Transcript for:
Einführung und Widerlegung in Buddhismus

so uh good evening everyone and welcome to uh week four of introduction to the middleware I'm Alex trezilla and um I'd like to start just by reviewing the first three weeks just to remind us how we got to where we are right now so firstly what what are we even doing here why do we need to establish The View and the first reason is that we're here because we wish to liberate ourselves and all sentient beings so our purposeful study here is not academic it's not to write books or to write phds it's so that we can liberate ourselves and others and that involves realizing the truth and just said many times the truth can be expressed in terms of the three marks or the four seals so once again there's a duka suffering one satisfactoriness impermanence any chair non-self anata but then in the Mahayana we have a fourth seal which is non-duality and this is the truth these four and wisdom or prashner is seeing or knowing this truth and if we don't know the truth or even if we know it intellectually but it's not what's driving our actions then we suffer and in Buddhism suffering has nothing to do with sin or punishment it's merely to do with ignorance with not seeing the nature of reality the nature of the self and so to end suffering for ourselves and for others and to attain lasting enlightenment we need to realize this truth which means we need to establish and then realize the Right View so that we have a path that can lead us to enlightenment so that brings us to establishing the view which is what we're doing now during this course of study and the ultimate truth is non-duality it's beyond words Beyond thoughts Beyond Concepts can't be taught can't be expressed so we can't actually study that or we can study here is the textual mediamica right a finger that points towards the Moon as we saw last week said as soon as we talk it's all contradiction as soon as we think it's all confusion so we have to acknowledge there's an irreducible amount of confusion that's going to accompany everything we do and as Russia said so many times realization can only be accomplished through our practice through our meditation because our words our thoughts our language that can get us as far as rational understanding as dualistic understanding but can never take us Beyond to non-duality explains that he can't enter the sutras the Buddhist teachings directly so he's going to teach based on the shastras and two in particular and one is and one is the dashabumika Sutra and although it may seem like we're teaching ultimate truth actually a lot of what we're going to be studying we're already studying is the post-meditation time of the bodhisattvas on the groomers and in particular now we're on the sixth chapter the sixth parameter or wisdom Tibetan shut up meaning Supreme mind and what does this supreme mind know it knows that any dualistic thought is not the Supreme mind I mean it wants to go beyond dualism to this non-dual so we know that anything we look at as a temporary phenomenon cannot be the ultimate or Supreme mind because it is changeable and that's part of the reason that we're concerned about any of our opponents establishing anything is truly existing because if you have a truly existing object and by definition it must be Duality that you're talking about so what do we wish to establish as my jamming as well in the ultimate truth all phenomena are Beyond extremes indeed there is no arising we cannot say that even I in your phenomena but in the relative truth we accept the ordinary consensus of ordinary beings and as part of this week's reading we're champasized the conventional truth it's not a thesis right it's not like the positions of philosophers and theoreticians because we know from our own experience as ordinary beings our views change all the time and one day we explain things one way another day we explain it differently we don't have solidly firmly established views so what we are going to do is we're going to refute theories of truly existing arising okay all are the theories of arising from self or other or both or neither because if those are truly existing theories then they are extreme views and not non-dual so last week week three we covered the sunken arising from self and looked at other arising in general and this week we're going to turn to the to the mattress school now yogacharya which is a specific example of Buddhist opponent of other arising it's just a review of last week I went spend long on the sulfur Rising so that was verses 8 to 13 chapter 6. as Roberta said it's not something that concerns us much in the modern world because for most of us when we think about causality or arising we think that the cause and the effect are different right we don't think that the cause and the effect are the same which is what you would need for True existing self-arising we're much more likely to fall into describing things in terms of other arising right where we say there is a Cause like a seed and a shoot which is the effect in that case or the results and they are different right we say that a seed is different from the plant that it gives rise to and so in the other arising we're going to meet and already have met a number of Buddhist opponents just review of what we covered last week so verses 14 to 22 where our opponents were suggesting the possibility of truly existing other arising well what does that mean it means we have a truly existing cause which gives rise to a truly existing effect let's remind ourselves what does truly existing mean why it means it is independent and it is unfabricated example of thinking of billiard balls or marbles that would be a good example of something that's true nice hard edges clear definitions doesn't change whereas we might say that something that's not truly existing you know dependently arising maybe we think of a cloud you know something which is much more fuzzy much more changeable even as you look at it it changes but a cloud is not good for a truly existing arising because for something to be true it can't change it can't be changeable and that by the way is where it must be independent because if a phenomenon depends on something else then it could change and likewise we want it to be unfabricated because that way there's no fabrication or imagination or conceptualization that is going to affect this concept it's not something that has been imagined or labeled or imputed by a theoretician and so when Chandra kirti turned to this position he said well we see that truly existing other arising is impossible so firstly it would mix up the order of cause and effect because if two things like two marbles cause and effect are truly other than things could arise of a different type or they could arise unpredictably so the logic of causality of cause and effect would fall apart because there's nothing that would connect our two marbles there's nothing that would ensure there is some order to the way they interact a second refutation was in terms of time because if we have our cause and our effect present at the same time like our two marbles then we can't say that one is the cause and one is the effect because they're both there already but if we don't have them there at the same time then they have no contact one marble can't hit the other marble so if they're not there at the same time how could cause lead to an effect so our opponent is aware of these problems and suggested that we have a continuum it's the example that Rice seeds only give rise to Rice shoots never to Barley shoots but we refuted that by saying well that's a circular argument because really all we're saying is things in the same Continuum cause results in the same Continuum so we're really just proving what we've just said it's not actually any kind of proof so we'll see that kind of argumentation come up again today right because with the treatment a lot of the challenge is going to be they believe in a truly existing subject namely mind or consciousness but the object they would argue is not truly existing so we'll see a lot of these kinds of problems we'll confront them as well but just in passing review also said look you know when we talk about theories and I noticed this by the way several of you asked questions during the week it's interesting that when we are grappling with this text our own counter examples come from our own experience right so we might say well an acorn gives rise to an oak an embryo gives rise to a baby you know where do we draw the boundary there is no hard boundary how could we say these things are truly other and yes that's that's fair but see the point is once we're doing that we're now arguing with gender Katie we're taking his own position right we're saying there is no such thing as a hard boundary around these objects so we're no longer taking our opponent's position I think as we said last week it's actually very difficult to find a coherent way of talking about a truly existing other arising now well that's all very well in theory but of course in practice as soon as in our lives there are things that happen that we don't like or things that we cling to we very certainly become eternalistic but if someone steals on money we don't generally think in terms of causes and conditions coming together we don't tend to think of all things being compounded and impermanent we tend to think we're victims of a crime in a true existing crime at that where we solidify we cling so again it may it may seem obvious that these things cannot be realistic in the world these ideas of true other arising but unfortunately our Theory and use our actual mindsets that drive our action they haven't yet caught up with our view our view isn't yet firmly established and as we said repeatedly for the last three weeks establishing the view is critical we need to know what is the Right View but 98 of the work is practicing the path because it's one thing to know something intellectually but it's another thing for it to be realized internalized embodied through one's being okay so the other or the next big idea we had last week was the two truths and as you may recall this came from a question that our opponent asked they said well kendrickett you you say that you accept ordinary people's view of the conventional truth um and yet you're trying to refute other arising when extraordinary people as we've just said would say that cause and effect are different and effect comes from cause and it's other so to answer this we set up the idea of the two truths they don't truly exist they themselves are just another convention another useful boat to cross the river which we shall abandon and we're not saying they're ultimately there um the conventional truth we're saying it's not a thesis right it's a means of communication it's something we need to know we need to be true because we need to be able to use the language and talk to ordinary beings but that doesn't mean we accept their theories of what is ultimately true and by the way most of them don't actually just said they don't have theories of what is ultimately true most of their ignorance they're clinging their attachment is fairly implicit fairly intuitive you know they have a sense