Учения ретрита в молчании 3: Второе зрение (2001, Аризона), занятие 4

[Говорящий 1]
Now we start the actual instructions for how to see behind those four curtains. Today we will only cover five stages that your mind goes through as you attempt to draw those objects closer to you. I like to think of it like a big fishing pole and you hook them and you draw them closer and closer in through five stages and then finally the curtains drop.

And I would like to repeat that you will never be able to do this until you do it for others. And very simply everyone around us is dying. It's as if we were halfway down the mouth of some horrible creature already.

So you have to remember that when you try to bring the four curtains down deep in your heart you have to want to help the people who are struggling in this life to face an inevitable painful death and the destruction of everything they ever tried to do. So if you have this feeling, if you try to remember it from hour to hour, like when you do your chitlanjana, your hour to hour yoga, then you'll be able. And if you don't, you'll never be able.

Then tomorrow we will talk about the actual practices you have to do to train yourself to see beyond the four curtains. And then on Sunday we'll talk about why those practices really work. And I think if you hear how they really work, then you'll have confidence and you'll try.

The first of the five stages of your mind is called viparyaya. This teaching comes from the ancient books on pramana, the ancient books on how to think clearly, how to perceive things that are difficult to perceive. The main book was written around 600 A.D. by Master Dharmakirti. He was writing an explanation of his master's work, Dignaga. And in Tibet, the greatest explanations were written by three disciples of Jetsun Kappa. Jetsun Kappa is the founder of our lineage.

He lived 600 years ago. He was the teacher of the first Dalai Lama. And oftentimes in his wisdom, he would ask his students to write the books so that the lineage would be passed on.

And so Gendun Drup, the first Dalai Lama, His Holiness, wrote a good, solid textbook on how to perceive these deep things. Then Kedug Je, who is sometimes called Jetsun Kappa's tantric master disciple, the one who specialized in the tantric lineages, he wrote an amazing commentary called Tsema Dedun Yikimunsel. And it's a commentary on the seven great books of Pramana, or reasoning, from ancient India.

This is a very good textbook for Westerners. It's laid out like a Western textbook. But the greatest work of all was by Gyatsobje Dharma Rinchen.

It's called Namgyal Talam Serje. It's a light for the path to freedom. Gyatsobje was Jetsun Kappa's greatest disciple.

He absorbed thousands of pages of learning from his master. After the master's passing, he was granted the throne of the master. Someone asked him, what was the kindest thing Jetsun Kappa ever did to you?

Was it a tantric teaching? Was it meditational instructions? Was it a vision of a deity?

He said, no. He taught me reasoning. He taught me how to see things that you can't see.

And then he wrote the greatest book. In the winter debates, the monks from the great monasteries, the cream of the monasteries, come to one of the monasteries. They meet for a month.

They debate nonstop. They take rest at night for a whole month. You might debate for a week on a page of Gyatsobje's 400-page commentary.

The greatest modern master of this learning, the holder of this lineage, was Geshe Yeshe Wangchuk, who passed away a few years ago. His greatest disciple is Geshe Tutankhamenchen, whom many of you had the honor of learning with in Serra Monastery. And these lineages go back to Lord Buddha, and to even older times, and other planets.

So I would like to teach you from one of those books. How do you, before you came to this talk, how are you thinking about the possibility of seeing exactly, precisely, directly what you will be after you die? I think many of us, maybe, I don't know.

I don't know who you are. But many of us weren't thinking about it at all. We didn't think it was possible to see that thing.

And so our mind was in a kind of darkness. This is the first of the five stages. I like to picture it like a journey from a dark land, like an evil island that never sees the sunlight.

It is the land of, oh, that can't be. I can't see that. No one has seen that.

And we have reports of people who have seen special things. But it's difficult to confirm. It's not common nowadays to meet people who have seen beyond those four curtains.

And so most of us are living on this dark island. It's called Diparyaya. The root text says, Diparyayo Nityaznyanam Vatadrupa Pratishtham.

Diparyaya in Tibetan is Lok Tok. Lok Tok means completely wrong idea. Completely opposite, wrong, ass backwards.

