them one by one. You cannot. And the human eye cannot see all five at once.

Cannot. Or it would look like a glove or something. What do you call them?

A mitten. It would look like a mitten. So...

And I know it sounds stupid or unnecessary or just philosophy. But what's the punchline? It's not up there.

It's not coming at me. Okay? How do I see Rick's right arm?

It comes from my seeds in my own mind. You see? I'm creating his right arm.

Okay? So that's almost as useless as arguing about how many fingers... You see what I mean?

Yeah. But Nagarjuna says, Look, something else is going weird. Does flipping the switch turn the light on in the room?

Huh? When you want the light on, what do you go do? You go and flip...

You say, I can't find the switch. It's dark in here. I can't find the switch.

Okay? Right? And whenever you flip the switch, the light goes on, right?

This is something we developed in DCI. It's really cool. DCI moves really fast.

You gotta... Why am I doing that? I did this the first time in Irpin, outside of Kiev.

The audience was half Russian, half Ukrainian, which itself was an achievement. And I went like this, and people were like, Why are you doing that? And I said, I have to do this.

And they're like, But you move! And I'm like, I gotta make the sun come up tomorrow. I gotta do this before it gets too late.

I gotta do this. And they're like, Huh? And I said, No, I'm making the sun come up tomorrow.

And they're like, Oh, come on. And I said, No. Listen.

Every time I bang on the mic, the sun comes up the next day. And every time I flip the switch, the light goes on. Keep flipping switches.

Keep working for those money. Okay? Keep looking online for a nice boy or girl.

Okay? Got it? Dig it?

Everything you do is mistaken. Everything. Every single thing you ever do to get anything is mistaken.

The guardian's like, Wake up! You know? Sometimes you turn the light switch and the light doesn't go on.

Yeah, but that's because the light burned out. Yeah, but if the switch made the light go on, it would go on anyway. But it only makes it go on sometimes.

He's like, Are you crazy? You just told me the truth. Okay?

You all right? Nothing's working the way you thought it was. Nothing.

Okay? And every time you flip a light switch, what did we say last time? Last night.

Every time you flip a light switch to turn a light on, you reinforce the misunderstanding of your world and it will get you deeper and deeper into misery. And things won't work. And you will die.

And your body will wear out. And you'll just be one of those people who died. I get emails.

You wouldn't believe it. It's super depressing. I don't see people for five years, ten years, twenty years.

I always get the death email. Now I have a failed disease schedule. They teach me Buddhism email.

But ten years later, everybody, every single person, I get that it's frustrating. It should have come to me ten years ago. I can't help you now.

I can't teach you everything in three days or three weeks. You see what I mean? Then people suddenly, Oh, things didn't work out.

Like, duh. Okay. All right?

Understand? So what Nagarjuna is saying and what the Panchen Lama is saying is that the emptiness of one and many boils down to the emptiness of one thing. And I cannot be seeing Rick the way I think I'm seeing Rick because it's not possible.

I can't look at your left arm and see your right arm. But if I don't see your left arm and your right arm, I can't see you. Okay?

So something else is going on. Your eye is not jumping around and getting indicators and then synthesizing Rick. It's not what's happening.

Rick's coming from you. Okay? Rick's coming from you.

That's one. Rick. Got it?

Okay? That's why there's no two Ricks. That's funny.

He's unique. Right? So anyway, now that we've studied what it means to not be one and many, which really just means not to be one because if it's not one...

Yeah, if you don't have one apple, you can have two apples. So we don't have to talk about more than one. We proved one Rick.

He can't be... If he has parts, which we established for every category of existing thing last night, if he has parts, I cannot see the whole. It's not possible.

What's going on is something weird. Something weird's going on. And Nagarjuna says, because it's coming from you.

How? You see indicators. You see skin colors, round spots, long spots.

And then a seed opens in your mind and a picture comes out called Rick and it synthesizes Rick into Rick. Okay? So Rick's coming from me, not from Rick.

Okay? So try to find one Rick who's coming from Rick's side. You ain't gonna find any.

Okay? So is it true that there's no one Rick? True or false?

There's one right here! Yeah, you gotta say, there's a Rick who comes from me. That's okay.

Okay? So Nagarjuna comes and says, Antel, is it possible when things are one or more than one, you say, yeah. And I say, why?

