Вступление на срединный путь (текущий курс, Аризона), занятие 96

[Speaker 1]
OK, we'll start. We just got in from Hong Kong very late last night, and I don't know where I am. OK.

So I apologize. All right. In advance.

I think first I wanted to say that we're trying to find some programs in Phoenix also in the fall, just to get it used to happening. And then I'm thinking there would be like three different kinds of things going on in Phoenix. One would be when I'm around, maybe every weekend, some kind of Dharma teaching.

And then I was thinking maybe two or three different things. One that, I mean, obviously I think we have to continue this maybe. And then maybe some exotic Tantric thing, which I don't know what yet.

And then I had this really clear vision to teach all of Nanda-laksa, liberation in the palms of your hands. Usually I don't teach things that have already been translated, but I felt like it's a teaching that I was given three times through by Rinpoche over 25 years. And also it's like, I was sitting around with some friends, some close friends, having a table, and people said, what's your favorite book of all time?

And then when it came my turn, I was thinking Nanda-laksa is my favorite book of all time. I think it's the greatest, maybe the greatest book ever written in this world. So I think it would be a nice, somehow it would be nice to go through a whole long, long rim.

And it's a special one, because it's about, I don't know, it's 800 pages or something. And it's very, very, I don't know. It was given as an oral teaching, not to the monks, but to the people in Lhasa.

And in Pabongkha Rinpoche, I heard he got in trouble for doing it. But it's full of very beautiful stories, and very beautiful teachings. And I thought that if people couldn't make it to all of them, and they just, it's something you could drop in on.

And if it went on for like five years, you could drop in for a weekend and still, you would still get the eight kinds of patients or something like that. And then I was thinking to do some 10-day intensives, like more, keep going like three, four times a year. We used to do at the FPMT centers.

Do you remember? Like Vajrapani, and LMB, and what's that one in Bodhgaya? Root Institute.

But we used to do like an ACI course, two classes on Saturday, two classes on Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday night, which was sort of optional for people who were out of town. And then four classes on the following weekend. So that's 10 classes in 10 days.

And it's two weekends if you've got to work between. If you're working nearby, you can still catch all 10. If you're working far away, you get eight out of 10.

And something like that. So I was thinking that that would be something I'd like to try in Phoenix, you know? So like a regular weekend thing.

And then 10 day intensives, you know, three or four times a year, say like that. And then the rest of the time would probably be a lot of touring, because we're planning to release 10 DCI courses over the next five years, so in maybe 10 or 15 major cities in the world. So we're, and then keep going back to the same cities for five years and repeat courses there.

So, but I'll try to give you dates. And people are looking for a place in Phoenix. I had this vision of like a mission style building, like Adobe and Spanish, what do you call it?

Mission architecture, with the tiles and the arches, and then a garden, and that it's all run down, and it's some very old building. And you know, nobody wants it, and it's on the edge of an Hispanic neighborhood. So I just keep seeing this thing.

So we have to find that. Kat was looking, she found something on the Gila Reservation or something like that, but it's too far away, I think. I think it's in Phoenix somewhere.

And then I think we end up, it ends up a community center also for the local people. And we help poor people learn English and learn yoga and meditation and like that. But then middle class people can come from their barrio over sometimes, you know, like that.

I just see something like that. And then maybe a business school, a separate business school up in North Phoenix where all the reputable universities are, that would have mostly people from Asia, maybe foreign students there, a lot of foreign students. There's over half a million foreign students in American universities at any given time.

And there are a lot of people we meet in Asia who would like to come and do a business course here. So I'm thinking about that. That's all the things I'm thinking about.

So we'll continue with this. We'll have one more course here. And then we'll keep going with it.

OK. All right, so we've been discussing the question of, we've been discussing this question for a long time. Uh, you know, you think that to see emptiness directly, you would have to have some special kind of good karma, right?

I mean, you would. And in my early years of my study in New Jersey, I used to think, oh, well, it must be bodhicitta, you know? Like, it must be that you have to have ultimate love before you can see emptiness directly.

Because maybe that's the karma you need. You know, maybe that's the amount of karma you need to see emptiness directly. So I used to play with that idea.

And I used to worry about that a lot. And then what this text is saying, and what the official party line is, is that people on a lower track, people on the hindayana, can still see emptiness directly. And so these are people who don't, supposedly, don't have bodhicitta, right?

They don't have ultimate love. So then there becomes a question, you know, how can they see emptiness directly? First of all, they don't have this ultimate love, which, by the way, is mentioned in the Abhidharmakosha, but there's not much teaching on it.

So they don't have that. Do they have, then the question becomes, well, do they have full-fledged teachings on emptiness? You know, like, if you claim that hindayana people can see emptiness without ultimate love, without needing that much karma, they must be getting some really good teachings on emptiness.

It must be very high level teachings about emptiness. But then there are all these, you know, generally, we say that the lower schools can't describe emptiness correctly, right? And that they never really understand emptiness.

And they have all the lower mahamudra flavors that we've enunciated in the six mahamudras. They all supposedly belong to other schools, right? Lower schools.

I think, how many? Like the first two or the first three are lower schools, right? So how can they, our hindayana schools, so how can they see emptiness?

How can you say they see emptiness directly if they never get a teaching on it, right? So if they never hear a correct teaching on emptiness, if there doesn't exist in the hindayana a correct teaching on emptiness, how can you claim that they see emptiness directly, even without bodhicitta, even without that extreme karma, right? And then you get into these discussions like, well, special people get a lower teaching on a lower kind of emptiness.

And then they just work really hard at that. And suddenly, they pop into an understanding of a higher kind of emptiness. You know, I mean, that's where your thinking tends to go, you know?

They must get lower teachings on emptiness. And then they kind of work hard, and they're nice people. And then they pop into some higher understanding of emptiness that even their teachers can't explain, OK?

Like that. I mean, you would think that, right? It would seem to be like that.

That seems to be the only explanation. Because the big claim is what? They are arhats.

That it's possible to achieve arhat, the level of an arhat, on the lower path, right? And then we're going to teach lama chopra, right? That's the big subject.

The last tantric class, the last course, is devoted to lama chopra. Lama chopra means the offering to lamas. And it's basically the ultimate ritual of guru devotion, right?

So we thought, Lama Krishna and I thought that, you know, this being the end of the tantric series, 18 courses, that it should be, I mean, part of practice should be next to last. And then guru devotion, which in many cases is another form of partner practice, would be the last course, right? And then so I'm translating all these materials for that class.

And there came a debate in it. And there's a debate that this ritual is actually anuttara tantra, OK? That this guru yoga ritual, the first pension lama and the commentators state that this particular way of worshiping your teacher is the highest tantric system there is.

So then you're supposed to be visualizing your lama. And there are supposed to be like circles of high beings around your lama who end up being your lama. So at first you see your lama.

Then you see your other direct teachers in this life. Then around them, right? Working out.

And then you see teachers of the lineage. And only then you see Buddhas, OK? They are less important than the others, right?

And then you see bodhisattvas. And then you see tantric deities. And then you see protectors, dharma protectors, and then all this stuff.

And then all the commentators stop. And they say, well, what happened to the arhats? Where are the arhats?

Especially the listeners and the self-made Buddhas. And then some commentators say, well, this is anuttara yoga. There aren't any.

They are lower school. They don't even have bodhichitta. They don't deserve to be in the group of all these people that you're going to make these offerings to.

