Дебаты дьявола с ангелом, часть 13: Диалог об уме и медитации (2019, Аризона), занятие 3

[Speaker 1]
So we're going to go right into where we were yesterday. And we just talked about chepto, which a human computer found in the dictionary. And it means to get used to not using ideas, not using emptiness.

So you study it, and you get used to not using it. So every time you don't use it, you reinforce your habit not to use it, right? So the best place to use it is when someone irritates you, OK?

So we will all have many chances every week to think about emptiness, OK? And it's good to tie those two together. And that's kind of the point of this class this weekend, is to tie together emptiness to people who irritate you in situations that are difficult for you, OK?

So that's the whole point of this class. If you don't, if you just come and you study all the schools of emptiness and you don't use it during the break when someone pushes in front of you and takes the refreshments before you, then you kind of flunked the class, OK? Good?

All right. All right. So we're on verse 134.

You don't have to follow in the verse. I propose that you do it at home. And I'm going through my notes.

So I really suggest your strategy after today. Well, there's two strategies. One is to leave the paper in your backseat in your car in case someone makes you keep their dog like happened to me this morning right now.

They'll have something to lay on. The second strategy is to take it home with you, OK? And study the verses with the outline, OK?

All right. It's not that bad, Curie. All right.

OK. Now we're at verse 134. And he's getting deeper into people who are doing sophisticated meditation on one and many.

So again, to just repeat that, because it's a little confusing, it doesn't have much to do with many, OK? So you can just cancel the many. I like to say one or more than one is a nice way to say it.

So if something's not coming from its own side, if one thing can't come from its own side, then two things can't come from its own side. So that's not such a big deal. So kick out the two things.

Then one thing, how to talk about one thing. When you teach it in New York in your three jewels, go to the parts of things. Go directly to the parts of things.

And there's something fishy, as Nagarjuna would say. There's something fishy, like it doesn't quite add up. And over the course of your life, you tend to ignore the inconsistencies that you see.

You see what I mean? And you get used to it. And you live with it, OK?

You buy a car, it's new, it doesn't quite work right, and you just keep fixing it. You see, you keep taking it in, you spend the money, or you sell it. You're thinking of these two options.

I can keep taking it back on the warranty. And then at some point, you lose your patience, and you say, I'm just going to sell it. And I'll buy some other car, and I'll do the best I can.

And those are, in your mind, your only two options, OK? And then the option of a person who's studied one and many is that they would say, I have to give more rides to people. OK, if I want my car to work better, I have to give more rides to people.

And if that's not your first impulse when your car starts acting up, you are reinforcing the negative part of your mind. And that's a big theme here, OK? If it's not your first impulse to give more when things aren't going well, then you don't have the angel in your mind, OK?

And it's not some kind of touchy-feely angel, you know? Like, I was asked to give a talk on corporate, what was it? Social responsibility in corporations in Japan, and two weeks ago.

And I was just like, there's one thing about social responsibility in corporations. You've got to understand it drives your profits. It's nothing nice.

It happens to be nice. That's lucky. But even if it wasn't nice, you still have to do it if you want to make money, OK?

The purpose of a corporation is that people invest in the corporation. And those people have invested, say, their retirement money. And they're trying to make money for their retirement.

And it's a good thing. Corporations are kind of cool, because they're kind of like everyone saying, I'm going to support each other. And we all put money into it.

And we all wait and try to get money out of it. So the purpose of a corporation, the purpose of a stock market, the purpose of modern economic system in the world is to supply return to people who invest in it. And that's a nice thing, because young people start yoga studios and stuff like that foolishly.

And no, just kidding, or farms. And then they're hoping people will support them and invest in them. And those people are hoping they'll get something back later.

So that's a good thing. But what's not current thinking is that if you want those companies to make money, you have to work more on helping other people and supporting other people, OK? So anyway, we're talking about that.

If your first instinct when you're trying to start a yoga studio or a farm or whatever is not to help other people with yoga studios and farms especially, then you don't have an angel in your mind. And you will fail. Or you won't do as well as you could have, OK?

If you succeed, it's old angels in your mind, OK? All right. So now we're talking about I promised you yesterday what?

Do you remember at the very last thing I said? I'm not going to bet any money, because you should remember. What was the very last thing I said?

I promised you today.

[Speaker 2]
At least the good one gets to say something they're going to do versus the worst people. Yeah.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, the devil proposes. He covers a meditation which helps a little bit, OK? All the ones up to now didn't help at all.

Now supposedly, we're going to get one that helps a little bit. What's weird about this section, if you live with it, if you sit with it for a while, is who's giving advice about correct emptiness meditation? It's the devil.

And it's all in a negative context. He's saying, you know, if you really wanted to kick me out, you would do this and this and this. But you're not, so don't blame me, OK?

But it's kind of ironic. Now he's going to go into some correct emptiness meditations. And he's going to say, if you had done that, I would be worried, but you're not, OK?

So it's kind of ironic that the devil is giving the advice here. And I like it. I like the idea of your ignorance is not misinformed, OK, like it's not completely stupid.

Your ignorance is clever. It's been there for a long, long time. And he's been preserving himself.

He's been taking care of himself, OK? The devil in the world is not stupid. Obviously, crude, arrogant, immoral people are not the devil.

It's the people who, it's your friends who are sophisticated and cool and nice and waste your time, OK? All right, so this number 134 is you stay on the fact that me, myself is not self-existent. And you're still trying to understand the thought process, right?

So we said DCI level seven, for example, which is all devoted to what? AUDIENCE MEMBER 2 The apparent causes of emptiness.

[Speaker 2]
What did you say?

[Speaker 1]
AUDIENCE MEMBER 2 The causes to see emptiness. What's the name of DCI level seven? Touching the diamond world.

Touching the diamond world. We don't use the word emptiness. We don't say direct perception, OK?

Try to learn the lingo that protects you when you go different places, OK? So trying to reach that. Yeah, there's approximate causes, what they call approximate causes in logic, which is like study, read books, meditate a lot, things like that.

But the real cause is sharing what you know, right? Sharing as much as you know. So now, at this point, the devil is examining the thought process, which kind of understands one and many, OK?

By now, after two days of all this, you're either fed up with it and you're anxious to go home. Or you're like, I kind of get it now. I kind of get it.

Rick has parts. But you can't really, you can't be seeing what you see. It cannot be coming from Rick.

You cannot be seeing the left arm and the right arm at the same time. And even if your eye catches the left arm, there's a problem that you have to see the left part of the left arm and the right part of the left arm. And it's just endless.

And what you're seeing cannot be coming from the borders that divide his, you know like the cow in the butcher shop, they have lines of the parts. And it's like that. You want to think it's like that, but it's not.

There's no borders between his pieces. What you see is impossible, OK? So you got that.

You're there already, OK? Now he wants you to explore, how did you get there? You see, what kind of things did you do to get in this room?

You know, you are one person out of, I don't know, you are one person out of two million. You're one person out of, I don't know, five million people in the United States. 10 million people, OK?

You are one person out of 10 million people in the United States who got here today, OK? So we got to explore, how did your mind get here? How is your mind understanding this stuff right now?

And then he says, meditate on it. Meditate on your mind. See how it's understanding these things today.

But understand what? Yeah, that the mind is, well, that, and yeah, good. But you're also, even when you're thinking right about your, so he says, if you come to a good understanding of your own thought process, right, if you focus on your own mind at this moment, and you say, I got here by sharing what I understand in my life, by trying to make other people's lives better, that's how my mind is understanding today's class, OK?

Is that emptiness? Is it useful? Yeah, it'll take you to emptiness, OK, got it?

So the devil's like, look, that doesn't contradict me, OK? It's not like dark and light in the same room, right? That's what we want to get to.

Seeing poof, and the devil's continued existence inside your head, they can't exist in the same place at the same time. But a mild examination of the causes, even the karmic causes of why you're understanding me right now, is not exactly light that's going to banish the darkness. It's just kind of like a flashlight.

[Speaker 2]
But if it's not, then you're just in a questionnaire.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, that's true, too. That's true. So what he's talking about here, where he got here was, you're getting closer because the thing you're examining is close to Mike, OK?

And when you see emptiness directly for the first time, it will be the emptiness of Rick, or the emptiness of Bonnie, or the emptiness of Lucia, or the emptiness of Bertha. You see your own emptiness first, OK? So he's a little nervous, because you're getting close to you, OK?

