Вступление на срединный путь (текущий курс, Аризона), занятие 5

[Speaker 1]
I'm going to do a little bit more alphabet because some people didn't have it. So give me the first column. Ready?

One, two, three. Ka, cha, ta, pa, sa. Second column.

Third column. Ha, cha, ta, pa, sa. Now, they are great.

That's fine. Did anybody learn the letters? I don't know.

It's okay. I'm going to try to have some... Do you want to...

What do you call it? Change it from Roman to Tibetan script for the first ten pages or something? And we can hand that out?

Okay. Yeah. Oh.

Fine. What's the address?

[Speaker 2]
www.dmes.org And then click on the translator.

[Speaker 1]
Okay. So if you want to see the Tibetan... Then I'll put it up.

If you can give it to me on a file. I can split my screen sometimes and just check people's pronunciation for you. Like that?

We can do that. So I'll give you the fourth column. You ready?

It's all nasals, which means all M or N sounds. Okay. And like all the other columns, it moves up your throat.

It holds to the same rules. So throat, palate, dental, labial, and then back to a weird little dental. Okay.

So... It's... This is how I teach it to people.

Say, ring a bell. I didn't get taught this way. It took me like six months of twisting my mouth around.

Take the R off. Ing a bell. Say, ing a bell.

Ing a bell. Ing a bell. Take the I off.

That's all. That's how you get your mouth to make an NG. And it took me like...

I remember walking to Dharamsala trying to get my mouth to do this. And if you can't get it, just do that. Ring a bell.

Ing a bell. And then NG a bell. And it's a closure in the lower throat, right?

The two parts of your throat are touching back here. NG a bell. People tend to make an N, which is wrong.

It's a dental, right? That's way up here. It's not NA.

It's NG. NG a bell. And all these poor guys get called Nga Wong.

Because people can't say Nga Wong. Okay? So...

Okay? So NG a. And then, moving up to the palate.

NG a. Like, NGA NGA NGA NGA. Okay?

NGA. Also Senor. Okay?

Canyon. NGA. Okay?

And then NA, the dental. Just N-A. NA.

And what would the labial be? Ma. Ma.

Ma. Okay, Ma. And then it breaks the rules and goes to Sha.

Sha. No, Wa, sorry. Wa.

Wa. Wa. There's only one word in Tibetan that has a Wa in it.

Two. Wa means fox, Pi Wang means guitar. They're mostly Chinese loan words, I think.

So you don't have to worry too much about Wa. So let's do four columns now. Ga.

Ga. Ja. Ja.

Da. Da. Ba.

Ba. Za. TSA!

KA! CHA! TA!

PA! TSA! KA!

CHA! TA! Benjamin's got it good.

PA! TSA! Now the last column.

WA! NYA! NA!

MA! WA! And that's it, 20 letters out of 30, you've finished.

It's so fast, you know. And again, the teacher taught me this, he's the most extraordinary, extraordinary. He's just unbelievable.

If you keep this system and don't lose it, it'd be very precious in the world. He's just unbelievable. He's like the best linguist that ever came out of Tibet.

He was trained in the Potala Palace because he was recognized as a kid to be extraordinary. He was trained to be one of the Dalai Lama's assistants. Then he taught in Beijing for a long time.

Then he was invited to Tokyo and then Chicago. Now I think he's very old. When he got to me, I already knew Tibetan.

He said, what do you want to study? I learned Tibetan from his father, who's a very old man who became a monk just before he died so he could die as a monk. He's very old in Dharamsala.

I said, well, I thought you could teach me Tibetan history or something. He says, how about the alphabet? I'm like, I've been studying for seven, eight years.

I can read everything. He said, no, your pronunciation is terrible. He started me over again.

Thank goodness. There's the four columns. Practice all the writing, all the letters.

Now you've got 20 out of 30 letters. Here we go. Master Chendrakirti wrote two commentaries to Nagarjuna's what text?

Root text on the Middle Way. One is what? Entering the Middle Way, Ummalajupa, and the other commentary is called Sixth Hell.

Say Sixth Hell. Sixth Hell means clear words, literally, and whereas Ummalajupa is a commentary on the meaning of the Middle Way, Sixth Hell is a commentary on the wording of Nagarjuna's text. So it's called Clear Words.

Now I want to check something. I want to check whether it's clear words as an adjective or whether it's a clarification of the words. What's the full title?

We always call it Sixth Hell in Tibetan. So where would I go? Yeah, it's in the Tenggir, but this is something cool.

See what I did? I said, look for Tsik near cell. See this thing switching in the middle?

That's a Boolean search. It means I can search or, and, nearby. So why don't I just search for Tsik cell?

Because if in Tibetan he says a clarification of the words, it'll be Tsik nam sel war che, and it won't be Tsik cell. I won't find it. So you say, find me clear near word.

Yeah. I can set it, watch. See, it asks me how many lines apart.

I want it on the same line. And there's a catalog in here to the Tenggir. And we'll see what it's called in there.

This is spelled Dey chok gya che shepa tsik dun rap tu sel war, a total clarification of the words in Dey chok. What's Dey chok? Heruka.

Not interesting. That's a Tantra. So we got to find another Tsik cell.

Nyel jor ma tsik sel. Yeah, Vajrayogini clarification of the words. No thanks.

Dam tsik sel war. Clear dam tsik. That tsik means vows, pledges.

