Вступление на срединный путь (текущий курс, Аризона), занятие 74

[Speaker 1]
Hello and welcome back to Chancellor's class. I wanted to... Today I wanted to start with something different.

Maybe every two or three years I do the shtick. And there's a lot of people, I think there's some visitors here. And I thought it would be good to go over it while you're here.

And that's just a very general talk about why we're doing these classes. What's the purpose of these classes? What's the purpose of this place?

Why are we doing what we're doing? I think it's good to know. It's good to talk about sometimes.

So, I'm going to use the overhead. There's these two ladies in New York. They used to be in an advertising company.

They used to be in an advertising company in New York. And then they quit the company and they... They started their own company.

Because they read the Diamond Cutter books. They figured they could make their own company. And they started in their apartment.

And then they used the Diamond Cutter. Now their company does 100 million a year. They own a skyscraper in Midtown.

I don't know, 5,000 employees or something. They do the Aflac ads on TV. I've never seen them, but they do them.

So one day they were on the Today Show. And they showed the... The hostess asked them, how did you get started?

And they showed the Diamond Cutter books. And then somebody saw that and they called us and said we should contact them. So we contacted them.

And they said, can we do something for you? Is there anything you need? And we said, I don't know.

You're good at spreading things. You're good at advertising, really. Maybe you could teach us something about that.

So they got their whole top staff together. And they brought us over. And they said, we'll give you three free hours of all the top staff's brains.

And this would normally cost you like $100,000. But we'll just give it to you. So we sat there.

Some people here were there. It's a really funny meeting. But they said, what do you want to sell?

That was their thing. They said, what do you want to sell? And we'll tell you how to sell it.

And we said, just ideas. We just want to sell an idea. And then they were like, they had to consult with each other.

They just want to sell an idea. And then we said, by the way, we don't want to sell it. We just want to give it away.

I don't know. It was an intriguing meeting. It was a beautiful meeting.

And so we're trying to sell an idea. We're trying to see if we can spread an idea in the world. And the idea is that everything in your world is coming from how you treat other people.

And there's nothing else. Nothing else means emptiness. Emptiness is that.

Emptiness means there's nothing in the world that's not coming from how you treat other people. And stated positively, everything in the world, everything in your world, everyone you meet, even the thoughts you hear in your own mind, are coming from how you treat other people. And if that's true, then you could control your future.

Then you could design your own world. You could decide what kind of world you want and then just do that to other people. In a special way, like there's a skillful way to do it.

And then if you wanted to make a hundred million dollar company, you could just do it in a few years. You know, you could just do it in a few years. Or if you wanted, if you were like overweight and a pudgy monk, you know, in 1990-something, then you could just design a different body and just do the things.

Because the kindness is to other people that are needed for that. Or if you wanted a spiritual partner, you could design one. And they would come.

They would have to come. So, if that's true, then how do you share this idea? How do you spread this idea in the world?

You see, what method would you use to try to change the way the world, the whole world works? It's like, could a small group of people change the way an entire civilization thinks? You know?

Could a small group of people change the way their whole civilization thinks? You see? And we were, Lama Kassi and I were in Vancouver.

We go there sometimes to learn Chinese and Chinese writing and things like that. And there's a coffee shop. I forget the name of it.

No, it's the other one. Next to the lousy Indian restaurant. They serve really healthy food there.

Foundation. But anyway, they're at the end of the street, so anyone driving onto this major avenue, they see the wall of the restaurant. And they, over the whole wall of the restaurant, they wrote a quotation in it.

It's by Margaret Mead. And it says, don't think that a small group of people can't change the world. It's always that way.

It's always that way. You know? Like a small group of people change the world.

It's not a big thing. It's not a lot of people. It's usually a small group of people.

So how would you do that? If you had an idea, and if you had a test drive it, and created a $100 million company, created a partner, and changed your health, I used to have a doubt. I couldn't walk.

Now we do ballet, you know? So how would you spread that idea? How would you spread that idea?

So I wanted to go over with you the flowchart of how we're trying to spread a certain idea. What's the idea again? You make your world by the kindnesses you show to other people.

And the details are determined by what kinds of kindnesses you pay to other people. And then you can get anything you want. Because it's all produced through the medium of your mind.

Can you see? So I'm going to show you the flowchart. And this is really the flowchart of all our work.

And what we're doing here. And I think it's good to talk about it once every couple of years. So I will start with ancient sources.

You see, testimonials are okay. You know, you have a hundred million dollar company, or you've changed your health, or you have a one in the universe partner. Testimonials are okay.

But also, ancient authority. People like authority. It's a prajnaksha of anima agama, right?

Where is that? From the old sutra, right? You can either have testimonials, or you can prove it to somebody.

What are your sources? What is your authority for these ideas? Where did you get these ideas from?

And it's helpful to say they came from a different place. You see, the first Dalai Lama in his commentary on anima agama culture, he says, when you start a class, always start with some wisdom in a foreign language. First, people will think you're smart.

And then, because it's different from their own country, they think it's better. And Sakyapadika said, no one appreciates the wise man in their own village. You know, like, oh, he's just a wise man.

Then someone walks through the village from somewhere else, and says some stuff, and then he's really a wise man. Because you're used to your own wise man. So, authority.

I think what we are trying to do is base everything on authority. So, first you have to go find the authority. You know, you have to find, in our case, we have to find the ancient scriptures, the ancient sources of our tradition.

And we had a special challenge doing this. When I first started studying in the monastery, I had to learn to read upside down. Because there was only one copy of the book that we were studying.

And the teacher would sit with you, and he couldn't let you have the copy. Because Tibetan books have loose pages, so if you took the page home, you might not read it back, and then the book would be incomplete, right? That happens all the time.

So, teachers learn not to give pages away. So, you had to learn to read it upside down where your teacher was teaching it to you, because it was the only copy. Why?

Why? In 1959, when Tibet was attacked, there were 5,000 major libraries. All of them were burned.

5,000. All the major libraries in Tibet were burned. There's one library in Derge that survived.

And there's a beautiful story, and I won't tell it now. But the books were all burned. So we, starting 22 years ago, we began a process of trying to find the scriptures, trying to recover them.

And we found collections in Japan and in Russia. The Tsar, the Russian king, collected Tibetan books in the 1700s. So we have a huge collection in St. Petersburg. And places like that, all over the world, Japan, and then in the last 22 years, we have tried to locate those books. I got an email this week from St. Petersburg 16 years ago, we sent three Tibetans there. We bribed the new Russian government and the KGB, an officer of the KGB.

