Нагарджуна, курс 4 — Мудрость Арьи Нагарджуны, курс 4: Тайна глав (2022, Аризона), занятие 2

[Speaker 1]
Hi, welcome back to the Mystery of the Chapters. We'll be going now through our second session of exploring the next section, which is really about, we're about almost two thirds or three quarters of the way through wisdom. And just in a quick review, we're going to review, let's review the first 17 chapters that we went through already.

I'm going to do them in order, one to 17, which is not what Tony Lama does, because if you do them in order, it's difficult to see any pattern. Or why did Nagarjuna go through the chapters in that order? And that's our big challenge to you guys.

We're challenging you participants in this program to break out into small teams and propose a logic to these, it's going to be 27 chapters of wisdom. But let's go through the first 17. What I did was, I took Tony Lama's commentary, I put it back in order.

So I put his out of order back into order, which is not out of order according to Tony Lama. And I'm just going to go through his comments on the content of each chapter. And I'm not going to try to connect each chapter to the next chapter, because that's your job.

And I'm looking forward to what you guys come up with, because that'll help me, I think. I've been curious about this question for a long time. I also challenged the Mixed Nuts, these guys who've learned how to translate.

I challenge you to go through John Brady's ALL database. Especially the Madhyamaka section of the Sumbho, of the native Tibetan works. And I challenge you to go through and find someone's explanation of why the chapters.

I'm guessing somebody like the great Mongol scholar, Ngo-Long Phelan, Chu Jing Ngo-Long Phelan. I'm guessing or Jamyang Shepa, one of these types. They are the types of people who would have an explanation.

I challenge you to find it separately and don't share it with the teams. Okay, but you can present it also. The first chapter is called the Pratyaya Pariksha, which means an investigation of conditions.

He does not say causation. He says an investigation of khen, of conditions for things. And Choney Lama justifies the chapter by saying, we have to show, if we're going to prove that things are not themselves, then our first job is to prove how they cannot start from themselves.

I'll say it again. If our goal of this whole book called Wisdom is to prove that things are not themselves, or you can say emptiness, then the first job we have to do is to explore how they first start without starting from themselves. Okay, got it?

So he says, therefore, Nagarjuna, as the first chapter, wrote the chapter called An Investigation of the Conditions That Helped Things Start. So we have some logic for the first chapter. Then it falls apart.

Here we go to the second chapter. By the way, here's an image for you guys. I'll try to give you an image each time to try to remember the idea.

I personally find it a great exercise if I want to remember the teaching I got today or yesterday. I just go through the pictures and challenge myself to remember what it was about. So when you see these little sprout guys coming up out of seeds, you're going to think to yourself, ah, first chapter on conditions.

What are the conditions? And I want you to think like that. So I'm going to give you pictures, images, and I want you to connect them mentally.

There's a tradition in this lineage that when you learn a topic, you review it at least two times after the class, preferably once on the day of the class and preferably once the next day or two days later. So I personally think it's a great idea to do your traditional lineage-required review by just looking at the pictures. Just get the pictures, get the images.

I like to do it, personally, I make myself breakfast and I set the images down on the table and I slop food into my mouth and I drink my coffee and I try to remember, what was this picture about? And for me, it's a very pleasant breakfast. It's kind of like a dharma breakfast.

Okay, so there's... And by the way, this explanation of what the first chapter is about comes long into the first chapter. He doesn't even give it to you at the beginning.

I went and got them for you. All right, second chapter. Oh, by the way, one verse you've got to remember from the first chapter.

I'm going to read it in Sanskrit because my Sanskrit is not as good as my Tibetan and I like excuses to try to make it better. anirodham anupadham anuchedham ashashvattham anekartham ananartham anagamam anirgamam yah pratityasamutpadam prapanchopashyamam shivam dekshayamasa sambuddhas tam van devadattambham Okay, and that's the Sanskrit of the opening lines. The opening lines of wisdom are extremely famous.

And I think it's worth it to just look at them. Let me say them in Tibetan. ,GANG GIS BSTAN CHEN DGREL BAR BYUNG, ,SGAGS PA MED PA SKYE MED PA BYED PA MED PA, ,LTA MED PA DBANG BA MED PA, ,RDO MED PA THAG LAS SDUG BSNGAL MED DON GYI MED, ,GCOD PA GNYUR ZHIG ZHIG BSTAN PA, ,RJOG PA'I SANG GI MA RNAMS KYI DAM PA DE LA CHAGS ZA LO, Very famous.

