Вступление на срединный путь (текущий курс, Аризона), занятие 6

[Speaker 1]
Oh, I got a nice email from, do you know Chris Kelly, you guys? Yeah, at Columbia. And he stayed at Serra for a couple of years.

I like dropped him off there by accident one day. And, but he'd like to go over Geshe Thubten Rinchen's tapes for his doctoral thesis or something like that. So, I think that's cool.

So, Chinzo's going to help him get the CDs. But I had another idea. This is something I had an idea about in 3-Year Retreat.

What they've done at Serra, Geshe Thubten Rinchen was trained in Mind-Only School by a former abbot of Serra J, who passed away in 1980 or something. So they had old tapes of him teaching Mind-Only School. So they, what do you call it, they transcribed them.

And then Geshe Thubten Rinchen made it into a beautiful book on Chang'e. And then ACIP printed it. And we edited it for them.

And it was really beautiful. So, I thought it'd be really powerful to get the ACIP ladies in Hunser and Belakopi transcribing Tibetan, which no one can do. No one's ever really tried it.

Like they've done a few books of His Holiness, very few. And the library in Dharamsala has a backlog of like 3,000 tapes of His Holiness that they'd like to transcribe and make books out of. And in Tibetan, Tibetan's harder to transcribe because gay can be spelled B-S-K-Y-E-D.

You see what I mean? But if you'd start, they'll learn. So my suggestion for Chris was to work with John Brady.

Because Chris went and trained the ladies in Hunser how to input Sanskrit. So he was there, he knows them. So they could transcribe tapes for him.

And then all he has to do is hook it up to the right place in the Gomadabsa, you see? And then if they got that training, they could offer to do His Holiness's tapes. They could offer to the Tibetan library to take care of that.

Because no one's ever even tried. No Tibetans have ever tried to transcribe them. Maybe one or two talks.

And the books that did come out are very, very popular and a lot of people use them. There's very little available by His Holiness in Tibetan, is what I'm saying. There's more books in English by His Holiness than there are in Tibetan.

Because nobody, they just can't afford to have 20 people transcribing, but we can. So that'd be cool. So anyway, that's my suggestion.

That'd make his project a lot more feasible. Because otherwise, like 400 hours of transcribing Tibetan by a Westerner is like three lifetimes or something. It's like hopeless.

So anyway, here we go. Let's practice columns. You ready?

First column. Let's do it together. Ready?

One, two, three. Second column. Third column.

Fourth column, a little harder. These are low tone, okay? I'll show you the difference.

Say ngah. That means me. Say ngah.

That means drum and other things. Camel. And before.

You see? So a big difference. And most Westerners never are aware there's a difference.

So they can't hear Tibetan right, so they can't translate right. Because they're not hearing it as they translate, you see? But we'll get into that later.

Oh, no, no. You've got to hear it. You've got to hear it.

[Speaker 2]
But you can see it, so you know where it is.

[Speaker 1]
But the way you hear language, when you read, you hear it in your head, you see what I mean? You can't really translate well unless you can speak Tibetan. And debating is great for that, you know?

We're getting there. We're getting there. Don't worry.

So now, if you think about it, we have four columns of how many letters each? Yeah. Ka, cha, ta, pa, tsa, right?

Now we're going to start doing the rows. The sixth row, the seventh row, and the eighth row, which is only half a row. So there's seven and a half rows of four, which makes 30 letters in the Tibetan alphabet, basically.

So if you think about it, we went like this. And I'll try to get one on my screen next time, okay? We went ka, cha, ta, pa, tsa, down the first column.

And then we went ka, cha, ta, pa, tsa, down the second column. Then we went ka, cha, ta, pa, tsa, down the third column. And then we went nga, nya, na, ma, wa, down the fourth column.

Now we're going to start with the sixth row going across, okay? So say sha. Sha.

Sa. Sa. A.

A. Ya. Ya.

First to our low tone, second to our mid tone, okay? Listen. Sha.

Sha. Sa. Sa.

A. A. Ya.

Okay? Now consciously you have to make a low tone. I'll show you a high tone, okay?

Listen to this. Here's a low tone. Sha.

Sha. Here's a high tone. Sha.

Sha. Okay? Sha.

Sha. Sha. Sha.

Sa. Sa. Sa.

Got it? That's the difference, okay? So they're both S and they're both SH.

And it's just the difference in tone. Say sha. Sha.

Sha means a hat. Say sha. Sha.

That means meat. Okay? So like you go and ask for a hat and then you get meat.

You know? No, really. It's the guy who wanted to go to the library and ended up in the toilet or something like that.

You know? Like you gotta know your tones, right? And then say sa.

Sa. And sa. Sa.

Sa means to eat, okay? Sa means earth, okay? Now there's no two S's in English.

And there's no two sha's in English. So for transcription purposes, they put Z on the low tones. Like Z-A.

Like Lama Zappa. Right? So that just means his name is a low tone.

Lama Serpa. Okay? Serpa means patient.

Serpa means to murder. Okay? Now you see?

Same spelling except for that one S. You see? So you gotta make the distinction, okay?

And in transcription, it's done with a Z. In pronunciation, it's done with the tone. If you're writing the pronunciation in your translation, what will you use?

Just S. What are you going to use for the low tone? Pronunciation, not transcription.

It's an S. We don't have a high tone. It's like Susan Stumpf is teaching us the names for the meridians.

We already got into like 14 jinx and five ways because that's the closest English comes. And they're way, way, way, way. You know, but for somebody in your office at work and you're doing acupuncture on them, you just say way.

You know, you just use an English, the nearest English thing is pronunciation. Okay? All right.

I'll give you that. Let's do the rest of the alphabet. Why not?

Here's six. So sixth row, say again. Sha.

Sha. Sha. Sha.

And then two midtones. Ah. Ah.

And ya. Ya. Okay?

For the ah, they transcribe it with an apostrophe. Okay? But it's just a plain old ah.

Okay? And then ya is YA. Now do the next row, which is which row?

Seven. Seven. Seven.

Say ra. Ra. The Tibetan ra is rolled like riffles, ruffles.

