Вступление на срединный путь (текущий курс, Аризона), занятие 7

[Speaker 1]
I've never tried this, but how do you get it to draw something? What do you click on here? This one?

I just, oh, good. OK. I can't draw very well with this mouse, but I just wanted you to get the idea.

We did the whole alphabet, OK? So give me the first column. One, two, three.

Ka, cha, da, ba, za. Give me the second column. Ka, cha, da, ba, za.

Third column. Ka, cha, da, ba, za. And then the sixth row.

Sha, sa, ah, ya. Next row. Ra, la, sha, sa.

And then just ha, ah. OK? That thought I want to talk about tonight is, what should we talk about?

Let's talk about head letters, OK? So sometimes Tibetan letters get another letter attached to them, and it forms a slightly different letter. So, for example, I don't know how this is going to work.

I've never tried it before, OK? But if you have a, oh, that's ugly. Sorry.

I've never done this before. That looks like ra to you?

[Speaker 2]
OK.

[Speaker 1]
Well, if ra gets attached to, for example, a ka, OK? It gets attached on top. Then the bottom of the ra gets cut off, so it ends up like this.

Sorry. Anyway, you get the point, right? And then that little dot thing goes here now.

That's it, OK? Now, so ra can go, we call it attached on top, OK? On top of a letter.

And let's talk about how it changes pronunciation. First of all, it's not pronounced, OK? The ra is silent.

It's just used to distinguish spelling, like the word, how do you spell no? Yeah, you have to ask which one, right? How do you spell two?

Yeah, which one? So in Tibetan, there's, like, ka could have a ra head letter on it. It could have a sa head letter on it.

It could have a la head letter on it. And it would mean different things, but it would sound the same, OK? So on a first column, when you add a ra on top, it doesn't change the pronunciation at all.

Why? Because it's already strong and high. There's no place for it to go, OK?

So let's practice this. This is ra plus ka. We say, when we spell out loud, spelling out loud is a custom in Tibet called jor lok.

Say jor lok. Jor lok. So you have to know, jor means connecting, lok means reading.

Jor lok means connecting, reading the whole connections. So for example, this one would be, say, ra. Ra.

Ka tak. Ka tak. Ka.

Ka. Which means ra with a ka attached to it makes ka. We'll do it again.

Ra. Ra. Ka.

Ka. Tak. Tak.

Ka. Ka. And that tak means attached on.

So ka with a ra attached to it makes ka, OK? Now, the second column letters, which are what? Say them.

Ka. Ka. Cha.

Cha. Ta. Ta.

Cha. They don't get head letters. They never get head letters, OK?

So not a problem, OK? Now, it's the third column that's really important for us. So I'll do this one.

I'll get good at this by the time I don't have to do it anymore. Sorry, it's really ugly, but OK, I'll do it. Say ra.

Ra. Ka tak. Ka tak.

You hear the ga? Ga. Right?

And then it changes. A third column letter, ka, cha, ta, ba, ta, with any kind of head letter changes to the real English letter. OK?

Ga, ja, da, ba, za. Like God and job and dad and Bob and we don't have za, OK? OK?

So, I'll say one with a head letter on it and I'll say one without a head letter on it and you tell me which one it is. Ka. No head letter.

Ga. With a head letter. See the difference?

I'll say it again. Without a head letter, ka. It even goes down a little bit.

Ka. And then with a head letter, ga. OK?

Cha. Cha. Head letter or no?

No head letter. Ja. Head letter.

Like job. That's the real English letter. So, those are in your tongue's vocabulary.

You've been doing those your whole life. When you see those, it'll be no problem to make them. Ga, ja, da, ba, ta.

It's when they don't have a head letter that you're going to have to stop and think and retrain your tongue. Ka, cha, ta, pa, za. And a big difference between the two means.

Like ka means where is it? Ga means I got all. You see the difference?

Ja is a rainbow. Cha is tea. OK?

Ta means now. Da means, I don't know, let me see. I don't think it's anything.

Then pa. Pa means a cow. Ba means a goiter.

You see? So, you got to know the difference between them. OK?

So, I'll do it again. Ka. No head letter.

Ga. Ja. Head letter.

Cha. Da. No head letter.

Da. Yeah. Ba.

Does have a head letter.

[Speaker 2]
Pa.

[Speaker 1]
OK. Now, I'm going to do something else here. Does that get rid of it?

How do you get rid of it? Really? Is that this one?

[Speaker 2]
Can I open a new one?

[Speaker 1]
Open. Oops. How do I start a new one?

File. New. Oh.

No. Sorry. We're going to talk about it right now.

Now, there are three kinds of head letters. One is the ra that we already did. And one is la.

OK? So, if that's a normal size la, here's a head letter la. It's like half size.

I'm not too good at this. It's like half size. OK?

And then you stick it on top of the letter. Like this. OK?

And the same with sa. And those are the only three possible head letters. OK?

And that would just look like this. Sorry it's so ugly. I can't control this very well.

OK? So, I'll pronounce this one. Ready?

Say ka. Watch this one. Ka.

It's already... The first column, you can't make it stronger. You can't make it higher.

So, the head letter doesn't have any effect. OK? So, if I say ka, how do you spell it?

It could be a simple ka. It could be with a ra. It could be a la.

It could be with a sa. And when Tibetans get in an argument, I heard it's worse in Japan, they'll just be going like this. Because they don't know which ka.

You see? And they'll be writing the head letter. You see?

Because there's so many homonyms. So many words that sound exactly the same. OK?

Sorry? OK. OK.

Now, the only... You've learned all the head letters. They're always silent.

There's a few words where they're not silent. Dorje, for example, the R is a head letter. Very rare.

Give me the fourth column. Nga. By the way, if you're having trouble making nga, hold your tongue.

Nga. Nga. Then your mouth is forced to close back here.

If your tongue's not available, your mouth will do the right thing. Nga. Nga.

Nga. OK? Then nga.

Nga. Then na. Na.

Ma. Ma. Ma.

Ma. But you've got to be careful to make them low-tone. The tendency is to make them middle or high.

