Вступление на срединный путь (текущий курс, Аризона), занятие 52

[Speaker 1]
One of the results of seeing emptiness is that within a short time your body will turn into light. And they call it the rainbow body. And it's considered very auspicious if at the first few moments of the class a rainbow comes out.

Seriously, so your karma, each person here has made that rainbow, you know, that we saw just now. So each of you has this seed. Each person here has created the rainbow.

And so it's very auspicious for each person here that you will see emptiness. And this is, I think, one of the greatest books ever written on emptiness. It's a commentary, explanation of Jetsun Kappa's greatest book on emptiness.

I don't know, I was looking at it briefly last night, I don't have time. The plan for this course was, it's just as if I were just translating it on my own and you're just sitting in the room. So it wasn't meant, you weren't meant to know what was going on.

Or, you know, it was just supposed to be like that. And it's a vision that we have during three-year retreat that it would be up on the wall and you would be following it. And those of you who want to be translators would be learning the tricks of translation.

And those of you who think you're not going to be a translator would be getting seeds that would make you translators later. And I'm happy with the progress of the people. You know, I've watched, I asked you just to sit in the class and stay in the class.

When I first went to the monastery, they said, how many years have you studied with Ken Rinpoche? I said, eight years. So they said, oh, well, then we'll just put you in Madhyamika class.

You can skip the first eight years, you know. And I sat in Madhyamika class for one night. In fact, I debated gime cancer in retreat.

He was eight years ahead of me. And then I said, no, you have to put me back with the kids, you know. And I said, I don't understand anything that's going on, you know.

And especially when they talk fast, I don't know what anyone's saying, you know. And they said, just stay there, just sit there, and it will sink in. You know, that's the Tibetan idea in the monastery.

Even if you don't get everything, just stay there. Just stay in this class. If you have time, you know, and if it's good for you, then stay.

You don't have to understand everything. You don't have to learn Tibetan. The ideas will sink into your mind, and they will pop out ten years later.

You'll have some extraordinary experience ten years later. So every scrap of Dharma you can get, every single word you can hear, do it. It's not wasted, nothing is wasted.

And don't get impatient. I mean, this is a Western thing, this is an American thing, you know. Don't think, oh, I need to learn everything the first day or something like that.

You know, it doesn't go like that. It's many lifetimes of work, and it's like yoga asanas, you know. Like if you get a quarter of an inch every four months further, that's fine, you know, that's good.

And then over eight years, it will change, you know. So don't be impatient, and don't think you're getting shortchanged if you can't keep up with everything, or, you know. It's not like that.

Everything is going at its proper pace. And just trust the Lama, okay? Speaking of Lamas, we're honored today to have a guest from the capital of Dharma students in America, which is Cincinnati.

I think Cincinnati, for some weird reason, has contributed more great students to Diamond Mountain than any other town or city in the world. And they tell me it's because of this fellow, Morgan, who was kind enough to start the study group in Cincinnati. So we'd like to honor Morgan tonight.

Then I was looking at the text last night. I didn't have any time. But I don't remember where we were.

I don't remember what they were talking about. And I tried. I had like 15 minutes.

I tried to look, and I didn't... I said, I'll just close the computer, you know. So I'm going to do what I would do if you weren't here.

You know, I would try to figure out where we were. And I would, as a translator, if I had been off for five months, off of a text, I wouldn't jump right back into it. And this is some kind of rule you can write down in the translation rules.

It's preferable to do a translation in one shot, if you can. Even if it's a shot of three or four years. Just if you can do it in one period, it's better.

If you can just do it every day for like an hour and a half. I read a book by... I don't remember his name.

He's some modern writer. Wouk? Henry Wouk?

Herman Wouk? I think so. Really great books.

But in one of his fiction books, he describes an author who's being taught by another author. And the other author says, you should... He said, what's the trick of being a writer?

And he says, just do it every day for an hour and a half. No matter what. And you can see in Herman Wouk's books that he's done that.

He cranks out these huge novels, and they're good. So, as a translator, one of the tricks of producing a good translation is set aside an hour, an hour and a half a day, and try to knock it out in one shot. Even if it's a four year thing.

Don't stop. Don't take breaks like this summer. And if you can, do it under special conditions, like retreat conditions.

If you can be in silence while you're writing, then the muse, you can hear the muse better, and it'll come out better. So, as far as you can maintain silence. Personally, I like to translate early in the day, if it's something important, because your mind is fresh, and you're more creative.

I find that in the evening, I do the dumb work, like emails and stuff like that, that doesn't take much creativity or deep thinking. So that's just a suggestion. If you do get stuck having taken six months off or something, then here's what I would do.

It's what we're going to do today. The Tibetans, ever since the time of about the first dilemma, or even earlier, when they write a book, they put in the book an outline. It's like a table of contents, but it's spread throughout the book.

And I would go back and study the outline, to remember where I am. So, we're going to do that tonight. We'll extract the outline from the book, as far as we can.

And then that will put everybody on the, what do you call it, page? On the same page, as far as where we are. Because some people weren't here last semester, or last year, or the last ten years.

So, here we go. Also, just as a translator, you have to be a project manager. You have to judge, are you going to make this translation in ten years?

Or do you have to change your plan? You see, we've been at it now for two years. So another thing I would do as a translator, I would, as a project manager, I would study, how far have I gotten on the translation?

How much have I got to go? Do I really want to do the root text and Jetsun Kappa's text also? I got this three-year retreat coming in the face now.

2010, right? Are we in a position to put out maybe one volume? Those are the kind of decisions I would make tonight.

So, maybe we do that first. So, we'll just take a look. It's been one year, two years.

Let's see how far we've gotten. This is easy. You go down to the first page, which would be a ampersand.

Sometimes the ASCII code for the Tibetan is an ampersand also. So anyway, but we're on page 21, okay? Of how many pages?

Then you skip to the end. It's 162 pages. At this rate, we'll be done in 14 more years.

Right? 16 years total. So then you have to make some decisions.

Also, we'll look... This was sort of a... We were going to translate two texts simultaneously, of Gompa Rapsa, which we haven't really started into yet.

And that's another 250 pages, which at our rate would take 10 more years. So we're looking at 26 years right now. Go faster?

I don't know. Do it in Sri Retreat? I already asked.

I got a no today. I think, just personally, I would... I would continue on the same pace, on the same track.

And I don't think it's appropriate to go over the Gompa Rapsa. We may not be able to do that right now. We may be looking at classes after the Sri Retreat or something.

God knows where we'll be or what we'll be doing. I don't know. But practically speaking, I like the way the class is going.

I think having everyone participate slows it down. But that's what the class is for, really. So I think we'll just keep going at whatever we're doing.

Now about figuring out where we were and what we were studying. I would go to the outline. So we scroll down.

This is the beginning. He does poetry at the beginning. He bows down to all the lamas.

And sooner or later, he'll get into... Here we go. Here's where he starts his outline.

And so I would start an outline. Outline of... What's the text called?

Uma Chidin. Say Uma Chidin. Uma Chidin.

What's Uma mean? Middle way. Chidin.

Sorry? Yeah, overview. Chi means general.

Din means meaning. So it means an overview of the whole middle way. Outline of Uma Chidin.

And there are many... It's a generic name. There are Uma Chidins from Daewoong Monastery.

There's an Uma Chidin from Ganden. There's even one from Ganden Shantse and Ganden Changtse. So each college has its own Uma Chidin.