that here I am I have a self and then I cling to the self me and mine and all those things but yeah it's often not really established through any kind of logic or reasoning and we also learned that we do need to realize both both the ultimate truth that things are completely Beyond any kind of extremes of existence not in existence both or neither and in the relative truth we just accept the conventions of Ordinary People because if we don't realize both we'll end up with an extreme View and most typically we'll end up like most of our opponents with something truly existing in the ultimate truth which is a form of eternalism and then denying something in the conventional truth which is a form of nianism right whereas Champion the two truths as you showed last week means you don't have these extreme views and the other thing is you know in all this confusion about how do we explain causality especially over time and space for Chandra Katie he has no problem because he has no truly existing cause and so there is no truly existing end to his cause so there's nothing that he needs to connect to the results because all of his causes and all of his results arise dependently anyway it's not as if there is an end or a firm beginning to any of them said um more on the two truths a lot of it is that our experience doesn't match up with what the teaching say is true we may know intellectually that there isn't a truly existing self but we don't feel that right we feel man I'm really real I'm here or what we know intuitively doesn't match up and so what do we do well either we ignore the theory or else we have to conclude that our feelings must be in some way wrong and unreliable of course this is very tough because we've been repeatedly told you know trust yourself trust your feelings it's pretty much the the main song of every Disney movie right so part of our challenge is you know are we going to follow our feelings or are we going to follow the truth and that's always difficult right because the intuitive move will always be to go with our feelings to go with our gut so as we said in week one it's very important for us to really develop the view to establish the view for ourselves so it doesn't feel like some external set of rules but it's something that we can understand and believe and then internalize for ourselves Adam so again bites this mismatch what we feel may not match up with what we know to be true intellectually but rather than focus on the discrepancy the two truths comes out in a different way it says well ultimately there is a truth of how things are in reality and then conventionally there's a truth that corresponds to our feelings our reality as if she said it's like relationships like conflicts whenever there's a conflict between two people there's what actually happened you know who said what who did what and then there's the truth of each person's experience and we all know because we've all done this we can take things the wrong way we can take things personally we can perceive an intention that wasn't actually there and thus feel bad or upset with another person or sometimes we feel good right sometimes we may have assumed that someone has been attracted to us when in fact that wasn't the case at all right so we're always imputing this kind of intentionality to others and so it'd be a big practice even in the Contemporary world is separating the behaviors from our interpretations and feelings right separating the truth of what actually happened from our personal subjective experience so again there's always this sense of an objective and a subject of maybe not exactly the same as the ultimate and the conventional but I would say very closely related I have a story here um so I mean I I sound very English indeed I grew up in England but uh I was born to an Italian father and a German mother and so I don't know if you know much about the difference between the Italians and the English but um one thing is how they communicate so in Italy it's always a source of great uh ebullience energy people talking over each other you know very extroverted high energy kind of feel to a conversation whereas in England it's considered polite to listen carefully and wait till someone has finished speaking and then speak yourself and so you know if I were to say in England I would say well you know if you interrupted me that was the the truth that I observed my subjective experience would be well I'm very upset because it means you didn't listen carefully to me it means you weren't actually paying attention so I would take that in a very bad way whereas in Italy if you interrupted me I'd say fantastic it means you're really excited engaged enthusiastic right so there you see how you can have the same truth perceive very very differently by two Observers now this is something that is happening everywhere in our conventional world so the first aspect of the true truths is we have an ultimate truth in a conventional truth now there is a third element we discussed last week which is the conventional truth is they valid relative truth right it is where there is a consensus among every beings we also identify the idea of an invalid relative truth when for example if somebody has taken too much alcohol or drugs or if they've got some kind of eye disease when they see falling hairs because in that case their perception would not be the same as the perception of other conventional beings right that will be an invalid conventional relative truth not conventional and what Chandra Kitty is going to say or has already said is all our opponents their theories of true existence their theories of true arising they are invalid relative truth right they're not conventional truths because not only are they positing an ultimate truth that convertible people don't agree with they're actually as we'll see because of their theories denying some aspect of the conventional truth so example we gave last week was you know if a person says oh my goodness I just broke one of my favorite wine glasses a materialist might say that doesn't matter you didn't break a glass it was just a bunch of atoms now that's an example of a denial of the conventional I just wanted to add one other example here which we'll come back to actually uh in the week eight yeah it's um a lovely story of course about the What's called the Stockdale Paradox it's a story of um by Samuel James Stockdale who was um the highest ranking American uh military officer to be captured and held in Vietnam during the Vietnam war it's held to seven years in a prisoner of war camp and suffered almost intolerable conditions torture uh sleep deprivation all kinds of things that's survived and when afterwards was asked how did he do it he said you need to do two things he said I I always did these two things one you have to face current reality see the truth right don't deny it don't hide from it admit to yourself very honestly this is what's going on but then also to have confidence that you will prevail in the end so again not exactly the same as the two truths but a very similar notion that there's a part of you that needs to be focused on the truth of my current situation you know and there's another part that's very much around possibility optimism compassion what could be hope faith yeah I think it's a good invitation for all of us as we look at that balance in ourselves do we Veer towards focusing a little too much on the reality with not enough optimism or do we focus a little bit too much on the optimism and not really pay enough attention to the reality because either of those will be an example of not practicing the two truths now one other important point that we came across was the side era of any uh provisional truth is not ultimate right and so it's untrue in some respects as we said all all the teachings all the paths all the language all our communication was Jimmy Miller said is in some way faulty and even the teachings themselves yes we know that the emptiness teachings are seen as the highest their Sinners pointing to the ultimate and all the other teachings right teachings on compassion teachings on the parameters teachings on kindness and patience teachings on Buddha nature all these things are provisional right they're seen as just a means to lead us to the ultimate but we must never miss Russia emphasize we must never look down on the provisional as being worse because it's all about what is skillful what is useful what is the right path that can lead us to the right View because if we teach the wrong path even if it may be true it's not going to take us in the direction of the truth so we'll give up right so that's a nice Zen story here on on skillful communication it's called time to die EQ the Zen master was very clever even as a boy his teacher had a precious teacup a rare antique EQ happened to break this cup and was greatly perplexed hearing the footsteps of his teacher he held the pieces of the cup behind him when the master appeared if you asked why do people have to die this is natural explain the older man everything has to die and has just so long to live the queue producing the shattered cap added it was time for your cup to die so we saw last week and J Cole we talked about the three different kinds of students right some can hear the truth at once some need repetition and some won't be able to hear it until they've had more life experience another another question is you know what to teach someone what is the best well likewise for ourselves what practice is the best remember she often talks about the difference between the Forest Glade and the channel ground now if you go back to the palisutas you'll see the Buddha talks about an ideal meditation spot as being away from the chaos and the distractions of the city and in the forest find a quiet secluded place to practice and indeed that's very beneficial especially if we're easily distracted if we're beginners and that we also know you know the tantric practitioners they consider the most auspicious place to practice is a channel ground where traditionally it was believed it's full of all kinds of spirits and strong energies and very distracting forces but if one was a stronger practitioner then the Forest Glade is not going to help one move forward with one practice that's a bit like skiing right as a beginner you want the most gentle slope right the greenest of the green runs if I were to give a beginner a black run straight away they'd fall over and probably break a leg but for somebody who's an advanced skier if you make them go down a green run it's one of the most frustrating things right it's boring it doesn't test their skills it doesn't help them develop their skills any further so we need the right kind of path for the right person and even last week we saw you know to whom should emptiness be taught they're very different for different kinds of people and for some people yes those you know for whom tears come to their eyes and their hair stand up on edge when they hear about emptiness for them yes we should teach directly but for many beginners much better just to teach a gradual path so a big part of this is also you know not fooling oneself right we need empathy and realism for ourselves