Нагарджуна, курс 3 — Мудрость Арьи Нагарджуны, курс 3: Пустота мантры (2021, Аризона), занятие 6

[Speaker 1]
Hi, welcome back to Nagarjuna and the emptiness of the Medicine Buddha. And we've reached the next chapter, which is chapter 12. Don't forget, our goal is to finish 27 chapters in five years, and this is the third year, and we're making good progress.

We're already to the 12th chapter. And again, this is a pariksha, which means what? Investigation.

And this time we're going to investigate dukkha.

[Speaker 2]
Suffering.

[Speaker 1]
Suffering, yay. So I don't know about you, but you feel like, oh, finally he got to the subject. I would like to investigate all the mess in my life, all the messes in my life, I would like to investigate and find out why they're happening.

So like, wow, why did this COVID come? Why is my partner grumpy sometimes? Why is my dog peeing in the house?

And stuff, big things like that. So this is called ,BDAG GIS BYAS PA DANG BZHIN GYIS BYAS PA BTAG PA, which means an examination of investigation of is the pain, the trouble in my life, is it coming from me, or is it coming from something else? And the me here is BDAG.

So that can also mean, does the pain in my, does the trouble in my life come from the trouble in my life, or does it come from something else? Does the trouble in my life come from itself or from something else? Okay, I'll say it again.

Do the problems in my life come from the problems in my life, or do they come from something else? And then actually, Nagarjuna splits it into two. Do the problems in my life come from the problems in my life, or do they come from something else?

And who gives me the problems in my life? Is it me, or is it somebody else? Who gives me trouble?

Is it always me giving myself trouble? So we're discussing self and other in two different contexts. Does the pain cause itself, or does something else cause the pain?

Do I cause myself pain? Do I pain myself, or does someone else pain me? Okay, so those are the questions that we're going to explore in chapter 12.

Let's go to the first verse. ,GA GCIG SDUG BSNGAL BDAG GIS BYAS, ,CHEN GYIS BYAS DANG GNYIS SKYES BYAS, ,RGYIS MED PAR LAS BYUNG BA RNAMS DUG, ,DE NAS BYANG BAR MI ROL, Then Nagarjuna gives you four options about does pain cause itself? Okay, forget me or you.

That's not what we're talking about in the first part. We're talking about does the trouble in my life cause the trouble in my life? Or does something else than the trouble in my life cause the trouble in my life?

And Nagarjuna starts out and he says, you know, this question is discussed by four different groups of people. There's four philosophical schools in ancient India, 2,000 years ago, who have an opinion on this question. GA GCIG means different people say different things.

What? First choice. Some of them say SDUG BSNGAL BDAG GIS BYAS.

You know, the trouble in my life comes from the trouble in my life. That's the first opinion, from itself. Now, second opinion, GZHAN GYIS BYAS.

What's that? Yeah, because somebody else, something other than the trouble in my life causes the trouble in my life. That's the second opinion.

Third opinion, GNYIS SKYES BYAS NI. It's both of you guys. The suffering, the trouble in your life causes the trouble in your life, and there's things that aren't the trouble in your life that also bring you trouble in your life.

At the same time. Third choice. Oh, GYUD MED.

Yeah, neither one. Nothing causes the trouble in your life. It just happens.

GNAS BYUNG BA BRDOD. DE NI BYA BAR MI RUNG NGO. Hey, you're all wrong.

Wait a minute, one of them has to be right. There's only four possibilities. He says, nope.

And I think this is a good place to learn some Sanskrit. So in different parts of these classes, we've been learning different kinds of Sanskrit, and there's some Sanskrit right here, which I thought it would be useful to throw it in right away. And that is, by itself, by something else, by both, by neither.

Let's learn the Sanskrit for those four possibilities. Then let's learn the Sanskrit for trouble in your life, because that's how we spend our life. So here's the Sanskrit.

The first one, Svayam kirtah. Svayam kirtah. Svayam means came from itself.

Kirtah means made. The trouble in your life. Svayam kirtah.

Comes from itself. The trouble in your life comes from itself. In Tibetan, DAG GIS BYAS.

