Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 44-minute introduction to Buddhist mysticism recorded in 1987, the speaker defines mysticism as a method to transcend mundane consciousness controlled by ignorance, then maps the terrain through Buddhist doctrine. Starting with the two vehicles — the lesser emphasizing personal enlightenment and the greater stressing compassion for all beings — the talk traces how Buddha attained not passive nirvana but parinirvana, remaining active in the world through cultivated love and compassion. The teacher walks through the Four Noble Truths as the path to liberation: recognizing suffering, tracing it to afflictive emotions rooted in ignorance, understanding cessation is possible, and cultivating the wisdom to eliminate false views of self. The final section addresses emptiness — not mere nothingness but the absence of inherent qualities in objects and people. Through a striking example of an enemy transformed by changed attitude, the speaker shows how ignorance projects ugliness onto others as if objectively real, whereas emptiness reveals that qualities are mind-created. This is foundational teaching aimed at those approaching Buddhist practice.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 01 Buddhist Mysticism.mp3
UUID: e48b437e-3948-437d-a68f-92f3f9261299
Teacher: Buddha House Misc
Collection: Buddhist Mysticism (Buddha House Misc)
Date: 1987 (exact day not recorded)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 44.5 minutes
Words: ~6,422
Buddhist mysticism, eleventh of the ninth nineteen eighty seven. What would you how would you define mysticism within a Buddhist context? I have to define what you’re about mysticism. Yeah. That’s not No.
I have to know what the difference is. We generally don’t apply that term to Buddhism. You don’t? That’s the thing. So I know I know it has a usage in the west.
Mhmm. So, yeah, just to find out what the What what do I mean? Union with some absolute or some experience, and I it’d probably be hard to to define in words. So if you use the term by mysticism, some sort of method whereby we can transcend mundane consciousness, the mundane consciousness being controlled by this ignorance. According to interpretation of who the Buddha was and nature.
According to the lesser vehicle, Buddha was born in Lumbini about two thousand five hundred years ago. Through hard work and perseverance and effort he attained enlightenment. According to the great vehicle he was already enlightened when he was born. He attained enlightenment in some far distant past life. So there’s some difference according to the doctrine of who the Buddha was and its nature.
The person who was actually born twenty five hundred years ago by the name of Śākyamūni. So from him arose from his teachings that he gave after his attainment of enlightenment in Buddhism at the age of thirty five. There was his doctrine. He gave his teachings and these are the sources, the basis of what we now call Buddhism. Buddhism is more or less a Western term.
He took the name of Buddha just like they took the name of Christ and made a religion out of it, out of his teachings called Christianity. Likewise, it means this term of Buddha who applied to this specific being who attained enlightenment and they called it Buddhism. So the source of the present teachings are the teachings given about two thousand five hundred years ago. As to his nature of who the Buddha was, there was no doubt that at one time he was an ordinary being and that through having insight into the nature of reality through the development of compassion and love, he was able to transcend the ego, the individual dissatisfactory patterns and mistaken consciousnesses, and able to have insight into reality and transcend it all false and achieve the highest potential of evolution. How he did this and when he did this is There’s several doctrines but it’s not particularly important into one’s own practice.
The teachings are still valid and useful. How would you explain nirvana? So, are a few types of nirvana. nirvana is a Sanskrit word. It literally means beyond sorrow.
Generally, nirvana is not a place. More technically the cessation of the afflicted emotions along with their seeds. The afflicted emotions like desire, hatred, ignorance, pride, jealousy, spite, and miserliness. All these are afflictive emotions. They’re called afflictive emotions.
They’re emotions. You know, like love is an emotion, states of mind. But they have the quality of afflicting. The mind is naturally at peace in itself. But due to disturbance of these emotional desire, hatred, etc, the peace of the mind is disturbed and this causes suffering.
So if we’re able to completely eliminate, for example, hatred, anger from the mind, then this is called a cessation, complete elimination of this particular type of emotion. And also not only the emotion itself, there’s a manifest emotion, but also there’s always a potential, like you have potential even though you’re not angry at this moment. And you have conditions for such you become angry by it. So there’s always this potential. We can also eliminate that potential so that the mind can never, that anger can never rise again.
