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20140803GRAAETB55

0:00:04.1

We are talking about the Four Noble Truths. Actually we are talking on the instructions of the Mahayana path. If you look at the Transcendental Practice – because of a lack of my English I have to keep using words like Abhisamayalankara – this is explaining the Buddha’s teachings on Transcendental Wisdom. There are direct and indirect teachings. All of those are the really true practice. You know quite a lot about lam rim, in and out, everywhere and most of you have the stages lined up within you somehow, from the lam rim point of view.

0:01:43.6 The lam rim is made into a very practical practice of Transcendental Wisdom. It may not be very suitable for beginning people, those who have begun to have an interest in the spiritual path, because the lam rim¸ as you know, begins at the guru devotional practice. Commonly we say, “From the beginning of the guru devotional practice to non-duality…..” Even on the sutra path we talk about that. So in the beginning is the guru devotional practice, which is neither suitable nor helpful to so many people at the beginning.

0:03:21.4 On the other hand, it is absolutely necessary for the really true spiritual development. It grows from there. That’s why it is called “root of all development”. In a very practical way was laid out in the lam rim stages. But when you look at the transcendental point of view it is not very practically laid out, but somehow quite interestingly. Ultimately, that’s how it is. Not ultimately, but that is the way it is. Even the lam rim will lead you to that. So it is the transcendental wisdom, the prajnaparamita, the direct and indirect wisdom.

0:04:29.8 The direct teachings are supposed to be those on emptiness and the indirect ones are supposed to be on love and compassion, etc. The teachings of Buddha, whether we call it that or whether we call it “Buddhist Canon”, are about 100 odd volumes. All of them are merged into three different texts: the detailed, medium and shorter version of Transcendental Wisdom. That’s the essence of all of Buddha’s Collected Works. The detailed version has 12 volumes, the medium version has 1 volume and the short one is a little more than a booklet.

0:06:11.4 The Abhisamayalankara is Maitreya Buddha’s commentary on the “Transcendental Wisdom”, which he gave to Asanga. Asanga was looking for the real meaning of the real essence of the practice and he could not find it anywhere. He meditated in a cave for 12 years and every 3rd year he started leaving. Something happened and he went back in and that happened three times. At the end he found Maitreya in his vision and he wanted to show everybody. So he was running around town, carrying something, shouting and screaming, “Look, I brought Maitreya Buddha” and everybody thought he had gone crazy, because he was just running around with empty hands, holding them above his shoulders. Only one old lady saw that he was carrying a wounded dog. Nobody else saw anything.

0:07:33.1 Maitreya Buddha took Asanga to this pure land of Tushita. They say he gave him teachings for one morning in Tushita which was the equivalent of 50 years in human life. He gave him those transcendental teachings. The Abhisamayalankara is just 20-30 pages in Tibetan and this has become the accessible source through which we can study all these paths. All lam rims have come out of that. Not only from the Gelugpa point of view, but also the Nyingma point of view, who have the kun kyen la me zhal lung. The Sakyapas’ lam dre is also coming from there. The Kagyupa’s [Jewel Ornament of Liberation] by Gampopa are coming from that too. Almost every Tibetan Buddhist teaching is rooted in this, totally. Then different explanations come and different versions and all kinds of things, but ultimately the purpose is to obtain enlightenment, to establish a path to enlightenment in an orderly, organized manner and ultimately the individual will obtain that. That is the whole purpose of it.

0:09:47.7 So the root of all of those, the commentaries and explanations and treatises of the early Indian mahapanditas and the later Tibetans, all of them are really rooted to this. These are the five major subjects that are taught in the great monasteries, such as Drepung, Sera, Ganden and many other institutions that have these studies. And this is the real root of that. The Gelugpas call them the “Five Great Subjects” and sometimes the Nyingmapas call them the “Thirteen Great Subjects” and anyway, sometimes there are Eighteen Great Subjects and they will all boil down to this. So that is the real root of all lam rim – everything. Now so far you have been looking through in an organized manner through the lam rim. It is very easy to go. Of course when you are beginning, it is not easy. It is very difficult. But now you are getting in touch a little more than that. Your hands are a little more inside the pocket, rather than nicely looking from outside. But I thought that I would begin the introduction of Mahayana Buddhism through the “Ten Instructions”.

