Welcome, we are ACI Course 2, Class 1. This is September 10th, 2023. 

Let's gather our minds here, as we usually do please. 

Usual opening

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.

See them there with you. 

They're gazing at you with their unconditional love for you,

Smiling at you with their holy great compassion. 

Their wisdom radiating 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. 

Think about how much you would like to be able to help them and consider how the worldly ways we try fall short. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t.

But either way, the person goes on to some other distress.

How wonderful it would be if we could help them in an ultimate way, a way through which they would go on to stop their distress forever. 

We are hoping this is possible. 

We have heard teachings that say it is.

And so grow that wish. Grow it into a longing, (into an intention, even into a determination). 

Then turn your mind back to that precious holy being. 

We know that they know what we need to know, what we need to learn, what we need to do to become one who can help that other in that 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. 

Here is the great earth 

filled with fragrant incense and covered with a blanket of flowers. 

The Great Mountain, the 4 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 Ratnamandalakam 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 I 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 being reach their total awakening

for the benefit of every other being. 

Recap on ACI 1

So everyone who needed to complete their papers and we will get them submitted to the Dean if we haven't done that already and so, congratulations. 

Last course we studied renunciation, Bodhichitta and correct view. 

Renunciation is coming to that deep understanding that nothing in our ordinary human lives can bring us the happiness we seek. Getting even a glimpse of that brings us a sense of almost overwhelm in that “What’s all this effort for if even a little bit of pleasure that I managed to get is just going to wear out and leave me wanting for more?” 

If we left a student there, they're gonna get depressed. 

But it is the starting point to recognize there's nothing we can do in our world that will in fact bring us the happiness that we're looking for. 

And when we recognize that enough, and when we are tired enough of trying, trying, trying, and failing, failing, failing–either directly or indirectly–we start questioning and searching. Looking for something, somebody that can either confirm or say, Yes it's true and no, it's not necessary. It can come to an end. 

We learned that when we are so fed up with this broken world that we're thinking both day and night of stopping the cycle, we have found renunciation. And that sounds like a state of mind that ought to be obvious. And when we try to hold it, it’s very difficult to hold it in a very high level obvious way. But as our spiritual practice grows, we become more and more aware that it really is in the back of our awareness constantly. 

This world is broken, and unnecessarily so. All driven by a big mistake, and I'm determined to stop the mistake. 

Our determination to stop perpetuating the mistake starts from our own personal motivation: I'm sick of it. I've got to stop it. 

And then that is the window of opportunity to grow our hearts, to recognize: Well, if that's true for me, that's true for everybody. Every human body. 

And if it's true for every human body, it's true for every conscious body. 

Meaning bugs, nats, worms, snakes. And it's true for any beings that might exist that I'm not even aware of. 

When our renunciation of the great mistake is turned on to the suffering of those other beings in our world, that's the doorway to that Bodhichitta, the second principle. 

Bodhichitta being: I want to reach my total enlightenment so that I can really help at least one other in that deep and ultimate way, let alone all others. 

Renunciation turned on to others makes our Bodhichitta, starts making our Bodhichitta. 

Every conscious being is in the same boat. We are the same sinking ship. 

Again, if we leave a student there, we're gonna end up making a lot of depressed students. 

It's a stepping stone, a motivating stepping stone. 

Then the correct world view is growing our understanding into a direct experience of past and future lives. Once we have some kind of direct experience of a past life, nobody can really tell us differently. They can say, Look, you were hallucinating. Look, you're crazy. 

But come on. That experience was a valid one, I've had one more than one. And thank goodness the person I was with when it was unfolding knew enough about those things to encourage me to let it go. The whole experience lasted about an hour. And if I didn't have her helping me, I would have thought I was going crazy, and I would have shut it down, shut it off. 

I wouldn't have benefited from it in the way I benefited by letting my friend guide me through it safely, in it safely. 

It was spontaneous, and it was long before I knew anything about Buddhism. 

I already knew a little bit about the idea of reincarnation, but not enough to really conceptualize it. But now nobody can tell me not. I really did experience (it).

So similarly our correct world view grows as we have these direct experiences of things that we didn't know for sure before. And we cultivate or spontaneously experience something directly ourselves in a state of mind that's valid and alert and that shows us the truth that we didn't know before. 

So past and future lives is one of them. 

The truth of karma is another. The truth of karma, karma being the law of cause and effect, but not the law of worldly cause and effect. 

Most of us understand a little bit about physics and chemistry and biology. We think we understand the causes for things. But those are just the apparent causes for things, and when we learn to really check logically into that relationship of worldly cause-result, we find: Oh my goodness, it can't work the way I believe that it works. 

And then again, we're at the state of: But it does, things do work. 

My key does start my car. 

But I see that if it doesn't do it every single time, it's not really the cause. 

And there are times when it doesn't work. Like once every five years our battery goes dead. 

And no wonder it's hard to show the mistake to ourselves if it only fails once every five years, I'm not going to be questioning. My mind immediately says, oh, batteries dead. Need a new battery. And that's my new reason. 

That's just as invalid as the key starting the car. It's not something we'll figure out on our own. 

But once we hear it said, the pen thing and then the answer to why do I see it as pen and dog sees it as chew toy? Why? And we hear the answer to that, something in us clicks, and we understand there's a really key wisdom under that, even if we can't at that moment grasp it. 

Now that doesn't happen for everybody. There are many people who have heard the pen thing., and they're not taking classes to figure out how to use it. 

So even the pen thing, there's nothing in it that's key to stopping suffering. Which is why the Pen story can be key to stopping the entire suffering of the world. Hooray. 

So, correct world view is growing this deep awareness that any experience I have in the now–just the only time we can have experiences–has to have a cause. It is a result of some past cause. And we come to recognize that that past cause has to be similar. Has to have come before. And I'm gonna throw in my own has to: It has to be unique to me. 

When we connect the dot, we recognize, Oh, it’s my behavior towards others. How I perceive myself interacting with another is the cause that will bring a result of how I experience another interacting with me. 

When we connect that dot we realized, Oh, then my current behavior is the source of my future experiences. Every single one. 

Any of that's true, I should be able to learn to behave in such a way that will create happiness for everybody forever, which includes me. 

And when we recognize, when all these pieces come together, we get that clearly enough that we're willing to change our habitual behaviors–little by little and big by big–to be consistent with creating the causes for the future world that we would like to live in. 

As we make those changes in our own behavior, our whole outer world changes. 

Our whole outer world is changing moment by moment always anyway, and as we become more conscious planters of our karmic seeds, our world change is starting to be directed towards a certain goal. 

That goodness grows within us and will help us reach those direct experiences of a mental seed ripening into the identity of an object. And from that experience, ripen into the experience of ultimate reality directly. That can ripen into the experience of seeing the face of every being and loving them, if we were imbued with that motivation when we went into our direct perception of ultimate reality. That experience will come out and happen. 

If we don't go into our direct experience of ultimate reality with that big wish, we won't necessarily have that heart opening. 

It doesn't come as a result of seeing emptiness directly. 

It comes as a result of the growing of loving compassion with which we went into the direct perception of emptiness. 

Either way, as we come out of direct perception, we experience that series of realizations that come to be called that 4 Aria Truths, and we are launched onto our path of habituation, where we're learning how to live according to what we now know is true from direct personal experience. 

Correct world view, it goes from growing correct worldview to a pretty strong conviction about it, to a really high intellectual level knowing, to a direct experience knowing. 

And it's the direct experience that launches our career path to Nirvana, if that was our goal going into the experience, or Buddhahood if that was our goal going into the experience. 

So in order for our growing correct world view to be correct worldview, our teachers teach us about that concept of no self, no self existence of. 

But it's a really long story to be able to load those words with the correct understanding of what's meant by those words. 

We want to cultivate the state of knowing that anything we are experiencing is a result of our own past ways we have interacted with others and nothing but that. 

To get there, Lord Buddha taught karma, the 12 links of dependent origination, and he taught emptiness–the Prajnaparamita. 

And when he first taught that he used the term no self. 

Things have no self nature. 

Things have no nature of their own. 

And if we already knew what he was talking about, yeah great.

But if we didn't know what he was talking about–which how would be if it was the first time he ever taught in?–our minds here: No nature? And think no nature at all. 

So that first teaching on the no self nature nature of all existing things is still available to us by way of the Heart Sutra.

I want to read it to you. I know you've studied it. I don't know whether we've done the Heart Sutra Module yet but it's coming, maybe sooner than later. 

But when you hear me say the words, watch your mind struggle with the words.

Don't struggle to get it right. Struggle to watch your mind go: What? What? How can that be? What there? What? No eyes, no ears? 

I want you to catch the struggle: That doesn't make sense, Buddha. Because we're gonna go and piece it back together through the rest of the 18 courses if you stick with me. 

Alright, so just listen. 

The Heart Sutra, which is a short form of Prajnaparamita that I'm going to tell you about very shortly. 

Flavia, do you happen to have your heart sutra memorized in Spanish? OK, all right, then I'll go slow. I did, once upon a time, I memorized it in Spanish so that I could recite it to a group in El Paso that we had taught who were mostly Spanish speakers. I managed to get through it, and forget it. Because, I had done my job and it's like my brain just said OK, enough? 

I couldn't do it now if my life depended on it. I'm so embarrassed to admit that. 

The Heart Sutra

The Exhalted One

The Lady of Conquest

The Sutra on the Heart of the Perfection of Wisdom

I bow first to all enlightened beings, and to every warrior saint. Once I heard this teaching.

The Conqueror was staying on Vulture’s 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 teachings known as the “awareness of the profound”. 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. He saw perfectly that the five heaps – the five parts of a person – were empty of any nature of their own.

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: “If any son or daughter of noble family hoped to follow the deep practice of the perfection of wisdom, what would they have to do?”

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: “Here, 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.”

“See first all five heaps – all five parts of a person – are free 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.”

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

“And 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.”

“And thus we can 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.”

“There 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. There 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 to the part of you that thinks, and the part of you that is aware that you are thinking.”

“There 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 death, and stopping your old age and death.”

“There is no suffering. There is no source of suffering. There is no stopping this suffering. There is no path to stopping this suffering.”

“There is no knowledge, there is nothing to reach, and there is nothing not to reach.”

“Thus 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 from every obstacle in their minds, and this frees them from all fears. They go beyond all wrong ways of thinking, and reach to the ultimate end of nirvana.”

“All the Enlightened Beings of the past, the 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.”

“Thus 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:

Tadya ta, ga-te ga-te, para ga-te, para sang ga-te, bodhi so ha

With this, the Conqueror stirred himself from his deep state of meditation. He turned to the great warrior, 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 rejoyce 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.

ACI 2 Course structure/content

So the reason I shared that, is because ACI course 2 is our beginning level study of the perfection of Wisdom, the Prajnaparamita. 

The Heart Sutra is a teaching on the perfection of wisdom. 

Class 1+2 on Refuge

In this course, classes 1 and 2, we'll talk about Refuge: 

What it means? How do we take it? 

It's the basis for being a Buddhist with the capital B. 

When you fill out the form, are you Christian, are you Buddhist?

Technically, to be able to legitimately put that, we will have done a formal “I take refuge in the Buddha, Dharma and Sanga” ceremony. 

People that grow up Buddhist, I don't know if they ever do a ceremony, like Christians get baptized that kind of declares them. I don't know about Buddhists. 

At another level, taking refuge has really nothing to do about those formal words making us into a formal Buddhist with capital B. 

That real taking refuge makes us into real Buddhas with a little b. 

You can still be affiliated with any other religion you like, and your understanding of what's taught in the Buddhist tradition will help your own religious tradition practices be more wisely informed and then more effective for whatever one's goal is in that tradition. 

In fact, probably so effective that you'll recognize that your goal can maybe even be bigger than what your tradition is hearing when it says what its goal is. 

I'm not saying they're wrong or limited. But I'm saying our wisdom will take it higher, take it deeper. 

So refuge–what it is to take refuge? Two classes in that. 

Class 3+4 on Bodhichitta

Then we'll spend two classes exploring the wish for enlightenment: Bodhichitta.

It's a little tricky for this group because you've already been studying it, and you already have the big picture. But it's useful to go back and do it step by step. Even if–our especially if–we think I don't need those baby steps, I've got the big step. 

Our big step will have more meaning if we go back and learn the baby steps, so we will do that in two classes. 

Class 5+6 on Nirvana

Then class five and six, we will study this thing called Nirvana. 

Which still should be so cotton dry and understandable, and when we get into it, it's like, Wow, that is like a greasy little pig. 

Yet, it's important for us to understand what we mean by reaching Nirvana because it is either our goal, or it's a step along the way to the goal. 

It's helpful to know how to reach it, what it'll be like.

So we'll investigate Nirvana. 

Class 7, 8, 9 on Emptiness

Then, we will see by the time we get there that the underlying theme that ties all of those together is the concept of emptiness, the no self nature of things, and others, and self. So we'll spend three classes, 7-8 and nine learning the classical proofs of emptiness. 

Using logic before we're taught logic, which we're not taught until course 13, right? Three years from now? 2 1/2 years from now, we'll learn how to learn those classes from course two.

So I'll do my best. 

Class 10 on Lord Maitreya

Then class 10 is this sweet class addressing: Who's this guy, Lord Maitreya? 

Avalokiteshvara. 

Lord Maitreya, Guanyen: Are they different? Are they the same? 

Who was it that was talking in that Heart Sutra. 

Who is Lord Maitreya? Where is he? 

I love those questions. Will become more clear questions at the end of that class.

Class 11 Review class

Then class 11, as you know, is the Review class. 

Although for my beginning students I give the review class, you guys are not my beginning students. I don't know about Sheila, but she qualifies as not beginning student because here she is in the evening class, and so you guys will teach me the review class as you've done before. 

I require that you complete your homework, your quiz, and your meditation assignment from each class prior to the next class, please.

Just show it to me on your phone, or e-mail it. Just somehow tell me that you've done it, please. Or give me a really good excuse why you haven't done it. But be careful there. 

So that when you get to the, all you need to do is review and get your final done. 

I want you to make completion seeds in these classes. That's more important than really understanding class perfectly–getting it completed. 

What I like you to do is you do your homework, open book, then get out the answer key and compare the answer key and your answer and mark your own paper and be nice. 

If you got it completely wrong, mark off five points. 

If you have to adjust something, mark off half or one. 

If it's pretty clear your answer, their answer, excellent. Don't mark off anything. 

Grade your own. 

Then study your now correct homework, then put it away and get out the quiz. 

The quiz questions come from the homeworks with only one exception somewhere along the line, not in course 2. 

Do your quiz close book. Then get out your answer key and mark your quiz. 

Write down your meditation time, at least one for each class. 

Show it to me. 

And in the end we'll compile everything and off it will go to the Dean and you will get a certificate. 

When you get your little certificate, it'll be by e-mail. 

Open it up, even print it out and look at it. Show it to somebody else. And, Yay. I completed my course.

So please do that when you get your ACI 1 certificate. 

It sounds silly, but it's important seeds. 

You will get recordings if you have to miss a class. But try not to. And even if you do miss, use the recording and do your homework and quiz before the next class so you don't get behind, so that everybody's on the same page when we have a class. 

Take that responsibility, please. 

All right, with all of that we're finally ready. Oh, let's go ahead and take our break.

[break]

Vocabulary & Names class  1

PRAJNAPARMITA{Sk} – SHERAB KYI PAROLTU CHINPA (Tib) = Perfection of Wisdom

GYE DRING DU SUM = the three main Perfection of Wisdom Sutras collection

GYE = long

DRING = middle or medium

DU = short 

SUM = 3

KANGYUR = Sutras spoken by Lord Buddha

TENGYUR = collection of the commentaries on Lord Buddha's teachings

YUM = honorific word for mother, it’s the nickname for Prajnaparamita teachings by Buddha

YAB = honorific word for father

Lord Maitreya   

Arya Asanga ~350ad

Abhisamaya alamkara{Sk} = Jewel Ornament of Realization –  “Gyen” (Tib) = ornament

Master Haribhadra 850ad wrote “Clarification”

Kedrup Tenpa Dargye 1493-1568 (not the Kedrup Je who is Je Tsongkapa’s main disciple) wrote “Analysis of the Perfection of Wisdom”

Dharma    Chu

PRAJNAPARMITA that’s Sanskrit. In Tibetan it’s SHERAB KYI PAROLTU CHINPA. It means Perfection of Wisdom and we just leave it at that for now.

The Perfection of Wisdom was originally taught by Shakyamuni Buddha during his teaching years 500 BC-ish in India. The Prajnaparamita–Perfection of Wisdom–refers to a group of teachings that he gave throughout his 51 year teaching career. 

He taught it many, many times. Many many versions. Of perfection of wisdom. There are only three main ones left. 

That three main Perfection of Wisdom Sutras collection is called in Tibetan GYE DRING DU SUM. 

GYE = long, DRING = middle or medium, DU = short, SUM = 3

So the three: the long, the medium and the short Perfection of wisdom teachings by Lord Buddha. 

The Long Sutra on Prajnaparamita, they say, is 100,000 verses. 

The medium one called middle length Prajnaparamita is 20,000 verses. 

And the short Prajnaparamita, they say, has 8000 verses. But Geshela says it's more like lines, 8000 lines. But the Heart Sutra doesn't have either 8000 verses or 8000 lines. It's very much shorter than that. So, I don't exactly understand what they mean by their just three Prajnaparamita left. 

I don't know if there's multiple ones that are long, multiple ones that are medium and multiple ones that are short, of which Heart Sutra is one of the shortest of the short. 

The shortest Sutra, as I understand, says: 

“Once I heard this. The Buddha was staying…”

They set up the whole sutra like they usually do, and they say so and so asked Lord Buddha for a teaching on blah blah blah, and the Buddha says: 

“A.”

And they all rejoice, and that's the sutra. 

A. 

It's a Prajnaparamita Sutra: A. 

I love teaching it. There's a whole course designed around it called DORJE DEPA that you'll get someday. A. 

The DU SUM, the short one.

Now those sutras are all descriptions of meditations and stories about how beings gained their wisdom. Within these comes that story we've heard, the Bodhisattva who couldn't stop crying. 

And there's a short version of that, and there's a long version of that. We'll get some day. 

The collection of all of the words of the Buddha are held as a collection in the Tibetan monastic tradition, and that collection is called the KANGYUR. 

I remember that I think ‘King Kong’, the biggest. And so KANG refers to Buddha. 

And TENGYUR is the name for the collection of the commentaries on Lord Buddha's teachings. 

So Lord Buddha didn't write down the stuff that he taught. 

The beings that heard it apparently had minds that were so clean and concentrated that they just had to hear it once, and they could repeat it. Verbate them. 

And then they would teach it. 

Those disciples also had these pure minds, and once Buddha left, they put their heads together: Oh my gosh. He never wrote anything down. We better write this stuff down. 

And someone said, well, OK, I'll do the Heart Sutra. OK, you do this one, you do that one. 

And between all of the disciples, the story goes, they got everything written down. Which is why they start with, ‘Once I heard this’. Because they're telling us, I was there, I heard this one. I didn't just hear about it. I heard it directly and then they wrote it down. 

And that's what becomes that KANGYUR. 

Then, later on somebody's reading the KANGYUR and saying, wow, this is cryptic. It's hard to understand. Let me write a commentary. Let me try to explain what I understand about it. 

And that, if it qualifies, gets drafted into the TENGYUR collection. 

So commentaries and direct teachings of Buddha. 

Within this combination of these, the teachings that are about the perfection of wisdom get this nickname: the YUM.

The YUM is the honorific word for mother. YAB is the honorific word for father. 

We’ll here sometimes the term YAB YUM, which means father, mother combination, but honorific–meaning the deity Father, Mother. 

So here YUM is the nickname for the Prajnaparamita scriptures. 

Because emptiness understanding gives birth to Buddhas. 

So the Prajnaparamita scripture collection study is how we birth our Buddhahood. 

Now, that alone won't do it. 

But without that nothing else we can do can birth our Buddhahood. 

Other practices can bring a lot of goodness. But it takes the Prajnaparamita, the study of it, the realization of it to birth our own Buddha and help others birth their own Buddha. 

So the originals are really, really hard to read, hard to understand. Easy to read, hard to understand. 

And so the commentaries are written in an attempt to make them more accessible to the generations to come. And one very famous commentary that falls into this genre is the commentary that is nicknamed in Tibetan GYEN, which means ornament. In the Sanskrit it's the text called the Abhisamaya alamkara. 

When you separate the word, there's this Abhisamaya and then alamkara. 

But in more accurate Sanskrit, this would be all one word, and there'd only be one A, but it'd be a long A. And then it would sound like Abhisamayaalamkara. 

So it's a little easier as we're first learning to separate it into two different words, but it's not correct from a Sanskrit literary position. Abhisamaya alamkara. It means Jewel Ornament of Realization. 

It was written by Lord Maitreya. But Lord Mitrea is not a human in our human world, so how did he write a text that gets into the TENGYUR? 

His student is Arya Asanga, around 350 AD in India, we've heard his story. I won't say it, but I'm going to say it later in these classes. 

We understand that he set about to meet Lord Maitreya directly, and it took him years and years and years of practice to do it. And then when he finally did, Lord Maitreya says, OK, come with me. You want to learn emptiness? Come. 

And the story is Sanga travels with him to Lord Maitreya's paradise and receives teachings there. He receives 5 main teachings that Lord Maitreya says, Take dictation, write this down. 

Then he sends those dictation notes with Asanga back into his world. Which for Asanga, he thinks he's only there five days or so. But he gets back to his world, and it's been 50 years. Which probably means everybody he knew was gone, right? 

So Abhisamaya alamkara is one of those texts that came out of Lord Maitreya teaching Arya Asanga about emptiness. Which is why it's part of the collection of the union. Lord Maitreya, 

in the open teachings, is a very very high level Bodhisattva, who is hanging out in a Buddha paradise, waiting for the appropriate time for him to appear into this earth world as the next wheel turning Buddha for humans, Earth humans. 

And he's just waiting till the right time, and then you'll come down, finish his last Bodhisattva life become Buddha and teach beings how to do it. But they say he will only teach open teachings (on) how to do it? 

Diamond Way teachings today, Come on, he's already a fullon Buddha. 

But he is the next in line to come and teach in our world. 

But it's not like he has anything yet to do to become Buddha. 

And our last class in this course is about that: What's the difference there? 

It's an opportunity to dabble in the differences between Diamond and Sutra Way in an open teaching, because Lord Maitreya is an open teaching topic. 

Who is he? What's he gonna do when he comes? 

We do have Abhisamaya alamkara and commentaries on it by teachers through the ages. If we read the text directly, it's cryptic and difficult to understand. Even the early commentaries are cryptic and difficult to understand. Not from their side, but from the fact that our own minds are so puny. I can only really speak for my own. My own mind is so puny that to get out an English translation, even a good one, of the Abhisamaya alamkara, I would miss most of the nuances of it. 

So again, there are commentaries and then there are commentaries on the commentaries, as we'll learn. One of those commentaries that is still in existence, was one that was written by someone named Master Haribhadra in 850 AD. Also an Indian practitioner. 

That apparently is a very amazing commentary. But still too hard for somebody like me. 

And we go down further and find that there is a commentary by someone whose name is Kedrup Tenpa Dargye. Who is this Sera Mey monastic from 1493 to 1568. 

Often this man will be called Kedrup Je. But it's not the Kedrup Je who is Je Tsongkapas main disciple. It's a student of his, which is why his name is Kedrup. 

So Kedrup Tenpa Dargye is like Je Tsonkapa’s great grandkid. Or maybe even one down further, I'm not sure. 

Kedrup Tenpa Dargye wrote a commentary on Master Haribhadra's commentary on Abhisamaya alamkara. This commentary is called Clarification. 

So Kedrup Je writes this commentary on clarification. 

It's called an analysis of the Perfection of Wisdom. 

This is Kedrup Tenpa Darguye’s text, and that's the text that Sera Mey Monastery uses to study the Pryjnaparamita. They spent 12 years on it, apparently. And don't always finish it apparently, because in their study of it first they memorize it, and then they go to classes to be taught the meaning of the verses–like verse by verse. And then they take a verse or two to the debate ground and they hash it out. They pull it apart. They try to understand it more deeply. And then they go back to class and discuss with the teacher what they came up with. 

So maybe they stay on the same verse for a long time. 

But slowly, over 12 years, they plug away at this particular text. 

The Gelukpas have this reputation for being detail oriented debate fanatics, intellectual, dry, not so hard motivated practitioners. 

And Geshela defends them. He says, Come on. If we want to permanently stop the suffering of all sentient beings, we need to dig into the details of our misunderstanding. Heart is nice, but it's not enough without this really sharp, defined, clear ability to cut away our misunderstanding. And it takes logic learning to really think clearly to be able to do that. 

So the Gelukpas want us to learn the definitions. Learn how to weed away our misunderstanding of things so that we can more clearly grow the ability to choose our own behavior choices accurate to the result we want to create. 

Is there something about being intellectually sharp and able to debate that in itself, from itself, will make us understand emptiness better? 

No. 

The answer to a question like that is always no.

Which is why it can help us if our motivation for doing so is to weed away our mistaken views and grow the wisdom through which we can help others weed away their mistaken views and be able to help others weed away their mistaken views.

It's like, I can't stop that sequence. 

Our efforts to weed away mistaken views and grow more and more accurate views leads us to the behavior that creates the goodness that ripens as the realizations of those principles we're trying to grasp. 

As we grow that goodness and work with it in our meditation time and contemplation time, our ability to go deeper in meditation and access that ultimate grows. It will come about as a result of seeds of goodness of kindness. 

So the whole process goes together: Our study, our meditation, our contemplation, our service – all rolled together to grow the seeds necessary to gain the realizations necessary for our motivation of stopping suffering to actually become reality. 

I think I got that sentence right. 

It takes training just like any other learning takes training. 

It does happen that some little kid sits down at a piano bench and can play Mozart, right?

Seems to be there's more of those lately. But for most of us, we can't even play chopsticks until we're taught how to do it. Then if we want to become a performance level pianist, we get a teacher, we do the drills. We train, we train, we train. We train way more than we perform until we reach a certain level. And then maybe we perform more than we train, but if we leave it at that, we'll stay at that certain level. 

Tom would say, Yes, I'm a really good pianist. But so now I'll learn this different method, or I'll learn this different genre, or…, Right? 

They keep pushing themselves to learn more, which requires more training. 

Which technically for that training to be successful, what do you have to also do? 

Help others training be successful in some arena. 

It doesn't have to be: I have to teach somebody to play piano in order to learn to play piano. 

But if I teach somebody something that I know: Oh, I know how to garden. I'll teach somebody gardening. And then I'll be able to learn to play the piano better, easier, faster. 

Using wisdom in this intentional way. 

The definition of the Perfection of Wisdom

So, why is this thing the perfection of Wisdom? 

The Perfection of Wisdom–Prajnaparamita, SHERAB KYI PAROLTU CHINPA inTibetan–it has a long definition, and it has a short definition. 

You need the short definition for your homework on Class 1, and that short definition is: 

The perception of Emptiness under the influence of the desire to help all sentient beings. 

I think I would add to that the direct perception of emptiness under the influence of the desire to help all sentient beings. 

I'm going to give you the long definition as well, just so you can cook it. The long definition is:

The knowledge of a person of the greater way with which they perceive emptiness and which is imbued with the wish for enlightenment. Meaning Bodhichitta. 

So, in essence, the Perfection of Wisdom is reaching Bodhichitta under the influence of Bodhichitta, and we're going to talk about it more as we go on. 

We've heard, I believe, that when we are experiencing the direct perception of emptiness. that state of being in communion with ultimate reality is an experience in which the distinction between subject, object and interaction between is not distinguishable. And they say it's so impossible to explain in words, that they say it's like water poured into water. 

Where is water A from water B? It's just all water. It's just all. 

Not even a Me experiencing all, it's just all. 

But all as indistinguishable from any specific thing. 

Words completely fail. So I'm not even supposed to try. 

Perceiving emptiness directly, it's like water poured into water. 

No distinction between self, other, interaction between, but not nothing at all. 

Not nonexistence. Not black. Not even blank. Because there has to be something that's blank. 

Beyond description, but try. Try to describe it to yourself and then say, No, not that. 

And we'll get closer to just saying: It can't be described, so I won't even try. 

So being in it, your YOU is unaware. Because your YOU–our Me–is part of deceptive reality, and there's no perceiving deceptive reality when we are ultimate reality. 

It's still karmic seeds ripening. 

Which means they're going to wear out. 

Which means we're going to come out of it. 

And when that process happens, and subject, object, interaction between steers forth again, there's this period of time where the virtue of what we just did as we're coming out of it perceives directly those experiences that come to be known as 

The Four Arya Truths

The truth of suffering. 

The truth that all that suffering has a cause. 

That truth that the cause can be stopped and 

the truth of how to do it. 

And by the end of those four, each of which have four, so those 16 experiences, which maybe takes up to 24 hours, you're back to perceiving your reality in the same old way. Me here, them there, them doing that to me. 

But because of your experience of truth, you know that your perception is mistaken. 

Which means, as you perceive things as coming at you, you're not believing that means that you're not replanting ignorance with every instant of perception like we are before we've had that experience. 

Which is why they say we're on the conveyor belt to either Nirvana or Buddhahood, depending on what we went into that experience motivated by. 

So the experience of emptiness directly does not have in it from it the influence that will make us Buddha. 

What it has is wisdom of the true nature of things. 

What we went into that experience with colors our interpretation of what that experience was. So if we went into it with a mind imbued with a wish to reach total Buddhahood for the sake of all sentient beings. When we come out of that experience, which did not include that state of mind for the benefit of all sentient beings. Because they can't. Because that's a deceptive state of mind. 

But when we come out of the direct perception, having gone into it with that mind of that goal, when we come out, we interpret that experience as, oh, that was my direct perception of ultimate reality, and now I'm on my conveyor belt to my Buddhahood. 

If we went into it with: I'm gonna reach Nirvana, the end of my mental afflictions forever, then when we come out of our experience our interpretation is: That's what I need to go on to reach Nirvana. And Nirvana we will reach. 

Or Buddhahood we will reach. 

Or you go into that experience with the wish to own a pair of red alligator boots. You come out of it with the ability of knowing how to get your red alligator boots. I'm being intentionally ridiculous. But my guess is we're thinking that there's something in our direct perception of emptiness that it itself will make us into Buddhas. 

And it's empty also. 

What we go into it with colors what we come out of it with. 

It's an important piece that you don't actually teach your beginning students. 

So tomorrow morning's class is going to get this a bit differently. 

Seeing emptiness with or without Bodhichitta

That state of mind imbued with Bodhichitta means that we've been working on our love and compassion for others. Because we understand that all that suffering is based on a big mistake, our misunderstanding of where happiness really comes from. 

Our hearts are like so twisted, I've got to stop this big mistake because everybody's so steeped in it. And I need to see emptiness directly in order to be able to help them. 

So that I'm free of that doubt that I have until I have that experience. 

The working at the level of growing our heart and wish to stop others suffering is a big, important piece. And as we use that to grow our more and more kind behavior steeped in our wish to help every being in that ultimate way, those seeds are pushing us towards reaching that direct perception of emptiness imbued with the mind to help all beings, so that we come out of it on that conveyor belt to becoming the one who can help them in that deep  and ultimate way. 

So we can have the direct perception of emptiness without Bodhichitta, and we can have the direct perception of emptiness with a mind imbued in Bodhichitta. But while we're in the direct perception, we will not be at all aware of either our Bodhichitta or the emptiness until we get out of it. 

And then we realized the context within which we had that experience and how that will carry us along. We can also achieve Bodhichitta, the Heart Opening Bodhichitta, without an understanding of emptiness. That's not called perfected Bodhichitta, even though we've had the experience. The direct perception of emptiness is not the perfection of wisdom, if it's had not with a mind imbued with the wish to reach total enlightenment for the sake of all sentient beings.

So when you put all that combination together, you can see emptiness directly, and that is not the perfection of wisdom. 

Seeing emptiness directly with the mind imbued in our wish to reach total Buddhahood is what makes that experience the perfection of wisdom. 

And when we come out of it, we now have the wisdom through which we practice the six perfections with wisdom. We can now do it. 

Whereas before we were practicing those six perfections, but with just wisdom wannabe. 

With pretend wisdom. 

And doing that gathers the goodness to reach the wisdom that we then apply to those same behaviors that we trained in, and now they are in fact planting seeds for that our causes for our Buddhahood after the direct perception of emptiness with Bodhichitta in our mind, which is our perfection of wisdom. 

The 6th Perfection. 

