Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. The pivot from compassion to emptiness gives this 42-minute session its distinctive arc. Khensur Rinpoche opens by using a difficult child as a concrete object of compassionate meditation, then draws an unexpected parallel from Thomas Merton’s Wisdom of the Desert — two Christian monks in the Egyptian desert who each lost their faith and unknowingly saved each other through necessity — to illustrate how universal responsibility stretches the mind beyond self-centered limits. A verse by Shelley bridges the shift to the second half, where Rinpoche introduces emptiness through the rope-mistaken-for-a-snake analogy, distinguishes the conventional everyday self from the fantasized permanent “I” that flares up in moments of pride or fear, and guides the room into a sitting meditation to search for — and find absent — that projected self. Suitable for newcomers encountering emptiness for the first time.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 06 LR 1992 05 17.mp3
UUID: 55ea134c-59c5-4665-8ddc-b4d5d5640ecf
Teacher: Khensur Rinpoche
Collection: Lam Rim Weekend (Khensur Rinpoche)
Date: 1992-05-17
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 42.6 minutes
Words: ~5,427
Son who becomes an unbearable young man. It may be hard for us to love him. That is natural. In order to be loved, a person should be lovable. If our son has become difficult to love, we will be very unhappy.
We wish we could love him, but the only way we can do it is to understand him, to understand his situation. We have to take our son as the subject of our meditation. Instead of taking the concept of emptiness or some other subject, we can take our son as the concrete subject for our meditation. We don’t blame our son. We just want to understand why he has become like that.
Through this method of meditation we find out all the causes near and far that have led to our son’s present state of being. The more we see, the more we understand. The more we understand, the easier it is for us to have compassion and love. Understanding is love itself. Understanding is another name for love.
Love is another name for understanding. Acknowledging our own pain, we begin to understand ourselves, and we begin to develop this will to extend ourselves for the purpose of nourishing our own well-being. That is to say, we develop love for ourselves. Initially it begins with ourselves. I think I mentioned this yesterday, didn’t I?
The determination to be free is simply another word for love. It’s in terms of oneself. But we can begin to extend the same understanding that we’ve developed toward ourselves, to others. And then we develop the determination to help others to grow. That is to say, we develop love for others.
And in helping them to grow, we begin to help ourselves. Taking responsibility, which is the strongest type of compassion, strongest, most powerful type of love. There’s a more skillful method available to us as a means for developing ourselves. If we’re going to take responsibility sincerely, then we have to be able to respond. If we’re going to have to be able to respond, then we’re going to develop ourselves to be able to do that, just that, to their needs, whatever they might be.
They’re infinite. There’s this quality of our own needs are very limited in individuals. There’s only one. At best we have be able to respond to the needs of one. So to that same degree, we will respond in terms of our own growth proportionately.
But if we were to develop a true sense of universal responsibility, and to be able to respond to that deep feeling of necessity to help all others, the mind is going to, of necessity, have to develop itself proportionately, infinitely, limitlessly. That’s why this awakening heart is the only power by means of which we can achieve the ultimate actualization of the human potential, because it becomes necessary. It is as if the mind will only achieve, only go that far, only go break through those boundaries which it sees as of absolute necessity. If it’s only necessary for me to bring about the welfare of one, I will develop myself to that extent and no further. To two, that much further.
To an infinite number of beings, my infinite potential. There is a story. It is in the book called Wisdom of the Desert by Thomas Merton. It takes place in ancient, not ancient Egypt. How would you describe it?
During the early Christian era, when the Christian fathers were living in the deserts of Egypt. And there were these two well known fathers. One of them was quite strict, quite a heavy fellow, and one them was quite an easy, gentle father. And so people would go to each of them for penance, to make confessions. And those who wanted an easy penance, obviously they would go to the gentle kind father.
Those who were into self bashing or whatever, into guilt trips, They would go to the what should I call them? Would you call that? Harsh? Stern. Stern, that’s a good word.
