Нагарджуна, курс 4 — Мудрость Арьи Нагарджуны, курс 4: Тайна глав (2022, Аризона), занятие 6

[Speaker 1]
Hi, welcome back to Nagarjuna. We've reached the sixth class. I'd like to show you a picture which kind of sums up what we talked about last time.

And here you can see a lady cleaning the floor. And this comes from an actual event at my house where I kept walking out into the kitchen at night to get a glass of water or something, and I would step in a puddle of water. So turn on the light, get a cloth, clean up the puddle of water, get my glass of water, go back to bed.

And this went on night after night. And every night I would patiently get on my knees and clean up the puddle of water. And then finally, after about three weeks, I'm like, hey, maybe it's coming from somewhere.

And I was like, duh. And I look under the sink. I guess, subconsciously, I really didn't want to look under the sink because it's so scary down there.

There's so much weird stuff down there that I threw down there. And I didn't want to go through the sink and find out everything was soaked. But I did, and it was.

And the idea of Buddhism, it's very beautiful. You don't attack the result. You attack the cause.

So you don't fix things by fixing the result. You fix things by fixing the cause. Fixing the result would be something like fixing the, would be like cleaning the puddle up every night.

But you didn't fix the source. You didn't fix the cause of it. And then it's just going to come back again.

So the idea is, attack the cause. Find the source and attack that. We just talked about steps that have brought about the problems in our life, starting with a tendency that we brought into this life with us, with our mind, to see things as coming from themselves.

And then that's going to trigger this habit of thinking that me and mine come from themselves. And then that's going to trigger this habit of liking the things that seem good, disliking the things that seem bad, and then reacting to them and responding to them. Fighting for getting more of what I like, fighting against people I don't like, and then making more karma to plant more seeds in my mind to carry on into my next life for this circle to continue again.

So we don't struggle with, for example, money. Money. We don't struggle with money.

We don't struggle with current money. We invest for future money, and that's all we do. We don't fight, we don't compete for current existing amounts of money.

We don't do that in this system. We plant the seeds that will grow money a couple weeks later or a couple months later. So we address the problem at the source, and we don't address the problem at the result.

And that's the idea. So don't forget the think thing. Just to remind you, in this chapter so far, we were supposed to be covering five things.

Number one was, how do you get into understanding emptiness? And we finished that section. There were five sections.

The third section, I'll skip the second one, was how do you teach someone about emptiness? The fourth section was, what's the essence of emptiness? The fifth section is, how do you put that into practice?

But the second section, which is what we're going to cover today, is called LUNG DANG BRGYAL BONG. LUNG DANG BRGYAL BONG means, hey, Nagarjuna, I like your ideas. They seem pretty interesting.

They are pretty persuasive. But aren't you contradicting what Lord Buddha said? Because Lord Buddha did say that things had a nature of their own.

He said they do have a nature of their own. And he did. So then Nagarjuna is stuck in this position, which he was hard stuck into, in which book?

The 60 Verses, which Nick Lasha is translating. You have to address the times early in the Buddha's career, when he said, yes, things do have a nature of their own. And now we got to talk about that.

So here's Nagarjuna's response. BDAG PO SHES KYANG BDAG GYUR CING BDAG MED SHES KYANG BSTAN PAR GYUR SANGS RGYAS RNAMS KYIS BDAG DANG NI BDAG MED DGA MED SHES KYANG BSTAN He says, when you think about it, there's three options here. What are the three?

BDAG PO SHES KYANG BDAG Yes, the Buddha said there is a self-nature to things. He did historically say things do have a self-nature. He did say that.

But the verb here is not say. The verb here is BDAG, which means fantasize. So yeah, Buddha did kind of fantasize about a self-nature.

There was a period in his life when Buddha was fantasizing about a self-nature. We'll see what it means later. But then there was another part of his life when BDAG MED SHES KYANG BSTAN PAR GYUR But there was another part of his life where he said, you know, things also don't have a self-nature.

