Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 45-minute evening talk, Ven Margaret McAndrew recounts the life of Atisha, the eleventh-century Indian scholar and yogi who transformed Tibetan Buddhism. Moving chronologically through his training with hundreds of gurus, his journey to Sumatra to deepen his understanding of bodhicitta with Lama Serlingpa, and his reluctant invitation to Tibet, she highlights King Yeshe’s sacrifice—held for ransom, he sends the gold to Atisha instead, choosing death for the sake of the Dharma. McAndrew traces how Atisha resolved the dangerous confusion between sūtra and tantra that had arisen in Tibet and established the Kadampa lineage, which influenced all subsequent Tibetan Buddhist schools. The talk emphasizes guru devotion and the discernment required to recognize a genuine teacher.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 46 MTT 1998 08 13.mp3
UUID: ff290ea1-2240-4431-973c-dd6020a8cffb
Teacher: Ven Margaret McAndrew
Collection: Evening with V M McAndrew (Ven Margaret McAndrew)
Date: 1998-08-13
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.3 minutes
Words: ~5,625
This time, they gave him permission to go and do as he wished. No strings attached. So they were probably quite relieved, really, to get rid of him. So Atisha and the yogis and the yoginis went back to this guru, Avadhutipa, who then went on to another guru, Guru Avadhutipa, who taught him for seven years. And from this guru, he learned the Mādhyamika philosophy, philosophic view, the Middle Way School, and many other things.
He studied many philosophical teachings and became an expert in sūtra and tantra. He also became an accomplished yogi with clairvoyant powers. He became recognized as a very great practitioner. At one stage, he became a little bit proud of his tantric knowledge, and then in a dream, some Dakinis showed him thousands of Tantric texts he’d never even heard of, and that subdued his pride completely. And he thought he was doing very, very well in Tantra.
He thought the next stage would be to gain the completion of the Mahāmudrā through doing practice with consort, by doing this special Tantric practice of the completion stage of the Maha Anuttara Yoga practice. This kind of practice could only be done by those who were very close to enlightenment. So, he had this thought that this would be the natural next step. But at this point, one of his gurus came to him, miraculously appeared to him, and advised him that it would be more beneficial for sentient beings if he were to take ordination. In this way, he would be a great example and benefit the teachings and benefit countless sentient beings.
He also had the same message from many dream appearances of various Buddhas and deities who all gave him the same advice. So he gave up that idea and instead he became a monk, he became a bhikṣu. At this stage he was twenty nine years old. And so then he continued to study with many different gurus. Excuse me.
So he continued to study with many different gurus. Actually, there’s a point here. Atisha was known for the number of his gurus, and he maintained perfect guru devotion to all of them. Sometimes the Lamas say that because it’s difficult for us to maintain perfect guru devotion, because we don’t have Atisha’s qualities, we should be a little bit wary about taking on too many gurus, about taking on this responsibility of the guru disciple relation with too many teachers. So Atisha, I forget what the number was, but it was over a hundred anyway.
Yes, a lot of Gurus. Yes, Lama Zopa is a perfect example, just like Atisha is. So Atisha maintained perfect Guru Disciple relations with all of them. He became very noted, very well known as a great scholar and yogi. But he was receiving various signs, various indications, particularly from talking statues.
A lot of these statues seem to have been at Bodh Gaya. He was at Bodh Gaya at this stage, and he used to circumambulate the stupa. There were various statues around the stupa which spoke to Atisha. Also, he had other signs. He overheard girls talking and various different things. All of these signs were that he should train further in bodhicitta.
He became aware that his level of development of bodhicitta wasn’t yet complete. So he began to search out for the right Guru to continue to give him more teachings on bodhicitta so he could continue this training. In this way he heard of a lama who lived in Sumatra. His name was Sanskrit, Suvarṇadvīpi, the Tibetans call him Serlingpa, which is a lot easier to say, so I’ll say Serlingpa. Serlingpa actually means golden island, and that was the name for Sumatra.
Somewhere in Indonesia, anyway, they seemed to think it was Sumatra because Sumatra was a great center of Buddhist learning in those days. I think Atisha must have still been getting financial help from his parents, because he made the boat trip. In those days, it was a tremendous voyage and the story didn’t get any less interesting for being passed down. So it’s quite a dramatic story in the Tibetan books of how they met all these demonic beings and all sorts of horrific obstacles on the course to Sumatra, and that Atisha had to be called in so that he could overcome all these hindrances and all these ferocious storms that were whipped up by all these demons and so on. Anyway, eventually they arrived safely.
