Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. A frightened child taken room by room — under the bed, into the closet — until she finds no monster and her fear dissolves: this closing image, used by Ven Jampa Gendun in this 46-minute talk, is also his model for the sevenfold reasoning that reveals emptiness. The session builds toward it by first defining Śūnyatā as an absence of inherent existence rather than a blank void, then drawing on Gregory Bateson’s systems epistemology and Thich Nhat Hanh’s sheet-of-paper image to show how phenomena arise through causes and conditions with nothing existing from its own side. Gendun explains how even existence itself is imputed by the perceiving mind, why conventional objects are true only for ignorance, and how this understanding cuts desire at its root. Part of the Three Principal Aspects of the Path series; suited to students already working with Buddhist philosophical analysis.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 11 3 PA 1990 11 16.mp3
UUID: ac7d0bda-8a48-4cc7-b9a6-b07419e21a7b
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Three Principal Aspects of the Path 1988-1990 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1990-11-16
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.6 minutes
Words: ~5,712
The Consequentialist Middle Way stage, you’ve seen deeply into the nature of reality. We’re questioning the the existential status of all things, the way the way in which things exist, their final mode of being. What is their final nature? This final nature of all phenomena, ourselves, all the things about us, whatever, is this term emptiness or in Sanskrit, Śūnyatā. The word Śūnyatā been variously translated as empty, void, nothing, or open.
And the suffix can be translated as. Therefore, the straightforward translation of would be emptiness, voidness, nothingness, or openness. However, one must be always one must as always be very careful when trying to understand a term such as this. The words empty, nothing, and especially void all convey the impression of a blank. Blank.
Empty and void contrast with full. Nothing contrasts with something. Again, we are caught up 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 is meant can be more readily understood if we ask empty of what? The answer is something like empty of concept, of mental fabrication, projection. Śūnyatā then means the quality of being empty of mental fabrication. That is, it means what is free from concepts. Now the the concept that is at the root of all other concepts, the most powerful and central mental imputation we make is the concept of thingness or ininherent existence.
So reality is empty of inherent existence. This is what we’re trying to understand. Reality is empty of independent existence, of natural existence. It’s empty of existing from its own side. All these mean the same thing.
This kid coming at from different points of view. Reality, everything we and all the things about us are empty of inherent existence. That’s the ultimate truth, the ultimate nature of everything. Emptiness is the very heart of Buddhist practice in Tibet. In Tantra, even the visualized gods and goddesses are qualified by emptiness.
Without an understanding of emptiness, the practice of Buddhism, be it sūtra or tantra, cannot be complete. Phenomena are empty of a certain mode of being called inherent existence, objective existence, or natural existence. This inherent existence is not a concept superimposed by philosophical systems but refers to our ordinary sense of the way that things exist, as if they concretely exist in and of themselves, having their own parts. Phenomena are the things which are empty of inherent existence. Inherent existence is that which phenomena are empty of.
Emptiness, or more properly, an emptiness, is a phenomena’s lack of inherent existence. An emptiness is a negative or utter absence of this concrete mode of being with which we are so familiar. So when we say an emptiness, we we do it’s it’s not simply a vacuum. It’s nothing. We’re saying there is another word which hasn’t been mentioned.
It’s useful. It’s an absence. An absence of a fantasized mode of being, a fantasized way of existing, that we instinctively conceive of ourselves, the things about us, to exist very concretely, very solidly, independent of causes and conditions, independent of the parts, independent of the mind conceiving them, imputing them, labeling them. That’s the way things appear to us. And we are seen to that appearance.
We accept that appearance as if in fact this is the way things do exist. So there’s the the point that’s being made is that there is in fact an absence of that way of existing. Though it appears to us that way, it really doesn’t exist that way. This fantasized way of being existing. There is an absence.
There is an emptiness, a lack of that way of being. You know, talking about the you know, although that this inherent existence is not a concept imposed by philosophic systems, many systems of thought do share up shore up do shore up our instinctual conception of inherent existence. You know, as we’ve seen, we’ve gone through the Hearer stage, the mind only stage, and the autonomy middle way stage. All of these stages, is all the stages prior to the present stage, Consequentialist Middle Way stage, they all assert that phenomena inherently exist. They all assert that.
