Дебаты дьявола с ангелом, часть 16: Церемония обетов бодхисаттвы (2022, Аризона), занятие 4

[Speaker 1]
Hi, welcome back to Angel-Devil, The Angel Debates the Devil, and Kat says she really wanted to read this one and Haso is going to check her. So take your time and make it clear.

[Speaker 2]
It's cute.

[Speaker 1]
Nice, very nice. All right, the angel lady is, how do you say that? She's so smart that everything she says is kind of biting.

How's that? Okay, elegantly biting. All right, and she says, ,GCUD KYI LUS LA NYONG BA NI, Do you have separate experiences in your body?

Do you feel cold during Geshe-la's class when he turns up the air conditioner to keep you awake, which did work by the way, and then you go outside and feel hot? According to you, if they don't come from you, if they don't come from how you treat other people, then they must be coming from the outside and things that come from the outside cannot change. Therefore, there's this idea of stacking.

They keep repeating a word, ,TSEGS PA, which means to stack things, and you're stacking experiences on top of yourself. You must be hot and cold at the same time. All right, and he says, it's contradictory.

What you believe is contradictory. Okay, got it? Here comes the punchline from the super intelligent lady.

I want to say it right. You don't seem to have a problem piling up contradictions where you would have to be cold when you're hot. You also don't seem to have a problem piling up more contradictions on top of your past contradictions, which I believe is possible.

You see what I mean? She doesn't believe you could be hot and cold at the same time, but she does believe the devil can stack up contradictions infinitely. She's like, you're a good stacker.

Why? You stack up impossibilities and contradictions. Your whole life is a stack of contradictions.

Got it? She's accusing him of stacking. Okay, all right.

Now we get into the body and the mind and me. I like to say body and mind. It's not what Buddhism says.

Buddhism does not use the term body and mind. It uses the term the five heaps. The five heaps.

There's a logic to that. In the West, we describe Michael as the combination of Michael's body and Michael's mind. When the Buddha taught, some of the first teachings given by the Buddha were about the five parts of a person.

He didn't talk about two parts, body and mind. He made it five. That in itself is a deep teaching.

The word here that starts out here, did we read this? No. Ellie, you want to read and Hasso's checking?

[Speaker 2]
Loud. PUM PO SOGS TSANGS LA BRTEN NAS NGA'O NYON PA'I LO DE NI MIG PA'I NA LA MIG NAS NI RNAMS PA'I BSTAN PAR BCUG HART ZIN Good.

[Speaker 1]
The first word here is PUM PO, which means a stack, a pile of things. The classic example is a pile of leaves. Like when you rake up leaves in New Jersey, which we don't do here.

But it's how you spend the fall if you live at that Mongolian temple. Thousands and thousands. Anyway, it's a heap.

Why did Lord Buddha, in some of his first teachings, talk about the five parts of you rather than the two parts of you? Why did he call each of the five a pile of parts? Why did Buddha say you are five parts rather than two parts, just body and mind?

Why did he call each of the parts a pile of parts? Each part is a pile of parts. So he says, you got five parts, piles of parts.

You got five parts, piles of parts. Yeah. I can see the translators pulling out their hair.

God bless you. You guys are amazing. All right.

So here's the logic. Just so you know, Abhidharma. Basic Abhidharma teaching.

Maybe one of the most important teachings of Abhidharma. BUNG DANG SKYE DGO RE GYI BDUN PHUNG PO SKYE BYED GAM RNAM YIN First chapter. Why do we call it PHUNG PO?

Because they are piles, like piles of leaves. What are you piling up? Well, you start with body and mind.

Body is so basic you can leave it alone. But body is body. Let's make it one of the parts of you.

So it's body and mind, or something like that, one and four. Why do we split mind into four parts? Well, there's your main mind.

The fact that you're alive. The fact that you have consciousness at all. Your awareness.

General awareness. The fact that you're not dead. That you can see the world at all, which is a miracle.

That's one. But then there's 51 or 46 functions of the mind in Buddhist psychology. So Buddhism has a very sophisticated psychology.

It takes years to learn. It says either 51 or 46 mental functions. So here's how we divide those.

Call them 50. It's 48 plus 2. 48 plus 2.

Here's 48, roughly. Here's 2. So there's Vivian's body and Vivian's awareness, whole mind, that you're not dead.

You can call it life. Then there's 50 little parts going on, like anger, like jealousy, like compassion, like intelligence, like attention, like memory. But two of those are separated out and 48 are kept together.

Why? ,BKUR BA'I RGYU CHER, ,RIM RGYUD CHER, ,PHUNG PO SEMS CAN RNAMS NAS, ,TSOR BA DANG, ,DUS SHES BLO ZHIG PHUNG PO ZHAG, We take feeling and discrimination out of all the Buddhist psychology, the parts of the human mind. 50 parts roughly.

We take two out separately and we teach them separately. Why? ,KHOR BA'I RGYU, They cause sansara.

,RIM RGYUD, They cause sansara in a two-part trigger. It's a two-part trigger. What's the two-part triggers?

This person makes me feel good and this person makes me feel bad. Therefore, I like this person and I don't like this person. We discriminate.

This is the capacity to discriminate and this is feeling. ,KHOR BA'I RGYU, ,KHOR BA'I RGYU, They cause sansara. Out of the 50 mental functions, two are the troublemakers.

What? This makes me feel good. This doesn't make me feel good.

I like him. I don't like her. Got it?

That's why Buddha said heaps instead of... That's why he said five heaps instead of body and mind. In the West, we say body and mind.

He said, no, no, no. Body, mind, and 50 parts of the mind, two of which are messy. 48, which are kind of, you know, good, bad.

