I'd like to start with some presentation. This triangle is set up by this paragraph, which says, we declare that whatever is dependent and co-arising is shunyata, whatever is dependent and co-arising is shunyata. It is a provisional name, so whatever is dependent and co-arising is a provisional name, or a conventional name, or a designation.

[01:33]

It is a conventional designation for the mutuality of being. Indeed, it is the middle way. And the other translation is, whatever is dependent and co-arising, that is explained to be emptiness. That, being a dependent designation, so again, that being a dependent designation could be that emptiness being a dependent designation, therefore emptiness is a dependent designation. Or that could apply to dependent co-arising, that's a dependent designation. So if you look at this, then you see various things. And all this, this relationship that's been described, that whatever dependent co-arising or co-arising, that's emptiness, and that emptiness or the dependent co-arising is a conventional designation.

[02:53]

And you can see by looking at that, I guess, that conventional designations, these go back in the other way too, so there's an error going from dependent co-arising, of the dependent co-arising to emptiness. There's an error going from dependent co-arising to convention. There's an error going from emptiness to dependent co-arising, an error going from emptiness to conventional designation or conventionality. There's an error going from conventionality to emptiness, an error going from emptiness and so on. So this means that emptiness is dependent on coheresn. It means that emptiness is a conventionality, or a convention. It means that convention is dependent on coheresn, and that convention is empty. So convention is empty, and dependent on coheresn is empty, and convention is dependent on coheresn. And emptiness is dependent on coheresn, and emptiness is convention. And all these different relationships, each story, there's several stories here,

[04:02]

each one of these stories is the middle way. So there's different kinds of middle way. One kind of middle way is the middle way of emptiness. So emptiness is itself a dependent designation. Emptiness itself is a convention. Emptiness itself is a word. So emptiness conventionally exists. But ultimately it is empty. Emptiness conventionally exists. How does emptiness conventionally exist? As a name, and also as a dependently co-arisen thing. It has that kind of conventional existence. As a name, as something that dependently co-arises. But

[05:02]

because it dependently co-arises, emptiness is empty. And because emptiness is a word, and words dependently co-arise, emptiness is empty. So emptiness has both conventional existence and ultimate emptiness. So emptiness is empty, and that's the middle way of emptiness. Terry, could you take care of this today? This is a mindfulness bell which someone requested. And so if you'd like to take care of it today, you can ring it at certain points if you wish, and then at that time we'll stop, and we will meditate on the dependent co-arising of the moment. Stop when the bell rings and just say, Now I observe my experience dependently co-arising, or I observe the dependent co-arising of this experience.

[06:07]

So next is that, you see, the things that dependently co-arise will be seen as ... I'll and not completely non-existent. And if you view them that way, then dependent co-arising is empty and conventionally existent. Empty means not non-empty. And conventionally existent means not completely non-existent. So to see things that dependently co-arise as empty

[07:12]

and also conventionally existent, this is the middle way of dependent co-arising. And the third is to view convention itself in this way, is to view it as neither ontologically insignificant or as ontologically efficacious. To view something as not ontologically insignificant is to view it as ontologically significant. How is convention ontologically significant? It is ontologically significant because it determines the character of the phenomenal world. Ontology has to do with ultimate being, or fundamental being. So convention has some

[08:18]

ontological significance because convention is the basis for dependently co-arising experience. Because dependently co-arising experience is based on convention, is based on words. However, convention is not ontological efficacious. It's like nothing is efficacious, neither is it. It isn't a basis upon which things come from. It doesn't have the power to cause things to arise. It isn't like this convention which is driving the universe. And yet the phenomenal world is built on and derived from this as a basis. This is the middle way of convention. Then, not only have we established that dependent

[09:19]

co-arising and emptiness are both just words, both just conventions, and therefore they're empty, but also they depend on each other. So the relationship between them is also empty, but not entirely non-existent. So those are four different kinds of middle way that you can get out of this karaka. In each case you have just observed the dependent co-arising of each one of those stories in order to produce the middle way of those stories. So I would like to use this as a basic model. Now, one other thing I'd like to do is, before we have questions and so on, is to tell you some ... go back and look at this verse that we chanted at the beginning of class, and I'd like to draw the attention to the part

[10:28]

about it being, in order to graciously ... the Buddha taught dependent co-arising so that we could graciously uproot all fabrication, or graciously uproot all obsession. So I look at the word gracious a little bit. Now, the way of graciously uprooting all fabrication or graciously uprooting all obsession is one of the gracious things about the way that dependent co-arising uproots it. There are non-gracious ways of uprooting it. For example, nihilism is a non-gracious way of uprooting it. You could uproot the obsession or uproot

[11:30]

the fabrication by vaporizing it or outlawing it. That's a way you could uproot them. This would not be particularly gracious, however. And that's not what dependent co-arising does. It doesn't come through and level the obsessions. It doesn't come through and destroy obsessions. It doesn't poison and bite and tear and rip the fabrications. It graciously uproots them. It uproots them in such a way that they still get to be fabrications, just like they were before. That fabrication down there is kind of like an easy-throw fabrication. It gets to continue to be a living one. If it's an energetic, well-established, high-powered, world-class fabrication, it gets to continue to be one. It's not that kind of uprooting. It's more the kind of uprooting which produces

