BDW 4 «Алмаз в Киото», занятие 1

(0:44 - 0:59)
Okay. Okay. Hi.

(1:02 - 1:14)
But he must have had some, some beer before I came, right? Maltai. Okay. All right.

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Thank you all for coming. I know it's a long way to come. And thank you for the nice greeting and thank you for practicing and coming.

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Thank you, Jasmine, for hard work to make this happen. Yeah, thank you. Yay.

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Okay. There's two classes today. The first one is called, this way, don't need that.

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Hi. And it's a book that was written 400 years ago. And it's a debate inside of one person's head.

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And the good side of them is fighting with the bad side of them inside of one person's head. And I've been working on it recently. Every day I do about six hours on some translations and I decided to work on that one and finish it.

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We started it in 2011. And it was at a cactus museum in Phoenix. If you ever go there.

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What's it called? Botanical museum. And my wife really likes that place. We rented a small room there.

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And we started 14 years ago. And so I finished this book two days ago, something like that. Okay.

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And, yeah. And it's, I wanted to talk about it. So I had, my teacher taught it to us.

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And I was trying to write the introduction. I was trying to decide what year it was. And I don't really remember those things very well.

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But I think it was around 1990 or something like that. And my teacher in the Mongolian temple in New Jersey started teaching it. And he never finished it.

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He started it, but he never finished it. And so I always thought that I would like to finish it and publish it. So I worked really hard on it.

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And it's 591 verses. First of all, it's not divided into verses. It's just a long string of 2,000 lines.

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And it's very difficult to know who's talking and where does each verse start, where does it end. And I had to design all that. And then I was counting the verses.

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I was trying to make more sense out of the book. And then I thought, I don't know about you, but when I was in high school, we were required to study two authors. One was Shakespeare and the other was Dante, Alighieri Dante from Italy.

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And he wrote a book called The Divine Comedy. And it's very famous. I think it's 14,000 lines or something like that.

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And it has three parts. One is called, what's it called? Inferno, meaning the hells. And one is called Purgatorio, which means the purification.

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And then one is called Paradise. And his famous book, which I think is considered one of the, maybe one of the five greatest books in Western literature. It was written in Italian.

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And he divided that trip, that journey into three parts. One was called the Inferno, or the trip to hell. And Purgatorio is how to clean that karma.

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And then Paradise, after you clean the karma, where do you go? And here's a picture. You got that first picture, you guys? I hope so. Black and white, gray color, no? Yeah.

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Okay. It is not in front of me. But okay.

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Yeah, that's a traditional rendering of that story. And Dante takes a trip to hell and he is accompanied by Virgil, who is a famous Roman poet. And Virgil is traditionally considered the greatest figure in logic, in reason and logic in the Western world.

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So he takes logic, takes a normal human being to hell and shows them what hell looks like. And then Purgatorio, where you clean that karma, he's also taken there by logic, by Virgil. And in this lithograph, you can see Virgil has taken Dante to the hell realms and he's showing him how people are cooked in the hell realms.

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And there's a set of beautiful renderings like that about this story. And then the Italian was translated into English by Longfellow, Henry Wordsworth Longfellow, about the time of the American Civil War. And he divided it into, I have here 4,000 lines, but we also call canto.

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And canto means like a song, a chant. And in Italian, they're called canto. So I thought when I was finishing The Devil Debates the Angel, I thought I would see if it could be broken into cantos or into separate songs.

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And it fits. It works really well. So I took the whole thing and divided it into 25 songs or 25 cantos.

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And this whole debate between the devil and the angel, we divided it into 25 cantos. And then we split out the devil against the angel and what they're doing. An interesting thing about the Divine Comedy, this book by Dante, which was written 800, 700 years ago.

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An interesting thing is that Virgil is not allowed to take Dante to heaven. He cannot accompany him to paradise because he's not Christian. He was a Roman poet, but he was not Christian.

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So in Dante's poetry, I give, you got Ibai? Do you guys know what Ibai means in Chinese? Ibai means 100. Yeah, this is Mr. Ibai. We changed his name at the DSC event.

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Mr. Ibai, he gives my $100 bills. So Virgil, reasoning, logic, cannot take Dante as far as paradise. He can show him hell and he can show him purification, but he cannot take him to paradise.

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I give $100 if you can tell me who had to take Dante to paradise. Who had to be the guide for Dante as traveling through paradise? Mr. Ibai, you decide. Maybe Giacomo? Of course, but, I mean, what was his Italian name at that time? Dante himself? Himself? No.

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You know, right? Last chance. I only give three chances. Beatrice.

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Nice, $100. Yeah, Beatrice is his divine muse. She is, in my idea, she's kind of the Vajrayogini of the Inferno.

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He finds a spiritual partner who's able to take him to the third level of reality, which is paradise. I think it's very beautiful. Anyway, when I was finishing the book, I designed it after Dante's structure and it works very, very well.

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By the way, we are on 23. So we're, after 14 years, we are just over halfway through in the classes. We'll see how we go with that.

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Today I'm going to start on verse 373. I'll read the Tibetan just for good luck. CHOS NA RANG RNGOL NI STONG PA NYAMS OG CHOS PA NA STONG ZHIG CHOS NA MING TZAM BTAGS TZAM BRDA TZAM THA SNYAD TZAM He repeats a special expression here.

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He's saying all the things in the universe. Who's he? It's probably the angel talking by now, okay? Things are MING, MING TZAM Things are BDAG TZAM, things are BDAG TZAM, and things are THA NAS TZAM. So four TZAMs, okay? Say TZAM.

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How do you say mind only? TZAM TZAM Say TZAM TZAM, yeah. So TZAM means only. TZAM means only, okay? TZAM means repeat, retreat, okay? TZAM means only, okay? TZAM So he repeats here first Panchen Lama.

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He says things are MING TZAM BDAG TZAM, BDAG TZAM, THA NAS TZAM He repeats four times, TZAM. And I thought we could talk about that today, okay? And it's very, very important to really understand the structure of 2,000 lines of poetry by the first Panchen Lama. Because he doesn't give you any subject headers.

