Welcome back. We are ACI course 4, class 1 March 17th, 2024. 

Let's gather our minds here as we usually do, please.

Bring your attention to your breath until you hear from me again.

Class opening

Bring to mind that being who for you is a manifestation of ultimate love, ultimate compassion, ultimate wisdom, and see them there with you just by way of your thinking of them. 

They are gazing at you with their unconditional love for you, 

smiling at you with their holy, great compassion,

their wisdom radiating from them. 

That beautiful golden glow encompassing you in its light. 

And then we hear them say, 

Bring to mind someone you know who's hurting in some way. 

Think about how much you would like to be able to help them, and recognize how the worldly ways we try fall short.

How wonderful it will be when we can also help them in some deep and ultimate way, a way through which they will go on to stop their distress forever.

We're learning that that's possible. 

So I invite you to grow that wish into a longing, and that longing into an intention. 

And with that intention, turn your mind back to your precious, holy being. 

We know that they know what we need to know, what we need to learn, what we need to do to become one who can help this other in this deep and ultimate way. 

So we ask them, please, please teach us that. 

They're so happy that we've asked. Of course they agree. 

Our gratitude arises. We want to offer them something exquisite.

We think of the perfect world they are teaching us how to create. 

We imagine we can hold it in our hands, and we offer it to them, following it with our promise to practice what they teach us.

Here is the great earth 

filled with fragrant incense and covered with a blanket of flowers. 

The great mountain

The four lands, wearing the jewel of the sun and the moon. 

In my mind, I make them the paradise of a Buddha and offer it all to you.

By this deed may every living being experience the pure world.

Idam guru ratna mandalakam niryatayami

I go for refuge until I am enlightened 

to the Buddha, the Dharma, and the highest community.

Through the merit that I do in sharing this class and the rest, 

may we reach Buddhahood for the sake of every living being. 

I go for refuge until I am enlightened 

to the Buddha, the Dharma, and the highest community.

Through the merit that I do in sharing this class and the rest, 

may we reach Buddhahood for the sake of every living being. 

I go for refuge until I am enlightened 

to the Buddha, the Dharma, and the highest community.

Through the merit that I do in sharing this class and the rest

may all beings reach their total awakening for the benefit of every other.

Introduction to the course

(8:30) We're on course 4 of the 18 Asian Classics Institute Foundation courses, they're called. They're not so foundation. They're deep and rich. I know many of you have already studied 10 through 18, and now it's like we're going back and learning the foundation from what we've already dug into. Which is a little bit odd, but I hope that it's helpful. At least it's helping you complete your package. 

When we started over with this group, we started with the Source of all my Good practice module so that you could get the overview of the Lam Rim.

The courtyard in the middle of the building, where your future Buddha you sits.

How do you make them for real? You have to come out this door. 

How do you get out that door? You have to get in that room.

How do you get in that room? By coming out of the one before.

All of those practices and realizations, and we got glimpses into how each step builds on the next. 

Then course 1 was the Three Principle Paths. 

What are those three principal paths? The path to Phoenix, the path to the outhouse and the path to the kitchen, right?

No, it's some other three paths, right? 

I can read your lips. Somebody say them. 

Claire, what are those Three Principle Paths? I know you know them.

Clare: Renunciation, Bodhichitta and correct view.

Lama Sarahni: Exactly, renunciation, Bodhichitta and correct view. 

Technically that means this curriculum is Mahayana. It is from the perspective of the greater capacity. But even as learning greater capacity, we learn about the lesser capacity as well. But it's not like we're starting our practice from lesser capacity. 

Renunciation, Bodhichitta—the wish to reach total enlightenment for the sake of all sint beings—, and then the correct worldview, which isn't just learning about emptiness, it's learning about the marriage of emptiness and independent origination, emptiness and karma. It takes both of those to have anything. 

So we tend to want to say renunciation, Bodhichitta and emptiness. That wouldn't be incorrect. It just would be incomplete, because emptiness alone is actually pretty meaningless. 

Then course 2 was Buddhist Refuge.

Course 2, if I'm recalling it correctly, it was mostly definitions, lists and definitions. What do we mean by refuge?

What do we mean by the three jewels?

What do we mean by Bodhichitta? 

What do we mean by Nirvana? 

What do we mean by Buddhahood? 

What do we mean by these things? 

Then course 3 was that introduction to the tools for training our meditative concentration to come under our control. Training of meditating mind to be like a microscope that we can decide what focal length, how focused, and then anything we put on the slide under the microscope, our mind will park on it to the same degree of interest and intensity regardless of what the object is. 

When we have that kind of concentration control, we have a tool that we can use to penetrate into the meanings of these concepts that we're learning about, to bring them to an actual experience, a meditative experience of them. Which goes beyond verbal explanation.

So you learn all the verbal explanation, mental verbal explanation, you hash it all out, and you come to some deep conclusion. Eventually that deep conclusion becomes this direct meditative experience of what all those words were trying to tell us. You come out of that and you only have words to explain it again, but now you mean something different by the words than you did before, because of your experience in that deep meditation. 

So it's worth the effort to train that mind to get so controlled, to be like a microscope. Eventually the realization we want to be able to hold is that direct experience of the no self nature of oneself and all existing things. 

But as we're getting close to that, through our study, through our contemplation and through our efforts in meditating, we're growing that realization. 

So it's not like every time you meditate and you don't see emptiness directly, you have failed. It's not true. You have planted more seeds to get through that portal sooner, so don't give up.

Then course 4, I was trying to think: If I was designing this course, what would come hot on the heels of meditation? The last thing that comes to my mind is logic. 

Let's study logic next. That'll be so inspiring. 

What?

But here we are, logic and perception theory. 

Now, keep in mind that this is the curriculum taught to the monks who have in their intention earning their Geshe degree. 

Not all ordained people want to earn a Geshe degree. 

Not all those who want to earn it actually achieve it.

This is the educational training in the monastery that the young kids do get taught to read and write. 

Then the next thing they get taught is how to think clearly. And that's this, it's logic and perception theory. It actually goes into all the stuff that we study in course 13. That's taught to the young teens, 12, 13-year-old, because they've learned to read and write. They've learned the basic rituals and their actual study and debate practice starts with this material that we're going to cover in our course 4. 

So part of it is about how to think clearly. And we had that a little bit in our course 2.

But more importantly, this course 4 is a discussion that helps us come to recognize that we can in fact come to know things as true or as real, even if we cannot directly perceive them with our sense organs.

Ordinarily in our western world, we say, how do I know something's real? 

I saw it, I heard it, I tasted it, I smelled it, that I knew it was there. So we confirmed something's reality by way of confirming it with our sense powers, our sensory experience of it. Yet, when we learned about refuge and Bodhichitta, and Nirvana, can we use that criteria to say, I know Buddhas exist? Have we ever seen one?

I know, it's like, would I even know it?

If I did, it should match the picture, right? It should match those 80 minor, 30 major marks, whatever it was. He should have the little goiter and the bump on his head, and he ought to be glowing in light and he ought to have these webbed fingers. I've never seen anybody. I have seen people with webbed fingers, but then they didn't have the wheel. They had this just one line. So I really can't say for sure that Buddha exists. Can I? 

If my criteria is, how do I know for sure David's bicycle is still there? Because I can see it out my window. 

Buddhas, Nirvana, karma, enlightenment, technically past and future lives. 

These are things that we believe are true. We must or we wouldn't still be studying at ACI 4 after 10 through 18.

But do we have the conviction that those are existing things, the conviction that would keep us on our track when all that yak poop hits the fan, like personal yak poop hitting the fan for you? Don't even think about how horrible it could be. But we could all imagine some terrible circumstance in which we would find it very hard to take our refuge in Buddha, Dharma, Sangha and want Nirvana when we're flat out trying to survive. 

It would be hard unless we had had some proof of those truths. 

But they aren't things that we can prove with our vision. 

We've studied course 13, most of us. We realize that doggone it, even the things we prove with our vision aren‘t actually true. We have to pretend we haven't studied that stuff yet for this ACI 4.

(22:47) ACI 4 comes to us actually from a lower school, from Logic School, a school where things exist. They're all suffering. We're trying to end the suffering, but they are existing things, and they change and they're impermanent. But we're not at the level even of Mind Only School in this discussion. But we'll see that growing this foundation, our Mind Only, 50-50 and Highest School understandings will get stronger. 

We just have to be careful with our language here. 

Why study Buddhist logic? 

Because Buddhist logic teaches us how to prove things to ourselves that we can't directly perceive.

If we can't prove those things to ourselves, then don't bother trying to prove them to somebody else. We start with ourselves.

We first need to understand what it means to have a valid perception, a perception through which we can establish something to exist. 

Then we learn how those valid perceptions can be direct and indirect and how through correct thinking we can prove things with as much validity to ourselves as a direct experience of it through deduction. 

Then we learn the details of how to do that once we get to course 13. 

Here we're gaining the foundation of what we will build upon.

In the monastic training the how to think is taught very early on. But the material of this particular course isn't taught until a few years before they're ready to sit for their Geshe debates, actually. 

Geshehla did this really skillful thing. He gave us the very beginning information, but he took us right to the end in the material that he taught us early on. So we're just baby Geshes in the making in ACI 4. But the sequence that we're going to use is used for the advanced classes. Interesting.

Geshela said back then, not many of the monks stay in the Geshe course this far. 

So not many actually ever learned the material that you're going to learn.

Then of the ones that do, they don't all go on to earn their Geshe degree. So they don't all go on to be able to teach this stuff to others. 

Again, Geshela in his wisdom, he's providing us with this material in a way that he wants us to use to share with others. Because the brilliance of that is that by sharing it with others, we understand it better. Not just through the physical mechanism of sharing it, but through the seed planting of sharing it. He's tried to make it as easy for everybody as possible, which is really sweet.

In Buddha's time, there were Hindu people. In Buddha’s time, there were no Buddhists yet. Keep that in mind. Buddha was not a Buddhist.

There were Hindu people at that time who argued that there are no such things as past and future lives, that your mind dies when your body dies. That this life was your opportunity. Do with it what you will, because when it's done, you're done. 

That was pretty similar to what I grew up with, and I was as comfortable with it as my parents were comfortable with it. Which seemed to be as far as I could tell. 

Then, as some of you know, I had this peculiar experience that proved to me that that was not in case true—like a direct experience, not in meditation, outside of meditation. But this direct experience that proved to me that my belief in ‚this life is it‘, material world is reality and there isn't anything beyond that was just plain false. 

But when that got ripped away, I didn't have any of this other information. I just had nothing to go on. 

It left me spinning in this black hole. I didn't know what was real at all. 

I landed and I learned this, and I learned that, and I learned, and it took me to here. But for me it took some devastating life-changing, horrible experience to prove to me that I was wrong. 

But then it was beyond any shadow of a doubt, because it was an experience. It was an experience, not a dream. It's pertinent. This discussion is pertinent if we live amongst others whose belief system is „the material world is what's real“, and maybe there's an afterlife, but not in the sense of some ongoing thing, not in the way that we have an understanding now. It's pertinent to have this discussion with our own selves about what happens afterwards. 

This course isn't about what happens after we die. But as we're looking at how to prove to ourselves Buddhas, karma, Nirvana, emptiness, we'll see that past and future lives are a necessary ingredient.

So we come to end up proving to ourselves the truth of the ongoing nature of your you. Not your name yourself, right? Not Sarahni, but the subject side of this mindstream goes on, on, on—always has and always will. 

To prove that to ourselves is a necessary piece to keep from losing it when the yak poop is hitting the fan. 

This course is actually called the proof of future lives. But we don't really sit down and do that proof. Maybe we‘ll talk about it at some point. Mostly this course is about proving the qualities of a Buddha. 

Then, when we even get into that, it sounds like, How does that prove anything?

It's just these words that we're using. We're going to work it through the next 10 classes if I do my job right.

To understand the logical arguments that we will hear, we need to understand about different levels of reality and what's meant by different levels of reality. 

We need to understand how we establish something as an existing thing. 

We need to understand how we actually perceive things, and how do we know what it is that we're perceiving. What comes first, the thing’s identity or our perception of it. 

It seems like it should be very straightforward, but when we get into it, it gets a little complicated. 

Valid Perception - Pranama

(33:25) We're studying a topic in Sanskrit called pramana, in Tibetan tsema. 

I have a vocabulary list. 

tse-ma mikpa yupay tsennyi

tsema namdrel       pramanavartika

tsema kuntu

tarlam selje

tsema gong gyen

du-ra

tak rik

tsen-sun

shi-drup

chi jedrak

TSEMA = Tibetan

Pramana = Sanskrit. It's short A, long A, short A—pramana.

Pramana, it means valid perception, TSEMA valid perception. 

In logic school they say valid, correct perception. 

But when we get to course 13, we'll be saying, wait a minute, valid and correct are two different things. 

But at this school, valid and correct seem to be used synonymously. 

For this group, I'm going to dance between those a little bit, and I want to lean more towards using the term valid perception so that we aren't getting confused between valid and correct. Although Geshe Michael, when he was teaching this course, he would use those terms interchangeably. He was doing it on purpose, but I'm probably not going to, because it confused the heck out of me later and I don't want to do that for you.

TSEMA means valid perception and pramanana is the Sanskrit. 

I make the difference between valid and correct, because valid perception means we're perceiving an object with a state of mind that's not deceived by something else. 

When we're perceiving an object and we're not drunk, or so sick that you can't see straight, or there's something wrong with your eyes that you can't see properly. 

Or you're so mentally afflicted, you're so angry, you can't really perceive clearly what's going on around you. 

Or you're stopped in your car, you're on this downhill slope and you're stopped in your car and then the cars around you all move forward, but you're staying still. But you get the sense that you're moving backwards or maybe the other way around. They all go backwards and you think you're going forwards and it's like, whoa, you hit the brake harder. 

That's not a valid perception. Your car was not really moving. You just thought it was because everybody else went backwards. 

Those are not valid perceptions just because you're not perceiving clearly. 

But when we say correct perception—jump schools now, let yourself jump to Highest worldview. When you perceive the scarecrow in the field and it really is a scarecrow, are you perceiving the scarecrow in the field validly? 

Yes, if you're not high, et cetera. 

But are you perceiving the scarecrow in the field correctly? Correctly meaning in the way it truly exists?

No, from Highest School, how does the scarecrow in the field truly exist? As my projection and nothing but. To see the scarecrow in the field correctly, one would need to see it coming out of your seeds and its emptiness at the same time. 

Who can do that? 

Only Buddhas, if we believe there's such a thing as Buddhas and we believe that they are omniscient. 

Technically speaking, unless we are Buddha, we can have valid perception but not correct perception. 

You see why we make that distinction here? Because from logic school level to say, I see David's bicycle out my window is a valid perception because my mind's not all screwed up. And it's a correct perception because it is his bicycle out there. It's not the neighbor's, it's not a motorcycle, it's a bicycle. I'm both valid and correct in lower school. Do you see?

Valid and correct is true in Lower School, if we're talking just about our simple human experience. But not correct, valid but not correct if we're speaking from Highest School. Only Buddhas have valid and correct perceptions, and technically they have them all the time, constantly.

To better understand what it is to be Buddha, we would want to better understand what it is to have valid and correct perception all the time. 

That's not something that we can directly perceive—yet.

But we can prove the truth of it by way of deduction. That‘s what we're going to learn in this course. 

The topic is TSEMA or pramana.

As I said, the topic is first introduced to the kids when they're about 12, and then they spend three months every year, the winter months, studying more deeply this topic of valid perception and pramana.

For most of us, 99% of our experiences are TSEMA, valid perceptions. 

The only time they're not is if we're intoxicated, so sick or so mentally afflicted that we're not seeing straight. So most of the time we are in a state of Pramana, valid perception. 

These valid perceptions make our world, make our experiences. 

The definition of an Existing Thing

In order to understand that connection between our valid perceptions and the existence of those things that we experience, they give us a definition. 

This word TSENNYI means definition. Anytime you see it, you've got a definition. Anytime your homework asks you for a definition, what's the definition of blah. Say it word for word, just memorize it, sorry. Because Geshe Michael has translated those definitions very precisely, and by the time we get to ACI 15, we see why. 

The definition of an existing thing is what this sentence gives us:

TSEMA MIKPA YUPAY TSENNYI

Claire has beautiful, beautiful reading skills. Claire, will you read us our definition of existing things, please?

Claire: TSEMA MIKPA YUPAY TSENNYI

Lama Sarahni: She sounds just like a Tibetan. 

TSEMA MIKPA YUPAY TSENNYI, please say it to yourself for the seeds so that we can keep Tibetan in the world. 

TSEMA = valid perception

MIKPA = perceived

YUPAY = of existence

TSENNYI = definition.

TSEMA MIKPA YUPAY TSENNYI =  the definition of existence, that which is perceived by a valid perception. 

The definition of existence is that which is perceived by a valid perception. 

You could say by valid perception. 

Think about that for a minute. 

How do you establish something as existing? Just perceive it with a valid perception. 

Doesn't that mean that we would have to see it, hear it, smell it, taste it, touch it with a mind that's not intoxicated, not sick, not mentally afflicted to prove existence? 

Wouldn't that mean that the only existence is the physical world existence?

If it's true that to establish an existing thing we need to perceive it with a valid perception, by perceiving it with a valid perception the thing exists.

But, we would then want to ask, is sensory perception the only kind of valid perception that proves things exist?

Olga says, no way. We know that's not true.

That's the point. Because if it were true, I could not have had that experience of something beyond the physical happening. And I did. 

But what if I had never had that experience and somebody's trying to prove to me that that could happen? There would be nothing they could say to make me believe it unless they went through some logical sequence: Well, do you believe this? Yes. 

Do you believe that? Yes. Do you believe this? Yes. 

Well, what if all those three things came together in a certain way, couldn't such and such happen? Yes.

We can prove something to ourselves that we already know the aspects of, but we've never thought of the ramification. That's where this is going.

We establish something as existing by perceiving it with valid perception. 

Let's learn how to perceive things with valid perception beyond the physical.

That opens us up to a whole lot of possible existing things that we couldn't prove to ourselves before, and now we're going to be able to do so. Hopefully, if I do my job right.

(48:07) Direct sensory experience is only one kind of valid perception, correct? 

Deductive perception is another kind of valid perception. 

Our hero Je Tsongkapa, he has those two main disciples. Gyaltsab Je on his right and Kedrup Je on his left. Kedrup Je, he was teaching also and then of course after Je Tsongkapa left, Kedrup Je was teaching, and he would say to the people he was teaching, You people, you're all taking refuge in the Buddha, but you don't have a clue as to whether or not that Buddha exists.

He's teaching people who are culturally Buddhist. You grow up taking refuge in Buddha, Dharma and Sangha, but you never really stopped to prove it to yourself because you wouldn't. Mom and dad believe it. My brothers believe it. Of course I'm going to believe it too. Until the yak poop hits the fan, then maybe it doesn't seem like, I can go for refuge in the Buddha because where the heck is he when life's going wrong?

Kedrup Je says, You've all been taking refuge in Buddha, but you don't have a clue as to whether Buddha exists or not. You have no evidence that there's a being like that. A being who is totally compassionate, totally omniscient, ready to come to you at a moment's notice. 

How can you take refuge in something that you don't know exists? 

We've heard it before. Blind faith will fail us. Faith born of logic is stronger than cement. So we want to learn to think clearly.

Deductive reasoning is another form of TSEMA.

To use deductive reasoning to come to a conclusion that conclusion is a valid perception, and that valid perception establishes something as existing. 

One would need to probably be clear that if you're using that clear thinking to establish something through deductive reasoning as truly existing, that now it's truly existing for you. And you want to impose that on others, but you would need to help the other come to that conclusion for themselves by guiding them through their clear thinking rather than just saying, I used clear thinking on me so now it's true for everybody. 

We want to believe that, but it's not going to work, is it? Because it didn't work for me. Somebody else has proven Buddhas exist and told me they exist, but I still don't know for sure. I need to prove it to myself.

The thing about Buddhist logic, technically any logic, is that we can only use reasons for our argument that the other person already believes are true. 

We're talking to ourselves, right? Here's the me trying to prove Buddha exists, and here's the me that doesn't know it yet. So the me that doesn't know it yet needs to already agree with the arguments that the one who's trying to prove it is going to tell me. Then, if I agree with this and then I agree with that, then here's the conclusion.

If you add the sum, here's the number 2, and here's the number 3.

You know 2, right? Yes. 

You know 3, right? Yes. 

So then if you add 2 to 3, you get 5, right? Right. 

Logic is kind of like that. We don't give some reason to the other that they can't confirm themselves as a reason to believe something new. It wouldn't work.

So our argument statements need to be clearly designed to help the other think through things that they already know to be true, but to add them together in a way that brings them to a new truth. 

So suppose somebody used to believe, you add 2 to 3 and you get 23. And you're trying to show them that no, when you add 2 to 3, you get 5. 

You say, here's 2. And you go, yeah, yeah, there's 2 and here's 3, right? Yeah, yeah, there's 3. 

So now true, if you wrote it 2 and then 3, it would look like 23, like you're saying.

But if we add them together, which now how many do you have? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

Do you see?

So we took two things that we already knew to be true, but we thought had a different conclusion, and now we've showed ourselves that, Oh no, no. 

It's a new conclusion from these old beliefs is what we're trying to learn to do with our logic. Old reasons put together in a new way, gives us a new understanding, a new thing that becomes real for us. TSEMA, Pranama. 

(55:35) In our developing our reasoning, for instance, you would not go to Geshe Michael and try to use any kind of argument to convince him of past and future lives, because he already knows the truth of past and future lives. 

Not just don't waste your time or his, but in terms of logic, the rules of logic, your logic, even if it was accurate, would be wrong, because you're trying to prove something to somebody that already knows it's true. 

Buddhist syllogisms are correct syllogisms only when you're pointing out things that they already know to bring them to a new conclusion that they didn't know.

Again, we learned the mechanism of doing that in ACI 13, just about it here. 

That method of reasoning also helps keep us on the same turf as the person we're interacting with. If we were highest school and we're talking to somebody whose first school, we're not helping, if we're trying to prove to them that everything's existence is emptiness, independent origination, if they're struggling to understand the impermanent nature of something. If the impermanent nature of something would give them this deep Aha that would give them such comfort, then that's the level we want to be helping them on. Rather than, yeah, yeah, impermanence is important, but come on. The most important is to know emptiness and dependent origination. 

You meet the other where they are, and help them understand a little better. 

It's true for our own self. Because again, we're doing this for ourself first. 

Meet ourselves at our own level and help us urge ourself forward. 

It will be much more smooth and effective than trying to land ourselves in the seat of Highest worldview before we've got a really strong connection with the truth of Buddhas and nirvana, and karma, and emptiness.

These teachings come down to us in a long chain through the lineage and the beauty of the Gelukpa lineage is that it is intact still, all the way back to Lord Buddhas teaching. So Lord Buddha did teach logic. 

I don't know if he was in the debate ground, but he did teach Buddhist logic, and then someone or more of his students taught it to their students, who taught it to their students, and et cetera—without it being lost somewhere along the way. 

Apparently, I don't know these things, but Geshe Michael's instruction was that the Sakyas and the Nyingmas, and the Kagyus, they were all great debaters at one time. 

Then, through the process of progress and how it goes, that debate lineage somewhere along the way got lost. Meaning at some point it stopped being taught and then it's just gone. 

With the Gelukpas, they kept the debate lineage going strongly. They kept the logic teaching in there strongly. They just had the foresight to do so, apparently. 

But it's helpful to know that when we're studying something, that the lineage has not been lost. There isn't been a missing link. 

It's important later in terms of taking our studies deeper into personal transformation to understand the power of this unbroken lineage.

The way we keep the lineage unbroken is by sharing what we learn. 

Whether you become a formal teacher or not isn't so critical as long as somebody's doing that. But in terms of passing on our own personal understanding to share what you're learning with someone else is what it is to help the lineage continue. 

One of the ways we see the lineage continuing is by way of the text that we have available to us for study. 

Again, deep gratitude to Geshe Michael for translating these into English, or I'd be out of luck for sure, and great, great gratitude to the Tibetan culture that kept them so intact for so long. Then great gratitude to the circumstances that took those collections elsewhere so that when they were lost or damaged in Tibet, they could be found elsewhere, and great gratitude to ALL and all the sponsors of ALL. They're still finding collections of texts that many are repeats of what they already have, but there are some others that had not been known that were there. So the collection is growing, thank goodness, as long as somebody can read and interpret Tibetan. 

The Texts we are studying

We have this series of texts that we are studying from that make up your reading in ACI 4.

There are four principle texts that we will use. Here are the four. 

The main one is TSEMA NAMDREL, in Tibetan it's called Pramanavartika. 

Let‘s take a break. (Break)

The 4 Main Texts

(64:07) All right. Our four textbooks that we will be studying, the main one is called TSEMA NAMDREL, Pranamavartika by Master Dharmakirti (630 AD in India). 

This is an Indian man, this is an Indian text. It's original was in Sanskrit. It was translated into Tibetan.

TSEMA NAMDREL = commentary on valid perception

It sounds like it's a text that's talking to us about valid perception. What it is, how you get it, et cetera. But the commentary on valid perception means that it's a commentary on a text called valid perception. 

That text that it's referring to is called TSEMA KUNTU.

TSEMA KUNTU = Compendium of Valid Perception 

It was written by Master Dignaga (440 AD in India). 

So 200 years before Master Dharmakirti, Master Dignaga wrote this compendium on valid perception. 

What he did to make this compendium is he went into all of the scripture, the Kangyur and Tengyur. He cut and pasted everything about logic and valid perception and perception theory that had been taught by Lord Buddha and those after him. He put that all together into this teaching compendium so he would have it to teach his people. 

They say then Master Dignaga is the founder of logic or of perception theory. But he didn't found it. He just pulled it all together and put it in one place from Lord Buddha's teachings and those who came after who clarified it afterwards.

But it's really hard apparently. So over the years, in order to access the wisdom in the compendium, master Dharmakirti comes along and he writes a commentary on that compendium. 

This is what that means, this is what that means. That's the TSEMA NAMDREL, Pramanavartika that Geshela refers to a lot in various teachings.

But then, TSEMA NAMDREL is really difficult to understand as well. So in Je Tsongkapa‘s, he has this student Gyaltsab Je. Gyaltsab Je writes a commentary on the commentary to help his students understand it better. He titles that commentary, TARKAM SELJE, which means Light on the Path to Freedom.

But it's very deep and difficult also. 

So in more modern times, 1928 to 1997, Geshe Yeshe Wangchuk is teaching his students and he puts together another text called TSEMA GONG GYEN, which means the The Jewel or the Ornament of True Thought. 

This is a commentary on the Light on the Path to Freedom

which is a commentary to TSEMA NAMDREL

which is a commentary to TSEMA KUNTU. 

Technically this list, if it were by time:

1. TSEMA KUNTU

2. TSEMA NAMDREL

3. TARLAM SELJE

4. TSEMA GONG GYEN

Geshela put this one first (TSEMA NAMDREL, Pranamavartika) because it's the main one that's used to study in the monastery. But in order to understand it, they use TARLAM SELJE and TSEMA GONG GYEN. He translated them into English for us.

The Beginners‘ Texts

Then there are more simplified texts that the kids use when they're first learning. These texts are being taught to the Geshes a few years before they're going to sit for their actual final debate. 

But in order to get there as 12 year olds, they're taught from a two texts called the DURA and the TAK RIK.

DURA is the title of a collection of texts that's called Collected Topics. 

It's what DURA means, collected topics. 

TAK RIK is the study of formal logic and reasoning. 

So when we learned about the syllogism and how to investigate the syllogism that comes out of these simple early texts that the young people are taught.

Then within the DURA, collected topics, there are a whole slew of topics, but the three most important ones are:

1. TSENSUN, which means how to define something, the definition of definitions. 

So that when we make a definition of something, it really can define that thing. Then we also learn that when we're thinking definitions, we're thinking, How do we put the words together in the right way so that everybody else can understand it in the same way as me? That is one thing about definitions. But then we learn later that when we're talking about what defines something, what we're talking about from a Higher School is how do we come to recognize it? Like what defines fire? It's not the words in the dictionary, it's the hot and burning. So what defines fire is you put your hand over and ouch, that's fire.

To define something means it becomes real for you. That's different than what are the words in the dictionary. Somehow those two come together by understanding these principles of defining things. TSENSUN.

2. SHIDRUP is the topic about that outline of all existing things. 

Do you have that in your head? Consider all existing things: changing things, unchanging things. Within changing things there's physical, there's mental, there are changing things that are neither of those two completely. That algorithm, to have a method of establishing categories of all existing things, so that if we're trying to prove ourselves something about the color red, that we can make sure that what we're saying about the color red pertains to everything that the color red is or can be. 

We need to have this method of knowing what we mean by all existing things, and how to divide them down so that when with them, we don't leave any stone unturned.

There's this whole topic of consideration, learning how to do that within clear thinking.

SHIDRUP, it's called. 

3. CHI JEDRAK that we're pretty familiar with that one, that's the study of things that are general and things that are specific, is one way of trying to describe that.

Like set and subset, or classes and subclasses of things. But none of those are quite right. CHI JEDRAK is about coming to intellectually understand how it is that something moves from a general idea into a specific appearance of that general idea. We've all studied it a little bit. Geshe Michael's classic is meditate on the difference between car, car, a car that car, the car, my car, good car, bad car, green car, blue car, right?

How that image gets more and more specific from this generalized, not even an image yet, an ideal. Then how does that become from the ideal car into my blue Subaru sitting out in the carport right now. To learn how that works, to try to learn how that works actually will lead us to the direct perception of it, which is the direct perception of dependent origination. Hot on the heels of that will be the fact that nothing exists in any other way than that. So in terms of looking for a process to set the dominoes to the direct perception of emptiness in motion, once we have that meditating mind, we use it to work on our CHI JEDRAK until we have that experience of, Oh, Seeds ripening, and then run and jump on your meditation question because the next thing up could be your direct perception of nothing exists in any other way than that. And that's your direct perception of emptiness if you sink into it, distractedly et cetera, et cetera.

It seems like a children's text, but deep important principles being taught and methods being taught that being planted in our minds that are going to help us grow our wisdom.

Geshela says over and over again, studying logic is the key to Madhyamika, the key to Middle Way, is growing our ability to think clearly. That then is the key to seeing emptiness directly, which of course is the key to Nirvana and enlightenment—we've been told. So we want to be able to learn the clear thinking methods through which we can prove that to ourselves, if we haven't already.

Geshela was sharing that when he was living at the monastery in New Jersey, they had some of the old Mongolian masters living there too. And there was one guy who was actively dying and Geshela went to visit him, and the monk was there in bed with his Dura text from when he was 12 years old. He still had his text on debate and he's reading that and Geshela said, he asked him, he said, Geshela, you're dying.

What are you doing reading Dura? And the Lama said, yeah, this is what I want to have on my mind when I pass. This is the key to Middle Way. 

So he's making himself read about logic, hoping it'll be on his mind when he dies. Tells us the power of logic. It is for the purpose of reaching Nirvana and enlightenment. 

Lord Buddha on Judging Another Person

(79:30) One might want to ask, did the Tibetans make this all up or did Buddha teach logic?

In that compendium back from four 440 AD—which was still a long time after Lord Buddha walked the earth, right? 550 BC to four 440 AD, that's a long time.

But Buddha is quoted as having said, quote: 

„If you are me or one like me, you can judge another person. 

But if you are not like me and you judge another, you will fall.“

You will fall, it says. Apparently through the years that's been morphed into you will fail, meaning you'll be mistaken about your judgment about the person.

Geshela said he went back into the scripture to check, did Buddha say „you will fail“ or did he say „you will fall“? And it's very clear he says, you will fall.

Does that mean when you judge somebody wrongly, you just fall down and go boom? No, it means you'll fall to a lower realm.

If we judge another and we are not omniscient and compassionate, made of omniscience and compassion, we will be so mistaken about our judgment of that other person and then hence our behavior towards them that we'll plant the seeds that will land us in a lower realm. 

The commentary says, probably a hell realm. 

Don't think, oh, that's okay, I'll just become an owl and that won't be so bad. It's like no wrong, any lower realm is awful. But mostly when they say you'll fall, they mean fall to the worst places. 

What does it mean to judge another? 

We judge others all day long. Just in terms of they're older than me, they're younger than me. That's a judgment. Does Buddha say, don't do that? 

I mean it'd be ideal if we didn't do that, but that's not really what they're talking about. Just not making a judgment about how we need to behave.

We have to make those judgments, implied in there is making a negative judgment. To think we know why they are behaving the way that they are, to think we know better than they. What they should have done in that situation. 

When somebody, the boss is yelling at us and we're judging the boss as bad boss, everybody knows they're a rotten boss. They know everybody dislikes them in the same way. So that justifies my thinking of them in such and such a way, and that justifies my lying to wiggle out of whatever they're blaming me for. Everybody will agree with me that because they're inappropriate, and they just fly off the handle, right? 

All that kind of judgment. Thinking we know what's on their mind. Thinking, we know what has motivated them. That we can't know. 

We don't know if that boss's wife just left him, and he's just so distraught that that's why that slight mistake that I made set him off so badly. If I knew that, I would cut him a little slack, wouldn‘t I? Maybe his daughter just got killed. I mean, horrible. 

You can think of horrible things that would make somebody behave badly and then we'd like, oh, I'm so sorry. Our own hurt would become a little bit more secondary than that. 

Yet, our habit is we're so within our own realm of: They hurt me. I don't like that. They must have done it, because they don't like me. Or they did it because they think so-and-so is better than me and they want to put me down.

The way our mind goes off on making a story about what's just happened. Those seeds are seeds that if any one of them ripens at the moment of death is for sure not going to land you back as a human.

Because human, being human is a result of extraordinary kindness. 

To have this idea in mind, why did Buddha say that you have to be omniscient in order to judge someone. He means we would need to be omniscient to be able to know correctly why they're behaving the way that they are.

If we knew correctly why they were behaving in the way that they are, we wouldn't hold them responsible. If we knew the seed that was planted that made the boss get angry at the moment, we would also include knowing that, oh man, that was actually my seed that made them get angry at me at the moment. Who should I judging here? Whose behavior should I be concerned about? Theirs at me or mine at them? 