Now, for $100, and it's important here, which is why I got there. For $100, Rosa's eyes get squinty. For $100, there's one more part here that I didn't mention.

This is called grab bag. This heap is called other stuff. RGYU BYED PUN PO ZHI LAS GZHAN The definition of the fifth heap is all the rest of you.

All the other parts of you is here. 48 states of mind and something else. No, that's here.

Physical, mind, feeling and discrimination, troublemakers. 48 mental functions here and one more. What?

[Speaker 2]
Yeah.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah. Hustle. Hustle.

[Speaker 2]
John.

[Speaker 1]
How much did I bet? $100? $75.

Okay. Yeah. Michael.

Yeah. John. Vivian.

Jacqueline. Okay. Here.

Got it? The person. Technically, it's the person.

The person. You are not your body because you say my body. You say my body.

You are not your mind because you say my mind. The guy you're referring to as my must be separate from body and mind. If it has a body and has a mind, there must be somebody else.

Body, mind, Vivian. You're three parts. There's three parts of you.

You, Michael, more. Cindy, you, then Michael's body, Cindy's body, Michael's mind, Cindy's mind. There must be a separate Michael.

There must be a separate Cindy who has the body and who has the mind. Got it? Now, are they physical or mental?

They're an idea. They're a concept. That's tough.

That's hard to wrap your mind around. In Buddhism, we're very sensitive. It's so nice to be able to say in Buddhism in a class.

All the other classes we have are sent to places where we're not allowed to talk about Buddhism. It's so nice to be able to talk about Buddhism. In Buddhism, you is very important.

The person who has the mind, the person who has the body. That's why it comes up here. Here's the state of mind which looks at the body and mind and says, Mike.

God, it's still, that watermelon is still sneaking out. Body and mind. Big body and mind.

Body and mind and then Michael. Here, there's a state of mind which looks at your body and mind and says, Michael, Michael. But when it looks at Michael, it feels like Michael's there without, sorry, Michael is there independent of how Michael treats other people.

Michael himself does not depend on how I treat other people. If I treat other people good or I treat other people bad, I'm still Michael. That doesn't come from me.

But it does. I'll give you an example. It's a cute example.

This is a famous Shantideva example. A Master Shantideva example. Seiji and Noor didn't come today, although they are here all the time because they have a baby.

Did you show the baby pictures, Hakeem? Yeah, so you saw the babies, our famous babies. They didn't come to this.

We have a big sangha here from Sedona. They didn't come because they're afraid, they want to protect their child from, and Hakeem, I assume, they want to protect their child from possible COVID. They want to protect their child from COVID.

There's an interesting thing that when a mother gestates a baby for nine months and then they have the baby, so the baby's part of their body for nine months and then the baby comes out. Then technically the baby is not part of the body anymore. But then try to hurt Maitri in front of Seiji or Noor.

Worse is Noor. Or try to hurt Hakeem in front of his mom and dad and see what happens. You're going to get punched so hard, so fast.

Why? Because that mom and that dad feel that that child is part of them. I mean, if you ask them, Is Hakeem, does he have his own pants when you wear your pants?

Do you have one pair of pants or two pair of pants? Then Alay will say, well, he has his own pants. We understand that.

But psychologically, you feel you are one person and protection-wise, taking care of him, you take care of him as if he's part of your body. You comb his hair, you brush his teeth, right? Not just yours.

It is possible to expand the sense of me to two bodies. It's possible. Every mother, every father does it.

They expand me to include two people. Therefore, me is flexible. It's not just body and mind.

It's not even the five heaps. Hakeem Alay is ten heaps and they get treated as one person. It is possible and it proves that the person is not coming from the person.

It proves the person is an idea. It doesn't exist objectively. The person can have ten parts because you treat him as you treat yourself.

You truly treat your child as you treat yourself. Almost as one person. Can you do the opposite?

Can you be less than one person? Now this happens in... I had a friend who got bad diabetes which 60% of all American, Mexican and Chinese children have onset diabetes.

60% of all. It's the one way in which those three countries are equal. We have fed the children badly and 60% of them are very probably going to have diabetes in their life.

Very likely before they die they will be faced with this question from a doctor. I was a translator in the Mongolian temple because I spoke Russian. I was the translator for all the Mongolians who speak Russian at the doctor.

I had to be the translator with this guy who had diabetes. I gave him his shots every morning and he got gangrene in his foot. You have to cut the foot off otherwise you die.

I'm like... The doctor is like, I got to tell this guy something, you translate. I said, yeah, yeah, I can do that.

Then he said, tell him he's going to die if he doesn't cut his foot off. I'm like, you want me to say that? He's like, yeah, you have to tell him.

You have to, because he was old. He was like 70 years, 75. That's not old, right?

In the old days. I told him and he said, no, no, no. No, will not do.

Die better, die better. He refused to do it. I said, well, what are you going to do?

He said, horse urine and mantra. I'm going to find some horse pee-pee and put it on the gangrene and do a lot of mantras. I'm like, okay, let's try.

Then he got worse and we moved him to a nursing home. I didn't see him for a couple of years. I went back to the nursing home.

He's still alive, he's fine, he's walking around. I'm like, where's your foot? I said, I still have my foot, please.

I'm like, does horse pee-pee and the mantra work? He said, yes, of course it works. I'm like, you're the only person I ever heard of who cured gangrene.

Why am I saying that? There's a purpose to Geshe-la's stories, don't worry. He was willing.

If a person decides to cut, amputate. I have a, my wife's hairdresser had her leg cut off. They told her, your leg has cancer.

Cut it off or die. She said, take it. They cut it off.