So but even in the anuttara tantric system, the highest system of all Buddhism, they say there are people who have eliminated their negative feelings forever because they saw emptiness directly, right? So how can they do that if they never get a teaching on it? And then the question arises, if they do get a teaching, if in the Hinayana scriptures, emptiness is taught correctly, the highest form of emptiness, then why teach Mahayana?

Then what's the difference between Mahayana and Hinayana? What distinguishes them? Why teach Mahayana if the main difference is a higher kind of presentation on emptiness, right?

So this is where we were, OK? That's a review of where we were. And it's a good question.

In my mind, when I was younger, I used to struggle with the question of, how could you ever see emptiness directly without a high attainment of love, right? And then here the question is also, how can you reach a high, how can you see ultimate or the highest form of emptiness directly and still be on the lower track, OK? And then lower tracks, as you know, are defined in two different ways.

Some people say a lower track means no teachings on bodhicitta and no teachings on love, bodhisattvas activities. And then some say, no, they are defined by lower teaching on emptiness. But either way, it would seem suspect that a person could get rid of all of their negativities on a lower path, OK?

That's where we are. That's where the debate is, OK? Our position most recently has been a full form of emptiness is taught in the Hinayana scriptures, OK?

We took that position. We gave some scriptural proofs for that. We gave some logical proofs for that, meaning that so many sources say that you can become an arhat in a lower path that it means that they must see highest emptiness directly, OK?

Highest emptiness is a little bit of a misnomer, right? The other ones aren't really emptiness, OK? All right, so we're at a point in the text where they get to come back, OK?

We've tried to prove to them that people on a lower track can see emptiness directly, and they use that to remove their negative emotions forever, OK? And then we try to prove that to them with scripture and with logic. And then now they get a chance to come back to us and say, we don't think so, all right?

And I think the most important thing in your mind, which is worth saying again, is why? And I think it's a very serious weakness of many presentations in the modern day on emptiness, right? And I think that Dhamma does not reduce that problem.

But the question being, why does the direct perception of emptiness free you from negative emotions forever? What is it about the direct perception of emptiness that can, in time, eliminate all of your anger, all of your jealousy, all of your desire? Why?

Why would the direct perception of emptiness do that? Because that's the selling point for the direct perception of emptiness, OK? The immediate selling point is that if you see emptiness directly, very soon you will overcome your negative emotions forever, OK?

So how does that work exactly, right? And then you get some weird explanations. People say, if you see emptiness directly, then when you get angry, you stare at it and it dissolves somehow.

Now, I mean, you hear that kind of stuff, you know? You have desire for a boy, and then you stare at him and his parts until you can't see the boy anymore, and then you don't feel desire. No, I always thought that in Dharma when I started.

This is what people say, you know? And so let's review a little bit about why seeing emptiness directly, what kind of effect would that have on your negative emotions, right? Because happiness would be to see that emptiness directly and then wear down your negative emotions until they're gone.

And then you would be happy all the time, right? So we just had a beautiful time in Hong Kong. The last night in Hong Kong, the local Dharma people said, would you just teach a private class, you know?

Not like lots of people. Would you just teach a private class for our members? And I was like, yeah, I feel like that.

That would be fun, you know? So we were in a small room, like half this size, and like 50 people came. And they said, would you teach an advanced class about emptiness?

So I was like, that sounds fun to me. You know, instead of when a lot of people come, and you can't really talk about anything very complicated, because they'll leave at the break. So you have to keep going over the pen over and over, and the dog, and everything.

And it's like, I don't know. It's like, Joni Mitchell used to complain that people asked her to sing the songs from her second album 40 years later, every night. And she was like, don't you want to hear anything else that I ever did, you know?

And I'm like, no, just sing a, what is it? I love to lie, so I'm like, what? Class, yeah, just sing class, you know?

So I haven't seen that since I was 18, you know? I did some jazz pieces for 10 years. Would you like to hear something else?

And they're like, no. And so sometimes you get started to feel like that, at first. So I was kind of feeling like, hungry to teach a real class.

And here it's fun, because we just keep going until you stop, you know? So then, you know, we talked about Chi Che Do. We talked about how the mind makes mental images, and how, and it went very beautifully.

It was really beautiful. We were supposed to take a break, and we all decided not to take a break. And everybody, the air conditioner broke.

That was the only break we had. And then it was like, everybody was pouring in sweat. And then a car alarm went off outside.

And all these demons were trying to stop it. And then, suddenly, we just all got into it. And all these people, I don't know why, but there was a magical night in Hong Kong, you know?

And all these people, because I'm trying to explain that the name of the talk was A-N-Da. The name of the talk was A-N-Da. So they don't have A-N-Da, right, in Chinese.

So, you know, you're speaking about A-N-Da to a group of 50 Chinese people who don't have an A-N-Da. It's their language, you know? But it was very beautiful.

And something magical happened, you know? And we really, really went very deep, you know? So the basic premise that night was, instead of going out emptying us with a pen, or instead of going out emptying us out using aspirin nowadays, that works pretty well.

We used it a lot this last time, because people had already heard about the pen. And then we decided to try to go at it like the difference between I was standing there and I had a clock near me, right? They were hoping I would end on time, which never happens, right?

And I held up the clock, and I said, what's the difference between clock and the clock, right? What's the difference between clock and the clock, you know? So you have to think about that for a second.

What's the difference between clock and the real? What's the difference between clock and the clock, right? And so then it comes into your, I mean, you have to think a lot about it, OK?

But generally speaking, easily speaking, clock is an idea, right? Like clock, clock is a quotation marks, right? Quote clock.

You know, when you go like this, and you say quote clock, and you use this mudra, this American mudra, quote clock. He's my boyfriend, and he was quote loyal. So you're referring to an idea, right?

Like you're referring to an ideal in your mind, right? It's used a lot in sarcasm, right? So clock is an ideal, right?

Jung called it an archetype, right? In Tibetan, it's called a chi, right? Like a duti or a dachi.

It's the perfect clock in your mind, right? And then you go around. I mean, the conventional wisdom says that you have all these ideal pictures in your mind, perfect things in your mind.

Like when you were three years old, when you were in the kitchen, your mother pointed to the clock in the kitchen. And she said, clock, Lizette, clock, and you said, quack. And then you learned your first clock in this life, right?

That's how we do it. And then she yelled, quack, quack, and you yelled back, quack. And then for the rest of your life, in conventional terms, that clock in your mother's kitchen became your chi.

It became your ideal clock in your mind, right? And that causes its own problems when you get married and stuff like that. And you have different things in someone else's house.

And they don't quite look like a clock that you, you know, there's a debate about what a big spoon is. Because you have, your mom said what a big spoon was. And that's your chi.

That's your ideal of a big spoon. And then there used to be debates later in your life about what, you know, hand me a big spoon, you know. And you can get weird things coming.

OK, so there's a chi in your mind, right? And in Roman terms, you got it when your mom explained to you what a clock was. And you have this perfect picture in your mind of a clock.

Clock, that's clock for Lizette. Mom's clock in the kitchen when I was three, that's clock. And then, you know, in conventional terms, every time, how do we recognize objects, you see?

When somebody holds up a clock and you recognize it, how does that happen, you see? How do you know that's a clock? And that's a big subject of the logic scriptures, which you've got Course 13, that's all you ever got, OK?

And you must be working on like a 600-page commentary by Ketur Jain, which is very, very beautiful. But a lot of the logic scriptures are actually meant to address a very fundamental question about what is an ideal object in your mind? What is a perfect clock in your mind?

And how do you recognize clocks when you see them? What happens in your mind when you see a clock, you see? Because in all Madhyamika schools, an understanding of that is considered the doorway to seeing emptiness directly, you see?

