Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Opening with Śāntideva’s assertion that all the Buddha’s teachings exist solely to reveal the wisdom of emptiness, Geshe Pema Tsering spends the first half of this 45-minute session building the philosophical case. He traces the ladder of tenet schools from Vaibhāṣika up to Prāsaṇgika, distinguishes the two emptinesses — of person and of phenomena — and uses a “search for the car” exercise to show that no carness survives analytical scrutiny without collapsing into nihilism; things exist, but only by mere label. He then applies the same analysis to the self, showing how the strong habitual sense of “I” dissolves under investigation. The session turns next to the Seventy Topics curriculum: the knower aspect of the antidote class, its three divisions (knower of bases, knower of paths, knower of all aspects), and brief notes on their 27 and 36 subcategories. For students already working through the Clear Ornament of Realizations.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 01 ST8 2003 08 14.mp3
UUID: ad421eb4-5007-4860-a7fa-422a10cbecbd
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: Seventy Topics (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2003-08-14
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 44.9 minutes
Words: ~3,342
And it. So in the Bodhicaryāvatāra, then the Śāntideva says that all of these different branches, the Buddha spoke all of these different branches, in order to elucidate or to show the wisdom of the Buddhas. So what this means is that all the teachings of the Buddha were only for one purpose, and that was to show the wisdom of emptiness to sentient beings. Now the reason that we need to know the wisdom of emptiness is because if we have wisdom understanding emptiness then we are able to cut through our ties to this life and we can stop experiencing suffering. So all of the teachings of the Buddha, that is, the Buddha taught Sūtra and Tantra, he taught the four different tenet schools with regards to Sūtra and the four different the four different levels of of Tantric practice.
The the the action, the the action, action, the behavior, yoga, and highest yoga. Is it not? Hello? So so all of this was taught so we could develop this wisdom understanding emptiness. Because if we don’t have the wisdom understanding emptiness, if you didn’t teach us how to develop that, then it would be setting a dangerous precedent because if there was no one explaining that, then there would be no chance for people to realize it. And if people couldn’t if people didn’t have a chance to develop this wisdom understanding emptiness, then there’d be no way to cut through self grasping.
And self grasping is a cause for us to create karma and therefore experience suffering. We really need to develop this wisdom understanding emptiness to stop our suffering. This is the main focus of all the Buddha’s teachings. So Buddha taught all these teachings were to develop, for us to develop this understanding of wisdom. But the wisdom that understands emptiness directly is incredibly difficult for us to understand even intellectually.
So he taught these different tenet schools in order that we could work our way through them and then develop this insight finally. So in order for us to understand the most subtlest viewpoint of the Prāsaṇgika or consequentialist school, then he taught the autonomous Svatāntrika school. So, and even if we couldn’t understand that, then he taught an easier description of emptiness through the means of the mind only school or the Chittamatran school. And if we couldn’t understand that, then he, in order for us to understand that, then he taught the Sautrāntika or Sūtra school, and then in order for us to understand the Sautrāntika school, in turn he taught the Vaibhāṣika, the particularist school. So by working through these, then we can understand the most subtle view, which is the prasangika view.
So there’s two different types of that was taught within the from the point of view of the Prāsaṇgika school, the two different emptinesses that I taught from the point of view of this school are the emptiness of person and the emptiness of phenomena. Now, the emptiness of person is the mind that understands or turns around the idea of the clinging to a truly established being. And the selflessness of the emptiness or selflessness of phenomena is the mind that turns around the clinging to a truly established phenomena. Now with regards to this, our aggregates, the collections of different things that make up our five aggregates, the selfless the grasping to them as being truly existent is grasping to the the self of phenomena, but the labeled I that we also grasp at is the selflessness of the person. So, one of these things we are realizing is the lack of any inherent excuse me, I, and then we have the understanding of the lack of any inherent phenomena.
So this selflessness of the person, what the selflessness of persons has to negate, what it has to abandon is the mind clinging to the person as being truly existent. Now this mind clinging to the person as being truly existent needs to have an antidote or something that is opposite to that in order to knock it out or get rid of that thought. So, for example, if we see a very, very small vase on Geshe la’s desk, now we look at that and we think, okay, that vase exists. If we take the vase away, then we look there and we say, okay, there’s no vase there, then seeing that there is no vase there gets rid of the idea that we had in our head that there was a vase there. The two different conceptions are mutually exclusive.
They can’t both exist at the same time. We can’t think that there is a there and there’s not a vase there at the same time. So, order for us to get rid of this mind clinging to true existence of a person, then we have to develop the mind that sees the non existence of a truly established person. Because only by developing a mind or the thought that sees the non existence of a truly established person can we get rid of this idea we have that there is a truly established person? Because the way that it appears to us is that there is a truly established person.
If we think about it, we think, I, I, I, I am doing this, I am doing that. And that I appears to us as being truly established, and not just the I, we see things, we see our arm, and we think my arm is a solid thing, it exists, it’s here, it’s truly established. We have that, it appears to us being thus. It appears to us as being truly established. So in order for us to get rid of that idea, we have to develop the mutually exclusive mind with regards to that idea, which is the mind seeing that phenomenon aren’t truly existent.
