Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 63-minute session, Geshe Pema Tsering makes a striking move: the four bodies of a Buddha — truth body, enjoyment body, emanation body, and union body — are reframed not as attributes of Buddhahood but as four distinct ways any practitioner can approach emptiness right now. He explains how meditating on the lack of arising, abiding, and cessation in phenomena gradually quiets conceptual grasping and brings the mind to its subtlest, clearest level. Practical advice follows: keep sessions very short and frequent; use analytical reasoning when fogginess sets in; switch to compassion or dedicated aspiration when concentration fails. A wide-ranging Q&A draws on the body, atoms, and illness to illustrate why we reify experience, then maps the progression from doubt to direct non-conceptual realization — inverting the common cliché: here, believing leads to seeing.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 09 2005 07 10 MT.mp3
UUID: c5d17964-6eda-4549-9cfb-95828afb7494
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: Mind Training (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2005-07-10
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 63.1 minutes
Words: ~5,915
Alright. So before we look at the Lojong teachings today, the mind trainings or I saw another translation for it, the cleansing of attitudes, then please check your motivation and see that you’re doing it in order to develop understanding, to be able to train your mind to think of others and others to cherish others instead of focusing on self-cherishing. Through doing so, attain Buddhahood for the sake of all sentient beings, for the sake of all others, and be able to lead them out of suffering and to Buddhahood. So, with those thoughts in mind or with that motivation, then please try and listen to the teachings on mind training. Alright.
So the point that we’re up to at the moment, is is still in the second point. Am I on? Yes. Yeah. It’s still in the second point of the seven points of mind training and it deals with what’s called the actual practice.
Now, the actual practice of mind training is divided into two sections. It is divided into the section dealing with ultimate bodhicitta and the section dealing with conventional bodhicitta. The section that deals with ultimate bodhicitta is basically talking about emptiness. They’re talking about the lack of inherent existence of all phenomena. That’s what ultimate bodhicitta is said to be. Okay.
So the process that we go through in the meditation on ultimate bodhicitta starts with looking at phenomena as being like a dream and then we look for the thing that perceives phenomena that being the mind and realize that there is no arising, abiding or disintegration to mind. So therefore we can see that there really is no truly established mind that we can recognize. And then the next section is to realize that the process of investigation, the analysis itself doesn’t inherently exist, that we can’t find it when we start looking for it either. And so this means that we stop all conceptualization and what happens is your mind comes to rest. After much practice, mind comes to rest in what’s called the true union of tranquility and insight.
That means that you have a mind that is able to rest, on an object and the object that it is resting on is the lack of inherent existence. This is called the true Shamatha or the real Shamatha, the real tranquility, where not only are you abiding tranquilly but the object you’re abiding on is the key to getting out of saṃsāra. This of abiding focusing on the lack of inherent existence, focusing on emptiness is then described in the next line of the mind training which says, this is the teaching abide in the basis abide in the state of the basis of all. And this one. Okay.
This is sorry. I’ve got another one. That was a crap translation. Alright. Here’s here’s here’s a better one.
Rest in the nature of all, the basis of everything. Alright. Okay. So so I was just going, Geshe-la, that’s complicated. Can you please explain this more?
And I don’t know if they know what that means. Can you explain this? And because everything up until this point has been really like, you meditate this way and this, then all of sudden it’s like alright. So this bit that says the basis of everything. The basis of everything.
Now what that’s referring to is that all phenomena are said to have a base. Yeah? All phenomena have a something that we recognize when we label them as something. Something that we can relate and say, that’s this. And that that is what’s called the basis of the phenomenon.
The thing that we posit the idea we have of something on. Alright? So this is saying that the basis of all is actually emptiness. The basis of all is the lack of inherent existence. And the way that this is explained is through what are called the four bodies.
Now the four bodies, when we talk about the four bodies, it’s not physical bodies. Alright? It’s like as in a body of work or something. Right? A body of things, you know, basically.
