Нагарджуна, курс 3 — Мудрость Арьи Нагарджуны, курс 3: Пустота мантры (2021, Аризона), занятие 10

[Speaker 1]
Hi, welcome back to Nagarjuna, Arya Nagarjuna, and this is the 10th class. We're going to talk about SPRING PA DANG THAR PA LTAG PA SPRING PA DANG THAR PA LTAG PA Say SPRING PA SPRING PA DANG LTAG PA LTAG PA What's LTAG PA? In Sanskrit.

BAR'I PHYA BAR'I PHYA An investigation of SPRING PA and LTAG PA. SPRING PA means bondage, like being chained up in the jail. And LTAG PA means freedom.

So we're going to talk, now we're going to talk about the emptiness of being chained in the samsara and the emptiness of getting free from those chains. Let's go to the first verse, which is really only half a verse. It starts with GAL TE.

Then the guy, Nagarjuna is asking the other guy, who goes around in samsara? Who goes around the circle of samsara? Who is it that circles around in samsara?

It's an interesting question. And by the way, if you don't understand who it is that circles around in samsara, that causes you to circle around in samsara. So it's kind of a good question.

GAL TE DU BYED KHOR BZHIN NA DE DAG LTAG NA MI KHOR TE So GAL TE means, all right, Nagarjuna is talking to the other guy. So who is it that wanders around in samsara? And the other guy says, DU BYED, which is a confusing answer because DU BYED means factors.

And in fact, it's, for example, the name for the second link in the Wheel of Life, which is fresh karma. And it has nothing to do with that here. Here it means PHUNG PO.

The body and mind. Yeah, I like to call it body and mind nowadays because it's just easier. It's exactly what we call body and mind.

So if you say the thing that circles around in samsara is the body-mind complex, the body and the mind together, KHOR BZHIN NA, if that's what circles around in samsara, are you thinking of body and mind as something unchanging or changing? When you answer me, when I ask you, who is it that travels through samsara? Who is it that goes from birth to birth?

And you say, it's body and mind. It's Michael's body and mind. And then I say, well, is that an unchanging thing or is that a changing thing?

And Nagarjuna typically covers either answer. So the other guy says, it's unchanging. It's an unchanging thing.

DE DAG DAG NA MI KHOR TE If the body and mind of Michael are unchanging, and by the way, it shades into permanent, right? The way that some people mistranslate the word. It shades into permanent.

If it's Michael's permanent body and mind that keep traveling around samsara, DAG NA MI KHOR then it cannot circle. Why? Because it's DAG PA, because it's unchanging.

When you circle, you change. By circling, you change. Circling means you change.

You can't travel somewhere else if you don't change. At least you have to change where you put your bottom. Something's going to change if you're traveling.

So therefore, it cannot be Michael unchanging Michael's body and mind, which goes from birth to birth. Then the other guy is going to come back with, okay, I changed my story. It's the body and mind which is changing.

And there's the next verse. By the way, the second half of the verse gets split again. So first part of the second half of the verse is MI DAG NA YANG KHOR MIN GYUR MI DAG NA YANG KHOR MIN GYUR If you say Michael's body and mind are changing, then they can't circle around samsara either.

Why? Because they blink out of existence every millisecond. Then last, SKAD GCIG GI SKAD GCIG GI SKAN GCIG BYAS PA'I PHYIR Definition of the impermanent, changing.

SKAD GCIG GI SKAD GCIG GI Say SKAD GCIG GI SKAD GCIG GI SKAD GCIG GI SKAD GCIG GI SKAN GCIG BYAS PA'I PHYIR It could be a good song. SKAD GCIG GI SKAD GCIG GI SKAN GCIG BYAS PA'I PHYIR It means that thing which comes into existence and goes out of existence. SKAD GCIG Instant by instant.

SKAD GCIG GI SKAD GCIG GI That thing. So how could that have a sustained circling if it's going out of existence every millisecond? How can something which goes out of existence every millisecond go in a circle?