Okay. So the reason that we used to establish this, the fact that things don’t inherently exist, is because if we look for them, we can’t find them. We can’t find their s ness, their ness. So for example, if we think about a car or then we’re trying to find the carness of car, where do we look for it? What is it that defines the car as a car?
If we think about it, the wheels don’t make a car, the body of the car doesn’t make the car, the motor doesn’t make the car, the steering wheel doesn’t make the car, the seat belt doesn’t make the car. And if you go through it, nothing in that car establishes the carness of car. There’s nothing in there that we can say that’s the essential part of the car. So, if we keep looking for it, we can’t find it. We can’t find the car.
We can find bits of things, but we can’t find the car. So then we think, well, the car mustn’t exist at all, then the car must must be a non existent thing. But then we look at it and it’s there. Right? So we go, okay, that’s a car.
So the way that it does exist is that we label it as such. We designate that group of things as being a car. We say, that’s a car. So that’s how it exists by us merely labeling it. So, that means that the car doesn’t exist inherently, it doesn’t exist truly, but it exists as a label that we give it.
So it’s just merely labeled. So the same way that the same process that we use to establish the car doesn’t exist inherently, we can use to establish that we don’t exist inherently as well. Because if we start looking for ourselves, then we can’t find ourselves anywhere. Now, we don’t think like this usually though. We usually have this very strong grasping at our sense of self.
We think, okay, I feel miserable. I don’t want to be miserable. I want to be happy. I want to go here. I want to do this.
We have this very strong sense of self, and not only that, we consider ourselves to be very important. We think it’s very important that I’m happy, it’s very important that I don’t experience any suffering. We have this sense of self, we hold this sense of self very tightly, But if we start looking at it, then we can’t find this self. We can look in our body, and then we can’t find our self in our body because just the body doesn’t make the self. And then if we look to our feelings, then we can’t say our feelings of suffering and happiness, we can’t say that that makes up who we are.
And then all the way up through our consciousnesses and the different thoughts we have, we can’t say that any thought or any of our consciousnesses can be designated as being us. There’s no us to look for. But because we think that there’s an object there that is us, then that acts as a cause for us to experience all these different kinds of suffering. So we start with this process of looking for something. Eventually, we can’t find it, and then we may come up with the idea that it doesn’t exist at all, but then it does terminologically exist, so we have to see things as only terminologically existing and not existing from some inherent characteristic within that thing.
So this is a process that we go through in order to establish this understanding, because once we understand this, then we can realize once we can realize this, that’s when we realize emptiness. When we realize the lack of inherent existence in phenomena, that’s when we realize emptiness. So, have to keep going through this process. The reason that we say something is empty is because it’s not inherently existent. The reason that we say it’s not inherently existent is because when we look for it, we can’t find it.
So this is the process that we keep going through. The same thing as looking for something and not finding it is the same thing as if we’re looking for something in the house. Let’s say we were looking for something in Buddha house, and there was there was some thing and we were all looking for it. And if we completely searched everywhere and we couldn’t find it anywhere, then we’d have to say it’s not here. There’s not it’s this this thing isn’t here.
So it’s because this thing is not here, then we’d have to say the the the complete lack of it we’d have to realize the complete lack of it being here. We’d have to realize the emptiness of it being here. And then by realizing the lack of it, then we would see that it wasn’t truly established in the house. Want a better way of translating it? It’s not really established in the house.
It’s the same process when we go through trying to find the self of persons. We search through all our aggregates and we can’t define something as being truly there. So because we can’t find something, then we have to realize it isn’t truly existent, and once we realize it’s not truly existent, that’s when we realize it’s emptiness. But then we have the tendency as well though to think, Okay, it’s completely empty, therefore it doesn’t exist at all, but that’s not the case, because that’s falling into nihilism. Instead, we have to recognize that things do exist, but they exist by a mere term.
They exist by a label or a term. They don’t exist because of their essence. So, the emptiness, because of this, it’s a very difficult thing to realize. But if we don’t realize it, then there’s no end to suffering. There’s no realization of liberation, there’s no realization of nirvana.
Because of these two things, because it’s very difficult to understand, and because it’s the realization we need in order to stop our suffering, that’s why all the Buddha’s teachings were directed towards our understanding of emptiness. So it’s a very difficult thing for us to realize emptiness. In order to realize emptiness, we need to get rid of a lot of obscurations, we need to create a lot of merit, we need to have all these conditions come together that will enable us to realize emptiness directly. So what we need to do is do a lot of good things. We need to do a lot of positive things that can act as a cause for us to have the opportunity to be able to realize emptiness directly.
We need to work towards creating the collection of merit that we need in order to be able to achieve this realization. So, in order for us to achieve this realization of emptiness, then we have to create a lot of merit. The best way to create merit is by doing practices like developing refuge, developing bodhicitta, and working on renunciation. If we don’t have these practices, then we can’t create the circumstances that will enable us to be able to see emptiness directly. Also, we develop those, before we develop a renunciation in the bodhicitta and have this sense of refuge, then we need to focus on other things that will enable our sense of refuge and our sense of renunciation to get stronger.