[12:34]

blitz all around. I can remember a story I heard about the founder of Judo, named Mr. Kano, and he was traveling in Southeast Asia on a boat, and some big guy was storming down the deck, pushing people from side to side, and he came up to the middle. Mr. Kano was kind of small. He came up to Mr. Kano, and I don't know if they did, but anyway, he pushed Mr. Kano, and Mr. Kano took this guy and threw him in the air, and put him back down this deep without letting him go. And so it's called, this is a gracious uprooting. He could have thrown him overboard

[13:36]

or onto his head, but he put him right back down, which was not really appreciated. He really, he really, he really appreciated it. He was very grateful for the experience in many ways. So, the gracious uprooting. And I guess, I can't remember exactly how the quote went, but I told this quote before about Dostoevsky, and that is something about, you have to love the world first before going for its meaning, or you have to love the world above the meaning of the world. So, when we come to our obsessions and our fabrications, we may want to like, you know, and take care of them graciously before we get at their meaning.

[14:37]

The obsessions do have a meaning, but if we're not kind to the obsessions, they will be all the more tenacious in their obscuration of their meaning. They will not be generous to us necessarily, ahead of us being generous to them. Once in a while, even when we're not gracious to them, they say, oh what the hell, I'll tell you. And they give you a little hint. But then after that, you have to come back, you know, and it's a matching grant, right? Now you come back and you make an offering here, okay? Now that I started, now you. And then, back and forth in this way, this gracious way, gradually, the obsession is lovingly, graciously approved. In other words, it loses its roots. It doesn't lose its being. It loses its inherent existence, and just has its conventional

[15:42]

existence. And conventional existence, dependent and co-arising. So, some other translations of this are, homage to the fully awakened one, supreme teacher who taught dependent co-arising, the blissful cessation of all phenomenal thought constructions. So, in other words, the phenomenal thought doesn't stop. That keeps going. But the constructive quality of it, like the, there's nothing beside, but the edifice quality of it, the face quality of it, the established quality, the constructive, official, real, existent quality of our thoughts, that ceases. But it ceases in a blissful way. I'm not just going to explain beliefs when it

[16:47]

ceases, but the thought constructions also are blissful. They're happy too to be deceased. They didn't want to be constructive. They didn't want to be so heavy anyway. They don't want to be the bad guy. However, they have to be the bad guy, in order to draw out of us this graciousness, which brings us bliss. Sometimes the obsessions will want to go on strike, because they have the bad name. You know, one time the chief obsession constructor went to the Buddha and said, you know, I'm getting sick of this. We're doing this so that sentient beings can learn how to practice dependent co-arising properly and release themselves, but they just do nothing but complain about us and kick us around. They're not being gracious about it. We want to quit. And Buddha said, look, I got a hard job too. Here I am trying to teach dependent co-arising,

[17:53]

you know, which is supposed to apply to you, and you're not doing it. And here I've given my whole life for this, and they, you know, they say that they like me and stuff, but they don't do what I ask them to do. I want to quit too, but I'm not going to, and you can't quit either. So you just keep being obsessive thought constructions, and I'll keep coaching to come and understand you. And between now and then, there's going to be some, you know, rough times. So bring graciousness, because people get frustrated working with you guys. Nothing wrong with you, but, you know, they bring their stuff to you, right? I know they're not gracious, but I'll try to get them to be more gracious. And then we'll have the blissful cessation of all phenomenal thought constructions. Another translation. I offer salutation to the best of all preachers, the Buddha, who taught dependent co-arising, which has no ceasing, no arising, and so on, that is the quiescence, or that is quiescent in all fictions, and that is blissful.

[19:03]

Dependent co-arising is quiescent, is quiet in terms of fictions, and it is blissful. Okay, that's another one. Perfect Buddha, the foremost of all teachers, I salute. He has proclaimed the principle of universal dependent co-arising. It is like blissful quiescence of plurality. I salute him, the fully enlightened, the best of all speakers, who has preached the non-ceasing, non-arising, and so on, the dependent arising, the appeasement of obsessions, that is auspicious. So, one question I got from one of the groups was, how does emptiness, excuse me, what is beyond conventional and ultimate reality?

