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These Are Raw Transcripts That Have Not Been Edited in Any Way, and May Contain Errors Introduced by the Volunteer Transcribers These are raw transcripts that have not been edited in any way, and may contain errors introduced by the volunteer transcribers. Please refer to the audio on The Knowledge Base website (http://www.theknowledgebase.com) for the original teachings. ACI Course 6 The Diamond Cutter Sutra (RAW TRANSCRIPT) presented by Geshe Michael Roach New York March – May 1995 Course VI: The Diamond-Cutter Sutra Class One: Lineage/Overview March 13, 1995 (Problem with rest of tape from mark #10 on Side 2 to end. Recording is very, very faint - can only hear very faint hisses at highest volume.) [cut] morning. Most people never do it. You're supposed to write the date and the time that you did your meditation. I don't care if you miss one a week or two a week because you got up late for work, okay? But you must fill that out and you must do it. If you don't do it, you fail the whole mark and I'll, and I'll, and after two of those you're, you're out of the class. I'm gonna be very strict this time about it. People... if you're doing a {chumduk} and a {dakye}, then it comes... you can do that during the part about the {yinde nyagde}, the mental and verbal recitation. It goes in there, okay? [student: What do you mean it goes... ] During that... [student: What do you mean it goes in?] Whatever meditation I've assigned you, you can do during that point, at that point in the {dakye}. So, so no excuse for people doing {dakye}'s awright? An' I'm gonna be more strict about that. Then there'll be a... we're gonna have a board meeting, of the board of, of this group. I believe people here on it are... don't... Anigasarni... you're, you're on... I don't remember who's [laughs] on it [laughter]. I think it's Margie, Ernst, Anigar, Michael [unclear] and then that, that board will change every year and we'll have elections after this board finishes and you probably will have a rule to be a member, a legal member, you, you have to have finished three cl... courses [unclear]. Awright. An' that's all. You can go on to the next page class syllabus, and I'll just go over with you quickly what you're going to be subjected to. Awright, in the first class we're gonna cover where did the book come from, who wrote the explanations, what's the meaning of the title and what were the circumstances under which t he Buddha taught this book that you're about to study. Class two, we're gonna talk about how emptiness relates to bodhichitta, which is the wish for enlightenment, why do they go together. Class three, emptiness and, and the bodies of a Buddha, 'kay. When you become a Buddha, you get like four bodies. Some books say three. And we're gonna talk about how emptiness relates to that. This is, by the way, the order in which [b: The Diamond-Cutter Sutra] covers them. Class four, this, the Buddha in [b: The Diamond-Cutter Sutra] discusses the future of his own teachings, an' we'll be covering that. Class five, how do emptiness and karma interrelate, 'right? That's a very important subject. Some people think if everything's empty, they can do what they want. And some people think that they should keep morality carefully and emptiness is ridiculous. So those are both extremes, an' we'll try to study about how emptiness and karma actually go together. Class six is very important. That's about total [unclear]. That's the stage, that's the experience at which you first perceive emptiness directly, which is very, very... it's probably the most important moment in a person's practice. An' we're gonna discuss that experience in detail. Number seven is how does emptiness relate to getting rid of your mental afflictions, your bad thoughts, awright, and that's very important. How does emptiness relate to becoming an arhat in reaching nirvana. Number eight is em... emptiness and paradise. How does emptiness relate to gaining a Buddhist paradise, and how does emptiness relate to purification or cleaning yourself of bad karma. Number nine is emptiness and the perfection of wisdom. You're gonna get the definition of the perfection of wisdom and study that, and see why even it has to be empty. And then we're gonna talk about the two extremes. Number ten is very important. Even though things are empty they do function and they do matter, and we're gonna cover that [unclear]. Class eleven, at the end of [b: The Diamond-Cutter