Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. A terminology disagreement between Geshe Pema Tsering and his teacher opens this 28-minute commentary, becoming a gateway into one of Tibetan Buddhism’s central philosophical debates. The talk traces how Tibetan scholars divided the Indian Madhyamaka (Middle Way) tradition into two schools — Prāsaṇgika consequentialists and Svatāntrika autonomists — and what separates them: whether the emptiness of persons and the emptiness of phenomena involve the same negation or different ones. The two-truths framework then comes into focus: seeming reality as causes and conditions appearing to the mind, ultimate reality as their lack of inherent existence. Geshe Pema Tsering closes with practical guidance — grasping dependent origination unlocks emptiness, and the Tibetan word for meditation literally means habituation, a reminder that philosophical insight requires breaking deeply ingrained habits of clinging to things as solidly real.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 24 LF 2005 02 01.mp3
UUID: bfcae0a9-17d5-4edf-83fd-4024e9cd3262
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: Letter to a Friend (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2005-02-01
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 27.9 minutes
Words: ~2,151
Okay. Okay. There’s because I was gonna Anyway, I was gonna say that there’s this is Okay. Now, there’s this school of philosophy called the Mādhyamika. Well, actually, the school of philosophy is called the Madhyamaka, and the texts based on that are called the Mādhyamika.
Right? So this is the the main school of Buddhism or the main philosophical school of Buddhism in Tibet. Right? In Tibetan Buddhism, Madhyamaka, or the middle way school. Alright?
Now in India, there was one school of Madhyamaka. There was one one middle way school, and its proponents were such people as Nāgārjuna, Candrakīrti, Bhāvaviveka, and all these different thinkers. Thank you. And now, when there was a discussion that went backwards and forwards between some of the followers of Nāgārjuna, Āryadeva, Bhāvaviveka, and Candrakīrti, as to whether objects could be defined by their characteristics or whether they couldn’t. So those who said that objects could be defined by their characteristics or established on the basis of their characteristics came to be known as what’s called the autonomous or Svatāntrika school.
And those who didn’t say that and only used arguments called consequences in their texts came to be known as the consequentialist school in Tibet, or the Prāsaṇgika school. In India, they weren’t known as either. There was no Prāsaṇgika school in India and there was no Svatāntrika school in India. There was just Majumaka or Middle Way school. So when Buddhism came to Tibet and the Tibetans started looking at the texts of the Madhyamaka philosophers of India or the Middle Way philosophers of India, they started looking at the different arguments and they said that Candrakīrti used consequences.
He wouldn’t actually put forward his own arguments, he would just show people the consequences of their arguments, and this way pointed towards this view of emptiness, which is the Middle Way. And then there was another school that was usually associated with a man called Bhāvaviveka, who Candrakīrti refuted in his philosophy writings, and they actually put forward what’s called a syllogism or an argument. As opposed to just saying, You’re wrong because of this, they actually said, I believe something. So there’s these two different schools that developed, and there’s different teachers that worked within these two different schools. In India, they weren’t two different schools, they were just two different approaches.
When the Tibetans started looking at those schools, they said, That’s one school and that’s another school. But the Indians didn’t say they’re a separate school. The Tibetans said, That’s that and that’s this. So you call them Indian philosophical schools as inappropriate, and that’s how Geshe-la and I got into this discussion. Because they said, I don’t think that everyone’s going to know the difference between autonomous and consequential schools, and I can’t call them Indian philosophical schools because they’re not Indian, the Tibetans may adapt.
So that’s how we just got into this discussion. There’s these two different strands of Madhya Maka or Middle Way School, the Indian Middle Way School that were seen as different schools by the Tibetans. Okay? Now, when we’re looking at this view of emptiness, which is basically what we’re looking at, these two different schools have a different approach or these two different ways of looking at emptiness have a different approach to the selflessness of the person and the selflessness of object. So, in general, when we talk about emptiness, can divide emptiness into two different sorts of emptiness.
We can have the emptiness of an inherent being, an inherent self, a person, an inherent self, a person. Yeah? Or we can have the emptiness of a of phenomena, of objects, things that we interact with. So there’s two different forms of emptiness. Now the consequentialist school say that both of the emptinesses are the same, that the emptiness of the inherent existence of cup is the same as the inherent existence emptiness of the inherent existence of person.
They’re the same thing. Alright? It’s just a lack of this inherent solid existence. Alright? So the difference between the emptiness of phenomena and the emptiness of self isn’t actually based on the thing that’s being refuted.
It’s based on the object, which is the basis for refutation. That means that, for example, the lack of inherent existence of a watch and the lack of inherent existence of a person is the same lack of inherent existence. It’s just that it’s the watch’s lack of inherent existence and the person’s lack of inherent existence that’s different. The thing that has the lack of inherent existence is different. That’s what the Prāsaṇgika or the consequential say.
The Svatāntrika or autonomous say that the thing that you’re negating is different with the selflessness of the person and the selflessness of object. So within one person you can have a selflessness of the person and a selflessness of object. The selflessness of the person, of an individual, is their lack of substantial definitive existence and the lack of their substance. So you can’t find a person in the self if we look for it. So that lack of a substantial thing that is self is selflessness, they say.
And the lack of an inherent existence of the phenomena that come together to cause that idea of self, the aggregates, is said to be the emptiness of phenomena. Were you there some other way? Okay. So, yes, so we can stop there for today and if you have any questions. Geshe-la thinks that you should have questions if you’ve been listening to that.