So a nirvana is the elimination of a particular afflictive emotion such as anger along with its potential such that it can never arise again. This is nirvana. When you have eliminated all the afflictive emotions, desire, hatred, all the afflictive emotions along with their potentials, and this is a fully qualified, this is a complete nirvana. It’s called beyond sorrow. The mind can never suffer again.
This is one type of nirvana. This is the nirvana which is we generally term nirvana. The case of a Buddha, he attains what is called a parinirvana. There’s a form of nirvana in which one attains one’s own peace. But if the individual in his practice has not cultivated love and compassion, then he no longer identifies with the suffering of others.
He is so far removed from suffering that he cannot understand what it means to suffer. Sees people suffering as like watching a movie. And you don’t forget that you’re watching a movie. You’re always mindful that you’re watching a movie and so it doesn’t move you in any way even though people are suffering. You’re not moved to do anything about it because you’re in complete peace.
In this case, you’re completely at peace with yourself. There’s no problems you can’t identify with the problems of others. This is generally what we talk about in nirvana. nirvana is in the mind of a person who has attained individual liberation, individual peace to the extent where he falls into the extreme of passivity. He’s so passive that he can no longer identify with the suffering of others.
Therefore, he just remains in his own peace without any interaction, without relating to anyone else. Now, the Buddha attained a special type of nirvana called parinirvana. Not only did he attain nirvana, but along the way, along his practice, when he was trying to eliminate the various faults of the afflictive emotions such as desire, hatred, along with their potential, he was also cultivating love and compassion. So when he did finally attain his nirvana due to the force of his love and compassion which he had cultivated, he did not fall into the extreme of peace. That is to say, he was still moved to work for the benefit of others even though for himself his mind was completely at peace.
For his own purposes, he had no reason to work for the benefit of others aside from the force of his love and compassion. It was the only thing that moved him. And so he didn’t fall into the extreme of peace. So he was beyond the extreme of suffering. He no longer suffered.
But he was also beyond the extreme of individual liberation, individual peace, passivity. So, therefore, he abided between these two extremes. He himself was at peace, but he still worked for the benefit of other sentient beings due to his love and compassion. So through wisdom, he went beyond sorrow, but through compassion, he remained in the world to work for the benefit of others. So these are the two types of nirvana.
nirvana generally, the cessation of the afflictive emotions so that they will never return again along with their potential or seeds, and also the parinirvana of the Buddha, in that he’s beyond both the extremes of sufferings of saṃsāra, cyclic existence, and the extremes of passive nirvana, whereby he’s in the middle. He has attained through wisdom his own peace, but through his compassion he does not fall into passivity and still is moved to work for the benefit of sentient beings. Could you explain enlightenment and how it is attained? So I’m pretty not I don’t have a great knowledge of it. We talked about you know, we talked about a little bit about the two vehicles, what I call the vehicles.
The vehicle is something which carries a burden, something that carries a burden from one place to another. So there’s the lesser vehicle and the greater vehicle. The lesser vehicle is the vehicle which carries one individual toward his own peace, whereas the great vehicle carries all sentient beings, all living beings from where they are now in a state of suffering to the state of peace. That’s why it’s termed the great vehicle. So they both have their individual enlightenments.
Their goals are both enlightenment. The nature of their goals, the nature of their enlightenment is somewhat different. It’s different from the point of view, as was talking about, from the point of view of a method of compassion. In the great vehicle, one purposely cultivates love and compassion as a means to fulfill further the most potential of working for the benefit of others. Otherwise, there’s the danger of falling into passive peace.
One just doesn’t care about others anymore. One has sort of got to eliminate one’s own suffering and it doesn’t matter about anyone else’s problems any longer. Enlightenment. There’s the enlightenment of the lesser vehicle and the enlightenment of the greater vehicle. Generally we talk about enlightenment as the elimination of all fault and the realization of all positive qualities.
So what are the faults? The faults are, you know, we can list eighty four thousand faults. But if we just abbreviate them, you know, we can talk about things like desire, hatred, and ignorance. So these are the faults that have to be eliminated. Desire, hatred, ignorance.
And the basis of desire and hatred is ignorance. This could be okay. So the basis of desire and hatred is ignorance. Now what do we mean by ignorance? So ignorance generally in in Western terminology just means you don’t know about something.
Don’t know what’s on the other side of that wall. I’m ignorant of what’s on the other side of that wall. Here, we’re talking about something more than just not knowing. It’s also a mistaken consciousness. You have a mistake of the way things actually are.
