Вступление на срединный путь (текущий курс, Аризона), занятие 44

[Speaker 1]
Welcome back to, what's the book you're studying?

[Speaker 2]
Ah, ah, what's your name? Ah, ah, what's your name? I don't remember what I was studying.

[Speaker 1]
You can say Gombrabsa, you can say what's your name. Let's say something.

[Speaker 2]
OK.

[Speaker 1]
So just to remember where we were, let me go back here. So he said, this comes from before, and it says, let's go back by the way here. We got to the second major section of our text, which is the actual body of the commentary.

Which commentary?

[Speaker 2]
Chandrakirti's.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, Chandrakirti's, Master Chandrakirti's, entering the middle way. Mm. And then there's going to be an explanation of the causal levels and of the resulting levels.

At causal levels, there's going to be a general presentation on how to travel this path. How to travel it before you see emptiness, and how to travel it after you see emptiness. So here's a general presentation.

Somebody says, entering the middle way sets forth both the emptiness teachings and the bodhisattva teachings, according to Arya Nagarjuna. So how many books by Arya Nagarjuna himself present both emptiness and bodhisattva, both equally? And then you know he wrote many books, the six famous ones, Umariksa Upadrupa.

But here, he says there are only three works by Nagarjuna that include both the emptiness teachings and the bodhisattva teachings, primarily. And these are Rinchen Theravada, and then Chögyam Trungpa and Dode Kuntu. And we had Rinchen Theravada, String of Precious Jewels.

We read about it the last partner talk, way back when. I don't remember. And then we finished, I think, how the Praise of the Served Reality covers this.

And I think we're on to the third one, but let's see. So he goes through the String of Precious Jewels. And what you need to know from there is a very famous quotation.

Here he gives the six perfections. And here he says the results of them. This is the most famous line.

Giving brings you what you need. Ethical life gives happiness. Refusing to get upset or angry brings us beauty.

Joyful effort, enthusiasm grants us grace and authority. Meditation leads to peace, and understanding liberates us. Love achieves all goals.

So that's the karmic results. That's probably the most famous summary of all the karmic results in scripture. Then he goes on to, having finished Rinchen Theravada, Ratnamala, String of Jewels, how it talks about both emptiness and bodhisattva life.

Then he goes on to how the Praise of the Served Reality makes its presentation. And we've got into this. It starts with going for refuge, then developing the wish for enlightenment.

After that, the six perfections, and then the 10 levels. Then he says the profound and far-reaching sides of the teaching, which are presented only in abbreviated form in the one book, are presented in detail in his third book, Dode Kuntu, which means this is like a kind of genre of work, where someone takes quotations from lots of sutras and puts them together, and makes a work like that. And there's a very famous one by Lord Atisha by the same name.

But this is the one by Nagarjuna. So this text describes how difficult it is to find opportunities and resources, as well as faith in the teachings. It then speaks of how much more difficult it is to develop the wish for enlightenment and great compassion towards every living being.

And now something new. So we'll read it together. If you haven't been in this class before, we just sort of read it together first.

And then I'll probably ask you one or two words that you're supposed to know, and then we'll go like that. This class has no homework. There's no requirements to get into the class.

I just wanted to go over Madhyamika, emptiness, in the traditional way, which would take like 6 to 10 years or something to get through this book. And if I write homeworks and do all that shit, I don't really have time to do it. And I kind of feel obligated to try to translate these two books, because my teachers spent like 10 years teaching them to me.

So I'm trying to translate them. And then I figure if you watch what I translate, it doesn't hurt. And so we made a class out of it.

But Alistair does write homeworks for the class, right? And I encourage you to do the homeworks. And I encourage you to debate the subjects in the debate ground.

Otherwise, you won't get much out of the class. So I have to do it anyway. I have to translate the two books.

But just to sit here, you won't get that much. You have to do something. But that I can't.

I just can't. I don't have time to police it. So those of you who really want to help other people, then you should really try hard to do the homeworks and to debate it and to try to learn the Tibetan.

OK? All right. Here we go.

We'll just read the first three lines on the count of three. One, two, three. DE LAS KYANG CHANG SEM LA MA CHUNG WA THAM MED PA THAM CHOD PONG GI LAS DU LAS PONG WA NYE KHA WE This seemed really weird to me.

So I'm going to show you what I would do if I thought something sounded weird. Because, again, these are books that were lost in Tibet when Tibet was invaded. And people, you know, they did their best to recover them and to reprint them.

And sometimes they made a lot of errors, especially this book. See, this is all handwritten. For example, this page here is just all handwritten by somebody because in those days they didn't have any other way to do it.

So here's the... See where that little positive thing is? Here's the corresponding corrupted original.

DE LAS KYANG CHANG SEM LA MA So, ma, I think... I was suspecting it's misspelled. But that's the way it's spelled in the original.

DE LAS KYANG CHANG SEM LA MA CHUNG WA DANG ME PA DANG CHUNG PONG GI NE DU LAS PONG NYE KHA WE So we'll go back to the typing. CHANG SEM LA MA CHUNG WA So I think it's misspelled, but let's check. How would I check?

I think MA CHUNG WA is misspelled. How would I check it? I'll spell it the way they spelled it.

OK, MA CHUNG WA And then I'll spell it the way I think it might be spelled. And then what I do is I do a vote, you know? I search for those two in like 300,000 pages of scripture and see which one wins.

OK? So that's just a fast way to do it. It's better even than a dictionary because dictionaries can be wrong.

Monier-Williams is the standard dictionary for Sanskrit and it's really bad, you know? It's very corrupt in many parts and then people just take it, you know? Because it's the only one.

And everyone grew up with it. So it's good to have a database. Then you can check things.

Here's one, MA CHUNG WA. It's spelled with what? Can you see it?

