Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 81-minute session, Geshe Pema Tsering opens with a vivid update of the classic “conjurer’s horse” image — comparing illusory phenomena to watching television — to explain the Seven Points of Mind Training instruction to “become a child of illusion” in post-meditation life. He first covers closing an emptiness session with the Seven-Limb Prayer, then moves to conventional bodhicitta and introduces the giving-and-taking practice (Tonglen) through two verses from Śāntideva on exchanging self-cherishing for cherishing others. A lively Q&A follows: can Tonglen make a practitioner sick, can it genuinely help an ill friend, and how to handle the feeling of being overwhelmed by others’ suffering. Suited to those already engaging with mind-training practice.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 10 2005 07 17 MT old.mp3
UUID: 3ab532a9-f7c9-4148-b706-091c67a03e12
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: Mind Training (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2005-07-17
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 81.4 minutes
Words: ~6,124
Okay. So last week, we were talking about doing meditation on emptiness, and we’re actually up to the stage where we are ending another meditation session on emptiness. So at the end of a meditation session on emptiness, after we’ve been able to for as long as we’ve been able to concentrate on the lack of inherent existence of something Sorry, that didn’t make any sense. I’ll try again. We can only meditate on emptiness for fairly short amounts of time.
So when we’ve done as much as we can, at that point, we should end our session. And the way that we should end our session is first of all, while we’re still in the meditative pose, by dedicating all of the virtuous, potential that we have developed, all the potential for good that we’ve developed from that meditation towards attaining enlightenment for the benefit of all sentient beings. In doing this, we should say a prayer that’s called the Seven-Limb Prayer to end our session. the seven-limb prayer has seven sections. The first of which is prostration, the second of which is offering, the third of which is No.
Yeah. This one? No. Me. The third of which is confession, and the fourth is rejoicing or being happy about all the good things that everybody else has done.
And then fifth one is requesting the Buddhas to remain until cyclic existence ends so they can help beings. The sixth is asking them to teach the Dharma, to turn the wheel of Dharma so that beings can, practice it. And the seventh is dedicating all the merit that we and all other beings have accumulated to all of us attaining enlightenment. Pardon? Mhmm.
Then after the meditation session, we give given advice to practice mindfulness of what we’ve meditated on in the next line of the seven Points of Mind Training, which says, In the post meditation experience, one should become a child of illusion. Now, what this is referring to is that in our meditation session we have focused hard on seeing through the mistaken reality that we usually perceive, to look at the lack of inherent existence of all phenomena. So instead relating to things as being solid, independent, autonomous entities as we usually do, in our meditation we have been striving to see past that facade, see past way that we usually view things, and try and see the way that they are the way that they do exist. And the way that things exist is that they merely appear but don’t have any inherent or substantial existence to them. So they come into being because of causes and conditions and pass away, but there’s nothing, no core to them that we can find when we look.
So in our post meditation experience, we are asked not to forget that. We’re asked to remind ourselves of that, by remembering that through mistaken appearances things appear to us as being inherently existent, but when we search for them, we can’t find any essence to them, any core to them. And so in this way, they’re like an illusion or like a dream. The examples given is that they’re like a horse. Yeah.
Okay. Okay. So the reason that they’ve said like an illusory horse is because before they had TVs and movies and photos and they used painting for painting for secular entertainment in these areas. They used to have conjurers and the conjurers’ main things that they seem to conjure up are horses and elephants. So it says here, all of the realities we experience are as real as a conjurer’s horse or a conjurer’s elephant.
So I guess, let’s say, we may not see many conjurer’s horses or elephants around, but we certainly see TV enough so that we can we can relate to things being empty because we know that they appear on television, but we don’t find any real substance to the things that appear on television. So our experiences of phenomena, although that we solidify them and reify them, what we’re striving for is that they will become as if we are watching television or we’re interacting with something we know isn’t really existent, but we know that it appears. So the idea of focusing on this in post meditation is that we don’t lose the strides we’ve made in meditation. In our meditation, we were focusing on the lack of something’s substantial core existence, and in order not to forget that in post meditation, we are advised to become, a child of illusion, or to remember that, everything that we experience or phenomena that we experience are actually illusory. So not only external phenomena, but also ourselves.
