Нагарджуна, курс 3 — Мудрость Арьи Нагарджуны, курс 3: Пустота мантры (2021, Аризона), занятие 4

[Speaker 1]
Hi, welcome back to Arya Nagarjuna. We're still in the middle of chapter 10, which is an examination of fire and firewood. And this was supposed to clear it up.

Whether the seer is there before the seeing and especially before the thing you see, or is the seer come later, or do they come at the same time? And is it even possible that we are seeing things the way we think we are? If you are not seeing things the way you think you're seeing things, then sooner or later you get in trouble, you start fighting with your husband, or you do things that don't make sense to make things happen.

Like, I don't know, in your business, you take actions which don't result in the result you think they do, because you don't understand this question. Is the seer seeing something before the thing is there, or is the thing there first, and then the person sees it later? And of course it applies to Medicine Buddha.

If you're doing a mantra, what's the timeframe between you and the mantra? Do you come first, and then you do the mantra? But how can you come first if you're a mantra practitioner, because you haven't done a mantra yet?

So actually the mantra should come first, and then the person who says it should come later, but then a mantra can't say itself. And it gets confusing. And if it gets confusing to you, you are on the right track.

And if it's not confusing, you're on the wrong track. If it seems confusing to you, then it's shaking up your normal way of seeing things, which according to Buddhism is always wrong. You have always been wrong.

Your opinion about whether the mantra came first, or the mantra sayer came first, or how the mantra works, if you think you know, you're probably making a mistake. And then when you say the mantra, they're not as effective. It's not as powerful.

It's much more powerful if you understand how it really works. And it's like the relationship between wood and fire, fire, wood, and fire. So we're halfway through our examination of fire, wood, and fire.

And here we go. We're going to go to verse number eight. And it says, ,GAL TE ZHING STOD MED YIN LA, ,GAL TE MED TO ZHING YIN LA, ,GANG STOD MED NA ZHING RGYUR BA, ,DANG PO GRUB PA GANG ZHIG YIN, This is a question from I.N. Nagarjuna. ,GAL TE ZHING STOD MED YIN LA, Is it the case that we have a fire, which is depending on the fire, wood? Or, ,GAL TE MED TO ZHING YIN LA, Is it the case that we have wood, which depends on its identity, fire, wood, which depends on its identity for fire. So the fire would have to come first because it can't be fire, wood, if it came first, before the fire.

You have to have a fire. And then you say, oh, this wood is fire, wood. But if you don't have the wood first, before it's fire, wood, how can you have a fire?

And how can you have a fire from wood, which is not fire, wood? Something's fishy. Something's wrong.

,GANG ZHIG MED NA ZHING RGYUR BA, And somebody says, I think they kind of depend on each other. The fire needs the wood to start burning, but the wood needs the fire before you can call it firewood. So somebody says, well, actually I think it's kind of like they're depending on each other.

,DANG PO'I GRUB PA GANG ZHIG YIN, But then we have to still have a question of which came first, the chicken or the egg? Which came first, the firewood or the fire? ,DANG PO'I GRUB PA GANG ZHIG YIN, Which one came first?

Why? Why is that important? Now, listen and think about it.

Because the second thing to come always depends on the first thing to come. The second thing that comes always depends on the first thing that comes. Curing cancer with a mantra comes second.

And that depends on the mantra coming first. But if it's that the mantra depends on the curing, in other words, if it doesn't cure cancer, then it's not really magical words, is it? It's not really a mantra.

So in that case, first you should cure somebody with some kind of words and then those words will become a mantra. But then how do you know what words to say? If you don't know if they're a mantra yet, you could just read the side of a cereal box or something and see if it helps.

So it doesn't get to be a mantra until you cure somebody. But then if it doesn't get to be a mantra until you cure somebody, you'd have to keep saying different words until something worked. And then that would be a mantra.

You see what I mean? So don't forget that the second thing to come has to depend on the first thing to come. Is it that the cancer is cured rests on the mantra?

Or is it that the mantra rests on the cure because the mantra is not special words until something happens from it? ,GAL TE ZHING STON MED YIN NA, If it's the fire that came first and then that depends on the wood, ,MA GDUG PA LA GDUG PA GYUR, then fire could have happened with no wood. If the fire comes first and then the wood becomes firewood, well, then the fire doesn't depend on the wood because the thing it depends on has to come first.

If the fire comes first and then it depends on the wood, then in the very beginning of the fire, there could be fire with no wood, before it was dependent on the wood. ,BUG PA BYA BA'I ZHING LA YANG, If the wood came first, ,ME MED PAR YANG RGYUR BA YIN, then without a fire, the wood would be firewood. Before there was any fire, the wood would be firewood.