She's 25 or something. She said, take it. She made a conscious decision that her me will cover less than body and mind.

You can make a, it means that me is artificial. The Buddhists say that me is artificial. You decide who's me.

You can spread me to two people or you can spread me to 85% of you. You see what I mean? You decide who's me.

It's artificial. John is artificial. If you were really advanced spiritually, you could see all living beings, including horses, as me.

It's possible. It's an artificial thing. That's what she's saying here.

But you, who? The devil. You got this problem.

You think me is your body and your mind. Your body and your mind and all four limbs. You got this problem.

You think it's coming this way. It's not. It's going that way because of LA and because of amputation.

Got it? Me is coming from you, not from body and mind. Got it?

Cool. Which means, in theory, it's possible to love all beings as yourself. Because in theory, it's possible to see all beings as yourself.

In fact, that's true. You are not independent from all other beings. How you treat other beings is who you are.

That decides who you are. You don't have a choice. You have to see other people as you.

You have to. Or you will never be happy. Because your happiness depends on doing things for them.

All right. Wow. This is an easy one.

I mean, I'm not saying anything, but let's let Tim do it. If I kick anybody else, it's kind of insulting. Here we go.

Say it loud, and Tim's going to do it.

[Speaker 2]
Okay. Check it out, Tim. Uh, day, me, uh, come, come, take, suck, suck, duck, dun, ing, uh, dare, gen, shin, come, duck, duck, gen, ing, day, far, true, true, not, then, do, ye.

[Speaker 1]
Nice. Hey Timothy, I lost this screen, so I can't see the time. Okay, good.

So to believe that the body and mind, okay, now I got it. To believe that body and mind is automatically your body, your one body, and your one mind. To believe that is all you are is holding to the self-nature of the person.

kansaki dang dzin. Okay. And to believe that is to believe in a self-existent John or Michael or whatever.

And if things could exist, if body and mind could be Mike from its own side, then body and mind would exist really, really. Really in Buddhism means naturally. Naturally means you didn't make it that way.

It was that way when you got to Sedona, the rocks were here. That means nature. That's what we call nature.

So nature in Buddhism means you didn't make it. And by the way, what we call nature is not natural. Those rocks, who made them?

You did. Nature is not natural. Good.

Nature is not natural. Even nature is not natural, forget you. Okay, got it?

But of all the things in the world that we tend to believe come from their own side, there's no stronger one than Mike or John or Vilian or Rosa. For some reason, of all the things we take to exist from their own side, me is number one. Me is number one.

Look Geshe-la, I understand the pen doesn't exist from its own side, but I do. And we act that way. And then we have trouble taking care of other people.

There's a beautiful teaching in DCI called Your Mouth is My Mouth. Do you want to come sit here and teach it, JB? Are you in the mood?

Sit here. Okay, there's a teaching about... Yeah.

These are the two high intelligence people. He says it's got to be closer, farther. Both go this way, JB.

Alright, there's a teaching in DCI, copyrighted, I'm sure, called... She's a fashion designer. It's called...

Something about your shirt, JB. I don't know what it is. The same thing, right?

Okay. It's called My Mouth is Your Mouth. And JB, relax.

Teach it your own way. Soundly. We know about donuts very well from Geshe Michael, correct?

Yes. Right. And the whole process of keeping donuts in your life.

Do you have a croissant? Can you hand me a croissant? Let's do a live demonstration.

I don't know why. Yeah. It's post-breakfast.

Just one. Don't trust him with the whole thing. Thank you.

Alright, here we go. Your Mouth is My Mouth. So, again, you know, this remarkable thing we label as croissant.

Delicious, right? According to your seeds. And, again, how do we keep croissants alive in a continuum basis for our life?

And it has to do with the donut story as well. So the donut story is when that last donut is sitting inside that, what is the name of that place? Tim Horton.

Tim Horton's Donut Stores, who's a hockey player from Canada who made a fortune selling donuts.

[Speaker 2]
What do you do when the little lady is moving toward and looking at the glazed donut, the maple sugared glazed donut?

[Speaker 1]
What do you do, right? Okay, so that's basically the setup of our lives. We have that choice.

We have that discriminating mind to say, am I going to just grab that donut, move forward, and take it before the store closes or will I invest in giving that last donut to someone else?

[Speaker 2]
So, essentially, it's a very basic understanding of my mouth to your mouth, literally a donut. But in this case, it's a croissant. And so...

laughter So, again, Geshe Michael loves croissants. I totally love croissants. And there's no butter here, but that's okay next time.

[Speaker 1]
More butter is better with croissants, right? So, I really, really want this enlightened self-interest of my mouth to your mouth. I want this beautiful croissant to be given selflessly as I can possibly give to someone who loves them.

[Speaker 2]
So, at that moment, laughter I just planted a beautiful seed with the certainty, honestly, that someone will come visit my house with croissants.

[Speaker 1]
Plural, plural.

[Speaker 2]
Yeah, multi-dimensionally exponential.

[Speaker 1]
laughter And maybe there'll be chocolate inside. We don't know. But, again, you know, I can sit back and know confidently that these croissants will be in the next six to eight years on a regular basis coming to me.

And, hopefully, I can share them again with somebody else.

[Speaker 2]
Yes, anyone else, but the higher the karmic object, the better, okay? So, I think that covers.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, so, the situation here is there's only one croissant. And, if you like croissants, what should you do? If you really like them, what should you do?

Yeah, that's so unusual. If you like croissants and there's only one left, then you should put it in the other person's mouth, okay? Why?

You will get many, many more. So, if you want to take care of yourself, then you give it to somebody else, okay? If you want to take care of yourself, then give it to yourself.

