Archive Result

Soundfile 19870100GRRTOMLOVCOM_07

Speaker Gelek Rimpoche/Robert Thurman

Location Omega Institute

Topic Love and Compassion

Transcriber Jill Neuwirth

Date 4/15/2024

RT: … sign of spiritual person as happy-go-lucky means like this, because spiritual person is living every moment as if it were the last, in one way, although on some superficial level it is important to remember that such a person, that doesn’t mean- at first it might seem like you become very kind of radical, sort of hippie dropout or this kind of business. It does seem like that, definitely at first, and that’s very good. Experience of dropping out is very good because in fact, itself is a tremendous relief. Because in fact so much of the things that which we are obsessed, with which we think about and worry about this and that, to have this and that, is all a complete waste of time. A tremendous waste of energy. So soon as the mind drops out of having to be preoccupied with the got to get this, and I’ve got to do that, all this kind of different ambition, and desires, and I must have this, and all these plans we have, like, some of us are scheduled up three, four, five, ten, twenty years. Even pension plan, you know? (Audience laughs) And the insurance company lives off this kind of obsession and preoccupation by people. So in fact, dropping out is a tremendously healthy thing, and it leads to tremendously peace and pleasure, actually. Don’t you think so? I’m sure many of you have meditated on these things before, but I was reminded myself, every time you go over this Rimpoche was going through this, every time you do, and you think about- you sort of remind yourself, goodness, here I’ve been worrying, when am I going to get this payment, and when am I going to get that, and buy another plane here, and do that, and pay off that debt, and ta da ta da. And then actually you could just die, you know? In between. Anytime. And the memory that really that is so, then you can get, well, it doesn’t mean you can just ignore it all, but you can get a little relief about it, actually.

[0:01:46.5] On the other hand, and you get certain pleasure from that relief. Definitely right away, kind of pleasure. And here it’s talking about suffering, and of course Rimpoche didn’t go into a very extensive- he didn’t begin with the extensive things. When you combine, you see, you take this tremendous valuation of your present existence and what a beautiful machine you are, what a marvelous creature is a human being, and which you are, you know? And also then you count up all the human beings on the planet, how many are in the jungle, how many are slaving in a mine somewhere, how many of them are like marching around in some boot camp? How many are in factory twelve hours a day, et cetera, et cetera. Even among the human beings, how many are like, free to think about sort of ultimate destiny issues? How many are brainwashed by this ideology they’re in, there is no ultimate destiny? If you count up the number of beings, how many right now thinking along this line like that? So there’s so much extensive detail you can enrich and rich and rich and rich, deepen that kind of pleasure that comes from recognizing sort of the ultimate reality of this situation. Ultimate reality of this situation. And then, so then there’s a pleasure from that. Then of course, that pleasure immediately becomes interconnected, of course, with- and then, that pleasure does not just sort of become like, that becomes intensity however, immediately when we realize that the quality of the spirit, spiritual development Rimpoche says, the quality of the spirit, quality of the mind of this moment is the one thing that is solid. It is the one thing that will not die. It is the one thing that will determine then even future life, and even it will be the quality of those moments in the future life, and then tremendous intensity goes toward the spiritual essence and energy of this moment. And each future moment. And then that intensity then could bring up again a new set of plans and projects. Especially the major plan and project which is to obtain buddhahood for the sake of all living beings, which means that the totally where this moment is totally bliss void indivisible. I’m jumping all the way to the limit, but why not? Bliss- what’s called bliss void indivisible, but this instant has become that aspiration because out of that kind of awareness of this instant of this atom is where all the beneficial activity of up to all other living beings spontaneously flows effortlessly. So if you want to really solve the problems of self and other, you have to find that realization of this moment. So, then that pleasure and relief becomes intensity, and that intensity then comes back into one’s progress and one’s path. So it doesn’t just have to be kind of, sort of a- renunciation does not have to become like a morbid dropping out, inability to sort of do thing one moment to another. You know, like there’s kind of a false notion of enlightenment Tsongkhapa mentions in one of his very technical books, the kind of false notion of enlightenment that enlightenment must be a state in which there is she ze me pa (?) [0:05:01.2] There is no calculation at all. So therefore, then you can tell, oh, if I’m still having thought in my mind, I’m enlightened. Buddha can’t think. I’ve never heard anything so insulting. Buddha can do anything he wants, he can think if he likes.

[0:05:18.0] A point is buddha does not have to think. He’s not driven by an automatic, sort of flow of thinking that he cannot control, that controls him. So therefore they go on about Buddha is without conceptuality, they make Buddhists kind of famous. But you merely want to go and say Buddha can’t think? Poor fellow. So, do we want to go on to be a buddha, who has paralyzed in the brain? Give me a break. Buddha in fact make a lot of calculation to benefit beings. His thinking is so great, when Buddha thinks he can think a being that can run out and get somebody a cup of coffee. His thought is even more powerful than our thought. Million times more powerful. Am I right, Rimpoche? Rimpoche: Yeah. RT: Buddha can think a planet, a universe. He’s putting his toe, but he’s thinking a different universe. So, (Speaks with Rimpoche in Tibetan) [0:06:09.3] So therefore, anytime- Chandrakirti has famous word, I think Nagarjuna has, Chandrakirti repeats. Different people say Buddha is this, and Buddha is that. But any time anybody thinks that they’ve said it all, and that they know what is Buddha, then they are wrong. Whoever thinks that they are seeing their idea and not the Buddha. Buddha is inconceivable, you know, something like that. Anyway, taking that intensity, now that we’re all free of all kinds of mundane and less important projects, we come to the encounter between Manjushri and Vimalakirti, the beginning of this, in the zero room. And in fact you see the first making of the zero room here. Now, here’s where he actually makes zero room. Now, you know, Buddha was looking for someone to represent the Sangha to go and visit the wealthy layman to ask if he’s okay and so forth and perform the necessary formalities about that society to make it comfortable. So nobody would go, right? Everyone would say, oh please, don’t ask me. And then the Buddha said to the crown prince Manjushri, Manjushri, go to the Licchavi Vimalakirti to inquire about his illness. And then Manjushri replied, Lord, it is difficult to attend upon the Licchavi Vimalakirti. He is gifted with marvelous eloquence concerning the law of the profound. That’s a deep reality. He is extremely skilled in full expression and in the reconciliation of dichotomies. That’s the kind of literary, those are literary forms Manjushri uses. In other words, he is skilled is sort of direct statement, and also in kind of paradoxical statement, reconciliation of dichotomy means bringing opposites and juxtaposing them in a certain way. It’s a certain rhetorical kind of thing, actually.

[0:07:59.5] His eloquence in inexorable, and no one can resist his imperturbable intellect. He accomplishes all the activities of the bodhisattvas. He penetrates all the secret mysteries of the bodhisattvas and the buddhas. He is skilled in civilizing all the abodes of devils. He plays with great superknowledges. He is consummate in wisdom and liberative technique. He has obtained the supreme excellence of the indivisible, nondual sphere of the ultimate realm. He is skilled in teaching the dharma with its infinite modalities within the uniform ultimate. He is skilled in granting means of attainment in accordance with the spiritual faculties of all living beings. He has thoroughly integrated his realization with skill and liberative technique. He has obtained decisiveness with regards to all questions. Thus, although he cannot be withstood by someone of my feeble defenses- this is Manjushri, the incarnation of the wisdom of all buddhas, still, although he cannot be withstood by someone of my feeble defense, still sustained by the grace of the Buddha, I will go to him and will converse with him as well as I can. Now, there’s one thing I want to comment on though. This beautiful statement here it says, he has obtained the supreme excellence of indivisible nondual sphere of the ultimate realm. This is the idea of sort of ultimate unity of the being who perceives all things as one in a certain way and always is aware of the ultimate without ever failing. This is a description of course of Buddha’s enlightenment of which I just mentioned in Tibetan ji ne pe [0:09:35.2] The wisdom of the nature of reality and the structure of reality simultaneously present. Now, the nature of reality is the wisdom of ultimate reality. Then he says, he is skilled in teaching the dharma with its infinite modalities within the uniform ultimate. And this is very crucial, because we will always want to say, oh, we tend to have an idea that sort of ultimate reality is kind of a total “one.” And that, you know, the enlightened, we sort of- as long as we perceive ourselves as a differentiated being somehow we’re unenlightened we can therefore tend to think. This then becomes another excuse of being unenlightened, like the previous one I said. If we have any thoughts, then we have to be unenlightened, because Buddha couldn’t think. Poor fellow. Similarly, if we’re perceiving any differentiation we must be unenlightened because ultimate reality is all one, and so we’re all just going to just dissolve into some oneness, we sort of waiting around to dissolve in oneness, and we sort of try to samadhi ourselves out, you know, or we’re getting someone to bang us upon the head in some way or another, or we’re brainwashing ourselves, or we’re turning to this and that device or technique to try to sort of melt down into some sort of soup of oneness. But that’s incorrect, actually.

