For the recording, welcome back. We are ACI course 6, class 1. It's September 5th, 2024. Let's gather our minds here as we usually do.

Class Opening

Please bring your attention to your breath until you hear from me again. 

Now, bring to mind that being before you is a manifestation of ultimate love, ultimate compassion, ultimate wisdom. 

See them there with you. They're gazing at you with their unconditional love for you, smiling at you with their holy, great compassion.

Their wisdom radiates from them. A beautiful golden glow encompassing you in its life. It feels so wonderful to have them here with us.

Then we hear them say,

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

Feel how much you would like to be able to help them.

Recognize how the world, the ways we try fall short.

How wonderfully 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 how that is possible.

We turn our minds back to our precious holy being.

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

And so we ask them, please, please teach us that. 

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

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

So 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, using our refuge prayer to make our promise.

Here is the great earth, 

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

The great mountain, four lands, wearing the jewel of the sun in 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 the 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. 

(3x)

Welcome & Guidelines to the course

(7:55) Welcome everyone, especially the two new faces to me. I'm glad you made it. Hi Mar and Jam. For your benefit, I have certain requirements for my students and that is that because I desperately want you to make completion karma, I insist that you do your homework and quiz from each class before the next class comes up. You can either email it to me or show it to me on the camera, but I'd like to see it done. 

The way I ask my students to do the homework is you do the homework open book, use your notes, talk to other people, and then take the answer key and compare the answer key to your answers and mark your own paper. Be nice to yourself. If you have to correct anything, take a half or one point off. If you leave the whole question blank, take five points off, but never more than that, right?.

So everybody should be doing well. The score is not important. It's the try, review. 

Then study it all again. Put the papers away, take your quiz closed book, and then do the same. Get out the answer key. Mark your answers, give yourself a score.

Be sure that on your homework paper you have put down the date and time of at least one meditation session on the homework assignment. 

If you're not trained in meditation, just sit down and think about it. That's enough.

In the end, when we prepare our final exams, then we'll switch papers with another student. They'll grade our paper, we'll grade theirs, just to keep it a little bit official.

At the end we'll set a date for the submission of the final exam so that all your papers, everything is all done, gets submitted to our TA, who's Luisa, who's not here yet, and. Then she compiles it all and sends it to the dean, and the dean will email you your certificate. So we get it all packaged together. Certificates tend to come quite quickly instead of this, it took, one of my certificates came like three years later after having completed the whole thing. We got a good system here. Your job is to do your part. The idea is review, review and then see yourself complete. That's what I want the complete.

These other ladies all know me. I won't bite your head off if you don't manage to do it because chaos happened. But try really hard please, and everybody will help you if you need help. 

Then one thing to my previous students, would you guys email me separately and tell me exactly which courses you have yet to complete? As I'm trying to look at my 10 year schedule, and I am filling in fast actually, so I kind of need to know where I'm going with different groups at different time. So that would help me to put everything into perspective.

Special infos on this course — Disclaimer

(12:22) Then still some housekeeping for this course. Course 6. They're all special, but this one's special amongst the special. When Geshela taught it the first time, he made this really clear point to his students that what was happening in that series of courses, classes was a transmission, a download. 

That previous classes, people had questions they were debating. There was a lot of on the topic, off the topic. For this course, course 6, he said, hold your questions till the end, the end of class, or even the end of the whole course. Because he didn't want that interruption from this special thing that was happening as he transmitted this particular course material to his people. 

The reason he said is that the ability to clearly and accurately carry forth the transmission of the wisdom teachings is so critical to bringing the right understanding to the west, to all of us, east, west, wherever we are.

But the shift from the monastic training having the deepest wisdom knowledge to bringing it out into the public at the same level of study or almost the same level of study as the monastic, Geshe Michael was the first to do that in the 1990s. 

Fortunately, the one we know as Venerable Jigme, she asked her friend John Stillwell, who was in New York, Jigme was in California, I'd love to hear teachings, but I'm here not there. Would you ask that guy if you would record them? And they did. As a result of having the recordings of the original ACI courses, we now have this ACI Teacher training course. So the whole series is designed to teach us to teach others, to share it with others. 

This course six is the first in the 18 series where we are addressing wisdom.

It's the first of the Prajna Paramita Sutra, I'll talk about it more.

Our ability to share what we've learned is driven by the quality of our attention as we're hearing it, and the quality of our doing our completion like we just talked about, so that when it's our turn to share, we can do it from a pure lineage, a pure transmission. 

The other thing he said about this course in particular is attend it, listen to it, study it with the state of mind of ‚I'm doing this so that I can share it with somebody else someday‘. Whether it'll be a formal class like this or together in your living room with your best friend, doesn't matter. But have that idea, ‚I'm not just learning this for me, I'm learning it so that I can help others learn it too‘. 

That little shift in perspective is really helpful, crucial in fact to what you'll hear coming out of my mouth. 

When we set up the opening prayers each time, it'll be the same every single time.

Kind of keep that in mind as you're thinking of this other person you're going to help. Think also, ‚And I'm also going to help 'em by someday teaching them Diamond Cutter Sutra‘. 

(17:22) This course, course six is the first of the perfection of wisdom teachings that we receive in the ACI foundation courses. Most of us got started from having already heard the Pen thing in the 4x4. We got interested in understanding them more deeply

and we started into the ACI training. So we'd already heard about the punchline of everything comes from us.

But technically, what we've been studying so far has not been everything. It's our seeds. We've been in the first turning of the wheel, learning the details. 

We're finally making it to second turning of the wheel, where the teaching says, all those things I taught you before, none of it has any nature.

And our minds go, What? Nothing exists. 

Of course that's not what it means, that nothing exists, but it means a very specific way in which things don't exist in the way we thought they did. 

That mistaken perception turns out to be the cause of all our distress. Big ones, little ones right down to getting older and dying.

Diamond Cutter Sutra, it was taught by Lord Buddha in the 500 BC timeframe.

In the middle of that sutra, he says this odd thing.

He says, you know, anybody who learns this sutra and understands it pretty well, they're going to have disasters in their life.

He doesn't really go into it. He says that and then changes the subject. 

Geshela has said in his experience, disasters do happen to people who are studying Diamond Cutters Sutra. So he's learned to warn people. 

The reason they seem to happen is that the learning of the Diamond Cutter Sutra is such an extraordinary goodness that it somehow stirs up the yucky seeds that we have in us and gets them to bubble up to the top of the pot, sooner than they otherwise would have. 

If we've got a bunch of old stealing seeds from when we were naughty people, monkeys, living in the edge of the city and you just stole everything from people, and you start studying Diamond Cutter Sutra, those seeds ripening now might ripen as losing stuff. It seems like people are stealing stuff from you and you can't get your needs met. You go to the grocery store and they have every kind of peanut butter, but the kind you want, right. You just can't get your stuff that you want.

We're not likely to go, whoa, that's happening because I'm studying Diamond Cutter Sutra. We're even less likely to think, wow, better than a lifetime in hell. Which if those seeds had been left to go longer would end up as hungry ghost or hell being. Some really, really awful ripening versus I just can't get the peanut butter I want.

Do you see? 

So in the course of these six weeks or so that we'll be studying together, don't be surprised if life seems to take these turns for the worst and kind of be proud about it. Try to be happy about it because we're burning them off instead of leaving them there. 

But also be a warrior about it because it's very likely that they'll be kind of situations that interfere with your being able to get here, or interfere with your ability to get your papers done, or things that are just getting in the way of learning more and more.

So buckle down. 

In my personal experience, when I am faced with some situation that I just really don't want to do and I'm really resistant and I'm trying to make all kinds of reasons why not to do it. If I look at seeds and I go, okay, I'm willing. I'll take it on. I'll do it no matter what. Knock on wood, it's almost never the case that I have to actually do it.

The sudden release of the resistance and struggle just changes the whole situation and never have to. 

The obstacles from Diamond Cutter Sutra are the same. We can go, oh my gosh, I'm waiting for disaster. I don't want it to happen. Or we can say, okay, bring it on. Very likely nothing will happen, nothing bad will happen to you. 

That does not mean that you're not learning. It does not mean that you have no negative seeds. Maybe it does, I hope so for you. 

It's not a bad thing if bad things happen, and it's not a bad thing if bad things don't help you hear me?

(24:05) When Geshela was teaching this, it was live. Although they did the recordings, the recordings weren't available for weeks. So he said, in this course, don't miss a class because you miss some of the transmission. 

But then as in with other classes, if you absolutely have to miss, then listen to the recording before you come back. Anything you've missed, make it up before you show up in class again. For in person, it's because you put somebody into a class who's not quite on the same page and it shifts it for everybody. I think that's still true online for online classes as well. So if you do have to miss, be sure that you get the recording or the video, and have a listen to it before you come back to the next class. 

These ladies make it all available very swiftly. I'm really proud of that.

The Commentarial Tradition

(25:22) Diamond Cutter Sutra from Lord Buddha, through the course of the career of Buddhism from that time until now, there is a collection of writings, some that were finally written down that were attributed to Lord Buddha's actual teachings, and some that are commentaries to those teachings or commentaries to commentaries. 

Through the course of Buddhism in India, those original texts were apparently written in Sanskrit and many of them got translated into Tibetan, into Chinese. 

At some point, most of those Sanskrit original texts were destroyed. 

Even by the time that the Sanskrit was going into Tibet, not all of the Sanskrit texts were still available. They know that because of what is available, those texts will sometimes mention sutras or commentaries that were in Sanskrit that nobody has anymore. Nobody knows what they are. They've been mentioned, but they've not been available in recent history.

Curious history is that even the Tibetan collection went on to get destroyed. It seemed like the Sera May monastery collection of textbooks was gone for good until somebody went actually looking for them. That's the organization we now know as Asian Legacy Library, and found a whole collection of amazing stuff in the St. Petersburg Library in Russia. Because of the connection with the Mongols who'd taken over all that territory who then became Buddhists. 

Confusing story, but putting it all together, we have two existing or access to the Tibetan of two Sanskrit commentaries on the Diamond Cutter Sutra. 

One of them was written by one of those two great brothers, Master Vasubhandu and Master Asanga. I think we know about them.

Master Vasubhandu wrote a commentary to Diamond Cutters Sutra. That's 350 AD India.

Then another one was by Master Kamalashila in about 750 AD, also an Indian. Master Kamalashila was that meditation master who was invited to Tibet because Tibet was just getting its feet wet with meditation and Buddhism, and there was a Chinese monk in Tibet teaching meditation a certain way. There were others teaching meditation in a different way. The way you would settle a disagreement is that the king would invite authorities on the matter and the two authorities would debate and the people would listen to the debate. At some point they'd say, okay, whose debate makes most sense? The people would say that one. As a result, the king would say, okay, that one. Then all of the king's kingdom had to follow that one.

For the Tibetan, the ‚that one‘ was Master Kamalashila. The Chinese monk was teaching a meditation practice where you try to blank your mind, to bring it to nothing, believing that that would bring you to see ultimate reality.

Master Kamalashila‘s point was, no, actually the seeds that you plant in your mind trying to blank it out are probably seeds that will ripen you as a rabbit or a cow or something that where the mind is just blanked out. The intellect is blanked out.

He said, a more effective meditation is to have a meditation that's focusing on a virtuous object and very specifically moving your mind through a series of analyses, like question-answer, that leads us to recognizing the true nature of things.

Master Kamalashila won the debate, and as a result the Tibetans learn this method, the method that we are trained in ACI 3. The method we will be experiencing at that meditation retreat in January, if anybody's interested. we’ll be spending 10 days on just fixation and going through the nine stages.

Vocabulary class 1

(32:52) You don't really need this for your homework. If you're doing your homework in English, which I did all mine in English, I'm language impaired. 

Here are words that I've already used. We'll see them again.

prajnaparamita sutra    madyamika

master kamalashila  750ad

master vasubandhu  350ad

vajra chedika                dorje chupa

tarlam selway nyima

choney lama drakpa shedrup   1675 - 1748

subhuti                         rabjor

jitar mepa gyi?

jitar drupar gyi?

jitar sem sewa gyi?

Tsok lam

jor lam

tong lam

gom lam

milob lam

chu la chu chakpa

Prajnaparamita Sutra, it means the perfection of wisdom teachings of Lord Buddha.

Madyamika means Middle Way. 

By definition, if we're studying Prajnaparamita, we were in the level of Buddhism called Middle Way. Also called Mahayana, greater vehicle.

Master Kamalashila, that's how you spell his name, master Vasubhandu. That's how you spell his name. 

We are on now to the topic of the Diamond Cutter Sutra and the commentary that we're actually using to study from because we are not studying from either Master Kamalashila‘s or Master Vasubhandu‘s commentaries. 

As it turns out, in 2015, Geshe Michael did choose to teach Master Kamalashila's Diamond Cutter Sutra commentary. It turns out that commentary is not a word by word explanation of Diamond Cutter Sutra.

It uses the sutra as a stepping off point for comparing Mind Only School concepts of dependent origination and emptiness to the two higher schools view of dependent origination and emptiness. 

I think it took, I don't remember, four or five, six or seven class meetings to get through Master Kamalashila‘s Diamond Cutter commentary. It's an extraordinary course. 

After you're done with your ACI‘s, if you want to dig in deeper, we have that. I have it up my sleeve to share. 

The Commentary we are studying

We are studying from a commentary that was written by a Tibetan, a commentary on the Diamond Cutter Sutra directly written by a Tibetan, and it's a Tibetan. M many of us are very familiar with: Choney Lama Drakpa Shedrup.

Often just called Choney Lama. 

Choney is an area in the area that used to be called Tibet. It's where he's from. 

Lama means Lama, Drakpa is his monk's name. 

His dates are 1675 to 1748.

He wrote a large portion of the textbooks that are still used at Sera Mey Monastery training program. 

His writing style is very modern and easy to understand, Geshe Michael tells us. When you compare his writing to Je Tsongkhapa, it is much clearer and easier to understand. But to me, it's still cryptic. It is often in the language of debate. 

You're never quite sure if what they've said is quite correct or not. It's very challenging to read. But he wrote this beautiful commentary to the Diamond Cutter Sutra called TARLAM SELWAY NYIMA (The Sun that's Shining the Light on the Path to our Buddhahood).

TARLAM means a path to freedom. The freedom we're talking about depends on the motivation of the student who's reading what we're talking about.

If our motivation, if our capacity is, like our belief is that I want to stop my own suffering forever. That's my biggest capacity. That's the best thing I think anybody can do, is to reach the end of their own suffering. Then TARLAM means the path to Nirvana. 

But if you're a student who says, no, I believe that we're meant to become Buddha ourselves to reach that state of perfect love, perfect compassion, perfect wisdom, that that's within our reach, that's my goal. Then TARLAM means the path to your Buddhahood. 

Same word heard by a mind that has a different belief.

Diamond Cutter Sutra is a teaching meant for those who have the highest motivation. I want to reach my total Buddhahood so that I can help everybody reach theirs. But again, remember, not everybody believes that that's possible. If you do, that's a big rejoice symbol. It's a really great goodness of seeds to recognize, oh my gosh, not everybody believes like I do.

Choney Lama is a big believer and he's writing about the Diamond Cutter Sutra to help us understand how to use it to guide us on this path. TARLAM.

SELWAY means to make clear, illuminate, to shine the flashlight on the path at dark so that you can see where you're going, SELWAY. 

NYIMA is the sun. 

It's The Sun that's Shining the Light on the Path to our Buddhahood, is the name of his text. Sunlight on the Path to Freedom, Geshe Michael calls it. Quite beautiful.

The Title of the Text

(40:20) The title of the text, the Sutra in Sanskrit is Vajra Chedika, and in Tibetan Dorje Chupa.

Vajra and dorje is translated as diamond, but the literal meaning is Lord of stones. Meaning the highest stone, the most important stone, the king of stones is diamond. Again, you could make a case for who says, I like emeralds better than diamonds. But we'll see why diamond is considered the Lord of stones and why we see it in the iconography of Tibetan Buddhism, we see diamonds everywhere.

It just don't look like this kind of diamond. They look like the vajra. 

Dorje Chupa.

It's very common to see the Diamond Cutter Sutra called the Diamond Sutra. Geshe Michael just gets hopping mad about that, because it's leaving out a really important piece of the title, which is Chedika or Chupa, which means to cut the diamond. 

I'll get to you shortly why that's so important, and it's critically important.

I would suggest that if you're ever within earshot of Geshe Michael and you happen to be talking about the Diamond Cutter Sutra, be sure you say Diamond Cutter Sutra and don't slip and call it the Diamond Sutra, or he will explode.

As in most sutras, Lord Buddha is sitting in meditation.

In this one, but the text of the Diamond Cutter says, Lord Buddha, he gets up, he brushes his teeth, he puts on his shawl, he gets his wisdom bowl, his begging bowl, and he goes to get breakfast. He goes begging. He brings his food back, he eats it, he cleans up, he washes his feet, and he sits down into meditation in this beautiful garden. 

Then his disciples are there with him, presumably they've all done the same thing. They're gathered around him. It seems a little funny to me, Lord Buddha sitting in meditation and somebody gets up and has a question to ask. 

So this particular monk named Subhuti, he gets up, he drops his shawl from his shoulder, he leans down respectively and says, oh Lord Buddha. He asks him these three questions. Like to interrupt a Buddha in meditation, you've got to be kidding.

But the thing is, Buddha is not going to teach if not he is asked, right? 

We'll see later why that's true.

So this one we call Subhiti, Rbajor in Tibetan.

Tibetan tradition says, you know what? Subhuti is actually the Bodhisattva Manjushri pretending to be a common monk, so that there's somebody in the crowd that knows what to ask. The rest of us there we're too ignorant or too nervous to go to the Buddha and to ask a question. We don't know what to ask.

I would've asked something like, what's the best day to do my shopping? Some stupid worldly question. 

But Subhuti knows what to ask to get Buddha to answer the question, knowing that that's what the people there need to hear. Subhuti makes this question, and he says, it's three questions actually.

(45:26) 

Jitar mepa gyi? (How shall they live)

Jita drupar gyi? (How shall they practice?)

Jitar sem sewa gyi? (How shall they hold their mind?)

It means, Jitar mepa gyi? How shall they live? 

The lead in is for those who have entered well into the way of a Bodhisattva, how shall they live?

Jitar drupar gyi? How shall they practice?

Jitar sem sewa gyi? How shall they hold their mind? 

Buddha says, LEGSO, LEGSO, LEGSO. Well, good question. Good question, Subhuti. Thank you for asking that question because that's exactly what I wanted to talk about. But I couldn't talk about it without somebody asking. So now let's talk about it. 

The rest of the sutra, what comes to be known as the sutra, is Lord Buddha and Subhuti having this question answer session about these three topics. But it doesn't come out as, okay, first let's talk about how they should live. Then let's talk about how they should practice. Then let's talk about how they keep their thoughts.

He goes off on this hard to follow trip that in one moment it's apparent he is talking about dependent origination and emptiness, and in the next moment he's talking about making merit. Like how much merit would you make if you did this, this, this. Subhuti will answer, oh, it would be a lot. 

Then Lord Buddha says, yeah, but it's nothing compared to studying Diamond Cutter Sutra. Then he asks, ‚How big do you think a body could grow?‘ 

Like really weird stuff, Buddha asks Subhuti. 

There's this conversation going on that the rest of us are listening to, and f. Fortunately because we have commentaries and teachers who give commentaries to commentaries, we can figure out the connection between Lord Buddha’s apparently skipping subject matters to see how it's all rolled together, answering these three questions.

That's where we're going with our discourse on Diamond Cutter Sutra. 

We don't actually go into this sutra and look at the verses.

That's what we would do in Kamalashila's commentary course. 

At the end of this course, we'll actually need to schedule an extra class.

I am supposed to give an oral transmission of the Diamond Cutter Sutra, meaning I read it out loud and you listen to it. That allows you to take that sutra and read it aloud to somebody else to pass on at least the lineage of the sutra. 

We learn in the sutra itself that anywhere the sutra is read becomes a sacred place. So it's kind of a fun, sneaky thing if there's someplace in your neighborhood that lots of people gather at, that you go and read the Diamond Cutter Sutra there, because then when anybody comes to that place, they're gaining merit by just being there, like the fly around the stupa. 

Once you have the transmission of the Diamond Cutter Sutra, you can use it in ways to make places sacred and clean out karma and do all kinds of fun stuff.

(50:28) I am still talking about the title, The Diamond Cutter Sutra.

If you go looking in the sutra for those words, Diamond Cutter, it's interesting that they are not in the sutra at all. It's the title, but they're never actually said.

Geshehla at first he thought that was curious because almost all the other sutras, you can find where the title comes from inside the sutra, inside the teaching. 

But in this one, not at all.

He said it occurred to him that that's probably the most important part of the whole sutra, is the fact that the words of the title are not in it. 

The most important part, the part that identifies the sutra, its title is missing from the sutra. 

The sutra is a wisdom sutra. 

Wisdom sutra means, it's really all about emtiness. 

Emptiness is the absence of self nature of anything.

Titling it Diamond Cutter Sutra and not ever having those words in it is a clue to the message within the sutra. 

What's not in the sutra is more important than what's in the sutra. 

Geshela says that's the subtlety with which all of the sutras are written. They just, for the most part, it passes over our heads. This one would've passed my head too if he hadn't pointed it out, and then with it pointed out, it just blows me away every time I get to teach that sutra again to see how precise Lord Buddha is. Even as to me understanding it as well as I think I do, it still seems like there are so many inconsistencies and contradictions, and I know because they title it Diamond Cutter and never use those words in the sutra that it's my misunderstanding anything that I don't see as an explanation for emptiness. So for what it's worth. Dorje chupa.

But now, why is what's not in the sutra so important?

Why is emptiness such an important topic, that huge amounts of literature and training are devoted to explaining this thing called emptiness to us, and at the same time that they're explaining emptiness to us, they are saying, and you know what? Emptiness is not something that can be explained to anyone. 

As we're hearing it explained, as I'm even hearing me explain it, if I've not experienced it directly, I am misunderstanding it as I explain it accurately to you. 

It's very slippery because it seems like, well then what's the use? Let's just go eat chocolate and watch movie. 

But no, because of the empty nature of even our understanding and misunderstanding, we can hear it, study it, misunderstand it, and plant seeds to come to experience it directly—from which we finally actually understand it, but not until we're out of it.

The 5 Paths in Buddhism

(55:25) The importance of the Diamond Cutter Sutra not being in the sutra leads us to understanding where does the direct perception of emptiness fall in our effort to go from suffering human to fully enlightened being. 

That led Geshela to describe the five paths, the classical five realizations that we will go through on our career path from suffering human to totally enlightened being. Technically same five paths from suffering being to arhat, if that's our final goal. Same five paths, a little bit different thing happening. 

So we're speaking of these five paths from the highest capacity, from the perspective of a disciple on the path with their goal being total Buddhahood for the sake of all sentient beings.

The five paths in Tibetan are 

TSOK LAM Path of Accumulation

JOR LAM Path of Preparation

TONG LAM Path of Seeing

GOM LAM Path of Habituation

MILOB LAM Path of No More Learning

Some of you have heard about the five ducks at Diamond Mountain. That's what we named them.

TSOK LAM means path of accumulation, and .

It can be easily misunderstood. What we're accumulating in the path of accumulation is enough disgust with worldly life that we're ready for something new and different. Technically it's the path of renunciation, but if you use the word renunciation, it kind of sounds like, okay, on TSOK LAM, I am becoming a monk or a nun and I'm giving up my family, and I'm going to go live in a monastery or under a bridge. But that's not renunciation at all. We can do that and be just as attached to our worldly way of being just more miserable than we were before. 

TSOK LAM is this period of time in which we're coming to recognize that just nothing ever goes right, and not only does nothing ever go right, in our world it's impossible for anything to go.

You work and work and work, and we get some things and we lose some things, and we just think that's life, and then you die. Then you do it all over again, if you're lucky enough to get another human life. At some point something happens, some part of us wakes up a little bit and we have that thought, there's something wrong with this picture. There must be a different way. There must be something wrong. 

I mean, I remember it. I remember where I was. I don't remember things very well, but that one I remember so clearly. My guess is we all have that something that was the trigger. I'm looking for something else here. 

It took me many years of searching to finally find.

Anyway, that's all path of accumulation, and we can be on path of accumulation for lifetime.

Then we've gathered enough goodness.

Geshela says, you move to JOR LAM when you first hear the pen thing. The first time somebody describes the pen to you, puts you onto JOR LAM. 

I love his simplicity.

The first time you heard emptiness described well enough for it to catch your heart. Maybe lifetimes, we've heard it and it was like, nah, the puppy sees the pen. 

Have you ever done it for somebody? And they just go, nah, the puppy sees the pen. 

They just don't get it. 

We're going, wow, wow. And they're going, nah.

Lifetimes and then we hear it and we connect to it. That puts us on this path of preparation. Path of preparation is called preparation because what we are doing then is preparing for TONG LAM, preparing for our direct experience of ultimate reality.

We maybe don't even know that's what we're preparing for in jawline until we get to the higher stages of our path of preparation.

But we're learning, we're studying, we're trying to change our behaviors based on what we're learning. We're gathering the goodness. As we gather that goodness, the clarity of our vision of what we are wanting to achieve, what we're capable of achieving is getting clearer and clearer.

As that gets clearer and clearer then our behavior, like fine tunes directed towards this trigger that will move us onto the path of, like direct towards that goal instead of on TSOK LAM and JOR LAM, we're still dancing around about it. 

That trigger is the third path called TONG LAM, which is the path of seeing. TSOK LAM can be many lifetimes. 

JOR LAM can still be many lifetimes, or it can be one really intense one.

TONG LAM takes 10, 15, 20 minutes for the direct perception and then the rest of that day. So 24 hours. 

TONG LAM, called the path of seeing it, it's the realizations of the highest moment of JOR LAM, when we perceive that what we're perceiving is coming out of seeds in our own mind, and then. Then we take that experience and we go, oh, sit in meditation, our mind will show us that nothing exists in any other way than that.

