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

0:02 Thank you. That's exactly what I was thinking about. We need some... We Report an error in the passage at 0:02 Highlight the passage at 0:02

0:15 can either have the microphone or the talk. No, that's a joke. I think I can do that. Well, see, one problem with it. I mean, there's always a problem. The problem with this is I can't see as clearly. You can just transmit. No. Report an error in the passage at 0:15 Highlight the passage at 0:15

0:33 Well, and then here's the other problem is when I look up to see people, my mouth goes away from the microphone. There's just no perfect solution. Report an error in the passage at 0:33 Highlight the passage at 0:33

0:50 Will that work? Okay, let's try that. Report an error in the passage at 0:50 Highlight the passage at 0:50

1:03 I'm sorry. Report an error in the passage at 1:03 Highlight the passage at 1:03

1:20 Thank Report an error in the passage at 1:20 Highlight the passage at 1:20

1:28 you. that work? That? Does that Report an error in the passage at 1:28 Highlight the passage at 1:28

· · · silence, 1 minute

1:38 but the last one. most recent. Here, you can have that. I just have one copy that you can sell or give away as you wish. Report an error in the passage at 1:38 Highlight the passage at 1:38

1:54 It is the time. So let's start on page 34 of the prayer book with the refuge and generating bodhicitta three times. okay. Report an error in the passage at 1:54 Highlight the passage at 1:54

2:11 Yeah, let's just do that. 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 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 in the passage at 2:11 Highlight the passage at 2:11

2:33 By my practice of giving and other perfections may 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. Okay, thank you. Well, today in one session we have to cover the most important and longest part of... Report an error in the passage at 2:33 Highlight the passage at 2:33

3:05 Most important book written in Tibetan, as I was saying, but particularly just to talk about what the Dalai Lama was able to say about it at Lehigh and hit some of the high points of that in 2008. Report an error in the passage at 3:05 Highlight the passage at 3:05

3:23 The insight section of the great treatise on the stages of the path to enlightenment is very long and it is... A work of great genius and it's by far the most important part of the book in many ways because, well, let's put it this way. Report an error in the passage at 3:23 Highlight the passage at 3:23

3:52 Just like His Holiness has been arguing that what makes Buddhism distinctively Buddhist is the teachings on emptiness and not the teachings on compassion. Report an error in the passage at 3:52 Highlight the passage at 3:52

4:04 Or even the teachings on meditation, per se. It's just exactly analogous to that, that within Tsongkhapa's presentation of the whole path, the part that's most distinctive is his presentation of emptiness. I mean, Buddhists agree that we should calm our minds and that we should practice virtue. And they agree that we should overcome an exaggerated, distorted sense of self. But as soon as you start talking about what is that self that you should be getting rid of and which is the self that you should be keeping, then everybody disagrees. Report an error in the passage at 4:04 Highlight the passage at 4:04

4:46 And some people think that other people have negated way too much and some people think other people have negated way too little. And so it's in that regard that Tsongkhapa's work was not... It's not great just because his great treatise of 1402 is not just like the most masterful compendium of the whole teachings on the stages of the path, putting them together on the basis of what Atisha said, but because it includes within that this particularly brilliant philosophical exposition of one particular distinctive way to interpret. Report an error in the passage at 4:46 Highlight the passage at 4:46

5:29 What the middle way is. And he doesn't just say, hey, here's my amazing interpretation of the middle way. He tries to prove, just like with every other part of the book, that this is the best and correct way to understand what Nagarjuna meant, what Budo meant, what Chandrakiri meant, and that this is better than, say, other alternative interpretations. Report an error in the passage at 5:29 Highlight the passage at 5:29

5:50 So it's impossible to do this. That is to say why this is better than any alternative interpretations without meaning and sometimes saying that other Tibetans were wrong. Report an error in the passage at 5:50 Highlight the passage at 5:50

6:10 And Tsongkhapa is very clear about this, although he doesn't name the people that he's saying are wrong, but he names the views and he says these are incorrect views that many Tibetans have been harmed by. Basically, as we read in the, this is why he's writing The book and his motivation for the composition is that many people have gone astray. And when he gets down to this point of brass tacks on the question of what is the nature of reality, he thinks that most but not all of the Tibetans who were... Report an error in the passage at 6:10 Highlight the passage at 6:10

6:45 Teaching Madhyamaka or practicing Madhyamaka had gone to a nihilistic extreme in their reading of Nagarjuna. But then on the other hand, there were some who had gone to another kind of extreme, which was exaggerating in some ways. So he's refuting. The views held by other Tibetans without specifically naming them. And probably some of those views are held by, many of those views are held by people today still. Report an error in the passage at 6:45 Highlight the passage at 6:45

7:18 So in effect, as we were talking about, the book has a position, this part of the book in particular, has like a kind of very convincing and brilliant. A philosophical position that everyone has to take account of whether they're going to agree with it or not throughout Tibetan philosophical history after that. Report an error in the passage at 7:18 Highlight the passage at 7:18

7:42 And so the Dalai Lama can't present this part of the book without acknowledging that there were some Tibetans who had wrong views that are being refuted by what the text he's teaching says. Report an error in the passage at 7:42 Highlight the passage at 7:42

7:59 But he manages to do this in this presentation I'm going to give today, his teachings on the insight section of this book, that he manages to do this while still attributing to all of the four main Tibetan Dharma traditions the final correct view as he sees it. Now he doesn't explain or try to prove why this is true, but he just comes right out and says that, okay, here's the final correct view, And when you know how to read this correctly, you'll see that this is the view that's the basis of all of what we sometimes call sex or chirluk, the four main dharma trees. Report an error in the passage at 7:59 Highlight the passage at 7:59

8:40 He doesn't say everybody in Tibet always had the right view, which is a very different thing, right? But he's going to, from his point of view, take the, say, if we really understand what's going on, it'll come down to the fact that people in these traditions can be awakened. And why can they be awakened? Because within their tradition, there is this correct view. So that's my general introduction to this part. Report an error in the passage at 8:40 Highlight the passage at 8:40

9:06 Then what are the main topics in this part of the book, the last part of the book, Lama Rinpoche. First, Tsongkhapa introduces how and why to practice insight meditation. Then he has a very, very long Discussion of the object of negation. What is the self? If we have a false view of self as the root of sickle existence, what is this false view of self? Report an error in the passage at 9:06 Highlight the passage at 9:06

9:36 What is the self that's been falsely imagined to exist? And this is a very, very extensive section with long discussions of the misinterpretations of this. And refutations of them and explanations of why those are correct and what is the correct way to identify the object of negation. So this is a very important part of the book. Report an error in the passage at 9:36 Highlight the passage at 9:36

9:57 And then the other extremely important part of the book following that is the discussion of, okay, should we follow as Madhyamakas the interpretations of people like Baba Viveka? Jnana Garba or Kamalashila or Shantarakshita or should we on the other hand follow interpretations of somebody like Chandrakirti and Shantideva and so forth. Report an error in the passage at 9:57 Highlight the passage at 9:57

10:20 And so that distinction within Madhyamaka between Svatantrika and Prasangaka is the most difficult part of the book and His Holiness does spend some time on it although I'd say a little bit less than those first two topics. On which he spends quite a lot of time. And then the remaining topics is the discussion of the actual reasoning for refuting this exaggerated sense of self and then gaining insight in that way and through combining the understanding that you get from reasoning with meditative serenity. Report an error in the passage at 10:20 Highlight the passage at 10:20

10:59 And then finally kind of a summary conclusion. And description of how to enter into Vajrayana comes at the end. And all of those topics are just barely noticed in His Holiness' teaching. Probably didn't have enough days to get through all of that and decided to focus on these other things. So the things that he's focusing then on are how and why to practice insight, what is the object of negation, and then to a certain extent, how do we... Report an error in the passage at 10:59 Highlight the passage at 10:59

11:33 Differentiates Svatantrika from Prasangaka and how do we know which one to follow. And finally, before I actually start into his text, I think that as I've argued before, his approach is panoptic. That's the word I thought of this morning when I was walking. He's looking down at the whole thing. Lamrim is a sequential, serial teaching. Report an error in the passage at 11:33 Highlight the passage at 11:33

12:00 It stages, and so one expects and finds in most lamrim presentations a sort of step-by-step discussion with instructions that are very clear and precise on how to do that step. And Lamrim Tsongkhapa's book is like that, although it's a very extensive presentation of all these steps. But Lamrim Tsongkhapa also makes the point that it's not a matter of discarding. Report an error in the passage at 12:00 Highlight the passage at 12:00

12:29 Or setting aside the lower practices as you move to the higher ones. You continue to do the lower ones and go back to them with new energy as you understand them in a deeper way in light of the higher practices as you progress. Actually, Tsongkhapa says that at the very, very end, like on the last page of Lama Rinpoche. Report an error in the passage at 12:29 Highlight the passage at 12:29

12:48 He said, now you should go back and start working on the stuff from the beginning. And you'll know that you've really made some progress if you feel a kind of new insight and energy in taking up the more basic practices anew. And so that, I think, gives that insight, that gives you a way of understanding what His Holiness is doing. Report an error in the passage at 12:48 Highlight the passage at 12:48

13:14 is that he does he um his His presentation of this step-by-step lamrim approach is very synchronic or panoptic, as I was saying. It's sort of like taking into, here's the stages of the path, and instead of saying, let's just talk about this and forget about everything else, he's always talking about everything and how it all fits together all the time to some extent. Report an error in the passage at 13:14 Highlight the passage at 13:14

13:37 That's the way he looks at it. And so it's like each stage that you're talking about is always being seen in the light of how it fits into other things. So I've made that general argument about that that's what he's doing, why all of these different lists are being integrated into each other as he goes along, particularly in the case of seeing everything you're doing with the Four Noble Truths or the Three Jewels and so forth in the context of the philosophical view of emptiness. Report an error in the passage at 13:37 Highlight the passage at 13:37

14:07 In this case, so everything's about emptiness in this section. So the way, my perception is, the way he did this was that he taught what was there in the text, but he sort of, to some extent, in his own way, treated it as a little bit of a commentary, or he shuffled it in and demonstrated its relationship to the 24th chapter of the Mula Madhyamaka Karikas, and sort of said, well... Report an error in the passage at 14:07 Highlight the passage at 14:07

14:37 Which actually isn't a root text of the section, but it's a root, you know, he's showing, he's saying this is like the key thing that Nagarjuna taught about the relationship between conventional and ultimate reality and how people can go astray in misunderstanding what emptiness is really for. He says that's what the 24th chapter is for, is to tell us that emptiness really means dependent arising. Report an error in the passage at 14:37 Highlight the passage at 14:37

15:02 Not nothingness. And that the whole point or purpose of talking about emptiness is for the sake of liberation. And when people don't understand those two things, then they go astray. So he's sort of taking Hlok Tong Chamo, he's taking Tsongkhapa and sort of, without saying it's a sub-commentary on the 24th chapter, which it isn't, and he doesn't say it, but he's sort of... Report an error in the passage at 15:02 Highlight the passage at 15:02

15:26 Taking that as an implicit root text for Lak Tung Chema. That's how I understand it. This idea of commentary and root text that occurred to me this morning when I was thinking is that, of course, people write all kinds of books that aren't nominally commentaries or sub-commentaries, but because the tradition of having a root text and then giving a commentary is so deeply embedded in the culture that I think even when people aren't Officially giving a commentary, they are giving a commentary a lot of time in Tibetan discourse. That is that even when there's not explicitly here's the root text and here's the commentary, there's going to be a root text. Report an error in the passage at 15:26 Highlight the passage at 15:26

16:03 Even if it's not explicitly stated and you can figure out what it is. And so my argument, you know, my perception for today is that this sort of tacit root text for Hlaqton Chemo as His Holiness reads it here is this 24th chapter. of Mulamadyamaka Karikas. Which is not the root text that's implicit in Tsongkhapa's own work, but of course shows how it fits with it perfectly. So His Holiness I would say is kind of relentlessly relational. Report an error in the passage at 16:03 Highlight the passage at 16:03

16:36 In the way he approaches things. That looking at everything in the context of everything else and not seeing it as self-instituting or self-sufficient, of course, reflects the idea of dependent arising. And he's embodying in that in the way he teaches these things by constantly showing how all these different categories are connected. Okay, so that's my introductory comment. Report an error in the passage at 16:36 Highlight the passage at 16:36

17:01 And then I thought I should, in order to... There to be any sense that I should at least start by reading just a little bit from the 24th chapter. So the opening six stanzas of the 24th chapter of the Treatise on the Middle Way. Nagarjuna has been spending 23 chapters refuting the... The idea of any kind of graspable, essentially real category that people could possibly posit and showing how all of these things are empty. Report an error in the passage at 17:01 Highlight the passage at 17:01

17:36 And then he has an objector speak for six stanzas to open the 24th chapter. If all of this is empty, neither arising nor disintegrating, then for you it follows that the four noble truths do not exist. And if the four noble truths don't exist, then there's no knowledge, abandonment, cultivation or actualization. Report an error in the passage at 17:36 Highlight the passage at 17:36

17:55 And if there's none of these things, then there are no fruits to exist. And without the fruits, there's no one to attain the fruits, nor is there anyone to enter into the paths. And if these kinds of persons do not exist, then there is no spiritual community. And since the noble truths do not exist, the Dharma would not exist either. Report an error in the passage at 17:55 Highlight the passage at 17:55

18:14 And if there's no Dharma and no spiritual community, then how can there be a Buddha? Therefore, if you speak of emptiness, this undermines the three jewels. It undermines everything. The existence of fruits, the distinctions between immoral and moral actions, all the conventions of the world. And Nagarjuna responds with the rest of the chapter, but beginning with the key verse that the Dalai Lama is working off of, 7, 24-7. Report an error in the passage at 18:14 Highlight the passage at 18:14

18:44 You who speak in these terms have failed to understand the purpose of emptiness, emptiness itself and the meaning of emptiness, and are thereby harmed. He goes on to say that the purpose of emptiness is not simply to enhance our knowledge, His Holiness is commentary on this, but to free us from cyclic existence. Report an error in the passage at 18:44 Highlight the passage at 18:44

19:05 And that, of course, the meaning of emptiness in 2418 turns out to be dependent arising. Report an error in the passage at 19:05 Highlight the passage at 19:05

19:15 Putting that in place, let's actually take a look at what he says about Tsongkhapa. Okay. So. Report an error in the passage at 19:15 Highlight the passage at 19:15

19:23 at Lehi. He had previously just been talking about how to cultivate serenity and how the cultivation, and ended by saying yes, but even though this is very difficult to attain, it's not really adequate to attain liberation from cyclic existence. And I noticed something which is that at the very beginning of the serenity section of... Report an error in the passage at 19:23 Highlight the passage at 19:23

19:51 The very beginning of the insight section of the Great Treatise, and then at the end of the insight section of the Great Treatise, Tsongkhapa quotes the same verse, which is from the Samādhi Raja Sūtra. He quotes it three times, the same exact verse. And when His Holiness started, he started with that verse when he started doing this teaching, which is these four lines. Report an error in the passage at 19:51 Highlight the passage at 19:51

20:21 If you analytically discern the lack of self in phenomena and if you then cultivate that analysis in meditation, this will cause the result, attainment of nirvāṇa. There is no peace through any other means. He's sort of laying out what he thinks the practice of insight ought to be and showing that this is... Report an error in the passage at 20:21 Highlight the passage at 20:21

20:36 And so, that's Report an error in the passage at 20:36 Highlight the passage at 20:36

20:47 This is like rooted in the teachings of this particular sūtra. Now the prior stanza of the King of Concentrations or Samādhi Raja Sūtra says, although worldly persons cultivate concentration, they do not destroy the notion of the self and so afflictions return and disturb them as they did Udraka. Who cultivated concentration in this way, Udraka, of course, being one of Buddha's meditation teachers who had attained a kind of peace, right, beyond the desire realm by cultivating very profound states of concentration in which he, you know, abandoned any manifest kind of attachment to the world as we know it now and went into a very, you know, peaceful kind of meditative state, right? Report an error in the passage at 20:47 Highlight the passage at 20:47