And it would be weird. It's a weird idea to think that somebody who just got out of Abhidharma, they're like a lower evolutionary form, right? Like they're like a tromelite that crawled up on a beach.

You know, like they just got out of Abhidharma primordial ocean, right? And they're crawling up on this rock with no trees, nothing, just rock. And it's the first, you know, shrimp.

So I said, there's this really funny thing in Theravada. I was making jokes about sotongs. And people were roaring, you know?

I would say, you know, a person who doesn't understand emptiness, they're a sotong, you know? And they started roaring. I said, God, I'm really flattered today, you know?

And then afterwards, somebody told me, there's a lot of sotong in Taiwan. In Chinese, it means squid, you know? And they thought you were making a joke about squids, you know, and that's why you were so grinch-like.

But anyway, so it's a, you know, the book that Khenpo Chodron wrote about logic, he spends the first 20 pages defending the study of logic, you know? Why do you have to study logic, you know? And then he says something like, I forget it.

He goes off on criticizing people who think logic is dumb, or logic is irrelevant, or logic is dry. And he says, you know, trying to see emptiness without logic is like saying you're starving, but you don't like food, you know? And he goes off, or that you want to build steps up to your new retreat cabin, and somebody says, are you going to use Samantha Rocks?

And you say, bubbles, you know? Like that, you know, he says, it's as stupid to say, I'm not interested in logic, but I want to see emptiness. You know, he's saying it's like the stairway, you know, to get there.

So why? Because what we didn't get into in Course 13, and we can get into in the coming years, you know, is even you three-year people, we can see you in the fourth year, and you can, we'll probably be 25 pages into it by then. So don't get worried, okay?

I mean, we go so slow, right? It doesn't, like I haven't even touched a text tonight yet. And I do that every week, so don't worry about that.

I think a three-year retreat is good, and then you will be to the point of the subject by the time you get out. So there's a, the meat of the so-called logic scriptures, it's really the scriptures on perception. It's the study of perception.

So how do you know a clock? When you look at a clock, how do you know it's a clock? Right?

And then, you know, general, what do you call it? Common wisdom, right? Is that what you call it?

Common, you know what I mean? Conventional wisdom? Conventional wisdom says that the mind, you know, I hold a clock up in front of you, and your mind is like a huge, like I always think of Princeton Library.

Princeton Library, when I was there, had five million books in it, and they kept adding stories down. They kept going down and down deeper. It went like seven, eight, nine stories into the ground, and then somebody would donate another 10,000 books, and they'd have to dig another story down.

And I think, I always think of Princeton Library, because you couldn't find anything there. And you could get lost in there and just never come back up. And it happened to me a lot.

I'll tell you an era of this story, but mine's rather unlikely. So we had a girl with us who was sort of, I don't know how to say, mischievous. And she said, I bet I could stand up on the table down there on the seventh floor down, and take off all my, do a striptease on the table, and nobody will notice.

And she just about did it. Anyway, your mind is like a, your mind is like a Princeton Library, you know? Seven floors down, five million volumes.

Think of each volume as an ideal picture of something, like a clock. The clock from Lisette's mom's kitchen when she was two years old is down on the fourth floor in the sixth row, on the fourth shelf. It's the sixth mental image down.

And she has all these images in her mind, stored in her mind. Has to be, right? If you don't believe in past lives and all that, it has to be that your mind is somehow storing ideal images, right?

And then someone holds a clock up, and your mind slips through, your mind goes through every book in the library. You know? The South Tropicus says, your mind eliminates every other book to get to the, to get to clock, clock.

Okay? Which is sort of an amazing thing, because I hold it up, and within a millisecond, you recognize it, right? So how does your mind do that?

You know, I mean, the South Tropicus says, your mind actually goes through five million mental images. In that, in the time it takes me to hold up the watch, the clock. And then it, you know, it finds banana, it compares banana to the thing, no, not that one.

And then it finds, you know, a cactus, and it, no, not a cactus, you know. And then it finds, you know, cake from my last birthday, no, not that. You know, and then it finds, it gets to clock, and supposedly this happens, if a clock exists out there, right?

Already. And the way you recognize a clock is conventional, what conventional wisdom says. That your mind goes through five million possible candidates, and eliminates them to come to clock.

You know? That's like, unbelievable. And then, in the higher schools, they're still talking about clock.

They're still talking about clock. Why are we talking about clock? We're trying to see, why do you get rid of your anger, and your jealousy, and your desire when you see a genius here?

Okay? That was the point, right? He went off on this long thing about Hong Kong, and then he went to the Princeton Library.

Okay? And then that girl. So, you know, what does the higher school say?

Okay? Higher school says, you've had clock in your mind from beginningless time. You've had, the, you've had, you've had clock forever.

And, and then, maybe you gave a clock to someone, recently, meaning the last 5,000 lives or so. You gave a clock to someone, right? And then that put a seed in your mind.

Karmic seed, right? The big question that you guys should be interested in, the one that you should spend a lot of time on, is like, which the scriptures don't spend a lot of time on, but you can find it. It's like the Princeton Library thing.

You can find it. But just how does a seed ripen? How does a karmic seed ripen?

You see, what happens when a seed in your mind ripens? Okay, I understand I gave a clock 5,000 lives ago, and I put a seed for a clock in my mind. And then there was a potential.

There was some kind of energy in my mind. I understand that. And then, you know, the right conditions happened.

I was with my mom. We needed to check how long the cake would take, right? To finish in the oven.

And she, in the kitchen, and she pointed to the thing and said, clock. And then, according to the high school, there's no clock out there, right? There's suddenly, in conjunction with another karma of cooking a cake with your mom, there ripens the seed for the perception of a clock, which happened to be necessary at the time of cooking the cake.

So there was a karma for the fulfillment of necessity. There was a karma for the baking of the cake. And there was a karma for you to see a clock.

But you don't see a clock, you're making a clock, right? Your mind is making a clock at the moment that you need it, which is all about having supplied other people with needs when they needed it, and not 15 minutes later. Okay?

Like that. The clock was there when your mom turned around, because your mind projected the clock at that moment, because you had helped somebody at an opportune moment before, when they needed a clock, okay? Like right now, can you see my clock?

You didn't get it. Okay. Well, okay, I have my computer.

Yeah, that's good. Yeah, see? There's the clock.

All right. So really crucial question for you guys. Really, really important question for you guys is just how is it that a karmic seed ripens in the mind?

What happens when a karmic seed ripens, right? And it opens, you know, at the proper time, due to conditions, right? Which for negative karmas and dirty good karmas, the fertilizer is your misunderstanding, right?

The karma could never open if you weren't misunderstanding. If you were not actively misunderstanding the world, the karmas couldn't open, okay? Like when you're in a direct perception of emptiness, no other karma can open because you're not understanding perfectly.

If we were understanding perfectly all the time, no other karmic seeds could open, you see? It's not possible, okay? So in the, what do you call it?

Right conditions of our ignorance, then how does the karma for a thought open? How does the seed open? What happens?

Like that millisecond, what's happening in your mind is very beautiful. I think you have to think of the back of your head as like a bunch of dirt, like flat stuff. There's a terrace up here, okay?

And you know, there's a little flat area about an inch in and there's some dirt there and it's clear, okay? It's not like dirt dirt, it's like clear, it's like water. And then up out of the water pops this image, okay?

Of a clock. Out of billions and billions of seeds, you just had an image of a clock pop up, okay? Each of us did, just now.