So he qualified. Things also don't have a self-nature. Then at the end he said, SANGS RGYAS RNAMS KYI BDAG DANG NI BDAG MED DGA' MED SHES KYANG BSTAN Later he said, it's not true that things have a self-nature and it's not true that they don't have a self-nature.

So we got three options here. In the early part of his teaching career, Buddha said, Buddha fantasized about a self-nature that was there. Later he said, ah, you can take your choice.

Take it or leave it. Self-nature or no self-nature. Okay, he taught two options.

Then in the third, in the third, sorry, RNAMS KYI BDAG DANG NI BDAG MED DGA' MED SHES KYANG BSTAN He also taught, I'm sorry, the third option was, it's not true that there's a self and it's not true that there's no self.

[Speaker 2]
Let me say it again. First he said there is a self and he went like this.

[Speaker 1]
There is a self. Then he said, you know, there's a way you can think of it. There's a self and there's no self.

And then later he said, no, there's no self and there's not no self. So this is Nagarjuna, he's being cute, which is, he really enjoys being cute. All right, so I thought it'd be worth it to go through these ideas separately, which is going to slow us down.

I'm sorry about that. Okay, but I'm not really sorry. Okay, here's the commentary.

SANGS RGYAS RNAMS KYI SDOD PA'I RGA' ZHIG TU BDAG PO ZHIG KYANG BDAG YOD PAR BTAG PAR GYUR TE BSTAN PA LTAR GSUM There was a time in the Buddha's career when he said, yes, there does exist a self-nature to things. He said that. First choice.

Second choice. YANG RGA' ZHIG TU NI RANG RGYAL THUB PA'I BDAG MED DO Then he said, KYANG BSTAN, he said on top of there being a self-nature, there's also in some cases a lack of a self-nature. He gave an option.

What was the lack of the self-nature he talked about in those days? It was the lower emptiness of the lower schools, which just means a self-nature which is independent, which doesn't depend on other things. So the lower form of emptiness is sort of like there's a driver, right?

You guys remember that? RANG RGYAL THUB PA'I ZAD DANG Someone's in control. Someone can be in current control.

You can get more money by doing these things immediately and not by being generous. So he said there's no such main thing as that kind of money. Then and finally, YANG RGA' ZHIG TU BDAG DANG BDAG MED PA RGA' YANG RANG ZHIG GI SGRUB PA MED DO There is neither a self-nature nor no self-nature where both of those come from their own side.

There's no self and there's no lack of a self-nature, but I'm only talking about ones that come from their own side. So that's three. What's the goal of this section?

We're trying to explain why Buddha seemed to have said there was a self-nature to things, and we end up saying, he was just saying different things to different people. Who did he say those things to? RIM PA BZHIN DU BLO MED DAG LA BDE BU'I BKUR BA MI BDE PA DANG First of all, he did say there was a self-nature to people of lower spiritual intellect because he wanted to make sure that they didn't discount karma and its consequences.

So he wanted to say, you do have a self-nature and things are going to come back to you if you do bad things. So he was afraid if he said there is no self, people would go ahead and be naughty. So he said, no, that self exists.

The one who gets back all the trouble you give to others, that one exists. Because he wanted them to be good people. Second, JIGS DAG LHAS PA He told other people, in some ways there's a self, in other ways there's no self.

And that's to help people overcome the attitude about the bottle of water which is mistaken. That me and mine come from the outside. Then who did he give the last explanation to?

Neither self nor no self comes from themself. Who did he give that to? SANGS RGYUD DONG NUS PA'I RDU BYA He reserved that for students who were extraordinarily sensitive and were able to get the deeper truth.

So yes, did he change his message about self? Yes. Did he contradict himself about the self?

No, because it was very intentional. He revealed different layers of selflessness according to the capacity of the student. That covers that section.

Three Kinds of Me's. You got it here? I don't know, what was that?

Yeah, we don't have to have that picture. Okay, ZHES TSUL GCIGS LA And I'm sorry to go into all this detail, but it's just beautiful to me. He says there's also a way in which you can explain these two differently.

Some people explain these three differently. He says what? He was trying to get along with the Sankhyas.

He was trying to get along with followers of the religion into which he was born. And he said, of course there's a self nature. It's inherent in all things.