And we got permission to open the Tsar's collection. And we started cataloging it. So I got an email last week.

And the guy, it's the last guy left, right? He says, I've been here 16 years, you know. And next month we were finished.

We've cataloged 139,000 ancient Tibetan scriptures. You know? And it's a huge catalog.

It would fit 100 telephone books. 16 years of constant labor. But now we have at least a list of 139,000 manuscripts that we can use.

And that diamond-covered book was only possible because we found the only Tibetan commentary in Russian about 12 years ago. We found it from our monastery, Tserame. So that's the only reason that book was possible.

So first, now we have projects, it's 22 years, we have projects in St. Petersburg, Inner Mongolia, Siberia, Outer Mongolia, Western China, Japan, Nepal, Varanasi, Delhi, Kerala, Pune, Malabar, Mysore, all over India. We have tried to recover the ancient Tibetan and Indian scriptures, right? So first I think you have to find the text.

And you have to know where they are, right? So that effort continues, right? We're still going.

We're working on the ancient scriptures. Then what's next now? I mean you find them, then what?

You have to preserve them, right? In India, in Mysore, there are 50,000 scriptures on yoga and they are just rotting. The bugs are eating them.

The worms are eating them. And so you have to preserve them. Two methods.

I mean one is scanning. And then the other... Think about a scan.

So you have to say preserve, right? One is that you can scan it. So in Mongolia right now we have a deal with the government that we're scanning about a million pages a year.

And those are being given away free on the web. And then for the past 20 years we've trained Tibetan refugees, mostly women in India because they cannot get work in India. Tibetans are not allowed to own land or to own a store in India.

So they're not citizens. They're refugees. So there's 200,000 refugees and they have to feed their families.

So for the last 20 years we've trained Tibetans to type in their scriptures. And then we've given away the data for 20 years. And they've done about 10,000 texts.

They've done about 5% in 20 years. So what's that work out to? 400 years.

381 years to finish. Okay? So 301 years to finish.

At this rate. Okay? And we're doing that.

And I think it's the main income for many Tibetan refugees. Probably it's the most... It's been the main income for the most refugees in the last 20 years.

Okay? And we don't have any big sponsors. We've had in the past, we've had corporations or the US government gave us several grants and Hewlett Packard gave us our first big grant and the Soros family gave us a large grant.

But now it's mostly just small people who give small grants, small donations. And then we give away the data for free on the web. So you have to find it and then you have to catalog it and then you have to preserve it.

Then what do you do? Translate it. You have to translate it, but to translate it you need to study it.

You see? Someone has to teach it to you. You can't sit down and translate a book on physics if you don't know physics, right?

And that's what they are. They're as difficult as physics books. So you need someone to teach it to you.

You need oral tradition. So one day we added up the people who worked on the project over the last 20 years. We added up, I think it's 10,000 hours of oral transmission.

They have been to about 10,000 hours of training and, you know, lamas explaining to them the books that were found and preserved. Because first they have to be understood by a human being in their mind, right? And only then can you translate them, right?

So it's a small group of very dedicated people and they have continued. And not just Tibetan, I mean Sanskrit, and not just Buddhist materials. Now we're doing, we're one of the largest Hindu input projects now.

And also Christian materials, Jewish materials. We're doing all, in Ethiopia we even have a small project inputting ancient sources to the Bible. They were the first source for, I forget which book, Enoch.

The book of Enoch in the Bible only comes from Ethiopia. It was only found among the Jewish settlements of Ethiopia. So we're doing projects like that.

It's not just Buddhism now. And also Chinese. But then you need to find people to help you.

So on the Hindu side, this is an advertisement for you guys, okay? Next May, we've been training with Swami, a very great master of Hinduism for three or four years, Lama Krishna and I. And then only this year he agreed to teach other people.

So next May, in a very difficult location, Paradise Island in the Bahamas, where there's a very beautiful ashram. So he's agreed to give us teachings on the Bhagavad Gita from the Sanskrit, right? And then next November, at the end of the fall term, we'll be doing the Dao De Jing with a very great Chinese master from Shanghai.

And there's another master from Chengdu, from western China, who's coming also to teach Dao De Jing. Master Liang, Shuyi Liang. And then for our Christian book, like for example, we went and studied, there's a place here in Oxford called Wycliffe.

What's it called? Is it Wycliffe? No.

Anyway, we went and studied there the ancient Greek. And that was the basis of it. We translated the, re-translated the Bible sections that we used in the Christian book.

So it's important to go and get the oral transmission from a living lineage. And then you can, what? Then you can translate.

And I think we've done, this group has done, I think, about 10,000 pages of translation. I mean more than anyone else in the world, I think. This little group of people out in the desert in the last 20 years, the people here have created the most translations, I think, in the world.

And I think they're good translations. And they were done in a special way. They were done one sentence of the foreign language and then one sentence of English and then one sentence of the foreign language and one sentence of English so that anyone can confirm or they can critique it.

And we opened it up to the world's criticism. We said, here's 10,000 pages free on the web. Every other sentence is the original language.

If there's a single word you think is wrong, then contact us. You know what I mean? And so we have 10,000 pure pages of the wisdom, of ancient wisdom.

In the original text, which if you don't know, if you haven't had the oral training, they're incomprehensible. Like, I'll put up some texts that we're studying here. I was reading over some of the texts that we translated.

We've been translating now for three years? Three or four years, a text. Four years.

But, I mean, if you just picked it up, if someone handed it to you, it would be totally incomprehensible. English is correct, and it's accurate, and you could never understand anything from it. If you didn't have a teacher sitting with you.

So, what has to happen after the translation of the source words? Then what has to happen?

[Speaker 2]
If I'm correctly taught? Huh? If I'm correctly taught?

[Speaker 1]
Correct?

[Speaker 2]
Correctly taught?

[Speaker 1]
Yeah. You have to translate them in your own culture's language. In your own culture's vernacular.

In the common language of your culture. It's not enough to put out scholarly translations that are going to sit on a shelf. And frankly, the one we're going to print, I don't guess that more than 500 or 1,000 copies will ever be bought.

It's hopeless. It's 10 years of work and only 50 people will really study it. So, then you have to interpret it.

You have to interpret the wisdom for your own culture. So, we have the ACF courses, right? We took a Geshe course.

We took a 25-year course. We took all the scriptures of a 25-year course. And we translated the major scriptures and then we cut them off.

We chopped out the easy parts, you know, karma and emptiness and refuge and, you know. We chopped out the parts that people could understand and then we made the ACF courses. So, now there are 50 courses counting the Tantric course, counting the advanced courses.

