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Dependent Origination & Emptiness (4 of 4)

Okay, so the next thing we're going to talk about is emptiness. And so the first question is, what does that mean? All right, things are empty of inherent existence is the usual way of putting it. For the Buddha, things were empty of a self and what pertains to a self. Okay, so this is mine, except this... it's empty of mine. There's no real "mine" in here, it's just a convention that we have. It's the conventional truth: this is mine, it's not yours, it's mine. Right. But it's empty of "mineness" on the absolute level. On the conventional level, it's mine, and on the conventional level, this is me. This is Leigh Brasington who lives in Oakland, California, I wrote two books, etc. All right, but on the ultimate level, yeah, it's just the intersection of a bunch of SODAPI^[1]. Need to operate from both of those levels when appropriate. And I'll talk about that in a minute or two, or more.

So emptiness for the Buddha was empty of self or what belongs to a self or what pertains to a self. But as time went on, emptiness was seen to be... well, have broader implications. And so we wind up with the Mahāyāna^[2] version of emptiness, which is best exemplified by the teachings of Nāgārjuna^[3]. Nāgārjuna was an Indian born in South India to a brahmin family. And by the time he was twenty, he was recognized as a quite brilliant brahmin scholar. However, he had a sensual side that was unfulfilled, and he and three friends learned from a sorcerer how to make themselves invisible. And they went sneaking into the palace, into the harem quarters, and let's just say when the king found out about it, he was most displeased. He had soldiers stationed behind the curtains and told them, "Strike above the footprints in the carpet." When Nāgārjuna and his friends returned, his three friends were killed. Nāgārjuna was only able to survive by standing next to the king. He managed to flee the palace and headed for the hills.

He had discovered craving can lead to dukkha^[4], so he began studying the teachings of the Buddha. It is said that in three months he completely mastered the earlier teachings, and it was at this point he met a monk from the Mahāyāna tradition. Mahāyāna Buddhism was just getting going at this point, beginning of the second century A.D. And its view of the world, shall we say, from a more broadly interconnected viewpoint, very much appealed to Nāgārjuna, this emphasis on compassion. And so he left his mountain hideaway and began traveling throughout India seeking other Mahāyāna teachings. He eventually started engaging Buddhists and non-Buddhists alike in debate and defeated all comers. He founded an order and rules for his monks to live by, and eventually said, "I have no master."

It was at that point some nagas^[5]—so nagas are like, well, they play the role of dragons in Western mythology, but we have nagas in India. They're like mythical sea serpents, except these nagas lived in a lake, so lake serpents. And they recognized Nāgārjuna's learning, and they took him to the bed of a lake where the Prajñāpāramitā Sutras had been stored. Now supposedly, these were given by the Buddha, but people in the Buddha's time weren't sharp enough to fully understand them, so they had been entrusted to the nagas until someone came along that was wise enough to be able to understand them. And the nagas now thought that that was Nāgārjuna. He brought back these wisdom teachings and wrote commentaries on them, one of which is the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā^[6], the Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way. It's quite a brilliant teaching, and it seeks to elucidate emptiness.

Now the story goes on to say that a king arranged for a contest of magic between Nāgārjuna and a brahmin scholar. The brahmin scholar created a giant lotus pond with a giant lotus in the middle and seated himself on the lotus pond and mocked Nāgārjuna for being stranded on dry land. Nāgārjuna conjured up a white elephant which waded into the lotus pond, grabbed the brahmin scholar with his trunk, and threw him back on dry land. The brahmin scholar admitted defeat, but wished that Nāgārjuna were dead. Nāgārjuna locked himself in his room. The next day a worried disciple broke down the door. A cicada flew out; the room was empty. Well, that's the official story, make of it what you will.

What we do know is that the author of the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā was an absolutely brilliant mind, perhaps the most brilliant Buddhist teacher since the time of the Buddha. And as I said, his Mūlamadhyamakakārikā, his fundamental verses on the middle way, are an attempt to elucidate emptiness not by describing it directly, but in a more poetic fashion. And so there are three chapters in my book entitled The Middle Way, and they are discussions of a small part of the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā. So this is page 56 in the PDF if you want to have a look. And if you don't have page numbers, this is the first of the three Middle Way chapters. This one is The Middle Way: Introduction to Emptiness.

So what I want to do is share with you some of Nāgārjuna's Mūlamadhyamakakārikā. And as you'll see if you glance through this chapter, you'll see there are translations. However, for this chapter, I'm not going to use the translations that you find in the book. The translations you find in the book are my translations; however, I don't know either Sanskrit or Tibetan. So these are translations of Stephen Batchelor's^[7] literal translation of the Tibetan translation of the Sanskrit Mūlamadhyamakakārikā. Okay, so especially since I was doing the last bit of it, there could have been something lost in the translation, so I'm going to go back to Stephen Batchelor's actual poetic translation from his book Verses from the Center, which, if you're interested in studying Nāgārjuna, this is the place to start. It's not a literal translation, it's an approachable translation. Stephen did a really good job of capturing what Nāgārjuna was saying in a way that is more poetic than what Nāgārjuna had to say.

So the first one I want to share with you, Stephen entitled Walking.

I do not walk between the step already taken and the one I'm yet to take, which both are motionless.
Is walking not the motion between one step and the next?
What moves between them? Could I not move as I walk?
If I move when I walk, there would be two motions: one moving me, and one moving my feet.
Two of us stroll by. There is no walking without walkers, and no walkers without walking.
Can I say that walkers walk? Couldn't I say they don't?
Walking does not start in steps taken or to come, or in the act itself. Where does it begin?
Before I raise a foot, is there a motion? A step taken or to come, whence walking could begin?
What has gone? What moves? What is to come?
Can I speak of walkers when neither walking, steps taken, nor to come ever end?
Were walking and walker one, I would be unable to tell them apart.
Were they different, there would be walkers who do not walk.
These moving feet reveal a walker but did not start him on his way.
There was no walker prior to departure who was going where.

So what Nāgārjuna is pointing to is the fact that walking and walkers are inseparable. You can't have a walker unless there's some walking, and you can't have walking unless there's somebody doing that walking, a walker. "Were walking and walker one, I would have been unable to tell them apart. Were they different, there would be walkers who do not walk." So the concept of a walker is not the same as the concept of walking, and yet each relies on the other. Neither of them has inherent existence. And this is what is meant in the Tibetan or in the Mahāyāna about emptiness. Things are empty of inherent existence; they don't stand alone. It's not possible to have a walker, just be a walker without having some walking. So a walker is dependent upon the action of walking, and the action of walking is dependent upon there being somebody there to do the walking. And as we'll see, it's going to turn out that everything is empty of inherent existence. Everything arises dependent on other things.

