Нагарджуна, курс 4 — Мудрость Арьи Нагарджуны, курс 4: Тайна глав (2022, Аризона), занятие 14

[Speaker 1]
Hi, welcome back to Arya Nagarjuna. We are starting or stopping to make our way through the 21st chapter. We were talking about this bottle and we were talking about can the coming into existence and can the going out of existence exist in the same bottle?

Can the same bottle have those two qualities at the same time? Can those two qualities live in this bottle? Are they, what do you call it, compatible in the same apartment called the bottle?

What? The coming into existence and the going out of existence. Are they compatible in the same apartment, in the same bottle?

And we were discussing that. And now Nagarjuna is going to, Arya Nagarjuna is... By the way, let's talk about the word Nagarjuna.

It's traditional never to say Nagarjuna. It's traditional to always say Arya Nagarjuna. It's just a, it's like you wouldn't call the president of the US, hey you, or something.

Or your mom, you wouldn't call her, hey him. You wouldn't call her by her first name normally. Hey Lizzie or something.

So it's just, he's the only Arya in 500 years. Let's give him some credit. So Arya Nagarjuna.

So, okay. He's going to blow, he's going to throw a bomb, which is very unusual for him. He's going to throw a bomb in the whole discussion.

And here it is, chapter 21, verse six. He says, you want to discuss whether this bottle has coming into existence and going out of existence in the same bottle? You want to discuss whether those two qualities can adhere or can live, inhabit the same bottle at the same time?

Is that, that's what you want to talk about? We're like, yeah, we want to know. And he says, let me tell you something.

He's like, he's always doing that. He's like, let me tell you something. He's like some New Yorker.

Let me tell you something about your coffee. ,GANG DAG PHAN ZIN LEN CIG GANG, ,PHAN ZIN LEN CIG MA YIN PAR, ,'GRUB PA YOD PA MA YIN PAR, ,DE DAG GRUB PA JI LTAR YOD, He says, you want me to tell you whether coming into existence and going out of existence can cohabitate in the same bottle? Or you want me to tell you they cannot?

I'll tell you what it is. No two things in the universe could be in the same place or not in the same place. That's my answer.

Wait, we just want to know if this bottle could come into existence and go out of existence. If both of those could be in the bottle, and then he said, at the same time, right? And he said, or can they not be in the bottle at the same time?

And he said, listen, let me tell you something. No two things could be together in your apartment at the same time, and no two things could not be together in your apartment at the same time, so shut up. Like, this is the thing, both options are wrong.

Don't give me both options. Can your shoes and your workout pants be in the same room at the same time? It's a bad question.

So you mean they're not in the same room at the same time? That's a bad question. Why?

Because if you think the pair of shoes is two separate shoes, if you see them that way, that's coming from you, not from the shoes. And if you perceive them as a pair of shoes, one pair of shoes, that's you too. They are both a pair of shoes and two separate shoes, but they're also not shoes, and they're also...

He said, bad question. Why? When you ask me, are they together in the room?

And when you ask me, are they not together in the room? You're thinking that both cases, you're thinking comes from its side. And that's wrong thinking.

It doesn't come that way. Both options are wrong because they are both assuming that the shoes come from their side. That's all.

Can you see them as one pair of shoes? Yeah. Can you see them as separate shoes?

Yeah. Is either possibility more suggested from the shoes side? No.

They didn't tell you how to think about the shoes. You decided how to think about the shoes, and you were forced to do so by your seeds in your mind. You are forced to see them as a pair of shoes, or you are forced to see them as two separate shoes because they're not two separate shoes out there from their side, and they are not a pair of shoes out there from their own side.

Neither one. And that's what this verse says. ,GOM DAG PHAN TZAM LHAN CIG GOM, Either things are existing in the same place at the same time together, or PHAN TZAM LHAN CIG MA YIN PAR, or they're not existing in the same place at the same time together.

