Вступление на срединный путь (текущий курс, Аризона), занятие 88

[Speaker 1]
Okay, so, people who are new, welcome back. We're in the middle of the, it's a commentary on the greatest book on emptiness ever written, you know, and I was like calculating in my very careful way that it might actually go past the three-year retreat, since we're only twenty pages into it after five years. So, I just wanted to say it's my intention to keep going after the three-year retreat, okay?

So, I'm not going to try to rush it, you know, because we couldn't do that. And then we have to finish the other book that goes with it. I told Ningbo, we're working on a logic text.

I said, well, the primary text will take you ten years, and then the really good one will take you another ten years. And he's like, okay, I'm up for that. Anyway, here we go.

So, he tried to prove that you have to see emptiness to remove your negative emotions permanently, okay? He was trying to prove that. And he went through logical proofs for that, and then he finished.

And now he's going through scriptural proofs for that. So, normally, these would only be used in a debate with Buddhists, okay? So, you know, they're not really things that you can always use.

Normally, when you try to prove a point with scripture, you are limited to the scriptures that the other party accepts. So, when we debate in Seram May, we use Kedrup Denpa Dargis scripture, the one you're reading, right? But then when we get to the winter debates, we can't use that scripture.

We have to use Jetsun Kappa and his two spiritual sons. And then if a Sakya or a Bumbo, a shaman monk, comes, then we have to use their scriptures. So, we have to have a basic, or we have to go back to the Kangyur or the Tengur, you see, for the Sakyas.

So, in the winter debates, sometimes we had Bumbo, which is the original shamans of Tibet. They would come, and they didn't even want us to use Kangyur or Tengur. So, then it's kind of limited.

What you can use is their own scriptures. So, if you know you're going to debate somebody, and this applies to if you're giving a talk at a temple or you're giving a talk at a mosque or you're giving a talk at a church, then it would be good to study their scriptures first. So, before Lama Kristin and I wrote the Christian book, we spent a summer studying Biblical Greek in England with some crazy Biblical Greek guys.

But then at least we could spout scripture to people who asked us questions. So, we're just going to see scriptural references now by Je Tsongkhapa, who was debating whom? He would have been debating other Kangyurs or Sakyas or Nyingmas, right?

So, he has to go back to basically Kangyur and Tengur. He has to go back to the ancient scriptures of India. So, you have to appreciate the context.

He's going to be pulling out scriptures from ancient India because he has to, because his opponents are from all the sects of Tibetan Buddhism. So, he can't use his own things. He might even rely heavily on a certain guy from the 2nd century, which is Arya Nagarjuna.

All right, here we go. So, Yungi Dollekhyang, he's going back to the Mother Sutras, Sutras on the Perfection of Wisdom, and they're trying to explain why... I'm just reviewing to get you back to where we were.

This is all dusty too, so I assume you are too. So, he goes back. He's going to go back and talk about why.

Why is Thekchen, Thekchen, and why is Thekmen, Thekmen? Say, Thekchen. Thekchen.

Thekmen. Thekmen. What's Thekchen?

Mahayana. Mahayana. Meaning, greater capacity.

Greater capacity. And then, Thekmen is lower capacity. Then, there's a discussion of why...

We're in the start of a discussion of what mainly distinguishes higher capacity from lower capacity. From the point of view of Middle Way, is their ideas about emptiness. So, if you have advanced ideas about emptiness, then you are greater way.

And if your ideas about emptiness are less sophisticated, then you would be lower way. So, he's going to address a statement by Lord Buddha that higher way is superior to lower way. That would imply what, as far as views, as far as understanding of emptiness?

Yeah, it would imply that the Mahayana has a more correct view of emptiness and that the Hinayana has a less correct view of emptiness. And that happens to be the way it is. But, don't forget that what he's trying to prove in this section of the scripture is that people on the Hinayana track, lower track people, who are able to remove their anger permanently and their jealousy permanently, these people do so because they see emptiness in its highest form.

They see emptiness in its highest form, directly. Could you say then that they are not Hinayana at that point? In terms of view?

Yeah, nice. They're still Hinayana in terms of whether they are working for the good of all living beings. Whether it's their conscious intent that everything they do is to save all living beings.

So, they're still Hinayana from that point of view. But you can see where a problem will come. We're trying to prove that Mahayana people and Hinayana people who manage to remove their jealousy permanently do so by seeing the highest form of emptiness.

But then the Mother Sutras say they're lower. So, how could they see the highest form of emptiness? Ergo, therefore, people on lower tracks, arhats, who remove their negative emotions forever, must not have seen emptiness in its highest form.

Got it? Got it? Okay, that's the other guy's position.

Because of what Lord Buddha said. Lord Buddha said, look, the Mahayana people are superior and the Hinayana people are inferior because they don't understand emptiness. Well, then it would be natural to say, well, does every Buddhist school accept that Hinayana practitioners can remove their anger forever?

All schools accept that. All schools accept that. But then the highest school tries to say, but to do that, to remove your jealousy permanently, you must see the highest form of emptiness directly.

Well, then how can you call them inferior? So, it gets confusing. Got it?

That's where we are. That's where we are. And the other guy is trying to say that lower people, lower level practitioners, who remove their jealousy forever, must have done so by seeing some pretty cool, but lower form of emptiness.

Got it? That's his position. Got it?

Yeah. The other guy is claiming that. He says, rangyatubhidze yukkidrubha tongwa, is a kind of emptiness that's good enough to get you to the permanent end of your anger and your jealousy.

Okay, what does that mean? We gave the example of Rob Haggerty. Is he not here maybe?

Because he's not in control of his body and mind. But we were giving the example of somebody in a crane, right? We believe that our body is in our control.

This is Geshe Michael's body. If you say, Geshe Michael, raise your arm, he can raise the arm. So, therefore, I must be in control of my body.

If you say, Geshe Michael, think of the dearest thing in your life right now, I can do that. So, therefore, I'm in control of my body and my mind. But then, when I get really jealous, I'm not in control of my mind.

Like, I can say to my mind, don't be unhappy this afternoon, and it will continue to be unhappy, right? Or I can hurt my arm, you know? I can hurt my body.

Lissette had a very bad injury. Was it during yoga? Yeah, so during yoga, she had a bad knee injury.

So, it's not like she wanted to, or she was planning on it. Five minutes before that, she was doing weird, exciting things, right? And then, it showed that the knee was not under her control.

So, the lower schools say that when you grasp that there is no driver of the body and the mind, then you've seen emptiness. They think that. Did Lord Buddha teach that that was a kind of emptiness?

Yeah. Did he even go so far as to say that was the ultimate form of emptiness? Probably somewhere he did.

When he taught Abhidharma or something, he probably did say that. Was he correct? Say, sangye gyi, dzun mi sung.

Dzun, sangye gyi sung. The Buddhas don't speak lie. Lie is spoken by the Buddha.

Because they speak about morality, so they say lie. Right? They say, don't lie.

It is a long story. So, the Buddha, Lord Buddha did teach that you are not in control of your body and mind. And he did at some point tell lower, audiences that couldn't handle it, he said, that's emptiness.

And then, audiences who could handle it, he said, I was just kidding. Because they couldn't handle it. And emptiness is really something else.

Emptiness is really something else. Which means that every detail of your life is coming from how you treat other people. Period.

That's all. There's no part of the reality around you which is fixed. Because it's all fluid, depending exactly on how you think and act and speak towards others.

Even now, you can change the reality of an hour from now by how you think and how you act towards others. And the fact that nothing around you is fixed and nothing around you is not fluid, because it's created by your karma, that's emptiness. Got it?

