Нагарджуна, курс 3 — Мудрость Арьи Нагарджуны, курс 3: Пустота мантры (2021, Аризона), занятие 2

[Speaker 1]
Hi, welcome back to Nagarjuna, course number three. What we're really exploring is the Medicine Buddha, the emptiness of Medicine Buddha and the emptiness of the Medicine Buddha mantras. Why?

Not something weird and it's not philosophy. It's not philosophy. I'm not asking you to learn some ancient philosophy.

I just want you to know how to get your mantras to work. Because isn't that the whole goal? And if we don't understand how things work, then we don't understand how mantras work.

And then you can say mantras and they don't work as well. So here we go. This chapter has a funny name and it's SNGA ROL NA GNAS PA BTAG PA We're in chapter nine.

Now we're starting a new chapter and we did an eight chapter review already. And this second class is all about the ninth chapter. SNGA ROL NA means before.

Before. GNAS PA means what was sitting there before. What was there before is the name of this chapter.

It's a cute name of a chapter. What was there before? What do you mean what was there before?

I'm going to tell you, don't worry about it. SNGA ROL NA GNAS PA BTAG PA Let's go to the first verse. It says, RTAG DANG NYANS PA LA SOGS DANG SOGS SOGS DANG YANG DBANG PHYIR PA GANG GIS YIN PA DE DAG GYI RNGA ROL YOD CES KA JIG MA Now you have to know something about Nagarjuna.

His style in this book called Wisdom is that sometimes he writes a little poem about a bad idea and then he attacks it. But he doesn't tell you which poem is the bad idea and which poem is the good idea. So that's one of the frustrating things about this book.

He'll do a little poem about a stupid idea. And since we're just babies, we think, oh, that sounds good to me. And then later he attacks it.

So you got to, it's a very difficult thing that the first verse in this chapter called what was there before is wrong. It's another guy's position. And then Nagarjuna's going to attack it.

So get used to it. KA JIG, the other guy, GZHAN LUG. The other guy's position sometimes comes first.

Now here's the other guy's position. And as we go through these chapters, I'm going to take you through the verses. They're not very long, and it's a blessing to hear the verses.

To explain them in detail would take approximately 20 years, seriously. But we're going to get the main idea of each verse, and then we're going to go on. So here we go.

Let's get the verse up, you guys. LTA DANG NYAN LA SOGS PA means, LTA means when you look at something, NYAN means when you hear something, et cetera, et cetera, SOGS PA, meaning when you smell something, taste something, feel something. And then TSOR BA, your capacity of feeling.

I feel good. I feel bad. It hurts.

It feels nice. And YANG DBANG PHYIR PA, DBANG PHYIR PA means all the various parts of your mind and mental functions which have the power to do something, which have power, DBANG PHYIR PA, which assert power on other things. GANG GIS YIN PA is extremely difficult.

It means the corresponding, the corresponding. What do you mean the corresponding? Well, when you're talking about your eye, E-Y-E, and you're looking at the carrot juice, then, okay, here we go, the corresponding object.

So the eye and the corresponding object is called GANG GIS YIN PA. GANG GIS YIN PA, here it's called GANG GIS YIN PA. DE DAG NYA ROL YOD And this is a position by another guy who says there must be an eye there before the corresponding object.

There must be an eye, E-Y-E, there before the corresponding object. If you're saying mantras to the Medicine Buddha, if you're saying the name of the Medicine Buddha, then you have to be there before you can say the mantras, right? That's what the other guy says.

A mantra-sayer has to be there before the mantra. The person who says the mantra has to be there before the mantra is said. The mantra-sayer has to sit down on his meditation or her meditation cushion, and then she can say a mantra.

So which came first, the chicken or the egg? Which came first, the mantra or the mantra-sayer? This school says, obviously, the mantra-sayer has to be on his cushion or her cushion before they say the mantra.

Now whose position is that? KA'I GCIG MA KA'I GCIG MA means some guy's saying, some guy's saying. And by the way, we're going to have different positions here.

And then Choney Lama and the great commentators have identified the guy who said this first verse. And it's a group called Samitya, Samitya. And this is an ancient group of monks who followed or they split off from a school called Sarvastivana.