Sometimes more than one. We have more than one. I think Chonyu Dal Pashedu also wrote an Uma Chidin.

So it's a kind of generic name. And it's as opposed to what? Uma...

Tachir. Say Tachir. Tachir.

Tachir. So they usually write the textbooks in pairs. And Tachir is a...

is more in-depth. It's an analysis. Tachir means to analyze.

So normally a Tachir would be much longer. So a monastic in the 16th century would write a Uma Chidin. And then he'd write a Uma Tachir to explain it.

And normally the Tachir would be much longer. The Parchant Tachir, the analysis of Perfectional Wisdom, is a beautiful text. If you're going to study monastic textbooks, you would study the...

For Parchant Paramita, for the Perfectional Wisdom, you would do the Tachir. And for Middle Way, you would do the... It happens to be that the Chidin is more a robust text from Sarah May in the case of Madhyamika.

In the case of Middle Way. So... Outline a Uma Chidin.

Start with... We'll do it in English, I guess. And this is how I would do it.

Just copying over. Okay? So those are your big four categories.

Oftentimes, Tibetan outlines aren't... One way they're called... Sabje.

Say Sabje. Sabje. Sabje.

Sabje. It's... For those of you who care, it's S-A-B-C-A-D.

Okay? So the prefix letter is pronounced. Sabje.

Say Sabje. Sabje. Sa means level or ground.

Like ha-sa means place of the gods or ground of the gods. And je means to cut. Like...

What's the word for diamond cutter? Dorje jupa. Or chedika.

And je is another form of that verb. So Sabje means to cut the levels or make an outline of a text. It's very nice to have the outline.

It's an easy way... Like when you're debating in a real debate ground, you usually memorize the subject first. You know, you'd memorize the subject for Uma Chidin.

And then you can debate... You can debate subjects for weeks. And it's very helpful because then you get an idea of the whole structure of the text.

It's like having a map of the whole North and South America. And then you get smaller maps of each country. And then you get smaller maps of each county and like that.

But a Sabje shows you the whole picture. I like Sabjes. I mean, I used to sit in the...

Howl in that little room and just do Sabjes. You know, write out the Sabje in Tibetan. It takes like...

It used to take me like six months. And then it started to take two months. And then it was like a couple days.

You can do a Sabje. But then you see the whole text. So we've done the meaning of the title of the text.

Which text? Umla Jigpa. In Sanskrit?

What's that mean? What's the meaning of the title? By the way, that was written by who?

Master Chandrakirti. Back in... 650?

About 650? As a commentary to... Mula Prajna.

The root text on wisdom. Which is Arya Nagarjuna's most famous text on emptiness. Which is beginning tonight in Bhagavad-Gita.

You are beginning the most famous book ever written by Arya Nagarjuna on emptiness. And it is the original text of all treatments on emptiness since then. So since 200 AD every book on emptiness has referred to that book.

So you have the honor if you are in Bhojjyama if you did your work. Don't try to get in otherwise. You have the honor of meeting that text tonight.

In Tibetan they say chun jel. Say chun jel. Chun means dharma, right?

Jel means to meet the dharma. They don't say read a book. Or they don't say see a temple.

They say hwagang je jeyu be. Did you meet the temple? Almost as if it were a person.

You see? So you are going to jel. Tonight you will jel Arya Nagarjuna and his text.

And everything we are doing is just a derivative of those short haiku-like zenny emptiness verses which are profound. They are really, really, really. I think to understand them you have to take a whole bottle of mandala first.

And then, you know, and then just stare at them for a while. Maybe do a headstand. I don't know.

And then, no, and then suddenly you feel it. Then you, because they are like riddles. They are like riddles, you know.

And the Sanskrit is very difficult. They are very short, very tiny and impossible to understand. That's why all these thousands of books have come from that one book.

Thousands and thousands of commentaries from that one book. So really everything we are doing is a commentary on the Bhagavad Gita. So what did Umla Jupa mean?

What is, oh, so Master Chandrakirti wrote two commentaries on emptiness, on that book. What's the other one? Clear Words, Sixth Self, or Sannapada.

And that one was a word by word commentary. So, Krishnila was reading that all summer in the Sanskrit to understand the root text. Because we have a nice edition done by a great Indian Pandit of the root text with the Sanskrit.

Sanskrit root text, Sanskrit clear words put in the proper places. It probably took him 20 years or something, I don't know. So that's a word by word commentary.

And this one is a Dunda. This is a meaning commentary. This just covers the meaning.

It doesn't go word by word. You don't see Arya Nagarjuna's text in this commentary. He doesn't say, oh, this is what that verse means, or like that.

You won't see that. But was... So, did it mean...

What's it mean, Uma Lajupa? Entering the middle way, but what does that mean? What did he say?

Do you guys remember? Yeah, in one sense, it's entering that other text, which is sometimes sometimes called just Uma Tencha, Madhyamaka Shastra, the commentary on the middle way. Sometimes it's not called Wisdom Prajna.

Sometimes it's just called commentary on the middle way. So we're entering that middle way. We're entering that book.

Sometimes you can say it means that. Any other meaning? The Uma Lajupa?

Yeah, sort of. They would say that. But then, so would the independents go.

They would curse the Tantra.

[Speaker 2]
Sorry? They would say that it's their root text.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah. But... Well, they might not.

But anyway, yeah, it's that also. But... What would it mean to really get in the middle way?

Yeah, see emptiness directly is truly getting into the middle way. What would it mean in yoga? Yeah, getting the Ida and Pangala into the Sushumna.

That would be entering the middle way. Or the Prana upon our bodies into the middle of the body. What would it mean as far as extremes?

Yeah, and what would that mean as far as the lady in the ice cream shop? Two wrong ideas about her. What's the first and what's the second?

That's one. That's one. So, thinking that she's not coming for me is one.

Realizing that she comes for me or thinking that she doesn't come for me and thinking that if she does come for me then she's not real. That would be the other. I'll say it again.

You've been going to the 31 flavors. If you haven't, you should go. In Bui.

I mean, until the Lizard Lounge. I mean, the Nectar Lounge. That was the only place to get ice cream.

But, you know, if you've been going in there and just thinking she's just there. She's just there. Some nights she's mean to me and sometimes she's good to me.

Sometimes she gives me three sample spoons and then sometimes she says, there's no sample spoons today. And I've cleaned up half the ice cream already. It happens.

I can tell you. And last Wednesday night I had the money but I didn't get the ice cream because our car blew a tire in the road cars. But anyway.

So money doesn't get you ice cream. But that's another thing. So the wrong view.

One of the wrong views would be she's just there and she's either mean or nice to me from her own side. That's one wrong view. And then somebody comes along and they held a long translation class for two years and they try to convince you that she's coming from you.

You know? Like if she's nasty that night and won't give you samples, those little spoon things, then it's your fault because you didn't give other people samples. You didn't share your last bowl of ice cream which is very possible.

And they say, and when she does give you samples it's because you did share your ice cream with other people. So you know, when she gives you a sample maybe you should even share the sample. Like someone talks you into that.

Right? Someone gives you that. And then you go home and you have the whole summer off.

You don't do any Dharma the whole summer. Your world view starts to disintegrate. You start to doubt everything.

Or you start to have, your world view, you don't have any world view about anything anymore. You get more angry at people. You're not doing your book so good.

And then you start to get the other extreme which is that if she's just my projection then she's not real. Okay? Then she's not real.

So those are the two extremes. 99.99999% of the population has the first one. She's coming from her own side.

