Нагарджуна, курс 4 — Мудрость Арьи Нагарджуны, курс 4: Тайна глав (2022, Аризона), занятие 13

[Speaker 1]
Hi, welcome back to Arya Nagarjuna. And we're going to jump into chapter 21. It's part of your homework to figure out the connection between all the chapters, and it's not going to be an easy jump.

But there's kind of an obvious connection between, Hansel's going to tell us, between this chapter and the last chapter we had. So the last chapter we had, and by the way, Nagarjuna calls it the convergence of causes and conditions. And then our author, Choney Lama, he just calls it the convergence, the coming together.

And then how things happen from that, how things happen from causes and conditions coming together. And now he's got a chapter called How Things Happen and How Things Pass Away. Okay, say, njung jik.

djung njik. Yeah, yeah, it's an examination of djung njik, how things happen and how things pass away. For $100.

Why didn't he use SKYES RGAGS, start and stop, which was part of his first verse, the famous first verse. That's discussing SKYE BA and RGAGS PA, which means starting and stopping. And now suddenly he's changing to occurring and passing.

[Speaker 2]
Because he's relating it to causes and conditions, like creation and destruction instead of anybody else.

[Speaker 1]
Why would he change from starting to... Normally in the first chapter, he's like SKYES RGAGS, starting and stopping. Now he's djung njik, which means occurring and passing.

[Speaker 2]
Yeah, yeah, yeah, come on, man. I'm just incurring that it's in the process of starting and stopping. Because he already talked about those already.

[Speaker 1]
Okay, for $50, I'll give you a clue. Do you have one? Do you have a guess?

Oh, CI BYED DAG. Think about CI BYED DAG. What's that?

Anyway, I'll give you the punchline. It's a delicate and important point that unchanging things don't start or stop, but they do come into existence and pass out of existence. And what's the famous drawing we use for SKYES RGAGS?

It's a, what do you call it? Sine curve. Yeah, they start, it's like getting your car going, or it's like getting out of bed.

You go, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, you know? And then when an unchanging thing comes into existence, comes out of existence, it's like this. It's just a line across the box.

There's no curve like this. It doesn't start up and lose its energy. It just, it goes, blinks in and blinks out.

And I would be very grateful if he wrote a chapter about the difference. Now, the bad news is, he didn't. Or Chodron Lama didn't, I don't know.

Anyway, that's what's really going on, I think. But let's go through the chapter. Keep that in mind as we go on, that that's an extremely important difference.

Does emptiness start and stop? It blinks in and it blinks out, but it doesn't. Okay, when you, when in the moment that this phone came out of the factory, the last guy did the last thing on it, then its emptiness came into existence, but it didn't start.

And then when this phone breaks, its emptiness will pass out of existence, but it won't stop. It won't wind down. It just blinks up.

Because emptiness cannot be less than 100%. And the famous example is? The mouse in the kitchen.

Which is, do you have mice in your kitchen? Do you have an absence of mice in your kitchen? Right now I do have an absence of mice in my kitchen.

Not always, but right now I have. So either the mouse is in the kitchen or he's out of the kitchen. Then you know the eight-year-olds in the monastery, they'll say, Geshe-la, what about the mouse has his nose in the kitchen, but his tail's not in the kitchen yet?

And you'll say, ah, shut up. It's not like that. Either he's gone or he's not gone.

You can't be sort of gone. Either you're gone or you're not gone. Either things are a little self-existent or they're not self-existent at all.

And it's always 0.0%. All right, but that self-exist, sorry, that lack of self-existence does come into existence when the thing that has that emptiness comes into existence. And then when this thing is destroyed, then Gag, King Gag. Anyway, think about it.

Unfortunately, we don't go there, but it's where I would have gone. All right, so here we go. The first verse here, he's going to say, let's look at his pattern here.

