Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Khensur Rinpoche opens by addressing a fear many practitioners share — that meditating on selflessness might cause oneself to cease to exist — and uses this as the entry point for a 40-minute commentary on the Four Close Placements of Mindfulness. He works through each object in turn: body (contaminated aggregates as the truth of suffering), feelings (pleasure and pain as the ground for craving and the truth of origins), and mind (examined as the apparent seat of self). He explains why the mind’s impermanence does not sever its continuum, then walks through how different tenet schools — from lower systems up to the Consequentialist Middle Way — progressively deepen the understanding of selflessness until the conception of self is fully abandoned. A Q&A follows, including a cup analogy that concretely illustrates the selflessness of persons.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 06 IR 1997-06-08.mp3
UUID: 3a61e34d-a055-4288-8135-6915fdaaf505
Teacher: Khensur Rinpoche
Collection: Insight Retreat (Khensur Rinpoche)
Date: 1997-06-08
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 39.9 minutes
Words: ~1,599
A small level of the path of accumulation in order that they enter into the practice of the Four Noble Truths, understanding with regard to the Four Noble Truths, what is to be abandoned and what is to be practiced. With regard to the Four Noble Truths, the first two truths, the truth of suffering and the truth of origins are to be abandoned, and the third and fourth, the truth of cessation, and the truth of the path leading to cessation are to be practiced in order to gain a realization of that one is a necessity for meditating the contemplations, four close placements of mindfulness. Objects of observation of the close placements of mindfulness, bodies, feelings, minds, and phenomena, there is no phenomena which is not included. All phenomena, this is a way of, in brief, in a few categories, including all phenomena. So, first, taking the body as the object of observation. And the hearer, or the practitioner of the individual vehicle, would take their own body, whereas the bodhisattva would take both the bodies of themselves and others.
And then they would meditate both the general and specific characteristics, the general characteristics being impermanent, suffering, etcetera, and then the specific characteristics of the body, for example, being those of the elements and evolutes. Out of this, they would come to understand that the body is in the nature of suffering, that the contaminated body, and here contaminated means the afflicted body, is that this is, as it states here, the appropriated, I use the word pernicious state, that is the appropriated afflicted state, that the contaminated body is that which is taken on, and is a state which is afflicted. And this would be the insight into suffering, or that is to say, the first noble truth of the truth of suffering. The reason for meditating this first close placement of mindfulness is in order to understand the first of the four noble truths, the truth of sufferings. So then taking as the object of observation the feelings, what is the reason for meditating on those?
It is in order to come to an understanding of the entity of pleasurable feelings and unpleasurable feelings, that from, upon generating pleasurable feelings, there arises a craving or a desire which thinks not to be separated from this object. On the other hand, when unpleasurable feeling arises, there is generated a craving or a desire which wishes separation from the object. And knowing that as a basis for craving are the various types of feelings, and through this understanding that the main cause of suffering is the craving, in terms of its result, and thereby to develop the desire to abandon the second noble truth, the truth of origins of suffering. So the Buddha said that sufferings are to be known, or to be recognized, and out of that we will come to the understanding that the origins of suffering, that is to say the second noble truth, are to be abandoned, and that the basis of the origin of suffering are the contaminated feelings. The basis of suffering, of the truth of suffering, is the contaminated appropriated aggregates.
These arise out of contaminated feelings, which are the source of the second noble truth, to be abandoned, which are the second noble truth, the truth of origins of suffering. So we said that the body was looked upon as the residence of the self, the enjoyments, the feelings as the ground where — the grounds upon which the self enjoys — the site where enjoyment takes place, at the feelings. And then we said that the mind is actually viewed as the self. So we are to meditate. Now, some people might think, well, you know, if we are to meditate upon selflessness, well, that’s not a very good thing to do. Why?
Because, I mean, the self exists. And if I meditate on selflessness, then I might go out of existence. And I don’t want that to happen. So there is a reluctance to meditate on selflessness. But understanding, but coming to an understanding of what selflessness means, then there is no fear around cultivating the understanding of selflessness, that the self does not cease to exist once one understands selflessness.
