Нагарджуна, курс 4 — Мудрость Арьи Нагарджуны, курс 4: Тайна глав (2022, Аризона), занятие 8

[Speaker 1]
Hi, welcome back to Arya Nagarjuna. And if you remember in the last class, we had gone through all these trios. We were trying to figure out if you could have, for example, the present and the future time, if you didn't have a past time.

So do the present and the future only exist relative to the past? And is that how the present and the future exist, through relation to the past? Do the concepts of past, present, and future only exist because of the comparison between past, present, and future?

And basically, Nagarjuna says no. Because a comparison between, for example, present and future with past would require that in some sense, present and future would have to make contact with past for there to be a valid comparison. There'd have to be some point of relationship.

And that gets into touching territory because then something which is present or future would have to be touching something which were past. And that's not viable. It just doesn't work out.

Then the edge of the present thing would have to be in the past also to have a relationship with the past. So there'd have to be a point of contact. I think it's pretty natural for us to believe that the concept of present and future, for example, relies upon the concept of the past.

And how we establish things as being future or present or past in our own life is done by comparison of the three. And Nagarjuna is trying to point out that that's untenable. There cannot be a comparison between past, present, and future.

So the very concept of time must be coming from someplace else, not by comparison, not because of comparison. And he said you can apply that idea to other triads or other groups of three. For example, good karma, bad karma, neutral karma.

And he had some other example. What was that? Oh, best, worst, and medium qualities.

What was the other one? Oh yeah, even one, two, and three depend on a comparison. And we tend to inherently believe that, for example, the difference between one and two and three depends on the comparison of the three.

And Nagarjuna's trying to say that's not even possible. So where does even the concept of a progression of time, how can time go from one o'clock to two o'clock if it's not by comparison? Where is it coming from?

And we'll get into it. We'll get into the answer. But first, he promised us two things.

He's going to examine concepts of time from non-Buddhist schools of Nagarjuna's time. So it would be like us talking about what modern physicists think about time. In Nagarjuna's time, if he wanted to have some juicy debate, he would talk about the idea of time, for example, in the Sankhya Hindu school or something.

And then by discussing their idea of time, our idea of time would become more clear. And so first he promises a discussion of time from other traditions. And then he says, then let's look at the concept of time in other traditions of Buddhism, other than Middle Way.

And he's going to take NGOS MA'O, which means functional list, which means people who think that if something does something, it should have some kind of inherent existence. If fire can be hot, then that heat must somehow be inherent to fire. Fires are never cold, for example, freezing.

So here we go. This next verse, which is verse number five, is going to present the idea of another school, another tradition of India in second century A.D. And here's the verse, MI NAS DON NYID RDZIN MI BYED GANG ZHIG GSUNG BAR BYA BA'I PHYIR GNAS PAR YOD PA MA YIN PAS MA GSUNGS MTHU NI JI LTAR BDAG When you see BDAG, G-D-A-G-S, or any variation of it, you automatically have to be suspicious. What does it mean?

It means to attribute or to call something something. Like when you say the world exists just in words or it exists in names, the verb is BDAG. So anytime you see BDAG, usually at the end of a verse, it means how can you speak of that?

How can you apply that? How can you refer to it this way? Meaning falsely, oftentimes.

All right, so GZHAN DE NA RE Here's the actual debate. GZHAN DE NA RE means other traditions of ancient India, maybe the Sankhya, the Hindu tradition. They come to Nagarjuna and they say, GZHU RANG BZHIN GYIS YOD DE Time exists in and of itself.

It is not a creation of our mind. It is not a creation of our karmic seeds. It's not even a creation of comparison between the times.

It exists in and of itself. Time exists in a certain measurable way and it is not relative. So you can say science before Einstein, Newtonian mechanics.

Time has a certain definition. RANG BZHIN GYIS YOD DE, why? SKAD CIG DANG THANG CIG DANG YOD TZAM DANG NYIN TZAM SOGS LA TSE DON GZHAN DANG BRTEN PA'I PHYIR Because time can be measured in agreed upon units.

