Классика Алмазного огранщика: Верхний Срединный путь — Великие книги мудрости, занятие 1

[Geshe Michael Roach]
Now, in Nick's case, we've got to go find texts. So, the first thing we're going to do is go to Gopher, which you will learn how to use it. It's a necessary tool for you guys.

Okay, so this is the collection of six texts on the rationale for the Middle Way. Uma Rigtsok Druk, okay? These are six important books by Nagarjuna.

These are his most important books on emptiness, okay? Rigtsok Druk. So, I want a list of them, okay?

So, I'm going to go to the Sungbum. If I wanted to make sure I would get a list of all six, what could I do? Rather than a mention of just a group of six.

That would help, but there's a better way. How can I get a list of all six? How can I for sure get a list of all six?

Look in a dictionary or something? No, I'm searching the whole database. How can I design the search?

Six books of Nagarjuna, proximity search. Pick any one of them. No, pick any one of them.

So, like we know ... Oh, that's an epistle. We know Tsundog, okay?

There's a book called Stopping Debate, Shutting Down Debate. And I'm going to search it within five lines, okay? Ready?

There we go. Sorry, what was the second part of the search? I know one of the books.

It's called Tsundog. Vyavartana. Wouldn't it be better to just search the Tengyur or no?

No, first we need the six names. Then we're going to go find the six books. Okay, here we go.

One, two, three. Searching, how many pages? 20,000 pages.

It's about a million pages. Ready? Talk to Wu, how painful it is.

Boom, we got it. Okay? Yeah.

So look, look, look, look, look, look, look. Take that and go to a document, open a new document. Ready?

There it is. And that tells you where I got it from. Whoa, what did you just do?

Did you say it will copy? If you control X, if you command X, it tells you which book it came from. Command X from within the search window.

Super sexy. Is that all six right now? Well, let's count, okay?

I'll get it.

[Student]
Do you want to send me this document? I want to pay attention to what I'm doing. It's hard to do it at the same time.

[Geshe Michael Roach]
I'll just whip it up right here and I'll send it to you. That's what I meant, the document. Sorry, I did not do that for me.

I did something weird. Tony, don't shoot that. Tony.

Tony. Richard, show me where I made it. Okay, there they are.

These are considered six books of Nagarjuna. I'll tell you in a second. SCIM Translator [?].

Text. Okay, got it? Here's the source.

Who wrote it? Yeah, my teacher's teacher. My teacher's teacher.

You know, there's a hundred other places where you could find it. All right. Now, I want to teach you how to find a book in the Tengyur.

Okay? You're looking for a book. There's 3,700 books in the Tengyur.

Tengyur means all the commentaries from India. What's Kangyur? Yeah, all the books by the Buddha.

How many of those? 990. We finished them.

It took 25 years. We finished 4,600 books, okay? They're all in there, okay?

Now, suppose I want one of them. How do I find it? You got any clue?

Well, we have to go into the... set up the search field in the Tengyur. I'm going to search the Tengyur.

But what's a clever way to find it? You can say, you know, bökke du if you need it. Good.

Every one of those 4,600 books begins with the same two lines. Here's the book's name in Sanskrit. Here's the book's name in Tibetan.

So we're going to search a few words of the title near the word, the name of the book in Tibetan. And we'll find it. Cool?

That's Sanskrit? These are Tibetan.

[Student]
Oh, okay.

[Geshe Michael Roach]
Tibetan names, okay? But every book in the Tengyur starts out and says the name of this book in Sanskrit is this, and the name of this book in Tibetan is this. So if I want to find a book that has the word wisdom in it, in the title, tsawa shiro, that's Nagarjuna's first great book.

It's called Wisdom. And all emptiness teachings come from that. All emptiness teachings come from that.

So of the six, Geshe Michael gets to translate that one. I'm saving that for me. You get to do the other five.

[Student]
Okay?

[Geshe Michael Roach]
But they're still sexy, okay? Okay, so let's go find ... I'm going to take this one because it's easier, okay?

Cool. Aren't there other five commentaries on the first one anywhere? I don't know, I don't think so, maybe.

Shimonamta, could be. Shimon ... Okay, so we open up a new gopher window.

Say ... Let's call it Shimon. Shimon.

Okay, because it might be Shimonamta, Shimonamta, you know, we don't know. Near bökke du. You could just say bö, right?

That's too much, but probably it's safer to say bökke du. Okay, got it? This book by Nagarjuna is called Crushing Bad Ideas into Powder.

Shimonamta. Crushing Bad Ideas into Powder. Basma?

Yeah, Basmakuru. Basmakuru in Sanskrit. So, okay.

Shimon, you ready? Now, there might be some other book among those 4,000 books that has the word powder in it, but there won't be a lot, okay? Ready?

Okay, so we go to the Tengyur and we search. I hope so. There we go.

That's not it. Okay, that's a different book. Okay.

Here, this is ... Three, total. Three books in the Tengyur have the word crush into powder.

Yeah, I don't use the one that after Phil got ahold of it, I don't use that. Oops. I used the one before that.

So there it is. Now look. How do you get that out of there?

Well, we have to get to the path and we have to go to the path. Nah, don't be so complicated. Control A.

Control C. Go to a Word document. And save it.

There you go. Or just do that. There you go.

Okay. We got one of the six works already. How long is it?

Starts on 22? By the way, Nick and I were dying to ... Nick and I were dying to find commentaries on these.

They don't exist. You know? We wrote to some scholars.

We said, we're not finding any commentaries. They said, because there is none.

[Student]
This is you.

[Geshe Michael Roach]
To a lot of Nagarjuna's books, there's no commentaries.

[Student]
How come?

[Geshe Michael Roach]
I don't know.

[Student]
We haven't done them yet.

[Geshe Michael Roach]
They were saving it for us. Okay, so Nick, save. Okay, control.

I got it. We're going to save it in your ... This is in the new folder.

