Нагарджуна, курс 4 — Мудрость Арьи Нагарджуны, курс 4: Тайна глав (2022, Аризона), занятие 7

[Speaker 1]
Hi, welcome back to Nagarjuna, Arya Nagarjuna. And we're still in chapter 18, which is discussing really the emptiness of the person and the emptiness of the parts of the person. Or you can say, the emptiness of me and mine.

The next verse, it's ,GANG LA BRTEN NAS GANG CHUNG BA, ,DE NYID RIGS SHIG DE NYID MIN, ,DE LAS GZHAN BA'ANG MA YIN PHYIR, ,DE PHYIR PHYIR MIN RTAG PA MIN, So this is a classic discussion, the last line about PHYIR and RTAG PA. PHYIR means cut off. And you see the same root in Dorje Chupa, which means?

Diamond Cutter. Yeah, so that means cut. So PHYIR and RTAG are related.

And so PHYIR means things just stop or things just discontinued, like the flow goes on and then suddenly it just stops. And then RTAG means it just goes on forever. No ending, no beginning, it just goes on forever.

And those are the two extremes. It's interesting that they are not real dangerous to our practice. They are the results of dangers to our practice.

So it's kind of interesting. So if you think the husband is coming from himself, then he could never change. And the implication, so these two are implications.

The implication of that is that he would just go on forever the same, if he was coming from himself. And then the implication of thinking if he's not coming from himself, he's not coming from anywhere else, is BYAS PA, then he would just blink out of existence. So it's called the blink and the blink, the blink result of thinking a certain way and the forever.

Forever and blink, how's that? Blink and forever implications of thinking in a certain way. So how does that relate to cause and effect?

GANG LA BRTAN NAS GANGS BYUNG BA That means anything that happens based on something else. And that's a sweet word. That's BRTAN BYUNG.

That's a sweet word in Buddhism. It means that things come from other things. And that's the name of Pratityasamutpada, which is dependent origination.

So if things come from other things, if the puddle on the floor comes from a leak in the plumbing, then I can stop puddles on the floor. I just have to fix the leak in the plumbing. So if I understand GANG LA BRTAN NAS GANGS BYUNG BA, dependent origination, something happens and then something else happens.

But here it says anything that happened based on something else, RE ZHIG DE NYID MIN wouldn't be exactly that. So what does that mean? Nagarjuna says, if something happened depending on something else, then in a sense, it wouldn't be what it was.

And that's confusing, and that seems to be Nagarjuna's specialty. So let's look at the commentary. GYUR GANG LA BRTAN DE GANGS BYUNG BA'I DRIB BU CHUD CHEN And Choney Lama puts it in the form of a debate.

Let's take any result which comes out from dependence on any particular cause. RE ZHIG GYUR DE NYID DANG NGO NYID GYI GCIG DU YOD PA MA YIN TE We can say provisionally, and the provisionally is important, RE ZHIG. We can say provisionally that it is not one and the same as its cause.

If it has come about through dependence on a cause, we can say it is not that cause. It is not that. So now the DE NYID means provisionally, we can say it's not it, meaning it's not the cause.

If something comes from a cause, then we can, what do you call it, in a preliminary way, we can say it is not that cause. And that's okay, we can appreciate that. GCIG NA RGYAS BYA RGYAS BYAS THAMS CAD GCIG DU RGYUR BA'I PHYIR If the result, if the tree were the seed, then there would be nothing to do the growing, and there would be nothing growing.

There would be nothing to cause the growing, and there wouldn't be any growing because they'd be the same thing. DE PHYIR CHEN GYIS DE LAS NGO NYID GYI GZHAN PA'ANG MIN TE But neither is the result something other than the cause. Neither is the result something other than the cause because DE LA MA STOB PA MI SBYUNG BA'I PHYIR If it were totally unrelated to the cause, the result wouldn't happen.

So we can't say the tree is the seed, but we can't say the tree is not the seed in a certain sense because without the seed, the tree can't happen. DE RGYUR NYID BRAL BUR And by the way, if you think you understand that, you don't. Because remember Nagarjuna, he's very, what do you call it, fascinated by these contradictions.

