Вступление на срединный путь (текущий курс, Аризона), занятие 85

[Speaker 1]
I'd like to welcome, especially Lisa Monte, who's been kind enough to come for the whole week. She has like the most famous and best dance company in the world, and I'm not exaggerating, like usual. And really, it's really the best.

We've seen her at the Joyce Theatre, sold out three times. And she's been kind enough, and it was a really beautiful class today, so we'd like to thank her. Okay.

I guess the first thing to say is, I don't know if you noticed, but how many people went to His Holiness's teaching in New York? What did he teach? No, he taught the same text.

He taught the same verses you just did, the last couple of years. He spent the whole day on the verses that you've been doing the last three years. So I assume you were all amazed then.

And probably you were the only people in the audience who knew what was going on, right? So, we're going to continue with that. But I wanted to summarize, especially if maybe people are new, right?

The debate at this point, we're studying a debating text from the 16th century, written by Kiripten Medagye, from our monastery ceremony. And this is what a person studies in the 12th to the 16th years of their Geshe studies. And then, he's commenting on a book, written by Tsongkhapa earlier in the late 1300s.

And then he's commenting on a book by Chandrakirti, written 650 AD, 7th century. And he's commenting on a book by Arya Nagarjuna in the 3rd century. And as the centuries go on, it gets clearer.

So it's not like in some traditions, each time a commentary gets added, it gets more confused. But it still happens that in the Buddhist tradition, especially the Dalai Lama's tradition, that things get clearer every generation. So his book is even more clear.

And then, he's been discussing this point. First, I'll ask you a question. What is Nirvana?

Nobody could explain to me what is Nirvana. What is the definition of Nirvana, or the description of Nirvana? The ability to remove your negative emotions permanently, forever, because of what you saw when you saw emptiness directly.

Basically, to get rid of your anger forever. Is it possible to get rid of your anger forever? And then, in the definition it says, you can't, unless you see emptiness.

So then you get into the, what is emptiness? And that's been misunderstood by centuries and centuries of Buddhists, from Japan to Afghanistan. It got corrupted, and people thought it meant closing your eyes and thinking about nothing, or thinking that everything is just black, or the worst one was what?

Thinking nothing matters? Whether you help people or you hurt people, it doesn't matter, because it's all emptiness, it's all void, it's all illusion. You can kick people, you can kiss people, it doesn't matter.

That's the worst idea of emptiness. But we're at a point in the text where it says, he's asserting that if you understand emptiness, you can remove your negative emotions forever. And in fact he says what?

You can't overcome jealousy, anger, desire, without seeing emptiness directly. So that's the point he's trying to make. And that's where we are basically.

And then you have to say, what is emptiness? So what are we going to do now? This is good luck.

This is how we explain emptiness, like in Hanoi. What is this thing? Yeah, it just looks like a pen.

And then if a little puppy came in, and wagged its tail and came up here, and you waved the thing in front of it, what would it do? Yeah, it would chew on it. So, is it a pen to the dog?

No. What is it to the dog? Yeah, a chew toy.

Who's right? Yeah, or neither right. You know what I mean?

So, we did this in, we just did a tour in Vietnam. It was cool, they caught it right away, right? In Ho Chi Minh especially.

So, in and of itself, right? By itself. And you got to get in the habit of taking a common object and teaching it this way, right?

I mean, I used to go to all of Khen Rinpoche's classes. I used to go to his alphabet classes 20 years later. I would go to his alphabet classes, just to watch how he taught it, you know what I mean?

And sit in the back and... So, by itself, is it a pen or is it a play toy? If there's no people in the room and there's no dogs in the room, what is it?

Yeah, it's neither one. That's emptiness. That's all it means.

Nothing more weird than that. That's emptiness. And then I think the next step you always have to take, and first of all, most people never get to that step, right?

They don't explain it properly. They go off on something about the path, and you're like, everybody's like, okay, you know, this teacher came up to me in Dharamsala, when I, you know, this is the year I started studying, and he said, you don't have to like girls. And I said, why?

He said, they have parts. And I'm like, okay. And he's like, they just made a parts.

So, you shouldn't go running around after girls in your college, you know? And I'm like, okay. And I tried it.

And it doesn't work. I mean, you focus on one part, it doesn't really work. So, no, it doesn't work, you know?

So, it didn't have the effect of removing my negative emotions, or making me a better person, or a kinder person, or a softer person. It didn't do that. So, first of all, understand that the emptiness of the pen means that it's not a pen from its own side, it's a pen to someone who sees it that way.

Then you have to connect it to people's real life. You have to say, well, what's that got to do with my life? Well, if you see a pen, it can't be coming this way.

What's the word in Tibetan for a person who misunderstands reality? Yeah, say, surtong. Surtong.

Sur means comes this way. Tong means they see it coming this way. They think the pen is coming from that side.

And then, like a papa, or an Arya, or somebody who has seen emptiness, they understand that for some reason, or somehow, their mind is creating the pen. They don't know how exactly. But they understand that if you wave this in front of a dog, they won't see a pen, they'll try to chew on it.

Something in the dog's mind is making them see it as something to chew. Something in the human's mind is making them see it as something to write with. And then you have to go to the next step.

What is it in the human mind that is making me see it as a pen? Well, there's a seed. There's obviously some kind of seed in my mind, or potency in my mind, and it's opening, or it's expressing itself.

Something has opened in my mind. When Lisa handed me the pen, then my mind suddenly made a pen out of it. My mind did something to make a pen out of it.

Why? What was in my mind that wasn't in the dog's mind? And there's a potency, or an energy in my mind that opened and asserted itself, and I saw a pen, like that.

And there's something in the dog's mind that was slightly different. They still saw a long object, but their mind made them think, oh, something I would like to chew on. Where does that energy in the mind come from?

Why did my mind have a potential in it to see it as a pen? Assuming I like pens. Assuming I'm going to use it for something good.