21:39 And the idea then of course being that when you die you could be reborn in such a peaceful kind of state. But the problem then as the next stanza said is that because he hasn't destroyed the notion of the self, these afflictions even though completely suppressed. Still have seeds or roots there and they will ultimately return to disturb him and you will ultimately have to fall from your concentration heaven, your formless or form realm level of birth and be reborn through the gradually sprouting up again of the residual roots of the afflictions that you've suppressed. Report an error in the passage at 21:39 Highlight the passage at 21:39

22:28 So, His Holiness talks about this a little bit. He said, We each know from personal experience that when we grasp at a notion of self or I, that we then go on to grasp at other things as mine and to reciprocally impute a real other, you know, that's separate from the real self that we think is here. And the more strongly we grasp onto things as mine, then the more forcefully it leads us into attachment to those things and anger at the people who are like separating. Report an error in the passage at 22:28 Highlight the passage at 22:28

23:00 us from those things, and fear and hatred. So this is the common insight at the basis of all Buddhist schools and differentiates Buddhism from non-Buddhism is that you can't just, even though it's very difficult to cultivate serenity as was mentioned yesterday, that even a masterful cultivation of it doesn't get at the root of cyclic existence. Report an error in the passage at 23:00 Highlight the passage at 23:00

23:26 So, um, hmm. Report an error in the passage at 23:26 Highlight the passage at 23:26

23:33 What we have to do is discern somehow the lack of self in all phenomena. And as the second verse says, we have to analytically discern this lack of self in phenomena and then cultivate what we've understood through analysis in meditation. Report an error in the passage at 23:33 Highlight the passage at 23:33

23:52 This holiness says we have to have critical analysis that shows that all phenomena are devoid of existence in their own right, devoid of existence by way of their own nature. And then, when we've understood this, Develop deep familiarity with that understanding and meditation so that we ascertain it in a very deep sense with a strong sense of conviction. Report an error in the passage at 23:52 Highlight the passage at 23:52

24:14 And we can do this and thereby eradicate, root out, eliminate from the root our sense of self because this strong, distorted, unrealistic sense of self that's the root of our problems is not... It's inseparable from the continuum of our mind. It's not in the very nature or essence of our minds to be that way. We're just deeply habituated to it. Report an error in the passage at 24:14 Highlight the passage at 24:14

24:38 So it's removable via the cultivation of this kind of insight that opposes it. And then the point about there is no peace through any other means. That is, that unless you first understand the lack of self, this lack of exaggerated self. And then meditatively cultivate that understanding and meditation, you can't become free from cyclic existence because there isn't any other antidote that you can cultivate that roots out the basis of cyclic existence. Report an error in the passage at 24:38 Highlight the passage at 24:38

25:08 For example, you could try to just stop thinking about, you know, stop temporary, you can suppress your reification of objects or withdraw from the process of thinking about them at all, right? But you don't eliminate the root, the roots of delusion which come back. Ultimately, and rise up in some new form. So you have to have an understanding that is directly opposite to the misconception that it's the root of cyclic existence. Report an error in the passage at 25:08 Highlight the passage at 25:08

25:38 That's the only antidote. So it's like, for example, His Holiness points out that Dharmakirti says that loving kindness, for example, does not counteract ignorance and delusion. Report an error in the passage at 25:38 Highlight the passage at 25:38

25:51 Love isn't all you need in that sense, right? Because love, as good as it is, it doesn't in itself embody an understanding that opposes egotism. And in fact, it could sometimes be associated with greater intensification of attachment. So of course you need to cultivate virtues like loving kindness. And compassion in order to be a fully enlightened Buddha and we talked about that yesterday. But they can't actually be the active ingredient in the Dharma medicine because they don't directly act against the root of cyclic existence. Report an error in the passage at 25:51 Highlight the passage at 25:51

26:36 So that's his introduction and that's very much directly based on what Tsongkhapa said. Then he goes on to say, well, the first thing that you have to do, you have to analytically discern the lack of self and phenomena. That means you first have to understand emptiness. And we're thinking about wisdom arising from study or learning, wisdom arising from reflection. So the first thing is you have to have some wisdom arising from study or learning, so whereby you can generate some conceptual, dualistic course. Report an error in the passage at 26:36 Highlight the passage at 26:36

27:12 Understanding of what emptiness is, right? You have to comprehend it at an intellectual level, His Holiness said, before you can think about having some meditative certainty about it. And so that means you have to read more. What would one read? Well, one would like to read some definitive teachings. Report an error in the passage at 27:12 Highlight the passage at 27:12

27:36 His Holiness says, the diversity of Buddha's teachings shows his recognition of the very diverse needs of his followers. Nagarjuna acknowledges that sometimes the Buddha said that things have some final existence. Other times he said that they don't. And in another text, the 70 stanzas, Nagarjuna says, this makes it in fact very difficult to figure out what the Buddha's final... Report an error in the passage at 27:36 Highlight the passage at 27:36

28:04 Teaching about this was because he says lots of different things. Well, you want to know what's definitive? Go look at a sūtra. Well, which sūtra? They say different things about the self. They say lots of different things because they're addressing the needs of different audiences. Yeah, but like, well, which one should we rely on to generate the antidote to the root of cyclic existence when they're saying different things about the self? Report an error in the passage at 28:04 Highlight the passage at 28:04

28:28 And His Holiness goes on to point out that there are sutras where the Buddha says, That the aggregates are like a load or a burden that's carried by the self. Well, that makes it seem very clear that the self is like something independent of the aggregates that's able to carry them along. And then there's other ones where the Buddha says that the person does not exist, but that the aggregates do exist and that karma does exist in a real way that's different than The person has an illusory or imputed reality, but there's some real basis for that, which is the aggregates. Report an error in the passage at 28:28 Highlight the passage at 28:28

29:10 Then there are other sutras where it seems to say that external objects don't exist, but the mind is real. It's like the projector of this illusory external world. And then there's sutras which seem to deny any The idea of true existence across the whole spectrum of existing things, internal and external, like the Heart Sūtra, for example, saying that all the five aggregates, any of the categories in the Dharma or otherwise, are devoid of any inherent existence. Report an error in the passage at 29:10 Highlight the passage at 29:10

29:46 So all of these different teachings in the sutras lead to there being lots of different schools of Buddhism that take different... Different sutras as their starting points. And not ignoring the other ones, but having to decide which one's definitive and interpreting the other ones in that light, they come to different philosophical conclusions about what the middle way is. Report an error in the passage at 29:46 Highlight the passage at 29:46

30:08 They're all middle way, right? From their own point of view. Everybody else has gone up, veered into a ditch, one ditch or the other. So here's the next poem. He says, well... Maybe the Buddha told us something about how to solve this problem. So let's see what sutras say about knowing which sutras we should rely on. Report an error in the passage at 30:08 Highlight the passage at 30:08

30:35 And it turns out that there are sutras that tell us which sutras to rely on. But they also contradict each other. So if we read the Sūtra Unraveling the Intended Meaning, you know, Sandi Nirmocana Sūtra, then it lays out three turnings of the wheel of Dharma. And it makes it very clear that the Heart Sūtra would be in the second turning, and it's the third turning that's definitive, not the second turning. Report an error in the passage at 30:35 Highlight the passage at 30:35

31:03 And then on the other hand, if you Buddha also taught the teachings of Akshayamati Sūtra, and there he gives very different criteria that would make it so that the second turning is the definitive one and not the third turning. So His Holiness was very... Entertained at this point. He said, well, it seems like if we want to know which sūtra is definitive, we would need another sūtra to tell us which sūtra to rely on to know the method for determining what was definitive. Report an error in the passage at 31:03 Highlight the passage at 31:03

31:32 And then we need another sūtra and so forth. And you have this infinite regress of sutras about other sutras in order to figure out. So his implication is very clear. If you have like, OK, you can rely on sūtra or what? What would other, you know, it's like. There's a paradox if you're trying to rely on sūtra to know what sūtra to rely on that doesn't end. And so he's like, well, let's see, we could ask the Buddha. Report an error in the passage at 31:32 Highlight the passage at 31:32

31:58 But he's not here in the room. Our teacher isn't here to say, well, which one of those ones was your final intention? He did that on the stage at Lehi. It's not available to us as an option to say, you know, which one of those was your final intention? So he's like, well, we're just going to have to use reason to make up, you know, to figure out. Report an error in the passage at 31:58 Highlight the passage at 31:58

32:26 The only way we can differentiate the definitive is by means of reasoning and analysis. Statements in sūtra that upon being subjected to critical analysis are in the end not contradictory to reason. Those are the ones that are definitive and the ones that when subjected to critical analysis in the end prove to be contradictory or untenable. Report an error in the passage at 32:26 Highlight the passage at 32:26

32:48 Then we can consider these provisional teachings. And then he quotes the famous passage, just as a goldsmith tests his gold by melting, cutting and rubbing, the wise accept my teachings after full examination and not just out of reverence for me. So His Holiness concludes, don't accept any scriptures at face value. Report an error in the passage at 32:48 Highlight the passage at 32:48

33:15 Analyze them and accept their validity on the basis of understanding that you thereby develop. Report an error in the passage at 33:15 Highlight the passage at 33:15

33:30 Nagarjuna, he goes on to suggest, was carrying out that kind of deep analysis of what really holds up. See, this is a little bit, it's like he starts out saying, it sounds like he's talking about analyze what... Things and what scripture we should rely on. But he's saying ultimately what statements in scripture finally bear, finally hold up under analysis which seem to be definitive. Report an error in the passage at 33:30 Highlight the passage at 33:30

33:59 And so it's like if a scripture says, oh, this person bears the aggregates, then you can analyze and say, well, ultimately that's not going to bear analysis. But he's suggesting, well, when we analyze and analyze and analyze, we come to an understanding that It's much more like the Heart Sūtra because it's showing that there's actually nothing that bears analysis. And that's concordant with the teachings of the Heart Sūtra rather than, say, a sūtra that's teaching that the person carries the aggregates on. Report an error in the passage at 33:59 Highlight the passage at 33:59

34:30 So he Report an error in the passage at 34:30 Highlight the passage at 34:30

34:37 then introduces this idea that in Nagarjuna's 23 chapters, first 23 chapters, he's doing all this analysis and leading to emptiness. And then rebutting this critique from people who say, well, you've just destroyed the Four Noble Truths and the Three Jewels. Good job. And so, and he's saying, look. You've misunderstood. You've been harmed because you've misunderstood the whole purpose of emptiness. And this purpose is to eliminate distorted perceptions or distorted states of mind. Report an error in the passage at 34:37 Highlight the passage at 34:37

35:13 Turbo, elaborations, usually people say, or fabrications, warped ways of seeing the world that spin out from taking simply reality as it is. Report an error in the passage at 35:13 Highlight the passage at 35:13

35:30 So Buddha's schools all agree that grasping itself is a fundamental distortion. They all do some kind of analysis, but they reach different conclusions about what selflessness is, what the final emptiness is. Some, His Holiness says, Say that it's the absence of a substantially existent person and they meditate on, they analyze and reach that understanding and then meditate on that basis. Report an error in the passage at 35:30 Highlight the passage at 35:30

35:58 And His Holiness says, well this kind of meditation on selflessness will have a powerful impact on your mind and will reduce grasping at a gross level, will undermine your sense of self. But it doesn't really get at the deepest roots of cyclic existence. It doesn't get at the grasping of that which is the basis of the self, the mental and physical aggregates itself. Report an error in the passage at 35:58 Highlight the passage at 35:58

36:22 Because you're saying, well, I don't have a real self because the self is just ascribed or imputed to this mind and body. But you're not getting to the idea that, well, there isn't any real mind and body either that's any more graspable than the self. Report an error in the passage at 36:22 Highlight the passage at 36:22

36:40 He gives this example I had to read a few times. Consider how we relate to objects that we find attractive. Even before you buy something in a store, you already feel some sense of attachment to it. Yet the quality of attachment changes a great deal when you purchase it. Now you label the object as mine and you relate to it as mine. Report an error in the passage at 36:40 Highlight the passage at 36:40

37:02 And this shows that as long as there's some basis for identifying something as mine, that grasping at the self as an owner Will persist. Now you have to understand that what he's talking about here is not commodities in the mall. He's talking about the aggregates, the mind and body. He's saying we've bought, implicitly we've bought, this is what we own. This is the mind here. Not our, you know. Report an error in the passage at 37:02 Highlight the passage at 37:02

37:28 Not our handbags and so forth that we really like. He's talking about something else that's even closer, our mental and physical aggregates. And he's saying, even if you're saying, oh, I've refuted my sense of self, but I still have this real mind and body. And you haven't really gotten to the bottom of it. Report an error in the passage at 37:28 Highlight the passage at 37:28

37:49 That's his point. Then, in order to address this, there are other Buddhist teachings on selflessness and relationship to phenomena other than the person. For example, the Chittimatra school says that there's a selflessness of... All these phenomena, the absence of a subject-object duality, we tend to see objects as naturally existing as the reference of names like cup and table, when in fact we can dismantle this apparent solidity that this external reality has and then meditate on that and reduce our grasping at external objects, including the external objects, say, of our body or an object that we own or something like that. Report an error in the passage at 37:49 Highlight the passage at 37:49

38:33 He says, the problem is that if you don't apply this analysis to your own internal Your own sensations, your own feelings, your own mental states, then you have still a kind of basis for grasping. You're not grasping so much, or you may still be grasping in a subtle indirect way at external objects, but you're not grasping so obviously, he says, at external objects. Report an error in the passage at 38:33 Highlight the passage at 38:33

38:56 But you're still grasping at your own subjective experience, that that's now the reality that you're grasping at, rather than the idea of something out there. So the Madhyamaka negates exaggerated reality across the whole spectrum of phenomena. Nothing has any true existence, which doesn't mean that nothing exists, but it means that nothing exists. Report an error in the passage at 38:56 Highlight the passage at 38:56

39:18 In the way that it now appears to us, that things are appearing to us in a way that's false and deceptive. And that applies to our own subjective experience and to our minds and bodies and even to really tiny things that other things are built out of. And it's like, it's actually when you think about it, it's really interesting how... Report an error in the passage at 39:18 Highlight the passage at 39:18

39:38 When people are, and I mean all different Buddhist schools, are refuting this or that, the self as illusory or external objects as illusory, there's always a way in which the actual reality of something is getting hidden somewhere else. That's what he's implying. And you have to give up on the idea of there being any objective basis, anything that's naturally there on the object side. Report an error in the passage at 39:38 Highlight the passage at 39:38

40:10 So within Madhyamaka, there are two main ways to think about this. One, in a subtle way, still supposes some objectivity to things or inherent nature. This is called Svatantrika or the autonomy school. And it says that things don't ultimately exist. They do exist in relationship to our perceptions. But at the same time, they do have their own unique, distinctive... Report an error in the passage at 40:10 Highlight the passage at 40:10

40:38 In some sense objective, that is something on their own side mode of being that will appear to the sensory perceptions of an undistorted mind. That would be a tantric approach. Whereas on the prasangaka way, even on the conventional level, there's no notion of anything existing objectively by way of some power from its own side. Report an error in the passage at 40:38 Highlight the passage at 40:38

41:03 This is, of course, a very difficult point to understand. I spent the whole weekend the last time I was here talking about this. Report an error in the passage at 41:03 Highlight the passage at 41:03

41:15 It's the idea that there's no ground or no self-supporting basis, nothing to be left to be grasped at that's out there on the object side. His Holiness immediately goes into pointing out a parallel to quantum mechanics here. Which wasn't in Lama and Shemom. In classical physics, it was assumed that objects possess some self-defining or objective reality status. Report an error in the passage at 41:15 Highlight the passage at 41:15