[20:11]

Before I answer that question, I'm going to say, what is beyond conventional reality? Is there an ultimate reality beyond conventional reality? And I would say offhand, no thank you. Ultimate reality is that conventional reality is just conventional reality. Ultimate reality is not about something beyond conventional reality. Ultimately, the talk of something beyond conventional reality is conventional reality. Does that make sense to you? In other words, in the ordinary conventional world, there's plenty of talk about something beyond conventional reality. And there's beautiful pictures of it, I love that picture, by somebody, maybe it's Boyd, is it? Somebody, it's a line drawing, and this guy, you know, this guy's body's in an ordinary world with windmills, and stars, and moons, and sheep, and men, and women, and so on. And then he's aligned to the drawing,

[21:20]

his head's sticking to his hand, and reaching on the other world, whereas things are different. This is a conventional drawing. Oh, the wheels of the universe, you can see the wheels. Nice. But anyway, this is a dependent co-arisen drawing. So, ultimate reality is not beyond conventional reality, as Karaka 10 says, only by relying on and becoming proficient at the workings of everyday affairs and everyday practices can you be taught the ultimate significance, the significance from the point of view of liberation, which is conventional reality, only after mastering conventional reality, is it good to tell people that conventional reality is just conventional reality. And you might think, what's the problem with telling them that? Well, the problem with telling

[22:21]

them that is the next thing that follows is conventional reality. Being just conventional reality is empty. It's nothing more than that. Most people think conventional reality is true. It has something to it, and that's why they sort of go along with it. If you tell them that it's just conventional reality and nothing more than that, you don't have to tell them it's empty for them to figure that out. When you tell them that conventional reality is just conventional reality, they sense something's been lost here. There used to be more than that, I don't know what it was. They sense that the whole situation's been emptied, so then their reaction to the emptiness of it is, well then, I guess it doesn't matter what I do. Where are my cigarettes? Is this a non-smoking area? Well, then it doesn't matter, I forgot. But I'm going to smoke those sunflowers. Where can you smoke anyway? China? In the designated area? Well, that's why first you should become really willing to live in the conventional world. In

[23:30]

other words, first, you should be willing to love and be gracious with the conventional world before you're told that the conventional world that you're being so gracious with is just a conventional world. In fact, if you are gracious with the conventional world, even before anyone tells you, you tell yourself. You realize, quite spontaneously, that life is taking care of the conventional world. And it's all right. But in terms of your inner revelation, that doesn't get revealed to you before you're ready for it. And it gets revealed to you when you're obedient to the conventional world. That natural chest, you can see, oh, the breath is just a breath. The body is just a body. My thoughts are just my thoughts. My emotions are just my emotions. My attitudes are just my attitudes. It isn't that my attitudes are actually false in reality. It isn't that my opinions are actually pristine, perfect, true. They're just my ideas. You see that? If I took care of them for so long, I now find out, hello, I'm just this,

[24:35]

wow. By being gracious with the thought instructions, they are graciously uprooted. By being gentle and loving of the world, its meaning comes forth. And the meaning of the world is, I'm not the world. The world is not the world. The jewel is not the jewel. But that message comes to those who have taken good care of the world and taken good care of the jewel. And good care of the jewel is not that you hold it tight to you and never look at it and punch people in the nose and try to touch it. It's taking care of it means lovingly, graciously, energetically, vividly, always changingly, questioningly, in awe and wonder of the jewel, in awe and wonder of conventionality. That's the spirit of the study of the technical arising of things, is to be in awe of them,

[25:37]

in wonder of them. And when you study them, and you know them, and love them, their meaning comes forth. Spontaneously. And you should be taught it now, and you should not have been taught it before you finished expressing your love. Life with his name. Carver, George Washington Carver, is that his name? And he was a little boy, you know, he liked, he loved plants, and he had a nursery. He made him a little nursery out of various pieces of scrap wood up in the forest. He went around and collected various kinds of native plants. And he also, I don't know how he got onto it, but he started like taking houseplants from various, you know, ladies in his neighborhood and taking them out to his little nursery and bringing them back to health and giving them back to the ladies. And they all said, you know, how did you know so much about these plants,

[26:41]

little boy? He said, well, I just go out in the woods, and I listen to the plants, and I love everything I see, and they tell me their secrets. Again, if we kind of like, okay, I'm a Buddhist monk, I want to find out the meaning of this, then that roughness blows away the source of the meaning. But listen carefully and lovingly to our obsessions, and our obsessions will tell us the real name, which is not obsession, which is life. Obsessions are life. Apparently, if that's the definition of life, we're alive. Not the definition, it's not the definitive, you know, end of the story, but it's one of those

[27:44]

things that are characteristics of living beings, particularly humans. We are the most diverse in obsession repertoire. Now, let's see, so, oh, we'll finish this question, is there anything beyond conventional and ultimate? Well, if there's nothing beyond conventional, then probably, or maybe there's nothing beyond conventional and ultimate. But again, this discussion, this whole discussion about things being beyond things, is a conventional discussion, and if we study how that works, we'll see that it dependently co-arises and it's empty. So, although there may not be anything beyond conventional and or ultimate, we can be free of both of them. And if you're going to be free of, to be free of conventional reality and stuck in ultimate reality is worse than being stuck in conventional reality. If you have a choice, choose conventional reality to get stuck in.