We can see emptiness directly without Bodhichitta, and that is not called the Perfection of Wisdom. 

We can have Bodhichitta without understanding emptiness and that is not the perfection of Bodhichitta. It is a Bodhichitta. But it's not the one the Mahayanist is talking about as the Perfection of Wisdom. 

It does get slippery because the term Bodhichitta means: I want to reach my total enlightenment for the sake of all sentient beings that has those two factors. But then we use the term also to mean the wisdom from seeing emptiness directly. 

That's called our Bodhichitta. 

And, Bodhichitta term is used for this heart opening practice where you see the face of every being, that ultimate love, compassion experience. 

Bodhichitta word is used for all of those. 

Confusingly, but I think for a really good reason. 

Just one of those things that's worth cooking. 

Arya

So we're still doing some terminology. 

Arya means someone who has had the direct perception of emptiness with or without the Bodhichitta in their heart. Arhat, sometimes written ‘arhant’ with an ‘n’ means someone who has reached their Nirvana, which requires going through the doorway of having experienced emptiness directly, regardless of Bodhichitta or not. 

So, typically they would say if Nirvana is your goal and you see emptiness directly, you won't have a mind imbued with Bodhichitta because you're not aspiring to Buddhahood, you're aspiring to the Nirvana-hood. And so your direct perception of emptiness experience puts you on the path to Nirvana, and when you reach Nirvana, you're called Arhat. 

What it is to be Nirvana is Arhat. We'll talk about, we'll do two classes about what it is freedom from all mental afflictions. 

So one can be an Arya, and one can be Arya Bodhisattva. 

And one can reach Arhat. And one can be Bodhisattva Arhat. 

Which the Bodhisattva Arhat doesn't, I surmise Bodhisattva Arhat hardly even notices that they're at Arhat level. Because they're so intent on reaching Buddhahood. And their freedom from mental afflictions completely just comes along for the ride. 

Whereas Nirvana being the goal means we've reached it. 

And there's nothing more to do, theoretically. But we'll learn later that there still is. 

[Luisa] When we reached Nirvana, or when someone reaches Nirvana and they say free of any mental afflictions, does it mean also no physical body suffering or it could be physical body suffering? 

[Lama Sarahni] No, there'll be no suffering. There will still be a physical body. There can still be a physical body. And even if that physical body gets a head cold, for instance. There'll be no mental suffering from the head cold. No suffering. Freedom from mental afflictions and any seeds for further. So no suffering. But still experiences. 

3 Ways the Perfection of Wisdom is used

There are three levels of Perfection of Wisdom.

Levels isn't right the correct word, more like three different meanings or ways that the Perfection of Wisdom is used. 

1. The Path Perfection of Wisdom

Path meaning the realization, not meaning moving along the path, but meaning making something real for us. 

The Perfection of Wisdom of the Path is the Perfection of Wisdom in the mind of a being who's not yet Buddha. 

The path Perfection of Wisdom means the realization Perfection of Wisdom, which means an Arya Bodhisattva: They've had the direct perception imbued with their wish to become Buddha in order to help all beings do it. And now that they're out of that, they have this realization. They have the path of perfection of wisdom. 

2. The Result, the perfection of wisdom of the result

This is the perfection of wisdom in the mind of a Buddha. 

When we are fully enlightened beings, do we lose our Bodhichitta, our wish to reach total enlightenment for the sake of all sentient beings? 

We still wish to be Buddha even when we're Buddha?

Yeah, we wish to remain Buddha. So we don't lose that Bodhichitta. 

What about the Bodhichitta where is the heart opening, we love everybody so much. 

Do we lose that when we're Buddha? 

No, it's culminated, right? And perpetuated effortlessly, spontaneously by our emanation being. 

And what about the Bodhichitta referring to the direct perception of emptiness? 

As Buddha's we’re directly perceiving the emptiness of all existence all the time. So maybe we finally have Bodhichitta, that Bodhichitta complete. Whereas always before it was not quite all there because it was on again, off again. 

3. The Perfection of Wisdom of the books

Meaning of the teachings, meaning of the Dharma, Chu in Tibetan. 

The perfection of Wisdom of the books, of the teachings, is how we learn about the Perfection of Wisdom. But they are called nominal perfection of wisdom–in name only. Because they are not the perfection of wisdom. They're just about the perfection of wisdom. Diamond Cutter Sutra. Heart Sutra. ACI Course 6 about Emptiness, about the Perfection of Wisdom. 

Very helpful. They are useful, but they are not seeing emptiness directly, are they? 

They are not the state of mind of a Buddha. 

The perfection of wisdom is a state of mind, a mental state. 

It's a realization. It's not a tangible book. It's not an audio. It's not.

So how do we start? 

How do we get to the Path of Perfection of Wisdom?

And then how do we get from the Path Perfection of Wisdom to the Perfection of Wisdom of the Result?

We start with Refuge. 

Refuge

Refuge means we're looking for something to protect us, to help us. 

So even worldly refuge, in order to need a refuge we perceive ourselves in some kind of trouble, some kind of distress that we can't fix ourselves. And it occurs to us that there's somebody or someplace that could help us. 

And that belief makes us go there, or call. 

Worldly refuge: Your house is on fire. You call the fire station. 

You don't call your doctor. 

You don't call your mom, till afterwards. 

You call the ones who can and will come help. 

We've taken refuge in the fire department. 

They get there, they put out the fire. 

Have they really served us as refuge? 

Yeah, you know, if our protection was stopped the fire. But part of our house is burnt, there's smoke damage. Did our suffering go away? Well, everything didn't get destroyed. But  they didn't fix it, and they didn't completely stop it. 

Our worldly refuges are so automatic and habitual, and they fall short and we don't seem to notice. 

The fire department did its job. Thank you guys. I'm so grateful to you. You did a great job. 

But that would fall short. If we went to the fire department for them to stop our suffering completely. They can't do that. Neither can the doctor. Neither can the car mechanic. Neither can your job. Neither can our relationships. 

Nothing that we go to for refuge, to protection from our suffering can really be the protection we're going for, if we are holding their ability to be protection in the wrong way. 

When we understand where protection really comes from, any one of them could even be our ultimate protection–with wisdom. 

So what if our recognition that the danger that we are in is the ongoing suffering from being an ignorant being? Who and what can protect us from that? 

Do we even really believe that there's protection from our ignorance? 

It's really a good question to ask ourselves: Do we believe we can get free of suffering, or are we really doing this to fooling ourselves? 

Or do we really believe? 

It's our desire to get free of suffering strong enough to override that doubt in our belief. 

But we all know what a struggle it is to maintain these ideas in the face of life. When we try and try and try to change and nothing changes. 

Two things present for Refuge

There must be fear and there must be a belief that what we're going to for help can and will help us. In Buddhism, our fear is the fear of suffering of life–the three sufferings: Obvious (suffering), suffering of change and pervasive (suffering). 

And our belief is that Buddha, Dharma, Sangha can and will help us stop those three. 

That requires learning about them, about the sufferings, about where they come from. And so we can apply ourselves to stopping creating more of them. And be more acutely aware of our reaction to them so that we can decide to stop reacting and be responding instead. 

So what are those three refuges? In the Buddhist teachings there are three aspects to the refuge that we go to in order to stop those three sufferings. 

(The Three Jewels)

They're called the Three Jewels. Buddha Jewel, Dharma Jewel and Sangha Jewel. 

And you know what? I'm not gonna finish class. Which means you can't complete your homework. But you can do most of it. OK. 

Do what you can do but that means you don't have to do your quiz. Off the hook until next time, I'll finish it in the next class. I don't want to go over. I don't want to start the habit of going over. So I'm going to stop and we'll finish it at the beginning of next class: Three Jewels, our refuge. 

Usual Dedication

Remember that person you wanted to be able to help at the beginning of class.

What we learned we will use sooner or later to help them in that deep and ultimate way, and that's an extraordinary goodness. 

So please be really happy with yourself, your effort to be here in class to grapple with these ideas. 

Think of this goodness like a beautiful glowing gemstone that you can hold in your hands. 

Recall that precious guide. They're with you. 

See how happy they are with you. 

Grow your gratitude to them, your reliance upon them. 

Ask them to please, please stay close to continue to guide you, help you, inspire you. 

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, that love, that compassion, that wisdom. 

It feels so good we want to keep it forever, and so we share it. 

By the power of the goodness that we've just done

May all beings complete the collection of Merit and Wisdom

And thus gain the two ultimate bodies that Merit and Wisdom make. 

So use those three long exhales to share this goodness with that one person. 

To share it with everyone you love. 

To share with every being you've ever, ever seen or heard of. 

See them all filled with happiness, filled with wisdom, filled with kindness. 

And may it be so. 

For the recording, welcome back. We are ACI Course 2, class 2, but finishing up class 1 first. It's September 14, 2023.

[Usual opening]

Last class we learned about the perfection of wisdom, and we learned the brief definition of that perfection of wisdom, right? And that brief definition of the Perfection of Wisdom is what? Anybody?

Ale, read it from your papers if you need to. 

(Ale) I have the definition of perfect of wisdom: the knowledge of a person of the greater way with which they perceive emptiness and which is imbued with the wish for enlightenment, Bodhichitta.

(Lama Sarahni) The short version being: the perception of emptiness with Bodhichitta in your heart. And I know the answer key gave the definition that Ale gave. Either one is fine. Seeing emptiness directly imbued with Bodhichitta is what perfection of wisdom refers to. 

(Ale) Do we refer to the picture of planets that‘s like is the Bodhichitta you perceive when you perceive emptiness directly? 

(Lama Sarahni) Bodhichitta, there's a Bodhichitta that we experience when we see the face of every being and love them. And there's Bodhichitta that is the direct perception of emptiness. And when that Bodhichitta—the direct perception of emptiness—is experienced by someone who goes into it with this strong motivation to be the one that brings everybody to that, then part of the experience after seeing emptiness directly will be that heart opening experience. 

So how do you see emptiness directly with that heart opening experience if it doesn't happen until afterwards? 

It's not the actual heart opening experience that you have to have had first before your emptiness directly as your perfection of wisdom. But there is some strong, strong experience that makes it such that our wish to reach Buddhahood for the benefit of all is now like simmering in the background all the time. 

And it happens along the path of preparation when we're studying and working with the idea of mental seeds and seeing suffering in our world and recognizing more and more that it's all just a big mistake, and we get this heart twisting feeling that it's all absurd. All the suffering is so terribly absurd, because if we all just stop responding so selfishly and ignorantly to the things that happened to us, we could turn it all around really fast. 

So to what extent that needs to be imbued in our mind for the emptiness directly to be our perfection of wisdom? Is hard to say going into it. We will know we had it when, as we're coming out of direct perception of emptiness, we have the heart opening experience. So maybe it takes those two to confirm that our experience of the direct perception now is our perfection of wisdom. Because we heard that, we could have that experience and become Arya, superior to what we were before. But not yet have the perfection of wisdom in our mind. 

Ale points out a good point. Which Bodhichitta are we talking about that you need to have infused in your mind?

So we're studying from a root text. A main text. 

The Ornament of Realization, who wrote that? It's a trick question, right? Who thought at first. Somebody tell me. 

(Claire) Maitreya.

(Lama Sarahni) Right, Lord Maitreya. Who wrote it down? 

(Claire) Master Asanga. 

(Lama Sarahni) Master Asanga, right. So technically, if somebody says, Who wrote the ornament of realizations, you could debate with them. It's like nobody wrote it. 

Maitreya had taught it, and Asanga wrote it down. 

That's kind of fun. 

But apparently that text, in order to read at and to really understand its nuances, it's too much for us beginners, and so we study from a commentary. And as Geshe Michael went through the commentaries, he came across one that is a commentary to somebody else’s commentary to that text. And that's the commentary we're studying from, and that was written and taught by someone named Kedrup Je. But not the Kedrup Je that we know of as Je Tsongkapa‘s main disciples. This is Kedrup Tenpa Dargue who was one of Kedrup Je‘s students. So in the lineage but I mixed them up for a long time. I thought this was Kedrup Je‘s teaching. 

Kedrup Tenpa Dargye, his dates were 1493 to 1568. 

You know, you learn it for your homework, you write it down, and then you're welcome to forget it. Just keep it in mind where they are in the lineage, OK? 

A little past Tsongkapa, and that frame of reference—1500–and I always like to think, well, what's going on in my country in 1500. Not much. What was going on in Europe in 1500s a lot, comparing pretty different world Tibet and India in 1500s. 

Then the next question on your quiz: What, what was the definition of the Dharma jewel? And that's where I stopped in last class. I'm so sorry. 

So we had gotten to the Three Jewels, talking about the Three Jewels. 

We learned that the Buddha jewel is the ultimate place of refuge, the one who has completely satisfied both needs. We'll talk more about that later. 

Buddha Jewel

A Buddha jewel means somebody who's already a Buddha. And somebody who's already a Buddha, they have to have those three qualities to be able to help us:

1. Knowledge. They need to know what we need. 

2. Love. They need to care about us enough that they want us to know what they know about what we need to know. 

3. And then they need to have the power to help us. Which, if they could, they would just reach into us, grab our karmic seeds, crush them into powder, swallow them, and we'd be fixed. They can't do that. What they can do is teach us because they've made all the mistakes in the process of their transformation from suffering to totally enlightened being, and so they know how to help us? 

They'll teach, and share, and guide, and nudge—like an amazing parent would. And we can be like 2 year olds and 16 year olds and fight with them every step of the way. Or we can decide: No, they really do have my best interest at heart. I'm gonna work with them and see what I can do. They're trying to help us learn:

The principles of how to stop suffering and then they're willing to be situations in which we get we have opportunities to try it on for size. 

Where we couldn't say, We're being tested. 

We're not being tested. Our own seeds ripen and our reaction ripens, and we either let ourselves act from our reaction or we recognize: Is this the actual reaction I want to do to be behaving consistent with how my teacher has taught me? 

It is always our choice. 

So, Buddhas have knowledge, love and power. Because without teaching us, they're pretty useless to us. 

So the next jewel is called the Dharma Jewel. 

Dharma Jewel

The Dharma is the teachings in whatever form: Oral ones, written ones, audio ones, any form. 

The Dharma also refers to the realizations in people's minds.

The things they come to know for sure as a result of what the Dharma teachings have taught them. The Dharma Jewel, however, is talking about these realizations that we're gaining. In particular when those things that we now know for sure—which is what we mean by realization—when those realizations lead to a change in behavior that becomes permanent. 

It leads to what's called a cessation of something. 

So we get a definition of the Dharma Jewel. The Definition of the Dharma Jewel is the enlightened side of truth as a cessation or a path, or both. 

The enlightened side of truth as a cessation or a path, or both. 

So the enlightened side of truth means that which will get us out of suffering. 

It really means the teachings. But the formal teachings, and also the kind of teachings that we get as we go through our day and weird stuff happens, and we really have to struggle and we say, Man, did I get a teaching out of that? 

It happens to all of us. 

And it's a kind, it's a level of wisdom to be able to look at some problem that we encounter or have encountered, and say, ‘That was a teaching’, instead of just complaining about the whole bad situation and blaming it on somebody else. 

So a path, remember, means a realization. 

Something that we've achieved, something we've come to know for sure, like the Three Principal Paths, Renunciation, Bodhichitta, Correct World View, like we were speaking about before. 

A new knowing. We can call a new knowing a realization when because of what we now know for sure, we can in fact change a behavior, stop a behavior that was either habitual, automatic, or we even like so much we wanted to do. 

But because of what we now know, we've set about to change that behavior, and sooner or later that behavior becomes a cessation. 

Like, you've got that yelling person in your life, whoever they are, or maybe multiple ones. And because you're gaining this realization about where the unpleasantness of yelling comes from, we recognize that when I yell at anybody, I'm making this situation gonna happen again. 

And however I react to that yelling person, I'm going to make that experience for me in the future. And I recognize that every time they yell, this is my reaction: I want to yell back, lie about it, cry, run and hide–whatever it is.

And, I recognize or realize that I have been unaware that wherever it is that I make other people feel like that, is where that is really coming from. So there's really multiple things going on when you're in the yelling person situation. 

Our tendency is to yell back, and we understand that if we allow that tendency to yell back to actually happen, we've perpetuated stuff. 

When we have this realization that that's true, we'll still want to yell back. But we'll be able to choose some other behavior. Every time we do that, every time we want to yell at somebody—whether it's yelling back or being the yeller—we go Hmmmm hmmmm (shaking her head like saying No No), and choose something different. We are burning off the yelling and being yelled at seeds and we will eventually run out of them. And we will have a cessation of whatever the impetus for yelling at someone, usually it's anger, right? 

We could say we will have a cessation of anger as a result of the realization. They didn't happen at the same time. But without the realization, we wouldn't have ever stopped the behavior that leads to the cessation of the yelling–of our own yelling at others and feeling the need to yell whatever it is. 

It's called a protection because the protection is in choosing a different behavior. 

We'll talk about it when we get to class 2. 

It's like, what do we expect from our protection? 

We call the fire department and we expect them to put out the fire. 

Does our realization don't set fire to other people's things? Stop the fire that's already burning our house down? 

No. 

We still call the fire department. But we fully understand that to what extent we blame somebody else or feel offended, hurt by the fire is the extent to which our ignorance is still driving our reaction. 

Cessation.

Sangha Jewel

So how do we reach this enlightened side of truth? 

We need to rely on contemporary beings who are in the system ahead of us. 

We really rely on the seniors in high school when we're freshman to show us where the cantina is. Because they've been there. 

So in that way we have this third jewel called the Sangha Jewel. 

The Sangha technically refers to a quorum of monks or nuns that's needed to carry out any given ceremony. 

For some ceremonies you need five to have a Sangha. 

For making a new non you need 10 or sorry 12 to have a Sangha. 

We use the term any group of people who study together is our Sangha. And that's OK to use it in that way. 

But then Sangha Jewel has really nothing to do with any of that. 

Sangha Jewel means anyone who's seen emptiness directly with or without the Bodhichitta in their heart. 

You become Sangha Jewel once you've seen Emptiness directly. 

And in that instant that you've seen emptiness directly, and then you're out of it you have also become Dharma Jewel, haven't you? Because now you have the experience of the realization of ultimate reality and dependent origination. 

You saw the dependent origination going into the ultimate reality. And then you now have at the very least the cessation of any doubt of your path to where you're going. Whether your goal is Nirvana or your goal is Buddhahood. That niggling little, ‘Is this really the right path? Will it really work? Can I really do it?’--Gone. Doubt in the path is gone, a cessation so. 

You have a realization and you have a cessation–both. So you qualify as Dharma Jewel.

Doesn't matter whether you wear robes. Technically, it doesn't even matter whether you've ever declared yourself as a Buddhist. You don't have to be Buddhist. 

We're talking in the context of Buddhism, of course, in these courses. 

The definition of Sangha Jewel is a realized being who possesses any number of the eight fine qualities of knowledge and liberation. 

A realized being who possesses any number of the eight fine qualities of knowledge and liberation. 

I'm not gonna tell you what those eight fine qualities are, yet. They come later, because it's not so important here. 

The important piece is a realized being. 

Because what that term means is: they are out of the direct perception of emptiness, so they've had it at least once. 

Ultimate Refuge

Then the last  homework question up for class 1 is: What's ultimate refuge? 

Ultimate refuge is any refuge when the journey along the path has reached the final goal. 

Any refuge when the journey along the path has reached the final goal. 

Here we're using the term path as a succession, not a cessation, an ongoing effort series of experiences in which we are applying what we know. 

So we're using path in the regular kind of way. We're going down this path. 

But sometimes we use path as the realization, which has nothing to do with walking down a path. But it has everything to do with how we interact with everything we encounter as we walk along the path to our Nirvana or Buddhahood. 

I'll be using the term path kind of interchangeably. 

It seems funny to me that in a system where language is used so precisely, that there are these little pieces where it's redundant or vague, and I think it's on purpose. 

Like I think there's something in there that is worth thinking about, cooking. 

Why did they do it? Why don't they use a different word for path and for realization. 

Why is it the same? 

I think it will help you get it someday. 

So, ultimate refuge is the protection that we have once we've reached our Buddhahood, once we've reached our goal. 

Is there any more suffering? No. 

Is there even the suffering of not being able to help everybody stop their suffering? No. 

It doesn't mean everybody else has stopped their suffering yet. But you're not suffering as a result, you are perpetuating your compassion, love, knowledge and power. 

So these concepts, what it is to take refuge–worldly refuge and refuge in the Three Jewels, which is the distinction we're going to make in this next class–these are the very basis of all of our future realizations. So it's an important part, and we have a tendency to just sort of take it for granted. I took formal refuge. Now I have refuge. I say it six times a day, like I'm supposed to. I'm taking refuge. 

But, every time I get annoyed with David, and either ignore him or snap back, it's like I am nowhere close to refuge. And every time I catch myself recognizing, Oh, my seeds, and choose some different response, I am taking refuge and I am under the Three Jewels protection. They won't stop the speeding bullet, but I am under protection. It's a shift.

Starting class 2

[Luisa] Can I ask the question about the ultimate refuge?

So that means when I become a Buddha, only at that moment I have reached ultimate refuge because the suffering has to stop. However, as a Buddha, I perceive every living being as a suffering being, and I mean that they perceive themselves as a suffering being,  and as an empty being. And I see their potential, right? So how is that I haven't stopped the suffering because I still see them suffering. So I don't feel any, I don't know, compassion? 

[Lama Sarahni] You don't suffer. You have holy, great compassion. That's not a suffering. 

That's a bliss. That's another bliss, to have the love and holy great compassion as you perceive these fully enlightened beings that you see seeing themselves as still suffering beings. And spontaneously, effortlessly, you are what they need to bring themselves along the path to their goal. And you can beat that, and it's nothing but bliss and more bliss. 

I know it's hard to grasp. 

How can they see me suffering so badly and enjoy it? 

They're not enjoying it. They're compassionate and loving and trying to help. And it's up to me. It's up to me how I perceive it. So we'll get there. 

Taking Refuge

Worldly Refuge

So, we have worldly refuges. 

Things that we go to for protection, the obvious ones fire department etcetera. The less obvious ones are we go for refuge and money, in our relationships, in our jobs, in our whatever you go to when you feel a little bit distressed, you grab a Coke, a chocolate, a tea, what do you grab for that little bit of comfort that you need? 

That's a kind of refuge. We are spontaneously recognizing a need, and we're going to something to get that need met. And then, in worldly ways, does the nice cup of tea solve the problem? 

No. 

Does it give me a little comfort in the moment? 

Yes, that's nice. Now I can be stronger to go and approach the problem again. 

It is a kind of refuge. 

It's just not a refuge that will help stop the cycle that is causing and perpetuating the distress that we needed that extra Coke to cope with. 

It does not mean that, oh I see the money that I get from my job is not really where the ability to care for my family comes from, and so if that's the case, yay, I get to quit my job. 

I should be able to continue caring for my family just by giving things away. 

So whatever is in our house, in our refrigerator family, let's just put it out on the street and let everybody have it. And your family goes, yeah, well where's our next meal gonna come from? 

Oh, don't don't worry, right? Your karmic seeds will ripen and it'll just show up. 

Is that possible? 

Yeah, it's possible. 

Is it likely in our world? 

Not in my world, I have to admit, although I'm closer to it in my immediate world than I have ever been before. 

The wrong conclusion about where the fact that our worldly refuges don't work is: Well, I'm just going to quit doing them then. 

That's the wrong conclusion. It's perfectly fine to go for a nice cup of tea when you need a little refreshment. 

It's perfectly fine to have a Coca-Cola, it's maybe not so fine to have a whole 6 pack or a fifth of vodka for other reasons but we're not saying just ditch your life. 

It's an important piece because our mind might want to go there. If our life is pretty stressed out and we'd really like to just avoid the whole mess, we'll use the teaching on Refuge to say: See, None of it works. I'm leaving. 

But your karma goes with you. So you just end up with the same kind of stress from living under the bridge that you did when you were with your family, so you might as well stay put, and figure it out. 

So what does it really mean–to take refuge? Whether it's worldly refuge or Buddhist refuge, I'm getting to my screen share because they gave you your vocabulary. This is what we're looking at. 

Definition of Going for Refuge

   definition of refuge

             yul shen-la rang tob-kyi rewa chaway sempa khamdrey tsennyi

   5 divisions of buddhist refuge

             kyebu chung dring chenpo sum drebui khamdro gyui khamdro

The definition of refuge. Don't you love definitions? 

In Tibetan it is:

yul shen-la rang tob-kyi rewa chaway sempa khamdrey tsennyi

This word TSENNYI, it means the definition of... 

So we'll see it a lot through the course of our ACI study. 

The definition of KHAMDREY = going for refuge, but it's plural here. 

The definition of going for refuge.

SEMPA = the word means movement of the mind. 

Any movement of the mind–Geshe Michael uses it in here as meaning any thought. But movement of the mind isn't always thought. I think of thought as actually word thought. And this means just any movement in our awareness.

The definition of refuge is: Any movement of the mind. 

Now we need to go back and fill in what? 

The REWA CHAWAY = to put all our hopes in something. 

REWA = hope

CHAWAY = all our hopes, but it has that sense of this spontaneous movement of the mind that puts all our hope into something.

This movement of the mind of putting all our hopes into something arises on its own, arises from us. 

RANG TOB-KYI = By the power of itself 

RANG = self, itself. 

TOB-KYI = by the power

The mind of: I'll put all my hopes in this particular object arises from its own site. 

Nobody says, Oh. Call the fire department. 

Your house is on fire. You've learned what you do in your house is on fire as you call the fire department. But in the moment of what is my refuge? My house is on fire. Ahh. Who do I call? The fire department? 

You don't have to call your mother to say who do I call? 

Your own mind knows what to do. 

So, all of this refuges, the movement of the mind that of its own accord knows that we can put all our hopes into–YUL SHEN-LA–another object.

It feels like I just let you down.

What am I putting all my hopes into that I know spontaneously? The other object.

YUL = object

SHEN-LA = other

So the definition of refuge, not Buddhist refuge, is: The movement of the mind that from its own accord puts all its hopes into another object. 

The fire department. 

If you're a little kid and you're in trouble, you go running to mom. 

You know to go running to mom. 

You don't go to your baby sister for protection, and you don't go to your baby sister to say, Who do I go to for help? 

You go to where the help is: Mom. 

Refuge, plain, old refuge. 

When we're hungry, we go for refuge in food. 

Wisdom would be when I'm hungry, I would go for refuge in feeding somebody up. 

But wait, I'm still hungry after that. 

It’s not so straightforward as it seems to have to be at the beginning. 

In English, refuge is that movement of the mind which of its own power puts all its hopes in another object, meaning an external object SHEN-LA implies external, external to ourselves. 

Refuge means my protection. 

Where do I believe my protection can come from. 

2 Factors: Fear and Faith

In order for this movement of the mind to be RANG TOB-KYI REWA CHAWAY, meaning of its own accord putting all my hopes in that other object, 2 factors need to be in play. 

One is that there is an element of fear. 

Fear meaning not like ehhh shaking in our tracks kind of fear. 

But the fear of: I can't do this myself, I can't fix this myself, or I'm in trouble. 

Until we notice, realize, recognize that we have a problem, we won't have this movement of the mind that finds who can be the solution to our problem. 

They call it fear. 

We could say I have to recognize I have a problem, have to recognize I'm in some kind of difficulty. They're calling that fear. 

Then we need an element of belief that the object we go to can in fact help. 

Again, our house is on fire. We don't call your grocer, right? 

You don't call your pharmacist when your house is on fire. 

Because we don't have that belief that they can and will help, right? 

Maybe they call the fire department for you, but we just wouldn't do that. 

We call the thing, the other that we already believe has the power to help us. 

In regular worldly refuge, this is the same. 

This is really what we're talking about. 

The classic example of that, they say: Suppose you're out in a park, and there's a pavilion over there on the other side of the park. And you're standing in the middle of the park and it suddenly starts to rain, and it's this downpour and you're getting so wet. 

We can stand there. I go for refuge in the pavilion. I go for refuge in the pavilion. I go for refuge in the pavilion. But you're standing in the middle of the park while you're saying you're refuge, you are still getting wet. 

You don't have to say any words at all, just run to the pavilion, and you stop getting wet. 

It takes an action for that what we go to for refuge to in fact help us. 

Worldly, we would say, yeah, the action is I have to pick up the phone and call the fire department. 

I have to go and get the cup of tea. 

In Buddhist refuge, we're going to see that the action necessary is this change of behavior that our refuge object is either demonstrating by being Sangha, Dharma jewel. Or that we have come to realize ourself if we ourselves are Sangha, Dharma jewel. And or whatever Buddha Jewel has been teaching us through the Dharma jewel, whoever is doing that for us. 

All of it helping us take an action that will really be protective. 

Like run to the pavilion for crying out loud. Put up your umbrella. Don't just stand there and say the words and expect something to happen. 

[Luisa] When we say our refuse prayer in the morning and at night, I have to confess many times I just do it like a parrot, like I just repeat the words and then I think, What I'm saying here? But I cannot feel the words with some meaning in that specific moment of the day many times. So what is your advice on that? How to fill those words with meaning? Like how can I really say I go for refuge to the Buddha, the Dharma,... 

[Lama Sarahni] Yeah, they have meaning behind them. So, ideally you take those same words. And you work with them to trigger a feeling of: If I don't yell, I'm gonna eventually stop all yelling people. If I don't yell from anger, I'm going to stop all yelling angry people. If I don't act from my anger, I'm going to stop all anger in my existent someday. 

But pick one that opened your heart. 

Maybe it's the other way around. If I can ooze kindness, I'm gonna make a world where every being around me is oozing kindness. And oh, how cool that would be. 

Ideally, you are thinking that while you're saying the words. 

If that doesn't happen, change the words. But don't change the meaning. 

Take refuge in karma and emptiness if that feels more immediate. 

I take refuge in knowing that everything I do is planting seeds for my future and I'm trying to make a good future for everybody. 

Say that three times and you are doing your refuge prayer. 

Maybe add to it: And I have people who are teaching me how. Thank you very much. I have people that are showing me how. Thank you very much. 

It's more important to be inspired than it is to say the words exactly right. 

But there's no reason those words can't trigger the same idea. 

Good question. 

So what are those two elements that need to be present for a refuge? Fear and faith. They call it fear and faith. 

But that word so loaded right. Fear and belief in the object of refuge. Believe that they can help. Let's take a break. 

[break]

Buddhist Refuge

OK, so mostly we've been talking about a category of refuge called Ordinary Refuge. 

I've been calling them worldly refuges. All the things that we go to as sources of happiness, Whether it's the happiness of just getting out of a difficult problem, or the happiness of getting a need met, or even achieving a goal. 

As we learn  on our spiritual path, we come to recognize that those objects that we’re going to for refuge don't work. They fall short. 

And so at some point we start looking for something that tells us why, and we're hoping that we'll get a glimmer that there's something that won't fall short. 

And sooner or later, we come to what's called exceptional refuge. 

But in our tradition, we would call it Buddhist refuge. 

And then within that there's Refuge in the nominal refuge objects: Nominal Buddha, nominal Dharma, nominal Sangha. 

And there's refuge in the Three Jewels. 

The nominal Buddha, Dharma, Sangha: Nominal Buddha is when you think ‘Shakyamuni Buddha’. 

Nominal doesn't mean they don't really exist. They are appearing nature. 

Buddha Jewel is not Shakyamuni. 

Buddha Jewel is that being of ultimate love, ultimate compassion, ultimate wisdom that in our world appeared Once Upon a time as Shakyamuni Buddha, who reached that place by becoming a Sangha Jewel and Dharma Jewel, which means gaining those realizations in their minds. 

So exceptional Buddhist or exceptional refuge, Buddhist refuge, those two aspects–the fear is the fear of Sansara and the perpetuating of it. It's a little more specific, but it's big. 

Fear of Sansara is with life. Life as we know it. 

And then our movement of mind with all our hopes and certainty that they will help goes to the nominal refuge objects, and to the Three Jewels refuge objects, because the Three Jewels is that we're going to for protection in the gaining of those realizations in our own heart. 

Those three nominal refuges are who and what will help us gain the three realizations of our own.

That's where the real protection comes from: Is doing what we need to do to gain and then live by those realizations along the path. 

5 divisions of exceptional refuge

Here is the Tibetan for them. 

KYEBU CHUNG DRING CHENPO SUM

That's the first three. 

That's what SUM means. 

GYUI KYAMDRO DREBUI KHAMDRO is the last two. 

So I'm going to start from the front because we need to work on these three first.

1 . KYEBU KYAMDRO – lesser scope refuge

KYEBU = the word that we use for a practitioner of lesser scope, beginning scope. 

