← Guy Newland

The Dalai Lama's Teachings on the Spiritual Path (3 March 2012, morning)

Guy Newland · 3 March 2012 · 2 h 4 min · Tse Chen Ling via Internet Archive

Download audio

Automated transcript, estimated accuracy about 90% for this source; report an error.

Words the recogniser was unsure of are underlined with dots. Use “Report an error” beside any passage to tell us what the teacher actually says.

Key passages

The teacher's own words, quoted from the transcript below and chosen automatically as representative.

  • 3:38

    Refuge in generating bodhicitta three times, followed by the four immeasurables and the seven limb prayer, each of those latter just once. In English, I go for refuge until I am enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma and the Supreme Assembly. By my practice of giving and other perfections, may I become a Buddha to benefit all sentient beings. I go for refuge until I am enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma and the Supreme Assembly. By my practice of giving and other perfections, may I become a Buddha to benefit all sentient beings. I go for refuge until I am enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma and the Supreme Assembly.

  • 7:15

    First, I argued that in terms of the nature and the purpose of the great treatise on the stages of the path to enlightenment or lamrim chemo, one of the key ideas, of course, is to integrate all the teachings so they can be practiced by one person sitting on one cushion rather than being seen as contradictory or some only being for an inferior sort of person or something like that. And Tsongkhapa is explicit and emphatic about that and that's why he credits the authorship of the book which he himself wrote to Atisha because Atisha had in his Lamp for the Path, which I see is for sale out there, introduced this idea of three capacities of beings and different practices not being subject to being discarded but all being appropriate for each of us as we advance through different kinds of capacity to take action.

  • 11:12

    And then he particularly, in terms of talking about how, in particular talking about how conventional reality or ethical distinctions relate to emptiness, he goes much farther really than Tsongkhapa does in Lamrim Chemo because he takes this idea of dependent arising and emptiness and he puts it It's at the center of every lamrim topic. That's what we were starting to get into last night. But it's just every single topic that he discusses. He shows how well you really don't understand it as well as you should unless you've understood it in a distinctively Buddhist way. And that turns out to be understanding in relationship to the purpose of liberation.

  • 26:28

    Okay. right. So... Discussion and how His Holiness was arguing last night that there isn't any kind of Buddhist practice you can do that's distinctively Buddhist unless it's somehow brought into connection with the goal of liberation or the philosophical view of emptiness which he sees as going together. Other practices are in common to one degree or another with other traditions. So in the next chapter he tells a little story about

  • 55:56

    What's distinctive about being Buddhist as is themed through all the different teachings. Okay, next chapter is on the Four Noble Truths and it's one of the longer chapters. And here we see his maneuvering around and mixing together a number of different lists together in clever ways. He says...

· · ·

1:08 Yeah, or what Report an error

1:20 if it's like more under me? Does that work or not? Then I'm talking into it? See, I don't like it because when you put it here and then I can talk into it, then it's kind of like blocking seeing people. Report an error

1:38 Well, see, I was thinking that, I didn't want to mess with it while I was talking, but I was thinking maybe a more, you know, if people were holding it, you'd hold it under your, Report an error

2:04 when I get, when I, yeah. I might laugh. Yeah. Report an error

2:16 Okay, thanks for that. Report an error

· · ·

2:59 Was that, there are new people? One new person? Okay. I was wondering. You weren't? Okay, two. Report an error

3:13 All right. We all assembled. Report an error

3:25 I want to start on page 34 of the prayer book. And today, let's do the... Report an error

3:38 Refuge in generating bodhicitta three times, followed by the four immeasurables and the seven limb prayer, each of those latter just once. In English, I go for refuge until I am enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma and the Supreme Assembly. By my practice of giving and other perfections, may I become a Buddha to benefit all sentient beings. I go for refuge until I am enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma and the Supreme Assembly. Report an error

4:09 By my practice of giving and other perfections, may I become a Buddha to benefit all sentient beings. I go for refuge until I am enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma and the Supreme Assembly. By my practice of giving and other perfections, may I become a Buddha to benefit all sentient beings. May all sentient beings have happiness and the causes of happiness. Report an error

4:34 May all sentient beings be free from suffering and the causes of suffering. May all sentient beings be inseparable from the happiness that is free from suffering. May all sentient beings abide in equanimity, free from attachment for friends and hatred for enemies. Reverently, I prostrate with my body, speech and mind. I present clouds of every type of offering, actual and imagined. Report an error

5:02 I declare all my negative actions accumulated since beginningless time. And rejoice in the merit of all holy and ordinary beings. Please remain until the end of cyclic existence and turn the wheel of Dharma for living beings. I dedicate my own merits and those of all others to the great enlightenment. Report an error

5:34 When the Dalai Lama, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, left... He went to Tibet for the last time in March of 1959, slipping out of Norbalinga in disguise as a Tibetan soldier and with great difficulty traveling to India. Report an error

6:09 He, according to his own teachings at Lehigh, carried with him a book, which is the book that he was then teaching. His own copy of the great treatise on the stages of the path to enlightenment. And so that fits with, I didn't mention that yesterday, but when he told that to us at Lehigh, people were rather, there was a moment of, I think, chill in the air, you know. Report an error

6:40 It's like he's sitting there with this book, and this is the very same book that he carried with him when he came out of Tibet, and it was something so precious to him. Report an error

6:52 Yesterday I tried to give a little introduction to what we're doing and just as a review and also for the benefit of the two people here for the first time today, I just like quickly in a different way run through my sort of overview and then like get into that in a different way and then pick back up where we were before. Report an error

7:15 First, I argued that in terms of the nature and the purpose of the great treatise on the stages of the path to enlightenment or lamrim chemo, one of the key ideas, of course, is to integrate all the teachings so they can be practiced by one person sitting on one cushion rather than being seen as contradictory or some only being for an inferior sort of person or something like that. Report an error

7:39 And Tsongkhapa is explicit and emphatic about that and that's why he credits the authorship of the book which he himself wrote to Atisha because Atisha had in his Lamp for the Path, which I see is for sale out there, introduced this idea of three capacities of beings and different practices not being subject to being discarded but all being appropriate for each of us as we advance through different kinds of capacity to take action. Report an error

8:09 what we aspire to. Second, that Tsongkhapa's book is so long because in part he's covering the whole path, integrating everything, but he's also bringing in lots and lots of citations of Indian texts, the purpose of which is to show, contra other interpretations in Tibet, that his way of reading and putting together the whole structure of the path is the correct one and is grounded in the teachings of the Indian Buddhist masters. Report an error

8:41 And third, that he very much emphasizes towards the end of the book the need for persistent analysis as part of meditation on the path. He doesn't quite say this, but in effect his argument is you need analysis in the beginning and the middle, not just for a little while in the beginning and also very much opposed to the idea especially. Report an error

9:04 That you should just like stop having dualistic thoughts and then you'll be okay. And that finally sort of the thrust of his philosophical interpretation of emptiness is to show how we can have reliable knowledge of conventional ethical distinctions and have this be fully compatible with a radical understanding of emptiness as the... Report an error

9:30 Utter or sheer lack of any kind of intrinsic nature in any phenomenon whatsoever. And then in the Dalai Lama's interpretation or teaching of this, which was, I guess I'd have to say, you know, the more I go over it now, is somewhat unconventional and creative and outside the box. I mean, he doesn't go through the text in a rote way and read it to us and then make a few stories. He has a kind of, he's seeing this in the context of All of this Indian and Tibetan literature, and he's in effect teaching the text as a way to make an argument to the particular audience that he sees in front of him. Report an error

10:10 So it's not like a... It's not a rote rehearsal by any means, but really a very creative kind of thing that he does. And one of the things is that, as I said, he also uses copious quotes and literary allusions to the whole range of Tibetan and Indian philosophical literature, but not for the purpose of setting, differentiating Gilukba system from the other systems, very much to the contrary. Report an error

10:34 It's to the point of showing that Tsongkhapa's lamrim is part of The heritage of Indian Buddhist literature, a heritage that has come down to all of the sects of Tibetan Buddhism. And he does this without ever saying that Tsongkhapa's ideas have to be changed or modified or adulterated in any way. What he just does is foreground the commonality they have with the other traditions rather than Foregrounding the difference as we were talking about last night. Report an error

11:12 And then he particularly, in terms of talking about how, in particular talking about how conventional reality or ethical distinctions relate to emptiness, he goes much farther really than Tsongkhapa does in Lamrim Chemo because he takes this idea of dependent arising and emptiness and he puts it It's at the center of every lamrim topic. That's what we were starting to get into last night. But it's just every single topic that he discusses. Report an error

11:47 He shows how well you really don't understand it as well as you should unless you've understood it in a distinctively Buddhist way. And that turns out to be understanding in relationship to the purpose of liberation. With the purpose of liberation requiring that you understand that there's a fundamental emptiness of the mind that makes it possible. Report an error

12:07 To purify the mind of the afflictions that are the root of our not being liberated. And so an emptiness, whether, you know, it turns out to be like, well, he keeps coming back to it over and over again in every single topic. To the point where you would think that if you were just listening to me and you hadn't been there or you didn't, you know, hear it yourself, you would think... Report an error

12:32 We would expect Newland to come up with something like this because we always knew that emptiness was the thing he was partial to talking about. So naturally when he teaches lamrim, it turns out to be all about emptiness. But I'm not making it up. This is what he actually, like he said, and everybody was rather dumbfounded by it, I think, at the time. And I've actually been thinking a little bit more about, you know, like obviously, okay, he did that. Report an error

12:57 But why did he do that? And I think that this is also clear and it's something that I didn't really say yesterday, so I'm going to say here in a minute. And the other thing that in terms of the emphasis on logic and analysis, instead of like disparaging other types of Buddhism for not having enough analysis, what he tries to do is to say that all of these schools of Tibetan Buddhism are heir to the great Nalanda tradition. Report an error

13:28 By which he means a tradition of rigorous philosophical analysis based in logic. And so what he's doing, this is sort of crediting them with having in their heritage that which he, as a gilukba, thinks is essential. Do you see what I'm saying? So that's a kind of way of utterly being true to his own tradition, but at the same time being extremely charitable to the other traditions. Report an error

13:58 I'm just having a lot of trouble with this microphone, David. I don't know what to do. I cannot make it stay so it's pointing toward my mouth. Report an error

14:11 It keeps going like this. I'll try again. Report an error

14:23 Let's try like this. Report an error

14:31 What I wanted to do, and we'll look at some other things here, but I thought in terms of just Okay, so. Report an error

14:38 Explaining this a little bit more, it would be interesting. I alluded to the fact that since 2001, actually, His Holiness the Dalai Lama has been focused on and repeatedly bringing up this business about the Nalanda masters and the great Nalanda tradition. As I mentioned last night, this is one of the great universities and libraries of the world, a Buddhist... Report an error