It comes from itself. This Svayam in Sanskrit has pieces like SU and AYA. And SU means yourself.

And AYA makes it a noun, self, selfness. And we see this SU in English when we say suicide. Side means to kill.

And SU means yourself. Self comes from SU. And solitary comes from SU.

So all of those words come from this Svayam. Also the Indo-European is Svay. And that came into self and secret.

So all of these words meaning self. Kirtah. Kirtah comes from a verb kar, which means to do.

And that's the root of the word karma. And kar just in general means to do something. English cognates are serial, create, and karma.

Serial. There's a time in history when C changed to S. Sam.

And originally it was ka. So create and then serial. All right, so these all mean to make.

All right. Now the second option is that things are bada kirtah. Bada kirtah.

Oh, then the trouble in my life comes from something other than the trouble in my life. Or the trouble in my life is caused by someone else other than me. Second choice.

Bada just means somebody else. Other guys. All right.

Third choice. Dvabhyang kirtah. Dvabhyang kirtah.

The trouble in my life comes from both me and other people. Or by itself and from other things. Both.

Dvab means two. That's why the number two has a W in it. And the W is the B in bicycle, for example, in the word divide.

Okay. Or the fourth choice is ahetuka. Ahetuka.

Hetu means cause. Ah. Not.

Okay. Ga means made by. Yeah, not made by causes.

Ahetuka. Okay. So the last possibility is that the trouble in your life just comes to you at random.

There's, you know, it's not brought about by you or by other people. It doesn't come from itself. It doesn't come from something else.

I like this word dukham. I mean, I don't like dukham, but I like the word dukha. Du stands for D-U-S.

The S changes to H in this context. And so dus means bad. I don't know.

Did you call people dusbag in your high school? I'm sorry. Okay, forget that.

Dus means bad. And it came into English as D-Y-S. I think to the Greek, right?

Dysfunctional or disease. And then the kha means the open hub of a wheel. And traditionally dukha is explained as meaning a squeaky wheel.

You know, they say what? The squeaky wheel makes the most noise. Oh yeah.

Yeah. Anyway, troublesome people make the most noise. Something like that.

So dukha is traditionally explained as being a bad connection on your wheel, on your cart. And then it goes, Okay. Kha is also found in Indo-European as G-H-I, G-H-I.

And that means, God. It means to yawn or to gape with your mouth. So dukha basically is just a big bad mouth.

And it means trouble. Where does the dukha, where does the trouble in my mind come from? Is it svayankirtam?

Svayankirta, does it come from me somehow? Parakirta, does it come from somebody else somehow? Dvabhyankirta, does it come from me and other people?

Or is it ahetuka? Or does it just happen? Things happen.

All right, that's the chapter that we're going to be looking at. Let's go to the next verse. ,GAL TE BDAG GIS BYAS GYUR NA, ,DE PHYIR BRTAN NAS BRJUNG MI RGYUR, ,GANG PHYIR PHUNG PO DE DAG LA BRTAN NAS ,GANG PHYIR PHUNG PO DE DAG RANG BYUNG, When we're discussing the possibility that pain has come from pain itself, Nagarjuna says, what I mean is, did the mortal falling apart body that you have and mind that you have now, did that come from a mortal falling apart body and mind in the past life? That's what it means when he says suffering causes suffering itself. Is it the nature of your body and mind to suffer?

And let's look at the possibility that your body and mind, which are falling apart and you can't stop it normally. And it's funny the things that people do to try to stop it. I think half the things we try to do to stop the suffering, the falling apart of our body and mind, they just accelerate the falling apart of our body and mind.

Anyway, GAL TE, he says here, so Nagarjuna says, when I talk about pain coming from pain, what I'm really talking about is what caused your body and mind right now that's falling apart? And let's look at the first possibility that it's coming from the same thing in the past. You had a body and mind that was falling apart and then it created a body and mind that's falling apart.

So here we go. GAL TE BDAG GIS BYAS RGYUR NA If the problems you have in your life are coming from the problems in your life, DE'I PHYIR BRTEN NAS BYUNG MI RGYUR Then we can say that it did not come about by depending on something else. If the trouble in your life has been caused by the trouble in your life, then we can say there's no dependence there.