0:12:07.3 Out of the 10 instructions we have done the first one, drub pa rang gi ngo wo la dam pa – the Nature of the Practice itself. There we talked about the Two Truths. We said that there is no third truth, neither relative nor absolute. We make it very clear, quoting that the buddhas, whoever they may be, Shakyamuni Buddha, Maitreya Buddha or any other buddha, - I am not talking just about one generation, but a thousand buddhas, have nothing more to say than the two truths and nothing separate from the two truths, and nothing less than the two truths. Nagarjuna made it very clear that

The enlightened ones, not listening to the others, taught the two truths: relative and absolute. And no third truth every existed or will ever be.

0:14:04.3 Now you may think, “But there are the Four Noble Truths” and in fact, the next instruction is on the Four Noble Truths. So how come there are four, without getting the third? That is very different. The Four Noble Truths is what Buddha first taught. You have heard them a million times. You have heard about the Truth of Suffering, the Truth of the Cause of Suffering, the Truth of Cessation and the Truth of the Path Leading to Cessation. You probably have some idea and good knowledge. You can say, “I know about the truth of suffering. There are three types and eight types and sixteen types of suffering and hundreds of sufferings anyway.” We have some idea and we are very familiar and very well experienced too. If we are not experienced with suffering, then who else is? Honestly. Each and every one of us has suffered tremendously throughout our lives and particularly in this life. The older you become the more experienced you are! That is nothing but the experience of suffering.

0:15:54.1 Yet, you know one thing: no matter how heavy, how persistent the sufferings may be, we are equally intelligent and diligent and clever enough to handle them. We are capable enough of handling them. That means we don’t submit to the suffering. We still challenge the suffering, so matter how strong, difficult and persistent it may be. This might not be the right place for me to talk, but the thing is this:

0:16:51.9 Our life is such. It is full of suffering, full of pain and full of difficulties. Yet we get through with everything. The human capacity is such, there are many ways of handling, there is help and all kinds of things. At the end of all, I am hesitating to say – we all lose our battles – for sure. Impermanence is only a question of when, not a question of if. We all will go, sooner or later, down the road, hopefully way down the road. That is what each of us keeps on thinking. But we all we go, for sure. Even then, we don’t lose our battle. We are never going to disappear. We are never going to be annihilated. The only difficulty is that we don’t recognize each other. We don’t see each other. You don’t recognize me and I don’t recognize you. We look like strangers, but the character and personality of the individual is such that you think you know the person for so many life times. Something like that you get.

0:19:10.4 It never goes completely into annihilation. Impermanence takes over for sure. But impermanence doesn’t take over forever, either. I guess what I am saying is this: no matter how much suffering we may have, we will prevail. They say: truth will prevail, so we will prevail. We all will become enlightened, for sure. That’s why it is worthwhile, even though you know that at the end of this life it is impermanent. That will conclude the so-called “this life”. Even then the individual person will continue. We even make arrangements for future lives and some even for future match making! Whatever.

And then everything, whatever we do, we are preparing for the future. Helping ourselves in the future. The future doesn’t end at the time of death. As a matter of fact, death is in the middle of the future. That’s really what it is. None of us here or those who are listening – or maybe there are some, but most of us who are thinking, will never think that we will completely end at the time of death.

0:21:20.9 We will probably think, “I don’t know what happens. I won’t see it anymore.” That is very true. That is the disadvantage of the change of life. I don’t see you and you don’t see me the way we are used to. But we see each other, we get together with each other and it never ends that way. I thought I should mention that, because it is impermanent, for sure. So sooner or later, we all go through that. But that is not the end of it. That’s the most important. It almost begins there. It is the end of one life and the beginning of another. So the whole circle of lives is not really a transition from birth to death, but a transition of a whole big circle, including many of our previous lives and many of our future lives. It involves at least two or three different lives and these don’t necessarily occur one after another.

But any karma that we create, positive or negative, may not necessarily be completed in one life time. That is actually very rare. Completing karma within one life is a little rare. It completes in two or three life times at the most. But it doesn’t necessarily go 1, 2, 3. The karmic effects may happen in this life and the next couple of lives nothing may happen with that particular karma. Something else happens. Then in another life it connects. But it is also possibly to go through one after another, boom, boom, boom. But often something happens in one life, then a couple of life times later nothing happens and then something happens here and it completes in a couple of life times or something. They are all possible, because of how karma works. It is a funny way of thinking, but think of the Audio car logo, those intertwined circles, hooked into each other. That is how the karma hooks into the different lives.