and so beginners from shares number one practice advice actually comes from one of Miller rapper's songs he says my religion is not deceiving myself and not disturbing others but this not deceiving myself very important now what counts as a higher path in Buddhism is the extent to which it really reveals non-duality directly the more we directly teach non-duality that's considered higher the more we you know talk in a very indirect way that's considered lower and I'm sure once said you know you could talk about the whole path of saying the non-truly existing person follows a non-trul existing path to attain a non-truly existing result and that is true but who could understand this who shave and said you know the Buddha all he actually needed to say was you are all Buddhas true and again most of us we have no idea what that means it just wouldn't touch us and it's because of that that he has to teach the 84 000 pounds as Richard said that's a sign of the Buddha's tremendous compassion I think especially now in the west I think it's very popular very we like this idea that we only want the best so everyone says oh I want zuction right I want mahamudra mahasandi but unless we have a really deep understanding of emptiness if we think we're practicing Junction no it's going straight over our heads we're probably just practicing shamots I have flat right so much a so-called Western's auction really is Josh shamosa similarly with Adriana right A lot of people they love to sort of refer to non-duality to justify all kinds of excesses they say yes in vagina it's allowed you can have meat alcohol sex wealth whatever you want and indeed that is true right there's nothing about the madamic of you that says those things are bad practically do you really realize that view or are you just gratifying your ego desires I'm sure she often says easiest way to tell is just do the opposite try just eating rice and dough for six months no sex live in poverty wear the same second hand clothes every day beg for your food can you truly say you have no preference well if so then maybe maybe then you could say you are ready for these other tantric practices but if you still have an ego preference and then you're just giving in to that and making an excuse to have meat and alcohol and sex and money and all the rest well then that's that's not practicing Dharma that's just as we said last week that's just spiritual materialism right that's just using Dharma as an adornment for your ego now I know um many of us are very busy it can sometimes seem impossible to do the study or the practice that this requires and traditionally would um would emphasize um renunciation and motivation at the beginning of each teaching and indeed I think that's something several of you have asked for and we we should do so even though I haven't done it I'm hoping the practitioners amongst you are doing it yourselves when we're starting you know as Russia says take time to establish or as he puts it to tune our motivation I really like that idea of tuning to make sure you know are we off-key or are we really in tune with the idea that all we're about to do is not just for our selfish or conventional needs but really it's for the purposes of liberation of all sentient beings um so often when he teaches these teachings he will at the beginning of each session chant the heart Sutra so if you're not doing that maybe before these webinars or before you study you could do that that's strongly encouraged actually is also encouraged remember she has invited people to do this as well to actually uh write out the heart Sutra I mean even better if you can do calligraphy in whatever language you can speak but um you know just writing it out chanting it just engaging with the heart surgery is considered very meritorious and again when he taught this in France every couple of days he would start the teaching with a long session on lojo on mind training match remind us the importance of pronunciation overcoming our worldly ambition and clinging to the eight worldly dharmers reminding us not to get caught up in all that because it's true if if we're just going to be focused on our Sam sorry goals all the time we weren't put in the time to study this or to practice this so again I'm not going to do that now but I would invite you perhaps during the week to spend some time reflecting on these little John teachings to spend some time reflecting on what is your motivation and how are you spending your week and how much time are you making to really engage in the study and the practice of these teachings because if you're not making time you have to ask yourself what is it for you that has higher priority and that's not really what you want okay so turning now to week four is a summary of what we're going to do I know before I've even summarize the content I would say I really want to encourage this week a mindset of humility a couple times in the text room shape and conversation with organ they were saying you know at times when we think we have defeated the chitamatra we might dance and think that we have won but as Shanti Deva says that is like when a crow meets a dead snake and the crow dances like a Garuda as you may know the Garuda was the most majestic and first of all the birds and the crow obviously thinking that or liking to pretend that has actually accomplished something and and I think that's actually a pretty good example because for any of you who spent any time with the background reading and if you haven't I strongly encourage it I put several articles I gave some background uh on the yogacharya the chitamatra and you'll see several things right firstly it's not as if there is a single sub-school of the chittama right they they're thinking it evolved from my Sangha and vasubandu who founded the school in the fourth and fifth century is 8th century and beyond so even in India there were many different interpretations of what mind only meant and then turning to the West well not just the West we're actually the Indian Tibetan and now Western commentators they have a very very wide range of different philosophical interpretations of what the chitta matcha actually meant and in particular um there was a quite a radical shift starting in the 1960s where until that point Western commentators had primarily seen this as a form of idealism but then off to the 60s it was much more seen as a form of phenomenology so all this to say we don't have a single understanding of who our opponent is or what they mean or how we should interpret them right so let's not jump to conclusions that we think we even understand them not alone that we've refuted them I think that's another element that ramshet talked about which is just arrogance and pride and he said uh if 200 he said you know we we may engage in these debates and we may even feel we're winning but don't start to develop this mindset of we the mighty America are the best we don't develop that kind of Pride but there's actually despising other paths is breaking one of the major precepts of the bodhisattva but also by contrast don't give up right don't think this is too difficult don't say I can never do this because that's also ego that's a narrative it's a form of ego showing up as resistance well there's a third aspect right don't think you're too sophisticated to engage in practice or the practice is somehow irrational if there's 210 he said this you know is Buddhism a philosophy or a religion well and you could argue that question itself is very dualistic said you know nagarjuna and the madamika tradition says for someone who accepts emptiness everything is acceptable here he pointed his criticism towards a lot of contemporary Buddhists especially secular Buddhists or if any of you who've read Stephen Bachelor with his Buddhism without beliefs or if she likes to call the British Buddhists you know bachelor wants to reduce Buddhism to a form of secular rationality right and I think we would say he is confusing the irrational with the Beyond rational the non-dual so he cannot accept religious methods or seemingly religious methods unlike Adriana he will say that's a form of irrational theism rather than seeing it as a skillful means that can take us Beyond rationality to realize the non-dual right so he's he's definitely not accepting everything like a mademica would so in other words he must have some form of truly existing view which is making certain things unacceptable to him so in that sense he becomes an opponent of gender keity now we'll we'll return to this uh in week seven the having said that even though the chitamatra is very complex um we can't necessarily identify a single position there is one thing which I think is common to most of the if not all of the schools which is the idea of a truly existing mind without object and so here uh they would say our opponents we have a truly existing subject experiencing an object that is not truly existing and there was actually already uh some criticism of this from the pre-made America schools right the verbask of the satrantica and they would ask um well if there is no pre-existing object what grounds a perception in space and time first question second question if there's no object why do different people see different things what gives rise to that and then how can we have in imaginary objects there's no object that give rise to actual results right we're very familiar with the idea that we can think something but it leads to real action in the world so how can something which doesn't exist be causally efficient in this way uh we'll come back to that um now a lot of what we'll see today is Chandra Kitty's reputation will say look if we have an object that doesn't truly exist then clearly the subject which is truly existing according to the chittama doesn't need that object right so why don't all subjects experience the same things as this subject that happens to have this non-trial existing object so for example if we say a person has a certain dream experience they might dream of a giant elephant well if that elephant doesn't exist it's equally non-existing during the daytime so why don't we perceive the giant elephant in the daytime and we'll see that our opponent comes up with actually a variation on this idea of a Continuum that we saw before actually this week we'll talk a lot more about the idea of a potential or a seed basically it's the same kind of problem trying to link together a truly existing cause with a effect right because when they're truly existing we cannot create that link okay so as with previous weeks I just read the ten balls I'll read I'll read two this week and also next week so number four catching the ball I sees him with a terrific struggle his great will and power inexhaustible your charges to the high Plateau far above the cloud Mists or in an impenetrable Ravine he stands comment he dwells in the forest a long time but I caught him today infatuation for scenery interferes with his Direction longing for sweeter grass he wanders away his mind still the stubborn and unbridled if I wish him to submit I must raise my whip number five taming the ball the weapon rope are necessary LC might stray off down some dusty road being well trained