Time is measured in seconds, minutes, hours, days, seasons, years, decades, centuries. We have created words and concepts for the measurement of time. So therefore, time does have some existence from its own side, or it could not have been named millisecond, second, like that.

These are real measurements, like an hour is 60 minutes. It's not like 61, it's not like 59. Therefore, it has some inherent existence.

An hour has to be 60 minutes. It's an agreed upon convention. Therefore, it has some independent existence.

And here's Nagarjuna's response. DE NYID MI RIGS TE That's MI RIGS, that's BS. That's all wrong, why?

DE NYID SKAD CIG RE RE BZHIN ZHIG NAS BRAL BA'I If you think about it, time passes in fleeting milliseconds, ZHIG NAS BRAL BA'I THER GZUGS MI NAS THER GZUGS is a beautiful word, you should learn, Tim. It means it has no solid existence. THER GZUGS is a beautiful, poetic word that means it has no solid existence.

THER GZUGS DU MI NAS PA'I PHYIR DANG DU LA NGO BO THAR BA'I PHYIR DKA' BYAS LA SOGS PA NGO DGO NA'I BRTZIN PA MI PHYIR PA'I PHYIR And you can't hold on to time. You cannot grasp time. You cannot catch time and freeze it.

Time is unfreezable. Time cannot be... You cannot grasp to a certain millisecond and say that's a millisecond.

It's too fleeting. It's too un-THER GZUGS to even call it substantial. PHYIR MA GRUB TE DE NYID DE DAG GCIG RIG PA LA BRTAN NAS RDOG PA TZAM YIN PA'I PHYIR And time requires...

Units of time require artificial measures. They require artificial concepts. Okay, 60 minutes will be an hour.

And that's all made up in your mind. So you are taking things. All units of time up to centuries ultimately depend on milliseconds or the shortest period of time.

And those are so fleeting that you cannot grasp onto them. So if you pile up ungraspable things, you end up with just a big ungraspable thing. It's not like it becomes more solid when you pile them up because each one is undefinable.

Each one is uncatchable. You can't catch a moment in time. And when you turn 69, you'll understand it better.

Then the other guy says a very beautiful thing. And these are all very thought-provoking. And if we had time, if you have time, these are great for conversation in a study group or for meditation on your own.

And the one that here he says, KHO NA RE Now here's another school of thought.

[Speaker 2]
And they say, RDUG GIS BYUNG BA SMIN PA Time, how are you going to say this?

[Speaker 1]
Time brings the elemental forces of the universe to fruition. Time brings the elemental forces of the universe to fruition.

[Speaker 2]
Therefore, it is solid.

[Speaker 1]
Time's effect on gravity, inertia, entropy, basic electromagnetism, time's effect on those elemental forces of the universe demonstrate that time must have some solid existence because it affects other things. Time causes, to this morning, they announced the astronomers for the first time watched a star explode in present time, meaning the light reached us. They were able to observe a star exploding for the first time in real time.

I mean, just a couple billion years behind. And what this guy says, what this non-Buddhist guy says, he says, look, so if time had no substantial existence, if it weren't solid, then how can it cause a star to explode? A star explodes over a certain amount of time.

The time comes, it explodes, it keeps exploding. This requires time. In a way you can, and it's going to come later, time has a solid existence because it is tetherable to the phases of solid objects.

So you can say that the phases of the moon, you can assign them times, and those are so solid that the times you assign to them, full moon, half moon, rising moon, dark moon, those must have some kind of solid existence either. Also, that the conventions that are admittedly artificial of time, if they are linked to a real natural occurrence, like the phases of the moon, then they take on some real existence. They have some solid existence.

They are tied to a thing changing. Then Nagarjuna won't have it. And he says, no, no, no.

You're trying to point out, for example, a change in the phase of the moon. You're trying to say that at a certain time, I don't know, a half moon becomes a three-quarter moon or something. You're making an artificial boundary between a half moon and a three-quarters moon.