And when they arrived at last, however, Atisha didn’t just rush off and meet Lama Serlingpa and ask for teachings, but instead he went to the area where Lama Serlingpa was teaching and he hung about on the fringes and talked to his disciples and for a couple of weeks he checked like this to check the quality of Lama Serlingpa’s teachings and to get an idea of what he was like. And it was after that, after he’d checked very thoroughly, that he then approached Lama Serlingpa and made him many offerings and requested teachings from him. And this is an example to us to be wary of who we take as a teacher, to be sure that they have the right qualities before we create this teacher disciple relationship. So this doesn’t necessarily mean that you can’t listen to somebody teaching, but to actually go and request them for teachings is, in a sense, taking on this teacher disciple relationship. And so Atisha was very, very careful about this.
So eventually, anyway, he and his companions—he went there with quite a number of disciples of his own. So they all went to Lama Serlingpa and made offerings, and they were accepted as disciples by Lama Serlingpa and they stayed there for twelve years. They received full training in the perfection of wisdom sutras and the bodhicitta lineage of the exchange of self for others. So, as you know, probably in the graduated path teachings, there are two bodhicitta lineages which were combined into one by Lama Tsongkhapa, but they’re also presented sometimes separately. So there’s the one that came down from Mañjuśrī through Nāgārjuna, then there’s this exchange of self for others lineage, which came to Atisha through Lama Serlingpa.
Atisha had, at this stage—actually Atisha had already studied the higher view of Mādhyamika tenets. And actually, they say that Lama Serlingpa was actually holding to the Cittamātra, the mind only school, which is actually a lower level of tenets than the Mādhyamika, the middle way school. In that sense, Atisha already had a greater understanding of emptiness than Lama Serlingpa, but because it was his teaching that enabled Atisha to generate bodhicitta and to realize bodhicitta, it was Lama Serlingpa that he always had a special veneration for among all his gurus. Even though he had perfect devotion to all of them, he had a special place for Lama Serlingpa. And then eventually, Atisha came back to India and after going to various parts of India, he settled at Vikramashila monastery, which was one of the great Buddhist monasteries in ancient India of those times.
I think that was somewhere more to the south. Does anybody know where that was? I forgot to look up where it was, but Nālānda is not very far actually. Nālānda’s not very far from Rajgir, and that’s all around the area where Buddha was teaching, around the northeast of India. It’s only a few hours bus ride from Bodh Gaya.
Vikramashila, I think, is quite a long way further south. Anyway, Atisha certainly traveled around a lot. And eventually settled at Vikramashila Monastery and he became revered as the crowning jewel of the Sangha in India. And he was considered to be like the great teacher at this monastery. And he had many responsibilities in the monastery.
But meanwhile in Tibet—back in Tibet the Dharma teachings were in a really bad way. The Dharma teachings had been established there previously and at this time, the great teachers of the past who had established the teachings had passed away. And a number of teachers came from India, and some of them were teaching sūtra, some of them were teaching tantra. The ones who taught sūtra said that tantra was not Buddha’s teaching and some of the ones who taught tantras taught some very strange things and wrong misleading teachings about tantra and they put forth the view that if you were practicing tantra then you didn’t need the discipline of sūtra, that you could do what you liked and that you didn’t need to worry about moral conduct and so on and they taught many other misleading teachings and at this time they received a hearing and people were very confused. It was very difficult to know what was the pure Dharma. And the king at this time was called Yeshe Wo, which means light of wisdom. And this king—I don’t suppose it was the whole of Tibet, but anyway, it would have been an important Tibetan kingdom. And this king was a bodhisattva.
Yes, you have to be careful not to do the wrong thing. So, yes, this king was very concerned about this. He was a bodhisattva and saw the degeneration of the situation and he was aware that there should be no contradiction between the teachings of Sūtra and Tantra. He felt that there was value in all these teachings, but he himself didn’t know how to put it together.
He didn’t know how to ensure the correct presentation of the teachings. And he felt that what was needed was to bring back great pundits from India who could restore the purity of the teachings. And so he sent twenty one students to India to study the Dharma teachings there and to try to invite back Indian pundits. So of course right down to the present whenever Tibetans have gone into India, they come down out of the highlands, out of the cold climate of Tibet, into India with all its diseases and so on, they die like flies. And that’s what happened. Out of all these twenty one students, only two survived to come back again.