he becomes naturally gentle then unfettered he obeys his master comment when one thought arises another thought follows when the first thought Springs from Enlightenment all subsequent thoughts are true through delusional makes everything untrue delusion is not caused by objectivity it is the result of subjectivity hold the nose ring tight and do not allow even a doubt so this week we'll start to get the sense perhaps that we are starting to master the bull we'll be starting to feel a sense of you know mastering the refutations we're in the hero's journey we're now in the very middle of act two sometimes called the promise of the premise where we're being tested our opponents are tough but we are winning the fights we're beginning to come confident we will prevail we're starting to have fun in this case we're you know starting to see that other arising can be refuted our refutations work and perhaps we've been starting to understand why okay so turning to the text and I just um a brief introduction to the match review you'll see it's called both yogacharya and chitamatra they're sort of interchangeable just the actual what the words mean yoga Chara literally means one whose practice is yoga uh chitamatra means mind only where chitta means mind and matcha means only or exclusively historically this came later than nagarjuna right so he didn't refute this in the Madonna karika so one of our our source texts which is one of the reasons that China Kitty is spending so much time on them as an opponent right because the previous modemica tradition has not really disposed of them fully um our other source text the Dasha boomica Sutra interestingly that's also a source text for the tritometer right so um it'll be quite interesting and quite challenging just in just in passing I mean I know a set of moment ago that we're not entirely clear what the chitamatra believes or that they believe just one thing and we're going to make an assumption here that they believe in truly existing other arising but um it's not even clear that your matter actually believed that um if you look at Wikipedia on yogacharya they say that's very helpful they say as evidenced by Tibetan sources this school was in protracted dialectic with the modemica however there's disagreement among contemporary Western and traditional Buddhist Scholars about the degree to which they were opposed if at all summer is the main difference while the pandemic are held at asserting the existence or non-existence of any ultimately real thing was inappropriate some exponents of yogacharya asserted that the mind or in a more sophisticated version primordial wisdom and only the mind is ultimately real but not all the yoga challenge asserted that mine was truly inherently existent and according to some interpretations even the founders right vasubando nasanga in particular did not hold for that interpretation and so actually this notion that we currently have that they are in opposition was expounded by swan song the Chinese monk in the 7th century when he had some debates with the medemica school in India and wrote in Sanskrit a treaty is no longer existing called the non-difference of my democrine yogacharya and actually later your guitar experience synthesized the two views right particularly chantara in the 8th Century his view is called the yoga charya swatantrika madhyamika by the Tibetan tradition where he's saying yes ultimately we follow the medianica the idea that all phenomena Beyond extremes right no existence non-existence both or neither and at the same time in the relative we like the phenomenological focus of the Mind only and we'll see um even more so next week actually that there's a lot of overlap between the chitamatra and the and contemporary phenomenology cognitive science philosophy of mind now a lot of the uh debates in philosophy of Consciousness around the third person versus the first person you'll see this with Francisco Varela the minded life conferences Alan Wallace there's a lot of this going on you know is our first person Consciousness real or is it empty you'll hear these philosophers use terms like qualia a heart problem and so on and so forth so I've already I put up some readings for next week but some we're going to dig into some of this next week when we look at the lack of true existence of the person in particular the lack of true existence of subjectivity right because a lot of us when we say the person we're referring to the sense that here I am right you know the Cartesian all right so verse 45 page 159 uh on the sixth booming the body Cipher realizes that phenomena are mind alone this is what the chitta mushrooms argue and worth noting they would also say emptiness but they would Define it a little differently whereas for the madamica we say empty of true nature the chitta Mantra it's empty of labeling it's not the same because for them the base of labeling as we'll see in a moment does exist substantially whereas for us the modernica nothing exists substantially so the example they use very good example um just as the wind stirs the ocean to make waves our habits stir the Alaya which is our Consciousness our mind to produce all our dualistic phenomena and experience now of course the danger with that analogy as it applies actually is an ocean there right which is being blown around by the wind whereas in fact as we will see there is no truly existing Allah even though our opponents would like to believe there is okay verse 47 now we come to the definition and um the the definition is in terms of three natures now the Chipmunks still holds a two truths right everything is either a phenomena as in Dharma or Ultimate Reality which is the nature phenomena so you know those three Natures there's only two truths just like just like us um and the theory is what's called representation list right so um that means you can't access phenomena directly only their representations and just to look at our previous opponents so the vibashika they are realists you know they believe in these atoms and moments of thought but not representationalists because they believe you can have a direct perception of these real objects these atoms at the South trantica the next school they also believe in the atoms of a matter and of mind but for them you cannot have a direct perception you can only have access to a representation right something that's caused by the external objects by the way we say representation very similar to how contemporary Neuroscience would describe things right we we think we see the world but what's actually happening is our eyes are taking in a stream of information converting it to neural impulses which are going along our nerves to our brains and our brains are then re-working all those neural impulses and constructing an image and we're not seeing the image directly we're seeing a representation with a construction it's a virtual reality and the same is true in the satrantica and also the chitamatra right but the differences in the subtrantica the representations are caused by external objects in the chitta mantra these representations are not caused by anything external right they're caused by subliminal Impressions from the foundational Consciousness right from the Allah this thing we're calling the mind only so just a moment what are these these vasana these buckchak again Wikipedia is very good uh if you look at the article in versa they are habitual Tendencies or dispositions a word that's oftenly used synonymously with the word bija or seed right it's found in the Pali and the early Sanskrit sources but really comes to prominence with yogacharya because they're using this term this idea of this habitual tendency or seed to denote a latent energy resulting from actions right so it's like if we engage in certain actions habitually it's thought to become imprinted in our mind streams right they actually call this Allah a storehouse Consciousness right it's almost like a like a bank account which stores all our karmic traces and it's believed that these habitual Tendencies predispose us to particular patterns of behavior in future right so it's uh it's a bit like that they're like a stain almost like a coloration of our mainstream for example it's assumed that if someone smokes they'll be habitual tendency for that urge to smoke to keep coming back uh the idea is that if we behave in a certain way it'll trigger similar actions in the future thereby reinforcing this bug Chuck again they're very similar to contemporary Neuroscience where there's this adage neurons that fire together wire together right we know that repeated Behavior tends to solidify our way of thinking and our way of acting right which is part of the reason practice even Dharma practice is effective right it's because we're reinforcing our habits uh it's very similar actually again technology we talked about last week he has lovely language about this where he talks about watering the seeds of sorrow and watering the seeds of joy you're making the point that at any moment in time you can choose you know am I going to put energy into the things that make me unhappy or am I going to put energy into watering the seeds of Joy the things that will make me happy because the more we water the seeds of Sorrow the stronger they become and likewise the more you water the seeds of Joy the stronger they become similar very similar examples the classic uh Native American story which we often is quoted the idea that there are two Wolves yeah and do there's a good will for a noble wolf and a bad wolf and the wolf that becomes the stronger is the one that we feed the more that's a very similar idea right where we put our energy the wealth that we feed the seeds that we water those become strong so I think actually the chitamatra idea very intuitive makes a lot of sense and actually fits with contemporary Neuroscience right that habits are real there you know physical in our brain um and the more we do a certain thing the more we have these we could call it comic traces okay so the three Natures there are two uh that are in conventional truth and one that is Ultimate so again two truths so the first one in the conventional truth is um para calpita sounds good or contact and that is all idealistic experiences and perceptions all projections or interpretations that we're making of the underlying seeds which are the mental phenomena Perry kelp it says you may recall from previous weeks that's a word we used which is the same word for imputed reality right so for the cheetah matcha that includes all our normal imputed dualistic phenomena and experiences but also things like language right where we've come up with a conventionally imputed system and to our minds they appear all these phenomena as if they have an external dualistic subject object reality and duality but this is completely unreal right none of this truly exists all of it is just like a a superposition on the bass right so it's a bit like we're talking last week the uteritant for teachings so keeping dirt on our window so the window is the base but we can put dirt on top and it's very similar to that uh there's often an analogy used that sometimes in a dark room we might have a striped rope lying on the