Is Spanish rolled? Yeah. So if you say ra, they're like, huh?

What did you say? They can't understand you. You sound really weird.

So I can't roll very well. I can't do a Spanish or an Italian ra. But you get your tongue back here on the palate.

Ra. Ra. Yeah, that's all.

Ra. Ra. Yeah.

And you don't do it with your front teeth on your lower lip, which is the English way. Ra. Ra.

You use the tip of your tongue on the top of your palate. Ra. Ra.

Yeah. Ra. Ra.

So ra. Ra. Midtone.

La. La. Midtone.

Now two high tones. Sha. Sha.

Sa. Sa. Okay, so now we'll do the sixth row and the seventh row just so you can hear the difference.

Okay, ready? Sha. Sha.

Sa. Sa. Ah.

Ah. Ya. Ya.

Ra. Ra. Ra.

Ra. Ra. La.

La. Sha. Sha.

Sha. An easy way to cheat the high tone is to make a U vowel. You see?

hear the difference? Sa. The vowel is really an uh, right?

And then to make the low tone you use an A vowel. Sa. Sa.

Sa. Sa. Sa.

Sa. You can fake it by changing the vowel. Just listen to it again.

Sa. Sa. Sa.

Okay? Got it? It's a little more forceful, it's a little higher.

We say high tone, but it doesn't mean like ah, ah. It's not really like that. It's a little more force and a little more tone.

It's both, okay? And if you learn it well, Tibetans will say, God, you're Tibetan so nice, you know? And if you don't learn it well, they'll be saying, they'll be polite, you know, like.

You know, and you know, they can't really understand you. And you won't be able to translate well, because four words sound the same that should sound different to you in your head. Okay?

Um, last two. Ra Ha. Ah.

Ha. Ha. Ah.

Ah. Didn't we already have ah? Yeah, there's two, two are pronounced exactly the same.

Okay? One is the ah in om ah hum, and one is a different ah, like in om ah, or milk. I don't think there's a plain ah.

Yeah, ah chum. But anyway, okay? So the thing you have to learn is low tone sha, high tone sha, low tone sa, high tone sa.

That's all and roll your R. Now you've got all the letters in the Tibetan alphabet. Next time we'll do vowels.

But now you've got all the letters in the Tibetan alphabet. Alphabetical order is across the rows. So here's the alphabetical order.

Ka, ka, ka, na, and then like that. You go across the rows. If you're using a dictionary.

Online it doesn't matter. Because if you had a hypertext dictionary of the 18 courses, for example, it could just all be out of order. It doesn't matter anymore.

With computers it doesn't matter anymore. You just type it in and it finds it. Today I'm really happy because we get to do Umachidan.

This is the Sereme textbook. We have to do some cleaning. Let's see.

Do you remember how we cleaned it last time? What did we do? You see how when we type it in it might be kind of messy here right where the cursor is?

So we're going to take out all the double returns. This is just maintenance stuff, which is a lot of translation. This is making your translation easier.

Those are two hard returns. I want to replace it with two dollar signs. Microsoft Word usually chokes after 100 replacements.

Let's see. It's so ridiculous. Anyway, look, it already choked.

Here we go. Then you go through and replace all the single paragraph returns with a space. It's really slow.

I want to get it all in a nice square text so it's easy to read, it's easy to look at. I don't want it all jagged. So I'm taking out returns that the typists in India put in that were extra.

They get inserted when you transfer the data. I just want to make the text look clean.

[Speaker 2]
It's What's the monastic textbook's name?

[Speaker 1]
Umajiddin. What's Uma mean? Middle way.

Also central channel. And then Jiddin? Overview.

Oh man, so slow. Who wrote Umajiddin? We're just wasting time.

I know what it's looking for. It's looking for it. I was trying to get the Chinese fonts in.

Let's look up Kedartan Bidadi. Let's try again. Oh God, this is so slow.

[Speaker 2]
You know what?

[Speaker 1]
I'm just going to do it manually because I don't want to tie it up. I'll do it at home. So when you're translating, you take out all this extra stuff.

This right here, you see here, we published this text for Sarame and I edited it for him. So these are the things that were wrong in the original. So we'll take that out.

We'll keep the correction and we'll take out the... Repeat after me. Try to get me to say it, okay?

Because I'll forget. So say namo manju gosaya. So namo means, I'm going to put this in Sanskrit, namo manju gosaya.

And then I thought, oh yeah, then the translation is, what's namo mean? Namaste. I bow down.

I bow down to... Who's manju gosaya? Yeah, I call gentle voice.

Manju means gentle and gosaya means voice. And aya is the dative in Sanskrit. And he's doing that.

What does it mean when someone bows down to Manjushri at the beginning of a book? Yeah, it's a wisdom book. Okay.

Oh, look at this. This is interesting. The Tibetans have a J, right?

Kajadabhatsa, right? Why on earth did they use DZ instead of J for manju? Because that was how it was pronounced in India a thousand years ago, right?

They didn't say rajah. They said rajah. And in some parts of India they still say that.

And then people make fun of the Tibetans. They say the Tibetans don't know how to pronounce Sanskrit, but they're pronouncing it correctly. And the Western scholars don't pronounce it correctly.

And my Sanskrit professor was excited when he found out the Tibetans put Z, because he had figured out it had been a Z. And then it was like confirmation. He was really thrilled.

So if it's important to pronounce Sanskrit according to your lineage, which it's supposed to be, when we did the dakye, we sat down Ken Rinpoche and we said, just pronounce it naturally. And a lot of it was different. Like Vajrayogini praise in Sanskrit, it was all like sounded corrupt, but it was correct.

It's the original pronunciation. And so we put that in the dakye. And then later people were correcting it to the modern mispronunciation.

So there's a little bit of a Z. Another evidence of that, where does the word Zen come from? It's dhyana in Sanskrit.

And the Chinese monks who came to India heard dhyana, and they went home and said, Zen. You see, it's very interesting. So that's the correct pronunciation.

Anyway, here we go. Or chan, right? Here's that poetry that always comes at the beginning.