You've got to consciously think, Nga. Nga. Nga.

Nga. Ma. Ma.

Why? Because if you add one of these head letters... Oops, scratched that one.

I'm sorry it's so ugly. Okay, that's a nga with a la on top, okay? In case you can't tell.

Then it goes to high tone. So without a head letter, it's what? Nga.

Without a head letter, it's nga. Nga. See, if you say nga, it means me.

If you say nga, it means a camel. Okay? If you say nga, it means a fish.

If you say nga, it could mean something else. I don't know if there's anyone like that. If you say nga, it means if or I'm sick.

If you say nga, it means my nose. You see what I mean? So the tone is very important with the nasal column, fourth column.

So I'll do it one more time. We'll go down the fourth column. I'll do some of them with a head letter and I'll do some without a head letter.

You tell me which are which. Nga. No head letter.

Nga. Nga. Nga.

No head letter. Nga. Ma.

Yeah, see ma means a sore on your arm. Ma means what? Mom.

You see? There's a big difference. If you say it wrong, people go, huh?

Your mother's sick? What? Huh?

You know, I say ma. With a head letter. Ma.

Wa. Wa is just a mid-tone. It doesn't get higher, it doesn't get lower.

It's just wa. And it's very rare. There's only like three words with it.

You don't see it very often. Did we finish head letters? Yeah.

So just to remind you about the third column, which is the hard one. I'm going to say the third column without head letters. Ready?

Ka. Cha. Da.

Ba. Za. And then with a head letter.

Ga. Ja. Da.

Ba. Za. Za.

Real English sounds.

[Speaker 2]
Okay?

[Speaker 1]
Now there's one exception you've got to know about. Uh. I'm going to do nu.

Is that okay? It's kind of ugly. Now, what's that letter on the bottom by itself without a head letter?

Da. Da. Da.

Da. Voiced, right? Da.

Da. Uh, with a head letter? Da.

Da. Da. Da.

But with a la head letter, it changes to something else. We call it prenasal. You make a little N in front of it and say, Listen.

Nda. Nda. Nda.

Nda. Okay? Got it?

Nda. Nda. Now, for example, the word dok.

Okay? Dok means I'm paranoid. Dok.

Okay? Uh. Dok means a dirt clog.

And ndok means a tantric ritual to get spirits out of here. You see? Okay?

Big difference, right? So, let's say these three. You ready?

Uh, dok. Dok. Does that have a head letter?

No, it's just that Brazil lady thing. Dok. Dok.

Okay? That means I have a suspicion of, you know, I'm paranoid. Okay?

Then, dok. Dok. That means a dirt clog.

Now, listen. Ndok.

[Speaker 2]
Ndok. Yeah.

[Speaker 1]
Okay? What's that? Yeah, yeah.

And that means a tantric ritual to turn something back. It can also mean color, depending on how it's spelled. Yeah.

Now, no head letters go on the second column. Uh, now, in theory, head letters can go on anything else in the first three columns. They don't go, they don't happen to go on wa.

Uh, all three can go on all the nasals, fourth column. All three can go on the first column. All three can go on the third column.

But, in practice, some words just never got made. Some combinations just don't happen. Uh, but, but in theory, they can do that.

If I think about it, śāsa āyā, śāla śāsa, I think I can say that in the other, the other letters don't get head letters. Okay? So, just the first, third, and fourth columns.

Okay? And then, śāsa āyā don't get head letters. And, um, what's left?

Uh, rāla śāsa don't get head letters. What about dawa? Sorry?

Uh, oh, that's a subjoined la head letter. You see? That, we'll get into that next time.

That's a letter attached below it. Okay? You have a question?

[Speaker 2]
Yeah, I have a question. So they, when you attach the head letter, Yeah.

[Speaker 1]
Uh, in the first column, they sound the same and they look different. In the third column, they look different and sound different. In the fourth column, they look different and they sound different.

Okay? And it's an easy way to remember is that the first column is already strong and high, and there's nothing, you can't make it higher, you can't make it stronger. So, okay.

Okay. There is one other exception, but I'm not going to do it tonight. Okay.

We're going to go to the text. Uh, I cleaned it up a bit. Just the thing that word choked on last time, the replacement of 9,000 commas or something.

Uh, I fixed that. Now, he was talking about the lungi tempa and the tope tempa, right? Lungi tempa means dharma in the form of words or written stuff.

And then tope tempa means dharma in the minds of people as actual understanding. Um, so he's going to describe the first one. Um, this is the word, I can say heaps of, heaps of dharma.

In, uh, when we did the Preparing for Tantra book, the subtitle was Mountain of Blessings. The literal in the Tibetan was Heap of Blessings. But it doesn't give you that feeling in English.

Like, I had a mountain of cookies for breakfast. You know what I mean? And then if you say I had a heap of cookies, we use heap for piles of leaves or heaps of poop or stuff like that, but we don't use it, when we want to say a big amount, we say like I had a mountain, you know.

So what do you want to say here? I don't know. Heaps is pretty well known already.

That's the problem. Think about it. Okay.

Masses or something. Yeah, people know. You see, how much has it become a word now?

It's the same word in Tibetan. Are we just going to roll over and use what the dharma books use? Or are we going to...

It does refer to what heap refers to. I mean, heap is accurate. It just doesn't sound too good.

[Speaker 2]
Yeah.

[Speaker 1]
It's... from the Abhidharma Kosha. The heaps are called heaps because there are many things piled up.

Let's leave it. Okay. That's pretty good.

You can say piles, but it sounds even worse, right? Okay. By the way, 84,000 becomes a mythical number.

You see, it just becomes a mythical number. It's like billion. I had billions of hassles today.

It just becomes a mythical number. And then the 84 Mahasiddhas is derived from that mythical number. So it's not like there's 84 exactly.

You can go crazy trying to figure out which are the 84. It just means, you know, the bunch, the guys. Okay.

Okay, here we go.

[Speaker 2]
Do you ever note that to the reader? Because I've never heard that before. I mean, maybe you said it, but I never connected it with...

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, no, I've never said it really. And why is 84,000 a magical number? I don't know.