We should remind remember that as we ourselves don’t inherently exist. We don’t exist in a independent autonomous in independent autonomous permanent way that we like to That we instinctually think that we do. So, our Obviously, our aggregates or the groups of things that make us up up appear. But they appear because of what’s called dependent origination. They appear because causes and conditions have come together, have collected themselves to create the appearance of something.
This person or this thing that has been created by causes and conditions doesn’t have a solid self though, the way that we think it does most of the time, the way we relate to it as we do most of the time. So this means that our ourselves are not permanent despite the way that we intuitively or instinctively relate to ourselves. Ourselves are also not independent. We don’t create ourselves. We don’t exist independently of other phenomena.
We exist exist because a collection of causes and conditions have come together to create the person that we are. But we don’t exist in an independent way. We’re not able to establish ourselves as an independent, autonomous, individual entity, even though this is the way that it appears to us. When we don’t investigate, we appear to ourselves to be an individual, independent, autonomous, permanent entity. But upon investigation, there is no such thing.
This means that what we are is the child of illusion or an illusion. We experience things, we do things, we can experience suffering, we can experience happiness. But none of these things actually independently, intrinsically exist. They are like the play of an illusion. So if someone conjured up an illusion or a hologram, then we could see it doing all sorts of things.
We could see it dancing and playing and singing and all sorts of things, but we would know that none of those things really are happening. This is actually the same for ourselves. It’s just that we cling to the appearance of self as being a truly existent self, and therefore we cling to the suffering and all of the other things that come along with that self. So what we’re trying to do is not to waste the time that we spend in meditation and waste the time we spend in post meditation by focusing on lack of inherent existence in meditation and then getting on with relating to things normally in post meditation. What we try and do is remember the illusory nature of the phenomena and the self that we interact with.
Sorry, phenomena and the person that we interact with in post meditation. So in post meditation, in order to not waste waste our experience, then we need to be mindful, need to remember that our objects that we experience through our five senses, that is all of our internal and external experiences, all of the things that captivate our mind are actually illusory. They’re dreamlike. And despite the fact that they’re illusory and Sorry, they’re illusory, they’re dreamlike like, and we label them in order to understand them. So because this process is, happening, then we need to remember that that doesn’t give everything solidity on the the realness that we normally ascribe to them.
We need to remember that this process is happening, that things appear and we label them as certain entities, That we should try and remember that they are illusory, try and remember that we have labeled them and that they don’t have any intrinsic existence of their own. In doing so, then we will be working in post meditation as well as in meditation. In meditation, idea is to try, when we’re focusing on emptiness or shunyata, is to focus on the lack of inherent existence. In post meditation, the idea is to try and be mindful that all of the things that we experience, including our person, is illusory. Okay.
So if we’re able to perpetuate this understanding that we’ve developed in meditation by viewing things in post meditation as illusory, as like a dream, then this means that all of the actions that we will be infused with or connected to the path of developing of understanding, the developing of awakening. And this includes all of the positive things that we do, all of the constructive activities that we may engage in in the moments when we’re not meditating on emptiness. So this includes things like we just talked about saying the Seven-Limb Prayer at the end of it or saying prayers to begin things, or prostrating, or meditating on compassion, or trying to perform compassionate actions, or actions infused with love and kindness. All of these actions we should try and remember are also illusory, also dreamlike, in that they don’t have substantial existence. And if we do that, if we are able to link or combine those activities with an understanding of the illusion like like illusion like illusion nature of phenomena, then we infuse our whole experience with the meditation practice that we’ve been doing.