And such as such assertions would foster an acquired as opposed to an innate, an acquired intellectual, artificial conception of inherent existence. So they do reinforce our conception of inherent existence on a on a conceptual artificial intellectual level. Even our western thinking, classical physics, Newtonian descriptions classify an item according to inherent attributes, inherent characteristics. Whereas the word that’s being used now is recursive descriptions define an item in terms of its relationship with others. You know in classical physics has helped to reinforce our conception of reality out there independent of the observer.
The impersonal forces operating on one another, operating independent of the observer of the system, for example. They don’t take into account the interplay between the observer and the observed, for example. But also modern psychotherapy has reinforced the notion of inherent existence. Ignoring the role of language in bringing forth our lived world has serious practical consequences at the level of so called therapy. Although almost all modern therapeutic systems ignore the fundamental role of language in creating the imagery of false conceptions.
Most therapies are in fact means of helping the patient to create a new inner dialogue therefore a new imaginary nature, rather than see through inner dialogue altogether. Thus, the imaginary nature and ego corresponding to it is patched up and made to feel more harmonious. But the fundamental problem, the problem of language based false conceptions is not met. And just the contrary to this, contrary to what I’ve just said up to now far as classical physics in many areas of modern psychotherapy, there are trends for example in contemporary particle physics towards a notion of field theory of a participatory universe in which there is an interplay of the observer and the observed, which bring into existence objects through the way simply through the process of observing objects are brought into existence. Likewise, there are trends in modern therapy towards abandoning the model of the therapist standing outside of the from the client and simply pushing and twisting and pulling the client to get him in the proper shape that he wants him to be in.
You know this is like a Newtonian approach. It’s simply that the therapist is a force acting upon this sentient thing as opposed to a therapeutic field. That that the simply in the the therapeutic dialogue changes both the therapist and the client. That the client’s problems do not exist independently of the therapist and his conceptions about the client. And talking about this this new trend in psychotherapy, one one area in family therapy called constructivism.
And he goes back a lot to Bateson. He was one of the first of the anthropologists in America. He died a number of years ago. But he was one of the I remember I quoted a short little quotation by him at introduction of seeing deeply into the nature of reality that the psychology of misery is the pathology of epistemology. That all our sufferings come about through unhealthy ways of knowing.
For Bateson, the subject of epistemology is epistemology, how we know things, was an intensely moral concern. Epistemology for him meant the rules one uses for making sense out of the world. These rules, not always conscious, determine much of our behavior and our interpretations of the behavior of others. Bateson isolates two particular villains. Epistemologically speaking, one is linear thinking, which appears to assign a cause and often ends up assigning blame.
The other is any form of dualism. In this passage, Bateson is going after one of the most outstanding products of dualism, the idea of the self. To draw a boundary line between a part which does most of the computation for a larger system and the larger system of which it is a part is to create a mythological component commonly called a self. In my epistemology, the concept of self, along with all arbitrary boundaries which delimit systems or parts of systems, is to be regarded as a trait of the local culture, not indeed to be disregarded since such little epistemological monsters are often liable to become foci of pathology. The arbitrary boundaries which were useful in the process of analyzing data become all too easily battle fronts across which we try to kill an enemy or exploit an environment.
So his concern was, he was very involved in systems theory and cybernetics and to that we have eliminated a self, a part of the system of our being, drawn a big thick line around it, and now we have in terms of we have ourselves and and not self. And we have created the confrontation between myself and other, my environment, other people. And that he tried to see that this was a that we cannot talk about individuals separate from their environment. That this is a product of of our chopping up the ecology into bits and thinking those as real divisions. That we are are exist within a few.
Can’t we can’t talk we you know, traditionally, we’ve talked in terms of evolution, talking about the evolution of an individual as individual were something like a hair being drawn out of butter. But the individual is not separate from their environment. That there that there there is interplay, that they’re not two different systems. That is as the environment changes the the the this which we normally call which we describe it to itself is also changing as we change our environment. Is that we are part of a larger field.
Bateson is always at pains to make it clear that he’s he’s talking about a total circuit. Talking about circuits, total circuits. To chop up the ecology is what one does when one takes the parts and pieces of what one is describing and decides that one part controls another or that one part causes another. You know, that we are in control of our environment. We This is a facade ultimately.
Maybe it’s been That humankind is not the center of the universe. Who is too? And nature is something which is to be dominated, to be to gain control, that we exist within a relationship in a field with nature and with others. Dale, applying Bateson’s ideas to family therapy points out the tendencies of many family therapists to negate the epistemological revolution that the family therapy movement represents. Another Batesonian thinker, psychologist Bradford Keeney, proposes an ecosystemic epistemology.
