Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 49-minute teaching, Lama Lhundup guides practitioners toward understanding how self-grasping misconceptions create suffering and what must be understood to eliminate them. He establishes the foundational motivation—developing a good heart and correct understanding of reality to benefit all beings—then traces the root of all suffering to the mind’s mistaken conception of a solid, independent “I”. Using the magician’s illusion analogy, he shows that while the misapprehended self appears real to us, it has no actual existence, and that all problems we attribute to external causes arise from this ignorance. He then methodically examines whether the self can logically exist as part of the body or consciousness, concluding neither holds. He distinguishes between the conventionally existing “I” we use in everyday speech and the falsely appearing inherently existent “I” created by ignorance. He emphasizes that only the Prāsaṇgika Madhyamaka school correctly explains emptiness, and illustrates this with the story of Lama Tsongkhapa discovering his understanding of emptiness was incomplete until meditating in retreat.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 03 1987 02 25 HY.mp3
UUID: 1a676c2a-f50b-4778-ba56-e8b40601ce62
Teacher: Lama Lhundup
Collection: Helping yourself helping others (Lama Lhundup)
Date: 1987-02-25
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 49.0 minutes
Words: ~2,698
So at this time we’re going to listen to the teaching on the Dharma. And the essence of listening, the purpose of listening, is to develop a good heart and to come to an understanding of the nature of reality. And to do this we must set a motivation that I’m going to listen to this teaching in order to develop a good heart, to understand reality, in order that I may establish all sentient beings in Buddhahood, in liberation. Therefore, I must listen to this teaching in order to attain Buddhahood for the sake of all sentient beings. We listen to the teaching with this motivation, engaging in the act of hearing the teaching and reflecting upon the teaching in order to develop these qualities of a good heart and a correct understanding of reality in order to benefit all sentient beings.
So the Master Candrakīrti has said that from the beginning of this time we have conceived of an I through the power, through the force, of ignorance. And through the force of this ignorance conceiving of the I, we generate attachment to self and aversion to others. And through the power of developing this attachment to oneself and aversion to others, all the various sufferings and difficulties that we experience arise. Therefore, the root of cyclic existence, the root of all our suffering, is this wrong consciousness which conceives I, which thinks I within our own mind. The I which is being conceived, this type of I which is being conceived of, does not exist.
And this is the root of our problem. And in dependence upon this mistaken consciousness which conceives of an I which in fact does not exist, we engage every day of our lives in many negative actions. We collect negative karmas through jealousy, miserliness, all the various afflictive emotions. But all the troubles, the difficulties, and sufferings that we experience, though we produce them ourselves, we don’t think that we make, that we create, our own suffering, all these various sufferings that occur. So we should understand that all the problems, the difficulties that we have, all the suffering that occurs, arises in dependence upon this misconception which apprehends the I mistakenly.
We shouldn’t think that others are causing our problems. They are not the source of our problems. It is the condition within our own mind which is the misconception of the nature of the I, the self. If we can keep in mind the fact that all our difficulties are arising in dependence upon this misapprehension of the nature of the I, then this will cause our anger, our worries, our various sufferings to lessen, to begin to lessen. And if we ask the question, you know, this apprehension, this conception of I, of the self, which is the cause of all our problems, is there a way we can get rid of it?
Is there some method? So what we have to understand by way of a method is we have to begin to understand the actual nature, the way the I actually exists. But if we look outside of ourselves when we’re trying to come to understand the nature of the I, if we look outside of ourselves, we’re never going to understand it. We have to look inside ourselves. How is the I dependent upon?
How does it arise? How does it depend upon the body, for example? So, for example, you know, the way the I appears to us and the way the I appears for someone who has had direct perception of emptiness, these two appearances to these two types of people are very much different. If we take an example: a magician, a conjurer, and he’s able to transform a pebble and a stick into a horse and an elephant. Even though this horse and the elephant are really an illusion that the magician has created, the audience does not understand this.
When they see the horse and the elephant, they think these are really a horse and an elephant. They’re actual, real, fully qualified horses and elephants. Now the magician who’s created these illusions, you know, to his eye consciousness, to his eye, this horse and elephant appear to be real. But he knows with his mental consciousness that these are a false appearance, that these aren’t really horses and elephants. They’re not real horses and elephants. They’re not actually horses and elephants. It’s an illusion that they’re not real. His appearance is false. So though it appears real to his eye consciousness, to his mental consciousness he understands this is a false appearance.
It’s just an illusion that they’re not real. Okay. So if we take this example and we apply it to ourselves, you know, the I or the self appears to us due to the effect of the conception of inherent existence by ignorance. Ignorance conceiving of inherent existence. Ignorance conceiving of true existence.
Due to the effect of this, the I or the self appears to us to inherently exist or truly exist. And on top of this, the mental consciousness thinks, this is exactly how it exists. It appears that way, and the mental consciousness thinks, this is the way it actually exists. So we have to understand, we have to know the way in which objects are not established the way they appear.
We have to understand how the way in which we actually apprehend objects. We have to understand the way objects appear to us, but in fact are not existing that way or established that way. Okay. So, you know, we take the I which appears to our awareness, and we have to understand, well, how does it appear to the I? We try to understand how is the I appearing to us.
The I which appears to exist inherently. It appears to exist inherently. Now if this I, if this inherently existent I which appears to us, if it in fact exists, it must exist in dependence upon either the body or it must exist in dependence upon the mind. There’s no way the I can exist independently of either the mind or the body. Therefore, we have to look at this very closely.
Now this inherently existent I which we’re trying to come to an understanding of, how it exists, if it in fact exists at all. If it exists, it must exist dependent upon either the body or the mind. So first, we look at the body. If this inherently existent I depends upon the body, then it must be one with it. It must be either one with the body or part of the body. Now we don’t conceive of the I as being the same as the body.
