Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Opening with the image of a liar — someone who says one thing and does another — Ven Jampa Gendun uses that mismatch to introduce the two truths in this 45-minute session. He unpacks emptiness not as nothingness or blankness but as the absence of an inherent, self-defining existence we unconsciously project onto everything, drawing on Niels Bohr’s remark that electrons didn’t exist before they were named to show how concepts constitute reality. He then catalogues conventional truths, giving particular detail to the five aggregates: the subtle clear matter of the five sense powers (eye like a flower bud, nose like two hollow needles), their objects, non-revelatory forms arising from vows, and the aggregates of feeling, discrimination, compositional factors, and consciousness. A closing Q&A addresses whether realizing emptiness equals attaining Buddhahood.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 09 OtE 1991 09 11.mp3
UUID: fe60d4ae-59ab-430a-9a64-1029faa9afa9
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Opening the Eye of New Awareness 1991-1992 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1991-09-11
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.4 minutes
Words: ~4,948
He’s a liar. He’s a hypocrite. He’s false. I mean, he says one thing and he thinks another. Or he says one thing and he does another.
There’s some disagreement in his character, in the way he acts. This is the way we generally use these words false, liar, hypocrite, things like this. And the same here. When we talk of truth, ultimate truth, conventional truth, truth means that something appears and exists the same. The face in the mirror appears to be really a face but it’s not, therefore it’s false, it’s not truth.
The ultimate truth is a truth because the way it appears and the way it exists are in agreement. The way emptiness appears and the way it exists are the same. We’re going have to build up some body of knowledge here. And again, what emptiness is, we’re going go into in detail when we come to training in special wisdom. And here we’re just talking about it roughly in terms of the two truths because emptiness is an ultimate truth.
It is the only ultimate truth. There is no other ultimate truth besides emptiness. Everything else is conventional truth. So we said that the Buddha taught all of the teachings are in terms of these two truths, ultimate truth and conventional truths. So we want to understand what are the various types of ultimate truths.
And the ultimate truths can be divided in various ways. The basic two ways are the selflessness of the person and the selflessness of phenomena. Here in this context, selflessness and emptiness mean the same thing, they’re synonyms. The selflessness of persons, people, the selflessness of objects other than people, emptiness of objects other than people. And from the Opening the Eye of New Awareness, there’s a quotation which says, In order to release transmigrators from the afflictive obstructions and the obstructions to omniscience, this selflessness was described as two types, through a division into phenomena and persons.
Therefore the teacher spoke to disciples frequently of these two selflessnesses extensively in many ways. Having explained sixteen emptinesses in the elaborate way, he again explained four in the brief way. These also are described in the great vehicle. So there are various classifications of ultimate truth. There is a classification into twenty, eighteen, sixteen, four, two.
Here, basically, they’re all emptinesses, just different ways of classifying different types of emptinesses, but they’re all emptinesses. Essentially, ultimate truth is emptiness, selflessness. For now, we can simply say emptiness is things are empty of a fantasized way of existing. Things are empty of a hallucinated way of existing. Things are empty of an imagined way of existing.
In this quotation the author is using the Sanskrit word ‘sinya’. Sinya is the Sanskrit word for emptiness, empty. The word Śūnyatā has been variously translated as empty, void, nothing, or open. And the suffix ta can be translated as ness. Therefore, straightforward translation of Śūnyatā would be emptiness, voidness, nothingness, or openness.
However, one must be always, as always, be very careful when trying to understand a term such as this. The word empty, nothing, and especially void all convey an impression of a blank. Empty and void contrasts with full. Nothing contrasts with something. Again, we are caught in thing thinking.
All these terms convey to us the feeling that there is a blankness where there could have been things, objects, or perceptions. Such a contrast is not the intention of the word Śūnyatā. What is meant can be more readily understood if we ask empty of what? The answer is something like empty of concept, empty of mental fabrication or projection. Śūnyatā then means the quality of being empty of mental fabrication.