Diparyaya says, I can't see that thing. People don't see their future. People, I can hardly believe that someone sitting in front of me might be at this moment seeing what will happen to them in 500 years or less.

And this is a state of Nityaznyanam means wrong, very wrong thinking, very wrong idea. Vatadrupa Pratishtham. It is mired, it is stuck in a complete misconception.

It's like a dark island. At this point in the first stage, the object, what's going to come to you, or all the places where beings live and all the sweet, holy sparks of life, human, animal and other, these are, at this stage, complete darkness. You don't even have a clue.

So you have to leave this island behind and go to the, I like to think of the next step as the ocean. Now, if this was a business meeting at work, or if this was a conversation over lunch with some friends, or if this was a TV show that you're watching in your armchair, it's time to do Chulam Nyamjor. It's time to make your secret sign to third base coach.

So try, practice now. This is how Chulam Nyamjor works. You just interrupt your regular program and for a few seconds you close your eyes, you put your hand out to the right, you make your own secret sign tonight when you announce it in the locker room.

You imagine that some sweet person that you love is trying to touch your hand through the curtain. And it's just a tiny fraction of an inch away from touching you. One day you will really feel it.

And then in a long, infinitely long human chain, and we are pretending, visualizing all the other creatures as humans, then stretches from planet to planet. And you comfort them and you say, I'm learning, I'm really trying hard. I will come and help you.

I'll be able. Then you take your hand back and you open your eyes. When you get good at it, it takes only a few seconds.

Your boss wonders why you scratch your ear all the time. Make it on the right side. We have to save the other sides.

The second stage that the mind goes through, and I like to think of it like an ocean, like you've left a dark island, you're headed towards a safe country. But first you have to go across the ocean. This ocean is called Vikalpa.

In the root text, it says, sab-jnananupati vastu-sunyo, Vikalpa. Sab-jnananupati means, at this point, you only have a very rough picture in your mind, an image of what might be possible. Vikalpa is like an ocean of the might be.

Maybe I could do it. The guy seems pretty convinced I could do it. Maybe.

This is still not Pramana yet. Pramana means true vision, true perception. Why?

Vastu-sunyo. The rough idea you have in your mind is so rough that we can't say it's almost anything like the real thing that you're going to reach when the curtains come down. But it's a start, isn't it?

It's a rough idea. You've got these 10 or 12 balls in your mind that are supposed to be planets and there's a bunch of squiggly lines called people and they're holding hands and you're starting to get a rough picture. In the study of perception, there are different states within Vikalpa.

One is called Yi Chö in Tibetan. It means like a rough guess or rough estimate. Like, okay, you know, if I had to make a sort of a half-educated guess, I would say, he's talking about something like this and then a little picture pops into your mind.

There's another kind of Vikalpa called Döngyur-kyi Tetson in Tibetan and it means samsaya or a kind of doubt. You hear the word doubt means a suspicion. Like, maybe, maybe that's true.

Maybe I could really do what he's talking about. Döngyur-kyi Tetson means the maybe is getting hot. The maybe is getting warm.

You're headed the right way. You're headed away from the maybe that says maybe not. You're headed towards the maybe that says maybe could.

And that's called Vikalpa. I think of it as the mist over the ocean. You're making pictures that aren't very clear.

You're listening to me yesterday and today. You're starting to percolate this idea that you could see every single living creature and all the worlds they live in in one moment. Or you could meet directly beings who have evolved into the perfection of ultimate reality and have actually become that, who have the power to show themselves on infinite planets at once.

You're starting to think, he wouldn't waste so much time talking about something that's totally crazy. Maybe, maybe there's something there. Then when you start to think like that, you've reached the second stage called Vikalpa.

Shab-jnana-rupati means the mind follows a picture based on words. We distinguish drachi from döngyi. Drachi means a picture of something in your mind that you've never seen before.

Ken Rinpoche, holiest lama in the universe, used to say Eiffel Tower. He had never seen the Eiffel Tower, but he had heard about it. So he had a drachi.