This framework prohibits blaming the patient for his behavior or blaming his symptoms on etiological factors. Instead, Keeney suggests that symptoms must be seen as a metaphoric communication about the ecology of the patient’s relationship systems. Above all, he repeats the characteristic Bateson warning that the therapist must never consider himself as outside agent but rather as a part of the therapeutic system or part of an Ecosystem. This position offers an alternative to the formulation that places therapist versus patient in a power struggle or game that the patient is always trying to win. The moment that the client comes to the therapist the problem and the symptoms are altered and just the therapist what he conceives of his problem alters the symptoms, alters the situation.
The therapist cannot see himself as simply an outside observer observing objects and objective phenomena out there called the patient and his problem. That he is going to play a part in what is the problem. What are and what are the symptoms? Dale raises one problem that the epistemological purity poses for many of us. When we reject dualism, we reject most of the concepts we have raised by concepts that order our thinking, causality, purpose, objectivity, and the like.
In fact, we cannot claim any accuracy at all for our attempts to make statements about the world because we cannot set apart from that which we are describing, the reality out there is unknowable because it changes as we watch and because we are watching changes it. The end point of this thinking is, of course, rather radical. Statements cannot be made about one’s own experience because we are spectators and participants at the same time, and our very grammar violates this unity. Lest we become totally mute, Bateson and those following him state that we may go on committing epistemological errors long as we know we are committing them. Dale states at the company position that as long as we are aware that we are always operating in the context of a self recursive network, it does not matter what epistemologies we use or what theories we adopt.
What matters is our awareness that both we and our chosen theory participate in a self recursive way in the emerging evolving flow of events. Has aptly labeled this awareness wisdom. So Bateson says wisdom is the awareness of how the circuits in a system fit together. The way they’re connected. So you know wisdom which is a which is a pretty good way of looking at wisdom.
The way the way the way the circuits are fitting together. The wisdom realizing emptiness understands that the part that the circuits of causes and conditions, parts and concepts play in world making, in our particular version of reality. It sees the interconnectedness of all things including ourselves. I think many of you know, it sees the circuitry. We tend to see things in isolation.
And as I mentioned this quotation from last week. As physicist David Bohm said, since our thought is pervaded with differences and distinctions, it follows that such a habit leads us to look upon these real divisions so that the world is seen and experience is actually broken up into fragments. The world appears to us to be broken up into fragments. That’s the that’s the way our language is operating. We that our language is the discrete units of images complexes and we have we have a sense that this corresponds to the way things actually are.
That things aren’t broken up as they appear due to the force of our language. But beginning to see the circuitry, the interconnectedness of all phenomena in terms of causes and conditions, in terms of parts, in terms of ourselves bringing them into existence in dependence upon our conceptions, our imputations, our labeling. And we begin to see the interconnected connection of all things, ourselves included. And this was in last newsletter, the quotation from Thich Nhat Hanh. And they’re just bringing this out.
Just as a piece of paper is the fruit of the combination of many elements that can be called non paper elements, an individual is made of non individual elements. If you’re a poet, you will see clearly that there is a cloud floating in the piece of paper. Without a cloud there will be no water. Without water the trees cannot grow. Without trees you cannot make paper.
So cloud is here. Cloud is here. The existence of this page is dependent upon the existence of cloud. So seeing the the circuitry, not overcoming the the, the habitual as seen to the appearance of isolation of non relatedness. Paper and cloud are so close.
Let’s think of other things like sunshine. Sunshine is very important because the forest cannot grow without sunshine and we humans cannot grow without sunshine. So the logger needs sunshine in order to cut down the trees and the trees need sunshine in order to be a tree. Therefore, you can see sunshine in this sheet of paper. And if you can look more deeply with the eyes of a bodhisattva, with the eyes of those who awaken, you see not only the cloud and the sunshine in it, but that everything is here, the wheat that became the bread for the logger to eat, the logger’s father.
Everything is in the sheet of paper. The Avatamsaka Sūtra tells us that you cannot point to one thing that does not have relationship to this sheet of paper. So we say, a sheet of paper is made of non paper elements. A cloud is a non paper element. A forest is a non paper element.
Things are not self powered. They not do not bring themselves into existence. All phenomena are other power. They depend upon something other than themselves for their existence. Sunshine is non paper element.
The paper is made of all other all of the non paper elements to the extent that we if we return the non paper elements to their sources. The cloud is the sky. The sunshine is the sun. The logger to his father. The paper is empty.