There's a big self who creates all things. He was trying to not freak out like Jesus among the Jewish people or something. He was trying to be cooperative with who he grew up with.

That's one interpretation when it says he did claim there was a self. Second, RGYANG PHAN PA'I PHYI MA RDO'O'ANG BYAS PA'I BDAG MED DO And then there was a school called the Charvakas who said there was nobody to go on into a future life. And he said, no, that self there is.

You will take a future. There is somebody who takes a future life, trust me. But he was just talking in that context.

SANGS RGYAS CHEN PO'I DE'I RNAMS KYI BDAG DANG BDAG MED PA RGA'I YANG RANG ZHIG YID GRUB PA MED DO And then finally, in his ultimate presentation, he said, yes, there is a me. Yes, there is a mine, but they don't come from their own side. That's all.

Okay, next section. I like this section. This is pretty famous.

DON DANG PAR BRJOD MI NUS PA'I RGYUD ZIN Okay, DON DANG PAR BRJOD MI NUS PA'I RGYUD ZIN In the Vajragini Sangha, BRJOD LEN DE BRJOD DU MED PA Beyond words, beyond description. The reality of the world is beyond all words. And now that subject is going to come up.

DON DANG PAR BRJOD MI NUS PA'I RGYUD ZIN Why is it that emptiness is said to be indescribable? If it's indescribable, why do we have to study this long book describing it? If emptiness is really indescribable, why do we got to do all this hard work to describe it?

So Garjuna, thankfully, I think sensitively for us, he's going to say, okay, yes, we do say emptiness is indescribable. Yes, we do say you can't describe it in words, but that has a special meaning. And here's the next verse.

BRJOD PAR BYA BA RDOG PA STE SEMS KYI SPYOD YIN RDOG PA'I SOGS LA SKYES PA DANG MA RGAGS PA SPYOD NI NYANGS YIN DE DANG TSUL Then he says here, BRJOD PAR BYA BA RDOG PA STE Yeah, it cannot be immediately expressed in words. And usually, which we're going to see later, that means you can't sit down if you have seen emptiness directly. And you sit, if a person says, look, just sit down with me for five minutes and tell me what it is and I'll see it.

And that's not possible. So it cannot be put into words in that sense. You cannot inspire an immediate perception, direct perception of emptiness in another person just by talking about it.

So BRJOD PAR BYA BA RDOG PA STE means it's not something that could happen just by talking about it. SEMS KYI SPYOD YIN RDOG PA'I SOGS And that's because most people's minds cannot conceptualize what you're talking about. You can sit down and describe emptiness for hour after hour for them, but they won't be able to comprehend everything in such a way that they would see emptiness directly within the next few hours or something like that.

That's usually not possible. It did happen at the first turning of the wheel, but those people weren't ready. Why?

They had eaten their teacher. But we're not getting into that. And that's not a Buddhist practice.

All right. MA RGYAS THAL MA MA RGA PA CHOS NI NYANGS YIN DE DANG TSUL In some respects, emptiness is similar to nirvana. And this is the highest interpretation of nirvana.

We talk about it when we talk about two kinds of nirvana. One is called nirvana with something left over, and one is called a nirvana with nothing left over. And the lower schools think that first you achieve nirvana with something left over, meaning your physical body.

You permanently end your negative emotions, and then later you die. And you die with that pure state of mind. But it's not like your body blinks out, or I guess it does, but anyway.

First you clean up your mind, and then you clean up your body. So there is a period in your life that you haven't died yet, but you still have a body that was created by karma and kleshas. And then the higher school says, no, no, that's not what nirvana with remainder means.

Nirvana without remainder happens first. And those are the direct perceptions of emptiness, where you are no longer loaded up with the idea that things come from their own side. While you are seeing emptiness directly, you are devoid of ideas that things could come from their own side.

During that blessed 20 minutes, you can't have a thought that things are coming from their own side. Then you come out of the direct perception of emptiness, and for seven more lifetimes, on some level, you still feel like things come from their own side, but you don't believe it. So what he's referring to here is that kind of nirvana, where for the 20 minutes of direct perception of emptiness, you no longer have starting and stopping, in that sense.

