Вступление на срединный путь (текущий курс, Аризона), занятие 98

[Speaker 1]
OK, we'll start. By the way, Ken Rinpoche had children in the class all the time, and they all grew up to be amazing. But he let them stay all the time in the class.

Like, Yosonyu no Janice, right? She started as a baby, and she became a really amazing person. So, people like that, it's nice to have them here.

OK. So, I'd like to... I was in the Bahamas a couple of years ago, and they were having elections.

And they elected two, a king and a princess. And I had the honor to meet them. We went out to dinner with their father.

And so, Princess Claire was elected the princess of the Bahamas. And this is her trusty servant, Purvel Pai, which stands for Purple Velvet Pie, of course. And then, this is King Will, who is actually ruling the Bahamas nowadays.

And so, we wanted to thank them. They're very great Tibetan scholars. And I'd like to give them a hand.

If you get bored, or you want to go sit with your... the old king, you're welcome to do that, OK? So, if you get tired, you can just jump down.

OK? All right? All right.

Because you will get tired. All right. Here we go.

I need help with kocha. I always needed help with kocha, OK? Kocha means you are...

you have a bottle of root beer, and you don't have a bottle opener. So, you go to your closet, and you get a pair of pliers. And, you know, it's not as good as a bottle opener, but it will kocha as a bottle opener.

You see what I mean? Suffice? It has to imply...

suffice is good, because it has to imply slightly inferior or something, right? Like, not as good as a bottle opener. It's make do.

I like fill the role, OK? I said that I never could ever fill the role. King will.

If the people are not peaceful, you have to put them in the baby jail.

[Speaker 2]
All right. You can do it.

[Speaker 1]
That's OK, Becky, you can stay. OK. OK.

A word that means the... he's failed to identify the size of the kocha. Scope is good.

Extent is also good. Yeah. The actual...

OK. So, just to take up where we were last week, it's two positions, mistaken positions are expressed, and then we deny... we respond to them one by one, OK?

And the first one, just to remind you and myself, is... they say, if I agree that nothing could exist really, OK? But the lack of reality to things should be real.

In other words, emptiness is not empty. OK? Emptiness is real.

Meaning, emptiness exists from its own side, and whatever qualities we see in it are not coming from me. Got it? OK.

So, they still feel like something should be coming from its own side. And then we say, you failed to identify the proper extent of what it is we deny. Meaning, he's too small or he's too big?

Too small, right. Because he should still deny self-existence to the lack of self-existence itself. Got it?

Yeah, so his Gaccha is not wide enough. The thing he's denying isn't big enough. It left out some things, OK?

All right. OK, here's a nice word. You can help me with this one.

I used to struggle with this one. It's brahlom, OK, in the second line. Say, lomba.

Lomba. You have a tantric vow, Nelanjara Parlom. Nelanjara Parlom.

Deva-mela tam jitten. Yeah. It's a lomba that you're a...

that you're a big yogi when you're not. Or that you're Napoleon or something like that. What do they call that?

[Speaker 2]
It's like a delusion of grandeur.

[Speaker 1]
Well, see, I'm going to... You see? They, lomba, they...

They think they know what it is to say all things that work, don't work. OK? And we talked about gasoline for a car.

Does gasoline work?

[Speaker 2]
No. Not by itself.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, not by itself, OK? Not by itself. It works if it's loaded by my karma.

It doesn't work if it's not loaded by my karma. And I had that the other day. You know, I had gas in the car, but the battery was dead.

So... The gas wasn't doing... The gas wasn't working, OK?

Because I didn't... Yeah, I didn't have the karma. I didn't...

What do you call it? I didn't infuse the gasoline with karma. OK?

So... These guys... They...

What do you call it? Lomba. It's not...

It's not insulting enough. Lomba means I'm Napoleon, or, you know, I'm Bill Clinton, or, you know... It's a delusion, really.

Yeah. Entertain the delusion? OK.

Have the delusion? Have the delusion?

[Speaker 2]
Have a delusion? Hold?

[Speaker 1]
No, it has to be insulting. It has to be lomba... You say somebody's lomba, you're like...

You're having delusions of grandeur, you know? Who do you think you are? The Dalai Lama?

[Speaker 2]
You know...

[Speaker 1]
That's nice. Deluse themselves. When in fact...

They have failed to deny... to disprove... this idea...

with any valid... Right? Valid perception.

And they are thus... That's a tough one. The kundap, right?

Kundap. To describe it... what it means...

The opposite is what? Tondo. Say tondo.

Tondo. Tondo. That means to think something's there when it's not.

