Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. A contemporary analogy cuts through the abstraction in this 46-minute talk: Geshe Pema Tsering argues that every time we watch television — moved by on-screen events while knowing the images are not solid — we have an everyday encounter with emptiness. The session builds to this point through Śāntideva’s requirement to identify what is to be negated before grasping emptiness, the four key analytical points, and a frank examination of self-cherishing: we deflect criticism rather than examining our own faults, and the remedy, Geshe Pema Tsering argues, is bodhicitta — treating the attainment of Buddhahood as a responsibility owed to every being who has once kept us alive. The doctrinal thread closes with Nāgārjuna’s equivalence of interdependent origination and emptiness, and the chair as an illustration of dependent labeling.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 13 TT 2004 10 26.mp3
UUID: 0f0e5218-3682-491d-9994-12daf8a66adf
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: DB Thought Transformation (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2004-10-26
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.9 minutes
Words: ~4,982
In a guide to the way of life, or text, or the entry to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life, Śāntideva said, You can’t establish the emptiness of something until you establish what you’re saying is empty off. So what this is referring to is if we want to understand emptiness, if we want to understand Śūnyatā, then we need to figure out what it is that we’re trying to negate, what it is that we’re saying isn’t there, what it is that we’re saying reality is empty of. So this means that we need to establish what we mean by something being inherently or truly self sufficiently existent in order for us to be able to negate that and say that the reality is empty of such things. So in order for us to understand it or develop an idea of it, we’ve already gone through what are called the four key points to be determined. And these four key points to be determined follow on from this quote from Śāntideva’s work.
First of the key points that we need to understand in order to understand emptiness is what it is to be refuted. And this is what Śāntideva was saying: If you don’t say what it is that you’re going to say reality is empty of, then you can’t understand emptiness. And the other three points are the what are the full set of possibilities, which ways things can exist, is number two. How the self and the aggregates can be truly the same and how the self and the aggregates can be truly different, they’re all ways of negating this thing that we posited as being the self to be refuted. So if we develop understanding of this self to be negated, and if we develop the wisdom that realizes the lack of this self, then we’re able to completely rid ourselves of suffering and achieve nirvana, achieve liberation.
We’re able to achieve liberation and not experience suffering, but we’re not able to achieve Buddhahood. In order for us to achieve Buddhahood, we need not only the development of wisdom, but we also need the development of our bodhicitta. We need to develop compassion towards others. Now the reason that we need bodhicitta is no. What we need bodhicitta for is to get rid of our self-cherishing.
If we continue to cherish ourselves above others, then we can’t attain Buddhahood. So in order to help get rid of our self-cherishing, we need to develop the mind of bodhicitta. So a combination of developing wisdom that perceives emptiness and developing bodhicitta, which destroys self-cherishing, are the two things that we need to attain Buddhahood. So this self-cherishing, this idea of ourselves as being very important is something that’s very pervasive that we find in the way that we in most of the things that we think about. It’s this it’s defined as or it has its nature as being not being able to give up ourselves or give up our bodies for others.
It’s a it’s this an an instinctual way that we protect ourselves and consider ourselves to be the most important things. So it’s very difficult for us to turn away from this way of thinking. It’s something that we experience, and we have habituated ourselves we experience continually, and we have habituated ourselves towards. So this self-cherishing mind that we have is really bad. It’s really destructive, and it’s really bad.
And it it harms us. And so this self-cherishing mind is is so funny because it it really it tricks us. We spend most of our time thinking how good we are, and and we don’t think about any of our faults. It’s not like we don’t have faults. We just don’t tend to think about our faults.
We just think about how good we are. And there isn’t anyone that we can find that doesn’t like themselves. Can constantly like ourselves, and you can’t say to somebody Everybody wants to look after themselves, and we’re always thinking of ourselves. Ourselves. It’s much more difficult to find people that actually feel that way about others.
So this we have this self directed mind, we’re constantly we’re constantly thinking about how good we are. And if someone actually comes up to us and says, well, actually, you have this fault or you have that fault, then we’re like, look. Listen to them. You know? They’re saying my faults.
What about their faults? And then and we and we can think of all the different things wrong with those people as opposed to actually listening to what they’re saying and trying to see if we have those faults ourselves. So sometimes we think, oh, where do they get off? They’ve got more faults than me. And sometimes we actually say it.