The lack of concreteness to the world around you is emptiness. Meaning, nothing is impossible. All things can happen within days for a really knowledgeable practitioner can make anything happen within days through their morning practice.

You see? So, if you understand emptiness clearly, you can adjust your reality almost immediately, within days, say, or within half a day. Okay?

Like that. That's emptiness. Got it?

So, is it unhelpful to tell people that emptiness is the fact that you're not in control of your body and mind? No. So, Lord Buddha taught it as a stepping stone, as a segue to the higher form.

Because it would help people. I mean, if you know your knee got hurt because of something you did to others, then you don't freak out. You don't go freak out.

You also don't put too much faith in physical therapy and stuff like that. You don't get upset if it doesn't work. You do it.

And you create the karma to make it work. But you don't believe it has an effect from its own side. Like, if you're contemplating an operation on your knee, then you would work really hard for other people for a few weeks, then have the operation.

Because that would shift the reality of the operation. Got it? So, it's not unhelpful to understand you're not in control of your body and mind.

Okay? It's a good thing. But it won't stop your anger and frustration forever.

It's limited. It's limited. It's not enough to tell somebody, don't worry.

I mean, you're standing up here telling them, don't worry. You weren't in control anyway. Don't be upset.

That's ridiculous. You should be upset. And then you should figure out what it is you need to do not to have it happen.

And for it to get back to normal. Which, understanding that you're not the driver doesn't do. Got it?

So, it's not an ultimate solution to tell somebody, oh, don't feel so bad. Your body is under somebody else's control. And then, I mean, my reaction would be, yeah, but my dad, he was hunting in Utah and he fell down you know, he fell down like 10 feet or something and he hit his back on a stone, on a rock.

And then we went to the we went to a Mormon hospital in Utah. I'm not saying anything about Mormons. It just happened to be a Mormon hospital.

And then, you know, they took x-rays. They said, maybe you broke a rib, so they took x-rays. And then we were sitting there waiting and the doctor comes out and he says, oh my God, praise the Lord.

And my dad's like, what? And he says, you are so lucky that you fell down. And he's like, why?

And he says, well, we never would have done an x-ray otherwise. And praise the Lord. And he says, well, what?

He says, you have really advanced lung cancer. And you didn't know. And it's such good news that you're so lucky that you fell down.

You're so lucky that God led you to fall down. My father, he's not a Buddhist or anything. He's just like, why the hell did God give me the cancer anyway?

If I'm so lucky, if God's so nice to me, why did I get cancer? So it doesn't really make you feel better to know that somebody else is in control. You'd rather be in control.

And you can be. Got it? So that's a lower form of emptiness.

That's going to be relevant. So when you say that Mahayana is superior in the Mother Sutra to Hinayana, we're not talking about, it's not explained in terms of whether or not they possess the wisdom which perceives emptiness. It's explained in terms of whether or not they are doing what they do for the good of all living kind.

[Speaker 2]
Got it?

[Speaker 1]
Okay? Why? Why would he say that?

Why is he trying to say, why does he bring that up? Yeah, if he said Mahayana is superior to Hinayana because of the way they view reality, then the other guy would say, oh, I understand. So all those guys in lower schools that are able to remove their jealousy forever, they see, they don't see emptiness.

They don't see the highest form of emptiness. He's right. He's avoiding a trap.

Got it? Nod. Okay?

I mean, if you're like out of it in the first ten minutes of the term, this is bad. Okay. All right.

So he's saying now, suppose somebody was a gyun-shuk, right? Extreme enterer. But they still believed that things were real.

Well then, it would be wrong to say they were who they were. Okay? If somebody, what's extreme enterer?

It's someone who has just seen emptiness directly. If they still believed that things were real, then they would be disqualified from being extreme. You couldn't call them extreme enterer.

Got it? Why? What is it real?

Is the microphone not real? Is it real or not? Yeah, it functions.

You're hearing something. The function of a microphone is to make my voice louder. It's working.

Therefore, it's real. Yeah, it's a real microphone. So if I say this is a real microphone, does that prove I haven't seen emptiness?

Okay. Got it? So what does it mean when you say things are not real?

Yeah. It's how you feel about why it's working. How do you feel about why it's working?

I was just feeling this and there's a little cut in the cord. You see? Right here.

There's a little cut right there. And maybe it shouldn't be working. You see?

I mean, is it working because the copper wire is complete? Is it working because the battery didn't wear out? You see?

How do you feel about the microphone? You know, if it stopped working, would you sit there and take it apart or try to change the batteries or like that? How do you...

Yeah. You would. You would.

You wouldn't like pray for people to have better voices or something. You see? And that's ignorance.

That's ignorance because sometimes you can't get it to work. Got it? Sometimes you don't have any batteries.

Got it? Batteries don't make it work. A fresh battery...

Sometimes you... Don't even say fresh battery. Sometimes you don't have any fresh batteries.

You only have worn out batteries. And they don't make it work. Right?

But that's not because of the battery. Got it? It doesn't have anything to do with the battery.

Are you telling me... Then this is where the guy in Ireland said, are you telling me that cars don't work from petrol? And I said, right.

And we had an interesting conversation. Okay. Okay.

Because I got here today without petrol. And I didn't pay for petrol. You see?

Got it? It's interesting. I mean, if you really understood everything, you would just do beautiful, good, happy things for other people and not worry too much about the rest.

Got it? Because that's why the microphone isn't working. And it has nothing to do with the battery.

Okay? You can go get a battery and put it in and sometimes it won't work. Or they don't have any batteries.

Which is more difficult to understand. Really. Okay?

But insofar as you can start thinking that way, you can get everything you dreamed of. Okay? Everything you dreamed of.

Think of the fondest dream you have in your life. The thing you would most want in your life. And you can get it by understanding the thing about the battery.

You can get the most beautiful thing you ever imagined or wanted in your life to happen by understanding the battery. So it's important to understand the battery. Got it?

Just nod. Okay. So now we're to the new material.

And I think it was Eva telling me, don't forget the key, right? We're on to new material. We'll read it out loud.

If you've never been in the class, don't worry. You don't have to know anything. I don't care if you ever learned Tibetan personally.

This is not really a Tibetan class, although it's masquerading as a Tibetan class. And just have a good time. Enjoy.

We're having nice refreshments later. And enjoy the class. Catch what you can catch.

Don't get freaked out about what you don't catch. Some people have been in this class for five years. No, five years and then 12 years before that, or 15, 20 years.

So don't stress if you're new. Just go with the flow. Pick up as much as you can.

And it will help you with your life. It'll really help you with your life. So here we go.

We're going to read it together. And just fake it. Say whatever words you can say.

Like this one you can probably do. It's not L.A. But just do the ones you can do. And don't worry about it.

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

There's the key, okay? So, what isn't decided? He's saying if you had reached the direct perception of emptiness, you should be a person who had at least once debunked or seen that things aren't the way you thought they were.

Okay? So if you had reached stream enter, then intellectually you should understand that you're still seeing things wrong. Even when you come out of the direct perception.

So you come out of the direct perception and then you start seeing things wrong again. But you're aware that you're crazy. Okay?

And I always like to compare it to who was the guy? Ulysses? Who went to get the golden fleece?

Jason. Argonaut.

[Speaker 2]
Yeah.

[Speaker 1]
So he they were passing the land of the sirens and these ladies who sing a beautiful song and then the, it's Ulysses? Well, I said. And then all the sailors get all excited and they turn the boat in to see the ladies and they crash on this reef and the ladies eat them and steal all their stuff.

so but Jason is smart and he says I know this is the land of sirens. I don't want anyone freaking out so put wax in your ears. I mean additional wax because I already have some.

