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

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0:59 How's it going? Just give it to me. I'll unveil it at the appropriate moment. Report an error in the passage at 0:59 Highlight the passage at 0:59

1:27 The smell. Buddhicans smell emptiness. Report an error in the passage at 1:27 Highlight the passage at 1:27

1:36 You might just go wild. Report an error in the passage at 1:36 Highlight the passage at 1:36

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2:09 I know. Well, Charles, he did bring that up to me. He thought, I guess there was some misunderstanding. I guess... wild. Report an error in the passage at 2:09 Highlight the passage at 2:09

2:02 it here or we can order it here. Report an error in the passage at 2:02 Highlight the passage at 2:02

2:20 Because Elizabeth was doing that job before and then she had talked to somebody from Snow Lion and there were supposed to be books but then there was only two books and so then we had to figure out how to improvise a little. Okay, thank you sir. Okay, you've worked off that karma. You know what I'm talking about. Report an error in the passage at 2:20 Highlight the passage at 2:20

2:48 Alright, so I think... All of you, I mean, of course, Elizabeth, whom I don't know, and Peter, who's the root cause, and Charles for all his good service, and then all of you for listening to me. I get a lot of enjoyment out of hearing myself talk, maybe, and some edification. Report an error in the passage at 2:48 Highlight the passage at 2:48

3:17 Also, because you know how it is like when you write then you try to figure things out so you can try to make it clear and talking is like that too, especially if you have to talk in front of people who then don't necessarily just accept what you say and then they ask questions and that's how I learn things. Report an error in the passage at 3:17 Highlight the passage at 3:17

3:34 I have to go back and try to figure out what to say. So it's very helpful to me and we can... I'll dedicate all the merit we get from doing this listening to the teaching to the goal of all becoming Buddhas together for the benefit of all beings. Report an error in the passage at 3:34 Highlight the passage at 3:34

3:55 I'm going to take a couple licks at Svatantrika. I felt like in just a few cents of the room and also in comments during lunch that maybe I don't want to leave everybody as Svatantrikas unless that's the right thing. Report an error in the passage at 3:55 Highlight the passage at 3:55

4:14 And maybe that is the right thing for us or for you, but we'll just take a couple of last whacks at what Chandrakirti would say against this tantrica point of view. That was just for a minute and I'll give you a little visual aid to go along with that. And then we'll go through in a not extended way, just explain what the four-point reasoning is. Report an error in the passage at 4:14 Highlight the passage at 4:14

4:39 And then some brief comments from the end of the book about how Tsongkhapa ends his great treatise, just doing all this thinking and figuring something out, where is it supposed to lead, how does that get you to nirvāṇa. And so then after that, as time allows, I'm going to read a very short piece, which I wrote to say something about how... Report an error in the passage at 4:39 Highlight the passage at 4:39

5:07 Karma is handled in Chandrakirti's system. And then, again, as time allows, we'll run through the Dalai Lama's essay from the back of kindness and clarity and insight. So that's the agenda. I'm going to try to do five things. So each of them has to be somewhat short. First, from a Prasangika point of view, Chandrakirti point of view, looking at Swatantrika, They're saying, yeah, people like us look in the world and we see cats and we see cows. And if we don't have any superficial cause of impairment, we're able to gather empirical information from our senses and then analyze it and think about what we're perceiving and say what's right from our point of view. Report an error in the passage at 5:07 Highlight the passage at 5:07

5:59 And we don't need, in addition to cat, to... We don't need any catitude or catosity in the cat in addition to the cat to make it a cat. It's superfluous addition on top of, we all know a cat when we see it. We don't have to study philosophy and learn about what the real character of a cat is or what its nature is in order to, this is a superimposition. Report an error in the passage at 5:59 Highlight the passage at 5:59

6:31 That's added on top of what we all have. Tsongkhapa talks about this as mundane knowledge. It doesn't guarantee that mundane knowledge is always right, but we all have, as that comes along with our karmic situation, a repertoire of mundane knowledge that is that way of viewpoint on the world that's appropriate to having healthy minds and bodies of this sort. Report an error in the passage at 6:31 Highlight the passage at 6:31

6:59 And we don't need any actual essence or distinctive character on the side of the object to make things what it is. So I think about the cat, you know, to me, I look at it, I say cat, you look at it, it's called a cat. And we're agreed on that and say, well, you know, we say we're imputing cat in relationship to the basis of imputation of the cat, even though we can't find any. Report an error in the passage at 6:59 Highlight the passage at 6:59

7:21 It's a graspable thing that's a cat on the side of those bases of imputation, but I think there's a mind and a body of a cat there. But, you know, really, I can't see the mind of the cat. And the color could vary quite a great deal. Sometimes they meow, but a lot of times they're quiet. So, really, most of the time we say cat when we see a certain shape or a certain kind of shape. And there's this famous philosophical question. Report an error in the passage at 7:21 Highlight the passage at 7:21

7:57 and really you know this idea of like well let's define what a cat is is kind of the way the Southronica system proceeds really is saying let's have a definition of a cat, let's have a definition of an ox, let's have a definition of an oboe. They have a definition of everything right that works in the Gelugpa This debate system is all based on the Sautranaka idea that for each thing there's a set of defining characteristics. So they have a definition of an ox, they have a definition of a pumba, which some people translate pot and some people translate as vase. Report an error in the passage at 7:57 Highlight the passage at 7:57

8:34 But, you know, it's like... If we see a vase, do we have to know the definition? Do we have to know some certain definition of a vase? Anyway, the Buddhists below the Prasangika would say, yeah, exactly, that's what you have to know. And Chandrakirti would say, no, that's kind of ridiculous. You never get to exactly what the right definition of something should be. Report an error in the passage at 8:34 Highlight the passage at 8:34

9:01 It's more that people with our kinds of bodies are able to tell. this from that unless they have something that has some superficial Okay, that's argument one. Moreover, if they did have some essential Katniss or some... built-in quality that made it, that's there on their own side and that's what constituted it as appropriate, you know, as a suitable basis of imputation for us to say cat, then they would exist by way of that essence and they wouldn't need us to come along later and call it a cat. Report an error in the passage at 9:01 Highlight the passage at 9:01

9:31 They would already be a cat because they would have their essential catness over there on their own side and everything would be like that. It wouldn't be contingent on the perspective of different beings. How could you have gods, ghosts and humans and spiders and dogs and Goats all like seeing things differently because each thing that they were looking at would have its own essential character from its own side of being X. Report an error in the passage at 9:31 Highlight the passage at 9:31

9:52 And it really isn't like that. Like if you think about how spiders and us exist in the room together, we just are in the same place in the same time with different objects that we're appropriately imputing in relationship to the same external world, okay? So, anyway, just as a way, a device for thinking about how, first of all, within the realm of karma-based frameworks, you know, different kinds of minds and bodies, there can be different true things in the same place and same time, contradictory sets of objects that are based on exactly the same basis of imputation. Report an error in the passage at 9:52 Highlight the passage at 9:52

10:38 And then again, how an enlightened mind can see... Based on having a merit and wisdom based framework, can see one kind of thing, right? Let's say just emptiness or only emptiness. So a person who has directly realizing emptiness looks at the table and does not see the table, but sees only the emptiness of the table. Report an error in the passage at 10:38 Highlight the passage at 10:38

11:06 And that's a legitimate framework too, right? That's what I was answering to your question. That's a legitimate framework. That's a point of view that is getting at the question of what's the real nature of the table. Like if we were tuned into colors, then when we looked at the table we could see what that was. If we're tuned into fundamental nature channel, which is called channel B, then when we look at it deeply we see just that. Report an error in the passage at 11:06 Highlight the passage at 11:06

11:33 So there's different, whether your karma is making you like a goat or a... or an intestinal parasite or a spider or a human, then what kind of stuff that's right you to see is different in the same place at the same time with the same. A basis of designation isn't like just naturally suitable on its own side to be considered as X. Report an error in the passage at 11:33 Highlight the passage at 11:33

12:05 It's appropriate to be considered as X. From the point of view of this kind of person or that kind of person. But there's something there. It's just that as soon as you say what it is, you have to say what it is from a point of view. Report an error in the passage at 12:05 Highlight the passage at 12:05

12:20 That's what I was trying to get across this morning. I don't know if you guys are quite buying it. You don't have to buy it, but I just want to make sure I've sold it. Report an error in the passage at 12:20 Highlight the passage at 12:20

12:30 This is a famous example of this kind of idea. This is Jastrow's duck rabbit illusion. And it's not really an optical illusion, it's an ambiguous drawing. It's a common thing, you know, you could say that Escher's work is a little bit like that. And there's other famous examples. This is probably the coolest one of all. Report an error in the passage at 12:30 Highlight the passage at 12:30

12:56 And it really, you know, looks exactly, it is. It's appropriate to see it as a rabbit if you look in one way and it's a duck in the other way, but you're looking at exactly the same lines. So what's artificial about this is it's something that for us, we don't have to really get outside our own heads and become a goat to see how the same room. Report an error in the passage at 12:56 Highlight the passage at 12:56

13:23 Really, really, really is different if you're a goat. We can use this as just kind of a trick to show us how it can be like to vividly, vividly see something in two completely different ways. Report an error in the passage at 13:23 Highlight the passage at 13:23

13:39 You're not looking in any different lines. You're looking in exactly the same set of lines. But it becomes two different things depending on the kind of framework. I'll pass around the other one. This guy is named Aaron Height and he did another duck rabbit that was done almost like 70 or 80 years later where he did the whole body of the duck rabbit instead of just the head of the duck rabbit. Report an error in the passage at 13:39 Highlight the passage at 13:39

14:06 And to get this one, you just have to turn it at a slightly different angle to turn it back and forth between the duck and the rabbit. But it's still just as vividly a duck and a rabbit. So anyway, form is emptiness, emptiness is form. Report an error in the passage at 14:06 Highlight the passage at 14:06

14:21 It's not like emptiness is in some different place or it's some different thing. It's like this is emptiness, this is form. This is table, this is emptiness of the table. What do you see? Which one's right? They're both right. They're both right. They're both there. They're not like some different place. It's like just depending on the quality of your mind, what it's suitable to say. Report an error in the passage at 14:21 Highlight the passage at 14:21

14:42 Tsongkhapa's really important point is that it's not like, oh, now I've seen the duck. Now I've seen emptiness. That rabbit mind was so stupid and wrong. No. When you realize the emptiness of things, it doesn't cancel out and destroy conventional phenomena. It's still a table. But now you know how that table has, there's like a totally different way of seeing it. It's not intrinsically a table from its own side. Report an error in the passage at 14:42 Highlight the passage at 14:42

15:05 It's not intrinsically a duck or a rabbit or anything else. It's like, what it is, is like what is appropriate for us to see from a certain point of view. Report an error in the passage at 15:05 Highlight the passage at 15:05

15:18 I Report an error in the passage at 15:18 Highlight the passage at 15:18

15:29 was almost ready to say something else that went out of my mind. Oh yeah, it reminded me of, the reason I thought of using this duck rabbit is that I was thinking about this idea that when people try to explain form is emptiness, emptiness form, how emptiness and the conventional phenomena are always right there together, that they're the same entity, but then They're different in some way because you're realizing table doesn't make me enlightened, even though it's also completely empty and it's of one entity with emptiness. Report an error in the passage at 15:29 Highlight the passage at 15:29

