Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 65-minute session from a Mahāmudrā retreat, Lama Zopa Rinpoche presents how the four Buddhist philosophical schools understand the self, then opens to Q&A. He traces from Vaibhāṣika through Cittamātra to the Mādhyamika Prāsaṇgika position: the person exists only as the mere I, merely labeled upon the aggregates, not findable under analysis, empty of inherent existence. Through concrete examples—his childhood fear of his grandmother Mip, the letter M—and an extended debate with a student, Rinpoche illuminates the gap between the merely imputed self (which exists and creates karma) and the false appearance of an inherently existing self. The Q&A explores how different schools realize emptiness and why emptiness does not negate conventional action. For practitioners studying Buddhist philosophy and meditation.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 91 2004 04 28 MR.mp3
UUID: 0d713f2a-1462-4939-8310-060fa217bd0a
Teacher: Lama Zopa Rinpoche 1
Collection: y Mahāmudrā International Retreat (Lama Zopa Rinpoche 1)
Date: 2004-04-28
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 65.5 minutes
Words: ~6,272
So Sarah has asked me to mainly be here for question and answer. And I thought at the beginning I would briefly go through the presentation of the four schools that we were talking about last time just to sort of try and make it very simple and as clear as I can. Apart from the fog of ignorance, I am also afflicted by the fog of mucus which is obscuring my mind in the present time. So excuse me if I cough occasionally and excuse the unclear presentation. We discussed that the simplest Buddhist school, the Vaibhāṣikas, in terms of presenting what the person is and what the person isn’t, this school, their their first job was to refute the standard belief in India at that time that the Ātman, or the self, existed as a permanent and partless entity, independent of any any causes and conditions.
I think it’s the concept is very similar to the our concept of the soul. You know, there’s a belief that we have that we have a soul which remains essentially me all the time, and and this essentially self existing soul will go to heaven and it’ll meet the souls of mom and dad who are up there waiting for me, and and everything will be happy meeting these permanent, unchanging people in our lives who have died. That’s sort of the concept an unchanging, self existing entity, the Ātman. So the the first presentation is the emptiness of a self existing permanently, which means unchangingly, partlessly, and independently. So all Buddhist schools accept that, but they they call that gross selflessness.
The Vaibhāṣikas, even though they refuted the self to be in that form permanent, partless, and independent, they said that the self is findable, and it exists as the collection of the aggregates. So we to have to identify the person, the conventionally existing person, the one who creates karma, the one who carries karmic impressions into future lives, and experiences karmic results in future lives. That, you know, we have to have some way of of identifying what the person is. It’s not enough to just say what the person isn’t. And so their assertion is that the self exists as the collection of the aggregates.
The next school, also a Hīnayāna school, the Sautrāntika school, they present essentially, similar to the Vaibhāṣika schools, a more subtle type of emptiness, the emptiness of self sufficient and substantial existence. So this is the concept of the self existing self sufficiently, which means, again, a type of independence, independent of karma, causes and conditions, and substantial in its own substance, independently of the mind and your mental imputation and so on. So that is refuted by the Sautrāntika School, and they assert that what the self is is not the collection of aggregates, but they specifically point towards the mental consciousness. You know, in the the aggregates are five, there’s the form aggregate, and then there are four mental aggregates, the feelings, discriminations, discriminations, the collection of compositional factors, and the aggregate of consciousness. That’s the fifth aggregate.
So within consciousness, there are the five sense consciousnesses and mental consciousness. So the mental consciousness is the realm of our thoughts. Mostly for us, it’s the realm of our thoughts and ideas. Mental consciousness is that which receives sensory input and makes decisions and plans for the future and so on. It’s the thinking part of our mind.
Mental consciousness has the capacity, a capacity which can only be brought out through single point of concentration, to experience phenomena directly without thinking about them, to see them directly. We call this yogic direct awareness, and that’s the one of the the main goals of the Buddhist path, is to attain that state of direct awareness, and turn that focus that direct awareness onto the object, emptiness. So it’s the mental consciousness which will realize emptiness. When we die, all of the activity of the mind sort of absorbs into the mental consciousness. So the the it’s the mental consciousness which does separate from this body and go into the next body, and it also bears all of the karmic imprints.