Stern father. So there’s the gentle father and the stern father. So they had, over time, heard about each other. They were both quite well known, though they lived some miles apart. And it came about that both of them developed some doubt as to their avocation, to their vocation, their calling, some lapse of a weakening of their faith in what they were doing.
And both of them were quite worried and filled with conflict, confusion. And they thought, simultaneously, it came to them that they would go visit the other father and seek advice. So they both simultaneously set out on the journey to the other’s cave. And it was quite a long journey, it was a two day journey. And the first night they came to the same spot, to camp in the desert.
And the gentle father said to the stern father, I am on my way to such and such a father’s cave. Can you tell me the way? And the stern father said, Yes, I can tell you, why were you going there? And the gentle father said, I’ve had some doubts. I have a lot of conflict in my mind, confusion, and I want to seek him out for his advice.
I’ve lost my way. And the stern father said, I see, you are the gentle father. And he didn’t say the gentle father, but you are such and such a father from over in the other hand. Yes, yes, that’s who I am. I’ll take you to his cave in the morning.
And so they set off and they got to the stern father’s cave. And the gentle father finally realized that this was in fact the person he had been seeking. And the stern father said, Yes, I’m the person that you came to see. I want you to stay with me for a while. And so the gentle father lived with the stern father for about a year, serving him, taking a confession, listening to his teachings, his talks, praying.
And at the end of the year that he spent with him, one day the gentle father came to the stern father, and he said, I’m going back to my cave now. I’ve found my way. I’ve regained my strength. I have renewed my faith. And I want to thank you.
And the stern father said to the gentle father, You know, I have a confession to make to you. You know that night we met on the desert one year ago? Yes, yes, I remember. Well, I was on my way to see you, because I too was like you. I had lost my way, I had grave doubts, I had a lapse of my faith, my conviction.
And the gentle father said to the stern father, Why didn’t you tell me then? Why didn’t you let me know that you were going through the same difficulties and the same confusion that I was? And the stern father said, You know, if at that moment one of us had not been strong, then we would have both been lost. So it is as if one almost pretends to arise to the occasion out of necessity. And out of that sense of necessity to arise to the occasion, one draws upon some inner strength which was not previously available to one.
One goes beyond one’s acknowledged limits and finds sources of strength and wisdom, something which is able to respond to the necessity of the situation. And in that way both of them were saved, Otherwise, they would have both been lost. So think most parents have experienced this to some degree when they have a newborn baby. I hear the firstborn newborn is quite a horrendous experience. It’s unimaginable.
Most mothers tell me they had never imagined it was going to be like that. But they live up to it, they find some way. There’s this thing, that’s crying in the middle of the night, that’s demanding, that’s in need. And you don’t want to get out of bed, you’re tired, you’re exhausted, but there’s this thing that needs you. And you accept responsibility for its needs, for whatever reason, and you respond. And going on, they’re often spoken about, I didn’t think I could ever do that.
One goes beyond some boundaries, some limits, one’s concept of what one could do. And likewise, the more that we are willing to extend our sense of we go beyond our usual self centered boundaries and begin to become other centered. To that same extent we will develop the abilities, the skills, the means to be able to live up to the necessities of bringing about that number of persons’ well-being. And that we’re going to be able to extend ourselves, we’re going to be able to respond. And even within our general selfishness and self centeredness.
There are moments when another individual elicits in us the capacity to reach out toward another. You know, a deeper some kind of deeper, wider dimension. Somebody has that ability to, which abolishes temporarily our self imposed isolation and loneliness. Individuals who have acted as conditions for drawing upon our resources of inner strength, of inner wisdom, of inner love. Having elicited this ability to respond, some kind of caring, some kind of communication takes place.
To participate in the life of another person means as much to give to another person as it does to receive from others into ourselves, to participate in the life of another person. So I was three twenty. Yeah. We could talk a lot about You know, I I think in the last two weekends ago when the Dalai Lama was here, you know, the the the feeling that was elicited in the entertainment center and the ability of the Dalai Lama to change people’s lives, if only for a moment, if only to shift their mindset temporarily. It’s a real gift, isn’t it?
