Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 44-minute commentary, Geshe Pema Tsering opens with a sūtra verse — “There is no validity to true existence; true results are not generated” — and unpacks it as the three doors to liberation: the entity, its cause, and its result are each empty of inherent existence. He then traces a ladder through the four philosophical schools, showing how each school’s presentation of selflessness must be mastered before ascending to the next, with impermanence as the essential first step on the wisdom side and renunciation as the first on the method side. The session then works through five subdivisions of the path of meditation of achieving — distinguished by entity, supreme result, function, temporary qualities, and great aim — before introducing the completely pure path of meditation. Suited to practitioners engaged in systematic study of the Ornament of Clear Realization.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 05 ST6 2003 07 03.mp3
UUID: f2db005f-6ac6-4c57-8e3b-1c0f02d3619a
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: Seventy Topics (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2003-07-03
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 44.8 minutes
Words: ~3,228
In a sūtra, the Buddha Śākyamūni said, There is no validity to true existence. There is no birth to a true result. True results are not generated. Those who know, don’t know, wander in cyclic existence. The one who has great compassion, that is the Buddha, has taught many ways for them to understand.
So, what I was talking about in the first place, that there is no validity to true existence, that there is no birth to a true result, and a true result is not generated. What this is referring to are what’s called the three doors — the three doors of understanding the true nature of reality — the three doors for understanding how things actually exist the first one is that the actual entity itself is free of inherent existence is empty of intrinsic existence the second one is that the cause for any object is also empty of inherent existence. And the third one is that the result of any action is also empty of inherent existence. So because without this understanding of the true nature of reality that beings wander in saṃsāra and because in order for them to get out of Samsāra or cyclic existence, they need to be aware of these three three doors to liberation. Then the Buddha, taught — the Buddhas, that is Buddha Śākyamūni and the other Buddhas they taught different ways for us to understand compassion and understand the wisdom understanding emptiness to get a grip on the wisdom understanding emptiness so the one who has great compassion or the ones who have great compassion is referring to Buddha Śākyamūni and any other being who has developed great compassion in their mind stream so any of these beings all of these beings have taught in many different ways in hundreds of different ways they’ve taught us about emptiness and method so emptiness is wisdom and compassion is method so they’ve taught us about emptiness and compassion or method and wisdom in hundreds of different ways they had to have the compassion in order to be able teach about the compassion and if for us to be able to get out of saṃsāra then we need to understand emptiness compassion has therefore taught in hundreds of different ways to understanding what this is referring to is the different ways the Buddha is taught so if we practice or we first of all analyze and learn the different the hundreds of different ways to understanding and then put them into practice with compassion or the method then we can achieve liberation from suffering and therefore not wander inside of existence anymore so That was the reason that they taught these hundreds of different ways because we could apply all the different ways we could use all the different logical reasonings in order to understand emptiness.
Okay. So because we have these hundreds of different analytical methods for understanding emptiness, for example, the one we were talking about before, looking at the cause and the actual thing and its result and seeing that all three of those are empty of true existence and also that their nature is empty of true existence and that they are not defined by their own characteristics if we use all these many different ways then we should be able to develop an understanding of emptiness by developing an understanding of emptiness we won’t have any more self grasping and because we don’t have any more self grasping then we won’t have the negative negative states of mind like desire and anger and and pride and these things coming about because of the understanding of emptiness will completely stop them so therefore we will get free from saṃsāra. So in general when we’re trying to train our minds, when we’re trying to apply antidotes to particular negative thoughts, then we use it an antidote that’s going to work on that negative thought in that instance. So for example if we think about compassion when we feel anger then that should negate the angry type of mind or the angry thoughts.
If we feel if we work on detachment when we feel attached or desirous towards things then that should negate that negative emotion so that’s the way that we usually work with things is on a moment to moment basis what that that kind of mental training can do is deal with our emotions in the short time our negative thoughts in the short term but actually understanding the true nature of reality understanding and the emptiness of inherent existence means that we apply the direct antidote to the cause for those negative emotions, which is self grasping. Okay so this practice that we do in terms of stopping those negative thoughts or ways of stopping them when they arise by applying their antidote, their temporary antidote, is of immense benefit. It’s not that isn’t a negative thing, it’s of immense benefit to our mind and it helps us to train our mind but it’s not the thing that gets completely rid of these negative emotions. The thing that gets completely rid of these negative feelings or thoughts is understanding the nature of reality, understanding emptiness. That’s the direct antidote to these.
