Дебаты дьявола с ангелом, часть 16: Церемония обетов бодхисаттвы (2022, Аризона), занятие 3

[Speaker 1]
Hi, welcome back to Angel Debates the Devil and hopefully the angel will win. JB, they're going to think we're drinking beer. Okay, so we're going to go straight into the next verse and Kwan Hasso has agreed to read it and it's long and I don't know, cat, if he makes a mistake, pick on him, okay?

Okay, slow and clear and loud from the microphone over here. Oh, he's drinking some coffee first.

[Speaker 2]
Oh, okay. DE DU NI PO NU NGEL NA SHI CHI TEN DU CHI TEN DU NN DU NN DU DU NI HLA LE PU MA THAR HLA YI DE WA SHEN MIN GYU Nice, pretty amazing. HLA YI DE WE RANG SHING LE NGUR WA ME SHING SA WA YI DU NGEL RANG SHING YUR ME PA CHOK CHIK NDUN WA MI SI KYANG TEN DRUG KYUL LA DU WA NI NYI TZIM NGIN TZIM DE RE KYER TEN PHA DRUG PA KYONG Can I start?

Yeah, no, it's good. Help me, please. TEN PHA DRUG PA KYONG DI LA YON TEN DU ZUNG NGEL RE TZIM NGIN RE TZIM Yay.

[Speaker 1]
He made a mistake just to, so you guys could do something. I like this last two lines here. TEN PHA DRUG PA KYONG DI LA means, TEN PHA DRUG means things exist from their own side, right?

Things exist in truth. YON TEN is a friend of ours, Geshe Lothar's student, and his name means guna. Good quality.

His name means good qualities. ZUNG is the past tense of ZIN, which means to hold. And then he says, SNYING RJE Say SNYING RJE.

So SNYING RJE means karuna, right? Compassion. It means lord of hearts.

SNYING RJE Like Je Tsongkapa, or Dorje, the king of stones. But SNYING RJE. Then in Tibet, when you see a car accident and you're driving by, you go, SNYING RJE SNYING RJE It's like, oh, how sad, how sad.

So who's talking to who? The angel says to the devil, SNYING RJE Your head is so messed up. SNYING RJE Your head is like a car accident.

SNYING RJE It's very funny in Tibetan. SNYING RJE RE TSIM means TSIM means to be satisfied with what you have. So he's saying, oh, your mind is such a car accident and you enjoy it.

Oh man, you're in trouble. You're in such a big trouble. What's he in trouble about?

Here. Here's the English. Pleasure and pain are supposed to be mutually exclusive.

When you're having pleasure, you're supposed to not have pain. They cannot happen in one person in the same moment. Yes, there are people who enjoy pain, but the enjoyment comes a millisecond after the pain.

They actually cannot coincide at the same millisecond. According to you, the pleasure they were feeling, meaning when they were in the deva realms, when they were in this Marvel movie realm, and it being a pleasure, they cannot change to something else when they get reborn in the hells. So they should be having a good time in the hell realms.

Why do people drop from the deva realms to the hell realms? Yeah, deva realm is karmically expensive. It's like, I don't know, it's like going on vacation in Paris.

I took Veronica's sister because she never went anywhere. We stayed in a hotel across the street from the Louvre. I used to go every morning to the exchange place and exchange like $2,000.

Then the next day I'd have to go back and do it again. I was like, well, I don't think I can keep this up. So that's the same.

To be a deva is to be living in a hotel across from the Louvre and spending money like that, like $1,000 every morning. So it's expensive, karmically expensive. So they say that the natural course of action is that when you finish the deva realm, you use up all your good karma and then you usually go to the hell realms.

Then he says when they hit the hell realms, they must be having fun. Then the other guy says, what do you mean they're having fun? He says, well, the pleasure they were having in the deva realms is self-existent.

It comes from its own side. Something that does not come from your karmic seeds would last forever. I'll say it again.

Something that does not come from your karmic seeds would last forever. If it existed from its own side, there's no reason why it would change. If it's dependent origination, ingo, if it comes from causes, then it has to change.

If it comes from your seeds, if your reality is coming from your seeds, then things have to change. If they don't come from your seeds, they couldn't change. Then when you go to hell from the deva realm, you should be having a good time.

That should be the Lube Hotel. It wasn't that good by the way, it was just famous. Here you have a pleasure of a pleasure being which can never be altered from its natural nature.

Then he's making a pump. It's natural nature. Nature.

You got to think about the word nature. Nature means, we think of nature as trees and grass and Flagstaff people, Williams people. We think of the word nature in Arizona means the outside and stuff that wasn't made by humans.

It's natural, meaning it came from its own side. We didn't build the beautiful rocks in Sedona. They were just here when we got here.

That's called nature. Then he says the happiness in the deva realm would have been natural, meaning it came from its own side. It's not a product of how you treat other people.

It's not a product of how you treat other people. Tim, is there a way to make this room cooler? I know people don't like it and it's good for you.

But get a sweater. It keeps you awake. Really, it keeps you awake.

An hour from now, you'll thank me. At the same time, you have the torture of watching your body burn within the hell. When you get to hell, it's like they're burning you with a torch.

But that fire in the hell is also natural, has a natural nature. The good feeling in the deva realm and the torture in the hell realm, they're coming from their own side. They're not depending on your seeds.

If something comes from seeds, it changes. If something comes from seeds, it changes. If something is being produced by your mental seeds, it has to change from moment to moment.

Like a tree. When a seed creates a tree, the tree changes every millisecond because the seed's energy is variable. The seed's energy is wearing out.