They say that this quote, 

If you are one, if you are me or one like me, you can judge another. 

But if you are not and you judge another, you will fall. 

is proof that Lord Buddha taught logic. 

Cook that one.

It is a logical syllogism actually, and he's using logic there. 

But it also does not mean that we just then ignore anybody's behavior.

Like, I can't judge their behavior. I see somebody beating somebody up. But who am I to judge? I'm not a Buddha, right? 

We also have our Bodhisattva intention at least to help stop suffering. So we can't say, oh, I'm not going to judge what's going on over there. Because it is not judgment to see that somebody's getting hurt. 

But a wise judgment would be, there's two people getting hurt here. The one who's ripening their karma and the one who's planting their karma. 

What can I do to interfere in some way? It doesn't mean step in the middle of it, drop your purse, pull the fire alarms, stand out in traffic, so the corn's all honk, something that'll make that altercation go, What's going on? And we've broken a cycle there. 

To not judge doesn't mean to don't not act, but act out of compassion and wisdom. This is what it looks like is going on and I see harm happening. I need to do something. But not with the judgment of victim - perpetrator. 

There is an apparent victim, there is an apparent perpetrator, but stop it right there and somehow get help for both of them. 

Buddha is saying, this is why we need logic. Because we can't know. Until we're omniscient, we don't know what's really going on. If we rely only on our sensory apparatus, we only get a piece of the picture, and a very small piece actually. 

If we have this ability to use reasoning, deduction, we can come to conclusions that take us deeper than the sensory can take us. But we need to do it accurately, otherwise we're just fooling ourselves with our reasoning. Which is the kind of reasoning that most of us learn how to apply. 

We want to retrain ourselves in our reasoning ability. 

Mostly our reasoning is:

Let's go to Chinese food. Why? 

Because it's better for you. Why? 

Because it doesn't have so much cheese. Why? 

If the person just keeps saying, Why?

Finally it's because I want Chinese food. 

Why didn't you just say that to begin with and be honest? But it's not a logical reasoning, especially for a Bodhisattva. 

A Bodhisattva would say, Let's go to Mexican, because you want Mexican. Even though I don‘t.

Using logic can help us, interactions with others.

The commentaries all say, that verse, 

If you are me or one like me, you can judge another.

is the ultimate source for Buddhist logic. Teaching us not to judge others, meaning not judge them as if we know what they're doing. 

Then there's just a little bit more. 

Logic as the kindest thing to be taught

I said before, Je Tsongkapa had those two disciples, Kedrup Je and Gyaltsab Je. 

Gyaltsab Je was actually a logician in his own right, a good one. And he heard about this young upstart guy from the Onion fields who was teaching around and getting this reputation. In his pride of being a good debater, he decided he would go to this guy from the Onion field teaching and show him a thing or two. 

The short of this story, we'll get the longer one later, is that Gyaltsab Je shows up at the teaching. Je Tsongkapa has already started teaching and Gyaltsab Je marches right down the aisle and goes and gets up onto the teaching throne with Je Tsongkapa. And Je Tsongkapa just doesn't lose a beat in his teachings. 

So Gyaltsab Je is sitting there with him listening, listening.

After a little while, gets up off the throne and goes down and sits in the audience. 

After a little while later, Gyaltsab Je is prostrating during the teaching, and by the end of the teaching Gyaltsab Je goes to this young upstart and asks him to be his teacher.

It's like, that's pretty impressive. 

First of all, for Gyaltsab Je to be open enough to hear something new from someone young, that he intended to go refute, to then hear something so profound that he changed his mind on the spot. Really beautiful. 

But the reason it comes up is because he then went on to say that once he took Je Tsongkapa as his teacher, Lama Tsongkapa taught him everything from the beginning. He started all over and learned it all, including logic, including Diamond Way. 

In the end, Gyaltsab Je would say: 

The kindest thing that Lama Tsongkapa ever did for me was to teach me logic.

From someone who had mastered logic.

That's the lineage that we're in, is Lama Tsongkapa‘s lineage, and that's the logic we're learning. 

Hopefully it moves us to want to try it on for size and not go, logic ew. 

It really is useful and I know I've told you before that, for myself, I went through school, I had to work really, really hard in school. But I got A's. I did well, I knew how to succeed in school and I did school, and I did college, and I did college multiple times, multiple degrees. Multiple. Multiple. I figured it out and I was good at it. 

But I realized I didn't learn to think until I took the ACI series and actually until somebody had asked me to share it with them. 

Then suddenly it was like, oh, this is what they mean by thinking. Before I was just putting it in, spitting it out, putting it in, spitting it up. But I didn't really learn how to think until I studied logic. 

I am not a syllogism maker. But what I learned is, I hear somebody make a statement, and my mind can think of all the different ramifications of what could be meant, could be understood by that statement, and how everybody's going to hear it a little bit differently. Then how absurd it was that the person said it. The person usually being me, or David, said it. Because it's just like we have all these reasons that we do things and that we share with people and everybody goes, yeah, yeah. And then when you think about it, it's just like, oh my god, it just doesn't work like that. I can't even use a direct example at this. But it became so clear to me that all of a sudden it's like, oh my gosh, I just learned how to think. I was 40, I was nearly 50 years old before I learned how to think.

So you guys already know how to think, but I hope that it will get fine tuned because it's so helpful, really. So helpful to be able to see the ramifications before you choose which path to go down with your behavior. It really is helpful. 

Okay, that's our class 1. 

I get the extra 15 minutes later, but I'll give it to you now. Any questions? I mean I'm sure there's lots, but anything need clarifying before you try to do your homework? Yay. Good. 

Class Ending

Remember that person, we wanted to be able to help at the beginning of class.

We learned stuff that we will use sooner or later to help them in that deep and ultimate way. And that's a great, great goodness. 

So please be happy with yourself.

Think of this goodness, like a beautiful glowing gemstone that you can hold in your hands. 

Recall your own precious holy being. See how happy they are with you.

Feel your gratitude to them, your reliance upon them. 

Ask them to please stay close, to continue to guide you and help you and inspire you. 

And then offer them this gemstone of goodness.

See them accept it and bless it, and they carry it with them right back into your heart.

See them there. Feel them there. Their love, their compassion, their wisdom.

It feels so good, we want to keep it forever. 

And so we know to share it.

By the power of the goodness that we've just done

May all beings complete the collection of merit and wisdom

And thus gain the two ultimate bodies that merit and wisdom make. 

Use those three long exhales to share this goodness with that one person,

to share it with everyone you love, to share it with every being you've ever, ever seen or heard of. See them all filled with happiness, filled with loving kindness. 

May it be so. 

Thank you so much.

For the recording, welcome back. We are ACI course 4, class 2 on March 21st, 2024. 

Let's gather our minds here as we usually do, please.

Bring your attention to your breath and until you hear from me again

[Usual opening]

(7:22) Let's do our review from the quiz. Remember? So what's that Tibetan and Sanskrit term for valid perception? Anybody, just unmute and tell us.

Lian Sang: TSEMA and pramana.

Lama Sarahni: Then what's the definition of existence? 

Joana: That which is perceived by valid perception.

Lama Sarahni: Yeah, that which is perceived by valid perception. 

That's cool. Keep that in mind going forward.

Then what did Buddha himself say is the purpose of logic? We had that quote.

Natalia: Only me or someone like me can judge others, and no ordinary person can do it because they will fall.

Lama Sarahni: Yeah, good. 

If you are me or someone like me, you can judge another. 

But if you are not like me and you judge another, you will fall. 

He's not saying we should study logic because…

He's saying we're making some big mistakes in our judging others, and by implication we need to learn how to think more clearly about what we believe is true about another. So we can stop doing that. 

Okay, nice. 

(9:30) TSEMA, pranama, they mean our ordinary, unaffected perceptions that we have most of the time. Only rarely do we have an affected perception. Which means that perception doesn't qualify as valid perception. 

It doesn't mean it's no perception at all.

It means the thing that we are perceiving and holding to in a certain way is not that. We've made some kind of mistake.

They give us a couple of examples of an affected perception. 

Like at dusk, you're driving and something dashes across in front of your car. You slam on the brakes because it's a squirrel. Then you look and it was a leaf. 

It's like we're not in the class where we're going to debate, was it a squirrel or was it a leaf? That's a different school, a different purpose.

But the squirrel ends up not being a valid perception. 

It was a perception, but it doesn't qualify as pranama, and the squirrel did not exist. It was a leaf.

Another kind of situation that is a perception that's affected and so not qualifying as a valid perception is: Suppose there's somebody at work that you don't like very much. Then, something goes so badly wrong and you are so convinced that they caused it. But then come to find out later, they had nothing to do with it. 

The them that you're blaming for all of these problems, it was never a valid perception. It was a perception. But not a valid one. Not establishing something to exist. 

Another example Geshela likes to give, for some reason is: your boyfriend girlfriend is acting in weird ways. Your jealousy makes you so sure that they're having an affair that you yourself start behaving weird. Then you come to find out what they were doing was arranging your surprise birthday party.

So that partner who was misbehaving was never there. 

You were so sure they were, but they weren't there at all. Affected perception.

They happen rarely, only rarely for most of us.

Three Levels of Reality

(13:45) Why is it so important to study valid perception if 99% of our experiences all day and all night are valid perceptions? It should be so obvious that we don't need to study them. 

They say the reason to study them is because of the vast quantity of valid perceptions that we have, they just touched the tip of the iceberg of all existing things. We're missing a whole lot of things that could be established as existing if we rely solely on what we know to be a valid perception. 

It's helpful to study what they are, and what they aren't and these different levels of what we mean by valid perception.

By studying logic and reasoning, we can actually learn how to perceive those other realities, those other existing things that direct valid perception cannot show us. 

To understand that, we need to understand these three levels of reality. 

We learned in course 2 two kinds of reality. We learned deceptive reality and ultimate reality, and that all existing things could be divided into those two realities. In a sense, divided isn't quite right.

Here these 3 realities are in a different context. 

We're not trying to fit them within the deceptive reality and ultimate reality. Technically they're all in deceptive reality. But just separate those two ideas.

For these three levels of reality we are studying from the Sutrists level school and to some extent Middle Way, but mostly think Sutrist school, Sautantrika is the name of it in Sanskrit. Sutrists believe all these existing things, they're not self-existent, because they rely on their causes, and conditions and it's through those causes and conditions that things come about. So they have dependent origination and because those causes and conditions change by way of bringing something about, then those existing things are changing, changing, changing. They are impermanent.

If we could better relate to things and other people, and our experiences from their impermanent nature, we would be less upset when things go wrong, less graspy when things go right. We would be so much happier if we could just understand the impermanent nature of all things, because they rely on their causes and conditions. Helpful. Not going to ultimately help us stop perpetuating suffering, but it's the first step. 

So all those existing things, Sutrists school needs to be able to explain them and explain what their causes and conditions are. So they divide realities into these 3 levels called 

1. NGUN GYUR (obvious reality)

2. KOK GYUR (hidden reality)

3. SHINTU KOK GYUR (deeply hidden reality)

So time for vocabulary.

Here are the three realities. Please say NGUN GYUR, KOK GYUR and SHINTU KOK GYUR. Apparently SHINTU is always said that way. SHINTU KOK GYUR.

1. GYUR = that which is (obvious reality)

NGUN GYUR = obvious or evident, that which is 

What they mean by that is the category of NGUN GYUR reality is made up of those things and beings that we perceive directly with our senses, they're obvious to us.

NGUN GYUR.

These are actually things like color and shape, sounds, smells, tastes, tactile, sensation and our thoughts. NGUN GYUR, obvious reality. Those things that are right there that our sense apparatus perceives.

2. KOK GYUR = that which is hidden (hidden reality)

KOK = hidden

So the reality of things which are hidden to an ordinary consciousness, a samsaric consciousness. KOK GYUR is hidden reality. The classical example of hidden reality is emptiness. The emptiness of things. We can't perceive that with our eyes, ears, and nose, tongue or thought. We can't perceive it directly with those.

We have to think it out in order to have a valid perception of it. 

Our valid perception of emptiness will not be a direct one. It will be one arrived at by way of deduction. 

It will be a valid perception, but valid by way of deduction.

We call it the intellectual perception of emptiness, and that's what is hidden reality. 

We can get to it, but it takes this thinking about it to come to that conclusion. 

Anything that we come to perceive by way of reasoning is in this category of hidden reality. 

The other classical example of hidden reality is subtle impermanence.

Now, gross impermanence is part of obvious reality. 

Gross impermanence is when your computer breaks. It's when you get sick so your health is gone temporarily or maybe for longer. Or when somebody moves away or dies. That's all gross impermanence, part of obvious realities when it happens. 

Subtle impermanence is coming to perceive by way of reasoning that everything is being destroyed moment by moment. That isn't our direct reality of things. 

Here's my friend the pen. You've seen it for months, same one. But technically it's changed every time we see it. 

We can get that intellectually, but directly, not same one. She's got that same old red and white pen.

At some point in meditation from our study, from our practice, from our meditation, we will actually perceive this changing, changing, changing nature of something. If it's happening in meditation, you're not going to see it with your eyes. But you are going to see it with your mind's eye. We reach that through this carefully applied reasoning to reach this Aha, and then in meditation we park our mind, our awareness on that arhat with that fixation, clarity, and intensity that we talked about in course 3. 

Another example of the difference between obvious reality and hidden reality is that example of seeing a car smashed up against a tree.

It is just there. As you look at it, you're driving by and there it is. Your obvious reality is: car smashed against tree. But your mind goes, oh, an accident must have happened. That we've used reasoning. It went that fast, right? We didn't have to go, consider the tree against the car against the tree. There must have been an accident because… We didn't have to draw up as syllogism. You just thought it through.

The accident that we know must have happened is part of hidden reality.

We didn't see it happen. It's not happening now. We're not directly aware.

The car against the tree is obvious reality. Do you see? 

It's like we're doing logic to come up with hidden reality conclusions frequently. Like I go home and I'm telling David about it, wow, I saw this accident, this car against a tree. My words would say I was there when it happened. But that isn't really. If I were being more accurate. 

I‘d say, I saw a car smashed against a tree and so I deduced that there must have been an accident. I hope nobody was hurt. 

But I would say, wow, there was an accident.

Do you see? We mixed the two. Probably more frequently than we realize.

3. SHINTU KOK GYUR = very hidden reality

SHINTU = really, really hidden reality, really hidden things

Which is why they say it like that, Really. Like very, very, very much hidden. 

The classical example of something that SHINTU KOK GYUR is the subtle workings of karma. Technically the subtle workings of karma are more deeply hidden than is emptiness. 

We think of emptiness directly as the ultimate thing that we can perceive. But technically it's not. Deeper than that even is this hidden workings of karma. 

But by that what they mean is the specific seed imprint cause for the specific details of every experience. So it's the hidden workings of karma, the subtle karma that would reveal why the fibers in your carpet are this one is green, and that one is gray, and that one is blue. We say, no, they were just dyed that way.

But why that design? Why particular color?

There are cause-result relationships for everything, specific ones. A specific something that we did that makes that carpet have that fiber be that color in that location. It is the only way those specific workings of karma can be perceived is if our mind is omniscient. 

The only being who perceives deeply hidden reality is a Buddha, because that omniscient state of mind is what it is to be Buddha. 

With that state of mind every detail of every existing thing of all three times is directly perceived. For an omniscient mind that is not deeply hidden reality, that is obvious reality. But for a non omniscient mind that is so deeply hidden, we can't even logic it out. 

We can learn the principles of karma such that we can draw correlations between behaviors, types of behaviors, and likely results with sufficient accuracy for us to be able to guide ourselves in making wiser behavior choices. But in terms of the absolute details of what causes what, what will cause what, and where stuff came from requires omniscience.

(32:26) Again, NGUN GYUR, the obvious level of reality is that what was directly perceived with our senses. 

Hidden reality, KOK GYUR requires us to think about it, to perceive it.

Then SHINTU KOK GYUR requires us to be omniscient to perceive.

Short of being omniscient, we can come to accept deeply hidden reality and what things might be found there by way of authority. Until we establish that authority, our SHINTU KOK GYUR understanding will be limited. It'll be doubting. 

There are certain conditions that allow us to accept what we learn from Lord Buddha as authoritative and we'll be studying that as we go on.

(34:20) This course is primarily about learning about deductive reasoning so that we can recognize how we are already doing it, but doing it in a faulty way, so that we can use reasoning in a more accurate way to help us interact with our own experiences in a wiser way. 

We're using deductive reasoning anytime we're trying to figure out, Why did that person do that to me? 

What they did was obvious reality. But if we're not omniscient, we don't know their mind, and everything about them that was involved in why they said what they said. But if we're not omniscient, we also are not aware of what in me made me hear it in the way that I did, and react to it in the way that I did.

An ordinary human nature is to come up with reasons for why they did that to me. 

The reasons we're trying to come up with could very well be reasons that we're trying to point out how bad they are, or how mistaken they are. Or reasons trying to point out why no, no, they can't be as bad as I'm seeing them, making excuses for them. 

Either way, our thoughts that we're having about the circumstance, it's through those thoughts that we're working out a story that we then come to believe is true. 

But that's all done through reasoning.

The obvious reality was the sounds, the colors, the what was happening at the moment that set this whole reasoning off.

(37:15) We get into trouble when we apply faulty logic to come to a conclusion and use that conclusion, born of faulty logic to decide our next action. In doing so, we perpetuate our cycle. 

We're wanting to train ourselves to recognize the difference between what's truly obvious reality and what's hidden reality in our day-to-day existence, our day-to-day interactions. 

But then deeper than that, also included in hidden reality is those things like nirvana, Buddhahood, some method for reaching either nirvana or Buddhahood. Those are pretty important things to learn to logic out to the point of our perception of them, valid perception born of reasoning. 

When they say, how do we establish existence, that which is perceived by valid perception? They don't say, that which is perceived by sensory valid perception.

It's not limited to that. 

A correct reasoning, to bring something to a deductive valid perception establishes it as existing. 

We're getting this glimpse of how important correct reasoning is, accurate reasoning. 

Are these three realities mutually exclusive? 

(39:40) …your homework is going to ask you. Can anything be in more than one of those categories at the same time? Can one thing be all three kinds of reality at the same time? 

What do you think?

It doesn't seem like it. 

But do those categories of reality, are they objective or subjective?

Do they come from them or do they come from the one who's perceiving them?

Those three realities are not object dependent, they are subject dependent. 

That means anything could be any one of those three realities depending on the mind of who's perceiving them. 

For instance, here's the color yellow. Is the color yellow obvious reality?

We'd say, yes, look, there it is—directly with your eyes.

But what if you were blind and I said, look, the color yellow. 

Then is this color yellow obvious reality? 

No. 

Suppose that blind person used to have sight and now they're blind, and you say, look, here's the color yellow. Is that color yellow that I'm pointing out to them, it‘s not obvious reality because they're not perceiving it with their sense organs. But is it really hidden reality?

No, because they can deduce. I remember yellow. She just said, see there's yellow here. I can remember so I can decide that there's yellow there. It's a hidden reality for that once sighted, now blind person. 

The yellow they are seeing in their mind's eye may or may not be this yellow. But because they knew yellow and they heard me say yellow, they put two and two together and come up with an experience of yellow.

What if that person had been blind from birth? And I said, look, see the yellow?

Is that yellow now really hidden reality? Because they have no concept color. 

Try to describe color to someone who's been born blind. Can't be done. Deeply hidden reality. 

Same thing: depending upon who's looking. Obvious for us, hidden for somebody who used to have sight but now is blind, and deeply hidden for someone who's never had sight.

(44:00) Then can the subtle workings of karma ever be obvious reality? 

Yeah, to a Buddha. To an omniscient being everything is obvious reality. It always throws me a little bit because we're thinking, oh, we just established ordinary reality is so limited, but for Buddha there's no such thing as hidden and deeply hidden reality. Everything is obvious reality to an omniscient mind. Interesting. 

That means Buddhas have no deductive reasoning. 

That's weird, isn't it?

We need to become so good at deductive reasoning that we become a being who no longer needs it because everything's direct.

Deductive reasoning is when you take information and you think about it and you come up with something. 

Everything direct means you never have to do that.

Does that mean Buddhists never think? No. But they're not having to think things into being the way we do.

Two Kinds of Valid Perceptions

(45:54) This is pointing out that there are two kinds of valid perceptions, TSEMA, two kinds of or two categories of a valid perception:

NGUNSUM TSEMA and JEPAK TSEMA

1. NGUNSUM TSEMA = direct valid perception

Not dependent on reasoning. For sansaric humans, NGUNGSUM TSEMA is colors and shapes, sounds, smells, taste touches, the thoughts. Not what the thought comes to a conclusion, but the thought itself. Our direct perception.

The things that we actually see, or think we see, are achieved by way of thinking about, taking the information that we got from our sense organs and putting them together into an identity. Which technically is happening via JEPAK TSEMA.

Even as we say, oh I see the tree directly, we're not seeing the tree directly. We're seeing the colors and shapes doing some rapid deduction, and coming up with ‚tree‘ onto those colors and shapes. 

It's a little harder to catch this with our thoughts. In that the thought itself is like the color and shape for our eyeball. But then when we stream what we think about our thoughts is using deduction to come up with a recognition of the meaning of that thought and the ramification of it. 

2. JEPAK TSEMA = deductive reasoning

Geshela‘s example was, we could have some thought, and then we have a thought about that thought: Oh that thought was stupid. The ‚That thought was stupid‘ was a reasoning, but the first thought was the direct thought. That's hard to catch in experience, but it's similar to color shape becoming the object.

We are showing that in order to perceive hidden and deeply hidden reality, we need this JEPAK TSEMA, correct reasoning to make a valid perception. 

Incorrect reason makes perceptions, but they're not valid. Do you see?

Incorrect reasoning makes it such that that coworker was intentionally causing you to look bad. You're so sure it's true that you're acting as a result of it. But in the end you find out they never did that at all.

Your incorrect reasoning brought you to an invalid perception. 

The coworker causing you trouble was never an existing thing. But we sure thought they were, and we maybe created some negative seeds as a result.

(50:34) We want to be able to develop our deductive reasoning into a reliable and consciously useful tool to perceive things that people who don't have that tool can't perceive. 

Actually when you have developed that skill, it seems to others like you're reading their mind, or it seems to others like you can see into the future, when you're just applying really careful reasoning to come up to a conclusion that other people are applying faulty reasoning to come to a different conclusion. 

It really is helpful to develop this tool, even for an ordinary human life that you just want ordinary human successes. 

But the reason we're trying to develop it is so that we can prove to ourselves nirvana and Buddhahood and how to reach it.

Alright, let's take a break and we're going to dig into Master Dignaga's opening statements. Let's get refreshed before we do. I'm pausing the recording. 

(Break)

Master Dignaga‘s opening line

(52:25) Geshehla used Master Dignaga‘s opening lines from his text, The Compendium of Valid Perception. 

Remember, The Compendium of Valid Perception was put together by Master Dignaga from all the different stuff that Buddha said about logic and perception theory. 

He put it all into one place, and it's too hard for anybody to understand. So 200 years later, somebody writes a commentary on it, Master Dharmakirti.

A couple hundred years later somebody writes a commentary on that, and then another one. Until they get down to being easy enough for us to understand, which for me was Geshe Michael's explanation in the original ACI.

I can't even read the simplest commentaries and really understand it without hearing Geshela‘s explanation. 

Here's the opening lines of Master Dignaga‘s text. 

This is from 440 AD. The original apparently was in Sanskrit. It got translated into Tibetan. This is the Tibetan. So please repeat after me.

TSE MAR GYURPA DROLA PEN SHEPA

TUNPA DESHEK KYOP LA CHAK TSEL

There's a second line that I'll share only in English once we get there. 

When you write your Buddhist book, your commentary. When you write your commentary, your opening line will traditionally be a paying tribute to the being from whom the subject matter has come. The being from whom the topic you are writing about has come from. 

In the text we often see—not the Buddhist sutras, but in the commentaries about them—the author will say, I bow down to Manjushri and then something about Manjushri. That tells you that the text is going to be something about Manjushri‘s specialty, which is wisdom. 

Sometimes they'll say, I bow down to Chenrezig, and you know it's going to be something about compassion or method side, or Bodhisattvahood.

Sometimes it'll be, I bow down to the Able One, Shakyamuni, and you know it's going to be about Vinaya. 

There are these clues to what the text is going to be focused on primarily—not limited necessarily, but focused on primarily.

Master Dignaga says this:

LA CHAK TSEL = I bow down to

It's the namas in Sanskrit, but literally this means „I seek from your hand“. I seek from your hand meaning this being that you're bowing down to, they hold something—not literally in their hands, but they hold something that we aspire to hold ourselves. 

When we go to them with this act of reverence and ask for their help, we're asking them to give us this thing that they hold. The words are literally „I seek from your hand“, and it means „I bow down“.

The syntax in Tibetan is kind of backwards. 

In English we say subject-verb-object: I am going to the store.

In Tibetan they say: I store go. 

You kind of have to go to the back of the statement to find out what's happening, and then you go back to the front and figure out which is the subject and which is the object. I don't know how to do it. I'm just parroting what Geshe Michael tells us. 

I'm going to give you the word for word, and then I'm going to explain it. 

LA CHAK TSEL =I bow down to

KYOP = the protector

DESHEK = those or the one gone to bliss. (Sugatha in Sanskrit)

TUNPA = The Teacher, meaning Buddha, TUNPA = another name for our Buddha

We have protector, one gone to bliss, The Teacher.

DROLA PEN SHEPA

DROLA = all sentient beings

PEN SHEPA = all this being wants to do is to benefit. 

For benefiting all beings, you could say: DROLA PEN SHEPA

TSE MAR GYURPA 

TSEMAR = valid perception. 

When you add this R at the end, it means ‚into valid perception‘

GYURPA = the one who has turned into this valid perception.

It's a weird phrase: ‚someone who has turned into valid perception‘

English doesn't quite fit.

What they explain is that when we use the term valid perception, for someone who is having it, you can call the person having the valid perception valid perception. That's one of those things we got to cook.

When we're speaking about a Buddha, a fully awakened being, they are having valid perception all the time. They can be called ‚valid perception‘. Not like that's their new name, but that's what they are: valid perception. 

Not one who's having valid perception, they ARE the valid perception. It's hard at this level to quite grasp that. 

But so this term, TSE MAR GYURPA, means one of the qualities of this being that we're bowing down to is that they became valid perception. Meaning they weren't a being a valid perception. They did something and then they became one of valid perception. Which means they know what they had to do, what they had to give up, and what they had to take up, in order to become one who could benefit all beings.

How? By teaching them.

How did they reach this state? By way of this great bliss thing. And so they've become our protector. Because they also know what we need to give up and take up. 

But the only way they can help us is by teaching us.

(62:25) Here, Master Dignaga, who's wanting to put together everything that Buddha ever taught about valid perception, logic, reasoning, et cetera, is saying.

I bow down to this being who's the ultimate protector,

The Teacher

Who themselves is bliss

Who does everything to benefit all beings

And who themselves had to become a being of valid perception.

These 5 qualities TSEMAR GYURPA, DROLA PEN SHEPA, TUNPA, DESHEK and KYOP, the translation comes out 

I bow down to the one who turned correct, 

Who helps all beings. 

The Teacher, 

The one who went to bliss, 

Our protector.

 I'll say it again, 

I bow down to the one who turned correct, who helps all beings, 

The Teacher, The one who went to bliss, our protector.

He actually goes on to say, 

And now out of love for those mistaken in their logic, 

I shall explain the right way to establish correct perception. 

That's Master Dignaga. Both of them are Master Dignaga. 

The first sentence is about the qualities of the being he's using the teachings of. 

But the reason he's putting it all together is because we are mistaken in our logic and as a result, most of our valid perceptions are limited to color, shape, sounds, tastes. 

That's not so helpful, is it? If through our logic we're putting those things together into the wrong conclusions.

His whole book is about helping us learn to use correct deductive reasoning, correct reasoning to come to more accurate deductive perceptions so that we become a being who has only NGUNG TSEM TSEMA, only correct direct perceptions always, meaning a Buddha. 

(65:46) Your homework's going to ask: What are those five elements or those five characteristics that Master Dignaga is bowing down to? 

Meaning these are the things that we are asking for from the hands of that being who for us is Buddha.

We want to achieve these five qualities. 

I just went through them, but I'm going to list them for you for your homework.

Master Dignaga is praising these qualities of Buddha:

1. Buddha is a being of valid perception. That means totally correct, always correct. We're going to talk to about it in greater detail. If a Buddha can only perceive things directly and correctly, then they can't even hear themselves say something incorrect. Can they? They're hearing what they're saying. We're going to be saying, A Buddha can't lie. We tend to hear it as, They won't lie. They know better than to lie. But a Buddha can't. They couldn't even try and their tongue would get tied. Not like that. They can't. A being of valid perception means totally correct always.

2. That being loves all being so much their sole motivation is to benefit them all, draw up and shape them. 

3. That being is The Teacher. Not just that they will teach, but they teach the ultimate. They teach the ultimate thing that which we need to give up and take up in order to bring suffering to the end—either our own suffering, so the path to nirvana or the end of suffering for all beings, the path to our own Buddhahood. The Teacher.

4. This being is One Gone to Bliss, DESHEK. Because becoming a fully omniscient being requires virtue and nothing but virtue. That virtue ripening and being replanted constantly is the highest goodness, which is bliss. We might think, Bliss, oh, this highest physical pleasure that we could imagine having. The scriptures will say, yeah, think of that most exquisite pleasure you can conceive of as a human. That's not it. That's not bliss. Bliss is way beyond that. Not a physical thing, not a mental thing. One of those changing things that's neither one. Conceptual, but conceptual to the level of even identity. That being identifies as bliss, DESHEK. 

5. KYOP, the protector, which means this being is our refuge. The one who can protect us. But how? Reach out and stop the speeding bullet? No. But by teaching us. And they are teaching us and have been ever since they became Buddhas. But I only just tuned in 30 years ago. We need to ask. That omniscient being can't take us and crack our head open and pour in. They're telling us there in front of us and we don't see it, we don't hear it until finally we go, whoa, there's something wrong with this picture. I need help. Then something shows up. Somebody teaches you the pen thing. It's the way refuge can happen. It has to come from our side. They're just waiting. They're not waiting. They're teaching all the time. But imagine how frustrating it would be. Blissfully frustrating. Sarahni, would you just get the picture for crying out loud? I've told you for a million lifetimes what you need to do. Would you just try it on for size, please? Then, when we finally do, imagine how they feel. Wow, she got it. Wow. You are the greatest. KYOP.

Of these five characteristics, we're wanting to zero in on what is it to become one who has turned correct, TSEMAR GYURPA. 

How does that come about? 

We're going to go through this logical sequence that talks about these others as well. But our main focus in this course is this growing understanding of how obvious reality, hidden reality and deeply hidden reality, how we're thinking of them in one way as suffering beings, and how they will flip around in a different way when we're omniscient. 

How do we bring that about?

Because it's not the objects that flip, it's our own mind, our own perception that flips.

Only we can bring that about. Not by willpower, not just by trying, but by learning how to do it and planting the seeds and then it happens seemingly spontaneously. But it's because we did the work before. 

Again, we're building our recipe and we don't have enough yet to fully get it. So allow all of this to go in and percolate. My job is to help it be more clear by the time we get to class 11, when you will teach me about it. Seems to work. 

I'm actually finished with this class, early. 

Again, I get to bank the minutes because when we get further, I'm going to need extras. I'm happy to take questions, comments since we have extra time. But I'm also happy to let you go early. So anything on your mind going once, going twice.

Luisa: It's just for me to understand. This hidden reality and deeply hidden reality. We knew the deceptive and the ultimate reality, how this work together.

Is there any connection? I didn't get that part.

Lama Sarahni: They're coming from different schools and they're used for different reasons. But if we wanted to pin them together, we would say that these three realities that we're talking about are within the scope of appearing realities. So they would all be part of deceptive reality. But you wouldn't call it deceptive reality when you get to the level of Buddha perceiving everything directly. Because it wouldn't be deceptive, but it's still appearing reality.

Luisa: Okay, so we have to always consider for whom the subject has to give the context on how to pin them together.

Lama Sarahni: Exactly.

Luisa: Thank you.

[Usual dedication]

Okay, thank you.

For the recording, welcome back. We are ACI course 4 class 3. This is March 24th, 2024.

Let's gather our minds here as we usually do, please.

Bring your attention to your breath until you hear from me again.

[Usual opening]

Review class 2

(7:52) We learned the names of three levels of reality and we learned examples of each. Somebody can share with me one of those three levels of reality and the example.

Natalia: The evidence-based reality, the one that we see with our eyes. 

Lama Sarahni: So is the obvious reality the tree that we see with our eyes?

Natalia: It's the tree that we see with our eyes. 

Lama Sarahni: So our eyeball sees trees?

Natalia: Our eyeballs, we see through our seeds that we've planted before.

Lama Sarahni: Right. Our eyeball, obvious reality, visual obvious reality is actually colors and shapes—to be more precise. Evident reality is the reality we perceive with our senses. But if we really technically go down deep, we perceive colors and shapes and we do something to come up with tree, car, friend. So colors and shapes for obvious reality, evident reality. NGUNG GYUR

Shayla, give me a second one, please.

Shalya: The Tibetan name is KOK GYUR. And is the things that we don't perceive directly like emptiness. An example is emptiness,

Lama Sarahni: Good. Our eyeballs cannot see it.

Shalya: We cannot see with our sense, we have to use logic, to see it.

Lama Sarahni: Right, good. Nice and Joana, what's the third level?

Joana: The third level is deeply hidden reality. So everything that we cannot perceive until we are omniscient. So the workwise of karma would be an example.

Lama Sarahni: Yeah, good. Subtle workings of karma. 

Then there are two basic types of perceptions that we use to perceive these different realities. We use two kinds of perceptions to perceive those three realities. Well, the two of the three that we can't get to anyway. I stalled myself in my question. What are those two kinds of valid perception? Ale, you know.

Ale: Sorry, sorry, can you repeat the question? I was distracted.