We have to recite it all the time in the monastery. The English. I bow down to that highest of teachers, to the fully enlightened one who teaches us to reach that peace where our fantasies about how things exist are put to a final rest.

I bow down to the one who taught us that things happen in dependence, colon. Nothing ends and nothing begins. Nothing stops, but nothing ever lasts forever.

Nothing comes and nothing goes. No two things are different, nor are any two the same. And that's the opening poetry of wisdom.

Very, very powerful. CHO NI LAMA explains that famous verse in eight parts. He says, this verse is about the kindest thing Lord Buddha ever did, which was to teach us dependent origination.

And then show how it's empty. So they always teach it this way. Tsongkapa's famous praise of the Buddha is called tendrel dupa, a praise of dependent origination.

The long name is a praise of Lord Buddha because he taught us dependent origination, which emphasizes where this stuff come from. It doesn't emphasize what it's not. It emphasizes where it comes from.

In the kitchen, your husband's yelling because you yell at your kids, which is kind of more useful than saying your husband's not coming from any place else. I mean, you identify where he's coming from. So CHO NI LAMA explains these first eight descriptions in the opening lines, which is worth it to mention in the first chapter.

We'll go through the other chapters much faster so we can finish the same class on time, which is something like 3.50 or something. Yeah, okay. Something that could never end in the sense of blinking out of existence, moment by moment.

Dependent origination could never end in the sense of just blinking out. It could never begin in the sense of taking on its own identity. So think of things starting of getting their name.

Once something starts, once a new employee works at a company for a few days, they get a title, right? And they take on their identity. Normal companies.

All right. Saying something could never stop as the flow has existed up to now has discontinued. So the flow in which an object continues.

I'm thinking of bicycles. And then finally the bicycle falls apart. But there's been a flow of identity that it had and then it stopped.

That's the third thing that doesn't happen from its own side. It has its own emptiness. Nothing lasts forever, which means something that couldn't be destroyed.

Nothing can ever come from there to here or go from here to there in and of itself, without a karma involved. And then two things could never be different from each other. Choney Lama says, for example, occupying different spaces.

Neither could they be the same in the sense of occupying the same space. And that's his comments on the first chapter. Basically remember, pratyaya pariksha, an examination or an investigation.

Of the causes or the conditions from which things come from. Chapter two, Choney Lama describes it this way. And don't forget, I'm giving him out of order.

I'm presenting Choney Lama out of order. He says, once you hear that a person has no nature of their own, you might start to wonder how they came into this life and how they leave this life if they don't exist on their own. If the person doesn't exist somehow, then how do they enter this life and how do they leave this life?

So the second chapter is called an investigation of going and coming. An investigation of going and coming. Specifically with regard to how a person leaves their old life and enters the new life.

If they are empty, then who is it that makes the crossing? That's the next one. Don't forget, your guy's job is to say, well, how the hell does that connect with conditions in the first chapter?

That's not my problem. That's your problem. And the examples that he gave, the image, if you remember, was the foot.

And we were trying to find what part of your foot is going and what part of your foot has already gone when you are halfway through taking a step. Where is the line between the part of the foot which has gone down the path and the part of the foot which is still going to go? Which part of the foot has gone down the path when you take a step?

Which part of the foot is taking the step? And which part of the foot has yet to come down and take it? So I've worked hard and found this image.

And we got lost there in that question for quite a while and I'm not going to go into it. What's your challenge? Okay, first chapter was how things come from their conditions.

Second chapter was focusing on how people come from the past life and enter the present life. And now you're asking this question about who is it that comes and goes? Or which part comes and goes?

Okay, all right? So that's your problem. You're going to connect all these chapters.

All right, next chapter. And now I'm talking about chapters three, four, and five. These three chapters hang together.

They belong together. Don't try to explain them separately. Okay, you guys, your teams.

Treat them together. Because also if you have to sit and explain the connection between 27 chapters, you're going to get a headache. There are certain groups within the 27 chapters that do belong together by any logic, by any Buddhist logic.

The next three chapters, which is three, four, and five, chapter three is an investigation of the powers, mainly the sense powers, eye, ear, nose, tongue, skin, but also other powers such as masculinity, femininity, mentality, intellect, these powers, which are the topic of the second chapter of the Abhidharmakosha. What about the parts of the person? What about the power, the sense powers of a person?