41:44 But discoveries of quantum mechanics now make it very difficult to maintain this classical model of some objective reality. And there's a growing understanding that the very notion of reality already incorporates the idea of some perspective. And this is... He sees homologous, I don't know, he sees it as maybe convergent or homologous to this Prasangika perspective. Because in Prasangika there is no objective ground or basis for reality. Report an error in the passage at 41:44 Highlight the passage at 41:44

42:13 Everything is dependently originated and in this sense this means all phenomena exist and are real only in terms of language, terms and designation. This is of course very difficult to understand but one way to think about it is that um, uh, um, When we say cup, you know, there is a cup and cup exists as an imputed object or a designated object. And it's designated, we designate a cup in relationship to the appropriate basis of designation of a cup and not something else. Report an error in the passage at 42:13 Highlight the passage at 42:13

42:48 But when we look among the basis of designation of the cup for the cup, there isn't anything that we can find and say, ah, there is the cup. Nothing at all. That's what he means when he says there's no objective reference on the side of the cup. And he's saying, he's implicitly saying that all the non-prasangaka schools will agree that things exist as conventional designations, but they'll want to say that there is something real on the side of the cup that in the end, you know, is the cup. Report an error in the passage at 42:48 Highlight the passage at 42:48

43:21 And he's saying you can't, that's what in prasangaka, there isn't anything like that. Like, for example, to just give a sense of what that means, like, is the cup made out of atoms? This is a question I remember asking one of my teachers a long time ago in India. I was saying, well, if things are conventionally real and atoms exist, then certainly the cup is made out of atoms. No, the cup is not made out of atoms. There are atoms, there are molecules, but the cup is not made out of them. Report an error in the passage at 43:21 Highlight the passage at 43:21

43:51 The cup is a designation, and it's designated... In relationship to an appropriate basis of designation. And atoms are no more or less real than paper and people and Buddha. They're all equally real, which means only and merely conventionally real. Emptiness, too, is only conventionally real. There's nothing that exists in and of itself by its own nature. Report an error in the passage at 43:51 Highlight the passage at 43:51

44:20 Even emptiness exists only in relationship to a basis of emptiness and to our mind designating emptiness. It doesn't have its own natural way of being empty on its own side. Report an error in the passage at 44:20 Highlight the passage at 44:20

44:36 Anyway, you can read a lot of things and think about that because that's the hardest thing. right so this is Report an error in the passage at 44:36 Highlight the passage at 44:36

44:46 His Holiness goes on to say, this doesn't mean that anything goes or that anything could be anything. It's not the case that you can just imagine something and write an A up on the blackboard and then say, okay, this is a B. Report an error in the passage at 44:46 Highlight the passage at 44:46

45:03 The crucial challenge is to maintain a middle way that totally rejects any notion of objective or intrinsic reality, yet at the same time leaves things with some Actual existence, that is not a real existence in the sense not a true existence, but leaves things with a kind of existence that's adequate to account for the workings of dependent arising. Report an error in the passage at 45:03 Highlight the passage at 45:03

45:29 And of course, His Holiness doesn't say right here, but many times says, well, we have to adopt provisionally the view that... For us, it's compatible with that, because the last thing we want to do is say, I want to find the best view, and then say, in our effort to adopt a prasangika view, find that we've destroyed our confidence that what we do makes any difference, because it seems like nothing exists. Report an error in the passage at 45:29 Highlight the passage at 45:29

45:56 So, you know, in terms of guiding people, the idea is to adopt the most profound view of emptiness you can, that for you... You've been able to understand as compatible with the idea that dependent arising actually works. But this is what he thinks. As you analyze each of these different explanations of what selflessness might mean given by different Buddhist groups, you will gradually begin to see that there's something incomplete. Report an error in the passage at 45:56 Highlight the passage at 45:56

46:25 Something that's slightly incorrect in each of the earlier ones, and as you gradually progress, your understanding, that is the process of analysis, the deepening of analysis, will culminate in the subtle view of the Prasangika Madhyamaka, where any kind of intrinsic existence, any kind of existence that's just naturally abiding on the object side, was completely rejected. Report an error in the passage at 46:25 Highlight the passage at 46:25

46:47 When you reach this view, you will understand that this is something that's accurate and complete. Or final and definitive. And that's why he links it back to the discussion earlier about what sources to rely upon. Saying the prasangaka view is the definitive view and the emptiness that it arrives at is what makes the sutras that teach that emptiness the definitive sutras to rely on. Report an error in the passage at 46:47 Highlight the passage at 46:47

47:18 Because they are teaching that which analysis finally arrives at. Okay, that's the idea. Now, there's the Madhyamaka tradition. And there, of course, Nagarjuna, Aryadeva, Buddhapalita, and then Chandrakirti and Shantideva. And then there's this other line following from Nagarjuna and Aryadeva that begins with Bhavavika. Report an error in the passage at 47:18 Highlight the passage at 47:18

47:46 And includes Gyanagarbha and Shantarakshita and Kamalashila. So you have these two different traditions, the Swatantrika side and the Prasangaka side. And he says, look, between these two, it's very clear that Tsongkhapa is going to go with the Chandrakirti line instead of the Bhavavika line. And this is what he says, in the case of the Tibetan tradition, we find, I think the we there is the royal we, Report an error in the passage at 47:46 Highlight the passage at 47:46

48:19 That the early translation school of Nyingma, the Mahamudra teaching of the Kagyu school, the union of clarity and emptiness teachings of the Sakya school, as well as this, Tsongkhapa's own Gilukpa tradition, all present their emptiness from the point of view of Prasangaka. And of course, this is also, if you read the difficult and final essay or chat or talk, transcribed talk, at the back of Kindness, Clarity and Insight, which is not easy reading, but if you read that talk, That he gave so long ago, that is why he gave that talk, was to make that argument. His Holiness is, as we know, not just a guy who goes around on tarmacs to say everybody wants to be happy and smile at people. Report an error in the passage at 48:19 Highlight the passage at 48:19

49:01 He is a profound original thinker. We don't always see it in all of his English language publications, but if you look at that last talk in Kindness, Clarity, and Insight, you'll see his mind has been working on this stuff in a very deep way for a long time. He doesn't just go over the surface. And so when he says, you know, he has this view, he's just not being nice. He has analysis and arguments of exactly why this is true. Report an error in the passage at 49:01 Highlight the passage at 49:01

49:29 How can he say that, you know, Nyingma is Prasangaka? Well, he has a reason, you know. Not everybody will agree, but he has some arguments to back it up. Report an error in the passage at 49:29 Highlight the passage at 49:29

49:44 Then he goes on to say, however, which is interesting, The Tibetan tradition also includes an emptiness of other standpoint, sometimes called the Great Madhyamaka. So the implication here is that maybe at least it's harder to say, or maybe not the case, that this could be considered prasangaka from his point of view. Report an error in the passage at 49:44 Highlight the passage at 49:44

50:07 And this would be the Jonang school, Dolbova Sherap Gyeltson, who was like the very popular... His view was very popular in the century before Tsongkhapa, like in the time of Tsongkhapa's teacher Rendawa and up into Tsongkhapa's day as well. Report an error in the passage at 50:07 Highlight the passage at 50:07

50:31 And then, of course, this view has become extremely influential down to today in many different schools of Tibetan Buddhism outside Gyelupa. Report an error in the passage at 50:31 Highlight the passage at 50:31

50:44 Some masters of that tradition reject the interpretations of Nagarjuna as presented by Chandrakirti and instead, which implies that he's not going to be able to take them as prasangaka, at least in any obvious way. They present instead a convergence of the viewpoints of Asanga and Nagarjuna and arguing that the view found in Maitreya's sublime continuum and Nagarjuna's Dharma Datu Stotra, him to the Dharma Datu represents Nagarjuna's final position rather than what you would find in some other texts. Report an error in the passage at 50:44 Highlight the passage at 50:44

51:24 And so it's very interesting to see just how he words this. He doesn't say it's wrong, but if you read between the lines, he's seeming to suggest that this isn't something, unlike all these other things, this isn't something that I can obviously posit as having the same final view. But then he follows it up by saying, when you examine the writings of these great masters, and these perhaps refers back to all of above, naturally there are differences in the terminology they use and the approaches they present. Report an error in the passage at 51:24 Highlight the passage at 51:24

51:58 But when it comes to the final understanding, the Pension Lama's Mahamudra text says, he was including a Gilukba Mahamudra text, right, says that all of the diverse Dharma teachings converge for someone who is learned, Someone who is learned in the definitive teachings, who is skilled in reasoning and possessed of profound yogic realization. So that's his argument. Report an error in the passage at 51:58 Highlight the passage at 51:58

52:23 Scholars will always disagree about how to word these things. Oh, is it an affirming negative or a non-affirming negative? It's like a big argument. It's the ultimate reality. A sheer negation or is it the negation of... Let me just say something like, for example, this argument within Guilupa that we mentioned yesterday about whether nirvāṇa is a conventional truth or an ultimate truth, it's like, well, it depends on how you define it. Report an error in the passage at 52:23 Highlight the passage at 52:23

52:51 It's like, okay, if you define it as, there's a person who eradicates permanently from the root some aspect of the afflictions in their continuum. Report an error in the passage at 52:51 Highlight the passage at 52:51

53:03 And that person's mind is, of course, empty of inherent existence. Now what are you going to call the nirvāṇa? The state of mind which has eliminated this affliction or the emptiness of that state of mind in which that affliction has been eliminated? Well, who cares, you know? You can call it one and then it's a conventional truth or you can call it the other and you call it an ultimate truth. And that's an example of what he's saying. Report an error in the passage at 53:03 Highlight the passage at 53:03

53:27 Now if you take that, that's, you know, Jamyang Shaba versus Pencha and Sonam Chakpa arguing within Gyalupa over that, right? I'm sure it gets very intense on the debating courtyard. It comes down, they're talking about exactly the same thing and they've just decided to frame it differently. Suppose you talk about, if you read what His Holiness says in Kindness, Clarity, Insights, he's essentially making a similar kind of argument about this argument about whether Report an error in the passage at 53:27 Highlight the passage at 53:27

54:04 The ultimate emptiness is a sheer negation, the sheer absence of inherent existence, or whether it can be understood as a profound mind that is empty of the inherent existence. Report an error in the passage at 54:04 Highlight the passage at 54:04

54:19 And it's like, he's like, well, you know, of course, you know, the whole point is to have a profound mind that's knowing the ultimate nature of things. If we just want the ultimate nature of things, we've already got it. It's cheaper than dirt. It's like everywhere. Report an error in the passage at 54:19 Highlight the passage at 54:19

54:35 Geisha Rapp then said, emptiness isn't sacred at all, you know, you find it everywhere. It's just that people don't see it, you know, they don't know it. So what's sacred or profound or holy is, you know, the mind that's knowing emptiness. So when you have the mind that's knowing emptiness, you have something that's profound and holy, and of course it's also empty. Report an error in the passage at 54:35 Highlight the passage at 54:35

54:56 So what is the ultimate reality, the emptiness or the profound mind that's knowing emptiness? And I would argue that His Holiness' way of looking at the big Gillouk versus non-Gillouk argument about whether emptiness is a sheer negation or an implicative negation, a negation that leaves a pure kind of mind as also part of the ultimate, is essentially making the same argument that we talked about yesterday within Gillouk. Report an error in the passage at 54:56 Highlight the passage at 54:56

55:22 It's like just a matter of how you frame it. We're still talking about the same thing. A profound type of consciousness knowing the ultimate nature of things is empty. Report an error in the passage at 55:22 Highlight the passage at 55:22

55:32 Okay. So next chapter, chapter 12. Report an error in the passage at 55:32 Highlight the passage at 55:32

55:41 Nagarjuna's fundamental wisdom in the middle way just characterized the ultimate reality as the total pacification of conceptual elaboration. And Tsongkhapa begins the Lactung section of... This talking about nirvāṇa, he said, if we want to attain nirvāṇa, what is nirvāṇa? The reality that we seek to attain, the embodiment of truth, the Churgut, is the total extinction of conceptions of both self and that which belongs to the self, specifically by stopping all the various internal and external phenomena from appearing as though they were reality itself, which they are not. Report an error in the passage at 55:41 Highlight the passage at 55:41

56:19 Along with the latent predispositions for such false appearances. And how do we attain this nirvāṇa? Tsongkhapa says, the stages by which you enter into this reality are that first you contemplate in dismay the faults and disadvantages of sickly existence. And then you develop a wish to be done with it. Report an error in the passage at 56:19 Highlight the passage at 56:19

56:39 And then, understanding that you will not overcome it unless you overcome its causes, you research its roots and consider what might be the root cause of cyclic existence. And you thereby become certain from the depths of your heart that the reifying view of the perishing aggregates or ignorance acts as the very root of cyclic existence and develop a sincere wish to eliminate that. Report an error in the passage at 56:39 Highlight the passage at 56:39

57:03 Then, seeing next, see that the... See that overcoming this redefining view of the aggregates depends upon developing a wisdom that knows that the self, as thus conceived, does not exist at all. You will then see that you have to refute the self. Be certain that in that refutation you rely upon scriptures and lines of reasoning that contradict its existence and prove its non-existence. Report an error in the passage at 57:03 Highlight the passage at 57:03

57:30 This is the indispensable technique for anyone who seeks liberation. So the key thing then is to figure out what is this self that we're grasping at as the root of cyclic existence. What is the object of negation? If the self that we grasp at did exist, what would it be like? This is the process of identifying the object of negation. Report an error in the passage at 57:30 Highlight the passage at 57:30

57:57 Of course you then are going to refute it in analysis and so you first want to know what the target of your analysis is. Report an error in the passage at 57:57 Highlight the passage at 57:57

58:06 There's the conceptual identification of the object of negation and then there's the process of identifying in one's personal experience what that object of negation is like. Report an error in the passage at 58:06 Highlight the passage at 58:06

58:19 So as Holiness says, what does the self that's the object of negation, this sense of an intrinsically real self, what is it like in our personal experience? We have to examine this. We see that our core sense of self within it, within this core sense of self, Especially when that sense of self is manifesting in a strong form, like when somebody's trying to take something from me. There's an underlying supposition or assumption that the self somehow exists in between the mind and body as something that's either separate from them or over and above them. Report an error in the passage at 58:19 Highlight the passage at 58:19

58:55 We tend to feel or assume that what we call I, we have a sense that what we call I, the referent of our self, It has some kind of concrete reality that it's somehow self-defining or self-sufficient or able to set itself up. And then when we perceive something else externally, because it's apart from this self, we tend to regard that object as if it existed in its own right, out there where we see it apart from us. Report an error in the passage at 58:55 Highlight the passage at 58:55

59:23 And it seems that we could point our finger at it and pin it down with our finger or that it occupies a very specific space. Report an error in the passage at 59:23 Highlight the passage at 59:23

59:34 Anyway, I thought I'd read that because that is what he says about this process of trying to understand what it feels like to have the object of negation in us, arising as something we're grasping to. And then he says, of course, this doesn't mean, of course, the person as a unique individual, I'm looking at you, the person as a unique individual does exist. Report an error in the passage at 59:34 Highlight the passage at 59:34

1:00:00 What's being negated as the person is existing in the particular manner in which we tend to assume that the person exists as some objectively real being that owns the body and the mind or somehow. Report an error in the passage at 1:00:00 Highlight the passage at 1:00:00

1:00:16 Then he makes the point that this is something that appears even at the sensory level. Things appear to us as like concrete realities. They look like they're existing by way of their own power. This becomes something he discusses in a lot more detail later. Because things appear that they exist, having an inherent nature, we just tend to go along with that. The Seventh Dalai Lama, of course he's always bringing in all these other sources. Report an error in the passage at 1:00:16 Highlight the passage at 1:00:16