But it it usually these four bodies are usually used to refer to what are called the four bodies or the four parts of a Buddha. Yeah? But here, the different aspects of emptiness are called by the same names as the four bodies of a Buddha, so that we can relate our experience of emptiness to the development of Buddhahood. Okay? So the four bodies of a Buddha are said to be the dharmakaya or it’s called the truth body as well.
And then there’s the sambhogakaya, which is also called the enjoyment body. And then there is the Nirmana kaya, which is what’s called the emanation body. And then there’s what’s called in Sanskrit the Svabhavikaya which is the body of connection or union. Now the way that this works when we look at emptiness is that we learn to recognize the lack of arising the hang on a second. Okay.
Yeah. Alright. Sorry. I just wanted to make sure I was gonna get them right, and I wasn’t gonna get them wrong, but hopefully now we’ll get them right. The so the lack of generation of objects, the fact that they never become to inherently exist, never things don’t come about, they don’t ever arise, they never produced.
That lack of production is what’s called the Dharmakāya, the truth body. The lack of cessation, the fact that even though things never because things are never produced solidly, it means that there’s no cessation to things. It means that things don’t ever really stop because they never really began. So this gives this infinite potential. Things are constantly in a state of there is no cessation to something that never began.
And then there’s the last one, the Nirmana kaya or the emanation body. This shows the lack of abiding. So if something’s never generated and it’s never stopped, then it never abides. If it’s never come into being, it can’t exist and then it doesn’t go it can disappear. So that’s what’s called the Nirmānakāya.
And the last of these or the Nirmānakāya or the emanation body, the last of these which is the Svabhavikaya or the union body is the fact that is focused on the idea that all these three things together aren’t separable. You can’t say, okay, that’s a lack of arising, that’s a lack of abiding and that’s a lack of cessation. You can’t separate them out. They’re all talking about one nature. The nature of all phenomenon in that they don’t arise, they don’t abide and they don’t disintegrate.
All of those things are the different aspects or the different ways that you can focus on emptiness. Alright? You can look at it as non arising, can look at it as non abiding, you can look at it as non cessation and you can also see that these three things aren’t disconnected. They’re all connected. They’re all the same entity.
Because they are the different ways that you can look at emptiness, they are the different ways that you can look at ultimate truth. And because they’re the different ways that you can look at ultimate truth, this is why they’re given the names of parts of a Buddha, the different aspects of a Buddha. Alright? Because by realizing this, this is how you become a Buddha. So and in the end, there is no distinction between the emptiness of Buddha and the emptiness of those who are who haven’t attained Buddhahood yet.
Alright? So these names are given the same point, although we’re not talking about the different bodies of a Buddha, but the names are the same Buddha, but because of how they’re related to the Buddha. Okay. Sorry. I knew you always getting something wrong.
And so to make it clearer, the reason that they’re given the names of the is the bit I got wrong we’re not actually talking about the four different aspects of emptiness. We’re talking about the four different ways that we can realize emptiness. And so the Nirmānakāya and all these names are given to the realizations that people have of emptiness. So people can realize the lack of arising of phenomena, they can realize the lack of abiding of phenomena, the lack of cessation of phenomena, and the way that these three things are joint. They can realize all these different things.
Those realizations that they have are called the body, the body of the emanation body, the body of the truth body, and the body of the enjoyment body, and the body of union. So why they’re given the name is because those realizations, the realizations of emptiness, are linked to the different aspects of a Buddha. Alright? So, the realizations of emptiness in ordinary beings are linked to the the realizations or the the total manifestation of Buddhahood in its four bodied form or four subsetted forms. So this basis of everything is talking about emptiness.
So we’re resting our mind in in this realization of emptiness. So this is what you’re training in. And the way that we train this is we keep bringing our mind back to the idea that things don’t inherently exist. They’re not arisen. They don’t abide.