Okay, you had an image of a clock, that image was planted when you offered someone a clock who needed one in the past, probably. Maybe you were trying to get somebody to class on time, something like that. And you were waving your clock at them, something like that.

I don't know, of course it's not you guys because you're on time. But, you know, something like that, something. Like, it would be, the clock would be planted by something like that.

Like, I mean, we're all late at times, like, okay. So, what's happening, really, is, I mean, you have to get used to this and sometimes this is a better way of going at emptiness, okay? This is a better way of going at emptiness because you're gonna hear tonight, if we ever get to the class, you're gonna hear that the difference between Mahayana presentation of emptiness and a Hinayana presentation of emptiness ain't a different emptiness.

What is it? Rupa Thaye Begone. What's that mean, Rupa Thaye Begone?

Yeah, a Mahayana person is hungry. They wanna hear you explain it frontwards and backwards a thousand different ways, okay? They don't wanna hear the pantheon over and over again.

Okay, why? And then he said in the scripture, right? He said in the scripture last class, he said, you don't get enough karma for omniscience, okay?

You don't get enough karma for omniscience by studying emptiness from one example. Not possible, you know? You can get enough karma for what?

Nirvana, okay? You can stick to a few things. You can stick to a pen and an aspirant and, you know, you can get to an understanding of emptiness that will be strong enough to stop your anger, okay?

That it won't be strong enough to trigger the perception of all things at all times. Omniscience itself, okay? For that, for the goals of an ambitious Dharma practitioner, meaning what?

What's ambitious mean? Wanna save everybody. Wanna save every planet, you know?

Wanna save every country on this planet and then let me go to some other planets, you know? So, I mean, you're ambitious, right? Dharma, ambitious, right?

So, in that kind of person's mind, they need stronger forms of emptiness to reach their goal. If you just don't wanna be unhappy, you know, if you're just challenged by depression or by your anger or by your jealousy, well then, okay, you just need the pen, all right? But if you are a real Mahayana person, which means you've got bigger goals in mind, you have a bigger vision, you know?

You wanna affect the world and then you wanna affect many worlds, right? You're going after many worlds, okay? Then you gotta listen to this thing about how a clock picture runs in your head.

Because that's going at it from the back instead of at it from the front, okay? When we talk about the pen, we're always talking about the thing that's already projected, right? And we're working backwards to prove it's a projection.

But hey, how about if we work from the projection and work out to the clock, okay? So what ripens in your mind just then? What ripens in your mind?

How does the karmic seed ripen? You guys are falling asleep. I was on a flight for 24 hours.

Now you guys are falling asleep. This is weird. You can hear it.

How does it ripen? So how does the seed ripen? The shapes and the colors on the wall evoke the clock on your mother's wall.

You can say that. My association. What do we call the thing that ripens?

It's clock. Got it? That's very crucial.

If you really want to see emptiness. It's clock without the quotations, right? Well, clock without the quotations is clock.

When I say clock, I mean clock. But when I say clock without quotations, it's the same thing. But I'm more talking about the mental image.

When you say this, clock, there's a danger that the person will mistake it for the word clock, which we're not talking about. You know, C-L-O-C-K, those particular clicks and buzzes from your mouth are not clock. When we say clock, we mean...

So this is a little dangerous to teach people because then they think the sound is what you're talking about. You're not talking about the word clock. You're talking about the perfect clock in your mind.

So, get this. When that clock ripens, when you look up right now at this moment, ready? When you look up right now at this moment, ready?

And you see clock. You are watching clock in the back of your mind. You are not seeing the clock or a clock.

Maybe there is no the clock. Maybe there are no a clocks, okay? You can't distinguish between this thing and the ideal.

That's a false division. There are no the clocks, which are particular forms of clock. It's just clock.

You say that's a clock?

[Speaker 2]
No, you can't say that anymore, you see? The one in your hand is not a clock? Sorry?

The one in your hand is not a clock. This is a clock. It's a clock.

It is a clock. Because it's not on your computer that isn't that clock.

[Speaker 1]
That's clock too, when I look at it.

[Speaker 2]
It's not the same clock.

[Speaker 1]
No, they're not the same clock, but they're both clocks. Sure. Okay?

No, it's a good point. It's a necessary point, right? So, but now the big question is, I mean, you hear this.

I was telling people somewhere on this last trip. I said, you know, I was kind of thinking at Princeton to study philosophy, and the religion and the philosophy departments were in the same building, because they were the poorest two departments. They don't bring in any money from anywhere, so they get the worst building on campus, and then they have to split it, you know?

So it's one building that looks like a barn, and then they have to split it, you know? And then I walked over to the philosophy side one day, and I said, I'm gonna learn philosophy, you know? Which would be, they would be sitting here talking about this stuff, right?

And then I sat there for like 20 minutes, and everyone was so confused, and everyone was so cluttered in their head, and they were just, what struck me immediately at 18 years of age was that it was all bullshit, you know? And they didn't ever intend to use it for anything, you see? So, and it never would happen, you know?

And they would go in that half of the, probably they'd have a third by now, I don't know, okay? But how are we gonna use it, you see? How are we gonna be different from that, you know?

How do we use this information? What do we wanna use it about? Clock?

How about irritating person? How about the last irritating person? The latest irritating person, okay, in your life, okay?

Because one is replaced by another, right? You dump one, and then the next one comes, you know? You can't escape them, because they're coming from person, right?

So, then it affects me, you see? Then this idea affects me. If this person who irritates me, makes my life unhappy, makes my life uncomfortable, I would like to be happy all day, I'd like to be laughing, I'd like to be trying jokes all day, I'd like to be eating Mexican food all day, you know?

Like, this person's between me and my happiness, right? So, I want to find out where they come from, right? And how to change them, how to adjust them, right?

So, if I understand the emptiness of that person, right? That they are not the clock, right? They are not the person.

They are person, which implies they are an idea, which implies they are in my mind, which implies they are coming from my mind, which sooner or later implies that they were planted there by doing something similar, right? All that backwards progression, right? Then it can make me happy.

I can reach happiness. I can eliminate my mental afflictions. I can reach the goal, right?

Got it? I just explained to you how an understanding of emptiness can remove your negativities, okay? Because you shouldn't ask, right?

You shouldn't ask. You're debating whether the Hindu-Aryan people already see emptiness, because everyone agrees that Hindu-Aryan people do become Arhats. They can become Arhats, right?

They can reach a state where they don't have anymore anger. And everyone agrees that you can only do that by seeing emptiness directly, right, okay? But if you can't explain how we get from one to the other, then what's the purpose of discussing it, right?

Whether they have the teachings or not, what's the purpose of discussing it? So, whenever this kind of debate comes up, can a Hindu-Aryan person remove their jealousy forever? Yes.

So, that implies that they must be able to see emptiness directly. Yes, but what's the connection? How do you lose your jealousy forever just because you saw that emptiness?

What happens? And now you know, okay, why. Last irritating person, last irritating person in your life.

Latest irritating person, right? Then that's it, that's person and not a person. It's not that irritating person, and it's not an irritating person.

It's irritating person, so-called irritating person. We say so-called in English, right? So you can, if, I think Raghajanath, I think Aryan Raghajanath, the beauty of Aryan Raghajanath, he spent his life in a and the and quotation marks, you know, the whole question of Moola Pramana, right?

The whole root text on wisdom. The whole thing, the brilliance of Raghajanath is he never got into explaining stuff. He said, he's like, he would write a verse, right?

He'd say, if he spoke English, right? He would be saying, think about a, think about the. Thus ends the chapter on a and the.