If the tree comes from the seed, then at some point they should touch. But if there's any point at which the tree touches the cause, the seed, then the tree would be in the past. The moment of touching would be in the past because relative to the tree, the seed is in the past.

So if they touch, then that part of the tree is in the past, the touching place, at the touching place. Okay. And I was trying to think of a more modern cause and effect relationship because I'm getting tired of, I'm getting bored of the seeds and trees.

So here's a picture of some ladies, some young lady is touching a keyboard. So the finger comes down on the key. The key is depressed by the finger.

And then something happens on the screen. So that's a kind of a more modern cause and effect. The motion of the finger triggers the change on the screen.

So does the change in the screen depend on the finger? And if so, shouldn't they have some point of contact? And if they do have a point of contact, then that part, the front part of the screen changing is touching the back part of the finger coming down and they are in the same time.

Then the cause is happening at the same time as the result, which is impossible. So Nagarjuna's like, didn't you guys notice? Doesn't it bother you?

Because it really bothers me. That's Nagarjuna for you. And what's really happening, we'll talk about it, okay?

And it feels, I have constantly, I have people talking to me and saying, oh, this is all just intellectual stuff. You're just getting, you're one of those philosophy majors who can't make a cup of coffee. And it doesn't really matter to your real life.

But it does matter to your real life because what you think is going on cannot be going on. It must be something else, okay? A seed cannot make a tree.

And a keystroke, a descending finger cannot create a change on the screen. It's not possible. It's literally not possible.

Something else is going on. And if you think the screen is changing because you hit the key, then you have a problem. And in the end, it will kill you.

It's a very serious problem. It's not some philosophical problem. Okay, we're on to what he calls part five.

,DUN DANG NGES PAR DGOS PAR BSTAN PA'O, You have to address these issues. This is the fifth section here. Arya Nagarjuna is saying, look, you can't just blow off these issues.

You have to think about them. And you have to do something. They have to lead to some kind of action.

Then he says this verse, ,SANGS RGYAS JIG RTEN DGOS RNAMS KYIS, ,RTEN PA'I DUS SUR GYUR PA DE, ,DUN BYED MA YIN THA DE MIN, ,BYED PA MA YIN LTA PA MIN, ,RDZOGS SANGS RGYAS RNAMS KYANG SRED PA NA, And then there's a line missing, which I put back in. Yeah, you put it back in. ,GNYEN THOS RNAMS NI ZAD GYUR KYANG, So this carving has a problem there.

,RANG SANGS RGYAS KYI YOD ZHIG NI, ,RTEN PA MED PAR RAB TU SKYES, This is a beautiful verse, and it's a very important verse. It's actually two verses, Tim, but we're okay. ,SANGS RGYAS JIG RTEN DGOS RNAMS KYIS, He says the Buddhists are the JIG RTEN KYI GUNG PO.

What's JIG RTEN? The world, yeah. And GUNG PO means protector.

So they are the savior or protector of the world. The Buddhists who are the protectors of the world. ,RTEN PA GYUR TSIG YOD PA STE, They taught RTEN PA, like tenure.

They taught the teachings, and those teachings are GYUR TSIG, AMRTA. They are the nectar of deathlessness. If you drink them, those teachings, you don't have to die, AMRTA.

So he calls the teachings, he calls Dharma, the deathless nectar of the Dharma, GYUR PA STE, ,DON CIG MA YIN THA DE NYIN, When they gave different teachings, they were not one teaching, but they were not different teachings. So all the teachings, all the nectar, all the deathless nectar teachings, by the way, nektar also means to go beyond death. Nek is necrophilia, means death.

And tar means, like tara means to cross over, which is where transportation comes from. So nektar means to cross over death. So DON CIG MA YIN THE DE NYIN, All the teachings the Buddha has ever given, those deathless nectar, those separate teachings are not one teaching, neither are they different teachings.

BYAS PA MA YIN LTA PA MIN, They don't stop before they start, and they don't go on forever after they start. Which is the necessary implication if they existed from their own side. He comes back to that theme, which was from the first verse of the whole work.

RDZOGS RNAMS SANGS, and then he goes into a cool thing. He says, RDZOGS SANGS RNAMS KYANG BSAD PA NA, Now, if you struggle with these ideas, if someone says to you, look, the teachings of the Buddha are nectar, they can take you beyond death. And then in the same breath they say, all the separate teachings they gave are not the same teaching, and they're also not different teachings.

