Вступление на срединный путь (текущий курс, Аризона), занятие 47

[Speaker 1]
So, he said he's going to start his presentation of the Ten Bodhisattva Levels, and he says he's going to follow the String of Jewels for the Middle Way. That's the wrong title, by the way. That's another book.

Rinchen Tawa and Uma Rinchen Tawa are different books. He's given the wrong title, okay? But anyway, that's okay.

Huh? Oh, that's a good question. I think most people make this mistake.

That's the thing, yeah. Say again? Ah, yeah, I guess it does.

I don't know. I feel like I just let this one go. But you should be aware there's the Uma Rinchen Tawa and there's the Rinchen Tawa.

And the Uma Rinchen Tawa is not by Arya Nagarjuna. So anyway, although the Rinchen Tawa is about Uma, both of them. Okay, so you know, anyway.

I got confused because I worked on it for a while before I figured out it wasn't the Rinchen Tawa, for the relationship talk like a year ago. Then after like two days, I'm like, something's weird here. This doesn't sound like the Rinchen Tawa.

Okay, and then he's going to... He says the Rinchen Tawa's explanation of the ten bodhisattva levels follows the sutra on the ten levels. So he's going to use both of those words.

And this is a quotation from Rinchen Tawa that describes... that just states that there are ten different levels for bodhisattvas. I just wonder if I can make it shorter, but I don't think so.

Okay, let's read it together. One, two, three. DIR SA CHUD DANG BYA NAS SUM PA'I SEMS SKYES DE YANG DON DANG PA'I SEMS SKYES LA BYAS CING Let's stop there.

That's okay. We'll do practice. I heard there's ten people working on the pronunciation for Chang-e, for the India thing.

So thank you for that. I think Rob Ho is really working on that. And the people who work on it will make the karma to understand the class.

By working on it, you're planting subconscious seeds, even just the pronunciation. Then when the time comes... I published this book for the monastery.

I proofread it and published it for the monastery. So now when I look at it, it's got this seed, the book that you're studying right now. It's a good thing to do.

It's a really cool thing to do. And it will help a lot of people, because a lot of people who come won't be able to read Tibetan. Okay, so I'm going to write.

I'll do some. Did we do this one? No.

How about this? Okay, any comments? Yeah, Indira.

Unless it's after another syllable, especially an open vowel, it's not going to be strong enough to hear. And that defeats the purpose of something that's easy for a Westerner to pronounce, because we don't have an N-D at the beginning of any Western word. So that's out.

Okay, good. Any more on this? Which one?

Ja-ne? Yeah, good. That's nice.

Because ne is a postposition. Ne means then. So we're cutting off, you know, like to, at, on.

We're cutting off those words. Okay. Any more?

Yeah, combined sem-ke. Who said that? That's nice.

And then we would cut it off and put it on the next line.

[Speaker 2]
Okay.

[Speaker 1]
Like, you know that, right, Rab Ho? You would cut this sem off and put it down here. Oops.

Right? And then it would be sem-ke. Sem-ke would be down there.

Any more? Yeah, I'm asking you to put A-wise, you know, this apostrophe I. Say, A-gi-ku-i.

A-gi-ku-i. A-gi-ku-i. When you learn Tibetan, this is like a mantra.

A-gi-ku-i. Say A-gi-ku-i. It just means apostrophe S, right?

Like John's book. Okay? John's book.

A-gi-ku-i. It's got to be like just a mantra. Possessive, yeah.

And just by convention, we're going to put a Y for the apostrophe I. Okay? Even after a dengbu or something where it's not so strong, but just to let the reader know it's there.

Sem-ke-dan. Anything else? Oh, that's a good point.

You could debate that.

[Speaker 2]
Yeah.

[Speaker 1]
You could debate that. But there's no thing close in English to ngo. That's why a lot of Tibetans get named Nawang, because their name got, you know...

Okay. All right. Say again?

[Speaker 2]
Would there actually be a Y on the G?

[Speaker 1]
Right. There shouldn't be one here. Okay?

Yeah, it would be like this.

[Speaker 2]
Okay.

[Speaker 1]
Anything else? Who did that? Yeah, I like it.

That's almost a... As an adjective, dendam-pe. Dendam-pe.

Dendam-denpa. It would probably be dendam, space, denpa. There's one more mistake here.

Yeah, ching. Okay? C-H.

Okay? That's all right. Okay.

[Speaker 2]
Yeah.

[Speaker 1]
I think it'll come in this book.

