Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 82-minute session, Khensur Rinpoche works methodically through Candrakīrti’s four-point “freedom from one or many” reasoning as a means of realizing emptiness directly. He begins by clarifying that emptiness is not nothingness but the absence of the object of negation — the I that appears to exist independently of mind and body rather than being merely labeled onto the five aggregates. He then takes each essential in sequence: identifying that object of negation clearly, establishing that if it existed it must be either identical to or different from the aggregates, demonstrating the faults of identity (only one aggregate could follow; no continuity after death would be possible), and showing that difference equally fails — removing each aggregate in turn leaves nothing behind. Suited to practitioners already engaged in analytical meditation on selflessness.
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File: 18 MM 1997 03 25.mp3
UUID: 4acd99ee-9864-4beb-83d9-2110288bf556
Teacher: Khensur Rinpoche
Collection: Mahāmudrā 1996-97 (Khensur Rinpoche)
Date: 1997-03-25
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 82.3 minutes
Words: ~2,478
By my cultivation of this teaching I will remove all the afflictive emotions from my mind and thereby gain all the knowledge and qualities that benefit all living beings. So the person is not the water element, is not earth element, is not fire, is not consciousness. What person is there other than — what is the person other than — you? Nor the perception of the aggregate.
So what are you referring to when he says the person that is synonymous with I or the creature or the being. The being is really imputed to the collection of the five aggregates. The five aggregates being form, feelings, and discrimination, compositional factors, and consciousness, and that this person is really imputed to the collection of the five aggregates, and these aggregates in turn are made up of these various elements of earth, water, fire, air, and space. We are to proceed by means of reason and eloquence and the Buddha presented those types of reasons by means of which we can come to an understanding of emptiness. The main reason which we use is the reason of dependent origination, but there are other types of reasoning, and the one which was mainly set forth by Candrakīrti is called the reason of freedom from being one or many. This reasoning of freedom from one or many has four points, so we are to proceed systematically through these four points.
So these are also referred to as the four essentials or the four points. So the first of these four points, the four essentials is the point of identifying the objects and negation. The essential of identifying the object of negation. The second is the essential of entailment — identifying the freedom from oneness or the lack of oneness, identifying the lack of oneness. The third they entail together. And the fourth point is the essential of identifying lack of difference, or the freedom from difference, or in other words can also be translated as I did previously, the freedom from many.
The freedom from many, or lack of difference. So you know we use this word emptiness and emptiness does not mean nothingness. It does not mean non existent. If emptiness itself were non existent then to meditate on emptiness we would not be able to abandon the afflictive emotions by meditating on something that does not exist. The word empty implies that there is lack of an absence of something.
That phenomena are empty of something. What are they empty of? They are empty of the object of negation. So what doesn’t exist is the object of negation. The non existence of the object of negation is the emptiness of the object of negation.
So this is the very first point of the four points or four essentials is that we must understand what phenomena are empty are and this is the empty of the object of negation. Therefore the first essential is that the essential of identifying the object of negation, what was the emptiness of persons and the emptiness of phenomena and we also went on to say that initially in the course of our meditation we are to meditate on the emptiness of persons but when we say person, we’re talking about in terms of ourselves. Initially we begin our meditation in terms of the emptiness of ourselves. Selflessness of persons — our understanding of selflessness of persons. So we have to identify the object in the vision and we understand the object in the person in terms of ourselves.
The meditation is done not just in persons in general but in terms of ourselves as individual persons. So we are trying to identify that in terms of ourselves. Now we have to understand that the person whoever we might be, for example Khensur Rinpoche or yourself or whoever, that person is really being imputed to the five aggregates. The five aggregates are the basis of imputation and then each of ourselves But though in fact we individually are merely labeled by means of name upon our individual five aggregates. When the eye, our self, appears right to us the way it appears it is just that I exist from my own side and objectify without depending upon the combination of mind and body as a basis on to which to be imputed or designated.
When eye appears to ourselves, the eye appears to exist in dependence upon its own side not to be, it does not appear to be imputed designated to the combination of mind body. To exist from its own side without being designated or labeled to the combination of the body and that factor of appearance is the object of negation. It’s extremely important that this object and negation appear to us clearly. If in order for us to identify this non existent, first we must identify clearly. How does the eye appear to ourselves and when it appears, oh that’s the way I appear.
There’s some recognition. We’re able to identify very clearly the way the eye is appearing to ourselves. So we have to identify how the I is appearing to ourselves. It appears if it’s just independent of the aggregate, independent of mind body combination. It appears to not be designated or labeled.
It appears to exist on its own side. This factor of occurrence is the object of negation. It’s non existence having identified the object of negation, we then come to the second essential of identifying the entailment with the persuasion. Now the object of negation in fact does not exist but it appears to exist and the non-existence of the object of negation is emptiness. So even though it doesn’t exist, it still appears to exist. So then we have to proceed to analytic investigation and its reasoning as to whether this object as it’s appearing if it’s intact, if it were to exist then is it the body, is it the mind, is it a combination of body and mind, is it other than the body and mind?
Eye itself that is appearing to us and we’ve identified what it is that we’re going to look for, how we could proceed in our investigation looking for it. Now the way the eye appears, is such that it does not rely upon the aggregate. The eye appears to exist on its own side. Now the basis on which it is appearing is, for example in my case, the I of Khensur Rinpoche. It’s appearing on my aggregates.