And, you know, he wouldn't go on to his three hour thing, you know, he would be in poetry, right? He would be in poetry, right? There's some kind of brilliance to going into the basic thing.

So, irritating person, irritating person, as opposed to unirritating person and the irritating person. The last irritating person you ran into today, was irritating person. And that was a picture in your mind.

And that ripened, that's easier to see how that ripens, right, from a karma. It's not like the karma has to ripen in your head and they fall out of a tear duct and they go, they suddenly grow in front of you and they fall off your hand and there they are, you know? Because how could that happen, you know?

And it's not that they just wander into your life randomly, you know, that life is a long string of, I almost said bad words, relating to arsis, okay? I mean, either it's random and you're just, if the irritating people that you've ever met are the next person in the front of the queue, in an infinite line of irritating people waiting in some Truman's World dressing room, right? And they say, okay, we need irritating person number 35.

Geshe-la, I'm an irritating person here. And then the next actor comes out and says, if it were that irritating people were just wandering into your life at random, then life is hopeless. Then you could just do, my brother killed himself, you know?

And I was like, why do you do that? You know, and then after a while you're like, yeah. If that's all there is, right?

Just to meet irritating people and tell you bye, then that's, you know, why not just get over it, you know? And then, but if they are coming from a picture, if they are an irritating person that's ripening in my own mind, right? And if I can control that process, you see?

I'm growing roses, right? Yelping. Like the iris, keeping the irises, right, to plant.

So like, I didn't need irises. I was already busy. I had roses to plant.

I had cardenias to plant. I had morning glories. I had chrysalids.

I had globe, what are they called? Malos. Malos.

I had all this stuff to plant. And she gives me a huge bag of irises, right? And she says, you gotta plant it in three days, you know?

I'm like, pressure, you know? I've got all this stuff to do. The garden's supposed to be relaxing, you know what I'm saying?

And then, you know, I left them down in the storehouse. In the storeroom, downstairs. And, you know, it's a little, kind of, part of the storeroom.

I left them there. And then I conveniently forgot about them, you know? And then I go back, like, weeks later, and here are these poor things, you know?

And bugs have been chewing on them, and you know? So I said, well, she gave them to me. I have an extra hour.

I have to plant them, you know? So like, I planted them, you know? And now they're growing.

And the deer love them. Like, they don't touch the other stuff. Just the irises, you know?

The minute the flower comes out, like, within 10 minutes, they're supposed to be there. I don't know how they grow. But I think that birds tell them.

You know, I think there's an iris growing over there. I think there's iris growing. Then they come, you know?

But this weird thing with irises is cool. Under the ground, they multiply, like rabbits, you know? And they just keep splitting.

And then new bulbs form from the old bulbs. And then there's a, then she gave me more work, because I have to dig them up regularly and divide them, or else they kill each other, because they can't feed. You know, they don't get their own dirt and water and, you know, oxygen, or whatever they need.

They're all clumped together. So like, you know, it's an extra job. So you have to dig them all up, and then split the bulbs, and then regrow them, right?

So there's this similar thing happening in your mind, right? Like, you meet one irritated person. You get irritated at them.

And then you plant one iris bulb. And then in your mind, it just blows out, you know? It keeps splitting and multiplying and multiplying.

And then there's like 25 bulbs underground ready to produce, each one ready to produce a new irritated person. No, sorry. Each one getting ready to produce irritating person.

OK, got it? And then if you understand that, then the whole life management becomes more of a real, of a possible thing to do, and not an impossible thing to do. You see?

To manage all the irritating people in your life, who keep multiplying. If they were multiplying outside, you know? If they were just showing up on regular intervals in your life, and then you haven't stopped dealing with the last one yet, and now there's another one, you know?

And then there's another one. And, you know, if life were all about managing the competing demands of 16 irritating people in your life, then it would be hopeless, right? But if life's all about a karmic seed, a new iris bulb in your mind, which is dividing and splitting, so long as you continue to be ignorant, so long as you continue to not understand emptiness, so long as you continue to not understand how the iris is splitting, it splits.

Got it? The water which feeds it is the misunderstanding of what is happening. Got it?

The reason it splits is that you don't understand it. And then that makes it split more. Got it?

So then, right now, the name of the game becomes mental seed management. Right? Mental seed, what's the opposite of governing?

I don't know. Deforestation. Agent Orange.

Mental Agent Orange. We were in Vietnam, right? And they took us out to see what the Agent Orange did.

That was bad. It's still there. They said, we can't see the Vietcong coming.

So let's, instead of, you know, putting our boys at risk, let's just get rid of the jungle. And make it a wasteland. And then you can see a guy walking.

In our desert, you can see a guy walking because there's nothing else. And they're like, well let's just make it so nothing else can grow and then we'll see the guys walking. And we want to do a similar thing.

Deforestation.

[Speaker 2]
Desertification.

[Speaker 1]
D?

[Speaker 2]
Desertification.

[Speaker 1]
Desertification. We want to diamond mountainize all those... all those...

all those balls. So, now you have a sense of how an understanding of emptiness would... would A.

prevent you from getting irritated, right? Because you can't. Because then you'd have to meet the person again.

Right? Like, you can say honestly to all the people who irritate you now, I'm not going to get irritated. And they say, why not, Ernie?

You know, I really... It makes my day when you get all upset again. And you say, well, because I don't like you.

And Geshe-la said I can get rid of you. And they said, well, how do you suggest getting rid of me? And you say, well, he said if I didn't get irritated at you, you would have to be.

On your own. Without anything else. I don't have to fight with you.

I don't have to argue with you. I don't have to reason with you. I just have to not be irritated at you.

And you must go away. Even if you don't want to go away. Life will take you away from me.

Okay? Like that. So that's, on one side, that's how understanding emptiness can remove your anger.

I can't afford to get angry at you. You deserve it. You're a stupid person.

You're an irritating person. You're unreasonable. You've cheated me.

You've lied to me. You've done all this stuff to me. Agree.

But I can't afford to get angry at you because I have to see you again. So I'm going to be nice to you and I'm going to be reasonable with you even when you're not reasonable with me. Because I want to get rid of you.

I love you because I hate you. And then just that thing about the irises can't multiply if you understand it. The way you stop them from multiplying and especially the way you stop them from sprouting is that you understand them.

Because the necessary nutrient that's feeding them and the nutrient which causes them to rise in your mind is misunderstanding. What allows them to pop out of the ground of your mind? How do they pop out of the ground of your mind?

Clock. Just think clock. Clock pops up out of the ground of your mind.

And clock pops up. Irritating person pops up. So they can't pop even if you have the old seeds from the past when you didn't know about this stuff.

Even if you have the seeds from the past when you were trying to control yourself by conventional means. Be nice to them because maybe they'll be nice to you. Be nice to them because it's going to raise your heart blood pressure if you don't.

Be nice to them because it's a religious thing to do. Forget all that. You're going to use the real method.

Be nice to them because you don't like them. And you don't want them to happen in your life. So you...

That's the connection between emptiness and... What's the emptiness by the way? Express the emptiness of this.

There is no dakka. Emptiness has to be something negative, right? It has to be the absence of something.

There is no dakka. There is no a-clock. It's just clock.

Everything is clock, everything is person. Got it? Yeah.

It is. It is. It's impossible.

Yeah. What you're saying is that Hmm Then you get into gaccha. You want to get into gaccha.

Gaccha means the thing that's not there. The thing that's out there. What's happening now is you're living in a clock that's out there.

And maybe the numbers are changing, right? The numbers are changing on the clock. You mean numbers?