It’s a real blessing. It’s quite necessary in this world to have demonstrated to us another way of being, and have it in some small way affect us, to inspire us and bless us. So this comes out of a sense of universal responsibility, Dedicating in some small way, some part of yourself to something outside of yourself, something beyond your own self centered egotistical needs to the welfare altruistically to the welfare of someone else in some small way. And then we’re able to to be a real benefit, not only to others, but also for ourselves. You know, we can as Rinpoche pointed out, we can approach even the necessity as the Dalai Lama did in terms of we all want affection.
It’s almost a physical need as in terms of food. If babies aren’t picked up, they’ll die, if they’re not fondled, cared for. That we are social beings, and that we need to relate, and we need to relate in terms of affection and caring. And we can discuss this in terms of reasoning, we can discuss it in terms of experience, but we can also discuss it in terms of our own intuition, the poetry of our hearts. There’s a short verse by Shelley.
For when the power of imparting joy is equal to the will, the human soul requires no other heaven. For when the power of imparting joy is equal to the will, the human soul requires no other heaven. You know, we don’t have to we don’t have to be saints or we don’t have to be superhumans, but we have to at least try to, in some small way, to live the life of our waking dreams. You know, that mostly, you know, our mostly our most deep felt aspirations. This is what makes us humans, most human.
Even to but even even to be happy in a very mundane way, must respect ourselves. We don’t have to like ourselves. We must feel that some part of our life is being lived out of very unique and personal part of ourselves, a part which we may not be able to fully comprehend, but which we believe in, and which brings us meaning, which brings meaning to our lives. As I think I mentioned yesterday, the intellect requires proof and demonstration. The soul requires belief in meaning.
And it is our souls which we are out of touch with, which we are in danger of losing. I don’t mean soul in it. I think you know what I mean by soul. The part of ourselves which when we are one with, we feel at oneness with ourselves, and at oneness with all else, where it takes place a real healing at a very a very great depth within us. A healing of the split within our being.
And there’s a sense of wholeness. There’s a sense of holiness about us and around us. Maybe let’s take a should we take a see if we we finish lunch at two fifteen. I’d like to talk a little bit about emptiness just to get you on the track. So yeah.
Let’s take a break. You want to take a break? For it’s twenty five after. Let’s take a break till for twenty minutes, a quarter till, and then we’ll have a little discussion and more meditation. Good, so we’ll take a break.
People who would like more instruction could come to learn to meditate. On Mondays at six o’clock? I think you have enough now to work with. Pardon? That’s right.
So I would like to talk just a little bit about emptiness and selflessness, how that’s down a little bit. Is that okay now? Is it loud enough now? It soft enough now? Is it okay now?
Wow, I don’t know what to say. I don’t operate very well under pressure. I’m sorry. I can read something. I’m going to explain a little bit about selflessness and emptiness, just for the sake of meditation.
We are going to do a meditation just to acquaint you with what we are talking about when we use the term emptiness and selflessness. And then after the meditation, I’ll explain it in a little more detail, and then we’ll have some questions and answers. Emptiness, emptiness conjures up, as it did this morning, many different ideas from many different people. And so it’s quite important to come to an understanding of what Buddhism is talking about when they use this term. The idea of emptiness.
Emptiness means essentially an absence, a lack, something isn’t there. This room is empty of elephants. Isn’t it? Yeah, well, it is. I mean, there’s something not there.
And in terms of emptiness, there is something not there, but more, there is something not there which we very deeply feel is in fact there. So on the basis of a misconception, on the basis of mistaken appearance. We believe something is there, but in reality, in fact, it’s not there, it’s absent. For example, if you were walking along a path and it was growing dark, it was dusk, and in the grass near the path was a coiled striped rope. And due to the conditions, the dimness of light and the nature of the object, this coiled striped rope, it appears, the first impression is there’s a snake, and a lot of fear arises due to that fact of the appearance.
And so, you even start running. You run down the path and you look back and it’s still there, it’s not moving. And you build up a little bravery and you walk back, look at it, Wow, it hasn’t moved at all, maybe it’s dead, a dead snake, yeah. There’s still a little bit of fear, even dead snakes. Yuck, something like that.
