Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this nearly 3-hour teaching, Tenzin Chogkyi offers a detailed commentary on the Heart Sūtra, walking students through the meaning and practical application of emptiness and dependent arising. She begins by contextualizing the sūtra’s setting and key figures, then guides a meditation on how the five aggregates—form, feeling, discrimination, compositional factors, and consciousness—are empty of inherent existence and are valid bases for the merely conceptual label “self.” From there she traces how to extend this understanding to all phenomena using the sūtra’s lists: the twelve sense sources, eighteen elements, twelve links of dependent origination, and Four Noble Truths. Throughout, she emphasizes how understanding emptiness is not abstract philosophy but practical medicine for suffering—it cuts the root of attachment, aversion, and our sense of a solid, unchanging “me.” She also weaves in discussion of emanation bodies, valid bases of imputation, the five Buddhist paths, the distinction between intellectual and direct realization of emptiness, and how karma and emptiness are inseparable. The teaching is pitched at serious practitioners and beginners, moving from foundational concepts to advanced contemplation, with questions from the audience integrated throughout.
File metadata (for organising)
File: Heart Sutra4 2009 10 25.mp3
UUID: a564a899-6d17-4818-8afa-6e837e2e6a2b
Teacher: Tenzin Chogkyi
Collection: Heart Sūtra (Tenzin Chogkyi)
Date: 2009-10-25
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Words: ~22,741
I don’t really have any other announcements. I’m gonna make an announcement later a couple of announcements later in the day, but I think just thanks I I haven’t been able to do it as much as I was intending to, but thanks to you all who have really been pushing the mic. We really appreciate it because I myself will be listening to this and I’ll know if I hear a voice who’s not using a mic, I will find you. Yeah. I know, but then I’ll hear Janet’s voice going, Mike.
Right. Good. Actually, Marcella, thank you. She’s our, plant. Could people turn off their cell phones if you still have one in your pocket that’s not been turned off?
At the end of the day, we will also offer a thanksgiving body, speech, mind, and I’m gonna grab a few of you to help me with that. But nothing in this early morning session. So thanks. Yeah. I move it back so I can get in.
So I don’t knock over the microphone. Alright. So how’s everybody doing, survivors of yesterday? Did everybody go to bed at about seven thirty? Clunk.
People here were saying, you made my head hurt. I’m like, sorry. Okay. So we’re gonna sit for a few minutes to set our motivation, and then we’re gonna start with reading through the sūtra and stopping at that point to do a meditation. So we’ll begin with the meditation, stopping at that point of right after the paragraph we’ve gotten up to the first part of Avalokiteśvara’s response.
So I’ll guide you through that meditation. We’ll do kind of a briefer version of what we did yesterday. But first, let’s sit on just for a few minutes and then set our motivation for today’s teachings. And so let’s think again that we’re meditating on emptiness, studying emptiness in order to eliminate the root ignorance that’s the cause of saṃsāra. That wisdom that arises from that understanding is necessary for both liberation and full enlightenment.
And we’re aiming to become a perfectly qualified guide for all living beings, a fully enlightened Buddha. So just take a minute to set your motivation. It’s Bodhicitta motivation for our study and practice today. Okay. Could we close that window while we’re doing the meditation?
It’s just a little bit loud. Great. Thank you. Okay. So let’s read the sūtra starting with the title on page seventy seven, and then we’ll pause at the top of page eighty right before form is empty, and then we’ll do the meditation on the five aggregates.
The heart of the perfection of wisdom, sūtra, ārya, bhagavati, prajna, pāramitā, hridayasutra. I prostrate to the ārya triple gem. Thus did I hear at one time the Bhagavan was dwelling on massive vultures mountain in Rajagriha together with a great community of monks and a great community of bodhisattvas. At that time, the Bhagavan was absorbed in the concentration on the categories of phenomena called profound perception. Also at that time, the bodhisattva, mahasattva, Ārya Avalokiteśvara looked upon the very practice of the profound perfection of wisdom and beheld those five aggregates also as empty of inherent nature.
Then through the power of Buddha, the Venerable Śāriputra said this to the Bodhisattva, Ārya Avalokiteśvara, how should any son of the lineage train who wishes to practice the activity of the profound perfection of wisdom? He said that in the Bodhisattva, Mahāsattva, Ārya Avalokiteśvara said this to the venerable Shariputratra. Shariputratra, any son of the lineage or daughter of the lineage who wishes to practice the activity of the profound perfection of wisdom and look upon it like this, correctly and repeatedly beholding those five aggregates also as empty of inherent nature. So first, we’ll look at the emptiness of each of the five aggregates and then see how what we call the self is nothing other than that which is merely labeled on the basis of those five aggregates. So first, we have the form aggregate.
And in terms of the personal self, that’s our body, material form. So our body is a product of causes and conditions, the substances of our parents, all the nutrition that we got, the exercise, and so forth. So take a minute just to reflect on this level of dependent arising. And then our body is composed of parts, what we call my body, is a collection of all the various parts, arms, the legs, the torso, the head. How many of these parts could be missing before we can no longer say my body?
And then all of these parts are made of smaller parts, their components, all the way down to cells, molecules, atoms, atoms, subatomic particles. So just take a minute to analyze your body, seeing how it’s composed of all these constituent parts from the grossest level down to the subtlest. And then the subtlest level, we arise in dependence on conceptual imputation. So my body I have a concept in my mind, my body. And then I lay that concept, label those constituent parts, and I think my body, to that subtlest level, body is created by my concepts, by my imputation.
There’s no body there. There’s all these different parts. And on top of that, that collection, I label my body, ‘ and it seems unitary. Like it was there already from its own side. To reflect on this, And then we have our mental constituents.
We have our consciousness, the mind that is that which is clear and knowing. Just that clarity, the ability to hold an object and be aware of the object that the consciousness is holding. And we have the five sense consciousnesses, and then the sixth, the mental consciousness. The object of that consciousness is thoughts. So think this consciousness, every moment of consciousness is produced by the last.
That’s the cause. Previous moment of consciousness giving rise to the next moment of consciousness. And then for every moment of sense consciousness or mental consciousness, we have an object that the consciousness comes into contact with, giving rise to a sense, experience or a thought. The consciousness doesn’t exist in any way independent of its causes and conditions, the parts that go into making up that experience. Any given experience doesn’t come from its own side.
It’s a product. And then consciousness is created by my concepts. I just take this aspect of mind, that which is clear and aware and holds an object, and I label that consciousness. I’m separating out that aspect and creating it by the label, by the concept consciousness. And then there’s discrimination or discernment after the initial sense contact.
We have some recognition of the object. The factor of recognition, discrimination, discernment. So again, dependent on that sense consciousness, on the object, on memory. For example, if we recognize something, we have some association with that. So it doesn’t arise independently.
It’s dependent on all these causes and conditions on these parts. We tell the difference between things, dependence on our memory, on recognition, prior learning, for example. And then we create the aggregate of discrimination by our labeling. We’re taking that one aspect of experience, pulling it out, carving it out, separating it from the other aspects of our awareness and calling that discrimination. Creating it by our concepts.
And then we have feeling that arises on the basis of that sense contact, on the basis of that recognition, some basic feeling of pleasant, unpleasant, neutral. Again, very dependent, not independent, that feeling. Very dependent on the recognition, on the object, also often on past association and memory, giving rise to some feeling of pleasant, unpleasant, neutral. And then again, in any moment of sense contact with an object, there’s so many different things going on, but we’re separating out that one factor of feeling, creating a concept, the feeling aggregate. It’s created by our conceptual imputation, by our designation.
And then we have compositional factors, which are all of the other mental factors that make up our experience, that flavor our raw sense contact. We have all of the things we call emotions, both negative and positive. We have the six omnipresent mental factors, things like attention, intention. We have certain neutral ones that are neither necessarily negative or positive, but all of the other mental factors that flavor our experience. And again, we’re making these categories, making lists, categories, labeling, creating these factors through our concepts, through our imputation.
And then the collection of all of these factors together, all of these five aggregates, we label on these parts me. We’re nothing other than that which is merely labeled on that collection of aggregates, just like we did with the body, just like we do with the cup. In the very same way, we take these constituent parts and we label me. There’s no no solid, unchanging essence somewhere inside of us that’s me. The consciousness itself isn’t me.
What me is, the way we do exist, is that which is merely labeled by concepts on these five aggregates. So think deeply. This is how we exist. And our emptiness is our lack of existing in any other way. There’s no other way we do exist.
That way we always thought we existed is having some solid essence somewhere, something beyond our component parts doesn’t exist at all. Again, the way we do exist is merely labeled by concepts. We have an idea, me, a concept. We label on the five aggregates. And our emptiness is our lack of existing in any other way than this.
Form is empty. Emptiness is form. Emptiness is not other than form. Form is also not other than emptiness. In the same way, feeling, discrimination, compositional factors, and consciousness are empty.
Shariputratra, likewise, all phenomena are emptiness, without characteristic, unproduced, unceased, stainless, not without stain, not deficient, not fulfilled. Śāriputra, therefore, in emptiness, there is no form, no feeling, no discrimination, no compositional factors, no consciousness, no eye, no ear, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind, no visual form, no sound, no odor, no taste, no object of touch, and no phenomenon. There is no eye element and so on, up to and including no mind element, and no mental consciousness element. There is no ignorance, no extinction of ignorance, and so on, up to and including no aging and death, and no extinction of aging and death. Similarly, there is no suffering, origination, cessation, and path.
There is no exalted wisdom, no attainment, and also no non attainment. Shariputratra, therefore, because there is no attainment, Bodhisattvas rely on and dwell in the perfection of wisdom, mind without obscuration and without fear. Having completely passed beyond error, they reach the end point of nirvana. All the Buddhas who dwell in the three times also manifestly, completely awaken to unsurpassable, perfect, complete enlightenment in reliance on the perfection of wisdom. Therefore, the mantra of the perfection of wisdom, the mantra of great knowledge, the unsurpassed mantra, the mantra equal to the unequaled, the mantra that thoroughly pacifies all suffering should be known as truth since it is not false.
The mantra of the perfection of wisdom is declared. Thus spoke the profound perfection of wisdom like that. Then the Bhagavan arose from that concentration and commended the bodhisattva, mahasattva, Ārya Avalokiteśvara, saying, well said, well said, Son of the lineage. It is like that. It is like that.
One should practice the profound perfection of wisdom just as you have indicated. Even the Tathagatas rejoice. The Bhagavan having thus spoken, the venerable Śāriputra, the Bodhisattva, Mahāsattva, Ārya Avalokiteśvara, those surrounding in their entirety along with the world of gods, humans, asuras, and Gandharvas were overjoyed and highly praise that spoken by the Bhagavan. Okay. We’ve got a couple of empty seats over here and one there.
If anybody who’s in the back and can’t see wants to move up, They’ve they’ve learned now that I call on people, so they’re hiding in the back. They were talking about that yesterday. Oh my god. You call on people. Oh, no.
Okay. So let’s review where we got up to yesterday. So we’ve been we started talking about the setting of the sūtra. We’re in Vulture’s Peak with the Buddha and an assembly of monks, meaning arhats, highly realized beings who are not bodhisattvas, and then we have bodhisattvas, and they’re great in different ways. We’ve got two great assemblies.
Okay, so one is great in that there are arhats. They’re of high spiritual realization. And great in the case of the bodhisattvas was all those phrases that we talked about, those seven different meanings, having vast activities, vast vision, you know, trying to help so many sentient beings, and I was saying that list always reminds me of Lama Zopa Rinpoche when I read that, you know, kind of this incredible vast view and, you know, incredible activities. So we’re up there and then Lord Buddha pretends to go into meditation on emptiness. He sits down.
Everybody’s expecting him to talk. They’re all gathered around. They’re all sitting there waiting for the teaching, and he pretends to go into meditation on emptiness. And why do I say he pretends? Chris knows why he pretends.
Where’s the microphone? Chris, you might have to run up here. In fact, there’s this seat right next to Ben if you want to get a better view. He’s running around coming through now. There we go.
Because the Buddha has already achieved full and complete enlightenment, he has the ability to see emptiness and conventional reality at the same time. Perfect. Exactly, right? So the Buddha doesn’t have to meditate on emptiness the way that the rest of us do, right? He doesn’t have to sit there and close his eyes and do anything because he’s seeing it all the time anyway.
So he can see conventional reality and emptiness simultaneously. So he’s just what we call taking the aspect. And this is an interesting concept to learn because you’ll hear this a lot the more you get into Tibetan Buddhism because this is something we emphasize a lot in the vajrayana. We say that whenever, you know, if we have a tantric teacher, part of the training of the vajrayana is to see them as a Buddha. And so we, if they seem to be sick, if they seem to be dying of cancer, we say they’re taking the aspect.