Before you saw a fire come from it, you could call it firewood. All right, and we have a picture here of firewood. The idea is, I mean, it's not firewood yet until there's a fire.

It looks like somebody tied it up. It looks like somebody cut it in a certain way. We don't know for sure yet though that it's firewood.

We don't know if someone's not using these sticks for something else. So until there's a fire, this is not firewood. And until there's firewood, there's no fire.

And so maybe things don't happen the way we thought. Maybe the mantra doesn't fix the cancer. Maybe something else is creating the mantra and the cancer, and the fix of the cancer.

Like maybe our seeds, maybe our mental seeds. And then, well, how do you use that, Geshe-la? How do you apply that to your life?

Well, then it makes sense to save animals' lives because then the mantra will work against the cancer, for example. There would be seeds in your mind for a cause and effect relationship between the mantra and curing the cancer. And I did a three-year retreat, 2000 to 2006, and I remember we had a lady in the retreat.

She wasn't from our lineage. She was from a different lineage, but she begged me, could I set up a cabin? Could I do this retreat?

We had, I don't know, five, six people in different cabins, yurts. And she said, can I do it with you guys? And we said, okay.

And she got permission from her teacher. And then I remember before the retreat and after the retreat, we couldn't talk during the retreat, but we used to have very intense discussions. And she would say, and it was a very interesting question.

She would say, the power of your teacher does not come from you. Everything else maybe comes from you. Everything else comes from your seeds.

But the power of your teacher is just in your teacher. That doesn't come from you. Whether you're a good person or a bad person, it doesn't matter.

What seeds you have doesn't matter. If a person is your teacher, then there's power. The person has power.

And then we'd say, well, yeah, but Buddha said it. The first lines of this book say, Buddha said everything comes from causes and everything comes from seeds. That's the first lines of Nagarjuna's most famous book.

,GANG ZHIG BSTAN CING BDE BAR BYUNG, ,GAGS PA MED PA SKYE MED PA, Okay, those are the first words. Everything comes from seeds. So it's not that a mantra has power.

It's not that a mantra has power. Even if it has been spoken by a Buddha, if you don't have the seeds for it to have power, it doesn't have power. Or else the Buddha was wrong.

Or else the person you say has the power didn't have the power. Okay, got it? If the Buddha has power in and of himself or herself, then everything they say is true.

If the Buddha said all things come from seeds, then even the power of the Buddha comes from seeds. Okay, got it? And it can't be wrong, because the Buddha that you say doesn't come from seeds, said it.

Got it? Okay, all right. Okay, all right, here we go.

That's very Nagarjuna, right? All right, okay. Next verse.

,GAL TE DNGOS PO GANG LTOS GRUB, ,DE NI LA YANG LTOS NAS NI, ,LTOS BYA GANG YIN DE GRUB NA, ,GANG LA LTOS NAS GANG ZHIG GRUB, If the fire depends on the firewood, then the fire, if the wood came first and the fire came second, then, ,LTOS BYA GANG YIN DE GRUB NA, If the thing being depended upon by the fire, which is the firewood, ,GANG LA LTOS NAS GANG ZHIG GRUB, what did the firewood depend on to be called fire? Firewood, okay. So, okay, I understand the dependence goes one way.

If I say, is there a dependent origination? Is there a dependent relationship with fire? Then you say, yeah.

Well, what? Well, the fire depends on the firewood. You can't have a fire without some fuel.

Okay, yeah. But on the other hand, the wood depends on the fire. Okay, that's what it says here.

,LTOS BYA means the wood that the fire is depending upon. ,GANG YIN DE GRUB NA, As soon as you have the firewood, ,GANG LA LTOS NAS GANG ZHIG GRUB, Well, what did it depend on to be called firewood? Okay, that's a question.

I like to call it a ladder with no wall. Okay, and here's a picture of it. It took me a while.

I was trying to make a ladder with no wall. It's almost impossible. But anyway, it didn't come out that great.

But try to imagine a ladder that's leaning on nothing. And then that's what it would be if the fire was firewood before the fire started. Then you could have a ladder.

You could get up on a ladder that wasn't leaning on a wall. And that leaning on the wall is dependence, and that's dependent origination. And we're going to talk a lot about the words for dependence and what dependence means.

Does the curing cancer depend on the mantra? Or does the mantra depend on curing the cancer? Or do they both depend on something else?

And that's what we would say. And that's what nāgārjuna would say. There's a reason why we took our bodhichitta vows from whose ceremony?

Nāgārjuna. Nāgārjuna, okay. We took our vows, which is the permission we need to study Medicine Buddha.

We have to take vows. And the most famous ceremony is Nāgārjuna. So maybe Nāgārjuna knows something about Medicine Buddha.