The same with us, the seed of your father, the egg of your mother. Since you were produced by a seed, you have to die. It's changing.

Everything's changing. The power that created you is changing, so you have to change. He says, but if the good feeling in the deva realm is natural and then the pain in the hell realms is natural, then how can the pain replace the pleasure?

How can the pain replace the pleasure when you drop from the deva realms to the hell realms? How could the pain replace the pleasure? They would have to coexist.

You'd have to have both in the hell realm. Got it? Because it comes from its own side.

It's not coming from your seeds. Things that come from seeds change. Things that don't come from seeds don't change.

Things that come from their own side don't change. The two could never combine within a single person, within a single moment. Actually, it's impossible to have a feeling of pleasure and pain at the same moment.

But yes, then the angel is like, oh, but you like your little self-existent thing. I don't want to bother you. You hang on to that.

You like your little self-existent thing. You keep that. Who am I to ask you to start thinking correctly?

Got it? But I know you like your truly exist. You like your truly exist.

That means that things couldn't combine. You want to claim that they come from their own side. That means they would have to exist in the same person at the same moment, which is impossible.

But I know you like that kind of thing. Don't change just because of me. Just hang on to that.

By the way, when you believe that things don't come from your seeds, you don't care about what seeds you collect, and then you suffer. If you don't realize that the world is coming from how you treat other people, then naturally you'll be selfish and you try to take care of yourself. That's natural, right?

Comes from its own side. Then the angel is talking to the devil, I truly pity you. Why?

You have to drag around. It's like my backpack. This is my office.

It got up to about 50 pounds or something. It used to be 10, then it was 20. As you get older, you collect more...

What do you call it? Those electrical things you have to carry to Paris to use the...

[Speaker 2]
Adapters.

[Speaker 1]
As you get older, you need more adapters in your backpack. Then you got to drag it around. Jack's got to come out to the car to help you carry it in.

It's like that. You got to drag around this extra weight. What's his extra weight?

What's the devil's extra weight? He's dragging around all the time. He lives in a contradiction.

He lives in an impossible world. He lives in a... His whole life is...

His whole life is a contradiction and he doesn't get it and he suffers. He believes things cannot change. Then they change and then he gets sad.

He doesn't know why they change and he quietly gets old and dies and they put him in the nursing home and then he dies. Then he doesn't understand why. He's helpless.

He just keeps going on that path and then finally they put him in the nursing home and then he dies. Everybody says, oh, so-and-so died yesterday. Then you forget about that person after a while.

They'll do prayers for a couple weeks and then that name will come up less and less. Then finally they'll say, do you remember this guy? No, I don't remember.

The angel says to the devil, I'm so sorry you have to drag around this crap with you. I've seen things the wrong way. I truly pity the fact that you must consider all of these different fallacies is your badge of honor.

You could say science if you want to. You're proud that we made cell phones. They're so useful.

They do so much good. I don't even know where it is. I think it's out of the car.

Anyway, the very thing that makes you suffer, you think, oh look, I have this. I have this really cool thing. It's the thing that makes you suffer.

The contradictions that you live with. Science, things come from little atoms. Things are made of little atoms.

What's the difference between an atom and a molecule? What's the difference between an atom and a proton and electron? And a neutron?

And a quark? No, when you have an atom, it has a natural nature. Carbon atoms act like carbon.

Iron atoms act like iron. When you get down to atom, a thing still has a unique identity and it will act in a certain way. It will conduct electricity or it won't conduct electricity.

Then as soon as you, the definition of an atom is when you split it, it stops working in a unique way. It doesn't have characteristics. You can't say it.

When you break down to proton, quark, then the thing doesn't act like a single element. It's not an element anymore. It's not an element.

Element means it still acts in a unique way. When you split it, it stops acting in a unique way. When you split elements, atomic elements into pieces, those pieces all act the same.

The protons and electrons in iron act the same as the protons and electrons in oxygen. They're not different. Got it?

So somehow when you have a whole ball, it acts like, it conducts electricity. Then when you split it, it doesn't anymore. So it has a nature, but it doesn't have a nature.

As a scientist, light from the sun comes as a ray or as a wave? As a particle or a wave? Which one?

Does it go like this or does it go like this? Sometimes it acts like a wave. Sometimes it acts like a particle.

Okay? Then scientists have to live with that. Then somebody like, what's his name?

Better History of Time. No, that's my boy. Hawking.

He'll say, well, we still have some contradictions to work out. I mean, the contradiction is, you don't even know how the most basic thing works. A small contradiction in your theory, that's the whole basis of everything.

You don't even know how light gets here from the sun. How does light get here from the sun? How do you live?

You protected life. You gave life to other beings. That makes sense and that's consistent and that's never inconsistent.

But atomic theory is totally inconsistent. What she says here is, you think it's your badge of honor. I'm a particle physicist.

I understand quantum. No, you don't understand quantum because quantum says it doesn't exist either way all the time. Got it?

Light travels. In the presence of an observer, it changes. What's it called?

Uncertainty theory. When you observe light's passage through a refractometer, it changes. So duh, it's not science.

Science is not science. But you're like, oh, I'm a physicist. I gave a talk at Princeton and two physicists came, two PhD candidates.

After I finished, they said, we want to quit and join you. I said, nah, stay here. You can get more money.

All right. I think Christina Kasica was threatening to read. Now, hey Tim, can you check her?

You okay? Go slow and enjoy. Don't have to be perfect.

Okay, go.

[Speaker 2]
Changuai, tuknyal, nyongwade. Yay. Tsawe, tuknyal, rangshinde.

Shantung, gyurwe. Who's checking? Shen.