To think something's there when it's not. You know, like... Oh, this person's out to get me, or something.

Actually, this person's trying to help you. It happens in the corporate world a lot, right? Like, you think some other vice president is out to get you, when actually they have been...

meeting with the owners all day, trying to... protect your job, or something, you know? You're like, why are they with the owners all day?

They're trying to replace me, you know? That's tondo. You're seeing something where there's nothing there.

But what's the opposite? No, it's where... something is there, and you say it's not there.

Like... It has to be more... particular.

It's like someone... It's like, underestimate. Yeah?

Okay. Okay, underestimate. It is, yeah.

[Speaker 2]
He misunderstood, but he misunderstood anyway.

[Speaker 1]
That's true. That's true. Okay.

In other words, things do work, and then these people said they don't work at all. Okay? Things do work under certain conditions, right?

Meaning what? The car, the gas works if you've... if you've helped other people get somewhere, then the gas will work.

So it would be a corned duck. It would be an underestimation to say that gas can't work. Okay?

Gas doesn't work by itself. Gas does work under certain conditions. Got it?

If someone asks you if gas works, you usually have to ask for a clarification. So in a debate, you can either say yes, no, or you could say, are you saying by itself, or are you saying under certain conditions? You see, you can ask a question to get a clarification before you commit yourself.

Okay. Okay. I'm gonna kind of go very fast, which means probably like one verse an hour.

And then, because there's one verse I want to get to towards the bottom. These are corrections I made in 1985 or something to this text. Because we printed it at the monastery for all the months.

It was missing for a while. Okay. Others have made the following thing.

So he's like, this debater is trying to draw some distinction between the scriptures of the lower way and the scriptures of the uncommon lower way. He's like inventing some special part of the lower way. Okay.

And he's saying, when Master Baba Viveka, if he ever did say that emptiness wasn't presented in the lower way, he was talking about the lower way in its uncommon form. But that generally he does believe that emptiness is presented in the lower way. Okay.

Alright. Now, we'll keep going. We'll have more here.

So, Master Baba Viveka wrote a book called The Lamp of Wisdom. It's huge. It's like, I don't know.

It's over a thousand pages. And it's the big, it's the classic for the lower half of the middle way. Okay.

For the Svatantrika school. It's pretty much the the main source for the Svatantrika school. Okay.

And, so he wasn't stupid, right? And it says, let's read the lines, okay? He's quoting, I believe, Lord Buddha, okay?

And let's read it together. One, or it might be in the Aranyagajna. We can check.

One, two, three. Okay. There's two kinds of duces.

I'm going to write the under one here. Watch. Duce.

Okay? Duce, duce. Duce, duce.

The S lengthens it slightly. The D cuts it slightly. Listen.

Duce, duce. Okay? And that's the only difference.

I'll say it again. This is with the S, okay? And here's with a D, du ché, okay?

So when you hear du ché, du ché would be more normal here. You would expect du ché, which means anything produced by the gathering together, anything produced by the gathering together of causes and conditions, like a flower, is a du ché. Du means to gather together, ché means made.

So du ne ché pey ché, in the scriptures, du ne ché pey ché, that thing which is produced by the gathering together of causes and conditions, like a flower, du ché, okay? The first one. But we don't have du ché, we have du ché, which means what?

This now means that which does the gathering, the gatherer, okay? And it's a synonym, it's the one which is a skanda, factor, it means factor, okay? It can be agent, it can mean agent.

That would be slightly different than, yeah, no? In the sense of something which causes an effect, okay? So du ché tam ché nui ché.

Lua, say lua. Yeah, but would you say all things which act as factors. Anything that makes something else happen, okay?

You can think of it like that. Anything which makes something else happen is a lua. It's deceiving, it's deceptive, how's that?

Okay, all things which act as factors, are deceiving us, would be even more powerful, right? De na de dag dzunbayim. And this is why we call them, we can say false, okay?

Okay? Okay? And this is very, very, very powerful.

We're at a very, very powerful place. It's a nice place to sort of be close to the end of the 18 classes, okay? I think it's going to be 180 classes, okay?

I mean, we'll continue with this in Phoenix. And I intend to make the Phoenix thing very, what do you call it, online-y? So, you know, I had this dream.

First of all, that all those classes in Phoenix will be live, what do you call it, webcam? So if you can't come, you can just tune in and that's fine with me, I don't care. It's better in person, you get more of a transmission.

But if you happen to be somewhere else, I'm going to make sure that everything is live online, like University of Phoenix or something like that. And then I told the people who are working on it, I said, you know these little arrow keys on the computer? It's so boring to watch somebody's face talk for two hours on your computer.