,GROD PA YOD PA MA YIN PAR, There's no either option. ,DE DAG GROD PA JI LTA YOD, How could they even exist that way? Now I have a proposal.

Given the amount of class time we have left, which is basically two classes, I have a feeling about what's been going on in these classes. I feel like we started single classes, we jumped into that topic, and I felt good about it. I felt like we dug down deep, and we went deeper and deeper.

And that's the whole point of the Garjuna series, is to go deeper. But I think there's a weakness to it that we don't see the whole flow. We got cool idea number one, over here cool idea number two, cool idea number three, we went deep, deep, deep, deep.

But we didn't really connect the ideas together. Like what's the flow? Does this book have a flow?

And that's what you're going to figure out. You guys. But what I thought would be helpful before we end this session, session four of the Nagarjuna series, and I believe now there will be six, might maybe even seven.

But why don't we look at the flow of the whole thing? And it's going to take more than one class, so I suggest we start now. And in discussing the flow, we're going to go deeper in this 21 chapter, chapter 21.

So we'll hit the rest of this chapter anyway, in the flow conversation. And if we finish the rest of this chapter, we'll never get to the flow conversation. And then I feel that you won't learn it as well as you should.

So personally, I'd like to start talking about the flow. When we hit chapter 21 in the flow discussion, we'll slow down. So here we go.

Tim, get your computer ready. Search for class 15. It's in parentheses, right?

Did you get it? Okay, here we go. I'm going to start back through all the classes we did so far.

I'm going to just go through them and remind you of what we talked about. But I'm also going to, what? Try to give you a feeling of how did it develop?

How did the chapter, how did this part of the book flow? Because we had separate cool classes about the ideas, but we didn't see how they flow. So we're going to work on that.

Yay, all right. That was enthusiastic. Just kidding.

All right, so here we go. First, the image here. We're going to use this image.

Why am I showing this image? Somebody tell me. Yeah, title of the book, which is, A Ship to Cross the Ocean of Emptiness.

A Ship to Cross the Ocean of Emptiness. Good, good. And then what's the book it's referring to?

Three books, actually. Yeah, Tsongkapa, who called his book on, his commentary is called RIGS PA RGYA TSOG, The Sea of Logic. What kind of logic?

Emptiness logic. So every time you see logic used with these topics, it means emptiness. It means proofs of emptiness.

So Tsongkapa wrote a book called The Ocean of Proofs of Emptiness. Then we, Chandrakirti wrote a book called Entering the Middle Way and the word used for entering, which in Sanskrit is madhyamaka-vatara, avatara, also means to cross an ocean. So they're all punning on each other.

So Tsongkapa wrote a book about the ocean of logic, to cross an ocean. And where's the logic? That's a pun logic.

Well, Tsongkapa's, sorry, Nagarjuna's collected works are called RIGS PA TSOG TU, The Six Books of Logic. And they're not logic books. They're arguments in support of emptiness.

Okay, cool. So they're all tied together. Chandrakirti, Tsongkapa, Chandrayana and Chandrakirti.

They're all tied together just by the title, this cool title. Okay, cool. And I dare say it was a favorite topic of these authors that intelligent students want more information about emptiness.

So, and we've all heard people say, oh, you guys are too intellectual, or you talk too much, or you translate too much, or you have too many books. And it's the position of the people who wrote the books that you need to study more. And that's, you should, you have to learn more.

RIGS PA THA YED PA'I DGOS NAS DBANG SNON, Tim, DBANG PO SNON POR DBANG SNON The student who is sharp, sharp, sharp. The student who's going to get to enlightenment faster is attracted to more proofs of emptiness. Period, period.

The student who's going to help billions of people in, soonest, the soonest, is dearly attracted to more explanations of emptiness. That's just the way it is. So, jump in the ocean, surf the ocean, okay?

And it's depth, and I'm old, I'm 69. I've listened to people for 50 years say why we shouldn't study more, we should just sit around and think. I don't know, but it's totally mistaken.