Then look at it, it doesn’t have a big head on it and it’s not slender at the end. It’s very uniform. You pick and get a stick and you start poking around, it doesn’t move. There’s no snake there, I was mistaken. The moment you become aware that you were mistaken, that is to say, it’s a rope.
The understanding that that is a rope and that is a snake are mutually contradictive. We cannot hold the same object as being both a snake and a rope at the same time. They were as if contradict each other. And as understanding that it’s a rope increases, the misunderstanding that it’s a snake would decrease and all the various emotions which arose and depends upon that mistaken conception as to the object, That fear and all the various associated emotions will disappear because they have no basis. They never had a basis in reality, only in our fantasy, only in our mistaken beliefs as to the object.
At that place, there’s an absence of snake. That object is empty of snake. We thought there was a snake there, but in fact, that object is empty of snake. There’s a lack of snake. Snake never existed there, though we believed very strongly due to various conditions that there was a snake there.
And in dependence upon that misconception, we generated fear and fright. Once we understand in fact that that object is empty of a snake, the fear no longer has a basis. It vanishes, it disappears into emptiness. So emptiness, this idea of emptiness, Rinpoche mentioned this morning, is quite deep, it’s quite subtle. And there are varying levels of which we can come to an understanding of it.
There are different schools within Buddhism, like rungs of a ladder, understanding the most basic and the coarsest presentation of emptiness and selflessness, and dependence upon coming to some feeling about that, then we can go into a more subtle view, more subtle understanding, more subtle understanding, until we come to the final thought of the Buddha as to the ultimate nature of reality. Put in positive terms, every phenomenon in the universe, everything, internal and external, is merely imputed by conceptions. That the world arises out of language and concepts, that things do not inherently exist. They do not exist from the side of the object. That things do not, as if, overwhelm us.
It’s as if we are passive observers and things somehow impinge upon us. The table is just kind of out there objectively, and it kind of overwhelms me with its presence. I have to admit ah there’s a table. It’s not as if I’m organizing that object and conceiving it as a table. You know there’s an old, now very mundane way of looking at it, is that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, isn’t it?
There’s no object. In some cultures, men and women, they put huge plates in their lips. In their culture that’s a mark of beauty. They say, wow, look at the lips on her. That’s that’s the beauty is as if coming from that side of the object.
Look at me. Wow. You you walk down the street and there’s a shop window, and there’s a a suit or a dress that says, come take me. You know? It’s sort of glowing, a little bit brighter.
You know? Its desirability is is as if coming from the side of the object. It’s not as if you are creating the desirability of that object. It’s not as if you were creating that beauty, that beautiful, admirable quality of that object. It’s not as if you were in any way involved in its creation.
And therefore seeing it that way, that there’s a beauty, this desirability, is outside of oneself, that one wants to bring it into one’s own domain, make it a part of oneself, and one develops attachment. Not realizing that in fact you are involved in the creation of the desirability of that object, the beauty of that object. There’s nothing inherently beautiful about that object because if you bring that same beautiful, huge lipped man to this country. He would look grotesque to most of us. Oh wow, how he ever do that to his lips?
How could he eat? So this is a cultural conditioning, this example of cultural conditioning. But we are conditioned in various ways to create the type of world that we live in. If we begin to gain an insight into this conditioning process, then we are no longer bound. We no longer generate attachment and aversion.
We we things have a conventional beauty about them, but we don’t have to go any further than that. You know, you know, we We can make use of happiness, we can make use of beautiful objects, we can enjoy them, but we understand the nature and we don’t superimpose something which they do not possess, qualities which they never had, a permanence which they do not have, for example. So it is emptiness, this insight into how language and concepts are creating our reality, which ultimately overcomes misknowledge, which is the basis of all the various afflictive emotions, out of which arises, for example, attachment and aversion. Without this, we can only reduce our attachment and aversion, we can never eliminate them completely. It is only the wisdom realizing emptiness, it is only the wisdom realizing that all phenomena are merely imputed, that is, they are projections, constructs of terms and concepts, out of terms and concepts, which is able to overcome the sense that these objects exist from their own side objectively.