This is called a chudja, which means an offering of praise. And it's a tradition. There are certain poetic traditions that are required before you write a book from ancient India by somebody named Danden, who was a famous dramatist and poet and wrote the rules for writing good composition.

So they're following ancient Sanskrit compositional tradition. So first they do some poetry. You should get a relative's friend.

The Bernie genes are in him. Okay, anyway. Okay, got it?

So who's he bowing down to first? Yeah, Shakyamuni Buddha. That's usually the first one.

And what's the two collections? Yeah, gewa di, gewo gun sunam yeshe tsok tsok shing. May all beings complete those two collections.

And then three countless eons. You know countless is a name of a number in Abhidharma numerology, arithmetic. It's ten to the sixtieth power.

Ten with sixty zeros after it. Is that many eons, each eon being millions and millions of years, after he got bodhichitta. So it's a long story.

But then he says he performed the highest deed of all. Like what would be the greatest thing you could ever do? Turn the wheel three times, right?

And what was the first turn of the wheel? Yeah, four noble truths. Second turning?

Yeah, heart, center, emptiness. And then the third wheel? I didn't mean what I said the first two times.

Okay, you go figure. That's where the whole mind-only debate comes through. Okay.

Ah, yeah, good. So please repeat after me. trang me sundu sok nyi rab dzok pe, ku sum nye ne, thek sum dul jala, ze chok korlo, sumbo rab korway, tubwang marway, wang bor, chak tsa lo.

Got it? You'll get it, okay? Don't worry.

I mean, right now it looks like briskos plus plus. You know, in Central Tibet the prefix letters got dropped out. The more trade or commerce or other cultures come through a place, the more the language gets slurred, like Vilma's Brooklyn language.

And then the more you are out in the country, the less changes there are. So in Ladakh they still would say, grang sum me ga sum du tsok nyi gnyis, you see? And in Mongolia they would still do that, you see?

So what we take as normal Tibetan is corrupt, and the Tibetan spoken out in the boonbox is the ancient Tibetan. Unfortunately, you're going to have to learn Hasa dialect, because everyone understands that, even if they can't speak it. And then Kambas, all these Kagyus, they had a whole nother thing going on.

Geographically they were separated by huge valleys. So each valley developed its own language. And then you hear really weird things like chamdo for gyamdo.

And it's like that. If you know linguistics you can figure out what they're doing. But it's a funny thing.

It sounds like way all you know you could do this now, you know? And it's like that, okay? So if you have a chance to learn to speak Tibetan, try to learn Hasa dialect, which is the center of the country and everybody understands Hasa dialect.

But if you like to learn Gerong dialect, you can't speak to five million other Tibetans, you see? What's your name again? She's good at this.

Laurie, right. So I'm going to ask you a question, a poetry question. Here's a word, say lakchen.

People always mistranslate it. Lak means a wave. Chen means big.

So people say big wave, you know? But this is how Rinpoche explained it to me. See, my dictionary was Rinpoche's.

So I got, you know, the Highest Honorable Geshe in Tibet is like my dictionary, you know, for 20 years. And so I said, what does lakchen mean? He says, you know those things you got, those machines that go through the fields and cut the wheat?

Yeah, combines. That's lakchen compared to a guy with a scythe. So what do you call it?

A guy with a scythe cutting, that's lakchen. You see, lakchen means like super effective, like some kind of, that's why I need help. It's like super, oh the context is with their, the two who took on the heavy burden of freeing infinite beings and infinite worlds with their blank deeds.

That's it. You see, there's a, now, if you know Tibetan well enough, you can eliminate some words. Profound is already covered.

That's sadma.

[Speaker 2]
It means, yeah.

[Speaker 1]
No, it's more specific. It's just like by doing a small thing, they affect billions of beings. You see, they have the power to take one action, which will change people on billions of planets.

It's like exponentially more powerful. That's the real meaning. It's exponentially more powerful.

But, yeah, yeah, we can't say that. They'll make fun of us if we put that. It's like efficient is close.

Rinpoche, when he learned the word efficient, he used to use that. He likes efficient, but it's not strong enough. It's like super efficient.

It's like super effective. Extraordinarily effective deeds. It's kind of corny, but it's kind of clumsy.

Give me something we can't spend all day on this room.

[Speaker 2]
Incredibly...

[Speaker 1]
Proficient. Proficient means well done, but this should mean efficient in the sense of small, you know, something which has extraordinary results.

[Speaker 2]
I like powerful.

[Speaker 1]
It's pretty close.

[Speaker 2]
I like it potent. I like that.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, let's do that. And we'll see if we can get something a little more...

[Speaker 2]
Okay, that's pretty close.

[Speaker 1]
Oh, by the way, let's read it. Who's he talking about now? Whose sons?

Now, when you're a translator, you go down the next one, so he's bowing down to next, and then you can place the person historically. So, the next one is bowing down to Ludduk, Nāgārjuna. So, who was between Buddha and Nāgārjuna that could be called the two sons of the Buddha?

They're called Cokni. They're called the big two, actually. Yeah, Sariputra and Madgalyayana.

Okay, Madgakipu. So, these are the two principal disciples of the Buddha. Whenever you see a talk of Lord Buddha, it's almost always Sariputra and Madgalyayana.

They were well known to have miracle powers. They could go to other planets. There are lots of stories of them going to other planets to do stuff.

So that's like bringing out... He's bowing down to Madgalyayana and Sariputra. Okay, we'll put a note there.

Think so? Tell me when you think I should put a note. Okay.

Oh, let's read it together. Say, Ramjam. Those of you who know Tibetan, why did I say Ramjam?

There's a heavy prenasal right here, and you got other guys who are going to learn it later. Ramjam, shingdu, lapchen, jepayi. So I think lapchen should be on the homework, because we talked about it.

It's good to know those words. My dream is that when we hypertext it, there'll be Rinpoche's comment on lapchen. You see what I mean?

Wouldn't it be neat to have a dictionary where you had Ken Rinpoche's... Oh, Ken Rinpoche said this was an international harvester as opposed to a scythe, you know. Something like that.

Okay. Taye. Drowa.

Jalwe. Korkere. Drowa is an old form, and sometimes a corrupt form, of the drol and dolma.