You're checking? Shen tu. I'm being supportive.

[Speaker 1]
Are you checking the copy?

[Speaker 2]
Wait, I didn't read that one.

[Speaker 1]
Oh, sorry.

[Speaker 2]
Shen tu.

[Speaker 1]
Good. Shen. Shen tu.

Shen tu.

[Speaker 2]
Gyurwe, kamype. Tehtang, lanshi. Lenshi.

Jogshindu. Changuai, tuknyal, rangshinde. Tagpar, te, te, tersugwe.

Nice. You did great. Tuknyal, chitthok, chitsepa.

Good. Sajangyi, ponggon, galdang. Nyoeng, nyoeng.

Nyoeng, nyoeng. Nyoeng galdang. Nyoeng galdang.

Rangshindu, nyi po, nyong gal ne, na. Nyoeng gal ne. YANG SU GCIG LTAR MYONG BAR GYUR Nice.

Very nice. Cool.

[Speaker 1]
There could never be a chance for the nature of the pain of cold to transform into something else than the nature of the pain of heat. There's two kinds of hell realms. Oh, Geshe-la, I don't believe in hell.

I don't care. When you go there, you'll believe it. Hell doesn't care whether you believe it or not.

Anyway, there's two forms of hell. In one of them, you're extremely cold. In one of them, you're burning.

He says, not only could you never go from the happiness of the deva realms to the suffering of the hell realms, once you get to the suffering of the hell realms, the cold would be hot and the hot would be cold because they would not be contradictory. Why? Because once you got hot, you could never get cold.

Why? Because the hot could never change. Why?

It comes from its own side. It does not depend on seeds. Got it?

Anything that depends on seeds must change because the seeds wear out as they produce the thing into the nature of heat. So in a case where one accompanied the other, so if you're in the hell realms and you walk from a cold part to a hot part, you must be cold and hot at the same time because they're coming from their own side and they cannot change. Since they come from their own side, they cannot change.

So if you went to the cold place first and then you went to the hot place, you'd have to stack the hot on top of the cold. You'd have to be carrying around all your experiences on top of you because they couldn't change. And as you went through life, they would just be piled more and more on top of you because they can't change because they're not coming from seeds.

By the way, we talk, when we discuss this book, we talk as if we're right. I mean, we all, everybody goes, yeah, yeah. But actually, it's the only thing that makes sense.

If someone else walked in here who wasn't Buddhist and they listened for an hour and they were truly logical, which is called in Sanskrit pramana. Who said that? God bless you.

If they were truly clear thinking, if they were truly unbiased, culturally unbiased, if someone from Mars came in here and was totally logical, they would immediately accept this idea of seeds because it makes sense. It just fits the data. It's empirically correct.

It makes sense. Once you understand it, you can use it to get anything you want. You can get lots of money if you want that.

And it's useful. It takes money to plant 10,000 trees at Diamond Mountain, right? How many?

10,000? 10,000. I think the number was 10,000.

Yeah, start with 10,000. But it takes money. And if you understand seeds, it's not difficult to do things like that.

It's just not difficult. It just happens. We had a wonderful meeting yesterday.

ACI supports a big group of DACA students. These are Mexican students in the United States who don't get local money and we help them. Some of our DACA kids graduated recently, in the last couple of weeks.

We got pictures of them. And it takes money. It takes money to send a DACA kid to college.

And we have money. And the organization has money because we know about seeds. So we can help people.

It's cool. It's really cool. You got that picture, right?

I can tell Tim's looking for it. There's a beautiful picture of their graduation that we got yesterday. And we do that every year.

We help another group of students every year. It's cool. So anyway, if pain and if cold and heat were not coming from you, then as you moved around the world, like you were hot outside, even this morning in Arizona, and then you came inside and Geshe-la froze you, well then the freeze and the heat should just get stacked on top of you.

You should be hot and cold at the same time. If scientists are correct, if your culture is correct, if the culture you grew up in is correct, you should be hot and cold right now because they're coming from their own side. And it's illogical.

It's simply not defendable. It's indefensible. The ideas of science that science is built on are indefensible.

Here's a conversation I had with my teacher. So I came from Princeton. I just got honors.

I graduated with honors. Next day I got in the car, drove to study with my teacher for 25 years. Everything I say, he says, is stupid.

I'm like, no, I'm a Princeton. He said, I don't care. Then finally one day he says, explain to me something.

I'm like, what? He says, can you explain something to me? I'm like, yeah.

Finally get to explain something to my teacher. He says, these scientists guys, and by the way, they didn't know the ideas of science. Classical Tibetan scholar coming out of the Himalayas in 1959, they had no idea of what science was.

They didn't have a name for it. Then they called it Zen Rigpa, some kind of special logician school. He said, these Zen Rigpas, where did they say stuff came from?

Where did the world come from? Where did the whole world come from? I said, well, it's all cause and effect.

He said, really? They accept cause and effect? I'm like, yeah, according to scientists, everything is cause and effect.

Experimentation is to create causes and see what the effect is and then repeat the conditions of the experiment consistently and you'll get the same result. That's the whole basis of science. It's cause and effect.

Everything is cause and effect. He says, wow, so they believe the same thing we do. I'm like, yeah.

Then he says, where did the world come from? I'm like, oh, well, that's easy. That's just cause and effect.

He said, wow, how did the first stuff happen? I'm going to slow down, Tim. I'm going to slow down, Birgitta and Mayer, Sunimla, don't worry.

Those German words are so long, it takes longer to say them. It wasn't that hard. Anyway, he says, wow, that's so interesting.