Where does it come from? Yeah, it comes from kindness. It comes from kindness.

I supplied someone with a pen. I helped someone write a letter. I used to have monks come to me, can you write a letter for me?

I say, okay. And then when I said okay, and I wrote their letter for them, then seeds were planted in my mind. How?

Simply by being aware of myself. Because you're always aware of yourself. So simply by my eyes watched my hand, my brain watched my intentions.

And I spent an hour, unwillingly really, to write a letter for some Tibetan guy who can't write. But then I watched myself and that was recorded in the mind, in the subconscious. A potency was planted into the subconscious.

And then Aliza comes up and hands me an object, and that ripens in the subconscious. And so the pen is coming not really, you can almost think of it as coming out of your eyes. You can think of the pen as coming out of your eyes.

If you knew that, you could design your reality. If you knew the details of it, you could no longer be a victim of the world, you could design the world. You could make the world do what you want.

If you wanted money, you could design the seeds in your mind that would make you see more money. If you wanted to have good health or a young body, you could just take care of sick people. And plant the seeds, what do you call it?

Consciously, purposely, in a very conscious way, you could design the health of your body and get a younger body. You see what I mean? And like that.

You could design a partner, if you knew the right ways to do it. You could design, you could make events happen. If all this stuff about the pen is true, if it's true that by my kindnesses to others, I can consciously create seeds in my mind which will emerge later as the people and things around me, then you can design your world.

What's the Tartuq? What's the... They used to say in college, in my university, they used to say, well, what's the end goal of that?

You could create a paradise. I mean, we say you could go to heaven wherever you are. In the weekend classes, you're going to get a reading, right?

About where is Dharpakaja, where is Kachari Paradise, where is the Buddha's heaven? You know? And then there's this huge debate.

Pabongkha Rinpoche goes in this long debate. And then he says, you know, it could be anywhere. It's wherever a person is practicing that worldview, then the heaven occurs around them.

So it could be in Sara Monastery, it could be in Hassa City, it could be in your backyard. He says that. And then there's this big debate about, well, is there another heaven that does have a place?

You know what I mean? And he says, well, that's okay, you can have that one too. You know?

I don't know if I agree with the second one. But... So that's the goal of everything.

In theory, you could remove poverty, you could remove sickness, and you could remove death from this planet. In theory. You know?

We have the theory. So we're going to continue tonight. We're going to wrap up his arguments for...

Oh, also you could be happy. You wouldn't have any more... No, you wouldn't have any more anger because the person you're getting angry at is coming from you, and you would just deal with it.

You would just say, oh, I have bad seeds in my mind, how do I clean those out and get rid of this person? And they would either change or they would move to Seattle or something. So, you know, you could...

You wouldn't have any more negative thoughts because you'd know that everything was coming from you and there's nobody to blame except yourself. And no one likes to blame themselves, so then you wouldn't have any negative thoughts. It's true.

It's absolutely true. So... We're going to finish...

We're going to finish a little wrap-up where he's talking about why all this is true. He gives a nice wrap-up. Then he's going to shift gears and go into...

You know, it's a huge debate text, right? So he has conclusively shown to the other guy things must be empty and you must understand that if you want to be... if you want to remove your negative emotions, right?

Then he shifts gears completely. What do you think he does after that? The guy is still not sure.

The other guy is still not sure. The other guy is a Buddhist. That's a clue.

Yeah, he uses the other... There are two classical methods of trying to convince somebody of anything. One is reasoning, you know?

Like, does all this stuff make sense to you? Did it all make sense to you? And the guy says, yeah, okay, it's okay.

And then he said, well, are you a Buddhist? He says, yeah, I'm a Buddhist. Do you accept the Buddhist scriptures?

You know, all the ancient books. Do you accept those? And he says, yeah, I accept those.

Are you Mahayana or Hinayana? Are you higher... What do you call it?

Greater way or lesser way? Whatever you want to call it. Older way.

Which one are you? And he might say he's Mahayana, he might say he's Hinayana. We have arguments for both.

We have scriptures for both. So, that's where he's going next. It's a classical approach.

Lungrik, say Lungrik. They even call people Lungrik. Like, Jampa Lungrik's last name is Lungrik.

Prove it by logic. Prove it by scripture, right? So, if we're in a monastery, what scripture do you use?

You use this one. Ketutam Dagi. Because everybody accepts it.

Then you go debate with Sarajay, what do you use? You use Gombrabso, which is accepted by all Dalai Lama's monasteries. Then what if the Sakyas come?

You go back to Chandrakirti in the 7th century and use Chandrakirti. What if the Bumbos come? They did.

One year they came. These are shamans. Tibetan shamans.

They are not Buddhists. They don't accept Magarjuna. They won't even say Chöchen in debate.

They refuse to say the word Chö in debate. They came up to me, la la la la la, Bönchen. I said, what?

They said, la la la la, Bönchen. I said, what's Bönchen? He says, well, it's Chöchen, but we replace Chö with Bön.

Because we don't believe Dharma. And they know, and they go running around doing Bönchen, you know. We're like, okay.

And, no, then you'd have to choose one of their books. You see, you'd have to find one of their books. And you would...

What if you wanted to convince somebody in India? What would you might do? You might go submit yourself to ten days of grueling Bhagavad Gita.

Which is what we did last week. Then you can relate to them. Then that's lung for you.

So then we're going to go to lung after that. If you're not able to understand that your forearm is the same as that pen. That's reincarnation.

You can get into reincarnation. Like I'm getting old. I might die soon.

So I didn't care much about reincarnation up to now, but now it's interesting. Can you tell me exactly how it goes? And then the classic view of people has, well, I die.

I leave this shell. Some kind of spirit goes on. And then I get born into a dog's womb.

And I get a new shell. And then if you're more sophisticated, if you're more into what we've just been talking about, you realize that if the subconscious seeds changed tonight, then I could see this as a paw. I have seeds in my mind now from being unkind to people.

