Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. A student’s question — what happens to a child’s emptiness when the child grows up? — closes this 45-minute commentary with Geshe Pema Tsering reaching for cups, a vase of water, a soccer goal, and a brass bowl to show that emptiness, like uncompounded space, is permanent and changeless. The session opens with a verse from the Three Principal Aspects of the Path on why wisdom must accompany renunciation and bodhicitta, then searches for the self in the five aggregates to establish the Middle Way view of a merely-labeled I — conventionally real but not inherently existent. Geshe Pema Tsering maps how the three principals reinforce one another on the path to Buddhahood, then introduces the four divisions of the perfection of wisdom — natural, scriptural, path, and fruition — before the extended object-by-object Q&A begins.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 03 ST 2003 02 06.mp3
UUID: de1ebdd2-c38f-42c4-8b2f-5cf92c6be38c
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: Seventy Topics (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2003-02-06
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.1 minutes
Words: ~3,517
So Geshe-la started with a quote from the three principal aspects of the path. Though you practice renunciation in bodhicitta mind without wisdom, the realization of voidness, You cannot cut the root of saṃsāra, therefore strive to understand dependent origination. And, the meaning of this is that even if we have if even if we have, renunciation and even if we have bodhicitta, if we don’t have an under if we aren’t in possession of an understanding of the way that things actually exist, if we haven’t, cut, cut through an understanding of things as being permanent as being inherently existent and see them the way that they truly are, which is non-inherently existent, then there’s no way that we can cut, the root of saṃsāra. There’s no way that we can achieve liberation properly. And then a bit that says, therefore, to understand origination.
What they mean by this is that each individual person should be practicing, should be meditating, should be trying to use as many different logical arguments as possible in their mind to try and get an understanding of what dependent origination actually is. And so the way that we start trying to understand dependent origination is by meditating on whether we exist as well, each individual person exists in themselves. By understanding that we don’t exist ourselves, we achieve the realization of selflessness of the person which is the easiest way to understand emptiness. So the way that we go about trying to understand emptiness is by first of all trying to look for some substance in phenomena and the first phenomena that we should be looking at is ourselves. So what we’re trying to find is our self.
If we can find ourselves then we actually exist. If we can’t find ourselves then we don’t exist inherently. So the first place we can look for ourselves is in our body. Are we our mind? Are we our sorry is in our body?
Are we our head? Are we our arms? And the second place we should be looking for it is in our consciousness. Are we are we our mind? And so, the another way that we do this is by, in a more thorough manner is to examine the five aggregates.
So first of all, we look in the aggregate of of our physical aggregate, the aggregate of form. Is this how we exist? Can we find ourselves in the physical aggregate? And then we look for the aggregate of feeling. Is our senses and our feelings?
Are they what we are? And the next thing is the aggregate of discrimination. Oh, the aggregate of compounded phenomena. Is that how we exist? And then there’s the aggregate of consciousness.
Is that how we exist? And then there’s the aggregate of no. Consciousness is the fifth one. Compounded thoughts. Is that how we exist?
Then the fifth one is do we exist in terms our thoughts? So if we go through all these five aggregates, I was just trying to find out what actually compounded phenomena was in terms of our aggregates because I was thinking I don’t know how to translate that. The first one, we can’t find ourselves in our physical form and anything that our senses senses pick up on, that’s not us and that’s what the that’s what the feelings is. Then anything that’s a that’s a feeling that doesn’t come from the senses, comes into compounded phenomena. Anything that isn’t that comes into our compounded thoughts and anything that doesn’t have concreteness is it, is our consciousness.
We can’t find ourselves in any one of these different aggregates. There’s also other people that posit that we are something other than our five aggregates. We are somehow a distinct entity apart from one of those five aggregates. In terms of the way that Buddhism looks at it, in terms of the way that Mādhyamika philosophy looks at it, the only thing that we are apart from our aggregates is a merely labeled I and this eye doesn’t inherently exist. This merely labeled I comes about because of our labeling.