Because it's coming from me. But if you say, not coming from me, then it's impossible. Okay, got it?

something screwy's going on. Get this feeling. Okay?

Now let's go to the text. Okay? How do you use it in your real life?

Okay? That's the Pension Law's favorite subject. Okay?

So I'm on, where am I? Yeah, we finished Chhuva Chukulamkara, we finished all that. I'm on 120, okay?

I'm on verse 120. You don't have to look at the text. Just listen.

Tonight, when you're overwhelmed with more curiosity to go deeper, you can look at the text. Verse 120 is another ineffective meditation. Politely, out of wanting to be polite, I call it ineffective meditations.

You could call it stupid meditations, but it's not nice to say those things. Okay. So, ineffective meditation number 13.

Decide that things are neither one nor many, but don't use it. Okay? So now we got sophisticated.

We got someone who sat in the room on Saturday night and heard the one or many argument about rig, okay? And they went home and they never used it. Okay?

So that's called useless meditation. Okay? Oh, look, rig's neither one nor many.

Okay? And then you just go on with your life. So how are you going to use it, for example?

How's Bonnie going to use rig's emptiness to have an even sweeter marriage next year? Huh? If he's not one or many, it means he's coming from me.

He's coming from you. Right? So the next time he does something stupid, who are you going to yell at?

No, then you have to pat yourself on the back. Don't tell him he's good. No, I'm just saying, use it.

Use it. Okay? Oh, everyone has problems with their partner.

Come on, let's be honest. You know? Then use it.

You know? Don't get upset. Don't get angry.

Don't do things that don't work. Change your seats. Okay?

Change your seats. And then the person will change. Okay?

The person will change. Oh, my partner's addicted to so-and-so. Okay, so you stop your addictions.

You deal with one of your addictions. And then suddenly your partner doesn't have this addiction anymore. Okay, got it?

Understand? So the Buddhist method of dealing with a marriage, a partner, is to fix it here. Okay?

Got it? That's why we study one and many. And if you study one and many and you don't try to fix your partner, you didn't get it.

Okay, got it? That's where he is. That's verse 120.

Okay? Yes, Rick is neither one or many. Okay, see ya.

See ya next time. Okay? No, use it.

Make him wash the dishes. Come on. There's a famous story in DCI where this lady in Asia, who I won't even name the country because you'll guess, said that her goal in her relationship was that her husband should wash the dishes all the time.

And I taught her the four steps. She invited me to her house the next year. And we sat down for dinner and there was a bell on the table and she we sat down and she rang the bell and the kitchen door opened and her husband came out with an apron on.

Men in Asia never cook. Okay? Never ever.

And he's like, yes, dear. And she's like, is dinner ready? And she's like, he's like, oh no, I'm so sorry.

I'm almost done, you know? He went back in the kitchen. She said, give me five!

We were like, give me a high five, you know? I said, damn, your goal was to make him wash the dishes. She said, yeah, but why stop there?

You know? the verse number 120 is the person who studied one in many who didn't use it to make their husband wash the dishes. Okay?

Got it? Okay? They understood the concept.

They understood the seed concept, but they didn't use it. Okay? Got it?

Alright. I'm going to give me five more minutes. I'll give you a break.

Okay? By the way, there's a large group of people here. I want you to come upstairs with me so I can rant at you about something.

Okay? In the break. I don't know.

I don't know. It's too many people here. Yeah, okay.

If you've been involved for a couple years, come upstairs at the break. Okay? I have a lecture.

A mini lecture. Alright? Cool?

Especially teachers. Okay? Alright.

Ineffective meditation number 14. Verse number 121. My husband comes from my mental seeds.

The karma opens and a mental image comes out and it coats him. And the parts are unified into Rick who doesn't wash the dishes. Okay?

Got it? And that's exactly how it happens. When do you...

What's the Buddhist name for that process? Dependent Origination. Okay?

When do you see it directly for the first time? Yeah, in the hours before you see emptiness directly. You see a karmic seed open in your mind and you see it create something in front of you.

Okay? And then there's no more philosophy. It's just like you saw it.

Is that emptiness? Yeah. And that's ineffective number 14.

Okay? Oh, let me meditate on the seed opening in my mind that creates my Rick. Okay?

