Вступление на срединный путь (текущий курс, Аризона), занятие 92

[Speaker 1]
I'll just repeat where we are. There are three traditional tracks of Buddhism that you can go on. One is, the highest one is the Bodhisattva track, and then there's lower two.

The Bodhisattva track, if you reach the end of it, you become a Buddha, meaning you know all things, past, present and future, and you can send emanations to every planet in the world. You can send an emanation to every bus in every city in every planet and sit next to somebody and irritate them who needs to be tested. And then on the lower two tracks, all you do is reach nirvana, which means you eliminate your negative emotions forever.

So nirvana means permanent stopping of all your anger, jealousy, etc. And then Bodhisattva track, if you reach the end of it, you become an enlightened being who can emanate on billions of planets and billions of buses, countless buses. You wondered where they were all coming from, right?

So then the Bodhisattva track people say, even if you just want to get rid of your negative emotions, you must see emptiness directly. Then they also say, there's no degrees of emptiness. You either see it or you don't see it.

So the question comes, then how can these lower track people reach nirvana if they have to see emptiness? Because how can they see the full emptiness if they're not a Bodhisattva? How is that possible?

Because the Bodhisattva people say, these lower people do eliminate their negative emotions. Got it? So the lower schools are saying, well, did Lord Buddha teach emptiness in the lower tracks?

And the Bodhisattva track says, yes. And then the lower tracks will say, what kind of Buddhism, what kind of emptiness did he teach? And then the upper track says, the wrong one, or a lower one, or an incomplete one, because they couldn't handle it.

The lower tracks couldn't handle it. And then the question comes, they ask the higher track, well, do you have to see the full form of emptiness to remove your negativities? And they say, yes.

So they say, you're saying, the Buddha taught our lower tracks a wrong kind of emptiness, but that we can get rid of our negative emotions. And they say, yes. And they say, but the only way we can get rid of our negative emotions is to see the right kind of emptiness, right?

And they say, right. Okay? So they say, okay, so let me get this straight.

Lord Buddha taught us a lower kind of emptiness, which if you perceive, you can't get rid of your negativities. But then some of us were really smart, and we figured out how to see the full emptiness, just from the partial explanation. And they said, right.

Okay? Got it? Then these guys say, well, isn't there a scripture where Buddha said that our version of emptiness and your version of emptiness are the same?

Okay? That's where we are. And then our guy said, no, there's no such scripture.

And then these guys said, well, isn't there this guy, Nagarjuna? And didn't he say something about our version of emptiness, which means everything wears out? Why is life meaningless?

Because everything wears out. Why is life illusory? Because everything wears out.

Okay? That's their version of emptiness. Okay?

And you hear that a lot, right? People get up in a Buddhist talk and say, if you can sensitize yourself to the fact that everything wears out eventually, then you'll be happy, and you'll reach the goals of Buddhism. What they're saying in essence is, you can't do anything about it, so get used to it, and just deal with it.

And then they get into this thing like, don't want anything. Don't hope for anything. Just give up.

Just be. Stare at the wall. Just relax.

Don't worry that kids are getting burned in Iraq. Just relax. Poop's going to happen and you can't do anything about it.

Your life's going to wear out. And as a Buddhist, you will reach nirvana if you just learn to chill about that situation, because you can't change the situation. Things wear out.

That's emptiness according to them. If you see that, you will overcome your anger, jealousy, etc. Why?

You know, who's going to get angry at somebody who's going to... What did he call it? Voltaire.

He said, we are fellow sufferers for a day. He said, human beings are fellow sufferers for a day. So, I mean, if you appreciate that someone...

that the people you meet that you're going to be irritated at are just people who are going to die in a few days, or a few weeks, or months, then you're not going to get upset at them. You know? And I always tell the story, I was on this plane that was going down and everyone got really friendly with each other.

Right? There were no... You know, we were crash landing and everyone suddenly got very friendly with each other.

You know? And all these emotions... Nobody was complaining during the whole time.

You know? There was this intense love came up among the people. So if we...

What they're saying is, if you really understood that nothing lasts, you would get an intense love for all the people around you. Which is true. Okay?

But we say it's not enough. It will wear off after two days after you hear the lecture. You know?

And you're irritated at somebody. Okay? Alright?

So... But they've come up with a quotation from Arya Nagarjuna and here it is. Okay?

And then we just covered it last class. To stop your suffering, to eliminate pain, to purify your negativities, the end of all trouble, the freedom from all desire, the end, the passing, never again encountering pain. This is peace.

This is the sublime. And as we saw, Miro pointed out, he's switching from losing things wearing out, he begins to equate with emptiness. So, the lower school guy is saying, see, even Arya Nagarjuna agrees with us.

Who's Arya Nagarjuna? He started the middle way school. Right?

He started the higher school. So, if even the guy who started the higher school agrees that wearing out is the same as emptiness, then you can't complain about our version of emptiness. Okay?

Got it? Just nod, okay? Alright.

That's a rule in this class. You just nod. Alright.

Otherwise, it takes too long. If you... If we have to wait for you to understand it.

Alright. Okay, now, that quotation... I'm just going to flash the quotation again.

It's pretty... It's pretty obscure, right? It's pretty...

What do you call it? Recondite. It's mystical, right?

So, we need some explanation of it. Got it? So, we're going to get some explanation of it.

But let's read together. One, two, three. GANG DU MYAL DI MA LUG PA PANG PA SHES PA NE PA SHES PAD PHAR KYI DRA CHUNG PA YAD SEM DI NYE LEN GYI PUNG PO PHAG ME NYANG DE THOB MA THAG TE NYAM SHA DE SING OR ME PA TEN Huh, okay.

This is... I'm just... Those of you who are sort of advanced and you're Tibetan, okay?

This is a pretty common formula, and you should get familiar with it, okay? Somebody like Alistair or Jason or somebody like that, okay? So, this is key, right?

