Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 37-minute teaching, Geshe Sonam Rinchen guides students through the philosophical foundations of emptiness by analysing the relationship between self and body-mind. He works through the four-point logical analysis: demonstrating that the self cannot be identical with or separate from the five aggregates, establishing that selfhood is neither intrinsically one nor unrelatedly plural. He then explains meditation technique: alternating analytical investigation with placement meditation to develop intellectual understanding that gradually becomes direct insight. The core practical message applies to daily life—remembering that things lack inherent existence weakens attachment and reduces emotional reactivity, even at beginner levels. He concludes with the three guidelines for ethical action: beginning with altruistic intention, performing deeds with the understanding that things lack intrinsic existence, and dedicating positive energy toward universal enlightenment. Pitched at serious practitioners studying the Lamrim path.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 08 6PQ.mp3
UUID: 8e716dc2-27b7-40dc-8fad-cfbc3d8d1056
Teacher: Geshe Sonam Rinchen
Collection: The Six Perfect Qualities (Geshe Sonam Rinchen)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 36.7 minutes
Words: ~3,274
It would have to be either completely identified with the body mind combination or it should exist as something separate from the body and mind and findably so. So there are only two ways that things can exist. They either exist as a single unit or they exist in terms of plurality. Right? They’re either singular or plural.
So when we’re trying to do this kind of analysis, when we’re trying to do this, we must first of all convince ourselves that there are only two ways that things can exist. So this requires a little thought. But one has to look to see how things can exist, what possibilities there are. And we’ll come to the conclusion that there are only these two ways that things can exist. Either they’re one or they’re many.
Right? They’re plural. Yeah. If the self and the aggregates, body mind, right? If the self and body mind combination are one and the same, then they have to be inseparably one and the same.
There can’t be any difference between them at all because the self is truly or intrinsically existent. If it exists in this solid findable way, then it must be findable in the body and mind. It must be identified, completely identical with the body and mind. And it would mean then that the body and mind are the self. The body and mind are the self.
So, in that case, if the body and mind or the five aggregates were the self, then there would be lots of problems because there are five aggregates five factors that make up the psychophysical being that we are. Right? So then there should be five selves. Or we can talk about the person in terms of being made up out of six elements, that is the four normal elements and then consciousness and space. So that makes six.
So if we talk of the person made up out of these six elements, water, earth, fire and air and then consciousness and space. So if we talk of the person consisting of these six, if these six are the self, then how can they be? Because then there would have to be six selves. So if you look at it very carefully then you see that there couldn’t be I mean obviously the self couldn’t be identified with those five aggregates, couldn’t be identical with those five aggregates or with those six elements that make up the person because otherwise there would have to be six persons or five persons. In the same way if they were completely identifiable you couldn’t have five things that are differentiable as factors making up the person.
So whichever way you approach it, it seems impossible that the self is completely identical with the component parts. So whichever way you arrive at the conclusion that the self can’t exist in in the way it appears to exist, then you’re ascertaining the absence of the person, of the self, the way it normally appears. So if this approach isn’t helpful for you, if you can’t find if you can’t come to an understanding of the non existence of the self, the way it appears by using this approach, then you can use the approach that when we talk about my body or my mind, we are separating the body and the mind from that which owns them. I mean we are talking in terms of an owner and that which is owned. Now if the self were completely identical with body and mind, we wouldn’t be able to make this difference.
We wouldn’t be able to talk in terms of my body and my mind. So this in a way can also be used, this approach if one thinks about this approach, it can be used as a way of convincing oneself that the self isn’t actually the body and the mind. Then also, if the body, if the self were the body or the body were the self, for example, since the body comes to an end, since the body is left behind at death, it would necessarily have to be that the self too comes to an end at death. So if by whatever approach you use and there are many many different approaches which we can’t go into at this point because there are still other things to be explained. So if you use one of these different approaches and there are many different techniques available for arriving at the conclusion that the body and mind and the self are not identical.
When you come to that conclusion, you’ve established the third of the fourth points. In other words, that the two are not inseparably one or are not identical. So now the other thing you’ve got to look at then is whether the self, the way it appears to you could exist as something separate from the body and mind. And although not necessarily, I mean it’s not necessary things which are separate are unrelated. If things existed in the seemingly independent way, in the independent way that they seem to exist, if they existed in that way, they would necessarily be unrelated.
So if the self and the aggregates, if the self and the body and mind were unrelated and separate because they would necessarily have to be unrelated if they were separate because of the way they appear, because of the way the self appears, the way it appears so solid and independently exist. So if the two were separate, then it should be possible to remove the five aggregates or the body and mind and actually able to pinpoint the self in the same way that you can remove the flowers from the table and point to the table. So there too, there are various approaches which you can use to establish that the two are not unrelatedly separate. Right? So they’re neither body and mind and self are neither identically one nor are they unrelatedly separate.