Okay, all right. Here we go. Verse 11.

DNGOS PO GRUB GRUB GANG YIN PA DE MA GRUB NA JI LTAR LTOS JI LTAR GRUB NA LTOS GZHAN NA DE NI LTOS PAR MI RUNG NGO DNGOS PO GRUB GRUB GANG YIN PA There's a very important word here called GRUB GRUB. And this is interesting for us. It means things happen because of other things.

And the most famous, I think Sugeng's text, the Mixed Nuts text, we are translating a very difficult commentary by Vasubandhu on the Wheel of Life. And you will see there the definition of dependent origination. The definition of dependence, prajjhite samutpanna, is LTOS GRUB.

LTOS GRUB, here's the word, LTOS GRUB. LTOS GRUB means everything, everything that changes happens based on something else. Everything that changes in the universe happens depending on something else.

DE CHUNG BA'I NA DE CHUNG And the very, very earliest statement of it is by Lord Buddha, and he said, if this happens, that will happen. And if that happens, this must happen. And he's like this, you can see him.

If this happens, then this will happen. It's like your mom used to tell you, if you do this, this is going to happen. And if this happens, it's because you did this.

Then, I don't know, after that it got complicated. People started calling it dependent origination. In the beginning, it was very simple.

If you do this, guys, you're going to get this. That's LTOS GRUB. LHOS PO LTOS GRUB GANG YIN PA DE MA GRUB NA JI LTAR LTOS How could fire depend on wood?

And now we get into a tricky thing with Nagarjuna. And it seems a little unfair. If you back him into a corner.

If you say, yeah, but you can't have a fire without a firewood. And he said, well, okay, okay. But the fire you think you're getting, the fire you think you can't get without firewood, it doesn't exist anyway.

And you're like, wait, wait, wait. Now you're changing things. He says, yeah, well, don't tell me the fire depends on the wood because the fire can't exist anyway.

Well, what do you mean? The fire you're thinking of can't exist. Why?

Because you think it comes from wood. But I'm trying to prove it comes from wood. I know, but that means you think it comes from wood.

But yeah, I think it comes from wood. That's what I'm trying to prove to you. But the fire you think comes from wood can't come from wood.

So you can't prove the fire comes from wood because the fire you want to prove comes from wood doesn't exist. And it's like you're frustrated. You're like, man, I was trying to prove something to you.

It's like having a discussion with your wife. SNGON PA MTHUL DU GANG YIN PA DE MA GRUB PA JI LTAR JI LTA'I GRUB LA LTOS SHES NA Then the other guy, it's funny. JI LTA'I means, well, what the hell?

The guy said, I don't care. JI LTA'I means, it's a very short word, right? JI LTA'I, but it means, anyway.

The guy's got JI LTA'I. JI LTA'I, anyway, the fire does depend on the wind. DE NYID RTOG PA MI RUNG NGO And then the guy says, no, you can't have a ladder leaning on a wall that's not there.

You can't have a ladder leaning or depending on a wall if the wall's not there. What's not there? There's no firewood there.

Why? There's no fire yet. How could it be firewood?

Maybe it's, I don't know, wood they're going to use to build a cafe when they get a permit in three years. Something like that. You don't know what the wood is yet.

Okay. All right. And then I like this picture.

And this is an old picture that we use in DCI. It's a pen, parts of a pen on a table. I hope so.

And the point here is that the resting of the pen on the desk is also not self-existent. We went through many times why it's not a pen until the seat opens in your mind. We talked about that countless times.

But now if you look at the pen resting on the table, the pen resting on the desk, that's also coming from your seat. The dependence of the pen on the part sitting on the desk is also coming from your seat. Okay.

All right. Next verse. Now some guy says, I have an option.

Why? The fire depends on the wood and it doesn't depend on the wood at the same time. How's that?

He's like getting frustrated and saying the fire doesn't depend on the wood because it's not firewood yet. And firewood needs the fire before it can be... He says, look, Nagarjuna, I have a suggestion.

Let's do both at the same time. The fire depends on the wood and it doesn't depend on the wood at the same time. How's that?

Then you're happy and I'm happy. ZHING LA STOD PA'I MED MED DE ZHING LA MA STOD MED YANG MED There's no fire that could depend on the wood and there's no fire that couldn't depend on the wood. Therefore, MED LA STOD PA'I ZHING MED DE And there's no wood that could depend on the fire and there's no wood that couldn't depend on the fire.

There's no fire that doesn't depend on wood, but there's no fire that does depend on wood. There's no wood that depends on the fire to be firewood and there's no wood that doesn't depend on the fire to be firewood. How's that?

Let's leave it like that. The other guy, you can have your cake and eat it too. Nagarjuna's answer is, ridiculous.