There are 50 courses that normal people who are satellite engineers can understand. No, we went on a tour, a book tour after Sriya retreat and we went on cars. We decided to go in cars and we went around the country and we talked to the people who came to the talks, you know.

And there began to be an obvious pattern, you know. Like, they were all literally satellite engineers or they were computer programmers or inventors of computers. Or, you know, the people who can take the ACF courses.

It's about, we estimate it's maybe 1 in 10,000 people can take an ACF course. I mean, 1 in 10,000 people can seriously digest an ACF course. It's still too difficult for most people.

You see, that's the simplified one, right? What do you do then? So what do you do then?

You write a popular book. You see? Then you popularize it.

You write the Diamond Cutter. You write a book for business, right? You try to connect into the normal society, right?

And you try to write what we call a mass market book or a popular book, like that. So, we wrote the Diamond Cutter and now we're, then you sort of, I would call it diversified. There are, there's about 100,000 copies of the Diamond Cutter right around the world.

It's in 20 languages now. The Hebrew came out, what? Last month.

The Vietnamese was just completed. The Mongolian was printed last week. The Italian came out a couple weeks ago.

And like that, Polish came out. The Turkish is being worked on. Stuff like that, you know.

So you, we estimate that if you can get 100,000 copies of a work out in one country, you have a chance of changing the country's views. You see? Because 100,000 people who study the book means that about a million are taking it seriously.

So we know in Chinese, for example, we know that a million people are using the Diamond Cutter's principles. We just have a count of people who are, they're doing their six-day, their six-time book because the books were printed in Chinese and they have been distributed to a million people who are using them. So we know, we know about a million people.

We estimate that if you can distribute, if you can write a book that's interesting enough for 100,000 people to read it, you can start to change a culture. You can start to change a country. You see?

So, so first we wrote a book about business and then we thought we should diversify because not everyone's interested in making a million dollars. Some other people are having health problems. A lot of people are having relationship issues with their partners.

So, and then there's a huge amount of Jewish and Christian people in the West. So we thought, let's write books about those subjects. You know?

So, so we've come up with, you know, the partner, what do you call it? The Yoga Boss. YSI, Yoga Studies Institute.

And then, you know, we saw, it started when we saw a, what do you call it? What's that big newspaper in New York? Wall Street Journal.

No, the other big newspaper. The Wall Street Journal said, we saw an article, it said 50 million people in America are doing yoga. You know, fairly regularly, 50 million people.

So we thought, that's a way to spread our idea. You know? That's a way to spread the idea that your world is coming from how you treat other people.

And only from that. There is no other world. Emptiness means there's no other world.

Got it? That's emptiness. Stated positively, there's nothing in your world and no one you've ever met that's not coming from how you treat other people.

So, that means that your health, the state of your health is coming from whether you take an interest in the hungry people in the world. You see? There's a saying in Tibet, you know, have you given more meals than you have eaten?

Have you given away more meals than you have eaten? You see? Because if you have not, the body will age.

If you have not, the body will age. You see? Aging is caused, according to this idea, aging is caused by not taking care of other people's bodies.

Enough. Allowing hunger to continue in the world is the source of aging in the world. It's kind of, it's mind boggling.

Okay? The source of, the reason people on this planet, and there are many other worlds, right? We, I'm just trying to restrict it to what you can confirm.

This planet. But there are many other worlds. And there are worlds where they have figured out these things, right?

But we can't get into that because you can't show that to somebody. But this world you know. You've got newspapers to prove it.

Right? So this world, in this world, at this stage in the evolution of this world, they, people get old, and people die, because they don't take enough care of the people who don't have enough food or don't have a place to stay. And that's the cause.

According to this idea, that's actually the cause of aging and death itself. It's eating more meals than you give away. You see?

It's very mind boggling. If it's true, right? If it's true, then what's the other, what's the flip side of that?

If it's true, then what's the flip side of that? If we all gave away more meals than we ate, we wouldn't age. And we would live in a world where people don't age.

There are worlds where the word death doesn't exist. There are no, there's no vocabulary to express aging or illness or death. There are places like that.

In the, the universe is a big place, you know. In Tibet they say, don't be a frog in a well. You know, there's this frog living in a well.

And he thought, that's the whole world is his well, you know. And he was the king of his world. He was the biggest frog in the well, you know.

And then one day, he had a friend, a crow. This has to come from India, right? Like, what do you call it?

Hirupadesha. Hirupadesha. From the Hirupadesha.

So, so a crow came to him and stood on the edge of the wall. And they used to talk a lot. And the crow said, you know, there's other worlds, you know.

Not just this well, you know. And the frog refused to agree. Just like you.

OK? He's like, no, no. This is the only world.

And I'm the king of this world, you know. This is the largest body of water in the whole world. You know, it's my well.

You know. So, no, we think like that. You think I'm foolish if I talk about other worlds' progress, right?

So anyway, you, the, one day the crow said, OK frog, come on, I'll take you, I'll carry you and I'll show you another body of water. So he took the frog in his legs, you know, on his, in his claws, carefully. And he flew to the beach.

And he set it down on the side of the ocean. And he said, OK, open your eyes, you know. And the frog opened his eyes.

And in Tibet, they laugh at this point. And he said, haha, his head exploded. They have a very odd sense of humor.

But, but so you, you, you diversify. You reach out to people. You find out what's popular.

If bowling gets popular, we're going to write books about bowling, you know. And if bowling sweeps the world the way yoga has swept the world, we'll put out books about the true meaning of bowling. And he's like, no, maybe.

Because it's all the same book. We met with our publisher, Dumbledore, last, couple weeks ago? In New York.

And he finally is figuring out that we just write the same book over and over again. You know, except for different audiences, you know. So we, they gave us a contract for a partner book.

And Mama Christy's book was turned into a meditation. And we're doing a book on, we're even doing a book for martial arts community. And, you know, with a Chinese master of martial arts.

And like that, wherever we'll get the idea out to more people. And then what happens is there's something of, what do you call it when you reach a certain point where it's going to sustain itself? Self-culture.

Self-recognition.

[Speaker 2]
Critical mass.

[Speaker 1]
Critical mass. Then you get to what I call invisible critical mass. What does critical mass mean?

Critical mass means in your culture they start putting TV shows on TV about, what's it called, Joe Scarborough, something like that? Earl. My name is Earl.

Yeah. But they just start putting out TV shows about pretty accurate TV shows about how karma works. You see what I mean?

And then in yoga centers around the world, around the world, they're pulling out your book before the exercises and they're reading a few sentences about how your world is coming from how you treat other people. You see? So that I would call critical mass.