So the Sautrantikas say this is it. This is the person. This is what this is the what they indicated. If we search for the aggregates, upon the aggregates to find the person, we will find the mental consciousness as the person. Then we talked about the Cittamātra school, or mind only school, who assert a seventh type of consciousness called the mind basis of all, or the Alaya Vijñāna.
I remember Rinpoche said that all the karmic imprints are born upon this Alaya Vijñāna. And whenever we experience something, it is due to the ripening of a karmic imprint on the Alaya Vijñāna, and that karmic imprint gives rise to two. It gives rise to the subjective awareness and the object of that awareness coming from the one imprint, the unique presentation of this Cittamātra school, they assert that there is no such thing as external objects existing independently of consciousness. Which means, if we look at it from the individual point of view, each one of us is experiencing our karmic life. Whatever we experience is a product of our personal karma, and it’s unique for each one of us.
We might think that we’re in common room here, If we don’t analyze, there is something which we can call the common room. But if we check up each individual’s experience of this room, there is a unique room experienced by that person according to that person’s karma. This is just you know, it’s a more subtle presentation of the example that we always hear about, the liquid which appears as pus, water, or ambrosia, according to the karma of the sentient being experiencing that liquid. So that example refers to three different rebirth states, the hungry ghost, the humans, and the divine beings. But the same principle works in one rebirth state, in our human rebirth state.
Each one of us has our personal karma and our personal room, and nobody else shares our personal room because it is a reflection of our it comes from the karmic seed in our mind. And so the Chittamatrans say everybody is living their personal saṃsāra. Although, in general, there seems to be a world in common, because we have similar karma, specifically, each one of us has their own karmic life and own karmic world. And so why? Because the world we experience and the experience itself come from the same imprint.
There’s no external reality separate from mind. When you think about it, it’s a very fascinating presentation and very profound. I met Jeffrey Hopkins once, he was giving a talk in Dharmashala in the seventies, and he was saying it was his favorite view, you know, even though it’s said not to be the final view, but it it definitely gives insight into tantra. Right? In in the way in which we practice the four purities, where we consciously create our own world, where we consciously see this environment as the pure realm of the deity.
We see our body as the body of the deity, our behavior, our actions as the activity of the deity, and the sound of our voices, the sound of the deity’s voice and the mantra. Where actually, you know, this practice of this tantric practice is working on the principle sounds quite similar. Anyway, the Chittamatrans then assert the emptiness of permanent, partless, and independent existence as gross selflessness, and they also assert the emptiness of a self sufficient, substantially existing person, a subtle selflessness of the person, and they also assert this emptiness of phenomena other than person, saying emptiness of external existence. The two lower schools only talk about selflessness of persons. They don’t talk about selflessness of of things other than persons.
They say that everything else truly exists in its own way. They don’t look at that. But the Chittamatrans now present a selflessness of phenomena other than persons, which is the emptiness of existing as external entities to the consciousness. Alright. What they assert to be the person is this seventh consciousness, this this Alaya Vijñāna, or this mind basis of all.
Because that bears the karmic imprints that goes from life to life. So they assert that to be the person. Alright. Am I going too fast? Okay.
So then we move up to the Mādhyamika school, middle way. And the Mādhyamika school that has the the two divisions, there’s the Svatantrikas and the Prasangikas. Now, the the Svatantrikas, as Rinpoche mentioned, they assert that the the self is empty of being of existing separately from imputation. It depends upon mental imputation. However, there’s so that the basis of imputation, say the aggregates, there has to be something on the side of the basis which meets the imputing mind.
Right? So we’ve got this thought, I. I is coming from the mind. It’s got to meet something on the aggregates, which is I. If there were nothing that’s me on these aggregates, then they can’t handle that.
They say, Well, then I could call myself king, president, whatever, and I would be that. If everything just depends upon mental imputation, then you could call a dog a lion, and it would be a dog. There has to be some dogginess, some essential essence of dog on that four legs and tail, and you know, that we call dog. So so they say that dog has to exist from its own nature, by its own characteristic or nature, and the imputing mind meets that, and you establish the dog. So they still assert that there’s something on the aggregates, which is the person.
