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

[Speaker 1]
Hi, welcome back to Nagarjuna course number three. And we're going to start a new chapter now. It's chapter 10.

And it has a great name and we'll see the name here. It's called MED DANG BU ZHING LTAG PA MED DANG BU ZHING LTAG PA An Examination or an Investigation into Fire and Firewood. And we're still getting this argument.

You see, there's still this argument that, okay, until the young lady with the telescope looks at the stars, we cannot call her an astronomer. So looking at the stars must happen before she comes out of her house, before the astronomer comes out of her house. It has to.

So there's some confusion there. And the other guy says, listen, I got a solution. Let's talk about MED DANG BU ZHING.

Let's talk about fire and firewood. Let's talk about fire and firewood. And according to me, that's going to clarify everything.

We will solve these problems if we just look at the example of fire and firewood. And mainly those guys like the lower Abhidharma guys who want to say that the eye was there first and then there was a scene. The astronomer was wandering around and then they looked at a star and they were called an astronomer even before they looked at the stars, right?

That's their idea. They say our position is supported by the example of fire and firewood, the relationship between fire and firewood. Now to really appreciate this chapter, I'd like to explore with you first.

Let's do our Getting to Know Sanskrit assignment and let's look at four Sanskrit words that are going to help us understand this chapter. The first word is indhana, say indhana. The Tibetan is prushing.

And this indhana comes from a root and you see that square root symbol. ID or IND, which means to kindle or to set fire, to set fire to something. Okay?

And I think it's related to the Indo-European, which is kind of an older root system called ID, which means to eat. And sometimes INDs drop out, like ID becomes ID in Indo-European and it means to eat. And some cognates or some English examples are edible and eat and obese.

And they all have the same root ID, which is related to the Sanskrit root ID, which means to burn. The kindle part, which means to burn something, is related, I think it is the precursor of a root khand, which means to burn. And you see khand in incandescent, candle, kindle.

And I think there was an ancient S before it, which is skand or schand. And that came into the word shine. So all of these words for burning, ID, IND, ED, khand, and skand, all related to burning, schand, all related to burning.

Now, we were talking about the eye looking at something, at an object. So Michael's eye looks at the juice. Michael's eye looks at the orange juice, the orange colored juice.

And you have three distinct things. You have the doer, which Choney Lama calls NYE BAR LEN PA PO, the agent, let's say, the one who undertakes the action. And then you have the object of the action, which is called the NYE BAR LEN PAR BYA, NYE BAR LEN BYA.

And then you have the action itself, which is NYE BAR LEN PA. NYE BAR LEN PA PO, NYE BAR LEN BYA, and NYE BAR LEN PA, meaning the object of the action, the agent of the action, and the action, which is seen in this case. Now, I challenge you.

In the case of a fire, who's the agent and who's the object of the agent? Who's the agent in the case of a fire? And I'll give you some choices here.

Here's the first choice. Indhana, the wood. Is the wood, the agent, is the wood like the eye, which thus sees the object, because the wood feeds the fire?

Okay, there's a possibility. All right, or let's go on to the next Sanskrit word here, which is AG NI. And as you guys probably know, AG NI means fire.

And what's interesting is it comes from a verbal root AG, which means to move like a snake, like this. So the flames are movers, AG NI. They're dancing, dancing.

AG NI means dancing. AG NI means fire. And in the Indo-European, again, you have these words for driving and moving related to AG that we had before.

And then you have the cognates act, active, agile, and agent, all coming from the same root as AG to move and get things done. And then there's a suffix NI, which makes nouns out of verbs. So AG NI means fire.

And in English, you get the words ignite and igneous, meaning made from fire, stone made from fire. So that's the fire. Now, again, so, so far we have firewood and we have fire.

Is it that the fire acts on the firewood or is it that the firewood creates the fire? Which is the agent? With the I, it's easy.

The I sees the bottle. The bottle is the object. The seeing is the verb and the I is the subject.