So I was thinking people could push the right arrow thing, and the camera would swivel, and that would be like being distracted in class. And they could look at, or, and they would have a sound detector on it. If somebody dropped something, the camera would go over there.

And it would have some kind of smell detection thing, like when they hand out the treats, it'll just go like this, you know. I want to make it real. Okay.

And somebody will have to have some extra babies around them, with a mic. Okay. Okay.

All right. But I do like babies, I'm telling you that. Okay, they have to stay.

We have to have them here. Okay. So there's a point in his book, where Master Pabla Viveka, we're trying to figure out what?

Does he believe that the lower school teaches emptiness or not? That's all. Does the lower middle way think that the lower schools teaches emptiness or not?

The lower way, Hinayana. All right. And the question came up, of course, because it's accepted by all schools that lower, in the lower way you can reach AHA.

You can get rid of your mental afflictions forever. It's accepted by everybody that you have to see the real emptiness, the highest form of emptiness to do that. So then, are you saying that lower way people see the highest form of emptiness?

And then they don't sound so lower to me anymore. That's the discussion. Do lower way people see emptiness directly?

Real emptiness. Okay. And if they do, then how did they get there?

You know, because all they got fed was lower school scriptures. And so you have to draw the conclusion that lower school scriptures, sorry, you have to draw the conclusion that they do teach emptiness in its purest form. Right?

Okay. And that's the debate. So does everybody believe that?

What does Master Pablo Iveco say?

[Speaker 2]
Okay.

[Speaker 1]
Well, he gets to a place where he's commenting on these lines, which say that everything in the world is deceiving you. How does gasoline deceive you?

[Speaker 2]
You think that the gasoline itself is running. Yeah. If I have gas, I'll get there.

[Speaker 1]
You think, yeah, if you have gas, I'll get there. You don't worry about giving other people rides when your car is acting funny. You don't jump out of the car and say, my God, I have to get three people rides to Tucson, and then it will be okay.

You go check the gas. That proves you think the gas runs the car. It proves you misunderstand the car.

And the gas has deceived you. Okay? The gas has deceived you.

And then there's this big debate, you know, can you really blame it on the gas? I mean, he's just gas. You know, he's not like lying to you or anything, you know.

And then the definition of deception in Buddhism is to a lower state of mind, to a person who doesn't understand. Right? They don't deceive.

When a Buddha looks at gas, it's not kun dzog denpa. Right.

[Speaker 2]
Because it can't fool him.

[Speaker 1]
Okay? So then it's negative. Gas is negative.

Because it's ultimate reality.

[Speaker 2]
Three realities. Who said that?

[Speaker 1]
That's pretty good. Okay. There's a new invention.

Okay. Okay. Okay.

Two, three. Okay. Chok ho.

Shek su bei. Good.

[Speaker 2]
Fine.

[Speaker 1]
Ready? One. You gotta do this.

Okay? You ready? You gotta do it to them.

Ready? One, two, three. Okay.

Good. So, Baba Viveka reaches a part, Master Baba Viveka reaches a part in his text where Lord Buddha has said, everything that does something is lying to you. Okay?

Everything that does something is lying to you. And then the commentary says, you can find, therefore you can find even in the Hinayana, even in the lower way, the idea that everything which is doing something is false and is lying to you. Therefore what?

Therefore the lower way must present emptiness in its highest form. Okay? Because that's the highest, it's not the only proof for emptiness but that is the highest form, right?

Once you understand the gas, you're on the edge of seeing emptiness directly.

[Speaker 2]
Okay?

[Speaker 1]
Once you understand gasoline, uh oh, stop sending me e-mails guys. Once you understand that gasoline is empty, you're very close to seeing emptiness directly. Because then the gacja gets pretty radical.

The gacja isn't an occasional event in your life. You don't come across a thing which emptiness denies once in a while during your day. You're using them all day long and you believe in them.

Every time you turn on a light switch, every time you put on your clothes, every time you brush your hair, every time you get out of bed, every time you turn the key of your car, you are misunderstanding reality by the act of turning the key. Okay? Alright.

And then if, I mean, so should I stop doing yoga? I mean it's not the yoga that makes me healthy. No, you should load the yoga and then do the yoga.

Load it and then do it? Load it. Yeah, no, you can load it and do it before that.

Okay. Uh, let's just read the quotation. Okay.

This is a, this is another quotation from scripture that Master Bhagavad Gita pulls out to prove that the lower way has emptiness teachings. Okay? So here we go.

One, two, three. I just realized, this is a problem because I don't, I don't think the last two lines are verse, but they have the same beat. Seven, right?