Six books of Nagarjuna. Okay? Yeah.

And by the way, I think they're all going to end up in one volume, probably, because they're so short. Yeah, this one's like two pages. But they're difficult.

It'll kick your ass. Okay. There's only a single part.

Okay. That's the first one. By the way, let's put it in Trijang Rinpoche's order.

Which one isn't in that list? Which order? Say that again.

I'm sorry. Oh, I think that was the second one, right? I hate to do this.

Because wisdom was the first one.

[Student]
Was it two? Yeah, it was two. Okay, so two.

[Geshe Michael Roach]
Where is it? Let's go see. Yeah.

Yeah, it was the second. Now let's go to the third one, okay? So we're going to search for any book in the Tengyur.

We can use the same search setting, but change it to R-T-Z-O-T, to argue. So he wrote a book called, called, Shut Up, the People Are Arguing With You. I was thinking this morning when I was driving here, like, how is Nick going to translate that?

There have been some really bad translations of it. So, you know. So these books have been translated already?

People have tried. They don't know anything. It's a disaster.

Okay. They're in universities. Okay.

Really bad. Yeah. Really bad.

Okay, here we go. Is That It? No.

It's not up in the title. Is That It? No.

Is That It? No. We've got 16.

Is That It? No. Is That It?

No. Is That It? No.

Is That It? You've got to get good at just, you know. That's it.

Okay? That's his second book. How long is it?

It's also short. It's a couple pages. I'm thinking that you're the only person in this group that will have to write a little explanation of each idea in your book.

Okay? Because he's hard. You can't just hand Nagarjuna to somebody.

It's mean. Okay. Okay, there we go.

We saved it. How do you spell it? R-T-Z-O-D.

Which book is it?

[Student]
Number three.

[Geshe Michael Roach]
D-Z-L-O-G, number three. R-T-Z-O-D. D-Z-L-O-G?

Yeah. Okay, we've got two and three. Let's go for another one.

How about Jinchupa? Okay. Seventy verses on emptiness.

Seventy verses. Okay. Jinchupa.

So let's go look it up. Sorry, what was it? R-T-Z-O-D?

Jinchupa. Okay. Ready?

Si. I love gopher. I kiss gopher every morning.

Sorry, what was it? This is searching a million pages. We're so smart.

Is this it? Yep, that's it. Okay.

That was easy. Okay. Okay.

Which number? That's number four, right? Oops.

Ta-da! How many pages? That's longer.

Not really. It's about three pages. Number four.

Twenty-seven? No, twenty-seven is just one tiny verse at the top. It's two pages, really.

Tongnyi Dunchupa. Got it? Okay.

Okay. I'm going to cut those. Number five.

Rigpa Dukchupa. Sixty verses on reasoning. Just to hear the names of his books is a blessing for your whole life, okay?

Much less to read them with Nikolai.

[Student]
So he has seventy verses of three pages.

[Geshe Michael Roach]
Yeah, it is. Yeah. That's about right.

Because a verse in Sanskrit is only two lines. Oh. That's a great question.

Yeah, it is. Sorry, what was this one again? Rigpa Dukchupa.

Sixty verses on reasoning. R-I-G-S, right? Mm-hmm.

T-R-U-G. How long is it? This is short.

This is shorter than the last one.

[Student]
Yeah, yeah, that's true.

[Geshe Michael Roach]
This one's eleven pages. I thought I was laughing to myself. No, it's like four pages.

Is it longer? Yeah. It is slightly longer.

Is it? I don't know.

[Student]
Yeah. Maybe it's, you know— It's about the same.

[Geshe Michael Roach]
Longer words.

[Student]
—extra character terms or something.

[Geshe Michael Roach]
Okay, there you go. Save it. Which number book is it?

Five?

[Student]
Five.

[Geshe Michael Roach]
Rigpa Dukchupa. Okay, got it? Yeah.

How long is Wisdom, Geshe La? I'm just curious. It's longer.

It's twenty-seven small chapters. Yeah. You got gypped.

I'm like— Rinchen Trengwa is quite long, and it's been translated a lot because the Dalai Lama teaches it. And it's also the name of— by the way, two possible spellings, so I'm just anticipating a problem. Okay, got it?

Why did this— Two possible spellings.

[Student]
You're right.

[Geshe Michael Roach]
Yeah, the second one has a— No, it won't belong. I mean, next year. This is not it.

This is a commentary on Chakrasamvara. That's a commentary. That's another one.

Okay, so this is it. Oh, it's a commentary. Kanjro.

Uh-huh. Vimchandra. Okay.

There's a lot of them. There's ten of them. No, there are tantric books called Rinchen Trengwa.

You found it? No, it's just one verse. It might be called Rinpoche Trengwa.

Actually, I thought it was going to be called Ratnamala, but it's— Rinpoche Trengwa. Rinpoche Trengwa. Possible misspelling.

Lopun Sila Ali Zepadzo. Sipa Ali? It's a different guy.

Okay, here we go. That's not it. That's not it.

Oh, I got no matches. That's not it. That's not it.

That's close, but it's a tantra. Now, okay, Ratnamali, but let's check it's by Nagarjuna. It should be down at the bottom.

Danditachamba Chandrahila was written by Chandrahila. This is not our Rinchen Trengwa. Okay, go find another one.

That's not it. This is it, okay. It's called the the string of jewels, the advice to the king.

This is it, okay. You want to just confirm? It's long, okay.

Lopun Chenpo Pakpa written by Nagarjuna. Okay, got it? Yeah.

So, Control A, Control C. This is a bit more to bite off. I didn't, I wasn't going to do it because other people had done it.

They'd be so sexy to put all his six works in the same book, you know, so, and of course we can do it better. Six, I mean, sorry. Did he spell it with an O?

With the triad, I didn't even catch it. Did you remember did he spell it with an O? I don't know.

Let's see. I don't think so. No.