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He doesn't even break the verses out. It's 2,000 connected lines with no spaces between them. And to really understand the structure after 14 years, the problem is that we only meet each other every, I don't know, couple of months, right? And it's hard to keep the flow in mind.

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But what he says here is you should understand that things are MING TZAM, BDAG TZAM, BDAG TZAM, THA NAS TZAM MING means name. MING TZAM means things exist only in name, okay? If you have to try to understand that things exist only in name, MING TZAM, okay? Say MING TZAM. Okay, then he says BDAG TZAM.

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BDAG means, the verb is BTAGS [?], which means to label something, okay? Things are only names. Things are only labels, okay? Things are only names. Things are only labels.

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Say BDAG TZAM. BDAG means like a sign, like somebody put a sign on something, okay? BDAG. BDAG TZAM means things exist only in signs.

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Things exist only in names. Things exist only in labels. Things exist only in signs.

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THA NAS TZAM. Things exist... Say THA NAS TZAM. Things exist only in terms, okay? So here's the angel trying to explain to us how to go to PARADIZIO, paradise, okay? And she's saying things are name only, things are labels only, things are signs only, and things are only terms, okay? She says that.

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And that's supposed to help us get liberated from all our suffering, okay? And it's very confusing. To me, I remember when I was first studying about emptiness, all of these things were very confusing. And I thought I would talk about that today, okay? All right.

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First picture. Next one. Yeah, okay.

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I don't know, a few years ago I decided that when I reached 30 years old? Oh, 70. That I was willing to talk about seeing emptiness directly in public and so there's this experience that he's talking about here that we have to understand and we have to try to reach it, okay? And that's called CHOS MCHOG. Say CHOS MCHOG.

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CHOD CHOG means the highest experience you will ever have in your normal life, okay? It's the last few hours of your normal life before you see emptiness directly, okay? So there's a level, a very high level in the path of preparation called CHOD CHOG. The end of CHOD CHOG, the end of the jorlam, the path of preparation is called CHOD CHOG. CHOD CHOG means the best thing that can happen to you in your suffering life, okay? Before you see emptiness directly.

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CHOD CHOG means the very best thing that can happen, okay? And in my case, it was an experience in the kitchen, okay? I like to call it in the kitchen. And certain certain things were piling up in my life, you know? Certain experiences were piling up in my life. I think the main one was that I was serving my teacher directly and full time.

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So I was I was a cook. I was a terrible cook for eight years. I washed all the dishes.

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I did all the grocery shopping. I cooked all the food. And I was the maintenance guy.

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And I had a huge toolkit. And I could fix anything in this big Mongolian temple and his house. And then I was the chauffeur.

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I was the driver. Which was a lot of time, because he often went on trips to teach groups in other cities. So like when we went to Washington D.C., it would be like eight, ten hours driving.

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so I was around him all the time and I was taking care of him all the time. I did all his laundry. Why? The only place I could hear rock and roll was in the laundromat.

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And I used to wash it every weekend. I purposely washed it once a week so I could listen to rock and roll in the laundromat, because he was very strict about rock and roll in the temple. So anyway, I had this intense karma of serving my teacher directly, being with my teacher all the time.

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And I think that was one intense karma. We also lived in a community of about two thousand Mongolians. They were old.

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They all were refugees. They were locked up in the concentration camps in Germany with the Jewish people. And they escaped.

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The ones who lived in our community had escaped over the fences in the concentration camps. They lived in the forest and survived the war. They gathered in Berlin at the end of the war.

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A friend of mine, Carmen Kitchikoff [?], you know her. Her older brother was born on the railway platform in Berlin. That's how crazy things were at that time.

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They also were allowed to come to the United States. It was really hard. They were all around 70, 75 years old by the time I got there.

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I was the chibita. Say chibita. Chibita means a public horse.

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I was the only one who was young enough to drive a car. Everybody else was too old. I took everyone to get their retirement pensions.

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I took everybody to the hospital. I took everybody to doctor appointments. Luckily, I learned Russian in college.

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They all spoke Russian. I translated for everybody. It was a couple thousand elderly people and it was very, very difficult.

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I had to fix their houses a lot. I did a lot of remodeling for people like that. I meditated a lot.

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I was alone. I was the only student of my teacher who survived his house Many students came. Many students left.

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He was a very, very tough person. Frankly, he kicked out everybody except me. I think he needed a driver so bad.

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I don't think he liked my cooking, but the dish washing, he really liked it. I got to tell you a story about momos. He would say, every Thursday we got to have momos.

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Momo is like handmade dim sum. Very difficult to make. He wants me to chop the meat by hand.

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I have to chop it with this big seto [?], big knife. I cut it up. Then one day I asked him, by the way, I was vegetarian.

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I made meat for everyone else there. He said, I said, why don't we just buy some hamburger? You know they sell this in the store and you don't have to chop it for two hours. He's like, nah, nah, it doesn't taste the same.

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The machine puts oil in it, something. He refused to do it. Then after that I went to the diamond business.

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I was working in the diamond business. I used to get home late at night. One day I came home early and he was cooking for himself.

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He had a big package of hamburger. I said, wait a minute. This has, you know, you don't like that.

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You can't eat that. He says, who would waste their time chopping this for two hours? I'm like, okay. Anyway, I had this intense karma of serving your teacher.

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It was really hard work and it was endless. I went home once in 25 years. When my brother died, I went home once.

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It was very difficult. But I was making intense karma. I think under the influence of intense karma helping my teacher.

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Then one day I had this CHOS MCHOG experience. I was boiling some tea on the stove and he insisted on having Tibetan tea. Tibetan tea is, you put tea leaves, then you put salt, then you put milk, then you put cream, then you put butter, then you put, what's that spice? Like baking powders and cloves, like that.

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Then you go like this in a big churn. Whoosh, whoosh. It takes like half an hour to make it.

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I'm boiling the water for his tea. Then I reached at that moment CHOS MCHOG. I'm just standing by the stove.

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It is not the direct perception of emptiness. It is not the direct perception of emptiness. But it's something that happens to you just before you see emptiness directly.