It comes because our mind labels something. It doesn’t come from its side. It doesn’t stand out or stand up for itself and say, This is me. It’s because our mind labels it. It is a merely labeled I and doesn’t exist.
So, sorry, didn’t mean it didn’t exist. I meant didn’t exist inherently. Okay. Because it does exist. It’s not a not existent.
It’s not a not existent because we do merely label it. Our minds do say, Oh, it’s there. But if our mind wasn’t merely labeling something, it wasn’t coming from our mind, would be a nonexistent, because there is nothing that exists apart from the things that are labeled by our minds. Okay. We’re talking about this obviously comes just from the point of view of the Mādhyamika or the Middle Way School.
What happens in that school is that if there’s something that isn’t labeled it doesn’t exist. It doesn’t exist naturally. It doesn’t arise naturally from its own side. It only arises from the thoughts that place it there. If so in this way we have it avoids the two extremes.
The extreme of nihilism, which means it doesn’t exist at all, and the extreme of eternalism, which means it inherently exists. So we have to keep thinking about this over and over again and apply all the different logical means we can to understand it. It’s not something that our mind can just instantly hook on. We have to keep applying once again from our own side that we are labeling things and this is how they come into existence and that from its side it doesn’t arise arise naturally and therefore everything only exists dependent on terminology dependent on the labels that we put on things and doesn’t sorry it only exists conventionally dependent on those labels that we put on with all our senses and exists but doesn’t exist in the way that we think it exists so therefore we have to do a lot of work and use a lot of logical arguments in order to change our own minds. So if we keep thinking in different ways about how emptiness actually exists, this emptiness and that things conventionally exist, they don’t exist in the way that we think they do.
If we keep thinking about that over and over again and meditate on this and actually at the same time accumulate a lot of merit and do a lot of good deeds, then we will come to an understand and direct understanding of emptiness. So, right. So so when we’re going through this process of of understanding the way that things really exist as opposed to the way that we think they exist. If we would start doing this for ourselves and working on ourselves and thinking that we don’t exist in the way that we naturally think we exist, then what happens is, we stop having to do a lot of things to support the thing that we think that exists that doesn’t. So basically we may we spend a lot of time and effort trying to make ourselves feel comfortable and make and get things and accrue things to make ourselves feel better.
But if we realize that we don’t really exist the way we think we do then we don’t spend as much effort doing that. And then we can spend a lot more effort doing meditation and a lot more effort creating merit and eventually achieve liberation. So so what we’ve got to realize is that things exist like they do on telly, that is that they don’t really exist. That this world is is like, the way that we should be viewing it is that this isn’t really happening. It’s like an illusion.
It’s like it is on telly. It’s, it’s not as concrete as I’m thinking it is. And then by concentrating on this, we should be, we our attachment to to things and our negative states of mind will naturally decrease because there’s nothing for them to grasp onto. We won’t have the natural grasping at things that really exist out there because they don’t exist because they’re like an illusion, and we won’t have and get angry if we lose something because it doesn’t really exist because it’s it’s like an illusion. All these thoughts, these negative thoughts would naturally subside.
Once these negative states of mind have subsided and we’re meditating on emptiness and understand that things the ultimate way that things exist and that they don’t exist inherently then what also comes about is that we don’t go around creating any more negativities collecting any more negativities because we have no attachment to things and we’re not we’re not having any of these negative states of mind so the creating new negativities is stopped and at the same time we are naturally creating a lot more merit and a lot more positive minds and we also at the same time are clearing away a lot of the karma that we have accumulated in the past. So then what’s going on is that when we’ve got this understanding of emptiness, concentrating on this, this understanding of the way that things actually exist, concentrating on this in combination with renunciation and bodhicitta, All these three things work together. They help each other out. By these three things helping each other out, we can achieve Buddhahood. We absolutely at the same stages as we are meditating on emptiness need bodhicitta in order to do this.
So the yeah. These three things working together. If we have bodhicitta, then we can have renunciation comes about. If we have renunciation, then bodhicitta comes about. And if we have renunciation in bodhicitta then we can work towards an understanding of emptiness and by these three things working is working together working like a team then that’s how we achieve Buddhahood by these three things working together.