But in the case of a fire, who's the doer and what's done? Is the fire the result of the wood or is it that the fire acts on the wood? Is the wood the object of the fire or is the wood the agent of the fire?

You got to think about it. It's confusing. To me, it's confusing.

Okay, let's do a couple more words and then we'll get to the real class. DA LHA, say DA LHA. And that means Sekhpa.

It means burning, the burning. So the fire burns the wood. Can we say that?

Or the wood feeds the fire. But anyway, DA LHA is the root here, which means to burn. I think it's related to DA LHA.

And then DHS sometimes changes to F in English, which is F. And then to make it an agent, you have to call it a fire. And then I think fire.

And a parallel case is where DHOR, which became dharma, which means to hold something, it comes into the word firm. And it's also the root for the word tree because trees were the most immovable thing in the ancient world. You couldn't move a tree.

So there you go, DHOR and DA. One more word for you guys. In this chapter, they're going to talk about fire burning wood until the wood is used up.

And then the fire, here's the next word, nirvana. Isn't that interesting? So you always hear about nirvana, meaning to blow out.

A candle. But here in Nagarjuna, in this chapter, he's using it without reference to liberation. It just means the fire went out, nirvana.

It blew itself out. It burned itself out. The fire burned itself out.

So nirvana, nirvana. And by the way, the V in Sanskrit is more of almost like a W, so nirvana. The Tibetan is NYANGS RNGUB NAS BDE PA, which is a meaning translation and not a literal translation, which means to go beyond grief.

And here's the parts of the word nirvana, which I want you to learn. NIST is a prefix, which means knocked. And it means out and down, meaning something degenerates until it's gone.

And then you have the words nether, beneath, and underneath. It comes from this. RANG means to blow.

That's an easy one for English cognates. You have fan, vent, and wind. So blow out is nirvana.

And I think it's exciting in this chapter that we see nirvana used only as a fire being blown out. And that gives you a nice insight into the idea of blowing out your anger at your husband because you realize he's coming from you. That's nirvana.

All right, let's go back to the beginning of this chapter 10. And we're going to go through the verses one by one. Now the first verse is traditionally split into two.

The first verse is traditionally treated, first two Tibetan lines, and then the second two Tibetan lines. And by the way, the Sanskrit still exists, which is exciting. If you want to learn Sanskrit, this book is a great text to learn Sanskrit from.

I don't emphasize learning Sanskrit because most of the Sanskrit is gone. So whereas in Tibetan you have maybe 500,000 important books, in Sanskrit you have a few hundred, maybe. So I don't know if it's worth the effort to spend six, seven years learning Sanskrit.

The Tibetan is exactly the same as the Sanskrit. Rarely, rarely, rarely see any difference. All right, here we go.

First half of the first verse. BU SHING GANG DE MED YIN NA BYED PA PO DANG LAS GCIG RGYUR BU SHING DANG NI MED YIN NA Now the way that Nagarjuna explores the other guy's example, the other guy says, look, you can understand all your questions, Nagarjuna, if you just use the example of a fire and the firewood, and the interaction of the fire and the firewood. You're getting all complicated, you don't have to do it.

If you just think about how a fire consumes firewood, then everything's clear. The discussion of whether the little girl had to be there first, or looking at the stars had to be there first, and then the little girl was an astronomer later, the whole discussion is decided by fire and firewood. Just stick to fire and firewood.

And Nagarjuna says, not really. He's like, I don't think so. Well, what's wrong with that, Nagarjuna?

Well, is the fire separate from the firewood or not? Is the fire a separate thing than the firewood? What do you guys think?

I mean, okay, listen, Nagarjuna says, listen, either the firewood is the fire, or the firewood is not the fire. Which one? And he says, okay, let's say you say the same thing.

Well, they're not. You can't burn yourself on the firewood if it's not a... So let's eliminate one possibility from the beginning.

We can say that the firewood is not the fire. They're not the same thing. So here it says, BU SHING GANG DE MED YIN NA If the firewood were the fire, BYED PA PO DANG LAS GCIG RGYUR then the agent, then the burner and the burning would be the same thing.

