Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. A guided visualization opens this 41-minute commentary — students imaginatively inhabit qualities they admire in others and then in themselves — before Ven Jampa Gendun shifts to the session’s central argument: that phenomena do not define themselves. Arriving at the fourth and final rung of a four-school survey of emptiness, he presents the Prāsaṇgika Madhyamaka view that all objects are merely imputed by language and concepts rather than self-defining or intrinsically real. He grounds the abstract claim in concrete examples: the culturally variable beauty of fashion and lip-plates, a cartoon about a “C-grade student” as a foil for what intrinsic existence would mean, and the rope-and-snake analogy revisited. Rorschach inkblots, Jean Piaget, and Einstein each make brief appearances. Best followed by students already working through this ongoing emptiness series.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 02 HoM 1993 10 20.mp3
UUID: 4b73771c-be84-4ba1-adac-55c0ea8a0021
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: The Heart and Mind of Awakening (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1993-10-20
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 41.4 minutes
Words: ~4,419
I think of a female that you admire, that you respect, that you value in some way. And what is it about her? What quality? What characteristic is it that she possesses that you admire and respect so much, that you value so much? And then imagine that you yourself have this same exact quality to the same degree.
And imagine a situation where you express this quality. So we’re going to play a role taking on this quality that you admire in this other person and expressing it as part of yourself in an imaginative situation. And think of a male that you admire and respect. Again, what is it about them? What quality?
What characteristics do you admire? Imagine that you yourself have the same exact quality and express it in an imagined situation. And then think of a significant female in your life. Someone who values you, who admires you, who cares about you. And what is it about you do you think they admire and respect, care for, value about you?
And imagine that that quality which they admire in you is many many times more developed. Completely, fully developed. And imagine a situation where you express this fully developed quality about yourself. Now think of a significant male in your life, someone who who values who value you, who admires you, respects you. What is it that they value in you, that they admire, care for.
Imagine that quality is fully developed many, many times greater than it is at present. And imagine in a situation where you express this fully developed quality. And finally, think of something that you admire, respect about yourself, some quality that you value within yourself. And then imagine that quality is many, many times more developed, completely, fully developed. Express it in an imaginative situation.
And then bring your mind back to the breath. And slowly becoming aware of your body. Gently, in your own good time, become aware of your surroundings. Is that speaker usually that loud? Has it been that loud?
The speaker has usually been that much background. Yeah. Usually that way? Any particular tune? Okay.
So we’re looking we’re looking at the three fundamentals of the path. Determination to awaken, the awakening heart, and the awakening mind. And of these three, we’re discussing the last of of these three. The awakening mind, the the essentially the wisdom understanding emptiness, the ultimate nature of reality. It is the means by which we overcome ignorance, a distorting pattern of thought, in dependence upon which we misconceive the nature of the self, misconceive the nature of the of other, misconceive the nature of phenomena, the world, things about us, Dependence upon that, then we develop attachment and aversion toward these misconceived objects.
We we engage in inappropriate actions. And the consequence of these ways of being is experienced as suffering at one level or another. So, you know, coming to an understanding of emptiness, we are talking we’re discussing in four stages. In the beginning, it’s like rungs of a ladder, working up to the final, most profound thought of the Buddha as to the nature of reality, his ultimate thought, his final thought on describing the way the world ourselves exists. In terms of the Hearer stage, Mind Only stage, Autonomy Middle Way stage, and finally the Consequentialist Middle Way stage.
So these four stages working through. We do we we’ve discussed the the Hearer stage, the Mind Only stage, and the Middle Way or the Autonomy Middle Way stage. And now we’re going to talk about the Consequentialist Middle Way stage, the final final thought of the Buddha on the nature of reality. And throughout this process, there’s been a gradual shift away from an unquestioned acceptance of appearances of of the self and the world about us, and this objective reality. As if, you know, there there there is a sense that there’s an objective reality which lies beneath these appearances.