Okay. So this means that all of the activities, all of the ways that we can practice the path of the Bodhisattva, if we can infuse those with this understanding that we have developed in meditation of the lack of inherent existence of things, of the illusory like nature that phenomena has, then we’re not wasting the experiences that we had in in meditation, but we’re combining them with the experiences that we have in post meditation. And it’s this combination of the experiences we have in meditation with those in post meditation that enable us to develop the union of understanding of the union of bliss and emptiness or happiness and emptiness because we experience we come to understand the illusory like nature of phenomena but then also the hang on. I had it in Tibetan and tried it in English. Comes as blah.
Okay. So it develops in us the ability to join the two aspects of enlightenment. So, in the latter phases of our meditation, this is experienced as a combination of bliss and emptiness. In the beginning stages of our meditation, it’s experienced as the combination of compassion and emptiness. So we are that is we have compassion for all the appearances that we experience, all of the phenomena that we experience, recognize that it’s emptiness.
It that it is its nature is emptiness as well. Alright. So, then there’s a a quote in the text that we don’t know who it’s from, but it’s very nice. And it says, in this in that way, by establishing all phenomena as way based hang on. Alright.
So in that way, by not being attached to true existence or inherent existence, you establish all phenomena as being illusory, as being as empty as the sky, and sorry, and view them as being as empty as the sky. By viewing things as being as empty as the sky, you achieve the great bliss of no death. And what this means is that if we can relate to phenomena as being illusory, as not being solid and individual, and inherently existent in the way that we usually relate to them. It means that we are not grasping at, at phenomena. We’re not grasping at at, things as being inherently inherently existent and we’re not trapped in the ignorance that perpetuates saṃsāra.
By developing a wisdom understanding emptiness, we don’t relate to things as being external solid entities that we need to possess or run away from, and we stop creating the causes for saṃsāra. And in developing this understanding, we are then able to are then able to leave saṃsāra and develop what’s called the great bliss, and the great bliss is another way of saying the realization of Buddhahood, that doesn’t cling to anything as being solidly existing, able to experience that experiences nothing but great happiness. And we and we will be able to establish ourselves or, yeah, establish ourselves in that state. Mhmm. Alright.
So on the basis of this understanding that the old things are illusion and that therefore don’t have any solid immovable parts that we have to deal with. The next stage of the meditation practice or the next stage of this text, looks at what’s called conventional bodhicitta. Conventional bodhicitta is developing the wish to attain enlightenment for the benefit of all sentient beings. So this comes under the second part of the second section of these texts. So the first section was the preliminaries and the second section was the actual practice of bodhicitta and it had two parts.
First which we just did was Ultimate bodhicitta and now we’re up to Conventional bodhicitta. The practice of developing conventional bodhicitta, or the wish to attain enlightenment for sentient beings is described in this text by a practice that’s called giving and taking. And it has as its source a paragraph, pretty much, or two verses from a text called The Bodhicaryāvatāra by Śāntideva. And I was pulling a face because it’s got two verses of really beautiful poetry here that I’m about to massacre because trying trying to translate poetry on the spot is a fool’s game. Anyway, so please excuse me massacring a beautiful poem, and, I’ll try and say what goes for the third, but I’m sorry.
Alright. The first line says, says, whoever look whoever wants whoever quickly wants to rescue, themselves and others, from intense suffering needs to exchange themselves with others. So this means if you want to alleviate the suffering of yourself and alleviate the suffering of others, what you need to learn to do is to exchange the cherishing that you have for yourself, the way that we cherish ourselves with a cherishing of others. So instead of doing everything for ourselves, we need to learn to work for others. This is how we achieve happiness for ourselves and for others quickly.
And it says this is a secret practice. Now the reason it’s a secret practice is most people, if you say the way to be happy is to take on others’ suffering and stop thinking about yourselves, they’re not gonna wanna listen. Alright? So this is why it’s called secret because most people don’t wanna listen. Then it says so this this practice is secret.