BUY SOMETHING and then at the end is the word TEN. That's TEN, right? So, that's a formula that's very common in commentaries or scripture, meaning the words...

These words are saying this, got it? A KYI BI TEN Okay? The words A, blah blah blah, are indicating blah blah blah.

B, got it? A KYI BI TEN Got it? So, it's just a way of commenting on scripture, okay?

You say, these words are... are conveying, okay? BI TEN Something, okay?

So, the words... The words beginning with those that include the elimination of every bit of suffering up to NUPA How do we translate NUPA? Peace.

Ooh, Trojan. Somebody keeps sending me Trojan, okay. Alright.

I guess it's a passing, right? The final N. Passing.

[Speaker 2]
Yeah, okay.

[Speaker 1]
Okay, just for those of you who are translating a lot, okay? The English syntax will be different from the Tibetan, right? So, the Tibetan might start with elimination of every bit of suffering until you TUGET You see what I mean?

And then, when you translate somebody who's saying the words from here up to there say, right? You have to adjust it. And the way I do it sometimes is I say the phrase that includes the words and then you get out of the problem.

You can see? In the syntax. Okay.

Or if you want to drive the hypertextor crazy, you replace the words of the English, you replace the words of the Tibetan with the words of the English, which aren't the Tibetan words anymore. But that's another thing. Got it?

Yeah, I like to do it that way sometimes, just to... I hear them groaning three years later. It's some kind of clairvoyance.

Okay. So that's what it includes. Okay.

Are a reference to the fact that the... I'm going to do it this way and we'll see. To the fact that...

Mmm... So this gets into Gakcha. Okay, we have to go into...

We have to go to Gakcha. When you study... Can I say it?

Gakche... Gakche ngu la ma rek par de ngu me dzin mayin. Say, Gakche...

Ngu la... ma rek par... de ngu me...

dzin mayin. That's Master Shantideva. And he said, until such time as you identify the Gakcha, you cannot perceive emptiness.

You can't perceive that it's not there.

[Speaker 2]
Okay.

[Speaker 1]
So Gakcha, as most of the older students know, is the thing that emptiness is empty of. So when you say the room is empty, somebody says, go in and see if the room is empty. And you come out and you say...

They say, go and see if it's there. You hear somebody say to somebody else, go and see if it's there. And they go into the temple and they come out and they say, it's not there.

You know, and then in your mind you're sort of curious, right? Like, what is it that wasn't there? And they say, you know, the birthday cake that was supposed to be ready for somebody.

Okay. It's not there. Got it?

So you can say that there was a voidness in the room. There was an emptiness in the room. Something was missing in the room.

And it was reported back to you that the thing you were wondering about, the birthday cake, wasn't in the room yet. So we can say the room was void of the birthday cake. Got it?

Or the room was void of, or was empty of birthday cake. Got it? So when we say emptiness, we mean something's not there.

Okay? Except the trick, the beauty of it is, when you're talking about the emptiness, which if you see it, you can remove your jealousy forever. Right?

When you're talking about that kind of emptiness, the thing that's not there is something that could never have been there anyway. Could you go in the temple and check if there's a... You know, Geshe Michael's waiting outside because he's nervous.

And you say, what's he nervous, you know? And he says, he's got this phobia about two-headed 18-foot purple elephants. You know?

And he'd like you to go in the temple and just check around, like look under the teaching throne and check under the chairs. Is there an 18-foot purple elephant with two heads? And if there's not, he'll come in.

You know? So, you know, you send the Israeli bodyguards and they check everywhere and then Liran comes out and says, you know, Geshe-la, I did a really thorough check. I even checked under the seats there and there's no two-headed 18-foot purple elephant.

Okay, got it? So the irony of life is that the thing that emptiness is empty of never could have been there in the first place. Okay?

The person who irritates you the most in your life who is not coming directly from what you're doing never existed, never was there. Okay? The person who irritates you the most in your life who is not coming from...

directly from how you behave could never be there anyway. Got it? So, what's the implication?

You have spent your whole life getting upset at people who were never there anyway. Okay, is there a person there? Yes.

Is there an irritating person there? Definitely. Are they not coming from you?

No. Okay? How's that going to make me happy?

Yeah, if they're coming from me, I can do something about it. If they're coming from themselves, I just have to put up with them. You see?

A lot of Buddhist teaching is like how to put up with bad stuff. That's not emptiness. Emptiness means if it's empty, it means it's not coming from itself, it's coming from me.

And once I understand that emptiness, I can truly be happy because then I can do the things that... I can get rid of all the people I don't like. A real...

I'm going to call it an emptiness-er. Okay? It's new vocabulary.

A real emptiness-er is engaged in the... What do you call? In the glorious mission of removing everyone they don't like from the world.

Okay? Just by being nice to people. Okay?

Got it? And that makes sense. I'm a...

So anyway, gac chan means... Gac chan means the thing that emptiness is empty of. Got it?

Okay? If something is emptiness, should it be appearing to the direct perception of an emptiness perceiver in deep meditation? Yeah.

Okay? And so, if someone's seeing emptiness directly, what's appearing to their perceptions? Okay?

Should be emptiness. Got it? Okay?

And that should be a lack of something. Okay? So, when you're talking about a high high person, an arhat, right?

Somebody who already got rid of their anger, their jealousy. And they're meditating on emptiness today. Is emptiness appearing to them?

Of course. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

What's that emptiness empty of? Are they focusing on the fact that the apple didn't come from nowhere? Or the fact that the weather didn't come from nowhere?

You see? They're focusing, right after they achieved nirvana, they happen to be focusing on their own old heaps. And they no longer appear to them the way they used to.

Their body and mind, as they used to think of them, are what's absent to their perceptions. Got it? Their body and mind, as they used to think of them, are what is absent to their perceptions.

Okay? And that body and mind are things that wear out. So, can we say that to the perception of a newly achieved arhat, the fact that their body is wearing out is appearing to them in some sense?