And I'm not shy to say it. It's an idiotic idea that you shouldn't study more emptiness teachings. You should, you have to, you need to.

And it's those people who will help more people, not the ones who do something else. That's the position of this lineage, and that's my position, and I've seen it. All right, second thing, second picture.

We started out, we were talking about the order of the chapters, and we got off on that. How many chapters in this book? 27 chapters, and they're short.

Some of them are two verses long, three verses long. It doesn't even qualify as a real chapter. But it should have popped into your mind somewhere around session two, two years ago.

Why is he just jumping around? He's got ADD, he's got emptiness ADD. He's jumping around to different topics.

I'll give you the first one, then you figure out the other 27. Why did he start with seeds? Why was the first chapter called An Investigation of Conditions?

Which means karmic seeds. So that's where it all starts from. So I'll tell you one thing about the flow.

It's logical that he started with karmic seeds. That was for free. Now you have to figure out the other 26 connections.

But if you're going to help another person, the best place is to start with the pen and start talking about how seeds created the pen. He's doing the same thing. The Garjuna's doing the same thing.

All right, please remember the first verse. I bow down to that highest of teachers, to the fully enlightened one, who teaches us to reach that peace where our fantasies about how things exist are put to a final rest. I bow to the one who taught us that things happen in dependence.

Nothing ends, nothing begins. Nothing stops. Nothing ever lasts forever.

Nothing comes, nothing goes. No two things are different, and no two things are the same. So now you have a more appreciation of the opening lines.

These opening lines are super famous. And they pretty much summarize the whole book. Sorry, yeah.

I'm going to just talk about the elements in that verse. There are eight different ideas being stated here. And Choney Lama says the whole verse is about, I'll give you a choice.

Emptiness or dependent origination? No, no, you have to choose. Yes, dependent origination.

Very interesting. The opening lines of the most famous book about emptiness aren't about emptiness. They're about dependent origination.

But in the opening lines, he denies eight things about dependent origination. Yeah, everything comes from a cause. What's the root?

What's the dhamma? We had it in Sugeng's text. What's the first principle of dependent origination?

You can teach dependent origination with one sentence or 12 links, choice. And the sutra, the first sutra on dependent origination is called First Principle and 12 Links. First principle is, DE YOD PA'I NA DE SBYONG DE SKYE BA'I NA DE SKYE If this happens, that happens.

If this starts, that starts. That's called the first principle. So he's going to say eight things about the first principle.

Why are we so obsessed with if this happens, why are we so obsessed with the seeds? It's because you cannot stop the suffering in your life by dealing with the suffering in your life. You have to find what's producing it.

You cannot deal with results. You must deal at the level of causes. Don't keep getting down on your hands and knees and cleaning up the water in the kitchen every morning.

For God's sake, get under the sink. Find where that's leaking and you'll save so much trouble. You cannot stop the trouble in your life by trying to stop the trouble in your life.

You can only stop the trouble in your life by stopping where it's coming from. And if you never get that, then you'll spend your whole life trying to be happier and you'll just fail over and over again. Don't try to change your wife or your husband.

Fix your seeds. That's the leak under the sink. The way your husband's talking and the way your wife's talking is the water on the floor.

But you want to change it, then change the sink. Look under the sink. Look here because these seeds are producing what they're saying.

All right? The big thing about Buddhism is that you go for the causes and you don't try to work against results that have already come out. It's too late.

It's just too late. Talk to your husband. Oh, please don't call me that.

Please don't say those things to me. It's too late. He's already saying them.

Go find the cause and shut that water off. All right, so that's why we're talking about the emptiness of dependent origination. And here we go.

First one, something that could ever end in the sense of blinking out of existence moment by moment is not dependent origination. Dependent origination is not something that could blink in and out of existence moment by moment. Does it?

It does. But does it? No, it doesn't.