And they say that. And then you say, stop confusing me. Just tell me what you want to tell me.

And he says, no, think about it. I want you to think about it. Why?

Because the teachings of the Buddha only become deathless nectar to people who understand why they are not one teaching and why they are not separate teachings. That's the key to the nectar. The nectar doesn't work if you don't understand that the teachings could not have been separate.

And they could not have been one. Both are impossible. If you don't grasp that, they don't work as nectar.

Then comes this beautiful frustrated cry from the audience. They're like, but I don't get it. So am I going to die?

I don't really get it. So am I going to die? And he says, no, things are still okay.

And that's so comforting coming from Nagarjuna. He says, you don't get it? No problem.

Something good's still going to happen. And that's the second birth here. RDZOGS BZANG RNAMS KYANG SRED PA NA If you struggle with these issues, with these contradictions, but you never truly figure them out, and you die.

And then he says, look, you may go to a world where the teachings of the Buddha, SRED PA, they're not there anymore. You may go to a world bereft or without the teachings of the Buddha. NYAN THOS RNAMS NI ZAD YOD KYANG And you may go to a world where there are no longer disciples of the Buddha.

So you may end up in a world where the teachings of the Buddha are no longer there. And that the people following those teachings are no longer there. Which just kind of relates to the three tracts.

Bodhisattva tract, listener tract, and self-made Buddha tract. Self-made Buddha, really self-made Buddha hustle?

[Speaker 2]
Not really Buddha.

[Speaker 1]
But are they self-made?

[Speaker 2]
No, later. Why? We have many, many, many teachers before.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, so many teachers in their past lives. And then they enter this life and they don't have a teacher, but they still get it. So that's called a self-made understander.

Buddha is an exaggeration. Say again?

[Speaker 2]
The doctor told them, go away for three years.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, go away for three years. So this is a beautiful verse. He says, look, if you don't get this, what I'm trying to express, keep trying, keep trying.

Even if you were to die, even if you were to go to a world where there's no Buddhas and there's no disciples of the Buddhas, still, RANG SANGS RGYAS KYI YOD SHES NI, BRTAN PA MED PAR RAB DU SKYES You will have insights. You will understand emptiness on your own because you worked so hard in this life. Even if you never meet a Buddha after this life, even if you never meet the Dharma after this life, even if you never meet people who believe in that Dharma, even if your next life you're alone, which is a terrible place to be in a world with no Dharma and no teachers, but still, something will happen to you.

Something good will happen to you and you'll start understanding emptiness spontaneously. So that's a beautiful, comforting line for those of us who don't get Nagarjuna completely. Okay.

All right, let's go to the next verse. Oh, so here's a picture. I always try to find a picture that will help you remember these points.

In theory, you're supposed to look at these pictures later. And here, you just, okay, in this life, keep planting seeds. It means keep struggling with these teachings.

Keep struggling with these ideas. Don't give up. And even if you don't get it perfectly in this lifetime, you are setting yourself up for a delightful next life, even in a world that there are no teachings.

That's pretty comforting, I think. All right, we're reaching, oh, hmm. Here it says part two, part three.

And that's the part two, part three of the whole chapter. Okay, so we're going back to the very first outline division. Tibetan scriptures, ancient Indian scriptures are very complex outline with different headers and deep, deep, they go very deep into an outline structure.

He's, what do you call it? You focus in and then you, he's coming back out of focus. And he says, by the way, we just reached the big part two of the whole chapter and the big part three of the whole chapter.

The first part of each chapter is the philosophy and the difficult ideas. The second part of each chapter, he mentions a book by Lord Buddha that backs up Nagarjuna's teaching emptiness. But Choney Lama, it's kind of cool.

And it would be a whole course with a database. And I did some of it, but I didn't spend all the time. But Choney Lama says, each chapter that Nagarjuna's going through has a scriptural reference in the original sutras.

You can go back to the original teachings of Buddha and find these points. This is not Nagarjuna making these up. He's drawing them out of the teachings of the Buddha, which were 700 years before him.