And if you stop there and you don't go further, you have failed in Mahamudra meditation. Okay? Got it?

Is it useful? Extremely. I mean, dishes is dishes.

Okay? It's extremely useful, but it's not the ultimate goal. All right.

By the way, he's... and Nick's going to explain it. Okay?

Barring which, the human computer is going to explain it. He says the problem in number 121 is that you are focusing on a mayingak, a mayin, and not a mepa. Yeah, so you're talking about something that's not something else as opposed to something that's not there altogether.

Yeah, say it again. You're talking about the problem is that you're focusing on something not being something else, implying that it could be there, as opposed to something that's just not there altogether. Yeah.

And I want to repeat the example from last night. It's a little weird, but I think everyone can relate to it. Okay?

So you come home, your husband is like this, and he's like giggling to himself. And then the minute you walk in the door, he's like, you know, and you're like, who is that? And he's like, what?

And like, you know, who are you texting? And she's like, oh, nobody. And then immediately the man gets this image in his mind of another man.

You see? And the whole thing is very elaborate. Like in the next few hours, every man knows this feeling, I think.

In the next few hours, you're going to create a very clear picture of the recipient of the email. You know, there's going to be, and he's chasing your wife around, and that's where she was last week when she sent you, you know, and you've got all this story of a guy in your mind. Right?

Very, very strong picture in your mind. Okay? Then we gave the example that you guys go to bed, and you wait till your wife's asleep, and then you sneak around to her side of the bed, and you duck down, because it makes a light that wakes up people, and you, like, hold it this way, and you check the record of her texts, and she was texting Amazon to buy you a birthday present, and that's why she was excited.

Okay? Why did we bring that up? Because it's poof.

Poof. What's poof? Poof.

Yeah. The guy. Yeah, that's the point here.

Okay? That's the point here. Your perception in your mind, your painting of this guy goes poof.

Okay? It doesn't go ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch. It just goes poof.

Okay? In one second, it goes poof, and that's emptiness. Okay?

Emptiness is not, oh, it's the other guy. It's not the guy I thought it was. It's not thinking.

Emptiness is not thinking, oh, it wasn't what I thought it was. It was this. Okay, got it?

That's not emptiness. That's what he's trying to say. It's not misidentification of the object of the image.

You're not thinking, oh, it was Amazon instead of Joe. Okay? You're not thinking that.

What happens? Poof. Okay?

That's emptiness. Okay? Something that never existed disappears.

Okay? And then suddenly you're happy. Got it?

Okay, so in this, now he's going deeper and deeper into Buddhist schools who misidentify emptiness. What's the point? What's the point?

Yeah, but what's the point of that? What's the point of trying to go to poof when you could go to my husband and wash the dishes if I handled the seed cards correctly? Yeah, the second one solves all your problems and nothing else does.

Okay? Until you can poof things that you don't like. You are just improving the crap in your life.

You're upgrading crap. Anyway. Peter, they want a break.

Okay, go ahead. It better be good. This seems to imply that it is possible to see dependent origination and then not emptiness directly.

Correct. That's what jalan chen chok is. The last stage of the second path is to see dependent origination directly.

And then the next hour or so you see emptiness directly. It is always the case that you don't see emptiness directly at the same time. No, you don't.

It's impossible to have that karma. Say again? Didn't that meditation...

Oh, no, no. Yeah, well, it wasn't perfect anyway. Okay.

Yeah, I understand. It wasn't jalan chen chok, but it was getting there. Which brings up a nice subject.

Then we'll really stop, okay? If you understand these faulty meditations, it's very useful. Each one of them is very useful.

The lower schools are useful. Okay? If you really want to understand emptiness, then master these 26 wrong meditations and use them and try them because it will take you higher.

Okay? He's not picking stupid meditations. He's picking sophisticated meditations that could take you higher.

Okay? Got it? Just like the tenger.

Okay? 90% of the tenger is wrong. Well, not if you count tantra, but...

Okay, got it? Okay, you ready? Here we go again.

Nick. The devil says, if you identify that Rick is coming from a seed in your mind, it doesn't hurt me directly. Why?

What do you think? Yeah, it's not proof. It's not a proof experience, okay?

That's the next verse in the text, okay? It doesn't hurt the misunderstanding in your mind. It doesn't really...