And these are the very, very, very early monks of Buddhism. They broke into different schools. They had the patch of their school sewn to the top of their robes.

And then this is the Samitya, which means highly respected because they followed a teacher called highly respected, Mr. Highly Respected. So these Abhidharma guys, basically, they have the opinion that the person saying the mantra should be there before the mantra. Somebody, don't forget the name of this chapter is, who was there first?

Who was there before? And if we put it in terms of seeing something, there has to be somebody there to look before you can see something. The person has to come in the room, open their eyes, and then they see something.

The person has to come first. Then what they see comes after that, in the order of things. And the mantra, sorry, the person should sit down on their cushion to do a mantra before the mantra comes out.

The person has to sit down, like that. That's the first school's position. As I said, this position is mistaken.

And the gardener, strangely, starts out the chapter with the wrong idea and just get used to it. And of course, it leads to a lot of arguments. I'm going to put a picture here of an astronomer.

And so according to this school, when a guy goes out to use a telescope to look at the stars, it must be that before the stars were observed, we had a young girl. So in the top picture, the girl went outside with her telescope at night and she put it up to her eye. And she must have come first, the E-Y-E, the eye.

And then there was a scene, there was an astronomy, there was a watching of the stars. First, there's the girl with the telescope. And then the next moment, you can have a girl watching the stars.

That's the position of the Abhidharma guys. There's some kind of Abhidharma guy. All right, if you're interested about all those obscure Abhidharma schools, don't forget to read Ben Kramer's Mixed Nuts text.

And in Tibetan, the school is called Mangkorwa, Samitya. All right, let's go on to the next. Oh, by the way, sorry.

Let's do the second verse here. The second verse starts with DNGOS PO. Second verse, chapter nine.

DNGOS PO YOD PA MA YIN NA Now the verse says, if there's no thing there, DNGOS PO YOD PA MA YIN NA and you have to know that thing here means the eye. It's confusing. If the actor, if the thing doing something is not there, if the girl doesn't step outside with her telescope, then who's going to be looking?

How can you have a looking at the stars before she walks out with her telescope? Therefore, before there's a looking, there must be a looker. That's their position.

DE PHYIR DE DAG SNGA ROL NA DNGOS PO GNAS PA DE YOD DO Therefore, the girl with the telescope must exist before the observing with the telescope can take place. And that feels comfortable to us. That feels pretty correct to us.

All right, let's go on to verse number three. Where are you? And by the way, we're going to have two arguments to argue against Buddhists, but lower Buddhists.

And here's our first argument. Here we go. LTA DANG NYEN LA SOGS PA DANG TSOR BA LA SOGS NYID KYI GNYIS SNGA ROL NA DNGOS PO GNAS PA DE NYID GANG GIS BDAG PAR BYA LTA DANG NYEN LA SOGS PA DANG means, and by the way, many of the ninth chapter verses start with looking, hearing, smelling, tasting, feeling, et cetera, TSOR BA LA SOGS NYID KYI GNYIS and sensation, feeling something, feeling good, feeling happy, feeling sad.

SNGA ROL NA DNGOS PO GNAS PA Okay, according to you, the girl walked out with the telescope first, right? Yeah, yeah, she was first. And then there was a telescoping.

Then somebody was watching the stars. Okay, well, when she walked out, how did you know she was a girl with a telescope? How'd you know she was a girl with a telescope?

Well, she had a telescope in her hand. Wait, why is it a telescope? What's a telescope?

A telescope is something you use to watch the stars. Oh, so you don't know it's a telescope till you use it, right? Yeah, maybe it doesn't look like a telescope, but once you use it to watch the stars, it's a telescope.

Okay, so she walked out with a stick in her hand then. It wasn't a telescope, was it? No, it was a telescope.

How do you know it's a telescope? It looked like a telescope. Look, lots of things look like a telescope, aren't a telescope.

You don't know if it's a telescope till somebody uses it to look at a star, got it? Right, so which came first, the girl with the telescope or the looking at the star? Looking at the star.

How can you call it a telescope if she doesn't use it to look at a star? I don't know. It could be a chocolate bar that looks like a telescope.