That’s things like death and impermanence, seeing the shortcomings of saṃsāra, focusing on the fact that we have a precious human rebirth and thinking about karma. These things will enable us to develop the states of mind that will enable us to create a lot more merit that eventually will lead us to be able to realize emptiness. So in order for us to achieve Buddhahood, we need to realize emptiness. In order for us to realize emptiness, then we need to create a lot of merit. So in order for us to create a lot of merit, the best way to do that is to focus on bodhicitta.
So bodhicitta is the thought that all sentient beings will be free from suffering I achieve enlightenment so I can establish all sentient beings in that state and that may they have all the good aspects of happiness. So in order for us to create merit, then we should try and focus and meditate meditate on that thought of bodhicitta for a few minutes. So we need to create merit. Not only are we creating merit by meditating on bodhicitta for a couple of minutes, but we’re also studying seventy topics. And may that also be a cause for us to develop bodhicitta and eventually attain enlightenment.
K. Gesta said, where are we up to? Are up to the easy bit yet? Yeah. Do you have to unpack unions?
Can I have a quick look at it, please? Thanks. So we are up to the four, the eleven topics of complete aspects application. The first of these is the knower aspect of antidote class. Indicated in this context, the definition of a knower aspect of the antidote class is an exalted knower that is able to quell its discordant class. Now an exalted knower is a synonym of a path.
Yeah, and is able to quell its discordant class. Now, anything that’s a discordant class is anything associated with the two things from the former noble Truths that are to be abandoned, namely suffering and the causes of suffering. Anything that is an antidote class is any minds associated with the two things to be practiced from the Four Noble Truths, which are the truth of the cessation and the truth of the path. So it’s the mind getting rid of the mind that uses true paths and true cessation to get rid of suffering and its causes. So it’s the path that does that.
Okay. So the divisions of this the knower aspect that is a knower of bases, the knower aspect that is knower of paths, and the knower aspect that is an exalted knower of all aspects. So these are the three types of knowers that we have done in the seventy topics as well. Geshe-la said, is it making sense? Did he wanted know if it was making sense to you?
He said I want to know. Yeah. And I was saying, he doesn’t have a translation so it’s gonna be difficult. Yeah. It’s difficult in English.
He’s worried about you now because he’s worried that you’re not understanding it properly. Right. Now, was I Right. Now, this this is quote from the clear from the clear realization text. Yeah.
In the translation from Jampa Gendun, I don’t understand what he’s saying, and I looked at it three times. So if you guys do, then that’s cool. So I was going to try and use Jampa Gendun’s one for this, because it says, Primordial awareness meditating on aspects destroying counter states to the subsets of base awareness is the definition of aspects that are asserted to be three, because all knowing awareness has three aspects. Now, the subsets of base awareness are in this one, the knower of bases is a synonym of all phenomena. In the Jampa Gendun one, the instance of knower of basis is a synonym of phenomenon.
So I don’t know. I don’t understand how he’s done this. There’s because how we’re talking about take taking phenomena as the object, right? And with regards to the minds of Bodhisattvas, then there’s three different types of awareness. We have base awareness, knower of bases or base awareness, knower of paths or path awareness, and omniscient or knower of all aspects awareness.
There’s these three different types of awarenesses with regards to all aspects. So there is this one it’s the same word in Tibetan for a knower of bases and the word that means well, he’s got it here of knower of bases, but it’s a base awareness. In one thing, knower of bases is a mind, and the other thing, it’s something that can be known. The one knower of bases is the thing that can be known, and then at the end where it says there are three, which is the knower aspect that is knower of bases, that’s a different knower of bases. Within the knower aspect that is knower of bases, this is the knower of bases that we were talking about before.
They are different topics with regards to. Within the knower of bases there are twenty seven different divisions. We’re not going to go through the twenty seven different divisions here. When we do the fourth chapter of the Clear Ornament of Realizations, that’s when you go into the different divisions. But here, they’re not all listed, they’re not all explained.
But just briefly, aspect of nonexistence, that’s like from nonexistence, there’s these different aspects through the aspect of unshakability, where we don’t know what’s in between at the moment. But there’s four for each of the first three truths with respect to no aspects, and there’s fifteen for the last truth. which is the truth of the path. She’s an yeah. Okay.
So with regards to the knower of paths, then there is thirty six different categories. Okay, so these thirty six are divided into the four different sections with regards to the Four Noble Truths. Four Noble Truths are divided into those from amongst the Four Noble Truths which are causes, being the cause of suffering and the two paths, and those from amongst the Four Noble Truths which are results, being true suffering and true cessation. For the truth of suffering there are eight different divisions within that. For the truth of the origin of suffering there are eight different divisions.
For the truth of the path there is seven. For the truth of suffering, there is five. And for the truth of cessation, there is sixteen.