But these two stayed many years at Vikramashila Monastery, and they were unsuccessful in inviting any great pundits back to Tibet. They came back themselves. They were greatly advanced in learning, but they didn’t feel that they were up to the task of restoring the purity of the teachings. And they assured the King that there was only one person who could do it, that Atisha was the only one. And the king had already been thinking along these lines from what he’d heard of Atisha and these two scholars who came back took the same viewpoint and so the king became determined to persuade Atisha to come back. And again he sent an invitation to Atisha and he also said that he was going to set out and collect gold to make a splendid offering to Atisha so as to strengthen his request. It was a custom in those days—it’s not that these teachers were interested in the gold, but it was the custom that if you wanted the teachings, and particularly if you’re wealthy, that you should make magnificent offerings.
And so this king went around to try to find all the gold that he could. And at this stage, he was attacked by a rival king who captured him. And this rival king seems to have been a non-Buddhist who wanted to stop his work for the teachings but he was also quite a mercenary sort of character as we’ll see and he was actually called the Khan of Garlog so he must have been a Mongolian. So all this must have been happening on the border between Tibet and Mongolia. And so this Khan of Garlog, anyway, demanded a ransom of gold equal to Yeshe Wo’s weight. Somehow, when he captured him, he didn’t actually capture the gold—the gold was somewhere else, perhaps back home. But he got hold of Yeshe Wo and held him to ransom.
And then the king’s nephew was called Changchub Wo, which means light of enlightenment. Changchub Wo was the heir to the throne. And he came with all the gold to try to ransom his uncle. But it wasn’t enough. It fell short by the weight of his head.
There was enough gold to match the weight of the body, but not the head. So he had two options: he could either pay the ransom or wage war and defeat this other side. But he decided—being a bodhisattva himself, he didn’t want to start a war, another war, and kill people, so he wanted to pay the ransom. So he managed to have an interview with his uncle, and he assured him that he’d set off and get some more gold, and that as soon as possible he’d be back to finish paying the ransom. And so the king said, “Don’t do that.”
He said, “I’m a very old man now, and I’ve only got a few years left anyway, so there’s no point in spending all this gold on me. And if I die in the service of the dharma, then it’s something that’s very worthwhile, and it doesn’t matter if I die in prison as long as we can manage to establish the pure Dharma in Tibet.” So he said, “Take all the gold to Atisha. Take this gold that you’ve got here to Atisha and tell him my story and tell him that I beg him to come and teach us and tell him the whole story of the situation in Tibet and just plead with him to come.” So Changchub Wo, he was very unhappy about this because he was very fond of his uncle and he didn’t want to leave him to die in prison. But when he thought about it, he had to accept his reasoning. So, in spite of his natural feelings and affection and concern for his uncle, he had to force himself to obey his uncle’s instruction.
And so he went off and he left Yeshe Wo to remain in prison and to die there eventually. And he went back and he took up the rule of the kingdom and one of the first things he did was to send the translator Nagtso to Atisha with the gold as his emissary. And after going a long journey through Nepal, they eventually reached Vikramashila Monastery safely. But this was only the start of the problem. The problem here is that Tibetans, particularly in those days, were not terribly devious, and the Indians in those days must have been—even in those days—been quite devious. And so these Tibetans simply were too naive to be able to deal with the Indians effectively.
And so they started off telling everybody that they met along the road, that they were going off to ask Atisha to come back to Tibet with them. And so they kept on meeting these people who were emanations of the Buddha and they’d tell them their story. They just seemed to be some old person or some child or something and as soon as they told this person what they were going to do, they’d be told, “You Tibetans are so stupid, you’re so naive. You go in there and tell everybody what you’re doing, you’ll never even be allowed to see Atisha, let alone invite him to Tibet.” And so after they’d been told this a few times, they finally got the message and realised that they had to shut up about what they were there for. And so they began to become a little bit more clued in. And so when they got to the monastery, instead of blabbing everything out, they went and found a Tibetan scholar who had been studying there for many years, who had settled there, and they asked him to help them, and he advised them to keep very, very quiet about what they were doing, and just wait until he’d tried to sort things out.