She's mean. She's mean. That's a wrong idea.

The words she is mean are a fallacy. They're wrong. They're totally false.

Every sentence spoken in America today was false. Period. Get used to it.

Every sentence spoken by any... The grammar of our language reflects our wrong thinking. She is mean is wrong.

There is no she is. There's no such thing. She isn't anything.

She appears to me because of my past karma, you can say. But she is, is wrong. It's already wrong.

When you get to is, you're already wrong. Okay? So everybody's wrong.

Everybody has this first wrong idea. And then you go to a class and, you know, they teach you that everything's coming from how you treated people in the past. And then you go away for the summer and you don't get any classes for the whole summer.

And then you get... Your thinking gets sloppy. Your mind gets sloppy.

Your vows get sloppier. And then... And then you start to think, well, I don't know, maybe I was like nuts, you know?

Maybe she doesn't exist at all. You know, if she's coming from me, she's not real. She's just not real.

Then I'm just living in a world of dreams, illusion. Everything's coming from me. It's weird.

I'm like the only person in the universe now. You know, like that. And you go to the other extreme.

You start to think, oh, she's not real. Like, I don't see really how you could go to that extreme with ice cream. But I guess it's...

I mean, you taste it. You get it. You taste it, you know?

It's cool. But they say that 0.001% of the world, after they get a teaching on Middle Way, and then they have a bad summer, lazy summer, then they start to think she doesn't matter, or she's unreal somehow, okay? Things aren't real, like that.

Those are the two extremes. So now what does entering the Middle Way mean? Madhyamika avatar.

Yeah, you avoid the two extremes. You go to the ice cream shop, because I told you to. You know, you look at her, and you say, ah, she's coming from me.

She's coming from how I treated people. And whether or not she's giving me a sample only depends on whether or not I shared my ice cream with other people. And then you ask for the sample.

And then it doesn't matter what she does. You see? Whatever happens, if she gives you a sample, you're going to share it.

If you buy some ice cream, you're going to share that. Because you have worldview. You're in the Middle Way.

You have entered the Middle Way. Okay? So that's the Middle Way and ice cream.

And that's entering the Middle Way and ice cream, okay? And that's worldview. That's correct view.

And then you're sweeter and sweeter with everyone. Everyone likes you, because they're all broke, and when you go through everyone's service, you're always sharing your ice cream with them. You know?

And then the world just goes up and up and up, like that. Because you understand emptiness. That's the whole idea.

That's the meaning of the title of the text. Okay. We did this.

Now we can just skip to the word second, hopefully. Yeah, translators and theses. This was where...

An obvious thing about outlines is they are not weighted equally. Okay? The bowing down by the translator takes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 lines out of a thousand lines.

Okay? So it's not weighted equally. Tibetan outlines are not equally weighted.

You have to know that. Because what happens is translators, immature translators, they break up their book by the outline. So they'll be...

The first chapter will have 10 pages. Now we're on the second chapter which will have half a page. And then the third chapter has 800 pages.

You know what I mean? And that's just something you should avoid. They're not weighted equally.

They're a running outline. Alright. Probably each item will be weighted equally after we fill in the whole outline, which will have a couple hundred lines.

[Speaker 2]
Okay?

[Speaker 1]
So the translator bowed down. Why? Why?

And who? To whom? Jambel...

Jambel Shunilachaksela Jambel Shunilagirbalachaksela bows down to Jambel Shunil Who's that? Manjushri who? Kumar, I think.

There's a joke. I'll tell you a joke. The word in Tibetan for a thief or, you know, disgusting thief is Kumar.

And so Khenpo Rinpoche, when I was learning this word, he said, Oh yeah, when I first got out into India as a refugee and we were in Missouri and they got me a job. His Highness got me a job teaching Tibetan. And I was in this elementary school and this other teacher got up in front of the Tibetans and the first thing he said is, My name is Mr. Kumar. And they all broke out laughing because it means I am the thief or something like that. So Kumar. But in Sanskrit, the young one, as a youth, as a teenage boy.

So, don't forget, that's the translation, that's the obeisance, by whom? Who's making that bow? Is it part of the book?

Is it part of the book? No, it's just the Tibetan translator. Why does he bow down to Manjushri?

This was an old rule, remember? Instigated by a king, he said if you're going to write a book about the three baskets, if you're going to talk about wisdom, emptiness, then bow down to Manjushri, the angel of wisdom. And then everybody will know what the book's about.

So if the person wants a book about emptiness and they see that they bow down to Manjushri, they'll open the book. Okay, got it? All right.

That's all there is to say about that. Here's the third one. What happened to the translation here?

Do you know? Huh? You went to Gombrangsa?

Oh, I'm in Gombrangsa. Oops, sorry. This is the wrong outline.

[Speaker 2]
Okay.

[Speaker 1]
Let's see if he has an outline. Okay, he only has two. Cancel this.

It was fun though. Can you read that okay? Is it big enough?

Yeah? It's big enough for everybody? You want a little bigger?

That's over 50, so our eyes are not so good, right? I know. That's why I hang out with Christy, because I can ask her what the sign says.

Okay. General overview of the work. Separate our spaces.

Okay. So here's his general overview. You and I are people who have decided that it's not enough to simply be content with the pleasures of this current life.

We strive for happiness in the world beyond and more. Okay. And that was his overview.

And he divided the teaching into tok pek, what do you call? Tok pek, nung, let's see, nung and tok pa.

[Speaker 2]
Okay.

[Speaker 1]
All teachings can be divided into say nung, tok pa. And sometimes they say nung tok, say nung tok. So the teachings can be either physical teachings, tape recordings, books, lectures, or tok pa, which means realizations.

And you can enter either one. So his version, K. R.

Pemba Pagli, who wrote the Umichigan, his version of the teaching that you enter, the middle way that you enter, is either the physical books or the ideas. You're entering the ideas. And hopefully in meditation, directly, not just hearing about the ideas.

That becomes nung. That becomes a physical teaching. But getting the ideas is tok pa.

So you enter the middle way either as a book, or you sit down and you meditate until you've entered the middle way as an idea. Realizations. Then he goes through, he goes through the six works I'm using.

Okay. What's it called in Tibetan? Say, rik sok du.

Rik sok du. Rik means rik pa, with a sa, and it means logic. Okay.

Sok means a collection of books. Tok means six. Collection of six different books on logic.

But Christy and I were talking, Christy Ha and I were talking that maybe it would be better called the collection of six books on proving emptiness. You see? It's not just logic.

Yeah, I think it would be a mistake to translate it as six books on logic. Or even six books on reasoning. It's six books for proving emptiness.

And that's where the logic comes in. Then he goes through all those six books, which we're not going to do. We're writing a relationship book.

We're researching a relationship book by figuring out why we quarrel so much. No. But, and we had this inspiration to base it on Arya Nagarjuna's works.

And our editor likes it. We met him this last couple of weeks. We met him and we had a really good time.

And we've been talking with him for about a year about this book. And we said, oh, we want to base it on the books of Arya Nagarjuna. So, who's like considered the second Buddha.

Sometimes he's called Sanghinipa. The Buddha come again. and he said, I like that idea.

And so our idea with the relationship teachings, which we're going to start doing in New York now also. So there'll be a west coast relationship teaching and an east coast relationship teaching. How they differ, I'm not sure.

But, but we, we found this other, well we, we were reading this other book by Arya Nagarjuna, which is what? This last one that we did in Tucson. It's called Letter to a Friend.

