500 образов для медитации на шагах пути к просветлению, занятие 54

[Speaker 2]
54. So, you know, it's very popular in Buddhism to talk about illusion. I know when I was a hippie, which I'm not sure I ever stopped being a hippie, but when I was a younger hippie, we liked to talk about mystical things and strange things and we were very attracted to maya, right?

[Speaker 1]
Illusion. And we thought, oh that's very cool. And some of my friends would say everything's illusion, you know, like Geshe-la, you're not drinking a cappuccino, it's just an illusion.

And then as I learned more, as I meditated more, and as I studied more, then I understood the main meaning of illusion in Buddhism. Buddha's mother was called maya also, right? So, now you have to tell me.

I think I picked a pretty good picture. It took a long time. Everything takes a long time.

So, this is the next thing that we covered in the first retreat of the 29th, and we talked about illusion. I'll give you a clue, it has to do with the process of seeing emptiness. So, anybody want to guess?

What's the main period? It's called gyulma tabur ting ngen dzin, the illusory period. Yeah, cool.

Wow. I thought that was going to be like pulling a tooth, but it was more like drinking a cappuccino. So, after you see emptiness directly, while you're in the direct perception of ...

well, just before you see emptiness directly, you might be making a cup of tea for your teacher, and you might be standing at the stove, and then for the first time ever you see a seed open in your mind. Like we've been practicing it during the lion's dance, but we never ever see it because it's too fast, it's 65 per second. So, we're not aware of seeds opening in our mind.

We can come to the teaching, Geshe-la can say it over and over and over. You can do it again and again and again in the lion's dance, which is why we're doing it again and again and again. Watching the silver seed open, watching the picture come out.

But just like in an hour or two before you see emptiness directly, you reach the end of the second path, path of preparation, and you reach the fourth part of the path of preparation, which is called something like ultimate thing in the world, meaning before you see emptiness. And then you actually see a seed opening in your mind, and you see the image coming out, and you realize the pot on the stove is just silver color and black color and straight lines and curved lines, right? Which is all your eye can see actually.

It's all the eyeball can see. And then you realize that your mind is putting an interpretation on those pieces. So, then you go into the direct perception of emptiness.

Oh, by the way, and up to that time it looks like every pot you ever saw on the stove was coming this way. Exists from its side. Atoms, right?

And it looked like that. Causes, in the normal sense of causes. It looks like that, okay?

Then you saw the pictures coming out, you realize what's going on, and that happens just before you see emptiness directly. Like within an hour or two you will see emptiness directly. And so really you see dependent origination, your mind making things, and then you see emptiness directly.

And during the direct perception of emptiness, there's no discrepancy. So, the word discrepancy is the perfect word to explain illusion. Who said that?

Hey, not bad, okay? So, discrepancy in English means it looks one way, but it exists a different way, okay? There's a discrepancy between what you said you spent on this project and the invoices I have.

You see what I mean? By the way, which doesn't exist in our organization, thank God. Rob Ressinger is perfect.

I think we should give him a hand. He also guided Diamond Mountain for many years, and through our hardest times he guided us, fearlessly and solid as a rock. Thank you for that.

Yeah, so discrepancy means, you know, what I heard from this person, what I heard from this person don't match. You see what I mean? And in the sense of illusion, what it means is, it looks like it's coming this way, but actually I understand it's coming from me, okay?

So, after you see emptiness directly, you enter path of habituation, fourth path, within the hour, right? And then during that last, that's really the last path. Somebody tell me why.

Yeah, the fifth path is already Buddhahood or Nirvana, okay? So, really there's only four paths that you have to walk down. So, during the fourth path, which takes typically seven lifetimes, unless you're practicing Tantra, which you started last night, but don't tell anybody.

During that time something weird is going on, and that's maya, that's illusion. Because things, after you come out of the direct perception of emptiness, things still look like they're coming this way because of deep, deep seeds you have, okay? For that habit of thinking that things come this way, or thinking that you met your teacher because they drove in a car, or they moved to Arizona, or they were born, you know, they lived in a house two miles away, or something.

You see what I mean? All of those old ideas about causes, and where things are coming from. The difference is, now you know you're crazy, okay?

So, it's a un-habit in your life. Do things come from their own side? No.

How do you know? I saw it. First I saw it on the pot, and then I saw emptiness directly.

Well, why can't you stop seeing that? I want to, but I can't. It still looks like that.

Do you believe it? No. I understand it's not that way, but it still looks like that, okay?

When you stop the seeds for it to look like that, you're arhat. If you have bodhichitta at the time, then you're a Buddha, okay? Got it?

So, there's this weird, uncomfortable 500 years, which is nothing, right? Phil can tell you, 70 is like, boom, okay? Seven times that, that's nothing.

Okay? So, there's a discrepancy about the way things look, and the way things really are, okay? So, that's the main gyumatabu.

In Tibetan, they call it gyumatabu, like an illusion, like a mirage, okay?

[Speaker 2]
Cool. Question, phraga.

[Speaker 1]
That's true too. I mean, there's an intellectual discrepancy, right? Even before, as soon as someone starts telling you about it, you start to sense the illusion, but it's more extreme after you see emptiness directly, but you're correct, yeah.

Okay.