You're getting close to Mike or Anatole, OK? And that's dangerous for him, because that's the emptiness you see first when you see emptiness directly. When I did my geshe, there's a film, right?

There's a video of the last few minutes. But the question the guy asking me, and he came down from North India to debate me, to kick this guy's butt. And I remember, and it was kind of cool.

And he was one of the last questioners, and that was his question. We went off on that. Which emptiness do you see when you see emptiness directly, is me.

But when you're studying it, you start with things. Yeah, things in your world, OK? All right.

So he says, verse 134, I'm nervous, because you're getting close to the emptiness of you. And that kind of connects to a Buddhist idea about who is you, which is what? Do you guys remember?

There's some schools that say that Nick is not a changing thing, which is neither mental or physical. There's some schools that say that Nick is. That would be a concept, yeah.

A changing thing. It's a changing thing, but it's the witness mind. Some schools say that that's word, or that's Earl, is the person who listens to the thoughts in your head.

Some schools, very high schools, will say that this is Earl. OK? The awareness of your thought, yikhi nama shepa, is you, OK?

So right now, we're investigating the emptiness of the consciousness of your thought. And it's close. The devil's getting worried, because you're close to you.

[Speaker 2]
So it's not the awareness, but it's the awareness of your thoughts.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, right. Thoughts include all your sense perceptions of the previous moment, technically. OK?

All right. Nick, did you have a question? I just want to know, in those schools, would there only be four heaps then, because that wouldn't really be a heap?

No, I think they still count it as a heap. And you could kick out the physical senses, awareness of the physical senses, anyway. OK.

All right. Then, verse 135, the devil says, look, you inflict only minor damage. But that's the first time we have inflicted minor damage.

So it's kind of encouraging. All right? Then he goes off on that a little bit.

And he says, so suppose you do start thinking about your parts, but even when you do think about Rick's arms and legs and head, you still aren't aware of the final part. OK, what do I mean when I say final part? Yeah, yeah.

So as I often say, I get really frustrated listening to Buddhist teachers, frankly. And they'll say, oh, you're not you, and your parts are not you. And then I'm waiting.

And then they say, all your parts are not you. And I say, well, if all your parts are not you, then what else is you? You see what I mean?

What's the punchline? The final part is? Yeah, one of the parts is the luminous image that comes out of the karmic seed.

OK, so karmic seed opens in your mind. A picture comes out that's about this big. It covers Mike.

And then the legs and arms and body, the mind, all together become Mike. But they need that last part. Without that last part, they are not Mike, OK?

Then you can say, the parts are not the whole. But they mean the parts minus the karmic image. Yeah, it's not Mike, OK?

You got that. All right, that's verse 136. Then he says, this tendency to feel that the parts of Rick are Rick is insidious.

It means nasty, because it follows you all the way up to the 10th bodhisattva level. He claims, in verse 137, that the habit of thinking that Rick is all the things I can see of Rick coming at me, that habit continues even in a high bodhisattva, even past the seventh bodhisattva level. And he's talking about the subtle stain of that habit.

OK? You're thinking about it. It appears that way.

No, it no longer appears that way after the seventh level. After the seventh level. So it's called nengen lempa, for $100.

Break it down. Oh, it's wang chok. No, nengen lempa.

Come on, you're just floundering. Wait, I want an explanation of the technical word at that point, which is called nengen lempa. It's a...

It must be taken up. Neng means place, situation. Ngen means bad.

Like, dengen means when you can't give an answer to your teacher in the monastery. They say dengen, which means evil omen or something. So it means nengen lempa is, arhats do nengen lempa, but they don't do bad karma.

OK? Arhats do. And the example is jumping inelegantly.

Go figure. Chom chom. Jwa chom chom.

Meaning you still do, like, what do you call that? Rowdy things, but they're not bad karma. How's that?

And they still reflect some kind of shadow. It's a shadow of an old karmic seed. But it's not the karmic seed anymore.

It's called shadow of an old karmic seed. How's that? And that follows a bodhisattva up to the 10th level, until they become a Buddha.

Because it's a shiddu, right? Obstacle to omniscience. OK, got it?

OK, and that's 137. So you got nengen lempa, and if you don't get it again, you owe me $100. OK, human computer?

We went over that at least once or twice. OK. The cool thing about the translation classes upstairs is that we are covering all of Buddhism three times a year for two weeks.

And I taught 72 classes in January. And they are hard. They take many hours of preparation.

And you can get bathed in Buddhism. You can get all the great ideas of Buddhism. Just listen to it on YouTube, right?

It's on YouTube. Yeah, just listen to it. Listen to it in your car or something.

Don't pay attention. Just expose your head to it, OK? And I'll tell you, we've been doing it for a couple years now.

And it's amazing what effect it has on your mind and your life. Like, it's amazing what it does to you, just to be bathed in all the schools of Buddhism once every four months or so. And it's free, and just do it, OK?

People complain to me, meh, meh, meh, this is not free. I say, yeah, OK, there's how many? $200 of free deep classes last year.

So just, you're crazy if you don't listen to them. I don't know. OK.

And that's all of Buddhism, except for secret Buddhism. We're not covering secret Buddhism in the open. Yeah, Seiji's text counts.

OK, $138. Now he starts to talk about, this is easy, Nick. So I'm going to give it to you, because you look kind of fresh today.

I don't know what happened. You don't work on Sundays, right? There we go.

Just kidding. Oh, that's why you're pumped up. OK.

What's the difference between Nyamsat Yeshe and Jetot Yeshe? One is the meditation where you're having the direct perception of emptiness. And the other one is the subsequent wisdom, where you realize the 16 aspects of the Four-H.

Yeah, nice. Did everybody hear that? Yeah.

So there's a division of the experience of emptiness into the direct experience, which is like 20 minutes of direct experience of higher reality. And then there's what they call the aftermath. Math means a cutting of the harvest or something.

It's a nice word. It means enjoying the smell of the hay afterwards. And I like it.

And so you can divide a person's, a high being's experience of emptiness can be divided into two parts. One is the direct perception. And then the second is this kind of fragrance, enjoying the fragrance afterwards, called aftermath, OK?

Verse number 138 talks about the aftermath. And it says bodhisattvas, although it should have said Aryas, even during the aftermath, they are utpala, something wrong. They still see things as coming from their own side, OK?

So this habit or this tendency to see Rick as coming from Rick's side and not from me, OK? It stays with you even after you see emptiness directly. It reasserts itself even in an Arya, OK?

So therefore, Aryas don't rid themselves of what form of inborn form of misunderstanding the world. They do not, by the act of being an Arya, rid themselves of that tendency. Someone told me, a very high source, wrong, said an Arya should be able to fly and read all this stuff.

And it's not true at all. No text says that in the Buddhism. You'll only lose three things at that time, which is what?

Give me one. Doubt about the past. Yeah, intellectual belief that what you're seeing is correct.

And then? Yeah, doing stupid things like hurting your body because you, you know, like whipping yourself or, I don't know, refusing to eat ice cream. OK.

Doing yoga. Yeah, I'd put that in there. OK.

When I was betting people on one day, I bet somebody $20 they couldn't lose my yoga mat. OK. OK, so verse 138 is talking about this fact that a person who's just seen emptiness doesn't rid themselves.

They don't clean out this habit of seeing things as coming from their own side. But they don't believe it anymore. I like the image of, I always give the image of, what's his name, Ulysses?

He's going past the land of the sirens on his boat, on his way to get the golden fleece. Odysseus. Oh, Odysseus?

I don't know. It's this Greek dude. Yeah, an alien.

And he really wants to listen to the song of the sirens. And the sirens sing on the rocky shore. And then the sailors get enchanted and want to meet them, and they crash their ships.

And the ladies take all their stuff, which is just like real life. And then, just kidding. I know, I know, I know.

We can say it both ways. But he says, tie me to the mast, because I want to hear the song, and then don't believe anything I say. Don't listen to anything.

Don't listen to your captain when he tells you to turn the boat. So he probably put a time limit on it, right? For the next hour, don't listen to anything I say.

And that's kind of what an aria feels like. Because this call, the siren call of thinking that things come from their own side. But the aria's like, I'm crazy, I'm crazy.

The king who was informed by his minister that the water supplies of the kingdom were poisoned, and that anyone who drank the water would go crazy. And the king said, well, just get me a private water supply. And the minister said, we can't.