15:04 A monastery in Bihar, India that flourished from the 5th to the 12th century and is generally thought to have been destroyed by a Muslim raider who pulled up to the gates and asked whether the library had a copy of the Quran in it and when told that it didn't he just destroyed the whole place. Report an error

15:31 Although that story has been contested by some Muslims who don't really think they're getting the blame unfairly. But in any case, that's the tradition that has come down, I think, to today in the Buddhist line. So His Holiness wrote this poem, and it sort of illuminates what he's talking about. Last night when he keeps talking about this Nalanda tradition. And I thought I'd read the poem a little bit quickly so you can see what he's thinking about. And then I'll just read one paragraph of his commentary on it. Report an error

16:10 Born from compassion, aspiring to help all beings, God of God, you have attained the Savior's state of abandonment and realization, and you guide beings through the discourse of dependent origination. O able one, the son of speech, I bow my head to you, meaning the Buddha. Then I bow at your feet, O Nagarjuna, most skilled in elucidating suchness free of elaborations, the essence of the mother of conquerors sutras, through the reasoning of dependent origination. Report an error

16:37 And in accord with the conqueror's prophecy, you initiated the middle way. I bow to your principal son, the Bodhisattva Aryadeva, most learned and realized, who has crossed the ocean of Buddhist and non-Buddhist philosophies and is the crown jewel among those who uphold Nagarjuna's treatises. I bow to you, O Buddhapalita, who has reached the supreme adept state and has clearly elucidated the noble Nagarjuna's intent, which is the final meaning of dependent origination, the profound point of existence as mere designation and mere name. Report an error

17:10 Then I bow to you, O Master Bhava Viveka, most accomplished Pandita. You initiated the philosophical tradition wherein, while negating such extremes as the arising of truly existing things, One upholds commonly verified knowledge as well as external reality. And I bow to you, O Chandrakirti, who disseminated all the paths of sūtra and tantra, most skilled in teaching the profound and the vast aspects of the middle way, the union of appearance and emptiness dispelling the two extremes by means of dependent origination that is mere conditionality. Report an error

17:44 I bow to you, O Bodhisattva Shantideva, most skilled... At revealing to the assembly of most fortunate spiritual trainees the excellent path of compassion that is most wondrous through lines of reasoning most profound and vast. And I bow to you, O Master Abbot Shantarakshta, who initiated the tradition of non-dual middle way in accordance with the trainees' mental dispositions. Report an error

18:08 You were versed in the reasoning modes of both middle way and valid cognition, and you disseminated the conqueror's teachings in the land of snows. And I bow to you, O Kamala Shila, who having excellently explained the stages of meditation of the middle way and the union of tranquility and insight in accordance with sūtra and tantra. Report an error

18:29 And then I bow to you, O Asanga. I bow to you, Dignaga. I bow to you, Dharmakirti. I bow to you, Vimukta Sena. I bow to you, Haribhadra. I bow to you, three masters of Vinaya. I bow to you, O Atisha. And then he goes on praising all of these people collectively for a couple of pages. And then concludes, may I traverse all the paths of sūtra and tantra and attain the conqueror's omniscience, characterized by the spontaneous realization of the two purposes. Report an error

19:00 May I work for the welfare of sentient beings as long as space remains. The two purposes I take to mean the welfare of himself and the welfare of others, the welfare of himself being fulfilled in particular and especially in the... Report an error

19:17 Bliss body and the welfare of others being fulfilled in the emanation bodies. So, Denny says about this, today, in an age when science and technology have reached a most advanced stage, we are incessantly preoccupied with mundane concerns. Report an error

19:39 In an age such as this, it is crucial that we who follow the Buddha acquire faith in his teaching on the basis of genuine understanding. Report an error

19:49 It is with an objective mind endowed with a curious skepticism that we should engage in careful analysis and seek reasons. So that point, I was interpreting his emphasis on Malanda in terms of his mission within Tibet to find a common, logical, analytical heritage for all Tibetan Buddhism. Report an error

20:19 Another dimension of it, which he shows right here, is that he's thinking about his role as a world Buddhist teacher, a teacher of Buddhism to people who don't come from a traditional cosmology of having faith and karma and rebirth. And so they hear about this and it's not really something that is, it's not something they take for granted, something that seems strange. Report an error

20:47 And then if they think, oh, that would be cool, I could be born as a bird. I mean, that's a whole stage, right? And then they're not, that's not actually, and then they think, well, if I don't have any self, how am I going to get reborn? And then, you know, so there's many difficulties in sort of coming toward. Report an error

21:01 The traditional view of how you understand rebirth. And so his idea about this, which isn't unique to him because as he said yesterday, Dharma Kirti said the same thing. We can't understand or know everything about karma. We have to have a faith born of a certain kind of confidence in Buddha as a teacher. Report an error

21:24 And you get that confidence by working on things that the Buddha taught with reason that you can figure out. And this is a common theme. So this is only saying, look, we have to appeal to people's reason and get them to see that there's some reason to have faith in the Buddha even when he teaches something that they can't actually see or understand fully, right? Report an error

21:47 That's the idea. And I think this is very much fits with what I was saying yesterday, that the way you organize the teaching has to do with the audience. And he's thinking that for This is what's interesting because on the one hand he's saying that for people who believe in God and that that's the basis of their religious faith and their path of virtue, it may be very bad to study emptiness. Report an error

22:15 But on the other hand, for people who want to generate faith in the Buddha and are coming from a situation where they don't have such faith nor any kind of concept about rebirth or karma. That you have to start with emptiness because that's where you're going to get people to see, gosh, this guy was on to something that other people didn't figure out. Maybe I should see what else he had to say, right? Report an error

22:37 Implicitly that's what His Holiness' argument is. And so this answers for me the paradox of why in a teaching to 4,000 Western people, mostly many of whom are not Buddhists and some are new Buddhists and so forth, that Report an error

22:57 He makes a point of saying, on the one hand, emptiness is harmful to maybe your belief in God. Now I'm going to spend most of the rest of the time talking about it, no matter what other subject comes up. Report an error

23:12 He's sort of giving people, what do you say, a caveat at the beginning. You might want to leave if you think this will be harmful because I'm going to be talking about emptiness. right it's kind of like Report an error

23:29 Anyway, that's my idea about that. Report an error

23:37 One other thing that fits with that is my friends Joshua and Diana who run the Tibetan Buddhist Learning Center in New Jersey since the passing of Geshe Wangyal. They sponsored this teaching at Lehigh and invited His Holiness for that. Some years before, they had asked His Holiness, what should we teach to newcomers who come to our Dharma center? Report an error

24:05 What kind of a curriculum should we have? It's a learning center. We want to have a curriculum for people to study when they come. What should we teach them first? They asked the Dalai Lama that. He didn't say, well, first they should take refuge or first they should meditate on death. He didn't say that. Report an error

24:26 He said, start with the two truths, ultimate reality. Start with the two truths. Start with conventional and ultimate reality. And it's like very counterintuitive, but it's based exactly on this idea that people who are very much coming from the outside and they're part of a culture where reasoning is very strong and science is the privileged form of knowledge, that... Report an error

24:52 They need to be approached on the basis of showing that the Buddha has some chops in this area, has something to contribute in that area, and that it's worth listening to what else the Buddha might have to say. Okay, anyway, that's my main insight overnight. Another thing that occurred to me, just to say, sort of leading into what we're going to be doing is that... Report an error

25:16 Yeah, His Holiness is very much interested in finding all kinds of connections, like hidden connections, not just between the different orders of Tibetan Buddhism. Report an error

25:29 But also between all these different categories that are used, all the different lists in Buddhist teachings, and not just sort of marching through them one at a time, but he's more like shuffling them like a deck of cards, saying, well, you talk about the Four Noble Truths, but this is how it relates to the Four Seals. Report an error

25:47 We talk about the Three Trainings, but this is how it relates to something else. And he's like constantly... is constantly... Report an error

25:55 Meshing these lists and showing how they relate to one another in very complicated patterns. So the ones that will come up today particularly are three types of suffering, three capacities of being, three jewels, three trainings, a little bit on three types of wisdom from study, reflection and meditation, four noble truths, the four seals. Report an error

26:17 And so he takes all these... He doesn't just go through them, he constantly talks about how they're related to one another in different kinds of ways. Report an error

26:31 Picking up from where we were, we were talking about this idea of how emptiness comes into every... Okay. right. So... Report an error

26:45 Discussion and how His Holiness was arguing last night that there isn't any kind of Buddhist practice you can do that's distinctively Buddhist unless it's somehow brought into connection with the goal of liberation or the philosophical view of emptiness which he sees as going together. Report an error

27:06 Other practices are in common to one degree or another with other traditions. So in the next chapter he tells a little story about An interfaith meeting he went to in India. It's called Buddhist Answers to Big Questions. But it basically means distinctively Buddhist answers to big questions, which you know what that means is that it's like just in the last chapter saying what the heart of Buddhism is wisdom that knows emptiness. Report an error

27:36 The distinctively Buddhist answers to these big questions will go back to this understanding of dependent arising and emptiness again. So at an interfaith meeting in India, he says he was on a panel with a Jew and a Sufi and himself, and they were asked to answer three questions. What is the nature of the self? Does the self have a beginning? And does the self ever end? And he starts by saying that, well, Buddhism is quite distinct in regard to its answer to the first question. Report an error

28:12 The kind of self that the other religions are thinking about is the kind that Buddhism is denying. There isn't any independent soul or independent self, permanent essence of the person. Report an error

28:27 But on the other hand, Buddhism does not say that there's no self at all. We accept a conventionally existent self designated in relationship to the mind and body. But in order to talk about whether that self has a beginning or an end, He skips to the second question for a while and talks about that. Is there a beginning to anything before you can talk about whether there's a beginning to this conventionally existent self? Report an error

28:56 So he has his last, before he goes into his critique of a divine creator, he has this extremely moving, sincere tribute to the idea that he's about to refute. Report an error

29:14 In Christianity, there really is a beginning. God created everything. So this very life is created by God. And I think this is a wonderful concept, a great teaching, because the purpose, the very heart of Christianity is love and affection. Knowing that this very life was created by God gives you a powerful feeling of intimacy with God, a sense that God is your own mother. Report an error

29:43 We know that our bodies come from our mothers. They come from our parents, but particularly from our mothers. And even animals feel so close to their mothers. In this same intimate sense, when you feel that this very life is a gift from God, then you feel for that reason very, very close to God. And through this sense of intimacy, you will become more and more willing to listen to God's advice, and you really want to know what God wants of you. Report an error