Not interesting. Here's somebody use tsik sel for something, but that's not going to help us. What's this one?

Uma tsawe delpa tsik sel. Tsik sel war. Yeah, a commentary on the root text of Madhyamika called tsik sel war.

That's it. And that's clear because it says clear words, tsik sel war. It doesn't say sel war chepa to make them clear or something like this.

Now I can translate the title responsibly. So we get rid of this box. Here's a tough one.

Dene takpa. We have takpa nyel jor in Tantric class. What was that?

Make-believe yoga. And this is make-believe, but it means to impute something on something, to lay a projection on something. Dene means due to certain dependence.

So things are labeled, basically. I like that. Okay, label.

I'm going to do one thing because it occurred to me. Mind-only school has two names. One is mind-only, one is consciousness-only.

I'd like to keep them separate. Nambariktsam. Okay?

So I want to just... The nice thing about doing stuff on a computer is... Oh, there's another principle for you.

Standardize your names early on. Okay? Standardize your names early on.

Because if you're going to go back later and change 500 mind-only schools into consciousness-only school, you're going to be in a mess. And standardize what you're calling other books, like clear words. And you might even want to keep a list, separate list, but we'll see.

Do you have that problem? What's it mean he is also doing so? Who's he and why also?

What was our last sentence? This is why Master Chandrakirti is saying, I had to write entering the middle way. And then Jetsun Kappa throws in, he also has to write entering the middle way, because in his other commentary he said, I'm not going to cover projection too thoroughly in clear words, so you've got to refer to my other commentary.

And also he didn't, in clear words, Master Chandrakirti did not specifically, what do you call it, reject or refute the mind-only school. And neither does Arya Nagarjuna. Why?

It wasn't really invented yet. When did Master Sangha come along? 350.

When did Nagarjuna live? 200. So there's no refutation of the mind-only school yet.

When did Chandrakirti live, Master Chandrakirti? Say around 650, something like that. So that's how, he's got to write this to refute the mind-only school.

That's another reason why he wrote this text. Sorry? Run that by me again.

[Speaker 2]
Oh, Nora, right.

[Speaker 1]
Neither does so in any sense. Is that right? I think neither is singular, right?

I don't know. Yeah? Same thing, synonyms.

At some point there might be a debate about why the two names are different, so I have to distinguish them from the beginning. That's all. In a Jetsun Kappa 400, 800 page text, you better distinguish them from the beginning because at some point he might say why, that there's a slight difference between the two.

I'm just anticipating, with Jetsun Kappa you've got to be careful because somewhere in there he might draw a distinction between them. But for all intents and purposes, the same thing. Let's see if he has said sam-tsam in his whole text.

Yeah, he does. He uses both, so we better be careful to distinguish them. Did you have another question?

Does? Neither this nor that is what I want to say? Neither this nor that are what I want to say?

No, I think it's singular. See, if I say neither that or that is what I wanted. We don't say neither that or that are what I wanted.

Oh, neither does. Yeah, yeah, this is singular. We'll check it.

Somebody check Chicago. I get confused sometimes. Okay.

By the way, those of you who know Tibetan fairly well, what does tsa-she mean? No, tsa-she, where this is now. Tsawa-sheram.

Root text on wisdom, muddha-prajna. How do you spell sheram? S-H-E-R-A-M.

S-H-E-R-A-M. Look here. They even misspelled the possessive correctly.

So you have to know, tsa-she became such a common word in Tibetan that it dropped the suffix letter. It's like one of the only words in the whole language. It's just so common, people quote it so often, that they just call it tsash, like that.

they say, oy chash, you know, they don't even say tsa-she. Get it? They just drop some of the spelling off of it because everybody says that.

Just in case you run across it, if you look up she in the dictionary, you won't find anything. And you'll say, what's going on? So when you hypertext that, it's very important to have an entry called S-H-E and say, well, this is a very weird usage of the word shes.

Okay? All right. Okay.

Yeah, you always do. Yeah, yeah. Books and newspapers and magazines, always in italics.

Articles in quotation marks. Okay. Unless you don't have italics in the news, of course.

[Speaker 2]
Yeah. You know what this is?

[Speaker 1]
That's a mudra of war.

[Speaker 2]
Okay.

[Speaker 1]
No, and you have to say you never know. It might be that way in some text somewhere. I don't know.

But not here. Here it's a book, famous book. Okay.

So if you remember, we were going to enter into the Middle Way from two aspects. One is from the emptiness teachings and one is from the bodhisattva teachings. And then the emptiness teachings themselves, there were two reasons why you should read this text.

He just stated them. Do you get it? What is it?

Yeah, one is, it's going to, well, basically it's to refute two other ideas. What are they? Lower Middle Way and Mainoni.

That's all. He's saying, now I've finished one of the ways of entering into the text, which is two reasons to get into it. What are they?

Refute the Lower Middle Way school. Refute the Mainoni school. These are very sophisticated schools.

They are both Hinayana or Mahayana? They're both Mahayana schools. They're very sophisticated.

Very sophisticated. You know, me and Vilma come from the same karmic seed. And the fact that nothing doesn't work that way is emptiness.

That's sophisticated and that's damn close to the truth. And then the Lower Middle Way, Vilma appears to me from her side and because I have a valid perception to see it, which is very close. So this book is important because if you can get over slight problems with those two ideas, you've got to hit emptiness because there's nothing more subtle.

