Audio recorded at Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 31-minute talk, Kyabje Rinpoche opens with bodhicitta—the commitment to achieve Buddhahood to liberate all beings—then moves into the four Buddhist tenets. He situates these schools within two main paths: Hīnayāna, which aims at personal liberation through meditating on selflessness of person, and Mahāyāna, which aims at Buddhahood through meditating on selflessness of phenomena. He then teaches Sautrāntika, the second tenet-school, focusing on “own knower”—the doctrine that consciousness has two aspects: an external-facing part perceiving outside objects, and an internal part perceiving itself. He illustrates this doctrine using eye consciousness and light, showing how this form of self-perception makes external perception possible.
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File metadata (for organising)
File: 1994-05-19 – 7A – KR.mp3
UUID: d3c0d8a1-2136-4a9b-a037-f18dc7aa6a2e
Teacher: Kyabje Rinpoche
Collection: Tenets
Date: 1994-05-19
Recorded at: Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide
Words: ~2,068
Yes. Now we are born as human. We have excellent degree of mental clarity and intelligence. Now if we have this then we must use it in most meaningful and dharmic way. Yeah.
So we need to understand what leads to happiness and what would lead to unhappiness as well because especially in the case of unhappiness if we not realizing what leads to them continue to commit the non virtuous actions then our very potential rebirth as human would go wasted. Regarding what leads to benefit and what leads to happiness, essentially anything one does need to have good motive, good motivation and intention. Regarding good motive the best which has no surpassing motive is the bodhicitta motive which we here needs to generate. Regarding bodhicitta, the mind of enlightenment, what that thought is, it is a thought which considers others more important than oneself and based on that perspective one is concerned about others’ sufferings and how to bring about happiness, excellent happiness to others. Through this way one thinks that I must firstly attain enlightenment by myself so I may very successfully be able to remove their sufferings and bring happiness to all sentient beings.
In order to attain such state meaning enlightenment I will try very best to my ability learn, reflect and meditate on the path. In this way please let’s together meditate for a minute in trying to develop this bodhicitta motive. Tonight, we continue the classes on the four Buddhist tenets, the four Buddhist schools of thought starting from lower upward: Vaibhāṣika, Sautrāntika, Cittamātra and Madhyamaka. And let’s perhaps just suffice the class on the lowest school Vaibhāṣika and go no further on that school. Therefore from this evening or tonight, we start from the second lowest Buddhist tenet, Sautrāntika.
Now with regards to the two lower schools in the context of the three vehicles or more specifically in the context of two vehicles let’s look where they fit into. To go into that firstly with regards to the teachings of the Buddha all the teachings can be categorized into three vehicles or the three main vehicles leading to their respective destinations: the hearer’s vehicle, solitary realizer or individual liberation seeker vehicle and the great vehicle and those three can be looked as being further classifiable into two vehicles Hīnayāna and Mahāyāna, the lower vehicle and great vehicle. Now when we look at the two lower Buddhist tenets the Vaibhāṣika and Sautrāntika we can say that by and large generally by and large what they follow and the instruction and the view they stick by and large are very similar and they very uniformly belong to the Hīnayāna part, the lower vehicle part. Those who belong to the lower vehicle, those tenets profess the presentation of the base, presentation of the path and the presentation of the results in line with the lower vehicle system whereas those who belong to a great vehicle, those tenets such as the mind only tenet and the middle way tenet, they follow the system of the presentation of the base, the path, and the result in accordance to what is explained in the Mahāyāna system, the great vehicle system.
The reason why there happened to be two vehicles or the two systems of instructions classifiable as two vehicles is because on one hand there is the state of Buddhahood enlightenment, full enlightenment, which is the state free of all weaknesses or all faults of the mind and state endowed with all excellent perfection of the mind. Buddhahood. So on one hand there is this state which is a result, a goal to achieve and the system of the instructions and the path which explains how to achieve that state and the very explanation of the path based on the explanation of base or the basic presentation about phenomena and so forth therefore becomes the great vehicle system. Opposed to that on the other hand we have the liberation, the goal to achieve, which is liberation of having freed from cycle from saṃsāra. And so that is the goal and the system of path and the instructions to achieve that goal and the system of the path or instructions based on certain explanation about the basic base of that path becomes the lower vehicle.
And in a way to summarize we can say because there are two types of goals to achieve we have therefore two methods classifiable as the two vehicles. Because there are two different goals, results to achieve, the methods are very variant. The methods differ. For instance in the great vehicle Mahāyāna system the goal is to achieve Buddhahood, the omniscient state. To achieve that state the different or the distinct method applied is to mainly the emphasis on the word mainly to mainly meditate on the selflessness of phenomena amongst within the two selflessness, the selflessness of phenomena and selflessness of person.
In this way in the great vehicle system the goal to achieve omniscient state Buddhahood the method which is distinct applied is to mainly meditate or familiarize with selflessness of phenomena. In the lower vehicle, Hīnayāna, the goal to achieve is liberation of saṃsāra, liberation of impure thoughts and suffering grossly. And to achieve that the method distinctly applied is to mainly meditate on selflessness of person. And we can say there is such marked difference in the method or the meditation applied. Now why there is difference in terms of view, meaning the understanding of reality applied in these two vehicles, is because there is difference in terms of what is to be given up, what is to overcome scripturally, literally speaking, what is to be abandoned.