So I don’t suspect that I can’t explain it very well, so I don’t expect that you have understood very much of what I said. But if we talk about it in simpler terms, in terms of our self, I want to, Who am I? I’m beginning to question. I’m over here, you’re over there. That’s conventional reality.
When I eat, it doesn’t fill your stomach up. We’re different. People who say everything’s one, I don’t know what they mean. I know I have to eat for myself. But when I say, I exist, I’m sitting on this cushion, How do I know I’m sitting on this Some of the older the newer students, new students, the old students, they’ve been taught.
What reason can I give for saying that I am sitting I mean, do you agree that I’m sitting on this cushion? Maybe. Anybody disagree? I hope hope not. Don’t know where Everybody agree?
I’m sitting on the cushion? You’re sitting What reason can I give? Some logic, some which establishes in some way that I’m sitting on this cushion. Anybody? Just take a while because it doesn’t matter.
Because I told you so? Pardon? Because ‘m sitting on the cushion because not because, not the reason, not why I’m sitting on the cushion, but what reason can I give which establishes that I’m on the cushion, that I’m sitting? You see me or what do you see when you say you see me? What do you see when you say you see me?
You see your body. Okay. So am I my body? I see your body. Yeah.
No. So you don’t see me. All you see is my body. Feel one. Happy living. See your body.
You’re happy with what? Oh, I see your body. So you don’t see me? No. You don’t see me sitting on the cushion?
I see I see a man sitting on a cushion. Don’t know what your identity is. I’m a man. Take my word on. Dogma.
That’s good. I mean, yeah, I mean we could. It’s a good point. Yeah, it’s quite reasonable to say that because my body is on the cushion, I’m on the cushion. Whatever my body is doing, conventionally, it’s a custom that we build up I can quite accurately, properly say, I am doing. Whatever my body is doing, I can say, I am doing.
Likewise with my mind. Whatever my mind is doing, I can say legitimately, accurately, properly, I am doing. If my mind is happy, I am happy. If my mind is sad, I am sad. If my mind is agitated, I am agitated.
If my body is walking, I am walking. If my body is eating, I am eating. These are conventions. This is the nature of the conventional self, nature of the conventional I. But there is another type of I which arises, just like in the case of the striped rope, in which we see as a snake.
The eye which says, I hate your guts. You know, I can’t stand you. Now what is that eye? This eye that can’t do the standing. This I which hates this other person’s guts?
What I is that? This is the I that we want to identify, the eye which thinks, I’m the best thing that ever that happened to Adelaide since the queen came. Something like that, isn’t it? Anyway, you get the idea. So there’s a conventionally existent I, which walks, talks, eats, thinks, is happy, unhappy, sits, listens, talks, etc.
It does all these various weird things. And then there is this other I, as in the case of the snake which is projected onto the striped rope. And just as a snake never existed, has never existed, at that place where there is in fact a rope, there is a type of I, is a mental fabrication, a product of our imagination, which we project onto our conventional I. Just as we project the snake onto the rope, we project a type of self, a type of eye, which is permanent, it doesn’t change, it’s independent, it’s not dependent upon the body, it’s not dependent upon the mind. It’s singular, it’s not composite, which we project onto.
As a snake onto the rope, we project it onto the actual, conventionally just an eye, this eye which sits, talks, walks, crawls on its belly like a reptile. So there is a type of eye which we imagine to exist, but which in fact has never existed at all, just as we imagine a snake, where in fact at that place there is no snake, there is only a rope. So this is the I that we have to come to understand. And we have to understand its features, color is it, what shape is it, what size is it, is it changing? By changing I mean, does it arise from moment to moment, is it something else from the next moment, or is there a sense of it being constantly the same?
