Нагарджуна, курс 3 — Мудрость Арьи Нагарджуны, курс 3: Пустота мантры (2021, Аризона), занятие 5

[Speaker 1]
Hi, welcome back to Nagarjuna, Arya Nagarjuna. And we're moving on to chapter 11. Look, the chapter 10 was tough.

That fire and firewood thing is so tough. I mean, does the fire make the firewood? Or does the firewood make the fire?

And I'm happy to say that we're moving on to a chapter where the first verse is easier. MA YIN RGAG Okay, so this chapter is called SNGON DANG CI THA BTAG PA So BTAG PA in Tibetan means pariksha, means an investigation, right? And then SNGON DANG CI THA means, is there a front end on samsara and is there a back end on samsara?

And that's a very intriguing question. Okay, I call the chapter name An Investigation of a First Beginning or a Final Ending to Things. Is there a first beginning and is there a final ending to things?

So we're going to talk about that. I think if you're bored and you want to go deeper, I think it's very interesting to try to see why he went in this order. It seems like he's just throwing stuff out almost without logic.

But I think there's a deeper logic. If you could understand why the 27 go in the order they do, maybe you could understand Nagarjuna's mind somehow. And again, Choney Lama, as you remember from our first session, way back two years ago, he just mixes it all up.

He says, oh, the real order is like chapter 18 first. All right, here's the first verse in chapter 11. LON MTHA' MNGON NAMS SHES ZHUGS TSE Okay, let's just talk about that first line.

It's very beautiful. LON MTHA' means a first beginning to samsara, a first beginning to our time in this universe. Was there a point where you and me first came into this universe?

Was there a beginning point of Michael or Pachi or Tim or Rebecca or Bala? Was there a first... Was there a beginning point?

ZHUGS TSE means when they asked him, when they asked him, who? They asked Buddha. When his disciples asked Buddha, ZHES, quote Mark, is there a first beginning to things?

Was there a first beginning to things? ZHUGS TSE, past tense ZHUGS, to make a request or to ask. ZHUGS TSE Now, I think it's fascinating that they didn't say YOD.

Okay, Tim, for a hundred bucks. Oh, yeah, a hundred bucks. Why didn't they say to Buddha, is there a first beginning to things?

They said, is the first beginning to things evident? What is it? NGON, like Abhidharma.

It means visible or manifest. They didn't ask Buddha, is there a first beginning to the universe or to our career in the universe? Is there a beginning which is NGON, which is evident?

Yeah, good, a hundred dollars for Rebecca. Okay, a hundred bucks for Rebecca. It means, can you see?

You see, they didn't say, is there a beginning? They said, can you close your eyes and just check for us? Is it NGON?

It's very sexy to me that Nagarjuna chose this verb. Can you see a beginning? Which means, is there?

But they didn't say, is there? They said, can you see a beginning? All right, ZHUGS TSE, THUB PA CHEN POS, the Great Able One, meaning the Buddha, Mahamuni, right?

MIN, nope, nope. I can't see any beginning to all this myth. It's beginning myth, all right?

KHOR BA NGON DANG LTA MA'I DE There's no first beginning of samsara circle and there's no... LTA MA'I means there's no end either. Okay, now that's something we got to talk about.

DE LA, then they said, why not? And he said, well, nothing has a front end and a back end and a middle. Don't ask me if your career in samsara had a beginning and a past, had a first beginning and a final end.

Why? Because nothing has a front end and nothing has a back end and nothing has a middle. DE LA NGON DANG, but he doesn't say it that way.

He says, GANG LA THOB MA THA MED PA Anything that doesn't have a front end and a back end, U KHA LA YOD, U KHA LA YOD Then how could it have a middle? If the place you're going, if the road you're going to travel is infinite, if the road you have traveled is infinite, I don't know, where's the middle? Where are you going to put the middle?

He's like, come on, where's the middle? And I don't know, I like this picture of a ribbon. Somehow it suggests to me the difficulty of defining a beginning.

It's just, I don't know, I just saw this picture and I thought, oh wow, that's the one I want. There's no middle place on an endless line. All right, let's go to the next verse.

