Вступление на срединный путь (текущий курс, Аризона), занятие 97

[Speaker 1]
So there was a question that came up. According to Buddhism, you can't become completely happy unless you remove your negative emotions, anger, jealousy, desire, etc. And according to Buddhism, you can't ever remove anger permanently from your mind, unless you see emptiness directly.

That's just, according to Buddhism, that's the way it is. You can suppress it, you can treat it, you can psychoanalyze it, you can have good days, you can have bad days. You know, you can't ban it, but you can't stop it forever unless you see emptiness directly.

So, then there's this deal that there are different levels of practitioners, different levels of... people are on different levels of their spiritual career. And there's what they call the higher way and the lower way, right?

Mahayana and Hinayana. Mahayana and Hinayana. Then according to tradition, you know, the Hinayana people don't get emptiness exactly right.

And it's only the higher way people who get emptiness exactly right. That's tradition, right? But then everybody in the higher school agrees that the lower school people are able to reach Nirvana, which means they are able to remove their anger forever.

Which must imply that they saw emptiness directly and that the emptiness they saw was the highest version of emptiness. Okay? So how is that possible if the teachings of the lower way aren't effective as far as emptiness?

Okay? That's the big question we're having, okay? That's what we're on, okay?

So then the author of the text has concluded, in the lower way they do present emptiness fully, but not in all its variety. They have basic proofs for emptiness, but they don't have a wide variety of proofs for emptiness. Wide variety meaning in the text this is Taipa, right?

Infinite arguments for emptiness. I would like to go through three of those tonight. Okay?

I'd like to go through three of those tonight, because he does. So the first one is going to be, you know, the standard way to deal with how does seeing emptiness help you deal, for example, with someone who irritates you. Okay?

So, you know, every once in a while we meet someone that irritates us. Somebody told me today, they said, I'm coming over to your house to help you with irrigation. I said, Irritation?

It's on my mind, right? So like, so like, we meet people who irritate us. And then, how does emptiness help you deal with that?

I read that many times. Someone yells at you, and then you think, oh, I'm seeing this person in my life because, you know, I irritated someone before. That's all.

That's their emptiness, okay? Their emptiness is that they're not coming from themselves, they're coming from something you do. Then, when they yell at you, if you don't understand emptiness, your natural reaction is to yell back.

According to the laws of karma, that creates like ten more yellers in your life. Okay? And then, you know, once you've understood emptiness or karma a little bit, then when somebody yells at you, you don't yell back.

Because you don't like being yelled at. Okay? Normally you yell back to try to stop them.

But now you're not yelling back in order to stop them. Got it? Because that's the best way to get rid of them.

If you don't like somebody, be nice to them. Because then they'll either change or they'll move to IOR or something. That's where all those people go.

Okay. They'll be... In the end, there'll be a mandala of the whole planet and IOR will still be there.

Okay. I did that one time and then there was somebody from IOR and they got really mad at me. You're not from IOR, right?

Ohio. Yeah, yeah. No, you're not.

You're New York. So then they say, the lack of a self nature is explained in a way which is totally complete and it is the subtle form of the lack of a self. Then they say, here's the other commentary by Master Chandrakirti.

He says, somehow, they don't have a meditation on the lack of self to things. Okay? So now that brings us to our second argument for emptiness.

Okay? Hmm. The look of my hand.

Okay? Like my whole life I had, what do you call it? Old man hands.

Since I was four. Okay? And then, the complexion on my hands, right?

So, why do I have that? Right? If I find it unattractive.

Some people like it, okay? But if I find it unattractive, then that's, according to the theory of karma, why? What causes unattractive things on your body?

Anger. Okay? So I, according to the theory of karma, I was angry in my past life, and then that manifested as old man hands.

In this life. Okay? So, we can say that the way I see my hand is not coming from my hand.

Okay? It's a ripening of karma in my own mind. Like anger didn't somehow cause the wrinkles on my hand.

At the time, a seed was planted in my mind, and then that's opening as I spend my life. And it's staying open. And I'm seeing wrinkles on my hand.

Okay? So, so part of Michael is certainly not coming from its own side. Okay?

Part of Michael's hand, at least Michael's hand, is not coming from its side. It has to be some kind of filtering process going on in my mind. If I didn't have that karma, and even if they were old man hands, I wouldn't see them that way.

Got it? Okay, alright. So I, you know, after some time at a Buddhist university, I can, you know, understand that the way my body looks is my fault.

You know, if I like it or I don't like it, the things I like are my credit, and the things I don't like are my fault. But it's certain that my hand, at least, the appearance of my hand is coming from my karma in my past life. Because that's simple.

And in that sense, it's empty. It's empty in the sense that it's not coming just by some random big bang that happened, and all the atoms bumped into each other, and suddenly I had a new appearance. It's the only other possibility.

Or there's a god who is like, picks on people, and said, Geshe Michael should have old man hands his whole life, you know? Because he did something wrong in the womb or something, okay? So, it does all these choices, right?

So, so if I understand at least that my hand has a certain nature, right? If my hand is empty in the sense that it's not coming from its own side, if my hand is empty in the sense that I'm supplying the wrinkles from my own mind, right? Then what's that say about Michael?

If one big part of Michael is coming from his mind, what is it? Just the, they put the string on me because everything past the string is coming from my karma, but everything on this side of the string is not? You see what I mean?

Could it be like that? Could it be like the appearance of my hand is coming from what I did before, and then they always put this red string on you to remind you the rest didn't come from karma? Got it?

So, the idea is if that's empty, then probably the stuff on the other side of the string is equally empty. Yeah, you said it in a very nice way. Equally empty, right?