[Speaker 2]
Yeah.

[Speaker 1]
But I'll show you how you would find it. I mean, that's the whole point of this class. I mean, Kristi and I are thinking frequently that we're the only people in the world using the ACIP database that took millions of dollars to create and, you know, 20 years of work.

If you knew how to use it, you could look up these things yourself. That was one of the big hopes from this class. So you'd say, den-dam-den-pe-sen-ni.

You see? That's enough of sen-ni. Or if you wanted to do it easier, you'd say, dam-den-pe-sen.

Okay? And then kun-zo. Well, let's do dzob-den-pe.

Den-pe-sen-ni, right? Where would you look? Yeah, forget the kangyur-tengyur.

They're translations from Sanskrit, of obscure Sanskrit, and it's like English advanced physics books translated into Eskimo or something. Okay? It's not that helpful.

It's better to go for the Eskimo's own commentaries. So, really, honestly. So, sum-bum.

You want to narrow it down? It could be you could get the parts in definition or you could get the umma definition. So let's just let it run.

Okay? This is a very useful book, you see up here. This is Cankya Rupa Dorje's dupta, his siddhanta.

It's, yeah, a survey of the schools of philosophy of both India and Tibet, both Buddhist and non-Buddhist. So, like, for Sankhya, you have good stuff in here. And the later duptas even have Christian stuff in it.

So, um, now he's giving senshi, which is not our interest. Senshi again. Senshi again.

I want to skip to one of my yukchas. This is Ngawang Pelden, who I've just gained this great respect for because he, we're just finishing up the translation of his text on tantra, his overview of tantra, and it's just so exquisite. And he's such a great writer.

He's like on the level of Jetsun Kappa. He's really talented. And, I mean, he's, and he's a foreigner.

He's writing in a foreign language, you know. But anyway, here's his definition of dundandemba, kunthabdemba. chö kang la cha she su chong pa'am lu cha she shenpe It's, this is a mistake, okay, if you can read it here.

It should be shen sel na. It should be B-S-A-L-N-A, okay? Very difficult.

Anyway. ran dzinpe lo min gyur pey chun de, kunthabdemba. Definition of kunthabdemba.

I believe this is not highest definition. I think this is Abhidharma definition. I think we talked about it the other day.

chö kang la cha she su chong pa'am Anything which you can break into parts, reduce into parts, or lu cha she shen sel na, or even if mentally you break those parts apart, okay, then ran dzinpe lo min gyur, the mind cannot grasp that object anymore, is the definition of a deceptive truth object. That's the Abhidharma definition, okay? That's a very low definition, okay?

Something that when you reduce it, you lose it. You take away parts until finally you lose the thing. Let's skip this one.

Let's go to Uma. There's one in the Kala Chakra, but that's another. You're going to like the Kala Chakra in the last two tantric classes.

It's nothing you ever heard at the Kala Chakra, okay? It gets slower. Here's a nice one.

Hmm. Who's this? This is Chodayadapa Srirupa, and he's so clear.

He's so totally clear that if you see something by him, you stop. But unfortunately, read this, kun dzok denpe seni serna. It's somebody else's definition that he's about to blow away.

Don't touch it. How about this one? Is it a good one?

Does it say serna? Does it say serna? No, but what's over here?

Yeah, don't touch it, don't touch it. You know, that's a problem with the database if you're sort of new at it. You might say he said that as a definition, and then you'd be in trouble.

[Speaker 2]
I'm not going to touch it.

[Speaker 1]
Read this thing up here. What's this mark here? What do we say this mark is?

A new major section. What's this say? Nyipa?

Ranglukla. What's ranglukla? Our position.

That's very interesting. That's what we wanted. So normally, you keep going until you find a ranglukla.

Oh, here's what we believe. So this is a... You're going to get seni yewa dashepa thange dutsu-mindawa deni sikso chedato shepa.

You're going to get the definition of the two truths, the division of the two truths, why they're called deceptive and ultimate. And then thange. This is not D-R-A-N-G-E, which means what?

Yeah, figurative and literal. This thange means definite number, fixed number, only two. Not three, not one.

Dutsu-mindawa, different beliefs about them. Deni sikso, how you see the two truths. Chedato shepa.

And then a detailed explanation about how you see the two truths. Here's the first. rang-nyi nye-pey tse-ma rang-la-thar-tu, chod-je gyi tse-ma song-way go-ne, shak-pey rab-duk-che, che-wa-de.