Okay, second one. Dependent origination is not something that could ever begin in terms of starting to be itself. Meaning what?

From its own self. Dependent origination, number three, is not something that could ever stop in the sense that it could exist up to a certain point and shut off. No, it cannot.

From its own side, but you can shut it off. It's always the same punchline. Number four, is dependent origination something that can last forever and never be destroyed?

No. But can you stop the cycle of life? Yes.

That's not what we're saying. You have to stop it here. Is dependent origination something that could ever come from there to here?

No. But does it? Yes.

Where's that coming from? Me. Is dependent origination something that could ever go from here to there?

No. But does it? Yes.

Why? It's coming from me. Now here's the one we were interested in.

Can two things ever be different from each other? For example, could they occupy the same space and be different? No.

Could two things be the same as each other and occupy the same space? Say no. Okay, so the whole book starts out with eight no's.

It's like talking to your kids. Joaquin talks? No.

When did he learn no, do you remember? He's like, no. Eight months.

Eight months. There's probably some child development book about what month does your child first start to tell you no? Did he say no first or yes first?

[Speaker 2]
No.

[Speaker 1]
He learned no first. Okay, I was guessing that. No, I've never been to that.

As a parent. Okay, and I'd like to note here at the beginning of the review that the Arya's approach is mostly negative or positive? Yeah, he's spending the whole book, right?

Just like the first verse, he's telling us, not what you think, not what you think, not what you think. What do you want me to think? No, not what you think.

And I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa. The whole book is, he should have called it not what you think because he doesn't tell us what he thinks. I don't think so in the whole book, but okay.

All right, and here's the punchline, the ice cream. Never forget this one. Never forget this one.

There are pieces of reality outside in the world, like pieces of a pen. There's the top and the pen. But your mind is putting them together.

They don't belong together naturally. Your mind is putting things together. According to, never forget, according to how you treat other people.

If you are nice to other people, the stuff you put together will be cool. And if you're not nice to other people, the stuff you put together will not be cool. Why don't we say, $100, $300 question, $300 question.

[Speaker 2]
If someone teaches emptiness correctly, then within what?

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, within a few minutes, say. Yeah, good, $300 for Tim. You're keeping your own, self-tracking yourself.

Good, the money. Yeah, if a person is explaining emptiness accurately, then they should be talking about being nice to other people within a few minutes. Because that's what emptiness is all about.

Why are we talking about being nice to other people? We're talking about chocolate sauce. Who made the chocolate sauce that makes the sundae, puts the ice cream together?

It's being nice to other people. It's seeds in your mind. If someone goes on about emptiness, blah, blah, blah, and they don't start talking about seeds, there's something wrong.

And if they don't bring it around to compassion and love for other people, there's something. They don't understand emptiness, is what I'm saying. All right.

We looked at the order of the chapters. We didn't try to figure it out. We said, that's your problem.

Your teams are going to figure that out. Good luck. I wish you good luck.

If I had time, I would actually do it just for fun. I think it'd be interesting to write a book about it, actually. I think it would make a nice small book.

But I don't have time. Maybe one of you guys can. But we did say that we would cover six chapters and we only covered four.

3.5 something. What are the six chapters? I'm going to give you the names, but I'm not going to try to connect them.

That's your job. Chapter 18 was, it's called an investigation. If you don't remember, just say, an investigation of the person and the things.

Things here means parts of the person. Exactly, always. In this context, it always means parts of the person.

What's another way to say that? A-hang and mama. Me and mine.

Yeah, me and mine. That gets interesting. Yeah, me and mine.

Especially the mine. What's mine? What should I protect?

What should I try to accumulate? The mine. So anyway, it's great to have a chapter called, let's look into, investigate, pariksha, me and mine.

And as I mentioned, this is the most popular chapter. This is the most quoted chapter of any book about emptiness. When someone writes a book about emptiness, they'll be quoting this chapter more than any other book.