It's here. It's a RMA. OK?

And here's an SMA. See, our text has an SMA. So I'm going to check.

So that's 1 to 0 for Geshe Michael. There's another RMA. It's 2 to 0.

This is even... You see the carving is wrong also, right? This is a...

And I'm hitting, by the way, those of you who know Gopher, I'm hitting F which means jump to a new text. So I'm not cheating and getting the same reading in the same text. Because you can do that too.

Where is it here? Oh, this one's not one. You see, it's pretty rare.

It's searching through like 100,000 pages. And now it's gone through about 200,000 pages. There we go.

There's another RMA. OK? So that's enough.

3 to 0. The carving is wrong. And it makes it very difficult to translate.

So we'll correct it. So he's saying there's a degrees of difficulty, degrees of increasing difficulty. It's difficult to become a human being.

It's difficult to be born in a place. It's difficult to have Diamond Mountain available to you. And then it's difficult to have faith in what they do here.

It's more difficult to have faith in what we do here. Even more difficult than that is to have bodhicitta and great compassion towards every living being. And even more difficult than that, machunga means to injure.

So he goes through all the good kinds of difficult. Difficult to find a teaching. It's difficult to find a human body.

But even more difficult than all of that to overcome the effects, the bad karma of having injured a bodhisattva or having gotten angry at them. And even more difficult than that to get rid of the karma of giving up the Dharma. And then the deeds of a demon.

He doesn't say exactly what the deeds of the demon are, but I take it as a positive.

[Speaker 2]
Yes, sir?

[Speaker 1]
Yeah.

[Speaker 2]
I'm sorry. Would you prefer it talks of how it is even more difficult? How even more difficult it is?

[Speaker 1]
Say again?

[Speaker 2]
Can it talk of how even more difficult it is versus how it is even more difficult?

[Speaker 1]
Yeah. Dhammakaya. What's a dhammakaya?

Dhammakaya means Tibet. You can say it either way, I think. OK.

So the particular approach that this book takes is to go through those steps of the path in increasing difficulty. OK. OK.

Let's read this first one together. One, two, three. Gung-po, lu-dru, lu-ki, sa-pa-ta, ya-che-we-cho, ten-la, pa-pa, ka-pa-yo-te.

OK. Where's the nagarjuna here? Yeah, lu-dru.

What's the naga and what's the arjuna? Yeah, lu. Say lu.

Lu. Lu. Yeah.

Lu is naga, and then dru is arjuna. OK. As in, what is it?

The Mahabharata? Bhagavad Gita. Bhagavad Gita?

Yeah. Arjuna is the? The archer.

The archer, yeah. So he's like the warrior of the, the king of the nagas. OK.

OK. Oh, we have to read it. OK.

One, two, three. Gung-po, lu-dru, lu-di, te-ni, ten-la, mbek-pa, la-ma, chu-we, se-me, ke-bu, yin-pe, rang-ki, yang-ka, pe-la, yang-su, len-su, la, nge-pa, tem-bo, nye-le, lam-shen, ta-lang, la-di, mi-nu-pe, go-pa, yo-pe. Thank you.

Wow. OK. Last, last part of the first line.

Say ten-la. Ten-la. Then you've got a labial prenasal.

So it's? Mbep. Mbep.

OK. Say ten-la mbep-pa. Good.

OK. If you didn't have the prenasal, it would be something else. It could mean to go.

Pepa, pep means to go, for example. OK. And then these are all along with the sa's at the end of them.

Say de-ni. De-ni. Se-me-ke-bu.

Se-me-ke-bu. Yim-pe. Yim-pe.

Ran-ki. Ran-ki. Nge-pa.

Nge-pa. Nye-ne. Nye-ne.

One more time. Nye-ne. Nye-ne.

See? The dash cuts it short. The sa.

Nye-ne.

[Speaker 2]
Nye-ne.

[Speaker 1]
Mi-nye-pe.

[Speaker 2]
Mi-nye-pe.

[Speaker 1]
Nge-pa.

[Speaker 2]
Nge-pa.

[Speaker 1]
Ye-pe-cha.

[Speaker 2]
Ye-pe-cha.

[Speaker 1]
So the, he's, to a Tibetan, his writing sounds good. Like in this paragraph, he's doing suffix letters. And he's maybe not even aware of it.

It's just beautiful. It's just like a musician. It's, what do you call it, assonance.

OK. Mm. Mm.

Mm. Mm. Mm.

Mm. Mm. Mm.

Mm. Mm. Mm.

[Speaker 2]
Mm.

[Speaker 1]
Mm. Mm. Mm.

Mm.

[Speaker 2]
Mm. Mm.

[Speaker 1]
Mm. Mm. Mm.

Mm. Mm. Mm.

Mm. Mm.

[Speaker 2]
Mm.

[Speaker 1]
Mm.

[Speaker 2]
Mm. So abiding means, you know, that would be miyowa.

[Speaker 1]
I like deep. Yeah, OK. Having suffered to a point of deep.

[Speaker 2]
Now, this is weird.

[Speaker 1]
Lam shen tanong la chi minupay gupa. Gupa means that the purpose is that chi, chi means, let me check which chi it is, hang on. Where would I look if I just wanted a dictionary thing?

[Speaker 2]
It's a great dictionary.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, a great dictionary. If you don't know Tibetan, you use Vowee. I was there when he wrote it.

He doesn't know Tibetan. OK. Chingwa means, it's defined as chingwa, which means bound, or yokpa means tied up in.

So he's not going to get like, I don't know, deep means, you're not going to help me again. It's like tangled up. It's tangled up.

I got it. OK. He won't be able to get tangled up in lam shen.

Other paths, which are tanong. Dak tanong means what? Do you remember?

Danyang dak is the opposite of dak tanong.