It's not possible. Why? Because each millisecond of Michael's body and mind is separated from the millisecond of Michael's body and mind just before that.

And we're already talking. We spent so long talking about sansarga, Christina. Sansarga.

[Speaker 2]
Loving together.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah. So if Geshe-la's mind-body is tat tat tat tat tat tat then there's a separation between each instant. And then there's no reason why this one should go to that one because they never touch.

So this one could change to Tim's body and mind. Why not? Because those are not connected either.

So if Michael's body and mind go like this, then why can't Michael's body and mind go like this and become Tim the next instant? Why? There's no reason why it shouldn't be Tim because Tim's also disconnected from Geshe-la.

If Geshe-la's disconnected from Geshe-la and Geshe-la can go moment to moment like that, then Geshe-la's body and mind can become Tim's body and mind. And I can go over there and join Tim's sansara. Got it?

If they're separated, anything can happen. And they can't be connected. It cannot be a flow.

Why? Because that would be unchanging and then you don't have different lifetimes. It's just you're stuck in the same moment all the time.

Like gopher's day, what's it called? Groundhog's day. Okay.

All right, next verse. Where is that? Oh, we are supposed to have a picture, right?

Let's do the circle. Or the second, I think it's the second clock. And Choney Lama says, look, if Geshe-la's body and mind only last for one millisecond, how can it have time to go in a circle?

There's no circle if there's only a single point. You can't draw a circle with one single point. All right, next verse.

SEMS CAN LA YANG RIM DU TSUNG SEMS CAN LA YANG RIM DU TSUNG SEMS CAN means a living being. You can say SEMS CAN being, I don't like the word because it's not English. We don't say that in English.

How's your SEMS CAN being? Mother. So anyway, it's just a living being.

SEMS CAN LA YANG RIM means what, like Lam Rim? Steps. In the Garjuna, RIM has a special meaning and it means the steps to an argument I just gave you.

Those steps to the last argument, in the Garjuna it's called RIM. When you see RIM in the Garjuna, think steps to my last argument. So what's it mean here?

If you say what travels around the circle, the wheel of life, is not Geshe-la's body and mind, but it's rather Geshe-la, then RIM TSUNG, same argument. Go back to the same argument, which is what? What's the first question the Garjuna asks?

Now don't forget, we finished body and mind. Now the guy says, okay, okay, body and mind cannot circle. So Geshe-la circles.

It's Geshe-la. Okay, so let's do the same argument. We asked him two questions.

If you say it's Geshe-la that's circling around in samsara, are you talking about a Geshe-la who is unchanging? He starts with unchanging. I don't know why.

Are you talking about a Geshe-la who is unchanging? Oh, yeah, yeah. It's Geshe-la unchanging.

Then how can he go to circle? Because he's in the same point all the time, because he's the same guy. He doesn't become an animal or a deva or hell being.

He's just always Geshe-la. So he can't. He can't change.

So what's his second RIM PAR? Or are you saying Geshe-la is changing? In which case he is random moments of Geshe-la.

And then in that case, which we already proved with our touching arguments, contact arguments, then there's no necessary connection between Geshe-la moment one and Geshe-la moment two. Geshe-la moment one could become Tim moment two. And then who's circling?

Therefore, nobody's in samsara. Nobody's traveling around in real life. Why?

It's not Geshe-la's body and mind, and it's not Geshe-la. Why? Because it's not Geshe-la's body and mind which is changing or unchanging, and it's not Geshe-la who's changing or unchanging.

There's nothing else. Nobody's circling in samsara. All right, we got a picture.

By the way, Choney Lama likes to go to the idea of... He says, don't forget when we say Geshe-la as opposed to Geshe-la's body and mind, we're kind of talking about a soul. Is there some mega Geshe-la who continues from birth to birth?

He wouldn't look like Geshe-la. It's independent of body and mind. There's some inner soul or essence of Geshe-la which takes different bodies and minds, which dumps the old body and mind and takes a new body and mind.