The burning would be the burner. If you take the wood to be the cause of the fire, then the wood would be the burning. Then the wood would be the burning.

So it's not possible that the fire and the wood are the same thing. So let's eliminate that possibility. Let's go on to the possibility that the fire and the wood are not the same thing and that they're separate.

Okay, we go to the second half of the first. Oh, and by the way, that picture, we missed a picture here. I was supposed to explain a picture here.

People looking at a campfire. And I don't know, where I grew up, Arizona, it's very popular to go out in the desert and make a small fire. Not this big one.

And you sit around the campfire and you look at the fire. So the other guy says, look, what the eye does when it looks at a star is not unreal, it's real. Meaning, for him, it's self-existent.

It comes from its own side. Why? Because the fire and what it burns are real.

So he says, when somebody looks at a star, it's really happening because it's really happening when fire burns wood. Same thing, same thing. RIGS PA SGO BRTZON Means parallel reasoning.

Okay, next verse, second part of... Oh, by the way, one more picture before that. RIGS PA SGO BRTZON Nagarjuna says, if the fire was the wood, then the person making a pot out of clay would be the pot.

All right, and that's easy to understand. It's one of the few easy things to understand in Nagarjuna. That's clear.

If the fire was the firewood, then this girl would be a pot. Okay, then what makes the thing would be the thing. If the fire is the wood that it burns, then the potter is the pot that it makes, and this girl would be a pot, and this girl would be in this girl's own hands, or something like that.

All right, not possible. All right, let's go to the second half of the first verse. All right.

,'ANG NGES BYED RGYUD YIN DAN NA, ,'ANG NGES YIN DAN NA BYUR TE BAR MED, ,GAL TE ZHING LAS MED SHES NA, If the wood is not the fire, if the wood and the fire are separate. Okay, now you got to think of... Here's a principle when you're reading Nagarjuna.

Is the fire separate from the wood or not? Yeah, it's separate from the wood. Is it self-existently separate from the wood?

You see, now, because Nagarjuna's going to keep pulling out this word self-existently, without an observer with karmic seeds in their mind, is the wood separate from the fire? And Nagarjuna says, no. They're not separate from their own side.

So you have to remember that. ,GAL TE ZHING LAS MED SHES NA, If the wood was distinct from the fire, then they would not overlap. They would never make contact.

When I say overlap, I mean make contact. Geshe-la, it's not the same thing. To touch something and to overlap is different.

Look, here's contact and here's overlapping. But you got to understand that if they make contact, some part has to overlap. Some part has to overlap.

Why? There has to be a point of contact. In mathematics, a point is a single spot that has no width and no length.

But in reality, if something touches, there has to be a point of contact. There has to be so many millimeters of place where they overlap, where they occupy the same spot. Or you couldn't have contact.

There can't be contact. So he says, if the fire and the wood never make contact, meaning they are separate, if they are different from each other, if they never make contact, well, then you're going to have fires popping out all over the place where there's no wood. But keep in mind, there's a fire right there.

Why? There's no wood. Yeah, you don't need wood.

Why? It's separate. They don't have to touch.

There doesn't have to be wood in the room for a fire to break out. Why? Because all fires happen.

What do you mean all fires happen? Fires happen where there's wood, right? Yeah.

So they touch, right? No, they can't touch. Why not?

They can't overlap. Okay, so they're separate. What's the problem with that?

Well, then you can have a fire in this room if you had firewood in the next room. Because they don't have to touch. If they don't have to overlap, then the fire could be anywhere and the wood could be anywhere.

Then you'd have fires breaking out all over the place. No, no, no, they have to touch. Okay, if they have to touch, they have to make contact.

Yeah, then they have to overlap. Right, then the fire is the wood. No.

Look, you can't have it both ways. The guard's just like pulling his hair out. That's what happened to me.

If they make contact, then some tiny part of the fire has to be the firewood. No, I don't want that. Okay, so they never make contact.