Okay, che-wa-de. Dun-dam-pey tse-ni. That's not so good.

He didn't say dun-dam-den-pey tse-ni. He said dun-dam-pey tse-ni. Anyway, I'll just read a little bit.

rang-nyi nye-pey tse-ma, the pramana which finds it or locates it, rang-la-thar-tu, chod-je gyi tse-ma song-way go-ne, is relative to it a pramana which is investigating it in an ultimate way. The pramana which establishes it happens to be a pramana which is investigating it in an ultimate way. Song-way go-ne, shak-pey.

And it is defined in that way. Rab-duk-che-wa, de. That thing which is set apart in this way.

That thing which is set apart by the fact that it is established through a pramana which is investigating its ultimate nature is the definition of dun-dam-pa. Okay. That which is set apart by that kind of pramana.

dun-dam-pa tse-ni. rang-nyi nye-pey tse-ma, rang-la-thar-tu, chod-je gyi tse-ma song-way go-ne, shak-pey. Rab-duk-che-wa, de.

That truth which is set apart, which is distinguished by the fact that the pramana, the perception which finds it, which locates it, is a perception which is investigating it in a nominal way as opposed to an ultimate way is the definition of kun-dzob-dam-pa. The thing which establishes it is not searching for things in an ultimate way but only in a nominal way and that's kun-dzob-dam-pa. kun-dzob-dam-pey tse-ni.

But I wanted to show you, since we're on the subject, you asked for it, right? Only nominally, dun-dam-denpa can be divided into 16 kinds of emptiness or 18 kinds of emptiness or 20 kinds of emptiness. je je re kyi go-ne yin na.

Divided nominally, you can say there are object ultimate reality and subject ultimate reality. The first object ultimate reality, emptiness, the real nature of things, the way things are, the realm of existence, the ultimate end of things are all synonyms. kun-dzob-dam-pa.

Deceptive reality can be divided into good deceptive reality and bad deceptive reality. That's Rangyupa, right? Examples of the first would be the lack of a self-nature to a person, an existing object, a functional thing, a vase, colors, and mind.

These are nice, these are good kun-dzob-dam-pas. Yeah, he says, of a person, which in their system is not emptiness. It's a lower emptiness.

This is Sautrantika. Prachin. Yeah.

No, it's not ultimate reality. The lack of self-existence of a person is not ultimate reality to them. Anyway, it's like number two.

Okay. The water in a mirage, the reflection in a mirror, the fact that a sprout could exist in truth, the fact that a sprout could have some nature of its own, the fact that a sprout could exist in an unchanging way without depending on any other thing, these are, for things to appear that way, is what we call fake false reality. Deceptive, deceptive reality.

Okay? In their system. Here's the nice part.

There's a reason why we call something ultimate reality. The reason we call something ultimate reality is that when an ultimate state of mind meaning the wisdom of a person who is in deep meditation in which they are perceiving emptiness directly, what appears to their perception and what really is are consistent with each other. Netsa, the way it is.

I don't know. It sounds good to me. Thunbar dembena.

Because it is true in that sense, dundam demba. It is ultimate reality. Here comes kundzop demba.

There's a reason why we call something like a blade of grass deceptive reality. Because even though it appears as existing in truth to this tendency to hold things as self-existent which is a deceived state of mind, whereas in fact it doesn't exist in truth, we call it deceptive reality. Okay.

So, a deceived state of mind holds it to be truly existing whereas in fact it doesn't truly exist and therefore we call it deceptive reality. So, those are the definitions of kundzop demba in Parchin. You're going to want Uma, right?

See if there's any difference. It's fun. I don't know.

We'll never finish the other book, but that's okay. We're in the T's, right? Oh, here we go.

Uma. I'm going to wait until I find somebody I really like. Let's see.

Here's a commentary. I think it's Gyaltsabje's commentary to Bodhisattva Charyavatara. It has a definition turned in there, but that would be too...

that would be a little difficult. Here's a whole text on the two truths, but it's probably not from our monastery. Here's Gombo Rapsa, but it will be too complicated.

Here's Nambelan. Yeah. Let's just do him for good luck.

Well, here you're in the Abhidharma again, so I got to get out of here. Yeah, this is Abhidharma.

[Speaker 2]
Yeah.

[Speaker 1]
I don't think you want to be here. Okay, let's go somewhere else. It's too difficult.

He's into like all four schools. This is definitely not. What's that SJ?