And it's happening. That's what I'm trying to say. You can work for 10, 20 years.

A small group of people can work for 10, 20 years. And then the ripples, the obvious ripples are, we know there's certain ripples, but certain ripples are, I call invisible. You see?

Untraceable ripples. You know, like somebody, some government official in China makes a statement about the Diamond Cutter. And he, he, he, the head of religious affairs in Beijing, for the whole country, has required his office to read the Diamond Cutter in Chinese, you know?

So, we don't know the guy. He's 100 steps removed from us. But the world starts to shift, you see?

There's a paradigm shift in the whole attitude, in the whole wisdom of the world. And then the wisdom becomes part of the civilization. And no one notices anymore.

Moses' commandments and Jesus' implementation of them are contained in democratic ideals. And in the idea of law, common law. They have invisibly and quietly become the color by which we live.

And even if you're not interested in Judeo-Christian roots, they have become, you live by them. So the idea is, the idea of this whole process is, you're not making the world into devout Buddhists, you see? And you're not trying to change their religion.

You're not having, what do you call it, fractional doctrinal disputes. You're trying to share an idea by, it's like fire. It's like fire.

I always used to sit in front of Prometheus in, what's that place? Lincoln Center? Rockefeller Center.

Yeah? Is it called Lincoln Center? That's a different one, yeah.

Rockefeller Center. I used to sit there because I used to work on the 5th and 20th. So I used to go up there for lunch.

I used to stare at Prometheus. So Prometheus, God, I don't know if you know this story. He was a god.

And then there was fire in the gods, but man didn't have fire. So Prometheus swiped it from the gods and brought it to man. So if you go to Rockefeller Center, he's flying through the air with fire in his hand.

This beautiful huge statue. So there was a time like that. When was the first fire in this world?

We don't know. I can't say what day it was. I don't know.

But like Prometheus, right? A small group of people can carry an idea to a civilization and change the civilization so permanently that no one even remembers when it changed. You see?

So long and permanently that all of mankind lives by this idea that your world, your reality, is coming from the kindness that you showed other people. You know? So this is the work we're doing.

You see? We are trying to contribute to this evolution. And it won't be remembered.

Hopefully. If we succeed, it won't be remembered. They won't say, Oh, you know, there's this crazy guy in the desert in 19...

whatever it was, 2000 something, you know. And they started putting books and they started canceling stock from ancient Tibetan. And then slowly over many ripples that changed the way people lived.

It changed how people responded, for example, to violence. You see? If people from another country come and blow up a building in your country, right?

Then if you understood where things were coming from, it wouldn't even occur to you to respond with violence. You see? If your culture was educated or advanced enough, no one in the country would even consider an act of violence in return.

Because it was violence which created it. You see? It's a violence.

It's our own violence which created the bombing of the World Trade Center. You see? So...

If we succeed in our work, there will come a day when someone blows up a building and people just try to reach out to their families and help them for their husbands who died in the planes, driving the planes. You see? And there won't be any...

No one will even... It won't even occur to anyone to do any violence. But, you see?

Then the work is successful. And then you have to move on to another world, you see? Okay.

So, that's a small introduction to what we do. But think about it sometimes. And you're down there near the beginning.

You're down there near the bottom. What was at the bottom? Find them.

Preserve them. And then translate them. Right?

Find them. Preserve them. And then translate them.

You're trying to learn to translate. And then the words that you translate will be lost, hopefully. You see?

The complicated monastic textbook that we're translating will be lost. And it will become newspapers. You see?

The wisdom will be transferred to the general populace. It will be what they write about in People magazine or the New York Times. You see?

It will just be what is written about. And we don't need these old philosophical scriptures anymore. You see?

Got it? And that's our goal. So, now we have to start the old philosophical scripture.

There's a second class that happens after this class that's not so advanced in their evolution. But in this class, it's required to have a snack right in the middle of the class. It helps your pronunciation.

Is there any snack? What does it mean, they're coming? It's time.

No, it's okay, it's okay, it's okay. It's okay, it's okay, it's okay. No, no, no, no, no, no.

When it comes, wow. When it comes, just let them. Okay?

If you don't know about this class, if you've never been in this class, Tibetan is very hard to pronounce, so it's easier if you have a chocolate chip cookie in your mouth. Pronunciation is better. If there's any yogis from New York, you should report to our teachers, David and Sharon, that all the snacks have gone vegan this year.

They'll be proud of us. Why? We were in the Bahamas, we were explaining why it was wrong to have dairy.

Because in our countries, they killed all the boy cows. And we watched them kill the boy cows. We saw it.

We watched it. And we watched the mother of the baby boy cow, we watched her smash her head against the pillar. In pain.

In grief, you know? And we saw it. Christine, we saw it.

We knew her. And we knew the baby. We couldn't keep using dairy products until they changed the system.

Anyway. Okay, I'm going to remind you where we are in this text, because this text is hard. It's hard to keep in mind for four years how the train of thought is going.

Okay? But basically it boils down to this. We've talked about the idea of emptiness.

And the meaning of emptiness is that you can't point to anything that's not coming from the kindness you pay to other people. There is nothing in this room that you can point to which is not a direct result of the amount of kindness you show to others. That's all.

And that's what emptiness means. That's the meaning of emptiness. So now emptiness is obviously an important idea.

And one that you can use in your world. And not just some kind of philosophical exercise. It has meaning that you can use in your world.

So, there was a discussion in the text. Can a person who doesn't want to save the world yet, right? Who isn't aware they want to do all.

They don't want to contribute to this process. They're not actually interested. You see?

They heard it. They understood it. They could even repeat it to somebody else.

Call a listener, right? But they're not so... It doesn't inspire them right now.

It will someday. But right now they're not inspired. Right?

The question came up in the text. You know? This is how it came out in the text.

Somebody said, What does Lord Buddha say is the best thing to teach to a cold audience? You know? A totally cold audience.

You know? Someone who's never heard of any of this stuff. Who hasn't had any kind of training at all.

And in Chandrakirti's commentary from 750 AD, 650 AD, he replies, Lord Buddha said, dhammo jhinvedan. Say dhammo. Dhammo.

Jhinvedan. Jhinvedan. Which means, what's dhammo?

First. Jhinvedan is the first of the perfections. What?

Giving. Generosity. Dham.

We have it in the Bahamas. Dham means, he described. He spoke about.

He spoke about, Lord Buddha said, if you get to a really cold audience, and this happens in China, right? You have a thousand Chinese people there. They're waiting for you to say something.