,SKAD CIG RANG BZHIN GYI GRUB PA RGAG PA DANG, ,DE LTAR GRUB PA LA BDAG BYED KYI KHYEN BSTAN PO, The other guy is going to say, when things start, it has some nature of its own. Starting has some nature of its own. And stopping has some nature of its own.

He wants to say that. And he really wants to say that. And we say, no, it doesn't have some nature of its own.

Explain to me in chocolate terms.

[Speaker 2]
Do you need chocolate?

[Speaker 1]
I need chocolate. No, no, no. How does chocolate apply to this?

[Speaker 2]
I said this part, like the last, the front part of the last moment is the first part of the next moment, but only the chocolate is embracing, putting them together.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, I'll throw something out to you that we haven't really talked about yet. So, you see this phone as having been created in an apple factory in China somewhere, that you see it like that. You see the cause as the apple factory in China, and you see the result as the phone in my hand.

And that means the seeds in your mind have drawn a connection between the apple factory and the apple phone. Your mind's seeds have created, imagine a connection between the apple factory and the apple phone. It's not natural.

When you say it doesn't come from its own side, it doesn't exist self-existently, it means it's not natural. It's artificial. You made up that connection.

Geshe-la, you can't get a phone without having an iPhone factory. That's your creation. That idea is your creation.

You could have a phone that doesn't come from an iPhone factory. You could have a phone if you had different seeds. So, it's not true that you have to have a factory to get an iPhone.

It's not true. How do you get an iPhone? You help other people communicate.

And that's another artificial connection. Explaining how I got a phone by karma, or explaining how I got my new car by karma, by giving people rides, that's another artificial connection. It's just more helpful.

You don't die if you really understand it. You don't have to die anymore if you really understand it. That's all.

The other connection's fine. Oh, the Toyota car came out of a Toyota factory. Your mind's creating that connection.

There's two balls of ice cream, which is the Toyota factory and the Toyota car. And then your mind is chocolate-saucing it. And your mind is making an artificial connection.

It says, this happens, and then this happens. And then a Buddhist is saying, no, let's chocolate-sauce a different connection. I got my new car.

I didn't pay for my new car. And they sent it to Las Vegas, they took it apart, and they painted every single part light blue, and they put it back together and sent it here. Okay, I didn't pay for that either.

And I have money to pay for it. It's just people paid for it. So how did that happen?

We would say because you give rides to people, or you help people get some place. You help them get some place. So now you're drawing new chocolate-sauce.

You're saying the same result, lump of ice cream, but a different cause, lump of ice cream, which was helping other people get rides, or helping other people have transportation. And now my Buddhist mind, my Nagarjuna's mind, is artificially creating another cause-and-effect chain. And it could have been anything else.

There's whole civilizations where you get a new car by doing a new car ritual. And you say, you got to say it right. Buk, buk, duk, gupag, gag, bu.

And you have to wave some flag, and then you'll get a car later. And they believe it. And probably it works for them to some extent.

So your mind makes the connection, even the real one. But the real one's not real either. Got it?

Okay.

[Speaker 2]
What did you say? It comes from perception?

[Speaker 1]
That's one way of explaining it. That's the Buddhist way of explaining it. And by the way, it always works.

If you want one that always works, use that one. You could have a factory that doesn't get a phone out. Or you can get a phone that someone gives you, and you don't have to deal with the factories.

But if you help people communicate, you'll always get a phone. Good. But even that connection is artificial.

[Speaker 2]
Okay.

[Speaker 1]
It's also chocolate sauce. And he doesn't talk much about it. Okay.

Anyway, here we go. He's going to say, by the way, he tries to link it to time itself. He says, by the way, time comes in, time happens, time passes away.

Time comes, time goes. Let's examine the coming and going. SBYUNG RJIGS SKYES RJIGS Now, RANG BZHIN GYI GRUB PA RGAGS PA So we're going to deny that that could happen from its own side.

And here's the cool part of this chapter. The first part of the chapter is, look, things don't come from other things automatically. It's artificial.