Okay, we don't know. Until she uses it to look at a star, it's not a telescope. Therefore, if you ask which came first, the astronomer or the star?

The star. Why? BDAG PA BYA, last line.

BDAG PA BYA means you can't call her an astronomer till she looks at an astro, till she looks at a star. So therefore, looking at the star came first. And then the girl came.

Why? You can't call her an astronomer until she looks at the star. Therefore, it's not that a girl who was an astronomer walked out and looked at the star.

Somebody walked out with a stick. She looked at stars. And now we know the stick is a telescope in the next moment.

Okay, so which came first, the telescope or the star? The star. Why she's talking first?

Don't tell me the girl has to be there first. It's not even possible. Who are we complaining to?

These Abhidharma guys. It's a kind of Abhidharma guy. That's our first refutation of his idea.

So look, Tim, we can finish a class in less than two hours. I'm going to. Okay.

By the way, the picture I like here, here's a picture, okay? You're going to like this picture of me and, oh sorry, Veronica and this guy. Okay, what's going on in this picture?

Me and Veronica are making the down payment for the black hole cafe, for the cafe that we bought. And this is two years ago. Why is that guy smiling such a big smile?

Because he got rid of the cafe. And they're receiving their first payment. Jigme was the banker.

She did all the financial stuff. And what do you have here? Who is this guy?

Oh, he's the guy taking the check. By the way, this guy, I used to go down there almost every day to this tiny cafe near my house. Keep the photo up.

And there's this quiet, very likable guy pouring coffee. And I even thought he might be a little retarded or something because he would never say anything. And he'd just smile and pour the coffee.

And I'd say, well, that's so nice. They hired someone who can't do anything else and he's pouring coffee. And then, I mentioned it to somebody.

He said, listen, Ralph is one of the most famous astronomers in the world. He just got back from, he just got back from installing an advanced telescope on a 747 that's going to fly around the world all day. And he's got it rigged so that it moves as the plane moves, so the star doesn't move.

And they're going to observe asteroids that might bang into the earth. And without him, they might bang into the earth. And then he's like, wow, I thought he was just serving coffee.

Why didn't I know he was an astronomer? Because he wasn't looking at stars. Therefore, stars come first.

It's not that Ralph came first, Ralph came second. I mean, Ralph the astronomer came second. And by the way, that lady is teaching me, that's his wife, Kay, who we call Cricket.

I can't tell you the story that when they went to their honeymoon, the guy who owned the hotel said, don't lose that cricket. She got to drop out of the season because she's very short. Anyway, that's why they called the cafe Cricket's Cafe.

All right. So anyway, that's not a bad thing to say. She'll let me say that.

Okay, all right. All right, so our objection is that, look, you don't know Ralph's an astronomer until he looks at a star and then you know who he is. All right.

All right, next verse. This is our second argument against the lower Abhidharma position. ,LTA BA LA SOGS MED PAR YANG, ,KYANG STE DE NYID GNAS GYUR NA, ,DE MED PAR YANG DE DAG NI, ,YOD PAR GYUR BA THAD SOGS MED, This is tricky.

Okay, I got to get it straight. ,LTA BA LA SOGS MED PAR YANG, If Ralph was an astronomer before he pulled out his telescope, if the girl who came outside with the telescope was already an astronomer before she looked at the stars, okay, got it? Then looking at the stars could be there without her.

Okay, I'll say it again and it's confusing, okay. If the girl came out first and she was an astronomer without looking at the stars, and then later she looked at the stars, and if she came first and looking at the stars came second, then looking at the stars doesn't really depend on her. And if she didn't come out, there would be somebody looking at the stars.

Okay, got it? That's our second argument against this idea. All right.

And now there's the next verse, which is verse number five. ,CI YID GANG ZHIG ZAL BA BYED, ,GANG GIS CI ZHIG ZAL BA BYED, ,CI MED GANG ZHIG GANG LA YOD, ,GANG MED CI ZHIG GANG LA YOD, This is tricky, okay. The CI means what action, such as looking at the stars, ZAL was who?

What action defines what person? So who is it being defined by looking at the stars? Well, the astronomer.