So he gives the references here for this chapter. And it'd be an interesting graduate student exercise to go list them and find them. And I did the first few chapters just for fun.

And they're correct. But it takes some time. It's a long search through the database.

And you have to know how to search. And then the third part of each chapter is the title of the chapter. So in Buddhism, the chapter is given at the end.

In Tibetan and in Sanskrit, the name of the chapter comes at the end. I put it artificially at the beginning in the English, but actually in the Sanskrit and in the Tibetan, it normally comes at the end. What's the chapter we just finished?

BDAG DANG SPYOD DAG PA An Investigation of the Person. And here SPYOD means the parts of the person, dharma, the incidentals of the person. So what just happened?

We finished chapter 18, probably the second most important chapter. It's the second most quoted chapter of the whole text. So we have struggled through, how many classes have we had?

Six classes, six and a half classes. We struggled through, we got through now the 18th chapter, which is a big achievement. If you never hear any more wisdom by Arya Nagarjuna, if you can say, I heard the 18th chapter, probably you're in good shape for next life, no matter what world you go to.

So that's an important chapter. We're going to go on to chapter 19. I think it's sexy.

I remember when I was first learning these ancient books, like 1975, 25, 45 years, 47 years ago, every time they had a big debate about the nature of time, I was turned on, like, wow, yeah, let's talk about that. I even took a course in university, in the philosophy department. They discussed whether time travel was possible in serious physics terms.

I was always so excited to see sections where Buddha started discussing the nature of time. And here we are, chapter 19 is an investigation of time. Okay, let's go straight into it.

DANG PO LA'I BDE PA DANG MANG PO LA'I BDE PA'I DU RANG BZHIN GYIS YOD PA RGA PO We're going to focus right now on, do the three times have an independent existence? Do the past, present, and future have an independent existence? Or do they exist through a relative relationship?

Does the past only make sense relative to the present and the future? And you can see, he could discuss it like nine different ways, right? But he's going to focus on, first, he's going to say, does the present and the future, do the present and the future exist only with relation to the past?

Do you need the past to say present and future? Can the present and future exist without the past? And once he covers that possibility, and I'll say it again, do the present and future exist only relative to the past?

Do you need the past to establish present and future? Or do they have an independent existence? Can the present exist without the past?

Can the future exist without the past? So first he's going to take two times, present and future, and he's going to discuss them relative to the past. Then he's going to mix it up.

Then he's going to say, well, can the past exist without the present? Can the past and the present exist without the future? So he takes a set of three, and then he describes it, he describes the possibilities in groups of one and two.

And there's an incredible error in the carving or something where they misspelled set of three, which is SUMTSAN, S-U-M-T-S-A-N. And they changed it to SU TSEN, because M is a prefix letter for TSEN, which means Mark, or we talked about it, LAKSHANA. So I was reading it for like a half hour, and I was like, I don't make sense.

Then I realized it was an exquisite misspelling, because it's a real word. The misspelling is a very attractive word, SU TSEN. And finally I was like, oh man, this is just a carving mistake.

Anyway, here we go. Verses one and two, chapter 19. THA LTAR BYUNG BA MA'ONG BA GAL TE DE LA LTOS GYUR NA THA LTAR BYUNG BA MA'ONG BA DE PAS MTHUN NA YOD PAR GYUR THA LTAR BYUNG BA MA'ONG BA, the present tense and the future tense.

GAL TE DE LA LTOS GYUR NA If those two exist only relative to the past, if the present and the future draw their existence relative to the past, THA LTAR BYUNG BA MA'ONG BA then the present and the future, DE PAS MTHUN NA YOD PAR GYUR would have to exist in the past. If the present and the future only exist relative to past, which means through a relationship to the past, then they must exist in the past because you can't share a relationship at different times. If you're going to hold hands with somebody, you both have to be here on the same day.

Got it?

[Speaker 2]
It's very interesting.

[Speaker 1]
Now he says the other possibility. THA LTAR BYUNG BA MA'ONG BA Well, okay, if you don't like that one, let's talk about the present and the future again. GAL TE DE LA MTHUN NA If they don't exist relative to the past, THA LTAR BYUNG BA MA'ONG BA CI LTAR DE LA LTOS PAR GYUR If the past is gone already by the time the present and the future come, then how can we have a relationship?