And the same holds true of analyzing the mind in terms of impermanence. So we’re thinking of the mind as the self, and we’re also thinking of the mind as being impermanent. And here we have come to understand by impermanence we mean the momentary arising and disintegration, and that there is a continuum of these moments, these momentary arisings and disintegrations of the mind, that though the mind is impermanent, it does not cease to exist. There is no cut in this continuum. It’s a continuum of momentary arisings and disintegrations.
So though the mind is impermanent, still the continuum of the mind is not somehow cut or stopped, interrupted. Understanding that, analyzing the mind in terms of that, then when there is no longer any fear around realizing that the mind, and therefore the self, is a continuum of impermanent moments, and therefore one can readily go on to attain a passage beyond sorrow, that is the cessation of that, of the conception of it being permanent and a conception of it being self. So we’re going to stop there, but we have some time left. And if you have some questions, we’ll take those. Yes.
Could you clarify a little bit more? What is it that doesn’t continue? You identify the continuum of the mind as the self. So the continuum of the mind is the self. You hold that the continuum of the mind is the self.
The continuum of your body and mind is the self. And how do you stop that? Is that okay? So the continuum of the body and mind, or let us say, the continuum of the collection of the aggregates, is not the self. Why?
Because it is not a substantially existent self. It is not the object of use of such a type of self. If we take, for example, a cup. A cup is, in terms of the selflessness of persons, empty of having a self of persons. Why?
Because it is not the object of use of a substantially existent self, of an independently existent self. So there is no substantially existent self which exists independent of the continuum of the collection of the aggregates. There’s no substantially existent self which exists independent of the continuum of the collection of aggregates. And therefore, in the case of a cup, we can talk about the cup being empty of a self of persons by way of saying that it is not the object of use of such a type of self. So in this explanation of self, of the selflessness of a person, this is the commonly asserted tenet.
This is the common assertion of all the tenets, but it’s not the exclusive assertion of the Consequentialist Middle Way school. So it’s necessary to meditate on the selflessness of persons. We have to develop a wisdom understanding selflessness. At present, our wisdom is not powerful at all, and moreover, our minds are under the control of the conception of self.
And because our minds are under the control of the conception of self, this acts as a motivating force behind all our various activities. Whatever we do is under the influence of the conception of self. So we have to meditate in order to develop a wisdom realizing selflessness. And we can work through the various levels of tenet systems in coming to this understanding, developing this wisdom. For example, in the lower tenet systems they would say that the I or the self is not substantially existent because it arises in dependence upon causes and conditions.
In the upper tenet systems they would meditate that the I does not truly exist because it is neither truly existently one, nor truly existently many. In terms of the Consequentialist Middle Way school, they would say that the I is not inherently existent because of being a dependent arising. So in the course of coming to an understanding of each of these methods, each of these levels of understanding, the wisdom, your wisdom would grow that much greater — to that same degree that your wisdom understanding of selflessness would increase in its power, then to that same degree your mind would come more and more under the influence of wisdom, and less and less under the influence of the conception of a self. Eventually, the conception of a self begins to arise less and less until the conception of self decreases in frequency and force to the extent where it’s completely abandoned and in all our activities our mind is under the control of the wisdom understanding selflessness.
So in general, it’s necessary to meditate on selflessness, and the mind will realize selflessness and will no longer go under the control of the conception of self. So how do you explain the consciousness entering into the fertilized ovum? Yeah. Do they know? How do they know that? So I think some people are tired and having maybe it’s difficult for them to continue, but we will answer that question tomorrow.
Okay? We’ll continue tomorrow. Okay. You’ve got to cut the. So some are having difficulty.
They’re tired. Okay. Is that okay? Yes.
Yeah. Yeah. So tomorrow, I’ll leave time for more questions. Yeah. Okay.
Good, yeah. Thank you. Oh, yeah. Thank you.