Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 14-minute Q&A exchange, Khensur Rinpoche traces how a mind moves from intellectual understanding of emptiness to direct, non-conceptual realization. Study and reasoning generate the wisdom arising from hearing; reflection builds an inferential cognizer — a mind grasping emptiness only through a mental image, not directly. Through sustained meditation, that inference sheds its conceptual scaffolding and transforms into a yogic direct perceiver. A student’s question — whether a conventional mind becomes non-conceptual by the same mechanism — prompts Rinpoche to clarify that the shift concerns how the mind apprehends its object, not the nature of the object itself. He closes by extending the arc to its endpoint: as the direct perceiver deepens and purifies the mental continuum, it eventually becomes an omniscient Buddha consciousness. Suited to practitioners already engaging with Buddhist epistemology or the stages of the path.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 11 AK 1988-10-27.mp3
UUID: 0b306cb8-0a5e-4cb0-8f84-44790713db2f
Teacher: Khensur Rinpoche
Collection: Awareness and Knowledge 1988-1989 (Khensur Rinpoche)
Date: 1988-10-27
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 14.5 minutes
Words: ~519
We’ll take a short So we run out of time, we’ll have just maybe five minutes for questions. So the awareness which newly realizes emptiness would be inferential cognizer. Could be. You know, I think if you sat there How does the inference pick? Do you mean a direct perceiver?
So initially, in dependence upon hearing and teaching about emptiness, we would develop the wisdom arising from hearing, having as its object of observation emptiness. And we would begin to think about it. We would reflect upon it using various reasonings. And dependence upon these various reasonings, we would develop an inference realizing emptiness. And this would be the wisdom arising from reflection.
Then we would go on to actually meditate on it. This inference arising, this inference realizing emptiness understands emptiness through the mode of a mental image, meaning generality of a mental image. It understands emptiness by its image, through its image of emptiness. It does not understand emptiness directly. So then you would go on to actually meditate and through a process of accustom oneself to the realization of emptiness, this inferential cognizer would transform by its nature into a yogic direct perceiver, directly perceiving emptiness.
And that would be the wisdom arising from wisdom observing the object emptiness. The wisdom of meditation, wisdom arising from meditation. Yeah? Is that, would that be the same process whereby a mind that use things only in conventional terms suddenly becomes the mind which can do things in a non conceptual way with the same process of life? A mind which views things in conventional way becomes a mind which views things in a non conceptual way.
The So, in this process we’re not talking about what is the particular nature of the object, just from the particular the way the mind is transforming the way it apprehends the object. Initially, in the case of the hearing, wisdom arising from hearing and reflecting, these are both conceptual consciousnesses. But as one, after having generated these, when one actually accustoms oneself to the realization, transforms the awareness understanding the object transforms its nature into a realization which is free of conceptuality. It frees itself from its conceptuality and understands its object directly. So it doesn’t matter what type of object that we’re viewing.
Intellectually. The knower. Gyalten, knower Gyalten day. So the mind, through this process of going from the wisdom arising from hearing, reflecting, and meditating, the mind which is apprehending the object becomes more and more subtle. Initially the object is understood intellectually through reasoning, but slowly it becomes more and more subtle where it no longer relies on reasoning but understands the object directly and becomes a yogic direct perceiver. So there’s this process of development through hearing, reflecting, meditating until we develop a yogic direct perceiver.
And then as this direct perceiver begins to develop all the various excellent qualities, begin to rid the continuum of any faults or defects, then it eventually increases to the place where in its development, to the place where it transforms its nature into an omniscient consciousness, a Buddha consciousness.