Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Khensur Rinpoche opens this 24-minute session with a structural insight: renunciation, bodhicitta, and the wisdom of emptiness each serve as direct antidotes to attachment, hatred, and ignorance respectively. The commentary then turns almost entirely to emptiness, focusing on why a practitioner must first clearly identify the “object of refutation” — what ignorance wrongly projects onto reality — before any genuine negation is possible. Rinpoche illustrates this with a memorable analogy: you cannot say whether someone called Champa Gyaltsen is in the room unless you already know who Champa Gyaltsen is. He closes by noting that even sitting in physical discomfort during such study simultaneously purifies past negative karma and accumulates merit. Suited to practitioners with some Lamrim background.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 44 3PA 1994 02 08.mp3
UUID: 6ea0f81d-841b-4689-a142-f57374210328
Teacher: Khensur Rinpoche
Collection: 3 Principal Aspects of the Path (Khensur Rinpoche)
Date: 1994-02-08
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 24.4 minutes
Words: ~1,520
All can be included within these three. Whatever faults we have, they can be traced to the impure thoughts. And then the impure thoughts can be traced to the three primary impure thoughts: ignorance, attachment, and hatred. And now the three principal aspects of the path can be seen as direct countermeasures against those three primary impure thoughts. Against attachment there is the instruction on renunciation or definite exit. Against hatred, there is the instruction on bodhicitta, the supreme kind heart.
And against ignorance, there is the instruction in the practice of wisdom — the realization of emptiness. So the three principal aspects of the path being directly countermeasures against these three primary impure thoughts would then mean that all other impure thoughts can be overcome through these three principal methods. Well, then we need, as the next main topic of discussion and study, to establish emptiness. We need to ascertain what emptiness is. And as regards the ascertainment of emptiness, we can say that by emptiness it means the negation or the refutation — which would mean the negation of the object that is to be disproved, the object that is to be cancelled as not truly existent. Therefore by emptiness it means the negation of what is to be negated. For example, when the object to be cancelled, to be disproved, is proven as not truly there, what remains is what is described as emptiness. Now if that is emptiness, then it would mean we need first to be very sure what is that object or what is that attribute.
What is that object or attribute which needs to be disproved, which needs to be negated. So what in popular translation is called the object of refutation, we need to establish what is that object of refutation, what is that object to be proved not there. So it becomes important that we first need to be sure what is that which is to be proved not there. The great ninth century Buddhist master Śāntideva has said, if one has not come in contact with what is imputed, then one will not retain — meaning one will not understand — what is not there. Now this means ignorance, the ego grasping mind which is the distorted mind or distorted view in relation with the way things exist in relation to emptiness.
Now with this thought of ignorance, ego grasping, by nature, this thought is a thought which fabricates which fabricates about phenomenon or things because in reality in the state of ultimate existence there is not phenomena which truly exist because all phenomena do not truly exist. They are in state of emptiness but the ignorance, the ego grasping mind is the mind or thought which fabricates the phenomena as existing truly there. Now it is something directly in contradiction to emptiness, in in contradiction to reality. Now in the in the in the context of what is to establish what is to be in the context of to establish what is to be refuted, what is to be proved are not there. What it means is in order to establish what is not there, in order to in order to understand the object to be proven not truly existent there, it would require firstly for one self to understand the way how ego grasping the ignorance fabricates about phenomenon, about the existence of things.
Therefore, it becomes extremely important that, in the realization of emptiness, once one has understood the way ignorance fabricates about the existence of things, then one can analyze whether such fabrication by ignorance is true to the way things exist or not, and when one through analysis finds that it is not so, then it would lead one to the actual realization of emptiness. Emptiness. So the point here is the link. The importance of the link to start firstly with ascertaining what is to be proved not there, which is which is, in another another word, the way ignorance fabricates. Well, it is like an example if one is to if one is to reply to an inquiry about a person’s presence, one would first have to be quite sure that one knows the person in question otherwise one would not confidently be able to answer to the question where the person is whether the person is present or not.
Let’s go into a further example. If someone here asks, “Is Champa Gyaltsen here?” — firstly one would have to know who Champa Gyaltsen is in order to say whether he’s here or not. Similarly, if someone asks, “Is Kimball here?” one would have to first know who Kimball is and then answer. And similarly, if someone asks, “Is Doc here?” one would have to firstly make sure that one knows who Doc is, and then confidently answer whether he is here or not. Now in this way, it is important in order to negate something one first know what is to be negated. Now here in the establishment or ascertainment trying to understand what emptiness is one firstly has to recognize identify what is that which is to be proven as emptiness which is to be proven as not there so this then mean one firstly has to be very sure what is that which is wrongly there being projected, being fabricated about the reality, about the way things exist, about way phenomena exist. And then one would be able to later confidently come to the conclusion that that is not so how things are.
So in a way, it is like the example of person’s presence or not to be first know about the person to be to have firstly identified the person in question. So it is like that. Also, firstly, one needs to identify the object or to be refuted what one needs to identify what is that which is to be proven not there. What are popularly called the object of refutation. One needs to one needs to ascertain that, one needs to be sure of that, and once one is sure of that, then it is possible to appear in one’s understanding what is the negation of that.
So meaning, it would not be it would not be possible to get any idea about the emptiness which is the result of having negated, having proven the thing is not truly there, that understanding would not come about without first day having identified what is to be negated. So that’s the whole significance or point behind that and the moment one identifies what is to be negated then it wouldn’t take long to then get an idea what the emptiness of having negated that is what that emptiness is. So this evening, we discussed the importance of the three principal aspects of the path by way of going into the reasoning that through these three one can overcome all unwanted experiences. Through these, one can overcome all sufferings. And then we What are the And then we are we we through that way observed how precious these three are.
Well, now we understood, observed how precious these three are. Now as practitioner, it would not be helpful and good enough to to think, these are very precious and just leave them somewhere up on the higher platform. Instead, one needs to develop them within one’s mind stream, within one’s continuum, in one’s continuity of mind. And then these can really be precious, that these can really be helpful to oneself. So in this way, we discussed these points and decided to mark on that and from next week we continue from the point about the object of refutation, what is to be refuted, what is to be negated, and we can gradually discuss the realization of emptiness.
So then we perhaps will stop for the evening also from the point it’s been a bit hot and perhaps not very comfortable to most of you to continue the long session. And if people want to ask a question from the back, please raise your voice because I have the advantage of the mic, but you don’t. Now of course, here by engaging in such activity on such profound subjects, and as well in doing meditation on such profound subjects, it is good if it is possible — even if one is experiencing a hot weather condition, meaning if you feel too hot due to the weather — because the advantage is that by the very act of experiencing hardship while engaging in this activity, one purifies so many bad karmas from the past which would otherwise make one be born in circumstances to experience hot tortures. So those karmas are compensated by here with very little. One accomplishes both the accumulation of merits and purification of negativities, because by hardships one gets one’s past karmic deposits purified, and by doing contemplation, listening, and meditation on such three principal aspects of the path, one accumulates a great amount of merits. So both are accomplished at the same time.
So if you have question, if you don’t, not necessarily to have.