Once you see some kind of flaw in those two ideas, there's almost nowhere left to go but to the highest meaning of emptiness. So this is a very important book. So if that were the only reason he entered into the Middle Way, that'd be great.

Now he's going to go into... What do you guess? Yeah, yeah.

Okay. This one here? Oh, okay.

Okay, yeah. By the way, Tukhapa's hard, okay? I mean, even in English, it's not going to be illogical, but it's going to be like talking to Einstein, okay?

That's how he is. So we've got to explain this. Here in the system of the Arya...

Who's the Arya? Nagarjuna. The distinction between whether one belongs to Mahayana or Hinayana is not drawn on the basis of whether one has perceived emptiness or not.

Why did he say that? No, because the lower Middle Way school thinks what? Well, they have this thing called the Three Tracks.

Do you remember? There's the listeners and the self-made Buddhas and then the bodhisattvas, and only bodhisattvas perceive emptiness, and the other two perceive selflessness, and it's different. Selflessness is not the same as emptiness.

I'm not going to go into it now, but in the higher Middle Way school we don't accept that distinction. We don't say that's what separates the Mahayanas from the Hinayanas. So would you say in the higher school that an arhat, a lower arhat, does perceive 100% emptiness?

Yeah, but in the lower half of the Middle Way school they say no. They call, say, dhagme, tarakasum. People of the Hinayana tracks, listeners and self-made Buddhas, they don't see emptiness.

They see a degree of selflessness, first degree or second degree selflessness, but they don't perceive emptiness. And then the highest school says, oh, hogwash. Of course they do.

And that's a bodhisattva vow, if you ever noticed. This issue became so hot that you're not allowed to claim that lower arhats didn't see emptiness. That became a bodhisattva vow.

That's why that vow is there. It's such a hot issue among people that it became a vow that you couldn't go around saying that. That's what they would say.

Meaning the two lower tracks?

[Speaker 2]
Mind-only and lower?

[Speaker 1]
Yeah. In the Svatantrika they call it first degree selflessness, selflessness of people, selflessness of things, and then emptiness. And they are not the same.

If you can perceive one without perceiving the third. And we say bohāki. If you perceive the emptiness of Alastair or the emptiness of the wall, it's the same thing as emptiness.

We say that division into degrees of emptiness is a false distinction. And that's a long story. It'd take me six months to teach that.

But now you see what he's talking about. Why is that relevant? I don't know.

Let's see. That's pretty weird. What's he saying?

Wisdom. Yeah. Arya Nagarjuna's work, text on wisdom, doesn't talk much about the perfections.

It's just a book about emptiness. Got it? You could have a debate on that.

I mean in the monastery they would take that to the debate ground the same night. So a book about wisdom is not a book about the greater way? No.

So a book about wisdom doesn't treat the six perfections, right? Right. So wisdom's not the six perfections, right?

You see? And then you'd have a debate going. And that would last for four or five hours.

Okay, anyway. I'm splitting these into digestible chunks for you. We might want to.

What's this particular text? Guess. He can't be talking about Arya Nagarjuna's text because he just said it doesn't treat the far-reaching teachings, right?

So what's he talking, when he says this particular text? Yeah, Uma Lajupa, Entering the Middle Way. Okay.

Yeah, Master Chandrakirti's text. By the way, those of you who know something about, see this te here? What's that used for?

Yeah. Yeah, or a reason is coming sometimes. Sometimes it's a progression, but sometimes it's a reason.

Mayimbatao, duh. Mayimbatao, chi-chir. What do you call it?

Ja-chi-chir, mi-ta-te. Che-pi-chir, mi-ta-te. Okay, it takes down.

It's impermanent because te. Dada-dada, yin-be-chir. So here he says, now this particular text, meaning whose text?

Master Chandrakirti's text, was written for people of the Mahayana. Why? Because when you write a book about emptiness and use a billion different arguments to establish emptiness, it must be you wrote it for Mahayana students.

It's like this famous thing, what makes you Mahayana? In some presentations, it's not the bodhichitta thing. It's can you handle many arguments for emptiness?

Is your mental capacity high enough to hear a hundred different reasons why things are empty? Can you handle that? And people of Hinayana will say, I'll stop there.

I can't handle it. That's enough for me. Two or three arguments is all I wanted to hear.

Let me go home and think about it. But a Mahayana person is like, give me another reason why. Give me another argument why.

And then you give them a hundred, two hundred, and they're like, give me more. I love it. Let's just talk about a pen.

Let's talk about the boss too. And they want to hear it every which way. Somebody with that seed in their mind is fit for Mahayana teachings.

And in many presentations, that's what distinguishes you from Hinayana, is that capacity to be interested to hear a hundred arguments about emptiness and get them. You see what I mean? So that's another reason why this book, which what book?

Entering the Middle Way, it's got to be having a Mahayana presentation. Why? Because it's just got a billion arguments for emptiness in it.

Okay, got it? This is like famous in the monastery. If somebody can handle a lot of arguments for emptiness, they're Mahayana.

Yeah, that's why he says this is also the way it's presented in the root text. You just anticipated the last sentence. Good job.

Our Oxford Greek professor would say, well spotted, well spotted. The first time he said it, I'm like looking for spots. Okay.

You guys got to teach me how to do this thing. I do this thing here. And what do I do over here?

It didn't work last time, did it?

[Speaker 2]
Yeah?

[Speaker 1]
Yeah? But it won't go. Mine won't go.