If we're capable of deep enough meditation, the power of those seeds will push us into the direct perception of that ultimate reality. 

I meant to stop and do a break before I went into TONG LAM, so let's stop and break here and I'll start that over on TONG LAM.

(Break)

(63:40) Path of seeing is that experience is the name of that experience that we call the direct perception of emptiness, which we'll talk about in much greater detail further on in these classes. We've heard Geshehla Michael describe it. 

It is the threshold from which we go from ordinary human to what's called Aria being. Aria is the Sanskrit word that means superior, but it means superior to what you yourself has ever perceived yourself to be. It has nothing to do with comparing oneself to others.

Geshela says it's like losing your virginity in this life. It happens once and you can't take it back and you are forever changed. Because now you know something from direct experience that you didn't know before.

Before our direct perception of emptiness, not even a Buddha can know how long it will be before we ourselves become Buddha. When we've come out of the direct perception every Buddha knows, and we do too actually. We'll talk about it. 

It's one of the things that we come out knowing for sure. It's what we have to do, how long it's going to take, what it's going to be like. Pretty awesome.

24 hours goes by, a bunch of cool stuff happens.

That puts us on the fourth path: GOM LAM path of habituation. 

Habituation meaning getting used to living according to what we now know is true. Because now we know that every instant of every moment of experience is my ripening karmas, and every interaction with those ripening karmas is planting new ones. Nothing exists in any other way than that. 

We know it from experience, which means all of a sudden what I think, say, do is creating my future. Not intellectually, directly, aware of planting seeds and what you need to plant, and what you shouldn't plant.

Are you perfect at it? No.

You've only actually lost three of 84,000 mental afflictions from your TONG LAM.

The rest need to be burnt off and not replanted. 

It takes, Geshela said, anywhere from 10 years to seven lifetimes to do that.

Seven lifetimes after infinite. It's kind of a selling point for trying to reach our TONG LAM, because otherwise we don't know how much longer it's going to take.

Seven lifetimes. What's that? Roughly 500 years.

Sounds like a long time, but compare it to infinite—drop in a bucket, right?.

MILOB LAM is a path of no more learning. It's called. It's another term for reaching our goal Buddha Me. But budha Buddha Me is not actually the goal. Buddha me is the start of our career. We've been in training for infinite lifetimes to become Buddha so that we can finally do what we're meant to do.

You, Buddha you will emanate to every being in your world to be what they need to bring them along their path.

We finally reached the ability to do that. Yay. 

Studying Diamond Cutter Sutra is the key. We will see, not just studying it, but using it to grow the seeds that we need to move us along our path. 

JOR LAM, which we're all on, TONG LAM, GOM LAM.

In the end of our path of preparation where we have that experience of the seeds ripening into the thing that we're seeing, at that moment that's the first moment that we've perceived deceptive reality for what it is.

We've been perceiving deceptive reality since beginningless time. But we've never understood that we were misunderstanding. So it wasn't deceptive reality for us. We thought it was real reality. And it is real in the sense that this is solid, it is happening. 

But what we have perceived was never perceived accurately until our CHU CHOK, perceiving things as our own seeds ripening. That's the highest experience of deceptive reality. That's what will push us into ultimate reality, which is nothing exists any other way than that. Really, it's that simple. 

When we're in ultimate reality, we aren't aware.

We can't be aware of ourselves in ultimate reality. Because an experience of myself is deceptive reality. Myself is an appearing thing. It's deceptive reality.

When we are directly experiencing the absence of things‘ own natures, especially one's own nature, that absence, you aren't actually aware that you're doing it at the time. You can't. Yet it‘s seeds ripening. It still seeds ripening. There is still subject object interaction between, not like your body disappears. It's not like reality disappears. But the experience is the experience they call non-duality. Again, we'll talk about it more, because it's a slippery concept. 

It's not subject, object, interaction are all one thing. 

It's not me and the universe one thing.

It's that absence of the individual natures of anything.

When we come out of it, that's when we go, oh. 

The sutra itself says, yeah. And, so when Aria thinks to himself, oh, I'm an Aria. Do you think that's thought truly spoken truly? The answer's going to be no. We'll see why.

They call the one who's trying to explain what the direct perception of emptiness is. Like we will say, oh, CHU LA CHU CHAKPA—that's Tibetan. 

The questions are Tibetan. 

What's it like in the direct perception of emptiness? 

They say, oh, CHU LA CHU CHAKPA—like water poured into water, meaning you pour water into water. You can't separate them. You can't tell the difference.

But that analogy just completely falls short. It only means that while you're in the direct perception, you won't know you're in it. 

But it's an important thing to kind of think about. Because it's a big conundrum. 

How can I have an experience that I don't know I'm having and plant seeds for it that are so profound? The answer is yes.

Diamond as Metaphor for Emptiness

When you come out of your TONG LAM, your path of seeing, and you're in that 24 hour period where these different realizations are coming to you, Geshela says, every Aria's mind will turn to trying to find something that can serve as a reminder of the profundity of what they saw.

They're looking for something that could represent for them as an ultimate.

They come out knowing, I just was not, they wouldn't say that, that was ultimate reality. Like, oh my God. Then you want something, you're back in deceptive reality. You can't see it as seeds ripening. You know it is, but you can't see it, and. You desperately want something to remind you of that ultimate reality.

Geshela says every Aria in this world will think diamond.

That's a long time ago.

I thought, I'll bet science has come up with something harder than diamonds.

So I Googled it today: What's the hardest thing? 

Omniscient Google says diamond, that even now, diamonds are considered the hardest thing because they're unscratchable by anything other than another diamond. You can smash a diamond with a hammer, you can use a laser to cut a hole through it. But if you take something and try to cut it, something that you use will get destroyed and the diamond will not. It takes another diamond to cut a diamond. Even then it has to be along the plane of something.

So it is still true that a diamond is the closest thing that we have in our reality to an ultimate.

Is it ultimate? No.

There's nothing in deceptive reality that is ultimate.

There's not a longest, you can always add a millimeter.

There's not a fattest. There's not a shortest. There's not a best.

There's not a worst.

There's no ultimate in our reality.

That's actually the point of the cutter in the Diamond Cutter Sutra, is without the cutter, we think, oh, diamonds, they're ultimate. They'll teach me how to become a Buddha. It's like, no, they won't.

Because they are nowhere close to this thing that is the ultimate, which is the no self nature of those diamonds, and the ones who are perceiving the diamonds, and the perceiving of the diamond.

There are three ways in which the diamond serves as the metaphor for emptiness. It‘s one of your homework questions.

The first is that in our deceptive reality, a diamond is considered the ultimately hard thing. Emptiness is ultimate reality. In that way, you make that connection. 

The second way in which diamond is considered a good metaphor for emptiness, like a good reminder, is that if you had a window pane of diamond, it doesn't matter how thick it would be, if it's pure diamond, meaning it has no little carbon flex in it, you could see through it as clearly—a mild, thick one you could see through as clearly as a quarter inch one. Diamond is perfectly clear. It's so perfectly clear that if there was no light bouncing off of it, you wouldn't even know it was there.

You would technically think that was a doorway and smack into it, because it's so clear. A window, if you take a pane of glass and you turn it on edge and you look down it, the window's clear, but the edge is like blue green. Windows aren't clear. 

The diamond, the clearness of the diamond relates to emptiness in the sense that the empty nature of every existing thing is all around us. It's not that emptiness is a thing that we're moving through. It's that every perception of every instant, of every thing, all has the nature of having no nature of its own. That's its emptiness. 

Even the space between thing is an object of awareness that is empty of self nature.

It's like we're walking through this diamond window, we just don't know it's there.

We can't see it. We don't see it.

We're moving through this ultimate reality constantly.

We are ultimate reality, constantly. But we can't perceive it.

Even after your 20 minute TONG LAM and you come out of it, you can't just sit right down in meditation and see it directly again.

You can think about it and you can imagine it, but you're conceptualizing and it won't be the same.

It must be kind of frustrating. 

You know it's there. You're not seeing it directly.

We can know it's there even before we've seen it directly, if we train our minds to think that way as part of what comes out of, I want to say course 13, is fine tuning how we see our world such that you can look at something and trigger this: I know it's empty. I know it's empty. I know it's empty. I know it's empty.

But it takes effort to do. 

Ultimately, hard thing, clear, emptiness is all around us. We don't see it. 

Third one is that if you take a pure diamond and you smash it, every single piece of that diamond is equally pure as its original one. Diamonds made of carbon, and I guess nothing else. Every little piece is still made of carbon and nothing else.

In that way, it reminds us of emptiness in the sense that every object’s emptiness is a hundred percent lacking the object's identity in it. 

The emptiness of this pen is identical as the emptiness of Buddha. Hundred percent no self nature, is what we mean by emptiness.

Are they one and the same? Is this the emptiness of a Buddha? 

No, but it's identical in the same way that every little sliver of diamond is identical diamond wise to the original that it came out of And to every other little piece. 

Every emptiness is identical to every other emptiness, 100% no self nature. Never 50%, 30%, 90%—all or nothing.

These three ways, the diamond is a metaphor for ultimate reality. 

1. t's the closest thing to an ultimate in our world, reminds us of ultimate reality.

2. It's perfectly clear, meaning we didn't know it was there. We wouldn't know it was there. Emptiness is that.

3. Every existence of a thing, it's emptiness is identical to every other existence of a thing, or a person, or a thought, or an emotion, or a mental affliction. All identical.

Diamond, a perfect analogy.

Use diamonds, surround yourself with diamonds says Geshe Michael. Maybe even go and work for a diamond company. Long story there. We know most of it.

But so why not call it the Diamond Sutra if diamonds are so important in our remembering our TONG LAM, or cultivating our TONG LAM?

Because diamonds is part of deceptive reality. Appearing reality.

We can't help if we're not Aria, we can't help but see a diamond and believe that it's a perfect analogy for emptiness in it from it. 

We're perceiving it wrongly. We can't help it.

Skillfully, Lord Buddha or somebody says Diamond Cutter, to point out that the diamond as a metaphor for emptiness is not even close.

It's the best we've got in deceptive reality, but it is totally cut by the direct perception of emptiness, totally cut by ultimate reality.

We have the slang in English that just doesn't cut it right when something's unacceptable. 

Geshela said it's like that, diamonds the closest thing, but it just doesn't cut it. Ultimate reality is an absence. Diamonds are presences, appearances.

There's no thing as appearances in ultimate reality.

Is there no such thing as appearances at all? 

No, because if there were no appearances, there'd be no emptiness. 

It takes both to have either. 

When we are directly communing with the ultimate reality of ourselves and our world, it will be as if there is no appearances. Because we can't be in deceptive reality and ultimate reality both at the same time until we are omniscient, Buddha.

(89:58) Reaching the direct perception of emptiness becomes this major milestone in our spiritual career, if we're serious about it.

It seems almost impossible to achieve.

It's like we understand a little bit so far that every experience we have is a ripening result of something that we thought, said, did towards and the other before.

It seems like if we're trying to bring on for ourselves this ultimate experience of the direct perception of emptiness, don't we have to have given it to someone else before? 

If I don't have it, how can I give it? So I'm stuck, right? I'm not ever going to be able to ripen the seeds of my own direct perception of emptiness, because it's something I can't give to anyone else.

But what's wrong with that logic is that it's missing the important piece that seeds grow.

If seeds didn't grow, we'd be in, what was that Ground Hog Day movie? Same again and again and again. But we never do the same thing. We never experienced the same thing twice. Do we?

May seem like it, but we don't.

Geshela says, it's rare that someone can hear about seeing emptiness directly and then just go sit and do it.

Is it possible? Of course, anything's possible with seeds ripening.

For most of us, it does take some conscious seed planting effort and conscious seed fertilizing effort to move ourselves along that path to that experience.

Is it impossible? Absolutely not, says Geshe Michael. 

Is it worth the effort? He says, from personal experience, absolutely.

When he was first teaching this in the 1990s, he had not come out and told people about his realization.

We have this extra advantage of having heard directly that it's possible for someone. Maybe that's helpful. Maybe it's discouraging. I hope not.

But it is doable. As we understand about karmic seed, then we go, whoa, what kinds of things do I need to be working on here? If that really is the front end goal for reaching my career path as Buddha me. 

Then there's a whole bunch, and that's what the whole ACI foundation courses are about, but. You could think them through. One would need to have the ability to sit down into a deep meditation that can be sustained at the level that's necessary for the 20 minute direct perception of emptiness.

The lineage says, it takes probably an hour, hour and a half of daily regular meditation training to have the capacity to sustain 20 minutes at the level of the direct perception of emptiness.

Similar to training as an athlete. Shayla does marathons. She doesn't train by doing marathons every day. She trains this way, this way, this way, this way. Then she has enough training hours that when it's time for race, she can sustain herself through the race time. Same with any kind of training piano, right?. Hours and hours of scales and whatever, in order to pull off a one hour performance.

I suspect we all have something that we've applied ourselves to, trained ourselves in, gotten reasonably good at, probably helped others get reasonably good at it along the way that we could use as, Hey, I want those seeds directed towards my seeing emptiness directly. 

They don't have to be, oh, I taught people meditation.

Have we ever taught someone something new?

Have we ever brought someone to a new experience?

Have I myself ever trained myself diligently and gotten good at something?

All of those are rejoiceable seeds. But they also tell us what we can be doing to help others to cultivate more of those seeds.

Helping others learn something new, not interrupting their mind, helping them cultivate their concentration. Wherever you see that you need some extra seeds that you build at that place. 

Another factor is on our path of preparation, our JOR LAM. 

That path is about the training, but also the gaining the learning.

Study, study, study. Listen to teaching, go to classes, apply ourselves to learning new material. Bring other people with you. Help others learn that stuff as well.

Hours and hours of listening to the Pen thing yet again.

Oh, come on. Do I have to hear it again? 

Yes. Hours and hours of pretending you're telling the pen thing to somebody else. 

Like so many retreats, I would in my imagination, teach my dog, teach my neighbor, and I know in my own mind they'd come up with all these cool questions that I didn't come up with when I was learning, and then I'd address 'em right there in my meditation.

It led to the opportunity to share with other people with a greater confident.

Then another factor that we need is that we need to be ethically really clean. 

This is what's pointed out in Diamond Cutter Sutra again and again and again, is.

He is talking about emptiness, and then suddenly he's talking about morality.

Then emptiness again, and then morality. 

Buddha doesn't say, look, you get it? The two are related.

He leaves it up to us to figure that out. So thank goodness for commentaries.

But why?

What's morality got to do with seeing emptiness directly? 

At one level, it's like, if seeing emptiness directly is this incredibly powerful goodness, it can only be a result of goodness seeds planted, lots of them that are growing. 

Goodness seeds means avoiding harming others.

When you have the opportunity on the sidewalk, there's the line of ants. You can be not paying attention and you scoot your foot right through them, or you're paying attention and you step over them.

Protecting life, protecting others' property, protecting others' relationship, speaking truthfully, speaking sweetly, speaking to bring people together, speaking purposefully or not at all, being happy when others get what they want or get what you want. 

Technically, being unhappy when others are having misfortune, but more importantly, being willing to help others in their misfortune, whether you like them or not. 

Then correct world of view, maintaining that understanding my seeds ripening, my seeds ripening, my seeds ripening.

To try to meditate deeply enough to take us to the single pointed concentration. Our conscience needs to be clear.

If we've got ugliness of behavior in our pockets, that's going to interfere with deep meditation. Because deep meditation is such a goodness. Ugliness blocks goodness. 

We learn the methods of recognizing and purifying, and cleaning out past yuck so that we can be clear of it so that our efforts in meditation can be more productive.

Our moment to moment efforts are not productive. They're seed planting, and we direct them all to this particular ripening. They will accumulate.

So study, ethical living. What's the third one?

Trained in that deep concentration. Learn how to meditate properly.

Start with five minutes every week. Go up by one minute.

In a year, you're sitting for an hour. Your whole life has adjusted because it adjusts one minute a week.

But learn the proper technique, the method, and then just like learning to play the piano, do the drills, again and again and again.

Regularity is more important than being good at it.

If you remember whatever training you were training in, you trained your hour or two a day. It didn't matter if you had a head cold, you went and trained anyway.

There were some days that your training was just lousy. You couldn't do anything right. You went back the next day, and the next day, and finally you had some good days. It all accumulates.

It's not like one day you'll sit down and you can force yourself into Shamata meditation. But train, train, train, train. And and then it starts to happen.

That gives you what you need for class 1 and I have 12 extra minutes that I'm putting in the bank because I have some classes that have 30 pages of notes, so I'll end up going long, and I am going to do it in this class. I don't usually, but I think it's important to not split it up. I hope that your schedules will allow me to go late.

I will pull from my bank of short classes, which I've accumulated quite a few, I believe. 

Class ending

(104:17) Remember that person that you wanted to be able to help.

We've learned a lot just so far that we will use sooner or later to help them in that deep and ultimate way. And 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.

Recall your own precious holy beings.

See how happy they are with you.

Grow your gratitude to them, your reliance upon them.

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

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 there with them.

It feels so good We want to keep it forever. 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.

So use those to be long exhales, to share this goodness with that one person. 

The second to share it with everyone you love. 

The third to share it with every being everywhere. 

See everyone filled with happiness, filled with loving kindness.

They don't know where it came from and it

Q&A

(107:12 Linh) I heard Geshe Michael Roach say we should listen to the Pen story at least 3000 times. In my case, I often tell Pen story alone. Because I don't have many time to tell Pen story for my children, for my friend. So I tell it for myself alone in front of altar. I image around me have many beings. And they are also listening to the Pen story too.

(Lama Sarahni) That counts. That's good. Very good.

(Nattie) You said that when we reach the ultimate reality, we don't have the awareness of self. When somebody becomes a Buddha, do they have awareness of self?

(Lama Sarahni) That's one of those questions that any way I answer it, a non Aria will misunderstand what I'm saying. But that said, I will say, Yes, but not the way we think.

I have another question. I heard Geshehla saying, and maybe I misunderstood that sometime in the kitchen, he was looking at the kettle and he saw picture coming over the kettle, and this was sometime in a different moment from the moment when he was in the garden, and this experience of emptiness happened. 

So does it mean that he saw it twice the picture?

(Lama Sarahni) No, his book, the Garden is a novel.

Written after his direct perception. The Garden was written I think just before he went into great retreat.

(Nattie) So it's a collection of…

(Lama Sarahni) Right.

(Nattie) And the experience with the kettle and him seeing the picture is actually when it happened.

(Lama Sarahni) Right, right. In the monastery in New Jersey.

We'll talk about it in greater detail in this course.

All right my dears, thank you for coming back. Thank you for the opportunity to share. Do your homeworks.

Vocabulary Class 3

sansara    korwa

dundam semkye 

kundzob semkye

sunam kyi tsok

yeshe kyi tsok

nirmanakaya    trulku

sambhogakaya    longku   okmin

svabhavakaya    ngowo nyi ku

jnanadarmakaya    yeshe chuku

Sansara (Sk) wheel of the life, turning of the wheel, making same mistakes again

KORWA (tib) Wheel

DUNDAM SEMKYE Ultimate Bodhicitta (codeword for direct perception of emptiness)

KUNDZOB SEMKYE Deceptive Bodhichitta (the wish for reaching enlightenment)

SUNAM KYI TSOK collection of merit (the deeds we do with wisdom, perfection of giving, ethical behavior, patience, joyous effort)

YESHE KYI TSOK collection of wisdom (wisdom we gain by seeing emptiness directly, which we achieve by perfection of concentration and wisdom)

The 4 Buddha Bodies

Appearing natures:

Nirmanakaya TRULKU emanation body (go out body)

Sambhogakaya LONGKU OKMIN paradise body

Mind natures:

Svabhavakaya NGOWO NYI KU essence body

Jnanadarmakaya YESHE CHUKU wisdom body (wisdom of the dharma, emptiness body)

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]

Review Class 2

(6:28) What was that definition of the wish for enlightenment that Lord Maitreya shared with us last class?

(Claire) I would like to reach total enlightenment for the benefit of every living being.

(Lama Sarahni) Yeah. Good. 

Then what's that literal meaning of the Tibetan word for Nirvana and what are the words actually refer to? What are they? Tracy, our Tibetan expert, soon to be.

(Tracey) Passing beyond sorrow.

(Lama Sarahni) That's the literal.

(Tracey) Basically the cessation of the mental afflictions. So stopping the mental afflictions?

(Lama Sarahni) Right, mental afflictions and something else. Karma. The karma that makes them. The Tibetan is NYA NGEN LE DEPA, it means grief, to go beyond grief. But grief means suffering and as Tracy said, suffering means mental afflictions in the karma that makes them, meaning the behavior that perpetuates them. Yeah? Good. Nice. Permanently—important piece there.

Good. Then the third on your quiz was: Describe the object we deny when we speak of emptiness. What does GAKJA mean? That slippery word.

(Joana) GAKJA means the thing that we deny and it's basically every deceived perception that we have. So everything that we think there is existing with an own identity, coming from its own side. This is what emptiness is referring to. It never can be something like that. Never was, never will.

(Lama Sarahni) Right. Anything that could exist independent of any other factor. And then highest any other factor that we're saying nothing can exist independent of is the seed ripening projection of the experiencer or of that object.

GAKJA. Good.

The answer Key said: A thing that could exist independent of any other factor, especially the factor of it being our labeling it based on our collection of data. 

A little bit more specific there.

What does Ethics does have to do with Emptiness?

(10:11) This whole sutra is drawing that conclusion that there is a connection. In particular we learn that a Bodhisattva‘s activities that they train themselves in are the six perfections.

We know them: perfection of giving, perfection of moral discipline, the perfection of— they call it patience, Geshela says ‘not getting angry when the situation would call for it‘—the perfection of joyous effort, the perfection of meditation and the perfection of wisdom.

The first four of those all have to do with ways that we interact with others as we go through our day. Then Diamond Cutter Sutra is going to point out that those activities of giving moral discipline, not getting angry, joyous effort, they need to be done with wisdom in order to qualify as the six perfections.

We can call them the six perfections, but they don't actually help us much unless we're doing them with wisdom. 

The text will say, a Bodhisattva practices giving without staying. It's a little discouraging. We're trying hard enough to increase giving, our sense of generosity, our avoiding harming others, our not getting angry, having a good time doing all of that. It's hard enough to change old habits.

But now it's saying, it's good to try and it will bring you pleasant results in Sansara. The pleasant result ends and leaves you suffering. It's like, well then why bother?

It means we not only train ourselves in these newer or more subtle behaviors, but now we have to do it with wisdom for it to really imprint our minds in what we say we want, which is I want Buddhahood for the sake of all sentient beings.

(13:37) In his early days of teaching, Geshe Michael always used that angry boss example. Now it's the two husbands in the kitchen. But early on, angry boss. Because that was his immediate reality. He was still working when he was teaching these courses. It was like his daily reality, he would say, getting yelled at by the boss. Sometimes for things he did, sometimes for things he didn't do, and it never seemed to really matter that you would get yelled at. But then he says, that's really what I was there for. Not to get yelled at, but he was there working as the dharma laboratory to give him the opportunity to learn how to burn off his mistaken seeds and plant different, plant new.

He was learning how to not get angry with his boss, and so learning how to work with the perfection of patience.

What's the difference between trying to not be angry with the yelling boss, and trying to not be angry at the yelling boss with wisdom?

We understand wisdom means understanding emptiness, the no self nature of the boss, of the Me, of what I'm feeling, of the yelling, of every part of every experience—not in it from it, coming from me. Long story.

We wrap it all into emptiness.

But if you've got the yelling boss in front of you, and you're feeling that discomfort, outright displeasure of the situation and you've got that thing we call anger arising, making you want to do something, you can't just go catatonic and go, This is all empty. Nothing's really happening. That is not going to be helpful.

I would also wager that at least at first we won't even be able to remember, oh, this boss is empty. I'm empty. This is all empty. Seems terrible. If I act the way I want to act, I'm going to make more of it. So I really, really don't want to act that way now. We're not paying any attention to what the boss is yelling us at about, and that's going to make 'em matter. Will you listen to me?

Because you're like off La La land thinking of karma and emptiness.

Thinking of emptiness doesn't make him stop yelling, and thinking of emptiness doesn't make the unpleasantness of the situation just go away.

So come on. What's the point of thinking of emptiness as soon as possible in that situation?

Mostly we think of the emptiness a couple hours later. Oh, whoops.

But then we dedicate and maybe next time we think of it a little bit sooner, and then maybe sooner yet. We get better and better at using wisdom in the midst of that unpleasant situation until finally we get good enough at it that we're actually practicing the perfection of patience. Meaning the perfectionizer of patience. Meaning we're in the midst of that unpleasant situation and we're so keenly aware that it seems like that nasty boss is at it again, blaming me for something, but I totally understand that I can't be experiencing this except as some ripening result of something I did before. So the last thing I want to do is act in a way that's going to, in the future, bring back to me an equally or worse unpleasant experience.

We need to have that all worked out so clearly that when we get into that situation, we just have to trigger the, Oh, not from that. Here we go again. My seed's ripening. I'm going to do the best I can to funnel this feeling that makes me want to blast the guy and instead I'm going to blast him with kindness. 

Somewhere along the line we choke on that, but slowly we get better at it when that experience, the yelling boss is done and it will wear out. If we have not done something unkind in an attempt to get it to stop, then when it stopped, that whole series of seeds have been burned off. They're done. They're gone. They can never come back. You have just lessened the entire existence by one episode of anger, because you have not replanted it. 

Now how many times do you have to do that before your boss changes?

We don't know.

I like to think, Ah, this is the last one—and then it happens again. It's like, oh, well maybe not. This one's the last one. Oh, well, maybe not.

This one's the last one.

It keeps us going to kind of play that game with ourselves.

But again, even having that clearly in mind, it's still a struggle because just understanding—it’s emptiness and karma and so an opportunity to plant new—does not make it any less painful. It doesn't change that energy we call anger into something else just by thinking it.