108 is a magical number. 9 is a magical number in scripture. Let's just leave it, I think.

Let me... I think this is... I think we'll just...

stick this up here. Say, let's try it together. This is how my Greek teacher kept us awake.

By the way, I just got news that he's much better. They took out a vertebrae or something, but he's still alive. So anyway, dang-po la Did you hear the da?

If I had said dang-po, it would have been the guy who's mad at me. And dang-po means first. So dang-po la dun-pe nyo-mong-pa ge-ti si-tong-gi nyan-bor Hear that?

That's a prefix letter, but hear it? Nyan-bor Yeah, nyan-bor means listener. Nyan-bor means antidote.

chuh-ki What's chuh? Dharma. Dharma, good.

pong-bo What's pong-bo? Heaps. Heaps, nice.

ge-ti si-tong sum-pe nang-ne ju-je nun-ne rap-dan Roll your R, I can't do it. pul-tu jung-wa ni gin-ding Where's the N in gin-ding? It's that prenasalizer right there.

So it's always gin-ding. It always sounds like gin-ding. gin-ding-du sum tabu yin-te You hear the te like in debating?

yin-te It's like his style. He can't even make a sentence without doing this. So he says, Why are the greatest books in the world the Perfection of Wisdom Sutras?

Well, because they teach explicitly emptiness. And without emptiness, not only can you not get enlightened, you can't even reach nirvana. Got it?

Okay. deng, what deng? la tam-je khyen-pa to-par ma-se tar-pa tam By the way, there's another example of, you know, there's a book publisher called Farpa, right?

And it's just, they confuse the what with the what. Pronunciation with the transcription. So it's gonna be farpa to anyone who doesn't know, forever.

And they just confused it. They just mixed it up. It's not consistent.

It's not logical. So anyway, it's one of my pet peeves. You may have guessed.

tam to-pa-la yang What's tarpa mean, by the way? Liberation, which is a catchword for nirvana. yang nge-par to ge-pe tong-yi ge-par pen Tibetan is not ambiguous, ever.

Written Tibetan is not ambiguous. And our system's not ambiguous. The way to present it is totally unambiguous.

So yeah, if you know the rules, you can always... You can always pronounce Tibetan precisely once you know the rules.

[Speaker 2]
Yeah, they're always consistent.

[Speaker 1]
Tibetan's totally consistent that way, except for one word or something. Which one? The word for happiness.

Well, the instrumental on the word for happiness is ambiguous. di-da-ga-sa It could be ge or it could be dak. And in the whole language, that's the only one.

And there's maybe one or two others with bas that could be was, but it's totally weird. you know, out of 100,000 words, there's only two or three. Okay.

Anyway, this is just a comment about... There's a distinction made in scripture between ngö-ten and... ngö-ten and be-dön.

Say ngö-ten. Be-dön. Be-dön is right here.

Without the head letter, it would have been be-dön. But right now, it's be-dön. Okay.

Be-dön means the implicit subject matter as opposed to the explicit subject matter. So, the obvious subject matter and then the hidden subject matter. Be means hidden.

The most famous tantric book written in Tibet probably is Be-dön Kün-sa, which means total illumination of the hidden meaning, which is what they study mainly at Gimé Tantric College. It's about the Guhyasamaja Tantra and it's written by Je Tsongkhapa. Okay.

So, be-dön means hidden subject matter. So, like all the Perfection of Wisdom sutras treat as their explicit subject matter emptiness. And then underlying that is this idea of the three tracts listener, self-made Buddha, bodhisattva, and why there's exactly three of those tracts, why the order is fixed, and why how they perceive selflessness is fixed.

So, because the Prajnaparamita Sutras treat hidden subject matter of that and explicit subject matter of emptiness, they are like the coolest things the Buddha ever taught. Okay. That's what he's saying.

All right.

[Speaker 2]
Oh.

[Speaker 1]
Is that okay? Yikes. Suchness is always a complete synonym for emptiness.

Oh. I think it's okay. I think this one's okay.

It's supposed to be a little... In Tibetan and in Sanskrit, like tatva, it's dekonanyi. It's meant to be a little weird.

So, when something's meant to be weird, you can't un-weird it. Okay. You see?

You see? Yeah. Just by massive years of study, you know that this is just totally weird even in Tibetan.

If you said dekonanyi to a Tibetan who didn't know philosophy, they'd be, huh? You know, suchness? What are you talking about?

It's meant to be a word that has the power of shocking you because it's not normal. And those words you have to be careful to translate in a shocking way. Okay.

So, anyway. Say again? Yeah.

[Speaker 2]
What about portion?

[Speaker 1]
Portion? Do you use normal for it? Portion almost implies a bit of something, whereas the word mountain, the way we use mountain in colloquial modern English is perfect, but I don't know, you know, it might be confusing for people.

Literally heap is perfect, but it's just like in English, modern colloquial English, it's kind of got weird, like me, heap, big, happy, or, you know, I got heaps of work to do. And it's only used in those frivolous contexts. But anyway.

What's that? That's pretty close, but they're also meant to be discrete bundles. You see?

Each one is supposed to be a self-contained bundle. You see? There's a big debate about what's a heap of Dharma.

And one of the, one of the opinions is that it's the amount of books you could write with the amount of ink that the elephant named Rabden could carry on his back. And this is a mythical elephant, so he's like, could carry like 45 Mack trucks on his back or something like that. You know, and that's the definition of a heap of Dharma in some schools.

So it's a long story. Anyway, let's keep going. Did you have some comment?

It does sound. Think about it. Give me one later.

That's why I changed the title in that other book we did and changed it to Mountain of Blessings rather than... Yeah. You want to say Mountains of Dharma?

Say again? Yeah, it has other connotations. Sleep on it.

Tell me next class. Sometimes you wake up at four o'clock. This happens to me like every day.

I got it, you know. And then I roll around and she's like, can you stand there? Anyway, okay.

The whole word suchness of dependent origination is like a made-up word. Suchness is a negative or positive? Negative.

Yeah, it's the absence of self-existence. You know, there's no cup of tea here which didn't come to me from my karma. Find me a cup of tea here that didn't come from my karma.