Lama Sarahni: What are the two basic types of valid perception and what levels of reality are they used to perceive?

Ale: The valid perception and deceptive perception?

Lama Sarahni: Which reality does, which of those do we use to perceive which of those?

Ale: Let me open my homework. Sorry. Yes, the valid perception is what we used to perceive evident objects.

Lama Sarahni: Okay. So obvious reality is perceived by direct perception. Technically direct valid perception. We'll talk about it more. And then what's the other one?

Ale: The deductive valid perception is that the hidden one that is hidden and super hidden.

Lama Sarahni: Exactly. Deductive reasoning perception. Good, good. 

Then we learned about Master Dignaga‘s opening statement to the compendium on valid perception. In it he is bowing down to the being who taught the subject matter that he wants to write about, or that he wants to compile in his compendium. And he doesn't just come out and say, I bow down to the Buddha who taught us logic. He gives these five qualities of what it is to be Buddha, to establish for us that it's not just about learning logic. It's like there's a reason we learn logic, and it has to do with these other four qualities. So those five qualities that Master Dignaga was bowing down to, one of them is that a Budha has jet black hair, right?

No, there's some other quality that Master Dignaga is bowing down to. Olga says yes first. So Olga, you get to tell us, what's just one of those five qualities.

Olga: Gone to bliss. 

Lama Sarahni: Gone to bliss, that must be Olga‘s favorite. Then his second good quality is that he can stay up all night and not be tired, right? No. Probably he can, but that's not what we're bowing down to. There's some other good quality. Yes. Who hasn't had a question yet? Monica, you want to give us one of those five qualities? Who can help Monica, coach Monica into one of those five qualities? Because She knows 'em. She just doesn't know she knows them.

Ale: The second one is the wish to benefit living beings, all living beings.

Lama Sarahni: Buddha certainly has Bodhichitta, right? Nice. What else? Anybody? Help me out.

Natalia: A person, a being of valid perception.

Lama Sarahni: A person or being of valid perception. What are we missing?

Ale: The teacher with capital letter T.

Lama Sarahni: Right. The Teacher. The Teacher. Did we get all of them? 

I bowed down to, oh, there's one more. 

Joana: The protector. 

Lama Sarahni: The protector. I bowed down to our protector, the one gone to bliss, The Teacher, the one who wishes to benefit all beings, the one who has become valid perception.

Natalia: Why is the protector important here for the valid perception when we are talking about it?

Lama Sarahni: We'll get to it later. 

Definition of Valid Perception

(16:52) So tonight's class is coming from Master Dharmakirti‘s commentary on Master Dignaga’s compendium, remember? So the compendium is everything Buddha said about logic and perception theory, cut and pasted from Sutras. 

Then the commentary on that text comes along to us a couple hundred years later by Master Dharmakirti, and he uses his commentary to help us understand the ramification of all that Buddha taught about reasoning. 

In the second chapter of Master Dharmakirti‘s commentary, he gives us a definition of valid perception, of TSEMA or pramana. He gives us an actual definition. So I will go to our vocabulary.

He gives us the definition of valid perception as a fresh unmistaken state of mind, a fresh unmistaken state of mind. 

Now this sounds a little bit, I don't know, it just sounds weird to me because before we were saying a valid perception is a perception that I'm having that's me not with a mind that's affected. But we were talking about the perception that I'm having.

That's how I always hear it.

But here it's pointing out that valid perception that we are having is actually, it's a state of mind that we're having. Which suddenly makes things get a little bit weird all of a sudden. Don't let it have you drop off the bridge. (This adorable little quail just walked past, he and his girlfriend. Sorry, that's distracting. They're so cute. What reality is that?) 

Anyway, back to the definition of valid perception, is a fresh unmistaken state of mind. 

The vocabulary is 

SARDU MILUWAY RIKPA 

RIKPA = state of mind

SARDU = fresh. The word is fresh, like fresh vegetables, fresh fruit. But what it's meaning here is like newly.

MILUWAY = not mistaken. It is a double negative somehow in there, not mistaken or probably better interpreted as unerring. 

So fresh, unerring state of mind. 

To define a valid perception as fresh, unerring state of mind implies that there are states of mind that are not that. There are in fact 5, most common I guess, states of mind, meaning kinds of perceptions that don't qualify as fresh, unerring states of mind. Which means whatever we are perceiving, thinking we are perceiving with a state of mind that's any of these five, are perceiving that object or circumstance does not establish the circumstance as existing in the way that we're perceiving it.

That's the important piece, is to not hear this saying, well, if I'm perceiving the tree when I'm drunk, that means there's no tree there when I'm drunk. Which means when I'm drunk I should be able to just walk through my yard and I won't smash into a tree. But that's not what this is saying. 

This is saying when we're drunk and we perceive the tree in my yard, the tree that I'm perceiving because my mind is affected by the alcohol is not the tree that I would perceive if I was unaffected. We're thinking it's the same tree, but our perception of it when we're affected does not establish it as being real like that.

It doesn't mean it's not there at all. We're in logic school, existing things have their own causes and conditions. They're there. But even in Highest School, they also don't say to perceive something with an affected state of mind means the thing you're perceiving doesn't exist at all. It's still your perception, your projection happening and it's one that's consistent with life or not consistent with life.

It is important not to try to apply Higher worldview on this level of discussion, because we won't get it right. Let ourselves stay in: Things have their existences, not self existent, because they depend on their causes and conditions. How I perceive them—accurately or validly or not—depends on my state of mind. 

There are these five states of mind that if we're perceiving objects with these states of mind, those objects that we are perceiving don't qualify as valid perceptions. But they are perceptions. We'll see when I get into them.

Tom: I want to sharpen on what you said with the question about the state of mind. So I feel like I may be wrong, or maybe it's lying, but I feel like western american figure of speech of state of mind is mood, vibe, feeling, where I'm at right now, that's my state of mind. And that could change. So, is the perception continually will change and will become the correct perception that we're talking about?

Lama Sarahni: Yeah, let me go through these five different, not Middle Way RIKPA and see if that answers your question. 

5 States of Mind that are not Valid Perceptions

(26:20) These five are these states of mind that we might have with which we are perceiving something happening that are not fresh unmistaken states of mind. Whatever they are perceiving happening does not qualify as valid perception establishing them to exist.

1. LOK SHE - diametrically wrong

Which means diametrically wrong. Geshela says in English, we have a term: You've got that ass backwards. It's a very apt expression. It just means you've got it reversed. You're misunderstanding it exactly opposite of what I meant.

In trying to describe a state of mind in which we're perceiving something and we're taking it to be just completely the reverse of what it would be to a fresh unmistaken state of mind. We could use an example of a farmer out in a field. You see the farmer out in the field when in fact it's a scarecrow. You drive by so quickly, you see the farmer out there, you take it to be the farmer. For you it was the farmer. But in fact it was a scarecrow. You wouldn't even know you were wrong until you drove back by at the end of the day, and it's like it's son of a gun, that farmer hasn't moved in eight hours. Oh, I guess it wasn't a farmer back then.

Technically, it wasn't the farmer when you saw it from this school, from logic school. Because we had it ass backwards, a farmer, not a scarecrow. 

2. TE TSOM - doubt

Here this means the state of mind having this perception is just not sure. It might lean towards the accurate perception, or it might lean towards the inaccurate perception. But the fact that it can't quite know, can't quite decide, can't quite establish something, that state of mind of doubt makes whatever is being perceived not valid perception. 

That kind of makes sense. Scarecrow, farmer, scarecrow, farmer, I don't know, right? It's neither one being established. 

Now, in another sense, if you take it a little bit deeper, they would say to be aware of your doubt—farmer, scarecrow, farmer, scarecrow—be aware of the doubt is valid perception. It would be valid perception to not know whether it's a farmer or it's a scarecrow. But that doesn't establish scarecrow or farmer there. 

The doubt prevents us from establishing the identity of the thing for us. 

3. CHE SHE - recollection

Recollection perception, memory. It's not the word for memory, but it's talking about having a perception of a memory of something is a state of mind of recalling something. 

This would require that we have had a fresh, unerring perception of something, and then that something is gone. Now, what you're thinking of or what you are perceiving is your recall of that object. 

Here is our friend. We're having a fresh, unerring perception of the pen. But then I take it away and I say, think of my pen. You have a memory, a recollection of my little friend, the red and white pen. But that doesn't establish the pen being there. 

We can't write a letter with a memory of my friend the pen, whereas we could with the pen. 

A recollection—in this school—says that the state of mind that's recalling things that we've had a direct perception of before, those are not established as valid perceptions, because they're not substantial enough. You can't drink from a milkshake you just remember.

Highest school says that CHE SHE state of mind is a valid perception, a valid perception of a memory. It means you're seeing a memory, you're thinking of something that you have seen before you're doing it. Then of course that's a valid perception of something you're remembering, versus thinking my valid perception of the thing I'm remembering makes it as valid as the pen that I saw. But we kind of think so, don‘t we? 

It's like I show you my red and white pen over and over and over again, and then we end class and the next class you see it again. If I were to see you in between classes, and I might bring up something about my pen, you would think in your mind, well she's got a red and white pen there somewhere. Because we think we know that the pen still exists once it's gone, because we have a memory of it. We haven't learned anything otherwise. If my pen dies and goes to pen heaven, I promise to let you know so that you won't be still thinking I have one. But it's silly, we don't do that. We don't need to do that. 

Memory, a memory does not establish something to exist now.

4. YI CHU - speculation

The word literally means speculation. We could say presuming we know, or making assumptions about something. The state of mind that is speculating about the object, the person, the circumstance, the experience. Speculation.

Speculation, presuming, assuming—it all implies that we're imposing something onto the object or the circumstance that we really don't know for sure. 

Speculation, I don't really know, but I expect such and such, assuming I don't really know but putting two and two together, I'm going to assume this is true. Presuming is a little bit different. I'm not sure you even have two and two together, but you just think. 

All of those states of mind means that we think we know something about the identity, or the function, or the state of mind of the object that we don't really know. Which you can see how that means the way that we are perceiving it can't establish it in a valid way, because we're putting something onto it. Not meaning we're putting our seed label on, we're not in that school. Meaning we're adding stuff to the identity of the thing that we're not directly perceiving, and that we're not using correct, accurate reasoning to come to.

That's the state of mind of YI CHU. 

5. NANG LA MA NGEPA - it appears but you don‘t ascertain it 

Is trying to describe a circumstance where something could be happening but you just don't ascertain it. Geshela gave the great example of a little kid watching cartoons on TV and the mom's hollering, Come for dinner. Come Tommy, it's time for dinner. Come for dinner. And she's getting so frustrated because Tommy's not responding. She's thinking he's ignoring her and being rude and naughty when he's just so absorbed in the cartoon that he doesn't even hear. So in this school, she is there, she is talking to him, he's in this NANG LA MA NGEPA state of mind where it's just not part of his reality at that moment, so focused on something else. It means her calling him to dinner is not being perceived with a fresh unmistaken state of mind.

All of these different states of mind tend to happen to us when our sense of awareness is kind of dim, tired, not highly intentional, sloppy. A sloppy frame of mind lets us have these kinds of different states of mind that we really aren't even so much aware of. But if we're having, when we're having them, the experiences that we are having through them cannot be said to be existing things. Not that they don't happen, but they were not established to be validly, they were not established validly, and that means our interaction with them is going to be mistaken as well. Our interaction to them will be mistaken. 

So whereas in last class I was saying 99% of our perceptions are valid perceptions, because we are so rarely so sick, so intoxicated, so mistaken, but all of a sudden it's like, I'm in a sloppy state of mind almost all day long. Maybe I'm not having 99.9% of my experiences as valid perception. 

Don't beat yourself up over it, but recognize that developing this high level mindfulness soon to be ethical mindfulness is part of how we learn to cultivate a fresh unmistaken state of mind as we go through our everyday life, so that we can better choose our behaviors to better create our futures. 

We're learning how the state of mind, the quality of our attention and motivation is going to make a big difference, hopefully a beneficial big difference when we understand the process well.

We're wanting to be able to distinguish between things that we are perceiving directly and things that we are assuming about things and others, so that we can better catch ourselves choosing our behaviors from assumptions and stop doing it.  That’s our habit, is to assume something and react.

We're learning these skills, first have to learn about it, and then we can practice our training.

Now here's an interesting thing. If we are in any of these states of mind that are not fresh, unmistaken stakes of mind, once we recognize, oh, I just had doubt, I couldn't figure out whether it was a farmer or a scarecrow, and now I realize I just am not getting enough information, I can't know. That state of mind is a valid perception. I'm aware that I'm doubting whether it's scarecrow, or is not.

That's a fresh unmistaken state of mind, to be aware of the doubt, you see. 

To become aware that I have it as backwards, to become aware I have doubt, to become aware I'm operating in the realm of recollection, or a sub speculation, or dismissing it all together. Those are TSEMA. 

But then we would need to do something with that as well. 

According to Highest School, however, we have valid perceptions that are still incorrect. Because a valid and correct perception of something would need to include the coming out of mental seeds appearing nature of the object, and the emptiness of the object. 

The first actual valid correct perception that we'll ever have will be the direct perception of emptiness. The true nature of any existing thing is the true nature of all existing things, including ourselves, and that will be the first time we've ever had a fresh unmistaken state of mind that's both valid and correct.

Only Highest School makes that clear distinction. 

Before we get there, as long as we're not in these states of mind or intoxicated, et cetera, our fresh unmistaken states of mind are establishing things to exist validly. We can tell whether the object running across in front of the car is a squirrel or a leaf. Sometimes we're a little mistaken, err on the side of protecting life if you can, but not if you're going to kill your family to save a squirrel. Instant decisions based on valid perception.

We see it's pretty important to have an alert state of mind that can make those determinations swiftly enough. 

A Person of Valid Perception

(46:35) Fresh unmistaken state of mind is the state of mind that has valid perception. But then, in last class we learned that there is this term, TSE MAY KYEBU, that means a person of valid perception. 

The term was TSE MAR something. The one who turned correct, the one who became correct valid perception. Like that's his identity all of a sudden? Hello sir, who are you? What are you? I'm correct valid perception. 

It doesn't make sense. It sounds like it's a quality that we will have and that is true. But the terminology—I think on purpose—is one becomes valid perception. It means you can't not have valid perception.

Even as you're perceiving what you think of as yourself, it's going to be valid perception. But now it's not just valid like we've been talking about valid, but not necessarily correct existentially. Now this person who is TSE MAY KYEBU, someone who's become valid perception, is a being who is perceiving things with a fresh unmistaken state of mind that is truly unerring, and that that being is perceiving the empty nature of existing things, and the appearing nature of existing things. Which are all appearing from the mind of the being experiencing them, and the being experiencing them themselves is an appearing nature. This mind that has become fresh unmistaken perception perceives it all, all the time, but freshly, newly all the time. That's contradictory. We'll talk about it in course 13.

TSE MAY KYEBU means this being who has valid perception all the time, who is valid perception all the time. That means that being cannot be mistaken in any way. They can't say anything mistaken, they can't hear anything mistaken. They can be aware of me doing, saying, being mistaken. But they're not mistaken about that. They're directly perceiving my mistake, that's not their mistake. 

A being who cannot perceive anything wrongly, unerringly, everything that's going to come out of their mouth has to be unerring, because they're hearing it too. It's not just that they won't say anything wrongly, it's that they can't. Technically, they don't have the mental imprints to say anything erringly.

Those have all been cleaned away. 

The merit that makes us omniscient is what makes us omniscient. It means we can‘t. We don't have the negative seeds to even be able to say something that's mistaken. Yet, in Buddha's teachings, there are three contradictory turnings of the wheel. What's up with that? We get a whole course later on about what's up with that?

How can someone who's unerring say, This thing exists, and then say, well actually it has no nature. And then say, well, maybe it does, maybe it doesn't. Not one of those be mistaken, but none of them are mistaken.

It's a whole study. 

Why am I going there? 

Another term for an omniscient being is this TSE MAY KYEBU, a being of valid perception. Another way of saying omniscient, which is another way of saying a totally enlightened being. But then we'll learn later, we need to be sure to say ‚totally enlightened‘. Because some people say someone who's reached Nirvana is an enlightened being, and they certainly are compared to me. But they're not omniscient yet. If Nirvana is your ultimate goal and you don't aspire to omniscience, then your Nirvana is your enlightenment, and the term's not being used in error, it's being used differently. So Mahayana says ‚total enlightenment‘, so that we don't make that mistake.

(53:33) Geshela stated and then asked, we know that there are three kinds of changing thing amongst all existing things: physical objects, mental objects, and those changing things that are not all physical, not all mental, DEME DUCHE it's called, let's call them conceptual objects. 

In changing things—physical objects, mental objects, and conceptual objects—which is valid perception?

Valid perception should be in the category of changing things that are mental, shouldn't it? A mental state of mind. It's a mental thing, it's a state of mind, a valid perception. But what about the person? Like the person Buddha, the person Sarahni, is that person a physical thing?

Well, technically not, right? Sarahni has a physical body, but this thing is not Sarahni. Because if it were, it could stand on the street corner and any bug or any person driving by would go, Hi Sarahni, and they don't. A lot of people do in my community, but not the bugs, and not the UPS drivers. So it's not this.

Oh, So Sarahni must be a mental state. That's not quite right either, but for a different reason. Sarahni has mental states. Sarahni gets jealous, Sarahni gets angry. We say ‚I am angry‘, but we don't say ‚I'm anger right now‘. ‚I'm jealousy right now.‘ 

I have jealousy. The eye that we're talking about is this thing I call Sarahni, and it's not physical, although it has a physical body apparently. It's not mental, although it has mental states. But Sarahni is this changing thing that's conceptual, isn't it?

So how can we say that as Master Dignaga states, ‚Buddha is a person who is TSEMA‘. Wouldn't you have to say Buddha is a person who has TSEMA? Has valid perception all the time. But apparently in this literature, in this scripture, it's very clear, Buddha is TSE MAY KYEBU, a person of valid perception. 

This person whose mental state is direct, correct perception always. 

That would include their identity, right? So Sarahni is my identity, and it would have to also be correct, direct, accurate perception all the time.

Maybe that's why Buddha almost never refers to himself as Buddha or Buddha Shakyamuni, or even say „I“. He generally says something like the One gone to bliss, or the conquerer. He refers to himself in these vague terms as if he's talking about somebody else. Maybe you'd have to do that once you become being a valid perception, because the „I“ that we usually refer to as when we say „I'm angry“, I think that a Buddha understands themselves way beyond that. So it can't come out that way, because it would be inaccurate. Do you see?

What TSE MAY KYEBU is trying to convey to us is that there is this being who is totally correct in all their perceptions all the time. Even their perception of their concept of self is correct and direct. 

It takes some thinking about it to really come up with the ramifications of what that would be like. In my personal experience over the years of chewing on that stuff, eventually I saw how the four bodies of Buddha are derived out of it. I'm not going to go there now, but it's like we really will gain the tools that we can teach ourselves stuff, and then get it confirmed from scripture, or from a teacher by learning how to put the pieces together in an accurate and valid way. The benefit of learning clear thinking, reasoning.

What we're trying to describe in this TSE MAY KYEBU is that this is a person who has become omniscient, which implies that they didn't start out that way. Which means they became that. Which means they had to give up stuff and take up stuff to change themselves in that way. Once they reach it, with their omniscience they now know what each one of us needs to do to achieve the same goal. 

They can't make us use it, or do it, or even learn it. But once we wake up enough to ask, then the floodgates open. Again, it's all up to us to use or not use and to keep asking.

This course 4 is about trying to give us the tools to help us show to ourselves that a Buddha must be always correct, not just choosing to be always correct out of their love, but they have to be always correct.

If we can prove that to ourselves, or at least prove that it might be true, that's enough for us to be able to benefit from the teachings that we are given that are attributed to that being. Because it means we have access to material that's been provided by someone who can't err. 

Now there's a whole lot of questions. Has it been handed down accurately? Is it really from the Buddha? Those are also questions that we personally get to chew on and come to conclusions about, and we'll have the tools to do that through our study of the ACI.

Let's take a break before we go to our next topic.

The Subject of the 2nd Chapter: Nirvana, Omniscience and the Path to them

(63:01) Geshela always says in this context, if.. He didn‘t say this, I say this part: If you are like me, I don't have the seeds to take teachings directly from Buddha Shakyamuni. I have had teachers through my life, that at the time I took them to be extraordinary but human. I listened to what they taught. I tried it on for size, some accepted, some I rejected. Then I met Geshe Michael, and still I'm not seeing directly being taught by a Buddha, but I am aware of realizations and trust what he's teaching.

Yet, technically until we're perceiving our teachers as Buddhas, we can't just force ourselves to say, oh, they are totally correct beings who can't say anything wrong. 

I mean, we can force ourselves to believe that, and it will probably get us in trouble.

If we have the seeds, great. It won't get us in trouble.

But if we're trying to force ourselves to have those seeds. 

Then, from a teacher's side, if they themselves don't perceive themselves as omniscient, then they're going to be really careful to not say to their students anything that hasn't been given to them through their teacher. 

You can see the importance of an intact lineage. If each teacher is declaring, I won't teach anything that wasn't given to me by my teacher, all the way back to the first one who taught what Buddha taught. Then even though the subsequent teachers may not see themselves as omniscient or be seen by their students as omniscient, we can show ourselves the power of the accuracy of the lineage.

That means, as a teacher, when you're sharing material, we make it very clear: This is what my teacher taught me. This is my own working with it, my own understandings that have come about.

You make clear what's lineage and what's personal. 

You are allowed to share personal experience, personal Ahas, but very important to say, This is how I understand it. It keeps the lineage pure for future students. 

I really admire and honor Geshe Michael's wisdom in that regard. He makes these courses so easy to share and he says, Share them. Share them with anybody who will sit down and listen. Then we share them based on how they've been given to us. We use the reading, and we use the homework and quiz. Any additional information, we're careful to say, This is how I used it. This is how it works for me.

To be willing to say, This is how I used it and this is where I went wrong. Because a lot of times your own personal experience of where we misunderstood and goofed up helps people more than, this is what's supposed to happen. 

This course 4 and Master Dignaga and Dharmakirti’s texts are about helping us gain the tools so that we can come to have a human valid perception of these concepts, conceptual things, these things that are beyond our ability to perceive with our sense organs like Nirvana, Buddhahood, the path to those. 

Technically we could add the workings of karma, dependent origination, emptiness. In particular, Nirvana, omniscience, and the path to them. 

That's what this phrase that Master Dharmakirti is going to help us invest, not that phrase, but he lays out his subject matter for his text. 

Please say:

TARPA DANG TAMCHE KYENPA DANG DER DRUPAY LAM

TARPA technically means freedom

Here it's another term for Nirvana, reaching Nirvana. 

Nirvana, we learned in course 2, didn't we?

That state of freedom from mental afflictions and the seeds for them due to having seen emptiness directly and applied ourselves to it. Short version. 

Freedom from mental afflictions, freedom from suffering, but for our ourself alone. 

DANG = and

TAMCHE = omniscience. 

A being who is perceiving appearing reality and ultimate reality simultaneously all three times.

TAMCHE KYENPA = perceiving all existing things

DER DRUPAY = the path to these two

Nirvana and omniscience, and the path to them.

These are three existing things that we want to establish as existing, don't we? To reach our own freedom from suffering, to reach being a being who can help everybody get free of their suffering, and how to go about doing it.

They seem like three important things for us to have made true for ourselves in order to carry ourselves through what we'll need to do to reach those states.

If we can bring ourselves to know that Nirvana and omniscience is possible, and to know that there is a method for creating them, then if we choose to set about using that path—which we don't have to, but if we do—we won't have to reprove it to ourselves again and again. We will have done the work, come to the conclusion and that will carry us through as the struggles of life come, which they will for a long time yet. 

When we have this internal determination that this path will work, then doesn't matter how much yak poop hits the fan, we will stay with the program. 

If we have doubt about the path, doubt or misunderstanding of the goal, then it's very likely that we'll have challenges and those challenges will meet one that we just lose our power, our motivation. Whereas with this succinct, clear, I know it to be true for oneself, we have a tool that will keep us on the path.

It doesn't mean we won't have to go back and revisit the logic from time to time. We might need to. But do it once powerfully, take something that was something we wondered about or doubted, or we're understanding with one of these five unclear states of mind, and turn it into something that we have perceived with a valid perception, born of reasoning and you have a truth for yourself.

It doesn't mean you can then go to everybody in your life and say, this is true for me. So it's true for you. So you have to act this way too. 

Don't do that. 

Change yourself first, and then pretty soon they'll be saying, yeah, wait a minute, what do you know? How do you do that? They'll be asking you to help them.

G

eshela said, just to have a valid perception that these three could exist is a major step forward: Nirvana, omniscience, and the path to them.

To come to a conclusion that, gosh, maybe so. That's enough to start us on our path. It's not enough to keep us on our path, but it's enough to start and you're all there, or you wouldn't be studying this course. Especially after having already done 10 to 18 or whatever you've done.

We want to develop TSEMA, valid perceptions of at least the possibility of Nirvana, omniscience, and a path that will get us to them. 

How are we going to do that? 

Can we see them directly? Not until you're there, right? 

Once you're Nirvana-ized, you'll be perceiving your Nirvana directly. But until we're Nirvana-ized, it's not direct. Does that mean it can't exist for us until it's direct? 

No, it can exist in the sense of ‚I can achieve it‘. It does already exist for a Buddha, but that's another story. 

A direct perception is a perception that does not depend on reasoning.

A deductive perception is a perception that depends upon good reasoning, accurate reasoning, correct reasoning.

Until we are Buddhas, once we are omniscient, there is only direct accurate perception. No more reasoning needed. 

If you don't like reasoning, get yourself to your Buddhahood and you never have to do it again. But until we get there, we want to learn how to do it well. 

It isn't all just word thinking, it will be a feeling thing as well. 

But we're learning that we already rely on reasoning. We want to become aware of ourselves doing it, and learn how to do it accurately. That's what this course and course 13 is helping us to do.

3 Kinds of Deductive Reasoning

What level of reality are these three: Nirvana, omniscience, and the path to them? 

You have to say, „According to whom“.

I'll give you a clue. Anytime Geshe Michael asks a rhetorical question like that, you won't go wrong if you say, „According to whom?“. Because it is almost always true: According to whom? 

Their hidden reality for me, I don't know about you, their obvious reality (first?) a Budha. 

Nirvana is obvious reality for Arhat, but omniscience is still hidden. Do you remember the yellow, and whether yellow is obvious reality or not? Depends on who's looking.

Here as well. For me, they are hidden reality still. So for me, I need to use deductive reasoning to be able to perceive them.

(79:24) There are three kinds of deductive reasoning that we will learn. 

1. Logical Reasoning

We use logical reasoning to perceive hidden things, meaning they're not so deep that we can't logic them out, like the empty nature of something or the empty nature of ourself. 

2. Belief in Authority

That seems weird, doesn't it? Like belief in authority is a deductive reasoning?

In order to have belief in authority, we have to have at some point made some determination that that person who is for us the authority. We have to have established them as that.

As kids, the belief in authority is mom and dad. It's not like we used reasoning to come to it, it was just that's what happens. As you grow your own identity, mom and dad already have them, and then it's all up to them. 

What do we do as we grow up, especially as we get it starts when we're two? No, no, no. Then by the time we're what, 12, 13, 14? For sure it's like no, no.

We never did go through the reasoning to establish mom and dad as authority figures. They become it for us. That's growing up. 

But as we grow up and mom and dad are no longer so much the authority figure. We are choosing other authority figures. 

For humans, the law is an authority figure, and we go by the law because we've established some authority in the sense that something will go wrong for me if I don't do that. So somewhere along the way, we did agree that the law is an authority figure. Thank you for agreeing to that, right? Or it would be chaos. 

But we didn't really have the opportunity to say, Do I want to or do I not? We had to as humans.

Then we are in some subtle way choosing to continue to go along with that, and choosing when not to continue to go along with that. Every time we park our car in the wrong parking space, and we just justify, I'm only going to be there a minute. It's like we're willing to break the law, because it's so minor a thing. But see, we've made that determination to not follow some authority.

Now, when we're speaking about hidden and deeply hidden reality, we can logic out hidden reality. But deeply hidden reality is by its not self-existent nature too deeply hidden to even logic out. Yet here we have these teachings that says, there are subtle workings of karma and somebody knows them. If we were to know them, it would be even not the subtle workings, we would be able to stop perpetuating suffering.

It would be helpful if I could know those two, but I can't even reason them out from a human state of mind. So that means I want to believe in the authority figure who teaches about that with enough conviction that when I hear them teach me about something, I can't even confirm logically, that I will not doubt it. Not meaning Buddhism says, once you prove Buddha is true, then you take everything as true. The way we know not to do that is because we've got those three turnings that seem contradictory. We're going to learn that teaching where Buddha says, Don't do it just because I said so. 

Yet we're wanting to prove to ourselves that they're an omniscient being who knows exactly what we need to give up take up. 

We're not giving up our responsibility for making our own choices of behavior as we're studying and proving to ourselves: Buddha is omniscient. I can get there too. 

In fact, we're learning that we're more responsible, our personal responsibility sense will get stronger.

Based on authority, to have that personal conviction towards an authority, we have to apply ourselves in our reasoning to the teachings of this being in order to prove to ourselves that for me, they cannot tell me wrongly, they cannot lie. They cannot teach something mistaken. 

It's a personal belief in authority that we can come to. 

If we're studying this material, we have mental seeds from past lives to believe this stuff. But those are mental seeds from past lives.

How many more do you have in your pocket? We don't know. 

We can rely upon our faith and maybe it will carry us through, maybe it won't. We can take the power of these seeds that we already have and reinforce them by learning the method of working out the details of, why a Buddha‘s teaching must be correct. And then use them for our own personal guidance through our behavior choice training.

Belief in authority that we've established the being as an authority, not just faith in authority. Established belief. 

3. Based on Convention

To have a deductive reasoning based on convention means our perception is based on an agreement between a whole bunch of people, convention.

Common conventions in the United States is when somebody says, oh, Uncle Sam did that for me. Everybody in the United States somehow knows we're talking about the US government. Uncle Sam is the US government.

Another example is when we say, oh, the man in the moon. We all seem to know that we're talking about the full moon. Tibetans say the rabbit in the moon, not the man in the moon. But then all Tibetans would know you were talking about the full moon when you talk about the rabbit in the sky. 

We have all kinds of perceptions by convention.

The problem with perceptions by convention is that they're not helpful. 

What if everybody knows that Uncle Sam is the US government? It doesn't help us choose our behavior any differently necessarily. 

Perceptions by convention also can be on the level of what's socially acceptable and what's not. Those truth by convention can lead us wrong in a lot of ways. 

So although there are three kinds of deductive reasoning, the logical reasoning is the most important one because we even need to use that to establish an belief in authority. Which is an important one to establish personally towards the Buddha teachings for us. One would do the same for whatever their spiritual path lineage would be.

Once we're convinced that Nirvana, omniscience or Buddhahood and the path to them are existing things, that gives us this change in perspective through which we can make changes in our lives.

Geshela has said, you can hear this stuff and never in this life do anything different. You could just drop it and go on. But seeds have been planted and they're going to do their thing, faster, slower, according to what comes next. But the seeds have been planted and unless we do something intentionally to damage and get rid of them, they're sewn. That's like a rejoicable. They're growing already. 

But we can help them along the way. We can speed them along as we use these teachings to choose our behavior changes that we want to make based on our growing understanding from reasoning about how our behavior now and now and now creates the imprint that will become the circumstances of our future. 

That's true from any level school. They all say karma is how we change ourselves and our world. 

The purpose of this course 4 is to gain the tools to reach a valid perception, either born of logic, or direct—that would be nice—of the existence of Nirvana, omniscience, and the path to them. Course 4 out of 18, we gain the tools to prove that Nirvana is possible, your nirvana is possible, your omniscience is possible, and what your path to them is going to need to look like.

But then it's up to you to do it to map that out. 

Let me look at my quiz for next week. Make sure I said everything I was supposed to. I did. So again, we're done early. And the reason these classes are short is that when Geshela was teaching them originally in New York, I think I've said this before. His students were like co-students of Khen Rinpoche. Most of them had studied this stuff before and they didn't see Geshehla Michael as any further along the path as they were. So they were arguing with him about points from the class before and he was going through it again and again and again. If you've ever listened to the audios of those courses, early courses, the first half is him talking to the students trying to clarify what he had said before, because they're arguing with him. It is so frustrating. The dogs are barking and the horns are blaring, and they're pretty rough. 

But it takes up most of the class, and then he gets to the class material. 

I'm not going to rush us any faster, because the homeworks are based on what he said in class. He didn't have the homework and then did class. He did the homeworks based on class. So I don't want to put two homeworks into your lap by speeding up through class. I just get the extra minutes for later because I'm going to need them.

[Usual dedication]

All right, thank you my dears.

For the recording, welcome back. We are ACI course 4, class 4, March 28th, 2024. 

Let's gather our minds here as we usually do, please. 

Bring your attention to your breath until you hear from me again. 

[Usual opening]

(8:30) Last week we learned the definition of valid perception from this school. 

Who can give us that English or Tibetan or both? Doesn't matter, Luisa. 

Luisa: It is a fresh, unmistaken state of mind. Yeah, SARDU MILUWAY RIKPA, fresh unmistaken, state of mind. Thank you. 

Then we were speaking about what it is to be a person of valid perception, which we're going to spend this whole class on it as well. Your quiz question was, describe a person of valid perception. How would you describe a person of valid perception? Anybody?

Monica: For me it's basically an enlightened being.

Lama Sarahni: Yeah, an enlightened being. So an enlightened being means someone who's reached Nirvana, right?

Monica: No.

Lama Sarahni: No. So it's not enlightenment to reach Nirvana?

Monica: No, I get so nervous.

Lama Sarahni: You're doing fine. So there's no difference between Nirvana and Buddhahood because they're both enlightenment.

Monica: There is a difference. Nirvana is only the ceasing of mental afflictions. But that doesn't mean that you're enlightened just yet.

Lama Sarahni: Right. Great. And so by enlightened being, what does that do to their perceptions?