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If you can reach CHOS MCHOG, if you can reach this place, then you will see emptiness within a few hours. It's interesting karmically. If you can reach the place where you understand how the pot is there, then you can understand directly how the pot is not there.

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You see what I mean? What you call dependent origination, things happening in dependence, RTEN CING 'BREL BAR 'BYUNG BA, that's the sister of emptiness. That's the other side of emptiness. Positively stated, everything around you is happening through cause and effect relationships.

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Then negatively stated, it is empty of anything else. You see what I mean? On a direct level, in a direct experience, you see dependent origination first on the same day that you see emptiness. You never really understand dependent origination until that day.

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I can teach it to you. The book is teaching it to you for many years now. I can explain to you what happens.

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Many, many thousands of pages have been written about it. But to really experience it in person is very, very powerful. I believe that if you have a chance to hear it from a person who saw it, then it will bless you.

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It will cause you to see it yourself. It's very, very rare to meet a person who has seen it. It's a very powerful karma or seed to hear it once from a person like that.

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Today my goal is that you just hear it in your mind from a person who saw it. It's extremely rare in this world that anyone can see that directly. Just relax and open your brain and listen to Grandpa tell a story.

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Then I think it will affect you. I have a theory. I was a negotiator in the diamond business.

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My job was to negotiate purchases of diamonds. I would do maybe 10 or 15 negotiations every day. Sometimes I had two or three phones at the same time.

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I'm negotiating purchases of diamonds. On a good day we would process 300,000 diamonds. We would be negotiating for many thousands of diamonds.

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Diamond dealers are from all over the world. Every country has some number of diamond dealers. They are... Like in India, there's several thousand diamond dealers in the diamond dealer zone, which is called SEEPZ zone.

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I met somebody two weeks ago who grew up there, which is very rare. I was having Thanksgiving dinner with my stepson and one of his business partners grew up there. It's a very, very rare place to go and get diamonds, buy diamonds like that.

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When I negotiated for so many years, thousands and thousands of deals with the cream of the liars in the world. These are people... I remember the first deal, my boss, he said, after two years or something, he would approve everything I said. He would make me come to his office every time I said something.

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Every time I made an offer, he had to approve it. Every time I changed an offer, he had to approve it. Then I remember... By the way, there came a day after two, three years, I went to his office to ask him if I could increase the price on something.

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He said, you can do it this time, but don't do it again. If he asks you to increase the price, please come to my office and stand here for 10 minutes and then go back. I said, why do I have to do that? He said, I'm leaving for the day.

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I won't be here. But I want the guy to think that I'm guiding the negotiation. Every time he makes an offer, you come into my office, close the door, stand there for 10 minutes and then go back and say, the boss says no way.

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I'm like... Anyway, I got to be able to... I remember I went back. The guy said, I said, no way. The boss says, no way.

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He will not increase the price. Then the guy said, oh, my son is going to have to drop out of college today. I'm like, what? I was trying to pay for my son's college bill and you're not raising the price.

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He's going to have to drop out of college. I don't know what I'm going to do. Then I'm like, the boss's office is empty.

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I can't raise the price on my own. I'm like, don't worry, I'll cover it. We'll do it.

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We'll raise the price. He said, oh great, thanks. I said, what about your son? What about my son? You understand? Anyway, I got very good at telling when people are telling the truth.

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After thousands of negotiations, I can tell. I can sit next to a person and tell. I can tell if they're telling the truth or if they're hiding something or something like that.

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Immediately I can tell. I think that every human being has this ability. To some extent, we all can tell if someone else is not telling the truth.

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I think you can sense that I am telling the truth. That's the point. I think on some level, you can sense that this did happen to me.

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Try to be open to the ideas that I talk about today. We've reached a very valuable place in the debate of the angel and the devil. The subconscious part of your mind is deciding whether or not Geshe La really saw emptiness directly or not.

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Let your subconscious decide. Your subconscious is very good at telling when people are saying the truth or not. Trust your subconscious.

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Anyway, I'm standing looking at the stove. Picture you guys. No, that's too early.

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Okay, let's do that one. Hmm. Nah, go back. 

Yeah, okay, good. Listen to this part especially. It's the most important thing you ever heard in your life.

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Then go back to your normal life and it will stay in your mind and someday it will open. Especially if you're doing all this dirty work for your teacher. Which by the way, the whole staff here has done, and Pachi and everybody else, and I'm very grateful.

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I know that's hard work. Fernando, Gina. Thank you so much.

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I used to recite text when I was cooking. My nickname was hayang tsiknyen. Say hayang.

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Tsiknyen. Hayang is the Tibetan word for aluminum. It means, wow, this is light.

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The very high lama was presented the first aluminum pot in Tibet in a certain palace. He took it and he said, ha, yang, hayang. This is really light.

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Then the word for aluminum became, wow, this is really light. Then tsiknyen means the dude who burns the aluminum. That was my nickname.

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Actually, my teacher didn't say Michael almost ever. He called me many different names. Bungo means jackass.

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Bungo means horsefly. Hayang tsiknyen means pot burner. He called me pot burner.

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I don't think he, towards the last half of his life, by the way, it's 21 years this week since he passed away. It's good to think about it. Okay.

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He's like, I was always spacing out while I was cooking and I was trying to recite text while I was cooking. I always used to burn everything. Then I was standing there staring at the pot and I was thinking about a text to recite.

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Then something, due to helping my teacher, due to serving my teacher, due to helping the old people at the hospital and all that, I think due to those karmas. He was teaching me heavily and I was meditating very heavily. He was teaching me two, three hours a day Abhidharma privately in this empty temple because everyone's too old to come to the temple.

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This beautiful empty temple. I'm watching the pot and suddenly, okay, here's the part you got to learn today. I saw these pictures coming out of my mind.

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First of all, when I look at the pot there's no pot there anymore. It's only two things. There's a silver circle and there's a black straight line.

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There's a silver circle and a black straight line. I was looking there, I was making the tea and I was waiting for the water to boil and then suddenly all I can see on the stove is a circle of silver and a black straight shape. Straight black, silver circle, silver circle, straight black.