30:13 He's gone over, you know. It's like so heartfelt, you know. It's completely sincere. You have to understand like he's not, he's actually put himself into the mind of a theist and experiencing things from that point of view. And it's difficult for people to understand if they're not used to the way these things work, how he can go from that expression. Report an error

30:38 To then explaining how the idea of a divine creator is logically untenable. But the thing is that for him this isn't any contradiction or mystery at all, right? Of course he thinks that this is a very, very important idea as part of many people's spiritual paths because there's all different kinds of beings with diverse dispositions in different countries and they all have teachings that are most appropriate to them. Report an error

31:04 And I, you know, I want to respect this as a valid way that people, not a finely logically correct way, but a useful, wonderful teaching, right, that's very helpful to many people at the same time that it's actually wrong. That's the thing, okay? Okay, so then having said that, in Buddhism there isn't any divine creator. What we have instead is... Report an error

31:29 The idea of causality, conditioning. Everything that comes into being arises in dependence on causes and conditions. It's illogical to conceive of a beginning that has no cause because every event must have its own respective causes. And then he quotes a famous passage from the Rice Seedling Sūtra. In which the Buddha talks about dependent arising, well the whole Rice Seedling Sūtra is about dependent arising. In this particular passage Buddha says, dependent arising means that because this exists, that exists, because this has arisen, that arises. Report an error

32:13 So basically he takes the first part of that, because this exists, that exists, to mean that things don't come into being for no reason at all, or as a result of some... Permanent divine power they come into being on the basis of particular causes and conditions which existed before and each thing comes into being as a result of its own particular causes. Report an error

32:37 And then the second part because this has arisen that arises he interprets as meaning that all these causes of each respective thing are all themselves caused. That's how he understands that. That is that It's not like things are caused, but that there's some other cause back of it that's not a cause. The point of the second phrase, as he understands it, is to say it just keeps going back like that. Report an error

33:04 The cause that was there, that was the thing that was the premise for the later thing, that itself is only arising in dependence on something else that was there before that. So in that way you have a chain of causation, chain of conditioning, or a matrix of conditioning. Such that everything's arising from transient causes, causes all which have their own causes in turn and so forth going back. When you trace this chain of causation back, you run into problems if you try to talk about a first cause or a starting point. Report an error

33:42 Why? Because you have to say that this first cause is either itself totally uncaused or that it... It's either caused or uncaused, the first cause. You have to accept that this beginning is either caused or uncaused. So if the beginning is uncaused, this is like causeless cause. Report an error

34:10 So then this is his question. This is not something he's making up. It goes back to the Indian Buddhist tradition. If this is a permanent cause, Okay? This would be... Report an error

34:24 Why do things start at one time rather than another? Say the world is 6,000 years old. I'll just pick a number out of my hat. Say the world is 6,000 years old. Before that, there was only one thing, and that one thing was a permanent cause that caused the world to start up 6,000 years ago. Why did it start 6,000 years ago instead of 5,000 years ago or 10 million years ago? This is an important question. Report an error

34:53 And from his point of view, if this is a permanent cause, it's not anything that's changing. It's something that's like, it's just something that's fit. If it were changing, it would be changing because of particular causes and conditions, so we're influencing it to change. But if it's permanent, then he says there's only two possibilities. Either it's continuously producing worlds at every second because that's its nature, right? Report an error

35:18 Or it never produces one at all. It can't just like sometimes produce a world and sometimes not produce a world unless there's some cause that affects it to say, oh, this would be a good time to, you know, create a world. Well, what would make that a good time? There has to be some condition that influences this permanent, so-called supposedly permanent creator to sometimes make worlds come into existence and sometimes not make worlds come. Report an error

35:44 You know, how did 6,000 years come out, come up? There had to be some... Well, if there's some condition that makes the first cause decide this is a good time to get it started and not that one, then it's not permanent itself. It's being influenced by some other cause and condition. Do you see what I'm saying? It's not absolutely uncaused itself. Report an error

36:09 That part seems like a pretty good argument to me. So he says, if you say that there's an absolute beginning because of this problem, Report an error

36:21 If you say that there's absolutely a first beginning, you'll probably have to accept that this beginning does have a cause, a permanent cause. Oh, I just went through that part. So one cannot say that there's something as a permanent, eternal, unchanging cause if it sometimes does and sometimes does not give rise to its effect. It's changing on the presence or absence of some other condition. Report an error

36:43 On these considerations, Buddhists reject any notion of a beginning to a causal chain. An absolute beginning would have to either be uncaused, are caused by a permanent entity. Of course, the other possibility is not caused by a permanent entity. It could be that just things started without any cause whatsoever. Report an error

37:04 There's not an uncaused cause. There's no cause. Things just started happening. All these events have causes and conditions, but the beginning of the world per se, no cause and condition arose causelessly. Report an error

37:21 That's a possible view. Buddhists consider it to be eminently rejectable. It's like everything we know arises from causes and conditions, so why are you going to suddenly posit that everything is the one thing that doesn't have a cause and condition? Report an error

37:42 If things arise causelessly, you have again this problem. They start at a certain time. Why do they start at that time rather than some other time? Right? Like, you think it was like... Report an error

37:56 Actually, I might be misunderstanding, but I think that's what Stephen Hawking's position is in his latest book, is that things begin causelessly. You can't give a reason because it's a quantum fluctuation or something. Report an error

38:26 Can you hear me when I'm talking? He said time itself is arbitrary. Report an error

38:45 Well, it seems that like in traditional Buddhist philosophy, they are definitely thinking in terms of, all of these analyses are done in terms of an arrow of time. And the thing is, of course, that things, we, time is not like something that we perceive, right? That you can say that it's a conceptual imputation, right? Report an error

39:13 That we make in relationship to objects. But when they do this kind of logical analysis, they're totally working with conceptual imputations. And they're definitely working in terms of a unidirectional arrow of time. And that things, everything arises and depends on conditions that were there prior to it. Not reverse causation per some interpretations of the Report an error

39:38 problems in modern physics. Report an error

39:45 Anyway, that's what he says about that. Now, having said that that's the case in general, it's important, he just puts in a footnote, that it's not that things are caused by everything else. It's that specific things come into existence. It's not that everything produces every other thing. There are specific causes and conditions that give rise to specific effects. Report an error

40:08 And in the case of our existence and cyclic existence, Report an error

40:15 The cause that sort of drives this process of our being born over and over again is ignorance or delusion. So he doesn't see that positing that as a root cause doesn't mean that it's a first cause, like a fall in the garden or something like that. It means that that's the underlying problem that drives this recurrent and beginningless cycling. Now, having established this idea that there isn't any beginning in general, Report an error

40:46 Or that one can't posit a beginning logically. He says, okay, coming back to the question, does the self have a beginning? He says, we have a conventionally existent self. A self is designated in relationship to the mind and body. So when we talk about whether the self has a beginning, we have to decide whether the stream of mental and physical aggregates have a beginning. Report an error

41:13 He's mostly interested then, in this case, in talking about the mind rather than the body. That when we're designating the person in relationship to the aggregates, the aggregates associated with consciousness, the latter four, are crucial because there's more continuity in them from lifetime to lifetime than with the physical ones. Report an error

41:40 When you come to talking about the physical aggregates, I think he's more feeling that on one hand you go back to the same question of talking about the Big Bang and where did it come from when you're talking about material in general. When you talk about the material body of this lifetime, you're talking about something that arises from the mental causes of a previous lifetime. So what you're really interested in when you're talking about the person is whether the basis, part of the basis of designation of the person that has a continuum that moves on from life to life. Report an error

42:09 Is that something that has a beginning? And he says, this is the more enduring continuum of our individual existence involves the mind. The continuum of consciousness has no form, it has no shape and no color, but it exists and it has real and definite effects because it's clear that our choices will lead to experiences of happiness and experience of suffering. Report an error

42:37 So the Buddhist understanding is that the main cause or the substantial cause of each moment of consciousness must be a prior moment of consciousness in that very continuum, in that very stream. He doesn't argue for that view at length, but in general that is the conclusion that's like at the basis of the idea of rebirth, that for us to have subjectivity. Report an error

43:02 That there must be prior subjectivity of some sort as a cause for that to come into being. That you just can't have things that have no subjective awareness at all suddenly be transformed in some way so that they do. And then after making that argument in a general way, he then turns to pointing out a few examples of, what do you say, cases suggestive of reincarnation that he's personally aware of. Report an error

43:31 He told a few stories about a girl in India and a Tibetan boy and a couple other cases where people seem to know things or remember things that were difficult or apparently impossible, although, as he says, this requires further investigation. But on the surface, seem very difficult to account for, that may be the easiest way to account for them in the way that... Report an error

43:57 Most of the Indians and Tibetans are accounting for them is to say this is obviously a case of reincarnation. So he says, we have to look at to see whether there could be some any other plausible explanation for these things. But from the Buddhist point of view, it's clear that there's no beginning to the continuity of mind. And that continuity of mind is the basis of designation for the person or the conventionally existent self. Report an error

44:27 So in a sense, our self, to the extent that it exists and not as the object of reputation, has always been cycling. So the question, is there an end? Report an error

44:45 He points out that there are two different kinds of Buddhist traditions about this. One that says that when you reach final nirvāṇa in the end, there's This is a nirvāṇa without residue, meaning that the individual or the continuum of the self, the conventionally designated self, completely ceases to exist like the flame of a butter lamp going out. Report an error

45:10 And he doesn't say who he's attributing this view to, but clearly he understands this as being a non-Mahāyāna Buddhist view of what it means to come to the end of your last lifetime in cyclic existence. Report an error

45:26 And so then he raises, you know, he says the question, we have to look further into the question of what is the nature of the Buddha to whom we go for refuge. Report an error

45:37 The Buddha is described as the supreme among bipeds and the Dharma as the supreme teaching and truth, a truth that it represents peace, perfect peace, and the Saṅgha as the supreme assembly. But if this is all we understand when we say our... When we go for refuge, then this isn't anything that's unique to Buddhism. Back to the same theme. He said, because other spiritual traditions have their idea about original teachers as being the supreme human being. Report an error

46:09 That's quite clearly true. And they will probably say that the teachings of these teachers represent a truth that is peaceful and transcendent. And then they'll form some idea of a spiritual community that's built around the practice of those teachings. So that's religious, but not... Especially Buddhist in itself. And that's his point. What makes it Buddhist is connecting it to the idea of understanding what actual liberation is. Report an error

46:35 And in his view, the view that Tsongkhapa shares, the Mahāyāna view, is this isn't to be understood as a coming to the end of the person, but the... Attainment of Buddhahood in terms of four embodiments. A truth body and a form body. I don't know exactly what translations you guys are used to, but like a nature truth body and a wisdom truth body on the truth body or Dharma body side. Report an error