But put plugs in your ears and then row. Row like hell. You know?

And then I'm gonna I want to hear what they sound like. So tie me to the mast. You know?

Tie me to the mast and whatever I say don't listen. If I'm like let me go, let me go, don't do it. Okay?

He's the captain of the ship. You're supposed to obey him. So don't obey me for the next two hours.

Just ignore everything I say for the next two hours. That's what it feels like to be an Arya who just came out of Arya. They believe in the siren.

They hear the siren and they're attracted to the siren and they know they're crazy. But they can't help themselves. It's not like he hears the sirens and says oh they're just sirens I'm not gonna order them in to turn the boat.

He can't help himself. The minute he hears them he's as attracted as anybody ever was and he would die to get the boat into the reef. And that's how it feels to be an Arya.

You're like I'm seeing everything wrong and I can't stop it. But at least I know I'm wrong. So at least you know you're wrong.

So can we say that a person cannot be called a real stream enter if they still see something as real? Why? Yeah, they're still seeing things as real.

Got it? So the opponent here is like wait a minute, wait a minute K.D. Dambadangi. You can't say they're not real Aryas just because they're holding things as real.

Everybody who comes out of the experience of the first experience of emptiness every time, everybody who comes out of it continues to see things as real. He says that's not what I meant. I didn't say they never saw anything as real again.

I said they don't see things as real and believe in it intellectually anymore. That's what I meant. And they still have what?

The inborn tendency. They still have the inborn tendency to see things as real. They can't help themselves.

It's been billions of lifetimes, countless lifetimes. They still have it. But they don't have the intellectual.

If you ask them are you seeing things as real? Do I see Alistair as existing outside of my behavior? And they say yeah, you do.

So am I not an Aryan? You see what I mean? Is that person then not an Aryan?

You can say no. I've seen emptiness directly but I can't control how I see him because I have the habit from billions of years of habit. Even though I know how Alistair behaves towards me is a direct result of how I'm behaving.

I know that. So I should never get upset when he's mad at me, right? Or he says something to me.

In theory I should never get upset. And if I had seen emptiness before I especially shouldn't get upset. But do I still get upset?

Yes. So I still have the inborn tendency. What?

At the first two resulting levels. So this is tricky. Dene.

It's called, say, Dene. What are the four results of the path of virtue? These are stream-enterer.

Wow. Say again. Gyunshupa.

Chirongwa. Chirongwa. Chirmyongwa.

Drachomba. Wow. I couldn't remember.

Okay. So Gyunshupa, stream-enterer, just saw emptiness directly. Chirongwa has to return once to the desire realm.

Chirmyongwa doesn't have to come back to the desire realm. And Drachomba, arhat. So those are called the four results.

And then they have subcategories. But what he's saying is in the first two levels, stream-enterer and once-returner, you still have the innate tendency to see things as self-existent. That's a little tricky about the third one.

Because they're not in arhat yet. I don't know. Okay.

By the way, those of you who care, once you reach the third level, if you were still in the process of becoming a non-returner, you would still have inborn tendency to see things as self-existent. But he's talking about the resultant state within that level, which means they're pretty much already in arhat. Got it?

They're on the border between arhat and non-returner. So really they count as an arhat as far as innate tendency to see things as self-existent. Got it?

That's just for those of you who care. Why would the third level not have it? Because by then they're already pretty much in arhat.

Okay? Got it? Let's do it again.

One, two, three. bhagpa la tong nyi tok nyong kyi kya pa lung dir ndu pa ma se de tar du pe rang gyu pa yang yu te I think air condition is better because you're going to lose it. Is that all right?

Is it okay? Are you a little warm? Am I just higher than...

Am I a bhagpa? How about that? Can you?

Okay. I just think you'll get sleepy and inattentive in 30 seconds. Okay.

So what's a bhagpa? Yeah, ayah. It's the Tibetan translation for ayah, which means someone who has seen emptiness directly.

tong nyi tok nyong kyi kya pa So that should be like on your tongue. Say bhagpa la tong nyi tok nyong kyi kya pa Kya pa means it's always the case. It's always the case that an ayah is someone who has experienced.

Okay? Nyong is important there. What's a duti nyang?

Nyal dan dan dan duti nyang Yeah, it's another form of that verb. Nyangwa and nyongwa, same thing. So you know the word already.

Experience the nectar. Okay, that's duti nyong. Duti nyong.

It can mean to taste or to experience. So that's a very, very if you don't take away anything from these six years of Madhyamika, you should take that. What makes an ayah an ayah is that they have had the experience of seeing emptiness directly.

Okay, that's all. Bhagpa la tong nyong kyi kya pa Kya pa. Okay?

It has to be. That's what makes them an ayah. Okay, got it?

And then, nyong dir. Say nyong dir. Nyong dir.

Why do I say nyong dir? Yeah, the penance. Okay, so nyong dir.

And then again, nyong dir nyong du pa. Say nyong dir nyong du pa. Nyong dir nyong du pa.

Yeah, that would be the proper way to pronounce it. Nyong dir nyong du pa. Say it again.

Nyong dir du pa. Okay, got it? Otherwise, du pa means a Sanskrit equivalent of a Tibetan word or a substitute for the class, you see?

And nyong dir would mean the sheep is stuttering. Okay? So, really, really, okay?

Okay. So, nyong dir du pa ma se. Okay.

Not only is it the case that what makes an ayah an ayah is that they've experienced the direct perception of emptiness. In this school, meaning what school? Mica Prasangika.

The highest school, okay? The highest half of the highest. Four schools.

The highest half of the final school, which is also accepted by all tantric teachings. You see, all tantra is based on the higher half of the fourth school. You just have to know that, okay?

So, not only in this school do they believe that du pa, okay? Do they believe that? Ma se.

Not only in that school. Detar du pa rangyupa yong yote. There are also spot tantricas, lower Madhyamika schoolers, who believe the same thing.

Got it? What's the mayinga here? Huh?

It must imply that there are also some rangyupas that don't accept that. Because he says, there are also, there are also rangyupas who accept that. Okay, got it?

So you learned something already from the mayinga. Spot tantrica, lower Madhyamika school. They're called rangyupa because very difficult.

They believe that the efficacy of a logical statement is inherent within it. Like, if I say the sky is blue because, or the sky is not green because it's blue, right? So do the words because it's blue, do they have a power to prove the sky is not green in and of themselves?

But they appear to, right? I mean, of all the things in the world, a good reason that any rational person would accept would seem to be self-existent. It would seem to have its own power.

You see? And they say rangyupa. You know?

It has its own power.

[Speaker 2]
Okay?

[Speaker 1]
They believe that. They believe in a sense then that words have their own power. And if they did, you would never have an argument with your partner.

Understand? Okay. Alright.

So, and I call it, I translate it as independent school. Meaning they think that a reason has an independent force or power to it. Okay?

Rangyupa. There are also those who are independent. You can call it group, okay?

Why? Because I like to call the four schools the four schools and then the two groups within the higher school.

[Speaker 2]
Okay?

[Speaker 1]
But there are also those of the independent group who believe the same thing. You ready? One, two, three.

Lopan, Shenjung, Lodrudi, Sherchinki, Beden, Zepapoda, Chunjuki, Delpa, Zepapo, Nikain, Tak. Okay. Tak means check it out.

This is not retaks, which would be takmadru, which would be a reason, a logical reason. Okay? This is bretak, which is pretty rare and means check it out, examine it, analyze it.

[Speaker 2]
Okay?

[Speaker 1]
What? There was a Lopan. What's a Lopan?

A Buddhist master. His name was Sherjung Lodru.

[Speaker 2]
Okay?

