So it is very important to understand the Buddha's view of impermanence. Not as a religious threat. Like: hey, you know you'd better behave. Otherwise, you will die and go to hell and all that. Base on this view, you can develop an attitude. The attitude based on accepting the truth. Okay. In order to understand this truth, there are many different methods. Meditation-related. Action-related. If you go to countries, like Myanmar, or Thailand, you see monks who have shaved their head. The act of shaving head is a method to remind you the impermanence. It's a discipline to help you remember impermanence. Not that Buddha has some allergy towards long hair. That he imposed this rule that as a Buddhist you have to shave your hair. So all these rituals are actually to take you to this truth. As I said before, unfortunately, we got so caught by the rituals, but not the impermanence. Okay, went back to our first question: Why Buddhism? We can have a really good, long-lasting, portable, cheap fun. And how do you do that? By understanding all compounding things are impermanent. By accepting that. Even if somebody is wishing you long life, then tell him: yeah, may you live. Or on the other side, even if you are going through the most depressing time.

I don't know if you have this expression_r in Chinese: "Time heals". That is a simple truth. By the way, I should tell you. When Prince Siddhartha, when he was contemplating on how to really seek and search the truth. He was indeed very practical. All his teachings are very practical. I'm sure he has the wit and intellect to do a research on what the neighboring deer eat or elephants eat when he was meditating. He can do a fantastic research on those. But a breakthrough discovery of dietary system of a deer, you know, that might help a few deer. That's all about it. He really wants to get to the bottom of all the problems. So he realized that problem No.1 is: Not understanding that all the compounded are impermanent. All of them, not a single thing exempt.

Problem No.2 is thinking, okay, this is the second view. Where does all these pain come from? Not only the pains, gross pains such as headache, stomachache. Basically, the human pains are not getting what we want. And having to live with this uncertainty all the time. Most of us are very uncertain like right after this, will we see our friends and loved ones? We are not sure. What is it? What is the fundamental cause of this pain? He never come out with answer like oh, yes there is an evil force from outside of galaxy. It invaded us. He didn't say that. No external existing evil being created pain to us. Then he discovered it is clinging to the self. Every mindstream or emotion that directly or indirectly involved with clinging to the self leads to pain. All our emotions such as love, hatred, jealousy, all of them basically stem from clinging to the self. That's a big discovery. Because we as human being, we like blaming someone. According this second view, there is none to blame. If you have to blame, you have to blame this habit of clinging to the self. But this is a very big subject in Buddhism study. We hear a lot of Buddhism teaching about selflessness. But I'll tell you something here. It's not that Buddha found that the self is evil, therefore clinging to the self is wrong. It is not that at all. So again here, I think our second view, I would say, it's nothing religious. But again, unfortunately, these tools to contemplate on the selflessness have unfortunately become very religious. He didn't discover that evil self. And he never said therefore clinging to the self lead you to pain. Actually, he found there is no self. Therefore clinging to the self is wrong. That's why we suffer. This is very important. As you know because many of we Buddhist always say, oh, I'm so egoist. I'm selfish. We all judge it very ethically or very religiously.

He said that actually everything is conditioned. He thinks that, basically, so-called ignorance, which he found, is self-clinging. Then you are looking at something. And this something is actually several components putting together then you think it's something. Like this table, table leg, plank, all these put together, then it becomes a table. Things put together, then it becomes something.

Probably, you already know this trick. But I'll show you a trick. I can only do it in English. If I show you this. How do you read this? (仁波切指着中间的13说道) You read twelve, thirteen and fourteen. Now, the same thing I fold it differently. Then thirteen becomes B. Why? Because we have A and C. Our mind shifts through. When 13 is in the middle of 12 and 14. It is 13. But when 13 is in the middle of A and C. Then it becomes B. Why? You can always argue this with Siddhartha. This is something good. You can debate with him. Never you should take that on the face of that. But According to him, everything is basically like this 13 or B. Everything is basically you put together and then it is functioning as something, which can be changed if another component is put together.