Monica: They don't have any more mental imprints?

Lama Sarahni: They don't?

Monica: No they don't. Or do they? I feel they don't.

Lama Sarahni: So Buddhas don't make merit?

Monica: They're in a state of merit, but they don't make any more mental imprints because otherwise then that would bring them back. I mean if they had the ability to still make mental imprints, then that would make them not enlightened.

Lama Sarahni: So that means when you get enlightened, you've used up all your imprints?

Monica: Yes, correct.

Lama Sarahni: Well then you can't perceive anything.

Monica: Or is it that you,…

Lama Sarahni: Nice. Monica brought up an interesting question. Do Buddhas make karma? No. 

Do they still imprint? Does their mind still, is it still, I don't even know how to say it. Is it still projecting? Yes. It's experiencing and to experience is projection. So Buddhas do have mental imprints. 

Then it's a good question: Do they make new ones? No.

But do they make mental imprints? Yeah, it's imprints in, imprints out. But somehow they're happening simultaneously. Their mind is changing. Their mind is a changing thing. 

Alright, we'll spend our whole class on this if we don't get going. So well done Monica.

A Buddha, a fully enlightened being is a being who can only have direct correct perception. Then that means they are then incapable of being incorrect. Which means they're incapable of saying something incorrect, because they'd be hearing themselves say that. Which means they can't even intentionally say something incorrect. 

We're going to see how, like, wait a minute, there's a conundrum there. We're going to get to it in this class. 

Then your third question on your quiz was is what three objects are we trying to establish with valid perception: Nirvana, omniscience, and the path to get to both of those. We want to be able to establish those three with a valid perception. 

Eventually we'll have a direct perception of them, but we learned that there's direct valid perception. We learned there's valid perception by way of reasoning, and we learned there's valid perception by way of authority. In order for the authority to be authority, we had to have already applied our reasoning to come to that conclusion. 

Luisa: I have a question Lama. When I was meditating in the homework that it say, it asks us to think if we have had a valid perception of any of the three objects. Then I was thinking, I thought yes, because of the memories that I have when I have been taught about that, when I have listened about it. But then I realized valid perceptions should not be memories. So does it mean I didn't have any valid perception until now of the three objects? Although I have heard and learned about them in the Lam Rim and in the classes with you. I am a bit confused, when is it meant that memory is not a valid perception. In the moment I having the memory and I am recalling it or… you know what I mean?

Lama Sarahni: Yeah, if you're remembering what Nirvana is, that's not a valid perception of what Nirvana is, according to Lower school. Higher school says we agree it's not a valid perception of what Nirvana is. But it is a valid perception of remembering what you were taught what Nirvana was. 

So again, the important piece about valid perception is that the way we establish something to exist is by way of a valid perception. 

It seems like that should be so straightforward: I see it and so it exists. But then we have already been talking about how what we actually see is just colors and shapes. So can we really say we ever have a valid perception of anything if we're talking about valid perception of my car, when really all I really saw was the colors and shapes, blue... Yes, it's a valid perception of the car as long as we're not intoxicated, et cetera. Seeing a car through intoxicated eyes, that car doesn't exist.

The car seen through intoxicated eyes doesn't exist. 

The car—if you could be intoxicated and not intoxicated at the same time—the car you'd be seeing with your not intoxicated mind is established to exist in that way. And the car that you perceive with your intoxicated mind can't be established to exist in that way. Do you see? 

An invalid perception doesn't mean that the thing we're experiencing doesn't exist at all. A drunk person can still walk into a tree. But the tree they walked into is not a validly existing tree like the one you would walk into if you were not intoxicated. 

This all gets pretty slippery.

It seems really straightforward: valid perception establishes something to exist. 

But then when we use reasoning to come to a valid perception, that also establishes something to as existing. Like the car against the tree is what we're validly perceiving with our senses. Then we put two and two together with reasoning and say, oh man, somebody had a car accident and ran their car into the tree. 

Then for us, if we go home and tell somebody about it, we say, whoa, somebody drove their car into a tree. When in fact our actual experience was: I saw a car smashed up against a tree.

If we were really being accurate, we would just say that: I saw a car smashed up against a tree. Because we didn't perceive the accident. We're coming to a conclusion it was an accident, because how else does a car get smashed up against a tree? But we're making big assumptions there. 

Then if we pass on the information of our big assumption without saying: What I've really experienced was the car already smashed against the tree. I don't really know how it got there.

But think of what life would be like if we only spoke of things that we knew directly were true.

If we're relying on our valid sensory perceptions, there wouldn't be much conversation in the world. 

And if we relied upon that + correct reasoning, we could have more conversation, but our human habit is to use reasoning that is not necessarily correct—but we think it is. 

So again, the purpose of all these details and we're just barely touching the surface of them, is to help us more recognize the errors that we are making in our day-to-day normal valid human interaction that are contributing to the perpetuation of the circle of suffering. 

It's more to show us how we can become aware of our error, our mistake, than it is to help us get it right. The getting it right comes later. This is helping us get more keenly aware of all the times we're operating on assumption by way of assumption as if it's true.

That's why we're talking about this being of valid perception, to even try to conceive of what it would be like to be a being who is perceiving directly always, directly and unmistaken always. It's actually beyond our conceptualization until we take it deeply into meditation, probably even then it's still beyond what we can get.

A Being of Totally Correct Perception

(22:45) Tonight's class is still about what is it to be a being of totally correct perception always. That's what it means to be omniscient: Totally correct perception always.

TSEMAY KYEBU is the word. 

Let's get our vocabulary.

Vocabulary

We've had this word before: TSEMAY KYEBU

TSEMAY = valid perception, TSEMA

KYEBU = to be born, it's the word for person

Person, not limited to human person. Any being that has been born. 

Later on we learn all the different methods through which one can be born. 

It means having moved from one life to the next, a person.

A person of valid perception whose perception is so good that you can establish the thing that's being perceived as an existing thing.

That's TSEMAY. 

When we say a person, a TSEMAY KYEBU, a person of valid perception, the implication that we just need to know is that we mean a being who's having valid perceptions always. 

This isn't the term we use in the moment that we ourselves are having the valid perception of the car against the tree. We don't call ourselves TSEMAY KYEBU at that moment. We just call ourselves ourselves and we're having a valid perception. 

Here we just need to agree that what we mean by TSEMAY KYEBU is a being who always has valid perception. That means that being is always a hundred percent correct in their perception.

Who can be a hundred percent correct in their perception always? 

Only an omniscient being. 

It's sort of circular. What do we mean by omniscient? 

Somebody who perceives all existing things and the emptiness of all existing things always.

What establishes something as existing? 

A fresh unerring state of mind. So a fresh unerring state of mind perceiving all existing things and all existing things‘ emptiness all the time, is what we mean by omniscient. And that's what we then mean by TSEMAY KYEBU, a born being who is valid perception. Not a being who has valid perception all the time, but a being who is valid perception. It's like the identity of the person, not just an adjective.

(27:55) They do say that probably a very highly realized being would know not to say anything that isn't a TSEMA for them. 

But Geshela said our world would be an amazing place if everyone only spoke of things that were a 100% true, that we knew to be a 100% true. It would be an amazingly silent place I think. Or we would all be amazingly meritorious. 

It's almost inconceivable. 

How much would you talk if you restricted your speech to things you absolutely know to be true? 

I am awake right now. I'm pretty sure of that one. Although I don't know if I woke up from a dream I would've… nevermind. You get it?

There's a quirky movie called „The Invention of Lying“, and it's not what you think. It's very bizarre, and there's some Dharma in it. It's worth putting on your list to dig up somewhere along the line. It's very, very quirky, but it's not what we mean by TSEMAY KYEBU. Keep that in mind. 

TSEMAY KYEBU = a person who can only have valid perception. 

It's only possible for them to have valid perception. Technically direct valid perception. 

I remember first hearing this, it is like, oh of course Buddha wouldn't lie. They love us so much, but this isn't about they wouldn't lie. They can't, they cannot. Not even like they start to and it can't get out of their mouth. Just completely incapable, because they would hear themselves. They would hear something that's not valid correct perception. It's impossible.

(30:55) How do we establish that someone is or isn't that, or even that it's possible to be that? 

That's the next couple of classes, to really see how we go about establishing that for ourselves. Tonight's classes get in the background to be able to do that. 

There's this term, your vocabulary term, SIKYUL.

SIKYUL as opposed to MUKYUL. 

If we were to talk about, I saw the car up against the tree wrapped around the tree, my telling about that experience, I'm talking about an object that I saw, MIKYUL.

But when we're talking about an object of seeing by a fully omniscient being, we use the term SIKYUL, because it's a honorific for seeing. Unhonorific for seeing is MIK, honorific for seeing is SIK. 

Meaning by usings SIKYUL as the object of perception, we are automatically to talking about the perceptions of a Buddha, of a fully enlightened being. 

It's like honoring them to use these higher words. 

So SIKYUL means the object of seeing by a Buddha. 

It seems funny, why are we talking about what a Buddha sees versus what a Buddha knows?

Because we seem to make the distinction between what we see and what we know. We know all kinds of stuff that we don't see directly, or that we've ever seen directly, we can know stuff. 

A fully enlightened being's experience is that they do see everything directly.

My mind says come on, let's say ‚experiences everything directly‘, because there are things that can't be seen that they are still experiencing, and that's true. 

But here, because we're talking about valid perception, direct valid perception, we're using the term seeing so that we can relate better. 

So much of our reality if we are sighted people is a visual world like most of it. 

In order to help us relate to how it is we become Buddha, they talk about what a Buddha sees. 

We also learn in other classes, when we are fully enlightened beings, we don't just see with our eyes, right? You'll be able to see with your pinky finger, with your elbow and again it's like, I don't know. 

Buddhas see things. That's the bottom line here.

And because they are TSEMAY KYEBU, valid perception, direct valid perception being, they see everything directly. They don't use reasoning. They don't use authority. They're perceiving directly all appearing things, and the true existence of all appearing things simultaneously always. 

That's held in this phrase, two phrases, but they go togethe:

JI NYEPAY CHU and JI TAWAY CHU

What it means for a Buddha to be TSEMAY KYEBU, these two phrases mean as many as there are existing things, 

CHU = existing things

JI NYEPAY = as many as there are existing things and 

JI TAWAY CHU = as they really are existing things. 

These two perceivings, one is that a fully enlightened mind perceives all appearing things, all existing things as they appear. 

How do existing things, how do they become established to be existing?

Somebody has to have a TSEMAY KYEBU, TSEMAY of it. 

Somebody has to have a valid perception. 

Here's our friend, the pen. There's 11 of us looking at this pen. This omniscient being is perceiving this pen in the way they do, and they're perceiving us perceiving this pen in each of the ways that we do. All different, right? Right.

And that omniscient mind perceives the no self nature of the object also.

How many of those are there? As many as there are of the appearing ones that they're seeing, right? I mean my brain is circuit breakers are popping, because I just can't conceive of it. But I can get the idea: all appearing things according to anybody who's seeing them. Not like there's a whole bunch of stuff that's existing from their own side and Buddha sees all that, and then we get to see it too in our weird ways. All those existing things depend for establishing them as existing on the ones who are perceiving them. 

Buddhas perceive all that, and the empty nature of all that.

That’s JI NYEPAY CHU, JI TAWAY CHU.

These are the SIKYUL, the things that an enlightened being perceives that makes them same TSEMAY KYBEU. Or that TSEMAY KYEBU is telling us this is their experience.

(40:02) A fully enlightened being is the only one who can perceive appearing reality and ultimate reality at the same time. Even as a human is in their direct perception of emptiness, they're only perceiving ultimate reality. They are not perceiving ultimate reality and appearing nature reality at the same time. 

When we are having that direct perception of ultimate reality, we cannot at the same time think, oh I'm seeing ultimate reality. Because that experience is appearing reality, and we can't do both. We can toggle back and forth as we move through our Bodhisattva Bhumi. But it requires what is the state of mind is omniscience is to be experiencing both at the same time. 

If it's a good thing to be omniscient, then that can only be the result of extraordinary goodness, and the clearing out of all mistaken view for that to be our experience perceiving emptiness and appearing reality simultaneously. 

Which we're going to see how that connects to compassion. Without compassion we can't make sufficient goodness to reach it.

Does a Buddha have a misperception when he or she is perceiving my conventional nature? 

When Buddha is perceiving me misperceiving my world, is Buddha having a misperception? 

No. They're directly perceiving me having a misperception.

Wouldn't it break your heart if you are the mom and you're watching your small child be all bent out of shape because they bumped their knee and yes, you bumped your knee, I'm so sorry. But two hours from now you're going to completely forget it. Imagine that multiplied by how completely mistaken we are all the time. 

Does a fully enlightened being have recollection?

No. Because they are perceiving all existing things all the time. They can't recall anything. 

Not just there's no need, but a recollection is not a direct perception. 

Can they perceive me having a recollection? Absolutely. 

But they themselves are directly experiencing seeing perceiving me having the recollection. All fresh unmistaken state of mind for bodan.

It seems kind of overwhelming. Why would I want that? 

We'll see why. It's really the only way to know what each of us need to give up and take up to reach our own freedom from suffering. 

Even if all we want is Nirvana, it still takes that kind of perception. It's one thing to say, look, avoid the 10 non virtues. Do the 10 virtues, have at it. 

It's another to say 2 billion lifetimes ago you moved your elbow in this odd way, and now that's why the pattern in your carpet has an angle right there. To know that directly, kind of overwhelming.

Who cares really about the angle of the pattern in the carpet? But they would know directly also what behaviors we believe to be the correct behavior for a certain circumstance. So we do it again and again and again, and they know directly what that's going to bring us 2 billion lifetimes from now. And they're going, oh man, would you just knock that off? It's going to hurt you so bad later on.

But they can't just reach in and go rip it out. Doggone it. Because they can't. Nobody can take anybody else's karma. Not even Buddha. Why is a long story which is important to work out? 

Luisa: A silly question. Buddhas don't meditate then. They don't need to meditate.

Lama Sarahni: They don't need to meditate. They're meditating all the time. If by meditation you mean deep, single pointed concentration with fixation, clarity and intensity state of mind. They are in Shamata all the time.

Luisa: But when you say, because when we were learning about the meditation then we were calling drenpa this recollection. But it was like bringing the mind back. And then now we are talking about recollection in the sense of memory.

Lama Sarahni: Different word, recollection. Recollect versus bring up a memory, right? Versus bring up a memory.

Apparently there's this debate about TSEMAY KYEBU.

Does the TSEMAY KYEBU have fresh unerring perception all the time?

Fresh meaning newly. If you're perceiving all existing things and their emptiness all the time, how can you say that they ever have a fresh perception? 

The debate goes around and around in circles like they usually do, not disrespectfully. Their conclusion actually is, every perception a Buddha has is fresh. 

But how can it be new if they've perceived everything in all three times? It has to do with the fact that the appearing nature of things that they are perceiving are changing, changing, changing. That means an omniscient mind is still a changing thing.

So yes, they perceive all existing things in all times at all times and every perception is fresh. Poof. Set that one on the shelf for a while unless it's totally obvious to you. In which case tell me about it later.

A Buddha's omniscient mind is still a changing thing—is the bottom line about that. 

For ordinary beings, we perceive obvious objects with our direct valid perception. We perceive hidden objects with reasoning—hopefully clear, well applied reasoning—,and we perceive deeply hidden things by way of authority. Things that we can't even reason out. We rely on someone who tells us about them, that we believe. That we believe.

We said before that belief could be based on blind faith, seeds that are ripening faith in the authority. Which if those seeds wear out we're in trouble.

If we have those seeds of faith and we learn to clear reason also, the likelihood of a circumstance flipping us out of our dharma ability because the circumstance got so hard and we wore out our karmic pocket of faith, we'd be able to fall back on our reasoning. 

So reasoning is some method that we learn to use that convinces us of our perception is valid makes a certain thing existing for us by way of reasoning. Even if we still aren't perceiving it directly.

Once you've proven it to yourself, the likelihood of losing belief in it is a whole lot less.

Part of being TSEMAY KYEBU is the knowing the causes of every appearing thing. Part of the direct correct perception of an appearing nature is the causes from which it came. 

A Buddha knows the causes of everything, technically perceives it directly. 

Like I was saying, move your elbow like that, it made the carpet. 

As humans, we believe that everything has a cause, and we tend to believe that those causes, the actual causes are similar material things, or the action that I did or they did the moment before the experience, or what I said or what I heard. We believe in causes, but we don't understand the real causes. We rely on science to tell us the apparent causes for things. Science does a good enough job to be able to make all those satellites, and put 'em out on the moon in a rover on Mars. But science can't tell us why. It only tells us how.

As kids, we wondered how come a whole bus got in an accident and those three people were hurt or killed, but the rest of the bus was not. Why? 

Science says, well, because the car hit them on that side.

Yeah but why were those people on that side and not those people? 

Well, because they got in late there and those are the only three seats left. 

But why? 

As kids, we keep asking, Why? 

The answers are never quite satisfactory. Then as adults, it's like you're given a medicine to take. It's supposed to work for your heartburn because it does this, this and this. The mechanism of your action, it works. It should work for everybody. But you take it and it doesn't work. Doc, why not? 

Well, you must not have the enzymes to dissolve the medicine right. 

Yeah, but why don't I have the enzymes and the other guy does? 

Well it's your genetics.

Well, why do I have those genetics instead of his genetics? 

Well, quit asking. I don't know. Or some other ridiculous answer. 

If we asked a Buddha, they'd say, well, it's because 2 billion lifetimes ago you did this and this. It's like, duh, no wonder. And further, don't you want to know what the karma is for the heartburn in the first place? Duh. 

Fix it there. 

I can't fix it there. That was 2 billion lifetimes ago.

But here's what you do with it. Purify, change your behavior. 

It would be really helpful if we were omniscient in the sense of when someone says, What are the seeds I need to plant for such and such? You could just say, these. 

But my guess is they would sound really weird. 

What seeds do I need to plant to get my soulmate to show up? And maybe they would say, well, you have to give up everything that you have right now and go and take care of a lonely person who lives in India.

If they know exactly, they're going to be really precise, and we're going to go, well, I can't do that, right? I'll go and take care of somebody in a nursing home around the corner, but I can't give up my life and go to India. 

That omniscient being would go, Suit yourself.

It's like why aren't I getting my partner? 

You did a substitute. The substitute's good. You'll get a partner from it. But it wasn't the one that omniscient being said, you need to go take care of that person standing on that street corner in downtown Mumbai. We'd go, no way. 

So no wonder they keep it to themselves until we really ask. 

What if we knew we were talking to a Buddha, and we asked them in all sincerity, what do I have to do to get my partner? 

And they said, Well this.

If we truly had that direct correct perception that their advice was exactly what I needed, would I hesitate?

No, I wouldn't. 

How do we establish that what that being has said to us is in fact direct correct perception for it to be the direct correct advice for me?

How can I be sure they're not confusing my seeds with somebody?

How can I be sure? 

How can I be sure that they really are a Buddha? Maybe I'm just deciding to call them a Buddha. And if I do, does that mean anything they say to me, anything they tell me to do, I should just drop what I'm doing. 

Do you see, it's dangerous actually.

What if just any old person says, okay, I understand Buddhists think like this, so I'm going to call myself a Buddha. I'm in charge of everybody now. I can get them all to do the stuff that I want 'em to do. It happens.

3 Tests for Checking if what someone said is accurate

Buddha himself said: Don't just take what I say as true. Prove that I can't say anything incorrect. But then don't take whatever you hear me say as correct until you check it out.

Doesn't that seem weird? It seems perfect to me. Because if they said, Prove to yourself that I'm always right, then great, you've just proven to yourself that I can say anything and you'll believe it. 

But yeah, because they won't say anything wrong.

But we won't be able to hold that necessarily. 

So Buddha himself says: Check what I say, apply the three tests. 

It's called CHEPA SUM, the category called the three tests.

Let's take our break before we get into CHEPA SUM.

(61:25) CHEPA SUM

There's this famous statement by Lord Buddha, here it is

JINPA LONGCHU TRIMKYI DE

JINPA = giving

LONGCHU = possessions

TRIM = short for TSULTRIM, morality

TRIMKYI DE = morality by happiness 

Altogether it means, if you give to others, you will have possessions. 

If you keep your morality, you will be happy.

If you give, you will have things. 

If you keep your morality, you will be happy. 

Wait a minute, if I give my computer away tonight, tomorrow I will have no computer to use and no computer to give away tomorrow. It's not true that if I give away stuff, I will have stuff.

But Buddha is omniscient, Buddha can't lie. Buddha must have meant something different then what I take it to mean.

Morality brings happiness. 

Wait a minute, if I lie just a wee little bit, I can buy that new purse for $20 less than what the person's asking for. I get the purse for $20 less. That makes me happy. 

So lying a little bit must not be a bad thing, right?

The next day I'm moaning to somebody: That person took advantage of me. Why would they do that?

Oh, I'm unhappy being taken advantage of. Do you see? We can't connect the dot correctly in this JINPA LONGCHU TRIMKYI DE.

If we think we know what Buddha means by what they said.

Buddha himself says, 

Check out what I say by way of these CHEPA SUM, these three tests to come to a conclusion about whether or not, technically whether or not you will decide to change your behavior based on what Buddha has said or taught or written.

Buddha never wrote, but what's been written down.

Curiously, these three tests, they aren't tests by which we can prove the truth of this statement that we're checking. They're tests by which we show ourselves that we cannot disprove the statement. 

That's kind of tricky, because we want to be able to prove it, and it seems dissatisfactory to find ourselves, I just can't disprove it.

But in the sense of trying to prove what an omniscient being has said, it's a little arrogant to think that we could use our correct reasoning to prove deeply hidden reality. We can't. We have already learned that. 

We can get a good clue and we can use clear reasoning to show that any of my reasoning for why I don't want to believe or understand what Buddha taught is valid enough for me to reject it. 

The tests show us, no, I can't disprove it. 

So if we still need to wait until we can prove it before we act on it, we're told put it on the shelf for later. Because for sure we don't want the seeds of coming to some conclusion that says, No thanks. I'm not interested in that piece of teaching just because of the seeds that get planted. There'll be a big hole in our practice progress if we let ourselves reject.

But at the same token, Buddha himself said, don't just believe it because I said so. Thank you Buddha. Saves us a lot of anguish.

In this phrase, 

giving brings possessions and morality brings happiness

We know the punchline. He was talking karmically. 

Not you give today, you'll have tomorrow. But how did I have a computer in the first place to give away? 

That was a result. I gained a possession. According to Buddha I had to have given something away. Even if we say, well, what I gave away was my time and my expertise to earn the money with which I could buy my computer.

I gave off myself in some way.

Same with the morality. We struggle to keep our morality, and when the results of that comes back to us, it's somebody else being moral towards us.

Morality means kindness.

Do we like for others to be kind to us? Yes. 

Statements like this can only be confirmed scripturally until we've learned enough for them to shift from deeply hidden reality to hidden reality. Which when we understand enough dharma, we can reason out the truth of ‚giving brings possessions and morality brings happiness‘. 

Here are the three tests. 

CHAPA SUM means the three tests

1. NGUNGSUM GYI ME NUPA

2. JEPAK GYI MI NUPA

3. NGA-CHI MIN GEL

1. Direct Correct Perception NGUNGSUM GYI ME NUPA

Like synonym for TSEMA is this NGUNGSUM, direct correct perception.

ME NEPA, it's a negative. It means not. And NUPA means to harm, literally it means harming. 

What this phrase is apparently saying is, the teaching we're testing cannot be disproved by any direct valid perception that we have had or have, have or have had. 

Suppose we're walking down the street and suddenly we see this coiled up snake in our area, there are rattlesnakes, and you jump back. Then you look more closely because, son of a gun, the thing did not move when I jumped back. So you look closer and it's like, ah, it's just a coiled up hose, but it looks so much like a rattlesnake. The coiled up hose just harmed the perception of the snake. 

In fact, it harmed it so much that the snake just disappeared. 

For an instant there was a snake there. Then my valid perception kicked in, just a rope. The valid perception overcame the misperception. 

That's what NGUNGSUM GYI ME NUPA means. When the direct perception overrides the one that was mistaken.

If we can have a direct perception of something Buddha said that's different than what the Buddha said, our direct perception would override what Buddha said. 

When we go trying to find a direct perception that we have had or are having that contradicts anything Buddha said, and we dig deeply enough, we will find that there is no direct perception that I as a mistaken being can have that can ever override what Buddha has said.

But we should try because the effort of trying actually ends up helping us sort out our own misbeliefs. 

So whatever Lord Buddha's statement we are checking, we try to find some direct NGUNGSUM, correct perception that contradicts the teaching. And when we try and try and try and try and can't find any, we finally say, Oh, I cannot disprove what Buddha said with my own direct perception. It takes effort to do this.

2. Correct Reasoning JEPAK GYI MI NUPA

(74:20) JEPAK we know is correct reasoning. The second test is, we use correct reasoning to try to disprove anything Buddha has taught. 

Correct reasoning would require airtight, correctly applied reasoning. Not our fuzzy assumptions kind of reasoning that we do by habit. 

Geshela gave this example. In his work he had been waiting for this shipment of diamonds that they had ordered, and the shipment is late, and then late again and late again. He found his own mind saying, oh, did the dealer not get them and he's just not telling me? Or does he have 'em and he's trying to negotiate a better price with somebody else so he's stalling me? Or is he holding them hoping I'll come back with a better price? It's like his mind was making up these different scenarios and at each scenario he was saying, oh, then I should do this, or I should do this. 

He recognized that he was using ordinary human assumptions and judgements, and he recognized I'm not going to make any decision about how to act here until I call the guy up and ask him what's going on. 

Once I have enough information, assuming the guy's going to tell you the truth, then you can make an accurate decision about how to behave.

That's true even in our ordinary human lives. Even if our decision in how to act is still driven by our mistake, we're still better off having waited and not acted from these scenarios that we made up and just called and gotten the straight skinny before we decided how to act. 

When we are talking about applying the correct reasoning to check a Buddha's statement, we need to learn how to do that accurately so that we can trust our conclusion. Apparently what we'll find is that we won't be able to disprove what Buddha has taught. 

We may or may not be able to prove it’s true. But we won't be able to disprove it.

Somewhere along the way that becomes adequate.

We're not supposed to accept the Buddha statement until we've tried to disprove it. 

3. NGA-CHI MIN GEL

The literal words are: before, after, not contradict itself. No contradiction. 

Before, after, not contradict. What it's saying is, did anything Buddha ever say before or after he said this thing that I'm checking that contradicted what we're checking. 

For those who have been through the upper end of ACI courses, we did course 15, which was that whole course on how do you establish when Buddha was speaking correctly. He's always speaking correctly, but there do appear to be contradictions. First turning of the wheel, all these existing things, they have their natures and there is suffering. 

Then the second turning of wheel. All these existing things, they have no nature. What? Those are contradictory.

Doesn't that prove to us that Buddha can say something wrong? 

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. 

The classic example is also your vocabulary.

Buddha speaking figurative or literal

Classic example in the scriptures is Lord Buddha’s quote:

MA DANG PA NI SEJA SHING

That's just half of the quote. MA DANG PA NI SEJA SHING. It means mom and dad, mother and father.

SEJA means kill them. 

The rest of the phrase says, ‚And destroy your country and everyone in it‘. 

I don't know what the circumstance was, but Buddha's giving a teaching and he goes, 

Kill your mother, kill your father. 

Everybody in your country and your country

Kill it all. 

Does that seem consistent with all the other stuff that Buddha taught us about morality? 

Like the first of the 10 non virtues is don't kill. Protect life.

This is the classic example of leading into that topic of study called DRANG NGE.

DRANG NGE means figurative and literal. 

If a Buddha cannot experience anything wrongly, including what they hear themselves say, and they say something like, ‚Kill your mom and dad‘, they must not be speaking literally. Because that seems to contradict other stuff that they said.

Or maybe it was the other stuff that contradicted this. But we would fix that conclusion as we study more about how giving brings possessions and morality brings happiness. 

When someone's speaking figuratively, it means the message they want to impart to us is different than the literal meaning of the words. We ourselves hear the words, our direct perception, and when it seems contradictory, we need to apply reasoning to come up with what are you supposed we're really talking about? 

We do it all the time with others, speak figuratively, and expect them to know what we meant. Then we get angry at each other because we weren't reading each other's minds. It's just this habit of not speaking directly, clearly about whatever conversation we're having, and assuming the other person knows what we're talking about.

Sumati and I do this all the time and we're just talking about different things and we can't understand why we're not communicating. 

He wants to know where the tomato sauce is and I'm telling him about where the soap is in the cupboard, and it's just because we missed it.

The point with the literal and figurative, long story short is that an omniscient being knows how to use figurative and literal to impress upon us something that will have a stronger impact on us. 

The teaching: Kill your mother, kill your father, everybody in your country. 

It was in the context of Vinaja actually, which seems even more contradictory. But the explanation is, if Buddha had just said, ‚Give up your attachment to your mother, give up your attachment to your father, give up your attachment to your countryside.‘, we would say, yeah, I already have. 

But if we hear him say, look, Kill your mother, kill your father. So they're just gone.

What? I know Buddha doesn't mean that literally. What's he trying to tell me about my relationship with my parents, my relationship with my country, my relationship with my world, my life? 

That's pretty drastic way to get us to go, oh yeah, I see. I still have some attachments I need to let go of. 

When there's a teaching that seems contradictory, within that arena they give us guidelines for how to think about how to try to figure out what was trying to be told and why Buddha might do it. 

3 Rules to Determine Figurative and Literal Statements

(85:58) Within this NGA-CHI MINGEL, trying to establish whether there's a contradiction or not when there appears to be one, we need to understand how to apply these ways to determine the apparent contradiction. 

1. Check the True Intent GONG SHI

The words literally mean thought basis. What they mean by this was, what was the true intent of this statement?

What do you suppose was Buddha's true intent when he said, Kill your mother, kill your father. It couldn't be literal.

What do you suppose was his true intent?

Don't let our attachment to our loved ones hold us back on our spiritual progress. They are the reason we're wanting to make spiritual progress. We are doing it for the end of their suffering. 

When they say, oh, you would make me so happy if you take me to lunch today at that favorite bar where I love those martinis. Out of your love for them, you say, yeah, because I want to make them happy. It's my mother. I want to make them happy and so yes, I'll take you to the bar and yes, I'll pay for your martini and it's all part of my practice, and I'll be late for class as a result. I'm so sorry. It's for my mother.

We can justify it. We can make that choice. 

Someday we'll be in a teaching with the Buddha, and Buddha will say, Kill that mother, kill that father, because they're holding us back from our spiritual progress. But it's hard. Mom's going to hate you if you say, No, sorry, I've got class. 

I'm not saying do that.

But I'm sorry I can't do that for you. Mom, at that moment's going to be upset.

Doing it skillfully. Upset mom in the moment is going to help you reach your total Buddhahood faster so that you can help upset mom and her suffering forever, someday. But by then she's not mom anymore.

By then, I don't know who. But she was your mom in that life.

GONG SHI — what was the true intent? 

2. Check Contradictions to Reality NGU LA NUJA

(89:25) Second one, NGU LA, it looks like NUJA, but I listened again and again and Geshehla kept saying NEJAY, it looks like NUJA. But he kept saying NEJAY. 

I don't know the Tibetan well enough. So NGU LA NUJA means reality. New

NGU = reality

LA NUJA = to contradict

Does it contradict reality? 

Does the statement contradict direct obvious, direct reality. 

Suppose I were to say to you, look at my new haircut. Doesn't it make my blonde hair look lovely?

And you'd go, blonde? It's not blonde, it's gray honey.

My words obviously contradicted obvious reality.

We're checking Buddha's statement for whether it contradicts direct reality—the way things are, not ultimate, but the way they are. 

Then, if I kept insisting, No, no, my hair is blonde. You would start wondering, what's she intended for me to get? Because it's really clearly not blonde and I know she knows it's not blonde. There must be something else she's trying to get me to think.

I am just making up a stupid example. There isn't anything I'm making you think, but that would be our thought process.

If the apparent contradiction contradicts what I directly perceive to be true, then we're thinking, what's that all about? What's their intent behind that? 

What are they trying to help me think about differently by saying that? As opposed to saying, well, there's something wrong with your eyes, because your hair is gray. 

Why would I say something wrong? Obviously wrong? I have some reason behind. That would be my true intent. 

3. Check if there is a Compelling Need GUPA

(92:16) The third check, GUPA.

Here GUPA means compelling need, a compelling need. 

Is there some compelling need to make a certain statement? 

Does it achieve a certain purpose? In this thing the Buddha says that we're checking, we're checking: What do you suppose was his real intent? 

Does it contradict my obvious reality? In which case I really need to know my true intent. And could he have had a higher purpose in mind?

What could have been the highest purpose?

In the early teachings, Buddha says, these existing things, they all exist. They have some natures of their own, and they're all sufferings and the causes of suffering.

Is it literally true? No.

Did he have a compelling reason? What was his intent? Did he contradict their obvious reality? No.

He spoke to all of our realities. We weren't Buddhas. We were practitioners interested in a path to Nirvana, culturally at that time. And Buddhas is just pointing out all these existing things that you know about deep down they're all suffering in the causes of suffering. You can come to a deep realization of that and not ever talk about the existential nature of their emptiness and dependent origination. 

Even the laughter of a child is a suffering. 

Even a delicious meal is a suffering. 

It's like the first teachings out of Buddha's mouth is this big Debbie Downer. It is like there is no happiness to be found in Samsaric life. 

He's speaking to people who've already reached some similar conclusion and now somebody who's flat out saying it: Don't bother trying to find happiness in this samsaric world. It is impossible. Any happiness you have is a source of suffering.

But it doesn't mean just give up and kill yourself. No.

And he goes on later to say, and all these things that cause all that suffering, they don't have to. They do because we made 'em that way. We make 'em differently, they all bring nothing but happiness.

But you can't say that early on in the same way that you wouldn't get the same response about reducing our attachment to our parents by saying, look, you're too attached to your parents. Give up your attachment. As opposed to, look, kill them. Kill them out of your life. Dramatic.

But what if one of his students went and did that? Would not have made the point.