I tried to make a ridiculous picture. Khachi, you ready? I don't know.

I hope it's ridiculous. It's a cup on a table. I don't know.

I tried really hard on this one. The cup's on the table, but it's not on the table because the table's on the cup. At the same time, the cup is on the table and the table's on the cup.

So Nagarjuna, you don't have to struggle deciding whether the fire rests on the wood or the wood rests on the fire. How about both? Let's do both.

Unfortunately, the cup would only be one. And then it'd be difficult to make a photo of it. Almost impossible.

I think so. All right, let's go to the next verse. He splits the next verse into two.

And when he does that, there's always an important reason for that. So we're going to take half a verse, which is 13A. And it's very simple.

ME NI GZHAN LAS MI YONG STE ZHING LA'ANG ME NI YOD MA YIN And what this means is, the other guy says, you can see it. If you can see it, if you can see fire burns wood, then fire does have a nature and it burns things. Don't tell me nothing has its own nature.

You don't have to be a philosopher to see that things are not empty. They are something. They're not empty.

Fire is not empty. Why? You can see it burns wood.

If fire burns something, then you can't say it has no nature. It has a nature. What's its nature?

It burns things. Duh! You can see.

Stop hassling me. That's all. The other guy is like, open your eyes and he goes, look, I probably lit a match or something.

He said, look, the fire is burning wood. Okay, got it? Don't tell me it doesn't have a nature of its own.

Don't say the match fire is empty because it's not empty, because it's doing something. If you can see that it's doing something, it's not empty. Don't give me this empty stuff.

So that's a very, very... In Tibetan, it's MED BU BZHIN SRED PAR SNGON GSUM GYIS MTHONG BA'I NGO BO YOD DO BZHIN NA The other guy says, look, if a fire burns a piece of wood, then SNGON GSUM GYIS MTHONG BA'I if you can see it with your own eyeballs, then the fire has its own nature. Then it's not empty of any nature of its own.

Now we're going to get to Nagarjuna's answer. But first of all, he says, and there's an American English expression, seeing is believing, seeing is believing. The other guy says, look, seeing is believing.

And Nagarjuna says, let me show you a picture now. Let me show you a picture with somebody with certain glasses on. Okay, and there's an expression in American English called looking at things with rose-colored glasses.

And actually, I gave a talk once long ago and I bought a hundred pairs of these glasses and I handed them out to everybody. And I said, is the world pink? And they're all like, yes.

Yeah, I can see it's pink, so it must be. You said, if you can see something is a certain way, it must be that way. And the other guy says, yeah.

Okay, well, put on these glasses. Is everything pink? Yeah.

Is it really that way? Okay, no, yes it is, because you're seeing it. Seeing is believing.

If you see everything in the universe is pink, then it must be pink. That was your argument. Then the guy says, no, no, you messed up my eyes.

You put these pink sunglasses on me. Yeah, well, maybe without the sunglasses, your eyes are messed up. All right, maybe you're messing up everything all the time anyway.

And that's the idea. So, the Wheel of Life teaching is basically that your equipment is messed up. Your eyes are already tinted.

And you can say, fire must depend on wood because any fool can see it. Yeah, but if the way you look at things, you're always a fool. Okay, all right.

Okay, here we go to the next half of verse, I guess. ,DE BZHIN GZHING GI LHA MA NI, ,SONGS DANG MA SONGS BSGOMS PA'I BRTAN, ,DE BZHIN GZHING GI LHA MA NI, ,SONGS DANG MA SONGS BSGOMS PA'I BRTAN, Now Nagarjuna, he goes an interesting strategy. And by the way, this whole book and most of Nagarjuna's books are like a military campaign.

I saw a movie about Alexander the Great. He is so cool. I mean, he was a brutal killer, but his first great battle, I think he's got 40,000 Macedonians against a million Persians and he's 21.

And it's 20 to one. And he goes out there and he's like, okay, I got an idea. And his strategy is so cool.

He rides out with a hundred guys and they take off that way. So the soldiers are facing the soldiers. He comes out with like a hundred guys and he runs that way with his horses.

And the other general is like, where's he going? He goes, I don't know. We're supposed to go like this and fire this way.

What's he doing? He's going somewhere. You, you, you, you, you, follow him.

Find out where he's going. And then he circled around. The general was no longer protected, the Persian general.

And, like, he's got it. Now, why are we talking about that? Nagarjuna does the same thing.

He sees this whole thing as a, almost like a military campaign. And here's his next move. Here's his next move.

DE BZHIN GZHING GI LHAG MA NI LHAG MA NI means leftover, right Tim? LHAG MA means leftover. He says, look, let's just stop there about the fire and the firewood.

It's been going on too long. It's already two classes. Let's just finish it.