1:00:43 Seventh Dalai Lama's writings weren't available to Tsongkhapa. The Seventh Dalai Lama... Says that every object that appears to our senses seems as though it had some self-instituting or self-defining reality. That is, in perception. It's that we don't always think, oh, this object looked like it's objectively real. But it appears to us as though it has self-instituting, self-defining reality of its own. Report an error in the passage at 1:00:43 Highlight the passage at 1:00:43

1:01:09 And the content of this distorted perception is the thing that's a subtle object of negation. It's like, you know, we're not trying... Actually, we'll get rid of this perception only when we're fully Buddhas. But when he means the content, he means that objectified way in which things are appearing to our senses. Report an error in the passage at 1:01:09 Highlight the passage at 1:01:09

1:01:38 Not the things, but that objectified mode of appearance is what is that content, is the object of negation, what we're trying to refute. Report an error in the passage at 1:01:38 Highlight the passage at 1:01:38

1:01:53 So then he relies a lot on Guntong Rinpoche who wrote a book of praise to Tsongkhapa's teaching which sort of ends up functioning as a commentary I guess on some of it. And he says that when we cultivate the view of emptiness we're setting out to understand the very nature of things. The non-finding of inherent existence That constitutes the negation of inherent existence. So in general, when you look for something and don't find it, it doesn't prove the non-existence of the thing. Report an error in the passage at 1:01:53 Highlight the passage at 1:01:53

1:02:35 I'm very familiar with this phenomenon myself. But suppose you have a situation where something really ought to be findable when properly sought and has been searched for scrupulously by someone who's qualified to find it if it's really there. And then it's not found, right? In this case, not finding something then entails its non-existence. And inherent existence was like this. Report an error in the passage at 1:02:35 Highlight the passage at 1:02:35

1:03:03 If it were real, and it vividly seems to be real, but if it were real as it seems, then it ought to be able to be found when we search for it. Report an error in the passage at 1:03:03 Highlight the passage at 1:03:03

1:03:13 This doesn't imply that the table or the cup doesn't exist, but it doesn't exist at all in the way that it appears. Because when you search for... That kind of objective cup, which is the way that the cup appears, it's utterly unfindable. Report an error in the passage at 1:03:13 Highlight the passage at 1:03:13

1:03:33 The mere existence of things is left untouched, but when you completely eradicate this objectified mode of how the cup appears to us, what's left is only this sense of cup as a nominally existent or a mere designation. And then we have to posit how cause and effect... Karma and so forth, all of our relationships work within, without inherent existence. And in fact, of course, Nagarjuna argues that it's only because there's no, only because things are empty that stuff is able to work. Report an error in the passage at 1:03:33 Highlight the passage at 1:03:33

1:04:06 But His Holiness is always trying to say, yeah, that sounds really nice, but you have to realize that it's very much against, it's very deep understanding. Report an error in the passage at 1:04:06 Highlight the passage at 1:04:06

1:04:16 Really, when you start working on this, you find out that emptiness always seems to be cutting against the grain of our feeling confident that things are going to work. That our assumptions that things are always implicitly built on the fact of things having some objective power in themselves to be effective as causes. Report an error in the passage at 1:04:16 Highlight the passage at 1:04:16

1:04:44 So he goes quickly through Nagarjuna's five-fold reasoning, saying, the person in the aggregates and relationship to which it's... The person and aggregates in relationship to which the person is designated, the person and the mind and body are neither identical nor are they essentially different, neither exists as a core within the other. Report an error in the passage at 1:04:44 Highlight the passage at 1:04:44

1:05:07 It's not the case that one rests upon as some objectively real thing depending upon the other. And then you can add on the idea that the self is not the mere collection of the aggregates. It's not the shape of the collection of the aggregates. And so when you search through the five-fold analysis or Chandra-Kiri's seven-fold analysis, you don't find the kind of person that you were taking as existing objectively there. Report an error in the passage at 1:05:07 Highlight the passage at 1:05:07

1:05:38 And then he says, on the other hand, when you get rid of objective existence, then some people think, well, it's just my feeling that it exists. Report an error in the passage at 1:05:38 Highlight the passage at 1:05:38

1:05:47 Subjective reality is also a problem. You can't say it. Everybody has their own sense of what things are. I'm going to go with my gut on this one. We tried that, actually, with the prior president. Report an error in the passage at 1:05:47 Highlight the passage at 1:05:47

1:06:05 Subjective reality. That's the real truth. Forget facts. That one didn't work out too well either. Avoiding nihilism. Tsongkhapa says there are two ways to go wrong when you're identifying the object of negation. You can negate too much or not negate enough. Report an error in the passage at 1:06:05 Highlight the passage at 1:06:05

1:06:27 And there's a very clever part where Tsongkhapa points out that the 24th chapter is where you see Nagarjuna refuting these Buddhist realists who think That because he's refuting the real or essential or objective existence of things, that he's destroyed the three jewels and the four noble truths and all conventional distinctions. Report an error in the passage at 1:06:27 Highlight the passage at 1:06:27

1:06:55 He's saying, well, they've just assumed that existence and findable, graspable, and inherent existence are always right there together. So Tsongkhapa takes that and he, as His Holiness explains, he turns it around on the Tibetans that he thinks are... You know, mistaken pseudo-madyamakas who are actually negating too much. When people said, well, we do this analysis and we find that nothing exists, but we just pretend that it does out of compassion. Report an error in the passage at 1:06:55 Highlight the passage at 1:06:55

1:07:27 And that's what it means. No, I mean, they actually say like that, right? Something very close to that. So, I mean, we know that nothing exists, but out of compassion, that's Buddhism, right? I mean, that's Buddhism. I read that in... In Kansa when I was 18 years old, the bodhisattva knows there are no people, but out of compassion vows to save them all. It's very mysterious. Report an error in the passage at 1:07:27 Highlight the passage at 1:07:27

1:07:53 But that's a real view, is that you can't say, oh, these people are real, but they don't have an inherent existence. Well, who cares about an inherent existence? We didn't even have a thought about it until we came to the Dharma Center. We just knew there were people. Report an error in the passage at 1:07:53 Highlight the passage at 1:07:53

1:08:09 We go to the Dharma Center and somebody says, there's this thing called in here in existence, but nothing has it. Oh, okay, fine. It wasn't really a problem. I don't even know what it is, but things don't have it. Report an error in the passage at 1:08:09 Highlight the passage at 1:08:09

1:08:27 The idea is this is important. This is a problem with the Gelukba approach. The Gelukbas identify themselves. It is saying, you know, that if you approach things in this way and you keep making sure that no one will ever be nihilistic, right, because you'll never get confused by refutation, you know, of this cup as it appears to me now. Report an error in the passage at 1:08:27 Highlight the passage at 1:08:27

1:08:54 This cup as it appears to me now is utterly non-existent. And so it's funny to say, well, if you then put that into another way and say, this cup is utterly non-existent. But let's pretend that it is out of compassion. Okay, well then if you take that too literally, then you're sort of like, okay, it sounds like you're saying nothing exists, right? Report an error in the passage at 1:08:54 Highlight the passage at 1:08:54

1:09:12 But we'll just pretend that it is, right? The problem is that for us, we can't tell the difference between inherent existence and existence. And so what do you have two problems? One, with these two things are stuck together, you can either say the cup doesn't exist, and you're really getting at your reified sense that it does exist, it's real, I know it is. Report an error in the passage at 1:09:12 Highlight the passage at 1:09:12

1:09:32 But you're taking a chance that people might take that to mean that nothing exists at all. Nothing matters. There's no three jewels. It's all just a game in some sense because there's nothing exists at all in any way. And then on the other hand, you could say things don't have inherent existence, but they do exist and make people feel safer. But on the other hand, they may not actually be Getting at their reified sense that things are there. And the Galupa way has always been to take the safer route to start with, at least with the general population, right? Report an error in the passage at 1:09:32 Highlight the passage at 1:09:32

1:10:17 And then sort of let the yogis work their way down into the understanding. But to start by getting people to have, make sure that you're not teaching in a way that undermines people's confidence. confidence in, in, in depend, karma. And the distinction between killing and not killing and so forth. Report an error in the passage at 1:10:17 Highlight the passage at 1:10:17

1:10:41 So anyway Tsongkhapa makes this move and he says look there's all these people who say that we do this analysis and Nagarjuna proves that nothing exists. And so we know that nothing exists but we out of compassion proceed to act as though it did. And he's saying, well, people who say that or say something close to that in Tibetan Buddhism, they actually have, this is Tsongkhapa's argument, they actually have exactly the same view as the Buddhist realists. Report an error in the passage at 1:10:41 Highlight the passage at 1:10:41

1:11:12 Why? Because they've said existence, it's not just that we've confused existence with inherent existence, they're saying existence is inherent existence, and that if you refute one, you've necessarily refuted the other. And that was what the Buddhist realists thought. They thought, you know, if Nagarjuna's refuted inherent existence and therefore there's no three jewels, you know, and that's a bad thing. And then the Buddhist Madhyamakas that Tsongkhapa's attacking, he said, you know, well, that's a good thing. Report an error in the passage at 1:11:12 Highlight the passage at 1:11:12

1:11:41 They say exactly the same conclusion. We've wiped out everything. Thank goodness. We finally got rid of all that impure stuff. It all turns out to not exist at all whatsoever. And he's sort of saying, well, these people think that they're very deep mud yamakas, but they actually have the same implicit assumption as the realists, which is that the inherent existence and existence are always right there together. Report an error in the passage at 1:11:41 Highlight the passage at 1:11:41

1:12:05 And I, Tsongkhapa, will show you that they can be teased apart and, in fact, teasing them apart and understanding Understanding that implicitly they've always been teased apart, even in the sutras, even in Nagarjuna, that it's never meant exactly the same thing. It's just that it's sometimes worded one way and sometimes worded another way. But the Heart Sūtra is not meant to say, everything doesn't exist and therefore go and do as you please. Report an error in the passage at 1:12:05 Highlight the passage at 1:12:05

1:12:33 You know, in, you know, in the man of. Manifest your pure nature right now, given that nothing matters, nothing exists, go and do what comes naturally. That wasn't the teaching. Be spontaneous. Report an error in the passage at 1:12:33 Highlight the passage at 1:12:33

1:12:54 Then he introduces a challenge or a problem that comes up. so. Report an error in the passage at 1:12:54 Highlight the passage at 1:12:54

1:13:02 These people who negate too much, he doesn't say who are they, the Tibetan Buddhists who negate too much, they think that Nagarjuna's tradition rejects any kind of valid cognition, any kind of reliable knowledge. Then they take Nagarjuna's teaching that everything is mere designation to mean that there isn't any possibility of real conventional knowledge about things. Report an error in the passage at 1:13:02 Highlight the passage at 1:13:02

1:13:25 Or maybe there's reliable knowledge, but it's only Buddha's knowledge of the ultimate. There isn't any real... Any reliable knowledge about conventional phenomena. Because they're all illusory, they're all elaborations and fabrications and so anything that you know about them is false, falsified. Report an error in the passage at 1:13:25 Highlight the passage at 1:13:25

1:13:53 Dalai Lama says, well we can understand their perspective. Because to say that a perception is a reliable source of knowledge, it's true that that perception must be in some way non-deceptive about its object. And we've just finished talking about how our perceptions are always being deceived by everything that appears to us. And just like in Lamrim Chemo, having raised this problem, he doesn't immediately answer it or address it at all. Report an error in the passage at 1:13:53 Highlight the passage at 1:13:53

1:14:21 He comes to it. But he leaves it aside. It's actually like somebody was reading this. It's like a murder mystery. He sets up this problem. Somebody says, your thing doesn't make any... It's not possible for you to talk about reliable knowledge of conventional things because we have all these sources that make very clear that this isn't the teaching. Report an error in the passage at 1:14:21 Highlight the passage at 1:14:21

1:14:43 And it doesn't really make any sense. You yourself have just admitted that all these things that appear are false to us. And how can we have reliable knowledge about them? He throws this problem out there and then he goes away from it for a long time. Instead he says, look, instead of directly addressing your question, I'm going to make another point. Report an error in the passage at 1:14:43 Highlight the passage at 1:14:43

1:15:07 Suppose you were right. You have then contradicted the core of the teaching, which is that emptiness and independent arising have to add up to the same thing. And if your version was right, they wouldn't add up to the same thing because emptiness would be canceling out the pendant arising. That's the argument. Report an error in the passage at 1:15:07 Highlight the passage at 1:15:07

1:15:28 So eventually he comes back to answer the charge more directly. But this is like the kind of the heart of the thing is that, of course, that emptiness is not total non-existence. Report an error in the passage at 1:15:28 Highlight the passage at 1:15:28

1:15:44 Fundamental wisdom of the middle way identifies emptiness with dependent arising in 2418, right? That which arises dependently we explain as emptiness. Report an error in the passage at 1:15:44 Highlight the passage at 1:15:44

1:15:54 And His Holiness goes on to point out that this in turn derives from Buddhist statements in the questions of the Naga King Annavatapta Sūtra, where Buddha said, what is arisen from conditions is devoid of arising. Such a thing is devoid of any intrinsic arising. And then having said, made these statements about, you know, what has arisen is devoid of arising. Sounds very empty. Such a thing is devoid of any intrinsic arising. Report an error in the passage at 1:15:54 Highlight the passage at 1:15:54

1:16:27 Sounds a little less empty. And then Buddha goes on to say, therefore, that which arisen from conditions is said to be empty. So what this means is that if you put these statements from the sūtra together, it basically says when we say that the rising things are empty, we mean they're empty of any intrinsic arising, not that they don't exist at all, and that because they arise and pass away interdependently and have no independent self-instituting existence apart from this, we say that they're empty. Report an error in the passage at 1:16:27 Highlight the passage at 1:16:27

1:17:02 This equates emptiness with dependent origination rather than equating emptiness with a non-existence in which there's this sort of a mere sport of compassion or something like this. Report an error in the passage at 1:17:02 Highlight the passage at 1:17:02

1:17:17 So, His Holiness goes on to talk about this idea of dependent, oh, the last line of 2418 says, this identification, this emptiness and dependent arising identification, this is dependent designation. And the true middle way. So he takes this phrase, dependent designation, and says, this is a very powerful phrase, dependent designation, that dependence immediately conveys the ideas that phenomena do not have any independent status, exist only dependently. Report an error in the passage at 1:17:17 Highlight the passage at 1:17:17

1:17:51 Dependent negates any notion of here in existence. Whereas the second word, designation, implies or conveys the notion that things are not nothing. They do have a conventional or designated identity that emerges from their dependent relationships. So the meaning of emptiness is to be understood in terms of dependent arising. Report an error in the passage at 1:17:51 Highlight the passage at 1:17:51

1:18:13 And then he has, the Dalai Lama quoted a few slightly long and really beautiful passages from Lamrim Chemo, which I'll read here at this point. Report an error in the passage at 1:18:13 Highlight the passage at 1:18:13

1:18:27 this attainment, as explained earlier, is based... This attainment of Buddhahood is based on having amassed along the path immeasurable collections of merit and wisdom, collections within which method and wisdom are themselves inseparable. That, in turn, definitely relies upon having attained certain knowledge of the diversity of conventional phenomena. Report an error in the passage at 1:18:27 Highlight the passage at 1:18:27

1:18:50 This profound knowledge understands the relationship of cause and effect, conventionally existent cause and effect, and is such that specific beneficial and harmful effects arise from specific causes. Report an error in the passage at 1:18:50 Highlight the passage at 1:18:50

1:19:05 At the same time, amassing the collections of merit and wisdom also definitely relies upon attaining certain knowledge of the real nature of phenomena. And this means reaching a profound certainty that all phenomena lack even a... particle of essential or intrinsic nature. Certain knowledge of both the diversity and the real nature is needed without them it's impossible to practice the whole path, method and wisdom from the depths of your heart. Report an error in the passage at 1:19:05 Highlight the passage at 1:19:05