[28:47]

It's a better prison. The doors are easier to find, and jailers are easier to find, and jailers can be helpful. But if you're in ultimate reality, there's no doors, no windows, no bars, no walls, no floor, no jailers, no you, how are you going to get out? Forget it. Just go back to conventional prison. Like those chickens, you heard about those chickens? They got out of the cage and they said, now how do I get free? Here we are on this golf course, how are we going to get free? Let's go back in the cage. We can always get out of the cage. I'll release us in a few more days. Liberation is close at hand, if you get in the cage. Now, for those who like presentation, is that enough presentation? Of course. Almost. What more do you want? Do it again. When you went through it at the beginning,

[29:53]

when you went through it at the beginning, you were moving a little bit fast, and I was wishing that you could once again make a statement, a forced statement. Okay, I'll point at the middle thing, videotape. It's hard to sit down over here. I know the difference between suffering and long weeks. First of all, emptiness, look at emptiness, look at chunyata. You can see that chunyata is a word, it's a convention, it's a dependent designation.

[30:58]

Okay, we also see that emptiness, dependently, co-arises. So, emptiness conventionally co-arises, conventionally exists, but because it dependently co-arises and therefore has conventional existence, it is empty. So, emptiness is empty, but not just empty, it also has existence of a conventional kind. Emptiness does not have openness existence, it has conventional existence and also emptiness is empty. This is the middle way of emptiness. If you're not looking at this, I'll show you everything. Next, the middle way of dependent co-arising. So, dependent co-arising is non-empty.

[32:00]

How do you know it's non-empty? Because it's convention. It has conventional existence, so it's non-empty. Oh, excuse me, it's not non-empty. It's not, it's not. The dependent co-arising is not non-empty, it's empty, but also it's not entirely non-existent because it has conventional existence. So, it's both again empty and has conventional existence. This is the middle way of dependent co-arising. Next, convention. Convention is ontologically significant, it's too strong maybe,

[33:06]

but it's not ontologically insignificant because this convention determines the character of the phenomenal world. We can talk more about that too. But anyway, for now just to say that convention, words, determine the character of the phenomenal world. Words, conventional expressions, determine the way the story is formed. However, it is not ontologically efficacious like nothing is because it does not produce effects. It does not have a causal power. So, the dependent co-arising in the conventional world, which is dependent co-arisen, again balances between being a condition for the arising of the world, of the phenomenal world, but not a cause of it, not an efficacious cause of it.

[34:09]

That is the middle way of convention. And then, finally, we've already said, established that dependent co-arising and emptiness are just words. Therefore, blah blah. But also, the relationship between them is also dependent. You can't have emptiness floating around by itself. It has to have something which has just been emptied by dependent co-arising, by meditation on dependent co-arising for it to appear. And also, you can't have dependent co-arising without emptiness because dependent co-arising realizes emptiness. The fact that they depend on each other and produce each other and help each other, the fact that they need and help each other, means that their relationship is also dependent and therefore empty. And that's the middle way of their relationship. And a little bit more about this, just this point about,

[35:11]

again, it is possible for us to perceive various little segments of the universe. We're built that way. We don't see the whole thing at once. We see a person, we see a slice of the universe which includes a person. We see a slice of the universe that includes a mountain. We see a slice of the universe which includes a river. We see a slice of the universe which is a feeling or an emotion. We see these various slices of what's going on. But to establish that as something by itself, we need a word. We need some way to tack that thing on to something that's limited. And that's how we use words. Words are the way we make an experience isolated from the rest of the realm of experience. And that word is conventionally determined. And that's how we use the convention of words to independently co-produce

[36:17]

the experience of something by itself. So now, maybe that's enough introduction. I have a bunch of examples, but then we have questions. The wake-up bell hasn't been rung yet. You haven't been moved to ring it yet? Well, you don't have to. You don't have to. If you're in charge, you're the master of it. I get very confused when you say meditate on the pinnacle of rising, probably because I still don't have a very good comprehension of what pinnacle of rising is. And when you say meditate on pinnacle of rising, I get this idea that you're asking us to look at things, but look at a machine of events, and go back and mull it over, and get a feeling that that's not exactly what you mean by meditating on the pinnacle.

[37:20]

Because that's not something I want to do. Well, then that's not what I mean. Just seeing things as they are, just looking at it. To me, that's pinnacle of rising, just that they happen in the moment. But if you're asking me to think back to the past, to the moment before, and just link them all up, then I have consistency. Well, then don't do it that way. So you want to do it just to see things as they are in the moment, right? Okay, now, what is being proposed to you is that the way they are in the moment is not the way they are, but just the way they have come to be, as being proposed to you. If you, okay, so I'm not saying go back and do blah blah, whatever you're resisting to, I'm just saying, now that you've admitted what you'd like to do, now let's, would you mind looking at what you've just done? Are you ready for that?

[38:22]

Well, you just said that the way you feel, the way you guess that one meditates on the pinnacle of rising is to look at, you say, what is in the moment, or how would you put it? Okay, just see the moment, or just see things as they arise. Can you say, see things as they arise? Okay, you see them as they arise, then that would make sense, that you're watching the arising, right? And how are you going to see the dependent and the co-arising of it? You don't have to necessarily look around and say, well, where's the dependent part? Where's the co-part? You don't have to look at that. If you can see the arising, you're doing pretty well. Something's arising. Then what do you mean to see if there's arising? You think, no, that's impossible. You might see that, and then what might happen? You can say whatever you want, you'll be fine. So you see the mind go blank, so then what happens if your mind goes blank? What has happened then, in terms of arising?