What's dolma? Yeah, the lady of liberation. Yeah.

And tara came into English as through, getting over, trans, the word trans. So anyway, it's found down here, freeing infinite beings. Korkerewe.

Yeah, kor means to carry a heavy load, and say korporwa. If you ever take one day vows, there's a thing in the Nirnaya called korporwa. It means they got rid of their heavy load, and that's a synonym for an arhat.

Like they dumped a load. Something like that. Okay.

Gyalse. Kengi. Wuna.

Hamewa. Seki tuwo. Nyi lang.

Ge chak tsa. I like extraordinarily potent. That's pretty good.

Okay. The extraordinarily potent is good. Let's get back down here.

See, all this could have been done automatically if Microsoft Word could take it, but we'll do that later. Okay, ready? Say gyalwe?

Sorry, did you have a question? Yeah, it's like weird in the Tibetan too. It just means like you're like the core of everything.

It's like a weird thing. It's like psychedelic in Tibetan also. It's like calling Christy Hart, you know?

It's that strange in the Tibetan also. Say gyalwe. Ringluk.

Chidang. Kepardhu. Dendel sabmu.

Dhini drelwala. Sateng dina. Dembe dadang drel.

Ludruk ningpo. Takdu. Gyel gyur chik.

Krelak. Krelak. Krelak.

Krelak. Krelak. Krelak.

Krelak. Krelak. Krelak.

What do they say in Sanskrit for gyel gyur chik? Jai. That's the jai, okay?

Jai. He's saying jai nagarjuna, you know? Jai is like victorious, okay?

Okay. Who's he going to bow down to next? Take a shot.

Maybe Chandrakirti. Who comes right after? You got an Arya, but it's a different Arya.

Ayodeva. We'd expect Ayodeva. Let's see.

Another word for bow. That means more to bend. It's dundro.

That's the same word. You know, I think it's okay here to say I throw myself down. You know what I mean?

Is that okay? Yeah. It's like we need a different word for prostrate, because he's doing, say, depe khyen.

This is a fault of classical composition. You cannot repeat a word too often. It's called depe khyen.

Then there's this debate about the Heart Sutra. Well, doesn't he say, like so, like so? Is it depe khyen, depe khyen?

No, no, not a purpose. Well done, well done. True, true.

Okay, anyway, here we go. I throw myself. That's well.

Oh, a word for sage or saint, which implies accomplished, accomplished. One who has gotten many realizations. This is more like accomplished in meditation.

What'd you say? Oh. Yeah, it's pretty good.

I throw myself to the feet. At the feet, right? Do, at the very end.

Yeah, do. Actually, literally it's bow, but we're trying to get more different ones. Too, too is no good, right?

Nah, it didn't go. We had it as well. I also bow, yeah, because we had it as well already.

I also bow. By the way, this is why I don't let Doubleday edit my books. No, I held out for two years, and they finally gave up, because they all changed at one as well, when I had an as well on the page in front of it.

The editor doesn't remember that there was already an as well, a page before, and then it doesn't flow. You have to keep changing. You have to avoid depe khyen, the fault of repeating a word too frequently.

Anyway, I also bow to, bow down? Yeah, that's true. I like it though.

I also bow at the feet of the one who, now here's a cool problem. He's going to bow down to Chandrakirti, all right? But the word chandra is what in Tibetan?

Tibetan. Dawa. Dawa.

But the word dawa in Tibetan also means an equal, because the moon is the equal of the sun. It also means partner, like kunda means holy body. Dawa is the name for a spouse, because they're your other part, you see, like as the sun is to the moon.

So he's saying, I bow down to dawa who has no dawa. Now how are you going to handle that? Yeah, but then you miss the pun.

You see? He's saying I bow down to the moon who has no moon. You see, right here?

Those of you who can read the, it's right here. Dame means has no match. And then dawa shab means I bow to the feet of dawa, meaning Chandrakirti.

And you know, I call it, this is principle I don't know what we're on. Try not to run over and squash the fine points or the, don't just trample through the poetry and lose them all. You know what I mean?

Struggle. Make a decision. Do you want to lose it?

Or do you want to translate it and make it sound weird? Do you want to translate it into normal English and put a footnote that there was a pun here? Which is not as much fun for the reader.

You know? Sometimes the Tibetans just lost them when they were translating Sanskrit. There's a thing where it says, devas are called devas because they live in the sky.

Namkala debena ha in Tibetan. Halas are called has because they live in the namkha. That's in the Abhidharmakosha.

But you go to the original and it says, devas are called devas because they live in the div. You see? So what do you do?

You see? And in that case they ran it over in a truck. You know, like an American is reading this Tibetan a thousand years later and it's like, devas are called has because they live in namkha.

I don't get it. And it's a pun in the Sanskrit. Devas are called devas because they live in div.

So how are you going to handle this one? Any suggestions? Sometimes you can like fiddle with it a little bit.

I kind of like that. Let's play around with that. The moon without a sun.

I like that one. The moon that cannot be cleansed. But it's the same point though.

It means unequal. That's perfect actually. Okay.

We need another word for bow. He's got to bow one more time to somebody else. It's just bow.

Yeah, it's just bow. It's bend my thumb. But I don't mind it.

It gives you the emotional content. Too many bows in a row get kind of boring. Too long.

Oh, he bows down to Śāntideva. That happens a lot, okay? He came much later, but he was so cool in the ninth chapter, Bodhicaryātāra, on his emptiness that people said, let's throw him in too.

He's like, they'll always throw him in at the end. It's like, wow, he's got to be in there somewhere. By the way, just so you know, Chandrakīrti, the reason someone would be called Chandrakīrti is kīrti means well-known, famous.

How many people have heard of Gomārapsa? Maybe a million or something, if you count all the Tibetans. No, I mean 99% Tibetans never heard of it, trust me.

But the 1% who are scholars, they heard of this book. So how many people heard of President Bush? And how many people have seen the moon?

You see? And it means like everybody. Everybody knows Chandrakīrti.

Chandrakīrti means as well-known as the moon. That's like a nice name to have, as well-known as the moon in the sky. Okay, here we go.

