The Heart Sutra Retreat

Note: For the transcriptions, black text is Lama Sarahni speaking (or both Lamas reciting), burgundy text is Lama Sumati speaking, blue text is students speaking. Gray text is AI generated and not cleaned yet so is full of errors.

The Exalted One,

the Lady of Conquest, 

the Sutra on the Heart of the Perfection of Wisdom

[Tibetan translatorʹs note: The name of this sutra in Sanskrit is Arya Bhagavati Prajnya Paramita Hirdaya. In Tibetan this is Pakpa Chomden Dema Sherabkyi Parultu Chinpay Nyingpo. (In English this is The Lady of Conquest, the Exalted Sutra on the Heart of the Perfection of Wisdom.) This work is completed in a single sheaf. I bow first to all the enlightened beings, and to every warrior saint.]

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[Tib] dike dakki tupay du chik na

[Sk] Evam maya shrutam

[Eng] Once I heard this teaching.

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[Tib] chomden de gyalpoy kapna jagu pungpoy rila gelong gi gendun chenpo dang jangchup sempay gendun chenpo dang tap chiktu shukte

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[Sk] Ekasmin samaye bhagavan rajagirhe. Viharati sma girdhrakute parvate mahata bhikshu sanghena sardham mahata cha bodhisattva saghena.

[Eng] The Conqueror was staying on Vultureʹs Peak, in the Keep of the King. With him was a great gathering of monks, and a great gathering of warrior saints.

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[Tib] dey tse chomden de zabmo nangwa shejaway chukyi namdrang kyi tingendzin la nyompar shukso. yang dey tse jangchup sempa sempa chenpo pakpa chenresik wangchuk sherab kyi paroltu chinpa zabmo chupar nampar ta shing. pungpo ngapo dedak layang ngowo nyi kyi tongpar nampar ta‑o.

[Sk] Tena khalu samayena bhagavan gambhirava sambodha nama samadhim samapannah. Tena cha samayena‑arya‑avalokiteshvaro bodhisattvo mahasattvo gambhirayam prajnya paramitayam charyam charamana evam vyavalokayati sma. Pancha skandhas tansh cha svabhava shunyam vyavalokayati.

[Eng] At a certain moment the Conqueror went into deep meditation on the part of the teaching known as the ʺawareness of the profound.ʺ At that moment too did the realized being, the great warrior, the lord of power, Loving Eyes, see into this one deep practice, the practice of the perfection of wisdom. And he saw perfectly that the five heaps—the five parts of a person—were empty of any nature of their own.

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[Tib] Dene sangye kyi tu tse dang denpa sharadvatipu jangchup sempa sempa chenpo pakpa chenresik wangchuk la dike che me so. Rikki puam rikki pumo kang la la sherab kyi paroltu chinpa sabmoy chupa chepar dupa de jitar lappa ja

[Sk] Atha‑ayushmach chariputro buddha‑anubhavena‑arya‑avalokiteshvaram bodhisattvam mahasattvam etad avochat. Yah kashchit kulaputro gambhirayam prajnya paramitayam charyam chartu kamah katham shikshitavyah.

[Eng] And then, by the power of the Enlightened One, the junior monk named Shari Putra turned and asked this question of the great warrior, Loving Eyes, the realized one, the lord of power: ʺIf any son or daughter of noble family hoped to follow the deep practice of the perfection of wisdom, what would they have to do?ʺ

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[Tib] Deke che mepa dang jangchup sempa sempa chenpo pakpa chenresik wangchuk gi tse dang denpa sharipu la dike che me so.

[Sk] Evam ukta arya‑avalokiteshvaro bodhisattvo mahasattva ayushmantam shariputram etad avochat.

[Eng] This then is the answer that the lord of power, the realized one, the great warrior Loving Eyes gave to the junior monk named Shari Putra:

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[Tib] Sharipu rikkyi puam rikkyi pumo gang la la sherab kyi paroltu chinpa sabmoy chupa chepar dupa de, ditar nampar tawar ja te.

[Sk] Yah kashchich‑chariputra kulaputro va kuladuhita va gambhirayam prajnya paramitayam charyam chartu kamas tenaivam vyavalokayitavyam.

[Eng] ʺHere, Shari Putra, is what any son or daughter of noble family should see who hopes to follow the deep practice of the perfection of wisdom.

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[Tib] Pungpo ngapo dedak kyang ngowo nyi kyi tongpar nampar jesu ta‑o. Suk tongpa‑o. Tongpa nyi suk so. Suk le tongpa nyi shen ma yin. Tongpa nyi le suk shen mayin no.

[Sk] Pancha skandhas tansh cha svabhava shunyan samanupashyati sma. Rupam shunyata shunyataiva rupam. Rupanna pirthak shunyata shunyataya na pirthak rupam. Yad rupam sa shunyata ya shunyata tad rupam.

[Eng] ʺSee first all five heaps—all five parts to a person—as being empty of any essence of their own. Your body is empty; emptiness is your body. Emptiness is nothing but your body, and your body is nothing but emptiness.

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[Tib] Deshin du tsorwa dang, dushe dang, duje nam dang, namshepa nam tongpa‑o.

[Sk] Evam vedana sanjnya sanskara vijnyanani cha shunyata.

[Eng] ʺThe same is true of your feeling, and your ability to discriminate between things, and the other factors that make you up, and all the different kinds of awareness that you possess: all of them are empty.

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[Tib] Sharipu, detaway na, chu tamche tongpa‑nyi de, tsennyi mepa, ma kyepa, ma gakpa, drima mepa, drima dang drelwa mepa, driwa mepa gangway mepa‑o.

[Sk] Evam shariputra sarva dharma shunyata lakshana anutpanna aniruddha amala vimala anuna asampurnah.

[Eng] ʺAnd thus we can say, Shari Putra, that every existing thing is emptiness. Nothing has any characteristic of its own. Nothing ever begins. Nothing ever ends. Nothing is ever impure. Nothing ever becomes pure. Nothing ever gets less, and nothing ever becomes more.

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[Tib] Sharipu, detaway na tongpa‑nyi la suk me, tsorwa me, dushe me, duje nam me, nampar shepa me,

[Sk] Tasmat tarhi shariputra shunyatayam na rupam na vedana na sanjnya na sanskara na vijnyanam.

[Eng] ʺAnd thus can we say, Shari Putra, that with emptiness there is no body. There are no feelings. There is no ability to discriminate. There are none of the other factors that make you up, and there is no awareness.

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[Tib] Mikme, nawa me, na me, che me, lu me, yi me, suk me, dra me, tri me, ro me, rekja me, chu me do.

[Sk] Na chakshur na shrotram na ghranam na jihva na kayo na mano. Na rupam na shabdo na gandho na raso na sprashtavyam na dharmah.

[Eng] ʺThere are no eyes; no ears; no nose; no tongue; no body; no mind; nothing to see; nothing to hear; nothing to smell; nothing to taste; nothing to touch; and nothing to think of.

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[Tib] Mikki kam me ching, mikki nampar shepay kam mepa ne yi kyi kam me ching, yi kyi nampar shepay kam kyi bardu yang me do.

[Sk] Na chakshur dhatur yavan na mano dhatur na dharma dhatur na mano vijnyana dhatuh.

[Eng] ʺThere is no part of you that sees. There is no part of you that is aware of what you see; and this is true all the way up to the part of you that thinks, and the part of you that is aware that you are thinking.

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[Tib] Marikpa me, ma rikpa sepa mepa ne, gashi me, gashi sepay bardu yang me do.

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[Sk] Na vidya na‑avidya na kshayo yavan na jara maranam na jara marana kshayah.

[Eng] ʺThere is no misunderstanding your world. There is no stopping this misunderstanding, and the same is true all the way up to your old age and your death, and to stopping your old age and your death.

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[Tib] Duk‑ngelwa dang, kunjungwa dang, gokpa dang, lam me.

[Sk] Na dukha samudaya nirodha marga.

[Eng] ʺThere is no suffering. There is no source of this suffering. There is no stopping this suffering. There is no path to stop this suffering.

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[Tib] Yeshe me, toppa me, ma toppa yang me do.

[Sk] Na jnyanam na praptir na‑apraptih.

[Eng] ʺThere is no knowledge. There is nothing to reach. And there is nothing not to reach.

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[Tib]  Sharipu. De taway na, jangchub sempa nam toppa mepay chir sherab kyi paroltu chinpa la tenne nete sem la drippa mepay jikpa me de. Chin chi lok le shintu dene nya ngen le depay tarchin to.

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[Sk] Tasmach‑chariputra apraptitvena bodhisattvanam prajnya paramitam ashritya viharati chitta‑avaranah. Chitta‑avarana‑anastitvad atrasto viparyasa atikranto nishta nirvanah.

[Eng] ʺThus it is, Shari Putra, that warrior saints have nothing to reach; and because of this, they are able to practice the perfection of wisdom, and stay in this perfection of wisdom. This frees them of every obstacle in their minds, and this frees them from all fear. They go beyond all wrong ways of thinking, and reach to the ultimate end of nirvana.

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[Tib] Du sum du nampar shukpay sangye tamche kyang sherab kyi paroltu chinpa la ten te lana mepa yangdakpar dzokpay jangchup ngunpar dzokpar sangye so.

[Sk] Tryadhva vyasthita sarva buddhah prajnya paramitam ashritya‑anuttaram samyak sambodhim abhisambuddhah.

[Eng] ʺAll the Enlightened Beings of the past, and present, and the future too follow this same perfection of wisdom, and thus bring themselves to perfect enlightenment; to the matchless state of a totally enlightened Buddha.

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[Tib] de taway na. sherab kyi paroltu chinpay ngak. rigpa chenpay ngak. lanamepay ngak. mi nyampa dang nyampay ngak. dukngel tamche rabtu shiwar jepay ngak. mi dzunpay na. den par shepar ja te. sherab kyi paroltu chinpay ngak mepa.

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[Sk] Tasmaj jynatavyah prajnya paramita maha mantro maha vidya mantronuttara mantro sama sama mantrah sarva dukha prashamana mantrah satyam amithyatvat prajnya paramitayam ukto mantrah.

[Eng] ʺThus are they the sacred words of the perfection of wisdom; the sacred words of great knowledge; sacred words of the unsurpassable; sacred words that are equal to the One beyond all equal; sacred words that put a final end to every form of pain; sacred words you should know are true, for false they cannot be; sacred words of the perfection of wisdom, which here I speak for you:

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Tadyatha. Gate gate paragate parasangate bodhi svaha.

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[Tib] Sharipu jangchup sempa sempa chenpo sherab kyi paroltu chinpa sabmo la detar lappar ja-o

[Sk] Evam shariputra gambhirayam prajnya paramitayam charyayam shikshitavyam bodhisatteva.

[Eng] And thus it is, Shari Putra, that great warrior saints must train themselves in the profound perfection of wisdom."

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[Tib] De ne chomdende tingenzin de le sheng te. Jang chub sempa sempa chenpo pakpa chenresik wang chuk la lekso she jawa jine lekso lekso

[Sk] Atha kalu bhagavan Tasmat samadher vyutthaya-arya-avalokiteshvarasya bodhisattvasya mahasattvasya sadhu karamdat.

[Eng] With this, the Conqueror stirred himself from his deep state of meditation. He turned to the great warrior, to the realized one, Loving Eyes, the lord of power, and blessed his words, saying, "True." "True," he said, and "True" again.

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[Tib] Rikipu, de deshin no, de deshin te. Jitar kyu kyi tenpa de shin du sherab kyi parol tu chinpa sabmo la chepar ja te. De shin shekpa nam kyang je su yi rang ngo. 

[Sk] Evam etad gambhirayam prajnya paramitayam charyam chartavyam yatha tvaya nirdishtam anumodyaye sarva tathagatair arhadbhih samyak sambuddhaih.

[Eng] Thus it is, o son of noble family; and thus is it. One should follow the profound perfection of wisdom just as you have taught it. Every one of Those Gone Thus rejoice in your words as I do."

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[Tib] chomdende kyi de ke che ka tsel ne, tse dang denpa sharibu dang, chang chub sempa pakpa chenresik kyi wang chuk dang, tamche dang denpay kor de dak hla dang mi dang hla mayin dang   drisar chepay jikten yi rang te. Chomdende kyi sung pa la ngunpar tu do.

[Sk] Idam avochad bhagavan ananda mana ayushmach chariputra arya-avalokiteshvaresh cha bodhisattva mahasattvah sa cha sarvavati parshatsa deva manush asura gandharvash cha loko bhagvato bhashitam abhyanandanniti.

[Eng] And when the Conqueror had spoken thus, the junior monk Shari Putra took joy; and the warrior, the realized one, Loving Eyes, the lord of power, took joy as well. And all the assembled disciples took joy, and so did the entire world - with its gods, and its men, and near-gods and spirits too - take joy. All sang their praises of what the Conqueror had spoken.

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This ends the sutra of the greater way known as the Lady of Conquest, the Heart of the Perfection of Wisdom. It was first translated from Sanskrit by the Indian abbot Vimala Mitra together with a master Tibetan translator, the venerable Rinchen De. It was later checked and standardized by the master translators and editors Gelo and Namka, among others. The translation into English was completed by the American geshe Lobsang Chunzin, Michael Roach, with the assistance of the American woman with lifetime vows, Christie McNally.]

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For those who don’t know me, this is what we do.

Bring your attention to your breath until you hear from me again. 

Now bring to mind that being who for you is a manifestation of ultimate love, ultimate compassion, ultimate wisdom. And see them here with you just by way of your thinking of them. They are gazing at you with their unconditional love for you, smiling at you with their holy great compassion. Their wisdom radiates from them, that beautiful golden glow encompassing you in its light. And then we hear them say: 

Bring to mind someone you know who's hurting in some way. Feel how much you would like to be able to help them. Recognize how the worldly ways we try fall short; how wonderful it would be if we could also help them in some deep and ultimate way, a way through which they would go on to stop their distress forever. We are learning that that is possible. We will learn how it is possible. And so I invite you to grow that wish into a longing, and that longing into an intention. And with that intention turn your mind back to that precious holy being. We know that they know what we need to know, what we need to learn yet, what we need to do yet, to become one who can help this other in this deep and ultimate way. And so we ask them, ‘Please, please teach us that.’

And they are so happy that we've asked, of course they agree. Our gratitude arises. We want to offer them something exquisite, and so we think of the perfect world they are teaching us how to create. We imagine we can hold it in our hands and we offer it to them, following it with our promise to practice what they teach us, using our refuge prayer to make our promise.

So if you know these prayers, you’re welcome to say them along with me. If you don’t, just listen. If you’re not in this tradition, just go along with what they mean to you.

Here is the great Earth, 

Filled with fragrant incense

and covered with a blanket of flowers. 

The Great Mountain,

Four lands

Wearing a jewel

Of the Sun and the Moon. 

In my mind, I make them

The paradise of a Buddha

And offer it all to you. 

By this deed

May every living being

Experience

The pure world.

Idam guru ratna mandalakam niryatayami.

I go for refuge until I am enlightened 

to the Buddha, the Dharma, and the highest community. 

Through the merit that I do in sharing this class and the rest, 

May we reach Buddhahood for the sake of every living being. 

I go for refuge until I am enlightened 

to the Buddha, the Dharma, and the highest community. 

Through the merit that I do and sharing this class and the rest,

May we reach Buddhahood for the sake of every living being. 

I go for refuge until I am enlightened 

to the Buddha, the Dharma, and the highest community. 

Through the merit that I do in sharing this class and the rest,

May all beings reach their total awakening

for the benefit of every other. 

[Joana: So welcome everybody to the monastery in Barcelona. We are really happy you join us from all over the world. Most of you have been getting to know each other already a little bit. We have guests coming from Spain, which is easy.. not so easy nowadays. We have guests from Romania, from Slovakia, from Austria, from Germany, and then crossing the ocean from America. Besides the teachers, there's two other participants from America and even from Mexico. And online, our co-students from Russia, students of Gabi are joining us who have contributed to this retreat with a great donation that really made everything more beautiful than we could have imagined. So it was a wonderful offering, thank you so much everybody. Pia will let you know a few things about the house, and then I just tell you a few things, and we try not to take up too much time.]

[Pia: Hello everyone. I want to talk a little bit on behalf of the nuns because they wanted to be clear with all of you… mainly they would like to say you that this is a space for peace, a space for everyone from any religion. They welcome every one of us, especially now in these times of difficulties that we have in Europe and also in the Mediterranean. They do perhaps the same things that we all want, which is working for peace, working for making a better world. And they do this in their way. We do this in our way, but we are having the same goals and this is what they are working for. And then they welcome here any religion, any people who are working for this better world and to have peace in the world.]