16:09 So then why wouldn't, if I'm looking at emptiness right now, how come I'm not already a Buddha? So it's like, well, you could be staring at this for a long time and just see the duck side. You just see the duck and you never get it that it's also that same exact stuff. when seen in a different framework that you can switch your mind This is like channel A and channel B, right? You know, I have the duck channel and the rabbit channel, right? Okay, so, you know, and then I think I was like, how do people teach this? Report an error in the passage at 16:09 Highlight the passage at 16:09

16:38 Yasutani Roshi in Three Pillars of Zen, his introductory lectures on Zen, he says, well, it's like this, he holds up the paper fan and he said, you know, there's a blank side of the fan and then the side with a beautiful design. And he's, you know, it's like, it's like this. There's, there's this side of the fan and there's that side of the fan. And this is like, you know, emptiness. This is form, emptiness, form, emptiness, form, emptiness, form. Report an error in the passage at 16:38 Highlight the passage at 16:38

17:01 And it's like, that's really good. Help me. But then here's the problem. It doesn't go all the way through. There's the blank side and it's not, it's like something that's on the back of this and it doesn't go all the way through. It's like if I had a laser beam, I go down the middle and I say, okay, I've got your form over here and your emptiness over here, right? Report an error in the passage at 17:01 Highlight the passage at 17:01

17:23 And so it's not quite perfect. And then, you know, when I use, you know, form and emptiness, conventional reality, ultimate reality, two sides of the same coin, it's the same problem. It's like they don't go all the way, it doesn't go all the way through. It's not like you can like get some kind of... Report an error in the passage at 17:23 Highlight the passage at 17:23

17:36 parsing device and cut down through the middle of speck of anything, if mined or matter, cut apart the emptiness part of it from the other part of it. So then the duck rabbit came to my mind because it's like both a duck and both a rabbit. It's entirely a duck and entirely a rabbit all the way through to all the parts, right? Report an error in the passage at 17:36 Highlight the passage at 17:36

18:01 And it's correct to see it as both, but it's like just the framework that you can flip a switch in your mind and see it either way. So, you know, I don't know if you've, this is like a famous thing in psychology for a long time. And Jastrow invented it a long time, like, I don't know, 100 years ago or more. And they did some experiments in Germany with it. Report an error in the passage at 18:01 Highlight the passage at 18:01

18:26 And they showed it to kids and then they show it to them at Easter time, then they say that it's a rabbit. And if you show it to them in the fall, then they say it's a duck. Report an error in the passage at 18:26 Highlight the passage at 18:26

18:43 Yeah. Oh, he needs a mic. Yeah. If we have a lot of questions about this, I'm not going to be able to get to the end. So I was thinking we could, yeah, if it's not a deep philosophical, only minor points of information. Okay, okay. My question was, I understand the duck-rabbit, oh, sorry. I understand the duck-rabbit thing in terms of identifying something as a duck and a rabbit, but what confuses me is function. Report an error in the passage at 18:43 Highlight the passage at 18:43

19:22 Like, you know how you were saying, like, one person could see a river as, you know, full of nectar and one person could see it as full of pus. Report an error in the passage at 19:22 Highlight the passage at 19:22

19:33 It's still flowing. It's still flowing, but in terms of its functionality to the people who see it a certain way, does that matter? I mean, if a god sees it as nectar and a praetor sees it as pus, does it function the same way for both people or does it function differently for different people? It functions differently for different people. Actually, I had this exact question the other night from a woman who was sitting where Peter is sitting now, who isn't here now. Report an error in the passage at 19:33 Highlight the passage at 19:33

20:00 So I had to think about that and I think it's absolutely, the answer is no. Function is also framework dependent. It's not, and also characteristics. You can't say what this thing is. You can't say what its characteristics are. You can't say what its features are. You can't say what its qualities are. You can't say what its function is. It's like, you can't say, you just say things exist. Report an error in the passage at 20:00 Highlight the passage at 20:00

20:23 There are external things. Not everything is our mind. Report an error in the passage at 20:23 Highlight the passage at 20:23

20:30 In relationship to some of these things, it's appropriate for beings like us to say cow and to other things to say cup. That's based on our frame of reference and the kind of karma we say or the kind of biology we have that that becomes appropriate and not because of something that you can pin down on the side of the object and say essentially that's what makes it that. Report an error in the passage at 20:30 Highlight the passage at 20:30

20:53 And I mean I think it's not that hard to think about that. It's like the problem with the god ghost and the human go to the river is that like well we think oh there really is a river there, you're admitting that. But then you know if you use some of the other examples like that Dogen uses or Gary Snyder Report an error in the passage at 20:53 Highlight the passage at 20:53

21:53 function depends on the kind of mind you bring to it. If you're an ant, then a rivulet of water is like a giant cliff. Report an error in the passage at 21:53 Highlight the passage at 21:53

22:06 it's not just that they're so little that's the way they would be stupidly seeing things it really is it really is a cliff you know what I'm saying it's not it's we can't Report an error in the passage at 22:06 Highlight the passage at 22:06

22:16 it's not like a rivulet of water that's just that's how it's right for us to see it and like the same thing if you think about temperature and stuff like that everything is completely framework dependent there's organisms that only live at you know temperatures that us means death. Report an error in the passage at 22:16 Highlight the passage at 22:16

22:36 That's the last I have to say about that. um then um so then the chapter nine In the book, I came up with this idea of starting it with the Alice in Wonderland quote. And what I really like is Alice wakes up in the morning and feels that she's changed in the night. And she says, let me think, was I the same when I got up this morning? Report an error in the passage at 22:36 Highlight the passage at 22:36

23:21 I almost think I can remember feeling a little different. But then, I mean, you're either the same or you're different from one day to the next. But if I'm not the same, then I'm different. And then if I'm different from yesterday, the question is, who in the world am I? That's the great puzzle. If there isn't any intrinsic self that we can count on to keep us being the same from moment to moment. Report an error in the passage at 23:21 Highlight the passage at 23:21

23:51 Then what are we really? And she says, that's the great puzzle. And then she messaged her and she was like, well, if I'm somebody different from I was yesterday, maybe then I'm my friend Ada or maybe I've become my friend Mabel. That's like me becoming George Bush. And she said, oh gosh, I hope I haven't become Mabel. So entertaining. Report an error in the passage at 23:51 Highlight the passage at 23:51

24:15 And then you think about how it is with us. You know, it's easy to play with this, right? Like, when do we become a different person? It's so strange, you know, to think about when you were younger and is that you or is that not you? And if that's not you in the picture of the nine-month-old baby, then when did you get to be a different person? Was that like... Okay, so do you see what I'm saying? Report an error in the passage at 24:15 Highlight the passage at 24:15

24:43 So that's a way in which impermanence, you know, like microscopic... The long-term rushing impermanence of us really is so contradictory to how we're ordinarily constituting ourselves. And the meditation on taking these ideas to mind and into meditation just constantly runs up against that resistance. Report an error in the passage at 24:43 Highlight the passage at 24:43

25:07 And it's like Jeffrey talked about it. It's like, well, you start reading these arguments and then there's something. like resistance, you know, idea of psychological resistance. You'd rather be distracted. You'd rather go get a sandwich. You'd rather think about something else. Or you get kind of irritated. Report an error in the passage at 25:07 Highlight the passage at 25:07

25:28 I find this like, this is so stupid. Why these people are irritating? Why are they saying this? And you get this kind of sense of either grumpiness or distraction. And all these things come in kind of in, it's like... Why didn't I feel so grumpy or distracted a moment ago? Well, because I wasn't having to mix my mind with something that's so going against the grain, right? Report an error in the passage at 25:28 Highlight the passage at 25:28

25:51 I think that has something to do with it. And he says, well, if you keep, instead of turning away, you keep going into it, then this dissonance between the basic way you feel that things are and what the reasonings are seeming to say gets like turned up, like to shriller. And he imagined, he says, it's like you have a small child standing next to you. Report an error in the passage at 25:51 Highlight the passage at 25:51

26:27 -point reasoning works is basically you identify the object of negation that is like You have to introspectively find within yourself what is that wrong thought that's thinking, what does it feel like to hold on to yourself as intrinsically real? What is it we're trying to refute? Identifying the object of negation is number one. Report an error in the passage at 26:27 Highlight the passage at 26:27

26:45 Number two, we'll call limiting the options. In Tibetan, it's like, I don't know, Jeffrey, variable concomitance. I don't remember what Lama Yeshe says, but we'll say something like limiting the options of how that thing could exist. Report an error in the passage at 26:45 Highlight the passage at 26:45

27:03 And then you have to then say, if you can limit them to two, which is not the traditional way that Chandrakirti did it, but if you can limit the way that, okay, here I feel like I'm solidly existing as intrinsically real. If I did, I would have to be either one with my mind and body or different from my mind and body. That's step number two, limiting the options in this case to only two. Report an error in the passage at 27:03 Highlight the passage at 27:03

27:27 And if you can do that, then you have refutation of... sameness, that's number three, refuting that the self is like one with the mind and body, and then four, refutation that the self is of intrinsically different nature than the mind and body. And then if you just go through all that then then you're done, you realize emptiness. Report an error in the passage at 27:27 Highlight the passage at 27:27

27:52 Identifying the object of negation, limiting the options, which means in this particular case of the four-point analysis, limiting the options to lack of To sameness and difference with the mind and body. Number three is refuting sameness between the self and the mind and body. And four is refuting difference or intrinsic difference between the self and the mind and body. Report an error in the passage at 27:52 Highlight the passage at 27:52

28:22 Okay, so it's like, I think I mentioned Tsongkhapa doesn't really spend a lot of time on the meditative practice of the first essential in the Great Treatise. He does a lot of more philosophical thing of how do we think about what the object of negation is and why is it that everybody else has gotten it wrong and how we're going to set them straight. Report an error in the passage at 28:22 Highlight the passage at 28:22

28:44 But as far as how you practice that in meditation, you do find it in other texts in Gelugpa and elsewhere. You know, they have this whole... I don't know if you saw that scene in the original Alien movie where that monster comes out of what's-her-face's chest. Yeah. Ripley? Yeah, well, I don't know, something comes out of somebody's chest and I'm like, yeah, I'm like, okay, that's the thing there. Report an error in the passage at 28:44 Highlight the passage at 28:44

29:30 It's like when somebody says, somebody comes and, you know, takes something that's mine, then like this like alien comes out behind my sternum, you know, and it's like that thing. So you're trying to like catch yourself in the act of having this exaggerated sense of how you are. But of course then that's kind of like a gross version of it and you have to like get down to sort of a subtler kind of reification and get somebody else to tell you how to do that. Report an error in the passage at 29:30 Highlight the passage at 29:30

30:00 I don't really know. I mean that's kind of, that's sort of what I can say. I mean it's like that you have to in some very subtle way catch yourself in the act of having this subtly reified sense of self. And then in order to know that that's really what you're refuting and not the very existence of yourself as a person. Then the idea is that there's a law of the excluded middle. Report an error in the passage at 30:00 Highlight the passage at 30:00