I like the philosophy. I'm kind of over-poetried from the first Pāñcanlāma, but okay. Let's see if we can buzz through this.

Yeah. No, he didn't get included. Sorry.

He got left out. Oh, he is here. You know where he is?

He's right. Yeah, he's the sun. Where did I put him?

Yeah, no, he got left out. Oh, here it is here. He's the sun right here.

Should we note that? Probably. Okay.

Another word for bow. I think we can use another bow by now. Did we have one in the...

No, I never said that. No, you have to balance between those two concerns. Okay.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I don't know.

It's not too clear. Let's see. I bow for my heart.

Oh, this is cool. A word for impersonation. The verb.

Yeah, I like masquerading. Is that okay? Yeah, masquerading.

In the guise? Oh. Okay.

In the form of a monk. Okay. We'll do another Kenra Vichai hypertext thing.

Say this one here. Sorry. It's right here.

Say ngormik. Ngormik. Ngormik.

And you got to get this. You look at a dictionary. I don't know if you'll find it.

There's a russet gold chest, and that's a ngormik. So it came to mean saffron, because they didn't have a saffron color, so they called it duck orange. You see?

So it came to mean... See, here it just says holder of the duck orange. No, and people were dressed in it wrong, right?

And it means dressed in the traditional saffron robes. So faking, tsul suwa means pretending to be just a normal monk, you know? It's a divine being posing as a monk.

Posing in the form of a spiritual man? You like masquerading. Yeah, because posing can mean other things.

Models pose also. Okay. And sometimes they do.

Oh, we're just about to get to philosophy. I like Kyrgyzstan Bodhgye because he is... He's bowing down to someone that sometimes people leave out.

Here's a correction I made in the Tibetan when we published it, so I'll take the correction. Did we read the last verse? No.

Say gyalwe. Gyalwe. Khyentse.

Khyentse. Chikdu. Chikdu.

Jampeyang. Jampeyang. Ngormik.

Ngormik. Zimbe. Zimbe.

Shinnyun. Shinnyun. Tsul suwa.

Tsul suwa. Losantrakpe. Losantrakpe.

Pelshe. Pelshe. Sasunkhi.

Sasunkhi. Kegerdemba. Kegerdemba.

Chokla. Chokla. Nyingne du.

Nyingne du. Oh, I guess we should tell him who just...

[Speaker 2]
In Losantrakpe, it's a lot like saying one of those three places.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, yeah, extremely rare. Actually, in most cases, it's not pronounced, the B. The B is a prefix letter.

It should not be pronounced. It should be Losang. In Tibet, in a monastery, they call it by Losang.

In a few cases, you might hear the B, Lopsang. I always put it Lopsang because Ken Rinpoche's name is Lopsang, so it just reminds me of my Lama. That's why I always do that.

Don't tell anybody. Okay. That's how they spelled his name, so it always reminds me.

Technically, it shouldn't be there if you're going to do pure pronunciation. Another word for bow. This is more like went down and touched their feet.

How do you say?

[Speaker 2]
Okay.

[Speaker 1]
They're close. What do you say like in India when they go down and touch their feet? You want to say I touch their feet?

A little too sexy. I fall at their feet. It's coming.

I need a different word for spiritual guide. Oh, spiritual friend, spiritual guide. Okay.

Well, that's close, but there's a word for that. Sorry, Lama. That's how you eliminate choices.

Tibetan has to be really good because you have to know the other choices. I like that. Sometimes they leave out their own Lama.

He means among his Lamas, the ones who taught him Madhyamaka. I guess you could leave it like this. How about my Lamas?

Pay me the kindness. I don't know. Does this sound okay to you guys?

Priceless? I kind of like priceless. I want to overdo it because if I first repeat it in turn, then ...

Okay.

[Speaker 2]
Giving me kindness?

[Speaker 1]
Shown? Okay. Yeah, I think it might also kind of conflict with the granting of ...

Yeah. Oh, good. Yeah, we need a footnote there.

I'll tell you how I'm going to put the footnotes. I like to do it this way, and I'm going to put them in the back. So say page 20, his two holy sons.

Too many syllables. No, it's okay. I'm going to put dollar signs because we might add new numbers later.

Okay. Sorry? The ones who have shown me?

And especially I touched the holy feet of my Lamas. I think it's okay. It's too many signs.

I'm going to put numbers there later, so I'll search for a dollar. You put the symbol that's least likely to appear in a Tibetan text. Am I wrong?

Is that right? Who are showing me the priceless? Who are showing me?

You mean like that? I think no. I don't think so.

In the Tibetan ... Oh, I did leave out one important thing. Okay.

Get it? Yeah, yeah. No, he just basically says right.

Right here. G means to write. So it sounds weird in Tibetan also.

I'm going to write a lamp. You see? Yeah.

Okay. Say again? And then now?

Or just then now? I'm trying to get the beat. And then now I shall write this lamp to a lumen.

[Speaker 2]
I like that.

[Speaker 1]
How's that? I like lumen. Lumen?

No? It's too many beats though, you see? And so now I shall write this lamp to a lumen.

You see? Also I want to ... It shouldn't be exactly the same word, you see?

It's got to be like a half-clear pun. Okay, anyway. Just got gyaltsab je dharma rinchen.

Dates? Why did I spell dharma wrong? Yeah, that's a totally different word.

It has nothing to do with the word dharma. It's just a Tibetan word for somebody's name. It does not even do with dharma.

Anyway, let's get up these dates. 14. Yeah, 1364, 1432.

Yeah, I think you're right. But just to show you how we would do it. We're also going to need somebody else.

Let's get him now. Yeah, Kedrupje. Kedrupje.

What's his full name? Kedrupje. Okay.

You go to Reference Works. You go to Catalogs. And the dates are fixed by Gene Smith, so you go to Library of Congress.

There's gyaltsab je dharma rinchen. It took how long? It's like 30,000 pages just went by.

You see? You've got to get us a search program. Okay.

What is it? 1462. If you want them both up, you go like that.

Where is that? Get rid of this thing. No.