Then I won't drink it. You see what I mean? But what's the dependent origination of this tea?

It did come from my karma. Okay? What's its emptiness?

It did not come from my karma. What's its dependent origination? It did come from my karma.

One is an absence. One is a presence. So to make a word that combines the two is a little odd but he's trying to make a point.

You know? The suchness... The suchness of the fact that it came from karma.

You see what I mean? It's a beautiful expression. It catches everything.

It catches everything of the truth, positive and negative aspects of the truth. Then it's got everything. You see?

So he's kind of invented this phrase. You see? Yeah?

[Speaker 2]
Doesn't the word suchness imply a positive as opposed to emptiness?

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, it does. It can, and that's why people got confused. Like, tatva means very much positive, right?

Tatva in Sanskrit is like essential thing you have to know. You know? So, that's the reason why trouble started.

Yeah. Okay. Do we fix something that trouble might have started about?

No. But we might want to put a footnote at some point and say, don't get confused. This is synonym for emptiness.

Yeah.

[Speaker 2]
Did you say invented that phrase?

[Speaker 1]
I don't know if I can say who invented it but he's using it a lot already and I'd say it's an idea that's been around forever. The specific wording is probably popping up in Tibet around the time of Jetsun Kapo or a little later or something like that. Yeah.

[Speaker 2]
Can you go back and do pronunciation on this and maybe point out one or two words just now?

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, I like that. Let's do this. Say, Gunbo.

Gunbo. Cheer. Cheer.

And if you meet the Vinaya Master, he's from Gyalron, like Rinpoche. That's why they're in the same house. And he'll say spear.

So you'd like to take a teaching from him and you're like, spear? You know, this is cheer and he'll say spear. You know, and you're like, wow, you know.

Anyway, Gyalwe. Gyalwe. Temba.

Temba. Gepe. Gepe.

Chirdu. Chirdu. Ndo.

Ndo. Got it? Ndo is a rock, like Dorje.

Ndo is a sutra. Okay? Got it?

Ndo. Ngak. What's ngak?

It's Tantra. What's ngak? Speech.

See? Ngak is Tantra. Ngak is speech.

This is ngak. Ngaki. Ngaki.

Sungrab. Sungrab. Duma.

Duma. Shi. Shi.

Nze. Nze. Ching.

Ching. Kepar. Kepar.

Tuyang. Tuyang. I'll give you two choices.

Sabmo or sabmo? Sabmo. Yeah, it's profound.

It should be sabmo. Okay? Tenjung.

Tenjung. Ki. Ki.

Dekonani. Dekonani. What's dekonani?

Suchness. Suchness. Lungrik.

Lungrik. What's the last name of Rinpoche's attendant? His teacher named him scriptural logic, scriptural authority and logic.

Suppose you went through your whole life called scriptural authority and logic. I mean, at least you'd think about it, right? Okay.

Lungrik ki go ne. Tenla. Tenla.

Pape chir. Pape chir. Dung.

Dung. Okay. Here we go.

It's the Tenjung right here. which in its expanded form is Tenching Jawa Chungwa, to occur in dependence and in connection, is the whole phrase. But we just call it Dependent Origination.

I wanted to change it to Dependent Arising, but I didn't because it covers both those things which change and those things which don't change. So it covers things which never grow and which never start in a normal sense. So I had to avoid the word arising.

That's my objection to calling it Dependent Arising or something like that. But that's a long story. How are you going to translate this?

Those of you who took course number... proof of future lives? A person of Pramana.

In colloquial English, what? A person who cannot lie. But what are you going to call it in like...

You could say person of authority or something. Being of truth? Being of truth is okay?

Well, here's a being of truth. Predicted or... I'm going to say the Buddha said that Nagarjuna would come into this world long before he came.

What do you like, prophesied or foretold?

[Speaker 2]
Foretold? Predicted?

[Speaker 1]
What do you prefer?

[Speaker 2]
Foretold? Who's coming?

[Speaker 1]
How's that?

[Speaker 2]
Who was...

[Speaker 1]
Was foretold? Oh, sorry, it's not it's coming. It's that the fact he would comment successfully on emptiness.

I think that the Buddha predicted that he would come here. Elucidate? Comment.

He uses this particular word comment to explain? Comment. The point is comment on somebody else's teachings, you see what I mean?

Is that okay? Okay.

[Speaker 2]
Sorry?

[Speaker 1]
Well, he appeared to predict, right? Yeah, I know. No, it doesn't, it's not a problem in Tibetan.

I understand the point. But it means that he revealed to us that Nagarjuna was coming. You don't like what?

[Speaker 2]
You don't like what? Comment.

[Speaker 1]
Come and? Explain?

[Speaker 2]
Elucidate.

[Speaker 1]
Well, now you've got to know Tibetan well enough to know they have different words for those and they could have used them. They could have used salwa if they wanted to elucidate. They could have used shepa if they'd wanted to explain.

And dralba means particularly to write a commentary. You see? This one right here.

So you have to know there's four different words in Tibetan and he could have used any of the other ones if he'd wanted to say that and he didn't, you see? He didn't use the word for explaining, which is shepa. To write commentary is the point?

But see, sometimes it's spoken also. That's the problem. Do you prefer give commentary?

There's also a, you should know the word. What's the word for Tara? Dralma and it's related to delwa here.

And that means to untie something or to liberate something. So you can also shade that into delpa. They come from the same root.

Tibetan has roots like Sanskrit but they're very, very difficult. They're very obscure. So it can mean to liberate the meaning from a book.

To clarify. Clarify? That's a weird thing because then you get into doctrinal issues.

Do you need negation to clarify, Lord Buddha?

[Speaker 2]
I'm still a little stuck on predicted because it feels to me a little bit like the way we use the word prediction in our current time. It's as if there are a lot of predictions and when they happen to be right, well you were lucky. It just means that the Buddha wasn't...

[Speaker 1]
No, it's prophecy.

[Speaker 2]
I'm still stuck on foretold. Do you prefer revealed? Foretold?