We don’t say they’ve got cancer because it’s a specific pure vision, a specific technique of the vajrayana. So you’ll hear this in this sort of Tibetan Buddhist context, this idea of taking the aspect or manifesting the aspect is how it’s called. Buddha goes off taking the aspect of meditating on emptiness and then through the power of the Buddha, and what does that mean? It’s got a specific meaning here. Who remembers what through the power of the Buddha something else starts happening?
John. It’s kind of like the Buddha is pulling the strings on this one and going and forget the the Tibetan that you used yesterday, but going and and causing, you know, a manifestation through Śāriputra and Avalokiteśvara to get them to start discussing between themselves this concept that he already knows. Right, right, right. Exactly. And so this is one of the ways that emanation bodies function.
And that’s why I thought it was interesting to discuss it a little bit because we have this whole idea of emanation bodies. Tulku is the Tibetan word. Nirmanakai is the Sanskrit word. And we always think of somebody like His Holiness. They’re born.
They decide to just shoot out a body like that. You know, and it happens in two other ways too. And one of them is this I call it channeling except instead of Ramtha or whoever it is, it’s like Lord Buddha. You know, just through the blessing of the Buddha, you know, these two people start to have a conversation. And if you ever notice that when you’re trying to help somebody, sometimes you just feel like something else takes you over completely, and you just feel like it’s not your own volition.
I feel that way sometimes when I’m teaching, especially when I’m totally clueless. Like, some student asks a question, I’m like, I don’t have any idea. And then all of sudden, I’ll start saying something, and I’m like, wow, that’s profound. Where did that come from? And then the student’s like, oh, thank you so much.
That’s exactly what I was like. I don’t know where that came from. That happens all the time. And it’s interesting as a teacher because I set my motivation for that. When I sit down before I teach, I’m like, look, I don’t have a clue.
Tenzin Chökyi doesn’t have a clue, but she’s up here as your representative right now so please channel. Like, I appreciate it. You know, like, whatever wisdom you guys have, like, channel it through me. And you can feel that sometimes when you’re really trying to help someone, especially I think when you are totally clueless the most is when that can happen. Brian has a question.
Where’s the mic? Thanks. You you said there were three kinds of emanations. Yeah. You said the first two, and it was just kind of bothering me.
Right, right, right. What was the third one? The third one, the word that they use, they sometimes translate as artisan emanation. And what it means is it can even be an inanimate object, like Master Śāntideva says, a dog, a bridge. Like, why he picked those two examples?
A Buddha can emanate like even an inanimate object or a dog or something. It doesn’t need to be one like His Holiness. And it doesn’t need to be one like the channeling kind. It could be anything that you encounter. What was that called again?
Artisan. They call it artisan emanation. Artisan emanation. And I think they call it artisan because it’s like temporarily just creating something of out of nothing. So you should be really suspicious all the time.
You know, I have this theory that we should be pronoid all the time. Like, pro noya is just assuming that everything in your reality is conspiring to get you enlightened because we don’t know what’s a Buddha and what’s not. It could be anybody. You know? And and I think going around with that attitude of, like, anybody I encounter could be a Buddha emanating.
And it’s not just the ones that are nice to you and sit up in front of the room with some weird outfit on and a shaved head. Like it’s usually the annoying ones, you know. It’s the ones that really teach you patience and it’s the ones that push all your buttons. I think if a Buddha was really emanating to help us, that’s how they’d manifest. Yeah, they’d chewed off a couple that look like the kindly teacher, you know, just to kind of keep you from despairing altogether, but then mostly they show up as the ones that teach you lessons in your life and cause you to practice things like patience.
So I think it’s kind of interesting to go around with this pronoid attitude towards everybody. And it really cuts down the mental afflictions. If that horrible person yelling at you, you think, Wow, it could just be a Buddha emanating to really help me right now, to help mirror something. Because so often when we get upset at somebody, it’s because they’re mirroring some quality in us that we can’t stand. So see them as a teacher instead of seeing them as object of your anger.
It’s like if somebody’s criticizing you, see what’s the grain of truth in what they’re saying. Okay, they may not be saying it in such a great vehicle, but could they be a Buddha just showing me something about myself? So it’s a really useful way. Whether it’s true or not, it doesn’t matter. Then you take everybody as your teacher.
Because we don’t know whether they really are Buddha or not. But don’t even waste a whole bunch of time worrying about that part. Just take it as if they were, and you’ll progress really fast. Go around with that pronoid attitude. You repeat the first two kinds of Hang.
For me. Yeah. Could you repeat the first two kinds of Yes. The first two, okay, so the three of them, one is called a rebirth emanation, okay? We can, you know, it’s useful to just think of rebirth emanation, blessed emanation, and then this artisan emanation.
And those are the three kinds of emanation bodies that’s talked about. Janet’s got something, and then Lynn, I think, has something. Unless that was the same something. I had heard a story once. I don’t know exactly the details.
Something of a family, and there was some problem, and it was gonna be solved by some animal, dog, or something that they needed. And it’s his holiness emanated as a dog in order to help this family. So that would that would be like an artisan. So it it’s like a magical emanation. Yeah.
Yeah. So so that they can appear for you in whatever form you need at that moment and then just Exactly. Exactly. And we’re talking about that we’re talking about vajrapani and somehow this came up and we said, Okay, His Holiness is the rebirth emanation, but it’s not like that being isn’t a lot of other places at the same time doing other things. And and you can have more than one rebirth emanation too.
Like, you can have a bunch of rebirth emanations plus plus you’re doing all kinds of other stuff, manifesting as dogs and bridges and god knows what and annoying coworkers and everything else to benefit beings. You know, you’re not restricted to just that one form or the form that looks in a certain way. They say it’s to benefit beings. So whatever it looks like benefits beings. So for it benefits us to have somebody in our world like His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, but he’s not his his holy activities are certainly not restricted to that one manifestation.
But it he he shows up like that because that’s what we can relate to, and that really helps us. But he could be everybody else in our life who’s ever taught us anything could be the same being. But I mean also the potential to take a form without going through the entire birth process. Yeah. And that’s what the artisan part of it means.
It’s just kind of creating. That’s what I was talking about. It’s like that kind of like, manifest as a person. You can manifest as a dog or bridge as long as you’re needed and then Right. Because when you when a person goes away from you, you don’t know where they’re going.
Yeah. Yeah. You have no idea. Right. Right.
Yeah. Yeah. So the whole missing person things takes on a whole new meaning on the milk cartons. Who were they anyway? It could be anybody.
Yeah. John. Oh, yeah. Just thought this was kind of amusing on, like, the same topic there. Because like about a month ago, I was on the phone with my mom talking about something.
And I was like in like this frame of mind, it’s like, Oh, I am so great. I figured this out. I am so cool. Yay, aren’t I wonderful? And at the time there was like this dog that like I run into all the time.
And like the dog was like sitting there listening to me, like on the phone with my mom. And like when I was going on telling her, I was like, I’m so great. Aren’t I cool? Yay. Yay.
Yay. The dog went over about five feet away, face turned me and proceeded to pee on a bush, all the while looking at me. And when it was done, it came back over and sat at my feet and kept on looking at me. And I was like, oh my, I just got scolded by a dog. That’s crazy.
And it was crazy because the rest, I realized like, oh wait a minute, oh, that’s humbling the dog. That’s what the dog thought of, like, me being all, oh, I’m so wonderful. Yeah. And it’s, for the rest of the day, I was like, by a dog. That’s pretty funny.
No. But it’s, that that that the dog the dog put me in the place I needed to be because I was all, egotistical and I was humble for the rest of the day. That’s This friend of mine does this thing he calls spiritual revisionism, and he says, go back through your life looking for those emanation bodies and those special teachers that showed you extra attention or the person next to you on the bus that told you about Sachen Ling Center or whoever it is, you know? Because chances are if you’re in this room you’ve run into more than a few. Everybody in this room has intense karmic imprints from the past that on a beautiful weekend in San Francisco you’re stuck in this stuffy room with me.
The chances are very high. In fact, I say a hundred percent certain that you’ve run into these and they’re showing up for you all the time. So it’s cool to tune into that, you know, it’s very cool to kind of be thinking. And then when you have those encounters to just think, Oh, who is that? Is that an emanation of a Buddha?
Yeah, there’s a question. We really need a cordless mic. Hello, Sage and Link. Stella. You were talking about dogs Yeah.
Emanations. One of the most moving for me is Asangas. Yes. Yeah. I think for me it’s so moving, I always remember it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And if we had really purified our vision, because remember, what we perceive is completely forced on us by our karma and that story of Asaṇga is a perfect example of, you know, we can’t see, you know, what might be there at a deeper level. We just see what we have the karma to perceive. And they say sometimes it’s a miracle that we can perceive our teachers at all and don’t just see them as like a dog or a donkey or something, you know, that we can even see them as a teacher, like already shows that we’ve purified so much, you know, because because and that shows, again, the relationship between karma and emptiness. Because it’s empty, our karma causes us to have the kind of perception that we have.
If we purify it, so they say everything appears as a Buddha paradise and it’s not somewhere Amitābha’s Pure Land ain’t somewhere out there. It could be this room if you have that kind of karma to have that kind of perception. So that’s really important. It’s not like heaven’s out there somewhere. You know, this room could be nirvana.
This room could be a Buddha paradise for somebody with the right kind of karma to perceive it as such, and that’s that’s what that means, you know, because it’s all the appearance is completely dependent on the karma and there’s nothing there from its own side. Yeah, great. Good example. Alright, so let’s see. Where were we?
So let’s review. So that was what was happening. We’re having this channeled conversation between Avalokiteśvara and then the Buddha’s blessing causes Shariputratra to ask a question. We said it’s really weird because Shariputratra is said to be the foremost among the Buddha’s disciples in terms of his wisdom. So here he’s asking this really basic question: Oh, let’s backtrack a little bit.
So the Buddha is meditating on having a direct realization of emptiness of all the categories of phenomena, and simultaneously Avalokiteśvara is having an intellectual meditation on the emptiness of the five aggregates, which he starts explaining to us right afterwards. It’s intellectual because he’s just getting ready to talk, and if he were having a direct perception, he’d be in deep meditation. You can’t have a direct realization of emptiness unless you’re in deep meditation, unless you’re a Buddha. But for the rest of us, you have to be in deep meditation to have that realization. And then you come out and everything appears the way it is.
But when people say, Oh, had a direct realization of emptiness like on the bus when I was looking out the window, No. You had something, hopefully, but it wasn’t a direct realization of emptiness because that only is happening in deep meditation. So then Śāriputra, the foremost of the Buddha’s disciples in terms of his wisdom, but in this context he’s an arhat. He’s not a bodhisattva. Ask Avalokiteśvara, how do you guys meditate on emptiness?
Right? He’s an arhat. He obviously knows how the other guys meditate on emptiness, but he’s asking the bodhisattva, How do you guys do it? How do you practice the profound how do those sons of the lineage bodhisattvas, practice and meditate on emptiness? So he says that and then Avalokiteśvara says, We meditate on the emptiness of the five aggregates.
And he’s talking about the beginning of the path. He’s saying, First, meditate on the emptiness of the five aggregates also and the emptiness of the self, and that’s what that also means. Both all of them separately together and see how those empty aggregates make up the empty self because that’s the only way the self exists. Okay? So he’s saying meditate on the emptiness of yourself and on the component parts, And that’s how you meditate at this stage of the path.
And why are we meditating on the emptiness of the aggregates and not the emptiness of the cup or the room or something else? Catherine. Where did the self empty? Oh, thank you. Because if we can understand that the self is empty, then we can understand everything else is empty.
Yeah. Yeah. And that’s our main object of attachment. That’s what causes the delusions. Exactly.
It’s the root ignorance. It’s about everything, but mostly what gets us in trouble is somehow thinking that there’s some inherent existence to the self. So again, how does this help us practically? It all sounds very highfalutin and theoretical. So how does understanding that we’re only that which is merely labeled by concepts on the aggregates help us suffer less because that’s the point, right?
So I had this example. Some of you have heard it and it happened a couple of years ago and it was just like so perfect I keep telling it in class. I did something. I can’t remember what I did. Know, just did something motivated because it’s me somehow by flailing around trying to find happiness and avoid suffering because that’s my motivation for most everything I do.
So I did something and one person in my life thought it was the most horrific selfish act of the most self absorbed person they’ve ever encountered in their life. And then another friend saw the very same thing and saw it was like the enlightened activity of an emanation of Vajra Yoginī. Meanwhile, I’m in the middle of like, whatever. How could I react? It was so extreme.
I think that that was a point where I really got how emptiness helps because I had a perception of that me and that incident in one way due to my karma. Then this other person has really crappy karma to see me as like the most horrible selfish person in the world. Right? He imputes that on me, and I was just instead of getting angry at him, was like, god. I’m so sorry.