[Joana: Just for your information, you have planted really great seeds that you're getting passive income with because Pia has chosen some very beautiful local vendors and business people, family businesses to contribute by their services. Those flowers for example, they have been very, very grateful for us ordering there. Also the catering and stuff. So we have Pia has tried to do everything not with the big ones but with the small ones to support local vendors.]

Yay, rejoicable.

….

[Joana: Every one of you got one thangka next to other little things, but this is I think the most nice one. This is an offering. So I asked a sangha friend of mine if he could paint something small; I was thinking about just nice picture. But he wants to be a professional thangka painter and he made this beautiful painting and his mom was sewing it. So this is a [], it's a first one of everything.

And who is that that did that?

[Joana; He asked me not to tell. But he's a student of Lama Hector at the Three Jewels. So anyone who knows that may make a connection. He didn't want to have anything from me, and he said that if you want to do something, you can make an offering to the Three Jewels, that was his wish. If you feel like, but this is yours, and he was very happy to make this offering to the Lamas and the retreatants.]

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

[Joana: We have specifically chosen this picture because the Heart Sutra.. I mean we want to get enlightened as fast as possible. That's the mission you signed up for. This is the moment Buddha as Prince Shakyamuni sat under the bodhi tree and all the spirits and all the bad everybody tried to shoot something at him, some negativities, and everything that he was receiving was flowers; everything was beauty for him that came on. So this is the moment of enlightenment and we hope to get enlightened everybody.]

Yay! Lovely.

So we're here this weekend to study and learn the Heart Sutra according to the teaching that we received from Geshe Michael Roach on the Heart Sutra, as part of what are called the practice modules aspect of the Asian Classics Institute Foundation courses, meaning the open teaching courses. That is the material that he was learning as he earned his geshe degree. So brilliantly, as he was studying for his geshe degree, he was teaching the material to others. Like what you give is what you get. And so he ends up with his geshe degree being the first westerner to earn such a thing. And part of that foundation courses was how to practice with it. And so there are six or eight of these practice modules that don't seem to be emphasized so much as we're learning our ACI foundation courses, and we love to intersperse them in our sequence of the courses because they help to set the material in experientially.

So this one, Heart Sutra, is a practice module that introduces us to the Prajnya Paramita, the Perfection of Wisdom teachings, which combines the teachings on karma (we reap what we sow) with the teachings on the no self-nature of things, and others, and self, et cetera. So to bring those two together gives us this whole package of insight into how we can in fact change ourselves and our world from suffering to no more suffering for anybody.

So our task this weekend is to learn the sutra and learn this meditation practice that utilizes its wisdom. So our classes will be part teaching, part experiential meditation, and by the time we get to Sunday morning’s class, we'll have the whole meditation sequence that you'll have learned and done at least once so that you can take home with you and explore it if you wish. The rest of the week we will use that meditation sequence to explore different specific aspects of our being and each day we'll work with one section of it so that we'll go deeper. So during the week we'll do much less teaching and more meditation work.

I received this teaching first from Geshe Michael in February of 2000. It was his last teaching before he went into Great Retreat. Sumati didn't go to that because he had been asked, ‘do you know how to build yurts?’ And he said, ‘I don't know, but I think I can.’ And so he was there at Diamond Mountain helping to finish off the details of preparing for Geshe Michael and the others Great Retreat in the desert. So he was working, doing service. I got to go take the teaching. He later received the teaching also so that we have our transmission through Geshe Michael. And you will receive it then through us and you'll be holders of the lineage of the Heart Sutra by the end of this weekend.

So the Mahayana teachings of Buddhism are the teachings that Lord Buddha shared with those students that were inspired or ready to aspire to a higher goal than simply getting free of their own suffering. So to get free of one’s own suffering, we use the term ‘reaching nirvana’, and it’s a lofty aspiration and an admirable goal to achieve.

So there was a level of Lord Buddha's teachings that said teachings it's very admirable to reach the end of your own suffering, but honestly, do you want to be the only one not suffering in your world, and see other beings trapped in trying to get happy in all the ways that don't work? That you've shown yourself don't work? And it feels kind of natural to go, 'd'uh, no'. And so he moved into a deeper teaching about how we can transform not only our own perception of our own self from a suffering being to a non-suffering being, if we can even conceive of that, but to do so in order to help others do so, in order for those others to help others to do so, in order for those others to help others to do so. And do you see, I can never stop saying that until there's no other others to get enlightened. And then that starts a whole question, 'well, how does the last batch ever get enlightened then?', but just leave that.

So as a Mahayanist, our aspiration is to reach not only the end of our suffering, but also the end of our limited perception, meaning to reach that level of perception that's called omniscience. And omniscience means you are perceiving the true nature of reality and the deceptive nature of reality simultaneously in all three times and in the minds of all beings, technically. So it's a vast state of mind that actually we only don't experience ourselves as having because we misunderstand ourselves. So in a way, omniscience is more a natural state of being than non-omniscience and we're just mistaken. And if we can recognize the mistake and then antidote it, we transform. Not in the moment, although there will be an 'a moment'; there will be a moment when it finally happens. But to reach that moment, we have to have a lot of little moments building up to it. So in those little moments of building up to it, we study so we intellectually understand better what this mistake is that we're making and how we apply the antidote, and then we put it into practice. And to put it into practice, we mean not in meditation - out in our real world, put into practice what we learn in our meditation. And we learn in our meditation what we learn by way of applying what we hear in our classroom hours to our meditation cushion. So that's what we're trying to bring together - is the wisdom of the Heart Sutra and giving you a method of meditation, working with it that will give you a stronger state of mind that will allow you to interact with your day-to-day interactions in wiser ways. So that's our task for this weekend. It's a big one. The Heart Sutra is a really, really concise teaching. And to just read the sutra without having received commentary on it, probably multiple times, it's like.. I don't know, reading the Bible, you can read it and it can be meaningless or you can read it in a certain state of mind and it's like, 'whoa, I get what that means.' It's cryptic, but when you catch it, it can take your mind really, really deeply. So this teaching will go not quite word-by-word Tibetan, but close to it, explaining from the commentaries the meaning of it so that we can tie it all together into a practice.

When we begin with a teaching like this, we offer first the oral transmission of the sutra, which means we've been downloaded with it and we are going to download it into you. And all you need to do is receive it; you don't have to understand any of it. Like just crack your head open and let it pour in and then you become a vessel for pouring it into somebody else. So I hope someday you'll meet somebody and you'll have the circumstance to go, 'could I give you the oral transmission of the Heart Sutra, please?' And they go, 'sure, why not?' And you just sit down with them and read it to them and that's what turns the wheel. So it's been poured into us, it is being poured into us as we pour it into you. All you need to do is listen and open up. We're going to share it in English, in Tibetan, and I'm going to do my best to struggle through the Sanskrit for you. 

So you just listen and you don't have to stay perfectly still. Ready? So English first.

The Exalted One, the Lady of Conquest, the Sutra on the Heart of the Perfection of Wisdom. I bow first to all the enlightened beings, and to every warrior saint. Once I heard this teaching. The Conqueror was staying on Vultureʹs Peak, in the Keep of the King. With him was a great

gathering of monks, and a great gathering of warrior saints. 

At a certain moment the Conqueror went into deep meditation on the part of the teaching known as the ʺawareness of the profound.ʺ At that moment too did the realized being, the great warrior, the lord of power, Loving Eyes, see into this one deep practice, the practice of the perfection of wisdom. And he saw perfectly that the five heaps—the five parts of a person—were empty of any nature of their own.

And then, by the power of the Enlightened One, the junior monk named Shari Putra turned and asked this question of the great warrior, Loving Eyes, the realized one, the lord of power: ʺIf any son or daughter of noble family hoped to follow the deep practice of the perfection of wisdom, what would they have to do?ʺ

This then is the answer that the lord of power, the realized one, the great warrior Loving Eyes gave to the junior monk named Shari Putra:

ʺHere, Shari Putra, is what any son or daughter of noble family should see who hopes to follow the deep practice of the perfection of wisdom.

ʺSee first all five heaps—all five parts to a person—as being empty of any essence of their own. Your body is empty; emptiness is your body. Emptiness is nothing but your body, and your body is nothing but emptiness.

ʺThe same is true of your feeling, and your ability to discriminate between things, and the other factors that make you up, and all the different kinds of awareness that you possess: all of them are empty.

ʺAnd thus we can say, Shari Putra, that every existing thing is emptiness. Nothing has any characteristic of its own. Nothing ever begins. Nothing ever ends. Nothing is ever impure. Nothing ever becomes pure. Nothing ever gets less, and nothing ever becomes more.

ʺAnd thus can we say, Shari Putra, that with emptiness there is no body. There are no feelings. There is no ability to discriminate. There are none of the other factors that make you up, and there is no awareness.

ʺThere are no eyes; no ears; no nose; no tongue; no body; no mind; nothing to see; nothing to hear; nothing to smell; nothing to taste; nothing to touch; and nothing to think of.

ʺThere is no part of you that sees. There is no part of you that is aware of what you see; and this is true all the way up to the part of you that thinks, and the part of you that is aware that you are thinking.

ʺThere is no misunderstanding your world. There is no stopping this misunderstanding, and the same is true all the way up to your old age and your death, and to stopping your old age and your death.

ʺThere is no suffering. There is no source of this suffering. There is no stopping this suffering. There is no path to stop this suffering.

ʺThere is no knowledge. There is nothing to reach. And there is nothing not to reach.

ʺThus it is, Shari Putra, that warrior saints have nothing to reach; and because of this, they are able to practice the perfection of wisdom, and stay in this perfection of wisdom. This frees them of every obstacle in their minds, and this frees them from all fear. They go beyond all wrong ways of thinking, and reach to the ultimate end of nirvana.

ʺAll the Enlightened Beings of the past, and present, and the future too follow this same perfection of wisdom, and thus bring themselves to perfect enlightenment; to the matchless state of a totally enlightened Buddha.

ʺThus are they the sacred words of the perfection of wisdom; the sacred words of great knowledge; sacred words of the unsurpassable; sacred words that are equal to the One beyond all equal; sacred words that put a final end to every form of pain; sacred words you should know are true, for false they cannot be; sacred words of the perfection of wisdom, which here I speak for you:

Tadyatha. Gate gate paragate parasangate bodhi svaha.

And thus it is, Shari Putra, that great warrior saints must train themselves in the profound perfection of wisdom."

With this, the Conqueror stirred himself from his deep state of meditation. He turned to the great warrior, to the realized one, Loving Eyes, the lord of power, and blessed his words, saying, "True." "True," he said, and "True" again.

Thus it is, o son of noble family; and thus is it. One should follow the profound perfection of wisdom just as you have taught it. Every one of Those Gone Thus rejoice in your words as I do."

And when the Conqueror had spoken thus, the junior monk Shari Putra took joy; and the warrior, the realized one, Loving Eyes, the lord of power, took joy as well. And all the assembled disciples took joy, and so did the entire world - with its gods, and its men, and near-gods and spirits too - take joy. All sang their praises of what the Conqueror had spoken.

This ends the sutra of the greater way known as the Lady of Conquest, the Heart of the Perfection of Wisdom. It was first translated from Sanskrit by the Indian abbot Vimala Mitra together with a master Tibetan translator, the venerable Rinchen De. It was later checked and standardized by the master translators and editors Gelo and Namka, among others. The translation into English was completed by the American geshe Lobsang Chunzin, Michael Roach, with the assistance of the American woman with lifetime vows, Christie McNally.

The first course we took in Bok Jinpa at Diamond Mountain University, we had to do some homework which was something called hypertexting, which is too difficult to explain, but I really didn't like it. So when Lama Christie made the mistake of handing out question forms talking about how well she taught or hadn't taught, my comment at the end was, 'let's not do hypertexting anymore, let's do something like memorizing the Heart Sutra.' I'd already memorized it in English, so that sounded like a real plan for me. So we get to class in the next semester and I'm thinking, 'oh, I've got this wired', and she, looking straight at me, said 'there was a suggestion we not do hypertexting, so instead we're going to memorize the Heart Sutra.' So I'm going [celebrating]. [She then said,] 'In Tibetan'. I went, 'oh' [disappointed]. So we had to memorize it and then we had to sit in front her and recite it. That was memorable. So here we go. I'll do my best.

Pakpa Chomden Dema Sherabkyi Parultu Chinpay Nyingpo. The Lady of Conquest, the Exalted Sutra on the Heart of the Perfection of Wisdom. 

dike dakki tupay du chik na

chomden de gyalpoy kapna jagu pungpoy rila gelong gi gendun chenpo dang jangchup sempay gendun chenpo dang tap chiktu shukte

ey tse chomden de zabmo nangwa shejaway chukyi namdrang kyi tingendzin la nyompar shukso. yang dey tse jangchup sempa sempa chenpo pakpa chenresik wangchuk sherab kyi paroltu chinpa zabmo chupar nampar ta shing. pungpo ngapo dedak layang ngowo nyi kyi tongpar nampar ta‑o.

Dene sangye kyi tu tse dang denpa sharadvatipu jangchup sempa sempa chenpo pakpa chenresik wangchuk la dike che me so. Rikki puam rikki pumo kang la la sherab kyi paroltu chinpa sabmoy chupa chepar dupa de jitar lappa ja

Deke che mepa dang jangchup sempa sempa chenpo pakpa chenresik wangchuk gi tse dang denpa sharipu la dike che me so.

Sharipu rikkyi puam rikkyi pumo gang la la sherab kyi paroltu chinpa sabmoy chupa chepar dupa de, ditar nampar tawar ja te.

Pungpo ngapo dedak kyang ngowo nyi kyi tongpar nampar jesu ta‑o. Suk tongpa‑o. Tongpa nyi suk so. Suk le tongpa nyi shen ma yin. Tongpa nyi le suk shen mayin no.

Deshin du tsorwa dang, dushe dang, duje nam dang, namshepa nam tongpa‑o.

haripu, detaway na, chu tamche tongpa‑nyi de, tsennyi mepa, ma kyepa, ma gakpa, drima mepa, drima dang drelwa mepa, driwa mepa gangway mepa‑o.

Sharipu, detaway na tongpa‑nyi la suk me, tsorwa me, dushe me, duje nam me, nampar shepa me,

Mikme, nawa me, na me, che me, lu me, yi me, suk me, dra me, tri me, ro me, rekja me, chu me do.

Mikki kam me ching, mikki nampar shepay kam mepa ne yi kyi kam me ching, yi kyi nampar shepay kam kyi bardu yang me do.

Marikpa me, ma rikpa sepa mepa ne, gashi me, gashi sepay bardu yang me do.

Duk‑ngelwa dang, kunjungwa dang, gokpa dang, lam me.

Yeshe me, toppa me, ma toppa yang me do.

Sharipu. De taway na, jangchub sempa nam toppa mepay chir sherab kyi paroltu chinpa la tenne nete sem la drippa mepay jikpa me de. Chin chi lok le shintu dene nya ngen le depay tarchin to.

Du sum du nampar shukpay sangye tamche kyang sherab kyi paroltu chinpa la ten te lana mepa yangdakpar dzokpay jangchup ngunpar dzokpar sangye so.

de taway na. sherab kyi paroltu chinpay ngak. rigpa chenpay ngak. lanamepay ngak. mi nyampa dang nyampay ngak. dukngel tamche rabtu shiwar jepay ngak. mi dzunpay na. den par shepar ja te. sherab kyi paroltu chinpay ngak mepa.

Tadyatha. Gate gate paragate parasangate bodhi svaha.

Sharipu jangchup sempa sempa chenpo sherab kyi paroltu chinpa sabmo la detar lappar ja-o

De ne chomdende tingenzin de le sheng te. Jang chub sempa sempa chenpo pakpa chenresik wang chuk la lekso she jawa jine lekso lekso

Rikipu, de deshin no, de deshin te. Jitar kyu kyi tenpa de shin du sherab kyi parol tu chinpa sabmo la chepar ja te. De shin shekpa nam kyang je su yi rang ngo. 

chomdende kyi de ke che ka tsel ne, tse dang denpa sharibu dang, chang chub sempa pakpa chenresik kyi wang chuk dang, tamche dang denpay kor de dak hla dang mi dang hla mayin dang   drisar chepay jikten yi rang te. Chomdende kyi sung pa la ngunpar tu do.

My apologies for the Tibetan.