Sometimes we say, wait a minute. You know? And so but we never kind of look at our faults. We are we’re always thinking about how good we are. The way of thinking that we need to develop in order to become Buddhas, in order to develop bodhicitta and work towards Buddhahood, is to switch that around, to instead of thinking of ourselves, instead of cherishing ourselves, instead of focusing on us, to start focusing on others, to cherish others, to think about what’s going to benefit others.
This is very difficult for us to even contemplate. It’s a very difficult thing for us to turn our mind around. So cherishing others as opposed to cherishing ourselves is wanting others to be happy. And bodhicitta even goes one more step than that. It’s not just this idea of cherishing others, wanting others to be happy, but it’s saying, I’m going to achieve Buddhahood in order to bring that about.
So it’s taking it’s not just cherishing others. It’s cherishing others and acting on that by trying to make ourselves the best to be best able to help others. So it’s very difficult for us to start thinking this way. It’s very difficult for us to completely turn the way we think around and be focusing on others instead of focusing on ourselves. It’s difficult, but it’s not impossible, and it’s not something that we can’t achieve.
It’s something that we just have to work hard at in order to be able to achieve it. But we certainly can achieve it, and there are certainly many, many large numbers of beings who have done it before us, who have who have developed bodhicitta, who have become Buddhas, who are constantly working in the best capacity to benefit other beings. So certainly, we know it from the beings who have been able to achieve it before us, and we can also experience it ourselves. We may not instantly develop or cheat it, but if we watch the way our minds work and we constantly try to focus more on others, we try to think more of others, then we’ll notice that our mind improves. We’ll notice that we come closer and closer development of closer and closer to bodhicitta, which is where we’ve totally turned our minds around.
We’ll notice that our minds slowly turn more and more towards others and focus less and less on ourselves. And it doesn’t mean that we necessarily have to change what do or change our behavior. We just have to change the way we think. So everything that we do at the moment tends to be about ourselves. We think, I’m hungry, I need clothes, I need food, I need work, I need all of these things, and we tend to focus constantly on ourselves.
But we can still do the same things and just change our attitude, and it turns those very same actions into causes for developing Buddhahood. So we still need to look after ourselves. We still need to feed ourselves. We still need to earn a living. We still need to do these things.
But if we’re thinking, I’m looking after myself so that I can be a useful being to help other beings. I’m looking after myself so I can practice Dharma. I’m getting money so I can help people doing this job and earning this money. So if we change the way we think about it, then everything we do becomes a cause for us to achieve Buddhahood, becomes a reason for us to help others. We’re still doing the same things, but the reasons that we’re doing it are different.
So it’s our it’s our responsibility. It’s our it’s what we need to do is to work in this way, to work towards attaining Buddhahood so we can be the most we can be as as of much benefit to beings as is possible. And so, for example, if someone was going to become the prime minister of Australia, then after they’ve I haven’t even said anything yet. After they’ve become the prime minister of Australia, then it’s their responsibility to work as hard as So I was just explaining why you’re all snorting. It’s the responsibility of that person to work as hard and as long and as effectively as possible to benefit all Australia.
It’s their responsibility. In terms of the jobs that they have, that’s the responsibility of that job, is to work as hard and as as long and as as much as it takes in order to benefit Australia. Because it doesn’t even have to be John Howard. It’s just like anyone who has a job where they’re supposed to be looking after the country, that’s their responsibility. Okay.
The point is that that it is the responsibility of that person who has taken on that role to to work for these people. The same way that, say, parent will take on the responsibility of looking after their child, and that child’s welfare is their responsibility. To make sure that they’re fed and clothed and looked after. So in the same way that looking after a child or looking after a country is someone’s responsibility, and then actually achieving enlightenment is our responsibility. Because at some stage in the past, every single sentient being has shown that kindness to us of being our parents, of looking after us, of making sure that we didn’t die, of making sure that we didn’t suffer.
So we owe them for their kindness. So it’s our responsibility in the same way that it’s a parent’s responsibility to look after their children. It’s the prime minister’s responsibility to look after their country. It’s our responsibility to attain enlightenment so we can actually be of the most benefit to all sentient beings. So this this this responsibility is something that we should try and take seriously.