47:07 And then a bliss body and emanation bodies on the form body side. He's saying that when the mind has been purified and fully awakened. Then it doesn't poof out of existence, but it manifests its deepest, truest nature and potential, which has been there latent all along, in effect. That's what he argues. He points out that Nagarjuna actually criticizes this idea that a person could attain nirvāṇa without residue. Report an error

47:42 That is, could a person attain a nirvāṇa in which they poof out, right? And he said, it doesn't make any sense because then there wouldn't be any person at the time, there wouldn't be any person, there wouldn't have been any time when a person would have attained such a thing. So you can't talk about a person attaining it. Because either the person's there and they haven't attained it, or then they've poofed and there's no person to talk about as having attained the poofitude, right? Report an error

48:11 Poofitude is unattainable by persons. Anyway, so Nagarjan has that argument in his 60 stanzas. So he goes on to say that even in Mahayani can say that, you know, our hots who sought liberation mainly for themselves, even if they also have great love and compassion, their basic motivation, their practice is mainly for their own welfare and have such different kinds of qualities. Report an error

48:41 From Buddhas, that there has to be a lot of, you know, specifically Buddhist practices, I mean, specifically Mahāyāna Buddhist practices involved in attaining the qualities of a Buddhist mind, such as the six perfections. Report an error

48:59 So his point is that the essential quality of the mind is that it's clear and knowing. Unlike ignorance and delusion, which can be eliminated, there isn't anything by wisdom. There isn't anything that can come along and discredit or eliminate or refute or stop the basic nature of the mind as clear and knowing. Report an error

49:22 This is his view. The basic nature of our mind is clear and knowing. There isn't anything that will impede it or cut it off that will give rise to another moment of consciousness, which could be quite different or similar, but some other kind of moment of consciousness will arise. Its basic nature will continue to be that which is clear and knowing. That's his idea. Then he relates this to highest yoga tantra, which he's not actually mentioned until the very end of Lama Rinpoche, but as His Holiness is constantly bringing it in here and there. Report an error

50:01 In terms of a highest yoga tantra point of view, at a very subtle level, you have the wind aspect that's associated with the subtle. In terms Report an error

50:12 There's a subtle energy, right, or wind, and that is sort of a subtle kind of materiality, and that's associated with a subtle kind of consciousness. And these two go along right now in us from now up until Buddhahood. And so he thinks that that inseparability of this kind of basic energy that we all have. Report an error

50:40 With this subtle kind of consciousness that we all have represents this indivisible continuum that goes on until perfect Buddhahood. The consciousness itself is dependently arisen and is fundamentally empty, while emptiness is the ultimate nature of this consciousness. When one goes along the path, accumulates the proper causes and conditions, this emptiness... Report an error

51:08 Becomes recognized or recognizable as the nature body of a Buddha or the natural body of a Buddha. A Buddha's body as the very nature of reality itself. Report an error

51:22 The emptiness of the mind. I mean we already have an empty mind but it's not suitable to be called a Buddha's nature body because we're not Buddhas. But as our minds become pure that basic empty nature of the mind is the Buddha's nature body. When one attains Buddhahood, the ordinary person's mind is pure and unpolluted in its essential nature, its basic nature, but it's tainted by adventitious or circumstantial pollutants and stains. Report an error

51:54 His Holiness didn't do it right here, but I heard him before use this example of some kind of a counter, like a kitchen counter or a tabletop. Report an error

52:05 We don't have like the ideal substance here, but if you have like a granite or a marble counter or a stainless steel counter or something like that in the kitchen or on the top of the table and you think that this is just in itself very shiny and clean. It's clean in itself, you know what I'm saying? And yet then you put peanut butter and maple syrup over the top like someone comes and smears it all over and it's smeared over there for a long time. Report an error

52:35 But then you can clean up the counter, right? And when you clean it up, the basic cleanness or underlying shininess of the surface is revealed. You see what I'm saying? And he's used examples like that a bunch of different times. So you have two kinds of clarity, two kinds of clarity. The basic clarity or reflectiveness or cleanness of the surface that's always there. Report an error

53:05 And then the fact that for a while, it's that basic clarity has been mucked up by all this goop being poured over the surface. When the goop's cleaned up, then you have two things that sort of come together. The basic clarity that's already, always, already has been there, but wasn't manifest. And then the circumstantial clarity of the fact that you've cleaned the goop off the top, right? Report an error

53:29 And so that's the idea. You're thinking of the basic nature of our mind is always fundamentally clear in knowing. The goop is the afflictions, right? And so when you're cleansing away the afflictions, the basic nature of the mind is revealed, right? And is able to shine, right? That's the idea. So at this point, the person's consciousness becomes a Buddhist embodiment of the truth as wisdom and the energy. Report an error

53:55 The subtle energy that's accompanying the wisdom mind becomes a Buddha's embodiment as form. Report an error

54:08 Because the attainment of Buddhahood has been motivated by an intention to work for the welfare of an infinite number of beings, or as long as space remains, then once it's attained, that Buddha doesn't pass out of existence. then Report an error

54:25 Because the motivation for practice has established this clarity that will remain. Report an error

54:37 The practice of the bodhisattva path comes to fruition in an enlightened being who goes on acting for the benefit of all beings for as long as space remains. So it says when you understand what a Buddha is in this kind of way, then this changes, deepens your understanding of going for refuge. Report an error

55:00 Maitreya's Uttara Tantra, Sublime Continuum, says that the Dharma isn't just freedom from attachment. It's something that goes beyond, it's inconceivable. It transcends anything we can imagine or anything we can express. And the Saṅgha is a community of practitioners who've embodied that kind of Dharma. Report an error

55:20 And so he said when you have this kind of deep sort of philosophical... understanding of what the three jewels are then your way of taking refuge in them is distinctively Buddhist right and that's that's of Emptiness is the key to liberation. Report an error

55:56 What's distinctive about being Buddhist as is themed through all the different teachings. Okay, next chapter is on the Four Noble Truths and it's one of the longer chapters. And here we see his maneuvering around and mixing together a number of different lists together in clever ways. He says... Tsongkhapa is teaching us how to lead students with actual instructions. By actual instructions, he means instructions of the Buddha. Report an error

56:33 When we say instructions of the Buddha, what we mean is distinctively Buddhist instructions, which of course means giving instructions that will guide people toward liberation. Report an error

56:45 Now he says liberation is something that people, moksha, people will talk about all over India in different religions, not just Buddhism. Report an error

56:56 In Buddhism, liberation is understood as a mental state or else a quality of mind that involves freedom from some contamination or stain. And I was very aware of the fact that he used that or in there. It's either a mental state or a quality of mind that involves freedom from some contamination or stain. Report an error

57:24 So this turns out to be a subtle thing. about that's a little difference within Gilukpa over whether to think of Nirvāṇa as the emptiness of an awakening person's mind or to think of it as the mental state of a person who's cleansed away some afflictions. I mean is it the ultimate nature of a mind in which some affliction has been cleared or is it The conventional nature of that mental state in which the mind has been cleared. Do you know what I'm saying? If I've cleared away some afflictions off the stainless steel nature of my mind, cleaned up some of the maple syrup, not even necessarily all of it, I've cleaned off some portion of the counter, then if you say that nirvāṇa that I've attained Do you define that in terms of the fundamental nature of the mind, which is that emptiness of the mind? Or do you define it in terms of just some circumstantial thing that has arisen, which the maple syrup happens to be cleaned up right now? Report an error

58:33 And this is a difference. So do you say that the third true cessations, do you say the third noble truth? Is the third noble truth a conventional truth or an ultimate truth? That's what we're talking about. When you stop, that third normal truth is stopping, we think of it as the stopping of an affliction. Report an error

58:54 It seems like it would be, to me, a mental state. That's what I always, I actually held that view for a long time until I realized what the other, you know, the meaningfulness of the other view. But this is... A division within Gilukba actually, not necessarily, there aren't very many important divisions about philosophy within Gilukba, this is one. Report an error

59:16 Penchan Sonang Chakpa's textbooks, tradition, the Losaling lineage of Drebel Monastery is very persistent in holding that third noble truth of true cessations, nirvāṇa, is Conventional, a conventional truth because it's a mental state and all mental states are conventional phenomena. Whereas other schools seem to hold, I'm not 100 % sure about Sarah, and I know FPMT is in the Sarah J lineage, but I'm pretty sure that Sarah is together with Gomong in saying that the third noble truth is an ultimate truth, which means that It's the emptiness of a mind in which some affliction has been cleaned and not the mental state itself. So anyway, it's not absolutely, it's just how you want to talk about it. Report an error

1:00:18 It's not like a big, and actually all the differences within Guillaume, except the one we talked about last night, are like that, I think. Report an error

1:00:29 He talks about how Nagarjuna in the Fundamental Treatise on the Middle Way says that one gains freedom by stopping karma and the afflictions, that karma and the afflictions arise from false conceptualizations. And these conceptualizations or dualistic constructs can be calmed by emptiness, calmed by emptiness. Report an error

1:00:49 So in that way of reading the text, Nagarjuna sees emptiness as a means for stopping... Karma and the afflictions for stopping cyclic existence. But His Holiness then immediately points out that you can also read the same Sanskrit text instead of saying that false conceptualizations are calmed by emptiness. Report an error

1:01:11 It could also be read to say they're calmed within emptiness. And it seems clear that that's the reading that he's really interested in, to say that the afflictions dissolve into the nature of the mind or cease. are exhausted or are extinguished in the nature of the mind itself. Nagarjuna takes liberation to be the very nature of the mind at the point when all false conceptualizations have been dissolved. Report an error

1:01:45 And there he tips his hand that he sides with the gomong position and attributes it to Nagarjuna, that nirvāṇa is the basic, the ultimate nature of the mind at a point that it's stopping. you know, afflictions, right? Report an error

1:02:05 Then he talks about the order of the Four Noble Truths. I think we're probably familiar with the general question of why did Buddha teach the truths in a non-chronological order? I don't know. I guess you've probably thought about this before. It starts with an effect and then goes to the cause of that effect. Report an error

1:02:29 And then goes to a different effect, which would be preferable, and then goes to a different cause, set of causes of that different effect. And so then he talks about the, you know, what do you say, the teaching value of approaching things in these ways. It's only when one comes to understand the nature of suffering that we can truly aspire to freedom from that suffering. Buddha teaches the truth of suffering first because he insists that we must recognize suffering as suffering. Report an error

1:03:01 Normally we're taking pleasurable experiences and mundane successes as desirable. If we look around at people in the world who are having some fantastic success, we can see that we don't think, oh, that's too bad they're having that suffering. Report an error

1:03:17 Yeah, no, we may feel admiration or something less admirable than admiration, right, in those cases, right? So you have to, he says, instead of recognizing worldly success in the nature of suffering, we just take it to be happiness. And so we have to cultivate a much deeper understanding of what true suffering is. And he quotes then First Pension Lama in talking about the three types of suffering. Report an error