Wow. Like, that’s not where I was coming from at all. But he could not be convinced. You know? He just saw it in that way, and he would not be convinced otherwise, and it was so solid and self existent to him that I was the selfish person in the world.
And then this other person with much more pure karma than me saw this enlightened activity and thought I was, like, the greatest. And it was just so extreme, you know, and I couldn’t get proud, you know, because I just saw that that was her karma imputing her view on me. And so that’s how it helps, you know. If I thought I was really self existent and they were misunderstanding me, no, no, you don’t understand me at all. Right?
How many times have we said that? No, you just don’t under No. It’s just that they have a different imputation, which they have to because everybody does, forced on them by their karma. You know, we think there’s some essential me and we’re striving to get our partner to understand us, oh you don’t understand me. No.
He or she just has different karma. Just accept it, you know, and everybody has their trip they’re laying on you just like we’re laying our trip on ourselves. Somehow we think it’s more valid for us because we’re inside ourselves. How weird is that? Then people try and tell you how much you’ve changed and you don’t believe it.
It’s like the traditional thing, like you lose a bunch of weight and you still think you’re a really fat person and everybody’s like, You’re skinny. I remember once I was in India and I lost all this weight and I was still thinking I needed to lose weight and I weighed like I mean, I’m six’four. I weighed like one hundred and sixty pounds or something. I was like a skeleton. But I’m still carrying around this vision of being over I mean, it’s exactly like that.
Right? We’re relating to the concept and not to the reality and that’s what we do with everything all the time. We have a concept in our head. We see some raw data out there that matches up with the concept. We lay the concept on the raw data, and then we’re interacting with the concept the whole time and not what’s there at all.
And it gets us in so much trouble And that’s how emptiness helps. It’s not some theoretical thing. It’s not something to keep Jeffrey Hopkins busy. Right? It’s because we’re constantly going around relating to concepts, and we’re not relating.
Like my friend who wouldn’t be convinced that I wasn’t selfish, and then he had this whole concept, and everything I did reinforced that. Right? And then the other person thought I was the greatest, and it didn’t matter what I did. Everything reinforced that concept because they were relating to the concept they had about me. And then it almost didn’t matter what I did.
They were just so full of their concepts, and we’re so full of our own concept about ourselves. And then we do that with other people all the time. You get some raw data, and then you create a whole story about it. And then we’re just constantly creating to our storylines about other people and about situations. And the proof of it is things like my conversation with my friend two weeks ago when he’s totally complaining about somebody who’s like my favorite person in the whole world.
I have no idea what he’s talking about. You know, he just perceived that, you know, and you meet people that are going around and everything is negative and they report their reality to you and you’re just like wow where are they coming from? And then people that are the opposite like everybody’s beautiful and perfect and wonderful and you’re like where are you coming from? So that’s how it helps you know and when you get criticized when you get praised just think, Hey, that’s that other person’s karma, that they’re laying that trip on you. Don’t react.
Don’t react. And that’s why part of, I think, bodhisattva activity is you just do what you think is the right thing and you’re not so worried about what people think. Because how much of our lifetime do we waste? You try and manipulate the reaction that you want out of somebody. How often does that work for you?
You know, you do this dance trying to get other people to respond in a certain way, and it never works. You can do the same thing and get five different reactions. You know, you try and be really nice to everybody, and you never fight with anybody, so everybody will like you. And then half the people think you’re just a wimp, you know, and so a couple of people might like you. But, you know, it never works, So just give it up.
You know? Just give up that thing of trying to invoke some response. You know? You try and act a certain way so you get a response because it’s just it doesn’t work because everybody just has their karma to perceive whatever they’re going to perceive so it makes you be a lot more honest when you understand emptiness. You just do the right thing, you know, you act out of your integrity.
It was really great for me to go into six and a half year retreat because I was like a total black belt codependent. Know, I totally cared. I put out so much energy to get people to like me. Like God forbid somebody doesn’t like you. The world will come to an end.
Know? Then after being in solitude for six and a half years I was just like the hell with it, I don’t care. Know and then you come out and then you can just be real. And then you can really help people because you can say those hard things to people that are good for them that you’re so afraid to say because God forbid they won’t like you anymore. So this is how it helps us practically.
Just think: everybody is just relating to their own concept about you. Just do the right thing and don’t get so worried about it. And don’t get upset when they don’t like you and don’t get upset when they criticize you. See if there’s something you can learn from it, but don’t get all caught up in that thing. And that’s how it really helps subdue our afflictive emotions, often give rise to those karmic actions, And not seeing ourselves as so solid.
Also allowing for the potential for us to change because sometimes we don’t even realize how much we’ve changed and we’re still stuck in some view of ourselves. And we really are just labeled on our aggregates and our minds are constantly changing, our bodies are constantly changing. It’s this continuum leading all the way to Buddhahood. We have to acknowledge that. Don’t stay stuck in some old self view.
You know, when you’ve been practicing Dharma for a while, a lot of stuff is going to change, and sometimes we stay stuck because we think that there is some inherently existing me somewhere. You know, so this is just thinking about this all the time, and if we do this meditation a lot, it helps really break down that solid grasping that we have onto some self because it doesn’t exist like that at all. The labels constantly changing because the basis is constantly changing. So the labels should be changing as fast as the base and we’re very, very fluid. What we really are is just extremely fluid, changing moment by moment.
So this is how this really helps us suffer less because that’s the whole point of Buddhism. It’s not just some intellectual trip. It’s like suffer less, see how everything is created by concepts and how we’re relating to the concepts and not the actual thing that’s there. Okay? Do you have a question?
Yes, please. Can you explain to me a little bit more about imputation? Yeah. I do not understand that more. It means impute means it’s like we take a concept, and then we impute or it’s kind of like putting it onto the thing, like laying it on the thing.
Imputing means what’s a good synonym for imputing? Frosting the cake. Yeah, like putting it on top. So we have what we call in philosophy a basis of imputation. And we say for something to be what it is, it needs to have a valid basis.
So to be a valid basis of the label cup because of our culture, because of consensus, because of function, we need to have a cylinder of a certain size that holds liquid that has a bottom and then we impute a label onto that object, meaning sort of like laying it on top of the base. So yeah, like frosting, that’s good. Assigning? Yeah, assigning a label on top of that base. Yeah.
I’ll look in the dictionary dot com during the break and we’ll see. Say a tribute of Oop, the mic, Janet, the mic. No. It says attribute attribute or credited to impute cleverness to cats. Is it Oh, tribute.
That’s good. Attribute. And that’s that’s good. That’s used in in a lot of the definitions. Yeah.
Attribute. Yeah. That’s good. That’s good. Yeah.
So could you have concepts without having things to impute them upon. So for example, if you just had, you know, a world, you know, a world just as in all of reality, being constructed out of pure mind with no, you know, form or no parts per se in a physical sense with which to impute upon, could you still have the generation of concepts from just concepts generating concepts? Or do you need to start with some sort of physical basis upon which to impute these things? Like in a universe of just your pure mind. Right, right, right.
And in the mind only sorry, in the middle way consequent school, we say there does have to be a valid basis. And that’s the difference, even though everything is created by our concepts, that’s the difference between a hallucination and reality. Because if everything is created by our concepts, why can’t anything be anything or why can’t you just create concepts out of nothing? And we say there needs to be a valid basis and the validity depends on the function, the consensus, the continuity. So yeah, we can make up concepts about anything but they say that’s the difference between the Tibetan example is a flower that grows in this mid air.
Yeah, we can think about that. That’s a concept but that’s not reality because it’s nothing that we can we can’t impute that concept onto anything that acts as that valid basis. Sure, we can think about anything. We can imagine just about anything like a flower growing in midair in the middle of this room. I can have that concept but that’s the difference between reality and something that’s just an idea is, is there a valid basis for me to impute that concept on?
I have a concept of sunflower, but I have a valid basis for my label sunflower. There’s no sunflower there. Sunflower is just a concept in my mind that I impute onto some kind of flower that’s got a very big whatever this part’s called and a certain kind of petals on it and then I impute sunflower. So we say that sunflower that I’m imputing there is reality, and a flower growing in the middle of the sky is not reality. Yeah, because I was wondering, because if you go and you start taking the sunflower and breaking it down, you take the sunflower and you go to a more subtler level of its existence, and you go down at the cellular level.
And you go down even further, Okay, those cells are made up of atoms, which are made up of subatomic particles. And by the time you get to subatomic particles, there’s a whole there’s this whole big debate in quantum mechanics of the measurement problem. When you measure something, when you observe something, what is it that you are observing? Does reality come into Does reality exist prior to the observation? How does that bring the reality of it into existence?
But what I was thinking more along the lines of is, well, if you take, say, instead of a sunflower, you just take, you know, like a particle in, like a particle detector, say, like CERN or something, these these particle accelerators. Well, you know, for all intents and purposes, you know, they are, you know, particles are basically, you know, just, you know, quantum states. There is no, like Mhmm. Like, real intrinsic physical reality to them. Just, know, like a probabilistic wave function.
Right. Right. So that when they go and hit into the, like, into the detector, it goes gives you a blip. Right. Well, if that’s what you define as a particle, it’s just that blip in a detector, well, okay.
You come along with a different type of detector. It gives you a different type of blip. Right. Now the only reason that we call them, okay, this is, you know, like this is a tau meson is because of, you know, like A concept. It’s concept of, you know, like a tau But is it does, you know, like if you have, like, a world system generated just from concepts, concepts referencing concepts, you know, like a whole self referential system.
Yeah. Yeah. Would you because, like, if you just have, you know, that, I can see how it can be kinda difficult to come up with any sort of real valid basis for reality. No. No.
No. But do do you need do you need something like like a general consensus in order to go and say, like, okay. This is a tau meson. This is a sunflower. We’re we’re looking see, the problem is you’re looking for ultimate reality, and it isn’t doesn’t exist.
This cup functions as a cup because it’s a cylinder with a bottom that I can drink water out of. That’s all. And that’s okay. And it doesn’t matter if there’s any particle that is the ultimate particle that can’t be broken down. Buddhists say it doesn’t matter at all because there’s nothing that exists from its own side.
But the fact is, there is some kind of reality there that I can relate to that’s a cylinder with the bottom that’s open at the top that I can drink water out of, and it’s just created by my mind as a cup. There is a valid basis there. You’re mistaking valid basis with some kind of ultimate reality that I know the physicists are trying to find, like some particle that can’t be divided. And we’re saying it doesn’t have to be at that level at all that we’re talking about. It can be at the grossest level.
We don’t have to break down the cup to atoms and subatomic particles and try and see if there’s tau mesons and all these other things in it. The fact is, at the grossest level, I’m still creating it with my mind. Okay. Taking for instance, like, the example of the cup again, I’m working at that level. Yeah.
If you have if you get, you know, a room full of people who perceive the cup in a different sense, so they’re labeling the cup differently. You know? Like the gods must be crazy. To some people, it’s a Coke bottle. To other people, it’s a rolling pin to say, no, it’s a weapon.
In order to go and bring into I’m thinking kind of here, like in terms of general consensus. Do you need, like, a general so if you want to have like I don’t know where exactly I’m going with this, but yeah, I think cultural cultural norms, I guess, would say, like, we would all kind of agree that that’s a cup. But to somebody in the Kalahari, it’s a rolling pin. Do you need like general imputational consensus in order? Absolutely, absolutely.
Consensus plays a big part of it. For everybody in this room, we see that as a cup, but there’s thirty different cups too because we all remember the concentric circle thing that I was talking about? Like just being a human, we share a certain consensual, perceptual reality, and then it sort of gets more and more defined depending on our culture, and then for all of us that’s a cup. We recognize that as a cup. But then we have different versions of that cup.
We all have different perceptions of that cup. There’s thirty different perceptions of what’s sitting there on my table because we all have our individual karmas. So yeah, it’s very consensual. And then you get people if you had thirty people from all over the world, they might be perceiving thirty completely different objects, and that would be that thing to them. See, our cultural imperialism says that’s a cup.
It’s a Coke bottle. It’s not a rolling pin. You know, that’s conceptual imperialism. And it’s just it is what it is depending on the concept of whoever the perceiver is, if it’s valid, if it’s a valid basis. Now if I start seeing that as a telephone, it’s not acting as a valid basis of the label telephone because it doesn’t function as that.
No consensus says that it’s a telephone. And then I’m hallucinating, right, because I’m labeling something on a basis that is not valid. So, okay. Just one more because we’ve really got to move on. Oh, okay.
Yeah, and you might and you have to work on it, okay? You really, really have to work on these concepts. Know, it’s not easy and it’s contrary to everything that you’ve ever thought. So it’s great actually when you have a background in physics because you have all these other kind of ideas about the way that reality works that you can help apply to it. But on the grossest level, it doesn’t really matter.
