500 образов для медитации на шагах пути к просветлению, занятие 48

[Speaker 1]
What's happening between 47 and 48? Can anybody tell me? Close, well, what did we just go through?

Since idim number one I think, or you know, number four or something, I'll go back and check. Starting with idim four and continuing up to 48. Yeah, that was meditation.

What's happening between 47 and 48? We're switching to Vipashyana, okay? We've been in Samatha, okay?

And we're switching now to Vipashyana, okay? So, these are the first retreat or two of the 29 retreats so far, were Samatha and Vipashyana. And then we started back at the beginning of the Lamrim.

You see what I mean? Because I wanted you to have some technical skills before you started the Lamrim, okay? So, if we get through all these, I think it's 60, right?

Let me see. 61. We try to get through these 61 today and tomorrow, and that's a review of the first retreat or two, okay?

And that was the tools I wanted you to have to study the Lamrim, okay? So, the first retreat or two that we did, we went to the end of Pabongka Rinpoche's book, and we covered Samatha and Vipashyana, and then we went back to the beginning so you would have meditation tools for the Lamrim meditations, okay? And it didn't take very long because it's a very short presentation in Pabongka Rinpoche.

Why? Because Tsongkhapa nailed it, and there's not much use for anyone to try after that, okay? Tsongkhapa's presentation of Samatha and Vipashyana is 500 pages in his Lamrim, okay?

And no one's ever touched it, okay? So, Pabongka Rinpoche covers it just to be polite, but what he's saying is, you know, go study Tsongkhapa's presentation of meditation and emptiness, and that's our plan also. So, when we get to the end of the Lamrim that we haven't covered yet, which I predict will be about seven more retreats or eight more retreats, two more years, then the plan is to jump into those 500 pages of Tsongkhapa, okay?

His Lamrim, just for dessert, big dessert, because I like big desserts, which is my problem. Okay, me and Phil I think, except he's looking, the Germans did something to him. I think they didn't feed you or something.

I'll tell you some restaurants there I know about. Okay, so, idam 48, we go to the two kinds of emptiness. Can somebody tell me why the image is appropriate?

Huh? You're close, I can see the synapse is about to ... no, it's not middle way, but you could say, I mean, but it's not what I was thinking of.

Not chi che dot yet. Hmm, say it again Mr. Brilliant. If a monkey types on a typewriter for six weeks, a few words will come out.

People and things. The emptiness of people, and the emptiness of things, okay? And one, you know there's a video of my Geshe exam, and I looked scared to death, and I was.

And afterwards I look relieved, and I was. And the question the guy is asking me in the video was the hardest question. This is a guy who came down from North India, and he said, I'm gunning for the Western Geshe.

And I heard about it before he reached Sarah, and I was a little nervous. He came to embarrass me, and he was like, he can't be a Geshe, you know. I'm like, okay, I'm here.

Then he asked me this question, and luckily I had studied it. When you see emptiness directly, okay, which of the two kinds of emptiness do you see first? Yeah, not just people.

It is people, but it's me. Okay, Stanley will see Stanley's emptiness directly first. That will be his first emptiness, okay, that he sees, which is also his Buddha nature.

Okay, it's cool. The first one you see directly is your Buddha nature. Why is it your Buddha nature?

Your emptiness provides the white, empty screen for you to project your Buddha on. Okay? Okay?

That's Buddha nature, your emptiness. You already have that part of your enlightenment. You've always had it, okay?

You've always had the white screen, you just don't have the movie. You don't have the right movie yet. Really, okay?

Like the best movie is yet to be made. Okay? That's what practice is.

You're writing the script, right? But when you are studying emptiness, you always start with the DCI people, no? A thing, like a pen or a car.

So, I got ... this is Tim a few years ago, and ... Dad's kidding.

He looks like you a little bit. Okay. Handsome and daring.

So, that's what you're supposed to ... My idea is that Jasmine and me were talking about it, that maybe if you could give a then ... then maybe you understand it.

You see what I mean? Okay? So, there you go.

That's the first subject that Pabongka Rinpoche talks about when he hits emptiness. He divides it into two kinds. Okay?

You ready Nick? Okay, because Ben's not here. You're his representative.

How does that relate to Siddhanta, the study of the Buddhist schools? You want to take a shot at that? It's not an easy question.

Yeah. Like, how would you characterize the lower schools if I said how they present the two kinds of emptiness? Okay?

I'll give you a clue. If I call one of them dakme, and I call one of them tongpanyi. Like, sometimes we say emptiness and sometimes we say no self-nature.

[Speaker 2]
Okay?

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, he was in fact. Good. Yeah.

So, the different schools have trouble. The lower schools, one of the things that makes a lower school a lower school is they confuse these two, or they can't handle the emptiness of things so well. So, they're dealing with anatman, lack of self-nature, especially Abhidharma people, but also second school.

What separates the schools is how they treat emptiness, how they explain emptiness. Okay? That's what created the different schools.

And really, Ben Kappa's text, which is the comparison of the ancient schools, and by the way, all the treatments of the Hindu schools there, if you study it carefully, they're talking about the soul, the self. Okay? It's not a...

it's not a survey of ancient religions. It's a survey of what they think about self. You see what I mean?

So, the lower... by the way, something I wish Ben Kappa had said, which I think is cool. Who created all the schools?

Yeah, you did. Okay? So, the reason we study them, the schools of ancient Buddhism, is that those represent ideas that every normal person has.

They represent misunderstandings that every normal person has about emptiness. Okay? Got it?

Therefore, his text is important. He's studying how did the lower schools misunderstand emptiness, including Hindu schools, like Sankhya and Charvaka, okay? And then Vaishnavite.

You know, how did they... Shaivite, how did they misunderstand the self? Okay?

So, they tend to have more... they tend to dig around in the self of a person, and then later they understand that it extends to things. Okay?

Got it? In Buddhism, we treat pens first, cars. We try to understand chi che dak by driving a car outside the hall.

Where were we in Germany? Near Hamburg. So, I wanted to talk about the no-self nature of a car, and we got permission from the hotel for Scott to drive the car on the hotel grass around to the teaching room.

It was really cool, and he didn't sink down into the grass. So yeah, in Buddhism we explore things first when we're studying, okay? Because it's harder to see the emptiness of a person, but in the direct perception, you start with...

the first direct perception you have is of yourself, okay? Your Buddha nature, okay? Your own emptiness.