Right, okay, so then watch out. You've got to have a fire extinguisher in your toilet, for your toilet, because a fire might pop out in the toilet. No, there's water there, Geshe-la.

I don't care. A fire can happen anywhere. It doesn't have to touch the wood.

All right, if you're not confused yet, I didn't do my job. Next verse, and he combines verse two and verse three. Okay, who's he?

Choney Lama. ,LTA LTOS PAR NYID DU RGYUR, ,'BAR BYED RGYUD LAS MI SBYUNG BZHIN, ,RTZOM PA DUS MED NYID DU RGYUR, ,DE LTA YIN NA LAS KYANG MED, ,LTA LTOS PAR NYID DU RGYUR, Not only would fires break out inside your toilet, they would also burn forever. Why?

Because they don't burn from the wood. They just burn from themselves because the wood never touches the fire. No, the fire does touch the wood.

Okay, then they overlap. And the wood is the fire and the fire is the wood, right? At some point.

No, no, they're separate. Okay, then watch out when you take a poop because the water might catch on fire. Well, I didn't say that.

Yeah, you did. You said a fire could happen without firewood. I didn't say that.

Yeah, you did. You said it didn't have to touch the firewood. Yeah, I did say that.

Okay, so the firewood can be in the other room. The fire can be in the toilet. Be careful when you take a poop.

Okay, something else is going on. Something's fishy. What's going on?

Maybe a separate entity is causing the fire in the firewood. And maybe the firewood has nothing to do with the fire. And maybe the mantra has nothing to do with curing the cancer.

Maybe they're both coming from somewhere else. Okay, RTAG TU'I BAR BA NYID DU RGYUR Then not only would your toilet break out on fire, but RTAG TU means it would never go out because there's no wood. It just burned by itself.

BAR BYED RGYUD LAS MI SBYING BZHIN Furthermore, you could have fires without any fuel. Okay, and RTZOM PA DUS ME NYID DU RGYUR And you wouldn't have to go through the effort of collecting firewood because you could have a fire without the firewood. So why go through all the trouble of finding firewood or buying gasoline for your car?

Because it's going to burn without the gasoline. The engine's going to burn without the gasoline. Then he gives another verse.

And I was confused when I first read it because it seems like he repeats the same thing, but I tell you, if you look at it carefully, you will see that verse three is a justification of verse two. And you can cook that and you can work on that. GZHAN LA LTOS PA MED PA'I PHYIR If the fire didn't depend on the wood, then yes, fires could break out everywhere and they would go forever.

BAR BA BYED RGYUD LAS MI SBYING And the fires would go for always because they didn't have to have fuel. BDAG TU BAR BA NYID YIN NA They would also burn forever because they didn't have fuel and the fuel can't run out. MTSONGS PA DUS MED PA NI RGYUR And you wouldn't have to go collect firewood or buy gasoline for your engine to run.

And that's similar to the assertion that the eye wouldn't have to depend, the eyeball wouldn't have to depend on its causes because it had no connection to them. And it wouldn't be the cause of seeing because the seeing and the eyeball and the chemicals in the eye were separate and never overlapped. You got to think about it.

He's really making the same argument that he made in the last chapter, which is the point because this chapter is used by the other guy to prove his points in the last chapter. So don't forget, when we're talking about fire and firewood, we're really talking about the eye, the astronomer, and the stars. All right, the sun really would burn forever.

Here's the sun. If the fuel, the hydrogen that makes the sun burn and the sun were separate, then the sun would never burn out because it has no fuel. You would just have this fire going on forever.

And this sun would never burn out. The Abhidharma says our sun is going to burn out. And Stephen Hawking says the same thing.

So probably he was an Abhidharma guy, I don't know. All right, all right, next verse. ,DE LA GAL TE DI NYAM DU, ,SEGS SHING BU ZHING YIN SEMS NA, ,GANG ZHIG STE TZAM DE YIN NA, ,GANG GYIS BU ZHING DE ZHIG BYAS, And by the way, this is a, this is a, what do you call it?