But that thing we call anger, it also it's just seeds ripening, label put onto information. We can get to a place where that what we call anger, can be perceived at a subtler level, an energetic level before it gets the label anger. It can be something else.

It can get the label power, strength, courage, resilience. There's nothing in that feeling called anger that has to be anger.

But that too is only going to happen as we work with not reacting the way the feeling that we believe is anger makes us believe we should act. Everybody believes that when you're being disrespected or injusticed towards, you should stand up for yourself and you should beat up the other guy and you should yell back.

That's part of why it's so difficult, it is like, well, if I don't stand up for myself and yell back, I'm going to get the reputation of being the sissy and everybody's going to walk all over me. 

Actually, not true. Because to get walked all over, you can only have that experience from your own seeds ripening. Well, if in the past we walked over somebody who seemed to be weak because they were kind to the boss the madder the boss got, then of course we're going to have that experience.

But you can't blame the other people and we can't just automatically assume that's going to happen. You might surprise yourself where your whole team goes, oh my gosh, you tried to help him when he was angry with you. That's amazing. Who are you? Teach us how to do that.

That would be the hope, wouldn't it?

Making Merit vs. Goodness

(23:52) Buddha goes into this next in his sutra.

He doesn't give a lecture on it, but he goes into the amount of merit one makes by giving with wisdom as composed to the goodness we get by giving ordinarily.

It's a goodness, it's a kindness to be generous. It will come back to us as abundance. But it will be abundance that wears out and leaves us suffering for more.

Giving with wisdom brings a result that doesn't wear out. That's just really hard to conceive of. Results that perpetuate, not from their own side, but because of how we respond to them.

In the sutra, Buddha says to Subhuti, hei Subhuti, do you think it would be easy to measure the space from here to the east? 

Subhuti goes, No, that wouldn't be very easy. 

What about to the south and the west? 

He goes through all the directions and Subhuti keeps saying, No, that'd be pretty hard.

Buddha says, Right, it would be really hard. Because, how far is it from where you are to the east? I mean there's no boundary of east.

It's not that it would be hard to measure, it's impossible to measure. Because we're talking infinite infinity here.

Subhuti, you think we could measure that?

Subhuti goes, No, I don't think so.

Buddha says, Right, and the amount of merit that a Bodhisattva makes by doing their giving with wisdom makes that much merit, like infinite merit. The amount of merit equals to measuring distance from east to west.

That's a lot of merit. 

We use the word merit. The designation between merit and good karma is that merit is a goodness done with wisdom. 

It's kind of a circular argument here, but is it a good deed to give, to share something? Yes. 

We learned all those different parameters that go into how much goodness according to the power of the object, the need, and our point of view. 

Then when you put your understanding of emptiness and independent origination onto the three spheres of you, the givee and the giving, then the imprint that's being made by that doesn't even qualify as karma. It's now called merit.

When you do those with your wisdom activated intact.

You could take that to the debate ground. Can that only happen if I've seen emptiness directly, or can I get almost infinite merit by applying my intellectual understanding? 

I think we would reach the conclusion that the more, the better.

We don't technically need to make infinite merit to become Buddhas. We just need enough good ones, enough merit that are multiplying that they'll become infinite.

The extent to which we have emptiness and karma in mind as we're trying to chill in the face of the yelling boss so that when we can finally get a word in edgewise instead of reaming them a new one, we say, man, I'm sorry you're angry with me. What can I do to help? 

You're not fibbing. Maybe you don't really want to help, but you are the employee so you're obligated.

But having said that instead of what you were dying to say, because you thought, I don't want to perpetuate this coming out of me, not them, much as I want to blame them, I can't. I'm going to say this instead. That is beyond calculation better seeds to plant than even just being like a bump on a log. 

We learned that in Master Shantideva, just shut up. It's a really great karma to just not respond, and it is good even to not respond with wisdom is a merit. But to respond with wisdom and kindness, whoa. Now you've got rocket fuel in your Bodhisattva jet shoot.

What does it mean to recall emptiness? Do you just need to say the word?

That'd be easy enough. Write the word on your palm of your hand when they're yelling, you just: emptiness, emptiness.

Not quite enough.

Geshehla explained it in this way. He said, in his case, he shared office space with others. Of those others, one of them didn't particularly know him very well, so he didn't really care too much about what was going on. Then another one who was there in that close space was somebody who downright didn't like Michael Roach. 

There's the boss marching in to yell at Michael Roach.

All three of them are hearing it happening. For Michael Roach, number one, the getting yelled at is unpleasant. It's double unpleasant to get yelled at in front of other people. You've got that experience going on: Boss yelling at us wearing Michael Roach's shoes right now, it's really unpleasant. 

It is really unpleasant, he says, even understanding emptiness doesn't mean I'm just ripening unpleasantness here. It isn't real. It's like a dream. It's really unpleasant.

It's unpleasant when you're in a dream and you're getting your head cut off.

So for him, he's having a really lousy experience.

But think about being aware of the neutral person. They really could care less. They're hearing the same yelling happening, but for them it's just a distraction. They're not paying any attention. So neither negative nor positive.

For the person that doesn't like him, that person is very likely getting a little pleasure out of that. That arrogant guy who's gone all the time, he's getting what he deserves. Good. 

The question is, there's one boss there, everybody has the same boss. There's yelling happening. He says, red face, round, high decibels, yelling is happening.

But for Geshe Michael, it's a really unpleasant, uncomfortable experience.

For this guy over here, it's like who cares?

And for that guy over there, it's like, yeah.

What's really going on? Can the boss, that one boss be pleasant, neutral, and unpleasant all at the same time?

No.

That reveals the fact that the pleasantness, neutral or unpleasantness of that situation is not coming from the boss. That's showing the empty nature of the boss, right there. It's so obvious and simple, says Geshe Michael, that we miss it. We miss the profundity of it. It's like, yeah, of course everybody experiences everybody differently. We know that all along.

But now it's like, How could I have missed how significant that is for a really long time in my life? 

Geshela wants pointing it out.

But then he goes on to say, the Michael Roach who's experiencing this situation as unpleasant, he is ripening karmic seed imprints from having done something similar to somebody else. Just for simplicity, we'll say ripening seeds of having yelled at somebody else.

The unpleasant experience he's forced to have right now in the form of boss yelling at me was created by some situation where he saw himself causing unpleasantness in another by way similarly. Let's just say by yelling at somebody. 

He's having a negative result because he made a negative seed. Negative meaning unpleasant, unkind.

The guy who's happy that his colleague is getting yelled at, he is having ill will. 

He's like, good with the uncomfortableness of Geshe Michael.

He's actually ripening good seeds because he's happy with the situation. He's happy with the boss yelling at Michael. So he's ripening past seeds of some kind of kindness. But he's planting negative seeds because his reaction to the situation is ill will.

Same situation, kind of. He's not the one getting yelled at. But he is in the presence of it happening. 

Neutral person, ripening neutral, planting neutral, if there is really such a thing.

To respond with wisdom would require that we have enough sense in the midst to say, Yes, this is unpleasant. Yes, it looks like it's coming from him. Yes or no I did what he is blaming me for, that doesn't actually really matter. 

I know that in fact this is a ripening result from my own past, and the last thing I want to do is plant another seed for a similar unpleasant experience. So this urge to yell back is the exact wrong thing to right.

We'll tell ourselves that. Not just because Buddha said so, but because we connect the dot, and somehow try on for size a different response. 

Our meditation time, if this is a recurring theme, then we can use our meditation time or at least contemplation time as a time to imagine scenarios. Okay, next time the boss yells at me, I'm going to try really hard to think this, this, this, and I'm going to try saying what Sarahni says. This thing, I'm sorry you're upset with me. True.

How can I help or what can I do differently or something? Can I bring you a coffee?

Anything. Plan it out. Review it in your mind, rehearse it in your mind and then see if you can do it. 

Are you guaranteed for the boss to stop yelling and go, wow, you're fabulous. Yes, let's fix this. 

No, they might get mad and then you just have to hold your ground. 

That one, let's say even just a few moments of holding to your wisdom in the midst of a situation like that, let alone full on responding with kindness, is because of our understanding of emptiness and creating our future, that goodness is beyond measurable.

We can try, I'm going to say something nice to my angry boss next time just because it sounds like a good idea.

That would be a great goodness. But not a goodness with wisdom. Not this incalculable merit making goodness. 

A little bit of wisdom is enough to make a little bit of merit. The more wisdom we've got, the more the merit is made from the same action.

We're in training. Those six perfections are perfectionizers when we're playing with them, exploring them, learning how to do them. They don't get perfected until we're Buddhas. We don't have to do them perfectly to become Buddha. We just have to try with wisdom. Try, try, try, try.

There's nothing good that can happen to us that wasn't created by kindness to somebody else in the past. There's nothing unpleasant that can happen to us that wasn't the result of some kind of unkindness done to another in the past. 

We're learning to prove that to ourselves again and again and again from so many different angles that we reach the point where we just can't wiggle out of it anymore. There's always some part of us that's like, no, no. It's got to be from them, because blah, blah, blah? 

We're so good at it like we're convincing.

Our ignorance is so convincing. Have you been following the angel debates the devil? That devil, wise and slippery.

The key factor is this recognizing that when we perceive the angry, yelling boss as in them from them, we're blaming them from my unpleasant experience. We are holding them to be bad from their side. In the moments of that happening at least, we are full on believing that they are full on bad. 

The debate and the monastery is, can a pillar be all red and all white at the same time? No. 

The key factor ‘all‘.

Can the boss be all nice boss, good boss, nice boss, pleasant boss and all unpleasant boss at the same time?

We go, no, but I really don't think that he's all bad. His dog loves him. I know that.

But when we're in the midst of getting yelled at, he is all bad, and it's all in him and it's his fault, and I didn't even do what he's blaming me for. 

Ignorant talking, because there's nothing we can experience that isn't the result of something we were aware of doing to another in the past. Not just this one, we mean the mindstream from beginningless time.

(44:46) Each of those three beings in the room where Michael's getting yelled at, there are three humans and they are validly perceiving the boss there

They all agree, that guy's the boss. They're all validly experiencing the boss‘ yelling. Their interpretation of that information, pleasant, neutral, unpleasant is happening. We would say, okay, that's where it's unique to each one. 

Highest School would say that's the level we can work at is just he's there. He's yelling, fine, let's work with the pleasant, unpleasant. 

But when we really stop to consider what's really going on, is, each of those beings, their sense perceptions are receiving information and their seed ripening is putting labels on that information.

They have these common karmas: Boss, upset boss, yelling boss. But then the uncommon karma ripening pleasant, unpleasant, neutral. 

But right now, let's just leave the data as out there.

Technically it's not out there independent of being projected out there.

But we'll go there eventually in the ACI coursework, but don't get caught up in that.

We've learned already when you are looking at this hole, there are certain parts that are getting labeled as that hole.

When you say, oh, let's look at where the parts came from, you'll find more subtle pieces that become a more subtle hole and then you can keep breaking it down. That was that 

TANJE TAKPAY TAKDUN TSELWAY TSENA MINYE

When you go looking for the thing that gets the label, you won't find it. You'll never find the thing that gets the label. You'll find something more subtle, getting a different label, and never nothing. Never nothing at all.

Then the other important factor is, well, if the angry yelling boss is just my projection, I'll just sit here and change my projection. I'm going to change the YouTube channel. 

If you can, do it. If you can, change him into Buddha boss.

But we understand that the system is not such that there's a me that's in charge of what's ripening out of my seed. 

Don't we wish? 

If we could choose our seeds, just choose Buddha paradise right now please, and we can all go to the beach instead of do the rest of these ACI course.

If we could, we would. If it was possible to do that, Lord Buddha would've taught us how.

The fact that it's not possible makes us go, well, wait a minute, everything's possible with Karma and emptiness. That's true, and it's still true that you won't ever be able to choose what seeds ripen. 

Will you be able to manipulate your seeds better and better? Yes.

But the very process of how it works is that everything's being influenced by everything else. Then once it's over that threshold, dry cement.

Where we make a difference is where we plant our seeds. By the time a result has happened—too late. 

But, it's the prime opportunity to plant new. Not just opportunity. What happens when we have an experience is we respond, and that's planted already. Just to experience the experience is already the beginning of our response, the replanting.

So where our power of transformation lies is in our response.

Our habit is: react.

Our reactions are driven by the mistaken belief that the things in it from it, and so I should do right what my urge tells me to do.

We plant seeds by reacting, then we are not the farmer. We are just perpetuating our suffering. When we decide, I'm going to become a farmer of my future, now we go into respond mode. Which at first, there needs to be this little pause. When we react, there's no pause. When we're in plant mode, it's like they say that, there's this (pause), and then we say something. It's kind of weird for a while, let yourself be weird. I give you permission to be weird for a while, and then it'll get more spontaneous and effortless, and you won't be weird.

But it takes that pause to stop and consider: What do I want to plant?

We have all kinds of guidelines for what to plant. So you don't have to stop in the pause and reinvent the wheel. 

In a situation where your stinginess is coming up, share something, anything.

In an event where your anger is coming up, say something kind.

Responding with a certain kind of intention, that's what we mean by ethics. That's why Buddha taught ethics. He taught the guidelines for what kinds of behavior choices to make that will be the ones that will burn off the unpleasantness that we’re experiencing regularly as sansaric beings, and plant the seeds that if we're doing them with wisdom will be seeds that will grow into your Buddha you in Buddha paradise emanating.

We don't have to reinvent the wheel. We follow the advice. 

In this perfection of wisdom sutra, the sutra is all about emptiness. You can't have a sutra about emptiness that doesn't also talk about behavior. 

Emptiness is useless if it doesn't inspire us to change our behavior. 

Buddha goes, What's a Bodhisattva to do? 

Oh, think of all existing beings. Aspire to bring them to total Nirvana, to their Buddhahood. And when you bring them there, there won't be anybody that got there. 

It's like, okay, no self existent being will get there. Because they're empty I can bring them there. All right, I'm getting a glimpse of emptiness. 

Then he goes to this, Can you measure space? How big is space Subhuti? 

Oh, space is immeasurable.

Buddha says, right. And a Bodhisattva who practices their giving with wisdom makes that much merit.

Hot on the heels of there won't be anybody you bring to Nirvana. It's like, what's the connection? He doesn't say, he just goes on to something else.

Thank goodness for the commentary.

Vocabulary

Sansara (Sk) wheel of the life, turning of the wheel, making same mistakes again

KORWA (tib) Wheel

(55:27) The cycle of life…, usually we call it Samsara. Geshela says it's been an ongoing Sanskrit error since beginningless time. It's really Sansara. We can start a trend calling it Sansara in Sanskrit, KORWA in Tibetan.

KORWA means the wheel. 

The sansaric cycle, you go into the office, the boss marches in, Sarahni you, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And Sarahni goes, I did not. So-and-so did that. Don't you be blame me. I'll go fix it, but it wasn't me, it was them. Maybe boss goes, okay. Maybe boss goes, I don't believe you. Who cares? What happens next is new karma, different karma. 

But our very reaction, the natural reaction to defend ourself and blame somebody else, or to yell louder thinking we could shut them off, is Sansara.

KORWA, the turning of the wheel, making the mistake again, the very mistake we made that this bad experience is a result of, we just replanted, and we didn't have to.

That's the beauty of Sansara, of KORWA, it's not self existent either. 

We've created it with our misunderstanding so we can set about to uncreate it. We can burn it off.

Some of us have learned that wheel of life teaching and link number one, the blind guy walking with the cane, the old man. It is the ignorance link. Ignorance meaning misunderstanding things‘ identities and where they come from. 

All the other links, like ooze out of that one and roll around, perpetuating that wheel until you get back to having added to your ignorance by all this stuff that's happened as we go through the wheel. 

The wheel can really be an indicator, an explanation of what's going on moment by moment. Then we interpret it as what's going on through a lifetime, what's going on through three lifetimes, lots of different ways to understand the wheel of life.

But all of it is describing how it is that we perpetuate the state of mind that's mistaken and that mistaken state of mind is the very state of Sansara.

To cut it at the link number one, we have to not do the deed that made the seed for the experience that we're having. We have to not do it again.

Ordinarily we would say, so angry boss yelling at you, don't yell back at them.

But technically, as the two husbands in the kitchen points out, you can't also get away with yelling at the dog, or your kids, or the bus driver, or the traffic jam.

It doesn't have to be boss-me, m—boss, boss-me, me-boss.

It's me. Me yelling. Me blaming. Me needing to be forceful. Me whatever the situation is. It is my seeds ripening. So I would want to stop planting seeds for angry yelling boss in any arena that I might find myself in, where I might do that—blame somebody for something they didn't do, get angry with something with somebody, try to overpower them with my speech.

All the little nuances of how we feel in the presence of being yelled at. They're all little pieces that if we have it as a recurring theme, we are somehow doing it, more subtly, smaller ways to somebody else. 

Sometimes it really was all past life stuff or earlier this life stuff, and you really aren't doing any of that now. Then the job really is to just, okay, every time here it comes again. Let's burn this one off, because you've gotten good at not responding. There are a finite number of those that you'll have to do. Hard as that might be. If we can wear off each one, they're going to get less and less, and fewer and fewer, and less frequent. 

Then we might get to a place where we say, well, I still read about angry people, or I hear other people have angry people. I don't have any anymore. But I still think there are some out there in my world. 

Then we might want somebody to yell at. We'd go looking for angry people, says Master Shantideva, so that we can be sure whether or not our seeds are gone. 

Luisa, would you get upset and yell at me please? 

No, I'm not going to do that. It would be weird.

We don't put ourselves in harm's way. I don't mean that. But how would we know if we've burned out off all our angry yelling person seeds if we're never yelled at?

The natural habit of trying to avoid unpleasant situation. Nothing wrong with avoiding unpleasant situations until we realize, wait a minute, if they come on, it's an opportunity to burn 'em off. 

If they don't, great.

Part of the joyous effort perfection is reaching this place where it's just as much fun to do our efforts of the six perfections with wisdom, whether we're in a pleasant situation or an unpleasant situation. That's real joyous effort. 

I'm having a good time getting yelled at right now. Because I know I'm burning it off and I'm not going to replant it. Now again, that does not mean if you're being physically harmed, threatened that just stay there and take it.

But with more minor unpleasantnesses, that we're so careful to avoid, maybe we don't need to be so careful to avoid them. Especially if in avoiding them we allow ourselves to do something unkind to somebody else. Gets more subtle. 

In order to be chopping away at our ignorance so that our perfection of patience, or giving, or moral discipline, et cetera can become more immediate, we want to cultivate this deep understanding of these different kinds of Bodhichitta.

Let's take our break.

(64:55) Imagine what it would be like if you only had good karmic seeds in your mind, not just dirty good ones, but merit seeds in your mind.

If the world is blank and all you have in your mind anymore are seeds from kindness, seeds from having tried to bring happiness to others, those seeds ripening force you to perceive yourself in a paradise, like a pure world.

That's how we get to Buddhahood. That's what it is to be Buddha in paradise, is the mind has only merit seeds to ripen. Then you spontaneously, effortlessly replant them. I mean, they don't all go off. But you are replanting them constantly. 

Once we reach Buddhahood, we're not done. We still exist by this process of imprints and ripening.

Our Buddhahood will be forced on us in the same way that our Sansara is forced on us. Yeah, hooray.

That collection of goodness, it's called the collection of merit. The merit that we gather to ripen, that will be what ripens us into Buddha Me and Buddha paradise emanating. It's called the collection of merit. 

We don't say, technically, we don't say, I'm working to make really good karma.

We shift to practicing the collection of merit. Which is what it means to do your giving, moral discipline, not getting angry, joyous effort with some level of understanding of the reason we're doing it is because of emptiness and independent origination, meaning with wisdom.

Then the wisdom that we're repeatedly trying to apply is also being imprinted. It's results and it's being imprinted, and the imprints are growing. So we also are collecting the collection of wisdom.

The boss is yelling, you're applying your wisdom. You don't yell back. You've planted seeds now of kindness in the face of unpleasantness. Because of some amount of wisdom you've planted some merit and you've planted some wisdom. 

It's not like you do one over here, and the other over there. They're happening kind of together. We work on our perfection of wisdom by way of the last two perfections: meditative concentration and wisdom. Meaning we work on our intellectual understanding of emptiness in our meditations, and we use that to trigger a direct perception, which is what actually brings on wisdom.

But we're growing those seeds by way of our meditative concentration intellectually on emptiness. We are growing seeds that will ripen into our actual wisdom.

When that happens, we become Arya.

If we do it with the mind imbued with Bodhichitta, we become Bodhisattva Arya, and now our perfection of giving, moral discipline, is actually perfectionizing us. 

Before that we're on the train to those givings with wisdom, being perfectionizers, but they're actually taking us to wisdom, taking us to the direct perception of emptiness. 

Then from there we'll see that we plant ever after are taking us to Buddhahood.

So don't get discouraged.

Our efforts to intellectually hold emptiness in mind are serving the purpose of growing our wisdom. 

The collection of merit is said to be the deeds that we do of giving, moral discipline, not getting angry, trying to have a good time doing those, while we're applying our intellectual understanding of emptiness and karma as why we're doing them.

The collection of wisdom is said to be our efforts on our meditation cushion to bring a single pointed state of mind through the analysis of emptiness to reach the conclusion of no self nature of whatever our object was. Then have that eventually take us to that direct perception of emptiness. 

It requires some component of perfection of effort in that, in the sense that we reach a point where our meditation practice becomes enjoyable, and our study in emptiness becomes enjoyable, leading to our actual wisdom.

The Four Bodies of a Buddha

(72:25) The collection of merit, we learned in some previous class, leads us to our form body of our Buddha being, the appearing body. 

The collection of wisdom leads to our mind of Buddha. 

How do we make this transition from just deciding: I don't want to react in the usual way because I believe all of this stuff. To: I'm so convinced that my usual reaction perpetuates suffering for everybody that I've just got to stop. 

It's just a different level of ability to keep our self-control and direct our behaviors.

Our tradition is, we get it intellectually first and then we try it on for size.

What we learned before is, when we do any deed with Bodhichitta, it becomes a cause for our Buddhahood. Remember that class?

Then we learned that what doing a deed with Bodhichitta means is at the beginning, our intellectual understanding and eventually it means no, no with what we now know from having experienced emptiness directly. 

Now our imprints include what we now know to be true.

Two kinds of Bodhichitta

There are two Bodhichittas.

We also learned that there are different ways to divide Bodhichitta, to think about Bodhichitta. 

These two I think we've heard before,

DUNDAM SEMKYE Ultimate Bodhicitta (codeword for direct perception of emptiness)

KUNDZOB SEMKYE Deceptive Bodhichitta (the wish for reaching enlightenment)

DUNDAM = ultimate Bodhichitta

KUNDZOB = deceptive Bodhichitta, the faking us out Bodhichitta, which gives the wrong connotation.

DUNDAM Bodhichitta is code word, because when we think Bodhichitta, we think ‚the wish to reach total enlightenment for the sake of all sentient being‘.

But DUNDAM means ultimate. It's referring to ultimate reality. Ultimate reality is the no self nature nature of every existing thing being self moment, everything, the emptiness of all existence. So technically, what we call ultimate Bodhichitta means the direct perception of emptiness. Being in the direct perception of emptiness is ultimate Bodhichitta.

It's like the ultimate state of mind. If I could get away with calling direct perception of emptiness is a state of mind.

It's the ultimate state of mind of your wish to reach Buddhahood, because it's so necessary as the doorway to the conveyor belt. But also in terms of to be a Buddha means that you're perceiving the emptiness and the appearing nature of all existing things at all times, simultaneously. 

To do that, one needs to be perceiving emptiness directly at the same time as perceiving appearing reality. Only an omniscient mind can do that. 

An omniscient mind is created from our seeds of wisdom, which are grown by way of our efforts and our collection of merit. Which our collection of merit are our deeds done with our growing understanding of emptiness, which is our growing wisdom.

It's also a cycle: Wisdom makes behavior, merit.

The goodness trying to do merit, ripens as more wisdom. They come together.

DUNDAM, ultimate Bodhichitta means the direct perception of emptiness.

KUNDZOB SEMKYE

KUNDZOB, we had it before in deceptive reality.

Deceptive, the KUNDZOB is often translated as relative reality.

Geshela, that's one of those that gets him hopping mad because yes, it's true that reality is all relative. There's no tall without short, there's no red without blue, there's no sun without (moon), there is no day without night. Everything is relative. 

But knowing that doesn't help us stop our suffering.

KUNDZOB has the connotation of faking us out. Deceptive.

What's deceptive about reality?

That we see things, and as with their identities and characteristics in them. 

Which means we should blame them. 

We should push back from somebody who's pushing. 

We should go after our own pleasure. Because nobody else is going to do it for.

If unpleasantness comes from them, pleasantness comes from them, avoid this, get that. 

Then our mistaken view thinks that what we do in the moment works to avoid that, get this. 

It's kind of a pity that it works as well as it does, because most of the time we do something to get what we want and we do get it, and it perpetuates the misunderstanding. 

Yeah, I turn the key and my car starts. I do it hundreds of times, thousands of times before the key doesn't start the car. But then it's the battery, right? We allow ourselves to perpetuate our misunderstanding. 

We understand that about deceptive reality. I am deceiving myself. 

They say the reality is deceiving us, but it's not doing it. I'm deceiving myself by believing that you are in you, and I am in me. I can blame you if something unpleasant goes on.

But when we apply that to Bodhichitta, deceptive Bodhichitta, it sounds like your Bodhichitta is wrong, or your Bodhichitta is unreal, or your Bodhichitta is misunderstood. But what they mean here by KUNDZOB SEMKYE is the wish to reach total enlightenment that we have as we are in this appearing reality.

It's the thought in our mind: I want to be a Buddha for the sake of all sentient beings. That's deceptive, boda Bodhichitta.

It's real. It's real Bodhichitta. But it's happening in deceptive reality, and so we call it deceptive Bodhichitta. We've got to work that one through in our mind so that you don't think there's something wrong with your Bodhichitta.