Foretold? I like foretold because he said it would happen before it did.

[Speaker 1]
No, it's lungtenpa. I'll tell you what, we'll stay there. We'll never finish in six years unless we...

How do you feel about foretold? We're going to take a dharma vote here. You like foretold?

I prefer foretold. That's what I usually do. I liked one of the...

You want that? You like that?

[Speaker 2]
I'm going to leave it. Clarify?

[Speaker 1]
He didn't use the words for clarify.

[Speaker 2]
A lot of people can comment on the teachings, but they don't necessarily clarify them.

[Speaker 1]
You got anything that's like that liberate thing? Revealed? Do you like revealed?

Revealed kind of feels weird to me. It's like Buddha couldn't reveal his own teachings.

[Speaker 2]
Further.

[Speaker 1]
How's that? Extricate his teachings?

[Speaker 2]
No, it's getting in the head.

[Speaker 1]
By the way, you might as well remember the Tibetan there. Delwa. As a verb.

You can remember it because Tara's name is Droma and they're totally related. It's also the word for untying a knot.

[Speaker 2]
Enough, enough. We're out of the bell, I think.

[Speaker 1]
No getting out of the bell. I'm going to say... He's going to list three different books and I'll tell you why I'm having trouble.

This is the cool thing about Arya Nagarjuna. He was the master, obviously, of Buddha's teachings. He's called the second Buddha sometimes and no one else is called that.

Sometimes Je Tsongkhapa is obliquely referred to in that way just as a compliment. But he's called the Buddha who came back sometimes, Arya Nagarjuna. And not only was he a great writer on philosophy, but he expanded his range into medicine, government, tantra.

He was an extraordinary writer on tantra. Yoga. You know, all kinds of things.

So what this... Kedrup Dhammadagya is saying, look, we're going to follow Nagarjuna's system. Arya Nagarjuna's system.

Why? Well, first of all, he just commented on sutra and tantra so perfectly. More specifically, he concentrated on emptiness.

Moreover, the Buddha said he was going to come. And finally, he spread out to these different, like more worldly subjects that would help people. You see?

So he had range. You see? So I'm not familiar with one of these works, so I'm going to just look it up in the...

I want to know more about this book that he wrote. It looks to be a book on medicine. And I think it might be misspelled, so I'm just going to check it.

So I look it up. And I don't put in the word that I think might be misspelled. Then I go to...

It says, where do you want to look for this book? I'd like to look at it in the catalogue to the tenure. So I go to Reference Works.

I want you to learn this. You're about, I don't know, a couple of months old. A couple of months from now, I'll be able to do this.

I go to Reference Works. I go to Catalogues. And then, Kangyur Tengur or Summum?

Tengur. Tengur. Nagarjuna's books would be found in the Tengur.

Classical Indian commentaries. Let's go. That's why it's called Gopher, by the way.

Let's go for it. Here it is. This is cool.

It says, Which means, Luki Tengyur means a Niti Shastra in Sanskrit, which means a worldly commentary, like on how to run a government or architecture or medicine or... Then it says, I still think it's misspelled. We'll look it up in a dictionary.

But it would mean like the drop for helping people. Like this is the So in Sojong, which means to renew or to fix something that's broken. What's Sojong?

It's the confession ceremony, because you're fixing your vows, you see. So Sotik means a drop for fixing people, which sounds like a medical text to me. Okay.

And then he says it was written by Lopen Ludrup. So we confirm that it was written by Nagarjuna, so we know we're on the right one. And I just want to see what the next one is called.

See, if I see the other books around it are medical books, then I feel comfortable to call it a medical book in my translation. It's not. I don't know.

Not clear. Let's look up Thigpa while we're at it. For this I go to a dictionary.

I go to the THs. Oh, it means the same thing. Okay.

It means a drop. What would it be in Sanskrit? Bindu.

Yeah, Bindu. Okay. Works such as a drop.

This is weird, see. It can mean that, but it also means any spot of anything. It means a spot also.

Yeah. It would be like that. A drop of elixir.

But I'm not sure it's medical. It's for fixing people, but how do you say that more...

[Speaker 2]
A drop to heal.

[Speaker 1]
I like that. That's why he's a brand guy. You've got to work on the EBI courses.

Anyway, works such as... I told the... Yeah, yeah.

Works such as a drop to heal. Sharadgapa, I think, is misspelled also, so I'm going to go check. Say again?

[Speaker 2]
Sharad...

[Speaker 1]
Hang on just a second. Shit. Okay, that's how I would spell it.

Let's see. We've got to go back to... Well, what happened?

When you get too many hits, you go back and fix it. No, that's okay. I keep hitting shut-up gelatins, so I'm going to go back here.

Those of you who know Tibetan, and add a space after that. You see? Then I'll stop hitting these gelatins.

You see? There it is. Who was it written by?

What's this line before it say? Right here. Yeah, written by Nagarjuna.

Sharadgapa. How do you spell it? B-R-G.

How did he spell it? Right here. You see?

And it doesn't make sense if you don't spell it with a B. Okay? With a B, it means...

Uh... So apparently that particular book on wisdom is not... Yeah.

This is the... What this is saying in Tibetan is at this point in the catalog, I have completed the works on architecture. And now we will begin the works on...

on lukyatantra, which means like... It means like... administration of worldly affairs and stuff like that.

So this book on wisdom doesn't have to do with emptiness. It's about worldly affairs apparently. Something like that.

Wisdom on how to run your government. Something like that. Now I want to look up this one just for...

There's a little problem with the translation here. Yeah. There's no separate book by Nagarjuna called this third thing.

So I'm thinking it might be a generic name. You see, not a name of a book. And that's why I'm trying to find it.

So now I'll use nearby. You know? So...

That's a whole other story. I'm not going to teach you all that now. That's the one we already found.

Oh, hang on. There's one by Chandragomi. What else did he write?

The twenty verses, right? Where the Bodhisattva vows come from? Yeah.

Hmm... Right there. Yeah, no such work, okay?

So... Hmm... I don't know, this bothers me.

The grammar here suggests that he wrote three books. But the name of the third book is a generic name. Like, book on worldly affairs.