Oh, here it went. I don't know. Different days it doesn't go.

I guess on Tuesdays it doesn't go. Okay. This point is also made in the Gauda commentary.

This is so difficult that it's obviously a translation from Sanskrit and they don't quite make sense. Okay. He's just saying, in the Gauda commentary he's saying it makes sense to teach Mahayana when you want to talk about emptiness because people of Mahayana will respond to detailed explanation of emptiness.

How's that? Okay. Got it?

Who said that? Yeah, Master Chandrakirti in the auto-commentary. There's an auto-commentary to Uma Lajupa.

We're working with three books by Master Chandrakirti. His Entering the Middle Way, Clear Words, and then his auto-commentary on Entering the Middle Way. I think we have the commentary in Sanskrit, but I'm not sure.

The Entering the Middle Way, I believe, has never been located in Sanskrit. I believe they're still looking for it. Here I said this point is also made in the auto-commentary, but down here it says this point is made shintu selva in the auto-commentary, which means what?

Shintu selva. Very clearly. So we can add that up here now.

This point is also made clearly in the auto-commentary. That drives the hypertextor crazy because it's in the next paragraph. That's your problem.

Okay. You're going to get a lot of that in this book. Okay.

We're still continuing with the quotation. So we still have to do this dumb thing. Sorry?

I'm sorry? Oh, in nothing more than a cursory way. Okay.

We'll talk more about this statement later on. Who's saying that? Je Tsongkhapa.

Okay. At this point Geshe Thubten Rinpoche would do what? He would turn to page 287, third paragraph, second line, where he found that Je Tsongkhapa talked about it later on, and I don't quite have that grasp of it.

Okay. It's an excellent approach then where the path which is taught in that text is supplemented by other teachings on the far-reaching path of the greater way, by other instructions from the Arya. What's he saying?

What's that text? What's he calling this text? This text is Uma Lajjupa, entering the middle way.

So what does that text mean? Nagarjuna's text. Nagarjuna's original text.

Okay. And he says, it's really cool. He's explaining the Arya's text which doesn't treat what?

Bodhisattva stuff much. So here somebody's come along and supplemented the original book with these other Bodhisattva teachings. Who did that?

Master Chanakirti. Where did he get these Bodhisattva teachings? Yeah, he took them from other teachings of Arya Nagarjuna.

So we're entering the middle way in two ways. What are the two ways? Yeah, through emptiness side of things and through the bodhicitta side of things.

What are the two ways in which we're entering it through the emptiness side? We're refuting lower middle way, we're refuting Mainoma. How are we entering it on the Bodhisattva side?

We're supplementing the original text. With what? Where did you get these supplements that you're loading onto Arya Nagarjuna?

Is it okay if I take them from Arya Nagarjuna? Okay, got it? Okay, so he said, that's so cool.

That's such a cool approach. Okay, here we got a book by Arya Nagarjuna that doesn't talk in detail about Bodhisattva stuff. So Master Chanakirti comes along and supplements it with Bodhisattva stuff from Arya Nagarjuna's own teachings.

Okay, all right, got it? Okay, a little hard, okay? Yeah, ordinary is good.

I got to put this back up there. Oops, what did I do? Huh?

Oh, yeah, yeah, I got it. Okay, thanks. This is a very Tsongkhapa-ian sentence.

Yeah, this is a Tsongkhapa-ian sentence, okay? What was that new word we came up first? Stillness.

Stillness, I like it, yeah. Lhakton? Special insight?

Extraordinary insight? What are you using, Nani? The special vision?

Extraordinary vision? We use extraordinary. Okay, that's like typical Tsongkhapa, okay?

You can either simplify him or, I don't know, or you can sit there and read it for an hour. No, and you can't read Jatakapa without surrendering to him. You got to give it an hour.

You'll never get it on the first reading. You'll never get it on the first week. And you have a choice.

You can either give up Tsongkhapa, you can go to easier stuff, or you can look at it for the next week. And then like on the third day, what I'm saying is that you can't read this book through, even if it were in English. You can't just read it through.

Tibetans don't read this book from cover to cover and put it up. They take one paragraph, they debate it, they memorize it, they think about it, and three weeks later they get it. We're just not used to that.

Yeah, yeah. Let's go through the pieces here. Yeah, I wonder.

Does it mean we're redefining our audience? I guess. I just did that to you and people will drop out of this class, and I knew that.

The monastic textbook is easier. In the monastery they don't read this book. Why did he spend eight years teaching it to me?

I wanted to read it. We read the commentary on this, which is easier. And I said, well, could we read the original?

One classmate came with me to like three sessions, and then he dropped out. And then we just kept going for eight years. It's hard.

It's hard. That's why I think we should translate it. Because our audience is many generations of people.

Maybe 13 generations from now somebody will say, thank God they got it into English before the old lamas all died off. You see? Because I don't know how many people can explain it now.

[Speaker 2]
Yeah, something like that.

[Speaker 1]
But I don't think I can simplify this kind of thing beyond what's there. And I don't think it would be justice to the text. And partly the reason I'm doing the most difficult text on emptiness is because it might not get done.

And then if the most difficult one's done, people can sit there all day and hypertext it, and maybe a couple years later translate the easier ones. You see what I mean? So my hope has been to do the difficult ones.

Yeah. Oh, tell me where. In order to supplement the...

Let's go through it. Let's read it in English. In order to supplement the text, he will be using...