The only thing that's wrong with our Bodhichitta is if we still have a mind steeped in ignorance, we're somehow thinking self existently about my wish and about my Me and about my Buddhahood. So in that way, our Bodhichitta is still deceptive, because it's not quite the Bodhichitta that's really going to get us there. 

But it's such a good start because it's so different than the usual, me, me, me that we had since beginningless time. That's one of your homework.

(82:48) We said that seeds in our mind are all merit and wisdom. Then we will be forced to perceive our body as a body of light—Buddha body—and perceive our mind as omniscient.

Those two, I said earlier, come out of the collection of merit and the collection of wisdom.

I wanted to give you the Tibetan for those two.

SUNAM KYI TSOK collection of merit (the deeds we do with wisdom, perfection of giving, ethical behavior, patience, joyous effort)

YESHE KYI TSOK collection of wisdom (wisdom we gain by seeing emptiness directly, which we achieve by perfection of concentration and wisdom)

SUNAM = merit

TSOK = gathering

the collection of

It's considered to be the deeds that we do with some amount of wisdom of giving, moral discipline, not getting angry, and they say part of joyous effort. I don't quite understand what they mean by that, but joyous effort.

Then the collection of wisdom, YESHE KYI TSOK.

YESHE means wisdom. When they use that term, it's the wisdom that one has once we've seen emptiness directly.

There's another word for wisdom, SHERAB. 

SHERAB is the wisdom we're growing intellectually. It's more like knowledge, conceptual knowledge.

Our collection of wisdom is the collection, the YESHE, from seeing emptiness directly. Those seeds are made through the power of our meditative concentration effort, which isn't just on cushion time. It's the growing our mindfulness, and then the emptiness meditations leading to the direct perception and what we do with that.

Then again, the effort effort piece. That joyous effort perfection gets tagged to both of them, which is why they say it's part, but it's not like half of it's here and half of it's there. It's just used in both.

The Marks and Signs of a Buddha Body

The sutra has gone from ‘Bring all beings to Nirvana and there won't be anybody that gets there‘, which is why you can bring them to Nirvana.

Then, ‚How far is it to the end of space? Far?’ Yeah, that's how much merit you need to make.

The next thing he brings up, he says to Subhuti, ‘How do you know when you're looking at a Buddha‘s body?‘ 

Subhuti says, well, because you see those 112 marks, 32 major and 80 minor marks, unique signs on their body that only Buddhas have. If you see those, you know you're looking at a Buddha.

Now it's a little slippery, because I hear myself say that, and I think, okay, when I see Joana and she shows me the bump on her head and the thing on her right, it's like, Ooh, I know I'm seeing a Buddha.

But we're also talking about when you look at yourself. Oh look there.

You're seeing yourself as Buddha.

Those 32 major and 80 minor marks, they are manifestations of the goodness made that it's ripening as your this Buddha body.

When Buddha has said to Subhuti, How do you know? You see these 32 and 80 marks and signs that only a Buddha have and you know that Buddha taught that there are no signs, no signs at all. There are no marks, no marks at all.

You see these 112 marks. They tell you there's a Buddha there, and you know that those marks are not there.

It's like, why did that come out of ‚Can you measure space?‘ 

And why did that come out of ‘When you get everybody to Nirvana, nobody gets there.‘ 

It's like, where's Buddha's mind? Am I supposed to be following this?

(88:20) Where do those marks and signs come from? They have to be results of goodness. 

Not just plain old goodness, but they have to be results of goodness done with wisdom. Because that’s what it is to become a Buddha. So when someone sees those signs, they would have to have extraordinary goodness to see it in somebody else, first of all. 

Then even more extraordinary goodness to see it on themselves, although those are very close. To see somebody else with those signs means you're very close to seeing yourself with those signs. 

But if we see someone with those signs and we think, oh wow, they're a Buddha because they have these signs, and we're thinking that those signs are their own qualities and characteristics and they are Buddha from their own side, then we are mistaking the signs that we see. 

There are no signs, no signs at all. He says it twice, which is curious.

If we see a being with that Buddha bump. Sumati has a little one. 

Is it coming from the being that we're seeing has it? Do we think it is?

Yeah, I just said it. Sumati has one.

I didn't say, I see Sumati is having one, which would've been more accurate, with wisdom.

Where's that Buddha bump coming from?

If I can see it, it's my seeds ripening.

Yeah, but they have to be Buddha in them.

No, they don't, do they?

It's all slippery. 

Surely, Shakyamuni Buddha saw himself as Buddha. But he didn't see himself as self existent Buddha. He saw himself as seeds ripening Buddha.

He knew that not everybody who saw that manifestation would necessarily see him as Buddha also. And a lot of people didn't. Fortunately some people did, and were wise enough to ask for teaching.

The marks and signs on a Buddha's body that shows us they are a Buddha don't exist at all in the sense of being from the being that we see them on. They're coming from us. Whether we see them on us, they're coming from us in terms of our seeds ripening, or we see them on somebody we're calling other. 

They're coming from us. If we can experience it, if we can see it, there are seeds ripening. 

If that other being seeds that on them too, that's their seeds ripening.

Why are we going into that?

Because our Buddha knew that people's tendency was to think once you're Buddha, you're self existent, bud Buddha. That Shakyamuni Buddha is Buddha in him. He had to make all those great seeds. That's true.

But the Buddha I see is not the Buddha Shakyamuni Buddha sees.

Where does it come from? Either the one that they see on themselves, or that we see on them.

Are they coming from the same place?

No, because the ones they see on them coming from them, the ones I see on them is coming from me.

So whose collection of goodness makes the Buddha I might see in my world?

Mine.No wonder I don't see Buddhas in my world. I don't have the seeds for it yet. 

They could be all around me and I just don't see 'em that way.

What makes the marks and signs of a Buddha‘s body, whether I'm seeing it on somebody else, or they're seeing it on themselves, or I'm seeing it on myself, we heard: it's the collection of merit. 

The collection of merit is the practicing giving with wisdom, moral discipline with wisdom, not getting angry with wisdom, and having a good time doing all of it.

The collection of wisdom, when those seeds are ripening, they ripen into your appearing body of your Buddha you. It will have two forms. 

The Two Forms of a Buddha Body & the Four Bodies

(95:00) Your collection of wisdom that's ripening at the same time is the source of your mental aspect, your conscious aspect of your Buddha you. It also has two forms, two aspects. So we've got these four factors. They call them the four bodies of Buddha, two appearing natures, two mind natures.

The collection of merit makes the two appearing natures, and the collection of wisdom makes the two mental natures. 

Let's do the vocabulary here.

The 4 Buddha Bodies

Appearing natures:

Nirmanakaya TRULKU emanation body (go out body)

Sambhogakaya LONGKU OKMIN paradise body

Mind natures:

Svabhavakaya NGOWO NYI KU essence body

Jnanadarmakaya YESHE CHUKU wisdom body (wisdom of the dharma, emptiness body)

The long word is Sanskrit. The short word is Tibetan.

When I hear Geshe Michael mention these, he almost always uses the Sanskrit, which is why I'm giving you both.

The two form bodies are the Nirmanakaya and the Sambhogakaya. 

Now they use the word body because It’s here, kaya—body. But it feels like the wrong kind of connotation. It seems like there's one body here, and if you go around the back, there's this other body over here. Then the mental body is somehow out here. This body to my mind is a little too concrete or solid. I like aspects, or sometimes they say parts.

It's hard to really quite grasp. 

Just stay with bodies for right now. But if you find your mind going, let's, all right, work with it.

The Two Physical Bodies of a Buddha

Nirmana means to go out.

The go out body. It means the emanation body in Tibetan it's TRULKU, which they use this term TRULKU to mean a reincarnated Lama. Here, technically the term means a Buddha emanation aspect, which means TRULKUs can only come about from a fully enlightened being. But when they use the term for a reincarnated Lama, the implication is not that they're considered a fully enlightened being returned their this high Lama lineage, still in the process of becoming totally enlightened, except for their disciples. Their disciples see them as fully enlightened already, but just don't get confused by the term because you'll hear TRULKU, that guy is a TRULKU.

Nirmanakaya means this body that goes out, and that's referring to how the compassion that went into our perfection of merit and the development of our wisdom radiates. That being appears in any way necessary for the being who perceives it according to what that being needs. It happens effortlessly and spontaneously. They say like the moon reflects in a body of water. The moon doesn't look around for bodies of water and say, I'll go shine down there. This one, not that one.

The result, the ripening of our collection of merit makes it such that will show up somewhere spontaneously, effortlessly, where someone is in need, where someone has the goodness. It's hard to describe.

There is this aspect of your Buddha that will be everything for everybody.

Geshela says, It's nothing to a Nirmanakaya to wait in the subway for decades for you to come along to get on the sub with you, step on your foot, give you an opportunity to get angry and you don't. It's like that's what they do.

I don't know, are they really there waiting all that time? Or do they just show up when you need one? How cool would that be for that to be part of our existence? 

It's just like I'm the puppy that that little kid needs right now.

I'm the rain on those crops that are necessary right now.

Beingomniscient, they're aware of it.

Nirmanakaya is our emanation being, it's a result of great goodness. It comes about because of our compassion, our love. 

Sambhogakaya is the paradise body.

Paradise body means that your ripening of your collection of merit will project you as having a form that is infinitely and exquisitely pleasurable. Perpetuating that pleasure in a world that's exquisitely beautiful and pleasurable, and perpetuating that pleasure and beauty. 

The Sambhogakaya we call the paradise body. That's the Buddha in their paradise. 

You and your paradise will look a certain way, and your appearance will be emanating not one or the other. Spontaneously, effortlessly, like the moonshining in the bodies of water.

The Sambhogakaya, they call it the supreme emanation body. It has five qualities, meaning they're called the five certainties.

Meaning every Buddha, what it is to be a paradise being, is to have these five qualities, to be manifesting these five qualities.

1. Place to stay is OKMIN

The first is that the place where it stays is always a place called OKMIN. It means the heaven below none. It's not like there is one OKMIN and every Buddha is there. It's that every Buddha where they are is a heaven below none, and they're all called OKMIN. But it's not necessarily the same place, although probably they're all aware of each other. 

(At the end a student asked if OKMIN = Tushita heaven, the heaven above all and Lama Sarahni said this could be) 

2. Surrounded by Bodhisattva Aryas

The second certainty is that the other beings there with them are always at minimum Bodhisattva Aryas. Meaning someone who has seen emptiness directly with a mind imbued with Bodhichitta, that being can actually go to a Buddha paradise and take teaching. Other Buddhas clearly will be aware of other Buddhas, so they'll be there too. 

3. Marks of a Buddha

The third certainty is that this is the body that has the perfect 112 marks. Those 112 marks are the manifestations of the kindnesses done that created the emanation body and this paradise body. They reveal the spiritual qualities that that being grew in the process of their behavior change from suffering being to fully enlightened being.

4. Always teaching

Fourth in that paradise: they are always teaching to the Bodhisattva Aryas who go there. Seems to me that Bodhisattva Arya, to go there you need to be either asleep or meditating. You would sleep or meditate a lot, at least until you don't have much more to learn or have anything more to learn. 

5. It stays until Sansara ends

What happens then, I don't know.

The Two Mental Bodies of a Buddha

(106:33) Let's talk about the two mental bodies: Svabhavakaya and Jnanadarmakaya—tongue twisters, both of them.

Svabhavakaya means the essence body. NGOWO NYI KU in Tibetan.

Essence body.

Jnanadarmakaya means wisdom, Jnana means wisdom. Wisdom of the dharma body, meaning their omniscience.

Jnanadarmakaya is the omniscient body. YESHE CHUKU, the wisdom body.

We have essence body and wisdom body.

Geshela explained we can't really understand the essence body until we understand the wisdom body. Both of these are ripening results of our seeds planted by way of our perfection of meditation and wisdom with the joyous effort thrown in. 

The yaku YESHE CHUKU is this mind of omniscience, which means it's experiencing the empty nature of all existing things and the appearing nature of all existing things in all times—past, present, future, simultaneously.

Another way of saying it is that they're experiencing ultimate reality and deceptive reality simultaneously.

Only an omniscient mind can do that. Non omniscient minds have to toggle between the empty nature and the appearing nature. We can't hold them both at the same time.

That omniscient does not grant them omnipotent. They are not all powerful.

If you think about it, perceiving ultimate reality means that emptiness of all existing things for this omniscient being. The appearing nature, we would have to say, well, there's the appearing nature of their reality from their side, which is all pure. And in their omniscience, they're also aware of any being who's not perceiving their world as pure. The Buddhas are aware of me perceiving my world in a self existent way. So they are perceiving us, perceiving our impure world, simultaneous with perceiving all pureness.

You got to grapple with that, because it's all happening together at the same time. When you think about it, it's like, oh, I can see how the different bodies come about. The emanation body is necessary because they're aware that there's a being that I see as pure who doesn't see themselves as pure and they need help.

The paradise being sees them all as pure. Let‘s talk dharma. Let's have debate. Let's play dharma together.

But the ones that are there with the Buddha, because it's all sentient beings, some of them don't see themselves that way. Buddhas see them doing that and the emanations are there for that. 

So far we've got two of the body and then it takes the omniscience for all of that to be happening. So there's our third body. 

That's the Svabhavakaya, that is necessary for these other three to happen.

It's called the essence body. The essence body means the empty nature of all of it. Geshela says the essence body is the empty nature of the other three, the emptiness of the other three.

Technically it's also empty. The emptiness body is the emptiness of all aspects of Buddha, because if Buddha isn't empty of self existence, then Buddha can't be Buddha. But they call it a separate body. 

The essence body of Buddha is the emptiness of the other parts of the Buddha, which are necessary for them to be.

It's being perceived directly always, because that's what it is to be omniscient—perceive the emptiness of all existing things all the time, and you the Buddha you, your essence body is an existing thing. The absence of its self existence of all existence.

See, how big is the mind of Buddha? See, how big is the mind that you'll be, that you'll have, when you gather your collection of merit and your collection of wisdom. 

If you can hear somebody tell you about that and you don't run away screaming, you already have such goodness in you that you're not so far away.

The sutra is going to go there later, quite a bit later. Anybody who hears this sutra and study the sutra and doesn't get afraid is wondrous in the highest.

Yeah. So give yourself some credit. You're not running away.

(114:09) Geshela points out that emptiness is always arrived at by the use of a double negative. The emptiness, intellectual emptiness has to be arrived at by the use of a double negative, because you can't use we're words that we put onto something to reveal the absence of something that we thought was there, that was never actually there in the first place. 

It takes this confusing double negative always to get our minds to catch the nuance of the absence, something not there.

Geshela‘s example was, Consider the Dalai Lama. Am I allowed to say that in this group? 

Consider the Dalai Lama.

The Dalai Lama is not not our projection. 

That's the emptiness of the Dalai Lama.

The Dalai Lama is not not our projection. 

The dependent origination, the deceptive reality, the appearing nature, Sambhogakaya, Svabhavakaya explanation is, the Dalai Lama is our projection forced by our karmic seeds ripening.

So our Buddha body will be our projections forced by our collections of merit and wisdom. 

Our Buddha bodies will not not be our projection. Which is how and why we can create them, because we're the only ones that can create the seed for our future projection.

Our Buddha body will be ripening seeds. When we have merit and wisdom full on, they will ripen as our Buddha body, our four Buddha bodies. 

Those four Buddha bodies will not not be forced on us by the ripening scenes.

Our Buddha bodies will not be anything but ripening projection.

Does that make us think, Oh, so my Buddha me is not really ever going to be real, because projections are not real.

No, projections are real. Self existent things are not real. Not only not real, impossible.

You have never actually experienced a self existent thing, ever.

But I don't know about you, we thought we have. Since beginningless time we've been mistaken.

Who wants to admit they've been mistaken since beginningless time?

Let's admit it right now, I've been mistaken since beginningless time. I've never seen anything right, accurately, correctly.

It's so discouraging. But here we are, ripening a class on Diamond Cutter Sutra.

I already said why the Buddha said, no marks, no marks at all. Because they are deceptive in that they appear to exist as if they're independent of projections, but in reality they are nothing but the projections of whoever's seeing them. Whether it's me seeing it on Buddha or Buddha seeing it on them, it's the projection of the experiencer. Which makes them deceptive reality, which means they are not in and of themself there. No Mark.

Then, he said it again, second No marks at all. The commentaries say because he is wanting to emphasize that to have a projection, the projection projects a name and a term. A name and a what it does. Like when we say this thing, the pen, in that experience. Pen is not just the name of the thing, but we understand pen is a writing instrument.

It has these two aspects, name and term. 

One reason, they say, that Buddhist said, No marks, no marks at all, is because it's the appearing and what we believe that they mean. Both of those are from projections. Then some other commentary says, well, the first marks say the physical body. 

The second reason he says, No marks at all, is that he wants us to understand that the empty emptiness body also is projective. I said that already.

So the two ‘No marks, no marks at all.‘, is to make it clear that the marks of the appearing body have no nature of their own, and the essence body, the emptiness of the no marks has no nature of it owe as well. You'll see it in the reading.

How do we apply emptiness and wisdom to everything?

We talked about it in terms of the unpleasant experience of yelling boss.

But apply it to some pleasant experience.

And what does it mean to apply our understanding of emptiness to something pleasant that we want? 

Geshela’s example was curious. I thought he'd talk about apple pie or something delicious. 

He said, it's like desire, a sexual desire.

Maybe you're attracted to somebody's wife, and you're so attractive and your wrong beliefs, ‚Well that's no problem. We can have this relationship and it won't interfere, and we can both have a little pleasure and a little fun, and it won't hurt anybody.‘ 

So you set about to attract the person, and maybe you do actually have this affair and you get this pleasure out of this experience.

We're thinking that the pleasure of the experience has come from that successful ability to woo this person from their partner and have a good time with them.

But when we understand emptiness and karma, we would understand that no, if any pleasure does come from my relations with that person, that's ripening results of past having brought someone else happiness in a relationship. 

That would mean that my interfering with this person's committed relationship has just made seeds in my mind for in fact not ever being able or having great, great difficulty in having a relationship that's pleasurable or even having a relationship at all, finding one at all. Because of interfering with somebody else's. 

The wisdom would be, I'm attracted, they're committed, doesn't matter how attracted, because to interfere with somebody else's partnership happiness can't bring me happiness, even if it seems like it did at the time. 

To choose to refuse to give into that urge because of understanding the seeds I would plant by doing so would perpetuate Sansara and so I refuse to do that, is applying our wisdom in the face of going after something pleasant.

It's a little different. I have trouble relating to that. It's a little different in terms of there's something that we want. Like the apple pie.

The apple pie, there's one slice left and it's like everybody's had their pie. One slice is not enough for everybody else to have more pie.

I'm waiting for that piece of pie to go away so I can wash the dishes. Why don't I just eat it? And I do. And along comes somebody else and they go, what happened to that pizza pie? I was saving it special? Ops.

It seemed harmless enough. But then if everybody in the household is Bodhisattva, that little slice of pie is going to stay there forever, and you never get to wash the dish. Or maybe instead you take it and you go serve it to somebody.

Well, nobody else is home. I'm the only one here. Great. Cut it in half, take it outside, leave it for the stray dogs. Have a bite, dedicate it. Wash the dish.

Seems so minor, but it's just a different state of mind than just, oh, I'll gobble that because I want it. Versus thinking it through and then gobbling it.

You get to have some of it either way, but share it somehow. Share it. Even the last piece, the last bite.

We are done with class 3. Good job.

[Class ending]

Thank you everyone. Thank you for doing your papers rejoicing in that. 

I could be wrong, but I believe Tushita is the Sanskrit word for OKMIN. Thanks for asking. Heaven above all.

Vocabulary class 4

lung gyi chu

tokpay chu

tripitaka

    abhidharma pitaka    ngunpa

    sutra pitaka               dode

    vinaya pitaka             dulwa

dode kelsang

nyingje pekar

dawa nyingpoy do

dorje chupa drelpa

hlamo drime gyi do

dak

semchen

sok

gangsak

yu gyu dak

me gyu dak

For the recording, welcome back. We are ACI course 6, class 4. It is September 15th, 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]

Review Class 3

(7:33) What are those four bodies of a Buddha?

(Ale) I don't know if I remember in order, but emanation body, Sambhogakaya, and I don't remember the other words. I just did the homework.

(Lama Sarahni) Emanation body is the Nirmanakaya, right? The body that appears when the condition is right for somebody. Then the Sambhogakaya is the paradise body, the way our Buddha appears to us, our pure form. So the way you are going to look to yourself in your Buddha paradise. Technically the way the Buddha paradise looks too. But at this level, we're just thinking about our appearance with our cute little bump and our long ears, the thing here and these shiny fingernails. We don't actually learn about the 112 marks until we met the Kamalashila's commentary to Diamond Cutter Sutra. If we ever do that, we go through the 112 marks and what karma they come from, what merit creates them. It's really interesting because you study that, and really, who cares about the marks? We care about the behavior that creates my Buddha paradise me. That's what's interesting about the 112 marks.

Not what they are, but where they come from. 

Then that enjoyment body, paradise body, it has those five specific qualities that I'm not going to go into. 

Then there's two other bodies. 

So you're going to go from a single being to a being that has four different ones, right?

No, you're not going to become four. All of these four, I don't know how to describe it. I don't quite know why they call them four bodies. 

But it's that your emanation being is a complete thing. It's not like this half is emanation, this half is paradise. They're all complete and they're all you. 

Anyway, there's two mental bodies. The one that's awake and the ones that's asleep, right? 

No, Luisa says no. It's two other mental bodies, right?

Yeah. You can tell me what.

(Luisa) The, I don‘t how to pronounce it in Sanskrit. The Jnanadarmakaya.

(Lama Sarahni) Yeah, that's a hard word.

(Luisa) That's the wisdom body, meaning the omniscience, meaning the awareness of deceptive reality and ultimate reality in all times simultaneously. Everything, everywhere, at once.

(Lama Sarahni) Yay. Good. 

(Luisa) And the other is the emptiness body, that I forgot the Sanskrit.

(Lama Sarahni) Dharmakaya.

(Luisa) But the Dharmakaya is both, no?

(Lama Sarahni) The Dharmakaya is the word they use for both mental bodies. Like the Rupakaya is what they use for both form bodies. So you're right.

(Luisa) Okay. That's the emptiness body. That is the potential that represents the possibility to have all the other aspects that the Buddha has. But it's also empty, which is confusing for me. But anyway.

(Lama Sarahni) Exactly, because you can't have an emptiness body without appearing body. It's not like the emptiness body is a body all unto itself, but neither are the other bodies. The other bodies depend on stuff. In particular they depend on being the ripening result of merit, and without those ripening results of merit happening, there's nothing to be lacking self existence. Dharmakaya is the no self nature nature of your Buddha you, all the other things. 

(Lama Sarahni) Then why did Buddha say those marks through which you know that you're looking at a Buddha, there's no marks. There's no marks at all. How come? 

What's he trying to tell us about those marks?

When you see those marks on a being, you know you're looking at a Buddha, right?

(Luisa) For us. If we have the karma for it, it's true.

(Lama Sarahni) Exactly. So those marks on the Buddha, they're not really there. There's no marks at all. They're not really there. What marks is he talking about when he says they're not really there?

The ones we see or the ones we think we see are coming from the being that has them?

We use the word the self existent marks and signs on that being, those are not there. Does that mean the signs are not there?

No, they are there. But they're not there self existently. They're not there without my projection of them being there. They're empty, and they are there by way of my projection. So he had to say, ‘No marks, no marks at all’ to make sure that number one, we're applying that to the marks that we see showing us that there's a physical Buddha there, and that the marks that we see also tell us about the mental aspect of that being. If we see a Buddha, we know their mind has to be omniscient and perceiving emptiness and appearing reality simultaneously. That's what seeing those marks tells us.

But seeing those marks self existly, meaning in that being from that being, those marks don't exist because the ones that we see are coming from our seeds ripening. And that's so slippery because it's like, okay, did I make Buddha Buddha, or did Buddha make Buddha Buddha.

Buddha had to make Buddha Buddha. But the Buddha I see is the one I made.

Are there two different Buddha there?

Yes. No, yes, no.

Will the real Buddha please stand up.

Without us perceiving those marks and signs there's no marks and signs at all—for us.

The marks and signs that a Buddha sees on their body, I don't know what those look like. Those two are nothing but their projections forced by their merit. And so they have those marks and signs. It's this constant conundrum in Diamond Cutter suture Sutra.

Those beings that you're going to bring to Nirvana, there'll be no beings that you bring to Nirvana. Do you see? And that's why we can bring beings to Nirvana.

Those marks and signs you see on a Buddha’s body, there are no marks and signs. Which is why you can see marks and signs. See? That's why we can call them marks and signs.

You will see, it's a recurring theme.

The Bodhisattva that's working to make their Buddha paradise can't be working to make their paradise, which is how they will make their Buddha paradise. Get it?

It's like, no, I don't. Lay it on me again. And the sutra does it over and over and over.

Nirvanasise those beings, but there won't be any that you get there.

Can you measure the distance from here to infinity Subhuti? No.

But if you could, would it be a lot? Would it be far? Yes.

Well, that's how much merit you make when you practice your act of giving Bodhisattva without staying. Meaning without believing that the one you're giving anything to has any self nature, without believing that you who's doing the act of giving has any self nature, without the thing you're giving having any self nature.

It‘s like, yeah, but if none of those have any self natures, then everything that's going on just feels so unreal. How is that a better goodness to feel like you're just in a figment of imagination as you give than really seeing somebody have a need and seeing myself address their need and making them happy. 

Doesn't that feel more real than being a Bodhisattva who acts without staying?

Yet, to do our act of giving without staying, turns that act of giving into the cause for your Buddhahood, as opposed to the cause for getting your needs met, having an abundant world. All nice side effects that we will get, but infinitely more powerful to do a deed that will bring us to total Buddhahood. Because from that state we are emanating to help beings in any way that they need. 

Then from there, he says, How do you know you're looking at a Buddha?

Oh, you see somebody with those marks and signs.