It's not like the trouble in your life has to depend on trouble in your life because it's already trouble in your life. GANG PHYIR PHUNG PO DE DAG LA BRTEN NAS PHUNG PO DE DAG BYUNG Actually, I should say that even when you say suffering, now Nagarjuna is correcting the guy. I would say though, that if you have a body and mind that's falling apart, it's a sign that you had a body and mind that was falling apart before.

So maybe last life you had a body and mind that was falling apart. You did things, you did not so nice things because your body and mind was falling apart. And then now in this life, your body and mind is falling apart.

So falling apart causes falling apart. That's okay. And then, by the way, he says, in that case, if pain causes pain, then could you have come from your death?

And he says, no. It's not correct to say that the falling apart body and mind of your last life caused the falling apart body and mind of this life, because the body and mind falling apart in this life started. And that one was ending.

So if they're the same thing, they wouldn't have a cause and effect. I could not have come from my death. I cannot come from my death.

Picture. ,GANG NI PHYIR NA CI DU GYI SDUG BSNGAL GYI PHUNG PO ,DI DAG LA BRTEN NAS SKYE BA'I PHYAR RTOG PA'I PHUNG PO ,DE DAG BYUNG BA'I PHYIR, ,SDUG BSNGAL DE PHYIR CHEN, ,SDUG BSNGAL RANG YON NA RANG GIS KYIS MI DGOS BZHIN ,DE NA RANG GIS KYIS MI MI PA'I PHYIR If your suffering body and mind came from your past suffering body and mind, then since your past body and mind were already suffering, they didn't have to create more suffering because they were already suffering.

Nobody made them suffering. The cause was suffering, so the result was suffering, so no new suffering was made. No new suffering was made.

,SDUG BSNGAL RANG YON NA RANG GIS KYIS MI DGOS If your nature is to suffer, then no one has to make you suffer. ,ZHING MED NA RANG GIS KYIS MI NGES If your nature is to suffer, then you don't have to do anything. You're going to suffer anyway.

If your nature is not to suffer, and you try to make yourself suffer, you couldn't do it anyway. If your nature is not to suffer, then nothing could make you suffer. If your nature is to suffer, then nobody would have to make you suffer because you're already suffering.

[Speaker 2]
All right.

[Speaker 1]
Next verse, ,GAL TE DI LAS DE GZHAN ZHING ,GAL TE DE LAS DI GZHAN NA, ,SDUG BSNGAL GZHAN GYIS BYAS GYUR ZHING, ,GZHAN DE DAG GIS DE BYAS GYUR Okay, this is how Choney Lama reads this one. ,GAL TE DI LAS DE GZHAN ZHING If your nature is to suffer, if the body and mind falling apart that you took in this life was coming from body and mind at your last death, which is GZHAN. GZHAN means, is the falling apart body and mind of this life, is it your body and mind falling apart in your last life, yes or no?

Is your body and mind falling apart in this life, your body and mind falling apart in your last life? Are they the same thing? No, they're the same experience, but one happens first and then the other one happens, right?

So can we say that the falling apart of your body and mind in this life is different from the body, from the falling apart of your body and mind in your past life? Is it different things? Yeah, they're different things.

GAL TE DE LAS DI GZHAN NA If they were really different things, SDUG BSNGAL GZHAN GYIS BYAS GYUR ZHING GZHAN DE DAG GIS DE BYAS GYUR Then you could say, if they were different, maybe you could say that the falling apart of your body and mind in your last life has caused the falling apart of your body and mind in this life. That's okay. If you had a body and mind falling apart in your last life, so you did mean things to other people to try to fix your falling apart body and mind, then you get a new falling apart body and mind.

Are those the same body and mind or are they different body and mind? So they're different, right? They have to be, okay?

Then they never touch. They never make contact. So how can two things that never make contact affect each other?

If you play a shoot a billiard ball and it hits another billiard ball, there has to be a point of contact, right? And the motion of the first ball creates the motion of the second ball. If your past life's suffering body and mind impelled your present life's suffering body and mind, then they should have made contact at some point.

