End of Suffering — 2012-08-26

Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.

About this talk. In this two-hour-and-fifty-minute teaching, Tenzin Chogkyi walks students through the heart of Buddhist practice by exploring the Four Noble Truths, particularly the truth of suffering’s origin and the possibility of its cessation. She opens with a guided meditation on the twelve links of dependent origination, showing how disturbing emotions rooted in ignorance lead to harmful actions and suffering. She then unpacks the two main goals of the Buddhist path—liberation and enlightenment—explaining why they diverge early and require different motivations, and emphasizes that both merit paths teach by the Buddha according to the capacity of the student. She covers the six perfections, the primary practices that create the causes for a Buddha’s enlightened body and mind, with emphasis on how ethics, concentration, and wisdom work together. Finally, she offers a substantial introduction to emptiness through the framework of dependent arising, showing through concrete examples how all things exist as conceptual imputations on valid bases rather than from their own inherent nature, and how this realization directly undermines ignorance. Pitched at earnest practitioners beginning to study the path in depth.

File metadata (for organising)

File: 2012 08 26 End of Suffering Sess. 3.mp3

UUID: 55c694eb-e3d7-4390-b332-91478f4fbd16

Teacher: Tenzin Chogkyi

Collection: End of Suffering (Tenzin Chogkyi)

Date: 2012-08-26

Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide

Words: ~19,173

Well, it’s on. Well, that’s the thing. It’s quite far away. Oh, now it’s a little bit better, isn’t it? It’s it’s working.

Testing. One, two, three. Oh, is it? Oh, Bill’s listening. Oh my god.

Bill, are you listening? You can come in if you want. Oh, I’m really glad I know that he’s listening. Now I won’t Now, all those things we said about Bill, we can’t use him as an example anymore. Okay.

So why don’t we review what we talked about this morning by way of a meditation. Like I said, it’s always a little bit dangerous to meditate right after lunch, but hopefully we can make it through about fifteen minutes without nodding off. So let’s sit in our meditation posture with our back straight and spend just a few minutes focusing on the breaths as a way to just settle, subdue our minds. So let’s reflect on that chain reaction causing suffering. So suffering results from non virtuous actions that plant a seed in your mind that causes you to later experience suffering.

And that action in turn was caused by a disturbing emotion such as anger, attachment, jealousy. And that disturbing emotion was caused by misunderstanding of the nature of reality, especially the fundamental ignorance, misunderstanding of how the self exists. So let’s meditate on this more deeply. So first of all, let’s think of one of your worst disturbing emotions, something a thought that disturbs your peace of mind, and maybe there’s one that comes up quite frequently for you. It might be attachment, anger, jealousy, pride, resentment, pretentiousness.

And think of a time recently when you felt that disturbing emotion. What were the circumstances that triggered it? Reflect on all of the circumstances around that event. As a result of that disturbing emotion, did you do or say anything? Did you react in some way either verbally or physically?

And now think, if in that situation, had had an understanding that it was due to past karma that you were having that experience, not because it was coming at you randomly or you were just a helpless victim of some other person or that the experience was caused by the object, but if you realize the role that karma played in creating that experience for you, whether it was pleasant or unpleasant. Would this understanding have changed your reaction to the experience? How much you have behaved differently. And now reflect. Do you think it’s possible to become free of delusions completely, free of disturbing emotions, free of the ignorance about the nature of reality?

Do you think it’s possible to become free? Are those delusions an integral fixed aspect of your mind? Or are they a result of a misunderstanding about the nature of reality that can be corrected? And if it’s true that all suffering is a result of negative karmic actions that are a result of disturbing emotions, that are a result of that ignorance, isn’t it true that if that ignorance is completely eliminated, the whole thing falls apart? That whole chain reaction just completely falls apart, will no longer function.

Isn’t it possible, therefore, to have a complete, permanent cessation of suffering, disturbing emotions, and of ignorance. Logically, when we analyze, isn’t that possible? So in conclusion, even before we’ve experienced a cessation, we can see that it’s logically possible by understanding the truth of the origin of suffering. That will give us much more faith in our practices because we can see how they lead to that permanent cessation of suffering. K.

So so we looked at this twelve links of dependent origination looking at how our Samsāra is created because that’s really what we’re talking about here. We see that it’s past, present and future lifetimes. So this shows the dynamic of how Samsāra works, how that endless round of rebirth in cyclic existence happens and how we can cut through. Right? So the truth of the cessation of suffering is just saying, we can cut through and we’ve seen some of those places.

We saw this place right here which is really important for our practice by understanding that there isn’t a cause and result relationship between the object and the feeling. Right? They’re a result of past karma. All of these things are a result, and these are the causes. Okay?

So by understanding that, and then being careful about certain sense contacts and avoiding sense contact that is especially with objects that are especially triggering that we can’t be smart about yet. We’re working on it, but maybe we know that there’s things that we have to be cautious about in the meantime. And then, ultimately, cutting through with wisdom. So we’re not even misperceiving the nature of reality anymore, which is the main, you know, root problem. So we cut through at the root.

So that’s why cessation of suffering, liberation from saṃsāra is possible because this isn’t random. It’s very exact how saṃsāra is created, how our suffering is created. And we had before our other page that relates very much to this twelve links, and it was this one, the simplified one showing the relationship. And, again, remember yesterday, I said, all of our Buddhist practices basically can be posited in terms of something that counteracts and short circuits this chain reaction. So in Buddhism, we have a lot of vows, you know, and a lot of teachings about teachings about ethics and morality.

We’re talking about that during lunch. How do we deal with some of our speech karmic actions? You know, what are some of the tricks that we do? Because once when we start to subdue our karmic actions, if we eliminate this link, no way. Right?

We’re gonna have these kind of suffering results. And then, like I said, we work kind of backwards. And I gave the example yesterday about my divisive speech karma that I was working on. And I decided to, when I criticized the person, say something really nice about them in the next sentence. Right?

So I was working on my karmic actions first. My mind was still full of critical judgmental thoughts, But I did this totally contrived kind of ridiculous trick to try and at least counteract that karmic action in the moment. And I found it had a subduing effect on my mind so that my mind wasn’t nearly as critical and judgmental as it had been. I started being able to think more kind thoughts about people. And then, as I said, with a subdued mind, we’re able to meditate deeply and generate the realization of the nature of reality that’s the antidote to this one.

And we talk and in fact, we’ll talk in just a minute the main path for beings on the way to liberation is what we call the three higher trainings, ethics, concentration, and wisdom. Right? So ethics whoops. Now it’s too much. Ethics whoo.

Every time they say ethics, it does that. So living with pure morality, right, helps to subdue our minds so we’re able to develop good concentration. Try sitting down to meditate when your mind is full of regret because you’re going around treating people really badly. It doesn’t work, you know. One friend of mine, a Theravāda monk, talks about the bliss of blamelessness.

And I love that phrase. He said, if you live really ethically, then when you sit down to meditate, your mind is really peaceful and you have this sort of blissful feeling, really easy to develop concentration. So ethics is the foundation for concentration. Now we say to develop the wisdom that’s the antidote to this ignorance. And when Jan when we’re talking about the twelve links, Jan said, hey, let’s just go for link number one.

I said, it’s really hard and one of the reasons it’s so hard to actually have that direct realization of emptiness that we talked about before, seeing the ultimate nature of reality directly. We say we need to have developed a kind of concentration, perfect single pointed concentration, so that, you know, the text give an example, you can sit in meditation for a four hour session and your mind doesn’t wander off the object of your meditation at all. Right? Can you imagine? And not only that, your mind is clear and you’re engaged with the object.

We say for single pointed concentration, have three characteristics. We have fixation, meaning you’re not losing the object. We have clarity, which doesn’t refer to clarity of like a visualized image. It refers to mental clarity and sharpness. And then you have intensity, which means you’re into it.

You’re super into it. You have this intense engagement just like I did with the seventh Harry Potter novel. Right? Like, you’re sitting there, you’re reading, you’re into it, you don’t even, like, wanna get up and go to the bathroom. You’re so engaged.

That’s the kind of for four hours. Can you imagine? We can do it with Harry Potter. Why can’t we do it with emptiness? You know?

That’s the kind of mental concentration we have to develop, absolute prerequisite for that direct realization of emptiness, which is why I said, yeah, it’s true and we must. But in the meantime, let’s work at some of those other levels because that’s quite a high level of realization. But that’s how this works. You know, the platform of ethical behavior helps to subdue the mind, then we’re able to develop that concentration, and then we’re able to develop the wisdom using that concentration. Right?

So we have ethical, you know, ethical vows, morality, so forth. We have a lot of meditation teachings we can use for disturbing emotions. That’s part of the Buddhist path too. We also have a lot of meditation teachings for generating positive emotions. Not only do we have meditation teachings like working with anger, trying to subdue anger, attachment, negative emotions, We have so many meditation teachings for increasing our compassion, increasing our loving kindness.

So we’re trying to, you know, increase the balance of the positive emotions. And then we also have all the study and meditation about emptiness, about the ultimate nature of reality. So, really, we can think of all of our Buddhist practices in terms of how do they lead to the cessation of suffering? How do they lead to that third noble truth? Right?

So the truth of the path, we can relate to the truth of the causation of suffering. And I think it’s really helpful to think like that. Even some complicated puja that you’re chanting in Tibetan, when you really look at it, you go, wow. Like, for example, there’s a pooja called the Lama Chopa, offering to the guru, really long, kind of complicated. You look at it, and a big part of it is a very elaborate prayer called the seven-limb prayer, which is all about purification and accumulation of merit.

So what is it about? Remember I said the way we deal with our our karma is avoiding new non virtues, purifying the old ones, accumulating merit. the seven-limb prayer is the second and third of those three things. It’s all about purification and accumulation of merit. So that’s what this whole big thing that you sit around chanting in Tibetan is all about and not some empty ritual.

You know, Sandra said something about why don’t we call habit ritual? And I was like, oh, because I really struggle sometimes with quote unquote ritual. Right? You know, but if we find out, if we examine and see what is it doing, like, what’s the point of it? Is it just some devotional thing that’s meaningless?

No. It’s about purification, accumulation of merit, offering to the highest object, the guru. Remember, we talked about the power of the object, any offerings you make. So we visualize and we also offer substances during that puja. So it helps.

You know, it really helps to think in terms of what is it doing to create the positive spiritual momentum and to purify our old negative karma. Okay? You get some benefit, you need to get more. I think it’s really important to understand more, which is why a lot of lamas say, Say it in your own language because then you’re getting what you’re doing. You know, I think there’s a limited amount of benefit of just chanting something in some Asian language that you don’t really understand.

It’s like the Tibetans translated everything from Sanskrit. They don’t sit around chanting in Sanskrit. Why should we you know, and the lamas sometimes say there’s an imprint. But I don’t know. My own personal feeling for it, and a lot of lamas also say better to do it in your own language because then you can meditate on the meaning of it.