You can't always tell the whole truth because you'll flip people out. 

Ale can't tell her three-year-old everything there is to know about life. He wouldn't be able to register it, or cope with it. 

There's some things to tell your kids, and there's some things to don't tell 'em until later, if at all.

It's the same with us and fully enlightened being. 

You don't lay it on all at once, they'll flip out.

You go on step ways. Just like in school, we go in grades and we grow. 

We need to consider these three:

What you suppose was his intention?

Does it contradict my direct experience? 

And might he have had a compelling need?

When we are checking a statement that to be contradictory within the Buddha's own teachings. That's a subset of the CHEPA SUM, that we're working on here.

The 18 ACI courses are built in this same way.

We go at them one piece at a time to grow a little bit of understanding, and then a little bit more, and a little bit more. As the pieces come together, what we learn in the latter classes mean differently than, or they reveal differently what we learned in the earlier classes. Some of you're doing them backwards, and we'll get to a point where you're going to say, okay, I already did that class I've done from 10 on.

There will be some who haven't done from 10 on. So we'll continue with 10 on. 

And I would really encourage you who started there to do them again. Because you're going to hear them differently, because now you have a better background than what you had from before. 

To me it's a little bit of the conundrum where people who go through DCI and get all the punchlines, but didn't actually get how to connect all the dots, come in with a volume of thinking that to me makes it more difficult to learn the step bys. Because we keep trying to jump to the punchline instead of take it slowly, build it, build it, build it. So that's what I keep insisting. Come back from the punchline and build up your ability, like to move into what you know to be the highest worldview by way of seeing your own mind get there, instead of going there based on seeds from past lives.

There are contradictions in Buddha's different teachings, apparent contradictions. What we learned is that at each teaching, Buddha is speaking to the level of the audience, the main part of the audience, and he's going to speak to them in a way that meets them where they are and pushes them a little bit higher. 

For someone who's already ready to go higher still, it will sound like those are wrong teachings. But then the teaching for them is to see how it's a correct teaching for the level of the beings that are there. And if they're there, they also need to hear that teaching again for some reason. 

It evolves into those 4 schools of Buddhism and the 6 flavors of emptiness that we'll see developing within our own experience.

Amongst those 4 schools, each school has its own definition of what it is to be a figurative and literal teaching by Lord Buddha. 

The Highest School says, let's not even use those words.

Let's say when the Buddha was speaking with words that he wants you to take at face value, and when he was teaching what he really meant. Highest School says, Buddha is only speaking literally when he is talking about emptiness. All the rest of his teachings are figurative. Some are to be taken at face value, and some are to be interpreted. 

So we are also taught how to interpret the words of the Buddha, which we'll go into further in next class. 

Why did Master Dignaga used the phrase „The one who turned correct“?

There's a question on your homework. 

TSEMAR GYURPA is one of those 5 qualities that Master Dignaga was bowing down to at the opening of his text. He says, TSEMAR GYURPA. 

We learned GYURPA means the one who has become a being of valid perception, the one who has turned into valid perception.

Someone asks, That's a weird term. Why did master Dignaga point out the quality of Buddha as being the one who turned correct, and not just say the omniscient one Buddha? And that commentaries tell us that there's two parts to the reasoning behind GYURPA, why he points out the one who turned correct. 

There's a negative implication and a positive implication when we use the terms negative and positive, we don't mean bad and good. 

Negative means something that's not there, and positive means something that is there. 

The negative implication is to say, this being is one who turned correct. It tells us that there was a time when that being was not a being of valid perception. 

That means they were not omniscient at one point. They were suffering at one point, just like you and me.

The positive implication is that that being must have had to have done something to get enlightened. They must have followed some path, some method to reach it. 

They weren't just born omniscient, they weren't just always omniscient. 

You couldn't be omniscient and be always omniscient. We will learn.

It really is a hugely important piece, this synonym for a Buddha being TSEMAR GYURPA, one who turned correct. Because it says that they must have figured out how to do it, at least for themselves. 

So maybe whatever they used to do it, that might work for me.

That's a very beginning level use of this explanation. Later we'll see that what it took to be to go from not omniscient to omniscient grows the goodness through which they do end up knowing exactly what I need to do. Not just maybe what worked for them will work for me, but exactly what will work for me. 

That completes our class 4 and we're going into it further in class 5: What is it to be omniscient and how do we get that way? 

[Usual dedication]

Thank you everyone. Happy Easter. Celebrate or whatever you do for Easter. Not sure celebrate is the right word, but blessings, Easter Blessings. Okay, bye-bye.

For the recording. Welcome back. We are ACI course four, class five on April 4th, 2024, which is April 5th at Joana's house and it's her birthday. Yay Joana. 

So what better thing to do on your birthday than to study omniscience, which is today's class. Cool. 

Let's gather our minds here as we usually do, please.

Bring your attention to your breath until you hear from me again.

[Usual opening]

Review class 4

(8:16) Last class, we learned that that term TSEMA, valid perception, is sometimes used in reference to the Buddha himself, because of that special object that only a Buddha can correctly perceive. 

That special object has two parts: JI NYEPAY CHU and JI TAWAY CHU.

JI NYEPAY CHU means the totality of all existing things, meaning appearing things, conventional things, relative reality. Like all these words that none of which are exactly accurate, but give us the understanding of they perceive all existing things.

Then the second part, the JI TAWAY CHU is they also perceive all of those existing things‘ ultimate nature. Their ultimate nature is their emptiness of self existence, meaning their lack of any identity in them, from them. All those existing things. 

What it is to be Buddha is to perceive both of those objects directly always. 

Then we talked about what three main methods we apply for establishing the authority of Buddha's teachings. They have to do with comparing what the Buddha taught with our own personal experience, our own reasoning, and whether or not it contradicts any of those or contradicts itself. 

The three methods is, we check to see if anything Buddha taught is contradicted by our direct correct perception. Correct is the imperative here. Because it sure seems like a lot of what Buddha said contradicts our direct experience.

So it takes some investigation to figure out whether it actually contradicts our direct correct experience. 

Then the second method was, we check to see if anything the Buddha taught contradicts anything we can come up with by way of our correct logical reasoning.

Again, correct logical reasoning. Not ‚because mom said so‘ logical reasoning. 

Then the third one is, anything that Buddha taught contradicted by anything else that Buddha taught. It's like, sure seems like it. 

So we needed some instructions for how to investigate whether those things the Buddha taught that appear to be contradicting each other to check to see whether they really are contradicting each other. 

There were those three ground rules for checking for contradictions amongst the various teachings. 

One was trying to establish the true intent of the statement that was given, meaning you've got two that are contradictory: don't harm people, kill your mom and dad. 

Wait a minute, what do you suppose was the true intent of the second one? 

I don't know. Maybe we would want to check, what do you suppose was the true intent of the first one? Don't harm anybody.

Then second one, does the contradictions that we are investigating, do they contradict obvious direct reality? 

Then third, was there a compelling need or higher purpose for Buddha making the statement? 

Again, it sounds like that should all be very easy to apply, and it's not easy. Because we're misperceiving our world so badly that it's really even hard to know if we are accurately applying the reasoning in this checking. 

That's part of what all of the ACI, once we've gone through it all, maybe more than once, helps us figure out how to really work with these ideas of „we need to prove to ourselves the truth of the Buddha's teachings“.

Then your last quiz question was: There were two purposes that Master Dignaga had in mind for using the words „The one who turned correct“ in describing the Buddha. 

Remember? 

One was a negative reason and one was a positive reason. I still admit every time I hear negative and positive, I think a bad reason and a good reason. It's like no, something that isn't there reason and as something that is there reason. Negative and positive mean not there and there. I have to keep reminding myself of that. 

The negative reason that Master Dignaga says Buddha is one who turned correct is because that tells us that Buddha was not already always enlightened. The absence of the Buddha's omniscience is the negative that this phrase is implying. 

The positive is that he followed some method to reach his enlightenment. 

The implication of those two statements is, oh, I'm not enlightened yet. Oh, maybe I could become enlightened. If I follow some path. If Buddha did it that way, maybe I can too. When it hits us, it's like, oh wow, wow, that's significant. Not just that answer on your homework.

Is omniscience unchanging?

(16:25) Then we had the question, if an omniscient mind is perceiving all existing things and their emptiness all the time, all three times all the time, doesn't that mean that that mind never experiences anything newly or freshly? Yet the definition of a valid perception is a fresh unmistaken state of mind. Well, how can it be fresh if you're seeing everything all the time? 

Then, if it's seeing everything all the time, then doesn't that mean it's unchanging?

Is omniscience unchanging? 

It's like we sure hope it's not ever going to go away once we get it. But does that necessarily mean it has to be unchanging, permanent, eternal unchanging? 

We hit a conceptual snag there that's mostly language, but let's look at it. 

So we get our vocabulary here.

These two words, TAKPA and MI TAKPA. 

TAKPA = unchanging. 

You add the negator to the front of TAKPA and you get not unchanging. 

TAKPA = unchanging

MI TAKPA = not unchanging, so changing

I think it's curious that in English the root word is changing and then you add something to that root word to change it. And unchanging gives us the opposite connotation. 

Whereas in the Tibetan here, unchanging is the root word and you negate the unchanging to make changing.

Geshehla never mentions it at all. But I it's significant.

One of those deep little clues that if we could catch it would be one of those little cracks that we can glimpse emptiness and dependent origination through in a deeper intellectual way, at least.

I think it also tells us something about the Tibetan language, which we understand was actually made into a written language in order to translate the Buddha Dharma from Sanskrit into Tibetan. 

To me, whoever made that language, knew what they were talking about to make TAKPA be the root word. Like the more inherent reality. 

And to negate that, to reverse it into the changing reality that we perceive. 

I think it's significant, personally. I've never heard Geshe Michael mention it. 

I don't have access to the Tibetan or Sanskrit scriptures to be able to dig into it.

But if I were doing a PhD thesis, that would be my topic: TAKPA—MI TAKPA.

TAKPA means unchanging, which implies uncaused, uncreated, unproduced.

MI TAKPA, not unchanging and therefore changing, implies produced, caused working thing, functioning thing. All of those are synonyms. Not synonyms, but implications of the idea MI TAKPA.

But, those who aren't so well schooled often translate TAKPA into English as permanent, and MI TAKPA as impermanent. There's a problem with that. 

Because in English, when we say permanent, TAKPA as permanent, unchanging as permanent, we hold that that means it's forever. Something would be eternal, permanent. 

Then when we say impermanent, we have this sense that well, something will eventually end. It goes along the same, the same, the same, the same, and then someday it wears out and disappears. 

But impermanent, we expect something to last for a while, but we know it's going to break, or die, or get lost or whatever. 

Those two terms are not complete enough for us to understand what's underneath TAKPA and MI TAKPA.

Here's our friend the pen. Is the emptiness of this pen permanent?

If the emptiness of this pen is permanent, there will be emptiness of this pen regardless of whether the pen is there or not, because you just said it's permanent there forever. 

So I'll ask you again. Is the emptiness of this pen permanent? 

No. 

Is the emptiness of this pen unchanging? 

Yes. Why?

Because every instant of the existence of this pen, it's emptiness is 100%. 

It's never 50% empty of self nature. Even as there's only half a pen here. Then each half of the pen has a 100% emptiness of that half of the pen and this half of the pen. Technically a different emptiness than the emptiness of the whole pen. 

But, the no self nature nature of an existing thing is 100% a s long as the object is there, whether or not the object is changing, which the pen is doing as it loses ink. Its emptiness is still full on a 100% until the instant that there is no more pen. And the instant the pen goes out of existence, it's emptiness, the pen's emptiness, is just gone. It doesn't shrink, it doesn't get less. It's just there's no existing thing to lack self nature, so there's no lack of that self nature. 

So emptiness of anything is unchanging but not permanent. 

Do you see why you can't use TAKPA as permanent now?

MI TAKPA is changing. The pen is changing. Technically changing moment by moment, isn't it? 

But to us still Sarahni's red and white pen, right? It's been months that we've been using Sarahni's red and white pen. And it's still Sarahni's red and white pen, but it's got less ink. It's three days older. It's changing, changing, changing. 

So this pen is a changing thing, even as we say, Yeah, but it's the same pen you had last week. 

Yes, it is the same pen. But it's not the same as it was. 

But its emptiness is unchanged from last week, last month, et cetera. 

Now, a mind, any being's mind is a changing thing, constantly changing in fact. 

But a mind is eternally existent. If there is a mind now, there was a moment before that and there was a moment before that for that mind, and one before that, and one before that, and one before that. And there will always be a next moment.

So this mind that's constantly changing is in fact eternal, permanent. 

Because it will never not be a constantly changing mind. 

It will never not be constantly changing. 

The no self nature of that constantly changing mind then is an unchanging thing that is also eternal. 

The emptiness of a thing that will be destroyed is unchanging, not permanent.

But the emptiness of something that will never be destroyed is unchanging and permanent, eternal. 

The only thing, the only emptiness that is unchanging and eternal is the emptiness of a mind. And that emptiness of a mind is what we mean by Buddha nature. 

Our Buddha nature is something that we already have, because we have a mind that lacks self nature. That mind will always be changing, changing, changing, and 100% lacking its own nature. 

So hooray. We have a changing thing that's eternal and an unchanging thing that's eternal. Our mind and our mind's Buddha nature. Got it?

So TAKPA, MI TAKPA should not be translated as permanent, impermanent. Unchanging and not unchanging is more accurate. 

Luisa: I have a question that I have never really internalized - when the emptiness comes into existence and out of existence. Flavia explained me that a long time ago, but I cannot really grasp it. Why is that not like a changing? It's kind of changing the state from being there to not being there. 

Lama Sarahni: The emptiness doesn't change. It blinks in and it blinks out. Because it's not a thing that goes out of, it's not a thing that withdraws. It's an absence that's either there or not.

Luisa: But it's changing. I mean in the sense of it's being there and not being there, that for me is a change.

Lama Sarahni: That's not changing. It's an absence and can't change. It blinks out. It's either exists or not. You just have to keep cooking it, Luisa. There's nothing more I can say than yes, our concept is if it's there and then not there, it has changed to go away. But that's an incorrect perception based on our ignorance.

Luisa: And when you say the mind is eternal, all the minds in the universe are eternal. That means that all the beings that are there, there are not going to pop up more beings. It is a definite amount of beings in the universe. And like if new people are born, it's not that because new minds are being created, it's because beings from other realms are evolving into humans. Correct?

Lama Sarahni: That’s correct. 

Luisa: Okay, thank you.

Lama Sarahni: Yeah, they say there is a finite number of minds. Hard to conceive. 

Flavia: I'm so happy. But I've never heard this before, that the human mind, not as human, but the mind is permanent. In all the explanations about the Buddha nature being only the emptiness of our mind. So we have the same absence. So ergo we can create this or we can, yeah, we can become this being. But I've never heard before that we are also permanent in a way. And that means that we have more in common with Buddha than just the emptiness of our mind.

Lama Sarahni: Right. And so does a worm and a hell being.

Flavia: Yeah, yeah. All being all beings.

Lama Sarahni: Any mind.

Flavia: But that is more than just the emptiness. It means that it's something that is pure in any mind, or something that is important.

Lama Sarahni: Not something. The absence of it is pure. The presence of it is impure. 

Flavia: The absence is always the absence of something creating. So the thing that is creating, it can be creating impure, but it also has the potential to create pure always in any given second. And that we have in common with Buddha. That is more than just an absence.

Lama Sarahni: Work on your syllogisms for that and see where it goes. Yes.

(33:58) Lian Sang: Sorry, Lama Sarahni. I may not have heard the full question and maybe it's a repeat. So I understand this mind like a spaghetti strip, right? So maybe in a cow, maybe in an ant. But we say that the mind is eternal. 

But we are referring to this mind of the ant, it's eternal, right? Because it can be… okay, maybe past life was an ant, past life was an cow, right? So we say the mind is eternal, but we know the mind of the ant is different from the mind of cow for example. But it's the same spaghetti strip, for example, right? It's the same. Like Buddha will have said that. Yeah, okay. Your past life was a cow. Your past life was an ant. But the content, how do I put it? The karma or the seeds, if we say the seeds that is carried by the ant, in their lifetime will be different from that from a cow for example. I don't know whether I make it, but it's a past life of the ant for example, the cow then turn into the next life, become an ant. And then maybe finally the human being. It is a continuous, like a spaghetti strip never ended.

Lama Sarahni: Right. The mind that which is clear and aware. 

So the ant‘s mind is still that which is clear and aware. It's not like the ant‘s mind looks different. What it's aware of is very different than a cow's mind, but the mind clear and aware as the same existential status.

Lian Sang: So that is the definition of the mind, right? Clear and aware, it's the definition. But what I'm trying to say is that if we look at the projection, right, the ant— because of the karma—is being projected as an ant. So at that particular strip of the time, the projections will be very different from a cow. So why do we say that? It's eternal?

Lama Sarahni: The clear and aware is happening instant by instant by instant, and doesn't really matter what it's clear and aware of. It does matter because it's influenced by what it's clear and aware of. It's influenced by that changing, changing, changing, changing, changing, changing. But never, not this thing we're calling mind.

It's not a thing that's clear and aware. It's clear and aware happening.

Liang Sang: Okay, so this thing about the mind unchanging, is there any difference in the different schools or this is common across all the schools?

Lama Sarahni: I don't know the answer to that. I want to say it would be common across all schools, but how they would describe it and explain it and the ramifications of it would have a different connotation. But all schools believe that every being has Buddha nature. That's not just Higher School I believe.

Liang Sang: Okay, thank you.

Can there be a Creator Being?

(39:30) Okay, so omniscience is this state of mind having technically correct direct perception towards everything. And only Buddhas have it. 

Meaning what we mean by a Buddha is being whose mind is that. 

Apparently, in Buddhas time, there was a Hindu school of thought that believed that to be omniscient also meant to be the creator of the world. And that being was TAKPA, unchanging. 

They would describe that from that omniscient creator being flowed, all things. That being knows the pain of the tiniest little creature. That being made the world, and that being is themself unchanging. 

They've always been omniscient and always been the creator of the world. 

So omniscient and omnipotent and always been that. Sounds familiar.

Master Dharmakirti says, so you're saying that there's this being who makes the world who knows all things and never changes. 

Let's check that out, shall we? 

Then there are apparently in Master Dharmakirti's time Buddhists who would say that a Buddha‘s omniscience is unchanging. 

Master Dharmakirti‘s arguments apply to that as well. 

They describe that amongst the various qualities of a mind, one of them is the quality of taking on the aspect of the object we are perceiving. 

This is from logic school, and if I understand correctly Abhidharma school says the same thing.

We've heard Geshehla say, when the mind is perceiving blue, our mind then is blue. Like a mirror, that if you put blue in front of a mirror, completely fill the mirror with blue, and you look at the mirror, what do you see? 

Blue.

If you didn't know it was a mirror, right? I don't know, you even think it was a blue sky. 

If we knew there was a mirror there, then we'd go, wow, the mirror is blue right now. 

Technically we'd say, oh, the mirror is reflecting blue right now, to be more correct.

But our experience is, oh, the mirror is blue. 

Apparently the way our mind is as it's perceiving blue, is it's appearing blue. And that's how we know blue is that our mind appears blue. 

I don't understand that so much.

What Master Dharmakirti is building up to, is that when the mind is focused on something, the mind itself reflects that something. So if a mind is focusing on something that is changing, then the mind itself has to be changing to reflect that changing nature. 

Again, the analogy of the mirror for me doesn't work. It's like I put something in front of the mirror and then I take it away and I put something else in front of the mirror. I don't think the mirror is changing. The mirror is just doing its thing.

But definitely the reflection in the mirror is changing as I go this thing and then this thing and then this thing, the reflection is changing, changing, changing.

That's a little bit more helpful, is if we've got this clear and aware that's seeing—I need something that's changing in the motion in the moment, I don't have that. Okay, let's do this. 

You can't see it, but you can hear it, right? (Clicking with the pen) 

Changing, changing, changing. The mind that's hearing it now and now and now, if the mind's reflecting that so that I can know it, is it changing or not?

It has to be, right?

Now it's this. Now it's that. Now it's this. Now it's that. Now it's this. Now it's that. 

So a mind that's perceiving a changing thing has to go along with the change. 

If we're thinking there's a mind over here that's doing the perceiving, we're going to think, oh no, the mind stays the same. It's the perceiving that's happening. 

But that would mean we would have a mind independent of the thing it's perceiving, and that would be a mind that's not empty of self nature. 

So, the clear and aware is aware of this, and then aware of that, and then aware of this, and aware of that. And that's our mind changing, changing, changing, changing.

Because what it's aware of is the appearing nature of our world, which is constantly changing. Even the thing that seems to be there the same every day until it finally breaks. It's still changing, changing, changing. 

To perceive a changing thing, the mind has to move. It has to change also.

Now, Buddhas perceive all things in all times, and those things that the Buddha is perceiving are changing. So that omniscient mind of perceiving all appearing things, which are all changing things is also changing. Omniscient and changing. 

So then, if we use that logic, that Buddha mind is also perceiving directly the empty nature of all of those things, and the empty nature of all of those things are unchanging. 

So now is the Buddha's mind unchanging when it's focusing on an unchanging thing? Then, how can it be both changing and unchanging at the same time? 

Well, because it's omniscient.

But their explanation, again for me it's not quite satisfactory, but their explanation is that when mind is focusing on changing things, clearly it's changing. And when the mind is focusing on the unchanging thing of the emptiness of those changing things, that mind is still changing, because it goes on and off that emptiness. 

Well wait a minute, a Buddha‘s mind is not going to go on and off that emptiness.

It's like they shift their argument from Buddha mind to regular mind and they say a non Buddha mind, when it's focusing on an unchanging thing, in fact, can't stay on that unchanging thing. It hits it and bounces off, and hits it and bounces off. Like a fly trying to get out the window. That it just flew in your house and it goes directly to the window and goes, Bing, bing, bing, bing, bing. Let me out of here, let me out of here. 

That our mind does that.

I don't know, I've been cooking it for a while and I think it has something to do with a mind staying on an absence, and how difficult that is for a non omniscient mind.

Then, for the argument of the omniscient mind not being unchanging, even as it's perceiving emptiness directly is because it's also perceiving the changing things. And those changing things are changing like this (Lama Sarahni is holding a pen up and hides it again), which means that emptiness of those things are blinking in and out of existence. 

So Buddha‘s perceiving both of those with a mind that's still changing. But forever omniscient, never changing so much that it becomes not omniscient anymore. Eternally omniscient, but ever changing, because it's perceiving changing things as it's perceiving all changing things at all times. 

It's like sparks fly, because conceptually we really just can't get it.

(50:16) You have a homework question that's going to ask you something about isn't the mind unchanging when it's focused on an unchanging thing in the same way that it's changing when it's focusing on a changing thing? 

The answer key is going to say something like, when the mind focuses on an unchanging thing, it engages with it and then withdraws, and engages again and withdraws. Because the mind can't engage the absence and stay there. 

So the mind is still changing as it engages an unchanging thing. 

Again, I don't buy it, but that's the answer key. So up to you whether you can write that.

Luisa: In that sense they're talking about our minds or the Buddha mind?

Lama Sarahni: Well, it's in the context of does a Buddha's mind change when it's perceiving emptiness directly? But when they answer it, they're talking about our mind. So again, I don't completely understand. 

Luisa: But this part of the engages and doesn't engage, is that related with the subtle impermanence of emptiness? Maybe?

Lama Sarahni: It will be.

Luisa: But this subtle impermanence of emptiness is only for ordinary minds, right? Because Buddhas does don't perceive this?

Lama Sarahni: They'll be perceiving that directly also.

Luisa: So then it applies the same, I believe. Okay, thank you.

All of that is building up to the question, can there be an omniscient, omnipotent creator of our world who is unchanging?

If we are still holding to some component of that, then we will not be able to take the personal responsibility as creators of our world that is necessary to stop the suffering either our own or anybody else's, let alone everyone else‘s. 

I saw a lot of head nods, no, on the answer to that question. 

But I grew up in a world where to say omniscient, omnipotent creator of the world who is unchanging is impossible. It could have gotten me on a whole world of hurt, if I have had held to it as a teenager. Because my world believes there is such a thing as illogical as it is. Then I don't know for sure, but I'm going to guess that in culturally Buddhist countries, there could very well be this idea that I take my refuge in Buddha means I just hand it all over to him, and he'll take care of me, and he'll tell me what to do. 

It still is not me taking absolute personal responsibility for all the great stuff that's happening in our world and all the crap. 

Who wants to take that personal responsibility? 

It's not a bad thing to say there's somebody, I'll blame it on them.

It's helpful until we reach a certain point and it's like just doesn't seem so helpful anymore. Something's gone wrong. Our own seeds ripen in such a way that we see this doesn't make sense. 

We're going to look at it. This is Master Dharmakirti‘s point. 

It's like, this does not make sense. An omniscient, omnipotent creator of the world who's unchanging. There's something wrong with this picture. 

One of his arguments is

JIKTEN SOWAPO RIMPA SHIN

JIKTEN = destructible basis, it means our world, our samsaric world

RIMPA SHIN = made in stages

SOWAPO = the word for the maker. 

The maker of our suffering world made it in stages. 

It seems to us ignorant beings that our world has come about in stages, right? Geology shows us that. Our experience shows us that. 

There weren't such things as internet and cell phones when I was a teenager. I was old enough to be an adult and there was no such thing. And now there are. They came about in stages. Stuff happens in stages. We see that. That's our experience. 

Master Dharmakirti says, why would an omnipotent unchanging being make things in stages? Why wouldn't they just make it up?

If they could make it all at once, they could also wipe it out all at once. 

Why would they bother? 

I'll make it this way now, and then this way today, and this way the next day. 

It's a funny argument. 

Why would they do that?

Like if you were omniscient and omnipotent, would you make it so they have to figure it out themselves? Or would you just like blop, here you go. 

In which case, why didn't they make us all enlightened, so we could all be in paradise together hanging out and having a good time? What are they, sadistic? 

I'm the only one. All the rest of them, they got to hurt. 

That's not the kind of omniscient, omnipotent creator of the world that I want to rely on. Thank you very much. 

I want one who's going to like me and help me. 

So let's reject that one, that they're just nasty.

Maybe they're either not omniscient or not omnipotent? 

Because they made it happen in stages. 

Then what about the being changing or unchanging part? 

Can a creator being create anything and not change in the process?

We said emptiness can blink in and blink out, and not change in the process. 

So why can't a creator being go from not having created donuts to creating donuts and not change? 

Because now they have donuts, and they didn't have 'em before.

Something's changed. In which case they weren't omniscient either, because if they could make donuts from not having had before they didn't know about donuts.

And all of a sudden they make donuts without having to know about donuts? How does that work? 

Oh, that's what it is to be omnipotent. You can make anything out of anything.

So then you're changing. Because now donuts that you didn't know before.

Then someone might say.. no. Let me stop for our break because this one's going to go on for a little bit. Let's take our break, but don't lose the, ‚And then someone might say‘.

(Break)

(60:21) Maybe that creator being is changing, and sometimes he creates all things and sometimes he doesn't. But he's been God for forever, never not God and had to become God, just God. 

I mean that's what God is. That's what it means, right? Just God. 

Master Dharmakirti says that doesn't make sense, because there has to be a cause to make you omniscient. It doesn't just come from nowhere.

An unchanging being could not have created their own mind. 

They could not have created their own omniscience.

It's a part of the world they created. So they had to have been able to create it.

If their mind was always mind, always god's mind, then it has to always be omniscient. 

But then that omniscience isn't a changing thing and it can't create, right? 

So it couldn't have been omniscience from the start and create something, and it couldn't have created omniscience without having the causes for omniscience. 

Master Dharmakirtis argument is, a being who has been perfect for all time, has never suffered.

So they've never had bad things happen to them, or good things that were out, or experienced pervasive suffering—illness, aging, death, forced rebirth. 

So they cannot be omniscient, because their omniscience would not include suffering. 

And if it doesn't include suffering, they can't create suffering. Then what the heck are we all experiencing?

Then it couldn't have been them that made us in our suffering. Because they don't know suffering. 

Oh, okay, so it's us that's suffering. They made a pure world and we don't see it that way. Yeah but they made us too. How could they have made us as suffering beings if they don't know suffering? 

It doesn't make sense. God doesn't make sense. God works in mysterious ways, my mom would always say. It's like, okay, thank you very much, but that's not satisfactory for me. Maybe it is for you. Okay, great. But it's not for me. So excuse me while I go try to figure this out.

This being, who's been God forever, has never experienced suffering and so never had to apply the antidote to suffering in order to become omniscient, in order to help other beings apply the antidote to suffering. And so that being could never have had their first direct perception of emptiness. Because we have to apply antidotes to our behavior to gather the goodness to create that.

So, to become omniscient, we must go through suffering, get sick of it, learn that there's an alternative, want to reach that alternative, apply that reaching the alternative to helping all beings to reach it, to experience ultimate reality along the way, and then live according to what we now know to be true until we reach the level of no more learning.

That's doing that sequence is how we come to know what other beings need to do to reach the end of their suffering. 

Without doing all of that, we won't know what other beings need to do to stop suffering. 

So if this creator being has never gone through all of that, they don't know how to help us. Even if they were trying to help us, they wouldn't be able to. 

Synopsis

Let me give you a synopsis. 

Why is being omniscient and omnipotent and unchanging not possible? Really, not possible. 

Omniscience is a changing thing because the mind is perceiving changing things. It has to have come from causes. So the omniscient being would have to have been caused meaning that omniscient being could not have always been omniscient. 

Then, in the process of becoming omniscient, they come to know suffering. 

Knowing suffering motivates them to want to become omniscient, and in the process of bringing an end to suffering, they learn how to do that, and they reach it.

And then they know how to help others do it from personal experience.

It's an important piece in Buddhism to understand that. 

We'll see by the end of class.

There has to be a cause to make you omniscient. 

Things to take up and give up

(68:46) Now, back to our vocabulary, that leads us to these two terms

LANG JA and DOR JA

LANG JA = things we should take up 

DOR JA = things we should give up 

If we could make this distinction accurately, we would have our spiritual path very clearly outlined. In our mistake we have things that are LANG JA, and things that are DOR JA mixed up.

LANG JA, things we should take up in our worldly perspective, things that we should take up is we should grow up to be effective adults, have a good job, meet a perfect partner, expect them to be the cause of our happiness. Have a delightful family, get a bigger house, get promotions, go on vacations, grow up to be a happy retired person, turning 70 and happy about it. That's what we should take up.

The things that we abandon or give up are putting others' needs ahead of our own. Because I'm busy taking care of my own family. We fail to exchange self and others. We aren't interested in a practice like that, right? We're busy taking care of our own, dealing with our own needs. 

It's too much to look after somebody else's needs. I'm taking care of my family. That's all I can manage. You're asking me take care of all my neighbors too? I can't do that. That's crazy. We've got 'em backwards. 

Things to abandon when we have our clarity about our spiritual practice is that we abandon things that we have attachment to, and we take up those things that will help us overcome perpetuating a Samsaric world. So when we say give up attachment, we don't mean give up your job, give up your family, go live under a bridge.

What we mean is giving up that belief that the source of my happiness is all of those things that I've been taught to achieve as an effective human adult. 

The expectation that the better job, the bigger house, the fancier car will bring me happiness. 

We're all taking classes like this because we've already bumped up against that. They're not the source of happiness. I see that. 

Either I can't get them or I have them, and I'm not any happier. They failed me. 

The attachment to our wrong views, the attachment to where we think our happiness is coming from is what we should be giving up. 

What we would be taking up then is our increased kindness practices, increased helpfulness. Included in the LANG JA is our study, meditation, contemplation service.

But we have them backwards. Do you see? 

As a fully enlightened being, we see exactly, perfectly, what any individual needs to take up and give up. We know the general purpose. Everybody needs to give up selfishness and take up compassion. 

But an omniscient being, because of their love and compassion that served as the cause for their omniscience, they know exactly what each one of us needs to give up and needs to take up. And it's unique to each of us.

Now having access to a being whose wisdom is like that, that's hugely powerful. Because if we could talk to them and get instruction directly from them, they‘d just say, go mow the grass right now, but make sure there's no worms. Go, your neighbor three doors down needs some help, go. Go to the grocery, right now. 

If we had that kind of guidance and that belief system is ‚Just tell me what to do, I'll do it‘, that's not really all that different than doing what God says. But now we know why. Because we have access to this authority. Authority based on having been there, done that. Made all the mistakes that Sarahni is so good at, they've made and are trying to help me not make them. But they can't just reach into me and take those habits away from me. If they could, they would. But they can't. 

They can only teach me, guide me, try to influence me. 

LANG JA, DOR JA.

Those two qualities of a Buddha's omniscience is what it is to be omniscient, to know directly each beings what they need to take up and what they need to give up. The ÖANG JA, what to take up from the Buddha’s side is the pure side of existence which brings happiness. So our omniscient being wants to show us, teach us the pure side of things, the things that if we take them up will create the causes for our happiness.

They perceive it directly. 

DOR JA is the impure side of things, the afflicted side of things, that which we need to give up in order to stop perpetuating our suffering. 

From our ignorant point of view, we have these reversed.

Pure point of view, LANG JA is the pure side of existence, DOR JA is the suffering side of existence. 

To perceive those directly always is what it is to be a Buddha‘s omniscience. But it does not make them omnipotent. 

Omniscience does also know every rock at the bottom of the ocean. But that's just a side effect of this mind that perceives all existing things and their emptiness. 

The importance of one's omniscience is to know this LANG JA and DOR JA for every existing being.

The Four Arya Truths

(78:22) A fully enlightened being knows exactly what each of us need to think, do and say to end all of our suffering forever. They can't make us do it. They can't make it happen to us. They can only teach us, and show us, and help us, and inspire us. 

It is up to us to make those changes.

What a fully enlightened being then teaches us is DUK KUN DOK LAM.

DUK KUN DOK LAM is the shortened phrase for the four Arya truths. 

Often mistranslated as the four noble truths. 

Arya means superior. 