0:21:20.9 Each one of those lives have positive and negative aspects. The positive sides are controlled by the two positive of the Four Noble Truths and the negatives are controlled by the two negative of the Four Noble Truths. That is how the life is sort of governed when we cannot control or manage. The management is taken over by natural forces. Some people may think that I said the Four Noble Truths take over. They don’t, but the natural movement takes over, because we are not managing. Then it is managed by something else and that’s why it is suffering. When you are managing and controlling your life by yourself it is pleasure, it is joy, because you are doing it yourself. But when it is controlled by forces other than you it is suffering. Remember, we say that many of the samsaric joys are not true joy, because everything is controlled by some other factor. Not necessarily a person, but another factor.

0:26:53.0 When you are controlling and managing, then that is freedom. When somebody else is managing and controlling, it becomes suffering. So we are talking about the 16 aspects of the Four Noble Truths and we did two of them, and luckily Greg Labo found something – in Brooklyn, a chart called “The Meditation on the Four Noble Truths by way of Sixteen Aspects”. Each one of them is listed. The first section I explained already earlier. The four aspects of the First Noble Truths are:

• Impermanence

• Suffering

• Emptiness

• Selflessness

And the chart also explains why these are there. So that makes it much easier. I am not going to talk more on what I already did. We did the Truth of Suffering already, but impermanence is explained in terms of the aggregates, like form, sound, smell, etc, and sometimes those are considered permanent by some. The most important point is the self, the individual person. This ultimately leads to it. Here it talks about the aggregates, the elements and so on, but ultimately it pinpoints to the self, the person. So all these differences of why wisdom of emptiness becomes so difficult is because it is completely foreign to us. That is the first thing. Who I the American world thinks we are empty? Nobody. This is totally foreign language. It is unreasonable talk.

0:30:37.8 But if you really look carefully: who is me? Keep on looking and searching and you are going to have this unreasonable answer yourself. Whatever way you look, from the spiritual point of view or the scientific point of view. If you use the instruments of science that is what they are finding as well. I had a visitor last week who is telling me that Mind and Life is minting money. There is tremendous amount of money there. Yes, people are putting tremendous amounts of money in there, because they are finding this.

Also, I saw the movie “Lucy” last week. I am sure many of you have seen it. It is purely from scientific [angles], but the bottom line is that it comes down to emptiness. The power is the emptiness. Either it is foreign language or unimaginable, unthinkable, the spiritual people have been talking about this for centuries. Scientists are now seeing that almost clearly. So even fiction movies are showing that as ultimate achievement. The unthinkable, unimaginable becomes reality. That is not some new reality, but the reality of what is. We just begin to discover it and it goes way beyond our imagination, way way beyond.

0:33:56.7 When you trace the self [you don’t find anything]. All the wrong views and misunderstandings could not really figure out that the emptiness is impossible and unimaginable, and “unless I am going crazy it can never be.” So they have to put something there to identify, because if there is nothing to be identified then it becomes the equivalent of not existing, not being there. But on the other hand, when you get to the zero figure, to me – maybe I am wrong, and if so, please correct me, but to me the zero figure does not tell you “no more”. The zero figure is a number. If you have one and zero that’s 10. A one with two zeroes give you 100, with three zeroes it is 1000 and so on. The zero is a conclusion rather than nothing. Empty equals to zero and zero equals to empty, but that’s why emptiness is full. There is fullness.

0:35:38.9 This will all lead to emptiness. All of those 16 aspects will lead to emptiness, but they don’t introduce it as emptiness. In the first four aspects of the First Noble Truth, although it is called emptiness, it is called empty, because [the aggregates] are “devoid of a supervisory self that is a different entity from them.” It is not the emptiness of empty. The wrong understanding that is contradicted by that is holding on to a permanent, partless and independent self. That’s why this emptiness is there.

The fourth aspect is selflessness, because [aggregates] do not exist as an independent self. I called it “ownership”. I can’t own me. I used that word, and maybe it is wrong terminology, but the meaning is the same as here. It tells you.

0:37:07.9 Then we have the four aspects of the Origin of the Truth of Suffering.

Cause – gyü

Origin – kün jung

Strong Production – rab kye

Condition – kyen

It is a cause because [contaminated actions and attachment] are the root of suffering. So it is a cause. It is an original cause, we sometimes say. Some people say there is no cause. They say it is causeless. Why? Somebody else made it and gave it to you. Or is the nature, and nobody made it and it happens to be there. It is sort of permanently there. This is important to know that suffering is coming from causes. If that is not the case we cannot get rid of it. Then it is always there, because suffering has no change. But suffering does have causes, because it has ups and downs. Whenever there is a cause there are ups and downs. We get ups and downs because there is a cause. When you know that there is a cause, then you know that the cause will function only if the conditions are there. It has to be cause plus conditions. So you begin to see there is room to manipulate, to get rid of it and there is room to build more. All that is available because it is happening through cause and effect.