But when you see somebody with those marks and signs, are you thinking about those marks and signs as being in them from them showing you that they're a Buddha? 

Because if you are, you're not seeing a Buddha.

But if you're not, you're seeing that those marks and signs don't exist at all, which is how you can see them.

What happens to the Dharma in the last 500

(21:10) Then the next thing that comes up in this sutra is Subhuti admits that he is beyond overwhelmed by the wisdom of this teaching.

He is not going, What's up with this?

He's following the train of thought and he's connecting the dots, getting the difference between making good karma and making merit, and how we turn a good karma into a merit by being aware of the no self nature of the subject, object, interaction between, as we do it. And that those imprints made are the imprints that will go on to force us to perceive, to project ourself as Buddha Me and Buddha paradise emanating. To be this ultimate giving happening. Subhuti gets it and he is like, whoa, this is beyond amazing this teaching Buddha. I've never heard a teaching like this.

He gets concerned, he says, But Buddha, what's going to happen in the future?

This is so hard to understand and it's so overwhelmingly, massively exquisite to understand it. What's going to happen in the days of the last 500? Will there be anyone around who can still understand this stuff?

Buddha says something like, Subhuti, don't ever think like that.

He gets as harsh as maybe Buddha might get. You shouldn't ever think like that. 

What's going to happen in the days of the last 500?

He goes on to say, there will come great Bodhisattvas.

We need to understand what's meant by the days of the last 500 in order to grasp the significance of this conversation.

It's not just Subhuti sharing a deep heartfelt fear that someday the Dharma will run out in the world and what'll happen then when it's lost. There's some reason why it comes up now.

The background is, what do they mean by ‘In the days of the last 500‘? 

Master Kamalashila's commentary, he spends a little bit of time speculating on what that means.

He apparently dug through all this sutras and he didn't have the ALL database or a computer. He must have had access to a good library. 

But can you imagine, pull the pecha out, read through it. I kind of think maybe they had some kind of beyond conceivable mental capacity. There just doesn't seem to be enough time to look through a hundred thousand pages looking for every time the Buddha mentioned what's going to happen in the future to the Dharma.

But anyway, let's pretend they had an ALL database and he plugged it into the computer to find all the different ways that Lord Buddha had up to this point, up to Diamond Cutter Sutra teaching. Well, no, not up to that, because Kamalashila has access to all of it. What has Buddha said about the future of the Dharma in the world?

It's interesting, because here's a founder of a religion, which actually that was not his intention. There is no Buddhism, and then Buddha is teaching and he's not out to found a new religion, he's just out to share what he knows. Then it becomes a new religion over the course of the hundreds of years after that.

But in the course of his teaching, in those 50 years or so, he says repeatedly, that what I teach, what I'm teaching now, it's going to disappear in the future. 

It's rare for a scripture to say that. I don't know the Bible, but I don't think the Bible says in it, there'll be a future in which Christianity has been forgotten from the world.

Would it be different?

Would we have a different relationship with whatever our tradition is, if we had a sense that, oh my gosh, there could come a day when this is not accessible to me, this is not available to me.

Already in our world now, there are places where you're not allowed to access it.

It still exists. If you can remove yourself from that place, you can access it.

But that's already seeds happening for us not be able to get the teachings that we're interested in. 

Buddha himself has said the teachings will die out, someday. It's like, eh gads.

He also describes a process through which the teachings die out. Which to hear it, to understand it means we can play our part in delaying that. 

There's two factors, two kinds of dharma.

It‘s time for our vocabulary list here.

Vocabulary class 4

lung gyi chu

tokpay chu

tripitaka

    abhidharma pitaka    ngunpa

    sutra pitaka               dode

    vinaya pitaka             dulwa

dode kelsang

nyingje pekar

dawa nyingpoy do

dorje chupa drelpa

hlamo drime gyi do

dak

semchen

sok

gangsak

yu gyu dak

me gyu dak

The Two Forms of Dharma

(28:42) There's two forms of the dharma.

This is the Tibetan called the LUNG GYI CHU and TOKPAY CHU.

The word LUNG means wind.

CHU means all existing things, but here we're meaning dharma.

So the wind of dharma is the first one.

TOKPAY means the realizations, the dharma in the form of realizations.

The LUNG GYI CHU refers to the spoken word of the Buddha. 

In Buddha's time, what they had was the Buddha‘s spoken word. There was nothing written yet.

After Buddha withdrew his emanation, yeah, I remember this one, I'll write it down.

I remember that one, I'll write it down.

Through the course of history, we had access to written words of the Buddha according to beings who were there. 

Then teachers came along who also taught commentaries, and those commentaries got written down. 

So we end up with a category of dharma that is the teachings that were given and now are being given and written down. 

In the category of LUNG GYI CHU is any time a teaching is given verbally, and then any recording, any transcript, any book, any of that, it's all included in this category of the dharma called LUNG GYI CHU—the spoken word dharma.

Then there's TOKPAY CHU, which is TOKPAY means realizations. This is the dharma that is gathered in the minds of the person hearing the LUNG GYI CHU. 

As we hear a teaching, our TOKPAY CHU is growing.

Technically TOKPAY means when we have a realization about something that's the full on realization dharma. A realization means we have some experience that confirms what we were taught so that it becomes real for us. 

Usually realizations happen when we're in meditation. But we can have a experience in our outer world that goes from something we didn't believe to now, oh my gosh, I know something different is true now, because of that experience. I had one of those, it was not in meditation at all. Turned me inside out. So when something becomes true for you, is a realization. 

We've got these outer dharma, and we could call the TOKPAY CHU the inner Dharma, in the mind of the beings practicing, studying, meditating, practicing are carrying our TOKPAY CHU.

The LUNG GYI CHU gets passed down from teacher to student, to teacher to student, to teacher to student. For instance, this Diamond Cutter Sutra Khen Rinpoche got the oral transmission of it from Pabongka Rinpoche‘s teacher, and then he gave it to Geshe Michael among others, and then Geshe Michael gave it to us. So did Winston McCulloch, so did Venerable Gyelse, so did… I've had it a number of times, and then I will be giving it to you. 

Then that means you have this piece of Diamond Cutters Sutra, chu LUNG GYI CHU that you can now pass it on to someone else. 

Technically, even without an oral transmission, you could sit down and read the Diamond Cutter Sutra to somebody. But it wouldn't make this lineage transmission unless we ourselves had gotten the lineage transmission.

It feels the same, read the Sutra to them. But something different is happening. In whose mind? Technically in one's own mind, because the other person, maybe they don't know that they're getting the transmission or not.

To really have our full effect, we would say to them, Now look, I received this download from somebody, and now thank you for the opportunity. I'm going to download it into you. Just so that they would hear it, and they may go, Okay, who cares?

I think the first time I read the Diamond Cutter Sutra, I just had my cockatiel sitting there with me, because I wasn't brave enough to go to my neighbor and say, Can I read this to you? Can I have two hours of your time to read this? I wasn't brave enough. LUNG GYI CHU.

The Process of the Decline of the Dharma

(35:08) LUNG GYI CHU is like the physical dharma, if you can call verbal physical. And TOKPAY CHU is the realizations in our minds. That would be the mental dharma.

Which do you figure would wear out first in the world?

The realizations or the physical stuff?

Victor said the realizations. I think that's what you meant, right? The second one.

Because they describe that we could imagine, I don't want to do that. Buddha actually said there will come a time when people can hear the dharma spoken and taught, but just really not understand it enough to be inspired by it, or to be interested in it, or there's a stage where we're inspired and we try to use it and we just can't. 

Then our perception is, well, this stuff doesn't really work, and we eventually give up, and then we lose interest.

As we lose interest, as a given individual, we stop going to the teachings. But as a, like over time a human group, interest is lost and all the LUNG GYI CHU, the books, the audios, the tapes, they get stored away somewhere, because nobody is using them anymore, because nobody's interested. Because somewhere along the way we decided they didn't work, because we didn't have sufficient goodness for our practices to see results. 

Then it's like, okay, stuff that in the basement, and then a whole generation or two goes by and it's like, what's that crap in the basement? Let's clear it out. And it gets all thrown away. 

Buddha said this is going to happen.

People's goodness will decline such that they will not spark realizations anymore. 

When realizations don't happen, we lose interest. 

When we lose interest, the dharma sits on the shelf. 

When it sits on the shelf long enough, nobody remembers what it is.

Nobody speaks the language. Even if they get it out, what is this stuff? It's like, oh, I can't read it. That's just squiggles. It must be meaningless. 

Subhuti is somehow seeing how awful it will be to be an existing being in a world where there's no dharma, no access to the dharma.

Sumati and I almost daily one or the other of us will say, thank God I have the dharma. Because without it I would just be lost, because everything's just getting so absurd.

What if we lived in a world where we didn't have it?

Now that we are getting glimpses, it's scary to think that I could do everything I need to come back to a world in the next life, and then the world I come back to has got no dharma. Yikers.

What does it take, what does it mean for the dharma to still be alive in the world? Because that will tell us when those things start to fade, we're headed in that direction. 

We're going to see this as not something that happens within our given lifetime necessarily. But when we really start trying to think this all through and it's like how it's coming from our own mind, the self existent nature of this explanation I'm giving will start to fade away and we'll see that maybe we're in greater danger than the sutra is saying.

What makes the Dharma stay in this world

To say the dharma is staying in the world means that three things are being taught and practiced. As long as those three things are both taught, taught properly and practiced, practiced properly, then that's what keeps the dharma in the world.

We can say that the dharma is staying in the world.

Those three things in Sanskrit are called the tripitaka.

It means that the three baskets. 

Pitaka =  basket, apparently

Tri = three

Tripitaka = the three baskets 

The three baskets in Sanskrit:

Abhidharma pitaka NGUNPA

Sutra pitaka DODE

Vinaya pitaka DULWA

Which in Tibetan, this Tibetan is not the translation of Abhidharma pitaka, but it's the Tibetan word for what's being studied and practiced in each one of these baskets. 

You can think of a big picnic basket, and inside that picnic basket are these different kinds of teachings. That's your picnic basket, and you carry it around with you. Because you're drawing out of those baskets for the teachings and your practices. So you got three baskets.

Abhidharma, we know that word Abhidharma. Remember? Up to the highest thing, meaning wisdom. Any level wisdom being practiced is Abhidharma. 

The subject matter in your basket of Abhidharma is in Tibetan NGUNPA.

NGUNPA means the teachings that grow our wisdom. 

It's not just emptiness teachings, it's emptiness, dependent origination, the six flavors by all the ways that we use to explore where we believe things, what their natures are, is inside Abhidharma pitaka. 

Sutra pitaka, we know sutra meaning words of the Buddha, and all of these are coming from sutra. But here Sutra pitaka is referring to the Lord Buddha's teachings that we're emphasizing learning concentration, learning meditation, learning how to deeply focus our mind so that we could take the information we're learning in our Abhidharma pitaka and pull it apart, put it back together again. Come to understand it as a realization versus something I hear somebody tell me.

Sutra pitaka, it's learning how to meditate—both fixation and analytical.

So the subject matter in your sutra basket is called DODE, which means the practices of meditative concentration. 

It's not just about how to meditate, it's about how to turn your NGUNPA training into realization. 

The third basket, Vinaya basket. We know the word Vinaya, it means to tame the wild horse. The Vinaya is all about the behavior training that we do in order to plant our seeds in a way that stops perpetuating Sansara, suffering and plants the seeds for the future end of suffering for everyone. 

The subject matter of the Aya Vinaya basket is DULWA, is vinaya.

It means how to choose our behavior such that our meditation practice can go deeper and deeper, 

so that our wisdom practice can go deeper and deeper, 

so that our behavior choices will get more and more clear and effortless, 

so that our meditative concentration will go more deep and effortless because of the goodness of our behavior, 

so that our wisdom can get deeper, 

so that our behavior can get more inspired. 

You see how it goes together?

As long as there is somebody studying and applying themselves to that training, the dharma is staying in the world. 

But as I was saying, what if we've haken teachings, we're trying to apply ourselves. I've heard people say I'm applying myself, I'm keeping my book, I'm working hard at this, and my life still has, pardon the French, just shit happening one thing after another. I'm starting to lose faith here, because I can't get any gooder and things haven't shifted yet. What's going wrong?

Imagine getting to that place and not having access to someone who could encourage you, and not let you give up. 

Imagine being sort of on your own with that, which we're all kind of in that place. We're not in a dharma center where we get together once or twice a week.

It's like we're on our own until we're sitting in a zoom class like this.

It's still a little hard to feel really connected.

What if we're in that position?

I'm trying. I'm trying, I'm trying and it's just I'm not seeing any results.

How long can we keep that up before we go, I give and our mind's watching. We're planting new seeds. We've just planted seeds that will make it even harder to find the dharma again when we're ready.

There will come a time where people can be interested in the teaching, get teachings, but can't connect the dot about how to actually practice them. 

Then there'll come a time where we are not even interested in hearing about them, as I said before.

What do you do if you're a teacher and you've got your classes scheduled and nobody shows up?

Eventually you quit showing up too.

The dharma's fading away in that way.

There's a homework question that says, 

How does the dharma stay in the world? Or how do we know it's staying in the world?

It stays so long as someone is teaching it properly with good motivation, the answer key says. Which is the LUNG GYI CHU propagated, and as long as there are beings who are practicing these three trainings because of what they've learned and reaching some level of deepening understanding as a result.

As long as those two factors are happening somewhere in our human world, we can say the Dharma is staying in the world. 

The more that this is happening, the more the Dharma is in our world.

It could come down to there's one last person, one last teacher, or one last student, and then I don't know, teacher goes… Like what if you were the last human? Movies have done this. How would it feel to be the last of your species? 

How would it feel to be the last of your Buddha, dharma, kind of scary thought. 

Different positions on how long the Dharma will stay in this world

When is this going to happen?

Subhuti must be aware that it is going to happen, because he asked the question.

But then Buddha kind of got mad at him. 

Don't ask such a stupid question Subhuti. 

But Buddha, you taught that it's going to happen. 

Kamalashila wondered, What does he mean by the last 500?

So did Choney Lama, and so did Geshe Michael.

They all apparently went into the ALL database to see what Lord Buddha had had to say through his career. 

In your reading, Geshehla quotes some of those different sources. There are many more, but these are the ones that he chose to share with us.

DODE KELSANG

NYINGJE PEKAR

DAWA NYINGPOY DO

DORJE CHUPA DELPA

HLAMO DRIME GYI DO

These are all names of texts that he's quoting.

DODE KELSANG is the Tibetan for this sutra called the Sutra of the Golden Age. Sutra means this is a teaching Lord Budha gave.

In that sutra, Buddha says, My teachings will stay in the world for 500 years in its pure form, and then 1500 more years in a shadow form.

We say in English, something is the shadow of its former self. It's degenerated and declined, but it's still there.

500 years and then 1500 more. 

After that people won't be gaining the major spiritual levels and no one will be explaining them properly anymore.

Buddha is five 550 BC. 500 years would take us to zero, and then 1500 years more was 500 years ago then.

We could say, well there's something we must be misunderstanding here, because we actually do still have it, and we do still have people teaching and practicing the three baskets. 

Not that Buddha was wrong, but he was trying to motivate his audience back in 550 BC And so this looked like it was so far ahead, we didn't need to worry about it.

I don't know, does the last 500 mean 500 years ago?

Second one—NYINGJE PEKAR

It means the White Lotus Sutra of Compassion.

That's a famous prajnaparamita, the Lotus Sutra they call it. The White Lotus Sutra of Compassion. I think it's the same one as the Lotus Sutra. I could be wrong.

In this one the Buddha says the Dharma will last 1500 years.

Well wait a minute, that's long gone also.

Then there's a sutra called DAWA NYINGPOY DO, which is the Sutra of the Essence of the Moon. Isn't that beautiful?

In that sutra, Lord Buddha says the Dharma will last 2000 years. Which we're actually technically past that too. Because it took 500 years to get to zero and then 1500 years more would be 2000. We're past that and we still have Dharma, thank goodness.

DORJE CHUPA DRELPA is the name of Master Kamalashila‘s commentary.

So this is not a Buddha sutra. In this commentary, Kamalashila gathers information and he puts it together and says, I suggest that the meaning is this. We'll get back to it.

Lastly, there's HLAMO DRIME GYI DO.

HLAMO = goddess

DRIME = unstained

The translation of this sutra is called The Goddess of Flawless Light.

Where the word light is in here, I'm not sure, not actually. But it must be implied in DRIME. DRIME means unstained.

HLAMO DRIME GYI DO means The Sutra of the Goddess of Flawless Light.

In there it says, I'm going to read you the Tibetan but not write it and not go word for word just so you hear it. (Reading Tibetan)

What that means is: The dharma will spread to the land of the ruddy faced people after 2,500 years.

Ruddy faced people, MARCHEN, means people with a very white complexion but with red cheeks, ruddy red cheeks. Geshela says British people, many of them have this complexion, like nice pale skin, but this tendency to these bright red cheeks. 

The commentaries, Geshela‘s in particular says, here Buddha is predicting that the dharma would actually come to the west, to Caucasians—the ruddy faced people. 

And it did. It really, it went to the British, the Europeans first. From there it has spread to the rest of it.

After 2,500 years, the Holy Dharma will spread to the land of the ruddy faced people, meaning it'll go west. 2,500 years–if 500 to get to a 1000, 2000 more is saying by the year 2000 the dharma will be in the west. It's like son of a gun, here it is.

It got a few drops into the west in the late 1800‘s and then another big influx in the 60‘s and 70‘s, and then by 90‘s and 2000‘s it's really mushroomed with so much more available. 

Of course now with the online stuff, it's like whoah, like ACI‘s growth show. It is like a mirror of what's been happening.

Master Kamalashila explains why he thinks the dharma will in fact last 5,000 years. Buddha has just said 2,500 years, it's going to go to the West. He didn't say what's going to happen after that. 

He didn't say it's going to go to the west and then die. 

It goes west. 

Let's take our break and then we'll hear the explanation of the 5,000.

(Break)

The 10x500 Years Eras

(60:00) Remember, Kamalashila is 750, 780.

Choney Lama, he's more recent history, 1600, 1700? I don't remember to be honest.

Kamalashila pointed out there are sutras where the Buddha says there'll be 10 periods of 500 years, and that makes 5,000 years.

Kamalashila is saying it looks like 2,500 years it'll go to the west, and then there'll be 2,500 more years after that. 

Choney Lama, he weaves this explanation where he tries to confirm that theory.

There's these 10 periods of 500 years.

In the Diamond Cutter Sutra Subhuti has said, What's going to happen in the last 500? That's what he's concerned about.

The 500, the 10 500’s go like this:

In the first 500 years, that means after Lord Buddha withdraws his emanation.

In that first 500 years, lots of people are studying and practicing, and lots achieve Arhat-ship, lots achieve Nirvana in that lifetime where they met the dharma. They achieved Nirvana. 

That 500 is called the era of Arhat. That would take us to about AD zero or 50-ish.

The second 500, lots of people are reaching the state called non returners. Non-returners mean that they experience emptiness directly. They've worked with their mental afflictions such that they've eliminated enough of them that they cannot be forced by their karma to take a Sansaric rebirth.

They can't choose to take a Sansaric rebirth, but they're not forced. 

Geshela didn't give us a name, but I'm going to say it's the era of non returners.

That's third 500, lots of people are reaching stream enterer.

Meaning people get taught the dharma, they practice the dharma, they go right on to have their direct experience of emptiness, they reach their TONGLAM. The era of stream enterers—with or without Bodhichitta you can see emptiness directly.

That first 1500 years, called the era of results. 

We had each one, and then altogether the era of result.

People learn, they practice, they get results.

Then come fourth, fifth and sixth 500.

In the fourth 500 people are training in the three baskets and their focus of training is the wisdom basket.

In the fifth 500, their focus of training is on concentration. Like the wisdom basket seems a little too advanced. They of course are learning it, but their practice effort is in learning to concentrate, to meditate, to apply their mindfulness to their behavior.

Sixth 500, still the three baskets being taught. But people's level of practice is mainly focused on the ethical life. 

That's called the era of achievement. The era of practice. Less results, more seed planting happening there. Not that you wouldn't get results, but not like Stream Enterer, Once Returner, Arhat result in that lifetime.

Then we get seventh, eighth and ninth.

In all three of those, the teachings of the three baskets are still being correctly taught, but no one's actually gaining realizations much. 

The seventh, the focus is said to be the Abhidharma basket.

The eight 500 the Sutra basket. The ninth 500 the Vinaya basket.

Teaching is still happening, but the practices don't seem to be effective. Seed planting, yes. But it's like the gap between seed planting and result seems to be getting longer and longer here.

That's called the era of the physical dharma, because the physical dharma is still there, but the realizations are veiling.

That brings us to the last 500, the 10th 500, the era of just a trace left. 

No one understands, no one practices. No one's practicing, no one's teaching, because nobody understands anymore. Sad state, and to go on for 500 years before it's just all gone. Because in 500 years, even the beings that had some hint of background with it, they've come and gone. Maybe seven times they've come and gone in 500 years.

What makes it degenerate? Why would it degenerate? 

Why wouldn't the dharma get stronger the more people that gain realizations from it—like in the early periods when lots were gaining realizations—, why doesn't that make the dharma stronger? Why does it degenerate?

We do have to really work that out in our mind.

Somebody gains their realizations, they use it to go all the way to Buddhahood. They're out being the one who stands on a billion planets to help everybody.

That doesn't mean I can see them. I can know them. If I don't have that much goodness, it doesn't matter how many people have achieved it ahead of me.

Their achievement doesn't strengthen the dharma for me, does it?

If I knew about it, I might be inspired and it might keep me interested, because it's like, well, I knew that guy and now I know they are a Buddha, at least I believe that maybe they are. It might inspire me. But their realizations don't make mine any stronger. My realizations, I have to plant the seeds and ripen those seeds.

(68:48) These dharma teachings that we're thinking about, where do they come from?

Well, they come from Buddha, right?

No, I'm glad I'm seeing heads shaking.

No, they don't, right? 

So Buddha never said them?

No, I didn't say that.

Buddha did say them.

Who heard them?

Whoever was there? And what did they hear?

The Buddha making noise, right?

There's a being, decibels, information. The mind experiencing that information, is putting on labels and information.

Well then, who taught the sutras?

If I had it in me coming out of me, why didn't I know? Why did I have to have the Buddha to teach me?

Because those seeds are not self existently seeds of the dharma, are they?

They're seeds of potential to hear something new, different, extraordinary, motivating, scary, whatever.

As Buddha was saying, what Buddha was hearing himself say, you've got beings there. Some hear him, some go into meditations see emptiness directly.

Some, Interesting. 

Some, What the heck's he talking about?

Some, This is rot. I'm out of here.

How can Buddha‘s teachings be exceptional, ordinary, and negative all at the same time if they're coming out of Buddha‘s mouth in the way each one heard it?

Those teachings are coming from the ones who are hearing them.

Each one of you is hearing something different.

Each one of you is experiencing this as something different. 

Coming from you. If you're bored—your fault.

If you're fascinated—your fault. 

If it helps you—your fault. 

If it doesn't help you—your fault.

It's hard. It's harsh to say ‘your fault‘. But let's just cut to the chase.

I made it. I made it.

We can hear the Buddha teach us something new and something extraordinary.

Or we can hear Buddha teaching us something that doesn't make any sense at all and I don't want to be a part of it.

As we have our response to what we are hearing, we are replanting our ability to hear more, our interest to hear more.

As we try to practice what we've heard, we're planting the seeds to get more guidance or not.

It is true that what the Buddha teaches has no nature other than being the projected results from the mind of the one who's experiencing it.

There is a Buddha teaching the dharma as long as there is someone experiencing it that way. Buddha is experiencing it that way. He/she doesn't need anybody to see them teaching the dharma to be teaching the dharma.

But we can't experience a Buddha teaching the dharma unless we have those seeds ripening, making us take the information that we're receiving and laying on this label.

So why don't we just do it all the time?

Because those projections are not under our control. They're happening, and we're within the happening forced to perceive its results. We're learning how to relate to ourself and our world in this different way that allows us to choose our response more carefully, to allow us to perpetuate receiving teachings, and to escalate our ability to understand and gain realizations from those teachings.

Will that be a good result to be able to have the experience? 

Whoa, she said that this and it just changed my mind, and I meditated on it and now I really get it. Would that be a good result? I hope so.

Good results come from kindness planted, and no other place than that.

Even if I do get to someday say something that triggers a realization in your mind, it won't be coming from me. It will be coming from your kindness, your goodness, your having helped somebody come to have an Aha about something new.

Does it have to be dharma?

No. It can be anything new. New experience for somebody, new idea. How to tie their shoes for your little child. 

We all have seeds of having helped somebody learn something new, and it helps us perpetuate the dharma. 

When we said before, the Buddha has no signs, no signs at all. 

It is true also of what the Buddha says.

What the Buddha says has no wisdom or not wisdom in it from it.

What the Buddha says that we hear is coming from us. 

So the Buddha can't speak wisdom or speak Sanskrit, which I wouldn't be able to understand in the slightest.

Coming from us.

Mostly our karmas are in us from past life, because we've had so many more past life‘s experiences than we've had years on this earth.

If we're imprinting 65 per instant, and I'm 70 years old, you could calculate how many 65 per instant seeds I've planted in my 70 year life.

But then same for all those lifetimes before. 

It's kind of what I've done in this life is a spit in the bucket compared to what I've done in past life.

Now that is we can work with that and grow the strength with which we plant our seeds in this life so they become more powerful.

But if you're just talking numbers, I'm relying on past life Me’s to run the show. 

Actually my life is pretty good when I think of it that way. 

So my past life Me‘s we're decent folks, and it might do me well to quit blaming them so much. Oh, it was Josephine that made that yuck stuff, and say, Thank you past Me for making life so beautiful and easy, and extraordinary, and quit complaining about the little things that seem so big. 

The dharma degenerates because our karma to interpret that information as something special, or useful, wears out.

As we hear this class, we are using up dharma karma.