30:32 If something is existing, then it has to be... be the same or different. It has to be singular or plural. And, you know, so then if there is a self such as I'm conceiving, then is it the same as the basis of imputation, the same as the mind and body to which is imputed? Is it one with those, or is it different? That's what they do. Okay. So. Report an error in the passage at 30:32 Highlight the passage at 30:32

31:01 You have to think about that. Now, in practice, I think for most of us, it's kind of like, well, I don't know, that seems like kind of a short list. I don't know. It's same or different. I don't know. One, not one. A, not A. It seems logically like it should be comprehensive, but I don't really feel. Report an error in the passage at 31:01 Highlight the passage at 31:01

31:19 Sure about it, you know, so that's why Chandrakirti has like a seven point analysis and other people, Nagarjuna has a five point analysis and you can make as many points as you want, you know, doesn't really matter. The sense, the importance is that, you know, I mean, why about that? Any points? I mean, there's many ways that the self could exist. You can say, you know, the self could exist inside my, inside the each cell of my body or i mean i don't know i'm not just making stuff up but however you think that the that the self might exist then just add it to the list even if Make a comprehensive list of all the ways that you think that that self could exist either in relationship to or not in relationship to the mind and or the body or the collection of them. Report an error in the passage at 31:19 Highlight the passage at 31:19

32:12 Make the comprehensive list. The point is to reach a sense of conviction that you've got all the bases covered, that this self that you're believing in, if it existed, would definitely have, that's the point, would definitely have to be in one of those places. So that's why, you know, it's like, well, some people say, well, all the excluded middle, we've only got, you know, it's the same or different. That makes a short list. But, you know, in practice, a lot of people, even that might be logical, they... Report an error in the passage at 32:12 Highlight the passage at 32:12

32:43 to overcome you know their sense that maybe something slipped through the cracks and uh so you know like if somebody was suffering unnecessarily because they thought there was an elephant and sage endling then we could ask them to make a list of all the places that they thought that that elephant might be and um you know there's the downstairs and this floor and then there's upstairs and then i mean you know there's the landing landing that that's it. Report an error in the passage at 32:43 Highlight the passage at 32:43

33:12 Like when you go down up and there's a landing when you go down and so forth. It's like, well, there's the roof. Are you going to count that? I mean, just like whatever you think, just put it all on the list and then we'll go and look. Report an error in the passage at 33:12 Highlight the passage at 33:12

33:25 We'll go and look in every place and then, you know. Maybe they'll think, well, while we were looking in one place, the elephant slipped over to the other one. It's like, well, actually, that's what happens when you try to do this. It's like when you say, when you're in the process of refuting the self as one place, then it kind of sneaks around over to the other place and then you have to go back, like whack-a-mole, I guess, or something like that. Report an error in the passage at 33:25 Highlight the passage at 33:25

33:50 It has that kind of quality of sliding around. When I say, my head, then the... Owner of the head's down here, right? But when I say my chest, then the owner moves up into my head so that it won't be the same. I don't want to have the owner and the own thing be in the same place at the same time. So I just kind of slide it around. Self's up here, you know, depending on which part I'm going to own. Then I move the owner of it to like a different part of my mind. Report an error in the passage at 33:50 Highlight the passage at 33:50

34:21 Well, that's who's the me that owns my mind? Well, that's the whole. The whole mind-body collection is owning the mind as a subset. I mean, it's just what I'm saying. You have to keep moving the self around. Anyway, so the idea is make a comprehensive list of all the places you think it could be. And then in the traditional four-point analysis, we just have the list be either the person is one with the mind and body or the person is different with the mind and body. Report an error in the passage at 34:21 Highlight the passage at 34:21

34:47 First they go through the example of using the chariot, which I gather originally was... Report an error in the passage at 34:47 Highlight the passage at 34:47

35:12 with the example of a chariot. Say how a chariot is not One with its parts. It's not the shape of the parts. It's not the collection of parts smeared out over the ground. It's not something separate from the parts. And you work through all the things in relationship to chariot. There's not something like chariot soul or I had my table heart the other day. Report an error in the passage at 35:12 Highlight the passage at 35:12

35:33 It's not something different from the parts that's added on. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Where is that whole? Report an error in the passage at 35:33 Highlight the passage at 35:33

35:47 It's hard to think about, you know, where does that hole, where is that hole that's greater than the sum of the parts? So you have to try to like search among all the parts of the chariot and then when you find that there's no chariot, then that gives you a sense, this is how this analysis is going to work. Report an error in the passage at 35:47 Highlight the passage at 35:47

36:05 I don't really care about the chariot anyway. It's not too bad for me that you didn't find it. But wait a minute, now you're talking about me. And it's like then having gotten some practice with that, applying it to the chariot, then you apply the same thing to yourself, right? And so then just I made a few, you know, a little bit of a sketch of the argument, but there are many detailed explanations of this. Report an error in the passage at 36:05 Highlight the passage at 36:05

36:32 Like, so for example, if the self is the same as the mind and body, Then why do we even have to talk about a self? You already have the mind and body. If it's exactly the same, you don't need to, you have, you already have it. It's like redundant. You've added something superfluous on to even speak of the self. Report an error in the passage at 36:32 Highlight the passage at 36:32

36:49 You just have mind and body. You don't have to talk about self. Actually, some people say like that. It's like we're just mind-body. But why do we elaborate and hold on to some idea of a self or a person in addition to that? If they're exactly the same, why do we even have an idea or a concept of them? Second, if the self is exactly the same as the mind and body, then since there are lots of parts of the body, first of all, you already got mind and body, you have to have a mind self and a body self. Report an error in the passage at 36:49 Highlight the passage at 36:49

37:25 Since it's exactly the same as the mind and body, you have to have two, your physical self and your mental self. And then since your body has all these different parts, if my self is one with, one with, My point is that the body is diverse, complex and plural. And the mind and the body together are diverse, complex and plural. And the self is identical to them. It has to be. Report an error in the passage at 37:25 Highlight the passage at 37:25

37:59 has to be... Quite numerous, because it's identical with something that's quite internally diverse and numerous. So, you know, our sense, and the problem with that, of course, is that the target, our sense of ourselves, that little, you know, eye monster, it feels like something solid and permanent and unitary. Report an error in the passage at 37:59 Highlight the passage at 37:59

38:19 And it's not so comfortable with saying, oh, well, you know, you're really, you're going to be one with the mind and body, so you have to be all these different things. Report an error in the passage at 38:19 Highlight the passage at 38:19

38:31 Also, the self feels like it's something that's not changing or that's permanent, but we can see easily that the mind and body are quickly disintegrating and changing, especially we can see with the mind. mind if we pay attention for a second. It's like always something different. And then there's this problem, there's this... Report an error in the passage at 38:31 Highlight the passage at 38:31

39:07 then there's this. Report an error in the passage at 39:07 Highlight the passage at 39:07

39:10 Other consequences, just a little bit harder to understand, but I kind of alluded to it a minute with my head and my chest and my head, and that is that the agent and object would be identical. And what that means is that the person has, we say the person has a mind and body. The person has these aggregates. Report an error in the passage at 39:10 Highlight the passage at 39:10

39:33 We say, conventionally, there's a way that we talk and say, my mind, my body. And if the self were the mind and body, then how could it also be the possessor of the mind and body? It just wouldn't really make any sense to say, my mind, my toe, my head. Because that is, the owner of it is... The owned, the possessor and the possessed would be, so the agent of possession, the owner, and the possessed, right, the aggregates, would be identical. Report an error in the passage at 39:33 Highlight the passage at 39:33

40:09 That's what you're saying. They're the self same. So once you have like that an agent, a possessing agent, that a thing can own itself, then why couldn't the thing burn itself or thing cut itself and so forth? Anything could do anything to itself, right? So they make that kind of argument that if you have absolutely, that there's no need to have agent and object can be exactly the same in regard to the possession because you're just saying that the self is identical to the mind and body, then you have those kinds of problems come up. Report an error in the passage at 40:09 Highlight the passage at 40:09

40:39 So I think those, like, pretty important to think through those reasons in depth. Because we really do feel a sense of the self or the person being here with the mind and body, embedded in it, somehow lurking in amongst it. And we have to go after that in a lot more depth than I just described. Then, of course, there's the other possibility, and it's like that the self is something of a different nature from the mind and body. Report an error in the passage at 40:39 Highlight the passage at 40:39

41:18 You can think about this as like, if it's of a different nature, if there's like, suppose that the mind and body are like a jar and then there's a pea rattling around in the jar and that's myself. Of course I could take the pea out and I could put it over there on the table and my complete mind and body with all accoutrement would proceed perfectly naturally and operate. Report an error in the passage at 41:18 Highlight the passage at 41:18

41:45 Well, myself resided over there on the table. It wouldn't be any problem, you know, because there's these things could be of a different nature or they say, well, you know, you could have this self of a cow could be in the horse. Myself could be over in the horse. Horse's self could be over me because there's no intrinsic connection. Report an error in the passage at 41:45 Highlight the passage at 41:45

42:09 They don't have any, you know, intrinsic connection to one another if they each. Report an error in the passage at 42:09 Highlight the passage at 42:09

42:28 that, and I believe everything you say, then you've just refuted the idea that any kind of person exists whatsoever. No, you haven't actually, I mean if you pay close attention, right, because they're going to say that the person, it does exist conventionally, the person exists nominally, it's just that the person can't be found under analysis. Report an error in the passage at 42:28 Highlight the passage at 42:28

42:46 And the merely nominally existent person that is not findable among the aggregates, not findable as any collection of the mind and body or piece of the mind and body, if you say that, that mere I, the merely nominally existent person. Report an error in the passage at 42:46 Highlight the passage at 42:46

43:05 It's not essentially different from the mind and body. It's not essentially the same as the mind and body. But it's different from the mind and body. It's the object imputed to the mind and body. It's not the mind and body. I don't know if you're following all this, but the idea is that conventionally, if you understand what it means for the person to be nominally existent, The right answer is it's not the mind and body. It's what we impute to the mind and body. But it's not like the example of the pea in the jar or myself going in the cow or something like that because it's not of a different nature. Report an error in the passage at 43:05 Highlight the passage at 43:05

43:40 It can only exist in interdependence. It's just a nominal imputation, Guy, that's imputed. And it's not imputed just randomly to tables. It's imputed. Although completely unfindable among mind, body, and mind, it's appropriately imputed to this mind-body collection. Report an error in the passage at 43:40 Highlight the passage at 43:40

44:04 So it can't just be ascribed to any old thing. That's what Tsongkhapa teaches about that. Basically, we've realized emptiness now. Report an error in the passage at 44:04 Highlight the passage at 44:04

44:18 Aren't you noticing a big change? Well, you've identified the object of nation. You make a complete list of all the possible ways it could exist. And in this case, our list was short. It has to be one with the mind and body or a different nature than mind and body. You refute those. And therefore, it's like, well, you know, it's like the person who's like searched the whole sage handling for the elephant. They didn't find the elephant in any of the places. Report an error in the passage at 44:18 Highlight the passage at 44:18

44:40 And they have to be convinced that if that elephant were here. It's going to be in one of those places, see? And if the person has some lurking suspicion, then you just add that place to the list up front so that they have a firm conviction. Report an error in the passage at 44:40 Highlight the passage at 44:40