Let me say this. You see? Then you can have it up while you're working if you want.

1364. Yeah, 1364. Yeah, 1364.

Yeah, 1364. Yeah, 1364. Yeah, 1364.

Kedrupje Gyaltsab. That's his full name. Okay, let's see.

There's his full name, okay? Kedrupje Gyaltsab. And his dates are right down here.

Oh, that's his date. There you go. You see?

Then you can be so accurate, right? I mean, you can... Yeah.

Okay. Yeah.

[Speaker 2]
So we're assuming at this stage that lama is a word that the rest of the...

[Speaker 1]
Yeah. I'm going to let lama be in there. Yeah, because of the Dalai Lama, you know, certain things he has just made household words.

Yeah. But normally, I very rarely let a Tibetan word get in. But that one is now, because of His Holiness, it's a...

Okay. By the way, that's called... That last line here is called Tsombar Dhamjawa.

Say it, Tsombar. Tsombar. Dhamjawa.

Which means, the pledge to compose the work. Like, I swear I won't finish this thing. And then they either die or they finish it.

We saw it at the beginning of the Yoga Sutra, right? How'd it go? Athayoganushasanam.

Now I'm going to explain yoga, you know. But that's a Tsombar Dhamjawa. Like, I'll either die or finish.

So we're doing the same, right? Six years bust... Bust or what do you call it?

Make it or bust. Finish or bust? Okay, anyway...

Almost all texts. Almost all classical texts. There'll be a...

It's not a commandment of the king in this case. It's a recommendation by Danden, the classical poet of ancient Sanskrit. And then if you're really fancy, you'll say, I'm following Danden.

Like Pabongkha Rinpoche does that. I'm just following what Danden said. That shows that you know classical poetry, you know.

Okay. I could either say auto-commentary. You know, and a lot of people don't know what that means.

Not off the top of their head. So it might be more powerful to say, in accordance with the commentary, which its author, master... And that might be good.

Yeah. That's nice. You see, and that gives extra weight.

[Speaker 2]
He says like... Oh, sorry.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, well, it's good you're here. You want to use a different word for commentary?

Yeah, I guess so. We need a third word, you see. He's trying to say, look, my commentary is going to be great because I'm going to follow who?

Master Chanakirti's own commentary on his own book. Okay. So it's like trying to impress you that he's going to be...

I feel like it helps, but how do you guys feel? The of it? Right here?

Now, this is the cool part, just so you know. The second part here. He doesn't attempt to comment on the entire Gomadamsa.

That would take thousands of pages. So what they do, what he did, he took out the coolest parts. Like you got them in the eighteen courses.

For example, Waterfall in Madhyamika. That's a whole section. It's like about emptiness, right?

About how three people see a cup of water. That whole thing is called Waterfall in the monastery. So you don't need debating nowadays.

You just say Waterfall. And it means the part about the glass of water taken out of Gomadamsa by Kirtibhutta Madhargi and made into a whole separate vignette. It's like his commentary is a whole collection of vignettes, little snapshots of the sweetest, most beautiful parts of Gomadamsa, then debated to death.

Because if you wrote the whole thing it would be tens of thousands of pages. So that's what's cool. And in the monastery though, when you do your Geshe, they go around the pre-Geshe exam.

Twelve guys qualify for a pre-Geshe exam. Then the debate master walks in on that day. Everybody's debating like we do here, but like 500 people.

And then he walks in, the whole place freezes, and you're supposed to lower your head and not look at him because he turns into a Tantric deity. And you're not allowed to look at him. So you're looking at your feet, and there's like 500 guys, suddenly there's silence, total silence, and everyone's staring at their feet.

And then you see these feet walk by. And if he gives you this piece of paper with your vignette on it, it'll just say Waterfall. It'll say Waterfall.

And then you've been selected. And that's going to be your subject for your pre-Geshe debate. So there's like 50 guys sitting there shaking.

This is their whole life set at stake. People quit the monastery the day after if they don't get it. People have done that.

And they're sitting there. And then he'll fake it. He'll put his hand down in front of you, and he'll give it to the guy next to you.

And it's just to test your Dharma mind. It was the most awesome thing. So all you get is a little slip of paper.

It says Waterfall. And you're like, keep this paper with you your whole life. It's like that.

Then four or five years later you get to have a Geshe exam. So that's where it comes out. So these little vignettes.

He's going to give vignettes. And that's what makes his book so amazing. And that's why I couldn't leave it out.

We have to translate both of them. Because then they take this little part out of Gomparabhsa and they rip it apart in this most beautiful way that you almost can't understand so well in Gomparabhsa. And then you get this whole comprehensive dialectic understanding of this subject.

Because they'll rip it apart. They'll attack Jetsun Kappa. Why did you say that?

And then Jetsun Kappa gets to come back and say, that's why I said that. And it's this huge debate going on about Waterfall, for example. So this cup of water thing.

What do you mean three people seeing three different things? What do you mean by that? And then this huge debate.

That one's very, very controversial. Kirtapadaṃgadāgaya says there's three things going on at once, just presenting themselves differently on different sides of the cup. And then there's a debate about that.

So anyway, to me there's selected explanations of portions. It's going to be cool. Okay, sometimes I...

Read the Tibet with me, ready? Do you know the way to change the cursor to like an arrow or something? Is it like control panel maybe?

Take a shot. You know, Eric? Control panel, then what?

Display? Display? Mouth?

Pointer? Oh, this one.

[Speaker 2]
Is it this one? Where? Select.

This one?

[Speaker 1]
Choose it?

[Speaker 2]
How do you change it?

[Speaker 1]
Whoa.

[Speaker 2]
Oh, okay.

[Speaker 1]
I kind of like the...it looks like a vajra, the four...

[Speaker 2]
Banana is pretty good.

[Speaker 1]
Maybe they have something...there's a dinosaur.

[Speaker 2]
Do you like the hen? We'll have a vote.

[Speaker 1]
This one's pretty dark, right?

[Speaker 2]
You like this one? Is that good?

[Speaker 1]
Okay, it wasn't me, it was you. What happened? Oh, that'll help, right?