And the physicists are looking for ultimate reality and Buddhism says ain’t never going to find anything that’s inherently existent because ain’t nothing is, not even emptiness. Sorry, I didn’t mean to cut you off, but we’ve got the whole rest of the sutra to go. Yeah. Lynn? Yeah.
I mean, what is the thing the thing of function? Is it if you can reliably predict that if you lift something to your you pour a fluid in, you lift it up, and you can drink it Yeah. And that’s expectation. You can predict that’s gonna happen across cultures. Yeah.
Does that mean it’s got a valid basis? Do you okay. Do you mean would it function it if it function as as that to everyone, would everybody see it as a cup? Well, they might not name it a cup. Right.
But if they you could predict that anybody would be able to drink fluid out of Yeah. Of any human. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. They’d figure it out sooner or later. Even if they didn’t perceive this as a cup, if you left them alone in a room with this for long enough and it was full of water and then they were really thirsty, they’d work it out. Okay. I have another question on a type of phenomena that we know from research, say, that Yeah.
Across the world when people get discriminated, they’re shown pictures of different emotions. There’s certain emotions cross culture that people respond to. And, like, Predictably, if somebody really smiles at us, we feel good. That’s because our consensual reality as human beings, it still doesn’t mean it exists from its own side. We’re still creating the label happiness that we’re imputing on that face.
So it still doesn’t mean it’s inherently existent. It means that there are some things that are universals for the human realm and that’s fine. They’re still not inherently existent. They’re still imputed by concepts. A good feeling Right.
In other in the the other person or animal or whatever. How is I’m still confused. And you have to just work on it. And, you know, usually at this point in the Heart Sūtra, everybody’s desperately looking for something that inherently exists. You know?
We and I really understand that. You know? I really kinda understand because I’ve just sort of told you that there’s nothing that inherently exists, and everybody’s trying to look at everything from facial expressions to, you know, tau mesons that inherently exist, and we just really need to get used to the fact that nothing exists inherently, not one thing. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
I have a question regarding the consciousness that is doing this meditation. Do you have a times in which that consciousness gets discontinued or gets shattered or gets confused or gets incongruent? Because I was sinking, this consciousness is reflecting on all of this emptiness and emptiness and emptiness. And let’s say that a fear comes. At that point, the consciousness gets distracted.
Or let’s say that I have pain in my back. Right. Suddenly, that component is distracted. Right. But wouldn’t that My question is, is there a point which that consciousness gets shattered, that you’re not able to maintain the level of consciousness or awareness.
Right, right, right. And they say to actually get a direct realization of emptiness, we have to have developed single pointed concentration to the point where the scriptures say you can meditate without the slightest bit of distraction for four hours on an object to get the direct realization, like what we’re doing right now. And this takes us back to the next thing I wanted to review, which is this chart. And remember we said the path of accumulation and the path of preparation we’re meditating on emptiness until during all the way up to the end of the path of accumulation, we’re actually using what we call the wisdom of learning and contemplation. We talk about three ways of relating to the teachings.
We say we’ve got hearing or learning about it, we’ve got contemplating it, and then we’ve got meditating on it. Strictly speaking, we’re not meditating at all until we have single pointed concentration. We talk about meditation now, and we meditate and come to meditate at eight thirty. We’re not meditating. We’re contemplating.
Until you have single pointed concentration, strictly speaking, you never meditate for one second in your life until you have. So that’s what’s necessary to actually do the meditation on emptiness. And that’s when we’ve entered the path of preparation, when we have single pointed concentration that we’re using to meditate on emptiness. And then you’re not going to have to worry about any of that stuff because whatever object you choose, your mind can focus on it like a laser beam for as long as you want. And that’s the power of that and that’s the reason for developing single pointed concentration.
The only reason, the main reason is to meditate on emptiness using that concentration because that’s the only thing that’s going to be able to get you to have that direct realization because otherwise yeah you’ll get confused, you’ll get scared, you’ll get distracted, your back will hurt, but once you’ve developed single point of concentration none of those things will interfere with your meditation. So yeah. Yeah. And that has to do with behaviors like single pointed concentration. So what you’re presenting is that single pointed concentration does inherently exist from what you’re saying?
No. Nothing inherently exists. No. No. No.
We’re mixing up existence and inherent existence and this is something you really have to get used to. If it inherently existed, you could never develop it. If single pointed concentration existed inherently, we’d be stuck because we could never develop it. It wouldn’t be a product of causes and conditions and parts and conceptual imputation and it would be hopeless. We might as well all leave and go to the beach now.
Right? Yeah. If it inherently existed, it would mean that there would be no way it could be produced or caused by causes and conditions. Conditions. So no training could result in single pointed concentration.
So again, don’t mix up existence and inherent existence. Things exist because they’re not inherently existent. There’d be no way that they could exist if they were inherently existent. Okay. Thank you.
Okay. Yeah, Matthew. Just a a quick question Yeah. To define terms. When I was taking the karma class, we talked about things like language as collective karma, cultural karma?
Is that the same thing as, like, our consensual perception of something? Yeah. It’s the same thing. Definitely. And if we were Finns, we would have a completely different perception of snow because we’d have eleven words for it.
So language for us as humans definitely helps define our actual concepts because concepts in language for us is so linked. So there’s all these studies about how people perceive things differently if they have the words for it. So For us it’s very much linked. So we have some kind of collective karma to be speaking English. Not all of us are Americans and then in other languages that we speak there may be completely different concepts.
Like in French there’s a zillion words for love. In Tibetan and Sanskrit there’s like a zillion words for mind and consciousness and awareness that we don’t have and they all mean something different. Then in Finnish there’s all these words for snow. Makes sense. Different languages there’s more words for something that actually makes us have subtler and more differentiated concepts about it.
And that has a karmic basis. Yeah, yeah. It’s our collective karma to be born speaking whatever language that we have. Thank you. Okay, let’s quickly review the five paths and then it’s time for our break and we barely finished our review.
Okay. We’ll be here all night. We’ll be here all night. No, we won’t, really. Okay, let’s review the five paths.
So we had coming from beginningless time. There should be an infinite error, an error with infinity. Since beginningless time, we’ve been from here. Getting to this point, fear, faith, and compassion leading to refuge, right? We had, you know, fear, which isn’t such a terrific word, but it just basically means, I don’t want to suffer anymore.
You know? I don’t want anybody else to suffer anymore. I don’t want to be in saṃsāra anymore. I’m gonna take refuge because I have faith in what the Buddha taught. The Four Noble Truths thing makes sense to me.
And so I’m going to just buy into that for now. Give that a try. I’ve tried every other way to be happy and it hasn’t worked, so I’m going to give that a shot. So then we take refuge and then we work on these three realizations: renunciation, Bodhicitta, and wisdom. Then when we have actual Bodhicitta and what isn’t written here is actual renunciation too because that’s a prerequisite for Bodhicitta.
We can’t wish for other all other beings to be free of saṃsāra and for us to do it if we still think that there’s some happiness right around the corner in saṃsāra when things mellow out a little bit. How many years have we wasted? Oh, yeah. When I get that boss, he’s really a drag. When I get the new job, then everything’s going to mellow out and it’s all going to be perfect.
Yeah, right. So actual Bodhicitta and then we’ve entered the path of accumulation when we have what we call uncontrived Bodhicitta day and night twenty fourseven. That’s our baseline mental state. And then we enter the path of accumulation during which we’re working on what? Who remembers what we’re working on during the path of accumulation?
To develop concentration? Yeah, I’ll just repeat what people say. So developing single pointed concentration, okay, and what else? Virtually. Yeah, accumulating merit.
So working on accumulating merit and working on single point of concentration. And then what’s the point that we transfer over to the path of preparation? What’s happening there? When do we go from the path of accumulation to preparation? Morgan, what’s Not yet.
Not yet. Okay. So when do we go to the path of preparation from the path of accumulation? Yeah, Ben. Perfect concentration.
Yeah, we’ve developed perfect single pointed concentration. We’re using it to meditate on emptiness. So they say a union of calm abiding and special insight is the way that they phrase it. A union of calm abiding, which means perfect single pointed concentration, and special insight into the nature of reality. Then we’re at the path of preparation.
We haven’t had the direct perception yet, but what we work on during the path of preparation is subtler and subtler intellectual understandings of emptiness. So we’re still using concepts, right? We’re still using concepts and ideas to meditate on emptiness, but it’s getting subtler and subtler, closer and closer to the way it really is. And then at the very last meditation of the path of preparation, we We go into meditation. Right before that, we’ve had a direct realization of dependent arising.
And then we go into meditation. And during that meditation, we have a direct realization of emptiness, direct realization of something that isn’t there. And remember it’s the pizza box example. We’re seeing something that doesn’t exist. We’re seeing its mere absence.
We’re seeing that that thing that we always thought was there isn’t there at all. And after the break I’m going to read some of these things that Lama Zopa said about what that’s like because it’s very cool. So we’re seeing a mere absence just like when you thought the pizza was there in the box and you open it and there’s nothing there. So we arise out of that meditation and we’re an ārya we’re on the path of seeing meaning seeing emptiness directly. Then during the path of meditation from that point on we’re called an ārya bodhisattva and then we keep going into that direct realization of emptiness over and over and over again and then that has the power to eliminate our karma and delusions.
So that’s what’s being worked on on the first seven Bodhisattva grounds. We’re eliminating the obscurations to liberation, which is karma and delusions. So we say that you can no longer create any more new negative karma after you’re an ārya, But you still have your old karmic seeds, you still have your mental afflictions, but they have no basis. It’s like they have no foundation anymore because they’re all based on that view of things as inherently existent. And that’s just gone.
It’s like pulling the foundation out from under a building how long is it going to be before the building crumbles? You’ve taken out the base, so it may stand for a while but days are numbered. And it’s the same with your karma and delusions. You’ve just taken out the foundation so it’s going to fall apart sooner or later. So you keep meditating on emptiness.
By the way, every time you meditate on emptiness it’s the same exact mere absence. It doesn’t change. Every meditation on emptiness you do after that first one on the path of seeing, same meditation. But what’s different is it chips away more and more at the karma and the delusion. So you keep going into it just like the pizza box.
You keep seeing there’s nothing there what you thought was there. You come out of it and your delusions and karma are more and more shaky until at the end of the seventh ground you’ve completely eliminated your karma and your mental afflictions. And just by the way, you’re liberated from saṃsāra there. It wasn’t your goal but it just happens because of your meditation. So you’re liberated but you’re not called an arhat even though you’re liberated because you’re not done yet.
You’re still an ārya bodhisattva. And then you have what we call the obscurations to omniscience very very subtle tendencies for seeing things as self existent. The analogy they give in the scripture they say it’s like a pot that’s had a bunch of garlic in it, know like a ceramic pot that’s had garlic in it, like unglazed, and you take all the garlic out and it still smells like garlic even though there’s nothing there and they say that’s what’s going on here. It’s just this sort of scent of seeing things as self existent, just this very subtle, it’s still left these taints. So you work on eliminating that and then at the end and the same process going into meditation on emptiness over and over and over again.
That’s the antidote to all of it. It’s just repetition and getting used to it, which is what the path of habituation means habituating yourself to it, getting used to it, repeating it over and over that meditation on emptiness. And then at the end of that, in the last meditation as a non enlightened being you go into meditation again on emptiness because every transition between these paths happens in deep meditation. You don’t transition from one to the next when you’re walking around and taking the bus. You’re transitioning in deep meditation so you go into the last meditation before and then arise out of that meditation as a fully enlightened being immediately shooting out infinite emanation bodies wherever sentient beings need you to, knowing everything, you know, having that omniscient mind, being able to see ultimate and conventional reality simultaneously.
Who knows what that’s like? Even the scriptures just say it’s indescribable, ineffable, incomprehensible. Yeah. So that’s the five paths. And then the last one is called the path of no more learning which just means ain’t nothing else to do.
You’re there. You’ve reached the goal. Okay, so that’s the five paths. So let’s take a break now and we’ll come back and any questions we have about the five paths and then we’ll want to read just a little bit of what Lama Zopa said about that fear, because we talked about that fear yesterday and what he says about kind of pushing through it, because it’s very cool. Okay, so is fifteen minutes enough?
Okay. Fifteen. Eleven fifteen. Yeah. Through meditation, we went through the five aggregates.
And I one of the goals was to realize that the self was just when these five elements come together. Yeah. That’s the basis. The valid basis of the label me. Yeah.
Right. I mean, go up the meditation to sort of realize that. So formless realms, Is this just for the human? Is desire realm and form realm. Formless realm beings have four aggregates, they don’t have the form aggregate.
So there’s three realms that they talk about. The six realms that we’re used to are the desire realm, which is where humans are. So the formless realm would have four and not the form aggregate. Yeah, that’s right. Does that mean So their meditation would be different.