Then how can you say past and future are, past and future are created by the mind by comparison to the past. But if the past is gone and doesn't exist anymore, how can you say the present and the future exist relative to something that's not there? Then you could say, past and future exist relative to fish, or past and future exist relative to the man in the moon.

You see, it doesn't matter. If it's already gone, then all the gone things are the same. So you could say, how do you establish past and future?

Relative to fish on the man in the moon's nose. Because it's the same as the past, which is already gone. It doesn't exist anymore.

So that's his first verse. I have a kind of a lame picture. I couldn't come up with a very good one, to be honest.

You got it? It's just calendars. And we just, so 22, can 22 and 23, can this year and next year, exist?

Can you say this year without last year? You see, and in this case, don't forget we are taking 22 and 23, the present year and the next year, and we're comparing them to the last year. Can you have 2022 and can you have 2023 without a 2021?

If you can have a 22 and a 23 without a 21, then how did you come up with 22? Where'd you get that from? Oh, I added one to what?

And if they do exist relative to 21, then there's a line where 22 touches 21, and part of 22 is 21. And then that was last, then this year was last year. Okay, all right?

And it sounds cute. It sounds like just BS, but it's a serious inconsistency in the world. And they bother Nagarjuna.

Those inconsistencies bother Nagarjuna. He says something else must be going on. And we're going to explore what else is going on.

Right now, we're just supposed to be confused. And then he says, ha-ah, this is how you figure it out. All right.

That's a teaching method, right? First you confuse the student and then towards the end of the class you resolve everything and they feel good and they feel like they understood something. Then he says, GAL TE DA LTAR BYUNG BA DANG MO'O PA NYID DE'I PA'I DUS NA DE NA MED PAR GYUR NA NI If the present and the future didn't exist in the past, if the present and the future don't exist in the past, GYUR NA, DU DE NYID JI LTAR NA DU DE LA NGO BO NYID KYI LTOS PAR RGYUR BA MI DE STE then how could they exist in and of themselves?

DE'I TSE NA MED PA'I PHYIR I'm sorry, let's do it again. GAL TE DA LTAR BYUNG BA DANG MO'O PA NYID DE'I PA'I DUS NA MED PAR GYUR NA NI If the present and the future don't exist in the past, then how can they have a relationship to the past? How can they touch the past?

There must be a point of contact. And that point of contact has to be shared temporally. All right, and I don't know, I just came up with another silly picture.

If the past and the present, I'm sorry, if the present and the future don't exist in the past, then there's no relation. If you call the present and the future the top part of that hourglass, and you call the past the bottom part of that hourglass, and you tip the hourglass over, and the sand in the present and the future never touches the sand in the past, then how can you have a flow? All right.

I'm going to take you to one sentence here. I can't possibly read every sentence because we won't finish. I mean, I would love to.

It would take about 10 years or 15 years. And that's fine with me, but people complain. All right.

DE YANG, NYUG DGOS LTA BU NI DA LTAR BA DANG NYUG KHOR SKYE BA'I RGYUR YOD KYANG RE ZHIG MA SKYES PA'I BYA' NI MA' BON DANG NYUG GUS ZHIG PA NI DE PA SBYOR PA NA SBYOR PA'I MA' BON PA NI NGON DANG DE PA NI RJES SU BYUNG BA YIN NO DE YANG, he says, DE YANG, NYUG DGOS LTA BU NI, if we take the example of a sprout, which is just spurting out of its leaf, okay? LTA LTAR BA DANG NYUG DGOS LTA BU NI LTA LTAR BA, the present sprout, and NYUG KHOR SKYE BA'I RGYUR YOD KYANG So there is the sprout coming out in the present, and there's also the present, the cause of the sprout. In a way, the seed and the sprout are happening at the same time.

When you see a seed splits and the sprout comes out, and you kind of see both at the same time, right? NYUG KHOR SKYE BA'I RGYUR YOD KYANG RE ZHIG MA SKAD PA'I CHA NI But if you think about it, the part of the seed which has not sprouted yet is something we can call future. To happen in the future.

What do they call that? To come later, like a check in the mail when somebody owes you money. That's always a future occurrence.