Because I've collected many. If the perception of the hand is coming from my own subconscious, and not from the hand's side, then it could be a paw tomorrow morning. And there's no problem.

And you don't have to do this complicated thing of the spirit leaves this body and goes to some place and then takes another body. Because that's how Buddhist scriptures explain it also in the lower way. But the higher way is, look, you don't need all that.

If you understand that the reason you're seeing a hand is that you were kind and helped, and you extended your hand to others and helped them in the past. So you're able to see a hand. But when that power runs out, and if you haven't done any great good in this life with those hands, then you will see a paw.

You see? So, then it's not, then it gets a little scary. You could see a paw tonight.

You could see a paw tomorrow. It's the same long cylinder. But that's a part of me.

So what he's saying is, if you don't understand the real nature of a part of you, you will never understand you. You want to understand the whole thing. Got it?

He's just saying, if you want to understand the real nature of Michael, that's too hard. Intellectually, that's too hard. Michael is a very slippery thing, because you're so invested in Michael.

You combed Michael's hair, even while it was getting less and less, but you combed it every day, for how many years? So you're invested in Michael. You care more about Michael than anybody else.

And so when you try to investigate Michael's nature, it's too difficult. Take one of his parts. And if you can establish that the arm is the same as the pen, then you can work up to Michael's whole body.

And then you can work up to the idea of Michael. And see that he's not there either, from his own side. He's also coming from your mind.

Start with parts. That's what he's saying. You want to get rid of your anger forever?

Start with your arm. Okay? If you don't realize that your arm is not an arm, you won't realize that you are not a person.

Got it? Are you a person? Am I a person?

Scripture is wrong. It says. You'll never be able to realize that a person is not a person.

Scripture says a person is not a person.

[Speaker 2]
So it's wrong.

[Speaker 1]
A person who wrote it didn't realize he was a person. But did he think of himself as a person while he was writing it? Did he tell his students, I wrote a book?

Yeah. So he identified himself as I. So he figures he's a person.

So he must have lied when he said a person is not a person.

[Speaker 2]
Yeah, okay.

[Speaker 1]
We have to add truly. We have to add truly. Let's put it that way.

So why in all the scriptures do they say a person is not a person? Why do they say, It shocks people. It's shock value.

I'm not Michael. Nobody's standing up here. That's the Heart Sutra, right?

And then people are like, What's that mean? And then they keep that book around for 2,000 years. You see it in all the restaurants in China.

On the wall. You say, do you know what that is? They say, I don't know.

It's some book, you know. If the tendency to see your own parts as real. That's okay.

Okay, so now we're doing, this is supposed to be a translation class, sort of. So, let's read. Everybody try to read.

Tibetan has some silent prefixes in it. Like, you'll be saying, But just read what's there and you'll figure it out. That's our approach to teaching.

Let's read it and then we'll work on it. Okay, one, two, three. He's making an assertion.

The whole book is written in debate style, right? Both of those. Oops, that was bad.

Okay. Okay. And what's the first question you should ask?

What's both mean? He seems to be saying, misunderstanding your arm and misunderstanding Michael. Misunderstanding Michael's arm and misunderstanding Michael.

And in the Bhagavad Gita class we had, their definition of ignorance or avidyas is the same as ours. It's not knowing. Are you ignorant about whether or not I'm going to be able to pay my credit card off today, this week?

And if I say, somebody says, are you going to be able to pay off your credit card this week? And I say, I don't know. Right?

That's a not knowing. Is that avidya? Is that ignorant?

What would not knowing be? It'd be, for example, that I think I could pay it off when I don't realize that all my money is gone. You see what I mean?

Like that. I thought I had the money but I don't. It's a misknowing.

And not a not knowing. Got it? It's a misknowing.

It's an active wrong knowing. And not just a lack of knowledge. Alright.

It's not that I just don't know about my arm. I actively misunderstand my arm. Okay?

Alright. Yeah. I can't get rid of desire for my arm until I understand its nature and my nature.

The parts of me and the whole of me. Got it? Yeah.

Because both of those misunderstandings are... But then he adds another word here. How does he qualify the misunderstanding?

He calls it mental affliction misunderstanding. He snuck in a word. He snuck in a word there.

What's nirvana again? Finishing your negative emotions forever. So if I don't call ignorance ignorance, but if I sneak in the adjective mental affliction ignorance, what's that mean about getting rid of my mental afflictions?

I'm also going to have to remove the ignorance. Because there are debates in Buddhism whether ignorance is a mental affliction. What's the definition of mental affliction?

What's the definition of a negative emotion? Yeah. Any thought which disturbs the peace of mind of the person who is having it.

Any thought which disturbs the peace of mind of the person who is having that thought. It's the definition. So there's this big debate in Buddhism.

Is misunderstanding my arm a mental affliction? Are you upset all day? I mean, there's times, right?

There's like a half hour in the morning there somewhere where you're not upset, right? But you shouldn't even have that half hour. If ignorance is a mental affliction, you shouldn't have that half hour because you're having ignorance all the time.

You're constantly misunderstanding your world and yourself. Okay? So is ignorance a mental affliction?

Well, there's a huge debate in Buddhism. That's what this debate is all about. If it is, then what does it say about me reaching nirvana?

I'll have to get rid of it. I'll have to get rid of that to reach nirvana. If it's not, I can just have it and still reach nirvana.

Okay? Got it? If it's not a negative emotion in and of itself, then I don't have to really concentrate on it because I can reach...

I can overcome anger permanently without worrying about that. Right? It's not like blowing my whole day.

The anger is blowing my whole day, not the ignorance. One school says that. Why?

Because the anger comes from the ignorance. It's based on the ignorance. I can't get mad.

If I understand it's my fault, I can't get mad. It's the bathroom floor syndrome. So we have it up at the Lama house constantly.