This is a method employed by Nagarjuna again. He will disprove something that somebody else said. Then he kind of gives the other guy a chance to come back and then he smashes him.

So he punches him with the first verse. The guy comes back and then Nagarjuna knocks him out with the second verse. So it's called MA NGES PA SPANGS PA.

MA NGES PA SPANGS PA means Nagarjuna's nailing it down. So this verse is kind of the same as the last verse, but it's meant to knock the guy out forever. Okay, the first one just punched him.

Here we go. ,DE LA GAL TE DI NYAM DU, And now suppose you think to yourself, he says to the other guy, ,SREG BZHIN PO'I ZHING YIN SEMS NA, The burning is the wood. Don't forget we had fire, agni.

We had firewood, indhanam. We had burning, daha. And then this guy, now the guy says, you know what?

The burning is the wood. The burning is the wood. Okay, they're not separate.

And frankly, his example of a fire is controversial. It's difficult to stretch it out in our own mind because really when a piece of wood is really burning, it's kind of hard to distinguish between where the fire ends and where the wood starts. Okay, ,GANG ZAD DE TZAM DE YIN NA, ,GANG GIS BU ZHING DE SREG BYED, If the burning is the firewood, then what burns the firewood except for the firewood?

Does the firewood burn the firewood? That's Nagarjuna. I'll say it again.

That guy says, you know what? If you really think about it, the fire and the firewood are kind of mixed up. And then Nagarjuna says, yeah, cool.

So the firewood burns the firewood and you don't need a fire. Because the firewood is the burning. He said the burning and the firewood are kind of mixed up.

So Nagarjuna said, yeah, that's fine. So just put a couple of sticks together and they can burn each other without fire. Because the one stick is already mixed up with the fire.

Like that. All right. The burning of the wood couldn't burn the wood.

What's the picture, Pachi? Oh, that's why the boy is looking confused. He just heard this verse.

If the burning was the fire, if the burning was the firewood, then one match could burn another match without a fire. Okay, got it? That's why the boy is looking confused.

All right. This boy represents you guys. All right.

Next verse. What's it got to do with mantra? Oh, saying the mantra is curing the cancer.

Okay. So then curing the cancer is caused by curing the cancer and you don't have to do a mantra because curing the cancer is the mantra. The mantra is curing the cancer.

The mantra cures the cancer. The mantra is curing the cancer. Okay, so curing the cancer is curing the cancer and you don't need a mantra.

You can just relax. Okay? Got it?

The mantra is curing the cancer. Okay. Then you don't need a mantra.

Why? Because curing the cancer can cure the cancer. Why?

Because the mantra is curing the cancer. Okay, got it? All right.

By the way, if you don't think about it and you just give up, you won't be able to use mantras. So I'm sorry, you have to think about this stuff. You have to go into retreat at Vamyur Mountain in your spare time, think about this thing.

And then you'll figure it out. One day you'll figure it out and then the mantra will work. Which is exciting.

All right. And by the way, I mean, it's going to take time. Geshe-la, should I stop my mantras until I can understand Nagarjuna?

I didn't say that. Keep doing the mantras. They're going to help you understand Nagarjuna.

And then understanding Nagarjuna will help the mantras work. All right. Verse five, I think.

,GZHAN PHYIR MI PHRAD PHRAD MED NA, ,GZHAD PA MI RGYUR MI SREG NA, ,GCIG BA MI RGYUR MI PHRAD NA, ,RAM DAG YANG DANG LDAN PAR GNAD, ,GZHAN PHYIR MI PHRAD Okay, does the fire... Is the fire the firewood? We already said no.

Okay, so the fire and the firewood is separate, right? Yeah, they're separate. Okay, and they can't overlap, right?

Right, they cannot overlap. Why? There cannot be an inch of the fire which is the firewood.

Either all the fire is the firewood or the fire is not the firewood. Okay, they got to be separate. Are they separate?

Yes. Do they ever overlap? No.