[39:26]

You could say arising is self-arising. Arising is seeing self-arising. Okay. And did you see, was there any ceasing in the neighborhood, or did you just, you only notice arisings? That's okay. I would suggest that you might occasionally, in the midst of all this, some days, notice a ceasing. I mean, maybe not, maybe you notice 44 billion arisings before you ever notice any ceasing. But eventually, you might notice that something's ceased. So it's quite normal, anyway, to notice arising and ceasing. But maybe you just notice arising, but where's the co-part of the arising? You start to notice the co-part. And then you start to notice the dependent part. You start to notice dependent co-arising without looking any other place. For example, you will notice the dependent co-arising of ideas of the past.

[40:31]

Without looking, without going back and looking at your past, you say, where did this come from? The past comes and jumps in your face and says, past time, Kern, time to look at, you know, Christmas Eve, 19, whatever, whatever, you know. Christmas past time. And of course, according to your suggestion, the way you meditate, you just be upright there and watch what has come up. Namely, Christmas, 1982. There it is. You're not going back and looking for that, but there it is. And then you feel lousy about what you see. Because, you know, the story you see is a sad story. The story of those people insulting you. And, you know, that's the story. That's what has, that's what's occurring. These people insulting this guy. That's the story. Which has just arisen. Now, now if that's the story and it's just arisen, that's all I've got on it, then I'm just kind of like looking at something pretty sad and it happens to be about you know who. Now, is this real or not real?

[41:36]

Well, I'm not going to say exactly, but if you don't see, if you don't see, if you look at something arising and you don't see the dependent part, you don't see the dependent part, if you don't see the conditioned part, if you don't see the co-part, if you don't see what that thing does to you and what you do to that thing, and what that thing comes from, where that thing goes, if you don't see all that stuff, there's no evidence of causes and conditions, right? And when there's no evidence of causes and conditions, then you see an inherently existing sad story. Now you've got adamantine reality of sadness in your life, and that's going to be hard on your system. And your system's going to like try to expel it. But it's going to be hard to expel it because you keep making it real. You can't expel reality. You can't get rid of what you think is indestructibly self-identical. And then you're stuck with this huge thorn in your heart. Why is it a thorn in your heart? Because you don't see the causes and conditions. You just sit there and watch the thorn, watch the thorn, feel the pain,

[42:38]

sit there with it, stand with that pain, stand with it. All you got to do, and eventually your system will say, I just noticed that this thing depends on something. This thing comes and goes and it depends on something. And then you start to notice this dependence and this co-dependence. This thing starts to get graciously uprooted. This sad, sad story starts to get graciously uprooted. And finally, you see mostly just the causes and conditions of this sad story. And then you see it's just the story, and then it's empty, and the thorn's removed. If you go looking for the causes and conditions, that's not really the way to do it. You should just be there and watch what comes up. And in fact, if what comes up is pain, then you see the dependent co-arising of the belief in this thing. And to see the dependent co-arising of something that doesn't depend on the co-arise, in other words, to see the dependent co-arising of something which inherently exists,

[43:39]

is to see the dependent co-arising of misery. To see the dependent co-arising of a story that's really true, whatever the story is. Even if it's not a sad story, but a happy story. To see the dependent co-arising of a happy Christmas, 1987. And if you see that inherently real, non-caused, non-conditioned story of Christmas, it will upset your psyche. It will become another kind of burn in your heart. And now it's the memory of that one glorious Christmas, which drives you to insanity also. Because you just see the adamantine, jewel-like quality of that wonderful, great Christmas in 1987, and it's there in your face, and you can't ever forget it because it's real. And it's with you all the time, driving you everywhere to find another Christmas. When you sit still with that pain and that drivenness, you will notice again that that story, that happy story,

[44:41]

is dependent on certain things. It has, for example, it's dependent on making you feel happy. And it's dependent on your view of the story. And all that is pretty soon the conventionality and the verbalness of the whole thing starts to appear to you. And the dependency starts to appear. And the co-dependency. And pretty soon, it's empty. And you're free of that story too. So this is how you meditate on dependent co-arising. This is a story about how you do that. However, it's a story about how you do it. So that isn't really how you do it. That story is empty. That's not the way. It's just a story I told you, which might be useful for you to get a hang of, meditating on what's happening. Now you understand? You have a few words? Come on, just make me a success, you see. Come on. Come on. Come on. I'm surprised you didn't say ceasing.

[45:45]

Is there any moment where you think you were dead? Shoots? What? When you say ceasing, are you talking about something that's arisen, bending, going on? When I say ceasing? What are you talking about when you say ceasing? Uh, what are you talking about when you say ceasing? I'm not talking about anything. I'm just saying, do you see ceasing? And you tell me what you're talking about. I'm not. When I said that to you, he said, Karin talked about arising. So I asked him if he noticed any ceasing. And he said, no, he's just into arisings at this point. So I didn't mean anything by it. I don't mean anything. I don't mean anything by arising and ceasing. Because to me, something by arising and ceasing would be to slip into making something more out of arising and ceasing than conventional stories. It's better not ceasing. You'll have fun. Where's Wendy?