And then you’ve established the fourth point. So these four points are used in trying to establish self the way it appears to us. And we need to think about them again and again and deepen our understanding of them if we want to penetrate to an understanding of how the person actually exists. So when you come to an understanding of the absence of this self in the way that it appears to one, when you come to an understanding of the absence of that self that normally appears to us, then you are reaching an understanding of emptiness. And when you reach an understanding absence of that self that you were seeking, when you come to an understanding of the absence of the self that you were seeking, the self that appeared to you doesn’t appear at that time.
In other There’s just an absence of that self. And the conventionally, validly existent self won’t appear to you at that time either. So the problem is that when you experience the absence of the self that you were seeking, of that solidly existent, intrinsically existent self that normally appears to you, when you experience experience the absence of that, it’s quite common for people like us, people who are beginners, to experience some fear because the validly existent self doesn’t appear to them at that moment. So space is the absence of obstruction and tangibility. That’s what space is.
It’s an absence of obstruction and tangibility. And in the same way, when you experience the emptiness of the person, the self that you were seeking, the solid self that you were seeking, you’re experiencing merely a non affirming negation. In other words, you’re experiencing a mere absence of something. There’s nothing positive there. There’s only the absence of something that you’re experiencing at that moment.
And then you fix your concentration which is why you need to have calm abiding to be able to do this effectively. You then fix your concentration on that absence, on that mere absence. So then you fix your mind, you set your mind on that absence, that emptiness, hold it mindfully, and hold it mindfully without allowing the mind to wander anywhere else. And as soon as that feeling, that experience of absence of what you were searching for, emptiness of what you thought existed, right, that absence of what you were searching for starts to fade. As soon as that experience starts to fade then you begin again using some analytical processes, using an analytical approach to bring yourself to that experience again.
So in this way you alternate between special insight meditation on emptiness which is analytical meditation which is designed to induce the experience. And then as soon as you induce the experience or you induce the conviction that the self doesn’t exist the way it seemed to exist, then you set your mind on that and you remain on that. And then as soon as that weakens, then you again analyze and so you alternate analysis with placement. So in this way, we need to alternate, right? If we’re doing this kind of practice, we alternate between placement and intellectual process.
In other words, you induce an intellectual understanding of emptiness. Through analysis, you induce an intellectual understanding of emptiness Then you place your mind, you set your mind on that ascertainment, on that ascertainment, and then as soon as that ascertainment weakens, then you re induce it. But gradually through familiarizing yourself with this, through familiarizing yourself with that, your understanding becomes more and more subtle and eventually you reach a direct experience of emptiness. As soon as you are able to gain a direct experience of emptiness, then it acts as a real strong counteraction to this conception of the self, to this wrong conception of the self. I mean it’s not until then that you completely escape the influence of that wrong conception.
Up to then, although the power of that wrong conception is slowly being weakened, you are still under its influence. But as soon as you gain experience of emptiness, you stop being under the control of that wrong conception. So what happens then? When you’re no longer under the influence, when you’re no longer dominated by this conception, this wrong conception of the self, you no longer are dominated by negative emotions which arise from that wrong conception. And then in turn you don’t create the actions, you don’t perform the actions which are motivated by those negative emotions.
And in this way you no longer take rebirth in cyclic existence. You escape from rebirth in cyclic existence through this process. So it doesn’t happen all at once of course, but gradually, gradually you are able to become more and more familiar with this experience and then gradually all the negative things fade out. You no longer need to take rebirth in cyclic existence as a result negative emotions and contaminated actions. So you may still take birth in cyclic existence for others benefit and so on, but you’re no longer propelled.
You’re no longer propelled. You’re no longer under the compulsion of these negative emotions and actions which are caused by them. So this is the ultimate benefit of gaining an understanding of emptiness and trying to cultivate that experience. But even for us, even for us people who are beginners and who are not able to do this kind of meditation properly at this point because we don’t have sufficient understanding of what it’s all about. So even for us it’s very very useful to remember that things don’t exist in the solid way that they appear to us.
That they don’t have this intrinsic or inherent existence the way they seem to have even that can be very very beneficial in our daily lives. About the self, while the self appears so concretely existent to us, we have tremendous attachment to the self. And as soon as we have such strong attachment to the self, we instantly respond to anything which seems to be harming the self with anger and aggression. And it’s not difficult for us to see how all our difficulties and problems spring from that. So if one can see the dependent nature of the things which surround us, of the situations we find ourselves in.
And if we can see that the self is if we can try to understand that the self is not the way it appears to us, but that it doesn’t have this inherent and intrinsic existence, but is merely something which is attributed to our body mind and combination. The tremendous attachment to it decreases a little. It diminishes a little. And so the strength of the desire and hatred, attachment desire and hatred aggression that we feel also diminishes diminishes as a result of that. We have tremendous attachment to our own bodies to pleasant feelings, to happy feelings, pleasant feelings.