You want to count like a Tibetan? You got to, you do four on each finger. Okay?

Seven. First line is seven. Now we have to go look because we can't translate this responsibly unless we see if he's just being cute and he's using verse, or if the original verse was four lines.

Was the original two lines plus accidentally two lines that are in the same meter? Or was the original verse four lines in meter? So we have to go look for the original verse.

Since it's a sutra, where could we go? Yeah, we'll go to the conjure. Okay?

And we take a unique piece of the, of the quotation, which would not be Chomde Deikisung, the Buddhist set. Okay? If you search for the Buddhist set in the conjure, you'll spend all night here, right?

So you take weird pieces. You take Nyi Yongso, okay? Which is just bizarre.

It's like saying Ewiya. When you want, you're trying to find today we are happy, so you search for Ewiya. Got it?

Something like that. Okay. If you get it, okay.

Too many hits, so then we search for another piece of it. Deiki, okay? Near.

We look for those two lines close to each other. That's not it. I know it was a nearby.

See? We'll change it somehow. See, now they might have misspelled it.

I'm going to do it later, okay? Because I just don't want to waste your time. Maybe I should waste your time.

But this is what I go through on every third line in the Tantric readings. I have to clean them up. And that's why it takes a long time.

Nyi Yongso Tenpo. How about that? Eh, I don't know.

He's probably misquoted it. All right. I don't think it's part of the reverse.

Okay, here we go. I'll check it later. Okay?

So we're still in the middle of Master Bhavaviveka's commentary. And in the middle of the commentary he said, the Conqueror, meaning Lord Buddha, clarified emptiness perfectly. He's talking about a Hinayana scripture, a Hinayana sutra, all right?

So now two times already Master Bhavaviveka has said that Lord Buddha was talking about, understood the highest form of emptiness to the lower school people, all right? In their own scriptures, okay? Let's do this together, ready?

One, two, three. Nige chesam, sedam denpa mayin no. Dhungel shenki chesam, sedam denpa mayin no.

Nige chesam, sedam denpa mayin no. Dhungel shenki chesam, sedam denpa mayin no. Nige chesam, sedam denpa mayin no.

Nige chesam, sedam denpa mayin no. Nige chesam, sedam denpa mayin no. Nige chesam, sedam denpa mayin no.

Nige chesam, sedam denpa mayin no. Nige chesam, sedam denpa mayin no. Nige chesam, sedam denpa mayin no.

Nige chesam, sedam denpa mayin no. Nige chesam, sedam denpa mayin no. Nige chesam, sedam denpa mayin no.

Nige chesam, sedam denpa mayin no. OK, so it's evocative. It's, oh, oh, hey, you're addressing somebody.

Oh, what comes next here? Gautama. OK, it's Gautama.

It's misspelled. OK, it's OK. It's Gautama.

Hey, Gautama. Oh, Gautama. OK, who's talking?

Probably some monk is asking him a question. Oh, Gautama. OK, it's a sutra, right?

Oh, Gautama. Duryodhaki che sam. OK, sam is a question mark in Tibetan.

OK, that's all you get for a question mark. OK, you get AM. And in front of that, you get whatever letter was the last letter in the syllable before.

OK, so if your last word was Kevin, and you wanted to ask a question, you'd say Kevin mam. OK, if it was che, you'd say chesam. Got it?

OK, so that's just a Tibetan question mark. There's no, nowadays, Tibet is getting corrupted in the newspapers, you see question marks. They're usually like 25 point.

But anyway, so the question comes from somebody. Duryodhaki che? Which means what?

Yeah, did I cause my suffering? OK. Oh, Gautama.

Was it, what did you say? Was it me or was it I? I don't know.

Was it I who caused my suffering? And then the answer comes. Tse dan denpa mayeno.

You know tse dan denpa from the Heart Sutra? Tse dan denpa. Oh, I got to turn the camera.

OK. We counted the spilled drinks at one of our sponsor's houses one day when we had an office meeting there. It was 17 on Michael Wick's carpet.

And then he kicked us out. Anyway, but luckily we own the carpets. OK.

Tse dan denpa? Oh, venerable one. OK.

Different people explain tse dan denpa different ways. Some people say you have time, meaning you are senior, meaning oh, venerable one, meaning oh, monk. And some people say tse dan denpa means still has time to go.

So, oh, junior monk. OK. I've seen it both ways.

Tse dan denpa mayeno. No, you didn't. OK.

Got it? Oh, the other one. Was it I who caused my suffering?

No, venerable one. It was not. OK?

Dunya shengi che sam? Dunya shengi che sam? Oh, yeah.