You are free of normal starting, coming from its own side, stopping coming from its own side, in that sense. By the way, I can't avoid teaching this paragraph because Choney Lama refers to the Diamond Cutter Sutra. He says, by the way, and he's back, it starts with DOR CHOS.

The paragraph starts with DOR CHOS. Maybe Tim will show it to you. By the way, he's doing an amazing job just digging out pieces of text and showing them to us.

Let's read this together. DOR CHOS SOGS LAS, SANGS RGYAS KYI CHUD GANG YANG BSTAN PA MED Okay, look, I agree. Why?

I agree that's what the Diamond Cutter Sutra says. What the Diamond Cutter Sutra says? The Diamond Cutter Sutra says the Buddhas never teach the dharma.

Okay, GANG YANG BSTAN PA MED means the Buddhas never teach any dharma. He says, okay, look, I know, I know. That's what this Diamond Cutter Sutra says.

But what it's saying is he never teaches a dharma which is coming from its own side. Okay? Which means when the Buddha sat down in the Jetavan Garden in Vaishali?

No, Shravasti. When the Buddha sat down in the Jetavan Garden at Shravasti and taught the dharma, none of it was coming from him. The listeners who were there had the seeds in their mind to create a being who was teaching them the path to freedom.

And the generations of people, the 25, sorry, the hundred generations of people after that who read the Diamond Cutter Sutra were writing the sutra on the pages as they went. Okay, that's coming from you. The sutra came from you.

Okay, DBANG DU TSUL THAN GNYED DU NI SANGS RGYAS KYI BSTAN PA MDOD GOS SO He says, look, on a conventional level, we have to say, THAN GNYED DU means on a conventional level, we have to say the Buddha did teach the dharma. That's not what this verse is about. We're not denying that the Buddha sat down in the Jetavan Garden and taught the Diamond Cutter Sutra.

We're not saying that. We're not saying he never taught it. We're just saying that nominally, conventionally speaking, he taught it.

But if you look at it from a karmic point of view, you taught the Diamond Cutter Sutra. Anyone who ever heard it was teaching the Diamond Cutter Sutra. Cool?

So that's starting a discussion of using words to explain a thing which is beyond words. Of those five great sexy subjects, we've now reached the third one, which is DE KHO NA NYID LA SPYI BA'I RIM PA What's a useful way to teach, SPYI BA means what's a useful way to guide people through the concepts of emptiness? SPYI BA means what's a useful way to guide people through these ideas?

And then he says, THAMS CAD YANG DAG YANG DAG MIN YANG DAG YANG DAG MA YIN NYID YANG DAG MIN MIN YANG DAG NYID YIN DE NYID SANGS RGYAS RJES BSTAN PA'O And he starts playing with the word YANG DAG. Say YANG DAG. What's the Sanskrit word?

TAT YAM, I guess, okay? TAT YAM. YANG DAG is pure, but the Sanskrit seems like he's using TAT YAM, which means as it is, TAT YAM.

Like Tathagata, for example. Anyway, THAMS CAD YANG DAG YANG DAG MIN I mean, if you read the line, here's how it sounds. Everything is pure, nothing is pure.

Purity is not pure perfectly. That which is not pure, is the purity of what is not. That's what the Buddha taught.

And then the question is, I don't know if we should go too much into this. It'd take a long time. Let's do it.

In what sense did the Buddha teach the Diamond Cutter Sutra? RGYAL BA'I CI THAMS CAD ZHIGS PA'I CHEN DU THAMS PA MA RIGS PA'I LAS PA'I LAS PA'I PHYIR THAMS CAD YANG DAG PA DE'I SNGOR ZHIGS ZHIGS ZHIGS In the beginning, when the Buddha first started to teach in this world, he did describe in the Abhidharma what the world looks like, how the world came into being. And in that sense, he said the world is pure.

But the word pure here in this verse means real. So pure here means real. So did Buddha ever say the world was real?