The next one is entitled Seeing.

If my eyes cannot see themselves, how can they see something else?
Were there no trace of something seen, how could I see at all?
Neither seeing nor unseeing see.
Seers seeing reveals a seer who is neither detached nor undetached from seeing.
How could you see and what would you see in the absence of a seer?
Just as a child is born from mother and father, so consciousness springs from eyes and colorful shapes.
Without these eyes how could I know consciousness, contact, vedanā^[8], craving, clinging, becoming, birth, aging, and death?
Seers seeing sight explain hearers hearing sounds, smellers smelling smells, tasters tasting tastes, touchers touching textures, thinkers thinking thoughts.

So, seeing reveals a seer who's neither detached nor undetached from seeing. So just like walking, you don't have a seer who's not seeing, and you don't have seeing unless you have somebody who is seeing, called a seer. Both of these are empty, both of these are dependent. Neither has inherent existence.

The next one is Body.

I have no body apart from parts which form it.
I know no parts apart from a body.
A body with no parts would be unformed.
A part of my body apart from my body would be absurd.
Were the body here or not, it would need no parts.
Partless bodies are pointless. Do not get stuck in the body.
I cannot say my body is like its parts, I cannot say it's something else.
Feelings, conceptions, drives, minds, things are like this body in every way.
Conflict with emptiness is no conflict.
Objections to emptiness, no objections.

So your body is made up of parts, right? I mean, you have the fingers of your left hand, and you have the fingers of your right hand, and your eyeballs, and your nose, and your feet, and your heart, and your lungs, and your liver. And there's a lot of parts there. So your body is not the same as its parts, but it's not different from your parts. "I cannot say my body is like its parts, I cannot say it's something else." Think about it, you go get a haircut. You walk in and it's your hair. Half an hour later you look at the floor. "Oh no, part of me is on the floor!" You have that reaction? No. But when you came in it was you, and now it's on the floor and it's just trash. How did that happen? Or you clip your fingernails, right? They were you, and now they're in the garbage. It went from being you to not you. Or what if you lost a valuable part of your body? Uh, no, let's don't do that, it's too gross.

Think about your red Corvette. I assume all of you have a red Corvette, yes? Okay, good. So you have your red Corvette. What if you remove one of the wheels? It's still a red Corvette. What if you remove all four wheels? Is it still a red Corvette? What if you remove the steering wheel and all four wheels? What if you take out the seats and drop the engine, pull the transmission, remove the differential? What if you unscrew everything that could be unscrewed and you lay out all the parts? Is it still a red Corvette? Or is it just a pile of parts? And if it's just a pile of parts, where did the red Corvette go? At what point, when you were taking off the parts, did it stop being a red Corvette and just become a pile of parts? And when it stopped being a red Corvette, where did the red Corvette go?

Your body is just like that in every way. Only, uh, we don't have interchangeable parts. Right, the red Corvette is empty of "red Corvette-ness". It's just a pile of parts. Your body is empty of "you-ness". It's just a pile of parts also. And just like the red Corvette, it's nothing but... well, the intersection of a bunch of streams of dependently arising processes interacting. That's all that's going on. So your red Corvette is empty, just like you are empty. It doesn't have an essence in it, it's just an assemblage of a bunch of stuff that we give this concept "red Corvette" to. Or this concept of "me", too. But in both cases it's nothing but SODAPI.

The next of these that I want to take a look at is entitled Self, and that's in the next chapter in my book, and let's see, that appears on page 60. And if you want to read along, I did actually take a Stephen Batchelor translation included in the book. I did my own translations of the previous because I couldn't exceed fair use for how much I included in the book, because they wanted more money to include everything than what I was going to get in my advance for writing the book if I went with a publisher. So I just could only use fair use. So yeah, you get one of Stephen's best translations. All right. So Self.

Where mind and matter meet, I would come and go like them.
If I were something else, they would say nothing about me.
What is mine when there is no me?
Were self-centeredness eased, I would not think of me and mine.
There would be no one there to thank them.
What is inside is me, what is outside is mine.
When these thoughts and compulsions stop, repetition ceases, freedom dawns.
Papañca^[9] spawns thoughts that provoke compulsive acts.
Emptiness stops papañca.
Buddhas speak of self and also teach not-self, and also say there's nothing which is either self or not.
When things dissolve, there's nothing left to say. The unborn and unceasing are already free.
The Buddha said it is real, it is unreal, it is both real and unreal, and it's neither one nor the other.
It is all at ease. Inconceivable by your papañca.
Incommunicable. Inconceivable. Indivisible.
You are not the same as or different from conditions on which you depend.
You are neither severed from nor forever fused with them.
This is the deathless teaching of Buddhas who care for the world.
When Buddhas don't appear and their followers are gone, the wisdom of awakening bursts forth by itself.

This might be worth going through a second time.

"Where mind and matter meet, I would come and go like them. If I were something else, they would say nothing about me." So if you are your body and mind, well, they say you change out all of your cells every seven years. I mean, you got almost nothing left from the point where you were born. Maybe there's a couple atoms hanging around, but yeah, it's all changed. Does that mean you're somebody different? And your mind, you change your mind all the time. Do you become somebody else every time you change your mind? Yet your body and your mind do, well, say a lot about me. Right, but this is in a conventional sense. But in an ultimate sense, they're just, well, more SODAPI.

"What is mine when there is no me?" This is a Buddhist strategy for getting out of dukkha. Right, you're to investigate anicca, anattā, until the point where you can actually uproot that sense of self. This is one of the last fetters to go with the fourth stage of awakening. It's usually translated as conceit, but better would be "conceiving of the self". Right, because if you don't conceive of a self, then there's nobody there to crave. It can't be a thought of "I want to get that." You know, want to get that? There needs to be somebody who's going to get it. And the same thing with clinging. There's nobody there to think "I have this," because if there's nobody, there's nobody to own it. What is mine when there is no me?

"Were self-centeredness eased, I would not think of me and mine. There would be no one there to thank them." So the Buddha is basically saying, yeah, try and look at the world from a less egocentric perspective and get a real sense of what's going on. If you can get enough insight from that direction, a real sense of the world from the non-egocentric perspective, then maybe you can let go enough to actually let go of the sense of self and get free of dukkha.