But if you think about it, the moment in which a half moon changes to a three-quarter moon is not something you can freeze. You can't freeze it. There's no point at which it is purely half moon, and then in the next moment, it is purely three-quarters moon.

There's always some kind of overlap. It phase, we call phases of the moon. It phases into the three-quarter moon.

There's no solid line where you can say it's now the three-quarter moon. You could say, you look it up online and it says, the moon's going to change phase at three o' five today. But which three o' five?

Three o' five and a half? Three o' five and a quarter? And then which three o' five and a quarter?

The first part of three o' five and a quarter or the second part of three o' five and a quarter? And it's all, it is not something, they keep using the word sung, which means zen, which means pointable to, grabbable, definable. You can't say this is the moment at which the moon changed.

SKAD CIG DANG THAMS CAG LA Oh, and by the way, in Buddhist philosophy, what's the definition of existence? Yeah, TSE MA'I MI PA'I YOD PA'I TSE NI Anything which is perceived by an accurate perception exists. And if it cannot be perceived by an accurate perception, it doesn't exist.

What about a tree that falls in the forest and nobody's there? Somebody's always there because the Buddha can see everybody. That's the classic answer.

But TSE MA'I MI PA'I means, can an accurate perception identify that moment and the Garjuna says, no, because identify means grasp. Identify means grab onto a certain point at which it is the millisecond. But you can't, there's no such thing.

Therefore, if you can't grab, if you can't identify the starting, the front end and the back end of a millisecond, if you cannot identify the front end and the back end of a millisecond, then because of the definition of existence in Buddhism, a millisecond cannot exist. Because there is no pramana. There is no accurate perception which can catch it.

Maybe catch is a good verb here. And that's a cool point. That's a very cool point.

THA LTA MA GSUM BA'I THOS NI KHYAD CIG LA SOGS PA'I TSAD KHYI JI LTAR BDAG PAR YANG MI NUS TE MA BRAL BA'I YOD CHUNG And if you can't even identify a single millisecond of time, then how are you going to describe the difference between past and present and future? Because that hinges upon a moment in which things change to present from past, or change from present to future. If there's no point at which past changes to present, and if present never makes contact with the past, if there's no point of contact which is observable, then the divisions of time, even into past, present, and future, are artificial and arbitrary, and they don't really exist from their own side.

Okay, cool. Yeah, I was trying to get a picture. I really love finding these pictures.

It's like I spend all day doing it. My wife wonders what I'm doing. And I found a picture for this one.

I like this one, okay. Time has just, time has just flown. Time flies out of the birdcage, and you can't say, you can't grab it and say that's the present, or that's the past, or that's when present shifted to past.

It's un-grabbable. You grasp and it's gone already. So I enjoy finding these pictures.

All right, now we reached the second part. What was that? We discussed other traditions of ancient India, their idea of time, and what did he promise us next?

Yeah, how about some of our own groups who are not middle way? Okay, what about the first three groups? He's going to treat the first three groups together.

Abhidharma, Sutras, and Mind-Only, which are called the functionalists. They all believe that something is real if it exhibits some kind of function. So he says, well, how do they think about time?

And can we poke holes in their idea about time? Which is pretty much what Nagarjuna spends his time doing, if there were such a time. So here we go.

And by the way, just for you guys, the question of time is a very unique circumstance where the fourth school and the first school agree, and the second and third don't. The idea that time is a functioning thing, or the past especially, or the future. The idea that the past does something is not accepted by school number two.

It's not accepted by school number three, but it is accepted by the Abhidharma and middle way. So it's a very rare case where Abhidharma agrees with middle way. Now, and then what you have to say in the next breath always is, for different reasons.

Anyway, cancel that. All right, here we go. ,GAL TE DUS NI NGOS RTEN TE, ,SNGOS MED DUS NI GALA GYUR, ,SNGOS PO DGA' YANG YOD MA YIN, ,DUS THA THA YOD PAR GALA GYUR And let's go to the commentary.