[Speaker 2]
And there's an incorrect reason.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, correct reason and an incorrect reason. So tanong means, tanong is an idiom for incorrect. And you won't find it in a dictionary, probably.

So tar means like, and nang means to appear. So it means to appear as if. And it's a word that means wrong, or faulty, like that, which appears as if, you see?

So, but what's the way they're trying to say, you see? What are they trying to prove, anyway? There's a reason why he set forth both these two, the bodhisattva stuff and the emptiness stuff.

Why? Well, because he's a person who cannot lie. He cannot make a mistake about these two sides of the teaching.

Having come to himself a point of deep certainty about how to practice the path of purity, he can no longer be, what did I say? Talk about in other paths, the paths which are faulty, mistaken, superficial. You can be correct and superficial.

Elliot, what's his name? Your music that you like? Elliot Smith.

[Speaker 2]
Monier Williams, Jim Balby, and Elliot Smith.

[Speaker 1]
OK, having himself come to a point of deep certainty about how to practice the path of purity, he can no longer be tangled up in them. But how does that prove what he's trying to say?

[Speaker 2]
That he's an authority, that nirgarjuna's not mistaken. This is why we should believe him. Is that the point?

[Speaker 1]
Well, the Tibetan seems to say, there's a gupa here that I didn't cover yet. Having himself come to a point of deep certainty about how to practice the path of purity.

[Speaker 2]
It's undeniable for deep certainty. Undeniable certainty?

[Speaker 1]
Hang on. Yeah, that's what it sounds like. That's what the Tibetan sounds like.

But doesn't it feel weird to you? He has to write a book about Bodhisattva stuff and emptiness stuff, because he understood it perfectly. And he's afraid he might wander off to something else.

I mean, about Arya Nirgarjuna? Doesn't it seem a little weird to you? No?

[Speaker 2]
Huh? Isn't it that he's gotten the result, and therefore he's setting it forth so that we can get it too? Obviously.

Because he's not tangled us in other thoughts.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, but he doesn't say we. He never mentions us, or you, or.

[Speaker 2]
He doesn't. As long as we don't see it.

[Speaker 1]
Huh?

[Speaker 2]
As long as we always do that, no, we stay.

[Speaker 1]
Oh, himself. Yeah. No, Kedrup Dhammadagya could say it about himself.

Like, I did it so I wouldn't get confused. But now he's saying. But he would never report Arya Nirgarjuna doing something like that.

Right, right, right. I don't know. It's a little confusing to me.

[Speaker 2]
Isn't this a reason for cultivating both method and wisdom? And he's giving the reason why. Because the gardener's not mistaken about the two collections.

And that's why we should trust this text.

[Speaker 1]
Well, the question is, are we sure enough about that to change the he to one?

[Speaker 2]
Us?

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, or we. We?

[Speaker 2]
Oh, then he doesn't say, so we will no longer be tangled up. Yeah. Well, that's good.

[Speaker 1]
I don't know. I think I have to leave it. Really, the Tibetan doesn't say we at all.

It just feels really uncomfortable to me.

[Speaker 2]
How about the student? Is that the student will no longer be tangled up?

[Speaker 1]
Well, then that's a decision. You see, then we're making a decision to change the he.

[Speaker 2]
But he is making a decision so that we don't get tangled up.

[Speaker 1]
Well, that's what I would feel more comfortable with. But the Tibetan doesn't say that.

[Speaker 2]
If you say one, then it's not a real commitment.

[Speaker 1]
That's what I mean. So sometimes you're just fudging.

[Speaker 2]
Could you put a his and he? Lowercase for a reason and not uppercase? Is that his and he or not?

[Speaker 1]
Oh, I only do that in chapter texts.

[Speaker 2]
OK.

[Speaker 1]
Because then anyone who bought the book would freak out. They'd say, oh, you're equating Arya Nagarjuna with God. And of course, he is.

I like that part.

[Speaker 2]
If you avoid a personal parameter, I would say one of the most important things is to avoid becoming entangled in another.

[Speaker 1]
I like it.

[Speaker 2]
Oh, he's entangled.

[Speaker 1]
Didn't you say entangled? Yes. Didn't you say entangled?

[Speaker 2]
Yes.

[Speaker 1]
Yes. I like that. That's his years in London.

OK. I like it, because it's ambiguous. OK.

Yeah.

[Speaker 2]
No.

[Speaker 1]
Where the text is ambiguous, a true translator has to retain the ambiguity. Sometimes it's hard to be a true translator. OK.

OK. OK. Here we go.

One, two, three. Gumbo, lungzin, chenpo, gyalse, shiwa, se, chir, lap, chir, nikale, gyepar, ten, shin. Who's Gumbo?

Nata in Sanskrit. Who's Gumbo? Yeah, here it's Arya Nagarjuna.

OK. Lungzin. Say lungzin.

It's a heavy prenasal. Lungzin. It's like chunzin.

OK. Chunzin. Say chunzin.

It's a heavy prenasal. Lungzin. Chenpo, who's Gyalse Shiwaha?

[Speaker 2]
Master Shantideva.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, Master Shantideva. Lap, chir, nikale. This is why it's difficult to read these texts.

Lap means, they're talking about two different books of Master Shantideva. He just says lap, chir. And what it means is lapakundu dam gyalse chirpalanjupa.

OK. So two syllables for lapakundu dam gyalse chirpalanjupa. It's just lap, lap, chir.

OK. So lap is shiksha, samuccaya, the companion of trainings. And chir here is chenju, which is the Bodhicaryavatara, guide to the bodhisattva's way of life.

So these points are covered in depth. In depth. One, two.

You want to say bodhisattva or son of the victors?

[Speaker 2]
Son of the victors. Are we using Sanskrit?