They don’t cease, and there’s no separation between those three things. We keep bringing our mind back to that idea, and every time we get distracted, back to that idea and rest in that idea. And in doing so, what we’re doing is stopping our ordinary types of thoughts. Alright? And most of our ordinary types of thoughts reify things.
They hold onto things solidly. So we’re stopping the way that we usually relate to things as being solid, independently existent things, and we are instead seeing that we are focusing our attention on emptiness. So it’s not as if we are it’s not as if we are I’m trying to think of ways to say things simply. Sorry. It’s it’s not as if we are actively focusing on getting rid of our thoughts.
Yes? What we’re doing is recognizing our thoughts, and by recognizing our thoughts, we can see that they lack. We can’t find anywhere where they arise, where they abide, anywhere where they are destroyed. We can’t substantiate thoughts and by doing so, what happens is we’re not stopping them, we’re not establishing them, but we become separated from them. Yeah?
So what we’re trying to do when we are meditating on emptiness in this way is to keep bringing our mind back to focusing on the lack of inherent things and stopping our mind conceptualizing. Conceptualizing. Because what usually happens, if we start to look into the way we think, we’ll find what usually happens is that there’s seven different types of consciousness that we have. We have five sensory consciousnesses, we have a mental consciousness, and we have this what is called the alaya, the basis of everything, the subtlest mind that we can access. Yeah?
And so, on the basis of all these minds, we think lots of things. We come up with lots of ideas. We we construct and we construct ideas. Most of the thoughts that we have are constructed ideas that come about through these seven consciousnesses. I don’t know if that’s plural, but anyway.
And what we’re trying to do in this meditation on emptiness is to get rid of those. But you don’t get rid of those by saying, I’m not going to think. Because as soon as you’re saying, I’m not going to think, then you’re thinking. Alright? So the way that you get rid of these conceptualizations is by bringing your mind back to the focus on the lack of inherent existence.
Yeah? The the on emptiness. And by bringing the mind back, then you you you you’re abandoning the conceptualized thoughts. By conceptualizing about them, you won’t. Alright.
So as this isn’t something that’s we’ve achieved as as we haven’t achieved the ability ability to focus single pointedly on an object without distraction for as long as we want, then this is one way that we develop that ability by meditating on emptiness. By focusing on these by focusing our minds on the lack of arising, the lack of cessation, the lack of abiding and the union of these three, the inseparability of these three things. Then we are developing both our ability to meditate properly, and also our understanding of emptiness. We keep working on these things, and in the process, we’ll find that our mind is distracted by both thoughts and by objects. Alright?
So there’s two things that we can look at. We can have a thought and be distracted by a thought, or we can be distracted by an external object. Yeah. And these things will distract us from our meditation. We have to keep bringing our mind back to the four bodies.
We have to keep bringing our mind back to this state, to this understanding of the lack of arising, the lack of cessation, the lack of abiding. Keep bringing our mind back to that and this is the way that we develop both concentration and an insight into emptiness. So, the things that come into our mind with regards to objects and other minds, other thoughts, can be either a main mind or a mental factor and they are conceptual and we want to stop our mind conceptualizing. Alright? So, every time that our mind conceptualizes about something, we bring it back to the idea of the lack of inherent existence.
Okay. Then it says, when you’re in a meditation on emptiness and your mind becomes distracted by conceptualizations or you develop fogginess, then fogginess about what it is that you’re meditating on. Then the idea is to use your ability to reason, ability to reason. Yes. There’s this word that means kinda like an ability to reason, but also reflects in the ability of mind to look at itself.
Right? So you can reason, but you can also reason by looking at what mind is. Does that make sense? I’m not sure we have definitely, no. We don’t have a word for that in English.