They also, similar to the Sautrāntika school, they would say, when you have to come up with what is the person, what you end up with, they say you end up with the mental consciousness as being an illustration of the person. Now Rinpoche then moved on to the Prāsaṇgika School, who go one step further. They say that the belief that there is although the person doesn’t truly exist in its own right, it exists by nature on the aggregates, that is the assertion of inherent existence, and their subtle emptiness is the emptiness of inherent existence, which means that the person exists in dependence merely upon mental imputation, upon a valid basis of imputation, the five aggregates, or the four aggregates for a person in the formless realm. So they refute even that subtle essence of self existing on the aggregates. Alright?
So what they assert to be the person is the mere I that is merely imputed upon the basis of aggregates.. This word mere refutes any existence from the side of the aggregates or from anywhere else. Mere also is equivalent to saying conventional existence, which means under ultimate analysis, it cannot it does not exist, it cannot be found. What we mean by ultimate analysis is the, you know, generating the wisdom mind in single point of concentration, and trying to establish an I existing from its side.
So but ultimately, no eye can be found to exist from its own side. Therefore, the eye is empty of existing from its own side. So the mere I is merely imputed exists or or put it over. Sorry. The person exists as the mere I imputed upon the five aggregates.
Then we had the interesting discussion with the debate with Sable, who was right, who who was presenting the Prāsaṇgika view. That you can say that conventionally, the mere I exists on the aggregates. Rinpoche was trying to trick her by saying, well, if it’s there, where is it? The the point is that you have the mere collection, if we’re talking about the m, it’s not any one of the strokes of the m, it’s the mere collection of the the four strokes which constitute the letter m, then the the mere m exists on that basis of designation. But in saying that, one understands mere to indicate conventional and not ultimately.
If it ultimately existed, it would be findable when we analyze the four strokes. We would find something which is m from its side, but there is no such findable thing, so that’s negated by mere. Rinpoche was not comfortable, he is not comfortable with the assertion that the mere I is findable. Not so, not findable, exists on the aggregates. Even his root guru, Kyabje Trijang Rinpoche said the mere I exists on the aggregates.
But he said, one of his other gurus, Geshe Sopa Rinpoche, says, you can’t say that. Geshe Jampa Tegchog at Nālānda monastery, he talked about this. He said, There is a person who comes, goes, stays, sleeps, and uses food, drink, housing, and so on. But on the other hand, such a person is not found when you analyze, looking for what it is in the basis of designation, asking, is this the person? Is that the person?
Is that the person? Where is the person? He says, when we talk of a mere I, we’re talking about the idea of not being findable. Right? Mere has the idea of not being findable, and not existing from its own side.
So those are the two things which the word mere excludes: existing from its own side and being findable when you look for it. A person that could be found when we search for it on the basis of designation would be a person existing from its own side. So he says, The person exists on the aggregates, or the me, I exists on the aggregates, it exists conventionally. Therefore, it has to be said to exist on the basis of designation, the aggregates. But its way of existing is not from its own side, but existing as something merely labeled, merely named upon the aggregates.
So why is it that? Because whatever the person whatever the aggregates do, we say the person is doing it. The aggregates are sleeping, the person’s sleeping. We said, if the aggregates are sitting in here, then the person is in here sitting in here. If the aggregates are thinking about a problem, the person is thinking about a problem.
If the aggregates are sick, the person is sick. So you see the function, the activity of the aggregates is not separate from the function and activity of the person, but only at a conventional level. Ultimately, no person can be found to exist upon the aggregates. So he says So there is a person who does various actions and experiences various results of pain and pleasure. We’re not nihilistic.
There are persons. Such a person does exist conventionally. Does the person exist on the aggregates? Yes. How?
It is merely labelled or named on the aggregates. Is there a person that could be found when searched for in the basis of designation? No. So if we can understand this, we can apply that reasoning to all phenomena. So this is where we meditate on.
It’s very good to use people’s names. I I when I was a kid, I remember, I had a a step grandmother who was who I was afraid of, and my brothers and sisters and nephews and niece, we we gave her the kid’s name of of Mip. I I have no idea why we called her Mip, but I was very afraid of Mip. And I I remember clearly, one night I was sleeping, I actually I spent about a year staying with my grandparents. And I remember lying in my bed, sitting and thinking, Mip, Mip, and I was repeating her name, Mip, Mip, And suddenly, I had this incredible realization.