And they just presented themselves as being there to study themselves, and they settled there and studied for a while. And after some time, eventually, this Tibetan scholar saw the opportunity for them to get to meet Atisha, when there was nobody else around to sort of get in the way, when all the other important monks who were perhaps superior to him and who might have been able to forbid this meeting were out of the way. He arranged for them to meet with Atisha and when they met Atisha and they gave him the gold and told him the story and begged him to come to Tibet, Atisha was very, very moved by the whole thing. Not by the gold, of course, but by the story of Yeshe Wo and by the situation of the people in Tibet. And so he said that he would like to come to Tibet, but he would have to get his abbot’s permission to go there.
And so he also did some checking, some clairvoyant checking, and he discovered through this that it would be very beneficial for him to go to Tibet, that it would be the most beneficial thing for sentient beings, but it would also have the effect of shortening his life, whereas if he stayed in India, his life would be much longer. He would also benefit sentient beings but not as much as if he was to go to Tibet. So he wanted to go to Tibet for this reason regardless of the shortening of his lifespan. Anyway, he worked on his abbot and eventually the abbot gave him permission to go for three years. And so he went back with these Tibetans and in actual fact he taught there for three years and after his three years were up he was going to keep his promise to go back to India but as he was about to set off a border war broke out and he wasn’t able to go back then. But he was able to send a message back to his abbot explaining the situation. And at this stage Atisha had already composed this text, The Lamp on the Path to Enlightenment for the Tibetans, because he saw the need the Tibetans had for this basic presentation.
And so he sent back a copy of this text, plus the letter, requesting permission to stay longer, and explaining that he couldn’t come back right away, and asking to be allowed to stay on. And his abbot, when he saw—the other great pundits, other great scholars—I keep on saying Nālānda, not Nālānda, Vikramashila. So, anyway, back at the Vikramashila monastery, when they read this Lamp on the Path to Enlightenment text, they were very impressed by it. And they saw that nothing like this had been produced before. They felt that although Atisha was away from them, as long as he was continuing to send them back texts they were still getting some benefit from him. And so they sent back a message. They decided that they would let him follow his own judgment and stay in Tibet if that was what he wanted to do.
And so they sent back the message saying, “You don’t have to come back, you can stay in Tibet if you think that’s the best thing.” And so that was what Atisha did. He actually remained in Tibet to the end of his life. Who would he have spoken to? He taught everybody. People, lay people. Why not?
Well, the monks, the lay people. He actually—he established I mean, he established his own lineage basically there. He attracted many disciples. He of course, he had the king behind him from the start, which is a pretty good start in those days. Mostly the subjects followed their king in terms of religious choice.
Atisha taught widely around Tibet. He traveled around. As well as writing this text, he gave many, many teachings, and he thoroughly clarified the path of Sūtra and Tantra and what should be practiced and how it should be integrated, so that people had no more doubts on that issue. They saw how both Sūtra and Tantra need to be practiced and how they can be integrated in the one path and that there’s no contradiction. This was the particular quality of Atisha’s teaching.
He had many followers and he actually established the three Kadampa lineages. There were actually three Kadampa lineages based on three different presentations of the teachings Atisha gave to people of different tendencies, different characteristics. Some of them relied on more sort of meditative, direct meditative practices, others relied more on scholarly—one of them was very much relying on oral tradition. These three lineages were all called the Kadampa tradition. I think they must have been pretty much interwoven anyway.
I think that these Geshes who called themselves the Kadampa Geshes—in those days, Geshe didn’t have the same meaning that it has nowadays of somebody who’s passed a particular exam, but it meant these practitioners who were living this very pure ascetic sort of life. They were practicing Tantra, but they kept their Tantra practice very quiet and showed the aspect of being perfect sūtra practitioners, very pure in their moral discipline. Anyway, this Kadampa lineage has been very influential on, I think, on all the schools except the Nyingma, as well as the Gelugpa tradition being directly descended from the Kadampa lineage. Also, the Sakya and Kagyu lineages are very much influenced by it. And so it’s been tremendously influential on Tibetan Buddhism. And so these three lineages were eventually combined by Lama Tsongkhapa in the Gelugpa tradition that we’re following here.