So you walk into the bathroom with your socks on in the winter. And with your only pair of wool socks in the winter. And then your feet are all wet.

And it's cold. And you're like, meh. I didn't say it.

And then you get mad and you say, oh, it must have been Lama Ura, or it was in the shower. And you get angry. And then you're thinking, I should confront Lama Ura.

When I see her in the kitchen, I'll confront her. And I'll say, a lot of people just dry off in the shower. And you're not like Geshe Michael where you have to go like this to get in the shower.

And then you bring it up at the kitchen one night and you say, how was your shower yesterday? And she says, and she says, I didn't take a shower yesterday. And you're like, and then you suddenly remember that you got up early and took a shower.

And you walked all over the floor and you left water all over the floor. So the question being, will you now stand in front of the mirror in the bathroom and accuse yourself? You know, a lot of people, they just dry off in the shower.

You know, will you, will you accuse yourself? No. Once you understand something is your own fault, you don't have a mental affliction, as much, usually.

I mean, there's suicides and stuff like that. but normally you don't, you don't, you cut yourself more slack than you cut other people. Right?

So once you know it's coming from you, later. Go ahead, go ahead. It's a booty.

That's a good question.

[Speaker 2]
But it's not pertinent.

[Speaker 1]
There are actually five kinds of wrong views. So that's just one. You could say ignorance is one of them.

But there are other kinds of wrong views. There are like, depending on the object of the wrong view.

[Speaker 2]
Okay.

[Speaker 1]
So here we go. So, once you understand where, that you, it's your fault, then you don't tend to have a mental affliction about it. And, and if you grasp that all the things you don't like in life are your fault, especially other people that you have created, then you, you can't reasonably sustain the anger.

You can unreasonably sustain the anger, which is what I do. Uh, there's no word in Tibetan for guilt. There's no word in Buddhism for guilt.

So, the idea is take responsibility, but don't freeze and don't get paralyzed and don't beat yourself up. Do it in a constructive way. Yeah.

Yeah. So when you teach it to people in a normal class, not like here, you would say, don't think this means you should feel guilt all the time. It's more like, uh, empowerment.

You know, oh, now I can fix everything. You know, now, it's not like to sit there and say, oh, I'm so bad, I put water on the floor, you know. And it's more like, uh, oh, okay, so I put water on the floor and I'll just stop, I'll try to dry off in the shower and I won't, and I won't have wet socks anymore.

And it's just a reasonable decision. But we, we tend to get, people here tend to get guilt about it. So then you have to, you have to steer them away from that.

Because guilt paralyzes. And, uh, knowledge empowers. So you want to steer people towards the empowerment thing.

Okay. Okay, let's read it together. It's kind of long.

One, two, three. PUM BO RANG SHIN MED PA CHUG GI DAG MED DRA MO DANG GANG SAK RANG SHIN MED PA GANG SAK GI DAG MED DRA MO JOK MIN JOK GYUR TSEN NAM PA KUN DU SUNG PAS Okay. This is a cool sentence for those of you like who struggle to trunge.

And they were talking about the lack of a self to a person and the lack of a self to things. So say GANG SAK GI DAG MED And then CHUG GI DAG MED And when you debate CHUG GI DAG MED you have to say GANG SAK GANG CHUG NI GYI NANG SEM DU GYUR PAS CHUG Say GANG SAK GANG SAK GANG CHUG NI GYI NANG SEM DU GYUR PAS CHUG I want to talk about things. Dharma.

Dharma can also mean things, right? In this case it means things. I want to talk about things.

But I'm not talking about things in general. I'm talking about things as a division of the division of the lack of self to me to a person and the lack of self to things.

[Speaker 2]
Okay.

[Speaker 1]
So I want to debate about things. And then the opponent will say, Okay. And you say, I want to talk about the lack of self to things.

The emptiness of the pen. And they'll say, Okay. But are you talking in the context of CHUG and GANG SAK?

Are you talking as half of that of that two things? Because it's different. So when you're in a debate, that's like I call the clarification response.

Somebody say CHUG GI DAG MED You say, Do you mean CHUG and GANG SAK and NANG SEM DU GYUR PAS? You say, CHUG or do you mean CHUG in general? Do you mean in this context or do you mean in general?

Because they're different things. They're completely different things. So there's an emptiness to things and there's an emptiness to people.

There's an emptiness to the person and there's an emptiness to things. Okay. But what does things mean here?

The parts of a person. Okay. The parts of a person.

So when you're debating, does Michael come from his own time? No. He's also a product of seeds ripening in my subconscious.

Whether he's happy today or sad today is not up to him. Or else everybody would be happy all day. He perceives himself as unhappy because of seeds ripening in his own mind because he made other people unhappy before.

So that's Michael. What about parts of Michael? Can Michael do the dance today?

Will his foot move fast enough for the teacher to be happy? Or will he keep doing the wrong foot which is probably why he won't go to class. I can't control it.

That's a part of me. That's a part of me. The emptiness to my parts is the fact that I don't control my foot.

She says move right foot, I'll move my left foot. Something like that. And I don't understand myself either.

There's the emptiness of my parts and the emptiness of Michael. Two different things. Got it?

What's cool about this sentence for those of you who care, and it's big if you're going to teach Chang'e, if you're ever going to teach Chang'e, you need to know the difference between the two. They're defined here. They're defined here.

Okay? It's really nice. So you could pull it out anytime you need it.

I might want to change it. This is difficult. How do you define the lack of self to things?

Meaning your arm. How do you describe that? If I was going to ask you, in this context, what does it mean to say things don't have a nature?

And if you wanted to say it more correctly maybe, what does it mean to say that things are not things? Yeah. Okay?

In this context, what does it mean to say that things are not things? It means, oh, the answer. The parts of Michael are not parts from their own side.