Was it somebody else who caused my suffering? Tse dan denpa mayeno. You could just pace.

OK? All right? It's faster.

No, it wasn't. Nyi kei che sam? Was it by both myself and somebody else?

Was it both of us? What's he say? Tse dan denpa mayeno.

No, venerable one, it was not. Dak kyi kyang ma che. Sheng kyi kyang ma che.

[Speaker 2]
Yeah. Yeah.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah. OK? Was it neither me nor someone else?

Tse dan denpa mayeno. OK? No, venerable one, it was not.

OK. Sorry, we needed to do that. All right?

So that's the end of the guy's argument. OK? How does that prove what he thinks it proves?

What's he trying to prove? He's trying to prove something about Master Baba Viveka. What?

Master Baba Viveka must believe that Lord Buddha did teach emptiness in the lower way, because he says so, and he quotes that text, which says, did I cause my suffering? No. Did somebody else cause it?

No. Did both of us cause it? No.

Did neither of us cause it? No. I didn't say that either.

How does that prove that Lord Buddha was teaching emptiness in the lower way? Well, there must be some emptiness in there, because it's also cuckoo's. I mean, who would say, you know, once it gets irrational, it must be discussing emptiness.

[Speaker 2]
Yeah, well let's go through.

[Speaker 1]
Is it true that you didn't cause your suffering?

[Speaker 2]
No. It is true we did.

[Speaker 1]
Who's we? I. Are you talking I or I?

I. Then that's a problem, because I can't do anything. That's a chi.

That's a mental image. That's a permanent, unchanging, unvarying mental image. Michael, quote Michael, can't do anything, and we see ourselves that way.

We talked about clock. We read? We talked about the chapter that Arya Nagarjuna should have written in the root text on wisdom called an examination of a and the.

Okay? Okay? I mean, he left the chapter out.

I'll probably fix it. Okay? A discussion of a and the.

Okay? There's clock, and then there's a clock. Okay?

There's clock, and then there's a clock. When you look at a clock, you know, in some senses, your mind goes through the library of all the things you know, all the pictures in your head, and it plays a matching game. It says, okay, long yellow.

You know, you're looking at a clock. I don't have one, which is bad for you. You're looking at a watch.

You have a watch or anything? Okay, cell phone. We'll pretend it's a clock.

It's called chupa as a clock.

[Speaker 2]
Okay.

[Speaker 1]
So we're, you know, you look at this, and your mind goes through all the images in your head and plays a matching game. Is it a banana? No.

Is it a Mercedes Benz? No. Is it the last bad word that someone said to me today?

No. And then you get to clock, you know, and there's a clock in your mind, and you look at this, and you say, bingo, match. Okay?

There's a match. You say, we got a match here. It must be a clock, because you compare a clock to this subject.

This, you look at clock, and then this, you look at this, and they're doing the same thing, and you say, okay, that's a clock. Okay, got it? But on a higher level, that's how the lower schools represent it, okay?

They say your mind, in a matter of milliseconds, goes through every word in your head, and every idea in your head, and every picture of every object you've ever known, and does an elimination game, and then comes up with, oh, the only thing left is a clock. It's clock. This must be a clock.

You eliminate every other possibility, they say, in a few milliseconds, and then you come up with a clock. The higher schools say something different. Catch this, because this is the cool thing tonight, okay?

Catch this. Your karma from helping someone else get somewhere on time, okay? Your karmic seed ripens into a picture of clock in your head, and then you mistake that for a clock, and there are no a clocks, and there are no the clocks, there are only clocks.

And what we're gonna learn tonight, later, is that that's lucky for us, okay? Because if it was a clock, or the clock, you couldn't do anything about it. You'd be stuck in this suffering life.

You couldn't change your situation. If it wasn't coming from your own head, you're stuck, okay? Clocks break, clocks don't go off at the right time, clocks don't tell the right time, you're out of cell phone range.

They don't cooperate. That's suffering. They don't work.

But since it's clock and not the clock, you have hope. We have hope, okay? Then you can change what created the picture in your mind into a clock that always goes off when you want it to, or doesn't go off when you don't want it to, okay?

If things were out there, if it was a clock, we'd be in trouble. But because it's clock, we have hope. Because it's a seed ripening in our own mind, and producing a little tiny image in your own mind, there's hope for a perfect world.

You can make solar ovens in every village in Bolivia, with no money, okay? That's later. Alright, so was it Mike who caused his suffering?

Which Mike? That Mike, or Mike in your mind? You see what I mean?

Okay? Which one caused it? The Mike that you think is Mike out here.