So, like, you know, the shape of my arm, the freckles, the hairs, they must also be coming from something I did in the past. I had this thing, I was at the winter debates in Sarah J., which is this lesser college. And, you know, we were debating, and I was debating whether I should get up or not.

I was really scared. And then, and then I felt this thing on my arm, you know? And somebody's, like, pulling the hairs out.

You're like the 3,000 people that have to do this courtyard at 2 o'clock in the morning, and people are screaming debate, and you can't move. If you have to pee, you're just stuck there till dawn, you know? And then, this guy is pulling on the hairs out of my arm, and I'm like, trying to, I'm like, you know, and they just mugged her, and she said, I just got out of the debate, I said, that's nice.

And then he said, I never saw anybody with hair in their arms. And I was like, that's so cool, you know? And I was like, oh, it's okay, you know?

Because they don't have any, you know, they don't even have, oh, anything. So anyway, so some people might find it attractive, is what I'm trying to say. But that proves it's empty, you see?

That proves it's emptiness, because to me, it's just a hassle, right? So, so what I mean is, if you establish, now, two parts of Geshe Michael are empty, then the whole thing must be empty, okay? So that's another way to get an emptiness.

The first one we did tonight was sort of like the irritating person emptiness. The one that you can use to not get mad. And then this one is the parts and the whole thing.

And it's no more complicated than that, okay? They keep saying, Chökyi Dakme and Hazaki Dakme, the lack of a self, the lack of a self nature to things, and the lack of a self nature to the person. But from now on, you're just going to remember Geshe-la's hand and Michael.

Michael's hand and Michael. Because it's no more complicated than that. It's no more mysterious than that, okay?

But Mahajanika books will go on and on about the emptiness of the parts and the emptiness of the person, okay? And then, you just have to think hand and person. And the big clincher in the debate is that if my hand is empty, the rest has got to be.

It's not like the string was put on me to show that that part came from my karma and this part didn't. That doesn't make sense. If one significant part of my Michael is coming from him, then we can say the rest is also.

Including Michael. Okay? Including the idea Michael.

Okay? Alright? So that's the emptiness of things and people.

Alright? Things doesn't mean all the stuff in the world necessarily. It can mean Michael's hand.

Okay? Alright. So they're saying, the auto commentary says, they do not have a meditation on a lack of self of things to which it's complete.

Somebody's saying, John McGriffy, sorry, John McGriffy's saying, the lower schools, they understand the thing about the, to Michael, but somehow they don't get the thing about his hand. Okay? Somehow.

Alright? Okay. That's the, that's the claim.

And somehow, understanding the hand is enough to get them not to be angry. Ever. Nirvana.

Okay? But here it says, and we would say that they possess in its entirety a meditation upon the lack of a self to the person. So they also understand the emptiness of Michael.

So, he's kind of saying they have a meditation on a lack of things which is not complete, and then they have a meditation on a lack of Michael which is complete. Okay? So the point, then he concludes, our author concludes that if you understand that Michael is not coming from himself, that's enough, even if you never get to Bodhicitta, right?

It's enough to reach Nirvana. If you understand that Michael is coming from Michael's past, how Michael treated people in the past, then, then you'll be able to overcome your anger. Alright?

Based on selflessness and not his parts, per se. They seem to say mostly because of the lack of self to a person. And I'll repeat that thing, right?

This was a Geshe question that was asked of me the last day, I remember. The last day, I think, some Geshe came down from, he was the abbot of the nunnery in Damsala, I don't know, but he, I don't know why, but he, he went 500 miles to see if he could screw me up. And, in my final thing, you know, so he was like, okay, show me this white guy.

You know, you know, sitting there, and he says, you know, which emptiness do you see first? The emptiness of your hand or the emptiness of Michael? And I said, well, you have to see the emptiness of the hand to see the emptiness of Michael, yeah?

And then he's like, well, which one do you see first when you see the emptiness directly? And then I said, well, then you see the emptiness of Michael. That's the emptiness you see.

The first emptiness you see directly will be the emptiness of Darcy, okay? And somehow, that's appropriate because that's the hardest one. And once you get that, then everything else is okay.

And you can quickly get rid of your anger. Somehow, the attachment to Darcy or the attachment to Michael is the root of all problems. And once I understand that Michael is coming from power treating people in the past, then I won't get angry at people, okay?

All right. Let me go through that for a while. Budapalita, a very famous thinker, you know what, 500 A.D., he says, when I say no self, I mean no quality, okay? No self means no quality. Is this a computer? Yes.

Does it have the quality of being a computer? No. Yeah, good.

So if it doesn't have the quality of being a computer, it's not a computer. It is. Does it have computer enough?

Yes. About it? Yes.

If you're living there, when you look at it, you'd have to see a banana or something. You see what I mean? If it didn't have something computer-ish about it, it would have to be a banana or, I don't know, an Empire State Building or, you know, something else.

It must have some computer-ness about it, right? Then the question is, no, the big, then you're, what you're saying is that, if I'd never seen a computer, I wouldn't have any computer. Well, you never saw a computer before you saw your first one.

But anyway, uh... 2001 Space Odyssey. That was my first one.

[Speaker 2]
Yeah. So...

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, I mean, the standard answer is it does have computer-ness, or I couldn't recognize it as a computer, but, but it doesn't possess that computer-ness in and of itself. I'm, I'm laying that on, that, that, if you ask where does the computer-ness come from, it wasn't granted to it the day they finished it in the factory. You know?

It wasn't, its computer-ness wasn't awarded to it on the final conveyor belt in the IBM factory. You know? Uh, the computer-ness that it has is coming from your mind as much as the amical-ness is coming from my mind.

