Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 43-minute opening session, Khensur Rinpoche frames his commentary on Je Tsongkhapa’s Three Principal Aspects of the Path around Mañjuśrī’s direct advice to Tsongkhapa: set everything else aside and develop renunciation first. He challenges practitioners who dismiss renunciation as a minor step and jump to exotic techniques, calling this a fundamental mistake. He then maps the three fundamentals — renunciation, awakening heart, view of emptiness — onto the Lamrim, showing each as a necessary precondition for the next. A doctor-and-medicine analogy distinguishes planting predispositions for understanding emptiness from the actual realization needed to uproot ignorance. The Q&A explores two routes to that realization: through awareness of one’s own suffering and through compassion for others. Rinpoche closes by reassuring newcomers that confusion at this introductory stage is entirely expected.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 04 3PA 1993 05 25.mp3
UUID: c06f1bc0-3ac2-470d-b01a-d826ca9acc66
Teacher: Khensur Rinpoche
Collection: 3 Principal Aspects of the Path (Khensur Rinpoche)
Date: 1993-05-25
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 43.4 minutes
Words: ~2,052
And the same holds true for the awakening mind, the view of emptiness. If we possess the awakening mind, then even a minor meditation coupled with such an understanding becomes an antidote for cyclic existence, a means of completely from the very root doing away with our suffering. On the other hand, if we don’t have this view, if we don’t have the awakening mind, then there’s no way that we can attack the root of cyclic existence, that is to say ignorance. And therefore whatever the meditation, it in no way acts as a cause for the attainment of liberation, the removal of all of our suffering. Such is the importance of these three fundamentals.
Mañjuśrī explained to Je Tsongkhapa that initially one should temporarily set aside all of the various profound instructions and concentrate on the cultivation of the determination to be free, that having gained the determination to be free, then whatsoever skillful actions that one accumulates becomes a cause for liberation. That temporarily setting aside all the other practices and concentrate on first developing the determination to be free, renunciation. And then having gained a good experience of the awakening mind, then going on to cultivate the awakening heart. If we gain an experience, a good experience of these two, then whatever skillful actions that we involve ourselves in will of themselves become causes for liberation and omniscience. And this is the great benefit in developing such stages.
Having gained some experience of these two, then we should go on to cultivate the view of emptiness, the awakening mind. If we can gain an experience of this, then we will gain the realizations of the grounds and paths. It becomes — it’s like flowers which spontaneously grow during the rainy season. Effortlessly they grow up. And this is the same way with these various realizations once we gain these experiences.
So first we should cultivate the determination to be free. This is extremely important. Some individuals think that the meditations and teachings and teachings involved in the development of the determination to be free are insignificant. They’re minor practices and they go on to meditate on really exotic practices. This is a great mistake.
This is going in a wrong direction. Their practice is going in a wrong direction. So, though we use the term three fundamentals of path, it is synonymous with the term Lam Rim, or the graduated path. We use the term flower on the one hand, and the Tibetan word we say metok. And though they’re different words, they’re actually synonymous.
They’re describing the same object, likewise with respect to the three fundamentals of the path and the graduated path. Why is that? The determination to be free is the source of the perspectives, the narrow perspective and middling perspective. The awakening heart is the path of the being of great perspective. And the view of emptiness, the awakening mind, is the practice of all three.
The Lam Rim, or the graduated path, sets out these various subjects quite extensively, whereas the present text, the three fundamentals of the path, though it is the essence of the graduated path, is much much abbreviated in terms of its length. But still, it is no different in terms of the topics which are covered. So because this is a practice of the universal vehicle, it is seeking to bring about the ultimate welfare of others. And in order to bring that about, it is necessary that we practice in terms of method and wisdom. Because this is the universal vehicle practice, method here refers to the awakening heart.
Wisdom refers to the view of emptiness. That is to say, this is the wisdom realizing emptiness. So within the universal vehicle the method is the awakening heart. The wisdom is the realization of emptiness. It is in terms of these two, the method and wisdom, that we bring about the welfare, the ultimate welfare of others.
Associated with these two, method and wisdom. So in order that we develop well the method of the universal vehicle, that is the awakening heart, and the view of emptiness, the awakening mind, it is necessary that there be a preliminary. And what is this preliminary? It is as was previously explained. First, we must develop the determination to be free.
If we do not have the determination to be free, if we have not developed it well, then there’s no way that we can bring about the awakening heart. Therefore, as a means to develop the awakening heart, it’s necessary as a preliminary to practice well the determination to be free. Why is that? Because in order to generate compassion — a powerful attitude which wishes that others be free of their suffering — it is necessary that we understand our own suffering first. If we ourselves do not wish to free ourselves from the tortures of our own suffering, then we cannot develop, and do not have the foundation for developing, the wish to free others from the tortures of their suffering.