It's a creation of your mind. And it's real. It's artificial and it's real.

You can drive the car that you get by helping people get rides. So that's real. But the connection is artificial.

Then he says, if you think that you got to have a car factory, an iPhone factory to get a car, then the implication of that idea. So this chapter is divided into two parts. How do you think about things starting and stopping or coming into existence and passing out?

How do you think about it? And then the necessary implication of thinking that way. So the whole chapter is 50-50.

The whole first part of the chapter is, here's how stuff comes into existence. Here's how stuff passes out of existence. And if you don't think that, if you think it comes from its own side, then you get into two deeper kinds of poo-poo.

So you're thinking about how things start and stop the wrong way, causes two deeper problems, two more important problems. Okay, got it? What's that called?

BDAG BYAS, say BDAG BYAS. BDAG BYAS means BDAG LTA and BYAS LTA. BDAG LTA and BYAS LTA.

He didn't mention LTA here, but it's BDAG LTA and BYAS LTA. What's that Tim? BDAG PA'I LTA BA and BYAS PA'I LTA BA.

Yeah, unchanging, unchanging. And then BYAS PA, never happened. So if you think about how things start the wrong way, you're going to get into a deeper misperception.

And that has the implication that you believe that things would go on forever and never change, or that they never existed in the first place. You could take this to the husband in the kitchen. If you don't understand where the husband comes from, you could believe, then in a way you're believing in a husband who's unchanging.

And if you deny, if you think it's impossible that you're wrong, then you would think there was no husband at all. If I explained to you that the husband is empty, you could swing too far and say, okay, there's no husband in the kitchen. I don't have to be nice to him anymore.

He's not real. That's BYAS PA. That's falling off the other cliff.

By the way, BYAS PA LTA BA and BYAS PA LTA. LTA BA means the viewpoint that he had to be unchanging, coming from his own side. Or the LTA, what's the LTA?

The LTA is the edge of the table. LTA means edge. So oftentimes, these two necessary implications of how you're thinking are called cliff edges, the two cliff edges.

And then you get ruined if you fall off. All right, maybe we better start the chapter. We got a lot going to do.

Let's see. Anyway, that's going to be the two big parts of the chapter. Okay.

Then we're going to talk about BYUNG JI RANG BZHIN GYIS YOD PA'I GRUB BYA RGAGS PA DANG DE RANG ZHIG GI GRUB So someone's going to try to prove that when things happen, it happens from their own side. And when things stop, they stop from their own side. He's going to try to prove that.

We're going to describe his idea. And then we're going to describe, we're going to discuss his proofs for his idea. And then we're going to defeat those proofs.

All right, good. And it's examinations or investigations. Now we go into our investigations, which means, is it possible that coming, is it possible that occurring and passing away happen with a single object?

Does this bottle have occurring and passing? Do occurring and passing happen at the same time with the bottle? Or they happen at separate times?

Okay, now you guys are used to that kind of, you're used to this kind of discussion. Does this bottle have occurring and passing away together? Or does it have occurring and then later it has passing away?

All right, okay. And by the way, the answer is neither. SBYUNG GCIG BSTAN GANG LA YOD PA DANG NAS Then we're going to examine the types of objects that can display occurring and passing away.

Like what's the kind of thing that would look like it was occurring and passing away? We're going to talk about the thing and not about the two qualities. We're going to talk about the thing that has the two qualities.

And then finally, SBYUNG GCIG GCIG DANG THA DE DANG NAS Then we're going to discuss the possibility that they are the same thing and then that they are separate, which is different from saying, can they be on the same object or not? First question, can this have occurring and passing away one bottle, can it have both? Then the second, we're going to examine the bottle itself, which has the two qualities.

And then we're going to examine whether somehow the occurring could be the passing away, or are they separate things? Got it? So the third question and the first question are different.

Can one bottle have both? That's the first question. When one bottle has both, are they both the same thing?