floor and if we're unsure we might project a snake where we there's actually a doctor a striped rope so in this case the striped rope is the base but the snake is this para calculator that contact right it's the projection the imputation there is no snake there in reality we are adding it based on our habitual patterns right it's invalid relative truth because other people if they were to look at that rope they would not see a snake they would see a rope that's the first nature right the second nature is uh para Tantra in Sanskrit or zhen Wong and Tibetan and this is the base right the base of all these projections so just like the example of the the struct Rope is the base of the projections of snake at and it's called the dependent nature right it's um mind but actually Consciousness really because it's not the dualistic Minds everything dualistic is a projection right that's part of that first category right the contact right the the zhenwang is a non-dual awareness right sometimes we say mere Clarity mere awareness and here the duty mattress say look it's divide of duality nevertheless it exists substantially and is completely beyond words or language or expression but for them it is considered to be conventionally real right as we said before the imputations the perfect calculator that's conventionally unreal they don't accept it it's completely unreal whereas this they need some kind of conversion reality for them the conversion reality is this genuine this base now perhaps already you can start to see wait a second this is starting to interfere with the cowards perception because no Cowherd would describe conventional truth this way um and actually the striped rope it's actually I mean yes it's a common example it's actually a little bit misleading because the striped rope is already dualistic right it's already a particular perception whereas this base should be something that is non-dual so there's a there's another example we'll come to later which is the way that different beings in the six Realms perceive water differently um and actually ultimately China Kitty will say there is no truly existing base but humans say it is water see it as a home the hungry ghosts the Predators they see it as pus and blood and excrements right so different beings make completely separate projections onto this base which is beyond Duality but there is no base at all truly existing according to change but to the chitta Mantra yes there's a base but it's beyond Duality right so that's a good way of thinking about it so just to be clear for all the lower Buddhist schools the vibhashika the satrantica the chitta Matra there is a truly existing base and that is why we talk of other arising right because our subjective experience it is based on this truly existing objective base that is the cause of our subjectivity whereas there is no truly existing base right so there is no true existing other arising third of third truth third nature is the ultimate truth and this is Tibetan and this is Ultimate Reality uh little complicated um because they you know like uh like us as the maderica would say the ultimate truth is um emptiness right Beyond dualistic uh existence or parents but um I'll read the quote from vasubundu so the literal translation he says the paranispana is the eternal non-existence it's never truly there of the as it appears in other words the the contact the projection of what appears in other words the base because it is unalterable it's a little hard to follow but what he's saying is these projections right the contact they are always non-existent right there's never a true existing projection whereas the base does truly exist right and so what we're saying in ultimate truth is that projections are always unreal whereas the base is unalterable and truly existing and that is the ultimate truth okay um there's some more detail which we can touch on a little um just this idea that even the Gen Wong right it actually has two kinds it has a pure and an impure version and actually this is uh progress along the path because in samsara as we've just described we have all these seeds these imprints these dualistic karmic habits which are causing the general to manifest for us as dualistic phenomenal experiences right it's impure genuine but if we practice we can replace these impure seeds with pure seeds right so we'll change the uh the storehouse right what's actually stored in our a layer Vision yeah and um all of a sudden we'll move towards so that idea of the purification of the genuine is what the path is about and it's replacing the bad seeds with the good seeds right the seeds of sorrow with the seeds of joy okay so refutation now um the uh sex doesn't actually talk so much about the uh early Buddhist schools but some of the pre-reading touches on this are quite helpful I think and the early Buddhist schools they they challenge the uh by saying look if you want Got No No Object how do you ground your perception in space and time and here the church manager answer with the example of the dream they say well yeah look at a dream and a dream the person is or repairs at a specific place and time in the dream it is grounded the next question well why do different people see different things can hear the common Buddhist example is used just as you said water appears differently to different beings on the different realms humans see water fishy home the pretor see pus and blood and excrement and this inter-subjective agreement is due to the maturation of their Collective Karma right so Buddhist accept this conventionally so again why why would you argue with us say that you're dementra final example how can we have a causally efficient object that is nevertheless not truly existing yeah the example is a wet dream right even without sex you can still have the emission of semen right because of a fantasy during your dreamers you could have a real uh effect even though the cause is not real so what will happen is um Chandra Kelly basically does not buy this idea that you can have a truly existing subject or Consciousness without a truly existing object and so he presses the church tomorrow like we'll give you an example right and so they successively go through four different examples right they're all actually good Buddhist examples but none of them it turns out actually work and by the way they would all work if we did not if the treatments did not insist in true existence but because they're insisting on truly existing arising that's what makes this not work so the four examples starting in verse 48 we have deluded mental Consciousness or the dream verse 54 will have deluded sense consciousness which is our old friend the eye disease of falling hairs for 69 mistaken meditation so this is the classic caravada meditation of the corpse meditation the skeleton meditation finally verse 71 will have deluded perception this is the example we've already discussed which is the different Perceptions in the different sex realms Okay so says okay give me an example and our opponent says well the dream because you know we have a truly existing mind we know that because we remember our Dream but the dream didn't exist but you know China Kitty is not happy with this he says well what makes you say um that the object was not truly existing but the subject during the dream was really existing why was the subject not equally not truly existing I want to put it differently why doesn't the dream object appear to the waking mind what's different there has to be something that's different because as far as he can say in the waking mind both the mind and the perception are both conventionally accepted they're both conventionally real but in the dream the dream mind the dream object they're both conventionally unreal so it's verse 49 verse 50. um here the church March is going to say look there is no object so they talk about three things they talk about the object they talk about the the I uh sense and Consciousness and then they talk about the result the mental representation all three are equally not truly existing but for the chitamatra the first two the object and the eye they are not truly existing because remember all of these dualistic appearances are manifested uh as contact right as projections on top of the zhenwang um but for them they they would say the actual mind that perceives this the Mind itself is truly existing and Chandra kethi cannot accept that right so basically the next couple verses 51 to 53 they're all basically saying look there cannot be a truly existing subject with no truly existing object so in 51 he says look if you say the object and the I do not exist how can something real right this mental representation arise from something non-real non-existent makes no sense 52. so these are actually says the verses themselves are actually very uh in a way they're very simple because really all he's doing is just challenging this idea of how real and unreal could be in that kind of subject object relationship because as far as he's concerned you could either have both real or both unreal without having one real and one unreal makes no sense right remember go back to our idea of the marble the the true existent interacting with the cloud it doesn't work I mean a marble can hit a marble or you can talk about you know two clouds merging together but a marble in the cloud how does that work or it doesn't make sense um 52 I General Kitty says look just as there is no truth in the cognition of the dream object there's equally no cognition the truth and the cognition of the waking object there's no true existing mental representation there either no true to existing consciousness 53s is the object the I and the mind the conscious they're all similarly not truly existing whereas as we've said the chittamatra says the mind really exists but not the senses not the objects so you know they claim they have a non-dual theory but for General Kitty this is extremely dualistic right we have a dualistic sort of breakdown between our truly existing subject and a non-trul existing object so very similar to a lot of the Contemporary economies of science debates about the first and third person and we'll come back to that next week you know what is the status that we're ascribing to the subject to our consciousness okay so now 54 we move to the second example uh the deluded sense Consciousness and again as we said before if we have um an eye disease we see falling here but for sure kids this is easy to refute he says look either you have the eye disease in which case you both have the object you see the object and you have the mental representation of that whereas if you have no disease neither exists right so again we the opponent still hasn't managed to come up with an example where we have one namely the subject but not the other 55. Chandra Katie says well look you know if indeed you could have a truly existing subject that did not have an object then why doesn't everyone see falling hair similar to the previous refutation why doesn't everyone see the dream elephant why doesn't everyone see the falling hat we have no reason and so of course 56 now that she's a mantra they have to resort to some reasoning to explain why these subjects