Okay? That's all. Okay?

So, that's all that Buddha Palita wants you to know that when Buddhists go around saying anatman, anatman, no-self, no-self, no-self, they're not talking about people. They're talking about this quantity. And just supply-ness to anything.

And that's, he's, when he's saying Buddha Palita, it's beautiful because so many people get stuck on the lack of self. You go to the Bahamas, you know, and you say, they say, oh, you're a Buddhist, you're an anatman, you know, you don't believe in anatman, you know, and you say, well, what do you think anatman means? And they say, it's a big guy, and you're like, wait, wait, we've got a confusion here, you know, anatman is, in Buddhism, anatman doesn't even mean self.

Okay? Like, the word is confusing. The word is translated, that means self, anatman means self.

But what it means is the ness of anything. That's all. Forget the word self.

What Buddha Palita is saying, and it's beautiful to see it written somewhere, okay? That's the beauty of scripture. You find out things in your practice, and then you go to scripture, you know, and you find it three years later.

Something you figured out, you find in scripture, and you say, okay, that must be pretty cool. And that must be, it must be that it's real, because I have confirmation from the last 2,000 years or so. You know, it's comforting to have some confirmation from somewhere, you know.

Especially from Chandrakirti. Chandrakirti's okay. So, yeah.

So, no, this is Buddha Palita. So, anyway, Buddha Palita is saying, when we say lack of self, never forget that we're just talking about ness. Don't think self, don't think itself, myself, himself, don't think that.

Don't think anything like self-important or self-obsessed or whatever. Don't think that. It just means ness, you know.

So, the computer ness is the self of the computer. Okay? Does it have such a self?

Yes, or you could never recognize it as a computer. But is, does it inherently possess that self? No.

Because it's coming from my mind. Okay? Alright?

Okay. Now, I promised you three kinds of emptiness tonight, right? One was the one you use when you're pissed off at somebody.

Okay, you're coming from me, therefore, I'm not going to get mad at you because that would just make more of you come back. You would clone.

[Speaker 2]
You know?

[Speaker 1]
If I respond to you with anger, you will clone. And that's not interesting for me. So, I would rather respond to you with kindness and then you will undo yourself.

Your one self will disappear, which would please me very much. So that's number one. And then number two was like, okay, if Michael's head is not coming from its own side, then neither can all of Michael be coming from its own side.

And now we have a third one. And I think it's, why am I doing different proofs for emptiness? It must mean you are a greater group of people.

Got it? Yeah. If you were in lower school, I would just give you one and you would go home and meditate on it, right?

So, Rigpa Thayeve Gone. Say Rigpa. Rigpa Thayeve.

Thayeve. Gone. Gone.

I'm going to use a thousand different proofs. But I'm only on number three. And I'm going so slow to this text that I'll probably still be on it a couple of years from now.

Okay. I just want to talk about the words it's saying. Let's read the whole thing.

Ready? Wait. I was trying to imitate Johnny Depp in this, what do you call it?

Yeah. One, two, three. So I just tonight, I want you to really chew on this, okay?

Ngopo Dendu. Say Ngopo.

[Speaker 2]
Ngopo.

[Speaker 1]
Dendu. Dendu. Ngopo.

Ngopo. Dendu. It comes millions of times in scripture, okay?

Ngopo has two meanings. It can mean stuff in general, but most often it means a functional thing. Say Dendu Dendu Ngopo, right?

Dendu Ngopo Ngopo Tseni. Say Dendu. Dendu.

Ngopo. Ngopo. Tseni.

Tseni. Definition of a working thing is anything that performs a function. Okay, so you can say car, or you can say a computer, or you can say a car, or you can say a human body, right?

So, Ngopo, okay? Ngopo. Then Dendu means what?

Really exist. Existing truth. But what does that mean, you see?

Because if you catch that tonight, I think it will really help you on your emptiness quest, you know? So I wanted to spend a little time with it. It's just four syllables from the text, right?

Ngopo Dendu. But what does Ngopo, what does it mean when you say a working thing really exists? Or a working thing is real?

Or exists in truth? So what does that mean exactly? And what's the opposite of that?

You see what I mean? If the opposite is supposed to get me to a state where I never get angry again, I never get upset again in my whole life, then I'm interested, you know? Just explain to me what's Ngopo Dendu mean, and what's the opposite, and then I'll just do it, okay?

Just cut all the philosophy, cut all the text, just tell me what is Ngopo Dendu. And then I promise I won't do it again, okay? And then eventually all the irritating people, irrigating people in my life will, you know, appear.

Okay. I mean, the irritating specifically, irrigating specifically. Okay.

So... Oh God, I have a picture. I was with Ngopo, we were getting, we were stuck in the safeway for a hot chocolate, and we were in the checkout line, because I decided to get some Fiji water, and we were passing all the magazines, which I still kept aboard, okay?

And I want to know which movie star just lost their mind, and, you know, which one's dying, who's, you know. So anyway, there was two ladies in a bikini, and then, uh... In one bikini?

No, that's not it.

[Speaker 2]
That was shot at the bottom, okay?

[Speaker 1]
But, it was, it was two ladies in two bikinis, and then, in between there was a huge banner thing that said, it really works. You know? Because I was thinking a lot about works, the word works, it works, right?

And then below it said, I'm not kidding, and this is true, and I even took a picture of Ruben on Shelton next week. It said, L sees tips for a great bikini body. And I thought to send it to her, but then I realized she lost her cell phone.

But anyway, I took the picture anyway, and, uh, it says both those important things. It really works, okay? So then, uh, there's a, there's a thing about it really works, okay?