I taught the human meditation on the five aggregates. The human desire realm meditation on the five aggregates. Is there any other Is that the only exception where where the formless realm, you won’t have the form element, but in any other way you have the others? It’s Buddha’s the five aggregates have completely transformed. So Buddha’s and the Buddha’s would be a whole different thing because they’re not even considered sentient beings anymore.
That’s a long story, but the only other exception to the five aggregates would be the formless realm, I believe. That makes sense. Any other questions about the five the five paths, the chart? Yeah. Reading it this way, it has generosity.
It has the perfections. Yes. And then it has method, prayer, power. Anyway, how do those relate to each of those grounds? Are you focusing on those particularly at those They say that during those grounds, those perfections reach perfection, like reach the perfected state.
So during the first ground, you’re perfecting generosity. Remember how we said that word could mean either gone to the other side or going to the other side, and perfection could either mean going to perfection or perfected. So we would say after the first ground, your generosity is perfected. And then the second ground. So it’s special kind of culmination of that quality is one way you could say it is developed and perfected on that ground.
And it in that order. And it goes in that order. And that’s the order they say that we start practicing the perfections because generosity is pretty easy, then ethics, then patience, effort. I mean, we try and practice all of them, right? But they say that that is the order of sort of from a little bit more kind of gross and easy to subtler and more difficult.
Yeah. So they say that that’s what’s happening on those grounds and why each one is related to a different perfection because it’s perfected on that ground. So one ground working on the second ground of ethics may be a couple of eons. Third ground many eons. Fourth ground half an eon.
Do you know what I mean? Could be It’s not like a time. The sūtra explanation, which is why we like the vajrayana so much, up to the path of seeing is one countless great eon. Right? Then from the path of seeing to the seventh bhūmi another countless great eon.
And then the last three bhūmis another countless great eon. So we talk about three I’m sorry, a little bit wrong from the path of accumulation no, I’m sorry, I was right yeah all the way through to the path of seeing one countless great eon, another one for the first seven bhūmis and another one for the last three. But according to vajrayana, one lifetime for the whole nine yards. Possible. Yeah.
Yeah. It’s possible. So that’s the yeah. Lynn? And then?
This is sort of a process question. Lynn? Lynn? From my I’ll get something. I’ll, you know, I’ll understand something, then I lose it.
And since everything is based on causes and conditions Yeah. I’m wondering about this seems like things are very definite on the chart and I’m wondering if there isn’t like a flexibility like somebody may be one place and then causes and conditions may change somehow and something else is And there are certain permanent sensations that are irreversible, and that’s why we use the word cessation because it means you can’t fall back from that. So yeah, what you’re saying is right. Sometimes we have realizations that don’t seem stable, like stable realizations or don’t seem like that. But they say, for example, after you’ve had the direct realization of emptiness, you can never fall back from that realization.
And then what happens in your next life is because you’re an ārya, you get born in the perfect circumstances, you get the teachings very early on, and then they say something happens when you’re about twelve or thirteen years old that they call in Tibetan bag chag sepa, and it means that karmic seed from your direct realization of emptiness in your past life ripens and you realize again what’s going on. We had this great teacher Kirti Tsenshab Rinpoche and in his biography he was talking about his education and he gave this little hint like if you know what to look for he goes, And then when I was about twelve or thirteen I started studying Madhyamaka, and it was like as if I’d found an old friend. And I was just like, oh. You know? Because that’s what happens.
When you start studying it and then all of a sudden you go into that direct perception again, it perception again, it all comes back. And they say that it usually takes that amount of time. And then in every lifetime, so you never fall back down from it just when you pass away or something. So there’s certain realizations. Once you’ve seen it, you’ve seen it.
It’s like learning how to read Chinese. Before, you’re just looking at the page and it’s a bunch of marks. It’s just random. And then once you learn how to read, you can never look at that page and it just looks like marks it’s the same thing with the direct realization of emptiness. So certain realizations are like that.
And then they say at a certain point of the path and for Buddhas, like if Buddhahood is not inherently existent, how come it lasts forever? How come you can never fall down from being a Buddha? And they say every moment of Buddhahood creates forces like it’s got so much virtue. Every moment of Buddhahood, all that you’re doing to benefit beings creates so much virtue that it forces the next instant of Buddhahood with a bunch of virtue left over. It’s Yeah.
And so it gets that way at a certain point. You’re creating so much virtue in every moment with everything you do as you progress along here that after a certain moment, it’s not that it’s permanent in the sense of unchanging. Your mind is still changing moment by moment by moment, but you’re creating so much virtue in every moment that it forces the next moment of consciousness to still be realized, and you can’t fall back. So they say after a certain point and I think they say you can’t lose your Bodhicitta after Bodhicitta can be lost until I think it’s the middle of the path of accumulation. I’m not sure about that.
Don’t quote me on that, but I think somewhere in there then you can’t lose your Bodhicitta anymore and then the other realizations are kind of like that, like at a certain point. And it’s not that it’s unchanging, but it means that just the mind that you have forces the next moment of mind to still have that realization. Yeah. Good question. Did you have something?
Yeah. Yeah. I think you hinted at this yesterday, but I’m sort of looking at your diagram too, seeing it two ways. And one is like the way you’re teaching it to us. And then the other one is like, you know, from a hypothetical lens of, you know, what if we were all enlightened?
Then sort of like the element of time and language and the whole schematic would not really exist, right? Mean, it wouldn’t I mean You mean for an enlightened being? Yeah. If you’re already enlightened. Or if we were all.
Yeah. If we were all enlightened. Yeah. Then in a certain kind of sense, the schematic I mean, not only would it not be needed anymore, but it wouldn’t really make sense from that perspective. Right?
Yeah. But it’s what what we did to get there. Right? So every every Buddha has to have gone through this. And yeah, if we were all enlightened, we’d throw away all the textbooks and who cares?
We don’t need the path anymore. They say, like, after you’ve crossed the river, what do you do? Take the ropeboat on your back and walk along with it? No, you leave it on the other shore. So it’s like that.
I mean, the Dharma, the whole path, is just to get you to the other shore. It’s of no intrinsic you know, it’s not inherently anything. It’s just a method. So like that. Is that what you mean?
Yes. It is. And just being able to recognize it as a method, I think, might be helpful. Yeah. Definitely.
Definitely. Right. Right. I mean, it’s just because because it’s what we have to do to get to be a Buddha, and it’s not, what we call Buddhism, which, by the way, is a word invented by The Buddhas explorers. It’s interesting when you look at the word for a Buddhist, which again didn’t exist, in Tibet the word is nangpa, which means inner being.
Like anybody following the path of Dharma was called an inner being because it was pointing to they’re looking within for happiness, they’re looking within for the answers and not looking at all that stuff. And I think that’s very cool. So it’s not about being dogmatic about it, it’s just a description. It’s just empirical in a way, kind of showing what happens. Then, yeah, when we’re at the end, then we don’t need anything.
One of my friends, one of his teachers said, the greatest thing about being enlightened is you don’t have to do your sādhana’s anymore. You know, you don’t have to do your daily practice anymore. You just benefit beings. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Okay. Yeah, Janet’s got one. Wait for the mic, Janet. I have your diagram, which is and I have one that I brought that was from Yeah.
Emily’s, which but, basically, my question is is that on both, you show that the acquired obscurations are abandoned. It’s almost at right at the beginning, just after your first Yeah. Direct realization of emptiness. But it it seems to me I think it was in in Taratantra, and we were working on this at vajrapani. Finding the point where you move from the path of seeing to the path of meditation was when the acquired obscurations are abandoned fully.
And you can see in your diagrams, that’s exactly how it’s drawn. And there is a space in the path of seeing where it seems as though you’re still purifying and working on eliminating or acquiring the full cessation of the acquired So it just a little technical thing? Yeah. And the way that I’ve been taught, it’s at the end of that first meditation, meaning the ones that are learned. So the ones that you learn from your culture.
How can you believe anymore that something that was taught by your culture like maybe that death is the end of everything when you’ve seen emptiness directly, you’ve seen your future rebirths, you’ve seen all that stuff. And all of those things that you were just taught by your culture that are wrong views are then eliminated when you’ve seen ultimate nature of reality directly. So that’s what I meant by those acquired obscurations. Just the learned wrong views when you’ve seen the nature of reality directly, all of those just completely fall away. Maybe it’s the difference between those tendencies or the imprints.
It’s sort of like the garlic bulbs are removed, but maybe that’s the difference. Whatever you put The seeds are propensity for it. Maybe you have the old karma that’s accumulated because of your it be because I can’t figure out because it doesn’t make sense. Otherwise, the path of meditation would pop over and your path of seeing would be only like a little line. Right.
Right. Right. And I’ll try and check that out. I’ll just try and check that out why you’ve got got that teaching. Maybe I’ll ask Emily or something.
Well, Emily agrees with what you had, but it was in the Tantra, and I believe it was with Geshe Dapa. Oh, okay. And then and then we were looking we were we were studying from the master’s program down with, oh, Right. That was the question she was trying to answer. We were searching, searching, searching through for the answer.
And then we found that that distinguishes when the acquired obstructions are fully abandoned is when you move from the path of seeing into the path of meditation. That’s like the line. Okay. I’ll check that. I’ll check that.
Yeah. I’ll check that and get back to you. Okay. So back to the sūtra. So now Avalokiteśvara has given the short answer, and now he starts to elaborate.
What we’ve done up until now is the brief answer and now he starts to elaborate. The next part is maybe the most famous words of the Heart Sūtra. So in your text it says form is empty, but the translation I prefer says form is emptiness because then that makes it symmetrical. Okay? So form is emptiness, emptiness is form, emptiness is not other than form, form is also not other than emptiness.
So these are called the four profound applications. Four profound applications. So form is emptiness, emptiness is form. What’s going on here? We said emptiness is what we call in philosophy a non affirming negation, meaning it’s a mere absence.
So how can that be form? How can form be emptiness? One’s a positive thing and one’s a mere absence. How can a mere absence be form? So what is he trying to do here?
What’s Avalokiteśvara trying to do? Is he saying literally that they’re equivalent? No. He’s just pointing out something that’s called Tibetan zecik dokpa tade and it means there are basically two ways of saying the same thing. Remember we said that emptiness and dependent arising are like two sides of a coin.
So that’s what he’s emphasizing here, that there’s two ways of looking at exactly the same thing. And he’s using form because visual consciousness for us is so compelling. We’re so kind of addicted to visual stimulus. So he’s starting out with form because that’s visual, you know, form the form aggregate. So form is emptiness.
Emptiness is form. It’s not literally true because then it would be equating a positive thing with a negative thing. But what he’s trying to do is show the relationship between emptiness and dependent arising here with these four. So form is emptiness means emptiness has to have a basis. You can’t talk about emptiness apart from some basis which is empty.
And sometimes in the early sutras there were these bad translations that would talk about the void, you know, emptiness like the Void capital V like it was some existing thing out there separate, like some ultimate void. Then the goal of the path is to merge with a void like a black hole, and that’s supposed to be appealing? No. So the void, it’s like some other kind of reality existing separately out there. Right?
Like you’ve got the world, you’ve got saṃsāra, and then you’ve got the void out there. And so this is saying it’s not like that at all. Emptiness is just a quality of every existing thing. You need to have that basis, which is empty. You can’t talk about emptiness without having a basis of what you’re talking about, a basis for that emptiness.
So even though the quality of emptiness is the same for every existing object, in being a mere absence how can a mere absence be more or less absent? It’s just not there at all. You know, that impossible way of existing. But you’ve got the cups emptiness and the flowers emptiness and the papers emptiness and the microphones emptiness and Tens and Chokies emptiness. And you can’t talk about emptiness in any way separate from a basis which is empty.
It’s just a characteristic of phenomena. So that’s what this means. Form is emptiness doesn’t mean literally because we would be equating a positive thing and a negative thing but it just means you need to have a basis. You can’t talk about emptiness as some abstract concept out there. It’s just a quality of every existing thing.
That emptiness goes out of existence when that object goes out of existence. Even though we say emptiness is an unchanging phenomena, it doesn’t change moment by moment because how could a mere absence change in any way? So the cup is changing moment to moment. The cup is a changing phenomena. Its emptiness is unchanging.
It doesn’t change moment to moment but it can go out of existence. If I smash the cup on the floor which I’m not going to do because it belongs to Sachen Ling then the cup’s emptiness would go out of existence. The cup’s lack of being anything other than a dependent arising, which is what its emptiness is, would go out of existence because the cup would no longer exist. So that’s what this is emphasizing. We don’t talk about emptiness like, Oh, emptiness is like some state of mind or some ground of being.