You know, it it involves swapping the suffering yourself for the suffering of others. If you don’t take on then it says, if you don’t take on the suffering of others, if you don’t accept to take on the suffering of others, then you don’t become a Buddha, and you stay in saṃsāra. And saṃsāra is in fact suffering. The irony is that in order to get rid of our own suffering, we need to open ourselves to taking on others suffering and not focus so much on getting rid of our own suffering. By exchanging our self-cherishing for other cherishing, we did then develop the ability and the drive to get out of saṃsāra.
And by getting out of saṃsāra, then we experience true happiness. So We may say to ourselves, I’m not going to work for others’ happiness, I’m going to work for my own happiness, but by working for our own happiness we actually perpetuate saṃsāra and there is no instance in saṃsāra of happiness. We may think there’s instances in Samsāra of happiness, but if we start investigating them, we’ll see that none of the happiness we experience in Samsāra lasts, none of the happiness we experience in Samsāra is reliable, and none of the happiness we experience in saṃsāra actually satisfies us. So if we want to experience true happiness, we need to get out of saṃsāra. And in order to get out of saṃsāra, we need to develop the ability to look to others happiness, look to alleviating others suffering instead of looking to alleviating our own suffering and looking to our own happiness.
So in order for us to alleviate our own suffering, then the the text goes on to say, in order for us to alleviate our own suffering, we need to alleviate suffering of others. So if we can give our happiness to others and take on their suffering, this is the way out of Samsāra. Oh, so do you So the Geshe is gonna explain that what that means and the practice that that involves more next week. Okay. Yeah.
Oh, yeah. Be hot. So if you have any questions, then please ask. Yeah. Doesn’t care as long as you concentrate anymore.
Alright? So if you the whole point is to to focus on to come bring your mind into focus. The point of meditation is to bring your mind into focus. So the way that he explains to do that is to start counting the breath. So if you’re focused on counting the breath, mind’s not as distracted.
Right? So if you find that easier to just breathe in and out and count one and two, yeah, then that’s fine. And if you wanna go up through one ostrum, down the other, that’s fine too. Whatever’s comfortable as long as you’re concentrating on the breath. Okay.
So this is a preliminary practice to settle the mind before you get onto the actual practice of meditation. So if we’re talking about what we’re doing here, then there’s two different main types meditation that you do. The first type of meditation is meditating on emptiness. And after that should be after a very small amount of analysis trying to rest your mind in that state. So that’s a placement meditation.
And the second meditation is that we’re just starting talking about now, bodhicitta meditation, taking and giving meditation can be both analytical and placement meditation. Yeah. Mhmm. It’s gonna hit you. Yeah.
Yeah. Uh-uh. Uh-huh. Says standing in front of a car and getting wiped out isn’t gonna make the dream end because dying is a dream too. And being reborn is a dream as well.
So the the whole process is is is part of the dream, and the idea of making the dream end is to wake up. It’s not to it’s it’s not that you can it it will end in any particular way. But but he said this idea of a of no. So he said unless you want to die, he doesn’t suggest standing in front of cars. But that example actually can also give us an insight into what we’re talking about here.
It is that we’re dealing with our perception of things, that we’re dealing with how we relate to things. So usually we relate to a car as a mode of transport. But if you think about it, you could also relate to a car as a weapon as well because so many things die from cars during the daytime, either animals or humans or whatever it is. So it’s the way that we relate to things. We have to understand that the way that we relate to things isn’t solid.
And the way we without thinking about it, think of things as being standardly existing in a certain way. Yeah? But what we have to understand is that they only exist the way that we relate to them. Alright? So if we can relate to a car as a car, as a means of transport, we can relate to it as a weapon, we can relate to all sorts of things.
So what we need to keep reminding ourselves is that things aren’t as they appear. Alright? So we need to keep reminding ourselves that even though we may instinctually or instinctually relate to things as being solid and independent and having their own existence, they are only, they do only exist the way that we relate to them. Right? They don’t have anything from their side.