,GAL TE LTAS PA'I DUS MED KYANG, ,SKAD CIG SOGS LA BRTEN NAS, ,THA LAS DU SHAR PA'I DUS NI NGOS YOD DO BZHIN NA Somebody says, look, I agree. Maybe there's no such thing as time which is unchanging. That far I can agree with you.

But you can posit separate times like past, present, and future based on instance. You can use the concept of a second or an instant. And based on that, you can artificially divide the past from the present and the present from the future.

If we all agree that we can use an idea called a second or an hour, then we can divide things. This happened at three o'clock, this happened at four o'clock. We can.

Using artificial measurements created by human beings, we can describe time this way. That's okay. This is a lower three schools idea.

,GAL TE GZUGS LA SOGS PA'I DNGOS PO MED PA STE, ,DE DAG LA'I SNGOR THAR DE PA'I DUS NI GAL LA YOD DE, ,DUS NI DNGOS PO LA BRTEN NAS BYOD PA'I BYED PAR, ,DE DAG GZUGS LA SOGS PA'I DNGOS PO MED PA STE, Then he says, does the time, does the artificial units of time which you agree to use, seconds, minutes, and this is cute. The gardener says, okay, you want to make up artificial measurements of time, right? The guy says, yeah, let's do that.

And like, what do you want to use? He says, well, let's use minutes and hours. How about that?

And this is another school, right? And he says, well, yeah, but I'll tell you something. And here's, now you guys got to cook it, okay?

You guys got to see if you agree on it. But the gardener says, those artificial units of time that you just make up, and we all agree to use by convention, by mutual convention, they exist only relative to an observable entity. You can only say minutes and hours and days relative to the moon phases changing or the time it takes the sun to come up and go down.

It's only by relative to observable actual entities that you can have an artificial entity called hour or day or month. Month, as you know, is based on the phases of the moon. Day is based on the phases of the sun.

And in Buddhist cosmology, there are other measurements of time based on the movement of the constellations. So in Buddhist cosmology, lunar, solar, and stellar measurement of time. But all three choices depend on an outside physical entity, the moon, the sun, the stars.

So the gardener says, look, I agree, you can make up units of time, but don't you always tie them to some observable outside thing? Like a season is kind of tied to the change in the weather and things like that. So he says, don't they always, and then the other guy's like, yeah, now that you mention it, the artificial units of time that we have created are created relative to, they have to be linked to a changing mupo, a functional entity on the outside.

Mupo gaya nga shi kyi yupa mena de la tape ten. Then he says, well, says the gardener, since the outside observable entities that you want to link time to don't exist from their own side, then neither does the time that is linked to them. If the moon doesn't exist from its own side, then the artificial convention called month that you link to that thing cannot be real because the thing it is a characteristic of is not real.

If the jar is not real, then the green color of the jar is not real. If the moon is not real, then the artificial measurement month based on the moon has to share that quality, and it's not real either. So that requires the gardener to prove that the moon is not real.

So that's another story. But he says, can we agree in theory that if the moon is not real, then the artificial measurement month that you create based upon the movement of the moon is also not real. If you're creating a convention that relies upon another object's activity, then if the other object's activity is not coming from its own side, if it's a fabrication of your mind due to your karmic seeds, then can't we say time has to be that way also?

If it's a feature of that object? If time is a feature of the moon, and the moon is not coming from the moon, then can't we say that the time that is based on the moon has to be coming from you also? And that it doesn't actually have a measurement, an independent measurement.

So it doesn't exist. And moreover, is there a point of contact between the moon and month? Months depend on the movement of the moon.

Yes. Is there a relationship between them or not? Yes.

Is the idea of month connected to the moon? Yes. Is there a point of contact?

Yes. Otherwise, month would be connected to solar activity or stellar activity. There has to be a point of contact.