That is, it means what is free of concept. Now the concept that is the root of all other concepts, the most powerful and central mental imputation we make is the concept of thingness or inherent existence. So emptiness is an absence. It is a lack. It is not nothingness.
It is a phenomenon. It is an object. Just as we can say, this room is empty of elephants, if you like. We can investigate the room and we come up, Ah, this room is empty of elephants. And that is a knowable phenomenon, this emptiness of something.
We’re talking about know, emptiness is an absence. It’s a lack of something. It’s something which we believe to be there very deeply. It’s the very root of our being. We believe, we conceive of a way of existing, of objects in ourselves which is in fact not there.
Things are empty of that way of existing. We have a fantasy about things in ourselves and we project upon them a way of existing which they do not possess at all, never have, never will. This lack of this fantasized way of existing is what we mean by emptiness. Empty of. This is not a concept which is being superimposed by philosophic systems.
You learn about Buddhism, someone once said that if you don’t study about karma, then it doesn’t work for you. If you don’t believe in it, it doesn’t work for you. And likewise, if you don’t learn about emptiness, then it really doesn’t apply to you. This has nothing to do with whether Buddhism talks about this fantasized way of existing or not. That we instinctively, all ordinary sentient beings, instinctively superimpose, project a way of existing on every phenomena that they come in contact with, which that phenomena doesn’t have.
And this leads to all our various problems. This leads to all our various conflicts and suffering. It is the root of all suffering. So this is not a concept which is being superimposed by a philosophical system, but it refers to our ordinary way of relating to things. That is to say, we have this innate sense that things exist concretely, that they exist in and of themselves, that they are self constituting, that they are self defining.
And this is the most difficult part in coming to an understanding of emptiness. How things appear to us. What does it mean to use various terms to describe this fantasized way of existing. We’re talking about a fantasized way of existing, is a hallucinated way of existing, a way of existing that doesn’t really exist at all, but that we imagine it to exist, that we very strongly believe, feel that it exists. And this way of existing, they use many different terms to try to help us to gain some feeling, to come in contact with what is the object of this hallucination.
For example, terms, this fantasized way of existing, use the terms true existence, objective existence, existing from its own side, inherently existing, self definingly existing, intrinsically existing, naturally existing, objectively existing, existing by way of its own nature. All of these are simply describing the way this hallucination is operating. This hallucination is called misknowledge or ignorance. This is what we’re projecting. We project upon things, this table, myself, this paper, you, a way of existing that has never existed.
We call this way of existing which has never existed objective existence. We call it inherent existence, natural existence, true existence, intrinsic identity, self constituting, existing from its own side, all kinds of just to help us to get a handle on what we’re trying to find, what we’ve been living with all this time and haven’t noticed. There’s many different subtleties and levels of coming to an understanding of what objects we are creating, this world that we are creating about us. It seems as if objects exist out there. People, bells, tables, cut off from my mind as if objects didn’t depend upon my mind.
It appears that objects don’t depend upon causes and conditions, that somehow they are self creating, independently existing. It appears that they’re self defining, that they aren’t dependent upon language or concepts about them. I think it was Niels Bohr, one of the foremost physicists of the twentieth century, said that prior to the first part of the century, electrons didn’t exist. It was only upon that we had been mistaking creation for discovery, that we have created electrons, atoms, neutrons, protons. It is in the process of naming, process of language, process of conception that we bring these objects into existence.
This is very difficult to understand. Is the way in which our reality is based upon concepts, based upon language, based upon naming, based upon all these various objects arise out of causes and conditions. They depend upon their parts. But they don’t appear that way to us. They appear the opposite way.
They appear as if they’re cut off from our mind, cut off from concepts, language, cut off from their causes and conditions, cut off from their parts, except in and of themselves. That’s the way they appear to us. And we say, that’s right. And we grasp to them the way they appear to be the way they exist. And this is the process, is the root of all our problems.