[Speaker 1]
Which, Sherjung is probably an abbreviation of Sherabgijungne.

[Speaker 2]
Okay?

[Speaker 1]
Sherjung. His name was Sherjung Lodru. He wrote a book, Sherchinki Beden.

[Speaker 2]
Okay?

[Speaker 1]
Beden, do you know? Yeah, you know Beden Kunsel, which means the illumination of the secret point. Okay?

Beden. Beden means hidden. Okay?

So, he wrote a book called The Hidden Meaning of the Perfection of Wisdom. Sherchinki Beden. Okay?

He wrote a book called The Sherchinki Beden. I looked it up, okay, on the way here in the car. It's a commentary to Jetsun Kappa's famous commentary on the perfection of wisdom, meaning the lower Madhyamika school.

[Speaker 2]
Got it?

[Speaker 1]
Okay? So, that's a commentary on Jetsun Kappa's Golden Rosary, which is a commentary on the lower half of the Madhyamika school. So, he wrote a commentary on that.

Got it? Zepapo. He was the author.

The maker. Okay? Maker.

Papo. And, Chinjuki drama. What's Chinjuki?

Bodhisattva Charivatar. Okay? This is Master Shantideva's famous book on Bodhisattva behavior.

[Speaker 2]
Okay?

[Speaker 1]
Which those of you who studied the 9th chapter know for sure that he must have been in which school? Prasangika. I mean, it is maybe the most exquisite presentation of Madhyamika Prasangika ever written.

Okay? The 9th chapter is perhaps the most beautiful presentation of the highest school of Dhamma ever written. Got it?

So, he wrote a commentary on that. He's a Jalpa Zepapo. He's a commentator on that.

Those two. Kanyintak. You check it out.

You decide. Which one was he an author of? You decide.

What's that got to do with anything? You can make some assumptions perhaps here. I said, okay, just pretend I've said this.

There are some people in the lower middle way school who believe the same as we in the higher school do. Okay? You decide.

Was he or was he not the author of a commentary on the lower school and the higher school of Madhyamika? You decide. I'm not saying anything.

Was he? Did he write commentaries on both? Yeah.

He did. He just happened to have done it. Okay?

Why do I bring it up? Yeah, because in the commentary, in the lower commentary, he said, you have to be, you have to have a perception of emptiness to be an Aryan. He said that in his first commentary.

Got it? So, are there people in the lower half of the Madhyamika school who believe that you have to see emptiness to be an Aryan? Yeah, because he's one.

He's one of them. But does he really represent the ideas of the higher school? Does that statement represent the position of the higher school about the lower school?

It does, because he wrote a commentary on Chindu. You got it? You see what I mean?

He wrote a commentary on the highest system of Madhyamika. He knew that to be an Aryan, you had to see emptiness directly. Then he wrote an explanation of the lower school and he said they believe that you also have to see emptiness directly to be an Aryan.

So can we say that even in the lower Madhyamika school you have to, that there are people who believe that you have to see emptiness to be an Aryan? That's all. Got it?

He's covering both positions. He's a master of both schools. He should know.

That's what he's saying. He should know. And you decide which one he was really.

Got it? Okay. That's a little hard maybe.

I think he was a Tibetan, so I'm going to... How would we check? Yeah, you would check the Sanskrit.

Let's just see if he's in... if he's ever been mentioned in Sanskrit literature. So this is searching maybe a few thousand pages of Sanskrit literature in Tibetan translation.

I think he's probably Tibetan. I'm not sure. We'll let that go.

I need a faster computer today. Just kidding. I'm not hinting.

Sometimes you have to let the search go and keep going and then come back. Okay, so... Yeah?

You got it? In Lokas Chandra? I don't have that.

Did I spell it wrong? Is it Shirab Jungne? Oh, okay.

Yeah, I'm not sure that means it was him. That would just mean the source of wisdom. You got to try to find the whole thing.

Try Shirab Jungne something. Okay, anyway. Oh, by the way.

Okay, got it? He's doing a diamond dealer trick on you. Why?

Is it a weather question? It's not. He did write Volkan.

Got it? You have to appreciate that. Alright?

He's saying, you check it out, Ani Palma, Lama Palma. Did he write a commentary on the higher school of Madhyamaka or did he write a commentary on the lower school of Madhyamaka? And then you're supposed to say both.

Don't try to trick me. He wrote both. And he said in both commentaries that to be an Arya you have to see emptiness directly.

So it must represent the position of both schools. At least for some people. Got it?

Just nod. Don't look so angst. Okay.

We'll just go on. We don't know that. And there's another qualifier here.

He said this. Right here. And now there's some debate whether it was two different guys.

And there's other Shirab Jungne lodgers. There are other ones. So then there's a whole debate in the literature about which one are you talking about.

Got it? So that's why he said in D. So you have to translate that.

To do that, you have to be good at the database. The ACIP database. To do that, it has to be finished.

To do that, you have to pay your monthly donation to the ACIP. Or these points will never be... No, they just won't be there to search.

Seriously. And it's not done. It's about 10% done.

Okay. Prajnaparamati. Prajnaparamati.

Is he a real guy? But it's there? Both?

Or did you recreate it? Okay, good. Karamati.

Prajnaparamati. Right? We better stick it together because it's a long A, right?

Prajnaparamati. So you can't split it. Even though it would be nice to.

Prajnaparamati. Okay. We can take out the loader now, right?

That's the mati, by the way. Which came into English as mental and mind. With a prenasal.

Okay. Dambhuyana. Let's go.

You ready? One, two, three. Dambhuyana.

Bhagbala Dhoni. Dhonyon ki kya pe. She je.

Sher chin sum kya pe. Lung de dem ba je pe. The only word you really need to know here is she je, okay?

This one here. She je means proof. Okay?

Or as corroboration. Okay? As supporting evidence.

Okay? She je. So, he quoted, Dren, some scripture, Lung, of the Sher chin sum kya pe.

The 300 lines on wisdom. Which is the Diamond Cutter Sutra. This is an old name for the Diamond Cutter Sutra.

It used to be called the 300 lines of wisdom. Okay? And what a line is, is a long story.

Okay? But he says, bhagbala dhoni dhonyon ki kya pe. It's always the case that if you're an Arya, you've seen emptiness directly.

How did he prove it? How did he support his statement that you had to see emptiness directly to be an Arya? How did he back it up?

He took a quote from the sum kya pe, from the Diamond Cutter. Okay? Not only a quote.

De. Lung de. What?

That. What's that mean? Which sum kya pe Lung?

Which quotation from the 300? We just had one. We just had one.

Okay? Got it? You want to go look at it?

Let's see. I'm curious. Let's go see what it said.

Remember, what's he using it for? Yeah, to prove as supporting evidence for his statement that if you're an Arya, it can only be so because you've seen emptiness directly. That's what makes you an Arya.

Let's see how he got that out of the Diamond Cutter. So what will we search for? How about 300?

There we go. So do people who have just seen emptiness, who have just entered the stream, do they say to themselves, you guys just started in New York, so it's probably fresh in your mind, doesn't Arya who just entered the stream say to themselves, oh my God, I just entered the stream? Good.

Yeah. Okay. You respectfully replied, right?

They do not. Okay. So you can't call him a stream enter.

Then you reply, what's the French word for au contraire? You know.

[Speaker 2]
You know.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah. I mean, no, not only is it not true that you can, not true that you can't, you must. That's why you can call him a stream enter.

Why? Why can you call him a stream enter? Because it would be wrong for them to say...

Good. Good. Okay.

He just said, why is he a stream, sorry, I'm confused. Yeah. Why can you say they're a stream enter?