So there's some kind of Geshe-la independent of Geshe-la's body and mind. There's a third part to Geshe-la which is super inner Geshe-la, and then the inner Geshe-la takes bodies and minds and keeps going like that. That's what the second argument's about.

We're going to get there. In fact, that's the whole chapter. Don't cheat.

All right, here we go. That's the whole chapter, actually. Good question.

All right, here we go. Next verse. ,GAL TE GANG ZAG GOR BZHIN NA, ,BUNG PO SKAD CIG GANG RNAMS LA, ,DE NI RNAMS PA NGA'I RDZUS NA, ,ME NA GANG ZHIG GOR BA'I RGYUR, This part has two verses.

Here's the first verse. ,GAL TE GANG ZAG GOR BZHIN NA, Then the guy's insistent. No, it's Geshe-la.

The GANG ZAG, the Purusha. It's Geshe-la that goes from life to life. He dumps bodies and minds and he takes new bodies and minds.

It's like some guy in high school with his girlfriends or some lady in high school with her boyfriends. He dumps one body and mind and then he takes another one and then takes another one. But he continues through high school.

So GAL TE, the guy says, no, no, it is Geshe-la who goes from lifetime to lifetime. Then let's examine Geshe-la's relationship with his body and mind. Let's examine Geshe-la's...

If it's Geshe-la who keeps going and getting rid of this body and mind and picking up a new body and mind, well then what's the relationship between Geshe-la and the body and mind? Because there are some relationships he cannot have with the body and mind and still switch bodies and minds. If Geshe-la is the body and mind, then he can't dump the body and mind and go to the next birth because he would be gone.

If he is his body and mind and he gives up a body and mind to take on the next body and mind, then Geshe-la cannot be the body and mind. He's got to be some super guy who takes bodies and takes minds. So what's the relationship?

Nagarjuna says, okay, okay, Geshe-la keeps going, right? Yeah, Geshe-la takes bodies and minds. Right, so Geshe-la cannot be his body and mind, right?

Why? Because he dumps them and then he goes somewhere else. If he was his body and mind and he dumped his body and mind, he'd be gone.

Got it? There's no Geshe-la who takes a body and mind because he is his body and mind. We better look at the relationship between Geshe-la and his body and mind.

And then he says, NGON PA NGES SPYUL All the texting of NGON PA NGES SPYUL, which is total misspelling. By the way, I got to fix this. So Tim, if you can imagine the letter SPYAL, first column with a NARO, it's SPYAL, right?

But if you draw the NARO with only one horn, by the way, NARO means horns. So then what's it become? A SPYAL with a little flag on the side?

Becomes SPYAL. All the texts say SPYAL and they're all wrong. It's SPYAL.

So that's the first problem. You can spend two days looking up SPYALs in dictionaries and you won't figure it out. And all the carvings are wrong, which is irritating for somebody.

DE NI RNAM PAR NGES BRTZAL NA If you... BRTZAL means like chak-tel. What's BRTZAL and chak-tel?

But what's it really mean? To seek a boon from the hand of the Lama. So BRTZAL means to seek, to look.

So here it means to look. RNAM PAR NA, five different ways. There's five different possible relationships between Michael and Michael's body and mind.

Let's look at all five. If you say it's Michael who goes from birth to birth and he picks up new bodies and minds, then let's look at the possible relationships between Michael and his body and mind. Now, Nagarjuna doesn't tell you what the five are.

He never mentions the five. He never tells you what's the five. So here's Geshe-la late at night, oh my God, where's the five?

What do you do when you're Geshe-la and it's late at night and you have to talk in the morning? You go to Gopher. You go to the database.

I went to the database and the first answer I got was Rendawa. We call Jetson Rendawa. Who's Jetson Rendawa?

Do you know him? He's a Sakya Master who was the teacher of Tsongkapa. He's one of the main teachers of Tsongkapa.