So there must, when you see a sprout coming out of a seed, there has to be some part of the sprout which is still locked in the seed as a potential for the future. CHA MONGS PA DAG We can call that future. NYUG KHOR ZHIG PA NI And when the sprout falls apart, when the tree falls down, ZHIG PA NI, DE PAR BYOGS PA'I You can call that the past of this event.

The future of this event, the future of a sprout coming out of a seed is the part of the sprout still in the seed. That's the future. It's coming in the future.

It's going to be a tree in the future. But the part of the sprout which is already dying is the past of this event. It's going to be past.

Past, okay, past. Then you start to get confused about what's future and what's past. The dying hasn't occurred yet, right?

So it's future. So the past is the future. And the future is past by the time you, sorry, the future is past by the time it becomes the present.

The future is past by the time it becomes the present. There's something screwy. Something's messed up.

Yeah, I think about it. Yeah, so then you get this question. And I put a picture here.

Who's in the past? Which happens first, the past or the future? Well, the future has to happen first for the sprout to grow, and then it becomes past, right?

So the past happens after the future, right? I mean, it's true. So work with that, all right?

All right, and then you can spend some time on that in your discussion groups. You can talk about it, okay? Until the future becomes the past, there's no present.

Okay, just cook it. My teacher used to say, just cook it. It means he didn't want to explain it anymore.

Okay. In the outline, if you're following the outline, it's defective here. Something's missing in the carving.

And I filled it in. You can put it there. DE'I PA LA NI MA DUG PAR DE NYID DUG PA YOD MA YIN DE PHYIR THAG PAR BYUNG BA'I SDUG BSNGAL MO'ONG DUG KYANG YOD MA YIN DE'I PA LA NI MA DUG PAR If you try to find a present and a future which don't depend on the past, DE NYID DUG PA YOD MA YIN you could never find a present and a future.

If you try to find a present and a future that don't rest on the past, you will never find such a present and a future. DE'I PHYIR THAG PAR BYUNG BA'I SDUG BSNGAL MO'ONG DUG KYANG YOD MA YIN But then there couldn't be any time in which you have the present and the future because if they have to rest on the past, the past by definition is already gone. DE'I PHYIR THAG PAR BYUNG BA'I SDUG BSNGAL MO'ONG DUG KYANG YOD MA YIN Okay, so if something's resting on something that's already gone, it must be gone.

Okay, all right, you're right. If the cup is on a table, it's gone. The cup must be gone also.

It can't be here because they have to be in the same time to rest on each other. Okay, there's a contradiction here. Something's going on.

Okay. And then, Choney Lama and the great commentators, I wish the green drink was passed. The great commentators will keep saying, if the present and the future rested on the past self-existently, and I ask you to struggle with that idea, okay?

He doesn't say, if the present and the future rested on the past. He said, if it were actually true that the present and the future rested on the past self-existently from its own side, then you'd have these problems. What's the opposite of that?

I ask you, what's the opposite? I'll say it again. Choney Lama keeps throwing in the adverbial phrase.

If the present and the future rested on the past self-existently from its own side, then what's the opposite of that? So he proves that's impossible. If the present and the future rested on the past self-existently, then they would have to be gone because they would have to touch the past, and the past is gone.

And once you touch the past, you're gone. But that's only if they existed self-existently. What if they, now my question to you, you guys, here in the room, these eminent scholars, if the present and the past didn't exist self-existently, could they rest on the past?

And what would that look like? What's it mean to say, you want me to help you? If the past and the present didn't exist from their own side, could they rest on the past?

If the present and the future didn't exist from their own side, could they rest on the past? Yeah, they could, because the whole picture would be coming from you. It would all be just an imagination coming from you.

And in fact, that's the way it is. It's all coming from you, which implies you can F with the past, which is very sexy idea. Like if you had a divorce, with enough good seeds, you could turn it into a masterpiece.

That's exciting. Isn't it possible with enough good seeds to actually create a different past? And I say yes, because it's coming from you anyway.

And not just that you try to think of why it wasn't so bad. I'm not talking about that. I'm saying where you wake up and you say, she saved my life, or he saved my life, or thank God.