He had an image based on someone's description. A döngyi is an image that you have of something you've really seen, like the Dragoon Mountain in front of you. Then if you go home and someone says, what's that mountain look like?

An image comes into your mind. That's a döngyi. When you have Vikalpa, the second stage, you are only as far as a picture that comes from someone's description, and that's called Shab-jnana-rupati.

Let's do Chulam Nandra. Close your eyes. Reach out to your right.

Imagine your hand is on the other side of the silver curtain. Someone you know, maybe someone you loved who passed away, is there expectantly waiting for you. They know you're alive.

They know you are getting close to having the power to really help. And their finger is only a tiny fraction of an inch from yours. And you imagine touching their hand, comforting them, saying, I'll come.

I'm learning. I'll help you. And all the people whose hands you hold.

Then you snap back into your lunchtime conversation. This is real Chulam Kinyam-jan. Even the secret one is the same pattern for those of you who are trying.

The third stage, I like to think of as like a beautiful big beach. And then a long, I imagine, yellow, plain, flat plain like Kansas, and covered with like some kind of golden weed or something. It's a long, plain, flat land.

And you jump from the ship. You touch ground. You leap from the ocean onto the solid land.

There's a reason for this metaphor. This is the first time you've gone from maybe to it is. You've gone from not pramana to pramana.

Pramana means true perception. Valid perception. You're right.

100% right. There are three kinds of pramana. In the text it says, Pratyakshana Managama Pramanami.

It means there are three kinds. First you get Agama. Agama.

I like to think of Agama as this solid land because for the first time you've passed from thinking some dim idea about helping all living creatures to a very firm knowledge. I can do it. This is the greatest leap you have to make.

I don't think anyone here would have a lot of trouble imagining helping every living creature. But to really make the leap from thinking it's only maybe possible to being absolutely certain that it is possible is where most of us stop. We never touch the dry land.

We're stuck on the ocean. You have to try very hard to make this leap. It is the most difficult passage.

What is Agama? Agama in Tibetan is called Lung. Agama Pramana is called Lunggitsema.

It means you have confronted, you have made contact with a person who can see through the four curtains already. And you spend time with them. And you talk with them.

And then finally you come to a realization that what they are describing is true. The scriptures are extremely strict about this kind of perception because it requires that you establish that the person speaking is telling the absolute truth. And it's very difficult to establish within the strict rules we call the command of logic that the person speaking to you must be telling the truth, must be describing something which has really happened.

How do you establish that a person is telling the truth about something neither you nor almost anyone has ever seen? It comes from establishing that the person speaking and I am also referring to books or scriptures, accounts from people who are not here anymore. It comes, Agama comes from establishing that this person must be speaking the truth.

Why? Because they speak the truth about other things. If you think about it this is a very delicate line.

You are staking your life's pursuits on the belief that a person who speaks the truth about some things must also be speaking the truth about amazing beautiful things beyond those curtains. How can we establish that this person is speaking truly, maybe even from experience? The test in scripture is very interesting.

Do they speak of the most important things of all? And in spiritual things it means does this person speak about suffering? Throughout our lives people either sugarcoat our condition or outright lie to us.

When my dear holy father was very ill I remember the people took us into a room. They said be cheerful, no one say what really is going on, no use to trouble a person who is going to die shortly. And so in our culture whether you admit it or not, we are encouraged not to look at what's really happening.

Every person here is in the grips of Lord of Death. Every person around you is halfway down the powerful jaws and fangs of a horrible invisible thing called the Lord of Death. Like the child rabbit we scratch at the ground trying to pull ourselves away and the leg is already being torn apart.

What are the chances that you can get someone out of this if you can't even do it for yourself? So we don't talk about it. But if you ever come across a person who speaks openly, frankly, truly, and then it strikes a chord in your heart of this is really the most important thing of all.

How can we stop this suffering that every human creature and other living thing has to go through? If a person will stand up and stake their life, their life's work, their life's time, their life's money on trying to stop this suffering, then the scriptures say listen to them when they speak about the way. That's the basis for Agama.

Agama means the speech of a person who cannot be lying. And if you ever meet such a person, then you can take what they say as truth. With no other proof than that, this is the hardest leap to make.