The arm doesn't have a quality of being an arm from its own side. I'm projecting arm. Why?

In terms of rebirth. No. If it had a nature of being an arm, then I would never die.

It would never change. It couldn't become a paw because it's arm from its own side. When I died, it would still be an arm.

You see what I mean? But it's sustained by my perceptions. And those are sustained by the love of my kindness to others in the past.

The whole reality is coming from kindness. You see? It's very, what do you call it, revolutionary in a way, right?

All reality is being sustained by kindness. The roof is being held up by the level of kindness of the inhabitants of the room. You see?

It's very, the implications are what? If everyone understood that, what would happen? I mean, everybody would be nice.

You'd have to be. You wouldn't have a choice. You know what I mean?

The better you understood it, the more you'd have to. So can we describe the lack of a nature to things as the lack of nature to my parts? My pumbos.

My skandha. Got it? All right?

I always had trouble with a certain idea, and I want to introduce it to you, and you think about it. Okay? And I think it will help you understand why it was called Shakyadagmi.

What are the five heaves? Let's quote the Heart Sutra. In Chinese.

Louder. Louder. No.

Just the five heaves. Anyway. It says in the Heart Sutra, right?

My body. The first one is what? Sukhme.

My physical body. Tora-me means what? My feelings.

Dushi-me. My ability to discriminate between things. Duchi-me.

All my other feelings and all the stuff about me. Michael. Also.

Throw that in there. Michael, throw that in there. And then what?

My awareness. You can say consciousness, but think of it as the fact that you're not a block of wood right now. You see what I mean?

When you teach the five heaves, when you get to the fifth heave, say Mike Tyson gives you a real punch, you lose namaste. It's this miracle of awareness. You're aware of the world.

It's a miracle. Don't think it's like some part of your brain or something like that. Get into the emotion of it, of feeling, I'm aware of the world.

And that's my fifth skanda. You see what I mean? Think of it like that.

Question now. What about my robe? Is that part of the five skandas?

That's where I wanted to go right now. Is my robe part of the five skandas? Is it part of Michael?

Well, then how about the stage? Is that part of Michael? Is that one of Michael's five heaves?

So when you stand on the stage, we're sharing a heave? I mean, come on. Start to think about the skanda of heaves, for example, of physical matter as everything you perceive in the world.

So really you extend to all the things you see. Yeah, I am positioned in my identity by my clothing. But I'm also positioned in identity by which state I'm staying in.

Yeah, and to you. So in a way, your tan is part of my first skanda. Get used to that.

Why am I bringing this up? Say again? Yeah?

Which means it might make more sense to call it instead of parts of person. Got it? Did your mind, your mind went the whole trip now?

Yeah, think of it like that. Oh, now I get it. That's why they divide things into person and things.

Got it? Michael and things. Then it's not so weird anymore.

Why didn't they just say Michael and the parts of Michael? Why didn't they call it Michael and things? Why did they call it Kamsakhi Dhamme and Chögyi Dhamme?

Because it is things. It's exciting. If you understand it, it's exciting.

It is things. Because in some of your skandas, there's all the other stuff you're perceiving. Because you're creating it.

So is the world just this big lonely place? Sometimes. Yeah, I know.

Let's go. Oh, let me ask you a question first. If the first thing we had to read now was D-E-R-T-H-A-L, that's like spelling out ice cream to kids, to your spouse, so the kid doesn't know.

You were trying to get me to say it, but I'm not. Are we going to go D-E-R-T-H-A-L? Or are we going to go D-E-R-T-H-A-L?

Yeah. We're going to go up. Why?

Yeah, we're trying to give the guy a reason. We're trying to give the guy a reason. So we'll go up.

So now you know how to read the sentence. One, two, three. D-E-R-T-H-A-L Okay.

D-E-R-T-H-A-L D-E-R-T-H-A-L That is so- Okay. Because of the following. I'm splitting the sentence, because it's too long.

This is really hard to translate, so let me work on it.

[Speaker 2]
Because...

[Speaker 1]
What's gākja? What's gāk mean? Gāk can mean to stop, right?

Like gōkden means the truth of cessation, right? Gāk means to stop or deny, right? In this case it means deny.

And it's the thing that's not there when you're talking about the pen, so I need the pen again. Is there a pen here? Yeah, what's the proof in Buddhism?

I see it and I'm not drunk, I'm not stoned, I'm not totally jealous at this moment, because those are the three conditions under which you see things that are not there. Okay, with normal perception I see a pen. Therefore, ergo, a pen exists there.

Focus on that pen. Now, focus on the pen that's coming from your own mind. Focus on a pen that's coming from your own mind.

Got it? Got it? Does that pen exist?

It's coming from your mind, as karmic seeds pop open in your mind. Yeah, it exists, yeah. Now, opposite, opposite.

Focus on the pen that's coming from its own side. Just don't blow my line. Yeah, that's the gākta.

The point being, the tricky point being, you're denying something which was never there. That's the tricky point. Do you deny that the sky is green with purple stripes today?

Yeah, I deny it, but it's not so hard to deny. You know what I mean? It's not like you're passionate about it.

Yeah, it wasn't green and purple today, it was blue. So, you've got to get in this emotion or this feeling that when you establish emptiness of the pen, you're denying something that never could have been there. Got it?

And a lot of people don't ever get that, because of the language here. Gākta, gākta, droop, right? What does it say, gākta?

Gok, right? You're stopping a thing that's never there anyway. Do you have to stop the purple sky?

Do you have to go out and, you know, don't do that. It just couldn't be that way. So, you have to be very careful when you translate or when you're working with this language, because you can't say stop something that isn't there.

Deny is closer, I think, right? Deny is better, but we're going to work on that. Something that was never there, never will be, never could be, which is the irony of it all.

Everything that causes your suffering, all the people you're angry at, the person you're angry at isn't there and never was. It's not like you're struggling against something that is tangible. You're struggling against something that was never there.