Where did the first stuff come from? I said, well, everything's cause and effect. There had to be a cause.

He said, well, what do they say is the cause? I said, well, there was a big bang. There was a big explosion and we're still measuring it.

There's a new James Dean Webb telescope opening up now, which is observing the explosion. It's looking back into the creation of the first explosion. It's, what do you call them, triangulating back to the original.

They're trying to position the first explosion from where the stuff went. It's like you throw a banana on the wall and then you measure where all the things came from and you decide where the guy threw it from. He's like, wow, big bang, yeah.

I said, yeah. He says, everything's cause and effect, right? Yeah.

I felt so happy to explain something to my teacher because he made me feel so stupid every day. He's like, wow, everything's cause and effect, big bang. So what caused the big bang?

Then I'm like, well, that doesn't have a cause. He said, everything has a cause, right? Except the thing that created everything.

You got to feel it. He's like, then he's a hi-hi Geshe. He set me up.

He knew when he started the conversation where I went in. It's like a chess game. A Geshe is a chess player.

He's like, oh, yeah, so everything's cause and effect except everything. I'm like, hmm. Then I was like, dang, I didn't get to teach him anything.

Okay, anyway, it's baggage. It's baggage to hold, to carry that heavy weight, to live. Deep down knowing that the system you live by is stupid.

It's a burden. That's what the angel is saying here. It's a burden to drag around those ideas.

Here. So you'd have to be cold and hot at the same time, right? We had it ten minutes ago, but that was a long time ago.

SNYING RJE'I TSIM Oh, so sad. It's the car accident thing, okay? Oh, you got to be hot and cold at the same time.

Oh, so sad that you have to carry around these ideas. You have to drag around this worldview for the rest of your life as an American. SNYING RJE'I TSIM Your whole life doesn't make sense.

SNYING RJE'I TSIM I'm sorry you have to live like that. Deep down you know. Deep down you know.

I don't have to tell you. If you suffer, you know something's messed up. If you're getting older, if you look in the mirror and you're like, God, what's going on?

I heard a lady wrote a book about a phenomenon that older people in America are starting to commit suicide more frequently. She wrote a book, she became the American expert on it, and then her mother tried to commit suicide. Then she's like, Mom, you're going to ruin my reputation.

I'm trying to teach older people to keep going, and here you're going to ruin my reputation. And her mom's like, let me explain something to you. When you hit some age, you get one problem, and then you try to take medicine or something, and then suddenly that causes another one.

And then you put medicine on that, and then suddenly that causes another one. The problems start to multiply. They start to stack up.

We know something bad is going on. You don't have to be Einstein or Hawkins. Hawkins?

Is it plural or not? Hawkins. You don't have to be Stephen Hawkins to know something bad is going on, and that something's wrong with your world view.

You can hang on to it if you want, but you're going to reach that point where things just start. One thing falls apart and then suddenly, you work on it for like six months. You go to the doctor for six months.

They finally stabilize it, and then suddenly two other things break. They just start breaking. Things start breaking.

It's like an old car. When you get there, you'll know. Here's cat.

Wait, cat didn't do yet, right? Do you want to take a shot? All right, Christina, you check?

[Speaker 2]
Here we go.

[Speaker 1]
Go slow and clear.

[Speaker 2]
Chichitendujitar ngu. Ngu. Ngu.

Ngu. Ngu. Ngu.

[Speaker 1]
Ngu.

[Speaker 2]
Ngu. Ngu. NGAL KYA'U BSTAN CHED SKAD LEN PAS LDAN GRUB KHO LA NYIN REG TSIM LDAN PAR GRUB PAS GNAS PA'O Yeah.

[Speaker 1]
Chichitendujitar ngu. Ngu is a very important word here. Ndu.

Say ndu. DNGOS means to gather together. Like sangha is what?

We are a sangha. What is it in Tibetan? What's sangha?

RGYEN BDUN So the DNGOS in RGYEN BDUN means a coming together. Sangha. What's the Greek of sangha?

Synagogue. A place where people come together to worship. It's sangha, synagogue.

Same word. It's exactly the same word. It's beautiful.

We are a synagogue. We're the Sedona Synagogue. Okay, good.

ZHIG CIG BSTAN DU RGYAL KHYAB THAMS CAD KHAS NENG PAS So SDU means things come together. What he's saying is cold and hot would have to SDU. They would have to come together in the same place at the same time.

You'd have to be cold and hot at the same time in the same place. Why? Because the cold you were feeling before cannot change.

When you go out of the air conditioning out to Arizona sun in the summer, the cold would stay with you because there's no reason why it would change. Why? It's not coming from a state.

It's coming from its own side. Things that come from seeds can change. Things that come from their own side cannot change.

When you go outside after this class, you'd have to be cold and hot at the same time. And so you're not only piling cold and hots on top of each other, you're piling contradictions in your life on top of each other. Got it?

You're living, your worldview, your scientific worldview stacks contradictions on top of each other and then you're carrying them around like a heavy backpack and they bother you. Subconsciously, they bother you. It's uncomfortable.

You're like, God, I don't know what's going on. But you live with it, okay? You live with it.

People are lazy to think it out. They hear an alternative explanation. They're like, I don't have time.

It's like cleaning out your storeroom. I'm like, I don't know, I open the storeroom and I just, I go, and I close the door. And I'm like, I don't want to deal with it today.

Maybe tomorrow. People open up the door of their mind. They look at all the contradictions.

They're like, I'll clean that. God, somebody's got to clean that up someday. I'll definitely do it when I have time.

That's the mantra that I give to Veronica. I'll definitely do that when I have time. It seems that you will have to content yourself with this.