Okay, all right, let's move on. Let's go on. We're crossing into what I had originally designed as a new class.

And I've been going so slow that we're hopelessly behind the original class structure. But sorry for the coughs. I know it kills the translators.

What this means, practically speaking, is that we get to start a new class in the middle of the class, which means we get to have some fun in the middle of the class. And the fun is, for Christina, we get to talk about the Sanskrit. So there are some important words for the next section.

And I would like to go through them with you. The first one is kala. Do you have those, Tim?

Yeah, kala means time. Okay, kala means time. You know the famous kala chakra, which is the wheel of time, which is a Netflix thing, right?

Just kidding. The novels were wonderful. Oh, the novels were wonderful.

I watched 10 minutes of the first show and I turned it off. It was like the first time they tried to do The Hobbit. So anyway, kala kala comes from an ancient root cal, chal, which means to stir or to move.

You often see Cs and Ks kind of mushing into each other. And you have also a root char, because I told you Rs and Ls tend to switch. And then that became car.

And it became the cal in accelerator. And it became the char in chariot. So those are all movement from past into the future.

They all imply some kind of speed and some kind of transportation, moving somewhere. So the ancient root for the word time in Sanskrit means the thing which moves. And then we have car, chariot, and accelerator from, say again?

I didn't think of that, but that's probably true. Cool. Then we're going to switch chapters before we end this next class, the next class.

So I'll give you some words from the next chapter, which is going to be talking about causes and conditions. And the name for cause is hetu. Say hetu.

Yeah, hetu comes from a root ha, which means to go forth or to leave. The Indo-European is gehe, which means to go. And you have the word gate.

You have the word go. And even the Indo-European lists the hina in hinayana because you went past that. That's a lower track and you went on a higher track.

So hinayana means the track I left behind. So, cool. So that's hetu.

The tu, by the way, makes infinitives from nouns. So it's like tuyo, to go beyond or to travel. I'd like to do pratyaya, pratyaya.

And that's going to be important in the next class. And that's this famous word for gen, which means condition. Sometimes you can think of it classically as the seed is the hetu.

And then the sunlight, the water, the effort of the gardener, these are all pratyaya. These are contributing factors. And then hetu is the main cause.

So pratyaya here means pratyaya. Praty means very much, super. And aya comes from the root i, just a simple i.

What's the most, what's a common English word?

[Speaker 2]
Exit. Exit.

[Speaker 1]
We got an exit sign over there. Yeah, ex means out from. And it is the past tense of it.

So if you want to leave, you got to go this way. Exit. Exit.

So pratyaya means super going, super going. It means contributing factor. All right, so now you learned three words.

What were they? You forgot them already. Hetu, pratyaya, and kala.

Kala. Okay, good. All right, good.

All right, we have some time. We'll just go to a brief thing and then we'll finish this class. We'll pick this up later in the next class.

But the next chapter in the outline of the whole book, or the next outline heading, is called RIGS PA DE'I DUS GZHAN NYID LA BRJAL BA Having examined how the past, sorry, having examined how the present and the future do or do not rest upon the past, let's mix it up. Let's look at how did the past and the present rely on the future, for example. Let's look at the other possibilities.

Let's mix them up. And that's the next verse. RIN PA'I TSUN NI, DE NYID KYI LHA MA NYID PO NOR BA DANG And this verse says, you get the same messes if you apply all this to the other two possibilities.

If you look at how the past and the present rely on the future, or you look at how the past and the future rely on the present, you get the same messes. And the word here for messes is NOR BA with an accent. And it comes from the root NOR, low tone NOR, which means to make a mistake.

So it makes it active. You get the same screw-ups with the other two times. So that's easily understood.

I don't have to cover that. Okay. And I don't know, I had a picture of, you ready for the picture, Tim?

I don't know, I found three people in a headstand. They are reversed, right? They are upside down.

I'd like to think of them as past, present, and future. And if you jumble them up, what other problems do you get? You get the same problems.

You get the same problems when you examine the past and the future relative to the present, or when you examine the past and the present relative to the future. The same problems, mess-ups that you got when you examine the present and the future relative to the past. Something like that.

Yay. Then Choney Lama says, you know what's cute? You could take the opening lines of this verse.