Beginning scope means this is the minimum motivation that we would have for declaring ourselves as a Buddhist. The minimal motivation for going for refuge in the Three Jewels is out of fear of our own lower rebirth at the end of this lifetime. And we have this belief that the 3 Jewels, the three nominals will teach us to gain the needed realizations in our own mind, through which we will stop that possibility of a lesser rebirth. 

So this minimal motivation as a Buddhist is to be concerned with where I go in my next life, what happens in my next life. 

Our willingness to change our behavior in this life is driven out of a fear of a lesser realm rebirth and so we will behave differently in this life. 

Our spiritual function is not about results we get in this life. It's directed towards next life, and lives beyond that of course. 

With that motivation our refuge objects teach us how to avoid doing the 10 non virtues.

How to keep our morality such that we decrease significantly the likelihood of having the seeds that could ripen as a rebirth as an animal, hungry ghost or hell being. 

And if we don't really believe in hell beings and hungry ghosts, it's really enough to think, Well, how awful it would be to be reborn as an animal. And although I've heard people say, oh, I want to be reborn as an eagle so I can soar above. And it's like, yeah, OK, that sounds really nice, but it's a big struggle to be an eagle, you know, and mostly your babies die and you have to struggle and kill things, and you don't have the option to choose your behavior as an animal much. So you can't make spiritual progress. 

As pleasant as it might be to come back as Flavia’s cat. 

That poor cat still has to eat meat. At best it can live a life of love and die love. But the likelihood of it reaching its Buddhahood in that lifetime is pretty remote from its side. 

2 . DRING KYAMDRO – medium scope refuge

Medium scope refuge includes the lower scope refuge: I want to stop the possibility of going to a lesser rebirth. But at medium scope you also understand enough about karma, the 12 links of dependent origination that you have come to recognize that it is possible that you can stop all your mental afflictions forever. 

That you can stop any forced rebirth. 

That you can stop Sansara for yourself. 

So your refuge is in the Buddha, Dharma, Sangha, Nominal, and the Jewels that you're gathering in your mind at that level through which you will close the doors to lesser rebirth, and stop perpetuating Sansara at all for yourself. 

So we have two levels of refuge so far, Buddhist refuge so far. 

They also practice their morality very, very carefully. 

3 . CHENPO KYAMDRO – great scope refuge

Great scope refuge shares the lesser scope refuge: I wanna close the door to lesser rebirth. They share the medium, scope refuge: I want to stop all my mental afflictions forever and stop perpetuating Sansara. But they also have this motivation that recognizes that every existing being is in the same sinking ship they are in, and that they realize Sansara can be stopped by everybody for everybody. And our motivation is I want to become the one who will do it for everybody in my world. 

So they have motivation shared with the lesser scopes. The lesser scopes of course don't share the ones above them. 

This person avoids the non virtues, works with their karma, and works with their Bodhichitta in order to change their behaviors in the way necessary that will bring about the goal that they wish to achieve: Total Buddhahood for the sake of all beings. 

So those are the three.

Here's the 5:

1. KYEBU KYAMDRO – lesser scope refuge

2. CHUNG DRING KYAMDRO – medium scope refuge

3. CHENPO KYAMDRO – greater scope refuge 

4. DREBUI KYAMDRO

5. GYUI KYAMDRO 

DREBUI KYAMDRO = going for refuge in the result, result refuge. 

GYUI KYAMDRO = going for refuge in the cause, causal refuge. 

4 . DREBUI KYAMDRO – result refuge

Going for refuge in the result–DREBUI = result. 

Going for refuge in the result  means going for refuge in one’s own future Sanghahood, Dharma Jewelhood, and Buddhahood. 

Going for refuge means changing our behavior based upon something that the nominal Sangha, nominal Dharma, and nominal Buddha has taught us. 

When we are taking refuge in the result, we are recognizing that by following what these teachers and teachings teach me, I'm planting my seeds to get the result that I'm motivated to plant those seeds for, and that due to the endless nature of my mindstream and the lack of self nature of that mindstream, it then means that it is inevitable that this one will someday perceive its own mind, body as this being that is a manifestation of Ultimate Love, Ultimate Compassion, Ultimate Wisdom. 

Although this me is thinking that one is still in the future, you can also recognize, But if there's an enlightened being who's omniscient now, and they see me–which they must, because I exist–then they also see the future fully enlightened being that this will be. Don't they? 

It doesn't mean they already really exist for me. 

But they do already really exist for anyone enlightened being, and I think there's more than one. 

So, we can take our refuge because of understanding our own empty nature in that enlightened being that already is. 

Now, it's dangerous because you could say, Alright then, I've got my direct connection to my enlightened being and all I have to do is listen and they're going to tell me what to do. In any given moment, because they know exactly. 

And that little voice inside says, Yell back at that person. 

So you yell back. 

Then that little voice inside goes, I wasn't your enlightened self. I was your ignorant self, and thank you very much, we just delayed you're reaching enlightenment by like eons. Well done. Thank you very much. 

So don't fool ourselves into saying oh, I'm taking result refuge, so that means I can’t do nothing wrong. Right. We think all that’s stupid. We wouldn't do that. But it's tricky. 

It does give us the understanding, however, that our efforts to change our behaviors are going to be successful no matter how puny they seem to be now. Because of emptiness and karma any little effort is gonna grow. 

And when we make some big efforts, even when we seem to fail in that effort, because the result doesn't come the way we expect, the effort has planted seeds. 

The effort plants seeds. 

The result we get, the apparent result that we get from our effort is really not related to what we just did. 

So we can train ourselves to be in that plant mode–almost independent of what's going on.

Because we have the tools, we either have the vows or at least we have the 10 non virtues, swapped over to be the 10 virtues. 

So how should I respond in this situation? This one. Oh, this one. 

And so we don't yell back when somebody's yelling at us and they even expect us to yell back. So by not yelling back and saying, you know, how could I help you, we actually make them matter, and they yell more. It's not because we just broke the cycle. It's because sometime in the past when somebody responded in a way we didn't expect, we got upsetter. That next moment experience is coming from us as well. 

So refuge in the result is coming to this conviction that that fully enlightened being of this  stream it's already happened, and they're there for me. They're there for this one, knowing exactly what we need to do, right? Because we've already done it. Yeah, yeah, I made that mistake. Let's not do it again. 

It's a little schizophrenic. But when it starts to resonate, it's really, really helpful. 

Geshela used to say: You know when you're having a rough day, go to the bathroom, go in the stall and have a little chat with your future you: I'm so sorry. I'm delaying my making you real for me by behaving by less such a jerk. Please forgive me. Please help me. Please inspire me, may your kind words come out of my mouth instead of my stupid words. Please help me. 

You do it in the privacy of your own mind at first. 

[Luisa] Sorry, but that means if I believe, or if I have this conviction that my future Luisa, enlightened Luisa already exists because there are Buddhas out there who can see it already, it brings in me this feeling of the wrong belief that there is a mini Buddha inside me that I just have to peel off, because it's already there. You know what I mean? Like, if I'm already enlightened, why bother? 

[Lama Sarahni] Right. But you're not already enlightened from your side. 

You are already enlightened from another enlightened being side. 

And so somehow our task now is to catch up with that or match it. It's not that they still guide us and see, oh, there's really a little Buddha in there. They're seeing our future. 

Which means I can do it. Because I'm empty. Because we're empty, that's why they can see us that way. 

[Luisa] But they see us in our future, this is the kind of the misunderstanding I have. I understood before they see our potential to become a Buddha, like they see that we have the capacity, but now that they see us already enlightened. 

[Lama Sarahni] Cook it. Our potential is our emptiness. They still see that once we're fully enlightened, we see it too. And then they see our appearing. They're omniscient. They are omniscient. But it's just that argument that says, Oh yeah, so I'm not enlightened and it won't be enlightened Luisa, that they see. Alright, Luisa will be long gone. 

Another reason why it can't already be in here because inside here it's Sarahni. And it's not Sarahni that gets enlightened. 

[Luisa] But if you do Tantra, Sarahni gets enlightened and this is the promise in one lifetime? [Lama Sarahni] But it’s ot Sarahni that does it. It’s not the me that does it.

[Luisa] OK, understood. Thank you Lama. 

Refuge in the result. 

Our spontaneous fear. I'm not the result yet. I'm perpetuating Sansara. 

The movement of the mind that puts all my hopes in that refuge object future me because I figured out to do so. 

Now I just gave you the suggestion. 

If it doesn't make sense, we're not going to spontaneously go for refuge to our own future Buddha me. 

But at some point, because you heard about it, and it'll cook, all of a sudden something will happen and you'll go, Oh, My faith, all my hopes get put into relying upon that future me makes sense. 

And our mind goes there. Don't force it until that that because then it's not real refuge because it's not this spontaneous movement of the mind to that object. 

But someday it will be.

5 . GYUI KYAMDRO – cause refuge

Then we have the GYUI KYAMDRO which is going for refuge in the cause, or causal refuge it's called. And this is the one, I remember, like as when I became formally Buddhist, what I was thinking. It it means my mind moves from its own accord to a being other than myself who is already fully enlightened. And because I've come to understand how it is a being becomes fully enlightened, I now know that they know what I need to know, what I need to learn, what I need to do to reach that state as well. 

So once I understand that about a fully enlightened being: How they became it? And how that love compassion component was so critical to developing their wisdom into omniscience, that that compassion is what propels their emanations, that all grew into this, Oh, that's what I want to become. 

Because I had learned how they became that for themselves for everyone, and what all those different steps, how they all came together for that to happen for them. 

It took me years after my formal taking Buddhist refuge. 

I'm gonna say 10 years probably before it really all like, Oh, that's why I go for refuge in the Buddha, Dharma, Sangha. And then I could say, all right, I really do take refuge, whether I have the words being said or not. Because of my understanding. 

So going for refuge in the cause means going for refuge in a being other than ourselves, who has already achieved one or more of the three Jewels. So we can go for causal refuge in someone that we perceive is Sangha Jewel, who would then also be Dharma Jewel. But we're not necessarily perceiving them as Buddha jewel as well. Or and we can take refuge in a Buddha jewel who is also automatically Dharma Jewel and Sangha Jewel. 

The refuge is the change in behavior that we do as a result of what they teach us, how they're guiding us. 

Benefits of taking refuge

Why take Buddhist refuge at all?

Short term benefit

There's a short term benefit and a long term benefit apparently. 

In the short term benefit, it means the benefit within this life. 

The benefit of taking refuge in Buddha, Dharma and Sangha–we already said that it's not even Buddhist refuge if our goal in our refuge is for some advantage in this life. 

But even though that's not our goal, we will still get some benefit in this life from taking our Buddhist living according to our Buddhist refuge. Because our Buddhist refuge means our belief in how our behaviors create our future. 

That will influence this future life as well as future future lives. 

Even if we don't see the results of our change of behavior in this life, it has benefited this life because your own behavior is changing. 

You are getting more kind. Even if as you get more kind, your outer experiences of your outer world just gets worse and worse and worse. 

You've still benefited from growing the habit of kindness. 

You're planting seeds for your future, and you're growing the ease with which you'll be able to do that in future. 

So, things like learning having the response to some situation that you feel like in a worldly way you just can't do anything, and to rely then on Tonglen. It doesn't seem like we're doing anything. But the effect that it has on our own mindstream is huge. 

Same in the sense of learning to respond differently in a situation where ordinarily you would have yelled back. 

That's a skill that will be helpful in life.

Long term benefit

In the long term the benefit of going for Buddhist refuge is that through it we can and will eventually achieve our own Buddhahood. 

Refuge is the basis for living morally. And living morally is what leads to the direct perception of emptiness, and serves as the foundation for the Diamond Way practices, if we go that far in this life, which gives us the opportunity to transform into fully enlightened being before this body dies. Without Buddhist refuge changing our behavior even if we try the Diamond Way, it won't be successful. 

8 qualities of a Buddha

So, what is it about a fully enlightened being that makes them such a powerful refuge? We would ask. And Geshela goes to the Uttara Tantra teachings by Lord Maitreya to Asanga to answer this question–which some of us studied that recently, although it's there seems like a long time ago now. 

These eight qualities of what it is to be a fully enlightened being is what helps us be able to rely upon them to guide us along the path. 

1 . Uncaused

These eight, one of the qualities of a Buddha is their uncaused quality. 

It should be a conundrum in our minds. 

Wait, if a Buddha is uncaused, how can we collect the causes to become one? 

It's not that a Buddha is uncaused. It's that a Buddha has a quality, and that quality is described as an uncaused quality. English fails. 

What they mean, of course, is the Dharmakaya–the lack, the lack of self existence of that Buddha's mind and appearing body. Is this quality of them that is uncaused that makes them a powerful refuge object. 

The reason that makes them a powerful karmic object is that they teach us that: Look, you have this uncaused quality in you now also. 

And because of that thing that's uncaused, we can plant the seeds to ripen our perception of ourselves as this fully enlightened being who will still have this quality that we're calling the uncaused quality. Because the emptiness is not caused by anything. 

Our friend the pen that we've learned about the emptiness of. Being the pen doesn't cause an emptiness to come into appearance. 

A pen here has to have a no self nature to be the pen that we see. 

But that empty nature isn't a caused thing, it's just there or not there. 

2 . Spontaneous

Second of these eight that makes a fully enlightened being a powerful refuge object is they have a quality of spontaneous. 

By spontaneous, what they mean is that that being  spontaneously, effortlessly appears to any being who's ready to perceive them in the way that they are ready to perceive them. 

And they explained this by way of the analogy of the moon reflecting in a body of water. 

If the full moon is in the sky, and there is a still body of water anywhere, no matter how big, no matter how small, spontaneously the moon will reflect in the body of water. 

The water doesn't have to do anything. 

Hey, Moon, I'm ready. 

And the moon doesn't have to do anything. 

Hello, body of waters, where are you? 

It just happens. 

In that same way Buddhas emanations propelled by their holy great compassion, is like the moon in a body of water. 

The extent to which any of us are ready to see a Buddha is the extent to which we will see them. 

Are they gonna be the maggoty dog? Or Lord Mitrea? 

Or the lady making the needles against the rock?

Or…? What would they look like? 

Are they ever not appearing to us from their side? 

You'd have to say no, right? 

How often do we actually go, Oh, that was a Buddha. 

I’m working so hard to be one of their emanations for others that it never occurs to me that that other is one of them. 

Yet, why can't every rock or every fly that crawls up your nose be a Buddha? 

Why would a Buddha annoy me so much? Why would they? 

Because they know I'm ready to burn it off. 

Yeah, but I'm gonna not burn it off, I'm gonna be annoyed, and then I'm gonna make terrible karma because I'm annoyed with a Buddha. But would I be annoyed if I have that spontaneous thought, Oh, that Buddha's crawling up my nose. Right? 

And it's a paradise for them. 

Would I react differently? 

I hope so. 

Spontaneous. They are spontaneous. 

[Luisa] Lama, sorry, can I question to that? It sounds like as as if they decide, I don't know it gives me this feeling of God again, like I they are just there and then they just decide to show up. And I think as I understand it's our karma or is it that they see our karma, don't know our program. And then they say, OK, now Luisa has the karma for me to show up. 

[Lama Sarahni] No, but that's what the term spontaneous is trying to override. They are spontaneously, effortlessly being what we need. It's our karma that ripens as us being aware of that or not. 

But from their side, their compassion is being whatever all of us need–for each one of us. 

It's to me it's the opposite of what you're just saying. 

If they weren't spontaneous, they'd be sitting up there in Buddha paradise watching Luisa. And it's like, Is she ready? Is she qualified? Has she pleased me enough that I'll go down and help her out? Or has she really sought herself in the foot and now she needs, a slap on the hand? Or to me, that would not be spontaneous. That would be very contrived on their part. But spontaneous means their love just shows up. 

[Luisa] But then we have a dedicated Buddha because if all the Buddhas are trying to help us, then they are emanating simultaneously. I don't know. It's very crazy. 

[Lama Sarahni] I know it is. We are surrounded. We are breathing them, we are walking on them, we are eating them. 

[Luisa] OK, this is too much for me at the moment. Alright, thanks. 

[Lama Sarahni] Luisa has a very literal mind, I know that. 

3 . Realized by no other way

Meaning that that emptiness of the Dharmakaya cannot be perceived conceptually. It cannot be perceived with a sense perception. It cannot be imagined. 

It can only be experienced directly. 

Can be realized by no other way other than directly.

It's doesn't mean you can only become a Buddha by being Buddhist. Does not mean that. 

The Dharmakaya can only be perceived directly. Is what it means to be. They are realized by no other way. It does not mean that you have to be a Buddhist in order to come to recognize that there are things called Buddhas in the world. Because we might think that. A Buddha is realized in no other way. We might think means you have to be a Buddhist to realize that Buddha's really exist. And that's not what the no other way means. It means direct perception of emptiness is necessary to get there, and that even once we're there, our Dharmakaya is directly perceived always by us and other Buddhas. And no other way. Has to be direct. 

4+5+6 Knowledge, Love and Power

They have knowledge, love and power. 

Knowledge refers to a fully enlightened being's awareness of our suffering condition. 

If they are aware of our suffering and they don't care about us, they couldn't, wouldn't help us. So we wouldn’t go to them for refuge. Because we wouldn't know for sure that they would know–if we don't know that they don’t care. 

So their love is their care for us. 

Knowledge is they know our suffering. 

Their love is that they want our happiness. They know it's possible. They know it's inevitable. They want us to reach it. 

And then even that would not be helpful unless they were able to do something. 

And that's the term power–knowledge, love and power. 

But the power means their power to teach. Their power to teach comes from their own personal experience of what it took for them to overcome their belief in their own true nature and the selfishness that drives. Grown to include that towards all existing things and beings. 

Their power is not the power to make things happen for us. 

They are not omnipotent. 

We can't blame Buddhas for what happens to us. 

But wait, you just said they're emanating as that angry, yelling boss. So they are making that happen to me. But they're not. 

Because our seeds are making us see them as angry, yelling boss. They're not making us see them as angry, yelling boss. 

They're not the angry, yelling bus. 

There is no angry, like boss other than the one where making onto something that's blank, that's empty. 

Knowledge, love and power. The power to guide us, to teach us, to inspire us, to challenge us. 

But they don't have the power to make our karma change. 

They don't have the power to even make us change our behavior. 

Wouldn't that be frustrating? 

How can being a Buddha not be wickedly frustrating?

Like Sarahni, would you just get it? 

I was at a teaching by somebody once and she was quoting, I think it was Rumi. And Rumi’s poetry is so extraordinary. He was talking to God, his beloved, and he was saying something like, Look, would you just pick me up by the heels and shake me until all this crap comes out of my pockets? And then put me down and I'll be fixed. 

That really struck my heart. 

It's like, I'm dealing with my tantric deity and it's just like just shake me up and down until it all comes out, would you? 

And I think she's doing that, I just don't interpret it quite like that, you know? 

So how frustrating that must be. 

She's going: I'm doing exactly what you asked me for. What's the matter with you? You're still begging for more? You're not even changing. Come on, get with it. I'm sorry. I'm such a challenge to her. 

7+8 Fulfills both needs–mine and his

They fulfill both needs. 

The wording is precise here. They fulfill both needs, so this is 7 and 8. 

They say, when you're breaking them apart and describing them, once a Buddha is a Buddha, they have fulfilled their needs. They've become Buddha. That's what they wanted. That's what their goal was. They have achieved it. And, they have fulfilled our needs. 

Our needs. 

So they have the quality of fulfilling both needs, meaning it's an ongoing thing. 

But when we pin it down, they've already fulfilled their own needs, and we want to say and they'll go on to fulfill mine. 

But they say no. They have already fulfilled our needs and it's a conundrum. 

One of those things we need to cook for a while, because it's it shows us how in our linear thinking, they're gonna teach me how to do this, this, this and this, and I'm gonna get there. 

But from their side, I want to say they're not linear thinkers anymore. 

They're perceiving everything all the time. 

Can we say they are spherical thinkers? I don't know. They're not thinkers at all, actually, because everything is direct for them, for a fully enlightened being. 

So, we could say yeah, they perceive my fully enlightened me who has fulfilled all my goals. And they perceive me that doesn't see myself that way. So I've still got goals to fulfill and they would go right, you have goals to fulfill. But I've already fulfilled them. 

Not meaning for me. For them. 

It's a cooker. I admit I don't have it straight myself. 

Because how can they have fulfilled my goals when I still need–I was going to say I still need to go to the grocery for food, but I don't. Somebody else does that. 

I was gonna say, and I still need to have money to pay for food, but I don't, because a whole bag of groceries and dinner showed up on our doorstep today and it's like: Can I go, ohh yeah I know who sent those to me, I know who brought me the groceries. They had to pay for them. 

But you see I'm making an error there. 

I could be saying, look, my generosity creates a world where your needs just show up. 

Why do I have to impose old world view and say, oh, well, they had to pay for that. Maybe they didn't. Maybe they just had the thought, okay tortillas and beens and this and that, there it is in a Trader Joe's bag. Cool. 

Is that fantasy thinking? 

Yes, unless I do it because of karma and emptiness, and because I want everybody to have a world where that what they need just shows up. 

It could be, couldn't it? Why not? 

Alright. So these eight qualities of Buddha, when we first learn them, we're grappling with them about learning what they are like. 

What a Buddha, the Dharma and Sangha are like. 

But at some point, it's important to look at these eight qualities and recognize, well, if I'm going to be a Buddha someday, I'm going to have these eight qualities someday. 

What's that gonna be like? 

What do I think I needed to do to create the mrit and wisdom to create those, to create the me that has those. 

That's really a more useful way to look at this teaching. 

Yes, we learn what Buddhas are like. 

But in doing so, we learn what we're gonna be like, and that's a clue about how to behave now to create ourselves into that. 

I think we'll see that we're really probably not so far from it as we might think. 

I'm not directly perceiving my own uncausedenes. But I can perceive my spontaneousness if I just stop to think about it. 

I lead a exercise group with four or five other seniors and we just be silly. 

And if I were to recognize anything that I do to lead this group and exercise is spontaneously being exactly what their karma is ripening in the moment. 

I'm kind of being in my spontaneous quality. 

And so anytime we're with others, we're being spontaneous what their karma is ripening. 

And they're doing that for us.

Reach no other way than the direct–kind of hard to play with that one when you're outside your meditation. 

Knowledge, love, and power. 

What if you knew exactly what would be the most helpful for that other person? 

When our love is strong enough that… what would be an example? I can't think of one. 

Say we’re in a situation somebody looks like they need something, and we don't feel capable of really helping and we decide, Well, I'll just smile at them and that'll be enough. 

And then we push ourselves instead of smiling, and instead we challenge them in some way. Our intention was to help them see what the way they were stuck. Are we willing to risk them getting upset with us in our effort to help them in a deeper way than just smiling and walking on? 

Knowledge, love and power. How would we use it? 

OK, good. So you have now what you need to finish class 1 and then class 2. 

[Usual dedication]

Welcome, we are ACI Course 2, class 3. Bodhichitta and the mind. 

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

[Usual opening]

Last class we learned the definition of refuge, didn't we? Someone can share that with us please? 

[Ale] Any movement of the mind. That you think that the. You can protect from any harm. Something like that. Sorry, I'm very bad with definitions. 

[Lama Sarahni] The thought which of its own power does what? 

Somebody. Ale you were on the way to that. 

[Ale] Hopes that they will protect you. 

[Lama Sarahni] Yeah, that this other object will protect us. 

The thought which of its own power puts all its hopes in another object. Well, having the state of mind of being fearful, and going for protection with absolute certainty that the object of refuge will help. 

So the fear and faith, those two components that arises from the mind by itself, not meaning self-existently. But meaning, Oh them! That will work for me. 

Then, your quiz asked, describe the taking refuge which is shared with practitioners of lesser scope. Joana, what's that mean?

 [Joana] People who are having the lesser scope, they try to, just not to get reborn in a lower realm. So that they seek refuge in… What did they seek refuge? 

[Lama Sarahni] Avoiding something? 

[Joana] Yeah, just avoid the suffering. Actually, I don't know the answer? 

[Lama Sarahni] Avoiding harming others in order to stop planting seeds that could ripen as their future birth in a lower realm. So their fear is out of fear of being reborn in a lower realm. And their refuge is in the guidance of what things to avoid doing to lessen the likelihood of a lower rebirth, which would go on to actually closing that door completely. OK. 

Why is it called share?

Shared, we're using the term shared meaning, we're not talking actually about the refuge of those beginning level practitioners. We're talking about a refuge in the mind of someone who is beyond that motivation–has a higher motivation for their refuge–but they still share that lower refuge motivation. Because even at, especially at Mahayana level, we still need to want to close the doors to lesser rebirth. And we still need to want to stop perpetuating Sansara altogether for ourselves in order for our Mahayana refuge to be complete. So when we say shared, we mean we're talking from the perspective of a greater capacity person, how their refuge is shared with the lessers in order for their greater vehicular refuge to be that greater vehicular. 

Sharing. 

The next question was: Describe the refuge of practitioners of greater scope. 

When we describe the refuge, you want to describe what they fear of, and so then what behavior they're trying to train in in order to reach their goal. 

So for the greater scope practitioners, they have only one fear. 

No, they have three:

1. Fear of lesser rebirth. 

2. Fear of perpetuating Sansara themselves, and 

3. Fear of not reaching the omniscience through which their compassion can help all beings. 

Meaning, their fear holds these three components to it. 

Then their faith is in the Mahayana guidance, which includes avoiding harming others. 

It includes avoiding harming others, really specifically to stop perpetuating those 12 links. 

And it includes avoiding harming and trying to help with that higher motivation of being able to help ultimately someday. 

So high, higher, highest capacity refuge has these two basic components–still fear and faith in a mind that arises without somebody having to say in the moment, oh, this is where your refuge is. It grows out of our training that starts with training yourself to avoid the 10 non virtues. Train yourself in not only avoiding them, but try learn to do the 10 virtues with them around. And then train in that state of mind while doing those other two, training the state of mind that I'm doing it so that I can help all those beings reach their total awakening someday. 

And with that state of mind, we have our greater capacity refuge. 

So you can see it isn't something that we achieve and we're done. 

It's something we keep bringing up over and over and over until it does become a state of our reality. But I think we don't stop taking refuge in Buddha, Dharma and Sangha probably until we are seeing ourselves in a Buddha paradise and you don't need to do it anymore. But until then we're still like sinking our device right with what our belief is every day, Six times a day, in fact, says the teachings. Every two hours. Well, in waking right during the 18 hours that we're awake, you could say every three hours. 

Then they asked, what's this thing ‘Result Refuge’? Anybody. 

What results are we talking about? 

[Ale] They will reach total enlightenment? 

[Lama Sarahni] That you will reach total enlightenment.

[Ale] The member of the Sangha, the Three Jewels. 

[Lama Sarahni] That you will reach becoming those three jewels, and we are taking refuge in that fact. 

[Ale] In our future us?

[Lama Sarahni] Yeah, it's a little weird. How can I get protection from something that hasn't happened yet just by way of thinking what's gonna happen someday that’s inevitable? 

How can that protect me? 

[Ale] Maybe like a mother who is just pregnant that they never met their baby. But they feel in love, like they feel a connection with them. It could be like that, like taking refuge in something that you don't know but you just know.

[Lama Sarahni] Yeah, you don't know, but you know, that's perfect. Yes. And then as we trained in how anybody reaches the state of their total enlightenment, and we take refuge in our result–the being that we're going to be someday–that's telling us: follow this training. 

In a sense, it's another way of encouraging us to learn those principles that we use to reach our total enlightenment and like the pregnant mom, right? Babies just stating, we don't know them yet, but we love them so much, we know they are going to be someday and so we do everything we can to bring them about. It's a great analogy. Thank you. 

Result Refuge. 

It just doesn't feel so solid. You don't call the fire department that has not opened in your neighborhood yet. You call the one that's already there. 

But if you cook it, you'll see how powerful it is when you have this connection to your future you. Because future you knows you so well. 

OK, good. 

This class is entitled Bodhichitta and the Mind. It’s difficult. And although I've taught it many times, I've studied it many times, it still throws me for a loop. So with this class, please give yourself permission to do your homework and quiz like a parrot. 

Do your homework, just copy if you need to, right? 

At least write it, don't cut and paste, at least type it or write it. 

Try to unravel it. I'm going to try to help you do so. 

The quiz is easier than the homework by a long shot, but it still–if you're going to try and really understand it before you do it, you will never complete it. So I'm giving you permission to be just like the parrot, and get it down on paper because we're planting seeds in this class. 

I remember my state of mind years ago taking this class by audio, and I listened to it again and again and again, and I just couldn't do it, but I knew how to pass a test. So I was able to pass the test. 

So I give you permission to just not understand. And I suspect that if you give yourself permission to, she says, This is too hard for me. I'm just not going to get it so just pour it in and let it happen that you'll come out of it going, oh, Sarahni, that was not so hard. What was up with you? I hope to hear that from you. But so here goes.

I have a screen share. Here's our 

Vocabulary class 3

semkye pa ni shen dun chir

yangdak dzokpay janchub 'du

bodhichitta       semkye

mahayana              total Buddhahood

pratyetkabuddha       Nirvana

shravaka                   Nirvana

chitta        sem

Tonight's whole class is about this phrase:

SEMKYE PA NI SHEN DUN CHIR YANGDAK DZOKPAY JANGCHUB ‘DU

Short definition of Bodhichitta 

It technically is the short definition of Bodhichitta. We've learned it before: The wish to reach total enlightenment for the sake of all sentient beings. 

That's the answer to the question on the quiz. 

But the question on the homework is what is the short definition of Bodhichitta? 

And the short definition of Bodhichitta is not short. 

No, I'm sorry, that is the short definition, but we're going to get a long definition that you only need for your homework. Which means you can copy it. 

So just very quickly on the short definition:

SEMKYE = Bodhichitta, it means this mind that wishes to reach their total enlightenment. And that's what we're defining. 

SEMKYE PA NI means SEMKYE = 

SHEN DUN CHIR = the wish for the sake of others

CHIR = the wish, 

SHEN = others, and 

DUN = somehow for the sake of

YANGDAK DZOKPAY= total. Total. 

JANGCHUB = the word for enlightened being, enlightenment. 

JANG = that training 

CHUB = total purify

totally purified by training–something like that: JANGCHUB. 

‘DU is the wish again. 

So this whole thing is the wish to reach total enlightenment for the sake of all sentient beings. 

Kind of two wishes rolled into one. 

And that's what the long definition needs to sort out. 

If there's two parts to this Bodhichitta, how can you actually grow it? 

Because if Bodhichitta is one state of mind, how can it have two different states of mind in one state of mind? 

1 is not 2, 2 is not 1. 

How does this work? 

Bodhichitta in Sanskrit, is SEMKYE in Tibetan. 

Chitta means mind, but in the sense of the mind as moving, movement of the mind, moving mind.

KYE = the wish or the wish to create. 

BODHI = Buddha. 

So we learned Bodhichitta literally means Buddha mind. 

But the Tibetans translated it as mind that's trying to create something, which is the JANGCHUB. Is what it's trying to create. And it's held within the SEMKYE, the wishes for Buddhahood. 

Again, Bodhichitta is the wish to achieve total enlightenment for the sake of all sentient beings. It has these two components. 

And key within those two components is to benefit all beings and to achieve total enlightenment.

Which we're going to point out. 

And it implies that if you have to emphasize total enlightenment that there must be non total enlightenments. 

What's up with that? 

And that's where the long definition helps sort this out for us, and fortunately, we have an explanation of how it does do so, because the long definition itself–for me–doesn't clarify it at all. Because I can't understand it. 

So let's just again get clear of these different capacities of humans on a spiritual path. 

We've learned that the Mahayana–these are Sanskrit terms, Mahayana, Pratyetkabuddha, Shravaka. 

Mahayana = the great capacity. 

The Mahayana practitioner, all that they put into practice is leading them to their goal of Buddhahood. I should probably put in here Total Buddhahood to be more accurate. 

The Bodhichitta of Self made Buddhas, Listeners and Mahayanas

Pratyetkabuddha = translated as Self-made Buddha. Which means this person is making great progress on their spiritual path in a given lifetime, apparently under the guidance of no specific teacher. They are probably reading books, exploring different traditions, but they're able to assimilate it and somehow practice it, and make these great strides in changing their behavior, such that they are planting the seeds that can move them along to their goal, their spiritual goal, which is Nirvana. 

And we've learned that this self-made Buddha, they're neither Buddhas nor are they self-made. The term means they're making spiritual progress, they have no apparent teacher in this lifetime, but it's all a result of the way in which they have studied from and served well teachers in the past. Probably many past lifetimes. 