Ignorance is reoccurring mental pattern which has the function of obscuring reality, the way things actually are. We can talk about this on various levels. On one level, we talk about ignorance with respect to the nature of the self, of the person, you know, who we are, what is our actual nature. Generally, you know, we have this factor of ignorance. It’s not rational.
It’s not a logical consciousness. It’s not a reasoning consciousness. Purely emotional. Not only is it an emotional consciousness, but it’s a mistaken emotional consciousness. It has the feeling quality with respect to the self.
That is the person of an independent, partless, permanent self. You when you become angry, when you become angry at a very extreme emotional situation, this this ignorance is is manifesting very strongly. When you say I can’t stand you. Get out of my life. I can’t.
I can’t. Now when you say I I I, this word I, it refers to something. All words have an object. We’re always referring to something. So when extreme emotional state, when you say I can’t stand you, this I is referring to something.
Now there is an I, there is a person. There’s no, know, I’m talking to you, you’re listening to me, right? There’s no question about that. But in these extreme emotional situations where ignorance is grossly manifested, there’s a feeling of an I which is permanent, partless, independent, and existing as if we could point to something. When you say I can’t stand you, if you were to minutely investigate at that very moment, would realize that that ignorance is grasping at a type of self which you could almost point to somewhere between your throat and your top of your stomach.
Somewhere in here there’s a feeling that there’s something there, a fixed identity, a self image which is unchanging, which is independent of the situation, independent of your culture, independent of all various conditions. That this is there, it’s always been there. You know, it’s not thinking, this is the emotional quality, the feeling quality. In order, if something enhances this self image, this identity, this fixed identity of who we are, if it enhances it, we reach out with this generate desire, we reach out with attachment. We want to bring this object into this sense of self.
If somehow we feel that our eye is threatened in any way, we become defensive, we become hostile. We react with hatred, anger, and we’re to protect them. But actually there’s nothing to protect. This particular type of eye does not exist at all. This is the object, this is the function of ignorance.
It’s creating type of self. It’s a hallucination. Based upon this hallucination, we engage in various negative actions, desire, hatred, etcetera. So, you know, we’re talking about what is the quality of enlightenment. The first quality, it eliminates all the fault.
Basically, we have to remove the fault of this ignorance, which is misconception of the nature of the self. That’s the fault. The qualities are We can talk about things like skill and means, having the various abilities to help others. It’s not enough just to sincerely want to help others. One must have some actual abilities.
One must know the nature of how your mind is operating in order to help others operate their minds more successfully, how to deal with their life more skillfully. So, when you talk about skill and means, the positive qualities, enlightenment signifies enlightenment. Skill and means fearlessness and willing to be worked with, is compassion, to be able to go out of your own selfishness and self-cherishing, actually work for the benefit of others. And by equanimity, not helping some who will help you, some people will help you, some people will harm you, I’m not going to help you because you’re not helping me in any way, way. You’re actually hurting me, but I’ll help you because he’s my friend.
Complete sense of equanimity and willing to work for any sentient being no matter how they may treat you. So there’s these qualities, these positive qualities. When these have reached their their maximum potential, then we call this enlightenment. So, it’s a quality of enlightenment. It’s made up of elimination of all faults and the cultivation of all positive qualities.
This is a constant sense of enlightenment. How would one go about obtaining it? Or I’ve got here in this I was reading this book, and it said something about the noble truth and the noble part plays a part in obtaining some sort of experience or release of self or something. How would you explain that and what role does the heart play? First turning of the wheel of Dharma or the first teaching was a teaching on the Four Noble Truths.
So he began with the First Noble Truth, which is called True Sufferings. You know, people can argue about whether God exists or whether the nature of the self, whether the ātman exists, whether the soul exists, but no one can argue about the fact of suffering as our own immediate experience. It began within the context of the individual’s own immediate experience, that is, that most immediate experiences of his suffering. If you just want to say things aren’t quite, things are a little bit dissatisfactory, it could be better. Was a so his first noble truth consisted in the fact of recognizing suffering as suffering.
True sufferings, that is the first noble truth, are to be recognized. Generally what we call happiness is in fact, in its nature, suffering. And this is the reason things are dissatisfactory. It’s like a child who keeps putting his hand in the fire because he expects pleasure, but in fact its nature is that it’s painful. And he keeps hurting himself again and again until he finally learns that he’s mistaken with the nature fire, that it’s not a pleasurable sensation to put your hand on fire.