"What is inside is me, what is outside is mine. When these thoughts and compulsions stop, repetition ceases, freedom dawns." All the compulsions that we have, yeah, it's "me" behind those compulsions. "I got to get this, I got to get rid of this." Whatever it is, it's "I". Repetition: "I got to do it again, I got to do it." Yeah, "I". As that stops, freedom dawns.

"Papañca spawns thoughts that provoke compulsive acts." You can keep your rotten potatoes! "Emptiness stops papañca." Once you really begin to not just understand but experience the empty nature of reality, you're far less likely to get carried away into papañca.

"Buddhas speak of self and also teach not-self, and also say there's nothing which is either self or not." So when the Buddha is teaching the brahma-vihāras^[10], he is speaking of self. One should give mettā to all as to oneself. And so there are selves there. But other times he teaches not-self. If you remember the so-called second discourse, the discourse on not-self (Anattalakkhaṇa Sutta^[11]), he asks his five ascetic friends: "Is body self?" "Well, it's impermanent, it's dukkha, no, that's not going to work." And then the same for each of the other aggregates. They're all not-self, and so he's teaching not-self. And he also teaches there's nothing which is either self or not.

To me, the most profound sutta in the whole of the canon is Samyutta Nikaya 12.15, Kaccānagotta^[12]. In that sutta, the venerable Kaccānagotta comes to the Buddha and wants to know right view. What is right view? The Buddha says, "This world for the most part depends upon a duality. Upon the notion of existence and the notion of non-existence." Or actually, literally, the notion of "it is" and the notion of "it is not". "But when one sees the arising of the world as it actually is with correct wisdom, one does not think in terms of non-existence. And when one sees the ceasing of the world as it actually is with correct wisdom, one doesn't think in terms of existence. This world is caught up in views and opinions and ideas. One with right view does not get caught in views and opinions. One with right view does not take a stand about my self, my soul, my atta." Right, the Buddha is saying if you can see the world not in terms of existence and non-existence, then you won't take a stand saying "I exist" or "I don't exist," "I have a self" or "I don't have a self."

People ask the Buddha, "Okay, once and for all, is there a self?" He wouldn't answer. "Is there no self?" He wouldn't answer. He said that if he said there was a self, that would be the mistake of eternalism. And if he said there was no self, well, that would be the mistake of annihilationism. Better not to say anything, because that would just get people more confused. They needed to practice some more. So what the Buddha is basically saying is if you really get this dependent origination thing, you don't think in terms of existence, you don't think in terms of non-existence. You think in terms of SODAPI, is how I would phrase it.

He says that one with right view sees that when there's an arising, it's only dukkha arising, and when there's a ceasing, there's only dukkha ceasing. When I first read that I was like, "What? That chocolate cake that arose the other day that wasn't dukkha, that was really good! I wish I had some more, it's all gone. And that headache that I had, when it went away, when it ceased, that was not dukkha! Hope it doesn't come back!" So the thing is to realize that nothing's going to give you lasting happiness. When there's arising, what's arising is not going to give you lasting happiness. And when there's a ceasing, what's ceasing also wasn't going to give you lasting happiness. The chocolate cake ceased—no lasting happiness. The headache ceased—that's happiness, but it might come back, so no lasting happiness. Another translation for dukkha would be "not a source of lasting happiness." Right.

"Everything exists: this is one extreme. Nothing exists: this is the other extreme. Without veering towards either of these extremes, a Tathāgata teaches the Dhamma via the middle. With this as necessary condition, that arises. If this doesn't happen, that does not arise." Now, if you look at the sutta, you'll find that it actually says something slightly different. It gives the 12 links of dependent origination in the forward arising order and the forward ceasing order. I suspect that was a later addition. It doesn't really make any sense. And it turns out I found some scholars that are saying the same thing. Vicente Pandi says that in his Studies in the Origins of Buddhism, and he quotes Caroline Rhys Davids for saying the same thing. What I suspected all along that it said was something like this: "This/that conditionality, dependent origination." And then somebody sent me the Chinese version of that sutta, and guess what it says? "This/that conditionality, dependent origination," and then that's the 12 links. But anyhow, the sutta is not about a self or there not being a self. It's neither a self or not. It's just, well, streams of dependently arising processes interacting.

"When things dissolve, there's nothing left to say. The unborn and unceasing are already free." We go around "thingifying" the world. It's a water glass, right? Obviously a water glass. It's got water in it, it's glass. You just thingify this. It's just some pixels, that's all that's happening. You know, you're seeing some colored pixels and you're making it into a water glass. We do that with everything. We conceptualize it, saññā^[13], right? Can you experience the world prior to saññā? This is the advice to Bāhiya^[14]. Remember Bāhiya? He came to the Buddha, wanted some teaching when the Buddha was on alms round. And the Buddha said to him, "In seeing, let there just be seeing, and hearing just hearing, and sensing just sensing, cognizing just cognizing. When you can do that, Bāhiya, there's no you. And in that, there's no you in this. Just this is the end of dukkha." Well, that was enough for Bāhiya to become fully awakened. It was a play on the teaching in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad^[15] that the Buddha knew that Bāhiya was following because he was Bāhiya of the Bark Cloth, he was dressed like a tree, which is what the followers of the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad did.

But, "In seeing, let there just be seeing." Don't see objects. Can you just see seeing? "When things dissolve, there's nothing left to say. The unborn and unceasing are already free." If you don't get born, you don't die, right? If you don't go around giving birth to things, they're not going to cease. Right, there's just the visual field. It's all free already.

"The Buddha said it is real and it is unreal, and it is both real and unreal, and it's neither one nor the other." It's very important to remember the Buddha wasn't doing consistent metaphysics. He wasn't doing metaphysics at all. Metaphysics is trying to explain how reality is, what it's like. The Buddha said repeatedly, "I teach only dukkha and the end of dukkha." And so it depended on to whom he was speaking, what he had to say. And so sometimes he would say it's real, and sometimes he'd say it's not real, and sometimes he'd say it's both, sometimes he would say it's neither. But it depended on his listener. What the Buddha was teaching was what he felt people needed to learn so that they could practice effectively. Now, indeed, there is such a thing as Buddhist metaphysics. It's a big deal in the Abhidhamma^[16] and the commentaries. But it's not from the Buddha. That's from taking what the Buddha taught and converting it into metaphysics. The Buddha was, well, if you want to give him a title, a phenomenologist. He was studying phenomena and how we respond to it. The way out of dukkha: don't respond with craving and clinging when you have pleasant or unpleasant vedanā. Okay, that's not metaphysics, that's the way out of dukkha.