So we hear stories like, Oh, that man Eckhart. There's an old Eckhart from a long time ago, and then there's the new one. Tolle is his last name. But anyway, the story I understand is he had this spiritual awakening on a park bench and sat there for three years. And now is able to lead people through, you know, amazing trainings. 

Yet he doesn't have the kind of study tradition that we're in. It doesn't invalidate anything for him. But, yeah, for some reason Pratyetkabuddha level practitioners, their seeds make them say or believe Nirvana is the highest achievable thing. Stopping Sansara for oneself is the highest goal. Pratyetkabuddha. 

And so, if this was the only tradition, and Nirvana–their Nirvana–was the highest goal, they would call that enlightenment. 

I've reached enlightenment. 

And the state of mind they will have reached is freedom from all mental afflictions and the seeds for future ones. Because they didn't have the aspiration for omniscience in order to help all beings. That wasn't part of their goal. So it's not part of their result. 

We will see in the literature, apparently, that a Pratyetkabuddha reaching their goal is: they are said to have reached their enlightenment. But not total, you see. Because they haven't reached omniscience. 

Long story about what happens after that. 

Shravaka = listeners

Shravaka are–we wanna say, they're the lesser practitioners because they only believe they can close the door to lesser rebirth and that's their goal. But Shravakas are above that level. Shravaka can even listen to Mahayana teachings. 

They can learn them well enough to even teach them to others. But they themselves don't have the seeds to see that that's something that they themselves aspire to. 

They are aspiring to their own Nirvana. Which includes closing the door to lesser rebirth, right? That's true for all of them. 

So Shravaka level practitioners also have as their goal the end of their mental afflictions, the end of their Sansara, and they call that enlightenment. So do you see if all of these are the SEMKYE that we're trying to grow. 

Then SEMKYE means different things. 

Bodhichitta means different things according to the motivation of the practitioner. 

What the practitioner perceives as their highest goal is what's meant by Bodhichitta. 

We learned Bodhichitta, and we think all automatically that refers to the Mahayana and automatically that means people want to reach their Nirvana with omniscience meaning Buddhahood. 

But we're assuming that everybody's in the Mahayana path. And they're not. 

Neither were we at some point. 

If we don't have any contact with people in different Buddhist traditions, none of this really matters. Because you're not gonna sit down with somebody and say: You know if your really goal is Nirvana, you're missing out and you're just going to have to come back and do your compassion training to get to Buddhahood. So why don't you just do that now? 

Maybe my words would sway them a little bit, but come on, they're probably way advanced over me in terms of their understanding of karma and emptiness. Who am I to say you're on the wrong path? 

It's a kind of arrogance when we're working with the Mahayana to think, oh, anybody who's not Mahayana is lesser. 

It is true, however, they say that the ultimate evolution of any conscious being is their total Buddhahood. So these other has that go to Nirvana, actually stall us out for a bit until we figure out that from a Nirvana state of mind, there are other beings that are still suffering, and it's clearly unnecessary because you've stopped your own. 

It means they can stop theirs. 

And so one would then maybe make the determination: I need to grow my compassion. And in order to grow compassion, I actually need to be within a suffering world. 

I'm not going to suffer from it, because all my seeds from mental afflictions are done and gone. But I'm going to work with growing my compassion to help others, and I can do so because I'm living proof that you can get your fingers and toes cut off and love the person who's doing it to you. To quote the fellow from Diamond Cutter Sutra. 

We're wanting to be precise with our terminology. 

But more importantly, precise with our mind and where we think we're headed to, we want to get it clear. 

On our path to total Buddhahood, we will reach Nirvana. 

And I think by the time we're there–from a Mahayana path–we're not likely to get wood into staying there. But I suspect it's a possibility. That's like, whoa, Nirvana, so nice. Let's just chill for a while. 

So the more we understand all these different levels, the more our practices of the Mahayana–which I'm assuming you're aspiring too, because you're in this ACI program–the more understanding is imbued in our mind, in our heart, in our practices. 

We don't have to be thinking this all the time. 

Once we understand the principles, we understand the principles, right? 

You don't have to remind yourself of your ABC 's in order to write a letter. Same idea. 

These three different levels are said to be 3 tracks of spiritual training with these 2 different goals. On each track, that practitioner will go through 5 stages of learning and practice and realization in order to go from 1 stage to the next. 

Each of those three has:

• a path of accumulation, 

• a path of preparation, 

• a path of seeing, 

• a path of habituation and 

• a path of no more learning. 

They even use those same words, but what they trained in on each of those paths, and what they call the experience of the realization that moves them from one path to the next is different. And in their TONGLAM, their path of seeing, what their mind is infused with going into their experience colors their interpretation of that experience, and it therefore influences their mind and their seeds according to that interpretation. 

Then they're on their path of habituation, learning to live according to what it is they now know by way of their path of seeing. But their interpretation of their experience may be: Oh, there's no thing or nobody that exists without their causes, meaning they're worldly causes. 

Or maybe: Oh. There's no thing or nobody that exists outside the realm of the other powered thing, the way I perceive it forced by my karmic seeds and the process of that happening. 

It becomes those different schools of Buddhism that we learn later. 

We have a tendency to think, oh, once you see emptiness directly, that experience is the same for everybody. It puts everybody into that place of, Oh, now I know that everything that happens to me is from my own seeds and nothing but. But to have that conclusion after the experience is born of having understood that about that experience going into it. 

The process of the path of accumulation and path of preparation is what's planting the seeds in us to interpret that experience in a way that will profoundly change our behavior. 

It comes about in three different ways, depending on what our path of accumulation and preparation included. 

So each of these is called enlightenment. But these 2, they call them lesser ones or incomplete ones, are not Buddhahood, they are not enlightenment, because they lack the omniscience that allows our mind to know how and what to do for each being to help them stop their suffering as well. 

So when we say total Buddhahood, total enlightenment, it is to clarify to us that we mean Nirvana with omniscience. That's what we mean by Buddhahood. 

And if we're talking to other people, and they're not in our tradition, or they haven't studied well even in our tradition, we might want to ask them: What do you mean by Buddhahood? 

It gives us an opportunity to share some clarification if they say, Oh, just freedom from mental afflictions. 

It's like, yeah, that's a really nice space. But there's more, there's more to it. Someday there'll be more. 

Pratyetkabuddhas and Shravakas also use the term Bodhichitta for the mind that wants to achieve their Nirvana. That's where the confusion comes in. 

We mean by the term Bodhichitta the wish to reach total enlightenment for the sake of all sentient beings. 

Is what we mean by Bodhichitta, Mahayana Bodhichitta. 

We would probably be wise to clarify it. Mahayana Bodhichitta. 

So now, if we're going to use the term Bodhichitta we want to fill that word with meaning. 

And we're in a position because it's a word that we didn't grow up with. It's not our home language. And so we have this new word that we're learning what they mean for it to mean. And the more we learn about it, the more rich that word is when we use it. 

It’s kind of fun because in English there's no short way to say Bodhichitta. 

It's the wish to reach total enlightenment for the sake of all sentient beings, that's too cumbersome. 

So we're gonna pack all this cool stuff into the word Bodhichitta. 

Then, what we train ourselves to do is, when we need that state of mind, all we have to do is think, say, see Bodhichitta. And the seeds are full of all this stuff, all this meaning that we've learned about it. 

And you don't have to be thinking all that stuff. It's all in the word. 

There's a word for that. Packing stuff with meaning, but I don't remember what it is. 

So we need to talk about Bodhichitta in this deeper, richer way so that when you use the word, it holds that much more meaning. 

Long definition of Bodhichitta

The rest of this class is about the long definition of Mahayana Bodhichitta. 

And the long definition is really long. So bear with me here. 

Again, the idea is to make the word Bodhichitta more packed with meaning. 

Bodhichitta has two parts. 

It is the main mental awareness belonging to the greater way which is focused on achieving total enlightenment for the benefit of others, and which is matched with a state of mind that is associated with it; the aspiration to achieve total enlightenment. 

That's the first part of the definition, and it itself has two parts. 

So here it comes again. 

First, it is the main mental awareness–underline that, we're going to talk about it–belonging to the greater way which is focused on achieving total enlightenment–we already talked about that–for the benefit of others, and which is matched with a state of mind that is associated with it–that seems redundant; The aspiration to achieve total enlightenment. 

Let me give it to you one more time. 

First, it is the main mental awareness belonging to the greater way, which is focused on achieving total enlightenment for the benefit of others, and which is matched with the state of mind that's associated with it; the aspiration to achieve total enlightenment. 

1 . The main mental awareness belonging to the greater way

We understand the Greater Way means the Mahayana, which means we understand enough about karma and emptiness and where suffering comes from that we have this glimmer that we could help all beings stop it. 

So we are already at that level of wanting to help others stop their suffering, and knowing that we stop ours in the process. 

Main mental awareness, we're going to talk about. I will come back to that, shortly. 

The focused on achieving total enlightenment, we need to say total so that we make it clear to our own mind that we are aspiring to omniscience–the end of our own mental afflictions and omniscience, total Buddhahood. 

Then total Buddhahood for the benefit of others, because we could be saying, I want to be a Buddha. I wanna be a Buddha. But from this, because it would be so cool to be a Buddha for me, hanging out in Buddha paradise, being emanations, I would have so much fun. 

But that's not a Buddha state of mind. 

Are they blissed out all the time? 

Absolutely. 

But did they reach their Buddhahood so they could be blissed out all the time?

No, they reached their Buddhahood so that they could be emanations that can help beings reach their blissed out all the time. 

My blissed out all the time is a side effect. Thank you very much. That's cool. 

So to clarify that I want to be totaled Buddhahood for everybody else's benefit doesn't negate our becoming Buddha. It in fact is necessary. 

We could aspire to becoming Buddha all we want. But if our aspiration to reach it does not include the aspiration to use it to help all beings reach it too, we won't ever reach it. 

What will reach is some Nirvana maybe. But not total Buddhahood. 

So although it seems redundant to say, I want to reach my total Buddhahood for the benefit of all beings. It's important to add that, so that our own mind doesn't fall off that track and try to reach Buddhahood for their own selfish reasons. 

I find it hard to believe that that would really happen, but it must. Because here's the definition, and it needs to be clear so that every part of our mind that's going to try and negate something or take advantage of something has already been addressed. 

Total enlightenment for the sake of all others. 

So this first part, the main mental awareness, is speaking to… 

When I say: Does your mind have Bodhichitta? 

We think, Oh, here's my mind, and it has beliefs in it, and I'm looking through the file card under B–is Bodhichitta in there? 

Oh, look, found it. 

But that's not what we're talking here. 

We're not talking a mind that has something. 

The main mental awareness Bodhichitta, main mental awareness is simply a light bulb is on. The light bulb is never off. But it's just that raw awaring happening before any designation of what? 

So before any discrimination, before any feeling, before anything other than just aware. 

It's not really a subtle state that we're ever in all by itself. Because the instant that aware has shifted, it shifted to something, and that something triggers a feeling–positive, negative, neutral–and that feeling triggers a ‘I like, I want. I don't like, I don't want.’ 

And by the time you have all that, you have the object with an identity that isn't it that you like or dislike because it causes the feeling. All mistaken and all happening 65 per fingers snap. 

So there isn't a mind over here that then is over here doing this. 

The main mind is this consciousness within which all of this is happening. 

So it's a hard concept to get because we keep talking about the mind with Bodhichitta, the mind imbue with Bodhichitta. It all keeps us implying that there is a mind here, independent of other factors, that then is aware of this or aware of that. 

It's not so critical at this point to get that worked out, but to understand what they mean by main mental awareness, it's this raw aware. 

To have Bodhichitta as your permanent address, as Venerable Petra once said, the main mental awareness is colored by that Bodhichitta, so that with every other thing it's aware of, it's still colored with it. It doesn't have it, it is it. 

It is Bodhichitta. 

So, we don't have that until some certain experience happens. And then we're colored with it to some extent. I don't think we're fully colored with it until we reach some certain bhumi later. 

But this definition is saying Bodhichitta, we have Bodhichitta in our main mind has this wish to reach total benefit for the sake of all others as it's color. 

And–still in the first part–and that aspires to achieve that goal. 

So it's one thing to be colored with the wish, and it's a second thing to be colored with the, Oh, and I'm going to try to do it. I'd like to try to do it. 

So the first part of the first section of the long definition is like, Gee, I think I want to go to New York City. 

But without the second part, I will never get to New York City. Because I'm just thinking about it. 

The second part of this first section is, Oh. I wanna go, so I'm gonna check out how to get there, where to stay, what I'm going to do while I'm there. I'm going to plan out my trip. 

The aspiration to make it happen. 

It still hasn't happened. But without having some aspiration to actually act on the wish, the wish is not going to go anywhere. 

Let me read it to you again, the 1st part of the long definition of Bodhichitta.

First, it is the main mental awareness belonging to the greater way which is focused on achieving total enlightenment for the benefit of all others. 

Wow, I want to go to New York. 

And which is matched with the state of mind associated with it; the aspiration to achieve that total enlightenment. 

The wish and the aspiration. The aspiration is a little bit more actively involved. 

All right, let's take a break. 

(break 1:01)

[Rachana] The self-made Buddhas, did they reach that in one lifetime?

[Lama Sarahni] I guess if their goal is Nirvana, do they reach that goal in that lifetime, necessarily of their own Nirvana. I think that's implied by calling them Buddha. 

I don't understand it well enough to know. 

Just because you don't have a teacher and you're making great progress? 

Maybe. But that alone does not necessarily mean you're going to reach Nirvana. So my guess it would be somebody who is getting close and could reach it. Either with something remaining with remainder. Something reaching Nirvana without remainder. Remember that. 

And then what would be the seeds to have so much goodness to become a self-made Buddha with it, but then to like not have a teacher? Yeah, I would guess something of about making a lot of progress under a teacher, but then somehow in the end thinking you've gone beyond that teacher and then I don't need them anymore. 

I'm going to read it again. 

Bodhichitta, the definition: 

First, it is the main mental awareness belonging to the greater way which is focused on achieving total enlightenment for the benefit of others, and which is matched with the state of mind that is associated with it; the aspiration to achieve that total enlightenment. 

Which maybe you can even add for the benefit of all others, but they don't do it. 

So really, there's three states of mind they're talking about here. 

And some bright bulb would ask: Well, wait a minute. How can the main mind have three thoughts in it at the same time? It can't do that. 

Mine can only have one awareness at a time. 

We say, Come on, that's not true. We're having multiple awarenesses all at once. 

They say well, if you get deep into meditation and slow your mind down you will in fact find that every moment of awareness is like flower petals pinned to a target, like they're stacked. And when the arrow goes through them, although it appears that it penetrates them all at once, logically we know the arrow goes through the first, the second to third, the 4th until it hits the target. That it's sequential, and that the process of our awareness is shifting, shifting, shifting are sequential like that, and there can only be one at a time, they say. 

So if that's true, then this definition for Bodhichitta where the main mind has three different thoughts in it at once cannot happen. It's not possible. 

They say, (REY?), that's why we're making the distinction that this Bodhichitta is the main mind, and that these 3 different thoughts that are happening are the mind’s manifestations. 

The main mind is Bodhichitta and these thoughts are its appearances. 

Bodhichitta appears as: I'm going to reach my total Buddhahood–number 1–for the sake of all sentient beings–number 2–and I aspire to actually do it–number 3.

Like 3 petals lined up, 3 Domino's. 

They must just go domino, domino, domino like they're down and they're back up again because they're going to be going on and on and on if our mind is imbued with Bodhichitta. 

So imbued with Bodhichitta arising, but it also means imbued with Bodhichitta as we plant our new seeds. 

That's the important piece, isn't it? 

Let me give you the second part of the long definition. 

2 . Knowledge belonging to the Greater Way

Secondly, it is a knowledge belonging to the Greater Way which acts as a door for entering the Greater Way (or something of its type), and which is included into the activity side of the standard division of the two–of view and activity. 

So let me give it to you again. 

Bodhichitta is secondly a knowledge belonging to the Greater Way which acts as a door for entering the Greater Way (or something like it), and which is included into the activity side of the division of the two–of view and activity. 

The division of the two of view and activity means the collection of merit–is the activity side. What we think, say and do with our mind imbued with Bodhichitta in order to plant the seeds for us to reach that goal: Keeping our vows, caring for others, all of our 6 perfections. 

Then the view side is our wisdom, growing our understanding of karma and emptiness into the marriage of the two into that sequence of events of perceiving directly the seeds ripening: perceiving directly the lack of self nature of anything and coming out hopefully having our heart opening experience, and then the four Arya truth experience. 

Which will all be interpreted with this mind colored by Bodhichitta, if we go into it with a mind colored by the wish to have Bodhichitta. 

Even the wish for the wish. 

So I like that term ‘the mind colored by Mahayana’. Because it'll still be colored by it when we come out of that sequence of events. And now we will have in fact truly entered the Greater Way. 

We are Greater Way practitioners, but we haven't actually entered the doorway to the greater way until we have this sequence of experiences that turns the tint of Bodhichitta in our mind into full color of Bodhichitta. Fullon Bodhichitta that can never, actually be washed away.

So what we're talking about here is the knowledge of the wish to reach total enlightenment for the sake of all sentient beings. Meaning you now know that it's true for you. 

Knowledge is a little bit more than just, yeah, yeah, I get it intellectually. 

It's a knowing it's true from deep experience that is deep enough to color a special experience to be interpreted as, oh, that's Bodhichitta. 

And your Arya Bodhisattva with the two Bodhichitta. Now we call them two because one is going to be the actual direct perception of emptiness with Bodhichitta in your heart, and the other is that heart opening experience that now proves to you that what you understood to be your final goal is in fact going to happen. Like you just planted the seeds for it when you saw the face of every existing being and loved them, and pledged to serve them. 

I think it's really impressive that their definition includes that nebulous statement ‘Something of the type’. That this Bodhichitta experience knowledge that we gain serves to move us through the doorway to the Mahayana, or something like it. 

Which implies that one could have an experience from other traditions, and they come out of that experience with a new level of understanding of what they can achieve, and what they want to achieve. And they don't use the words Mahayana, Arya, Bodhisattva. 

I have no idea what words they might use, but this leaves it open that this could happen outside of our tradition. 

I think it's an important piece as we're learning and growing and finding, Oh my gosh, this is such a perfect match, everybody needs to learn this to recognize yes and no. 

The principles, yes, but this particular method of learning it and practicing it maybe doesn't suit everybody. 

Geshela encourages us to take these ASI courses into the arena of our own life and use them for your suitable audience. 

OK, I'll leave it there. 

Main mental awareness means that Bodhichitta will become our main mind, and the thoughts of what that Bodhichitta is are the mental functions, or will color the mental functions that arise out of that main mind that is now Bodhichitta, the Bodhichitta mind. 

It doesn't mean you're Buddha already. 

It means everything that I do is moving me along that path now because of this series of experiences that we've had and interpreted in this certain way. 

So the main and the definition makes it clear somehow that no one of those first three wishes in the first section are enough to serve as Bodhichitta. 

There are those three different thoughts in the first section, and no one of them is sufficient. 

You have to have all three, but you can't have all three in your mind at the same time. 

The mine has to be so imbued that it–I can't even say. As if it has the three all at once. 

It is the three all at once. And then they pop up. They manifest out of it. 

It says the main mental awareness: Why do they have to stipulate mental awareness? 

We're talking about mind. 

Isn't mind mental? 

Are there other forms of awarenesses that are different than mental awareness? 

Eye consciousness, ear consciousness. Those are awarenesses. Not mental. 

It’s a little weird, it's like, no, but you have to have a mind to be able to interpret that information. 

They all have to be mental. No mental means the thought ones. 

So yeah, you have your eye consciousness and then the interpretation of that eye consciousness, and then the mental thought about it all in a sequence. 

The mind that we're trying to define as Bodhichitta is mental, it's not gonna come through the visual consciousness, or the auditory consciousness. 

It is mental consciousness. 

There's a reason they need to clarify that. 

And again, the significance escapes me. But they say if you just said awareness, you might make the mistake that the fragrance of fresh bread is Bodhichitta. 

I don't even get that example. 

They say the reason it's important is that once we are Buddha, we will see with every part of our being. We will smell with every part of our being. Et cetera. And we will have mental awareness with every part of our being, and so for a Buddha, their imbued with Bodhichitta is not limited to their mental awareness. 

They even go on to say, Look, Buddhas aren't imbued with Bodhichitta at all and wow, go down that with one of your debates. 

It's like Buddhas are not imbued with Bodhichitta. Where does it go? What happened?

I don't think the conclusion is not at all. But something about not the way we think. 

So just in case we might misunderstand that we could have Bodhichitta from what we smell. They make it clear: No, it's a mental awareness. 

They say we need to stipulate it as belonging to the Greater Way to make it clear that they are not talking about our sugar cane Bodhichitta. 

Meaning the Bodhichitta that arises that we cultivate at the beginning of our prayers, for instance. Or even the Bodhichitta that we get in some difficult situation and things shift a little and we get this heartfelt awareness of how this stuff really works, and we have a little glimpse of our Bodhichitta, that's not enough either. 

Those are great to have, and it's a big rejoycable. But we haven't stepped through the doorway to the Mahayana from those sugar cane instances of Bodhichitta. 

Stating that redundant for the benefit of others, seemingly redundant for the benefit of others, clarifies that we are making the distinction from the enlightenment of the Self-made Buddha or Shravaka level. So it is important to add ‘for the benefit of all others’ to our wish to reach Buddhahood. So that we're sure that our own mind is getting it right. 

Total enlightenment qualifies that we are aspiring to omniscience as well as the cessation of our Sansara. 

Geshela has said, how do we know? Like we will know when we've walked through the door to the Mahayana, there'll be no doubt. 

But how do we know we're even getting close? 

How do we keep from getting discouraged? 

And he suggests that we look for the boundaries of our compassion. 

We all have them. 

We can go out of our way for this person. Or we can go a little bit out of our way for everybody, but we'll reach a level, it's like no more. 

I had this really interesting experience yesterday. It's too long a story for the setup, but this fellow, I can hardly do it. I was watching this person willingly go out of his way to serve the needs of a mutual friend of ours. He got up early, he packed his car, he brought all this stuff to our house to put it in our space, willingly we had agreed.

But by the time he got here, we had already been contacted by someone else in this guy's own neighborhood who said this friend is going to come stay with us, so his stuff needs to be here. So, this one, man, it's like, yeah, I'm willing to do whatever I need to do to get this stuff to you. Then we said, Sorry but it needs to go back to your neighborhood. 

And I could see his level of Bodhichitta shift. It's like he was really proud of himself. I'm not putting him down. I was proud of him too, for going to so much trouble to bring it to us. And now he's got to go to so much more trouble to take it to somebody else that he could have just taken it there in the first place. But the communication wasn't there.

And I just saw his attitude shift from: I'm willing to take care of this guy, but this is too much.

I'll do it this one more time and then no more. 

He didn't say that, but I could feel it shift. 

And it was like, whoa, I didn't know that I've done that. 

I saw that in myself in other situations and it's like, oh, this is what this is talking about. 

Where's our boundary? 

We all have them. Don't feel bad. 

To be able to recognize it, even if we don't shift what we do about it, to just recognize, oh, that's my level of my compassion, means: I see where I can work. OK, I can see where I can focus my attention to grow it bigger. 

Don't try to grow it including the whole world at once. That we don't have that capacity yet or we'd already be doing it. 

But all of us have much bigger capacities than we thought we did, because look what we're doing. Already our capacities have grown, grown beyond what we thought we could do, or even thought we would do. And here it's almost part of everyday life. 

So tap yourself on the back. OK, we're getting there. 

Second way we know how we're doing is how easily, quickly do we blame others for our own upset. 

It happened so quickly. Who left those dirty dishes in the sink? 

They did because there's only him and me and I didn't do it. And then my seeds ripening him to do it, I get to fix it. It's the Domino's happening. 

Wherever along the way our awareness kicks in, then we laugh at ourselves for that. 

Oh, there we did it again, blaming somebody else. 

And then lastly, how far out of our way will we go to help someone who appears to be in need. We have a limit. Reasonably, worldly reasonably try to recognize it and to try to grow it bigger is helping us grow our Bodhichitta. 

All right, I'm going to just go through the homework with you because it's just cryptic and weird. Please forgive me Geshe Michael. 

Homework Questions

The first question on the homework is this detailed definition of the greater way. 

Just copy it from your notes or from the student notes. Just write it down. You don't need to know it for your quiz. 

All you need for the quiz is that short definition. What's Bodhichitta? 

The wish to reach total enlightenment for the sake of all sentient beings. 

Then the second question: What thing is not this wish for enlightenment, but might be confused with it if we left the word main out of the definition. 

I don't even understand the question. What thing is not this wish for enlightenment, but might be confused with it if we left out the word main from the definition: the main mental awareness. 

So, the main is inserted here to make clear that there are two specific different kinds of wishes which are included within the overall wish for enlightenment in the Greater Way. 

See why I'm giving this to you? 

Main, so that you can have two different states of mind at the same time, because you can't do that in anything but the main mind, but I don't know how the main mind can do it either.

For the homework. Main here makes it clear that the two different specific wishes are included within the overall wish. Got it? 

Number 3: What thing is not this wish, but might be confused with it if we left out the word mental?

So if we left out the word mental, we might think those other sensory consciousnesses could be our Bodhichitta. 

The answer key says: What thing is not this wish but might be confused with it? That sensory consciousness of the Buddha. 

If you leave out mental consciousness and we read that long definition, we're going to think they're talking about the sensory consciousnesses of the Buddha. 

So don't make that mistake. Put in mental awareness. 

Number 4: What thing is not this wish, but might be confused with it if we left out the words belonging to the Greater Way? 

Their answer is: The idea that artificial or sugar cane Bodhichitta is not genuine Bodhichitta, that if we don't say belonging to the Greater Way, we might think that our sugar cane Bodhichitta is enough. 

Emotions that we're calling Sugar Cane Bodhichitta, they don't go deep enough to qualify as real Bodhichitta for the entry into the Mahayana. They are steps along the path. But they don't imbue our mind with Bodhichitta. 

Number 5: What thing is not this wish, but might be confused with it if we left out the word total?

Total Buddhahood. Without total, we might think that by Buddhahood we mean wanting to reach Nirvana. And by saying total Buddhahood, that's what clarifies that we're not aspiring to only Nirvana. We won't mistake that, the wish for Buddhahood to be the wish to reach Nirvana. 

And then lastly: What thing is not this wish, but might be confused with it if we left out the words for the benefit of others? 

And by adding for the benefit of others, that makes it clear that we are not having listener or Self-made Buddha motivations. 

Because their motivations do not include others. 

So, that long definition takes all the different ways that we might mistake what someone means by Bodhichitta, and it pulls away all the misbeliefs, so that we're clear that what we mean by Bodhichitta is the wish to reach total enlightenment for the sake of all sentient beings. 

The wish, the aspiration, even to the intention to do so. 

OK. That's class. 

You worked so hard you get to finish early. Yay. Me too. 

Do your best with this and it is fine if it never gets clear. We've planted seeds that someday in the future you'll go, oh, I see why they had to do that. 

That early, like ACI 2 class 3, anybody who wants to run away, now is the time.

And we've got the reason: This is nuts. I can't follow it. I'll go find another path.

But please don't. 

Because we just got through it. Do your homework. Do your quiz. And there aren't too many other classes that are this difficult, in my experience, even the ACI 13 is easier than this class. So, and you just did it, so Hooray. 

[Usual dedication]

Alright, thank you so much. This is Sunday. We're going to have a great week. I'll see you Thursday. Thanks so much. Take care. Work hard. I love you.

We are ACI Course 2, Class 4, September 21st, 2023. Welcome to Fall. 

Let's gather our minds here as we usually do, please. 

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

[Usual opening]

Review of class 3

Let’s do a review of that last class number 3, that was so clear and exciting. (chuckling) 

So we learned the short definition of the Greater Way’s wish for enlightenment, the shorter definition of Bodhichitta, didn't we not? 

Yes, and someone can share with us what that was? The short definition. 

[Joana] The which for enlightenment for the sake of every living being, every sentient being.

[Lama Sarahni] Exactly. Then we also learned that long definition with all its different parts. 

What thing is not this wish but might be confused with it if we left out the word “main” from the long definition? So the long definition I will read to you because you were not required to memorize it. Neither was I. 

First, it is the main mental awareness belonging to the Greater Way

Which is focused on achieving total enlightenment for the benefit of all others

And which is matched with the state of mind that is associated with it; 

The aspiration to achieve total enlightenment. 

If we left out the term “main mind”, main in the mind, what mistake might we make in what we think Bodhichitta means. Just read your quiz answer if you need to. 

What thing is not this wish, but might be confused with it? 

[Ale] Yeah, there is actually three different kinds of wish for enlightenment, the wish for enlightenment of full Buddhahood and two wishes for enlightenment of the lower trucks. Those are the listeners and those who are called self-made Buddha. Which actually are only in the lower Nirvana. Is that correct? 

[Lama Sarahni] That's the right answer, but the wrong question I think. Hang on to that one. 

So in the first section, the main mind, it's necessary to say main mind, because the wish for enlightenment has these two different mental functions: 

The wish to reach my total enlightenment, and the wish to benefit all beings to reach theirs. 

And we can't have two mental functions at the same time. So if they just said, It's the mind that has these two, we might think that, Oh, I have Bodhichitta when I have the wish to reach my total enlightenment. That's enough. 

Or if I have the wish to help all sentient beings, that would be enough. 

But neither one alone makes Bodhichitta. 

We can only have both of those at the same time, they say, if our main mind has both those qualities. So when Geshela uses the term “a mind imbued with Bodhichitta”, this is what he's talking about, I believe. Because the main mind, our main awareness, that has qualities of wishing for and intending to reach total Buddhahood, and wishing for an intending to help all sentient beings together as one state, one quality, one state of mind. That's what Bodhichitta is. 

So they use the term name to make sure that we won't mistake either one of those mental functions. 

I want to reach my total Buddhahood. And second mental function for the benefit of all beings. Thinking that if I have one or the other but not both, it's enough to say I have Bodhichitta or I understand Bodhichitta. 

But as mental functions, we can't have both at the same time. 

We got to think of 1, then we're not thinking of the other and you would toggle. OK. 

So in that same vein, what thing is not this wish, but might be confused with it, if we left out the words “belonging to the Greater Way”? And that's what you said, Ale. 

We might mistake for meaning the enlightenment of the listener track or the enlightenment of the self-made Buddha track, which both of them are Nirvana. And neither of them have the omniscience through which we really can help all beings. 

Then the third one, what thing is not this wish that might be confused with it if we left out the word “total”? 

And that's the same answer that Ale gave. It's still, we might mistake the lesser capacities final result as what we mean by Bodhichitta. And they do call it Bodhichitta. That's why this is worth recognizing, that if we ever are out in an arena where we're interacting with others who are at listener or self-made Buddha practitioner level, they'll be talking about Bodhichitta and developing Bodhichitta. And if we're thinking Bodhichitta the way we're trained and they're thinking Bodhichitta the way they're trained, we're not being able to communicate. Or we might make the mistake of saying, well, your Bodhichitta is wrong. Because mine is right. 

Which is not right. Right? 

There is this right for them, ours is right for us. 

You say tomato, I say tomato. Same idea, except now we're talking meaning, not sound. 

All right. 

Introduction to class 4

Class four is learning more about what we mean by this term Bodhichitta, so that when we personally use it, that word has lots more depth of meaning for us, whether we're using it for our own personal growth understanding or using it to help guide and share with others. 

The more we understand the word to mean, the better we can use it to help others. 

They give us 4 different ways to classify Bodhichitta, four different ways to understand it better, more deeply. 

These four are:

1. By the level of our spiritual understanding

2. By the way we think, meaning the way we think about our path 

3. By its basic nature, and

4. By way of ultimate or deceptive, DUNDAM SEMKYE, KUNDZOB SEMKYE, we will get there. 

The 5 Paths – overview

We're going to talk about each one of these in tonight's class. 

The first one: By way of our level of spiritual understanding, we need to understand the five paths to Buddhahood, the five realizations that we gained on our training to our career path as totally enlightened being.

Here they are, the tibetan names of the 5 paths, paths meaning things that will become real for us, and all that we do to plant the seeds for that to happen. 

tsok lam

jor lam

tong lam

gom lam

milob lam

We've heard earlier that the Listeners Level Practitioners, they have 5 paths. 

They're called these same names. 