There's another popular chapter later, but this is the big one. Chapter 19, investigation of? Time.

Yeah, and that was kind of fun. Why? It comes from me and mine.

You figured out, okay, right? Past, present, future. Who creates past, present, future?

That developed out of a discussion of me and mine. So, probably Dr. Haso's going to figure it out. It'd be fun for you to write something.

Chapter 20, an investigation of how causes and conditions come together. That perfect moment when you have the seed, the earth, soil, fertilizer, water, sunlight, and a gardener. All the stuff's ready.

And then the next moment, boop, the tree comes out. How that can happen is impossible. Just visualize it.

Oh, I bought seeds at the store. Veronica bought some seeds at the store. We just got some bok choy.

God knows why. Bok choy seeds with the soil and fertilizer and water. And we're going to plant them as soon as spring comes.

And then we're going to put our effort into it. And just try to get the feeling where everything is there. Everything is ready.

Everything is perfectly there. And then in the next millisecond, boop, boop, here comes the sprout. But what happens between there?

What is it about everything coming together? At what point is it all together? And at one point, where's the tip of the sprout?

It's weird. There can't be a tip of the sprout. Because that would have to have a front top tip and the bottom part of the tip and the bottom part of the tip.

So even the tip coming out is impossible. It should be disturbing to you if you studied this book well. All right.

Chapter 21 was talking about coming into existence and going out of existence. And those are the four chapters we did. Let's say it again.

We did it, investigated me and mine. Then we went to time. Then we went to all the conditions together.

And then we went into occurring and going out of existence. We grew. That's what we did.

We did those four. What are the two chapters we were going to try to do and we didn't do? 22 is sexy.

It's called, it seems to be an investigation of Buddhas. And it would be nice to investigate Buddhas, especially in this context of emptiness. And then chapter 23 is fascinating.

It's called An Investigation of Buddhas. Isn't that interesting to write a chapter called An Investigation of How You Can Screw Up? It's kind of depressing, but it's a whole chapter about, it's a whole chapter not about the mistakes you can make, but about the process of making a mistake, which is even more fascinating.

So we'll get there. Why did Geshe-la not cover it this class, this session? Maybe he was going to give you a chance to experience it personally.

How to make mistakes. Okay. By the way, there's always some kind of suspicion of a teacher that they're planning something.

I'm not, but there's always this chance. Okay, there's five big pieces to the discussion of the emptiness of me and mine. And I'm just going to go through those five, because it's kind of fun.

We did them, but you didn't see the flow. So if you're going to talk about the emptiness of me and mine, first, you're going to talk about the real nature of me and mine, which was basically a discussion about whether I am or am not my body and mind. Okay, so when you discuss the real nature of me and mine, the topic is, am I my body and am I my mind?

Or am I not my body and my mind? Am I separate from my body and mind? Like, could my mind go crazy?

Could I get Alzheimer's and die and still be me? Am I my body and mind or am I not? Am I independent?

Could I somehow keep going without a mind and body? We talked about that. R.4. Yeah, and I don't know. I think it's a great image for body and mind. I found it on my 123 website. They have great...

The nice thing is the images are good, but they also named them right so you can find them. So anyway, that's body and mind falling apart. Okay.

Okay, then a question was, if I am, if Michael is Michael's body and mind, then Michael is blinking in and out of existence millisecond by millisecond. And Michael is not as much Michael in the second millisecond as Michael was Michael in the first millisecond. Can Michael be less Michael and more Michael as the day goes by?

Because my body and mind are. They are less body and mind or more body and mind as the day goes by. But does that, if they are mine, then does Michael get less and more?

Am I more Michael in the morning and less Michael in the afternoon? I think so. Okay, but that's the problem.

If I am my body and mind. If I'm not my body and mind, then you couldn't say Michael's getting older. Michael's going to go to his next life or Michael came into this life.