He didn't. Okay. Oh, it is Rinpoche.

Yeah, yeah. These are his six most famous works or he did only six? He did more than that.

He did Shetring, for example, Suhrllekha, but somehow these tie together into his teachings on Madhyamaka. Okay. There's 14 famous Nagarjuna books, I think, total, right?

14 books by Nagarjuna in the Tengyur. But we're only going to work on six because they're called the Rigtsok Druk. And there's supposed to be some logic to why they all hang together.

You want to go look at why? Yeah. I mean, if you don't have anything else to do.

It would be interesting to see what's the rationale why they were all put together. It would be interesting. There's a lot of shirdams, okay?

Yeah. So I'm going to teach you a trick. Okay.

Go down to here. And that tells you which section of the Tengyur you're in. See?

And we didn't translate all these, but this is the te-tsoks. These are the tupas, the stavas, stotra, praises, eulogies. I'm going to skip file here.

Skip file means skip books. There's 230 books with wisdom in the title. I don't have time to look at all of them.

I'm going to skip to which section of the Tengyur?

[Student]
Uma?

[Geshe Michael Roach]
Yeah, Uma. Okay, Madhyamaka. So that's why you use this thing here.

And you watch this here.

[Student]
Watch this right here.

[Geshe Michael Roach]
Can you move the window so that the bottom is on the screen somehow? No, I can't. Can I?

Oh, I got it. It doesn't matter. You see everything important.

Okay. Okay, next file, okay? Until we hit Uma, I'm not stopping.

Eat. Eat. Tantra.

Tantra. Tantra. Tantra.

Tantra. Tantra. Tantra.

Tantra. Tantra.

[Student]
Tantra. Yeah.

[Geshe Michael Roach]
I could go make the search field Uma, and it would save me some time. Oh yeah. Let's do that.

Okay. So I'm going to change the search field to just include the Madhyamaka books. So I add a new search field.

I'll teach you guys how to do this, okay? Then go to the Tengyur. Dr. Wu paid for all this, thank you. And I go to Madhyamaka, okay? Then I open. Now I'm only searching Madhyamaka.

Okay, got it? Here we go. Aha.

That's it. That's wisdom. Yep.

Prajnanamamulamadhyamakakarika. And we just go see who wrote it. Here.

Here's the author. So did they spell his name differently there? No, Nagarjuna wrote it.

So it's the right book. Okay, we saved ourselves some time. And I, you know, I could have done this with Nick separately, but I thought you guys would like to see how we do it.

So this is Rin... what is this? Tsawa Sherab, okay.

And we just call it... it's number one, right? Yeah, yeah.

Okay. Ta-da! We did the six books.

Okay, now your work is... Now you want to see something super sexy?

[Student]
Okay.

[Geshe Michael Roach]
I mean, you're probably one of the only people in the world that think this is sexy. Nick knows what I'm about to do, but I'm going to do it. So you want to just start through from the second one?

Yeah. I already started formatting it, but you might as well do it for everybody. Yeah, I want to teach them...

so first of all, our standard is Palatino 12, because I like it. For no better reason than that. You know, you could double justify it now, too.

We can do that. It's between Palatino and Palatino, mind you. I don't know.

There is a small difference. This is a little fancier. Now, check this out, okay?

We're going to save ourselves, like, some time. Now, this is because I've been doing these courses all these years. I want to find any place that does space...

This thing is in verses. I want it to cut itself out in verses, in poetry. I'm going to tell the computer, make it poetry.

Okay, very sexy. Before you do that, don't you want to do the returns and the double returns, and the carat piece, double returns? You're right.

Because it might get messy. It might get messy. He said Palatino, huh?

Double returns replace with space, right? Yeah, and then single returns also replace with space. Replace all those, okay.

I'm just saving myself time. Okay, then I'm going to search for what? Single returns.

I'm looking at one. Yeah, yeah, there I see. This is the Tengyur before, but things were different back then.

Okay, now it's getting cleaner and cleaner. Okay, now I can full justify it. Okay, and now watch this.

This is the sexiest part. Poetry.

[Student]
Now it's in poetry.

[Geshe Michael Roach]
Okay, except there's an extra space there because I left it there. Okay, now this is what I'll show you how, you know. Now where there's an error by the typist, I have to clean it up.

See what I mean? So the whole thing is poetry again? Is that right?

Yep. Normally poetry is four. Yeah.

But it's, oh. It's not in poetry. It's not in, there's no rhythm.

It's not in poetry. Here, take it out. Go back.

Well, fine. Oh, I was going to show you something sexy, but I failed. It's not in poetry.

Yeah, it's not in poetry. This is Nash in Windsor [?].

[Student]
Oh, you're right.

[Geshe Michael Roach]
Sorry. This is the second book. He was thinking it was, yeah.

[Student]
I'm with you now.

[Geshe Michael Roach]
We'll be among them here. Yeah. Well, some of it's in poetry, I'm afraid.

For me, it seems almost easier, but. Yeah. Well, at least I understand how to split it up.

Oh, that.

[Student]
Your idea.

[Geshe Michael Roach]
Your character turns, it's easier. Yes. I'm fine with that.

Nick knows what I'm doing. I do. Oh, Lordy.

Really? Well, it's one way to do it.

[Student]
That's me.

[Geshe Michael Roach]
It means a new character. Especially when you have. I like it.

[Student]
Yeah.

[Geshe Michael Roach]
Yeah, that's wonderful. That's me. That's me.

We did it with you first. Yeah. That's brilliant.

It saves a lot of time. It means a lot. I've forgotten this knowledge by the time I can use it again.

Yeah, you have to use it every once in a while. It's cool. You have to do it in order, yeah.

Uh-huh. Wow.

[Student]
Alright, now I'm impressed.

[Geshe Michael Roach]
Yeah, and I just saved so much work. Yeah, yeah.

[Student]
I don't have to clean it up.