It’s actually painful. So, we have to first recognize the nature of suffering and try to understand its evolution, its causes. You know, we have a feeling that if we can manipulate the various things around us, all the goods and possessions, if we can manipulate the people, put them, have them arrange them in order, however, in an abstract pattern that we may come up with, that’s not how we’re going to be to achieve eternal happiness. Well, this is an impact we can never do. Happiness is these various objects, the various people around us are in themselves neither pleasurable or painful.
They’re more or less neutral. It’s our attitude towards them, isn’t it? You know, love. Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder, something like that. That the pleasure that we are looking for isn’t inherent in these objects.
It’s not inherent in that new car that you just bought. It’s not inherent in your lover. That these things act as conditions of course, to develop certain states of mind, bring us pleasure. It’s these states of mind. So it’s due to our attitudes whether things bring us happiness or pleasure.
And the same person can one minute bring you a great deal of happiness and one minute later bring you a great deal of suffering. And that person hasn’t changed your attitude towards this person. So this is we have to begin to recognize, reorientate thinking from thinking from the habitual notion that happiness lies outside of our own mind to where, in fact, if we begin to work with our own mind, change our attitude, then we can find happiness that we’re looking for regardless of whatever our external situations are. We have to have It’s good to have friends and possessions just have reasonable standards of living. It makes life comfortable.
But even then we have to have But the main source of our happiness is going to be how we relate with these objects around us. Whether we relate with them skillfully or unskillfully. No matter how much money or how many people we have around us, if we live with these things unskillfully, we’re still going to suffer. We can have no money, we can be alone, but be very happy if we’ve developed specific attitudes, skillful states of mind. Also, if we when we try to cling onto the various objects and people, you know, as if these relationships were permanent, as if these objects were permanent, if we relate with them in that way, we’re going to suffer because they’re actually impermanent.
The relationships are impermanent. At the most, one of us is going to die. But even before that, you know, your friend can become an enemy. Your enemy can become a friend within a matter of a few weeks or even a day. So if you cling onto these ways of relating, as permanent, you’re going to suffer.
So we have to begin to loosen up our mind to the fact that things are constantly changing and not clinging to trying to hold onto things as if they were always going to bring us the same happiness that they did in the past. If we let go of this feeling of permanence and trying to hold on to things, then we can become more fluid and spontaneous and enjoy being more open to this actual changing, which is the nature of reality, which are way things actually are. And also the fact that we have an idea of the self, that there’s some inherent quality of bliss, for example happiness and pleasure in these objects, and that if we can only grab hold of that inherent quality, that substantial quality in these objects, then we can hold onto the bliss of pleasure forever. And this is all again mistaken again. It comes back to that understanding that there’s no inherent qualities in anything.
It’s all a matter of our attitudes toward these objects. Therefore coming to an understanding of the nature of suffering. What is the nature of dissatisfaction? It’s just because we hold on to we have a feeling that we can manipulate things and people, and we can find happiness that we can hold on to. Our various past happinesses, maintain all these fixed relationships permanently, we’re going to find happiness.
And we that these things are inherently pleasurable, that certain objects by their very nature are pleasurable. If we hold on to that notion, we’re going to continue to suffer because these are all counter to the way things actually are, then this is not the way reality exists. So we have to recognize the qualities, how our suffering arises. Basically, suffering arises. That leads us to question the second noble truth, that is the true sources.
What are the We have suffering. We investigate the nature of the suffering, its qualities. How does suffering arise? It arises from true sources. True sources have two types.
There’s karmic sources and sources with the are the afflictive emotions. So karmic sources, karma just means it’s a Sanskrit term. It just means action, work. So there are certain types of actions. In external reality, we rely on the law of cause and effect all the time, constantly.
When you turn your key in the car, you expect your motor to turn over. And it’s a long process, actually. You close the electrical system, and then it starts and the starter turns over, and the flywheel turns over, and the sparking system is going up and down, and spark plugs fire. It’s all a series of laws of cause and effect, one relying upon the other. We this, we make use of this in our everyday life.
We rely upon this, the infallibility of relationship between causes and effect. Likewise, actions have an effect. They have ethical quality about them. Certain types of actions have an effect on their actions. So, we have to become skillful in what type of actions we create because we don’t want to suffer, we want to be happy.