All right, next I get to torture you with some Sanskrit. They say all Buddhas speak in Sanskrit and those who hear them hear their own language. So I don't know if that means that we need to learn Sanskrit to become Buddha; I'm holding out that becoming Buddha means you speak Sanskrit and you don't actually ever have to learn it. But, so, I'm going to plant some seeds in your mind so that you don't have to learn it and I'll do the best I can. Please forgive me, all Buddhas. 

Arya Bhagavati Prajnya Paramita Hirdaya

Evam maya shrutam

Ekasmin samaye bhagavan rajagirhe. Viharati sma girdhrakute parvate mahata bhikshu sanghena sardham mahata cha bodhisattva saghena.

Tena khalu samayena bhagavan gambhirava sambodha nama samadhim samapannah. Tena cha samayena‑arya‑avalokiteshvaro bodhisattvo mahasattvo gambhirayam prajnya paramitayam charyam charamana evam vyavalokayati sma. Pancha skandhas tansh cha svabhava shunyam vyavalokayati.

Atha‑ayushmach chariputro buddha‑anubhavena‑arya‑avalokiteshvaram bodhisattvam mahasattvam etad avochat. Yah kashchit kulaputro gambhirayam prajnya paramitayam charyam chartu kamah katham shikshitavyah.

Evam ukta arya‑avalokiteshvaro bodhisattvo mahasattva ayushmantam shariputram etad avochat.

Yah kashchich‑chariputra kulaputro va kuladuhita va gambhirayam prajnya paramitayam charyam chartu kamas tenaivam vyavalokayitavyam.

Pancha skandhas tansh cha svabhava shunyan samanupashyati sma. Rupam shunyata shunyataiva rupam. Rupanna pirthak shunyata shunyataya na pirthak rupam. Yad rupam sa shunyata ya shunyata tad rupam.

Evam vedana sanjnya sanskara vijnyanani cha shunyata.

Evam shariputra sarva dharma shunyata lakshana anutpanna aniruddha amala vimala anuna asampurnah.

Tasmat tarhi shariputra shunyatayam na rupam na vedana na sanjnya na sanskara na vijnyanam.

Na chakshur na shrotram na ghranam na jihva na kayo na mano. Na rupam na shabdo na gandho na raso na sprashtavyam na dharmah.

Na chakshur dhatur yavan na mano dhatur na dharma dhatur na mano vijnyana dhatuh.

Na vidya na‑avidya na kshayo yavan na jara maranam na jara marana kshayah.

Na dukha samudaya nirodha marga.

Na jnyanam na praptir na‑apraptih.

Tasmach‑chariputra apraptitvena bodhisattvanam prajnya paramitam ashritya viharati chitta‑avaranah. Chitta‑avarana‑anastitvad atrasto viparyasa atikranto nishta nirvanah.

Tryadhva vyasthita sarva buddhah prajnya paramitam ashritya‑anuttaram samyak sambodhim abhisambuddhah.

Tasmaj jynatavyah prajnya paramita maha mantro maha vidya mantronuttara mantro sama sama mantrah sarva dukha prashamana mantrah satyam amithyatvat prajnya paramitayam ukto mantrah.

Tadya ta, ga-te ga-te, para ga-te

Para sang ga-te, bodhi so ha

Evam shariputra gambhirayam prajnya paramitayam charyayam shikshitavyam bodhisatteva.

Atha kalu bhagavan Tasmat samadher vyutthaya-arya-avalokiteshvarasya bodhisattvasya mahasattvasya sadhu karamdat.

Evam etad gambhirayam prajnya paramitayam charyam chartavyam yatha tvaya nirdishtam anumodyaye sarva tathagatair arhadbhih samyak sambuddhaih.

Idam avochad bhagavan ananda mana ayushmach chariputra arya-avalokiteshvaresh cha bodhisattva mahasattvah sa cha sarvavati parshatsa deva manush asura gandharvash cha loko bhagvato bhashitam abhyanandanniti.

All saying the praises of what the Conqueror had spoken.

Wow.

It's all Sanskrit to me. 

It's all Sanskrit to me too, oh my gosh. Thank you for sitting through that. [To Lama Sumati:] You're on.

We're going to learn the hard sutra in two different ways. First, the most important way to study on how to meditate on emptiness is, you might guess, by meditating on an emptiness. So we're going to do that for short periods throughout the teaching. People are always talking about meditating on emptiness and people write books called 'Meditating on Emptiness', but then really most people don't have a clue about how to meditate on emptiness. Geshe Michael has this mission to make sure we learn good solid meditation, and in this case, to go with the Heart Sutra. The one popular meditation, which is often used with the Heart Sutra is to meditate on various aspects of your parts. So that sounds a little bit strange, but you'll understand as we get into the meditation.

We're using a different meditation, one based on instructions by Kedrup Je, one of Je Tsongkapa's two major disciples. It's a four-part meditation and we're going to be going over it many times. You will leave this teaching with an excellent emptiness meditation that has a direct connection to highly realized beings. This doesn't mean you'll be great at it, it takes patience and hard work. But this is a start and if you carry it out in your home on a daily basis, and if you do the other things we suggest, then I think you'll certainly improve the chances of seeing emptiness directly in this lifetime.

The second method.. we're going to go through the Heart Sutra word by word. That sounds very boring, but it's actually very interesting to see how it all comes together. Geshe Michael has a special ability to take complex topics and remove all the gobbledygook and bring deeper meaning to many topics. Khen Rinpoche, Geshe Michael's root lama, taught the Heart Sutra several times during the 20 years that Geshe Michael was with him. And a year or two before his death, published a wonderful book on the Heart Sutra. During the course of these teachings, the Asian Classic Input Project staff found a copy of the special text that had been at Sera Mey, but was lost when the Chinese invaded Tibet. It's a commentary on the Heart Sutra by Choney Drakpa Shedrup, the author of many texts in use at the Sera Mey monastery. The title is The Sun That Illuminates The Profound Thusness, written in 1731. We'll be using this commentary to fully understand the Heart Sutra. In many sutras, the words are so jam packed with meaning they require something more than a simple literal translation. So Choney Drakpa Shedrup provides an expansion into a simple translation. The start of the book he quotes Samadhi Raja, King of the Samadhi Sutra. If you are able to analyze what emptiness means, and if you are eventually able to see emptiness directly, this is the only way to reach nirvana and enlightenment. There is no other way. So this is just the first of many admonitions during this course to work hard and learn to meditate so that you can see emptiness directly. If you do not understand what we mean by this now, you will by the time the weekend is over.

Yes. So the commentary by Choney Lama, The Sun That Illuminates The Profound Thusness, at the time we received the Heart Sutra teachings that, as Sumati said, that book had only just been rediscovered. So it had not yet been translated. It has since been translated and published through the Diamond Cutter Press. As of 2021, it was only in English, but now we have it in multiple languages as well. There's one in German here. So the commentary that we're teaching, that we're actually teaching from, we don't have in the text, but now it's readily available. Which is why we didn't print it out for you, because Diamond Cutter Press has it available.

So Sumati mentioned several times 'emptiness', and we both mentioned it in the sutra multiple times in multiple languages. And so it's like emptiness is this key that really is what's unique to Buddhist study is this idea of no-self. And it seems so slippery and difficult, but Geshe Michael in his uniqueness has simplified the scripture so much that we start with that simplified explanation. Simplified but not dumbed down. Very accurate description that helps us understand this term 'emptiness'. 

So we're going to do the pen thing. If you've never heard it before, welcome. If you have heard it before, I invite you to pretend you have not. It's like the hardest thing is to not jump to the conclusion. But I found that every time I forced myself to like stay in kindergarten about the pen thing, each time, by the time I got to the aha, it was just a little deeper. So try, pretend you've never heard it. So somebody's going to help me here. Okay, what is this thing? 

[Students: Pen]

Are you absolutely sure? 

[Students: Looks it]

Looks like, right? I'm going to try and prove it to you. Let's see, sometimes this works and sometimes it doesn't. [makes smiley face on palm with pen] There we go. See, proves to you that this thing is a pen. Do you agree?

Yes. 

I'm not just fooling. So now, suppose your favorite little dog walks in here and I hand it to the little dog. What's the little dog going to do with it?

[Students: Chew on it]

Yeah. Sniff it first, take it in its mouth second. And then [chewing].

He's going to go to the white rug and he's going to chew on it until the ink comes out.

[Laugh] Right, he is. So let's do another one. Suppose a fly lands on it. Suppose I hand it to a three month old infant. 

Maximilian would take it and write something.

So what is this thing to the dog?

[Students: Chew toy]

What is it to us?

[Students: Pen]

What is it to the fly?

[Students: Landing space]

What is it to the baby?

[Students: thing]

Yeah. Baby's got it closest, in my opinion. So what does that say about the identity of this thing? Really, just think about it. Pen to us. Dog [chews it]. Fly [lands on it]. Where is the identity of this thing coming from?

[Students: The perceiver]

From the perceiver. It has to be, right? That's what's meant by the emptiness of the pen, the emptiness of the chew toy, the emptiness of the landing pad, and the emptiness of the whatever the baby is seeing. It's [The pen is] not in itself, is its emptiness, is its no self-nature. Does the thing disappear when you go, ‘oh, it's a pen for me, but not for the dog’. Does the pen disappear? No. Was there ever a pen that wasn't established by the experiencer of it? 

[Students: No]

No. Never. [confused face] Wait, then what is it?

How can that be that many things at once?

Right. If it had its own identity in it, and any given being identified it as something, wouldn't every being have to identify it in the same way? If its identity was in it, independent of the perceiver. But wait a minute, if the thing is independent of the perceiver, could the perceiver even perceive it? [confused face] ‘Wait, no, it takes me even to perceive a thing that is in it.’ But wait, I can't perceive a thing that's in it, can I? Because what I'm perceiving is unique to me. So what happens if we put this thing, pen for us, chew toy for dog, et cetera, if we put it on the table and all the people, all the dogs, all the babies, and all the flies, leave the room. Like walk yourself out and what do you think is there? Come on, we think there's a pen sitting on the table, right? [Lama Sumati takes pen away when Lama Sarahni isn’t looking] 

What pen? 

What pen, [laughing] hey, good one.

Can't take me anywhere.

Don’t we think it's still there? But when you think hard, it's like, wait, what if the first being in here is the dog? What's there?

[Students: Chew toy]

A chew toy. What if the first being is a fly? Landing pad. What if dog and human go at the same time? 

[Student: Two things.]

Two things? Two pens?

[Student: Two experiences.]

One thing, two experiences. Exactly. Because where is the experience of the object coming from?

[Students: the experiencer]

The experiencer. Can there exist anything that's not our experience of it? 

[Student: Yes.]

Really think about it. How would you establish it? 

[Student: Sorry, I misunderstood]

Even to say, ‘oh, I just imagine it’. Right. ‘Oh, it's a real thing’. Right? ‘Oh, it's somewhere in between, dream’. Right. But can we establish anything without experiencing it in some way? What's there when there's nobody perceiving it? Has it disappeared? Is there nothing there? 

[Student: No]

No, you can't say that.

[Student: How can you be sure?]

You can't, right? If you've seen it before and it's [you’ve?] gone away, and as far as we know, nobody's taken it away, but you’re right - you can't establish anything is there. But then as soon as you come back in and you see it again and it looks like the same dumb pen, our automatic seeds go, ‘see it's a pen, and it was there the whole time because it's still there when I come back’, right? 

[Student: Maybe]

Right, we don't really know.

But when you leave the room, the floor and the ceiling and the walls and the windows are still here because the building from outside is still intact.

Seems like it. So the next question then is, ‘well why do we as humans see this and use it as a pen?’ So to identify it as a pen and to use it as a pen are two subtle but different aspects of this object's identity. We know that because you can use it to tie your hair up, but when we do, we say, ‘I've tied my hair up with a pen’. We haven't said, ‘I tied my hair up with a hair tie-up thing.’ We still think we just used a pen in a different way. But we're thinking when I need it, I'll just pull it out and write with it because that's what pens do, says humans. For the dog, is the dog chewing on a pen? We say so, but the dog can't be because if to be a pen is to be a writing instrument from the pen's side, the pen would make the dog write with it. ‘That's silly, pens don't make things do things’. But to be really honest, we think they do. And that's what we're trying to dig into as we learn the meditation practice that goes with the Heart Sutra - is to catch this deep belief that things' identities and their characteristics and their functions are in them, even as we understand that everybody experiences it differently. And because of that mistake, we fight with each other about things. So who cares about pens, but we care about good movies, best restaurants, country borders. We care about all kinds of things that, ‘my way is right and you don't see it the same way as me, you must be wrong’, and kaboom [fighting]. When we understand better that, ‘no, everyone's experiencing what we call the same thing, unique to them’, it opens our hearts and minds to a little more negotiation, at least, if not greater and greater compassion that we can help each other like merge our views. But then the question still remains, ‘why, why do we as humans see this as pen and insist it's a pen, and dogs, if you got them all together, they would insist, nope, chew toy, chew toy, chew toy. I don't get what those humans are saying and I don't understand why they do this [write] with it when they could be [chewing it] having some fun.’ Why? Where's that coming from? And what's the punchline? Our seeds, our karma, our ripening mental seeds. But how do we get from, ‘I identify it’ to ‘why I identify it in the way that I do’ without just hearing the party line and going, ‘okay, I accept it’. And for years, years, years, I never heard an explanation of that. I still haven't actually, officially, but I've worked really, really hard in trying to come up with connecting that dot. And maybe we'll get there through this weekend, we'll see. But it's something to think about. Why is it that it's karma that makes me see the pen in the way that I do? It's a dog's karma to see this object as a chew toy. It's human karma to see it as pen. It's fly’s karma to see it as landing pad. How do we prove that to ourselves? Okay, we're going to hopefully unravel that.

Well, it's also the question of when a fly comes into the room, what is the fly seeing? We think they're seeing what we call a pen, but is the fly scene a circular object? We don't know.

Right, we really don't know.

We assume it's the pen is being seen in three different ways, but I think it's maybe a little more correct to say the object that's their karma ripening is maybe a cylinder, may not be.

Right, it's just a landing pad, a place to land.

So back to emptiness. Where's the emptiness in all of that? The emptiness is the fact that when any being perceives this object, the being establishes the identity of the thing; the thing does not establish its own identity. And that's called the emptiness of the thing. The emptiness always has to refer to some appearing thing that lacks its own nature that we think has its own nature. Because if we saw directly its no self-nature, we wouldn't be having this discussion. We wouldn't need to. We don't see directly their lack of self-nature. We think we're seeing directly their own self-nature. Are we seeing it? No, because no such thing, but we think we're seeing it and then we fight over it. So that's what we're trying to identify. 

So what's the emptiness of this pen? The fact that it is not a pen from its own side. Its no self-nature. It doesn't mean there's no pen at all. It means the pen that's here is the one unique to you, unique to you, unique to you. Each of us, we're all agreeing it's a pen, but do we all see the same pen? No. [Not] Ever. And then even me, we'd think, ‘well I'm seeing the same pen every single time’, but no, because I've seen it once before. Every time I see it, I'm seeing it again. So who's different - it or me? Me, right. And so it's making me see it differently, but I think I'm seeing it the same. Mistake. So the emptiness of the pen is the fact that its identity and its characteristics are not in it. And that not in-it makes it available to be whatever anybody puts on it. So let's just put on it ‘gold bullion’ and we'll split it all up 30 ways and walk away with an ounce of gold. Can we do it? It's not by wishing, right? Could we create the seeds? Yeah. How?

Bitcoin.

[Student: Giving gold]

Right, giving valuable something to others. Like what? Like the dharma.

With the wisdom of knowing where things like that come in your life is by giving it away.

Right. Which means you wouldn't care about it. Which means you wouldn't care whether it was gold or pen or paper anymore. Just whatever was needed is what you would want to ripen. Like whatever's needed at the moment. And can you imagine being a being whose experience is whatever anybody needs at any given moment, just [open your hand and it’s there]. It's not in human realm to be able to pull it out of the air, but it is in Buddha realm; it's called their emanations. It's called their manifestations. You are what anybody needs at any moment. Glass of water, there you are. Because of the emptiness, it is possible. Pretty inconceivable, but possible. So we've just talked about pens as empty. What about you? Like think of your own self. It's like, ‘no, I'm a real thing, I'm not empty.’ But yes, I'm a real thing, and yes, I'm empty of my own nature coming from me. ‘Wait, I have to have my own nature coming from me, don’t I?’ But which one is it? The one you see or the one you see or the one you see or you see? ‘Oh, no, no, it must be the one I see.’ But wait a minute, which one is that? This one or that one [next moment] or that one [next moment], right? Aren't we changing moment by moment? So truly our identity is that we are available to be whatever anybody's perceiving us as at any given moment. That's kind of scary.