Well, what part of the moon touches what part of month, please? You said like that, it's impossible. Month cannot be tied to the moon because moon itself is not tied to anything.

It's very beautiful. You got to cook that one. Then, by the way, can you see this sentence, DU GSUM GYI RNAM SHAG Do you see a sentence starting, DU GSUM GYI RNAM SHAG Can you display that?

DU GSUM GYI RNAM SHAG DU GSUM GYI RNAM SHAG I don't know. I didn't check the Colophon, which is the last few sentences of the book where he says, I wrote this in my house in Choney Monastery in 1747. But I'm guessing it was late in his life.

He had a spurt of activity late in his life, Choney Lama. He wrote 200 books. I think half of them were in the last 10 years.

He went into retreat. He said, I got to get this down. I got to get this down.

They're going to mess it up after me. I know the feeling. So he's working like an insane man and he's cranking out these books because he's thinking nobody's going to be able to do it after me.

And then you get frustrating sentences like this one, Tim. DU GSUM GYI RNAM SHAG This whole thing about RNAM SHAG means this whole presentation on the idea of the three times. BDAG GIS RJUGS PA'I RNAM SHES I even covered the whole thing in my commentary to Umalajupa, Madhyamaka Avatara, Entering the Middle Way by Chandrakirti.

He says, hey, go check my commentary to Chandrakirti, not my commentary to Nagarjuna. I already wrote the whole thing. I already did the whole thing.

You want more on this? Go read my other book. So it's kind of frustrating when you're translating this book.

I believe that morally we will have to go get it, snip it out and put it in an appendix. Then we'll have to translate it again when we translate that book. But anyway, so that's what I always do.

Personally, if he says, I already covered this in this other book, I feel obligated to go find it, cut it out, put it in the appendix and translate it. We can only do that because we have this amazing database created by Grandpa John, Grandpa number two, Grandpa John Brenner. And it's so easy.

It's so delightful to... In the old days, it would have taken many days. But nowadays, you just sit there at my kitchen table and I say, hey, database, tell me, what did Choney Lama say about the three times in that other commentary?

And you can find it in about 30 seconds and you can cut it out in another five seconds. Then you have to translate it. That takes the same time.

But it's very cool. It's unbelievably cool. That's why these Mixed Nuts books are so valuable, in my opinion.

[Speaker 2]
All right.

[Speaker 1]
I have an example. I don't know, I was trying to get cute, which I'm always trying to do. There's a book and a clock.

And the idea is, only relative to an outside object does time have meaning. So how old is the book? When was the book written?

How many years until the Mixed Nuts is translated? How so becomes a Mixed Nut and translates? How many years will pass?

And the measurement of year only has meaning relative to the physical book. The book is defining time in a way. The phases of the book's existence are defining time.

When did John Brady input it? When was it published? When was it put online?

For free. Those are all great measurements of time. All right, part two.

Refer to the Elephant's Dance Sutra.

[Speaker 2]
Any guesses what that means?

[Speaker 1]
We said every chapter he's going to say, hey, here's where Nagarjuna got these ideas. He's going to point back to the Buddha. He says, you want to know where Nagarjuna came up with all these time ideas?

Go check out the Elephant's Dance Sutra. That's Choney Lama. And I like it because it means Nagarjuna's ideas are not just made up.

The ideas you are reading here from Nagarjuna are his interpretation of the original sutras. And they always tie back to a sutra. There might be a clue there in which sutras are tied to in working out the order of chapters, but that's too much.

Okay, what's the third category of this chapter going to be? Last sentence, the title of the chapter. Here we get, in Asian languages, the name of the chapter comes at the end.

DU BDAG PA DKA' LA BAR BYED An examination of time or an investigation. I almost like investigation because Nagarjuna is kind of a very over, what do you call it, overachiever guy. Like he's going to investigate.

He's not going to examine. He's going to dig it out. I called them examination for a couple of years and then I thought of investigation.

I thought, oh, just drop the examination. Let's go to the investigation. All right, next chapter.