They started out as teacher and disciple. Later they teamed up as a teaching team and they used to teach like Vinaya together and stuff like that. By the way, Rendawa wrote an extraordinary commentary to the letter to a friend.

Short, sweet, precise. So anyway, the first... He also wrote a commentary to Nagarjuna's wisdom, which is short and precise.

It's concise and precise. So first I went there and I worked on him for a while. Then I went to Tsongkapa who wrote a commentary on Nagarjuna's wisdom called...

Yeah, the Ocean of Reasoning. That's the ship that we're in. We're trying to cross that ocean.

So all together I got some good answers. That's the beautiful thing about this text. Everyone has tried to explain it.

And it's hard. It's really hard. So there's maybe hundreds of commentaries on this text.

Chandrakirti tried to explain it. So here we go. So here's the five possible relationships between Michael and Michael's body and mind.

Here's the five. And where did I end up? Oh, to be fair to Nagarjuna, he already gave us the five in his text and we forgot.

He gave it long ago. He was talking about the relationship between something and something. What is it?

Between the fire and the firewood. And he already covered this point. That's why he's not being lazy when he says there's five possible relationships.

He already covered this point between the fire and the firewood. He already covered this point. So he's probably sitting impatiently saying, don't ask me stupid, go back to verse number 14 in chapter 10.

I went and got it. And I discussed it already there. So don't tell me I didn't tell you what the five are.

I was hoping you would remember. So here they are. You could go through them quickly and you say, yeah, yeah, and then you just don't think about it anymore.

But let's think about it carefully. Let's start with Tim. Is Tim his body and mind?

In this discussion, don't forget the discussion is in the context of how does Tim go from birth to birth in the Wheel of Life? So this is a pretty easy question. Is Tim's body and Tim's mind right now, is that all there is to Tim?

No, because if it dies, then Tim's gone and there's no one to go through samsara. So it can't be that Tim equals Tim's body and mind because somebody has to take the body and mind and somebody has to drop the body and mind. Let's go on to Pachi, number two.

Pachi. Is Pachi completely separate from his body and mind? Look, he just fell off his body and mind.

No, he has to have some connection, right? There has to be some connection, right? Otherwise, you would be Tim.

Otherwise, Pachi would be Tim. I mean, he'd just glom onto the nearest body and mind. So there's got to be some Pachi who's not separate from his body and mind.

There has to be a Pachi who has some kind of connection with his body and mind. You can say there's a separate Pachi from his body and mind, but somehow he has to be intertwined with his body and mind. Otherwise, he'd just get intertwined with Rebecca's body and mind and then you'd have trouble combing your hair and everything.

And you would have a beard. That's all kinds of philosophical problems. Okay, so Tim is not his body and mind, but Pachi is not completely separate from his body and mind.

So it's got some connection, right? Third possibility. Does Rebecca's body and mind somehow have Rebecca?

You see, let's switch it this way. So we're not talking about does Rebecca have body and mind. Does the body and mind over there somehow reach out and hold Rebecca?

That's a weird idea, but that's the third possibility of the five. Somehow your body and mind have attracted you and your body and mind gravity sucked in Rebecca and Rebecca stuck to Rebecca's body and mind. That's the third possibility, which is kind of silly, but it's not completely silly.

Fourth possibility. Pau, ready? Pau doesn't depend on her body and mind.

You can do anything to her body and mind and it doesn't affect Pau. You can get a virus, you can get a vaccination, and Pau doesn't care. Pau is a different entity from body and mind.

Pau doesn't rest on her body and mind. That's the fourth possibility, right? We got four, right?

One, two, three, four. Okay, Kristina, you ready? Kristina's body and mind don't depend on Kristina.

So Kristina can go away and Kristina's body and mind will still be in the chair, typing away. All right, that's the fifth possibility. And all five possibilities are kind of untenable.

They're kind of impossible. It doesn't seem possible. What were you thinking when you thought you were traveling through samsara?