If I put a bed sheet here, and a blanket and a pillow here, it becomes a bed. If I chop it into pieces and put it in the kitchen. Firewood I get. So now, he thought the so-called self is exactly 13 and B. Basically, you are looking at several components put together. form, feeling, color etc. This is a very big subject in Buddhism study.

I'm sure many of you know Heart Sutra. form is emptiness. Emptiness is form. No eyes. No ears. No nose. Basically, according to the Buddha, several components put together, you come up with this idea of self, which does not exist at all. And this is what you are clinging at. This ridiculous actually. But again, as simple as it sound, it is very difficult to combat with this self-clinging. Why? Because it's an old habit. You know, even quit smoking is difficult. And that's relatively a new habit. Because you didn't hold a cigarette when you were born. But clinging to the self is a very old habit. Okay, so what do we do? Basically there are several components put together, and we think it is the self.

Then we built a lot of hideout so that the self will be comfortable, insured and powerful. This is where, you know, like money, power, influence and friendship. It is very big. If there is not self there is no economy. If what Buddha said works and if a lot of people actually practice combating the self, the market will crash. Because there is no insecurity, if there is no insecurity, there is no business. You must know that, right? I don't know much about business. But it looks like this is the quintessence of business. And they have people teaching us what we don't have and what we should have. To make this non-existing self more comfortable and more insured and on the process of trying to make this non-existing self comfortable, on the larger scale, we destroyed our own world. Environment. Everything. Every one of us. On the smaller scale, even between the friends and the family, we say we love them. It is all related to we love them because we love ourselves. Because we want to put them on the shelf, so that anytime you want, you can use them. This is basically the second view. There is nothing really religious about this. Nothing ethical. But in Buddhism, ethics is taught a lot. There is a full subject such as Vinaya But all of them they are designed to understand the truth. As I said before, the gunpoint, you would say the sky is red. The whole path, the complicated path has been taught by Buddha himself.

Diamond Sutra is something that is very popular in Chinese culture. There is, you know maybe some of you remember...there Buddha said: Those who see me in form is a wrong view. And Buddha said, Buddha's marks are not true. Of course it is very difficult to understand this. We'd like to have a savior. A savior. Someone to blame to. Someone to pray to when all the options run out, generally. For the Buddhist, yes we talk about Buddha. We are talking about golden Buddha. Because we like gold. There's no one mentioned charcoal like Buddha. But even if you look at the marks of the Buddha you really understand why this is just yet another skillful means. The truth that we have been talking about, itself is the Buddha. There is no other Buddha than the truth. The truth has no color, no shape, it's not bronze-made.

But anyhow we just make people to get attracted to this truth, isn't it? That is important. If you love someone. You want to really make this someone to be happy. You want really to give this person the cause of happiness. You will do anything to lead him to the truth, lead him to the cause of happiness. I'm trying to talk about Buddha's compassion. So the compassion is like this, you want to make them understand the truth. Yet the truth has no color, no shape. Nothing. Even on the general level, the truth is bitter.

Let's say, like the other day, I was in India 3 days ago. I attended a luxuriant wedding. You can't really go to the couple and say: you know, you will die on some day.And also you two are human beings, therefore many times you will fight and disagree with each other. Especially this couple I've never seen them before.So in order to deliver the truth, you have to make the truth attractive. This is when the Buddhists begin to paint the Buddha with gold. It became much more elaborate later. there are actually some people who like blue color, then we have blue Buddha. There is some people who like coral. So there is Amitabha Buddha with coral color.

But even the method, if you look carefully at these methods, if it is really an authentic method, it should all have an element of bringing you to the truth. For example, even the Buddha's qualities like the golden color that we Buddhists are so proud of. Or the ears long enough to touch the shoulder. I mean think, would you really seriously date with someone like that? Would you proudly show your boyfriend who with completely golden color to your normal friends? Or ears hanging to shoulder. So all these Buddhists' symbols, if they are authentic, they are designed to attract you. Then lead you to the truth.

Because as long as you are bound by color, shape, you are bound by compounded things.

So it is very difficult for me to present these two views. They're quite vast. It's very difficult for me to put it in a very short of time. There are two more truth out of four Seals of Dharma, which we will discuss tomorrow. So maybe about 10 minutes for your questions.

(To be continued...)