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That's all there was on the stove. There wasn't anything else on the stove. Then I saw these pictures coming out of my mind and it felt like they were coming from the back of my head which is why me and John Brady have and Earl have air conditioning [?].

(36:05 - 36:16)
It felt like the pictures were starting at the back of my head. They are not, okay? Mental pictures don't have a location. Thoughts don't have a location.

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In Buddhism, non-physical things don't have a location. But it feels like, okay? What do they call that? Sensory misapprehension. In ballet, they teach you sensory misapprehension.

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It feels like your leg is out straight but it's really crooked. Like what feels like to you inside and what's really true on the outside is sometimes completely different. But it feels like your leg is straight and the teacher is yelling at you and that's called sensory misapprehension.

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So you're having a you're having a mistake in your mind that it feels like there's pictures coming out of places in the back of your mind. I don't want to say seed because you are not aware of a seed at that time. It's not like you see a small brown thing in the back of your mind or something like that.

(37:14 - 37:24)
It doesn't feel like a seed. Okay? It is a mental seed but it doesn't feel like a seed. There's no physical location that feels like a seed.

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You just see and you sense pictures coming out of the back of your head and they are they are coming out of your head and they are coming down on the silver circle and the black stick and they turn it into a pot. Okay? They turn it into a pot. You are not watching a pot.

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You are not looking at a pot and there's no pot out there. Okay? There is nothing there except a silver circle and a black string. Listen.

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Logically, your eye cannot see a pot. Your eye can see colors and shapes. Okay? Your eyes are limited to colors and shapes.

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The decision of what it is that you are seeing cannot be made by your eye. And you say all day, you say, I saw him or I saw the car or I saw Kyoto. I saw Takashimaya.

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I went on my pilgrimage today. Christmas pilgrimage. You guys know.

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From my wife. I went shopping today. Okay? She's so tired of stuff from Takashimaya.

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Anyway, that's the big department store downtown. Okay? So anyway, pictures are coming out and I wanted to talk about the pictures today. And then at least once in my life, you have heard me talk about it.

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Okay? So I wanted to talk about those pictures. In the text, she says, MING TZAM THA SNYAD TZAM Only labels. Only names.

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here's a next picture. Now you can, yeah. So she's talking about dependent origination.

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She's talking about how things really exist. And then emptiness is the opposite. For things to exist from their own side, for that pot to come from the stove to your eye, is self-existence.

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That's what's impossible. There's no such thing. Okay? The pot is coming from here.

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The pictures are coming from here. There's no pot coming this way. In fact, there's a word for a hundred dollars [?] you buy [?].

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There's a word in the ancient language for someone who thinks that things are coming this way, and it means a non-arya, a person who is not an arya. In the ancient language, he's getting some exercise. He was accused of just choosing the close-by people.

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So-so kye-wo So-so kye-wo is a great guess, but no cigar. But it's a good guess. Who said? Huh? You're stumbling there.

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Say tsur tong. Tsur tong. Tsur tong.

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Okay, a hundred dollars, she got it right. Tsultrim. Tsultrim.

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Tsultrim means things are coming this way. Things are coming this way. What's the opposite of tsultrim? What's the opposite of tsultrim? Paro.

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Pharol tu phyinpa. Paramita. Param means going that way.

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Paramita. Paramita. It means going that way.

(41:28 - 41:45)
Tsultrim means this way. If you think the world is coming this way, you have not seen emptiness directly. A sign, that means you haven't had this experience of understanding that things are being created by your own pictures.

(41:45 - 41:56)
Things are coming this way. Things are not coming this way. Now the text says something confusing, and that's kind of why I wanted to talk about it today.

(41:56 - 42:04)
He's insisting on this word, tak tsam, ming tsam, tanye tsam. It's only labels. It's only names.

(42:05 - 42:10)
It's only terms. And that's very confusing. It's very confusing.

(42:11 - 42:21)
If you go around saying, oh, Mike is just a name, therefore Geshe La is empty. That's not the point. Okay? You got to understand something.

(42:22 - 42:41)
In the emptiness books, in Madhyamaka, in Middle Way, when they say things are name only, the word name doesn't mean name. Okay? It means the pictures coming out of your mind. Okay? It does not mean name.

(42:41 - 42:49)
Okay? You can call it pot. You can call it katushka or whatever. You can call it any different name.

(42:49 - 42:53)
Hayang. Hayang. You can call it many names.

(42:53 - 43:12)
That's not the point. When they say in Madhyamaka things are name only, things are terms only, things are only labels, the word name is a shorthand for the pictures. Okay? Understand? Name is not important here.

(43:13 - 43:17)
Names differ. Every language has a different name. It's not the verbalization.

(43:18 - 43:37)
It's not the syllables you use to say pot. That's not what they mean when they say things are name only. Okay? When they say label, they don't mean it's somebody put a name on it with a little name and some store clerk put a label on it.

(43:39 - 43:59)
This is not the meaning of name only in the study of emptiness. If you want to see emptiness directly, don't get distracted by the word name only or only terms or only labels. Label, name, term, means, mental picture.

(44:00 - 44:07)
Now listen. Coming out of a karmic seed in your mind. Okay? Coming out of a karmic seed in your mind.

(44:07 - 44:28)
Lately I've been calling them seed pictures. Okay? There's a seed in your mind that was planted by... There's a seed in your mind that was planted by... There's a seed in your mind that was planted by... Always planted by hurting someone or helping someone. Okay? Always.

(44:29 - 44:46)
Okay? All the seeds in your mind are coming from hurting someone or helping someone. Okay? Those seeds from hurting someone or helping someone yesterday or 10,000 years ago, doesn't matter. That seed is in your mind.

(44:46 - 44:55)
Okay? When the seed opens, it's not that a label comes out. It's not that a name comes out. A picture comes out.

(44:55 - 45:01)
Okay? A picture of a pot comes out. And, I'll tell you that later. Okay.

(45:02 - 45:12)
So, one very important thing, so you don't get confused. Okay? For the rest of your life. Emptiness doesn't mean that things are name only.