Suhur Lekha. Suhur Lekha. Su means good, right?

From Esu? From Eurythmics? You remember.

Okay. And then, hurl was originally heard. What's that mean?

Heart. So, heart, credo, and creed. All these words, cardiac, the C comes from a ha, akha, and the H comes from akha.

So it's all from the same root, hurd. What's the Heart Sutra? Hidayah Sutra, right?

So, suhur, good heart, lekha means writing, or a letter. So, suhur lekha. Arya Nagarjuna wrote a lot of tantric works.

Arya Nagarjuna wrote a lot of epistles. Like, who is it, Paul? Who wrote epistles.

And the epistles are a big part of the New Testament. Whether they should be there or not, I don't know. But anyway, they, he wrote a lot of epistles.

And it seems like his epistles are more appropriate for relationship talks. But you don't see his epistles mentioned here. Now they're just talking about his technical books.

His difficult books. Six difficult books on proving emptiness, okay? More like logic books, okay?

Although the other ones are all based on emptiness too. So what I meant to say is, if you're going to give a relationship talk, I think Arya Nagarjuna is really cool. And maybe his letters are more appropriate for a general audience.

So he goes through that. This was the first part, I don't know if you remember, but in our translation, we started to encounter places where what Kedrup Devadakya or the person who carved it remembered in the debate ground was totally different than the original text. So he's quoting an ancient Indian text and the quotation was all corrupt, completely wrong.

And it's been going on that way for 500 years now and no one's really cared. And this is a weakness of the of the Tibetan monasteries. There wasn't a tenger in in Sara until ACIP bought one.

Nobody was looking at the tenger at all. So this is a weakness of the Tibetan system. I hope we can not do that.

We should have it on... We have the whole tenger in, I think the first 20 volumes are coming out online, free online. That's about a thousand works in the next few months.

Like John's been working on it for like eight years now. And Gordon asked it. So I think there we first met an example of that where sometimes monastic texts are sometimes...

Some scholars don't like monastic textbooks because of this weakness. And I think we could improve the monastic textbook. We could confirm everything and make sure it's correct.

That's a contribution we can make in this generation. With this book. I don't know where I'm getting this...

And he's just talking about the relationship between those six books about emptiness. And all of his text is written in what kind of style? It's debate.

It's dialectic. It's just like Socrates or... Who's that?

Aristotle. It's all argument. The whole book is written as an argument between two people.

So I kind of like that. I kind of prefer that. Ideally what an author like he...

Like Kedip Temadagi does, he sets up an argument that you would naturally have in your own mind. You know, like theoretically if he's doing his job and you're doing your job in the debate ground, you'll find this if you debate regularly. If you debate what you're studying, you'll come up with the next section of the text in the debate ground the night before you get that teaching.

You know? It will naturally flow to what's coming next in the text. Your debates will automatically proceed to the next great idea.

And then you go to class the next day and the teacher teaches it to you. Because it's what our undergraduate taught next in the book. So dialectic is very beautiful.

I prefer it. The classical dialectic is this. Kacik, someone else, comes along and says, I think emptiness means everything's black.

So they present a wrong idea. And then you defeat them. One by one you defeat them.

You defeat the idea that it's black. And then he says, well I think emptiness is stopping the mind. The vrittis.

Don't think about anything. And then you say, no, that's not what vritti means and that's not what emptiness means. And you defeat him on that.

And he says, okay, okay, you're right. Emptiness means nothing matters. There's no good, there's no bad.

There's no good deeds, there's no bad deeds. Everything is empty. I can do what I want.

Which is the worst wrong view of all. And then you defeat that. That's called shenlup kakpa.

It's a standard. First you defeat their wrong ideas. Shenlup means other guy's ideas.

Kakpa means what? Like defeat them or refute them. Say shenlup.

Kakpa. Shenlup. Kakpa.

It's a better way to teach people. Don't get up and say, here's what it is. Challenge them.

That's how you see Geshe Thich Nhat Hanh teaching. Give them a wrong idea. And see if they can tell you what's wrong with it.

Make them think. It forces them to think. If you get up and say, here's the 14 divisions of emptiness.

And here's the definition of emptiness. There's no challenge for the student. Get up and say something wrong.

And see if they can explain to you why it's wrong. Like what's wrong with saying that emptiness is just emptying your mind? What's wrong with that?

What's wrong with that? Aren't you supposed to empty your mind to see emptiness? Aren't you supposed to empty your mind to see emptiness?

Don't you need shamatha to achieve vipasyana? Don't you have to calm your mind first before you can see? Doesn't it have to be like a still pool, before it can reflect the moon?

Don't you have to empty your mind?

[Speaker 2]
Yeah, yeah.

[Speaker 1]
Stop thinking. Yogas citta-vrtti-nirvana. In the first line, Yoga Sutra.

Stop the vrttis. Stop thinking. What's wrong with that?

I like it. I like it. I mean, if you're going to see emptiness directly, your mind must be totally still.

First. First. First.

From sam-deng-dang-bo-nyon-dong-mi-kon-me. You get to the perception of emptiness by putting your mind on a certain level of the form realm. You know, your mind is totally, perfectly still.

Not attracted to outside objects at all. You have to empty your mind, right? That's what emptiness means.

But it is. Every text says you need shamatha first. Then you get to vedasya.

Then you can see emptiness. So you have to empty the mind first. If you're thinking about the chocolates that might or might not get handed out.

Mini chocolates. I'm not sure how this is going to do on the... Me and Ellie will do the chocolate covered cherries.

Can you open them for me? Okay. If your mind's on that, you can't see emptiness, right?

So emptiness is... You must empty your mind first. Right?

Okay. So that's what emptiness means. It's just not thinking about anything.

And then, you know, you have to say, that's shen-lu-gapa. Then you have to prove me why it's wrong. Why is it wrong?

What's wrong with that? Yeah, you can't stop the mind. Anyway.

You can't do it anyway.

[Speaker 2]
Okay?

[Speaker 1]
And there's no content. You have to have a virtuous content. There must be a high content.

So it's not stopping the mind. It's turning the mind to a higher goal. Like that.

But it's stopping other miscellaneous thoughts. You have to do that. Right?

It's like that. Okay? That's shen-lu-gapa.

What's the second step? Rang-luk. Shakpa.

This should be like a mantra. Say, shen-lu-gapa. Shen-lu-gapa.

Rang-luk-shakpa. Rang-luk-shakpa. Rang-luk-shakpa means, okay, here's what's the real, you know, here's the real truth.

And it's usually only one page. Here's the definition of emptiness. Here's the divisions of emptiness.

You know? Thank you. Okay?

Rang-luk-shakpa. Usually it's the definition and then the divisions and then classical examples. It only takes a page or two.

That's the part that most books start with in the West. You see? They just tell you, here's geometry, here's the first idea, here's the second idea, go home and learn it.

You know? If a geometry book were written by a Tibetan Lama, it would start out with all these wrong ideas about geometry. Like a triangle has two sides, right?

You know? Or something like that. You see?

And then there'd be a whole ten pages about, no, somebody else would say, no, no, four sides. Triangles have four sides. You know?

And somebody else would say, well, I guess a quart of milk is a third of the bottle. You know? Or something like that.

And then there'd be this long debate and then in the end they'd say, oh, oh, I get it. You know? Triangle means three and angle is three sides.

And then there'd be a little short section that said, a triangle is a drawing with three sides. There are different kinds of triangles. I saw some of these triangles.

They were like this. Okay? Then what would the third part be?