Because all day long you go around and people are saying this works. You go to a board meeting and they say, this will work, you know? And you're like, okay.

And then you have a headache and somebody gives you an aspirin and they say, this will work. And you say, all right, you know? And then people give you all these, you know, people has a bad back, they're like, oh, you know, here's some juju bee oil, you know, try that.

And then it's always it really works. It's always a pendant on the end of it that says it really works. And then in, in the, in the word nopadendru, you have to struggle.

That's what it means, okay? That's all it means. Go there, stay free in the next three days, you'll see.

There's a huge magazine, you know, that says it really works. It was a diet, right? It really works.

So what does it mean really works, okay? Because that's your, that's what, that's what nopadendru means. It really works.

Okay, got it? It really works. Then, the whole world is, is, you're at a board meeting, you're discussing how do we get the students to do this?

Or how do we raise money for this? Or, you know, how do we resolve this? And then you go to a, I don't know, you have a headache at the Atlanta house and you say I need something and they say, they give you something and they always say it really works, okay?

And then you're, what I mean is the question comes up in your life every five minutes. In everybody's life, every five minutes comes up the question, will this really work? Why?

What I'm doing, I mean, will people like the character we've tried to prepare? You know, or, you know, will this work? Right?

I mean, you're constantly asking yourself, it's every five minutes you're saying will this work? Okay? Will my car start?

You know, if I say this to the person I'm having a problem with, will it, will it solve things? You know, if I say this to the guy I fell in love with at the yoga studio last week, will it work? You see?

So your whole life, our whole life is spent in the pursuit of something that will really work, right? And the reason people say, the reason why the magazine said it really works is because it doesn't, right? They have to say it really, right?

They have to say it really. I mean, when they're advertising for a new headache medicine, they say, this one really works. And in Buddhist logic, it's called what?

A mayinka. A mayinka. Which means, the other ones don't work.

When you say this one really works, it means the other ones don't work. There's some kind of implication there. This one really works.

And then your whole life, not only your own inner life, but your interaction with other people, 90% is spent determining what's going to work and what's not going to work. That's how you relate to other people. You talk about, well, is this going to work out or not?

What do you think? What do you think I should do? You know?

I'm interviewing 80 people, right? It's half an hour each. It's 40 straight hours of, you know, will this work in my life?

You know? And it's a big, that's how we spend our life. We want to know how to get things to work because we want good things to happen and we want bad things to stop.

And we seek the advice of other people. And then we, that's human interaction. Either trying to figure out what will work yourself or discussing with other people how to get things to work.

We want the dead group, okay? How to really get things to work, okay? And then all of the old ideas of what we were in, where were we?

Galway, right? No, because we were in Galway. And this famous, what do you call it, interviewer guy.

This famous newspaper guy. Very, what do you call it? Abrasive.

What do you call it? Just sort of abrasive. What's that?

Like confrontation or something. So anyway, we got to this point where we were discussing how gasoline doesn't work. Petrol, right?

You know? So we were like saying, petrol's not what makes a car go. You know?

That's a very basic example. And you've got to hang on to that right now because that's lupa bendu. If you understand how a car works, you just crack the text.

And you can go for 50 pages and not have to understand anything else. But you've got to think, why does a car, why does petrol not work, you know? And everybody in the audience was our friends and our students, you know, Kevin, Thornton, and everybody.

And they were all being sweet to us and they were nodding politely, you know, and half asleep and nodding politely. And then, and then this guy, this reporter in the back, he says, what the? And he says, you know, wait a minute, you know?

And we're like, what? And he says, do you know what that means? And we're like, he stood up, you know?

Everybody's on the floor and he stood up. And he's way in the back and he's like screaming, you know, and he says, that means, like, a car, you can get to, from Dublin to Galway in a car with no gasoline. I mean, come on, you know?

And we said, right. You know, and he's like, you know, and he was like, he was like that, you know? We, because he's the only one who got it.

You see, in the whole room of cooperative people, he was the only person who got it. Really, what we were saying, you know, that gas doesn't make the car run. Gas is not what you get from Dublin to Galway.

Petrol is not how you get from Dublin to Galway, right? It's not the petrol that got you from Dublin to Galway, right? It doesn't, the cars don't work.

You see? Cars don't work. The one thing in an American person's life that they believe works almost the most is a car.

And then you have to get up and say, cars don't work. But then you have to explain what that means. You see?

Mupudendu means cars that work. Mupudendu kick means block that idea. Stop that idea.

Stop the heat. Okay? So what are you talking about, what are you trying to say?

You know, are you going to get to Tucson tonight? Are you going to get a car with no gas? Will you try it?

You know? Are you going to prove something to us? You know?

And then you have to discuss what it means to say you didn't get from Bui to Tucson because the car worked. Okay? Got it?

What really works? If I tonight, if I get in the car and I drive to Tucson, Christine Walsh's, right? And if I get there, was it the petrol?

No. Did the car work like the bikini guy works?

[Speaker 2]
No.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, you have to say no. Mupudendu kick. Kick means forget that.

Kick means stop thinking like that. Okay? Mupudendu.

So if the car using the gasoline isn't going to get me to Tucson tonight, what will get me to Tucson tonight? If I get to Tucson tonight, it proves what? That I must have helped someone else get somewhere in the past.

Period. Period. Nothing else.

No other conclusion to be drawn. If Gezi Michael makes it from Bui to Tucson tonight, we can say if you're a real understander of things, you can say with no question that he must have helped someone get somewhere in the past. That's all.

That's all. So what works? Gas?

No, I mean, we could have an accident. Dave's film, right? Right.

Remember, he rolled his truck out there. He didn't make it to the road. You can have gas and not make it to the road.