So that’s what we’re reminding ourselves. We’re not telling ourselves it’s just like a dream so it doesn’t matter. We’re reminding ourselves that they don’t the things that we relate to don’t have any independent essence to them. Okay. So Geshe-la said that it’s not actually possible to take on other people’s karma.
If it was possible to take on other people’s karma by their illnesses and so on, then the Buddhas would have taken on our karma. Alright? And we wouldn’t have a problem. So, but each individual creates the causes for their own experiences. Alright?
So, each individual has to experience the results of their own karma. So he said it’s not possible to take on other people’s illness and experience as an illness. The whole point of doing this exercise is a mental exercise to develop the strength to want to help others even at the expense of your own happiness. So it’s a mental exercise. So if you’re starting to feel sick from taking on other people’s, from this idea of visualising other people’s suffering, it’s not something that’s coming from them, it’s something that’s coming from you.
So if you have started to feel tension or sickness from the other people, from visualizing taking on other people’s suffering, it’s something that you’re creating. Not something that’s happening by necessarily doing this process because this is purely a mental process. It’s strengthening your mind, strengthening your ability to be compassionate. So if you have this idea that taking on their illness is going to make you sick, then it could possibly make you sick, but only because you have that idea. So if you can say this is a mental exercise and I’m developing my courage, I’m developing my ability to think of others, then it’s not possible for it to make you sick.
So you can’t you can’t actually take he said it’s not possible to take on other people’s suffering. This is a mental exercise with him. Uh-huh. Oh. Okay.
Geshe-la said that he thinks Okay. So Geshe-la said that it can definitely help them, you know, even in terms of if someone has the karma to have someone doing created the causes to have someone doing Tonglen for them or this giving and taking practice for them, it means that they’re acting as a reason for the person to be doing something positive. So they create positive karma from having you do it. Does that make sense? It’s like an interconnected thing.
So it can help them. It can help their mind because you’re you could because if they have this idea of someone trying to take on their suffering or doing this meditation practice, by you being compassionate towards them in that way, that will help their mind. Alright? So he thinks that it’s definitely gonna help them. Right?
They’re creating positive karma by you doing that for them. Yeah? And you’re also being a positive influence on them. Alright? So it’s definitely gonna help them.
But he thinks the best way to try perhaps to deal with illness is to take medicine. He said, Tonglen is certainly not going to harm anyone. The giving and taking practice is certainly not going to harm anyone. So if you can do it, it’s really good. But please don’t do it instead of anything else.
I said, anything that you have at your disposal to help your friends in terms of medicine, in terms of care, in terms of all of these things, you should use all of those things. And that includes having a positive attitude towards them. That includes having a compassionate attitude towards them, is where this practice comes in. So it’s certainly not gonna harm them. It probably will help them, but it’s better to take medicine as well.
Yeah. Oh, hang on. Sorry. There’s one more thing. Because he said sorry.
That we’re dealing the the reason that people get sick is because they’ve created causes and conditions for sick so that we’re where they’re experiencing the results of their karma. Right? So to to wipe out, the kind of negative karma that’s going to make someone sick by just merely doing giving and taking practice is very difficult. There’s some very strong causes for them to develop this. The best thing to do is to try and create positive things for them.
So doing this kind of meditation is positive. But it’s very difficult to have a strong enough meditation where you’re going to complete and get rid of that negative karma. So is beneficial, but to also take into consideration anything else that you can do, any other kind of this is one of these things to translate because the word in Tibet Tibetan for karma is action. Right? So he he said, any other actions you can engage in.
So there’s not much difference. We can sometimes have a different idea in our head between like some kind of cosmic kind of karma and then doing something. But in Tibetan and Sanskrit, there is no difference. Alright? So he said the karma that they have accumulated in the past can also be alleviated by doing something about the illness like medicine or operations or whatever it is as well.
So by doing things, doing positive things, practical things as well as Mhmm. Suffering. Mhmm. Mhmm. How would you do that?