He says, anything else you wanted to say about the firewood, just stop. And the guy said, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait. He says, go back to SONG DANG MA SONG DGONGS.

Go back to the chapter about walking down a path, which is the second chapter. Coming and going, going and coming. He says, look, I don't have to do this whole argument with you.

I'm tired. This chapter, we got to go on to the next chapter. It's already too much time.

Let's get on to the next chapter. If you want to talk more about anything else about firewood, can you just go back and read the second chapter? Okay, again, I told you everything.

What did he tell us in the second chapter? Anybody? Remember?

Something about, there's three parts to the path. Three parts to a road. Do you remember?

There's the part you already walked on. Then there's the part you're going to walk on. And then there's the part you're walking on now.

Now, how wide is the part you're walking on now is the question. Your foot goes like, here's the path and your foot heels touches first and then your toes take off, right? Heel, foot, toe.

This part is the path you already went on. This part is the path you didn't go on. Now, exactly where is the line between those two?

Well, it must be halfway. Well, let's wait till you put your foot down. Okay, and you want to call it halfway the foot?

Yeah, yeah, okay. Well, where's the halfway point on your foot? You can't find it.

You can't really find it. Any line you draw, if you can see the line, it already has width. So it already has a part that you went on already and a part that you didn't go on already.

Okay, well split that one Geshe-la. Okay, let's split that one. And then that has width and that has part that you went on and part that you didn't go on.

And the answer is there's no part that you're walking on now. You're always either walked on something or kind of walk on something, but you're never walking on something. So if you're not walking on something, how can you ever have walked somewhere before and how come you're ever going to walk on something?

Because you're never walking. Geshe-la, it's all bullshit. You're just splitting here.

Yeah, but no, it's important. You think you're walking, but you're not. Maybe the path is moving.

Okay, maybe your mental pictures are getting bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger as you go through a door, right? Bigger, bigger, bigger door? Smaller, smaller, smaller door.

And you call it walking to a door. But maybe you're not walking to a door. Maybe your mind is making small door, big door, big door, big door, big door.

Little, little door, little door, little, little door. Maybe you're standing in the same place all the time. Okay, something like that.

Geshe-la, what's the point of all that? Well, then it means you're creating the door and you're creating the passage to the door. And that means you can go anywhere you want.

If it's coming from here, then you could walk planets. You could act out your bodhichitta. That's how you're going to be a Buddha.

Oh, if you say Medicine Buddha mantra, you become Medicine Buddha. Yeah, what's that all about? Well, then you can go to different planets and help people at the same time.

Why? Because the planet get bigger, bigger, bigger when you arrive. And the planet gets smaller, smaller, smaller when you go to the next planet.

That's all coming from your mind. Hey, why not just do it all at the same time? And then you're everywhere.

And you can help everybody at the same time. That's all. If the travel to other planets was coming from anywhere else except your seeds, it's impossible.

You can't, there's, why? There's no place you are now. Okay, got it?

It's very sexy. Because of emptiness, you can become Medicine Buddha. And if you don't understand that, you will never become Medicine Buddha.

Okay, got it? Okay, so he says, go back to what I told you before. Now, grandpa likes to take you back to the, I could just go on to the next verse, but why don't I take you back to the last verse?

We don't have it on the thing. Anyway, I went back and got, the whole second chapter is all about that walking thing. And the gardener, you can feel like he's almost impatient.

Now he wants to get on to his 11th chapter, right? And he's like, just remember what I told you about the walking thing, okay? By the way, every text I saw, or many of the texts, they misspell the walking thing.

And if you spell it wrong, it becomes meditation. And then it gets messy. So it's useful to have the Sanskrit.

Okay, all right. Which means, I don't know, I was in a mood. The picture, the next picture we're going to look at, to me, the most important application of fire is making a pizza in a fire brick oven.

Do we have any around here? Yeah? Yeah, so if you can't decide, is the fire burning the pizza, or is the pizza causing the fire to be called a fire because it gets cooked by the thing?

And I think the discussion of whether the pizza defines the fire, or the fire cooks the pizza, what's it similar to? What did Nagarjuna just say? What did he just say?

You can't find... Yeah, you can't find the now. Therefore, you cannot bake a pizza.

That's why they're parallel. That's why he wants to bring the second chapter into the 10th chapter. You can't find a place where the pizza is cooking.

In time, temporally, you cannot find a place where the pizza is done. It doesn't exist. And he's just sitting in front of the guy, and he's like, I'm so tired of this fire and agni-indhana.

The guy says, well, do you have any last words you want to give me? You can't have a pizza. Why?

There's no moment when it's done. Got it? Because the pizza doesn't depend on the fire, and the fire's not a pizza fire until the pizza's done.