44:57 I know that elephant's in one of these places. I know that elephant's here. Like, okay, so like that, my little alien monster self, if it's lurking in and amongst my aggregates, I have to have a complete list of all the places I think it might be hiding. And when I fail to find it in any of What should happen? It should dawn on me that I was wrong, that even that my strong conviction that there is a person that exists in such and such a manner, even though I'm still feeling that conviction, but while I'm feeling it, I'm now thinking, you know, that conviction seems to be counterfactual. Report an error in the passage at 44:57 Highlight the passage at 44:57

45:33 Because if it, I'm still feeling it, but it's got to be counterfactual because I know that if it were right, I would have been able to find it by now. That's what happens. You're still having that clinging feeling, Peter, but now you've got this evidence that, how wrong am I? This sense of wrongness about my hanging on to myself has begun to get in there and undermine the foundations of that attitude because now you know it's illogical. Report an error in the passage at 45:33 Highlight the passage at 45:33

46:07 So, yeah, like... I imagined it like a cognitive, this is ontological cognitive therapy. So it's like somebody has this wrong belief that they just take as a granted or a given or assumption, right? They first have to figure out that they have that belief, feel like what it's like to believe that and how that's shaping their behavior. Then they have to analyze and see, you know, if that were really true, what it would be like, you know, what would it imply? Report an error in the passage at 46:07 Highlight the passage at 46:07

46:42 And when they see that these counterfactuals keep coming up, they still feel that that thing is true. But the force of that conviction is undermined and diminished and weakened. And the power of that conviction, which still keeps grabbing onto you, but the power of it to direct your actions is undercut because now you have this sense that... Report an error in the passage at 46:42 Highlight the passage at 46:42

47:07 These thoughts keep coming into my mind, but I know that they're not concordant with reality. It reminds me of that story, The Beautiful Mind. Did you guys see that movie? This guy is hallucinating, but he learns to... Report an error in the passage at 47:07 Highlight the passage at 47:07

47:23 He learns to recognize his hallucinations as hallucinations. He's still hallucinating. But then with a portion of the mind, he can say hallucination, hallucination, hallucination to the point that he can manage to function while being actively psychotic. This is like phenomenal. And only a few people, I mean there are people who can do this, but there are a few people who can do that. And I've heard some other stories like that from other people since then about people with that kind of thing. Report an error in the passage at 47:23 Highlight the passage at 47:23

47:51 Peter? Report an error in the passage at 47:51 Highlight the passage at 47:51

47:54 This is kind of apropos of that. How would this philosophy, what would the context be for people with say multiple personality disorder or in the case of spiritual possession, which even the Tibetans seem to believe in, how does that fit in with the idea of a self, there's multiple selves or literally another self that takes over someone else's body? Report an error in the passage at 47:54 Highlight the passage at 47:54

48:36 I think, I mean, I don't know, but I just have, you know, obviously I have to make something up. I think that maybe a person with multiple personality disorder is, what, it's not like they really have different ontological selves. What they have is a series of different personality constructs, like duck rabbit, that are operating, In some sort of unstable alternation on the same biological basis. Do you see what I'm saying? And so as each of them emerges, it's not a self. Report an error in the passage at 48:36 Highlight the passage at 48:36

49:19 That relates to the question. The way the word self is used in psychology is not the way we're using it here. Very important point. Read Harvey Aronson's book, Buddhist Practice on Western Ground. Please, that's a good book. That will help you with that self versus self. Report an error in the passage at 49:19 Highlight the passage at 49:19

49:36 Psychological self, not the same as what we're talking about. Psychological self is, generally speaking, a healthy thing that's a kind of personality construct that is different. I would say that all the Buddhas have different personalities. I'm positing this. And that's why we have all these different tankas and we just don't have to have one. Report an error in the passage at 49:36 Highlight the passage at 49:36

50:05 And so that's a self in that sense. They're different persons. They have different, yeah, they're different. And those, that doesn't mean, they're all completely devoid of intrinsic nature. Some are green and some are red, you know. It's like, so, okay, that's what I generally say about that. So obviously, multiple personality disorder doesn't mean different intrinsically existent selves. It just means each. Report an error in the passage at 50:05 Highlight the passage at 50:05

50:33 Personality construct as it takes over is grasping onto inherent existence of its being in that mind-body aggregate system. Report an error in the passage at 50:33 Highlight the passage at 50:33

50:43 Possession, I don't know. I don't know anything to say about it. Report an error in the passage at 50:43 Highlight the passage at 50:43

50:56 Obviously it's something that people have different ways of modeling what's going on. I don't know. I don't have anything to say about it. Maybe somebody else does. Report an error in the passage at 50:56 Highlight the passage at 50:56

51:12 Yeah. Okay, so I'm going to skip a whole bunch of the rest of Chapter 9 so that I can get through all the things I'm hoping to do and just tell you the key things to know from Chapter 10, the last chapter of Introduction to Emptiness. Report an error in the passage at 51:12 Highlight the passage at 51:12

51:29 A big theme that came up was, you know, I talked about this idea, Ha Shang, and the idea of not just not thinking, but using thinking. thinking to figure something out and then going beyond things. That relates to this. We've been talking about the thinking part. That's what, you know, the part of the book that I was asked, the part of Tsongkhapa's great treatise that I was asked to write about is about how to think about emptiness. Report an error in the passage at 51:29 Highlight the passage at 51:29

51:59 But this is like just a piece of a much bigger book, which as I mentioned includes... Taking refuge, meditating on death, how karma works, relying on a spiritual teacher, generating bodhicitta, the six perfections and also then how to calm your mind, focus your mind, how to generate meditative stabilization where your mind is very, very, very deeply focused and tranquil so that it stays undistractedly fixed on whatever object of attention you place it on and not only stays Undistractedly fixed on that point of attention, but stays there in a sharp, vivid, clear, balanced way, not just kind of in a vague, fuzzy way. Report an error in the passage at 51:59 Highlight the passage at 51:59

52:45 Like sometimes I have this, you know, it's like I'm very tired and then my mind just feels like it almost stops moving. And because it's almost too lazy to jump on, like, you know, monkeys jump around and usually my mind's jumping around, but then maybe the monkey gets tired. Report an error in the passage at 52:45 Highlight the passage at 52:45

53:02 And it just sort of like sticks on one object, but it's not because it's concentrated. It's just because it ran out of gas and it's getting ready to go down, right? And it's like, well, that's not it. So if you have a very sharp, clear kind of mind, subjective quality of mind, and a one-pointed lock on a single point of attention so that distraction doesn't come into it, Report an error in the passage at 53:02 Highlight the passage at 53:02

53:48 Appliancy, mental and physical appliancy. Which means something like serviceability, which means I was trying to, we were trying to come up with better words the other day and sort of like responsiveness or ease of use or lack of resistance means that what you want to, what you do, what you try to do with your mind and body, it does without like always pushing back because you've made it like a very powerful, clear, sharp tool. Report an error in the passage at 53:48 Highlight the passage at 53:48

54:17 Well, like we don't really know, you don't really know what I'm talking about, maybe, unless you've... But we have a little bit of it. We don't have the full-blown thing that I'm talking about. But just if you think about how our minds are now compared to how when we were in kindergarten or something like that. Report an error in the passage at 54:17 Highlight the passage at 54:17

54:34 You guys stay two hours at a time listening to me. Each person may lose the tension for a moment or two, but generally you're just locked in, right? So how do you do that? You're able to do that because you've cultivated this ability to stay focused and stay attentive over a period of time. Wow, that gives you power. Report an error in the passage at 54:34 Highlight the passage at 54:34

54:53 You have like a kind of power. This idea that power comes from the ability to circumscribe the sphere of attention. All throughout India, it's not just Buddhists, all throughout the Jains and the Sikhs and the Hindus all have this idea that we get power through learning to focus our minds. That includes the idea of All virtue comes from reflecting on facts with an undistracted mind. It doesn't help to just flickering through, have a little factually concordant thought that then just disappears and doesn't have any lasting effect on your behavior. Report an error in the passage at 54:53 Highlight the passage at 54:53

55:37 You have to be able to stay focused and absorbed in that. It's true with everything. That is the idea of how supernormal powers arise also. you know, from feats or whatever you call it. All this arises both in Hinduism and Buddhism from people having these powers to focus their mind. And so then they can do unusual things which are not supernatural but are unusual because mostly the mind is not that powerfully focused. Report an error in the passage at 55:37 Highlight the passage at 55:37

56:03 That's the idea. And so the question is how can you take all this dualistic chatting about emptiness and then turn it into like a non-dualistic realization of nirvāṇa? Well the first thing you have to do Which I alluded to is take the kind of conversations we're having and then make them the basis of meditative practice where you're applying this analysis to yourself. Report an error in the passage at 56:03 Highlight the passage at 56:03

56:28 And understand not just the idea of emptiness but understand I am empty the way the Dalai Lama had that lightning bolt going through his chest this morning. And then that's maybe still conceptual. That's my understanding of His Holiness' insight. It's inference. Report an error in the passage at 56:28 Highlight the passage at 56:28

56:49 It's not nondual, direct, it's not nirvāṇa. It's an inferential understanding of emptiness. It's conceptual. I mean, he's really gotten it. He knows that things are empty. How does he know? He knows logically. He knows analytically. He knows conceptually. It means he knows dualistically. At that point, when he was 35 and he described that experience, it's not a non-dualistic experience of emptiness where everything else in the world vanishes and only emptiness is appearing. Report an error in the passage at 56:49 Highlight the passage at 56:49

57:19 No, he understood it, right? And that's dualistic conception. Wow, that's really powerful. Dualistic conceptions can still be really powerful and transformative. But what you have to do then... Take that understanding of emptiness, which is like you could say an image, idea in your mind, and you use that as what you focus your mind one-pointedly on, instead of the breath, which is so much easier. Report an error in the passage at 57:19 Highlight the passage at 57:19

57:50 So we'll start with the breath, meditate on that for a while, and we get good at it, and then realize emptiness. And we'll say, oh, use that, meditate on the breath concentration and see if we can put it, you know, use it to focus our minds one-pointedly on something else a little harder. Okay. Well, it turns out that it is harder because, you know, the breath just keeps going and it doesn't, we don't stop, right, breathing. Or, you know, you can do other things like you visualize, right, an image. Report an error in the passage at 57:50 Highlight the passage at 57:50

58:21 image in your mind of a Buddha or something like that. And you can make the image somewhat stable enough to keep your mind focused on. Emptiness is this very difficult to figure out. It's like if you do a complicated calculus problem, like realizing emptiness is the equivalent of solving this calculus problem, and you get to the end and you know the right answer. Report an error in the passage at 58:21 Highlight the passage at 58:21

58:38 Now focus your mind one-pointedly on that. Well, as soon as you have this certainty that this is the right answer, but then when you keep your mind focused one-pointedly, because you're not... Doing the analysis, the object kind of just disintegrates. The vivid sense of things is empty, fades away. And so then you have to go back and come out of your one-pointed concentration and you have to go back and analyze again to restore that vivid sense that things are empty. Report an error in the passage at 58:38 Highlight the passage at 58:38