But moving through these stages, we’ve been moving toward a deepening question of all that appears and a greater and greater acknowledgment of the subjective element in the underlying reality of these appearances. Initially, we only at the Hearer stage, only questioned we accepted everything as fact in terms of the way things external phenomena, the way they appeared, that’s the way they exist. We didn’t bring them into question. The one thing that we did question was the self. It a certain type of self appears to us, an independent, unchanging, unitary, isolated, concrete, solid self appears to us.
It appears very vividly in emotional experiences. That appearance we begin to question. When we analyze and search for that self, it cannot be found. The reason it cannot be found is because it doesn’t exist. Just as in the example of the rope and and depends upon which we see a snake.
You know, due due to poor lighting, it’s becoming dark, and there’s a there’s a there’s a coiled rope in the grass, we see a snake, distorted conception. And we respond with fear, whatnot. But upon examination we see that that appearance is false. There’s nothing which corresponds in reality to that appearance. There’s no snake actually there.
Likewise with the at the Hearer stage, with respect to a certain type of self which appears, an independent, unchanging, unitary self appears. But in fact, there’s nothing which corresponds to it, that we believe that it there does exist such a type of self. So working through that level of ignorance, working on to the mind only school, the Consequentialist, the Autonomy Middle Way school. So, you know, we’re going to in looking at the Prasaṅgika Madhyamaka school, we’re going to Initially, it’s going to be a lot of, what, philosophy and theorizing, abstract thinking. But then we’re going to work with some actual methods to to to to clarify what is actually trying to be gotten at.
Some some techniques we can use to to experience what is seems to be some kind of abstract intellectual theory. You know, we’re trying to you know, it’s it’s as if it’s sometimes I I guess one metaphor, I guess, that I I think of in terms of like a fish living in the water. It’s the medium the water is the medium in which it exists. It’s very doubtful that it’s aware of the water, you know, it’s like it’s so pervasive with its with its experience that it can’t think of it can’t, it has no distinction, there’s no sort of alternative way of making, discerning the water in which it exists. And it can’t think of any other way of any other way of existing than within water, within the medium in which it it is life goes on.
So what we’re talking about is so pervasive to our experience that it’s hard to to discern what is being gotten at. Because we can’t think of any other way that things could be. We’ve never seen, we’ve never experienced, it’s never appeared to our mind before another way of that things could exist than the way that they appear to us every moment of our of our waking and unawakened existence. And it’s we have to begin to it’s and to a large extent, we’ve never even thought about these issues. We’ve never thought about these subjects before.
So it’s a lot of it’s quite new and it’s quite unusual. So it’s a it’s a great deal of working with these ideas and seeing its relevance and then it begin its import. And then maybe develop some kind of feeling for what’s being gotten at. Realism assumes that objects and events in nature define themselves in a way that can be grasped by the human mind. One way, for instance, would be through language and mathematics, the language of mathematics.
Einstein expressed this view in his comment that the most incomprehensible thing about nature is that it’s comprehensible. The centrist view. So centrist means, this author which I’m quoting, centrist is middle way, okay? The middle way view, on the other hand, denies that physical reality defines itself in terms of mathematics or any other human language or concepts. In short, nature does not define itself at all.
So this is this is the this is what we’re going at the level of the Prāsaṇgika Madhyamaka school. This is what we’re trying to get at. This is the final understanding that we’re trying to apprehend, comprehend. That phenomena do not define themselves. This table does not define itself.
There’s there’s no there’s nothing which forces me to conceive of this object as a table from its there’s nothing from the side of the object which makes it what it is. Now this is a it is completely subjective subjectively defined. It is my consciousness, my conceptual thinking which determines that that object is in fact a table. There’s nothing whatsoever from the side of that object which determines fact that it is a table. The table does not define itself.
I define the table. So we’re going to talk a little bit about this and what that might mean. It means it has some immediate relevance and but also far reaching profound relevance. human beings define objects and events of the world that we experience. Those things do not exist intrinsically or absolutely as as we define them or conceive of them.
So intrinsically, intrinsically. So the the we’re to use the many different terms which Buddhism makes use of to get to get at they all are synonyms, you know. They all mean the same thing but they’re they’re different ways of trying to get at what is being intended by these words. Intrinsic. Intrinsic.