Okay. Okay. So, let's go.

Say Dhambola. Dhambola. Rangchak.

Rangchak. Tsendi Dewa. Tsendi Dewa.

Tsam Kyi. Tsam Kyi. Chokpar.

Chokpar. Minzinbar. Minzinbar.

Jigten Chima. Jigten Chima. Penche Kyi Dewa.

Penche Kyi Dewa. Dundun Nyirwanam. Dundun Nyirwanam.

Kyi. Yanda Bar Dzogpe Sangye.

[Speaker 2]
Yanda Bar Dzogpe Sangye.

[Speaker 1]
La. La. Khyapsusongway Gone.

[Speaker 2]
Khyapsusongway Gone.

[Speaker 1]
Dey Tembala.

[Speaker 2]
Dey Tembala.

[Speaker 1]
Okay? Okay. All right.

By the way, that's what refuge does, right? When you finally take refuge, the big selling point is that's what makes you a Buddhist. You see?

When you take refuge, you're a Buddhist. That's what makes you... you don't have an initiation, you don't get, like, something on your forehead.

When you mentally stop blaming things on other people, which is true refuge, and when you see that you've created things, which is true refuge, then you're a Buddhist, you know. So he's saying it's appropriate for us then, you see. Okay.

Yeah, there's a joke, there's a joke that you can be an abbot in a monastery like Sarah Mae, with 3,000 monks, sitting up on the throne of the abbot and not be a Buddhist. You see, if you don't have that attitude, there's a joke in the monastery, it's in the scriptures, you know, and it's happened. Like, yogis read the guy's mind and said, the abbot's not a Buddhist, you know.

And, you know, it happened. Okay, anyway. Yeah.

[Speaker 2]
You wouldn't get too depressed.

[Speaker 1]
I'm going to stick this up here. Can we ask a question about Waterfall? Uh, later.

It's coming. In about a year. Okay.

What is the question?

[Speaker 2]
Maybe I shouldn't ask it. It's kind of a technical question. It seems like an Emptiness No.

5 view.

[Speaker 1]
Remind me what's Emptiness No. 5.

[Speaker 2]
Yeah, yeah, it would seem like that, right?

[Speaker 1]
You're going to see that. We have to fight about that. Okay.

He's going to quote a book called Belmar Thuppa. And I don't remember what Belmar means, so I'm going to look it up. Just for your information, you don't need to know this yet, but when you get your gopher search program, it'll be, it'll be, Cik, cik, cik means a dictionary.

It's a huge, huge dictionary that I use like 200 times a day. It's Tibetan-Tibetan, unfortunately. Okay.

And I can skip to the Ps like that. And here's Pelma. Yeah, this is a weird Pelma.

This means, I thought that's what it meant. By the way, Pelma the nun is burning one, blazing one. That's a different Pelma.

Like, jump, Bel young. This Pelma is, this means alternate, and it comes in the Abhidharma where you stay in some Samatha for a while, then you go to Vipassana for a while, then you come back to Samatha for a while, then you go to, and you learn to jump levels. You go to fourth level, form realm meditation, then you jump to second, then you go to third, formless realm, and you learn to Pelma, you know, like that.

But, yeah. I still don't know why they would call, Tulpa means a praise. It's the name of a book called Pelma Praising, Praising Pelma.

That's nice. Who said that? I like it.

As into Roman. Thank you. This is a very famous verse that comes in the sections on Lamrim text about going for refuge.

So, it's three verses of praise. By the way, I'm going to start doing this. He's already starting his debating format.

He says, you see, what do we say when we want to prove something? They say tamadub. How do we start out?

In English, how do we start? You always start out because. Because the sky is green.

You just start, pick a fight. Because the sky is green. Well, we'd have to say something crazy in Tibetan.

Because the sky is green. Does he have to know what you're trying to prove? No, you start the debate with a reason.

Because the sky is green. It doesn't matter what you're trying to prove, you're already false. You could say emptiness is the greatest thing in the world because the sky is green.

True or false? It's already false. You don't have to say emptiness is the greatest thing in the world.

You just say, because the sky is green. You start a debate that way. We always start a debate with babababa yimbeye chir.

Some ridiculous statement. Then he says tamadub. So, here he's got the chir.

See it right here? What happened to my old cursor thing? Oh, there we go.

Shek sumbe chir. See, he's already got his debate thing going. It's right that you and me, who aren't satisfied with just making money, that we should strive for something higher.

We should get to be an enlightened Buddha. Because it says so in Inter-Roman Practice. And then he's already off onto his debate format.

So now we've got to translate more poetry. Okay. I'm trying to grapple with this with the First Panchen Lama.

How do you say... He says literally, we live here in the ocean of the cycle of pains. I'm sorry, right?

Which has no bottom and no end. Like the depths are depthless, bottomless and edgeless. Something like that.

But anyway, I want to get some word that kind of gives you the image of somebody like... You know that new movie that's out? The two people got stuck out scuba diving and the guy went home with the boat?

Yeah, something like that. I want to get that feeling. You see, it's not just in the ocean.

It's like... I want to get this... I want to get this feeling of being in the water.

You see? Like swimming in the middle of the Pacific, hopeless.

[Speaker 2]
Engulfed?

[Speaker 1]
Engulfed in the ocean, too long. I'll give it to you here. What did you say?

Oh, that's pretty good.

[Speaker 2]
Do you like that?

[Speaker 1]
Drifting alone? Here we are, a cast of... I like, here we are, adrift alone.

In a shoreless ocean. But you got to say bottomless also. Thing means...

[Speaker 2]
Fathomless ocean.

[Speaker 1]
Too much shoreless, fathomless ocean.

[Speaker 2]
Ocean has that... It's got the feeling. Just by itself.

Yeah, ocean scares me.

[Speaker 1]
Okay.

[Speaker 2]
If you're following around adrift alone?

[Speaker 1]
No, it goes faster this way. We are adrift alone in a shoreless ocean.

[Speaker 2]
I think shoreless gets you. Because ocean itself is deep. No, it is.

[Speaker 1]
It's... It's right here. Chusin means any kind of crocodile-like nasty creature that lives in water.