Anyway, so this is so we’re using our intelligence to look at our intelligence or look at our ability to have intelligence or or or, insight or clarity. Alright? And through doing that, we’ll keep coming back developing our understanding of the dharmakaya, developing our understanding of the lack of inherent existence of objects, the lack of arising, the lack of abiding, the lack of cessation. So it isn’t like we can just sit down and go into a deep Samādhi or Dharmakāya just like with no effort. It’s not something that can happen spontaneously.
It’s something that we need to work at. It’s something we need to keep bringing our mind back to. We can’t expect to just be able to concentrate on the four bodies without putting in the effort to doing so. When our mind is distracted or we become doubtful or we start reifying things, then we have to use reason, use our mind’s ability to look at itself to bring it back to that object, bring it back to what we’re focused on. And we have to do that again and again and put in a lot of effort because it’s not something we can do spontaneously.
Alright. So this means that the actual practice that we’re engaging in is is to we’re trying to get our mind to abide in its subtlest form. Right? So most of the time, our mind’s pretty gross with it’s made gross by lots of conceptualization. We’re like thinking about this and we’re thinking about that and it’s not our mind isn’t very subtle.
But if we can keep bringing our mind back to focusing on the lack of inherent existence, the part of our mind that we are developing in that stage is the most subtlest form of mind, what’s called the said, do you understand what I’m saying? I said, yes. And he goes, what’s your problem? Said, have no idea how to translate it. Okay.
There’s this word. Right? And and and the reason I’m trying to take a bit of time to translate it properly is because it’s something that seems to have a problem getting through the language barrier. Okay? And there’s this word that’s called ösel.
Yeah? And it’s sometimes translated as, luminous clarity or, the clear light nature of mind, all sorts of things like that. Yeah? But the reason that it’s reason that it’s problematic to translate it is all these ideas of luminous clarity. They sound very You know, like you’re looking through a church window or something and the light’s going, Woah!
And it’s not like that. It’s just like the mind has these two aspects. It has clarity, because you can focus on anything, and it’s luminous in that it’s not just the lack of obstruction, it has the ability to comprehend. So there’s a clear light nature of mind or the nature, the luminous clarity of mind is developed through focusing on the lack of inherent existence. So when you are in have developed the ability to focus your mind on the lack of inherent existence, then the part of your mind that you’re using is the most subtle part of your mind.
The luminous clear nature of your mind as opposed to the gross conceptualized thoughts that we usually use. Yeah? So, this type of meditation where we’re looking at the lack of something and using the subtlest levels of our mind is obviously very difficult. It’s not something that we can do most of the time. It’s not part of our mind or the way that we usually use our mind.
Then the next thing is to say this is the actual meditation. It’s the actual meditation that we’re trying to develop in first stage of mind training to look at the lack of inherent existence with the subtlest level of our mind, with only the the clear and luminous aspect of our mind as opposed to the conceptualized, reifying, constructive aspect. And this is very hard, very hard, and very hard for us to do, for any length of time. So the next thing it says here is, don’t do it for very long. It says, developing the ability focus on this this lack of inherent existence should be done in very, very short meditation periods and do but frequently.
Alright? So if you wanted to develop this, you do a very, very short meditation, have a break. Do another very, very short meditation, have a break. If you try and do it long, you’re not gonna get anywhere. For a long time, you’re not gonna get anywhere.
And if you only do it occasionally, you’re not gonna get anywhere. Okay. So the the length of time that you should do it for it says, is do it while you can. Okay? So if you’re having a good meditation session and you can feel and you feel clear in your meditation and you’re able to keep recognizing when your mind becomes distracted and bring your mind back to the object that you’re focusing on, and let your thoughts pass away, and you’re still able to do that, keep meditating.
Alright? When you start not realizing that you’re distracted, or it takes you a while to realize that you’re distracted, or guess just can’t even get there to what you’re supposed to be meditating on. Forget it. Yeah? You then you you leave it.