[0:10:46.0] There is an experience of oneness, there are dissolution-type experiences, but those dissolution-type experiences are not buddhahood. Buddha is not just some sort of puddle of melted puddle. A person who melted into a puddle. This is not Buddha. Buddha is a person for whom the state of total dissolution is completely indivisible from total presence. Total differentiation. This is why I was saying the other day about simplicity. You know we went, oh! Well, either let it all be one or let it all be many. Let’s get the answer quick! Please, is it all one? I hope so. Then I don’t have to think about it anymore. Unfortunately not, wrong. I love, in fact, there’s one Japanese philosopher who made the great, I think, expression. It comes from Zen tradition, but it’s great actual Western philosopher as well, received the Goethe Prize in Germany, actually. Although a Zen man. Not a Zen master, but a scholar. But a kind of Zen master name of Nishitani, Keiji Nishitani. And he said, enlightenment consciousness is something like a double exposure. Like a negative, you know, has two shots exposed on one another. And that means that buddhahood is completely aware of the ultimate reality in which therefore sees no living being whatsoever, sees all a complete sea of brilliance, energy, or even there’s no duality between energy and non-energy, no duality between light and dark. Everything is somehow transparent completely, I mean, you can’t describe it. But it’s like totally settled and solved and no question and no problem. And it’s definitely aware too there’s no question of location, it isn’t Buddha found that somewhere just to run back in that meditation corner and zip himself to the reality, it’s everything and everywhere. But simultaneously, that in itself is just like a screen on which the whole contours of the multiple relative realities are all impressed. Therefore, the Buddha is completely aware of all the beings and each one, each universe of each being- how each being sees the universe. With different ones see different universe. There’s the microverse, the macroverse, and then within the universe all different subjectivities. So there’s a double exposure of the relative reality and all of the complexity, differentiation, structure, and detail simultaneously, with the ultimate reality which is pure bliss voidness. So therefore, Vimalakirti, he is describing a kind of buddha consciousness to Vimalakirti Manjushri when he says, you see, he is skilled in teaching the dharma with its infinite modalities within the uniform ultimate, you see.

[0:13:26.9] He is skilled in granting means of attainment in accordance to the spiritual faculties of all living beings. The Buddha is, imagine being with someone who knew what- at the same time, was you. It’s like the ultimate CAT scan machine, kind of, you know? You’re in the presence of a being who is also every nerve of your body is just as present in every nerve of your body, is also present in their own apparent body. Therefore, they’re like a CAT scan, they know everything, you know, like every little like twitch inside your system, they know. Every little, like, chemical. Anything in your system, they know. At the same time, but again, that’s only one side- at the same time, completely not aware of you or them, and completely outside also individually in their own body, an emanation as a buddha. And therefore, when they speak, they simultaneously see how you perceive what they say. When they gesture, they simultaneously see themselves from your eyes how they are gesturing. Now, theoretically, it’s sort of inconceivable to theoretically, a person like that, like they’d give a great massage. (Audience laughs) I think they’d be unmatched as a masseur. You know, at the same time as they press they would feel what they’re doing. They wouldn’t make any pain. I mean, they wouldn’t have to think, I don’t want to hurt- they would- because they’d be simultaneously feeling the object as well as the subject. Simultaneous. It’s inconceivable, of course. I’m not trying to make something to argue debate about in this, I’m just trying to convey a picture or image. So therefore, Vimalakirti is skilled and granting means of attainment according to spiritual faculties of beings, because he’s aware from their own side how it looks to them. By definition, this is. Which is a kind of description of buddha consciousness. Now, what Manjushri himself is like this, pretty much, he’s like posing, acting as a bodhisattva. He also is like this. So what are they going to do, the two of them, one wonders, let’s see what they do.

[0:15:29.1] Now, soon as he said, I will go to him and converse with him as well as I can, Manjushri, now look at all the little chickenhearted monks and bodhisattvas and people. Thereupon in that assembly the bodhisattvas, the great disciples, the chakras, the brahmas, the lokapalas, and the gods and goddesses all had this thought. Surely, the conversations of the young prince Manjushri and that good man will result in a profound teaching of the dharma. Thus, eight thousand bodhisattvas, five hundred disciples, a great number of chakras, brahmas, lokapalas, and many hundreds of thousands of gods and goddesses, all follow the crown prince Manjushri to listen to the dharma. And the crown prince Manjushri, surrounded and followed by these bodhisattvas, disciples, chakras, brahmas, lokapalas, gods and goddesses, entered the great city of Vaisali [0:16:19.6] so, Manjushri is going and behind him comes the whole parade, you know. Through the town of Vaisali. Meanwhile, the Licchavi Vimalakirti thought to himself, Manjushri the crown prince, is coming here with numerous attendants. Now may this house be transformed into emptiness. And he says there’s no time, in the sutra, don pa (In Tibetan) [0:16:41.2] In Sanskrit, shun ya ta, ba la tu. (Rimpoche comments) Vimalakirti. Or others, too, Japanese, too. Rimpoche: A Japanese scholar? RT: And they get upset with me when I say the Vimalakirti is very tantric. They do. So now, May the top- this is because all tantra begins with a statement, may all things become emptiness, you see. In other words, turning into zero room. Now zero- I just want to remove one negative. Remember, zero room is only something we find a little nervous about. You know, we think about absolute zero, brrrrr, you know, freezing, you know? We feel zero room may be some darkness, you know? Only because this shows our false reification of our own concepts, how we live imprisoned in the world of our concepts, you know? Zero is nothing. It can’t be cold or hot. Zero means only that which allows all other things to take place. Basically. By zero does not mean like a positive entity nothing. Absolutely not. It simply allows everything else to happen, zero means. So zero room means the room that clears the deck for all potentialities to ripen. So your mind of renunciation today, which Rimpoche showed you the quintessential method of generating, through appreciation of human biology, death immediacy, appreciation of evolution, appreciation of suffering. And by generating that zero is not any kind of nothing that you have achieved, some sort of morbid self-wiping out type of thing. It’s a total clearing of the decks for your real growth and life to occur. You cannot plant something when full of something else. You have to have space and air, and so forth and that is how to do it. So Vimalakirti creates such a zero room, he says, may this house be transformed into emptiness. Otherwise, he has a big house, he has many servants, he has a huge family, he’s a great-grandfather by this time. He has like secretaries who work. You know it’s big Indian aristocratic mansion he has. He just emptied- zip- no furniture, nothing. Closets are empty, everything is empty. (Rimpoche laughs) Zero room.