He didn't cause Mike's suffering. Because he can't do anything, because he doesn't exist, okay?

[Speaker 2]
But isn't my suffering believing he does? Yeah.

[Speaker 1]
But when you believe he does, you're misunderstanding him.

[Speaker 2]
Right, exactly.

[Speaker 1]
That's the problem, yeah.

[Speaker 2]
Which Mike's suffering? The Mike that thinks there's a Mike out there. Yeah, that one.

[Speaker 1]
The one in my head. Which I even misunderstand that. I don't even understand who's suffering.

Okay. Alright, so do I suffer? We went through this exercise where we said, you have to ask for clarification.

Do I suffer? I'm sorry, did I cause my suffering? Yeah, which I do you mean?

I mean the I which is produced by my karma. You know, how I treated people in the past. And yes.

Yeah, then you have to say yes. That Michael did cause Michael's suffering. But if I just ask, did Michael cause Michael's suffering?

You have to say, generally you have to say no. Lord Buddha said no. Why didn't he ask for clarification?

[Speaker 2]
For Lord Buddha or the student?

[Speaker 1]
No, Lord Buddha didn't say which I you're talking about, right? The question was, was it I who caused my suffering? He didn't pause and say, which I are you talking about?

He knew which one the student was talking about. That's true too. But also he wanted to freak out people.

He wanted to overstate things. There's nothing in the world. And then you wake people up.

They're like, what do you mean? If you just said, well, you know, there's two I's. So was it somebody else who caused my suffering?

In the first case, you can say, the ultimately existing I didn't cause my suffering. But the relatively existing I produced by my karma as an image did produce my suffering. Is it ever possible that someone else, either ultimate or deceptive, could cause your suffering?

Not possible.

[Speaker 2]
Not possible.

[Speaker 1]
So you never hate anybody. And you never get mad at anybody. And you never get jealous of anybody.

Right? OK.

[Speaker 2]
Machiavelli.

[Speaker 1]
Machiavelli.

[Speaker 2]
That would be like Beyond Sorrow, right? That's the Beyond Grief part there.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, yeah. OK, that's all. All right, here we go.

If someone's talking like that, he got to be talking about emptiness. He got to be talking about emptiness. Come on.

If somebody's talking this, this psychedelic thing, he must be talking about, and it's Buddha, you know, then that section of the scripture must be talking about emptiness. Come on. Therefore, Lord Buddha did present emptiness in the lower school, in the lower way.

OK? One, two, three. Dai shin tu kun so yo che jao wa ni dak pan gyur.

Me che jao wa ni che pan gyur. Che su. Dang.

Dang. All right. OK.

Yo che jao wa ni dak pan gyur. Yo che jao wa ni dak pan gyur. Me che jao wa ni che pan gyur.

Who is that? Yo che jao wa ni dak pan gyur. Me che jao wa ni che pan gyur.

That's Arya Nagarjuna, OK? This is a longer version, so I have a feeling this is the original sutra for Arya Nagarjuna. He was probably summarizing that earlier sutra, OK?

And this is sort of what I wanted to talk. This is what I wanted to lay on a little bit tonight. You know, in my mind, we've progressed from last week.

We were doing what I think is a really important analysis of why things work. And really, if you understand it well, you come up with a conclusion that nothing works. Nothing works.

OK? And we were talking functionality. We're talking about how does stuff work in the world.

And the conclusion is that nothing works the way you thought it did. And we were talking about it in Tantric course, right? People always come up to you with an aspirin.

What's the first thing they say? This works. Or a new sleep remedy?

You know, this one works. Or, you know, you hurt your back. And the first thing they come up to you and say, you know, I got something that works.

And then always the necessity to say that before you give the aspirin or the sleep remedy or show them the new back treatment. The necessity to say that means that what? It doesn't work.

You know? People say this works when things don't work. Because they want you to...

You know, otherwise they would just give it to you and you'd take it and it would work, right? They have to say it works because it may work and it may not work.

[Speaker 2]
OK?

[Speaker 1]
And all the stuff you tried before didn't work. So then they have to say, this works. But that already begs a question.

You see what I mean? Like we were giving the example in India. When you're at the airport and you say, is the flight leaving on time?

Or is there something happening with the flight? They say, no problem.

[Speaker 2]
You know?

[Speaker 1]
And then you're like, oh no. You know? The minute they come out with this no problem thing.

[Speaker 2]
You know?

[Speaker 1]
Then you like call your friend and you go back to the apartment where you were and stay for two days. You don't even ask what happened to the plane. OK?