What we're perceiving ourselves to be.

But we're also perceiving ourselves in that way too.

I think one thing that I've struggled with for a long time on this is we use the term 'emptiness' and is that the best word. And Geshe Michael more than once has said English suffers from not having the exactly right term. So we came up a while back with ‘potential’ and that's better in some ways, but it still implies a certain amount of self-existence.

Right, presence.

Potential energy says there's a potential for this [raised pen] to fall. There's a potential for it to fall if I let go. So if I don't let go and move it here [onto the desk] myself, it hasn't fallen yet. It's down here now [on the desk]. I think “the potential” is closer for me because that says the pen has the potential to be a chew toy, potential to be a landing pad.

It still has implications. So one of the fun things that we've had over the years is trying to find a word that better describes it. And as he [Lama Sumati] describes, you'll land on one and it's like, ‘okay, we've got that right’, and then we work with, and then it's like, ‘no, there's got to be a better one’. And you end up with that recognition that really that state that we're trying to reach intellectually is beyond intellect, it's beyond words. So there won't ever be a word that we can find that exactly pins it down. And so to reach that deep truth requires being in a deep state of meditation where we are experiencing, but beyond the intellect, beyond needing the words to experience. And it's difficult to reach that level of concentration that's so withdrawn from our sensory input to be able to sustain that state of awareness without intellect. But we can get glimpses of it. We can reach some fleeting moments and catch something even before we're at that meditative ability to be able to sustain that for a long period of time. So we're not really concentrating on the techniques of meditation even in the week that we're here together. That takes a different aspect.

That takes going to Mexico City.

Yeah, in January. But we're dealing with trying to grapple with the ideas of it and then the experience of it in the meditation. So did we get it? Quiz time. What's the emptiness of this thing?

The fact that it doesn't have its own nature and so it can be the thing that everybody sees, and everybody sees it differently, and everybody who's not drunk, hungover, or whatever is seeing it validly, and so it really is what they see.

[Student: For them.]

For them, exactly. Good.

So that implies it's not an illusion, it is a pen and you can pick it up and write on yourself.

Right, but it is an illusion in the sense that it looks like it has its own nature. We believe it has its own nature and that is not true, never has been true, but we see it that way and so in that way it is an illusion. It's an illusion that this pen has its nature in it. So we're trying to see the illusion which reveals to us the mistake that we're making about the object. The object is here; it is not going to disappear into thin air. A belief about the object is going to disappear into thin air if we do our jobs right.

Emptiness is an absence. I like ‘absence’ as well as ‘potential’. ‘Absence’ doesn't imply negative to me, ‘absence’ implies the lack of something, in this case its self-nature.

So then what can we say is the appearance of the pen? How does the pen appear if it lacks its identity in it, and yet here it is, how is it that it's appearing?

[Student: Seeds]

Right, from our mental images. Our identity of it makes it be here. It has no nature of its own; it has the nature each one of us is putting on it, and so here it is, and we can use it in all kinds of different ways [writing, tying up hair] according to what our experience is of it. Is that by choice? No, doggone it. So what's forcing us to see it that way? 

[Student: Our karma]

Our karma, right. That's what’s meant by karma. Anybody know the definition of karma? Movement of the mind and what it motivates. So ‘pen’, ‘my pen’, ‘can't have my pen’, ‘don't use my pen’.

But it's movement..I think when you talk about the definition of karma, people think, ‘oh, it's what I do or say’. Karma is movement of the mind first. So having a bad thought, like me in politics now, having a bad thought but not acting on it is still karma. So we have to be careful what we think. For me, it's something I forget constantly. 

Right. So we tend to think karma means duty or fate. Those are other tradition ideas of karma, and in a sense they're correct. Our tradition says karma means this movement of the mind and what it motivates us to say and do. It really takes a different aspect of karma. It’s like our behavior (what we say and do and think) is making these imprints on our own mind that are influenced by every other imprint that's ripened and new imprint that's made, they're all interacting with each other and something happens that I haven't quite figured out how this works, that seeds get over the threshold into manifestation and then [broop], it ripens. [Broop], the next ripens. Broop, broop, broop. They're ripening into our experience and we respond. The responding plants new. The ones that have ripened - done, gone forever. So it's like ‘phew’ for some of them. But by the instant that we've experienced it, we've already planted new. The movement of the mind, just the awareness of whatever experience has ripened, we've already planted new. Then we think it, we say and do something in response to that, and that plant some more. So they say that those who have slowed their mind down enough to witness this process, say 64 or 65 imprints are happening in [a finger snap] that fast by way of our experience, planted and ripened. So 64 in and 64 out, but there's this delay between the ones in and coming out and during that delay they're being influenced by similar ones and so they're growing. The main thing they're being influenced by is the common theme of misunderstanding the true nature of those things. Our ignorance is within every one of those 65 in and 65 out seeds. And so it's growing, doggone it, and those seeds grow. So we never run out of mental seeds ever because 65 in and 65 out, but they double, double, double, double, double. You always have more. So you can kind of forget the idea of disappearing or being annihilated which actually is a great aha to realize that ‘oh my gosh, whatever this thing is that's me, is eternal.’ Is it ever the same two moments in a row? No. But is it ever not? No. That's kind of cool. As you get close to seeing emptiness directly, one of the things that will kick you out from going there is the fear of disappearing because it seems like that's going to happen. And so this conviction that it's impossible to disappear is really helpful as you're getting deeper into your meditation and reaching that place where our ignorance piece is scared for itself. The ignorance is going to disappear someday and it’s going to fight. It's going to fight for its survival and it is a powerful foe - the ignorance. So again, it's something we're going to work on this weekend is to see if we can pin that slippery pig down and then work with it. 

We only have 15 minutes left and the next is about the five paths and I can't do that in 15 minutes. So let's run through the meditation preliminaries. Would you like to do that?

Okay. I try and remind myself every day of the fact that the past, whatever the past is, is my present, and my present is my future. Whatever happened in the past is creating where I am now, and whatever I do now is creating my future. So if I want a pleasant future, I need to be pleasant to as many people as I can in the present. That for some reason is very comforting to me. I worry about my reactions to the present; I don't worry about the past and what I did because I don't know. But I do know that if I focus my attention on the present, the future will be what I want it to be. So I use that when I work with the fact that I've got Parkinson's. It is something that happened that I did in the past and it's ripening now, so if I don't want Parkinson's in the future, I have to do something about it. It's up to me. It's not up to anybody else, it’s nobody's fault but mine. On that cheerful note… 

Yeah, let's learn the preliminaries and then we'll hand our gifts and do our light.

Please get comfortable. We're going to be sitting, going through the preliminaries for five or ten minutes. Scratch that itch. 

So watch your breath. When your mind wanders, bring it back. Keep your mind at the tip of the inside of your nostrils. Keep it there and feel the breath coming in and out. That is what we mean when we're watching our breath. Count to 10; out breath is the start. 

I like to try and slow my breath down. In three-year retreat I could get to where I was breathing four times a minute without any struggle, but it’s usually about 12 breaths per minute.

Now take refuge in the Buddha, dharma, and sangha, and in this case, we'll take refuge in the Heart Sutra. What it means - put your hopes in it that maybe on that paper some kind of information that could actually lead you into another realm. No disappointment, no suffering, just bliss. 

Now think about bodhichitta. Think about some specific person or group of people that you know that are having some kind of trouble and wish that you could learn about this thing called emptiness and you could use it as a tool to help people that are in trouble or suffering. Truly help them.

Now invite a holy being to be with you. If you have a root Lama, bring them to sit in front of you in meditation. They're about a full prostration length away and at your eye level. If you don't have a root Lama, I have often used my parents; someone you have respect for. Think about all the good qualities you know about them. And in your mind, bow down to them and honor them. A prostration is honoring somebody; it's not kowtowing to them.

Then think of some offering they’d like to have from you. I think most often what they really like is for you to improve your mind or your heart. So you could offer this retreat and your efforts during this retreat. 

Next, purify your mind. Think of the most negative thing you did today, what you said or thought, and look at it. Admit it. Try to clean it from your mind. Be honest with yourself and find a thing that would most disturb your meditation. Admit it and cleanse it by admitting it. 

Think about the best thing you did today, the best thought you had, the most pure thought, most helpful thought. And be happy that your mind is capable of such thoughts and you have that goodness within you.

Then pray to be taught, to meet good teachers. It doesn't have to be a Lama. It can be your next-door neighbor. It is if your next-door neighbor is a person that's annoying you by driving with their cell phone and chatting in their cell phone, holding up traffic. Pray to meet sweet teachings wherever you go, whomever you're with. 

And pray the holy beings in this world stay, stay to help us like His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, Geshe Michael, Lama Christie, the people who've been a good influence on you. And pray for their long life that they stay and help us.

Okay, you have an ending you want to do?

So think of what we've done here this evening - receive the oral transmission of the sutra, thought about the empty natures of things a little bit, tied them to our behavior to come to the conclusion that kindness creates a more pleasant world. And think of this goodness like a beautiful glowing gemstone that you can hold in your hands. Be all happy that you've made this goodness. And then bring to mind that being that you thought of at the beginning of class. Recognize that we've planted seeds in our minds through which we will go on to help them stop their suffering forever, someday. And be happy with that great goodness. And finally, recall that precious, holy being, your own personal guide. See how happy they are with you. Feel your gratitude to them, your reliance upon them. And then offer them this gemstone of goodness. See them accept it and bless it, and they carry it with them right back into your heart. See them there, feel them there. Their love, their compassion, their wisdom glowing inside you. It feels so good we want to keep it forever, and so we know to share it. By the power of the goodness that we've just done, may all beings complete the collections of merit and wisdom and thus gain the two ultimate bodies that merit and wisdom make. So use three long exhales - the first to share this goodness with that one person that you wanted to help. The second breath, share this goodness with everyone you love. Third breath, share it with every existing being everywhere. See them all filled with loving kindness. They don't know why, they don't know where it comes from, it doesn't matter. And may it be so.

Let's gather our minds here as we usually do, please. Bring your attention to your breath until you hear from me again. 

Now bring to mind that being who for you is a manifestation of ultimate love, ultimate compassion, ultimate wisdom. And see them here with you. They are gazing at you with their unconditional love for you, smiling at you with their holy, great compassion. Their wisdom radiates from them, that beautiful golden glow encompassing you in its light. 

And then we hear them say: bring to mind someone you know who's hurting in some way. Feel how much you would like to be able to help them. Recognize how the worldly ways we try fall short. How wonderful it would be if we could also help them in some deep and ultimate way, a way through which they would go on to stop their distress forever. 

We're learning that that is possible. We're learning how it's possible. And so I invite you to grow that wish to help into a longing. And growing your understanding of this idea of karma and emptiness, grow that longing into an intention. And with that intention, turn your mind back to your precious holy guide. 

We know that they know what we need to know, what we need to learn, yet what we need to do yet to become one who can help this other in this deep and ultimate way. And so we ask them, please, please teach us that. And they are so happy that we've asked, of course they agree. Our gratitude arises. We want to offer them something exquisite and so we think of the perfect world they are teaching us how to create. We imagine we can hold it in our hands and we offer it to them, following it with our promise to practice what they teach us using our refuge prayer to make our promise. 

Here is the great Earth, filled with fragrant incense and covered with a blanket of flowers; the great mountain, four lands, wearing the jewel of the sun and the moon. In my mind, I make them the paradise of a Buddha and offer it all to you. By this deed may every living being experience the pure world. Idam guru ratna mandalakam niryatayami.

I go for refuge until I am enlightened to the Buddha, the dharma, and the highest community. Through the merit that I do in sharing this class and the rest, may we reach Buddhahood for the sake of every living being. I go for refuge until I am enlightened to the Buddha, the dharma, and the highest community. Through the merit that I do in sharing this class and the rest, may we reach Buddhahood for the sake of every reliving being. I go for refuge until I am enlightened to the Buddha, the dharma, and the highest community. Through the merit that I do in sharing this class and the rest, may all beings reach Buddhahood for the sake of every single other.

Okay, so I'd just like to share that much of what we do, our mudra about the offering mandala, the prostrations, all of this is part of our specific tradition. It all has meaning and it's not at all obligating, so don't feel that if it feels unusual or foreign or in any way uncomfortable, don't feel that you need to participate. It's all personal meaning and people use it in that way. So I just want to hope that people feel at ease in that way. So we would like to start again with the meditation preliminaries and then a short tonglen meditation to get us in the mood for learning the Heart Sutra in a way that influences us properly.

Okay, so go ahead and get comfortable. Try and stay still for the next maybe 10 or 15 minutes.

So we start by watching our breath. When you see your mind wandering, bring it back. Keep your mind at the tip of the inside of your nostrils and sense the breath coming in and out. We'll count to 10 nice slow breaths, not stress/ strain. And then out-breath is the start of your breath.

Now make an act of refuge in the Buddha, dharma, and sangha. And I think for today we'll take refuge in the Heart Sutra. And what it means to put your hopes in it - that maybe, just maybe, we're going to learn some kind of information that will actually lead us to another realm where there's no disappointment and no suffering, no ups and downs, no broken relationships, just bliss. 

Next, think about bodhichitta. Think about some specific person or some people that you know who are having some kind of trouble and sincerely wish you could learn this thing about emptiness and you could help them with it. 

Now, invite a holy being to be with you. Have them sit in meditation with you. They're at your eye level and about one full length prostration away. 

Now think of all the good qualities you know about them and in your mind, make three mental prostrations to honor them.

Now, think of some offering they'd like to have from you. I think a good offering for this week is offer this retreat and your efforts during this retreat. 

Now purify your mind, especially from the negative things of yesterday, or even though it's early today, today. Think of the most negative thing you did, which you said or thought. Look at it, admit it, and try to clean it from your mind. 

Now think of the best thing you did yesterday, the best thought you had, the most helpful thought, the most compassionate thought, and rejoice that your mind is capable of that as well.

Next, pray to be taught. Pray to meet good teachers and understand they don't have to be Lamas. They could be your best friend, it could be your family, it could be a person on the street.

Pray to meet sweet teachings wherever you go and with whoever you're with. 

And lastly, pray that the holy beings in this world stay and stay to help us, like His Holiness 14th Dalai Lama, dharma friends you have. Pray for their long lives and that they'll stay and help us with our practice. 

Okay, you can move about a little bit. We'll start the meditation in just a minute.

Okay, here we go. 

It's useless to try to meditate about emptiness if you don't have a good motivation. So we're going to do a short tonglen, which is a meditation of using our breath to take away the pain of other people and in return, give them good things. So breathe through your nose; when you breathe in, imagine that you are taking the trouble or the pain or the depression away from someone you know. Be specific about someone you know that is sad or they're sick and every time you take a breath in, you're taking away some of that sadness. It's not like you are filling up with it, you're just taking it away and it is leaving them and it's just disappearing. 

When you breathe out, imagine some kind of white light in your breath; when it touches their body, it makes them feel very happy. 

Don't let your mind wander. Imagine their problem clearly and try and take it away. 

If you finish taking all their problems, which is unlikely, there are about 3 billion other people you can work on. So if you think you're finished with one, take up another.

If you remember, we brought a holy being to meditate with us. Picture them again, ask them to come and bless your mind and they happily agree. They start to get smaller and smaller and they rise up in the air. They get even smaller, two or three inches, three or four centimeters. Bring them to the top of your head, facing the same way you are. They shrink to the size of a pea. They slowly come down inside your head and down your backbone headed towards your heart. When they reach your heart, make for them a beautiful seat made of a lotus. Inside the lotus is a sun, like a cushion. You ask them to sit there. And finally we dedicate this meditation, the good karma we did to the person you're trying to help. Think about them again and dedicate this good karma you've generated to them.

Okay, you can open your eyes. 