But what they mean by what's happening on each of those levels, is a little different. 

And what they experience directly to help them move from one to the next is also different, or interpreted differently. 

Yet, the basic process that's happening on each one is similar. 

Same for the Pratyetkabuddhas, they have these five different tasks, different teachings, different realization from the Mahayana level 5 paths. 

TSOK LAM – Path of Accumulation

TSOK = gather together

So they call this Path of accumulation. We are accumulating enough disgust or distress with our worldly life, and how nothing works right–even when it seems like it does–that we've reached some clear state, whereas, like there's just something wrong with this picture, and we go in search of something else, some answer, some explanation. 

So path of accumulation, it's happening at the point in which we're starting to wonder: How come everything goes wrong? 

Then we're accumulating the strength of that disappointment and growing it into an understanding that there is in fact a mistake happening here that could be stopped. 

On this Lam our renunciation is growing. 

It's not like our renunciation finishes when we move to the next path. 

It's still growing and getting stronger and becoming more and more imbued in our mind. 

JOR LAM – Path of Preparation

In the path of preparation it's like in our TSOK LAM, we’ve reached this point where we go, Oh, this is the teaching for me. We were searching in TSOK LAM and we found something. And in JOR LAM we dive into it. We study. We meditate. We try to practice what it's teaching us. 

So this tradition in the Mahayana teaches: serve others. Serve the teacher. Serve those who are helping to share the Dharma with others. 

Help, help, help. 

Path of Accumulation, path of preparation. 

What we're preparing ourselves for is TONG LAM.

TONG LAM – Path of Seeing

What we learn is that at the height of our path of preparation, we're actually starting to have little realizations, little understandings of what we've been being taught studying, meditating on and helping others to understand are starting to become real. 

We reached the point where we see directly, we experience directly that something that we're experiencing in the moment is its identity is coming out of our own mental seeds ripening.

To experience that directly tells us that we have the goodness, like bubbling up to the threshold, that if we go into a deep meditation on that, and the fact that nothing exists in any other way than that, that if we have sufficient mental concentration on our cushion, we could get pushed into our direct perception of emptiness, which is our TONG LAM. 

So we go from JOR LAM’s peak into TONG LAM in this very swift time period. 

Once the momentum is going, we see those seeds ripening, go meditate on that into the direct perception of emptiness. Which we've learned last 20 minutes or so. And then we come out and that whole series of other realizations happen in the TONG LAM aftermath. 

Then, when all that settles down within about 24 hours,  we are on GOM LAM, the path of habituation.

GOM LAM – Path of Habituation

Habituation, meaning getting used to making our behavior choices based on what we now know is true, even though we can't see it directly anymore. 

GOM LAM takes time to get to the point where its realizations come to us. 

There are different levels on our GOMLAM until our final GOMLAM realization pushes us into MILOB LAM, which means the path of no more learning. 

MILOB LAM – Path of No More Learning

No more learning means we've reached Buddhahood. 

There is nothing more to learn. There is nothing more to train in. 

Now you are Buddha you and Buddha Paradise emanating, omniscient, ultimate love, ultimate compassion, being what every other needs. 

So we start our career at MILOB LAM. 

We'll study these in greater detail later. 

I get to tell you a story that's gonna help you remember these names. 

The Story of the Ducks

So when David and I were first at the Diamond Mountain, where Diamond Mountain is now, there was no place to stay there and we were going every weekend. So we bought this old trailer, and we put it up just outside the Ani Gompa. That's where we would stay. 

And just across the road from Ani Gompa was this big, amazing pond, and it was sustained by the overflow water that was coming down the hill out of both the spring and what we call the mystery water–because there was some tubing coming out of the mountains up there, that wasn't actually on our property, but the tubing came through our property. And it was constantly running water too, so somewhere along the way these two water sources were overflowing and so they just dug a big hole years ago. 

And there is this big pond, like bigger than a home swimming pool. It was quite big. 

It had some water plants growing in it, but mostly it was a mossy mess. 

And I had ponds, I was a desert pond gardener, so I knew how to make a pond that was clear and fresh and had plants and little fish and cool stuff. 

So it's like, Wow, I've got a great big pond to work with. 

But it was really too big for me to get in there and clean it all up, to get started with the planting and the fish and so forth. 

So I got to thinking, I need some ducks to help eat the algae, so that I can make a pond that will be lovely. 

So I went to the Humane Society. The Desert Humane Society said, Yeah, we've got ducks. 

I explained the situation and they said, well, you could probably support five ducks, and if you want, come get them they are mallards. One was a mix, but the rest were mallards, boy and girl mallards. 

So ok, I'll take 5. And guess what I named them. 

TSOK LAM, JOR LAM, TONG LAM, MILOB LAM

I let the ducks go in the pond and they seem quite happy, and they're munching on the algae and stuff and within a few days or a week we're down to 4. 

Oh phew, you know. 

Then we're down to three. 

Oh man. 

And then too. 

And then one–and it just happens to be MILOB LAM who's left. 

A little male mallard, you know how pretty they are? 

But now he's all by himself. And I'm feeling bad for MILOB LAM, so I got some crack corn and I started feeding MILOB LAM.

Mistake! Because pretty soon, MILOB LAM was coming up from the pond to find out how come I hadn't come out of the trailer to feed him yet, and he's banging on the trailer. 

Then other people are coming to the courses, and he's nagging them for the crab corn, too, because it's so fun to feed MILOB LAM, you know? 

There's even a cat that lives there. We inherited a cat with the property, but MILOB LAM and the cat got along well. 

So MILOB LAM became a great friend to everybody. 

Then at the end of the term, everybody goes away, and David and I were going away as well, curiously. So MILOB LAM was going to be on his own. And it's like, He won't survive. He's so used to getting fed now he can't be on his own. So I was thinking, oh, what are we gonna do?

I made this big mistake, right? Unattended consequences. 

So we got the bright idea there's a lake outside of Wilcox, which is 45/50 miles away. But it's a preserve, a nature preserve, so it's a safe place to be for the ducks and whatever. So OK, MIOB LAM, you've gotta go and live in the preserve with other ducks like you. 

We caught him, and we send him away. He got banished from Diamond Mountain, and I don't know what happened. I'm going to believe he met a nice little girl mallard, and they lived happily ever after and made lots of little baby LAMs. 

But I don't know that for sure. 

But I tell you, I've never forgot that Tibetan names: TSOK LAM, JOR LAM, TONG LAM, GOM LAM and MILOB LAM because of those little ducks. And the story I get to tell about them. 

The reason I'm telling you that is because when on our TSOK LAM-JOT LAM we are learning about the different aspirations for ourselves on our spiritual path. 

The practices are different if our aspiration is to reach Nirvana, or our aspiration is to reach my total Buddhahood for the sake of all sentient beings. 

The Bodhichitta term is used by those other practitioners to mean: I'm gonna reach my Buddhahood. But they mean: My Nirvana. So they don't have that second part “for the benefit of all sentient beings”. 

What happens in JOR LAM to TONG LAM, to TONG LAM to GOM LAM, to MILOB LAM when we have a mind imbued with Bodhichitta with the two states of mind is different. Because our mind is different, so we're planting our seeds differently. 

And even the behaviors we were instructed to do will be different. Because for those on the Mahayana, part of what we're doing in JOR LAM is learning to live according to the six perfections, which helps us gather the goodness to be able to ripen the TONG LAM–the path of seeing emptiness directly imbued with the mind of Bodhichitta.

Then GOM LAM is continuing to work on our six perfections. 

Same deeds we were doing before, only now we are planting them with wisdom, whereas before we were planting them with pretend wisdom. 

On the Mahayana path, our Bodhichitta is starting to grow in our TSOK LAM. 

It's part of our renunciation. Renunciation turned on to others, we are calling Bodhichitta. 

It actually starts in this first path. We’ll reach some kind of clear, strong understanding of it at TSOK LAM. But it's not necessarily that heart opening experience. 

They still say, OK. You got your Bodhichitta. Like they say, TSOK LAM is where we get our renunciation and our Bodhichitta. But not in that sense, necessarily, of the heart opening–it could be. 

Then we use what our renunciation with Bodhichitta motivates us to study, meditate, try in growing our path of preparation to those realizations that will move us onto our TONG LAM with a mind imbued with Bodhichitta. Although once we're in the direct experience of emptiness, there's no awareness of, Oh, I'm imbued with Bodhichitta, because that thought is deceptive reality. And in your TONG LAM you are not deceptive reality, you are ultimate reality. 

And when you come out of ultimate reality, and you're back in deceptive reality, you now know that what you're perceiving is mistaken. 

It's that state of mind that allows us to finally start burning off our ignorance seeds, and not replanting them. Which is what's happening along GOM LAM, it’s we're just using the time for those seeds that had been made with the belief that things’ natures are in them, my nature is in me, they're gonna ripen with that belief in them, that experience in them. But we don't believe it.

Our seeds planted in response to those other things don't include that ignorance anymore. 

When we don't believe that that nasty, yelling boss is doing that to me–even though that's what we experience–when we don't believe it, we are much better able to write to respond instead of react. Because now we know from personal experience that whatever I do in that moment is planting seeds for my future. And technically for everybody's future when you're Mahayana. 

So it does help us choose our behaviors more conscientiously. But it doesn't automatically wipe out your selfishness. It wipes out your belief in your selfish me driven behavior so you're much less likely to behave from it. But you're not perfect yet. 

GOM LAM.

Understanding this, that Bodhichitta starts to grow at TSOK LAM and JOR LAM, we'll get full on at Mahayana TONG LAM. And then we use that Bodhichitta to direct our behavior in our GO; LAM to reaching our Buddhahood, MILOB LAM. 

4 Ways to classify the term Bodhichitta

So now we can go back and talk about those four kinds of Bodhichitta, meaning four kinds of wanting to be a Buddha for the sake of all sentient beings. 

This class is like a outline. We're going to talk about Bodhichitta and all these different ways, because they'll all accumulate in what you mean when you say Bodhichitta. 

So here's one set of four. 

4 kinds of wanting to be buddha:

mupa chupay semkye

hlaksam dakpay semkye

nampar minpay semkye

drippa pakpay semkye

1 . MUPA CHUPAY SEMKYE – Bodhichitta acting on a belief

SEMKYE = Bodhichitta

MUPA = believe

MUPA CHUPAY = acting out of a belief

MUPA CHUPAY SEMKYE = the Bodhichitta where we're acting out of a belief in what we've been taught about this process of becoming a Buddha. 

So at this level our Bodhichitta has grown out of our belief that things are not self existent, things’ qualities and natures are not in them, based on having learned that from someone, and applied our reasoning enough to come to believe it enough to decide, we would choose our behaviors more carefully. 

So the belief they're talking about means the belief in what we've been taught. 

Not yet having had any direct perception. 

Maybe we've had little glimpses that the karmic seed thing is true because we've applied our four steps and our four powers. But we're acting based on a belief here. 

Geshela gave us this example: Our yelling boss example

That nasty boss is yelling at Sarahni again. 

I find it unpleasant. I think the boss is a jerk, and I naturally react in defense which will either be yelling back, or changing the subject, or lying to get out of it–whatever my habit pattern has been is very likely to come up. 

My friend, my coworker who's a friend, is also experiencing ‘This is unpleasant. He's yelling at my friend.’ 

But there's also somebody there who, in fact, doesn't like me. And that person is actually experiencing something pleasant. 

Finally, that jerk Sarahni is getting what she deserves. 

Then maybe there's somebody that's completely neutral. And they're just no reaction at all. It's just some blah, blah going on in the background. 

The boss is negative jerk, unpleasant to two of us. 

Boss is pleasant, good boss to one. 

And just neutral to another. 

If we think further, he's married and he's got five kids that love him very much. 

Can he be a jerk, bad, a neutral, good guy and dad, Best dad in the world, all at the same time from one guy? 

No, he can't. 

You have to say who's looking? 

You can't be all of those things from his side. Because if it's from his side, we're all gonna see him the same way. 

So he's either good or bad,  or we would see him and go, wow, best dad in the world. 

But what if I don't even know he's got kids? 

He's not gonna be that for me. 

So where does the good boss, bad boss, neutral bass come from? 

Does it come from the boss? 

No. 

Is the boss yelling at me? Is it unpleasant? 

Yes. 

But because that experience is unique to me, and then we automatically say, Well, because it's from them. Because who wants to take responsibility for a jerk yelling boss unique to me? 

I don't. Of course I'm going to blame him. Or somebody else. 

Because I don't want to take responsibility for that, deep down. 

So MUPA CHUPAY SEMKYE is when Sarahni has heard the pen thing, and the two husbands in the kitchen thing, and has had the experience of, Well, that does make a certain amount of sense, and if that can come up while I'm in this situation of unpleasant yelling boss  but it can't be from them, it has to be at least partly from me. How should I respond if I don't want this in the future? 

Even enough belief will help us entertain the idea that maybe I would serve myself better to respond differently and just try it. 

That's a level of Bodhichitta. The willingness to choose a different behavior than our automatic one, so that we can sooner or later help everybody stop being yelled at by jerk bosses. 

Then it's gonna go further as we know. It's not just yelling back at the boss that makes jerk bosses. It's yelling at other people, other beings even. 

All right, so this one is changing our behavior simply out of a belief in the truth of dependent origination and emptiness. 

2 . HLAKSAM DAKPAY SEMKYE – Bodhichitta as personal responsibility 

HLAKSAM NAMDAK = personal responsibility

HLAK = take 

SAM = absolute

So take absolute.

Personal responsibility gives us a better understanding, but HLAKSAM would be “is absolutely all mine”. All my fault, all my seeds, all up to me to change things. 

Which, if you take it far enough, it's like, well then I really can be the one who will stop all that suffering in the world. HLAKSAM. 

Not so much “I have to”. Although we do. 

But more it's like, Wow, I can. I really do have that power. If I can just get my seeds, my behavior aligned with this understanding. HLAKSAM.

DAKPAY= pure

So here a pure personal responsibility wish for Buddhahood for the sake of all sentient beings. 

So this is the Bodhichitta in the mind of a person who has had the direct perception of emptiness. 

They're out of it now. But now they know how things really exist. Not just belief. 

But they know–personal experience. 

The outcome of that personal experience is that they have no further intellectual belief in things’ having their natures in them. Although things still appear to them to have their natures in them, they don't believe it. Because they have directly experienced the fact that that is impossible. 

Impossible. Not just, I saw once that it wasn't so. 

But that what you saw is the, Oh my gosh, that's just impossible. 

So when you go back to seeing it again that way, it must be kind of disorienting, because it's like you can't stop it happening. But you know, what you're seeing is just not possible. 

With that state of awareness we are even more strongly able to choose our responses to our life experiences. In fact, I would guess that we're learning to not be so much in react mode as we are shifting to plant mode. Like a more intentional: I'm gonna do this in this situation, intentionally do this. 

React is our automatic pilot based on our ignorance seeds. 

Respond is what we're learning to do when we're in the MUPA CHUPAY Level. 

I still wanna react that way, but no, no, I'm gonna act this way instead. 

Once we know for sure that that yelling boss and the unpleasantness I feel is not coming from him or her, or even the yelling–it's coming out of my seeds–our next response is gonna be well then what seeds do I want to put in right now? And what seeds do I need to be careful to put in separate from this situation to be sure that I'm burning these off, and not replanting something similar, similarly unpleasant? 

But with our path of seeing, we cannot any further plant seeds with ignorance. 

Because of our disbelief in things’ having their own nature. 

We have still bazillion seeds colored by our ignorance that are ripening, ripening, ripening. 

But we're burning them off, and whatever we do, we now are planting without that ignorance. Which we can see why they say then we are on the conveyor belt to our goal. 

Because if we're not replanting ignorance, and we're burning off ignorance, eventually we run out of old seeds that have ignorance, and all we have are the seeds that have been implanted with wisdom. 

That process is what's happening along our GOM LAM, our path of Habituation, moving through the Bodhisattva Bhumis for the Mahayana path. 

The things, the deeds that we're doing at each blooming level is accumulating the goodness necessary to be able to do what we need to do on the next bhumi level, and burning off ignorant seeds as we go. When we get to the end of bhumi 7, we are no longer even perceiving things, others, self, experiences as being in them from them. 

We are experiencing everything as results of our own seeds, our own behavior. 

But we are not yet omniscient. 

We still have ignorant seeds that have been so damaged by the wisdom seeds–which are their opposite–that they can no longer reach the threshold to come out as a perception of something with its identity in it. But those seeds remnants, we could say, are obstacles to our omniscience. So there are still things we need to plant that will clean out those obstacles to omniscience before we can perceive ourselves as total Buddha for the benefit of all sentient beings. 

But those seeds are not ripening. So it's harder in a way to get rid of them. Because at least our ignorant seeds were ripening. 

To ripen it is to burn it off. 

As long as you don't replant it, which you cannot do as Arya. 

But these obstacles to omniscience are not able to ripen, so we can't burn them off, so we have to do something else. 

And there's four more Bhumi behaviors that we do that helps our goodness grow such that the goodness negates even the remnants until the remnants dissolve away. And those are the last four Bhumis. And at the end or the completion of Bhumi 10, Buddha you and Buddha Paradise emanating is the arisings. It's what you now are at that point. 

So the HLAKSAM DAKPAY SEMKYE is this Bodhichitta that's carrying you along in your GOM LAM, your path of habituation. 

Let's take a break.

(break) 

4 kinds of wanting to be buddha:

mupa chupay semkye

hlaksam dakpay semkye

nampar minpay semkye

drippa pakpay semkye 

The Bodhichitta personal responsibility version, that’s our Bodhichitta that takes us from TONG LAM to Bodhisattva Bhumi number 7.

3 . NAMPAR MINPAY SEMKYE – Ripening Bodhichitta

NAMPAR MINPAY means ripening Bodhichitta. It's a funny term, ripening. Haven’t we already been ripening it? We have been. 

But what this means is that this is our same Bodhichitta–the wish to reach total enlightenment for the sake of all sentient beings. But when we are Mahayana Arya, also known as Arya Bodhisattva… Let's clarify. 

Let's say Mahayana Arya finishing Level 7, and reaching that place where no more seeds for even seeing things other self as self existent as their identities in them, our Bodhichitta at that level is called ripening Bodhichitta.

It means their Bodhichitta is so strong that their seeds to see things as having their own nature, cannot ripen. 

Like their ripening Bodhichitta is so strong it keeps those old seeds from seeing emptiness directly from ripening. 

You could make the case, Well, then my Bodhichitta makes my seeds become the obstacles to omniscience. Because they're only obstacles to omniscience when they can't ripen anymore, and that takes that level of Bodhichitta. But now our level of Bodhichitta means our level of wisdom, along with this wish to use that wisdom to reach total Buddhahood. 

So we can see the term Bodhichitta is now starting to intermix with wisdom, the knowledge of having seen emptiness directly, and that heart opening wish to serve all beings with it. 

The term Bodhichitta is gonna have both of those connotations. 

We can see how that's happened by now at the level 8. Because we're no longer seeing things as not coming out of our seeds the way we were before. 

We're not responding to things at all. We're just planting, planting, planting. Whatever we need to do now to clear out those obstacles to omniscience, so I can really help everybody in that deep and ultimate way. 

We're probably already emanating to some extent at this level. 

Not spontaneously, effortlessly maybe–yet. But if we're not yet omniscient., we're not experiencing directly what everyone of those beings we emanate to needs exactly at that moment. 

NAMPAR MINPAY SEMKYE is the Bodhichitta in the mind of that being who's Arya Bodhisattva 8th Level to finishing 10th, cleaning out the inborn habit to perceive subject-object-interaction between as having their identities in them. 

It's not happening anymore, but there's still the subtle remnants from having done so a long time ago, by the time we get here, lifetimes probably. 

4 . DRIPPA PAKPAY SEMKYE – obscurations eliminated Bodhichitta = Bodhichitta of a Buddha

DRIPPA = obscurations

PAKPAY = eliminated

So the Bodhichitta of eliminating obscuration. 

This Bodhichitta is how they clarify the Bodhichitta in the mind of Buddha. 

Because it's the Bodhichitta through which we have eliminated even those obstacles to omniscience. 

When those are eliminated, we perceive our own mind as omniscient. 

Our own being as a manifestation of ultimate love, ultimate compassion, ultimate wisdom. 

It's forced on us by the ripening of our merit. 

The process is the same. 

Seeds in, seeds out. 

It's just all happening simultaneously now, and it's all on a level of merit, and love. 

Love being: I want your happiness. 

Like my happiness depends on your happiness. 

And that propels whatever I will pursue me to be, no but me. 

So DRIPPA PAKPAY SEMKYE is Buddhas Bodhichitta. 

So we see when they say, Hey come on, once you're a Buddha, you don't need Bodhichitta anymore. Because Bodhichitta is the wish to reach total enlightenment for the sake of all sentient beings, and I've made it, so I don't need to wish for it anymore. 

Right, it's not a wish anymore, but it's DRIPPA PAKPAY SEMKYE, it's the state of mind that finally eliminated those obstacles to omniscience. 

We're not gonna lose that state of mind, even if there's no more obstacles to omniscience to eliminate. Because we've planted in that mind, and then it ripens, and we planted, and we ripen it, plant it. OK. 

We started out that section saying: The Bodhichitta depends upon our level of spiritual understanding.

Do you see now what I meant by that? 

1st stage: I've heard enough about the pan and the two husbands in the kitchen that OK, I believe enough in karma and emptiness that I will try to act differently. 

First one. 

2nd stage: I've seen emptiness directly. Although everything looks the same after that, now I know for sure things are not self existent, and so I know for sure that I'm responsible for my future by what I plant now. 

3rd stage: is the Bodhichitta when we've reached that place where we're not even seeing things as self existent anymore. We still need to Overcome those obstacles to omniscience. 

4th stage: We don't see things as self existent. We don't believe they're self existent. There's no suffering left, and there is no obstacles to the omniscient state of mind. 

3 Ways by the Way of our Intentions

So let's move on to another way of understanding Bodhichitta more deeply. 

3 ways we might use our bodhichitta intentions

gyalpo tabui semkye

dzibu tabui semkye

nyenpa tabui semkye

There are three ways that our Bodhichitta shows up by way of our intentions:

1. GYALPO TABUI SEMKYE – King like Bodhichitta 

2. DZIBU TABUI SEMKYE – Shepard like Bodhichitta 

3. NYENPA TABUI SEMKYE – Ferryman like Bodhichitta 

GYALPO = King 

GYALPO TABUI = King like

DZIBU = shepherd

NYENPA = ferryman

1 . GYALPO TABUI SEMKYE – King like Bodhichitta 

On one level of understanding this Bodhichitta, my Bodhichitta, is like a king. Where I need to make sure… the only way I can help others reach the end of their suffering is if I achieve that for myself first. And then I'll make sure that they all reach it. 

The king owns everything. 

Then their job is to take care of everybody in their Kingdom to make sure they have everything that they need. 

But in that analogy, the King's not trying to help everybody become king. 

In this analogy, where king like Bodhichitta is like, yeah, I'm going to become Buddha so that I can help everybody become one. 

But I'm in charge, I need to do it first. 

And it is necessary, isn't it? 

We can't help anybody reach their end of suffering Nirvana, let alone Buddhahood, if we don't know exactly what that individual needs to do. 

We have a good idea. But omniscience means we know exactly. 

So we might want to say also, really Bodhichitta needs to be this one. 

How do we how do we reach our king like Bodhichitta? 

Do we just park our Fanny on the meditation cushion until we get it? 

Do we just keep being the same old king making sure my needs are met so that I can become a Buddha? 

No, that doesn't work. 

We can't reach King like Bodhichitta without trying to help others get theirs. 

But the attitude is: I'm trying to help you get yours, so that I can get mine, so that I can really help you get yours. 

But in a way, if we have that train of thought going on, I hear it as some kind of blocker because it's like, Yeah, yeah, I'm trying to get my needs met. I'm using you to get my needs met. 

And if we understand that accurately that’s a good state of mind. 

But until we've seen emptiness directly, we can't understand that accurately, even when we think we do. 

So it might be a little dangerous until emptiness directly to say I'm working on my King like Bodhichitta. 

2 . DZIBU TABUI SEMKYE – Shepard like Bodhichitta

This person is the sheep herder. 

He's got 100 sheep and he needs to get them from this field to that field. 

He doesn't go stand in front of them and walk through the gate, and say follow me, because the sheep won't do it. 

He gets behind and he enlists his two shepherd dogs, and he just coaxes them all, heads them all towards that little gate and just keeps pushing, pushing, pushing until they've all gone through. 

Then he steps through. 

Which we can see the merit of this Bodhichitta. Because it means: Help the others get there. Help the others get there. Help the others get there. That's all you really have to do. 

And then those seeds ripen and bingo. You're there too. 

3 . NYENPA TABUI SEMKYE – Ferryman like Bodhichitta

Come on, let's all get on the boat, and we'll all go together.

The way I reach my total enlightenment is to bringing you all along with me. 

The way you all reach your total enlightenment is to bring everybody else with you. 

Let's all do it together.

Also a very nice state of mind. 

So these are not grades of Bodhichitta, one is better than the other. 

There they are different sense in our heart of how we will use our growing Bodhichitta. 

It's not like we're ever one or the other necessarily, and we'd probably swing amongst them according to the situations. 

2 levels of Bodhichitta by its Basic Nature

There is another way of learning about Bodhichitta and it's called by its two levels. 

The two levels by its very basic nature. 

There's actually two 2 levels by its very nature. 

Which is confusing because on your homework and quiz, it's going to ask, what are the two Bodhichittas by its very nature? 

The answer key gives one, but technically there is 2 x 2. 

It doesn't mean there's four, it means there's two ways to divide it as two, and you can get extra credit for yourself if you put them both. 

2 levels of bodhichitta by its very nature

munpa semkye

jukpa semkye

another division of 2

kundzob semkye

dundam semkye

Bodhichitta as prayer or action

One of the divisions of Bodhichitta by its very nature is MUNPA SEMKYE and JUKPA SEMKYE.

MUNPA = prayer, the wish in the form of a prayer. 

JUKPA = engaging. Engaging Bodhichitta. The wish that depends on our behavior changes. 

So when we learned about taking our Bodhisattva vows, we learned that we can decide we will commit ourselves to growing the wish. And we take the ceremony, but we don't actually get the vows. We get the vow to grow the wish, and that's the prayer. 

The wish in the form of a prayer. 

Then at some point we decide, oh, I think I really can live according to these. I would like to take my vows formally, and behave according to them, and check them. 

Then we take our ceremony in which we actually receive our vows, we declare ourselves and receive our vows.

These two levels of Bodhichitta, one is like, Gosh, it'd be nice to be able to live by a live as a Bodhisattva. I'll try it out. And then JUKPA SEMKYE, I'm ready to make my determination. I'm going to get more serious in the form of the prayer and in the form of action. 

Bodhichitta as deceptive or ultimate

But there is a second Bodhichitta by its very nature. 

These are KUNZOB SEMKYE and DUNDAM SEMKYE

Anybody remember what KUNDZOB means? 

KUNDZOB = bogus, fake 

DUNDAM = truth or ultimate

KUNDZOB SEMKYE = fake Bodhichitta 

Wait a minute. More accurately here it means deceptive or apparent Bodhichitta. 

DUNDAM is ultimate Bodhichitta. But here ultimate Bodhichitta is a code word for the direct perception of emptiness. 

So it's here that our term Bodhichitta makes this shift from being all about the heart opening experience to see the face of every being and love them, to Bodhichitta means that direct perception of emptiness to where we now know the truth of the existence of every being and every experience we can have. And subsequently, do love them because we now know that their happiness is in fact up to the seeds that we make. 

The happiness we see in them is up to our seeds ripening.

And so, ultimate Bodhichitta is that wisdom in the mind of a being who's seen an emptiness directly imbued with Bodhichitta–the other kind. 

And together we now have what Bodhichitta really means. That there is a Bodhichitta that's within our appearing reality, and there's the emptiness of it and us, and whatever object is included. In fact all existing things. 

Our wisdom of the emptiness of all is our ultimate Bodhichitta. 

We're only in it for that short period of time, the first time. 

Then it'll come again and again from time to time until finally as Buddha we are experiencing directly both–appearing, apparent Bodhichitta and ultimate Bodhichitta, emptiness and dependent origination–simultaneously. 

Which then evolves into actually four different experiences at once.

When we talk about KUNDZOB SEMKYE, they call it deceptive Bodhichitta. 

It makes for an interesting debate. Because we might say, Well, you're saying that my wish to reach total enlightenment for the sake of all sentient beings is going to deceive me someday? 

In which case, how can it be a helpful thing? 

Or do you mean that my wish isn't valid because it's deceptive, it's fake? 

Well, then, why do I bother trying to cultivate it? 

What do we mean when we say deceptive reality? 

The way we perceive reality is inconsistent with the way it truly exists. 

But what does that mean? 

Angry yelling boss is a jerk from his side, yelling at me. I didn't deserve it. I didn't do anything to make it. 

Is that my reality? 

Yeah. 

Is it deceptive reality? Why? Is it because it's not happening? 

No, it is. 

It's deceptive because I'm perceiving it as Him generated. He's doing that to me. 

Is that happening? 

I'm experiencing it that way. 

But is that really what's happening? 

See, words are failing here. 

It's real to my experience. But it isn't real, because it's not at all coming from him the way I think it is. It's, Oh my seeds ripening, making me see him yelling at me from him. And so it's deceptive in the sense that I’m experiencing it as from him, but in fact, it's from me. 

There's a discrepancy–I love that word–a discrepancy between what's really going on and what I think is really going on. 

I can't see the discrepancy until I'm at that Bhumi 8. 

I know it's happening on those other Bhumis, because I saw it happen directly once. 

And probably multiple times after that, but from the first time. 

So. Deceptive Bodhichitta does not mean our Bodhichitta is not valuable, our growing Bodhichitta to them. It's the understanding that the state of mind of the of our growing Bodhichitta is what's arising. It's what's appearing. Anything coming out of our seeds is appearing reality. 

We can call it appearing reality when we're aware of it coming out of our seeds. 

We call it deceptive reality when we're aware of that coming from them at me. 

So deceptive and apparent reality are talking about the same thing but from a state of mind that doesn't understand and the state of mind that does. 

Ultimate Bodhichitta is the direct perception of the lack of any subject, object or interaction between that be can be coming from anything other than my own mental seeds ripening me to see what I see. 

Seeds ripening is what makes the deceptive or apparent reality. 

The emptiness of those seeds and their ripenings is the ultimate Bodhichitta. 

Emptiness is the ultimate Bodhichitta. 

The ultimate state of mind through which we will go on to become totally enlightened being for the benefit of all sentient beings.

As we learn about it, we're inclined to say, OK, help me learn to live by it. 

MUNPA SEMKYE and JUKPA SEMKYE. 

And as we learn more, we'll be attracted to either the Ferryman's State of Mind, or the Shepherd state of mind, or maybe the King state of mind. 

Which ever one will help motivate us to change our behaviors. 

That's all then that drives us through these different spiritual level understandings. 

Not understandings, spiritual level realizations of what we mean by our Bbodhichitta as we go through these different stages. 

All of that it's inside the term Bodhichitta for us now. 

As you do your homeworks and quiz and your meditation, think of it that way. 

You're imprinting stuff into this term Bodhichitta so that you don't have to rattle it all off in order to know:

I'm feeling a little like I really wanna become a Buddha for the sake of all sentient beings right now, because I see that what's going on is not really coming from it. I know it's really coming from me, so I can change my behavior. 

It's too much, right? 

But Bodhichitta, you can write it across your glasses, and be looking out at your world through Bodhichitta. 

That's the purpose of these last two classes. 

Then it'll grow, of course, as we continue to study. 

In your homework, it says: Memorize the definition of the wish of the prayer and the wish of enlightenment. But we didn't get a definition, we just got a description. 

So that's what Geshela asked us to memorize. 

The wish in the form of a prayer, Bodhichitta as the wish in the form of a prayer and wanting to become a Buddha for the sake of all sentient beings. And the wish of form of action: I'm gonna live according to a Bodhisattva. 

Alright, that's class 4. 

[Usual dedication]

Thank you so very much everyone.

For the recording, this is ACI course 2 class 5.

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

[Usual opening]

Review Class 4

Review of class four, which was more about Bodhichitta, meaning learning more about what we mean when we use the word Bodhichitta. It's becoming this really, really rich and full concept. Your quiz asked: Describe the four types of the wish according to the level of one's mind. Remember those? OK give me the first one, Joana?

[Joana] The wish in form of a belief. So as long as we haven't seen emptiness directly, we use what we have learned about emptiness and the pen and we grow our understanding and grow our wish. But it's only intellectual, so we haven't had any direct experience yet. 