What time till 3.50 Tim? 15 more minutes. Okay, let's get here.

Artificially, oh wait, I shouldn't give you that. Anyway, Choney Lama attempts to link this chapter to the last chapter. Chapter 20 is called The Convergence of Causes and Conditions.

Let me see, I think there's a Sanskrit here that's very useful. No, not yet. Anyway, there's this beautiful concept in, sorry, in this chapter called, I think it's called Samagriha.

I want you to get the feeling before you jump into this chapter. I want you to get the feeling of what he's talking about. He's talking about the time being so ripe that the thing has to happen.

All the conditions come together. Try to get your mind on that particular instant. All the necessary.

The e-book guy sending his thing. The app guy just finished the app. Rosa finally has time to sit down for the first half of the day and work on it.

All these causes are going to spit out a result. So Choney Lama, Nagarjuna, they want you to try to bring to mind that special moment in time when all the necessary causes and conditions have come together. Finance, concept, accounting department, human resources, blah, blah, blah.

And now the company can launch. It's that moment just before the cafe opens. The kitchen's done.

The floor is there. Furniture is bought. The signs are made.

The garden is landscaped. The toilet is there. And boom, it's just about to open.

He wants you to think about that moment. And he calls the chapter, the moment when all this stuff came together. And it's the moment just before the result pops out.

All right, so get your mind on that.

[Speaker 2]
Good.

[Speaker 1]
Now here's the structure of the whole chapter. You ready? Here's the structure of the whole chapter.

Try to put your mind on that special moment when everything you need for something to happen, like the opening of the cafe, has finally come together. Everything's finished. Furniture is bought.

We found workers. All this stuff has come together. Put your mind on that moment called the, what did I call it the other day?

The consummate completion. The consummate convergence. All the causes, all the necessary stuff that needed to happen has happened.

Now, my question to you. Does that happen before the result comes out? Does that happen as the result comes out?

Or does it happen strangely after the result comes out? Do you open the cafe after everything's ready? Or do you open the cafe just before everything's ready?

Or do you open the cafe as everything's ready? I think naturally, what would we say? What do you guys think?

Yeah, normally you'd say, Geshe-la, get the money together before you open it. Don't open it and then look for the money. By the way, there is money.

But I took Dr. Chin's advice long ago, 30 years ago. I asked this great Chinese philanthropist, what's your secret for doing projects? He says, I start the project, Michael, after I have the money.

And I'll never forget it. And I always, isn't that the story here? Start the cafe, open the cafe after you get the, after you got, what do you call that?

Capital together and don't mess with it. But Nagarjuna requires us to consider the other two possibilities. Could it be possible that the result is happening as the causes and conditions come together?

Or could there be some angle where the causes and conditions have only come together after the result has come out? Could there be some way of looking at it that way? And hasa's already there.

Shh, don't tell anyone. I can sense you're already there.

[Speaker 2]
Okay, all right, here we go. Now a question. Okay, put your mind on this.

[Speaker 1]
When you get all the money for the cafe and all the equipment and all the employees and blah, blah, blah, permits, God bless the permits.

[Speaker 2]
When they're all together, is the opening of the cafe present or not?

[Speaker 1]
In the convening of the necessary causes and conditions, is the opening in it, in the convention, convening? Is the opening present in the final collection of all the things you need to open it? Is the opening there or not?

I think conventionally you'd say, not yet. Or it's just about to be there or something. The opening's not there, but everything you need for the opening is there.

But Geshe-la, technically, the opening is not one of the conditions for the opening. So it's not there yet. Okay, got it?

Like you can have a seed and a gardener and a sunlight and fertilizer, but there's no flower yet. Is the flower there when the gardener's planting the seed? And that's what we're going to, but we're going to examine the possibility.

Okay, so here we go. Okay, good.

[Speaker 2]
Then he says, what time I stopped him? Three, three, five, five. How much?

[Speaker 1]
Ten minutes. Six minutes. Okay, I'm just trying to keep track.