"It is all at ease." No amount of papañca is going to put it at ease. "It's incommunicable, inconceivable, indivisible." The universe is as it is. It's just there. But it's too big for our little pea brains to handle, so we need to chop it up into bits and pieces to be able to find things to eat and a place to live and etc. But this is our conventional approach to staying alive, but it's not what's actually there. What's actually there is incommunicable, inconceivable, indivisible. Remember I said there were only verbs? You know, nouns were just slow-moving verbs. Truth be told, there's only one verb: unfolding. We could say "the universe is unfolding", but "the universe is" is superfluous. There's just unfolding. That's all that's happening. But that's a little too much for our pea brains to take in, so we need to chop it up into bits and pieces to find something to eat and something to wear and some place to live, etc. But at the ultimate level, it's indivisible. It's all interconnected in ways that aren't readily apparent. It's inconceivable. There is no concept that's going to give you an accurate picture of what's going on. And incommunicable. All I can do is sort of be the finger pointing at the moon and hope that you don't start looking at fingernail polish or rings or something like that. Right? So yes, a good teacher can point you in the direction, but you're going to have to get there yourself because it's incommunicable, inconceivable, indivisible.

"You are not the same as or different from conditions on which you depend. You are neither severed from nor forever fused with them. This is the deathless teaching of Buddhas who care for the world." Those six lines right there are more of the source of SODAPI than anything else I've studied. "You are not the same as or different from the conditions on which you depend. You're neither severed from nor forever fused with them." So what do you have for lunch? Do you have some lettuce, maybe? Right, so you're not that lettuce, but you're not separate from that lettuce. Right. It's become part of you, but you're not forever fused with it. Yet you're not severed from it. The fact that you ate your lunch today has had an effect on who you are, how your brain works, and how your body works. You're not the same as or different from the conditions on which you depend. You're neither severed from them nor forever fused with them. This is the deathless teaching of Buddhas who care for the world. This is SODAPI. This is dependent origination.

"When Buddhas don't appear and their followers are gone, the wisdom of awakening bursts forth by itself." You don't need the Buddha to explain this to you. You don't need the Buddha's followers to explain this to you. But it's really hard to see. But if you look carefully, you can see this for yourself. I would have never seen it without the Buddha and his followers pointing me in this direction. I really needed their help, okay? I wouldn't have gotten here otherwise. But it's there for anyone to see who looks carefully. It's really nice there are those who can teach us where to look and how to look so that we can see all this stuff.

The Two Truths and Awakening

Okay, the next one that I want to share with you is entitled, well, it's entitled Awakening by Stephen Batchelor. It's often entitled The Four Noble Truths. That's the next chapter in my book which starts on page 63. Again, this is a different translation. This translation comes from Jay Garfield^[17] and his Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way, which is a more literal translation, it has a really good commentary. I would suggest you read Stephen Batchelor's Fundamental Verses or Verses from the Center multiple times before you tackle Garfield. Garfield's a little difficult. But yeah, reading them both will take you a long ways. But I'm going to go with Stephen Batchelor's translation to start with.

So this particular chapter in the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā starts with an imaginary opponent giving Nāgārjuna what for, saying basically, "You're corrupting the Dharma by teaching your emptiness." Because this opponent thinks that emptiness is equivalent to nihilism. If something is empty, it means it doesn't exist. This is a very common mistake. Please do not make that mistake. It just means it's empty of inherent existence; it doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

So, "If everything is empty, there would be no arising and passing. Ennobling truths would not exist. There would be no understanding, letting go, cultivating, realizing. Without tasting the fruits of practice, there would be no sangha. With no truths, no Dharma either. With no sangha and Dharma, how could you awaken? Talk of emptiness maligns what is of value. Acts and fruits, good and evil, conventions fall apart."

Nāgārjuna replies: "Not knowing emptiness, the need for it, or the point of it, you subvert it. The Dharma taught by Buddhas hinges on two truths: partial truths of the world, and truths which are sublime. Without knowing how they differ, you cannot know the deep. Without relying on conventions, you cannot disclose the sublime. Without intuiting the sublime, you cannot experience freedom."

So the Dharma taught by Buddhas hinges on two truths. This is one of the early elucidations of the doctrine of the two truths. It doesn't show up per se in the suttas. There are hints of it. The closest you'll come to finding the two truths probably is at the end of Digha Nikaya number nine, the Poṭṭhapāda Sutta. There the Buddha says, "A Tathāgata, a fully realized one, can use these words I, me, mine and not be fooled by them." So a fully awakened person can use the conventional terms, the concepts from our conventional reality, but not be fooled by them. The first time that the doctrine of the two truths showed up in Buddhism, as far as I know, is The Questions of King Milinda. King Milinda was one of the Greek kings left behind by Alexander the Great's army in Afghanistan. And at that time Afghanistan was a Buddhist country. Remember when the Taliban blew up those very tall statues of the Buddha? Yeah, that was Buddhism from the time after Alexander the Great when there was Buddhism in Afghanistan. And so King Milinda asked a bunch of questions to an enlightened monk named Nāgasena. And what shows up in there is the first teaching on the two truths. Here it says, "partial truths of the world and truths which are sublime." The actual literal Sanskrit says, "truths that don't fully reveal and truths which are sublime."

So the truth is, this is my phone, right? Not your phone, my phone. Right, but that doesn't fully reveal what's going on. It doesn't fully reveal, well, the dead dinosaurs to make the plastic, or the sand that was dug up to make the silicon, or the minerals that were mined, the metals that were mined, and the sweatshop in China where they assembled it, and whoever wrote the software and all the rest that went into it. So when I say it's my phone on a conventional level, that's true, but it doesn't fully reveal what's going on. And it's the case for well, all the conventional truths. Anytime you say "me" or "mine". On the conventional level, yeah, it's you. I'm the one giving the talk right now, it's not you. Conventionally that's true. But this talk is actually coming to you as a result of a whole bunch of SODAPI, right? The practice that I've done, the Dharma talks I've heard, the books I've read, the discussions I've had with my noble friends when we were having noble conversations. Oh, that's what's feeding into it. I'm just the mouthpiece of trying to express what the Buddha expressed. Hopefully I'm doing a reasonably good job of it. Okay, but "me", that's only conventional. And then truths which are sublime. Truths that, well, are inconceivable and incommunicable. Right, it's just a little bit more than we can express with our conventions.