It really exists in the US, okay? And you're going to have to embrace all the contradictions. If you want to hang on to the idea that things are not coming from your seed, if you want to hang on to the idea that your life, the content of your life, is not coming from how you treat other people, if you want to hang on to that idea, okay.

Then carry around those contradictions for the rest of your life. Suffer under the burden of the contradictions of the scientific viewpoint. Science is not completely wrong.

Science has an extraordinary... The idea of confirming things by experiment is brilliant. It's perfect.

They just haven't carried it out. All right. Such are the faults of anything that could have real existence.

What does he mean by real? What does the angel mean when she says real? Come from its own side.

Does not come from how you treat other people. It's natural. It wasn't coming from me.

It's natural. It's been that way. It's been that way from its own side.

Okay, cool. All right. This next section is called Rebirth as an Impossibility.

And Timothy, I was going to have you read it. Jigme, you want to read? I'll give you the next one, Tim.

Do you want to read? Okay, go. Can't criticize it.

It's fun. I do it all the time.

[Speaker 2]
,'KHYER MED GYUR NI DGAL TE NA, ,GYEL ,GYEL ,GYEL ,GYEL ,GYEL ,GYEL It's not in English, Jigme.

[Speaker 1]
It's not, GYEL.

[Speaker 2]
It's GYEL, GYEL. Oh, nice to see you. GYEL, GYEL.

,WI LE CHEK NI TOG GYUR SEG, ,WI LU SAR DUNG TOG PA DANG, ,GYEH WA GGE SU DONG SHING NUSU. NUSU. NUSU.

NUSU. NUSU. NUSU.

NUSU. NUSU. NUSU.

NUSU. NUSU. NUSU.

NUSU. NUSU. NUSU.

NUSU. NUSU.

[Speaker 1]
NUSU. NUSU. NUSU.

NUSU. NUSU. NUSU.

NUSU. NUSU. NUSU.

NUSU. NUSU. NUSU.

NUSU. NUSU. You must be saying that things cannot start because there's nothing that would start them because they exist from their own side Kailin KN is to take it out of the mouth.

I agree sir MTS they are Sir, what's our it means? Here's the translation? Amaze You ideas are How do I say it That dot-dot-dot is is the angel scratching her chin Nothing changes and people still get bored It's really if you read The first mention moment above I think really really brilliant writers are funny Okay, the ones who are really slightly garden.

It is extremely funny Nothing changes everyone That's what he's saying, okay, thanks. I'm not coming from you from how you treat other people Things are not coming from the season Things are coming from their own side things never change and people still buy Okay, got it sarcastic right angel is very like all brilliant women Sarcastic at times Alright, here we go Whoa This is this is one's made for Tim. It's the longest one.

[Speaker 2]
You're gonna have to swallow that croissant before you See if it'll change He's breaking it down into its component parts Wait, who's checking Say love Yeah The angel tends to save the punchline for the end, which is normal, right?

[Speaker 1]
And and you know, like when she goes ning ne sim. What's that mean? Oh Poor baby Oh You gotta accept these Contradictory ideas that carry around your whole life.

Oh poor baby Okay, it's like when my tree falls down Okay, so here's the end of this verse. Okay, RAG MA LAS PAR KHYER GZHAN PAS So according to you GZHAN, say GZHAN PA GZHAN PA is a is a perceptual theory word Which is by the way, what we debate in the intercollegiate debates, the Olympics of debating It's always perceptual theory and or formal logic in and he says RAG MA LAS PAR KHYER GZHAN GZHAN PA means you hold that position Okay, GZHAN PA means and it also implies you're attached to it.

So the same word What's GZHAN PA ZHIG STO for $100? GZHAN PA ZHIG STO. Anybody in the audience?

GZHAN PA ZHIG STO $100 bet She'll pay GZHAN PA ZHIG STO Cancel the bet. It was so perfectly quiet. When we ask people to be quiet, they're noisy.

When we ask them to give an answer, it's super quiet. It's a lojong that you guys studied in New York City in 1998 or so called Freedom from the Four Attachments. GZHAN PA here means to be attached to some wrong idea.

Okay, you hold on. When you leave here, you're still going to believe the atomic theory of the scientists. By the way, that's all theories pass.

Okay, except Buddhism. I mean they won't believe that theory. As quantum theory becomes stronger, Newtonian physics are thrown out.

Every generation thinks their theories are the end ones. Every generation thinks that. If Newton can be thrown out by quantum mechanics, trust me, something can throw out quantum mechanics.

And when we have quantum computers, it's going to be super cool. Then there'll be enough computing power to have an avatar. You can eat potato chips all day on your couch and go to class and do everything else.

It's the ultimate goal of every American. RANG MA LAS PAR GYUR GZHAN PAS Then you got to get the punchline here. Tim, I'll give you $300 for the last line, but it's got to be close.

Okay, I'll give you $300 for the last line. GZHAN PA, I'll say it for you. I'll phrase it correctly.

GZHAN PA, which is that kind of attachment we just talked about. GZHAN DU Different GZHAN, different spelling. Same pronunciation.

MING GYUR, forget the GZHAN. I'll give you the GZHAN for free. Okay, so you got, come on, that's like $60 a syllable.

It's just like that guy who came to build walls at my house. It's like $300. It's $300 a stone, I think.

I'm not kidding. It was six feet long and he charged me $300. GZHAN DU, into GZHAN.

[Speaker 2]
Good.

[Speaker 1]
Your GZHAN PA, MING GYUR GZHAN DU. Yeah, good. I'll give you $200.

Okay, collected from Jigme. She says, who is she? I don't know why this button opens up and this one doesn't.