So the way it works is that we have to try and understand the way that things really exist. Because if we understand the way but in order to understand the way things really exist, we have to understand bodhicitta in order to understand bodhicitta we have to understand renunciation in order to understand renunciation we have to have developed some sense of turning away from saṃsāra some sense of stopping our attachments to saṃsāra. In order to achieve that, we need to think about the defects of saṃsāra and how it doesn’t really create us any pleasure in the long run. Once once we’ve done that and realized how we don’t like it and develop renunciation, then we also think, we don’t want anyone else to really go through that suffering either. And then we develop bodhicitta, and then we think, how do we stop anyone else going through that suffering?
And that’s We do this by achieving Buddhahood. What do we need to achieve Buddhahood? We need to understand the way things really exist. If we understand these three things, then we can achieve Buddhahood. Most of us know what suffering is.
Most of us experience suffering in some way. The process that we should be adapting in order to be able to achieve Buddhahood for the sake of all sentient beings is to start with that understanding that we have of our own suffering and then to think about other people and think how we don’t want them to suffer either. Then in order for them not to suffer what we have to do, which is achieve Buddhahood. In order to achieve Buddhahood, we need to understand emptiness. The process goes like this and the best mind to do this with is the bodhisattva mind.
Okay, so we should be concentrating on the merit. Okay. So, we have to think about the merits and all the good things that the five different types of beings, have. Those five different types of beings are hearers and solitary realizers and bodhisattvas and ordinary beings and Ārya Buddhas. All the merits of those five different types of people and our own merit, however small that is, their own collection of merit, however small that is, we should dedicate all that merit to us being able to achieve Buddhahood in order to help all sentient beings.
And the way, one of the ways that we’re going to achieve Buddhahood and to help all sentient beings is by studying the seventy topics, in order to make our understanding greater. So In thinking in this way, then we should meditate. And be thinking, may I quickly, quickly? So yesterday we were yesterday, no. A week ago, just feels like yesterday.
We were discussing or Geshe said we were discuss what the meaning of the perfection of wisdom was. Now today we go on to what the divisions of the perfection of wisdom are. These divisions are done by terminology. It’s a termin ological division, not necessarily a division of the perfection of wisdom into different things. It’s just the different ways that you can refer to the perfection of wisdom or it can be referred something can be referred to as the perfection of wisdom.
Anyway, I haven’t quite finished. There’s a division of four for those. There is the natural perfection of wisdom, the scriptural perfection of wisdom, the path perfection of wisdom and the fruition perfection of wisdom. The first one being the natural perfection of wisdom. That’s actually a synonym with an example of this is emptiness and this is every single phenomenon is actually included within this natural perfection of wisdom. Okay, so, yes, so all phenomena fit into this first division of the perfection of wisdom, which is emptiness.
And he was saying that, David, you asked about what happens to a kid’s emptiness when they become an adult, and he wanted to know if it made sense to answer. Did you understand it? He wants to know if you understood it. Because if you didn’t understand it, he wants to explain it now. Okay.
His explanation is, that we have Okay. So we were going to use vase but we’re going use a cup. Right. So at the moment inside here we have this space inside the cup. Alright.
It’s the space of the cup. If we break the cup, that space still exists. That lack of something inside the cup still exists, but the cup doesn’t exist. The same way but it’s still the same space. In the same way that if you have a child the emptiness of that child once the child ceases to be there because it’s grown up ceases to be a child that emptiness of the child still exists it’s just not the emptiness of the child anymore Does that make sense?
The space inside the cup exists. It’s this air, not the air, the space inside the cup still exists, right? Whether it’s the space inside the cup or if it’s just space. So so the the so in the same way that this this space would still exist if the in the top of the cup, in the in the mouth of the cup, if the cup didn’t exist, then the space inside the cup would still exist it just wouldn’t be the space of the cup the emptiness of the child still exists it’s just not the emptiness of the child anymore it’s just emptiness it’s the emptiness yeah No. That was the wrong language.