You’re not just kind of trying to follow. Now, when we’re doing it with our own teachers that are doing it in Tibetan out of respect, often we’ll chant the whole thing in Tibetan just because out of respect for their language and all of that. But I think it’s really important to understand, you know, even if we do chant certain things, to at least be meditating on the meaning. Otherwise, there isn’t a lot of benefit. One of the earliest Buddhist kind of practices that I was exposed to, a bunch of my friends were doing was it was called Nichiren Shoshu, Chanting the Lotus Sūtra in Japanese.

And we would sit around with these books of Japanese phonetics chanting the Lotus Sūtra, that was supposed to be really meritorious. And I got really frustrated because there was no study, there was no meditation. It was just, you know, there I was following along in the book. And I felt really frustrated by that because it was like, how can this really be having an impact on my mind if I have no idea what I’m saying? I mean, in that tradition, there wasn’t a lot of study, at least in the Tibetan tradition.

Of course, there’s tons of study, and you have no excuse for not knowing what you’re doing. You know? But still, I think it can be limited if you really have no idea. You’re just doing the phonetics without being able to meditate on it. I think it’s much better to know what you’re doing.

Yeah. Okay. Were there any questions about twelve links left over or this chart or anything left over about karma that we’ve done before we start talking about the goals of the path, let’s turn back to this one in case we have questions about that. For sure, and we are all the time when we’re doing our purification practices, Is it the karmic’s imprint is in there, whether it’s something you did two minutes ago or something you did seven lifetimes ago. You know, as long as it’s there, unpurified as a potential, yeah.

And that’s why we say, we talked about this a little bit yesterday, It’s good to focus your purification for things that you know that you did in this life and then you always add this sort of, you know, whatever language it says, plus everything else too. You know, you can focus on things that you know you’ve done in this life but we know just because we’re unenlightened beings that we’ve done everything possible. In every realm of existence, we’ve done absolutely everything. So, you also just say, okay, you know, focus the purification also on everything else. Yeah, yeah, because we definitely can.

Yeah. Right. Yeah, yeah. Right, right, right. And it may not be necessarily something that disturbs your peace of mind.

And remember, that was kind of the definition of a disturbing emotion, something that disturbs your peace of mind. Grief isn’t in the list of twenty Interestingly enough, I never really thought of that, but it now, the list of twenty six isn’t all encompassing, and all of the lamas say it’s just, you know, one list, but it doesn’t cover everything. But grief isn’t one of the ones on there. And I think, yeah. So it sort of depends on how disturbing is it to your peace of mind.

Sure. Yeah. Yeah. And the Buddhist approach towards disturbing emotions and this is a whole long story, but I’ll just say this because there’s a lot of kind of misunderstanding. The Buddhist approach usually, our approach disturbing emotions is either suppression, and that’s what you’re talking about.

You either suppress the feeling or some Western psychological techniques say express it. Let it out. Just explode with the emotion. The Buddhist approach is neither one of these two. It’s neither about suppressing it nor is it about just expressing it.

It’s about understanding and transformation. Okay? So that’s the general approach to our disturbing emotions, mindfulness and understanding and analysis of it and then transformation. So we’re not suppressing it, neither are we acting it out. Those it’s a false dichotomy.

That would be a great technique. Right? Yeah. And I think it’s good to acknowledge that we will miss them. Right?

I think when grief becomes people can get stuck. And I think, you know, sometimes people ask, what’s the Buddhist approach to grieving? Like, if you’re a Buddhist and somebody close to you dies, are you allowed to be sad or something? You know, I teach a lot of courses in death and dying, and this comes up. And I say, of course, you have the feeling that you’re gonna miss the connection with the person that you loved.

That’s just normal and totally understandable. I said, the extra thing that often makes grieving so difficult is this idea, why did it happen? It shouldn’t have happened. Why did it happen to her? She was so if you understand and according to Buddhism, everything is changing moment to moment to moment.

Because we’re born, we have to die and we have no idea when. There’s an acceptance which makes the grieving easier. We’re still missing that person or that being ourselves but we don’t have that extra added thing of like, it’s so unfair, it’s wrong, why did it happen? You know, and I think that’s the difference. Right.

Right. Right. Right. Yeah. Of the situation.

Right. Sure. Sure. Yeah. Yeah.

I think in either either case. Yeah. But that’s kind of the Buddhist approach is really about awareness and then transforming it using as much wisdom as we have, you know, that that we know about the path. Yeah. Okay.

So, let’s talk about the goals of the path because we’ve said, okay, because this is caused, it can cease. That’s easy. The logic of that is easy to understand. If things were random, you know, if our suffering were random or if our suffering was because some, you know, omnipotent being, it was, know, creating it, we wouldn’t know if it was, you know, if it were possible for it to cease or not. But if we know the dynamic of the causation, logically, we can see.

Yeah. It can end. So what does that look like? What does the cessation of suffering look like? And I’ve been going back and forth with my flip chart, so I have to find Okay.

So what are the goals of the path? So we have two kind of outcomes when we talk about the cessation of suffering. The two main outcomes we talk about are liberation and enlightenment. Two different goals, different paths lead to those goals. And sometimes people think I thought this in the beginning when I first started studying Buddhism.

I thought, liberation comes first. It’s sort of linear, and you’re going towards liberation, and then you get liberation, and then a little bit later on, enlightenment. But you’re actually heading off in different directions from quite early on in the path, not maybe the first weekend teaching that you ever get. Right? But quite early on, because there are different paths leading to those goals.

It’s not linear. It’s not like you’re heading towards liberation. And then when you get liberated, then you start generating newly the wish to get enlightened for the benefit of all beings. It doesn’t work that way. Okay?

So let’s look at the differences between these two. Liberation, and I said, equals nirvana. This is the state, and it’s a mental state. It’s not a place. And I said in one of the other classes, there could be a being in nirvana in this room.

It’s not like the meditation hall of Buddha House is not nirvana because it’s a mental state of being free of karma and delusions. Okay? So, what’s eliminated is what we call the obscuration of the defilements, the obscurations of the defilements, karma and delusions. That’s what’s eliminated when a being is liberated. The path is the three higher trainings.

We’re just talking about that. Ethics, concentration and wisdom. It’s the main training of a being on the way to liberation. And the resultant state is called an arhat, usually translated as foe destroyer. That’s the translation of arhat.

Now we’ve used the vocabulary word ārya. An ārya and an arhat are not the same thing. And there’s a lot of confusion sometimes between these two words because they sound similar. What’s an ārya? We talked about that because I said it was the four ārya truths, sometimes translated as noble.

What’s an ārya? Yeah. Someone who has recognized emptiness and has really come alive. Yeah. Well, they’ve recognized emptiness.

Now, they’re not necessarily on the track towards enlightenment. It’s just a being who’s realized emptiness. Okay? So, does that happen before or after liberation or enlightenment? Before.

Okay? So, it’s like I said, it’s a huge milestone. Right? But it happens before either becoming an arhat or a Buddha. Now, I’ve said that you go off on two different tracks.

You’re either on the track to liberation or the track to enlightenment. On both tracks, you must have a direct realization of emptiness. So we talk about aryas as a general term. We talk about ārya bodhisattvas who are the ones who have the direct realization of emptiness on the track towards Buddhahood. But that’s what it refers to, a direct realization of emptiness on either one of those tracks.

Right? So, if you’re on the track to liberation, you get a direct realization of emptiness, you’re an ārya, then you have to complete all of the other purification and then you become an arhat. So an arhat happens before ārya. They’re not synonymous, easily confused because they sound similar. So an arhat is a liberated being.

What’s the foe that’s been destroyed? Yeah. Samsāra karma delusions. Okay? That’s why they’re called a foe destroyer, heroic destroyer of karma and delusion.

So, no more rebirth in saṃsāra. That’s why they’re called liberated because what’s the impetus or the, you know, the compelling forces for rebirth as we have seen, karma and delusion, no more karma and delusion, no more rebirth. It’s as simple as that. So, the causes are eliminated, no more result, liberation, right, from saṃsāra. So is that clear?

What’s happening with liberation? Any questions to clarify? An arhat, liberated being. Judy, what’s happening? She’s smirking.

Peter, what’s happening? Yeah. It’s a lot. It’s a lot of detail. Okay.

And this is one of those things you just kind of, you know, think about it over and over and over again, kind of giving you the building blocks and the, you know, you have to hear it for the first time once, and then you hear it over and over and you study, and then it sort of makes more sense the second time you hear it and like that. Okay? So yeah. Ah, great question. And sometimes, you’ll hear, right, in Mahāyāna circles, very disparaging comments about these guys.

And sometimes and it’s really true. You’ll hear and in some of the commentaries, it’s taught, oh, arhats don’t care at all about other beings. You know, they could care less. They’re selfish. They’re just going for personal liberation.

Absolutely not true. You know? And it’s very disparaging and very unfair. Well, that’s that’s what you’ll hear, you know, and you’ll hear this word Hīnayāna that’s just a very, very awful word that means lesser vehicle. But what is happening is in the Pāli Canon, which is the scriptural basis for this vehicle, this path, it’s taught that only beings with a certain destiny can become Buddhas.

For the rest, it’s impossible. Liberation is the only possibility. So for those beings, it’s not that they’re choosing to be a Buddha or not. It’s said that only what we call the thousand wheel turning Buddhas, only the thousand beings that are gonna become Buddhas in our age have the destiny to become a Buddha. For everybody else, liberation is the only option.

So why would I want to you know, why would I spend all this energy wishing to become the queen of England if it was totally impossible? Forget it. You know, I’m sure there’s all kinds of technicalities of why I couldn’t become the queen. You know, if there’s something that’s totally impossible, why do it? So in that canon, it’s taught that that is the only possible goal apart from those special beings with that special destiny.

So the Bodhisattva path is taught in the Pāli Canon, but only for the thousand wheel turning Buddhas. Now, why is that? Was the Buddha lying in the Pāli Canon? Why do you think that was? Why are the two goals taught by the Buddha?

That’s right. That’s absolutely right. For some beings, the thought of getting enlightened for the benefit of all beings, incredibly inspiring. You know, even though it takes so long, they’re like, I’m gonna do it. For some beings, so overwhelming that they would just get completely discouraged and give up altogether.

So that’s exactly right. We say that the Buddha taught really specifically depending on the audience what was appropriate for that person, what capacity did they have. I had an example of this that happened a couple of years ago. I was teaching in in India, this huge introductory course. There are about sixty people, and it was a ten day introductory course.

Well, I’m not a Buddha. I don’t know what capacity the students have. You know, they just ask me to teach, and I do my thing, and blah blah blah. So I’m up there going yada yada yada. I get to the page that talks about Bodhicitta, is the wish for full enlightenment for the benefit of all beings just because we’re at that point in the outline.

