Class Eight: Enlightening Each Other **1) We are now into the tenth chapter of the Gita; in the opening lines of this chapter, Lord Krishna speaks of those beings among “the mortal” who have “escaped the darkness of ignorance.” Why do you think Lord Krishna speaks of these two things in the same breath? What are the Sanskrit word, and cognates, for the word used for “the mortal” here?** We have seen in these classes how for example an aspirin which works is coming from us; we have talked about how a pen is coming from us, and we have talked about how a yelling boss is coming from us. We have even spoken about how our own thoughts are coming from us; meaning, from seeds we have planted through our past behavior. We have seen how, if we escape the darkness of ignorance, then we can turn anything around us into something literally divine. And so now Lord Krishna throws out to us a further challenge: can your new view of where things come from affect the very fact of your death, the fact that you are still mortal? To answer this we need only to hold up our own arm, and question how whether it differs in any way from a pen. We have seen how a pen can be perceived by ourselves as a writing instrument, and by a visiting dog as a chew-toy: in effect, there are two separate realities going on simultaneously in the same room, in the same space that the pen occupies. And so it’s also possible for a different reality to be going on in the space which our own arm occupies: someone standing next to us, someone without sufficient seeds, could be perceiving this arm as something made of flesh and blood. And at the same time we (if we have really devoted ourselves to helping others) might perceive our arm as made of light—the arm of an enlightened angel. The arm is neither “really” made of flesh or made of light, any more than the black stick is “really” a pen or a chew-toy. Because our arm, like every other object, possesses that one highest quality of what we can call “blank white screen-ness,” it is “available” to be made either of light or of flesh—it just depends on the seeds that we have accumulated to see it either way. Mortality itself, Lord Krishna is leading to, is just another perception overlaid upon the different parts of ourselves; and, were we to understand the Lord correctly, as his ultimate nature, we would be “freed of all bad deeds,” “escape the darkness of ignorance,” and escape our mortality as well. **2) Lord Krishna, still in the tenth chapter, recites an extraordinary list of personal qualities that are exhibited by the people of this world, all of which, he says, he himself is the source of. How does the range of this list help us to understand the nature of Lord Krishna as a divine being?** We are naturally drawn to trying to understand why Lord Krishna has chosen to mention the particular qualities that he has in the two verses in question. It is quite comfortable to accept that the Lord will have been the source of the fine qualities mentioned; that is: intelligence, understanding, freedom from ignorance, patience, honesty, self-restraint, a peaceful nature; pleasure; things coming into being; freedom from fear; refusing to hurt others; feelings of equanimity; feelings of contentment; a willingness to undertake difficult spiritual practices; generosity; and good reputation. But then we see other qualities, one which are not at all desirable, also in the list: pain; things going out of being; fear; and bad reputation. If Lord Krishna is right in telling us that these qualities too have come from him, then we need to question the Lord’s own nature. He obviously, by his very own account, is not some very big and powerful creator being who can create whatever he wants, since nobody in their right mind would create for example the pain of our world. Rather, the inclusion of these negative qualities implies that Lord Krishna is in fact the ultimate nature or self which we have been describing all along; that is, he is the “blank white screen-ness” or availability inherent within all things and people which allows them to take on whatever nature we lay on them, compelled to do so by the particular mental seeds within our own mind. We can think then if we want of a god who is making everything around us, but who is bound by the laws of karma to make whatever it is that exactly fits the way in which we have been treating other people. Which is to say—if we ourselves do harm to someone else, and thus plant a negative seed within our mind—then the Lord (or, more accurately, the Lord as the ultimate nature of all things) will have no choice but to return back to us the same harm, amplified in the way that all natural things which grow from seeds are infinitely bigger than those seeds. That is, we begin to think of the nature of God as being that of a mirror, or ultimate justice: he (or she) can only return back to us exactly what we are displaying to others. In a way, this kind of invariable justice is much more comforting than the idea of a very powerful being who can tweak rewards and punishments according to his mood, or to how much we can get on his good side. It means that it *is* possible to escape pain—and even the pain of death itself—simply by our being sufficiently good to others, which is already a fun and pleasant thing to do. **3) Lord Krishna says that those who think upon him have their “winds turned” to him. And then he says that people like this “always speak” of him, and thus “enlighten each other.” Speak of the connection between these two.