[0:18:55.3] Then magically, his house became empty. Even the doorkeeper, the janitor, you know the footman at the door, disappeared. And except for the invalid’s couch upon which Vimalakirti himself was lying, no bed, or couch, or seat could be seen anywhere. This becomes very amusing later as you’ll see. Then The Licchavi Vimalakirti saw the crown prince Manjushri, who apparently sort of let himself in. (Laughs) Cause there’s no doorman. And addressed him thus, Manjushri, welcome, Manjushri. You are very welcome. Now that sort of concession toward ordinary reality right? It’s a low level hello Manjushri, pronounces his name. Then immediately, he comes to the intensity of being in the moment here of a different way, he says, there you are, without having come here. Or, there you are without any coming. So you’re here but you didn’t come. You appear, but you are not seen. You are heard, but you are not heard. What a pain this guy is. (Audience laughs) Said things sit down and have a cup of tea, of course can’t even sit down, there’s no chair. There’s nothing. He says, you are here, but you didn’t come here. You appear, but you are not seen. You are heard, but there’s no hearing. It’s like he sort of throws the heart sutra in his- you know, the prajnaparamita sutra at him you know. So he immediately puts on this double exposure level. I think that’s such a great metaphor Nishitani has, you know? He puts on this double-exposure level. And remember, of course, two realities of the double exposure metaphor is not quite perfect, of course, because double-exposure both are somehow equal images, you know. But in ultimate reality and relative reality, or ultimate reality and superficial reality, as it is called in Buddhism. Superficial is superficial, ultimate is ultimate. Ultimate is more real in some sense than superficial. At least on a level where there is a duality. Because finally ultimate is itself, empty of itself, superficial becomes ultimate in another way. And we’ll play with this kind of problems, don’t worry. That’s just the beginning and they’re not just a game, too, they’re very important to keep one’s mind weaving that way, that’s how to develop this double-exposure. Never listen to those false people who tell you that intelligence, critical discernment, wisdom can be achieved without it. Your reason is very precious. Manjushri is your reason, your the inner Manjushri is not just thangka, it is not just person in history, actually Manjushri is your own mind, everyone has the Manjushri. It is their reason. Their critical reason, which becomes transcendent wisdom when pushed to the extreme. Not when thrown into the garbage. Sort of blank mind, blah, staring. What you call, what’d you call it, blank sitting? Throwing the mind away? Blank sitting, didn’t you say, Rimpoche said, blank sitting will give you blank result! (Rimpoche laughs)

[0:22:04.3] Buddhahood is not a blankhood. It’s Buddhahood. So, then he begins the double-exposure with Manjushri. He comes to the more ultimate level, you know? So Manjushri (Inaudible) [0:22:18.2] He says, householder, it is as you say. Who comes, finally comes not. Who goes, finally goes not. He’s trying to comment, elucidate for us, for others, what he knows. He’s elucidating. He says, who comes is not known to come. Who goes, is not known to go. Who appears is finally not to be seen. Now what does that mean? You see, now you think, the way we perceive the world now, you see, I see you, you see me. You think that I’m here the way I appear to be here. As if I were established via my intrinsic objectivity. That there’s something in me that’s sort of, out of myself independently, I sort of loom up at you. And I see you the same way. So when I see you, you seem to me an ultimately real. The idea of ultimately real and relative real means nothing to me, because you’re just there, it’s as if you’re objectively, intrinsically there, the fact that my imagination is constructing you. The fact, as the physicists would tell us, you know, there’s all these like weird photon atoms, you know? And you’re a whole bunch of weird atoms mostly empty space. I mean, it’s weird, photon atoms are bouncing off you and come bouncing onto the neurons on my optic nerve. And then there’s some crazy chemistry going on, they’re zapping around, going from synapse to synapse, and somehow they’re retrieving some concept which means person- okay, what’s your name, I’m sorry? Marty. And, ah! Marty! And I recognize Marty, and my brain completely isolates all sorts of other photons and many things that are there, a buzzing, blooming confusion, as William James used to say, and then I think there’s a clear cut construct there, Marty. The tremendous construction in the brain, tremendous subjective activity there, but I routinize that in such a way, we all do that. I perceive you as if you objectively were there, you see. Now, luckily in modern times we know very easily it doesn’t take as much effort as it would have taken thousands of years ago because we have microscopes, we have radioscopes, we have x-ray scopes, I don’t know what scopes we don’t have. So, we know very well that if I tried to find Marty, I would go with the radioscope, the telescope, every scope- I can’t find anything, finally.

[0:24:48.7] There is no way we’re going to find Marty in a sort of ultimate way. If I just glance at Marty, Marty, yeah I found you, if I don’t look hardly, then you’re there, absolutely. In other words, Marty, I will designate Marty upon something that isn’t Marty, that’s a two-dimensional image on my retina, that is by my own brain’s routinization made to appear to be an objective thing over there, I will say ‘Marty’, and if I don’t look any further into it, that’s Marty, okay great. I’ve found you, hello Marty. If I try to really find you, I can’t find anything. Right? Subatomic. You know, take you and throw you into an electron accelerator, perish the thought. Just heave you in, Marty, just take him and dump him- I don’t know if they have big enough scoop in electron accelerator, you know, in Zurich in Switzerland. You know, just dump him in and see if anything’s left. There’ll be nothing- the electrons, all going zip! Zap! There’s no Marty. No place will we find Marty. Same with me. So that means, who appears is “finally not to be seen” means, that although all these things appear if we really look into them, in a way in which they will then be existing satisfactorily, ultimately, resistant to analysis. Though what we really show it and prove it to always be so, nothing can be found in that way. Right? Now you may say the objection here is, well, whoever said it would be found in that way? I mean, heavens, we’re not going to throw Marty into an electron accelerator, we’re not even going give him any high dose of x-rays, that’s very unhealthy. But, this is not true to ourselves. If we stop to think, I like Rimpoche’s way of saying that, we’ll find that we won’t have to be proven because we’ll find that the way we do perceive things, when we think we know a thing, it’s really real. It’s not just sort of temporarily real, it’s really real. Now, about Marty, because people forget each other’s names easily, especially as they grow older, you know, but Marty’s real reality as a human being is really real, you know the name is not so associated, but even about yourself, your own name, ‘I’m Marty’ that’s really real. You’re not going to say that that’s finally not- I’m not- I’m Marty, but I’m finally not Marty? Emotionally you will totally resist that, we all will. We’re finally us. We all feel. We’re living life like it’s finally. Samsara is finally samsara, we hope for finally nirvana. Finally life and finally death, finally this wall (Taps wall) Finally this everything. So we’re living in a world of finality. We’re living in a world where we think what we see is really so. We have a misplaced faith in the world that we have been conditioned by culture, habituated by karma, to perceive by which is whole imaginative construction of our culture, of our language, of ourselves, we live in a way that routinized construction is really real. Therefore, for example as you know, in our history, how many wars have been fought? How many people killed each other because one called ultimate reality God, another one called it Allah, another one called it Yahweh, another one called it shunyata, another one called it this and that, how many of them killed each other over that? Why would they kill each other if wasn’t that they didn’t want their sense of really real to be challenged by another sense of really real. And these collided to the death.

[0:28:13.8] Peoples’ conflicting over realities, their vision or version of reality, is a life or death fatal matter. It’s not a minor matter. So that means we are trapped in a complete falsity. The falsity is, this is really all here, the way we think it is here. When in fact, it is not so. For example, another way of seeing this is very easy. Every one of us here, as an egocentric person, perceives this experience here and organizes it to our own center of organization. Correct? The center of this event here is your heart, or your senses sort of coordinate and brain, and so on, whatever, right? For me it’s here. For Rimpoche, it’s there. For Brenda, it’s there. So what’s really happening for each of us, if any of us is, heaven forbid, really egocentric, actually the only thing that’s happening here its worth happening inside our own center. See, all this could be like a holographic projection, for all we know. Could be like a big funny game. You know, we could be in a scientist’s lab with wires in our brain thinking all of you were there. And pressing buttons, somebody experimenting. Who knows? We don’t know, even. Right? But now, one thing we can immediately realize since all of us feel that way, all of us are wrong. Aren’t we? No one of us is the center of this here, absolutely not. And therefore, only an enlightened person would be able to perceive this experience from all dimensions simultaneously. And then that’s your definition of a buddha again. Again though approaching only inconceivability. Because, on the other hand, that being is not perceiving it at all, simultaneously, either. There’s nothing to be perceived. Ultimately speaking. So when Vimalakirti is doing this, you see, he and Manjushri are taking this into this level where they are challenging immediately everybody’s idea, you know, Sariputra I’m going to see Vimalakirti. That’s Vimalakirti. Manjushri. This is Manjushri. This the house. This is the planet. Here we are. Buddha isn’t here. We’re unenlightened. Oh, this is this, and that is that. And thinking that that’s so, he’s just saying, no. You’re here and I don’t see you. And Manjushri agrees, but he gives the epistemology of it. To help people out who otherwise think it’s just making a paradox, you see. That’s too easy. In the half-baked way in which Buddhism has been presented by many half-baked teachers, although for their benefits, though I shouldn’t really say that, probably mostly for us, half-baked audiences, is, oh- reason is very incompetent. Words cannot express about ultimate reality, therefore, Buddha, Nagarjuna, Aryadeva, Tsongkhapa, Manjushri, et cetera, et cetera, all of them were basically saying, shut up and don’t use words by saying things like you are here without being seen. You are heard without being heard. Really all they meant to say was one thing, that words are useless. Did you recognize this? Have you heard a little version of dharma like that? Shut off your mind, don’t think, get rid of words, and you’ll be enlightened. Are you kidding? Have a lobotomy and you won’t use words, and you won’t think! And this is not enlightened. When the great masters use a paradox it is to press the binary mind into hyperdrive, overdrive. Get to see both its limitations and new potentialities.