Who's he? Master Chanakirti. Okay.

Supplementing whose text? Yeah, good. He will be using the concepts of the three qualities of the levels of ordinary beings who haven't seen emptiness.

Oh, you want a footnote? We'll get there. I don't know.

You see, you could just put in a footnote that says, go see page 400, but it's not going to help them much. They just have to get used to the idea. We could try that.

And then the ten levels of a realized being who is still learning. That's easy. That's a bodhisattva.

Sorry, no. Yeah, it's an Arya. Why didn't I say bodhisattva levels?

There are two other sets of ten levels that people usually don't know about. There's ten boomies for bodhisattvas. There's also ten boomies for listeners, and there's ten boomies for self-made Buddhas, and they're different boomies, so you've got to be careful.

Then the resulting level, which is Buddhahood. It's like number 11. And how in the passage between the two steps of the fifth and sixth levels one utilizes the very stillness in order...

This is where you use vipasyana and samatha. This is the real meaning of vipasyana and the real meaning of samatha. You use samatha between the fifth bodhisattva level and the sixth bodhisattva level.

Special ways of using samatha and vipasyana, which is stillness and extraordinary vision. And let's read it. The two steps of the fifth and sixth levels, one utilizes the very essence of meditation, which is stillness, in order to meditate with the extraordinary vision.

An examination where wisdom analyzes dustness in the form of the two ways in which there is no self-existence. That's exactly what the Tibetan says. You just got to sit on it.

Yeah, yeah, like seeing deities and stuff. Yeah. Insight to me means conceptual thought.

And what this is is non-contemptual. You guys go home and think about it.

[Speaker 2]
Hang on a second.

[Speaker 1]
What are the two… where are we? Oh, two ways.

People and parts. Okay. Yeah.

[Speaker 2]
Yeah. Yeah. Deity.

Yeah, yeah.

[Speaker 1]
Extraordinary sight. What's important to convey in Tibetan is hlak tong, which means special seeing, extraordinary seeing. In Sanskrit it's vipasyana, which means extraordinary seeing.

They translated the two syllables. I don't know. Sleep on it.

Sleep on it. We'll remember. Sleep on it.

Sleep on it. Sometimes it helps to sleep on it.

[Speaker 2]
I'm still stuck in it.

[Speaker 1]
Okay? Okay? By the way, in the monastery they'll start calling it jukpa.

Okay? It's just jukpa, avatara, you know? And everybody knows what you're talking about.

Okay. In Tibetan the word for lost here is exploded. Like a glass shattering or something like that.

It's like blown, but yeah. It's a very strong word. I don't know how to…

But I think in our idiom it's like you lost the whole point. You see what I mean? It's like that.

You lost the whole point. Is that the same word you sometimes translate as smashed? No.

Jukpa. Okay? We okay?

So if you don't get how entering the Middle Way enters the Gardener's Middle Way using both the emptiness teachings and the Bodhisattva teachings, then you lost the whole point for which Chandrakirti wrote it in the first place. Got it? Okay?

If you don't get that, then you don't grasp why he wrote the book in the first place. Get it? Okay?

All right. It'll get easier. I'm going to keep going until we hit something easy.

If you don't get how entering the Middle Way enters the Middle Way by utilizing both the Bodhisattva teachings and the emptiness teachings as I've just presented it, the two kinds of emptiness teachings, refuting Lower Middle Way and Mind Only, and then Bodhisattva teachings in the form of like five different things. Where were they? Presenting the ten Bodhisattva levels, talking about the three levels of people who haven't seen emptiness directly, talking about the passage between the fifth level and the sixth level, Bodhisattva level, talking about how you get to Buddhahood that way, talking about Samatha related to Vipasyana.

If you don't get why he's entering the Middle Way with these two weapons, then you don't understand why he wrote the book. You see, he's saying that. Then you lost the whole two reasons why he wrote the book.

Get it? You okay? A lot of glazed looks here.

Not just you guys on the web. He either did or he wants to. Oftentimes they'll say why they wrote the book, and that's coming.

They'll say... Sometimes like Dharmakirti says... What's it say?

It's very beautiful. kevala-pelacar cela cakṣiṃ śrī-rābdhāme penā lekṣeṇāṁ dṛṇu-mīṇho konar mā sa tato kīnī tīma-dhāvanam yauṁ su-sthete It's like, the majority of people are attracted to stupid things like TV and, you know, and the word in Tibetan for normal people and the, you know, common things is the same word. Therefore, they have no wish to read these books.

And the few people who do want to read them are just scholars who are jealous of each other, want to debate each other out of jealousy. Therefore, I'm not writing this book for anybody else. Just so I can practice the ideas myself, you know.

And there's this whole debate in the monasteries. So Dharmakirti is not a bodhisattva. He's just selfish.

He's just taking care of himself, you know. And then, you know. Anyway, oftentimes though, he's going to write why he wrote the book.

Okay, so here we go. Are you okay on this one? This one's easy, right?

He's just... By the way, he's wrapping up. Okay, he's wrapping up.

Oh, something easy. This is nice. Oh, I have a question up here.

What's this mean? What's ngoa mean? Ngoa.

Not ngoa. Ngoa. No, that's ngoa.

High tone. Ngoa. This is ngoa.

No, it's not ngoa-yi. It's a misspelling. There is no such word.

Okay. Now, I went and looked it up. There is just a ngoa that got cut off.