Sure. Overwhelming feeling. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Having this feeling of being overwhelmed by other sufferings is a form of self-cherishing.
Alright? Because it’s a it’s a thinking about how you feel about something. I feel sad about this. I feel overwhelmed by other people suffering. Right?
You said, but it is very very likely that that would come up in a dominant practice. That is something that is one of the means that you may be doing in the right way. Right? Because it’s attacking your sense of self. It’s attacking your sense of me being important.
So he said, What you need to separate out here then is a process of thinking from a process of meditating. I said, So this is what’s happening from your meditation, examine that thought. You need to think about that way of thinking or that experience of sadness. And he said, it’s about learning how to think properly. Because if you think about that experience of sadness properly, you can turn it around.
So the way that you’re the reason that you’re feeling sad is because you feel overwhelmed by other people’s suffering. But that is a kind of a very personal response, a very self focused response. And if you can try and look at it in terms of a process as opposed to how it makes you feel, then that may be helpful. So if you think, okay, what’s happening here is that positive things create positive results. Negative things create negative results.
So self-cherishing creates suffering. This suffering is a result of self-cherishing that everyone’s experiencing. It’s a result of self-cherishing. It’s created by them focusing on themselves and following their negative emotions. So by doing something positive like this process, I’m working to alleviate suffering.
And so if I’m doing something to alleviate suffering, then that’s a very positive thing. That’s something to be happy about. If I’m just focused on how it makes me feel, then that’s a negative thing. So if you can say, what I’m doing here is positive, I’m doing something to alleviate suffering and that is something that makes you happy. Know, if you’re doing something to alleviate suffering and you can focus on that idea, then that’s something that would lift the mind as opposed to making it depressed.
So if you focus on the idea of, oh, there’s so much suffering, then you’re going to get down. If you remind yourself that this meditation, this idea of taking on other suffering is a way to alleviate suffering, then that’s something that can lift you up and make you feel happy about what you’re doing. Oh, yeah. So what’s been happening since forever is that we’ve been thinking about ourselves and trying to make ourselves happy. And by thinking about ourselves and trying to make ourselves happy, we haven’t got very far.
Where we we continue to perpetuate saṃsāra. We continue to create the causes for saṃsāra, and there’s no happiness in saṃsāra. So we’re in this cycle of wanting to make ourselves happy, and by wanting to make ourselves happy, doing things that don’t make us happy. And this cycle is how we perpetuate saṃsāra. The thing that happens then if we’re doing something again and again and again, and by again and again, it’s almost every moment of our experience, that it becomes such an ingrained habit that it’s very hard to break.
So we’re trying to break a habit of thinking for us about just ourselves and trying to start focusing on others because what we need to remind ourselves is that even though we’ve tricked ourselves into thinking, thinking about ourselves will make us happy, it doesn’t. It makes us miserable. It makes us stuck in saṃsāra. So in order for us to really be happy, we need to start thinking about others. But it’s a big turnaround for our mind, so we have to do a lot of work to try and turn it around.
But if we wanna know why we’re unhappy, it’s because we concentrate on ourselves, because we’re focused on ourselves, on trying to satisfy our whims. So if we keep reminding ourselves of that, then that’s training the mind. Oh, yeah. And and the other thing is that the beginning was, which I forgot to say is, self-cherishing is very bad. Oh, yeah.
Is there anyone Okay. He said it happens, and I said, do you why do you think it happens? And he said, oh, if you have two people and they had things in common that they agreed on in the beginning, and then in the in the future, they don’t have things in common that they agree on, then they go their separate ways. And he said it’s also very strange because there’s some people that get better once they’re divorced and others that get worse. Oh, dear.
Okay. So there isn’t the same sort of thing as there is in in Buddhism, there isn’t the same sort of thing as there is in Christianity in some quarters that that divorce is a bad thing. Right? Said specifically because the Buddha wasn’t much interested in marriage. Alright?