What were you thinking was your relationship to your body and mind? Could you dump your body and mind and there's still something about you that can go on and take another body and mind? Can you exist without a body and mind?

Can the body and mind exist without you? Can it go on without you? When you think about going through the Wheel of Life, traveling through samsara, you didn't really think it out.

That's what Nagarjuna is saying. Maybe you have some idea. I think most of us feel, at least I grew up in a Christian culture, Judeo-Christian culture.

I feel like there's some Michael's soul that takes the body and mind and holds it for a while and then they get separated and the soul goes on and then the soul has to find a new body and mind or something like that. And in that case, you could do things to the body and mind. You could abuse the body and mind and the soul is somehow beyond all that and nothing happens to the soul.

Something like that. I mean, the Judeo-Christian culture has an opinion on this question. And so we have it because we grew up in this culture.

But if you really examine it, is it defensible? Does it make sense? Are you totally independent from your body and mind?

Is there a Rebecca which is totally, is totally unaffected by the body and mind? All right, and if you're interested, go back to verse 14 of chapter 10 where they discuss whether the wood is the fire. And that's the same argument.

And that's why Nagarjuna didn't bother. ,GAL TE MANG POD KOR BA, I'm sorry, no. We finished that, okay.

All right. Let's go to ,DU BYED We didn't do ,GNAS BA LEN Verse three. Oh, right, you're right, the second half.

Oh yeah, that's a nasty one. I don't know why I skipped it. Let's go back.

I know what you're talking about. Let's see here. ,GNAS BA LEN ME GNYER LEN PAR, ,'KHOR NA SRID PAR MED PAR RGYUR, ,SRID MED GNYER LEN MED NA, ,DE'I GANG CI ZHIG GOR RANG RGYUR, This is tricky because GNYER LEN PAR is a very difficult word in Buddhist philosophy, which means to take on closely.

GNYER BAR LEN PAR But it means to take on a new body and mind at rebirth. So even that word suggests what? Yeah, somebody takes it on.

So the ancient Buddhist expression for rebirth is called embracing another one. It's called embracing another one. So it means another body and mind.

So then Nagarjuna uses it for the word rebirth. He uses it for the word rebirth. He says, so is it a rebirth?

What happens from rebirth to rebirth? Let's look at that and then we can decide your relationship. We can decide the relationship of your body and mind with you.

Let's look at how you go from rebirth to rebirth and then we can decide what's the relationship between Tim and Tim's body and mind. So he says here, GNYER BAR LEN MED NYON LEN PAR When you go from one identity to another, for example, and then Choney Lama says, I don't know why, he says, if you go from a human birth to a deva, to a deva birth, to a divine temporary suffering being birth, which kind of assumes that we are meditating. GOR NA SRID PA MED PAR BSGYUR Then there's no SRID PA in korwa.

Korwa means sansara. SRID PA here means, and again, you need Choney Lama. It doesn't mean SRID PA, which means sansara, like SRID PA'I KOR LO, bhava chakra, the wheel of life.

It doesn't mean that here. Here it means Parsi. And since you guys studied Abhidharma, you know what's a Parsi.

Pardo SRID PA Pardo SRID PA A being in the bardo. Yeah, it's called a Parsi. It's called a bar guy.

A bar guy. It's not that kind of bar guy. Parsi.

GOR NA SRID PA MED PAR BSGYUR If you drop one body in mind and then take on another body in mind in the next moment, then there's no body. That's what he's saying. Nagarjuna is saying, look, what happens when you...

How do you go from one birth to another birth? Oh, and the other guy says, well, you just drop your body in mind and then you pick up a new one in the next millisecond. Okay, then there's no bardo, which is against Buddhist teaching.

There should be a bardo. There should be for most kinds of rebirth. Then the guy says, okay, no, no, no, no, no.