How do you say? There's a cowboy movie in the United States called... They say, this town ain't big enough for both of us.

This is very common in the U.S., English. They say, this town is... The bad guy and the good guy have guns, and they say, one of us has to leave this town.

So, it's like that, okay? In your mind, either you are remembering that this person is coming from you, or you're not. And if you're not, then the devil can stay, okay?

If you're not actively thinking... So, this goes back to two states of mind that we use in meditation called... Sheshin and Temba.

Somebody explain the difference. In this case, Rick's wife is mad at him for some irritating thing he did. Then she gets sheshin.

[Speaker 2]
So, sheshin is what would go off in her mind, like, eat, eat, you're angry. Eat your wife.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, we're describing you, Bonnie. No, he does something irritating, and you start getting upset, okay? And then, sheshin...

Okay, wait. Describe sheshin in meditation. It detects...

So, sheshin in meditation is used to describe mainly two problems. Either you're getting too sleepy, or you're starting to think about the next thing you're going to do when you get up. Yeah, right.

You're texting, okay? And now, what's sheshin mean in normal life when Bonnie gets irritated at Rick, which never happens, but just takpatasamgiripa, for no dollars.

[Speaker 2]
For example...

[Speaker 1]
Takpatasamgiripa.

[Speaker 2]
That's something that never happens? In a hypothetical case?

[Speaker 1]
In the highly hypothetical case. I'm trying to teach him this logic word, and it's been a struggle. In the highly theoretical case that Bonnie got irritated at her husband.

Then what? Then you would want your lower mind to start to go off and say, oh, there's a mental affliction happening. Why would that happen?

Oh, because you're starting to think about the object in a way that it could never exist. So therefore, start thinking about it in a way that it actually exists. So poof.

[Speaker 2]
Good.

[Speaker 1]
Where's the jemba? Where's the jemba in meditation? When you pull the mind back.

Yeah, so jemba means... It's mistranslated as recollection. It doesn't mean recollect.

It means... Jemba means to pull. So it means pull the mind back to the object.

Bring the mind back. The alarm goes off, and then you bring the mind back. So what's the jemba in this case with Bonnie and Rick?

[Speaker 2]
The teaching.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, you remember, he's coming from me. The old one goes poof. The one who's not coming from you goes poof.

That's the... Peter and Maria did it last night, right? And then all is good, because then you realize that you can change him.

You can change him. Not by hurting him, or not by saying hard things to him, or not by being angry at him, but by changing him here. Okay?

All right. But until there's... Ni nang.

The dual discrepancy. Nice. Discrepancy between what?

Between what really exists and what you think you see. Yeah, what's really there and what you think you see. So this is a big subject in Buddhism.

What's the Sanskrit?

[Speaker 2]
Maya.

[Speaker 1]
Maya, illusion. Okay? So illusion in Buddhism just means what you think you see and what's really there, they don't match.

They don't match. And that's the definition of illusion in Buddhism. Okay?

So until there's a discrepancy between the devil and the angel, the devil will stay. Okay? Until there's an active understand...

Until there's an active poof in body's mind, she will continue to be upset at Rick. And there's no other way. According to Buddhism, you will never be totally patient with Rick unless you can poof him.

Okay? Not possible. Okay?

All right. Now, verse 123, okay? Ineffective meditation number 15.

Using one and many to come to a lack of me, but while still holding in the act of holding me, what's a common example of this problem in DCI? I'll say it again. For those of you who have been doing construction all day.

Did you do construction all day? Damn, you got to lay off and take Sunday off. Using the idea of one and many, there's no one and there's no many, to come to a lack of me, but you are still holding to me while you're doing that.

What's a common DCI example? While I'm explaining to you why the pen comes from you, in that moment, you are feeling that it comes from itself. And this is just about anyone who's not an Arya in the direct perception.

Okay? Even an Arya out of the direct perception. Did you do the magic show today?

Yeah, if you came to her magic show. Did you get through the whole thing? Wow.

Eight minutes. Oh my God. Cool.

Nice job. Okay. So he's talking about, you're thinking about, oh, Rick's coming from me.

But while you're looking at him, you still feel like he's coming from him. Okay? Like it's an inability to implement it completely in the moment.