They don't know anything about what you're going to talk about. So, cold audience. And in their country, they've been cold for a generation or two.

None of this kind of talk publicly for a generation or two. So, how do you start off? Jhinvedan means, talk to them about getting rich with these ideas.

Start from that. Write a book called The Diamond Cutting Problem. Making money.

Start that way. Start off that way. So, then the question came up in the text.

In the scripture we're studying, the question came up. Is it possible for a person to manipulate the laws of karma to gain personal wealth without any interest in helping the world? Without any interest in saving the world?

Can a person just use it for selfish purposes? Will it still work? Yeah.

And the answer came yes. It will work. In a limited way.

Because their intention is limited. They will get limited in being wealthy. Meaning, couple million bucks or something.

It's possible. They will get wealthy.

[Speaker 2]
It is possible.

[Speaker 1]
Are you saying that a person like that wouldn't be able to perceive emptiness directly in a deep state of meditation? Can a person who has no particular interest in saving the world, can they reach a direct perception of the highest truth of the world without being interested in saving the world? Michael says yes.

But it was a huge debate in the ancient times. It was a huge question in the ancient times. Can a person who's not particularly interested in saving the world, can they commune with ultimate reality in a deep state of meditation?

Is it even possible? And what's wrong with our system? The position of this school of Buddhism, which happens to be the highest school of Buddhism from ancient India, it says yes, it's possible.

It is possible. But the opponent said what? He said not possible.

He said not possible. Lower people don't perceive emptiness directly. Not possible.

Then we came back to them. Are you saying... We came back to them.

They said not possible. We said not possible means they don't see emptiness, right? They said right, directly.

And we said that means they don't see the emptiness of Rob Haggerty. Right? Okay?

He said they don't see emptiness. Because they don't want to save the world. Then we said, so they don't perceive the emptiness of Rob Haggerty.

Who? Rob Haggerty. Okay?

Rob Haggerty. Why? Because the first emptiness you ever see directly is always the emptiness of Ben Kramer, if you're Ben Kramer.

Got it? Okay? And don't forget that you're not even allowed to say it's your own emptiness.

You're not even allowed to say that. You can't say that. You have to connect it to your personal name.

The first time I see emptiness directly it will be Ness Jew's emptiness. Okay? You have to think that in your mind.

It will be the lack of Ness Jew in the world. It'll be the fact that Ben Kramer isn't in this room. It'll be the fact that Rob Haggerty is not going to be eating a cookie.

Okay? Got it? Got it?

It'll be that. It'll be exactly that. Okay?

And then he said like, he said like, are you implying that... He said, why? And we said, because Rob Haggerty can't see the emptiness in Rob's parts.

I'll say it again. Rob Haggerty couldn't have seen Rob Haggerty's emptiness because Rob Haggerty didn't see the emptiness in Rob Haggerty's parts. Got it?

So it's like this. To understand that Rob Haggerty doesn't come from any place else than Rob Haggerty's kindness to others. Right?

You must first understand that Rob Haggerty's beard doesn't come from anywhere else than Rob Haggerty's kindness to others. Got it? Got it?

Obviously. Because you cannot see Rob Haggerty unless you at least see a couple of Rob Haggerty's parts. You can't understand Rob without understanding all the parts to Rob.

If you're his partner and you can't really understand Rob until you understand all of the multitude of his emotions and all the parts to him. Everything about him. You don't know Rob until you know all the parts to Rob.

Right? Okay? So when they said those guys who don't want to save the world can't see Rob's emptiness, we come back with are you saying they don't perceive Rob's parts?

Okay? Are you saying they don't perceive Rob's parts? Now the question comes.

Does that mean the first emptiness that Rob ever sees will be the emptiness of Rob's beard? I'll say it again. Does that mean the first emptiness that Rob ever sees directly in a deep step of meditation in his new three year meditation life?

Does that mean the first emptiness he ever sees will be the emptiness of his beard? No. Okay?

So catch this. While you are developing an intellectual understanding of Rob's emptiness, which must always perceive the meditational perception, you work on his parts. Is his beard empty?

Are his eyes empty? Is his ears empty? Is his mind empty?

Okay? And then you work out to, okay, Rob's empty. Will you see it directly?

Okay, but the first emptiness you ever see directly is Rob's emptiness. Then the guy did a sneaky thing. He said, oh, so Rob gets to see emptiness by understanding something about how Rob relates to his parts.

And we said, did we say that's right? Is that emptiness? Okay.

The fact that Rob doesn't run the parts of Rob. What's that mean? Think of a big crane.

You know, here in New York, we were up in this skyscraper, you know, looking down on this new construction, not far from the World Trade Center. And we were watching the cranes work. And there's this tiny little glass box.

And there's this one tiny little guy with a microphone on, you know. And they're like, turn it 30 feet to the left, you know. He can't even see the ground.

And he just turns the controls and he turns 30 feet to the left. This little tiny guy up in the glass box who can't even see what he's moving, right? He's controlling it all.

And we tend to think that we are like that. You see? Okay.

On the count of three, raise your left arm. One, two, you gotta wait till three. Three.

Okay, so you control your arm, right? Right? You control your arm.

You're in charge of your arm, right? It's a part of you. And you run the show.

You're the guy in the glass box. And your body does what you want, right? No.

Listen. Something you will see on the day you see emptiness directly. Something you will see on the day you see emptiness directly.

Gravity will beat you. Gravity will win the struggle. Okay?

There's a struggle going on at this moment between you and gravity. And you have enough youth left to stay vertical. But gravity will pull you down.

Sooner or later, gravity will win. Unless you've changed the reality, right? I mean, that's why we're here.

But for normal people who have no other recourse, who've never heard of these things, inevitably, ultimately, gravity will pull them down. Right? Do you control your arm?

Do you control your arm? Are you in the glass box telling the arm to go up? You don't control your arm.

I mean, for the time being, there's some other kind of going on. And the arm rises when you say rise. But for normal people, there must come a day when you cannot raise your arm.

That proves you don't control your arm. You never did control your arm. You thought you did.

What about the other parts of you? How about your thoughts? I mean, you're this thing.

There's an interesting thing. I mean, it's kind of obvious. And it's kind of weird when someone points it out.

Are you the person listening to your thoughts? Or are you the person speaking those thoughts? Right?

Which one are you? But I think up to the Ranggipa, up to the Svatantrika school of Buddhism, up to there, up to that point, they say the real person is the awareness of the person. The awareness of the person's thoughts.

Who are you really? You are the person who's listening to your thoughts. You're not even the thoughts.