You know, what do I know? So I get there, and I’m giving the definition of bodhicitta, which is way back here on our other flip chart. We haven’t gotten there yet in this class, but I think a lot of you are probably familiar. The wish for full enlightenment for the sake of all living beings. In fact, I think I was exactly on this flip chart page.

This one guy in the back of the room had done a lot of reading. He hadn’t studied much except from books, you know, but he’d done a lot of reading and he was sort of one of these guys he thought he really kind of knew it all. He stands up when I give the definition of bodhichitti. He stands up and he goes, you Mahayanists, you think that you can enlighten all sentient beings? You guys are nuts!

And he storms out of the room. Everybody in the room is just kind of like another guy sitting kind of right in front of me. He’s got tears running down his face. He’s never heard anything more inspiring in his life. It’s like that’s it.

You know, changed his life. He was this young Danish student. First class in Buddhism. So inspired. He went back to Denmark, got a long term visa for India.

He keeps in touch with me, and that was, like, four and a half years ago. He’s now starting a three year retreat next spring in North America, you know. So it’s exactly that. The young Danish guy has this capacity that he just hears this idea, and that’s it. The other guy hears about it, and he’s like, I’m out of here.

You guys are nuts. Now, if I’d been a Buddha, I would have known. You know, I might have told the guy in the back, the next session, you know, you’re looking kind of tired. Why don’t you just take a break? Like, know, stay in your room and skip the next one.

That’s why the Buddha taught both of these because they’re appropriate, you know, for the people of that capacity. He didn’t teach the path to enlightenment for everybody because not everybody is ready for it, and they’ll freak out. Right? The thought of the responsibility of all living beings can either be incredibly inspiring or so overwhelming that you just think, it’s hopeless. I can’t forget it.

I’m not gonna do it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah.

That’s right. That’s right. And, you know, so we kind of have this division. Although, having explained this, nowadays, like I said, there was a stream based on the Pāli Canon that taught that only certain beings have the destiny to become Buddhas. And traditionally, in Asian countries, there’d usually be one stream or the other, you know, e usually either the stream leading towards liberation or enlightenment.

Nowadays, it’s not really true. And if a lot especially for a lot of Western monastics, we’re exposed to all kinds of different ideas. We have these conferences in the States, these Western monastic gatherings. So those of us that are Buddhist monastics of all different traditions get around for a week and talk about everything, like what it’s like to be a Martian walking around in robes in Western countries. We talk about our practices.

A lot of my friends who’ve studied and are monastics in, for example, the Thai forest tradition have taken bodhisattva vows. They’re students of His Holiness, the Dalai Lama. So there’s a huge amount of crossover. I mean, this is a little bit an artificial historic division that isn’t even so, you know, valid these days as much as it used to be. So don’t go, oh, you guys are Hīnayāna guys, blah blah blah.

That’s why I explain the differences because it’s a difference of capacity that’s taught in their scripture. So somebody who’s a traditional person of the and I prefer the southern Buddhist school and the northern school. A lot of people prefer that to Hīnayāna Mahāyāna because it’s not as derogatory. A lot of the people who’ve studied the Pāli Canon in the Southern School, like I say, this is presented as the ultimate goal of the path. Period.

You know? So to want to become a fully enlightened being would be seen as, you know, hubris like what? You think you’re one of the very few that can do it? Like, what? Are you nuts?

You know? And for them, it’s appropriate. And then there’s the goal of enlightenment or buddhahood. And we say, for an enlightened being, there’s not only the obscurations of the defilements are eliminated, but also very subtle obscurations called knowledge obscurations. And this is quite hard to understand but it’s these subtle tendencies for seeing things as self existent.

Okay. Tendencies for that misapprehension of the way things exist, that dichotomy between the way things exist and the way things appear. When those are eliminated, the result is omniscience, omniscient mind. And we talked before about one of the special qualities of a Buddha is knowing exactly the karma of beings, knowing exactly their past lives, knowing exactly their delusions so that you can teach them perfectly. Right?

That’s that’s what omniscient mind is for. You know, there’s some analogies they give in the scripture of, like, if you took all the trees off the side of the hill and you put them in a wood chipper and it, you know, chipped the trees into little microscopic bits for like a hundred years and then you flung them back out on the hillside, the Buddha would know exactly which little bit came from which original tree. Well, who cares? That doesn’t really benefit beings. But the main point of having that mind is about being able to guide beings perfectly by being able to know exactly what their karma is, what their disturbing emotions are.

So if it had been a Buddha instead of me, like I say, I would have been able to know what to say skillfully in that moment, not to turn this guy off because he and his friend left. We’re in the middle of a ten day course. Then there’s this big scene in the courtyard as they’re packing their bags and getting the taxi and handing in their keys. I’m standing there going, whatever. What do I know?

You know? So you can guide the students perfectly. So knowledge obscurations, they also are free of karma and delusions. Right? And then on top of that and again, this is quite subtle.

It’s probably enough for you to know for now. You know, you can study more what that means. Now the path is different. So in addition to ethics, concentration, and wisdom, we have three more. Right?

So we talk about the six perfections and we’re gonna talk about that in a minute, what those six perfections are because we need to create the energy for the enlightened body and mind of a Buddha. We need to create the causes. And remember I said the motivation isn’t enough? We need to actually back it up with actions. The actions are the six perfections.

Those are the karmic actions that create the causes for the enlightened body and mind of a Buddha. K. And then I put plus vajrayana, special techniques of you know, especially in Tibetan Buddhism, there’s special techniques that we do to accelerate that process and speed up the attainment of the enlightened body and mind. So the resultant state is Buddhahood. We usually talk about three bodies, emanation bodies, and we say that a Buddha has the ability to show up in whatever form will be of benefit.

If the sentient being has the karma, the Buddha will be there in whatever form it takes. Dogs, inanimate objects, human beings, Tibetan lamas, you name it, whatever it takes. Right? So we say limitless emanation bodies, you know, wherever a being has the karma of Buddha will be there. And then there’s sort of an astral body.

That’s one way of looking at it. This one is usually called the the Sanskrit is Nirmana kaya. This one, the Sanskrit is Sambhogakāya, usually translated as complete enjoyment body and that’s a very refined energy body like an astral body. Okay? And these pictures here of the tankas of the deities, somebody saw the Sambhogakāya and drew a picture of it.

That’s what these guys are. That’s the refined energy body of an enlightened being, the way they appear to very highly realized beings. Now everybody can see these. You may not know it’s an emanation body. Only very highly realized beings can actually have a direct perception of one of these complete enjoyment bodies, but they sometimes Buddhas sometimes appear in that form to give teachings directly.

For example, the founder of the Gelug tradition, Lama Tsongkhapa, at a certain point, Mañjuśrī, the Bodhisattva of wisdom, the Buddha of wisdom, appeared to him in this form and gave him teachings directly just like we get teachings from our own masters, but a very high level of realization to see this one. And then the last one isn’t a physical form. This is the mind of a Buddha, complete the wisdom, truth, body, right, which is equivalent to that omniscient mind. So that’s the mental kind of part of a Buddha, and then these are the ways the physical parts of a Buddha emanate. Okay.

The emanation and the complete enjoyment. Yeah. Jan. So are you just Yeah. Mhmm.

That’s right. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

So somebody saw Tārā. You know, Lama Atisha’s Tārā appeared to him directly and gave teachings and looked like that. Now they can look in a variety of different ways. You know, they’re not restricted, and we say there’s twenty one different forms of Tārā. Like, there’s twenty one ways that Tārā has appeared.

There’s a tantric deity called Vajrayoginī, and there’s a whole book showing the different ways that she has emanated to different beings. Because, again, it’s not limited to a Buddha’s ability. It’s just what’s gonna be beneficial. Beneficial. Right?

What kind of appearance is gonna be beneficial to that being? But, yeah, somebody saw Chin Rezik with a thousand arms. Talked about it. Yeah. Yeah.

In fact, I heard a story when I I’ll I’ll tell this story and then we’ll take a break. Oh. Oh, no. I was looking at the clock wrong. We’re not quite at break time.

This well, the first time I went to Dharmasala where His Holiness the Dalai Lama lives, there was this was a story going around, and I didn’t hear it directly, but I thought it was a cool story anyway. Apparently, some young Western tourists that was back in the days, it was really quite easy to get an appointment to see the Dalai Lama. So she comes to Dharmasala, and she goes to His Holiness private office and said, hey. Can I talk to the Dalai Lama? And they go, yeah.

Sure. Why don’t you come tomorrow at three o’clock? So she goes, and they sit, and they have tea, and they have this great talk. And she doesn’t really even completely know who he is or, like, what the deal is or whatever. She’s just sort of chatting away.

And then she goes to leave and she’s walking out and then she turns around to say goodbye one more time and she sees Thousand Arms Chin Rezig. Like, all of a sudden, she turns around, and there’s this white light body with all of these arms. Now we say that His Holiness the Dalai Lama is an emanation of Chin Rezig, and she fainted as one would, especially if you didn’t have any idea that that’s who it’s meant to be. And then the story was going around, and they say you know, people were trying to explain what was going on, and they said, well, obviously, she had some incredible karma to be able to meet with his holiness, the Dalai Lama, in the first place. And then there was some momentary kind of pure perception, like the veil dropped, you know, of her obscurations.

And in that moment, she was actually able to not see the ordinary appearance anymore and see, you know, this other level of appearance. So I thought that was a cool story. Never happened to me. I’ve been waiting. I look at him.

When’s he gonna turn it? Yeah, right. Because I’m grasping. That’s right. She just was Can you imagine?

Yeah. Heard she fainted and then all the security guys had to scramble up and like, you know, pick her up. Whatever they do when somebody faints. Yeah. That would be amazing.

That would be really cool. Maybe laughing, Judy. So, any questions about these two? And like I said, this is a huge kind of chunk to bite off at once and it takes, you know, quite a bit of mulling over to get clear. And I and again, I don’t want to really sort of emphasize the difference between like Hīnayāna, Mahāyāna, but I think it’s important to know.

Oh, and by the way, the but we I said, it’s not like you go to liberation first, and then you continue on to enlightenment. They say one of the main causes actually for enlightenment is bodhicitta, the wish for full enlightenment for the benefit of all beings. We need to start working on that from the very beginning of our commitment to the path Because it said, if you’re liberated without generating bodhicitta or thinking about compassion and loving kindness and generating that, it’s actually harder for an arhat to attain buddhahood than it is for us. And that seems weird because they’ve already overcome the obscurations of of the defilements, but they say to newly generate the wish for enlightenment for the benefit of all beings when you’re already free of saṃsāra is very hard. And I think one of the factors is empathy.

You know how much easier it is to relate to the hardship of others if it’s something that you’ve gone through yourself. Those beings, no more problems at all. So it’s harder to newly generate that kind of compassion, empathy, bodhicitta. Right? They also say that once you’re at that point, you go off into these blissful meditative absorptions for eons.