Something which is intrinsic isn’t it is completely you know, like we say or we say, he’s he’s intrinsically a good person or something like that. That means that’s something about his nature. By nature, he is a good person. It’s not as if I I’m just conceiving him or thinking about him as a good person, or the circumstances dictate that he is a good person. But it’s like some kind of intrinsic quality.
Maybe I think I’ve shown this cartoon to you before, but I we’re just to help to get a feel. Maybe it’s useful. I’ve shown this cartoon a number of times, but that’s okay. Because I I would like for you to because the words are important, but we they’re only important to the extent that we begin to have a feeling for what they mean. There’s two boys walking home from school, and and one boy just received a results of examination in which he took.
And in the first box of the of the cartoon, the the boy says to the first boy says to the second boy, that new teacher really did a number on me. In the second box he says, I thought I’d get a b on that test and he gave me a c. In the third box it says, how did he know I was a c student? So, you know, what is it? You know, okay.
What is he what is he saying about himself? You know, he tried he was a new teacher. Right? So he tried to pretend. He tried to pull one off on the teacher as if he were really a b person, a b student.
But the teachers saw through that pretense, you know, that that act he was putting on. There was some kind of something kind of oozing out of his skin, which which was obvious to anyone who’s sensitive and aware. And and the teacher caught on to his act. He he was trying to act like a b student, but everyone could see by his very nature. He was intrinsically a c student, you know, from his own side, from his own nature.
That that’s that’s who he really is. Somewhere, something in his genes or something about him has seen us. You know, he goes he he he goes on to get a c grade job and where he marries a c grade wife and has c grade children and teaches them how to be c grade people and, you know, life becomes a self fulfilling, self defeating prophecy, a C-grade prophecy. So that’s what the idea about intrinsic means, it’s not a matter of convention. It’s not like a matter of our cultural it’s culturally defined or socially defined or personally defined, but it’s something inherent, intrinsic by way of nature and the object itself.
You know, like some people you know, like we can begin to understand what the the ramifications, significance of this if we you know, using a simple example of that we have a that beauty is culturally defined. Beautiful things do not define themselves as being beautiful. Right? To get to an idea what what I mean by this, you know, and I’ve used this example again, right, but it doesn’t matter. You know, in some cultures, some I know in in the in the Amazon jungles, there’s some natives who put large plates in their lips.
And this is really aesthetically pleasing, really beautiful in that within that culture. Or in Burma, there’s women put rings and add many, many rings around their neck, and their necks become stretched and very, very long. And it’s you know, the more rings, the more beautiful. So, I mean, to us, that’s to to us, that would probably appear to be repulsive. But we when we see something beautiful, it is as if, you know, there’s something I remember when I was an art student drawing from a model and sometimes, you know, and sometimes the the model’s face, for example, would would appear very beautiful.
And I was trying to I I look at it. Why is it what makes it beautiful? Is it, you know, is it the shape of the nose or the curve of the of the cheekbone, the the chin, you know. And then I I would think, oh, that’s really beautiful. And then I’d see a pimple or something.
And the the beautifulness would go away. But there’s a sense, you know, like you’re walking down the street and there’s a there’s a beautiful dress or a nice suit, you know, and it’s like it’s like it’s like glowing. It’s like it’s radiating out. Come come take me, you know. And it’s this guy this guy trying to hook hook into wow.
You know? And looks like there’s something from this you know, it looks like you know, I was really you know, having lived in India for a number of years, when I came to Australia, I was amazed at the clothing that many of the people were wearing. Ten years previous, you couldn’t have paid them to wear those same clothes. But now they were paying lots and lots of money for those clothes, and they were wearing them. So, you know, the the design designer the the clothing industry spends a lot and a lot of money defining what is beautiful.
And then we feel these clothes, they look beautiful to us and they do, don’t they? The clothes actually look beautiful. We feel good when we put them on. It is if by association we too are beautiful, because we’re wearing beautiful clothes. And it’s not as if that beauty is culturally defined, conventionally defined by commercial advertising, whatever.