It's going to affect all the water in the kingdom. So the king said, put a big ax on my head. Get a magic marker and put a big ax on my head.

And whenever I see myself in the mirror, I'll remember I'm crazy from the water. And then they did it, and he put the ax on his head and drank the water. And then he was always wondering what the ax on his head was for when he looked in the mirror.

OK, that's how an aria feels. OK, verse now. He goes on in that verse 138 to say how other people experience the aftermath.

So how does a Buddha experience the aftermath? Do they still see things coming this way? No.

So it's not legal, he points out, to talk about nyam shak and jey tong, direct and aftermath for a Buddha. It doesn't apply to a Buddha. Then he says, normal people have no experience.

So forget non-aria. Yeah, they don't have either one. They don't have the direct experience, and they don't have the aftermath.

So he gives three moods. He gives three permutations. There's people who have neither.

There's people who have both. And there's people who are, OK, you got it. All right.

Verse 139, we have a tendency, and this is a famous teaching on emptiness, that you tend to think of things as more self-existent when you're upset. Halt, right? H-A-L-T.

Hungry, angry, anxious, lonely, and tired. OK, and he's going to talk more about that, which is interesting, because this is a big NBC thing. This is a big nonviolent communication thing.

When you're hungry, when you're angry, when you're upset, when you're lonely, when you're tired, you tend to be more vulnerable to attacks of bad communication, which means yelling at people. And so he says, you're more likely to have trouble around someone that you're having a problem with. Your emptiness understanding is going to dip when you get in contact with people who irritate you.

Verse 140, you can think about the flow of the understanding of emptiness, and you can break it down into parts temporally, in time. And you guys know this example. What's the example for $50 in the Bodhisattva Charitara?

Oh, damn. Peter, $50. OK, yeah, a rosary is the example in the Bodhisattva Charitara for emptiness over time, parts over time.

And what's the example for $0 statically?

[Speaker 2]
Army.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, an army or a forest. OK, yeah, OK. All right, so verse 140 says, only small damage to me if you treat the moments of your understanding of emptiness today, during this class, as parts, and start to understand that those parts are being glued together by the act of sharing what you understand with others in the past.

OK, small damage to me. So we're getting into the field of small damage. Not bad, OK, not bad.

Then he says, 141, OK, if you don't understand the luminous image thing, I will dance on top of your head. And he uses these words, OK? I kind of like it.

What are those words? Let me check. The word will be interesting.

Yeah, nga nyi phunpo teng du gyin. OK, nga nyi phunpo teng du gyin. Nga nyi means I will, me and nobody else, meaning no wisdom.

Phunpo, on top of your body and mind. Teng du, on top of it. Gyin means, do you know gyin?

Gyin means, I saw a video of Mick Jagger, you know. AUDIENCE MEMBERS CHATTER Yeah, it means strut. Gyin means strut.

We're thinking to do Gimme Shelter in Taiwan with a bunch of de-organizers singing. So it's kind of dangerous. But anyway, OK, JB?

You're the one who has to keep them together. He will gyin on top of your, ignorance will gyin on top of your body and mind, OK? Huh?

Oh, good question. Au ga yata ngyi, au ga yata ngyi, nga ngyi, nga ngyi. OK, if you want to know the spelling, OK.

In Tibetan, when you say CAT cat, you have to say C-C-A-K-C-A-T cat. Anyway, this is the rule. But it's dying out, even as we speak.

OK, 142. Then he says, so I'm not your body, and I'm not your mind. And if you think I am, I'm going to dance on top of your body and mind.

But by the way, don't think I'm something divorced from your body and mind. And this gets into, which we're going to do, the eternalist schools of Hinduism, which say that, like the Jains, for $0, the self is, come on. It looks like a big mushroom.

And it's, you know, I don't know. Oh, sorry. I don't care, anyway.

It's like a big mushroom, and it hangs on your head, and it's kind of a halo thing, OK? So he says, in verse 142, to believe that there is a part of Michael which is not here, which is somehow a soul, to believe that is also a mistake, OK? A soul that doesn't come from you, OK?

Michael can have a soul, if you talk about wisdom as a soul or something like that. But if it doesn't come from how you treat other people, it doesn't exist, even the soul, OK? So there is no soul who suffers or gets pleasure from the things that you do, OK?

The soul is the pleasure or suffering you get from the things you do, OK? And maybe God is the law of karma. You could say it that way, OK?

And that would be acceptable, OK? And that might be a good way to teach it to people who are attracted to that idea, OK? All right.

143. And only when you see that Michael cannot exist without the luminous image coming out of your karmic seeds are you doing damage to me, OK? When you see he cannot exist without the picture, OK?

When you see that nothing that's happening to you in your life could be happening without karmic seeds, then you're getting there, OK? Then you're damaging that habit. So again, that goes back to two husbands in the kitchen, which if you teach it, there's a fun way to teach it.

And I don't have time to do it today, but get in touch with Anatole. Anatole has an interesting job. He gets paid to look at all my videos over and over, hundreds and hundreds, 5,000.

And he cuts out the concepts, and we use them in our teacher training. So every time Geshe-la taught the two husbands, he heard it like three, four, five times. And he cuts it out, and he sends it in.

He puts it online for our teacher training. And I would wager that the early ones are not similar to the later ones. You see, it continues to evolve.

But what's fun in the two husbands thing, look at some of the recent videos. Yeah, I mean, just see there's something very cool that during that skit, you can identify just about every major Buddhist concept. And it's fun when you're teaching it to an audience who's Buddhist to say, where do you think the dependent origination, where's the gaccha, where's the two gacchas, where's nirvana, at what moment did the lady have a nirvana-ish experience?

And like that, where's the self-existence? And it's really nice to do it that way. You can really get everything in there if you're careful.

So you can look at the more recent videos. OK, 144. You have to reach the feeling of poof, OK?

144 verse 144 is poof verse. And it's like, you've got to get to this poof experience. Who wants to take a shot at a poof experience that's not with the email and the husband?

Yeah, I mean, it's too depressing. You got another one for me? Something you really expected to be there and then poof.

You got a good one for me? Anybody? Peter, Piotr.

You go to Sedona and you expect it to be really hot, and then the plane opens slow as fuck. OK, yeah, the image of hot Sedona goes poof, yeah, OK. A good, give me one that's impossible.

It's possible your girlfriend will be cheating on you too. I mean, not in that case. Not in that particular case.

Epitechter poof. You got, what? Wait a minute.

Wait, I want a poof from over here.

[Speaker 2]
Give me a poof.

[Speaker 1]
Any poof. You can't use discover card. I already used that.

Say louder. Oh, discover card's pretty good, yeah. Yeah, Chinzon brought me a menu from New York, and on the back it said, we do not accept discover credit card.

Anybody else? You got a good one?

[Speaker 2]
When you just want to drive your car and you expect that your key is going to make the car run, and you reach into your purse and you realize you brought the wrong one, and there's no key in there. And then the thing is, the key was not the thing that started the car in the first place.

[Speaker 1]
OK, that's not bad. I got more poofs than that.

[Speaker 2]
Come on, poof me.

[Speaker 1]
I'll geng if you poof. This is a real story. Ben Kramer, I had to pick something up at a house I was staying at, one of the terms.

I was like, Kramer, can you drive me? He's like, I don't feel like it. Can you just take yourself?

I was like, OK. So he gives me the keys to his car. So I'm like, OK, I'll just drive.

And so then I go, I get in the car, and it's a Prius, so you're supposed to be in the car with the key and go, right? So nothing's happening. Nothing's working.

I'm like, what is going on? I was like, what did Kramer give me? And I was like, ah, Ben, damn you.

And then I realized I was in the wrong car. No, I was in front of a Phil's Prius.

[Speaker 2]
That's a good one.

[Speaker 1]
That's enough poofs. That's poof. I got to get in here.

Me and V were in San Diego. We went to a pizza parlor, and she came out and sat in the wrong car. But the owner was sitting right in front of me.

He was kind of, I was kind of, wasn't good. OK, 145. 145, the devil describes a perfect emptiness meditation.

And if you look at my notes, I just note how weird it is that after 144 verses, the person telling us what real emptiness meditation is is the devil. So he just says, you will see that there's no me without a luminous image. There's no me, OK?

Without an image coming out of your karmic seed, there's no me, OK? But then he adds something cool, which he says, and especially, you're going to have to maintain the high quality of the meditation. The meditation's going to have to be high quality, OK?