59:11 Once you restore that vivid sense that things are empty, then you go back and you focus one-pointedly on that again. And you keep going like that. Report an error in the passage at 59:11 Highlight the passage at 59:11

59:21 That's called the path of accumulation for bodhisattva. That's the whole first level. And then when you get to a point where you're able to maintain perfect stable concentration while also reasoning or analyzing or seeing emptiness, when you have this perfect stability of mind, Fused with the ability to analytically understand that things are empty and that's called what we'll say the union of perfections five and six, whatever you call them, union of meditative stabilization and wisdom, the union of serenity and insight. Report an error in the passage at 59:21 Highlight the passage at 59:21

1:00:06 Those two, the fusion of those two, that's the beginning of the path of preparation. So you're just able to stay one pointedly absorbed and focused on emptiness without any distraction. Right. And, you know, it's by having that kind of mind and practicing that kind of mind, which guess what, is still dualistic because you have an image of emptiness that you focus your mind on. Report an error in the passage at 1:00:06 Highlight the passage at 1:00:06

1:00:32 But if you keep practicing like that, then what happens is that sense of I'm realizing emptiness gets thinner because concentration is this quality of absorption or penetration of the object. And you just like clairvoyantly. You know, the idea is concentration allows you to like see the other person's mind. Well, now what you're focused on one pointedly is emptiness itself. And so you eventually see emptiness. Report an error in the passage at 1:00:32 Highlight the passage at 1:00:32

1:00:57 That is, you know emptiness with your mind as though you were knowing another person's mind clairvoyantly, not through an image, but through direct experience of it. And that's nirvāṇa. That's not Buddhahood, but that's the path of seeing. That's the beginning. That's the moment when you... Permanently eradicate from the very roots some portion of the afflictions that bind us in cyclic existence. So let's talk about this point where you reach the union of serenity and insight. Report an error in the passage at 1:00:57 Highlight the passage at 1:00:57

1:01:31 It's a little hard to understand when concentration comes together with analysis because usually, as I said, analyzing is like the mind keeps moving from thing to thing, as we've seen. It's very discursive. Whereas concentration... Report an error in the passage at 1:01:31 Highlight the passage at 1:01:31

1:01:47 Concentration is just the opposite. It's keeping the mind focused and steady and one-pointed. So it's interesting to think about what is that like? What are they imagining? What's that experience like when those two come together? So anyway, this is on page 110 from my attempt to describe what Tsongkhapa is saying about this. Report an error in the passage at 1:01:47 Highlight the passage at 1:01:47

1:02:10 This is based a little bit on the Middling Exposition as well as the Great Treatise and also Tsongkhapa's later treatment of the same theme. The union of serenity and insight is a fusion of analytical power and sublime one-pointed focus. It's a mind that powerfully and analytically discerns its object, but without in any way fluctuating from in the same time a responsive... Report an error in the passage at 1:02:10 Highlight the passage at 1:02:10

1:02:37 responsive, one-pointed absorption. Tsongkhapa said that we should not think of it as a small fish moving beneath still water without disturbing it. wish he had said what we should think of it as like, you know. So anyway, Report an error in the passage at 1:02:37 Highlight the passage at 1:02:37

1:03:00 what would that be like? The still water is the serenity. we know that we should not think of it as a small fish moving beneath still water without disturbing it. Report an error in the passage at 1:03:00 Highlight the passage at 1:03:00

1:03:04 A small fish would be in that big still water of serenity. We have this little analytical fish moving around. It's not like that. So obviously some Tibetans must have explained the union of serenity and insight as some kind of composite mental state in which just a small portion of the mind was engaging in some penetrating analysis of ultimate reality without disturbing a vast ocean of mental peace. Report an error in the passage at 1:03:04 Highlight the passage at 1:03:04

1:03:30 My understanding is that in contrast to this, Tsongkhapa sees this union as more like a fully empowered, activated analytical mind, which is now armed with the laser-like focus of serene concentration. So it doesn't have to be staying, like, for example, once you learn to focus your mind one-pointedly on an object, You could get the capacity to have it serially focused one-pointedly on a series of different objects but while remaining concentrated. Report an error in the passage at 1:03:30 Highlight the passage at 1:03:30

1:04:07 That's my idea. So that's why I understand what he's saying, is that you're staying absolutely perfectly concentrated but still nonetheless moving through analysis that establishes this image of emptiness and then focuses on it. As you do, then your mind penetrates emptiness, becomes, you could say, As though one with emptiness. That is, actually your mind is already emptiness. Form is emptiness, emptiness is form. Mind is, and duck is rabbit, rabbit is duck. Report an error in the passage at 1:04:07 Highlight the passage at 1:04:07

1:04:36 So just like, this is a different framework. Your mind is emptiness all the way through. So it's not like a question of it becoming one with emptiness is some new thing. But it's like this, the non-dualistic experience is like they say, like water poured into, clear water poured into clear water. It's not like, you know. Report an error in the passage at 1:04:36 Highlight the passage at 1:04:36

1:04:57 Then at that experience, the whole words, mind realizing emptiness make any sense anymore. That's where the whole Gilupa way of talking starts to be most discordant with yogic experience. Report an error in the passage at 1:04:57 Highlight the passage at 1:04:57

1:05:12 Okay. So just to wrap up this book, Tsongkhapa, just because he really wants to ram home this point that this whole thing thing is going to work on the basis of conceptual thought. He has this quote from the Kashyapa chapter sūtra where Buddha is speaking. Kashyapa, it is like this. For example, two trees are dragged against each other by wind and from that a fire starts burning the two trees. Report an error in the passage at 1:05:12 Highlight the passage at 1:05:12

1:05:50 In the same way, if you have correct analytical discrimination, The power of a noble being's and Arya's wisdom will emerge. That means like some non-dualistic understanding. And with its emergence, with this non-dualistic wisdom's emergence, then correct analytical discrimination will itself be burned up. Report an error in the passage at 1:05:50 Highlight the passage at 1:05:50

1:06:13 You're not going to be like thinking about and making analytical inferences about emptiness. Once you taste it, see it directly with your mind, right? That part is over. But you don't get to this place where you know it directly until you rub the tree to two trees together, right? And then set the fire that burns up this duality. What are the two trees? The two trees I think represent, you know, your mind and emptiness, right? Report an error in the passage at 1:06:13 Highlight the passage at 1:06:13

1:06:46 And it's like they're different and you have to like... There's this sense of them as separate and you have to bring them together and you have to work them against each other with these reasonings until this fire burns up all of those kinds of dualistic conceptions. And with it, all the seeds of, as we say, seeds, I'll get to that in a minute, all the seeds of cyclic existence. So anyway, my book's all about emptiness. Report an error in the passage at 1:06:46 Highlight the passage at 1:06:46

1:07:16 The path isn't. And so Tsongkhapa wraps it up with some stuff along that lines. There's a quote, some say to expend your energy only to stabilize your mind and to understand the view. That's the cool thing. That's the important thing. Ignoring all important earlier topics. But in fact, this makes it very difficult to even get the vital points of the view. Report an error in the passage at 1:07:16 Highlight the passage at 1:07:16

1:07:39 Therefore, you must develop certainty about the whole course of the path. He just hates this idea that everybody jumps over the basic practices. He thinks that you'll know that you're making some progress with the higher practices when you feel inspired by them to go back. Report an error in the passage at 1:07:39 Highlight the passage at 1:07:39

1:08:01 Revisit the more basic ones and have a deeper and more profound understanding of them. That's like His Holiness talking about taking refuge and then seeing taking refuge in the context of emptiness and seeing it as different from something that as a beginner would understand. Report an error in the passage at 1:08:01 Highlight the passage at 1:08:01

1:08:18 That's my book. We're doing pretty well. Four. I'm up to four. Some licks against Vatantrika, including the duck rabbit. Four-point reasoning. Now we did the union of serenity and insight and some final advice from Tsongkhapa. Now I'm going to say something about karma and then we'll see if we'll do the little bit of Dalai Lama on Nyingma. Okay, so there's this interesting thing. Report an error in the passage at 1:08:18 Highlight the passage at 1:08:18

1:08:50 We always think about karma as seeds and... guess and that that comes from the mind only tradition and the idea that there's a foundational consciousness like a warehouse where these seeds are kept and you know nobody really thinks that they're seed seeds but that's how that's a good way to to picture them as like these some kind of Report an error in the passage at 1:08:50 Highlight the passage at 1:08:50

1:09:16 They actually say non-associated compositional factors that are associated with the consciousness. And so I don't know if they're non-associated when they're associated with consciousness. But anyway, that's what they say. And so that's the seeds and then these seeds ripen and create the world as we see it moment by moment. Report an error in the passage at 1:09:16 Highlight the passage at 1:09:16

1:09:39 The question comes is like, well, if you don't have this foundational consciousness in Prasangika, you know, we only have the six consciousnesses. We're not positing this like mind basis of all our foundational consciousness. And how do they describe how karma works? And Chandrakirti does say something about this. And it's very... Report an error in the passage at 1:09:39 Highlight the passage at 1:09:39

1:10:00 It's kind of strange, and I think it's kind of cool, but people haven't written a lot about it. And it's in Dan Kozort's dissertation. I guess he published it. It's like Unique Tenets of the Prasangika System. He has a chapter on this, which is called Disintegratedness, or in Tibetan it's Shikpa. And so it's just really hard to explain. Report an error in the passage at 1:10:00 Highlight the passage at 1:10:00

1:10:23 Technical seeming. So I tried to write something about it that was like more poetry-like. It's not actually poetry. More poetic and evocative and not so technical. But it's just based exactly on Kozort and then through that on Chandrakirti. Okay, so this is my short little thing on how Chandrakirti sees karma. Report an error in the passage at 1:10:23 Highlight the passage at 1:10:23

1:10:43 Things exist or they do not. People are alive or else dead. That seems reasonable. But along with reason, we have... It seems sharp memories, feels like ghosts. People have lived with us, people have lived within us, but now without breath of their own. And after certain funerals, our hearts are haunted, homes to the vivid presence of some very particular absence. Report an error in the passage at 1:10:43 Highlight the passage at 1:10:43

1:11:18 And it's not just simply something to get over, because now to know... What would have made a certain person laugh? This is part of the person you have become, a scar that's a slowly fading mark and gives shape to your face. So do you say that she exists or she doesn't exist, such a person? Or if you take a whole nation, does Martin Luther King exist now or not? Report an error in the passage at 1:11:18 Highlight the passage at 1:11:18

1:11:53 If you say that he's dead and so therefore he definitely does not exist, then you have this non-existent category, which includes Martin Luther King and venomous turtles that live on Mars. Report an error in the passage at 1:11:53 Highlight the passage at 1:11:53

1:12:10 So and so forth. Right. Flying unicorns. I mean, OK, so that doesn't seem right. Something's missing from the picture. Clearly, we want to say he did exist, and that's what really matters, unlike these things that Guy makes up. That his life happened is integral to what happens now. So instead of thinking just exists and doesn't exist, it's important also to distinguish what has happened, what has happened. Report an error in the passage at 1:12:10 Highlight the passage at 1:12:10