The only way Geshe Michael can get a croissant in his mouth, the only way is to put it in John's mouth. Now, big question. Therefore, his mouth, if I want this to go in my stomach, where do I have to put it?

In his mouth. Then, visually, visually, visually, visually, he's 18 inches away. His mouth is over there.

Visually. But in reality, that's my mouth. That's my mouth.

Because the only way I can get a croissant is to put it in my mouth, which is his mouth. That's why human language breaks down. That's why human language itself is supporting ignorance, okay?

Because we have the word his and mine. But his is mine. It's not, what do you call it?

It's not true, theoretically. It's not true. It's not that it's a nice thing to think.

I'm not saying that. In reality, by every measure of reality, his mouth is my mouth and the word him and me is mistaken. It's a corruption and it keeps supporting the habit of seeing things as self-existent.

The language of every country in the world is broken and we have the word his when it's really mine. Okay? That's my mouth.

Why? Because if I want a croissant, I got to put it in that hole. So it must be my mouth.

Here's how language should be written. I'm going to rewrite language, okay? John Michael wants a croissant today.

So Michael John is going to put a croissant in John Michael's mouth so that Michael John gets a taste of John Michael's croissant. New language. The language of understanding.

Non-fragmented. Cool. All right, thank you.

Okay, good job. I'll send you the invoice. You'll send me the invoice.

Uh-oh, you're going to give me more work. All right, let's see what they got me to do here. Okay.

Yeah, I got it. Oh, yeah. Okay, good.

All right, here we go. This is what it means when we say that a person is grasping onto the self-existence of the person. This is what it means when we say that a person is attached to the idea of a self-existent person.

If you think your mouth is only your mouth and not your mouth, then you're not understanding your mouth because you're thinking your mouth is not your mouth. Okay? Easy, right?

Okay, for something to exist this way is what we mean when we say a thing has true existence. So really, true is false, right? All right, good.

Whoa, here's a long one. That must be from Mr. Longhouse. Are you ready?

Okay, loud and clear. Kat's right there. She can turn around and tell me it's wrong.

Ready, Kat? DE DRA YI LO NI LEN KHE LA PHUNG PO LA MEK NA TE NI DEN PAR DROOP PAR NANG WAN DE NANG WA THAR DROOP DUK NA THAG PA THA SUNG SUG GI SUN BDAG BYAS ZAS KYI BDAG YOD DE DRUL MED NGON NI GZIN PA NA DE NI BDAG YUL YI SO YIN DRA YI SO BO RANG DE YIN NO This sentence is, I mean this verse is extremely deep and extremely beautiful in the native language. It's extremely beautiful.

So I'm going to take a shot at it. DEN DE LO NI LEN KHE LA We naturally think this is Michael's mouth and we naturally think LEN KHE means naturally. We think that that's John's mouth.

We naturally feel that way. LEN KHE We are born that way. We are broken from the factory.

We are defective from the factory. Every human being, every animal. PHUNG PO LA MIG NA DE NI We look at the five parts to me and we take it to be naturally me.

And we look at John's five parts and say that's not Michael. And it's natural. It's automatic.

It's built in to us. We're broken from the factory. By the way, there are worlds where nobody is broken.

On this world, eight billion people think that's not my mouth. There are worlds where eight billion people think that is my mouth and if I have one croissant, I'm going to give it to myself, which is John. Okay, got it?

LDAN PA'I SGRUB PA'I SNANG BA'I DI SNANG BA LTAR DU SGRUB SDUG NA Now let's say that that was John's mouth and not Michael's mouth. Let's be stupid. Let's pretend we're stupid.

Let's pretend we don't understand. Oh, I have to put it in this hole. This is my hole.

That's his hole. I don't put it in his hole. This hole won't get one.

I have to put it in this hole so Michael can get it. Let's say there was a Michael like that who should eat the last donut because if he doesn't, someone else will get it and he won't get a donut. Actually, the real Michael, the real Michael's main mouth is over there.

I do have a secondary mouth. I shouldn't use this one so much. The main mouth is the one where I can get ten croissants out of it.

This is just a secondary, this is a backup mouth. That's the primary mouth. That's Michael's main mouth is over there.

Why? When you stuff that one with one croissant, you get ten. If you stuff this hole with one croissant, you get one.

Duh! Duh! My ballet teacher, she taught me this one.

Duh! Duh! I said, what's duh mean?

She says, you know. Okay. Listen.

Stay with me. If I really believe that this is the main hole and that's not the main hole, for Geshe Michael to get more croissants. Okay, got it?

If I really believe this is the main hole to get croissants and not that hole is the one I should shove the croissants into. Okay? If I imagine this is the main hole, she says, that's the gakja.

You want a gakja? You don't understand what gakja means? You want to know what emptiness is empty of?

It's this one. When you think this is the main hole, you're hanging on to a self-existent thing. That's the gakja.

Wow. That's what's not there. That's what was never there.

The main hole that's here was never there. It was always over there. That's the ten croissant hole.

This is the one croissant hole. What's the main hole? It's that one.

If you think this is the main hole, then you are focusing on the thing that reality is empty of. That's called in Tibetan gakja. It's like gotcha.

Gotcha, gakja. I gotcha, gakja. Now I know what emptiness is empty of.

What's the non-existent thing in the world that causes everybody trouble? Hole number one. This is not hole number one.

This is the backup hole to put the nine extra ones. Because you put one in his mouth, you give up one, you get nine. Duh.

Got it? You want a gakja? You don't understand the word gakja?

You want to know what emptiness is empty of? You want to know what the hell emptiness means? This is not the main hole.

That's all. That's emptiness. I'll tell you more correctly.