Got it? So this is the first time someone has mentioned shamatha with vipassana, vipashyana, sorry, vipashyana, OK? This is the first time anyone, I think, has said, by the way, you're going to need this platform of a good meditative ability if you want to really sustain this state of mind.

And then they're going to kind of get into sustaining the state of mind, OK? So in the class with Geshe Michael there, you control yourself. The person next to you irritates you big time.

And you're like struggling with it. And you're like, oh, they're empty. They're empty.

And it's just a luminous image. And then you get outside of this building, and you just lose it, OK? This is like holy ground, right, Seiji?

This is becoming holy ground. You can feel the change in the building, I think. Will wasn't here for a while, and just feel the change in the, what do you call it, patina, dharma patina of the building is increasing.

And it's kind of cool. Three Jewels is doing that. The new Three Jewels is doing that, too.

So anyway, yeah, he's going to start talking about sustaining the experience, OK? All right, 146. If you were able to think these thoughts and sustain a regular meditation practice, OK, then he says, that would hurt me.

That's the kind of, he says, that would hurt me. But 146. I want to get to Tibetan.

Come on, I know you can do it. I'll just do it manually. Oh, I see.

It's not in this reading. Hey, we finished the first reading. No, I got it.

I got it. It's OK. I can't read it anyway.

I got it in glasses. OK, good. dzin dang gyong la khen na ni.

If you get good at maintaining this view and the meditation below it, nga dang dzin dang gyelwa te, you are contradicting the way I see things. nga ni bupa nu mu gyong. Then you could bupa me.

Bupa? It's not very common. Yeah, you could expel me from the mind.

Yeah, it's not poof. It's boo. No, it's different.

You're expelling something which certainly does exist, which is misunderstanding. den da nyi mo karma tsam. Do you like a star in the daytime?

Nice. Nice. Very nice.

I'm glad I didn't bet. Nyi mo means in the daytime. Karma means a star.

Karma in Tibetan means star. And I think he's trying to allude to another star for $3. Yeah, the back end of the diamond cutter.

OK, I owe you $3. Karma rabri mam me dang gyul ma sum mo chubu de mi la mo tun chun dra bu de da de chu no. What's the Sanskrit?

Taraka. Taraka. Yeah, taraka means star.

So I think he's trying to allude. This is star during the day. Star in broad daylight, nyi mo.

Star in broad daylight is a Buddhist expression for impossibility. But I think he's purposely recalling the last verse of the Diamond Cutter Sutra. And anyone want to give me two interpretations of that?

We did a whole, we did it for like a week. We did that verse for like a week. We did like five commentaries on it.

[Speaker 2]
On just the star?

[Speaker 1]
Shoot, do the easy one. Let somebody else do the hard one.

[Speaker 2]
OK, one of them is that our karma ripening is like stars on a black sky.

[Speaker 1]
The sky's emptiness, the night sky. Good, that's the one I didn't remember. So that's even better.

Anybody else? Yeah. There was one about stars being reflected in a bucket of water.

Yeah. And so kind of unreal. There was one like that.

There's two more I can think of. Anybody? Wisdom in the human mind is like starlight in the dark.

Like it's a, what do you call, a ray of hope. And then there was one more, one more obvious one. Don't forget there's two themes to the final verse of the, yeah, impermanence.

That when the sun comes up, the stars fade every day. OK. All right, cool.

Now, but he's comparing the person who has a strong meditative platform and who's understanding emptiness at the same time and who's able to maintain it or, what do you call it? Sustain it outside of the building, outside of the class. Even during the refreshment break.

When is the refreshment break? Maybe another 10 minutes or so. How's that?

OK, we have refreshments? Yeah. All right, it's really bad.

When we do DCI teacher training, we say make sure there's refreshments before you announce them. OK, that's like number one teacher training thing. So yeah, a person who understands emptiness clearly and who can call up that understanding when they're tired or hungry or angry is as common as a star shining at noon.

This is who says that. Yeah, and fortunately, he's correct. And it's the same for us.

Like I had a challenge this morning, and I was like, come on, you're going to teach it in an hour. Maybe you could use it. And I'm like, no, I don't want to.

OK, it wasn't anybody here, don't worry. 147. And I'm going to read you the Tibetan.

Let me see. ,,GYUN DU SNGA NI ZHAL BYAR NGES, ,,SNGA NI MI GYI MA THONG BAR, You live with me every moment, but you don't see me. ,,SNGA NI BU TSER MI RNAM KYIS, People who say they're going to kick me out.

,,JE NI ZHANG GOR GNAS PA LA, OK? So there's two words here that you guys don't know, OK? One is ,,NGE, say ,,NGE, and one is ,,LU, OK?

And ,,NGE means ,,DONG DRE, which means a spirit being, a negative spirit, evil spirit, who's harassing you. They're called harassing spirits. ,,DONG DRE, ,,DRE MO, for $10?

[Speaker 2]
Female spirit being.

[Speaker 1]
20, 30, 40, 50. Forget it, cancel. ,,DRE MO, means yeti, a vulnerable snowman, OK?

So they may be related, I think, but just ,,DRE by itself means a spirit that hassles you. And there's a custom to make a ,,LU, OK? So ,,LU, an easy way to make a ,,LU is to get a, yeah, I don't know, go to a restaurant to serve soft rolls and then squeeze it into this shape and then push this side and push this side and then drop it on the ground discreetly when the waitress isn't looking.

And that's called a ,,LU, OK? And then that's supposed to draw, it's supposed to distract the spirit from harassing you. Then you get in your car and you drive away and they're still trying to eat this ,,LU, you know?

But there's a joke, OK? This is Tibetan humor, which is really dry and not very funny, actually. But they laugh, so it must be cultural.

If you drop the ,,LU, in the back door but the demon's in the front door, that's what this verse is about. So I was trying to think of a common example. Like your wife gets mad at you, you buy her a bouquet of flowers and you put it in a vase and you drive home and you put it in front of the neighbor's front door.

You see? And your wife never sees it. That's the idea, OK?

So he's talking about people who say they're going to kick me out of their mind are people leaving vases of flowers for their wife at the neighbor's door because they don't even see me and I'm there all day. You see what I mean? Got it?

So I'm there all day and they're like studying Buddhism so they can identify me. And I'm just there while they're studying Buddhism also and they don't see me. It's like when I taught this at, what do you call that place, Sivananda, I handed out those paper sunglasses and people forget they have the sunglasses on after a while.

You see what I mean? It's hard to see the sunglasses when you've been wearing them for more than an hour or something. So you've had these glasses, rose-colored glasses, poop-colored glasses your whole life and you don't see that you have a mind.

And then you're studying Buddhism to try to identify the demon and he's on the top of your head ginging while you're studying, you see what I mean? So he's talking about that. And then he starts with a couple of nice images about similar thoughts.

So verse number 148 is shooting an arrow at a target with a blindfold on. So you say you're going to go after ignorance. Ignorance is in your mind while you're going after ignorance.

And then you study, study, study to find the ignorance. And the ignorance is singing in your mind the whole time you're studying. And you don't know this.

You don't know. OK, got it? It's part and parcel of your experience.

So it's hard to identify. You know what's really hard to identify also? It's awareness.

So we have these classes upstairs. We talk for hour after hour. And then we used to translate number shepa vijnana as consciousness.

But I think awareness is closer. And it's hard to identify that you're aware. Rarely do you do it, because you never lose it.

And even in deep states of meditation, you still have awareness. So something that's going on all the time, you don't notice. It's like your partner or something.

You get used to them. They have a rule at the monastery. They have a special room with football lockers, hundreds of lockers, because people donate paintings to the monastery, as you know, at Diamond Mountain.

And so you have hundreds of paintings, thousands. And there's a rule that you have to rotate them every six weeks or something. There's a rule in the monastery.

The gunyer, which is the temple keeper, he has to change them every six months. Why? Because you stop noticing them.

You don't notice them anymore. And then the gunyer does his thing. By the way, they take the worst 10 monks.

He gets those guys, because they have to stand there with sticks and hang thangkas all day. And then you come in, and you're like, wow, the thangkas are so nice today. Unfortunately, you never change your ignorance out.

It's been there since you were born, and it's always going to be there. So verse number 147, 148. 48 is shooting at a target with a blindfold on.