Or are they different things? Got it? Here we go.

[Speaker 2]
All right.

[Speaker 1]
Here's the text. ,GCIG PA BYUNG BA MED PA RANG, ,LTAN GCOD YOD PA NYID MA YIN, ,BYUNG BA GCIG PA MED PA RANG, ,LTAN GCOD YOD PA NYID MA YIN, If occurring and passing away exist by nature, and if you look at the second and fourth lines, what do you notice in the Tibetan? They're exactly the same.

What's the difference between the first and the third line? That's more interesting. Yeah, he reversed them.

So the first line says, can you have passing out of existence without coming into existence? And then this third line says, can you have coming into existence without passing out of existence? Can something happen without going out of existence?

Can something go out of existence without happening in the first place? Can they be independent? Or does everything have to have both?

It feels like... What's it feel like?

[Speaker 2]
Try it.

[Speaker 1]
No, but I mean, generally we would say what? If it ends, it must have started. And if it starts, it must have an end.

We would say that. And that's wrong thinking somehow. Okay, so either GCIG PA occurs without BYUNG BA, or it cannot be that the GCIG PA occurs together with the BYUNG BA, which exists by nature.

So that's... Can GCIG PA, can something pass out of existence without coming into existence? And then can they exist with the same object?

And we're going to say yes, but not from their own side. They can, they can have both with one bottle, but not from its own side, not from their own side. That's how we're going to go.

Okay. So let's go. By the way, the Tibetan is extremely difficult here.

And for about a week, I thought it was wrong. And I checked a couple carvings, and we had trouble finding... All of Choney Lama's works were destroyed in the Cultural Revolution, all of them.

There were no copies left, and they were all burned. And we couldn't get any. And then we found a set in Russia.

When John Brady's ALL team spent 12 years in Russia, they found a well-carved, complete set. And that was a big historical thing. These are maybe the most important commentaries in the world, and they were missing.

And we had a few handwritten copies that people went somewhere and copied it out by hand, and it was all messed up. And so John Brady's team, God bless you. And especially Jason Dunbar.

We should thank him. He even went to Choney Monastery and got more copies of the original books, and we have them. So I had to check.

I thought you'd be interested to see what it looks like. This is the best carving. This is the carving you would find in Russia, for example.

And we got permission from the Russian government to, when we signed the contract to do 12 years of work, we were allowed to take out copies of our monastery's books, if we found any, that we could take copies, we could make copies and take them. Yeah, it was a rule, but we did a nice contract. It was a tough contract.

Negotiated with a crazy Georgian director in Russia, but finally he agreed. But I thought you'd like to see, and it's a fairly good carving. It's a pretty good carving.

And so anyway, there is no mistake in the input. The input is correct, actually. I thought it might be a mistake, but it's not.

All right. So here's a picture, tree half dead, half alive. Could you have life without death?

Could you have a life that never had a death? Or could you have a death while you're still alive? That's basically the question.

And it sounds silly to talk about a life without death. Would life be life without death? And then the other question is, could you die while you're still alive?

And still be alive, how's that? And that's basically the questions we're getting. And you're going to say, look Geshe-la, those are silly questions.

Yeah, if you're alive, then you die. And if you died, you must have been alive. And if you're still alive, you probably didn't die.

But it's not so sure. Okay, it's not so sure. That's what we're going to talk about.

All right, the next verses by Nagarjuna, they are like, ,'JIGS PA SBYUNG BA DANG LHAN CIG YIN MI DGAG PA, ,'SBYUNG BA SBYUNG BA DANG LHAN CIG YIN MI DGAG PA, We're going to deny ideas that going out of existence could exist with coming into existence. We're going to deny that going out of existence could exist with coming into existence. And then we're going to discuss whether going out of existence and coming into existence could even be in the same object at all.

Can they both live in the same apartment, the green bottle? Is it even possible? And are they interconnected?