Who gets defined by looking at the stars? The astronomer. And there's a very important word here, and we're going to...

I don't know. Can we detour to the Sanskrit? Okay.

This is a great place to go to the Sanskrit. And I'm not going to bother you much in this class, but I really encourage you to come on, learn some Sanskrit. While you're in this easiest book to read in Sanskrit of all, while you're inside this book, why not pick up a few Sanskrit words?

So here's the word. Here we go. Ajyate.

Ajyate. And this is a tough, tough word, and you won't find it in a dictionary. So aj is a root, and you see the square root sign means, that's a verbal root.

Sanskrit has 800 verbal roots. If you memorize them, you know Sanskrit. And I did that on the bus going to New York.

So anyway, aj. Aj means to drive something or push something. So aj means to push something.

I think engine comes from this. Not everybody agrees. But can you keep it up?

Because I'm not there. So ajyate means push, meaning which action sketches in, which action propels an astronomer? Which looking at the stars.

Was it the looking at the stars which ajyate the astronomer? Or was it the astronomer who ajyate the stars? Looking at the stars.

Did the astronomer look at the stars? Or did looking at the stars create the astronomer? Make them an astronomer?

Which one? Both. But they come in different order.

What do you think? The result is the cause of the cause of the result. What?

What are you trying to say? The point is, it's confusing. Yeah, something's fishy.

Saying Medicine Buddha mantras doesn't heal people. It's not a mantra until somebody gets healed. You don't say the mantra first and then it heals somebody.

It's not a mantra until it has a magical effect. That's the definition of mantra. So which came first, the mantra or the healing?

I don't know. Well, the mantra came first. I said the mantra and then the person got healed.

Well, then you don't understand what's going on because until a person gets healed, it's not a mantra. Oh, well, how can the person get healed before I say the mantra? Well, that's not possible either.

So what's really going on, the mantra doesn't touch the healing and the healing is not touched by the mantra. The mantra doesn't cause the healing and the healing is not caused by the mantra. The mantra and the healing are in completely separate time frames.

They never touch each other. The mantra is gone by the time the healing starts. The healing starts...

The healing can't start until the mantra ends. The healing can't start until the mantra is gone and the mantra can't do anything until it heals somebody. It's weird.

Something's fishy. Everything you think about how the Medicine Buddha mantra works is mistaken. So how much power could it have to sit there and say the mantra?

All right, CI'I GANG ZHIG SEL BAR BYED Is it the saying of the mantra that makes you a mantra-sayer? Or is it a mantra-sayer who makes a mantra? Or CI'I MED GANG ZHIG GAL LA YOD If you didn't have a healing, how could you have a mantra reciter?

And if you didn't have a mantra reciter, how could you have a healing? Okay, got it. But they never touch each other.

Therefore, you could say a mantra today and 10 million years from now something will happen because they don't have to touch. They never touch. Now don't get confused and don't get worried.

The point is what? We confuse you first and then we clear it up. And then you never forget.

So if you're feeling confused right now, you're in the right place. Now, was it that someone confused you or you were confused before they confused you? That we have to talk about.

All right, so what do we got here in the next picture, Bachi, I don't remember. Yeah, are you going to have an astronomer without a telescope? Who put the name astronomer on them if they don't have a telescope yet?

If they're not using a telescope yet, how can you call it an astronomer? You just put a sign there that says astronomer. They got nothing in their hands, got it?

But they're an astronomer. Why? Because I call them astronomer.

So look, they don't have to look at the stars to be an astronomer, right? Right. If Geshe Michael says they're astronomer, they're astronomer.

Their hand's empty. They're not looking at the stars. Yeah, okay, good.

So isn't the looking at the stars that makes you an astronomer? Or do you call someone an astronomer and then they look at the stars? Okay, which comes first, the chicken or the egg?

You got to think about it. And if you understand it, then your mantras will work better. Next verse, you guys, verse number six.

By the way, without warning you, by the way, anticipatory translation. If I tell you Nagarjuna hasn't warned you, what can you guess about the next verse? It's wrong.

He has a wrong verse, two correct ones, and then he pops you with another wrong one. But he doesn't tell you. That's why you need Choney Lama.

