Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Geshe Pema Tsering opens this 28-minute Heart Sūtra commentary with a magician’s illusion: a wooden horse conjured from sticks and rope, witnessed differently by a convinced early audience, the knowing illusionist, and a late-comer who missed the spell. These three map onto ordinary beings who grasp at inherent existence, practitioners who perceive it but don’t hold it, and ārya beings in direct meditative equipoise with emptiness. He then unpacks “form is empty, emptiness is form” as the middle way between inherent existence and total nonexistence, using the image of walking a path without veering into brambles on one side or a muddy ditch on the other. A Q&A closes the session, working through the distinction between nominal and nonexistent with examples including a dream house, milk becoming yogurt, and whether bodhicitta in a practitioner is itself merely imputed.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 05 2001 11 29 HS.mp3
UUID: 97b585ac-1715-4db8-856d-62d366c28278
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: Heart Sūtra (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2001-11-29
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 27.8 minutes
Words: ~1,968
So when we think of this example by the the illusionist who has assembled something in the front of the audience, like a a wooden horse or something like that. Then, firstly, there are three modes of appearance that arise in within that example. Firstly, then we have the audience itself. Now the audience are those who have been there from the beginning of the show, and they become convinced that what they’re seeing, in front of in front of them is an actual, horse or an ox. Then the second mode of appearance here, is the mode of appearance that arises for the illusionist himself.
So the illusionist is there from the beginning, and he knows that he’s created this object and he’s placed out in front of the audience, and it’s just made up of sticks and stones and and a bit of glue and rope and so forth. However, due to the effect of the illusion, he does have the appearance of that wooden horse to be an actual horse, but it doesn’t hold to the appearance as that. Now the third mode of appearance in that illustration is the a member of the audience who arrives late. That is they arrive after the mantra has been recited by the illusionist. And even though that mantra has created that appearance even for the illusionist himself, a being who comes later after the mantra has been recited then doesn’t have any appearance of that object that’s in front of the audience as being a horse.
And he also doesn’t hold it to be a to be a horse and so forth. So there are three different ways here of relating to that appearance. No. Then what these three types of person illustrate, these three modes of appearance for the three types of person is firstly, for the audience who have been there from the beginning, they’re like ordinary beings who for whom true existence or inherent existence appears, and they also hold things to actually exist in that way. So, in fact, the the audience the early audience, just as they hold the the illusory horse to be a horse, it appears that way too, and they hold it just in that way.
So too ordinary beings hold things to exist in the way they appear. Things appear to be truly existent or inherently existent, and they absolutely hold it very tightly or objects very closely to be inherently established. And it’s very difficult to change, that mode of holding objects. So here, the there, those ordinary beings are like that early audience who are become convinced that there is an actual horse there because there appears to be a horse there. So then the second mode of appearance or the second type of person, is like the illusionist.
And for the illusionist, even though the wooden horse appears to be a horse due to the power of the mantra, he doesn’t he knows that it’s not a horse, so he doesn’t hold it to be a horse. They’re like a being who’s on the, say, the path of preparation, who comprehends emptiness conceptually. So for them, they have the appearance of inherent existence, but they don’t hold to it. Then the third type of person here is the late comer. And they’re the third they have the third mode of appearance.
So that is for them, they don’t hold the object in front of them to be a horse, and it doesn’t appear to be a horse to them either. So they’re like an ārya being because an ārya being does not have in equipoise the appearance of true existence and more do they hold to true existence. So they’re like an ārya. So that the ārya, therefore, is illustrated — the fact that the ārya is illustrated by the late comer in the audience who does not hear the mantra and therefore does not have appearance of there being a horse in front of the audience and does not hold that object to be an actual horse. So we’re a bit like the first person in all of this, like the early comer in the audience who tends to hold things as they appear to exist.
So in fact, here, when it stated that there is no later, it said that there is no form or feeling and so forth. So this in fact, is what occurs in relation to the third type of person. For them, there is no form and so forth that appears to their equipoise awareness focused or comprehending emptiness directly. So here it’s stated empty, and, therefore, empty here is to be applied to inherently empty, empty from its own side, and empty by its characteristics. So these three are terms that can be used interchangeably.
So then as it states in the sūtra after that, similarly, feeling, discrimination, composition, and consciousness are empty. So just in the way that form is empty and emptiness is form, emptiness is not other than form, and form is not other than emptiness. Similarly, apply the other aggregates such as feeling, discrimination, etcetera, and understand the other aggregates in just that way as well. So in fact, here the five aggregates are stated in the text here from form, feeling, discrimination, composition, and consciousness. So initially, form aggregate is form, and it’s a little bit like the vessel or the basis.