1:12:49 an ancient Buddhist Teaching about disintegration and loss led me into this line of thinking. All forms of Buddhism teach that things assembled from parts are subject to disintegration. As we're born, we must die. And of course, it's not just that things will someday fall apart, but that they're constantly changing, constantly disintegrating instant by instant. Report an error in the passage at 1:12:49 Highlight the passage at 1:12:49

1:13:13 But then we have several steps forward, farther to go with this. Even to say instant by instant. We can realize is imposing a false kind of intermittent solidity on the way change actually flows. If we struggle to fix our gaze on a rushing river or we try to scrutinize in meditation the stream of mental and emotional states, it's not obvious that we can catch these little instants. Report an error in the passage at 1:13:13 Highlight the passage at 1:13:13

1:13:42 It's just a flood, a flow. Nothing seems graspable. But on the other hand, if we look at a desk or a rock, it doesn't seem to be changing in the same way. Report an error in the passage at 1:13:42 Highlight the passage at 1:13:42

1:13:58 But whether it's evident or not, with reflection and meditation, we can see that all produced things are changing in this streaming, continuous way. What arises right now in this mind and body substantially depends on what was just here. But it's always new and at least a little bit different. And what was here before is gone. And so it's gone. Report an error in the passage at 1:13:58 Highlight the passage at 1:13:58

1:14:25 So for people and things we care about, I'm not saying like produce things, things that arise from causes and conditions, to be is to be disintegrating or to be gone by now. Always to be gone or gone by the time you finish the sentence about it. And to be disintegrated, to be gone, is to enter the honorary class, excluding the venomous turtles and so forth, the honorary class of what has happened, to join the vast ranks of the ancestors whose choices have given us our shape. Report an error in the passage at 1:14:25 Highlight the passage at 1:14:25

1:15:11 But it's really stranger than this because the very condition of having just, and this is where we get to the Chandrakirti, the very condition of having just happened, having just happened, right, is something that arises, okay? Report an error in the passage at 1:15:11 Highlight the passage at 1:15:11

1:15:30 And so, like everything else that arises, it disintegrates and passes away. It's really hard to hold that in the mind, but for every event and every object, there's a rising and immediate disintegration. And that condition of having just disintegrated is something that then disintegrates. Report an error in the passage at 1:15:30 Highlight the passage at 1:15:30

1:15:53 Then the disintegration of the prior disintegration, having arisen, definitely disintegrates and so forth. And so you have disintegration of the disintegration of the disintegration of the disintegration of the disintegration of the last, of Martin Luther King. Following the 6th century Indian teacher Chandrakirti, the Dalai Lama's school of Tibetan Buddhism You were wondering what the hell I was talking about. This is actually the Gelupa view of karma. The Dalai Lama School of Tibetan Buddhism teaches that this is how karma works. Report an error in the passage at 1:15:53 Highlight the passage at 1:15:53

1:16:23 There's a wave or stream of just-having-happenedness, a series of silent collapses or disintegrations that rushes out from our choices and constitutes the world as it's flowing. Report an error in the passage at 1:16:23 Highlight the passage at 1:16:23

1:16:42 Every instant, is emitting limitless phantom events, I'll call them, disintegratednesses, states of having just happened, like karmic photons. So the world is in ferment. It's a seething field of inconceivable complexity in which all that has happened somehow fructifies each instant into something new, sometimes a human being. Report an error in the passage at 1:16:42 Highlight the passage at 1:16:42

1:17:16 So that's actually what they teach about how karma works. There are these moments of disintegratedness. So how does the effect of the karma get to the future? And so then you picture this little seed, but you don't know what that is because it's just a metaphor. What is it a metaphor for? It's a metaphor for this condition of having happened of the thing that you did. Report an error in the passage at 1:17:16 Highlight the passage at 1:17:16

1:17:41 Like you can't not have done the thing that you did. The stream of having doneness moments, it's not really the having doneness, but it's like a having happened of what you chose. In that case of an action, it's a having done. Stream of having done, well, there's a moment of having just done, and then that moment disintegrates but is replaced by another moment of that having just done. Report an error in the passage at 1:17:41 Highlight the passage at 1:17:41

1:18:09 having just disintegrated and so in other words you can't it's like always what is that's the case it's like the present and then is created out of the interaction of um all all of um the consequences the ramifications of everything that's happened before anyway um Anyway, that's the way they say. Okay, last thing. Report an error in the passage at 1:18:09 Highlight the passage at 1:18:09

1:18:40 thing Report an error in the passage at 1:18:40 Highlight the passage at 1:18:40

1:18:47 I heard this talk in, I don't know, like 1981 or something like this. His Holiness the Dalai Lama came to Charlottesville and then he came out. I was a graduate student with Jeffrey Hopkins and he came out to Jeffrey's house and Jeffrey fixed up his basement as a temple and then His Holiness gave this talk in Jeffrey's basement and we were all crammed in there. Report an error in the passage at 1:18:47 Highlight the passage at 1:18:47

1:19:14 We put a lot of effort, of course, in getting the place fixed up. But we had a carpenter sort of among us who led the way. And it was jammed with people in that basement, though. And then we all sat there for a long time while His Holiness gave and Jeffrey translated a talk of which we could understand almost nothing. Report an error in the passage at 1:19:14 Highlight the passage at 1:19:14

1:19:35 And then when I read it later after Jeffrey published it, I still didn't understand it. Even though I was then pretty far along in grad school and then I read it. Anyway, eventually now I've started to understand it a little bit. So this is the last talk at the back of Kindness, Clarity and Insight. And of course most of the talks in this book are very accessible. They're all given on the same visit of His Holiness to the United States in the early 80s. Report an error in the passage at 1:19:35 Highlight the passage at 1:19:35

1:20:03 So I'm going to summarize for you what I'm getting out of it and read some excerpts. He starts by saying, this is a more or less personal account. For a long time, I have had the one-pointed belief that Nyingma, Sakyak, Gagyu and Gelug all have the consequent school, the Chandrakirti's view, in terms of the view of emptiness. Report an error in the passage at 1:20:03 Highlight the passage at 1:20:03

1:20:35 So I just really point to the significance of this sentence to start. He's not going to say that... They don't have the right view, but they're okay anyway. He's going to say that whether they're using the same words that we do or not, there's a way in which I, as a Gelugpa, can understand all of them as having a path to liberation, even if they say it differently, if they do it differently, if they have a different order. Report an error in the passage at 1:20:35 Highlight the passage at 1:20:35

1:21:04 There's a way in which they can achieve high status, a way in which they can achieve enlightenment within their kinds of practices, which sound really different. Okay, so then first he talks about some of the connection of Gyalupa to, he says, well, if you look in terms of Gyalupa, you look at Milarepa's Song of the Five. Report an error in the passage at 1:21:04 Highlight the passage at 1:21:04

1:21:31 Song of the Five Long Life Sisters, Milarepa advocates a non-confusion of dependent arising that is not mixing up this and that within the realm of the conventional, as well as advocating that emptiness is non-findable itself ultimately. So that's the right view. That's the whole idea, that nothing is findable ultimately, but at the conventional, you can distinguish one dependent arising from another. Report an error in the passage at 1:21:31 Highlight the passage at 1:21:31

1:21:56 And he's saying he's got Milarepa says this, so he thinks that that... It shows that Gagipa includes the right view. And then, of course, Tsongkhapa's important teacher, Rendawa, was a Sakya. So he doesn't spend a lot of time on that. He thinks, ah, they have different words, but basically it all gets down to the same thing. They all understand this emptiness of intrinsic nature. Report an error in the passage at 1:21:56 Highlight the passage at 1:21:56

1:22:17 So then you've got the three so-called new translation schools. All different ways of talking, but different kinds of practice systems, different rules, different robes, different hats. But it all comes down to, you know, they're trying to realize everything is empty of intrinsic nature. But then, what about Nyingma? They have, you know, it goes back from older translations and all, you know, the basic kinds of practice traditions predate translation of Chandrakirti into Tibetan. Report an error in the passage at 1:22:17 Highlight the passage at 1:22:17

1:22:45 So they certainly weren't developing these ways of practicing on the basis of having read Chandrakirti's interpretation of Nagarjuna. So then that's the key question. Can a Gelugpa, while being a Gelugpa, understand enigma as having the resources to realize that all things lack intrinsic nature? Report an error in the passage at 1:22:45 Highlight the passage at 1:22:45

1:23:13 So the first thing he does is point out that Tsongkhapa had a Nyingma master named Namkha Gyeltsen who supposedly helped Tsongkhapa realize the view. And that Tsongkhapa could have gone to India, but it's like if he did, I don't know who was going to teach him. But anyway, instead of going to India, he relied upon a Nyingma to help him figure out emptiness, as His Holiness says. Report an error in the passage at 1:23:13 Highlight the passage at 1:23:13

1:23:41 He points out the fact that there are enigmas who everybody recognizes as being highly enlightened. And so how did they get so enlightened if they didn't have some way to realize emptiness? What are they going to say? Are they going to say none of these enigmas are all faking their high status? Well, generally people don't say that. And he says even nowadays we can acknowledge that there are some very enlightened people who are outside Gelugpa. Report an error in the passage at 1:23:41 Highlight the passage at 1:23:41

1:24:06 How are we going to account for that? So then after a long thing about K-Droop and stuff he said about why Dzogchen was okay, he comes around to say that there's a lot of people, not just me, Tenzin Gyatso, there's a whole bunch of people who've said that all four Churluk, Nyingma, Gagyusakyan and Gelug have basically the same thought. Report an error in the passage at 1:24:06 Highlight the passage at 1:24:06

1:24:31 And the most famous person to say that was the first Penchen Lama. He said, people use all different kinds of words, and then he lists about 10 different kinds of things. And he said, all of these practices come down to the same thought. Report an error in the passage at 1:24:31 Highlight the passage at 1:24:31

1:24:48 Well, after he said that, then later the third penchant Lama said, well, you know, the first penchant Lama didn't really mean that. He just said that because he had a political purpose, you know, to try to pull people together, but he didn't really think that that was true. Why would he not think it was true? Why? Because emptiness for us is a non-affirming negative, as I mentioned. Report an error in the passage at 1:24:48 Highlight the passage at 1:24:48

1:25:14 It's a sheer absence, an utter lack of intrinsic nature. It's not clear away intrinsic nature and then the real thing will shine out and you'll know how, you know, the pure Tathāgata Garba. That exists in and of itself, the pristine wisdom that's the ground of reality. No, it's like everything is utterly lacking in intrinsic nature. Report an error in the passage at 1:25:14 Highlight the passage at 1:25:14

1:25:36 It's a mere or sheer negation, right? And that's the view. So the feeling is that when they realize what they say is the most profound condition, maybe not seeming to have that. So first of all, His Holiness says, That there's no question, he disagrees with the third penchant on Lama basically, there's no question in my mind that the first penchant on Lama really meant this when he said it. And so here's what I've tried to figure out about what that could mean. Report an error in the passage at 1:25:36 Highlight the passage at 1:25:36

1:26:07 First of all, and this relates to the question that led me to talk about this, so you can't really compare a kind of presentation like Guy's been giving about emptiness to Dzogchen and Nyingma. You have to compare a presentation from Highest Yoga Tantra in Gilupa where this view is brought into a tantric path and what's said about that. Report an error in the passage at 1:26:07 Highlight the passage at 1:26:07