"Without knowing how they differ, you cannot know the deep. Without relying on conventions, you cannot disclose the sublime." So the ultimate truths, the non-conventional truths of the world, do need to be disclosed. But just like you can't take somebody's hand and put it up against the moon and say, "Now do you understand the moon?" You just have to point. And so that's what Nāgārjuna is doing. That's what the Buddha was doing, that's what I'm trying to do. Just point you at these ultimate truths, these truths beyond our conventional way of accessing the world. And why? "Without intuiting the sublime, you cannot experience freedom." The only way out of the dukkha is to gain an understanding of the world from the ultimate perspective. The relative perspective, no matter how accurately you get it, it's not going to set you free.

Okay, now it's talked about as two truths. I prefer to talk about it as two perspectives. Truth seen from two different perspectives. So if I had a bowl here, like just a regular ordinary soup bowl. Is it concave or convex? What do you think, concave or convex? I mean, those are opposites, it can't be both, right? Well, no, it's actually both. It depends on your perspective. And it's very important to pick the proper perspective. If you want to pour some soup into your soup bowl, you better take the concave perspective, otherwise you're going to have a mess. If you want to elevate a tea candle, it's probably going to work better if you use the convex perspective. Right, it's really important to understand both perspectives. Often when people begin to get hints of the ultimate perspective, they want to throw away the relative perspective. The conventional world won't work! You can't cross the street from the ultimate perspective. What, you get to the corner, you look down there, you see a bus coming. You go, "It's empty," you step in front of it. You're dead. It's not going to work. There are times when it's absolutely necessary to operate from the conventional perspective. When you're eating your peanut butter and jelly sandwich, it's very important you eat the sandwich and not your fingers, right? When the Buddha was eating his food, he was fully awakened. He never ate his fingers, he only ate the food. Right. So the relative perspective doesn't go away, but it doesn't fully explain what's going on. You need to be able to look from the ultimate perspective. And what you see from that perspective, well, you see SODAPI. You see dependent origination. You see, yeah, it's inconceivable, indivisible, and incommunicable. But it has to be understood because that's where you find freedom. That's the perspective that is going to enable you to let go of that selfing. And when you let go of that selfing, that's where you're going to find your freedom.

"Misperceiving emptiness injures the unintelligent, like mishandling a snake or miscasting a spell. The Buddha despaired of teaching the Dharma, knowing it hard to intuit its depths. Your muddled conclusions do not affect emptiness. Your denial of emptiness does not affect me." You could see where Nāgārjuna would be pretty tough in a debate, right? "Your muddled conclusions." Right, it's like picking up a snake by the tail and expecting not to get bitten. It doesn't work. "When emptiness is possible, everything is possible. Were emptiness impossible, nothing would be possible." The fact that everything is dependently originated processes means that they're changeable. Right, it's all changing all the time. If something had an essence, an implication of that would be that it wouldn't change. Right, I mean, it's a water glass, right? And if it had an essence of water glass, I could drop it on the floor and it wouldn't break, because it has an essence of water glass, and the essence means it's in there and it's not going to go away. I drop it on the floor, it's going to break. Right? So if things had essences, they would be locked in that way. If you had an essence, when you got it you better hope you were in a good mood, because that's where you're going to be stuck forever. Right.

"In projecting your faults onto me, you forget the horse you are riding." So this is a story about a man who had two dozen horses. And he went out one morning to count his horses, so he mounted up on one and he rode around counting: "One, two, three... 22, 23. Oh no, one of my horses is missing! Somebody's stolen one of my horses!" Forgetting to count the horse he was riding. Remember the Buddha despaired of teaching because he didn't think people would get it. They had too much dust in their eyes. So what Nāgārjuna basically is saying to his opponent is, "You've got too much dust in your eyes, Mr. Opponent. You forget the horse you're riding."

"To see things existing by nature is to see them without causes and conditions, thus subverting causality, agents, tools, and acts, starting, stopping, and ripening." So if you impute an essence to anything, you just froze it. And furthermore, you assume it's been like that since beginningless time. Nothing has an essence. It's all dependently originated.

And then what most scholars consider the heart of the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā: "Dependent origination is emptiness, which dependently configured is the middle way." Everything is dependently originated. Everything is empty. So when you hear teachings on emptiness, you're hearing teachings on dependent origination. It's just another perspective on the same thing. Everything is empty because everything is dependently originated. And furthermore, this translation here doesn't really bring it out, but emptiness also is empty. It's just another concept that we're using to try and help you understand what's going on. Right, don't make a big deal about emptiness, it too is empty. Okay, it's a dependently originated phenomenon. It's as empty as everything else.

There's a lot more to say about emptiness, but I'm going to share one more thing from Nāgārjuna's Mūlamadhyamakakārikā. This comes from the next chapter, which is entitled Nirvana. This is something that gets people all wound up when they hear it: "Samsara is no different from Nirvana. Nirvana is no different from Samsara. Samsara's horizons are Nirvana's. The two are exactly the same." What this is saying is that this right here, this is Samsara, if you look at it with the eyes of craving and clinging. And this right here is Nirvana, if you look at it with the eyes of a Buddha. Nirvana is not some place, some far away heaven for arahants or anything like that. It's right here, right now, if you can process your input in a way that doesn't lead to craving and clinging. Right. In fact, the whole idea of conceiving of Nirvana or Nibbāna (however you want to do it, Nibbāna is Pali, Nirvana is Sanskrit) as having ontological existence, as being a place that you can get to or something like that... well, it's got a serious problem. Because we know that Nibbāna is unchanging, and if you ain't in Nibbāna right now, you ain't going to get in, because it ain't going to change to let you in. You better hope it doesn't have ontological existence. Nibbāna is a realization. It's a realization of the nature of reality that's so profound that it uproots all of your tendencies to craving and clinging. It's not a place or a thing, it's a realization. And it too, yep, it's dependently originated based on your practice. That's why we practice.

Q&A

All right. So it's with a fair amount of angst I say, any questions? Patrice.

Patrice: Oh, you're still muted. Um, thank you. Thank you for this, it's been great. This is going to sound like a stupid question, but I can't seem to get it out of my mind. So if I have no essence, which I can accept, and I go to karma, then how do we explain karma?

Leigh: Okay, so the Buddha's teachings on karma basically is: pay attention to what you're about to do, actions have consequences. Karma means action, that's what it means. Now, at the time of the Buddha, spiritual karma was a ritual action. For example, if you were a farmer and you want to have a good harvest, then you better get the gods on your side. But to do that, you had to perform ritual action. But you didn't know how to perform the ritual action because you were a farmer. But luckily for you, down the road there were some priests who for a modest fee would perform the ritual karma, the ritual action for you to engage your harvest. And the Buddha goes, "No. Karma, I declare, O monks, is intention." In other words, pay attention to what you're about to do, it's going to have consequences. That's what his teaching is primarily about.