Mip is just a word. It’s just a name. And I and I I remember very clearly laughing at the full heartedness of being worried about this word, this word, MIP. So I’m not saying I had a a childhood realization of emptiness, but that’s what we should do. We should repeat the words, you know, mother, mother, mother, father, father, or people close to us, and try to connect the sound of the word, of the name of the person, with the appearance of the person from the from the aggregates, from the body and the sound of the voice, the clothes they wear, the smell, everything that we associate with that person, and and see how the inherently existing person appears to us and responds to that name.
And then look, where is this inherently existing person? Suddenly we can realize, it’s just the label, it’s just the name, there’s nothing there. So we have to meditate on it. All right. So any questions?
Yeah. Rinpoche is right. He said he prefers he prefers to say the the person exists in relation to the aggregates. But within our, you know, Sera Je’s way of talking, they do say that the person exists on the aggregates as the mere I, merely labeled I. But Rinpoche is not comfortable with that because it’s too close to the position, which asserts some, you know, a person existing by its own nature on the aggregates.
And so Rinpoche says that that is what we say, but it’s better to think of the person being related to the aggregates. That’s what he said. A satellite? Yeah, well, they assert the findable self. All the schools below the Prasangikas assert the self to be findable on the aggregates, findable.
And they assert that the when you look for the person, you’ve what your illustration of the person, what comes out is the this this mind basis of all, this seventh consciousness that carries the karmic imprints. So that’s what they assert to be the person. Well, a lot of people lose arguments but still carry on. Like, they don’t believe they lost the argument. And we we have to still study it.
When the in the Geshe program, when you’re studying these schools, you become a vibrancy, an exponent of Vaibhāṣika tenets. You must become, you must completely train your mind to think like they do, and you defend in debate that stance against the Sautrāntika, the next school, and you can do very well because it’s subtle. And then you become a Sautrāntika and you attack the Vaibhāṣika. So in this way, you really get to know. And then you become a Cittamātra, and a very good debater is very difficult to defeat.
But in the process but it can be defeated, but it’s no good to say, oh, it’s wrong because it says so on page six. That’s useless. The whole purpose of debate is to generate the view and then be led in debate to contradict yourself. That’s that’s the whole point. Like, Sable was giving the right answer, and Rinpoche was trying to get her to contradict herself, and that’s where the comes in.
The is when you say something and the questioner leads you to contradicting yourself, then you know. You know the mistake. It’s not page six. It’s, ah, there’s your realization. So this is the purpose of debate.
And it’s like there was sorry. There was one translator, Filiberto Nagy, in the early days, and he got into a debate at Sera, and he defended the Chinese position in Tibet. And he did so well, they got totally angry at him with throwing things at him, but he was they could not defeat him in in logic. So this is the method. It’s fantastic.
Yeah. Yeah. That’s right. In words we hear, everything exists and everything is a manifestation of emptiness. Literally, those words are wrong.
And I squirm every time I hear it. Emptiness is a permanent, unchanging phenomenon. It is the ultimate nature of all things. Whatever exists, its ultimate nature is emptiness, which means ultimately it it is empty of existing from its own side. It’s impossible for emptiness to produce anything.
Emptiness because the very definition of something which is permanent is that it cannot be a cause to produce a result. Because if something is a cause, it is impermanent. Because all causes cease upon producing their result, which means they’re impermanent. So the literal words, everything comes from emptiness, is wrong. However, however, causes produce results because of emptiness, because emptiness allows them to produce results.
If things existed inherently, the entire universe would grind to a halt. There could be no change, because everything would be existing in its own right, independent of causes and conditions. Emptiness allows the arising of impermanent phenomena. You know, the universe is divided up into permanent phenomena and impermanent phenomena. Impermanent phenomena is just about everything.
It’s all physical things, all mental things, and designations. Emptiness. Oh, you won’t understand. Space. A permanent the meaning the meaning of a permanent thing is something which doesn’t change moment by moment.
It can cease. It can cease. Like, you know, the emptiness the ultimate nature of the glass is emptiness, empty of inherently existing glass, and that ultimate nature exists unchangingly, even though the glass itself is constantly changing in a subtle way. But if I smash the glass, the glass ceases to exist entirely, and simultaneously, the emptiness of the glass ceases to exist entirely. So permanent does not necessarily mean lasting forever.