Have a break and come back again. Yeah? So it’s a matter of not pushing yourself beyond what you’re capable resting, but being persistent. Okay. The another thing that you can do if you wanted to continue meditating, but you are too distracted or confused to meditate on emptiness still, and you can switch what you’re meditating on and start meditating on compassion or loving-kindness or bodhicitta.
Or you can finish the meditation session with a strong dedication that this merit that you’ve accumulated or the positive potential that you’ve accumulated through trying to develop this part of your mind and focus on emptiness in this way, may that be a cause for you to establish yourself and others, it says, in a in a in a stable way to realize emptiness and to lead others to that understanding. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. You guys have said, then if you’ve done this, then basically, you’re dedicating all your merits to others so you don’t get to keep any for yourself.
Good one, Marty. And then he said, and you’ve worked on all that hard work, and you’re not gonna get anything from it. So said the the problem is that the more you dedicate to others, the more you you get for yourself. And the more you dedicate to yourself, the the less you get for yourself. Okay.
So if you have any questions. Really? Okay. Existence. Yeah.
Go on. Okay. Yeah. It is. Are you having trouble with the English words or is it just the concept?
Both. Okay. So Say it Greek. Hey. I don’t know it in Greek.
Yeah. Alright. So yeah. So the way that we experience things is as if they are real. As if they are this word inherently existent, inherent means there’s something in the thing itself that makes it exist.
There’s something you know how we say that’s inherently bad? It means that there’s something in there that makes it bad. Right? So if you say inherently existent, it means there’s something there’s some essence or there’s substance or something inside an object that makes it real. Right?
So the way that we relate to things is like this. We think, I’m suffering. That suffering is real. It’s good, you know, or we think I’m happy. The happiness is real and we cling to it.
So all of the experiences that we have, in all of the experiences we have, we make everything very substantial and very real. We reify everything. But if we look at things, all of the experiences that we’ve had, while they may have seemed very real at the time, don’t seem real now. Yeah? So at the time, they may they may come across to us as being very real and we may think of that that as being independent entity that doesn’t exist, in dependence on anything else.
But if we look at things, then we can see how everything is connected. All of the experiences that we related to as being the an inherent experience of suffering or an inherent experience of happiness aren’t. So Geshe said he thinks the best object for us to use to look at what emptiness is ourselves. Alright? And we think when we think about ourselves, we have a strong idea of who we are and how and how important we are.
Right? So we’ll be we would think, this is me. And if we think me, we may be thinking of our body. Right? This is me.
This is how I I define myself. This is how I relate to myself. It’s in this space. And we without thinking about it, without examining it, we relate to that body as being an independent, autonomous entity. Alright?
We think this body, I can make it this body has the ability to exist by itself. Alright? This is the way without thinking about it that we relate to our body. We relate to our body as if it should be a certain way, as if it has the ability to be a certain way. Yeah?
But then if we look into it, then we’ll see that if that was the case, if our body existed as an independent entity, if our body existed without causes and without being conceptualized as something, then it would never change. It would never get sick. It would never die. It would never grow old. It would just be exactly the same all the time because it would be autonomous and it’d be able to do what it wanted.
Alright? But this isn’t the case. Alright? If we if we watch our bodies, they don’t stay the same. Yeah?
They’re continually changing. Now the reason they’re continually changing is that they don’t exist by themselves. They come into existence based on a huge collection of causes, yeah, and conditions that have come together to create something. Yeah? And then collection of things, that collection of causes and conditions has created a thing that we first of all call a thing and then we call ourselves.
We label. Our mind labels it as something. So you have this combination of causes and conditions bringing have come together to create something that we then label as ourselves. Yeah? Now if it wasn’t if that wasn’t the case, if it wasn’t a a collection of things that had no solid entity of itself, it wouldn’t ever change.
Right? And this may sorry. No. Next thing was then. This may be the case.
There may be like this collection of things that comes in together to make us and we may only give it a label or something so we can understand it. Yeah? But that’s not the way we actually think about it. Yeah? And the next time that we experience an illness, do you think, oh, this is just a combination of causes and conditions.