Sorry. DE PHYIR DE LA SNGA PHYI DANG, LHAN GCIG RIM PA MI THA DOR This SNGA PHYI means earlier and later, but Choney Lama explains that Nagarjuna has now gone on to your lifetimes. Your lifetimes.

There's no earlier lifetime and there's no later lifetime. There's also no place, LHAN GCIG means where the two meet. Here it means where the two meet.

There's no place where all your past lives meets all your future lives. There's no place where you are living now. There's no place you're going to live in your future lives.

There's no place you have lived in your past lives. And there's no meeting point between your past lives and your future lives. All right, so don't ask me about a beginning.

By the way, did he really say no? Do you remember? LUNG MA BSTAN CHU BZHI Fourteen LUNG MA BSTAN, fourteen unanswered questions.

I believe this is one of them, or two of them, I don't know. Okay, he refused to answer. And then later his disciples said, why you refuse to answer a question?

He said, any answer I give, they're going to misunderstand it. It's better to keep my mouth shut. That applies to talking to a pram, right?

It's not like that. Anything you say is going to be twisted. Just don't say anything.

All right, yeah, and I don't know, I found this other picture, a khekpa chi of a guy with a rope. And yeah, it means the beginning is almost undefinable and the end is undefinable. That's okay.

No, it's worse than that. The middle is also undefinable. You can't find the present moment.

All right, it's bad enough that your lifetimes have no beginning, and it's bad enough that your lifetimes have no end. But by the way, there's no place where you are between those two. Okay, all right.

That's why the rope is unraveling. Get it? Okay, all right.

All right, we're going to go on to, it's kind of a denial of past lives and future lives. Technically, it's called that. ,GAL TE SKYE BA SNGA RGYUR LA, ,RGA SHI PHYI MA YIN NA NI, So which came first, your birth or your aging and death?

Okay, in one, put it together. Which came first, your birth or your aging and death? Which came first?

,GAL TE SKYE BA SNGA RGYUR LA, If your birth came first, ,RGA SHI PHYI MA YIN NA NI, and then your aging and death came later, ,SKYE BA RGA SHI MED PA DANG, then you should be able to have a birth with no aging and death. Because in the early part, it has to stand by itself. If you can have a birth with no getting old and dying, sorry, if birth came before getting old and dying, then birth can be self-standing.

And it doesn't have to depend on getting old and dying. So if you say, my rebirth into this world came first, then I got old in this world and died. He says, no, okay, if that's the way it happened, then SKYE BA RGA SHI MED PA DANG, then you can have a rebirth that doesn't have dying, sorry, getting old and dying.

,MA ZHIG PA YANG SKYE BA RGYUR, And you could be born without dying. ,MA ZHIG BAR, Without dying, you could be born. If being born comes before getting old and dying, then you could have a being born without an aging and dying, and you could live without getting old and dying.

Are they interdependent? Does one depend on the other? That's the question.

,GAL TE SKYE BA GCI GYUR LA, Then the guy says, the guy is like a perfect fall guy. He always gives the right, wrong answer. And he says, oh, oh, SKYE BA GCI GYUR LA.

The birth comes after aging and death. ,RGA SHI SNGA BA YIN NA, And aging and death come first, and then you die and you get reborn. So rebirth is not first.

Getting old and dying comes first. Then you have a rebirth. ,SKYE BA MED PA'I RGA SHI NI, ,RGYUD MED PAR NI JI LTAR GYUR, Okay, good.

So in the beginning of that process, when there's just getting old and dying, that doesn't depend on anything. You can get old and die without being born. Why?

Being born comes later. Okay, so you can get old and die without being born. Why?

You said that being born comes later. He can't change his story. He can't say being born comes before getting old and dying because he said being born comes after getting old and dying.

Okay, got it? All right. He started out with getting born comes first and getting old and dying comes later.

But then there was a problem that you could get born and never die. Okay, because it would be by itself and then you'd have to. All right, and we have a birth here.

I don't know. I was looking for a baby to be born. Oh, there it is.