It means not changing moment by moment. The sound man. Could you go over, please, the what is it that goes from life to life from the point of view of the four schools? I’ve mentioned the lower school talks about the mere collection of the aggregates. Other schools talk about the mental consciousness or the Alaya Vijñāna.
The Prāsaṇgika school said, alright, so yeah, I didn’t mention. What is the person it’s the mere eye. We said it’s the mere eye. So what is it that creates karma and and goes from life to life? It’s the mere I, the merely imputed I.
That that is what creates karma, experiences karma, and goes from life to life. Now, the merely imputed I is the I that exists. That it is merely imputed. Yeah. Yeah.
Well, the point is the one that we don’t have to take so seriously is the inherently existing I, because the merely imputed I appears to our mind as an inherently existing I. This is the problem. That’s the one that we should stop taking so seriously. The merely imputed I, we have to take seriously, and that’s why we’re doing all the prostrations. We have to cleanse it of its karma.
That’s serious. And if we if we realized how serious it was, we would be doing prostrations like an hour before Sarah begins, and then for several hours after, was like, Lama Zopa Rinpoche does prostrate. When he leaves here, he does prostrations. Right? Nobody does more prostrations than Rinpoche.
Well, no, you just said it’s the same. I agree with that. It is the same. Right. Alright.
Now, it’s it’s a fair enough question, because if well, the question is essentially, if the lower schools don’t have a presentation of the exact object of refutation, How can they realize emptiness of the object of refutation? The actual emptiness, the correct emptiness, which will cut the root of saṃsāra. So what the the lamas say is that when the Hīnayāna practitioner or the Cittamātra practitioner or Svatāntrika practitioner, when they reach the point of meditating deeply on emptiness, and they’re approaching the direct realization of emptiness, in one of two ways they understand the subtle object of negation. The first way is through imprints from previous lives, where they’ve studied the Prāsaṇgika view, and they sort of realize that they remember it in that meditation. And the second way is that appears to them in the meditation and explains to them the subtle Prāsaṇgika view, and they realize emptiness on the Hīnayāna path.
So that that that’s how it happens. The imputed eye that we have to take seriously. Yes. No. No.
What we have to purify is not not the conventional thing. The conventional world exists. The problem is it appears to us falsely to exist from its own side. That’s what we have to purify, that wrong appearance. We can’t purify or eliminate the mere I, the mere world, because they exist.
To negate them would be to fall into the nihilistic extreme. Sorry? Yeah. We have to purify Yeah. That’s right.
That’s right. And the key point is we’ve got to recognize how things are appearing as inherently existing. And that’s really, really difficult to recognize the negativity, the object of negation. And to, you know, to separate or to distinguish it from the appearance of the mere I. And when we’re analyzing the basis of designation for the eye, we’re not looking for the mere I, we’re looking for this wrongly appearing, truly existing I.
So don’t be tricked by the words like like the Heart Sūtra says, know this, gone, gone, gone, gone. The the gone, as Rinpoche very nicely explained, the know is like a bomb that you throw at the inherently existing I, the wrong appearance. You don’t throw that bomb at the mere I. Literally, the words say, gone this, gone that, And it sounds obviously, sounds nihilistic. The words everything is an an hallucination.
Sounds like the Hindu view of all is Maya, all is illusion. That’s wrong. Literally, is wrong. I don’t think we should use that expression. I would have ripped those signs off those trees.
Everything is not an hallucination, but everything has an illusory appearance. There is falsity in the way all things are appearing to us, but not complete falsity. The conventional object is there, and we’re not to to negate the conventional object. The wrong appearance of true existence. How you appear inherently existing to me, and how I appear inherently existing to you.
That false appearance, that’s what’s hard to to identify. Well, try it. It is moving target, and it’s very subtle. It’s very subtle. No.
I mean, you approach the understanding of emptiness first at an intellectual level. I mean, of course, any any level of concentration is always helpful, but we’re using logic and reasoning in the beginning. And the, you know, the four reasonings begin with identify the object of negation. That’s the first step, and that’s the hardest. Once you’ve done that, the next three are really straightforward.