So, I'm not going to bother you. I'm not going to call up the scans. I did call up the scan.

I checked it. And some things I'll be correcting as I go just because I know what they are. Okay.

And I'm not going to... The principle is you go look it up in a scan if your Tibetan's not that good. And be careful.

Until you're really, really good, it might just be an odd word. Okay. But as you go, it's nice to create a pure text.

Christy, we've worked a lot on text and I'm very adamant that every time we find an error, she has to make a huge mark and then we go back to the database and we correct the original text because then it will be clean for future generations. The weakness of a database is that if it's not clean, what? You can't search for it.

You won't hit anything. If I had searched for ngoa, I wouldn't have hit anything because it was misspelled. So that's the weakness of a database.

The reason I said that is because this is not a word either. Dundipa. Okay.

And I looked it up. It's dundampa. What does nivni mean?

Now for the second point. Okay. And you know, there's this dumb translation method which is .A13,456EDD34. You know, they do that. I've seen a book like that recently. Or you just start a new chapter or you start a new, you know, you have a little subtitle there.

You see, in English, that's what you do. We'll throw those in later. But what is his second point?

Did we somewhere before have, he's going to go through three steps or something like that? I don't know. Go back and find it.

Let's go back up. I think title was one of them. Here we go.

My explanation will proceed in four parts. Meaning of the title of the text. Is he done?

Could you beat a title more than that? You know, I mean, we spent like six hours on this title. These just explain the title.

Why is it called entering? You see? Why is it called entering?

That's entering. Okay. So what's his second thing?

Yeah. Now, I like to supply them for people. I don't like to make the reader wonder what number two is.

So we're on like page 20, just finished the title. I put it this way, okay? What is the wording of the obeisance?

We don't know. We got to go look it up. Okay?

Let's go check it out. Well, we'll go this way. Going to the database.

Sumbam tengyur or kangyur? Tengyur. Mind only, parasamparamita, abhidharma, umma.

Well, let's go to jukpa. Waiting for Microsoft Word. Here we go.

Okay. Watch my cursor. Ummala jukpa she jawa shukso.

This is the actual text of Entering the Middle Way. Why don't we put one in our directory that we can keep using? What are we calling it?

Oh, gongso, right? And we'll call it jukpa root text. Okay.

And personally, I don't like to read this ugly courier, nude, ten-point... Let's do a 14-point. Is that easy for you guys to see?

Okay. So here's the original text by Master Chandrakirti. First we have the title in Tibetan.

Ummala jukpa is the name of this book. Then it says, in the language of India, Madhyamakavatara nama, in Tibetan letters. Okay.

Then he says, in Tibetan, this is ummala jukpa she jawa, and then he says, japa shruna gyupa la chak chalo mispel. Do you think we should translate this text while we go? It'll slow it down by about a year.

Do you want to finish it? Let's see. We'll think about it, okay?

I mean, every time you add another thing, you increase the chances that you won't finish it. And then nobody gets it, you see. Maybe a student could translate it.

But anyway, we'll talk about it, okay? Maybe somebody could struggle with this, okay? But now that my computer froze up again.

But here's his prostration, japa shruna gyupa la chak chalo. Who's japa? Japa young.

Sometimes japa young, sometimes japa young, okay? Manju Gosha. The jampel is Manju Sri, okay?

So here he's got Manju Sri. Who's shunu? Shunupal.

Yeah, that's his refugee's name? Yeah. So shunu means youthful.

And that's what the name came from, actually. But anyway, chak chalo means I bow down to Manju Sri who? In the form of a young man, okay?

This is like a youthful form. It's a famous kumara Manju Sri. It's a famous aspect of Manju Sri as almost a youth, okay?

Ted, is that going to be a pull-it-out-the-battery thing? Yeah, I know. Anyway, I'll tell you the story and then we'll translate it.

This is not part of the book. This was added by the Tibetan translators, okay? And that's why it's called The Translators of Bsints.

And there was an edict issued by the king of Tibet. I forget which one. Songtsen Gampo, maybe, or Chisong Detsen or somebody.

And he said, look, it's getting confusing. We don't know. Like, wisdom publications had this thing for a while.

Green books, red books, yellow books. No, and if you were just starting out in the Dharma, you would buy the green books. And if you were like pretty well along, then you'd buy the yellow books.

And the red books were for tantric people or something like that. But they color-coded the spine or something. And so the king said, we have to color-code the teachings.

When you translate something that has to do mainly with wisdom, which is the subject of which of the three baskets? Give me the three baskets first. Cipitaka, Abhidharma, Sutra, Vinaya.

Vinaya. Vinaya is easy. It mainly treats the training of morality.

The other two, I always get confused. Sutra is said to treat the training of concentration. And that is Abhidharma, which treats the training of wisdom.

I think it's pulled out, Ted. Am I okay? Do I have to do that dumb thing?

Try to put it in D and C so you can quit.

[Speaker 2]
See the little D down there?

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, right.

[Speaker 2]
Right click on that and then say, close D and C.

[Speaker 1]
Okay.

[Speaker 2]
Is it heavy? No.

[Speaker 1]
It's just a traditional that they took all the books that treated wisdom and called it the Abhidharma Pitaka. This is like way, way back. This is in the time of post-Malinda.

I think it was even Malinda or they had a meeting in Palipitana. Yeah, kill it? I did.