I was born in the United States, Ohio, I moved to California, I traveled in Europe and North Africa, I traveled to India, I became a monk, then I traveled to Thailand, and I traveled to Australia. There’s this constant I, which kind of moves through all these historic events. And there’s a sense that there’s something there which isn’t changing, something there which is permanent, that is kind of moving through these events. And there is a sense of the I which isn’t quite the body and the mind. I hate your guts, I’m beautiful.
I’m the most beautiful thing in Italy. This I seems to stand apart from the body and mind. It doesn’t seem to depend upon body and mind. So this is the I that we have to identify, that we want to understand, and that we want to think through as it were, just as in the case of the snake. We want to begin to look at it very closely and begin to poke around as to whether this I really exists.
And then we’re going to see that in fact what we thought existed, that place is empty of that type of I, that unchanging, independent I. There is an I there, just as in there is a rope there. But this rope, this I is constantly changing from moment to moment. I’m not the same person I was yesterday. I’ve changed from moment to moment.
I’m dependent. I depend upon my body, I depend upon my mind. I depend upon causes and conditions. I’m also a composite. There are many facets to who I am.
I’m not homogenous in one single whole. We have these misconceptions with respect to this nature of the I, so we have to identify this I. This is the most difficult part of this process of coming to an understanding of the emptiness of a permanent, unchanging, independently existing I. I know this is a lot of information, but you can take home what you will and just introduce some of these ideas so that you at least know what we mean by emptiness. And it doesn’t mean purposelessness or nothingness or a vacuum of some sort, it means an absence of a particular fantasized way of existing, a fantasized way of existing with respect to the self, the I.
Self and I are synonyms Monk, Champa, American, you know. All these mean are referring to this same individual, names that are given to the same individual. So we want to try to identify. And this I, this fantasized I, arises most strongly, appears most vividly when we’re undergoing strong emotional experiences. Pride, hate, jealousy, strong attachment, embarrassment.
You you’re walking up to receive the Nobel Prize and you trip on the step, and you fall flat on your face in front of ten million people. Your eye rises very vividly. Oh, I I remember the Dalai Lama’s brother who was who was in the military, and he was in the he was in the he was a paratrooper. He said jumping out of an airplane was a was a great opportunity to med meditate on the nature of the eye. Just as you jump out, this huge eye appears to you.
Or the yogis in India used to sit on the edge of a well or at the feet of an elephant, and you look up to an elephant. It’s quite a frightening experience, and a huge eye arises. Or sit on the edge of a cliff and you look over and a huge eye arises at that moment. There is something that needs protecting, you’re not quite sure what it is. All this fear arises in dependence upon the misconception of the nature of the eye.
So we want to identify that eye, and then we’re going to look for it. And where do we look for it? Anybody? In the next room? We look for it where it appears.
It appears it appears somewhere on this side of the looking glass, over here. Not quite sure, and we have a rough idea. I’m over here somewhere. You’re over there. I am over here, I am not going to look for me over there, am not going look for myself in the kitchen, I am going to look for myself over here.
And so the place that we look is within the body and the mind. So we perform a very precise analysis, having developed some conception of what it is we’re looking for. If we don’t know what we’re looking for, then it’s hopeless. The non finding of such a self will never have any impact on our mind. It would be of no significance.
You’ll think, Well, I didn’t find it, but really I didn’t know what I was looking for anyway, so it doesn’t matter. It’s really there, I didn’t look in all the corners, I didn’t pick up the rug or something. It’s probably under the rug. It’s somewhere in there. We want to know exactly what we are looking for, and we want to cover every nook and cranny of our being until we’ve exhausted all possibilities, and then the mind finally gives up and says, Wow, I thought it was there, and it’s not.
And this huge burden falls from my shoulders of carrying around this fantasized eye. It’s quite a liberating experience. So we’re going to look within the body and the mind for this eye. So we’re just going to go through this process, just to give you a rough idea of an initial method of how to work with the idea of emptiness, but particularly a simple conception of what emptiness is in terms of a permanent, unchanging, independent existing self. That’s a lot, isn’t it, that I’ve talked about?
But let’s try it anyway. So if you take a firm, comfortable posture.