[Geshe Michael Roach]
Now, did the second shades belong to the beginning of the following? No. After all, they don't.

So, you get a double shade after all. Okay. Yeah.

Cool. Yeah.

[Student]
But you added the extra shade?

[Geshe Michael Roach]
No, I just cleaned them up. They were there, but they were messy. Okay?

[Student]
There. Cool.

[Geshe Michael Roach]
Okay, I've never tried this book. Okay? I guess we're going to want to try to find the Sanskrit scans at some point, too.

Yeah. You're really going to need the Sanskrit scans. Yeah, that's going to be the thing.

Who wants to help me find them? We have a list of stuff, right? Yeah, we do.

I mean, talk to... I have them on a drive in my house, actually. Yeah.

Scans. Right. I'm just doing some minor cleaning, okay?

Before we start. It's really just aphorisms. It seems to be just little sentences about, you know...

Wow, I don't even know if we can chant like this. I promise nobody's done a commentary. There might be commentaries in the Tengyur, by the way.

But, you want to take a shot? Up to you, Lama. I figure no one else can do it any better.

So, what the heck. I mean, what would be your reason for saying, I don't know if we can do it? Like, it's too hard, or...

It's like cryptic. Oh, that sounds fun. Like secret.

Like coded. Yeah. That sounds fun, though.

Okay, this didn't format correctly, because it was... Oh, yeah. That mark.

One of the steps we wanted to do before was to switch all the semicolons to commas. We should have done that first, right? Nobody can come in.

No, no, no. No, no. Cannot come in.

No. Oh. Oh, he's saying something about the microphone, maybe.

That's okay. He said it's not working, Mr. Wu? Oh, echo.

Yeah, I don't know how to fix that. We got to ask Scott. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Running over by my car.

Well, I mean, Dennis can watch in the lounge, and then I won't echo. He just heard me, so... Now, okay.

Let's take a shot. You want to try it? Let's see.

Because I don't have this now fully formatted. Do you want to just give it to me after? I'll give it to you right now.

Yeah, that's great. You're going to drop me the whole folder of the six texts. Okay.

Tell me how to do that. Okay, go to your Finder. New Finder window.

Control shift. Third one down should be AirDrop. Yeah.

And then take the folder of the six, and then drop it.

[Student]
And drop it in there?

[Geshe Michael Roach]
Yeah, drop it on Nick. Drop it on Nick. And me too.

Well, I'll put it in the Dropbox for everybody who wants to clean them up. Although it would be nice to put it right on top. The second.

[Student]
Did it go? No.

[Geshe Michael Roach]
No, on top of that Chinese guy. On top of this, right?

[Student]
Yeah, that's it.

[Geshe Michael Roach]
It's from Hong Kong. Anybody else want it? Who's up?

[Student]
Totally.

[Geshe Michael Roach]
I'd like that, please. Thank you. Who are you?

Are you on here? Stanley's here. Stanley, you want it?

Yes. Who's this? Is this Dr. Wu?

[Student]
Eric Wu.

[Geshe Michael Roach]
Is this you, Xiaoping? Who's this? This one here?

[Student]
That's me. That's Mr. Wu. Do you want the six?

Yeah, give it to Yi, so we can see it on your computer right now. Yi wants...

[Geshe Michael Roach]
Where'd Yi go? Oh, here it comes.

[Student]
She just left. It went in Downloads.

[Geshe Michael Roach]
Yeah, right. Adam, did you get it?

[Student]
No, sir. Okay, good.

[Geshe Michael Roach]
Okay, we're all right? Yeah. All right, let's take a shot.

Now look, if there's something we don't understand, which is probably all of it, we can go to... we can see if anyone quoted it. I'll show you, okay?

If you had time, and you didn't want to do anything else today, you could see who quoted it in the Sungbum, you see? And here we go. Okay, this person...

Here he describes the function of each of the six. What did Nagarjuna hope to accomplish in each of the six? And he says, the function of smashing into powder is to refute the sixteen proofs of the logicians.

So now you know something. There's supposed to be sixteen ideas in here. And they're all going to be refuted.

Okay. So you want to try some... You know, I'm just showing you what I would do if I was going to start this text.

What did you search? Zhibmo Namtak. Name of the book.

Oh, you searched it in the Sungbum? Yeah, I want to see if he's going to... Anybody going to quote it?

Is there any more context? Because there ain't a lot of context in the book. This is a list of the six.

Thanks doesn't help. And there's no further matches. in...

In the Sungbum. Yeah, nobody talks about this book. Zhibmo Namtak.

We can try that, right? No. When you're desperate, go to the...

Oh, uncatalog data. Uncatalog data is approximately 20,000 books that we are behind. We don't have enough staff.

We don't have enough money. When 20,000 books are typed, they're finished. We couldn't put them in the database.

They're just sitting in this huge box called uncatalog. Okay. Let's see if there's anything in there.

And this search is the only one that can take a long time because... Okay, that doesn't help. This is thousands and thousands of books uncatalog.

We couldn't have enough people to do it. Anyway. I have another suggestion.

There was a great catalog of the Buddhist books made in Japan just before World War II, 1937, in a university called Tohoku, which is in the middle of Japan. And I went there. They have a great collection of books, thousands and thousands of books.

They have about 10,000 books there. Actually, it was flooded during the tsunami. I don't know if the books were destroyed or not.

We can look up this. We want to see if anybody in India wrote an explanation of any of these. In the tenure?

Yeah, in the tenure. So we're going to start. We're just going to look for Shinmo.

No? Okay. And we go to the catalog of the Tengyur from Tohoku.

And that's it, okay? Sorry. That's the book.

Yeah, this is. Here it's called a sutra, which I'm not sure it was called a sutra. Interesting.

So here, look. There's the wisdom, his most famous book, which is the basis of all emptiness teachings after that. All of them.

Everywhere. China, Tibet. Everywhere.