[Speaker 1]
Sorry? Are we using Sanskrit for this? You mean bodhisattva?

Yeah, you want to say bodhisattva. I think it's so common that we're shooting for a medium on this. I don't want to shoot for college professors because they don't buy any books.

And they just write bad reviews. And I don't want to shoot for the Doubleday audience because we already got them covered. So we're shooting for the Diamond Cutter Press audience.

Snow Lion, 5,000 American Buddhists, both written by the bodhisattva. Would you rather say son of the victors?

[Speaker 2]
Son of the victors. OK, fine. Sure?

[Speaker 1]
Child of the victors. System or teachings? Because it says system.

[Speaker 2]
System?

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, OK. Because it is a system. OK.

You guys ready? Yeah?

[Speaker 2]
I'm just really uncomfortable with referring to Master's son today, but as a child in any fashion.

[Speaker 1]
No, no, this one's OK. That's the theme of this book, by the way. Right?

Buddhists are born from bodhisattvas. You know, I mean, that's the theme of the opening. So it's OK.

In this book, it's not an insult. It's a compliment. OK, one, two, three.

KHE BAR DUR YANG LAB DU LE DELN GYOR NYE KA DUN CHE SAMPE GON NE SEM DIR NING PO LAMPE PENG YIN SEMPE SU DANG Say deln gyor. At the end of the first line, deln gyor. Hear that pre-nasal?

And then again, this is really heavy. Say, sem dir. Sem dir.

So in the monastery, if you said sem dir, they would think you were saying this vibratory life. Because dir means vibrate. And then dir means this life.

So you have to say it heavily, when there's what we call an open vowel in front of it. So sem doesn't have any suffix letter. It's just an open vowel sound.

When an open vowel sound bumps into a pre-nasal, it becomes very noticeable. So it's said sem dir. Sem dir.

And not say dear. OK? All right, here we go.

Ning po lampe. Do we really say that in real English, though? See, we've been infected by Dharma English.

What do you say it means in Tibetan to get the essence out of your life? But is there a normal English way to say that? Is that enough?

Is it strong enough?

[Speaker 2]
Take full advantage of it.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, you're too far off. What was the deriving over here somewhere?

[Speaker 2]
Deriving. The full advantage, she said. No, somebody said deriving.

[Speaker 1]
Deriving.

[Speaker 2]
The full advantage. Well, we would say deriving the essence. I mean, you might say the maximum benefit, extract.

Deriving the essence.

[Speaker 1]
Deriving the highest essence? How about that? Huh?

No. Is that not English? Getting the most out of it.

[Speaker 2]
Getting the most out of it.

[Speaker 1]
Is there anything that has heart in it? Is there something with heart in it? Essence?

[Speaker 2]
Getting the heart of it. Getting the heart of something. Sure, we use that all the time.

Distilling. Distilling. Distilling the essence.

Distilling.

[Speaker 1]
Distilling the essence? Yeah.

[Speaker 2]
I'm just trying to think of something that means like almost all of it. Drawing on our stuff. Getting the heart of it.

Yeah, that's it.

[Speaker 1]
It means to take full advantage of this life.

[Speaker 2]
There you go. How about that? That sounds good.

[Speaker 1]
That sounds good. Yeah. I'm just a writer.

Just take full advantage of it. Okay.

[Speaker 2]
Sorry. How about that? Yes.

[Speaker 1]
Well, I'm trying to cover all the Tibetan words too. I have some responsibility to the heart protectors. Okay.

I don't know. Dunche. Nyeka dunche is an idiom.

Nyeka means hard to find. Like the fact that you were born with two hands and a head. It's nyeka.

Or that you can speak. It's nyeka. And then dunche means, do you know?

It means meaningful. Big meaning. Right?

Dunche. But, but what does it really mean?

[Speaker 2]
Extremely rare.

[Speaker 1]
See, that's the nyeka. It's a balance. Things are nyeka and dunche.

Difficult to find and, no, dunche means big meaning. Necessary? Very useful.

It means very useful, but more strong.

[Speaker 2]
Essential. Stronger than that. Essential.

[Speaker 1]
Essential is pretty good.

[Speaker 2]
Essential timing.

[Speaker 1]
But, like he said, usable for something, you see. They have a great value.

[Speaker 2]
Indispensable.

[Speaker 1]
Value. Value is essential.

[Speaker 2]
And a great value. Yeah.

[Speaker 1]
I think a great value. Okay. I missed that voice.

Good to have you here. I like his great value. Okay.

It's good to be the boss. Like, I had to build this place so I could be the boss, you know? So, okay.

Okay. You can build your own. Alright.

Okay, here we go. One, two, three. One, two, three.

It says, generally speaking, the root of all good things, happiness and goodness, is yi che kyi depa. So, there are three kinds of depa, right? Do you remember?

Dangway depa, yi che kyi depa. Then there's a third one. Do you remember?

Admiring faith. Three kinds of faith in the Lamrim. Remember?

So, if you can't remember something like that, you can look it up. No, you'd say, look for dangway depa, which is also sometimes spelled dangway depa, and find it for me near yi che kyi. Let's say I can't remember which one is which, and I want to get it right.

So, they would be within three lines of each other. And would I look in the tengyur, the kanyur, or the sumbu? Lamrim.

Sumbu. Yeah. Lamrim was invented by the last Indian to get out of India.

Okay? Lord Atisha. So, you know, it's going to be in the sumbu.

And I'll look under lamrim to make it faster. Okay. This is...

These are the three. Like, you hit it that fast. It went through about 10,000 pages in less than a blink, right?

And it found the three for me. Here they are. Sangye jangsem sok tongne yi depa chepe.

Dangway depa. Dangway depa means the kind of faith where you admire the object, and you're thinking about how cool it is. And they say...