Chapter three. Chapter four. What about the heaps, or the different five parts of the person?

Chapter five. What about the classical elements which make a sa chu men lung? Earth, water, fire, and wind.

Sometimes they add consciousness. And in medicine, you add wood. Don't ask me why, me.

Okay, so these three are typical parts to people which Lord Buddha covered in the Abhidharma teachings, which means which are the three turnings of the wheel? First turning of the wheel. So it's not crazy to talk about the powers, sense the powers of a person, the parts of a person, and the elements which make up their physical being.

The typical energies, which we would call gravitation or inertia or entropy, things like that, they express those ideas through names like water, wind, but they don't refer to that. They don't refer to physical water. They refer to energies of the natural world.

Okay, so it's natural for Nagarjuna to treat those three chapters sort of as a lump. If, Nagarjuna, if you're saying that everything is empty and nothing exists on its own and nothing is itself, then why did Buddha describe so concretely these concrete parts of the person during the first turning of the wheel? Was he wrong?

Was he crazy? Why did he teach it that way? So those three chapters explore those parts of a person.

So now we got one, two, three, four, five. No obvious link between one and two, or two and three, four, five. And that's your problem.

[Speaker 2]
Yay.

[Speaker 1]
By the way, here's my picture for chapters three, four, and five. And again, I'm trying to combine chapters because you will put the student to sleep if you try to describe 27 connections. Try to, you know, why Nagarjuna didn't write five chapters, six chapters?

We don't know. But normally you don't overload a student with 27 logics. Why those chapters go to, you clump them together.

So for me, this is chapters three, four, and five. And these are all the parts of a car. And in describing the parts of a person, Lord Buddha implied that people were themselves.

Okay? And he was very, what do you call it, concrete about it. The parts of a person are very basic.

They are very tangible. You have your feelings, you have your discrimination, you have your physical body, you have your awareness. These are standard parts to a person.

And Buddha never said, when describing those three kinds of parts in those three chapters, he never said, the resulting person doesn't exist. He never said that. So naturally that comes.

Nagarjuna, don't forget he's on the cusp between the lower way and the greater way. He is the cusp of the lower way changing into the higher way. To the middle way.

Okay, so he is the person standing at the end of the Abhidharma period and standing at the beginning of the middle way period. He is the milestone. He is the person where we flip over from Abhidharma into middle way.

Okay? He's the one who did it. Oh yeah, she needs some cover off.

Umarripe Wangchuk. Oh, that's a different one. Okay.

All right, so you have a... Let's talk about chapters six and seven. I suggest clumping six and seven together.

Choney Lama does. And why? And he starts out his logic with a question.

And I repeat, his logic is out of order. So he's like, well, then maybe somebody will think, given that we have emotions such as desire, and since we observe in things the three stages of starting, stopping, and staying, and we see also explanations of things as being triggered by karma, which we're going to talk about later. Can't we say they have a nature?

Don't emotions have a nature? Don't negative emotions in particular trigger your next birth? Don't they have a nature?

They must have a nature. Okay? So chapter six is an investigation of desire and the person who feels the desire.

Chapter six is called an investigation of the emotion of desire and the person who has that emotion in their heart. Chapter seven is an investigation of starting, staying, and stopping. And already we have pause, right?

So why does Nagarjuna jump from desire to starting, staying, and stopping? What's the connection? I understand Choney Lama wants to lump six and seven together.

Why? He says, don't they have some nature of their own? But why he lumps them together, is his reason really strong?

That's your guy's problem. How they flow from discussion of parts, that was more concrete and didn't talk about emptiness. That's your problem.

You guys got to figure it out. I'm giving you Choney Lama's justification for single chapters or small groups of chapters out of order. He gives it out of order.

All right, next one. Oh, by the way, if you want to... Really that's chapter six and seven about starting, staying, and stopping and desire as perhaps the emotion which triggers rebirth or triggers a passage through your lifetime's rebirth.

He's talking about agents. And when you claim that the Buddha, when you deny that when the Buddha taught things in parts, like the elements that make up my physical body, that he wasn't saying, therefore, that they come from themselves, what about the interaction between parts? What about cause and effect?

What about agents? What about the guy with the billiard stick who hits the billiard ball? Is that also not real?

How can a guy whose thumb and hand is not real hold a stick and make a ball spin across the billiard table? How's that possible? That's the question that comes up next.