And they decided, let's group all the teachings into three groups. And they just artificially... The teachings which were clearly mainly about morality got called Vinaya group.

And the teachings that were mainly about concentration were called Sutra group. And the teachings that were mainly about wisdom were called Abhidharma group. Is that the Abhidharma in the five subjects?

No. Is that Sutra as opposed to Tantra? No.

Okay. It's just the artificial name for that category. Killing this?

Yeah, I'd love to do this. Bang, bang. Okay, Anthony.

I don't know where you got that. God bless. Oh, okay.

Okay. Sounds good. You have to do that?

Okay. I'll take a tea break. You guys should keep drinking, okay?

Because it keeps you from getting cranky. Oh. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, maybe. I think we could do that.

Or we could read it together. We should be reading it together. Yeah, yeah.

[Speaker 2]
Yeah.

[Speaker 1]
Okay, we'll do that way on some of it. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, okay.

Okay. Here? No.

I don't know. I forget where she's from. Something like that.

Yeah. Like Vancouver Ballet or something like that. It's got a start-up word.

You guys can take a break. We could practice that. Say, jampel.

Jampel. Shunur. Shunur.

Kyurpala. Kyurpala. Chakselo.

Chakselo. That's the obeisance of the translator. What's the kyurpa?

Do you know? Do you know? Gyur means to become, but when you past tense it, kyur.

It's who did become, which means is. You see? So it just means is.

I bow down to Manjushri in his youthful form. That's all. Become young.

Okay. We'll do that. Say, ka.

Ka. Then say, ga. Ga.

Then say, nga. Nga. Get it?

I'll do it again. Ka. Ga.

Ga. Nga. Nga.

Three different ga's. Okay. One is the sexy ga from Brazil.

Ka. Ka. One is the real English G, like in God.

Ga. Ga. And one has a little N sound in front of it.

Nga. Okay. So if you say gyur with a real G, English G, it means to translate.

When you say ngyur, it means will become. When you say gyur, gyur, it means did become. Get the difference?

It's interesting, right? So if your pronunciation is not good, you hear those three things as the same in your mind as you're translating. It's hopeless.

You'll never be a good translator. You see what I mean? If three words that are completely different, like cheap and jeep and sleep, sound the same to you in your mind, you'll never be able to translate.

You see? So don't worry about it. We'll get there.

Okay? By about second semester, it'll be clear. You'll be using it all the time.

And Tibetans often can't explain to you what they're doing. You know? They don't...

They don't... It's very difficult for a Tibetan to tell you what they're doing differently. You see what I mean?

Try to explain to a German why cheap isn't the same as jeep. Or to a Thai, why real and rare and leer are different. And they just look at you, you know, like...

You see? Okay? Do I have to say this?

Didn't I keep doing that hand thing? We'll save it. Boring.

Yeah? Sure? I like that.

Okay. Okay. Okay.

So back to Nippāni. So what's he saying? This last sentence.

Do I have to explain to you what it means, I bow down to Jampayong? I mean... Okay?

That's what Je Tsongkhapa does. Gelugpas are like proud of the fact that they don't comment on the easy stuff. They say, they say, look, you can read that yourself.

You don't need me to comment on that. You bow down to this guy, okay? Got it?

Let's go on. Okay? And then other traditions will like have a 14-page commentary on that, and Je Tsongkhapa's like, yeah, see?

Okay, anyway. When an author doesn't know what many of the points in the text mean, they will often kill the easy points. You see what I mean?

And Gelugpas say, they like to say, they're doing the opposite. You know, the easy points we're not going to cover. The monastic textbook does not cover any of the easy points in Je Tsongkhapa.

It just goes for the hard points. So anyway.

[Speaker 2]
Yeah? Say again?

[Speaker 1]
Oh, probably. Yeah, yeah, it does. That's different.

In accordance with, right? Okay. Nyipa nyi, tsikyidun, korlala, lala, jampel, la, chaksawa nyi, shungidun, sorry, shung, ndi, dundampe, chungmba, nambashakpa, yinpe, yinpe, shirapgilapa, tsor gyurpechir, not gyurwechir, not gyurpechir, but gyurpechir.

Ngundi, kechepadam, tumbal, zepao. Okay. He just reached the third part of his, of his four parts, right?

What's the third part from up here? The meaning of the body of the text. This takes like 800 pages.

I want to, we got ten minutes. We're about to hit the actual book. The monastic textbook has a beautiful introduction that explains the history of the book, like who's Buddhapalita, what was the fight out that he had with, you know, so-and-so, why was, I think we should go over there for a while.

How's that? So we're going to go to Umajidun. Say Uma.

Uma. Jidun. Jidun.

Yeah, we're going to poke away at that for a while. I'll make it bigger. He gives a, as we said before, this is a faux Sanskrit title, like by this time, which is when?

Monastic textbook. Yeah, late 1500s. Let's look it up.

Kedrup. Temba. There it is.

You see how cool it is to have everything in a database? 1493 to 1568. Call it 1550, he probably wrote it.

So by 1550, there wasn't much Sanskrit left in Tibet. I mean, you know, probably by, I don't know. The Sakyapandita in the 1200s was like finalizing the last things.

Okay, so, yeah. Oh, the author of our textbook. Kedrup Temba Dargye.

1493 to 1568. In the catalogs. Okay, we wrote the catalog.