1:19:36 So this is the key to the path that leads to the attainment of the two embodiments at the time of the result. And whether you get it right depends on how you establish your philosophical view of the basic situation at the outset. The way to establish that view is to reach certain knowledge of the two truths as I've explained them here. Report an error in the passage at 1:19:36 Highlight the passage at 1:19:36

1:19:59 Except for Madhyamakas, other people do not understand how to explain these two truths as non-contradictory and instead see them as a mass of contradictions. But experts possessed of subtlety, wisdom and vast intelligence, experts called mandyamakas, have used their mastery of techniques for knowing the two truths to establish them without even the slightest contradiction and in this way reach the final meaning of what the conqueror taught. Report an error in the passage at 1:19:59 Highlight the passage at 1:19:59

1:20:25 This gives them a wonderful respect for our teacher and his teaching and from that respect they speak with utter sincerity, raising their voices again and again. You who are wise, the meaning of emptiness, emptiness of intrinsic existence, is dependent arising. It does not mean that things don't exist. Report an error in the passage at 1:20:25 Highlight the passage at 1:20:25

1:20:44 It does not mean that they are empty of any capacity to function. Report an error in the passage at 1:20:44 Highlight the passage at 1:20:44

1:20:52 And still, in different ways, talking about emptiness and dependent arising, His Holiness then goes on to talk about some ways that people can go astray. He says that sometimes having read in Nagarjuna that emptiness means the total pacification of conceptual elaboration, some people will think that they can realize emptiness by just stopping conceptual thought. Report an error in the passage at 1:20:52 Highlight the passage at 1:20:52

1:21:17 Or other people might use the reasoning that the person is not one with the mind and body or different and in the end see that nothing can be found. And then reach the conclusion that since everything is completely unfindable and untenable, that nothing exists. Or other people will say that because things are unfindable, it doesn't necessarily mean that things don't exist, but it means that no conclusion or determination can be made at all about the status of things. Report an error in the passage at 1:21:17 Highlight the passage at 1:21:17

1:21:50 And then he says something remarkable. Tsongkhapa had this view, this wrong view, earlier in his career. When he was writing, when he was Randhawa's student, and then he wrote his Abhisamaya Lankara book, The Golden Garland of Excellence. And within that, he's retelling a bodhisattva story. And Tsongkhapa says that all things are illusory and unfindable. Report an error in the passage at 1:21:50 Highlight the passage at 1:21:50

1:22:21 Yet for the sake of others, the bodhisattva assumes the validity of dependent origination. Not the sort of thing that you find in Tsongkhapa's mature works, and in fact exactly the sort of thing that he's concerned about in his mature works. In other words, as Lama says, in Tsongkhapa's early work, he seems to take the validity of dependent arising as something that the bodhisattva assumes Only for the sake of helping others, rather than as something, anything that he or she could adopt as his own or her own view. Report an error in the passage at 1:22:21 Highlight the passage at 1:22:21

1:22:58 And then he says, on the other hand, later, for example, his three principal aspects of the path, let alone Islam and Shemmo, but in the three principal aspects of his path, he says, as long as you think of dependerizing over here and emptiness over here as alternating in your mind like the feet of a weaver, alternating but never going together, Then you'll never become a Buddha. That it's the bringing together of these ideas and seeing how they're completely compatible. They're exactly, precisely two ways to talk about the same things, that that's what it means to get the view. Report an error in the passage at 1:22:58 Highlight the passage at 1:22:58

1:23:33 And then he goes on to give many other arguments about how this is found in the Indian Buddhist teachings. For example, Nagarjuna's Precious Garland says, The person is not the earth element, the water element, and so forth, nor is it the consciousness. In that case, where is the person? Over and above these elements. Report an error in the passage at 1:23:33 Highlight the passage at 1:23:33

1:23:56 And His Holiness says, but Nagarjuna, having said this, does not then immediately jump to the conclusion that the person is non-existent or devoid of inherent existence either. Instead, he provides an intermediate verse saying that the person exists not as an ultimate, but in relationship to Designated in relationship to a composite of the elements. And then he goes on to say, and the person is non-existent or non-inherently existent. Report an error in the passage at 1:23:56 Highlight the passage at 1:23:56

1:24:27 So he first shows that the person can't be found under an analysis and then he brings up dependent arising and then comes to the conclusion that the person has no final reality. He said this is a perfect example that shows why bring up the person's dependent relationship when you just finished apparently showing. Report an error in the passage at 1:24:27 Highlight the passage at 1:24:27

1:24:45 If all you wanted to prove was the person doesn't exist, then you wouldn't have to insert some conversation about dependent arising in the middle between your reasons and your conclusion. He's saying that's because it means the same thing when properly understood. That's his point. And so he says in terms of his own teaching, His Holiness, his own teaching, that when I teach Nagarjuna, I like to start with the 26th chapter and start with the teachings on dependent arising in terms of cause and effect. Report an error in the passage at 1:24:45 Highlight the passage at 1:24:45

1:25:16 And how the 12 links worked. And he justifies this by saying that Nagarjuna himself says, without relying on the conventional, the ultimate cannot be known. The Chandrakirti says the conventional is the means and the ultimate is the end that's arrived at through the means. And therefore, it makes sense to start with the conventional. Report an error in the passage at 1:25:16 Highlight the passage at 1:25:16

1:25:38 Okay, that's the argument we were saying. This is also, as I was alluding to earlier, the way the Gyalukpa... The system is structured to start with the conventional and explain how it works and give people a sense of confidence in it before turning to exploration of emptiness in a deeper way. Report an error in the passage at 1:25:38 Highlight the passage at 1:25:38

1:26:03 Concluding this chapter, he says, once you maintain an understanding of ultimate reality as the emptiness of intrinsic existence, Neither negating too much or too little. Then you'll really understand dependent origination. And when dependent origination works within emptiness, then the notion of suffering makes sense because suffering is a dependently originated phenomena that you can see the causes and conditions for. Report an error in the passage at 1:26:03 Highlight the passage at 1:26:03

1:26:29 And when you understand within dependent arising as emptiness, when you understand suffering, you understand its origins and then you see that the... Origins of suffering is the real root is ignorance regarding ultimate nature of reality. So understanding emptiness allows you to see the possibility of cessation and a path realizing emptiness that leads to that cessation. Report an error in the passage at 1:26:29 Highlight the passage at 1:26:29

1:26:54 And so the true path and true cessation lead together to constitute the true Dharma among the three jewels. And then when you see how the Dharma jewel works within emptiness, then you can envision individuals who fully embody that Dharma. And such individuals constituting the Saṅgha. And then if there is a Saṅgha, then the perfection, perfection within that Saṅgha, the consummation and epitome of the Saṅgha is the Buddha. Report an error in the passage at 1:26:54 Highlight the passage at 1:26:54

1:27:23 So in other words, he sort of undoes where he started with the 24th chapter and say, when you understand emptiness correctly, this is how you can make the whole thing with the Four Noble Truths and Three Jewels work. Report an error in the passage at 1:27:23 Highlight the passage at 1:27:23

1:27:35 Okay, let's see. Finding the Middle Way, chapter 13. Report an error in the passage at 1:27:35 Highlight the passage at 1:27:35

1:27:44 Now remember, just keep in mind that he raised one problem earlier that he hasn't answered in that business about how can there be any reliable cognition of conventional things if all of our perceptions are completely false, have this completely false appearance. He hasn't come back to that yet. He still leaves that hanging through this whole, you see my point? He raised that question and then we get this really long thing about dependent arising so that you'll really come to believe that It's deeply true that dependent rising emptiness have to mean the same thing. He still hasn't answered the question that he raised before. And before answering it, he raises another problem, which is that these other Tibetan Madhyamakas say, look, when you analyze things and you don't find them, if something can't be found when it's properly philosophically analyzed. Report an error in the passage at 1:27:44 Highlight the passage at 1:27:44

1:28:37 How can you consider that it's a legitimate philosophical view to talk about that thing is existing? It doesn't sustain analysis. So that's what we mean is saying it's just made up. It's not real. A proper analysis of these. So the challenge is if these things can't withstand any kind of rational analysis, how is it possible for something to exist? Report an error in the passage at 1:28:37 Highlight the passage at 1:28:37

1:29:03 Reason has refuted it. And you're saying your whole thing is based on reason. That's problem number two. We'll call that problem number two. He still hasn't come back to problem number one, but now he's going to say something about problem number two. Report an error in the passage at 1:29:03 Highlight the passage at 1:29:03

1:29:18 Tsongkhapa says, and this is my view, is that this actual point here is one of the most distinctive and important things that Tsongkhapa said about this. Because everybody has some problem about this. He says, you are mistakenly conflating the inability to withstand rational analysis with being invalidated by reason. Report an error in the passage at 1:29:18 Highlight the passage at 1:29:18

1:29:45 Just because when you search for something and say, what is this really about the cup, and don't at the end find some graspable cup, you have not proved the non-existence of the cup. That's another way to say it. You've proved the non-existence of a cup that exists in such a way to have To be answerable to the question, what is it really? What's the real cup? You haven't proved that the cup doesn't exist in such a way like this. Report an error in the passage at 1:29:45 Highlight the passage at 1:29:45

1:30:17 That's all. You see what I'm saying? It doesn't refute the cup. It refutes the cup existing in the way the cup appears. It refutes the cup being answerable to the question, the cup having some real nature. That we could pin down in the way that we thought the cup, we thought the cup ought to have some real nature that could be pinned down. Report an error in the passage at 1:30:17 Highlight the passage at 1:30:17

1:30:42 And it doesn't at all, and we can't find it. And it doesn't prove that it doesn't exist at all. It just proves that it can't exist in a way such that it would be answerable to that. It's a little bit hard to understand, but Tsongkhapa gives an example, which is no matter how closely you look, microscope, good reading glasses, Report an error in the passage at 1:30:42 Highlight the passage at 1:30:42

1:31:06 Telescope, you know, you don't ever see sounds. Darn, they must not exist. No, he says this. This is in Lama Rinpoche. He says, look, that means that what your channel, the epistemic channel, you could say, along which you're searching is not one that's tuned to... you know. Report an error in the passage at 1:31:06 Highlight the passage at 1:31:06

1:31:35 Finding every possible thing that might exist. You're answering the question, what is it really? You're asking a question about the ultimate ontological status of things. How do these things really exist? And they don't have any objectively real existence that's findable. You didn't ask the question, is this cup a cup or a cat? Report an error in the passage at 1:31:35 Highlight the passage at 1:31:35

1:31:57 That would be a different question. And if we knew that this cup... If we knew something about its ultimate nature, whether it exists by way of its dependence on its parts or apart from its parts or whether it had causes and conditions, we still have the problem of knowing whether it was a cat or not. Report an error in the passage at 1:31:57 Highlight the passage at 1:31:57

1:32:15 You know what I'm saying? When I find out whether it ultimately exists, I'll know whether it's a cat. No! That's a different kind of information. It's like they're using your ears versus using your eyes. It's like if you want to know what something sounds like, then you don't try to look really closely at it. Report an error in the passage at 1:32:15 Highlight the passage at 1:32:15

1:32:35 You listen. Okay. He's intentionally using everyday thing of... Seeing versus hearing and saying, look, our conventional knowledge can be useful. It's indispensable to the practice of the path to know the difference between virtue and non-virtue and not think, well, really, they're all the same because they're all empty. Report an error in the passage at 1:32:35 Highlight the passage at 1:32:35

1:32:54 No. No. Conventionally, they're different. And that is reliable knowledge. You have to be able to say that even though they're all empty. Report an error in the passage at 1:32:54 Highlight the passage at 1:32:54

1:33:04 So he's saying ultimate knowledge that knows that everything is empty doesn't cancel out or destroy this conventional ability for things to be with virtue to be virtue and cups to be cups and cars to be cars and so forth. And this is actually, there's a lot to this. I mean, if you read, okay, Jeffrey's, Jeffrey did Mountain. Report an error in the passage at 1:33:04 Highlight the passage at 1:33:04

1:33:29 in Dharma and Sharap Gelson's teaching. He also did this book, The Final Exposition in the Middle Way, which is Tsongkhapa's medium length lamrim book. In the back of that final exposition in the middle way, the medium length lamrim book, he has a summary of his synoptic comparisons. Tsongkhapa's view. Report an error in the passage at 1:33:29 Highlight the passage at 1:33:29

1:33:54 Versus the other emptiness view of Jonah. And he very objectively, fair-mindedly catalogs all the differences and then he boils them down to 18 quintessential differences and three root differences and one final thing that he thinks he can boil it down to. And the one final thing is pretty much this. This question of whether this distinction is at the heart of a lot. Report an error in the passage at 1:33:54 Highlight the passage at 1:33:54

1:34:22 of differences in Buddhist philosophy in Tibet, this question of do you refute things when you search for them and you can't find them or not? Report an error in the passage at 1:34:22 Highlight the passage at 1:34:22

1:34:33 So His Holiness says this is an extremely important point but he doesn't elaborate on it as much as he does on some of the other things he just tells us it's extremely important and he quotes Gunthang saying in the context of the philosophical view of emptiness we're searching for intrinsic nature. So when we do not find that intrinsic nature, this constitutes the negation of intrinsic nature. That's a simpler way of saying what I'm trying to convey. Report an error in the passage at 1:34:33 Highlight the passage at 1:34:33

1:35:02 You're not trying to know whether it's a cup or a cat. You're trying to know whether it exists by way of its own nature. It doesn't have any nature that sets itself up on its own side at all. And still manages to be just quite conventionally, legitimately different from a cat. Report an error in the passage at 1:35:02 Highlight the passage at 1:35:02

1:35:19 All right, so having made that point, which is extremely important, he then returns to this problem number one. Can there be reliable conventional knowledge? Even though all of our encyclical existence here, all of our sense perceptions and so forth are distorted by this overlay of reification. Report an error in the passage at 1:35:19 Highlight the passage at 1:35:19

1:35:43 Unfortunately for Tsongkhapa, he has the challenge of dealing with some rather daunting-looking sūtra and shastra passages, such as a sūtra passage that says, the eyes, nose and ears are not reliable means of knowledge. Well, that seems pretty clear. But then he's not daunted at all. He says, let's look at that passage in context. What does the sūtra actually say? Report an error in the passage at 1:35:43 Highlight the passage at 1:35:43

1:36:09 It says, If sensory perceptions were reliable means of knowledge, then why would we need paths of the noble beings? This context allows us to understand what the sūtra means. The passage doesn't reject that there can be any reliable information from the senses at all. It just rejects the idea that these eyes and ears and nose and so forth can give us reliable knowledge about the ultimate nature of things. Report an error in the passage at 1:36:09 Highlight the passage at 1:36:09

1:36:36 If we want to know about emptiness, you don't try to... Sniff it out. It's right here, but we're not going to be able, all of these things, all of our senses are seeing things in a mode that's the opposite of emptiness. They're not giving us, in terms of how things appear, good information about the ultimate nature of things. It doesn't mean that they're utterly unreliable. Report an error in the passage at 1:36:36 Highlight the passage at 1:36:36

1:37:02 They're unreliable about the ultimate nature of things. This is the crucial point. At the perceptual level, things do appear in prasangaka, to have inherent existence. They're pervasively deceptive. Even when we're thinking about, is this cup empty? It's still appearing to me as though it's non-empty. And so it goes against the grain for me to think of it as empty. Report an error in the passage at 1:37:02 Highlight the passage at 1:37:02

1:37:31 So there's a flaw in how things appear. But that doesn't mean that they're completely unreliable. And Tsongkhapa points out that Nagarjuna makes reference to four different means of reliable knowledge and that basically these four boil down to two, which are direct perception and inferential cognition. Report an error in the passage at 1:37:31 Highlight the passage at 1:37:31