And this is what we mean by determination to be free. That is to say a strong desire to free oneself from the tortures of one’s own suffering is the determination to be free. So, first, in order to develop the awakening heart, the attitude which wishes to free others from their suffering, it is as a preliminary to its development, we must see our suffering in the terms of our own situation and initially develop a longing to free ourselves from the sufferings of cyclic existence. So we’ve described the benefits of developing these three fundamentals: the determination to be free, the awakening heart and the awakening mind — what benefits we can derive if they are present in our minds and what loss there is if they’re not — what are the disadvantages — and as we develop an understanding of them and cultivate a sense of necessity that we practice these three fundamentals. To free others from their suffering, to free oneself from one’s own suffering, that we need these three fundamentals.
Okay. So now we’ll leave some time for if you have some questions. Do you have any questions? Yes. Without the determination to be free, there’s no way to develop the awakening mind.
Without renunciation, there’s no way to develop the view of emptiness. So there are two ways in which we can cultivate the view of emptiness, in terms of self and in terms of other. In terms of self, one begins confronting how one is continually tortured by suffering, one develops a longing to be free from that suffering, that is to say, to achieve liberation. And understanding this, developing this longing to be free, a longing to be liberated, the means by which we are able to achieve that is through cultivating the wisdom understanding emptiness. So it is through understanding one’s own suffering which leads one to cultivate the wisdom of understanding emptiness.
It leads up to that. On the other hand, looking at others’ suffering and out of one’s compassion developing a longing that they be freed from suffering and that oneself is going to free them from suffering. But understanding that at the level of one’s own present ability one does not have the power to be able to free others from their suffering. And this, in turn, leads one to develop the understanding that one must cultivate the understanding of emptiness in order to help others. So either way, both must be in terms of the development of awareness of suffering, either of one’s own or others’, in order to come to the sense of necessity to cultivate the wisdom realizing emptiness.
Thank you. So today we’ve just sort of introduced you to these three fundamentals. You know, it’s like being introduced — saying, this is an American, this is Chinese — making you acquainted. We talked about the reasons for why it is necessary to generate these three fundamentals; in the latter part, as we move along, we’re going to talk about the way of generating these three fundamentals, the means, and then finally the measure of what it is to have actually generated these three fundamentals. So gradually we will come to all this later.
Things will become clear as we go along. To attain what? To have some view of emptiness. So next, we can cultivate the understanding of emptiness, but we plant predispositions for its understanding. But in order to actually generate a realization of it, in order to eliminate the ignorance which is the root of cyclic existence, in order to actually gain the realization it’s necessary that it be preceded by the determination to be free, renunciation.
Then Rinpoche went on to say that there can be individuals who have never heard of Buddhism or never studied the view of emptiness, but they may have an understanding of something which is similar to the view of emptiness. But something which is similar to the view of emptiness is not the view of emptiness. So we can meditate on the view of emptiness without having the determination to be free. And through this we will implant latencies for its eventual understanding; we can meditate on the awakening heart and likewise plant latencies for its eventual generation.
Merely that is not sufficient. We need to generate the realization of it. It is that which actually removes the faults — realization. So it’s analogous to if we were ill and we went to a doctor, and the doctor was skilled in diagnosing our illness and gave us an appropriate medicine, which was extremely potent medicine, and explained the course of treatment to ourselves, how to take the medicine. But if we didn’t take that medicine, then there would be no way that we could cure our illness.
It’s necessary that we have the properly prescribed medicine and then take the medicine itself. It’s necessary that we take it. If we have a headache and we get an aspirin, then we have to actually swallow it to get rid of the pain. So it means to ascertain, to understand.
Upon examination, coming to understand. For example, with respect to the wisdom realizing emptiness, what realize means is to ascertain the factor which negates true existence, and that is to say emptiness. So ascertaining that factor which is able to negate true existence — ah, that’s emptiness — and coming to that understanding. Just as in the case if we don’t know what some object or article is, and somebody says, Oh, this is this. Then there’s an understanding.
We ascertain. We understand exactly what it is. We come to know what it is. So, just as in the case of the eye consciousness realizing the table or the flower or the cup. Likewise, with respect to emptiness, when we eliminate, when we refute the object of negation, then we understand what emptiness is.
So just as in the case of we can ascertain or realize the existence of the cup on the table. Likewise, with respect to emptiness, though at present we don’t understand what emptiness is, we don’t know what it is. We haven’t ascertained emptiness. But when we refute the object of negation — which is true existence — through investigation, through analysis, then having refuted the object of negation, which is true existence, that which replaces that object is emptiness. And then we can say, I now understand emptiness.
I have ascertained what emptiness is. Having refuted the object of negation, which is true existence, in place of that, we come to understand emptiness. So for some of you today might have been somewhat difficult. Perhaps you’ve never heard some of what has been discussed before. So today was something of merely an introduction.
And it wasn’t meant that things were to be said out clearly — simply an introduction — and therefore some of you perhaps were a bit confused today, but gradually it will all become clear as we proceed. Through the commentary the thought will come, Oh, that’s what that means. Then everything will become clear as we proceed. So don’t get discouraged if there are things you don’t understand. Don’t think you’re not able to understand.