[47:00]

This is an innovative use of the life of this bell. I want to tell a story time. What do you want me to tell a story? Yes. Cessation co-arises with horizon. Cessation is a word that is dependent on horizon. I'm going to jump up and down. Well, tell us about the one that's there already. Come on, come on. So when you ask questions,

[48:25]

please meditate on the dependent co-arising of your question. OK, were you doing it at that time? Were you doing it at that time? No. When you ask your question, were you? Now you are. OK, do you want to ask again while you're simultaneously meditating on what you're saying? OK. How about you, Charlie? You're going to ask questions in that spirit or just want it? OK, go ahead. I'm trying to see how it works that you have to be loving and gentle with the world. And it doesn't seem that way. You're trying to see the reason why love reveals the essence of the truth of the world? Well, practice it and you'll see how it works. That's the best way. I tell you. I just told you a story about, you know, little George Washington Cartwright. He tried and it worked for him.

[49:29]

So you've got a story about, you know, what he done and did the same thing. All the ancestors lovingly meditated, graciously and kindly meditated on what happened to them moment by moment. And then they taught their students how to do that. Like, for example, the six patriarchs said to that guy who was chasing and trying to get the roving bull, that general who was chasing and trying to get the roving bull from him. When the guy caught up with him, he said, Oh, I didn't really come here to get the roving bull. I came here to get the Dharma. What is the Dharma? The six patriarchs said, Don't think good. Don't think bad. What was your faith before your parents were born? This is love. This is the way to lovingly look at your face. Without thinking good, without thinking bad. You try that and you tell me how it works. Maybe you'll come and say, well, it worked. But I was blinded by the light and I couldn't see how it worked.

[50:30]

It was just so sweet. I just drank the nectar. Sorry. I have nothing to report. But I'm very happy. That's what the general said. He said to the six patriarchs, Well, now you're my teacher. And he said, well, not really. The six patriarchs are my teacher and your teacher too. And you go back and you share your enlightenment. So, I'd like you to sort of try to practice lovingly meditating on what's happening to you. And then see how it works. See if it works. Or you can also try, if somebody wants to try being brutal to what's happening. Being rough and coarse and ungracious to your experience. And if that works for somebody, maybe that's a new, you know, what do you call it? Tough love. I don't know. Maybe that'll work too. Maybe graciousness will allow some innovative kind of rough form of graciousness and love. But the point is, usually I think it's someone maybe a little gentle,

[51:31]

contended, and careful, and kind and respectful. These kind of things are words, are conventions that seem to apply to the process or depend on this conventional process. And then, if you practice it, you'll be able to articulate it. Maybe some details of the process. Or you may be able to point out that, in your case anyway, you didn't see a thing. You just sort of like, you know, it was as if things were as usual and then suddenly everything changed. I don't know how it happened. Next time I'll check again. It can happen again in the room as well. And then you have a chance to observe how loving our world reveals the secrets of the world. How loving the world is what we mean by meditative and dependent co-arising. So basically, we all have millions of stories. And any story that we can't see the dependent co-arising that we tend to think is real, any of the things that have happened to us in the past,

[52:35]

that we have not, that we can't see, where conditions aren't evident, we tend to think, we tend to attribute reality to it. And all those stories that are still, you know, got reality and essential existence in them, all those stories are bugging us. And so any of those stories that are bugging you, go back and just lovingly attend to them, and they'll start revealing their conditions, and then they'll end themselves and you'll be released from that story and move on to the next one. This is a question from our discussion group. Yes. And before you ask me anything, since you've got that written down, there's one that may be right to this point. Sure. Well, I was thinking, it seems like when you regard what is happening or try to regard what is happening with love, it almost seems like you're adding something to what's happening. It sort of seems like there's stuff happening and I got it.

[53:39]

Okay, here it comes, and I got to try to do this loving thing. Thank you for that comment. That's not lovingly looking at things. That's being on a trip. So lovingly is to not be thinking, I'm lovingly looking at that. That's not, that's maybe, you might explain that to somebody, but then somebody will say what you're saying, if there's any sense to it. They'll say, well, that seems like an additional thing. It seems like putting a head on top of your head. You're walking around with a loving thing on top of your head. That's not lovingly. Lovingly means, lovingly means that you listen to the thing. That you watch it carefully. That you see how it moves and changes and how it's codependently arising. That's lovingly watching. And that's nothing more than what's happening. If you add anything to it, you obscure it. If you take away from it, you obscure it. You add love to it, you obscure it. But that's what I mean by love. That's what I mean by love. That's what I think. Just as being by love. In other words, you use the world as it is, but really you use the world as it has come to be.

