Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Realizing emptiness requires first knowing what you are trying to negate — and Khensur Rinpoche makes this vivid by asking whether a specific person, Doug, is present in the room: you cannot confirm an absence without first recognizing the person. This 49-minute retreat session opens by completing the teaching on calm abiding, with step-by-step walking meditation instructions — holding the mind to the moving foot, right foot as method and left foot as wisdom. Rinpoche then traces the Buddha’s three doors of liberation, unpacks the meaning of Mahāmudrā, and divides emptiness into persons and non-persons, before arriving at his central point: identifying true existence as the object of negation is the essential doorway into any genuine realization of emptiness. For practitioners already engaged in the retreat.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 09 MR 1990 04 15.mp3
UUID: 6547acfa-768a-4761-8f67-2eb5b46d4b32
Teacher: Khensur Rinpoche
Collection: Mahāmudrā Retreat (Khensur Rinpoche)
Date: 1990-04-15
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 49.4 minutes
Words: ~2,779
Having achieved that consummate consummation of excellent qualities found in Buddhahood, I will then eliminate all the suffering of all sentient beings equal to space and bring them consummate happiness. And for this for the sake of achieving that end I am going to listen to this teaching on the essence of the great vehicle of the Mahāmudrā as in order to put in the teachings into practice and developing this attitude of the awakening heart as the intention and the motivation for listening to this teaching. We will spend five minutes cultivating that attitude. So Rinpoche is quoting from a verse by Tsongkhapa. And yesterday, we discussed the way of practice in order to develop calm abiding and taking as an object the mind itself.
And these terms that are used such as calm abiding, meditative stabilization, and also amongst the six perfections such as the perfection of generosity, etc. Are the fifth of these six perfections, meditative concentration. These all mean the same. And by developing this meditative concentration or calm abiding through meditation then we gain control over the mind. The mind can be led anywhere that we like.
We can place the mind wherever we want and it will remain there. So this quality of calm abiding or meditative concentration is that which gains control over the mind just as in the case of a king who has power over his retinue. No one else has that power to order about his retinue, only the king himself. And this is the same way with calm abiding or meditative concentration with respect to the mind. So having cultivated this meditative concentration, calm abiding, then if we were to place the mind on emptiness then it will remain on on that object of observation.
Just in the same way as a mountain where it is unshakable, unmovable. Likewise, the placement of our mind upon any object is such that it will be unshakable, unmovable. It will remain there. It won’t it will not run about here and there, but will abide unmovingly upon any object that we place it upon like a great mountain. So, with this quality, by means of this quality of calm abiding, then wherever we place the mind it will remain upon that object.
From time to time we will place it on various objects. We may place it on emptiness. We may place it on the awakening heart. We may place it on the compassion upon selflessness. We can send it in any direction and wherever we send it that’s the only place that it will go.
It will not take us some side, some path to go to other objects. It will go to only the object that we send it to. If we want to meditate on emptiness, we place it on emptiness, it will abide only on emptiness. It will not go to any other object. If we send out to meditate upon awakened heart, likewise it abides on the awakened heart.
It will not go here and there to other objects and likewise all the various objects that we choose. And still explaining this verse that the mind in developing this ability to move it in any place in way and we have it to remain there develops a great pliancy or flexibility. It’s easily moved about and remains. We gain this literally well-trained flexibility. Out of this plant arises a physical and mental bliss.
And therefore considering all of these qualities of calm abiding, all of the great scholar yogis made great effort in cultivating it. So if we take an example from what we’ve been doing during the retreat. In the morning we go out doing walking meditation, we go outside and this is a practice of the lesser vehicle. One of their important practices is close mindfulness, close placements of mindfulness, close placement of mindfulness. And there are four close placements: body, feelings, mind, and dharmas.
And this is close placement of mindfulness on the body. And what is the reason, the purpose that we carry on such a type of meditation? Is to develop the mind specifically to eliminate the all of the various trains of thought which are constantly occurring in the mind to eliminate those to bring to pacify the mind to create a bliss to make to develop a very clear mind that to develop the mind in this way. So, the quality of the practice depends upon our motivation. If we practice with the awakening heart, even though this practice may be classified as a lesser vehicle practice, with motivation of the great vehicle that is the I am doing this practice for the sake of attaining Buddhahood for the sake of all sentient beings then this practice becomes a practice of the great vehicle.