And if you don't have Choney Lama, God bless you. I once listened to a person explain this text for like six months and I was like, yeah. Anyway, okay.

,LTA BA LA SOGS THAMS CAD GYIS, ,SNGA ROL GANG ZHIG YOD PA MIN, ,LTA SOGS RNAMS NAS GZHAN ZHIG GIS, ,GZHAN GYI MTSAN NA SA BAR BYED, ,LTA BA LA SOGS THAMS CAD GYIS, ,SNGA ROL GANG ZHIG YOD PA MIN, Then the guy comes up with a weird thing. You ready? We've been talking about seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, feeling.

And he says, look, if you have stars, then you can say there's an astronomer, but you can't say there's a listener. If you have someone looking at stars, you can say there's an astronomer. If you limit it to one sense, seeing, hearing, smelling, the guy says, look, I'm not saying the person is there with all their senses first, because they're seeing.

Let's divide the senses out. A sense organ is not an organ till it does its thing. But that doesn't prove anything about the other ones.

If you see something, you can call it an eye. But that doesn't say anything about the ear. Got it?

Let's treat them separately. Let's keep it separately. If you have a seeing, then you have an eye.

But I'm not saying if you have a seeing, you have an ear. That's another thing. Let's divide the senses out.

And each one is operating... When the eye is operating towards the stars, it's not that you're listening to somebody else in the room. That's separate.

Then if somebody in the room clears their throat loudly, then you stop looking at the star and you start listening to the person. And then at that time, the eye shuts down. And we cannot say there is a seer because there's nothing seen.

Because you switched to another object. So it's never that you have five senses at the same time. One of them is working at a certain time.

And then you can say there's a hearer or there's a seer. LTA BA LA SOGS KHAMS SU'I DGE SNGA ROL GANG ZHIG YOD PA MIN It's not that you have all your senses operating and then before them, you have five senses ready to operate. That's not the case.

LTA SOGS SNANG NAS GZHAN ZHIG GIS GZHAN GYI BRTZEN LA SEL BAR BYED Among SNANG NAS, among seeing, et cetera, when one of them is in operation, then it SEL BAR BYED. It defines or it delineates a sense of power. When there's a seeing, sorry, when you see something, there's a seer.

When you hear something, there's a hearer. But it's not that there's a hearer-seer waiting there to do something before. He's trying to clarify.

All right, here we go. Oh, and the picture is, we are spotlighting or we are, what do you call that? Spotlighting one-sense ornery.

Spotlighting? Yeah, we're focusing in on one-sense ornery. And then you can say, when it's in operation, it's a sense ornery, but the others are not in operation.

Hearing, for example, and it's not working yet. So you can't say about it that there's a hearer and something heard. All right, now we go to verse seven through nine, am I right?

This is our refutation of that idea that if we treat the senses separately, we can talk about a seer before something seen or something seen. We can say there was a seer first and then there was a seeing second. ,LTA BA LA SOGS THAMS CAD GYI SNGA ROL GAL TE YOD MED NA, If the seer and all are not there, if you don't have all the senses there before there's any seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching, ,LTA LA SOGS PAR RE RE SNGA ROL DE NI CI LTAR YOD, If all five senses are not there before all five experiences, then how can you say that one is there before it's experienced?

It doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense to isolate the eyes and say that it's seeing, it's an eye before it sees, but the others are not hearing, smelling, tasting, feeling before they do those things. It doesn't make sense to treat one differently from the other ones.

,LTA BA DE NI NYAN PO DE, If that's the way it worked, then when the eye is a loker, it's also a hearer, and a smeller, and a taster, and a feeler. ,LTA BA DE NI NYAN PO DE, ,GAL TE TSOGS PAR DBANG DE NI NA, ,RE RE SNGA ROL YOD DGOS NA, ,DE NI DE LTAR MI RIGS SO, So then in that case, all of them, then feeling too, could be feeling before you feel. A feeling wouldn't be feeling until you felt something.

You wouldn't have feelings until they got hurt. According to you, because you're looking at something. You can only have one thing doing something at a time.