But if things exist the way you think they do outside of your seeds, they can never make contact. They cannot make... We already went through that.

It's like your foot on the... Where's the middle part of your foot? Where does the past meet the present?

Where does the past meet the future? There cannot be contact between two things if they are self-existently separate. If they exist by themselves, from their own side, they cannot make contact because they would have to overlap, and they can't.

If they did overlap, then your past life would be your present life for a little time. They can't touch. There's nowhere where they can touch.

There's no place where they can touch. If your past life touched your present life, then the place where they touch would be both your present life and your past life. And that's not possible.

They have to be separate. If they're completely separate like that, then by the time your past life messed up body and mind... Sorry.

If it's still there, you haven't died yet. And you can't have a future body and mind yet. If you have a future body and mind, then your past body and mind already died.

A thing which is already gone cannot have a relationship with something that's here. Not possible. Something that came the moment before can never cause something which is here now because there's no time for them to touch.

Either the past thing would have to be, have his toe in the present, or the present thing would have to have the edge of his bottom in the past. Somebody would have to cross the line for them to touch. Got it?

And it's not possible. It's not possible. Don't blame something else for causing your current suffering.

It can't be. If it's gone, it can't do anything. If it's not gone, you're still in your past life.

All right. All right. I have a picture here, finger and a cactus.

All right. This is different from the other finger and cactus picture. Why there's not, there's a space between the finger and the cactus.

If things never touch each other, you can't get hurt. If your finger never touches the cactus, you can't get hurt. And the fact is that you can't, your finger, your present suffering cannot touch the cactus.

It can't touch your past life suffering. Not possible. Cannot.

Rebecca, if they never touch, can one hurt the other? No, if they never touch, then one cannot cause the other. Now, if you like, insist.

Yeah, my current life suffering happens. Forget, I don't care about, and my past life suffering caused it. Did they touch?

No. Can a cactus hurt your finger without touching if your present life can have trouble caused by your past life without touching? Yeah, they can.

Okay, so you should run around like this all day. Ow, ow, ow. Why?

Because there's cactus near Phoenix. And it doesn't have to touch you to hurt you. Okay, Geshe-la, it does have to touch me to hurt you.

Okay, then your past life has to touch your present life. Yeah, well, what's wrong with that? They have to overlap.

Then part of your past life has to be in the present to touch your present life. Or part of your present life has to be in the past to get touched by your past life. But that's not possible because your present life is different from your past life.

If your present life had to touch your past life, then you would be in your past life. Okay, got it? It's not possible what you think is happening.

It's not even possible what the Buddha kept saying that what you did in your past life is causing you suffering in this life. That's not possible. The Buddha, something's wrong.

A cactus that you never could touch is making your finger hurt. That's the same thing. I'll say it again.

Don't look so confused, or look confused. That's okay. If what you did in your past life is causing you suffering in the present life, then the past life has to touch the present life in the same way that your finger has to touch a cactus.

And if your finger can hurt without touching the cactus, and if your present life can have trouble without touching your past life, then because there's cactuses in Arizona, every time you cross the state line, your finger should start hurting. Why? Because without touching, they can hurt you.

What's the got to do with it? Because without your past life touching your present life, the events of your past life can hurt your present life, according to you, Buddha. Got it?

But they can't touch. If they touch, then the very beginning of your present life would have to be in your past life, or the very end of your past life would have to be in your present life. And then there wouldn't be a difference between past life and present life.

It doesn't make sense. Here's why we talk about this stuff. Who cares?

Who cares? Because you can't stop suffering unless you figure out where it's coming from. And it's not coming from your past life, because your past life can't touch your present life.

Well, where's it coming from? Oh yeah, you get there. Okay.