Now, we do find in the suttas where the Buddha is using previous actions to explain why bad things happen to good people or why good things happen to bad people. That's in the suttas, but is this just skillful means or was it inserted later? I don't know. But the teachings on karma are about paying attention to what you're considering doing, it's going to have consequences. What people want to do with karma is balance the books. Right, they want to say, "Okay, this person did an evil thing, so they're going to have something evil come back to them." But that's personal, that's on the relative level. And we were just talking about, you know, when you get really down to it, the persons sort of disappear.

Think about, well, one of the most recent evil actions done not this year, but not too long ago, was the invasion of Iraq. That was, well, that was really bad karma. Really bad karma, really bad action. It resulted in the death of, well, somewhere between a hundred thousand to a million Iraqis. And it left how many millions of Iraqis with PTSD? And how many of the soldiers that went there with PTSD? And it led to the rise of ISIS, and I mean we could go on with all the really unwholesome, unhelpful results of that action. Yes, those guys that actually did the action, they seem like they got away with it. And I don't like that. But when you start looking at the bigger picture, no, nobody got away with anything. It was a very unwholesome action and it caused a whole lot of problems for a whole lot of people. We want to make it personal, but the Buddha's pointing out that, well, turns out we're much more interconnected than it appears on the surface. Right. So yeah, realize that every action you do is going to have results that depend on what's going on there, and it's going to affect more than you.

Let me read you something. This is from the last chapter of my book, which is actually entitled Don't Be Fooled By Your Conceptualizing. "A human being is a part of a whole called by us the universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. The striving to free oneself from this delusion is the one issue of true religion. Not to nourish the delusion, but to try to overcome it is the way to reach the attainable measure of peace of mind." That's from Albert Einstein. He was a smart guy. Right. So karma is about paying attention to what you're about to do, it's going to have results. But the Buddha said don't try and figure out the threads of karma, it will lead to either madness or great vexation. So just pay attention to what you're about to do. Does this address at all your questions?

Patrice: Yes it does. There's still a little bit more. So if I hear you correctly, you're saying it really isn't... it's just a view or an idea. There's no collective, like accumulative karma.

Leigh: No, I'm saying it's only collective. It's collective in the sense that karma, as long as we are not in that stream, we're all subject to the karma kind of. That's universal. We're all creating it and we're all experiencing it. I think that's what you're saying.

Patrice: Yeah, but what about accumulative then?

Leigh: Well, it's cumulative in that you know they invaded Iraq and now we're dealing with ISIS. That's cumulative to the world at large, that there are all these terrorists who were basically created by the invasion of Iraq. Maybe Putin invaded Ukraine, he thought, "Well, the Americans got away with invading Iraq, didn't seem to go too bad for them." And so the cumulative karma of it gave Putin bad ideas and he invaded Ukraine, maybe that's part of it as well. Don't try and figure out all the threads, it'll lead to madness or great vexation. So yes, it accumulates. And where does it accumulate? In the universe. Okay, there's not some guys upstairs that are writing down, "Oh she did a good thing, we'll give her two points; he did a bad thing, that's minus seven." That's not happening. What you do changes the universe, and so it's accumulating in the universe with every action that you do. And it's accumulating in your own brain with every thought, speech, and action, because you're reprogramming yourself with everything that you do. For example, someone joins an urban gang, right? What do they make them do? Go out and commit a crime so they'll be useful to the gang, so they'll get used to committing crimes so it won't be a big deal for them. Reprogram their brains so they'll be a criminal. Right? Well, we reprogram our brains with everything that we do. So it's accumulating up here and it's accumulating in the wider universe as well. Does that help?

Patrice: Yes, thank you very much.

Leigh: Oh, you're very welcome. Jeff.

Jeff: So I haven't read Stephen's book yet, and I think I will, I will definitely do that. Um, all the other times that I've tried to read Nāgārjuna I've, you know, besides getting a little perplexed, I've just really felt like I was trying to get my merit badge in emptiness, right? So I was so glad when you brought up the fact that the Buddha just teaches suffering and the end of suffering. He's not really trying to get us to go through this mental exercise and, you know, as you're saying, who's keeping score? And as you said, emptiness is a concept too. So I was just looking at the PDF and for me the three lines that are really helpful, I always think of this as, okay, I've just had this great meditation on emptiness, right? And I get up and I'm walking and I stub my toe, and suddenly I'm, you know, in a rage or something like that. Obviously, I'm missing something. Um, so your line here: "Papañca spawns thoughts that provoke compulsive acts. Emptiness stops papañca." And to me, that's the emptiness I want to understand. I don't need to go through all of the manifestations, but if I can get down to that simple level, then I'll be happy.

Leigh: Yeah, that's where we want to go. Part of that emptiness that helps stop the papañca is realizing that not only is there nothing worth craving, there's nothing that can be clung to. It's all empty, it's all impermanent, it's all changing all the time. And furthermore, there's nobody home to actually succeed in clinging to what was craved. And so getting that at not an intellectual level, but at a felt sense level, this is what the Buddha's after. This is the way to freedom. Uproot the craver and there's no more craving, no more dukkha. All right, Lynn.

Lynn: Uh, so I really like what you were saying about sort of the universal nature of karma and not trying to make it too personal, it's out there somewhere in the world. And yet, "I am the owner of my karma, heir to my karma, born of my karma, related to my karma, abide supported by my karma. Whatever karma I shall do, for good or for ill, of that I will be the heir." So how do those fit together? Thank you.

Leigh: Okay, so sometimes the Buddha had taught self, and sometimes he taught not-self, and sometimes he taught there's neither a self nor no self at all. So this is a teaching on self. The five daily reflections from Anguttara Nikaya 5.57. "I am of the nature to grow old, sick, and die. I am not exempt from those. All that is mine, dear and delightful, will change and vanish." These are very much relative teachings. They're being taught on the relative level. We can't dismiss the relative level. So from the relative perspective, yeah, I'm going to grow old, sick, and die. The old part's already happening, I can see every time I look in the mirror. Right. I've had things that I found dear and delightful that changed and vanished. Okay, so on a personal, relative level, all that's going on. The actions I do, yeah, are going to have consequences.