This is what ultimately we have to try to work through by gaining the realization of their emptiness in this way of existing. Then there is emptiness, ultimate truth. This lack of a certain way of existing, that’s ultimate truth. That is the truth which is found upon ultimate analysis. I’m conditioned by language, I’m conditioned by culture.
It is ineffable. It goes beyond language. It is said that the experience is interesting. It’s not like the Buddha or these individuals don’t understand what emptiness is. But once you begin to use language, then you’re talking about something else.
The experience of directly, you know we can have various types of perception. There are two main valid ways of understanding. There is by direct perception, like eye, ear, nose, tongue. I see directly the bell. Or I can know things by inference using reasoning.
I can either know them directly or I can know them using reasoning. We can understand a great deal using reasoning. We can have valid inferential understanding using reasoning. And we can understand emptiness using reasoning. But the direct perception of emptiness, just as the I consciousness sees the bell, when the mental consciousness sees, understands, realizes emptiness, The experience is said to be like pouring water into water.
That the mind which is perceiving the emptiness as the object, these two become indistinguishable. However that might appear, I don’t know. There’s no sense of there’s emptiness and there’s me over here observing emptiness. There’s no duality whatsoever. The mind becomes completely mixed with emptiness.
There’s no word, there’s no language, there’s no concept operating at that time. This is the reality which is unconditioned by language, unconditioned by concepts, by culture. But this reality exists out there waiting, in here waiting to be discovered. That’s ultimate truth. And what is conventional truth?
So ultimate truth was an object which was found by reasoning consciousness analyzing for the ultimate. Conventional truth is an object which is explicitly found by an awareness that is involved with worldly terminology, conventions that is involved in The superficial terms, convention that we make use of in talking about things, houses, tables, people, cars, earth, all of the things about us, everything but emptiness are conventional truths. They’re all conventional truths because they are all objects found by an awareness that is involved with worldly terminologies. This awareness is not analyzing deeply. It’s dealing on the superficial level of the world.
These aren’t ultimate objects like emptiness, but objects on the surface. Every object but emptiness is a conventional truth. This is a conventional truth. This stick, I am a conventional truth. This piece of paper is conventional truth.
These are objects found by this awareness which is dealing with worldly terminologies. So looking at the term for conventional truth, the Sanskrit term is samvrti satya. The word samvrti is generally translated as convention. It means worldly conventions, worldly agreements, what we come to agree upon in the world. This table is a conventional truth.
It is something that we have come to agree upon. But it also means relative, relative truth. It also, and this is important, means concealer, deceiver. So again, means deceiver, concealer and means truth. Conventional truths are truths for a deceiver, are truths for a concealer.
They are not in fact truths. Ignorance, this misknowledge concerning inherent existence, it conceals the reality of selflessness, the reality of the actual nature of the objects about us. Ignorance obstructs, conceals, deceives us with respect to the actual nature of all the various phenomena. Those things which are truths for concealer are truth for ignorance. This stick is a truth for ignorance.
It is not a truth in fact. Why? Because we said if something is truth, the way it appears and the way it exists must be in agreement. In fact, this stick appears to inherently exist, objectively exist, independently exist. It doesn’t appear that it’s dependent upon my mind, my concepts.
It doesn’t appear that way, but it does. Therefore the way it appears and the way it exists are not in agreement. This stick is false, in fact. But it is a truth for a concealer because the ignorance says it really does inherently exist. It really does independently exist.
That’s the way it appears and that’s the way it exists. Ignorance is for ignorance it is true. In fact, it is false. So all of these various objects are truth for a mistaken consciousness. Just like you look in the mirror, I don’t know if this has ever happened to you, eh?
You see a face? Ah, who is that? It appears to be a real face. And for a moment, a mistaken consciousness arises possibly, which makes that really a face. Where’s this guy in my bath?
Wow, ugly. So it’s true for that mistaken consciousness. That’s a real face for a mistaken consciousness, but only for that mistaken consciousness. In fact, it’s not a real face. It’s a false.
It’s not really a face. But for that consciousness at that moment, it’s true. It’s real. So these are real. These are true, but only for ignorance, only for mistaken consciousness.