,GAL TE LTA PO GZHAN NYID LA NYAN PO PO GZHAN TSOR GZHAN NA, ,LTA PO YOD TSE NYAN PAR RGYUR, ,BDAG KYANG MA MO NYID DU RGYUR, If your ears had the capacity to hear, even as your eye was looking at something, and if they were operating separately, then as you were looking at something, you would be hearing something. If you have five separate senses and each one is not a sense until it senses something, and only the one which is sensing something right now is a sense, and those other four senses are just sitting there doing nothing, and they're not themselves until they sense something, then since you call them senses already, they must be self-existently senses before they sense something. You're the one who said you had to sense something before we could call you a sense.

And you said, if one of the five senses was sensing, then that was a sense. And the other senses weren't senses until they were sensing something. But they are senses because they could sense something.

So the other four are there. They're not senses in operation, but they are senses. Well, and only one can work at a time.

Right, okay, so there's five TIMS. There's five TIMS sitting in that chair right there right now. There's five TIMS. Why? It's a sense before it senses something because you said it's a sense sitting there waiting to be an active sense.

Okay, got it? So each sense, according to you, can only work at its own time period. Okay, so TIMS senses, TIMS eye senses, active.

And that's active TIM. And there's four other TIMS sitting in the chair waiting to be TIM. Or they're TIM, but they're not TIM yet.

Then because they're not doing what TIM does yet. So there's, okay, that's okay. There's five TIMS in the chair and one of them's doing something, right?

Right, okay. Then there's five TIMS. There's too many. Then TIMS should buy eight more shoes.

So here you go. And by the way, these are not silly, stupid little things. They're very deep.

If you think they're silly, you didn't get it. All right, all right. I have a room full of me's here, Pachi, somewhere.

I mean, it's just a nice picture. It took me a while to find it. I'm sorry she's so dressed up.

I could only find one picture like this. But there should be a separate lady for each sense. Okay, one for hearing, one for seeing, one for tasting.

All right, next verse. Where are we? Sorry?

,YOD YANG MTHAN, And there's no image here because it's kind of just, ,LTA DANG NYAN LA SOGS PA DANG, ,TSOR BA DAG LA SOGS PA NYAMS, ,GANG LA CHUNG BA'I RGYAS DE LA'ANG, ,DE NYID YOD PA MA YIN NO, Your physical senses, for example, come from chemicals. Not your mind, but the eyeball and the auditory canal and the cells on the inside of the nostril and the cells on the tongue and the cells of the skin that feels things. Those come from chemicals.

Now, Buddhism says that mind has to come from mind and mind cannot come from something which is not mind. But the sense powers which do the sensing, those are physical. They come from chemicals.

Now, if the object that wasn't active isn't a sense, if your eye is not a sense power until it sees something, if your eye is not, if the astronomer is not an astronomer until they look at a star, if the person doing the mantra is not a mantra expert until they say a mantra, then the causes of those things, the chemicals that create your auditory nerve, the carbon, the oxygen, the nitrogen, they can't be there either because there's no sense power. So the physical basis of your senses, the chemicals, according to you, if the sense power, which is not in operation, is not a sense power yet, then it doesn't come from its chemicals.

It comes from sensing. It does not come from chemicals. If when the ear is inactive, it's not an ear, then the things which created the ear must also be gone.

And there cannot be any chemicals which created the ear because there's no ear. Why? It's not hearing anything.

Got it. Why? Because only the eye can see something.

When the eye sees something, the ear has to wait to hear something. During that period, the ear doesn't exist. And therefore, you must be saying the chemicals don't exist and you're not sitting on your ass right now.

That's Nagarjuna, not me. I mean, he didn't say people, but you get it. ,LTA DAG NYAN LA SOGS PA YIN, ,MTSOR BA LTA LA SOGS PA YIN, ,GANG LAS SBYONG BA'I RGYUD DES BLANGS, The causes from which they come, meaning the four elements, which we call chemicals, ,DE NI YOD PA MA YIN NO, So those are not possible either.

There must be no carbon in your body. Why? Because your ear doesn't have carbon at that moment.

Why? Because it's not there when it's not in operation. Why?

Because only the eye can be in operation. When the eye is in operation, we call it an eye because of what it sees. But we can't talk about the ear yet because it's not doing anything.