We're replanting it to some extent, but we're using it up, and there will come a time when these classes end. Hopefully it's because we complete them. Yay.

But it could be that I just can't get here anymore, or we lose this amazing ability to connect over the airway, or you can't get here anymore.

We do take it for granted that we have all the circumstances and it's going to last long enough for us to get through the ACI 18 and then depending on what you want next. 

But it's tenuous. We don't know we. I mean we really don't know that there'll be a tomorrow.

The dharma can't die out any other way than our seeds for it wear out. 

Our conclusion is, Man, I want to perpetuate my for the dharma so that I can do my part to not let the dharma wear out in the world.

It's like, maybe I've got 30 more years max that I can do my part. I'll do my best.

But then what happens?

If we don't know how much time we've got, it becomes pretty critical that we use our time well to somehow help preserve the dharma, help share the dharma. 

Doing your coursework, doing your completion, helping to share it with others, make it available, share what you learned, just not a whole class, just add it to your yoga class. That's helping to keep the dharma in the world. Little things like that.

(81:10) Subhuti has said, what about in the days of the last 500?

He said, by then, absolutely, nobody's going to understand a teaching like this.

It's so exquisite.

He's saying, I can't bear the idea that someone would not have access to this Diamond Cutter Sutra someday. And even if they had it to hold in their hands, it would be like (making a helpless gesture). 

Subhuti is like, I can't bear it Buddha, what's going to happen?

Buddha says, don't ask such a stupid question.

Why is it stupid?

It doesn't seem stupid to me. It seems like a really good question. 

He goes on, Buddha said, there will come in those days, high level Bodhisattvas, and those high level Bodhisattvas that come in the days of the last 500, they won't see any self. They won't see any living being. They won't see any life, and they won't see any person. 

What does that mean?

These high Bodhisattvas who will come in the days of the last 500, are they going to be blind?

I did a retreat once where for one day I put on a blindfold and I just wanted to see what it would be like if I didn't have the visual data coming in. 

It was pretty fascinating actually.

From that, I worked out a meditation where I took myself into a room that I had seen this stuff, but now I couldn't see it. I led myself through experiencing the room that I knew was there, but now I had to make the thing out of my memory, and then reestablish that it was really there by touching it.

That helped show me how the mental image was making the thing. 

Then I imagined, what if I go into a room that I was never in before?

It's like, whoa, even just thinking of it now, it's like you get a glimpse of the empty nature. Not empty as in there's nothing in that room, but it's like I just don't know what's in here.

Of course, I always set it up that it was safe in that room, because it could be, am I in a room with you, scary thing.

No, no, it's all safe.

But to step into a room you've never been in before where you're blind, how terrifying. I don't know how people do it.

Then go through the room identifying stuff, and see how…

The State of Mind of the High Level Bodhisattvas to come in the last 500

Here's these high level Bodhisattvas that come in the days of the last 500.

Their state of mind is such that they perceive no DAK, SEM CHEN, SOK, GANGSAK—are the four Tibetan critical words.

DAK self, me

SEM CHEN suffering living being

SOK life

GANGSAK person

DAK = self, me

It means the me that we hold to as me independent of any other factor. 

The me, it's independent of projections ripening.

The me that's doing the projecting. 

SEM CHEN = living being

When they use the word SEM, it is the word for mind, meaning a being who has a mind. Buddhas have minds as well, but Buddha are not included in the term SEM CHEN.

When we use the term SEM, loaded within it is a suffering being mind, a mind in Sansara. Not just desire realm, form or formless realm as well.

A suffering living being—SEM CHEN.

SOK = life

It's this being over the course of one's life. Then over the course of the next life, and the next life, and the next life. 

GANGSAK = person

Which DAK and GANGSAK, they're not really interchangeable. But we say I am me. And then we also have this sense of I am a person. Not meaning a human person, but meaning I have this identity that goes along.

The me is the self existent me.

The GANGSAK is how me, my personality goes along. 

SOK is how me goes from life to life.

SEM CHEN is this living being me.

These four. 

These high level Bodhisattvas in the days of the last 500, they won't see a self, a living being, a life, or a person.

What in the world does that mean?

Does that mean they're walking amongst the rest of us poor suffering slobs in the days of the last 500, and they don't see anybody?

What could the Bodhisattva who doesn't see anybody?

Or does it mean they themselves don't see themselves as a me, a suffering being, a SOK or a GANGSAK? But they're Bodhisattvas. They're not Buddhas.

What are these four that they don't see?

What are the nirvanasized beings that won't get there?

There's no being we bring to Nirvana that won't be my projections bringing that being to Nirvana. 

There's no being that we experience as having a self that's not my seeds projecting them having a me. 

There's no me that's not my projections, including me.

High level Bodhisattva doesn't perceive a self existent me—either their own or the others.

Does that mean they don't perceive Me’s at all? 

No, of course they do. They perceive all the ones that they're seeing. 

They perceive them and know that they are projected.

Oh, so that means they're not real, because they're projected, right?

Wrong. Projections are very real.

Self existent Me’s are non-existent. They're not even, they're not just not real. They're not there at all. 

It's so slippery, this emptiness thing.

Me. No Me the way I think.

A me independent of projections happening.

These high level Bodhisattvas that come in the days of the last 500.

This is saying they're pretty high level Bodhisattvas. Their wisdom is big. If they're able to be in the days of the last 500 and be aware that there is no self existent me, no self existent living being, there's no self existent me through my lifetimes. There's no self existent person me and B, the be the Bodhisattva that's there in the days of the last 500.

Because to have no self, no SEM CHEN, no SOK, no GANGSAK does not mean they're not there at all.

Got it?

This leads us to this distinction between YU GYU DAK and ME GYU DAK.

(…)

YU GYU DAK = the way me does exist

GYU = to exist. I think it means result.

ME GYU DAK = the way the me doesn't exist

For any moment of a Me, there's a way Me exists, and a way Me doesn't exist.

This is the distinction that these high level Bodhisattvas that will come in the days of the last 500 are living within. They know.

Here is Sarahni.

What's the Sarahni that does exist?

Am I here right now with you?

Yes.

Is there a me here with you that's the same for all of you?

No.

Do you think there is? Be honest.

When you say, You know Sarahni? And somebody goes, Yeah.

Doesn't your mind think, This. Oh, they know this. Our mind thinks they know the same as I know. We have to think that, because we all agree, it's Sarahni.

Deep down inside there, we're thinking everybody knows Sarahni the same way. 

But then you just apply logic and it's absurd. Everybody knows Sarahni differently.

So which Sarahni is there, and which Sarahni is not there?

Which Sarahni exists, and which Sarahni doesn't exist?

The Sarahni that we think is the same Sarahni for everybody is impossible.

At some point we go, come on. We don't really believe that anyway.

But when we think, oh, the Sarahni that exists independent of my seeds ripening Sarahni, a Sarahni that exists independent of my seeds ripening Sarahni. That Sarahni doesn't exist.

But doesn't that make you think, Well then that means as soon as the zoom goes off, Sarahni disappears? She's just like this magic show. Poof. Here for two hours and then I disappear and somehow I show up again. Thank you very much for giving me two hours twice a week to exist, because the rest of the time… 

But that's not what it means. Or does it?

I know it's a little weird. The Sarahni that does exist is the one that's being projected by anyone who's experiencing Sarahni, including Sarahni. 

The one that does exist for me is the one that's ripening out of my own seeds. 

That one is here. It is real. It is functioning. Doing my best to convey new information that will spark a realization within you someday.

ME GYU DAK.

Which Sarahni is not here?

The one that's independent of your projection. The one that is in me from me. 

The one that everybody would experience the same.

The one that will be here on Thursday evening at six o'clock.

That one's not here. Never was, never could be. It's impossible.

But come on. Don't we think that there's a Sarahni right that exists independent of my projection, independent of my life, independent. She lives in Tucson, and she teaches these classes, and I'm glad I know her. She could be gone someday. 

There's no such Sarahni.

It doesn't make me disappear.

To understand ME GYU DAK makes my YU GYU DAK more real.

As we understand the impossibility of a thing with its identity in it, it's not a conundrum anymore that there are no such things.

But our karmic seeds are all steeped in ‘them, in them, from them‘ that it's really slippery to hear,

Those great Bodhisattvas they'll see no self, 

they'll see no living beings, they'll see no lifetimes, 

they'll see no person, no self existent. 

Know those things not their karmic projection, which makes all those things there. They will see selves and living beings, and lifetimes and persons, and they'll know that they are ripening results of their own seeds. 

If those beings are suffering, they will be desperate to try to help them, knowing that their help might work and it might not work. Because it's up to the being's own seed ripening perceptions to benefit or not benefit.

But it won't mean they'll say, oh, these are beings in the days of the dark. They're beyond hope. I can't help. 

They'll still do their Bodhisattvas thing.

That means those great Bodhisattvas, they must know emptiness and they must know the GAKJA. 

As technically to say they see no DAK, SEMCHEN, SOK and GANGSAK is saying that they see the GAKJA nature of these four things. 

Because implied by these very words is the self existent belief of these beings that we're proposing from these four words.

(100:45) Kamalashila, he says, DAK refers to the self we hold onto when we think ‘I myself am self existent‘. Meaning independent of my projections ripening.

Does this DAK exist?

No. There's no self independent of the projected self this moment, this moment, this moment, this moment. There will never not be a projected self.

There will always be a subject side. Always, because every imprint has a subject side. But there will never be a subject side that's independent of the subject side that's ripening out of the seed that was planted.

Will your real subject side please stand up.

Will your subject side please stand up, there, there, there, there.

Constantly changing.

How do we relate to ourselves if we're constantly changing?

By the time the next one's there we're different. 

Not a whole different person, but different.

But we know that, right?

Are you different now than you were an hour ago?

Of course, that's no big deal.

Those great Bodhisattvas will have no sense of themselves as self existent.

It really does probably mean they're close to or at the level of Arhat. 

High level Bodhisattvas will come in the days of the last 500.

Isn't that when Lord Maitreya is supposed to show up?

There's that whole thing for sutra, Lord Maitreya is a high level Bodhisattva. 

And for Tantra, they're already fully enlightened.

Now it's like some pieces are coming together here about how this process is going to go. 

The Dharma is going to decline, decline, decline, decline, decline. But maybe in those days of the last 500, this great Bodhisattvas are going to show up, and most people will go, eh. Because they're not interested.

But for the few and far between that have the seeds that go, whoa, who is this guy? 

He'll teach, and morality will improve. From two or three students, it will grow again and grow again, and grow again and hopefully it'll grow back under Lord Maitreya before it completely burns up.

We'll hear other teachings, and it's like not quite clear if it works that way or if it has to completely burn out. We have to destroy everything and just a few of us will survive and it'll start over that way. Which is what Abhidharma text says.

Abhidharma Kosha apparently has a chapter that says what's going to happen is the sun's going to supernova and burn things up, and then it's going to do it again, and it's going to burn things up worse, and then it's going to….

But somehow it'll start all over. 

He says, and then before that happens, there'll be a process where something happens that the humans almost all die in a very swift period of time.

Geshela tells this story. There are people that are out camping over a holiday weekend. That's the weekend where the nuclear weapons go. The cities all get destroyed and blah, blah, blah. But these people that were out camping, little pockets of people that were out camping somewhere, they come back from camping and it's like, Eh gads, what happened?

They think, oh my gosh, we must be the last ones alive.

They figure out how to survive, and then at some point they go looking for others.

It sounds like a movie, right? I think I've seen one like this.

They do connect with other humans and oh my gosh, we're so glad to see that there are others. We thought we were the last seven left. Like, man, I don't know what happened, but humans made a big mistake. Let's not repeat it.

Can we help each other survive and grow?

This little group grows, and they grow because they're taking care of each other and they're being really, really kind. They share everything, and it grows and grows and their goodness grows as they grow. Pretty soon they have enough goodness that Lord Maitreya appears and teaches them why their goodness is so important. 

It grows and grows and grows and the whole civilization starts over again. 

Apparently this has already happened four times for humanity.

It's just lost to history.

SEMCHEN. Those with minds. 

SEMCHEN means non Buddha living beings who have consciousness. 

Not rocks, but conscious mind holding beings. 

Kamalashila says, The difference between SEMCHEN and DAK is that me, my SEMCHEN out of me, my DAK grows into SEMCHEN by the things that are mine.

Me is the Me, the mine is my body, my parts, my house, my world, my experiences, my Me.

DAK and SEMCHEN means me and mine.

When we hear me and mine, we think: my car, my keys, my cell phone. 

But this mine is experience. Me and mine is any experience.

The mine is any experience, me and mine.

SOK means to grasp to one's self as self existent over the period of the lifetime and to believe that self existent me is what goes into the next lifetime.

When you think of your future life, we can't help but think, oh me, Sarahni, we'll be Bruce in that lifetime. bBut I'm still identifying with the same thing as I'm identifying as Sarahni now. I'll be thinking that will just be identifying itself as Bruce.

It is holding to a SOK in the wrong way, ongoing lifetimes in the wrong way.

GANGSAK means the person who's coming and going.

GANGSAK apparently means coming and going. And and that means the me and mine as I go out amongst the world and try to get what I want and avoid what I don't want by doing things. Doing something to get what I want in the next moment.

We went from the little Mexican food place to the Bruce dog place for ice cream, and it really seemed like we walked across the street, we bought ice cream with the credit card, and we enjoyed ice cream, because we had the credit card to pay for it.

I couldn't have gotten ice cream without the credit card to pay for it. I tried to pay with that green paper stuff and he said, I don't have change.

So okay, green stuff doesn't work here, but plastic does. 

Then we got our little cup of ice cream, and it seems like that's where the ice cream came from, but of course it didn't, right?

GANGSAK.

These great Bodhisattvas who will come in the days of the last 500 will know emptiness and dependent origination on all of these levels.

What do you think they're going to do?

They're going to teach. 

Your job is to think about, why did she spend two hours telling me that?

What does it have to do with me—those days of the last 500?

Aren't we thinking I'm going to be one of the last 500 that have lost it all?

Well, quit thinking that.

Imprint, the seeds that you get to be aspire to be one of those great Bodhisattvas who shows up in the days of the last 500.

Is the one that is your DAK, SEMCHEN, SOK and GANGSAK trying to uplift all these poor suffering slobs that don't get it?

Where are the poor suffering slobs coming from, still?

Isn't that a conundrum? How can a high level Bodhisattvas still see suffering slobs?

How can a Buddha still see suffering slobs?

Cook that one too.

I mapped out those 10x500s to kind of see where we are with that.

Because I remember when I was hearing this from Geshe Michael, I was thinking, oh man, we must be right in the midst of the last 500. The way the world's going. 

That was, gee Eh gads, almost 30 years ago.

Now the world looks even worse, to me anyway. 

It's like, where are we in the last 500? Are we in the last 500? 

Technically if the 2500 and 2500 is true, that's what I mapped it out.

It's like Buddha was 550 BC. There's the first 500. 

Second 500 is going to be zero to 500 AD. 

Who's in there in that timeframe for us? Arya Nagarjuna, Vasubandhu and Asanga. That's all I can think of now. Dignaga probably. 

Then we get to the third 500, going to be 500 to 1000. 

Who's in there? Kamalashila, (?) the Vinaya master. Lord Atisha was around 1000. The Kadampas, the Lojong masters were 1000/1100. 

The fourth 500, a 1000 AD ad to 1500 AD. Who we got in there?

Marpa, Milarepa, Je Tsonkapa, Naropa. Can't think of the others.

1500 to 2000 Choney Lama. Lobsang Chukyi Gyaltsen—no, he was earlier.

Pabongka Rinpoche, Geshe Michael, the current master.

Sixth 500, 2000 to 2500 AD. We're 2025.

It sounds like. Oh, 500 more years and we're just at the sixth level, phew.

But that would be sort of the wrong conclusion to go, Phew.

500 years sounds like a long time away. 

Then there'll be a seventh 500, 2,500 to 3000. The year 3000. Can we even conceive of it? Didn't you when you were a little kid, what year will it be when I'm 50 years old? It's like, oh man, that will never come. Now I'm 20 years past it.

What year will it be when I'm a hundred years old? 2054. 

That sounds like a hundred years from now. But you know what? We'll be there.

The eighth 500, 3000 to 3500 AD.

The ninth 500, 3500 to 4000. The year 4000 earth years.

The 10th 500, when things are the most degenerated. The year 4000 to 4500.

If they're still counting the years in the same way. I don't know by then they still will.

It's a little odd because we can't really wrap our mind around those numbers that seeing into the future. Yet it is kind of, we can say, well, is it a guarantee that there will still be dharma? That means that it's a guarantee that there'll still be people? 

So that's a guarantee that we're not going to destroy the world and go extinct with climate change? 

It's like I don't think it is such a guarantee. 

The idea is that all of it is coming from our projection. Which means none of it is set in stone, which means all of it's changeable. Which means if we want to keep the dharma in the world, what do we need to do?

Practice the three baskets. Keep asking for teaching. Share what we learn, and we can perpetuate the dharma infinitely if we grow the seeds to do so.

Somehow this class is supposed to inspire us.

But I remember coming away from it feeling really like a downer, a real bummer.

But then when I mapped it out like this, it's like, no, the dharma's going to be around until the year 4500. That's so long away I don't have to worry about it.

But that's the wrong conclusion. You see?

The right conclusion is to be kind of worried and it's like, I'll do my part. I promise to do my part.

I remember thinking of that years ago, never believing that my part would be sharing the ACI again and again and again, but it's just like there's nothing else to do.

This is just landed in my lap. So thank you for being here, letting me help perpetuate the dharma for everybody. So hooray.

[Class ending]

Thank you everyone.

Welcome back. We are ACI course 6, class 5 on September 19th, 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]

Review of the Diamond Cutter Sutra so far

(8:03) I'm not going to review the quiz, but I'm going to review the sutra.

We're studying Diamond Cutter Sutra, a sutra on emptiness, a sutra within the genre of Buddha sutras called the Perfection of Wisdom Sutras. 

It is a sutra in which the title Diamond Cutter is never even mentioned in the whole sutra. 

Somebody recently earned a thousand dollars by knowing that answer to that question. 

In this sutra, Venerable Subhuti respectfully asks, Someone who's trying to be a Bodhisattva, meaning someone who is hellbent on reaching their own enlightenment so that they can bring about the end of suffering for every existing being there is, 

How should they live?

How should they practice?

How should they think?

Buddha's answer is the sutra. He says, They should think ‚I will bring to Nirvana every single living being of all those different kinds. But when I bring all those beings to their total Nirvana, there won't be any living beings at all who got brought to their total Nirvana‘. 

Budha will later say, And as long as we think that we brought someone to their Nirvana, that we could bring anyone to their Nirvana, well then we are not a Bodhisattva. In which case we won't ever bring anyone to their total Nirvana.

Then he says, And they should practice those six perfections.

But, if they practice those perfections without wisdom, they're not practicing the perfections. Because to practice the perfections with wisdom is what it takes for those deeds to make merit, for those deeds to be that huge goodness that won't wear out, that will in fact be the goodness that propels you to your total Buddhahood.

If that aspiring Bodhisattva, or when that aspiring Bodhisattva does their perfections without wisdom, they are neither perfecting them nor even practicing them.

Then he says, in answer to how should they live, Those marks on a Buddha's body, do they reveal that a person is a Buddha? 

Are they real?

The punchline is: no, they're not real.

There are no marks of a Buddha on a Buddha's body through which you can tell someone has become a Buddha, whether it's your own someone, or some other someone.

There are no marks on a Buddha's body that you use to be able to tell that you're looking at a Buddha. Which is how we can see marks on someone's body that tells us we're looking at a Buddha. Get it?

Buddha went there to the marks on the body, because practicing the first three and a half perfections with wisdom creates the causes for your form body of your Buddha you, your paradise body and your emanation bodies, meaning the way that you will appear when you are a Buddha, is created by your perfections of giving, moral discipline, not getting angry and having a good time doing all of that.

Those seeds go on to force you to see your body with those marks and signs—which are not real. They are projected, and so they are there, but not independent of the projection of whoever is seeing them, whether it's you or someone else.

Then Subhuti is overwhelmed with the profundity of this sequence of what's been taught, and he gets worried that in the future, especially the far future, in the days of the last 500–the days of dark they call them—, that nobody will be able to accurately understand this teaching.

Maybe the book is still there, and somebody can read it in whatever language it still exists in. But he's concerned that nobody will be able to connect the dots the way he's connecting it as he's interacting with Lord Buddha as Buddha answers his three questions.

And Buddha said, Oh Subhuti, don't ask a stupid question like that.

Doesn't seem so stupid, does it?

When we heard what those 500 year cycles were explained as by the time we get to the last 500, it seems like a really good question.

Buddha says, Even in those days of dark, there will come great Bodhisattvas who have the morality, the qualities and the wisdom. These Bodhisattvas, they won't see any DAK—self nature, SEMCHEN—living being, SOK—life, GANGSAK—person. 

These great Bodhisattvas who have morality, good qualities and wisdom, they're going to come in the days of dark and not see anybody? 

Like, not care? They will find the other great Bodhisattvas and they'll all just hang out together and forget everybody else, because all they can see all the other great Bodhisattvas?

Surely not, right? Hopefully not. If I'm going to be one of the ones in the days of the dark, I want to be one who will be seen by a Bodhisattva who come. 

So we learned that what those four things that the great Bodhisattva doesn't see. It means that they see beings—DAKs—but with no self nature.They don't see themselves or the other living beings as having their nature in them from them.

Do they see themselves and other living beings? Yes. They're seeing them, knowing them as projections of their own past deeds.

But each being's me is DAK. The living being through the course of that lifetime. 

SOK, the one in that lifetime.

The GANGSAK, the person that goes from lifetime to lifetime. 

The punchline, those great Bodhisattvas,they won't see anything as anything other than their projections forced by their past deeds, imprints ripening into their result.

Anyone meaning living being, and technically anything that they experience, they will experience it, knowing it has no nature of its own, not being self existent.

Anyone they perceive, anything they perceive, they will know as blank in nature, infinite possibility appearing as it does to them.

They are not Buddhas yet. They are not perceiving emptiness and dependent origination simultaneously. But they're dugon close. 

The implication is, they will understand this sutra.

Later on in this sutra, Buddha is even going to say, And where does this sutra come from?

Did Lord Buddha read it, say it and somebody wrote it down? Is that where it came from?

It's like yes and no.

It comes from the ripening seeds of the one who's reading it. So of course those great Bodhisattvas are going to understand the sutra.

My guess is that's why they show up in the days of dark, because nobody else is understanding it. No, I'll go help out. I'll go see if anybody has the seeds to be attracted.

That brings us up to this class.

Good Deeds (Karma) and Emptiness

The next thing that Buddha says sounds like a geography lesson, but of course that's not what it's meant to be. But to understand what it's saying, Geshela says, we go to the Abhidharmakosha 3rd chapter, that explanation of all existing things. 

It describes the worlds and the creations of the worlds, the destruction of the worlds, and all the beings that live in all of those worlds. It describes the bardos. It describes time and space and atoms. It is quite detailed.

In there, it describes these concepts that Lord Buddha is talking about in this next section. Because it's a verse where Buddha says, 

Subhuti, consider the world's systems of a thousand of a thousand of a thousand of a planets and consider someone had the resources to cover all those planets with the seven kinds of precious jewel, and then they offered those planets, thousand of a thousand of a thousand of a thousand planets covered with the seven kinds of precious jewels to Lord Buddha.

Would that be a lot of merit? 

Would that be a lot of good karma? 

Of course, Subhuti is going to say, Wow, that would be a lot. 

Geshela wants us to understand what is this, thousand of a thousand of a thousand planets? 

Is Buddha just trying to pick out a big number?

Like when he said Subhuti, would it be easy to measure the distance from here to the east? Like a trick question. Where does east end?

Vocabulary

jikten lokta

tong chi-pu

tong barma

tong chenpo

paramita skr

parol tu chinpa

parol tu chinje

parol tu chin sin

korsum mi mikpa

yul

jinpa yul

The Three Orders of World Systems

(25:15) First vocabulary is this word JIKTEN.

LOKTA in Sanskrit.

TEN = the basis

JIK = the word for fear, but it's also for the word to destroy, to be destroyed. 

So the basis to be destroyed is what an inhabited planet in Sansara is called JIKTEN. 

Our earth is our JIKTEN, our sansaric world that is the basis to be destroyed. 

Not meaning someday humans will destroy the place. But meaning the basis through which we finally destroy perpetuating our misunderstanding, our ignorance through which we perpetuate our suffering world. JIKTEN.

In the middle of JIKTEN is said to be Mount Meru, this humongous mountain, four different sides. If you've studied the Mandala in 37 piles, coming up soon in April, you understand what's included in JIKTEN. It's not just planet Earth actually.

Lord Buddha says TONG CHI-PU, TONG BARMA, TONG CHENPO.

TONG = 1000

CHI-PU = the general type.

So these three TONGs are these, Geshela calls it

TONG CHI-PU first order network of planets

TONG BARMA is the second order network of planets.

TONG CHENPO is the third order network of planets.

The general type network of planets is ours, kind of ours, is a thousand planets. 

What we call earth is part of a network of apparently inhabited planets similar to ours that make up this first world order of a thousand planets.

Where are they?

How come science hasn't found them?

How far away are they?

I don't know. Depends on our seeds.

Subhuti, consider a world order of a thousand planets, but then it goes further.

TONG BARMA.

TONG BARMA means a thousand in between. Not meaning like bardo in between. But here's the first thousand, the second world order is a thousand of those. 

Not a thousand more, but here's a network of a thousand planets. Now we've got a thousand networks of a thousand planets. Got it?

How many planets is that? A million, right? A thousand thousand.

Then the third world world order TONG CHENPO. It's called a thousand grade. That means the world order of a thousand TONG BARMAs.

Geshela will translate that as a thousand of a thousand of a thousand planets.

How many planets do we have in a TONG CHENPO? 

If the first is a thousand, and the second is a thousand thousands—that's a million. Now we have a thousand of those. So we have a thousand million. Is that a billion?