The step of pervasion, the step of looking for it on the aggregate side, and looking for it separate from the aggregate side, they’re really straightforward once you’ve done the first step. Excuse me. Sorry, could you repeat? Alright. Yeah.
Yeah. I still got the first package you gave me. Still on this one. Alright, so if we look at the other side of the coin, how the mere I does exist, it exists as a dependent arising. And it’s very important in a meditation on emptiness to look at dependent arising because if you if you understand it dependent arising, you’ll easily understand emptiness.
Dependent arising is it that the I does exist in dependence upon causes and conditions, such as the imputation upon the aggregates. So that’s affirmative. That’s how it does exist. So mental imputation is the key to all phenomena. There are three levels of dependent arising, and mental imputation is the most subtle.
And whatever exists, nothing can exist for us. Right? I think we have to add that right for you or for me without our mind in some way imputing that object. We need not necessarily know the correct name that that we even babies impute upon their people and things in their environment. Even animals impute something on the the objects of their environment, and things exist for the animal as a result of the animal’s mind imputing.
And then there is the valid basis of imputation. Know, animals can have the wrong appearance, can’t they? The puppy can see its reflection in a mirror, and falsely, you know, this this false appearance to that puppy’s mind is of is of another dog, another dog. And so it reacts to this false appearance by trying to play with or or bark at the other dog. But it the the puppy can then analyze it.
It runs around behind the mirror. It touches the mirror. It realizes that that’s not another dog, and after a while, the the trick is lost. It it ignores its reflection. So it’s it’s now in it is it is imputed illusion upon its reflection or at least at least it’s imputed non dog on the on the on the reflection.
So its mind’s working at that level. Alright. So dependent arising is is equally as important to think about as is emptiness, and each one helps to understand the other. This was a point that Lama Tsongkhapa made very clear. Yeah.
Right. Well, mean, giving is it was a conventional action of giving. So on a on a proper basis of giving. Right? So that that’s the basis was all that sequence of of steps, which led to the process of giving something to somebody.
So that that’s right. That’s that’s how we establish conventional things to Ultimately, there was no inherently existing giving. This is the key. Look, ultimately does not negate the conventional phenomenon. You must understand that.
Ultimately, only negates an inherently existing phenomenon, which never existed in the first place. It appeared to exist, but that appearance was false. It was the emptiness of an inherent existing action of giving. Well, that’s right. If the action of existing was of giving was inherently existing, how could it have been created?
I mean, it would have had to have existed before the action, and it would still have to exist after the action. If it existed in its own right, that means independent of causes and conditions. So it’s not dependent upon the sequence of steps involved. It’s not dependent upon the label giving. It exists in its own right.
So isn’t it, when we think about that, ridiculous. There’s no such thing as an inherently existing action of giving. Great. But our mind will will think of that, and and it appears to be inherently existing. Well, the six perfections that you have to practice all six in the one.
Right? So the practice of Chenrezig, as Rinpoche was saying, is practiced with morality, patience, enthusiasm, concentration, and wisdom. So so if you give charity with with the awareness that the giver, the object given, and the recipient, or the action and the recipient are empty of inherent existence, you won’t grasp that situation. As, you know, here am I, I am the good giver, I am, you know, inherently existing, you know, the pride and so on, and there won’t be any So so that’s the pure action, to not grasp at any of the parts of the inherent existence. Did you?
We talked about beginningless time, and it seems from the teachings that as far back as the Buddhas have taught about the way of things becoming dependent arisings and karma and all that have evade, if you like, fixed structure, a fixed set of what you might call unchanging laws. Would those unchanging laws be part of the permanent emptiness? I mean, does emptiness actually is it sort of a universal structure that always has been and always will be? Could we refer to it like that? I hope not.
I hope not. Well, can you tell me why not? Can you sort of tell me why not? Well, emptiness emptiness itself is a mere negation. Mere implies nothing else.
Right? And what it what it negates is inherent existence. And so the nature of you, of me, of the microphone, of everything, is empty. It’s empty of existing in its own right. That’s all.
That’s all that emptiness is. That’s all. It’s not a universal principle from which things arise. That is asserted by the Hindus, and that is rejected by all Buddhist schools. There is no universal principle from which things arise.