This is the main hole is what emptiness is emptiness of. That's the unreal impossible thing. This is the main hole.

You want a gakja? This is the gakja. Now, Panchen Lama says something cool and you got to be sensitive.

You have to be a mixed nuts level thinker to get it. He says, takpa tasum. Takpa tasum.

Tim, $500. And I know you know it because I spelled it for you once. Takpa tasum, line number five.

500, do it, do it. Come on, come on. Yes.

You asked me to spell it for you once. I'll give you a clue. He has misspelled it.

He has misspelled it. You asked me to spell it for you once. All right, all right.

Takpa tasum means theoretical. Theoretical. And it means, and it means, where's Michael's, where's the gakja?

Main mouth, main mouth. That's the gakja. But it's only theoretical.

It's imaginary. Got it? Takpa tasum.

He says, your so-called main mouth. She says, your so-called main mouth. Got it?

Your goddamn so-called main mouth, which was never there. Got it? Takpa tasum.

The gakja is always imaginary. The gakja is always theoretical. Why?

It can't exist. It's the ultimate can't exist thing. Main mouth connected here.

Main mouth here is a contradiction of terms. This was never and can never be the main mouth. Got it?

You can call it main mouth, but it's like calling it, I don't know, most handsome guy in the room. Geshe-la, you're not Joe, you're not, you're not, you're okay, but you know, most handsome in the room, I fight. Okay, got it?

Got it? When you specify the thing that emptiness is emptiness of, it's always theoretical because it doesn't exist at all. How long is a rabbit's horn?

John, is it 18 inches or is it 20 inches? It's takpa tasum, Geshe-la. It's all a, it's a ridiculous question.

How long is the rabbit's horn? How main is this mouth? Got it?

when you talk about the Gag ja, when you talk about when emptiness is emptiness of, you got to be very good at imagining what could never be. Got it? So it's hard to describe.

But if you want an easy way to describe Gag ja, this is the mouth, this is the hole where I should put one croissant, if there's only one croissant in the room, it should go into this hole if you have self-interest. Got it? If you have real Buddhist self-interest, where's the main hole?

It's over there. Got it? If you want to take care of yourself, you have to put the croissant in the main hole, which is that one over there, because that one gets me ten croissants.

Got it? Okay? Got it?

Got it? Nod. My teacher said nod.

I don't care if you don't understand. Just nod. Okay.

Got it? It's very beautiful. Now you know Gag ja forever.

Why does Geshe Michael like this way to teach the Gag ja? It always involves eating a donut on the stage. I always get at least half a donut.

I'm sorry, I get a whole donut. Gag ja is it. Now, this thing then, this thing that could exist only in a theoretical sense, THAG PA THA GSUM.

By the way, it's not THAG PA. It's not RTAG. Somebody has carved it wrong or something.

It's BRTAG, which means theoretical. That's the thing. We deny that this is whole number one.

That's the thing that's not true. This is not whole number one. That's whole number one.

You want more croissants? Don't be stupid. Give them to other people.

If we can identify without any error this supposed, you got to say supposed. You got to say theoretical. You got to say the thing that might exist if things were messy.

That's what we deny. That's what we deny. Now, here's the punchline.

Last line. DA, say DA. DA YI YI RDZO RDZO ANG ANG DE DE YIN NO YIN NO Who's the god damn enemy in this poem?

Don't think it's some guy. It's not some guy. The person the sweet angel is fighting is this one.

My mouth. He says, who's the enemy in this poem? By the way, we didn't start this poem in 2017.

I made a mistake. I checked this morning. We started this poem in 2011.

It's been 11 years that we've been working on this poem. Therefore, I have a request from ACI, which means from Tim. He says, Geshe-la, we already had people die in between.

Can you speed it up a little bit? We made a plan that in the next major ACI event, which is in November? October.

15th to the 24th. October 15th to the 24th at the best retreat center in the world with the best staff in the world called Diamond Mountain. We're going to have our usual autumn, fall, Medicine Buddha retreat October 15th to the 24th.

But we're going to teach Medicine Buddha through Angel Devil. We're going to teach Medicine Buddha. Medicine Buddha is going to get married to Angel Devil.

Every year when we teach Medicine Buddha, we do it through some deeper text. Why? Because I am personally very opposed to Buddhism as superstition.

I'm very opposed to that. I did not grow up with Medicine Buddha. I didn't grow up with Buddha at all.

I had a chance to learn what Buddha was when I was an adult and I could think about it. But there's a lot of superstition in any country where you grow up with something. There's a lot of, oh, you say Buddha, Buddha, mama, mumu, gugu and your cancer will go away.

But that's not true. If you don't understand emptiness, you cannot make cancer go away. It's not possible.

It is not possible. It's not mama, gugu, dudu, bubu. It's not mantra.

Mantras work, but only for people who understand emptiness. I'll say it again. Mantras do work, but only for people who understand emptiness.

Therefore, if you have a Medicine Buddha retreat focusing on mantras, you god damn well better talk about John's mouth, Michael's mouth, John Michael's, Jemichael's mouth. Majon? Majon?

Jemite. Which one are we going to choose? Jemite.

Jemite. Jemite's mouth. Okay, got it?

To really successfully practice tantra, which Medicine Buddha is a tantra, then you have to understand emptiness, or it doesn't work. It won't work. If you combine them, mantra and emptiness understanding, there is no powerful path.

No more powerful path than that. That's the most powerful path. We're going to do it in October.

You're very welcome to come. We're going to work harder. We're going to, for the first time since COVID started, we're going to open up the retreat.

Am I right? Do you have to be vaccinated? We're going to open the retreat up to all vaccinated persons.