Like, when you hear or see bodhisattvas or buddhas, okay? Or high lamas, like Lama Tsep or something. Like, you see them and you get...

Or you hear them talk and you get dangway depa. Okay. Then...

Le ge dik gi lang dor la yi chepe yi cheki depa. This is the one we have here. And it's always the same thing.

Faith in the sense of belief about good deeds and bad deeds being the source of good things and bad things in your life. Okay? Why belief?

Because we can't see it. We just did like pratyakshana managama for like 10 days in the Bahamas. The three kinds of correct valid perception, right?

So one is like direct. We can't have that about karma. One is like deductive.

It's hard for us. We wouldn't have figured it out on ourselves that the best way to get candy is to give it away in your class. But then there's agama, faith.

Sorry, scripture, authority. Believable authority. Authentic authority.

And that's... Yi cheki depa is based on that. So belief.

You see? So the first one was more like admiration of a holy being's qualities. The second one is closer to our word belief than faith.

You see? Although faith also covers it. And then the third one, just for your information.

Debu... Kong... Mistyped.

Debu kongma topar depe ngun duke depa. Ngun duke depa means aspiration. Faith in the sense of aspiration.

So you have faith in the sense of... What was the first one? Admiration.

Faith in the sense of belief. And faith in the sense of aspiration. So there's three kinds of faith in the Lamrim teachings.

So... And the example of the... Yi cheki depa.

Faith in the sense of belief is always what? I mean 99% of the time. No.

Not in Buddhism. What's the... What are we thinking about when we use yi cheki depa?

Karma. It's karma. Because that's koki or shindu koki.

It's like beyond... You would never figure out that giving away all these chocolate chip cookies is the best way to get more. And to have Kristi let you eat them.

It's kind of heavy, you know? I think so. They might get pre-broken.

Yeah. Okay. I don't think there's...

This other stuff is like... Either too good or... Okay.

[Speaker 2]
Nah, we better start something.

[Speaker 1]
Maybe we'll start these whoppers and then... Okay. If you're not...

If you haven't been in this class, this candy is to get you hyper for the last half hour.

[Speaker 2]
Okay.

[Speaker 1]
Just out of curiosity, how many yi cheki depas are about karma and its results? Right? So...

Let's look... Let's see. I'll just do it...

We'll do it real quick. What comes just the three words before yi cheki depa here? Leng de la.

About karma and its effects. There's one. We're taking a bow, okay?

Is yi cheki depa always about karma? Why am I doing this? Because we're about to translate it.

And he didn't say about karma. But I'd like to throw it in. Okay?

So let's go. Ge dik la. Le ge dik.

It's about karma. Leng de la yi che. It's about karma.

Ke par leng de la yi che. It's about karma. Leng de la yi che.

It's about karma. These are all different books. Leng de la yi che.

You see? So far, 100% of the references have been about this kind of belief directed towards karma. So can we go back and use that information in our translation?

Okay. Let's go see.

[Speaker 2]
That's called an aspiring thing?

[Speaker 1]
No, that would be the third one, which is... Oh, I didn't tell you what the third one was.

[Speaker 2]
Oh.

[Speaker 1]
Aspiring towards higher goals. Like, I'd like to become Vajragyana or something. Oh, that's karma and how to do that?

Yeah. No, no. Karma is the second one.

Okay. That would be belief. In the sense that somebody had to tell you and you believed it because you can't see it.

Okay. Okay. So generally speaking...

I got to add this. That's the text. This is a TED mnemonism, and I've been using it like three times a day since you did it last year.

And more especially, one gives birth. Because they would say develop or generate or... Generate drives me crazy.

I always make generator sounds when she uses it. And more especially, one gives birth to... No, I mean, people...

We never say generate in normal English when you say develop an attitude, right? Like, I've generated love towards you, you know?

[Speaker 2]
Anyway.

[Speaker 1]
It's one of my pet peeves about translation. Not that she did it. Somebody else keeps doing it.

Other people keep doing it. I won't check her work if she does it. What's that mean?

You get Semke. Mumba Semke, right? What's the unique form of belief found in the greater way?

Let's go check. You got to look up uncommon. Tumul Mayin.

Or Tum Rin. Tum Rin. So you look up uncommon or unique next to that kind of faith.

How close? One line is sufficient. Where?

Lam Rim should be a good place to start. Nobody ever said it.

[Speaker 2]
What about Tumul? No, here I have Tumul.

[Speaker 1]
Let's try that. That's not it. You can make it two lines in case the phrase comes at the end of the line.

Let's just try all the symbols. That's not it. That's not it.

So basically it's not in 300,000 pages of scripture. I don't know. Oh, here's one.

Oh, that's our book. Let's see if it comes anywhere else in our book.

[Speaker 2]
Didn't Sanghaka comment on this?

[Speaker 1]
This is a couple hundred years after him.

[Speaker 2]
Let's try...

[Speaker 1]
No, I don't know. I think he made it up. Now what it means...

You can debate it. There's some kind of belief. I think it's the belief that you could become a Buddha.

I would agree to that. Oh, I know where we didn't check. He's quoting who?

Who's talking about this kind of belief?

[Speaker 2]
Shantideva.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, who said that?

[Speaker 2]
Newman.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, good Newman. So, let's go check in Master Shantideva. Master Shantideva.

Let's see if Master Shantideva himself ever used this expression. Where do you find his books? In Madhmika?

In Prajnaparamita? Yeah. No, he didn't say that either.

Let's see if he even used Yuche Kintepa. In the book he's being accused of using it in. Or just Yuche.

By the way, if you want to learn modern Tibetan, you say, Yuche Ngundu. Say, Yuche Ngundu.

[Speaker 2]
Yuche Ngundu.

[Speaker 1]
He don't believe me. Nobody believes me. Yuche Ngundu.