You can't say things like that because if I'm not connected to things which exhibit time, then how can you say I'm getting older? If Michael is just an idea, then how can you say he's walking to his life or he's collecting more years? How can you say that?

If I'm not, if I am my, sorry, if I'm not my body and mind, but if I am my body and mind, then I'm blinking in and out of existence every millisecond. And I'm less Michael sometimes and I'm more Michael other times. When I work out, I'm more Michael.

When I eat chocolate, I'm less Michael. Something like that. Okay, I mean, it doesn't make sense, right?

Both options sound funny. That was the whole idea. I had a baby walking.

I was trying to find an example of moving through life but being frozen at the same time. He's got his foot up but it didn't come down yet. Okay, it looks like Hakeem.

The best picture of Hakeem is when he's blessing the priest at the baptism. It was so cute. He's like, and the priest is like, there's this picture.

Okay, anyway. So there would be no indication that I had been someplace or I will be someplace or that I am going someplace now. I would be like frozen, okay?

If I'm not connected to my body and mind, you couldn't say time applied to Michael, okay? You couldn't say he's getting older or whatever. All right.

Also, if I'm not my body and mind, then, next picture. I cannot see, I cannot, if I'm not my body and mind, then the two main things that my body and mind do, I cannot do. The first one is the body, the main, they say in Abhidharma, 90% of your physical senses is visual.

You spend 90% of your life paying attention to colors and shapes and less for sounds and less for smells. Unless you're running a cooking show, just kidding. Yeah, so if I was not my body and mind, then since I am not my body, I would be less physical and I wouldn't have so much ability to see, to live in the 90% visual world.

And I couldn't do the 90% of the mental thing, which is feelings, sensations, awareness. So I would be deprived of awareness and of sight. And that's what that picture was supposed to, if I'm not my body and mind.

All right. Then almost as an afterthought, he had one verse, which we didn't even cover, about, by the way, that's all me, I'll give you a clue. We just talked about me, body and mind.

Then he's got only one verse about mind, mind. He says, look, if you understand me, mind's no problem. Because your family, your house, your kids, your dog, your arm, it's all the same as body and mind.

It's just more mind. It's more me. He doesn't spend much time on me.

DAG NI YOD PA MA YIN NA DAG GIS YOD PA GA LA GYUR DAG NI YOD PA MA YIN NA DAG GIS YOD PA GA LA GYUR If you are not yourself, then how the hell could you be mine? If you are not me, how the hell could you be mine? He's a simple question.

If you're not me, how can you be mine? Let's go on. He's like that.

Let's go on. All right. But we did have a picture of this girl.

I don't know, because she's so possessive of her body. And she's thinking, this is mine, this is mine. And I think sometimes mind gets us in more trouble than mind.

Protecting our possessions and our relationships, our husband, wife, et cetera, it takes more energy than taking care of me or something. And I used this image in the review because I wanted to review a few words that we had. One is me, which is atman.

Atman, long A. It shouldn't be a long A, but it is. Sometimes that happens in the initial position, atman.

And then, or aham. And then mama was mine. Mama was mine.

And then we had these very important words that refer to the cosmic spaceship and the planetary travelers around the Sedona Crystal Vortex called ahamkara. Do you remember that? It's funny.

Now there's explanation in some yoga schools, Hindu schools, that ahamkara is cosmic travelers. It's a whole story and it's all completely wrong. It just means, do you take things as self-existent or not?

Do you take it as me or mine? There's a whole long story about their spaceship and what they're doing and stuff like that. So you can forget.

Basically, those schools were, in my opinion, just corrupted Buddhism. Like Buddhism by somebody who saw the book once or something and then they made up these weird stories. So don't spend much time on that, okay?

Don't waste your time on it. Be honest, in my opinion. I'm not saying it's evil or something like that.

I'm just saying you're not going to live forever and you don't have time to figure out the cosmic travelers of the Crystal Vortex. All right. Yeah, and then he said, well, how do you put this into actual practice?