should be different given that there is no truly existing object right remember China Kitty doesn't have this problem because he doesn't have a truly existing subject that is separate from these objects for him subject and object a rise to pen and flip on one another and so naturally in different circumstances you'll have different subjective perceptions of course Twitter matrons can't do that right so they need some kind of explanation and in this case they talk about the mental potential right the back check the seeds they say well the reason the supposedly healthy person doesn't see the hair is not because there's no hair for them but just because their mental potential their seed hasn't ripened yet you know chapter Katie doesn't like this um and so very similar to the uh refutations that we had last week he's going to refute this idea of a seed or a potential by asking where on which time does this seat exist is it in the past the present or the future this as well it's 57 if it's in the present we don't need the seed right because we already have the results so in the same way that if we have a shoot already present we don't need the seed right if it's the future mind that has this seed well the future mind doesn't exist yet so we can't talk about the characteristic of something non-existent now that can't actually give rise to anything later because it doesn't even exist and then if we talk about deceiving in the past well then we have the same problem as in verse 14 that things could arise without coherence anything from anything so verse 60 John okay to concludes look the chitamatra idea of this continuity this seed this potential this has already been refuted Justice before just in verse 16 it's a circular argument right at 61 he then points out there are some additional problematic consequences when we say um things are other and yet we say they're part of a continuity that doesn't make sense right you can't have things that are truly other sharing a single continuity and if you find that hard to visualize just imagine again the two marbles the two marbles you know they they you can't sort of overlap them like you might to clouds marbles have hard edges they cannot share a continuity right where one marble is the other marble cannot be they can't overlap right so same with anything truly existing it can't overlap it cannot share this continuity so now 62 through 64. again the two Dimension now restates that basis but this time in terms of the uh support and the object supported around the base and the object genuine contact so they say 62. the I actually this idea of an eye is just the potential uh habitual pattern of the Alia Visionary which has been activated and so as a result ordinary beings project dualistic phenomena like I like the object of the eye on something that is fundamentally non-dual it's just a non-dual uh seed or movement of Asana in the layer likewise 63 this sense objects do not exist 64 there are no truly existing forms right just as in a dream we might see a dream elephant even though there is no real elephant and that would be arising from the maturation of these seeds these karmic Tendencies this back check uh similarly anything else we perceive is the arising the maturation of this kind of seed okay so the refutation and we've actually covered this already to some degree so 65 genre Katie here says look the dream you have a you see forms and yet there is no I so why do blind people see things when they're awake right if it's all coming from the mind we're at 66 he reverses the argument says if the blind person doesn't have the potential to see while awake why should the healthy person see things when dreaming by the way if you uh I noted the uh the translation here on page 179 is actually different from the padmakara translation um so I I would actually advise if you if you have a chance to follow the uh the Padma car when I know Roche recommends that as uh uh the most accurate translation we have um yeah the commentary in the padmakara on this verse says since neither external objects nor sense Powers exist in dreams they cannot be just Consciousness existing in isolation and it must be accepted that just as in the waking State objects such as forms and the sense of sight and so on in the dream state are the causes of or the occasion for the false mental Consciousness namely the subject okay so in 68 then conclusion all the chitta matron arguments are basically unsubstantiated hypotheses right there hypotheses that are the same of the thesis to be proved there are circular arguments they're really not proving anything we still haven't got an example a valid example of a truly existing subject without an object nevertheless they have given up so we turn now to 69. third example diluted meditation all right so here this is the classic example of a yogi would meditate on the Skeleton on the Earth being covered with bones and indeed with such a meditation the yogi can transform his or her Consciousness and thereby achieve non-clinging right renunciation so here the you know our opponents too much of the saying well look you know we all know there is no skeleton covering the Earth in reality and yet we have a truly existing change in our mind that results from this not truly existing object so what are you going to say to Katie how do you refute that at h100 he says well no look that's not truly existing that's also dependently arising because if indeed this was a truly existing mental representation then it should be like a theater it should be that everybody should see the same thing but we know that's not true right it's only the case for the person who's done their practice okay that's the 17th fourth example verse 71 deluded visual perception so again we've already seen this idea um different Realms perceive water differently because here General Kitty in the last two lines put on X7 says just in brief if there is no object then there is no subject right there is no consciousness because as before if it were truly existing we should all see it and clearly we don't have each of the Realms is something different but here he turns now to refuting this genuine it's the space it's a layer he's he's refuting its true existence as a subject the substance sorry uh because it says the 72 well who could know it right it's not an object of mind we really said it's completely non-dual it is not an object of anything so how can anyone perceive something non-deal because as soon as you were to perceive it it becomes an object right of perception and then our opponent says well what about truly existing self-awareness but that doesn't work right if if our self-awareness perceives itself and it's truly existing then we have the same problem we saw last week as with the samcare right I've been truly existing self arising so again very that's very much thinking wrongly of Buddha nature as being like Atman it's very important for those of us you know who who are you know aspiring to practice your masandi mahmudra this idea of the mayor Clarity the mere awareness that should never be truly existing right because otherwise it just becomes like a form of Hinduism um okay another another attempt in the church as well what about the self-awareness remembering its early experiences yeah Chandra Kitty says well look memory itself is not proven to be real and so we can't use it as the valid proof of self-awareness because who knows other things might cause memory right we don't know and in 74 he says the other problem is the past memory and the present experience they are other right and as we said last week if things are truly other but truly existing other Rising then you have all these problems of linking cause and effect not having a chaotic breakdown where anything could lead to anything else so all of these problems still still with us with our opponent I should say and whereas so then 75 well how does Chandra Kitty then understand memory and for him no problem right because for us we do not have truly existing arising right so the mind or the memory that remembers something blue it's not truly different not truly the same there is no true statement we can make about its relationship to the object blue we know there is a mind we know there was the object we know they are existing in this complex dependent relationship with one another but there's no true arising right so there's nothing to explain there in terms of a true causality so summary starting in 76 there's no true existing self-awareness so there is nothing that can perceive this General dependent nature 77 and if gen Wong is neither born well because your opponent here insists on bongs it's truly existing nor is it known because it can't be perceived then Chandra Kitty says well surely it existence is totally logical right something unborn and unknown and he he sarcastically says what did the barren woman's child do to you that you're not using that as your example again obviously the example here is a barren woman obviously cannot have a child right so here trying to Collective communicate he's saying this is truly not existent right Unborn cannot be known and why is that any different then from your Alia and as we've already seen because the chitamatra believe the zhenwang truly exists they end up destroying the conventional experience of ordinary people because remember they've already argued all of these out of phenomena are not real the only thing that is conventionally real is this General that you know we can't even talk about or perceive so clearly not conventional experience 79 very important verse um the first two lines which I read the whole thing apart from this very path of the vulnerable acharya nagarjuna other paths will not serve as means to attain peace in other words enlightenment as they incompletely grasp the all-concealing in other words relative and absolute truths they fail to establish liberation there's a very strong statement right we're basically saying even though other Buddhist schools uh May will say they're working to Enlightenment as we saw last week only the Madame like only the practice of my demica is actually the path to Enlightenment and indeed even you know the sravakayanas the protector buddhayana they those other Buddhists are also practicing madamica if they are moving towards Enlightenment right so all these other Buddhist theoreticians all these different schools their beliefs are not a path to Enlightenment a very strong statement um verse 18. sort of building on this conventional truth is the means absolute truth is the aim whoever's unaware of this distinction will enter inferior paths because of wrong conceptions right so either we get the wrong goal or we get the wrong path but unless you have the right goal rather the correct understanding of the ultimate truth unless you have the right path in other words the correct understanding of conventional truth you will not move towards your goal and as we've seen for us we have neither fault but for our opponents they have both faults right they are asserting something truly exists so the goal is incorrect and they're interfering with the conventional truth of organ beings so their path is incorrect now there's also because I mean our