Audio recorded at Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 8.9-minute teaching on the Bodhisattvacaryāvatāra’s ninth chapter, Kyabje Rinpoche shows how understanding emptiness through dependent arising becomes the foundation for sādhana visualization. He begins with a conceptual approach: phenomena exist through causes and conditions rather than from their own side, and thus lack inherent existence. He then traces the sādhana sequence: lineage lamas absorbing into light, that light purifying the environment and all sentient beings, which absorb into oneself before dissolving into emptiness (not mere void, but absence of inherent existence), from which the practitioner arises as the deity. He closes by addressing the object of negation: both the truly existing phenomena we mistakenly perceive and the consciousness grasping them must be negated, given our strong habitual patterns to self-grasping since beginningless time.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 1994-11-22 – 17A – 9th Chapter – KR.mp3
UUID: 0b19b601-25ea-48a8-9347-7728be4143ee
Teacher: Kyabje Rinpoche
Collection: Bodhisattvacaryāvatāra
Date: 1994-11-22
Recorded at: Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide
Words: ~513
They apply reason or dependent arising, how the body has come about and it exists due to dependence on and with relative to causes and conditions, and therefore it is not existing independently or from its own characteristic and by that way it is emptiness of existing from its own side or inherently existing and that would be the appropriate way to meditate. Yeah. Should be okay. In the case of specific context of sādhana practice then one can meditate on it in this way where firstly one does the absorption of the lineage teachers where the visualized lamas absorb to one another and finally the immediate lineage lama to your main lama absorbs into your main lama and your main lama as well absorbs from its lower and upper part of body merge inward and becomes light and then absorbs into your heart and having absorbed into your heart, or let’s say one point, having absorbed into one point then from one’s heart lights go out in all directions, the lights touch all environments and purifies them and the environment are then absorbed, visualized as absorbed into sentient beings, the resident beings and then lights continuously touching sentient beings absorb them from lower parts of their body and upper parts of body into light and they then are absorbed into one’s self and one’s self eventually absorbs by dissolving from lower and upper part of the body and finally becoming light and that as well gradually disappears into emptiness but at that point to emphasize one must not think it is mere vacuum.
One must not think it is emptiness in the sense mere vacuum but instead emptiness of inherent existence and then then out of that emptiness having meditated for a while then out of that emptiness whatever deity one is practicing one thinks instantaneously one arises as that deity. Yeah. So that’s both both the questions answered. What is the object of negation? Is it the truly existing or the mistaken consciousness that grasps that can be the object of negation then which is to be negated because the misconception which grasps onto that I as truly existent that is the main thing to get rid of in our mind but in order to get rid of that, one has to firstly get rid of or one has to get rid of the object of that misconception which is truly existent or inherent existence about the I or phenomena.
So therefore both. If the object meaning the base, the true existence is negated then that out of it will come gradually the stopping of the grasping at it. Yeah. That’s because there was no beginning to our past lives and that means since beginningless life, since beginningless time we have been very much used to that ego grasping with strong ego and therefore there’s a strong habit with it and that’s why there is a strong ego or in other words a strong grasping at ego or even when we are born. Yeah.
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