Sutra] is a very famous poem. Four lines, { }, and all monks have to recite it at every monk ceremony, it's very famous, very beautiful, so we'll cover that, we'll cover that poem, and its meaning as far as impermanence and emptiness, and then you get your review for your final exam, okay? And then class twelve will be final exam. Final exam will be exactly one week after the review. And not gonna let you take the exam when you want to because some are still lingering from [laughs] last fall, awright? The, the, the only thing permanent is the, the exam [laughter]. And, that'll be exactly that. I don't promise that we'll end... next thing. The next page is... the next few pages... the first two of them which is refuge and the next is offering the mandala, these are the things we recite before class, so if you're new and you [cut] the teacher, to, to give the teaching, and that mandala represents whole earth, and at the end of the mandala you, you [unclear], you, you pray that that earth could become a paradise for all living beings, so actually you're doing bodhichitta at the same time, okay, so that's a great... those two are before class. I think I got the order wrong here. You should pop it out. Okay, subject of your class is this. Say {vajira} [repeat], {chedika} [repeat], {vagira} [repeat], {chedika} [repeat]. {Vagira} means what? D' you know? [student: Diamond.] [student: Diamond.] Okay, diamond. {Ched} is a, is a, this by the way, this is the Sanskrit name, okay, not the Tibetan name. {Ched} means "to cut something", awright, "to cut". And {ika} is just an ending, 'right. So {vagira chedika} means "diamond-cutter". An' that's the name of the book you're gonna study. It's a sutra, which means it was taught by an Enlightened Being, okay. It was taught by the Buddha, a Buddha, okay. Something is a sutra is taught by a Buddha. There're some other teachings called sutras, but are not really sutras like [b: The Vinaya Sutra], but normally sutra means taught by an Enlightened Being, okay. So we're gonna study the [b: Vagira Chedika Sutra]. Taught by Lord Buddha, Shakyamuni Buddha, five hundred BC, and in Tibetan the name is this. [silence] Say {dorjay} [repeat], {cherpa} [repeat], {dorjay} [repeat], {cherpa} [repeat]. You've heard the word {dorjay} a lot if you, you know, if you've been around Tibetan Buddhism at all. Okay. {Dorjay} means "diamond". The {do} part means "stone". {Do} means "stone". {Jay} means "lord". So {dorjay} means "lord of stones", "king of stones". The king of all stones is the diamond. Okay, {dorjay}. And {cherpa} again means "to cut", awright, "to cut". You've had I think {genza cherpa} before, "cutting that virtue root", remember? We had it in the karma course. Same verb, okay, "to cut something", awright. So the name of the book is [b: Dorjay Cherpa]. [student: Michael, is this modern Tibetan or is this ancient Tibetan, [unclear] is it Tibetan?] Tibetan hasn't changed much since they started writing it about eleven hundred years ago, okay. It's changed very little. You can read scripture, you can probably read a newspaper, roughly. [student: So the spoken is different.] Yeah, much different. There's three or four Tibetans. You don' wanna know. Okay, so [b: Dorjay Cherpa] is the name of the book. Spoken by Lord Buddha about five hundred BC. It, it was the first printed book in history. The Chinese edition around eight hundred was the first printed book. First book used printing and not manuscript writing. It's been very, very important book, in China, Japan 'n Mongolia. I' was first translated in, into Chinese in, in the fourth century in the three hundreds by Kumara I, Ibi, isn't it? And it's been very important in China. The Mongolians, and even the Mongolians that I lived with, still keep a copy in their house. It's one of the only two books that every Mongolian keeps in their house. They call it [b: Jedbah], which is from the {cherpa}, an' it's, it's been considered very important. It's been considered the most, either their most, or one of the most important sutras studied in the Far East. In Tibet, it's not studied per se in the monasteries by itself, but it's still considered one of the most important sutras. There are two Indian explanations to this sutra, okay. Two Indian, ancient Indian pandits wrote explanations. The first one was Asanga [silence] three fifty AD. He wrote an explanation of this sutra. It's in the kengir, it's in the, the Buddhist canon.
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