opponent has said well surely Jean Wong is a conventional truth but here we reject any similarities among the conventional truth because Chandra kethi says look he does not accept nor the Ordinary People except this genuine or a layer in the ultimate or the relative and he says even when it comes to accepting conventional people's opinions in the relative he only admits these non-existing things exist for the sake of convention and he said indeed if phenomena didn't appear to Ordinary People he wouldn't even talk about them and have example as well look for our hearts who have attained Nirvana that them they no longer have a nominal appearances right although of course for beings until that point we do still see phenomena suchandra Katie is saying look you know I am in agreement with ordinary people I'm not going to argue with their perceptions if that's what they see 83. he says look Ordinary People they contradict the denial of relative conventional truth right he says try debating Ordinary People and whoever wins I'll rely on the stronger a lovely argument right I'm very consistent with his view he says look straight to Marshall you debate these guys if you can convert something then fine I'll follow you but frankly I I doubt that you will it's a great I think it's a great reminder as she said a great anti-nihilist of us because it just reminds us we cannot ever let our Dharma path ignore or deny the importance of family work relationships Health responsibilities in the world right sometimes we can you know get allow our Dharma path to become realistic but this this verse reminds us that is a mistake um and the conversation actually the Q a there was a nice Point made that um what why is the chitamatra other arising it's because the self is a label right all labels are not truly existing so it cannot be a truly existing arising for itself because the self doesn't exist right so it has to be a true existing other arising by contrast as we saw the Hinduism and you know there's some care there the cell does truly exist which is why we have truly existing sulfur Rising right just to be clear on that point okay so now verses 84 onwards actually they're a little more straightforward because this basically is saying you know why was the checha much review taught in the first place you know if indeed on the sixth movie The bodhisattva sees that it's all mined why would uh you know why would we get sort of why wouldn't we just go with that right why do we need to worry about damaging this teachings be ultimate and the uh chitamatra not being valid why was the church matter taught at all Okay so 6a4 it was taught to refute a permanent self as a Creator right as we saw like uh some care or indeed schools that believe in a Creator God right yeah the Buddha want to say no none of these external things create only the mind 685 it was taught to overcome these wrong views 86 because the titicans right the uh the Believers in wrong views they taught other kinds of creators like Atman like God which the Buddha wanted to refute hence he taught mine only but 87 but he was not doing it to deny form only to establish the importance of mind and it is hey just to be clear about that in other places the Buddha does talk about the importance of action right he doesn't just talk about the importance of mind so he's not going into this kind of idealistic ignorance or denial of action 89 but why is the mind so important well because all the six Realms all sentient beings they come from Karma and without mind there could be no Karma right 90 form itself is inanimate right it's only minded as the creator of Karma and therefore the creator of the six Worlds the six realms and again the big difference is unlike the chitamatra but it did not refute the existence of the external world for him if you have mind you also have form and vice versa so thinking otherwise is contradicted right 91. because the ordinary beings see the five scanders whereas the yogis is none right so we cannot have a truly existing form or substantial form um but likewise in the ultimate truth if there's no form No Object there's also no mind no subject so either both are equally refuted ultimate and conventional as in the partial parameter or both are accepted right the mind and the form like the avidarma or we're explaining conventional truths whereas the cheetah Mantra what they do is they keep one and reject the other so in this way 93 all these substantialist opponents are trying to catchita matcha they're all dismantling the two truths 2001 we have this lovely quote from Guru Shay our view should be as wide as the sky but our attention to the details of action should be as fine as the SunPower at The Barley flower that is the statement of the two truths so just continuing um there's a bit of a discussion about the scriptural authorities just saying that um in this case the supporting text is of expedient meaning so drunk done not certain meaning or near done and as we said already the mind-only teachings were taught especially for those who have a strong attachment to form which needs to be demolished refuted in 95 Mr Kitty says look in other sutras the Buddha himself said you know I teach different medicines for different sicknesses and for some I taught all is just mind and why would he say that if this were not just uh provisional teaching as I said before just because it's professional does not mean it's inferior right provisional is about useful because if we don't have the right teaching for us at this point in time we will not move forwards right as Russia said actually part of what a skillful teacher will do is he will decide for a student do they tend to Veer more towards the eternalism or more towards nihilism and then he'll decide what kind of teaching they need right if they're more eternalistic they probably need more deconstruction more emptiness oriented teachings right whereas if they're nihilistic in their Tendencies then maybe they need more compassion more energy oriented teachings right so 205 that this lovely saying of the Buddha which is mind there is no mind the nature of mind is Luminosity right those three statements correspond to the three turnings of the wheel and there was a discussion here I'm not going to go into much detail you could certainly read more in the background video if you're interested and this is really amongst the differences between the the different Tibetan schools the rangtong and the shintong uh the rangtong basically say only the second turning teachings right the teachings on emptiness only those are certain teachings and the third turning is provisional whereas the shintongas they would say both the second and the third turning are certain teachings right um there's a nice story actually in page 206 um about when it's all that still he came from today I went to visit his followers who basically said yes you know just a reminder when establishing the view it's wonderful to have the wrong topper right more emptiness oriented very clean no chance of falling into misleading hiding places for the ego but once we have established the view then it's beneficial to practice with the shantanka right a little bit like uh stockdale's Paradox right it's good to get a clear understanding of the truth but then we need something to motivate us to practice to keep going on the path right it's easy if you're just focused on deconstruction focused on emptiness you might lose hope you might wonder what the points as if indeed there is no meaning and no purpose um another nice analogy given here which is like the the mother with a sick child right normally of course we would say it's very good for the baby to have the mother's breast milk but if the child is sick and can't take the milk then maybe the mother for period has to put something bitter onto her breast so the child does not want that but then once the child's sickness is healed her mother puts something sweet back onto her breasts to encourage the child to drink the milk so similar here right the milk right the uh the teachings on the Buddha nature teachings they they give us this inspiration this encouragement to practice like the mother's milk but at the beginning um they can poison us because we already have too much attachment right so first we need to take the bitter medicine and to not sort of drink these this milk too much we have to instead drink you know something different and establish emptiness but then once we have done that once our view is in place then as we practice the chanton is considered very very beneficial okay 96 just um also why did the Buddha teach the emptiness or a lack of true existence of phenomena first because then it's easier to disprove the true existence of the person and did as we said last week that's is the order we're doing it in this text um again just a repetition 97 any Sutra any of the word is teaching that does not teach emptiness directly is considered provisional including as we've said anything on Buddha nature Etc um and that is the end of a rising from other right arising from both soft and other just one verse 1698 and really all what gender Katie says is look all the defects are already identified would occur because if it's both you've got all the problems of silver Rising and if it's other you've got all the problems of truly existing other arising so in 99 we then turned it rising from no cause right neither self or other and um verse 99 if that were the case causality would break down completely right if there's no causes how on Earth does any cause lead to any kind of result anything could arise from anything why would we perceive any phenomena right because there's no rational reason there's no causing of anything to appear or to function in the world so clearly absurd then there's a slightly different School of chart because in 101 which is chocolate has to believe in an elemental cause is Extreme materialists who see all phenomena just emerging from different configurations of material elements and actually some would say this is uh similar to a contemporary materialistic scientists and that's a very interesting debate that happened in France when we read through the transcripts here um because French and Indians you know the verse 101 says How could somebody with such thick mental obscuration even probably know what is beyond this life in other words you feel that much materialist how you you wouldn't be able to imagine rebirth and the ancient Indians of course this was a source of ridicule because for them rebirth was very much part of their contemporary truth conventional truth whereas as you know nowadays we have secular Buddhists like Stephen Bachelor who do not accept a rebirth right because they argue their conventional truth in the Contemporary West does not have a rebirth so there's a really interesting question here from shasks as well how can we bridge this gap between cultures like ancient and Euro Tibet where rebirth is conventional truth and cultures like the modern West where it isn't this is especially a challenge for for us if we're following John Ducati because you know he accepts conventions and so if the convention is there is no true existing rebirth why would we believe it I'll leave that