I told him. I keep telling him. But Yuche Ngundu.

[Speaker 2]
Okay?

[Speaker 1]
Alright. Now, I'm just skipping books until I hit, what? The compendium of the teachings.

Which is called Lapa Kuntur. Which is short name is Kuntur. There's all the Gomerins.

Which is what? In Sanskrit. Vamana Karma.

So, you had that in Bhaktivinoda. Last year. Yeah, it's not even...

Here's Labdu. Okay? See it up at the top?

Up at the arrow. That's Labdu. That's Sriksa Samuccaya.

That's the book we're in. And here he's talking about Yichepada. Listen to this.

in the greater way, okay. So, chetam chet duma le dakpa yun chet te. To believe that all things in the world have been dakpa from time with no beginning, have been pure from time with no beginning.

That's a higher kind of deva, yun chet, which is, what's that mean? What's that mean to say things have been pure from time with no beginning? Yeah, either that they're empty or on a higher level, that you're already in a divine realm, okay?

All right. Here he says, he's quoting somebody addressing Ananda, Kungao. And he says, sange kyi chu yu ni yi chepa gao.

It's difficult to believe in Buddhists, but that's probably not what he means here. That's all. I think, yeah, then we're on to a different book.

So, that's all the word you just said ever occur in Master Shantideva's book, okay? So, it's got to be about what? I think it's in the greater way.

In the principle of reaching the Buddhahood for other people or something like this. Okay. Okay, let's read together.

One, two, three. Dhene juk dom lak, juk pa chang chuk, chok tu sem kye me. Lu long chuk, gye we tsar wa nam lak, tong sung dak pel, shi shi che su tenpe, go nye kye pa tenpe.

After that, it says, we take the vow to enter into the activities, to engage in the activities of bodhisattva. So, after we get the wish to become an enlightened being, and after we get that unique belief that we could perhaps, we vow to do what we have to do to become an enlightened being. So, first is to commit to the idea, and then is to commit to the activities.

And after we commit to the activities, we go through doing four things each with three objects, our body, our possessions, and our good karma, which makes twelve. There's four ways to relate to the three parts of you, your body, your possessions, and all the good karma you have so far. There's four ways to relate to each of those, for a total of twelve, four times three.

Now, I've seen these mentioned a lot, these four ways, and apparently they come from Master Shantideva's second most popular word, right? The compending of the trainings, which is rarely taught. His Holiness taught it in Bodhgaya when we were there, and it was really hard, because he tried to go through it in one sitting, in a week or something, and it's long, it's huge.

So, I was fooling around today, I have to go to class today, I don't know what these four are exactly. What are they? Giving away, protecting, purifying, increasing.

And these are famous, the names of the four are famous, but I don't recall anyone ever explaining them, you see. So, I went and looked for them, and I just wanted to go over with you how I would have done that, so you can explain it to somebody. So, you go to a gopher and you say, and we do this when we prepare a class for you, like the class for tomorrow, it involves maybe two hundred searches like this, just to get everything straight.

Because sometimes, everyone talks about it, but no one ever explains something. So, we're going to go looking for these four. And they are, I'll do the last two, I'll do dak bel, because the four in Tibetan are dong, sung, dak, bel.

Say dong, sung, dak, bel. Dong, give away, sung, protect, dak, purify, bel, increase. Okay?

Dong, sung, dak, bel. So, the two most unusual words here are dak and bel. So, I'm going to go look for dak and bel, okay?

And let's see, let's see if I can find them. And I would say sung bu. This is not, this is something else, this is about how to do a fire offering, okay?

This is a different thing, ta dak bel, it's a different word, it's not dak bel. This is, this is what we're looking for, dong, sung, dak, bel, shi, shi, tab, je, gom, pa, cha. You should do these four, and then he doesn't explain them, okay?

Whoever this author is, okay? It happens to be Justin Koppa. Okay, here's another one.

Dong, sung, dak, bel, shi, nang, ne, ge, tsa, tong, wa, yin, nang. You should do these four, but no explanation. Who's that?

I think it's one of the, maybe the first Panchen Lama. Okay, here's another one. Dong, sung, dak, bel, shi, shi, tab, je, gom, pa, cha.

Everyone should do gom, dak, shi, gom, pa, but no explanation what it is. That's Justin Koppa, Lam Rim Chong. Here's his medium-length Lam Rim.

Dak, sung, dak, bel, shi, shi, che, pa. You should do all four of these, and no explanation. Here's Lamgyur Junme.

I think it's Lord Atisha's Lam Rim. Dang, sung, dak, bel, shi, ni, dun, shi. They all mean the same thing, but I don't think so.

Okay, here's a Lojong. Okay, and it says, this is, it was very interesting to me. Lu, long, ju, ge, tsa, sung, re, la, tang, sung.

People tell us we should do these four things, give away, protect, purify, and increase your body, your possessions, and your good karmas. So you get twelve, right? Dey, nang, du, jang, sim, gyi, lap, jat, tad, ar, lapar, jong, lojong, tsang, gong, gye.

They say that all, all, all of the trainings of the bodhisattva are inside these twelve. Chi, ni, pa, dey, tam, je, gong, yin, bar, lam rim, che, mo, sung, pa, tsam, re. Even in the Lam Rim, che, mo, it says you should do these twelve, all twelve of them.

But, tsam, so, sung, lun, dzun, sel, war, gup, pa, shi, je, yab, se, je, ndrang, dang, je, pe, shung, du, yu, pang, lun, che, ma, thong, ar. But I can't say that I've ever seen in all the books by Je Tsongkhapa and all his disciples and everyone who ever followed those books, any clear explanation of these four. OK?

I like this guy. Who is this guy? Who is this guy?