Lama Tsongkhapa brought together various different teachings, various tantric teachings, various sūtra teachings, and on the basis of this Kadampa tradition, he founded this Gelugpa tradition. So the Kadampa tradition doesn’t actually exist today as such, but it continues on in these other lineages. And so all this stems from Atisha and his particular presentation of the teachings. And so Lama Tsongkhapa also has a fantastic story, but I’m not going to tell that tonight. Not a new lineage.
Well, it’s—with Lama Tsongkhapa, it’s actually—it’s not so much a new lineage, but it’s—well, it is in a sense another lineage in that by bringing together several strands into a new stream, he became the founder of this particular school. Yes. Yes. Yes. Milarepa was Milarepa.
And also, I think it was through—it was. But I think it was through the one after Milarepa, Gampopa, that the Kadampa lineage came into the Kagyu tradition. He was Milarepa’s—he was the lineage holder who followed after Milarepa, and he took Milarepa’s lineage, and he also took the Kadampa lineage—Kadampa means pure speech. He took this lineage from his Kadampa masters that he’d been practicing with before he met Milarepa. And so all these lineages are very intertwined.
And that’s one reason why you have not to criticize other lineages because in actual fact there’s so much sharing of lineages and lineage gurus that you could be criticizing your own lineage if you criticized one of the other traditions. Anyway, have you got any questions at this point? Is that written by Atisha and sort of expanded by Lamrim or sort of curious about— Oh, yes. The path of the—? Yes. Yes.
Actually, Lama Tsongkhapa wrote many Lamrims. Well, particularly, he wrote three very well known Lamrims, called the great, medium and small. But there have been many other Lamrim texts written, and of course, the process is still going on down to the present, and the Westerners are doing it too. You could say they’re all inspired and based on this original Lamp on the Path teaching that Atisha wrote, which sets out these three principles of the path and the basic outline of the teaching. On the basis of that, which is quite a brief text, then all these other various commentaries, more detailed commentaries have been developed.
Yes? All interrelated, or— Yes. Well, yes. Yes. Yes.
And by studying it many different ways, each teacher has its own particular slant on it, although they’re all on the same basic teaching. By studying these different commentaries and teachings and looking at it from different angles, seeing it in different ways, it clarifies these some of these difficult topics for you. Well, it is true. If you look at all different lineages, each of them has so many different teachings that even the great scholars really can’t absorb all the teachings of every tradition of Buddhism. There was one movement apparently fairly recently called the—I can’t remember what it was called. It started with an R or something, Rimé— Rimé movement. It was some sort of—that was some sort of attempt to combine all the major teachings from Tibetan Buddhism into one lineage. But it didn’t seem to work terribly well because only the really great scholars could absorb the amount of material that was required. Really, it’s presumably not necessary to absorb all the teachings because each lineage has, you know, like a complete presentation of what you need to know. But there are differences between the lineages.
It’s because of the different tendencies of human beings. One tradition works better for one person, another works better for another. Each of them has the different aspects that you need. For instance, we’ve got the Mahāmudrā teachings and—or is it the Kagyus have the Mahāmudrā, or is it Dzogchen? And the Nyingmas have their equivalent, I forget what it’s called, but anyway, you know, you find the same—if not exactly the same, often the presentation is somewhat different, but it’s got some sort of essential sameness about it.
So you find that each tradition has the essential things that’s needed in order to—yeah. Basic text. There’s not just one basic text. There’s a number of different teachings, but, you know, you have to—there are certain things you have to learn on the path to enlightenment, certain things you have to do and the presentation of these is different in the different traditions but they do have a series of texts and series of techniques which take you through these realizations that you have to gain. So whether you gain your realizations through doing Mahāmudrā or whether you gain it through doing Dzogchen or whatever, it’s still the realization of emptiness. Yes.
Yes. So this is a commentary. Yes. So this is a Lamrim. And I find it—it’s more a little bit more—yes—than other commentaries because it’s—the topics are much more detailed, and it wouldn’t be a good one for starting off with, because it sort of has a wealth of detail. Whereas some other Lamrims might be too concise for starting off. But they’re very good for reference. So every Lamrim has its own particular virtues.
This is the one that we consider as being the basic text for the more serious students who’ve already got a good knowledge of the Lamrim, and they need a Lamrim text to keep at hand so that they can use it for reference for everything. Somebody picking this up who didn’t know the Lamrim before would just get lost in the detail. They wouldn’t know which were the important points and which is just elaboration. But you would find some books like the one you mentioned, perhaps some of the ones that are written for Westerners are good to start off with, like the one by Thubten Chodron. There’s a few really good ones are full enough in their explanation, but not too detailed.