Okay. I'll write it here in simplified pronunciation and not transcription or transliteration. Any Dharma book you pick up, they've mixed it up, which then if the person doesn't have enough logic to do that, then how can you trust what they wrote?

You see what I mean? Because you need logic to grasp these things. If your level of logical thinking doesn't extend to spelling, then you're like suspicious of the whole book.

This person can't distinguish between a transcription and a pronunciation. Then how can I trust them about some point on emptiness? You see?

It's like any Dharma book you pick up. Bring me any one. It's really weird.

Anyway, that's a pet peeve of mine. Kedrup Temba Dargye. Why not put an H there like Ken Rinpoche?

That's transcription. That's transcription. It was only made for transcription purposes to distinguish what from what?

Ka from ka. We don't have ka in English. We only have ka.

Every K is a ka in English. So there's no point to put an H there because your reader can't pronounce it. You see?

So it just doesn't make any sense. It's a leftover from the transcription. It's really funny.

Oh, he's going to have the database. No, he's going to have it in Tibetan. Obviously.

Okay. So anyway, there's the author's name. Okay, we got to get cruising.

We got four minutes here. I like this. This is cute, right?

I'll make it bigger for you guys. Get the pun, right?

[Speaker 2]
Okay.

[Speaker 1]
It's gomba rapsa, gomba rapsa.

[Speaker 2]
Okay.

[Speaker 1]
So we go back to the Sanskrit. Just for fun, okay? We got two minutes left.

Matipa. What's mati? Give me the...

I swear, if you know Sanskrit well, you can read the New York Times and see a Sanskrit root behind every single word in any article about Iraq or George Bush or anything. It's really cool. So do it with me here.

Mati comes from mana. So what's it mean? Mind.

Mental. It's down here with clear minds. There's the...

That's the mati. Okay. How about bha?

If you know that it comes into Greek as pho, as in photography or photon. Yeah, light, clear. Okay.

Clear minds. Okay. How about di-bam?

Right? Agam, bubi, dubi, adike, di... Yeah, lamp.

There's the lamp. Okay. Who's di-bam kala?

Lord Atisha's other name. Lamp maker. Maha came into English as mega.

Okay. That's this great down here. Okay.

Great. What's a shastra?

[Speaker 2]
Classical commentary.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, yeah, classical commentary. Okay. There you go.

Then madhyamaka. Madhya coming into English as medium. And aka into English as icy, alcoholic, colic.

You see? It's very interesting. Middle way, entering avatara.

Yeah. Samanyi means general, which is the overview here. And artha means meaning.

Artha. Vibhashita. Problem with the Tibetan.

Is there a misspelling here? Vibhashita. Tibetans didn't have a V.

And so they just used a B. So what did they use for a B? A B.

Okay. It drives you crazy. Okay.

It's like every other M is a Q. Or something like that. Okay.

It's just like... Okay. But I won't pick on them.

Vibhashita means an explanation. What was that? Vibhashita adhkara.

That's wrong. Akara. Where is that?

Vibhashita adhkara. Who said ratnakara? Minchenjungne.

One of the five Dhyani Buddhas. You have vowels from Minchenjungne. Okay?

Okay. You have ratnakara vowels, right? Sorry?

What's that? Avatarasya. Akara prabha.

What is prabha? I think it's an illumination. Okay.

It's bha again. Adhkara? No.

Akara. Illuminator. Bhakara.

Light. Nama? In English?

Name. Okay. Hearing contained is by that name.

Okay. In English, how do we indicate that? That it's a name of a book.

We just italicize it. You see? You don't have to translate that.

That is translated by the italics. Get it? Okay.

Last thing. Viharasma. Do you know what a Buddhist vihara is?

Like a shelter. It's the Sri Lankan place for a monastery or a shelter. But it means a resting place.

So that's the hearing contained. Isma means it's here.

[Speaker 2]
Okay.

[Speaker 1]
All right? So he's properly made a false Sanskrit title for his book. Okay.

It's a little bit weird in the Sanskrit, but it's okay.

[Speaker 2]
It's good.

[Speaker 1]
And we'll start the book next time. No, we'll start right now. Say namo.

Namo. Manju. Manju.

Gosaya. Gosaya. Which means what?

Gosaya. Why would a person in the 16th century bow down to Manjushri at the beginning of his book? It's a book about wisdom.

He's still keeping the king's command, like hundreds of years later. I'm writing a book about emptiness, so I have to bow down to Manjushri.

[Speaker 2]
Okay?

[Speaker 1]
So he's like honoring the ancient custom. It's very beautiful. Okay?

Okay. You've got to start. We'll pick it up later.

You ready?

[Speaker 2]
Okay.

[Speaker 1]
I don't know if you noticed, but we're not just translating it. You're getting a full commentary on this text. So, no, really you should...

I encourage the other people to come. If you meet anybody who wants to come, but they're like afraid of Tibetan alphabet or something, just tell them they can come. Tell them they can hold a cloth over their head or something.

And, no, it's going to end up that you're going to learn Madhyamaka better than anyone's ever learned it in this country. And you should be here even if you're not going to learn Tibetan, and you'll probably be the best Tibetan student anyway at the end, because that's happened many times. So, yeah, I've tricked many people.

So, I encourage everyone to come, you know, if they want to, if they're not too busy. But you're going to get, like, an extraordinary commentary on the Internet. Even if you never want any Tibetan.

It's okay. All right? Okay.

Thank you. See you in a half hour. Online also, right?

Same thing.