Your whole life is ruined by something that was never there. That's pretty ironic, right? Yeah, I'm guessing, Michael.

And that is so, because it's funny. Now, for the students who are Tibetan, this may be a little better. I need another verb, because it's blank, the object you deny.

Disprove, maybe? Disprove, maybe. Who said refuse?

That's really nice. But I want to know, what do we do with Rangshinkyadrupa? What do we do with Rangshinkyadrupa?

Do we make it an adjective, is my question. What does it mean in the first place? What does Rangshinkyadrupa mean?

Rangshinkyadrupa. Rangitsenikyadrupa. Tendambadrupa.

Say again? Yeah, exists through some nature of its own. Exists through some nature of its own.

Does the pen have a nature of its own? I need the pen again. Now, this is what your students felt like all day.

Get up, go down, sit down. Get up. Does it have a nature of its own?

What does its own mean? No, like, does penness... Does it have penness on it?

That's what it means. You got to know what these words mean, because then you start turning around technical terms and you lose the meaning of them. Does it exist through some nature of its own?

Does it have a nature of its own? Does penness accrue to the thing itself? Is there a penness like a coat around this thing that's always there?

From its side. And that it was born with. The minute it came out of the factory, the last inspector, they're like, okay, we got to put penness on it.

Okay, we put penness on it. No, you got to imagine that. You got to imagine like a cloak or like somebody gave it penness.

It doesn't have that. Why? You can use it as a weapon.

Annie DeFranco has this line, right? What she say? Yeah, who said that?

Yeah, every what is a weapon? Yeah, every tool is a weapon if you hold it right. It's in one of her songs.

It could be a weapon. It could be a chew toy. It doesn't have a coat of its own that identifies it as a pen.

That's coming from me. That's added to it by me. It's an added feature from my mind.

It never had it itself, right? The lack of self-nature means that that coat that the thing never had is what we want to refute. Okay, got it?

Alright. So technically, do you want to make an adjective or a positive? Do you want to say the self-existing object we deny?

Or do you want to say the object we deny, the fact that the thing could have its own nature? Yeah, the second one. Very subtle translation thing.

Does it make sense to say the thing we deny about it, which existed through its own nature? Because it can't. There's no such thing.

You can never use that as an adjective clause or phrase. You can't. You can't say the gākjā, which has its own nature, or something like that.

You can't say the gākjā, which has its own nature. You have to say the gākjā, the idea that it could have its own nature. Got it?

It's very subtle. And if you blow it, you blow the whole thing. And then the reader gets the wrong idea and they don't reach Nirvana and it's all your fault.

I think it's snack time. It's the only way I get them to come to class. I don't know what you do, but I give snacks.

Because the reason we deny could be itself. We rely upon... What's a good adjective for reasoning, which means correct reasoning?

Valid reasoning? I need an adjective for the logic. Correct is pretty good, I guess.

It's exactly the same. We rely upon correct reasoning with regard to either the things or the person. Types of reasoning, such as...

Okay, say cikdūtrā. Cikdūtrā. Okay, so I was talking to somebody yesterday.

[Speaker 2]
I forget. I forget.

[Speaker 1]
They say, oh, we brought you Uma Chidron from the monastery. It was just published. And do you think it's correct?

Do you think it's going to be clean? And I said, yeah, it's clean, because I edited it in 1985. You know what I mean?

So I came across this spelling. Cikdūtrā.

[Speaker 2]
Cikdūtrā, right?

[Speaker 1]
Right there. Cikdūtrā. Which is wrong, and I'll prove it to you.

Cikdū or cikdū. Okay? Let's look in the dictionary written by the lama who's trying to send us hundreds of books.

Okay? He wrote it. Like a 3,000-page dictionary.

It's the best in the world. So here we go. Is that a dū or a tū?

One vote for dū. Got it? This is what we do in textual research with a computer.

Let's take another one. Cikdū. Say tū.

Not dū. Okay, let's do another one. Cikdū.

Cikdū. What's the vote now? Three to zero.

Well, this one if you count. Okay? Let's do another.

Let's get up to four or five. Cikdū. Cikdū.

I mean, it's unanimous. So Ketap Temudagi has made a major error. This is an elementary error in grammar.

You don't follow a kā with a dā. You never do that. Right?

Huh? Yeah, it's in my corrected version. This is one of the infinite proofs for emptiness, right?

Rikpatayipa. Say rikpatayipa. Intelligent disciples want rikpatayipa.

They want countless proofs for the same thing. Give me countless reasons why your arm is empty. Give me countless reasons.

Rikpatayipa. This is one of the classic ones. Out of, you know, 25 classical proofs for emptiness, this is one of the best.

It's called Cikdūdra. Cikdūdra. Because it's an abbreviation for Cikdangdumadangdrawa.

Say Cikdangdumadangdrawa. Which means what now? Yeah, it's an abbreviation for du.

It's not du. It's not an adverb. It's very subtle.

And then you can make the text more correct if you understand that. It's very subtle. But what does it mean?

Cikdangdumadangdrawa. Neither Cikdangdumadangdrawa. Neither one nor many.

So it's a classical proof of emptiness. So if you changed it to du, it wouldn't make sense anymore. The du is for duma, which is a word that means many.

So this is a classical proof for emptiness. Things are neither one by themselves, and they are neither plural by themselves. So I'll ask you a question.

A pair of eyeglasses. No, that's not fair. No, no, it's not fair.

Is it plural or one? Eyeglasses. No, I won't mess with your eyeglasses.

Well, the pen that I held up. Was it one or many? Yeah, it was one.

Was it one by itself? No. Well, don't go that far yet.

Was it one by itself? If I had a box of them, would they be many by themselves? Why not?

And then give me the right answer. Yeah. The reason they weren't many by themselves is because because each one wasn't one by themselves.