Perhaps because it's so hard to find a source of Agama. It is the first great leap all of us would have to make. But if you meet that person and they describe the method clearly, and if you are convinced that they must be speaking truth, especially the truth from personal experience, then what you see is real.

You have gone from unreal to real. It's not a vague image anymore. However rough and unclear it is, you are seeing the truth.

The image you have in your mind, if you have established that this person who is speaking cannot be lying, is a true one. You are really seeing the possibility, the inevitability, of being able to see what will come to you after you die. You are beginning to see the inevitable vision of being able to see every single place there is in a single moment, and every being who lives in those places, the ones you are going to save.

And at the same time, you have a true image of the existence of holy, enlightened beings around us, constantly, who are struggling to bring us to our full destiny. The image is true. You have crossed onto the dry land of Agama.

I'd like to take another break there. We thought it might get cold, but I don't think so. But pull out some drinks and snacks, bring them to your place.

We'll pretend we're at the winter debates. We just sit there and ignore the debates and concentrate on the porridge and the tea. So please have some refreshments and then we'll continue.

So now we've followed the state of mind through three stages. The first was the dark island. And I think it's impossible to see directly what I will become in the very end of things.

Then you go to the second stage, which is, oh, maybe I could see that. And then the third stage is, I will see that. Because a person described it who cannot be lying.

And that's a hard leap to make, the last one. And you shouldn't try to make it until you're sure. It won't be made until you're sure that the person speaking is telling the absolute truth.

These are the three states of mind so far. In the monastery, in a debate, we would be tracking the condition of the object as well. What you will become in the end of all ends is, for the first state of mind, only darkness.

What you will become at the very end of all things is, for the second state of mind, only a dim picture. What each of us will inevitably become, for the third state of mind, is a very sharp picture and has crossed, the object has crossed into the state of reality. It is a true image of something.

It corresponds to an actual object. It's not mastu shunyo anymore. It's not something which no longer corresponds to an object.

It now represents something that really exists. We call this kind of object, at this stage in the fishing process, drawing in the object to your mind, bringing it through the curtain. We call that object shindukokyo.

Shindukokyo means real but very difficult to see. Then the object comes closer and closer. It becomes just jungse kokyo.

Jungse kokyo means difficult but not so difficult to see anymore. That's at the fourth stage. The fourth stage is called anumana, pramana.

Pramana means true perception. Anumana means, in Tibetan, jepak. Jepak sama is when you sit down and think it out clearly, and after many hours of thinking hard about it, you can establish that you could see beyond the curtain to the future directly.

You work it out in your mind, slowly, carefully. You think about all the arguments that were given in favor of this idea, and then suddenly, one day, it just clicks and you perceive what you will become with a new clarity, with a greater clarity. It's no longer very far away and hidden to your eyes.

It's much closer. The image is sharper. The process of reasoning has now demanded and created a stronger image.

On Sunday, I would like to have the honor, really, of speaking about the emptiness of this image, but I think it's useful to give you a small introduction now so that the seeds are planted. Also, I don't feel like you get the real feeling of the winter debates if you don't suffer a little tonight. Some people listening to this talk this evening will be polite, but honestly, they won't think it very meaningful or immediately applicable to their life.

If they are interested, they wouldn't come to this lonely, isolated spot in the desert and take the trouble that you have all taken and the expense to come here lightly, but after a few days, they will dismiss it because they didn't really grasp it. Maybe a few fortunate people, we call kawasambo, people who have been extraordinarily kind to others in the past, and so their minds are free and open, they will be stunned. Kawasambo people start crying at strange times.

They get bristles of hairs rising up their spine when they hear about these holy things, even if they never heard about them before. And so these words that I'm saying even now are empty. Empty means they don't have any quality of their own.

If the words I'm saying were, from their own side, convincing and important to everyone, then everyone would be struck and everyone tonight would do their Jurlam Nyong'o locker room secret code ritual, and immediately they would start on the journey to tear down the four curtains. If the words I'm speaking tonight, from their own side, were sort of a little mixed up and crazy, and the words of a person who spent too long in a little hut, then everyone would go home and sort of try to get a meal before the two restaurants in 100 miles close. But my words are empty.