So, if we start avoiding negative actions, then we can begin to avoid suffering. If we begin to purposely create positive actions, we find the happiness that we want. Generally, the cause of the emotions is basically ignorance. We involve ourselves in negative actions. That is the cause of ignorance.
We said there was two two types of of true sources. karma, karmic sources, and emotions. And we talked about this a little bit before when I said the various negative states of mind such as desire, hatred, spite, miserliness, jealousy, pride, these all arise on the basis of ignorance. These are all negative states of mind. These are all producing negative karma.
They all have the effect of producing suffering. So the basis of all suffering, the basis of all the afflictive emotions of ignorance, we have to be able to eliminate ignorance if we’re ever going to eliminate suffering that is dissatisfactory patterns of mind that we habitually are caught up in, we can’t escape from. Now, so we question, is it possible to eliminate the cause of suffering through sources? So that makes us to understand the third noble truth, which is true cessation. We’ve talked about this, that is nirvana.
Is it possible to achieve a state beyond sorrow? And as we say, what is a nirvana? It’s the complete elimination or the cessation of the afflictive emotion along with the potential. So, we have to be able to question the source of all our sufferings, the source of the afflictive emotions, the source of all afflictive emotions, ignorance. Can we get rid of ignorance?
If we can get rid of ignorance, then we can get rid of all suffering. Ignorance, as we talked about before, is ignorance. There are many types of ignorance. We can just talk about the ignorance with respect to the nature itself of the person. If we can eliminate that, then we can eliminate all our suffering.
So that leads us to the fourth noble truth, the path to the cessation of suffering, the path by which we actually eliminate the causes of suffering. That is, we eliminate ignorance. There’s a method, the path. The path is something which takes you from where you are now to where you want to go. So, in this case, we want to go to happiness, or we want to bring a nirvana, whatever you want to call it, be all in peace, some healthy sanity, some mental health.
So in order to do that, we have to eliminate ignorance. So we use the paths. The paths are generally are just consciousness, types of consciousness. Most specifically most generally, we say wisdom, understanding, selflessness. This is the antidote which will eliminate ignorance, because ignorance is the misconception of the nature of the self.
If we develop the wisdom with respect to how the self actually exists, we can eliminate ignorance completely from the mind where it can never arise again. So, have to come into an understanding of the nature of ignorance, come to an understanding of how the self actually does in fact exist. Once you cultivate this to its fullest extreme, you eliminate the ignorance, you attain nirvana, and and you’ve gone beyond suffering. You’ve eliminated suffering completely. So, in the cultivating the paths, the Fourth Noble Truth, the True Path, general I said it was wisdom, understanding, selflessness.
If it’s spoken more specifically, they break it down into the Noble Eightfold Path. And these are, for example, perfect view, perfect realization, perfect speech, perfect action, perfect livelihood, perfect effort, perfect mindfulness, perfect samadhi. The Eightfold Noble Path. Are all, know, roughly speaking, we begin with the first, the Eightfold Noble Path, Perfect View, where we just learn the doctrine. We learn about selflessness, the nature of reality.
We learn about the various, la karma, all the various, this transforms our worldview, how we perceive reality intellectually. This begins to filter down through reflection, meditating, filtered down and integrated into our emotional life. Actually, we develop so from perfect view we cultivate perfect realization. That means we actually integrate this Buddhist vision of how reality is operating into our emotional life.
And so, emotional life begins to change. Our perfect speech, our way we communicate begins to change. Our actions, perfect actions, are transformed, the way we relate with the world. And so, this filters down further and further until our entire being is transformed. So, the first of the Eightfold Noble Path is the path of vision.
And the remaining seven are the path of transformation. In the first of the eightfold path, you gain a new vision of the way reality is actually structured. Perhaps you never thought of it before, but now you have an idea of the way it actually does exist, intellectually. And the seven remaining paths are the way this vision is to actually transform your very being, your behavior, your emotional life. This culminates in enlightenment.
So, there’s the Four Noble Truths. The first, true sufferings that been recognized. The second, true sources are to be abandoned. The third, true cessation are to be actualized. And the fourth, true paths are to be cultivated.
Could you explain void or the void emptiness? You like a drink, Jampa? Uh-huh. Or do you wanna So, we talk about the we talk about the word emptiness. Emptiness.