You can come in person to the greatest retreat center in the world if you like. Now, if you don't have time, you don't have money, or if you don't have money or don't have time, if you can't get there, it will be held 100% online also. Don't worry.

Don't get all nervous. You don't have to eat Jack's cooking or Chloe's cooking. You can eat, your mom or your wife or your husband can cook at home.

Actually, they cook very well. I heard. I'm going to eat there because I'm lazy.

But anyway, there will be local retreats. There will be local Medicine Buddha Angel Devil retreats and you're very, very welcome to come. They will be held in Germany, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Mexico, Romania, Russia, UK, Vietnam, and Ukraine.

You can go to a local retreat center and do the Medicine Buddha Angel Devil, most powerful marriage between Medicine Buddha and angel. The Medicine Buddha is getting married to the angel. How's that?

Very sweet. We should do that, the marriage. Okay, cool.

There's QR codes up here. You can just aim your phone at that code and it will take you directly to the website link that you need. You don't even have to type it in.

Okay. I didn't know how to use a QR code. You just aim your camera at it and it takes care of everything else.

Duh. Actually, I didn't understand. I used to think, what is that thing?

Do I have to understand more? No. Okay.

I'm going to make a few announcements. I know we still have some class to go and then we're going to have question and answer. We are going to have a Bodhisattva Vow Ceremony by Arya Nagarjuna, sexy, after this class, 20 minutes after this class.

If you are taking the Bodhisattva Vows for the first time, fill in the form that you see and we will send you a Buddhist name, a Bodhisattva name. If you want to, if it's the first time you took them, Geshe-la and I will choose a name for you. Bodhisattva name.

The rest I'm going to do later. Let's get back to the text. Geshe says, if you want to see the real devil in this poem, it's thinking that this is my main mouth and that is not my main mouth.

By the way, that means that taking care of others is never a sacrifice. People say, oh, Geshe-la is so nice. He gave up his last croissant for John.

I said, no, it's enlightened self-interest. Geshe-la wants more croissants. Geshe-la is happy to give to John the last croissant.

By the way, that is kindness. You cannot perform an act of kindness without helping yourself. It's not possible.

It's impossible. You cannot perform an act of kindness that isn't the best thing to do for yourself also. It's kind of far out.

It's kind of cool. Being nice to others is the best way to take care of yourself. It's the best kind of selfishness.

That's real selfishness. Forget this other one. That doesn't work.

All right. Oh, this is a little one. Anybody want to volunteer?

Okay, go. Chloe, you check her. Do you like Chloe or close?

Close. I'll figure both ways. Okay.

Go. And yet still you cling to this mighty mountain of your own contradictions. $100 if you can tell me the joke here.

I'll give you a clue. You have to look at the Tibetan. Maybe.

Why? You're going to expect me to give you $100 if you can't explain it? Pumbo has two meanings.

Which is? Yeah. Good.

$100. Ellie, give Ellie $100. But that's impossible, right?

Yeah, we're going to explain it again. Don't worry. She says to the devil, still, after me and John did that hard work to eat a croissant for you guys, you still cling to that idea that only these parts, Pumbos, right?

Only these five parts are Michael. You still hold to them. And you refuse to understand that John's mouth is your mouth.

Listen, the only way to get a croissant into this hole is to put it in a different one. Got it? Even this one is from sometime in the past I gave to somebody else.

The only way to get a croissant into this hole is to put it into that hole. Therefore, that's my hole, John. And this one's yours.

Got it? My John or John My? Okay, John My.

And here's a joke. She's being funny and cute, which is her specialty. And she says, you just keep hanging on to this huge mountain of contradictions and the word for the five parts of a person and the word for mountain in Tibetan is the same.

So she's making a joke. Okay, got it? For example, the book by Pabongka Rinpoche and the famous the famous poem by Je Tsongkapa, the source of all my good?

It's part of a larger word called the Mountain of Blessings. JIN LA PHUNG PO So it means mountains sometimes. All right.

We still got six minutes. Let's do another one. HA SO, I keep wanting to come back to you.

You ready? And Tim, can you just complain about it?

[Speaker 2]
Okay. DE LTA RGYUD PA'I NGA DE NI PHUNG PO THAN GNYIS RANG NUS NAS GRUG PA'I GCIG DU GRUG PA'AM GRUG PA'I THA DE GANG DU GRUG So she's setting him up and she says, look, you got five parts, right?

[Speaker 1]
Body and mind. Okay, you got five parts, body and mind. Are you one thing or separate things?

[Speaker 2]
That's a question.

[Speaker 1]
He asked me that about an hour ago or something. Okay. Are you, you have body and mind, right?

Are you one thing or five things? Okay. That's, she's asking him.

Are you body and mind? Are you your body and mind? Or do you exist up here and you have a body and mind?

And you control them. Okay, got it? Are you your body and mind?

Sorry, are you your body and mind? Or are you up here and you say, move your mouth, Geshe-la. Think what to say next, Geshe-la.

Are you separate and you're running them like a puppet? Hey, mouth, yes. Time to open.

Okay, I'm here. Hey, mind, time to think and the next thing to say. Okay, we're on it.

Is there a Geshe-la up here, puppet master controlling them? Or is that Geshe-la? Okay, is there a Geshe-la separate from them?

Yes or no? So there's a Geshe-la with no mind and no body, right? Okay.

No, no, Geshe-la is his body and mind. Oh, so mouth tells mouth to start. Okay.

So she's asking, are you the puppet master who runs the body and mind? Talk now. Okay, talk, talk, talk.

Think now. Think, think, think. Okay, are you in charge of them?

Or are they you? And there's no puppet master. Okay, which is it?

She's asking him. It's a trick question. I guess.