My grandson, Maitri. And a birth with a birth would have no death. A birth that was just a birth would have no death.

He came out like that, by the way. He was like, already looks like Rodin's stinker. Did you ever see that Pachi in Paris, that Rodin, his estate?

That's awesome. And the guy is up there. Okay.

All right, that's Maitri. All right, here we go. Next verse.

,SKYE BA DANG NI RGA SHI DAG, ,KHYEN GCIG RUNG BA MA YIN TE, ,SKYE BZHIN PA NI CI RGYUR BZHIN, ,GNYIS RGA RGYUS MED CAN DU RGYUR, Then the guy, again, he's trying to get out of the problems. And he says, you know what? You're born and get old and die at the same time.

Don't say one came before the other, because when you say one came before the other, there's all these problems. Then the one that came before the other would have to not depend on the other. So I'll tell you what, both at the same time.

You're born and you die at the same time. Then Nagarjuna says, ,KHYEN GCIG RUNG BA MA YIN TE, That's not right. ,SKYE BZHIN PA NI CI RGYUR BZHIN, Then a baby coming out of the womb would be dying at the same moment.

Not possible. ,GNYIS RGA RGYUS MED CAN DU RGYUR, And since neither came first, they would both be causeless. There would be no born before getting old and dying, and there'd be no getting old and dying that caused you to be reborn, because they were happening at the same time.

Therefore, both would be causeless. By the way, anytime something's causeless, there's a problem. What?

It could pop up anywhere all the time. Oh, look, there's death. Oh, look, there's everything.

It'd be happening. Boop, boop, boop, boop. All right.

Can being born and dying happen at the same time picture? Yeah, I don't know. Ooh, let's skip to the next one.

Brannigan's looking at my shoulder. What are you doing with that picture? Okay.

She gave up a long time ago trying to figure out why I spend all day finding weird pictures. All right. Here we go, next one.

,GANG LA SNGA PHYI LHAN CIG GI, ,RIM PA DE DAG MI SRID PAS, ,SKYE BA DANG NI RGA SHI DE, ,CI'I PHYIR NA GRUB PA BYED, This is very, very, very interesting to me. Look, so birth can come before getting old and dying, right? Right.

And getting old and dying can come before being born. Right. And we said they can't happen at the same time, right?

Right. So they're misipa, right? What's misipa, Tim?

Remember? So they're impossible, right? And the guy says, yeah, they're impossible.

Then the guardsman says, well, why the hell you keep talking about being born and dying and getting old? CI'I PHYIR, why you make up this crap? Okay, GRUB PA means, now we're going to talk about GRUB PA.

GRUB PA means, why you make up all this stuff? Why you keep coming up with weird stuff? Oh, first I was born and then I got old and dead.

No. Oh, I got old and dead and then I got born again. No.

Oh, they happen at the same time. No, no, no. Then why you keep thinking up this weird stuff?

So weird stuff, thinking up weird stuff, there's a special verb, GRUB PA. And I wanted to talk about it because to me it's very interesting. What's the Sanskrit for thinking up weird stuff?

What's the verb? Here we go. We're going to go to the Sanskrit, I guess, which is PRAPANCHA, PRAPANCHA.

And it's weird and you're not going to be comfortable with it. No, it's hard to find. And there's a lot of things it could be.

So PRA means forward, right? Like the probable or proud person or forward. Okay, so the PRA part is easy.

The hard part is punch. And it can have several meanings. What's PRAPANCHA?

Yeah, fine. PRAPANCHA means five. PRAPANCHA means five.

And then it came into German as fump. PRAPANCHA is the fump. And then it came into English as five.

What is it in Spanish? Oh, I forget that. It probably is, that's a weird thing, which probably means it was kavanch before, but that's a long story.

So PRAPANCHA, I take it to be like this, look. And the many comes from the one. So why you keep making up stuff?

Why you keep making up stuff when there's nothing there? Why you CHOS PA? CHOS PA means that also.