I’m really not having a good Yeah. I got it together. Yeah, did that help? Oh, help me. Okay, so there’s water in the vase on Geshe la’s table at the moment and at the moment it’s the water of the vase.
If he chucks the vase on the ground and the water goes all over the ground, the water is still water. It’s just not the water of the vase anymore because it hasn’t changed its nature its nature and its characteristic hasn’t changed all right in the same way the emptiness of the child as when the child doesn’t exist anymore the emptiness is still emptiness it’s just not emptiness belonging to the child anymore but it doesn’t have it hasn’t changed its nature So so in the same way, the glass the water in the vase, if you pour the water from the vase into the water of the cup, right, it’s still water, but it’s not the water of the vase anymore. It’s the water of the cup, but it’s still the same substance. Do you know first of all, do you want us to know if you know if you know do you know if you know what uncompounded space the definition of uncompounded space is? Yeah.
It’s like the it’s like the absence of something inhibiting something. So it’s not actually air because that’s got that’s made up of molecules. So the water doesn’t really work as a good metaphor because it actually changes moment by moment and it’s not a permanent. But uncompounded space which is the space that something takes up, which doesn’t block anything, alright, is a permanent, alright. So at the moment there’s uncompounded space that the glass is taking up.
But if I take the glass away and put the pen, and then, then the pen takes up the same uncompounded space. Yeah. But the uncompounded space’s nature hasn’t changed. It’s just being Hello. Filled up by something else.
Now he wants us to know if you understand. Coffee. Coffee. Okay. So we got a soccer goal.
This is another example. There’s like the soccer goal, right? Inside the soccer goal, there’s space and there’s the uncompounded space and it’s the uncompounded space of the soccer goal. If you knock down the goalposts and knock down the nets, you’ve still got the same space there, but it’s not the soccer goal’s uncompounded space. It’s It’s not the emptiness of the soccer goal, it’s just the emptiness.
Okay. So he said it works with any kind of object. If we turn this belly thing, he just said this thingy. If we turn this thingy over, then the space the the space inside the the lack of something inside this that thingy is is the thingy is thingy space. Right?
The thingy’s emptiness, whatever. And then you take it away, that’s still there. Right? But it doesn’t belong to this anymore. Now do you get it?
Please say yes. Okay. Emptiness. Right. Sure.
He said they’re exactly the same because they’re both what they call permanent so they don’t change, right? So in all their different ways they’re the same because they are there’s not this moment to moment change. So anything that doesn’t change works in the same way. So the emptiness of something and uncompounded space both have the same nature in that they’re both permanent. Now do you get it?
So in the same way, okay, that we put this brass thing on the table and there’s uncompounded space underneath the brass thing is the uncompounded space of the brass thing and then we take it away and it’s still the uncompounded space but it’s not belonging to the brass thing that when you have a child, the emptiness of the child when it grows up is the emptiness of the emptiness of the adult. It’s still the same emptiness and it hasn’t changed its nature. I mean it hasn’t changed in any way. It’s still the same emptiness but it’s just not the emptiness of the child anymore. It’s still emptiness, but it’s not the emptiness of the child anymore.
So in the same way we lift this up then it’s not gonna be this the the uncompounded space of this bowl anymore. Changing every time the brass thingy bowly. It’s not gonna be the emptiness of that anymore. When the child grows up, it’s not gonna be the emptiness. It’s still emptiness.
It’s just not the emptiness of the child anymore. So said, okay. So if I put my hand here, then the emptiness of my hand is here. And if I put my hand there, the emptiness of my hand is here. And wherever I put my hand, the emptiness of the hand is inseparable from the hand.
So if he chops his hand off and there’s no more hand, then then the emptiness of the hand is no more, but emptiness is still because it’s unchanging. Do you understand? He he think he thinks maybe that you you have you have to think about it a bit more. In so much as that where there is something, there is emptiness. But it’s not that there can be something outside of emptiness.
It’s just that everything is not inherently existent. And therefore, because everything is not inherently existent, everything is empty. So now we’re back to this and to think about it a bit. Too