1:37:49 So we can get inferential understanding that things are empty. That's why we have to start. There's two kinds of reliable knowledge, perception and inference, and everything looks wrong. So what if What does that lead to? It's like if we're going to figure out how things exist, we're going to have to use reason. We're going to have to come to an inferential understanding. Well, then you get to the next problem. Report an error in the passage at 1:37:49 Highlight the passage at 1:37:49

1:38:14 If you're going to do inference, you're going to say, for example, one of the arguments is things aren't produced from inherently existent others. There's not like there's this. Things are not produced from things that are inherently other than them. Things aren't produced from things that are the same or essentially different or both or neither. So they're not inherently produced. So if we do that reasoning, how things aren't produced from causes that are inherently the same, different, both or neither. Report an error in the passage at 1:38:14 Highlight the passage at 1:38:14

1:38:46 we say when we're due like It seems to me like things are produced from things that are different. If things are real and they have something inherently different from them that's producing them, then anything that the argument goes, then we could light a match and it would produce darkness because light and darkness are different. Report an error in the passage at 1:38:46 Highlight the passage at 1:38:46

1:39:03 And so things that are inherently different can produce each other than any light match could produce darkness. That's an argument. You might have heard it. Report an error in the passage at 1:39:03 Highlight the passage at 1:39:03

1:39:13 In that argument, it assumes that we know something about the difference between light and darkness. Similarly, if I say, if my aggregates are, if myself were inherently different from my mind and body, then shoot, you know, I could be, my mind and body could hear, and my real self could be over there in a cow. Report an error in the passage at 1:39:13 Highlight the passage at 1:39:13

1:39:39 Well, that assumes that you know what a cow is, like a match, a log. All these arguments have logs and cars and fire and darkness and butter lamps. It's like, how do you know about this stuff? Report an error in the passage at 1:39:39 Highlight the passage at 1:39:39

1:39:56 You know about it because you have conventional knowledge in the world. When you're going to do a reasoning, you do inference, you've got to have some data to work with. And that data is coming basically from our ordinary, everyday sense perceptions. And it's all flawed because it's all contaminated with this perception of things as inherent existence. So does that mean that we should just abandon, if we abandon inference, we've already given up on perception because it's totally flawed. Report an error in the passage at 1:39:56 Highlight the passage at 1:39:56

1:40:28 If we abandon inference because even though it may, you know, of course it's coarse and dualistic, but it's considered reliable knowledge, but we don't have any data to work with because all the data is contaminated, garbage in, garbage out, right? So it's like, what are we going to do? I think we'll just have to ask the Lama for some blessings. That's what I think is like actually, you know, the way a lot of this works in practice. Report an error in the passage at 1:40:28 Highlight the passage at 1:40:28

1:40:52 It's like, well, Report an error in the passage at 1:40:52 Highlight the passage at 1:40:52

1:40:56 I've read people saying basically like that. It's like I'm just here stuck in sickly existence. It's almost like Calvinism, you know. All of my perceptions are completely flawed. All of my thoughts are completely dualistic. Who can help me here? Lama. That's it. Report an error in the passage at 1:40:56 Highlight the passage at 1:40:56

1:41:15 There's nothing I can do from my own side. It's like Pure Land, right? Except it's Lama Land. That's it. There's no power to help except through the Lama because I don't have anything going on here that has any legitimacy whatsoever. It's all bad. Shot through with bad. Beginning to end. Okay? And that's not obviously Tsongkhapa's point of view. He's not saying that. He's trying to say, no, it's true. Report an error in the passage at 1:41:15 Highlight the passage at 1:41:15

1:41:46 All of our sense perceptions are flawed. But guess what? It's more complicated than that. A cup can appear as an inherently existent cup and that's totally wrong. And yet it still can be useful at the same time that it's flawed. You can tell the difference between a cup and a pen even though they're falsely appearing as inherently existent and that part is completely wrong. Report an error in the passage at 1:41:46 Highlight the passage at 1:41:46

1:42:13 So in other words, you have to think about it. His argument is you have to distinguish between that we can have some reliable information that's coming in through distorted sense perceptions. And if you don't, you have nothing to work with to do your reasoning. And without your reasoning, you have no way to have an understanding that's the basis for realization. Report an error in the passage at 1:42:13 Highlight the passage at 1:42:13

1:42:35 So you have to rely upon data that's coming through your distorted senses to start the reasoning process. And that means you have to distinguish between, you know, all of our reliable knowledge in cyclic existence is coming from impaired perceptions. Perceptions that are impaired in terms of their ability to see things as they are. But that doesn't mean that they're completely useless. It's like... Report an error in the passage at 1:42:35 Highlight the passage at 1:42:35

1:43:05 I made up this example in the Introduction to Emptiness book. This is my attempt to sort of say something about this. It's like if you have a traffic accident that causes personal injury here at Oak and Webster, and there was a question of the light changing. Does a person go through a red light or a green light and cause this harm? Harm represents sickly existence, by the way. Report an error in the passage at 1:43:05 Highlight the passage at 1:43:05

1:43:35 and so the person so it's like well what what um what's what you know what who Did the person go through the red light or the green light? There's only one witness. That represents our sense perception. And it's colorblind. Report an error in the passage at 1:43:35 Highlight the passage at 1:43:35

1:43:56 It doesn't know the difference between inherent existence. It's ontologically colorblind. It has no idea about the difference between inherent existence and existence. They look exactly the same. Just like red and green. That's our situation. We've got the evidence of our senses. This is all we've got to work with. And they're ontologically colorblind about the exact question that is at stake. Report an error in the passage at 1:43:56 Highlight the passage at 1:43:56

1:44:20 How do things exist? They're wrong about it. But it doesn't mean that they're wrong about everything. Do you see what I'm saying? They're not wrong about everything. They're wrong about that. So, well, was it the top light that was lit, sir? Or the bottom light? There's a lot of information, good cross-examination, out from the senses, relevant data, even though the person is confused about the color of the light. Report an error in the passage at 1:44:20 Highlight the passage at 1:44:20

1:44:52 That's essentially what we're doing. All these reasonings are saying like, yeah, we think the log inherently exists. We think the cow inherently exists. We think the match inherently exists. We think darkness inherently exists. But we still know the difference between heat and cold and light and dark. And those aren't obliterated by the fact that we're mistakenly seeing them as inherently existing. Report an error in the passage at 1:44:52 Highlight the passage at 1:44:52

1:45:13 And we have to use the practical implications of that reliable conventional knowledge to deduce the way we're ordinarily... Thinking of things and perceiving things. We can deduce our own colorblindness by using the other accurate or reliable information that's mixed in there. Report an error in the passage at 1:45:13 Highlight the passage at 1:45:13

1:45:33 That's the idea. Report an error in the passage at 1:45:33 Highlight the passage at 1:45:33

1:45:41 I've jumped ahead and sort of summarized some of the things that he's talking about. Report an error in the passage at 1:45:41 Highlight the passage at 1:45:41

1:45:50 So as Holiness says, when we perceive things as having an inherent intrinsic nature, then we just tend to assume that they really do possess the subjective and inherent existence. And a good example is that in the Chittimatra school, they say that when you ask them, like, where do things come from, self, other, both, or neither, how do they arise? Report an error in the passage at 1:45:50 Highlight the passage at 1:45:50

1:46:10 They say, will things arise from other things? Clearly, they arise from things that are intrinsically different from them. And we don't have to argue for this. There's no reason to try to prove the validity of the notion that things arise from intrinsically other things because we perceive this. It's directly observable, right? Report an error in the passage at 1:46:10 Highlight the passage at 1:46:10

1:46:29 They perceive things as intrinsically other and they use this perception as a reason to support their conviction that things are intrinsically other. So that's anyway, that's something that's not in, that was also another thing from His Holiness through in there in this commentary. Report an error in the passage at 1:46:29 Highlight the passage at 1:46:29

1:46:47 So then there's a section about why does Tsongkhapa think that Bhava Viveka is... See, Bhava Viveka is, you know, the bad guy here and the bad Madhyamaka guy in this story because he's considered the Madhyamaka who mistakenly thinks that at the conventional level, things do have some objective nature of their own. Report an error in the passage at 1:46:47 Highlight the passage at 1:46:47

1:47:11 Only at the conventional level. Nothing ultimately exists. But at the conventional level, things have some objective nature of their own. So he's... The bad guy, you know, within the Madhyamaka tradition in Tsongkhapa's presentation. But he never actually, Baba Venka never actually says that. Report an error in the passage at 1:47:11 Highlight the passage at 1:47:11

1:47:28 And not everybody agrees that he meant it. And it's like, a lot of people still argue about this down today and say, you know, not guilty. So Tsongkhapa has a very, very complicated, elaborate argument and he has lots of different bits of evidence to try to... To show that it wasn't just a difference when Bhavavika said we should use this kind of argument and Chandrakirti said no, it's fine to use this other kind of argument. Report an error in the passage at 1:47:28 Highlight the passage at 1:47:28

1:47:57 Everybody knew that they had these different interpretations of how to read Nagarjuna, but it was just about how to set up the argument, the form of the argument. Should you use a reductio ad absurdum type argument where you tell a person, well, this building... Must not depend on any parts because it exists by way of its own nature. And it's like a person is thinking, oh, hmm, maybe it really doesn't exist by way of its own nature because it's pretty dang obvious that it depends on its parts, right? Report an error in the passage at 1:47:57 Highlight the passage at 1:47:57

1:48:30 So that's a reductio ad absurdum argument. You know, that's called a prasanga, and that's where you get the name prasangaka, right? Whereas then, Bhavaveca said, that's no good, you know. Even if it looked like Nagarjuna was setting that up, that's not the proper formulation. You have to say that the building doesn't exist by way of its own nature because it depends on its parts. Report an error in the passage at 1:48:30 Highlight the passage at 1:48:30

1:48:55 You have to prove the thing that you're trying to prove in a positive way in a syllogism. Everybody knew for centuries that this was a difference of opinion. Report an error in the passage at 1:48:55 Highlight the passage at 1:48:55

1:49:08 And that Chandrakirti had criticized Bhaviveka and Bhaviveka had criticized Buddhapalita and they all argued about how to set up these arguments. But no one was going around saying that this mattered in terms of the philosophy until Tsongkhapa. And Tsongkhapa was the one who came and said, you know, Bhaviveka was a really sharp guy. Report an error in the passage at 1:49:08 Highlight the passage at 1:49:08

1:49:31 And he must have known that when he's arguing with a realist about whether the building... You know, it exists by way of its own, whether this building is empty because of a dependent or, so suppose Bob Vivek is saying to a realist, this building doesn't ultimately exist because it's a dependent arising. Report an error in the passage at 1:49:31 Highlight the passage at 1:49:31

1:49:51 Now think about it from the Buddhist realist point of view. We know what the Buddhist realist thinks, that emptiness and dependent arising are exactly contradictory. We just finished talking about that. For the Buddhist realist, The fact that things are dependent arising proves that they're not empty. That shows that they're full of power to work and be effective. Report an error in the passage at 1:49:51 Highlight the passage at 1:49:51

1:50:14 So how is that going to work to give to a realist this kind of argument that it's like you're saying something that from their point of view proves exactly the opposite of what you're trying to prove. Report an error in the passage at 1:50:14 Highlight the passage at 1:50:14

1:50:30 He's saying Bob Iveka was really smart. He had to understand that. And so he doesn't seem to get it that he's dealing with a person who went, that their perception of the world is like, they're assuming, he's assuming that when you're talking about the building, there's a common perception of the building that you can talk about. Report an error in the passage at 1:50:30 Highlight the passage at 1:50:30

1:50:52 But there probably shouldn't be, at least from Tsongkhapa and Chandrakiri's point of view, right? Because... The realist is thinking that when the building looks like it inherently exists, that's what makes that a correct perception of the building. You check the building, it looks like it inherently exists, and that's what gives you to know that it has the nature of a building that you're discussing. Report an error in the passage at 1:50:52 Highlight the passage at 1:50:52

1:51:12 Whereas from the other point of view, it's like, no, things appear, but they don't have any intrinsically findable nature. So can you debate when people are disagreeing about how the building exists? In the first place, you're debating about how the building exists, but each person's perceiving the building, which is the topic of the debate in a completely different way. Tsongkhapa argues that this and a whole bunch of other little minor things, which he points to, betray and add up. Report an error in the passage at 1:51:12 Highlight the passage at 1:51:12

1:51:46 It's a circumstantial evidence situation that together, closely analyzed, this material in Shantaraksha, Kamalashila, Bhava Viveka, add up to a picture of basically that That these particular Madhyamakas agree with everybody else that nothing ultimately exists, but they seem to assume that at the conventional level, you can have reliable perceptions of things, that there's no colorblindness at the conventional level. Report an error in the passage at 1:51:46 Highlight the passage at 1:51:46

1:52:13 Ultimately, things aren't findable, but at the conventional level, we can trust that the nature of things is, it's like, you know, you know the question of like, is the whole problem that we Don't just stick with our raw perceptions and that we do this overlying conceptual dualistic elaboration. Or is there something wrong even in how things appear? Report an error in the passage at 1:52:13 Highlight the passage at 1:52:13

1:52:36 You actually read, if you look in Dharma books, you see people talk in different ways about things. Sometimes you get the impression that all the mistake is at the conceptual level. If we could just be with our natural feelings. Do you know what I'm saying? That things would be okay and that it's only when you start thinking about them that it gets messed up. Report an error in the passage at 1:52:36 Highlight the passage at 1:52:36

1:52:53 But Tsongkhapa is arguing that the whole Prasangaka view from the very beginning is even before we start thinking, we already have this mistake that's shot through everything. And we still have to have a refined, reliable knowledge even in the midst of that mistakenness. So His Holiness tries to explain for a little while these ideas about the difference between Prasangaka and Madhyamaka. Report an error in the passage at 1:52:53 Highlight the passage at 1:52:53

1:53:22 And he acknowledges, you know, it's very difficult to understand. Report an error in the passage at 1:53:22 Highlight the passage at 1:53:22

1:53:38 And he says, in the end, Tsongkhapa concludes that the prasangaka system of Chandrakirti is the one that establishes the correct view of emptiness and that you should meditate so as to realize the correct view of emptiness on the basis of that. And then he very briefly describes the use of the chariot as an example to analyze the person. Report an error in the passage at 1:53:38 Highlight the passage at 1:53:38

1:54:02 And then says, How does meditating on emptiness in this way clear away the mental obscurations? Quote from Tsongkhapa. After you've seen that the self and that which belongs to the self lack even the slightest particle of intrinsic nature, you gradually accustom yourself to these facts in meditation, thereby stopping the reifying view of the parafishing aggregates as self. Report an error in the passage at 1:54:02 Highlight the passage at 1:54:02

1:54:27 And when you stop that view, you stop all types of grasping. And when you stop these, Existence that's conditioned by attachment will not occur and hence there will be an end to rebirth of the aggregates that are conditioned by existence and you will attain to liberation. All of the afflictions such as attachment and hostility are rooted in a reified view of the aggregates and they're produced from misconceptions that operate only by clinging to ideas like this is real in relationship to worldly concerns or men or women or pot. Report an error in the passage at 1:54:27 Highlight the passage at 1:54:27

1:55:02 or cloth, or forms, or feelings. These misconceptions, rooted in the idea of self, conceive of these objects and they are generated from the elaboration of conceptions or distortions of the conception of true existence. Report an error in the passage at 1:55:02 Highlight the passage at 1:55:02

1:55:18 So the view of emptiness cuts the root of cyclic existence and is the very root of the heart to path of liberation, therefore the root of the whole lamrim teachings. You must gain firm certainty about this. This holiness then says, Well, maybe you're not interested in seeking liberation. You may not even be wondering about it. You might just be coming here to see the Dalai Lama. Report an error in the passage at 1:55:18 Highlight the passage at 1:55:18

1:55:44 I think, though, by this point, most of the people had some interest or they wouldn't have sat through all the days. You may not even be wondering about it. But if you do aspire to liberation, then you have to cultivate an understanding of emptiness. Report an error in the passage at 1:55:44 Highlight the passage at 1:55:44