It's whoever wrote book 637. So, you go up here, you open another gopher, and you say, who wrote this book? It's got to be, Muthu Dharmapadra.

OK? He's like a hero. Right?

A great Vajrayogini's master. And you'll be using his extremely rare commentary. I think we have the only copy around to his Vajrayogini, which was given to us by Prabhupada, the third.

So, anyway, he says, OK, here's what it means. Je pe ma thong ar ma se, di tsa we kya shung, lap du tsa nrel yang shel ma jel we. Also, you can't find nowadays any original copies of the book it's supposed to be from.

Je su di taro shen, lap du nrel yang shel ma jel we. And so, I must confess that there's no, you know, you can't find an authentic source that really lists the meaning of these four. But, un kyang, at the end there, un kyang, jang dar nang gyel trak sung kyi tse pa'i tong sung, tsa we me la shepa shepa thong wa le rang la sung tsa tsam chepa shepa la.

But, if I were to guess, on the basis of having seen a particular scripture in which it was described, which I no longer have in my possession, something like that, OK. So, I'm just going to give you, and this is the best there is, OK. Otherwise, it's just people, everybody mentions it and no one explains it.

And so, he was in the same position back in 1750 or whatever, you know. So, I'm going to give you what I think it is. OK, here's the first one.

Understand that it is of great value to others and when you have seen that it would be of great benefit to others, and when you are totally adept in your practice of compassion. So, he's placing conditions on it already, right. What were they?

It has to be of extraordinary benefit and you have to be at the level where you can pull it off. So, up there it says, Then you can give up your body to somebody. Then somebody says, I need a brain, I need livers, I need kidneys.

You say, OK, I'll cut my wrist tomorrow, just have an ambulance nearby with a lot of ice. You know, like that, when you're ready, when you're at that level. So, he gave two requirements, you have to be at that level.

And you have to have, there has to be great need and you have to be at that level of compassion. So, then you can give your body away, etc. The other four, all your possessions, all your good karma, right.

Give away your good karma just to make it more, but anyway. OK. Shendu, Lula, Dru, Lo, Shakte.

And then, otherwise, if you're not going to give it away, Lula, Dru, Lo, Shakte. Dru, what's a dru? Do you know?

Drusim? Drusim means a ship or a boat or a ferry to get to the other side of the ocean, right. So, Lu, Lu, your body, Dru, Lo, Shakte.

Think of it as a ship, think of it as a boat, think of it as something you're going to use to get somewhere. And, Take good care. So, sungwa, the second one, the first one then means give away those three things, your body, your possessions and your goodness, right.

That one's clear. Number two, protect means take good care of your body. You need this boat to get to the other side.

So, so long as you need the boat, you know, scrape it, paint it, keep the barnacles off of it. You know what I mean? Like, take good care of it.

So, he gives an example. Say, good, eat, eat, eat as you need to eat. Eat, eat carefully, eat well.

Good, dress carefully. Like, don't be some yogi and catch a cold and then you can't teach. Neymel, get a decent bed to sleep on.

You know, like you're cranky all day because you never have good sleep, because you're trying to be a yogi, sleeping on this mat you can't really sleep on. And then, man, when you need medicine, take it wisely. Ring up.

And, you know, if certain spirits are like bugging you, then do this on Gihana, Gihana, you know. No, do your fierce mantras and don't be afraid to use them. If you need to protect yourself, like before you go to bed sometimes, there are certain mantras you do, right?

So, use those mantras. So, he's saying, that's the second one, protect, OK? What's the next one?

Purify. What does purify mean? The first meaning of...

Dakpa has two meanings, purify has two meanings. First one, with the topshi, use the topshi, the four powers of...

[Speaker 2]
Purification.

[Speaker 1]
Purification, good. To wipe away laya-ngemba, bad karma, OK? Which is causing you natta, sickness, for example, which is causing you sickness.

So, purify. Purify. Purify the karma that's affecting your body, see?

That's how purification applies to body, right? Got it? And, If you have like excessive attachment to your body, then meditate on midupa.

What's midupa? Midupa, that's... Midupa means...

disgusting. And that's that... One of the meditations is where you focus on your forehead, and you pretend that you just got a small cut, and then you fast forward 24 hours and it's getting a little bit infected, and then you fast forward another 48 hours and it's this blisters opening, and then you fast forward two weeks and it's got gangrene, it's starting to spread, and then you fast forward another two weeks and the skulls start to show through, and it smells funny, and there's pus coming out, and now it's about this wide, and then you fast forward a week and you're dead already, and it's still rotting, and then you get to where your whole body is like skeleton, just bones on the ground, and then you go further, and you go to the edge of the temple, and you let it get old, and the bricks start to fall apart, and the dust crumbling, and then the roof caves in, and then all those nice adobe bricks, they start to fall down, and then you go further, and you see the highway 80s, like the weeds are popping up to it, and all the trucks are broken down, and this is after the atomic bomb, and then you go to Tucson, and there's just dead bodies all over, and then you go to the edges of America, and you see the water all polluted, and the fish are all dead, and nothing can live in this ocean anymore. You know, it's the future. And then when you feel disgusted enough, you bring it on back.

This is an Abhidharma meditation, and then this is a good meditation for attachment to your body, because what's your body in the... given the whole process of this life? What's your body?

What are you talking about? The ocean is going to die. The earth will melt.

What's your body? Come on. So then you don't feel so attached to it.

It's a beautiful meditation. That was the third one, right? What was the fourth one?

[Speaker 2]
Increase.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, increase. Okay, what's that? BYANG CHUB MA THOB KYI BAR GYI RDZOGS BYANG CHUB PA'I NUS TEN GYI RGYUR TSUL KHRIMS SU NGON DANG PHYIR BSTAN PA'I LHAG GOG DKAR SU NGON SOGS LAG PA'I LUG PA'I LUG PA'I LA He gives it for body, okay?