149, he switches to the positive. He switches to the positive. You are digging for rubies, but you don't know what color they are.

Somebody says, here's a shovel, dig for rubies. And you dig, and dig, and dig. And then after the whole day, you're all sweaty, and you're all dirty, and you say, did you get any?

And they say, well, no, I didn't know what color they are. So that's a comment on wisdom. That's a comment on understanding where Rick's coming from.

And if you don't know what you're looking for, you'll never find it. Then the devil, in that same jewel verse, he says, wisdom, you are someone no one ever meets. I am master of the universe.

I like that. 150, he goes back to ineffective meditations. And if you're interested, if you're keeping count, which I decided to keep count, he's on number 21.

So here's kind of stupid meditation number 21. I don't want to say stupid in a text translation, because it's stupid. All right, number 21.

The problem is that it's comfortable to leave me where I am. It's more comfortable for people not to face these ideas. And it happens to me, because my job upstairs is to read all the translators' translations.

I have to prepare before the classes, which means I have to find all the references before they get to class. Many hours of work. Then I have to make sure I understand what the book's about.

And sometimes it's really, really hard. And I find myself resisting it. I get to a hard idea, and I'm like, I don't really have to explain this deep.

I don't have to go this deep. Maybe I can just let it go. Do you do that?

I just reached a point where no human being would be asked to go this deep. I did it yesterday. I was translating Tsongkhapa, and I was just like, come on.

No one's ever going to know that I didn't talk about it. And I'm like, then there's this moment of honesty. But if you don't talk about it, who's going to talk about it?

And you're like, all right. It takes another three hours to figure it out or something. You have to look at many, many texts and like that.

So what ignorance is saying in 150 is that the human being takes the easy way out. Water flows downhill. You're just like, why do I have to?

You get to an idea about emptiness, and you take a break because it's uncomfortable. It's like hitting a rock when you're digging in your farm. And you're like, I'll leave that one for Annie.

You don't say anything. You just leave it there. And maybe she'll come across it later.

And that's human nature. So 150 is about this human nature thing where we avoid thinking hard. It's hard, especially when you're tired.

It takes a lot of discipline to say, I'm going to stick with this another half hour and see if I can figure it out. And what the devil says in 150 is that human nature is to let it go. And you just go do something else.

Go eat some ice cream or watch Netflix. And then maybe you never get back to it. So there is a kind of beauty for us guys, Buddhists, Dharma people, where you confront ideas and you refuse to let go.

You're like a dog. What do you call it? A dog who won't let go of a bone.

And I think you have to be, part of my job is to be a cheerleader, right? I'm saying to you guys, when you get to those ideas, don't let it go. Just stay with it.

And it's very powerful to come back the next day. It's very, very powerful to come back to it the next day. So when you're translating, what I like to do is read the whole thing first.

When I'm in a good mood, I used to go for a walk with the scripture in my hand. So I'll go for a long walk down a country road with some nice trees. And I'll just read it.

All the part I want to translate, I'll read it until I got a pretty good understanding of it. Then I stop, I turn around. Then I walk home, I read it again.

And then I'm home, and I set it down. Then I translate it the next day. And I don't start translating until I understand it perfectly, almost to the point where I could recite it.

So just a personal advice, when you're trying to read this text or similar texts, don't avoid the hard parts. Like become some kind of tough guy. Tsongkapa's famous for just going after the hard parts.

And that's a little excessive. But when you hit a hard part, then be persistent. And don't be a wimp.

When something's their idea, especially with these translations, try to read them. And you'll hit stuff, and you'll say, this is weird. I don't know.

Then don't go on. Just keep doing it, reading it over and over and over again. And the understanding you get from those moments is very precious.

Then your mind level goes higher, and your understanding goes deeper. It's really cool. If you're listening to the translation videos, and something goes over your head, stop it and go back and listen to it again.

Stanley's good at that. Stanley's still writing me about an idea I refused to finish in China like three weeks ago in a talk. And I kind of didn't want to finish it, because I didn't understand it perfectly.

And he keeps writing me. And you've got to be like that. He keeps writing me.

I was like, let it go, man. So get that habit. If you're going to be an emptiness person, you've got to have this habit.

All right, take a break. See you in 2, what, 2.12, Tim? 2.12?

OK, 2.15? There's bathrooms upstairs, if you need. Couple of things.

First thing, start talking. First thing, April 12th to 21st, Diamond Mountain Retreat Center, there'll be a Lam Rim. OK, Lam Rim means Steps of the Path to Enlightenment.

You all know what it's about. I think it's number 33. Yeah, so that's about, I don't know, call it $900 of classes so far.

$1,000 of classes so far. And you should come, OK? It's really frustrating for me when people don't come.

And I've made a commitment to finish it. We're about halfway through, I think. And I'm through in Tsongkhapa's Lam Rim Chenmo Emptiness Teaching, which is dessert.

So it's going to take another seven or eight years, I think. We've been at it for about eight years, I think. And you should come.

It really frustrates me. I often get people asking me for advice that I covered the last Lam Rim retreat for 10 days. And it's just, you know, then I have to do this irritation meditation.

You know, it's cool. It's really, really nice. Now, second thing, we're going to start ACI teacher training.

So at this college, it has kind of demonstrated to me, I'm not a very good teacher trainer. I enjoy teaching ideas. I love ideas.

And I enjoy teaching Buddhism. It's my favorite thing. I told Vy, the attention I get is unmatchable.

But I'm not a very good teacher teacher. I just kind of say, well, here, I taught you, so go do it. And so we've had the college here for two years now.

We're teaching DCI teachers. It's a formal program. It has four parts.

We call it the four legs of the table. First part is content. So our content is unmatchable in the world by about 1,000 degrees.

Like, I'm not worried about the content. The content is extraordinary. And even I admit it.

But it's not my content. It's Buddhism. It's like dude, omniscient dude, which I'm not.

So the content is cool. Second is how to teach, which I have never taught. I just always thought if I just taught, people would watch me and they could teach.

And I have a natural ability to teach. And it took me many years to realize not everybody does. Like, if you're a natural athlete, if you're a good runner, she used to outrun all the boys, then you don't think about it, you see?

So I don't think about teaching. I just do it, you know? But the teacher training for DCI, which happens in this room mostly, and Lucia's been there, a lot of people have been there, it's teach you how to teach, teach you how to present to an audience.

And I've watched the people for two years. And that's mainly Oreda, who has a degree in education. So she knows how to teach teaching.

And she has all these tricks that she learned in college and she uses them. And people who were not good teachers, people who were shy, people who stuttered a lot, people who just lost it in front of an audience. They've gotten really good.

And it's amazing. They use a lot of video stuff. People video each other on their phones, and then they all critique the videos, and it's cool.

So we're going to steal everything for the ACI teacher training, OK? So that's the second thing. Third thing is, what is the third thing?

Production, I'd say, you can say either order. Yeah, production. A lot of people are really good teachers, and they don't know how to get people to come to their talk.

They don't know anything about Facebook, is it called? What's that newer one? Instagram.

I was in Germany. They introduce people by the number of downloads they have. Oh, this is Tobias Matthew.

What's his last name? Visbek? Tobias Beck.

This is Tobias Beck, 12 million. And this is, what's her name, 20 million. And I'm like, what's a 12 million?

This is how many downloads they have from their podcast. So they introduce people with their number of downloads. I don't even know how to do a download.

And so I was in Japan. We kicked out the old organizer. He was marketing.

And we said, did you market this event? Like, you were there. We sang that hippie song.

What was that? Yeah. And 40 people came.

And so I said, did you advertise this event? He said, yeah. I said, what did you do?

He said, he took me to the 7-Eleven, and he showed me the poster he put up. And I'm like, OK. We've got to work on this.

OK, so yeah, how to market your event. Rinpoche had a very, my teacher had a very beautiful philosophy. He said, look, I'm not trying to toot my own horn.

That's a bad karma. I'm not trying to become the person with the most downloads in the world. It's not my thing.

But if you guys, my students, and he was saying it to me, if there's a person in the world who wanted to come and didn't hear about it, you failed as my disciple. And that was a heavy thing. And so really, it's how do you get the word out that you're having a class to the people who want to come.

And you don't fail people that way. And it's not like going door to door and trying to convince people to come to your class. Although if you want to do that, I don't know.

OK, and then the last one is professional behavior. It boils down, let's face it, it boils down to two things. Taking care of the money carefully and not doing sex stuff with other people's partners and stuff like that.