[54:41]

First of all, as it is, because you have not yet seen it's codependently arising. Then, as it has come, as it comes to be, as you see it's codependently arising. And to allow it to move from how it seems to be, to how it's come to be, is part of the loving process. It's like when you have a child, you want to take care of it, but if you take care of it too tightly, it can't grow. But to step back and watch and appreciate it, how it is. And appreciate how it is, and appreciate how it is. Then you start to see and appreciate how it has come to be, and how it's coming to be, and how it's coming to change. And you get scared as it starts to change, but you quickly have to start appreciating how it's happening, rather than how you think it should be, or how it used to be. And that's part of the loving process. But to have the word love in your mind, is expert. And when I said it, I just said it, but then hopefully I'll just let go of it. What did we say? In the chapter, chapter 8 of the Book of Serenity,

[55:44]

you know, which is about codependent co-arising. Chapter 8 of the Book of Serenity is about codependent co-arising. The introduction says, if you hold so much of the letter A in your mouth, you go to hell, like an arrow shot. So, you can't hold the word love. Like, I can also say, you want to know, people say, well, how do you meditate on codependent co-arising? I can say, A. You can say probably, say the letter A. That's fine, if that's how I'm used to you, use it. I don't know, but let go of it, don't hold it. If you hold it, you go to hell. Thank you. Oh, okay. The original question was, what is the relation between the three natures and the two truths? Then after some discussion, we came up with another question that we thought might have derived from this question and be more to the point, which is, are the three corners of that triangle the same as the three natures?

[56:48]

Can it be related? Well, they're very similar, aren't they? Yeah, very similar, almost the same. The three natures, this gets into a big thing, which is going to throw some people in the dark, you know, but the three natures are from, you know, Vasubandhu, 30 verses. And so, you would naturally think, probably paratantra-svabhava is dependent colorism. Paratantra means, you know, that which has continuity through dependence, through the other part. So, the self-existence which comes, which dependently colorizes. And then, what do you call it? The parikalpita-svabhava is the svabhava of, of, you know, what do you call it, mental fabrication.

[57:52]

However, that's a little different from convention. It's like, it's conventional that we do that. I mean, it's a regular thing. It's part of the common occurrence of daily life, is that human beings do attribute inherent existence to things, and do project self on things. That's kind of conventional that we do that, but it's not conventional to understand that we do that. However, understanding will lead you back here, and understanding that will lead you up here. And so, you can say that the emptiness, or in other words, in terms of what he's bringing up, the what's called parinispana-svabhava, the own being of the accomplished or the mastery, is when the convention, is when the things that dependently colorize are separate from, or arising in the absence of, this attribution of self to. So, in the conventional world, we do attribute self to things.

[58:58]

And that is, that aspect of conventional reality, attributing self, is like the party culture, that's svabhava, the own being of attributing substance of things. When those two are separate, or in other words, when something dependently colorizes without the self nature being attributed to it, that's called the accomplished. However, the accomplished is an emptiness of what dependently colorizes because it doesn't have the self projected on it. And so, in some sense, the accomplished is like emptiness, and also the accomplished is like emptiness in the sense that emptiness is empty, and the accomplished is also dependent on the dependently colorizing event happening in the absence of, or separate from, the attribution of self to it. Therefore, the mastery own being, the accomplished own being, is also empty.

[60:02]

So, these three things aren't exactly the same as those three natures, but these three things will explain those three natures. This is more our ultimate position, because conventionality does not necessarily include the attribution of essence in this process. However, there are stories which do that when unexamined. So, conventional stories, the what we call parikalpita, is these conventional stories without dependent colorizing. So, these conventional stories in separation, when conventional stories are in separation, you know, separation from the dependent colorizing, then they're parikalpita, svabhava. Those are very nice dynamic relationship between those two. But there's a slight difference in terms of what we call philosophical process, that this is the next stage after that one, I would say, even though they're very close.

[61:06]

Let's see, Butch, and I think Iva, and Stuart, and Kerry. So, this emptiness without being designated, or without words, is this the ultimate? Emptiness without being designated? But you can't have emptiness without being designated, because emptiness is dependent on something that dependently colorizes. For example, animal consciousness that doesn't use words. You say animal? Uh-huh. Yes, uh-huh. Isn't this part of that? Good example, okay. Now, animal consciousness that doesn't use words. Without words, the animal consciousness cannot create any dependently colorizing thing. In other words, the animal cannot create entities. Animals, without language, I propose, cannot make entities.

[62:08]

So they don't do that. You need, and in order to make entities, you have to use dependently colorizing to make them. Animals do not, in other words, make entities. They do not make words. Because they do not make words, they do not need to meditate on dependently colorizing in order to empty the words. And they don't need to use words in order to practice, in order to use dependently colorizing to make entities. They don't need to do all that. So they don't need emptiness either. They don't have emptiness. They don't have form. They're not into that stuff. So they're free of that. And if they're good animals, they get to evolve into humans and have our problems. Because we can imagine an entity by using the conventions, linguistic conventions. We can create, we can make stories which make entities. And then we can have big problems. And then, and those problems cause us to want to understand the source of the problems

[63:14]

and the source of the problems is the way our mind works, which creates these problems. So we have to, we humans have to be illuminated as the nature of our consciousness in order to be halfway decent and not cause a lot of problems for the animals. But they don't have to meditate on dependently colorizing with their equipment. But when we get to this level of compassion and love, going back to Dylan's question of just loving and not naming it, is this not just loving and not naming? No, no, [...] no. You're asking one of those good questions. It's great. Loving does not mean not naming. Not naming, refraining from naming would be called, would be ungracious for trying to uproot these obsessions. It would be ungracious for you to stop naming. And not only that, but you would be in massive denial. You would be into the name called not naming. It would be very cruel of you to do that. But it's a wonderful question because that's a good example of what you don't do. You don't stop naming. You don't, in other words, you don't bust the conventional world.