1:56:03 And then. I'm going to read the last chapter. It's very brief and is sort of His Holiness' concluding words. I'm going to read the whole thing and wrap up here. So now we are done. To understand this teaching properly takes months. After that, to practice it properly takes decades. But we have to do it. There's no other choice. In my own case... Report an error in the passage at 1:56:03 Highlight the passage at 1:56:03

1:56:34 I developed a very genuine interest in these teachings when I was about 16 years old, and I'm now 73. This was four years ago, right? All along, this very book has been my main guidebook. In Tibetan, we call texts that are very comprehensive, a thousand doses at once. And Tsongkhapa's great treatise is certainly such a text. Report an error in the passage at 1:56:34 Highlight the passage at 1:56:34

1:56:58 But among such texts, Tsongkhapa's work is unique in that he sets out to explain even the very hardest passages in the Indian texts. Naturally, this makes his own book very difficult, but clarifying these difficult passages is necessary and worthwhile. Report an error in the passage at 1:56:58 Highlight the passage at 1:56:58

1:57:18 Tsongkhapa's collected works fill 18 volumes in Tibetan, and there are writings of every sort, and hardly any of it is easy reading. Every text says something weighty. Something of profound significance. At the same time, his writing style is wonderful and he can use just a few words to express the greatest meaning. Report an error in the passage at 1:57:18 Highlight the passage at 1:57:18

1:57:38 It is a special gift to be able to write in this way. As a simple Buddhist monk, I am extremely happy to lecture on this book. Of course, my own knowledge is very limited and my experience even more limited. But reading this book makes me feel very happy and fortunate. Report an error in the passage at 1:57:38 Highlight the passage at 1:57:38

1:58:01 Look at your teacher. From age 16 until now at age 73, I have been working on this, and I'm still working on it. For you also, the study and practice of these teachings will take many, many years. Do not feel discouraged or demoralized. Each day, every day, learn one page. That's enough, and that's good. Report an error in the passage at 1:58:01 Highlight the passage at 1:58:01

1:58:28 After 100 days, you will know 100 pages, and after 1,000 days, you will know 1,000 pages. Even the construction of external things takes time. So building something in our minds takes time and is not easy. But I have total certainty that our minds can change and improve. And I assure you of this from my own personal experience. Report an error in the passage at 1:58:28 Highlight the passage at 1:58:28

1:58:54 If you make effort continuously without losing interest, without losing determination, things will change. Things will improve. Report an error in the passage at 1:58:54 Highlight the passage at 1:58:54

1:59:04 Eventually, Our aim is genuine experience of infinite altruism and perfect understanding of ultimate reality. As Buddhists, our final destination is Buddhahood, however far it may be. Let's start right now for that final destination. Thank you. That's how we stopped. And then we ended the event by reciting together the whole, I think it wasn't 4,000 anymore. Report an error in the passage at 1:59:04 Highlight the passage at 1:59:04

1:59:39 After the Svatantrika Prasangika beating that we took, maybe a little thin down, I need 2,500 people. In that pure land surrounded by snowy mountains, you are the source of all benefit and happiness. All-powerful Avalokiteshvara, Tenzin Gatso, may you stay until Saṃsāra's end. Report an error in the passage at 1:59:39 Highlight the passage at 1:59:39

2:00:06 Questions? Report an error in the passage at 2:00:06 Highlight the passage at 2:00:06

2:00:11 Not you, Peter. You. You. Yes. Report an error in the passage at 2:00:11 Highlight the passage at 2:00:11

2:00:33 Thank you. I have two questions. I think you said this. I just want to make sure I'm understanding it, right? To achieve liberation or experience cessation, you have to have a direct realization of emptiness. And it seems like all the four schools have produced our hats. So is it possible to just to work with whatever school you're in to experience or to have a direct realization of emptiness and then from a better perspective kind of decide which school you think is more correct? Report an error in the passage at 2:00:33 Highlight the passage at 2:00:33

2:01:06 His Holiness would definitely say yes. He said that in a couple different ways. One, as I talked about the first day, he's discouraging people from converting away from some home tradition that sort of roots them in their family. I think he feels that there are opportunities for cultivating... The good heart within all the major religions. And then within Tibetan Buddhism, he explicitly states that there is a prasangaka viewpoint within all of the four major traditions. Report an error in the passage at 2:01:06 Highlight the passage at 2:01:06

2:01:49 I have to point out that that's not exactly the same thing as saying that every teacher is teaching the correct thing. Report an error in the passage at 2:01:49 Highlight the passage at 2:01:49

2:01:59 But anyway, he says yes, the prasangaka viewpoint necessary for liberation is present and just perhaps expressed in different words, but what he takes as the final true viewpoint is accessible and available within all of the four Tibetan traditions. So I think that if you have a connection and a deepening practice that... Report an error in the passage at 2:01:59 Highlight the passage at 2:01:59

2:02:26 I don't know, one way to proceed is to deepen that as much as possible. Like we were saying the other day that in the case of His Holiness, he says he started working on lamrim when he was 16, and it seems like he didn't really in a very deep way start studying the other traditions until sometime in the later 1970s. Report an error in the passage at 2:02:26 Highlight the passage at 2:02:26

2:02:51 And so there was a long time in which he... Both studied and practiced his own tradition and then used that as a basis to not to denigrate the teachings of the others but see what was profound in them and what could be not just... Sometimes I think his approach is one of charity and how he, from a Gilukba point of view, charitably reads what they're saying. Report an error in the passage at 2:02:51 Highlight the passage at 2:02:51

2:03:25 So that it fits with his Gilukba idea of what would be right. Do you see what I'm saying? And then other times he goes farther in seeming to say that while the Gilukba way of course is right, there could be some weaknesses in the Gilukba tradition that would actually be helped by learning and listening to what other people have to say, which is different from the first point. Report an error in the passage at 2:03:25 Highlight the passage at 2:03:25

2:03:48 So I think the idea of... Learning one valid, useful tradition well, and then in a broad-minded way, looking at how it helps you understand and learn from other traditions is a good way. Report an error in the passage at 2:03:48 Highlight the passage at 2:03:48

2:04:08 But specifically, it is possible to... Become enlightened. Well, maybe not become enlightened, but to achieve liberation from all those different schools. His Holiness says that in kindness, clarity and insight very specifically. He spes that exact sentence that you just said in the last talk in Kindness, Clearing, Insight. He doesn't say it in this book, but in this book he says the view of prasangika is present and all, which implies that there's the potential for it. Report an error in the passage at 2:04:08 Highlight the passage at 2:04:08

2:04:41 But in Kindness, Clearing, Insight he explicitly says that there have been realized people in all these schools and therefore... That's prima facie evidence that they must have access to the right view. So then he tries to work backward and figure out, like, well, how could they possibly have the right view when they're saying the wrong words? Report an error in the passage at 2:04:41 Highlight the passage at 2:04:41

2:05:00 And then he tries to figure out how those wrong words could actually have behind it the kind of meaning that he thinks is necessary. Report an error in the passage at 2:05:00 Highlight the passage at 2:05:00

2:05:12 Yeah. Between the two different Mademaka schools, My understanding is, you know, if there's an object and you've got two ordinary beings perceiving it, they're going to have a different experience based on their own past karma that's arising. So if there were two ordinary beings, like, preceding me at this, in one moment of time, they would each have a different experience. And then between the two different Mademaka schools, one says there is a moment of objective reality and the other says there isn't even a single moment of objective reality. Report an error in the passage at 2:05:12 Highlight the passage at 2:05:12

2:05:47 So if you had two beings who had perfect perception, two Buddhas, you know, who had no obscurations and they were both perceiving the same object in the same moment of time, would they have the same experience or would they still have different subjective experiences? Would two Buddhas see things as the same? If they looked at me in the same moment of time, would they see the same thing? And if so, what would that be? Report an error in the passage at 2:05:47 Highlight the passage at 2:05:47

2:06:13 This is very hard. Very hard. It seems like what, usually what they say, okay, well let's start with the things that I can say, is that, you know, you have the usual way that people start talking about this is the gods, ghosts and humans go down to the river and it's like, so all these different categories of beings based on their different karma perceive things in different ways and And like, you know, if they're dogs or spiders who come into this room, then the things that they see correctly are some of them invisible to us and senseless to us and so forth. Report an error in the passage at 2:06:13 Highlight the passage at 2:06:13

2:07:00 So there are reliable, valid, conventionally correct perceptions in the same place and time which are contradictory in prasangaka. And that's an indication of the fact that even though there is matter, even though there are objects that conventionally exist from mind, they're not objectively set up from their own side. Report an error in the passage at 2:07:00 Highlight the passage at 2:07:00

2:07:27 Because what's there depends on the perception, depends on the point of view. Now, within that, there tends to be a view that if you have beings who have the same class of karma, that... Report an error in the passage at 2:07:27 Highlight the passage at 2:07:27

2:07:42 For example, among humans looking into the sky, the ones who see one moon are discredit and undermine the impaired perspective of those who see two. And it's not that the ones who see two have their own okayness, but there's a conventional incorrectness to seeing two because this is like the way that... Report an error in the passage at 2:07:42 Highlight the passage at 2:07:42

2:08:09 Humans are set up, our faculties are set up via karma and such that from a human point of view this is the way the world appears. I don't know if the spiders are seeing any moons in the sky and yet their perceptions are perfectly correct. Okay, so then you get to the idea of how do Buddhists see things. Report an error in the passage at 2:08:09 Highlight the passage at 2:08:09

2:08:34 This is where the, I mean not that they're not problems with the What I've said so far, that's a very challenging topic. But at least I can say that much is clearly the case and part of the tradition. As soon as you bring in the question of how does a Buddha see things, you always make things really, really hard. And first of all, how Buddha see things is inconceivable. Report an error in the passage at 2:08:34 Highlight the passage at 2:08:34

2:09:00 Achintya in Sanskrit. Samghi Mikyaba in Tibetan. It's like, you should expect problems. If you read, especially in Gilukba, why? Because Gilukba, the entire system is set up to make sense from our point of view. Everything, as I've described in the curriculum, everything in the way the epistemology and the definitions are constructed is to make sense for us. Report an error in the passage at 2:09:00 Highlight the passage at 2:09:00

2:09:35 In fact, for example, when you say, What is a smell? In Gelugba you would say, well, it's an object of a nose consciousness. For me it is. For you it is. But for a Buddha, that's a very bad definition, right? Because a Buddha's eye consciousness perceives smell quite nicely because all of Buddha's consciousness is our omniscient. Report an error in the passage at 2:09:35 Highlight the passage at 2:09:35

2:10:00 So none of these definitions about how to limit this or that thing conventionally ever work for the Buddha ground. And Gilukbas have noticed this a long time ago. So at first people started writing these qualifications in their definitions. Definitions get very long in the Yikcha because you always have to, you know, well, some schools would say, well, we just have to, you know, formulate the definition. Report an error in the passage at 2:10:00 Highlight the passage at 2:10:00

2:10:27 Like, so... A smell is the object of a nose consciousness and that object by which a nose consciousness comes to be designated as a nose consciousness. Report an error in the passage at 2:10:27 Highlight the passage at 2:10:27

2:10:39 It's like in relationship to its smell. But it could be that some nose consciousnesses know all kinds of other things, and some smells are perceived by eye consciousnesses. We're talking about Buddhists. But those are other persons that if you're making a general definition, you have to take account of. Report an error in the passage at 2:10:39 Highlight the passage at 2:10:39

2:10:58 Then other people say, well, let's just take it for granted that when we make a definition we're not talking about Buddhists. Well, as soon as you do that, you're sort of saying, all right, we're going to make a system that leaves out the inconceivable aspects of a fully awakened mind and only describe things in a way that's coherent for unenlightened people. Report an error in the passage at 2:10:58 Highlight the passage at 2:10:58

2:11:20 And that's exactly what the whole Galupa system does. And it's intentional. You know, sometimes it becomes unconscious, you know, when I'm saying where people are sort of saying, well, you know, this is the reality. But it's not the only reality. It's the reality from the point of view of unenlightened people works very coherently this way. But you've left out the inconceivable way that things are appeared from somebody who has no obscurations in order to give this philosophical account. Report an error in the passage at 2:11:20 Highlight the passage at 2:11:20

2:11:53 And, okay, so that's a big problem. It's not just me who says that, but for example, if you look in the last chapter of my Two Truths book, the whole last chapter is about, I mean it's a very sympathetic account of Galupa trying to say this is what they're saying. And when it comes to what they're saying and how they explain exactly the nature of a Buddhist consciousness and how it perceives conventional and ultimate phenomenon, it gets extremely problematic. Report an error in the passage at 2:11:53 Highlight the passage at 2:11:53

2:12:26 They run into a lot of different levels of problems. One of the ways that Galupas deal with them, and this has been worked on over the centuries, and the Galupa solution to that is to not just say, Oh, well, you know, it's all very mystical and deep and, you know, we should give up on logic and just, you know, stop having all these gross dualistic conceptions. Report an error in the passage at 2:12:26 Highlight the passage at 2:12:26

2:12:48 No, they never say that. They're going to have gross dualistic conceptions. Why? Because they just told you, you have to use dualistic inferential conceptions in order to understand emptiness and get started on the path. So they're not going to give up on having these dualistic conceptions. Report an error in the passage at 2:12:48 Highlight the passage at 2:12:48

2:13:03 So when they come to questions about how to dualistic conceptions think about inconceivable, non-dualistic minds, they always make some kind of a hash of it, and they know that they are. And so then they'll say things like, in Tibetan, they'll say, well, they'll work on this naughty problem, you know, like you've raised. And then they'll come to the end of the best analysis they can give, and they'll say, which means... Report an error in the passage at 2:13:03 Highlight the passage at 2:13:03

2:13:28 This remains for further analysis. I have broken my brain on it. Next generation, you guys take it up. But that's important. The solution is further analysis. The solution is not to throw up our hands and give up on reason. The solution is to keep using further reason. and and but you know it's it's uh it's One of the, you're posing a problem where the thing is like it goes into the realm where you have that exact kind of difficulty comes up. Report an error in the passage at 2:13:28 Highlight the passage at 2:13:28

2:14:02 Now I would say one thing I could say about your imaginary scenario, or it's not even really imaginary because we have all these different Buddhas, right? So they're all, you know, how do they have different perceptions of us or the same perceptions of us? And then we like to know if they're awakened and they have the same perception of us, then that would seem to be our objective nature. Report an error in the passage at 2:14:02 Highlight the passage at 2:14:02

2:14:24 But I would say that one thing we know, what would appear to the Buddha's mind in part would certainly be the way in which we exist from the point of view of various beings, including ourselves and the other beings around us. So we would not appear, there wouldn't be one unitary objective representation of who we really are, but there would be, because there isn't such a thing that exists, Rather there would be who we are as we appear to ourselves right now, who we are as we appear to other beings right now. You see what I'm saying? Report an error in the passage at 2:14:24 Highlight the passage at 2:14:24

2:15:02 So we're like, we actually conventionally exist in multiple contradictory ways, all of which are perceived by Buddhas. That's what I would say. That's the best I can say. Report an error in the passage at 2:15:02 Highlight the passage at 2:15:02

2:15:22 It doesn't fully answer the question, but I think that's all I can say. Thank you. Report an error in the passage at 2:15:22 Highlight the passage at 2:15:22

2:15:35 First of all, Guy, thank you so much for being here. This has just been an extraordinary weekend, and it's been so helpful, particularly in terms of we've been studying Shantideva, and this just fits in so beautifully in what we've been already studying. My question is, when you're starting to really think about the Prasanghika viewpoint and applying it, It can be almost sort of a schizophrenic relationship between living in conventional reality and trying to maintain the prosanghika viewpoint. Report an error in the passage at 2:15:35 Highlight the passage at 2:15:35