All right, chapter eight. Chapter eight is called An Investigation of Agents and Actions. And I guess it's pretty obvious the connection between the last one.

If desire is what throws you into your next lifetime and then you exhibit starting, staying, and stopping in the next lifetime, then shouldn't we discuss desire as an agent who makes things happen? The guy who makes things happen. So chapter eight, I'm sorry.

Chapter eight, An Investigation of Agents and Actions, Doers and the Things They Do. Here's how Choney Lama introduces chapter eight in part. Once they hear that the person possesses no nature of their own, someone might start to wonder, how did such a person come into this life from another life?

And how did they go into another life from this one? And you might also at that point wonder about if it's karma that causes them to make that journey, then how can you commit karma if there's nobody to commit the karma? You'd have to investigate agents and actions, meaning karma.

Who does the karma? And what is the karma if nobody exists? Then how can a billiard stick that doesn't exist make a ball cross the table in a way that doesn't exist?

Okay, that's chapter eight. Got it? We're halfway through our review.

We're right on time. Maybe. Okay, so this idea, chapter eight, passing from one life to another.

I like this photograph. This is Shanti, the newest member of our Sangha, born to Pachi Kuket and his wife, Pao, in Guadalajara last week, I think. New Year's Day, actually, we can always remember.

I hope the parents can remember. One, one, okay, you guys? And how did this baby come into this life?

How did they go from the past life? Who was it that went and came? And what were the forces that, what were the agents or the forces which pushed them into the next life and created that action?

What are those forces? Chapter eight. Okay, connection between seven and eight, that's your problem.

I'm just describing the chapters. Okay, chapter nine, out of order again. I'm giving them out of order from Choney Namas.

But I'm going in the Garjuna's order, which is, maybe he chickened out, didn't he? He didn't even try to put them in order. He just cheated and put them out of order.

Okay, so that's you guys. Okay, here's his justification for chapter nine. Once they have listened to a presentation on how the agents of actions, the doers of karma, have no nature of their own, then the audience might start to think, maybe there was never anyone who took a rebirth.

Who took the rebirth? If Shanti wasn't here before Shanti was born, who took Shanti's rebirth? That means there must have been somebody before Shanti, who was Shanti, to take Shanti's rebirth.

Who was there before? Who was there before an action was committed? And that's the subject of chapter nine.

We have a picture here. Yeah, I like this. This is a picture of a tree.

I bought three peach trees for Peach Tree Cafe. Me and Stanley and Allison from Shenzhen, China, we planted two of them at the cafe. Then I thought I'll plant one at my house to make my wife happy.

And this is the one at my house. And it grew a lot of beautiful peaches the first year. And the question is, who was there before?

And if you think about it, it's an interesting question. Shanti took rebirth. No, Shanti didn't take rebirth because Shanti wasn't there before Shanti was there.

So who took the rebirth? Who took Shanti's rebirth? You see what I mean?

Who was there before? Who was there before the tree was there to plant the tree? The tree is evidence that someone was there, but who was there?

All right, that's chapter what? Chapter nine. Okay, chapter 10.

Here's Choney Lama's comments out of order. The 10th chapter then, an investigation of fire and firewood is devoted to denying a certain metaphor which people have employed in an attempt to prove that the one who takes on the different parts of a person at rebirth had some nature of their own. Shanti had some...

Shanti who took on the body and mind when he came out of Pao, he did have some nature of his own or he couldn't have taken a body and mind. Got it? Somebody had to be there before.

And non-Buddhist schools try to explain it with the metaphor of fire and firewood. So really chapter 10 is the other guys. So that's important to know.

This metaphor of a fire and firewood is coming from the other guys. And the Gajanam mentions it only in order to defeat it. Now for them, what's the fire and the firewood?

And that's tricky. And I'm going to explain it. And then you guys have to figure out why the heck did it come after chapter nine.

So chapter 10, in the example, in the metaphor given by non-Buddhist schools of agents and actions, the agent is the firewood. Not the guy who made the fire. So when you read the 10th chapter, I encourage you to remember, the agent, the thing that was there before the fire that made the fire happen was the firewood.

Firewood came first, put the firewood there, light it. And then the firewood made fire. And they say that's how you can explain who took a rebirth or something like that.

They say that. Or they say the result was present in the cause. Their fire was in the firewood and it was manifested.

This is Sankhya. This is the Sankhya. These were the great other school when the Gajanam was around.