SRID MED NYE ROL LEN MED NA SRID MED NYE ROL LEN MED NA DE'I GANG CI SHES KHO BA'I RGYUR How can you say there's a cycle of rebirth if there's an interruption between the rebirths? How can you say there's a constant continuation of rebirth if it's a discontinuation? If you say, no, no, no, there's a bardo, well, then there's no connection, no necessary connection between dropping this body in mind and picking up your next body in mind because there's a gap.

And you can't have a circle where there's gaps. That doesn't make a circle. Circle should be, BTAB DUG PAR DUG PAR DUG PAR You should go like that.

If there is a bardo, then there's no khorwa. If you drop your body in mind and there's a gap until you pick up your new body in mind, then you can't have a cycle. That's just a bunch of uninterrupted vignettes.

It's not a cycle. It doesn't fit the meaning of a cycle. Cycle should be BTAB DGOS Same thing over and over again.

Like, I don't know, troubles with the tech equipment or something. It should just keep happening. Sorry, I'm not saying it did.

I'm saying, by the way, I'm very grateful for the tech. God bless the tech. Okay.

All right, so we covered that second verse. Let's go to the next verse. Yeah, and it's a very interesting segue.

Sometimes Nagarjuna just moves on to another topic, meaning he thinks the case is closed. We're like, and he's like, come on, you guys got it. Nobody takes on the body and mind and the body and mind doesn't have anybody to take it on.

Okay, let's move on. And you're like, well, wait. So here we go to the next verse.

He's moving to a huge separate topic. ,'DU BYED NYANG NGAN DA' BA NI, ,CI LTA BU NA'ANG MI THAD DO, ,SEMS CAN NYANG NGAN DA' BA YANG, ,CI LTA BU LA'I YANG THEBS MIN GYUR, Let's stop talking about who it is that takes on bodies and minds. Let's start talking about who it is that reaches nirvana, who breaks out of the cycle.

What's happening then? What's happening when you break out of the cycle? We discussed the cycle.

It doesn't make sense. You cannot take on a body and mind and you cannot not take on a body and mind. Something's fishy.

Okay, enough. Let's go on to... Well, who gets to nirvana?

,DU BYED NYANG NGAN DA' BA NI, What's DU BYED mean in this chapter? For a hundred dollars. Factor.

But what's it mean in this chapter? Cancel it. PUM PO, the body and mind.

So the word factors in this chapter refers to your body and mind. It just means changing stuff. The changing part of Rebecca.

Rebecca as a soul is this stainless steel, unchanging egg shape. And then, Rebecca's body and mind, and he calls it changing stuff about Rebecca, which is the stuff you take on and you drop from life to life. So he says, look, is it Rebecca's body and mind that goes to nirvana?

What part of Rebecca goes to nirvana? Is it Rebecca's body and mind? CI LTA BU LA'ANG MI TE DONG That's...

Now it's this kind of frustrating thing with Nagarjuna. He says, no, it's not Becky's body and mind that goes to nirvana. Why?

Because it's self-existent, please. It's not her body and mind which blinks out or something. Why?

Because it's self-existent. It doesn't depend on anything else. It doesn't depend on mental seeds.

It's coming from its own side. It doesn't ever blink out. It's coming illogically from its own side and it's going to stay illogical from its own side.

And nothing illogical is going to make it disappear. It's an illogical, metal, unchangeable egg shape called Rebecca. So forget it.

Nagarjuna is kind of frustrating that way. This book is kind of frustrating that way. Whenever he gets in a corner, he says, well, anyway, it can't happen.

And you say, why? He says, because you think the husband in the kitchen comes from his side. Na, na, na, na, na.

Then you're like, oh man, come on. If the husband in the kitchen is upset because he had traffic at work, then your body and mind cannot go to nirvana. That's his argument.

If your husband is coming from his side, then your body and mind cannot be where it goes to nirvana. Why? Because it also exists from its own side.

And it couldn't change. It couldn't reach some elevated place called nirvana because it couldn't change because it's coming from its own side. The only way anything can change in the universe is if your mental states change.

Got it? All right. Then the guy changes his story.

Oh, it's not Rebecca's body and mind that goes to nirvana. It's... What's the other choice?