It it beauty isn’t we have a sense that it’s inherent in that clothing, that style, that that person, that face. It’s coming from the side of the object, and and quite naturally you want to make that a part of you. And if I can only have that beautiful clothing, then my status is going to be enhanced. I’m going to be somehow a happier person because of it. And we develop attachment.
But we don’t see that stylishness is simply a social construct, that that beauty is simply culturally defined. We see that that beauty the beauty of those clothing are defined by the clothing themselves, that somehow that beauty is inherent in that in that style, that cut of cloth, that that fabric, that design, that there’s something inherently beautiful about it. That’s the way we think if we don’t consider it well. That is something about that that that color, that shape, that design, that fabric that is inherently beautiful and we want that. We don’t see how that in fact that beauty that it is beautiful.
It is beauty. We’re not denying the beauty, but it’s a socially defined beauty, a culturally defined beauty. It’s not inherently beautiful. It’s not self definingly beautiful. Does that make a little bit of sense?
So this is the way that we’re tricked. That we’re tricked. We trick ourselves continually in this fashion. If if we if we could begin to understand how there is beauty in the world, there but we don’t have to be attached to it. Because it’s simply a socially defined beauty, a culturally defined beauty.
There are repulsive things in the world, but we don’t have to have aversion towards them because, again, what is repulsive is simply socially defined, a convention. It is simply a conventionality, nothing more than that. You know, the idea of a conventional reality. human beings define objects and events of the world that we experience. Those objects do not exist intrinsically or absolutely as we define them or conceive of them.
They do not exist intrinsically at all. But this is not to say that they do not exist. The entities that we identify exist in relationship in relation to us. They perform the functions that we attribute to them, but their very existence as we define them is dependent upon our verbal and conceptual designation. Thus the world that we experience is related to human language.
Thus the world that we and the fact that it is humanly comprehensible presents no mystery at all. On this subject, Benjamin Lee Wolf writes, The ideal entirely unfamiliar to the modern world, that nature and language are inwardly akin, was for ages known to various high cultures whose historical continuity on the earth has been enormously longer than those of the Western European culture. So the what we want to get at is the understanding that things do not define themselves. You know, we’ve talked about is accessible initially in terms in thinking about beautiful things, attractive things. But the things themselves, not just the quality, but even the table, whether it’s a beautiful table or an unattractive table.
But even the table itself does not define itself. That it is it is defined by it is a social construct. It is constructed through a process of language and concepts, human thought. Conceptual thinking process thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world quite literally, not metaphorically.
So this is what we’re going to try to be getting at. You know, we I just used at the hearer level, we used the example of the rope and the snake. And the idea of that things are only constructs of language, terms, made use of by concepts. The snake appears to us. Yeah.
There’s there’s actually a striped rope, a coiled striped rope. But due to poor lighting, the conditions, it appears to be a snake. So the important point here in using this example again, this illustration again, is that there is no difference in the way that the snake is projected and the way that the rope is projected. In the case in this case, whether the appearance the the projection, the comprehension, the conception of a snake is invalid. There’s in fact no snake there.
But there is no difference between conceiving of a snake, in this case, and conceiving of a rope. They both come completely from the side of the mind, equally so. One is a correct consciousness, one’s mistaken, isn’t it? The conception of a rope is is correct. Conception of a snake is incorrect.
But just setting that aspect aside, there’s no difference in terms of the way the process perceptual process is operating. The way that the mind is conceiving its object between conception a rope and conception of a snake. No difference whatsoever. So that’s really quite radical in terms of that our world is built up completely in terms of a subjective element from our own side through language, through concepts. There is nothing which defines an object coming from its own side objectively.
In other words, phenomena do not define themselves. We define them through language and concepts. Both in scientific research and in everyday experience, we ascertain objects that are endowed with certain attributes. And it is by means of the defining characteristics of an object that we identify it. From a centrist perspective, that is a middle way perspective.