1:03:48 The first three types of the first, the three aspects of the first noble truth as suffering. Jimbo was translating at Lehi as evident suffering, or some people say it's dukkha dukkha, you know, the suffering of suffering. So suffering in the sense of actual mental anguish and physical pain, that kind of suffering. Saying, well, there's that kind of suffering, and we don't have to, like, have a human rebirth to recognize that pain is bad like animals have the same understanding, right? Report an error

1:04:18 And then he goes on to say, well, then there's the suffering that comes because things keep changing, the second noble truth, the suffering of transitoriness of things. And he's saying, you don't have to be a Buddhist to have a sense of disenchantment with that. And that's why he argues that non-Buddhists will seek heaven, you know, or through meditative states because they want to get To something that goes beyond the sort of, get to a stabilized mental condition. These high states of meditation where they're just stabilized in a certain state of mind. Report an error

1:04:58 And they'll escape the kind of fluctuation of feeling good this moment. A little bit too warm, a little bit too cool. Oh, my stomach's a little bit upset. Oh, my legs are cramped. And they don't have any of these problems because they just like stay settled, you know, blissfully or in equanimity for like a whole lifetime in a very peaceful condition. Report an error

1:05:17 So they sort of like have gotten away from that kind of fluctuation of the suffering of impermanence for a little while, right? Anyway, for a good while, not forever. You say, so basically, you know, what Buddhists are really interested in and should really focus on is not suffering of change or suffering that's like obvious even to animals, but the suffering of conditioned states, the subtlest or third level of suffering. Report an error

1:05:45 And the fact that our very existence is driven and conditioned by karma and the afflictions. That our aggregates serve as the conditions for the arising for future suffering and also containers within which we're presently bound in suffering. And if you understand suffering then in this subtle way... Report an error

1:06:05 Then you generate the determination to be free or real renunciation, wanting to get out of cyclic existence. There's a few nice quotes from Tsongkhapa in the teachings. Once you recognize suffering in this way, you see yourself as continuously submerged in an ocean of suffering. There isn't any time when you surface from it. Report an error

1:06:28 You realize if you want to be liberated from suffering, you have to do something to counteract it. You have to recognize you can't stop suffering unless you counteract its cause, and this leads you to investigate the truth of origin. Report an error

1:06:47 So he says then, of course, this leads you to investigate the truth of origin and see that karma leads to suffering, afflictions produce karma, that the root of the afflictions is a conception of self. And this is common to all teachings of Buddhism. And sometimes it's understood in terms of this profound emptiness and other times it's not. But it's common to all kinds of Buddhism to have this basic understanding that we're trapped in cyclic existence by grasping after a reified sense, exaggerated kind of self. Report an error

1:07:24 So he asked the question, he says, look, basically we all have this innate inborn tendency to grasp at an exaggerated kind of self. I, I, I, hold on very tightly. And it's not something that we're taught to do or something that we learn in a philosophy class or a religion class that we have intrinsically existent self. Report an error

1:07:48 We just have a natural tendency to grasp in an exaggerated way a reified sense of self. It's a very natural state of mind, he says. Report an error

1:08:00 Very natural to have this ignorance, this delusion. But is it correct? That's the question. Just the fact that it's natural doesn't mean that it's realistic. And of course then he goes on to say that you have to analyze and see that this inborn natural way of seeing the world is wrong. It goes against the grain to constantly keep challenging things that just seem obvious. But when you stop to think about it, the way that things are appearing discords with what makes any sense when you stop to think about it. Report an error

1:08:35 And that's the case with the self as well. When we react to events at an ordinary level, we just react to how things appear. And things appear to us, even at the sensory level, as they had some nature of their own on their own side that was set up apart from causes and conditions, apart from our participation in them. Report an error

1:08:57 These are objectively real. They have some sense of separateness and their own solidity. They appear to us that way and so we just naturally accept that they really are that way. We grasp very strongly at them and then that further reinforces our afflictions. So it's like this idea is that the affliction of delusion or ignorance is like the co-conspirator with all the other afflictions. Report an error

1:09:26 And it inflames them and is inflamed and reinforced by them continuously. So we have to practice all the time, not just when we're sitting in meditation, but investigate and think about this disparity between what makes sense about how things could really exist and how they appear to us, even at the sensory level. Report an error

1:09:47 And this way we could learn to differentiate between the way we're used to looking at the world and the way the world actually exists. Report an error

1:09:58 To take refuge in effect in reality and not in a naive assumption about how things exist. Report an error

1:10:11 So then he gives a couple examples of how by understanding the nature of the mind is fundamentally empty, that we can clear away some afflicted ideas about people that... We have some problems with. So, for example, if someone's just would appear to be like naturally mean and hateful, His Holiness argues that it's very unlikely that this person actually mean and hateful all the time. Report an error

1:10:54 They're not permanently manifesting hatefulness continuously. And so this hatefulness that we're perceiving, even though you could say that, we could say they're temperamentally inclined to hatefulness, but you can't say that they're just hateful by nature, right? It's going a little bit too far. That's what we're always doing. Because not only does this person have moments when they're not hateful but have some neutral sense, but this person could even have some moments of loving kindness or moments of compassion, even though they're much rarer than the moments of hatefulness. Report an error

1:11:31 So this shows that the basic nature of this person, the essential nature of our minds and other people's minds, it's not like these afflictions are not rooted in the very nature of the mind. That's what he's trying to say. They're removable, right? Because they're not essentially or absolutely grounded in the nature of the mind itself. Report an error

1:11:55 This is the key thing because this means like, okay, we have... These sufferings and we have these afflictions that are causes of suffering, but they're not grounded in the nature of the mind itself. That means that there's the possibility of removing them and eliminating them in terms of the third noble truth. Report an error

1:12:18 So what do you think is the fundamental ignorance that the root of cyclic existence depends on what you take to be the view of reality? People have a false view of reality at the root of cyclic existence. Report an error

1:12:37 Nagarjuna's 70 stanzas says, Phenomena arise from causes and conditions, and ignorance grasps that phenomena as possessing final existence. Ignorance is a mental state that conceives of dependently originated phenomena as though they had some final reality of their own. Just as the sense of touch, Aryadeva argues, pervades the whole body, including... Report an error

1:12:59 Like, say, the surface of our eye and so forth. Delusion pervades and permeates all the afflictions. When we really understand dependent origination, then we can eliminate this problem. Report an error

1:13:12 Generally speaking, people are aware of causal relationships. It doesn't mean that we wouldn't be able to function if we didn't have some sense that things depended upon causes. Like, if we want to get a better job or something like that, then we understand that there's something we probably have to do. Report an error

1:13:29 To create causes and conditions to get more money or to get a different job with a different boss, something like that. And he makes a point that even animals understand that, right? That it's not something unique to humans that understand that things arise in dependence on causes and conditions. So the way in which Nagarjuna understands dependent arising as meaning emptiness is different from that. Report an error

1:13:59 People, when they think about this leads to that, they tend to think of the causes as having some nature of their own which gives them the power to produce certain effects which are distinct from or other than the causes, perhaps. Report an error

1:14:14 This is a little bit unclear, you know, that we naturally think of the causes the same as the effect or as other than the effect. I tend to think like the cause is over here and the effect is over there. They're two completely different things. Report an error

1:14:29 But... Then, of course, there's a problem when you start to analyze it. Like if the cause and the effect are separate things, then how does the cause get its oomph over to the effect? It must have some even intermediate thing. Maybe there's some ether or some medium or some air, some philosophical airspace, which it shoots some. Report an error

1:14:56 Rays through. You know what I'm saying? How does its causal powers get from over here over to generate the effect? But if it actually contacts the effect and touches the effect and you can say at a certain point in time you have both cause and effect together, then you can't really talk about them being separate anymore, right? Report an error

1:15:15 Because then they're overlapping and you can say that they're right there together in time. I mean, are they a cause and effect together in time or a part in time? Either way. When you analyze it, you start to have a problem. He's saying cause and effect operate specifically because cause and effect are not self-contained separate realities. Report an error

1:15:39 There's a kind of openness or conventional existence in which conditioning is able to operate, but when you analyze and see exactly how did it work, then you don't find anything. That's what makes it able to work. Because if it had to work as things that were absolutely separate or right together, it wouldn't be able to work at all. There's no way to conceptualize such a mechanism. Report an error

1:16:07 So when you recognize that things have this kind of relational dependent nature, that it's not that they're real and then they do some causal work, but that just in their very nature, they're relational or dependent. And you see that nothing has its own intrinsic reality. Report an error

1:16:25 So he points out, and I think I mentioned this, he said this point yesterday too, that Buddha's teaching of dependent arising can be looked at in two levels. One, it teaches us about cause and effect. And that we can use for attaining favorable rebirth in higher realms of physical existence by focusing on virtue and good karma. And then also we can look at it more deeply in the way I was just talking about it in terms of how when properly understood it implies emptiness and understanding emptiness leads to our longer term goal of attaining liberation. Report an error

1:16:57 Now the liberation of course is the distinctively Buddhist goal and the more important goal but the Dalai Lama acknowledges that in practice It may be that we can't really do anything about that one unless we have a good rebirth. So it can be very important to focus on the first aim first and make sure that we have a proper, that we don't do anything, like for example, that in our quest for liberation we don't so deeply engage with an understanding of emptiness that mistakenly undermines our confidence in karma. Report an error

1:17:35 And thereby we end up falling into a bad rebirth. Report an error

1:17:49 So then he goes into more detail about different types of suffering. And there is like a huge amount about the different ways of dividing up suffering in Lamrim Chemo. Report an error

1:18:01 And one of his points, he says, our physical and mental aggregates arise through the conditioning of karma and the infliction and have a nature that is... Just like the karma and the afflictions they come from. Our mind and body have this quality of being continuously vulnerable to further aggravation. Report an error

1:18:28 They're vessels for future suffering. He tells a little story about a Mongolian who lived during the time of the 12th Dalai Lama who fell into some disgrace and then pointed at his body and said, well, all this misery comes to me because I have... These aggregates, seeing the very condition of being born in cyclic existence as the root of the problem, not the fact of some more immediate cause. Report an error

1:18:58 He goes on to argue that in terms of the suffering of change, second of the three types of suffering, pleasant feelings experienced by beings in cyclic existence are like the pleasure felt when cool water is applied to an inflamed boil or carbuncle. As the temporary feeling fades, the pain reasserts itself. So sometimes you could feel good, but there's like a basic underlying problem that remains. Report an error