How to increase your body. How to increase the strength of your body. BYANG CHUB MA THOB KYI BAR GYI RDZOGS BYANG CHUB PA'I NUS TEN GYI RGYUR TSUL KHRIMS SU NGON Keep your morality, because this is what keeps your body healthy and increases your health so that you can become a Buddha.

TSUL KHRIMS SU NGON DANG PHYIR BSTAN PA'I LHAG GOG DKAR SU NGON And then he's saying, make offerings to the Buddhas and actions like that. And in thus doing, increase the strength of your body. You know, that would make your yoga work better.

Care for other people, and then your body would increase in strength, and then you'd be better able to serve other people. So that's how he interprets those four for those three. You want to go through the whole thing?

I don't know. We got eight more minutes. He goes through all three.

Let's do all three, real quick. Whatever possessions you already have, which were properly owned by you. We tend to give away stuff after we're already in debt, which is technically giving up someone else's money.

Give away to other people. That would be the giving, right? The possessions which you retain because you need them to practice.

The minimum possessions you keep, you should keep them in good order. Keep them well repaired. Like we have one junky old van, and it's all broken up.

But we do get it oiled, because we need it to take care of people. So take care of the possessions you have that you need. Purify your possessions in the sense that when you attempt some activity in order to gain new possessions, don't let those activities be polluted by negative ways of making a living, like selling alcohol or drugs, or doing something like selling animal skins, or something like that.

When you need to get new possessions, make sure they are acquired in a pure way. And when you need to increase the stuff you have, like we need to increase our endowment to put in enough retreat cabins for everybody. Like it's not enough to have $5,000 around.

We need $100,000 or we need $300,000. So then give away more money. Like increase your money.

Increase your possessions by giving more. How do you give away your karma? Imagine that you are giving away your good karma to other beings.

Just imagine. Because you can't, right? So imagine that you are.

Like I made a lot of good karma by doing this class. So I imagine that I give it away to other people. When we do the Mandala law at the end, then we give away the good karma.

What's the next one? Protect. Protect your mind from the two great thoughts which can destroy your karma.

Can you think of any? Anger. Anger is famous.

I mean, anger is famous, right? Anger is the most famous one. The other one is gyopa.

What's gyopa? That's gyopa. That's nice.

Gyopa means regret, right? But it's not the four power of regret. This one means, I'm sorry I helped that guy.

I mean, I should have gone straight to Diamond Mountain. I was late for my class, you know. You know what I mean?

That's like you do something right, and then later you second guess yourself. That's gyopa. So that's another great destroyer of good karma.

Like later on you say, I shouldn't have gone to Diamond Mountain. I lost that job. I had a really good job.

I shouldn't have like flown out there five times. It was too much. Then you lost your job and you lost all the good karma.

Okay.

[Speaker 2]
Okay.

[Speaker 1]
Then. Whenever you collect new good karma, be sure to infect it with an attitude of, may this make me into an angel. May this make...

That's purifying the karma. Okay? That's purifying the karma you collect.

Always have that higher motivation as you do even a small thing. We got one more left, I think. What is that?

Yeah, increase your karma. What does it say there? Oh, two methods.

What do you guess? Yeah, rejoice. Rejoice is the first one in this.

Just be happy about good stuff you do. When I'm having a really bad day or I'm having a really bad meditation, the least you can do is just put your mind on something pleasant. Just think anything good.

Did you do anything good in the last ten years? You can come up with something. Then that increases your karma.

If you just can't meditate and you're just having a lousy day and nothing's going right, just give up. Today's not going to work. At least be happy about something you did in the past.

I worked on the temple. I stacked a billion bricks right over there. And then just think about it and put your mind on something positive.

And then it gets you out of a downward cycle. What would be the second way? It's more.

Dedicate the karma after a good deed like this class which is now drawing to an end. Okay? Dedicate the karma.

So now we finish the twelfth. And somebody should type that up. Somebody should summarize that.

And we'll throw it in the footnote or something. Okay? I'm too lazy to do it.

So, it'd be useful because no one's ever explained it really. Right? And that would be nice to have.

Okay? And we'll just throw it in there somewhere. It comes from the Compendium of the Trainings.

Oh, this text? Oh, yeah, yeah. This is a really cool thing.

This is back when I had a lot of time. And I was at Land of Medicine Buddha up in the tent, up above. I was just a free man.

And so this is a series of... This is a really cool work by Nrtyadharabhadra where his students asked him questions. It's called response to questions from students.

And there's like three or four hundred of them. And I sat there and cut them all out, one by one, and put them in the right... So I put it like in the lojong.

So I put it in the... So they asked a question about... And it's all the stuff that you always wondered about.

You know? It's like, it's all the questions that you never heard an answer to, you know? And like cool questions about Vajrayogini that Americans would ask, and they are in the scriptures, and they're just really cool.

So that's a... It's just a tiny... It's just a paragraph or two taken out of the middle of there.

Somebody said, you know, what's these twelve? No one ever explains them. And then he answered it.

So it's like a text called Questions and Answers. It's just called Questions and Answers. It's called Chitman.

It's a beautiful, beautiful text. And the fact that they bothered to carve it in his life is really great. So it means one of his students like wrote down all the tough questions that people asked.

And they kept all the answers he gave. And then somebody at the end of his life put them all together into this book called Just Questions and Answers. And it's really nice.

I find when I read a book by the dhyalama or something, I always skip to the question and answer part. Because that's always the coolest part, you know? And even in those days, question and answer was the more...

Even in the sutras, right? When a student asks for a sutra, it's more fun. It's more interesting, right?

So anyway, there you go. All right. We'll increase the virtue.

Gyalse laya?

[Speaker 2]
Thanks.