1:26:32 When you compare that with what's said about Dzogchen and Mind Vajra and so forth, then he says, then the comparison is being made at the right level. You're comparing apples to apples and not comparing a sūtra system from our side to a Highest Yoga Tantra practice on their side. And it's fair. Report an error in the passage at 1:26:32 Highlight the passage at 1:26:32

1:26:53 So, okay, then a few pages later he says, look, he gives many examples of how both within Gelugpa, of how you can't be attached to certain words like ultimate or essential or intrinsic or reality. You have to like figure out in the context what it is people are really talking about because all these words, even within Gelugpa, they're all used in different ways. Report an error in the passage at 1:26:53 Highlight the passage at 1:26:53

1:27:20 You always, like what does the word nature mean? It depends. You have to see what the context is and what people are saying. So the fundamental mind, he says, even in the fundamental mind, in the highest yoga tantra of our systems, the fundamental mind, which serves as the basis for all the phenomena of cyclic existence of nirvāṇa, we usually call the clear light. Report an error in the passage at 1:27:20 Highlight the passage at 1:27:20

1:27:47 But enigma... It is called mind vajra. And I notice, I draw your attention to the fact that he says enigma it. That it clearly refers back to what he just finished describing as the clear light. So he's sort of saying what we, he is saying that what we call the clear light, they're calling mind vajra. He didn't quite say that but by using the word it there and that reference is in the enigma sentence back to the Gelugpa sentence. Report an error in the passage at 1:27:47 Highlight the passage at 1:27:47

1:28:12 So he says this is a basic knowledge, that's rikpa, it's the factor of, Luminosity and knowing, it's the final root of all minds, it's forever indestructible in the sense that its continuum is not broken even though it's changing moment by moment. It's immutable and this is like the idea of a beginningless and endless fundamental mind of clear light in Goya Samaja, that's what he's saying. Report an error in the passage at 1:28:12 Highlight the passage at 1:28:12

1:28:46 So he goes on about the In the Nyingma concept of mind vajra, and he says the nature of this mind vajra, which is an equivalent of the basic fundamental mind of clear light, is to be the truth body beyond all afflictions. It's called the ultimate truth. And the phenomena that we see in physical existence are the sport or manifestations of it. Report an error in the passage at 1:28:46 Highlight the passage at 1:28:46

1:29:12 The entity of this basic mind is essentially pure. So I'm like essentially pure, intrinsic existence alert. But then he says, like he's not even missing a beat, he said, which means that it's naturally devoid of inherent existence from the very start. Report an error in the passage at 1:29:12 Highlight the passage at 1:29:12

1:29:31 Everything that appears and arises from this basic mind, all appearances, all occurring phenomena, are characterized by the nature of spontaneity, this spontaneous flowing out from the truth body. And when you are manifesting this basic mind and recognize it, The unimpeded effulgence, I guess that's like an outflowing of light, the unimpeded effulgence of the basic mind, that's what we call compassion. Report an error in the passage at 1:29:31 Highlight the passage at 1:29:31

1:30:03 So he says, if you identify the basic mind and you ascertain that all the phenomena and cyclic existence are at sport, then you'll understand that everything that appears is essenceless and all such phenomena have been from the past. their start not established on the on their own power even though they're appearing okay So he's sort of saying, well, you know, you're realizing the emptiness of things by seeing them as all manifestations or expressions of this fundamental mind. Then the problem comes is like, well, skip a little bit. Report an error in the passage at 1:30:03 Highlight the passage at 1:30:03

1:30:43 When you do that, is that really a non-affirming negative? We Gilupas, we want that non-affirming negative to be the ultimate realization. And just like seeing all these phenomena as an effulgence. And he says, well... You've negated the idea that these things exist from their own side, but you've done it within the context of revealing this underlying thing that's his pure mind below them. Report an error in the passage at 1:30:43 Highlight the passage at 1:30:43

1:31:06 He says, If we look at, do the Nyingmas say that this is an affirming negative or non-affirming negative? Well, first of all, they almost never talk like that. That's not the way they talk. But when they do talk like that, when you get them to talk like that once in a while, they'll say it's an affirming negative. They won't say what we want them to say so that they can fit in with us. Report an error in the passage at 1:31:06 Highlight the passage at 1:31:06

1:31:28 They'll say the wrong thing. So that gives His Holiness a little challenge. right and so Because that's what they're saying is the highest realization, right, when you're able to manifest this mind vajra. But it's an affirming negative. So it can't be like the same as our emptiness. So then this is what he figures out. He looks back at what other practices they're doing besides this manifesting of the basic mind. So when they're getting warmed up to do this manifesting of the mind vajra, one of the higher level preparatory practices is called breakthrough, where you... Report an error in the passage at 1:31:28 Highlight the passage at 1:31:28

1:32:07 Try to meditate in such a way as to identify the character of the mind now and watch the mind as its, quote, watch from where the mind arises, analyze from how the mind abides, and analyze where it goes. So it's a meditative practice in Nyingma called breakthrough, which involves, from our point of view, analysis searching for the mind as it's going along. Report an error in the passage at 1:32:07 Highlight the passage at 1:32:07

1:32:35 And that's not what they're calling... ultimate realization but as long as the basic Basically, this is a realization of emptiness in relationship to the mind. You understand the mind as clear and knowing or luminous and knowing, and then you look for it or watch for it as you're sitting there. You realize that it's empty and unfindable. Report an error in the passage at 1:32:35 Highlight the passage at 1:32:35

1:32:59 Then when you do this other practice of manifesting the basic mind, Vajra, and seeing all the phenomena as mere appearances of this basic mind, what is this basic mind has already been realized as completely empty in the previous breakthrough practice that you did before. Do you follow? So what we're saying now, let's go back and switch to our way of doing it again. We realize emptiness. Report an error in the passage at 1:32:59 Highlight the passage at 1:32:59

1:33:24 Everything disappears. We consider that the ultimate consciousness. We've gone over to channel B. And then you have to come back, as we've talked about a few times. When you come back to channel A, now things are appearing again, but you see them as like illusions. Well, what's that? That's an affirming negative, or you have a mixture of a positive appearance with an understanding and utter lack of intrinsic nature sort of mixed in with it. Report an error in the passage at 1:33:24 Highlight the passage at 1:33:24

1:33:49 So we have an experience of a non-affirming negative, sheer emptiness. Which is not the end of our practice, but is followed by this aftermath in which we realize all these appearances as like illusions. And they have a preliminary practice where they realize the mind is utterly unfindable and completely empty. Report an error in the passage at 1:33:49 Highlight the passage at 1:33:49

1:34:15 And then a culminating practice where they're seeing all these phenomena as the mere sport of the basic mind. Do you notice the pattern? It's like both have a negation. Followed by an experience of the conventional as an affirmation within that negation in the same order. And it's just the accents on the other syllable. Report an error in the passage at 1:34:15 Highlight the passage at 1:34:15

1:34:39 We're saying that the big thing is going over to channel B and then because of that you get this other thing when you come back to channel A. and this illusory appearance that you see when you realize that things are empty but then they appear and they've put it the other way they said you have to realize emptiness of the mind the unfindability of the mind as it comes and goes and arises and disappears moment by moment and when you see that then you'll be able to do this other thing which is the big deal which is experiencing all phenomena as they appear as the as you know aspects of this right Right, Report an error in the passage at 1:34:39 Highlight the passage at 1:34:39

1:35:08 do you see? It's like, okay. are some Kind of amazing that he figured this out, you know, but it's like he wasn't, he's not wasting his time. He's like really studied hard. And, you know, he had this, like he had to take teachings from Nyingma teachers, presumably, to figure this out. He didn't, you know. So I'm going to skip some so I can wrap up pretty quickly. Report an error in the passage at 1:35:08 Highlight the passage at 1:35:08

1:35:37 But, you know, he got a lot of the ideas from this from a guy named... Dovdrup Chen, Jikme Denbe Nyingma, who turns out to be a Nyingma, probably part of that Rime movement. I think he died in 1912 or something like that. Report an error in the passage at 1:35:37 Highlight the passage at 1:35:37

1:35:59 This Rime movement was basically a Tibetan comparative religion or something like that. They actually went around and studied each other's systems and then tried to... Figure out how the vocabulary related to each other. But usually they didn't always give the Gelugpa as much. It was more about the other three. Report an error in the passage at 1:35:59 Highlight the passage at 1:35:59

1:36:21 But some people within the Rime movement really did include Gelugpa and try to understand all the Gelugpa categories too. Basically, that's what His Holiness is doing. He's saying, I can do the same kind of internal comparative analysis from a Yalukpa point of view that these Nyingma people did, and I'll use their texts as an inspiration and a starting point. Report an error in the passage at 1:36:21 Highlight the passage at 1:36:21

1:36:44 But he had another inspiration too, which he says comes from Tsongkhapa's explanation of the hidden meaning of the first 40 syllables of the introduction of the Guhyasamadra Tantra, this being a quote from Nagarjuna's Panchakrama. And it is, everything is like the meditative stabilization of illusion. So it's like, in other words, all phenomena are, what all phenomena are like is how they appear when having come out of meditation on emptiness, you see them in this illusion-like way. Report an error in the passage at 1:36:44 Highlight the passage at 1:36:44

1:37:17 And that's how things are. And so it's like, oh, well, that's sort of like this mind vajra. you know, experience that Nyingma is talking about. And Tsongkhapa says that, you know, that's how all things are. Report an error in the passage at 1:37:17 Highlight the passage at 1:37:17

1:37:31 then I'm almost done. Report an error in the passage at 1:37:31 Highlight the passage at 1:37:31

1:37:36 Now, with respect to identifying the clear light in the great perfection, for instance, when one hears a noise between the time of hearing it and the time of conceptualizing it as such and such, there's a mind that's devoid of conceptuality. but nevertheless is not like sleep or meditative stabilization in the object appears as a reflection of the entity of the mere clear and knowing mind. Report an error in the passage at 1:37:36 Highlight the passage at 1:37:36

1:38:06 Okay, that's what is that. So there's like... This is referring to this identifying of the basic character of the mind and how this practice is done in Dzogchen. It's by this kind of attending to and meditative experience with a fine-grained level of attention, What it's like when you experience something and then just after the direct perception come to think, oh, I heard a sound. What's the character of the mind watching in that moment? Report an error in the passage at 1:38:06 Highlight the passage at 1:38:06

1:38:35 And he said, those training in the philosophy of Gelugpa and so forth frequently repeat the definition of consciousness as that which is clear and knowing, but they need to identify it in experience. It is not sufficient merely to mouth definitions, divisions and illustrations. Experience is necessary and for that the great perfection is very valuable because it introduces one to the actuality of this entity of the clear and knowing. Report an error in the passage at 1:38:35 Highlight the passage at 1:38:35

1:39:06 And then he concludes by saying that after done all this work, he feels like he's justified in his view that the basic... Report an error in the passage at 1:39:06 Highlight the passage at 1:39:06

1:39:15 His view of all the four systems can, from his point of view, be understood as compatible with the teachings of Chandrakirti. Report an error in the passage at 1:39:15 Highlight the passage at 1:39:15