Everything arises from karma and afflictions in the minds of sentient beings. karma and afflictions are impermanent, but they are existing. Impermanent means they’re changing moment by moment. The presentation of the the four noble truths, the the six realms that arise from the common afflictions, you know, suffering, true origin, true cessation, and so on. This is merely a description of how things operate at the conventional level.
Everything functions at the conventional level. There is no activity at the ultimate level. Right. So the structure I was referring to, which is unchanging, is part of what we call the conventional world, the conventional universe? Well, if we talk about karma, we’re talking about the whole cause and effect process in any individual’s conscious mind stream.
I guess what I’m referring to is not that an individual’s action brings about a result, but that the same action since the beginning of time always produced the same result. In other words, behind the scenes, there is a rule. Alright. You can talk about generalities and particularities. Generality, for example, is permanent phenomenon.
Now permanent the particularities of permanent phenomenon are emptiness, space, true cessation, analytical cessation, and there are other permanent things such as the the very mental images we have in our mind. That that are examples of permanent phenomena. They they don’t change moment by moment. So there there are many particularities within the generality permanent phenomenon. Right?
Permanent phenomenon itself is a permanent generality or class, because every one of its particulars permanent. Now another generality, functioning phenomenon Functioning phenomenon means something which performs a function, and so if anything performs a function, it’s necessarily impermanent, which means it’s changing moment by moment. So that includes all physical things, mental things. So that because every particularity is impermanent, the generality there is impermanent. Even though it’s an eternal law that a functioning phenomenon is something which changes moment by moment.
karma, every particularity of karma is a cause and effect thing. So even though it’s eternal, the principle of karma is eternal, It’s still impermanent because every instance of karma is impermanent. Does that answer it? Yeah. I mean, it was more I’m sort of trying to make a definition between what what we’ve been discussing, which is the impermanent nature of every karmic instant, every independent thing, and what’s actually driving that, what’s behind the scenes that’s actually seems as though it never has changed and never will change, and yet it also doesn’t fit the category of emptiness like just being it, you know, being permanent because it’s empty.
It’s not permanent because it’s empty. It’s permanent because it doesn’t change moment by moment. Right. So it it you you could say karma is permanent. You could say karma exists as long as there are sentient beings, but there will be a time when there are no sentient beings, and therefore there will be no karma.
How can that happen if saṃsāra is never going to end? It will happen because you, I, the ants, the millipedes, has the potential to become a Buddha. So there can be an end to saṃsāra. From the individual’s point of view. From from the entire universe’s point of view.
This also is asserted by our school. Yeah, but numberless is a finite number. It’s not infinite. It’s just very big. I didn’t say karma is permanent, he did.
Yeah, eternal and permanent are not synonyms. Permanent means not changing moment by moment. No, emptiness is a dependent arising. It’s also a dependent arising. Emptiness is a dependent arising.
Yeah. More of a checkup. Emptiness depends upon the basis of imputation. It depends upon imputation. It’s it’s it’s a it’s it’s conventional phenomenon from that point of view.
Why is emptiness in the nature of bliss? It’s not. Bliss is a state of mind. Emptiness is not mind. Oh, you bet.
The is very much more than emptiness. I know these words are expressed by the lamas, but Lama Zopa Rinpoche, who expresses disfavor of his own root guru’s expression, the mere I exists on the aggregates, I have great disagreement with saying that everything arises from Dharmakāya. Yeah. Well, that’s something else. The ultimate guru is Dharmakāya.
That’s another story. Yeah. I think we’re starting at two thirty, are we? Yeah. I mean, we can continue.
There’s more I was going to talk about the tantric stages in tantra. The which? End of Samsāra. Yeah. That’s right.
That’s right. But he didn’t say it couldn’t see the end. Oh, The Perfect Mirror published by Lothian Books. About what? There are millions of books about it.
Never I don’t read them. I’ve had His Holiness’s book on Mahāmudrā like for the last six months intending to read it for this course. Haven’t got around to opening it. Look, there’s lots, but the thing about emptiness is a teacher, instruction from a teacher. That’s what you need.
Books, okay. Sure. But main thing is having a qualified teacher such as His Holiness and Rinpoche who understand emptiness. Khenpo. That’s correct.
Okay. We dedicate the words. But there’s a wisdom realizing emptiness, that’s something else. I’m accepting your charity.