Or, okay, PACH, do you know PACH, like pachi? The verb in Sanskrit, PACH means to cook, to cook something. And it used to be PEC BA, and then that came into kitchen and kuchina.

And VIPAKA, VIPAKA means when your karma is cooked. That means karmic ripening. The Sanskrit word for karmic ripening is super cook.

VIPAKA, VIPACH. So anyway, that cooking can also have the feeling of setting the dishes out on the table. Like setting a meal up for a person.

So again, it's just the idea of why did you make up this feast? Why you keep making up birth, aging, death? Why you keep telling me this?

Why you keep making up this stuff? Like presenting a meal. Yeah, that too, yeah.

There's also another meaning to the Sanskrit, which is PEC. And PEC in Indo-European means to be pretty, to be beautiful. And it comes from a verb for combing sheep.

And combing your hair and making yourself beautiful. So it's called PEC. PEC also means to pick out hair from a sheep and to make it sheep beautiful.

And that PEC came into the word fight. And that's why there's a G-H in fight, which means pulling somebody's hair. And there's a kind of shell called pectin, which looks like a fan.

And so again, you get this idea of creating reality from a single point in many different versions. Why are we discussing this verb? Yeah, the Garjuna says, come on, I'm tired of it.

Quit pecking. Quit pecking on me. Like, leave it alone, all right?

Why do you keep making up this different thing? Oh, what's this? I'm sorry I haven't been eating.

Since I haven't been eating, since I haven't been eating. Just stop making up crap, okay? It doesn't.

This is all your pachyate. All right. Stop the Sanskrit lesson.

The difference between making something out of nothing and making something out of something. And that's a magician here. And I chose this picture because there is a DRIB PA, which is legal.

Like the Garjuna's accusing the guy of making up false things. Beginning to things, end to things, middle, stop making up stuff. But then if you're in the Garjuna, he'd say, but by the way, you do always make up stuff.

Yeah, but at least if you know what you're doing, you're not making it up that bad. So yeah, we are creating reality. And there's a verb in Tibetan, RIGS SU BYAS PA, which means to separate hairs, which means to define reality.

And that you are doing. You are PHAD DKA'I, pachy. You are creating reality.

You are drawing lines and oh, this is where Tim starts. This is where Tim's computer starts. You are making those lines.

But that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about your human need to say there was a beginning to your lifetimes and that there is a final lifetime. There's not.

Your mind goes on infinitely and it has no beginning and no end. And philosophically, you cannot find the present moment. All right, although it feels like there's one.

Okay, next verse. If you're not confused yet, you haven't been listening. ,GCOR BA BA ZHIG SNGON GYI MTHA' YOD MA YIN PAR, ,MA ZAD KYIS, ,RGYUD DANG BRJED PA NYID DANG NI, ,TSE NYID DANG NI, ,GZHAN ZHIG NYID, ,MTSOR DANG TSOR BA NYID DANG NI, ,DOD NYAD GANG DAG CI YANG RUNG, ,SNGON RNAMS THAMS CAD KYI, ,GNYIS LA YANG SNGON GYI MTHA' NYID YOD MA YIN, Look, COR BA BA ZHIG means it's not just samsara that's the problem.

Okay, BA ZHIG means only. Last chapter in the Yoga Sutra, $50. It's called BA ZHIG PA, the one and only.

Kaivalya, Kaivalya. The oldest yoga center in India is called Kaivalya. The center for the one and only beginning of all things or something like that, Kaivalya.

And it became a synonym for emptiness in the Yoga Sutra. The one and only, BA ZHIG. What's it doing here, Geshe-la?

Stop getting distracted. COR BA BA ZHIG means, look, it's not just samsara that doesn't have a beginning and an end. MA ZAD means it's not only that.

RGYUD DANG BRAL BA NYID DANG NI You cannot point to a first cause. You cannot point to a final result. MTSAN NYID DANG NI, MTSAN ZHIG NI You cannot point to a first mental picture of something and you can't point to the first thing that matched that mental picture.

Definition and definition. TSOR DANG TSOR BA NYID DANG NI You cannot point to the first feeling that was ever felt. You cannot point to the first feeling that was ever felt.

