Namaste. So far, we have seen how the monk approaches emptiness by a process of abstraction. First he looked at the wilderness, and of course the wilderness has a lot of detail in it. But then he abstracted the wilderness into the earth element, which of course comprises most of the details, the information in the perception of the wilderness: you have the earth, the rocks, the trees, and so many other things. So he took all those earthy things and abstracted them into one perception, the perception of earth. That got rid of the idea of a village, the idea of the palace, the idea of an assembly of monks, and even the idea of the wilderness surrounding them. So now what happens? What’s the next step?

“Further, Ānanda, the monk—not attending to the perception of wilderness, not attending to the perception of earth—attends to the singleness based on the perception of the dimension of the infinity of space. His mind takes pleasure, finds satisfaction, settles, & indulges in its perception of the dimension of the infinity of space.”—Cūḷa Suññatā Sutta

What does this mean? See, you have to think about these things. The Buddha is not going to give you your realizations and insights on a silver platter; you have to do some work, you have to analyze it, you have to cross-question it. We quoted that Sutta before, that the monks who are intelligent cross-question the Suttas, they discuss among themselves. This is why I’m trying to get you all to make intelligent comments, and cross-question the idea in the Suttas—don’t be lazy, look up the terms! Try to figure out what it means.

Namaste. So, we’ve been dipping in the ocean of emptiness [laughs], just a little bit. Although it’s only a dip, it seems like the deep end of the pool, right? Well, now we’re going to stop messing around in the pool, and we’re actually going to go out in the ocean. So, this is taking a deep dive into the source material, the Buddha-suttas on emptiness.

I remember one time I went out in a boat with some friends beyond the island of Guam, beyond the coral reef, out into the ocean. And there’s a shelf, the Marianas Shelf, then that drops off into the Marianas Trench, which is the deepest part of the ocean in the whole world—36,000 feet or something like that, and basically it’s just like a cliff, it goes straight down. I remember diving off the boat and going down the cliff wall, and we were looking for shellfish and whateve—and feeling the immensity of the Marianas deep... I mean, it was just such an awesome feeling. I think it had a lot to do with the sound. Just like you can hear if somebody puts a lot of reverb or something, it sounds like a big space. Well, this was the biggest space I ever heard—just awesome. And I looked up, and there was a whole school of barracudas swimming over my head! [laughs] “I think I want to see some daylight here!” [laughs]

Anyway, for those of you who are allergic to emptiness, you should tune out right now! [laughs] Because this is going to get really deep, and there are lots of barracuda... [laughs] But for those who have an appetite, who have a taste, then this is going to be wonderful, because we’re going to go through the whole sutta. And even though it’s called The Shorter Sutta on Emptiness, it’s actually quite long, and it goes step-by-step, by degree, to introduce you to the concept of emptiness; the apophatic teaching. Instead of the positivist teaching of being in the Vedas, it’s going to be the apophatic teaching of emptiness. So, here we go: check your tanks, check your regulator [chuckles], blow all the water out of the breathing tube, and let’s jump in!

Namaste. So, you might think that “Well, what is there to know about emptiness?” [laughs] I mean, how much can I say about emptiness, right? Well, it’s like name-&-form. I looked up on the suttas all the suttas having to do with emptiness, and there’s maybe a thousand of them... So emptiness is actually a very important topic—and we haven’t even started to cover it from the Vedic side.

So, emptiness is a big deal. Why is it such a big deal? There’s nothing to it! [laughs] But the point is when we attain the realization of emptiness, that stops the creation of sankhārā. The Buddha created a gradual series of meditations called the jhānas, more and more subtle, and finally leading to complete emptiness. So, is that Nibbāna? No. Listen to this:

“Since Nibbāna is called the stilling of all preparations, sankhārā, sabbasankhārasamatha, one might sometimes conclude that the attainment of the cession of perceptions and feeling, saññāvedayitanirodha, is in itself Nibbāna. But it is upon rising from that attainment, which is like a deep freeze, that one makes contact with the three deliverances: the signless (animitta), the desireless (appanihita), and the void (suññatā).”