Everything but emptiness is false, but they’re true for ignorance. They’re true for a concealer. So all conventional objects are truth for concealer. They are truth for a consciousness obscuring reality, ultimate nature, the way things actually exist. They are truths only for mistaken knowledge.
But in fact, they are not true. They’re false. Emptiness exists the way it appears. It is true. It is truth.
It appears the way it appears and the way it exists are in agreement. It is truth. Every other phenomenon is false. The way it appears and the way it exists are not in agreement. So the various varieties of conventional truths.
Conventional truths refer to all the various varieties of phenomena that are not emptiness. And when they’re divided up extensively, they are divided up for examples. And this is the example in which the Dalai Lama gives in Opening the Eye of New Awareness. He divides conventional truths up into the five aggregates, into the twelve sources and eighteen constituents. So these are various, the conventional objects are being divided up in various ways for various purposes, for various reasons of understanding.
But ultimately to help us for them to serve as a pathway leading to ultimate reality. All of the Buddhist teachings are seeking to lead us to ultimate reality, to an understanding of emptiness. So though they appear in very different ways, these are simply different facets, different skillful means to bring us to an understanding of ultimate reality, emptiness, which is the link. If we realize emptiness, as I said, I’ve been talking about becoming well adjusted individuals. There’s many different analogies and metaphors.
It’s like a tree which is growing. We can keep cutting off the limbs. We have a lot of attachment. We cut off a few branches of our attachment. We don’t have quite as much attachment.
We have a lot of hatred. Off a few branches of our hatred, spite, jealousy. But ultimately, you know, this could this could go on. It’s an endless process. Because but what if we cut off at the roots, then we’re going to destroy this whole tree of afflictive emotions.
Ignorance is the root. Ignorance is the linchpin which holds the whole artifice of ego in place. It’s all based upon the factor of misknowledge. If we can develop the wisdom realizing emptiness, then we’re going to cut the root and we’re liberated, we’re free. But in order to come to that understanding, we have to go via understanding conventional truths.
We understand ultimate truth in terms of conventional truths. And conventional truths are divided in various ways. Some of the ways are five aggregates, twelve sources, eighteen constituents. Without employing the conventional, the ultimate is not taught. Without understanding the ultimate reality, nirvana is not attained.
The conventional is inevitable and indispensable for communication. We have to talk about things, we have to use words, we have to use language. The Buddha could just have sat there remaining silent, which he initially did. But once he opened his mouth, what was he to say? He had to use conventional truth.
The ultimate truth is unutterable, ineffable. But he had to say something out of his compassion. So he talked about conventional truth. And these are like arrows pointing to the ultimate truth. The most important communication is teaching.
The most important subject of teaching is ultimate reality. As it is the most important to know it for its knowledge results in the attainment of liberation, nirvana, the highest bliss, which is the best thing that can happen to a sentient being. The relative world is there, but so is its transcendence. And the path of liberation is indeed proclaimed to be viable. So I’m going to go through some of these conventional truths, these categories which the Dalai Lama list.
These are just helping us to get familiar with these various categorizations of conventional truth, of conventional phenomena so that once we begin to understand them, then we can begin to think of them in terms of their emptiness. If we don’t understand what are the five aggregates which constitute our being, a person who we are, then how are we ever going to understand the egolessness of these five aggregates, the selflessness of these five aggregates, the emptiness of these five aggregates if we don’t know what the five aggregates are? So we have to first know what the conventional truth is and then begin to apply an analysis with respect to those phenomena in order to understand their ultimate truth. So going through all of these various categories to give you some familiarity with what these might mean. These are some of the divisions, the ways of organizing conventional truth as a means for getting a handle on ultimate truth.
The first is the categorization of the five aggregates, Five aggregates. In Sanskrit, skandhas, five skandhas, five bundles, five piles, five aggregates. From among the five aggregates, and I’m just quoting from the opening the eye of new awareness, from among the five aggregates, the first, the form aggregate. So there’s the form aggregate. It is composed of the five internal physical sense powers.