So harder you waste a lot of time because you can you know, your mind has the ability to go into this blissful absorption, and then you have to sort of go, oh, right. No. I’m supposed to still be on the path towards enlightenment. So that’s the way it’s explained. And so like I said, for us, we should you know, if we feel resonance with the idea of full enlightenment for the benefit of beings, we should start working on developing bodhicitta and kind of heading off in that direction.

Like I said, not from your first weekend course necessarily, but pretty early on. You know, don’t get too far on the path and develop too many high realizations without conjoining them with bodhicitta. Okay? So that’s an important thing to just point out in terms of those two tracks because, like I said, it’s easy to think it’s liberation first, and then you newly kind of get on the track to enlightenment, but it diverges. Yeah.

Right. That’s right. That’s right. They would say that what is for most beings, what’s possible is mere liberation and that only those special beings with that destiny are able to become Buddhas. And like I said, they teach the Bodhisattva path, but not for everyone.

You know, and in the Pāli Canon, they call like, for example, in the Jataka tales and they talk about the Buddha’s past life, they call him the bodhisattva. You know? So they have the idea of a bodhisattva, but it was just for Lord Buddha and just for Maitreya and just for the ones that are gonna be those special beings. Right? So like I said, for them, it’s just not posited as an option, so why waste your time?

Except, like I said, nowadays, there’s so much crossover. One of these monastic gatherings, it was very interesting because a young monk from the Tibetan tradition who was kind of a bit of a boy scout, you know, how some people are just sort of born again Buddhists. You know? So he’s sort of this born again Mahāyānist, and he’s sitting with this older monk from the Thai forest tradition. And he’s kind of going you know, he’d been brainwashed a little bit by the Mahāyāna line.

He was like, why don’t you want to go for Buddhahood for the benefit of all beings? Isn’t it kind of selfish that you’re you know, and this monk was very experienced and very graceful. And, you know, and I was just kind of like, oh my god. Like, I can’t believe you say I’m sitting there just chewing my toast going, oh, stop. Please just don’t.

But this very gracious, you know, monk from the Thai tradition said, you know, I don’t know really what’s gonna happen. I’m just trying to do my practice. You know, he’s just kinda like, I’m just trying to meditate. I’m just trying to do my practice. You know, it may be that I end up a Buddha.

It may be that I end up an Arhat. I don’t really know. I’m just trying doing my best. And I thought that was great. You know?

He’s just kinda like, I don’t really know how it looks. You know? And this kind of young boy scout monk was like, well, you’re no. You’re supposed to have this party line, and I’m supposed to have this line. We’re supposed to have this conflict.

So, again, you know, we have to be careful. You can’t say by the color of the robe, oh, you’re headed towards enlightenment. I mean, I don’t even think I’ve validly completely taken refuge yet. Like, let forget it. I mean, I have.

But, you know, where we are in terms of our motivation. Like, when I really check, I would like to think that I’m doing it for the benefit of beings. But when I really check my mind most of the time, it’s mostly about my own happiness. Still, I try to generate, you know, a wish for others. But even though I’m wearing the red robes, like, when I really check what’s going on in my mind, you know, I’m still totally working on that altruistic intention.

Right? So you can’t judge from the appearance of, you know, the person what track they’re on at all. Okay? So that’s important. Alright.

Why don’t we take a break and then we’ll come back. And what we’ll do when we come back, we’ll look at the six perfections. The last perfection is wisdom, and I promised you that we’d look more deeply at that. So why don’t we take a getting confused about the alarm setting on this clock. It’s really hard to see, isn’t it?

Yeah. Twenty past two. So why don’t we take a twenty minute break, not a seventeen minute break. I know. It’s kind of why don’t we come back at twenty minutes to three?

And then we’ll go for about another hour and twenty minutes. We’ll go till about four ish. Hopefully. We’ll see how we go. So I’m alright.

Alright. So any questions still about liberation, enlightenment, the goals of the path? Do you see how it’s a result of cessation? Right? Because this is the truth of the cessation of suffering, which is why I’ve emphasized what is eliminated because that’s what cessation means, right?

Is we’re eliminating the causes, therefore the result ceases, is ceased. Okay? So any other questions about that? Now one thing that might be helpful, this is from the other class that we did, but this seemed to be helpful, is just an idea of like I said, it’s not so linear, you know, the development of the realizations and so forth. But the for the other class, I had a kind of a flow chart of as if it were linear whoops.

Find it. How these realizations are developed. Sorry about that. It’s a problem of okay. Here we go.

So this is from the Bodhisattva vows class, but we can just look at this for a minute. So we say the first step, taking refuge based on fear and faith. We say these are the causes of taking refuge. And as I said the other night, refuge is kind of a weird word that we don’t use in English much, but we talk about refugees. So what’s a refugee?

A refugee is somebody who’s going from a situation of danger to a situation of safety. So when we’re taking refuge, that’s exactly what we’re doing. We’re going from the dangerous situation of saṃsāra, uncontrolled rebirth characterized by all of those sufferings to a situation of safety, which is liberation and enlightenment. Now, the fear and fear, you know, it’s not sort of like watching a horror movie fear. It’s the wish to avoid.

I mean, that’s the kind of fear we’re talking about. We’re wishing to avoid those sufferings. We’re wishing to avoid at that second level of the Lamrim rebirth and saṃsāra altogether. We’re wishing to avoid suffering of all sentient beings. You know, at that highest level of the motivation, the fear is that any being would be suffering.

So we’re trying to become a Buddha in order for all beings to be free, in order to lead them to freedom. And then we have faith in the path taught by the Buddha. That’s what the real refuge is. And it doesn’t mean blind faith. Sometimes faith is a bad word, you know, because we think that all faith is blind faith.

But we have a certain amount of faith every day when we cook our lunch. We have faith that if we cook and eat lunch, we’ll be fed and get full. We don’t know that it’s true today, but it worked before. It makes sense. Why not?

Right? So this is the kind of faith we have in the Buddhist path. We analyze, we use logic, we get teachings, it makes sense, and then we take refuge. Okay? In Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha, but the main refuge is the Dharma, is the path taught by the Buddha.

Yes, Sandra? You could, but this is sort of the traditional presentation, so I’m using the traditional word. But, yeah, confidence actually is the word I prefer because we have confidence in that path taught by the Buddha. It makes sense to us. We we have confidence in it, so we’re willing to take it on.

That’s right. That’s right. Yeah. Yeah. So, then, development of renunciation.

And renunciation, we talked about this a bit in the other class, doesn’t mean giving up all the good stuff and being miserable because that’s the way to be virtuous. It means, actually, the word that’s usually translated as renunciation in Tibetan means definite emergence, the wish to definitely get free of saṃsāra. So that’s the first step from understanding the pitfalls. So now we’ve seen that through meditating on karma, the sufferings of saṃsāra, the twelve links. We understand the dynamic of how cyclic existence is caused and we wish to get free because we understand that as long as we’re subject to that uncontrolled cycle, there’s never gonna be lasting permanent happiness.

And that enables us to develop renunciation, a wish to get free. And then, on the Bodhisattva track, we develop Bodhicitta, the wish for full enlightenment for the benefit of all beings through there’s two main methods, the seven point cause and effect method and the method of equalizing and exchanging self for others. Again, long story, you’ll learn about that in your Lamrim classes, those two techniques. So developing Bodhicitta and then, since this page is when we were focusing on the bodhisattva vows, then we can take aspiring bodhisattva precepts and then the engaging bodhisattva vows and then keeping our vows and practicing the six perfections. And remember I said, this is the motivation, but we need to back up the motivation with action.

Developing the wish alone isn’t going to make us a Buddha. It’s really important and it’s absolutely necessary and it’s hugely powerful, but by itself, it’s just the wish. The six perfections, keeping our vows, practicing the six perfections is what creates the causes for the enlightened body and mind of a Buddha. Okay? So like I said, this is a presentation that is linear, but usually, we’re not linear in terms of how we really engage.

You know, a lot of us will take engaging bodhisattva vows and be working on the six perfections before we really have total uncontrived perfect renunciation. Right? We just have some sort of a feeling for this and we sort of dive in to all levels. You know, people have been saying Judy was saying yesterday when she introduced herself and Jan too, I’m a slow learner. You know, I started studying, and then it was a couple of years until I took I think that’s awesome.

Because personally, I took refuge, bodhisattva vows and tantric vows in the same event. You know, I just was like dove right in. I had no idea what I was doing. You know, just I was like, this is great. This is cool.

It worked out great for me, but I think it is good to just really learn what you’re doing. Then your commitment is much deeper. Right? Like, if you study refuge and I told the story about the prison inmates that wanted to take refuge in lay vows, and I insisted on doing a whole six week course on the four noble truths because I’m like, otherwise, it’s just gonna be theistic for them. It’s gonna be, oh, the Buddha’s cooler than Jesus, so I’m gonna go with that.

And it’s gonna be like, oh, Lord Buddha, save me. It’s not a valid refuge unless you really understand the four noble truths. It’s so important. Right? So I think it’s good to be cautious, you know?

A lot of people in the past, like my sort of generation of Dharma practitioners, we weren’t at all. You know, we just went to Dharmasala, we went to Kathmandu and just got into it. But I think it is good to understand what you’re doing and to be more linear about it, you know, because then I think it’s very stable. Like I said, it worked out, you know, I think a lot of us that jumped in, had strong karmic imprints, so we just sort of caught up to ourselves eventually, sort of, you know, still catching up, but this would be a presentation. And then wisdom is conjoined with all of it.

You know, again, this page came from the Bodhisattva vows class, I was emphasizing the track in terms of Bodhicitta, but the wisdom of the ultimate nature of reality sort of is happening simultaneous to all of this. We’re learning about emptiness. We’re meditating on emptiness. Right? It takes a long time for the direct realization.

But what we’re going to look at now is the six perfections, the practice of the six perfections. And by the way, we had those two tracks, the track to liberation, the track to enlightenment. You know, I’m gonna be biased here and emphasize the track to full enlightenment. Sorry. I mean, it’s the Four Noble Truths, but now we’re gonna get into the Mahāyāna bias a little bit here in the last session.

You know, everything else has been completely pretty universal to all Buddhist systems, but here, we’re gonna diverge and bias a little bit to the Mahayana. So let’s look at so we were here looking at the two goals. Now let’s look at the six perfections because these are the actions that we do to create the causes of the enlightened body and mind. Now, are six perfections. Let’s look at those first.

A perfection of giving, ethics, patience, enthusiasm, sometimes known as joyous effort, concentration and wisdom. And what page is that on in your book? Anybody found it? Page twenty. Great.

Now, remember I said we need to create the causes for the enlightened body and mind of a Buddha. Which one of the perfections do you think has to do with creating the enlightened body? Some of these are about the enlightened body and some are about the enlightened mind. So of these six, what do you think? Giving, ethics, patience, enthusiasm, concentration, wisdom.