So I'm trying to see if he wrote the third book actually. So what we'll do is... What was the name of the other book?

Kewo Sotik, right? We'll go back to that. Normally they would lump the same author's books close together.

Okay, so we'll see. Huh? I must have misspelled it.

Kewo Sotik... So we go look at the book in front of it. Oh, there we go.

Okay. Okay. Right in front of the...

It's called Luki Tenju Shirabdombu. Okay. And our author of the monastic textbook has misquoted the name.

You see? So... You see?

That happens. And then you got... It's very difficult.

Okay? So he's misspelled one of them and he's misquoted the other one. All right?

And it can be hard. Okay, so... What's it called again?

Oops. It's right here. It's Luki Tenju Shirabdombu.

Sorry? I did fix it on my copy. Here.

Did I? Oh, sorry. Sorry?

Oh, no, what I'll do is I'll just put a note so somebody else doesn't go crazy looking for it. Okay? Because they'll never find it.

So, let's think about that. Sorry? Oh, this one is correct.

This one here is correct. No, that's correct. That's...

By the way, la sopa is what? Et cetera. So it just drives me crazy.

People say, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, et cetera. And in English it's considered bad style to use et cetera too many times. Because it's like condescending to your...

Or it's like assuming that your reader knows all this stuff. So, Tibetans use this word over and over. So, I...

I think I like pioneered the use of such as. You see? Because that covers the et cetera.

And it doesn't get so repetitive to your reader. Okay? So, anyway.

Then I think we got to put a footnote here to save people later. Here's another one. It could be...

Come on, look at that. Up there. Yeah, probably it didn't work.

Okay. And then I... I put a note to myself.

List of Hoku... Numbers just before... This is a note to myself.

I need another reference work to give them the catalog numbers for that. And Rob's getting them from... That's what I needed that for.

Yeah, okay. I'm sorry for... That's a little boring for you guys.

But... I don't want to go back later. That was one of my principles, right?

I'm not going to go back later and fill in all this stuff. Because then you never do it. And then this book never gets published.

Okay. Oh, yeah. How did we translate it last time?

Was that it? Did we say... Oh, we can look it up.

Since we're all computerized here. Gotcha. Yeah, we used size before.

Oh, no. We just got there. Oh, we used it in the other book.

Let's go look at the other book. We just said profound and far-reaching. I knew we had it once.

Let's see how we used it. Yeah, we said profound and far... We didn't say anything.

Oh, we used side before. Okay. Let's stick with side.

This way you can make sure that you're being consistent. And you don't switch words on the reader half or through. Say again.

Side? Both the... Yeah.

I think close. Okay. It's meant to apply two different...

Here's the one side and here's the other side.

[Speaker 2]
What do you mean in the first part of that paragraph? It says, now there's a way in which Master Nagarjuna...

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, you see...

[Speaker 2]
Do you mean a specific way, a particular way, or just a way?

[Speaker 1]
He's saying, I'm going to prove to you what I just said before, which was that Master Nagarjuna used logic and scriptural authority to show the meaning of emptiness. So it says, now I'll prove to you that he used scripture. And after that I'm going to prove to you that he used logic.

He's very linear this way. Okay, so... So Nagarjuna wrote this famous book called Companion of the Sutras, which is just piles of quotations from sutras proving emptiness.

No logic. You see, just Buddha said so. How do you know?

Buddha said so. Somebody else also wrote a Companion of the Sutras, Lord Atisha. So you have to be careful not...

They're called the same thing. Did you have a question?

[Speaker 2]
Consistency of phrases. Before the phrase was subject and subject, depending on origination.

[Speaker 1]
Oh. Yeah, you're right. Let me see.

Sorry, it's the suchness of... You're right. I'm the suchness.

[Speaker 2]
Kent asks why you utilized when you could say uses.

[Speaker 1]
Because I already had a use in that sentence. Or just before. Right here.

Right here. You see? And I'm trying to prevent duplication.

What's duplication? Yeah. Don't...

Try not to repeat a word in too close proximity. Okay, here we go. Oops.

Yeah, it does. The order of the words. Yeah.

The one that should come first in English comes second. Okay. How's that for a rule?

Now it gets interesting. In fact, this part should go with the next part. With the last part.

Hang on one second. Now this is not a separate book. This is a group of teachings.

So I'm not going to talisize them. Get it? It's like the...

I don't know how it's... But you get it. Okay.

Yeah. And now you're going to see each of the six. And by the way, what you get now...

He's about to go into a history of Madhyamika. Showing you the history of worldview. Not the historical history, but the idea.

The history of ideas. Which to me is very interesting. It's what we talked about at Malinda.

Right? Like how the worldviews crash into new cultures. Like the Greeks conquer northwestern India.

And then suddenly there's this clash of worldviews. Then the Greek kings are sitting with Indian philosophers. And two huge worldviews are colliding like icebergs.

I see it like that. So what he's about to do is to explain how these worldview icebergs got released in the world by Madhyamika. And how all the different kinds of Madhyamika happened.

And to me it's just really cool. And you rarely get this in the monastery. So here Kedubdheda Madhargi is going to...

He's about to explain how Madhyamika exploded. And to me it's just like really cool. So he starts out with Nagarjuna's famous six books.

Which nobody ever goes further. They don't study the six in the monastery. No one memorizes them.

No one reads them. He not only talks about them, but he goes into why it was necessary for Nagarjuna to write six. And what's the separate...

What's the worldview need for each separate one? So you're going to get that right now. And then we'll continue on Monday.

Simply fabricated it. I need help. Dron-dhar, past tense.

Dron-dhar. Right there. Fabricated it.

Now this is the thing. What's the function of... Is this a functioning thing?

I call it working thing. Just to make it easier. Is this a working thing?

Does it have a function? What does it do? It holds my tea.

This cup holds my tea. Therefore it's a ngopo, right? Other schools would say that proves it's real.

It exists truly. I'm not imputing its function. It's not holding tea because I made it hold tea.

It holds tea. I didn't make it hold tea. I didn't give it the quality of holding tea.