Okay. Okay, so they can't... Then the fire can't burn the wood.

Why? It never touches the wood. No, they do touch.

Okay, then they overlap. Okay, then the firewood is the fire. Right, then the firewood can burn the firewood and you don't need a match.

It's true, okay? It doesn't make sense. There's something weird going on.

You just never thought about it. Don't blame the Garjuna. The things you used to think were causing things aren't causing things, but you spend your whole life lazy not thinking about it.

And you keep taking aspirin even though it doesn't work half the time. Okay? All right.

And you keep doing mantras even though they don't work half the time. Okay, GZHAN PHYIR MI PHRAD PHRAD MI NA If the fire never touches the firewood then they never overlap. SREG PAR MING GYUR There cannot be a burning.

Okay? If the fire, if the agni never touches the indhana, right? There cannot be a daha.

Okay? If the agni never touches the indhana then there can never be a daha. Okay?

If the fire never touches the firewood then there cannot be a burning. Okay. And if there's no burning, there's no nirvana.

What's that mean? If there's no fire, then there's no fire going out. Nirvana.

And this is where the word nirvana comes. If there's no fire, if the firewood never, if the fire never touches the firewood then there's not going to be any fire. And if there's no fire start then the fire is never going to stop.

Nirvana. Then if it never stops, micchina. Okay?

Micchina. Which in the Sanskrit is un-nirvana. Un-nirvana.

If there's no stopping of the fire. RANG BDAG DANG YANG BSTAN PA NAS Then the fire is going to be hot forever because burning is part of the fire and it can never go out and it can never start. So every time something is a fire, it's going to burn forever.

It's just going to burn. It will never lose its swalinga in Sanskrit. Linga means its sign.

By the way, which means a male sign and a female sign. But in philosophy, it means the fire would never lose its hot and burning and it would burn forever. Swalinga.

It would keep its own sign forever. Why? Because it never went out.

Why? Because it never burned. Why?

Because the fire never touched the firewood. Something you got to cook. All right.

We did the Sanskrit part already. Let's go. Yeah.

And by the way, Nagarjuna wraps it up and says, by the way, if the fire could burn the fire without any contact, then you could... Next picture. Tim.

Then a match will light a cigarette without ever touching the cigarette. The fire doesn't have to touch the cigarette. If a fire could happen without overlapping between the fire and the firewood, then somebody could start a lighter in Guadalajara and the cigarette will burn in Sedona.

Because they don't have to touch, according to you. All right. We don't want to smoke anyway.

I felt some weird about it. All right. Next two verses, six and seven.

Now, this is one of those tricky spots in Nagarjuna. Verse six is the other guy. And verse seven is Nagarjuna.

But he doesn't tell you. Now, when you get really good at reading scripture, you know which verse is fake and which verse is right. But if you don't, you better get a good commentary.

I've heard many people explain the other guy's position as Nagarjuna's position very eloquently. And it's just totally wrong. By the way, in my opinion, I'm not aware of any good translation of the root text.

I don't think so. Correct one, I don't think so. ,RDZI LTAR BU MED SKYES PA DANG, ,SKYES PA'ANG BU MED PHRAD PA BZHIN, ,GAL TE ZHING LAS MED GZHAN NA, ,ZHING DANG PHRAD PA RUNG BA YOD, The other guy says, look, when a man touches a woman and a woman touches a man, they're different.

What is the Vibhala difference? A woman is not a man and a man is not a woman. And that's the only reason they can touch.

If they were the same thing, then they would never touch. And then we wouldn't be here because our mom and our dad would not have touched each other. So he says, look, women touch men and men touch women.

And it's only if the firewood and the fire aren't separate that you could have touching between them. Things can't touch if they're not different. A thing doesn't touch itself.

You see what I mean? A coffee cup can't touch a coffee cup. This coffee cup doesn't touch this coffee cup because it's not different from this coffee cup.

This coffee cup is not different from this coffee cup so they could never make contact because they're the same thing. To have contact, things have to be different. And then they can contact each other.