Okay. Kat, you ready? Take your time.

Christina, Christina's checking. Don't be shy. Good.

So, she says, are you, is Michael one thing? Is Michael body and mind? Or is Michael separate from body and mind and runs the body and mind?

Is Michael this one thing? Or is Michael all these parts together? Which one is Michael?

Okay. And he says, I'll take this one. I'll take puppet master.

Michael's up here and he runs the body and mind. THA DE BSTAN MED CIG GRUB DANG Okay. Then, they are completely one, right?

They're all one thing, right? Yeah. Michael and his body and mind.

RANG BZHIN GZHAN DU MING RGYUD DANG By the way, those of you who know, well, I won't get into it. No, I will get into it. RGYUD means to be.

But it also means to change. And you have to be totally sensitive here. Okay.

RANG BZHIN GZHAN DU MING RGYUD here doesn't mean it's not of another nature. It means cannot change into something else. Are you saying that Michael is the puppet master?

Yes. Are you saying that Michael is one unit? Yes.

Then he cannot change. He cannot get old, for example. He cannot get less hair than he has now.

Good news. He will never have less hair than he has now. Why?

Because he's one thing. He's one thing. If you lost one hair, you wouldn't be the same thing anymore.

Then he'd be two things. The one that had more hair and the one that has less hair. Got it?

Okay. So these are the problems if you say Michael is the one puppet master. GZHAN DU RANG NYID MA LAS DANG Then Michael doesn't depend.

The puppet master doesn't depend on the puppet. The puppet depends on the puppet master. If Michael is one thing, if Michael is the master, then he can't change.

He can't get old. Now, what are we going to pick up with in October? We just said Michael cannot be one thing.

Now we're going to say Michael cannot be more than one. We'll talk about it next time. If you're smart, Geshe-la, you make a mark here and say start here at Diamond Mountain in...

I'm sorry, 1022. Tim, I think we'll take questions and answers and then I have some announcements. Jack, any questions?

Oh, ask Tim. He's the puppet master here. Jack has a question, Tim, if you...

If it's...

[Speaker 2]
If you have good foundations and you could believe that your mouth was GZHAN's mouth while you were doing it, would the karma... Could the karma be similar? Okay.

Okay. Okay. If you have...

If you have good foundation of emptiness and you believe that your mouth, Geshe Michael's mouth, is John Brady's mouth while you're eating it, could the karma be similar?

[Speaker 1]
It's a cool question. It's the kind of question you'd expect from Jack. If I understand that John's mouth is my mouth, then I would automatically want to make sure that John got his croissant, right?

But that doesn't mean I should also make sure that this mouth gets a croissant. Is it democratic? Is this new definition of Michael democratic?

Does this mouth have equal right to that mouth? Okay. Once I understand that putting croissants in that mouth is how this mouth gets fed, should I ignore this mouth?

You see? Or does this mouth have an equal right to a croissant? What do you guys think?

I think equal right. There's no contradiction, by the way. I'm giving the croissants to that mouth so I can get a croissant in this mouth.

Buddhism is, as I said, it's not this sacrifice thing. Oh, it's okay, Jack. You take the last croissant.

I will suffer. I'll do without. It's this kind of giving where you keep reminding the person how nice you are.

Oh, Christina, you take the last croissant. I'm a bodhisattva. I'm Mother Teresa.

I'll do without. I can do without croissants. That kind of idea doesn't exist in Buddhism.

When you take care of anyone, you take care of everyone. When you take care of everyone, you take care of anyone. There's no distinction.

There is no distinction. That's beautiful. We don't accept the idea.

There's three kinds of bodhisattvas. $100. Damn.

Say it slow. Just give us a little more description. By the way, classically, there are three kinds of bodhisattvas.

Since you're going to take bodhisattva vows, you better know them. Tim, go. The first one would be the person who leads everybody to enlightenment, meaning they go first.

I'll get enlightened first so I can help you guys. Then there's the shepherd who pushes everyone from behind and says, no, no, no, no.

[Speaker 2]
You need to go to enlightenment first.

[Speaker 1]
I'll be the last one. I'm like the suffering mom. You guys go first.

I'll stay back until everyone's safely in enlightenment. Then I'll come later. What's the other one?

The third one is the we're all in the same boat together. We're basically, you're in the boat, you're paddling the boat, but we're all going to enlightenment together at the same time. Yeah, and to be honest, when I think of the boat one, it's called the ferryman.

When I think of the boat, let's all go together. Let's cross the river together. Let's go in the boat together.

No one's up in front. No one's behind. That's how Lord Buddha got enlightened with his spiritual partner, Tilottama.

They practiced all night together. When the dawn cracked, when the sun hit the horizon, they both got enlightened at the same moment. To me, that's the ultimate ferryman.

People ask me, did Lord Buddha practice tantra? Yeah. There's a position in Buddhism that you cannot get enlightened without tantra.

That's the ultimate crossing the finish line at the exact same hundredth of a second. They both got a gold medal. Got it?

Now, Tim, now that earned you a hundred dollars. If you're interested in making a hundred more, tell me why there's really only two. That's a good question.

Don't think I'm giving you extra. It's only a hundred. I would say that for the leadership one, because really, why would you delay your enlightenment to help everybody else?

No, she-purner. As a shepherd. You wouldn't do that one because actually to help everybody, you need to get there first.

Yeah, that's the correct answer. The example of the she-purner, the self-sacrificing she-purner. Oh, you guys get enlightened first.

I'll stay back in samsara and I'll make sure everyone gets into enlightenment and then I'll get enlightened. That one's a fallacy. That one's not true.