So I live supported by my karma, my previous actions. Well, I worked as a computer programmer, I earned a bunch of money, you know, now I get Social Security and I got a nest egg. So I live supported by my previous actions. Right. Uh, "I am born of my karma." Who I am right now has occurred from actions I've done in the past. Were they done by some other person in the past that has made me who I am? Well, certainly a lot of people, those English guys that came over and ran off everybody else and suppressed them, yeah, that's part of who I am now. So it wasn't "me", but those actions have had an impact on me. "I'm related to my karma." At the time of the Buddha, you know, no Social Security. You only had your family. Your relations were the most important thing that you had. Your actions and their consequences are as important as your relatives, when you look at that from the perspective of India two and a half thousand years ago. So yeah, getting a sense of that, this is a teaching from the relative perspective, the conventional perspective, and it's very important to realize that.

The Buddha wasn't doing consistent metaphysics. It wasn't like he stopped talking about "I" and only talked about something on an ultimate level. He's like, "Yeah, this is important, do this practice, it'll be good for you." Right, and until you get fully awakened, you're going to be assuming you have an "I". So your "I" is going to get old, sick, and die. Your "I" is going to be dependent upon the actions that it does. Pay particular attention to what you're about to do, it's going to have consequences. That's what he's trying to teach. So yeah, does that help?

Lynn: Yes.

Leigh: All right. Any other questions? John.

John: Hi, I'll just, uh, simple question. Is there, will there be a way to access these recordings to listen to some of it again?

Leigh: Yeah. Yes, uh, it'll be on AudioDharma. Give it a week for them to, you know, edit the recordings and so forth. It will show up there on AudioDharma, and after it shows up and I realize where it is, I will put a link on my web page under 'Talks' that will point to it as well. But probably easiest just to go to AudioDharma and plug in my name, search for it.

John: Thank you so much for this.

Leigh: Yeah. Ronnie.

Ronnie: Hi Leigh. Um, I guess I may be stating something really obvious. Um, when you said emptiness is also a concept, I assume that you can't just have that at that very get-go. It's like the raft analogy, you have to kind of go through understanding all the SODAPI and everything else, and maybe toward the end of this you can give up or abandon this idea of emptiness. And not abandon it, just know that it's just another concept, a useful one, because something's empty doesn't mean you abandon it, you just know that it's dependently originated as well. But I guess maybe my point is, if I think of that as just another concept at the very early part of this whole idea of dependent origination, I seem to think that that may make it harder for me to go through the understanding of this part of the teaching. So I guess maybe I'm clarifying with you if there's a timing part of this, to understand this, that's one of my questions.

Leigh: Yeah, so that very definitely is. So I had read Stephen Batchelor's translation, the Verses from the Center, let's say somewhere between half a dozen to a dozen times, never got a hint of it. This translation doesn't do it justice, really. And I read Jay Garfield's translation, which does do it justice, and it still went over my head until I read it the second time. And when I got it, I literally jumped out of the couch that I was sitting on and go, "Yes!" That I understood at that point that yeah, even emptiness, it's just another concept to try and help us out. All of this, Four Noble Truths, they're concepts to try and help us out. Dependent origination is just another concept to try and help us out. But these are all very, very useful concepts.

As it turns out, anything that we can talk about is, well, we're just talking about concepts. We have to conceptualize it to be able to talk about it. It doesn't mean that just because it's a concept it's not useful. Because it's all, I mean, this is a cell phone. All right, it has a material existence, but unless I conceptualize it as a cell phone and you know, punch the thing on the back that makes it wake up and, you know, dial the number or whatever, until I actually start using it, it's yeah, it's just a concept. But even then, the idea of a phone call is just a concept, but it's a very useful concept. They're all concepts, but some of them are quite useful. And emptiness is just another one of these quite useful concepts. But I would say don't worry about it. I say the most important thing is just realize that whatever you're experiencing is dependently originated and just keep looking at that more and more. And then hopefully at some point, the fact that everything is a concept becomes equivalent to "Oh, everything is dependently originated. I'm just stopping these streams at this point and making a concept out of it because that's useful at this point at the conventional level." Does that help?

Ronnie: Yes, it does. Thank you very much. Um, a second question is, regarding the concentration practice, the jhāna^[18] practice. Is there a certain stage in one's spiritual path where one should engage in that or just whenever you feel like you're ready, or how would you sort of point it out to some of us?

Leigh: So what I tell people if you want to come on a retreat with me, you need to have done two one-week or longer residential retreats. By that point you will have enough meditation experience to where you can start to learn the jhānas, hopefully. Okay, there's no guarantees, but that seems to be the minimum. You really go on your first residential retreat to find out what it's like to be on a retreat. And you go on your second residential retreat to find out it wasn't quite like what you thought it was. So then on your third retreat you're really ready to get going. And so two one-week or longer residential retreats is usually enough background so that at that point you could, you know, make sense of what's being taught. Because to do that you're going to have to have learned to meditate. You know, you're going to be doing stuff before you go on the retreat, between the retreats, and so forth. So yeah, get some skill at meditation, be able to follow your breath at least somewhat, you know, learn how to do some mettā practice, those sort of skills you want to have coming in. Because on my retreat, I just assume everybody knows how to meditate. And so I say, "All right, here's some ways you can work with your breathing that will take you to a deeper level," but I don't tell you so much, uh, about how to do it.

Thank you. Yeah, and someone put in the chat, "Residential retreats are not easily accessible." Well yeah, these days they're not easily accessible at all, unfortunately. So I do accept two one-week or longer Zoom retreats. But of course you have to be really dedicated on that Zoom retreat, you can't just show up for the Dharma talks. I mean, you've got to really actually meditate and keep silence and so forth to have enough background. But even, you know, back before COVID, yeah, you needed to be able to take time off work and they cost money and so forth. I wish it was more easily available, it would be a better world if everybody had an easily available retreat. Amy.

Amy: Hello. Hi. Um, thank you very much for today, for your book. Um, I uh want to address or ask you a question about the idea that we conceptualize everything. You used the example of the Corvette. Um, is very helpful if you think about its component parts. Um, we conceptualize it as a Corvette. Um, the example of the cell phone also very easy entryway into that idea. Um, uh even your glass is actually... my experience of it would have been pixels actually. Um, and even if that glass was physically in the space with me I could also break it down to, you know, again I think you said if it fell and smashed into a million pieces it would still be the same thing. It wouldn't... I guess it's an entryway into seeing the concept of the glass as false also. What I'm a little bit stuck on is, for example, the water in the glass.

Leigh: Yeah, if I may.

Amy: Yeah.