Empty of what? Empty of separate self. It’s almost as if the fun the phenomena can cannot bring itself into existence. It’s a dependent arising. It’s almost as if it doesn’t come into existence.
It take take away everything that’s dependent upon, and there’s nothing there. It’s empty of its self existence. It doesn’t define itself. It does it’s can’t bring itself into existence. Empty of separate self.
It has no self. It has no independent self. Self with an inherent self. It appears that way. It appears.
This table, you and me, it appears to be self contained, self powered. It’s not depending upon other factors outside of itself. That’s the way it appeared. That’s not that’s not the way it exists. It’s a false appearance.
It has been made of all non self elements, non paper elements. And if all these non paper elements are taken out, it is truly empty, empty of independent self. Empty in the sense means that the paper is full of everything. The entire cosmos. The presence of this tiny sheet of paper proves the presence of the whole cosmos.
So if this piece of paper doesn’t exist, nothing exists. Let this paper piece of paper exist. Everything must exist. So phenomena do not inherently exist. Even in the existential characteristics, the very existence, like existence is a characteristic of a phenomena.
The existence of this table are not independent and do not adhere in phenomena. The very existence of this table, that attribute, that characteristic of existence, is not does not inhere in the table itself. The very existence of this table is dependent upon other factors than itself. One of those other factors is upon imputation, conception, terms. How is it possible that existence is not in here in objects of perception?
It appears that the very I mean, the very existence of this table is out there. I mean, just the very existence of the table. We’re not talking about its color, its shape, whether it’s a good table, bad table, but just the defective tables in existence. It’s that’s not even its own property. That even that, the most basic property.
You know, I if I was color blind, I would see this table a different color. Or if I were you know, we can we can we can sort of play around with ideas about if we we can have different false perceptions of of its of the size of the table, the color of the table, etcetera. But it seems as if the the very root of the characteristics must must be that it exists from its own side. That that doesn’t depend upon me. Maybe its color does.
Maybe the way its shape does in some way. But just the very fact of its existence seems like it doesn’t depend upon my concept conceiving it as such, upon my perception of it. How is it possible that existence does not inhere any objects of perception? Recall that typically we do not cognize actual objects in and of themselves, but rather cognize conceptions or representations of objects and consciousness. That is a mixture of perception and mental images.
This is what we talked about last week. That immediately upon the second moment of cognition we begin to mix the very perception with the mental image. Mental image is a complex of beliefs, visual images, ideas, all the various associated factors that we have. Complex as our mental image. We begin to understand the object not through the object itself, but by the power of our mental image of it.
As we overlay our conception of the object upon our bare perception of the object, upon the appearance of the object. And then we are understanding not the object directly, barely, but filtered through our our conception of what it is. These images are pervaded by concepts and the ordinary person is not aware of the difference between the bare image and the concepts which pervade it. Without depending upon the defined, one cannot establish a definition. That is to say although it is possible to intellectually consider an object and its characteristics as being two different things, An object and its characteristics, intellectually we can consider them two different things which we’re going to do.
For example, a cart and cart, an object and its characteristics. Characteristics, its axle, its wheels, its frame. We can we can we can conceive of those as being two different things. We can like, we can conceive of, you know, like, leaf on a tree, its color. You know, the the leaf on a tree as the as it turns to autumn, the leaf on a tree turns from from green to red, yellow, brown.
It is this. So we can talk about the color of a leaf that is an attribute and as if it were separate from the leaf. It like the leaf is it is almost as if we could take away the color from the leaf and there’d still be a leaf left on the tree. There’d still be something hanging there. So when we I can’t like when we conceive of things, it’s like we can talk about the shape of the leaf and the color of leaf and the leaf.
It is as if we have a sense that I could take away the color and the shape of the leaf and I’d have something on the end of that branch. Although it is possible to intellectually consider an object and its characteristics as being two different things, in fact, we only cognize them in an interdependent fashion. When we cognize an object, it appears to us that it exists. But actually, existence is a characteristic which defines an object. Just as non existence is a characteristic which defines an object.
Existence or non existence are concepts or characteristics imputed upon bare perception in the perceptual process of forming an object. Now it may seem that this is just an intellectual exercise but even if one accepts that existence is merely designated upon appearing objects, still something does appear in perception. Nāgārjuna does not refute this. Indeed, this is precisely his point and he refers to this mere appearance as the true status of phenomena. The ultimate truth about phenomena is they are mere appearances which are empty of the characteristics we attribute to them.