Japan. Okay? Then comes 60 verses, okay?

Then comes smashing into powder. Then comes 70 verses on emptiness. Then comes you know, shutting down those guys who try to argue against us.

Okay? Then this is a commentary probably on his own wisdom called I'm not afraid of anybody.

[Student]
Okay.

[Geshe Michael Roach]
Here's another version of Zhibmo Namtak by Nagarjuna. Okay? And here is a commentary to the 70 verses by Where?

Right here. Him. Oh.

It's an auto-commentary. Oh. Major.

Yeah, according to this. Okay? Here's a commentary to shutting up those guys who debate against me.

Okay? And I got bad news for you. There are no other commentaries on the six, because they would be after that.

Okay? Here's the essence of dependent origination, by the way. He did write a book called that, see?

Yeah, while you're not busy. Here's a commentary, an auto-commentary to his own book. Okay?

But what I'm trying to get to is nobody ever wrote commentaries to this. It may be that you just can't understand it. Okay?

And then you get to Buddhapalita's commentary. And then you get him defended by Chandrakirti. Okay?

So it's kind of ambitious to go after this book. No one wrote a commentary. Ever.

Maybe it's incomprehensible. It's so clear. Well, let's try.

When are we supposed to stop? In like... Two minutes?

Seventeen? Well, since we started at one, we could... Go to two?

Yeah. Seventeen minutes. Okay, I'm willing to take a shot.

I'm sure some scholars have tried. But anyway, if it were me, and there's no... nobody quoted it, so there's no context.

Yeah. Okay. Well, luckily I'm not a scholar.

Let's go see if this hid anything. By the way, this huge list here, those are the catalogs to the Russian collection and the Mongolian collection. And there are 141,000 books.

We cataloged it. Twelve years. It took twelve years.

So there's a copy in Russia. Oh. You see?

Stuff like that. And they won't let it out. And they won't let you do it, use it.

And Dr. Wu is going to get the ambassador in China to help her.

[Student]
Okay.

[Geshe Michael Roach]
Now, I'm curious about the word. I think vaidalya means to crush into dust, doesn't it? How can we check that?

We can check in DOS.

[Student]
Yeah, so we go...

[Geshe Michael Roach]
We just want to make sure we understand the Sanskrit title. Vaidalya sutra. So it does have sutra.

Who's that guy with the mustache, the artist? Dalian. Dalian.

These are best onions from Georgia.

[Student]
Here it is.

[Geshe Michael Roach]
That's what I was thinking about, yeah. Yeah, vaidalya means nampar tagpa, to crush into dust. Okay.

Okay? Yes, sir. Tapa means to crush like...

Like a mill? Yeah, when you change a weed into flour. That's called tapa.

Okay? Nampartapa. So vaidalya apparently is the whole verb.

Okay? Zhibmo namtak. There's the Sanskrit.

So you guys should learn some Sanskrit, okay? It was called a sutra, but it's not a sutra. Okay?

It's not by Lord Buddha, but it's called a sutra because it's... Short.

[Student]
Short.

[Geshe Michael Roach]
Now, okay, I've been avoiding this. Let's try. I can understand the first verse.

[Student]
Okay.

[Geshe Michael Roach]
Okay, what's this say? Where are we starting? Lopunpapa...

Lopunpapa... I bow down to Nagarjuna. I bow down to Master...

to Master Arya Nagarjuna. Something's wrong here.

[Student]
He's not going to bow down.

[Geshe Michael Roach]
Now I'm worried. He's not going to bow down to himself. Yeah, that would be...

I'm the best. That sounds... Maybe that's the translator's obeisance, Geshe La.

Sometimes...

[Student]
That's got to be...

[Geshe Michael Roach]
because look, it says here it was written by Nagarjuna. Yeah. Here it says written by Nagarjuna.

It's got to be the translator's obeisance, then. I guess. Okay.

RIG PA'I ZHES PA'I NGA RGYAS KYIS THAR ZHIG TSOD PA'I SMRUG PA DE'I NGA RGYAL SPANG PA'I PHYIR ZHI MO RNAM DAG ZHES PAR BYA Okay. RIG PA'I... RIG PA'I means logic.

Okay. Usually we say RIG PA, right?

[Student]
Yeah.

[Geshe Michael Roach]
Or DAG GIS RIG PA and the science of reasons. Uh-huh. So...

But in some cases... But I'll give you the Sanskrit for RIG PA. RIG PA.

I forget what it is. It's not NYAYA, is it? TAR KA.

[Student]
Okay. TAR KA.

[Geshe Michael Roach]
Now TAR KA can also mean stupid logic. Okay. So RIG PA can be...

RIG PA can mean a good word for logician, and it can mean a pseudo-logician. This is like THOB PA. Yeah?

Yeah, it's like THOB PA. Okay. So THOB PA SHES PA'I NA RGYAL GYI...

NA RGYAL? Pride. Yeah.

How do you split it up? I-king. Yeah.

The word for pride in Tibetan is I-king. I'm the king. NA RGYAL.

Okay. By the way, we're right here, okay? Yeah.

So THOB PA SHES PA'I altogether meaning like this? Out of some delusion that they SHES PA THOB PA. Okay.

That they have correct logic. That they understand logic. Okay?

That they know logic. And it's key, right? Instrumental.

Because they have some... What's a good word for pride?

[Student]
Arrogance?

[Geshe Michael Roach]
Delusions of grandeur? Yeah, like that. Because of their arrogance that they understand logic, THA' ZHIG TSOS PA'I MNGON DU PA, anyone who would like to debate with me, MNGON DU PA means ABI DU PA.

It just means... Anybody who would really like to debate with me, right? DE SNGA RGYAL PANG PA'I PHYIR, to relieve them of their SNGA RGYAL.

To get rid of their pride. SHES MA MED NA SHES PA BYA, I will now reveal to you. I will now teach you.