,GAL TE RGYUD DANG, GAL RNAMS KYI TSOG PA NYID NAS KYI YOD ZHING, ,TSUM DAG DE PO YIN NO NI, JI LTAR TSOG PA NYID NAS KYI, If the opening of the cafe is present in the final convening of all the causes and conditions, then why the hell we have to open the cafe? It's already open. Okay, it's very cute.

It's very cute. Then why you have to open the cafe? It's already open.

If the opening of the cafe is present in the convening of the final requirements, then we don't have to open the cafe. ,GAL TE RGYUD DANG, GAL RNAMS KYI TSOG PA NYID NAS KYI YOD ZHING, ,TSUM DAG DE PO YIN NO NI, JI LTAR TSOG PA NYID NAS KYI, But if the opening of the cafe is not somehow present within the particular causes and conditions, then how could a cafe open? Then you would just open a bookstore.

You see, why should a cafe open when all the causes and conditions to open a cafe are present if the opening of the cafe is somehow not present in the final convening of the causes and conditions? Because if the opening of the cafe was not present in some degree during the final convening of the causes and conditions for the opening of the cafe, then when the causes and conditions finally did their thing, it should pop out a rabbit's turd or something. You say, I mean, well then why wouldn't anything pop out?

I'll say it again. If the opening of the cafe is not in some degree present within the final moment of the convening of all the necessities for the cafe to open, then when they do convene, why should they open a cafe? Why shouldn't they open a rabbit's turd or something?

I mean, because there's no relationship. There's no necessary relationship. There's no more reason why a cafe should pop out than a rabbit's turd if the cafe is not in some degree present in the final convening of causes and conditions.

Got it? Or at least, I think in English we would say the potential is somehow there. There's more potential for a cafe to pop out than rabbit turd to pop out.

Something like that. But here we go. Here comes the question.

All right, here we go. Actually, I just covered it in the book. Yeah, okay.

RTZO LA BDE BA RNAMS SHES KYI YOD NA Yeah, if the result of the cafe popping out were somehow present the moment before, during the time of the final convening of all of the things you need to open the cafe, then there wouldn't be any need to open the cafe because it would already be open. And it would be redundant. He keeps using the word redundant.

There wouldn't be any point to opening the cafe a second time, a millisecond later. Here's a picture. I had trouble with the picture.

I couldn't find a picture that you didn't have to explain. But somehow, if the watermelon were already present in the seeds and being together, then why would you have to plant the seeds? There wouldn't be any point to it.

I'm calling this watermelon the watermelon which came from the seeds that you see now. If the watermelon were already present in the time of its seeds, then why would the seeds have to do anything? Okay, got it?

[Speaker 2]
All right.

[Speaker 1]
And suppose the result is not somehow present even as a potential in the final convening of the causes and conditions, then it could never grow. And I don't know, I was desperate. I got an apple here.

You can see the apple. It's a metal apple. Okay, so it didn't grow from anything.

All right, got it? Makes sense? If the result is not present in the convening of the causes and conditions, then why would it ever create that cause?

If it's not somehow connected to the final coming together of the causes and conditions, which means it pre-exists, then why would an apple come out from this thing? Why wouldn't something else come out from it? And there's another deep problem there.

The Garjuna keeps coming back to the idea that if things are not coming from you, if things are coming from their own side, they cannot change. They have no reason to change. I'll say it again.

The Garjuna keeps coming back to this theme, which you guys can chew on, that if the cause is not somehow present in the causes, if the result were self-existent, then it couldn't change. If something is self-existent, it will always have to be the same. Because it doesn't depend on its existence on other things.

If the jar were self-existent, then it would never break or it could never be made because it just existed by itself. It didn't exist because of a factory or it didn't break because I dropped it. It would just be all the time the same.

If it does change, it's not self-existent. That's all. Let me see if that's a good place to stop.

That's a great place to stop. Okay, Uncle Tim. We'll do one more class after that.

Thank you guys.