What are the five internal physical sense powers? There’s the eye sense power, ear sense power, nose sense power, tongue sense power, and body sense power. There’s five sense powers. And these not these five sense powers are not the organs. It’s not like the eye organ, this fleshy thing.
But the sense powers are a clear subtle matter. Located. They are not the organ nor are they the consciousness. The particles of the sense powers are arranged in specific ways. For example, there is within the eyeball, this fleshy thing.
The sense power is this clear matter which is in the shape of a flower bud. I don’t know whether you believe this or not. In the ear, it’s said to be like the knot of a birch tree. I don’t know what that looks like. Anyway, it’s an ear organ.
The nose, they are said to be the particles which are like two hollow needles which come down to the root of the nose. This is the nose sense power, eye, ear, nose, tongue. In the tongue, are half moons, the size of the tip of hairs coming down the central part of the tongue. Maybe they called them nerve endings. Anyway, it doesn’t matter.
And the body sense power is located within the covering of the skin. So these are the five sense powers. They’re matter, they’re a very subtle type of matter and they’re clear. A sense power is called a sense, it’s an empowering condition. It acts as It creates the possibility for contact with a specific type of object.
It is because we come in contact with the eye sense power with visible forms. The eye sense power empowers the consciousness to come in contact with visible forms. The ear sense power empowers and causes, brings about the potential for the consciousness to come in contact with sounds. So that’s why it’s called a power. It empowers.
It has a specific means. It is the media, the medium between consciousness and these external objects. The media of contact, the place where they can come together. It’s a medium of transmission, of impressions. So there are five sense powers.
There are five sense objects. There visible forms, sounds, odors, tastes, objects of touch. That’s five.. So we’ve got ten. The five sense powers, the five objects of the senses. And then there’s another category which is non revelatory forms.
Non revelatory forms. And you’re probably dying to know what non revelatory forms are. I never thought you would ask. Are forms which arise in the course of taking vows, making promises. They’re actual forms.
When one takes a vow of individual liberation, a form arises in dependence upon the shape of the body as in crouching. When you take some of the vows, you crouch down as you take them. And there’s a form which is generated at the moment of taking the vow. And it depends upon the sounds of speech in declaring that one will turn away from killing, for example. This subtle physical entity is said to arise at the moment of first taking the vow and remains with the person until losing the vow or death.
Similarly, a form arises from non restraint as for instance, in dependence upon a butcher, a butcher’s physical and verbal action in killing an animal and selling their flesh. A middling variety of such is a form that arises from physical or verbal virtue. Forms arising from promises are continuations of virtue or sin and arise from revelatory actions of body or speech, arise from cultivating meditative stabilizations. Here’s the point. Since the motivations of these actions are not knowable by others, they’re called non revelatory forms.
So we do actions of body and speech which are revelatory actions. They can be seen by others. But the motivation which precipitated those actions are not revealed to others. So the forms which are generated due to these actions are called non revelatory forms. Learned something new.
So we have eleven so far. So the form aggregate is made up of these eleven forms, these eleven parts. Five sense powers, five sense objects and it’s one single factor of non-revelatory forms. Then the second aggregate is the aggregate of feelings. There are pleasant, unpleasant and neutral feelings or indifferent feelings, the aggregate of feelings.
The third is the aggregate of discrimination, sometimes called perception. Perceptions or discrimination. This is the two types, conceptual and non conceptual. So this is essentially you’re thinking, oh, is a stick, this is big, this is small, this is black, this is green. This discriminating factor of perception or discrimination is the third aggregate.
The fourth aggregate is the aggregate of compositional factors, sometimes called thought constructions. Essentially, it is all our various emotions, all the various mental factors, faith, love, hate, anger, jealousy, spite these various factors. Plus non associated factors, such as the various karmic seeds implanted within the mind. And the fifth aggregate is the aggregate of consciousness and refers to the six consciousnesses. There’s six consciousnesses: eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, and mental consciousness.