Uma Chidan, according to... Sid. Here's a Kachi Kunsal Dambetseni.

We don't want that. These are all other people, Saipiyas. These are all Sarnas.

Sorry.

[Speaker 2]
No.

[Speaker 1]
No, not really. No, they're both equally sarcastic. This is a little complicated.

I don't know. Let's just do it quick. That object, which the state of mind, which is investigating the ultimate nature of things, locates, is the definition of ultimate reality, ultimate truth.

Yeah, it's not much different. And the definition of deceptive reality is that object which is located by a correct perception which is operating on a nominal plane. Nominal.

And then he refutes it slightly because he doesn't cover Buddhas. That's all the easy places. So I think we go back to our text.

It'll come. Okay. I like it.

[Speaker 2]
Okay.

[Speaker 1]
So, we touched on it last week. When you say bodhisattva levels, why are they called bodhisattva levels? Because people who have bodhicitta are on them.

But what kind of bodhicitta? Ultimate bodhicitta, which is the direct perception of emptiness. So, the ten levels are named bodhisattva levels not because you're a nice guy when you're on them, but because you've seen emptiness.

And in fact, you don't reach the first bodhisattva level until you reach the path of seeing in the Mahayana tribe. So, so to call them bodhisattva levels is almost deceptive. Right?

They should have been called ultimate reality levels or something like that. Okay? All right.

Let's read it. One, two, three. I'm going to do one more pronunciation thing with you.

Comments? No, you see it all the time. Get any publication from any Dharma center in the world and it looks like this.

It's like, drives you, it drives you crazy. What it means is the person who did it doesn't have a logical state of mind. No.

No, they don't have a consistent state of mind. So that means they can't be, that means whatever the book is about is also thrown into question. You see what I mean?

If they don't have the logic to do the pronunciation, in a consistent way, then that throws doubt upon the contents of the book, for me. Okay, anyway. Dayang, where, any problems here?

Yeah, no, it's, okay, that's, that was transcription and not pronunciation.

[Speaker 2]
Right?

[Speaker 1]
Any others? Yeah, poor Lama Zopa. Okay.

Suck me. Where's that, Dayang? Oh.

Yeah, good. Who said that? That's good.

Are you doing this? Sign up with Rob Ho. Okay.

Dayang ngo suck me yeshe yinpa dang. Yeah, cinche. Okay.

No S. Yeah. New chamber.

Z. Right? Because what's the difference between that, those two letters?

Sa and sa. It's just the, it's just the tone. It's not that one is a Z and one is a S.

So how come we see Z all the time? That's transliteration. It was used to, for two different symbols.

Because we didn't have two, we didn't have a high-tone S and a low-tone S in English, the alphabet. So we used the Z.

[Speaker 2]
Okay.

[Speaker 1]
Simpe gong ne?

[Speaker 2]
Yeah, that's it.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, and that's a thing where you have to train the reader. You have to say, look, when you see a final E, it's not the silent E that makes the O long. It's pronounced.

All E's are pronounced. In my pronunciation system, all E's are A. Gone A.

It's not gone. And you have to tell them that. Sometimes you'll just come up with a word that is spelled like a real English word, but they have to be trained.

You have a little one-page thing at the beginning that says, E is always pronounced A. O is always pronounced O. U is always pronounced O.

You know, like that. Yeah. Yeah.

It also has to be broken. Yeah, gone A. Where is that?

Oh, yeah. That was another boo-boo. It sounds more like that to somebody.

We'll test it on somebody. I just used to see myself walking down New York on Fifth Avenue and stopping people at random and saying, could you pronounce these two words? Who doesn't know Tibetan?

At all. Come on. Michael Dunn.

Okay. Pronounce these two. Yeah.

Yeah. Chenpo and Chenpu. Now I'll pronounce something and you tell me which is closer.

First or second? Chenpo. The first or the second?

How would you spell it if I said Chenpo? Don't go that. Choose one of these two.

Chenpo. Yeah. Chenpu.

Yeah. There it is. That's all.

A normal person who doesn't know Tibetan hears it as Chenpu, more than Chenpo, even though it's neither one. Okay. That's your test.

That's how you should test these things. Then they'll say, I think it's a B-H-U and then you're in trouble. Okay.

Okay. Then you get really complicated. Any other?

Nyam su len... Nyam su lenpa is a little tricky. Do you cut it off because it's a postposition?

Do you leave it on because it has stopped being a postposition in most people's minds? And they just say, nyam su len su, nyam su lenpa. I would put nyam su lenpa because it's got glued on by now.