Sometimes people get confused with the whole Hindu idea of Ātman and Brahman. It’s like some kind of ultimate ground of being that everything is kind of popping up out of. It’s like it’s unmanifested ground of being and then everything’s kind of popping up out of it. No, it’s not like that. It’s just characteristic of every existing thing.
So that’s what form is emptiness means. And then emptiness is form is emphasizing the dependent arising aspect. It’s saying form could not arise if it weren’t empty. So emptiness is form means because things are empty, form can arise. Because things are empty, these things can arise in dependence.
Emptiness allows for dependent arising. If things weren’t empty, they could not manifest they couldn’t come into existence. So that’s what the second one is emphasizing. Because things are empty, they can come into existence. Emptiness allows for form because things can only exist as dependent arising and dependent arising is only possible if things are empty.
So emptiness allows for the possibility of dependent arising which just happens to be how everything exists. So nothing could exist if they weren’t empty. Nothing can come into being inherently. So is that clear what those two mean? So it’s juxtaposing the emptiness and the dependent arising showing in the first case that emptiness depends on the form and then that the form depends on the emptiness because it couldn’t come into being if it weren’t for emptiness.
If it weren’t empty, there’s no way for it to arise. And then to emphasize even more, emptiness is not other than form. Form is also not other than emptiness. Again, emphasizing that relationship. So form is not other than emptiness, meaning there’s nothing else that exists that’s not empty.
Nothing exists that’s not empty, and if it weren’t for emptiness nothing could come into existence in the first place. So it’s completely linked. This idea of emptiness and dependent arising completely linked. Emptiness shows how dependent arising functions and things arise in dependence because they’re empty of inherent existence. So this is just showing those two things in this kind of shocking statement because it seems weird.
What do you mean form is emptiness? You know, it’s all mystical, right? And you read it for the first time and you’re like, Wow, that’s trippy. I wonder what he means. So that’s why we’re studying it because then the next time you read the Heart Sūtra it reminds you, Oh, right.
Emptiness and Dependent Arising are two ways of talking about the exact same characteristic. And that’s cool because don’t forget that. And don’t think of emptiness as some black hole out there somewhere, some mystical void that you’re supposed to merge with. That’s just ridiculous. It’s just talking about the quality of every existing object.
Because of that quality, things can come into existence. Things can be dependent arising. Yeah, we’ve got the microphone somewhere. So Buddhas are depending arising also. Yep.
But what I get not clear is Buddhas also go out of existence, or they go out of existence. I know that had said that there’s a point in which I’m no longer my teachings or I will not be in But I was also hearing that as Buddhas do skillful activities, they keep rolling on. Why would the Buddha no longer be there? Not appear for us in this world system. They say that Śākyamūni Buddha is manifesting.
We talk about the twelve deeds of all of the wheel turning Buddhas. They all go through these twelve deeds. And the Buddha is manifesting those twelve deeds simultaneously in multiple world systems. So our karma ran out in this world to have Śākyamūni Buddha alive. He disappeared but he simultaneously because of being a Buddha and that’s why these holy beings take the aspect of dying.
What’s happening? Our karma wore out to have them with us, which is why we do all these long life prayers for our teachers. Why you’re supposed to if your teacher has told you to do something, you’re supposed to do it because that creates the cause for their long life because the only reason they show up is to help us. And if we diss their advice, they’re going to disappear. Why bother?
So they say the best cause for your teacher’s long life is following their advice because it’s dependent on our karma that these beings show up for us and manifest like that. So that’s the reason that the Buddha disappeared from this world system. I mean, he took a formed body. Right? He took a rebirth emanation that has a certain lifespan, you know, and that’s one thing too.
But there is the possibility that, you know, that emanation could take another body and continue continue on. But they say that Śākyamūni didn’t continue in this world system, but is simultaneously manifesting in multiple world systems. Yeah. Yeah, Mark. So I have a question going back to karma and Dependent Arising.
So if I understand this, because the cup is is empty. Right? Yeah. We can all relate to it with our different karmic imprints. Right.
If the cup wasn’t empty, also karma wouldn’t work. Is that how karma works for dependent arising? Because dependent arising is based on karma, like cause and effect. It’s just all about cause and effect. If yeah.
Exactly. If things were inherently existent, karma couldn’t function. Dependent arising couldn’t function. Because they’re empty, karma, cause and effect, dependent arising all function. Exactly.
Right. Right. Yeah. If things were inherently existent, nothing that we did would have any result. And we might as well forget about ethics.
We might as well forget about cause and effect, forget about ever keeping any kind of vowed morality. Why bother if things are inherently existent? It’s not going to produce any kind of result. But because things are empty, all those things do produce a result. Yeah.
Yeah. Including our perception, which is another result of our karma. Yeah. We’ve got one right here. And then Lynn?
My one understanding of emptiness is that it is impermanent. Because of impermanence, there is a lot of possibilities in cause and effect. Is that correct perception? We say that emptiness when you use the words permanent and impermanent, which I don’t like. I like to use changing and unchanging because for us in English, permanent has the connotation of it’s going to last forever.
And as we’ve just seen, the cup’s emptiness isn’t permanent in that sense because it goes out of existence when the cup goes out of existence. But for the whole time that it lasts, it’s unchanging. It doesn’t change moment to moment. So some people use permanent and impermanent for this quality of changing and unchanging, but I prefer to use the words changing and unchanging because it’s unchanging for as long as it exists. And then when the cup ceases to exist, its emptiness goes out of existence too.
So it’s not permanent in the sense of lasting forever. So it’s impermanent in that sense only but for as long as the cup exists, its emptiness is not changing moment to moment. What? What do you mean? What?
Speak. Use use your words. Thank you. Gosh, I’ve been happily thinking that this is dissolving moment by moment at a subatomic level. I have happily thought that for years.
What? The cup? Yes. It is. Oh.
Yeah. I’m talking about the emptiness of the cup doesn’t change. Oh, okay. Okay. Alright.
You can quit one. Okay. Wait. We’ve got Lynn had one. Lynn?
I kind of want you to see all bunch of things all over again. Okay. Lynn Carla John. Just the connection between dependent arising, karma, and emptiness. Why is dependent arising?
Dependent arising has to do with causes and conditions, circumstances, and parts and conceptual imputation. Right? Those three levels. So could you just say again why can’t there be karma and dependent arising without emptiness? Because if things weren’t empty, if things were inherently existent, nothing could come into being.
They’d be solid. They’d be static. Nothing could be produced if it were inherently existed. So cause and effect couldn’t function. karma couldn’t function.
Nothing would be dependent on causes and conditions if it were inherently existent. Because that’s what inherent existence means, that it’s what it is from its own side, independent of all of these factors. And nothing can exist like that. It couldn’t come into existence in the first place like that. It’s impossible.
It’s describing something that’s completely impossible because nothing could ever come into existence apart from depending on these three factors. And that’s what dependent arising is. But things don’t appear to us like that. That’s the problem. When we think about it intellectually, we go, well, sure.
Nothing could be inherently existent. But it’s not the way it appears to us. We walk in the room and everything appears as if it was there from its own side, completely independent. Intellectually, when we think about it, we go, well, of course not. But it’s not the way things appear to us.
And that’s the difference between understanding it intellectually and having a deep realization of it so you don’t even have that appearance anymore of inherent existence, because that’s how everything appears to us. It doesn’t appear as a dependent arising at all. Carla and then John. Oh, sorry. I think all the most of the teachings that I’ve had so far have used the word permanent as of as Yeah.
In the empty quality of the cup. Yeah. So my idea is that the emptiness of the cup would not dissipate. No. See, that’s why I hate the word permanent because we have the connotation last forever.
But the minute that cup goes out of existence, because the emptiness is just a quality of that cup, its emptiness goes out of existence. And that’s exactly why I use changing and unchanging because permanent to us has two connotations. It means it doesn’t change moment to moment, but permanent to us also means it lasts forever. But the minute that cup disappears, because form is emptiness, emptiness is form, emptiness is not other than form, form is not other than emptiness means that the emptiness of that cup depends on the existence of that cup. It cannot exist once the cup no longer exists.
If you shred that on the floor, you should have the emptiness of Of the pieces. Yeah. But that’s not the emptiness of the cup. So not like transforming. It’s just like energy.
It’s never No. It’s just mere absence of a certain way of existing. Right? Emptiness is not a positive thing. It’s a mere absence of a certain way of existing.
It doesn’t transform. No. No. Because there’s nothing to transform. It’s just describing something that isn’t there.
So there’s nothing to transform. Cook it. I’m giving you all the raw vegetables. You gotta cook it. Sorry.
John’s got it. Sorry. This is just a question about dependent arising, and I don’t know if it’s already been addressed or if, you know, I’m just confused about it or, like, or whatever. But let’s take a let’s take a world system, remove all sentient beings, and remove all valid bases. Buddhas can still perceive even if there’s no sentient beings because if a Buddha’s omniscience, even if there’s no sentient beings there, the Buddha can perceive it.
Okay. And and remove, you know, all, like, remove all, like, objects, you know, I guess, all valid bases of imputation. Then in such a world system, even if you go That wouldn’t be a world system. Because there’s nothing there. We wouldn’t call that a world system.
Okay. Well, what I’m what I’m see, the thing that I’m kind of questioning is, say you have a universe. We have these things. Say it like, you know, like how do I best to describe this? What’s on my mind?
In a universe devoid of beings who are able to lay conceptual imputations onto things or onto the things that they And it’s just a universe full of objects, say. Do things, you know, like the axioms of mathematics still hold? You know, can you go and say two plus two is equal to four in such universe if you have no, no beings that are able to go That mathematics is just concepts. It’s just a concept. If you don’t have a being with that concept, it’s meaningless.
Two plus two equals four doesn’t exist in nature, really. It’s just a concept that we’re imputing onto addition. I mean, it’s just a concept, so we don’t talk about that. There would still be external objects. They wouldn’t exist as what they appear because we’re organizing everything conceptually.
So I love these pictures of the birth of the universe or the Big Bang or something, and they show a picture of what it looks like. The hell it looked like that. There was nobody there who could perceive light of certain wavelengths that saw the purple and the blue. Mean, give me a break. It’s just a bunch of energy exploding in the middle of space.
It didn’t look like that. Who could it have looked like that, too? There’s no eyeballs. It’s like they get these pictures. Oh, it looked like that.
Like, give me a break. One more question, then we really have to move on. We could go on like this forever, but we’ve got to finish the Heart Sūtra. One of the things is, like I say, you’ve got to keep thinking about it. And I’m giving you the ideas, but it takes a long time.
And I know for a lot of you, you’re hearing all of this for the first time, and you just mull it over. And there’s nothing like just meditating. Apply it to all of these examples. Just keep thinking about it and just keep thinking about how it applies to the different examples because it’s a long process to actually get to the point of understanding. And this is just the raw material and then you have to apply it to all these things like geological time and subatomic particles and the cup and everything else because it’s all the same.
Well I was just gonna say I think there’s a point where our usual ways of understanding things break down and like like, we have to kind of surrender to the like, language isn’t gonna get us there Yeah. In the end at the end of the day. Like, it’s not that’s Yeah. It’s only experience, you know, really, and it’s like, you know, I I talked the first night about this book that I read. Every page and every footnote and Maps of the Profound, this huge book by Jeffrey Hopkins.
My conclusion at the end of that book was I wasn’t going to understand emptiness by reading footnote number eight seventy two. I was going to understand emptiness by sitting down on my rear end on a cushion and meditating on it. Can’t figure it out intellectually. I mean it’s not that hard to figure out intellectually, but you need the experience. And then it’ll all become clear, all these examples that we’re asking about.
You just keep practicing. You keep meditating on it and then it becomes clear. Okay, let’s just reel ourselves back to the sūtra. And then after talking about the four profound applications this form is emptiness, emptiness is form, emptiness is not other than form, form is also not other than emptiness We’re applying those same four to the other aggregates in the same way, meaning those same four apply to everything else too. Feeling, discrimination, compositional factors, and consciousness are empty.
So all of these aggregates are empty of inherent existence. Our dependent arisings have that relationship of emptiness and dependent arising that we explained for the form. It’s all the same for the rest of the aggregates. And remember, we’re still talking about how to meditate during the path of accumulation and preparation. Remember, that was the other level.
We’re talking about meditation instructions, descriptions about what we’re doing in our meditation. So we’re still on the path of accumulation and preparation. In the same way feeling discrimination compositional factors, Shariputratra likewise all phenomena are emptiness. Now, interesting. A lot of commentators say that every time Avalokiteśvara says the word Shariputratra, we’re jumping to another path.
So that’s a clue. Where are we? The path of seeing. Every time Avalokiteśvara says the word Shariputratra, it’s a signal that we’re jumping to another path. Some commentators explain like that, so it’s very interesting.
So now we’re at the path of seeing. We’re just beginning a presentation called The Eight Aspects of the Profound, which is the path of seeing. So there’s two levels. We’re explaining emptiness and then we’re also explaining what’s happening at the path of seeing. So all phenomena are emptiness without characteristics.