So these are the five aggregates: form aggregate, feeling aggregate, aggregate of perceptions, aggregate of what I call thought constructions, and aggregate of consciousness. This is what constitutes our being. This is important to understand this classification because when we do talk about selflessness, we’re going to have to analyze what are the constituents of our being. And we’re going to analyze those constituents and see whether we can find a self or not to see if we do have a concrete, permanent, solid self or not. And the place we look for that type of self is in our five aggregates.
If it exists at all, it has to exist within the five aggregates. Then the twelve sources. What do you think? I thought I had finished two truths tonight, but they’re gonna finish me. Hope to spend most of the time well, mean, we don’t have to spend when we come to the training in special wisdom, when we talk about emptiness, in fact.
But there’s still some interesting, some juicy things that need to be going over. So I’ll stop there. You have any questions or comments? It’s important that we remain relevant to what’s happening out on the street. But there’s a huge body of knowledge that Buddhism has to offer.
The more that you know, the more relevant these, what seems to be academic or abstract ideas become, and the more impact it has on what’s happening out on the street. Sometimes I hesitate. Some of these things are ideas perhaps. And I think if someone knows what they’re doing, then they can make even a very abstract idea relevant to our everyday life. But I don’t have that ability.
So I sometimes hesitate. Mean, lived in India and in the course of my studies, some of the things I learned were I felt and perhaps still feel that totally irrelevant to my life. So it’s a matter of gaining some insight and seeing how they do, in fact, or if in fact they do at all, have some connection with happiness. Yeah. Is the understanding of emptiness and the attainment of Buddhahood one and the same?
No. I mean, you have some understanding of emptiness right now, don’t you? A little bit. Yeah? Another academic point, perhaps.
Once one enters into the path, are said to be five paths, path of accumulation, preparation, seeing, meditation, and no more learning. And so at the first two of these five paths, one gains what is inferential understanding of emptiness. One understands it by way of reasoning. One gets to the path of seeing. One no longer needs to reason about it.
One directly sees emptiness. Just as my eye consciousness sees the table, I understand emptiness directly without reason, without my ideas about emptiness. I see it directly. So this is the first point. This is when you have direct realization of emptiness, that is third path.
From there on out, it’s simply a matter of again and again gaining that direct insight into emptiness. And this begins to remove more and more layers of ignorance. It’s like washing clothes, something that’s very soiled. Initially, the first washing, you get out the gross dirt. The second washing, you get more and more subtle.
Until finally, passing through the path of meditation, you attain the path of no more learning. And that’s where the most subtle stains of ignorance and misknowledge, along with their predispositions have been removed from their mind. And that’s the attainment of Buddhahood. So one has direct realization of emptiness here, but it’s not powerful enough to remove all the stains, all the layers of ignorance. And so it’s a process of familiarizing the mind again and again with that emptiness until it becomes an integral part.
And it becomes like the scales of a balance As the power of your wisdom of realizing emptiness increases, then the ignorance becomes less and less and less and less until ignorance can no longer return again. It’s completely removed from the mind and it’s impossible that it can ever rise again in the mind and when it becomes a Buddha. Again, Right? Now what? None of the above.
Okay, good. Empty is also empty. Is existence empty of? True existence. So is empty of true existence?
Is empty of inherent existence, objective existence, existing from its own side, independent existence? Non hallucinatory existence is empty of hallucinatory existence. None, Right? Non hallucinatory existence is empty of hallucinatory existence. What are we talking about?
Well No. No. True. No. First off, no.
True nothing truly exists. So that would be a good word to remove from your vocabulary. Nothing truly exists. It exists. That’s no problem.
Is not empty. Existence is empty, true existence. No, true existence doesn’t exist. Everything is empty. Everything.
Nothing ultimately exists. That’s right. But it doesn’t have to be hallucination. There’s a book. There’s a table here.
That table exists in dependence upon our concepts. Then there’s nothing.