You shouldn't say explain, right? It's not a commentary.

[Student]
Uh-huh.

[Geshe Michael Roach]
I will now teach you CRUSHING INTO DUST. Do you want to call it CRUSHING INTO DUST, or what we can talk about over here? I'm sorry? You decide.

I want sexy titles. I want short, sexy titles. So I'll come up with something and present it to you.

The real name of this book is the source of all my goodness. good qualities. Good qualities, intent.

But it was taught to a group of lamas who were about to take a tantric initiation. So I called it Preparing for Tantric, because it sells much better. This is called The Three Principal Paths, but I changed it to The Principle Teaching of Buddhism.

You can help more people. In the inside you say the real title is blah blah blah. There's a guy, he translated an Arabic poet, Rumi.

And there's millions of copies in the world, millions. And he just kind of massaged it. Okay.

You ready? These are just, these are cryptic. These are poems.

Good luck. Pramana and enlightened speech are No. No?

Okay, what's translated? What the heck? Yeah.

Okay, but it's it's incomprehensible. Sera means correct perception, right? Shalja is a synonym for sheja.

Oh, existing thing. Yeah, all existing things. This word is njelwa, which means to weigh, or to consider.

So that thing which is to be weighed, or that thing which is to be considered, is a synonym for sheja, and you're going to get it in the Dura. When we get to Siddhupinamshak, the outline of existence in the Dura, he'll say, shalja, sheja, yurpa, tsemi mikpa, dinchi. So this is like Pramana and enlightened speech.

Anything which you can judge. Anything that you can perceive. Okay, but it has the sense of considered.

Objects of consideration. Nyika, both of them, drepa. They tend to get mixed up.

Wow, that's cool. They tend to get mixed up. And that's all he says.

End of subject. Whoa.

[Student]
Okay?

[Geshe Michael Roach]
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you can spend the rest of your life, kids who are not born yet are going to come to Nicholas and say, what the, what's it mean? You're going to say, oh.

I've got to grow a beard. Give me an example. Of correct perception and existing things getting mixed up.

And its object. Correct perception and its object getting mixed up. You're lying.

I think he means you're confusing them. You know, you mistake, you know. You mistake things for things.

He's not, well yeah, I guess it is Prasangika. Oh. I thought it was as simple as he's trying to, I mean.

Yeah, I think I would go with that. The luminous image, which you're going to learn about in the ACI class. Couldn't it be anything?

Yeah, that's hilarious. The luminous image and, and the thing that you think, and the thing, the object, get mixed up. Yeah.

Then he moves on to another subject. Okay, so you mistake the image in your mind, which is what exits the karmic seed. The dunchies?

I mean, yeah, it's like a dunchie. Yeah. You mix them up.

I'm going to read it that way. And the, you know, all you can do with this kind of text, no commentaries, nobody ever spoke about it. You got to take what you know and you got to give some explanation to people.

And it could be, also be cryptic. It could also be sexy. You can say, you mix up the pen and the pen and just go on.

Really, really. Okay, you mix up the pen and the pen. You think there's a pen out there, you're watching an image in your own mind.

Okay, that's, I believe that's where you spend hours. And it'll be fun to spend hours. This is easy.

This one's easy. You tell me. Because we don't achieve...

I'll add this.

[Student]
Yeah.

[Geshe Michael Roach]
Shel jar rang le. Say, shel jar rang le.

[Student]
Shel jar rang le. Yeah, yeah.

[Geshe Michael Roach]
Because those things aren't, that's what Ben was just saying. Because those things don't come from their own side. Good, good.

Okay. Now, is that connected to the last line? I don't know.

I guess. I think he's just throwing out random statements to these guys. It's like you just heard the only one microphone was working at the debate.

Listen, Adam, good morning. Because things don't come from their own side. That's all.

But it proves so many things, right? No, because the last one is you know. Now, it could be or it could not be.

Well, it could be connected or it could not be connected. There's two ways to get at this. Three ways.

Meditate on it. Sleep on it for a few weeks. Or drink a lot of wine.

Just kidding. Okay, give me the next one. Both existing things and non-existing things.

Sorry, I didn't get through the whole thing. Not doc. Talk.

Yeah, talk. Talk. Nika, both existing things and non-existing things are talk.

What's tupa? Is this the same tupa we just had? This one means to rely.

That's for the D. This is for the S. It relies neither on that which exists or that which doesn't exist.

No, we don't know. It's not the doc. He doesn't say the sentence and the subject.

Subject and sentence. What's doc? Pluralizer.

Dualizer. It's the dual in Sanskrit. Sanskrit has singular, plural, and a separate for two's.

Two's, different spelling. Dharma, dharmas, dharmani. You see, there's a singular, a double, and a plural.

There's not just single plural. Sanskrit has a separate ending for two. And Tibetans use doc.

Which makes sense because there's two choices here. Tupamayi. Tupamayi.

It's just Tupamayi. No, they rely both on existing things and non-existing things. It doesn't say lani.

Sorry? It doesn't say lani. Oh, that's true.

Existing and non-existing, and both existing and non-existing, don't depend on anything. Existing and non-existing? And both existing and non-existing.

Oh, and both? See, it's three subjects in this sentence. Yeah.

Existing, non-existing, and both existing and non-existing are not things that rely. Oh, so doc is shown plural, not dual. Could it be that the docs are...

Yeah, are not things that rely. Okay. Well, I think it's referring to the nika.

Nika means... Oh, because it's... Nikadak.

[Student]
You've got to read it.

[Geshe Michael Roach]
Nikadak. But then the doc says it's a pluralizer Yerpa, merpa, and nikadak. Okay.

You said it's... Geshe La, before you were saying it's a pluralizer but not a dualizer. Here it's a dualizer for both.

Oh, it's just nikadak. Yeah, that's why I said nikadak.

[Student]
Okay, I get it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry, I was spacing out.