Now, is it true that phenomena don’t have characteristics? No. Of course they do. Not from their own side, independent of our dependent arising. So from now on, whenever they say something there is no this, there is no that we add in our minds from its own side.
It doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist at all. It just means inherently. It doesn’t exist independently of these three levels of dependent arising. So nothing has characteristics from its own side that are not produced by causes and conditions, not dependent on parts, and not dependent on conceptual imputation. Unproduced and unceased from its own side, independent of causes and conditions.
So things come into being, they’re produced dependent on causes and conditions. And our karma and afflictions aren’t produced independently. They’re produced as a result of causes and conditions. And nothing ceases by itself independent of causes and conditions. So our afflictions and our karma and our obscurations aren’t ceased just because we hope so.
We have to create the causes. We can look at each of these eight just in very general terms and in relation to the path. So unproduced and unceased think about it in terms of your own delusions and your own karma. They weren’t produced without a cause and they ain’t going to end without a cause either. So by practicing the path, they can cease.
The next one, stainless. And that’s not the greatest translation of the word. No impurity. So you can think of no impurity. Nothing is stained from its own side or nothing is impure from its own side.
So instead of stainless, change it to no stains from its own side. So the impurities arise independence, too. So nothing all of our delusions, all of our stains, all of our obscurations arise dependently. And no freedom from impurity either without causes and conditions. nirvana and enlightenment, freedom from impurity, don’t happen inherently.
It’s not self existent. It’s created by causes. So this is talking about how all of these things are dependent arisings. All of these things are empty of inherent existence. It doesn’t mean they don’t exist it means they don’t exist from their own side.
So they exist as dependent arising. So not deficient, again, not a great translation. Does not diminish is a better translation of this. Do not diminish the impurities, the afflictions don’t diminish from their own side and not fulfilled. A practitioner’s attainment of knowledge, of good qualities, of enlightened qualities doesn’t exist from its own side.
It’s created. So this is all talking about the path and how it’s all a dependent arising. None of it comes from its own side. You want your afflictions to diminish. You want them to cease.
You want to be pure to create the causes for it. It’s emphasizing what’s done on the path, to create the causes for what we want. And it’s picking these examples that relate to our karma, our delusions, our afflictions. It’s using these examples. None of these things exist from their own side.
Now, this is also talking about the direct perception of emptiness. In that perception of emptiness, none of these things appear. Remember we said the direct perception of emptiness, you know, no objects are appearing, so all phenomena are emptiness means no phenomena are appearing during that direct realization of emptiness. We’ve just jumped to the first meditation of the path of seeing. Nothing is appearing to us except for that mere absence.
So none of these things are appearing. No production, no cessation, characteristics, no stains, no purity. None of it is appearing to us in the direct realization of emptiness. So it’s referring both to describing the emptiness of all of these things, and it’s also talking about the actual appearance to the meditator during the path of seeing. So it’s got these two levels to it.
Is that clear? What’s What’s the not fulfilled? Not fulfilled means that the path isn’t completed from its own side. Fulfilled means fulfillment of all the qualities of an enlightened being that doesn’t happen inherently. All the attainments of the path, the fulfillment of the attainments doesn’t happen from its own side either.
The impurities don’t diminish from their own side and then the qualities aren’t attained from their own side either, independent of causes and conditions. Yeah, John’s got something. Not about world systems this time, though, No, no. No, it’s actually about something you just said. So in a direct perception of emptiness, no phenomena appear except for the mere absence of those qualities of the phenomena?
The mere absence of inherent existence. The mere absence. The only thing that appears. Okay. Yeah.
It’s not the mere absence of all the other qualities. It’s specifically the mere absence of inherent existence. Gotcha. That’s the only thing appearing. Gotcha.
And what that feels like, I got no idea. You know? It’s like the empty pizza box thing. How can you be perceiving that thing? Oh, we should read from Lama Zopa perfect perfect timing.
Lama Zopa will tell us what it feels like because I wanted to read this. So this is talking about the direct realization of emptiness perfect segue. So Lama Zopa says: When you realize emptiness not just that there is no I, not just the feeling that there is no I you should feel something very intensive. It should be very much more than that. Your understanding should be something very intensive not just the feeling that there is no I.
The feeling should be something very deep. The feeling there is no I should be very intensive, very deep. You should feel as you would if you had a vision that you’d received a million dollars, Somebody put a million dollars into your hands and you totally one hundred percent believed that you actually had all that money and then suddenly realized it was just a hallucination. It’s gone. Like that.
Suddenly you realize that it’s not there. It is totally gone. What you have believed, we’re one hundred percent convinced of and so strongly clung to grasp that is suddenly totally nonexistent. There’s nothing to grab onto, nothing to hold onto. Suddenly, it’s totally nonexistent.
Nothing of what you’ve been holding onto, cherishing as if it really existed is truly there. None of what, so far, you have never had any doubt about, have been grasping at continuously, holding onto like a cat grabbing a mouse, all its claws clutching tightly together. Nothing of that I exists. Suddenly, that about which you’ve never had any doubt since beginning this rebirth, even since this morning or since you were born into this life, suddenly it doesn’t go anywhere. Suddenly there’s nothing there.
Just there, suddenly, you realize that there’s nothing there. Suddenly, it’s not there. You realize that it’s totally nonexistent, totally nonexistent. There’s nothing to hold on to. Just right there, where it was, totally lost.
And then he goes on like that. And then he says, let’s see, The right way of perceiving that the I is empty is an extremely deep, intensive experience, but there are basically two kinds of experience you can have. You can feel incredible that you’ve discovered the most precious things, such as a wish granting jewel or like a person who’s been looking for or waiting to meet a friend for many, many years. And then after all those years, suddenly meeting that friend or like you’ve been waiting to get a billion dollars for a long time and then suddenly you get the money. In other words, when you see emptiness, you feel unbelievable joy, incredible joy that makes you cry.
The second kind of experience is one of unbelievable incredible fear. Not just any kind of fear. Not just the fear of being attacked by somebody. Not that kind of fear. It’s a very deep fear, something deep inside your heart, in the very depths of your heart.
A very deep fear. The other fear is not fear of losing the I. Something is going to happen to this I but it’s not losing the I. The ordinary fear that this real I is going to receive some harm. Here, something that you believed in not only from birth but from beginningless rebirths up until now, something that you believed in one hundred percent, only now, only now, you realize that it’s not there.
Only now you realize that it’s totally nonexistent. This can cause an incredibly deep fear to arise. As I often say, when you recite the Heart Sūtra, when you say the words no I, no ear, no nose, no tongue, if fear arises, that’s a good sign. Fear arising means your recitation of the Heart Sūtra, the essence of wisdom, is hitting or touching the root of saṃsāra hurting it. Your recitation of the Heart Sūtra has touched the root of saṃsāra ignorance and hit it.
Your recitation of the Heart Sūtra, your way of thinking when you recite the essence of wisdom, is fitting like an arrow or a bomb. And then he goes on, It’s hit its target. And then he says, The texts that explain that when you feel this fear, at that time, you should not try to escape from this fear. Trying to do so is your greatest obstacle to realizing emptiness. Instead, you must realize that this is the one time, the one opportunity to realize emptiness, the only wisdom that can directly cut the delusions, the root of saṃsāra, the gross and subtle defilements, bringing liberation from saṃsāra and full enlightenment.
Knowing this, you must go through the fear. You must complete your experience. Go through the fear like crossing a river. Otherwise, if you block your own progress, the one time that you have the opportunity of realizing emptiness, if you run away from that, if you run away from the fear that arises when you realize emptiness, that’s no good at all. However, you never have to worry about the I ceasing because the I never ceases.
The I that is the label never ceases. The label never stops, never ceases. Why is there always continuity of the I, the label? Why is there always continuity of the self? Because there was always the continuity of consciousness.
Even after enlightenment, the consciousness continues forever. Therefore, thinking I’m going to cease, I’m going to become nonexistent is totally wrong. So he goes on like that. It’s this great there’s this whole section that starts on page four fifty five. It’s called A Meditation on Emptiness of this book that’s a transcript of teachings that Rinpochei gave at the Vajrasattva retreat about ten years ago at Land of Medicine Buddha.
So he’s talking about what it’s like. So that’s what it’s like, just that mere absence like he described. Like you’ve always thought there was something that was there, then suddenly it’s just gone. There’s nothing there. So I’ll leave that up there.
This is Venerable Chuky’s copy. If you want to look during lunch, I’ve bookmarked the section so you can take a look at that. So these eight characteristics that are all empty. And this is what’s happening during the direct realization of emptiness at the path of seeing. We’re seeing that all of these don’t exist from their own side.
Nothing is appearing. None of these phenomena, none of the characteristics, none of this is appearing at all. So next, Śāriputra. So what’s happening? Shift.
New path. Path of meditation. Okay? So what’s going on here? So Shariputra, Therefore in emptiness there is no form, no feeling, no discrimination, no compositional factors, no consciousness.
He repeats the five aggregates. So this is talking about how we meditate on the path of meditation. We’re still meditating on the five aggregates and during the direct perception none of those aggregates are appearing. So this is our object of meditation, but when we’ve gone into the direct perception, none of those aggregates are appearing to the consciousness at all. Only that emptiness.
Then he goes on: No eye, no ear, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind, no visual form, no sound, no odor, no taste, no object of touch and no phenomena. So he carries on with this list. So not only is he talking about the five aggregates or the five heaps here, he’s talking about something called the twelve ayatanas. It’s the Sanskrit word we usually translate it as the twelve sources. Eye, ear, nose, tongue, body and mind.
So what we’re talking about is the potential for sense consciousness. These are called the sense powers, and it doesn’t mean just the sense the physical sense organ. It’s more subtle than that because it’s talking about just that potential for having consciousness that depends on the physical organ, and it depends on the brain, and it depends on a lot of other things, too. So it’s not just the eyeball, not just the physical ear, but it’s just that ear sense power, the eye sense power, the nose sense power. So we’ve got the sense powers and then the objects of those senses: visual forms, sounds, odors, tastes, objects of touch, phenomena.
And this is another list that the Buddha came up with to talk about what? Sense contact again. So we’ve got the sense power coming into contact with an object once again shows up over and over and over again. Shows up in the five heaps. Shows up in the twelve links.
He’s telling us how we get in trouble. And He’s talking about the emptiness of all of these things. You know all those things that seem like they exist from their own side that we’re perceiving? They’re empty. And you know even the sense powers that we have, it seems like we’re seeing things from our own side and it’s appearing to us from its own side, and it’s all empty.
So he’s emphasizing again the emptiness of all of these components of every sense contact that we have with an object. Because that’s how we get in trouble, is we think it’s inherently existent and the pretty stuff is inherently attractive and the ugly stuff is inherently, causes aversion for us and all of the other things and he’s just saying, Hey, none of it exists independently. None of it exists from its own side at all. None of it is inherently existing. It all exists as a dependent arising.
So he’s giving us another list. And also, of these things, you’re not having any of that sense consciousness in the direct realization of emptiness. So it’s also describing what’s happening during the direct realization of emptiness at the path of meditation. Now are any of these things appearing in the direct realization of emptiness in the path of seeing? No, they’re not either.
But in the path of meditation we’re starting to use different objects. Remember I said that first direct realization of emptiness is personal emptiness that we get through Meditating on the Five aggregates, seeing their emptiness and the emptiness of the self that’s nothing more than a label projected on that composite of the five aggregates. So that’s the subject for the path of seeing. Now the subject for the path of meditation, we extend it to all other phenomena. We start meditating on everything else, too.
Because the same exact emptiness, the quality of my own emptiness is the same as the quality of the emptiness of the cup, the flower, all of these sense objects, all of my sense powers. It all has exactly the same total lack of any kind of inherent existence. So we extend it in the path of meditation to more objects. We’re extending that realization that we got, which we first got in terms of ourselves, to everything else. And we see, Wow, everything’s the same.
It’s all the same. So that’s why this list comes up when we’re talking about the path of meditation because that’s when we start meditating on more and more objects. Now he’s giving lists of all existing objects. Then he says, There’s no I element and so on up to and including no mind element and no mental consciousness element. And this is shorthand.
He’s not listing it all out. What he would say if he listed it all out, he’d repeat these twelve. He’d go, There’s no eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind, no visual form, no sound, no odor, no taste, no object of touch, and no phenomena. And then we’re adding the six consciousnesses that arise as a result of this contact. So we’ve got three components here.