[0:31:48.7] Reason was not there to be thrown out the door. Reason is the ultimate vehicle of achieving enlightenment, in fact. Not the only, but possibly the ultimate. So, therefore, Vimalakirti is not saying to everybody, oh- well, you came here for conversation, I’m going to let you know right away it’s all useless, there’ll be no conversation because A is A, and A is not A, and therefore words mean nothing. Therefore, why talk? That’s much too easy. That’s a tremendous copout. Which we shouldn’t take. Good sir, now Manjushri, after that little exchange, now Manjushri goes back to the superficial reality, goes back to some sort of pleasantries on one level, this is a sort of stock formula you find in mahayana, in any Buddhist sutras. Good sir, is your condition tolerable? Is it livable? Are your physical elements not disturbed? Is your sickness diminishing? Is it not increasing? The Buddha asks about you, if you have slight trouble, slight discomfort, slight sickness, if your distress is light, if you are cared for, strong, at ease, without self-reproach, and if you are living in touch with the supreme happiness? This is quite a heavy duty way of cheering up a sick person. That’s the formality when you see a sick- next time you see a sick person, take a little flash card and get in there (Audience laughs) and they’re probably attain enlightenment at the end of it, you know. Far from- throw away their vitamins and crutches and leap up. Now, since that was kind of formality, even though that one itself is pregnant with a lot of meaning since it’s a Buddhist cultural formality, Vimalakirti didn’t answer, so Manjushri continues. And he says, householder, and now is when the dharma conversation begins. He says, whence came this sickness of yours? How long will it continue? How does it stand, how can it be alleviated? Vimalakirti replied, Manjushri, my sickness comes from ignorance and the thirst for existence. And it will last as long as do the sicknesses of all living beings. This is a big one. Now, Rimpoche said rightly, there’s a big danger, you see, about Buddhism also has been fraught. Now first noble truth was what Buddha first said, right. All is suffering- all this, actually what he said is, all this is suffering. By this, idam, in Sanskrit, idam, he meant, this five aggregates, five contaminated aggregates of body and mind which are myths falsely organized by the exaggerated egocentrism. If you really want to unpack his statement at length. It means all this clinging to this kind of body and mind from ego center that is exaggerated it’s sense of importance. A self-important ego center, habitual one, then this is suffering. And that’s not a mysterious thing. Look at us! Each of us is the center. Everything else is somewhat unreal. On the other hand, we’re not such fool enough to realize that it’s unreal enough to stub our toe, give us poison ivy, the earth to go bye and make us die, crush us under cement truck. I mean, this other reality- other people like do nasty things to us, time go by and devour us, devour our beauty, devour our intelligence, devour our youth. I mean, if it’s us against the universe, the universe will beat us every time.

[0:35:18.2] There’s no hope. The universe includes time and space. We’re this one little point here. We’ll get smashed, crushed. No wonder we’re paranoid. No wonder megalomaniacs are so like wildly extravagant about it. Because they have to be deluded to think they are greater than the rest of the universe. So, that’s a fundamentally unsatisfactory situation to be one against the universe. It’s therefore not a big repudiation of life at all to say that mode of existence is suffering, is the samsara. So when Rimpoche says samsara is right here, he means a mis-organized misinterpreted, mis-lived life is suffering. The first noble truth is not anything if not connected with the third noble truth, this can be ceased. This can be a beautiful life. This can be bliss void indivisible. This can be nirvana. Samsara means nothing without nirvana, it’s a binary set of concepts. Nirvana also means nothing without samsara, in some way. So, when he says, my sickness comes from ignorance in the search for existence, he’s talking about the ignorance here is not just he didn’t know- he doesn’t know Tibetan, he doesn’t know Sanskrit. He didn’t know English. He doesn’t know how to drive an automobile. Fly an airplane. That’s not ignorance. That is a kind of ignorance, but that’s not important ignorance. Ignorance actually is better, almost translated sometimes as not just ignorance which means a not knowing, but it's rather translated as a mis-knowing. A wrong knowing. Ignorance is a big knowing. Like I know I’m Professor Thurman. Occasionally Bob sometimes, Tenzin sometimes. I know it. I’m a person, I’m a man, I’m a human, I’m alive, blah, blah, blah. This is planet earth, this is America, I have a passport, I know all of that. But all of that is mis-known. Because I think that is so in a final mode of being. I think that’s really it. And that’s why I get really upset when someone comes and says, hey, Joe turkey, or something. Treats me like a dog or something. I feel, wow, I’m not a dog. Because I mis-knowing, all that knowledge is mis-knowing, you see. It’s dangerous when we hear ignorance we think, I’d better know, learn something. But it’s not, we know too much. We know the whole world wrong. Ignorance means the mis-knowing of the world. Avidya, asatvidya in Sanskrit [0:37:53.1] they usually gloss it as asatvidya. And knowing what is not the case, as if it were the case. So, but ignorance is kind of standard, so ignorance and the thirst for existence that is the craving based on the false dimension, for example the thirst for existence means by falsely thinking that you are alive. By falsely knowing that you are alive, that you must fear death. Because it’s false. Because it’s a false exaggerated difference between you and the rest of the world. Between life and death. You are sort of trying to keep imposing that sense of life on the death. You’re trying to like, reinforce this constructed reality that is you, that makes you greedy. You think, because you know secretly you say, here I am. I am what I am, I am what I think I am. All these things that these great philosophers supposedly said. But actually he knows that he is not, even if he’s thinking.

[0:38:52.7] Mr. Descartes. He actually, underneath, everyone knows that they are not. They’re deeply worried about it, at least. Deep inside there’s a little voice says, gee, maybe I’m not Descartes. Maybe this isn’t France. (Audience laughs) That’s very serious for a Frenchman, too. (Audience laughs again) That’s mean. Americans are even worse. And so, I guess that was a joke by Wittgenstein, the greatest philosopher about the French which I shouldn’t have introduced. In any case, because he secretly knows that he is not, he builds a huge effort to construct- well, maybe if I owned ten thousand acres, I’ll feel more that I am. Maybe if I conquer Germany and Italy and England, and America, I’ll feel more that I am. Maybe if I have seventy-five children and twenty-seven wives, I’ll feel more that I am. If I have a million dollars I’ll feel more that I am. So the greed comes precisely out of this ignorance in that way. In fact, if a person really was, they would not feel required to prove it. They would need no support of possessions, feedback from relationship, fame, or anything. They wouldn’t need it at all. They would just relax. Because they couldn’t be destroyed. Because anything that would come to destroy them would be them. Therefore, they become indestructible. So if my sickness comes from ignorance and a thirst for existence, and it will last as long- and this is an enlightened person, by the way. Of course, we can say it’s an act and so on, but yet enlightened person adopting the ordinary form of corporeality of unenlightened persons, and therefore in some sense having still the residue of ignorance and thirst. So whether it’s his ignorance and thirst, whether it is others’, he’s not making the distinction. In fact, he associates very much with others, and he says, it will last as long as do all the sicknesses of all living beings. We’re all living beings to be free from sickness, I also would not be sick. Why, Manjushri? For the bodhisattva the world consists only of living beings. Again, the same point of the pure land. You know it’s a minefield of beings here. It’s not a bunch of earth, air, fire, water, you know, carpets and floors and things, this is a minefield. This is all our mutually shared imagination, all of this. There’s nothing more solid, nothing more sharp. Diamonds are not more powerful than our mutual imagination. Diamonds are but our mutual imagination, in fact. For example, Manjushri, we’re all living beings- so Manjushri for the bodhisattva of world consists only of living beings and sickness is inherent in living in the world. We’re all living beings free of sickness, the bodhisattva also would be free of sickness. For example, Manjushri, when the only son of a merchant is sick, both his parents become sick on account of the sickness of their son. And the parents will suffer as long as that only son does not recover from his sickness. Just so, Manjushri, the bodhisattva loves all living beings as if each were his only child. He becomes sick when they are sick, and is cured when they are cured. You ask me, Manjushri, whence comes my- wait, why an only child, why? This is actually very good, but it’s not just some sort of sentimentality on the part of- it’s very important.