Okay? That's ineffective meditation number 15. So you're getting sophisticated, you're understanding that things are coming from you, and you're looking at him with irritation, saying, he's coming from me.

Which means you think he's coming from him, deep down. Got it? So there's a discrepancy between your feelings and your understanding.

They don't match yet. Okay, got it? That's a deeper kind of bad meditation.

Is it okay if I go like ten minutes over? Because I cheated you out of ten minutes. Fifteen.

It's okay? If you have to go, go. If you have to catch a subway or something.

There's one across the street. Uh... Yeah, and then the next verse is just a very funny statement from ignorance.

It says, you know, look man, I'd love to leave your mind, but as long as you keep doing this stuff, I gotta stay here. I'm sorry. I would like to leave.

I'm up for it. I'm willing to leave. But as long as you're thinking about the pen coming from its own side while I'm explaining the pen to you, what's a man going to do?

He's got to stay! Okay, got it? It's kind of funny.

All right, verse 125. And this is a famous quotation from the Three Principal Paths. How do you spell that principle?

Yeah, I will personally decapitate any person who puts P-L-E, which is not an adjective. It's only been 40 years. Okay, mikpe teso kyan kun shik na.

Last verse or next to last verse? Mikpe teso kyan kun shik na means, If your opinion dissolves of what is real. If your opinion of what is real dissolves.

Mikpe teso means, If the way in which you view the object, which is like zintang. You know zintang. Teso is much more ancient.

Zintang means, how do you hold the thing? So mikpe teso kyan kun shik na means, If it dissolves. Te tse umedawa dzogpa la.

Then you understand middle way. Okay, that's Tsongkhapa. So based on that poetry, there was a school that came up in Tibet where they said, We are beyond all positions.

We hold no positions. We are beyond philosophy. We exist in the void.

You see? And they really took it seriously. They said, don't say it's there, and don't say it's not there.

Don't say Rick is there, and don't say Rick is not there. Just stay in suspension. It's all like the suspension school.

And you know, you kind of laugh or something, but if you were there in those days, you would have been a suspender, trust me. A suspender? Sure.

Okay. I often think that if I was in Germany in 1939, I probably would not have been brave enough to not do what everyone else was doing. You see what I mean?

We tend to do what people around us do. You see? Your opinion of yourself is probably exaggerated.

I know. Okay. Okay.

So, verse 125 is, don't get fooled into this school of thought that says it's not meaningful to discuss philosophy. It's a waste of time. It's splitting hairs.

Okay? Let's just leave it. Be in the natural state.

Because the natural state of the mind is to suffer. Okay? It's to misunderstand reality, which causes you suffering.

So you must rikpe rikpe nandam thayepa for $50. Rikpe Nice! Damn!

Infinite proof for emptiness. It's a very common expression in Madhyamika. Okay?

Fifty bucks, Peter, to the construction guy. Rikpe Yeah. Rikpe nandam thayepa.

You know, people who say that, Look, Geshe-la, this is all just ... I had a guy tell me that. Someone left the door, and they said, Geshe-la, it's too much.

You explain too much. Just let it ... Give us a couple months with no teaching.

And I'm like, Rikpe nandam thayepa. This is the position of the guy. You have to hear a thousand different presentations.

And then it will sink into the wood. Okay? And then the devil says an interesting thing.

He says, Can I ask you a question? And the guy is like, Yeah, okay. And he says, You're trying to hurt me, right?

The word in Tibetan is ... Nö. You're trying to damage me.

You are trying to inflict damage on me. I'm the one who's in your mind telling you to yell at your husband because he decided to yell at you. Okay?

And the angel is what? The part of your mind which understands that you created your husband. And if you don't like it, be nicer to other people.

Okay? Okay? misunderstanding comes out to the guy.

And he says, And the conversation is really hilarious in Tibetan, and I'm sorry I can't do it very well in English, but it's like, Look, what were you trying to do to me again? And the angel says, We are thrusting you out of this mind. You will be homeless.

We are thrusting the wrong way of looking at your husband out of your mind forever. He says, Oh, really? He keeps doing that.

He's like, Oh, really? And you're going to do that by taking no positions at all. Right?

Okay, get it? It's a joke. Okay?

You're going to thrust these wrong ideas out of your mind by actively taking no positions. He says, I like it. I go for that.