Yes, when? Like Abhidharma in the third chapter, he describes all the continents, he describes the sun and the moon, he describes the galaxy, he describes the different solar systems. It's all real.

Nowhere did he say all these planets are not real. In his first teaching. DE LA CI DU BYED DE DAG SKYE PHYIR RE RE LA BYUD PA'I GZHAN DU RGYUR PA YOD PAS Then in this later teaching, he said, but in a way, things are in constant flux.

Things never last for more than a millisecond. And in that sense, they are impure. They don't have a purity of being real for more than a millisecond.

So let's call them unreal, in the sense that they are fleeting and they are changing instant by instant. So did he ever say it was pure? Yes.

Did he ever say it wasn't pure? Yes. Did he ever say it was real?

Yes. Then after that, just after that, did he say it wasn't real? Yes.

Now it's not finished, okay. DE NAS RGA ZHIG GI NGOR NUS BYED DI DAG YANG DRAG PA DANG BHAG PA'I RGYAL DUG GI YESHES LA BSTOD NAS YANG DRAG PA MA YIN PA Then he changed his story and said, for all you guys, the world is real, but not for an Arya, okay. For someone, especially who is in the, engaged in the direct perception of emptiness, the world is not real.

So, so far he said real, then he said unreal, because it's momentary, and then he said real and unreal. Depends on who you are. Depends on who's looking.

So, so far we got real, unreal, and real and unreal. It's starting to make a little more sense. BSAM BA LA SMOS PA'I NGOR DU BYED RNAMS YANG DRAG PA MIN TE SKYE PHYIR RIGS LA GZHAN DU RGYUR PA'I NGOR NYID DU PA'I YANG MIN LA YANG DRAG PA STE SKYE PHYIR RIGS LA GZHAN DU RGYUR PA'I YANG MIN LA Then those who were really interested in emptiness, he changed his story.

And he said, things that are caused are not real. Why? Because by the time they're real, they change to something else.

Things that are caused are not real because by the time they're real, they're not real anymore. RGYUR BA'I NGOR NYID DU PA'I YANG MIN LA YANG DRAG PA STE From another point of view, they are real. SKYE PHYIR RIGS LA GZHAN DU RGYUR PA'I MIN PA In the instant that they are themselves, they're real.

But considered over instance, they're unreal. In the instant they're real, considered over a series of instance, they're not real. Change this story.

Then Choney Lama makes a famous comment that different presentations of what reality means to different levels of people is very much a Buddhist tradition because people are at different levels. And if you overwhelm a beginner student with too heavy a presentation of emptiness, you have mistaught them. You are a bad teacher.

And Buddha's not a bad teacher. So Buddha would modify the presentation to fit the student, even to the point of saying things are not empty when they are, if it would help the student. All right.

How are we doing on time? I'm going to keep going, Tim, into what we had called class for. We're going to start studying, I'd like to go back to the Sanskrit and talk about some words that are useful for studying the next section.

And the first one I'd like to talk about is LAK SHES NA. And I know Christina knows LAK SHES NA. LAK SHES NA means, it's a difficult word.

And here it's going to mean a typical characteristic. CIG GI, typical characteristic. So LAK SHES NA means sign, but in logic it has totally different names.

So it means kind of, what are the bright, you know, like you're selling somebody a new car. What are the five LAK SHES NAS? Oh, it's got a 700 horsepower engine.

It's got six Bose speakers. It's our LAK SHES NAS. Qualities of the new car that stand out.

Okay, bright, that's how you say feature. Excuse me. Bright, shiny features of the new car.

And that's because LAK SHES, which means to mark a thing as special. To mark a thing as special. It comes from an Indo-European root, LAY UK, LAY UK, which means light or brightness.

I met a waiter two days ago. I said, what's your name? He said, Luke.

I said, God, I was just studying this verbal root. Do you know what your name means? And he says, I have no idea.

And I said, I think it means shining person. You're a shining person. He says, I'll take it.

So anyway, LUK is the Indo-European root. LOOS, light comes from that. That's why there's a GH in light.

Brightness comes from that. That's why there's a GH. R's and L's are interchangeable.