[0:42:15.6] The bodhisattva, he is describing almost at buddha level, has empathy of a certain way. Bodhisattvas are sort of slowly expanding their empathy and their feeling of the way others feel. Now, each being in the world is an only being, right? Every egocentric being is an only being, because each of us thinks we’re the only one. I’m the only one. We all think, I’m the real one here. We secretly have somewhere that fault, all of us. It’s really all me, you know, I mean, I paid my tuition, I’m getting my knowledge, I’m reading my book, it’s my butt, it’s my pillow, I’m going back for my virtue or benefit, I’m worrying about my karma- we’re each the only one. Now if there was a being, who was empathetic therefore, confronting any of us, would feel that one was the only one. Because they would fit into the feeling of ourselves that we’re the only one. Love therefore is completely seeable as indivisible from wisdom. Wisdom is completely nothing but the wisdom of selflessness. Selflessness means that a person has finally coped with the fact that every time they really looked for themselves, they couldn’t find anything. When you cope with the fact that when you really look for yourself, you can’t find anything, you become colossally uninterested in yourself. Because so many times you look for it and you couldn’t find it. Then you get bored with it, don’t you? Like they say in Zen Dzogchen says, forget the self. To learn about the self is to forget the self. He doesn’t mean just forget just bang, hit yourself with a hammer. He means you learn so much you look so hard for yourselves, you’ve sat there for hours and days and months and years, and you couldn’t find it, finally what am I looking- who’s looking for what? At which time, somebody enters your field of feelings, and they’re all in themselves. Here I am! Brrrr! Mind is going around brrrrrr! I’m feeling this is me, this is it! I’m seeing you! And then their mind is frozen to it like into a vacuum, and they suddenly feel the only- I am the only one of the other person. Then, because they have nothing to interfere with that, when we meet another person who is very selfish, why does it bother us? Because we’re very selfish. And after all, we’re the only one, so they think they’re the only one, that’s really disturbing. (Audience laughs) But if we know we’re not only not the only one, we don’t even know what one we are, someone else thinks that they’re the only one that becomes very interesting. Maybe they’re right. After all, we didn’t look for them yet. (Audience laughs) We haven’t found ourselves all this time, maybe we’ll find them! So, something new to do, look for this one. But then of course, then you find that they aren’t findable and that they think they must be findable, and they’re suffering a lot for that reason. And then you want to help them alleviate that sickness. You ask me, Manjushri, whence comes my sickness? The sicknesses of the bodhisattvas arise from great compassion. And this great compassion is not just idea. Oh poor things, they are so unhappy in the Kalahari, they have no Bermuda shorts. (Audience laughs) Poor things. They don’t have motorcars. This kind of sentimental notion of compassion is not great compassion. Great compassion- see, Vimalakirti’s teaching right away, I mean, we’re in zero room, really the theme today is renunciation and transcendence, but somehow because the way Vimalakirti keeps it all in this ball, all here now in this moment. Compassion wisdom taught this together from the beginning in this way. Compassion, wisdom, transcendent renunciation, all taught together in this way.

[0:45:48.2] Which makes it in a way, too difficult without the path, without the, you know- death, preciousness of life, suffering, evolution, step by step, how to generate this thing in the process. That’s why the two fit together so well. Because Vimalakirti helps us keep aware of the whole thing, the final goal of it. And then the Lam Rim from Manjushri and Tsongkhapa helps us with the step. Both again, double-exposure is there. That’s nice. It’s our experiment. We’re a double-exposure. (Laughs, Audience laughs) Superimposed print. Superimposition. Now, Manjushri is from that, so then Manjushri goes from there, and he begins this- so this next set of dialogue that they have is very, very famous, especially very famous in China. When Sang Jao (?) [0:46:42.1] read this, one of the great early Chinese Buddhist translators and sages. Before that he had been a Taoist, and a schoolteacher, and he really much appreciated, especially Zhong Zu (?) and what is known in Taoism as Ching Tan (?) [0:46:53.9] the tradition of illuminating conversation, as they call it. This kind of like, deep seeking, like turning and twisting type of talk. And when he read this, he just totally freaked out. He couldn’t believe it. His other books became you know, just unimportant to him. And it’s very difficult to understand, Chinese it’s difficult, in Sanskrit, and even English is difficult. Manjushri says, householder, why is your house empty? Why have you no servants? Because empty means physically empty, they’re in this empty, and there’s no servants, that’s sort of mundane, but empty you know is always a loaded dangerous word, you know, in Buddhist philosophy. Vimalakirti says, he uplevels totally, he says, Manjushri, all buddha lands are also empty. Now Manjushri wants to hunt Vimalakirti little bit debate, is this man reifying emptiness, is this man secretly an absolutist? Is this man not really a man of double-exposure of wisdom compassion indivisible but is he a man of selfish wisdom who’s looking for big emptiness to go jump off absolute zero, sort of giant icebox to go and hide himself, and cool himself in this giant icebox, is that what he’s looking for? He’s going to catch him, you know? Reifying emptiness. Don’t you do that, have you meditated, you heard about emptiness, you want to reach emptiness, you’re sitting there, when am I going to go blank? I want to go blank. I don’t want to see anything anymore, I don’t want to see anything more, I want to feel numb and blank. When was it that you last caught yourself doing that? You who have meditated? When did you last decide that you hadn’t known anything about emptiness because you hadn’t gone blank yet? You can hit yourself on the head and go blank. Pass out and go blank. Take some huge anesthetic drug and go blank. That won’t be emptiness. But Manjushri thinks Vimalakirti might be reifying, you know that word? It means make a thing out of. Reifying emptiness. So he says, what makes them empty? He’s going to get him. Vimalakirti is very sneaky, he says, they’re empty because of emptiness. He didn’t say emptiness made it, he said empty because of emptiness. What is empty about emptiness, says Manjushri.