This responsibility is something that we we should try and remember. And in fact, this responsibility is the basis of our mind training, the basis of training the mind in working towards enlightenment. If we’re constantly thinking about this responsibility that we have to all these beings, then in everything that we do, we’re training our mind to think of what it is that we’re doing as being a way to benefit beings, as opposed to being a way to benefit ourselves. Most of the time, the way that our mind instinctually works is to think of self, is to think of how will this benefit me, what will I get out of this, and what do I need from this situation, and what do I need from these objects? Now the way to train the mind is to constantly remind ourselves that what we’re doing should be of benefiting other beings.
It should be benefiting toward focusing on others. And in this way, if we remind ourselves that, we train our minds to become more other focused, less self focused, more other focused. And this is the way that we work towards developing So if we really want other beings to be happy, if we really want other beings to be free from suffering, if we really want other beings to be able to reach the state where they don’t experience suffering and all they experience is true happiness, that doesn’t change into suffering, if we really want them to be able to experience that, then the only way we can bring this about is as Buddhists. The only way that we can lead them to that state is as Buddhas. So this means that we really need to become Buddhas ourselves.
We really need to develop that wisdom and that compassion in order to work for sentient beings in that way. So because this is really the only way that we can take on that responsibility, that we can really work for others, then we really need to put all our efforts and all of our positive actions, and we need to dedicate them towards becoming Buddhas. So please think about anything that I do this evening, and may that be a cause for us to become for myself to become a Buddha so I can benefit beings in this way. Can take on that responsibility. And please meditate on that thought for a couple of minutes.
Okay. So when we’re talking about developing a wisdom perceiving emptiness, there’s two aspects to this wisdom perceiving emptiness. There’s what’s called meditative concentration perceiving emptiness, and then there’s what’s called post meditative concentration perceiving emptiness. Now, what we’ve been talking about in the previous few weeks is what’s called space like awareness, perceiving emptiness. It’s a meditative concentration.
Basically, the process we’ve gone through in the last three weeks is that we establish this sense that we have of a self that is a solid entity, that is a feeling we experience of a self that is something that continues and doesn’t depend on causes and conditions as an independent object. We establish that we have that feeling. And then, through a process of logic whereby saying with that that thing, if it exists, has to be either plural or singular, and then we can use that logic to establish that that doesn’t actually exist. Alright? And then once we have established through logic that the self that we we we identify with, the self that we experience in terms of our feeling, it doesn’t actually exist, then focusing on the lack of that self, when we realize when we focus on the emptiness of that self, is what’s called meditation perceiving emptiness.
The mere lack of that self is a meditation perceiving emptiness. Alright? So that’s the meditative aspect of situation. Then when we come out of meditative equipoise perceiving the lack of that self, the way we relate to the world is what’s called the post meditation state. So when we’re doing it says a meditative absorption, Another way that this is sometimes translated as as meditative equipoise.
Alright? Probably lucky in English because it’s always got this meditative bit in front of it. In Tibetan, there’s no meditative bits. I guess, we just pointed out that absorption concentration equipoise are actually other ways of saying meditation right so being focused pointedly without distraction on an object familiarizing ourselves with an object now so this is the the type of meditation we do we’re focused on the lack of something in meditative equipoise when people develop their perception of emptiness then when they come out of that state when they cease to be in equipoise or when they cease to be in meditation on the lack of that self, in the post meditative state, all that they can perceive of the self is what’s called a name, is the the sense of I as being just a name, just a a label or an an idea that’s a that is a is is is tagged onto a collection of So what we need to understand about this idea or this label or this convention that we have of self is that it doesn’t truly exist the way that it usually perceives we usually perceive it as truly exist existing.
So if people haven’t developed a realization of the lack of the inherent existence of this object, then it will appear to them as existing as a solid independent entity. If, however, someone has developed a perception of the lack of this independent, solid, truly existing entity, then when they come out of meditation, it won’t appear to them as existing in that way again. In fact, the way that it will appear to them as existing is a term what’s called terminologically applied label. So an idea or a word that we use to describe something is probably better than a label perhaps a word that we use to describe something. So this word or this idea that we have of self, we have to remember that it is on the basis of this idea of self or this label of self or this word self that we accumulate positive and negative karma.
Alright. This self is a is a term. It’s an idea, but it is still able to accumulate positive and negative karma. And just as it’s able to accumulate positive and negative karma, positive the results of positive and negative karma have the ability to ripen on that merely labeled self. So the way they describe positive and negative karma is black or white and negative karma.
