Открытки от Геше Ла, часть третья: Семена (2011, Нью-Йорк), занятие 1

[Говорящий 1]
So probably the most famous book in all of Buddhism is called the Heart Sutra. In China it's called Shinjin, in Tibetan it's called Sheru Gyalpa Rinpoche chenpay nyin du dzok. And in that book they teach about emptiness.

su tongpa-o tongpa-ni su so, su de tongpa-ni she ma yin, tongpa-ni le su she ma yin no, in the Heart Sutra. Then many people ask me, what is emptiness and can you, could you explain to me emptiness in like two minutes? I can do that.

It takes about 20 years to learn it, but I think you can explain it in two minutes. I like to do it with a pen. So I have this thing, if I hold this thing up to you and I say, what is this thing?

And then naturally you will say, oh, this is a pen. And then if a dog came in the room and he came up to me here on the floor and he jumped on the couch and I showed him the pen, then his reaction to the pen would be to try to bite it. If he was a young puppy, he would try to bite it.

So we could say that the puppy doesn't see a pen. The puppy sees something to chew on, right? And then if I ask you, who's right?

You see, is the puppy right or is the person right? Is it a pen or is it a chew toy? Then people sit there for a minute and then they say, I think it's both.

I think the puppy is right and I think the human is right. Different creatures see the thing as a different thing. So both of them are right.

You can't say one of them is wrong and one of them is right. It's both. This object is a pen and it's also something to chew on.

Then we come to the next question, you see. So what if I put this pen down on the couch, right? And we leave it there.

And then all the people leave the room and all the dogs leave the room. And then I ask you, well, at that time, once everybody has left, then what is this thing? Is it a pen or is it a chew toy?

If I ask you to choose which one it is, is it a pen? Which one of the two is it, you see? And then your mind, I think everyone's mind correctly goes to the idea, well, it's neither.

At that moment it's not a pen and at that moment it's not a chew toy. If there's nobody watching it and nobody to decide what it is, then I think you can say that that thing is neither. So really you came up with what Nagarjuna came up with.

He said, this is a pen. This is a chew toy. This is both a pen and a chew toy.

And this is neither a pen nor a chew toy. You see, Nagarjuna came up with this idea. And it's not crazy, right?

To the human, it's a pen. To the dog, it's a chew toy. If you ask who's right, you have to say, well, they're both right.

And then if all the dogs and humans leave and you put the thing here, then you can say it's neither one. When you say neither one, that's emptiness. That's the meaning of emptiness.

And you can think of emptiness like a movie screen. I like to think of it like a blank white movie screen. When you place the object here and there's nobody looking at it, by itself, from its own side, it's not a pen and it's not something to chew on.

And that's emptiness. Now the important step comes, I think. You have to say, well, what good does that do me?

If I understand that this thing isn't a pen from its own side and I understand that it's not something to chew on from its own side, if I understand that it's neither one by itself, by itself, it's neither one. It's nothing. It's empty.

It's blank. Then what good does that do me? How is that going to make me happy?

How is that going to help me help make the world happy? You see? And then you have to go on to a different subject which is, how do you make the pen, how do you make this object into what you want it to be?

And how do you make your life into what you want it to be by using emptiness? And that's a different subject and we'll cover that later.