And he said, yeah, you have to examine this tendency to grasp to me and mine, which is what's causing you trouble in your life. And I'll ask you guys, since you, I'll give you a clue. Since you have sat through Seiji Aral's book, especially haso, for years, what's he say about me and mine?

[Speaker 2]
See, he says there's two versions. Yeah, there are two versions. First, they say that's the fruit of all evil.

[Speaker 1]
Is grasping that things have their own nature. And then that flows into...

[Speaker 2]
And then later it comes to self-cherishing.

[Speaker 1]
Good, nice, self-cherishing. So self-cherishing, selfishness is not selfness, but they're related. Believing that you are not coming from how you treat other people, is going to lead you automatically to take care of yourself more.

And both are tragedies. Both are disaster.

[Speaker 2]
Okay, all right.

[Speaker 1]
And then the tendency to focus on the idea that me and mine come from their own side, is jikta, a hundred dollars.

[Speaker 2]
Is jikta. Jikta. The view of destruction.

[Speaker 1]
The view of destruction. Why is it called the view of destruction? Because of some problem.

Yeah, it's the first link of the Wheel of Life. They say a guy with a cane, misunderstanding, but it's not. It's misunderstanding me and mine only, specifically.

It's not general misunderstanding. It's not marikpa. It's jikta.

Misunderstanding the nature of me and Michael, and Michael's staff, and Michael's friends, and Michael's partner. Okay, and we had a picture, I don't know this lady, of a misunderstanding me is the girl, and then mine is the book, because my favorite possessions are books. Okay, anyway.

All right.

[Speaker 2]
Then there was a part here called BDAG BA BRTAN LA'ABA This is a cool part.

[Speaker 1]
This part was, we went to a part in the 18th chapter where he said, enough about theory. What's the practical application? How does this relate to the flow of your entire life?

How does this relate to the flow of your entire life? Okay, I understand that thinking me and mine is the root of the Wheel of Life, but how does it spin? How does it make the Wheel of Life spin?

Five steps. We call them the Five Steps of Maitreya. They were in the ACI courses.

The Garjuna brings them up here, which is very comforting. Somebody told me they went to teachings by, they didn't understand what I was teaching when I was teaching it. They got distracted and started doing something else with their life.

They went to teachings by high, high, high, high lamas, and then they suddenly shocked that the high lamas were teaching exactly what ACI was teaching. And then they were extremely happy that they could understand what the hell was going on, because nobody else in the audience did. Okay, so why am I talking about that?

There's a consistency of this lineage. There's a high consistency. If you take teachings from any teacher who is well-trained in different parts of the world, or different nationalities of teachers, they'll be saying the same thing.

Because the Garjuna is talking about, what? The Five Steps of Maitreya, a hundred years before Maitreya talked about it. Which is an interesting implication.

Okay, anyway, so who's going to give me the Five Maitreya Steps? Let's do them together. I actually chopped this out of the ACI.

Okay, number one, we come into this life with cease to see things the wrong way. We come into this life with that. So you can always say it's not my fault, and you're correct.

It's Joe's fault. We come into this life with the tendency of seeing two things wrong. Me and my knife.

Yeah, we come into this life with the tendency to misunderstand Michael and Michael's stuff. Then based on, sorry, then the seeds open, and I actively misunderstand me and my knife. So I enter this life.

By the way, sometimes you can teach the five or seven. It depends on how you do it. You came into...

I just love this, because it's not your fault. You were born crooked, so don't worry. You came into this life with the habit of seeing things the wrong way, and then you saw things the wrong way.

Yay! And due to that, this is Maitreya. Then when those seeds opened, you misunderstood two things about your life.

What did Maitreya say? Things that you like and things that you don't like. So Maitreya goes that way.

He says, due to the seeds of misunderstanding me and mine, you start to misunderstand why you get money and why you get yelled at by your partner. Like you misunderstand things you like and you misunderstand things you don't like. And it looks like they are coming this way.