It innately has a function. You shape ceramic in a certain way, you fire it, you glaze it, and it holds tea. It's not like I made it hold tea.

It holds tea. I don't make a pen right. Pens right.

That's what they do. I don't make fire hot. You touch a fire, you get burned.

That's the quality of fire. I didn't project that quality into that object. That's what every other school says except the highest school.

What's the highest school say? Even the fact that it holds tea is being projected by me. And if that karma that's projecting that were to fail, I would drop the cup right now and it would break.

And then it wouldn't hold tea anymore. You see? It's very interesting.

I'm creating... I make the sun come up in the morning. I make pens right.

I make peas round. Now there's this big debate. Who made peas round?

So they say... But they say, come on, don't tell me it's an illusion. It works.

So that's called dengue here. Dengue ngupo is a hot object of debate, a really existing working thing. Every other school says it works, therefore it's real in the sense that you're not creating it.

It's not artificially created by you. It's real. It's real.

Yeah? It's tricky, right?

[Speaker 2]
Are you saying that the lower Madhyamika school says it's real?

[Speaker 1]
I don't remember. Which schools are included in the ngupo mosque? No, but there's a group called Those Who Profess a True Functioning Thing.

Is it the first three schools? Sorry, sorry. Not Lower Middle Way.

Not Lower Middle Way. Okay, so anyway. So that's why he wrote the first of his six books on emptiness.

Why? He wanted to attack this idea. Which is the most famous of the six books?

Which is the only one you ever heard of? This one. Okay?

It's the Moola Pragnya, right? The Root Text on Wisdom. That's the one we've been mentioning because Master Chandrakirti is writing an explanation of it.

Now the other five are not often taught. It might be cool to teach them someday. It might be cool to translate them.

I think some of them are available in Sanskrit. Yeah? I know, but could it?

How about this? Like that?

[Speaker 2]
Because it was harder to understand? Did he come after working? Did he possibly come after working?

Did he have a program? Or did he just come into the school? Is this something they proved?

I was thinking about coming after working.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, I know what you mean. I'll tell you why I said something they proved. Because the next...

Let's do the next one and then you tell me if it helps. It's confusing until you hit the next one. I think the next one is misspelled.

Oh no, it's not misspelled yet. Later. Give me a name for a book.

It's called Smashing Things to Find Duff.

[Speaker 2]
Is that right?

[Speaker 1]
Okay. Okay. It means other people's arguments, right?

[Speaker 2]
Yeah, right.

[Speaker 1]
But sometimes I have to type so fast that I forget what it... I can't hold it in my mind. You see, because he means this one to...

to parallel the one he used before. You see, what they prove... something they prove and what we use to prove, he's trying to contrast them.

You see, and you don't know until you read the second sentence. Does that help leaving the first sentence the way it was? In Tibetan it's prover.

You see, it's what you're trying to prove and then what you use to prove it. So, first he's saying what other people seek to prove, which is that this is not... this is real because it works.

And then in the second one, and he says even the logic they use, they hold that to be self-existent. You see? The words I've used to convince you of my position must have some kind of innate power that's not projected by me.

Otherwise, how can I prove it to you? You see, those words have their own power. Don't tell me everything's projected by me.

Those words must have power because everybody was happy they accepted what I said. They must have their own ability to convey an idea to you. They must have their own ability to convince you of something.

They can't... that ability could not have been imparted by my past karma, something like that. If I give you a good argument, you accept it.

So, the power of convincing is in the words. I didn't give it to him. So, he writes his second book to prove that the power that's in words and in arguments is not innate.

Which is, by the way, why you can have an argument with your friend you live with and they don't believe you. Okay? Because they don't have the courage to see it that way.

And your arguments don't have the innate power to convince somebody. As you may have noticed.

[Speaker 2]
Yeah.

[Speaker 1]
See? Yeah, yeah. It's getting there.

It's getting there.

[Speaker 2]
It's coming.

[Speaker 1]
Does that help with the first part? Yeah.

[Speaker 2]
Yeah.

[Speaker 1]
I'm going to avoid it because it's actually the terms. And terms as not words necessarily, but... How about if we do this?

Which is what? Then you got two what's. How's that?

Working thing, which is what other groups take as something to prove. If it's the idea that what we use to prove things. Does that help?

No. There are actually standard portions of logical statements that he's going to name the 16 later. Like parts of a syllogism.

Like major term, minor term. You know, like that. They're more like standard devices.

Like the reason and the major premise and the minor premise. You see, they're not... Technically, they're not...

I simplified it for you. They're the tools of logic which are used to convince somebody. Like major premise, all animals have legs.

You know, minor premise. Man is an animal. Conclusion, therefore man has legs.

Something like that. It's talking about those devices of logic.

[Speaker 2]
It confuses me in English is that when you say when in fact they have simply fabricated it. I understand what you're trying to say. But what I read in English is the it doesn't tell me whether it's the cup they fabricated.

[Speaker 1]
Oh, okay.

[Speaker 2]
Or whether it's the proof that they fabricated it.

[Speaker 1]
Okay. I see what you mean. Let me try it again.

Yes, ma'am.

[Speaker 2]
And proof of what? Proof of self-existence or not. It's not used as proof.

[Speaker 1]
How's that?

[Speaker 2]
Each other group is used to prove. It's used as proof.

[Speaker 1]
No, it's not. It's not that. It's something they want to prove.

[Speaker 2]
But they want to prove it through the fact that it's functional.

[Speaker 1]
No, that's not the point. There's no such thing as a truly existing or anything. The existence of which other groups seek to prove when in fact there's something fabricated.

[Speaker 2]
I don't think it's clear.

[Speaker 1]
Is this okay? Is this clear to you? Big silence has an impact here.

Truly existing working thing. No, the whole thing. Truly existing working thing.

A cup which works from its own time.

[Speaker 2]
They have actually fabricated that That concept.

[Speaker 1]
Colon? No, it's not that. Yeah, it's not that.

Logically, it's not that. I don't know. This is true, first of all, because the root text...

Oh, I see. Let's try that. Is that all right?