I vote for that. The Tibetan is really hilarious. Now, more deep.

The devil says, I have a new meditation for you. And the angel is like, What? And he says, How did you figure out that Rick wasn't there?

Okay? Peter and Maria's demonstration. Which you guys got to work on, by the way.

There's a better way. Maybe if you had more fights. Anyway.

Okay. So, the devil says, So, let's just... We saw a Robert De Niro movie.

What was it? Silver Lining or something like that. I feel like it's Robert De Niro talking.

He's the devil, right? He's like, So, you know, let me get this straight. You figured out that Rick wasn't real, right?

And then Bonnie says, Right. And you figured out that the Rick you thought was coming from Rick, and Rick was being mean because Rick wanted to be mean, which doesn't exist. Rick's mean because you were mean to somebody else.

Rick's not mean because Rick decided to be mean. The Rick who decided to be mean doesn't exist. Okay?

Poof, right? So then the devil says, So, you got it, right? You figured it out, right?

And we say, Yeah, I figured it out. He says, What happened exactly? How'd you figure it out?

And we say, Well, you know, I wasn't doing anything on Saturday so I decided to go to Geshe-la's class and Peter and Maria did this nice demonstration. I heard about the angel-devil talk and I studied it and I went home and I didn't just put it on the shelf to collect dust. I actually read it the next day a couple times.

I tried to figure out how the outline matched the verses. Then I understood that Rick wasn't coming from Rick. And the devil says, Well, tell me more.

Tell me more. How did it feel? What kind of thoughts did you have?

The point is, the next kind of meditation is an over-interest in the proximate causes of seeing emptiness directly. In DCI Level 7, we discussed the ultimate causes and then we discussed the apparent causes, right? So the apparent causes of her figuring out that Rick is not coming from himself was Geshe-la's class, the poetry by the Panchen Lama, you know, discussion with friends, events of the afternoon, hearing these great translators.

By the way, these are last year's production of the translators. You should look at it. It's amazing.

It's amazing. Anyway. So what's the real cause of understanding that your husband comes from you and not from himself?

What's the deeper cause and what's the apparent causes? Yeah, sharing. But what does the text always say?

Sharing. Come on.

[Speaker 2]
What you know, as far as you know.

[Speaker 1]
Good. Yeah. The Tibetan is always the same.

Chi shing shenpa. Chitta shenpa. Teach as much as you understand.

The implication is you don't understand much, but share as much as you can. Like, every chance you get that doesn't bother other people, which is not allowed in Buddhism. You cannot bang on people's doors and ask them if they heard about the pen.

I often do it on planes, though. People say, what do you do for a living? I pull out the pen because you asked me.

But to share with others as much as you understand is the real cause of understanding that your husband is coming from you. Okay, got it? It's not even going to class.

Why? $100 question. Huh?

[Speaker 2]
It's like flicking a license.

[Speaker 1]
That's not bad. She said it's like flicking a license. Peter...

Wait, Peter had a... He actually raised a hand. But he's Austrian.

Understanding in the class is coming from the Lord's seat. Sweet. Sweet.

Okay, got it? Who wrote the Diamond Cutter Sutra? You did.

Like, okay, when you go to see a movie, I always laugh at people who say, you know, I went to see this movie, but I hate the ending. And I'm like, who made the ending? According to disbelief, you made the ending.

And if you come to this class and you have a breakthrough, and you suddenly understand that Rick comes from you whenever he's irritating, and you just strive in your life not to be irritating to other people, if you get the teaching, it's only because you shared as much as you understood with other people in your life. Okay, got it? Cool?

Now that becomes more subtle. Okay? The devil says, oh, tell me again the mighty deeds you did to understand Rick.

And he wants you going off on all the classes you went to and all the books you translated. He wants you distracted with all the stuff you did, rather than understanding that your understanding comes from sharing understanding. Okay, cool?

And upstairs I was mean to everybody, and I was yelling at people for teaching. I don't mean to. I exist to see you teach.

The reason I'm doing what I do is I want to see you teach. But teach wisely. Okay, all right.

All right, here we go. But don't not teach. That would be a big mistake.

All right. Okay. Now, did I lose $100 just then?

Who was it? Oh, you're paying us off. This is apperception.

Okay. $100. Okay.