Because he's somebody who would never say he was a stream enter. Got it? And that proves he's a...

So everybody who says they're not a stream enter is a stream enter. Good. Good.

Okay. Okay. Okay.

Oh boy.

[Speaker 2]
I'll say...

[Speaker 1]
Let's try... That's impossible. Let's try...

Without the... Okay.

[Speaker 2]
Alright.

[Speaker 1]
He doesn't say direct, okay? I mean, it's understood, okay? Okay?

So, if he was the first, meaning if he wrote a commentary on... If he's... If we're talking about the same guy, if we're talking about the guy who wrote the commentary on the lower middle way school, the fact is that in that book he said you had to see emptiness to be an Aryan.

Okay? And he's... He's meaning that that means that school must accept that also.

Got it? Anatoly, where are we? Is he here?

What? Can you tell him it's time? Everyone's like dazed.

Yeah. Okay. Time to get some sugar into people.

Alright. Okay, this one's a little bit long, as you can see. But it cannot be cut.

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

Arya, vedana, vedadala, vedadala, if you intend to reach freedom in the sense of nirvana. Why did he say in the sense of nirvana? Yeah, he didn't want you to take it as Buddhahood, although it's also true of that.

Droha, nyamde, topala. In order to achieve liberation in the sense of nirvana, toni unsoom du tokwa. You must see emptiness, unsoom, directly.

So this is the first time anyone has said directly, but it was assumed all along. But he just wants to nail it down. Unsoom du tokwa, kaansik.

Yeah, kaansik, say kaansik. Kaansik. It means, first of all, you've got to do this.

Second of all, you've got to do this. So that's the second ala, got it? Kaansik is the second ala.

OK? First of all, it doesn't exist in Tibetan. You've got to do this.

The second ala, you've got to do this. So kaansik, kaansik. It's called a split reason.

It's a very famous logical form. I don't like you because you're stupid and ugly. OK?

OK? They're both reasons, and they go together. All right.

Here we go. Well, maybe we could use a different example. Nyelang da jomba.

Let's go to the end. Kepa suyongme, say suyongme. Suyongme.

There ain't none at all. There ain't nobody at all. Su means anybody or who.

Yongme, suyongme is a colloquial expression, an idiom that you should learn. Suyongme. There ain't nobody who's a kepa, who's a real master and says that nyelang da jomba, advanced practitioners on the lower tracks.

Got it? Advanced practitioners on the lower tracks. Korwe chingwa le ma dul.

Didn't break the chingwas of Korwa. OK? Chingwa is ching.

The way I learned that word was from the Tibetan newspaper, because I saw chingdul magmi, chingdul magmi, liberated Tibet, PLA, People's Liberation Army. In English it's called, I mean, in Tibetan it's called chingdul magmi. Chingdul, liberation army.

That's where I learned the expression. So korwe chingwa le ma dul depa. There ain't no Buddhist sage in the world that ever said that those lower arhats hadn't broken the chains of samsara.

Got it? There's nobody ever said that. Nobody.

Rigpe kyang mi, thebe eichir. You could also never prove such a thing through logic. OK?

Try to prove that you don't need to see emptiness to get rid of your jealousy. Try to prove that. I mean, spend an hour, try to prove it to somebody who knows.

Like, oh, you can get rid of jealousy just by going to therapy or something. It doesn't stick. It won't stay.

So you can try to prove it, but you can't prove it. Whereas you can prove the opposite. If you understood that whatever unkind behavior is being shown to you is an exact reflection of your own behavior, then who you're going to get mad at?

I mean, who can get upset at other people? That's like smashing a mirror because you don't like the face of the mirror. You're giving me a bad face.

Really. Like, then I would be smashing mirrors constantly. Like, oh, I don't like the face in the mirror.

Is your a bad mirror? I'm going to get a better mirror. No, really, really.

That's what you're saying every time you get upset at somebody. Really. Or every time you say, I don't like a certain person.

Ultimately, every asshole in your life is coming from you. So the more you complain, the more of an asshole you're establishing that you are. I mean, a real person at Diamond Mountain should be embarrassed to complain about other people.

Because it's actually a statement of what an asshole you are. Got it? So at least don't talk about it.

All right? Because or else all your Majimika friends will be laughing at you. Oh, Coco's complaining about stupid people.

OK. So let's translate. I'm just talking to myself, OK?

It's not you. And I still do it every 30 seconds or so. But I teach a good language class.

OK. That's not a bad way to translate kava, if you're interested. It must necessarily have.

We were just talking about you. Did you want to come here? Just kidding, just kidding.

All right. We were discussing your power over your body and mind, control over your body and mind. He's not a Gaga because he's here.

Oh, one. OK. OK.

Sorry. Got it? OK.

Got it? Let's go on. Yeah.

That's a good question. I guess there would be someone who believed in my, what was it, Mahamudra view number five, was it? Which was what?

Yeah. So they would accept that. And they would say, you didn't have to see that directly to become an ayah.

How could they say that? I'll tell you what the text said, OK? What Jetsun Kappa said in Gomu Rapsa, at this point.

He said, there are positions, there are some kind of flavor of school that believes that you could get a deep insight into the four higher truths, and that that would be enough to remove your mental afflictions permanently. You could become a photo star from that and not see emptiness directly, even their version of emptiness. Got it?

That's all. There are some people who said that, and we kind of broached that earlier, if you remember. But that's what the reference would be.

I believe that's what you would say. OK, let's read this one. If you read it really well, you might get a little health kick.

So you're really in trouble now. I probably reduced the number of people who come to class. But anyway, here we go.

One, two, three. There's a couple of problems with the Tibetan here. If anyone wants to look at the carving, and I'm not going to take the time in class, but maybe Jason or somebody.

Alistair had a copy of the carving? I don't know. But maybe Jigme, you can work on getting it from Gene Smith, like see.

I think we did it, no? Check. Ketuk Temba Dagi's commentary.

We have a handwritten copy. I don't know if we have a carving yet. I think he might have a scan of a carving.

There's two problems with the Tibetan that I would look into. I don't think you need to say depa. It's just duanyang de.

Duanyang depa throws it off beat. And it should say here, tenjil layang sungbayinte. It should say something like that.

You're going to do the Kali initiation, right? And the text is almost 300 pages long. And it's very ancient and very, very corrupt.

And it took hundreds of hours to clean it up. And it was very badly carved. And so we had to compare many, many versions of it.

But this is the kind of thing you start to, if ACIP succeeds, we can make the scriptures purer than they've ever been in this generation. You see? If it keeps going, you can do that.

You can make the scriptures purer than they've ever been. You can clean them up. OK, anyway, if you want to see, if you want to achieve nirvana, you've got to see emptiness directly.

You've got to. Gapa, OK? Got to.

That is stated sung in the Mahayana Sutras, written by Lord Buddha. Masay. I say, not only that, tenjun le sung by yin te, but it's also stated in the classical commentaries from ancient India, tenjun.

Shastra or shastra? Ningbo and I were fooling around with this the other day. The shastras or the shastras, Ningbo, do you remember?

Am I embarrassing you? Yeah, shastra is a commentary. Shastra is a sword.

And there's no relation. So that's a difference. If you ever want to teach your students the importance of pronouncing a short A in Sanskrit against a long A in Sanskrit, that's a good example.

That word there, tenjun in Tibetan. Shastra is ah. Say ah.

Then say uh. Ah. So that's the difference between a long A and a short A in Sanskrit.

And it makes all the difference. It's like confusing K's and P's in English or something. I just saw a pop was giving me a ticket instead of a cop.

No, I mean, it's as important in Sanskrit as K's and P's. You have to know that. Otherwise, you pronounce Sanskrit to somebody who knows Sanskrit, and they have no idea what you're talking about.