1:19:25 You have like this huge carbuncle, right? So the fact that it doesn't hurt for that particular time doesn't mean that the problem has gone away. And that's the way he sees like, well, when people, that's the way, that's the way that Lama Rinpoche presents pleasures of encyclical existence. Report an error

1:19:42 It's like, oh, that feels really good that it's not hurting so much for a little while, right? That kind of thing. But then the basic underlying nature is miserable and reasserts itself. Report an error

1:19:57 He goes on to talking about the suffering of change to say that except for one Buddhist school, most of the Buddhist schools regard the basic idea of impermanence mainly in terms of momentary impermanence, right? The fact that we'll die someday or that things will break down someday, but the fact that things are continuously changing, like we say instant by instant, but then you can't even really capture how small these instants are. Report an error

1:20:24 They're flooding or flushing or flowing by, you know. And that this is really what, in the nature of things, in the sense that Report an error

1:20:37 It's not like the cause gives rise to the thing and there it is. And then unfortunately some other causes come along and break it. But that it's transitory. Report an error

1:20:51 Everything arises from impermanent causes that have the nature of generating them as impermanent things. So everything's just going to be impermanent, right? And sometimes it... Is succeeded in the next instant by something that looks or appears or functions so much like the first instant that we see it as being exactly the same, but sometimes not, right? Report an error

1:21:20 And there's nothing, you know, that like gives it a nature of being permanent or solid. Okay. Report an error

1:21:30 So then he relates this to the four, this discussion to the four seals. We're starting it toward the end of the Four Noble Truths chapter. He has to tie it in with the Four Seals. So you know the Four Seals, I don't know, do you call them the Four Seals? Do you know what I'm talking about? Yeah, okay. People have all different words, right? So, all products are impermanent. Report an error

1:21:59 All contaminated things are suffering. All phenomena lack self and nirvāṇa is peace. He says about this that these first two, that all conditioned phenomena are impermanent and that all contaminated phenomena are in the nature of suffering, basically pertain to the first two noble truths. They don't seem to exactly match up, but he's saying that the purport of these first two relates to the first two noble truths. Report an error

1:22:33 then the... Third seal, that all phenomena are empty and devoid of self, he connects this to the, I think he's connecting that to the fourth noble truth, that is that we have to realize that everything is empty with the wisdom consciousness. And then the third noble truth, that nirvāṇa is peace, the third seal is connected to the fourth. Report an error

1:23:02 The fourth seal is connected to the third noble truth. Sorry, I finally got it right. Nirvāṇa, true cessations for the third noble truth is related to the fourth seal, that nirvāṇa is peace. So he says, after not quite explaining it exactly like that, but pointing out how these things relate to each other, he says, It is beautiful to contemplate the four seals together with the four noble truths and take them to heart in this kind of integrated way. And then the reason I think is important to him is because it's another way of talking about the same thing, that he sees the four seals as sort of the Buddhist view or the Buddhist philosophy. Report an error

1:23:42 He says it's not enough to just say, well, we have a problem, it has a cause. Oh, I get this so much as a professor. I teach the Four Noble Truths. I explain it the very best I can. And then students come into class and they write an essay. It's just like when you go to the doctor. You have a sickness and the doctor finds an illness. Report an error

1:24:01 And then you find out that there could be a cure. And then you get some medicine. And then they'll stop writing. And I'm like, well, I thought we were talking about Buddhism. I mean, that's an example. But like, okay, so how do you make this Buddhist? And that's what he's saying is how do you make it Buddhist? You have a structure here. Report an error

1:24:20 It's an interesting, you know, it's a model. We could apply it to any problem, right? But how is it, what makes it Buddhist? Well, you have to like put in the four seals and explain what the actual content of that structure is. Report an error

1:24:39 And then he ends the chapter, and I don't know, you know, there's a little bit of coming and going in terms of like how these different things fit together. Report an error

1:24:52 But he ends the chapter talking about the question of what exactly is an affliction. Tsongkhapa cites a saṅgha, this compendium of knowledge. An affliction is a phenomenon that when it arises is disturbing in character and disturbs the mind stream. It's disturbing in character and disturbs the mind stream. So His Holiness says that the mind has a natural state of being imbalanced. Report an error

1:25:24 And that it is disturbed from that natural state of balance or equilibrium by the afflictions. The afflictions are the mind is sort of naturally clear and knowing. And so he's saying the conventional state of the mind, if left undisturbed by the afflictions, is to be still and clear. And that the afflictions are what disturbs the mind. Report an error

1:25:49 And he goes on about this. This point to say that the wording that Tsongkhapa uses, emphasizing that he's been relying in giving this explanation, particularly on a Saṅgha, could be understood as being understood by the Dalai Lama to imply that this is just how we define affliction based on a Saṅgha, but it's not necessarily the only or final definition that one could give. Report an error

1:26:13 And he uses, because the Dalai Lama, J. Rinpoche Tsongkhapa doesn't say, This is my definition of affliction. He says, if we go by what a saṅgha said, the definition looks like this. And the reason he wants to say that is because he's not 100 % happy with the definition. He wants to revise that a little bit. And the reason is because he feels that when a person who hasn't realized emptiness is meditating on cultivating compassion and they are taking into view from the depths of their heart the misery of other beings, that You can't say that there isn't some aspect of their mind being disturbed at seeing the suffering of others. That empathy in some sense means feeling for, compassion means feeling with or feeling the pain of another. Report an error

1:27:02 And so he wants to say that when you voluntarily allow the mind to be disturbed, that... That this isn't the same. For example, he says, you could say, perhaps we need a qualification to say that a disturbance of the natural balance of the mind without any control on our part. That we're rattling around helplessly. The karma and the afflictions are knocking us around in cyclic existence. Like buckets in a well. Report an error

1:27:38 When you meditate on compassion and feel the pain of another person. And are moved by it. That's not that. That's not the same thing as being helplessly drawn in like a bucket and well knocked against the side. You're choosing to direct your mind to that and allowing, opening yourself up in a way that is to be encouraged, you know, to feeling for another. Report an error

1:28:00 And so he says there's a voluntary dimension when you choose to share in others' suffering. Disturbing, generally speaking, and I think he's just speaking from his experience here and not. And, you know, maybe in an open-ended and exploratory way. Generally speaking, it seems that the disturbing emotions that come up spontaneously tend to be negative. Report an error

1:28:22 Whereas emotions arising from intentional training in which we reflect and reason are usually positive. So he doesn't say always even there. But he's saying, you know, that, you know, we can, you can imagine someone training in negative emotions. It could be a possibility. Got to be meaner. Report an error

1:28:41 Right? You could have a course in that. And then on the other hand, you can think about people like having, you know, feeling spontaneously without having practiced at least in this lifetime, right? And some kind of like natural sort of empathetic response. The Dalai Lama talks about that a lot, actually. But of course then you could say that those positive feelings that are arising spontaneously aren't afflictions, but they're they're, you know, They come about because of things in our past life that we've done virtually, that we've done in our past life makes us capable of that kind of empathy in this life. Report an error

1:29:29 Anyway, I don't know what to say about this except to just say I think it's interesting that he's kind of not putting forth a definitive view and sort of saying we have to think about what does it really mean when we say an affliction. This is sort of a basic category. Instead of giving the answer, he started saying, here's an answer Tsongkhapa gave, but it's worded in such a way that could be a little open-ended, and we ought to analyze and think about what does that really mean for a mind to be afflicted. Report an error

1:30:00 I will say one thing that occurred to me when I was trying to think about this a little bit is that there's a passage in Lamrim Shemo that he doesn't cite here where Tsongkhapa says, all virtue and all happiness Report an error

1:30:16 Arise from reflecting on facts with an undistracted mind. So he thinks that in some sense, fitting with His Holiness' argument, that if you have some virtue or you have some happiness, that this comes either in this lifetime or in the past lifetime from some time when your mind was at least a little bit calm. Report an error

1:30:40 It doesn't mean you had any yoga containment and you focused on something that was true. That is that basic idea that making the mind calm and then focusing on facts, that that's where virtue and happiness come from. That's like, you know, the central sentence, you know, in all of Lama Rinpoche because he wants to say that, look, we have to cultivate virtue and the way we have to do it is we have to make our minds calm. Report an error

1:31:10 And then we don't make them calm and spacey. No, we make them calm and reflective, reflective on actual facts, which could be conventional facts or ultimate facts about the nature of ultimate reality of emptiness. But it's looking at actual facts with a calm, clear mind. That this is where everything good in this world and beyond comes from. Report an error

1:31:32 Anyway, so I just put that out there like this definition from a saṅgha of what an affliction is, as something to like... play with you know in your minds and think about well does that really work that like all happiness all virtue comes from Okay, Report an error

1:31:50 so we made it through the Four Noble Truths. It doesn't exactly go through the truths truth by truth, you notice. It's really about the first two truths mainly, of course, but then he's saying in order to understand these, you have to really look into what the nature of the mind is. Report an error

1:32:07 So the next, let's see. effects with an undistracted mind. Okay, Report an error

1:32:09 When am I supposed to stop? What's lunchtime? Okay, thank you. I'll keep going now. Yeah, it's 12 and let me try to do, chapter 6 is a lot shorter. We'll try to do chapter 6 and then maybe there'll be time for a couple questions and then we'll go lunch. Report an error

1:32:37 So in the next section he talks about the qualities that teachers need for different to be giving teachings. And he says, for stages of the path, there's different, so many different Buddhist texts about that. Whether it's teaching monastic discipline or teaching highest yoga tantra, there's so many different texts that give lists of qualities for people to be qualified as teachers. Report an error

1:33:05 He says, for stages, for lamrim, for stages of the path teachings, the teacher... Must be someone who can impart instructions that encompass the practices of persons of all three levels of capacity. He doesn't come right out and say it immediately, but he gets around to saying it as that basically means that you should be realizing emptiness and attain bodhicitta and you should have all three principal aspects of the path in place because you're teaching people how to cultivate those. Report an error

1:33:37 Rely, Sankaba quotes, Maitreya is ornament for the Mahāyāna Sutras. Rely on a Mahāyāna teacher who is disciplined, serene, thoroughly pacified, has good qualities that surpass those of his students, her students, is energetic, has a wealth of scriptural knowledge, possesses loving concern, has a thorough knowledge of reality and is skilled in instructing the disciples and has abandoned dispiritedness. Report an error

1:34:02 That would be good if the person was encouraging, right? And so he says, in Tsongkhapa, in talking about this, he says, the key thing is that a person ought to try to discipline others without having first discipline themselves. And it's not enough for them to have just done any practice that they find interesting. In order to teach Lamrim, they have to have trained in the three trainings in ethics, meditation and wisdom. Report an error

1:34:30 And then he goes on to elaborate on the point that I... I made before that basically this ends up meaning that you're supposed to know emptiness and have cultivated bodhicitta yourself in order to be teaching other people to do it. Then he goes on to talk about the qualities of a student for stages for lamrim teachings, basically being three, impartiality, intelligence and diligence. Report an error