—Bhikkhu K. Ñāṇananda, Nibbāna the Mind Stilled

Namaste. The series before last was about Dependent Arising, the process of becoming. And the process of becoming is the trap that causes us to be stuck in duality. But it’s also the process of enlightenment; because we have to turn that process on its head and use it to become free. We showed how the descent into duality, when it’s uprooted, and when the process of becoming ceases, then automatically the Eightfold Path and the four Path Fruits manifest automatically.

Then in the last series we showed how there is a very deep, high-level ontological alignment between the four paths and the Śaṅkarāchārya’s four darśanam, catur-darśanam, the four views. Starting from duality, that’s dvaita-vāda; then conditioned duality, viśiṣṭādvaita-vāda; then there’s the appearance of the world, vivartha-vāda; and finally the unborn, ajata-vāda. So these four stages exactly mirror the process of enlightenment given by the Buddha. And what is the goal, or what is the object of that process? Emptiness.

Now, I know, Westerners are terrified of emptiness, and not only Westerners! [laughs] One of the reasons why emptiness is not better known is within the Buddha’s followers themselves. Let me read this prediction by the Buddha:

“In times to come, monks will lose interest

—Samyutta Nikāya, Nidānavagga, Āni Sutta [SN 20.7]

Ontology is the most powerful western science. It gives us the power to analyze anything, even esoteric subjects. Indeed, it is the science of sciences, for it allows one to create sciences. 

So if you’ve come with us this far, you know that the most effective method of learning is learning by being. And being requires change; that’s called becoming. And the first step to becoming a genius in whatever field you choose is duplication.

Now if this doesn’t make any sense to you, you didn’t watch the first two videos. Go back and do that now—here’s the link—and then watch this video. Otherwise without the preliminaries, you’ll be grasping for the meaning.

So what we’re doing here, is we’re learning by becoming. Being is the best way because it comes from inside of you spontaneously. There’s no script. It’s not necessary because you are the thing that you’re trying to be. You are the genius, the master of the subject that you’re trying to learn. So, if you’re not already that genius, how do you become that genius? The first step is duplication. You must be working from an exact copy of the source materials. The second step, however, is understanding.

Now what is understanding? When we’re with someone that we know, and that knows us really well, we can say, “We understand each other.” It means we really know each other; it means we have internalized each other’s being to such a degree that we can predict the effect of any word or incident on your consciousness. Isn’t it? And that’s a very pleasant feeling of intimacy. We have a saying: “I get it.” I get you, I know what you’re getting at. What is it that you’re getting? You’re getting the duplication of the other person’s mind.

So this concept of duplication is very powerful, and it’s fundamental. If you’re not working with an exact copy of the original thing that you’re trying to learn, how can you learn it? And we’ll get into the exact standard of duplication later; but it’s much higher than you have been trained or led to believe. Real duplication means an exact copy. And how that’s possible? By knowing the definitions of all the terms and symbols used in the original material. You should be able to recite the definitions by heart. That’s how well, that’s how down cold you have to have your original material.

This is not an exaggeration. That’s why real students of a subject can quote verbatim from the source materials. Then by modeling the meaning of those source materials in a cause-and-effect relationship, you come to understand it: “I do this over here, and it causes this over here. I tweaked this, and it does that. And there’s a cause-and-effect relationship in time.”

So what we’re doing here by developing understanding is actually telling a story about the subject that we’re learning. It’s like constructing a narrative based on the material that you’ve duplicated that describes how the thing works, the theory of operations, if you will. But the actual process that goes on inside your mind is one of modeling, and modeling in terms of cause-and-effect. Building a narrative, building a story. And we go through all the stages on how to do that.

So today, without any further ado, we’re going to go right into the thousand names, and look at the first two names. The first line of the Lalitā-sahasranāmam goes:

श्रीमाता श्रीमहाराज्ञी श्रीमत्-श्रीमत्सिंहासनेश्वरी ।

śrī mātā śrī mahārājñī śrimat siṁhāsaneśvarī

So we’re only going to do the first two. Śrī Mātā is the first name, and of course mātā means Mother; so the Goddess, Tripura, is the Mother of the whole universe. She’s not just ordinary mother, Mātā; She’s Śrī Mātā, meaning that She is the Mother of all: the universal Mother. And not only that—She’s an extraordinary Mother. An ordinary mother has no power to reduce or eliminate the suffering, and trials and tribulations of life. I mean, maybe she can give a little bit of relief; but Śrī Mātā can completely remove those sufferings.