Because you're not making any difference between namaste and namaste. And then they say, what are you trying to say? OK?

So anyway, tenjun le yang sungbayin te. It's also stated in the shastras. It's also stated in the shastras.

You should have put yang. Maybe you just wrote it wrong. OK, anyway, that's a joke.

All right. Maybe. Not only has it been stated sutras of the greater that one must pursue attain, but this is also in the classical.

OK, got it? That's a segue. That's a cheap segue to what?

Yeah, he has concluded his presentation that who said that you had to see emptiness to get rid of your jealousy? Lord Buddha. OK?

If you don't believe that, then let's pull out Nagarjuna. OK? He's going to start pulling out commentary.

Got it? So his original promise to us was, I'll prove to you that you have to see emptiness directly to get rid of your negative, to be happy. You'll never be happy if you don't see emptiness directly.

It's not possible to be happy unless you see emptiness directly. Not possible. That's his position.

I'll prove it to you logically. And then I'll prove to you that Lord Buddha said the same thing. And then I'll prove to you that every Buddhist sage since Lord Buddha has said the same thing.

Got it? So now we're at that third. He's just introducing.

He's going to start going into shastras now, classical commentary. I think it's a nice way to think about it, and maybe a nice way to teach it to your own students, to present it like that. We would all like to be happy.

We would all like to have all the things we ever dreamed of. And you can. But until you see emptiness directly, it's not going to happen.

It cannot happen. You cannot have a consistently happy week unless you've seen emptiness directly. It's not possible.

And if you lay it on somebody like that, then they might be interested to study emptiness a little bit. All right, think about doing it that way. Think about it, because it's the truth, according to us.

[Speaker 2]
That's right.

[Speaker 1]
OK. But at least people can think about it. If they're already attracted to Buddhism somewhat, you can lay that on them.

If you really want to have a good week ever, you have to see emptiness. You have to study emptiness. No, it's just true.

You will never have a whole good week if you don't see emptiness directly. You can't. You won't.

Not possible. The whole week, I'm saying the whole week. Maybe eight days, all right?

Here we go. Ready? One, two, three.

KUNG PO DENG PA ZINPE DENG ZIN GYI SHEN YOD SUNG CHUNG MI NIRBAR GYISI ZHUG GI BAR DUG GANG SA DENG PA ZINPE DENG ZIN GYI SHEN YOD SUNG CHUNG MI NIRBAR ZHUG GI ZHUG. So I was on retreat this summer, not far from here. And I was practicing my Christmas carols as I walked through this wilderness.

And it was really fun to scream out Christmas carols in July in this empty 500 miles. And then I got this one place, and I would do the monastery thing. By the way, if you want to memorize scripture, this is a really good way.

And to me, they used to look like those swimmers who they flip under and they kick off. So like these geshes, they would be blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And they'd just miss the wall, and they had some kind of thing.

So I was doing the geshe thing, and I was doing the same 10 feet over and over. And I'm singing, you know, Har Cal the Bells. And then I'm like this, and there's a snake right there, a rattlesnake.

And I'm like, how many times have I been back and forth here? And then I'm like, I just kept singing, you know. And I got close, and I sang to him, and he didn't move, he just sat there.

And I thought, maybe he's dead, because anybody else would run away from this singing. But he just stood there, and he stayed there until dusk, you know. And I sang to him until dusk, and then he didn't move, I didn't move.

But you can imagine how I felt about sticks after that, you know. The whole rest of my retreat, every time I see a stick, and I'm like, you know. And so at the moment when you see the stick, they're not like our rattlesnakes.

They're smaller and uglier. We have better rattlesnakes. So they have black markings on them, not brown.

And so sticks were bad, you know, because sticks looked like black. But there's a split second when you're walking and you go like this, and then there's a split second where you see the stick as a snake, right? There's a split second.

It's hard to isolate in your mind. It's hard to capture the image in your mind of a living marked snake, you know. It's very hard to capture.

And then in the next millisecond you see that it's a stick, you know. But try to grasp, try to remember times when you've done the same thing. Because I did it a lot this summer, especially when it was dusk.

I was like seeing, I was having instantaneously only momentary perceptions of a living snake where there was only a stick, right? Try to focus your mind right at this moment on the overlay of the living snake, you see. It's a mental overlay.

There's a stick and then there's an image laid over it, right? And the image is breathing and has fangs and has poison and can rattle. You know, in that one moment you see an image.

Say shengyo. Shengyo. That's a shengyo.

Got it? That's a shengyo. That's a beautiful Tibetan word.

We don't have it. Okay? Shen means what you desperately believe in at the moment.

You know shenba shidro, right? What was that? Freedom from the four attachments, right?

Which is a lojong about attachment. But this is a different kind of shenba where you're like, oh, you're a snake. Okay?

That's shenba. And then that's a shengyo. What's you?

An object. So that's a, in English you'd have to say something like, grasping desperately dearly to wrongly to object. Okay?

Shengyo. I believe in that moment. I believe and I'm like stepping back.

And then suddenly it fades. Shengyo's fade. Got it?

Shengyo's tend to just dissolve. And you almost can't remember them. You almost can't hold them in your mind.

What was I seeing the last millisecond? What did I see? And it was a living snake with black markings on it, you know?

And a rattle. So think of that. That's, it's really cool to think of that.

So, punpo denpa dzinbe denzyin gyu shengyo. You are looking at the parts of Michael. You are looking at Michael's hand.

You are looking at Michael's arm. You are looking at what's left of Michael's hair. And you are, you are denpa dzinba.

You are overlaying something on top of that. There's a snake there. There's a, there's a fantasy snake there.

Right? And you, it's there all the time. You are doing something wrong all the time.

When you look at Naomi's hand, and you look at Naomi's arm, and you look at Naomi in the mirror, you are always doing the snake thing. And there's always a shengyo there. There's a fake fantasy Michael there.

Okay? Got it? And what's your goal in life?

Dissolve it. You see? Make it go away the way the snake image went away.

It's a cool feeling, the way it dissolves. Then some people say, Oh, Geshe-la, I got there. I don't feel like anything.

I had four cups of vodka, and I felt like I was just nothing. You know? And that's not right.

There is a stick there. It's not right to say, Oh, my shengyo went away, Geshe-la. I don't see anything there.

Then I know you didn't do it. You see? If you said, I had a shengyo, but now I see something different.

You know? I see an arm whose health depends on my taking care of the latest old person I know who fell down today.

[Speaker 2]
Okay?

[Speaker 1]
Like, that's how I perceive my arm. I don't think that food has anything to do with my arm. I can drink all of Anatole's almond milk that I want, and I know it might break tomorrow.

Okay? I know, I have a feeling about my arm that it's health, and it's beauty, and it's existence, and whether or not it can turn into light or not, and whether or not I can touch God with it or whatever you want to call it, right? Depends only on the kindness I show to other people.

That's how I feel about my arm. Then, if you say that, then the shengyo has dissolved. Got it?

Then the wrong Naomi's arm has dissolved. And you're not looking at the arm as something flesh and blood anymore. You're seeing it as a reaction to the goodness you've shown to others.

Got it? It's very beautiful. It's very beautiful.

So, when an Arya, who's in a good mood, looks at their arm, they're just seeing a product of, you know, relative goodness to others. Okay? And then the shengyo has, is not there anymore.

Got it? Okay. So, how am I going to get to the, dissolve the shengyo that covers all of Michael?

How am I going to get to the final, you know, the first emptiness you ever see directly is the emptiness of Ben. Right? All of Ben.