Then people say, well, that's different. He rolled over. Of course he didn't make it.

You don't understand. The gas's capacity to take him to Tucson was denied by some power, by some force. The gas didn't have the power to get him to Tucson.

The power of the gas to take him to Tucson was withdrawn by some force of the universe, right? The gas never had that. The gas never had itself.

The gas never had the power to take him to Tucson anyway. And it was withdrawn by other forces, by other circumstances. And people say, that's ridiculous, Keshav.

If he hadn't rolled his car, he would have made it. You know? But he did roll his car.

That's part of the gas. That also belongs to the gas. And people are so crazy.

I mean, once you get it, the whole world seems insane. Once you get it, the whole world seems insane. You know?

The gas didn't work that night. Yeah, but if he hadn't rolled his car, it wouldn't work. But he did roll his car.

So the gas didn't work. So the power to get him to Tucson wasn't in the gas. It wasn't in the car.

No, because he had a car, too. He just rolled it. Yeah, but you're talking about a car that got rolled.

You're not talking about a car, a normal car. But it did roll. You see?

The car didn't have the power to take him to Tucson. Ergo, the power to take him to Tucson doesn't exist in a car. It doesn't exist in gasoline.

It exists somewhere else. And the beauty of it is that it exists in kindness. I'm thinking about the President of the United States.

You know? Like, you get strangled, you have a fifth thing to schedule. You know?

And that's going to make the other things all squishy. You know? Tomorrow's not an easy day.

It's not just four things to do. You have, you know, one private, you know, two classes, you know, a public class in New York to think about because they're going to take you in between. And probably during.

Right? So, so you really have five things to think about. And then I've got to make decisions.

You know, do I tell him that you're going to take me? Do I stay quiet? Do I go along with whatever he takes me?

Do I try to fight whatever he takes me? You know? Why don't you take away that fifth activity?

What if it didn't exist anymore?

[Speaker 2]
I wouldn't recognize myself.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, you're not even a guru. You're not even a guru. You're not even a guru.

But, but, I don't know. That's what the democratic America is all about. And in Taiwan they got it like it's only $10,000 in the first two weeks.

And in America it's only $5,000 every year. It's a new figure. It's that all that time in your mind would be free.

See? Your mind would be free from when it spends almost the whole day thinking about, which is, will this thing I'm trying work out or not? You get out of bed because you think something might work.

And I talk to people, I was talking to somebody today, they said, look, I've been depressed. And I said, what? They said, I just suddenly got out of bed, I have a TV next to my bed, and when I wake up, I turn it on and I just lay there.

And it means they're not thinking something's gonna work. You see? You get out of bed because you think something will work.

And then the whole discussion in your mind all day, will this work or will this not work? Cancel it. Because what you thought made things work doesn't have anything to do with it.

The gas doesn't have anything to do with getting to, wait, you can not buy a car, and you can not pay for the gas, and you can make it to the sun quite nicely. I do it every week.

[Speaker 2]
Okay?

[Speaker 1]
Okay. I don't own a car. I mean, not a real car.

That's weird. I'm not asking you, okay, I love you. So anyway, we can say that things don't work, okay?

We can just say that. If this were a Heart Sutra lecture by Lord Buddha, you'd just get up and say, things don't work, and then you'd leave. You know?

And then for 2,000 years, people would memorize it in different languages and struggle with it. But now you know what it means. The only way that anything will ever work out in your life, whether it's a relationship or a car, is if you're good to people.

And that's the energy that makes things work. So we can say that things don't work. When I get up and say things don't work, I'm telling the truth, and you can accept that, because I mean things don't work any other way.

Got it? So luo po den du ke. Say luo po.

Luo po. Luo po, not luo po, okay? Luo po.

Hang on to your mouth. Luo po. Luo po.

[Speaker 2]
Luo po. Luo po. Can't do?

Can't do. Okay.

[Speaker 1]
Forget, forget saying that things work. Things don't work. Yeah.

Does karma always work? Yeah. Yeah.

I didn't say cars don't work. Karma. Karma doesn't work.

Karma.

[Speaker 2]
Karma.

[Speaker 1]
What? Karma. Karma.

Karma doesn't work. Karma doesn't work. Oh, good question.

It's right here, in fact. They say, I can buy all the cars and stuff don't work. I understand what you're saying.

What about the principle that they don't work? Does that work? That's your question.

[Speaker 2]
Yeah, see, that's exactly. You're replacing something that doesn't exist in truth. You're replacing the explanation for something else that doesn't exist in truth.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, that's what he's saying. See? That's what he's saying.

That's the second part of the sentence. That's where we're going right now. Siddhuji always asks that the next time.

Now you've got to get a little more thorough, okay? I agree that all the cars in the world don't work. But does the fact that they don't work, work?

Yes. Okay. But does it work in the way we thought it did?

No. Does it work independent of your kindness to others? No.

That's all. If the car works, it's because it was kind. Some people who didn't understand what Lord Buddha meant, they said there's two kinds of stuff in the world.

There's all the cars that don't work is on one side. All the things we used to think work that don't work, that's all over there. Over here is the fact that they don't work.

Divide the world into the fact, you know, all the stuff that doesn't work anymore. I understand that cars don't work. But the fact that they don't work, let's separate them like that, okay?

This one is real. They are not. And he says, mistake.

You're thinking karma works from its own side. And then our author is saying, not even the idea that the car doesn't work comes from its own side, right? And you can buy that if you understand that you must have had the kindness to teach someone else about deep ideas for this fact to be a fact in your world, okay?

That's also cool. That's pretty awesome, okay? Truths, which are unchanging, which technically don't function.