Unless you understood it all. Sorry. I was just saying that. And then and people fought wars over that, and Geshe-la went back to the source. And they said that they there was this, like, political intrigue about the time of the fifth Dalai Lama, and they chucked a whole group of people called the Jonangpas out of Central Tibet because they said that the autonomous school’s view was the highest view, and they didn’t like that, so they chucked them out.
And but it was actually more to do with political intrigue. And, he goes, but there are do you know Jonangpas in Central Tibet? I’ve seen them. And I said, yeah, but not in Central Central Tibet. Anyway, they fought wars.
Yes, Anthony? Okay. Okay. There is an entity,, and there are external phenomena. They just don’t inherently exist.
Alright? So there is a separation of entity and inherent in phenomena. Without examination, they exist. When you examine them, you can’t find it, and you can’t find what it is that makes up external phenomena. But to say they don’t exist is is not is not right either.
They do exist. They just don’t exist inherently. They exist as appearances. Oh, they exist as experiences. Right?
Now this is they they exist I used to translate this as they exist as that well, I didn’t use to translate it as much, but it has been translated as they exist as that which has been terminologically recognized. But as someone pointed out to me in India, this isn’t correct because dogs have this same thing and they don’t terminologically recognize anything. So, anyway, they exist as appearances. They exist as that which we experience, right? So they do exist and they exist as separate entity, separate experiences, also separate appearances.
They just don’t exist as these separate inherent entities. Yeah. Yeah. Both realities. Yeah.
They both exist. They both exist at the same time in the same instance. It’s just that we don’t apprehend the the both of them existing in the same time in the same instance. An entity, it’s yourself or itself. An entity itself is a a what’s it’s called an obscured reality.
Right? Or a relative reality. Right? Anthony himself is a relative reality or an obscured reality, and the emptiness of the entity is the ultimate reality. Alright?
So these both these things. But we don’t perceive the ultimate reality. We actually don’t actually perceive the appearing reality of Anthony or the seeming reality of Anthony either because we see it as being inherently existent. But these two, the relative or the seeming reality, the appearing reality, and the ultimate reality both exist at the same time in the instance of the entity. The ultimate reality is the emptiness of the object.
The the lack of inherent existence. Seeming reality or the appearing reality is the collection of causes and conditions, the result of karma that appears to us as being an entity. Yeah. That’s the seeming reality or the relative reality. Mm-mm.
Okay. Uh-oh. Uh-oh. So the lack of inherent existence, but the appearance of something is emptiness. Emptiness isn’t just the lack.
It’s also the idea that even though you can’t find something, something is appearing. Alright? So we can go looking for the self or the essence essence of any object who can’t find it. It doesn’t exist in time or in the parts of the object, because we divide things into parts, they lose their essence, or we don’t find an essence. Essence.
But the fact that they appear is what’s called the seeming or the relative reality, and they appear based on causes and conditions. Okay. So Geshe-la said Geshe-la said, you don’t have to take it. You don’t have to look at it anyway. What you need to do is investigate for yourself.
So you keep investigating. You live your life keeping investigating, looking to see if there is something that’s solidly existent in the way that we naturally respond to objects, or we naturally respond to ourselves. So it’s investigating to see if there is an I that needs, that wants, that has to do things in the way that we generally react to situations. And to keep investigating, if we keep investigating in this way and we can’t find an I, to start not reacting in the same way that we had been reacting. So it’s a constant process of investigation into who and what we are and what phenomena is.
And, Geshe-la said, the other thing to remember is that this is a very difficult concept, and it’s a very anti instinctual concept for us to understand, so it’s something you need to meditate on and look at look at a lot. If you, yeah, if you understand dependent origination, developing an understanding of emptiness is very easy. Dependent origination is the fact that all phenomena come into existence based on causes and conditions. None of them exist individually or as an independent phenomena. All phenomena come into being based on the combination of causes and conditions.
And as all phenomena come into being based on the combination of causes and conditions, it means that they don’t have a solid entity into themselves. If we start looking at things in this way, we see the lack of their inherent existence. So if you can understand dependent origination, the understanding of emptiness is easy to get at or develop. So we react to the combination of causes and conditions by labeling them as things. And our mind labels things that aren’t really there, as aren’t there solidly as being there when we perceive the combinations of causes and conditions.
If we see the lack of individual origination, this is the same thing as seeing the lack of inherent existence. We’re seeing the lack of an individual phenomena’s ability to exist by itself, and this lack of that solidity, that independence, is the same thing as perceiving the emptiness of that phenomena. That’s my fault. Perceive? Okay.
So, yeah, it’s not as easy to perceive reality directly in this way as it is to come up with an idea about this because we have a strong a very strong habit to perceive things as being solitary existent. The way we naturally or instinctively relate to objects and to ourselves as is as something that is solidly existent,, independently, inherently existent. So in order for us to develop a perception of emptiness, we need to break that habit. Alright? And so the way that we break that habit is through meditation.
So this word that’s usually translated as meditation also has this meaning in Tibetan of habituation habituating yourself with an object, habituating yourself with a focus on. So if you habituate yourself with emptiness through developing, first of all analyzing to develop a clear insight into emptiness, then habituate yourself with that understanding, you start start to see that, and you break the habit that you have of clinging to things as being inherently existing. So we can finish. Be nice. Anyone has any other pressing questions, we can finish there.
And So if we can go to page twenty six in the first section of this book, which is called morning prayers. Page twenty six starts off with