Is it bigger than a billion?

Write out the zeros and count them and then you'll have the answer. 

That many planets Subhuti, consider that many planets in a TONG CHENP. Somebody gathers enough precious jewels, the seven different kinds, and Geshela says, just covers Mount Meru. 

The scripture says covers the planet with those seven jewels.

Our planet's pretty big. Maybe we could make a case for these thousand of a thousand a thousand planets that are not as big as ours.

But they have to be big enough for humans, right? Or things like humans.

They have to be a certain big. To cover them all with precious jewels, how thick?

One layer thick, two inches thick? I don't know.

But just if a new said, just one jewel layer thick on a billion planets, if they were all our size and you offered that to Buddha, would that be some good deed?

Yes. 

My own mind goes ‚impossible to do‘.

Like almost impossible to even think about. It's just too big. 

Why is Buddha bringing up something that we can‘t see?

First of all, he wants us to try, and he says that to Subhuti. He says, Try to think of this. How much goodness would that be?

Wow, a lot.

Whoever managed to do that, they would make enough goodness to be wealthy for forever, as long as they didn't steal those jewels to get them to make the offering with.

But Buddha says next, he doesn't even answers Subhuti.

He says, but consider the act of reading just one verse of the Diamond Cutter Sutra, or teaching it to someone else, or holding it, memorizing it, sharing it, copying it.

Just one verse. Subhuti, which do you think would be more goodness? 

All those jewels on all those planets to Lord Buddha, or just reading one verse of Diamond Cutter Sutra? What do you think?

Buddha says, The Diamond Cutter Sutra is infinitely greater merit, to read just one verse than making that huge pile of offerings to the Buddha.

Which one are we capable of doing?

I can read a verse of Buddha dharma.

I can't even conceive of a billion planets, let alone have jewels to cover them.

Is Buddha exaggerating? Does Buddha ever exaggerate? 

No. 

Diamond Cutter's Sutra is teaching us about what it is to do our six perfections with wisdom and he's telling us why.

Because to do our acts with wisdom is what makes the imprint of that act be the cause for our own Buddhahood. To make that imprint is beyond compare to any other goodness we can do, even that many jewels on that many planets to the high holy being Lord Buddha.

But is it just increasing our giving that makes us a Bodhisattva doing a perfection of giving?

No.

The sutra is showing us, he doesn't actually come out and explain it.

Thank goodness for commentaries.

The sutra is telling us how it is that we do our acts of the perfections in such a way that actually make them be the causes for our Buddhahood. Because we can think we're doing our six perfections, and only be doing them in a way that will perpetuate nice things that wear out. That'll be nice, but it won't be what stops suffering.

So even the teeny act of giving a piece of bread to a bird. When done with wisdom, meaning our knowing emptiness, becomes a direct cause for our Buddhahood.

You don't have to cover a billion planets with precious jewels and offer them.

Just a little piece of bread to the bird.

Just once?

Technically it could be enough. Probably we want to do more than that.

But it's pretty easy to give, to feed birds.

But it has to be done in the right way. It has to be done with this wisdom in order for that act to make the imprint that will go on to our Buddhahood.

We have the Sanskrit term Paramita.

Sanskrit for ‚gone to the other side‘. Which is how they describe perfection. Interesting how they use that term.

The Tibetans translated as PAROL TU CHINPA.

PAROL = the para, the other side

TU = two

CHINPA = gone

Paramita = gone to the other side, already gotten to Buddhahood, gotten to the other side of Sansara.

PAROL TU CHINPA means done, perfected.

But what has this ‚gone to the other side‘, to the far side perfection, what's it trying to say? 

We think, okay, when we're Buddha there won't be any more Sansara for us.

We're gone out of it, as if it's still over here and now our Buddha paradise is there, and we look back at it to see who's still in there. 

Of course it's not like that. 

It does seem funny that they say ‚gone to the other side‘.

They've gone to the other side of ignorance. You don't actually go anywhere technically. Like you don't get on the bus and go.

What makes an act of giving an act of the perfection of giving?

(41:03) How are those six kinds of deeds, the six perfections, how are they different when they're done with wisdom versus not done with wisdom?

We want to know, because it makes the difference between giving the bird the piece of bread as a cause of our enlightenment versus giving the bird a piece of bread as for us having all the bread we could ever want.

What makes the acts of the perfections perfection? 

Technically, PAROL TU CHINPA means you're doing your act of giving perfectly.

The only being who can do an act of giving perfectly is a Buddha, because a Buddha is perceiving the ultimate reality and appearing reality simultaneously: of themself, the bird, the act of giving and the thing they are giving.

That Buddha is giving perfectly.

Does it mean there's no hungry birds anymore because Buddha has perfected the act of giving?

No, there are still hungry being, but Buddha sees emptiness, dependent origination, simultaneously as they give.

If that's what the six perfections mean, means I can't do them, because I'm not omniscient. If I have to have wisdom in order to do them perfectly, and I can't get wisdom without doing them, it seems to me I'm stuck. Like pretending. 

There must be some subtleties here.

PAROL TU CHINPA does mean perfecte, doing the perfections perfected. 

The Tibetans say, look, Buddha meant PAROL TU CHINJE.

JE = what makes us perfected, what will get us to the other side

There are actually other sutras where Buddha did use whatever Sanskrit word for PAROL TU CHINJE, where he said, It's true that a non Buddha cannot do a Paramita.

But it's also true that trying to do your acts of giving as a perfection is what will bring us to Buddhahood, so that our further acts of giving will actually be perfection, PAROL TU CHINJE.

We could be calling our Bodhisattva activities of the six perfections the Bodhisattva activities of perfectionizers. It would be a little bit more accurate. It would reveal to us that we understand the process that we're involved in.

But now again, does just understanding that then make any old time I feed a bird, be an act of a perfectionizing for myself?

It's not the giving, it's about some state of mind that I hold that makes the same act of giving a seed planted for my Buddhahood versus a seed planted that perpetuates Sansara.

Then, if we're using PAROL TU CHINJE for how a non Buddha practices their six perfections does perfectionizing ourself, they have another word PAROL TU CHIN SIN, which now means perfected. Like gotten there. 

Which is a little different than PAROL TU CHINPA, is the being perfect.

PAROL TU CHIN SIN is getting there, completing it, finishing it.

The Buddha who is PAROL TU CHINPA, does their acts of giving as PAROL TU CHIN SIN, the acts.

Geshela quoted Buddha from another sutra called The Briefer Paramita Sutra.

It's called DUPA. You'll have the Tibetan in your reading, I'm pretty sure, so I'm going to bypass it in interest of time. It's long.

But what the quote says is, 

Blind people who don't have any eyeballs.

That means really, really blind.

A trillion trillion of them gathered all together 

could never find the road, let alone the city of destination.

Got it?

No matter how many blind people you gather together, they can't see the road to the destination. They aren't ever going to get to the destination. 

It goes on to say,

If we don't have the perfection of wisdom, (meaning number six) 

then the first five perfections are eyeball-less. 

The Tibetan is MIKPA MEPE.

They cannot get us to Buddhahood, no matter how much we practice our giving, moral discipline, not getting angry, having a good time and meditative concentration, if they're done without wisdom, we might as well be blind.

If we're able to get wisdom, then we would have found our eyes, and then those deeds can be called perfection. 

We understand that perfection number six refers to the direct perception of emptiness.

Once we have that experience for the first time, we then have wisdom in our mind.

It affects our karmic seeds, all of them.

We don't see it directly again easily.

We don't see it directly when we're out of meditation.

But we understand that when we perceive, experience anything, we know that what we're perceiving, we're perceiving in a mistaken way. So we don't believe that it exists in the way that it seems to, which is still in it from it. 

We've learned about that state of mind that although our seeds still ripen as seeing things as self existent, we don't replant them that way.

Why am I talking about that?

Because with that state of mind, when we do our act of giving to the little bird, we are no longer replanting ignorance about ourself, the little bird, the bread and the giving.

Of course that giving is contributing to reaching our goal, which as a Bodhisattva is our Buddhahood. 

Then it sounds like we can't in fact even start to do the perfections as perfectionizers until we reach number six—wisdom. We would say technically that's true, but the PAROL TU CHINJE, that TU can be grown. Like there's a baby level of practicing our perfections as perfectionizers through which those seeds are the goodness that pushes us to the direct perception of emptiness, meaning perfection number six.

There are ways that we can practice our giving, moral discipline, not getting angry, having a good time, and even the meditation part that is gathering the goodness to reach wisdom six. 

When we do now, we continue to do those and now those seeds are actually planting our seeds for our Buddhahood.

It's not that we don't try to do the first five perfections until we reach emptiness directly. Because we won't reach emptiness directly without trying to do the first five pretending, or intending using those perfections that aren't perfections yet, intending to reach wisdom by doing them so that we can continue to do them with wisdom in which case they are in fact our perfectionizers. Finally perfected when we are perceiving the empty nature and the appearing nature of all existing things simultaneously as Buddha.

What does it take for our baby Bodhisattva attempts at our six perfections to be planting the seeds that will grow into our wisdom number six, so that we can then really be planting our seeds as perfection.

Again, it's our state of mind as we're doing our actions that is the critical piece, and the state of mind that we want to cultivate as beginners is the intention to do our act of giving in order to reach our total Buddhahood for the sake of all sentient beings. 

The intention is enough to make regular giving a good karma that will come back in a worldly life way, into a good karma that is going towards our direct perception of emptiness. 

The intention is our deceptive Bodhichitta, the Bodhichitta that we have in words, in thought, in heart, related to us in our appearing world, in our deceptive world.

I want to reach my total enlightenment for the sake of all sentient beings. 

The more we understand what we mean when we say that, the bigger that intention grows, the more complete is the imprint that's made with that intention.

So we talk about it again and again and again, going deeper and deeper in our understanding of what it isto be a total enlightened being.

How it is ‚I get there‘.

What it is to bring all beings to their total enlightenment. How that's going to happen. As we learn more and more, we're infusing our statement, ‚I want to be total Buddha for the sake of all sentient beings‘ with richer and richer meaning. Which then is part of the intention that we hold in mind as we practice our five perfectionizers, that are going to become perfectionizers.

The 3 Levels of the Practice of the Six Perfections

(58:22) We've got this practice of the six perfections on three levels.

1. the practice that gets us there.

2. the practice of the one who's already got there, the way a Buddha gives.

3. the practice that's sort of like a Paramita, because at least we did the deed with the intention of reaching the one who doing it perfectly.

How do we get from this sort of like a perfection to the actual perfection so that we can get to being the one who has perfected it?

To understand how we move from baby level to perfectionizer level, we want to understand the KORSUM MI MIKPA

KORSUM = the three spheres 

MI MIKPA = to not see them

In Diamond Cutter Sutra, Buddha says again and again and again, the Bodhisattva does their act of giving without staying, meaning without seeing the three spheres. 

But it doesn't mean they literally don't see. It always means without seeing any aspect of the three spheres as not coming from their own ripening results of past behavior. 

The MI MIKPA means to not see anything as self existent. But we need to deeply understand what we mean by not self existent, because if we're misunderstanding it or understanding it at a lower level, it doesn't qualify as a KORSUM MI MIKPA.

We are in Mahayana, Middle Way here.

(Break)

We'll dig into KORSUM MI MIKPA.

KORSUM means to do our act without seeing the three components, KORSUM. 

Of course the not seeing means to see those three components with an understanding of emptiness. Which means to not see them as with their identities and qualities in them from them.

What are those three components?

There's two ways to describe the three components of which there are in fact four things in the three components. Don't you love the Tibetans and their lists?

One of the components of the KORSUM in the act of giving is YUL.

YUL = the object

In our example of giving the piece of bread to the little bird, the YUL is the bread, the piece of bread we're going to give.

The second component is the JINPA YUL.

JINPA = the giving here

1. JINPA YUL = the recipient, the one who's going to receive the YUL. 

The third component is JINPAY JAWA 

2. JINPAY JAWA = the act of giving

(63:50) We have the object, the little bird—the recipient, and the act of giving.

Doesn't that seem like there's one missing?

The missing one it seems is the giver.

Isn't that kind of a necessary part of the KORSUM? 

3. JINPA PO is the word for the giver.

So we have the object of giving, the recipient of giving, the act of giving and the giver of giving.

Some of us are studying Nagarjuna‘s root text ‚Wisdom‘ and we're just talking about this. We didn't call it that, but…

Which of these need to be seen as not having their identities in them from them in order for our act of giving to qualify as a perfectionizer?

Is it any one of them?

Is it any combination of them?

Or is it all of them that need to be known to lack their self nature as we are doing the act of giving the food to the bird?

It‘s not just about not seeing the bread, not seeing the bird, not seeing myself give it to the bird.

That'd be easy to just do our giving with our eyes closed.

We need to have in mind the empty nature of the bread, the bird, the giving, and the me for our act of giving the bread to the bird to be an act of the perfection of giving, technically the perfectionizer.

See where if I am not imbued with the understanding of emptiness, so that everything I do has the misunderstanding wiped away from it, how can I ever do an act of giving in a way that will imprint in my mind in a different way? 

Fortunately they say, look, the intention is enough. 

The intention to reach total enlightenment for the sake of all sentient beings because we understand that in order to reach that we must see emptiness directly, and then we must do our acts of giving and the rest with that state of mind of knowing that things look self existent, but they cannot be—as we do our active giving.

Then our question would be to what extent does that have to be in my mind?

99%, 1%?

How much is enough to have my intellectual looks like a little bird, looks like bread, looks like me giving the bird bread, but really it's all seeds ripening my mind, this circumstance, this opportunity. And so as I give my bread to the bird, I can be thinking, oh little bird, I'm empty. You're empty. This piece of bread is empty.

If you take this little piece of bread from me, I'm going to become Buddha as a result and someday I will teach you how to reach it too. Please eat it. 

Saying it in our mind.

What if we just think it at the beginning of the day, anything I do for anybody I'm really doing in order to reach my Buddhahood for the sake of all sentient beings.

But then I go through my day on automatic pilot. Is that enough?

Every little bit helps.

Could we spend the rest of our career becoming Buddhas, just setting our intention at the beginning of the day and not making any effort the rest of the day?

Technically yes. It would just take a really, really long time.

The greater extent to which we have our emptiness understanding, our two Bodhichittas in mind as we're doing whatever act of giving we are doing, the more that influence is included in the seed that's being planted through the course of that time period. 

It's not really an either or situation. It's the quality and quantity of our two Bodhichittas in mind as we're doing our acts of giving that influence the seeds.

Maybe we do 16 of them through the day on automatic pilot, and one really strong. 

Great.

Maybe we do all 17 with 50 50. Great.

It's better than we did yesterday.

That's the practice.

It's not about being perfected, it's about doing a little bit better tomorrow than we did today of holding in mind our wish to reach total enlightenment for the sake of all sentient beings as we're going about our day doing anything.

Because really, our giving isn't just when I'm here, you're there and I give you something.

When you do the dishes at home, you're doing an active giving. You're giving a clean kitchen to the rest of the family.

Everything we're doing could be looked at as some version of an act of giving.

As we do it with our Bodhichitta rattling around in our mind, those same seeds that we do every day are now planted in a different way.

If we specifically also can remember to dedicate them—I've really gotten sloppy in my dedication—dedicate it to that sixth perfection so that your perfections can be become it.

It increases the power of the seed planting, because now we can't foul it up by making a big mistake somehow.

We want to zero in on first the little piece of bread, not self existent.

There are different levels. What we mean?

Not self existent, because the bread, somebody had to make it.

Not self existent because the flour that was used in the bread had to be grown someplace.

The bread has parts, it has causes.

That's not enough.

We need to be thinking of the emptiness of this bread is that it's nothing but my seed's ripening, and so I have a little piece of bread here that I can feed a bird. Yay.

Looks like bread in it from it. It's not.

My goodness made this bread if it's a pleasure to feed bread to the bird.

If it's not a pleasure to feed bread to a bird, then it's like, whoa, my selfishness made this bread. Not in the bread.

The bird will eat it either way, whether we know it's emptiness or not.

If the bird has the good seeds to see it as something to eat, they will eat it.

The emptiness of the object.

What's the emptiness of the recipient of the object? The emptiness of the bird?

There are lots of different levels.

There's this little thing, I see it as a bird. I see it as a cute bird. I see it as a nice bird versus I see it as something dangerous.

This bird, identity bird is coming from my mind.

Identity ‚this bird here now‘ coming from my mind.

Identity ‚little bird, opportunity to feed something to‘ coming from my mind.

Always not in it from it.

Little bird opportunity to give to in order to reach Buddhahood ripening from my mind now.

Then the JAWA, the act of giving. What's the emptiness of the act of giving?

That was a little slipperier, because it's like I have this little piece of bread. I want to feed the bird. I want to help it both worldly and ultimate.

But the poor little bird, it sees this giant thing coming at it. No wonder it runs away. 

It could be scared.

My act of giving could be a scary thing.

My act of giving could be a pleasant thing.

It's not a good thing or a bad thing to give anything to anybody in it from it, because we can give somebody that we think is something good and they could have a bad result from it. Happens.

They could see us as doing something dangerous.

However they respond to us, it's not from our current act, it's from them, right?

No, it's from how we reacted to others giving us something in the past.

It does take some thinking about the emptiness of the act of giving, and then where we want to land is: It looks like I'm given the bird a piece of bread to feed it now, but really I'm making this connection with this being so that someday I can teach them how to never go hungry again. Never be a suffering being again, so that I can teach them, guide them to their total enlightenment. That's what I'm doing.

I'm not feeding a bird a piece of bread.

I am giving them the opportunity to start on their path to their total enlightenment.

Our own state of mind as we give it.

The two levels of working with the 3 Spheres

If we've not seen emptiness directly, we need to impose all of that.

The extent to which we do is the extent to which the seed planted as we do it become seeds that will move us towards our perfection of wisdom, seeing emptiness directly. 

Technically it's not just about keeping the laws of karma in mind.

There is two levels of working with the KORSUM, the three spheres, the emptiness of the three sphere.

One's called JIKTEN PAY LAM and the other's called JIKTEN (LEN DE GNE PAY?) LAM. 

1. The Worldly Path

JIKTEN PAY LAM = the worldly path.

The worldly path of using our understanding of karma means we choose to live according to karma. We understand enough about karma that we make our choices based on knowing that what I do now is going to come back to me in the future.

We're not applying our understanding of why that's true.

It's just choosing to live more intentionally according to karma.

But it means that we would be feeding this little bird so that I will always have enough to eat.

I will be generous so that my world can be abundant in the future.

It is not a bad state of mind.

In the west that I grew up in, as far as I was aware, not many people thought that way that what you do will come back to you.

But it's not enough to end the suffering. 

It's enough to create a future for oneself and one's loved ones that's more pleasant. But it's a pleasantness that will wear out and technically that's still suffering and perpetuating suffering. 

They call it a worldly path: using karma to make a better world. But it won't stop the suffering of the world.

2. Transcending the suffering world

The other level, JIKTEN (LEN DE GNE PAY?) LAM, means the path of transcending the suffering world. 

This is performing our act of giving with an understanding as an emptiness as opposed to an understanding of only karma.

We are saying that the path that transcends the world isn't giving to the birds so that I can always have my needs met in the future.

Will that happen?

Yeah, but that's not why. It is a side benefit of why I'm giving to the little bird. 

The why I'm giving to the little bird is because of their empty nature, my empty nature, the empty nature of the bread that I'm giving and the empty nature of the giving.

All of that means that I can do this act with a state of mind that makes that same act become the result of bringing myself and that little bird to complete freedom from suffering someday.

Same act, different state of mind.

The instruction is:

Take the time to establish this before you do what you're going to call an act of giving as an attempt at a perfectionizer.

Find some way of reminding yourself.

Maybe we can imprint Bodhichitta, Bodhichitta, Bodhichitta.

Maybe we can write it across our glasses. I tried, that doesn't work.

Maybe we can pause before you do the dishes, and think it through.

Pause before you put the hummingbird feeder out, and think it through.

But practice.

The training is to learn to think differently as we do our same old deed. 

If you ever were inspired to learn something new—I want to learn to play the piano—, we had to find a teacher, take lessons.

They taught us ‚Do your scales.‘ 

‚I want to play piano.‘

‚Do your scales.‘

‚I want to play piano.‘

‘Do your scales. Then you can play.‘

But practice. 

What did we do as we were kids learning to play the piano? 

An hour a day, half an hour a day when we were little. An hour a day later.

Pretty soon we liked it so much we were doing two hours a day, maybe three hours a day, maybe even doing our scales for fun before we went to bed.

Can art training be similar?

I want to learn to play the piano—now is ‚I want to become Buddha.‘

Do your scale. The scales means, I'll get there in a little bit. But training to get off automatic pilot.

I'm talking to myself as well. After all these years, it still takes effort to stop and think:

Empty me, empty them, empty deed, and so I will do this in order to stop all suffering someday.

That's why we start every class setting that up.

We don't talk about the empty me, but we bring up our intention and our deep motivation, so that every moment we're in class, that intention is added to the seed we are planting.

It's really an extraordinary system.

Geshehla said, okay, giving to a bird. How do we apply the KORSUM MI MIKPA in the face of the yelling boss?

We've talked about it so many times.

The example is now the yelling husband in the kitchen, but let's stay with the yelling boss.

When we're getting angry, feeling hurt, wanting to yell back, it is really hard to bring up, oh, they're empty, I'm empty. This is all empty. It's all coming from me.

The last thing I want to do is do what I'm wanting to do right now. Whatever it is.

The beauty of the system is that we can't continue to blame the boss for the discomfort I'm feeling and recognize, It's all my seeds ripening.

We can toggle back and forth, forth. Woo, that jerk guy, wait, he's coming from me.

Oh, this feels so terrible. Wait, that's ripening my seed.

Oh, I should yell back. No, that's going to bring it back to me.

The toggle is an incredible goodness. It's a delay in our automatic reaction.

Maybe we can only delay it for a short while and we let fly, and an hour later we go, oh no.

The little bit of delay is a great goodness. We try it again next time, and next time, and further we learn to look for where is it that I'm causing somebody else to have an upset such that they want to blast back at me?

Where can I stop doing that?

It may not be I'm yelling at somebody. Maybe the way I upset somebody else's mind is that I ignore them and they get upset.

It is the upsetting somebody's mind that still is contributing to my specialty of being upset by someone yelling at me.

It may actually not be enough to just not yell back at the boss to get them to stop being the apparent cause of my getting upset.

Maybe there's some other way I'm upsetting someone's mind that doesn't even seem related to the boss yelling at me, in which I am still perpetuating situations in my future where somebody upsets my state of mind.

It's one thing to toggle with the emptiness and seeds ripening in the midst of the yelling boss.

It's another to see where it is that our own behavior is imposing that on somebody else, and work with the emptiness of the three spheres there as well.

The practice, almost like a game, more than I'm blanking out on a good word.

We can feel like such pressure to do this so perfectly that I have to do it right, or I'm not doing it at all, would be like going to your piano teacher and saying, I read music, let me just play it, and expect to be able to do so without learning how to do the scale.

We wouldn't do that, but to expect ourselves to be able to perfectly not respond to the yelling boss, because we've worked with our classes, itis imposing an expectation on ourselves that we will probably fail. 

Whereas if we can look at the whole system as, I'm in training. I am going to get good at this. By trying things on for size, it can actually become a enjoyable exercise, which is where the practice of joyous effort comes in.

Some days I do better than others. Okay, that's fine. I understand where it's all coming from. I get to go to bed now, have some rest. We'll try it again tomorrow.

With that attitude it's much easier to work with these things.

Not expecting perfection, but allowing ourselves to explore and try and fail and fix it and try again.

Geshela said we need a little logic lesson here.

The premise is, giving a piece of bread to the bird is a cause for our enlightenment. 

So there must be a connection between the two, technically the two of the three spheres of the giving the bird, and the three spheres of me reaching my enlightenment. 

There are two ways that things can be related.

They can have either a relationship of identity or a relationship of cause and effect.

A relationship of identity is like set and subset theory.

The relationship between motor vehicle and Toyota, how are those two related?

Motor vehicle is the set. Toyota is the subset.

All Toyotas are motor vehicles, but not all motor vehicles are Toyota.

Like the color red and the color crimson.

Red is the bigger set. Crimson is a subset. Crimson is a kind of red.

There are other reds besides crimson.

For there to be a relationship, two things must be happening.

Those two objects need to be separate things.

Sarahni cannot have a relationship with Sarahni, because we are one and the same thing.

Red can have a relationship with Crimson. It's the set.

Crimson can have a lationship with red. It's the subset.

The two objects must exist.

We can't have a relationship with a non existing thing. 

Sarahni cannot have a relationship with the horn on the head of her pet rabbit, because there's no such thing as a horn on the head of her pet rabbit. There's actually no such thing as her pet rabbit. She doesn't have one.

Sarahni exists. The horn on the head of the rabbit doesn't. So we can never say that I have a relationship with it.

There's another factor. By the time of a result in a cause and result relationship, the cause must be gone by the time the result comes about.

Remember the (NGYER LEN GYI GYU)?

By the time of the oak tree, the acorn is long gone.

But there is no oak tree without there having been an acorn.

There need to be two separate things, and two existing things for there to be relationship. 

Yet we just showed that results and their causes don't exist at the same time.

Technically there's no relationship between the acorn and the tree from which it grew.

Technically there's no relationship between karma and their consequences, because the cause is gone by the time of the result.

Or at the time of the cause the result hasn't happened yet. 

So technically the cause is not the cause, because no result has come about. 

The karmic action of giving bread to the bird, and the result Buddhahood, they can't actually be related.

They can't have a cross result relationship, because when we're doing the giving to the bird, my Buddhahood doesn't exist. 

By the time of my Buddhahood that giving to that bird is long gone.

How does this whole thing work if none of it can be related?

Then we learn the way we know that there's a relationship between two or more things is where if you remove one, the others are also removed.

You have this relationship of identity.

By the time we reach enlightenment as a result of the deed of giving the bread to the bird with wisdom, that deed is long gone.