So it just boils down. I mean, after 66 years of my life, this is professional behavior. Number one, keep good track of your finances.

Be honest. Be totally, totally transparent. And then secondly, don't bother other people in this way.

And be clean this way. So I just give the same lecture. It's called the birds and the bees lecture over and over again.

And then there's the money lecture. So anyway, these four parts we're going to have in the teacher training. The first teacher training will be part of the Lam Rim, April 12 to 21.

And we'll be going through ACI course one. We'll be teaching you how to teach ACI course one. Anyone's welcome to apply.

OK? Talk to Tim. At the same moment, I don't want to freak out ACI teachers who've been teaching for 30 years or 25 years.

So in the same breath, I have to say we will recognize people who have been teaching ACI. We're not going to make you jump through all the hoops again. And we have a system that we're almost finished.

And it will take into account what you've done before. But we will still ask you to do some basic training on the parts of the table that we didn't talk about in the past, OK? And just to help you and to help us.

So don't freak out. I'm not trying to kick anybody out of being an ACI teacher. The goal is still to have as many ACI teachers as there are people in the world.

And so just feel comfortable. And after long talks with Hector, for example, we can't expect everyone in the world, like ACI is strong in Israel, for example, or ACI is strong in Argentina. Not bad.

We can't expect everyone to fly 12 hours here or 15 hours every time we do a teacher training. So we're going to do a mix of online and offline, OK? When I took my gemology degree, which I have two, one I took from the Great Britain gemological site.

Extremely difficult to pass. And the American one, which is always less difficult. And you did part online, which at the time was called letters in the mail.

And you did part of it in the lab. So you had to go through. You submitted a lot of homeworks by mail at the time.

Now it would be online. And then every quarter or something you had to fly to New York and pass a difficult lab test. And it was tough.

I remember it was 20 stones. And you had to get it perfect. And if you failed one stone, identifying one stone, you had to take it over.

And it was expensive, OK? So I don't know. How we're going to pay for this, I don't know.

Tim's going to figure it out. We didn't talk about it. That's all.

But we ask the existing teachers to, I don't know, to cooperate, you know? Like, don't be stubborn about it. We're trying to do something which protects everybody and makes it safe for everybody.

And we want our students to be safe. And we want teachers to be good. And we want to have some kind of way to check your performance.

My mom was a schoolteacher. I remember the day she would come home. V's mom met my mom because they were both teaching in the same school.

That's how we met each other. And my mom used to come home really pissed off twice a year. And she'd say, I had the teacher check her person was in my class today.

I'd say, don't worry, mom. It's OK. And she's, ah, they don't know anything.

You know? And that's going to happen with ACI. OK.

But just relax. And it's OK. The goal is more teachers.

And then don't hurt anybody. OK, that's all. Those two things.

OK, that's all. And don't get scandals. And don't get in the press and stuff like that.

OK, all right, here we go. I thought it would be a good time to do questions. And then maybe I'll go back and do a final verse.

But I propose we do questions about any subject you want. OK? It doesn't have to be relevant.

You can talk about anything you're curious about. We have in this room these intense Dharma veterans. And it's really kind of fun for me.

It's been a pleasant weekend for me to be in a room. I guess there's a couple hundred years of practice in this room right now. Seriously, more than that.

Maybe we've got 1,000 years in this room. But it's pretty amazing. But I think your questions might be interesting.

So go for it. Peter's going to choose the people, so I don't get in trouble. Mic's not working.

[Speaker 2]
Thank you, Geshe-la. So in the text that I'm working on with you, there is in the discussion of the independent group of the Middle Way School, there's the presentation of the metaphor and the magician. And in that metaphor, they relate the basic three characters to who they are in real life.

And so we know that the people standing around and being affected by the spell and the powder are so-so kegels, are people who have not seen emptiness directly. And we know that the magician who has thrown the powder and knows what he has done, he has the experience of having his eyes fooled, but his mind is not fooled. He knows what's happened.

Now, the third person I've heard described as an Arya in the direct perception of emptiness, but now, given what has been talked about today, I'm not entirely sure of what we would call that person. Would he have to be a Buddha, then?

[Speaker 1]
Why so?

[Speaker 2]
Because what you said, until you're a 10th level bodhisattva, there's still the shadow of the karma.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah. OK, good. My understanding, and I think you might find it explained different ways by different people, but my understanding is that the person who walks up later and didn't get a mantra, which is the ancient meaning of mantra, a magic spell, and who didn't get magic powder thrown on them and doesn't see a horse where there's only a stick, that this person is like the Arya in the direct perception of emptiness.

And what you're saying is that they have a feeling about the stick, or they have deep seeds for seeing the horse, or something like that. That's true. I guess you could say that.

I don't think they have to be a Buddha in this image, in this particular image. But I'll say something interesting that he's going to cover later on, because he's going to pick on that school. And he's going to say, he's going to challenge us to think about, is there trying to draw a distinction between existing from its own side, existing by definition, existing through some nature of its own, existing in and of itself?

The lower middle way school tries to draw a distinction between this. And then he challenges it. And he says, really, you guys are the same as the other schools.

As long as you keep trying to make a distinction between different kinds of self-existence, then you don't understand any of them. Yeah, which is kind of a radical thing to say. Any other questions?

Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh. Scratch here. That's my answer.

During the presentation of the pen, we come up to the point of the luminous image. And sometimes you go deeper at that moment. And you say, if you want to know what the luminous image is, you can think of it as, well, you say in Dharmakirti school, it's defined as when your mind removes everything that the pen, for example, is not, then the luminous image of a pen pops up in your mind.

And then that's how we explain those frames opening is how we see things and hear things, et cetera. But I was examined.

[Speaker 2]
And then the final thing is that that luminous image, according to Dharmakirti school, I believe, is unchanging.

[Speaker 1]
It is in their school, yeah.

[Speaker 2]
So then I thought about what I had a question about, what a wonderful thing it is to try to imagine a smallest frame of sound which would never change.

[Speaker 1]
How strange that would be. So I had a question about that. An archetype of sound.

Yes, exactly. Whoa. I didn't think about it.

The Abhidharma school, which we studied in the, I think it came up last time we were together. What did they say about sound? The quality of space.

Oh, it's so ephemeral. It's a quality of sound. Something about how ephemeral it is.

Yeah, it doesn't count as Gyukyutupa? Yeah, it doesn't count as substance, but it's so ephemeral or something. Yeah, like the Abhidharma school tries to say, and it's not correct, that it's different from visible form.

That what you hear is different, and it can't be continued. I think it was that it can't be contained within a human mind stream because it's gone by the time you hear it, something like that. But I don't know.

I can't even imagine an archetype of a sound. I guess it'd be a nice meditation to do to try to think of an archetype of sound. And I guess it wouldn't be so weird.

It'd be the opposite of all that it's not or something like that. My own experience is that the first time it was visible, it was a visible object. It wasn't an auditory object.

So I think the Abhidharma also says that somewhere it says 90% of human experience is visible. And the other senses account for very little. Like most people relate to what they see.

And they're living in the world of what they see. So I think I can say, although I haven't asked everyone who ever had the experience, that your first experience about catching the image kamyada of a karmic seed, which is the highest part of the second path, is probably always with a visible object, unless you're blind already or something. I'm guessing, yeah.

That doesn't help much, I know. That's all I can think about. OK, other questions?

[Speaker 2]
First, I have a question for everybody else. If anyone's going down to Phoenix tomorrow, if they could let me know, that'd be great.

[Speaker 1]
Anybody going down to Phoenix tomorrow?

[Speaker 2]
If we could talk after, that'd be awesome. Geshe-la, do physical things only cause physical things?

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, OK, that's a good question. My answer is going to come from a, yeah, take the mic away.

[Speaker 2]
No, that's just the beginning. Consider physical things.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, this question traditionally comes up in the examination of the relationship between mind and body. And so is it that the mind cannot be affected by physical things? Because most people, human nature is to equate the mind with a physical part of the body, like the brain.

And that's mistaken. Awareness cannot be weighed, cannot be cut, cannot be measured in that way. But there's a famous discussion about the connection between mind and body.

There's a sutra discussion. And as you know, there's a tantra discussion. So the sutra discussion says, and you've heard me say it many times, when you get nervous at work, you get an ulcer.

So the mind must be able to affect the body. And when you drink alcohol, your mind gets more stupid. And so there must be a connection between the physical things and the mind.