It's not a separate word anymore. It's not a preposition anymore in Tibetan people's minds. Okay, anyway.

We have to glue this up above. I'll tell you why. He's going to make four points here and he separates each one with a dung, which means what?

But then one of these he separated with a ching. Why? That's an alternate, right?

You can say shing, ching for dung, right? So why did he use... He's got four elements.

He used three dungs and one ching. Why? He wants to draw your attention to something.

What? How many dungs did I say we had? How many elements did I say we had?

So why do we need a ching? That would mean five elements. It's like a hamburger.

There's two buns, one piece of meat. He wants you to read the first two together. You have to be sensitive to that or else you'll mistranslate.

So the ching, you're not supposed to cut until you get to the first dung. So that means we have to take this and put it back up here. And then you glue it onto the sentence.

Let's read together. One, two, three. We'll keep going.

Then we'll talk about it. One, two, three. One, two, three.

I'll just draw your attention if you're a translator. What's this word here? Say nje.

Nje. It's not je. And it's a very, very, very common mistake.

Okay? Je means what? The most common verb in any language after is.

To do. Okay? This ain't to do.

This has an au. This has an au. It's an au prefix letter.

So it becomes a totally different word which means to divide. You know the noun yewa that comes from this. A division.

Yewa. You only see this word in colloquial when they say godje da. What's that mean?

Godje da. Godje da. Open the door.

Because it means split the door. You see? It means make a space.

Split the word open. You see? Nje.

Okay? So... So never...

Always be sensitive to this one. 99% of the time it's the verb to do. With the prefix letter it's to divide.

Okay? Alright? And if you have your prenasals down you wouldn't have made the mistake anyway.

Because you would have heard in your mind Nje. Which is not je. Got it?

Okay. Rabga. Rabdagawa.

Uh... I had it today. And I want to use the same...

I want to be consistent. It's the name of the first bodhisattva lover. Right?

Rabdagawa. Also known as Rabga which is not an uncommon personal name in Tibet. So I go back to...

I was working on your tantric reading today. So I just see if... what I used.

And that's... There it is. You see?

The level of extreme bliss. You see? So that way if you use this search program if you get good at it you can go check how you translated it earlier this afternoon.

And then you can be consistent across your translations.

[Speaker 2]
Right?

[Speaker 1]
Okay. What did we say? Extreme...

[Speaker 2]
Extreme bliss.

[Speaker 1]
So what he's saying is when you talk about bodhisattva levels we want you to be talking about them in four different ways. What are they? In what...

You have to talk about bodhisattva levels as being levels of what? Wisdom. Of emptiness.

Okay? That's the first point he wants to make. So this is going to carry you on to the next three years or something, right?

Why... When we talk about bodhisattva levels we're talking about four different things. Number one.

State of wisdom that perceives emptiness. Okay? We're not talking about bodhicitta.

We're talking about ultimate bodhicitta. Okay? And just for those people who didn't know what ultimate wish for enlightenment was ultimate bodhicitta he told you.

That's, by the way, wisdom. Immaculate means which sees emptiness. We're going to talk about it.

Okay? Number two. Although the bodhisattva level is made of wisdom it's imbued with a second mental quality which is what?

Great compassion. Great compassion. Why did they say imbued?

What's the imbued mean? Say it? Yeah, good.

You're not toggling? Yeah, but not manifest. That feeling is not manifest.

This is a way to get out of the problem of what? But specifically at what moment? Yeah.

Yeah. We had it last night. We were talking about it last night.

So if you don't come to the debate ground you're just a loser. I told you that? Yeah, okay.

No, but you're seeing emptiness directly so you can't have any other kinds of thoughts at that moment. So if you've already achieved bodhicitta and then you go into the direct perception of emptiness do you suddenly for that period of time become not a bodhisattva? Do you suddenly for the 20 minutes you're in the direct perception of emptiness are you back to being a non-bodhisattva?

Why? Because you don't have bodhicitta in your mind. Yeah, you do.

No, you don't because it's not manifest. Then they say, oh, well, it's just imbued. The mind is just imbued with it.

Okay? All right? That's our wrong look about how you get out of this problem.

Okay? Not all schools accept, not all monasteries accept that. So two qualities so far.

A bodhisattva level is a state of bodhicitta but what kind of bodhicitta? Ultimate bodhicitta. That having been said, it's still imbued with great compassion or normal bodhicitta you can say.