Aren't they focused on some quality of their old body and mind? But isn't the emptiness they're focused on the emptiness of their old body and mind? Emptiness is not a quality?

It doesn't pertain to the thing? That's what I'm saying. Emptiness is a qualifier of all objects.

All objects possess their own emptiness. You see? So, let's run it by again.

They're perceiving an emptiness. It happens to be the emptiness of their old body and their old mind. Their old body and their old mind were such that they were constantly wearing down, changing moment by moment, getting older, dying.

Okay? To an arhat's perceptions, is their old body and mind appearing? Is the emptiness of their old body and mind appearing?

So, isn't the emptiness of their old body and mind directly connected to their old body and mind? So, can't we say that they are perceiving the lack of something about their old body and mind? Can't we say then that they are perceiving the fact that things wear out?

Are they perceiving a fact? Will that fact wear out? Will the thing that the fact is about wear out?

Almost the same thing. Got it? That's what they want to say.

Got it? The lower school wants to say, look, they're focusing on their old body and mind, which was wearing out. Got it?

And they're seeing emptiness about that. So, emptiness and wearing out are the same thing, which is not true, but they're saying that. Okay?

Got it? Okay. Yeah.

Did I leave out Dantrubhu? Dantrubhu? Was I?

Probably not. Of the mind... Yeah.

Hang on. Of an enemy story?

[Speaker 2]
Okay.

[Speaker 1]
Which, by the way, just to review something, okay? These are all technical terms. Sometimes it's like trying to teach somebody about physics and they don't know what a quark is.

You know what I mean? They talk about nirvana with nothing left over. What's the lower school's interpretation of that term?

Nirvana, where nothing is left over. Huh? Yeah, your old body and your old mind.

They just disappear. Okay? So, in the Abhidharma, in the lower school of Buddhism, you know, there is an idea that when you reach nirvana, you just go out of existence.

Your old body, your old mind go out of existence. And they leave it like that. So that's where the wrong idea, or the weird idea, that you just disappear when you reach nirvana came from.

In the West, you know, people said, you want to reach nirvana where you're just a vegetable or you're not anything or nothing's left? And yeah, that's how the Abhidharma says it. The higher schools say what in response to that, what do they say?

Is the person who achieved that an Arhat? They say, yes. Who is he?

What's he look like? You know, does he have two arms? Does he think anything?

You know, and they say, no. Why? He doesn't have a body, doesn't have a mind.

So, okay, you're positing a person who doesn't have a body, doesn't have a mind. And that's where they leave it. The Abhidharma leaves it at that.

Okay, what's the very unique and special interpretation of the nirvana without remainder, which is presented in the highest school of Buddhism? Yeah. Meaning what?

Yeah, you could say that. That's better. So, really, first you achieve nirvana without anything left, and then you achieve nirvana with something left.

Whereas in the Abhidharma, you achieve nirvana with something left, and then you achieve nirvana without something left. In some schools of Prasangika thought, nirvana without remainder means the direct perception of emptiness, period. And then when you come out of it, you come back to all these deceptive perceptions.

So, in a sense, your baggage is back. So, first you achieve no baggage, and then you achieve with baggage. Maybe baggage is a good translation of leftover.

I have to work on that. But that's very interesting. You see, baggage, that's a more beautiful and subtle interpretation of baggage, right?

Somebody says, did you get rid of your baggage yet? And then, you know, an Abhidharma person would say, no, I still have my flesh and blood body. You know, I'm still wandering around ignorant.

You know, I still can't see all things. And I still have that kind of baggage. But then you ask a Madhyamika person, do you still have your baggage?

And they'd say, yes. And you'd say, why? And you'd say, things are still appearing to be as if they come from their own side.

Things are still appearing to me as if they come from their own side. And that's the worst baggage to have. In Tantra, what would be the worst baggage?

Yeah. It still appears to me that at least two or three people in this room are not special. Like, okay, I agree there could be like five angels in this room.

But I definitely know three schmucks. You know? And, you know.

So then, the perception of the three schmucks is baggage, tantric baggage. Okay? I agree everybody else could be enlightened, but not those guys.

Okay. All right. You have your own.

All right. Okay, one, two, three. DUNG-EL SHEN-KI TZAM-MI GYOR-SHE-PA MEN-SHE-KI DRAG-BYONG-PE MA-ONG-PE PHUNG-PO NYAM-SHA TE-SING-OR ME-PA TEN-PE So, the debating wasn't useless, right, Scott?

Where is he? Right? So he got stuck.

Where, in Taiwan? I don't remember. Yeah, so he got suddenly, he's up in a couple hundred people.

He's up in front of a whole auditorium of people in Singapore. And I'm like, okay, you have to debate right now. You know?

And if we hadn't done this, he would have just gone, but instead he was like, yeah, it was really cool. Okay. I think there's a mistake in both of these texts.

Ding. Is that Windows 7 yet? Does anybody know how it sounds?

They should have one that has like Lama Krishna saying something Bok Chien Bien. Yeah. Okay, okay, okay.

Okay, we'll go on. Yeah, that would be good. They have a nice one of Lama Sopha.

There's a ringtone of Lama Sopha we heard in Singapore. And he was on a radio show in Mongolia. I forget what they asked him.

They asked him some question and he burst out laughing. He's like, ah! So now when Tara Milwani's phone rings, it's like, ah!

It's her Lama laughing. It's really cute. Okay.

See, here's that same formula. For those of you who are kind of more along than your Tibetan, there's A followed by an instrumental. By A is tembad, is indicated something else.

[Speaker 2]
Okay?

[Speaker 1]
By A is indicated B. A is saying B. Okay, got it?

So, and the part all the way down, all the way from, never going to un-down, is meant to express the fact that the heaps that the enemy destroyer will possess in the future. And we'll just steal this part, see? That's how you can translate hundreds of pages in a week.