1:34:57 Impartiality seems to be meaning something like open-minded or objective or fair-minded, not being like ideologically rigidly attached to a certain point of view that prevents you from listening to what the teacher is saying because you'll be too much swayed by your impartiality to a certain way of explaining things and not able to open your mind to the different ways of looking at things that lamrim requires. Report an error

1:35:24 Then he talks a lot about the faculty of intelligence. Intelligence here obviously doesn't mean wisdom knowing. You don't have to know emptiness in order to begin to be practicing a stage of the path. He means intelligence, he means critical intelligence that can discern what's right and what's wrong, what would be correct and what would be incorrect, to have an inquiring mental faculty. Report an error

1:35:45 And then His Holiness, and this isn't Tsongkhapa, this is His Holiness the Dalai Lama, he says, when you start to practice in particular, You need to have a measure of skepticism, a certain degree of doubt. It's extremely important. This is because only with this kind of questioning do you create the possibility for deeper understanding. Report an error

1:36:08 If you approach every teaching right from the beginning with single-pointed faith, then the possibility of deeper understanding doesn't open up because you don't ask enough questioning. Report an error

1:36:19 This is the way he teaches. Report an error

1:36:25 end. After having talked about the teacher and the student, he talks about how do you actually rely on the teacher, what state of mind, what behavior should one adopt, and Tsongkhapa goes right to the question, well, we should practice in accordance with the guru's words, but what if we decided to rely on a particular guru and that person leads us in an incorrect path or directs us to carry out activities that are contrary? Report an error

1:36:53 To the general teachings or our vows, should we do what they say? And Tsongkhapa immediately answers his own question by citing Gunaprabha, if an abbot instructs you to do what is not in accord with the teachings, refuse. And the Cloud of Jewels Sūtra, which says, do what your guru says when it's in accord with virtue, but not when it entails carrying out non-virtuous activities. Report an error

1:37:19 And then Tsongkhapa cites the 12th Jataka tale. And the 12th Jataka tale turns out to be a story, I don't know if you know it, in which in a past lifetime of Shakyamuni, he is a disciple of a guru who has a number of other followers. And this guru teaches all of them that having taught them a lot of other things, one day he says, now I have something important to tell you. Report an error

1:37:51 It's very virtuous to steal. Please go out and steal. And all of the other disciples are, yeah, you know, that's, yes sir, you know, as you say, a master. And the one who is to become Shakyamuni doesn't say anything. And so then the guru asked him, why are you silent? And he said, because your instructions don't accord with the general teachings. And then the guru said, Well, that's because I was just testing you. I don't intend at all for you to steal, right? And then he, His Holiness, that example is, those examples and citations are all right in Lam Rinpoche, you know, telling you not to follow your teacher's instructions if they require you to engage in non-virtue. Report an error

1:38:43 And then He goes, I mean, His Holiness goes on to give a slightly different kind of example, which is, That one of Atisha's favorite teacher, Serlingpa, was a Chittimatra, follower of mind only. And so even though he loved his teacher, and this was his best teacher, his favorite teacher, that he didn't follow what he said about the view of reality. Report an error

1:39:13 That's a slightly different thing because I thought that example was a little different from what Sherempa Ji said because in that case, It actually pertains to emptiness, the view of reality rather than stealing something. It's a different thing where he's sort of saying. Well, we'll come back to this, I think, tomorrow morning when we're talking about emptiness and how do you know what to think about it. Report an error

1:39:43 But it seems that the pattern is that His Holiness, like in a very, very serious way, systematically does put faith and reliance upon what his teachers say and what scripture says. Report an error

1:39:58 But he has observed that the scriptures say very many different things and that the teachers don't always agree with one another. And he seems to have come to the view, sometimes he articulates it explicitly, that All of these authorities are valuable and they should be relied upon and not disparaged. But at the end, in knowing how to rely upon them and which advice to accept about what as finally guiding your action, you have to use reason. Report an error

1:40:28 Because of the fact that you have so many different instructions that don't always point exactly in the same direction. Anyway, I think that's interesting because that relates to... Report an error

1:40:40 A little bit what we were talking about last night where you have the question of Shukden. Trijong Rinpoche has obviously instructed him to worship Shukden. Ling Rinpoche doesn't worship Shukden but is telling him it would be better for you to not mess with this stuff that will get you in trouble with Shukden. Report an error

1:41:01 And he decides to do his own, he doesn't just say, oh well, I'm going to do what I want. No, he does this extended analysis and investigation. of all kinds of other texts and arguments and history and reaches a conclusion which doesn't exactly fit with what his tutors have said. Report an error

1:41:21 So I think that fits with his bringing in here and saying, look, it wasn't just stealing. It was about this view that Atisha, who's obviously an important figure, went against what his favorite teacher was saying about the nature of reality. Report an error

1:41:38 Okay, then in terms of, he tells a little bit about, okay, so when you're relying on a teacher, what do you do? You learn how to meditate, you know, and you learn how to do basic practices like the seven branches of worship and you learn how to behave in between periods of meditation by having a balanced diet. Report an error

1:42:00 You should guard the gates of your senses, live with mindfulness and care. And try to make it so that the periods of your life in between meditation are complementary with what you're doing in your meditation session, enhancing one another and not undoing all the work that you do on the cushion. And then he says, nobody wakes up early in the morning and says, now I'd really like to have some more trouble today. I really ought to have some more conflicts and anger. Report an error

1:42:30 Instead, he said, everybody wants happiness, but when we still have so much misery and trouble, and most of it we bring on ourselves. And this is, of course, because our minds are completely dominated by the afflictions, and the afflictions, again, are driven by ignorance at all different kinds of levels, including the ultimate ignorance about how things exist, but other things as well. Report an error

1:42:53 And he says, our ignorant, deluded minds, not knowing reality, they'll just look at things from one angle. On the surface of how they appear and then they'll immediately just take it for granted that that's how things are without investigating any more deeply. Meditation means to control our minds and therefore protect our minds against domination by delusion and other afflictions. Report an error

1:43:15 People don't aspire to have their minds dominated by delusion and the other afflictions and neither on the other hand does just aspiring to have your mind not dominated on them fix it up. The afflictions are very powerful and they're very diverse and they're very sneaky, right, effectively, he says. They operate against our wishes, against our aspirations. Report an error

1:43:39 We can't go to the store, no matter how much money we have, and find, wouldn't that be nice? It's like, I've got a little fear problem, you know, I've got some envy. They have that at the mall, the envy remedy, you know, it's like, you never seem to see that on sale, you know. And then you can invent the, maybe you could have a machine, a really good machine that people could buy only if they were very rich, that would eliminate their afflictions and so forth. Report an error

1:44:09 We don't have that yet either. So what is it that actually is a source of happiness, isn't stuff that we can shop for? It comes as a result of mind training, training the mind in meditating. Which means habituating ourselves actively day after day, week after week, month after month. And he says lifetime after lifetime to cultivating countervailing forces or antidotes to these afflictions. Report an error

1:44:37 They have to be built up through active training and habituation. And that's what meditation means, he explains. The Tibetan word gomba in meditation means it's related to the word... That means habituation, but the verb is changed so that it has an active sense of choosing to deliberately habituate or familiarize yourself with a certain kind of mental state. Report an error

1:45:04 So we're ingrained to these afflictions over many lifetimes so that they just seem natural and spontaneous. And when we try to do something different from that, it's really difficult and goes against the grain. That was like a basic thing that you hear said about Buddhism, that it goes against the grain, you know. The pratiloma and anuloma, like when you pull your hair like this, then it doesn't hurt, and if you pull it the other way, then it does hurt, right? Report an error

1:45:33 Buddhism is like going the wrong way because like our natural tendencies is to just go along with the affliction. Report an error

1:45:46 Jeff? Jeffrey, in The Truthful Heart, Jeffrey Hopkins has this thing where he talks about, he said, you're going around teaching people how to cultivate compassion and there's all these exercises and meditations that you have to do. And he says, one woman said to him, he said, well, why don't you just do what comes naturally? And he said, well, maybe that will work for you, but for me, that would be quite bad. Report an error

1:46:15 Yeah, and then of course he talks about how we tend to, you've heard the teachings before about how we tend to regard these afflictions as friends and we tend to see attachment as nurturing, a source of nurture and anger and hatred as protectors and so forth. So you have 84,000 heaps of teachings and all this different Buddhist literature because we need vast and lots of different approaches to tackle the diversity of the afflictions that disturb us. Report an error

1:46:45 And we have to be very deliberate and systematic in cultivating their antidotes. And that begins with studying or learning, which he seems to understand is both being listening to a teacher and also reading and studying Dharma books. And then systematically reflect upon what we're learning. And I think that this means, my understanding of this is it means introspectively, not just like... Report an error

1:47:12 Intellectually thinking about it, but thinking about how does this apply to actually to my mind? How does this work for me introspectively in my mind? And so when we have not just an intellectual understanding where you get the words in the right order, but then we know how we begin to have thought about it or internalized it so we see how it works in our own experience, then that wisdom arise from reflection can be the basis Report an error

1:47:41 Moving on to cultivating wisdom in meditation where you don't do so much analysis or reflection but you mainly focus on a certain fact or truth that you've realized and focus your mind on at one pointedly. You become very familiarized with it where it becomes second nature. To look at things in that way, in that reality-based way, instead of the other way, unrealistic way that you've become habituated to in cyclic existence. Report an error

1:48:15 And then I wanted to end with one question. I haven't said everything that he's saying, but skipping over some. One question that he was asked at the end of the session was, Your Holiness as a beginner on the path, still just taking baby steps. Do you have any words to help me establish a meaningful daily practice that will lead me to greater awareness and understanding? Report an error

1:48:45 And this is interesting because I thought he'd sort of answered that question earlier when he'd given this whole thing about startup in the morning. Think about what your highest ideals are and then commit yourself to living by them for just that day. Then watch with one corner of your mind and see whether you're doing it and then check in the evening. Report an error

1:49:02 And so see how you've done and so forth. And I thought that could be like an answer to this question. But he gives a completely different answer. I was thinking that maybe that other answer was like something that applied to everybody, Buddhist and non-Buddhist here is like a practice. And that in this case, he's taking it that this person is saying, look, I'm a Buddhist, but I'm just getting started in the path, what we suggest. Report an error

1:49:28 And he says, read more. There are translations of Buddhist texts into English as well as French, German, Spanish and of course Chinese. And I think there are still fewer translations into Chinese than into English, but there are many, many new translations into English. Read such texts daily for an hour, or if you can't, at least for a half an hour. And then turn your mind inward and contemplate what you have learned in your reading. Report an error