[Lama Sarahni] Yeah, good. So this would be the Bodhichitta in the mind of a still ordinary Dharma practitioner who believes in what they've been taught, but haven't seen emptiness directly yet, right? You said that very well. And then another level of Bodhichitta might be what?

[Ale] Taking personal responsibility. This is the thing on the mind of a person who had the direct perception of emptiness. Like they will never stop until they help everybody else reach the same goal.

[Lama Sarahni] Nice. Because they've seen it, now they don't just have the belief that things don't have things their own nature. Now they know for sure. Yeah, nice. 

Then the third level. 

[Ale] Is the level of an Arya when they're in the level 8. But they they can't perceive emptiness directly because they still have to clean some bad seeds or something. 

[LAma Sarahni] Yeah, right. Clean bad seeds that won't open, but they're still in there, blocking their ability to see emptiness directly and appearing reality simultaneously. 

So you could say the Bodhichitta in the mind of someone who's reached Arhat level, because they're no longer even experiencing things as self existent. Mahayana Bhumi 8. 

The second one: They still see things as self existent. They don't believe it anymore but out of personal experience. The first level is, we still see things as self existent. We've never seen reality otherwise. But we've been taught and we believe strongly enough that we're willing to change our behavior.

So the 4th one, 4th Bodhichitta is...

[Joana] The Bodhichitta in the mind of a Buddha. They have cleaned out all those even tendencies to perceive things in the way that they are self existent. They now see directly all the time the emptiness of things. And it's called obscurations eliminated wish. 

[LAma Sarahni] Yeah. Good. Which starts that big debate. So Buddha still have Bodhichitta which is the wish to reach Buddhahood? It is a bit of a conundrum, but again, we're packing the word Bodhichitta. And when we think of it that way, it's not a conundrum at all. OK. Then your quiz also asked: Describe the two other types of which there are two types of two other types. So whichever you choose is fine with me. Somebody give me one of the two types of the two types. Yes, Luisa. 

[Luisa] The Bodhichitta Prayer and intention. When you want to think as a Bodhisattva, but you are not ready to take the vows. 

[Lama Sarahni] Yeah, nice. And then the other? That's half of the first kind of two. 

The other one is the action Bodhichitta, taking the vows. I'm going to actually act. I'm going to actually work on trying to reach my Buddhahood. 

[Luisa] Ah ok, I thought you were asking the first one of the other kind.

[Lama Sarahni] No. The first of the two. Oh you're right, I see my English is confusing. Of the two types that you chose to tell me, what are the two parts of that one? Here we got it. 

What's the other kind of to divisions of Bodhichitta. Yes, Joana. 

[Joana] The deceptive or the ultimate Bodhichitta. So the one is still the fake one. Where we perceive things as being self existent, and the ultimate one is when we already know that things are empty of any self nature. 

[Lama Sarahni] OK, so in this division the ultimate Bodhichitta is code word for seeing emptiness directly. Just a little different than what you just said. And the first one is the Bodhichitta that we mean when we say the words ‘I want to reach Buddhahood for the sake of all sentient beings’, or have the thought or describe it to somebody. Our Bodhichitta as it it appears to us, as we think of it. It's the appearing side of our experience. Its emptiness is its our ultimate Bodhichitta. Really the direct perception of emptiness is what they mean by ultimate Bodhichitta. 

[Joana] So it's combined with this heart opening experience when we commit to every being to to love them and take care of them?

[Lama Sarahni] Right. Because its appearance is that. And it's ultimate Bodhichitta is still the emptiness of that. Yeah. Good. 

Introduction to Class 5

We have been learning that lesser capacity and medium capacity practitioners, what they have in mind for their goal is to reach Nirvana. And Mahayana level, great capacity practitioners, something in their heart, really probably from the beginning for them in that life, is already saying, No, that's not enough for me to end my suffering. Yes, I want to do it. But come on, everybody else. Humans alone everybody else. And then all those animals, and then all those ones who maybe exist that we don't even see. And Oh my gosh, there's so many. 

And we could see how if our mindset was not Mahayana-wannabe, that would just be too big. We understand karma enough to know all that suffering is their karma–which is true. I can't handle their karma. It's enough for me to handle mine. So I'll be doggedly determined to reach that place where I stopped my suffering, which means I'm stopping contributing to stop suffering in the world. And that's the highest that I think humans can achieve. 

Mahayana understands, No, I want to be Buddha. 

And it's like, where does that come from? I didn't grow up with that in my culture, to grow up to become God. Be good so you can sit at the feet of God when you die. Like that was the biggest thing I could do. And yeah, that'd be great. I don't know that it's all that different than reaching Nirvana. But it's not becoming God, and how blasphemous that would be if you went to your priest or pastor and go, You know what? Teach me how to be God. 

What's the difference? We want to know the difference between Nirvana and Buddhahood. 

In order to know the difference, we need to know what's Nirvana. 

What do we mean by Nirvana then? So let's dig into the definition. We have two classes to do this. 

Vocabulary class 5

nirvana       nyang de

klesha        nyun

                   bakchak

Nyun-drip ma-lu-par pangpay so sor tak-'gog ("tang gok") nyang-de

nyang-de: nyang ngen le 'depa ("le ndepa")

moksha      tarpa

arhat

rang-shin nyang-de       dundam denpa

Nirvana = the Sanskrit word

NYANG DE = the Tibetan, but it’s a contraction of a longer phrase that I'll get to in a minute. Nirvana. 

In Sanskrit Nirvana means to blow out. Like, here's the candle. 

The Tibetans didn't translate it that way. It meant something really different, apparently, to the culture of those who used the term Nirvana, what we mean by to blow out. 

The Tibetans translated it as to go beyond grief. 

Which still seems like an odd thing. 

How did they get go beyond grief from to blow out? 

So this NYANG DE is this short form of this longer phrase NYANG NGEN LE ‘DEPA. 

So when there's this little apostrophe, it makes the prenatal between the LE and the D, so it looks like it's LEN DEPA. There's a ‘n’. It sounds like there's a ‘n’ in there. But it wouldn't be right to put a ‘n’ in there, because that changes the Tibetan, apparently. 

So NYANG NGEN LE ‘DEPA is this more complete phrase of the Tibetan translation of what's meant by Nirvana. 

NYANG NGEN LE ‘DEPA means beyond gone. It means gone beyond. 

And NYANG = grief. 

So we tend to think of grief as the loss we feel when a loved one dies, the loss we feel when we lose a job. We tend to associate grief with losses. Used in this context that's too limiting. 

Geshela surprised me when I first heard this, because he said, now the phrase is more like when we use the term grief as a slang. You know, when your body is giving you a bunch of troubles, slack we call it, and you go quick giving me grief. It means, Come on, you're bugging me. You're being an irritating. You're getting in the way. And so gone beyond grief means, gone beyond the possibility of anybody giving you grief. That kind of grief. Slang grief. 

But now it does include gone beyond grieving from a loss. But it doesn't mean that when somebody disappears from your life, you don't care. It's not that state of gone beyond grief. 

It's gone beyond this being irritated by anything. It's much more moment to moment than no more grief. 

NYANG NGEN = gone beyond grief. 

So let's look at its definition. What do they mean: Gone beyond grief. 

So we have this long phrase and we're gonna go part by part. 

NYUN-DRIP MA-LU-PAR PANGPAY SO SOR TAK-’GOG (“tang gog”) NYANG-DE

“Tang gog” because there's that weird ‘n’ again. It sounds like TANG GOG, but that's not the right English, so you don't use that.

NYUN-DRIP MA-LU-PAR PANGPAY SO SOR TAK-’GOG (“tang gog”) NYANG-DE

Nirvana. 

Let's see which direction shall we go. 

Nirvana. Let's just go piece by piece. 

SO SOR TAK-’GOG

SO SOR = 1 by 1. 

TAK-’GOG = literally it means cessation–GOG. And the TANG here means seeing. 

So related to Tong Lam, but here the TONG means seeing. So some sensation that comes about by something that we've seen–but not necessarily with our eyeballs–that does something one by one. We'll come back to that. 

PANGPAY = eliminated. 

So the one by one refers to what's getting eliminated because of the cessation due to something we've seen. 

So let's go backwards yet. 

MA-LU-PAR = in their entirety

In their entirety. 

NYUN-DRIP = mental affliction in English, klesha in Sanskrit. 

DRIP = obstacle

NYUN-DRIP together means mental affliction and obstacles. 

What that's trying to describe is that what we have brought to us a cessation 1 by 1 by way of something that we have seen–meaning experience directly–has in their entirety eliminated our mental afflictions, and what are called obstacles. 

So the obstacles mean those subtle seeds for more mental afflictions, unripened seeds for more mental afflictions. And NYUN is the active mental afflictions that any given experience might arise in us. We have eliminated the ability for that mental affliction to arise, and we've eliminated even the unripened seeds for more of those. 

Those are eliminated as well. 

This is not talking about the obstacles to omniscience. Those have not been eliminated. 

But any seed that is ripening as what would cause a mental affliction can't cause the mental affliction. 

Then to be at Nirvana, we've reached that, and we've reached the stage where the unripened seeds for more of those mental afflictions have been so damaged, they can't ripen either. 

That means any experience that we have as a being who's reached this state of mind, nothing will rock our peace of mind. 

Seeds may ripen as unpleasant experiences or what we would have called unpleasant and gotten upset over, but we don't get upset over it. We respond with wisdom, because that's what we used to get there. And we understand clearly, how the process is functioning. 

Now, if we got there without Bodhichitta, this state of freedom from any mental affliction, now and now and now and now, and freedom for the seeds of ever having a mental affliction again, we are in Nirvana. 

If that happens to you tomorrow, you still need to go get on the bus to go to work. And anybody looking at you, they may be like, wow, she's really smiling today. But we won't look any different. We won't be someplace different. Your world doesn't disappear and you end up in Hawaii. 

Your mind is different, and so your response to your moment by moment experiences is very different. But it doesn't happen, just poof, all at once. 

It comes about so sore, one by one. 

Because what's hidden inside here is that–the SO SORE TAK-’GOG is meaning–this individual analysis of that thing that we saw that is going to help us bring about the cessation of our mental afflictions and seeds for more obstacles. 

Geshela’s translation of this is: A cessation the TAK-’GOG. A cessation which comes from the individual analysis, and which consists of having eliminated the mental affliction obstacles in their entirety. 

A cessation which comes from the individual analysis, and which consists of having eliminated the mental affliction obstacles in their entirety. 

The individual analysis is code for seeing emptiness directly. 

Coming out of it and experiencing directly those four Arya truths. 

We went into our direct perception, having studied about those truths, we went into it. 

Let's leave it at that. 

When we come out of it, we have that recognition that Wow, I just experienced the Dharmakaya:  The empty nature of all things, of myself, of Buddha–all Buddhas, and subsequent experiences take us to that direct realization of the truth of suffering. 

Like everything is suffering, both the verb and the noun. 

And the causes for more, and all that suffering has causes, and it's possible to stop those causes, to stop all that suffering. And here's the way to do it. Those four are Arya truths. 

We come out of that and we go back to seeing our world then the same old way. 

We are not yet at Nirvana. 

We have reached some cessation: cessation of doubt in our path, cessation of belief and things having their natures in them, and there's a third one I'm not remembering right now. 

But we then are on that path of habituation where we are working with what we now know to be true about where all those situations that cause my mental afflictions to arise are really coming from my behavior towards those situation. 

So we systematically set about to burn off all of that past misunderstanding through our experiences. So whatever experience comes up, it seems like the other is doing that to me, it seems like the Me is separate from the them doing that, and it seems like the unpleasantness that's arising is because of what they did to me. 

But we know we're mistaken on all those three counts, and so we know how I respond is how I create my future experiences.

That's enough for us to choose some different, more kind response than our seeds ripening make us want to do. 

It's this wisdom that we've gained from seeing emptiness directly, gives us that ability to the seeds have ripened with this wrong way of seeing, and we have the ability, the seeds are ripening with us, have the ability to choose a different response. 

Then our task is to do it, and do it, and do it, and do it. 

And as we do it, we are burning off all those mental afflictions–84,000 Buddha says. That's a lot.

As we burn them off, and don't replant, then the seeds for a similar situation have also lost power because we didn't replant that would ordinarily have made them grow. 

They're still growing on their own, but they're not growing in the way they were before. Because we don't have the ignorance component, and we've just consciously chosen a different response, presumably a more kind response because of what we know. 

So we can see how the pattern is, we just have to systematically work through our mental afflictions until the seeds for them are so damaged, they can't ripen as a mental affliction. 

We're not damaging seeds from ripening into circumstances. 

We're damaging the component of the mental affliction in those seeds on our path of habituation, on our way to Nirvana. 

We're doing the same thing if we went into and came out of our direct perception of emptiness with a mind imbued with Bodhichitta. 

We're still on our path of habituation, working with our ripening seeds to stop replanting the mental affliction that arises from blaming the other. Because we're not blaming the other anymore. And now we're doing it so that we can reach Buddhahood. 

Does that mean we don't also reach Nirvana? 

No, of course we'll reach that same state where all of our seeds for a mental affliction, or the seeds for more will be so fully damaged they won't go off. But they're not cleared yet of the way in which they block our ability to perceive emptiness directly and dependent origination directly simultaneously. 

So, for Mahayanists that state of mind we would call Nirvana is reached, but you don't really stop and say, You all want to stay here or not? 

Your trajectory is towards Buddhahood, and at some point it must get easier or less painful, less of a struggle, because you're finally free of those things giving you grief. 

Your response to anything that comes up is this peaceful calm, for a Mahayanist probably loving state of mind. And it doesn't really matter what's going on. 

The Story of the King of Kalingka

I think most of us have heard the King of Kalingka story from Diamond Cutter Sutra.

In Buddha's former life he's this great Yogi and something he didn't do has pissed off the king. And in the King's rage, he's cutting off the guy's fingers and toes as he's asking, What's your name, Yogi? 

My name is Mr. Patience. 

Ah, really? Let's see how patient you are. Whack, whack, whack. 

What's your name now? 

My name is Mr. Patience.

And it goes on like this, and his fingers and toes, they're laying all around.

And finally he gets the chance to say to somebody, You know if I had seen any of this as self existent, coming from its side, I would have gotten upset.

And if I had gotten upset, I would have hurt somebody. 

I mean, my guess is he had some kind of powers, and if his mind went to hate, the king probably would have blown up or something.

So, he's like, wow, that was pretty cool, actually. I could experience all of that pain, and really not get upset with the King. 

Thank you, King. I love you all the more because you showed me how far I've come and that just made the king even crazier. And finally, the guy says to the king, Well, you know, I'll show you, and he did this act of truth: If it's true that I love the king and I don't have any instant of mental upset, then let my digits all reform. 

And the fingers and toes all jump up and reattach. 

Imagine the king! It's like, OK, I'm at your service. 

It's a long story after that.

The Yogi becomes the Prince who comes across the five tigers, the tiger mom and the babies. And he gives his blood to save the mom so she can save the babies so that they can become his first students. 

Then the king is one of those. I think the king is the mom tiger. 

Then those five become his first students when he's Buddha. 

And the king is one of the ones that sees emptiness directly in those very early days. 

So it's tracing back how this connection is, that we share.

But the point was, despite the pain of getting your digits cut off, you just love the guy even more. That's pretty unbelievable. 

NYANG-DE – Beyond Grief. 

What does the individual analysis mean here?

Why did I go into that? So we got the definition of Nirvana. 

A question on your homework says: What does the individual analysis mean here?

This is that code for experiencing those four Arya truths one by one. 

Which actually each have four aspects, so really there's 16–we'll learn them later–that come only after experiencing emptiness directly. 

So in that state of awareness, you know those Arya truths to be true. That's why they're called truths. They're facts that you come to experience directly, and so you know are true. 

Whereas before, we studied them, we learned them, we logic them, we hope that they're true. But experiencing them directly takes it to that next step. 

Individual analysis means all that. 

Means having seen emptiness directly, seen the four Arya truths, and then, knowing them to be true, we will live according to them. We won't be able to not live according to them. 

That becomes our  path of habituation. 

NYUN-DRIP – Mental Affliction obstacles

A mental affliction, they say, is any thought which has ruined your peace of mind. 

It doesn't really mean a series of words thought. But any movement of the mind, the reaction of which is Eww, either reject or grasp, has ruined our peace of mind. 

It implies that our mind can move to things, and we don't lose this state of peaceful response to it. 

Whereas ordinarily, our mind moves to something like nature in it: seems pleasant >> I like pleasant >> I want it >> I'm going to get it. 

Then the reverse for unpleasant, that dominoes of Lord Maitreya 6 steps that we'll learn again and again, to be free of that. Doesn't mean free of experiences happening. But free of that domino driven by misunderstanding. 

It's not enough to just say ‘to be free of mental affliction’. 

They say it's more complete and more accurate to add than the DRIP, which means…it's the word for obstacles. But what they're trying to explain here is that we could be in a situation that ordinarily we would get upset over, and this time, son of a gun, I'm in the same situation, but I don't feel upset like I usually do. 

And we might think, oh, great. I have reached the Nirvana of that particular mental affliction, because I didn't have the old reaction one time. 

They say yeah, but do you know for sure that you won't come across a situation like that again and react badly again just because you didn't one time? Are you sure you're completely free of it? 

And their example is, as the monastic, the most of them enter the monastic training at 7 years old. They stay there mostly within the boundaries of the monastery all through puberty and young adulthood, until if they go all the way through the Geshe and then get launched, they're probably 25 or 30 by the time they're out amongst the world. 

But say a 16 year old hasn't gone out. He's really stayed within the monastery, and he might be saying, no, I have no desire for a girl. 

But then, he gets the chance to go out, and he goes out to a party and there's some beautiful girls. Is it likely that he will come back and say, yeah, I have no desire for girls? 

Very likely he's gonna go, Oh, I guess I did. They just weren't ripening because the circumstances weren't there. The only girls I was seeing were those old ladies bringing us the offerings, and it's like: I must have no desire because they didn't kick off desire in me. 

But show me a cute one. That's a different story. 

So for it to be Nirvana, both the active mental affliction can't happen, and there aren't any sleeping ones that can ripen either. 

You can get a glimpse of what a powerful state of peacefulness that would be. 

We don't have it because we don't really know what seeds we've got in there, and for sure, we don't know what's ripening next. That's part of the whole suffering of Sansara, pervasive suffering is we're just at its mercy. 

But imagine, having the state of mind that it doesn't matter that we’re at its mercy. 

Our response will be what it needs to be to bring everybody to that peaceful state of mind if we're Mahayana. 

If we're not Mahayana, the state of mind is: I will know how to respond to bring an end to all of that upset state of mind that's causing the other to do that to me. 

Yeah, it's coming out of my seeds. 

Our mental afflictions are made of mind. 

They are thoughts. They are awarenesses. They're the active experience that we're having. The DRIPs are the BAKCHAKs in Tibetan. 

It means those mental seeds, but meaning the potentials. The potentials that are in us, that we put in there by way of perceiving ourselves, things they do towards others. They haven't ripened yet. They're being influenced by every other one, in and out. But they haven't yet come into the fullon experience that triggers our mental affliction. 

BAKCHAKs are these seeds, sleeping seeds, Geshe Michael calls them. 

They are not mental things.

You could make a case for them being very, very subtle physical things, but they say they're not mental, they're not physical. They're in that category of existing things that are not quite either one. 

They become a mental thing when they ripen into our mental aspect of our experience. They bring about the physical thing when out of them comes the physical experience.

But as the seed that's not yet ripened, they're neither. They're just this tendency that we have. 

The active afflicted thought’s experience, and those sleeping seeds are what block our constant peaceful state of mind. 

It implies that if we didn't have those, our state of mind would–from its own side–be peaceful. 

That it makes a great debate because we're misunderstanding it as we're trying to understand it.

But we have to start somewhere. 

We're creating a state of mind whose default mode is peace. 

We have to create it. It's not that because we haven't created and so we have these seeds for both –the active mental afflictions and these potentials for more that block that state of mind. That state of mind is the Nirvana state of mind, peace. 

I'm not remembering the Tibetan word for ARHAT. So I'm not even going to try. But there are these other vocabularies that can help us. 

Moksha in Sanskrit = liberation or freedom

In Tibetan it's DARPA. 

We use the term liberation for an Arya, because they've liberated themselves from their belief in things having their natures in them. But then it has another meaning when they reach that stage in which their seeds no longer have in them the perceiving things as having their natures in them. Because of all that effort they made to weed out their ignorance through their path of habituation, they reach a point where they are experiencing directly everything is coming from their own past behavior. 

So really, it's because of that awareness that we can be so free of the upset that comes about from our experiences. Because our upset comes from not understanding where those pleasantnesses and unpleasantnesses really come from. 

The more we understand and recognize that the unpleasantness of the angry yelling boss has been made by past Me-s and this current Me can make more or not, the better able my current Me is able to refuse to act from the anger. And as I do that, that same recurring situation makes me angry less and less and less until even that situation fullon-no-upset-there experience still happens, I respond appropriate to my understanding and what I'm trying to create. 

As we're getting close to that, are we really gonna be trying to avoid unpleasant stuff?

There be no need to avoid. There really wouldn't even, I mean, you're still going to experience somebody yelling at you differently than somebody telling you they love you, but your peaceful state of mind it will respond with a peaceful response in both situations. 

So our Arhat is the level where the liberation is now such that we are liberated from the struggle to not respond badly to our mental afflictions, because there are no more mental afflictions. 

So it's not like we're liberated from some place. 

We're liberated from the jail of our own, perpetuating our Sansara. 

That's true whether we reached Arhat as our goal, or we came to Arhat-ship on our way to Buddhahood. 

We still reached that state of no more mental upset. 

We then have other stuff to do to clear out our obstacles to omniscience as Mahayanists. 

But it's gonna be pretty effortless. It's gonna be a mind of peace that does those things. 

Liberation, you can say it starts at direct perception of emptiness, and it continues to grow and reaches what we call fullon liberation at Arhat. But liberation is not total enlightenment. 

If our goal was Arhat, our liberation would be called enlightenment–but not total enlightenment. That's how our tradition makes the distinction. So that we don't fight with other traditions when they say my lama is an enlightened being. 

So, oh, are they omniscient? 

Well, no. 

Well, then they're not enlightened. 

No need to get into that. Great. They are free of mental afflictions and the seeds for more? How great. 

Let's take our break.

[break]

[Luisa] Lama, sorry, can you repeat something I didn’t get when you were explaining the liberation part? There is the liberation of the mental afflictions themselves but also there was another level, you were saying, where the seeds something like they don’t have the appearing part of… I didn’t get it.

[Lama Sarahni] Right. When we reach Arhat level of liberation, we no longer experience things as self existent at all. Which means our experiencing things as our seeds ripening as accurate dependent origination. When we reach that experience, Mahayana level would say: If you are going to say you’ve reached Nirvana that would be it.

But we don’t really even use that term.

We say Bodhisattva has reached 8th Bodhisattva Bhumi. But that’s a detail that is not so important. It’s the shift from still things look self existent but I know they are not. And as we are working with those seeds to not replant them, eventually there is no more in there that ripen seeing them as self existent anymore–not self, not other, not interaction between. 

All perceiving it is coming out of your own past behavior. 

I can’t conceive of what that’s like. 

I can imagine what the mental state of mind might be like. But I can’t quite conceive of how stuff gonna look different. And I think it is because it’s always been coming out of our seeds. 

What’s gonna be gone is that thing that was never there in the first place.

So it’s something about our reaction that will be different when we reach this level.

And we’ll know it when we get there.

I hope that’s more clear.

[start of second half of class]

If someone reaches nirvana tonight, do they have to die to do so? 

No. 

Would we necessarily know that they did? 

No. 

Would they know that they did? 

Absolutely. 

I could imagine they would jump out of bed, Whohoo.

Does nobody know that they did but them? 

Trick question. 

Don't Buddhas know? 

Yes. 

So, no ordinary being will know that you've reached your Nirvana unless you tell them, but then you won't tell them because it would be a bad seed for them to say, No, you didn't. 

But Buddhas know. So you might end up having a Buddha party all by yourself. 

Different types of Nirvana

So the rest of this class and into next is there is four different types of Nirvana, meaning four things we mean by the word Nirvana. 

They say there are four kinds of Nirvana nominally. 

1 . RANG-SHIN NYANG-DE – Natural Nirvana

RANG-SHIN NYANG-DE is a synonym for DUNDAM DENPA.

Anybody remember DUNDAM DENPA? 

DENPA = truth

DUNDAM = ultimate

Ultimate truth, meaning ultimate reality. 

So this NYANG-DE, this Nirvana RANG-SHIN,is called natural Nirvana. 

RANG-SHIN = natural

It's another way of speaking about ultimate reality. 

What do we mean by ultimate reality? 

That empty nature of whatever we're talking about. 

The empty nature of the object. 

The empty nature of the subject. 

The empty nature of the interaction between. 

And everything about that interaction between. 

Does ultimate reality exist independent of the appearance of subjects, objects, and interactions between?

No, correct. No. 

In order for emptiness to exist, there has to be something that is empty. 

Empty of its nature in it, from it, independent of the subject side’s seeds including the subject side. 

So when we say natural Nirvana, something has natural Nirvana, what it means is that we're recognizing that any existing thing we're talking about is seeds ripening and nothing but.

The ‚nothing but‘ being its empty nature. 

The banana is not that banana until the perceiver of the banana says, oh, that banana. 

The angry yelling boss is not an angry yelling boss until the perceiver of them says, That angry yelling boss. 

We've heard it so many times, but every time we hear it, we’ll hear it a little bit differently. 

What about from his side? He's hearing himself be an angry yelling boss right now. That's not coming from me. 

But I'm not aware of what he's aware of himself as. 

I'm only aware of what I think I know him to think of himself as. 

It's all coming from my… every instant of my experience is coming is unique to me, so the causes have to be unique to me. The results are unique to me.

And how I behave is where my power lies to create future unique experiences. 

I'm doing it anyway. I might as well do it consciously. 

Yes, Luisa. 

[Luisa] For me it's somehow confusing why we use different words or terms for the same. Like we say before ultimate Bodhichitta is a code word for emptiness. Natural Nirvana is also somehow a code word for emptiness. I don't know why this is a bit confusing. 

[Lama Sarahni] Yeah, I mean why does language have synonyms at all? I don't know the answer to that. In this context every different synonym gives us more clues about what they mean by the thing that's being synonymized. 

So if we're taking ultimate reality to be the thing that we're giving different names to, every different name gives us a different understanding of that one thing. And if we just use the one term, we can't get to all those nuances of it. I think it has something to do with that. 

And until we really have the big picture, what it will be thinking, oh, I don't get these nuances, they're just frustrating. But the hearing about themis enough to just let them get in there and let them cook. It will come along. But that's not to say, Don't think about them, or don't wonder about them, or don't try to check them out. We still try to do that. 

When we come to one that we just can't seem to figure out, that's the one we put on the shelf for now instead of saying now I'm just going to stick with one word. 

[Luisa] Is it understand like with the proofs of emptiness, that there are a thousand, I don’t know how many proofs of emptiness according to the different levels of people?

[Lama Sarahni] Right? Similar idea. Somebody will go, oh I get it now from this RANG-SHIN NYANG-DE. And others go, Why do I need so many words?

And it's OK for both.

Ultimate truth and natural Nirvana are synonyms because the natural here referring to the word Nirvana free of all mental afflictions and seeds for more, means that it's always been that way. Meaning, if we did not have mental afflictions and seeds for more, we would have this peace of mind. 

Not that our peace of mind is self existent. But if you don't have the seeds for it to get upset, and you still have seeds for mind–which we do–what else is left? 

You can't get upset. And you're still existing. 

What else do we call that? 

Even if you want to call it neutral, it's still not afflicted, peace. 

So, Natural Nirvana, the emptiness of self, other, interaction between, is called natural Nirvana because that emptiness has always been empty, 100% empty. 

Those things, existing things have always been 100% empty. 

Not self existentially empty. 

But always empty, and that means that empty nature of all those existing things, the emptiness cannot be a cause for a mental affliction or a seed for more. 

The emptiness of the boss causing my mental affliction according to my ignorant mind, is not the part that's causing my mental affliction. 

It's my inability to understand the emptiness that's causing my mental affliction. 

So the emptiness of our worst situations is that situation’s natural Nirvana.

The situation is not Nirvana. 

My mind is not Nirvana in that situation. 

But all three parts–subject, object, interaction between–all are in fact lacking their natures in them, and that's called their state of natural Nirvana. 

So there's a question: 

Could there be anything that is natural Nirvana and real Nirvana at the same time?

It's like, I know I gotta crank. What she asking me? 

Is there a state of mind of cessation of all bad thoughts and it's emptiness, does that exist somewhere? 

Yeah. Every Buddha, any being who is Nirvana’ed–reached Nirvana we would say. 

Because the natural Nirvana simply means the emptiness of them. And reaching Nirvana means they're free of those mental afflictions. 

OK, I'm actually done with this class. 

We pick up the rest of the other three non nominal Nirvana in next class. 

The reason some of these classes end up being so short is that when Geshela was offering the class, the students there were like having an animated discussion as he reviewed the previous class, and they end up doing these debates. There are lots of distractions, and it goes on for 1/2 an hour or so before they let him actually get to the next class. 

It's very frustrating to listen to those early audios. Just shut up and let him give class–was my mind. 

But I'd rather not just push into the next class. I'd rather give you a little time, offer to stay and chat. So you have what you need for your homework 5. 

So let's do our dedication. 

[Usual dedication]

Thank you so much.

Let's gather our minds here as we usually do, please.

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

[Usual opening]

Last class we learned the definition of Nirvana. Which is “a cessation which comes from the individual analysis and which consists of having eliminated the mental affliction obstacles in their entirety.”

We learned what all those different pieces meant. 

Your quiz also asked you, What does that individual analysis mean? 

We learned that it's code for the experience of the realizations of those four Arya truths one by one, that happened after our first experience of the direct perception of emptiness. 

In the answer key it threw in “and knowing them to be true”. 

I don't think that it means you could have those experiences and not know them to be true. 

But included in the individual analysis that we use to overcome our mental afflictions and seeds for more in order to reach that state we call Nirvana, the knowing the truth of the four Arya truths is an important piece to understand. Because we could say, oh, I know the truth of the four Arya truths. But if we haven't experienced them directly yet, we know them [in our head]. But we don't know them [in our heart]. 

So individual analysis, like redundantly, says it comes from seeing them directly also, experiencing them directly also. Because part of that experience is to then know that they're true. It's not understanding because somebody you believe told you. 

It's because you've experienced them directly. 

Individual analysis. 

Then we went on to these four different types of Nirvana, but what they mean is what the term Nirvana is referring to. Like how it might be manifesting in someone, and we had just spoken about the first one, which was RANG-SHIN NYANG-DE –Natural Nirvana. 

Let's look at all four of those in my shared screen:

Vocabulary class 6

rang-shin nyang-de         dundam denpa

hlak-che nyang-de

hlak-me nyang-de

mi-nepay nyang-de si-ta shi-ta

dak-me tok-pay she-rab kyi lap-pa

lap-pa dan-po nyi-kyi sin-pa

tok-sin gom-pa

Overview 4 Kinds of Nirvana

In the top section are these 4 kinds of Nirvana. Geshela used that term.

But when I hear it, my mind thinks like 4 different kinds of apples. 

It's not quite like that. 

1 . RANG-SHIN NYANG-DE – Natural Nirvana

So we learned the RANG-SHIN NYANG-DE. We learned that that's another term for the ultimate nature of every existing thing. So another term for DUNDAM DENPA, which is Ultimate Truth or Ultimate Reality. 

But when we use RANG-SHIN NYANG-DE, we're meaning some specific existing things and their empty nature that allows them to be the specific existing thing for whoever is experiencing them. 

The natural Nirvana of any existing thing is its emptiness–inanimate thing, animate thing–when we're using the word thing: people, animals, helpings, cars, trucks, plugs, everything has natural Nirvana. 

It does not mean they've used to not have natural Nirvana, and then they did what they had to do to reach the cessation via the individual analysis. 

It's called natural Nirvana because the instant anything exists it is lacking its own nature in it. 

It has its emptiness. And the emptiness of that was never involved in mental afflictions or causes for mental afflictions, so it really is free of mental afflictions. 

A thing’s emptiness is free of mental afflictions–even in the midst of our worst mental affliction we have natural Nirvana. Because ourselves and every instant of nasty mental affliction is still lacking self nature. 