On a tantric level, you know it's Lungsem Jupa Cipa, which is prana and the thoughts move together, which is an interesting in the discussion when you teach the four, what do you say? Yeah, when you teach the four parts of a karma, Shri Sampaja Uttaratuk, the four steps to creating a karmic seed, the final one, which is the coffee meditation, which is to enjoy the good things you've been doing today at the end of the day. It's interesting when you teach it to teach it in terms of the tantric presentation of the relationship between the physical and the mental.

Because you can talk about prana traveling on thought and vice versa, linked, and how it kind of psychically heats up the karmic seed, speeds its growth. If you think about a good karma you did, then prana moves with the thought and literally heats up the seed somehow. And that's a nice thing to talk about, I think.

I guess I mean it more. So that's my answer, but go ahead. In the sense of, can a physical thing create a changing thing that's not physical or mental?

Does an action create a seed, and isn't an action a physical thing?

[Speaker 2]
So how are we doing an action that's creating a seed?

[Speaker 1]
How are we doing something physical that's creating something that's not the changing thing that's not physical or mental? Yeah, I understand. That's an interesting question.

So semba yi kyi le yin no, de che lu dang nga kyi le, thinking is karma of the thought. And then what it triggers is physical and verbal karma. So maybe it's all tied up with the mental side of a physical karma.

No, according to Tsongkhapa's little poem, which Xiaoping's struggling through for the next five years, the thought precedes the action. So maybe it's the thought that is primary in planting the seed. How's that?

Because the thought always precedes the action.

[Speaker 2]
So the beginning doesn't create the seed.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, the physical giving is secondary to the intention to give, which is why intention is 90%, traditionally, of a karma. How's that? Same problem, though, because it's the mental movement of the mind that's creating something which is changing, but neither physical nor mental, right?

Yeah. Well, if a mental thing could create a physical thing, I don't think a changing thing is neither physical or mental. That was such a big jump.

[Speaker 2]
An active body isn't the main thing creating the seed.

[Speaker 1]
Exactly. In that case, which is the famous point that intention is primary? See what I mean?

Yeah. I understand. I think you can cross those lines.

I mean, if you want me to really answer the question, I think we can say that a mental activity can cross the line and create a thing which is neither mental nor physical, but which is changing. I would say yes. I would say duh, and then I'd let you fight with me.

OK, next. One more. Don't ask him.

He's too expensive. Five. So about ACI-5.

Wait, never do that, because I always forget with it. OK. It's about karma.

It's a Chandrakirti question. So Annie has an amazing, highly developed nose and olfactory and taste. So put Jihad down.

Yeah, so she can smell anything and taste. So at the hotel room, she tastes the water, and it tastes bad to her, but it tastes fine to me. So two different karmas there, right?

So Chandrakirti says that if you take the hungry ghost and the human and the god, they're seeing three different things, wet and flowing, right? And Chandrakirti says they're seeing those three things based on their species, in a sense. That it's human, we see water.

As a hungry ghost, we're going to see pus and blood. As a god, we're going to see nectar. So it seems, and this is really a question of cultural relativism, too, it seems like there's some things which are species-based and some things which are adjustable.

And I'm wondering what that delineation is between those two. Yeah, when I teach rebirth in DCI, which is illegal. So you see what I mean?

We try to avoid the question of rebirth in DCI. When we get to the fourth way that karma opens, we have to dance around it a little bit, which is how seeds tend to multiply until you have more seeds at the end of your life than you could possibly use up at the end of your life. But justice demands that they don't get canceled.

And we leave it kind of there. It's kind of cute. We kind of leave it there.

And all these smart business people, they're like, you can see they're going click, click, click, click, click, and they figure it out. And we don't say anything. But we say you reach the end of your, if karma doubles, if a karma done on August 1st is a million times stronger by August 31st, then you must end your life with more seeds than you begin.

And it's been piling up. And seeds cannot be canceled. So it must be that when you come to the end of your life.

And that's the fourth manner in which karma is taught. That's the fourth quality of karma. The way the fourth flower, the fourth way that karma opens is in the next life.

But we can't go there in DCI. So we kind of leave it at, we give them the two parts of the equation, and then we just go on to the next subject. And it's kind of fun, because I like to take a break at that point, because they go out for coffee and you can see them.

Then you can kind of see them stop drinking and they hit it. And they're like, oh, that means I must have a future life. You see, but you don't say it.

You're kind of not allowed to say it in DCI. Then there's something I like to say that I say over and over, and I can see people don't get it. But I'll try it again, OK?

Here we go. Which is the answer to the question. Um, there's a traditional sense, even among people who accept rebirth, that there must be some kind of bardo.

And the more you study bardo, the more often you see references that bardo is the time it takes to get to your new location, OK? It's most often presented that way. Who can tell me why a word?

For 50, OK, I'll do 50. Because you're moving in space, so you have to. Because a tree cannot come from a seed without an intermediate sprouting.

We talked about it upstairs. OK, I'll give you a clue, and it cancels the financial. Farmless room.

Because they don't have a bardo where. There's no bardo when you're headed for the farmless realm, because there's no place to go. So it doesn't take any time to get there.

So you don't need a spirit being after the dying, before you get reborn, to travel to where you're going, even by supernatural means. Because you just start living where you died. But if you go deeper, you know, and then I like to go into this long story of why, you know, when people hear the word rebirth, and the way Abhidharma explains the word rebirth, with all these spirit beings after you die, it starts to feel like, by the way, the spirit being in the bardo, bardo being, has karma to pass through any physical object except the cells of skin at the back of the womb.

They get stuck there. OK, that's the Abhidharma presentation. Therefore, people start to think that their soul gets released when they die.

And then I like to call it the dog body factory in Kansas. I'm sorry if anyone's from Kansas. But, you know, we kind of feel, when your mom talks about rebirth, that there's a place where they make dog bodies.

And then you have this image of a butterfly net with a really long stick. And there's souls going east-west across the United States. And then somebody, mean person at the dog factory, dog body factory, swings the net up and catches your soul, and opens up the back of the dog, and shoves your soul in there, and shuts it really fast.

And no, I mean, admit it, that's the picture you had when you were a kid. Something like that. OK, not you.

You're advanced. OK. It's Canada, it's not Burma.

Oh, yeah, OK. So it was some kind of, don't pick on Canada. It's the only moral country right now.

So that's the feeling we have. But when I teach the emptiness of a pen, at some point, I like to do this. You guys probably saw me do it.

And I like to say, this one's the same as this one, OK? So why I see a pen is that every 65th of a second, there's an image coming out of my mind. There's a karmic seed opening, and the image is being laid on these parts, these two parts.

And that's how I'm seeing a pen. And when I see an arm, it's the same, right? So how long does it really take to become a dog?

Yeah. It's 1 65th of a second. Forget Bardo.

I mean, if you really understand emptiness, there's no reason why it should take. There's also no logical reason why you'd have to travel 1,000 miles. Because this would become Kansas, or this would become Mars.

It doesn't matter. Your seed would open, and it would become a different location. So OK, this is where I lose people.

You ready? And if you look at this one, and you see a paw, you is a dog. And then I lose everybody, and everybody's like, they're just like, OK.

It's not that you were born as a dog. It's that you see a paw, that the picture that comes out of the seed makes a paw. And that makes you a dog.

Then you is a dog, you see? So that's all. So don't think of species as a self-existent thing somehow.

You see what I mean? You create the species. The next seed that opens after you die creates the species.

How's that? And I think I would say there could be species exceptions. Somebody made me a, John was trying to get me to drink these rotten pond scum expensive green stuff.

And I just can't stop experiencing it. He's gone, right? I'm so lucky.

I can't stop experiencing it as pond scum. And I can't drink it. But we're the same species.

Let's do one more. Then I'll wrap up. So forgive me, because you may have answered this.

Probably. Back to the idea of physical and mental things. At the highest level, there is no distinction, right?

Yeah, right. They're both pictures. That leaves us time to answer one more.

Hello. Hi. Yesterday you were talking about that the mind is defective.

And I've been a little troubled in my mind because of that. That's natural. Yeah, but I've been troubled because I don't think it is defective.

And I even went to the dictionary to see what defective really meant, right? And I was looking that when someone is defective, it used to work well at some point. Or there's a lot of other things that work well except one.