So the duma part is easy. Why isn't the whole box of pens coming from their own side? Because each individual pen is not coming from its own side.

Then that gets hard. The second part gets hard. Well, why isn't one pen coming from its own side?

Then you have to go off somewhere else. The answer happens to be that it's not coming from its own side. It's neither one from its own side nor many from its own side.

It's not from its own side. And that's an old proof for emptiness. So how are we going to translate it?

Types of reasoning such as the one called Tao, which comes from the old Anamadapik word, shral. That's shral. That's called shral.

I'll do it again, listen. Shral. No, really.

And tral comes from that. It's Anamadapik. So, tral means separated.

Separated. Or not to have. If this no longer has this.

So, tral means I no longer have. Tral. Chik du tral means free, like shambhashidra.

We had a lojong called shambhashidra. Free of the four attachments. So, it means freer.

Okay, or voider. Got it? Unfortunately, if you put a small prenasal on, and particularly if you're a person who doesn't know anything about prenasals, you might say tral, which means what?

Related to. Which is the opposite meaning. Tral.

Say tral. Unrelated. Del.

Related. Got it? Tral.

Unrelated. Del. Related.

Den del. Dependent origination. Got it?

So, you're never going to say den tral in a debate. You're going to say den ndel. Probably you'll get up and say den ndel.

Okay? All right? Very nasty.

Very nasty. We're going to have a free of free of being one or many. Okay, got it?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[Speaker 2]
Ah, you're nice.

[Speaker 1]
That's nice. Yeah, you're right. The fact.

Let's say the fact. But then that fact exists, don't they? I like that.

That's okay. That's a mam gigak cha. That's a nice point.

Very nice point. Something that could be itself. Okay?

What tense did I use for the verb in that phrase, in that clause? Something that could, which is the English optative, which means possibility. You don't say is itself.

Why not? It could never be. And in English we don't say the thing you deny that it is is itself.

Because is-ness doesn't apply to a gigak cha. You have to say could be. And you can open any goddamn translation of any Madhyamika text and the minute you say is I throw it out.

One sentence says is and with regard to a gigak cha I just throw it out. I don't even read the rest of the book. It doesn't say could be.

You see what I mean? Because it can't be. Got it?

And then I say this person doesn't know what they're talking about. I just throw it out. Then the whole 900 pages goes.

Okay. Yeah. Yeah, that's good.

That's good. You could say whether or not. He didn't use it in the first one, right?

Just use it in the second one. Oh, I did say able. Yeah.

Oh, you're right. Yeah, let me think about it. How about able or not?

Okay. That's a good point. That's a nice point.

Why did he say equal or I mean it's a little hard before your snack, but why did he say a little more sugar would get you over this hurdle. Why did he say equal? What's the point?

Beautiful. Yeah. Whether you're talking about Michael's arm or you're talking about Michael, you can use the same proofs.

They apply equally. Whether you could apply them or not is the same in each case. Can you?

Yeah. Okay, good. Oops.

By the way, I don't well, let's see if we do a big debate tonight. I wanted to pick on somebody new and we have an Australian who just came after not being able to use Visa for a while. And I thought it was mean to pick on him the first night.

So I'll give you I'll give you some clues during the week of what the debate will be and you can prep for it.

[Speaker 2]
Okay.

[Speaker 1]
We've been having this big debate thing. You know. Okay.

Alright. One, two, three. The big word here that you should learn is in the first line.

Say, kung. Kung. Kung.

Then say, lung dang kung mey ken.

[Speaker 2]
Lung dang kung mey ken.

[Speaker 1]
You gotta get the mudras. Okay. I was telling you in the business class.

Lung dang kung mey ken. Lung dang kung mey ken. One more time.

Lung dang kung mey ken. Lung dang kung mey ken. It means lung means scriptural authority.

Kung means authoritative source. Kung means authoritative source. And then mey bah is like like you just came up with this on your own, right?

You know. Like in a debate you say somebody will say, oh I saw the clear light and it's a little blue and I had this experience in my right arm. Then you're like lung dang kung mey ken.

You know like where did you get that from? You know. I mean nobody mentioned that in 2,000 years of scripture.

You know. Like you just it's a way to say you're making this up, right? And it's a very serious criticism in a debate.

Because normally if you're lung dang kung mey ken is mey ken means what's ken mean? Ken is the ER in English. In colloquial Tibetan ken is the ER in English.

Okay. So what's a do ken? A goer.

Someone who's going. What's a shing ken? A carpenter.

A shing ken is a farmer. Like that. So ken just means anyone who does that thing.

Like plumber. Okay. Like ER.

[Speaker 2]
Okay.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah. So what's a kung mey ken? That's a Jackson Shaker.

A person with no scriptural authority. No, no. Kung means authoritative source.

Okay. All right. Xie jie is a little tricky word that you should learn.

Xie jie allows you to know. Okay. I used to have a single English noun for that.

That's a verb. And that's an adjective. It's almost like evidence.

I said what? Oh. It's not quite proof, you see.

Who said that? Oh. No.

No, it's the most accurate, and I'm afraid no one would know it. That's the thing. Like sometimes in translation, in translating, in the job of translating, you have to avoid words which are more precise because no one knows them.

Like the general public doesn't know that word.

[Speaker 2]
Corroborate?

[Speaker 1]
If you spell it, I'll put it. Okay. Corroborate.

Now I'll teach you something. Okay. One, two, three, four, five.

He's reached a major, major division in the text so far. Like we've been at this for four and a half years or something, and we just came to a major, major division in the whole thing. So, it might be worth it to do what?

Go back and see what was the first division. Like, you can fudge it the way I did here. I didn't go back and, I don't know, you asked me, what was the first division, Geshe Michael?

I said, I don't know. You know, how did you know it was a major division? I don't know, it feels like a major division.

But maybe it would be prudent to go back and, how would you do that? Yeah. Well, you'd hit a thousand dangbos.