Superior means we've perceived emptiness directly for the first time, and that makes us superior to any way we have ever been before. Not superior to anybody else, superior to any way we have ever been in any lifetime before that. We now know better. We know a truth. We can't see it again. We can only remember having gone into and come of it. But we are forever changed as a result and we can never not know. That's what's meant by superior, Arya.

1. DUKNJEL DENPA Truth of suffering

2. KUNJUNG DENPA Truth of a source of suffering

3. GOKDEN DENPA Truth of end to suffering

4. LAMDEN DENPA Truth of a path to stop suffering

In that period of time going into, coming out of our direct perception of emptiness for the first time, we also experienced directly these other aspects of the four truths, and that's what becomes these four Arya truths. 

We have experienced directly the truth of suffering, DUKNJEL. Meaning we come out of our knowing that every instant of every experience since forever has been mistakenly misunderstood, and so mistakenly reacted to. Whether it's a pleasant thing, or an unpleasant thing, or a neutral thing, it's all been mistaken. All been ignorant, and so all suffering and a source of more suffering. So meaning every instant of me up until this time has been suffering. Not meaning suffering adjective, but suffering noun. Like my very identity has been suffering and I never knew it before. And now you keenly know it. 

DUKNJEL—the truth of suffering.

KUN is short for KUNJUN DENPA.

KUNJUN DENPA means the truth, DENPA, of the source of suffering. 

So part of what you come to know to be true is that the ignorance, the misunderstanding, the true nature of self and other is what has made us act selfishly and harmfully towards other since beginningless time. 

The truth of the source of suffering all mental afflictions is our ignorance, our belief in a self nature of me and a self nature of other. And so I can blame other for anything that I'm experiencing. Big mistake. Source of all suffering.

You have direct experience of that in this period of time called our TONG LAM.

GOKDEN DENPA is the truth of the stopping of suffering, the cessation of suffering.

GOK = cessation

During that direct perception of emptiness that you're not aware of until you come out of it, you realize that you were free of suffering for whatever that period of time was. 

You were finally free of ignorance, and so free of any suffering for that 20 minutes. 

So you know that the end of suffering is possible, and out you come and you're suffering again. In a whole different way, but still suffering. 

But the reality of no suffering exists, ultimate reality. 

Then LAM, the truth of the path. Because of your understanding of the empty nature of any of yourself and any object you are interacting with, you are taking personal responsibility for responding to that object in a way that will take you to your Buddhahood eventually. 

So you're on the path, you know the path. Not meaning you know the details of your own every life yet. But you understand what you need to do, and you understand that you're on the conveyor belt of doing it—your path of habitation.

A fully enlightened being, an omniscient being, needs to know these four, don't they? They need to have gone through these four, and know these four, and know that we need to go through these four, and they actually know what they'll be like for us already. 

Then, when a Buddha describes these to us, they do so in this perfectly correct way. We can't yet confirm the truth of the path. 

We can't yet confirm the truth of the cessation.

We can't yet confirm the truth of source of suffering. 

But as ordinary beings, we can in fact confirm the truth of suffering.

If we can confirm from our own experience the truth of suffering, and we can come to a conviction from logic of the omniscience of a Buddha mind, then by way of confirming one of the four truths that the Buddha teaches, and knowing that an omniscient mind hears itself teaching, it can't teach anything to make us go wrong, or anything that's incorrect, or anything that's intentionally incorrect. 

Their own hearing them teach beings is direct correct perception, because that's what it is to be an omniscient being: direct correct perception. 

We confirm one of those direct correct perception teachings. 

We can accept that the other things that they taught are also correct.

When they don't seem like they're correct to us, then we apply these tools:

What am I misunderstanding? 

How can I dig into this further to understand it better? 

Why would Buddha have said, kill my mother, kill my father. There must be another reason. 

How does it fit into the LANG JA and DOR JA? 

We will have the tools to work those inconsistencies or contradictions out, but we'll only bother to do so once we've established to ourselves that, oh, because I can confirm the suffering piece that makes the other stuff they teach authoritative for me, not for anybody else, necessarily.

Buddha said this one thing that Master Dhamrakirti quotes and so did Geshe Michael. He taught, 

The seed for the destruction of things starts when it begins, 

and my condition is unhappiness. 

That's all one sentence. 

Buddha taught, 

The seed for the destruction of things starts when it begins

When the thing that we're talking about being destroyed begins.

And my condition is unhappiness. 

Geshela said, work on confirming this with your own direct correct perception or airtight reasoning. Then you decide whether the Buddha‘s teachings can be authoritative for you. 

The seed for the destruction of things starts when it begins, 

and my condition is unhappiness. 

Alright, we're not done yet.

The opening lines of the 4th chapter of the Abhidharma Kosha

This phrase

LE LE JIKTEN NATSOK KYE DE NI SEMPA DANG DE JE

it's the opening lines of the fourth chapter of Abhidharma Kosha. 

LE LE JIKTEN NATSOK KYE DE NI SEMPA DANG DE JE

It's kind of fun to say, DE NI SEMPA DANG DE JE

LE LE JIKTEN NATSOK KYE all the various worlds come from karma

DE NI SEMPA DANG DE JE and karma is movement of the mind and what it motivates

What it motivates means, what it makes us say and do, movement of the mind. Karma is movement of the mind, and what it makes us say and do.

Movement of the mind, and what it makes us say and do makes the world.

Abhidharma Kosha, lowest school. It means our behavior creates everything, has created everything, is creating everything, and will create everything.

As long as we still hold to some other as the source of our unhappiness or happiness, we are blocking our own liberation, our own reaching the happiness that we're wanting. 

If we blame anything else than our behavior for creating our own happiness, we're blocking the very happiness. We're wanting the other thing or other being to bring us from getting it. 

Until we're convinced that cause and effect is the basis of our every experience, we won't be careful with our actions. 

Cause and effect not meaning the seed makes the sprout. 

Cause and effect meaning my behavior in the past makes the seed make the sprout. 

I think I said it before, you could make a case for this God as the creator being, being the principle of karma. Totally just, totally infallible, constant.

You could make a case for that. But if our end result of making a case for that is still going to be, oh, see, so there is a God that I can blame, right? Some people understand karma as fate, and you just blame your karma. You blame your fate. And that's no more helpful than having a creator God to blame. Karma isn't fate, it's not predetermined. It's the word we use for the process of the imprints made by our behavior and the projections that those imprints result in later.

There's that doggone time gap. But thank goodness for the gap, the time gap, because otherwise every bug we squished our ribcage would break, and it's like, Ooh, man, I'd be in deep trouble really fast.

So we use the time gap instead of moan about it. We use it to create, create, create, create. Like Johnny Apple seed. You just put the seed in the ground and walk away.

If we know that we've planted a seed of a kindness, then we know that whenever it ripens next week or 2 billion years from now, it's going to be pleasant. So who cares, really? Just plant. 

Yeah, but Sarahni, that doesn't get your paycheck to just plant and walk away. 

Yeah, right. It's not contradictory. 

It does take time. We put these new ideas into practice. 

I am planting kindness. I am planting kindness and my life is still going wrong, going wrong, going wrong. Right. That's not contradictory. It's frustrating. I agree. 

But every moment we're burning off 65 old seeds probably made from before we really knew anything about this stuff. 

So why wouldn't it be kind of unpleasant, kind of pleasant? 

Why do we really expect just because now I know about seeds and I'm being extra special nice all of a sudden there should be roses everywhere. It's like, that's just not realistic if we were ordinary jerk in past life, and the one before, and the one before that.

Knowing the process, we just doggedly, determinedly, do the best we can to plant new seeds, that when they ripen will at least be pleasure that wears out. 

Ultimately will be moving us along our path to where we are working with our seeds in such a way that pleasant ripenings or unpleasant ripenings, it's just as enjoyable.

The perfection of joyous effort. Because we've worked with our patient's practice, because we've worked with our morality practice, because we've worked with our sharing or giving practice. 

It all builds up to this level of wisdom. 

Even before direct perception, but especially after of course, where good ripening, bad ripening, don't matter. They're all seed planting opportunities. 

It does with time get easier. I guess we can say that. Get easier, get more pleasurable.

That completes your class 5, omniscience,

What it is to be an omniscient being. Good job. Let's do our dedication before our minds slide. 

Remember that person, you want to be able to help son of a gun. Our own suffering is actually necessary to become a being who can help them and theirs. Our own wisdom is growing just by listening to this class. And so that's already set in motion, the end of their suffering because of our motivation to take this class in order to do that. That's an extraordinary goodness. So please be happy with yourself and think of this goodness, like a beautiful glowing gemstone that you can hold in your hands.

[Usual dedication]

Thank you so very much for the opportunity to share.

For the recording, welcome back. We are ACI course four, class six on April 7th, 2024. Let's gather our minds here as we usually do please. 

Bring your attention to your breath until you hear from me again. 

[Usual opening]

Review class 5

(8:12) Last class we were talking about omniscience and what it is to be omniscient. And whether or not omniscience automatically means omnipotent.

As a side product, whether or not there could be such a thing as an omniscient, omnipotent creator being who has always been that, and so unchanging. 

In the different discussions we had, one was the reasoning that the mind of an omniscient being must be changing. 

Not just a creator being must be changing, but an omniscient being who's perceiving all things in all times all at the same time. Sounds like that would be unchanging. But the reasoning was that a mind that's focusing on a changing object has to change to see the object in the next way that it is. So even a mind that's perceiving all things changing and unchanging all the time does not mean that that mind that's perceiving changing things is not also changing. It must be.

Then your quiz asked, what does a being have to know to be all knowing?

Like what do we mean by omniscient? 

We might think, well, they know all knowable things. Which at first blush would be everything in the Encyclopedia Britannica. Anybody old enough to know what that even is? 

When I was in grade school and you had to write a report, you pulled out the encyclopedia and you read everything you could about your topic. Then you wrote a summary of it and oh, good job. It was our resource tool. Now it's the omniscient Google. But that's not the power of being omniscient.

The usefulness of being omniscient is that that mind knows perfectly all that needs to be taken up and given up in order to stop perpetuating suffering. 

That's way more important than knowing every topic in the Encyclopedia Britannica. Way more important, because with that information there's nobody we can't help. There's no one we don't know how to help. 

The omniscience of knowing the suffering, the causes of suffering, the cessation of suffering and how to bring that about is actually the most important part of what it is to be omniscient. 

Then your quiz also asked, the question was: Why is the Buddha unerring? 

But it's really asking how can we know that the Buddha is unerring? 

The answer key just gave this really simple answer. But you have to think about it for a while to really get the connection. 

How do we know the Buddha is unerring? Because he teaches about suffering in a way that we can personally directly confirm.

That's the argument. That's how we know a Buddha is unerring. Because we can confirm one thing that they say and it's like how does that confirm that something else they said couldn't be right? 

It starts this circular argument it seems. If they're omniscient and they know perfectly what we need to give up and take up, and in that omniscience they are perceiving every existing thing and its true nature simultaneously all the time directly. Then that means they're also hearing themselves say what they say when they teach somebody. 

So if they're hearing themselves say stuff and they're omniscient, then they're only going to say stuff that they know is the stuff that their audience needs to hear in order to take up and give up in order to stop perpetuating Samsara.

They hear everything they say. We hear some of it, and one part of it, the truth of suffering, we can directly confirm. The other stuff we can't yet. 

But if they heard themselves say the suffering part and they heard themselves say the cause of suffering part, and the end of suffering and the path to it, and we can confirm one of them, then we've confirmed them all.

It still is like I don't know about that. But that's the reasoning. 

If we couldn't confirm any part of Buddha teachings for ourselves with either direct experience or by our own correct reasoning, if we could not confirm, then we would have no way to really know that anything the Buddha said was correct. 

It's significant that we can confirm the fact of suffering, the truth of suffering.

Then we tend to live in a world where you push all suffering away and deny it and don't want any part of it. And here's Buddhism that says, look, that's your ticket to confirming that you could in fact end it is to absolutely confirm that there's nothing not suffering in our world, our human ignorant world.

In a way it's like, well, it's kind of a relief to hear it said. I'm not so odd after all. 

But we don't stay there of course. It would lead to a terrible depression, but it's our start.

So how do we know the Buddha is on unerring? Because he teaches about suffering so perfectly and we can directly confirm that for ourselves. 

That brings us to actual class for this evening, which is the four reasonings of the forward order, it's called. Which is going to help us sort out what I just said.

The Four Reasonings of the Forward Order 

(18:21) Here's our vocabulary.

This looks like LUK JUNG, but when you hear Geshela say it, there's a prenasal in there somewhere and it sounds more like LUNG JUNG. It's a short hard fast U, short U, but there's somehow a prenasal in there. I don't understand it. 

It's LUNG JUNG and LUNG DOK

LUK JUNG = the forward order 

LUK DOK = the reverse order.

Meaning a sequence of things, a sequence of thought that leads you to a conclusion. There are teachings that consider a certain teaching in the forward order, and there are ways to consider that same teaching in the backward order, which gives you a different perspective on the meaning of the teaching. 

For example, the classic one is the 12 links of the wheel of life. Which some of us have studied. Where it's the explanation of how it is that we perpetuate our suffering world, where suffering comes from. It starts with our ignorance and because of our ignorance we make karma, and because of that karma we have birth, and with the birth we get heaps, and with the heaps we get aging and illness in some order, and from that we get death. At the moment of death some kind of grasping pushes that projecting karma into a new birth. Because that projecting karma was infused with the ignorance that pushed it, we start the whole cycle again.

The mind moves, Karma. Form comes about, contact comes about, grasping comes about, all of those things. But in the end, death and forced rebirth. 

All those different 12 steps, describe how that process happens from one to the next to the next to the next.

If you study that in reverse, if I want to stop death, what do I have to do? 

I have to stop the birth.

How do I stop birth?

I have to stop that projecting karma.

How do I stop projecting karma?

I have to stop that specific kind of grasping that happens at death.

How do I stop that? How do I stop that?

It's going to bring us all the way back around to that raw karma that's collected but not committed, and the ignorance that pushes that.

So you get different information studying it in the reverse order than you do studying in the forward order.

Our text, the Pramanavartika uses the reasoning in the forward order, LUK JUK the for becoming a being who is totally correct, for becoming TSEMA. 

That particular text goes through a forward order of how that happens. 

One can use that same sequence of arguments in reverse to figure out how to do it.

The forward order is the connection between becoming that and the backward order is what you have to stop doing in order to reach it. 

We're just going to do the forward order. Working our way through the Master Dignagas opening statement:

I bow down to that being with these five qualities, 

the protector, 

those gone to bliss, 

the teacher, 

those who wish to benefit sentient beings 

and those who have turned into persons with valid perception.

We want to know, how is it that we can know that this being we call Buddha is in fact an authoritative source for how to stop our suffering. 

Maybe we have the seeds to hear those five qualities of a Buddha and just go, yeah, understand. Or we think we understand what that means and we're attracted. But those five are all related, and when we understand them deeply, we'll see how in order to be one who has turned correct, one must also have these other four qualities that they actually—I don't want to say come in a sequence—but they're all interrelated. Then from that we can come to better perceive what started that process happening. Because then we know what we need to do to start our process happening.

(25:30) We need to review logical statements, because we're going to explore some. When a logical statement is written, the first statement is stating the topic of consideration in the Tibetan. 

That sentence will end with CUCHEN, which means let's consider. 

Then second statement is what we say is true about that topic under consideration. It's called our assertion. In the Tibetan, the statement that is the assertion almost always ends with YIN TE. It means it is. 

The third statement is our statement of our reason for the assertion we made about the topic we're talking about. In the Tibetan that sentence usually ends with YUPAY CHIR. Sometimes it's YINPAY CHIR, ‚because‘ it means. ‚It is because‘.

They put this YIN down with the PAY CHIR. 

Then when we're checking a logical statement, if you recall, we check to be sure that there is in fact a relationship between the topic we're considering, and the reason we're giving about it.

Just can those two be related? Not whether they are or not. But just can they.

Then we check if the reason were true—not whether or not it is—just if it were true, would it necessarily be the case that the assertion we make about it must be true? 

If not, we don't go any further. 

If we find there's no relationship between the topic and the reason, then we don't look any further. 

If there is, we check: If 3 is true, is 2 necessarily true? 

Not whether it is in real life, just logically. 

If it is, then you negate your assertion and look at what happens to the statement of your reason. 

If negating your assertion necessarily also negates the reason for the assertion, then you have an airtight logical syllogism. And if we're being logical, we'll go, oh, then what we asserted about the topic is true, and we'll change our whole behavior around it.

Commonly, we agree, we agree, we agree, we agree, and in the end we say, Ah but no. Because we're so glued to our own beliefs. 

Just keep this in mind. When we're doing debate in order to learn something new about the topic under consideration, the person making the logical syllogism will intentionally say something wrong. 

Then the debate goes back and forth to reveal what's incorrect about the original statement. 

That's not what's happening in the syllogisms of this class.

These syllogisms are the classical ones that have already been hashed out and proven to be true. So we're not needing to argue with them. We're trying to figure out what do they really mean? How do they really prove anything to us?

Because they don't seem so airtight logical proof until we get an explanation.

(30:37) We have those five, the one who turned correct. 

We need to get 'em in the right order. 

I bow down to the protector, 

the one gone to bliss, 

the teacher, 

the one who wishes to benefit all beings, 

the one who's become person of valid perception. 

We have this sequence.

We're going to investigate each one, and then we're going to see the way they're trying to prove the first one, you have to prove something else before the first one proves anything. I'll just show you.

There's a lot of Tibetan here. That's not so important as just planting the seeds to hear it and read it but then to see how the sequence of logical arguments go. 

1. TUNPA CHU CHEN

TSEMAR GYUR TE

KYODPA YIN PAY CHIR

2. TUNPA CHIR CHEN

KYODPA YIN TE

DRIMA PANG PAY CHIR

3. TUNPA CHIR CHEN

DRIMA PANG PAY (YIN TE) (DESHEN SHEKPA)

TONG NYI KYI TUNPA YIN PAY CHIR

4. TUNPA CHU CHEN

TONG NYI KYI TUNPA YIN TE

TUKJE CHENPO YU PAY CHIR

TUNPA CHUCHEN means ‚consider the teacher‘.

Technically it should be T with a capital T, but my computer does weird things with capitals. 

TUNPA CHUCHEN, consider the teacher.

TSEMAR GYUR TE this is the YIN TE

TSEMAR GYUR we learned was ‚they are one who's turned correct‘. 

That's our assertion about the teacher. 

Why are we saying that? 

Because YINPAY CHIR, the one we're talking about, whoever it is, KYODPA.

KYODPA YINPAY CHIR, it means protector. They are the protector. 

This logical statement is

Consider the teacher, 

they are one who's turned correct 

because they are the protector.

It's like in English, when we say ‚because‘ of that, it should somehow reveal to us the truth of the thing we're saying about it. 

Let's go for Chinese food, because I like it better. Right? 

That's enough to say why I'm suggesting we go for Chinese food.

But here consider the teacher he's one turned correct, because he is the protector.

We can reword it a little bit.

Consider the teacher 

if they are one who has turned correct. 

They could be the protector.

Or, how do I know that teacher is one who's turned correct? 

Because they are the protector. 

But for any way we try to reword that, first of all, we need to be clear who we're talking about as the teacher. We're talking about a Buddha. Whatever that means to you. 

We need to know what we mean by they are at TSEMA GYUR. We talked about that before. They are one who was not always perceiving everything directly correctly, and they became a being who can only have direct correct perception.

Then KYODPA, the protector. What does it mean to be a protector?

When our house is on fire, we call the fire department, because we know that they can and will do their best to protect me. 

We don't call the grocery store when our house is on fire. The grocery store can't protect us. Fire department can. 

We kind of have a sense of what we know being kind of protector.

But how is it that we're using that term protector when we're talking about a totally enlightened being. 

Consider the teacher, 

they are one who has turned correct. 

Why do I say that? 

Because they are our protector. 

We should say, wait a minute, how do we know they are our protector? And why does that prove that they are one who's turned correct? 

What would we need for someone to be our protector? 

We would need them to know how to help me.

For the Buddha to be my protector, they would need to know specifically how to help me. 

Yeah, I want them to help everybody else too. 

But if I held them to be someone who could help everybody else but didn't really know what I needed, then their teaching isn't, I'm going to be limited in my ability to benefit from it if I don't recognize that they know what I need better than I do.

Because we're still wondering about the validity of, ‚because Buddha is the protector‘, that's how we know they've turned correct. 

They give us this second syllogism that says, 

again, consider the teacher

TUNPA CHUCHEN KYODPA YINPAY

 So we're taking the protector that was our reason for why they have turned correct and now we're investigating the protector. 

Consider the Buddha. 

They are the protector. 

Why do I say that? 

DRIMA PANGPAY CHIR

DRIMA PANG means ‚gotten rid of all their negativities‘. 

I don’t want to buy that one too fast. We'll go on. 

DRIMA PANG means to have ponged, cleared away all stained. 

DRIMA means stain.

It means all bad qualities.

Because a being or once a being has cleared out all of their bad qualities, they can be a protector. 

Because a Buddha has cleared all of their bad qualities, that's why we can know they are the protector. 

What does it mean to clear out all bad qualities? 

It means that that being had mental afflictions and seeds for more, had ignorance driving the whole big mistake, got taught and figured out how to clean out those mental afflictions and seeds for more, and cleaned out their obstacles to omniscience. 

What do we know is a necessary step for being able to stop all of our mental afflictions and seeds for more?

We need to perceive ultimate reality at least once for the first time in order to stop perpetuating the ignorance that is the cause of the grasping, that is the cause of mental afflictions. 

By saying this being has cleaned out all their stains, it implies that they went from an ignorant being to one who has seen emptiness directly, and then applied what they needed to do to clean out their mental afflictions and seeds for more, and went on to clear out their obstacles to omniscience. Because those are still stains.

A being who's reached Nirvana then would not qualify as a protector. Doesn't qualify as someone who has turned correct.

By clearing out all mental afflictions and seeds for more and the obstacles to omniscience, that being is now experiencing directly correctly all appearing things and the no self nature nature of all those appearing things. Perceiving appearing reality and ultimate reality simultaneously. 

That's what it is to DRIMA PANG. 

Now, if they have completely cleared out all their negativities and the obstacles to omniscience because they saw emptiness directly and did everything they needed to do to purify themselves and make the goodness to become omniscient, that means they have experienced suffering. 

They've experienced the causes of suffering. 

They've experienced that there is a cessation to that suffering, at least for those 20 minutes of the direct perception of an emptiness.

And by the time they've completed that process, they have identified the path to the cessation of that suffering.

Just because they've done it for themselves, how does that prove that they know what we need? 

They at least know what they had to do. So there's still a little shred of doubt there, right? 

Consider the teacher, 

they are one who's turned correct

perceiving having nothing but direct correct perception always, is what that means. 

Why do I say that? 

Because they are the protector. 

Well wait, that doesn't follow. 

Consider the teacher. 

They are the protector 

because they've cleaned out all their mental afflictions, 

seeds for them and obstacles to omniscience. 

Well, really? Is that enough?

I'm not totally convinced yet. 

Okay then, 

Consider the teacher. 

They are one who's cleaned out all their mental affliction, 

seeds for them and obstacles to omniscience. 

Why do I say that? 

Because 

TONG NYI KYI TUNPA YIN PAY CHIR

TONG NYI KYI TUNPA means they teach emptiness. 

What's my reason for saying that this being has cleared out all their bad deeds? 

Because they teach us emptiness. 

How do I know they've cleaned out all their bad seeds? 

Because they teach us emptiness. 

Now, here's an odd piece. In those five qualities that we were talking about, none of those five qualities says they've cleaned out all their negativity.

But the term ‚the being gone to bliss‘, DESHEN SHEKPA, that DRIMA PANG is a synonym. 

The implication is that when you have completely cleared all your stains, you are one gone to blis. DESHEN SHEKPA, and Buddha often refers to himself as ‚one gone to blis‘. That has a higher connotation. But ‚one gone to bliss‘—if you just imagine being free of any kind of mental affliction, it's not that you're just now neutral. It's that every instant, like every 65 seeds ripening per instant are all pleasure and more pleasure. Not any kind of specific pleasure, just plain pleasure. The pleasure of such extraordinary goodness. Goodness ripening upon goodness, ripening upon goodness. It's called DESHEN SHEKPA,  gone to bliss.

Bliss and more bliss. 

You can't reach that without having made the goodness of clearing out all your stain. It's not just you clear out stain and you become neutral. 

The goodness of clearing out stain brings us to bliss. 

Emptiness being an absence, you can't say, oh, to see emptiness directly is blissful. 

If you're still thinking, there's a me who's experiencing bliss while I'm experiencing emptiness because that's not ultimate reality. 

We start with an object and we say, recognize its emptiness. 

What if the object we start with is emptiness, and we say, recognize the emptiness of emptiness, which it has that. Then the emptiness we started with would be the ultimately pleasurable appearing thing. 

It's not an appearing thing because it's an absence. But our idea of it would be extraordinarily blissful. If emptiness could be the appearing thing of emptiness, it would be extraordinary blissful, is what I'm trying to say. 

Which is why one of your qualities as a Buddha will be one gone to bliss, bliss, bliss and more bliss.

(49:42) How do we know they're bliss, blis and more bliss? 

Because they teach emptiness. 

What?

Now it is very pleasurable to teach emptiness, but what's so important? 

Let's go through the sequence again:

Buddha is one who's turned correct.

Why do I say that? Because he is the protector. 

Well, why do you say he's the protector? 

I say he's the protector because he has cleared out all his stains. 

Well, how can you say he's cleared out all his stains? 

Well, he's cleared out all his stains because he teaches emptiness. 

What's so important about teaching emptiness? 

Especially for somebody for whom our premise is that they are perceiving directly correctly all the time. They had to go through the direct perception of ultimate reality at least once in order to become this being who is direct correct always. 

Because of that, they know what I need to give up and take up.

I can trust that because I know they went through it.

They went through it because they saw emptiness directly. 

So they teach about emptiness, because of that is such a critical experience for beings to have in order to clear out all of their stains, in order to become the protector, in order to do what a being of valid perception does.

We might say, well, why does teaching emptiness, how is it that that's proving this sequence that takes us back to the TSEMAR GYUR TE?

What's the significance of Buddha teaching emptiness?

They give us this fourth reasoning:

Consider the teacher. 

TONG NYI KYI TUNPA YIN TE

He is the one who teaches emptiness. 

Why do I say that? 

TUKJE CHENPO YU PAY CHIR

Because they have holy, great compassion.

Because of their, they teach emptiness.

Because they teach emptiness, we know they've cleaned out all their stains.

Because they've cleaned out all their stains, we know they can protect us.

Because they can protect us, they are a being of direct correct perception. 

It still doesn't quite, the gears don't quite fit.

Compassion and Holy Great Compassion

(54:02) Let's talk about compassion and great compassion and holy great compassion. 

The Tibetan word for compassion is NYING JE. 

JE = Lord

NYING = essence

It's like the Lord of essence, but meaning the Lord of our heart. Our heart essence. JAMPA means love. 

There is a distinction made here.

NYING JE, the essence of our heart is this concern for others‘ suffering, concern for suffering. Let's not say just others. Our own and others. To be concerned with suffering is what's meant by compassion. 

JAMPA, love, means to be concerned with happiness. To love someone means you want them to be happy. Our own self-love would be, I want to be happy.

We should both be happy and want to be happy. 

The mistake is how we make it.

NYING JE is being concerned for others‘ suffering. 

Plain old NYING JE, human NYING JE is, oh, that person's suffering. I'm sorry. 

But no sense of interest in helping them stop it, let alone knowing how to help them stop it. 

It's a big step for some to just be willing to notice someone else's suffering enough to feel compassion. It's not necessarily a nice feeling to see somebody suffering and not be able to do anything. It hurts. So mostly we learn to look away.

They say it's a quality of our heart. Compassion. 

I think in the West we tend to say, oh, my heart's so full of love.

Personally, I think the source of love comes from the naval chakra, but that's just me not scripture. And this thing that we say is love in our heart is in fact this compassion. Then NYING JE CHENPO

CHENPA = great, so great compassion. 

By great compassion they mean a compassion that has grown along with some sense of understanding where suffering comes from. So that part of the compassion is: I really would like to be able to help them.

I wish that I could. I'll even try to some extent. 

Taking some small amount of personal responsibility for the suffering that we see. Wanting to help.

TUK JE CHENPO

The TUK JE is the way you say NYING JE when you are speaking to a being that you honor. A fully enlightened being doesn't have NYING JE, they have TUK JE. It's just an honorific word for talking about the same quality of mind, compassion. 

But the additional factor of the fully enlightened being, their compassion is such that they do in fact help that being. 

They see the suffering. They want to stop the suffering. They do something to stop the suffering, but not in the sense of, oh, run to the person and get them a wheelchair. Because the being with TUK JE CHENPO is not even necessarily in a form that the suffering person can recognize. But from the enlightened beings‘ place, who is directly perceiving all of this constantly, and directly perceiving what that person needs to give up and take up, their emanation does something. Their compassion motivates something to happen in that mind.

The most important thing that a being can do for another to help stop suffering is to teach emptiness to teach the pen thing. Now, you can't go to somebody that's just broken their leg and say, look, I'm going to help you. Would you just listen to this pent thing, and then we'll get your leg braced, and we'll get you to the hospital. That's not obviously useful in the moment. 

But anything else we do for that person with the broken leg, will be helpful and they'll go on to suffer again in another way.

A fully enlightened being will do anything that anyone needs and they teach emptiness over and over and over and over again. 

It's probably happening right now, and I don't know about you, but I can't hear it.

Because to learn about the true nature of ourselves and any experience and any existing thing is the doorway through which we stop our suffering—our own and everyone else's. 

So their compassion propels them to do everything in anything including teaching emptiness.

Consider the Buddha. 

They are one who teaches emptiness 

because they have this holy, great compassion. 

By implication then compassion is the start of our career path to Buddhahood. Because without it, if a Buddha were a Buddha and could become a Buddha without compassion, they would know what we need to give up and take it up, and they wouldn't care. So they wouldn't teach, and so they wouldn't protect us. 

Which if they could be aware of suffering and not do something to alleviate that suffering, they wouldn't stay a Buddha. 

It's illogical. It's not possible to become a Buddha without having that compassion.

It's a really important piece to catch that compassion as it grows from plain old compassion to great compassion, wanting to actually do something to wholly great compassion. Actually having the capacity to help. 

The process of that growth is the process through which we are cleaning out our own negativities, reaching the omniscience through which we know what and how to teach. Then what gets taught is those four Arya truths, of which one any suffering being can directly confirm for themselves.

(64:14) In teaching emptiness, a Buddha is teaching us the ultimate thing. 

That ultimate idea through which we ourselves can stop our suffering.

Buddha can't make us stop our suffering. We figured that one out. 

They can only teach us how to do it, and hopefully motivate us and inspire us, and coax us and conjole us. But they can't make us do it. 

So they teach the principles, they teach the highest thing and the process for applying our own growing wisdom to our behavior. 

They know that that's what's necessary, because that's what they had to do. In the process of doing it they helped lots of other people do it too. 

Then, part of the implication is that the only way to get rid of all of our bad seeds is to see emptiness directly. So out of our growing compassion that would become an important thing to try to do. 

Alright, let's take a break.

Compassion, Great Compassion and Holy Great Compassion

(66:40) DREL DU and KYOB DU,  I was supposed to use to help us understand how NYING JE grows into NYING JE CHENPO. 

NYING JE is that compassion in an ordinary being, and the term DREL DU means just a sense of wanting to be separated from suffering. Either it's my own suffering, self-compassion, or the other person's suffering, I wish they could be separated from that suffering. DREL DU. It's ordinary compassion. 

Then there's this sense of KYOB DU, which KYOB is the same root word here as KYOB DA, which is the protector. So here KYOB DU is a level of compassion in wish. We really wish that that person be free. 

This DREL DU is just: Oh, they're suffering. I wish it didn't have to happen. 

KYOB DU is: I wish they could be freed. But it still does not have the sense ‚I will be the one that will get them free‘.

There's a big gap between our KYOB DU—compassion ‚Oh, I really want them to be completely free‘, and our TUK JE CHENPO ‚I am helping them get free on the way there‘. 

Our compassion is motivating us to try to help others get free, even as we're aware that worldly things will fall short, we do them anyway. And we're growing our need, our compulsion to free ourselves of all our negative seeds, so that we don't have the negative seeds to see what we do for them not fail. 

Or we don't have the seeds to see them go back and make more suffering. 

Or we don't have the seeds to see them as ignorant suffering beings in the first place. Our own compassion for all the suffering that we see drives our own personal spiritual behavior change. 

As Tom was saying in the break, we're logical beings. We come to a logical conclusion and we still act from the old belief. 

What will help us shift that, is as we understand where suffering comes from both our own and others, that complacency and behavior or attachment to habitual behavior will start to shake loose by growing our compassion towards others. 

For a Mahayanist, of course, we are talking Mahayana here.

(70:46) The sequence has been:

How do we know a Buddha is totally correct?

Because he is the protector. 

What is it about being a protector? 

That I can rely upon him. 

If he is the protector he must know my suffering perfectly and 

what I need to do about it. 

So let's see if he might know that. 

So, consider the teacher, 

he is the protector 

because he has cleared out all of his obstacles. 

He's one who's gone to bliss. 

What does it mean to clear out all the stains? 

They've gotten rid of all their negative qualities. Which includes their obstacles to perceiving the appearing nature of things, and the empty nature of things simultaneously—including me, including everybody, including what they hear themselves say, or have ever said, or will ever say.

So how do I know that Buddha is one who's cleared out all their negativities, that they're one who's gone to bliss?

Because they teach us emptiness. 

They hear themselves teaching emptiness, because they directly experience that perceiving ultimate reality is the doorway to the end of all suffering. 

They did do it once, and they're perceiving everything directly always now. 

So they still are directly perceiving how experiencing ultimate reality puts an end to all suffering— not the instant that it happens for the first time, but eventually. 

So that's all they really want to do is teach emptiness.

They say the most powerful aspect of Buddhas is their speech. Not their actions, not their mind, but their speech. Because it's through the speech that they teach.

Because he teaches emptiness.