Say, tsopa?

[Speaker 2]
Tsopa.

[Speaker 1]
These are not good for class. In any good debate, after the bad guy gets beat by the good guy, or any good movie, the bad guy should come back. Like, you know, Spider-Man should beat Dr. Tentacles or whatever it is. And then the building should cave in and everybody should be standing there. He should be there with Alice or his girlfriend. Is it Alice Parker?

I don't remember. I mean, that's his mother. Mary Jane.

And then they should be standing there and saying, this is like an hour and 15 minutes into the movie. Into an hour and a half movie. And the building has collapsed and they're standing there holding each other.

First time in the movie. And it's almost the end and they're sitting there and saying, you think he's really dead? And they're like, yeah, he's really dead.

He's gone, you know? And then this hand comes up out of the package, you know? And then there's another fight for like 25 minutes.

And then there's a five minute romance scene at the end. So there should be, for drama, there should be a tsopa poma. Tsopa means the other guy gets to come back and fight against what?

The way we beat him. So first he gives his wrong idea. We beat the wrong idea.

Then he gets to come back and beat us on how we beat him. It's a good method. It's more fair.

It's more real. Like, no argument is going to end with your first counter argument. Right?

You know that from your relationships.

[Speaker 2]
You know?

[Speaker 1]
No argument is going to end from the first response. There's going to be a tsopa poma. They're going to come back with a counter response.

Like, why do you always leave the toilet seat down? You know? I mean up.

And then you're going to say, well, why do you always leave it down? And they're going to say, well, I didn't know if it was a number one or number two. Right?

There's got to be a response. That's tsopa. And then you tsopa poma.

Then you defeat the response. Well, how many, compared to my number twos, how many number ones do I do? I mean logically.

Like that. Okay? You know that.

So there should be a tsopa poma. Or you refute them. I'll say, now you tell me the three.

Number one. Whoa, good. One, two, three.

Number one. Shen. Lu.

Gaka. Number two. Rang.

Shaka. Number three. Tsopa poma.

We'll do it one more time. Just for this year. This is how I feel in Dharma's class.

When he's like, let's do handstands one more time. Okay. Then he says, go to the wall and do it where there's no holy images.

You know, you're like... Anyway. Say, Shen Lu.

Gaka. Rang Lu. Shaka.

[Speaker 2]
Tsopa.

[Speaker 1]
Poma. Okay? So those are the classical three parts.

And most of the monastic textbooks are like that. And I prefer it. I'd rather read that than a twenty page book that just tells you what's to think.

You don't get any excitement. You don't get any drama. You don't get any of your wrong ideas come up as somebody else's wrong ideas and see them blossomed away.

Which is very helpful. It must have an outline in here somewhere. This is about Ayodhya.

They go into Ayodhya. Who is Ayodhya? Disciple of?

Ayanagarjuna. Okay, sometimes called together. Yeah.

Where was it? Papa Yabse. Yabse.

Father and son. Spiritual father and son. And then Buddhapalita came along.

Who's Buddhapalita? Huh? Who's Buddhapalita?

He wrote an early commentary explaining Ayanagarjuna. And he explained it according to the...

[Speaker 2]
Prasangika.

[Speaker 1]
Our, you know, our Rang Lu. Our own system. He interpreted the true intent of the realized father and son as being that of the consequence group.

Then what happens? This bad guy comes along. Who?

Master Bhavaviveka. Okay? Everybody who was in India this last summer knows in great detail all the teachings of Master Bhavaviveka.

Remember his name even? Yeah, okay. Okay.

By the way, that was the... I don't know. It was kind of historical.

It was the first time that Westerners have ever had a teaching on the independent school period as a major ten-day teaching or something. First time in history. First time in 600 years.

So, it was a big deal. It didn't feel like a big deal, but...

[Speaker 2]
But you should know.

[Speaker 1]
It's the first time in history. Okay. Anyway.

Then Master Bhavaviveka comes along and attacks Master Buddhapalita and says, you were wrong when you explained our indigrance. And then who comes... What knight in shining armor comes to save Master Buddhapalita?

Master Chandrakirti. And that's one of the reasons why he wrote his book called Entering the Middle Way which is why you're studying. Okay.

So Master Bhavaviveka complained about Master Buddhapalita. And thereby sort of began the independent, the lower Madhyamika. And then Master Chandrakirti comes along and clears everything up and defends Master Buddhapalita and thereby more or less starts the consequence school, the Prasangika school.

What does Prasangika mean? Tiangir in Tibetan. Tiangir.

What does it mean?

[Speaker 2]
Yeah.

[Speaker 1]
In what sense? Yeah. But in a sarcastic sense, right?

Give me an example. Any example. I'll give you an example.

[Speaker 2]
Yeah.

[Speaker 1]
Or how about all fruits are red. Yeah. Good.

Or I guess a lemon is something like that. It's red. Somebody comes along and says, all fruits are red.

You say, oh, good. I guess lemons are red. And then you just go, you just turn around and walk away.

Okay. And you don't like stand there and grab them by the lapels and say, lemons are yellow, right? Lemons are yellow.

You don't say that. Prasangika system. Consequence.

Tiangir. Say Tiangirwa. Tiangirwa.

The last word gets lost and the prenasal gets strong. Tiangirwa. It's Tiangirwa.

They believe that it's enough to teach a sharp disciple emptiness, just by making a sarcastic rejoinder and turning around and walking away. Okay. The lady at the ice cream store comes from her own side.

Yeah, okay, so I guess it doesn't matter what we do, whether we share with others or not. And you don't say anything else. Just walk away.

Or I guess she will always be cranky. Or I guess she'll always give me samples every night that I ever go there. Right?

Right? She exists from her own side. She's nice.

She is nice. She is nice. Right?

Even the sentence is wrong. The whole world is crazy. No, the words we use are crazy.

The grammar, the syntax is mistaken. It's innately mistaken. The syntax reflects the mind, the way the mind works.

So the mind is mistaken. She is nice is a mistake. It's already a mistake.

Also I guess she's nice. Yeah. Also she gives you samples all the time.

And then just walk away. You don't say anything. You don't say, Duh!

She doesn't give you samples all the time. Duh! So she's not nice, right?

Duh! You don't go like that. That's not prasangika.

Prasangika is, telling you is that. So, Master Sandra Kirti and the prasangikas believe that's enough. There's a nice prasanga in the Yoga Sutra.

What is that? Prasangat. Oh, forget.

There's one in the Yoga Sutra. Prasangat. Oh, so it must be that something, follows from something.

Okay, anyway. All right, let's see what else. We're doing a review in case you didn't notice.

It was supposed to be an outline, but he doesn't have any outline yet. He talks about eight classical commentaries to the root text. Don't read them.

There's a bhaya-kutas. A bhaya-kuta. It means what?

Kale jigme. Kale jigme. Yeah, beyond all fear.

Kale jig... Jig means fear. Me means no fear.

Kale means from kutas in Sanskrit, nothing. Nothing can make me afraid. And once you are an Arya, once you can see emptiness directly, then nothing fazes you, really.

I mean, you still get upset when Kirti wants a hug or something, you know. But on a large scale, nothing can faze you for very long. Maybe a few hours or a day or two, or something like that.

But you know where everything comes from. You know... If you are an Arya, you know what's going to happen.

You know the future. You're jigme. You're beyond fear.

There's no real problem in your life, ever again. So, Naropa, the glorious Naropa, right? Damden Naropa.