Do you need coming into existence to have going out of existence or not? That's what we're going to examine. That's where we're going.

,JIGS PA SBYUNG BA MED PAR NI, ,JIGS DRAG PAR NI YOD PAR GYUR, ,SKYE BA MED PAR CHU BA GYUR, ,JIGS PA SBYUNG BA MED PAR MED, Could you have going out of existence without coming into existence? And we say, ,JIGS PA SBYUNG BA MED, How could that be? Then you would have CHU BA without SKYE BA, Tim.

Then you could have CHU BA without SKYE BA. Yeah, then you could have death without birth. Then you could have things die without ever being born.

You could have people die without ever being born, if that's possible. If you can have going out of existence without coming into existence, then you could have people die who had never taken birth. Or, ,JIGS PA SBYUNG BA DANG LHAN CIG DU, ,JIGS DRAG PAR NI YOD PAR GYUR, Could going out of existence and coming into existence exist at the same time with one object?

He says, well, in that case, the person would be dying and being born at the same moment, the same instant. I mean, it's close, right? If you believe in future lives, you can say, die and born within two minutes or something.

That's possible. Actually, within a 64th of a second. 64th or 65th?

65th. You can be a dog in less than a second from now, any time in your life. But can you be born and die?

Can you die and be born at the same millisecond? That's the question. And we say no.

YOD PAR GNYIS MA YIN NO Not possible. And then he says something interesting. ,MOD PO'I JIGS PA CHOS CAN, ,BYUNG BA DANG LHAN CIG DU, ,CIGS CHAGS TU CI THAG NA RANG BZHIG GI YOD PAR NYID DU MI GYUR TE, How could the ending of a functional thing and the word is LHAN CIG.

LHAN CIG means sit in the same apartment or something like that. How could they be in the same place at the same time? How could the going out of existence and the coming into existence of the same object be there at the same time?

How could they both be there at the same time? And then he says RANG BZHIG GI for $50. $25.25. $25.25. I hope you guys are collecting from Ellie. She's on vacation. That's not my problem. You got to collect from her.

Yeah. I don't know why he has to say that. Our question is, can the going out of existence of a thing sit with the coming into existence of the thing in the same thing?

Can its going out of existence sit with its coming into existence? On the same bottle, right? Yes or no?

Rosa says no. Then he says, sit with. I mean DU GCIGS BYAR.

DU GCIGS BYAR means at the same millisecond, in the same millisecond. Could they both be sitting on the same object? And then I don't know why he feels he has to add from their own side, but he feels like he has to add from their own side.

So that's an interesting question you can ask your students. NYID DU RGYUR MA'I RGYUR BA LTA RGYUR NA PHYIR BA LTA RGYUR BA DU GCIGS DU GCIGS BYAR If they do sit on the same object in the same millisecond, then people could die and be born in the same millisecond. People could die and be born in the same millisecond.

And then he says, they are pens in RGYAL BA. Pens in PANG RGYAL. And that's a special logic term.

If you studied Adam's text, you know that. RGYAL BA means contradictory. There's two kinds of contradictory in the universe.

And one is where one thing cannot be both things. So yeah, they are mutually exclusive. They're the kind of contradiction called mutually exclusive.

That's starting, sorry, coming into existence and going out of existence are mutually exclusive. And then he says, like SNANG BA and MUN PA. Like SNANG BA and like MUN PA.

What's that? What's SNANG BA and what's MUN PA? Yeah, darkness and what's the opposite?

Like, yeah, in a single room. So here's a picture of a room. And this is a bad photo.

I couldn't, there's no such thing as the correct photo. Because the correct photo, the room would have to be all lit up and all dark at the same millisecond. And there's no such thing.

So I was just kind of trying to find something to show. But he says for something to die, something to go out of existence and to come into existence in the same millisecond would be equivalent to any other mutual exclusive relationship, like darkness and lightness in a room. So if it was possible for a thing to have coming into existence and going out of existence in the same millisecond, then you could have a room that was all dark or all lit up at the same time.