So the black or heavy deeds can result in as in experience of heavy or negative experiences like suffering, and the white or the lighter positive deeds result in the experience of positive result, which is happiness. Okay. So the an example of the way that things will appear to someone who has this perception is that they will appear in the same way phenomenon will appear to a being who perceives emptiness in the same way as a conjurer’s illusion. If a conjurer conjures up a horse and an elephant, right, then the horse and the elephant will still be perceived by them. Right? They have created the illusion of a horse and an elephant.
And it doesn’t mean that they won’t see a horse and an elephant, but they’ll know that they created that illusion. So they won’t interact with that horse and that elephant as if they were inherently existent, truly substantial things. They will still be able to see them, but they won’t see them as being independently existent. They will know that they conjured them. So in the same way that a conjurer’s trick would appear to a conjurer, then the reality will appear to someone who has perceived emptiness directly.
That is, they know that all the phenomena that they encounter, all of the phenomena that they experience, are nothing more than ideas that they have created in order to the the ideas that they have labeled things. And as they are nothing more than an idea or a name that they have given to something, they won’t interact with that as if it is an inherently existent thing. They will appear to them as being as as if it was an illusion, as if it was a conjurer’s trick. They won’t appear to them as being solidly inherently existent. But in the same way that they won’t appear to them as being inherently existent, they will still appear.
Things still will exist. They will still experience things. They will know that karma is still created, that happiness is still experienced, that the suffering is still experiences, positive karma leads to happiness and so forth. But they will not see any of these things as being inherently existent. They’ll see them as being labels that are given to illusory like phenomena.
And they will also know that the emptiness is not other than the appearance of things, and that the appearance of things is not other than the emptiness of them. Guess the things that then use the example of illusions in the illusions in the conjurer’s tricks because no one had invented the television yet. Right? And he’s like, you know, really, if the if the television had been around back then, they wouldn’t have been talking about conjurer’s tricks and everything like that because it’s a much better example. He’s like, we’re so lucky because we have televisions, we can understand emptiness much better.
Because he’s like, we have a we have a daily interaction with a with an experience of emptiness. Yeah? Every time we turn the television on, we have something that’s there, but not really there. Alright? We we see something that that appears to us as being solid, but we know it’s not solid at the same time.
So we have this daily interaction with emptiness. And he said that if we’re watching television and something happy happens on the television, we’re happy. Or if there’s something sad happens on television, we’re sad. If we see someone getting killed, we get upset. If we see someone being praised, we feel happy for them.
So we have this interaction with something, and we know it’s not real. We still interact with it, we still experience it, we still see it, and we know it’s we still we know it’s not real. So he’s like, it’s so good. It’s so good that we have television that we can see we can understand emptiness from this point of view. So he’s like, yeah, television is so good because every time we turn the television on, we understand that that’s an illusion.
And we have this experience of it. It’s it’s it appears, and it’s a and we interact with it, but we know it’s an illusion. So every time we turn the television on, we can develop an understanding of emptiness. So we have all of these experiences in our daily life. We experience happiness.
We experience sorrow. We experience there’s some something good happening to us. We experience loss. All of these things happen to us. Sometimes we’re we’re up.
Sometimes we’re down. We have all of these experiences that that we have. But and it’s not like we don’t have them because we do. But if we go looking for them, we can’t find them. We can’t there’s no essence to them.
There’s no there’s no substantialness to them. I’m not sure that’s a word, but substantial there’s nothing there there that we can find in them. This is the same as a television or or or an illusion. We look at these things, and we can experience them. We can see it.
Sometimes they make us happy. Sometimes they make us sad. All of these things happen within that framework, but we know it’s not real. Yeah. And in the same way that when we’re watching a television, images that we see in the television come about because of different frequencies and different causes and conditions bring about different images and different experiences or different things in the television.
And then that’s the same thing that happens to us in our day to day lives because as ordinary beings, we have created a lot of negative situations, everything that we experience negative karma. Everything that we experience is actually a result of karma and delusion. So sometimes our karma has been positive, sometimes it’s been negative, sometimes our delusions are one thing and sometimes they’re another thing. So in dependence on the combinations of this karma and delusion, we experience all sorts of different things. This is the same with the television.
in dependence on the frequencies, in dependence on all of the electricity or whatever is happening in the television, different images appear. So, actually, developing an understanding of the illusory illusory like nature of phenomena is very difficult for us, especially at the beginning. Now the reason that it’s difficult for us at the beginning is because since beginningless time, since forever, we have been habituating ourselves with the perception that things inherently exist. So, us to turn around that habit is a very difficult thing. What actually usually happens when we start trying to turn around this habit is that we fall from one extreme into another.