[Geshe Michael Roach]
No, that's confusing. So it's... And then...

Yeah, okay, good. I mean, I don't... I get how to translate it.

I don't get what you're saying. So it doesn't say daklami. Yeah, I see.

It says takmi. Uh-huh. Neither existing and existing, non-existing, and both existing and non-existing don't rely.

Don't rely, yeah. Yeah. And you can't say they're not relied upon, right?

I mean, an easy way to read this, which is probably not correct, is to say in Buddhism we don't believe in this thing that you can only know what's painful if you know what's... You can only know what's pleasant if you know what's painful. We don't believe that.

Relativity. We don't believe that. If you have karma to experience pain, you'll experience pain whether there's no pleasure in the world or not.

You see, we don't believe that they depend on each other in that sense, that you can't feel what's a beautiful song if you don't hear a crappy song. We don't believe that. If it's coming from karmic seed, you can have all beautiful songs without bad songs in the world.

As far enlightenment as possible. Yeah, yeah.

[Student]
Okay?

[Geshe Michael Roach]
And you're saying a potentially incorrect way to interpret this phrase or one way to interpret this phrase? I would take it interdependent because of course Nagarjuna is not going to say existence is not something that depends. That's his whole life's work is to tell people everything is dependent origination.

Okay? I bet he's talking about relativity. Can you have happiness without pain?

He would say yes. It's not that you need pain to know what happiness is. That's a psychologist's view.

I mean you can spend a couple years thinking about what to write here. Good luck. And it may be a whole line of logic.

They may all be interconnected. No one's ever discussed it. Oh, the lines of the text may all be interconnected.

They could well be because this next one feels they are not because if they were there would have to be infinite regression. There'd have to be an infinite regression. You know, which came first chicken or egg pleasure or pain?

You know, you'd have to have pain to have pleasure but to have pleasure you'd have to have pain and to have pain you'd have to have pain. You know, no, mayinte means this mayinte may well be connected to the mayin that just came. Otherwise it's impossible to understand.

It's just, it's not because it would be infinite regression. That's what this is saying, this line? Tawa means it would necessarily have to be tupa mepa.

Tupa means to reach to reach to an end. Okay. It's probably related.

[Student]
It's probably related.

[Geshe Michael Roach]
Tupa mepa is tupa. Okay. You okay?

That seemed to be related to the last one. Yeah, it has to be that they cannot be because if they were there would have to be infinite regression.

[Student]
Doesn't it seem to be the opposite of what you think?

[Geshe Michael Roach]
Anya, let me just give you the wording and you guys can argue for the next 20 years. Okay, here we go. These may or may not be related.

Okay? There's a double column between them. Oh, I see.

I'm sorry. Okay, they may not be related.

[Student]
I think they are.

[Geshe Michael Roach]
I'll try to translate them each and then see what happens. Semana, so you know, valid perceptions are like butter and butter lamps? Valid perceptions are like lamps.

Flames? Could you say flames? They establish themselves in others.

Now, I don't know if it's relevant but there's a debate about whether a light can can illuminate itself. Does a light bulb does a light bulb light up the light bulb? Buddhism says no.

Our school says no. I wonder if Oh, I've got something for you. What if the first sentence is always the other guy and the second one is him?

I'm open to that. Do you mean like the Rangdang Chengyur Pajepayin? Well, now I'm going back to the other one.

Maybe the other guy said existence, nonexistence, and both are not things that depend. And then Nagarjuna said, no, you're wrong because then they'd have to be endless. It could be going back and forth.

And I bet if you add these up there's thirty-two. Because there's supposed to be sixteen bad arguments here. You want to go to one and count the lines?

One, two, three, four. Count the Os. Here, we can do it like this.

Nick, look, let me do something. No, watch. You know how you find out?

Did I ever teach you this? Now, replace one of seventy-eight matches. Seventy-eight, yeah.

Sixteen divided by... Yeah, two. Four point something.

Well, seventy-six is... Quite true. We're going to find them then.

[Student]
Yeah, good luck.

[Geshe Michael Roach]
Boy, this is going to be fun, right? It's hard. By the way, I'll show you something.

You could look up Sema and you could say rang chupa. Okay? Okay?

And you could see if anyone in India ever used his logic in the Tengyur, in the whole Tengyur. Malfunction. Nobody.

Well, they weren't that idea. No, nobody used it. Who is this?

Only one person ever mentioned it. I think we'll just let it go. Okay.

How come Nick didn't notice that?

[Student]
Well, it's not because I don't care.

[Geshe Michael Roach]
I just got my head a little bit spinning by this one. I'm going to give you one more because it's understandable. Okay.

And I think we should take a shot at it. As you wish. Maybe we can find those sixteen listed somewhere.

Okay. Alright. Because someone thought it...

Somebody decided there were sixteen things in here. Yeah, yeah. They must have known more about it than we do.

Okay. You cannot have a correct perception about correct perception because it's not the case that the light of a lamp removes darkness either by touching it or by not touching it. Someone needs to make contact with you.

I'll say it again. There cannot be a correct perception about correct perceptions. Because when a lamp when the light of a lamp removes darkness it does so neither by touching that darkness nor by not touching that darkness.

That was easier, right? Either by touching that darkness nor by not touching that darkness.

[Student]
That's okay.

[Geshe Michael Roach]
That one's easy. That one's not so hard. I was so excited because in that other text I had translated some verses and I was going to show off.

This is awesome. But now I'm just totally confused. You want to know the next one?

[Student]
I want to know.

[Geshe Michael Roach]
Can you tell us the meaning of this one? Well, I'll just tell you another one. They're kind of sexy.

Fair enough. A lamp cannot illuminate itself because it is not darkness. Why?

That's a little easier. A lamp cannot illuminate itself because it's not or it doesn't have darkness. That's the next one.

No, it's too down. I'm going backwards. You want the one before that?

No, just for sexier. Okay, because I can't stop. Okay, here's the next one.