No. They're changing on the clock. So that's a gaccha.

They aren't changing on the clock. There's no a-clock and the numbers aren't changing. So I think in answer to your question which is a good question get a grasp on the gaccha.

Where's the gaccha here? Where's the gaccha here? It's in my head.

The gaccha is here. There is no clock here. Okay?

It's an image right in your mind. And then you have to deal with the accompanying wrong ideas. Okay?

Or else you have broken what it's talking about which is what? Teaching emptiness to a person who's not prepared. Or you know, freaking people out with emptiness.

Unnecessary. Okay? So you have to go on to say and I did say in Roku, right?

Who was there? I did go on to say in Roku that that kind of clock is late. The one which is an unchanging clock.

Which is an unchanging clock. That's late. It can't be changing.

The gaccha said if it had a quality what did he say in the opening lines of the 15th chapter? He said if it had some quality of its own it couldn't change. If it didn't have a quality of its own what could change?

That's what he asked about. He said it can't be unchanging. So we'll get there.

We'll get there. What I'm saying, I'll put it this way. If you really want to see emptiness directly and if your motivation is to save the world which it is then sometimes go at it from a different angle.

Sometimes go at it from what's happening when it arrives? Rather than pointing to a pen and saying look, two different people see the pen differently. Got that?

Work at it from where it's popping out in the mind. Rather than what's already there and discussing why two different people see it a different way. It's a different way to get at emptiness.

It is actually relevant to our class. And which we'll get back to. We don't have refreshments, right?

Like this poor guy is on a plane and dehydrated for 24 hours. You do? Oh, that's so smart.

So first we start saying I want to go back through what we did last time. So we're going to refute the guy's rebuttal. The guy came back and now he gets to come back Thank you.

He got an opportunity which I think it's always so fair in the scriptures He gets an opportunity to come back after we have argued against his position, right? And he gets an opportunity to come back to defend himself. Which is human nature, right?

When someone has disproven something of your ideas you always want to defend yourself, right? So, Buddha said that descriptions of how nothing in the universe has any self nature are found in the sutras of the lower way. And it does mean that nothing in the universe occurs through any nature of its own.

What's that mean about clock? What's it mean about clock when I say it doesn't have a nature of its own?

[Speaker 2]
That if it's changing, it's because my mind is changing. And it's not changing up there. But this clock's been moved.

It occurs to me.

[Speaker 1]
This is this thing of the guy's where he took the clock, okay? He said, okay, look at the thing you think is the clock, right? Could it exist independent of the third of the kitchen clock in your mind?

Could that clock, could an example of the clock exist independent of the clock in your mind that supposedly was planted there when your mom brought you to the nursery? It cannot, okay? So, play with that as the meaning of it has no nature of its own.

Play with that sometimes. I'm giving you a different way to play with it, okay? Play with that.

Try to imagine a clock that could be a clock without clock as you learned it from your mom. Got it? Okay?

Play with that. Play with that. Try to imagine clock, try to imagine an irritating person without a mental image of an irritating person that you picked up somewhere.

But which actually, according to high school, is ripening in your own mind. Got it? So, we're now distinguishing between her perfect clock coming from her mom pointing to the clock on the wall when she was three.

We're now distinguishing between that clock and clock as it has existed in your mind forever. Okay? We're not saying that your first image of a clock was planted by your mom pointing to the thing and saying that's where a clock is.

We're saying it's older than that. We're saying it has no beginning. Okay?

Because clock must come from a previous clock. There was never... How could you plan a scene for a clock?

The latest clock. I like the word latest. Play with the word latest.

Play with a, the, and latest. Okay? How could you plan a scene for a latest clock if you hadn't given a clock?

And when you gave the clock have you thought if I don't understand what this is and I give it to you how can you plan a scene for a clock in the future? How can you plan a scene for a clock in the future? But if I say I give it to you I already have some image of a clock in my mind then where did that one come from?

It came from giving a clock earlier. But I couldn't have given that clock earlier without having an image of a clock in my mind. There is no first clock.

Which came first, the chicken or the egg? You say yes. Okay, got it?

In Buddhism you say yes. Which came first, that clock or the clock? You can't have a good clock unless you can comprehend a clock or cognize a clock, right?

You can't cognize a clock unless the clock is right in your mind. You can't get a karma from offering an object as a part to write an image of a clock unless you perceive it as unless you cognize it as a clock otherwise you'd get an image of a blackbird or something you'd have a chunk of chewing tobacco or something Got it? What about my my good friend?

Same, same.

[Speaker 2]
Do you want to answer that question?

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, somebody should ask that question.

[Speaker 2]
Who asked that question?

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, okay. So she's describing a unique event She's describing a singularity event Right? In a cone, what do you call it?

A causation cone and then there's a singularity event Meaning, what about something which happens for the first time in your mind's existence? So you've been living countless lifetimes You've never had the direct perception of emptiness if you are who you seem to be If you're still getting upset or you're still having a rough life or, you know still junk happening in your life then you haven't, you know It only happens once Right? Seeing directly seeing emptiness directly for the first time only happens once in all of your lifetimes in all of your infinite lifetimes Right?

So, how can you cognize a new thing if you don't have any image of it from before if no such thing has ever happened before to you If you've never cognized thought how can thought ever come to you by ripening in your mind because you've gained a thought cognizing what it was Right? It's not possible And, I mean, this guy named Nimbo keeps asking me this question So just to get out of it I invented the the answer of, just so I can have a peaceful car night You can call it New Conglomeration of Thought New Arrangement of Old Doubt Health Doubt which you have to have a previous experience of New Arrangement of Old Doubt

[Speaker 2]
What was it like in the Wizard of Oz when it was in black and white and color? Is that a metaphor?

[Speaker 1]
Well, what I'm saying is that you could say you could do it from you could make the leap from metaphors or that's what you're saying I mean, in logic, you make a leap from a metaphor Right? You explain something that the person can relate to and then they they get something that is similar Well, like some kid in a movie who'd never seen a color movie before goes to the Wizard of Oz in 1939 It's an impression, you know All he's seen is Laurel and Hardy and all of a sudden, Judy Garland's in Oz and you see Camelot in gold Right? Right now, I'm tending towards the New Conglomeration of Old Stuff of Old Mental Images Well, it's still Dorothy, but now she's in Technotonic Yeah, but how is she getting to Technotonic?

[Speaker 2]
Exactly But I think this is in the Conglomeration Huh? I think this is in the Conglomeration The Perceptionism Right

[Speaker 1]
She actually raises her hand

[Speaker 2]
How can there be a direct perception of emptiness which is a direct perception of emptiness which is unchanging That's what she's asking And it's unproduced No, you'd have to have

[Speaker 1]
something prior to it You'd have to have someone else do it or something like that Which means you'd have to come back

[Speaker 2]
Which means it would be dependent on another

[Speaker 1]
Maybe because it grows Maybe because it grows You've heard explanations of emptiness forever And I know from my cross-experience I've been doing it for quite a while So that's an actual experience No, but maybe it gets bigger as it grows The iris fades until it reaches a certain critical mass Right?

What do you think?

[Speaker 2]
It's like a real world So if you give it to somebody else and they come and then it kind of grows Somebody will give it to somebody else Really? So it's not like it's possible What's impossible? It is possible if the mind keeps changing But what we're saying is it never changes in a new way Because if you see a change you must have helped someone change that way before You're saying that it cannot change in a new way?