It's not Rebecca's body and mind that... It's Rebecca, which he calls Kamsa, Purusha. No, no, no, I change, I change.

It's not Rebecca's body and mind that goes to nirvana. It's Rebecca. NYANG NGES BDAG YANG, CI LTAR BU YANG THAD MIN GYUR Same problem, please.

Rebecca comes from her own side. She can't change. She can't go to nirvana.

He's kind of using the thing he's trying to prove in the argument to prove what he's trying to prove. It seems a little fishy. But if it's fishy, he's proving what he said.

[Speaker 2]
Yes, it's all fishy.

[Speaker 1]
Everything's fishy. Okay. Yeah, and the picture is just kind of artificial here, but it's to help you remember.

Here's Rebecca's body and mind. I don't know. It's supposed to be the mind and the body.

Which one gets nirvana? I don't know. Okay, all right.

Choney Lama has a particularly compelling, excuse me, has a particularly compelling argument here and I would like to read it. Sometimes it's nice to go to Choney Lama and let him talk. We've just been letting Nagarjuna talk.

,'DIR GOR GAN RANG BZHIN GYIS MED PAR NGES NA, If it is the case that the GOR GAN, GAN, GAN is the word you add to a verb to make it a doer. Like a teacher would be a LAB GAN. GAN is ER in English, teacher.

You add ER to teach, it makes the person who teaches. In Tibetan you add GAN. So what's GOR GAN?

The circular. Yeah, the guy who goes around in a satsang, good. ,'DIR GOR GAN RANG BZHIN GYIS MED PAR NGES NA, Choney Lama is like, why are we talking about, why are we so obsessed with this person?

Why are we obsessed with figuring out who it is that goes through samsara? Because if you can NGES PAR, if you can ascertain that they are RANG BZHIN GYIS MED PAR. Yeah, if you can ascertain that the person who goes around samsara doesn't exist from their own side, well, then you can stop going around samsara.

You got it? It's very beautiful. I'll say it again.

Choney Lama says, hey, you want to guess why we're obsessing about who it is that circles around in samsara? And we're like, I don't know. He says, because we want to see that they don't have a nature of their own.

Why? Because then you don't have to circle around samsara. It's a very beautiful argument.

Got it? That's why we're having this long discussion about who is it that circles around in samsara. Because by examining your relationship to your body and mind, you're suddenly going to figure out that you are coming from yourself, your seeds, and then you don't have to circle around samsara.

Yay! That's Sok Choney Lama. All right, next verse.

Now he wants to talk about the concept of ching wa and dro ba. And I'd like to skip to the Sanskrit lesson, which is the next slide, I think. Mainly I do this for Christina because she appreciates it.

So we're going to discuss ching wa and dro ba. This chapter is called bondage and liberation. Shackles and freedom or something like that.

And we've been discussing who is it that's shackled? Who is it that's in the handcuffs? And now let's go look at the Sanskrit words that are being used here because then you can learn some Sanskrit so when you become Medicine Buddha, you can speak in Sanskrit.

So here's the first word, banda. Okay, banda. We have them in yoga, right?

Paul, what's a banda? Yeah, a lock. You call it a lock.

Huh? Yeah, similar. Granthi is more nasty.

Granthi is like a knot in the channels. But banda is a purposeful... Somewhere down here, I don't know.

It's hard for me to do. Tighten up your belly. That's a banda, a lock.

Okay, so banda. Technical spelling is the same. It doesn't have any...

It's all English sound, banda. The Tibetan is chingwa. The way I learned chingwa was from the Tibetan newspapers.

They kept talking about ching dul mak mi, ching dul mak mi, people's liberation army. The word in Tibetan for the Chinese National Army is ching dul mak mi, shackle-freeing army. People's liberation army.

So ching means shackle. Okay, chingwa. So band, the root is band, and it means to bind.