We go from the idea that things inherently exist and are all solid and steady, and then when we start using logic, fall into the way of thinking, Well, nothing exists. Using this logic, we fall into the other extreme. So to develop the middle way view between these two things that things exist but don’t exist inherently is a very difficult balancing act for us to develop, especially as beginners. But as we train our mind in developing this understanding, as we habituate ourselves with this understanding, then that wisdom becomes more clear and more solid, and our habituation towards inherent existence and and and the nihilism becomes less strong. So what we need to do is to find develop an understanding that things neither don’t exist at all or that they and that they don’t exist inherently inherently or truly.
So a balance between these two things. And once we start developing that understanding, then actually going back to where we perceive things as inherently existent not based on causes and conditions, not coming into being through labeling and so on, is difficult. So this is, as Nāgārjuna said, and this is why we’re laughing because there’s a very difficult quote in Tibetan. I guess they go, did you understand it? I’m like, yes.
Because I have it here in English. And and I sound like I’m really smart, but I’m not. I’m just reading it because it was, yeah, very difficult in Tibetan. Anyway, Nāgārjuna said, all functioning things are empty by nature, but the blessed Tathāgata, that’s the Buddha, taught the interdependent origination of functional things. Now what this is talking about is that all objects are said to be interdependently originated.
That is, they depend on everything else in order for them to exist. And by understanding interdependent origination, you understand emptiness. And by understanding emptiness, you understand interdependent origination. They’re the same thing. Understanding that things come into being based on causes, conditions, and labels is understanding interdependent origination.
Understanding that is understanding the emptiness of their inherent existence. So the two things are actually different ways of looking at the same thing, except they are not. Now the Tibetan word for this phrase that is translated usually as interdependent origination is literally this it says is a base. Means to come from or originate from. So it means that everything depends on something else.
So that’s why they say interdependent, but it’s kind of dependent. So something depends on something else. Now the something else that they depend on is causes and conditions. Causes and conditions. They need a whole array of causes and conditions in order for something to exist.
Right? Now when we say emptiness, what we’re talking about is the emptiness of something’s ability to exist by itself. When we talk about dependent originate interdependent or dependent origination, we’re saying that things depend on causes and conditions to come into being. Emptiness is saying that things are empty of this inherent independent existence. So this independent existence that makes them able to exist to exist permanently and to exist by their own capacity.
Now this way of things existing permanently and by their own capacity is the way that they appear to ordinary beings as existing. The way that instinctually we relate to objects and to people is as if they are independent, permanent things. Alright? So when we say emptiness, we’re saying the lack of that independent, truly existent ness. Right?
So in actual fact, saying something is interdependent and and not independent is the same thing. Alright? So saying something is dependent is a is a dependent is an instance of dependent origination or if something is interdependently originated, right, is the same thing as saying it’s empty. It’s the same reasoning. So if something is if we say emptiness why is why are things empty?
Because of interdependent origination. Why are things interdependently originated? Because of emptiness. They’re they’re two sides of the same thing, and they prove each other. Yes.
It’s a similar thing because what we’re dealing with is when we say chair, we’re labeling something a chair. It’s not as if the chair announces itself as being chair. If we have a label that we’ve given to something and we’re saying that that’s chair, and the only part of that label that is actually chair is the label chair. Right? So if we go looking for the chairness of chair, we can’t find it.
We can’t find it in the molecules of wood that it’s made up of. We can’t find it in the in its legs in its different parts. We can’t find any bit of that chair that makes it inherently a chair. But we call it a chair because it functions as a chair and we see it that way. So whether it’s made of wood, it’s made of plastic, whether it’s made of brass, there’s nothing inherent in the substance that makes it a chair.
The reason it becomes a chair is because we label it chair we interact with it as being a chair so we need two things in this case not only do we just need a label for chair but we need something to be labeled chair so we need to have a combination of causes and conditions that has come together for us to label that thing chair for it to be what’s called a valid cognition, as opposed to a complete hallucination. So there has to be something that exists there for us to call it chair, but it doesn’t exist as an independent chair y thing. Yeah. Yeah. That’s