And it's the same principle. Not possible. By the way, he's setting you up.

It's easy to say, yeah, a room can't be all dark and all light in the same millisecond. And it's easy to say that something can't be coming into existence and going out of existence in the same millisecond. But how do things really work?

Where's the line? Sooner or later he's going to say, where's the line then? When did the coming into existence of this bottle shift over to going out of existence?

Where's the line where it shifted? And then that line is... You know, in this course, if you just want to get all your answers right, just say chocolate sauce.

It's just chocolate sauce, okay? Yeah, there can't be a line between the part coming into existence and the part going out of existence. There can't be a line.

But there is. We think there is. And the one we think is there is Ranggitsa Niddupa.

It's coming from its own side. We feel that. That's a good example of something that's self-existent.

If you want a good example of something which is self-existent, think about the point at which the thing changes from coming into existence to going out of existence. Where's the line? Where's the border?

Okay, good. We're going to do a few Sanskrit words because it's a good break in the class. And they actually matter.

So, I like this one. Anyonya, anyonya. Say anyonya, anyonya.

It sounds like onion, right? Anyonya. And it's anya plus anya.

Why anya plus anya isn't anyanya? And it changed to anyonya, I don't know. But it did.

So, anya means other, right? Not the same. It comes from an and i.

We talked about it already. But here it's, anya, anya, means one, cheeky cheek means one does the other. One and the other.

One and the other. Cheeky. One implies the other.

Sorry. One implies the other. I got allergies, sorry.

I don't think it's COVID, I take my time. But I have terrible allergies, which I guess that's a symptom, I think. And here's two examples of anya, anyonya, anyonya.

Say, saha-nyonya. Saha-nyonya. Okay, saha-nyonya.

This is where the coming into existence and the passing out of existence are cohabitating in the same bottle. They are living in the same bottle. PHEN GZIN LHAN GCIG means in the same millisecond, they are both inhabiting the bottle.

They are both, okay? They're like in the same apartment at the same time. That's called saha-nyonya.

Say, saha-nyonya. Okay, saha-nyonya. And the Tibetan is PHEN GZIN LHAN GCIG.

LHAN GCIG means they're both in the same place at the same time. It means together. But PHEN GZIN means mutually together.

So the passing away is together with the coming in and the coming in is together with the passing away. Mutually. They're both together with each other.

Saha-nyonya. Say, saha-nyonya.

[Speaker 2]
Okay, good.

[Speaker 1]
And then if that's not the case, then they are vinaya-nyonya. Say, vinaya-nyonya. Vinaya-nyonya, vinaya-nyonya.

They don't get along. PHEN GZIN LHAN GCIG MA YIN And there's many, many examples. Crows and owls or something like that.

They don't sit on the same branches. They get replaced. Anyway, darkness and light.

They are vinaya-nyonya. They can't co-exist in the same place at the same time. So which one is coming into existence and going out of existence?

Are they saha-nyonya or are they vinaya-nyonya? And Nagarjuna typically says, neither. Okay, good, good.

So now he's thinking like, Tim's already thinking like, Nagarjuna said neither. And then that's kind of disturbing. It's like my teacher.

He would never make a decision. We'd ask him, which one's correct? He'd say, you know, you have to think about it.

You cook it. He'd say, you cook it. And we're like, just tell us.

And he'd say, you cook it. So Nagarjuna's doing the you cook it thing. All right, here's a picture.

I don't know. It sounds dumb. I mean, it looks dumb, but is this a pair or is this, is this a pair or is this two shoes?

Is this a pair of shoes or is this two shoes? Are they two separate shoes or are they a pair of shoes? Which one?

Both or neither. Okay, yeah, okay. I know with Nagarjuna, with Arya Nagarjuna, the simple illustration is probably the most correct.