[0:49:10.7] Again, Vimalakirti dodges, he says constructions, meaning mental concepts, constructions are empty, again, because of emptiness. Then Manjushri thinks he can catch him that way. Can emptiness be conceptually constructed? Then Vimalakirti says, even that concept is itself empty, and emptiness cannot construct emptiness. He kind of escapes. The chasing arounds, you know? But this chasing around is not just idle business because we make- remember what we said about we sounded very well about zero and about nothing? We all have a big picture of nothing. We think big black hole someplace, big nothing. We’re terrified about it. People who- even nihilists and materialists will tell you- who say there’s no future life, everybody knows there’s no future life, what I’m scared of is the nothingness. Existentialism is built on that. But, so this reifying of emptiness is a very crucial thing. In Zen it’s a big thing, for example. Zen people are meditating, and then often Zen masters get violent when the disciples dealing with emptiness. That is precisely pretty much when they do, because they want to shock them back into feeling something, you see. Because they wouldn’t do that to normal person, it would just be mean to hit him with a stick or something. But someone who’s getting all numb you see, because they’re reifying, their like putting their whole nervous system into this big idea of emptiness, and they’re taking that idea of the world after all, you see. We underestimate the power of the mind. This whole room and everything, we’re all building with our minds, our routinized imagination builds our whole conventional network of perception. And then we live in it, and we think its objective there. But if you then train in meditation, and if you harness that meditation to a warped ideology, some inaccurate ideology the problem is, that you come to have an experience as if that ideology were real, just like you are now experiencing this world as if it were real. So if you have an ideology that all is nothing, you will have a fantastic samadhi, and you’ll sort of slip down, and you’ll feel you’re being very brave, and you’ll go swoosh down the chute into big nothingness. And then you become pretty hopeless case. In the science of the ideologies, which Buddhism developed to the ultimate degree in a most extraordinary manner known as trung pa, what is known as a nihilist by experience, there are two kinds, a nihilist by ideology and by conviction, and a nihilist by experience. And the one who is a nihilist by experience is more or less hopeless. Because they can just sort of put themselves down this chute into this remembering they have of this realm of nothing, which to them was the big real reality, it’s like, they don’t quite have a double-exposure, they have like, you know, they have the one world, the world of differentiation, but then they feel this big block of stone of nothingness underneath it. And that’s sort of much more real.

[0:52:06.9] And these people are really dangerous, actually. In the Buddhist ethics, it’s considered the greatest danger. Buddhist sages would die to try to cure a person of that disease, that ideological what they consider ideological disease, because that person who feels the massive reality of nothingness will do anything to anybody. They will put ten million people in a box and burn them, if they think that’s logical. Because what’s really real is nothing. Nihilism is tremendous, but especially nihilism by experience. Therefore, Manjushri, I don’t mean to digress, but Manjushri going with Vimalakirti like that, is to just check out, and to make sure that not only not Vimalakirti, but also everyone attending on that, is not going to make a big emptiness somewhere where they’re going to chase. So they make emptiness empty of emptiness. This is the marvelous thing about emptiness, you know? The most supreme, important form of emptiness is what is known as the emptiness of emptiness. Emptiness is itself empty. Therefore emptiness is not annihilation of anything. Emptiness is- zero is not annihilation of number, of structure, of anything. Zero in emptiness is the location in which all can occur. Emptiness is the matrix, the screen upon which all images of life can arise. Emptiness is the fabric of reality. It is the freedom in which all things can transmute and be beautiful and be enlightened. And be unenlightened, and have a horrible time. Even, so he gets out, he says even that concept is itself empty, and emptiness cannot construct emptiness. Householder, he says, then Manjushri says, householder, where should emptiness be sought? This is really marvelous. Vimalakirti answers, Manjushri, emptiness should be sought among the sixty-two false convictions. So, it is not even, again, emptiness does not present itself as a dogma or an ideology contra to other dogmas and ideologies. It presents itself as, in a way the end of all ideologies, and since it empties itself of itself, all ideologies are in a sense leading to emptiness, even false ideologies. For example, I have a friend who is a sociologist of religion, and he’s very much of a monotheist, himself. But very intellectual, very clever one, and he’s been lately most interested in Islam the last few years, and he had to have this conversation, once he asked me this thing, he said, I bet you actually put money- I won money, I’ll bet you money that you cannot reconcile Islam with Buddhism. Because it was in this context that Vimalakirti sixty-two convictions. Among the sixty-two false convictions catalogued in the Brahmajala sutra in India, are included various forms of monotheistic ideologies. But they don’t use Allah, but the use Ishvara, [0:55:06.5] this kind of thing. So, if you say emptiness is to be found in the false ideology, falls from the strictly scientific or rational philosophical point of view of shunya of emptiness, but if emptiness is in there, how can you do it? I bet you dollars you can’t. But you can. Remember Muhammad, what he did. You know Muhammad’s story. Muhammad went to Mecca, he went into the kava (?) [0:55:30.4] which was a little temple, and there was a whole bunch of idols in there. You know, deities, images. He smashed them all. He rejoined to the teaching of Abraham. The teaching that there is no image of god. That even in the old Hebrew, there is no vowel in the word god. Therefore, any ancient grammarian knows that if there’s no vowel, a sound is unpronounceable. There’s no sound. Consonant has no sound. We don’t know that in English, we go A, B, C, D, but B is not a consonant, B is mmm- that’s all B is. Has to have an E on it to sound. Consonant is the life and energy of language.

[0:56:13.6] I mean- vowel is. So when you take the vowel out of the word god, Yahweh, it goes yah-something, there’s no vowel in it, it has no sound. This is a way of respect. Ultimately reality cannot be designated this and that. Ultimate reality transcends our name. Our conceptual grasp. Or Muhammad is saying this idol and this idol, and this idol is not god. Ultimate reality is beyond being anything we conceive it to be, right? That’s the commandment- the monotheistic commandment against idolatry is that. That is shunyata. That is emptiness. All things are empty of what we might designate them to be, as being objectively so. That is completely emptiness. No difference. And emptiness is to be found in a belief in a being who transcends all labels and notions, and objectivizations of what is believed in. So therefore Vimalakirti’s statement, for example, about the monotheism which is supposed to be so contrary to Buddhist ideology is correct that you can find emptiness in that view. That doesn’t mean that that whole view is emptiness. If you then come around and pretend that you do have a hold of that ultimate reality, if you become an idolator, in fact, even in monotheism’s own terms, and you say, well, I really know what god is, my name doesn’t even reach to god, I couldn’t say it’s something beyond those human notions, and yet, god just told me to go out and kill everybody who didn’t believe in him. Then you’re attaching all tribal, parental images, authoritarianism onto something you initially recognized was beyond such attachments. And emptiness is not in that. Then you made it full of yourself, actually, you dared to project yourself onto ultimate reality, which is what an idolator does. They project something they make upon ultimate reality and pretend it gives them the right to go and do whatever they like to whoever, because they have some sort of ultimate bossing to be able to do that. I think it’s clear. Where should this- Manjushri then says well where should the sixty-two false convictions be sought? This is even worse. Vimalakirti says, they should be sought in the liberation of the buddhas. The buddha’s liberation, the buddha’s freedom, becomes the source of all even false views in the world? That’s very strange idea. But it relates, doesn’t it, to the vision of the Buddha, it’s not so straight- we can understand it, it’s of course a challenging and a completely difficult one, it takes us back to the faith realm, but after all, someone who puts their toe on the ground. Someone who in some sense has transformed their entire environment. Whose imagination and love have become so powerful, that they can actually transform a massive minefield of beings into any different shape. Not that they can destroy it, or that they can liberate the beings or something, but that they can put it into any different environments in which those beings then feel like just as individuals. Such a being would also start up all sorts of cute theories. This fits with a kind of idea saying the karandavuha sutra that say, Avalokitesvara the bodhisattva or something, they appear as Shiva to those who need Shiva, they appear as Vishnu to those who need Vishnu. They appear as a male, to who needs a female to who needs it, so you have this kind of idea.