Therefore, come on, it's simple. It's like boys and girls. And then they touch, they're different.

So the fire and the firewood, they have to be different things. The other guy says, I don't know why you're getting so complicated. That's verse number six, am I right?

Now, verse number seven is our answer. Nagarjuna's answer. ,GAL TE ME DANG BZHIN DAG NI, ,CIG DANG GCIG NI GSAL BAR BSGYUR, ,CIG DANG GCIG NI GSAL BAR BSGYUR, ,ZHING DANG MED GZHAN NYID YIN YANG, ,PHYIN DU THER PAR BRDOD LA RA, Now we go back to that verb we had where one thing illuminates another thing or one thing delineates another thing.

And he says, you know what? ,GAL TE ME DANG BZHIN DAG NI, ,CIG DANG GCIG NI GSAL BAR BSGYUR, Is it that juice bottles define coffee cups and coffee cups define juice bottles? Is it that women define men and men define women?

In that case, they have to be separate, right? If they touch, quote, like, by the way, the other guy was talking about touching in the sense of physically touching each other. But Nagarjuna takes it to, okay, so you can't really tell a man is a man until he's in a room with a woman.

You can't distinguish male without female. In that sense, they have to touch, meaning they have to be in the same picture. We got a picture here.

I think so. So, male and female have to be in the same photo to appreciate the difference between a man and a woman. They have to be in the same photo.

And then you can say, oh, look, he's got a beard. She doesn't have a beard. She's got lipstick.

He doesn't have lipstick. I don't know exactly, but okay. So when they're in the same photo, when the juice bottle's next to the coffee cup, then you can tell the contrast defines each one.

Each one defines the other when you put them in the same frame of your video right now. When you put them in the same frame, then this one speaks to the difference between that one and this one speaks to the difference from that one. ,GAL TE MED NA GZHIN DAG NI GCIG DANG GCIG GI SO BA RGYUR, Are you saying they define each other?

Yes. ,GZHIN DAG MED GZHIN NYID YIN YANG, ,GZHIN DER GYUR PAR BDOD LA RANG, Then you have to say they make contact. ,BDOD PA You have to believe they make contact.

Do they make contact? Yes. Do they overlap?

No. Do they make contact without overlapping? Yes.

Where's the point of contact? It's where they overlap. So don't tell me that males define females and female males define males because they can't touch.

No, they have to touch to define each other. That's correct, so they have to overlap. No, Geshe-la, they touch without overlapping.

Okay, so there's no point where they touch. There's no point where one overlaps the same area with the other, which is what contact means. Get used to that.

It's not that there's a tiny tip of the male. Well, it's not that there's a tiny tip of the bottle that touches the tiny tip of the coffee cup. At some point they have to overlap or else they don't touch, and then they are disconnected.

And you can't say one is defined by the other. You can't say one is delineated adhyate by the other. You can't say that.

It's very subtle and if you think about it, you'll get it. Don't give up. Don't be lazy.

You want to cure someone's cancer with your Medicine Buddha mantras? You got to figure this out. And I say, if you don't understand this, you cannot cure another person with your mantras because then you don't know what you're doing.

Then you're yelling at the husband who's not in the kitchen. Doing mantras without understanding them to cure cancer is like yelling at the husband in the kitchen who's not there. It's the same thing.

Okay, whoa. All right. Okay.

Okay. Yeah, we got that one. Hey, we finished the class.

Okay, so think about it. Can they touch without overlapping? No.

Well, if they overlap then they don't touch. Then they're the same thing. Then the man is the woman and a little part of him is the woman.

And they don't define each other. Okay. And the point is, for us, a mantra cannot cure cancer if the mantra doesn't touch the cancer and the mantra cannot touch the cancer.

So Geshe-la, why the heck should I do mantras? Because there's one thing causing the mantra which also causes the curing. Well, what's that?

Well, that's saving life of animals. Okay. Saving the life of the animals makes the mantra work to cure cancer.

Think about that. All right, see you guys in the next class. Yay.