So we'll repeat those meditation preliminaries as the beginning of each day and they come in a specific sequence to warm our minds up to be able to go into that deeper concentration. And this is not the place to learn about them. We are just going to get familiar with this sequence. So we left off last evening having spoken about the no self-nature of the pen and we were trying to expand that into the significance of the no self-nature of anything, but I kind of feel like I jumped in ahead of time because none of that's really useful or pertinent if we don't start from the premise that we all just want happiness. So can we agree that any existing being that we can be aware of is motivated to reach their own.. to just be happy? I mean, is that fair to say? Is there anything wrong with that? No, it really should motivate us. Now what it means to be happy, different story. And that's what starts us on our path is when we recognize at some point in life [that] all those things that we're going to [do/get] that are supposed to make us happy, they don't seem to do it. Maybe at first they do and then it wears off, or they don't actually, they never meet up. And at some point we recognize that we're in this constant state of disappointment and we're making all these efforts to get these results and everybody has taught us this is what you do to get those results, and we do it, and it doesn't work. Have you noticed? it doesn't work. That's why we're here. There's something wrong with this picture. And the premise is not, "oh, it's wrong to want to be happy". That's the wrong conclusion. The premise is "there must be something wrong with what I think brings me happiness or how I think I get happiness". And when we recognize there's a disconnect and we go searching for something else, in this tradition that's called reaching the path of accumulation. So this tradition says that any person / being who comes to an understanding that there's something wrong with this picture and starts searching for some other answer has started onto what we call their spiritual path. And if one follows that impetus of their spiritual path along to the goal, they will go through five personal experiences that move them through these different levels towards their goal, whatever that goal is. And the first one is reaching this level of renunciation, basically. In this tradition, those five paths have names. Path of accumulation is this first one that we're talking about. Path of preparation is the second one; I'll describe it a little bit more. Path of seeing is the third one. Path of habitation is the fourth one. And the path of no-more-learning is the fifth one. This first one, the path of accumulation means we're accumulating enough disappointment with life that it grows into actual disgust with life. Like it's just, everything I try it fails eventually. Maybe it seems like it works at first, but then in the end it leaves me disappointed and wanting for more. And it sounds like a real downer because in Buddhism it says: until you've reached that point where you are just distraught with how disappointing life is, you haven't really started your spiritual path. And it's like "really? We all have to start our spiritual path from being depressed?" But it seems like that because when we're looking for happiness, this mistake that we're so steeped in of believing that a thing's identity is in it, includes that the thing's qualities are in it, which means whether or not it's something pleasurable is in it, which means it is the source of my happiness.

"I like berry pie; there's one piece of berry pie left; I know that eating that berry pie will make me happy so that piece of berry pie has my name on it and I should be the one to eat that berry pie; It's going to bring me happiness so regardless of who else likes the berry pie, it's like there's the last one, I deserve it' I'm going to eat the berry pie." Is it pleasurable? Yes, it tastes good. I enjoy the berry pie. And then there's the last bite and I eat the last bite of berry pie and 10 minutes later I want more berry pie because it wears out. And somebody else didn't get any berry pie. It's like, “that doesn't matter, he'd rather have ice cream”, which is my justification for eating the last piece of berry pie. “He doesn't like berry pie the way I like berry pie. He likes ice cream. He can have the ice cream.”

I like ice cream and berry pie.

[Laugh] he likes ice cream on his berry pie. And so it seems like such a trivial example, but who's watching as I eat the last berry pie expecting it to make me happy forever? And it seems like a silly thing. I don't really expect the berry pie to make me happy forever, but deep down I do. And then there's the last bite and then it's gone. And then it's like, oh, so now I need something else to make me happy because the berry pie happiness is gone. Okay, so now I need a cup-of-tea-happiness, and now I need a I've-got-to-go-to-the-store-happiness. We're in search of happiness thinking that these outside things that have them in them are the source of my happiness. We just showed that the pen doesn't have pen in it. So can the pen have pleasant-pen / unpleasant-pen in it if it doesn't have pen in it? Can it have pleasant in it? No. Can the berry pie have pleasant in it? Well, why the heck do I want it? It's got all those calories. Really nothing good in it at all, except may be some purple, right? Vitamin purple in berry pie. But come on, there's nothing good in it, is there?

[Student: Good karma]

Yeah, it's got good karma in it, it tastes good. But then I use it up. If I really want happiness, what would I do with that berry pie?

[Student: Share it]

Share it. Yeah, you can slice it in half, right? I don't have to give the whole thing away. I can give half of it to somebody else. What if I live by myself and my cat doesn't eat berry pie?

[Student: Neighbors]

Yeah, find somebody to share it with, right? You can even just make an offering. But the point is: our misunderstanding of believing that there's something pleasurable in the berry pie that's going to make me happy, that mistake makes me then believe that I need to do what we do in worldly ways to get what we want and to push away what we don't want. And we believe that what we do in the moment works to get what we want and to push away what we don't want. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. But what always works is the imprint we make in our mind as we do the thing that we do. That imprint stays in there. It is eventually going to ripen into its ex-print, into its projection, of a similar experience coming back to me of what I just did. So I eat the whole berry pie, my mind's watching "you ate the whole berry pie". That imprint goes out, past Pluto, comes back to me eons later, and "who ate the last potato chip? Who left the car without enough gas in it? Who used up something and left not enough for somebody else" will be my experience from having eaten that berry pie without sharing it. It seems so minor a thing. The point is that our happiness, whether it's from berry pie or meeting a new wonderful person, that's all results from imprints made when we tried to do something similar for someone else. When we experience for ourself, we're using up imprints made by behaviors we did before. As we interact with others, we're planting new. That new planting creates the circumstances of our future experiences. Where does happiness come in there? We want experiences that seem to bring us happiness. They don't, but because they lack their happiness in them or not, they can. So can't we make imprints that when they ripen, ripen everything we experience as giving us happiness? That makes us a happy person. It's not really related to what's happening at all. The happiness was from the inside out. Your happiness is unrelated to what's going on around you. We can reach that place where happiness just bubbles out because it's unrelated to what's going on. Translate the word "happines"s to "love". Love meaning: I want you to be happy. So if we walk around with this sense of: I want you to be happy, I want your interaction with me to leave you feeling a little bit better than you did before. Seed planting, seed planting, ripens as ending up walking around in a world where the other beings in your world are wanting to leave you a little bit happier after their interaction with you. Is that a world you'd like to walk around in? Yeah. Is it going to happen from the outside? No. Can it happen? Yes. How do we make it happen? By being that. Being that now whether or not the others are being that. Do you see? Eventually everybody's forced to be that around you because you've made those seeds. So while we're here, everybody's doing it. We're all on our best behavior, getting to know each other, being kind, being helpful. We're planting seeds to make a world where when you go out in traffic, the traffic just parts ways for you because you've been so kind in your other arenas that even traffic is kind to you. And it takes time. We've been at this for embarrassingly long time, but now we'll go driving and thinking, "oh my gosh, the traffic's going to be terrible", and where did it all go? Some days, not every day, but often. Just because we've avoided interfering with people intentionally for so long, we hardly ever, knock on wood, get into traffic jams anymore. Even when everybody else is saying, "the traffic is so terrible out there". "Really?", we just don't see it. Do you see? But it takes this time. There is this annoying time gap between when we intentionally plant these good seeds that I'm trying to create my future, and when that actually happens. There's a long time between "I try, I try, I try" and nothing's changing. And that's actually path of preparation. We've moved into path of preparation when our efforts to change have become infused in us; our path of accumulation has reached its power to push us into path of preparation. Path of preparation is when we are preparing to make this breakthrough in our understanding of the nature of reality. In this tradition, our path of preparation is this timeframe when we're taking classes, training our meditation mind, keeping our book meaning following our behavior very precisely to learn to make new choices in our life situations, in order to intentionally imprint in our mind kindness in the face of ugly situations. Intending to be able to then experience different results in our future experiences. Our path of preparation is preparing technically to reach the experience of ultimate reality.

So the path of seeing, the third path, refers actually to an experience that happens once for the first time and over really only 24 hours. So our path of renunciation may take us many lifetimes to reach the point where we are at the place where we would bail out of life for 10 days and come to a retreat like this. And then the path of preparation hopefully is not going to take many more lifetimes, but can. Usually we.. not usually.. we try to do our path of preparation in a lifetime or half of one. And that path of seeing though happens within about a 24-hour period of time. And in that 24-hour period of time, the beginning of it is reaching this culminating event in path of preparation where we actually directly experience these seeds ripening out of our mind into the object of our experience. We will hear about that experience again and again and we'll imagine it happening again and again. But to have it as a direct experience has a different impact on our being than all of our imagining. The imagining all helps bring on the actual experience. The actual experience of "whoa, I'm laying on the identity of that object" will, if we take that experience and go and jump on our meditation cushion and then meditate on that experience, that experience will pull us into the direct experience of the fact that nothing exists in any other way than as these overlays of mental imprints. And that takes us into the direct perception of emptiness, which is really the direct perception of the ultimate reality of all existence. Most specifically, the existence of one's self. The no self-nature of one's self, not meaning physical body, but one's self being is the no self-nature that's important. And that's what you will experience directly in this direct experience of emptiness that's called the path of seeing, TONG LAM.

Once you've had that direct experience and you come out of it, you are forever changed. It's like learning to ride a bicycle. You can read all the books about it, see all the YouTubes about it, but never actually get on the bicycle. You could be an expert in it but never actually have experienced it. But you finally get on the bicycle and you ride it, and it's like now you know what it is to ride a bicycle. And even if you never ride again, nobody can ever tell you, "you don't know what it's like to ride a bicycle" because you've done it once. Once you've experienced this emptiness of all existence reality directly, and you come out of it, you don't see it directly again for a very long time. But now you know and nothing and nobody can ever make you un-know. And the result of that knowing is that you now are very, very keenly aware that your ordinary experience of everything and everybody is mistaken. That everything goes back to seeming like their identities are in them again, but you know you're wrong.

You know it's all this shape-shifting of your own results of past behaviors and available to be whatever your current behavior plants for your future, but you can't see it directly at that point. You are on your path of habituation, which can take, again, multiple lifetimes to progress through the experience of burning off the old seeds that were planted with the big mistake, and replanting seeds without the mistake. And in the process of that, you're working very keenly on burning off all of those mental upsets that are inside all the seeds that were planted while we were still the ignorant-mistaken-being. So they call it working through burning off all our mental afflictions and planting our seeds without that mental affliction of the belief in the self-nature of things. We call it ignorance, that belief in the self of things, others / self. So the process of the path of habitation is learning to live according to what you now know is true, but you can't see it, but you know it. So ones responses / reactions to their experience of life change dramatically. Not easily, it's effort to be on your path of preparation. When we've entered this whole sequence with the heart of a Mahayanist, the great vehicle, which is "I understand my own suffering better, now I understand everybody's in the same boat, I want to become the one who can help everybody become the one who can help everybody stop all of this suffering." When that's our mindset, then the guidelines are that we work on what are called the six perfections as we move through our path of habituation; meaning we're working on overcoming our selfishness by working on being more generous with material things, with our time, with our love, with our knowledge. We work on our level of morality. Morality being avoiding harming others, learning what kinds of kindness we want to plant, and doing both of those with this mindset of bringing everyone to freedom from their suffering someday. We then also work on avoiding anger, growing our patience, that's a long story, what that is. And work on doing all of that enjoyably - having a good time doing our giving, our avoiding harming, and our experiencing patience. And all of that feeds into deepening meditation practice that feeds into being able to reach that direct perception of emptiness again and again and again repeatedly. We'll have it for the first time sutra-wise, and it may be a very long time before we have it again. But as we accumulate our goodness, it will start to happen more frequently. That grows our wisdom. Wisdom meaning that.. intellectual wisdom is our intellectual understanding that, "yeah, it seems like things are in-them from-them, but intellectually I know it can't be. I've proven it to myself because I've done the pen thing so many times and I've been able to apply that out there. Intellectually I apply it to my behavior and I try really hard to increase my mindfulness of my automatic, "what about me?" and say, [put that aside to think about the other], and turn it to greater kindness. And we just track our behavior and see how well we do. And we do well some days and we do not so well other days. Path of habitation. Accumulates, plants the seeds, for reaching our goal. Whether that goal is our own freedom from suffering, nirvana; or our goal is reaching our full awakening, called Buddhahood in this tradition, called the path of no more learning. It sounds like, "okay, once I'm Buddha I can just retire." But it's not like that. It's like once you reach Buddha, you're ready to launch your career. It's like we're ready to start what we are meant to do is reaching this full awakening state. And then that's a beautiful long story about what you do once you're Buddha, again, for another time. 

So to move through these levels, renunciation, accumulation, preparation, et cetera, the experience that moves us from one to the next happens in deep meditation. We accumulate the experiences off our cushion, but the switch from one to the next happens in deep meditation. Which means if we're not meditators, it ain't going to happen. And it means to be a meditator deeply enough to have these realizations means regular daily practice. It doesn't mean you have to ditch life and go into retreat, although you might want to. Regular steady effort accumulates the karmic seeds to be able to reach that deep state of meditation that can carry us to the direct perception of emptiness when we need it. And this tradition says: build up to an hour of meditation a day with the 20 minutes of preliminaries and about 10 minutes at the end, so the whole thing is ends up being almost two hours. But Geshehla always says, just start with five minutes and add a minute every week. And by the end of a year, your whole life has adjusted for your one hour meditation session a day because you didn't sit down and try and do it all at one time; you've just accumulated it slowly. So hopefully we'll have a little inspiration to start a practice if we don't already have one, and to maybe crank up the juice on it if you do already have one by the end of this weekend in session. 

So the Heart Sutra is all about these five paths. If you didn't know that, you wouldn't know it because the sutra itself, nobody heard in the sutra, "Here's the first path, here's the second path." But they're all in there and it's talking about what the experiences will be on that path and moving from one path to the next. Which is why we get the commentary on the Heart Sutra so that we can understand and use it to help move us through these paths. Moving through the paths, all of them have to do with understanding emptiness and dependent origination, meaning emptiness and karma, this marriage. Ao we're going to talk about it a lot.

In Choney Lama's commentary, he quotes a text by Lord Manjushri that says about the Heart Sutra: You know, when somebody hears the Heart Sutra, probably they're going to doubt it, but if in their doubt of the Heart Sutra they have the thought, well, but maybe there's something to it, that thought "maybe there's something to this Heart Sutra is such a good imprint, such a good karma, such a merit, that just that thought is enough to shift your mind and set you on your path of preparation. You're here because you're already on your path of accumulation, whether you knew it or not, that's what brought you here. And then just to hear the Heart Sutra and have a sense "maybe there's something in there that can help me help others", that's enough to propel you along these five paths. It's very sweet because even the doubt, doubt in the doubt, is enough to carry us forward. Okay, I'm finally done.

You've covered just about everything. We can all go home now.

No, now we get into the Sutra.

Take a break and then we'll start looking at the actual word for word.

So Choney Lama goes through every word and we're going to go through it likewise. We talked about how one of the qualities of an enlightened being is they speak in Sanskrit and we all understand in our language. That's why you might hear someone say that to them Lord Buddha spoke the sutras in Pali, or in our case in English, when he's actually speaking in Sanskrit. 

So [Sk:] Arya Bhagavati Prajnya Paramita Hirdaya, [Tib:] Pakpa Chomden Dema Sherabkyi Parultu Chinpay Nyingpo. ‘Bhagavati’ or ‘bhagavan’ is translated into Tibetan as Chomden De. 

CHOM means conqueror, DEN means possesses something, and DE means gone beyond. Geshehla translates it into English as 'conqueror', but literally it means the conquer who possesses something great and has gone beyond. The MA of DEMA is a feminine ending, so literally the title is the Conquering Woman of Wisdom. BHAGAVATI, the 'I' is a feminine ending in Sanskrit and there's a reason for it, but we'll get into that later. 

[Sk:] PRAJNYA or [Tib:] SHERAB means wisdom. People accused the Tibetans of mispronouncing it. They pronounce it as 'praj-nya' and they're accusing them of mispronouncing it, but that's apparently the way it should be pronounced. PRAJNYA means wisdom, PARAMITA means the other side. So reaching the other side.

If we ask nicely, maybe Lama Sarahni will tell you her foUr dharma chicken jokes, but you have to ask nicely. They're very funny and very original, but.. well, there's nothing wrong with telling jokes in English. It just means we may get a bunch of blank stares. 

But anyway, so PRAJNYA means the other side. You often hear of gone to the other side and we'll be discussing that.

HIRDAYA means the heart, your heart. So literally the thing is called, The Heart of the Perfection of Wisdom, The Woman Conqueror, that's the actual name of the Heart Sutra.

So if you study the sutra, you'll reach the other side. It means by studying the sutra, then seeing emptiness directly, you will reach the other side of the shore of ocean of suffering, which is the opposite of suffering, is total enlightenment. So when we talk about going to the other side, or crossing to the other shore, we're talking about reaching enlightenment. If you learn the Heart Sutra, if you see emptiness directly, you'll reach the other side of the ocean of suffering. So the perfection of wisdom can mean either emptiness as we're working on it and trying to perfect it, or the perfection of wisdom can mean the real perfection, perfect wisdom that's already in the mind of a Buddha. So when we say this teaching is called the Essence of the Perfection of Wisdom, the Heart Sutra, that perfection can mean either the one that gets you there or the one you have when you get there.