It's a physics thing. What's she saying to the devil? Well, you believe everything comes from its own side so nothing can change and therefore your stupid police also can't change.

Got it? It's funny. You should be roaring with laughter.

Oh, Mr. Devil, Mr. Ignorance. By the way, that's his real name, Mr. Stupid. Everything exists from its own side, right?

Yeah. Nothing changes, right? Yeah.

I believe it. You're so stupid it's never going to change. Isn't that funny?

No. I think it's funny. Your bad ideas are never going to change either.

I think that's the thing that's not going to change. That's the angel talking. She's really cool.

We got to paint her somehow. She must be elegant and funny at the same time. Where this one thing stands complete, where we misunderstand our world, then pain can continue.

If you keep carrying around the baggage of believing that the world comes from the world and not from how you treat other people, you will never stop suffering because then you have no incentive to treat other people well. It's just selfish life. It's just a self-centered life for the rest of your life.

You can say, look Geshe-la, I'm nice. I make a donation once in a while. That's not really nice.

That's just occasional. Do you do it from day to day? Dr. Moore is still going to the prison frequently, I think a couple of times a week, a couple of days a week, and helping with the operations there. I asked him what kind of operations are popular nowadays in the prison. He said, mostly smashed up noses. Anyway, he keeps going.

He keeps doing it. He doesn't just do it occasionally. He's like constant.

I've known him 30 years or something. He hasn't stopped. It's not something you can do once in a while.

You have to do it constantly. Then he says, as long as you misunderstand your world, you will keep cycling through the five different kinds of life, although according to your viewpoint, you don't change lives, you just stack them up. I'm an animal who's a hungry ghost who is a deva who is a human.

Something like that, because they don't change. You got to carry the last one, wouldn't you? It seems as though the way you grasp to things is itself also immutable.

If you say things exist from their own side, which means they can never change, I guess your stupidity is permanent. Who's talking? The sweet angel.

She's funny. I like her. It'd be nice to make a movie of her.

It'd be nice to make a movie of this debate. That'd be something. Or a play.

A play would be nice. All right, we're back to haso, I think. We're going to read this one.

Christina, can you criticize him? He's an angel.

[Speaker 2]
Okay, call it from the word. Ryut-jang-pung-pong That's young. No, not young.

Young. Young. He's making mistakes on purpose.

No, no, no. Ryut-jang-Pung-pong Sob-sam-lam Dan-ne-ng-ao Myan-pa-yi Lo-yi Sing-pan Dan-ju-tu Nan-wa-tar-tu Kyu-du-pe Ndu-pe Kyu-du-pe Drogba, Trukpo, Rereta, Luki, Sintang, Shi, Chiktu, Ntu, Luk, Yitar, Jit, Jitar, Che, Nga, Nga, Nga, Ang. Har, Pel, Hel, Cher, Ngu, Ngel.

Supaman.

[Speaker 1]
Good. So we just finished a translation. It took six years.

Adam Mandrade is working on a book called Clear Thinking. And it's the principles of clear thinking, logical thinking. It's the principles of logical thinking.

It comes from Dharmakirti about 1,500 years ago. It's a massive book. The notebook is this big.

I use it at home when I can't go to the gym. I just do this with the book. All of these ideas are in that book.

So you got to get it when it comes out soon from Dharmakirti Press e-book. It's going to come out soon. And it talks about, okay, Latin, perceptio, to grab.

Kleptomania comes from that. Stealing, or kepto, septo, perception. The C used to be K.

Perceptio. So to grab. How does the mind grab objects?

How does the mind reach out and grab an object? And this is a huge subject in the inter-monastic debates. Once a year they take the best 50 Geshe candidates.

We go to a separate place and we fight for a month. And we debate for 10 to 12 hours every day. And it's unbelievable.

A couple of nights we do TSEN BYANG. TSEN BYANG means whole night debate. We debate the whole night.

And it's fun. It's really awesome. So you got six major colleges, 300, the best of the best debate.

And it's really amazing. And this is a popular debate. It's not that the mind grabs the object.

There are many objects going on out there. There's many objects going on out there. There's the object that's appearing to you.

When I look at Vivian, then there's one object called the Vivian who is there appearing to Michael. And then there's the Vivian I perceive, which might not be the Vivian who is appearing. Got it?

The Vivian that I see might not be the Vivian who is appearing to me. If I'm drunk, for example, or I'm angry, then I won't see the same one that's appearing to me. Then there's the Vivian as I take her to be.

So now you got three objects. Vivian as she's appearing to Michael. Vivian as Michael sees her.

And the Vivian that Michael believes, which may not be the one that's appearing or the one he takes. Got it? And there's another one, which is, I don't know, Vivian as coming from Vivian or Vivian as empty.

Do I take Vivian as not being who she seems to be? Do I understand that? Do I understand that it looks like she's coming from her, but she's actually coming from me?

It's not that light bounces off Vivian and comes to Michael. It's that light leaves Michael's brain and creates Vivian. How many of those fall out after?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's very cool. When Adam's book comes out, you should buy it because there's not one object here.

There's about five. And only some of them are real. And some of them are destructively false.

And that's called RGAGS BYA, which is defined as the thing which emptiness is empty of. I like to call it that. The thing which emptiness is empty of.

And she's going there. You're right, JB. She's going there in about a page.

She's headed to the RGAGS BYA. So what we got here, when it says RZIN STANG in the third line, RZIN STANG means, how do you take Vivian to be? When Vivian appears to me, RZIN STANG means, how do I take her?