Ben as Ben. The first emptiness you will ever see directly is your own. Viet's will be Viet.

You see, you have to get that because then your goal is clearer. You know, I want to experience a whole good week, Geshe Michael. Okay, cat, then guess which kind of emptiness you're going to have to see.

Cats. You're going to have to see the emptiness of cats. So, you might want to explore cat's emptiness.

Because, then you'd be on the right track to see that first. And that would be the one that would make you have a truly perfect week. Okay, or four days, or whatever.

Okay, so, how do we get to that? What's the first word there? Start with her part.

Forget heaves, I don't like the word anyway. Just the part. Start with her part.

Start with her arm. Start with her hand. Start with her finger.

Start with her last jealousy attack. If you have any. I don't know.

I'm not saying. I'm just giving you an example from my own experience. Start with the parts of your body and mind.

Examine the emptiness of one of your parts, and then you'll get to the part and you'll get to the emptiness of her. Got it? Start with her parts and you'll get to the emptiness of her.

Soon, what happened? Soon, chung. What's number sun jin be to?

What's number sun jin be to? Yeah, it's one of the four powers with which you can destroy your old bad karma. And this one happens to be intelligent regret.

Yeah, it means to rip its heart out. Okay? Rip its heart out.

Number sun jin be. Okay? What is it here?

Rip out that idea about your arm and then you'll be able to rip out the idea about Naomi as a whole. Got it? Start with her parts and then you'll be able to analyze some part of you.

Analyze your jealousy or analyze your anything. Okay? So, can we say that when you first want to perceive emptiness, you should perceive the emptiness of one of Naomi's parts?

Yeah, if you're Naomi. Can we say that if you want to perceive emptiness of Naomi and you're Naomi, you must first perceive the emptiness of one of Naomi's parts? So, it's not true that when you see emptiness directly, you first see the emptiness of Naomi in general.

So, it is true that... So, it's not true that when you first perceive emptiness directly, it's about Naomi as a whole. When Naomi sees...

It is true. But didn't you just say you had to see emptiness in Naomi's arm to get to the emptiness of Naomi? Right.

But you... No, that's not... Why not?

So, it's not an existing thing? No, it's okay, it's okay. Don't go there, don't go there.

It's all right, it's all right. I'll summarize it. No, you're right.

But I don't want to go off because I only get a few moments with you and it'll take 20 years instead of 15. But maybe that's funner. To understand intellectually Naomi's emptiness, you've got to go at it through her parts.

To make the wrong Naomi disappear. But then to see Naomi directly, the first Naomi you ever see her emptiness directly, that'll be all of Naomi. Got it?

[Speaker 2]
Okay.

[Speaker 1]
So, let's translate it.

[Speaker 2]
Okay?

[Speaker 1]
It's all right? It's all right? Meaning, for as long as you still perceive your arm as sustained by popcorn and almond milk, you won't see the emptiness of Michael.

Okay? The emptiness of Michael's arm. So long as you still look down and see an arm sustained by popcorn and almond milk, you will never overcome your perception that Michael is sustained by popcorn.

Got it? That Michael exists other than from the deeds I do to help others. Got it?

[Speaker 2]
Okay.

[Speaker 1]
We've got to catch the Silky Juke, okay? Okay. Okay, I'm not even going to see if that sentence makes sense.

Let's just go on. Betz is going to clean this all up in 2025.

[Speaker 2]
Okay.

[Speaker 1]
Promise? Where is he? Yeah, yeah, okay.

All right. Okay. Remember the date.

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

DGC Juki Pardu Reisak Rei Dewangki Korwar Korwa Gunbo Luduki Shebe Su Okay. You will still Reisak. What?

Collect karma. Okay? You will still collect karma.

And that karma will cause, force you to spin Korwa in the cycle Korwa Okay? Of pain. This, excuse me?

Sorry? Yeah. Okay.

Okay. Where did you see a similar process described? Yeah, Maitreya's stick, right?

Very beautiful. Really beautiful. And that was reflected in the Yoga Sutra, second chapter.

Okay? And it was in the five kleshas presented in the opening sections of the Yoga Sutra. Okay?

Which described the steps of Maitreya, right? You come into this life with an inborn tendency to believe things are coming from their own side, right? Then you you you grasp to them, you try to affect them, you get anger or desire towards them and then that causes there's a fresh incidence of ignorance with particular objects and then that causes you to try to affect them and then your frustration gives you desire or hatred and then you do things to other people who bug you and then you collect bad karma.

And then you then the cycle goes. And he's going to describe soon he's going to get into the interrelation of the cycle which is almost like a wheel of life thing. You get angry.

You do karma. You get born again so that you can get angry and collect bad karma which comes back to you in the next life as something bad and then you get angry again and then you collect bad karma and it just you have to get into that feeling of a cycle. And Lama Krishna and I in the last few years we were talking about this concept that I like of mini cycles like mini samsaras.

Like samsara doesn't have to refer to the grand play of rebirth. It could be I criticize my partner. I bitch at my partner.

They respond. They react to me. Then I say something again.

Then they say something to me. And then there's this big question among partners of who started it. Then you say yeah, I started it today but I'm just reacting to something you did yesterday.

And it's a chicken or egg thing. For a Buddhist you can't have those conversations anymore. So I just cut out like 5% of your partner problems.

You can't have those conversations anymore because it's a chicken or egg thing. What does the Buddhist say about the chicken or egg? There's always been chickens and eggs.

There's always been chickens and eggs. Why? You can't have a chicken without an egg.

And you can't have an egg without a chicken. Ergo there's always been chickens and eggs. No problem.

That's not a problem. Got it? Your partner has always bugged you.

Because you bugged them. So who was first? There was no beginning.

You've probably known them for billions of lifetimes and you've been bugging each other. So it's probably better to just chill. Yeah, and then you wouldn't you cut the cycle.

You cut the cycle. But that's what I wanted to say when I got off the subject with partners. It's a mini-sansara.

So try to see mini-sansaras happening in your life. Try to isolate. Try to say Oh, there's a mini-cycle going on.

They bug me. I respond to them. Then they bug me more and then I respond to them.

So try to isolate. Try to identify mini-sansaras. Sansara is not some grand thing that's happening across the billions of lifetimes.

You don't get out of sansara that way. You break the little ones. One by one you diffuse the little sansaras.

You say, I'll break it. I'll break the bickering thing. You can bicker at me all day.

I'm not bickering at you. In fact, I'm going to have a good time. I'm just going to have a good time.

You bicker if you want. You can even bicker at me. I don't care.

But I'm just going to have a good time today. You're not going to ruin my good time today. You can bicker.

And I'm not going to make the sansara continue. I'm going to break the sansara. You deserve to be bickered at by me.

But I'm not even going to give you that. Like that. Because I don't want you to bicker anymore.

Got it? You are an idiot. You deserve to be criticized by me.

You deserve to be called an idiot by me. But I'm not going to say anything. And it's not because you're not.

Okay? You got it? You got it?

So you're going to have this very, what do you call it? This very, what do you call that? No, like this very stuck up, egotistical patience with them.

Self-righteous patience with them. In your mind you're going to say, you are an idiot. And you deserve me to bicker at you.

But I'm going to cut it now. Because it's a cycle. I understand it's a cycle.

And it is my fault that you're bickering at me. So I just choose not to bicker with you anymore. And actually I'm not only not going to bicker, I'm going to have a really good day.

I'm going to do stuff I like. I'm going to enjoy myself. I'm going to be happy today.

And you can bicker. It's okay. You can go in the corner and bicker.

Or you can bicker in front of me. You can even bicker in front of me and I'm still going to be happy. And then you break that.