I shouldn’t it shouldn’t be a problem. We don’t relate to like this. We think I’m sick. Yeah? There’s a very self solid reification of our experience of ourselves.
We we turn it into something very real and very, solid. Yeah? We don’t we don’t think of it as being a merely existent temporary thing. A merely existent. A merely labeled temporary thing.
And all comes into being, yeah, goes out of being. Alright? Anything that happens stops happening. Right? Anything that has causes and conditions come together to bring it about, when those causes and conditions finish, it finishes.
Yeah? If that wasn’t the case, things could exist forever without changing. Yeah. There there would be no new things and there would be no change. Right?
But this isn’t the way things are. So when it says there is no generation, there is no abiding, there is no cessation, it’s talking about the true nature of things. Right? There’s a constant change of conventional things, of causes and conditions, but there’s no solidly existent, independent, autonomous, inherently existent thing that comes into existence, abides, and goes out of existence. It’s not possible.
Yeah. It’s like all atoms coming together, and then they come together, and then they separate. But if you look into an atom, you can’t find anything either. An atom is made up of parts, and then the parts are made up of parts, and eventually you’re left with emptiness. That’s what is okay.
Because you’re looking at them as if they’re gonna last forever. Yeah. Because you’re looking at them as if they’re real. Yeah. So because the way that things exist is in the way that we perceive them.
We perceive things as being autonomous, independent, having the ability to do what they want. Right? So when something happens to those things that we’re perceiving that way that shows they’re not like the way we perceive them, we get upset. We think that’s not the way I perceive. Right?
This isn’t the way it should be. Yeah? And then if we had the ability ability to see things that are the way they actually were, it wouldn’t hurt. Right? But we don’t.
So we have to keep working at it. Mhmm. I know I know it hurts. I know what happened to my mom. I knew that Yeah.
Yeah. He he said, absolutely. It absolutely hurts when you lose people, it’s really good also to remind yourself that the re of why. Because if you know why, then that can help. You did.
Because there is no there is no phenomena that don’t come about. Okay. So when we don’t investigate things, when we just accept them for the way we are, we experience suffering, we experience happening happiness, we experience birth, abiding, and death. Right? All of these things happen.
But when we start looking for those things, we can’t find them. You can’t find a solid yeah? There is no solid independent thing. So the more that you can understand that, the more the whole process is okay. Thank you.
Yeah. Conceptualize something, then you’re seeing that object as being conceptualize something, then you’re seeing that object as being as having some entity of itself of its own. Geshe-la said a belief is a concept because a belief You only have beliefs about things that you haven’t seen directly. Alright? So, if you have a belief about something, it’s like you can’t belief is thought where you think something is a certain way, but you haven’t had a direct experience of it.
Because if you have a direct experience of it, you know it. You don’t have to believe it. You just know it. Alright? So belief is where you’re thinking it’s probably like that, alright, ultimately.
Yeah. Uh-oh. Uh-oh. Uh-oh. Uh-oh.
Okay. Okay. So I’m not quite sure how to translate some of those expressions that you actually use. But you start by thinking having a doubt about something. Alright?
So for example, if we think about I don’t know what he’s pointing at, but I think about an object in front of us. Right? And we start by thinking if we start hearing about impermanence and emptiness, yeah, you may think, well, maybe that isn’t inherently existent. Maybe it’s not gonna last forever. Yeah?
The thing that’s in front of us. And that, that’s what you call doubt. Yeah? But it’s doubt tending towards understanding. Yeah.
And then through analyzing, but through looking at it, you’ll develop a belief that it’s not inherently existent and it’s it’s it’s not permanent. Yeah? So through analyzing, through using your wisdom or your understanding, you can develop a belief that it’s not that, but that’s still conceptual. Alright? And then if you keep meditating on your belief, on that thing or clarifying No.