No, that changes the meaning. Yeah, here it would change the meaning. I see what you mean.

It's not in a positive. I think I'll stay with that. Let's look at it again next time.

Secondly... Okay. Then we'll do one more and we'll stop.

Wow. Okay? That's okay.

I mean, it's hard, but it's going to be hard. It's logical, and it's grammatically correct, but it's just hard. Okay?

And sometimes you've got to... That's the way it's going to be. I mean, you've got to sit there for a minute and think about it.

That's cool, right? So, yeah, things... It doesn't have a nature of its own.

Oh, well, then how could you break it? How could it ever be made? How did they make it in the factory if it didn't have any cupness?

Because then how could it exist, you see? How could it start or stop if it didn't have a nature of holding water on its own, you see? It's very cool.

So you're going to start to get the sense of how Arya Nagarjuna started an argument and then continued it through six different unbelievably holy basic works for all of Buddhism. All Buddhism came from Arunachala. And he's responding to people's natural problem with saying that this doesn't hold water.

And so he writes each work as a logical continuation of someone's problem with what he wrote about before. And so you come out with six works like that. And then he's going to be careful to say how also they sometimes continue an idea which he presented in his first work.

And he'll say, it comes from this chapter. And later the guy says, well, what part of that chapter? And he quotes that.

So that's how we're going to go in the next couple of sessions.

[Speaker 2]
So the author of this work would have had to have gone through all the six books.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah. But they don't do it... I don't think there's a copy in the monastery of Sara.

You know? I bought the only copy and put it there and we built a library in the hopes that someone would visit. You know?

They didn't... It's weird. They only read these books and they don't go look at the originals.

And it's just a weird thing. That's why we want to try to encourage the use of Sanskrit here and things like that. In the monastery, I don't think anyone I know owns a copy of those six books.

And that's just the way it is. But to be fair, they debate like seven hours a day and they memorize for like four hours a day. And they do all their rituals and they eat and there's no more time than that.

And if you really want to study the monastic course well, you don't really have time to go look at the source work and stuff like that. Very few people do. Yeah?

[Speaker 2]
I want to find this terminology.

[Speaker 1]
I like it. I think it's just plain English for the idea. You think there's an easier way to say it?

[Speaker 2]
I just thought it sounded very plain.

[Speaker 1]
I thought it was like a really big thing that I introduced. You know? They say arising and destruction or something like that.

It's more profound than that. It's more profound than that. You see?

Like people in Buhi don't say the cup arose from the factory. You know what I mean? I mean, I try to use common words that have more power in my mind.

[Speaker 2]
Can you explain that when you were doing the cup was that you explained it in a more simple way?

[Speaker 1]
What's more simple than start and stop? Begin and end. You can say begin and end, but that's a little tricky.

Unchanging things begin and end. They don't start and stop. It's very profound.

The emptiness of this cup will go out of existence when I break the cup. But it doesn't go through a process of ending. It doesn't get smaller and smaller and smaller and then disappear.

It's always 100% a lack of self-existence. It's very profound. You don't understand subtle impermanence till you understand what I just said.

And you can't understand emptiness to understand subtle impermanence. So you've got to go home and think about it. Things can go out of existence and things can come into existence without ever changing.

For example, emptiness of this cup when it breaks. But whereas the cup stops, the emptiness of the cup doesn't stop. It doesn't go through a process of stopping because that would imply change.

So it just goes out of existence. But it doesn't stop. It doesn't change moment by moment.

It's unchanging. And people mistranslate that as permanent. That goes back to a very basic mistranslation.

And it's unbelievable. Like everyone who ever talks about this is saying the wrong thing. It's extraordinary.

You know, the word mitakvara, takvara, nityara, anitya to translate it as permanent and impermanent is completely wrong. And everyone does that. You see?

It's extraordinary that people haven't thought about it. You know? It is.

No. No. It's so cool.

Think about it. The fact that it's not coming from anywhere but me doesn't ever change the slightest bit. Cannot change.

That fact is 100% constant no matter the degree of the cup's integrity or not. But its integrity is constantly fluctuating. It's changing.

But it's impermanent. You see, that's a mistranslation. It will break someday.

That's a huge misconception by almost every translator I've ever heard of or every teacher. It's unbelievable. You see?

It's just very sloppy thinking. No, the thing is totally impermanent, right? And so is its emptiness is impermanent.

It's not going to last forever. The minute this breaks the emptiness goes out of existence but doesn't stop. You've got to chew on that because if you don't get that you won't get emptiness because that comes just before emptiness.

That comes like the week before emptiness. You realize that the week before you see emptiness. You know?

It's very profound. Yeah?

[Speaker 2]
I just wanted to say that there are some people who did from Vasa, right?

[Speaker 1]
Wow! Yay! I think this would be very good for monks and people in India.

Like, I understand there's a lot of internet cafes at Serenno and stuff like that. And if there's a way to get word to them I think it would be really good for their English. They could see it on the screen and, you know, it'd be really useful for their people in Tibet or, you know, like that.

Yeah. Okay, we'll stop there. Think about that last thing, okay?

It does come to a person just before they see emptiness. If you get that, that's a big step. The difference between impermanent and changing and emptiness and stopping or starting, see who brought it up.

You know, does the emptiness stop or start? And is there a distinction between coming into existence and starting? And is there a distinction between stopping and going out of existence?

Winking out of existence, you see? Call it that. It may help you.

Then go meditate the hell out of this and you might see emptiness. It's very interesting. It comes just before, okay?

All right, sorry. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is going to happen every time we pick this book up.

Yeah, okay. You ready? Okay, cool.

You're very brave to sit here. I was determined not to have an easy class. And she's like, when are you going to teach a class for the hard-ass people?

Because everything is like Reader's Digest. And I said, well, when we get to Diamond Mountain, and we've screened out the 300 people who don't want to come to Diamond Mountain, or 3,000, I don't know, they will have some really hard-ass class. And if you feel a little lost or confused or bored, just stick in there.

That's because it's harder. I could have made it easier, and then it wouldn't help you as much. So the more uncomfortable it is, the better it's helping.

Okay? Bye.