Because he wants to draw our attention to fundamental discrepancies in reality. Either you have two shoes or you have a pair of shoes, but could you have both at the same time? Is it even possible?

And he says, no, then what's going on? Where's it coming from? He wants to keep asking that.

All right. We just denied that going out of existence could be there without coming into existence. And now we're going to deny that coming into existence could be there without going out of existence.

Just switch them. I'll say it again. We just talked about how you couldn't have death without birth.

But now we're going to talk about how you couldn't have birth without death. Let's put it that way. So Nagarjuna is going there.

,'BYUNG BA JIG PA MED PAR NI, ,'JIG RTAR YOD PA NYID DU GYUR, How could you have coming into existence without going out of existence? ,SNGOS PO RNAMS LA MI RTAG NYID, ,RNAM YANG YOD PA MA YIN NO, If you could have coming into existence without going out of existence, then how could you have SNGOS PO? What's SNGOS PO?

Functional, yeah, functional. Something that does something. By the way, the Sanskrit word here, which is bhava from SNGOS PO, it's the bhava in bhaveshu in the second line, bhava.

It can mean either existing thing or functional thing. So it's unfortunate. SNGOS PO can mean any existing thing.

And SNGOS PO most often means a working thing and they're completely different. So it's a big trouble. You have to develop over many years an instinct about which one they're talking about.

And that's the only way you can translate to them. It takes 10, 20 years. People are getting, what do you call it?

Impatient in mixed nuts class. But I'm like, Dukkha, you're only five years, you're nothing. Talk to me when you got 15.

They say, I want to translate. I'm like, yeah, but you have to feel whether he's talking about a working thing or an existing thing. And it takes many years.

Okay, so anyway, here, SNGOS PO RNAMS LA MI RTAG NI If you could have coming into existence without passing out of existence, then SNGOS PO wouldn't be MI RTAG PA. Then things that do something wouldn't change. And what's the punchline there?

I'll say it again. If things could happen, sorry. Yeah, if things could happen, if things could come into existence without passing out of existence, then things that do something wouldn't change.

But what's the fundamental truth behind the sarcasm? It's a telugu, it's a prasangika. It's a prasangika.

Oh, oh, oh, you want to have a coming into existence without passing out of existence? Yeah, I don't want both on the same bottle at the same time. It's uncomfortable.

Okay, that's all right. So I guess things that do something don't stop. They're not impermanent, right?

And that should be very offensive to be accused of thinking that. But what's the principle behind that? What's the principle behind saying that all functional things have to be changing?

What's the basic principle behind that? What's the fundamental truth at the bottom of that? All things which do something must change.

[Speaker 2]
Why? By, by, I don't want to give it to you. By doing something, they change.

[Speaker 1]
Okay, it's so fundamental. The minute you do something, you change. Because to do something, you have to exert energy, and then you change.

You lose energy. By being alive, you die. By being alive, you die.

I saw a funny thing. Discussing which diseases are terminal, and some doctor said, "'Goddamn, life is terminal.'" And they're all like, oh yeah. Yeah, if it does something, if you move, you die.

You get old, you wear out. By moving, by affecting other things, you die. You use up your energy.

Every motion you make, every word you say, it costs you a lifetime. And it drives me nuts, because I'm very sensitive to that. And it just drives me nuts.

People think I'm an asshole, because I say, don't waste five minutes of my time. And they're like, what? Who do you think you're so special?

And I'm like, no, I just think I'm going to die. I got to use the time. I'm using up, if I spend five minutes with you and you're talking about T-R-U-M-P, then I just lost five minutes of lifetime.

And they're like, well, what's the problem? You know you're alive. And I'm like, yeah, but life is made of five minutes.

Well, don't get so uptight about it. I'm like, I am uptight about it. I want to use the time.

I don't want to waste time thinking about that. Okay, BYUNG BA'I RGYUD PA So by doing something, you wear out. By doing something, you destroy yourself.