We’ve got the sense power, we’ve got the object, and then a consciousness arises. So if he wrote out the whole list, he’d say, And then there’s no visual sense consciousness, no auditory sense consciousness, no olfactory sense consciousness. Because after that potential comes into contact with an object, then the consciousness arises. In that list of eighteen, the twelve sources plus the six sense consciousnesses, is called the eighteen dhatus or the eighteen elements. So we’ve got this list of twelve and then we’re adding the six consciousnesses and we call that the eighteen dhatus is the Sanskrit or elements is the way we often translate it.
And that just so happens to cover every existing thing. So there just so happens that between our sense power, any object of our senses, and the consciousness that arises, we’ve just covered everything that exists. So he’s just told us nothing exists from its own side. Remember, and it’s not that there’s no eye, no ear, no nose, no eye from its own side, no ear from its own side independent, inherently existent. So he’s just giving us a list of all existing objects are covered by the eighteen dhatus or the eighteen elements.
And he’s saying, During the path of meditation, this is the object of our meditation. This is how to meditate. Remember meditation instructions. We meditate on all this other stuff, too. What we saw is true in our own, you know, applied to our own personal self, we apply to everything else that exists, too.
And none of it is appearing to us at all when we’re in the direct realization of emptiness. None of these positive phenomena are appearing at all. So it’s describing how to meditate and what that meditation feels like. D H A T U is the way it’s usually spelled and Āyatana is usually spelled A Y A T A N A, Āyatana, and that’s the sources. That’s the Sanskrit word that we usually translate as sources.
So he’s, again, just giving us lists of what else we meditate on. So during the direct realization of emptiness, we’re not perceiving any of those things. They were object of meditation. But then when we actually get to the emptiness of them, that’s the only thing that’s appearing. And he carries on.
Oh, John. Yeah. So just to clarify, the eighteen elements cover all perceptible things. All things. All existing things.
All existing phenomena. All existing phenomena. All existing things. Okay. Yeah.
And then he’s and then he carries on. Well, if he just covered all existing things, how come we’ve got more to this stanza? Well, he just wants to drive the point home that it really is all existing things. And then he says, There’s no ignorance, no extinction of ignorance, and so on, up to including no aging and death and no extinction of aging and death. What’s that all about?
What is he talking about here in shorthand? What does that look like? What starts with ignorance and ends with old age and death? The twelve links. Yeah, the twelve links of dependent origination.
So he hasn’t named them all out. He hasn’t said ignorance, karmic formations, consciousness. He hasn’t gone into the whole thing. But he says, None of the twelve links which describe how we create our saṃsāra, in the forward order. So he’s saying, We don’t create our saṃsāra self existently.
It’s not inherently existent, that whole process. And it doesn’t end because he’s doing the twelve links in the forward order and the reverse order. So he says, There’s no ignorance all the way through old age and death from its own side, independent of causes and conditions, parts, and conceptual imputation. And it doesn’t stop self existently either, folks. So we have to create the causes for it.
So he’s bludgeoning us with the path now. He’s like, look, guys. Nothing exists inherently. Even the path doesn’t exist inherently. Your saṃsāra isn’t created inherently and it doesn’t stop inherently.
It’s all dependent arising. So at this point we should feel excited. Great! There’s hope. Right?
So the twelve links is what he’s talking about here. Similarly, in the same way, there’s no suffering, origination, cessation and path. What does that sound like? Four Noble Truths. The Four Noble Truths aren’t self existent.
They’re dependent arisings, too. All of this stuff is a dependent arising. There’s no exalted wisdom, no attainment, and also no non attainment. So even the end of the path, even that attainment isn’t self existent. And the non attainment isn’t self existent, so if you don’t complete the path that’s cause too.
If you don’t pull it off, there’s a reason for that too. That’s not self existent. So He’s telling us the path isn’t self existent. It’s all caused. Even the attainment is caused.
Even the non attainment is a result of dependent arising. It’s a dependent arising. So it’s very cool. He’s applying emptiness to everything. And remember, he doesn’t say it doesn’t exist, so no suffering from its own side, no origination from its own side.
No cessation from its own side. Because now that we know what he means, it’s not just this cryptic mystical thing. He’s telling us how to meditate on emptiness. He’s describing the emptiness remember again the three levels describing the emptiness of things, giving us meditation instruction, and describing what happens during that realization. None of these things are appearing to that consciousness in the direct realization of emptiness.
None of the twelve links are appearing, none of the path is appearing, even the result isn’t appearing. Even when you have those realizations, are you aware of it when you’re in the direct realization of emptiness? You could be a tenth level bodhisattva in that direct realization. Is your Bodhicitta obvious to you? Are you perceiving your Bodhicitta and your clairvoyances and all of those qualities?
No. None of those things are appearing. It doesn’t mean you’ve lost them but they’re not the object of your consciousness at that point. It’s cool, isn’t it? Isn’t it more meaningful now when you read the Heart Sūtra?
Like it’s not just these lists and it’s also mystical. Okay? So Śāriputra. And I think we’ll leave this last part for the afternoon because we’re nearly at lunch and then that’s a whole another thing. And we’ve got two hours left this afternoon, so we’ll finish this sūtra and then answer any other questions.
We’ve got time for a couple of questions now. Yes? Yeah. We’re actually gonna finish. I didn’t think it was possible about two hours ago.
Gonna do it. Okay, after knowing that nothing exists From its own side. Yes, from its own side. How can we apply that with our feelings? Like if you’re in a situation that you’re conscious, I heard a lot, you know, I said, I don’t know what to do.
Somebody told me, You have to feel your heart sometimes. How can you apply that knowing all this? Yeah, It’s kind of like the example I gave before. When I was criticized by one person and praised by one person and knowing that everybody’s just perceiving different things based on their karma because it’s all empty of inherent existence, so the appearances are all created. So I think when we have strong feelings like strong emotions, like strong attachment, strong aversion, we apply our understanding of emptiness to the object that seems to be creating that strong feeling.
Like, for example, the definition of attachment is exaggerating the positive qualities of an object and thinking that by possessing that object you’ll find lasting happiness. So I always say when you feel a strong emotion arise, look at what you’re exaggerating. Always look at the exaggeration. Somebody feels so attractive to you and you’re just like, I have to go out with that person. How much are you creating that appearance of that person as attractive?
And I always give the example I remember years and years ago, now it’s like twenty three years ago, long before I was a I remember one time totally falling in love and this guy was perfect. He’s just like totally and then there’s always the time that you start going out with him and then you take him to the party to introduce him to your friends. And they’ve got to see how fantastic he is, too. So you take him to the party, you’re like, here he is. And they’re all like, oh, nice to meet you.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then the next day, you’re checking. Wasn’t he fantastic? And they’re like, yeah, he seems really nice. Okay.
Do you want to go to the movie at seven and have the pizza later? And you’re like, no, no. But really, wasn’t he amazing? And they’re like, honey, you seem really happy. I’m really glad.
Let’s go to the pizza first. And you’re like, you think all your friends are blind and stupid. Right? Because he is inherently perfect. And then what happens?
Then you move in together. And six months later, you can’t stand the way he chews his food, and he leaves the toilet seat up in the middle of the night. You’re like, you’ve changed. No, he hasn’t. You just had this whole projection of perfection.
And then you start to see that it’s a mixed bag. And that’s what some of those strong emotions are like, and that’s how you can use it. How are we exaggerating? How are we creating a whole story? Sure, there’s some qualities there.
Granted, there’s qualities. That’s the valid basis. But then we’ve totally exploded it. We completely built it into this whole story. And then what happens?
You’re relating to the concept. Poor guy. You’re not even having a relationship with him. You’re having a relationship with your concept of Prince Charming. Poor guy.
And that’s what we do all the time. Remember we’re relating to the concept and not to what’s there. And we do that with aversion, the horrible boss that we can’t stand. You can’t believe that his wife and kids come in at the end of the day and the kids jump into his lap, Oh daddy daddy! You’re like, Who could even stand to be near him?
Aversion is the same thing. We are exaggerating the negative qualities of an object. We build up that whole concept, and then we’re responding to the concept. And the poor boss can’t do anything right. And everything they do is just proof to us that he’s really as horrible as we think he is.
So looking at that in our daily life, especially when we feel a strong, disturbing emotion, that’s when you can use both your understanding of karma and emptiness. karma is a little bit more gross, you think. What have I done to create this experience? You know, if it’s something negative. What have I done to create it?
And then you think, How is my karma even creating the very appearance of this situation? Not only did my karma create the situation that I’m in, my karma even creates, on a subtler level, how the whole thing appears to me is created by my karma. So that’s how we use this knowledge, to cut through saṃsāra, because that’s how the whole chain reaction works. Our ignorance gives rise to our afflictive emotions. Thinking that things exist from their own side is what gives rise to those disturbing emotions.
Those disturbing emotions is what causes us to engage in negative karmic actions, which makes us suffer. So we cut it at the root. I heard that Lama Yeshe used to always say, Question appearances. I think that’s a great mantra for us. Question appearances.
The way things appear, question. Does it exist the way that it appears? Especially if we’re caught up in some kind of strong negative emotion. Yeah. Okay.
Let’s have Ben and then we’ll Ben and Lynn and then we’ll bless the food and then we’ll have time for more questions later. This is just connected to what you were just saying. Yeah. But it just seems like such a fuzzy line to be able to like see kind of the root of your own ignorance. But then you said earlier like acting out of your own integrity.
Right. And and it’s just. Yeah. Like how how can you see the signs for what your integrity is? Right.
Right. Right. Right. And it’s and it’s so hard. It’s so hard because our wisdom is always increasing and because we don’t have clairvoyance and omniscience and all of this other stuff yet.
So you just do your best with whatever wisdom that you have and realize that it can change. And what seems like the right action is not necessarily the right action in that moment, but we have to somehow trust in that process and trust in ourselves. Because one of the things you see sometimes people think, oh, unless I’m omniscient, I don’t really know how to help people, I don’t really know what to do. So they just sit on their hands, hoping that somehow they’ll magically get enlightened and be able to help. And as we’ve seen with practicing the perfections, you have to engage.
We do have to create the causes in our own faulty way without omniscience and clairvoyance and all this other stuff. And we just do our best. And for me, that’s always like that. I kind of had this frustration when I feel like my compassion outstrips my wisdom and I really care about someone and I really want to help them and I don’t have a clue, or I do something that seems like I’m just bumbling around creating a worse mess, and then I think, If only I were Buddha, then I’d really know. So that very frustration that comes from trying to help inadequately for me is a big fuel on the path in that frustration.
But don’t go to thinking that you need perfect wisdom before you can act because it will only come as a result of our, what we call, contaminated good karma. Good karma done without perfect wisdom. We need to just plunge in and do our best and just sort of trust ourselves and trust our intuition somehow. But it’s hard. It’s really hard because you’re there, you’re poised, and then you’re like, well, I don’t know.
But don’t go to the extreme of nonaction just because we know that we’re not omniscient yet. That’s the other danger. Yeah, yeah, yeah, good, good. Lynn? I’m still struggling with Okay, karma and causes and conditions.
And if we look at dependent arising in karma, what are the causes and conditions that lead to the karma, that leads to the non virtuous action or whatever. Are you asking about free will perhaps? Yes. I am. Okay.
I thought so. About half an hour ago Yeah. Got popped into my head. Can we hold free will to the afternoon? Because I wanna draw a diagram.
We’re gonna get into free will He really got wanna draw a diagram. What popped into my mind. Okay. Great. Great.
We’ll have to do it. We’re just gonna have to do the twelve links thing. I can just see that right now. There’s no way around it. We’ll do the short version, ten forty easy version of the twelve links.
Okay? And that’ll answer the free will question. God, do I really want to get into at the end I was startled when it came into my mind. Yeah. Okay, we’ll do the easy version of the free will question.
All right. So first, let’s dedicate the merit, and then we’ll offer the food. So thinking of all the amazing virtue, incredible, unbelievable virtue from even just this morning, thinking about emptiness like this, tearing apart saṃsāra by our thinking about emptiness. So let’s dedicate it towards being able to have that realization, which will not only free us from Samsāra, but enable us to have all of the qualities of a fully enlightened being. All those qualities to benefit others.
So just take a minute to dedicate the merit. And then we’ll offer the food. It’s on page two zero seven if you want to follow along. So visualizing the food as blissful wisdom nectar inside of a vast jeweled vessel. And as you eat, imagine offering this blissful nectar to Śākyamūni Buddha seated at your heart.
Om Ah hum. Om Ah hum. The guru is Buddha. The guru is Dharma. The guru is Sangha also.
The guru is the creator of all happiness. To all gurus, I make this offering. May we and those around us in all future lives never be separated from the Three Jewels, continuously make offerings to the Three Jewels, and receive the inspiration of the Three Jewels. To the supreme teacher, the precious Buddha, to the supreme refuge, the precious Dharma, to the supreme guides, the precious Sangha, to the triple gem, the objects of refuge, I make offering. Okay.
Thank you. Enjoy. Bon appetit.