What I'm saying is, get used to breaking a small cycle in your life. Then you can break the grand one. Because that's made up of small concerns.

Got it? It's not like you're trying to overcome rebirth. You just don't want to have a bad day bickering.

And then when you break that little cycle, you can break the whole cycle. Because you get good at cycle breaking. You become a cycle breaker.

We should probably create a new word. We should create a whole new vocabulary, really. We get rid of me, you.

We discussed that in Sampancha. And then we create words like cycle breaker. Did you have a question?

But you wouldn't not speak unless you had already thought it in the mind. Well, they are. If they weren't an idiot, you wouldn't have to stop it.

I don't want to see idiots anymore. No, they're not a self-existent idiot, but they are a Michael Roach-produced idiot. So, I don't mean to say they're not.

They are an idiot. In Buddhism, we're not trying to prove that the person's not an idiot. The person is an idiot.

And they bug you. They really bug you. But you want to remove that part of them.

You want to eliminate that part of them. No, get this. If you perceive them as an idiot produced by Michael Roach, that's a correct perception.

And with that perception, you can destroy the idiocy. That's all. You can't go around denying that people are idiots.

They are. To an idiot. To an idiot.

To a person who's acting idiotically, they are a real idiot. And they will cease to be. That's what I'm trying to say.

Don't try to sit there and pretend they're not stupid. They are stupid. Change them.

Change them by being good. Really, honest. They bug you.

They really bug you. That's like saying a car bumper's not a bumper when it broke your knee. It's a bumper.

But change it. That's all. Really.

They bug you from your side. That's true. They don't bug you from their side.

They are not self-existent buggers. They are moi-created buggers. These are all vocabulary we have to create.

They are Michael Roach-created buggers. That's all. And those buggers we want to stop.

Right? Those buggers I can dislike. Yeah, yeah.

If I didn't dislike them, I wouldn't be good. Okay, anyway. We'll do one more.

Are you ready to start? You ready? Okay, we'll do one more and then we won't have debate tonight because you have to go home and do it with your partner.

Okay. As if I had to ask. Okay.

Okay. Okay. You will hold to me for, this is back to Naomi's arm, okay?

You will hold to me for as long as you continue to hold to the part of me. Who said that? Who wrote the String of Precious Jewels?

Yeah, Ari Nagarjuna. So it's a good way to prove that he does too. Right?

Meaning that's Ari Nagarjuna's position. He believes that. No, he doesn't.

He does too because the String of Precious Jewels, which was written by Ari Nagarjuna, says that. Okay, got it? So Ari Nagarjuna didn't believe in me.

It says here, I mean, you will hold to me, meaning that's a bad thing. You will do that me thing. You will hold to me.

You will hold to bugger for as long as you hold to the parts of bugger.

[Speaker 2]
Right?

[Speaker 1]
You will. So there will always be people that bug you because you will always hold to their parts. Yeah, for so long as I hold to their parts as being self-existently bugger arm, bugger hand, bugger's words, bugger's looks, bugger's irritating habits, then I will hold to bugger.

So to not hold to bugger anymore, I will have to ignore their habits. Pretend they don't exist. Not see them.

Hold. Hold them. Right?

If I want to stop people from bugging me, if I never want to see something I don't want to see ever again in my life, right? Up from another person, then I have to see, then I have to ignore the parts that make them up. I have to ignore their arms, their hands, their speech, their manner.

He just said, if you want to stop holding to them, you have to stop holding to their parts. He said that. He said me.

I mean, you can say them. For as long as you, you will hold to them, bugger, for as long as you hold to their words, their actions, their manners, their manner. Right?

Right. That's what I'm waiting for. Explain.

Yeah. So you're saying it's desirable. The implication is, it's desirable to stop holding to a bugger.

What's that mean? Yeah. Okay.

Got it? They aren't bugging you from their side. Got it?

How do you establish that they are not bugging you from their side? Yeah. Take a piece of them.

That's all he's saying. Take a piece of them first. What?

Take the last thing they said to you. Take the way they move, you know? Take the way they move.

You know, but take one. Just take one. And work on that.

Examine it. That's what he's saying. You know, examine the words.

So they said, you know, you're a fool or something. They said you're a fool. So then you examine you're a fool.

You don't like try to deal with the whole person. That's what he's saying. If you want to stop holding to them in the wrong way, just work on some little thing they did.

Work on a few words that they said. Like, you're a fool. So Geshe Michael, have you ever in your life used the expression you're an idiot or anything similar?

You know, like have you gotten yourself into that habit ever? You know, that it could be that someone would accuse you of being a fool. You know, and then you have to say, yeah, I just, in the class the other night, Gelser was trying to get me not to use that language, and I did, repeatedly.

You know. Okay. Okay.

So then I'm no longer holding to the bugger because I'm no longer holding to the three words they said to me as coming from them. Got it? So then I, that's how I drop the bugger.

By dropping one of their pieces. I stop a mini-samsara to stop the big samsara. Got it?

It's so beautiful when, when you make a little progress at it. You know, you can use it and then, you know, go after one bugger in your life, you know. Or go after the opposite.

Go after someone you really want to be in your life or someone you really love, you know, and use the same method and see how it works, you know. See the, see the, see the dependent origination of their arm or their lips or their ears or their hands, you know, like someone you, you want to be with, you know, as a friend or whatever. But, but contemplate where the arm is coming from and where the, the, the hips are coming from or where the arm, the shoulders are coming from and, and contemplate, now I'm saying the opposite of a bugger, you know, someone you want to be with.

Then contemplate where any one part of them has to be coming from. And then that's the first step to getting them into your life, you see. So then, in theory, you could, you could accomplish anything.

You could have anyone, any divine being be in your life. You could, you could, by, by working on the pieces of a divine being, you could bring a divine being into your life, consciously. And not like, what do you call it, the lottery.

You know, like, oh, you know, I'll go on the, I'll go to that Bhagavad Gita thing in New York, maybe I'll meet somebody. You know what I mean? Don't do that.

Say, let's, I got, how much time we got? I got five weeks till Bhagavad Gita, so let me design somebody. You know, let me design somebody to show up at Bhagavad Gita, you know, and you, you work on it.

And it's nice, you know. And then, whenever they start bickering, you, you, you, no, then you do the, you know the antidotes. You know where it comes from, you see.

You not only bring the person, but you make them eternally beautiful, you see. They don't, you don't go through this cycle where there's the hot date, and then there's the pursuit, and then there's the culmination, and then there's the bickering, you know. No, you, you can, you can keep the pursuit going like indefinitely, like that, you know, something like that.

It's more fun. Okay. Okay.

Alright. Let's do a, let's do a prayer.

[Speaker 2]
Prajnaparamita Vajra Niram Guru Radham Avakam Inadayami Dige Rogam Sanam Yashet Sansakshin Sanam Yashet Necchutham Dhammakumitopajram So, the ordination was shifted to the 15th, Thursday, the 15th of October.

[Speaker 1]
We'll be ordaining some two full monks, one novice monk, and one full nun. Two full nuns? One.

Oh, yeah, two. Well, anyway, a whole bunch. And it'll be very, very, very beautiful and important because Chuky and I, we worked for several years to create a unisex ordination ceremony because the ordination ceremony for fully ordained nuns was lost in Tibet about 1,200 years ago.

And for 1,200 years, people have not recreated it from the existing records, which could have been done. And so we just went ahead and did it. And so, you know, there are existing scriptures that we pieced it back together.

But it took a long time. And it's beautiful, and it's accurate and authentic. So we'll be doing some beautiful ordination ceremonies, you know, next week.

So if you can, come to that on the 15th, right? Okay, have a good night.