All right. Here's the example, fire and firewood. And just remember, we're talking about fire, in this case as the agent, sorry, firewood.

And then the fire as the deed or the action which it commits. And we say their example of the fire is mistaken. So don't forget, we're not presenting our system, we're presenting a mistaken system in chapter 10.

All right. Chapters 11 and 12. By the way, we're just doing the first 17 chapters in this review because it's a review of chapters that we already finished.

And if you're curious, in this session, we're going to finish chapters 18 to 23. 18 is, I believe, the most important chapter of the entire world. And it's extremely popular.

It's the one that people like to quote a lot. In fact, I set the mix nuts to do some statistics for me. And because of John Brady's fine work, we are able to do this kind of statistical analysis.

Because the Gopher Program gives you the exact number of hits you got in different settings, you can do a percentage study of quotations, like which of these chapters is most quoted. And we are going to hit chapter 18, which is the emptiness of people and things. And we will finish with chapter 23.

19, 20, 21, 22, 23, not so popular. 18, super popular. 24, super popular.

You have to come to the Last Nagarjuna Teaching next year. Okay. All right.

Chapters 11 and 12. Chapter 11 is called An Investigation of a First Beginning or a Final Ending to Things. An Investigation of Whether Things Have a First Beginning or a Final Ending.

Chapter 11. Chapter 12, An Investigation of Whether Pain is Created by Itself or by Something Else.

[Speaker 2]
Okay.

[Speaker 1]
Even just try to draw a connection between those two. Choney Lama lumps them together. I'll say it again.

Chapter 11, An Investigation of Whether Things Ever Had a First Beginning and a Final Ending. Chapter 12, An Investigation of Whether Pain Comes from Itself or from Something Else. Does something else trigger pain?

And he says, this is Choney Lama, okay? They come after chapter 10 because they disproved the firewood idea. These two chapters, 11 and 12, prove that the firewood idea of agent and action is mistaken.

How that is true, you guys should remember from the last session we had. Because I don't remember. I mean, yeah, you'll figure it out.

Picture here. This is actually the image we used last session when we discussed these ideas, okay? Where do you draw a beginning?

And where do you draw an ending? Where does past life end? Where does current life start?

And where did the ribbon start? You can say that Shanti's birth was cutting the ribbon. It was demarcating a line in time when he ended his past life and he entered his new life.

But that ribbon, according to Buddhism, if it represents the mind, our life itself has no beginning and has no end. Okay, chapter 13. Okay, here's an introduction.

Given that, and again, it goes back, he lumps it with the desire. Given that we see emotions such as desire, and given that we see things exhibit starting, stopping, and staying, as well as causes for these things, which is karma and the people who commit the karma, okay? If people can do karma, if there's people who commit karma, then doesn't that have some nature of its own?

If something can produce an effect, it must be itself. And we say not necessarily. Okay?

But we're going to discuss that next. Okay? Okay.

And so chapter 13 is an examination of factors.

[Speaker 2]
Okay?

[Speaker 1]
Didn't we already have a chapter like that?

[Speaker 2]
What was the first chapter? Yeah. An examination of, GYEN.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah. We called it conditions. And now we have a different word, factors.

Okay? And what's the difference between the conditions of the first chapter and the factors of the 13th chapter? We have to examine.

We have to do a pariksha. All right. Here's a picture from that last session that we did.

We chose this picture. Okay? And this is actually an illustration of a concept from chapter 13 about the connection between cheating and lying.

Deception and lie. And that's the idea of illusion, of things not being what they seem to be. Is it true that anyone who cheats you has necessarily lied to you?

Okay? Do things lie to us? Do things try to present themselves as one thing and then secretly they're something else?

And can they steal things from us by lying to us? All right. That's a question.

Chapters 14 to 16. Okay. Here's how Choney Lama clumps them together.

I suggest that you clump them together because 27 is too much for anybody. Show me 10 connections. Show me 12 connections.

This is why one thing should lead to the next thing. Somebody might posit as proof that both the person and things do possess a nature of their own, that things do make contact with each other. So really 14 to 16 are talking about that crucial idea of can things make contact with other things?

Does the eyeball make contact with the outside world, colors and shapes? Does the awareness of what you see make contact with the eyeball? What's the nature of contact between mind and body?

And what's the nature of contact between physical things and physical things? What's the nature of things touching each other? It's the general theme of chapters 14 to 16.