Got it? I don't know why I decided to use a pizza. Hey, G, let's buy a pizza on the way home.

Okay. I'll tell you the English of the old verse, which that part I've already translated. So, first of all, having gone is not going.

Neither is not having gone, going. And yet, except for having gone and not having gone, you can never be stepping. That's part of the lines that he's talking about.

Okay. All right. Oh, and then there's another verse later on that's relevant.

And he says, fire as an example to establish seeing is not something which can. Having gone, or not gone, or stepping down offers a reply to the one who is tied to seeing. In other words, if you always believe your eyes, then I'll give you the argument about walking.

You cannot always believe your eyes. Why? I told you about the walking thing.

It looks like there's a place where you're walking, but there's not. So don't trust your eyes. That's the subject we're on right now.

Don't trust. Don't tell me the fire must depend on the wood because you can see it burns when there's wood there. And then we say, don't trust your eyes.

You also think you're walking, don't you? You also think you're walking to a door, but you never are. But my eyes tell me so.

Yeah, that's the problem. All right, and we can go to verse 14. This is a long one, I'm sorry.

I think Nagarjuna also wants to get on to the next one. Nagarjuna here, he's kind of making a review, and he says, let's look at the four possibilities here. ZHING NYID MED NI MA YIN TE ZHING LAS GZHAN LA MED YANG MED MED NI ZHING DANG LDAN PA MED MED LA ZHING MED DER DE MED Here's the four possibilities.

So Nagarjuna's kind of summarizing. Look, wood is not fire. Wood is not the fire.

Why? And by the way, I want you to think about this because the way Choney Lama does it, it's a little bit tricky. You ready?

Wood is not the fire because in that case, the agent would be the action. That makes wood the agent. So it's not that fire is burning wood.

It's that wood is feeding a fire. Who came first, the chicken or the deer? Is the fire burning the wood?

Is that what this chapter is all about? And Choney Lama says, oh, no, no. The wood is feeding the fire.

The fire is the object of the action, not the agent. The wood is feeding the fire. Then the guy says, well, I thought the fire was burning the wood.

I thought the fire was the agent and the wood was the object. Then Nagarjuna says, well, think about it. You also thought you were walking.

I'll say it again. By the way, I'm sorry we have to go so fast. We're trying to get through this book in five years.

And this is the only way. Right now, today, we are moving at one wisdom per five years. And if we move slower, it's going to be 20 years or so.

Really. Okay, here we go. And you're meant to look at these videos again and again and again until you get it.

Wood is not the fire because then the agent would be the action. When you say it that way, who's the agent? I'll say it again.

Wood is not the fire because if the wood was the fire, the agent would be the action. He's saying that fire is the object of the wood. The wood is feeding the fire.

That kind of implies the wood came first and then it's feeding the fire. And he says, I don't want you to say the fire is burning the wood. Then the fire came first and the wood came second.

Sorry. But yeah, the fire came first and the wood came second. All right, so are they the same thing?

Is the fire the wood? No. I mean, either the fire is burning the wood or the wood is feeding the fire.

But they can't really be happening at the same time. Then the second one is, is the wood separate from the fire? And he says, no, it's not.

Why? Because when you say separate from the fire, you think they never overlap. When you say Rebecca is separate from Michael, then what you mean is they're not Siamese twins somewhere.

She's over there, I'm over here. So there must be some line between them. That means they don't overlap.

They can't overlap. Well, okay, if they never overlap, then they can't have a relationship. Not possible.

If the fire never touches the wood, there can't be burning. But if it does touch the wood, then there's a place where the wood is the fire. No, no, no.

The wood's over there, the fire's over there, Geshe-la. And they touch. YAB PA, where do they touch?

Oh, they touch where there's just a spot where they touch each other. So they have to overlap in a tiny space there. If they don't, then there's always a line between them.

Then the one can't burn the other because it never touches the other. If it does touch the other, there must be some kind of overlap there. Okay, if the wood is not separate from the fire, you couldn't have the fire burning the wood because the fire is the wood.

If they're in there, okay. All right, does the fire involve the wood? No.

Is the fire completely devoid of wood? No, because then it wouldn't burn. So these are the four choices.

I'll say them again. And again, you don't have to understand it the first time. Just keep listening to it.

If you think you understood Nagarjuna the first time you read it, you must be drawn crystal. All right, wood is not the fire because then the agent of the action would be the action. Wood is not separate from the fire because if they were separate, then there couldn't be a fire.

Fire doesn't involve wood because if it did, some part of the fire would be the wood. And if you say that's ridiculous, then I say, well, okay, then water can cause fire. Why?

Because they don't touch. If fire were devoid of wood, there would be no fire. If fire had no relationship to wood, how could you have a fire?