Okay. Appear to the perception of the mind. And the part all the way from never again encountering pain, un-down, is meant to express the fact that the heaps that the enemy destroyer will possess in the future cannot appear to the perceptions of their mind.

Okay? Yeah, because... Yeah.

Still have heaps. Oh, they took out... Be careful.

How did they describe the heaps in this first part? Yeah, that's a code word in Buddhism for suffering heaps. Because take on in this life means took on by the force of karma and kleshas.

Was forced to take on. But look what happened in the second quotation. He took out that part.

He took out nirlengi. Okay? So now it could be heaps that he chose to take on.

You see what I mean? We don't know. We don't know.

Right? Like that. So, wouldn't the body and mind that he would choose to take on in the future appear to his meditation?

Is he going to have body and mind in the future? Pure one. Purified.

Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean, except for Abhidharma school, he's going to have some kind of body and mind.

Right? So, if he had some kind of clairvoyance or something, wouldn't those body and mind appear to his mind? No, but...

Say it again. No, I'm going to say it again. Will he have a pure body and mind in the future?

Yes. If he's going to, like, look into the future with his clairvoyance, wouldn't he see that body and mind? So, in a state of deep meditation, would not he see his future body and mind?

Ah, good. He sees on meditating on emptiness of his future body and mind. Okay?

Meaning, when you see the fact that your future body and mind aren't coming from anyone but you, you're not seeing your future body and mind. Got it? When you're seeing the fact that there's no two-headed purple elephant in this room, you're not seeing a two-headed purple elephant.

Got it? When you're seeing that one is gone, you're not seeing it. Got it?

Or else it wouldn't be... gone. Okay.

Yeah. Yeah. That's a good point.

That's a good point. Yeah, that's a very good point. And you should know that when a scripture refers to an Arhat or a Bodhisattva, it's not necessarily not a Buddha.

And we saw that in the Tantra class with what? Yeah, the Bodhisattva who would take on any... the chameleon Bodhisattva who would take on any appearance to help others.

You know? Right? The one who would appear as a girl.

The one who would appear as a man. The one who would appear as a woman. The one who would appear as a meditator.

The one who would appear as an author or a musician or anything. You know what I mean? We had that.

[Speaker 2]
Right?

[Speaker 1]
Ah, my cat. Okay. Okay, this is a little tricky.

One, two, three. De, ta, ne, tsam, du, yang, me, pe, shi. I'm just going to make a change that you can check with the carving, okay, Alistair?

I think this should be the... ki. All right?

There's a two percent chance it could be ki, but you're going to check for me.

[Speaker 2]
Okay.

[Speaker 1]
The key word here for you to learn is this. Say, Nelu. Nelu.

Nelu. Say, Nelu. Nelu.

Nelu. Nelu means the way of barley, okay? Now say, Nelu.

Nelu. Nelu. That means the way things are, the way things really are.

Ne means to be, to stay. Look means the way. So Nelu means the way things really are.

And that's a synonym for, for, yeah, for emptiness, okay? So Nelu, tomba-ni, dekona-ni, deshin-ni, these are all synonyms, okay? Suchness, emptiness, harchun-ness, these are all synonyms for emptiness, all right?

So what he's saying is that, when, whoever's talking here is saying, when the Arhat goes into deep meditation, okay, and they don't see before them their old body and mind, that's Nelu. Got it? They don't see their old body and mind, that's Nelu, that's emptiness.

Ki, at the end of a sentence, at the end of a phrase, must mean but, okay? In one percent of the time it means but, in 99% of the time it means apostrophe s, right? Okay?

But when it's at the end of a, you don't end a sentence with John's, you know, okay? Unless you say this quote isn't John's. But anyway, not in Tibetan.

But, de kye wa chi me sak chen nyer leng gi pum bu de sing ngo me pa nelu mayin de. But for him not to see his future heaps before his mind, when he's in the direct perception of emptiness, is not Nelu, emptiness, because they were never there anyway. They're not gonna be there.

But he cheated. Whoever's saying this cheated, because look what he put in front of the heaps here. He put the impure heaps.

He's, what do you call it, what do you call it when you change the meaning of terms halfway through a debate? Yeah, he's equivocating. He's equivocating, okay?

Does a bodhisattva, does an arhat who's in the direct perception of emptiness see their old dirty heaps? Mind, body and mind. No they can't, okay?

Does an arhat who's in a direct perception of emptiness see their future dirty heaps? Yeah, what's the big deal, you know? He's not gonna have them, okay?

He never had those even in a nominal sense. He never had those even in a deceptive sense, got it? Whoever's talking now is changing the terms, because our guy was careful when he talked about the future heaps not to put the words impure.

But now he's adding them back, got it? Doesn't an arhat perceive his old heaps when he's in the direct perception of emptiness? Does his non-perception of his old heaps as being something self-existent constitute the direct perception of emptiness?

Yes. Does his perception that his old heaps weren't coming from anywhere else constitute his direct perception of emptiness now? Yeah, it does, okay?

Got it? So his perception then, you said yes, right? So his perception then in the future that he won't have dirty heaps is the perception of emptiness.

No, because he never was gonna have them anyway. Got it? Got it?

Okay? So can we say that his perception that in the future he won't have any heaps is the direct perception of emptiness? I changed.

I just changed, got it? I just changed. I didn't say dirty heaps.

Does he perceive that he won't have heaps in the future? Does he perceive that he won't have a body and mind in the future? No, he doesn't.

He would never perceive that because he is gonna have a body and mind in the future. Unless you're an Abhidharma freak out or something, okay? So does his perception that he's not gonna have a body and mind in the future, is that his perception of emptiness?

Right. Does his perception that he won't have a dirty body and mind in the future, is that the direct perception of emptiness? If someone insisted that he will have some perception about his future body and mind where he sees that something about it is missing, could that be the direct perception of emptiness?