The fact that things don't work doesn't function, you see? Even those things that don't work don't work. Meaning, they also don't come from their own side.

Meaning, they were also produced by your goodness and your kindness, and they're out there. Yeah, okay? They were trying to say, oh, there's one thing that's not, there's one thing that really does come from its own side.

I understand the thing about your wrinkles, okay? But what about the fact that cars don't exist? That should be coming from its own side.

And he says, no, okay? It's a beautiful question, and that's, they say if you teach a thing right, then the mind of the student should go to the next question automatically. Okay, how are we doing on time?

I still have a couple of minutes, okay. Let's read this together, okay? One, two, three.

[Speaker 2]
Ka-shi-nu-po-la-do-shi-ki-tsu-me-pa-hei-wan-mei-shi-ni-ju-pa-rang-wang-wei-hen-ju-tsu-lu-pei-gang-bo-ni-tei-tei.

[Speaker 1]
Keep going, one more line, hang on, I'll bring it up. One, two, three.

[Speaker 2]
Tei-ga-tse-sei-mu-ma-sin-pei-kyun-yin-pei.

[Speaker 1]
Okay, first he gives his answer to the first guy's question, okay? So we're gonna do the answer to the question that you just gave, from the book, okay? So here's from the book.

Tei-ga-tse-sei-mu-ma-sin-pei-kyun-yin-pei-cha. Ga-cha means what? Ga-cha means the thing that's not there that you used to think was there.

Gas. Gas that works. You can say gas that works is more precise.

Gas that works from its own side is even more precise. Gas that really works. Ga-cha means the thing that you used to think was there but was never there.

Ga-cha means the thing you thought was there, the thing that you used to think was there but was never there. It's ga-cha, okay? Tsei means the, what do you call it?

The extent. In this case it means the extent. You know tsei-ma-pu-ma-nu meaning the measure of ma-nu.

Tsei means the extent of the ga-cha. How big is this problem we're talking about? How much stuff doesn't work from its own side?

What's the tsei? What's the quantity of stuff that doesn't work from its own side? Give me a measure here.

50%? 30%? How much of stuff doesn't work from its own side?

Ga-cha-tsei. Got it? Mu-ma-sin-pa-kyun.

What does it mean when you say kyun-min-du? No problem. When you hear, in India, anyone say kyun-min-du, you have a kyun.

Alright? You go there. No problem.

Then you're like, wait, what's wrong there? No problem, sorry. So kyun means there's a problem.

Kyun-yin means there's a problem. It is a problem. What?

Mu-ma-sin-pa. Mu-ma-sin-pa means you have failed to identify it. Mu-ma-sin-pa means mun-zin-pa.

You have failed to identify what?

[Speaker 2]
Ga-cha.

[Speaker 1]
It's the extent of the ga-cha. But it's not bad. It wasn't a bad mistake.

It was a pretty cool mistake. 99.999999% of things you decided were cancelled. Ga-cha.

Ga-cha means they're cancelled, right? All the cars in the world were cancelled. Okay, I can handle that.

All the gas was cancelled. I can handle that too. What about the fact that we haven't cancelled it?

That's the question. That's the beautiful question. It is the question.

What about that last .00000000% of stuff? Meaning the fact that gas doesn't work. Does that work?

And if you say it does, you haven't gone far enough in your ga-cha. That's what he's saying, okay? You have a problem.

Your ga-cha isn't big enough. How big should your ga-cha be?

[Speaker 2]
It should encompass everything.

[Speaker 1]
No, wait, it shouldn't have no limits. Even the fact that things don't work doesn't work, right? And that's just about everything you could have.

Alright. Now, what he did was, he gave one bad idea by somebody. He gave a second bad idea by somebody.

He answered the first bad idea by saying, you didn't go far enough in your gacha. And then he came back with the answer to the second question. So it kind of confuses you, okay?

So we're going to ask the second question now. We might not get to the answer. Kachi, moku wa kochu kichu me.

Means, moku wa kochu kichu me. Koche koche. Kocheba.

Say kocheba. Kocheba. They need food.

Is there any food? They obviously need food. I'm sorry.

You'll just have it in time to be doing in your bus between you and Tom. So kocheba. Say kocheba.

[Speaker 2]
Kocheba.

[Speaker 1]
Kocheba is a beautiful, beautiful word and a very difficult word. How was he? Where was I?

Yeah, okay. Oh, yeah. It was born syndrome number 83.

Wasn't it? The born conspiracy or something? Born identity.

Born identity. Yes. I just remember we bought it in Pacho, San Pacho.

Illegal coffee in a night market. And we were at home and it was all like, So anyway, at some really cool point, they have a fight, right? They're having a punch out and the guy's a part of it.

You know, the guy comes in through the window on a rope and he's about to kill the girl, which is not allowed. And then, you know, they're having this incredible fight and then finally, you know, finally Jason Bourne is like, he gets into this pen thing. The other guy has a sword or something or a gun.

Jason Bourne is a pen, okay? And he ends up killing the guy with a pen, okay? So can you say that a pen can fill in for a real weapon?

In the right hands. I mean, you can say it, right? In Jason Bourne's hands, a pen can fill in for a real weapon.

You know, it can stand in for a real weapon. You know, if it's all the time it does right now, there's no samurai sword where you can use a pen. You know, and then he killed the guy with a pen.

That's the meaning of the word poncheco. Poncheco means, this thing can be used as that thing. And it implies that the first thing is not usually, okay?

I don't know how to say that anymore. It can't suffice. A pen can suffice for a weapon, okay?