[64:16]

That's what those criticisms of Nagarjuna were about. They heard him talk about emptiness and they thought, oh, you're telling us to stop naming things. You're telling us to close down the conventional world. No more names, no more forms, no more people, no more Buddha, Dharma, Sangha, no more practice. No, that's not what it's about instead. That's you getting on your self-existent horse and riding around imagining we're trying to bust the world. No, you don't stop naming. If you're an animal, you don't stop naming. You never started naming. And if you're a human, you don't try to address to being an animal or advance to being an animal. If you're a human, to try to progress to being an animal or regress to being an animal is ungracious of you for the human opportunity. The human meaning, really the gracious thing to do, the loving thing to do is just be human without even saying you're being loving, without even saying, hey, I'm really cool. I'm a loving person. I'm willing to be me. No, just be you. Just be you, is a big name. And if you're willing to be you gently, kindly, wholeheartedly, you will be released from you.

[65:17]

And then the animals will be very happy. But you still will be naming things left and right unless you have certain kinds of cosmetic brain surgery, which, you know, it's up to you. It's free country. They'll do that for you, you know. That's why you were nodding, good. Yeah, I was nodding. A little bit left. So I guess that the next step, which I think other people should be aware of, is that this really is just a pragmatic matter. Yes, definitely. Just pragmatic. This is nothing about reality. Buddha's not into teaching about reality. Buddha is, he's just a kind of a simple dude. He's very smart. Very smart. Very, very smart guy. But very simple. He's just into cessation of suffering.

[66:19]

That's the whole trick. And he's just into recognizing suffering, which is due to, you know, our lack of understanding and talking about how to become free of it. That's all. This is all practical. Don't make more out of it than necessary. So sorry that I made so much out of it, but I'll be gone soon. Anything else? Yes? If conventional reality is made up of words, as you said, in the universe, it doesn't mean anything by them. Well, I mean, my enlightened person doesn't. Your enlightened person doesn't. I can slip into that. How do you... I can be tricked into it. How do you keep from falling into thinking that conventional reality is ontologically insignificant, with all the words you talk about? Talk about it with what you say are meaningful. I didn't say that. Okay, I'm sorry. At various points, when asked about words that you were using to describe

[67:20]

conventional reality, you said you didn't mean anything by them. Someone asked you, cessation, I should identify it. You didn't mean anything by them. Is that right? Yeah, that's different from saying I think they're meaningless. Then I would get into meaning something. Okay. I'd be taking a stand, an ontological stand. But in other words, when I use words, that's all I'm using is the word. I'm not... The thing that the word... The thing that you use words to refer for, I don't mean those things, because those are entities, and they depend on co-arising. I don't mean anything by that. Nothing more than the word. The word is enough conventional existence for me. I don't mean anything more than that. That's that. But that doesn't mean it's meaningless. It's useful. We can talk. We can relate, and we can stop, you know. Hopefully, we can relate in such a way as... So it has meaning within conventional reality. Yes. Have meanings in relation to other words. They do. That's why... They don't have any meaning in relation to things beyond conventional reality. That's right.

[68:22]

And so... And the meaning of the word is the word. That's the meaning. That's all you need. And if you need more words, just collect a bunch together to make another one. But that's all it is. In other words, conventional reality is nothing more than conventional reality. Conventional reality doesn't mean anything. Conventional reality is not about something. It's enough of itself. It brings out enough stuff for itself. I don't mean anything to do any more than it's doing. It's sufficient. Life in its way is sufficient. You don't have to make it any more than it is. How about letting it not be any more than it is, as a matter of fact? How about making it not less than what it is? How about letting it be what it is? Letting it be what it is is letting it be how it becomes. The convention. And that's called... graciously meditating on the pinnacle of reality. Okay? So, basically, I enjoy myself, and I would be happy to continue to meditate on the stories

[69:26]

that appear before us. The stories of self. The stories of pain. The stories of pleasure. The stories of other. The stories of Christmas, past, present and future. All these things. All these things that appear to us. Each one, to just be upright with and watch how they are. Do they have conditions? Or not? If they don't, how is that? Is that painful? If they do have conditions, how is that? Is that releasing? You check it out. I've heard many stories from people and talked to them about how to look at the story. And I've heard some people who have looked at some stories and seen their conditions and they've released. I've heard some other people who don't want to look at the stories and rather go to prison. And I've heard some other people who are working on the stories and are kind of like in process. So this is the project. And now it's time for the kitchen to go. So I'd like to stop so that they don't miss any jewels that aren't jewels.

[70:29]

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