So "I bow down to the Buddha and all the bodhisattvas", at the beginning of a book, translators bow down to somebody. In this case they're bowing down to Lord Buddha and all the Bodhisattvas. This came about when the government of Tibet made a point that.. the king said, if you write a book about sutra, he wants to see a prostration to the Buddha. Well, let me go back. There's an obedience at the start of all teachings and this was required by the king in Tibet. And so when you get a sutra, you're going to have an obedience to several.. possibly several people. One, Lord Manjushri, if you have the obedience to Lord Manjushri, then it's a wisdom teaching. If you have the obedience to Lord Chenrezig, it's about compassion. If you have an obedience to Shakyamuni Buddha, it's Vinaya. And if you have one to Vajradhara or Vajradharma, then it's tantric. So an authentic commentary should have an obedience to one of those individuals. In general, in Buddhism, we distinguish between wisdom and method, between knowledge and action. The knowledge side of things, the nighttime side of things, the left side of things, the mystical side of things, the wise side of things. This is why the book is called The Lady, or the Woman. The feminine energy in all people, not just women, that's a quality of knowledge and wisdom and of emptiness. The masculine side is love and compassion, bodhichitta, action, daytime, the right side. These are all distinctions we make in Buddhism. So wisdom, this whole subject of knowledge and deep understanding of reality, is a feminine side of things. And that's why the Heart Sutra is the woman, the lady conqueror.

NOT CLEANED YET

So welcome back. We'll do our opening prayers as we usually do, and then take a little wiggle and then go into the next stage of learning Jay's meditation. So just make yourself comfortable. Bring your attention to your breath until you hear 

From me again. Please. 

Now bring to mind that being who is for you a manifestation of ultimate love, ultimate compassion, ultimate wisdom, and see them up here, there with you. 

They're gazing at you 

With their unconditional love for you, smiling at you with their holy, great compassion. Their wisdom radiates from them. That beautiful golden glow encompassing you. And it's like, 

And then we hear them say, bring to mind someone you know who's hurting in some way. 

Feel how much you would like to be able to help them 

Recognize how the worldly ways we try fall short, 

How wonderful it will be when 

We can also help them in some deep and ultimate way, a way through which they will go on to stop their distress forever. We're learning that that is possible. We are learning how it's possible. And so I invite you to grow that wish into a longing 

And that longing into an intention. 

Then turn your mind back to your precious holy being. We know that they know what we need to know, what we need to learn, yet what we need to do yet to become one who can help this other 

In this deep and ultimate way. And so we ask them, please, please teach us that. And they're so happy that we've asked. Of 

Course they agree. Our gratitude arises. We want to offer them something exquisite and so we think of the perfect world. They are teaching us how to create. We imagine we can hold it in our hands and we offer it to them following it with our promise to practice what they teach us. Using our refuge prayer to make our promise here is the grave earth filled with fragrant incense and covered with a blanket 

Of flowers. The great mountain Bo lamps wearing the jewel with the sun and the moon. In my mind, I make them 

The paradise of a Buddha and offer it all to you by 

This de May every living being experience a pure world come here. Yet I go for refuge until I am enlightened to the budah of the dharma and the highest community to the merit that I do and sharing this class and the rest I reach bud, I would for the sake of I living be I go for refuge until I am enlightened to the budah, to married that I do during the class and the rest may we reach Buddhahood for the sake of ever living being I go for refuge. And until I am enlightened to the budha that dharma and the highest community through the merit that I do in sharing this class and the rest, I all meetings reach their total, the benefit of every single 

Other. 

Okay, we'll the second part of Jade's meditation, so wiggle a little if you need to and then get ready. So let's start by watching our breath. I'll count to 10. Remember, you're focusing on the sensation at the tip of your nose and the count starts with the alk. Make refuge in the Buddha and sangha, specifically in the heart sutra, and think about why what you need to know might be there and help you escape your death. And think about somebody you know who is suffering and try to get the feeling that you would like to reach your own enlightenment to help them. Now I'll picture your root mama in front of you meditating with you. Think about some quality about them that you see and admire. Make three mental prostrations to them next to make an offering to them. And today, a good offering would be you're going to try very hard to understand the sutra as we go through it. Next, think about the most negative thing you did yesterday or thought about yesterday. Look at it and try to purify it from your mind. Next, think about the best thing that you did yesterday, the best thought you had. 

Now pray that during the day, especially today, that you receive the teaching, that you get it. You begin to understand it. Pray for the long life of the great teachers in this world and also that the teachings themselves will survive. Buddhism is coming on hard times. It's being pushed out of Tibet. It's dwindling among the refugees in India. It's come to the United States and to Europe, but it's not strong yet, but we're part of the effort to make it strong. 

Okay, if you need to shift and move for just a second to get comfortable, go ahead. So now we're going to the actual meditation. First we'll go through the physical body again. This is all part of the first step. We're going to observe the physical parts of our life without any kind of examination or philosophy. Just checking. We'll start with the object of your eye, the colors and shapes. So go around the room with your mind. Think of all the colors and shapes. Try to picture your physical body sitting in a big box called this room. Think of the colors of the walls and the windows, the colors of the grass, the trees outside the sky. Continue going through all the colors and all the shapes that are part of your world, the ones you call your arms and legs, and also the ones you call grass in the sky. Just go through all the colors and shapes. If you turned your head from left to right, what would you see? 

They all go to the second step of the meditation and do the same thing mentally. Go around the room again, picturing the colors and shapes mentally. Look down at your hands and your knees all in your mind. Look at them one more time. Now we're going to start an examination of those colors and shapes. There's a choice you can go either way. The first choice would be that those colors and shapes as you normally see them for visualizing them. But suppose your eyes were open and you looked around the room that way. The question would be, do those things exist outside of you or are they inside of your mind? So now for the first step, pretend they are outside and go around the room again from left to right with your eyes and concentrate very strongly, very deeply on the feeling you have, the natural feeling that they're outside of you. The natural feeling that if you reached out with your arm, you could touch some of them. Or if you threw a rock, it would hit them. Concentrate on that feeling You have that they're outside of you. Now we'll go one more time across the room starting from left to right. Go slowly. Think about each thing you could see and get that feeling. Get in touch with the feeling. It's a natural feeling you have. Those things are outside of you or the inside of you. I can reach out and touch them. If I had a stick, I could reach out and hit them. 

It's a natural feeling you have. If you are not in this room, all those things would still be here. And in one way that feeling is wrong. They don't exist that way. And we'll go into that in the next meditation. So for now, dedicate the good karma that we just did to someone is having a problem today. Think about them very concretely and think about dedicating what we're trying to do to them and ask your llama to come to your head and down into your heart. Picture them very clearly staying in your heart. They're extremely happy with you for trying to do these meditations. 

Okay, you can open your eyes. 

May I summarize that? Sure. 

So the first step of kedrick j's meditation is to practice experiencing and experience without all the labels and the stories. So kind of like an infant before you have names for things that they might still see these colors and shapes, and I know their field of vision is only this much, but pretend it's this much and the infant don't really know what all this stuff is. But you're picking up information and we're trying to be able to actually experience things in that way. It's not our normal and it's not what we're going to end up with at all, but it's getting in touch with the fact that our sensory information is different than the identity of the things. So we want to do that as a separate step. Then this second step that he just shared with us is actually going through and letting the identity of the objects show up and experiencing our deep belief or relationship with that object as it being out there. 

Me here it out there. We're trying to really establish it's actually the wrong view, but we want to clearly experience that view. So that steps three and four is what we're going to do with that first step is just the information. We call it the raw data and it's actually very hard to do. And then once you have a sense of that, let the label, let the thing have its identity and find your belief in its identity. Prove it to yourself. Well, if I reached out, I would touch it. If I left the room, it would still be here. All the reasons that we say things have their own natures. Use it in that section of the meditation to get convinced that the things out there because then third and fourth step is we're going to work with that, but we have to have it to work with it and we'll do it again and 

Again. Thank 

You. So let's go back to the sutra. Now, what we've had so far is the D. No, once as I heard this teaching and now we know that that's got those three different meanings of ones I heard. Then we learned what did we learn? Hum ga, kna. Ja. The conquer was staying on vulture's peak and keep of the king home. Illa though that's the mountain. Did we do those? We did those with the great gathering of monks and the great gathering of ho and we had those different meanings of great. They're making the distinction between monks who are at the benign level working for their personal nirvana and the B who may or may not be monks and nuns, but their attitude, their motivation is working for being able to become a being who can help everyone become a being who can help everyone become a being. Right? I can't stop saying it. They're all gathered 

There with him. 

So next comes de say, which means, and then it tells us we're into a new paragraph de say arhat the conquer are all those different meanings is the word for the profound, let me make sure I'm on the right page here. Yes, Damo means profound and profound is code word for emptiness, like another word for wisdom. So anytime you come across the word profound, it really does mean deep and it means the depth of the true nature of something so emptiness. It's another word for emptiness, Dumbo. It doesn't mean emptiness. Dumbo, it means profound. But profound means emptiness then not. So the profound ung means appearance. So together it's the appearance of the profound, which is a weird thing to say because we described emptiness as the absence of itself nature, and now we're talking about the appearance of an absence and it's like, wait, that's an oxymoron, isn't it? If it's absent, it's absent. If there's no two-headed purple elephant in this room right now, it's absent. You can't appear here. But is its absence hearing here 

Is its absence here. Yes. So this appear of the profound doesn't mean all of a sudden emptiness is right there. What it's talking about is how anness appears to the conqueror. So we have to go onto the rest of this sentence to get it. So it says, and then the conquerors, the conqueror goes into this state where his mind is aware of the emptiness of means is synonyms and chuy means dharma. But dharma here means existing things. Dharma often means Buddha's teachings in our practice and we're studying the dharma as we do this. But the word dharma also means existing things and the chuy, namron means all these different synonyms for existing things, all these different names for existing things, which is really a subtle, it has a deep subtle meaning. But now, right now let's just say all different kinds of existing things, Buddha goes into the awareness of the emptiness of a whole bunch of different existing things. 

Well, omniscient, they're perceiving the emptiness of all existing things at all times. Why does he have to go into meditation to do it like he doesn't, but he's demonstrating something and apparently Buddha do this all the time. They do things they don't have to do, they don't have to do because they've already been there, done that and gotten enlightened because of it. But then they do it to demonstrate to their students, this is what you have to do. So here we are, all these Buddhists and monks and nuns and buddhi. Safa is not Buddhists. The Buddhists there and they're all his disciples have gathered around him like Tom from far away with lots of trouble to come to the teaching and what does he do? 

I think it's really funny. Get on with it. So 

Well you can do, 

Yeah, I skipped by that. I So when we were talking about mong, the word namron, which means synonyms. Gais said the use of this word often is referring to different synonyms for emptiness. So there are different ways to talk about the emptiness of something. One is to say that the pen does not exist by nature. It has no nature. Another way to say it, it doesn't exist by definition is another way to say it. It doesn't exist from its own side is another way to say it. All of these are numb drunks for emptiness, for the word emptiness, the meaning, emptiness, and it has no nature of its own. I said that about three times so far. So all of those are what's called no drunk synonyms. It's not word forward, right, meaning synonyms. But the one here we're talking about is synonyms for the existing things that Lord Buddha's mind is aware of the emptiness of. 

You follow that. So Buddhists, we can say, oh, Buddha is meditating on emptiness, but there has to be an object that's lacking self nature for the Buddha to be meditating on emptiness. There's no just uber emptiness that you set your mind on. There's an object, an appearing thing, and then you look at the appearing thing as if it has its own nature and go, no, it has no own nature at all. And that's its emptiness. Even Buddha catches both of those aspects. Buddha perceiving emptiness all the time still must perceive an appearing thing to perceive the emptiness of that appearing thing. So if they just said, oh, Buddha goes into the direct perception of emptiness, it wouldn't really be enough to explain to us what Buddha's doing for us in this sutra. As he sits into meditation, he's meditating on the emptiness of all existing things. 

It takes both appearance and the emptiness of the appearance to be experiencing emptiness directly. So now when we have this simple little phrase, it means the appearance of emptiness in the mind of the being to whom that is happening. In this case it's Buddha. So what does the phrase say in English? At a certain moment, the conqueror went into deep meditation on the part of the teaching known as the awareness of the profound. So the profound is the emptiness, the awareness is that state of mind that's experiencing that emptiness of the existing things that is being focused upon all of that. So Buddha goes into this deep meditation on emptiness is what that phrase de say is the single pointed meditation 

Called the teaching of the profound. 

Okay, so line four dei again repeats the time aspect saying also at that time chupa means BofA. SEPA tempo means great beam. The reputation is because of sutra is talking about reaching his goals and those of all other beings. So you hear that often in the teaching, the two goals, and it always refers to the goals of yourself or himself or themselves and the goal of all other beings. Chen translate as the exalted arhat. PBA refers to someone who is an aria who has seen emptiness directly. Aria means a higher bean or a realized bean and literally means higher. Someone who's reached a higher state, Tony, Dr. Explains that rezi advocate. RA has gone beyond the state of a normal person and normal person is what's the for normal person. 

So 

A normal person meaning a person who has not seen emptiness directly and he's called RA because he's focusing on all the beings of the world and all the different realms of the world all six times of the day. So he's constantly thinking about the welfare of all other beings. Tibetans translated arhat into Chen Rezi and Chen means I. It's the honorific for I. Can you explain the honorific? I get Jay's own kapa, et cetera, but I don't understand why it'd be an honorific for eyeball 

When you're talking about his holiness is eyeball versus my eyeball. His holiness gets it. 

The J eyeball. 

Yeah, it gets the honorific eyeball. I get the So eyeball. Eyeball, 

Different 

Word 

For I reik means to look at somebody with love. It's like gazing on someone with 

Love. 

She does that all the time, not to me. She's looking at one of her plants and 

I walk in the room and she goes, nah. In the sutra system, what we're studying, which is what we're studying here, Rezi is a Buddha. He's not enlightened yet. He's just one of those disciples of Lord Buddha. Tony Lama says Wch means lord of power. In this case it says he has total power. Now you may recognize in the text that we go through, what's an example? The answer that the Lord of power, the realized one of the great warrior loving eyes gave to the junior monk named Sherry Ra. Then you'll find later on the order of that changes. And we had a student, Yasmin, when we were first memorizing this and she just dug in her heels about memorizing the different order. 

Me 

Too. She just said, there's one order. That's why I'm memorized. This is too confusing. 

In the Tibetan and the Sanskrit, it's the same every single time. 

So guess like was playing with it. 

One check means Lord of power. He's a great master of the dharma. So Cher Chupa, the profound perfection of wisdom, he looked upon it. Tony Lama says, Chen Rizzi is also thinking about emptiness by looking at the five parts of a person. So we have five parts to a person, and we're not talking about the arms and legs, we're talking about a little more philosophical. Each one is a huge pile of things, and so they're called sconda and Sanskrit that means heaps. Each one of the five parts of you is made up of here. The text says Jillions. 

I don't think there's such a word but an awful lot directly from the abma Kosha, we're going to describe the five heaps. The first is form your physical body, your physical world. The second is feelings. Your capacity to feel things good or bad or neutral, but never stops. You may be in neutral for a while, but it's not that your feelings aren't running constantly. And I've struggled with the concept of neutral karma for a long time and I don't understand how they can be. We always have an opinion about, well, I always have an opinion about things. So you say neutral karma. You look in a mountain, you go, that's neutral karma. You're just thinking mountain. But in the next instance I'm thinking, oh, it's a nice mountain, it's a tall mountain, and I have an opinion. So I struggle with neutral karma. Anyway, next. 

So form, when you're asked about the five heaps, you have to recite the recall in an order form feelings. Next is discrimination. This is your ability to discriminate between things. This is good or this is bad. I like this. I don't like that. We're constantly making distinctions between things, which is part of the reason we have so much trouble with karma. Number four is all the other stuff that makes you up. Your anger, your jealousy, your compassion, your concentration, guessing Michael and the ko. You say these are parts of you and don't fit anywhere else. So number four is called the grab bag. And ki says, that's exactly if you translate the A koha, that's exactly what it says. It's a grab bag of all the other stuff. The last one, 

It's a little confusing because what we often mean in English anyway for feelings is all this other stuff. I'm feeling angry, I'm feeling jealous, I'm feeling, and that's not how the word feeling is being used in heat. Number two, heat number two is just thumbs up, thumbs down, thumbs sideways, physical, thumbs up, thumbs down, thumbs sideways, mental stay. And it's much more subtle than what's in the heat. Number four of all the other stuff, all the other stuff comes out of positive, negative, neutral, but it is different. 