His monk's name was what? Abhaya Kirti. Say Abhaya.

Abhaya Kirti. Kirti means like famous, Thakpa. And then Abhaya means...

A means not. And Bhaya means scared. What famous tantric deity's name comes from the same root?

Bhairava. Bhairava. Jigje, the frightener, the lord of terror, right?

So, Abhaya was the name given to Naropa. As we're going to learn in the tantric course this semester. So, we're going to concentrate on entering the middle way, along with the auto-commentary.

He's going to throw in parts of the auto-commentary to... Madhvi commentary. Chandrakirti's own commentary on his own commentary.

And he's going to use entering the middle way. Okay? Oh, there's a debate about whether...

What is this? I think... Whether...

Oh, whether or not Chandrakirti could have been a direct disciple of Arya Nagarjuna. Because scholars date Arya Nagarjuna at 200 A.D., born at 200 A.D. They date Master Chandrakirti at 650. So, he could not have been a direct disciple, right?

Prasangika. That's a Prasangika. He could not have been a direct disciple, right?

He lived 450 years later. Right? Yeah, Khyamma-chung.

Who said that? That's nice. Khyamma-chung means what you said is correct, but it doesn't prove what you wanted it to prove.

[Speaker 2]
Okay?

[Speaker 1]
Did he live 450 years later? Yes. So, you can't say Thangma-du.

You have to say Khyamma-chung. Just because he lived 450 years later doesn't prove he wasn't a direct disciple, because he lived for 900 years. Okay?

All right. But that's another story. And that's what they mean in the Hatha Yoga Pratibhiga when they say, bhagman de vicharantante vicharantite bhagman de vicharantite Hatha Yoga, bhagavata.

Because they are empowered by Hatha Yoga, you know, they still wander the earth. Okay? They still wander the earth.

Still alive. Okay? Okay.

He says now there are two different kinds of middle ways. The words used to describe the middle way and the middle way which is the subject of those words.

[Speaker 2]
Okay?

[Speaker 1]
The scriptural middle way is Sutras and Shastras. Teachings of Lord Buddha and then the ancient Indian pundits on emptiness. But that middle way that the books talk about as a subject of study can be divided into foundation middle way, path middle way, and result middle way.

There are three kinds of middle way as far as concepts or ideas. Okay? Not books.

The fact that no object has any nature of its own is foundation middle way. Okay? That's the first kind of middle way.

The fact that nothing... The fact that the lady from Thirty One Flavors does not have any nature of being what? Mean or nice.

Okay? She has no nature at all.

[Speaker 2]
Okay?

[Speaker 1]
No nature at all. Nothing... So is she neither nice nor mean?

She has no nature of being nice nor mean. So she's never mean, right? That's a Prasangika by the way.

So she's never mean, right? Is she mean or not? She's mean.

She doesn't give you a sample. She's mean. If she closes up like ten minutes earlier as she did last time, she's mean.

You know? She's like, Oh, I put everything away. The vanilla is still left.

You know? I'm like, Yeah. Okay?

That's mean. So she does have a nature. Right?

She's mean. Yeah, not of her own. Okay?

You have to say not of her own. That's all. She has a nature.

Yes, she's mean. Yeah. But it's not coming from her.

It's coming from me. So does she have a nature? Yes.

Does she have a nature of her own? No. Okay, good.

And that's foundation middle way. Why? That's where all things come from.

That's where all things come from.

[Speaker 2]
Okay?

[Speaker 1]
That's where all things come from. All the nice people you ever met and all the mean people you ever met, came from that. Came from what?

The fact that they're not mean or nice. Okay? Got it?

Everything. So that's the foundation of all things. All...

Everything that ever happened to you in your life happened to you because nothing has any quality of its own. Nothing is anything. And that's why everything happens to you.

Good or bad. Got it? Comfortable, right?

Okay. Path. Path.

[Speaker 2]
Middle way.

[Speaker 1]
Is... Uninterrupted path of seeing. What's...

Path of seeing is direct perception of emptiness. What's the uninterrupted mean? Partial middle.

Why uninterrupted?

[Speaker 2]
Yeah. Yeah.

[Speaker 1]
Your mind stream is uninterrupted by any common thoughts, by any normal thoughts, by any other perceptions.

[Speaker 2]
Okay?

[Speaker 1]
That's one way to read it. Okay? Uninterrupted.

What follows after that? Ceto-Virsi. Then you come out of it and you're back in the normal world and you're still seeing things wrong, but you know you're wrong.

Okay? Ceto-Virsi. Then, nirvana, where nothing is left, is result middle way.

[Speaker 2]
Okay?

[Speaker 1]
Nirvana or... I think you could call Buddhahood also is result. So now three middle ways.

What's the first one? Foundation. She's not nice or mean.

What's the second one?

[Speaker 2]
Path.

[Speaker 1]
The direct perception of emptiness. I think also you could say path middle way could be walking into the store the next time you do and thinking whether she gives me a sample in the next five minutes is all up to whether I've been sharing my ice cream. That kind of thinking as you walk into...

Then that prevents what? Expectations. And that prevents what?

Disappointment. And that prevents anger. Okay?

Alright? And then you're nice and then people aren't angry at you. So it's like proactive.

It's preventative middle way as you walk into the store. Like, she's coming for me. Have I been totally sharing in the last few weeks?

No. So is she gonna give me a sample or not? Don't expect.

Either way. Don't get angry either way. Then your whole life is preventative?

Like you walk into a place or you go into a relationship without unrealistic expectations. Have you been totally pure, helpful, kind, never saying a negative word to everyone around you for the last ten years? No.

Are you starting a new relationship this week? Yes. Then what are your expectations?

No, really. And then you don't have problems. Then it's much...

Then you don't get into this downward cycle called samsara. Then you don't have weird expectations and then they aren't disappointed and then you don't get angry and then you don't fight and then you don't create another bad person next week. You know what I mean?

Okay. So that's also in my mind a middle way. And then result middle way.

Right? Nirvana. Which is what?

No more mental afflictions. Why? Because you saw emptiness.

Why? You don't have those expectations anymore. You don't get angry because you didn't expect...

You went in the 31 flavors knowing you might not get any... share any samples. Right?

Because you haven't been sharing in the last few weeks.

[Speaker 2]
Okay?

[Speaker 1]
No disappointments. No mental afflictions. And eventually that kind of thinking reaches...

you reach nirvana. Which is no more negative thoughts about the ice cream lady. At all.

Because you go in with no expectations because you know you've been both.

[Speaker 2]
Okay?

[Speaker 1]
Does that mean you shouldn't hope? Does that mean you shouldn't think well maybe one day I will reach a place where I know I will get samples. I know when I walk to Cold Stones at 11.05 on 2nd Avenue in Manhattan with my friend from Vancouver. And they've been closed for over an hour in the middle of New York City. You know? And if I just go and stand at the door the manager will step in behind me and open the place, turn on all the lights, turn on the cash registers, make the employees get their uniforms back on and come out and serve us a bowl of ice cream.

Right? They all come a day. It was cool.

And we told her not to expect it next time she comes to New York. But they wouldn't sing that thing. So we didn't have it quite perfect yet.

Okay. We gave them a big tip and they wouldn't sing. Because they said they should have been gone home an hour ago.

Two different ways to enter the Middle Way. Enter from the profound side of teachings and then enter from the far-reaching side of teachings. What are those?

What's the profound side of teachings?

[Speaker 2]
Sorry?