So if you are experiencing them as meaningful, it must be something in your own mind, some sweet, holy, extraordinary, rare seed, Samskara, which is causing you to hear them in a holy way. And then if you find these words a little interesting but dull, then it must be coming from some part of your mind also. That's what emptiness means.

It's no more mysterious than that. You don't have to argue or debate about it. It's obvious.

My words aren't meaningful from their own side. Your mind, if you have the great fortune, finds meaning in them. My words aren't dull or boring from their own side.

If you find them dull or boring, it's a part of your mind which is making them dull and boring. My words are empty of any quality of being meaningful or boring. That's the emptiness of my words.

So, something very important. When I talk about drawing in an object through the curtain, when I say there's an object out there, there are countless planets, worlds, realms even around us, and in those worlds and realms are lovely, holy, striving, beautiful creatures, life, like us. And then if I ask you, is that object existent or not?

Does it exist or not? Do there exist these sweet, struggling, striving creatures, like us, everywhere, limitless? Does that object exist or not?

And then what is the status of it, if it does exist? Is it Shindukokil? Is it very, very far away and very hard to see?

Or is it only Chungsekokil? Is it sort of hard to see? Or is it Mungil, Patyaksha?

Is it right in front of your face? Then, those of you who have studied emptiness, I'm sure you will reply, for whom? We were at Ganden in the winter debates.

Holy Lama Trijang Rinpoche allowed me to stay at his holy residence. I was stuck in the middle of a big group of people who wanted to see what a white guy could do. So you always start a debate with a controversial statement.

It'll at least confuse the other people until you have time to get away. So they said, is such and such an object Shindukokil, very difficult to see? Or Chungsekokil, kind of difficult to see?

Or Mungil, is it right in front of your face? I said, all goddamn three. You have to be a little chutzpah in debate.

And thank God, for hours they couldn't figure it out. And only much later I realized I had hit on something that great books talk about. Of course everything is all three.

Every object is all three. What are you talking about? What about the sky, the blue sky?

That's in front of our faces. That's Pratyaksha. That's right in front of you.

For whom? Not for a blind man. Can't see the blue.

For a blind man, the blue of the sky is not evident. It's not obvious reality. It's a deeper reality.

The vision of countless planets and holy, sweet, expectant beings on those planets. Is it hard to see or not? You have to say, for whom?

So all things are hard to see. And all things are easy to see. Because none of them is hard to see from its side.

Nothing is hidden from its side. Nothing is open from its side. This is a key to seeing beyond the four curtains.

I've given you a clue. Holiest Lama, sweet darling Ken Rinpoche would say, now go home and cook it. The fifth state of mind.

Oh, Chalam Nendra. Close your eyes. Put your right hand out and touch them.

Promise to come soon. Okay, come back. At work it will be that fast.

The fifth state of mind is called Pratyaksha. Pratyaksha means right in front of your eyes. If you hold up your hand in front of your face and look at your palm, that's what we call Pratyaksha Brahmana.

That's Muntsum Tsema in Tibetan. Direct perception. You see it as if it were in the palm of your hand, they say.

The goal of this teaching is to learn how to bring those holy objects under the curtain, through the curtain and make them Pratyaksha. If establishing that these things are possible by logic is like going from the plain up into the foothills, then Pratyaksha, direct perception is like climbing a beautiful high mountain. I was thinking of visiting towns like Dharamsala and when you take the bus down, you look out the window and the Himalayas fill half the sky.

It's a very strange feeling. You feel like maybe they're going to fall down on you and squash you. So I was thinking of Pratyaksha as looking up at those mountains with their white snow and in the bright sun from the Indian plain and that's direct perception right in front of your face.

There will come a day when you look up you will see what you are going to become. In the very end you will see those worlds and those beings. You will see divine beings.

They will instruct you. You will see their core which is ultimate reality. The seeds are being planted now.