The fifth heap is your raw awareness, the fact that you're not unconscious, the fact that you're not dead in western terms. So the raw awareness is simply being alive. And I think to me, awareness, when I think of raw awareness, I think of it a newborn baby. Just imagine what they're sucking into their brain. I just look at the white eyes of the newborn baby and wonder what are they thinking? Because there's all this information that they're gathering that do they not know what to do with it? I don't know. It'd be same for a young anything, a young dog or any animal, they open their eyes for the first time and I just really wonder what that must feel like. Maybe it's overwhelming. That's why they're crying. So as far as going into a meditation, an examination of the five heaps, the five parts of a person, our meditation start on heap one and we're doing the same meditation. So you start with your physical world. To do that, you have to go through your five senses, and that's what we started already. We're going to concentrate on the first one, which is visual, and we'll be concentrating on that when you do your emptiness meditations. 

So there's a big debate about why they call the first sconda form, meaning shapes and colors. It's a word that normally means shapes and colors when they name the five heaps, everything you smell, everything you hear, everything you taste, everything you touch and everything you see. Why did they use everything you see to name all the physical parts of you? Because vision is 95% of your world. You live in a visual world. When somebody asks you about your world, you're thinking about what you see, not most likely, not what you smell, taste, or touch. So we're going to concentrate on that when we do this emptiness meditation. Keso says we could have done smells, but they're just harder since they're not in any choices and not much variety. 

You take smell for granted. You take smell for granted. But if you've had covid, you may have lost the ability to smell. I have very little smell or taste anymore with Parkinson's. So it's an interesting subtle. We say the visual is 90%, 99%, and you stop and think about it, you take for granted. There's so much we take for granted in this world, and believe me not having a taste anymore or smell makes food an interesting diversion. Now I focus on texture and food. I like certain textures in my cooking and I've discovered my wife doesn't enjoy necessarily the same texture. 

So that's going to be a challenge. Who doesn't like marinated artichoke arts? I mean, everybody likes those, don't they? I was taught to always eat anything put on my plate by my mom. Apparently my dear wife didn't learn that lesson, at least from my mom. Okay, let's get back to this. Okay, ppo de no ni ta. Page two is heaps. NPO is five. De is parts of the person, no is nature of their own ni to par empty non ta Lama says, there's an interesting thing here to think about. Let's see. ta, I'm confusing myself. 

Look at it. 

Yeah, he's got charo ta says it means to look at a lot of texts. It says Ta Chao. And Lama says, I have no idea why he did that. A lot of the addition says, should look, look upon the heap of form, should look upon the five heaps. And Lama says, I have no idea why he did that. And then he says something that is often the case in a lot of these commentaries. I don't know. You guys figure it out later. 

It's a clue. 

Do you want to take a break? Now 

We started at two. No, let's go a little bit longer section that can break. So it has just said 

That the Buddha went into that deep meditation called the awareness of the profound. And at that same moment, Rezi, this realized being the great warrior Lord of power sees into this 1D practice the perfection of wisdom. And he is seeing perfectly the five heaps, the five parts of a person were empty of any nature of his. That's the phrase that we just went through and we put it all together into the English. So Lord Buddha sits into meditation, and so now the main teacher and the co-teacher are both sitting there in meditation when we all gathered for this teaching. Next it says Young de say, and then in that moment also something else is going to happen. So let me see if 

I'm any right place here. 

Yeah, 

So there's a difference between Lord Buddha's awareness of the profound and Chen Reese's deep meditation on the emptiness of the five heaps. First, because Chen Rezi is limited to the five heaps, but second because Chen Rezi is not in Sutra teachings and omniscient being. And so he has to go through some sequence to get to the emptiness of the object of his meditation. So we're not saying that Buddha and Chen Rezi are both in the same meditation on emptiness because it's different because their states of mind are different. And the distinction is made by saying Chen, Rezi, what's the word I'm not finding? It is engaging in what's called the profound activity and or Buddha, the profound awareness of the profound, the profound means emptiness. And he's in meditation on that. When they use the term profound activity, it gets a little confusing because when we have the two aspects of the path, we have the method side and the wisdom side. 

And the wisdom side is the learning and meditating on emptiness, the empty nature of existing things. And the method side is the activity that we do in our world, meaning our behavior choices that we make based on our growing understanding of the no self nature of the yelling boss. And so if that yelling boss is coming from me, my impulse to yell back to get out of whatever the problem is, is the impulse that will make more yelling people in my future. And so because of my growing wisdom, I will refuse to yell back and instead try very hard to say something like, I'm sorry you're upset. How can I help you? They're difficult to do when you're being blamed for something. So all of that, 

And just as a side and guessing, Michael talks about the robo clause and uses the example of if you don't like your boss and you say, well, I'm going to move to a different job. I don't like my boss. And you move to a different job and guess what? After a little bit you don't like your boss, you move to another job, you don't like your boss. So the solution is not to move to a new job. The solution is figure out how to get to your new boss, 

But I don't want to like my new boss, he's a jerk. 

Well, if you want that in your future, that's exactly how he should react, 

Right? So usually we identify method side in terms of activity because it's our behavior choices and what we think say and do and that we identify the method or the wisdom side by the profound emptiness. And here they're mixing the two together, the profound activity, the activity of the profound, and it's trying to relay to us that we are going to do our activities with a deeper and deeper understanding of emptiness. And that's to do the activities in a profound way. It's not like as we get more and more aware of emptiness, we do less and less in our world. They're not ends of the pendulum, they're in fact the middle of the pendulum where the two come together. And it is an interesting juxtaposition. Usually when we're talking about the wisdom side of the teachings, the bodi Safa who's giving those teachings is Montery. 

He's the wisdom specialist. And when we're talking about the method side of the teachings that the Bo Safa who's teaching about it is Alora Rezi, he's the compassion specialist. And yet here is compassion specialist teaching about Hamptons. And it's like if the commentaries didn't point it out, it would, I mean it went over my head for a long time, even though the commentaries pointed out, it's like until you get to thinking about it, it's like it's a significant piece of this sutra that it's being taught to us. But Buddha through alo tera about emptiness, the compassion specialist is teaching about emptiness, not the emptiness specialist. There's a point there, it's an appointment point that I can't really verbalize in English any better than just say it's something to cook. There's a reason the sutra Buddha did that in the sutra. There is a connection between compassion and wisdom, both in compassion, in growing our wisdom and the compassion that comes out of wisdom. If our growing understanding of emptiness is making us more self-involved, more withdrawn, more detached, we are not understanding emptiness, our emptiness, understanding when it's accurate will increase our love, increase our compassion, increase our inability to tolerate anybody's suffering. When we understand emptiness and it just feels very different, oh, you're suffering, it's just empty. It feels like that, right? Oh, it's empty, it doesn't matter. It's really, really a wrong view. 

Seen too extreme, 

Right? The two extremes. Exactly. All right, so young de say John Day, where is it? I'm sorry, I'm mixed up. So let's take a break because I'm mixed up. Give me a chance to get unmixed 

Up. 10 minutes, 10 minute break 

Talking 

Too fast. 

We talk more 

Slowly, slowly up. 

Okay, let's go over the five sheeps again. I'll try and do it a little more slowly. 

I may have inaccurately recorded that you were too fast. That was my understanding. 

No one was complaining, no one was, sorry, thought that was my incorrect understanding. 

We good. It's 

Very nice to take care the translators. Thank you. And maybe it's for some participants as well. 

That's what you slow down. It was slow down. Also, it was asked to clarify the five heaps do so. 

So you have five components you made of, and each one is no simple thing. So they're called heaps because it's a huge pile of stuff. So the five heaps are formed. Your physical body, your physical world, and that covers everything from the grass outside to the trees, the clouds, the rain, the parrots, everything. That's your physical world. Then there's the mind and that's the remaining four feelings, discrimination, all the other stuff and your awareness. So feelings, your capacity to feel things good, bad or neutral, which never stops the moments you're born. You have an opinion and what you do with that opinion is part of the five heaps. 

Discrimination is next. Your capacity to, no, let me go back. Feelings is that whether it's good or bad or neutral. Discrimination is deciding that you like or don't like something. You make distinction between things. And then number four is all the other stuff. And that's the grab bag, that's everything else. Your compassion, your concentration, your identity, your anger, they're a part of you and they don't fit in the discrimination or feelings part of the five heaps. Then the last is your awareness, your raw awareness, and that's described as the fact that you're not unconscious. The fact that you're not dead in western terms. I don't know if that helps, but that's the concept of the five heaps 

And the awareness of the senses is in the awareness. 

I would say, I would think the awareness of your senses would be in number five, 

Right? 

It was asked to clarify about five people. 

No, Louise asked whether the, 

I'm sorry, I'm sorry, that question, right? So it was asked are the awareness of the senses in the heap of awareness or in the heap of form? And the answer was it's in the awareness of the sense is in the heap of awareness. The picking up the sense is in the heap of form. 

Yeah. What you do with the awareness is in the heap of form. 

Okay? 

Right? 

Yeah. 

Okay, so 

I got regrouped. So we are on the handout that has the Sanskrit and the Tibetan and the English, if that's the one that you have access to, we're at the top of page three on that one where it says at that moment, right? And then Z gave to, I have all that to talk about. 

Let 

Part, lemme do the easy part. The back of that, the Chong tube Zi, we've already had, we're going to have it again and again. So chpa, anybody remember 

BofA? Buddha want to be warrior from sepa, the great warrior AK Aria Chen Ra won power guy, the Lord of power. So every time we see it as ti pointed out in the Tibetan and Sanskrit, it's in the same order. But guess you Michael takes those descriptors and puts them in different orders just to challenge us. So this is referring to what Sha Ra, he's going to ask a question of the great bud Safa, the great warrior loving eyes, the Lord of power. So there's our indicator that it's, that's doing the sangha. So what's happening here is that the one who's written this down for us who was there says under the power of the Buddha some key to say don the Buddha in meditation. And somehow he's influencing Shari Ra to ask a question of Avelo Tera, it looks like those two are in meditation. 

Sorry, PRA comes up, must hug on the robes of Avelo. Tera, I've got a question and he asks, but in fact Lord Buddha is inspiring this one called Shari Ra to ask this question of the great warrior loving us and in the Tony Llama commentary, which is what Gehi Michael's following as he was giving this teaching originally, Tony Llama says, why did they call this guy Shari Vati here and Shari Ra in other places? Like who is this guy and Ra, the word Ra means son of. And he even goes so far as to say, who have you seen the son off? Who is this Shari person? And all they give us is Shari RA's mom was named Shaka. And so that's how Shari Vati who gets his name, and sometimes we call him Shari, and sometimes we just call him Shari Ra and why says we'll talk about it later, but we never got there. So I don't know. It means the same guy, whether you see it as Shari Pra or Sha, the main thing here is that under the influence of Lord Buddha sha RA has this bright idea. I'm going to ask Lord Rezi this question. 

He turns and asks this question to the great warrior, loving us is what this means, but is the term that points out that Shara is a monk called a junior monk. They don't. Depa means someone who still has time, still has life and it means he's younger, but here it means he's a junior monk, but not meaning that he has only rtn vows, which is the beginner vow. It just means he's the young guy in the picture here. And so a way of saying venerable Sha turns and asks this question to Rezi. And here's the question that he asks in that same paragraph on the top of page three, if 

You form 

So Ricky, Ricky Puo, son of noble family, and that's you gave him the page, right? Yeah. Son of noble family and daughter of noble family. Tama starts by saying they're called son or daughter because they're someone who's been born to the family of the dharma and more specifically the family of the Bodhi Safa. So there's a child of noble family, meaning now due to your efforts in your life, you've taken a kind of rebirth and that indicated by being a son. Now sometimes Buddhism is accused of being, what's the term for male-centric 

Al patriarchal and 

GSO says he didn't add the translation of the daughter of noble, noble family that was in there. So you're a new person, you're a born again Buddhist, and you've been born into this new family. So you're considered a son or daughter of noble family. In this case, Noble's not talking about the four noble truth of aria and that's why I Geshehla doesn't like the translation of noble truth. 

Yeah, share something. Do you remember when you took your Buddhist off of Vs. Those of you who did we say something? Now I've been born into the family of the Buddhist. I'm a child of the Buddhist. That's this. No, you are Ricky Pu Puo, 

Ricky Puo being daughter Ricky Pong being son. Thank you. 

You're welcome. Anyway, I'm getting there. 

Okay, I won't go through. That means all of us, any one of us at all. So it's covering both male and female. She peril through mpa, the profound perfection of wisdom. Sammo chupa, chahar, dupa follow the deep practice. So Lama Lama is asking que, I mean Sherry Ra is asking those of us who want to see emptiness, what should we do? How should we work on our daily practice day? Jja Lama says the words, how do we train ourselves? What are we supposed to learn? The real question he's asking is how are we supposed to learn the five paths? So here's the first mention in the heart sutra about the five paths, and if you didn't have a commentary, you'd never figure out that that's where the five paths enter into the heart sutra. So the heart suture is a textbook on how to go through the five path and you have to go through all five to become enlightened. So I have soak, 

Hear the five paths again and talk about those. 

Yeah, I'm just, okay, soak your tongue, go the five paths. So the first one, what's the first one? 

Determination. 

What are you accumulating? Merit. 

No 

Accumulating renunciation right now. When I first started learning the five paths, I always slipped into the thought it had to do with merit and it clearly doesn't. Renunciation is what you're trying to accumulate and it is true renunciation. You're tired of the ups and downs, you're tired of relationships falling apart, you're tired of your body getting old. So there's kind of candy cane renunciation where you don't want to do something but you're not really serious about it. And then there's the true renunciation where you're giving up, you're giving, wanting to be reborn. Renunciation is where you accept the fact that you're tired of the supposed good things of cyclic life, of samsara. You are really tired of it. There's nothing that you enjoy and that doesn't mean you're a terrible depressed person. I'm a reasonably happy guy and I have reasonable renunciation most of the time unless it's chocolate, but I digress. Okay, the next is starting down a path of preparation. You're starting to understand emptiness intellectually and the profound path of seeing home intense 15 to 20 minute exercise experience of experiencing emptiness directly. And the last next one is path of habitation where you learn you use your knowledge of emptiness to eliminate your mental afflictions. Now the interesting thing there is things are empty, they're not self existent, but you slip back into thinking that, but you catch yourself. Then the last is the path of, well, the path of situation and the path of no more learning where you become a Buddha. So dk, what do we have here for that? I don't, 

Sorry, Lama. Where is that in the text when it says no, 

I'm sorry, say again. Oh, I'm at dk. Where is that? In there 

Towards the bottom of three. Page 

3, 1, 2 

Underneath the Tibetan on page three, bottom Tibetan on page three English we have that is the answer is the answer. 

John two, simple, simple. Page 10, the Lord of power, the realized one, the great warrior loving eyes 

Have both. 

That should, 

Yeah, we have it on both at the top of the page. And that same phrase is at last, the last Tibetan on page three. 

So 

The one we just finished, that any son or daughter of noble family hope to follow the deep practice of the perfection of wisdom. What would they have to do? 

Yeah, 

That's what he just finished talking about. 

That's chairman. 

No, that's Rick Pu Ricky Puma, son or daughter hope to follow the deep perfectionist, the practice of the perfection of wisdom. What would they have to do? 

Okay, 

So then next down, see that? 

Yes. 

Okay, got with me. So we're putting together pieces we already know we're asking a or he's something about arhat and we already know depu, venerable, sorry, RA. Now de map just means that he's quoting what Rezi is going to answer. So che just means this quote, it's telling us that Chen Rezi is going to speak. Rezi is rezi, right? All of that means Rezi. He responds. He responds to venerable Shara in the following words. So this is what this phrase is saying. Rezi answers Shara. It's not the answer, it's just that he's going to answer. And here it comes what he answers. So in English, this cheong phrase is this, then is the answer that the Lord of power, the realized one, the great warrior loving eyes gave to the junior monk named Sha Ra. We there? 