That’s the word. So, what does the word emptying mean here? What’s the word? It is. Nothing.
There’s nothing there. Nothing. It’s really hard, but it’s fine. Like a box with nothing. There’s nothing inside.
I can’t remember. Simply is. Absence of something. Mhmm. Mhmm.
It’s just not nothing. It’s the absence of something. Mhmm. Right? Mhmm.
Coming to an understanding of emptiness, we have to come to an understanding of that there is something which objects are empty of, a quality which is absent in objects. Now, what difference does it make whether we know there’s a certain quality at which objects are empty of or is absent or not? It has to make some difference. So we talked about ignorance before. It obscures reality.
It has the function of obscuring reality. So so so ignorance is mistaken the way the way things exist. And then we talk about the way things exist on on many types of levels, you know, like this pin. On the most superficial level, on a superficial level, it exists as a piece of plastic, a solid, and a certain color and shape. You can go down to a more subtle level, a little bit deeper, and you say this.
It exists it’s of course we talk about its coarse impermanency, meaning that, you know, maybe thirty or forty years, this pin won’t exist at all. It won’t just, you know, be broken up in all its pieces and maybe all the you won’t even be able to see it. You won’t be able to tell what it is in thirty or forty years. It’s coarse impermanence. Then there’s another deeper level called subtle impermanence.
It’s the that this pin is made up of atoms, which is constantly moving around, constantly changing. You know, this pin is actually coming into existence, abiding for a moment, then disintegrating constantly. And moment by moment, very subtle impermanence It’s constantly changing. It’s very subtle type. We can’t see it with an eye.
It’s very difficult to understand it, but this is what in accordance with atomic theory, that this pin isn’t really solid as it appears. It’s made up of atoms which are swirling around in space, concentrated in one particular pattern. So we call that a pin. That’s subtle impermanence. So that’s another way the pin exists.
Now there’s the most subtle way, the most deepest way that the exists. It’s called it’s emptiness. It’s emptiness of a certain way of existing. Now, what is this way of existing? Ignorance, in this mistaken consciousness, conceives of the pen to exist independently, its parts independent of cause and effect, independent of the mind.
This pen as it appears to be objectively existing, doesn’t it? Solemnly out there, right? That depends upon your mind, right? You should. Yeah?
Do you think that? No, right now we’re talking about this intellectually, aren’t we? That is that ignorance is an emotion. It’s not a reasoning concept, right? It’s not an intellectual factor of mind.
So, we can talk about it intellectually, but actually whatever decision we might make intellectually, ignorance is still going to operate emotionally in our lives. We have to begin to first we understand things intellectually and begin to recognize, have insight into the way that this is actually the way ignorance is operating in our lives. So we have a feeling that this pin exists independently, independent of my mind, that there’s a pin out there. Yeah? Oh, let’s take it easier.
Let we’ll take it easier in that way. You know, we have an enemy. You know, have you get angry at somebody, you know, your boyfriend or whatever. You look at both. And he’s your enemy.
You hate him. You draw a lot of anger toward him. And if there’s some if you were to really be aware of that, there’s something about him which exudes some kind of quality of ugliness, repulsiveness coming out of him. He has a repulsive quality about him. Something that says, Get away from me.
This is the way you feel. It’s not intellectual. It’s the way you’re feeling of your emotional life. You want to either destroy it or you want to run away from it. In some way you’re repulsed by this quality that you see in Him.
Now, this quality was actually imaginary, this repulsive quality. Then another person, I looked at this same person, would see that. But another person, How can you call him? Nice guy like that. Beautiful.
I’ve known him all my life. Finest person I’ve ever known, always friendly. How can you think you’re screwed up? Whatever. So we’re going to see that the way ignorance is operating, holding it, that there’s a certain quality which he has independent of how you view him, independent of your mind, independent of your relationship.
You have a feeling anybody who saw this person, would think, Wow, that’s repulsive. You know, that guy says, I don’t want to get near that person. We have this feeling. This is the way we react to the enemy opposite to someone we love. This is the way our emotional life is operated, not intellection, but emotion, feeling.
But we can see that characteristic of being repulsive isn’t his, it’s not a part of him. If it was part of him, anybody who saw him would have to say, Yes, I can see that quality. I can see he’s repulsive. But in fact, other people may see the exact opposite quality. So, in fact, this quality of being repulsive is being projected by the mind.