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, teachings on emptiness. And then the far-reaching side? Yeah, teachings on compassion, kindness, loving other people.

Okay, you can enter it. His commentary, entering Master Chandrakirti's commentary enters it both ways. Through the emptiness side and from the kindness side.

And then he goes into how it does. And some debates. Am I supposed to stop by 7 or 7.30?

What time did your class start? Oh, so we were actually on time today. That was a mistake.

I was supposed to give out the candy at 7. We really go to 7.30? This class?

Oh, so we have to have another piece of candy. Let's see. McNally, this is the best one.

Mmm. I want more in the future. Okay.

Does the root text on wisdom present the far-reaching side of the teachings? Is it an incomplete book? Does it not talk about compassion?

Does it only talk about emptiness and not about kindness? Yeah, okay. You have to learn that.

It talks about emptiness directly, explicitly. And then it implies compassion. Why?

I mean, why... Why would you say that a book that talks a lot about emptiness directly must be a book that's based on kindness? It's the only way to help people.

It's the only way to get out of suffering. It's to understand emptiness. So the kindest thing you can do for anybody is to teach them emptiness or to talk about emptiness, right?

And all the books of Lord Buddha that talk about emptiness directly, as we learned this summer, are...

[Speaker 2]
literal. According to?

[Speaker 1]
Only according to. Only the books by Lord Buddha, only the Buddhist teachings which talk about emptiness mainly, are talking about what they're supposed to be talking about. And all other books about Buddhism are...

Yeah, are figurative. Are like, they wanted to talk about emptiness but the people weren't ready. The people in the audience weren't ready.

So they had to talk about patience or something. Okay, really? If you go at emptiness, all the other qualities come.

Patience comes, compassion comes, everything comes. If you go after the other way, it's very limited. There's this thing called patience, you have to be nice to people, don't get mad.

And then they don't really learn the principle behind all things. Okay, so... So it's perfect to have a book that teaches emptiness, because all other things will come.

We were in the two months retreat in China with the bedbugs and the... I don't know... moss over everything.

Mold. Everything was... It rained all day.

But... So we were there and we were doing this special meditation about how can we help each person that died in the mountain. So we go through the people one by one.

How can I help James Connor? What does James Connor need? And then by the end it was boring because it's only the same thing.

You could say this person needs more patience. You can say this person needs more generosity. You can say this person needs to meditate more.

But in the end they all need emptiness. And how? They need to teach emptiness.

Not that I have to lecture you about emptiness. You have to teach emptiness. That's the kindest thing we can do for you.

Give you the equipment to teach emptiness. Because then it will come. That's the way it comes.

So you have to sit in a class and you have to learn all about this stuff. But the kindest thing we can do is to empower you or give you the tools or the equipment to teach. Because then you collect massive amounts of good karma.

There's no other way. We can't give you karma. All the emptiness we can explain to you doesn't give you karma.

But then if you start teaching other people what you understand it doesn't have to be perfect. It's never perfect at the beginning. It's always something wrong with it.

But you start teaching and then you get this good karma. And then your own understanding gets more and more. And you get into an upward cycle.

The best thing you can do for anyone is to teach them to teach emptiness. You see what I mean? And then set them loose on the world.

In Cincinnati or wherever. And just get them to start teaching. So, that's the best thing you can do for anybody.

You can sit down and talk about don't get mad at your friends. Don't eat so much. Do your yoga.

You can do that. That's okay. But in the end the kindest thing you can do to people is to teach them to teach.

And the kindest thing you can teach them to teach is emptiness. So, I think Diamond Mountain has a really good premise. The whole premise of Diamond Mountain is that.

Just create teachers. Because that's the nicest thing you can do to anybody is make them a teacher. But then you have to work and become a teacher.

And you have to go out and teach. And don't expect 120 students the first night. It doesn't work like that.

Okay? I mean, for a year I had Mark Chiarelli, the postman on the other end of my bed teaching him, you know. Sometimes he wouldn't come.

You know, and then... And then year number two and three was, I swear to God, it was in a van. It was in a Volkswagen van.

And I would sit in the driver's seat and face the back seats. And there were two to five people in the back seats. And it wasn't running, it was parked.

And we would have our classes. And then people would come to me and say, oh, I'm not doing so good. And I said, why?

I only had six people come to my class or two people come to my class. That's the way it goes at the beginning. Don't take anything.

Don't think like that. It takes 35 years of suffering to get 50 people in your class. You do a whole tour of South America and get one person.

Maybe. It's like that, you know. And then you do 50 tours.

It takes 30 years. And, you know, like that. So don't...

It's kind of the first year is going to be in Starbucks over lattes or whatever. And you're going to have one student. And then they're going to quit.

You know. And then... Don't feel bad.

Just keep going. Okay. This is cool.

This is the idea that... Say, chedu, jaui, dulja. Sorry.

Chedu. Chedu. Jaui.

Jaui. Dulja. Dulja.

Chedu. Chedu. Jaui.

Jaui. Dulja. Dulja.

Oh, you woke up. Chocolate is good. What do they call it in Chinese?

I forgot. No, there's some... What do they call it?

Chikule? Chikule? Yeah, okay.

We're trying to translate the dove rappers when we were bored in retreat. Anyway. Chedu, jaui, dulja means...

It's this beautiful concept. The disciple for whom a book was targeted. You know.

So, books in the old days and teachings were given like cruise missiles. You know. They were...

They had a guidance thing in the front. And they were... You would sit down to write a book and you'd say, who am I writing this for?

[Speaker 2]
You know.

[Speaker 1]
Who's my targeted audience? You know. And you can see that I think even in the books that we're doing.

You know. Like one is aimed at business people. One is aimed at yoga people.

You know. We're doing a new book aimed at peripheral martial arts, dharma, seekers of physical beauty, cosmetics people. And...

You know. And you... You know.

You're targeted one. Chedu, jaui, dulja means that.

[Speaker 2]
Okay.

[Speaker 1]
What's the chedu, jaui, dulja in this case? For example, the Wendokgen by whom? By Maitreya.

Lord Maitreya. Chedu, jaui, dulja is targeted at a disciple who can use that one book to achieve an understanding of emptiness without any other book.

[Speaker 2]
Okay.

[Speaker 1]
So that's targeted at a really high audience. That's a 75-page book. The commentary is 2,000 pages.

You know. A 50-page book. It's a 50-page book.

It's the smallest book in the monastery. You memorize those 50 pages. It takes 12 years to study the 50 pages.

You do 4 pages a year. 10 hours a day. You do 4 pages a year.

So, that kind of disciple must be special. That must be targeted at some kind of Dharma Einstein. Okay.

I know he's going to start the book sooner or later. Here's another case where he it didn't seem to be the correct quotation from the tenure. Ah.

This is the book. This is... Now we go back to our original outline.

The general overview of the work was just a general overview of the work and there weren't any other technical divisions of it. But now we have now we have a nice kalupa outline. Four stages.

So the... He's going to give separate explanations of selected portions of which book. Maybe, but but what happens in practice is he's going to start quoting the root text a lot.

Arya Nagarjuna's text. There's... And we start with an offering of praise.

It's called chudja. Say chudja. Chudja.

Chudja.

[Speaker 2]
Chudja.

[Speaker 1]
When you start a book you praise you praise somebody. Okay. You start out with an offering.

And the offering you make is not flowers or chocolate or something. You offer words of praise. You sing the praises of somebody.

Okay. And that's a vehicle for undertaking the book. Okay.