Ethics. Okay, so ethics. Kathy votes for ethics. What else? Giving?

Okay, Jan votes for giving. Right. Okay. Good. Good.

Yeah. And patience. Okay. Good. You got all of the most commentators say that the first four perfections have to do with creating the enlightened body.

Right? And then the last two, concentration and wisdom, have to do with creating that omniscient mind. Right? So most commentators divide it up that way. Some commentators say enthusiasm goes both ways cause you need that enthusiasm for both sets of practices.

So some say it’s like three and a half, two and a half. Some say four and two. But you get the idea. Right? So we say that we need all six for the enlightened body and mind of a Buddha.

And by the way, you can’t have the mind without the body. Sometimes we get this idea that omniscient mind is kind of like God. You know, it’s just sort of everywhere is this amorphous thing, and then every once in a while, the Buddha will shoot out a body when it’s necessary. But we say that the two are you know, even though conceptually we divide them into two parts, They’re always coexisting. You know, you can’t have the omniscient mind without a manifest a physical manifestation of emanation bodies and enjoyment bodies.

Right? So it’s not just sort of like, yeah, the omniscient mind is sort of just this pervasive everything like God or something, you know, and then with no manifestation. So there is manifestation. Kathy looks worried about that. Yeah.

Yeah. That’s right. So the enjoyment body is something that you Well, there’s always an enjoyment body if there’s an omniscient mind. And then because of the nature of the Buddha’s activity, there’s always emanation bodies happening too. So, they’re always all three existing.

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Not just one, but bodies. Plural.

Yeah. That’s right. Yeah. That’s right. Well, it’s interesting.

You know, when you get into that and there’s a lot of debate, there’s a lot of debate and there’s, you know they say it’s said that every individual mind stream will eventually attain Buddhahood. But it’s not like at that point I mean, one school of thought says it’s not like at that point you just kind of merge with this pool of enlightened mind. Like, every enlightened mind is an individual mind stream. Now, Buddhahood has exactly the same characteristics of every other enlightened being. You know, there’s no difference in terms of characteristics.

But, sometimes, there’s a difference in terms of activity because of the prayers that were made during the path. For example, we’ve got the seven medicine Buddhas that help in very specific ways at Buddhahood because of the energy of the prayers that they made on the path to benefit in specific ways. So, there’s that explanation, right, of how the Buddhas manifest, but their qualities are exactly identical. And then, there’s another school of thought, and this, again, is a big debate, and I think it’s Pabongka Rinpoche holds this view and other lamas too that all enlightened beings in a way merge and he says the the metaphor he uses it’s like streams going into or rivers going into the ocean And he says, it’s not that the individual drops of water disappear, but they lose their identity as a drop that came from that river. But I think, basically, when it comes down to it, it’s really hard for us to conceive of how enlightened beings, like, function.

Yeah. I asked Lama Zopa Rinpoche once in a letter that I wrote to him from this long retreat, you know, how does this Buddha thing work? Like, is there one? Is there a lot? And he wrote me this hilarious letter and he said, well, you know, when you need he would he kind of ascribes to the ocean and they mix, but they still have their own they don’t cease to exist, but they cease to have a separate identity school.

That’s kind of his school. And he was saying, because when you need Tārā to manifest to you, he goes, it’s not like a million Tārā’s manifest. He goes, one Tārā manifests. It’s not like a million. It’s he said, it’s not like they’ve lined up in a queue like going to the toilet or like all the beggars in Bodh Gaya just crowding around.

Like, Buddha manifests as Tārā because you need Tārā now. You know? And that was his idea of, like, how a Buddha manifests. But after that response, I thought, well, I’m not gonna worry about it. You know, it’s one of those things that’s hard to actually imagine sort of how it works.

But we are taught that there are these kind of three components of the omniscient mind, complete enjoyment body, emanation bodies that all co you know, coexist. You can’t just have the mind without the bodies. Okay. That just blew Peter’s mind. That was just the last straw.

It’s like short circuit. We’re nearly done, Peter. Okay. So let’s go back. Let’s reel back into the six perfections.

So, yeah, four mostly, commentators say the first four are to do with the enlightened body and the last two, the enlightened mind. So we have the perfection of giving or generosity, the first one. Oh, and by the way, these you know, even though we try to practice them all simultaneously, this is sort of from the easier ones to the more challenging. Right? So we kind of focus at the beginning of the path more on the perfection of giving.

This is sort of easier. The other ones become more challenging. So we say the perfection of giving, we’ve got four different things that we can be generous with. One is material things, stuff, you know, donations, food, clothing, shelter, material stuff. The second one is Dharma.

We can practice the generosity of Dharma and it doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to be wearing red robes and sitting in front of the class. Sharing the Dharma, sharing your understanding as much as you can with the people in your life. And we’re talking over lunch. You don’t have to call it Buddhism. You don’t you know, just skillfully share with people what works for you in terms of dealing with your suffering.

You don’t have to call it Buddhism. You know? And that’s a great vehicle to share the Dharma, just practical little tricks and tips. And it’s beautiful and it’s one of the six perfections. The third one is offering protection or fearlessness.

When beings are in some kind of danger, you offer protection to beings. You know, I’m we’ve been talking, I’m super into this animal rescue thing. I’m involved in all of these little animal rescue attempts. And often, I think this is part of this. You know, when an animal is really in danger of being killed or is, you know, a stray and starving to death in northern India, you know, I really help to sponsor these animal refuges.

So any kind of being that needs protection, you know, you try to offer that. And then love. This one’s great. It’s cheap. In fact, it’s free.

You don’t need any special knowledge like you do for the dharma. Just being kind to people. And Sandra mentioned before, you know, all day, just be friendly. Just smile at people. Just speak kindly to people in shops and things, you know.

I do this thing in California. I don’t know if you guys do it so much here. All of the people in shops have a little name tag, you know, with their name on it and I always try and make a point of calling them by name because nobody else has called them my name all day and it there it is. It’s so easy and you go, hey, Bill. How’s it going?

And suddenly, because you called him by name, he’s so happy. I mean, it’s the easiest way to make somebody happy. There’s some magic thing. If you just go, hey, how’s it going? It’s different than if you actually call them by name and there’s that personal connection.

So there’s so many ways that we can just be kind to the people we run into. And that’s a beautiful way of offering that love. Oh, completely. Yeah. That everybody’s been treating them like a machine all day long and then you eventually check-in.

Yeah. That’s right. I do this cute thing now because I travel from country to country and I never know what the change is, you know, so I do this thing now of like just holding out my hand with all of my change and letting them like pick it out and it always makes them so happy because you’re doing this childlike thing and I always just go, I don’t know what it is. Do I have it here? Help me.

And then they’re like, oh, this is a five cents and this is ten cents, you know. So it’s very cute, you know. I just kind of put myself in the position of like this stupid small child. So any of those things that we do, you know, offering love. And then ethics, and this is something we talked about in the Bodhisattva vows.

Usually, we when we think of ethics or morality, we only think of the first one, refraining from non virtue. But ethics has these three components, refraining from non virtue, accumulating virtuous actions, and benefiting sentient beings. So all three are included in the perfection of ethics. Okay? Then patience also has three parts to it.

Sometimes this word is sopa. It’s actually Lama sopa’s name. Lama patience. Okay, sopa is the Tibetan word, sometimes translated as forbearance, sometimes translated as tolerance. And it has these three different meanings.

Not getting angry and retaliating. Right? And this means when you think that it’s justified, just don’t. And we talked about that a lot in the twelve links thing. You get upset, you know, something happens, you get upset, you’re just about to act, just stop.

Understand again karma. That person you’re not a helpless victim of random craziness. It’s karma that caused you to experience what you do. So refraining from getting angry and retaliating. The second one, just accepting hardship.

Samsāra is a mixed bag. We’re going to be experiencing good situations and unpleasant situations for a long time. So this one is just about not freaking out when you’re in the hotel in India and the hot water runs out when you’re halfway through your bath. Just accept that hardship is part of the mixed bag of saṃsāra. Right?

So it’s just about tolerance or forbearance to hardship. Okay? And then the last one is putting effort into your Dharma practice. You know, putting effort, studying, meditating, especially on emptiness. It’s not easy.

It takes a lot of hard work, a lot of study, a lot of meditation. And this is just about having the patience and not giving up. Right? Not throwing in the towel, just realizing it’s gonna take some effort and having the patience to put up with that. So those are the three different flavors of patience.

So it doesn’t mean waiting for a bus. You know? It means specifically these these three things. So, any questions about these first three? Okay.

So, let’s look at then enthusiasm, joyous effort. Sometimes it’s translated as joyful effort, joyous effort. There’s one translator, Alan Wallace, that’s a quite well known meditation teacher. He goes, for God’s sake, don’t call it effort. Call it enthusiasm.

So now I’ve started using enthusiasm, but I put joyous effort in parentheses because that’s what we’re used to. But he goes, don’t do that because then it’s this thing of, like, drudgery it invokes. And he goes, it’s just about this is taking joy in virtue. That’s the definition of this one. Getting off on virtuous things.

Instead of being happy about non virtue, we’re just being happy about virtue. That’s the definition of this one, enthusiasm. And it overcomes three flavors of laziness. The laziness of procrastination. Oh, I’m young and I’ll do my Dharma practice later after I retire or this weekend or tonight, you know, oh, I woke up late and I don’t have time and yada yada yada.

And before you know it, your precious human rebirth is over and you keep putting off what’s meaningful. So this is about the laziness of procrastinating, putting off virtue. There’s another kind of laziness attraction to meaningless activity. And this comes up a lot. It comes up in the Bodhisattva vows.

We’ll see that as we go through the vows. We have so much energy for meaningless activity. You know, you’re sitting around going, oh, meditate. God, I had such a hard day at work. And then your friend comes over and says, let’s go to the for a run-in the park.

Yeah. Okay. Great. You know, we have tons of energy for things that are meaningless and our Dharma practice, you know, we don’t have any energy for that at all. So it’s attraction to meaningless activity.

And then the last thing, this is a kind of laziness, the laziness of discouragement. Oh, everybody has Buddha nature but me. Lord Buddha was wrong. I can’t do it. It’s too hard.

I’m too old. You know, I’m too my mind is too crazy. I don’t have the right it’s not quiet enough. Like, it is, we get discouraged about our capacity. Right?

So that’s considered a kind of laziness and we have to really guard against, you know, all of them but especially discouragement. And that’s when we talked about when it doesn’t happen fast enough, then it’s easy to get into this one. You know, wow, I’ve been meditating for months and I got angry. I was using once I always use my own afflictions as examples because it helps and it’s true and I know what it feels like. And I was teaching once in this prison and I was talking about antidotes to anger and I was explaining about this time that I got really angry at somebody and then this happened, this happened, this happened.