Yeah, OK, good. Right? So I am thinking that maybe defective is not the correct word for that.

So maybe it will be another word that should be used for describing the mind. And I was using Anatole's son as an example, right? Like, he's not able to speak well or walk well.

And that doesn't mean that he's defective. It means that he's learning how to do it. And eventually he will get there, right?

So the question is, why defective is the word chosen to describe the mind? Yeah, good question. You could probably describe it as a sprout that hasn't grown into a tree yet, right?

That's, I think, what you're saying. It's going to be perfection. And it's not the tree yet.

It's just this tall. And it's not a whole tree yet. So why call it defective?

It's just on its way. It's a short tree. Don't call it a defective tree.

And that's good. I like that. I think you can say that.

I use defective as an exaggeration. I'm trying to push people to, yeah, it is an exaggeration. So I use the word to shock people and to try to get them to, yeah, and it's not meant in a derogatory way or something like that.

It's meant to shock people. Yeah, that's all. Sometimes I say defective from the factory, which is also useful when you're a teacher and you want to shock people.

You can say defective from the factory. And then people say, well, when did the factory start? And you say, defective from the factory since forever.

And that's also depressing. But I think that's a good way. And there are ways of presenting the human mind as on its way to perfection, perfection to come.

And that's a beautiful way to say it. And that's fine. That would be fine.

I think it depends on your audience, maybe. And I think it would be cool to call it perfection coming perfection or something like that, like cutie. Say again?

Yeah, yeah, on its way to perfection. Yeah, halfway to perfection. That's fine.

Yeah, that's fine. That's cool. That's cool.

Yeah, Dennis had one. Thank you, Geshe Michael. My question's about chi chedrak, quality and characteristic.

So when I think of my car, Toyota, the characteristic, it has the quality of being a car. So if I think of the emptiness of it doesn't have any self-nature of itself of being a car, could I say that the emptiness of all cars in the parking lot relate to the overall quality of emptiness and somehow link it that way? Yeah, you can.

And it's kind of where we went with the parts of emptiness. Yes. I just felt like a parrot saying that because I don't understand it.

First of all, I wouldn't go there. I mean, I wouldn't say it's necessary to understand chi chedrak. I mean, you could go there, but it's a little difficult.

It's the last thing Choney Lama talks about in his long list of candidates for things that have parts. He talks about the parts of emptiness. It's a very difficult subject.

And you can see emptiness directly just by focusing on cars. And I think it might be easier to stay there. So how does car relate to a physical car outside?

And to teach that meditation is kind of boring because it takes about 10 seconds. Like, close your eyes. And then I say, car.

And then you see what comes up in your mind. And then I say, OK, then I always have a student drive a car right to this door and open the door and say, look at the car. And then people look at the car.

And in the end, in the meditation, you want people to focus on what's the difference. And so there's three levels when you teach it. One, think about, I'm going to say a word.

Tell me what you see in your mind. And then people close their eyes. This is DCI level seven, right?

And people close their eyes. And then you wait a while. And then you say, car.

And then they're like, what the? And then you repeat it. You repeat it two or three times because they're going to think you forgot the rest.

And you just say, car. And then you say, OK, observe what comes up in your mind. And then you say something like, your car.

And then classically, you can say a car, a car, a particular car. And then they think of their RAV4. They have a picture in their mind of a specific car.

And then you take them to the window. And you show them a car. And then you play with what's the difference between those three.

And the punchline is that they're the same. OK? But invariably, people will say the image that came up in their mind when you said car was fuzzier than the image that came up in their mind when you said a particular car, which is fuzzier than the car you see when you open your eyes.

OK? So that's a little tricky. Those are three degrees of karma.

Those are just three degrees of karma, OK? They're not a difference in the object, OK? You have the karma to see one less clearly than the other.

But they're the same object, OK? It's kind of weird. So play with that.

You can take it to emptiness. But I think you might get lost. It's pretty complex.

Then it becomes really complex. But if you want to try, why not? Because you can't do the car one.

So every day, it just gets kind of like you're like, OK, what's next? That's the nice thing about the lion's stance. I think Maitreya made it complex just to keep people interested.

Cool? OK, I'll wrap up. You ready?

I'm going to wrap up. All right. And we didn't pick a date.

Do you have a date proposal? I was supposed to do it with V last night. But we got interested in some tacos.

July? Is July weird? Well, I'm sorry.

I can't control the weather. How about beginning? How about we negotiate it later with my boss?

Because that's her time. No pressure. OK.

We'll talk about it later. I'll try to do this three times a year, four times a year. OK.

And it's pleasant for me, too. I get to hang out with my old friends and compare how much hair we have left. OK?

Peter's lying. OK. Last word from the text.

Verse 150, OK? And he just repeats that it's easier not to think about this stuff. And it's easier just to go on with your normal life.

And it's a strain to worry about whether Rick's coming for himself or not. It's a mental strain. And we tend to avoid.

That's why we avoid physical exercise. I mean, it's easier not to, right? And so there's a, on a beginning level, the only thing that can hurt the devil in your mind is logic.

I like to call it clear thinking nowadays. I think it's more acceptable to people if you call it clear thinking instead of logic, right? Logic is a bad word.

So clear thinking. Clear thinking and, what do you call it, persistent clear thinking is the only thing that can hurt the devil. And it's a strain for a human being.

It's not convenient for us. It's a strain. And we don't do things that are a strain.

We don't strain ourselves unless we have to, OK? So it takes a kind of a courage to strain yourself, OK? And I would just say, accept that as part of a Buddhist life, OK?

You're a Buddhist. It's weird to talk to Buddhists, actually. And you're Buddhist.

And there's ideas you're supposed to try to understand. And it's a strain. And the devil is saying at 150, it's easier not to think about them.

And it's easier just to do your normal, everyday life thing. But then you die. Then you run out of time, OK?

And I guess that those of us who are over 35 now, what we can report is that time accelerates, am I right? The older you get. And you don't want to get caught with your karmic pants down.

Do the strainful thinking now. And then you can relax later. And don't put it off.

Because it's human nature to put it off, OK? So struggle with these ideas. Read the poem.

And if you read it lightly, don't meditate on it. Don't study it formally. Go outside.

Sit on the porch. Take the paper with you. Read one verse.

And cogitate on it. Does that count as meditation? I don't know.

Just think about it. And I predict that it will reveal new levels to you, because he was an extremely profound writer. And I translated his Tantric poetry, which was found in a monastery after he died.

And it's amazing. And I gave it to a few friends of mine. And somebody published it illegally.

And if you can find it, it's really cool. What's it called? Meditations from a Tantric cabinet or something.

Anyway, it's totally illegal. I think you can get it almost anywhere. And what you'll see from those poems is that you could sit on the porch with them.

Every couple days, take it out with you on the porch and just sit there when the sun's going down or something. And it's a nice time to be outside and enjoy yourself and have something nice to drink. And just sit there and look at the sunlight and see if you can find another level of wisdom below each verse.

I predict it's there. I say you will find many levels. So let it be your friend.

And we can do this kind of thing three or four times a year. And we'll come back to it. And then maybe you share what you saw on the porch.

You saw levels of the poetry that I didn't see. And it'd be nice to share with each other. I do feel with this group that it's what Rinpoche predicted of when they all become Buddhists, they just sit around and teach each other emptiness.

And what they say, they knew they were going to say. Everyone knew you were going to say what you say anyway. But people just enjoy it together.

So I kind of feel like this particular group, it's kind of sweet that we're all kind of like banged up Dharma veterans. We have chips and scratches. And we enjoy each other at this time in our life.

And we talk about these deep things. And I try to see if there's something you don't remember or vice versa. OK?

So look at the poem, Between. I say you will find deep things there. And cogitate on it.

When you tell people to meditate, it feels like an obligation. So just cogitate on it. And you will see sweet things, OK?

By the way, he mentions in verse 150 a thing called the seven-part analysis. And it's extremely difficult. And I think it'd be sweet to pick it up next time, OK?

So I promise you, in this life or the next, depending on our individual circumstances, the seven-part analysis, OK? Cool? And that's what we'll pick up next time, OK?

All right. Thank you. OK.

Team? Oh. OK.

OK, it would be fun to do. By the way, we're going to have a meeting upstairs about a project that I'm very proud of that the Mexicans are doing, a Mexico team, to help 23 million children learn these principles in Mexico. So I think it's kind of cool.

Hector, you have an?