Then the last one, consider the teacher, why do I say he's the one who teaches emptiness? How do we know? Doesn't make sense. How do we know what's so important about the Buddha teaching emptiness? Why is it that emptiness is so important to the Buddha to teach? 

Because this being has this holy great compassion. Not just: I see you're suffering. I want it to end.

Not even just: I see you're suffering and I'll do something to try to get it to end. 

It's, they say, they see our suffering and they see that it's just a big mistake that we're making, and they already see us free of it. In their great compassion, they just want to infuse us with what we need to stop perpetuating the mistake. So teaching emptiness is the key factor to us growing actually the compassion through which we will stop perpetuating the negativity that perpetuates our ignorance, that perpetuates the negativity that blocks us from seeing emptiness directly.

So Buddha teaching emptiness is the most compassionate thing they can do.

Which gives us a clue what's the highest thing you can do to help somebody? 

Teach them emptiness. 

Not in the middle of their problem. Help their problem worldly way. Doesn't matter that they're going to go suffer later in another way. Help them anyway.

When you've gained their confidence and you've shown by example, you don't have to be so upset by these things that go wrong, go wrong, go wrong. They'll ask you, what's your secret? What do you know? And you say, sit down. You have 20 years. I'll teach you everything I know. Literally, and encourage them to start on and stay on their path through thick and thin, things get worse at first sometimes.

How do we know that Buddha is the teacher?

Because he is got holy great compassion.

Because he is got holy great compassion, we know he is somebody who's turned correct.

Again, it's like circular. I don't get it. But the important piece here is, okay then compassion is the first gear that needs to be put in motion in order to become a being who can help anybody, let alone ourselves. 

The Charvaka’s Belief of only one Lifetime

(77:36) The discussion says, well, how long does it take to go from just plain old DREL DU, recognizing somebody's suffering and oh, I'm sorry, to NYING JE CHENPO to TUK JE CHENPO? How long does that take? 

They say from the first inkling that you would like to be one who could stop others suffering to reaching Buddhahood, oh, three times 10 to the 60th countless eons. That's all.

That's a really long time. And it's not the number of earth around the sun years. It's a much longer time than that. 

It's the time it takes to burn off negativity and grow the goodness, however long that takes. We'll learn the details of that in another course. But it's a really, really long time. Which means there must be a string of Me‘s on the path working on it for that long a time, or else it's impossible for there to be a Buddha, if there's not more than one life. 

If there's not at least three times 10 to the 60th great eons of lifetimes, or more than that. 

So at least in Master Dignaga and Dharmakirti’s time, there were people who said, look, Buddhas must not be possible because you only have this one life. 

When your body dies, your mind dies. Everybody can see it.

If you are saying that a Buddha has to develop this holy great compassion to be a Buddha, they don't have enough time to do it in one lifetime. There's no such thing. 

It's a compelling argument, because it is a very common belief that the mind is part of the body. 

There was a belief system, people with a belief system that held to that. They're called Charvaka, is the way it is in the notes in the answer key, although I've seen it Chravaka as well. I'm not sure which one is correct. 

But this is a group of people who believe that the mind stops when the body stops. So when you're dead, you're dead. You have this one life and make the most of it be nice, but I'm not sure why. It's just more pleasant to be nice, but when your life is done, it's done.

Master Dharmakirti takes a little bit of a detour to show how past and future lives are true in order to help them recognize this sequence of what it takes to reach the compassion that compels the teaching. The emptiness that shows us that this being who's teaching us is one who has turned correct, used the direct perception of emptiness to clear out all their negativities and obstacles to omniscience. So that now when they teach what they hear themselves teaching is absolutely correct, because that's what omniscience is. 

Then they teach us the four Arya truths, because they know someday we will experience those directly, but until we do, the one that we can confirm is the first one, the truth of suffering.

If we have confirmed that the one who taught the truth of suffering can only hear themselves have direct correct perception, and we've proved this one, then we know their direct correct perception is true when they're teaching the other three, driven by their holy, great compassion. 

Next class actually goes into what are the causes for the mind?

This class Master Kharmakirti is saying, Look, what do we really believe happens when a new life starts? 

Do we in fact believe that for humans at least the egg and sperm come together and then the cells have some awareness in them? In which case do they come from the mother, or do they come from the father? Do they come half from mother, half from father? At what point do those cells become aware? Does it take two of them, or four of them, or 16 of them, or when and how does that actually happen?

If we believe that the mind is in the body, then the mind starts when the body starts, when those two come together, and you have a fetus forming. 

Then that would mean that when that body dies, the mind ends as well. 

It does look like that, if you've ever been around a dead body, right? 

There is clearly no awareness going on there.

The Charvakas, they have three reasonings for why the mind dies with the body. 

The three arguments of the Charvakas why the mind dies with the body

1. They say, first of all, the mind is a quality of the body in the same way that alcohol when ingested has the ability to make you drunk. So they say the mind is inside our body and has the ability to influence our body in the same way that alcohol has the ability to influence us when it gets ingested. A glass of alcohol in the glass doesn't affect us. We ingest it, we get intoxicated. The mind has to be inside the body to drive it, to influence it. So the mind must be inside the body.

2. They say, and look, the mind is a part of the nature of the body like a wall and the design you put on the wall. So you have a blank wall, you paint a picture on it, now the picture is on the wall. If you had no wall, even if you wanted to paint the picture, there'd be no place to paint it. If you had no painting the picture, then the wall would have no picture on it. It takes both. The body supports the mind. The mind supports the body—like a picture on a wall.

3. Third reason they say, the mind is a result of the body like a lamp and it's light. A light only comes on when the lamp is lit. The mind only comes on when the body is alive. Can't you see that? It's compelling, isn't it? If we haven't personally had some direct experience of a past life, most of us don't remember being conceived, so it's hard to say what's that first moment of mind of this life. But we know there had to have been one because here we are in this life.

We'll go into it further in next class.

This class’ meditation assignment is to investigate what do you think your mind really is? 

I'm still not completely clear on that. 

What's the difference between me and my mind? Which one trumps which one? 

It's not so clear. 

Try to find your mind. 

Where is it?

What is its relationship with your body?

Don't just jump to the conclusion, Oh, projections. 

Really use your sense of awareness and exploration to what is this thing ‚mind‘? 

I'll give you a clue: that which is clear and aware. 

Explore what do you identify more with: your body or your mind? 

We certainly make greater effort to take care of our body than we do to take care of our mind, don't we?

Yet? It's the mind that goes on, not the body. Interesting. 

This is a hard class, to work out this reasoning of the forward order. 

We want each reasoning to be so clear that it's like, oh, yeah, I see, I see, I see. 

The way it's worded, for me, it still isn't clear. So when I was working with it, I just kept rewording, rewording, rewording in my meditation and review until I caught the connection between this sequence.

It's not that one causes the next. It's that each one of those four reveals something that can confirm the syllogism from before it. It has to do with thinking of what the quality of the reason, what we mean by it, what the ramifications of it are. That will help us understand why they're saying ‚because they are the protector. They are one who's turned correct‘.

It's like they have to have been turned correct in order to be the protector.

It's not because they became the protector, they became correct. It's not cause and effect. It's ramification. 

Maybe that'll help you chew on it, chew on it, chew on it, and see if you can catch this connection. The important connection being between the development of compassion, starting this ball rolling to leading towards becoming one who has turned correct, an omniscient being.

Okay, we're done a few minutes early. Again, I'm going to bank those because I'm going to need 'em later, but I'm happy to stay and try and hash this out with you if you'd like. Otherwise I'll let you go to bed early. 

Going once, going twice. All right, let's do our dedication. 

[Usual dedication]

Thank you very much. I'm stopping the recording. I wish I could make this more clear.

For the recording, welcome back. We are ACI course 4, class 7 on April 25th, 2024.

Let's gather our minds here as we usually do. Please bring your attention to your breath until you hear from me again. 

[Usual opening]

Review Class 6

(8:13) It's been a while since class. Thank goodness I have my notes. But I can pretend I know what I'm talking about. Let's go through the quiz. That'll bring us back up to speed. 

This course is about logic and perception theory. It's about the proof of future lives. We started out with Master Dignaga‘s bowing down to that one who is our protector, who is the one who's turned correct, the one who's gone to bliss, the one who is the teacher, the one who has holy great compassion. 

Supposedly that sequence can be used—it's called the proof of the forward order—it can be used to prove what it means to be one who has turned, TSEMAR GYURPA. 

So really we're talking about perception, correct perception, and we're subtly learning the difference between valid perception, which we all have mostly and correct perception, which if you are like me, you've never had one yet.

So that's later. But we're building this foundation to be able to understand what it means to become one of truly correct perception. 

They use that term, TSEMAR GYURPA—one who has turned correct—about Buddha, about a fully enlightened being as one of the ways you refer to them.

We're learning what that means, not only what it means but what it implies.

In the process of learning that material, we also pick up on this discussion between the textbook writer and the people of his time who apparently listened to his discussion and his arguments and still say, Yeah, but none of that can really be true because there's not enough time in one lifetime to go from ordinary selfish slob to having the compassion that's big enough to make our mind become a Buddha mind.

 Because you only have this one lifetime, because one's mind and one's body, they are so interrelated that when the body dies, the mind dies. 

I suppose if it happened that your mind died before your body died, the body would die too. They're together. 

We've reached this sequence of classes where the interchange is between Master Dharmakirti and thus the commentators after him, and the beings who believe that the mind dies with the body to investigate if that can really be true and still be consistent with our experience in this life.

And that's where this class is going to go, once we get there, is: What's the cause of the mind in this life? Because in studying that, we can more clearly see how the ordinary relationship of my mind dependent on my body isn‘t accurate. Then, the outcome of that we'll see is that, oh, to have a mind in this life means I had to have had one before. I'm supposed to get you there by the end of class.

But we need to go back and get into the stream of why we're even going there, which was that string of called The reasoning of the forward order. 

I'm just going to go through it and then try to explain it again a little bit, but I don't want to take a lot of time. 

(14:21) Your question was What is the reasoning of the forward order and what do they prove?

They're supposedly proving of what it is to become a being who has turned correct, TSEMAR GYURPA. 

I admit, when you read through those reasonings, they don't come across as proofs. It's like you don't read them and go, oh yeah, I get it. It's like how does that prove anything? It's only a proof if you already believe it. I still read it that way.

But technically, if we took the time to really apply the method of checking the statements, and we added new syllogisms according to what we needed to check these, we would eventually recognize what it is showing us.

We don't have enough background in logic to do that yet. So not to worry if this reasoning of the forward order doesn't seem to prove anything to you. Get from the five, that there's this relationship between these five qualities of what it is to be Buddha, what it is to become Buddha. That's more useful.

I can say now looking back that that's more useful than trying to chew on these proofs until you can get them to be a, Oh, I see how they're airtight reasoning. 

Get the relationship between these qualities. It's important. That's more important. 

The forward order is first the reasoning of the protector, which is supposed to prove to us that Buddha did turn totally correct. So it says because he's the protector, he turned totally correct. But you can think of it more like, alright, let's start with the Buddha is our protector. Starting with the fire department is who you call when your house is on fire. So Buddha is who you call when we're in trouble, when we're in this suffering state. 

Then why is he our protector? Why is the fire department the protector when our house is on fire? Because they know how to put out a fire, and they are obligated to do it. So Buddha is our protector, means that we somehow know or believe that Buddha knows what we need. What need to take up and what we need to give up to stop our own suffering. That's what it means to be omniscient. Really. That's what it means to be TSEMAR GYURPA, One who has turned correct, is that they correctly know exactly what every being needs to do and stop doing to stop their suffering.

Great. That's what our protector would need, right? Otherwise we wouldn't go to them for protection. 

If we call Buddha our protector, then he must have this state of mind that knows exactly what I need to give up and take up. 

The second one says, the reasoning of having gone to bliss proves that he is the protector, because having gone to bliss means that that being themselves has gotten free from all their suffering and obstacle or obstacles to omniscience. That's what it means, gone to bliss. 

So once we know that that's what that term means, then we would go, well, if this being has gotten out of suffering completely, then they must at least know what they needed to do to get themselves out of suffering. 

Then the term gone to bliss has a bigger meaning than just out of their own suffering.

But so if they are one who's gone to bliss, then they have done what they had to do to get out of suffering, and that means they at least know that. So they can be my protector. They could share with me at least what they did to stop their suffering. 

Third says the reasoning of the teacher proves that he's gone to bliss. Reasoning of the teacher means that they have taught us emptiness.

We have lots of teachers and they aren't necessarily our protectors. 

What's unique to this one is that they teach the empty nature of things, and us, and themselves, and our future Buddhahood, and our mind and our emotions, right?

The list goes on.

The fact that they teach emptiness proves that they've gone to bliss, proves that they themselves have experienced that directly and used what they saw to stop their own mental forever, and to clear out their obstacles to omniscience. 

Because they teach emptiness that tells us they've done it themselves. 

Then, the last one is the reasoning of great compassion proves being the teacher, because their great compassion is what makes them teach. 

If they knew how we could all end our suffering and they didn't care, they're not going to say anything. They're not going to go to the trouble to teach a bunch of ants how to see emptiness directly.

But with this state of heart—holy, great compassion—which is the state of heart, I can't stand to see anybody suffering. I know what's wrong, I have to help them. I can't take it away from them. I can only teach them how to do it. And so they teach and they'll teach us anything that we need, but the main thing we need is to understand the empty nature of the very suffering me that I believe is so self existent.

You can work those five back and forth. Again, don't worry about getting them until you go, ‘oh, I see the proof’, but see the sequence - how those five go together. They're not one-at-a-time thing, first I do this and then I do that. But they're all somehow interrelated and they're telling us what's going to happen to us as we continue on our path.

Then your quiz also asked you - what's the difference then between compassion, great compassion, and holy great compassion? 

I know you all know that, so I'm just going to go ahead. Plain old compassion is that recognizing somebody's suffering, having trouble, and it's like, ‘oh, I'm sorry’, but really no sense of wanting to step in there and do anything about it.

It's a big step just to let ourselves feel compassion instead of putting blinders on and looking away.

Then great compassion is that seeing suffering, ‘oh man, I don't want them to suffer and I wish I could do something’. Maybe we even try, and maybe it works and maybe it doesn't, and either way they go on to suffer again. It's still worth trying, of course. 

Then holy great compassion is that compassion in the mind of a fully omniscient being who sees the suffering, knows it's a big mistake, knows what will help and what won't, and actually acts to help stop the suffering. 

That's where it gets a little tricky because the acting to stop the suffering probably looks different than what we think, right? Shakyamuni Buddha is not in form. He can't act to bring me my dinner on time. But a Buddhas emanations are doing stuff all the time, they just don't look like Buddha to us yet, necessarily. 

Technically only fully enlightened beings have this holy great compassion.

Do they have holy great compassion because they're fully enlightened beings?

No, they had to create the causes for their holy great compassion, just as they had to create the causes for them being a fully enlightened being. And those causes are kind of parallel things that we develop. The collection of merit and the collection of wisdom. 

(25:53) As I said, somebody was listening to this discussion and they said, ‘well then there's no such thing as Buddhas because as humans you get this one life and then when you're dead, your mind is gone, so you don't have time to grow your compassion that big’. 

That group is called the Shravakas. They believe that the mind dies when the body dies and they gave these three reasons.

They say, one: because the mind is the quality of the body like alcohol and its ability to make one drunk. The mind is inside the body influencing the body like alcohol has the ability when it's inside our body to make us drunk. 

Secondly, they say the mind is a part of the nature of the body like a wall and the design on the wall. If you don't have a wall, you can't have a design on a wall. If you have a wall, you have a place to put the design. 

Third one, the mind is a result of the body like a lamp and it's light. No lamp, no light. 

It's kind of convincing, especially if you've ever known somebody who's died. And if you've ever seen them dead. It's like they were living yesterday and now that's just a lump. Where'd that life go? Where'd that mind go? 

It's very tempting to believe that the mind went with it. 

Is the body the cause of the mind?

(28:22) This class is looking at: is the body the cause for the mind? 

Because if it is, it would be true when this body ceases the mind stops too.

When the body ceases living, and the body is the cause of the mind, boom, it must be gone.

The question about what is the cause of the mind comes up. 

This class comes from Khedrup Je’s presentation of past and future lives. 

But it is used to address this question of- is the mind and body this interrelated thing such that when the body dies, the mind ends. 

Let me give us our vocabulary here.

Khedrup Je is Je Tsongkapa’s left hand, major disciple. 

Usually known for his tantra teachings / commentaries.

Gyaltsab Je is usually known for his logic teachings.

But they both mastered both. 

This particular presentation is Khedrup Je's discussion about what could be, what is the cause of the mind of this life.

The distinction between material cause and contributing factors

(31:03) About the only thing we know for sure right now, is ‚I am aware‘. You can say that to yourself, you know you're aware. 

That awareness SEL SHING RIKPA, that which is clear and aware, is this.. I don't want to say thing we call mind, but I have to because of language.. our awareness happening. That's what we're talking about. 

What is its cause? 

To understand…Khedrup Je makes this distinction between NYER-LEN GYI GYU and KYEN.

NYER-LEN GYI GYU. 

GYU = ‘cause’. 

GYI = ‘of’. 

‘The cause of’. 

NYER-LIN = material 

So NYER-LEN GYI GYU = the material cause. 

KYEN = other factors, often called conditions. 

So when we've studied the different flavors of emptiness, we hear them say, ‘oh, objects exist based on their causes and conditions’. This is what we're talking about. The material cause and the contributing factors, the conditions. 

Now this term NYER-LEN GYI GYU, material cause, it means the actual thing that turns into the thing that is the result. The best example is the acorn for an oak tree. The acorn is this material cause for the oak tree. One specific acorn.

The acorn had to already be present, it had to be there before the oak tree.

It had to change in some way in order to become the oak tree. The sprout that then grows that then… and eventually you've got a mature oak tree. 

In the process of becoming the result, the material cause must disappear. 

The acorn gives up itself and it's gone at some point completely. 

The material cause.. Geshehla says it means the stuff that flops over into the result. Really scientific, the stuff that flops over. 

Traditionally they say: for a clay pot, the NYER-LEN GYI GYU, the material cause, is the clay. And the KYEN, the contributing factor, is the potter and the wheel and the kiln, et cetera. 

There are a lot of different contributing factors that are needed for the material cause to do its thing. 

But the contributing factors are not the stuff that flops over, right? 

If you have an acorn and you have all the right contributing factors, the acorn flops over into a sprout, flops over into a tree.

If you don't have that acorn, it does not matter how much water, sunlight, fertilizer, soil, et cetera, you're never going to get an oak tree out of a non-existent acorn. Do you see? The material cause is a crucial piece.

Now there's something about material causes and their results, is there has to be some similarity between the two. 

There is some similarity between what we call an acorn and what we call an oak tree. We don't plant a tomato plant and expect to get an oak tree out of it. 

We know that there's some correlation between the material cause and its result. With the contributing factors, you don't have that limitation. Sunlight, water, soil, that's the same for all the seeds. But the seeds will uniquely make a plant that's unique to them. 

We don't water a piece of cement in hopes of an oak tree growing. We know that the cause has to be similar. We know it has to be there before, and we know that the seed is going to disappear as we get the result. So we're not disappointed, ‘Well now I have an oak tree, but I don't have the acorn anymore. That was my favorite acorn. I want them both’.

You can't have both. The material cause flops over into the result. Those are necessary things to understand about this thing called material cause. 

But the word ‘material cause’ makes it sound like we are talking about matter, form, stuff of form. But there will be a material cause for our enlightenment, and that's not a thing of matter. 

There will be a material cause for our mind and that is not a thing of matter. 

So although the word says ‘material cause’ try to not hear it in terms of only things like acorns and seeds and the bricks that build your home.

It's the whatever factor that flops over into the result and disappears in the process. Was there first, has some similarity to the result, and disappears in the process of the result coming to be. Got it? NYER-LEN GYI GYU.

The mind at the moment of birth

(39:04) What we are looking for, says Khedrup Je, is we want to know the material cause of the first moment of our mind in this life.

We know we have a mind because here we are.

We know we had to have had a first moment of mind in this life.

Probably we don't remember it, probably we can't even relate to it.

What's the first moment of awareness when the egg and sperm touch? In this tradition, that's the moment of conception. 

Is that when the mind goes in there? Is it later? Is it at the first breath? Is it at the first kick? Is it at the first burp? When is it?

Regardless of when it is, where did it come from?

Is that mind a changing thing? Yes.

Changing things must have causes, don't they?

Something has to act on them to make them to change.

So this first moment of mind in this life has to have a cause, because it's changing.

Khedrup Je says, let's see if we can find the NYER-LEN GYI GYU for the first moment of someone's life.

Do we believe that our mind is actually a stream of consciousness? 

Geshehla took the time to point out that we must believe that our mind flows on, streams on, being influenced by experiences. 

He says, because we send our kids to school. Because we go to school, it says that even if we say we don't believe in a continuous mindstream, we do believe that we can learn something in first grade that we will use to learn more in second grade, that we use to learn more all the way up to becoming effective, efficient, capable adults. Even if we didn't have a chance to go to school, we learn stuff living on the street or under an apprentice, and the stuff that we learn gets added to other stuff.

Geshehla says, just the fact that we attend school, attend classes, shows that we believe that we have this mindstream that's like a spaghetti noodle. 

I don't know, in the end, I don't think it's spaghetti noodle, but it's a good place to start.

Then, the spaghetti noodle that we're talking about now is the spaghetti-noodle-your-mind-of-this-life. So my spaghetti noodle is considerably longer than most of yours, but all of ours had to have a first.. a beginning end of the spaghetti noodle.

So we're talking about people that believe that when this body dies, you die. Which means something must happen at conception or birth that makes a mind come into being. Do you see? 

We can see the process of birth happen. So we know the physical body is taking birth. And then [boop], it's got a mind. So something had to start the mind, because there it is. 

And it's got the time of that body to do what it's going to do because [boop] when the body dies, that's the end of that mind. So that's why we're talking about it, this spaghetti noodle. 

If we can say, all right, I'll agree that I believe that I have a spaghetti noodle mind, and that it must have had a first moment in this life, then we can go further and say, alright then, let's see if we can find what the thing was that flopped over into that first moment of your mind of this life. Do you see? 

So we're starting at the place where we all agree: 

Do you have a mind right now? Yes. 

Were you born in this life? I think so. 

Did you have to have a first moment of mind in this life? Yes, I guess I did.

Where did it come from?

Khedrup Je says: that cause has to be an existing thing, and so it must be able to be found amongst the category called ‘all existing things’.

Can a non-existing thing bring about something, you Arya Nagarjuna Investigators? No. 

He gives us this table. I think we've seen it before, maybe we haven't, called ‘all existing things’.

SHE-JA = ‘all existing things’, ‘all knowable things’, technically is what it says. 

All knowable things. 

When we want to investigate something like this, we break ‘all knowable things’ down into categories of similarities. 

Then we look at the category because everything that belongs within that category, what we logic out about the category, will be true for every existing thing that belongs in that category. 

This way, they say, 

Let's consider all knowable things, 

we can divide all knowable things into knowable things that are TAKPA, 

that are unchanging, 

and knowable things that are MITAKPA, 

not unchanging, or changing.

Investigation of Unchanging Things as cause for our mind

Can we agree, if you take all existing things and you break them into unchanging things and changing things, have we covered all existing things?

Yeah, because they're one or the other.

Now, things that are unchanging things, we don't even have to go into what those different things are, because can an unchanging anything serve as the material cause of a changing thing?

No. Because in order to serve as a cause, material or otherwise, that thing must change. And it for sure can't be the material cause of something, because it would change, it would go from unchanging to changing, and then disappear in the process. An unchanging thing can't do that. 

An unchanging being can't be the cause of our world. We studied that before.

An unchanging creator being can't create anything. Because they have to change in order to create. A changing creator being can create stuff, of course.

So, can we say that we can just set aside all unchanging things, all things within the category of unchanging knowable things?

We don't need to even consider them any further as material causes for the first moment of our mind, because they can't cause anything, they're unchanging things. 

Can we agree? Take them away. 

So we then go to the category of things called ‘not unchanging’, meaning changing. Within the category of changing things, you can divide all of them.

He gives us two divisions, technically there's a third. 

These two divisions: 

BEMPO and RIKPA. 

If I were tech savvy, I would draw a line here (SHE-JA to TAKPA) and a line there (SHE-JA to MITAKPA), and then I would draw a line here (MITAKPA to BEMPO) and a line there (MITAKPA to RIKPA). Can you see it in your mind's eye? 

BEMPO, within the category of changing things, we can say all those changing things that are physical matter, BEMPO, and all those changing things that are mental things, all those things that are mind [RIKPA].

Oh yay, you wizard. Perfect, magic. [Liang Sang added the pink lines on the Zoom Whiteboard]

We're going to investigate all the different categories of things in each of these two categories of changing things. 

We're going to look for all the possible things that could be material cause for our mind under physical stuff [BEMPO]. 

If we don't find it there, we'll go looking under the category of all knowable stuff that is mental stuff [RIKPA]. 

Investigation of Changing Things that are Physical as material cause for our mind

(51:49) Let's start with the BEMPO, the physical stuff. All changing things that are physical can be divided into WANGPO SUK and CHIY SUK.

WANGPO SUK

WANGPO = the sense powers

WANGPO SUK = the living physical matter

You could say BEMPO, there's living and not living.

But they call it WANGPO SUK, which is the matter that has to do with our five senses. 

The CHIY SUK is an outside physical matter, meaning outside the boundary of our own personal living body.

Any matter outside of that falls under the category of CHIY SUK, which is outside matter.

Now, it can be living or not, depending on if it's we're looking at somebody else's physical matter. But we're making this distinction between changing things that are physical, that are the material things inside me, meaning you, or outside me, meaning you. 

In CHIY SUK category, there are four elements. 

In the WANGPO SUK category, there are five powers. 

All we need to do is determine whether or not it's possible for the cause of the first moment of this mind to be found in either one of these categories.

If we find that we can prove that we can't find them there, then just like we wiped out TAKPA, we'll wipe out the BEMPO MITAKPA category.

WANGPO - the 5 Powers as source

(54:44) Let's start with the WANGPO SUK. 

Geshehla said at this point in his class—my guess is he's looking at people's faces and they're going [confused] and he says,—‘look, some of what this class presents will probably give you doubt because we have our biases from our culture.

Whether it's a religious bias or it's a science bias, our biases are really strong beliefs. He said, ‘look, if you're just willing to hear this discussion and be open to think about it, that's enough to cast some doubt on whatever doubt you already have about your own system. Because you have some doubt about your own system or you wouldn't be here in class.‘ 

Our habit will be to try to defend our own system, even though we're wanting to reject it. It's like it's inside us to do that. 

He says, ‚look, don't worry about if this class doesn't make you all of a sudden formally completely reject everything else. Just casting doubt on it is enough to keep you moving towards the seeds that you need to reveal truth to yourself.‘ 

Doubt on the doubt is useful. 

He said the main thing that we doubt yet is the workings of karma. 

Or to doubt that there's not some unchanging permanent soul that is you inside you and always will be.

Or some belief that the mind really does die with the body.

So just be open. It's enough.

Okay, let's take a break. Stop the share, pause the recording. Oh, the arrows all went away. Okay, get refreshed please.

(break)

(58:17) Natalia: Total confusion. Can I get a new brain to understand all of this?

Lama Sarahni: You are making a new brain as we speak

Luisa: Lama, may I ask you a question?

Lama Sarahni: Okay.

Luisa: When I was having, I've been thinking after the retreat and the classes and about this omniscience part to see if I am crazy or understood wrong. So now I have my mind and my mind it is this projection or creation of my world. Okay? So let's say thanks to my goodness and my teachers, I become a Buddha and then it's the same mind, but with a new merrit and karma that is now projecting or creating omniscience.

Now my question is, in this moment, if I see people around me as an ordinary being, my karma is forcing me to see them suffering. And how I perceive each being is according to my karma. Now when I become a Buddha, this omniscience is still in my own world? Let's say when we all become Buddhas, then each of us is going to have our own world of projections and omniscience of those beings in our world. 

Is that correct or is it like now I as a Buddha can see Sarahni is Buddha world. Do you know what I'm trying to?

Lama Sarahni: Yes I do. And our language is so limited. There were those questions that Buddha wouldn't answer because any way he answered it, he knew the person he was talking to would misunderstand. It's kind of like that.

But, I see where you're going. And to the best of my ability when I try to describe it to myself is that every Buddha being perceives purely and perceives those directly, those who don't perceive themselves purely. And they—perceive isn't the right word—they experience their being omniscient and they experience the empty nature of all of that all simultaneously. Which is why it's inconceivable. 

But if we tried to break it down, we'd say, oh, there's four bodies of your Buddha: your paradise body, what you look like in your own Buddha paradise—not meaning you're the only one there, meaning you and your world is Buddha paradise and everybody in it.

So if you're omniscient, you're also aware of those Buddhas Buddha paradises, like you're sharing them all. And they say what all those Buddhas do is they do Mahayana Dharma, you know. Your turn to teach today, your turn to teach today, right? Let's do a dharma dance. I don't know what it's like, but simultaneous and in the same space is their emanation being that's being what anybody needs.

And so we say, oh, it's going and waiting on the bus for eons until you're at the right position for them to help you. But your emanations are like the air we breathe and the water we drink and your emanation is everything anybody needs. 

But what they really need is to be taught emptiness. So they're that too.

We're so limited in how we can conceive of emanation. 

Then the wisdom bodies are the omniscience and the Dharmakaya, the emptiness of all of it.

Luisa: My point was going into the direction. If there are already many Buddhas, why do we need more if they can already help us teaching us? And this is my own conclusion that I am trying to make in my mind.

Lama Sarahni: Because you want to wiggle up getting to be a Buddha?

Luisa: No, because I need, it's like now is my karma that is creating this so is in my responsibility to make this and all the people that I perceive through my karma Buddhas. So you cannot do it in my creation, and therefore each of us has to become Buddhas, so we perceive in each of our Buddha creations those others as Buddhas. Right? Is that correct?

Lama Sarahni: It's like there's no conundrum there. Yes. Because the only way to become a Buddha is to want to become a Buddha for everybody else

Luisa: But my everybody else. And there is your everybody else and Ale‘s and Olga‘s. And then I have to become a Buddha. So my everybody else become Buddha. That is not going to be the same everybody else as Flavia‘s or any others. So therefore is each of us responsibility to become Buddhas to help everybody else’s in our projection to become Buddhas.

Lama Sarahni: Exactly.

Luisa: So when I say the Buddhas are omniscient in my world, not in, like they cannot jump to your perception. 

Lama Sarahni: No, there's no them to jump like that.

Luisa: There is not an over Buddha. You know what, like a super…

Lama Sarahni: Buddhas are not self existent. You don't become self existent Buddha when you become Buddha. They're still seeds ripening and nothing but.

Luisa: Okay, thank you Lama. Sorry, I just wanted to be clear with this omniscience part.

Lama Sarahni: Wait a minute. That recording started itself. That was all on the recording. Whoever did that good job. I thought I stopped it. Oh look at wizard. Our arrows are gone.

(End of break)

(65:25) We are talking about: Can WANGPO SUK, the inner physical matter be the material cause for our mind? 

We need to know about these WANGPO SUK things.

I said there are five of them.

There's our eye power, ear power, nose power, tongue power and tactile power. 

What we mean by that is the physical tissues that serve to give the information to the awareness. 

For instance, the WANPO SUK for the eye of the eye power is the retina and the optic nerve, and probably whatever tissue is in the back of the brain, I don't know the name of it.

Those physical tissues that are sensitive to light and shape, that pick up information and provide it to the eye consciousness through which the mind says, Oh pine tree. 

The eye power doesn't see pine tree. 

The eye power doesn't see pine needles.

It doesn't even see green.

It picks up information.

The eye consciousness triggers what we would call green, and then the mind goes green, shape, pine tree.

So technically the mind is an instant behind the information coming at us in this school. 

We have those tissues, the eye of the ear, power, nose, tonglen, tactile—which is really the biggest, right?

Our visual consciousness is probably the biggest that we relate to, but our tactile sense power is all over us. 

The question would be: If we're going to find the material cause of our mind in the first moment of this life within this category of our sense powers, Khedrup Je asks, it would either need to be found inside any one of those sense powers, or in all five or technically within any combination.

He just addresses: Does it take all five sense powers to be present to serve as the NYER-LEN GYI GYU of the first moment of mind, or does it take only one?

He says, let's look and see what experience shows us.

Let's apply logic. If it takes all five sense powers intact in order to flop over into the first moment of mind. Does that not mean that any child born living, born living would have to have functioning eyes, ears, nose and touch?

Then, wouldn't that mean that if that child was born blind, it would have no mind, because it wouldn't have all five sense powers intact.

Our premise was it takes all five sense powers intact for something to flop over into the first moment of mind. That means if one is missing, you get no mind. And that's not true. 

Babies are born deaf, blind, and they still have mind. 

Further he says: If you still hold that it takes some combination to flop over and then you have the mind going on. If someone goes on to lose one of those sense powers that was part of the NYER-LEN GYI GYU, does that mean your mind becomes suddenly that much less so you get your mind from all five sense powers and then you go blind. Now do you have 20% less mind? 

No.

You have different mind activity than you had before, but you don't have less mind if the sense powers were the cause of your mind—not just the first cause but the ongoing cause—then if you lose a sense power, you should lose that much mind?

And you don't. Everybody agrees. 

So okay, it can't be all five that are necessary to be the NYER-LEN GYI GYU.

What about just one of 'em? 

Okay, it just takes one.

Khedrup Je says, alright, if that one sense power is the thing that flops over into the whole mind, then that one sense power’s quality should be the quality of similarity that flops over into the mind. Like the acorn had to have some quality of similarity that made the oak tree.

If it's the eye power that we determine is the material cause of the mind, then the mind has to have some similarity with the eye power. 

And I don't know, to me it's like it does because my mind can think it sees when really the eye is doing this thing. 

But Khedrup Je says, if the mind is similar to the eye power that was its material cause, then the mind should be able to see with the same kind of clarity and precision as the eye power picks up. 

