Audio recorded at Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 12.7-minute teaching, Khensur Rinpoche uses a friendship example to unlock understanding of emptiness. He reflects on why we like a friend—their good qualities, kind actions, the ways they’ve helped us—to show how this relationship arises dependently through multiple causes and conditions rather than existing as something fixed and independent. He extends this reasoning to all phenomena: nothing exists independently of its causes, conditions, parts, and labels. He then applies this directly to the self. The self appears to us as existing independently and inherently real, yet tracing its dependence on causes, conditions, parts, and concepts reveals it lacks independent existence. The insight—proved through dependent arising logic—is the gateway to realizing emptiness. For practitioners already engaged in emptiness study.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 1992-08-16 – Side 2 – Meditation – KR.MP3
UUID: 2a152807-63d6-445f-ad3d-be028ba1bbd4
Teacher: Kyabje Rinpoche
Collection: Emptiness
Date: 1992-08-16
Recorded at: Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide
Words: ~573
If we have a friend, someone we like very much, we see this friend possessing many really wonderful qualities. And if we were to begin to try to understand why we had so much liking, why this person is such a good friend, we can begin to list various reasons why this person is such a good person. The way they talk to us and the way they treat us, the various ways they’ve helped us, the way they’ve related to us. We can go through all kinds of qualities about this person and the way they’ve related and the way they’ve acted toward us to establish why we have such a great feeling for them. Likewise, it’s seen how this quality of how we see this person has arisen in dependence upon various reasonings, various ways of relating, various ways of acting, and all of these qualities there arises this relationship between you.
And coming to understand that all phenomena whatsoever are established in a dependent fashion, just like this relationship with this person. By understanding this presentation that likewise all phenomena whatsoever arise in dependence upon various parts, upon causes and conditions, and are labeled by terms such that there is nothing which exists independent of all of these factors, then we can come to a very strong ascertainment that nothing exists independently of these factors. And without this ascertainment, there’s no way that we can come to an understanding of emptiness. So we’re going to meditate five minutes on emptiness. We’re going to meditate on the I, that is there, our individual I or the individual self.
Now the way the I appears to us, the way the self appears to us, that it does not depend upon anything other than itself. It doesn’t exist in dependence upon anything other than itself. It exists independently. And so, but we have to use our various reasons as we’ve been applying to these simple cases where we begin to see that everything arises in dependence upon causes and conditions, upon their parts, upon terms and concepts. In order to realize emptiness, we have to realize that everything is dependently related, that it exists relative to something else.
It does not exist unrelated or independently or without relying on something other than itself. If we cannot see this dependently related nature of the I or the self, then we’re never going to be able to understand its emptiness. So we’re taking the I as the basis for our coming to an understanding of emptiness. We are seeking to understand that it does not naturally exist, that it does not inherently exist. It does not independently exist.
Why? We make use of the reason in order to establish this, in order to prove this, that it exists in dependence upon, its existence relies upon various causes and conditions. It relies upon parts. It relies upon terms and concepts. We establish that it does not inherently exist because it is dependently existent.
This is this is the most difficult part coming to this understanding. So we should contemplate as follows, that taking as the subject the I or the self, it does not inherently exist. It does not independently exist. Why? Because it is a dependent arising.
Relies upon, its existence relies upon causes and conditions, in dependence upon parts, in dependence upon terms and concepts. The prayer on page 10. Verses eight and nine.