500 образов для медитации на шагах пути к просветлению, занятие 55

[Speaker 1]
Edam 55. One of the greatest books ever written is Pabongka's explanation of the Three Principal Paths of Tsongkhapa. It's very, very tiny.

It's a small book but it's packed with Geshe course jewels.

[Speaker 2]
Every page has extremely valuable Geshe course insights in it. It's almost like the whole Geshe course in a 40 page book. One of the most beautiful teachings there is about the meaning of dependent origination.

[Speaker 1]
The different schools of Buddhism explain dependent origination in different ways. Again, that and their explanation of emptiness is what divides the schools. Again, the schools are not a historical event or historical phenomena.

They are stages that you and I will go through in our life, in our understanding. You see, they are a template for how your own thinking will go. So, your thinking before you met Buddhism was very Abhidharma.

Then you met Buddhism and you started to be a little Sautrantika. Then you studied more and you became a little mind-only. Then you went lower middle way and then finally you got higher middle way.

Then you got tantric higher middle way. Okay? So, somebody tell me one of the three meanings of dependent origination.

By the way, it's the one that the lowest school would say. Yeah, things come from their causes. That's dependent origination.

Things depend, things rely on causes to originate. So, I don't like the word dependent origination. I have spent much of my life trying to get rid of words like that, but I just can't find a much better word.

It means a rising independence. It's a difficult word because in the end it has to cover non-cause things. Okay?

[Speaker 2]
So, nowadays I'm mostly putting dependence. Pratitya samudpada, right? Pratitya, relying on something else.

Pratitya samudpada, a curse. Okay? It pops up.

[Speaker 1]
Samudpada. Okay, so anyway, there's the lowest meaning and that's what you'll see in the Abhidharma, for example. What's the next highest meaning?

Yeah, things depend on their parts. You know, you think everybody knows this stuff, but it's a great pleasure for me to think that, to understand that you think that, because it means you learned it. You think you always knew that, but you didn't.

It's very pleasant for me to understand that these ideas are common knowledge among Diamond Mountain people. Okay, what's the ... oh, by the way, so if you say that dependent origination means that all things have their parts, depend on their parts, then you cover what things?

Unchanging things. Then you cover unchanging things.

[Speaker 2]
Then empty space can have parts. Sorry, can have dependent origination. Okay?

[Speaker 1]
If you restrict it to causes, you cannot say everything has dependent origination. See what I mean? Alright, what's the highest one?

Yeah, things are coming from my seeds. Okay, from seeds in my mind. Now, how that covers unchanging things, we'll talk about in a later idim.

It's coming. Okay, so let's not talk about it now. Okay.