And then I'll give them to you again. He says, you can take the opening lines of this verse, sorry, this chapter, which were THA LTAR BYUNG DANG MA'ONG BA, the present and the future. If they do depend on the past, then the present and the past would have to exist, if the present and the future did depend on the past, then the present and the future would have to exist in the past.

That's his first verse. Second verse, if the present and the future don't depend on the past, then the present and the future, how could you establish them? How could you say present and future?

So it doesn't work if you say they do depend on the past, present and future. And it doesn't work if you say they don't depend on the past. So, and then he says, he gets cute, and he just substitutes words in the original two verses.

And he recites them that way. Oh, if the past and the future didn't depend on the present, then they would have to exist. If they did depend on the present, then the past and the future would have to exist in the present.

And if the past and the future, if the past and the future didn't exist in the present, then they couldn't exist at all, because they wouldn't be here. Or if they didn't exist relative to the present, then we'd only have past and future and no present. So he does a cute thing, where he substitutes, he jumbles up the words, just like Nagarjuna told us to.

He actually writes it down. So that's helpful. Now we're going to get, how much time we got?

Mm, we're a little bit over time, but I think it's great to finish one more small point, because it hangs with this. He says, CHOS SUMTSAN GZHAN LA BYAR And we corrected the carving from CHOS SUMTSAN GZHAN LA BYAR. So we figured out this problem.

He says, you can apply that to any other trio. If KHYIR, SUMTSAN means trio. Anytime you have three things.

He says, you can apply it to all the other trios in your life. So let's look at some trios. And he gives some examples.

Nagarjuna gives some examples. He says, CHOG DANG THA MA DANG SDUGS When you discuss the concept of relative quality of things, best quality, worst quality, medium quality, that's another set of three. That's another trio.

And the same thing. You got the same, that best, medium quality and best quality are relying on worst quality. But if medium quality doesn't touch worst quality, then there's no comparison.

So part of medium quality has to be worst quality, but it can't be, because then medium would be worse. Then there'd be a new worst. Okay, same problems with that trio.

Then Choney Lama wants to get his trio in. And he says, well, how about DGE BA MI DGE BA LUNG MA BSTAN What's that, you guys? DGE BA, DGE BA, MI DGE BA LUNG MA BSTAN Good karma, bad karma, and neutral karma.

Do they exist relative to each other? Can you say this is neutral because it's neither good nor bad, but it's karma? And he says, no, you cannot say that because if neutral karma only exists relative to good karma and bad karma, then part of neutral karma would have to be good karma.

And then good karma would be neutral. Part of good karma would be neutral, okay? But if you don't compare them, if they never touch each other, then neutral karma could be fish on the nose of the man in the moon.

If it doesn't have to connect to anything, well, then it could connect to anything. All right, he's got one more trio here. And it took me a long time to figure it out.

He says, one, two, and three. I'm like, what one, what two? He says, no, I'm just saying number one, number two, number three.

You can't have a trio. You can't have a number one, number two, number three if they do depend on each other because then three would be two. But if they don't depend on each other, then two is the man in the moon's nose, and three is a fish.

They don't have to relate to each other. So it's very cute. It's very cool.

He has a lot of fun. He points out the same problems with all the other trios in your life. You can think of other trios, okay?

Dennis, Hasso, and Venerable Phil. I put a trio, I don't know, I was digging around for other trios. This trio is from the Olympics.

The guy who wins the gold medal or the woman who's in the middle, silver's on the left, that they exist relative to each other. You can't have a gold medal without a bronze medal. But if the gold medal touches the bronze medal, it's not such a special medal anymore.

Stuff like that. You can play with your own trios. Okay, we're going to stop this class there.

What we're going into next is, we're going to explore concepts of time in other Buddhist schools, which is a very sexy topic. I enjoy it a lot. So we've kind of been looking at time from the viewpoint of Middle Way, highest schools of Buddhism.

But the lower schools of Buddhism have very fascinating explanations of time, and they're important. So the next place we're going is to the other Buddhist schools' explanation of time. And Nagarjuna will destroy each of them.

Okay, see you in the next class. Thank you guys. Thanks to all the people here.

It's nice to have you here, brother. It makes me more awake than talking at a screen.