Who are you really? Who's the real Dabdvina? Dabdvina's consciousness of his thoughts is the real Dabdvina.

I mean, up to the National High School, they say that. They say that. So, you're deciding to have the thoughts in your mind.

Right? The listener is choosing the thoughts to have in their mind. Right?

Like you raise your arm. Right? You're in control of your parts.

Right? You're not. If you've ever been unhappy in your life.

If you've ever taught a whole weekend on how to control your mind and then blown up on a Monday morning at your partner. Like me. No, you don't control.

You can't control. You're not in control. So, some schools of Buddhism say that Rob's emptiness is the fact that Rob can't control Rob.

That there's no driver. There's really no driver. There is no driver.

There is no listener. The listener is also just another thought. The next moment you're hearing that thought.

You see? The next moment you're aware of the listener. So, the listener is just another thought.

You see what I mean? There is no driver. There is no controller.

Okay? Some people say that's emptiness. Okay?

So, the other guys... We're in this huge argument. Four year argument.

I'm trying to pick you up in the last few days. The other side. The other guy says, Oh, so you agree with us.

What do you say I agree to? Rob's emptiness is the fact that Rob's not in control of Rob. There's no driver.

Okay? It's just all karma going on. Okay?

That's Rob's emptiness. Is that Rob's emptiness? It's not.

Okay? It's not the ultimate Rob's. It's not the real Rob's emptiness.

Is it a helpful thought? Yeah. Can you say it's a step to final realization?

Yeah. So, in a teaching called Mahamudra, we say there are six flavors of emptiness. Seven if you count Vajrayana.

But we're not counting. Okay? So, six flavors of emptiness.

We just covered flavor number one. But we have to say, even as we say there are six flavors of emptiness, we have to say that five of them are not emptiness. Okay?

Five of them are not emptiness. Alright? Got it?

Because they're not the final emptiness. By the way, some guy from Columbia wrote me an email a couple of months ago. I think Jigme knows.

Chris Kelly. Okay? And he said, Geshe Michael, where did you get this six flavors of emptiness from?

I can't find it in scriptures. You know, Mahamudra. I can't find it.

This is one source. This section, in this text. So you can tell him.

He can listen to the thing. Okay? This section, in this text from 1560s, is one of the places.

But you also have to study the sister text on Prajnaparamita, by K. Duttendwa Dagne. Same author.

From those two sources, you can get the six flavors of emptiness. Okay? So if someone had to write a thesis about it, they'd have to master those two books.

The other one takes twelve years. Because it's one of the explorers. In the monastery.

Okay? So it's just the sixteen year project he's looking at. Alright.

So, the guy is trying to trick us. Right? The guy is trying to trick us.

Why? He says, Oh, you're saying, I have to understand the emptiness of Ra's parts to understand the emptiness of Ra. And we say, Okay?

What are you laughing about? Okay. And then, and then they would say, Well, is that emptiness?

And we would say, Not according to them. Us. Not according to us.

And then he would probably say, if he's smart, he'd say, he'd say a Telugu writer, Prasangika, he'd say, Oh, I guess Lord Buddha never taught that was emptiness. And then you always look away. In the debate ground, you don't stare at the guy.

You don't say, Lord Buddha never said that. You just say, Oh. So I guess, I guess Lord Buddha never taught that was emptiness.

Right? And then what do we say? Now we're at a very interesting point in the text.

We say something different. We say, Oh. Did Lord Buddha teach the mind only?

Did he teach it in school? What would you say? This is a debate now.

I'm Ronald, you're Shannon. I'm always right, you're always wrong. Oh.

So I guess Lord Buddha never taught the mind only in school. Oh, he did? You're saying he did?

Lama Thang. We can say, Lama Thang. He taught it.

He was a Thang. Lama Thang. Then what do you say?

Duh. Yeah, duh. That's right.

He taught it. Oh. So I guess Lord Buddha taught that emptiness means that Genshin Michael's gustatory consciousness on his tummy.

And the loose schoolboy cookie, which only he gets, by the way. Uh. I'm going to do Lama Krishnamurti.

[Speaker 2]
Is that music?

[Speaker 1]
This is beyond music. It's a talk. It's from a talk.

Twinkies have nothing, no food in them at all. I'm kidding. I'm kidding.

So. So. If you're saying, we're going to listen, because you've got to listen to what you're reading.

So you're saying that Lord Buddha said that, uh. Let's use my eye consciousness. Genshin Michael's eye consciousness.

And the loose school schoolboy cookie, which is made of partless atoms. Which is made of partless atoms. Which, if you broke it down, at some point you would reach nuclear particles.

Okay? Got it? Which, if you broke it down far enough, you would reach a unit of matter.

Okay? My eye consciousness and that cookie, which is made of units of, smallest units of matter. Which is what science says.

Okay? Which is what, if you want to say quarks or, quarks or whatever. Particles are particles.

It doesn't matter. But the smallest observable particle, uh, which is made of, of real particles. You know?

Smallest particles. Then, then, they don't come from a separate karmic seed. Did Lord Buddha ever say that?

Yes, he did. He did? So, by the way, that's a very, that's one of the famous in emptiness, right?

That's one of the famous in emptiness. Me and the cookie don't come from a separate karmic seed. There was one event in the past.

What was it? I shared my cookies. I shared a cookie.

You see? And, over time, that one karma has split into a subject and an object. You know?

So, even though to us, in the world at this moment, it seems that the cookie is out there, and Geshe Michael's over here, and they don't have any connection until they eat it, right? Uh, even though it seems like that, that's not real. That's not true.

You have done an act in the past, which over years has festered in your subconscious, and has now flowered into your perception of you and the cookie in your head. Subject and object. Did Lord Buddha ever teach that?

Oh, excuse me. And the cookie made a part of us, part of us. Huh?

Yeah, he did teach both of us things. He did teach both of things. But, it's wrong.

There's no such thing as a part of us, part of God. Okay? I mean, science is just starting to grapple with this idea.

Science is just starting to grapple with this idea. Science is just starting to grapple with the idea that when you observe an infinitely small particle, the act of observation changes it. The act of observing it changes it.

You see? You're just getting there. Right?

You can't have a part of us particle, because if it were part of us it wouldn't have width. Okay? If it didn't have width it couldn't do anything, you couldn't make a cookie out of it.

Not really. If it didn't have any size, then a lot of them together wouldn't make as good of a cookie. Because it has size.

Got it? So it can't be such a thing as a final atomic particle. They will never find one.

Because it will always have to have width. You see? Like that.

Where's the apparent width coming from then?