The classical text says that the actions of those of the world and a lion are the same. Can you say that again? No idea what text, no idea what...

In the classic it says that the person who acts in the world and a lion and other things are exactly the same. Are they acting out of ignorance or something? Like an animal?

I don't know. Asleep for 20 hours a day? What, minds?

That's it. Yeah. That's why no one touched this text.

Nobody. Learned something today. Unless you can find 16 somethings in there.

What were in the 16 what? 16 refutations? Oh yeah, there's 16 refutations.

But we don't know what the original arguments were. No, and we don't know if this text is offering... Well, if he's got a couple of quotes in here, you could go back to the planter [?] and see if there's anything in there.

[Student]
You can.

[Geshe Michael Roach]
You can. But probably there are criticisms posed by people whose criticisms are no longer existing. Right, because they never admit the facts.

Exactly. Geshe La, you can have some fun and just... You could say, look, we don't know.

We will never know. But maybe they said this.

[Student]
Would that just be one giant footnote on the whole...

[Geshe Michael Roach]
I'll tell you something funny though. Lama after lama after lama has said that this is one of the great works of Nagarjuna and no one ever read it. That is funny.

They just agreed. They just agreed that it's one of the great ones.

[Student]
So it's an example of one of the physical things we're reading now.

[Geshe Michael Roach]
Yeah. In Rinchen Trengwa is fine. It's easier.

That's just like a lamrim. It's easier. But I think it'd be fun to throw this in.

Do you think I'll be able to make a whole book even of this size out of these? If you add the Rinchen Trengwa. Rinchen Trengwa, why?

Because Rinchen Trengwa has commentaries. And you could add a commentary to Rinchen Trengwa. But that's been covered by so many people.

The Rinchen Trengwa. Because it's been taught so much recently by the big lamas. We could add his Dependent Origination, Essence of Dependent Origination.

Yeah, you're going to have to wing it. You're going to have to create something. Or try to...

I wouldn't translate just the Rinchen Trengwa. It's overdone. It's valuable.

Maybe there's a commentary that would be worthwhile doing. But the reason I didn't choose that in the first place was because it's so common. I wanted something special.

You can keep searching. That combination of Suhrllekha, Letter to the King, and Rendawa's commentary is brilliant. But I don't know if there's any other commentaries on Nagarjuna.

I asked Art, for example. And he said no, he couldn't think of any. I don't know.

I think we could make a whole book if that other book is a few pages the actual root text of Essence of Dependent Origination. We could take a look at it. No lama in Tibetan history or Indian history has treated this text.

Geshe Thubten Rinchen would take a shot at it. He's not afraid to take a shot at anything. But I don't think it would be better than what we can do.

All right. We'll work on it. We'll work on it.

If anybody has dumb confidence, it's me. I'll write my own commentary. People will love it.

No, the safe thing is people will criticize it. You could do anything, you know. Nobody can do anything different.

I found a Chinese one. Chinese translation and commentary. That lama is like 100 years old.

He is a main disciple of Kangsar Rinpoche. The same one as Pabongka Rinpoche. There's another one called Kangsar Rinpoche.

Oh, that'd be interesting. What's he say? Oh, he didn't try to explain it?

Oh, okay. Would be worth to look at it. Let's take a look at it.

About 100 years ago? But he wrote it in Chinese? Wow.

So he's a student of Pabongka Rinpoche? Let me search that. Oh my gosh.

Well, maybe it'd be cool to maybe it'd be cool to put to put that in. He's terrible. Yeah, you got Stanley.

He's called the modern Xuanzang. Because he's one of the best translators in the... Is he Chinese?

He's Chinese. But he stayed in Tibet for like 10 years. Oh.

Drepung Monastery.

[Student]
Drepung.

[Geshe Michael Roach]
And he's the director of the Buddhist college at that time in China. Oh. He has a lot of courage to write a commentary.

Well, it'd be interesting to see what he says. I have a feeling if we sit with it for a while, we might be able to figure out something. You know, my experience is you go three or four lines and you find something you do understand, and then you go back and see if there's something you can understand.

This would be a lot of meditation. It is not something which could be direct perception. Chimejang shows.

[Student]
Which one?

[Geshe Michael Roach]
It's just like... It's like having one microphone in a discussion.

[Student]
Yeah, yeah.

[Geshe Michael Roach]
Yeah, but... Yeah, it's red. Of course.

It's not something which could be direct perception and the rest. That one? Yeah.

Yeah. Because it gave up... Ah, let's do it on your own time.

We could look through the six and see, you know, which are easy to translate. Let's see. Yeah, tsundok is pretty easy.

And I always wanted to do shima lam tak, because I like the word vaidalya. Well, it's not that long. I mean, we could just do it.

We might want to start with stuff that's more... If you do all of Nagarjuna's works, and maybe inside of there these arguments come someplace, sometimes. We don't know.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It'll make more sense either way after doing one. I would string them together in one document.

And then when a refutation comes up, when the answer comes up without the question, you search the rest of his works for the answer. And that's the beauty of having a... that's the beauty of having a computer.

So, I would suggest we get all the works he ever wrote out of the Tengyur, and we string them in one long document. Because there's nothing before him. And what's after him is only dependent on him.

So, you know, let's take all the works he ever wrote, glue them into one huge document, and then when he has an argument like this one, we can, you know, see if he ever treated it somewhere else. You see what I mean? Because he's also got auto-commentaries here, a couple of auto-commentaries.

So you would look, next time we meet, we'll go to the native catalog to the Tengyur, and we'll see, we'll take out all the books by Nagarjuna, and we'll glue them all together. And then we'll see, when we have a piece of an argument, but we don't have the whole argument, we can check all his books to see if the argument's somewhere else. See what I mean?

Okay? You could have them in the same folder. With Gopher you can have them in the same folder, which is probably wiser.

Okay, ready? Okay. Om.