It's never useful to delay your Buddhahood. It's not like you go to enlightened paradise and you can't get back to samsara to help people. It's not like that.

There could be, this whole room except for me could be enlightened. That's not a problem. Enlightened beings can go to samsara and visit people and help them.

That's what they do. Don't think that they go to somewhere else and they can't get back or they can't communicate with you. Don't think like that.

That's what it's saying. Somehow that relates to the question they asked me. Oh, yeah.

By taking care of John's mouth, you do take care of your mouth and there's no contradiction. It's fine. It's fine to feed this.

You have to feed this one also. You must. You have to.

We take care of everybody or nobody.

[Speaker 2]
You can take 10% from your own mouth.

[Speaker 1]
Ah, God. Yeah, because I would put it in his mouth. Yeah, because I use my own mouth.

All right. Go, Tim. All right.

Thank you, Geshe-la.

[Speaker 2]
This is a question of when you describe what self-existence means, how can we think about this from the point of view of what is emptiness? Is emptiness itself not self-existent?

[Speaker 1]
Then the flip side of it, if it's a negative thing, how does one use seeds, which is a positive thing, to see something that is not there? Nice question. Beautiful question.

As I mentioned, we're working on 27 translations, not small ones. They are each five to 20 years of work each. We just finished a six-year project of Adam Andrade's book, which is about, it's very interesting.

You got a pen, somebody? You got a pen? Thank you.

The classic way to explain dependent origination, cause and effect, not emptiness. They are brother and sister. They are two sides of the same cell phone.

I left mine in the car. Dependent origination shows up in emptiness. Wow, that's a good one.

Okay. They are two sides of the same coin. Okay, they are two sides of the same coin.

What's the dependent origination of the pen? There's a top of the pen. I'm not going to take it apart cause it gets messy.

There's the top and there's the bottom. Those two are not naturally connected to each other. Okay.

They are connected artificially by your mind. Your mind sees the top. By the way, your eye goes, if you look at a human eye close up, it's going, it's glancing at the top part and then it's glancing at the bottom part and the eyeballs call the mind.

Hey, mind. What? We got something out here.

What? There's this other, there's the black thing over here on the left side. What else?

There's this other black thing on the right side. Oh yeah, okay. Hey, mind, what do you think it is?

Then mind puts it together. Okay, mind puts it together. How?

With a mental picture. Okay. Mind hears the description from the eyeball.

The eyeball, by the way, cannot see a pen. The eye can see colors and shapes only. Eyeball cannot decide what's out there.

The mind has to interpret the data. Eyeball calls mind. We got black.

We got long. Ah, that's a pen. If it's Geshe Michael, yeah, oh, it's a pen.

Okay. In that moment, your mind puts a picture on top of the two pieces. I like to say two balls of vanilla ice cream at Moscato restaurant and they're pouring that espresso chocolate sauce on it, which is a weird thing to have at the end of the meal because it keeps you up all night.

Here's one ball of ice cream. Here's another ball of ice cream. Then the mind pours chocolate on it and turns it into one thing.

It pours a picture over the thing. Where does that picture come from? It comes out of a karmic seed.

Who put the karmic seed there? I did. How?

John needed a pen. John and Tim needed a pen to sign the contract to buy this storage facility, which is going to pay the rents for everybody. They needed a pen.

Geshe-la showed up and said, I got the pen, John. I said, take it, keep it. I gave someone a pen when they really needed one.

When I saw myself do it, it planted a seed in my mind. Then, I don't know, a year later, Geshe-la's teaching Angel Devil. He holds up the pen and Geshe-la sees a pen.

Why? A picture comes out of the seed. Now, Adam's 640 page book is all about not seeds.

That's Sugeng's book. That's the 12 Steps of the Wheel of Life book. That's a seed book.

Adam's book is a picture book. What's the picture made of? Where did it come from?

How do you get these pictures? What do they look like? If you could take them apart, what would they be of?

Guess what? I was at the... What train station was that?

Hamburg. Hamburg train station. I was at the Hamburg train station.

We rushed there. I don't know why, but we're late. Somebody was probably telling stories.

We rushed to the train station. Sylvia's like, I say, You got the tickets? She says, No, no, no.

Someone's meeting us with the tickets. I'm like, What? She says, Yeah, it's no problem Geshe-la.

We'll just find them. There's 2,000 people walking around the train station. I'm like, We're late.

How are we going to get the tickets? your mind at that moment does a... What do they call that in English?

By elimination. A process of elimination. Your mind goes through a process of elimination.

Is the person with the tickets a man or a woman? It's a woman. Cancel all the men in the trains.

1,000 gone. I don't have to check every face. Are they tall or short?

Short. Okay. Cut, cut.

50. Now we got down to 25%. The mental picture that comes out of this scene consists of the opposite of the opposite.

The nature... By the way, you have to study Adam's book. You got to read it.

Because then you can make easy scenes. You can make easy pictures. You can make pictures of income.

Really. Or boyfriend. Or whatever.

You can create things. It's the opposite of the opposite. Cancel all the people in the train station who don't have tickets.

Then you reach the person who does have tickets. So a person who wants to understand emptiness has to be good at this double flip thing. The nature of the seed that comes...

The nature of the picture that comes out of your mind is the opposite of the opposite. The nature of emptiness is very similar. You cancel...

Cancel the mouth that's not the real mouth and you get to John's mouth. Sorry. Jamai.

Jamai's mouth. Got it? Got it?

The way we reach emptiness is to cancel what emptiness is not. Okay. That's why Gag ja is so important.

And that has a big connection to the pictures that create your income, your relationships, your health, your mental state, and the state of your world. It's so cool. If you understand emptiness, you can create a wonderful life.

Only that way. All right.