So now he's saying something interesting. He says, nothing can suffice for a working thing. There's nothing that can pretty much fill the role of gas that works.

Somebody comes up and says, Katsu, nothing in the world suffices for a working gas. True or false? You can't say that, you see?

Gas, gas, gas to which you have imparted the power of gas to your kindness is called chupa for working gas. It's just about working gas. I mean, you could use it to get into Tucson.

It isn't real working gas, though. Denduki, we move with denduki, we lay it. It's not real working gas.

But gas which has been infused with the karma of your past kindness, that gas will get you to Tucson. It's called chupa. Got it?

That's why I brought it up. Don't do that. You're going to have a pen in your hand.

Okay. I'm just kidding. Let's see.

Yeah, yeah. That's nice. There's still a lot of working gas.

It's pretty much working gas. You can call it a weapon. But it's not substantially a working weapon because it doesn't have the qualities of a working weapon.

Yeah, I mean, in most houses, it's not a working weapon. There's no nest there. Not really.

Yeah. Not naturally. Not naturally.

It was imparted to it by a skill of martial arts. Okay, got it? In the same way that the power of gas was imparted to it by a claim of principle.

Got it? Got it? It has to be imparted.

It has to be granted. It has to be labeled. Usually they say labeled, right?

It's so confusing. Labeling a pen a weapon. It has to be awarded to it.

The power of gas has to be granted to it by your own kindness in the past. So culture. It should.

But this guy, Kachiki, says there's nothing in the world that could be almost as good as real gas. We said, no, you didn't get what we said. We said there's no real gas in the way that you used to think of gas.

The gas you used to think was there is not there. That's a shock job. But there is a gas there.

And it does get you to do something. And that gas is gochupa gas. That's pretty much gas.

Meaning it's not real gas because it's not gas that works because it's gas. It's gas that works because you have somebody get to some place in the past. Got it?

So it's pretty much gas. You can still call it gas. Got it?

Got it? So it's not right for Kachiki to come up and say there's nothing in the world that you could say is pretty much gas or could work as gas. Right?

That's also an extreme view. To go running around and saying all gas works is the most common extreme view. That's called gyuta, right?

The extreme of is. But then there's also the extreme of there isn't. Mekan.

Which is what? Okay, then nothing works in here. I didn't say that.

I said the gas you used to think works as gas doesn't work as gas. But that doesn't mean that nothing can't work as gas. If gas is infused with kindness in your past, that gas works.

And you can call it gas. Although it's not real gas. You should call it gas infused with kindness.

Probably there will be octane ratings in the future. 80% infused with kindness. Got it?

Kei-lan-mei. They believe, kei-lan means they believe there's nothing that can stand in as gas. Chun-ni, ju-pa, rang-wan-wei, den-du.

This is good. Chun-ni, ju-pa, rang-wan-wei, den-du. Chun-ni means the way things are.

Chun-ni means the way things are. Tan-la-da. The way things are.

Ju-pa. You can say you're a positive thing. A solid thing.

Got it? Is Chun-ni, ju-pa? Is the way that all things are a solid thing?

Is it a positive thing? Is it a thing with an outline in a sense? Is the way of all things, is the reality of all existence?

The core reality, is the ultimate reality of all existence. Is it a thing? No.

It's an absence of something. It's an absence of something. Can you hold on?

Is there an elephant in this room? No. No.

Can you grab onto that lack of an elephant? No. Is it something that you can, like, touch or like that?

No, it's not a positive thing. It's the absence of something. It's that something ain't here.

Something ain't here. There's a big debate. I saw one of my classmates beat the abbot of Tushy in football in this debate.

And it was awesome. And the abbot took his hat off to him. In the end, he took his hat off and bowed to him.

But there's this guy, he didn't ever study at all. He used to listen to music all day. And then he got up from the debate and he wiped out the abbot of Tushy.

So anyway, the question was, can the absence of an elephant in this room, does the absence of an elephant in this room exist?

[Speaker 2]
Yes.

[Speaker 1]
Of course it exists. Because if it didn't exist, there'd be no elephant in this room. Right?

That's easy. That's easy. Okay?

Does the lack of an elephant in this room exist? Yeah, it's a fact. Facts exist.

It doesn't change. It doesn't get bigger or smaller. It doesn't get more or less.

It's a fact. It exists. The fact exists.

But does it exist as a thing that you can touch and feel? Is it a positive thing? No.

So there do exist things which are not positive things with edges to them, but which still exist. And those are the things that aren't around. The fact that those things aren't around, how's that?

That's more comfortable, right? If I say the fact, then it's easier. If I say, is it a fact that there's no elephant in this room?

Yes. Does that fact exist? Yes.

Is that fact something you can hang on to or hold on to? No. It's just something that's not here.

It's just the idea that something's not here right now. These guys, they're like, look, Geshe-la, if there's no gas and there's no cars, we need something. There's got to be something.

I mean, there's got to be reality. There's got to be some kind of reality. You know?

You just canceled everything. There's got to be some kind of thing around that's real, that's the world. And for them, that's emptiness.

But they want it to be a thing. They want it to be a positive thing. They want it to be, rang, wang, wang.

Rang, wang, wang means independent. It's always going to be there. It'll stand on its own.

I didn't make it up. It's not coming from me. The fact that there's no gas is not coming from me.

First of all, there's no real gas. But there's got to be something in the world because we're experiencing the world. Something's going on.

We're here. The temple's here. The people are here.

The guy's talking. There's got to be something there. I'm having an experience.

Oh, that's emptiness. And that's the only real thing. That's their school.

That's the other school. That's one idea number two, okay? Since there's nothing that can be anything, right, called che, since there's nothing that can act as gas, well, I guess the only real good, comfy thing that we can hang on to, that's a good translation of dupa, okay?