All right, next verse. ,GAL TE GANG ZAG BDAG GIS NI, ,SDUG BSNGAL BYAS NA GANG ZAG GIS, ,SDUG BSNGAL BYAS PA'I GANG ZAG DE, ,SDUG BSNGAL MA LTAG GANG ZHIG YIN, If some kind of... Now it's a person, or let's say, yeah, if someone else could hurt me, then, ,SDUG BSNGAL BYAS NA GANG ZAG GIS, ,SDUG BSNGAL BYAS PA'I GANG ZAG DE, then that person who caused me pain, ,SDUG BSNGAL MA LTAG GANG ZHIG YIN, must cause me pain all the time.

Or they would be pain itself. If another person can pain me, then they are pain. If another person can pain me, then they are pain.

Okay, got it? If another person can... We're always blaming our problems on other people, right?

All the time, every moment of the day. But if a person could make you feel pain, then they would have to be pain. Because you're feeling pain when you touch them.

Okay, got it? And then you could go a different way. I think you could take this a different way.

And Choney Lama, if you read Choney Lama, you can take it this way. You can look at the picture here. I don't know, this is a guy in an office.

I don't know if this ever happened to you, in a job, that your boss was yelling at you. I don't know. It's almost the definition of a job.

Okay, so the boss is yelling at the guy. Now, who's hurting whom? Wait, stay there.

Yeah, good. Who's hurting whom? The boss is hurting the employee, right?

The employee looks sad. The boss looks happy, because he gets to be the boss. And he's hurting the person.

Okay, so you can say the boss hurt the employee, right? Did the employee hurt themself? Is the boss himself?

Is the boss the employee? That's the question here. I mean, that's one of the big questions of this chapter.

When someone else causes you suffering, when your boss is yelling at you, who's yelling at you? Who caused it? Yeah, so you're hurting yourself.

You're hurting yourself. Which we just said is impossible. Okay.

Pain cannot hurt pain. Right? Okay, think about it.

By the way, this whole thing gets into blame. Can you blame other people for the trouble you have? Or what caused cancer?

If the mantra's going to work to stop the cancer, then it's going to have to stop whatever caused the cancer. So then you got to look at what really caused the cancer. Because if it's the mantra's job to stop the cancer, the mantra's going to have to stop what caused the cancer.

Because if the mantra can't stop what caused the cancer, then more cancer's going to come. So does the mantra ever work to stop cancer? Then it would have to stop the cause of the cancer.

And you have to think about that. How can the mantra touch the cause of the cancer when the cause of the cancer is already gone? How can you ever cure cancer with a mantra?

You would have to stop the cause of the cancer, which is already gone already anyway. You don't need the mantra to stop the cause of the cancer because the cause of the cancer's already gone by the time the cancer's there. So how are you going to stop the cancer if you can't stop the cause of the cancer?

How can you make contact with a thing which is already in the past? That's like writing your great-grandma a letter or something. Therefore, the way a mantra works to stop your cancer is not what you think.

You have to collect other seeds. And again, saving life is great. Saving some fish's life is good.

And I think it gets you out of your house and it gets you actually saving a living being. Here's a tranny. And there's nothing as powerful as that.

But I think there are also lifestyle choices you can make about using your car or using plastic or things like that. Cutting down trees. That would save a lot more lives.

Maybe you could do both. All right, next verse. He puts together five, six, and seven.

Here we go. ,GAL TE GANG ZAG GZHAN LAS NI, ,SDUG BSNGAL BYUNG NA GZHAN ZHIG GIS, ,SDUG BSNGAL DE BYAS GANG CIN DE, ,SDUG BSNGAL MA LTOR CI LTAR NGU, If the pain I have is caused... ,GAL TE GANG ZAG GZHAN LAS NI, If another person can cause me pain, ,SDUG BSNGAL BYUNG NA GZHAN ZHIG GIS, ,SDUG BSNGAL DE BYAS GANG CIN DE, then the suffering they caused me should never stop.

Why? Because if the pain, if the trouble in my life is really caused by another person, then the word another means a person who is not myself. Right, right.

So a person who is not myself caused me some trouble in my life. Right. That means they must have touched you.

Right. If they never make contact with you in any way, then they can't cause you trouble, right? Right.

So their life must have made contact with your life in some way, right? Right. So they must overlap at some point, right?

No, they just touch me. They don't overlap. Okay, so how do they touch you without overlapping?

