Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Thubten Chodron leads a guided meditation on emptiness using the four-point analysis, a foundational Buddhist technique for understanding the absence of an independent, solid self. She begins by establishing the object to be refuted: the inherently existent “I” that appears so vivid during strong emotions like anger or embarrassment. She then walks through a systematic two-part search: first examining whether the self can be found among the body’s physical parts or the mind’s various aspects, and second checking whether it might exist wholly separate from body and mind. Through this methodical investigation, practitioners are guided to the experiential realization that no such solid self can be located anywhere. The teaching concludes by clarifying that this emptiness does not deny the self’s existence entirely, only its independent, inherently existent mode; the self exists conventionally, merely labeled upon the collection of body and mind. Suited for practitioners already familiar with Buddhist philosophy and ready to engage analytical meditation.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 46 GM.mp3
UUID: 96b87897-bb8d-4c71-97f0-cbb750fed4b4
Teacher: Thubten Chodron Guided Med
Collection: Guided Meditation (Thubten Chodron Guided Med)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Words: ~1,340
When we meditate on emptiness, we’re searching for the deeper mode in which all phenomena exist because things appear to us to be very real and solid, to be out there existing on their own independently. But when we do a little bit of exploration and analysis to see if we can find the things that appear so vividly to us, then it becomes very difficult actually to find them. And by searching in this we come to realize that they’re empty of existing in all the fantasized ways that we thought they existed. There’s many techniques for meditating on emptiness. The one we’re going to do here is called the four point analysis.
And so here, the first point is to identify the object to be refuted. And so that’s the independent, solid, inherently existent I or self. So to get a sense of that, remember a time when you had a very strong emotion. Perhaps you were really angry or jealous or extremely self conscious and embarrassed or completely attached and obsessed with something. So bring to mind a very strong negative emotion and let it arise in that way.
And with one corner of your mind, just get a sense of how the I appears to exist. Like, when we say, I’m angry or they cheated me. What’s the sense of the I? How does the I appear to us? And so really try and get an experiential feeling of how you feel that the I exists during these times.
So really try and make a vivid sense of I appear, like when you’re really mad or really self conscious. And then think if the I existed the way it appears to me, If there were this very solid eye that seems to set itself up, then I should be able to find it. If it really exists, then the closer I look, the more apparent it should become. And there’s only two possibilities to search for it. One is among its parts.
In other words, within the body and mind. And the other is to look for the eye, the self as totally separate from the body and mind. So that’s the second point, understanding that if it exists, there’s only two possibilities where to find it, in the parts or separate from the parts. Should come to some conclusion that there’s no third possibility where to search for the eye. And the third step is to actually begin that search.
So remember, we’re looking for this very solid inherent eye. This one that seems so strong, like when you’re afraid, that sense of eye. So let’s look within the part. Let’s look within the base. Let’s look within the body and the mind.
So with part of your mind, have that vivid appearance of that solid eye. And with another part of your mind, look inside your body and see if you can find it there. Sometimes the eye appears to be inside of our head. I’m here. But is our head, the eye?
If you look inside your skull, is the brain the self? Can you find anything physical inside there that is you that you feel this is me? So in a similar way, look through all the other parts of your body. Sometimes we feel that I’m inside my chest. I’m in my heart.
And, again, if we look inside there, there’s a heart, there’s lungs, the chest cavity. Are any of those organs me? Can we find anything physical and say, that’s me. That’s who I am. So check within your body.
See if you can find something that’s me inside this body. Something physical that’s me. And come to the conclusion that the body is not me. I am not the body. And then again, still looking for this solid inherent strong feeling of I, the self that appears to be so real.
Look in your mind all the different aspects of consciousness. So your visual consciousness, you, your auditory consciousness, olfactory consciousness, taste consciousness, body consciousness, any of those you? Then we think maybe the mental consciousness is me. The one that’s sleeping, the one that’s dreaming, the one that’s awake. So we’re looking for a solid eye, so we have to find one thing that is it.
We have to corner it, identify it, find this thing that appears so real. So what is it? If it’s our mind, we have to find which part of our mind is me. Am I my anger? Am I my attachment?
Now as we do this, we realize that if we say I am one particular aspect of my mind, then that thing has got to be me, and it’s got to do all the things that I do. It’s the only thing that’s me. So that wouldn’t make very much sense. Because even if we say, my mind is me, then what is the self when we say I’m walking? Is that equivalent to say my mind is walking?
That doesn’t make any sense. So then would we have to have more than oneself? Oneself that’s the body, oneself that’s the mind, but then we would need a different self for each part of the mind, for each part of the body. That doesn’t make any sense either. So exploring every part of your body, every part of your mind, every aspect of your mind, try and find that I, that me that we try and protect and hold on to and gratify, that me that wants to be successful and recognized and well known.
What is it? Who is it? Is it somewhere in the body and mind? So search. You come to a very firm conclusion, but you can’t find that solid eye anywhere in the body and mind.
It’s not there. Completely not there. Then let’s look in the other place. Beyond the other place where we can try and find this independent eye. It’s not one with the body and mind.
So is it totally, completely separate from the body and mind? The self were totally separate from the body and mind, then our body and mind could be here, and I could be across the room. Does that make any sense? Can the eye exist totally separately from the body and mind? So the body and mind are one place doing one thing and the self, the eye, is somewhere else doing something else.
Can you find a self that’s completely independent of the body and mind? And if you can, what are the qualities of that self? What does it do? You say, well, it thinks. Well, no.
That’s not the self because it’s the mind that thinks. So you have to try and find a self that’s completely separate and does something completely unrelated to the body and mind. So look and see if you can find yourself that way. So come to a very firm understanding that such a solid eye doesn’t exist anywhere separate from the body and mind either. And so what we have after searching for this real thing that is me, We’ve searched in the body and mind.
We’ve searched separate from them. There’s no third place to search. So that means that such a solid inherently existent eye is completely nonexistent, doesn’t exist anywhere, can’t find it anywhere. So stay with that nonfinding of such a solid eye, that absence, that emptiness, a nonfinding of what you thought was so solid. The fact that we can’t find an inherently existent I doesn’t mean that there’s no self at all.
Means there’s no inherently existent self, but there is a conventionally existent one. And that one exists by being merely labeled by term and concept, in dependence on the valid base, a collection of body and mind. It’s just merely labeled I. Very fine, very subtle that exists, but it can’t set itself up. Can’t find it when you analyze and search for it.
It’s just an appearance.