1:39:25 So let me just say about that. First of all, he... Lama Tsongkhapa is not one to be held back from learning about new things. For him, it's self-evident that that would include other kinds of Tibetan Buddhism besides the kind that he was schooled in. As the Dalai Lama of all Tibetans, I think it is true that he feels a moral responsibility and not just a political motivation to try to understand the ways in which all these systems have value. Report an error in the passage at 1:39:25 Highlight the passage at 1:39:25

1:40:01 the same time, he doesn't... create any amalgamation or confusion between Gelugpa and Nyingma. It's extremely clear which each system is saying and his view remains unchanged by his explorations in Nyingma. The reason he's able to say Nyingma is okay is because the Dzogchen practice is okay is because he's been able to understand what they're doing in terms that make sense to him as a Gelugpa, right? Report an error in the passage at 1:40:01 Highlight the passage at 1:40:01

1:40:32 You could have some Nyingmas or Kagyapas say, oh, you've misunderstood. We're not saying at all what you think, right? And we really don't think that the fundamental mind is empty in the way you're saying. But certainly he's extended himself as far as he could within his perspective to try to make account for how people could be highly accomplished within systems other than his own. Report an error in the passage at 1:40:32 Highlight the passage at 1:40:32

1:41:01 Anyway, I take His Holiness as so stupid to have fighting between different religious views in the world and then even stupider to have fighting between different systems of Tibetan Buddhism given the situation that Tibet's in. It's really a sad state of affairs, as His Holiness says in this essay. I think he's done everything he can, frankly, even at risk of his life. Report an error in the passage at 1:41:01 Highlight the passage at 1:41:01

1:41:31 from some really nutty people to be seriously inclusive and reach out and try to understand the value and what other people are doing outside the system that he's raised in, that he's been trained in by his tutors. So, anyway... I take for me this as a model of understanding one thing really well and seeing what really works for you, but then taking the lesson from that of not using that as something to aggrandize ourselves and to put other people down, but use it as a starting point for trying to understand what they're doing, how it's valuable to them from their perspective given the kinds of minds that they have. Report an error in the passage at 1:41:31 Highlight the passage at 1:41:31

1:42:26 Okay, that's enough for me. Thank you. Questions? Report an error in the passage at 1:42:26 Highlight the passage at 1:42:26

1:42:42 Yes. Report an error in the passage at 1:42:42 Highlight the passage at 1:42:42

1:42:54 Okay, so I don't understand Nyingma practice much. Neither do I. I don't understand it all. I just thought I'd tell you. Hope you're not going to ask me about the mind vajra. No, but forms being a play of the mind vajra, that seems almost... To me, as if they have the Nyingma view of no external object. That doesn't seem to affirm the Prasangika view of there being external objects, but it would be just as valid to say, okay, well, all appearances are a result of these karmic imprints. Report an error in the passage at 1:42:54 Highlight the passage at 1:42:54

1:43:38 That they're arising from the ripening of these seeds. Well, of course, we mentioned that Chandrakirti wasn't translated. And I think that Report an error in the passage at 1:43:38 Highlight the passage at 1:43:38

1:43:51 there's a huge influence of mind only and sometimes tantrica, but especially mind only in maybe the viewpoint that seems to come across in some tantric ways of representing the world. The perspective of our system, right, is that we have to bring the prasangika view into the practice of tantra in order to do it. So, you Report an error in the passage at 1:43:51 Highlight the passage at 1:43:51

1:44:26 know, there's a sort of principle of, you could say principle of charity here, but it's like charity from your point of view. That's what I was trying to say is I'm not trying to say that you're not right. I'm just trying to exhibit, given all those kinds of other ways you could look at it. How he set out to analyze it and look at it in this particular way. I think what he's trying to do is say, look, the key point is, are you doing something that's deconstructing or de-reifying both the conventional and the ultimate? Report an error in the passage at 1:44:26 Highlight the passage at 1:44:26

1:45:08 Not how you're doing it or in what order you're doing it or what you're calling it. And he thinks that he can say that in the case of Mind Vajra practice as he has been taught it, you know, at this time in the early 80s and as he describes it, he can see that. The particular practices you're doing and what you call them and so forth are different. But if these things are, the sport of the mind means that these are just, what do you say, you could say that these are mere constructions of the mind, that they appear in an illusion-like way. Report an error in the passage at 1:45:08 Highlight the passage at 1:45:08

1:45:49 For him, that's like, okay, you're understanding what it's like to come back to channel A after you've been on channel B, right? I don't know what else to say. I can't really, I don't think I can make it any more convincing than His Holiness did. You don't either. But you know what it reminds me of? I mean, you can think about this, whether it's a good thing or bad. It's like... Report an error in the passage at 1:45:49 Highlight the passage at 1:45:49

1:46:15 In liberal Christianity at one point they had this concept of the anonymous Christian and the idea was like well you know traditional Christianity you definitely have this idea that everybody who's not saved in Christ is going to have to go to hell but then what do they do as the world gets very big and you're a liberal thinking person but you don't want to let go of some of your traditional Christian beliefs with the fact that there's all these people out there who seem to be very good and some of them are even very saintly but they don't like Believe in Jesus even when they hear about him. So, you know, it's not like they just didn't hear about him. It's just like they still don't believe him even if they hear about him. Report an error in the passage at 1:46:15 Highlight the passage at 1:46:15

1:46:54 So what are you going to say about those people? And so some people said, well, we'll call them the anonymous Christians. That is, they have what we call the love of Christ in their hearts and they act in a way that expresses that. And so we know them as Christians by their love, so to speak, right? But they don't know themselves as Christians. They don't call themselves Christians. They don't accept the name Christ. But what we call Christ, what we understand as Christ, what we experience as Christ, what we live as Christ, they have that and they call it Krishna or something. Report an error in the passage at 1:46:54 Highlight the passage at 1:46:54

1:47:33 Do you know what I'm saying? And so what's the big deal? Which is actually really a powerful step forward. In terms of where things could be and world peace and so forth. And you can say, well, I don't know if that's exactly what we meant by tolerance of diversity. But, you know, at least we're not going to have a war where the Christians are fighting the anonymous Christians. And it's like you have the right idea, but the wrong word. Report an error in the passage at 1:47:33 Highlight the passage at 1:47:33

1:48:01 And, you know, it's like so it's a huge progress in terms of world peace. OK, so if you're not, you know, and I think a huge chunk of what His Holiness is doing in there. could be called recognizing Nyingmas as anonymous Galugpas. Report an error in the passage at 1:48:01 Highlight the passage at 1:48:01

1:48:19 He's not going to say that, right? He's going to say, well... They just call it all these different things. But then he has, there's one little, you know, we think about like dialogue, interreligious dialogue, tolerance between people with different religious point of view. It shouldn't just be limited to saying you're okay in so far as you really agree with me but don't know it. It would be nice if we could get to the level of there's something okay with what you're doing. Report an error in the passage at 1:48:19 Highlight the passage at 1:48:19

1:49:03 If it works for you, even if it's really different from what I think and doesn't hurt anybody. You know what I'm saying? And then here's the other level of like I'm glad we talked because even though I'm not going to stop being what I am, I heard something from you that can help me be what I am better than before. Report an error in the passage at 1:49:03 Highlight the passage at 1:49:03

1:49:26 Can interreligious dialogue be a situation where people who are absolutely dedicated Muslims or absolutely dedicated Gilukpas learn something from Nyingmas or Christians that helps them be better Muslims or Christians or Nyingmas or Gilukpas or whatever? And there's one element of this essay that... Hits that mark, exactly. And that's when he turns around at the end after telling everybody how the enigmas are anonymous, and they're really okay because they realize what Chandrakirti meant. Report an error in the passage at 1:49:26 Highlight the passage at 1:49:26

1:49:57 They just call it something different. Then at the end he turns around and says, we've got a problem on our side. And I found out about it by going over there and listening to these people. And that is that we just say clear and knowing, clear and knowing, clear and knowing, clear and knowing. But then we never know what we're talking about. And they have a way that we can find out. Report an error in the passage at 1:49:57 Highlight the passage at 1:49:57

1:50:16 And so that's actually, you know, whatever you think dialogue is, that's either real dialogue or some step that's just beyond dialogue. See, I always think it's like if people are actually having a conversation, that you should start from the premise that the other person might have something to say that you hadn't heard before that was worthwhile. Report an error in the passage at 1:50:16 Highlight the passage at 1:50:16

1:50:38 It's really hard for religious people to do that, though. But it's not impossible now. His Holiness just modeled it for us. Report an error in the passage at 1:50:38 Highlight the passage at 1:50:38

1:50:48 Yes. So how do the remes deal with these differences in deep philosophy? Well, some of them have, in a way, sort of like what you saw in this essay I just went through, a way of taking all the tantric and philosophical terminology that's quite different. The adverbs are different, ultimately, essentially. What they use all these words to mean is different. They take all the names for the states of consciousness and the philosophical ideas and they try to compare them and match them up and analyze how they correlate to each other. Report an error in the passage at 1:50:48 Highlight the passage at 1:50:48

1:51:32 Sometimes you don't get a direct match where you can say this is equivalent to that, but you can say the function of this and this system is fulfilled by the interaction of this and that. But some of them do that. While leaving out the Gelugpas. Report an error in the passage at 1:51:32 Highlight the passage at 1:51:32

1:51:50 But then some of them include the Gelugpas too. And that's like he found, you know, this Douglas Duckworth has a new book out either about, it's either out or about to be out. It's like a remake book and includes looking at, you know, all four systems. But anyway, yeah, His Holiness has this like found this guy who's like analyzed all four. Report an error in the passage at 1:51:50 Highlight the passage at 1:51:50

1:52:15 He doesn't. Quote Daudrup in here, so we don't know, unless we do more research, how much of his idea comes. But he gives Daudrup, Dembe Nima, this huge amount of credit, both at the beginning and the end of the essay. So it's pretty clear that he didn't just think this up all by himself. He got it out of studying. Report an error in the passage at 1:52:15 Highlight the passage at 1:52:15

1:52:41 studying Rime and Tantra and thinking about how much of what they were saying he as a Gelugpa could accept and how he would reframe it from a Gelugpa point of view. Report an error in the passage at 1:52:41 Highlight the passage at 1:52:41

1:52:52 Mine Report an error in the passage at 1:52:52 Highlight the passage at 1:52:52

1:53:04 is not so much a question, but I want to thank you very much for sharing all your great knowledge and your experience and all the hard work that you've done and your creativity and your sense of humor. Report an error in the passage at 1:53:04 Highlight the passage at 1:53:04

1:53:19 It's been really a great benefit to me personally. And also what I've come away with from this weekend and from your presentation is how dynamic emptiness is and how dynamic the concept is. And yeah, it's given me a lot to think about. So thank you very much and I hope you come back. Please come back, please come back, please come back. Report an error in the passage at 1:53:19 Highlight the passage at 1:53:19

1:53:47 Peter always says it three times. Yeah, I'd love to come back. We'll see when I think of something else to say. Report an error in the passage at 1:53:47 Highlight the passage at 1:53:47

1:54:02 Okay, thank you very much. Report an error in the passage at 1:54:02 Highlight the passage at 1:54:02

· · · silence, 1 minute

1:54:41 What noise does it make? Report an error in the passage at 1:54:41 Highlight the passage at 1:54:41