Can we have a result without a cause?

No.

Can we have a result if the cause is already gone?

Yeah, infact, that's how it has to happen.

But then that means there's not two things there to have a relationship.

Choney Lama gives us the punchline.

I personally don't find it very satisfactory, but I'm going to share it with you.

He says, 

Technically by the time enlightenment has occurred, 

its causes are past. They are non-existent. 

If the causes are still existing, then the consequences of that cause has not yet come to be, and therefore doesn't exist either.

He goes on to say though, that in a general sense there is cause and effect, because time itself is empty.

That's a cooker. I'm still cooking it.

The clue though is: causes and results do their thing, have their relationships by way of our projections projecting them that way. 

It is a conundrum to say, karma, seeds and their consequences can't actually have a relationship, only because we're thinking of our imprints made and their results in some self existent way. 

Something in them that makes that result other than the projection happening in the way that it does.

Just the words are not enough to get us to go, oh, I see the mistake.

It takes some digging in meditation to recognize why it doesn't make sense. Because it does make sense when we get in there.

But what do we mean by time itself is empty?

We think of a second, a minute, an hour and we think everybody agrees with what those mean.

But we can experience an hour that goes by in a snap, or we can experience an hour that seems to drag on forever. Which tells us right there from our own personal experience, that that thing we call time has to be included in my seeds ripening.

If it has its own nature of how long a minute is, it would impose upon us, this is what it feels like to be a minute.

It could never seem longer or shorter, more pleasant, less pleasant.

Time is included in every one of our projections.

Why?

Because it's included in every one of our imprints, and there's no time other than that.

It's not like I know 7 48 being imprinted.

It's the fact that things are changing is what is time, and that's going on with every imprint.

Yes, the time of day is included, and the season is included.

Everything about our experience is included in our imprint, and that includes the very time itself, so that it's perpetuated as our seeds are ripening.

When we go looking for a present moment, the smallest unit of this thing called time, we just find a beginning of that moment, a middle of that moment and end of that moment. 

By the time we've actually done that, that moment is long gone.

We can never find that present moment that we're calling the singular unit of time that gets built upon to make a minute, an hour, a day, a month, a year, et cetera.

(104:25) Do karma and its consequences not exist at all?

No.

When the action exists, the consequences of it don't yet exist. They are yet to come.

When the consequence has arrived, the karma that caused it is passed, and therefore also non-existent. 

As we can conceptualize, this causes that, that comes from this, karma and its consequences does exist within that conceptualization.

They have a relationship of cause and effect, because we put it there as we watched ourselves think, do, say towards others. 

That's that critical piece about perceiving another that contributes to that planting of the imprint that will bring about a future result that again has a self and another. That's the other thing we are exploring in Arya Nagarjuna right now, which I find to be so fun and slippery.

What would happen if we go through our day not perceiving others as others?

What would happen if we expand our sense of self to include others per Master Shantideva?

We put the donut in that mouth. Functionally, says Geshe Michael, we've put a million donuts in this mouth when we put one donut in that mouth.

When we are doing this exchange stuff and others meaning expand self to include others, it's clue to what it will be like to be Buddha you.

Your paradise body and your emanation body, and your omniscient body.

You still make seeds, but they are pretty different, and also has something to do with the shortening of the time gap between the imprint and the ripening.

When the other, what's perceived to be other, is perceived other widely. Nevermind. 

The Order of the Six Perfections

We had said before, the practice of the six perfections go in that order.

1. The practice of giving. As we get better and better at it, our 

2. practice of moral discipline gets better too. 

3. Then our practice of not getting angry will get better as those other two are getting stronger. 

4. Then our joyous effort kicks in, because we're having so much fun.

5. Then because of all that goodness, our meditative concentration will go deeper.

6. All that goodness will accumulate and push us at some point into seeing the seeds ripening experience out of meditation, and then pushing us into the direct perception from in meditation after that.

But we said we can't actually do our first five perfections well enough to be perfectionizers until we reach the sixth one.

So how do we ever do one through five with enough goodness to get to six, if we need sixto do one through five well enough to get to six.

It seems like we're stuck.

Choney Lama says it is true that it takes the wisdom of emptiness to make the perfections truly perfection. But it's also true that Buddha said we can call our acts perfections if we are doing it with the intention to reach enlightenment.

Because to have this intention makes the deed done some similarity to the real perfection.

Choney Lama is saying, Buddha said, just hold the intention in mind as you're working with your giving, moral discipline, not getting angry, having a good time, doing your meditation, that that's enough to start us on the path to reaching the sixth wisdom, the direct perception.

Once we reach that we're on first Bodhisattva Bhumi, meaning now we are focusing on our acts of giving with that state of mind that now knows about emptiness.

We don't see it directly, you can't see it directly while we're doing our acts of giving anyway.

We can only experience emptiness directly in that deep state of meditation where our awareness is completely withdrawn from our sensory input.

It's not that you can see emptiness directly while you're feeding the bird.

It has to be an intellectual play recalling what you know about emptiness if you're Arya, and imposing our intention when we're non Arya. 

It's enough to make this big splash in our imprints made to move us along the way to the actual wisdom.

We need this heavy duty goodness of trying to do the first three and a half perfections in order to be able to do them as perfectionizers.

It's really a beautiful system, because as we intend to do my active giving to reach Buddhahood, I'm actually moving myself along the path to it, albeit slowly but better than not at all.

Any teaching in which we get a glimpse of how our behavior with a growing state of mind of understanding emptiness and dependent origination grows the goodness that we will receive more teachings through which we understand better, through which we practice better, through which we understand better.

It's a system that feeds itself once we get started.

Buddha says again and again in the sutra, 

Is covering a billion planets with precious things and offering it to someone a good deed?

Yeah, big good deed. 

Yeah, well, reading, studying, sharing with somebody else, understanding of what Diamond Cutter Sutra is about is incomparably better, stronger, bigger goodness than all those jewels on all those planets.

Just understanding something about Diamond Cutter Sutra is planting the seeds in your mind or reaching your Buddhahood someday.

All you have to do is read it.

Technically, says Choney Lama, you need to think about it too. You need to study it. You need to get some teaching on it probably, because it's kind of cryptic to just read it, and for sure you can't just hold it and stare at it. 

Even when Buddha says, it's a better good deed to hold one verse, like one page, then all those goodnesses… he is not quite being literal here.

But the effort to understand it, the effort to help somebody else understand it, that goodness done with this growing understanding of how to reach Buddhahood is incomparably stronger, bigger, better goodness than all those jewels on all those planets.

(115:33) We would say, okay, what exactly do I need to do?

Geshela says, if you ask an Arya that, they would say TU SOM GOM.

Classtime—TU. 

Contemplation time, think about it time—SOM, and GOM—meditate on it time.

In order for just reading one verse of Diamond Cutter Sutra to be that powerful a karma we attend classes by someone who's teaching accurately, properly.

We think about what we've learned, and we meditate on what we've learned.

The other aspect of GOM means we get used to it. We get used to living according to it.

One class about the pen now and then it's a great goodness, but it's not enough. Hours and hours and hours of teachings, all planting seeds for growing our wisdom.

Then thinking about what we've learned, and then working on understanding it deeply enough to live by it.

Then lastly, they say, and more important than all of that is Guru yoga. 

Guru yoga means finding a teacher that fits you.

Guru yoga is Sanskrit, and being close to them, serving them, helping them, helping them help others. Devoting oneself to helping them do all the deeds that they do.

Ideally you live next door, and you do their laundry, and you buy their groceries. 

There doesn't seem to be enough gurus to go around for us all to do that.

But in our state of mind, as we grow our relationship with that being that we see as the one who knows and loves us so much that everything they do is intended to get us enlightened as quickly as possible, we devote everything that we do to their goal, to their goal coming about.

What's their goal? For you to reach your Buddhahood.

It's no sweat to help them achieve their goal. It's our goal. It's what we want.

Technically they're going to say, the way you help me best is study, study, study, contemplate, contemplate, contemplate, meditate, meditate, meditate.

The goodness we get by helping them achieve their goal is what makes those deeds powerful enough that we learn our scales in the first three months, and we can play concertos to our hearts content much more swiftly than if we're left out on our own to apply what we've learned.

The most powerful goodness we can do is find our teacher, our perfect match and serve them.

That completes our class 5.

Course 6 class six turned out to be an exceptional class.

My advice is that it's very powerful if you can hear that particular class for your first time from somebody who's saying it, versus hearing it as a recording.

After you hear it the first time orally, get as many recordings of it as you can and listen to them again and again and again.

Especially get one of the versions of Geshe Michael teaching it. The original ones available from ACIdharma.org. He's taught it in other places over time.

We are doing it next class. So move mountains to be here, and move mountains to be here on time so that the download can come, because that's what I'll be doing, is downloading it. 

It's a really, really important class. So do your best.

[Class ending]

For the recording, welcome back. We are ACI course six, class 6. It is September 22nd, 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]

Review Class 5

(8:22) I do want to do the review, because it leads us into the class nicely.

Your quiz asked for the six perfections in order. We've learned them:

1. the perfection of giving,

2. the perfection of moral discipline,

3. the perfection of patience, meaning not getting angry when we're in a situation where we would,

4. the perfection of having a good time doing our other perfections,

5. the perfection of meditative concentration and 

6. the perfection of wisdom.

We didn't really talk about why that is the order. We'll talk about that in future classes. It comes in Master Shantideva, I think.

Your second quiz question asks to name the three elements of the act of giving and what it means to not see them.

The answer key, if you noticed, is a little bit different than what I said in class. 

Because I said in class that the giver is like the fourth factor, not one of the three. 

But then in this question the answer key says the emptiness:

of the giver, the emptiness of the receiver and the emptiness of the giving. 

Doesn't talk about the emptiness of the object given, but it would apply in the same way. 

What does it mean to understand the emptiness of the giver, and what it means to not see them? 

In these situations, we're talking about oneself as the giver. It applies if you see someone else giving something to somebody else. But it's not quite the same, same process but then not the seeds we're working on. We want to understand the emptiness of oneself, the giver.

So we would think: I myself am empty of self existence. I exist as these perceptions forced by my karmic seeds ripening right now. So I can use this situation to plant new seeds for a me in a situation as a fully enlightened being.

Understanding this, I don't see this element ‚me‘ as having any self existence, having any true nature. By imposing our understanding: my me giving is seeds ripening, I cannot see the me in me that I used to see before. You don't disappear. You don't stop giving. It's all in mental words at first.

Who's aware of you doing that? You are.

So you're planting seeds in a different way than when we just ordinary me giving bread to the ordinary bird. 

The second element, the emptiness of the recipient.

They too are empty of self nature. They exist as this perception forced on me by the ripening of my past action. So I can use this opportunity to plant seeds to see them as a fully enlightened bean in my paradise, someday.

Understanding this, I don't see them as self existent anymore.

In the period of time that we were describing that to ourself, we weren't seeing them in the same old usual way. Just thinking it once doesn't stop our seeing them in the ordinary way forever. But if we can plant a series of 65 seeds for two seconds, that's more than we did before. Rejoicable. 

The third element, the element of giving, the emptiness of the giving. 

Here's this situation: me giving something to someone.

This whole experience is empty of self existence. Meaning it is a situation and experience I am having by way of my perceiving things this way ripening on me results of past seeds. And so the opportunity to plant seeds, to experience the activity of enlightened being in the future. 

Understanding this, I'm not seeing this third element, the giving, as self existent. 

All in words. The extent to which we can impose those words while we're giving a piece of bread to the bird, those seeds get implanted. It gets easier next time around, and next time around, and next time around. 

That effort to see things ordinarily and refuse to agree with it is such a goodness that those seeds that we plant while imposing this mental gymnastic are a great goodness that contributes to other goodness that we've done, that moves us along in our intellectual understanding of what those words are actually describing, so that we get closer and closer to reaching the place where we can experience directly what we mean by those words.

Seeds ripening, and so opportunity to plant, and so not seeing things as self existent in that period of time.

Am I literally seeing things as self existent still?

Yeah, but refusing to believe it—simply intellectually—gets us started. 

(16:50) What this means is every moment of every experience is ripening of this mind's past perceptions of me doing, saying, thinking something towards an other.

No self existence in any part of it, which is how and why I can experience what I do. And how and why everything I do experience is unique to me.

Everything you experience is unique to you.

Every experience is an opportunity to plant seeds for new experience. Not an opportunity, we are planting seeds for new experience with every interaction.

If the opportunity to plant seeds more consciously, more intentionally driven by our growing wisdom, our growing understanding so that we can reach the point where we are in fact planting seeds that will be the cause of our future Buddhahood instead of cause of a nicer Sansara.

We plant our seed with this understanding of the emptiness of the three spheres, that sequence we just went through.

That's how we plant our seeds in a different way as we are doing our usual interactions with other beings. 

In the sutra, Lord Buddha now asks Venerable Subhuti, 

What do you think Subhuti, when a stream enterer enters the stream, 

does she think to herself, oh I've entered the stream?

Subhuti says, No, she doesn't think that. 

He goes on to say, 

Does a once returner think to themselves, oh, now I'm a once returner.

Subhuti said, No.

Then does a non returner think to themselves, oh, I'm now a non returner.

Subhuti says, No.

What about Arhat?

Once you're arhat, do you really not say, now I am Arhat

Subhuti says, No, they're not going to say that.

But then he is going to go on to say something surprising later in the sutra, that seems to contradict this whole conversation. 

Let's go back to the stream enterer.

What does it mean to be a stream enterer, and why is it significant that a brand new stream enterer does not say, Now I'm a stream enterer?

Do they not know it? Do they're just being really humble so they don't admit it? 

What's the point here?

Stream enterer, becoming stream enterer, happens with our first direct perception of emptiness. In those moments we become Arya.

Let's go to vocabulary. 

Vocabulary:

arya pakpa

so so(r) kyewo

tsok lam

nyenjung

rabjung

jor lam

chi jedrak   "chedak"

tsok chi

rik chi

dun chi

dra chi

chu chok

tong lam

chu la chu shakpa

nyinang mepa

nyamnyi

jetop yeshe

pakpa denpa shi

dukngel denpa

gokden

lamden

gyuma tabu

tong pang

gom lam

The Two Types of Beings & Becoming a Stream Enterer

(21:55) Arya is the Sanskrit word, PAKPA is Tibetan.

Arya = superior.

It does mean superior, superior being. But it's meant to convey that the Arya, the new Arya is superior to how they themselves have ever been before.

It's not at all about comparing oneself to others.

The way in which that word has been used historically has been wickedly misused. It has got a negative connotation in some circles and I beg you to override that with truth. It means, it is the word that we use for someone who had seen emptiness directly. 

In the literature, we say Arya, we say Arya Nagarjuna after he has been to Maitreyas heaven and comes back.

PAKPA in Tibetan. 

There are two divisions of existing beings in all of the universe in that TONG CHENPO, the billion of a billion of a billion inhabited planets.

All those beings, however many there are, fall into one of two categories.

One is they are either Arya, or there are SO SO(R) KYEWO.

SO SO apparently has a R in there somewhere, but you barely hear it when Geshehla says it. But it didn't seem fair to leave it out because it isn't exactly SO SO KYEWO—very, very light hint of R.

What it means is an ordinary person.

We are ordinary person until we've had our first direct perception of emptiness, and then we are PAKPA forever. Not just that lifetime, but forever. Forever changed.

Geshela says it is a huge differentiation between beings, because of this significant change that happens to us by way of this experience of the direct experience of ultimate reality for the first time. It makes us a totally, totally different being.

Up until that moment our career in Sansara is unlimited, and we've heard that not even an omniscient Buddha can know when we will reach our Buddhahood.

They know we will, but exactly when depends on our own karmic management.

Until we've seen emptiness directly, our suffering is still limitless, they say. 

(26:24) The PAKPA coming out of that experience is now on her way out of Sansara. 

Technically on her way to stopping perpetuating Sansara.

They call it getting out.

Typically it will take seven more lifetimes to achieve it. But in those seven lifetimes she remains on this conveyor belt to Buddhahood. To Nirvana, if that was the goal.

We're in a perfection of wisdom teaching that assumes that we're Mahayana, which assumes that our goal is total Buddhahood.

The process is the same. The result of our experience, the direct perception of emptiness, has a different impact on our mind depending on our training going into it.

Once direct perception of emptiness has happened, we're moving inexorably towards our goal. It will be a certain amount of time before that transformation happens. That makes this big difference between a being who is not stream enterer and a being who is stream enterer, and that's where the term stream enterer came from.

We know that all streams flow inexorably to the ocean. If there had been conveyor belts to Buddhahood in Lord Buddha's time, we would be called conveyor belt riders. 

But there were only rivers. So the term is stream enterer.

Once you've entered this stream, there's no getting out of it. Even if you wanted to, you couldn't. But there's no reason you would want to, because of what it means to be Arya, what you know directly to be true. 

Another thing happens at the direct perception of emptiness.

At that moment, one becomes two of the three jewels.

The three jewels is what every Buddhist prays to you.

The three jewels is what every Buddhist goes to for protection: Buddha jewel, dharma jewel, sangha jewel.

We understand that the Buddha jewel, the Buddha, the refuge in the Buddha can be nominal refuge and ultimate refuge.

The dharma jewel, there's a nominal dharma jewel and an ultimate dharma jewel, and same for Sangha jewel.

You as new Arya become dharma jewel and sangha jewel the moment you have your direct perception of emptiness. Your Buddha jewel-hood is still a long way away, probably seven lifetime or faster. But you are already dharma jewel, sangha jewel, 

(31:18) The Sangha jewel conventionally are the ordained people. But the Sangha jewel ultimately is anyone, ordained or not, who's had the direct perception of emptiness, because they have had a certain experience and what they had to do to lead up to that experience through which they now know how to teach others to do it as well. 

They become this authority in seeing emptiness directly, and it's meaning it's significant. They become someone we can rely upon, someone we can go to for protection. Not protection like save me from a speeding bullet, but rather save me from my own ignorant understanding of where things come from. Save me from my habit of blaming others and reacting badly as they teach it.

The dharma jewel, the dharma has all those different meanings. 

One of them is the teachings of the Buddha, the teachings of the commentaries.

But the dharma jewel is the realizations and cessation in the mind of a being who's had the direct perception of emptiness.

What does it take to reach this experience?

Our tradition is really nicely laid out and it's tried and true. People have used it, they've learned it, they applied it, and they gained their sequence of realizations until they reached their goal.

If we follow that guidance, we'll get those results.

Now, following that guidance is easier said than done a lot of times. But it is not the fault of the teachings. It's not the fault of the Lam Rim. It is one's own mental afflictions getting in the way. But even that we learn how to work with them. So there isn't anything that can happen in life that can't be used as part of the practice. 

The Two Meanings of Renunciation

There are prerequisites to reaching the direct perception of emptiness.

The first is getting onto our first path, TSOK LAM, the path of accumulation, accumulating enough disgust, disappointment, unhappiness with our ordinary life that we are compelled to look for an answer.

There are two levels of getting onto TSOK LAM and then moving ourselves along it. 

One's called NYENJUNG.

The other is RABJUNG.

NYENJUNG = to definitely come out

It means definitely coming out of Sansara, it's a term used for actually reaching Nirvana or Buddhahood. It's almost like NYENJUNG is another word for reaching the result. Our ultimate result of reaching our path of accumulation is to reach our goal. 

We can't reach the goal if we never step onto the first path, the path of accumulation. Accumulating enough reject of our sansaric habits. It isn't really accumulating, it's getting rid of stuff. But we need to have the motivation to want to stop perpetuating a broken cycle. That takes time, even to get there to the place where we've reached that place—

There's something wrong with this picture. 

Nothing works right. 

Even the nice stuff and even the nice stuff is disappointing. 

I'm just sick of being disappointed all the time. 

Something's got to shift.

Surely there's something that can help me. 

The other factor in our TSOK LAM reaching it and moving along that, within that process of experiences is RABJUNG.

RABJUNG means to come out of the home life. 

It's more specific than NYENJUNG—to come out of Sansara.

RABJUNG—to come out of the home life.

It means leaving behind the home life. IT sounds like it means, oh, get ordained, move to the monastery. That is an option for our acting on our growing state of mind of REBJUNG. But it is not necessary. 

If you recall the three Principle Paths, they are renunciation, Bodhichitta and correct worldview. We are talking here about our growing renunciation, or whatever has happened in life that triggers our state of mind: ‚I'm going to look for something else.‘ 

That starts us on our path of accumulation. 

Probably we searched for a while. That was all happening on path of accumulation. Eventually you hit the teachings where somebody teaches the pen thing, and seeds open and it's like, oh wow. We glom on and we study more, and see that maybe this is a path that can really work. 

We're trying it on for size, changing our seed planting even maybe before we really know much about it, because of some connection from past life of having met the teachings that speak to us.

Reaching the realization of renunciation, full renunciation, is reaching this state of mind where we are so disgusted with everything in this broken realm that there's just nothing acceptable about it and it's quite radical. 

It's hard to get to that place where ‚I'm done with it‘ without thinking it means you're going to walk away from your family, your job, your bank account, everything, and go live under a bridge. It does not mean that.

This is a mental renunciation that's maybe harder to hold than living under a bridge, but it does not require ditching out of your life. It should not compel us to give up our obligations and to leave other people stranded, other beings stranded, or to mooch off other people so that we can be a good practitioner.

That's misunderstanding this path of renunciation.

We can't reach our path of seeing without starting on the path of accumulation, growing this renunciation, this reject of Sansara.

This NYENJUNG, getting out of Sansara. This renunciation is a mental state, an attitude and an understanding state. We could spend months meditating in a cave, having given everything away, and our mind could be still agitating about, What do they think of me? Who's thinking of me? Do I have enough support? 

We would be no different than we were before we ditched everything and went into the cave.

Or we can be this lay person, totally concerned with serving others, bringing a little happiness into our world, both with our physical service and with our meditation service. Which is interesting, because we think, oh, when I go into meditation, that is me time. I am going deep within myself and everybody has to agree this is my personal time. Don't interrupt me no matter what. It sounds so selfish. 

It's a misunderstanding of what we are doing, and what we are achieving by way of our on the cushion time. Leave me alone, no interruptions, no matter what for the next 10 minutes. 

They don't know what we're doing. But the difference in our own mind as we do our meditation as it's planting seed is, leave me alone. This is my me time. Add more selfishness to the pot.

Leave me alone. I'm saving the world right now—changes the power of those seeds. 

The difficulty is that we so easily can fool ourselves.

We hear the teaching, oh renunciate, give up your world, give up your home life and we're ready to do it. Then it's like, wait, wait. Maybe that's not the highest way I help my family, to just ditch them. I can use everything about my life as part of my practice and then everybody benefits and that is what we're trying to cultivate. But it's so easy to then fall into the ‚We need a new refrigerator‘. Maybe we really do, but then we think, okay, let's go to Home Depot, let's find the one on sale.

It's just sucked into worldly ways. Maybe our wisdom would say, ‚We need a new refrigerator. I wonder who else does.‘

I can't buy two refrigerators, I don't think. But maybe somebody else needs something that I can give them.

Do we think before we go to Home Depot to buy the new refrigerator, we go find somebody who needs something and get it for them?

Say we do that on Saturday and then on Sunday we go to Home Depot.

Did giving the other person the new shoes, make the refrigerator on Sunday?

No, but it contributed to other seeds of giving somebody something that they needed, so that if we find the refrigerator that we need at Home Depot, that's the one we can get it.

Maybe we get to Home Depot and it's like none of these will do. 

We think, what's the matter with the world? What's the matter with Home Depot? They don't have the refrigerator I want. We've just made that mistake of blaming them instead of blaming my own seeds. 

The renunciation is this state of mind. It does evolve into where our old interests fall away. Our old habits of what we do for fun fall away, of even the people that we used to hang out with fall away.

It can happen very sweetly, organically, the way they say. 

You don't need to reach a place in your spiritual practice where Buddha has said, now it's time to renunciate. And then you have to go to all your people and say, you know what? You're ordinary being, I can't see you anymore, because I am on my spiritual path. Those are not the seeds we want.

But what you'll find is they call you, Hey Sarahni, you want to go to the bar and hang out. I never did that, but that might be what happens. And you go, oh gee, I know we used to enjoy doing that, but no, I can't go. 

You don't have to say why. 

You don't have to make up anything.

You just say thanks, but no thanks. 

They call you again, thanks, but no thanks.

How many times do they call before they go, ah, forget it. 

Nobody ever had to say why, or sorry, I don't like you anymore. It's not like that. 

It's interests change, and we've done it.

We've had friends that we aren't close to anymore, because everybody's interests changed and it's not any kind of fight at all.

Same with our growing renunciation. 

Our priorities change. Our interests change. Our very vocabulary changes. 

Maybe they'll be somebody who ends up saying, That Luisa, I can't even talk to her anymore. I can't understand. She speaks in English but I don't get it. She's talking about seeds and behavior, and I don't know. I don't get it. 

You still have a connection with that being, they are still part of the beings that you are going to help someday. 

So they will be back. Not to worry.

But also don't go impose that. Allow it to evolve.

NYENJUNG.

When things come to us, if they're pleasant, enjoy them by sharing them.

When things come to us and they're unpleasant, enjoy them by burning them off. 

That's the joyous effort piece. Burn them off. Don't replant.

You don't enjoy it, of course. But the idea is that the renunciation grows such that this grasping to the things I like and pushing away the things I don't like starts to ease, that impulse gets softer and easier. We become much more tolerant of others and things and experiences because we understand the process.

When we are at that place of beginning to understand the process better, because our renunciation has gotten stronger and stronger, we make this shift from TSOK LAM to JOR LAM.

JOR LAM is the path of preparation where we're preparing to have the direct experience of emptiness. 

The Principle of Quality & Characteristics–CHI JEDRAK

(51:19) We make that preparation by gaining intellectual understanding of what's meant by emptiness and dependent origination.

We gain that intellectual understanding by way of class time, class time, class time, study, study, study, contemplate, contemplate, contemplate, think about it, try to meditate on it.