The end of all suffering is liberation, mokṣa: the relief of material existence, the end of saṁsāra, repeated birth and death. So She can grant this; it’s within Her power. In fact, it’s only Hers to grant. But why is that? Because as the Mother of the universe, She is the universe. She is the trap; She is Māyā. So Māyā can also remove māyā, you see? Just like a thorn can take out another thorn. But in Her case, we don’t want to throw the thorns away because She is our Mother, and full of love and affection for all Her children.

(So let me check my notes here.) So She is in one way the creator of the universe. She creates the material elements, space, time, dimension and the mahāt-tattva, the source of all the five elements. And then at the end, She also dissolves Her creation, see? Who makes it can also dissolve it; and this is why She can give liberation too.

So this cycle of saṁsāra that we’re all stuck in, is like an ocean. In the ocean there are very strong currents and tides. It’s very difficult, actually impossible, for an ordinary human being to swim against them. So in other words, one has to be rescued by the ocean itself. Maybe the tide will wash you up on the beach somewhere. But in the case of saṁsāra, it’s the Mother Herself; so She is also the one to grant liberation.

The problem is, you see, saṁsāra the current of material existence, is produced by the senses. When the senses interact with their objects we become overwhelmed by all these impressions, and we’re swept away, we’re swept along by it. We don’t have the strength to resist it. Especially early in life, when our habits and thought patterns are being formed, we have nothing solid. We are always at the effect or under the influence of externals. So therefore, we become patterned, we become conditioned by them; and we start to think of ourselves as a material thing, and of course this is called identification.

We have to be able to think with this chart. What does it mean? OK, there are four levels, OK? Four levels. The person on the first level can maybe see a little bit of the second level, but they can’t really understand it. The person on the second level can understand the first level just fine, because they’ve been there. And they’re learning the second level, and they’re maybe just barely able to understand the third level. The people on the third level understand the first two levels, but they can’t really understand the fourth level: it’s beyond their experience. And of course, the people on the 4th level understand everything. But Rāmana Mahārṣi, people like that, are so rare. There are only a tiny, tiny handful on earth at any particular time.

So what does that mean in practice? If you have some friends who are sectarian religionists—Christian, Muslim, born-again Baptists, or Jews, or whatever—people who are committed to their religious faith, they’re a solid dvaita-vādīs. They’re into duality all the way, right? They have an eternal soul, and they’re gonna go be with God forever and ever, amen.

So, these people cannot understand bhakti. When I became a devotee, a bhakta and went to join my spiritual master in India, my family completely rejected me. And that was never healed; they could never grasp why I would want to go off and serve some brown guy in a dhoti on the other side of the planet; it was completely beyond them. Well, to be fair, they weren’t even really 100% dvaita-vādīs, they were more like half-and-half, you know, half animals really. Still eating meat and all of that, ah, horrible. So their minds could not grasp the ontology that God can appear in a form.

This is so strange because at the beginning people give no form to God. Maybe they do give a form, you know, like the Sistene Chapel frescoes, that show God, you know, reaching out and touching Adam and giving him life, right? So God can have a form, He can do stuff, He can be—like a person, and you can worship Him in that form you can have pastimes with him in that form, and so on.

So that’s the viśiṣṭādvaita-vāda platform, bhakti-yoga, OK? Before you realize that, you can only do karma-yoga, right? And there are many, many sects that pretend to be higher levels, but are actually just dvaita-vādīs, stuck in duality. The neo-buddhists and the neo-advaitins are perfect examples of that. They claim to be ‘buddhists’, or they claim to be ‘advaitins’, but they’re actually just another sectarian duality. Y ou see? Why? Because they believe this, and they don’t believe that; they accept this, and they deny that. That’s duality, that’s sectarianism.