0:40:14.6 Origin – because [contaminated actions and attachment] again and again produce suffering. That’s true. One does not necessarily finish it. One karma is finished, another one continues, a third one comes – zillions of different karmas continue functioning for each and every one of us all the time. Those who do not accept the origin, think that suffering is caused by only one cause. Who or what could that be? Dü che kor na le jung wa. Then some people say suffering comes without any cause. If it comes without any cause, what guarantee do we have that we will not want it. If it becomes one cause, it becomes that somebody else made it for us, somebody has awarded it to us. I am not talking about the Christian point of view, but some early Indian schools believed that Ishwara has made everything, every world. Everything is Ishwara’s reaction. That is something like God and he has reactions. When Ishwara reacts a certain way the world becomes a certain thing. People suffer certain things, people enjoy certain things and it is Ishwara [who does as] he pleases and then everything happens.

0:42:41.3 It is Wangchuk’s or Ishwara’s mind. He made everything. So the early Indian treatises have that.

Strong Production. I talked about “very much growing”, and here it is called strong production, because [contaminated actions and attachment] produce suffering with great force. It is quite interesting. The wrong view contracting that is: the nature of things is permanent but their states are changeable. Sometimes they way that it is permanent, but its states are changeable. Then it becomes impermanent, right? Anyway.

The last one is: Condition and that is the case because [contaminated actions and attachment] act as cooperative conditions of suffering. The mistaken view is: Suffering is created under the supervision of a deity. That is the early Indian thesis. Actually it is because of causes and conditions. Nothing else. Nobody else gives us suffering. Nobody else gives us joy. Joy and suffering, whatever we have, is there through our own deeds.

0:44:34.5

They are consequences or our actions. When we do something wrong we get that result. When we do something right, we get that result. We will say, “Hey, these people are so intelligent, they manage so well, look at them.” How many times we have said that Karl Rove is so intelligent and look at Bush. For so many years we said that, right? Now, look at Bush.

0:45:21.0 What did we get? Now we see whether Karl Rove is intelligent or not. That’s exactly how it is. Sometimes being witty and crazy looks like you are managing. It is very, very strange. It depends on the people, how honorable the individual really is. I am just sort of thinking of the Gore-Bush election. When you are not honorable, you go and and yell and scream and do all kinds of witty things and get the Supreme Court Chief Justice on your side and then you become president. On the other hand, honorable people will not argue that much, because of respect to the Supreme Court and that’s how Karl Rove’s intelligence works. I am not against Republicans and I am not pro-Democrat, but when you are looking at it, that’s how it really is. And then he was so intelligent and successful and wonderful, but now, after 8 years of Bush we saw what happened and the legacy still is war. They started almost the day of 9-11. And at the end we had this war. And now it is done or not done. Even after 8 years of Obama, whether the war is done or not done is not even clear. How many lives have been wasted? How many zillions of dollars have been wasted? How wasted it is and it still continues. If not here, it is there, if not there, it is here. It is everywhere. Today we have problems in Ukraine, Israel, Palestine. How many people died there?

0:48:23.6 How many Iraqis died? Nobody ever mentions a number. Nobody and they are still dying continuously. These are the consequences of wrong doing, of a few people, who we call “intelligent”. I was also very curious and cautious about the guy from Chicago, David Axelrod, because of Karl Rove. He is a similar duplicate. I sort of saw it, so I was cautious about it. But at that he did not produce a war yet.

0:49:35.4 So that is the strong production of causes and conditions. So we did the two of them [Truth of Suffering and Cause of Suffering] and next Sunday I will be here and we will talk about the Cessation of Suffering and you can look at the chart and read up on the Truth of the Cessation and the Truth of the Path, which we will talk about next week.

0:50:14.2 Since I am not running around for a while, maybe we will be able to have some discussions on a couple of Sundays afterwards, before I move to the next instruction. We are on the Four Noble Truths and the next instruction will be the Three Jewels.