You just give up. And so it's the same when somebody says, this really works. You know, Jeff Eddy, try this asana.

Or try getting up in the handstand this way. This really works. You know?

And then, why are they saying that? Because there are six other ways of doing it that sometimes work and don't work. And sometimes don't work.

And this one sometimes works and doesn't work either. OK? So, yujja jaa daapar gyur.

To say that things exist is to say that things never change.

[Speaker 2]
OK?

[Speaker 1]
To say that things exist is to say that things never change. Which means, if gasoline has the power to run a car, it should always run a car. OK?

If gasoline had any efficacy of its own, if it could do anything of its own, it should always do that. That's what it means. Daapar gyur means unchanging.

If gas ever worked the way we thought it did, it should always work. Anytime you have gas in your car, you should get to Tucson. OK?

Daapar gyur. Yujja jaa daapar gyur. Meyja jaa jaapar gyur.

So, gas doesn't work. We can conclude that gas doesn't work, right? That's mey.

That's to say they don't exist. Gas doesn't exist. So, gas doesn't work, right?

No, you just have to say, I didn't say that. I didn't say that. I didn't say gas never worked.

OK? Those are the two extremes. What are they called in Tibetan?

Meta? Well, yuta? Meta and yuta?

Well, you can call it dakta and cheta. You've got both of them here in the Tibetan. You've got yuta and meta and you've got dakta and cheta.

What's the... What does it mean? To say they exist means they exist the way you thought they did.

To say they don't exist means you went too far and you're saying gas doesn't work at all. OK? When you say the first, things exist the way I thought they were, then you're implying the gasoline never varies.

It's constant. I'm as constant as a northern star. You'll claim that.

Anyway, it's constant. It always works. It never doesn't work.

OK? That would make it dakta. That would make it anitya.

Never changing. OK? To say that the gas didn't work at all would be cheta.

That would be saying that everything in the world had stopped. OK? And you shouldn't turn on light switches anymore.

And you shouldn't turn keys of cars anymore. If you believe the second one. Which view is more common?

By what percentage? Yeah, like a billion to one. OK?

They say the second half is the philosopher's downfall. The second half is the philosopher's... You know, people hear somebody give a bad lecture on emptiness and they go home and shoot themselves or something.

You know, they say, oh, nothing works. Nothing means anything. I'm living in my head.

You know, and they just give up. There's not so many people like that. There are.

But compared to the people who think stuff works, everybody thinks stuff works. Even the people who think they can shoot themselves in there will work. You know?

He doesn't really mean that. Yeah. So, even they have the other one.

So... So that's what those two extremes mean. You go through these bad translations that are like the extreme of permanence, which is already a completely wrong translation.

You can be changing and be permanent. Your mind churches. OK?

Your mind is permanent. It always was and it always... It's eternal.

And it's changing. OK? So the word is extremely poor translation.

It means they don't get the idea at all. And then I just close the book. I don't read the rest of the book.

You know, if they got that wrong, then what's the rest gonna say? You know what I mean? So, if you think things work, you must be saying that nothing can be changed.

OK? And if you think they don't work, well, you just ran... You know, you've been in too many bad emptiness classes.

But let's talk about the first one. Get this and then we can stop the class. Just get this.

If things work the way you thought they did because they had something inside of them, right? Aspirin works because it has something special, chemical inside of it. Gasoline works because it has some kind of petroleum inside of it.

If you continue to think that things work because they have something inside of them, right? Got it? I'm gonna write another chapter called In.

It's just gonna be called In. The examination of In. Because the word In is wrong.

OK? You don't have to say it depends on dependent origination and it doesn't have self-existent reality. You know, forget all that.

It doesn't have anything in it. Got it? There's no In.

There's no In. There's nothing in aspirin. There's nothing in gasoline.

Forget this whole self-existent stuff. Just think In, OK? There's nothing in gasoline that makes it work.

And there's nothing in aspirin that makes it work. Now get this. Your whole life has been shuffling around objects that have no relation to each other.

You go to the gas... You stop at, what's it, Benson, right? Because they have Starbucks next to the gas.

In Safeway. Mercedes gets the gas, me and Nimbo get the Starbucks. So, you stop there and you put some liquid in your car.

You're forcing interactions between objects that don't affect each other. You live by that. You're constantly shuffling stuff around in your life.

Let me get the gas close to the car and something will happen. And the gas can't do anything to the car. The gas has no relation to the car.

The gas never touches the car. The gas cannot affect the car. And you spend your life trying to get things in proximity.

Let me put my hammer close to this nail, you know? And then I can get a house built. You see, you take the hammer, put the nail into the wood.