[Speaker 2]
The subject side.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, from you. The width of the smallest atomic particle is made up by your mind under the influence of your kindness to others. The walls of this temple are held up by kindness.

It's a very, I mean, talk about evolution. When people figure out that the best way to get a new house is take all the mortgage money you ever saved up and give it to a poor family to build their house. You know?

I mean, when people figure that out something weird will happen in this world. Right? And it's true.

And you can make a hundred million dollar company and you can prove it. You know? But to really get people to buy into it is a little difficult.

Okay. Mmm. Alright.

Now I'm not sure how to pronounce your name. We said that back to the guy who said there's no drama. We said that back to the guy who said there's no drama.

We said to the guy, Oh, so Lord Buddha taught the mind-only school and what did he say? He said, yes. Then we hit him with this and then we're caught up.

Then we hit him with this and then we're caught up. We can go on with Bertrand's vision. Okay?

We hit him with this and then we're caught up. Oh, so, Van Kringeren. Lord Buddha accepted the idea of a atomic particle that was indivisible.

He taught it. He taught it. Kala Machina.

When you say Kala Machina you just lost me. Why? You were trying to catch me on the same thing.

You were trying to catch me on the same thing. You said, Oh, didn't Lord Buddha say you understand Rob's parts? Rob's relationship to his parts.

The guy in the glass booth as opposed to the parts of the crane. Didn't Lord Buddha talk about that? I said, yeah, he talked about that.

But that's not emptiness. Well, then that's not a helpful idea. I never said that.

I didn't say that. Of course it's a helpful idea. These are all helpful ideas.

They're not emptiness. They won't save you. They won't save you.

They'll contribute. They'll get you there. Okay?

And there are six levels of that kind of emptiness. That's not what Christian... Oh, I'm not interested in that.

That's the Maori group. The bad, bad Maori groups. I mean, they're too bad.

Okay. You really want to see it, but it's not. All this is just said relative to establishing your own viewpoint once they have just proven that things could exist in the way the other two schools believe.

Okay? What's he saying? People in the mind-only school, when they said that Lord Buddha was talking about partless particles, they were talking about partless particles because they believed in partless particles.

They talked about partless particles because they were living in a culture and a place where other people thought there was partless particles. So, they did talk about the partless particles of the loose schoolboy cookie, but not because they believed in the partless particles of the loose schoolboy cookie. Got it?

So yeah, Lord Buddha did talk about having to understand Rob and his relationship to his parts, as the lack of the owner to the owned. Right? He did talk about that.

But just because that's all that people could relate to. Got it? Just because that's all that people could relate to at that point.

Okay? So, it's not true that you see Rob's parts directly first. The emptiness of Rob's parts directly first.

When you see emptiness. You see the emptiness of Rob first. That's the whole argument so far.

Got it? That's the whole argument so far. People make statements that are not, in fact, totally accurate when trying to relate to people who aren't there yet.

Okay? And they do all kinds of things to try to attract and relate to people who are not there yet. Okay?

And it may not be what they want to do really at all. Okay? Alright.

So, we're going to actually do some... We got 12 minutes to have a class. Let's...

We're going to practice reading the Tibetan. And if you don't know any Tibetan, just go like this. Or you can go like...

It's called Wawa. In the monastery, it's called Wawa. In the monastery, you do 4 hours of chanting every morning, right?

And maybe half the monks don't know all 4 hours of prayers. So, when they get to the park, they don't, or they just go... And everybody else kind of fills in.

You see? You don't sit there like... like that.

You know? You look like you're really joining in. I was very big in that.

Okay. Basically, pronounce the letters in the middle. Okay?

Here we go. It's true, right? If you had to give somebody a 20 second Tibetan...

1, 2, 3... Then I look in the mirror, 다시 깨워 까네, 저기 다음에, 때만 백받다를 위해. Okay.

That's the... how you answer a question. This is a debate test.

The test is... Socratic Dialogue. It's phrased...

It's framed in Socratic Dialogue. It's a debate. It's like, for example, in this very system, where we establish the...

저기 다음에, lack of a self to... things, or parts of a person, technically parts of a person, lack of a self to things, by... by denying or negating, by denying, that anything could...

깨워, start or grow, start in any of the four ways. Okay? Any of the four ways.

You're going to have to go to the class in nine minutes, or whatever. You know, she's... because she's teaching the root text for all of these texts.

It's the mother text of all texts. And they deny that something could start through four different ways. Right?

Which are what? What's the class of... I don't know.

Okay? I really don't know. Don't take any photos and put them everywhere in Saskatchewan.

It happens. Okay. Did the milk pour itself?

No. Okay. Was the milk poured by both itself and Anatole, or whoever it was, tonight?

No. No. Is it true that no one poured the milk?

So those are three. We just denied three of the ways that the milk could have been poured. Here's the hard one.

Was the milk poured by something other than the milk, or somebody other than the milk? You know, normally you have to say yes. You know, Anatole is somebody.

Okay? And... he poured it.

Right? But in Madhyamika, in the highest Buddhism, we have to say one. It was not poured by somebody other than the milk.

Because there is nobody other than the milk. Because Anatole doesn't exist. Okay?

No. Anatole doesn't exist. That one Anatole.

A third Anatole doesn't exist. Okay? A third Anatole doesn't exist.

Say it the way I've said it all night. What's the certain Anatole that doesn't exist? One that...

The Anatole that has not... that does not exist in my world because of the kindness I have shown others, never poured the milk. Okay?

There's no such Anatole. That certain kind of Anatole doesn't exist. How does that help you?

How does understanding that emptiness help you? Lamas get out all over the world. Probably right now there are Lamas all over the world saying the same thing.

They fail to make this next step. Universally they fail to make this next step. So it's coming from you.

So what? Whether I get the same from you or not, I still have the milk.

[Speaker 2]
What?

[Speaker 1]
He said, if I want more milk, what do I have to do? Ask Anatole? Yeah?

Right? No. That's the next step, you see.

That always has to be the next step. Oh, you prove that the milk didn't pour itself. Yes.

You prove that it didn't pour itself and not pour itself. Yes. You prove that knowing it's not true that no one poured it.

Yes. Did you prove that nobody else poured it? No.

Well, did somebody else pour it? No. Well, isn't Anatole sitting over there?

That Anatole is not sitting over there. That's how you have to see it. That Anatole who doesn't come from my sharing my milk never existed, never could exist, never will exist.

That's emptiness. Okay? Got it?

Let's do one more just because it would be nice to get some. We have six minutes. Pratyakshana monogama.

Pratyakshana monogama. Where did that come from? Don't listen to the first chapter.