Well, just the edge of them touches the edge of my trouble. Come on, then there has to be contact. There has to be some overlap.

Okay, so there is overlap, Geshe-la. Okay, then the other person and your trouble are partly the same thing. And any time the person is there, they give you trouble.

I guess there are people like that. ,GAL TE GANG ZAG GZHAN SDUG BSNGAL, ,'BYUNG NA GANG GI DE BYAS NAS, ,GZHAN LA DE BA'I GANG ZAG GZHAN, ,SDOD NA'ANG MA DOR GANG ZHIG YIN, Okay, according to you, someone else is causing the problems in your life. Yes, it's my partner.

I don't have trouble. They give me trouble. Okay, so somebody else gives you trouble, right?

Right. So they have to make contact with you on some level, right? They have to make contact with you to give you trouble, right?

Yeah. So in some way, in some point, they become you. The past touches the present.

So the last part of the past is the first part of the present because the last part of the past has to start your trouble, right? By the way, if the other person and your trouble starting were one millisecond apart, then they couldn't make contact. There's no point at which they make contact.

Okay, the cause is gone. The result is starting. Well, that doesn't make sense because if the cause causes the result, then the cause has to share some milliseconds with the result.

Or else something which is not there is causing something which is there. And that's not possible. That's like a billiard ball that already fell in the pocket is making another ball move.

You see what I mean? It has to be there. They have to both be on the table.

So the person who causes you trouble in your life has to be in the same moment and in the same place as you to do that. Yeah, so that means they're not a cause, right? Why not?

Because they're past already. By the time the tree grows from a seed, the seed is gone. By the time your partner gives you trouble and you got the trouble, your partner has to be invisible, not there.

An invisible non-existent partner, like a seed that disappeared after the tree grew, is causing you trouble, right? ,BDAG GIS BYAS PA MA GRUB PAS, ,SDUG BSNGAL GZHAN GYIS GANG LA BYAS, ,GZHAN GYIS SDUG BSNGAL GANG BYAS PA, ,DE NI DE'I PHYIR GYUR PA, So the other guy is... Now Choney Lama goes off on a bit of a tangent.

And I'll go with him. He says, when I say your current pain is caused by somebody else, I just mean the actions taken by a life form in the past, say an animal, are causing the pain of a human in this life. So I'm not talking about the same person.

That was an animal. This was a human. I'm talking about different life forms.

He says, that's possible. They're not me. The animal is a different life form.

Somebody other than me. When I say somebody other than me has caused me the trouble in this life, I'm saying this human life's trouble was caused by someone who was an animal or something. That's what the other guy's trying to say.

Then you should have suffering all the time. If someone can cause you suffering, if someone can give you trouble without making contact with you, then you should have trouble all the time. Why?

Because they're always not making contact with you. Then your whole life should be trouble all the time. I'll say it again.

If someone can give you trouble without making contact with you, then even when they're not around, you should have trouble. Why? Because they don't have to make contact with you to give you trouble.

All right. Then I chose a picture here. I don't know.

Do you ever give pain to your future self? There you go. There's the answer.

I don't know. Yesterday I made sweet rolls. Someone was teaching me to make cinnamon rolls for our cafe.

Then I don't know why, we all felt, there were four of us there and we all felt that because we were making them for a noble purpose, we could eat them as much as we wanted. And we all ate like three or four of them. And then afterwards I was like, what the heck did I just do?

And yeah, I am causing pain for my future self, but how is that if I never touch them? If I'm gone, if the person who ate the three or four cinnamon rolls is gone by the time the other person gets fat, then can you really say that someone who's not there is giving trouble to someone who is there? It's not possible.

It's actually not possible. Well, Geshe-la, what's really going on? Some kind of karmic seed is creating eating the cinnamon roll and then another karmic seed is creating the fat person, but the cinnamon roll doesn't cause the fat person.

In theory, you should be able to eat cinnamon rolls without getting fat. We're still looking for the sweet spot. All right.

Let's go on to the next verse. And I know it's hard. It's hard to have so much Nagarjuna in one day.