Hey, Jigme, did you ever go to the bus station in India and everyone's on strike, and they're all saying, band karo, band karo, we're on strike, we're on strike. Band means shackle the buses so they can't get anywhere. The Indo-European is banda, and it came into bind, band, and bundle.

So it's easy to see how banda means being chained to samsara. Now what's the opposite? Next slide.

Is mukti or moksha. And the sha is a retroflex, right? You got to turn your tongue back.

Moksha, moksha. And the Tibetan is drowa as in droma, tara. And the root is muk or moks, which means to release.

I think it's related to the Indo-European. There's a muk, which means to be slimy. Like mucus comes from that.

And I think it means to slide out of samsara. But I didn't put that here because it's a little too much. On your...

And I think all of them are related to the Indo-European mitter, which means to, and you find it in Latin, right? To send a message, miss a mission, to send somebody out. It means to liberate somebody.

Got it? All right, so let's go back to the verse now, which is going backwards in the slides. ,SKYE MCHED PHYIR CHEN DU BYED RNAMS, ,MI PHYIN DU BA MI RGYUD TE, Don't forget that DU BYED here means?

Body and mind. It's spelled a little differently. How could you remove shackles from a KHYING RJIG, from a person who is going in and out of existence?

KHYING RJIG, minute by minute, second by second. How could you liberate a person? How could you take chains off of a person which was either unchanging or changing millisecond by millisecond?

By the time you get your hands on the shackles, they've changed into somebody else. So how can you? Who is there there?

What body and mind is there in a sustained way to take off their shackles? Because if they're in a sustained way, that means they're unchanging, which means impossible. You can't take shackles off of a person who is sustained over time because they cannot change and they cannot go from shackled to unshackled because they can't change.

You can't take shackles off of a person who can't change because taking off shackles is to change them. Got it? And if they're changing every millisecond, by the time you get your hand on the shackles, it's somebody else's shackles.

Got it? SNGA MA BZHIN DU SEMS CAN YANG MA'I PHYING RDOR MI'I RGYUR SNGA MA BZHIN means, look, let's follow the same pattern as before. Now we established you can't take chains off of Pachi's body and mind.

Why? Because if they keep going for any length of time, they can't change. And if they don't keep going for any length of time, there's somebody else by the time you get the shackles.

And if it applies to Pachi's body and mind, it also applies to Pachi. That's the second half of the verse. He's doing the same RIM BA, right?

What's that mean? The same... There's parallel arguments.

Let's treat Pachi's body and mind, and then let's treat Pachi. You cannot take chains off of Pachi's body and mind because it has to be either changing or unchanging. You can't take chains off either one.

And you can't take chains off of Pachi, which is that aluminum Rebecca who goes from life to life and drops bodies and minds and takes new ones. Because, same problem. If he's changing, you don't have time to take your shackles off.

And if he's unchanging, he can't get unshackled when he used to be shackled because then he'd be changing. Got it? It don't make sense to say you can liberate a person.

It don't make sense. Something's wrong. The whole chapter is, it don't make sense that Pachi got into samsara, and it don't make sense that you can get Pachi out of samsara.

Something's going on. There's a big problem here. Why does he go to liberation and shackles?

I guess because we're so invested in it. We're reading his book because we want to change our lives. That's why we're reading the book in the first place.

All right, here we go. Oops, we finished the chapter. Yay!

Okay, let's wrap up. If Pachi's the one moving from lifetime to lifetime, then, I don't know, he's unchanging because he's the unchanging Pachi who picks up new bodies and minds and drops them and goes and picks up a new body and mind. That would imply that Pachi exists without his body and mind, which is crazy.

Then if there is no Pachi who holds his body and mind, and if Pachi's just his body and mind, then who goes to the next life? If this body and mind died, then Pachi's gone because he's just his body and mind. No, no, Pachi is a soul who holds onto his body and mind.

Well, then he doesn't change. Then he's going to be in samsara forever. He cannot be liberated.

Some kind of problem with Pachi. All right, let's go to the next chapter. Yay!