So when the eye power picks up color and shape now and sends that information to the mind, and the mind sees the pine tree, that pine tree is much more clear and precise and functioning than the pine tree that the mind thinks of as a memory.

This argument says that if the eye power was the material cause that makes the mind, then the mind thinking about a pine tree that it's seen before but is not seeing now, that pine tree should appear to the mind with the same clarity as it appears to the eyeball.

I don't buy that argument myself. It doesn't seem strong enough.

I like the argument of, if my mind relies for its material cause on my eye power and I lose my eye power, is my mind going to disappear? Right? 

It should and it doesn't. People go blind and they don't lose their consciousness.

Luisa: But in that case Lama, the seed of the tree also disappears as material cause, but the tree stays. So the material cause will disappear and still the result stays in the comparison with the seed and the tree.

Lama Sarahni: Yeah, I don't know why they don't use that argument here. If the eye power is the material cause of my mind, then the eye power has to disappear when my mind comes in. And it doesn't, I still have it.

That's not the answer. That's not the argument that they given the answer key. But to me that one's stronger. Right?

None of our sense powers disappear when our mind comes into being. And they should if they are the NYER-LEN GYI GYU.

Are they contributing factors? Absolutely.

But they're not the thing that turns into the mind at the first moment of this mind in this life, whenever that was.

There's certainly not the material cause of the ongoing mind, but we might think so. Of course my mind is influenced by everything I see, hear, smell, taste, and touch. 

How can I experience anything else? 

My mind does rely on those things constantly. But not as its causal factor.

It isn't caused by those things. It is influenced by them for sure, but our mind is not caused by the color and shape or sound. It's not caused by that. It's influenced by those. 

So can we scratch out inner living tissue as the material cause for our mind? 

Please say yes or I won't be able to finish class.

CHIY SUK - 4 elements as source

All right then, the second category of changing things that are physical is CHIY SUK, which is outside physical matter, outside physical matter.

All of it that exists is made up of some combination of the four elements: air, earth, water and fire.

Air meaning the quality of movement.

Earth meaning the quality of form, hardness, shape.

Water meaning the quality of fluidity.

Fire meaning the quality of temperature. 

Any physical thing has some combination of those four. 

A rock has more earth element and a lot less air element than a river.

A river has more fluidity than a rock.

A tree has less fluidity than a river, but more fluidity than a rock.

Everything is made up of some combination of those four. 

Khedrupe Je says, let's check to see if the first moment of our mind can come about from all four of those elements together, flopping over or any one of them flopping over to make our mind.

Can we find the cause of our mind in any one of these four elements or all four together? 

He says, first of all, if it takes all four together, then does that mean if an atom of earth was missing, then the mind can't occur?

Do they all have to be in equal amounts, or is there some designated amount of each one that makes it flop over into mind?

Then, whatever we decide is the combination of all four that's necessary to be the flop over, if you're missing some, does that mean no mind happens?

He says further, And can you find something that has all four elements but has no mind?

Well yeah, like my sofa, the computer, the car, any outside non-living physical thing is made up of some combination of all these four elements and they don't flop over into mind.

So if it takes all four of those, when all four of those come together, that will make mind, it should do it every single time all four come together. And we say, no, no, all four have to come together and just a really special way to make them flop over into mind. 

Well then that means it's not them coming together, it's the special way that is the cause, right? So not all four.

What about any one of those four elements? 

Can it just be some element within the earth element that ends up being the actual thing that flops over into the first moment of mind? And I don't know, we might say, look, what about air element? 

Air is this movement, movement and the mind's like that movement, movement, movement. Surely it's a moment of air that flops over.

Khedrup Je doesn't address that specifically. 

He says, look, if any one element is the cause for the first moment of mind, the thing that flops over into the first moment of mind, then suppose it was an element of iron that flops over into the first moment of my mind, then by definition of what it is to be NYER-LEN GYI GYU, my mind would have the characteristic of iron.

And it doesn't. 

Because iron is a physical thing, even a teeny little atom of iron, it's still a physical thing. And our mind is SELNG RIKPA, that which is clear and aware. 

There's nothing about any one of those elements nor all four together, nor any combination of them that's similar to clear and aware. 

They're all material things. No matter how subtle, even the air element, as a physical element, it is a physical thing, air. 

So CHIY SUK cannot serve as the cause for the mind because they're not similar enough. 

Yes, they can be there before.

Yes, maybe we could make a case that they disappear when they become mind.

But they're too dissimilar. They have to be part of the contributing factors, not the thing that flops over and thus disappears. 

Luisa: Sorry Lama ,for me to understand when we say this CHIY SUK, we are meaning, if I'm talking about my mind is outside of me, let's say the womb of my mother. Is that what we are talking about? The elements of the things outside the boundary of my body, that means the cause for my mind could be the womb of the mother I am in. Is that correct? 

Lama Sarahni: Yeak, that's what he's wanting us to think.

But even as we're going through life, we're being influenced by all the outside things. 

Are we thinking that seeing that car accident makes my mind become distressed? 

Yeah. 

It's like, well, is that a NYER-LEN GYI GYU, or a KYEN, a contributing factor to what my mind's experiencing, or is that making my mind?

We say, oh, that made me so upset. 

That's like, well, okay, so you believe that that outside factor made you change in some way?

Yeah, it did.

Well then do you think it's causing your mind?

No, my mind was already there. It's just causing some change in my awareness. 

Yeah, but your mind is your awareness. Right?

They're really not ridiculous arguments when you start to really try to pinpoint what is my mind really?

We haven't talked about that. We're not going to for a long time.

RIKPA - Mental Things as source

(87:55) Okay, so theoretically we can now say, son of a gun, I can't find the cause of the first moment of my mind in the outside, and I can't find it in my inside physical tissue.

We can't find it in unchanging things. 

All that's left is changing things that are RIKPA, that are mental, that are mind.

But we're not done yet. Because there are RIKPA that belong to other people, and there's RIKPA that is my own. 

Khedrup Je says, we need to check to see if the first moment of my mind, the material cause of my mind comes from an other's mind.

Does somebody else's mind, something about their mind, flop over into the first moment of my mind? 

What do you think? Those who have been pregnant, and you just first learned that you were pregnant, what did you think was in there?

And then, when did suddenly, it was like, oh my gosh, that's a baby in there, and it had some response to you and then at some point you had this relationship with a being in there, right?

It went from, well, I don't know what's in there, to, oh my gosh, there's a being in there, there's a mind in there, and it's responding.

Where does science tell us that that comes from? 

I don't know. I studied it but it never made sense to me. But somewhere along the line there's enough cells, and there's enough of the central nervous system, and all of a sudden it's kicking and pushing back and responding, and it goes from not having consciousness to having consciousness. 

Everybody goes, great. You're going to have a healthy baby at some point.

Nobody asks, well wait a minute, how did it go from chemicals to clear and aware? 

Science can't answer that. They don't really try much.

But we want to know, because if mind can only come from something similar, then it can only come from a mind that's already there that flops over into the new moment of mind, and in the process, the previous one goes away.

Of all the minds there's mine and there's yours.

So can someone else's mind flop over into my new mind?

Does the parent's mind flop over into the infant's mind somewhere along the way from conception to first breath?

What would be the argument to say no?

Because if we don't really know when the baby wakes up, how can we say no, it's not the parent's mind?

Khedrup Je‘s argument is, well, because a father can be a really skilled carpenter and the boy can not know the difference between a nail and a hammer.

Or the child can be a piano virtuoso and the parents can both be imbeciles. 

His argument is, there's not enough similarity there.

I don't know. I don't buy that one either. It seems to me the similarity is the mind is clear and aware. The parent's mind is clear and aware. 

Can't you give some of your clear and aware to that little creature, and then make it be clear and aware?

But he's saying, if you do, then the clear and aware that you give them is going to influence them in the same way that you're clear and aware is being influenced. 

So you and your kids should be closer to identical—and we're not, clearly.

I don't get that one myself.

My own argument is that if the parent's mind is the thing that flops over into the child's mind, it is there before. It could flop over, but it would need to disappear in the process like the acorn goes away. And truly, once you're a parent, you are never the same, but you are not less mind.

In fact, you have more mind, because you have more to handle, more to deal with. So the parent's mind doesn't qualify for NYER-LEN GYI GYU because it doesn't disappear in the process of your child's mind coming into being.

They don't use that argument, at least not in the answer key.

They use the argument that they're not similar enough.

But you decide which one you want to use. 

So, if we have ruled out anything within the category of unchanging as the material cause for our mind, and we've ruled out any inner physical matter or outer physical matter within the category of changing things that are physical, none of those can be the material cause of our mind. 

And went to the mind category of changing things and looked into others' mind as possible causes for our own mind and found that that's not possible.

What's left as the cause for our own mind? Within the category of all knowable things, what's left? Our own mind.

Now, is it our own mind in the moment that causes our own mind in the moment?

No, because it has to be there before, flop over into the result and in the process go away. 

So, is your mind moment, the moment before, gone by the moment now? 

Yes. 

Is your mind similar to the one you had before?

I think so, right? I'm like moving my mind back, yes. I think I'm the same me. I'm not, of course, is to be there before flop over into the result and go away in the process. 

So does a previous moment of my own mind qualify as that which flops over into the result? Does it have those three criteria? 

Yes.

So, if we had a first moment of mind in this life, it had to be the result of a material cause which had to be a moment of that mind before. Right?

That means that that mind had to be before this body got conceived. 

And that means that that mind itself had to have had a first moment of mind and that would've required a moment of mind before that life. 

So that means this moment of mind that you have now has never not been the now moment of your spaghetti noodle mind. It never had a first material cause, but it has never not had a material cause, always. 

And that means that this body will die, but that mind is just going to keep flipping, flipping, flipping, flipping.

Which shows us that our mind is beginningless and endless. 

We know our physical body is not endless.

But this thing called my consciousness, not my Serahni, but this consciousness is constantly changing and eternal. 

Remember when we were doing TAKPA, MITAKPA. It's like there's one thing that's constantly changing and permanent, and that's this mind, your own mind.

Which is the only one you can really confirm.

But our projection of other beings with other minds, same goes for them. They have their unique mind. 

Theoretically this sequential go looking for something and can't find it will leave us with the only thing left.

Even if we don't feel like we've fully proven that my own previous moment of mind is the thing that flops over into this moment of mind, there isn't anything else that it can be. And we know that we have mind. 

So it has to have a cause. 

There's a name for that kind of conclusion. I can't remember it. But it is this conclusion by withdrawing every other possibility and all that's left, is the one that we can then rely upon as true. 

That means that the argument by the Shravakas, that the mind dies when the body dies and so therefore there's not enough time to grow our compassion, so therefore there's no such thing as Buddhas, is incorrect.

Even if we don't relate to the Sharvakas, are we still relating to science which says when your body dies, the mind dies? Mostly. 

However, that said, there are many examples of people who have had near death experience. 

One that I find really useful is there's a physician, I think he was a neurologist or some super surgeon, who got a terrible case of meningitis and died. 

His brain function was zero, but they put him on life support and kept him alive. 

I don't know how long he was comatose, like worse than comatose, zero brain function. But then he wakes up, and he wakes up with an ability to recall, explain what he experienced while his EEG was flatline. 

That's what was extraordinary about this particular case, is they had him on the EEG and it showed zero brain function. And when he came back, he described these elaborate experiences with people he knew, family members, he could relate things that other people verified. He had this extraordinary experience that said that his mind was not limited to his brain ,and his entire belief system was that brain. 

It runs the show. And he realized that that was not true, and everything he'd ever learned was incomplete and incorrect. 

He quit practicing medicine. He couldn't do it anymore. He went into spiritual training and personal empowerment work. He's gone on to share his wisdom with other people. 

But it kind of takes that, the fact that he was hooked up to the EEG and he says, no, I was not brain dead. My brain was not functioning, but my mind was more active and more complete, and more big, more capable than when I was stuck to my physical body. 

So our minds and our bodies do have relationship. But they are not a relationship of cause and effect. And they are not a relationship of identity.

There is some other kind of relationship. 

It's a limiting belief to think our brain is our mind. Because it's not.

The brain is like the computer. It's doing its thing with information.

But our mind is what sees the movie.

And now we've shown ourselves that that mind is not limited to the life of this body. Technically it's not even limited to the body. 

We just use it that way. 

All right, so again, we're done a little bit early. I'm banking those extra minutes. Go through this argument again and again and work with them a little bit to see if you can get this Aha about oh my gosh, my mind and my body are not as solidly connected as I was maybe thinking. 

But don't go crazy.

You're not disconnected from your body. Your body is a proper vehicle to use.

Then, in the next two classes, we go deeper into the relationship between the mind and the body of the newborn baby so that we can understand it a little bit more deeply. So there you have it. 

[Usual dedication]

Thank you so very much. That was fun. Thanks for the arrows Lian Sang.

Welcome back. We are course 4, class 8 on April 28th, 2024.

Let's gather our minds here as we usually do.

Please bring your attention to your breath until you hear from me again.

[Usual opening]

Review class 7

(7:40) Now from last class, we recall what's meant by the material cause of something being that which comes before turns into the result and in the process disappears. To understand the importance of something's material cause and how that material cause has other factors that contribute to it doing what it does. When we have that clear in our mind that any result must have a material cause, and then has various contributing factors in order for the material cause to become its result.

Really, to work out those two pieces and the necessity of those two pieces for any result is the basis of these discussions about where does the mind come from and is it something that disappears at the end of this lifetime? 

The reason, well, I'll get back to that.

Last class we heard Khedrup Je‘s discussion about what things can't be the material cause of our mind. Tonight's class is going to be a Master Dharmakirti‘s similar discussion.

Khedrup Je pointed out that we can know that our minds cause, the mind of this life cause, can't be living physical matter. Because if it is coming from living physical matter, then it would have to of course depend on one or all five of those living physical matter tissues to be there in order for the mind to become the result.

Well, the living tissue is there. But what if one or more of those living tissues fails or stops functioning, or wasn't there to begin with. 

That would mean that the mind could not come into being if one or more of those were the material cause for that mind. So sorry, but babies are born blind, babies are born deaf, or they're born intact and then we go blind deaf or similar. And our mind doesn't disappear. 

Just by way of logic, we can show: no, the living tissue can't be the material cause.

Second, how can we show ourselves that outside physical matter also cannot be the material cause for this mind, the mind of this life?

Same argument. If they are, then anytime you have all four elements present, you should get mind. But my sofa has all four elements and I don't think it has a mind. There are all kinds of things that are made of the four elements and it doesn't become mind. If the four elements were the material cause, then that's what it would mean. To be the material cause means it's the stuff that's there first, similar to the mind that flops over into the mind. 

It's like earth, air, fire, water, come on. They're too different, and they're still there once you have mind. It just doesn't fit the criteria. Which is why it's so important to establish the criteria for what qualifies as the material cause in order to go through these arguments.

Fourth one was, how can we see that the material cause of the mind of this life can't be someone else's mind. Same arguments. 

Can the parents' minds be the material cause of the baby's mind? 

It's like we think, well of course they are right. They had to have minds that made the bodies come together, that brought the two cells together, that made the fetus that got the mind.

Surely the mind comes from the parents too. If everything else about the baby comes from the parents, the mind must come from the parents as well.

But, does the mind of the parents qualify as the material cause with the material causes three characteristics. 

They're there before. Yes.

They're similar. I say yes, they're similar. They're human consciousness. 

But do they disappear in the process of becoming? No. 

But the argument or the answer in your answer key was no, they're too dissimilar. Like is your mind like your parents' mind?

I'm going to say yes, human mind. Human mind. 

But the argument is no. There are cases where a parent's mind and the child's mind are so wildly different, still human, but very, very different, that if you can find one case where you can show that the parent's mind can't be the material cause of the child's mind, then that holds for everybody. Because a material cause of a result holds true for every case in order to be a cause for a result.

Which really, when we think about it, there's no actual causes for the results we think. Because there is always some subtle difference between this one and that one. So you can't ever have a hundred percent cause result relationship even in science. 

The best you're going to get is 99% repetition of an experimental result. 

Probably anything over 30% is useful because 30% variation is just plain placebo. Which means the relationship you think that's going on is not. 

So we just really are speaking theoretically here about cause-result-relationships. 

Is there anybody studying Arya Nagarjuna? That's his big point.

The cause-result-relationship that we believe in as ignorant humans, none of those work like that. But not that they don't work at all.

And that's where it gets kind of crazy. 

So the mind’s cause, material cause can't be the living tissue of that lifetime. We've shown ourselves.

It can't be outside physical tissue, not physical tissue, outside matter. Which technically is what makes up the living tissue. 

Then it can't be the mind of another.

What's left?

So this is like proved by elimination, and we can't say, well what's left is a previous moment of this mind. We can't say, well it's not that either because here's this mind, this moment. It had to have a cause, because this is the result right now. 

So you can't get to this last one and go, well I can't prove that a previous moment of this mind is the cause of this mind now.

But it's like you can't disprove it, and that's all that's left. 

So if you have a mind now, then a previous moment of your own mind has to be the material cause for this mind. Says Khedrup Je, it's all that's left. 

Master Dharmakirti‘s Arguments

So this class is Master Dharmakirti‘s similar discussion towards that group of believers called the Charvakas, a group of Hindus in the 13 hundreds. 

They are saying Buddhas can't exist. This thing called Buddhahood can't actually happen, because you yourself say, Buddhists, that it takes three times 10 to the 60th, countless eons to develop your compassion big enough, the virtue of your compassion big enough to bring about the state of mind of omniscience and emanations, which it is to be a Buddha. 

So it's not possible because everybody knows the mind ends with this body. 

So you don't have enough time to generate that big a compassion. You just can't do it in one lifetime. 

Their argument hinges on their belief that the mind comes into being when the egg and sperm come together, and that baby is birthed out of the womb, that's when this mind starts. They're saying the cause of the mind is the egg and sperm coming together. Something happens and you've got life at that moment. 

If it survives the nine months and comes out whole, you've got a baby that's got body and mind together. As long as you've got that body and mind together, you've got life, and when it ends, it ends. 

It's not unreasonable to think about, because it's a big belief in our society now that it's valuable to check our own heart, our own belief. 

In the Buddhist tradition they say, well, to be a Buddhist is to believe in reincarnation. It's just like that's what it is. It takes many lifetimes and then you become a Buddha, and you go on and you help everybody become one too. 

But can we prove it?

No, we just believe it. We have the seeds to believe in past and future lifetimes and so it makes sense to us.

But we could say either for those of us that became Buddhists versus being born into it, there was something about our birth religion that we rejected. There were beliefs that we were brought up with and then we said, nah, that's not helping me. And we went looking for something else and we found something else and it's like, oh yeah, this one makes sense. 

But probably it just made sense from seeds in our heart, not because we really thought it through. 

So as the (NYIPAs[?]), definitioners, we want to prove to ourselves the truth of past and future lifetimes, not just rely upon the seeds of belief. Because we could run out of those. We could still run out of those even when we apply logic. But when we run out of seeds of belief, we fall back on our logic, and it will help keep us in the fold if that's what we want.

Then Geshela shared that these arguments about the proof of past and future lives actually don't come up in the monastic training until just a year or so before you sit for your Geshe exam. 

It seems so interesting that we get it so early in our training, but in the traditional training it doesn't come up, because everybody already believes, do you see? There's no need to bring it up. So in a way it's like thank you Geshehla for seeing that we need both to learn how to think logically and to use this particular subject matter to wrap our minds around what do we think our mind is? What do we think our body is? What do we think our life is? What do we think we are?

When you try to find yourself in amongst your heaps and your mind and your everyday life, it's so obvious. But when you go to try and find it, it's so confusing.

Proof 1: Three Characteristics of a Newborn Child

(24:33) Master Dharmakirti gives these opening statements.

These four lines are the premise that we're going to be talking about. 

For the seeds of keeping Tibetan alive in our world, please read

KYEWA YONGSU LENPA NA JUNG-NGUB WANGPO LODAK NI

RANG GI RIK LA TU ME CHEN

LU NYI BA SHIK LE KYE MIN

KYEWA YONGSU LENPA NA JUNG-NGUB WANGPO LODAK NI

KYEWA YONGSU LENPA NA

KYEWA YONGSU = when a person takes birth, actually that's what all of it means.

KYEWA YONGSU LENPA NA =  when a person takes birth. Now here, meaning birth coming out of the womb. Conception is at the moment the egg against sperm touch. So technically rebirth happens at that moment, because the moment that lifetime begins. 

But we are talking now about when that soon to be infant exits the womb.

KYEWA YONGSU LENPY NA, when that being gets born, JUNG-NGUB WANGPO LODAK NI. 

NI = they're there. 

So these are three things that that infant already has. Three characteristics, three qualities. 

JUNG-NGUB = breath passing, it means they are breathing.

It's actually the word for in and out: JUNG-NGUB. 

So when that infant exits the womb, they already have breathing. 

Breathing is happening. 

WANGPO is the word for those living tissue sense powers; the optic nerve, the retina, the optic nerve, the auditory canal and its auditory nerve, all of that—living physical tissue, but it's called the sense powers. 

They have a mind that's responding. The mind responds. That's what it does. 

The instant this infant is out and alive, they have breathing, they have living tissue sense powers, and they have a functioning mind. They are reacting to their environment, so we know they have a functioning mind. 

He uses those three characteristics of a brand newborn to talk about the material cause for those three to come to some conclusion about what's the material cause for the mind. But also what's the material cause for that, for all three of those. 

Are they three separate material causes?

Is there like a overall material cause for the life of that baby with these different material causes for these three different characteristics?

We're going to see.

He's basically saying when a child is born, it already has these three qualities, these three characteristics, breathing, sense powers—living physical tissue sense powers—and mind. 

We know the mind by way of seeing it react. It cries, it moves. 

RANG GI RIK LA TU ME CHEN

This means these three things are not things which do not depend upon something of a similar type. That's what that phrase means. 

These three: breathing, living tissue and mind are not things which do not depend upon something of a similar type.

LU NYI BA SHIK LE KYE MIN is another statement in the negative. 

Those three do not come only from the body itself. LU.

LU NYI BA SHIK - they do not only come from the body

He is making this statement because he is talking to this group of people who believe that the child's mind does come from the body.

It does come from things that are not similar and they're convinced that that's correct, that that's true. 

So he's saying to them, no, those things can't come from something not similar and no, they can't come from just the body itself.

So it is important to have those negatives in there. 

My experience in this tradition is anytime they have a chance to state something positive by way of a negative statement, they do it. Some secret hidden reason for working out a truth by way of a negative. 

So it's not pointed out in this class, but I just thought to point it out because you guys are sophisticated Dharma people.

(32:10) Master Dharmakirti is going to give us 10 different, like a sequence of 10 arguments. Really they are responses to this group of people that you know what they believe. Each argument is addressing another angle through which the audience isn't believing what he's saying.

But remember the thing about logical statements. Each part of your logical statement needs to stay within the belief system of the person you're addressing. 

Geshe Michael didn't go into that so much with this class. But when you're chewing on these arguments, it's a way to look at whether or not we can accept the argument as a correct statement based on whether or not it's still within the belief system of the other person, the one who believes that the mind comes from the body.

Again, for vocabulary, we're looking first at the four elements that the belief that the mind comes from the body hinges on the understanding that the body is made of some combination of those four elements that we spoke about before.

But here's the more complete names of those four elements, because the name of the element hinges on it's what it is, like how it's defined, how we recognize it.

Wait, wait, I'm getting ahead of myself. These are earth, water, fire and air. 

But let me get back to it. I've gotten ahead of myself. 

Master Dharmakirti has said to this group of folks, 

Consider these three breathing, living tissue and mind. 

They did not come from something not similar,

because the baby having them now means those three had to have had material causes. 

The baby having them now—breathing—has to be a result that has a material cause and contributing factors. 

There had to be some kind of something similar that became the baby's breathing, and in the process went away.

The living tissue, the sense powers, having them now means they're the results of some material cause plus other conditions.

The material cause having had to be there before, be similar, and in the process of becoming the result goes away.

The mind, to have the mind now, which we know the baby does because it's reacting to its environment, that mind had to have a material cause that was something that was there before, is similar and flops over into the result and the process goes away.

He's talking to people that don't believe that that happens but who still will say yes you have a cause. The baby has a cause. Baby has a cause and contributing factors. Master Dharmakirti is saying, well let's figure out what those are, shall we?

He's saying to this group, so what do you think are the material causes of that infant's breathing, living tissue and mind? 

They're going to say, the four elements. That some combination of the four elements coming together is what makes all existence.

That doesn't sound so farfetched, right? Science says that. Take that chart of all the chemicals, you combine those in multiple ways, and you've got Einstein to nat to hell being and hungry ghost, if you believe in that.

So what are these four elements? 

Proof 2: The four elements can be felt, mind not

SA SHING TEPA = solid and rigid

That which is solid and rigid is what we mean by earth element.

It's the quality of form of hardness, firmness. 

For instance, a wall has more earth element than a carpet. Because a wall stands upright. A carpet has flexibility. You stand it up and let go and flip.

CHU-LEN SHING SHERWA = water, wet and flowing.

LEN SHING SHERWA = wet and flowing.

So when we say water, we tend to think, oh that clear H2O.

But the quality of water is in blood, and saliva, and the xylem and flow that goes up and down the tree trunk. It's not water, because it's got other stuff in it.

But the fluidity factor in anything. 

In the comparison of the wall to the carpet, we don't think of the carpet as having any fluidity to it at all.

But it's got more fluidity than the wall, because when you hold it up like this and let go, flip, down it goes.

That's because it's got fluidity to it, right? It bends. It can't hold itself up the way something with more earth has.

Fire = ME-TSA SHING SEKPA

Fire is that which is hot and burning.

Burning meaning like consuming. 

We say we all know what fire is, but any kind of metabolism is fire element. 

Any kind of temperature is fire element.

Then LUNG-YANG SHING YOWA = air

Which is light as in light versus heavy, not light versus dark. But light and moving. 

Air element is the element that moves, that lets things move. 

Again, the carpet has more air element than the wall. Because the carpet is movable. More so than a wall is movable.

When we say air element, we don't just mean the air that we breathe.

Every existing material thing has some combination of solidity, fluidity, temperature and movability. All four of these elements have some kind of tangibility, meaning tactileness, they can be felt. 

Even the air element is tactile. 

The mind, that which is clear and aware, has no tactile ability. None whatsoever. 

So can these four elements, even the air element be similar enough to mind to serve as the material cause, that which is there before? That could be.

Are they similar enough to be the material cause of mind?

If they're touchable and the mind is not touchable, if we believe that, then we would have to come to the conclusion, oh my gosh, I guess those four elements can't be the material cause of the mind. 

Can they be contributing factors?

Sure. If you say that in order to know that the being has a mind, you see the little body move, and you hear it cry or smile or whatever. That in order to establish that there's a mind there we rely on the four elements. 

But they're not cause and effect.

They're not cause and result, they're not material cause, because they're too dissimilar. 

Alright, that's all of our Tibetan for class 8, but I have a lot more class eight to do. 

That was his second argument.

Proof 3: The four elements are not living things

His third, he says, 

Consider these three—breathing, living tissue and the mind.

They did not come from the elements alone,

because the elements are not a living being. 

His previous argument is that they're not similar enough to the mind.

Now he says their elements are not living things.

How can you combine any combination of non-living things in any kind of a way that would all of a sudden make life out of not life?

Science can't come up with the answer to that one either.

They hook you up to the EEG and show that you have brain function and they say, see, they're still alive.

But how does squiggles on a page prove awareness? 

Unless you already believe that squiggles on a page mean awareness.

It's funny logic, says a logician. But if you argue with it, that seems peculiar because you're arguing that there's a mind still in there being proven by an EEG. What do you think the mind's not in there at all. Where is it? 

If it's not inside the body, if it's outside the body, then why is it related to the body at all? 

I mean those are good questions that the scientists have. It has to be inside that body. That's why we can measure it with an EEG. They prove their own misperception to themselves, and it's like I go along with that.

But it really isn't accurate logic. 

Now Geshela always says someday in deep meditation you'll experience directly what is not the material cause of mind and what is material cause of mind. And then you don't need any of this. 

Once you've proven the truth of past and future lives to yourself, you don't need logic anymore. You have direct proof. 

But that doesn't mean anybody that you're talking to is going to believe you just because you said, I experienced it. Right?

How many people have near death experiences or something similar and it's like, I know this mind goes on. It's like, yeah, great for you.

We still want to get good at being able to help someone think something through if they're willing. You can't make anybody do it.

Number three. 

Those three did not come from the elements alone because the elements are not living being. 

Rocks and chemicals can't give rise to consciousness, no matter how much we want it. Your sofa is never going to have a mind. But your baby's always going to have a mind. 

What's the difference in those elements, if the baby's four elements get mind and the sofa’s four elements don't? 

Proof 4: Mind is Continuing

Number four, he says, Consider the mind. 

So now he's zeroing in on the mind, which is really what he wants to talk about, because his audience is saying, you got one life to live, you might as well do the best you can. And he's saying, no, actually your mind is beginningless and endless.

You have lots of lifetimes and so you better use it wisely. 

It's kind of a funny conclusion. Well if I've got all the time in the world, I might as well just live it up this one. 

It's like, oh, wrong conclusion. 

He wants to zero in on the cause of the mind, the material cause of the mind. Because that's more important to the point he's trying to get across, which is this mind goes on. 

The physical body will end. That is true. 

But the mind does not.

Not my mind. The mind of Sarahni will end. The personality, the ego mind of Sarahni will end.

But the moment by moment consciousness, awareness, is going to go, go, go, go, go, go, go. And that's what he's trying to show us beyond a shadow of a doubt so that we can rely upon and relate to that constantly changing, never non existent quality of being. 

I use those terms, not from scripture.

Consider the mind.

It is not something which does not cross into the next life,

because of the mind's ability to continue itself.

So follow it again, 

Consider the mind.

It is not something which does not cross over into the next life. 

He states it that way because he's talking to people who believe that it is something that does not cross over into another life. 

It's not something which does not cross over into the next life, because of the mind's ability to continue itself. 

I have to assume that Master Dharmakirti knows that his audience does believe that the mind has the ability to continue itself. 

I'm not sure if we talk to our neurologist and we ask them, does the mind have the ability to continue itself? 

I'm not sure that they would say, yes.

I'm thinking back in my previous, this life lifetime as a medical practitioner, and if somebody had said, does the mind have the ability to continue itself?

I think I would've said no. 

That it relies upon the brain and that as long as the brain is functioning, the mind's continuing, but the mind's not continuing itself. The brain's making it happen. 

To me that would make this argument unacceptable, not correct logic. 

When you're cooking this one, kind of chew on that. 

How might someone who believes the mind ends with the body still hold to how the mind somehow continues itself within the framework of that physical body's physical life.

It has some kind of mind moment, mind moment, mind moment.

It would require having some awareness of awareness.

Being aware of how our awareness changes, changes, changes, changes, changes. Which, if I weren't a meditator, I would never have paid attention to that. Even though it's our constant experience. 

It was so ubiquitous as experienced that it was never like, wow, my mind is changing, changing, changing.

It was just me and that was life.

I think it has something to do with somebody who at least is interested enough in these things to look and say, well what is this thing mind? 

And what does it do all day?

And what's it like?

Because it's a doorway in for Master Dharmakirti in the folks who say the mind relies entirely on the body. Do you see?

Because if it relies entirely on the body, then the mind does not continue itself.

And if they say, yeah, yeah it does, as long as it's got a body, it'll continue itself. Those are inconsistent, logically inconsistent.

His explanation though is, if the mind has been moving from one moment to the next, to the next, to the next, for your whole lifetime, from the instant out of the womb until you're 97,5 years old, why would the mind's ability to move moment by moment, by moment by moment all of a sudden stop? 

That's illogical. To think of something that has that kind of momentum where just, all of a sudden the principles change, all of a sudden the process change, as all of a sudden…

I dunno, you can say the same for the body except that the body doesn't roll along and then screech to a halt. It takes at least four minutes for it to screech to a halt and probably longer. 

Why is the mind any different?

I don't find that so convincing, personally.

(56:00) I like the argument that a material cause has to be there before, be similar, and go away in the process of becoming the result. 

That fits mind. 

We have a moment of mind, this instant. 

The moment of mind that it's going to create will be similar, and in the process of the one coming newly into being the old one has to go away.

That's the case that they make for the moment of mind, the moment before flopping over to this one now, and then this one—well you can't say this one now. 

Because now it becomes the one the moment before for this one now. 

It's always this cycle of the one before flops over and goes away. Because the one from before is gone, isn't it? And then (flip, flip, flip).

Once we get a hold of that process, what could possibly stop it?

Because your moment of now awareness instantly becomes the one the moment before that can flop over. 

Okay? 

Proof 5: The Four Elements Would Never Fail to Give Mind

(57:36) He goes on. 

Consider the elements.

They are not the cause of those three,

because there should never be a case where the elements would fail to give those three.

If the combination of the elements is the material cause for breathing, living tissue and mind, then every time you have those elements together, you should get breathing, living tissue and mind. 

We already said, doesn't happen with a sofa. 

It was like, come on, we're talking about living people. 

Well it can happen that an infant can be stillborn, in which case you had those elements together while it was in the womb, and then something happens between here and there that doesn't anymore have life.

There had to have been some other factor, not just the four elements. 

Because there it was alive in the womb and here it is, unfortunately not outside of the womb.

Something else has to be going on. All of a sudden you don't have the material cause that you had before, or did you not have the material cause?

Let's take a break. I've got two more. No one more.

Only one more argument to give you. 

Maybe let's not take a break. Let's not take a break. 

Let me give you the one more argument. 

Proof 6: Multiple Elements would Cause Multiple People

(59:50) Consider the four elements. 

They are not the cause of the three—breathing, living tissue, mind, 

Because multiple elements would cause multiple people. 

That one is, I don't know, I don't find that one so helpful either because it seems so absurd.

But if we're saying it takes all four elements together to make a living being, and then he says, well look, but that doesn't happen for your sofa. Why does it happen for your baby? 

Then they say, oh well it's just one. You just have to have one complete. 

He says, well if all you need is one and you have all four, then each one of the four should make a whole being. And so every baby should be quadruplets, and that doesn't happen.