And whenever you talk about bodhisattva levels you have to divide them into ten basically. Ten basically. Okay?

Ten bodhisattva levels. Sometimes you'll see twelve, sometimes you'll see eleven. We'll talk about it.

In Tantra you might see twelve. Huh? I don't know why.

I think he's using that as bodhicitta now and maybe he wanted to avoid bodhicitta because some people weren't quite used to thinking that it could mean the perception of emptiness. But we'll see. Yeah?

I was just wondering if this is a... You could say that. Wisdom imbued with great compassion equals nothing wisdom in the mind of a bodhisattva.

You could say that. You could say that. Then number three, we're going to be dividing this into ten levels.

[Speaker 2]
Okay?

[Speaker 1]
The first one being extreme bliss, etc. It's interesting that the final path, the final level, which is called Chökyiṭin, Dharmamāga, is also the final path in the Yoga Sutra, in the fourth chapter, Dharmamāga Samādhi. It was really fun to talk with the Sankhyas at length about how they saw that level explained.

But it's beautiful that they're called the same thing. So at some point they're probably the same. Number four, we wanted a literal explanation of its name, bodhisattva level.

Why is it a bodhisattva level? So these four are going to be... These are typical subjects that come up when you're talking about bodhisattva levels.

Why? Oh, I think I need a cough drop. Somebody got into this one, Beth.

Yeah, right. What was your excuse again? You are sitting next to Rex, you know.

Rex, somebody got into this chalk, somebody opened it. It wasn't a mouth, right? It was a boy mouth.

Okay. One, two, three. He's quoting another book.

He says, because that book says because that. Okay? I got it?

Okay, here we go. What's Chanjusemba? Bodhisattva.

What's Yeshe? Bodhisattva. Wisdom.

[Speaker 2]
Okay.

[Speaker 1]
Compassion. Simba. Held.

Meaning imbued. Past tense of zimba. Okay?

Yeah, the name's a name. You could say that. Yeah.

Nice. Yeah, what name? What name?

I mean, this is how this sentence reads. If you follow it, the syntax, this is what it says. Okay?

So whenever you come to a sentence that doesn't equal a sentence, as a translator, no, I mean, you know syntax perfectly, you translate perfectly, it just doesn't make sense. It's not a sentence. What would you do?

No, as a unit, as a syntactical unit, I've translated it perfectly and it doesn't make any sense at all. What would you do? Go to the source.

Who said that? Eva. Go make sure it's not a miscarving that they've been passing on for 400 years or 500 years and nobody bothered that it didn't quite make sense.

Okay? So here we go. Take a few unique pieces of it, which means you don't want to use what?

You're not going to search for dung. Right? Okay?

Say no, no. Yeah, we're not going to search for dung. There's four billion dungs in the database.

Okay? You'll be an old man or woman by the time you find this one. What's a unique piece here?

I'll just say sim-pa-ni-char. You can take weird pieces. You can take half of one phrase and half of another phrase.

That's pretty weird. How about ming-to-te-yun-ten? I'll throw in three just for good measure.

Yun-den-ki-ne-su. Okay. We're going to look in kang-gyur, teng-gyur, or sum-bum.

So there aren't any commentaries in the sum-bum? You're right, but tell me why you're right. So why don't I look in the sum-bum?

Who said that? Yeah. Yeah.

Andrea said... It's a yellow commentary. It's Master Chandrakirti's commentary.

Okay? No, this is K. W.

Demond Duggar writing in the 16th century. Okay. Here we go.

So, teng-gyur. It makes a lot fewer hits if we could specify um-ma, the Madhamika section. Okay?

Path does not exist. Yep. Okay.

I forgot A. Um, check this out. Chang-ju-sen-pa-nam-gi nying-je.

Chang-ju-sen-pa-nam-gi sa-pa-me-pe-ye-shi nying-je. La-sok-pe. La-sok-pe.

Where are we? Yong-su-sung-wa. Sim-pe.

Konar. Char-nam-par-che-wa-ni. Char-nam-par-che-wa-ne.

Then what? Then what? What comes right before that?

Nam-par-che-wa. What's it say in the original? Nam-par-che-wa- ni.

Nam-par-che-wa-ni. Sa. It doesn't mean ne at all.

It made sense. Ne makes sense, almost. It's like a miscarving for 500 years and then the Giku broke off the woodblock, which happens.

They're just woodblocks. There's a wood that gets old and then the smallest parts break off. Now what's it say?