1:49:58 Examine and investigate, comparing in your mind what the text says, Versus your usual way of thinking and living. It's best to do this in the morning when your mind is fresh. Maybe after breakfast is even better. At least for me it's like that. Before breakfast, I'm so hungry. Sometimes when I meditate, half my mind is going to my stomach. Report an error

1:50:23 So take this approach. Study and then take what you've understood as the basis for contemplation, spending some time each morning in formal meditation. Combine understanding of what you've studied with meditative practice. This approach brings together learning, reflection, and meditation. So it could be, you know, it's like, anyway, he answers that question in terms of these three wisdoms which he had just been talking about, you know, thinking about, look, if you're just starting out, you should not be, like, trying to focus your mind one-pointedly in meditation. Report an error

1:51:00 You should be trying to be, well, like... Focus on wisdom arising from studying that is trying to understand the Dharma, get the words in the right order and then think of meditation not as a time where you space out but as where you reflect introspectively on what it is you've read and how it actually relates to your own experience and start with that and that can be then the basis. Report an error

1:51:28 There's a lot of stuff just like that in Report an error

1:51:35 Much more than His Holiness said at Lehi, where Tsongkhapa is very, speaks in a critical way about people who think there's all these scholarly texts, but those are for scholars. You were talking about Buddhist texts on the Dharma, and it's like, like them, we should have something else very simple that doesn't have anything complicated in it. Report an error

1:52:03 And that will be the basis of practice. And he's saying, well, no, you know, you study and then you take what you learn by studying as the basis of your meditative practice. That's the way, anyway, that's how Jay Rinpoche did it. It worked out for him. All right. Report an error

1:52:24 Well, that is going to be enough explanation for this morning's session. And let me just... See if there's a question. But what we're going to do in the afternoon is we'll talk a little bit about the value of human life and three capacities of beings, cultivating bodhicitta and six perfections. And I Report an error

1:52:59 don't know. Then obviously the next topics after that are cultivating serenity. And cultivating insight into emptiness. So I don't know how far we'll get this afternoon. But at least we want to do the bodhicitta and six perfections stuff. Yes, you look like you want to say something, Teresa. I want to think. Report an error

1:53:23 Well, I'm really delighted to do it. But because you were supposed to read, I wanted to advertise. Oh. Report an error

1:53:38 In reality, it's a little commercial break. No, don't do that. Oh, don't do it now? Do it later? No, don't. Just don't do it. Oh, you're not comfortable. There are many Dharma books available. You'll be aware already that some of them are by me. Report an error

1:53:58 Okay, the book that I'm... and wonderful, and your book is coming up. I'm saying this to the new people. pull her, is that right? Okay. Report an error

1:54:04 Teaching from is really done, but because of some complications, it will be out officially from Snowline in October, and it sort of represents His Holiness' teachings on Lama and Shema. Yeah, that's what we're talking about. Yeah. Report an error

1:54:23 You have a question? Yes. Yes. That's what I wanted to do. I have one question. It's about the teaching, and I'm... yeah but um Report an error

1:54:36 I've asked this question before and I'm hesitant to ask it again because I never understand the answer. Okay. And the question is as follows. There are about 20 bodies in here. Yeah. And the teachings always talk about mind. Yeah. Does that mean that there are also 20 minds in here or is there one mind? Report an error

1:55:03 That each of us connect to. There are 20 minds, I posit. So what's the counter argument? Why don't you think that, why wouldn't we just say, yeah, by mind I mean continuum of consciousness. Like, for example, when he says in there, when a moment of consciousness arises, its primary cause has to be a prior moment of consciousness. Report an error

1:55:31 And he doesn't say anywhere in the universe. He says in the same continuum. So it's like when I'm sitting here starting this sentence or picking up the pen, the next moment of my consciousness doesn't arise in dependence on what you were thinking. Report an error

1:55:48 It comes about in the prior moment of consciousness in this continuum. That's why he makes this point about, look, we believe that there's all of these causes and conditions, that things don't arise out of nowhere, they arise in dependence on causes and conditions. But it doesn't mean that everything is causing everything all the time. Report an error

1:56:07 If it were, then what would be the point of cultivating virtue? It would be just as likely that doing bad actions would lead to happiness. The whole idea is that specific causes and conditions lead to specific kinds of effects. It can be complicated how different things interact. There's lots of different variables. Report an error

1:56:29 There's so many lifetimes in the past where you've accumulated good and bad actions. But the idea is that... And that's why it's, you know, you can't, but. Report an error

1:56:35 Specific actions in the continuums or mind streams of specific persons lead to specific effects in the mind streams of those persons, respectively. Report an error

1:56:50 The next thought that I have on that, if there are 20 minds and my mind is different from your mind, then when I am told to pray for someone or when I am told to do Tonglen, Yeah. Then that doesn't make sense. Why? Well, how would my consciousness affect somebody else's consciousness? Because I'm also aware that my consciousness affects somebody else's consciousness. When I'm around somebody who is happy, I'm feeling happier. If I'm around someone who's depressed, I'm feeling a little down. Report an error

1:57:27 So there is obviously... A connection between your mind and my mind and everybody else's mind in here. Oh, yeah, yeah. We affect each other. There's absolutely lots of different ways, some of which are really clear, like the fact that we're having this conversation right now is in the sense that some of the things that are arising in my mind are not just... Report an error

1:57:49 You have to consider different kinds of causes and conditions. They have this idea of a substantial cause, like the main cause of a prior. So the main cause of this moment of my consciousness is the prior moment of my consciousness. But it's not the only cause. That's why I say it's complicated. There's lots of other causes and conditions besides the prior moment of my consciousness. For example, my blood sugar level, the temperature in the room, what I remember about what you said, therefore what you said. Report an error

1:58:23 Do you see what I'm saying? There's a lot of causes and conditions. Like the Dharma activity of Lama Yeshe. You know what I'm saying? It's like you can't begin to get to the end of all the causes and conditions. But you can start by saying, you know, it's not that I have this isolated mind and the only thing that affects what arises in my consciousness in the next instant is what was in the consciousness of the prior moment. Report an error

1:58:48 We obviously interact with each other. One of the ways that, you know, we do It's clear that as the kinds of beings that we are, we're attuned to what one another are feeling. It's not that we have clairvoyance, right? You know, they have all this research on mirror neurons and so forth. So we are affected by what we become aware of other people thinking and feeling around us, even in ways that we aren't aware of, like you were saying. Report an error

1:59:22 That's true. But that's not because we have a single continuum of consciousness. Report an error

1:59:29 My consciousness, one of the things that affects my consciousness is influences things that come from outside. It's not only, it's like, okay, here's a kind of old-fashioned example. You have a clay pot, right? And then the main cause for the... The clay pot is the prior moments of the clay, but the way you see the clay pot is not only determined by the prior clay, it's also determined by what people have done to it, how they've worked it, right? Report an error

2:00:00 You've put it in the oven or you've put it on the wheel or whatever. So there's lots of different things, you know, that affect how it appears and its shape and its color, but, you know, there's besides the prior moments of the clay. And it's like that with us. A lot of things affect us. That's why we can help one another. It's because we can have an effect on one another. Report an error

2:00:27 But it's not like the fact that I, it's not just like, well, everybody go out and, it's like I can't just magically make, Buddha doesn't like shoot rays of enlightenment into our heads, right? Report an error

2:00:44 That's too bad. But that's not what it means to be blessed or something like that. That's why it says when Tsongkhapa is talking about Buddha's qualities, he says the main way that Buddha assists other people is through speech. Report an error

2:01:04 That's the main way. And what speech is mainly effective? The speech about dependent arising is the most important. But it's like... That's the most important thing. So the idea is that, I mean, that makes it pretty clear that it's not that we do have a primary responsibility for cultivating and training our own minds, but that is distinct from saying that we're all completely on our own. Report an error

2:01:34 We're not on our own, but we do have a primary responsibility for training our own minds because nobody can reach in there and do it for us. Buddha can't train our minds, get inside there and train our minds for us. We try to create circumstances. It's very difficult. We try to create circumstances that make it easier for other people to train. But we can't actually train. Report an error

2:02:04 There's an interesting little Dharma book, it's not Tibetan, called Novice to Master. It's like an autobiography by a Zen guy. Report an error

2:02:14 And he tells a story about, you know, someone who's, this young man who's like desperately questing for enlightenment. And he has this older, you know, monk who's just really trying to help him as being like a monk mother to him, you know, and like nursing him along in every aspect of the path and doing everything for him. Report an error

2:02:32 And, you know, and then there, and the guy just like, you know, keeps having problems and finding obstacles and difficulties. And he says, He goes out and he says, and one day they're out on pilgrimage and they go to take a piss on the side of the road. And he says, well, there's just a couple things that I can't do for you. And this is one of them. You know, it's like, well, you know, and he's trying to make a point. Report an error

2:03:04 It's like, all I can do is do the very best I can to create the conditions. For, you know, you being better able to train your mind. But I can't grow up for you. Like children, right? You try to help them grow up, but you can't grow them up. It's like that. Report an error

2:03:25 It is the time. Okay. All right. Thank you. I'll see you. What time are we back? Say. We're back at 2 o 'clock. 2 o 'clock. Report an error

2:04:00 that looks good. Yeah. Report an error

Report an error

Passage at . Please listen to the audio before you suggest a fix.

Suggest a fix

Passage at . Please listen to the audio before you suggest a fix.

Related talks

  1. The Dalai Lama's Teachings on the Spiritual Path (3 March 2012, afternoon)

    Guy Newland · 3 March 2012 · 1 h 57 min

  2. The Dalai Lama's Teachings on the Spiritual Path (4 March 2012)

    Guy Newland · 4 March 2012 · 2 h 35 min

  3. The Dalai Lama's Teachings on the Spiritual Path (2 March 2012)

    Guy Newland · 2 March 2012 · 2 h 30 min

  4. Understanding Emptiness: In Search of Reality (12 March 2010)

    Guy Newland · 12 March 2010 · 1 h 48 min

  5. Understanding Emptiness: In Search of Reality (13 March 2010, 3)

    Guy Newland · 13 March 2010 · 2 h 2 min

  6. Understanding Emptiness: In Search of Reality (14 March 2010, 4)

    Guy Newland · 14 March 2010 · 2 h 4 min

Talk by Guy Newland, recorded 3 March 2012. Original at Tse Chen Ling Center for Tibetan Buddhist Studies via Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/GN_DalaiLamaTeachings_20120302. Licensed CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. Transcript generated automatically and may contain errors; the audio is the authoritative version.

Recorded at Tse Chen Ling Center, San Francisco, and archived by the center on Internet Archive. More from Tse Chen Ling

Listen on Internet Archive · CC BY-NC-ND 3.0