I'll say it again. If he had some kind of perception about his future body and mind where he saw that something about them was missing, could that be the direct perception of emptiness? Yeah, okay, got it?

That's all. But once I say his future dirty body and mind, you know, if he sees that he's not gonna have a future dirty body and mind, is that the direct perception of emptiness? Then you can say no.

Is the fact that he's not gonna have a dirty body and mind in the future a fact? Is it an existing thing? Is it an existing thing, that fact?

Do all existing things in the universe have their own emptiness? So doesn't that fact have its own emptiness? So when he sees that he won't have a dirty body and mind in the future, could he not be seeing emptiness?

Okay, we won't go there. But we did go there. Okay.

No, then I'm equivocating, because I'm changing the terms, right? Because we were debating about, we weren't debating about the fact that he wouldn't have a future body and mind, dirty future body and mind. We were talking about his future body, dirty body and mind, which don't exist.

The fact that he won't have them does exist. So I switched you over, halfway through, and you didn't notice, and you didn't stop me. And then you hung yourself halfway through.

Okay.

[Speaker 2]
All right.

[Speaker 1]
I equivocated the opposite way, if you care. Okay. ...

Okay. In the fact... The fact that the...

...is indeed the real nature of things. Okay? But the fact that the impure heaps, that they are going to take on in their subsequent lives, the fact that the impure heaps, that they are going to take on in their subsequent lives, cannot appear to their perceptions in this same meditation, is not the real nature of things, because they could never exist even in a nominal sense.

[Speaker 2]
Got it?

[Speaker 1]
Oops, sorry? In, sorry? Oh, okay, in, in.

Yeah, I have a team of four people at the Lama house who just supplied prepositions for me. I'm not kidding, right? All right.

Got it? You got it, right? Just nod.

Okay. Okay, we got to go back up and find the word sepa. Where was that?

Sepa, right? Just before loss of... The finish, right?

We call it the finish. And when the... We didn't read this, right?

I'm going to put the finish, okay? The finish. Okay, one, two, three.

Tibetan doesn't have diphthongs, okay? Where you have two vowel sounds head to head. Except almost here, sepa'am.

Sepa'am. Okay, it means either... Okay, like that.

All right, so, and when they... And when the text refers to the finish as emptiness, right? It's a reference to the fact that the heaps that we have taken on are...

Döme ne. Döme is tough. Döme ne means from always.

Okay? Taken on are from the very beginning, right? And finished.

And then, you see, he's saying your body and mind are finished. Then he says pa'am. Pa'am is how you introduce in a positive, normally.

Which means, I don't think you're going to understand what I mean when I say your body is finished and your mind is finished. So, I better clarify. I better add some other phrase that clarifies what I mean when I say Stephan's body is finished or Stephan's mind is finished.

Because it's not quite. All right, so... From the very finish, which is to say...

What? Rang shing kyi sepa. He's using sepa in the sense of void or empty, okay?

So, we have to somehow squeeze... We have to twist it into the English. Finished.

Finished of having any nature of their own. Okay? Or devoid of having...

The expression not having any nature of its own is important, okay? We throw it around a lot. Does fire have any nature?

What's the nature of fire? Yeah, it's rang shing kyi sepa. It's hot and it burns you.

That's the nature of fire. In fact, you could say it's the defining nature of fire, right? It's the one quality that fire must have, right?

So, does it have a nature of its own? No, because when we say a nature of its own, we mean that the heat and the capacity to burn exist in the fire and are not being granted or placed on the fire by us, by our karma, okay? Got it?

I think the best example of this is in medicine, especially in headache pills, right? If you want to get to the idea of not having a nature of its own, it's very helpful to talk about headache medicines, okay? So, is there a substance or is there a quality of a headache medicine that would remove your headache?

Does that white pill have anything in it? We say in it, right, in English. Rang shing kyi dupa means in it, okay?

Does it have anything in it which can stop your headache? No, for the very simple reason that if it did, then anytime you took it, it would cure your headache, or anybody who took it, it would cure their headache. And we know that's not true.

Therefore, the quality of removing a headache isn't in medicine. So, the word in, you know, I mean, ultimately, Nagarjuna, the beauty of Arya Nagarjuna is that he doesn't fool around with all his philosophy terms. He says, go home, think about why the English word in is wrong.

In is impossible. I mean, Arya Nagarjuna would get up here and say, in is impossible, and he'd stop the class, and you'd have popcorn or something. Are we ready for popcorn or something?

Did we make anything? Okay, let's do that. You want to stop the class on in?

No, because then we don't have anything to do. Except translate your next line anyway. So, there's nothing.

When you say rang shing kyi ma dupa, it doesn't have any nature of its own. You can think it doesn't have any nature in it. It doesn't have anything in it.

So, whereas, I like to get into the idea of loading something. In Asia, we found that was very helpful for people. It really, really helped them.

Medicine doesn't have, inside of it, anything that can cure your headache. But I still take aspirin. I took two aspirin today.

Why? Because you have a car. Yeah, if I load the aspirin, it will cure my headache.

You see? Does a stapler put two pieces of paper together?

[Speaker 2]
If it's got staples in it.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, if it's got staples in it. You see? Okay, got it?

The whole world, and all the medicines which do exist in the world, are like staplers. In and of themselves, they can't stick two pieces of paper together. If they're loaded with staples, they will hold two pieces of paper together.

If they're not, they won't. Don't go freaking out if you hold a stapler up to two pieces of paper and they don't stick together. Don't blame the stapler.

Okay? You didn't put staples in it. Okay?

Don't blame your aspirin. Don't blame the last operation you had. You know?

Don't blame the business strategy you were thinking of. Don't blame the way you thought you were going to get your girlfriend. You know?

It would have worked if you had loaded it. Okay? So then, how do you load aspirin?

You pay attention to the people around you. You know, if you have a migraine problem, right? So, don't go looking for new kinds of medicine.