We have tremendous attachment to these, tremendous aversion to unhappy feelings, unpleasant feelings. It’s for sure that our attachment is rooted in this apprehension, in this perception that we have of ourselves and our bodies and minds. If we can see, if we can think about our bodies and our minds, our feelings not being inherently existent, not being intrinsically existent, it definitely helps us to diminish to some extent at least the negative emotions that we experience. We know we can see for ourselves how attached we are to our bodies because although our bodies are actually quite unclean, nobody likes to hear about that. People feel really upset when anybody explains about the body being unclean because we have this very very strong image of our bodies as somehow being clean.
We have a strong feeling about that. Yeah, so it’s for sure that when somebody is explaining about how unclean the body is, a lot of people feel like leaving. So because there’s no doubt that our bodies are unclean, if we think about it a little bit, it’s not hard for us to realize. But we have this very, very strong feeling of our own bodies being clean, being somehow intrinsically clean and alright. So we don’t like to hear anything about that.
If we can just relinquish this very strong hold we have on the self, the strong clinging we have to the idea of the self, to strong attachment we have to the body. Not to say that we should neglect the body, but just to decrease the attachment. If we can decrease that, we’ll be less tormented by these overwhelming emotions, by our passions, and we’ll find that at the same time the difficulties and problems problems we meet with will also decrease. So if we have something like a pen that we really like very very much, that we’re very attached to, that we write with every day and we lose it, If we have been able to understand its lack of inherent existence, if we have been able to see it that it’s merely something which is attributed to a collection of parts. Even if our understanding of that is intellectual, just merely remembering that, merely remembering that somehow soothes the upset of having lost it. So these are some guidelines about how to approach meditation on emptiness and what the advantages are.
The advantages are far reaching even at our stage. It’s really important for us to try and seek an understanding of emptiness since it is so essential if we want to find release from the kind of existence that we lead at present. If we want to during meditation sessions there are certain techniques such as this four point analysis which was just very briefly described. Certain techniques can be used and which have been found to be effective in bringing one to an understanding of emptiness. So during our meditation sessions, we need to try to concentrate, ascertain the absence of the thing that we’re trying to negate and place our minds on that.
And during the rest of our lives, you know, when we’re not actually sitting down but when we’re just going about our daily activities, we have to try and cultivate the illusory-like appearance of things. We have to try and see things as being like illusions. And when we think of our dreams, in our dreams all sorts of places and all sorts of people, animals appear. So because of the fact that we are asleep and dreaming, these things appear to us, but they don’t actually exist in the way that they appear. Right?
They appear like real people and like real houses, real animals in our dream, but they they don’t actually exist in the way that they appear. In a similar way, whatever we see appears to exist of its own side independent of attribution by name and thought. And they appear in this way, they appear in this intrinsic or solidly existent way because of this underlying conception of the self and because of the underlying misconception which we have with regard to reality because of this conception that we have of both the self and other phenomena as existing really solidly in and of themselves. And that’s why everything appears in this way. Actually, they don’t exist in this way at all.
What we see in the mirror seems to be a real face. But actually there’s no real face there at all. There is no real face at all but through the presence of your face here and the mirror there a reflection occurs. A and a mirror image occurs. In the same way, does not exist the way it appears to us.
Everything does not exist the way it appears to us, but through the coming together of causes and conditions it nevertheless exists. These things all exist. They simply don’t exist in the way that they appear to us. So when we began, we we began by talking about the altruistic attitude. Actions we do, whatever activity we engage in, we need to approach it with this altruistic attitude.
And then whatever we do, whatever we do, the actual activity that we’re performing should be accompanied by an understanding that things don’t exist inherently, that they don’t have this solid inherent, intrinsic existence. And when we conclude an action, when we conclude a positive action, we shouldn’t want it to act as a cause for our own happiness in this and future lives only. We should steer that positive energy that we’ve created for all beings to attain perfect and complete enlightenment. So that’s the direction in which we should steer the positive energy. And these are the three guidelines which we should live by and follow in our daily actions.
The intention, having the right kind of intention, and then accompanying the action, whatever action we do with the the right idea. In other words, that things don’t really exist the way they seem to exist. And then by dedicating the positive energy that we create in the correct way. If we are able to do this, then we are working in the way that bodhisattvas work. And if we can do things the way bodhisattvas do, then it doesn’t matter what other people think, whether they say that we’re good or bad, it will be immaterial.
So please do whatever you can in whatever way is possible to work along these lines. And we’ll dedicate the positive energy that we’ve created now, and this is where I’m going to stop.