So when we’re talking about the mind understanding how things are empty of true existence, what we’re talking about here is the consequentialist middle way consequentialist school’s point of view about the way that things don’t inherently exist or only exist because of the labels that are put onto them. That is, they don’t exist from their side at all. They only exist because we label them such. Okay, so in order for us to understand this subtle view of the consequentialist middle way school’s definition of emptiness before we understand that we have to be able to understand the autonomous schools definition or concept of emptiness if we don’t understand the concept the autonomous schools idea of lacking true existence or not being truly established then we can’t understand the consequentialist schools idea of it not being being completely free of inherent existence so these two ideas are slightly different, and in order to understand the more subtle consequentialist schools view we definitely need to understand the autonomous schools first likewise before we understand the autonomous school’s version of emptiness that is that things aren’t truly existent before we can understand that as a concept then we have to understand the mind only school’s view of existent of emptiness that is that things are the mind and the object is the mind and object that is focusing on are not empty of separateness so they have the same essence so we have to be able to understand that point of view if we don’t understand that point of view or the point of view of emptiness as presented by the mind only school, the Cittamātra school, then there’s no way that we can understand the point of view presented by the autonomous school.
Okay. So once again before we understand properly the Cittamātra or the mind only school’s version of emptiness that things are the mind and the object that it’s focusing on are empty of separateness then we have to understand the Sautrāntika or Sūtra school’s view and presentation of selflessness. Now the Sūtra school’s presentation of selflessness states what’s called the more subtle version of selflessness, that is that a self is empty of autonomy, empty of the ability to exist by its own mechanism. So that’s the Sūtra school’s version of selflessness. Now before even we can understand that we have to understand the grosser or the less subtle description of selflessness which is presented from the point of view of the particularists or the Vaibhāṣika school. their presentation is what’s called the gross selflessness of persons and they state that a person is empty or a person lacks having a permanent and independent self. So that’s what their gross form of selflessness is stating. So that’s for one that we need to understand in the beginning before we understand any of the others. So before we even try and work with this subtle understanding of emptiness, we need to work with these three ideas that are essential to the grosser selflessness as presented by the Vaibhāṣika school or the particularists. Now they say these three things: that we are permanent, unitary and independent.
Now the antidote to sinking that we are permanent is of course meditation and concentration on impermanence. The antidote to thinking that we are unitary or one thing is to look at our parts and understand our parts and see if we decide whether that is us or not and then to understand that we are not independent independent or autonomous then we need to understand that if it wasn’t for those parts there isn’t anything that exists apart from those parts so that’s understanding that’s an understanding of the lack of independence that we have that there’s no separate independent being within us. So if we understand these three things then we have an understanding of the grossest form of selflessness as presented by the Vaibhāṣika or Particularist school. So, in order to understand this, we need to develop realization of impermanence if we if we have a realization of impermanence then the concept of ourselves being independent and unitary will also cease to exist the concept ceases to exist, the concept of permanence, the concept of permanency — those three things are so connected that if we understand one of them then we understand the other two so when we understand impermanence we understand that we’re not permanent we understand that we’re not unitary and we understand that we are not independent.
So, that means that understanding impermanence is the thing that we need to do before we understand any of the versions of emptiness. Before we have any understanding of emptiness, we need to understand impermanence. After we’ve understood impermanence, then we can go through the other stages understanding emptiness but if we don’t understand impermanence we can’t actually start with those so at this stage for us to do meditations on impermanence is incredibly beneficial and incredibly important So this is from the point of view of wisdom. Now, as we were talking about before, how there was parts to the Buddha’s teaching there was wisdom and method now from the wisdom point of view then we’ve established that understanding impermanence meditating on impermanence and developing a realization of impermanence is the most important thing to do at the beginning. Now, from the method point of view, then the first thing we need to develop is to turn our minds away from Samsāra to develop a renunciation.
Renunciation is key to the method aspect of the Buddha’s teachings in the same way that impermanence is the key to the wisdom aspect of the Buddha’s teachings. Because if we think about it in terms of just saying, Okay, in order to attain enlightenment, we need method and wisdom. We need to know the way, we need to have the wisdom of insight. So if we just think of it in terms of those two things, it doesn’t seem that difficult. It seems something that we’re fairly close to doing because there’s only two things in fact that we need to achieve and then we’re Buddhist.
But if we understand that before we have anything approximating wisdom, we need to have an understanding of impermanence, a realization of impermanence and we understand that before we have anything resembling method we need to have bodhicitta, before bodhicitta we need great compassion, before great compassion we need renunciation and before renunciation we need an understanding of suffering then we can see that it isn’t in fact as easy as it first seemed it is a very long way to go it’s incredibly difficult to attain Buddhahood So even to develop even to develop a liberation for ourselves, even to liberate ourselves from saṃsāra, according to the Prāsaṇgika or the Consequentialist school, in order to develop liberation from saṃsāra, we have to first of all develop an understanding of gross selflessness of the person then subtle selflessness of the person then the mind only schools version of emptiness and then the lack of true existence and then that things are merely labeled and then and only then would do we actually achieve liberation that’s according to the consequentialist school. Now according to the autonomous school then we have to achieve an understanding that things aren’t truly existent, so they say that that’s the final view and that’s the only way that you can achieve liberation, and likewise the Cittamātra school presents the idea that their view is the final one so in terms of us even even achieving liberation we have to develop this this high understanding of high highly difficult understanding of reality in order for us to even just attain liberation.