Because Because in in the the lower vehicle the goal to achieve is liberation of saṃsāra and to achieve that the greatest hindrance, obstacle is the self grasping of person or grasping onto the person or identity as concretely independently there. And as a measure to overcome mainly that greatest obstacle to liberation applies the meditation of the selflessness of person. Whereas in the great vehicle Mahāyāna, the goal to achieve is Buddhahood, the state of omniscience. By the state of omniscience it means the very enlightened mind state which directly perceives all phenomena without mistake. Now to achieve such state, the state of omniscient, what hinders a person from attaining that?
Mainly the obstacle is the wisdom obscuration, what is interpretively translated as obscuration to omniscience. There’s very subtle weaknesses of mind hindering from attaining that state. And the direct measure which overcomes that wisdom obscuration or obscuration to omniscience is the meditation and familiarization on the selflessness of phenomena within the two selflessness. And that’s why in the great vehicle then the meditation and the perfection of selflessness of phenomena is practiced as the main practice of meditation. In this way, in the great vehicle, find the greatest obstacle hindering to achieving enlightenment omniscient state is the wisdom obscuration or alternatively the knowledge obscuration.
By wisdom or knowledge of obscuration what it means is when a person is not omniscient or enlightened one does not precisely and clearly and altogether perceives and sees all phenomena as they should correctly be perceived or seen. So there is such a weakness of mind not perceiving every old phenomena precisely, correctly as they are. And to overcome that obscuration of mind the main meditation applied is the meditation on emptiness in the meaning, the meditation on selflessness of phenomena combined with bodhicitta meditation. But as emphasized again, it is mainly the meditation on the selflessness of phenomena that becomes direct countermeasure to overcome those knowledge obscurations. Anyway, let’s continue from previous part.
Now we come to the second Buddhist tenet, lower upward, the discourse groups or Sautrāntika. In going through what this tenet or school profess or follows we can look at in what is the definition of this tenet, what are its sub schools or divisions and what are its distinct assertions and so forth. Of this tenet, the discourse groups, firstly it might be helpful to go back to the definition of the previous tenet, the specific exponents, the Vaibhāṣika. There we come across its definition as the proponent of lower vehicle tenet who does not accept own knower but accepts external actually existing phenomena as truly existent. In brief what we found there was Vaibhāṣika or specific exponent are the the tenet and whoever followed that are those who belong to lower vehicle but they do not accept a mind called own knower or self-knowing.
They don’t accept that but they do accept external matter or phenomena as truly existing. Now here with the definition of the discourse groups the Sautrāntika what is different is in this tenet they accept the external things as truly existing as well this tenet accepts own knower, a mind knowing itself. So in this way we can then have the definition of the discourse group as a proponent of the lower vehicle tenet who accepts both the own nor and external phenomena as truly existing. Now here there is the mention of a specific mind called own knower or knowing itself. This will need clarification.
What it means is generally we do relate in our experience the property or the attribute of our consciousness having the ability to recall things of past and planning things of present and in future. For example, we can relate that our consciousness does have the feature to think, oh, I remember what I did yesterday and now I am thinking about such and such. Now based on such observation about the mind there is the explanation by certain tenets saying mind can have two basic kinds. One is which perceives external things and then there is yet another type of which does not perceive or see anything external. Instead, it only focuses on the mind itself.
And that is what is called by the reference on mind knowing itself. Now to illustrate this point, say let’s say with the eye consciousness, generally such a consciousness as eye consciousness has the distinct feature to perceive external things such as it can see white or yellow, red and and so forth different colors. Similarly it can see various objects. Now in this way the eye consciousness perceiving external object can be described as a consciousness knowing others and to put it tersely we can say literally other-knower as opposed to own knower. Other-knower or knowing others.
Now those who profess own knower and mind knowing itself explains not only, say in this case the eye consciousness has the property to perceive external things but there is a part, a portion of the eye consciousness which perceives only and solely the eye consciousness itself and such a part or such portion of the eye consciousness is described as an own knower, a consciousness or mind knowing itself. Exactly this is what here the discourse group, the Sautrāntika explains about own knower. Now those who explain eye, in this case the eye consciousness having combination of both the other-knower and the own knower justify their assertion about own knower in this this way saying if say in the case of eye consciousness if it does not have the portion of own knower or the part knowing itself then it is not possible for the eye consciousness to see external external things. This would mean according to their justification that if the eye consciousness does not have an own knower portion or property then it is not possible for the the eye consciousness to see blue, white, red or colors or any external objects. It is due to the very presence in the eye consciousness to perceive the consciousness itself that the our consciousness becomes able to perceive external objects such as in this case colors and so forth.
So that’s how they justify. And the other justifying example to prove that given is light. If light, now what is observed is light has the property to illuminate external surroundings and things and so forth. So it has the property to illuminate others. With that example they say if light does not have the property to illuminate itself then it is not possible for the light illuminate others.
Anyway, that’s how they give the example as a supporting case.