Yes. Okay, so then on page four, Barry pool 

Topics, page four, Barry p, Ricky Puum, Ricky Puo. What's Ricky Puum? Ricky Puo. We just learned son and daughter of noble family, right? So men and women included here 

Means 

La la. All of them together. Look, we're learning Tibetan share, kipa, chia, perfection of wisdom, share of Kipa chi, the perfection of wisdom. Mo what we learned, that Mo was 

Profound, 

Profound chupa. She bar dub day, I have to look that one up. 

Sorry, I don't have that word for word means as follows. So this what follows is going to be what we should do if we want to learn to practice this deep practice of the profound is what this is saying. So it comes out as here's Shahi Pra is what any son or daughter of Nobel family should see, meaning should do, should see who hopes to follow the deep practice of the perfection of wisdom. So perfection of wisdom is that phrase share ki. And that is the deep practice of wisdom du deep. This is what we should do, this is what we need to see. So we're all set up, the question's been asked, the answerer is telling us what comes next and all the rest is going to be taking us through. This is what happens in the first path. This is what happens in the second path, but it's not going to say that that way it is going to give us the essence of the experience, not really how to get it. And then Koop J gives us this four step meditation that helps us reach what this is trying to teach us 

All. Does that still mean? So Tony Lama says in that little phrase, TA our J meaning as follows. That's where Tony Lama says this is starting the explanation of the five paths. And again, if we didn't have a commentary, we really wouldn't know it. So thank you Geshe Michael for, 

And there's a question as to whether this refers to two of the five paths or all five, 

Right? Right, 

Right. 

Tony Lama says he's on the five paths, 

Right? He thinks it's the all five. But when you're studying a hole that has parts, you investigate what makes the whole the whole, and you see, oh, it relies on its parts and then you investigate the parts to see what is it about the parts that make the whole the whole. And you find that, well, there's not really anything about the parts that make the whole, you have to have all the parts together to make the whole, but if you didn't already know the whole, it wouldn't matter how many parts you had together, it would never make the whole. And so when they're talking about the five heaps, it's like you can think about the five heaps as a whole me made up of five heaps and it can investigate my emptiness of me made up of five heaps. Or you can look at each one of the five heaps and all of its parts to try to find the actual heap of which it's a fifth of me or whatever. 

So he's saying it's not that we just look at the five heaps as a one thing. And it's not that we look at the five heaps as just a two thing as in body and mind. It's like if you're going to bother to do this, go through all the heaps individually and work on where is that thing, the heap and all its parts that make up the heap that makes up the whole heap me. And at each level we'll find something that I think is there and I'll go looking for that thing I think is there and not be able to find it without my seeds, my label, my karma ripening, seeing the thing in the way that I do, which means it's not in it ever. So Tony Lama is pointing out, don't think that this is just talking superficial. Oh my five heaps wants us to go through, dig into it deeply, which is what we'll be doing during the week. What is it that I look at? Tera is going to point out about those five heaps that we are to come to realize by our own investigation and that is what comes next. Is that still me? All right, so down in the middle, bottom of page four, you see it? No, all of that is me. 

What's 

S 

Is hips nap og k, no Nick Park, no Nick Town Par is the phrase for does not have any nature of its own. No ni par does not have any nature of its own. So this phrase is pointing out, what do we need to do? We need to see that our five heaps ple, our five heaps don't have any nature of their own, not as a whole and not as any one heap and not as any one of the teeny little piles of things that make up that heap. They have no nature of their own. And what that means for them to have known nature of their own is what's going to be explained as we go along in the sutra and 

See. So napo 

Is the five heaps. The day means see them one by one and together. So see those five heaps as a group as being empty of any nature of their own and explore each one of those five heaps one by one to find their lack of what we think is there as their identity in them from them. So we're trying to identify our heap to begin with and then identify our belief that that heap has some nature in it that makes it our heap of form this thing. And then show ourselves whether or not it has that self nature. We will theoretically come up with an absence of that self nature, but not an absence of our body. Is our body going to disappear? Because suddenly we understand it to have no nature of its own. No. Why is it not going to disappear? It never had any nature of its own. That thing that we are looking for that we think is there was never there to begin with. So when we see that it's not there, what changes? Some belief, some deep belief that pushes our interaction. That's what changes. Not the outside stuff. It was never had its own nature. It's really slippery. 

This is why it can change 

Because slippery or because it's empty. Both you are making a joke. Alright, let's see. Alright, see them one by one. See those five parts of yourself as being empty of any own nature? That's the, I just lost it. 

No 

Number. Oh, see them this way. 

Have 

Page 15. 

Yeah, but we have 20 more minutes. So we do this third meditation or save it for the beginning of Let's do questions. Yeah, let's do question and answer and we'll start this meditation at the beginning of next class. 

Question from the audience. 

Okay, so I will try to repeat questions from the audience. So all of that is clear as mud, right? Yes, exactly. Even too unclear to ask questions about, right? Yes. But try to, for size, what can I do? What can we do to help? 

I know that you already explained it, but if you can go a little more because I haven't understood clearly the difference between feelings and the four hip. Yeah, the fourth hip, you can go a little further because Yeah, do you want to do 

No, mine is not clear. 

Okay. Right. So the question was can we distinguish between the heap of feelings and the heap of all the other factors more clearly? So the heap of all the other factors is everything that doesn't fit in the others. But what it's talking about is our reactions to our experiences in the sense that we have an experience and we automatically, no, we automatically are jealous or we automatically are angry or automatically distracted or loving or compassionate that it's our, we would call it our emotional reaction to a situation 

You like or dislike something and what you do with that liking or disliking, 

Right? So the like and dislike is over here separated into the feeling and discriminating, not because they're so different than what's in the fourth heap, but because those two are the cause of what happens in the fourth heap, what goes into the fourth heap? So wait, an experience happens with that ripening seed of that experience is the seed of positive or negative experience. It's not even yet I like, I dislike. It's just yes or no positive or negative. And then the instant with the positive is I like, which distinguishes what it is I like. So there's two apples on the table. One's a sour green one, one's a gala, right? And it's like, oh, thumbs up apples green one, no gala. Yes. And I move toward, I want, I like I distinguish, I want, I go after 

The I go after is in the keep number four. If somebody else is going after it at the same time as me, ignorant me goes, I got to get there first. Pave number four, pave number five. Awareness is the awareness of all of that happening. And there are many different ones happening because there's the awareness of the colors and shapes, the awareness of the sounds. All of those are different awarenesses, but all ripening together into the experience. So the feeling and discriminating between things are separated out because if you can catch the no self nature of those two, you will not react badly and make negative seed things in your fourth heap. You'll only make positive seed things in your fourth heap if you're not misunderstanding feeling and discriminating. But it's so subtle, it's happened already. By the time you're already reacting in your fourth heap, using your fourth heap is clear. 

As you study karma emptiness, you quickly realize that you can have an opinion. It's what you do with that opinion. It's the ignorance. Well ignorant, ignorant response to a good or bad that's causing the problems. 

Right? What else can we clarify? 

Is it then so that we can say if the four hips are like the sequence, 1, 2, 3. First I check the water with form and color, then it comes to feeling to say, then it comes to say, okay, I identify I like a dislike. And then the next, it's like a sequence. So Tina asked you the five heaps 

Happen in sequence and when we investigate them, it's a great way to think of 'em. I would hesitate to agree that they happen in sequence because I think they're happening all simultaneously. But yes, to work with them, it can be very useful to work with them in that sense of sequence from one to four. But five isn't like a fifth one to happen. Five ray is there in each one of them. 

Good. What else? 

I have a question. 

Okay, 

Then you said that in the, when loving eyes starts to answer is going to give us the five paths, but then he goes right away into the emptiness of the heaps. So I am missing the renunciation part. The first part, 

Right? So it was asked that where is the first path in the teachings here When the first answer is what we're supposed to do is meditate on the emptiness of the five heaps. Where is renunciation? Do you care to talk to that? The renunciation is the willingness to ask the question with Shari Pra and follow the advice that comes. 

So to just be reading the sutra, we already have some level of renunciation happening or we wouldn't have the seeds to be interested to be hearing the teaching. We wouldn't have the seeds for it to have any meaning at all. So it's kind of like it's implied, but all five heaps of all five paths you're going to see are seem like they're implied. So it would be a good exercise to dig back through that vener Sanskrit to see where's the real clue here about where renunciation is coming in. It's probably even earlier than Shari Pra asking the question. 

Is it because he's asking about the novel? Sounds it in place that they already novel, 

Right? They're already so does it. We're already talking about noble sons and daughters, meaning people on their BofA path already. So doesn't that imply that they have their renunciation already strong? That's a good point. So again, the renunciation would be implied to just be at the teaching of the Heart Sutra. Good question. 

What else? 

10 minutes. Guess you, Michael says never waste 10 minutes. 

Yeah, I have a question. It's a technical question. It's hard to follow. You are reading, commenting on the commentary, and we have the text of the suture, right? We don't have the commentary. I don't have it either. You don't have it either, right? 

I'm sharing the download that guess you Michael gave to us. 

Lisa. 

Yeah, it just came to my mind that, so we are starting the commentary from Cho Lama, but the meditations are from Kro J. 

Yes. Meditation are Kro J. We are learning from Chony Lama's commentary on the heart sutra and the meditations that we're being given our Kro Ja, who was a disciple of Jetson Kapa, which was much earlier than Joni Lama. 

But in the commentary he doesn't mention the meditations. Geshehla Michael. 

Geshehla Michael taught us that. Thank you. That meditation 

And also you gave us the mantra already and do you want to give us some practice with the mantra or just get, 

Yeah, we'll get there. But in the, I guess the, do you care to do that? 

I'm not sure what the question was. 

So the question was, sorry. What practice do we do in using the mantra? And with a mantra use, you are verbalizing the vibration of those words, those sounds, and that vibration goes forth from you. And rattles 

Rattles the raw data of all existence in a positive way. And so what you might do as you're reciting your mantras, have a sense of this outflow of aspiration to move through the five paths to reach the state of being the one who can help others become the one who can help others become the one that loves everybody. So as one repeats the mantra, you have this sense of outflow, of uplifting vibration that as it goes out from you, just every worm, every nat, every human, every angel feels uplifted by the sounds coming out of your mouth. It doesn't need to be specifically thought out. Just radiant sound waves vibrating out would be a good place to start. 

I'm not sure it is. Question is so good for this class. What I'm going to ask it anyway. I heard you explaining that you're going to became that person that is going to help that person to became the being to help that person and looks like something sequential in some way. But I wonder if the part of the orian thing is no time or it's not everything going simultaneously. So it's something that comes to my mind constantly. And I know sometimes I ask for it, but the answers maybe, of course my seats are not prepared to receive it, but I can, for me it's supposed to be 

Right. So a given the question, yeah. I'm trying to even rephrase the question. Does when one person get fully enlightened, everybody get fully enlightened at that moment? Or does it have to be one at a time? And if you're omniscient, how can it be one at a time? If you as omniscient, you're perceiving everything all simultaneously. Did I get the question right? Exactly. That's one 

Globe. 

Well, simultaneously, I would look at it this way. You take the word simultaneously to mean happening at the same time or you're aware of all things happening. That to me is a subtle difference. Very subtle difference. But that's the difference. It's not like your brain is trying to process everything at the same time. Your brain is processing everything. That makes sense to me. I can see one person nodding yes and everybody else going, what the hell are you talking about? How can I explain it better? 

Okay. Okay, go ahead. 

Maybe there's an analogy on a computer with a computer program when you're searching, when you're doing a search on the internet, you're searching everything at the same time, but you're doing it sequentially. So there's this vast information and the search engine's going through and eliminating everything. That isn't what you're looking for. And it's doing that at the same time. It's looking at the hole, it's looking for a part, and those parts aren't all stacked on top of each other. I guess that didn't help, man. 

Yeah, but that would be the simultaneously that would be the explanation of, because this is the confusion that RDA is expressing sequential. 

Well, that's what I'm saying. I don't know. Is it sequential? The fact that it's looking like this isn't that this isn't it, this isn't it. Here's what I want. Or is it looking at it and saying, here's what I want? 

I think because we cannot conceive this, we have one thought after the other. So it is difficult for us to conceive that in this one thought I had all I am able to capture everything at the same time. 

But I guess my analogy with the internet is instead of having to look at 30 or 40 books to try and find something, you can look at all that information at one time. It doesn't mean that 30 books are stacked on top of each other. They're still the morass of knowledge. But you're not having to look in 30 places. You're looking at the totality at once and you find if you're lucky, the internet's got what you want. 

We can think of it in terms of the difference between the bori Safa on their path to reach the state of omniscience in which they're already working to help others reach that state of omniscience. But the Bodhi Safa themselves has not quite gotten there yet. They are working with this one and this one and this one and this one. When one reaches Buddhahood, we talk about those four bodies of a Buddha where that new Buddha, you will have your paradise being meaning, your projection of your own being, Buddha being in your Buddha paradise, and everyone there with you will be Buddha or high level body SaaS. Your projections makes them that and they are that for real for you. Then there will be the other form body of you, which is your emanation being, which is the forms that are forced by the compassion to perpetuate your Buddhahood by being what any being who doesn't see themselves as a Buddha needs to become Buddha. 

So now there's you with every around you Buddhas, but not every one of those are seeing themselves as Buddhas. Are they necessarily? So for the ones that you see as Buddhists, but they don't see themselves as Buddha, your compassion goes out as an emanation to help them. That compassion emanation going out is going to seem like it works with this one and then this one and this one. But you've got emanations going out everywhere to all of 'em all at the same time. Any given one is working sequentially and then you've got the omniscient mind aware of it all and you've got the emptiness of all of the others three. So it can be happening at all. The projected nature. Maybe that clarifies it, but 

Not for you. We got two more minutes. Anything else, Maria? Well, 

It's really ideal. Can we compare the Buddha to a very wise teacher that he's teaching something to his students. He knows almost everything, but through teaching he learns something more from his students. 

Technically, Buddha by definition has no more to learn. No. Their omniscience is such that 

Well, they're omniscient. They are. 

Will it look like a Buddha has something more to learn in their emanation body that comes to earth who he had to look like it. Buddha Buddha looked like he had to grow, he had to learn how to read and write and shoot arrows and all those things that Princes Arthur learned, manifested, needing to learn. Yeah. 

Can you please explain one more time the order of the second meditation? What we do? The first is just to recognize that my body don't stop here. It's all over there. What my senses get for the first step and for the second step, right? 

You want to 

Do, can you 

Repeat the question? 

Can't ask. Can I clarify the second step of the meditation? So the second step of the meditation is parking our mind on an object and then letting ourselves be aware of the object's identity and be aware of our belief that the object's identity is in it. And we actually spend a little intellectual time proving to ourselves that the object's identity is in it. It goes against the grain. Because if you've been at this for any time at all, we've been refusing to let ourselves give the object, the identity. But in that piece of the meditation, you want to really clearly find the belief, the feeling of the belief, the experience of the belief that the flower vase on the altar is flower, vase is on the altar in it from it. Somebody bought it, somebody had to get it, somebody has to take care of it. It'll be there when I leave because it'll be here when I get back really clearly. Let all your justification of why the thing is there on its own or level two. So over the weekend, we're just going to be doing physical objects. When we get into the week, we're going to go beyond the physical objects into feeling discriminating between things 

Mind 

Simultaneously. 

Okay, good. So remember that being, we wanted to be able to help at the beginning of the class. We learned a lot, whether we know it or not, that we will use sooner or later to help them in that deep end ultimate way. And that's a great, great goodness. So despite the confusion, despite the frustration, be happy with yourself, the seeds you've planted, and think of this goodness like a beautiful glowing gemstone that you can hold in your hands full of this goodness, full of this wisdom. Recall your own precious holy guide. We have them in our hearts already. See how happy they are with you. 

Feel your gratitude to them, your reliance upon them. Ask them to please, please stay close, to continue to guide you and support you and inspire you. And then offer them this gemstone of good news. See them accept it, and they bless it and then they shine forth their loving kindness, their wisdom. It feels you full. It feels so good. We want to keep it forever. And so we know to share it by the power of the goodness that we've just done may all be complete, the collection of merit and wisdom and thus gain the two ultimate bodies that merit and wisdom may. So use those three long exhales to share this goodness with that one person to share it with everyone you love to share it with every existing being everywhere. See them all filled with this wisdom of loving kindness that that's where happiness comes from. 

And may it be so. All right, thank you very much. Thank you. Time is 

Really 

Five and seven o'clock is next. 

Really five 30. 

It's really 

Yes, please. 

I'm going to show up with five just in. 

You will send some limitations. 

Okay? So please get the rest. See you at 

Dinner. You please go ahead and do what you think. 

Sorry I can't see you. The 

Result, result of the result of.