[0:59:46.9] Then, but then Manjushri says, well now where should the liberation of tathagatas be sought? Because this is all getting very far out, great buddhas the powerful theistic kind of idea, and then Vimalakirti says, it should be sought in the prime mental activity of all living beings. This is a good place to stop today. We still have to finish this thing, but let’s go, let me unpack this one and I’ll stop here, I think. Because it’s late. The prime mental activity of all living beings, what does it mean? This means some think that Buddha is not different. Now, the other way we are going, Buddha is changing the world, Buddha is teaching us something very different, where is Buddha? Out there yesterday, a thousand years ago, up in the Pure Land. No. Buddha- liberation of the Buddha at least, is in prime mental activity of all living- what is our prime mental activity? We are living beings. What is our prime mental activity? Is our prime mental activity, this means our ignorance? Our mis-knowing? Or is there something prior to our mis-knowing? That is our, somehow, some kind of level of acknowledgement of our presence? Some acknowledgment of our relationality here. Some sense of being part of this here. Is there some subliminal sense of selflessness in all of us? In all beings? That is immobilized when we like are a mother or a parent, or when some unusual circumstances, when we can get away from the stream of mis-knowledge that says we’re the only thing here. Is there, in other words, are we more importantly enlightened than unenlightened, in some sense? Even if we may think we are trapped in a- are we more enlightened than unenlightened? Well, as we said yesterday, if we are selfless, even the most egotistical person is selfless as a technical form- I don’t mean ethical selfless, I mean, technically selfless. Self-defined as an intrinsically self-established entity, which is the core identity of a person. If there is no such identity in any being, person, or object, then every being, person, and object is in fact, selfless. And every single being and person in fact knows that they’re selfless. In fact, I think it was useful the way we saw mis-knowledge leading to greed as being the fact that mis-knowledge knows that it’s wrong. There’s something about ignorance- I’m it. I’m me, I’m the only one- because I know I’m not the only one. There’s something more strong that I know I’m not, that’s why when I push I’m the only one too hard, I become really neurotic. And really anxious. Very greedy to like sort of, bolster that sense of very tenuous sense, based on falsehood. Truth is more powerful than falsehood. Its foundation is more powerful. Falsehood is on a distorted foundation, it will fall. So, for the liberation of the buddhas to be found in the prime mental activity of all beings means, that buddhas are present in all beings. Enlightenment is in fact, the ultimate reality of these beings in the double-exposure, and unenlightenment is the relative reality. The less real one. Isn’t this lucky again? (Laughs) If unenlightenment was more powerful, wouldn’t it be awful? Then Vimalakirti goes on to say he says, Manjushri, you ask me why I am without servants, but all maras and opponents are my servants. Why? Mara means devil.

[1:03:34.0] Evil. But you ask me why I am without servants, but everything is my servant, he says. There’s no opposition. Vimalakirti’s sense of the world, Buddha’s sense of the world there’s no opposition to him. It’s not like, gee, I’m a buddha, will I succeed in enlightening beings, or will Ronald Reagan blow up the world? If he blows up, that’s not the end of living beings. Not that easy. Even that’s not the end of Ronnie. Ronnie might think he’ll get away from all his headaches by blowing it up, but it wont be the end of him. He will not be more dead than red. He’ll be red in another life. Anyway, next life. Better dead than red, but next life, red, anyway. Forget it, you can’t get away from dealing with whatever you think is your opposite. So Buddha, in other words, at least according to the vision, is not question of opposition. Vimalakirti doesn’t see the world as a trouble problem. Even the devils are themselves not able to overcome the fact that every atom of their own being is enlightenment. They even know they’re putting on an act, being a big devil. Playing the devil, running around. Even they know it’s a farce. Unfortunately, they dim that knowledge tremendously and then they conjure up all sorts of scaly self-importances. So he says, why? The maras, Satans, the maras, advocate this life of birth and death. And the bodhisattva does not avoid life. So I don’t mind life, he says. The heterodox opponents advocate false convictions, and the bodhisattva is not troubled by false convictions. Therefore, all maras and opponents are my servants. I just had to bail out, you can’t stop once you get with them, he goes then back onto the sickness, and we will begin tomorrow with how a sick bodhisattva should- how a bodhisattva should console another sick bodhisattva, because then he goes into how to console, when a bodhisattva’s sick, how do you console a sick bodhisattva? How do you make them feel a little better about it? Which is then the teaching of various kinds of selflessness, which we will continue with tomorrow.

[1:05:57.9] So we said yesterday we thought we would begin with questions since people have some questions gathered up, so we’ll have a question session, on anything that we’ve discussed so far. Or mani, do you want to teach the mani first? Rimpoche: Mani we can do today, but not now. Let them questioning first. RT: Okay. That’s not money, that’s mani. (Audience laughs) Mani peme hum, that’s the mantra of- that comes with the teaching of compassion very well. Rimpoche: And also some people requested yesterday to us. RT: Right, right, right. Yes? Audience: That phrase that we say three times when we’re reading the Heart Sutra, how does that translate? Rimpoche: Tayatha gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi soha. RT: Tayatha means, it just means as follows, basically. As follows. But then the real mantra is gate gate. Gate means gone. Gate, gone, again means gone. Gate. It’s the same, Sanskrit and English are really the same roots, you know, so gat- go, to go. So gate gate means gone, gone. Paragate means very gone. Parasamgate means very totally gone. Bodhi means enlightenment, and soha means hail, something like that. All is well, soha means all hail, something like that. Now, the only thing you have to know because gone you know, we might think it’s like in English, pretty far gone (Laughs) like, destroyed, or something. But this is not correct. In Sanskrit, the words for understanding, for realization, for achievement of insight, relates to the verb to go, not the verb to stand, as in English. In English we say understand. You know, that means that’s a cognition you might get some understanding of something you sort of stand under it? But in Sanskrit standing under is not understanding. Understanding has to do with going into something. You know you go in, you change in a certain way. You move into something else, that’s understanding. So gate gone in that sense, doesn’t mean gone like gone away, it means gone into the realization of the ultimate nature of selflessness of the ultimate nature of reality. So it means that through wisdom, tra nya, which is the name of that sutra, one goes into the understanding of ultimate nature of reality, one becomes that ultimate nature of reality, one understands that nature of ultimate nature of reality. So gate, gone in the sense of realized, realized, very realized, very totally realized, enlightenment, hail, all hail. That means like that. Gate gate paragate- and if you recite it as a mantra by yourself, by itself, you should instead of putting tayatha, tayatha is how it occurs in the sutra, but if you practice the recitation of that, instead of tayatha, you should put om. You should put om gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi soha. In other words, change om for tayatha. Because the way it occurs in the sutra is tayatha, but when you recite you go om gate gate paragate. Okay?

[1:09:11.4] Audience: I have something that concerns me to death (Inaudible) When I was a young girl I was taught by the nuns that we have to pray for those who died, because if they are in trouble then we can help them. And in Brazil, if you die in a car accident in the street, within a couple of minutes, you will start seeing candles, the people run from their homes and put a candle there so the spirit of the person will have a something like (Saint) Peter invite them, I have no idea. How would that go in the Buddhist? Rimpoche: A very important question and welcome. I’m sure it bothers everybody. The death is a important process everybody has to go through. And the different cultures have a lot of different ways of treating it. The question of help is very important and it can help. And everybody can help everybody, okay? This is so important. A lot of people have different ideas. Lot of people think, unless you are a great powerful person, you cannot help. Lot of people think, it is a karmic, originally programmed already, what can you do? And all these questions are, and these thoughts are, have of different people. But my understanding is, everybody can definitely help. As I told you, karmic system, there always a temporary karma and original karma. The temporary aggravator helps a lot in order to connect to one of those big original karma, good or bad. You understand what I mean? So in order to link, to click, one of the good karmas, there are a lot of people can contribute. You can say prayers, you can light candle, you know, candlelight, lighting the candle to me, is part of making offerings. Making offerings to those of enlightened, or high, whatever you call it. You like to call it high level. Okay, you make offerings. That is by nature, it is virtuous work. You know, by nature, the act itself by nature, it is virtue, it is not non-virtue, it is virtuous work. So, when you try to influence the person who’s going, his thoughts and ideas with the virtue. You get me? Are you with me? So virtue brings virtue, non-virtue brings non-virtue. The thoughts. If you have good thoughts, the good thoughts will bring good things. Always. The bad thoughts will bring bad actions. The good thoughts will bring good actions. You know, the virtue brings the virtues. So it helps one that way. It also helps the reminder, the praying, reminder to those of the highly developed people, or high-developed person or whatever you may call it, for them to remind, hey, here, help, act, interfere, do, what sort of thing. All these are all sort of energies force pushed together, so it definitely helps. Beside that, the death itself is a neutral mind, lu me de [1:13:35.7] Neutral mind. So the mind it cannot be a virtue, it cannot be non-virtue. Okay? But then mind, immediately before death, is very effective. Whatever the next, after the neutral, is going to be virtue or non-virtue it has a lot of help from the last thoughts. You know what I mean? The last thought just before the death. Death itself a matter of whatever it is, period, but sometime can be long, sometime it can be short. But it is the neutral period. But people enter before the neutral, if you have positive thought, it can definitely bring a- I mean, it helps to bring a positive conjunction. If you have negative thoughts, and it also contributes to bring negative conjunction.