We’re doing this practice in order to to purify our mind. So taking it as what we mean in terms of this close placement of mindfulness and if my hand is mindfulness and the My hand is the mindfulness and the bell is the mind itself and the hand holds the bell. Mindfulness is holding the mind. And in our close placement of mindfulness on the body, in our walking meditation, that we’re holding the mind to the together with the foot and we’re constantly holding these two together by means of mindfulness that we’re raising, raising, raising, abide, stop, you know, just pause, bring mind to the foot by means holding it to the foot with mindfulness and then proceed slowly slowly placing placing keeping the mind held to the foot by the force of mindfulness placing pausing bringing make sure that the mind is held to the foot by by means of mindfulness. And repeating the next foot, raising slowly, slowly holding the mind to the foot by means of the force of mindfulness just like the hand holding the bell, placing it like that.
And in this procedure then the mind is not able to stray to anywhere else by the force of this mindfulness. It’s held bound to the foot. It’s being simultaneously with the motion of the foot. The mind is going with the foot and it’s being held there by the force of mindfulness. And this brings about an elimination of all these various thoughts of trains of thought which are constantly occurring in our mind.
We pacify the mind, bring it peace, and it there occurs a great deal of bliss. A bliss will arise from this through this practice. So in developing this, once we can proceed. Through this practice having gained stability with being able to hold the mind to the foot in this close placement(s) of mindfulness and having it remain there which will not come easily but it may be some difficulty but we will be able to develop where mind will remain with the foot. Then we can carry on that practice.
We can imagine that the object of observation is not just the foot but also the object of observation can be the attitude that in raising the foot I’m doing this in order to liberate that the right foot is method, the left foot is wisdom. And raising the right foot, developing a method in order to liberate all sentient beings and lowering it down for the sake of attaining Buddhahood and again developing one’s wisdom for the sake of all sentient beings, raising your foot and lowering it in order to develop Buddhahood for the sake of all sentient beings. And there therefore, your walking becomes a matter of developing method and wisdom. So now we’ll move on to emptiness in connection with Mahāmudrā. Rinpoche did quote a verse from the Buddha but in general in his explanation of emptiness in connection with Mahāmudrā, there were many views and many great masters who had presented various methods and views prior to Tsongkhapa, there’s not enough time to explain all the various methods and views that they set forth with respect to emptiness.
Rinpoche will take the essence of the view as presented from Tsongkhapa and since Tsongkhapa and in abbreviated fashion. So, in presenting the view on emptiness, the Buddha spoke about the three doors of liberation. And these are emptiness, peace, and non production. So the the Buddha said that the reason that continually experience suffering, continually turning in cyclic existence, revolving in cyclic existence is due to the influence of not understanding these three doors, that we have an obstruction to understanding these three doors. So the Buddha is you know almost like our parents, our mother and father.
Yeah. With respect to the great love and compassion that he has for sentient beings. But in fact, he probably has hundreds of times more love than even our own mothers have for us. And out of his seeing the sentient beings experiencing suffering and out of his great compassion he taught the various methods whereby we can liberate ourselves from this suffering. That is to say he taught the Dharma which is the means to liberate ourselves from suffering.
And doing this he taught the many ways of reasoning as a means to understand emptiness. And by practicing these reasonings, this acts as a path leading us to liberation. So, the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas taught a great deal of Dharma. They gave many, many, teachings. And what was the ultimate purpose for all the various teachings?
This ultimately in the final analysis was to understand emptiness. And in this, by means of these teachings, trying to gain and generate an understanding of the emptiness which we do not understand. That emptiness which we presently understand, to have it remain and not only to have it remain but increase our understanding higher and higher. That this all in order to achieve liberation and finally omniscience. That all of the various teachings have as their essence, are essentially a method for gaining a realization of emptiness.
So we’re going to get right down to the business of emptiness and and general there are many types of emptinesses that we can classify emptiness into a classification of twenty or sixteen or four. But in accordance with the teachings of Candrakīrti we are going to talk about mainly two types of emptinesses. So we can begin with the classification of phenomena in general. There are two types of phenomena. There are, so I use the word person but it can apply to all sentient beings.