About four months later, I had an interview with one of the inmates that was in that class. Like, usually, would go in and do a class and then try and have one on one kind of fifteen minutes each with the ones that wanted an appointment. He goes, I have to confess. He goes, I was so disillusioned the day that you’d used that example about being angry because I thought, she’s a Buddhist nun? And she got angry?

And I’m like, dude, man. It’s like, let’s get real. So but sometimes we can be discouraged ourselves at things like that. Like, We’ve been practicing for a while and then all hell breaks loose. So we have to be careful about discouragement and wanting quick results and expecting them and then getting discouraged when they don’t happen.

He got over his disillusionment. He said, after that, I was really upset and I went back to my cell and I was like, man, if she’s a Buddhist nun and she gets you know, and then he then he’s like, but but I’m stubborn. So I kept coming back and now I get it, you know. So fifth perfection concentration. We talked about this a little bit before.

We said you need to develop this perfect concentration that you can focus on an object for, the scriptures say, four hours or as long as you want without any wavering from the object, no distraction whatsoever, clarity and intensity, that engagement, like when you’re on the edge of your seat at a good movie or Harry Potter or whatever it is. Okay? So this is called the Tibetan word for this single pointed concentration is shine. You may have heard of that word or śamatha is the Sanskrit word. Huge details about how to develop that.

You know, you don’t just kind of sit there and go, okay, I’m gonna do it. I’m gonna concentrate for four hours and sit down. You know, huge teachings on that. In fact, Alan Wallace, the translator that I just mentioned, focuses on that. Like, he’s just decided to really pretty much focus his life on teaching that, those techniques and enabling people to generate single pointed concentration just because it’s such an important part of the path.

Not a goal in itself, but completely necessary for generating this wisdom. Okay? So super important. In fact, non negotiable. If you want to see emptiness directly, you have to have developed perfect single pointed concentration.

No other way. So non negotiable quality of the path is this concentration. Okay? So, any questions about those six perfections? Are you completely burned out or can you deal with a little taste of emptiness?

You okay, Peter? You can deal with it? Alright. Alright. Just for the icing on the cake, why not?

We’ll talk about this one because we haven’t talked about wisdom. I keep teasing you with little hints about the ultimate nature of reality. So, let’s talk about it. Yeah. Right.

Right. I could. Well, that’s why I’m gonna give them a little taste and then they’ll get really interested to come back for the Heart Sūtra weekend. I’m not supposed to advertise myself. That’s Kathy’s job.

But the Heart Sūtra is all about emptiness and it’s all about how you progress on the path, like the milestones. You know, we talked about the aria milestone, but in the Heart Sūtra, it’s an explanation. Actually, it’s meditation instructions. The Heart Sūtra. How many of you have chanted or recited the Heart Sūtra?

Did you know that it was meditation instruction? It is. And you’ll find out in two weekends if you come back. Right? It’s specific instructions about how to meditate at each stage of the path.

So it’s talking about how to meditate on emptiness at each of the stages of the path. So that’s what we’ll talk about. There. See, I advertise myself anyway, even though it’s completely inappropriate. That’s alright.

Alright. Okay. So, let’s finish with just a taste of emptiness. So now, the Buddha famously taught the doctrine of Sanskrit word anātman, no self, Highly misunderstood idea. The Buddha didn’t say that we don’t exist.

You know, people have you had this? People go, oh, you Buddhists don’t think anything exists. Right? Or, You don’t think the self exists. That’s not what the Buddha taught.

What the Buddha taught was that there are ways that we think that the self exists that it doesn’t. And then there’s a very subtle way that the self does exist. The Buddhinists say, We’re not in this room. We don’t exist. It’s all just a big hallucination.

But the Buddha said, The way we do think that we exist is really different than reality. Okay? So let’s first talk about three views of how the self exists that the Buddha refuted. Okay? So the Buddha said, these are not the way that we exist.

And the first one is a self that is permanent, unitary, and independent. So what does that look like? Permanent means not changing moment to moment to moment. Unitary means no parts, no composite parts. Independent means independent of causes and conditions.

So a self that would exist in this way as permanent, unitary, and independent, Buddha said, no such thing. Now, what would an example of one of those be? What kind of idea would there be of a self that existed like that? Yeah. Yeah.

A soul. Okay. Very there was an idea in fact, in India now and in the time of Lord Buddha, there’s an idea that there was this sort of ultimate ground of being called Brahman, this absolute ground of being. And then there was a part of us called Ātman that was like a piece of that absolute, and the goal of the spiritual path was to reunite with that ultimate ground of being. So there was a part inside of us that was the real self.

And sometimes now in the literature of certain Hindu traditions, you’ll see they translate capital s self and little l s self. So the capital ‘S’ Self was this one, the Ātman. Permanent, not changing moment by moment, not any parts, not dependent on causes and conditions, a little chip of that absolute ground of being. Okay? Very similar, I think, to some Christian idea of the soul.

You know, that there’s part of you that’s the real you, that’s the essence. Right? But then when you die, it’s sort of like Casper the ghost and sort of rises up and, like, goes to heaven or next rebirth or whatever the idea is. But it’s the same kind of an idea that there’s something there that’s permanent, unitary, independent, like an ātman or like a soul. So the Buddha said there is no such thing.

Now the Buddha also said this wrong idea of how the self exists has to be learned. This is one that is learned through a religion or a philosophy. This isn’t innate. This is a learned one. Right?

So you learn that because you’re a good, you know, Hindu of the branches that believe in Ātman or you’re a good Christian. You know, I don’t know that much about sort of a Christian idea of the soul, but I think some and I know there’s a lot of differences and a lot of subtlety, but some of them would be this one. So the Buddha said, no. That’s not the way that we exist. Okay?

The Buddha also refuted. That’s a gross view of how the self exists. Gross, not meaning, like, disgusting, but but coarse, you know, gross. There’s a subtler wrong view of how the self exists as substantially existent, self sufficient self. And what does this mean?

This means one that’s independent of body and mind like a controller of your body and mind. Right? So I think one of my friends who teaches uses this great analogy, he says, it’s like on a big construction site, there’s a crane, right, that’s lifting the eye beams up to this, you know, skyscraper. In a little box, there’s some guy or maybe a woman in the, you know, these days of affirmative action or whatever, with, you know, running the show, you know, moving the levers and then the thing is doing its thing. And we have an idea that there’s some real me somewhere in our body and mind that’s like the controller, the driver.

In fact, in Western philosophy, I think it was the late seventeen hundreds, there was this idea of the homunculus that lived in the pituitary gland, a little guy who lived in near pituitary gland, like the crane operator. You know, this was actually an idea of Western philosophy based on this this one’s innate. This one’s innate. And so you see these ideas in philosophy. That was an idea in Western philosophy.

There’s pictures, you know, you can find pictures and, of course, because it was the late seventeen hundreds, dressed in a top hat and a, you know, tails and a cane, the homunculus that lived inside of you. I remember when I was little, I used to think that the real me, like, lived in my head and was looking outside my eyeballs. Have you ever had an idea like the me You know, I would sit and meditate and I thought it was so profound, but what I was really meditating on was the wrong view of the self. I felt like and you know, there’s phrases like the eyes are the windows of the soul. Right?

And you think I mean, most Western people, we think we live in our heads. We’re so cerebrally oriented. You ask, where do you think you are? And you’ll point here. Sometimes you point here, me.

And in fact, when we say me, often we point here. That’s quite interesting because according to Buddhism, the most subtle consciousness resides at the heart chakra. So it’s quite interesting that just instinctively when we say me, we don’t usually go, oh, me. We go, me. But if you really ask, you know, where do you think you are in your body?

Most people feel like, you know, my thing of, like, being behind my eyes. Some traditional cultures think they live in their gonads, their reproductive organs. That actually makes a lot more sense. Right? Because that’s kind of what that’s really what goes from life to life.

You know? Lama Zopa says, and I don’t know if it’s true, he has this thing that he talks about when he’s explaining this and he says, Japanese people point to their nose. Like when they go, ‘Me?’ they point to their nose. I don’t know how valid that is but it’s some idea that Lama Zopa has. It might be true.

But it’s this idea that there’s some ‘me’ in there somewhere, independent of the body and mind. Okay? And so, does that that one make sense? The controller, the driver, sometimes it’s called like the manager. Right?

And then, the subtlest one is an inherently existent self. Exists from its own side, by its own nature. And to this one is very subtle and to understand what this one means, we need to get into dependent arising because we say, the way things do exist is as a dependent arising. Because they’re dependent arising, they’re empty of inherent existence. So it’s like two sides of a coin, two ways of looking at exactly the same quality.

You know, because things are dependent arising, they’re empty of inherent existence. Okay? So it’s two ways of looking at the same quality of every existing thing. And we say that the reasoning or meditating on dependent arising is the easiest way to get an understanding of emptiness. So now let’s look at dependent arising and then we’ll see the relationship between these two things.

And by the way, this is a lot that we’re doing in a short period of time. But again, I just wanted to introduce these ideas and give you a little taste of it. Don’t feel like you’re gonna be able to understand it perfectly today, because you won’t, you know, but it might be the first time that you hear the concepts and then the next time you hear them, they make more sense. Okay? So let’s look at dependent arising.

And we have three levels of dependent arising. Now, dependent arising, sometimes you’ll hear different translations of this. You’ll hear dependent origination, codependent origination. One of my friends who’s a translator and just published a book on Lama Tsongkhapa wrote a text called Praise to Dependent Origination. He prefers the translation dependent relativity.

And I really like that one because it’s actually quite accurate. It just hasn’t really caught on yet, which is why I’m calling this dependent arising. He’s really hoping that dependent relativity will catch on as a translation for this. So we say that things are dependent on causes and conditions. Okay?

All functioning things, all products are dependent on causes and conditions. So let’s take the glass. We use this as an example. So this glass This glass is dependent on causes and conditions. So what are the causes?

When we talk about causes, we talk about the material stuff that turns into the glass. And for glass, it’s like silicon and what is it that makes up glass? You know? Whatever it is, the substances, the chemical substances that are used, you know, to make up glass. So those would be the causes.

And then the conditions, I think they need to heat it and fire it. And there’s some factory with people working in it, and then there’s machines. All of those are the conditions. So we’ve got the material substance that turns into the glass, the silicon and the whatever chemicals. And then we’ve got the process, which is the conditions.

So we can’t say that the glass exists independently of those causes and conditions. Right? So the glass is a dependent arising, dependent on causes and conditions. That one’s super easy to understand, isn’t it? So every fun functioning thing, the paper, the brocade, the bell, me, the microphone, all exists in dependence on causes and conditions.

So the stuff that made it and the process, the conditions. Right? Now the glass is also dependent on its parts for its existence. It’s a dependent arising dependent on parts. So for a glass, what are the parts?