What's Pratyakshana? Direct perception. You see the chocolate heart.

That's a Pratyakshana. Okay? I taste the chocolate heart.

It's the only time and the only place in the whole week that I get to eat whenever I want. It's not vegan by the way. So I have a you have a direct perception of the you have a direct perception of the chocolate heart, right?

Where's the other heart? No, where's the other heart? Yeah, it's in my mouth.

Pratyakshana monogama. That's the Gautama perception. That's the Gautama perception.

It tastes good. That's Agama. What's Agama?

Authority. Intrustable authority. I know my chocolate.

Which one of these three do you use to see emptiness directly? Pratyakshana. I mean, no.

When you say directly it's Pratyakshana. It's direct perception. Okay?

But it's a special kind of direct perception. Can you have a direct perception only within your mind? Not seeing, not tasting, not feeling, not hearing.

Can you have a direct perception only in your mind? Hopefully, if you hear your thoughts you're having a direct perception of those thoughts. Right?

If you hear your thoughts you're having a direct perception of those thoughts. But there's a very, very, very important kind of almost clairvoyant direct perception which is recognized among the ancient schools of India. Okay?

The direct perception in your mind with which you see emptiness directly has a special name. Okay? It has a special name.

And it's called Yogin Pratyakshana. So what's the... Yogic direct perception.

The name of it is Yogic direct perception. Which means some kind of almost supernatural direct perception in a very, very deep state of meditation. Okay?

So let's read this one together in Vasta. Okay? One, two, three.

Neljor munsum gyulang dembe surdong yude nyer lengi pung bo mi tak par munsum du dokpe surdong yube Cheese. Cheese. Okay?

Neljor munsum Yogic direct perception. Nel-Dor means yoga, yogic. Okay, yogic, yogic.

Nel-Dor means... Yulat that means a person who has it in their mind, in their heart. Who possesses yogic direct perception.

What's a tsorto? Yeah. Someone who believes the world is coming at them.

Someone who thinks the chair is there, and I'm seeing the chair because it's presenting itself to me. That's called a tsorto. What's another word for a tsorto?

Chiba, say chiba. Chiba means a... compared to a person who has it in their chest directly, literally an infant.

An infant, a child. Or a sosokeo. Normal people of the world.

They think the world is coming this way. This is one of the only places in scripture you'll see this beautiful word in this text. Very...

the least common word for a person who hasn't seen emptiness directly. Tsorto. Someone who thinks the world is coming at them.

Whereas we know it's coming from us. From the amount of kindness we've shown to others. Okay?

Got it? So tsorto. Yul.

There does exist a tsorto who has another wisdom. What's he saying?

[Speaker 2]
Yeah.

[Speaker 1]
You can be a person who has yet to see emptiness directly. And you can still have a yogic perception. Okay?

Now, what are we saying? It's a bad way to debate. What are you saying?

Eh, you might say... Kaisha. Kaisha.

Which means what? Give me an example. What?

What? Show me. Show me.

Okay? Kaisha. So what are you going to show me?

What are you going to say? That's the last thing we're going to do now. Kaisha.

So, who? What? Where?

When? How? Who?

Who? Who? Who they were.

Then the answer comes. Nyer-len-gyur-phung-bo means what? The heaps...

This nyer-len has a different meaning. This nyer-len means the heaps you took on at birth. This nyer-len means the heaps I took on at birth.

Okay? I was forced on me. Nyer-len-gyur-phung-bo.

Mi-tak-pa. A bad translation is... Impermanent.

Okay? A good translation is... Changing.

Changing from instant to instant. The definition of mi-tak-pa is that thing which is coming into existence and being destroyed instant by instant. So, impermanence is not good enough.

In a state of constant flux. Constant change. Mi-tak-pa.

Mun-si-bu-to. So, I've directly... Chor-hong.

Yeah. Non-arya. Yut.

There it is. Prove to me there's a person who hasn't seen emptiness yet and still has a yogic direct perception. I can prove that.

Because there are people who understand, who perceive directly the fact that their own body and mind are in a constant state of flux. Okay? That's the answer.

That's wrong. That is wrong. Okay?

Well, maybe not really. Okay. Maybe not yet.

No. And, and, and... A-bam denies it.

A-bam says, I'm not too comfortable with that. Prove that. And, and that's where you should always think.

You should now prove that. Okay? And we're not going to do it tonight.

Because we're running out of time. So you have to cook it. You have to debate it.

And then we'll do it next week. Our task next week is to prove that a person who hasn't seen emptiness directly could still have such a subtle, direct, almost clairvoyant understanding of their own constant flux. Of the fact that their own body and mind is in constant flux.

Okay? Why are we talking about that? Why did that come up?

What do you think? What's the subject of this book? Emptiness.

The subject of this book is emptiness. So why are we talking about the fact that things change constantly? Because emptiness doesn't change.

He said because emptiness doesn't change. Why have we been talking about other lesser ideas tonight? Like the guy in the glass box.

And the cookie and the sense perception coming from the same... They contribute. They guide you.

They lead you. They bring you one step up closer to seeing emptiness directly. All these things are steps on a ladder.

All these things are steps. Got it? So somehow, if we could understand that we don't stay for a single second ever, we could come closer to ultimate perception of emptiness.

If somehow we could contemplate the fact that we change radically from moment to moment, much less from day to day, and especially useful if you have a partner. No, I mean, if you could come to grips with the simple fact that you and your partner are in a constant state of flux, so tomorrow who knows what you're going to get along. Right?

Then you'd be better equipped to live your life. And you'd be more flexible. You know?

Right? And then eventually it would bring you to understand ultimate reality. That's all.

So next week we'll be talking about this very, very... This is an idea which occurs to artists within a few weeks before they see emptiness directly. They are grappling with the question of constant change.

Okay? A person who sees emptiness directly, in the weeks leading up to that perception, begins to grapple with the question of constant change. Okay?

So it's very important. We're going on... It proves that whoever wrote this book knew what they were talking about.

Okay? Alright? We don't need to know their name either.

They can remain anonymous. But whoever wrote this book, they knew that this is a good place to concentrate on. Got it?

Okay. We'll dedicate the camera. Okay?

Beautiful class. Beautiful meeting. And you can change the world.

A small group of people can change their civilization. Okay?

[Speaker 2]
Alright. Sangha neshe medume Dhamma-vayuni tova shok Sangha neshe medume Dhamma-vayuni tova shok In the land of snowy mountains You're the source of all happiness and joy Powerful Chenrezig, Tenzin Gyatso Please remain until sunset