We take the... I'm going to leave it because it makes as much sense. We take the Immaculate Wisdom of the Bodhisattvas, imbued with compassion and the rest, and we divide it into different parts that we call levels.

You see? We take the Immaculate Wisdom of the Bodhisattvas, imbued with compassion and the rest, and we divide it into different parts that we give the name of levels, that is states in the attainment of spiritual qualities. Four different actions have taken place in this one sentence.

What are they? This one sentence by Master Chantakirti satisfies the four subjects we're supposed to talk about when we talk about the levels. Why?

What was the first one? Let people know they are wisdom. They are the wisdom of the Immaculate Buddha.

Let them know they're imbued with compassion and the rest. Let them know they're divided into parts. And explain the literal meaning of the name.

Okay? So, he's like showing off. Master Chantakirti, in a single sentence, has satisfied all four subjects you should talk about when you talk about Bodhisattva levels, in a single sentence.

So he's like, look, you know, Master Chantakirti did it with one, I see like a sword, you know, like a knot, what do you call this knot? Gordian knot. He's just like, you know, all he needs is one sentence to do it all.

Got it? Yeah. That's a good question.

I was wondering about that. What are the other two qualities that they mentioned at the beginning? Maybe that's, maybe that's the missing bodhicitta?

Maybe it's bodhicitta and compassion? No. It's already the mind that transcends duality.

So maybe it's imbued with compassion and bodhicitta. You see?

[Speaker 2]
I don't know.

[Speaker 1]
We'll look into it further.

[Speaker 2]
Yeah. Good.

[Speaker 1]
One, two, three. KHA CHIK DIR DEN PAS SAK ME KHE DUN NGO DANG SUNG DEN CHI RIG GI GONE SAK PA GESU RUNG WA LA SAK CHE DANG DE ME PA LA SAK ME DUN DRUM PA MI RIG TE Who got that? Who is that?

Stella? Her chocolate thing said, flirting is mandatory. That's been going on a while.

Okay. Just coincidence. Okay.

So, this is tricky, okay? This is from the first lines of the Abhidharmakosha. CHOS NAM SAK CHE SAB PA ME Say, CHOS NAM CHOS NAM SAK CHE SAK CHE SAB PA ME SAB PA ME All things can be divided into those things which are stained and those things which are not stained.

SAK ME LAM GYI DEN PA DANG DU MA CHE NAM SUM YANG TE Say, SAK ME SAK ME LAM GYI DEN PA DANG DU MA CHE NAM SUM YANG TE And it also says, all DU CHES are SAK CHE. All changing things, according to the Abhidharma, except the path, except the true path, are SAK CHE, stained. SAK ME LAM GYI DEN PA DANG DU MA CHE NAM SUM YANG TE The only things which are not stained are, the only changing thing which is unstained is the path, the true path, and the three kinds of unchanging things.

NAM KHAB DANG NI GOPA NYID Empty space and the two kinds of cessation. So what he's doing here is, a debater comes and he says, what's the essence of a bodhisattva bhumi? What's a bodhisattva bhumi made of?

Is it like a place? Yeah, it's a level of wisdom. It's a level of understanding, which is SAK ME, immaculate or unstained.

So he says, oh yeah, okay. And I remember back in our Abhidharma class, stained meant, anything which is either made of stain or which contributes to the growth of stain. I like contribute, that was good.

Okay, so an example of something which by its very nature contributes to the growth of stains is anger. It's a stain itself, stain in the sense of a mental affliction. Here's stain as a mental affliction.

So anger is by its nature a stain in the Abhidharma sense. But while you're angry, you're also aware of the object. If I'm angry at a person, I'm also aware of their colors, their shapes, their way they sound, the way they smell, everything, right?

So those awarenesses, are they stained? By association. You see, it's what we call by being linked mentally.

And this is a whole thing that you have to learn someday about tsung den nam pa nga, the five ways in which one mental function can be associated or linked to another mental function. In this case, the anger and the perception of the person's color, of their face, are occurring at the same time. They're occurring in the same subject state of mind.

They have the same aspect, general aspect, like that. They have the same foundation. They're based on the same sense power.

These are ways of being linked. So, something is screwy, either because its nature is screwy, like anger, or because it's so tightly linked to a screwy thing, like your visual sense as you are very angry at somebody. So then it infects the visual sense.

Yeah. It is. Yeah.

Okay. And then unstained means something that's not like that. And in the Abhidharma, the only example would be lam den, the direct perception of emptiness or something like that.