** The “winds” that are mentioned here are of course the different movements of prana within the body. This recalls the very basic principle which is expressed in the yoga lineages of Tibet as *lung-sem jukpa chikpa:* the inner winds and our thoughts always ride in tandem, like a horse and its rider. We use this principle in our physical yoga practice: by turning the gross physical body in certain ways, we direct prana along specific channels of the inner body. This then “straightens out” our thoughts in the same way that it straightens out our channels. And then we are simply more likely to understand the deep spiritual ideas which Lord Krishna is teaching here in the Gita. It’s important to appreciate the immense power that can be added to our practice if we put ourselves in the company of like-minded practitioners, who are also using their physical yoga to further their spiritual goals. A famous Tibetan Lama of the later 20^th century, Geshe Ngawang Dargye, used to say that practicing for example meditation by ourselves is like holding a single pencil in our two hands: it is easily snapped in two. Practicing though with even just a small group of friends, he said, is like a whole bundle of pencils: something which cannot easily be broken. The level of conversation in a good group like this, Lord Krishna is saying, is also uplifting. He says that fellow practitioners who are mindful will “always speak of me,” and thus they will “enlighten each other.” Normally when we get into a group of people, it can breed gossip or critical talk of other people outside of the group. Lord Krishna is pointing out that the opposite can also happen, especially in the spirit of spiritual inquiry which is so encouraged for example among students in a traditional Tibetan monastery. Here, students devote a significant portion of each day to traditional Socratic dialogue, working together to explore spiritual questions that they might have. Their teacher normally poses to them some thorny questions of this type in the morning group class, and then in the evening debates in a beautiful open park, under the stars, the students work together to discuss the question and see what solutions they can come up with. They then report back to their teacher at the next day’s class, and the teacher further clarifies any remaining issues. This gets these young minds in the habit, from the beginning, of speaking of something meaningful whenever they are together. The habits formed at this age tend to continue on through their adult life, and in the end we see an entire community of spiritual seekers in the habit of discussing higher things—such as Lord Krishna’s nature—over tea or on a bus together. We can emulate this behavior in our own life and encourage it among our own students, by encouraging interaction and discussion amongst them outside of the class. This then becomes a habit which can affect our yoga studio, and our entire society. **4) What pivotal question does Arjuna ask of Lord Krishna in the middle of the tenth chapter of the Gita? How does it reflect the progression of the Gita itself, and a spiritual principle of how imagination leads to reality? What is the key Sanskrit word here, and how does the Tibetan equivalent help clarify it?** At this point in the Gita, Arjuna basically breaks down and recognizes fully that the being before him really is the Lord of the Universe—for he asks Lord Krishna to describe to him the multitude of forms which the Lord takes here in our world for our benefit. Arjuna then goes on to ask an extremely important and pertinent second question, which is: How is Arjuna going to recognize which of the people and things around him is really the Lord? The very asking of this question implies that Arjuna has already in the course of the Gita advanced significantly in his spiritual path, standing there between the two armies poised to fight. For he is already seriously entertaining the possibility that many of the people and events in his day-to-day life might in fact be Lord Krishna coming to him for some higher purpose. This reflects a general and inevitable broadening of our vision of the world as divine. One of the most important reasons that we need to find our Heart Teacher is that we need one pivotal person with whom this rippling effect begins. That is, we intellectually decide that one person in our life—our Heart Teacher—*must* in fact be a divine being already. And then we struggle to maintain this vision of them: to overcome all the little moments when we see them do something mundane, or worse. We learn to interpret, or imagine, that small things which they say or do might in fact be more profound messages which are meant to carry us further along our path to enlightenment. We are driving in a car with our Lama and they keep asking us to turn on the air conditioning and then a few minutes later to turn it off. We can think that they are just being whiney or demanding, or we can see that they are trying to give us a lesson in the emptiness of our own endless stream of desires. At some point—if, as usual, we are persistent in our practice—then we have a “divine moment” with our Heart Teacher. We perceive them as someone divine, and we of course ask Them if They would be willing to transport us as well to Their particular paradise. As this breakthrough is completed with one person, we begin to expand our vision of the divine to other persons: quite naturally, it occurs to us that other people around us might also be our Heart Teacher, assuming a different form for our benefit. And so Arjuna’s question to Lord Krishna reflects a turning point in the Gita, where he is finally obviously convinced about who his chariot driver “really” is. It’s crucial at this point to realize that Arjuna also understands that the person in the chariot with him isn’t “really” a divine being or a normal being, any more than a black stick is “really” either a pen or a chew-toy. He is learning about what makes a true action: he is beginning to realize that if he sees his friend as a divine Guru, then that’s because he has been working to plant wholesome seeds in his mind. With this knowledge, it will be easy for Arjuna to expand out his vision of things and people being divine. It will become different than asking Lord Krishna to identify which people in the room he is or isn’t; it will become an exercise of planting enough mental seeds to see, naturally, that the entire roomful is divine. And these seeds are planted in large measure by the exercise of imagining or pretending that they are divine, purposely trying to see people divine that we don’t now see divine, with the right intention—which is what makes them divine in the end. **5) Lord Krishna promises Arjuna that he will describe the forms which he takes—that is, just the principal forms, since, as the Lord says, it would not be possible to describe the entire infinity of forms that he takes. And then Lord Krishna says that he is “the self which lies in the heart of every living being.” Describe this self, and then describe how it relates to what we call the Buddha-nature inside of every being.