The cylinder, the bottom, the open top. Those would be the parts of the glass. So if you just had the cylinder without the bottom, it would just be a glass tube that you could use for who knows what a big napkin ring or something. Right? If it didn’t have if it were just the bottom without the cylinder, it would just be a glass coaster.

If it weren’t open on top, it would just be a glass, you know, kind of container that you couldn’t drink out of. So the glass exists in dependence on all of those component parts. So, again, dependence on component parts. We can’t talk about the glass independently of the parts. Now this is the tricky part and this is really subtle, the third level.

Both of those two easy to understand. The third level is tricky. We’re gonna go over it a couple of times. You’re gonna have to think about it. You’re gonna have to cook it as one of my friends says.

He goes, I’m giving you all the raw vegetables. You need to simmer it and make it into soup. Okay? So we also say the subtlest level of dependent arising is things are dependent on conceptual imputation or designation. So how does that work?

So according to Buddhist philosophy, we have what we call generic images. It’s usually translated as generic image, mental image. Sometimes the word dunshi is the Tibetan word translated meaning generality. It’s a very general concept in our mind, very generic image. It’s sort of like a kid’s picture book picture.

You know, glass, cow, apple, you know, very general sort of image in our mind. So what happens when I walk into this room and I see an object like the glass or, excuse me, like the glass cylinder with the bottom and the open top, when I see that object with those parts, the first thing that happens is I have a visual, raw visual sense data coming in. Right? Raw data. And then, almost instantaneously, I’m matching it up with all of the generic images in my head.

What matches it? I come up with the generic image glass and then I impute or designate that label, that idea, that concept on the cylinder. Then I start talking about the glass on my table. So far so good. No problem with that.

The problem is then I think it’s a glass from its own side independent of my conceptual designation. Okay? That’s the problem. That last bit, it was okay. Raw data, raw sense data matching up with my mental images, concept imputed on the object.

Then I call it a glass. I can say to Judy, my glass is empty. Could you please put the water in the glass? We all know what we’re talking about. Fine.

But I don’t get that that’s how the glass exists. Right? There’s no glass from its own side independent of that process. What’s there? A valid basis of the label glass.

A cylinder with a bottom and an open top that we’ve all decided we’re gonna call such an object a glass. So it exists the way that it exists is as a result of our conceptual imputation and our designation. Result of imputation There’s no glass there from its own side independent of that. Yeah. A lot of it is, especially for humans, and it’s also very linked with language.

So we talk about names and terms. Well, that’s right. So it’s convention too. It’s convention. Now if I were an Inuit in Greenland, what do they drink water out of?

Probably some kind of seal bladder or something. If they saw this object, would they have the conceptual imputation, oh, glass for drinking water? Probably not at all. So we say it’s based on consensus, and it’s cultural. It’s not universal.

And a perfect example, you guys most of you guys who are around my age, you probably remember. Remember that movie from the eighties, the gods must be crazy. Right? And the Coke bottle comes out of did you see this movie, Sandra? The Coke bottle comes out of the low flying plane in the middle of the Kalahari Desert.

Right? The bushman picks it up and takes it home. He doesn’t know it’s a Coke bottle. We’re all laughing our heads off because what are we thinking? Oh, it’s look.

Look. It’s really a Coke bottle. Is it really a Coke bottle? Not to him. Not to him.

What is it? A glass cylinder to us because we have that conceptual image, light green, specific shape, c o c a, c o l a. We think Coke bottle. To him, you know, he takes it back to the village. They use it as a rolling pin and then a weapon, and it’s this hilarious movie.

And I always thought, Lama Zopa would see that movie and go, what? What’s so funny? It’s not really a Coke bottle. There isn’t any Coke within five hundred miles of the Kalahari Desert. It doesn’t function as a Coke bottle.

It’s just our concept says Coke bottle. Okay? And we have and it’s so solid in our mind. Oh, it’s really a Coke bottle. But for him, he’s imputing rolling pin on a perfectly innocent glass cylinder that we lay our trip Coke bottle.

Poor thing. The green glass bottle is minding its own business sitting there, and we lay our trip Coke bottle on that cylinder. And then we think it’s a Coke bottle from its own side. So that’s what we’re doing all the time. And we don’t question it all.

And we believe that appearance, which is just a result of our conceptual imputation. You know? And Sandra’s right. It’s very relative, you know, to culture, to different realms. And there’s this great example, and I have to fill up the glass to explain.

There’s a great example in this text by master Candrakīrti called the Madhyamakāvatāra, a commentary on a text by Nāgārjuna called fundamental stanzas of the middle way. And he says, there’s three beings sitting around looking at a glass full of liquid. And I would imagine sort of a humphrey Bogart movie, like a sort of a dark bar with, you know, Sam playing the piano and the light, like, shining down and these three beings kind of sitting around and the waitress comes up and, like, slams the glass down. And we’ve got a human being, and we’ve got a preta, a hungry ghost or craving spirit, and we’ve got a deva, a being from the pleasure enjoyment realms sitting around together. Now, the human being, let’s say it’s me, perceives the liquid as water.

Nice to drink, thirst quenching. Right? Because of my karma as a human being, I have the conceptual imputation on that liquid as water. Now the craving spirit, the hungry ghost, totally different karma, perceives and experiences I’m sorry. It’s kind of gross.

Puss in blood. That’s one of the problems with the with the Preta or the hungry ghost realm. You have a karmic obscuration to being able to experience anything nice to eat or drink. So my perfectly clean glass of water, because of the karma of that other being, right, and shared karma of all the beings in the hungry ghost realm, they would all experience it as pus and blood. Then you’ve got the Deva, who has way better karma than I do, experiences it as ambrosia, you know, nectar of the gods, amrita, something divine to drink.

All of those perceptions forced on them by their karma. So we talk about conceptual imputation and designation. It’s very relative. And I sometimes think in terms of sort of concentric circles of shared karma. Right?

Like, human being born on planet Earth shares a certain karma to have certain common perceptions. And then, say, everybody who lives in a certain country or all sort of twenty first century technological western people have certain shared perceptions that maybe somebody who wasn’t a twenty first century technological person like the Inuit or the somebody in Papua New Guinea wouldn’t perceive this as a glass to drink water out of and the computer as the, know, the laptop. Right? And then concentric circles of shared karmic experience. Right?

And then when it comes right down to it, it’s completely individual. You know, we all have a very unique perceptions and conceptual imputations, again, forced on us by our karma. We don’t choose. They’re forced on us by our karma. But that’s why even though things are a result of conceptual imputation and designation, we can talk to each other.

We do have some shared reality because we share a certain karma just as human beings, you know, with similar enough language and perceptions. But when it comes right down to it, we all have completely unique perceptions forced on us by our karma. Okay. So, the emptiness of the glass is its lack of existing in any other way than a conceptual imputation labeled on a valid basis. So we talk we talk in philosophy about this is a valid basis of imputation of the label glass.

What makes it valid? Function, consensus, and continuity. Okay? We’ve all decided, all of us twenty first century Western people have decided by consensus that a cylinder of a certain size with a bottom and an open top that has the function of holding liquid is a glass. That’s what makes this a glass.

That’s all. Function, consensus, also continuity because even though the glass is changing moment by moment by moment and strictly speaking isn’t the same glass as it was when I walked in this morning or even five nanoseconds ago, there is continuity. So I can say to Judy, could you please put the water into my glass? And she know and it’s okay to use that language because we have a continuity of the object. So it’s a valid basis of my imputation glass.

And that hang on one second. And it shows why we can’t just decide what things are. Everything exists as a result of conceptual imputation, but we can’t just decide. Like, up until last year, I was one of the few of the seven billion human beings on the planet that didn’t have a mobile phone. I just wasn’t into it.

I didn’t hang on one sec. I what’s that? You don’t have one either. Well, then I was stuck in the Melbourne airport. I was flying to Sydney from Melbourne, and I get there, and they canceled my flight.

And it’s such a short flight from Sydney to Melbourne that the person that was picking me up at the airport was already on the way, and I didn’t have a mobile phone because I’d always refused. You know? So the after that incident, I was like, okay. I travel too much. It’s just too complicated.

I have to do it. So if I were there at the Melbourne airport and I’d gone to the cafe and I had my glass of water, Could I have said, oh, since everything is, you know, a dependent arising, you know, based on concepts, great. I’ll just decide that this is a mobile phone and make my phone call. You know, could I have picked up my, you know, glass and said, well, I’ll just designate mobile phone and try and call her. No.

It doesn’t work that way. But just because this functions as as a glass, it’s not a glass from its own side at all. Right? It’s only a glass because of that conceptual designation. And that’s the part that’s hard to get used to.

And, again, you need to cook it. You know, I’m giving you the raw materials. One of the things that I find really helpful is to pick an object that you see all the time. For me, it’s the teacup because I’m always drinking tea or the pen or the computer, whatever it is. And every time you see that object during the day, quickly go through those three levels of dependent arising and analyze the object.

Right? It’s a great vehicle to get familiar with that and it starts to deconstruct that solid appearance of that object. Right? And once you start to deconstruct in terms of one object, it sort of trickles out to everything. You know?

Now it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t function. It just means that solid feeling we have that it’s coming from its own side in exactly the way that it appears to us. That starts to break down. Now I it doesn’t really matter to me to see the emptiness of the glass. And remember I said the emptiness, it’s like two sides of a coin.

Because it’s a dependent arising, because it’s dependent on conceptual imputation, it’s empty of inherent existence. Doesn’t exist from its own side because it’s a result of conceptual imputation. So it’s two ways of looking at exactly the same quality. Now seeing the emptiness of the glass isn’t gonna help me much because I don’t have really a lot of attachment. It’s a nice glass.

It served me well this weekend, but, hey, you know, I can go back to the flat today and be okay. But what is problematic, especially the way I think that I exist from my own side, that there’s some Tenzin Chökyi in there inherently existent. And you better not criticize her, and she’s really looking for nice experiences to have or the things that build up her sense of herself. Right? Because I think that I exist inherently too.

So it’s really important to do this analysis for ourselves. How do we exist as a result of causes and conditions? That part’s easy. Sperm, egg, food. Right, education, all those shelter, all those factors that went into making us who we are today.

So the causes and conditions, that’s easy to see. The parts, all the parts of the body and mind. For those of you that have studied the five aggregates, you can think in terms of that. Even more simply, body and mind. You know?

Body has parts. Mind is a continuum of moments of mind. So we’re dependent on all of those parts. How many parts can be missing, and can I still be Tenzin Chökyi? Well, I could have my leg amputated, probably both, maybe even my arms.

Couldn’t have my head amputated. That wouldn’t work. Right? So certain parts can be missing, and you can still have a valid basis for that label, Tenzin Chökyi. Right?

But I am dependent on my parts And dependent on conceptual imputation designation. On the valid basis, which is the functioning continuum of body and mind of this continuum, I label Tenzin Chökyi. I have an idea in my head, Tensen Choki, right? My generic image of Tenzin Chökyi, that I then label on a body that’s changing moment by moment, a mind that’s changing moment by moment, what really exists, just this ever changing continuum of body and mind. And then there’s a label that I slap on top of that.