We assert that entities do not determine their own defining characteristics. That is, they are not self defining. Having recognized a certain object, we say that it has the qualities by which we identify it. So the the final view that we’re that we’re that we are trying to move towards, that we’re trying to understand, is that phenomena are not self defining. They do not intrinsically or inherently exist.
If we state that another way, in a in a more positive fashion, all phenomena are merely imputed by the means of language and concepts. This is what we’re we’re going to try to understand at the level of the Consequentialist Middle Way stage. All phenomena whatsoever, phenomena, glasses, tables, people, cars, the world, universe, are merely imputed. Other words for imputed, like designated, projected, labeled. The very perceptual process itself brings forth objects.
And it is as if there is simply some kind of chaos of colors and shapes and sounds. And the mind is trying its best to to to make sense out of this world. So it it begins to impose certain patterns, to understand, trying trying to to create constructs to know what things are. It uses certain rules. It uses beliefs, ideas, assumptions, premises on what how it’s you know, like, have you ever seen, you know, for example, the Rorschach inkblots?
You know, just the inkblot. Different people see different objects, don’t they? And so the it gives it it is a reflection of some some processes in the mind, some qualities and characteristics of the mind, what they in fact do see. So it is if, you know, there’s nothing you know, if you say, oh, there’s an there’s a there’s a ghost and it’s trying to it’s it’s chasing a, you know, a person and, you know, you see all these weird things in the in the inkblot. There’s not there’s no ghost in there.
You know, inherently, it’s there. There’s there’s no trees, there’s flowers, there’s no in the inkblot. This is the shape. But one can see, one projects, one one can label. One recognizes certain shapes and identifies them as being flowers, as being a house, as being a car, whatever.
This is the same way in which we are creating our reality, the world about us. We are recognizing certain, you know, taking data and creating constructs, recognizes certain objects. Once we recognize objects, then we attribute certain qualities to them, certain characteristics which those particular objects must have. Is this making sense? You didn’t get very far, did you? This is done.
Just a few couple two or three more minutes. According to the child psychologist Jean Piaget, a child first constructs a concept related to the world, then projects it out into the world. The concept is externalized so that it appears to be independent of the subject’s own mental activity. As we can see from our own experience, the phenomena that we perceive in the external world appear to exist independent of our perceptions and conceptions. Here is perhaps the most fundamental reason for believing in an objective universe, independent of consciousness.
That is simply how the world appears. But it appears that way due to the process of reification. So reification is the the mental distortion of what is called ontological absolutism. Ontological ontology I’m sorry. Ontology is the study of the way things exist, their being.
So, if things exist absolutely. By absolutely, we mean not relatively. By absolutely, we mean that they exist independently, that they don’t exist relative to anything other than themselves. So it’s this reification process which we’re involved in, attributes a way of being to everything ourselves, the world about us, attributes a quality of existence which they do not possess, an independent existence, an inherent existence, you know, a intrinsic existence. The beauty that we see in and it’s difficult to you know, people when they when they hear, you know, like Beethoven, Mozart or Chopin or or they see some great work of art.
Somehow it’s a notion that it’s absolutely beautiful. You know, that’s it’s not just simply culturally defined as beautiful. They have that notion. And if it were to be so, then, you know, if we were and if a if an aboriginal were to listen to to Beethoven, they would, oh, that’s very beautiful. But it might just sound like a, you know, like traffic noise to them.
Yeah. So it’s not but we we we lose sight of the fact that it’s simply culturally defined as beautiful. This this so this giving it attributing it to it some independent absolute beauty is we have we have found it, a quality of the beauty of that music, we’re giving that beauty a status of existence which it doesn’t possess. It’s absolutely beautiful rather than relatively beautiful relative to my culture, my time and history. Well, I’ll stop there.
Okay. So hopefully it’ll be interesting. I find it quite interesting. I think and also we can if we did develop some flexibility, you know, like, if we can develop a mindfulness of the the the the the constructive nature of things, the the how things are culturally defined, then we are I think if we can keep that in mind, then we aren’t captivated. We we we can maintain some kind of balance.
Also, in terms of we’re gonna well, anyway.