[Speaker 1]
That's what we're saying You've seen clocks forever But then how do you get to be the angel? Yeah, because you've never done it before

[Speaker 2]
Because you've never done it before

[Speaker 1]
That's what we're trying to figure out I was hoping you were going to help us

[Speaker 2]
I was thinking if the mind is always changing it's possible It's going to be easier to see an angel than to see an angel because an angel is a compounding thing We're familiar with those Yeah My conglomeration has stopped What do we draw to it?

[Speaker 1]
I mean new arrangements of all of all chiefs New arrangements of chiefs which you already have I guess it's the same as what Baba Pan was saying You're dealing with mental images that you've always had But someone shows you how to arrange them in a different format in a different form That's exactly what it is That's the process of logic right? Supposedly It's to find the Gaccha

[Speaker 2]
You refine it until you eliminate it You can't eliminate it until you've found it and you won't find it until you search it out and eliminate everything that isn't the Gaccha So it is a win in a way I think it might be like that You can't say you've established the absence of the Gaccha No way So your mother said there's this line and this other line because you have a mental image for a line and there's a circle because you have a mental image for a circle and that's a clock and that's what you're saying that you can have a new you can have a new clock because there's a line and a circle There's a digital clock

[Speaker 1]
Well, I guess the process you can take the process of language itself or the process of teaching someone a new idea is that what I did today what I did tonight hopefully there were some ideas that you didn't have before but in the process of logic the classical process of logic is to present three elements which the person already accepts right?

and they already accept the relationship between those three elements and you're just showing them a new it's like creating a new synapse between stuff that was already there so, you know you already knew what clock meant you already knew what a meant you already knew what the meant you already had some ideas about how stuff can come out of the mind and then I just used words that you already knew and ideas that you already knew and I sort of rearranged them and you got a new idea so that's a that's a possibility we're discussing how can there be a singular event how can something happen for the first time once

[Speaker 2]
couldn't you say that about anything? it's like your direct perception of emptiness is still just like the cheat it's just you have a a different experience of it but that different experience of it would be a cheat in itself what if you rearrange your karma's? oh that's good so it's that excuse me the direct perception of emptiness is not a cheat it's not it's not a it's not a kind of perception it's a kind of direct perception there are I'll tell you the definition of a Cheddar, okay?

[Speaker 1]
Are you ready? It's a perception, right? And there are other perceptions which are not it, which are also perceptions.

So then that's what makes it a Cheddar. So the direct perception of emptiness is a Cheddar. It's not one of those kinds of perceptions.

I just proved it was a Cheddar. There are invariant perceptions of emptiness, which are also perceptions. So that makes it a member of a set, which is a subset of a single Cheddar.

You see what I mean? And that's what makes it a Cheddar. That's the definition.

As a Cheddar, that's the self-attainment.

[Speaker 2]
Is the direct perception of emptiness caused by us seeing things for the first time and not facing our karma? For example, if we go through life and everything that we experience is caused because of our karma, so therefore we're seeing the world as an illusion. But then eventually at this point we use up all our karma and then we see the reality beyond the world created by karma.

[Speaker 1]
This goal, this goal of Cheddar, there is nothing that's not karma.

[Speaker 2]
But emptiness is created. It's not saying it's created. Isn't it how you stay out of the third half of the philosophy school?

It's a way in which you're helping others. Once you have that direct perception, you're not just using this heady idea of emptiness, but you're using it in a way that, like Ari said, grows.

[Speaker 1]
Maybe the intention is important? I don't know. Maybe we have a new intention or something?

It's not karma. So the ignorance is a cause thing, right?

[Speaker 2]
Yeah.

[Speaker 1]
And the ignorance is a cause thing. And whenever ignorance arises in the mind, it's coming from some cause.

[Speaker 2]
Is it possible for there to be a state of mind following ignorance? And the ignorant state of mind that does not contain ignorance? Yeah, that's the claim.

[Speaker 1]
I mean, that's the claim. There's a section in Abhidharma that divides stuff into, like, ignorance and goodness and evil and purity, and then it gives all the possible permutations. You know, can a virtuous state of mind follow a non-virtuous state of mind?

Can a virtuous state of mind and the desire realm trigger a virtuous state of mind and the formless realm? Can a perception of deceptive reality immediately precede a perception of ultimate reality? That's why they discuss it in Abhidharma.

They get into that. And then they decide that you can. The question is, what can provide an immediately preceding state of mind to these higher states of mind?

You know, what is the immediately preceding state of mind to a direct perception of ultimate reality? You can say that the understanding of the teapot that you got just before you went into the direct perception of emptiness, right? So how would you characterize that?

It's not an unstained state of mind in Abhidharma terms, but it's close. It's the closest you ever got, right? It is a powerful understanding of what we've been talking about tonight.

That's Dronacharya. It's a powerful, direct understanding of what we've been talking about tonight. That's why we're talking about it, by the way.

Because I would like you to get into Dronacharya. And I'd like you to see it in this way. If I had to choose a one and a half hour talk, that would trigger it most likely.

That would most likely trigger it. This would be the one. That would be the one.

[Speaker 2]
So is the first moment of tonglong, the first moment, the very first moment?

[Speaker 1]
In Abhidharma terms, you would say, yeah. sāgmey laṃ vidaṃ gataṃ dumacenaṃ sunyate, naṅkātāṃ gopaññī, detaṃ naṅkāṃ vṛndaṃ go'o. Opening minds in Abhidharma terms.

sāgmey laṃ vidaṃ gataṃ dumacenaṃ sunyate. The only changing thing, which is pure, is the direct perception of everything. You know, in Abhidharma terms.

[Speaker 2]
And it's changing because it arises and arises and ceases. That's what we mean by changing.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah. Perception, not the act. The perception.

That is it. Maybe, now because you're reinstalling, you already got home early tonight. Which would you prefer?

Are you tired? No, I'm not tired. But just, what's good for you?

How about another ten minutes? Okay. Let me do a little bit of the class, because you might want your money back if I...

I get these emails like once a year, of course, only once a year. Somebody complaining bitterly about me. And then I sit down to breakfast and I'm like, but all I'm doing is giving seven years of free classes.

I don't understand. Okay, anyway. Maybe the jokes aren't good enough.

Okay. So, Master Buddha Palita did say that you can find in the Hinayana Sutras explanations of how nothing in the universe has any nature of its own. And then Master Baba Viveka, who is the bad guy, because he's the lower middle way school.

If you want one person who is the classical representative of the lower middle way school, this is Master Baba Viveka. He wrote a two-volume presentation on emptiness in the lower middle way school, and that's the classic. And it's in the Tengyur, it's 2,000 pages, right?

And it's good, okay? So he says, well, I suppose Lord Buddha didn't have to teach Mahayana, because Hinayana already had a good explanation of emptiness in it. Okay, got it?

We said that already. So we say to Master Baba Viveka, you're contradicting scripture and you're contradicting common sense, logic. How is he contradicting scripture?

We already gave a lot of sutras that said, where Lord Buddha said that lower people can see emptiness directly. And they have emptiness in there. In the scriptures they say they had emptiness in the scriptures.

Okay, got it? Now here's how Master Baba Viveka's position contradicts logic. Then we split the debate, okay?

There's called a split answer. You say, are you saying that if emptiness was clearly explained in the lower school scriptures, the whole Mahayana was unnecessary? Or are you saying just the teachings on emptiness in the Mahayana were unnecessary?

Okay? That's what we're asking him. Then, either way he goes, you split a question so you can squash the die on both ends.

That's the method. You know, you give them two bad choices, and then you're hoping they'll take one or the other. If they fall for the idea of taking a choice, then you already got them, okay?