Now if the I were the same as the body, the self were the same as the body, then we would have to say that the head or the arms or the legs or whatever parts of the body are the I. And we don’t think of these parts as being the I. Now we’re going to examine to see if the I or the self is a part of the body. First, take a similar example of a rosary. If we divide up the rosary into all the beads and the string, then the appearance of the rosary disappears.
When we take the parts of the rosary and we divide it up into the individual beads and the string, we no longer see the rosary — the appearance of the rosary disappears. And likewise, when we begin to, if we examine for the self or the I as being a part of the body, looking for it amongst the parts, once we begin an examination, you know, the skin and the various parts of the body, we begin to dissect the body, then we will come to the conclusion we will not even be able to find a single atom which we can call the I or the self. We have to make an actual examination and come to an understanding that not even an atom of the body can be thought of as the I, conceived of as the I or the self. Now, contemporary science, a scientist would think, they equate the self with atoms, the I with atoms. You know, we are the atoms. I am the atoms. But if they make an examination, they’re not going to find any atom which they can call the self, any atom which they can call the I. None of the parts of the body, not even an atom, is the I or the self. So then we have to come to the understanding that none of the parts of the body are the I, the self.
So now we’re going to make an examination of the consciousness to see if the I exists and how it would exist in relationship to the consciousness. Now amongst the four Buddhist tenets, most of the tenets within Buddhism hold that the consciousness is the self or the I. Now probably most of you think that the consciousness or the mind is the self or the I. So we’ll make an examination. When we think that the I, that the consciousness or the mind, is the self or the I, so we examine the mind.
In general, we can make the division of consciousness into sense consciousnesses and mental consciousnesses. So then we examine whether the sense consciousness or the mental consciousness is the I. Now if the sense consciousnesses were the I, at the time of deep sleep, there would be no I or self. And at the time of deep sleep, then the I would become nonexistent. Or because we have many different types of minds arising, consciousnesses arising, then we’d have to have many different selves or I’s.
But there aren’t many I’s. I am not many I’s. I’m just one I. When we examine the consciousness and search for the I, we do not find it. If we were to hold that the consciousness is the I, there are many different types of reasoning which we’re able to refute this. If the I is posited to be the consciousness, then the I must be inherently existent.
If the I is inherently existent, then there would be no way to eliminate mistakes. If the I were inherently existent, there would be no way to eliminate these mistakes. So we have to come to a firm determination that I am not inherently existent. So we have to differentiate between two types of I. The I in which we say, I am going out, I am sick, this type of I which we usually use, this is the nominally existent I. But there’s another I which appears to us, which appears to us inherently existent, appears very concrete, very solid, which we grasp at as appearing the way it exists. So the I which thinks I am going, I am sick, this I exists. But the type of I which is created out of a mistaken consciousness does not exist. So we have to understand correctly how to be able to distinguish between these two types of I.
So we have to understand what is the nature of the I which exists? What is the nature of the I that exists? And we have to understand how they differ. So there are many people in your countries who talk a lot about emptiness. But if they do not understand emptiness, they can cause a great mistake, they bring about great mistake.
So, you know, we can’t, there’s no easy way to understand this all at once. There’s no easy way to understand it all at once. So among, it is only the Prāsaṇgika Madhyamaka school amongst all of the four tenets of Buddhism. It is only the Prāsaṇgika Madhyamaka school which correctly sets forth the correct view of emptiness. All the other schools are mistaken in holding to an inherently existent I.
So these various levels, these represent the various levels of tenets, represent degrees of coming closer and closer to the correct view of emptiness as was spoken by the Buddha, depending upon the amount of merit or positive potential that one has. One can, by degrees, come slowly closer and closer to a correct understanding of emptiness. Emptiness, the understanding of emptiness, is extremely important. If we don’t understand emptiness, there’s no way we can destroy our enemy, that is the afflictive emotions. And so we must understand emptiness correctly and not without making any mistakes. So in Tibet, when the great master Lama Tsongkhapa was giving the teaching, and he was giving the teaching, in the audience were many great masters.
He wasn’t correct. Even this great master who was a great master, he did not have a correct understanding even before the age of thirty years old. Since thirty years before, he got many teachings, Heart Sūtra, they explained the emptiness. So he understand what they say. So then he meditate, you know, during the puja time.
So then he meditate strongly and concentrate on emptiness. So just most monks finish puja, but still he meditate on emptiness. But what he understand, the emptiness, after he, some lama told him really, then he please, you ask. One lama, Lama Umapa, he tried to see Mañjuśrī. So please, you ask to Mañjuśrī.
What I, this understanding, this emptiness, really correct or not. Which tenets accept? Which tenets accept? Just he asked the question to Mañjuśrī. Then Mañjuśrī said, what you understand, the emptiness, no one accept.
Any tenets, all tenets, Buddhism all tenets, anyone, no accept. So then he said, you know, what shall I do? So you must, you need to go. Now you give up everything. You go in the retreat.
Then after some time, you will really understand. You will understand. You know, told him, you know. Okay. That is, yeah.
That is. So this emptiness that Tsongkhapa was meditating on wasn’t really the actual emptiness. No. No emptiness.
So later, so Tsongkhapa, you know, would become a great master, and he was at this time. And he was giving a teaching to a thousand really great scholars and masters. And at this time, Mañjuśrī appeared to him and said that you must go into isolation, dwell by yourself, and purify and make prostrations. So upon hearing this, Tsongkhapa set out with eight of his students, and they didn’t take any possessions with them. He left, you know, all their belongings behind, and they immediately set out to a retreat place and to offer prostrations.