Audio recorded at Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 47-minute teaching on the Ornament of Clear Realization, Kyabje Rinpoche works systematically through the 36 aspects of the exalted knower of paths structured by the Four Noble Truths, beginning with bodhisattva motivation. He covers True Sources and True Paths before turning to the noble truth of suffering and its five characteristics — impermanence, suffering, emptiness, selflessness, and the lack of true existence of these characteristics. Using the five aggregates as the basis for illustration, he employs concrete analogies: a flower’s inevitable growth and decay, and honey remaining sweet regardless of its container. These examples illuminate how the multiple types of emptiness taught in the Perfection of Wisdom sutras apply to the noble truth of cessation. For serious practitioners of classical Buddhist philosophy.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 1990-05-24 – 42A – KR.mp3
UUID: 63544c75-10db-4092-a581-8df6740334e2
Teacher: Kyabje Rinpoche
Collection: Ornament of Clear Realization
Date: 1990-05-24
Recorded at: Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide
Words: ~2,122
So mindful of all of sentient beings equal to space and not allowing ourselves to forget them. And the fact that all of these sentient beings have been our mothers and remembering the great kindness that our mothers have shown us in this life and extending that to all sentient beings in previous lives. And now though they wish happiness, they do not know the ways to, or that is, the causes to bring about happiness. And though they wish to bring about the end of their suffering, they are continually afflicted by suffering. And we on our side have attained this human life, and we have met with the teachings of Buddha that we are able to practice the Dharma, and that we are coming to understand the the way in which to bring ourselves happiness and to abandon suffering.
So at this extremely wonderful conjunction that we have to we have to seek to return the great benefit that our mothers have shown us and that to begin to enact the various deeds to benefit them. But if if we simply seek to bring them food, clothing, etcetera, this we can’t even do this to bring them temporal happiness. So, we must look at the situation from a deeper point of view and seek to bring about the ultimate welfare of sentient beings. That is by, we can do that by eliminating our various faults and bringing to consummation all our various qualities and that is attained with the attainment of Buddhahood. By the attaining Buddhahood that we can bring complete happiness to others and eliminate all of their problems.
And now, practicing the Dharma of the great vehicle, which is the method to, by which we can achieve Buddhahood. And if I train my mind well, and I achieve this this great end, then I will be empowered to be able to establish all sentient beings in happiness, and to eliminate all of their suffering. And therefore, I’m going to listen to this present teaching as a means to practice and to achieve this end. And cultivating this kind hearted attitude of the awakening heart for the next five minutes in meditation. So we we’re discussing the 36 aspects to the exalted knower of paths and beginning with the which is taught in terms of the four noble truths.
And firstly, noble truth of true sources which in this has eight aspects which are taught in terms of abandonments and antidotes. The characteristics of true sources. The first being origin has three aspects. The second cause, three aspects. The third condition has one aspect and strong production has one aspect made total of eight aspects.
And these are the abandonments and the the antidotes which actually abandon these are the actual exalted knower. Then with the noble truth of paths, this is taught in terms of the seven aspects of the path in which there are four characteristics of true paths. The first, these are taught in terms of the thesis and proof. And first of these four characteristics is path, and this is taught from the point of view of the of the two, thesis and proof. Then knowledge, thesis and proof.
Achievement, thesis and proof. And the fourth characteristic, definite emergence, definite deliverance, which is taught only from the point of view of thesis, making a total of seven aspects. So, True Sources has eight aspects. True paths, seven, making a total of 15 we’ve completed so far. And Then the the within the the first noble truth, the noble truth of suffering has five aspects and these are presented from the point of view of self and general.
So beginning with the contaminated aggregates as a true suffering. That is the aggregates of an ordinary sentient being. The aggregates of forms, feelings, perception, thought constructions, and consciousnesses. And as it says in the Heart of Wisdom Sūtra, We should we should recognize that the the the heart of wisdom sūtra, it mentions the that the five aggregates are empty in their nature, and therefore, it is necessary that we are able to recognize what are the five aggregates. And the true sufferings are presented from the point of view of five characteristics.
Previously, they were mentioned in terms of four. Here, the previous four, that is, in terms of characteristic of impermanence, suffering, emptiness, selflessness, but additionally, the fifth characteristic of without self nature. And these are to be based upon we take as our basis upon which we illustrate — the basis is the aggregates. The aggregates are the basis for illustrating these five characteristics. The aggregates are the basis for illustrating these five characteristics. So the five aggregates are appropriated under the influence of karma and afflictive emotions and therefore they are termed true sufferings.
And the first characteristics of true sufferings is impermanence. And this is illustrated on the basis of the aggregates that our appropriate aggregates have a cause and that is the karma and afflictive emotions due to which we are forced to take birth. Upon taking birth, it’s necessary that there follow disintegration. If there is no birth, then there is no disintegration or that is to say death. Just in the case of a flower, once a flower begins to grow, it must eventually die.
It is impermanent. If there were, the seed were burnt such it never germinated, then it would never die. The cause for taking rebirth, that is for taking the appropriated aggregates is by its very nature impermanent. Impermanent. That it’s that it’s it’s that the cause is itself momentary.