Hang on. Sorry. If you keep clarifying your belief, eventually you develop what’s called a conceptual understanding. You’ll be absolutely convinced. Yeah.
There’ll be no kind of, I think so, or this is what I believe. It’ll be, I know it’s like this, but on a conceptual level. At that point, if you start meditating on it, like the lack of inherent existence of the book or the impermanence of the book, then you become so clear about it on a subtle level of mind that you see it. In the same way that we can see there’s a book, we’ll see the book isn’t inherently existent. It doesn’t exist that way.
That’s when you realize emptiness, that’s when you realize impermanence. When you can see, when it’s so clear to you that it’s like a non conceptual understanding, like a visual percept, like a visual consciousness or a hearing consciousness. You can see or hear or understand that that it isn’t permanent, that it isn’t inherently existent. The the word that I just used there, understand doesn’t really work. It’s like a non conceptual understanding of it.
Non conceptual understanding of it. So it’s a so it’s a saying I’m gonna get this around the wrong way now. Seeing is believing. It’s really the other way around. Believing is seeing.
Seeing it. No. No. No. It’s okay.
Seeing is believing. No. It’s the other way around. Yeah.
Yeah. Okay. Geshe-la said, absolutely, you shouldn’t believe what you see. Because he said he said that the way that we see things is as if they’re inherently existent, and we grasp on them because of what we see. We create all sorts of karma because of the way we see things, and that leads us into saṃsāra.
So believing leads to seeing and he said, but don’t believe the way you see things. I haven’t got to the beauty thing yet. But it so it said that so what happens is that that we see things and we because we don’t understand, because we haven’t developed our wisdom, that we think that we’ve perceived things directly. Alright? So we think there’s this word that’s called pramāna in Sanskrit, and it’s usually translated into English as valid cognition.
So it means unmistaken, seeing things in an unmistaken manner. Yeah. So we think that we see lots of things unmistakenly. We think that we see walls and flowers and everything unmistakenly because there’s nothing interrupting our perception of those things. Right?
There’s no eye diseases or there’s no walls or anything. Right? But, in fact, our perception of things as being inherently existent means that all of our perceptions are mistaken. All of our perceptions are of things being solid independent entities. That’s the way we relate to things.
That’s the way that we see things. So we think we’re seeing it, but we’re not. The only way that we can really get to see things the way they exist as opposed to the way that they appear is by developing our wisdom. Okay. You know?
Okay. So I guess this is someone with jaundice. I think it’s jaundice. It’s some disease, but I think it’s jaundice. They go yellow.
Well, they see yellow as well? There’s some disease where they see yellow. I don’t know. That that that they can look at the moon and go, the moon’s yellow. And the and the and the Pardon?
It’s a drug poisoning thing. Yeah. Some disease they get into bed where they think the moon’s yellow. Anyway, they go, the moon is yellow. And then someone will say, no, it’s white.
And then the person go, no, it’s yellow. But in fact, it isn’t yellow and it isn’t white. These are all characteristics that the individual is experiencing. So we’d say the general accept general thing that’s right. The general thing is that the the moon is white, but for that person, it’s yellow.
So the way is the general it’s generally accepted as white, so we say that’s the relative truth. Yeah? But we can’t say it’s ultimate truth because for that other person, it’s yellow. Mhmm. So in the same way that a person with this disease, whichever one it is, would see the moon as yellow, we think see things as being truly established, independent, and existent.
Yeah. It’s quick? Do you mean an environment as in you’re hanging out with dodgy people, or do you mean an environment as in one that’s polluted? I guess, more specifically, I say, environment. Okay.
Alright. He’s very important, he thinks. If you don’t have supportive conditions, you can’t meditate. You can’t you can’t practice. He said it’s very important.
Okay. Yes. Yeah. Thought I got it right. Just making sure.
He said it’s very important, but if you spend your time trying to find the perfect environment, you’re never gonna meditate. Yeah. Yeah. No.