** When we first read a passage like the one mentioned here, we tend to entertain a mental picture where a little Lord Krishna is somehow present in a secret corner of the heart of every person around us—which is not a bad start. There is a little piece of Lord Krishna in everyone, which of course is what allows him to appear in an infinity of different forms. What this piece is, more precisely, is something called “Buddha-nature,” or *Tathagata garbha.* There is a little confusion about what exactly this nature is, and it takes a little study to get it straight. What it *isn’t* is some Buddha inside of us that we only need to uncover. What it *is* is the kind of self or ultimate self-nature that we’ve been describing all along. We can begin this exploration by trying to imagine which parts of us will still be the same when we become, through the practice of our yoga, an enlightened Angel. We can divide this examination into the parts of us which are changing, and those which are unchanging. We have three main components of our being which are changing. The first is our physical body. We will not be keeping this body when we become the Angel, since it is made of flesh and blood and thereby mortal: subject to inevitable decay and death. Nor will we be keeping the mind, at least in its current state. Our enlightened frame of mind will be completely different: completely free of all negative emotions; able to see all objects in all times; and able to see objects and their real nature simultaneously. The third changing component of ourselves is our identity: the person which is attached to our body and mind together; for example, “Mike.” The change in our body and mind as we pass into enlightenment is so radical that we can no longer be referred to with anything approaching our original name or identity—and so we won’t be keeping that either. And so the question becomes, will there be any other parts of us that will remain the same? Are there any unchanging parts to us that will be the same? This is where things get interesting. If you think about it, each one of us has a space or availability which allows us to look or think the way we do, or even just be called what we are. The way we look, and the way we think, are—as we well know by now—only pictures that have ripened from mental seeds planted by the way we have acted in the past. The fact that we have no other nature—no nature of being any way which is inside us, part and parcel—allows the picture from our seeds to *make* us one way or another, in the same way that a blank white movie screen, a screen which is not already filled up, allows a movie a place to be. Now this availability is not something which changes. It can be filled, or emptied, but the space itself remains the same—just as the empty space in which the pages you are reading right now can be occupied by the pages, or vacated by the pages, but remains the same in either case. And so each of us has an unchanging availability which is part of us. When we finally do become enlightened, it is this same availability—which our old mind and body and name occupied—which allows room for our new, enlightened mind, body, and name. And so the only part about us which doesn’t change as we move from suffering to enlightened is this availability. And it is exactly this availability which Lord Krishna has all along been describing as the ultimate self, as the Krishna which exists within each of us. So it’s not really a tiny little version of Krishna inside of us, but the base reality below all things which allows them to be what they are. **6) In the final selection for this course, Lord Krishna states, “I am the death which destroys all things; I am the source of what is yet to come. I am shining fame, I am Her voice.” Explain.** Again we return to the fact the Lord Krishna’s ultimate nature is the availability which allows all things to be. This means that the very fact that things and people pass away rests upon this very same availability. Without an empty screen upon which it is projected, death itself would not be possible. But in final words of hope, Lord Krishna turns away from death and states that this same availability is the “source of what is yet to come,” meaning the truth that—when all living kind comes to an understanding of how their world is a creation of the seeds planted in their mind by their behavior towards others—then death itself will inevitably disappear: we will no longer even have a word for it, no one will remember what it was, any more than many people remember what a person with polio looks like. How this knowledge will be delivered to each of us depends upon our own seeds. But Lord Krishna does mention here a shining, golden Lady whose voice will teach us wisdom. To meet her, we only have to plant the seeds, by devoting our life to helping others. *Coffeeshop assignment:* Please meet with one other member of the class (preferably someone you didn’t know before the course started) to talk a bit about this class, before the next one—and to collaborate on filling out your homework. *Meditation assignment:* 15 minutes per day, get very very quiet in your meditation, and then simply listen for “Her voice.” Keep trying, listen closely. *Meditation times and dates* (homework without this section completed will not be accepted):