Comfy thing that we can hang on to is the fact that there is no gas. And that makes people feel comfortable. Well, at least something's there.

Got it? Okay? Then we say, here's our answer, okay?

One, two, three. Chima-mi-te-te, nun-go-den-tru, ka-pa-ra-no-myang, se-me-ma-ke-pe, nun-go-do-la, nun-go-den-tru, ka-pa-ra-no-myang, ka-pa-ra-no-myang, se-me-ma-ke-pe, nun-go-do-la, nun-go-den-tru, ka-pa-ra-no-myang, Because he started out by saying, there's nothing that you can even call gas then. Got it?

And we say there is something you can call gas, which is what? What kind of gas? Gas is used with kindness.

Gas which has been produced by kindness. Working gas which draws its functionality from my kindness towards other people's kindness. Nun-go.

But to say that there's no gas then is going too far. Ti-ma-mi-te-pe. The latter position is wrong.

Nun-go-den-tru-ka, pa-ra-lo. What's lonely? Anybody know lo-pa?

To accept. It's a really hard word. It's in your tantric vows.

Neon-ja-pa-ra-lo. Deva-me-lo.

[Speaker 2]
False idea about yourself.

[Speaker 1]
Huh?

[Speaker 2]
False idea about yourself.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, it means, what do you call that? When you think you're Napoleon. What's that?

Delusion. Delusion.

[Speaker 2]
It's not surrender.

[Speaker 1]
Lo-pa means, neon-ja, it's one of your tantric vows. Neon-ja-pa-ra-lo. To have a delusion that you're a higher being is breaking your tantric vows.

And I just broke one of my tantric vows.

[Speaker 2]
But anyway, I don't know. I just hope it's not.

[Speaker 1]
Oh well. In my hell, I don't have lots of lo-pas. So, lo-pa means to have a delusion.

They have a delusion that they have gas. Lo-pa delusion. Right?

They say, I'm a big money maker. Oh, really? Gas.

So you understand the doctrine. You understand what this means. I do.

What is it? All gas. You know?

No gas person. All. I saw the truth.

All things are an illusion. There is no gas. And that's something that we have.

And then you say, okay, can I have the gas out of your car? You know, because it doesn't work. And, you know, you don't need it.

You know? So what then? When you say, no gas works, you are a lo-pa.

You have delusions that you have identified the doctrine. You have a delusion that you understand what it means when we say nothing works. Lo-pa delusion.

Car. You have a, that's a delusion. Because there is gas.

Gas, as you can call gas. Because, due to your past kindness to someone else, helping them get somewhere. How many people have you helped get somewhere in this life?

Big question for you. Maybe it's the last question. Let's just, ngobola kunda kita, tseme makipo means, you didn't have a correct perception that, that blocked the gaccha.

You just had a wrong idea. And then, ngobola kunda pitawagyorejo means, you're just underrating things. Right?

Ngobola kunda. From the Changay's time. You knew that.

You're just, you, you think nothing's there when something really is jeopardy. You can say that. Okay?

But let's stop. Forget that. I want to ask you a different question.

If every tank of gas that you ever used came from the kindness of helping someone, I mean a major helping someone else get somewhere. I'm talking, giving someone a ride to Sedona, you know, something like that. If every tank of gas that ever worked for you was the result of taking someone to Sedona, how's your credit card?

It's in the negative. It's in the negative. That's all.

Okay? If every meal you ever ate required offering a meal to a person who was hungry, how's your credit card? It's not even on the charts.

I mean, I'm glad I served somebody a meal once a month. And then I eat, like, six meals a day. And, uh, you know, the the balance is not good.

That's why people get old and die. That's why people get old and die. That's why people get old and die.

The... Yeah. The...

The... Aging itself is caused by the imbalance of your use of gas and your production of gas. Got it?

Aging of the body is caused by the use of the body without helping other bodies. Sufficiently. If the balance is off, if the income of helping other bodies is less than the use of your own body, you will get old, you must get old, you must die.

Wow. What if that's true? Start feeding more people.

Yeah, you gotta feed... And you have to take a real interest in feeding people. You can't...

You are using someone else's credit your whole life. Every meal you ate that wasn't balanced by a meal given to someone else, you've been living off Joe's credit. Who's Joe?

That's your whole pastime. We like to call him Joe. You know, Joe collected all those meals.

Joe probably ran out of soup kitchen in Tucson or something. And then he died, you know? Don't ask me why.

And then... Well, I mean, he accumulated future meals, but he hadn't had enough old meals. You understand.

So... Then he was born and most of the time he just ate and ate and ate and he married and got old. And then he got old.

So think about it. I mean, if you ever get irritated by it, people come up to me and say, I'm tired of being old. I don't want to be old, you know?

I'm on the edge of old and it's no fun. You know, the wrinkles are no fun, the forgetfulness is no fun, people don't like me anymore, all their friends have moved away, you know, or died. And then you're like, well, then you've got to do a little bit about the paragraph balance.

Like, feed a few more people, help them... Give them yoga classes that could... You know, if you give enough yoga classes and people actually come, you can make up the...

That's a good way to make it up in an enjoyable way. Stuff like that. Serve other people's needs physically and help them.

And try to take people who need to get somewhere and help them get somewhere. If you want, you're part of it. Okay?

Work. It works. Okay?

Alright.

[Speaker 2]
Let's start.

[Speaker 1]
Okay. Just complain in class, okay? If you want to go.

Be complaining in class. I think it sounds cool. She's happy.

She sounds happy.

[Speaker 2]
She's happy. Alright.