So he didn’t say anything about it much either way. The main thing he’s talking about was becoming a monk or a nun. So he doesn’t talk about marriage, so it’s up to the individual. There is a the the Buddha did say that if people wanted to this is the only thing that he actually said about marriage well, not marriage, but being it it wasn’t technically marriage, but being with someone. If you wanted to be a lay Buddhist practitioner to practitioner, to not have more than one partner at a time.
Right? That’s the only thing that he basically said about it. And and then Geshe-la said, you know, it’s funny that because people tend to get divorced cause they want to be happy, they got married because they wanted to be happy. Neither of them seemed to really work. And then and then he said that, you know, he thinks it’s he said he would think more about getting married than getting divorced.
Because if you are going to get married, it’s very important or it’s good to check out to see whether you get on well with the person. Not just whether that you feel happy or bliss around them, but that you get on well with them and he would spend more time figuring out getting on than he would if something’s not working, separating. Yeah. Actually, he was. All sorts of things happen.
You know? Oh, dear. And the only thing to he’s he would think would be important to think about in gang divorce is if you have children, they they are looked after well. Apart from that, he doesn’t think it’s that bad. Yeah.
Not quite. Yeah. Focus the mind. Focus. Focus the mind.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because he what usually happens is our mind goes after one thing after another after another. And what we’re trying to do is to try and bring the mind in a little bit.
Bring the mind in turn a little bit, not have it chasing after external things as much. So that’s why you focus on the breath, to bring the mind inward. Yeah. Yeah. Breath.
Okay. So the problem is focusing on your breath or Okay. He said the problem with focusing with meditating just on your breath, and the reason that it’s called a preliminary, is that your breath isn’t anything necessarily positive. It just is. It’s what’s called a neutral object.
Alright? So you focus first of all on neutral object and then you try and focus on something that’s positive object, an object that develops the mind. Alright? So I said that’s why I talk about emptiness or body usually in those instances. So he said that if you just keep meditating on your breath, you’re not achieving much.
You’re developing a you’re settling your mind, but you’re not cutting through anything. So he said that if you’re if he wants you to think about what you mean when you say he said he he needs to look at what his means when his mind goes all over the place when he’s thinking about emptiness. Alright? So he said, it’s not as if you can automatically have a single point of concentration on emptiness. Alright?
If you’re examining emptiness, if you’re thinking is it like this, is it like that, is it like this, that is meditation. It doesn’t have to be single pointed. It’s analytical. And until you get to the point where you’ve recognized emptiness, which is very hard, that is what meditating on emptiness is. thinking very, very clearly about how things exist and that’s what’s called analytical meditation.
So it’s not just all over the place thinking. He said, you start thinking about things you’re attached to and things like that, that’s not very positive, then you have to keep bringing your mind back to the idea of emptiness. But thinking about emptiness is is analytical meditation. So he just said that for he said for beginners like us, including himself in this, so he said for beginners like us, most of our meditation is looking at things. It’s not meant focusing single pointedly on something.
Because in order for us to be focusing single pointedly on something, we need to know what we’re focused on. So there’s no point focusing on something when we don’t know it. Alright? So I said that we keep analyzing in in a meditative state, analyzing things like in a calm meditative state, calm state, analyzing things. And then if we do a placement meditation, then we can do that separate.
But you don’t actually get to the stage where you can do placement meditation on emptiness or placement meditation on bodhicitta until you figure out what it is. So that’s very difficult. There’s actually in Okay. So in texts and in teachings, you’ll hear the same a similar process gone through over and over again. And it’s what there’s a systematic reasoning that’s described called things like dependent origination or the lack of one or many.
There’s a system of looking for emptiness. And then you’ll hear it talked about or you’ll read about it all the time. And if you can go through in your meditation, go through one of those systems trying to find yourself or something, then that’s the way that you analytically meditate on emptiness. Oh, yeah. Okay.
It’s hard enough. Please?