BYUNG BA'I RGYUD PA DANG PHAN GCIG TU RGYAS DOR YOD PA NYID DU RGYUR Now is the problem. Could you have, so can you have coming into existence without going out of existence? Yes or no?

No, why not? Because working things, yeah, they wear out by doing something. And if you could have a coming into existence without it going out of existence, then that would not be true of working things.

Then that would not be true of working things. But we all know it is true. Okay, we all know it is true.

And then now, here's Nagarjuna. By the way, you can't have going out of existence with coming into existence either. And we're like, what?

You just told us we had to have them together. And he's like, yeah, but if you think about it, you can't have them together either. And you're like, wait, what are you talking about?

He says, ,'BYUNG BA GCIG PA DANG LHAN CIG TU GCIG LTAR YOD PA NYID DU GYUR, How are you going to have coming into existence and going out of existence with the same thing? Are you crazy? What?

You just told us we had to. Me? I didn't say that.

He's like, no, I didn't say that. Why? ,SKYE BA DANG CIG PA DU GCIG TU YOD PA NYID DU MA YIN NO, You cannot have coming into existence along with going out of existence because you cannot die and be reborn at the same instant.

In the same instant, you cannot die and be reborn. So okay, neither. This can't have coming into existence and going out of existence.

Sorry, if this comes into existence, it better as hell, sure, go out of existence because it's a bottle and it has a job. It holds water and someday it'll wear out and it won't hold anything anymore, it'll break. So we say, okay, then everything that comes into existence, especially functioning things, has to go out of existence, right?

They exist together in the bottle. No, are you kidding? Then the bottle is made and broken at the same instant.

Then those factories would fail. Is the bottle done? Oh, dang.

The moment it started, it broke again. Can't we make a bottle that didn't last for a while? So he says, yeah, you can't have it either way.

So there's a problem with the perception. That's where he always wants you to go. Look, you think it happens that way, but it can't.

Then you go to the opposite and you think it has to happen that way and it can't. There's not a problem with the bottle. There's a problem with your mind.

There's not the bottles. Don't blame it on the bottle. The bottle is just doing its thing.

You're the one who thinks that there's only two possibilities. You're the one who thinks that. Did you ever consider that you're just crazy?

That the two possibilities are just crazy? Did you ever consider, you go through life choosing one, choosing the other, choosing one, choosing the other. Can't be both, can't be neither, can't be both, can't be neither.

And he says, well, maybe the question is bad. Maybe neither is true. Maybe something else is going on, like?

Chocolate, yay, give that man a hundred dollars. Add it, add it. Okay, yeah, but I was looking at it.

She's generous. He wants to force you into thinking about that the whole thing must be screwed up and there must be some other possibility, which is that you are creating these things artificially. Does that mean they're not real?

No, it's only the artificial things which can break your head or give you immortality. That's the choice. All right, I have some picture here.

What time do we have to stop today? This class, right now? Oh my God.

Well, let's show one nice picture of anything that does something worthwhile, which is a pair of gloves. I mean, if you're a gardener or you do construction, it's frustrating because you buy gloves and then before you know it, they wear out. But every time you put it on, you wear it out.

And every time you wear it, it's coming closer to breaking. That's all. Okay, we'll continue on with the, and by the way, the punchline, in case you don't come back to the next class.

If the coming into existence and passing out of existence of all things is coming from them, then we must die. And there's nothing we can do. All the money we collect in our life must go away.

All the family we create must die. All the houses we buy must fall down. All the jobs we ever have must end in death or firing.

I mean, if things are coming from their own side, our life is hopeless. And my brother committed suicide. And I have to say, he was probably the most honest person in the family.

And if you don't have any option, then yeah, it's bad. Things are bad. But if things are coming from you, then there's hope.

And that's why we're talking about these funny things. That's why we're talking about these weird ideas, because we're trying to prove that it's possible not to die and not to go through this suffering. It's possible to live a different way.

Okay, see you next class, I hope.