What's really happening when fire burns wood? You have the karma to have a fire. That's all.

You have the seeds to have a fire. The wood is not causing the fire. The wood is not feeding the fire and the fire is not burning the wood.

Your seeds are opening. That's all. That's all.

That's what Nagarjuna wants you to do. That's all he wants you to understand. The fire is not burning the wood and the wood is not feeding the fire.

Your seeds are opening and you see a fire. And forget, stop thinking that the wood causes the fire or stop thinking that the fire is burning the wood. Stop thinking like that.

My seeds are opening into wood. My seeds are opening into fire. That's all.

Start trying to think like that. My seeds are opening into Medicine Buddha mantra and then my seeds are opening into the cancer is stopping. And my seeds put them together.

My seeds make them cause and effect. They are not cause and effect. They can't be cause and effect because one can't touch the other.

[Speaker 2]
Okay.

[Speaker 1]
No more than where you went and where you're going to go can ever touch.

[Speaker 2]
Okay.

[Speaker 1]
All right. Let's go to the next verse. I'm sorry.

This one's really long. ME DANG BUD ZHIG BDAG DANG NI NYE BAR LEN PA'I RIM PA KUN BUM RNAMS SOGS DANG LHAN CIG TU MA LUS PA NI RNAMS PAR ZHIG This is a pretty profound verse. He says, look, we spent all these two classes talking about wood and fire.

NI NYE BAR LEN PA'I RIM PA I want you to apply that to all actions by all people. For example, to what we had in the previous chapters, seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, feeling. There's an agent, which is your eyeball.

There's a blue color out there. The agent acts towards the object. Try, when you're struggling with understanding how you can see something, when you're struggling with understanding how a mantra works, please, just go back to the fire and the wood.

That's what he's saying. He says, use it for everything. Then he says BUM RNAMS. BUM PA, Tim knows. GA'I LAS, coffee cup. And RNAMS BU means a bolt of cloth. And he's just taking two things in the room.

The eyeglasses and the coffee. The eyeglasses and the coffee. What I said about the fire and the firewood, what I said about the eye, eyeball, and the blue color, look, it's the same with everything.

Eyeglasses, coffee cups, vases, bolt of cloth. It's the same with everything. MA LUS PAR NI RNAMS PAR BSHAD You can explain every goddamn thing in the world if you just get this fire and firewood thing straight.

What? The fire is not burning the firewood and the firewood is not feeding the fire. If you can get it, okay, then you understand everything.

Apply it to everything. I have a picture here. I was trying to think of two things in the world.

Two things in the world. I don't know, there should be a refrigerator and a car, but maybe I messed it up. Oh, there we go.

Yeah, you can apply it to everything. Refrigerators, cars, bolts of cloth. In the old days, they didn't have cars and refrigerators, so he had to say bolts of cloth and water.

Water vase is a popular example because there was no plumbing in any of the houses. You had to have a vase. So it's a good example because it's always there.

You always have one. If you've ever lived in a village in India, the kailash, the water vase or pot is a very important thing in your life. That's all your water for the day.

You walk a mile to the well, you get it, you put it on your head, you bring it home. And that's what you wash from. That's what you cook from.

That's what you, yeah. Okay, we've got another verse here. I don't know what happened.

,GANG DAG BDAG DANG DNGOS PO RNAMS, ,DE PHYIR GNYIS DANG THA DE BAR, ,RTOG PA DE DAG, Oh, this is the final verse, I think. And it's very funny. Oh, no, it's not.

Yeah, it is. Yeah, it's the final verse. Very cute.

He says, ,GANG DAG BDAG DANG DNGOS PO RNAMS, ,DE PHYIR GNYIS DANG THA DE BAR, If you think the fire and the wood are the same thing, or if you think the fire and the wood are separate, ,SKAD SONG NYAM DU MI SEMS SO, I don't think you're so smart. SKAD SONG means, Right? The Kepa, right Tim?

Like stage. If thou thinkest that the fire is the wood, or if thou thinkest that the fire and the wood are separate, I don't thinketh that thou is too smart. And that's his last word on it.

He's kind of insulting last word. Kepa. SKAD SONG NYAM means if you think you're a smart guy, MI SEMS. I don't think so. If you don't get the fire and firewood thing, then you're a fool. That's all. All right.

And if you're a fool, then you're always going to be suffering. Okay. Somehow, you're always going to be suffering.

Okay, now I thought, since we have a few minutes. Where are we at? Oh man, my computer just freaked out.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. You got a picture for me, Bachi?

I keep wanting to call you Seiji just because your name ends in a long title. Yeah. I heard Tim likes turtles, so I got a turtle picture.