Then you get defensive. You want to defend the things that are yours. You want to destroy the things that bother you.

You want to get more of the things that you like. And because of that, you commit karma. And then those karmas plant seeds that you can walk into your next life with.

And then it becomes a circle. So you can say five steps. You can say seven steps.

But it's fascinating that Nagarjuna describes the same steps that aren't described yet in scripture. Because that's how it is. And everybody can figure it out.

All right. This is called TSUL BZHIN MA YIN PA YI LA BYAS PA I think somebody should write a book about that. It's the looking at things the wrong way that triggers misunderstanding or liking or disliking.

It's a wrong way of looking at things. It's called, it's not ignorance. It triggers ignorance.

It's weird. It's just looking at things the wrong way. But I got the perfect picture for you.

Ta-da! It's like this. Like looking at things the wrong way.

Something good happens in your life and you look at it the wrong way and you think it came from the wrong place and then you fight for it. Fight for your children. Fight for your country.

And that's because you don't see it the right way. Sorry to pick on the dog. All right.

Okay. Then again, at this point in the text Nagarjuna, Arya Nagarjuna reminded us to deal with the causes and not the results. Here's the picture.

And this comes, as I said, it comes from a real story. Night after night I would walk into a cold puddle of water in the kitchen and I was just too lazy to look under the sink. And every day, every night I'd say, I don't want Veronica to step in this.

I would get down on my knees and wipe it up and go back to bed and then it'd be there the next night. And I'd say, somebody should really look under the sink. You know like that feeling?

Somebody should look under the sink. It's just sheer sloth, laziness, total laziness. And if you keep being lazy about where all your troubles come from, it don't just keep coming.

You got to find the source. Actually, how did I fix it, Hassan? Guess.

I invited Daniel over to look under the sink. Hey Daniel, want to come over for some pizza? Yeah.

And I'm like, can you look under the sink? I don't know what's going on here. Is that still laziness?

I don't know. What's the time? How we do it on time?

Oh, okay, all right. Let me see where we should go there. One last thing.

And then we'll stop the first half of the review. Somebody says, look, if things don't have a self nature, why did Buddha say they did? Why in the early part of his teaching career, you can think of the Buddha's teaching career, roughly, you can think of it as three 20-year periods.

Something like that. He taught till he was 81 or something. So you can think of him as a 16 1⁄2 year period.

In the first part of his teaching, Abhidharma type stuff, he just said, here's the kind of color, here's the kind of perception. He didn't make a big deal about whether the green was there or whether it was coming from me. He didn't talk about it.

He described so many factual objects, like the 18 dhatus, the 12 ayadhanas, the five skandhas, the makeup of the world, the different kinds of karma. He didn't get into whether they were coming from you or me. Okay?

Then in the second part of his career, he said, nothing comes from you or me. And then in the third part of his career, he said, well, maybe some stuff does. And then there's a discussion inside of Nagarjuna of why would Buddha, because the other guy attacks Nagarjuna.

He says, well, Buddha never said anything about no self-nature for 20 years. What, he forgot? Why are you talking about it all of a sudden?

And then Nagarjuna says, it was the...

[Speaker 2]
Why didn't Buddha mention no self-nature? They weren't read.

[Speaker 1]
They weren't read. The students weren't read. He had to make them read.

That's all. That's all. Then what great subject flows from that fact?

Yeah, tell me. The art of interpretation. Why did Buddha not address certain things at certain periods of his life?

And why did he even misstate things at certain periods of his life?

[Speaker 2]
Cool? What's a deeper idea there? If you see a teacher contradicting themselves sometimes.

[Speaker 1]
Where's that coming from? Yeah. I always say, if you like my teaching, it's coming from me.

No, if you don't like my teaching, it's coming from you. If you like it, it's coming from you. All right.

We'll continue the review in the next class. Doing pretty good, I think.