And that’s the way Tenzin Chökyi exists. That is the way we exist. That’s the conventional I, Lord Buddha said, that which is merely labeled by mind on the valid basis. That is how we exist. Remember I said the Buddha didn’t say there’s no self, but the self that does exist is very subtle.

It’s just that which is labeled by concepts on the basis, which is an ever changing, right, impermanent continuum of body and mind. Okay? So you have to get used to it. And that’s what lack of inherent existence means, and that’s what emptiness means. Emptiness means you’re empty of existing inherently because you’re dependent arising, especially dependent on that subtlest level.

Right? And and first, like I said, we get used to it intellectually, and then we actually have a direct experience of that lack of inherent existence in deep meditation. But first, it’s doing what we’ve done, and I’m sorry to be doing it at the end of the second day, but that’s kind of where it comes in, and they’re they have no choice. But like I said, come back for the Heart Sūtra. We’ll hash it out in extreme excruciating detail for an entire weekend.

Right? But this will give you kind of a sneak preview of that. But you really need to like I said, pick an object, keep breaking it down. You know? Keep seeing how it’s a dependent arising, and then, you know, seeing how because it’s a dependent arising, it’s empty of inherent existence.

Okay? That’s what emptiness means. Doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. It doesn’t mean it’s like empty space. It just means the emptiness or voidness of a certain impossible way of existing.

What’s that impossible way of existing? Inherently, from its own side, coming at me without my concepts doing the imputation. Okay? Kathy, are you alright? You’re frowning over there.

What’s happening? Right. Well, that’s right. That’s right. And like I said, for us as human beings, language is so tied in with concepts for us.

And I always use the example of again, the Inuit may not see this as a glass, but they see thirty five different kinds of snow. Is that right? I read it when I was quite young. Yeah. And it turns out to be fantasy class.

So I was trying to teach people. Oh, okay. Well, okay. Let’s not use the Inuit, but I was teaching a class in India, there was a Finnish woman, and she said, we have eleven different words for snow. So I know that the Finns have eleven words for snow.

Me, I’ve never really lived anywhere that it snowed. I perceived two things, the really squishy wet kind that you can make the snow person out of and the dry powdery kind. Like, when it’s when I’m somewhere that snows, I perceive two different kinds because she has the language. She has eleven And I said, is it really eleven different words? And she’s like, yeah.

She actually, because she has language, can differentiate. So, has eleven generic images in her mind, which because of language, her generic images are conditioned by her language. And for human beings, that’s really important, and it’s hard to really separate our generic images. Navajos in the southwest of the United States have one word for blue and green because they work with a lot of turquoise, which is just this sort of aqua going from blue to green. So it’s interesting.

Do they see the difference, like, between the tree and the sky and between subtle differentiation? So for us, it’s definitely tied into language. And that’s one way of of that helps us understand. Wow. You know, like I say, I don’t see eleven different things when I see snow.

My mind isn’t filled with eleven different generic images the way the Finnish woman’s is. You know? And there’s tons of examples like that. So I think part of learning, like I look at learning, especially in the first, you know, five or six years, it’s really learning these concepts and these generic images. Like the kids picture book, cow, cup, apple.

You know, you’re filling your mind with generic images. Now does a baby see emptiness directly? No. There’s still yeah. But we say, you know, there’s still conceptual imputation.

It’s just not tied into language. At the place that I was living in Mahāmudrā, there was this goat, you know, this sort of goat that somebody had rescued because people had him by the side of the road as a lawnmower, and they thought it was cruel. So they brought him to the center. Well, Mani the goat. You know?

I would always use him as an example because I said, if Mani the goat walked in this meditation hall, would he see chairs, cushions, tankas? No. He doesn’t have that generic image, but it does have concepts. What are Mani’s concepts? Really basic.

Can I eat it? Is it gonna eat me? Can I mate with it? Real basic. Three basic generic images.

Know? So even you know, animals have this. Babies have this. It’s just, you know, sophisticated for adult human beings with language. But it’s it’s it’s great to, you know, mull over all of these things of, like, where do our concepts come from?

I have another great example. I was in this long meditation retreat. During my retreat, they invented, whoever they is, Sony, invented m p three technology. Right? So I come out of this retreat.

And back when I went into the retreat to record the teaching of the Lama, there was this big cassette machine with the two tape things and somebody sitting and they’d have to flip really quickly, like they have two forty five you know, ninety minute tapes and it’s sort of like the a side and then quickly so you don’t lose a word and flip flip and click click and push and, you know, eject. So I come out of retreat, and I’m, you know, going to a teaching. And I’m sitting right behind the translator, and I see people passing up to her, these reincarnated, you know, TV remote controls and cigarette lighters. And she’s sort of pushing a button and saying, And she doesn’t have to change anything for, like, two hours, and I’m going, wow. What’s that?

What is it? What’s well, okay. I didn’t have the generic image yet, m p three recorder. I had learned. You know?

But I did have the generic image, small electronic recording device. So that was my label. You know? So people kind of say, well, if you don’t know what something is, then does that mean well, you have some kind of concept around it. It’s like, even if I didn’t know it was a recording device, small metal box, whatever.

Right? So it may not be, you know, a sophisticated label, but we’re still labeling, you know, on the basis of our concepts at whatever level we have, even the baby, even the goat. Like I say, the goat cannot eat it. Is it scary? Does it look great?

Can I mate with no? He was fixed. So that probably didn’t enter in. It was probably just the first two. You know?

So we all have them. So do the thing that I said, pick something, and analyze. Break it down. Because if we start to do it with the cup, it’s easier to do it with me. It’s easier to do it with the object of attachment, the object of aversion.

If the yelling boss, horrible and unpleasant from his own side, no. And you know how that works. Like, you find somebody to be irritating, and then they can’t do anything right. And even the way he tucks his shirt into his pants annoys you. I mean, everything.

Right? Because you have this concept of annoying that you’re imputing on every action. You know? So it really helps to start questioning those appearances. How many of those appearances that seem so strongly like the object is attractive or unattractive from its own side.

It’s just our concepts we’re designating on it. Right? And it helps a lot. And, again, going back to the twelve links thing, in fact, let’s do that, and then I promise I’ll let you go because everybody’s like, woah. So going back to the twelve link thing, like I said, if we use that level of analysis, it helps even more because where are we?

Wow. We’re way back there. Okay. Because then when you have a contact with the object, not only are you questioning and saying, oh, that feeling that I have of pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral isn’t caused by the object, it’s caused by my past karma. Even the way the object appears to you, right, is your concept.

Even the way it appears is attractive or unattractive. It’s empty of of existing that way from its own side. So that’s an even subtler way of working with the twelve links. Right? You say, wow.

Even the fact that the object appears so strongly attractive or unattractive, even that’s my concepts. Right? So that helps a lot. That’s an even another subtler way of working with the twelve links is reminding of emptiness. Sandra, you had a question.

Yeah. Yeah. That’s right. And that’s when you have to yeah. Yeah.

Sure. Sure. And and that’s when, you know, the function and sometimes it can have several functions. You know? So I could drink out of this.

This is this the carafe, or is this something I could drink out of? Right? So, yeah, it it isn’t like everything is exclusive. Again, it’s just the concept based on the function in that moment of that object. And and certain objects have several functions.

So at one time to one person, it’s the glass. At one point to another person, it’s the vase. So it can be like that. Yeah. That’s true.

Because some people would just say, oh, no. You don’t put flowers in this. It’s the wrong shape. They never consider using this as a vase. For some people, it would be perfectly fine.

You know? So, yeah, different people would have a completely different conceptual imputation on the range of functions even of this object. Yeah. That’s right. That’s right.

You know? But we might still say we’re putting a candle in the glass. You know, we might still see it as a glass and just say, for now, because I don’t have a proper lamp, I’ll put a candle in the glass. You know? But these are the kind of things like work with it and really check your perceptions.

You know? Why is it that we have certain perceptions about certain things that are sometimes so solid that we’re not able to accept that they could function in a different way? That’s an interesting thing. You know, they seem so inherently glass. You never think to put a candle in here during the wind, which would be a great thing to do because it would keep the candle from blowing up.

But, you know, your inherent, you know, appearance of this as drinking glass is so strong that you can’t be flexible in terms of function. So all of this, work with it. Like I say, cook it. Work with it. Think about it because it takes a lot of getting used to.

Because Lord Buddha said, things have appeared as inherently existent to us since beginningless time. So the last forty five minutes of the weekend class ain’t gonna make much of a dent in our view unless we really work with the concepts. But like I said, not to advertise the Heart Sūtra, but that’s what the Heart Sūtra is all about. It’s really cool. You know?

So if you want more of a taste. But like I said, Lama Yeshe had this mantra, question appearances. And remember I said before, if you’re under the control of a strong disturbing emotion, check your exaggeration. And this is why. Because what is it about that that you’re exaggerating that you might be misperceiving?

What is your conceptual imputation on that object? Now you’ve got an even subtler way of looking at it. Check your conceptual imputation. How valid is it? Can you open up your thinking in a different way?

You know, is the person who doesn’t who passes by you in the hallway that you always thought was a snob and aloof, maybe they’re too shy. Maybe the same thing of not looking at you and not talking isn’t because they’re a snob, it’s because they’re shy. You know? Is it are we imputing the correct label onto the appearance or not? You know, sometimes not.

Right? So it’s very cool. Any questions? Peter, you alright? Now I was now I was feeling shy because I keep picking on him.

Yeah. Good. Good. Alright. Well, I think we’ll leave it.

That’s a very auspicious place to end. So let us, dedicate all of the positive energy from this weekend, which has been considerable. So think, in this weekend, we got a introduction at least to the entire path, the four noble truths. We really looked in a lot of detail about the causation of suffering, which is so important for understanding how the path works. And we just had an introduction to the idea of emptiness, the wisdom of which is the antidote to that root ignorance that’s the root of saṃsāra.

His great master, Āryadeva, said, even doubting, even questioning that things exist in the way that they appear, even generating the smallest doubt, tears Samsāra to shreds. So think, since beginningless time, maybe we’ve never even questioned that things exist in exactly the way that they appear, and now we’ve generated that doubt, huge amount of virtue in that. So let’s dedicate all of that positive energy that we’ve generated this weekend towards being able to generate all of the realizations of the path, renunciation, bodhicitta, correct view of the nature of reality, and attain full enlightenment for the benefit of all living beings. Great. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you for coming. It was great to meet you. Yeah. Yep.

You know I wrote a brochure, so I’ll give it back to you. Yeah. I just was interested great. Thank you. Yeah.

Yeah. Good. Good. Yeah. I don’t know either.

Remains to be seen. Great. Thank you. Thank you, Kathy, very much. Right.