I built an office in Bangkok. We had three suppliers of gems. Leer gems, real gems, and rare gems.

Real gems, rare gems, and leer gems. But when the receptionists called me to tell me the salesman was here, she said, little gems is here. I'd say, which little gems is here?

Real, I said real. So R and L are basically interchangeable in Asian languages. And it's good.

So LUK is the root, and it actually comes from ROOCH, which means to shine, and ROOCH comes from that. So anyway, light and luster and lucid are all cognates. I chose the two signs or bright, shiny features, LAK SHNA, of the Buddha, which I would consider the most important of the five that he's going to present now.

And I'll give you the Sanskrit for those. First one is SHANTA, which means peace, and it comes from a root SHAM. And you know the word SHANTI, and you know the word SHAMATHA.

SHAMATHA is SHI NAS, which means to stay in peace. Probably STA, SHAMA STA. If you're interested, most of the ancient SHA roots used to be KSH.

Most of the ancient SHA roots used to be KSH. And those come into Western languages as QU. So KSH is usually the real root when it starts with SH, and most often the KSH comes into Western languages as QU, meaning quiet, or also calm.

And KSHANTI is patience. So I want you to learn SHANTA, why? Because it's going to be one of the five great LAK SHNA of emptiness.

It's going to be one of the five great selling points of emptiness. Like selling a new Tesla car or something. And another one I wanted to teach you is actually a lack of PRAPANCHA.

So PRAPANCHA. I like PANCHA, it means five. It came into the word finger, okay, five.

It came into the word FUNG in German, which comes from punch. So FUNG comes into English as five. So it means five.

But what it means is, look at my hand. It means, and DROD PA, the verb means for light rays to spread out. We constantly see in those tantric visualizations the world is coming out, but you're getting hard.

There's this DROD PA of light. DROD PA means like you take your hand and you go like that, and that's PANCHA. That's PRAPANCHA.

So PRA means forward, like proud of a boat or proud. And PRAPANCHA means the world is a construct coming from you. It's a finger coming from you, but a different one.

Five finger. Anyway, I'm not going to talk about that. Okay, I do have some self-control.

All right, so we're going to go through the five. These are the five shining features of emptiness. I think that would be enough for this class today.

Okay, we'll go through the five features. They're in the next verse. GZHAN LAS GZHAN MIN ZHI BA DANG DROD PA RNAMS KYI MA DROD PA RNAMS KYI MA DROD PA THA DE MIN, DE NYID DE NYID MTSAN NYID DO Here are the five, and I'll read them off to you.

Number one, and you can leave that verse up, Tim. GZHAN GYI BSTAN PA TZAM LAS DNGOS SU BSHAD PA MIN GYIS GZHAN LAS GZHAN MIN GZHAN LAS GZHAN MIN means emptiness is not something you can see directly by talking to someone directly. No one can sit down and trigger the direct perception of emptiness in your mind just by talking to you about what they saw.

So Geshe-la, you should never have emptiness teachings. No, no, that's not the point. The point is there's no way for a person who has seen emptiness, no matter how desperately they might want to help you, they can't force you to see emptiness directly just by describing what they saw.

In that sense, it cannot be communicated to another person directly. That's what we mean by directly, in the sense that if I explain it to you for 10 minutes, suddenly you see it, that's not going to happen. Does that mean we shouldn't study emptiness?

Duh, no. Of course you have to. So that's the first quality of emptiness.

GZHAN LAS ZHES MIN Not something you could directly or immediately, immediately learn from another person. ZHI BA means, but it is a kind of peace. And it's not that you sit down and feel peaceful.

That's not what it means. Peace means, there's a joke. I mean, the Sanskrit root sham, shanti, also refers to wiping something out.

Yeah, like stopping it completely. Put to rest. Rest in peace.

Rest in peace, meaning dead, finished. So whenever you see shanti in Sanskrit, just be aware it also refers to putting out a fire. The same word means putting out a fire.

So making the fire leave existence. So that's what it means here. What fire does emptiness put out?

The perception that the bottle is coming from itself. A bottle that could come from itself is permanently shut down, shanti. That's shanti, that's peace.