There's one more image and then I'll stop. I thought it would help you to remember the five stages of the mind. I was thinking of one of those holy, sweet, infinitely kind care ladies who are sacrificing their own life and time and money and their own practice so that we can practice and many others like them but those three more than anyone.

So suppose caretaker, Venerable Jigme Phamo L.A. La is sitting in her little house that I heard about I've never seen. Her roommate is bouncing around clicking on the floor with his half-chewed-off leg and she's ordered some vegetables from someone, Owen Benson. They're not very reliable.

They promised to deliver them on Thursday. Then on Wednesday, the day before, she hears some sound, a car. She's trying to figure out if it's some people running drugs down our road from Mexico or maybe some campers who have started a forest fire.

So she decides to go look. At the moment she's at her door, her mind is in the state of mind number one, the pariyaya. It hasn't even crossed her mind that maybe the guy who she can't count on is bringing vegetables early, a day early.

It's darkness. It's a kind of mental darkness and it's wrong. Then she starts walking towards the kitchen which I've never heard about, I've never seen, but certainly enjoyed.

And outside she sees a car pulling away, driving off, and she thinks maybe she's seen it before. She has some dim image in her mind. So that looks a lot like the car of the undependable vegetable guy.

Okay. At this point the state of mind is the kalpa. There's an image forming in her mind of the vegetables.

It's a very dim image. It doesn't correspond to a real vegetable yet. You see?

She goes to the door of the kitchen yard. She looks in. Sweet Venerable Jigme La is there.

She's leaning over. She's got the refrigerator door open. She's got her head halfway in.

Venerable Jigme Phamo Eli La can't see inside because it's a side view, but she can see that Holy Ann is looking in. And she says, Are there any vegetables in there? Is there a box of vegetables in there?

And Venerable Holy Sweet Life-Giving Ann turns towards her and nods her head and says, Yes. This is Agama. This is Agama.

Venerable Jigme Phamo knows, Venerable Ann, being a nun, wouldn't lie about small things like vegetables. And this is the basis of Agama. Agama.

Agama means you totally, at that moment, trust this person about this thing. Why should anyone lie about such a thing? And they have a long history together.

They've known each other a long time. This is a good example of Agama. Ann has never spoken anything but truth.

And we know it. And she says, Vegetables are there. And then in Venerable Jigme Phamo, Holy Angel La's mind, this strong, solid image of vegetables comes.

This is now prominent. This is now a true perception. There's an actual box that corresponds to the solid picture in Venerable Jigme Phamo's Holy Lady's mind.

Then she starts to walk towards the refrigerator and I imagine a table there. And on the table, there's a big invoice, a bill. It's from Joshimo Vegetables.

It says in her mind, He must have come. And the box of vegetables, the image, the true image, Veronica, gets stronger. And you know the end of the story.

She walks up next to Holy Ann. Amber's out working somewhere. And she looks in the refrigerator.

There's a big box of vegetables. And that's pratyaksha. That's direct perception.

So what we hope to do is go through the same process. We hope to tear down the curtain in front and see directly what will become of us. We hope to tear down the curtain to our right and in a single moment see every world there is and every living creature waiting for us to help them.

Imagine what will happen on that day. Your life will be changed forever. You can't say anymore, I can't do it, or I don't know about it.

Imagine how your life will change on that day. You will change entirely inside. This is the real feeling of bodhicitta.

You will never be able to spend another hour of your life without working to serve them and help them and save them. We will tear down the curtain behind, which is where we came from. And we will tear down the curtain to the left, which is all the holy beings who are guiding us without us even knowing it, and their true nature, which is the key to everything, their emptiness.

These seeds are being planted as we speak. If you haven't seen these things, then you will. It will come.

It will come. Remember to do it for others, or it will never come. These things are always completely hidden to people who can't do it for others.

Have a good night. We will miss you, and try to remember to prepare your secret sign and then start doing it. And we are really very grateful.

I don't think any of us in retreat will ever be able to repay you. It's a very heavy feeling, a very grave responsibility. But you should know that each of these people has really tried hard to the limit, and sometimes even a little too far, to earn the hard work you are doing for us.

So we all thank you all the time. Good night.