It does qualify to be called Nirvana. But it doesn't qualify in terms of the definition of Nirvana which was that cessation that comes from that individual analysis. 

You get the difference here? 

All right, so now these other three relate to the Nirvana that is a cessation which comes from the individual analysis, which consists of having eliminated entirely all mental affliction obstacles. Meaning all mental afflictions and seeds for more. 

There are HLAK-CHE NYANG-DE Nirvana, there's a HLAK-ME NYANG-DE Nirvana and this one called MI-NEPAY NYANG-DE SI-TA SHI-TA. Just fun to say: SI-TA SHI-TA. 

2 . HLAK-ME NYANG-DE – Nirvana with remainder/left over

We've heard the term HLAK, haven't we? 

As in HLAKSAM NYANG-DE. 

Here the HLAK means something left over, it means remainder. 

I don't know what the Tibetan spelling of it is, if it's different than the other HLAK, HLAKSAM. But this one HLAK-CHE:

CHE = having or possessing

NYANG-DE = Nirvana

So that Nirvana, the cessation of all mental afflictions, etc, that has something remaining. 

They translated as Nirvana with remainder. 

Nirvana was something leftover. 

3 . MI-NEPAY NYANG-DE SI-TA SHI-TA – Nirvana without remainder/left over

MI = the negation

So it means something left over not Nirvana. 

Nirvana with no remainder, with no  thing remaining, no leftovers. 

I remember hearing this for the first time. It was so confusing. And now I don't understand why it was so confusing. 

I hope that at the end of my sharing with you, you go, oh dah. 

But I don't promise you that that's the case, because I'm using the same words Geshe Michael used to describe it to me, and by the end of it, it was like what? How can that be that you can have Nirvana with remainder or Nirvana without? 

But these are two real Nirvanas as compared to the first one. It's not that it's not real, but it's not included in this cessation that we achieved by way of our individual analysis, do you see? 

Let me just give you the 4th one.

4 . MI-NEPAY NYANG-DE SI-TA SHI-TA – Nirvana that does not stay in either extreme of Sansara or peace

MI-NEAPY = to not stay

SI-TA = a contraction of the words for ‘to stay on the edge of Sansara, the extreme of Sansara’. TA = the extreme edge, Sansara

SHI-TA = the extreme edge of peace

So this phrase is saying: the Nirvana that does not stay in either extreme of Sansara or peace, which here is a code for what we would call our Arhat, Nirvana. It's the Nirvana that doesn't stay in Sansara, and it doesn't stay in not Sansara–in Nirvana. 

Which is meaning the Nirvana of a Buddha, and we'll get there. 

So let's go back. 

2 . HLAK-ME NYANG-DE – Nirvana with remainder/left over

If a person that we knew were to reach their Nirvana tonight, and we see them tomorrow, would  they look any different to us? 

No. 

If I reach Nirvana tonight, and they don't, are they gonna look any different to me? 

Yeah, not visually different. But definitely experientially different, very different, actually. 

But that other one wouldn't see me any differently. 

That person who achieves their Nirvana tonight and we see them tomorrow, they still have a physical form, apparently. 

Would they have any suffering left? 

Apply the definition: Nirvana means the cessation of all mental afflictions and seeds for more because of what they've done to overcome their ignorance due to what they have seen before. Probably a long time ago before. 

Which sort of by definition, they can't have a mental affliction. 

Do we think somebody could suffer and not have a mental affliction? 

Is it what we mean by suffering? An upset state of mind? 

Yes.

So, if they have no more seeds or any mental affliction, no anger, no fear, no irritation, no jealousy. You get the idea. No ignorant wanting. 

Doesn't mean not wanting it all but completely impossible that they could be unkind to get something they wanted. 

Completely impossible for them to do something unkind to avoid something they didn't want.

Are they still going to ripen things they don't want? 

Yeah. 

If they still have a physical body, they are still in Sansaric world. There's still going to be this [thumbs up, thumbs down, neutral] going on in response to everything. But there's no mental affliction related to this going on: Positive, negative, neutral. 

So there's no suffering going on, there's no mental afflictions happening. 

In this place of an unpleasant situation, their direct experience is that it's their seed ripening that whole situation. So their reaction is a wisdom reaction, like the Yogi and king of Kalinka. 

Did he feel pain? 

Yes. 

Did he suffer? 

Apparently not. He just loved the guy more and more. 

We could say pain is inevitable, but suffering is not until we reach a Higher level yet. 

So even Arhat  can still have pain. 

It's not that they'll just say, I refuse to suffer from this pain. 

They don't have the seeds to suffer from the pain. 

Not that they like pain. They don't like it. 

But they don't have a mental affliction about where it's really coming from. 

So we get this glimpse into the joy one could have at the pain. Because you're directly aware that you're burning off those seeds. You could take that to the debate ground. 

If pain is a joyful experience, does it really qualify as pain? 

Ask a mom about the pain she had at the birth of her baby. 

Was that pain? 

Yes. But oh my gosh, this joyful pain that's not. No, it's not. 

We've heard the story of King Udriana and Bimbisara about the making of the Wheel of LifeThanka. 

King Udriana  was the one who took one look at it, Ah! and goes into the direct perception of emptiness. Then through the course of that life, he makes great progress. And he's Buddha’s student, and at some point, I don't know which direction started it, but both he and Buddha become aware that the King's son is plotting to kill the dad. 

And Udriana goes to Buddha, What should I do? 

We might think that Udriana is wanting to save his life. 

But his concern was that if his son kills him that son would be committing two of the heinous crimes: killing his father and killing an Arhat. And he didn't want the son to make that mistake. 

But Udriana was not omniscient. Buddha was. 

And Buddha saw that it was necessary. 

So he counseled King Udriana, go visit your son. Go spend time with him. 

You know what's going to happen. Sorry. You need to do it. But He is Arhat, he said he's Arhat. However, his son kills him, he's not personally suffering. 

But what about his mindset towards the son. Isn't that suffering? 

Or does he see the extent to which the son's gonna benefit from that need someday? 

Even though in this short run is going to get some really bad boogie. 

It's really hard to wrap our conceptual mind around this state of mind Nirvana with remainder, which is what we're talking about here. 

The term Nirvana with remainder. The story of King Udriana gives us a clue as to what that means. We can reach Nirvana state of mind, no more mental afflictions possible, not even seeds for more. But still have the leftover of our suffering heaps. 

They have a momentum that needs to finish off. 

Just because we now are aware of everything seeds ripening doesn't automatically make our body poof out of existence. 

We're aware our body is coming from seeds. We are aware that this is coming from seeds, second heap. We're aware our discriminating between things is coming from seeds. 

All the other factors that make us up... Get the idea? 

Nirvana with leftover. 

What's leftover? 

The impure heaps. 

Do we call them suffering heaps anymore? 

No. But they are still impure. Got it? 

So let me clarify that this teaching about these four kinds of Nirvana comes to us from Middle Way’s Svatantrica. Not highest Middle Way. 

Highest Middle Way has a different explanation of what it means: the difference between Nirvana with remainder and Nirvana without remainder. 

Lower School’s explanation of Nirvana With/Without Remainder

Let's talk about a little bit about Lower School that tells us Nirvana without remainder, what that means. 

If you reach Nirvana with remainder, that means still have this physical body with whatever amount of life it's got left in it going through all those experiences, and then finally running out of seeds for this life and this body dies. 

Does the mind go on? 

Yes. 

Does the mind that's reached freedom from mental afflictions and seeds for more, is it still free of all mental afflictions and seeds for more? 

Yes. 

It wasn't just that life’s seeds that it burned off when they reached Nirvana. Because it still had that life. And the mental afflictions and seeds in that mind, were they just from that life? 

No, they're from all lives, since forever, that have been burned off or so damaged they can't ripen. 

The mind at the end of this life, is still Nirvana. It's still in a state of Nirvana. 

The state of Nirvana is not a place. Do you see? 

It's a, you could say a state of mind, but it's a ripening moment by moment by moment of the awareness of our mind that's free of mental afflictions. 

Does that have to have a place? 

No. 

It's happening wherever that mind perceives itself to be. 

So at the end of this life that mind is still in Nirvana. It still has Nirvana, but now it has no remainder. It does not have what was left over when it reached Nirvana in that lifetime. 

But then what happens? 

You just go into some Never Never land in your Nirvana? 

No. 

Something's going to come next. You go through the death process, you go into Bardo. 

But are you going to be forced into a rebirth, like a non-Nirvana mind is? 

No. 

Somehow from that point of the moment of death until whatever the next life is going to be, seeds are still ripening. If I understand somewhat accurately, one has some kind of seed management ability. And you can direct what kind of seed ripening next life you're going to have, you're going to project. 

If you are not Mahayana and you just reached Nirvana–Nirvana with no remainder–you've reached your goal. 

And whatever you project that life to look like is going to be what it is. 

You can't call it Buddha Paradise, because it's not. They're not omniscient. 

But it's probably just as beautiful and just as exquisite and just as enjoyable. 

Then they say that in that mind, that wasn't Mahayana, at some point hanging out in their Nirvana, something stirs them. And they realize, wait, I'm missing something here. I can't help anybody. I want to help people, beings. 

And somehow we know that we need to go back into a human form as the best place to grow our compassion. 

So presumably it means you could have someone who's free of mental afflictions, who's walking our planet learning, growing their compassion, so that they can clear their obstacles to omniscience. 

This school proposes that that being actually goes through a path of accumulation, preparation, path of seeing, path of habituation to reach their no more learning again. 

My mind would say, you mean they start all over? 

And I don't think it's like that. 

It must be very swift, and focused on different things that you're focusing on for your path of accumulation and preparation. It's all directed at growing your compassion from regular human compassion to a deeper understanding, all the way to that holy great compassion–using what you know to be true about karma and emptiness to care that other people are still suffering. 

Probably primarily still suffering from not knowing that their suffering is so unnecessary. 

We might then say, well then, do they have Nirvana with leftovers again? 

I don't know. 

But the point is, Nirvana reached without the Mahayana motivation is temporary. 

It meant I still really, really, really, really, really long time, but it's not the ultimate state that a consciousness can reach and so it will eventually push itself further. 

Our tradition says, Why not go for the highest from the get go? 

And if we have the seeds to be attracted to the Mahayana, we don't need much convincing to follow the Mahayana. 

But it's really not fair to say, oh duh, everybody should follow Mahayana because not everybody has those seeds. 

So the difference between Nirvana with remainder and Nirvana without remainder is those impure heaps that are left over. 

If you reach your Nirvana before your physical body dies, kind of implies that you could reach your Nirvana when the body dies. But that's not what we want to talk about here. 

When we still have a body, it means we still have the five heaps that are still impure because they come as a result of ripening seeds that are stained with that ignorance that made them impure. But our experience of them is that they're pouring out of our seeds instead of being some aspect of us that we have. That's in us from us rather than in us from us from our seeds. Our past behavior results. 

So those five heaps we know there's the heap of form, the physical body that has a certain trajectory that it's on until it comes to the last seed for this life. 

We have the heap of feeling. Not meaning emotions. But just really raw and subtle thumbs up=positive, thumbs down=negative, thumbs neutral=neither positive nor negative. 

That every seed ripening has within it and so triggers that positive, negative, neutral. 

Physically positive, negative, neutral, I guess. 

Mental positive, negative. 

One of them doesn't have a neutral. 

But very, very subtle. And then instant after that comes the discriminating between things. 

Meaning on a subtle level thumbs up from it, in it, I want it. I want that. Is happening in the discriminating heap. 

We think of it, Oh, it's how I tell the difference between this and that. 

How I tell the difference between long and short, me and you. 

And that's true. That's how we start learning about this heap of discriminating. 

But it's happening on this really subtle level from this: I want. From this: I want to push away. 

We have to know. You need to be able to tell the difference between me and it to be able to even do this. 

Then we get heap number 4: All those mental factors that make us up. 

That's where all of our mentally emotional experiences are happening. 

What we would call feeling is here. 

When we say feeling means: I feel hurt, I feel happy, those kind of feelings. 

So when you're teaching it, it's important to make clear that the heap of feeling is not those. 

The heap of feeling is just positive, negative, neutral. 

Then the heap of all the other factors that make us up is where are those emotions and mental states are. 

Some schools say there's 54 of those. This school says there's 46 mental functions that make us up, main ones. But two of them are feeling and discriminating between things. 

So in all the other factors that make us up, there's 44 mental functions that every experience we have is some combination of. 

So I guess you could do 44 factorial, and that number would tell you how many different emotional state reactions we could possibly have as humans. 

I've never done that figure. 44 factorial would be pretty big. 

Then we have the heap of consciousness. Which we've learned: the eye–there's an eye consciousness. We could call it a vision consciousness, but they call it eye consciousness. 

Ear, nose–smell, taste–tongue, and tactile. 

But then there's a 6th one. And that's the mental consciousness. 

Which we tend to think that that's what we mean by consciousness, is the mental consciousness. And it's what's behind all the others. But mental consciousness is specifically the awareness of thought. The reaction that is pushing our choices. 

Heart Sutra says all the different kinds of awarenesses that make us up. 

It's telling us that we are made of all these different awarenesses. 

We are not a awareness that has all these others. 

All of those make us up. 

The awarenesses plus all the other factors, plus the discriminating between things, plus the feeling, plus the form. 

Now we're talking about that because you reached Nirvana with remainder and you still have all that stuff. 

Before Nirvana, that's all suffering stuff. 

Suffering outright and making seeds for more. By the time we're at Nirvana there are not suffering heaps anymore, but they are still impure. Because their ripening is forced by the ignorance and selfishness through which they were planted, that's still in there. 

Only as we experience them, we can't suffer from them anymore. 

When that form cesses, it means that lifetimes worth of feeling, discriminating between thing, all the other factors and consciousnesses, the ones we were relating to through our physical body are done. 

But our mind is still going on, but we have no more impure heap.

Nirvana without remainder. 

Now, will our Buddha have heaps? Does Buddha you have 5 heaps? 

Form, feeling, discriminating between things, all those other factors and consciousness?

I hope so. 

Are they impure heaps? 

No. 

Our Buddhahood's gonna have pure heaps, and they're called the four Buddha bodies. 

How you get 5 heaps out of four Buddhahood bodies, I'm not sure. 

And they don't directly correspond–Oh, my physical body will become my form body. 

We do use our physical and our actions of our physical to transform it into a form body, and our mind transforms into our mental body, and our emptiness of both of those transforms into our Dharmakaya body. 

But you wouldn't say this body becomes my Buddha body. 

Highest School’s explanation of Nirvana With/Without Remainder

Highest school, they have a different opinion about what Nirvana with and without remainder means. They say the leftover refers to conceptual thought. 

Nirvana with remainder means you've reached Nirvana, and you still have conceptual thoughts. 

What are conceptual thoughts? 

Can you have non conceptual thought? 

I really don't know the answer to that. 

But conceptual thought means awareness that we are aware of, like ripenings. The appearing side of our existence. There's conceptual thought going on. 

It's fullon conceptual thought when we're actually thinking the mental words. 

But conceptual thought means this awareness of like when we finally make the identity, and have our response, that's all happening at the level of conceptual thought. 

So Nirvana with leftover, according to Higher School means, when you've reached Nirvana and you are not still in or back into the direct perception of emptiness. Because when we are having the direct experience of ultimate reality, that's the only time we're not having any conceptual thought. Everything is direct –until we're Buddha then everything's direct. 

So Higher School says Nirvana without remainder is the state of mind that is experiencing emptiness directly, whether it's your first time or your 100 billionth time. 

Every time you're in that you are Nirvana without remainder. 

Then they say Nirvana with remainder is when you reach that place where all your mental afflictions and seeds for more have been burned off by way of your individual analysis. 

So they're saying you actually reached Nirvana with no remainder first. 

Because in that direct perception of emptiness, you are free of mental afflictions.

But you haven't reached Nirvana in the sense of free of them forever, by way of living, according to what you now know. 

Nirvana without remainder is this temporary state, and then you use what you saw what you experienced and what came after to stop replanting mental afflictions and seeds for more–even the very subtle mental affliction of things having their own nature. 

And so it takes time to reach Nirvana with remainder. 

And every time you go back into the direct perception of emptiness, you are in Nirvana with no remainder, but it's only temporary. 

4 . MI-NEPAY NYANG-DE SI-TA SHI-TA – Nirvana that does not stay in either extreme of Sansara or peace

The Nirvana that does not stay in the extreme of Sansara or the extreme of peace is how they describe the state of mind of a Buddha's Nirvana.

Not meaning their Buddha Paradise. 

But meaning if we use the term Nirvana for a Buddha’s state of mind, would it be true that they have reached freedom from all mental afflictions and seeds for more by way of their individual analysis? 

Yes. 

So they do have a Nirvana state of mind. 

Do they have Nirvana with or without remainder? 

We would have to say without remainder, really from either definition because they don't have any impure heaps, and they also don't have any conceptual thought. 

Does that mean Buddhas don't think? 

No, of course they think. 

But every “think” is direct. Not having to figure out something. 

All of our conceptual thoughts, we have to do something to have them first. 

When we are Buddha, all thought is direct. 

Again, exactly what that means I can't wrap my mind around. 

So a Buddha’s Nirvana is not the Nirvana of an Arhat who still has a physical body and those heaps to deal with. That's an Arhat who's staying in Sansara. 

They're not choosing to stay. They reached Nirvana in that body and it still has some time left on that life. Like the parking meter still has minutes on it. 

Buddhas don't stay in the SHI-TA, the extreme of Peace. Because they mean by that extreme of peace the Nirvana of the Nirvana sized being when they've finished their life. 

Buddhas don't stay there either. 

Because to become Buddha, they did reach the freedom of all their mental afflictions, and they did what they needed to do to clear out their obstacles to omniscience. 

So it's a different state of mind than the state of mind that they call SHI-TA, the extreme of peace. 

SI-TA SHI-TA means that Nirvana where you still have a left over physical body. 

Or the Nirvana that you reach when that physical body is done, but was not motivated to reach Buddhahood. Buddhas don't stand either one. You see? 

They just continue right on to Buddhahood. 

When they reach Buddhahood, do they lose their Nirvana because now they're Buddha? 

No, because Nirvana is the cessation of all mental afflictions and obstacles or seeds for more by way of their individual analysis. They did that to reach Buddhahood. So they do still have Nirvana. But we just say, yeah, great, right? 

It's part of being Buddha. 

3 Factors to reach Nirvana

So what do we need to do to get there? 

What do we need to reach Nirvana? Let's go back to our shared screen.

dak-me tok-pay she-rab kyi lap-pa

lap-pa dan-po nyi-kyi sin-pa

tok-sin gom-pa

These three are our vocabulary. 

We cultivate three things and all three need to be present in the right order for reaching this state of mind Nirvana with remainder or without remainder. 

Not meaning direct perception, but then freedom from mental afflictions out of the direct perception. 

Geshela said it's like a car engine. You not only need all the parts. But they all need to be put together in a certain way for the car to run. 

These three things about how to reach Nirvana, need to be put together in the proper way for them to propel us to the end of our suffering. 

So here's the three:

1. DAK-ME TOK-PAY SHE-RAB KYI LAP-PA – Ordinary Training in Wisdom

2. LAP-PA DAN-PO NYI-KYI SIN-PA

3. TOK-SIN GOM-PA

DAK-ME = No, self nature 

DAK = self, but here we mean self nature. 

Not in the sense of myself, Sarahni. But that self nature that I think I have. 

DAM-ME = no self nature

DAK-ME TOK-PAY = realization

So no self nature realization. 

SHE-RAB = wisdom

KYI LAP-PA → LA-PA = training

So that training of the wisdom of the realization of the no self nature. 

Does a self exist? 

Yeah. 

Myself, yourself. Technically even a pen’s self. Not a conscious self, but it's an existing thing. 

It has some self. 

Does my my-self exist in the way I think it does as an ordinary human being? 

How do I think it does as an ordinary human being? 

I think I have a Me with its own qualities and characteristics and unique to me, that everybody if they just knew me well enough, would know me like I know me. 

If there's a me, like I believe there is, I'll meet somebody who will care enough  to get to know me like I know me, and then of course, we hope they love me. We call them soulmates or something, right? They know me so well… Humans. 

That's our human belief. 

We could call it an independent, self-existent me. 

I have trouble with those words. 

Do you really think of yourself as independently self existing? Like, independent of everything? No, I need food. I need air. I need David. I need, I need, I need. 

If I were self-existent it would mean I wouldn't need anything. 

I think when we use the term self-existent, as we go through our classes, I'm hoping that we're fine tuning what we mean by that word. 

Because if we use that word to somebody outside our tradition, they'll go, I don’t believe I'm self existent. I don't believe my car is self existent. And then they won't pay any attention to our message. 

Because the word isn't right unless we understand what we mean by the word. 

Like this whole training is all about what do we mean by the words that we're using? 

So that self-existent self what we mean is this self that comes from its own side. 

Which for those of you who have already studied, let's look at that a little deeper. 

My real me is my me coming from my own seeds. 

Is it? 

So my not self-existent me does come from me. It is in me. 

Can I get away with saying that? 

It is coming from me. It's my seeds. 

So it's true that there's a me in here coming from me. 

What would you say? 

How about: According to Who's looking? 

It's true for me to say, I'm coming from me. 

But then if I say, well then my me that you're seeing is coming from me, that would be incorrect, wouldn't it? 

Unless I could see what you were seeing me as. In which case that would be coming from me. 

It's getting slippery. 

We don't need to go there in this early class. ACI 2 does not go there. 

I was doing that for your benefit. 

So let's go back to ACI 2. 

Does the me that comes from its own side the same for everybody exist? 

No. 

Does the me exist at all? 

Yes. 

Is that me’s real nature the availability for you to see me the way that you do, and me to see me the way that I do. And all of that is me? 

There is a me, according to whoever is perceiving them. And I do perceive me, so that's one of them. 

But it's not anymore real than the one you see. 

But we sure think it is. I'm the real one. The one I see is the real one. 

The one you see is the one you see, but OK. 

I'll go with that, but the real me is me. And that's a mistake, right? 

And as we go through the different schools, we'll see how that is a mistake. 

1. The extraordinary training in Wisdom

So this factor in reaching Nirvana is the training in the wisdom realizing the no self nature. 

Like the no self nature of everything in anything, including oneself. 

This is called the extraordinary training of wisdom, or the ordinary training in wisdom. 

It starts out with the intellectual understanding. 

And that intellectual understanding gets stronger and stronger as we try to live, making our behavioral choices according to it until we have the direct experience of that lack of self nature.

After which we continue to live according to it, making our behavior choices by way of what we now know for sure. Whereas before, we were making those behavior choices based on what we believed was now true. 

We're learning, path of accumulation, we're learning a little bit. Enough to where we go, Oh yeah, maybe there is a way to stop this cycle. 

Then, some point we shift onto the path of preparation, and we hear about the pen, and we hear about the two husbands in the kitchen, and we hear about the angry boss, and we hear it over and over. We try to explain it to somebody else, over and over, and we catch on slowly to the point where when we do have an angry boss experience, hopefully we'll go, Oh wow, here's a chance. To try it on for size. And maybe it goes well, and maybe it doesn't. 

The effort to not yell back plants a really powerful seeds and makes it a little easier to do it again next time. And next time and next time and every time we do it, there's that many less seeds in our mind for it to happen again, either the one coming at us or the situation that in which we yell at somebody else. Which is the real reason they're yelling at us. 

So it's really not enough to not yell back at the person yelling at us. 

We have to also not yell at the person who's frustrating us or something, whatever reason we yell at the other person.

We have to stop it in these two arenas for the seeds to get damaged enough to where, at some point you have to go looking for angry people to see if you still have anger seeds, says Master Shantideva later on. 

So this training in Sharab is hearing the pen thing over and over and over again. 

Study. Chew on it. Debate it. Try to explain it to others. 

So that we can cultivate the goodness that will bring us to the direct experience of it.

Training and wisdom. 

Trying to live by it. 

2. The extraordinary training in Concentration & Morality

LAP-PA DAN-PO NYI-KYI SIN-PA

LAP-PA = training

DAN-PO NYI-KYI SIN-PA = under the influence of the first two

We need to know that because they said the first one is about the extraordinary training in wisdom. What the second one is talking about is we're doing that training in wisdom under the influence of training and finely tuned morality, and finally tuned concentration. Which is the other two of the three extraordinary trainings. 

They say the first factor is training in wisdom. But the second factor is training in wisdom with a mind that's already training itself in morality and concentration. 

So we have to start somewhere. 

We learned the pen. And then we learned that, oh, the ramification of that is that I need to be really conscientious about avoiding harming others. And if my aspiration is really big, then I not only avoid harming, but I try really hard to be helpful in specific ways. 

And there's actually a third factor in there of doing both of those avoiding harming and helping with the mind that wants to reach total Buddhahood by doing so, the Mahayana first two. 

We're learning intellectually about emptiness. And then we're learning about morality. 

They go together. Because we see all right, the pen thing means I need to behave some way differently towards the yelling boss to get the yelling boss to quit being my experience. 

So I do need to change my behavior, and out of the bazillion behaviors I could try, might there be some guidelines? 

Yeah, there's ten basic ones to avoid. 

Which if you flip them over, they're the 10 basic ones to train in the goodness of. 

If you want them more fine-tuned, you can look at your refuge advices, your Pratimoksha vows, growing into Bodhisattva vows, growing into Diamond Way vows for more and more specific guidance on specific behaviors. 

But they all come out of those ten non virtues, and the 10 virtues. 

So the training and morality is learning about the behaviors, learning about karma and its correlations, and the training is trying to live according to them using those as guidelines for our behavior choices in life. 

To be able to do that takes a trained level of concentration. 

The extraordinary training in concentration generally refers to our meditative cushion time training. And in that training, what we are in fact training is our DREMPA and SHESHIN–our ability to hold on to our object of focus and our ability to check whether we're on it clearly or stupidly. 

We use our meditation cushion time to build those two tools. 

Third tool, the ability to adjust and check. 

When we take that off our cushion, what we're hooking ourselves to with our DREMPA is our morality, our ethical choices. 

And what our SHESHIN is doing, is watching clearly our choice of behavior that's starting to arise: Oh, I should yell back. That's how I get them to stop yelling at me. Old world view. 

Our hook of DREMPA: No, do something different.

SHESHIN says, Hello, you're about ready to react badly. 

SHESHIN doesn't tell you what to do. You have to do that. 

But SHESHIN that's alert is that state of mind that goes, What is my natural reaction? 

Am I going to let myself do that? 

Yes. No. 

It takes concentration–ethical mindfulness, I like to call it. 

Our on-cushion practice grows our mindfulness off-cushion. 

We tend to think, Oh my off-cushion mindfulness is going to grow my on-cushion and meditation. And that's true. 

But how much, compare the time you spend on your cushion. Compare it to the time you spend off your cushion. Where's your leverage? Where's your power? 

Off cushion time. 

So prepare yourself on your cushion for what's going to happen in the other 23 hours of your day to live according to these two other trainings, the first two. 

So it takes those three. The first two things you need to reach Nirvana is these three. 

Don't you love the Tibetan lists? 

3. Getting used to live according to our realizations

Third one is TOK-SIN GOM-PA.

GOM-PA, we know that word: Habituate. Meaning getting used to something. 

It means meditation. But it means meditation, even in the sense that our on-cushion time meditation is our time that we spend getting used to going deeply inside to make our mind into this tool that can come to perceive directly the true arising nature and the true empty nature of all existence. 

So using the term GOM-PA for meditation means getting used to going deep enough to see emptiness directly. 

We don't tend to think of meditation in that way. 

That it's just to getting used to something. 

So GOM-PA, getting used to something off-our cushion, we hear that in the Path of habituation: GOMLAM, it's the same word. 

Getting used to living according to what we now know from having seen emptiness directly, which came from having seen dependent origination directly. Which came from seeing something else directly in the sequence of events. 

So here TOK-SIN GOM-PA means getting used to  the realization we've already had. 

TOK-SIN = the realization we already had

Usually when we say “realization”, it means something that wasn't true for us. That now, because of some experience, is now true for us. 

We will have realizations of things. 

The realization of emptiness directly is a huge one. 

But it's not the only one. 

Once we've had any realization, this factor is getting used to what we saw. Meaning learning to live according to it. Because it doesn't come automatically.

Just because now you know how to ride a bike. Because you finally got on one. 

It doesn't mean that you automatically know how to ride that bike according to the rules of the road to keep yourself and others safe. 

The more we ride the bike. The better we get at it. 

And the more we know about the safety rules, the more likely we can ride the bike often enough to get really good at it. 

And maybe you want to become one of those people who can ride the bike, along the fence line. Have you seen that kid do that on the video? 

It's a chain link fence and he's riding his bicycle along the top of it. 

It's like, come on. 

That's the kind of thing we're talking about here. 

And of course, the most powerful of our realizations is the direct perception of emptiness. 

That means the most powerful of our getting used to learn to living according to it, is our what happens after. Which is where back in life, that looks just the same, feels just the same. But now we know we are mistaken in every instant of experience. 

So we know our natural reaction is the mistaken one, and we know to choose from our vows for our response is how we burn off that–pleasant or unpleasant–situation born of ignorance and plant new ones born of wisdom.

Then that's our job. From then until Buddhahood. However many lifetimes it takes. 

Getting used to living according to karma and emptiness instead of living according to me and my selfishness. Which is what we do beforehand. 

Not meaning we're bad, we're just all mistaken. We've been taught that's what you do as adult, people. 

How do we know if we're making progress on our path?

There are these four stages that we'll find ourselves in that show us that we are progressing on our Buddhist path. 

1. Becoming a Stream Enterer

We become stream enterer in that moment of the direct perception of emptiness. 

With that direct perception, we become Arya. Meaning a superior being. 

Not meaning superior to everybody else. But meaning superior to how we ourselves have ever known ourselves before. 

Because now we know that all this self-existent Me-s I've ever believed in were mistaken. 

Now I know the truth of that. That's Arya. 

Arya is said to be stream enter because they don't believe any of the apparently self existent things. They don't believe them to be self existent, even as they see them that way. 

They are in the stream to the end of that, because they are burning off seeds stained with ignorance, and not replanting them. 

What they're replanting is seeds with wisdom. 

They are not not replanting seeds. 

But ignorance is not replanted. 

Which means that all the seeds that we still have, that have ignorance, staining them. They are no longer being fed with more ignorance. 

Which means just by them burning off, the ones that burn off, they're gone. And the ones that are still waiting to get burnt off, are not being fed. 

So this stream is picking up momentum, just by living. 

Now if you got there with this strong motivation to be the one who ends the suffering of all beings, you're going to be actively working with those seeds and the burning off, and then not replanting. So now you're stream enterer before you were on the raft just going along. 

Now you have a little outboard engine on the back, and you're like zooming along your stream enterer. 

But technically you don't have to do that. 

Just float in the inner tube, and you'll get there eventually. 

You cannot stop. 

Like you don't ever run out of river and you don't ever get off on shore. 

You’re stream enterer. 

2. Becoming a Once Returner

In the inner tube along your stream, you are likely to wear out your seeds for that life. 

Does that mean your mind of stream enterer falls out of the stream just because your body has died? 

No. 

You still have the mind that's burning off ignorance and planting not ignorance, planting wisdom as you are forced to take another rebirth. 

So stream enterer, the first time we become stream enterer and that life ends, we still have enough ignorant seeds that we’ll be forced into another lifetime. 

But the seeds that ripen will force us into a lifetime that's conducive with us continuing our practice. 

You get born to Buddhist parents, or you get born in sufficiently comfortable circumstances, but you're that kid who at 10 years old is already asking “Why does this happen like that? Why does this happen like that?” 

Seeds are ripening, getting you on your path again, soon, early. 

And your seeds will ripen, perceiving emptiness directly fairly early in life, Geshe Michael describes. 

And you come out of that seeing the four Arya truths, probably having the Bodhichitta if we if our previous life realizations were Mahayana. We pick up sort of where we left off in that lifetime. Probably we have teachers. But maybe not. 

Because we have these seeds propelling us. 

That one's called once returner. 

It's not necessarily the very next life after stream enterer. 

I'm not quite sure how many that goes through. 

Because we're told that typically through direct perception of emptiness will take about 7 lifetimes before we finish the process and reach Buddhahood. 

Somewhere along the line we reached the last forced rebirth into perfect circumstances. 

So we're not really afraid of forced rebirth. 

And this once returner, you're only forced into it once. 

At the end of that life you become what's called non-returner. 

3. Becoming a Non Returner

One who will not come back to any of the six desire realms, again involuntarily. 

Well, now you closed the door to lesser rebirth a long time ago. But you won't be pushed into human, jealous God, pleasure being, form or formless realm. 