Every feeling felt something and everything that was felt came from a previous feeling. DANG NYID GANG DAG CI YANG RUNG DANG NYID means it's something which has meaning, but it means substantial or something concrete. You can't point to anything in the universe.

GANG DAG CI YANG RUNG SNGON NAMS THAMS CAD NYID LA YANG SNGON GYI MTHA' MI YOD MA YIN There is no beginning to any experience in the universe. Forget it. Nagarjuna's like, don't ask me.

Don't ask Buddha, did your past lives have a beginning? Why? Because when you hurt your finger, it didn't have a beginning either.

So forget your universe. Like, pick your nose. It didn't have a beginning either.

Stop asking me. Stop making up this stuff. So this verse is about, look, samsara doesn't have any beginning, but neither does cause and effect, neither does definition, neither does sensation.

Nothing has a beginning. That's Nagarjuna. When was the first mantra?

When did the mantra begin? When did the cancer start to get healed? By the mantra.

And if you don't understand those things, it's not going to work as well. All right. Oh, but it's too difficult to understand those things.

Or my grandmother will never understand it, Geshe-la. Just let her do the mantras. That's okay.

If your grandma is 95, I have a lady I take care of. This is our conversation. I'll say, hi, how you doing?

She'll say, mine, how are you? I'll say, fine. She'll say, what are you up to?

I'll say, I've been filming stuff with Pachi and Tim. And then she'll go, oh, that's nice. Oh my, what are you up to nowadays?

She'll just ask me the same question over and over again. And it's interesting, me and Veronica read a book about how to answer older people. And it said, never say, you asked me that 10 times today already, because they already feel bad about being old and not remembering anything.

So never get impatient. Just answer nicely. And then that book said, how you answer nicely is a sign of your mental health.

I'm like, you can change and make more interesting. Oh, me and Pachi went out for pizza and we had a... And then the third time she asked me, you can say, oh, me and Rebecca came from LA.

I said, wow. So why am I saying that? I don't remember.

[Speaker 2]
Don't teach your grandma mantras.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, yeah, yeah. If someone is that far gone, okay, just teach him a mantra. Tell him to do the mantra.

Don't try to explain how the mantra works. I believe that. If a person's over 95, don't explain the mantra.

In my opinion, before that, always explain the mantra because it will work better. So unless their mind is that far gone, and by the way, even a 95-year-old, if you try to explain emptiness to them, you can get some really sexy results. You can get some amazing results.

My mom, my own mother, my stepmother, I was visiting her and she said, I said, well, let's go out for lunch. She said, I can't. And I said, why?

And she said, I got a yoga class. And I'm like, what? You're doing yoga?

She's 94, right? She's doing chair yoga or something like that. I said, wow, that's so great, Mom.

I didn't know you're doing yoga. She said, I've been doing yoga for 30 years, every day. And I'm like, oh my gosh, I didn't know that.

How'd you get started in yoga? You taught me my first class, you forgot. And then I never stopped.

And I just didn't know. So it can be a surprise. You can try to explain the deeper meaning of how mantra works.

Like the only person you can't explain it to is if they're like totally 100 years old or something. But anybody else will benefit from some explanation of what's going on with the mantra. All right.

No beginning, no middle to all these things. And we have an infinity sign. It's just to make the class more interesting for you.

It looks like a car or something on a car. But don't try to find the starting point. Don't try to find where you're at now.

Okay? There isn't any, by itself. All right, let's go ahead.

Oh, oh my gosh, we finished the class. Is that possible? That was a short one, right?

By the way, that's the whole chapter, I'm sorry. Is it? Am I crazy?

Oh, no, I am. No, I'm not crazy. That's all.

That's all. Don't try to find it. Look, do your past lives have a beginning?

No. Do your past lives have a final end? No.

Why are we talking about that? Because nothing else does either. This class doesn't have an end.

This class doesn't have beginning. This class doesn't have a halfway point from its own side. If you see this class end suddenly, it's because your seeds ran out.

Nothing has an end of its own. Nothing has a beginning of its own.