So this is all perceptual theory from 15 centuries ago. And it's very beautiful. It was in the time just before Shantung, before the great Chinese Buddhists came to India, just before that, it was hot to talk about these ideas.

How many Vivians are out there? And which ones are real? And which ones are not?

Got it? So RZIN STANG is a very popular word from those days, 15 centuries ago. How do you take her to be?

He takes her to be DEN GRUB. Say DEN GRUB. DEN GRUB means real.

From her own side. Real because she comes from her own side. What do we call it in English, real?

She's real from her own side. I'm not making her up. She's there.

She's coming at me. She's not coming from me. And that's what the devil thinks.

That's a devilish, that's a satanic. You want something satanic? That's satanic.

The way our mind works is satanic because it causes all suffering. It causes all suffering in the world. Until you truly believe that your world is coming from how you treat others, you will always suffer.

All right, cool. Very nice. What you believed in is that when we look at the simple collection of parts and hold it as me, that me exists as it seems to.

Something truly out there appearing to you. How can then you talk about six kinds of rebirth? You must be all six kinds of living being at the same time, like stacked on top.

You must be the deva you used to be. So JB was Miss America countless times and that's still stacked on top of him. He's still wearing all those crowns from his past lives when he was Miss America.

According to you, the devil, according to you, all those previous lives he lived, which is everything. He's been everything. He's been every bug.

He's been every fish. He's been every bird. He's been everything.

And they're all stacked on top of him because they can't change. He's just accumulating new identities. He's got a fake mustache.

It's a whole bag. Almost all your ideas here are simply complete contradictions. Who's talking?

She always at the end, she always says something like, you know, how many things you think are wrong? Everything. She's like that.

She's like, how many things you think are, how many ideas of yours are messed up? Everything. Everything you think is messed up.

Every thought you have is polluted. And it's true. As long as you think the objects are out there and they're not coming from how you treat people, then every perception you have, which is how many per millisecond?

65. 65 perceptions per second. How many of the 65 are mistaken?

DZIN DANG Taking it the wrong way. 65. 100%.

It's not that you make a mistake once in a while in your ideas. It's that every single perception, 65 per second, 3,600 per minute, right? Something like that.

They're all wrong. 100% wrong. All of them.

That means it'd be a big deal if you sat in this class and just for a minute you thought about the possibility that the whole world was coming from, how you treat others. That would be like a glass of lemonade in the house. Ice?

Lemonade with ice in the house. Just to consider the possibility that the world is coming from how you treat other people in a world where you have 65 wrong thoughts per second. It's like a lemonade in the house.

Got it? Cool. A cool lemonade, a nice iced lemonade in the house.

Okay, cool. Tim's pointing the clock to me. I could shock you and finish one minute early.

Let me see. Yeah, let's stop there for this class. It's a good place.

Well, no, I got one minute. Let's use it. That's a principle in my life, by the way.

Yeah, we'll have a Q&A after that. Q&A. Okay, so if John's past lives are all stacked on top of him because they can't change and he's everybody he ever was at the same time, then it would be like hot, things that are like hot and cold, according to your worldview, should be stacked on top of each other.

It should be possible that ice burns and fires freeze because they don't have, because all their natures are inherent. They cannot change. They are never depending.

They are immutable. They are never shifting. They are concrete.

They are solid. This is the poetry. This is real poetry.

It's like this. BSTAN PA'I GRUB PA'I LTOS MED DANG GZHAN LA RAG NI MA LAS DANG RGYUR MED DAG DANG THER GSOL GYI GYOD DU MYAL DU It's like that. Unstoppable.

Unchanging. It's a fix. Neverness.

She's like this. It's very beautiful in Tibetan. How could it ever be that you have experienced each of them acting out?

How can you be everybody you used to be right now in your human body? How is that possible? She's pointing out his contradictions.

All right. Questions and then we'll take a break. Any questions.

I don't care. Any topic.

[Speaker 2]
Thank you Geshe-la. So the first question has to do with this idea of self-existence. And the question is could you explain a little bit more clearly what it means to say something is self-existent?

I'm not really sure what that means and how to use that when I'm thinking about these problems. It's not clear to me what that means.

[Speaker 1]
I'm American. I grew up in a society which did not have any of these ideas. None of them.

Not a single Buddhist idea in my state called Arizona in 1952. Nothing. So I understand when you have trouble.

You're probably lucky if you come from a culture that didn't have Buddhism because then you have to figure it out as an adult and not have a lot of wrong ideas as a kid. You see what I mean? About it.

So when we say self-existent, I'll tell you what it feels like and then I don't have to say anything else. In a self-existent world things would not get worse if you mistreated the people around you. That's all.

That's self-existent. I'll say it again. In a self-existent world if you were mean to the people around you and hurt them your life wouldn't get noticeably worse.

If you were trying hard to be nice to other people and your world did not improve, if your life and your business did not improve, that's self-existent. That's all. Simple.

If the world were self-existent then you could go on being selfish and ignoring other people and you would be successful. In the long run. Look, I know.

Yeah, I know. There are politicians who are incredibly corrupt and mean and they get richer. It's not cause and effect.

It's not cause and effect. They did something sweet earlier and for a while they're getting some good results. But when the current behavior kicks in they're going to be super miserable.

I'll say it again. To me, as a person who did not grow up Buddhist, self-existent means if I'm selfish and only take care of myself and don't help other people self-existent would mean I would be successful. My life would go well.

My marriage would go well. My business would go well. Self-existent to me means if I were kind and generous and sharing and thoughtful to other people and my life got worse and worse and worse that would be self-existent.

That's all. When I say self-existent, think like that. Think like that.