It's not that I have a lot of money. I just want you to listen. $100 question.

There's been a theme throughout this poem about a weakness of getting too interested in the mental process. Who can tell me why? There's been a theme that I've mentioned a few times in this poem of a weakness of getting too interested in the mental process that you use to get to emptiness.

Not exactly. Wait, wait. Tim has an opinion.

Close, but no cigar. Anatole. Human computer, give somebody else a break.

You got rich off me. You're getting kind of close, but not really. Okay, Chen Zong, give me a shot.

Okay, Peter. It's more simple than that. It's too much detail.

Okay, I saved $100. I mean, I only go so far. People are just fishing around.

Sometimes I go 90, 80. Then you owe me $10. The human mind is defective.

Anytime you watch the human mind, you are worsening the infection. Anytime you watch the human mind, which is defective because it thinks the pain comes from itself. You didn't mention the mind.

Anytime you focus just on the mind, like watching the mind, just itself, the impure mind, you become more impure if there's no active attempt to see why it's coming from you. This is a theme throughout this book. Until you are doing something which is incompatible with misunderstanding, you are supporting misunderstanding.

Okay, got it? Until you do something to actively push it out, you are supporting it. You are reinforcing it.

Okay, got it? It's weird. Which is to say, if you ever get upset at another person, ever, you are reinforcing ignorance in your own mind by the act of being irritated.

So it's almost hopeless. Okay. I'm going to go until 9.30. Is that okay? If you've got to leave, leave. We'll eat next week. We've got something in the fridge.

Just heat it up. Don't tell the dog. All right.

Yeah, again, Ineffective Meditation 18, verse number 129. And I could go off on it. I could read you the verse, but the basic thing is study without application.

And I think, having gone through the Geshe course, 25 years in the monastery, there are times in the monastery when you get really frustrated with people and you're like, you know, there's a lot of politics in a Buddhist monastery. A. Those institutions are the most important institutions on this planet.

They are the most precious institutions on this planet. B. There's a lot of politics that goes on and a lot of hard stuff goes down.

And sometimes you're just stunned. I heard you give an hour defense of this idea about irritation and now you're so angry at this other monk. What's going on?

So the devil here says, I like this kind of stuff. I'm especially enamored of people who study, study, study and are still getting irritated. That somehow they can, Geshe Michael, talk about irritation for days and then go home and get irritated within 15 minutes.

You're especially dear to my heart. Okay, that's verse 129. Okay, verse 130.

He repeats that reviewing the thought flow that got you to see that Rick was not coming from his own side is not itself the perception of emptiness. In DCI Level 7 we spend a lot of time on the approximate causes the approximate causes of seeing emptiness directly. I think DCI Level 7 is exciting.

It's the only piece of literature I've ever seen which is a guidebook to see emptiness directly. I don't know, it's 200, 300 pages long. I think it's a good piece of work.

But a lot of it is tracing the thought process. And the devil here would say, I hope you get stuck on that. Okay, I like it.

I hope you never get to the end of the manual. I hope you keep thinking about how to get the thought process going. And you get focused on the thought process.

And then when you get home from DCI Level 7 you yell at your husband. Then you're perfect. Okay, got it?

C.S. Lewis wrote a book. I like to talk about it. What's it called?

The Screwtape Letters. And if you haven't read it you should read it. It's about a young man in the World War II.

And the devil assigns his nephew to corrupt the young man and make sure he doesn't go to heaven. And it's a series of correspondences between the uncle and his nephew. So the nephew is a junior devil and the uncle is like the senior devil.

And he's sending advice to his nephew about how to corrupt this guy and keep him out of heaven. C.S. Lewis wrote it. He wrote The Narnia Tales and The Witch in the Wardrobe.

So he's a wonderful writer and an amazing thinker. So he says he said it was the hardest thing he ever did in his life to write the book because he had to put his mind in the devil's mind. And he said it was extremely uncomfortable and it was disgusting.

Like he felt revolted as he was writing the book to put his mind in the devil's mind. I think you could go to a dark place following. If you really understood the ideas of this text, which are very sophisticated, I think it would be a very dark place to go.

I think it would take a lot of strength to really put your mind in the devil's mind and try to make sure people slightly miss the mark and end up fighting with their wife when they get home after the lecture. I hope I don't do it. If I do, just hit me, okay?