(45:13 - 45:18)
He says, she says, ming tsam. It's not that they're just labels. Tak tsam.

(45:19 - 45:25)
It's not that they're just terms. Tanya tsam. The point is, they are all just pictures.

(45:26 - 45:47)
Okay? The word word, the word name, the word label, the word expression, just means picture coming out of your karmic seeds. Okay? Got it? And those pictures always have an ethical content. Those pictures always have an ethical content.

(45:47 - 46:08)
Those pictures always have an ethical content. All the pictures of all the things that you meet in your life are coming from were you good to other people or not. Okay? Got it? All pictures are planted by morality, by ethics.

(46:08 - 46:27)
Okay? They don't just stick in your head. All right? When you're good to other people, you plant a seed and the seed creates a picture. When you're bad towards others, lie towards others, hurt others, then you plant a picture, you plant a seed which will open into a bad picture.

(46:27 - 46:49)
It's very beautiful. All Buddhism, all Buddhist epistemology, where does the universe come from? All Buddhist epistemology is based on ethics. Are you compassionate or not? The world was created by compassion.

(46:49 - 47:03)
It's very important. There's nothing meaningful you ever do which is not connected with helping other people. Okay? Got it? That's creating your world, literally.

(47:03 - 47:26)
All right? So anyway, the word name, the word name, the Christians say in the opening book of Genesis, first line, in the beginning was the word. That's extremely beautiful. We should borrow that for Buddhism.

(47:26 - 47:37)
Understand? Yeah. The very first sentence of the Bible says in the Old Testament, in the beginning was the word. All things came from the word.

(47:38 - 48:00)
Listen, the word name is shorthand for picture. When you hear some Buddhist philosopher, first Panchen Lama say everything is name only, you should think pot picture only. Geshe La told me.

(48:01 - 48:13)
Everything is just pot pictures. When they say name only, terms only, nominally existing, get over it. Just think pot.

(48:13 - 48:20)
Not that kind of pot, John. Just kidding. Okay? Pot on the stove.

(48:21 - 48:51)
Okay? All right? Don't forget. When you say name in Buddhism, think, for the rest of your life, think Geshe Michael's silver pot, okay? Okay? By the way, how I feel about marijuana pot is not part of this talk, but I think it's a tremendous waste of time and money which can only make you more stupid. We're already stupid enough.

(48:51 - 49:10)
We don't need extra stupid... All the people that I know from my hippie days who smoked the whole time, they're all like, ah, hi Geshe Michael. If you want to be senile 20 years early, smoke marijuana. Okay.

(49:11 - 49:18)
Next picture, you guys. Next name. I like this one.

(49:18 - 49:33)
I don't know why. Maybe Rob can help us understand that so many of Geshe Michael's examples are ice cream or donuts or all the things my wife won't let me have. Tries to not let me have.

(49:34 - 49:47)
That's why I travel. You got to think about this, okay? And don't forget this picture, okay? And it's not easy to forget. I mean, it's easy to not forget.

(49:47 - 50:01)
Let's see. Okay? When you think of emptiness, think of this picture, okay? And it's extremely important. I try to have fun when I teach.

(50:01 - 50:07)
I joke around when I teach. But I'm talking life or death. Everything I say is life or death.

(50:08 - 50:14)
If you understand it, you will live. If you don't understand it, you will die. It's very serious.

(50:15 - 50:31)
So anyway, but I like to have fun. I think with life and death you should have fun. Okay? All right? If you're going to have a serious surgery, you should have fun.

(50:32 - 50:41)
I was in the... The guy gave me the... What do you call it? Anesthesia. I was joking around with him. He's like, are you all right? I'm like, yeah, I'm having fun.

(50:42 - 50:51)
Okay. Ice cream means... The ice cream means the silver circle and the black line. I don't even want to call it stick.

(50:52 - 50:57)
Got it? It's not a stick. It's a line. Silver circle and black line.

(50:58 - 51:21)
Okay? What's out there on the stove? It's just a silver circle and a black line. Okay? Then something comes out of the back of your head for no reason at all, comes out here and coats the pieces. Unifies the pieces.

(51:22 - 51:44)
It forces the pieces together. Okay? That's the chocolate sauce. Okay? The chocolate sauce in this picture is the names coming out of your seeds of how did you treat people, Ezra, yesterday.

(51:44 - 52:07)
Okay? Were you a nice young man? By the way, welcome to Kyoto. It's good to have the whole family here for the first time. There's lots of husband and wife teams that debate, but there's only one that debates philosophy.

(52:11 - 52:27)
Okay? Yeah, for a long time. And they're good at it and you should learn from them. The pictures come out of your mind like chocolate sauce and they hit the what? The silver circle and the black line.

(52:28 - 52:38)
They hit it and they coat it. Okay? They create a nice little pot. What did you say? Sundae.

(52:40 - 52:49)
You're getting me hungry. If I had a real green room, I'd have an ice cream sundae in there when I get there. I'm just hinting.

(52:49 - 53:01)
I'm not kidding. Okay? The chocolate sauce covers the pieces. The pictures come out of what? Karmic seeds.

(53:02 - 53:15)
It feels like the back of your head. It's not really because those pictures, mental seeds have no location. Okay? Mental seeds have no location.

(53:16 - 53:22)
Mental seeds have no physical location. They are a possibility. They are a potential.

(53:23 - 53:30)
They are not, they don't have a color. They don't have a shape. They don't have a east-west, north-south orientation.

(53:31 - 53:56)
They just exist where they exist. Okay? They open and the pictures come out and the pictures cover the pieces and make the black line and the silver circle into a pot. So, I propose nowadays and in this translation, by the way, the text was so difficult.

(53:56 - 54:05)
Two thousand unconnected lines of poetry. You don't even know who's talking sometimes. You don't know if it's the devil or the angel.

(54:06 - 54:17)
You know? It was so, so difficult that I wrote a commentary. Okay? In the last couple months I wrote a commentary. So, I wrote, I put the commentary into the book.

(54:17 - 54:28)
That's the first time I ever did that. So, there's a commentary inside the book. And you can easily read it now.