So it doesn't mean eagles song, peaceful, easy feeling. It's not that at all. It's rather like putting out a car fire and saving the inhabitant of the car.

All right, number three. SPROS PA SNANG GI SPROS PA No prapancha. And here you have to call it constructs.

No stories that you make up in your head. Emptiness is free of stories that you make up in your head. This is called elaboration.

Some translators call it elaboration. I like to call it constructs. It means stuff made up in your head.

Emptiness is free. And he says specifically verbal elaborations or verbal constructs. It's not something you can elaborate on with words and see it directly.

That's not going to happen. It's related to the first one. Okay, the fourth one was SNAM STOGS MED which means no normal thought.

Unthinkable with normal thoughts. Unthinkable with normal thoughts. What?

Emptiness. Why? When your mind is thinking normal thoughts, you cannot see emptiness directly.

So if there's a flow of normal thoughts in your mind, it will stop the perception of emptiness. And this refers to a contradiction, inherent contradiction. I give you day after day, a description of how the bottle is not coming from its own side.

While I'm giving you that description, you are desperately holding to the idea that it's coming from the bottle. When I hold the bottle up to tell you why it's not coming from the bottle, you're seeing it as coming from the bottle until I put it down. And it's one of the big contradictions of teaching emptiness.

Even as you hold the pen up and explain why it's not coming from itself, there is no one in the audience who doesn't feel that it's coming from itself. It's just the way it is. If you tell them 10,000 times, you might have some hope.

But the first 10,000 times, when they see the pen, they automatically think it's coming from itself even as you explain how it's not coming from itself. And that's what he's talking about here. Normal flow of thought is interrupted.

Number five, CHOS THAMS CAD GYIS BDE GONG NA GNYIS RIGS TSUNGS PA'I DRON THAL BDE PA MIN TE When we explain the diamond in the Diamond Cutter Sutra, we often talk about this particular quality of emptiness, which is that all objects have their own emptiness. All objects are devoid of not coming from you. All objects in the universe are devoid of not coming from you.

All husbands in the kitchen are empty of not coming from you. Which is to say, all husbands in the kitchen are coming from you. That's their dependent origination.

But to state it emptiness way, no husband in the kitchen is not coming from you. So CHOS THAMS CAD GYIS BDE GONG NA RIGS TSUNGS PA'I In that sense, all objects in the universe are totally equal. So Buddha's saying constantly, equanimity, but there's a higher...

I treat all people the same, see all people the same, but there's a higher form of equanimity, which we don't talk about very often, which is that you should see all objects as equal in that they're all coming equally from you. They all share a certain quality that they are coming from you. And there's many stories in scripture of a teacher handing a student a little piece of dog poop or a piece of meat or a glass of wine and say, take a drink or taste it.

And the student will say, no, no, it's poo-poo. Lama Palma used to do that. The student said, I'm totally into emptiness.

She said, okay, eat the poo-poo then. As some brave students tried. By the way, I'm not recommending that.

I'm not teaching that. I'm not asking you to do that. And it's a pity I have to repeat that.

But the point is dog poo-poo does have its own emptiness. And from that point of view, it might be worth it to taste dog poo-poo every once in a while. Just so you can say, this does have the same quality as emptiness.

Or this does have the same quality as Nagarjuna's great wisdom. They all share a certain high quality in that they don't come from themselves. So the reason these tantric yogis, why they do strange things, is to remind themselves.

Like tasting poo-poo, which I don't recommend, and I'm not teaching that. The only way you could do it is if you were reflecting on something deeper. This too is not coming from me.

This too is not coming from me. So those are the five great qualities. Those are the five great lakshina of emptiness.

And they're very, very beautiful. And these are traditionally taught by Nagarjuna. Okay, next we're going to get into how the world might misunderstand emptiness.

And that's the next topic that we'll be covering in the next class from the 18th chapter, 10th verse. All right, see you then. We're going slower than I expected, but we'll just have more Nagarjuna classes.

Thank you guys.

[Speaker 2]
Thank you, Tim.