Welcome to Episode 3 of Being Integrity, and today we’re going to discern or recognize integrity as compared to other types of knowledge that discuss right and wrong, such as morality, legality, ethics and so on.

Well, what does the Buddha say about integrity? He says:

“And how is a person of integrity endowed with qualities of integrity? There is the case where a person of integrity is endowed with conviction, conscience, concern; he is learned, with aroused persistence, unmuddled mindfulness and good discernment. This is how a person of integrity is endowed with qualities of integrity.” — Cūḷa-puṇṇama Sutta (MN 110)

I love how the Buddha always tells us how; not just what, but how. So we’ll go into some of these other qualities later on in this series. But right now we want to talk about unmuddled mindfulness and good discernment.

So, to discern something means to be able to pick it out, to recognize it, to identify it even among a bunch of other similar things. So for example, if I had a pet dog, and there were a whole bunch of dogs running around, I’d be able to pick out my dog from among the pack. Similarly, there are many different ideas dealing with right and wrong, good and bad, what to do, what not to do. And we’re going to go over the difference between integrity and these other ideas.

We use a positive model of integrity; and the reason we do that is because it gives us access to enhanced performance. And we’ll get into that later on in the series. But basically, if you have integrity, you will be able to perform far greater than a typical person without integrity. And of course the same goes for groups, organizations and societies that have integrity built-in. They will have a much higher output, much greater creativity and so on than others who don’t have integrity.

In our model, we discern or recognize four phenomena dealing with right and wrong: morality, ethics, legality and integrity. So let’s go over those briefly. Philosophical discourse and common usage misdefine and confuse morality, ethics, legality and integrity. This causes people to misunderstand these four phenomena, so it is very difficult to apply them properly. Their integrity declines as a result.

So what is the difference between morality, ethics, legality and integrity? Can you tell me right off the top of your head? Probably not; and that’s a problem. It’s a problem because these words actually refer to different things; and unfortunately in the ordinary dictionary definitions, they are defined in terms of one another. So there’s a lot of circular definitions going on: morality is defined as ethics, ethics is defined as morality, and so on.

Āya Bhuwan: may you live long!

Welcome to episode two of Being Integrity, where we establish a firm foundation for your progress in this series. Why is integrity so difficult? Sometimes when we try to explain it to people, it’s as if we’re speaking a foreign language. But actually, integrity has been trained out of us; it has been socialized out of us; it has been basically beaten out of us by a society surrounding us that’s completely out-of-integrity itself.

The government is spying on everybody, they’re lying to the press, to the Congress; businesses are stabbing each other in the back; there’s all kinds of covert wars and stuff going on all over the planet—and these are the leaders! So if the leaders are like that, then imagine what the rest of the population must be. In school, it’s supposed to be about education; but it’s actually just about social conditioning, about training easy-to-manage workers for the industrial corporations.

So we’re not really getting what we’re promised in any area of life: government is corrupt, business is corrupt, school is corrupt, families are corrupt; people are cheating on each other, nobody’s following any kind of moral standards. It’s very rare, and when they do, it’s only because of external coercion like a church, or because they’re afraid of getting caught.

So we live in a world where being out-of-integrity is pervasive, and to get along in that world we often find ourselves compromising what we know is right and wrong, in order to get by. It’s a pretty sad state of affairs. But this is the typical consciousness that we find in the world today. We want to do something about this; we want to encourage and help people to regain their integrity, and to become a fully integrated, whole, fully functional human being.

Why? Because without integrity, without the intention to reduce suffering or eliminate suffering for ourselves and others, we are less than fully human. A full human being—human being in the full sense of the term—is one who is committed to reducing or eliminating suffering for everyone. Of course, this is a Buddha, or at least an arahant: a fully Self-realized person.

So a full human being is something very far above the average human being of today. Yet without integrity, we cannot even take a small step toward that platform. We’re stuck in the subhuman consciousness of thinking we are the body; we’re thinking we are some abstract designation related to our social or economic or political status. That is a conditioned state of consciousness. It’s not real consciousness; it’s consciousness in terms of some symbolic representation or some abstract relationship that we take on and say, “This is my self.”