So let's go look at that. His offering of praise has... There's two different kinds.

Oops.

[Speaker 2]
Okay.

[Speaker 1]
Honoring great compassion without dividing it. Honoring great devotion right away. I don't know what that means.

Let's go look. Now he starts with the actual lines from the book. From the...

Entering the Middle Way. Okay. Listeners say the mid-level Buddhists are born from those Lords of the Able.

And Buddhists themselves take their holy birth from Buddhist sattvas. The causes for the children of victors are the attitude of compassion, the mind that transcends duality, and the wish for total enlightenment. So these are really the opening lines of the Madhyamaka Avatara.

These are maybe the most important lines. And they're describing this cycle. They're describing this circle.

Okay. Lower Aryas is what the first line refers to. Listeners are mid-level Buddhists, which means self-made Buddhists.

People who reach nirvana without any particular desire to save the world. Okay. They reach a personal nirvana.

[Speaker 2]
Okay.

[Speaker 1]
People who reach a personal nirvana are born from Buddhas. Who teach them. They teach them, and then they reach nirvana.

But where do Buddhas come from? Bodhisattvas. And where do Bodhisattvas come from?

Three different attitudes. Number one, love. Okay.

Number two, understanding emptiness. And number three, bodhichitta. How does compassion...

Why did he say three? Isn't compassion and bodhichitta the same thing? What's the difference?

[Speaker 2]
One wishes people to be free from suffering, and one wishes to become enlightened to benefit them perfectly, so that they can free themselves from suffering. Yeah.

[Speaker 1]
Good. Okay. That's the difference.

Okay. One, you can't stand to see other people hurt. And then number two, you've decided, I will become a Buddha to help them.

Okay. I'll do it. I'll do it.

I will do that. I will stand on a billion planets and help people. I have the capacity.

I can do it. A human being has the capacity to emanate on billions of planets at the same time and help billions of people in each emanation. A human being has that capacity.

Even on this one planet, I have the capacity to teach billions of people on this one planet. I personally have the capacity. If I played my cards right, you know, I could be doing it by the end of my life, you know.

If I really worked hard, if I really learned all this stuff and did everything they asked me to do, or even have, I could be serving millions of people in this life, in this lifetime. I have the capacity to do that. That's the cause of a bodhisattva.

And you have that capacity. You have that capacity. No reason why not.

We all have that capacity. And it's happening if you didn't notice. Okay.

Talk about that tomorrow, maybe more. Tomorrow's chapter class, we start going over the empowerment text. And I wanted to...

We wrote a letter to everybody which we emailed maybe today, I don't know. Or tomorrow? Did we get emailed yet?

The letter about the initiation?

[Speaker 2]
I just got it.

[Speaker 1]
Oh, she just got it. It might be emailed out tonight. But basically what it says is, we got a lot of last minute requests.

And maybe they weren't all last minute because we were out of the country for five months. We were on a five month teaching tour. And the last two months we were out, last three months, we were out of email contact.

But, you know, we basically hit Tucson a couple days ago and got this stack of requests for, I don't know, 40 people, 30 people, something. Can they get into the Tantric Chorus? You know, can you decide in the 15 minutes that you have at dinner on Friday night if all these extra people can get into the Tantric Chorus?

And then we were like... It was really hard. It was extraordinarily difficult to be asked to do that.

And it was really uncomfortable because we love every single person. And then this is a decision that's going to affect their whole life. And we don't intend to give the initiation again to a group, personally.

Because we want you to do it. We want you to do the next generation. And we think that's the way it should go.

So suddenly someone has your list of something like 40 names, I don't know. And it was really, really hard. But our only consideration...

And please take it to heart and please tell other people who might be... There'll be a bunch of disappointed people tomorrow and there'll be a bunch of happy people tomorrow. You should tell both of them.

The only consideration was did we think you could succeed with your current level of teaching? Have you done enough teachings or do you have enough karma from your past life to succeed in the Tantra course? Because people have failed, big time.

And if a student fails in Tantra they go straight to the diamond house. That's all. So as a teacher we have this very grave...

It's like putting somebody into a headstem too early. And they'll screw up their neck for their life. So as a yoga teacher you don't do that.

And you would be irresponsible. And they're like begging you, I can do it, I can do it. Don't worry.

I'll take responsibility. But you can't take responsibility. You don't know what a headstem is all about.

And you'll hurt yourself. And then I have to walk around with that the rest of my life. Every time I see you I have to go like this to talk to you.

So it's a really heavy decision. It's a powerful decision. And in a lot of cases we felt that we're not your rude lama.

In a lot of cases the people who asked didn't realize that the person they should get the empowerment from is the person who's been teaching them all along. And we feel pretty strongly that way. We don't believe in this big lama flies into town for the weekend and gives everybody initiation and leaves.

You know what I mean? We think strongly that by now if you've been through a lot of courses you should realize that the Dalai Lama for you is the person who taught you the courses so far. And always will be.

The Dalai Lama used to come to New York and people would say, are you going? Michael, are you going? I said, no.

They said, why? I said, I have Ken Rinpoche. He's my lama.

He's the one who spends every day with my crap and is correcting me and fixing me and helping me. And if he tells me to go, if he goes, I'll go. But otherwise, who's the biggest lama in the world?

It's my teacher. I didn't even question, didn't think about it. So I think we're really trying to get people, we're trying to encourage people not to think of the empowerment as more important than all the other 25 courses we've taught in the last three years.

It's not more important. And are we somehow, am I somehow, or Kristi, or the other lamas, are we somehow more important than the person who's been teaching you the ACI courses? No.

We're less important. So we're going to try to, we have to make our decision. And then some people, you meet them, you look at them, you sense their past lives.

You sense what went on between you in your past lives. And you say yes. You say yes in two minutes.

So, but in either case, the decision has been made. We had to make a decision, we made it. It was very uncomfortable, but we did it.

We did it during dinner, 15 minutes. No, we sweated for a couple of days. Really hard.

But we made the decision, and it's been based on we want you to succeed. And we think we figured out the smartest way for each person to succeed. So, you know, when the decision comes down, when you get either yay or nay about coming to this initiation, if you really want to be a tantrica, believe in your lama, that's all.

Believe in what they say, whether it's what you wanted or not. Tantra is all about your lama. What they say goes, period.

No other questions. Lama said no. Okay, that's the best thing.

Lama said yes. Okay, I'll do it. That's the best thing.

And then sometimes lama said, you come to the classes, but take your initiation with your teacher. Because that's better. Okay, lama told me to do it that way.

That's all. But in your mind it should be, if you want to be a tantrica, if you want to get into tantra, that's the basis of everything. Lama said this, okay.

Whatever lama said, that's it. That has to be it. If any other thought comes in your mind, then you shouldn't be in a tantra class.

You see what I mean? So be happy either way. And be a tantrica either way.

As maybe some people who got in and who are happy are not tantricas. And maybe some people who we felt shouldn't do it now, who say, okay, whatever lama said, maybe they are tantricas. You see, tantra is very tricky that way.

Nothing is as it seems. Maybe the people who got in are the retards. Maybe the people that we felt would understand if we said, think about who your real tantrica is and who should give you the initiation really.

And if they get it, then they are the real tantricas. So don't judge things, don't, don't, just trust what lama says. And then you are a tantrica.

Then you are already in the tantric course. Okay, wherever you are sitting. All right.

Chikina.

[Speaker 2]
Chikina.

[Speaker 1]
Okay, thanks. Keep coming, it's fun.