I found a translation of the 10 Mahayana instructions in a Buddhist dictionary. In Sanskrit that is dasa upadesa:

1. Nature of Achievement/ Path. dru pa pa ngo wo la dam pa That’s the Two Noble Truths.

2. Four Noble Truths. That’s what we are talking about now.

3. The Three Jewels. We will be talking that later.

4. Detachment From Wrong Conduct - cha wa nyen pa la zhen pa la dam pa

5. Persistent Indefatigability. You don’t get tired - yong su nga wa men pa la dam pa

6. Persistent Practice of the Mahayana Path.

7. Five Wisdom Eyes.

8. Extrasensory Perceptions. That is knowledge gone beyond the normal touch, seeing, etc.

9. Path of Seeing

10. Path of Meditation

We will be following that. I just counted them, because I was looking for certain words in the dictionary and they counted all the ten of them here. Now you also found a website that gives you that. That’s great. So we have help coming from unsuspected areas like Brooklyn. That’s good. All right, thank you. I don’t want to delay so, so thank you.

0:55:04.4 May all beings have happiness……….(Four Immeasurables)

MEDITATION ON THE FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS BY WAY OF THE SIXTEEN ASPECTS

THE FOUR ASPECTS OF THE TRUTH OF SUFFERING

ASPECT TO BE

MEDITATED

MEDITATION CENTERS ON THE THOUGHT THAT THE CONTAMINATED PHYSICAL & MENTAL AGGREGATES ARE:

MEDITATION COUNTERACTS THE

MISPERCEPTION OF:

1. Impermanent because they are produced occasionally (i.e. they do not exist forever).

the Five Contaminated Aggregates as Permanent.

2. SUFFERING

In the Nature of Suffering because they are under the outside influence of contaminated actions (karma) and afflictions.

the Five Contaminated Aggregates as Pure and Pleasurable.

3. EMPTINESS

Empty because they are devoid of a supervisory self that is a different entity from them.

a Permanent, Partless and

Independent Self.

4. Selfless because they do not exist as an independent self.

a Self-Sufficient Substantially

Existent Self.

THE FOUR ASPECTS OF THE TRUTH OF ORIGIN

ASPECT TO BE

MEDITATED

MEDITATION CENTERS ON THE THOUGHT CONTAMINATED ACTIONS AND ATTACHMENT ARE:

MEDITATION COUNTERACTS THE

MISPERCEPTION THAT:

Causes because they are the roots of

suffering. Suffering is causeless.

2. Origins because they again and again produce suffering.

3. Strong Producers because they produce suffering with great force.

4. Conditions because they act as the cooperative conditions of suffering.

Suffering is caused by only one cause.

the nature of things is permanent but their states are changeable.

Suffering is created under the supervision of a deity.

THE FOUR ASPECTS OF THE TRUTH OF CESSATION

ASPECT TO BE

MEDITATED

MEDITATION CENTERS ON THE THOUGHT THAT A SEPARATION WHICH IS A TOTAL EXTINGUISHMENT OF [CONTAMINATED] ACTION AND AFFLICTION IS:

MEDITATION COUNTERACTS THE

MISPERCEPTION THAT:

1. a Cessation because of being a state of having abandoned suffering.

2. a Pacification because of being a state of having pacified an affliction.

3. AUSPICIOUS HIGHNESS Auspiciously high because it is a separation which is in the nature of benefit and bliss.

definite emergence because it is a

there is no liberation from cyclic existence.

certain contaminated states are liberation (e.g. the Jaina’s assertion that there is a place of liberation on top of the world that is like an upside-down umbrella).

there is a liberation that is superior to the cessation of suffering.

4. DEFINITE EMERGENCE

separation from suffering such that it will never return.

liberation, once attained, is

reversible.

THE FOUR ASPECTS OF THE TRUTH OF PATH

ASPECT TO BE

MEDITATED

MEDITATION CENTERS ON THE THOUGHT THAT A BODHISATTVA PATH OF SEEING REALIZING SELFLESSNESS DIRECTLY IS:

MEDITATION COUNTERACTS THE

MISPERCEPTION THAT:

1. a path because it causes one to proceed to liberation.

2. suitable because it is a path which serves as an antidote to affliction.

3. an achiever because it directly realizes the nature of the path unmistakenly.

4. Deliverance a deliverer because it is a path which eliminates suffering and delusion irreversibly.

there are no paths of liberation from cyclic existence.

the mind realizing selflessness directly is not a path of liberation.

paths such as worldly concentrations, undergoing asceticism of the five fires, etc., are paths of liberation.

There is no total eradicator of suffering.