Just make it easier I’ll just say person. Those phenomena which are persons and those phenomena which are non persons. So by persons we mean those are sentient beings, those phenomena which have life, those phenomena which have consciousness. These are sentient beings or we’re calling them persons. And on the other hand, those which do not have life, those which do not have consciousness are non person phenomena.
So we have in general we have two types these two types of phenomena persons and non persons. I hope that’s by persons I mean all sentient beings. Persons and non persons. As was explained when we talked about the etymology of the term Mahāmudrā, that in Tibetan it was Chagya Chenpo. And Chagya means — stood for both of these types in terms of emptiness.
That the emptiness in terms of persons and emptiness in terms of non persons is what Chagya meant. And as was explained previously in the etymology of the word Mahāmudrā, Chagya Chenpo. Chagya refers to emptiness, that is Mudra. Maha or Chenpo refers to the awareness realizing emptiness and by the means of meditation developing this awareness that all the various faults are eliminated, abandoned, all the excellent qualities are attained until we’ve achieved the supreme attainment of Buddhahood. And this is what is meant by maha or great, or Chenpo.
So as we said Mudra, Chagya, is termed persons and is termed as is understood as emptiness. And we said that therefore there are two types of Mudras. There is the mudra which is emptiness of persons and there is the mudra which is the emptiness of phenomena other than persons. If we take the main example which is taken for phenomena other than persons is the mind itself. So as we said, in order to easily understand what we’re talking about in terms of mind, discussing calm abiding, we were taking the mind as the objects of observation and seeking to develop a single pointed concentration whereby the mind would remain well upon the object of mind itself.
We place the mind single-pointedly upon the mind. So having by means of calm abiding placed the mind single-pointedly upon the mind as its object of observation, then one portion of the mind now engages in an analysis. This part of the mind is a factor of wisdom. It examines the mind as to its emptiness, that is to say investigates whether that mind is truly existent or not truly existent. So we are examining the mind in order to determine whether it is truly existent or not.
That is to understand the emptiness of the mind. Now we have to we want to understand is that the mind is not truly existent. But unless we know what truly existent is, and we have to know that true existence is the object of negation. It is what is being refuted. But if we do not know what true existence is, we cannot understand that the mind is not truly existent.
Are trying to understand non true existence in terms of the mind. We are trying to understand non true existence in terms of the mind. If we understand non true existence in terms of the mind then we understand Mahāmudrā. Therefore we have to know what true existence is in order to understand that is not truly existent. We have to recognize the non existence of true existence.
We have to recognize and identify the object of negation. Quoting from Śāntideva in which that if the the the object to be negated is not understood, If the true existence of an object is not understood then its non true existence cannot be understood. That we to recognize the object of negation, that is to say true existence, and therefore it is just like in the case of if we’re shooting an arrow we have to identify what the target is. We have to know where it is, where we’re going to shoot. If we don’t know what the target is then even if we’re never going to be able to hit it even if we shoot the arrow so we have to identify what is the target the object of negation.
Most of you know Doug, one of the co-directors of Buddha House, Doug. Doug is not here today. Hello? The guy with the white hair. Anyway, Doug.
So Doug was here. Doug is not here. Doug is not here. Okay. If somebody wanted to know, is Doug here today?
Where is Doug? Is he here today? If you didn’t know, if you couldn’t recognize Doug, you didn’t know Doug, you couldn’t recognize Doug, then you could look where is Doug, where is Doug, where is Doug, you would never be able to know whether Doug was here or not. You would not be able to come to an understanding that Doug is not here today, that he doesn’t exist in this room. Therefore in order to understand that Doug is not here in this room today, would have to be able to identify Doug.
You would have to be able to recognize Doug. Just in that case of just like that case, an example of Doug, I just in order to understand that Doug is not here today in this room, have to be able to understand who Doug is. Likewise, in coming to an understanding of emptiness, we have to understand what the object of negation is. In making and carrying out an examination we are trying to understand does that object of negation exist or not exist. And we if if we come to when we come to conclusion that object of negation doesn’t exist and we understand emptiness So this, you know, the doorway, the entrance way into the understanding of emptiness is identifying the object of negation and this is difficult.
If we are to understand emptiness we have to begin by recognizing, identifying the object of negation. If once we identify the object of negation, then there’s no difficulty. We simply investigate, we see that object of negation in fact doesn’t exist, and we realize emptiness.