Try to find one or two other people who has the same problem or a similar problem and take care of them and help them. Two ways you could help them. Give them new medicines or explain to them, I mean, when they're ready, explain to them how to really fix their headache.

Right? But either one is a good karma and either one will load your medicine. Got it?

So, does medicine have a quality of helping? No, we can say it has the capacity if you load it. You know?

If it's loaded, then you take it, your headache will go away. Got good? People in Asia, it was so clear to them and they were so happy.

One lady in Vietnam burst into tears at this point. She came in and she was sobbing and she's just a business, you know, she's just a person who runs a business and she said, I got it. You know, after all these years of hearing Buddhist lectures blah, blah, blah, this staple thing, now I get it, you know?

I just have to load stuff because I want to do something. I want to have a business strategy. You can't get up there and say, don't have a business strategy.

You know? Get up and tell me a business strategy. You didn't tell me how to load it and I'll get successful.

And she was bawling. It was really beautiful. And you knew she got it because she was bawling.

You know? Okay. This is tricky.

Yeah, this is really tricky. Okay, here we go. One, two, three.

DENDRA Well, stop, stop, stop. Say DENDRAWE. DENDRAWE.

Where's the N? It's the AO. It's the prenasal.

Two prefix letters can give an N sound to a D. They are AO and MAO. O means prefix letter.

AO, say AO. MAO. This is an AO.

Okay, here we go again. Don't say DENDRAWE, okay? You're going to say what?

DENDRAWE. And then a Tibetan knows what the hell you're talking about. DENDRAWE means I got caught in a trap.

DENDRAWE means that kind of thing. Got it? DRAWA means trap.

You see, if you don't prenasal it, they don't understand what you're saying. Oh, I got caught in a trap. I'm, you know...

Where does it hurt? You know? Okay.

Okay, here we go. One, two, three. DENDRAWE DENDRAWE Because if heaps like this were to exist to some nature of their own, then they would have to exist to the perceptions of this type of meditation, whereas they do not.

That's a pretty bizarre statement if you ask me. If a medicine were to work on its own, then it should appear to the meditation of a highly realized being, but it doesn't. I'll say it again.

If medicine had some power of its own, then by definition, that medicine would have to appear to the meditative consciousness of a highly realized person in deep meditation.

[Speaker 2]
Why? It would be ultimate nature.

[Speaker 1]
It would be ultimate nature. It would be ultimate. But I would go at it this way.

How do you get to emptiness? How do you get to emptiness? You go looking.

You go looking. Check in the temple. See if there's that elephant in there.

Then Geshe-la won't be so nervous. We won't have to put a restraining order around the elephant. Okay.

All right. Got it. Okay.

Geshe-la won't be so nervous. Got it? The perception of emptiness implies a search.

The realization that what you thought was there was not there can only come after... Yeah, looking for it. So, how you get into a meditation on emptiness is you go looking for a thing that could exist from its own side.

When you don't find it, you have found emptiness.

[Speaker 2]
Okay.

[Speaker 1]
So, if there was a pill that could cure everybody's headache, as all the advertisements claim, then the arhat, who's looking to see if anything does exist by itself, would have found it. Okay. In this case, they're not talking about a pill.

They're talking about his body and mind. Got it? Okay.

He would have found that. Because that's what he was looking for just before he figured out there wasn't there. Okay, got it?

It's nice, right? That's okay. We can do that.

That'll fit. Okay. One.

Two. Three. Four.

Five. Eight. Nine.

11. 12. 15.

17. 19. 21.

22. 23. 24.

25. 26. 31.

32. I'm gonna challenge Eva to try to get this one, but I'll help you. We're talking about finished dhammane, and we're not talking about finished because you used a nyambo.

Okay? Got it? If I say, look, this was finished.

Okay? Something was finished. There's two...

It could be in two senses, right? One is that I used to have this problem, then I went to Madhyamika class, and now I don't have that problem anymore, which is the purpose of this class, but it hasn't worked on any of us. Okay?

So, okay? I finished off my jealousy. I finished off my anger.

Nyambu sepa. Nyambu sepa. Got it?

And then the author is saying, look, when we're saying finished here, we're not talking about nyambu sepa. We mean what? Yeah.

Yeah, so in a way the word finished is tricky, even in Tibetan, right? It's been finished forever. Got it?

What about you has been finished forever? Yeah. The fact that you're coming from yourself.

Well, that's tricky. The podium that came from a factory was finished from the beginning. Got it?

Okay? I didn't have to apply my wisdom to finish it. Okay, got it?

It wasn't finished through some spiritual antidote. It's always been finished, in the sense that it never had, it never was from its own time. Got it?

It never was from a factory. Got it? It's been finished since forever.

Oh, that's a great translation. Okay, wait. We get it.

I mean, I'm just pausing so that I'll have something to do for 20 years with you guys. Those who profess a ngopo. Those who claim there is a working thing.

Okay? Those who claim that anything can do anything. Got it?

Those who claim that anything can do anything. Who is that? The three lower schools.

Yeah, the three lower schools. Why are they called those who say that there do exist things that do something? Huh?

Wait, let me ask you another question. Does the highest school of Buddhism assert that things can do something? So, cannot they be called those who assert that things do something?

Not in this sense. Good, good. Not in this sense.

Because when we say here, those who say that things can do things, we're talking about people who believe that things can do things because something inside of them. For example, aspirin.

[Speaker 2]
Okay?

[Speaker 1]
Aspirin. So, if you're a Lua Mawa, right? If you're a person who says that things really can do something from their own side, what are you saying about the aspirin?

There's something in the aspirin. What do they call it on the box? Active ingredient.

It's the active we have a problem with. It's the active we have a problem with. Okay, got it?

We don't like the active. Active is Lua Mawa. Got it?

Somebody who writes active on a box, they're a Lua Mawa. Okay? The active ingredient.