for you as a contemplation how would you resolve this dilemma yeah maybe maybe a topic for reform discussion by the way I just want to uh have a shout out for the Forum it is now fully functional and I know already some people are active but I know there's many of you following these teachings in only a very small number are actually engaging in the form so I just want to encourage you use it you don't necessarily have to participate in existing topics if you don't want to maybe start new topics ask questions uh you know raise your doubts and just you know work with each other uh comments on each other's thoughts answer each other's questions it's really there for you as an opportunity to use it that way okay uh 102 um yes I mean if indeed you see the self as an object then you do have this problem that you are you're having a truly existing end truly existing ceasing of a truly existing self right that which could indeed be a criticism for an unsophisticated modern materialist who doesn't believe in vendorizing um 103 because you know Katie says the elements themselves are pretty shown like all phenomenally the elements they do not have truly existing arising so they do not truly exist so how could these elements which don't really exist give rise to a truly existing self makes no sense right so yeah the very idea that you could have a truly existing self which really existing phenomenon that does not come from any causes makes no sense for 104 um so here we're disposing of a few objections uh just repeating 904 there are no truly existing objects but two ignorant sentient beings they appear deceptively 105 really important points it's not as though there is some kind of true nature that is being blocked right it's not as if there is a base that we are perceiving incorrectly according to trying to Getty there is no base right neutral existing base so dualistic phenomena themselves are the ignorance right just like the water six Realms there is no true and existing base that could in principle be seen correctly it's not as if one of the six Realms has a privileged or correct view of this supposed phenomenon is that all of the six Realms in samsara are all mistaken right that's why we talk about going Beyond dualistic perceptions because they're all mistaken right and certainly if you're using the language of science you might say any model of the world we know is an approximation there is no right model you know any model is wrong it's just this idea is getting used to this idea that any story We Tell is incomplete right any dualistic perception that is the ignorance already 106 like like 42 actually we did last time um the unwise still engage in creating Good Karma and bad comma the wise go beyond good and bad and they'll liberated actually a little later in 230 room she clarifies this verse saying you know often gets the question how can it be that good things like Faith Like devotion like compassion are considered to be ignorant I just as we've been saying all along remember what we're interested in is realizing the non-duality the truth the absolute ultimate truth and all of the path right all of these path teachings all of these methods are just like the boat for us to cross the water right we're not wanting to get attached to the boat right we don't want to get attached to any of these good methods which are our path always remember this right as a media maker follower non-dual is always better than good I think that can always be a challenge for us right because I think in our conventional uh thinking or conventional morality we always think we do what is good so we always have this confusion again between the two truths how do we make sure we are keeping to both the ultimate truth focusing on the path to the non-duality and at the same time not contradicting conventional truth so just a few more um refutations how our opponent attempts to refute our saying well look 107 if there's no arising in the relative truth like you say 200k to them why do I get a headache just so we saw this last week in the Zen story nothing exists you know why harpreneur says why isn't your lack of true existence just the same as the non-existent barren woman's child you know why is there anything at all how do you explain it so it's 108 so first chapter Katie says well you know first argue with those who experience all these falling hairs and then you can argue with ordinary sentient beings right his point is very hard to refute people's perceptions they really believe this is their experience that 109 he says look why are you getting so hung up with this idea of any true existence in the first place right we all understand the idea that we can perceive a non-existent phenomenon like a mirage right just because it doesn't exist doesn't mean you can't perceive it right so you clearly don't need something to be truly existing in order to perceive it that's in 110 he basically says you know Therefore your objection doesn't hold and in fact in 111 he says the brown woman's child doesn't exist ultimately or conventionally and all phenomena are like that 112. hence the Buddha said that all phenomena are primordially peaceful uncreated and naturally Beyond suffering now I I like this um this word promotedly peaceful especially although one room she teaches the four seals he'll often say Nirvana is beyond extremes he also sometimes says Nirvana is peace that's the same idea there's something about non-duality that is intrinsically peaceful so um 113 here example is you know the lower Buddha schools of ibashca they will say that a composite object like a pot doesn't ultimately exist but nevertheless it exists relatively right even though the ultimate existence is this atom which many are collected together to make the pot but they're not denying the part right so it's Chandra kitty saying just because you say something doesn't exist it does not mean it's like a Barren woman's child which doesn't even exist conventionally right so that was the opponent's accusation in 107. so China Kitty refutes that so now 114 another important verse so this is the first time where General Kitty actually uses the words uh dependent arising so having now rejected all the four possibilities of true arising from self other both or never what is left is that there can be no true arising but because we don't deny that things appear conventionally we then accept dependent arising and again again I said this already but it's a handy way of thinking about this is when you think of truly existing or true Rising you're thinking of billiard balls right hard edges clear boundaries you know can't have two in the same place same time or as dependent arising we don't think of billiard bulls or marbles we think of something like a cloud fuzzy edges unclear boundaries unclear beginning and end always changing right and so again for our practice it's always good to think when you notice your emotions when you notice your conceptions what is the narrative you're telling right is there a narrative more like a cloud or more like a marble so again you know somebody accidentally scratches your car do you accept this as a cloud-like impermanent condition phenomenon or do you think of your car as being something that should be pristine unscratched always perfect you know like the marble and of course you know as we've seen intellectually it might be easy for us to sort of talk about everything being dependent but when it comes to our emotions especially when things which is regarding theories of me or mine then we become quite marble-like right quite billiable like all of a sudden things have hard edges we find it quite hard at that point to accept the four seals you know the impermanence the suffering nature uh the lack of self the non-duality so 115 then well what are the benefits of understanding experience Rising well it cuts through extreme views 115. 116 it cuts through conceptions is a very straightforward so it stanza sort of go through them really but I like the end of 116 it says you know without the firewood you will have no fire it's a very similar nice image there that if you don't have a truly existing idea of self no mean no mind then you won't get the fire of the three poisons 117. yogis are freed by going beyond all thoughts beyond all virtuous and non-virtuous so again very similar to 42 and 108 at 118 an important verse Chandra Katie's saying look I'm not engaging in all this debate and reputation because I happen to love polemics or debate I'm doing it for the sake of liberating people who currently have wrong views and he says look if in the course of that other views fall apart when analyzed it's not my intention it's not my fault right so it's really important he's pro-enlightenment he's not anti these other schools now I think uh it's easy to lose sight of that because we use the language throughout this text of talking about our opponents we talk about debate we talk about winning and losing and defeating but that that tends to conjure up a very dualistic mindset which makes us think our job is to you know defeat these schools it's not not what we're trying to do here right all we're trying to do is liberate beings and yes if in the course of that if in the course of pointing out wrong views they fall apart so be it but that's not our aspiration and 119 you know makes that beautifully clear clinging to one's own View and equally assailing the view of others such are limited attitudes therefore when first clinging and hatred have been cleared away analysis will bring liberation it's a really important always to remember as we're engaging in this text because sometimes you can get excited by this journey as we said you know the hero now has the capacity to defeat his opponents we can start to think it's all about the fight all about this defeating people that's really not what we're doing right it's not our ultimate purpose okay so with 119 then that marks the end of um the reputation of the truly existing self phenomena and as we saw we ended up with uh ultimately there's no true existence and relatively we can speak of things arising or appearing dependently so I mean for next week if you read the rest of this week's reading from 236 onwards you'll see there's quite a debate on you know rebirth on next life on what does it mean to have a self to have a mind and um at the time when she said look you know because we were coming to the end of the 1998 teachings he said you have a year now to prepare for our next set of debates which is going to be you know debating the true existence of the self now in this case we only have a week but I I do encourage you because there's a lot here of contemporary interest of you know contemporary theory of mind um philosophy of Consciousness a lot of the mind and life work the first third person work you know a lot of how we think of ourselves how we relate to ourselves so just taking time to clarify whatever narratives or theories we might have whatever beliefs we might have I think that'll be very helpful as we then come to the refutations next week as we will have more of a sense of what our own habits might be and with that um I thank you once again I wish you a good night and I will see you next week foreign