But, yeah, this is really detailed and this is actually a commentary. It was a spoken commentary, a spoken discourse by Pabongka Rinpoche on the concise Lamrim discourse on the stages of the path to enlightenment by Lama Tsongkhapa. Any commentary which gives the whole of the graduated path presents the whole of the graduated path. You see, what happened is that, first of all, Atisha wrote this quite short, snappy little text. Oh, yes.
Yes. It’s called Lamp on the Path to Enlightenment. Oh, Bodhicaryāvatāra— oh, no. No. Bodhipathapradīpa.
Then that one is a commentary on Atisha’s—no. Then Je Tsongkhapa wrote a commentary on Atisha’s text, and this is a commentary on Je Tsongkhapa’s text. And so yes. So that’s how it goes. Of course, there have been many other commentaries, and it’s not only in the Gelugpa tradition that we have these commentaries, but there are commentaries written by scholars of the other traditions. You only have to look at our bookshelves there, and in the graduated path you’ll find a whole lot of texts. Some of them are very short and brief, some of them again have been condensed into very brief texts which would be perhaps used as meditation guides more than as references, then you’ve got other texts which are very precise and concise, and other texts which are very elaborate and detailed, and some texts which are written at a very easy readable level, and some texts which are written at a very, very technical level. There’s just one to suit every occasion. They all have their uses. You shouldn’t just stick with one Lamrim text, but you should look at several.
If you’re serious about your Dharma practice, you probably want to have two or three different Lamrim texts on your own shelf, and of course go along to Lamrim teachings whenever you get the opportunity, because the Lamrim is the basis of the whole thing. Lama Zopa Rinpoche always stresses, and Lama Yeshe used to and His Holiness the Dalai Lama, all the Lamas, really stress that the important thing for us to understand is the Lamrim. The other things like Tantra and Madhyamaka philosophy, all of these things are good, but they are only useful if you have the basis of the Lamrim, whereas the Lamrim is the essential thing. Lama Zopa says that when he hears about people doing things like Shamatha meditation and so on, he doesn’t get all that excited. But when he hears about people seriously studying and trying to practice the Lamrim, he feels very joyful in his heart because he knows that the Lamrim is the real Dharma practice.
Then when you have the Lamrim, you can go on and do all these other things. In actual fact, all these other things are Lamrim anyway because they all come into the Lamrim. The Lamrim really presents the whole path of Sūtra and Tantra, but it doesn’t go into the details of some of these things. Some of them you need to study in detail separately. You need to study Madhyamaka philosophy and all the different schools of tenets, Lorig, Tarig, Dura.
The thought trainings, for example, sometimes they’re explained in the Lamrim, like in this text—Lama Tsongkhapa, Pabongka Rinpoche goes into a lot of detail on one of the thought training practices, but in the shorter Lamrims, you don’t find the thought training presented, so you often find the thought training presented as a separate teaching. There are many different thought trainings, like Wheel of Sharp Weapons and so on. They’re not included in the Lamrim, but they are graduated paths because they can be fitted into the framework. So what the graduated path does is give us the outline, it gives us the framework, and then everything fits into it. One of the other Western students once just said to me, “Lamrim is the road map to the mind.”
And I always felt that that was a perfect description of what it does, because it just gives you that sense of direction. It shows you where you’re going and how to get there. Yes. The teachings are able to come into the graduated path, but they’re not given in a detailed way, because they’re so profound and there’s so much to be studied that, you know, that comes into the study. Well, essentially, if you really want to study it, you have to study Madhyamaka. But then if you want to understand Madhyamaka philosophy, you have to understand the other three schools as well.
So you have to end up studying all the tenets, and there’s a lot to study. I don’t mean in this retreat. In this retreat, we will be—of course, I would think that emptiness would be— I haven’t thought about what’s going to be done, but if it’s about the nature of the mind, we would have to be looking at the empty nature of the mind. That would have to be an aspect of it.
I would think that I’d probably be looking at the graduated path a bit too. But anyway, that’s it. So if you haven’t got any more questions— oh, sorry. That was just the stories. I mean, you know?
Well, that’s right. There are—haven’t you? You hear amazing stories. There are still people who are giving up everything and going and living in caves. Dada probably knows where you find the stories.