Therefore, the ear is not there right then. Okay, so there's no carbon. There's no oxygen, right?

Got it? All right, think about it. All right.

How do you relate that to mantras? Only the mantra being said right now is a mantra and all the other mantras I ever learned are not mantras right now. Why?

Because they're not doing anything right now. So of all the mantras you know, only one can be a mantra at a time and the others are nothing. When you're saying it, it's a mantra.

When it's helping somebody, it's a mantra. And when you're not using the mantra, it's not a mantra. And it has no sound.

Okay, got it? Verse 11. Yay!

,LTA DANG YIN LA SOGS PA DANG, ,TSOR BA DAG LA SOGS PA YIN, ,GANG GI YIN PAR GAL BAS MED, ,DE DAG KYANG NI YIN MA YIN, What the heck is this word? Let's see the commentary. ,LAM BYA LTA DANG SOGS PA DE DAG KYANG NI SPYOD CHEN, ,MO YIN GYIS YIN PA MO YIN PAS, Okay, good.

If the sense power is not a sense power until it's doing something, then we already discussed why the physical chemicals of that sense power, like the chemicals that make the eyeball, would have to be absent at that time also. But the result of those things would also have to be not possible, meaning hearing itself. If the ear is only the ear when you're hearing something, which is what he said, then when you're seeing something, the ear can't be there.

Okay, a hearing can't be there. Right. If hearing can't be there and then no ear could be there.

Right. And no chemicals that make the ear could be there because there's no ear there. Right.

Then by the way, there's no hearing either. Okay, the cause of the ear couldn't be there. And the result of the ear, hearing, couldn't be there either.

Okay, the ear can't be there. The chemicals in the ear can't be there. And the function of the ear, hearing, can't be there.

Why? Because you're looking at something. According to you, you're looking at something.

Something can be defined by functioning at the moment, but it doesn't apply to all the other senses at the same time. Cannot, according to this guy. All right.

All right. I think we got one more verse here. Did we lose everybody?

Yay! By the way, the 12th verse, which I think is the final verse, right Tim? It's a summary.

It's a summary of the chapter. Thank God. At least if we understand the summary, we can say we know the chapter.

Okay, so let's look at the summary. ,GANG ZHIG LTA LA SOGS PA YID, ,SNGA ROL DA LTA CI NA MED, Yeah, CI NA MED. ,DE LA YOD DONG MED DO ZHIG, ,RTOG PA LTAR NI RTOG PA RGYUR, And I like this image because I like ice cream, but I never get it because my wife doesn't let me have it.

I'm sorry. Oh, I'm not... We got three choices.

Don't quote me. You got three kinds of ice cream? Yeah.

Okay, look, this is a summary of the chapter. If you understand the next two minutes, you're okay. And I think you will.

So no pressure. There's three kinds of ice cream here. You got to choose between the peppermint, the lemon, and the chocolate.

Makes me want to choose one. Okay, so there's three different ideas in this whole chapter and Nagarjuna kindly is wrapping it up for us. He says, look, there's three ideas.

If you get these three, don't worry about it. Don't worry about what you didn't understand. What are the three?

Can a seer exist before they see? Yes or no? Can you call someone an astronomer until they look at the stars?

No, cannot. So that's okay. Why?

BDAG CA There's no appellation cost. There's nothing to call... There's no reason to call them an astronomer until they look at the stars.

So that's okay. We're okay with that. You have to look at the stars before we can call you an astronomer.

You have to say the mantras before we can call you a medicine Buddha practitioner. Something like that. Can...

Now, the tricky one. Okay? When the girl's looking at the stars, is she an astronomer?

In the moment that she's looking at the stars, is she an astronomer? In the moment that the girl is looking at the stars with her telescope, can we call her an astronomer? Yeah, we just said that.

After she looks at the stars, we can call her an astronomer. Okay, so in that moment that she's looking at the stars, we can call her an astronomer. All right, good?

Does she ever meet the stars? Does she ever have contact with the stars? An image of a star, does she ever have contact with an image of a star?

Is there a place in her life where a star overlaps with astronomer? Where being a star overlaps with being an astronomer? I mean, she might be a star astronomer, but...