Would you like a yellow diamond or one with a black spot? You know, and then let their mind go on that. If you say, the Mahayana was unnecessary, because the Hinayana, the whole Mahayana is unnecessary, because the Hinayana has a good explanation of emptiness, okay?

Then you're wrong, because it's not just the teachings on emptiness which distinguish the scriptures of the greater way. They also present the Bodhisattva levels, and they present the Six Perfections, and they present Manlama and Ngoa, okay? Which are high Bodhisattva practices.

You know, I do... Lama Krishna used to sit in LA somewhere and feed birds little pieces of French fries, and do a Manlama, you know, like, you're gonna be my student 16 lives from now. You know, you see this little guy with a black head and a brown beak, and he's, like, hanging out over there, and he's a little scared, and you break off this tiny, tiny little piece, you know, and you flick it over to him, and as it's going to the air, you say, okay, buster, if you eat it, you're gonna be my student in 10 lifetimes, you know?

And then you're, like, watching. And then he would chomp, and then you go... Like that.

So that's Manlama and Ngoa. Those are low... These are high Bodhisattva practices.

You don't find them in Hinayana, okay? They would think that was dumb or something, okay? What ultimately is the karma that produces in the mind of a high Hinayana practitioner, or even a high Mahayana practitioner, why is it that they wake up in the final moments and go a little farther and get enlightened, right?

Remember that story? They're, like, stuck in a lower nirvana. Like, what is it that kicks them out and pushes them higher?

And then there's this... There's all these stories about the Buddhists coming in and tapping him on the shoulder and saying, hey, man, you know, I know you're having a really good time, but... Yeah.

It's like, somebody's really high, and you're, like, knocking him on the shoulder, hey, man, I know you're having a really good time, but, you know, we've got some beer in your office. You know? So you're, like, tapping him...

Who taps him on the shoulder? It's Munmo. Yeah, it's the little sparrow feedings of McDonnell's French Fife that you did all those years.

It's all the momentary feelings of intention that I would like to save your life. And then you're just chilled, and you're on a track to stay chilled indefinitely, and then one of those little boogers rifles. One of those little French Fife boogers rifles, you know?

And that's the tap on the shoulder. Got it? Okay, yeah.

[Speaker 2]
So it's your Munmo or someone else's Munmo?

[Speaker 1]
It's your Munmo.

[Speaker 2]
So you make these aspirations to help others, and that's why this is important.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, yeah. Okay. Then he quotes Aryana Garjuna to say that's what characterizes the Mahayana.

Okay? Then he says, okay, suppose you say that, and then we'll finish, okay? We'll just finish up with that.

We'll just catch up to where we were. Suppose you say that, okay, the whole Mahayana was okay. I think the Mahayana in general was cool.

You got those perfection things, you got the Munnam thing, you got the dedication thing. It's pretty cool. But definitely the teachings on emptiness, the subtle forms of emptiness found in the Mahayana are redundant.

If Lord Buddha taught all the forms of emptiness, if he taught emptiness fully, already in the lower school, not necessary in the Mahayana, okay? I'm not saying you don't need the whole Mahayana, but you definitely don't need those teachings on subtle emptiness because Lord Buddha already covered that. Okay.

So he says to Baba Viveka, if you do say that, literally infinite number of different proofs of emptiness. Rigpa Taipe Gone. People who are shooting for the big time, they need lots of different explanations of emptiness.

Why? Why did we say? Why do they need it?

You would want to say, you would want to say, oh, they are more talented, they can take more explanations, they will get it faster, they hear a lot of explanations. That's what you feel like saying, right? But what does the scripture say?

Why do they need infinite proofs of emptiness? Are they stupider?

[Speaker 2]
Because there's infinite beings, and they're all going to have to have a tailor-made presentation.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, it's more like that. And then he's going to say, they need infinite karma. They need to push themselves into omniscience instead of just Nirvana.

It takes a lot more good karma. And every time you think about emptiness, you make more good karma. So if you have infinite arguments for emptiness, if you go to infinite classes about emptiness, and they say, and they take different approaches in each class, then you've got more good karma to go into omniscience rather than just Nirvana.

Nirvana you can do on the pen. To become omniscient, that's a different ballgame. You need higher caliber karma.

Got it? That's what he's going to say next, I think. Yeah, here you go.

They just want to get to freedom, meaning Nirvana. So they could use an abbreviated presentation. And then he quotes a couple of books to prove that.

This is interesting. Emptiness is not presented in infinite forms in the Mahayana, but it is presented fully. Okay?

In a lesser way. Yeah, in a lesser way. It's not presented in infinite formats.

But the few presentations there are, are complete. So you can't say that the way the Mahayana differs from the Hinayana is that the Mahayana is somehow more complete. It's just more variations.

Got it? There are one or two explanations. The pen thing is complete.

The clock thing gives you more variations. Got it? Okay.

By the way, he's also saying, look, you can't do the lack of self to a person and lack of self to a things division. Okay? That lower way somehow doesn't have one or the other.

Okay? Maybe. And that brings us to our class.

Okay? So we're at new material now. Okay?

Just starting here. I'll make some lines. So you're caught up.

Now you can go on. Alright? And...

Okay. We'll be starting from there. Basically, they've proven that emptiness is presented fully in the lower school.

Okay? And that the difference between the presentations is not the content of the presentation, it's the variety of the presentation. Got it?

Okay? Because they need more good karma because they got bigger stuff in mind. Bigger goals in mind.

[Speaker 2]
Alright?

[Speaker 1]
They want to go to many countries. Like Michael said, they need big toolboxes. Got it?

And to have a big toolbox is already a good karma. More good karma. The intention to have a big toolbox is already a bigger karma.

Got it? The intention to know different ways of proving emptiness so that you can help more people later is already a bigger karma. Even if you don't understand all those presentations.

Got it? The intention to try to learn them so you can be more helpful to people. Somebody in Vienna shows up and, you know, you're out there under the sun on the balcony, and they're like, I don't understand this.

Can you please explain it again? The French lady. Were you there?

You all were there. The French lady was... It was so cold, you know.

Here's your room. By the way, you really trained these guys well. I mean, that was so...

They were so, so, so sharp. Only the Israelis. But they were so well trained.

And then, you know, this lady's saying, yeah, but I was at the ticket counter, and, you know, I went to get this government form filled out for my school, and the lady just didn't understand me. So, I should have gotten angry. You know?

I mean, if you guys don't understand, I was dealing with a different person than you are. You know? I was dealing with someone really irritating, and really unreasonable.

And she truly believed that the person she had run into was different than the people we had run into at the government office. You know? And then, Yoram was so skillful in doing the emptiness of the lady at the office.

You know? It was really beautiful. But he did it because he had different...

She didn't get the first three proofs, and then he kept going at her with different ones. You know? In a very, very gentle way.

Because he's not... He's like the most gentle person you can meet, right? He said, yes, but maybe you could think...

You know? And then, you know, you have one French lady whose English nobody can understand, and you've got this... Oh, she speaks like that.

And they're trying to talk to each other. You know? It was so cute.

Because she's like, what? And he's like, what? You know?

And... But it worked. On the fourth try, on the fourth variety of emptiness, she was like, oh, she's coming for me.

You know? And it was so beautiful to see, you know, two people from completely different cultures speaking almost not a common language. And then, she got it.

Because of his training. So, really, you did a good job. They were stars.

Super stars. Okay. Let's do another.

Okay. Thank you. I'm sorry.

I apologize in advance. I ran over a little bit.