All right. 1.31. And we have five more minutes, okay? Focusing on no self-nature, but still not applying it to your life and your challenges.

I think a special application of angel-devil thinking is with personal problems. For me, it was dealing with security bureaus this week. I was contacted twice this week.

It was frightening, and it's difficult. And I want to get upset at somebody. And then the devil's taking over my mind.

I'm like, no, no, calm down. This is coming from you, Geshe Michael. To use it for challenges in your life.

We started with irritating husbands, and Rick as a Thakpa Tasongi example, highly theoretical example, highly hypothetical example. But I personally have found that angel-devil thinking is most useful for personal problems, personal issues in your life, okay? All kinds of problems.

Financial, partner, work, you know. People say he yelled at me, and it's always, when you meet the guy who yelled at them, he always says, I talked quite softly. But I'm the kind of person who, when someone gives me a suggestion in a peaceful, civilized way, I'll always go to me and say, he yelled at me.

Did he really yell? Okay, so, when you have a challenge in your life, pull this out, or else it has been useless. Or else you are the devil's minion.

Okay? Why? There's a tradition that if you come to a class, and you learn these things, and you don't use it, you got worse.

It's better that you didn't come to the class, okay, if you don't use it for something. So use it. When you have personal challenges this week, try to get used to using it.

And that's going to be DCI level 11. Like, how do you get in the habit of bringing up angel-devil thought? What do we call it in countries where we're not allowed to talk about angels and devils?

We call it the tiger and the donkey. Okay? And we have a whole thing.

We have puppets, tiger and donkey puppets. Okay? In some countries where ACI is not allowed, we have rewritten the whole courses, and it takes training to deliver it safely.

Okay? Right? John did that.

Peter did that, right? You guys helped me write it, I think. Yeah.

So it takes some training to be safe. Okay? All right.

1.32. I still got four minutes. Don't ask me how that minute passed. Uh...

Failing to bring up angel-devil when you have personal challenges will put... This is verse 1.32. The devil says, will place you uniquely far away from an understanding of emptiness. I'll say it again.

Failing to use donkey-tiger thinking, angel-devil thinking when you have a personal challenge in the next few weeks will distance you from an understanding of emptiness even further. Okay? Failing to use it when you have it creates a karma that you become more emptiness-stupid than you were before.

Okay? That's depressing. Okay.

By the way, the opposite is also true. If you struggle to remember what we said tonight when someone pisses you off, like even if it's two days later, you say, oh wait, I was supposed to... It's a very powerful bomb against the devil.

Okay? Even to remember it two days later after you're not so upset and you remember what you were supposed to think two days later. It has a unique ability to destroy the devil.

Okay. All right. One more.

Yeah, say chepto. You guys know for a hundred dollars? I should have said two hundred.

Chepto. Chepto. Okay, I'll tell you chepto.

I had a human dictionary. I lived with a human dictionary. When I didn't know a word, I just went upstairs with a cup of tea, because otherwise you couldn't get in, and asked Rinpoche what it meant.

Here's his explanation of chepto. Chepto is your kid acts up, and you belt them. This is too bad, okay?

You belt them, and then the next time they just stick their butt out and say, go for it. And they get hardened to it. And chepto means if you don't remember the angel once, it gets harder the second time, and then harder the third time, and you get more inured.

You get more inured to not thinking about the angel. Okay? You get chepto.

The skin gets calloused. I like that. That's kind of cool.

Try to spell it. I don't know. Good luck.

No, chepto. It's got to be K-H-R-E-P. K-H-R-E-B, I think.

It's hard. I think I've seen it once in a book. But it means you get hardened to the inured.

You get used to not using it. And then it gets worse, okay? Alright, so we're stopped on 133.

We're going to pick up on 134. And for the first time, I think we're going to do something during the meditation that's close, that gets us a little closer. So it's the first time that the devil says, Oh, now that meditation, it wouldn't really hurt me, but if you kept doing it, we'd have a problem.

So, you know, come back tomorrow, or you will never hear any kind of good meditation. Oh, Elnish is like, Oh, well, just listen to it online or something. Okay, alright.

Mr. Duncan, can you do the mandala and the gewa-di, you think? Okay. Okay.

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