Right? So I'll say it again. While she's looking at the stars, can you call her an astronomer?

Yeah, I guess so. Does the astronomer and the stars ever overlap? Is any part of her body a star?

Is any part of the star an astronomer? Can we say they never overlap? Then in that case, she can't look at the star.

They never touch each other. She might also be swimming in, in, what do you call it? Sayalita.

Looking at the stars is swimming in Sayalita because there's no reason why it should be astronomer because they never touch each other. She never makes contact with stars because they can't overlap. No part of her can become a star and no part of a star can become her.

Therefore, they have to be separate. And disconnected. If they're disconnected, then when she eats a banana, she's an astronomer.

Because there's no more compelling reason that looking at the stars should make her an astronomer if it's not related to astronomers. If they never overlap. Okay, third ice cream.

You got the first two ice creams? I'll repeat the two ice creams for you. Until she looks at the stars, she's not an astronomer.

That's the first ice cream. Okay, I'm okay with that. While she's looking at the stars, she can't be an astronomer because the stars never touch her and she never touches the stars.

If they never touch and she can still be an astronomer, then when she's taking a bath, she's an astronomer. Okay, third one. Is it after looking at the stars that she's an astronomer?

Does looking at the stars confirm that an Indian astronomer is established by the looking at the stars? Yeah, well then she's also established by pizzas that fly to Mars. Because something that doesn't exist anymore is making her an astronomer.

The looking at the stars is done by the time you call her an astronomer. Therefore, anything else she ever could have done would also make her an astronomer because there's no connection between looking at the stars and becoming an astronomer because they can't overlap either. In all three ice cream cases, it's impossible.

Something is fishy. This ice cream smells like fish. This particular ice cream smells like fish.

Each of those three choices is defective. Does the mantra cause the healing? So the mantra comes first.

Or does saying the mantra cause the healing and they're going on at the same time? Or do you have to heal somebody first and then you can call a mantra? Because if it doesn't heal anybody, it's not really a mantra.

Which three? And the Gardener says, none of the above. I'll say it again.

Let's do it one more time. Which came first, the mantra or the healing? Oh, mantra.

Okay, so if mantra came before the healing, then the healing didn't have a cause. Why? Because the mantra is gone by the time you get a heal.

Then you get a healing without a cause. No, no, no. Okay, the mantra goes on at the same time as the healing.

Okay, then the mantra also causes rice to grow in Pluto. Okay, why? Because they don't have any connection.

There's no connection between the two. They can't connect. They cannot overlap.

Saying the mantra and being healed from the cancer are always different things. Saying a mantra is not getting healed from cancer. It causes getting healed by cancer.

Getting healed by cancer comes after the mantra. They cannot go on at the same time. They're separate.

It's not that 10% of healing is mantra and 10% of mantra is healing. Mantra comes first and then it stops and you get the healing. Okay, if it stops and then you get the healing, then it can't be connected to the healing.

There cannot be a relationship between the mantra and the healing because the mantra stopped before the healing started. They never overlap. Then you could just, I don't know, eat more croissants and it would heal cancer.

That's my idea. And then the last possibility is it's not a mantra until somebody gets healed by it. Then you can really call it a mantra.

Okay, so after the mantra is finished, it's a mantra, right? A mantra is not a mantra until it finishes. Why?

Because a mantra is not a mantra until it heals. Okay? First comes the healing, then the mantra is a mantra.

[Speaker 2]
Okay?

[Speaker 1]
Okay, so you don't have to say the mantra. Why? Because by the time the healing comes, the mantra is gone anyway.

You could have just eaten a pizza and it would have healed the cancer.

[Speaker 2]
Okay?

[Speaker 1]
None of the three connections you think is going on between the mantra and the healing the cancer is possible. There's something fishy. Oh Geshe-la, just tell us what's going on and we won't worry about it.

That's not Nagarjuna's style. Okay, he wants you to figure it out. Okay, yay.

And it's, thank God, because all the teachers who don't understand Nagarjuna really don't have to say what they don't understand. Okay, you figure it out, all right? No, we will figure it out, okay?

So see you in the next class, The Emptiness of Medicine Buddha.