(54:29 - 54:44)
And I'm sure Rosa, every time I finish a book, Rosa and Anatole get it done in 24 hours. Right, Ben? So, no, I get excited about a book. I tell them, get this one out immediately.

(54:44 - 54:49)
And they're like, yeah, yeah. So, anyway, it's ready. It's done.

(54:49 - 54:58)
Okay, I have to polish it. But I put in the new word seed pictures. Okay? And that's the chocolate sauce.

(54:58 - 55:12)
Got it? Okay? Seed pictures come out of the back of your mind. They come out of your head and they cover the pieces and they turn the pieces into a pot. Okay, got it? There are no pots out there.

(55:13 - 55:33)
Okay? If there was a pot out there, an ant would make a cup of tea. To an ant, it's the hell realm. It's Dante's Inferno trying to climb up the edge of a of a steel, of an aluminum pot that's red hot.

(55:34 - 55:59)
Okay? The same pot, the same thing you see as a pot is a hell realm mountain to an insect, to a roach. Of course, my teacher didn't have any roaches in the kitchen except one. But to the insect, this thing looks like a mountain of red hot steel.

(55:59 - 56:10)
You see? It's very frightening. It's a terrible, terrible thing. If the pot was coming from the pot, the roach in the kitchen would make a cup of tea.

(56:11 - 56:27)
Understand? Okay? The fact that a roach sees it as a mountain of pain proves that it's empty. That's a proof of emptiness. Okay? That proves that it's coming from from my seeds and not from its own side.

(56:28 - 56:40)
Okay, got it? All right. I wanted to... What's my time, you guys? 15 more minutes? Okay. All right, I got it.

(56:40 - 56:59)
I usually pretend I don't see those signs. By the way, I will do Q&A, okay? I always promise I rarely deliver, but I'll do Q&A, okay? By the way, my Q&A, you can ask any question at all. I don't care.

(57:00 - 57:09)
Any subject, anything you want to talk about, I don't care. Okay? I'm so old. I've taught for 50 years.

(57:13 - 57:24)
I heard every terrible thing and I've been called, I think, every possible name. So nothing bothers me anymore. So you're very welcome.

(57:24 - 57:39)
In Q&A, you're welcome to ask any question. 25 years on the debate ground is a lot tougher than any question you can give me. So I'm like relaxed.

(57:39 - 57:52)
I'm fine. Okay? All right, next picture, you guys. I told the AI, okay? You maybe have an artificial intelligence.

(57:52 - 57:59)
I have an artificial idiot. And we're working together. We're working things out.

(57:59 - 58:14)
But it's taking time. And he's getting better, but he's still pretty artificial stupid. So I told the AI, I want a silver ring.

(58:14 - 58:30)
He thought it was a finger ring, I guess. Then I said circle, then I said round object, and he just didn't get it. There's a certain point, midnight, I'm working on some stupid reading, and I just give up.

(58:30 - 58:59)
Okay, I'll take your silver ring. Something I want you to know about, and I want you to hear it from the horse's mouth. Those pictures, when they come out of your mind, the first time you notice them, the first time you observe them, the first time you see them, they look like they have a halo around them.

(58:59 - 59:11)
They are luminous. They are shining. They have some kind of a lucid quality about them.

(59:11 - 59:22)
They don't look like metal or something like that. They look like halos or something like that. They look like fuzzy lights or something like that.

(59:22 - 59:53)
I just want you to, I'm trying to put a seed in your mind that you will have this experience sooner than if you didn't come to the class. I think the more detail I can give you, the better. One of the things that you will notice on the day that it happens to you is that the pictures coming out of your mind, the chocolate sauce coming out to cover the pieces is luminous.

(59:53 - 1:00:05)
Somehow it's giving off a soft white light. It's not like meeting Jesus or something. It's only about this far.

(1:00:06 - 1:00:19)
I mean, it's only a short halo. It's not like an atom bomb or something like that. It's just a soft white light that comes off of the pieces as they come out of your mind.

(1:00:21 - 1:00:45)
It's actually what's coming out of your mind is a unified picture of a pot. Because what it feels like is that the silver ring and the black line are out on the stove. Got it? It feels like the pieces are out on the stove and there's a unifying picture coming out of your mind of a pot.

(1:00:45 - 1:00:51)
Because there is no pot on the stove. There is no picture of a pot on the stove. There's only clues.

(1:00:52 - 1:01:14)
There's only indicators. BDAG TZAM, THA SNYAD TZAM, MING TZAM Then your mind is sending out chocolate sauce. Your mind is sending out complete, nice, impossibly nice pictures of a pot.

(1:01:14 - 1:01:37)
There's a very famous emptiness teaching trick in the monastery where you get an apple and you eat half of it and you let it sit there for a couple days. The place where you ate it rots. Then you show the good side to the student and you say, you want to take a bite? They're like, yeah.

(1:01:37 - 1:01:48)
Then you let them take a bite and then suddenly the whole thing's rotten. You see, you never see the back of the pot. Your mind is filling out the back of the pot.

(1:01:49 - 1:01:55)
It could be pizza on the back of that. You don't know. The front is aluminum.

(1:01:56 - 1:02:03)
You can see that. But you don't really know what's in the back because you can't see it. That's another sign.

(1:02:03 - 1:02:17)
Pizza is another proof of emptiness that I'm trying to say. Okay. What did Grandpa just say? My wife hates it when I say that because she said, that means I'm grandma.

(1:02:18 - 1:02:35)
I said, okay. What else did Mike say? I said pictures are coming, whole pot images are coming out of your mind impossibly perfect and they are luminous. Okay, got it? I think I said the silver and the stick are coming out of your mind.

(1:02:35 - 1:02:49)
That's not what I meant to say. The silver and the stick are out there on the stove. Then there's a picture of a pot that comes out of your mind and covers the pieces like chocolate sauce.

(1:02:50 - 1:03:17)
Then it becomes a pot on the stove. Unless you're a real roach, in which case it becomes a hot metal mountain. Got it? Then in the ant's mind or the roach's mind, the karma seed is bad and a picture of a mountain of steel, red hot steel is coming out of their mind and unifying the same straight black and round silver.