Let's hang in there. ,RE ZHIG SDUG BSNGAL BDAG BYAS MIN, ,DE NYID KYIS NI DE MA BYAS, ,GAL TE GZHAN BDAG MA BYAS NA, ,SDUG BSNGAL GZHAN BYAS GA LA RGYUR, ,RE ZHIG SDUG BSNGAL BDAG GIS BYAS PA MIN PAR DAG, ,SDUG BSNGAL DE NYID KYIS DE NYID MA BYAS PA'I PHYIR, You can't say that pain causes pain because the pain that causes the present pain would have to be past pain, and that past pain would have to be gone. ,RANG GIS RANG MA BYAS PA RGYAL BA'I PHYIR, ,GAL TE SDUG BSNGAL GZHAN BDAG GIS MA BYAS NA, ,SDUG BSNGAL DE GZHAN GYIS BYAS PA MA RANG, ,GA LA RGYUR TE Okay, if I didn't cause my own pain and something else caused my own pain, but also that thing was gone by the time I had my own pain, and something that was gone was causing something that's not gone.

Okay, so the picture I have here is, I don't know why, no one can cause me pain. I cannot, Michael cannot cause Michael pain by overeating. Michael at three o'clock cannot cause trouble for Michael at four o'clock by overeating at three o'clock.

Why? Because Michael who overeats at three o'clock is gone by the time Michael at four o'clock is suffering. They never talked, they never made contact.

So I cannot cause myself pain. Obviously, if someone else cooks me cinnamon rolls and I eat too many of them, since they never touched me, they didn't cause me the pain either. Therefore, I didn't have the pain.

No, I had the pain. It was coming from somewhere else. All right, here we go.

GAL TE, next verse. GAL TE RE RE BYAS GYUR NA SDUG BSNGAL GNYIS SKYE BYAS PAR GYUR GZHAN GYIS MA BYAS BDAG MA BYAS SDUG BSNGAL GYIS MI GAL BAR GYUR Then he skips over quickly the other two possibilities. What?

Say again? Yeah, both and neither. Both Geshe-la and somebody else causes Geshe-la to get overweight.

Or nobody causes Geshe-la to get overweight. Neither Geshe-la nor anyone else causes Geshe-la to get overweight. And he just dismisses those two.

Okay.

[Speaker 2]
Picture? It's a picture of two hands solving a puzzle, I think.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, anyway, it's not both me and someone else causing my pain. And it's not nobody causing my pain. Nobody causing my pain is easy.

But Geshe-la, how can you say that it's not me and somebody else causing my pain? Because they are gone by the time you have the pain. And something that's not there cannot cause pain.

All right, here we keep going. Next verse. SDUG BSNGAL BA ZHIG RNAMS PA ZHIG YOD PA MIN PA MA ZAD KYIS PHYIR ROL NGOS PA RNAMS LA YANG RNAMS PA ZHIG PO YOD MA YIN He says, look, we just finished the discussion of suffering from four points of view.

Does suffering cause suffering? Does something else cause suffering? Does both itself and something else cause suffering?

Or does suffering happen? AHED DUG PA Without any cause at all. And he said no.

He said no to all four. Then he said, okay, take that principle and apply it to everything else in your life. PHYIR ROL NGOS PA RNAMS LA YANG Apply it to all the things around you in your world.

All the things around you in your world are also not caused by themselves, are not caused by something else, are not caused by both, and are not caused by nothing. But they are caused, so how does that happen? From seeds in your mind.

You create, your mind creates the cause. Your mind creates the result. Your mind creates the connection between the cause and the result, but the cause doesn't cause the result.

That's a fallacy. That's wrong. That means that everything everyone has ever done on this planet who didn't understand emptiness was mistaken.

Every action taken in the last few million years by any person in the world was mistaken and didn't do what it was supposed to do. It had no relationship to what they wanted. Every single action in human history was worthless and useless.

And that is the joyful end of this first class. Every action taken by any living being, animal or human, in the history of this world, if they didn't understand these things, was useless and wrong.

[Speaker 2]
Okay, see you guys in the next class.