2:16:06 And it's often very difficult to keep the prosanghika view in your mind throughout the course of the day, yet at the same time you're trying to integrate it. And I was wondering if His Holiness addressed that difficulty until we've had the direct perception of emptiness. We're dealing with this all in very conventional terms. Report an error in the passage at 2:16:06 Highlight the passage at 2:16:06

2:16:26 I think Pema Chodron calls it comfortable with uncertainty in terms of our relationship with it. Did he address this at all for aspiring bodhisattvas who are trying to integrate this? He did not. He did not answer that question in the teachings. I would say that, I Report an error in the passage at 2:16:26 Highlight the passage at 2:16:26

2:16:49 don't know if this really helps you or not, but I think the thing is to... Report an error in the passage at 2:16:49 Highlight the passage at 2:16:49

2:16:56 Be guided what Lama Yeshe said. You can't just walk around doing this kind of analysis all the time. But you can, as you see different things and situations, bring to mind a reflection on how a dependent arising is. And then have faith that when you go down and sit and think about it, you'll remember the dependent arising and how it relates to emptiness. But thinking of like... Report an error in the passage at 2:16:56 Highlight the passage at 2:16:56

2:17:28 I think it's very important. That's the key, you know, both on the conventional karma side and then having the understanding that that will connect you to emptiness is to remember how things are arising in dependence on cause and condition. So when you see the, like, you know, whatever you encounter, especially if it draws your attention, it seems impressive, especially, you know, if something seems... Report an error in the passage at 2:17:28 Highlight the passage at 2:17:28

2:17:57 Potentially associated even in a subtle way with an affliction to just remind yourself of how the object is a dependent arising. That's all you can do, right? I mean, in ordinary practice, I think that's the place to start. Report an error in the passage at 2:17:57 Highlight the passage at 2:17:57

2:18:23 I brought the third volume to have you. I don't know if this is rude, but can you autograph it? okay. Report an error in the passage at 2:18:23 Highlight the passage at 2:18:23

2:18:37 I noticed how you intervened on your, like the CD after the show, you know, yesterday. I'm not on a book tour, as I was pointing out to Tracy yesterday. That was so good, that was so good. Well, I'm so glad you ended with, it was very moving to have you read, reread what His Holiness said at the end of those teachings, which I was fortunate enough to attend. Report an error in the passage at 2:18:37 Highlight the passage at 2:18:37

2:19:02 yeah. And, um... God, it must have been fabulous for you and your staff, your team to have heard those words from him. And I was moved on your behalf and I was moved just to be there. But in addition, today I heard you use a different verb than the one I've been thinking he said all these years, four years ago. Report an error in the passage at 2:19:02 Highlight the passage at 2:19:02

2:19:24 I thought he said, if you just read one page a day, you know, so I've been doing that. I've been trying to read one page a day. Today I heard you say, learn one page a day. Oh, is that right? There's a difference. There's a difference. He says, you're right. Oh, darn it. Learn one page a day. But, you know, slowly, slowly. I'm starting with the reading. Well, you know, some of the pages are harder than others. Oh, and I do know that. Report an error in the passage at 2:19:24 Highlight the passage at 2:19:24

2:19:50 And some are cliffhangers, and I have to read more than one. Yeah, yeah. He says, he's talking, when he's talking about the Prasangika, Sva Tantrica thing, he, remember the part where he said, Well, he breaks off in the middle and he says, you know, there's a saying in Tibetan when, you know, the food is too tough, when the text is too tough, then just treat it like a person with no teeth and just swallow it without chewing. Report an error in the passage at 2:19:50 Highlight the passage at 2:19:50

2:20:14 That's exactly what I did. That's exactly what I did. Well, I actually think it was because of reading these three volumes slowly, slowly, Lama Tsongkhapa comes alive to me. He seems so cheerful. Report an error in the passage at 2:20:14 Highlight the passage at 2:20:14

2:20:30 As opposed to some other things, other translations of Tsongkhapa, whatever you guys did together makes my mind happy. And I have a feeling, you know, even I try to place on that statue a cheerful thing that I get from reading this book. And so encouraging, so encouraging. But there's one piece that you kind of touched on yesterday and it's come up in our emptiness classes with Emily. Report an error in the passage at 2:20:30 Highlight the passage at 2:20:30

2:20:58 And certainly before, before, before for me. And that is when you're going back and forth with serenity and insight. And you talk about... That's a very difficult part. He doesn't talk about that at all. No, I know. But you said something yesterday about the discursive mind at work. Oh, yeah. Okay. So when I've heard the instruction... Okay, now. Report an error in the passage at 2:20:58 Highlight the passage at 2:20:58

2:21:22 Meditate on emptiness or hold your mind down the meaning of emptiness. Well, it sounds like I'm supposed to be having a non-discursive mind and at the same time contemplating the meaning. I know. So am I only going to get through practice and meditation itself of what you're meaning or am I just missing some word here, some verb? Report an error in the passage at 2:21:22 Highlight the passage at 2:21:22

2:21:46 No, you're not missing it. It is difficult. That's right. In fact, that's what I was trying to say a little bit yesterday when I was unable to handle the question about why people aren't successfully generating shamatha, and I was trying to say what I could say about it, and that is that the purpose of having a deep, concentrated mind is not to... Report an error in the passage at 2:21:46 Highlight the passage at 2:21:46

2:22:16 I'm using the word discursive here, which is not really one of the words that I like to use, but they use the word dokpa, which is usually translated conceptuality or conceptual thought, but sometimes in these discussions about serenity, concentrating your mind, one point of focus, it doesn't have that same meaning. Report an error in the passage at 2:22:16 Highlight the passage at 2:22:16

2:22:37 It doesn't mean that, and so it means something more like yoa in Tibetan, like fluctuating. So like a fluttering kind of quality, like so unstable, right? And that's what they, like discursive. So actually, you know, you can have serenity that is completely conceptual. That's the whole, just you have a concentration that's one pointedly focused on an object. It's still conceptual and it can be focused on a concept. Report an error in the passage at 2:22:37 Highlight the passage at 2:22:37

2:23:13 In the sense of what? What does a concept mean? It means that it's not a direct perception of something. It's a mental representation. I don't know what words you use. Generic image or meaning generality. Those kinds of words are used in the translation. And that's the object of a conceptual thought. Well, there's conceptual thoughts and there's conceptual thoughts. And some conceptual thoughts can be very non-discursive. And if you have a serenity meditation that's focused one-pointedly on an understanding of emptiness, it's conceptual and non-discursive at the same time. Report an error in the passage at 2:23:13 Highlight the passage at 2:23:13

2:23:53 And in Tibetan, you could use the word dokpa. It's technically dokpa in the sense that it has a mental image as its object. but it's not It's non-midokpa in the sense that it's miyoa, it's not fluctuating, it's non-discursive. Cultivating one point of focus involves making your mind non-discursive. It doesn't per se have to do with stopping thought or conceptuality. In Tsongkhapa's way, I'm not sure how everybody teaches, but I know what this text is trying to say. Report an error in the passage at 2:23:53 Highlight the passage at 2:23:53

2:24:28 We have to watch very carefully in the translation, both in the serenity part and in that part in the end that you're referring to. so cultivating Report an error in the passage at 2:24:28 Highlight the passage at 2:24:28

2:24:35 When the word dokpa is used to figure out whether he's talking about conceptual thought in general, which is a big topic, or whether he's talking about this quality of discursiveness in the mind that you're getting rid of as you make your mind very still and stable and one-pointedly focused. So now the problem that you're specifically talking about, of getting an idea of emptiness and then focus your mind on it one-pointedly, Report an error in the passage at 2:24:35 Highlight the passage at 2:24:35

2:25:03 Of course, as I was saying yesterday, that is the problem. To actually be able to do that well, then you're at the path of preparation level. You're past the beginning bodhisattva level. What we first have to do is get this very clear understanding of emptiness and also, probably, realistically, Independently get the ability to make our minds very calm and clear on some other easier to meditate on object besides emptiness. And it's like when you know we go through the objects of serenity cultivation. Report an error in the passage at 2:25:03 Highlight the passage at 2:25:03

2:25:43 His Holiness did not dwell on the possibility of taking emptiness as the object with regard to which you initially cultivate serenity. He's pretty much assuming that for theoretically possible, for practical purposes, you have to cultivate shamatha or serenity, shine, on the basis of some easier to work with object. Report an error in the passage at 2:25:43 Highlight the passage at 2:25:43

2:26:03 And then having done that and separately gotten this conceptual understanding of emptiness pretty thoroughly, But conceptually in place, then you're going to try to combine the two. And so, you know, you do the analysis, you get this clear understanding of emptiness. And then having this serenity power with regard to something easier already in place, you bring that power to bear by trying to focus your mind one pointedly on the emptiness that you've understood. Report an error in the passage at 2:26:03 Highlight the passage at 2:26:03

2:26:31 And if you can do that, then temporarily, but then... Your understanding of the object that you're focusing on disintegrates because the force of the reasoning that made you understand emptiness. It is farther in the past. It fades away. And so then you have to stop concentrating and go back to analyzing it again. Report an error in the passage at 2:26:31 Highlight the passage at 2:26:31

2:26:55 And then it's yoa. It's discursive. The analysis process, as we carry out the reasoning, is a discursive process. And it's contradictory to the process of focusing our mind one-pointedly and non-discursively. That's why it's hard to get to the... to, uh, you know, Shiné Sung-jook, the, Shiné, you know, Lactung Sung-jook, the, uh, The beginning of the path of preparation. It's hard to get there because you have to figure out how to make your mind one point at least focused on an object that only appears in your mind after a discursive process of reasoning. Report an error in the passage at 2:26:55 Highlight the passage at 2:26:55

2:27:35 So the mind is not moving? At which point? At the point that you're getting to? Yeah. Report an error in the passage at 2:27:35 Highlight the passage at 2:27:35

2:27:45 Well, that's a good question. My understanding is that the real union of serenity and insight, when it really kicks in, that the mind could either be moving or not moving. Report an error in the passage at 2:27:45 Highlight the passage at 2:27:45

2:27:59 It's important to understand that we usually think about serenity in terms of making the mind one-pointedly, and that's how we train. But if you develop a very deep kind of concentration, and we know this maybe in a preliminary way just from our ordinary meditation, you can become very concentrated and then within that concentration move your mind from object to object. Report an error in the passage at 2:27:59 Highlight the passage at 2:27:59

2:28:20 It's possible to have a concentration that moves from object to object. So you have a laser beam and then you're moving it around to different points of attention. Report an error in the passage at 2:28:20 Highlight the passage at 2:28:20

2:28:33 I mean, the main thing that we're really thinking about is having this, the main thing to get is this idea of a one-pointed absorption, a one-pointed, sharp, clear focus of the mind on this inferentially realized object emptiness. But once you're getting this practice deeper, it can be that the power of your concentration... Report an error in the passage at 2:28:33 Highlight the passage at 2:28:33

2:28:58 Can actually start to work with your analysis and the analysis deepens your concentration instead of conflicting with it. And that's when you're getting to these. But initially, of course, it's completely contradictory. It's completely antithetical. It seems like you're being pulled in two different directions. Report an error in the passage at 2:28:58 Highlight the passage at 2:28:58

2:29:19 It sounds like that's what you're experiencing. That's normal. That's what they're saying. That's the difficulty. difficulty of, and. When you get past that problem, then you're at the path of preparation. Now, in your path of preparation, I'm thinking that if you're at the path of preparation, you could actually probably do analysis of emptiness from within a state of concentration. Report an error in the passage at 2:29:19 Highlight the passage at 2:29:19

2:29:47 Because at that point, the tension between them, that tension has been resolved. Your mind becomes very powerful and it can move. This is actually a difficult point that you bring up. Report an error in the passage at 2:29:47 Highlight the passage at 2:29:47

2:30:12 Does the combination of serenity and insight always just stay on a single point of attention or can it be a moving thing? And my... Report an error in the passage at 2:30:12 Highlight the passage at 2:30:12

2:30:27 His conclusion as of this year is that J. Rumpache clearly intends that it can be a moving thing. But he doesn't emphasize that in a way that's extremely clear in the great treatise. Yeah, you have to read it. You apparently have also read it closely yet. It seems to suggest that. That's right. Report an error in the passage at 2:30:27 Highlight the passage at 2:30:27

2:30:53 I don't have a question, but just want to say thank you. This has been very beneficial. I had a question, which you've already answered, but I'd like to see if this talk has been, again, very helpful, and I feel like it's almost just started getting very juicy at the end. So if I could humbly just make a request, if you had the time to even come back and consider teaching and speaking on emptiness and maybe providing a little more elaboration on your books that you had provided, which we use for our class as well. Report an error in the passage at 2:30:53 Highlight the passage at 2:30:53

2:31:26 So if possible, I'd like to just put that out there. So thank you again. Well, I'm happy to come back here. You guys are such good listeners and you ask so many good questions and that's what I find satisfaction in sharing something that means a lot to me with people who are tuned in. And I think, just to be honest and not pretentious in any way about it, this is why I like to go and speak at places like this because it's different from my usual experience at a university. Report an error in the passage at 2:31:26 Highlight the passage at 2:31:26

2:32:02 diversity. So it's different, like, yeah. And so, I, I, yeah. I, I, I'm, The thing about coming back, I would like to come back, and I certainly hope that I will come back, and I would like to feel that when I come back I have something to say. Report an error in the passage at 2:32:02 Highlight the passage at 2:32:02

2:32:18 I feel like, well, it's not like I have an unlimited number of things that I know that you want to hear. I've gone through most of my main riffs. episode. But I think I'm I am learning more. I'm right now working with Thupten Jimba on a book that involves translations from important Madhyamaka texts that Jimba picked from all different Madhyamaka traditions of Tibet from different periods. Report an error in the passage at 2:32:18 Highlight the passage at 2:32:18

2:32:55 And it's painfully difficult. The texts are all difficult and they're all different from each other. And I'm learning like... And only one of them is Gilukba, I think, really. And so I'm learning, like, a lot. And at some point, it seems to me that, you know, I don't know, like, I would be interested in talking about something that, you know, comes out of that experience in some way, because that's what I'm really focused on. Report an error in the passage at 2:32:55 Highlight the passage at 2:32:55

2:33:22 And I don't know if that's exactly the most helpful thing at the FPMT or not. But it's like, I'm obviously coming from a Gilukba point of view. Report an error in the passage at 2:33:22 Highlight the passage at 2:33:22

2:33:32 Trying to understand other things from within that and that's what I'm focused on right now. Report an error in the passage at 2:33:32 Highlight the passage at 2:33:32

2:33:44 something. Students have said all. On behalf our saṅgha, Keshitapa, Carol, Chiki, and our wonderful teachers like Emily and Keshitapa, who have prepared us for being better, able to understand this class today. I'd rather Report an error in the passage at 2:33:44 Highlight the passage at 2:33:44

2:34:11 know that you're also preparing to get another tuna. Oh, yeah, that's true. I'm going to Srivasti to teach about Nagarjuna. Okay, well, I hope that that comes to pass. Maybe so. Report an error in the passage at 2:34:11 Highlight the passage at 2:34:11

2:34:33 Oh, Report an error in the passage at 2:34:33 Highlight the passage at 2:34:33

2:34:39 thank you very much. Yeah, I'm very happy to be here. So, and there's just no way your wonderful generosity. Report an error in the passage at 2:34:39 Highlight the passage at 2:34:39

2:34:34 this is from our students Report an error in the passage at 2:34:34 Highlight the passage at 2:34:34

2:34:48 This is twice now, so three, we want you back. Seems to be, we're getting a connection going here, aren't we? Yeah, thank you so much. Report an error in the passage at 2:34:48 Highlight the passage at 2:34:48

2:35:12 ha, ha. Report an error in the passage at 2:35:12 Highlight the passage at 2:35:12