So what I want to come to understand is if that I exist the way it appears it must exist either of two ways. If it does exist it must exist either of two ways. It must be either one and here one we can also translate as identical. Same, identical, one, inseparably identical with the aggregate or it must be different in the aggregate. It must be either identical to the aggregates or it must be different than the aggregates.
For example, like the flower, the Tibetan word for flower is metok. So metok and flowers are identical, inseparably identical. Nothing whatsoever different about them. So the eye, the way it’s appearing and the object must be either exactly identical or must be different. We must come to that conclusion.
If it exists, it must be exactly the same or different. We’re excluding any other possibilities, excluding middle. It must be either same We can extend this to all phenomena whatsoever but if something exists, it must be either same or different. There is no other possibility. It is something that is excluded middle.
It must be one of these two. It must be either the same, that is identical or it must be different. So here we are talking in terms of the object of negation and the aggregates. Are the aggregates and the object of negation identical or are they different? We think to ourselves if the object of negation exists, if it were to exist, it must be identical or it must be different than the other.
There is no other possible way that we can exist either it’s exactly the same or it’s different than the other. We must come to that definite conclusion. Once we come to that conclusion then we identify if the object in negation were to exist, let us say the I or the self which is not derived from the object, it must be either the same or different, either identical or different than the other. That is inherently the same or inherently different. Now we’re going to come to the third point, the essential identifying the lack of oneness.
Here you can also translate oneness as sameness or identity. The faults, what faults would accrue, what faults would come if we were to say that the I were one with the aggregates? So now, what is it that we’ve identified? We’ve identified an eye which appears not to rely upon the object. That’s the way it appears to us. We’re going to use third essential to analyze whether this eye as it appears, is it exactly, inseparably identical with the object?
The basis of the imputation, the aggregates. Is this eye the way it’s appearing as it appears? Is it exactly identical to the object and if it were, we will see that there are faults which will come about. The first of these faults is that we’ve identified the I and the I appears to be a singularity, one. We’ve only identified the I as being one. Now if the eye, that eye were identical in every way with the aggregates then the fault would be that because there are five, there could not be five aggregates.
This could only be one aggregate. This could be a singularity of aggregates because the I and the aggregates are identical in every way. And if there’s only one it’s only one But though this is entailed by this that there should only be one object since there is only one eye and these are identical, we know for ourselves in fact this is not the case. We have valid cognition that there are not just one single aggregate. Just like if somebody said well all five fingers are just one.
There’s only one similarity amongst the five fingers. Well we know there’s not a single finger that there are in fact five fingers. Likewise with regard to the five aggregates. We know for ourselves and we from our own that the aggregates are not one but in fact five. So this is contradicted, this entailment of the necessity of being one single aggregate is contradicted by our own way of knowing, our own So then the second part, we could work with the same idea that we worked with in the first part but reverse the direction.
They could say well if the eyes appear and as it’s necessarily identical in every way then since there are five objects there should also be five eyes. But we know they’re not five eyes. So then the first part would be as follows. If the eye as it appears is identical to the aggregate, the aggregate undergoes production and disintegration, the eye would necessarily undergo production and disintegration. For example, if we were to take the aggregate form, simply the body, that when at the end of this life when the body disintegrates, if the I were identical to that aggregate of form, then the I would disintegrate and there would be nothing which would proceed to take rebirth.
If the eye of the present life did not continue on to the eye of the future life then in contradiction to the fact that people have memories of past lives, it would be impossible to have a memory of past lives since there would be no connection between the two eyes. So we can understand the faults that accrue when we examine to see whether the I as it appears is inherently identical with the aggregates. It should become clear that in fact this I as it appears cannot be identically the same as the aggregates. So when you come to a firm conclusion that the I as it is appearing is not identical or is not one with the aggregates, when one has identified it as being free of — or lacking — oneness, freedom from identity, this brings us to the fourth essential. So we’ve established at the second essential that if the I as it appears to itself exists, it must be either identical or different to the aggregates, and at the third essential we concluded: this I as it appears, it is not identical to the aggregates, therefore it must be different. If the I has appeared to ourselves as the object of negation — that which is the I existing independently of the aggregates —
If it is different than the aggregates, then it is different than each of the five aggregates. For example, the eye is not the aggregate form. It is different than the aggregate form. The eye is not the aggregate of feeling. It is different than the So if the eye as it appears exists, it exists as being different from the five aggregates.
If by way of analogy we were trying to single out one amongst a group of six people and we brought each one in turn and decided that this is not the individual. The first person was not the person we were looking for, the second person was not the third, fourth, the fifth. Then we would by the process of elimination have to conclude that the one left over is in fact the person that we are looking for if in fact this person is existing amongst this group. So likewise, we are looking to see if the I, which is object of negation, is different than the aggregates. So if we were to in turn remove each of the five aggregates — forms and feelings, etc. — then we should be left over with the I, the self, which is the object of imputation.
See with regards to the aggregate that it undergoes production and disintegration. If the aggregate undergoes production and disintegration and the I is inherently different than the aggregate, then the I would be capable of migrating from past lives to present lives to future lives without undergoing any changes, and we would realize that we don’t inherently exist. So through the force of our previous realization of the non-inherent existence of phenomena, we begin to appear like an illusion. We talked about the fact that the overall text is divided into three parts.
There is a preliminary, the actual teaching itself, then finally the conclusion, and this conclusion is the dedication.