And the following four aggregates are all by nature awareness itself. And they’re like the what’s contained within the vessel of say the form aggregate. And so, therefore, they have this relationship of being like the vessel and the or the vessel of the support and that which is contained by that vessel of support. So here also, when it’s expressed that form is empty and emptiness is form and so forth, these are stated in order to overcome the extremes, of nonexistence or annihilation and, permanence and so forth. So the mode of So in fact, here expressing the the nature of entities in the way that is stated here, for instance, form is empty, emptiness is form, emptiness is not other than form, also form is not other than emptiness, is to direct one to follow a path that leads between the extremes of annihilation and permanence.
It is a little bit like when one travels on a path. One needs to keep to the middle of the path, and so one avoids falling off the edge of the path either to if one too too much veers to one side, one could veer off and fall into the brambles and so forth on one side of the path or one could fall off into the other into a muddy ditch and so forth. So one in fact needs to retain the center, the central ground, the middle way in order to do this. Then therefore, the advice is given in sūtra. Form is empty, but then emptiness is form.
Emptiness is not other than form. Form is not other than emptiness. So here, one is seeking to establish the middle way between the extremes, firstly of inherent existence, the extreme of being inherently established and extreme of being not even conventionally existent or nominally existent. So therefore, as in abiding in a or traveling down a path where one avoids going too close to the edge of the path and therefore falling off. Here, by stating form is empty and emptiness is form, one is establishing firstly that form is not inherently established.
But then in stating emptiness is form, it’s also stating that, form is, nominally existent. And by doing it, then it that avoids the extremes of, annihilation and permanence. So up to this point, one has been involved in the answer given by Avalokiteśvara. And in that answer, then the advice for meditating on emptiness that one of accumulation and the path of preparation has been stated. Now from this point on, then one engages in meditation or one what is explained is the mode of meditation that exists on the path of seeing.
So here, the practice that one engages in at this point is, therefore, avoiding the extremes of holding that objects are inherently established. So one therefore contemplates that they’re inherently empty. But when one contemplates that they’re inherently empty, it doesn’t mean to say that they don’t exist because, in fact, they do they are dependent. They are imputed dependent arisings. So therefore, they’re they do have a measure of existence.
They do exist. So one avoids the extremes of thinking that then they’re truly or inherently established by contemplating a non inherently established, but then avoids the extreme of them not being existent by contemplating that they are conventionally existent or nominally existent. Is that understood? Is that okay? Do you understand the point that’s being made?
What? What is the difference between nominal existence and nonexistence? Yeah. For a start, when something is nonexistent, it means completely nonexistent. It’s like the horns of a rabbit or it just doesn’t exist at all.
So it’s not a for instance, it’s not something that’s functioning. It doesn’t even the principles of of functioning phenomena and so forth can apply to it. He was talking about something completely nonexistent when one talks about nonexistence. So here being nominally or conventionally existent means that it is a dependent entity, something that depends for its existence on other entities. So that’s the measure of something conventionally existing.
The fact that it’s For instance, here, dependent arising means, that it’s imputed there by conception as well. And that also because it’s conventionally existent, it’s imputed there by conception. And the illustration of imputed there by conception is, for instance, a dream house. Like in one’s dreams, one dreams of a house. Right?
When you dream of a house from time to time. That house in the dream is merely imputed there by conception within the dream, isn’t it? It’s merely imputed there. So that’s an illustration of, imputed, by conception or something just being conventionally existing. Are there any further questions on on this, part of the text?
The potential to become yogurt is imputed. So the question is when conventional milk becomes conventional yogurt, is that transition itself conventional? These are good questions about the imputed path. Are you asking this question in terms of the illustration of one of the forms of one of the empty states that was given before? And you understand the what was meant by that empty state in terms of milk and yogurt?
Right. But your question here is a little bit different. You’re concerned about the potential that exist in the milk that Yeah. That potency or the potential within the milk to become yogurt itself, of course, is an imputed existence. It’s only conventionally existent.
But here, when this came up in the text itself, when talking about empty, it just means nonexistent. In other words, it means that at the time of the milk, yogurt is nonexistent. At the time of the yogurt, milk is nonexistent. So there that nonexistence there was illustrating a type of empty state. Is bodhicitta imputed inside of a human being?
Of course, yes. The the bodhicitta that exists within a being who’s generated bodhicitta is only conventionally existent. It’s only imputed there. But in fact, everything is only imputed because everything lacks inherent existence. If it’s not conventionally existent, then it’s nonexistent.
There’s really only two choices. It’s either conventionally existent or nonexistent. So everything that exists is a conventional existent. So the fact of existing conventionally pervades everything. Although things are not inherently existent, it doesn’t mean to say though that they’re nonexistent.
That that’s an important point.