You did that. You carry your hammer out to the job site. You believe that.

I've got to have a hammer in this house and I can go out. You believe that. And I sound crazy saying you shouldn't take the hammer.

You think I'm crazy. The gas thing I can handle. The hammer thing is harder.

I have to put a hammer in the proximity of the nail to get this house up. Or, you know, I'm not going to have a superior machine. You believe that.

You're shuffling objects to get them close to each other. But they never touch each other. The hammer never touches the nail.

You don't do anything to the nail. Okay? Like, that's really hard to handle.

But the day you get it, when you want a house, you know, which Lama Kristi and people have been so good at doing, you go work for somebody else's house. You don't grab a hammer and some nails and run out and find some wood. You go and fundraise for someone else's house.

And that's the smartest way to get a house. And that's why you have two million dollars a house is suddenly popping up in a community where nobody has ten bucks.

[Speaker 2]
You know? You know?

[Speaker 1]
It's a miracle. It's a miracle. It's bizarre.

It's really funny. You know, all these other universities are fundraising and they're hitting up the alumni, you know? And we don't have two dimes to run together.

And just houses popping up. Like mushrooms. Every time I drive down the road, there's, God damn, there's another house.

Whose is that? I did it today. I was like, whose is that?

I don't know. It's just another one popped up. I think it's a reflection of we're not perfect in our view, but we're getting there, right?

And so without an endowment and without any tuition fees and with no visible source of income, these houses are popping up. You know? It's because people have been giving, right?

And working for other people's houses. So keep it up. It's a good way to make the hammer hit the nail.

Does the hammer hit the nail?

[Speaker 2]
If it's loaded.

[Speaker 1]
Bad answer. Who said clarification? It's probably one of the Israelis.

No, I'm sorry. It has to be an Austrian. All right.

It couldn't be an American, I was saying. Yeah. It's like, which hammer and which nail are you talking about?

Are you talking about the hammer and the nail that I created by, you know, helping someone else? Right? Giving away a hammer.

Yeah, that hammer works. And that nail goes in. Got it?

You have to ask for clarification. So anyway, your life... I'll tell you just in closing, okay?

A neat application of these teachings tonight is with people who bug you.

[Speaker 2]
Okay?

[Speaker 1]
A nice application. Because that's... I mean, basically, once you overcome the people who bug you, you're in Nirvana.

[Speaker 2]
Right?

[Speaker 1]
I mean, isn't that the definition or something? If you could live in a world with nobody to bug you, you'd be in Nirvana. So how do you apply this to people who bug you, you know?

Whatever they're doing that bugs you, you stop doing it yourself. And it's so... Because then you're not trying to move stuff around to get stuff close to each other.

You're not trying to make them more reasonable. You see what I mean? Then you're dealing with the source code.

You see? You're dealing with where they come from. Go to your own mind and look at your own mind and say, How do I...

How did I create that? You know? Take whatever they're doing that bugs you and stop doing it yourself.

And it's fun. And it feels good. And it feels right.

And it changes them quickly. And it just works. You see?

That works. Got it? And then your life is such a nice thing.

What if a whole community of people responded to bad stuff from other people by doing the opposite? What if their natural reaction was, You know, this person really bugs me. You know?

This person's always like, You know, on my... What do you call them? They're in my face all the time.

And then if it became the natural reaction of everyone in our community to think, Oh God, whose face am I in? You know? Whose face am I in?

And then you stop that, right? Then suddenly all this chain reaction of goodness happens. You're not in somebody's face and they're happy with you.

And then you already feel better. Right? And then because of that karma the other person stops being in your face.

So then you stop being in other people's face. And then the person who bugs you stops being in your face. And suddenly no one's in anybody's face.

And that's how to fix people getting in your face. Okay? Alright.

It just is... I'm just saying, it's really satisfying to fix things that way. Because there's an immediate result that you...

The vibe that you get from the people around you feels better. Because you're trying not to be in their face and they're already like, Oh, Geshe Michael's finally not in my face anymore. You know?

And there's immediate some good vibes going. You know? And then karmically in time the person who's in your face fades away.

So it's a win-win, right? Immediately you feel happy because people feel better with you because you stopped being in their face. And then in the long run the people who are in your face go away.

It's just a nice way to deal with stuff. Instead of arguing. Instead of tension.

Instead of confronting. Instead of all the other options. You know?

It's really fun. It's really a nice way to live. And you stop moving stuff around.

Okay. Thank you. I gotta go get my gas and...

I think we should thank King Will and... Per... Pervel...

Pervel... Pie and Queen... Princess Claire.

Okay, thanks.