14 is called an investigation of the contact between things. 15 is called an investigation about the nature of things. If things can contact each other, then they must have a separate nature if they can touch each other, which implies they were separate before they touched each other.

If they were the same thing, they couldn't make contact, could they? So contact leads in the... Investigation of contact between things leads into an investigation of the nature of the things.

And then he jumps to... Okay, to Choney Lama, they tie together naturally. But chapter 16 is an investigation of bondage and freedom from bondage.

Different kind of contact. Maybe the contact of the handcuffs or something. Okay, all right.

So somehow those three have got to tie together. All right, and that's up to you guys to figure it out. They're all three contact.

And the question of contact is crucial to an understanding of emptiness. Okay, how can one thing touch another thing? All right, okay.

Here's a picture. The idea here, and I don't know if I got it so clear, was that what has caused her to make contact with the money? Like we would all like to make contact with more money, right?

And depending on your motivation, you can make the contact or not make the contact. Contact is not coming from different objects being in the same spatial place. Contact comes from motivation.

Contact with money comes from the motivation to help others. So is that really contact? Got it?

Money touches your hand if you want it to touch other people's hands bad enough. Not because money is paper and your hand is skin. We got to think about it.

All right, chapter 17. Don't worry, this is the last one today. And then to next class, I'm going to go over the 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 26 chapters.

That we're going to cover in this session. And just give you a quick introduction to them and then we'll jump into the first one, which is 18. What does chapter 17 cover?

Somebody says, sansara, the cycle of pain, which in the kitchen is? Wife yells back. I'm not stupid, you're stupid.

Plants new seeds, goes to the bedroom to get out of the kitchen, runs into misbehaving kids coming out of the seeds of criticizing her husband. She yells at the kids. She goes back to the kitchen and her husband yells at her and then she yells back.

That's called a mini sansara, a mini cycle. You probably have a few going on in your own home at any given time. Okay.

So this is an examination of an investigation of karma and its consequences. Somebody says, sansara must have its own nature. And the proof is, there's a basic connection.

Now we got a connection back to the last couple chapters. There's a connection between karma and its consequences. There's not just a karma between your skin and the money.

There must be deeper connections going on, like between karma and its consequences. Where does the connection exist between offering someone else money to help them and getting money to come back? What created the contact between your skin and the paper or the bits which make the money in your bank account nowadays?

Who made that?

[Speaker 2]
Okay.

[Speaker 1]
Who created the connection between being generous and getting a lot of money back? Who created that connection? Where did that connection come from?

That must be inherent. It's not like we create, it's not like you have to make that connection first and then karma works. Somehow it's always there.

So that means nobody made it, right?

[Speaker 2]
No.

[Speaker 1]
Okay. And by the way, I'd like to point out that when he discusses in that 17th chapter, the connection between karma and its consequences, he chooses to take a delightful karma. He chooses to take positive karma, which I think is nice.

And I thought you might like to hear the verse. BDAG NI LAS PAR SDOM PA DANG, GZHAN LA PHAN DOGS CANG SEMS GANG DE PHYIR DE NI DI GZHAN DU, BRAS BU BDAG GIS SA BON YIN When you controlling yourself, which in Buddhism means not hurting other people, being nice to other people. GZHAN LA PHAN DOGS CANG SEMS GANG Real love towards other people.

DE PHYIR DE NI DI GZHAN DU, BRAS BU BDAG GIS SA BON YIN This is the seeds to have happiness as a result, and even across lifetimes. All right. So really he concentrates on, next picture, last picture.

He concentrates on what he calls white karma, pure white karma. So in the 17th chapter, when he discusses our connection to self-existence, the connection he chooses is the connection between kindness and happiness. Kindness to others and happiness for yourself.

And then he calls it pure white karma. He wants to know, is the connection between kindness to others and happiness for yourself, is it somehow natural, which would mean self-existence? All right.

All right, so I'm going to leave you there. Those are the 17 chapters we covered already. I think you sense, and I certainly sense trying to teach it to you, that there's a chaos here.

How is it that each chapter flows into the next chapter? Mostly Buddhist books are extremely careful to draw a connection between each successive chapter. This book is not.

This book doesn't do it. Wisdom doesn't do it. We're going to have to do it for ourselves.

Maybe Nagarjuna intended us to have to fight through that exercise to really understand emptiness. Okay, see you in the next class. Yay!