[1:14:35.6] You know what I mean? So that’s why, when somebody is dying, people rush and say prayers, people lay candles, people do all sorts of different things. That is the reason. And if you are better developed person, or better knowledged person, there are certain rituals to do. There are certain dedications to do, certain prayers to do. Even there are transferation of soul it’s also available. And we don’t advertise, I can do that. So don’t advertise out that way and do that (Laughs) but otherwise there are all these are there. For that at least helps the next immediate life. RT: If I can add one thing- Rimpoche: Please go ahead. RT: Furthermore, in Tibetan culture, I believe, and many Buddhist cultures, because of the power of the good or bad mind of the people in the environment of someone who died, people becoming extremely angry, or screaming and freaking out, they’re just taken away from there. As much as they can. And discouraged from doing that because the dead person is sort of like, out of body around there kind of often, and they don’t really know what has happened, and then all of a sudden they hear someone they know, a loved one or something going totally freaking out, you know, and getting angry, creating mind of great anger or tremendous like, distress, then they become very distressed. And that can be very bad. Rimpoche: That’s right. RT: One has to discipline oneself not to manifest grief in a sort of violent, angry form of rage, because that’s very destructive to the soul, or could be very destructive, to the soul, am I right? That’s important. Rimpoche: Yeah. RT: That’s important to mention because it’s such a culturally prevalent form, to sort of freak out, you know? Rimpoche: Well, it may not really be a culture, but it may be a very well be a reasoning. Not only the person who gone out of the body, but even before going out of the body. I mean, it’s a sort of person with sort of struggling through it, if that been interrupted by a say, hey, if you go, what do I do? So that will bring sort of attachment back, and so if you’re some person you hate, and sort of enemy or something you see it creates anger, so these are not very favorable for the outgoing person. I mean, the departing person. So that’s why you avoid that. It is very important. That’s what I say, it may not be a culture, because it’s very reasoning and very effective to the really going person. RT: No, I didn’t mean what is culture, in many cultures, people, when somebody dies, they don’t start shrieking, they feel they’re not doing the right thing. That’s the culture. Rimpoche: That’s right, even in Hindu culture, some of the Indian culture, they even weep, you know, and they even hire a group of people to cry, you know (Laughs) Sometimes they cannot cry, they keep on saying, ahhhhhh all the time. (Laughs) I mean, that’s a part of culture, you can laugh at it.

[1:17:54.4] That’s their culture. It’s certain corner, not all India is one culture, with a huge vast country, there’s different ways. But certain do that, you know? (Laughs) They’re supposed to cry for three days or something. They hire quite a number of people, they have nothing to say, they keep on saying, ahhhhh!! (Laughs) RT: Five dollars an hour for crying? Rimpoche: Probably something like that. (Laughs) Yes Sir? Audience: Yesterday, I think briefly you mentioned, if I had it at all right, four attributes of karma, something like definiteness, fast, expanding, you know, if you didn’t do it, you won’t get the result, and if you did, you will? Rimpoche: That’s right. Audience: Three are definiteness, if you could just sort of go over those a little bit? Rimpoche: Well, karma is definite. I mean, I call it, maybe I’m saying wrong, lang ne pa [1:18:52.7] RT: That’s right, definite. Rimpoche: Okay. I have to give you an example, I don’t- yeah, that’s right. Whatever the karmic you created, you know whatever karma you created, you’ll get the whatever virtue you create, you get good result. And whatever non-virtue you create, you get bad result. You say, you know, some people have the habit of saying, well, look here, I did something bad, so let me do something here good and square it up. Make it equal. I don’t believe that’s working. That’s why I say karma is definite. Example here, is you lay down a seed. Which is a sweet fruit. And also you lay down a lot of jalapeno peppers around the sweet fruit, and hoping that sweet will be a little bit of sort of soured, hot, and hot jalapeno pepper will be little bit of sweet, it will not work, right? The sweet will be sweet and jalapeno will be hot. So similarly, whatever the virtuous work, whatever you do, you have the virtuous result and whatever non-virtue you do, you have non-virtue result. Additional example I give you one more thing. During the period of the Buddha, there’s a great singer lady called Nyingpa Sangbe [1:20:38.2] Nyingpa Sangbe. She is great singer- sorry I had the name in Tibetan. Anyway, it is Nyingpa is what? Sweet voice. Sang be is good look, but she is not. So what they do is she is good singer, what they do is they always has to put a curtain, and she always sings behind the curtain. She is sort of terrible looking most ugly if you can’t really look at it. That sort of ugly but have tremendous good voice. In India, we used to joke with La dam and Geshe ga [1:21:20.8] (Laughs) The famous Indian singer but not good looking. I mean, this Nyingpa Sangbe even worse than that. So the Buddha’s disciples have asked Buddha, such a famous lady, she’s singing so wonderful. Everybody likes. But why she looking so terrible? Why they always have to put curtain, because otherwise the look will get people, you know, sort of the voice will be sort of distant down. So what is this? So Buddha said, during the period of the Buddha ka sa (Asks RT in Tibetan) [1:21:54.7] RT: Khashapa. Rimpoche: Khashapa period, somebody’s building a huge stupa, a king. And this fellow happens to be a worker. So he keep on cursing it. He says what is this king doing such an ugly creature is building here, he keep on cursing it all the time. And he sort of, he worked, but he keep on cursing. When it’s finished, completed, he looked, he said, well, I kept on saying it’s an ugly creature, but it’s not so bad, anyway. So out of his salary, and he bought a gold bell, and just to square it up, he say, karma, and he put it up the gold bell on the stupa. So Buddha said, as a result of offering the gold bell, she had such a tremendous huge voice, and as a result of cursing, ugly creature. And that’s why I said le nye pa [1:23:02.6] The karma is definite.

[1:23:06.4] Do you want me to go all four? No, I hope not. (Laughs) Okay, thank you. RT: What are the other three attributes? Rimpoche: Fast-growing, increase tremendously, example is the tree outside and inside- inside people it can grow tremendously. And then the third and fourth has together one good example I can give you, okay? If you created karma, you meet the result, if you do not, you don’t. (Speaks to RT in Tibetan) [1:23:42.3] Anyway, there was a king, I forgot the name of king. And he had five hundred queens. And one major important queen, and five hundred retinue this and all this sort of, you know these early Indian kings they have so many queens. (Laughs) So, all of them happens to be a disciple of the Buddha, and some of them have even obtained arhat level. And they’re all in place in the wooden palace somewhere. And suddenly that palace got on fire. And all of these five hundred started floating in the air because they are highly developed they flew, all of them flew. And after some time, they couldn’t fly much more. (Speaks in Tibetan) [1:24:39.7] They are not yet arhat level, but they have obtained- RT: Some degree of selflessness. Aryahood. Rimpoche: Yeah but (Speaks in Tibetan) RT: Selflessness. Rimpoche: Yeah. When they fly, somehow they notice something is pulling them back. So she started meditating, the principle queen started meditating, and she realized they have created certain collective karma together by, you know, in their previous lives, by putting a lot of people, you know burning the villages together, lot of people burned them together. So that sort of result they have to pay. So she told her friends, she said, if we do not pay our own karma, who will pay? So they started jumping back, like a, you know, these butterflies jump to the light. RT: Moths. Rimpoche: Yeah. Just like that, they will started jumping back, one after another in the fire. And they have a maidservant who have no development for whatsoever, she’s known as Gyur Chok [1:25:52.4] Probably hunchback crooked one, looks (Laughs) And of course everybody had developed, they fly, and she had left. So she has to run for her life. So she runs around, and she found, she jump into the toilet. At that time, remember the toilet, it’s not like these days, toilet. (Laughs) So she jumped through and dig through and she came out of it.