[Speaker 2]
Okay.

[Speaker 1]
The true path. Because that state of mind can't contribute to the growth of mental affliction. Cannot contribute to the mental...

So there's this debate in the Abhidharma, you know. So suppose a non-Buddhist sage who has the power of clairvoyance reads a mind of an Arya who's in the direct perception of emptiness and gets jealous of them. Isn't the true path then contributing to the growth of a mental affliction?

That's a nice debate though, right? It's a cool debate. Maybe.

I don't know. Maybe later he got jealous. It still contributed to the growth of his jealousy.

The direct perception of emptiness has contributed to the growth of a stain. And that's the definition of stained. Or they look at an Arhat and they get jealous of him.

So an Arhat has contributed to the growth of jealousy, so an Arhat must be stained. Sakche. This is nirmala, by the way.

Nirmala and... Huh? Yeah.

Okay, got it though? I mean, in general, that's the Abhidharma's view. Whether you can defend it or not, have fun trying to defend Abhidharma things.

Yeah.

[Speaker 2]
Oh.

[Speaker 1]
Okay. So for them, the wisdom, immaculate wisdom would mean a wisdom which cannot contribute, which is not a mental affliction and cannot contribute to the growth of mental affliction. Okay.

That's what they hear when we say immaculate or unstained. He's pulling up an Abhidharma to position. They never say that that's what it is, but it's the...

[Speaker 2]
Right. Yeah.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, that's a weakness with their definition. Okay. One, two, three.

den dzin dang de, bhak chak la, sak pa dang, de me pa la, dir ten, sak me kyi den, yin pe chir. We forgot a little piece back here. Okay.

But this was at Mirakde.

[Speaker 2]
Okay. Yeah.

[Speaker 1]
And that's true because the word stained. I think in the context here, right?

[Speaker 2]
Okay.

[Speaker 1]
Thanks. Okay. So whereas in the Abhidharma, stained means all mental afflictions, he's saying in our context, we're talking about the Bodhisattva Bhumis as being levels of unstained wisdom.

What we mean is wisdom which is not stained by either the tendency to think of things as self-existent or the mental seed for that tendency. Got it? Absolutely.

Yeah, yeah. No, you can have the seed without the tendency at the eighth, ninth, and tenth... at the eighth and ninth Bodhisattva levels.

We got one more little piece. Hmm. By the way, then he's going to go into the question of whether it's ever possible for us to have immaculate wisdom.

Okay. Does it exist in the mind of a normal person? Is it possible at all?

But one more thing here. Let's read this together. One, two...

Wait, are we going to go up or down? No downs? Nobody for down?

Oh, you're getting too good. Okay, we're going to go up with the dertao because it's us talking, okay? It's us defending our own idea.

What was our idea? Stain refers not to that which promotes mental affliction or is mental affliction, but rather to the tendency to think of things as self-existent and the seed for that, okay? Dertao.

One, two, three. Dertao. Denzin sakpe.

Tsowa yinpe. True.

[Speaker 2]
I don't know.

[Speaker 1]
The stain we're talking about here is the tendency to think of things as self-existent because that's the main mental problem. Because that's the main form of stain. It sounds like he's going back to saying stain means all mental afflictions.

Doesn't it? We call... When we say stain here in the Madhyamika Avatara, we mean the tendency to think that things exist in truth because that's the main kind of stain.

I don't know. It's kind of wimpy. It's kind of...

I don't know. What do you call that? Sophistry to me.

I don't know. Okay. Sorry?

[Speaker 2]
You implied that it's an afflicted state of mind because it grasps at things as having a nature...

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, there's a big debate whether ignorance is a mental affliction. Because laziness is what anger is. Laziness is considered an afflicted state of mind.

I don't know. I think it is. I think so.

I think so. But look it up. Hang on one second.

I think it's in the... Hang on a minute. Okay.

Here it is. It's in the list of 26 lesser mental afflictions. Okay.

Okay. I think we'll stop there. But one more thing.

Is it possible to have a sākmekā yeshe before you reach Buddhahood? You have to think about that. Is it possible to have an immaculate wisdom before you reach Buddhahood?

If... Yeah. If stain means the tendency to hold things as existing from their own side or the seed for that stain.

[Speaker 2]
Okay.

[Speaker 1]
You can debate it. Okay. All right.

Think about it until Monday.

[Speaker 2]
Okay. All right. Thanks.

Satsang with Mooji www.mooji.org