When you hear the word self-existent think like that. A world that could get worse the more kind you are and a world that could get better the more selfish you are. That's self-existent.

You can say impossible. Same thing. Same meaning.

Self-existent and impossible are the same. Okay, Timothy.

[Speaker 2]
Cool, thank you. You were talking earlier about how planting seeds can help you get everything you want. I'm afraid that when I get everything I want I'll become attached to those things and then hold on to those results and then be scared I'm going to lose them.

So how can we think about this and how can I be free and not have any desire at all? Cool question.

[Speaker 1]
If you really understand Buddhism and you want to be happy then you know you have to treat other people kindly and with generosity. You know that. The only way according to cause and effect to get financial prosperity for example, the only way is to share what you have.

There's no other way. There's no other source of one dollar in the world economy. Sixty trillion dollars.

There's no other way to make money unless you're the Fed and you can print the paper. But there's no way to make, there's no real way to become financially successful except for sharing what you already have even if it's not much. Sharing what you have is the only way to get successful.

If you get in the habit of sharing what you have and then you get financially successful the habit is going to carry over to the success. The habit is going to carry over into the... You don't have to worry about it.

A Buddhist who becomes successful because they serve other people is going to use their success to serve more because they got in the habit which is the only way they got successful. It's a cool system. I'll say it again.

The only way to be successful is to share what you have. If you follow that philosophy and you become successful and you make $370,000 last week, John. Right?

Then when you get the $370,000 which I pray you do, I mean collect it, then because you got it by being generous no one's going to be stupid enough to hang on to it. Come on. No one's going to be stupid enough to not share it.

Got it? If you worked hard to plant the seeds for prosperity by sharing, when it comes you are going to create a positive sansara. This sansara goes like this.

But a Buddhist sansara goes like this. Then you're going to say, Oh, I got $370,000. Let me give away $180,000.

Then that kicks in. Then a million comes and you're like, Oh, a million. Let's give away half a million.

Then it's an upward sansara. It's an upward circle. Got it?

Cool? I don't think it's possible if you become prosperous by serving others that you would be attached to what you got. I don't think it's possible.

I don't think it's possible. You would share because you know where it's coming from. Cool?

Cool system. All right, Timothy.

[Speaker 2]
Geshe-la, after hearing your teaching, Geshe-la, after listening to your class, what do you do when you realize, after studying emptiness, you realize that something you did in the past, you're like, Oh, dang. Oops, that wasn't the right thing to do. Specifically, this question is about having an abortion.

After having an abortion and then studying emptiness and realize there may have been something, I realize I may have made the wrong choice. How can we think about this and how can we maybe make up for it or change the seed that we planted?

[Speaker 1]
Two things I'd like to say. This is a question about abortion and what do I do afterwards if I realize I killed somebody. First of all, I've done it.

Before I became a Buddhist. In university time. The lady said she was on birth control.

I don't know. But then I went to India and she had an abortion and I didn't stop it. I could have stopped it and I didn't stop it.

I have that same karma. There's another story I'd really like to tell. I did a three-year retreat in 2000 to 2003 at the greatest retreat center in the world when it was first starting.

Nearby. Then after I came out of retreat, I went back to Manhattan and I was invited at the... What's that big center there?

Chogyam Tungpa Center. Dharmadhatu? Dharmadhatu?

[Speaker 2]
Yeah. Shambhala.

[Speaker 1]
Shambhala, yeah. The president's wife was Cindy who owned the largest yoga center, Aum Yoga, where I used to teach. Her husband asked me to go.

A thousand dollars if you can tell me something special about her husband. Cancel the bet. He wrote, midnight at the oasis.

He did. It's unbelievable. It's extremely intricate song.

Anyway, Tim tells me my story's gone too long. You think so? He invited me to go speak at his center and I was sitting in the waiting room.

There were two doors. One door to go in and speak and one door to come in from the outside. This small girl, like three years old, danced across the room in a ballet tutu, pink tutu.

She's like... She's dancing across the room from one door to the other. I'm like...

It was so beautiful. Then her mom came in. She's Chinese.

She looked at me and said, Geshe Michael. I'm like, yeah. I'm like, what?

She said, that girl exists because of you. I'm like, what? She said, just before you went into three-year retreat, you gave a talk.

You said that a baby after conception is alive, is a being. I was considering an abortion. After I went to your talk, I changed my mind.

She exists because of you. I'm like, oh my God. She's so beautiful.

Anyway, I've been there and I made that mistake also. I think what my teacher told me to do was to do an antidote, right? Do a counter...

What do you call it? Counteraction? Which was...

In my case, he encouraged me to start a children's class. I did. I did a children's class for 15 years.

I said, how long I got to do this class? He said, when it's over, you'll know. Then one day I felt clean and I felt like the karma was gone.

I just knew it was gone. I didn't just stop the class because of that, but I moved away. I think serve children.

Take care of children. Care for children. Make it a theme in your life to do something for children every week.

You can clean the karma. The cleaning is fun. You see what I mean?

It's not a hard work. It's fun. It's fun to have a kids class.

It's fun to take care of kids. That's my suggestion. Do something beautiful and fun for children and the karma will be cleaned.

It's even better than if you didn't do it somehow. Tim, do I have any announcements to make or anything? We're going to take a 20 minute break.

Don't forget that after the next class, how long after the next class? 15 minutes after the second class we'll be having a ceremony to either take the bodhisattva vows or simply commit to studying and trying to live like a bodhisattva. We're going to have a ceremony to make that commitment due to two nice people from Diamond Mountain.

All right. See you guys in how long? 20 minutes.

Bye.