(1:03:18 - 1:03:26)
Got it? Okay, all right. So pay attention to the luminous part. The day you see it, you'll know.

(1:03:27 - 1:03:32)
I'm just helping you. I'm putting a seed in your mind to see it. Okay? All right.

(1:03:33 - 1:03:49)
My last picture today. Then I'll do Q&A. We call Ajna Chakra, right? It's the SMIN MTSAMS [?] At the middle, A is locative.

(1:03:50 - 1:03:57)
MA RGYAS means middle. BRUL BA means eyebrows. BRUL BOR is dual genitive.

(1:03:57 - 1:04:03)
In the middle of the two eyebrows, which is not really. It's a little bit higher than that. Okay, here.

(1:04:04 - 1:04:12)
There's a chakra, Ajna Chakra. It's the one that goes like this. There's a knot here.

(1:04:13 - 1:04:20)
The two side channels cross here and continue back. They say between the eyebrows, but it's not really. It's a little higher.

(1:04:21 - 1:04:41)
If you ever want to contact it in meditation, if you feel sleepy in meditation, go here and then go a centimeter in. Go in a centimeter and you can feel it. When you meditate, you can try to feel it.

(1:04:42 - 1:04:51)
You'll know when you hit it. It's like when the dentist hits the nerve and they go, do you feel anything? You're like, that's it. That's the one I was talking about.

(1:04:53 - 1:05:06)
By the way, it doesn't hurt, but you're aware. If you hit it, take your mind here. BRU BOR MA RGYAS Go up a little bit, then drill down.

(1:05:07 - 1:05:27)
It's a beautiful place to focus your mind and you will touch the Ajna Chakra. I think that there's some ancient Indian reason why women in India wear their, what do you call it? Bindi? Bindu? They wear it there. They wear the spot there.

(1:05:27 - 1:06:00)
They put it right there. Why is grandpa talking about Indian ladies? On the day that you have the stove on the pot experience, on that day, the pictures feel sensorially that they are coming out of seeds in the back of your mind and they feel like they're coming through this spot. They feel like they're coming out through this spot and then they expand.

(1:06:01 - 1:06:11)
Then they cover the pieces. You will have a feeling that the pictures are coming out of a seed in the back of your mind. You do not see a seed.

(1:06:12 - 1:06:18)
You're just aware that they are coming out of somewhere. They're coming out of nothingness, really. They're coming out of potential.

(1:06:19 - 1:06:41)
Then the picture travels to the front of your forehead and then from there it creates the reality in front of you. I'm just giving you some things to think about. If you wanted this to happen to you, and by the way, if you get this far, you will see emptiness the same day, directly.

(1:06:42 - 1:07:01)
It's a very interesting couple of hours after you take the tea out to your teacher and you clean the dishes and then you go to the temple to do your meditation. Those few hours are very intriguing. You cannot die during those two hours.

(1:07:02 - 1:07:18)
No being in history ever died during those two hours. A nuclear bomb could go off, you would survive. Nothing in the universe can stop you from seeing emptiness directly if you get this far on the same day.

(1:07:19 - 1:07:32)
Nothing can stop it. It takes thousands of years to reach the fourth step of the path of preparation. It always takes two to four hours to see emptiness directly after that.

(1:07:33 - 1:07:39)
It's amazing. You should be jumping up and down right now. Anyway, don't, no, it's okay.

(1:07:42 - 1:07:55)
You should be though. Anyway, I believe that's why the Ajna Chakra is so honored in India and in the yoga tradition. All right.

(1:07:57 - 1:08:16)
I just tried to plant a seed in your mind. I think those of you that fell asleep, it's a deeper seed. So, don't worry about it, okay? It will have its effect.

(1:08:16 - 1:08:36)
It will have its effect, okay? Be happy. Very few people in this world hear this madman's talk, okay? Very few people have enough karma to hear this, okay? Very, very, very few. All right.

(1:08:37 - 1:09:03)
Q&A. By the way, now you know what they mean when, next time they say name only, labeled, expressions only, you know what, they're saying what? Pictures only. Pictures only.

(1:09:03 - 1:09:27)
They're not talking about words, okay? When they say name only, only labels, only terms, they're always talking about pictures, not verbalizations, okay? That's not a big deal. The words represent the pictures and the words change in every language. Okay, madame.

(1:09:28 - 1:09:43)
Oh, sorry, go ahead. Hi Geshe La, thank you for teaching us. A couple of years ago, during a Mixed Nuts Q&A, you mentioned that there are also dance texts in the database, the LL database.

(1:09:44 - 1:10:07)
And I quote, you said that we could one day, we could someday translate one. Could we please translate a dance text? You know what they say in politics, they say, I will take it under consideration. No, I mean, which means I'll give it serious thought and I'll give it intention.

(1:10:08 - 1:10:18)
But, you know, that depends on my health and other things. Whether I have time to do extra things depends on things. But I'm happy to do it.

(1:10:18 - 1:10:25)
I'm happy to try. Maybe it's part of the Diamond Way course. It's a book called BYANG CHOG.

(1:10:25 - 1:10:29)
Say BYANG CHOG. BYANG means to purify. Okay.

(1:10:30 - 1:10:38)
CHOG is the short term for choga. And this is a genre of literature. It's not a particular text.

(1:10:39 - 1:10:55)
BYANG CHOG means, I mean, a book may be called blah blah BYANG CHOG, but it's a kind of book which helps you to help another person through the bardo. Okay. It helps you.

(1:10:55 - 1:11:13)
It's a guide book for you to guide another person after they die. And so it's very, very important, very useful to have. It's a wonderful thing if you can help a person who just died.

(1:11:13 - 1:11:22)
If you have the tools to help a person, bardo, chang dro. Say bardo. Chang dro.

(1:11:25 - 1:11:40)
Chang is... Chang means a narrow path on the side of a treacherous mountain. A guy died in Sedona recently, like in the last week. He's an accomplished mountain climber.

(1:11:41 - 1:11:54)
And he was on an easy rock. He was on Bell Rock, which 10,000 tourists go there every year. And there's a narrow path going up the rock in Sedona.