That what you’re seeing is actually the enemy being constructed here in your mind, the hallucination of your mind. He is actually empty of this inherent quality of being repulsive, being isolated, whatever this feeling that you have. This quality is not in here, in here. In here means it’s in there somewhere. It’s inherent, it’s intrinsic to him and it’s coming out from his side without anything from our own side.
It’s completely from the side of the object. Nothing coming from our own mind. We have this feeling that this is not the way he exists, this is the way ignorance is operating. If we can cut through that and say there’s no that he possesses which is not being created by mind. There’s no inherent qualities.
He’s neither a loving person from his own side objectively, nor a hateful person from his own side objectively, but in fact it’s the way my attitude toward him creates with his lovability or his hatability. So we view all objects as having inherent qualities, inherently good, inherently bad, beneficial, harmful, dependent upon our condition, dependent upon our culture, our upbringing, our education. We don’t realize that we’re actually projecting all these various qualities, all the objects. That in fact all these qualities are an empty and inherent existence. These qualities aren’t coming from the side of the object themselves.
So things are empty. There’s an absence of inherent qualities, absence of true existence. True existence simply means that ignorance holds that whatever the quality is exists objectively it doesn’t exist in dependence upon the mind. It’s completely independent of my mind that this person is an enemy. When you talk about it, it sounds unreasonable, but this is the way our emotional life operates.
We can think one thing intellectually, but then when our actual emotional life works in everyday life we can do the exact opposite of what we might believe intellectually can’t we? Because our emotional life overrules our intellect ninety five percent of the time. So though you may think intellectual I understand that he’s not really an enemy, this is my own attitude toward him, etcetera, etcetera. But when you angry at him, you completely forget this intellectual doctrine, this abstract idea, and you relate to him through the power of ignorance as if there is something ugly about him, something repulsive about him. Just get away from it.
You want to push the object away, not realizing that you’re creating this object in itself. It’s like hallucination. Objects are empty of any inherent qualities, any inherent qualities, any objective qualities, any truly existing qualities. Now, this is very difficult to see. It’s too subtle to see from the point of view of a friend and stranger, for example.
You know, the what do they say? Like, you know, the mind is in its place and in its way it can make a heaven of hell and a hell of heaven. That the mind can, Just by changing your mind with the same object towards the same person, by cultivating skillful states of mind, what was once an enemy can become a person who might care very much. That person hasn’t changed at all, but your attitude towards him. So that person is empty of being inherently an enemy, inherently repulsive, but it’s also empty of being inherently lovable, inherently beautiful.
Know, when your boyfriend or something, I mean, it feels some some beauty coming from this. It’s bright, beautiful. It’s my natural wants beautiful. It wants pleasure. So nicely wants to bring this in towards it, thinking that this quality of beauty, this quality of compatibility is in that object and then wants to bring it into ourselves and therefore attachment arises.
Thinking the reason attachment arises is because of ignorance thinking that this quality is objective in that person, independent of your attitude towards the person. I have to bring this person into myself. If you realize that this is really creating this then there’s no necessity bring it into you because you realize that your mind is creating this object. You know, it’s the only reflection of the beauty of your own mind in this object. So there’s no sense, there’s no need to bring that object into you.
So therefore attachment dissolves once it learns the nature of how ignorance is operating. So things are empty of inherent quality, inherent beauty, inherent ugliness, anything actually. But this is very subtle, this is very deep. But we can begin on the level that a friend is not inherently beautiful, an enemy is not inherently ugly, it’s our mind which is created. So you’re empty of these inherent qualities, inherent characteristics truly existent in being a friend, truly existent in being an enemy.
Little bit. Okay. If I say mysticism as being the way we can transcend mundane consciousness, the mundane consciousness being controlled by this ignorance. So by understanding emptiness, this is the way one would practice the developed transcendental wisdom, or if you like, this is the way one would the mysticism. We never use the word mysticism.
I never use the word I don’t know of any word in Tibetan. It’s a Western Christian word probably. This is the means coming to an understanding of emptiness of objects, of inherent existence, lack of objective existence. Objects do not have an objective status, they do not have an objective existence, this is the way to transcend existence as being controlled by ignorance. And that’s the way in my practice Buddhism is this, isn’t it?
There was such a thing. Mhmm.