Oh, where do you go then? 

4. Becoming an Arhat/A Foe Destroyer

Meaning, you have destroyed the foe of even experiencing things or self with their natures in them. The foe of the big mistake, the ignorance. 

When that's destroyed, we are perceiving everything as our own mental images ripening, ripening, ripening, planting, planting, planting. 

Foe destroyer, Arhat attained Nirvana.

Arhat is the term we use for one who has reached the cessation of all mental afflictions and seeds for these due to their individual analysis. And it cleared off those all entirely. 

Reaching Arya is not getting to Nirvana. 

It takes time, lifetimes then to be Arya who is now also Arhat, which means Nirvana. 

First, we're stream enterer as Arya. 

Then we reach once returner. 

Then we reach the level non returner.

And then we reach the level Nirvana Arhat. 

And for a Mahayanist, then we are working specifically on clearing out the obstacles to omniscience. 

So reaching Nirvana, reaching Arhat is like one tool along the way. 

It is not at all the goal. 

Not that you don't experience it. 

But it's not like, yay, I've reached Nirvana. 

It's like, OK, Buddhahood's not so far away. 

Homework Assignment

You're homework assignment says “Memorize the description of the method to achieve Nirvana”. 

Which is on page 3 of reading 3. 

I'll read it to you. It's the synopsis of what I just spent the last half an hour talking about. 

It says:

Suppose you are able to analyze one by one 

those things that have no self. 

And after that you habituate yourself

To what you analyzed individually. 

This is what then leads you

To achieve your freedom;

Nirvana beyond grief. 

It is impossible for any other cause 

to bring this peace to you. 

So find it in your reading. 

Geshela says, memorize it.

Clearly, I haven't memorized it. I did for the assignment and it's gone. 

But the point is look at those different phrases within it, and try to match your understanding of what we've talked about. So that you can grow this image in your mind about this process that we're learning, that we're setting about to set in motion. 

It's not that it doesn't start until seeing emptiness directly. 

It's we start setting it into motion on our path of accumulation, and then passive preparation. 

The better we understand the big picture, the little bits that we do at the beginning, our planting our seeds with a more complete picture. 

It works without the complete picture. But it's just that much more powerful the more we understand as we're moving along our path.

Some of you have already done the higher classes, and now we're back into the lower classes. 

Sense that's a big advantage. Because now you can apply what you already know to this stuff that we're already learning. 

On the other hand, it's also a big advantage for it all to be kind of new and fresh and to be building the little Lego blocks altogether. 

So either way we're in the right space. 

Meditation Assignment

Then your meditation assignment is: Imagine what it would be like to achieve Nirvana according to this definition that we've learned. 

Like next week, imagine that you reach it next week, and go through your imagined day with this mind that's perceiving your seeds creating the you and your experience in every moment. 

Don't imagine some perfect day. 

Imagine your usual work day. 

But imagine you're aware that it’ seeds, seeds, seeds, seeds, and see how it goes. 

Pretty fascinating, actually. 

That's class. 

[Usual dedication]

Alright, thank you so very much. Thank you Roxana for translating. Please do your homework, your assignments. I will see you Sunday evening.

Gakja

Lo nu-me la nang-way wang-gi shak-tsam

Madhyamika svatantrika school

Welcome back, we are ACI Course 2 class 7on October 1st, 2023. 

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

[Usual opening]

Review class 6

We learned Madhyamika Svatantrika’s explanation of Nirvana and the difference between Nirvana with something left over and Nirvana without something left over. 

What is that difference? Joana, please. 

[Joana] It refers to the impure heaps that are left over. 

So if we reach Nirvana in this life, in this body, we still have seeds for the impure heaps, the body, feeling, all the other factors that make us up, consciousness and… I forgot the other one.

[Lama Sarahni] Yeah, form, feeling, discriminating between things, all the other factors that make us up and all the consciousnesses. 

[Joana] So, but as soon as we have left this life, those seeds will be gone this well and then we don't have the leftovers, but the mind still has this other mainstream still has the Nirvana state.

[Lama Sarahni] Right. Because the seeds for suffering are all gone. And they're still all gone once the physical body for the life in which they reach that mental state is gone. Good. 

Then what does it mean: the Nirvana which does not stay? Nirvana does not stay in either the edge of peace or the edge of suffering. What does that mean? 

[Luisa] I think it’s Buddhahood, yeah. 

[Lama Sarahni] Yeah, Buddhahood. So Buddhas have the state of mind of Nirvana, that's the cessation of all mental afflictions because of their individual analysis et cetera. And they still have that once they're Buddha. 

But Buddhahood is more than that. Good. 

Then there were three main parts of the method for achieving Nirvana. I'll go through them so that we can get to class. We are trained in the wisdom realizing emptiness by first gaining strong intellectual understanding. Then going on to perceive it directly. 

Part 2 is that were working on number one, Part one under the influence of finely tuned morality and concentration. 

So it's not like we do number one first and then number 2. OK. 

These aren't what we do in order. 

We're keeping our vows and we're meditating regularly, so that our mindfulness of our behavior off our question gets stronger and stronger. 

Third: After one and two, have brought us to our path of seeing, then we habituate to living according to what we now know. So we're using our skill of our powerful morality with our powerful mindfulness on and off the cushion to live according to what we now know is true about the no self nature of self and other, and everything that happens to us. Because we still perceive things in the same old way. But because of what we now know, we are more swift to choose our behaviors based on our morality born of wisdom, are better able to do it. 

And so our path of habituation is the path of purified ignorance and gather goodness. 

In our growing intellectual understanding that's bringing us to greater and greater wisdom. 

To begin that we need to start with understanding the GAKJA, understanding the self existent thing that we think is there. 

GAKJA – the object we deny

When we use the term self existent, the literal words would mean: to exist independent of any other factor. Any other factor!

That seems like a ridiculous concept, doesn't it? 

We all know that everything depends on something else–including my me. 

So we need to fine tune what we automatically think we mean when we use the term ‘self existent’, and then when we're using that term out in a public arena, we would want to actually probably not use that term. 

Because they would hear it: She thinks things exist independent of any other factor that everybody knows that's not true. I'm not interested in what she has to say. 

Yet, as we are growing our understanding of what we mean by that, it's a very concise way of saying a whole lot. Which I think is why in our tradition, we keep using it. 

So, give yourself the time to keep adding to what you mean when you use the term ‘a self existent thing’. 

What we mean by self existent thing depends on our level of understanding of what it means for something to exist in dependence upon something else. 

Some of us have already studied that six flavors of emptiness, and so we already understand how that shifts from school to school, as if there's a group of people over there in Alabama that believe this way, and a group of people in LA that believe that way. But it's not like that. 

It's our own thinking as we interact with our day, we'll swing between, not even for school all the way up to maybe glimpses of nothing can be coming from itself. 

We're gonna learn more and more clearly that ultimately what we mean in our highest school, what we mean by a self existent thing means anything that could exist independent of the experiencers mental seeds ripening results of past behavior. 

That's really what we mean by a self existent thing. 

And all the nuances to get there are baby steps for coming to understand that. 

So we have this term GAKJA. 

GAKJA–We've heard it so many times. 

GAK = to deny or to refute

JA = the object

So the object to be refuted 

We call the GAKJA the object we deny. 

Which still doesn't make sense to me. 

The GKAJA is what we believe is there existing from it in it, and the reason they call it what we deny is because we're going to go looking for that. 

Theoretically, no matter where we look, we're gonna come up short. 

It's not going to be there. 

What we're looking for won't be anywhere we go looking for it. 

So they call it the object which we deny. Those words sound to me, it's just like deny, flat out and you're done. You don't have to go investigating. 

Everything's a GAKJA, just forget it. 

But that's not what they mean. They mean we need to go looking for it to actually experience the fact that what we thought was there is not there. Not only not there, totally impossible. 

Which, when we reached that conclusion, totally impossible, do you have to go looking for it anymore? 

Do you have to look in your closet to see if there's any full size 2 headed purple elephant in your room? 

No. 

There's no such thing. I don't have to go looking. 

That's true about these things, the GAKJAs. But we need to go looking first. 

Which in order to go looking for the GAKJA, we need to know what it would look like. 

If there was somebody who had no idea what a full size 2 headed purple elephant would look like, and I asked them, is there one in your room? 

They go, I don't know, is there? Because they don't know what to look for.

That's the position we're in with the GAKJA. 

So we actually have to go looking for it first. 

To do that, we need to figure out what it would be like. 

So that we can go see if there is such a thing. And when we finally exhaust ourselves in looking for it, we come to the conclusion, oh, the GAKJAis the thing we deny. 

But it's just that just doesn't feel like it's complete, those words to me. 

It is for the lineage. So GAKJA–that which we deny. 

In the example of the GAKJAheaded elephant, two headed elephant, we can say, Yeah, the purple headed…is the GAKJA, is the thing that we're denying. 

But we were talking about growing our intellectual understanding of emptiness, the GAKJAthat we're looking for is more specific. The GAKJA in that arena is what emptiness is empty of. 

So again, a phrase that Geshela uses over and over and over again that I still like, Why do you say it like that? 

I can think of a bunch of ways of saying that that's more clear. 

But I think there's a reason. 

The GAKJA is what emptiness is empty of. 

Even at that level, in order to know what we're looking for, what emptiness is empty of, we have to clearly be able to recognize what isn't there in emptiness. 

Because it's not just nothing, we're not looking for just nothing. 

So if we don't know what emptiness is empty of, we can't very well study emptiness, let alone come to perceive it directly. 

Further, if we have the wrong idea of what it is, we'll be wasting our time in our study and meditations going in the wrong direction. 

So Scripture tells us, if you don't know what a water pitcher is, you cannot prove that there is not one on the table. 

You can't recognize whether or not there is one on the table if you don't know what one is. 

So if we don't understand what exists, we can't refute its emptiness. 

We need to have a good idea of how we think things exist in order to check to see if that's correct or not. 

We need to investigate what it means to be a self existent thing to be a thing which exists independently out there all by itself, without depending on any other factor. 

I already said, we don't believe things exist independent of any other factor. 

But what about those other adjectives? 

Something that exists independently. Meaning, David’s Tricycle, it's outside my window. 

It's standing there on its own. 

It's a thing that's there, independent. 

It's an existing thing, it's there. 

I know it has parts. We had to buy it. I know, I know, I know. 

But there it is. An existing thing. That has a name, that has a function. That’s sitting there waiting for somebody to get on it and ride it, very patiently. 

So, there is a part of us that believes things exist independently. We just don't mean totally independently. Kind of independently. 

But it's enough then to blame that independent thing for anything that goes wrong and technically anything that goes right. 

If David goes out to ride the bike and it's got a flat tire, and he gets upset at the flat tire, he's not going, You darn bike, you've got a flat tire. But his mind says, oh that bike has a flat tire. 

He is blaming the bicycle for the flat tire. Maybe he doesn't, but I would. 

As opposed to a wisdom being, oh, seeds ripening flat tire happening now.

We're going to talk about it more. 

We have a tendency, because we already know the punch line, to jump there too quickly. 

And we want to go through this GAKJA slowly enough that we can catch our mind in how do we believe things exist in some way without our projection of them. Because we do believe that. 

It will take us eventually through those six different schools. 

Master Shantideva says: Until we can find what we think is there, we can never grasp how it cannot exist. 

So what would a self existent thing look like? What would it be like? 

It seems like it's just semantics. But that means we're not really understanding the significance of this discussion yet. That's OK, we're planting seeds. 

Geshela said in the monastery, they don't actually get to this subject matter until like they're in their 12th year or so. And then before they start this, they're told to take a six or eight or nine month break, and go do some powerful virtue to prepare themselves to get these teachings on the GAKJA and emptiness from these higher two schools. 

What they typically mean by ‘go do some high virtue’ is to go do a meditation retreat. 

And they're given practices to do to gather this virtue, to be able to understand these teachings that they're going to get when they come back. 

So even though we've heard the pen thing gazillion times, when I hold this object up and ask you what it is, is our gut reaction still: It's a pen, and it's telling me that it's a pen. 

Right, mine too. 

That gives us a hint as to what the self existent thing is that we're looking for, that we're going to deny. 

It's really so simple to deny it. 

Does the dog have that gut instinct–Pen? 

No, they have some other gut instinct for this thing. 

It looks to me like they chomp on my pen. 

But if it was a pen, from it in it the way my gut instinct says, could a dog do anything but use it in the same way I do? Because if that identity and function and everything is in the pen telling us about it, it's not relying on the mind of the perceiver. 

It's relying on itself. And that means the dog would pick it up in his little paw and write with it. 

Or it would mean that human would salivate and chew on it, if it was in it, from it, the way our gut makes us believe from inborn seeds we know. 

What would a truly Self Existent Thing be like?

Something whose identity and function is in it from it, independent of the perception of it by who's ever perceiving it. 

What's the ramifications of that? 

1. It would appear and be experienced the same way by any and every sentient being. Wouldn't it? Which means no factor of the perceiver’s mind would have any effect on it.

2. It would have to function in the same way for any and every being who perceived it. Because it's function is determined by it, and not by the perceiver of it.
   My own mind is saying, yes well, every human is going to use this in the same way. It's just that the dog or fly and every fly sees it the same way.
   But is that true? No.
   A human baby is more likely to ruffle it then to write with it. 

And then when they finally do write with it, they write on the wall, not the paper. They're using it in the wrong way. 

3. So then lastly: If it were something whose identity and function were in it, unaffected by any being who interacted with it, could the thing ever change? No. And we say to function is to change.
   If it's functioning on its own, then it's making itself change.
   Well, what makes that happen?
   Something that exists totally independent of anything else, it can't change. It can't even make itself change. Because something has to change it to make it change itself. 

But still like all of those three pieces are pretty self-evident if we just think about it. 

But then still when we look out anything–ourselves included–still, our automatic thought and reaction is in it, identity in it. Function, change, in it from it. 

Part of us knows that's impossible. 

The other part of us completely overrides that. Because our seeds force us to see things that way and believe that they are that way. Even when our rational judgment says, that's ridiculous. Because it's inconsistent with the experience. But the rationale, inconsistent with the experience seeds are too few and too puny yet to override the automatic in it from it. 

Seeds that we've been planting since forever. 

When we think about it, it's easy to recognize the mistake that we're making. 

But if we don't intentionally make ourselves think about it, it's really unlikely that it will occur to us to do so. 

Because it's threatening to our familiarity, and so it's threatening to our safety, and it's threatening to everything we thought we knew. 

It means we're admitting that we've been wrong since forever. And for some reason, that's one of the hardest things to do as a human is to admit we're wrong. Even just to ourselves. 

So a self existent thing, it can't exist, can it? 

It's impossible. 

The scripture says if it did exist, it would have to exist in a way opposite to the way things conventionally exist. 

Again, these weird combinations of words that are strung together intentionally to get us to think about them. 

If a self existent thing did exist, it would have to exist in a way completely opposite to the way things conventionally exist. 

Meaning we couldn't experience things in the way we do if things existed self existentially. 

We could not pick up this pen and write with it. Or pick it up and use it to demonstrate dependent origination and emptiness. Or use it to tie my long hair up in a bun. 

Yet we can use it for all these different things. 

If it were a self existent thing, we wouldn't be able to do that. 

It's like the opposite of what we experience. 

It's not just that the GAKJA isn't there. It's that there is no such thing. 

So it couldn't be there. It never has been there, and it never will be there. 

So again, why are we bothering to look for it? 

Our belief that it is there is so strong that we have to go to the effort of looking for it to be able to show ourselves it's impossible. 

At some point, of course, we get to stop agonizing over that. 

But until we get to that point where it's becoming so instant, so clear, that the thing I'm blaming for making me upset is impossible, and my upset goes away at that instant… until I'm there, I need to keep intentionally bringing up ‘Oh, I'm blaming a GAKJA. A thing I believe in that's non existent. I'm blaming Santa Claus for hurting my feelings.’ 

It's not that GAKJAs exist deceptively. It's that they don't exist at all. They are the thing that we deny as existing at all. 

And we have to go about denying it because we believe in them so strongly we blame them for everything. 

All of our negative emotions and negative judgments are focused on GAKJAs. Things that we believe have their identities and qualities in them but aren't there. 

That angry, yelling boss  isn't there.

The one that's in them, from them. It does not mean that there's no angry yelling boss at all. But the one that I can blame for the unpleasant that I'm experiencing–that one isn't there.

Forms of Existence of Things according to the Different Schools

Things have these two forms of existence. 

One is there ultimate existence, and the other is their dependent existence, which we also call their deceptive existence. By that we mean the reality that a non Nirvana, non Buddha perceives. 

The Svatantrika School has this way of explaining how things exist in order for us to help us wrap our mind around this understanding of, Oh, things appearing to have their natures in them when they really don't, but not meaning that things don't exist at all. 

gakja

Lo nu-me la nang-way wang-gi shak-tsam

madhyamika svatantrika school

Madhyamaka Svatantrika School, this is the Sanskrit term. 

In those six flavors, Geshela’s short terminology for it is the 50-50 school. 

At this level of understanding we've already come to see that, oh, everything exists dependent upon its causes and so it's going to change is true. 

But a very limited understanding of dependent origination, that's helpful, but incomplete. 

Then we expand that to say, well every existing thing exists in dependence upon its parts.

That's a more inclusive set of things. But that still isn't sufficient to help us stop suffering–either our own or our loved others. 

Then we reached Mind Only School that says, right. Functioning things, they have some nature of their own. But the experiencer of them only experiences those objects through their own lens of their ripening seeds. 

Functioning things are out there. But we can't ever really say exactly what they're like and what they do, because we can only experience them through our own unique seeds ripening. 

Everything exists in that way, and nothing exists in any other way than that. So see, our behavior is what makes the way we color those self powered things that function. 

It's a strong level of understanding to help us choose our behaviors more conducive with stopping perpetuating Sansara and bringing ourselves to the wisdom that can help all beings.

Then, when we dig into that and try to figure out, well what part does that other powered thing bring to the party? Because my perception of something has to land on something that's conducive for that KUNTAK, or I could put out my KUNTAK into outer space and make those changing things and that doesn't work. 

I can't just imagine a milkshake and pick it up and drink it. 

There's some interaction going on here. 

As we try to find that, we might say, look, let's explain it in this other way. 

There's an existing thing that has its not it's whole quality in it, from it. But it has an essence to it. You know our friend the SHEN WANG has pen-ness. It's not enough to make it pen from its own side, but it's something that suggests pen, so that my arising mental seed–Mind Only would call it KUNTAK–can land on this thing and it can be a pen that works for me. 50-50 School. 

Highest Middle Way of course is saying all along: Nothing has any nature of its own. Everything is projections and nothing but. 

Admittedly, my mind hears that and automatically thinks, jumps to the conclusion: Well, nothing's real then. Because just a projection makes it sound like the laser laser light show in the mist, in the sky, you've got the whole story unfolding. But when you stop the projector, the mist goes away, you don't see anything. And that's not correct either. 

That nothing really exists and we all just make it up as we go along. 

So it's useful to stop at each of these different levels, as we'll do through the course of our study, and check out how does this help me choose my responses to situations in a more ethical way? 

Any level we find where, oh, this is the one that helps me, great. 

Maybe it's the beginning level: Everything comes from causes, those causes wear out. This too shall pass. So I don't need to get angry. I don't need to manipulate things like I used to think I needed to do. 

All of them are useful. 

We're studying the GAKJA, that thing that we deny in order to be able to understand the emptiness of our experience of that object. 

Emptiness is the absence of the GAKJA. 

So the GAKJA is something that exists independent of any other factor, at the highest level independent of being the projected results of past behaviors. 

Which means then anything that does exist for us, it is ripening results of past behaviors. Because there is nothing that cannot be that. 

GAKJAs don't exist. The GAKJA is not opposite of deceptive reality. Because a GAKJA has no reality at all. But we think it does.

Madhyamaka Svatantrika School describes how things exist so that when we come to the conclusion, all these GAKJAs, things that I thought made-up me and my world, there is no such thing. We need to land on something. Because otherwise we end up in that no man's land of well, then nothing exists at all, and that's wrong world view. 

LO NU-ME LA NANG-WAY WANG-GI SHAK-TSAM

This is describing how things do exist. 

The GAKJA is how things don't exist but we think that they do. 

This is how things do exist

LO = mind

LO NU-ME = a mind that’s not hurt

NU-ME = not hurt

Here they mean a mind that's not hurt by being on some kind of drug or drink that has us intoxicated. Or not hurt by some illness that has our sensory apparatus is not working right. Or not hurt by some mental affliction that's so strong it's coloring our judgment. And not hurt by some physical trick of the eye that happens sometimes. 

It means an unimpaired state of mind. 

LA NANG-WAY = appears by the power 

NANG-WAY = appears

What is appearing that we're talking about is this thing we are trying to establish as existing. How is it that it does exist? 

We've established that it does not exist in it, from it. But by establishing it, the it does not disappear. So there must be some way in which it does exist, because there it is. 

SHAK-TSAM

SHAK = established as existing 

TSAM  = just or only

So the whole phrase says: 

Things exist just by appearing to an unimpaired mind.

That is refreshingly simple, is it not? 

Things exist by the power of appearing to an unimpaired mind. 

It seems to say as long as my mind is unimpaired, anything I see, hear, smell, taste, touch, or think of exists just by way of that. 

We learned later that the definition of an existing thing, even from earlier schools, is that which is perceived by a valid perception. 

Same idea here. 

To validly perceive things makes that thing exist. 

But to be accurate, wouldn't we have to say: In the way it does for me. 

But then we might be thinking, Oh well then, everything in my world is unique to me. That makes me really special. So I'm the only one that matters. 

And they could make us nastier instead of kinder if we're misunderstanding the ramification of that. 

2 Aspects of an Existing Thing

In this definition of or this explanation of existing things, it's pointing out that two parts are necessary for something to exist. 

We have to add: to exist deceptively. Meaning to exist in the world of beings whose minds are deceived an existing thing requires these two parts. 

1. There must be a thing out there. There has to be something appearing to us

2. There has to be someone perceiving that thing with an unimpaired state of mind. 

When we have those two factors present, we can say that that thing that we are perceiving is there. 

When we are perceiving it with a deceived mind, included in that scenario is our belief in the things identity in it. So we established something as existing deceptively, and then we go looking for the deceived part. 

It's not in it, it's in us–as we will come to see. 

It takes these two parts: something to be seen and someone seeing it. 

Something to be experienced and someone experiencing it for that thing to be what's experienced. 

That makes sense, doesn't it? 

But still, if you think of your grocery store or flower shop right now. 

Aren't there flowers? The stores are closed maybe, but regardless, aren't there flowers there waiting for somebody to come and purchase them? 

Is this saying that those flowers are not there in the flower shop until you walk in, and then all of a sudden flowers there me to see them, I see the flowers, I see them, poof. 

Is that what our world is really like? 

And we're just perceiving it as if it's all out there waiting for us? 

I'm not saying yes or no. 

But recognizing that we do believe that all of those things that, intellectually we know they depend on other factors, still when we think of them, ah, those flowers are there waiting for somebody to see them. And anybody who sees them will see that there's three vases of moms and 2 lilies, and everybody will see them the same way as me when I get there. 

But does anybody see them the same way as me when I get there? 

No, they can't. Everybody sees them unique to them. 

Which hopefully is not disorienting. It's rather empowering. 

But hopefully we'll get there. 

So a GAKJA, for this school would be anything which appears without both those factors present. Without something there and someone there perceiving it in the way that they do. 

Those flowers that I'm thinking are at the grocery store now, existing there even though nobody's there to see them–that's the GAKJA. 

Does that mean there's no flowers? 

No, there are. But they can't be established as being there until somebody's perceiving them as there. 

Ignorance believes that things have their own identities, qualities, existences in them, from them. 

At the same time we hold and they have their causes and they have their parts, and that's all consistent with them coming from themselves, because that's how things are different. 

They have different parts from themselves. It's really irrational, when we stop to think of it. 

So things can takes exist in that way, but they can't not exist at all because we experience things all day long. 

This school says, Let's see if we can reach an understanding of what it would be like to be able to understand as we're perceiving something, that these two factors are happening together to make our experience, and that either the subject or the object can't have their own identities that the two are banging up together the way we think they do. 

The Magic Show

They  say, let's use the example of the magic show to explain what we're getting at. 

Again, we've heard these things, I believe. Probably more than once. 

But try to let yourself pretend that you haven't heard it before, so that you can hear it a little bit differently. 

So this story is in India, there were magicians. They would gather a crowd and using showmanship, they would take a stick off the ground and they hold it up in front of everybody. They'd cast a spell over the stick and everyone, and then they throw the stick on the ground and because of the spell, hmm, there's a horse there, or an elephant or whatever their spell does. 

The crowd perceives a horse there. 

Maybe a scary stallion and they all back up. 

Maybe a cute Little Pony and they all go, oh, cute pony. 

They react to this pony, that's there, this horse that's there. Because they're unaware that they're under the magic spell.

They see a horse there. They believe the horse is there. And they react, according to whether they like it or dislike it. 

The magician is also under the spell. But she knows it, so she's forced to see the horse there. But because she knows she's under the spell, she knows that she's looking at a stick. 

But she can't see the stick. She could only see the horror. 

So she sees the horse, but she doesn't believe it. 

Then along comes somebody who wasn't there when the magician did the spell. 

They just see a crowd and they walk up to see what's going on. And they hear the crowd going, wow, look at that horse. It's so beautiful. It must be really valuable and important. 

And they're going, What horse? 

They don't see a horse. They don't believe in a horse. 

You'd have to say they see a stick to stay with the analogy. 

And so this school says, who do you think these different beings represent in terms of our study of the GAKJA–what it is and what it isn't. 

So then what deceptive reality is and isn't, and what ultimate reality is and isn't. 

The people who see the horse and believe the horse is there, are like ordinary ignorant beings, who are perceiving everything in their world, including themselves, as there, really, in the way that we're perceiving it. 

It's like we're all under the spell of our ignorance, and we don't know it. 

We might say, well, why does there have to be a stick there? 

If it weren't necessary for the stick to be there, appearing as the horse, then the spell given for the minds to see horse, they would see horse anywhere they looked. 

But they don't. They only see a horse where the magician put the stick. 

It takes those two aspects:

1. The thing that's there appearing as something. 

2. And the mind of the beings seeing it as the thing that they see. 

The thing that's there, that's available to be perceived as something, is something there. 

And then the perception of the ones experiencing it fill in its details. 

If we're under the spell, the details are horse, and I believe horse is there. 

Yelling boss and I believe yelling boss is there, yelling at me for nothing I did wrong. 

Then the magician sees the horse but doesn't believe the horse is there, knows it's a spell cast on him and the stick, her and the stick that makes her see the horse where really–not meaning truly–but in the example a stick is. 

So this person is analogous to someone who has seen emptiness directly but is now out of that experience. They have had the direct experience that things exist by way of seeds ripening and they have no nature other than that. 

So in this analogy, the seeing the horse but not believing it, is their state of mind out of their emptiness directly in which they are forced to perceive things as having their natures in them again–because of their seeds–but they don't believe it because they've experienced directly that that's impossible.

But they can't force themselves to see the emptiness of those appearing things. 

None of us can force ourselves to do that. Buddhas don't force themselves to do that. 

So, to see the horse but not believe it, but not be able to see the stick, is the Arya on their Bhumis one through seven, because once they reach eight and above, they are no longer perceiving things with their natures in them or themselves. They are now experiencing everything as their mental imprints ripening from their deeds and they reach that by way of burning off all that ignorance on their path of habituation, reaching Nirvana. 

And if they're on the Bodhisattva track, they're on their way to a Buddhahood.

Then what about the newcomer who doesn't see a horse, doesn't believe there's a horse there?

We might want to say, oh, that must be Buddha. 

But think about that a little bit further. 

A Buddha perceives appearing reality and emptiness simultaneously. 

So if that newcomer represents a Buddha, they would see the horse and the stick, and not believe either one. But that's not what the example is given. 

The example is, they don't see a horse, they don't believe it's there, implying they see the stick. They don't actually say that, but they don't see, they see both. 

So this newcomer represents a person who's in the direct perception of emptiness. Which is weird because they can't walk along and see the crowd and see the horse. 

So you have to work with the analogy here a little bit. 

Someone who's in the direct perception of emptiness only perceives reality in the way that it truly exists, whatever that means.

So in our scenario we're saying that the stick on the ground is analogous to the way things truly exist. Then a horse appearing there is analogous to our belief in self existent things. So for someone to come along who does not have the spell of ignorance, they're going to see a stick. 

What's everybody upset about? There's just a stick on the ground. 

So how does that help us understand the GAKJA and the dependent arising that makes us fill in the details of our experience according to this school, and recognize how things can't exist in any other way than that? 

That magic show, if you keep thinking about it, you can explain to yourself these different parts: What's there that we think is there that can't be there? Oh, the GAKJA. 

Oh, here's the dependent originating part, and it's not dependently originating from the thing, it's dependently originating from the mind of the perceiver. But there has to be something there that the mind of the perceiver lands on because otherwise the mind of perceiver would just make up anything anywhere. And we don't, we can't–at least yet.

Then reach that point of, oh, nothing exists in any other way than what's forced onto the mind of the perceiver. 

What makes that happen? 

[Luisa] Why do we explain the GAKJA with this school and not with the Highest School? Or do we need this physical thing there in order for the mind to project or to perceive? So if I go to the highest school, then it makes me think of what you just say, then I will have horse everywhere in the air, which is also why I never understand if I have seeds for a teacher, then why specifically it has to be this person and it cannot be someone else? Will be the same somehow for me, the same example.

[Lama Sarahni] Right. The answer to that is because there is an advantage for you for it to be one person, doesn't have to be one.

[Luisa] Yeah, okay. It's just a general example. If I have seeds for health, why do I have to take this specific Ibuprofen and not the acetaminophen? So if I take the Ibuprofen, it goes away, but if I take the acetaminophen, it doesn't.

[Lama Sarahni] Right, and the very fact that we're asking that question means we don't understand emptiness and dependent origination, and that's why we have to go sequentially through the schools. Because otherwise we would not ask that question. It would be very clear why acetaminophen will take the pain away, but vitamin C will not. 

And I don't mean that disrespectfully. We bump up against our belief in self existence as we even think we're understanding it, and it happens for a long time. 

So, the reason they seem to make us learn a lower school, is that when we understand these schools enough to where we can actually catch ourselves in those beliefs, we'll actually see that, oh, I'm doing that. I'm doing what 50-50 school describes. 

We thought they were just teaching us about it, but actually they're letting us become aware of what we're already doing when we're approaching our world with some level of wisdom.

So it'd be nice, some people can jump straight to the Highest School, and they already recognize all these little nuances and have already gotten past them. 

For most of us, we learn about them all, and then at some point we actually recognize, oh my gosh, I really have noticed that because I understand the changing, changing, changing nature, I'm not as reactive to things as I used to be. 

I'm actually functioning at first level school, and all my intellectual understanding of Highest School, I'm nowhere close to behaving that way yet. 

So we will start to recognize in future examples as our mind reacts to the example, we'll find ourselves in this school saying, oh yeah, there has to be some pen-ness here to receive my projection and it'll make so much sense then. And then if we're functioning from that level, it's only a little tiny shift to where we don't need the pen-ness anymore and we won't fall into that mistake of: Well then I can just project pen anywhere. Because we'll be so close to understanding how they are rising and the emptiness are two sides of a coin. 

They arise together, not one then the other, but blink, blink, blink. 

We can imagine ourselves there, but when push comes to shove, there's something in that nasty boss that's yelling at me again.

So it's useful to actually work at these different levels even when it's like, no, no, only the Highest level works. The way we get to the highest level working is by working with the lower levels. Let's take our 20 minute late break. I'll pause the recording.

[break]

I'll summarize.

The way things do exist deceptively is that it appears to me and I see it.

But now when we hear that, we tend to think first it appears to me and then I see it. And that's not what this is saying. 

Our deceptive reality is: it appears to me and I see it, it's arising at the same time. 

It makes a big difference when you walk into the grocery store and think the flowers are already there and then you see it. 

That's not what this is saying. 

So, the way things do exist deceptively is it appears to me and I see it, meaning I experience it.

The way it does not exist is out there on its own waiting for me to perceive it.

Anything that could exist out there on its own is a GAKJA, and there's no such thing. 

But this is the way we think everything does exist as out there on its own. 

Emptiness is the fact that nothing exists out there on its own like that. 

It takes that process. 

We're not negating that things are all around us. 

What we're negating is our belief that they are there in them, from them, waiting for us to experience them.