I love this picture. This is an ancient belief in India that the whole universe is held up by a turtle. That the universe exists on the back of a turtle.

Now listen, if you're wrong about the turtle that holds up the world, you're wrong about everything in the world. Got it? If you think the world is being held up on a turtle's back, what's being held up on a turtle's back?

The world. How much stuff is in the world? Everything in the world.

Okay, then you're wrong about every goddamn thing in the world. Okay, got it? If you think the world exists on the back of a turtle, then how many things are you wrong about?

Everything on the back. How much is that? That's everything.

So, by the way, people are always bringing me books all the time. You don't know. And I don't know why they, especially when I leave a city or a country, they always give me some book at the airport.

And it's like, oh Geshe-la, read this. It's just like what you teach. I'm like, I don't think so.

But I'm always polite. I take the book. And I have a game I play with myself while I'm waiting at the passport line.

I open the book at one sentence and I look at it. And if it's not ridiculous, I might read another page. But if the one sentence is ridiculous, then when I get through customs, and I make sure the people aren't looking at me anymore, and then I throw it out.

I throw the book out. And then my friends are like, Geshe-la, why don't you give it to the charity store when you get home? No, I don't want to, because it's totally wrong.

I don't want to be responsible for someone else getting a stupid idea in their mind that's going to cause them suffering for the rest of their life. No, the only thing you can do with this book is toss it. And hope that the garbage guy doesn't read it.

I'm not being sectarian. I'm just saying, if Nagarjuna is correct so far, then everything we know, everything that was taught to me at Princeton University was wrong, everything. It was all on the back of a turtle.

The basic premise was wrong. Everything about it was wrong. One thing can cause another.

That's wrong. Okay, then all science, all philosophy, all music, all art, everything is wrong. Got it?

Everything. If you think the world's on the back of a turtle, then everything you think about the world is wrong. On a basic level, on a basic level.

All right, so don't give me a book unless it agrees with Nagarjuna. Because I'm not interested. All right, and don't say it's just like what I teach because it's not just like what I teach.

It really frustrates me. All right, we're going to do a little Sanskrit lesson. Don't think this is useless.

When you become a Buddha, you speak Sanskrit. So come on, learn a few words now. It'll get your mind ready for later.

So apeksha, say apeksha. Apeksha. Now this is an interesting word because, Christina, when a Sanskrit word starts with a, it's a negative.

But here it's not. And it's very confusing. So it's not a peksha.

It's apa-iksha. Yeah, okay, got it? So yeah, so it's not a peksha, like avidya, ignorance, not knowing.

It's not a peksha. It's apa-iksha. So don't get confused.

What's that mean in Tibetan? It's dukpa. What's dukpa mean?

Depend on the wall. The ladder depends on the wall. The fire depends on the wood.

And the wood depends on the fire. Dependent origination. They both depend on your seeds.

It's not that the fire's depending on the wood. And it's not that the wood's depending on the fire. They are both depending on your brain and your seed.

Got it? So dependence becomes crucial. The word apeksha becomes crucial.

Now it's so beautiful. Apa means away. And away comes from apa.

Iksha means, you had pariksha? To see, nice. So you're looking to someone else for help.

Hey, Christina, I need some fingernail clippers. And I look away from myself to you. It's called looking away from yourself to another person because you need something.

You're depending on, I'm depending on Christina for the fingernail clippers just a few minutes ago. So that's called apa, iksha. Looking over there for help.

Looking for what you need. Hey, Jigme, can you get me a pizza? I'm depending on you.

Apeksha, apeksha. I'm looking away to you. Got it?

Okay, we had iksha already when we did pariksha. Yeah, and then an investigation. Looking into someone, looking around, looking around, digging around.

Yeah, and don't forget. By the way, okay, Tim, you'll be interested. The only one.

This is the Tibetan word is LTOS. L-T-O-S. LHAG LTA LTAR NA RTOGS LA LTOS What's the root of that?

For $50. Wait, you look in here. He's too honored.

LTA BA, which means to look. So the root of the Tibetan word is the same as the root of the Sanskrit word. When you say dependent origination in Tibetan, you're saying look to somebody else.

Got it? The same root, LT. LHAG LTA LTAR NA RTOGS LA LTOS Okay, cool.

All right, that's your Sanskrit lesson. I'm sorry, that's a tough chapter. That's maybe the toughest class we're going to have, maybe.

So don't get discouraged. Look at it again and again and again. I spent, I don't know, almost 30 years trying to figure this stuff out.

So don't get frustrated. Just keep coming back to it. And each time you come back, you'll understand a little more.

I say, you can't really do mantras if you don't understand this stuff. You can. I mean, obviously anybody can do mantras.

But if you want them to be powerful, you have to understand this stuff. All right, see you guys later.