Yeah. It means water demon. But it refers to...

You got to think of the nastiest, toothiest thing you can. And I think we do shine. I like savage.

Anyway, okay, here we go. They are. It is.

Who can we turn to now? They can be pretty bad. They didn't have chusins either.

They just heard about them. And they were like magnified. They got worse and worse.

They are like 2,000 miles from an ocean, you see. So the ocean was very mythical to them. Yeah.

He like overdoes the Tibetan here. It's like every single, without exception, totally, infinitely, completely, you know, and it gets out of hand. So I'm trying to reflect it without going too...

If you want to explain. Yeah, so I got to... There's a number...

See the kundu-kundu pun here? Kun-kun? Okay, we got to pick that up in every...

You see? Okay. This is a very famous quotation, this one.

Kelte Samsik Yunani. Hang on. You see this question mark here?

Like I... I thought it was probably a mistake in their carving. So let's go look it up.

Tenla Nepe. Okay, so we'll give both choices. The first one is what I think it is.

Okay, and we'll just go see. And we'll use probably Sumbum. It'll be quoted like a hundred times in the Lamrim, hopefully.

It's going through about a hundred thousand pages right now. And in the meantime... Oh, there you are.

Oops. Yeah, hmm. Yeah, that's in the Tantras.

Who wrote it? Tsongkhapa. Let's see if anybody else used it.

Ooh, somebody else used it too. And it's... Yeah, I don't like that.

Anyway, let's keep going. In the meantime, while I was searching, let's look at this. Say Kelte.

Okay? Samsik. Yunani.

If you've got any brain at all. Okay? It's kind of cool.

Oh, here's one. Ew. Wanky, wanky.

This is a Vajrayogini commentary. Wanky, wanky. Do you know what wanky, wanky is?

That's for your retreat talk for Petra and Benedict. For like... Too bad.

I'm going to keep going. I don't believe in it. God, everybody has it that way.

Let's try the tenure. That's older. Ew.

Here it's misspelled ring, but anyway, it doesn't help me. Yeah, everybody has it that way. I don't know.

I'm going to go check the tenure. Yeah. Okay, Kelte, if you've got any brains at all, say deni.

Lani. Kemdoshing. And for goodness sakes, take refuge in that one, meaning the Buddha, right?

Dekta. Praise him. Deni korwa.

Honor him. Dey tenla ne. Stay in his teachings.

Rik. When you use rik, meaning it would be right or appropriate or good, you always use the instrumental before it. You see?

By doing this would be good. If you use the possessive, it means you belong to that family. It changes the meaning completely.

You belong to the family of Da. You see what I mean? And it doesn't mean that.

Anyway, we haven't input it yet, so let's try one more place. Yeah. We haven't input the whole kangyur.

I don't know. If you had the Sanskrit, it would be a different word, and that would be very helpful. You see?

Rik would be like, I don't know, lakshana. And then proper would be something like mata. You see?

Like that. No. Anyway.

Anyway, I'm going to translate the same way anyway. No, no, no, no. We got like five minutes.

Let's knock out this and then we're done with the poetry. Yeah, it's a little too colloquial. He doesn't say intelligence, and he could have.

He could have used the word lodru. You see? He's being very radical.

He's saying you don't have a brain, is what he's saying. It's stronger. It's sarcastic.

You see? I don't know. Give me some other choices.

Say pungsambha. Pungsambha is a very important concept. Give me another choice.

Don't get stuck in a duality. Give me... Any what?

Brains? It's more powerful. It's like you don't have a brain.

It's like saying you don't have a brain. If you don't agree with this, you don't have a brain. Let's take a vote.

What do you think? That's how I take a vote.

[Speaker 2]
I don't think it should be by vote.

[Speaker 1]
That's what I'm saying. I'm voting.

[Speaker 2]
What do you think? I think mine is fine.

[Speaker 1]
Okay. Let's keep going.

[Speaker 2]
I say that a lot of times. Well, I would translate it like this.

[Speaker 1]
You tell me the two parts. Lunggit-denpa and dokpe-denpa. Lung-dok.

Yeah, the physical teachings and then the teachings in the minds of people who guide. You know, it's this thing at the end of the Abhidharmakosha, the last lines say first this one will die out and then there'll be books in the libraries and there won't be anyone who saw emptiness but there'll be books about it in the libraries and then later the books will die and there'll be nothing. And he predicts the death of his own book.

You know, this book will disappear in the world in so many years. It's a very weird way to end a book, right? Anyway.

It literally says this. And we'll stop there. He says he's going to give you examples of the first one and then he's going to give you examples of the second one.

And the second one, the highest form of the second teaching is going to be what? Especially given what subject we're on. Yeah, he's going to say the perception of emptiness.

The books, if you want books, well, we got the Prajnaparamita Sutras. Stuff like that. But if you want the real teaching, it's got to be perceiving emptiness.

So let's talk about emptiness. That's his bridge. That's his segway.

That's his segway. He says, you know, you got to enter the teachings. That's physical or mental.

And the physical would be to read the Prajnaparamita Sutras, but the mental would be to perceive emptiness directly. So, God, let's talk about seeing emptiness. How are you going to see emptiness?

And then this whole book is about that. You see what I mean? It's to get people to do that.

It's a very cool project, right? OK. We'll stop there.

I stopped on time. And this file we can put up on the web. I can leave my computer with a flash disk.

You can take the file. Yeah, you just take the file when we're done. This file.

Yeah, OK. You ready? OK.

[Speaker 2]
OK, cool.

[Speaker 1]
Stick it out, OK? It's hard. You can't be a translator in one day.

You just sit here, and it sinks in. And then, you know, suddenly, like two years from now, you see emptiness or something like that. You know, that's what we're working on.

It's not like I'm trying to teach you third column aspirates, you know? It's not like that. It's like, you sit here, pick up whatever percentage you can, and it will sink in, that thick mahogany.

And then, like, two or three years from now, suddenly you'll get emptiness, you see? And if you didn't sit here, you wouldn't, you see? So, it's not just a translation class, OK?

It's a vehicle to trick you into something else. OK.