But he will say, in the division he'll say shejegi. You see, he'll use that rare word. So let's go back and look.

That's not it. Here it is. This was way back when.

Our expectation of women. I think this is even not the same one. It might be the same one.

Let me see if there's more. No, that's it. So anyway, it is a major division.

Ni. You got cookies in your mouth. All right.

Now I'm going to use that. You got anything other than proof? You got anything less than a proof?

Yeah. Give me a noun. Give me a noun.

Oh, no. I mean English noun. Source wouldn't be so bad.

Do you have another word that's similar to source? Textual sources. Oh, who said reference?

You got two in one class? Okay. Okay, got it.

I'll just alert you. So you guys know the words for Mahayana and Hinayana, right? What are they?

Teik-chen and teik-men. Teik means vehicular capacity. Literally.

I'm thinking about your test later this week. The capacity of a pillar to hold up the roof is called teik.

[Speaker 2]
Okay?

[Speaker 1]
Yeah. It might be on the test. He's taking his contractor's license test this week.

So we got to pray for him. And then teik-men. And men, there's this unfortunate thing where the word for woman in Tibetan is what?

Ke-men. Ke-men. Which means lower birth.

Same word. And I think it reflects a whole cultural thing. You know, that's been going on for 2,000, 3,000 years.

And then we have to try to overcome that, I think. In scripture. It's a whole scripture thing, too.

For 3,000 years. In the Kangyur and Tengyur, there are maybe two works by women out of almost 5,000 works. We have to change that.

I think we should call them ke-chok. Supreme birth. But it's something we have to overcome in our time.

It's a job for us to overcome in our time. I think Lama Kristi's book release helped. In a way.

So now he's going on to Lung after he already did Rigpa. So he's going to the Lung part of Lung Ring. And he's going to start quoting books to back up what he said before.

Which are kind of nice. They're less, you know, fun. But they're still nice.

Some of them are very beautiful. So we'll go do some of them. It is the case.

We're going to read it together, right? I'll eat a cookie. You read.

1, 2, 3. 1, 2, 3, go.

[Speaker 2]
1, 2, 3, go.

[Speaker 1]
Only one person did mudra. Do it again. Okay, good.

Okay? Got it? The first dulwa is a verb, the second dulwa is a noun.

The liberation where you are liberated. Okay? What's a common name of a Buddhist goddess using that very word?

Yeah, Dhruma. Right? Tara.

[Speaker 2]
Okay.

[Speaker 1]
What's green Tara? Tara Jangu. Say Tara Jangu.

Yeah. Okay. Emerald Tara.

Okay. Let's do this one and then I think we should stop. Are you all done with your, yeah?

You're not done? Oh, Navakrishna says I should stop. I think I have something to drink.

One, two, three.

[Speaker 2]
Okay. Okay. And that's true.

[Speaker 1]
Say, Mitha Duniya Tongva Dharme. Mitha Duniya Tongva Dharme. It's got this cadence to it.

And it's, you learn the cadence. And it's the, what is it? The first half is right.

Who said that? Yeah, nice. The four qualities of the four noble truths.

[Speaker 2]
Okay.

[Speaker 1]
So each of the four noble truths has four qualities, total of sixteen. The Abhidharma schools say that something like you go through the first fifteen realizations and then when you hit the sixteenth you're on to Gomlaam or something like that. The sixteenth instant during the aftermath of Tongva, when you reach the last quality of the last noble truth, Arya truth, you're already on Gomlaam.

Like that's how they describe it. So, this is a very interesting assertion and we won't, we'll start on it next week, okay? But this is a very interesting idea.

He says, can you reach Nirvana by understanding the four higher truths, the four higher truths? Can you reach Nirvana by understanding them? And he's saying no, if you misunderstand what they apply to.

Okay? And then he's going to quote a scripture, which is a sutra which we only have quoted in Prasannapada, a book by, another book by Chandrakirti's other great work, Clear Words. And in there he quotes a scripture and it says, so suppose there's a magician who comes up and he does some thing, you know, and then there's this beautiful woman standing here, you know, and then all the guys in the audience are like, are like starting to drool, you know.

And then he says, you know, you want to be liberated? They say, yeah. He says, so come up, so look at her and think about the impurity of her body, you know, all the piss, all the crap, all the pus, all the menses, you know, all the guts, you know, all the bacteria, all the stomach acids, you know, like the brain matter, you know, the wrinkles coming on, you know, the collapse of the body structure, the skeleton, you know.

Come up and look at her this way, you know, like develop understanding of who she is, you know. So they come up and they try, but the scripture says something, they say, because she's not real, you see, he's produced her with magic. There is no woman there, literally, okay, like he's produced her with some spell.

But they are doing an analysis of her that will supposedly benefit them and maybe get them to Nirvana, right? He's encouraging them to do an analysis of her that will help them achieve a high spiritual goal, right? Would it work?

But suppose I wanted to describe, suppose I wanted to say, suppose I had these flower petals and they were fake, you know, suppose they were silk or something, and it looked just like a poisonous plant that grows here. And I said, look, if you see a plant that looks like this, you've got to be careful because it's got spines and the spines will give you this thing and, you know, you should avoid that plant. So wouldn't that enable you to avoid the plant, whether this existed really or not?

I mean, assuming there are plants outside that are really that plant, but I'm just showing you a model, a plastic model of the plant. Would you be able to develop a correct attitude towards those thorns by me showing you a plastic thorn and explaining to you that if you run into the real thing out there, then you'll have a problem? He's, Lord Buddha says no.

We'll do that next week. Okay. What did, can Rinpoche say at this point?

Cook it. That's my teacher. Cook it.

I didn't write the sutra. I mean, I'm just, don't shoot the messenger.

[Speaker 2]
I mean, I'm just, don't shoot the messenger. I mean, I'm just, don't shoot the messenger. Okay.

Good night.