(1:11:55 - 1:12:01)
And he just slipped. He's a master climber. And he just slipped.

(1:12:01 - 1:12:05)
And he died. He fell. And it was very sad.

(1:12:05 - 1:12:21)
And that's chang. Chang means slippery narrow path on a rocky surface. So the death books, books about guiding people through that experience are called chang dro, helping.

(1:12:21 - 1:12:34)
That Tibetan Book of the Dead, Book of Liberation, something like that, that's part of its name. By the way, that particular book is fake. And you shouldn't follow it and you shouldn't read it.

(1:12:35 - 1:12:41)
There's a translation called the Tibetan Book of the Dead or something. It's just a fake. So don't study that one.

(1:12:42 - 1:12:49)
She's going to say, well, in Geshe La, let's do the real translation. Okay, soon, soon. Okay, no problem.

(1:12:50 - 1:13:06)
One more quick question. Geshe La, if you want a quick question, why don't you give a quick answer? Thank you Geshe La for teaching us. I have a question on alcohol actually.

(1:13:07 - 1:13:28)
I was doing a reflection yesterday on how alcohol affects our mind and practices. And I remember vaguely, some time, long time ago, I heard a story about how Buddha talked about alcohol, about how we should not consume more than a drop of alcohol from the wheat. But I couldn't find a verse that explicitly states it.

(1:13:28 - 1:13:39)
Because if I were to convince someone else on the negative effects of alcohol, how would I do that? With a verse, preferably. Thank you. Okay, good question.

(1:13:41 - 1:13:53)
I'll tell a story because I like the story. I was translating the first Dalai Lama's commentary on the Abhidharmakosha of Vasubandhu called Tarlam Seljey. There's two Tarlam Seljeys.

(1:13:54 - 1:14:15)
And the story was in there about the Buddha. Somebody asked the Buddha, can I drink alcohol? And he was sitting on the grass as usual. By the way, those grassy areas are often called Rajavan, Garden of the King.

(1:14:16 - 1:14:28)
There's a famous one called Jetavan, the Garden of Jeta, which was where the Buddha taught the Diamond Cutter Sutra. And I was there. I sat there.

(1:14:29 - 1:14:45)
Shensang wrote the instructions how to get there. And so, those are beautiful grassy areas with a special, a certain look to them. And we're going to try to recreate one at Dragon's Head in Rimrock, Arizona.

(1:14:45 - 1:14:59)
We're going to try to recreate the Jetavan and make it look like that garden. But Buddha often taught... I sat where he taught the Diamond Cutter. And there's a grassy place in front of it.

(1:15:00 - 1:15:17)
And he picked... forget the time. He picked a piece of grass. Someone said, can I drink alcohol? And he said, anyone who drinks the amount of alcohol that you could fit on the tip of this piece of grass, don't call yourself my student.

(1:15:18 - 1:15:28)
Which is a terrible thing to say. It's one thing to say, don't call yourself a Buddhist. But don't call yourself my student.

(1:15:28 - 1:15:35)
It's like, it hurts to think about it. Don't call yourself my student. If that's what you're going to do, don't call yourself my student.

(1:15:36 - 1:15:50)
So, that's the famous one. The reason I think about it, I was on a plane to... Bloomington, you remember this? No, Madison, Wisconsin. There were a lot of Tibetans on the plane.

(1:15:52 - 1:16:01)
One of them was sitting next to me. I don't know him. He ordered a big martini or something from the stewardess.

(1:16:02 - 1:16:19)
And I was like... And then I thought, how can I tell him without criticizing him? And I had this cool idea. I had that book with me in Tibetan. And I found that line.

(1:16:20 - 1:16:43)
And I said, are you Tibetan? He said, yeah. I said, man, I'm just learning the language. I was curious, what's this line about? And he got this funny look on his face like, are you sure you can't read Tibetan? So anyway, it's in there.

(1:16:43 - 1:16:56)
I can get it for you. It's in there. But there's also a beautiful essay about the 62 or 63 problems of drinking alcohol.

(1:16:56 - 1:17:05)
And I think it's in Ben's book. No? Did we put it in there? Whose book? All the Kinds of Karma. We put it in All the Kinds of Karma.

(1:17:05 - 1:17:13)
So that's a separate sutra. And it's by Lord Buddha. And it gives, I think, 62 or 63 problems of drinking alcohol.

(1:17:14 - 1:17:23)
And you can find it in there. I'll try to find the Abhidharma one for you. What you would do is get John Brady's database.

(1:17:24 - 1:17:38)
And you would look up the word... This is how you search John's database. You think of a word that's spelled unusually. Like tsa, for grass.

(1:17:39 - 1:17:45)
It's R-T-Z-V-A. It's a very unusual spelling. So you could look up tsa.

(1:17:45 - 1:18:01)
And then you could look up chang, which means alcohol. And then you do a Boolean proximity search. You say, give me any book in which tip of grass is found near alcohol.

(1:18:02 - 1:18:12)
And it will take you to that in 10 seconds. And it's a very powerful tool that we use in our translation team. So we can do that.

(1:18:12 - 1:18:16)
If we had time, we could do it right now. But we don't have time. Okay, we're going to take a break.

(1:18:16 - 1:18:31)
How long now? Okay, how long? 25 minutes. Take a 25-minute break. And I'll see you when we start again.

(1:18:31 - 1:19:01)
Thank you. Okay. 好,我们一起起身,请格西老师。 We are so grateful for Geshe Michael for his very deep and very important teaching.

(1:19:01 - 1:19:13)
Like always, we're grateful for him that he always trying to plant a seed for us to see emptiness one day. So thank you, Geshe Michael, so much. And thank you, everyone, for participating.

(1:19:14 - 1:19:23)
You know, participating in this class, you're supporting to continue for this teaching worldwide. So it's a big seed. Thank you for that.

(1:19:23 - 1:19:32)
And now it is a short break. We'll see each other in 25 minutes for the class two of Geshe Michael. Thank you, everyone.

(1:19:33 - 1:19:34)
And see you then again.