The stuff inside that really does the thing and not the gel and the coloring and everything else. The active ingredient inside it really does something. Got it?

They believe there's something coming from the aspirin side. Why? Because if it was just all what I wanted, then you could eat rocks and your headache would go away.

Right? Yeah, that's what they say. I never said that, right?

I say, if you loaded the rock, maybe. Okay? Okay?

If you loaded the rock, maybe. Okay? But I never said just rocks.

And I didn't say just because you wanted it. You have to go be nice to somebody, then you eat the rock. Okay?

Alright? But aspirins are closer to being effective than rocks. I don't know.

I don't know. Watch that one. Are the old body and mind of an Arhat finished?

Yeah. They're finished. In a way, they're finished, right?

They moved into a new body and mind. Were those old body and mind finished because they worked at practicing the Dharma? Or have they always been finished?

Who said yes? Yeah, again. Okay?

Both. Both. It's a diamond deal, right?

They're finished in the sense that they were never what they are themselves, but they're also finished in the sense that he applied a spiritual antidote. And the lower school is mixing up what Arya Nagarjuna wanted to say. He didn't say they were finished off by spiritual antidotes.

He meant they're finished off in the sense that they never had those qualities in the first place. Got it? But we agree that Arya Nagarjuna saying your heaps are finished off was confusing.

Because normally when something's always been that way, you don't say, I finished it off. Got it? So we can't blame the guy.

It's all right. All right. One, two, three.

DE TAR YIN NA THOG CHA LHAG ME NYANG DE YOD PA'I DU SU THOG PA PO DRA CHEN PA ME PA DANG THOG PA PO DRA CHEN PA YOD PA'I DU SU THOG CHA LHAG ME NYANG DE ME PA KHE LE DGOS PA'I KHYON YOD PA'I KHYON What's Khyon? What does it mean when a Tibetan comes up and he says, Khyon Man Du? No problem.

In India that means you're in trouble, right? Is my reservation to Kathmandu ready on Wednesday? Khyon Man Du.

No problem, sir. Then you know you have to go to another travel agent. Okay?

So Khyon means a problem, okay? Khyon means a problem. Because if it were that way, then there is the logical problem, let's say, that in a time where what we were trying to achieve, that is nirvana is now a remainder, we're already present, then the enemy destroyer, and at that point in time when the person who was trying to achieve this thing, that is the enemy destroyer, we're present, then, okay, and at that point in time when the person who was trying to achieve this thing, that is the enemy destroyer, we're present, then the nirvana without remainder that they were trying to achieve. Okay, let's go slow.

Is this guy trying, is the arhat trying to achieve nirvana? Well, before he becomes an arhat, is there some guy meditating who's trying to achieve nirvana? Is he trying to achieve nirvana where nothing more is left over?

The no more baggage nirvana. He is trying to achieve the no more baggage nirvana, right? Which in the lower school, Abhidharma school, means he's trying to achieve the point where, say, bemrik gynchepa.

Very beautiful Abhidharma idiom. Bemrik gynchepa. Bembo means the, bembo means physical matter.

Bembo means physical matter. Rik means mind. Chepa means cut off, terminated, stopped in midstream.

Okay, so they believe Bemrik gynchepa is the definition of nirvana for them. Okay, the sudden termination, the sudden, what do you call that? How do you say?

Severance is perfect. Severance is perfect. The sudden severance of body and mind is for them nirvana with no more baggage.

Okay, so can we say, if I agree that that's what nirvana is, if I agree that's what nirvana with no more baggage is, right? Then, at such time as that nirvana is there, can there still be the guy? No, okay.

But if the guy is there, can that nirvana be there? That's a problem. Gyn, gyn du.

Okay, there is a problem. Got it? Okay, if what you're saying is true, if Arya Nagarjuna were talking about the cessation of the body and mind of a person in the sense of their stopping, we have a problem.

Okay? Because when you achieve it, you're not there anymore. And if you're still there, you haven't achieved it.

But you're trying to achieve it, and you never can. Okay? So, he must have been talking about finished off in the sense of it never came from anybody else but you.

If you don't like your nose, which is part of your satchi, nirnangi, pumbo, that's your problem. Okay? Because you created it.

Got it? All right? Got it?

Just nod. Come on, I gave you a snack, you should nod. Where's the...

You got all food? Did everybody get something to eat? They didn't get any...

There wasn't any snacky thing? No, but did you get? Okay.

I have a policy before a big class or a big dinner with a sponsor, I always eat a lot. And then they think I'm like this really good monk who doesn't want to eat. Okay.

[Speaker 2]
Huh?

[Speaker 1]
Of course, yeah. No, I set the alarm to go off, and then I... They hear the alarm going.

Okay. One, two, three. Somebody came up to me and said, Geshe-la, I gave my first teaching over the last break.

I said, great, you've risen to a new level of hypocrisy. All right. One, two, three.

Dö ma ne, Sey pa la, Chey pa yin te, Gyü la ma ne, Dön ne, Sey pe, Sey che cha, Shey sum pe, And that's true because the higher line has that line, let's be cute, about... that says, that line which says, we say that it is finished in the sense of having been finished from the beginning. Got it?

What's gyü la ma in Sanskrit? Uttara tantra. Say, uttara?

Uttara tantra. Uttara tantra tantra yin pa ta. So are you telling me the uttara tantra is a tantra?

Yeah, okay. So there's a book, there's an open book in Buddhism, very famous, open teaching called Uttara Tantra. And tantra in that book's name has nothing to do with tantra meaning secret book.

It just means a line.

[Speaker 2]
Okay?

[Speaker 1]
Like the thread that a Brahmin wears sometimes called a sutra, sometimes a tantra.

[Speaker 2]
Okay?

[Speaker 1]
So, uttara means higher. Okay, so it's a book by? A Sangha Maitreya.