So in order for us to attain Buddhahood we need to practice these two things: method and wisdom — method being bodhicitta and wisdom being the mind understanding emptiness. Now if we really want to achieve Buddhahood we have to practice this from the point of view of the consequentialist school, so we have to develop an understanding of emptiness that accords with the consequentialist school’s presentation, that is that things are completely devoid of true existence from their side. So, because we need these two things, this method and wisdom, then what we need to do is to think that I, who am not truly established or not established by my nature or truly established by my nature have to attain Buddhahood which isn’t truly established by my nature by its nature in order to be of the most benefit to beings who are not truly established by their nature. And I need to do this quickly so I can become omniscient and help them. And on this thought, then we should meditate. Okay, so we finished the path of meditation of rejoicing, we’re moving on to the path of meditation of achieving.
The definition of the path of meditation of achieving is: An uncontaminated Mahāyāna subsequent clear realizer that establishes the imprint of the final realization which is its object of attainment. Now, an uncontaminated Mahāyāna subsequent clear realizer — to start with that, subsequent clear realizer is a synonym of the path of meditation, and uncontaminated means non-conceptual. So up until now the path of meditation of rejoicing, the path of meditation of dedication, and all the ones we’ve done beforehand relating to the path of meditation have all been in relation to conceptual thoughts, and this is the first one we’ve done which is a non-conceptual thought. So that’s why it’s called uncontaminated. What does it mean by establishes the imprint is that because the Buddha’s mind is also non conceptual that this acts as what’s called the main cause for the realization of omniscience.
And the final realization is the the attainment of omniscience. And we yeah. So this is what it’s working towards.
Okay. So the first of the divisions of five that are related to this topic is the path of meditation of achieving distinguished by way of entity. Now the entity of achieving is its nature or its emptiness or its lack of true existence. This is talking about the path of meditation of achieving by looking at its true nature, which is emptiness. The next one: A path of meditation of achieving distinguished by way of supreme result.
The supreme results are referring to the attainment of Buddha or attainment of omniscience so what this is saying is the path of meditation is distinguished by the fact that it is the cause for attaining enlightenment because the path of meditation leads on to the ground of a Buddha. Right okay so the next one is a path of meditation of achieving distinguished by way of its function so this basically is referring to what the path of meditation of achieving does now what the path of meditation of achieving does is to ripen the continuum of beings or to get them to understand Dharma when they haven’t understood it or understand the nature of reality when they haven’t understood it. In order to do this, it’s working towards enlightenment enlightenment for the benefit of all sentient beings and their own benefit. Their own benefit being that they will receive enlightenment, benefit of all sentient beings being that they will have their continuum ripened by these actions. A path of meditation of achieving distinguished by way of temporary excellent qualities is referring to the fact that on the path of meditation one already has amazing qualities that are getting better and better and understanding which is getting subtler and subtler so this isn’t referring to anything towards which they are working but the actual qualities which the beings with these realizations possess in themselves and which gets stronger and more subtle and more subtle as they progress along the path of meditation.
The fifth one, it says in here: A path of meditation of achieving distinguished by way of great aim, the final excellent qualities and results. Now there is a bit that they have left off for some reason, because it should read something — or maybe another way of looking at it would be that it could read something like: a path of meditation of achieving distinguished by way of having the great aim which is to achieve enlightenment, and it has the ground of the final excellent qualities and results. so that means that the tenth ground is what’s called the resultant ground so it’s referring to the fact that the tenth that that not only do you achieve the tenth ground of a bodhisattva, but you also achieve Buddhahood straight after that. Okay, so there’s two things that it possesses here. It’s distinguished by way of having the great aim for the final excellent qualities — that’s one thing — and also having the resultant ground. so the path of meditation not only has this working towards enlightenment but it also within the path of meditation there is the resultant tenth ground, which is the result of all of the different paths up until that point.
Those two things are included within the path of meditation. So the boundary of the path of meditation of achieving exists from the first ground through to the tenth ground. Okay, so the next one: the completely pure path of meditation now the idea of this is based around the quote from the Clear Ornament of Realization which says: the extremely pure these activities are the path of meditation the knower of paths of the bodhisattvas is explained as such. The definition of a complete pure path of meditation is an uncontaminated Mahāyāna subsequent clear realizer that establishes the imprint of the final abandonment, which is the object of attainment. Right.
Now the yes. I think that’s right. Yep. Okay, so the bit where it says an uncontaminated Mahāyāna, subsequent clear realizer, is the same as in the path of meditation of achieving because this is actually something that’s synonymous with the path of meditation of achieving so an uncontaminated Mahāyāna subsequent