That it it arises and disintegrates. And therefore, anything which arises out of this cause is by that by that due to the influence of that cause in itself is momentary arising and disintegrating likewise. So the the direct realizer, the the exalted knower, the exalted knower within the continuum of a bodhisattva superior which directly realizes the impermanence of the appropriated aggregates, is the first aspect within in terms of true sufferings of of of the exalted knower of paths. So the exalted knower within the continuum of a bodhisattva superior which directly realizes the impermanence of the appropriate aggregates is the first of these five aspects of the exalted knower of paths in terms of true sufferings. And the second characteristic is the characteristic of suffering.
Again, this is applied to the appropriate aggregates, that the appropriate aggregates have the characteristics of suffering. And why is that? Because they are appropriated under the power of karma and afflictive emotions. And additionally, that the appropriate aggregates, such types of appropriate aggregates are the abandonments of the superiors. They having realized that they are by their very nature defective and therefore are to be abandoned since they are in the nature of suffering.
So the exalted directly the exalted knower in the bodhisattva superior, in the continuum of bodhisattva superior which which realizes the suffering nature of the appropriate aggregates is the is the second aspect. So the the third characteristic is empty. Emptiness. And this refers to the that the I, the self, the person, exists in dependence upon the contaminated aggregates empty since there is no difference with respect to entity. In the case of the non-Buddhist assertions, it is that the I, the self, and the aggregates are a different entity.
They are they are of other entities, different entities. But here the assertion is that the I and the aggregates are the same entity. That there is no difference in entity and this no difference of entity is referred to as the emptiness. The non difference of entity between the I and the aggregates. The I that goes, that eats, that does all these things, and the aggregates.
Non existence of a difference of entity is the emptiness. Third, so the exalted knower which in the continuum of a bodhisattva superior which realizes the non existence of difference of entity between the I and the appropriate aggregates is the characteristic of emptiness. And the fourth characteristic is selfless, selflessness. And this This is being presented from the point of view of the Autonomy Middle Way School and not the Consequentialist Middle Way School. Therefore, hereby we’re talking about the selflessness of persons.
And this is the understanding that the appropriate aggregates are empty of being a self sufficient, substantially existent self. That the appropriate aggregates are empty of being a self sufficient, substantially existent self. The exalted knower within the continuum of a bodhisattva superior which directly realizes the emptiness of the appropriate aggregates. Empty, self sufficient, self sufficient, self is the fourth characteristic. It is the fourth aspect. So the fifth characteristic I think may be a good translation without self nature. I think I said self nature. This refers to the lack of true existence of the first four characteristics: impermanence, suffering, emptiness, and selflessness that they lack true existence. Therefore the exalted knower within the continuum of a bodhisattva superior which realizes that these first four characteristics do not truly exist or lack true existence is the fifth aspect.
As was mentioned that these five are explained in terms of self and general. The first four were explained in terms of the aggregates in terms of oneself. The fifth characteristic is the fact that these first four are without self nature and this is in terms of it being that they are generally without true existence. They applied in general to all four of the first four characteristics. So these five characteristics are each applied to the appropriate aggregates as far as being impermanent, empty, selfless and then in general lacking true existence.
That is from the point of view of the object. Then that which the bodhisattva superior, that is to say that we’re talking about exalted knower of paths and this only exists in the continuum of a bodhisattva Superior, that that exhaustive wisdom within the continuum of bodhisattva Superior which realizes these five, is the five aspects of the exalted knower of paths. So we’ve explained three noble truths. Here are the resultant noble truth of suffering, which has five aspects making so far a total of 22 aspects. We covered 20, didn’t we? Yeah. I understood. Yeah.
So now we’re going to come to the resultant noble truth of true cessation. This we’ll have 16 aspects. We’re going to share out 16 aspects among the four characteristics of true cessation. These four characteristics of true cessation are cessation, pacification, auspiciousness, and definite emergence. So the perfection of wisdom sutras set out various divisions of emptiness.
There’s a division into 20, into 16, into four. And these 16 aspects shared out through the the four characteristics are explained in terms of the benefit in terms of these 16 divisions of emptiness. The first three of the 16 types of emptiness apply to the first characteristic of cessation. These three these three emptinesses are emptiness of the inner, inner, emptiness of the external, and emptiness of both internal and external.
Internal, external, and both internal and external. In general, we can say that there are in fact no actual divisions of emptiness, that that this lack of true existence is simply a non affirming negation which has no no divisions whatsoever. But but we can use the to the difference in the basis of the emptiness, there are many types of phenomena which act as the basis of emptiness. Using these differences in types of basis of emptiness, we can apply the name of different types of emptinesses. We can use these different nomenclatures, different names to emptiness in terms of the different types of phenomena which serve as their basis.
So using analogy to come to an understanding that that though there are no differences with respect to the emptiness itself due to its basis that we can we can, we can designate different names to types of emptinesses in the same way that honey is, by its very nature, sweet. And though it is non differentiated with respect to its sweetness. But if we take that honey and we put it in three different types of containers, we put it into a, say, an earthen container, a golden container, and a silver container, then we can we can say, this is this is the honey containing. This is the honey of an earthen container. This is the honey of a golden container.
This is the honey of a silver container. So the honeys are exactly alike because they are in different containers. We can we distinguish between those three types of honey. So, in fact, are all the same nature.