Dictated to a Sangha by Maitreya, according to belief. But what school does it represent? Mind only.

It does. Right. So is that a good quotation to use here?

Yeah, yeah, that's a good point. But is it safe to use a quotation from a Ngomawa book? You see, we were just fighting with someone who said that the aspen worked from its own side.

And we called him, therefore we called him a working thingist. We called him a working thingist. Okay?

And now we're quoting from a working thingist book to defeat him. Is that okay? You should use his own book against him.

Got it? Alright? Okay.

That's the best kind of book to use. I mean, if you're debating with a Christian, you don't quote the Koran. Okay.

But if you're debating with a Muslim, can you quote the Bible? Is there not a chapter in the Koran about Jesus? Anyway, here we go.

One, two, three. Sumba, Tsepa, Powa, La, Drel, Pane, Shepe, Tsepa, Powa, Dang, Ma, Shepe, Tsepa, Powa, Nyi. So, this is the great, great, great beauty of the monastic textbook system.

It's the great jewel. It's the great beauty of the monastic system. It's...

Say, Gak, Shak, Pong, Sum. Gak, Shak, Pong, Sum. Shenlu Gapa Rangu Shapa Tsepa Powa.

So, say, Shenlu Gapa. The first step in every monastic textbook presentation is to... is to show why the other guy is wrong.

Okay? We show why the other guy... That's the first step.

We show... We present wrong ideas and defeat them one by one. Okay?

Rather than Rangu Shapa, which is what? Our position. So, you know, those of you who are interested in pedagogy, the science of teaching, how to teach people, right?

This is a very beautiful thing. If you open up a western textbook, there's a list of things you're supposed to know and that you're supposed to agree to. Like, they present chemistry and then they just list the elements for you and they tell you what to think about them.

If a western textbook were written in Gak, Shak, Pong, Sum style, they would start out with all the arguments against modern chemistry. And not stupid arguments. Very subtle, very beautiful, very convincing, very tempting arguments about why chemistry is wrong.

So, then you work your way through all the objections to chemistry that have ever been presented. Slowly, you work your way through very convincing objections to the science of chemistry, right? By the time you've finished that, you believe in chemistry.

Without being told what modern chemistry is. You see? And you already have a perfect idea of what modern chemistry is by learning what it's not.

Okay? You get to hear somebody make 50 arguments about why modern chemistry is wrong. You see them defeated one by one.

And then you're almost ready to write the second section yourself, which is Rangguk Shakpa, which means what? You know, what we believe. It's what the real thing is.

Normally in a monastic text, that's three sentences. Four sentences. Almost nothing.

Okay? Then they jump into Tsopa Pong. What's Tsopa Pong?

Step three. Tsopa Pong. He gets to come back.

It's so nice. It's so perfect. He gets to come back and say, I have a problem with your system.

You know? You destroyed... I fought against modern chemistry.

You defeated me 50 times in the introduction to your book. Then you made like five sentences where you described your idea about modern chemistry. Well, I'm going to...

I have a problem with your ideas. Okay? He gets to come back.

You know? We don't just beat him and throw him out. He gets to wait and then attack us.

Re-attack us on the basis of what we believe. Got it? It's very beautiful.

So then not only do you understand wrong positions about what we believe, but you get to see a very sophisticated debater attack what we believe. You know? And defend it.

Then you get up in front of an audience in Taipei or you sit with your table group in Singapore around the table. And you know, if you've been fed this for a few years and they start arguing with you, you're like, boom, boom, boom. You know?

You're like just ready. Right? You're just like...

And you don't get upset and you don't get defensive and you're a very good teacher. We took 20 Diamond Mountain teachers on the tour. I sat in on each one.

Like I spied on each one. I went to each one's group. Over the course of a month, I went and saw every teacher teach and they were slick.

They were really good. You know? I was so proud of everybody.

You know? Somehow Diamond Mountain worked. I don't know how.

But people were questioned in, you know, hotly by people. And they were so cool and they were so collected. Stephan, I remember in Taipei, right?

He gets up in front of 1,200 people and they're like throwing questions at him. And he's just smiling. He's smiling and giving this...

Alicia in Vietnam. Vietnam? Singapore.

Yeah, and they're like, they're like debating these guys and they're just smiling and answering and that's someone who's been fed it this way. Because then, it's not the point to be argumentative because you can't win arguments with your spouse anyway no matter how logical you are. The point is that in the world, you know, sitting around a table with a bunch of people at a retreat in Singapore, you can be persuasive and you can help people.

You know? People went... I'm still getting emails.

I get them about once a day. I get an email from somebody who was in the... sitting around the table in Singapore and they say, you don't remember me.

My name is T-Peng. T-Peng. And, but I...

Oh God, you know, the other day I did this thing. I tried out what my teacher at the table said and I had this incredible success in my business and I just wanted to thank you, you know. So, this is the point, right?

This is the point of all of this thing. So, then you're in a position to really help people, right? In their real lives, right?

Because you've... you've been in the heat of the argument and you've heard that a thousand times and then you're so smooth and slick and gentle and calm when they're debating you around the... I saw Nicole Vigna.

She's like, there are three business problems you're going to have to work on. She's telling this big executive, where was that? In Singapore?

Hong Kong. But it was beautiful, you know. I was like watching this thing go down, you know, and I'm like, wow.

You know? He's got a billion dollar company. She's lecturing him.

No, and she... and she's saying the right thing and he's grateful and he smelled it. You know, he said, yeah, she's right and he smelled it and she helped him.

It was beautiful. It was very beautiful. It was really...

it was really impressive. You had to be there to see how beautiful it was. Okay.

So, we'll do Tsipipo one next time and this guy gets to come back and attack us, okay? Which I think is so fair. All right?

[Speaker 2]
Okay.

[Speaker 1]
So, I'll see you next week. You ready? Let's do it Mandala.

Executive. Yeah, be there next time. Okay.

Thank you.