Leigh: So materiality. If I spill the water on the floor, it's still water. All right, but what if it soaks into the floor? Uh, I mean it didn't evaporate, it just soaked into the floor, now it's part of the floor. So it's changed, it's not... right. Now the hydrogen and oxygen atoms are still the same. Okay, so at that level there's not a lot of change going on. Except, when we really get down to that level, that's not where we're doing our craving and clinging. Right, we're doing the craving and clinging at a much more macroscopic level. You know, I'm not really clinging to the... when I'm thirsty, I'm not clinging to the oxygen atom at that point in the glass, right? I'm clinging to the water because it'll slake my thirst. So we're working at the level of practicality for understanding the reality that we're interacting with, such that we don't interact with it with the craving and clinging bit. Uh, yeah, materiality may change form, the water may evaporate, it may freeze, something like that, it's still water. Okay, uh, but when it's ice it's conceptualized different than when it's steam, those two are really conceptualized different, even though it's the same atoms perhaps that are involved.

And so we... we yes, can get down into the quantum level and all this other stuff, but that's not where we're doing our craving and clinging. So when we step back to the world in which we're operating, where it's craving and clinging, yeah, it's a glass, it's a cell phone, it's me. Right, and I'm just... I'm empty as everything else. I'm just the product of a bunch of streams of dependently arising processes interacting. And so it's at that level that we're going to find freedom. I don't think we're going to find freedom by not clinging to oxygen atoms or something like that. Does that help?

Amy: Yes it does. Thank you very much.

Leigh: Okay.

Participant: Hi, thank you, this has been truly helpful. My question is, um, you mentioned earlier Buddhist metaphysics. Yes. And having been originally trained in meditation and Buddhist philosophy in the Tibetan system, I definitely got a big dollop of that. Yes. Some parts, whereas the explanation of emptiness that I received in the Theravada system makes sense to me, I can understand it. There was something that felt always elusive, highly convoluted, abstract, and not clearly proven by the examples that were given on the way emptiness is explained in the Tibetan systems. Now, some teachers say that the two explanations are compatible. Others like Thanissaro Bhikkhu^[19] say they're not. And, and I'd like to have your response to that, um, because I don't want to give up something just because it's difficult or maybe it's not being translated well, but I don't want to continue to put a lot of effort into something that doesn't go anywhere. And particularly when it comes to emptiness of phenomena and like "everything is like a dream", sometimes it seems to be taken a little bit too extreme to me and becomes almost like, what is the term, um, there is a term that comes from psycho-spiritual bypass.

Leigh: Yeah. Yeah. Do you get what I'm saying?

Participant: Right, I do, I get what you're saying.

Leigh: So I have studied some Tibetan philosophy and teachings and practices, but I would not say that my understanding of Tibetan philosophy is broad enough to say that yes, it does come together exactly at the same place that emptiness comes together from the Theravadin perspective. But I see a lot of similarities and I see where it could be possible, but I can't, you know, I just don't have enough background to say for sure. Certainly, there are schools in the Tibetan who are looking to the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā as a very basic foundational practice for their understanding of emptiness.

But well, the truth be told, I haven't found any system in Buddhism or anything else that I totally agree with. You know, I mean, uh, maybe it's hubris on my part, but you know, they say if you understand quantum mechanics, it proves you have no clue about quantum mechanics. Okay, I don't claim to understand quantum mechanics, but I think the standard interpretation of quantum mechanics, the so-called Copenhagen interpretation, I think it's mistaken. Right. You know, but I'm not going to sit here and try and explain to you everything about why I think it's mistaken and what the right way to look at it is. I just get the sense that, no, they've missed a point here. And yes, it does have to do with conceptualization.

Um, so I mean, I don't agree with orthodox Theravadan Buddhism, I don't agree with Tibetan Buddhism, I don't agree with Zen Buddhism in any of these in their entirety. But I agree with enough of what they're teaching that I find it useful. And so that's what I'm working on: what can I find in here that's helpful for me? What can I find in these teachings that propels me down the spiritual path? What can I find in here that helps me do less craving and clinging, helps me to be a more compassionate person? And I'm finding that in all of these—well, maybe not in quantum mechanics, but in all the Buddhist teachings I do find there's helpful stuff there. So I take what I find helpful and the rest of it I just put in the "I don't know" bucket. The "I don't know" bucket I've got is really quite big. And I just, you know, pull stuff out and look at it, and a lot of times just throw it back in. Sometimes I get an understanding and come up with something like SODAPI. So, yeah, okay. Yeah. "I don't know" bucket, and throw a lot of stuff in there and pick stuff out of it occasionally when you get some new information. See if it makes sense.

Participant: Thank you, thank you, that's helpful. Thank you.

Leigh: Good. So, uh, got five minutes, I think that's time for mettā^[20]. So in order to begin, please put your attention on your breath for a few moments.

Guided Meditation: Mettā

So, do you like to be happy? I mean, if you're happy, is that a good thing? Do you like that? Can you appreciate it when you're happy? Wouldn't it be nice to be happy right now? Can you get in touch with the fact: I like being happy? May you be happy.

Do you like it when your friends are happy? I mean, is that a good thing? I like it when my friends are happy. A lot more fun to hang out with them. Wouldn't it be great if all of your friends were happy? May all of our friends be happy.

What if your acquaintances were happy? What if everybody at work, everybody in the grocery store, all your neighbors? What if they were all happy? That'd be nice. You know, all the clerks are happy, your neighbors are all happy. Wouldn't it be great if all of our acquaintances were happy? May everyone we encounter be happy.

What if the difficult people in our lives were happy? I mean genuinely happy. Happy because of wholesome activities, not that evil thing whatever they were doing. Right, but wouldn't it be nice if all the difficult people could find a source of wholesome happiness? They'd probably be a lot less difficult. May all of the difficult people be happy, wholesomely happy.

What if everybody on the planet was happy? What would that be like? Everybody everywhere happy. I'd like that, that's where I want to live. May all beings everywhere be happy.

[Silence]

So thank you. It is said that a good way to make good karma is to teach the Dhamma. So I appreciate this opportunity. So may any merit from today's teachings be for the benefit and liberation of all beings everywhere. And as I mentioned earlier, all the dāna that you send to Sati Center for today will go to Ukrainian relief.

I'll leave you with these words: "All I'm saying is simply this: that all mankind is tied together. All life is interrelated, and we are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. For some strange reason I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. And you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality." That's from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

May all of you be happy, healthy, and may your practice be fruitful. Thank you.