This was the difference between the distinguishing factor between autonomy middle way stage and the Consequentialist Middle Way stage. That in the autonomy middle way stage that the objects were self defining. That they had characteristics by which we determine, by which we recognize them. Now I use the analogy of a garden with little sticks, seed packets stuck on the end of those sticks. The seeds like the potential of the objects.
And it’s, there’s some information, some basis of the imputation, some defining characteristic which appears to us. And it depends upon that we conceive of the object. The object comes into existence. There is some defining property by which we identify. What the consequence of Consequentialist Middle Way school says there’s no defined property of the object whatsoever.
Upon identifying object we assign characteristics. This is Upon recognizing an object, we then proceed to attribute characteristics to it, not the other way around. And then we recognize the object. But first, we recognize the object and then assign characteristics to it. Then how do we know?
Then how do we call anything anything? That things are determined simply at a popular convention. By the force of popular convention we identify things. We recognize things. We then attribute the characteristics to what we have recognized.
If I recognize a dog then there must be a dog that has certain characteristics which I then attribute to it. There’s nothing about that object which makes it a dog. There’s no defined characteristics from its side. I’m assigning those once I’ve recognized it, and I only recognize it as such out of the force of popular convention. It’s renowned in the world as this object is renowned in the world as being a dog.
That world making is remaking, that we are born into a system of conventions. And it’s a particular version, and we accept this, that version. And within this version, we can talk about truth and falsity within this version. But this is that things are only defined, only determined, only become what they are by force of the conventions of this popular version. Nothing more than that.
There’s nothing inherent about calling this object a dog and this a cat. It is only by the force of popular convention that makes this a dog and this a cat. Then on as a consequence of recognizing this as a dog, we then assign certain characteristics, dog like characteristics to this, dog like characteristics to that cat. The ultimate truth about phenomena is that they are mere appearances, which are empty of the characteristics we attribute to them. While the conventional truth about the phenomenon is that fact of the erroneous appearance to ordinary beings.
Now one of the alternative, you know, conventional truth. The alternative translation of the term is truth for a deceiver or truth for the deceived. The tables, chairs, houses, people are truth for the deceived. The deceived is ignorance. These are only true for ignorance.
And we said what is truth and falsity? Truth is that which exists the way it appears. To ignorance, this table exists the way it appears. It’s true for ignorance. It’s only true for ignorance.
It’s not true for a wisdom consciousness understanding the ultimate nature of reality. It’s false for that consciousness because that consciousness knows that it though it appears to truly exist or inherently exist, in in fact, doesn’t exist that way. It’s false. The only thing which is true for wisdom consciousness is emptiness because emptiness appears the way it exists. That’s the only one thing.
Therefore, it’s called the ultimate truth. True for the ultimate. The ultimate being, the wisdom consciousness, understanding the ultimate nature of reality. Everything else is false, but it’s it’s true for ignorance, for ordinary beings. This question about the existential status of phenomena and their characteristics is relevant because Nāgārjuna is after all teaching within the context of the Buddhist tradition.
His purpose, like all of Buddhist teachers, teachers, is to show a path for liberation for suffering. So, you know, we’re getting at the import to some degree about the significance of understanding emptiness. You know, we try to bring it down to practical level. What difference does it make to me if things are empty? Or in terms of the hearer stage, etcetera, what what difference does it make if there is no unchanging singular independence?
Do I believe that one exists? The twelve limbs of dependent origination formulation shows that the source of suffering is ignorant grasping after phenomena. But what are we grasping after? We grasp after phenomena to satisfy desires and attain happiness or else to avoid suffering. But we do not grasp after phenomena in and of themselves independent of their characteristics.
Indeed, it is the characteristics of phenomena that we presume will satisfy us. It is, for example, the taste of the food and the feeling of a full stomach which is gratifying, not the stuff of food in itself. Why do we grasp after food? Because we attribute characteristics to it that has a delicious flavor. It’s going to bring me a pleasant, comfortable sensation when it fills me up.
We are signing it characteristics and therefore that which has those characteristics we desire. But as Nāgārjuna demonstrates, these characteristics are imputed on phenomena. They do not inhere in the phenomena themselves. We recognize that phenomena and then we attribute certain characteristics to this phenomena. Those characteristics, desirability, deliciousness, etc, do not inhere in any objects themselves.
We are assigning those characteristics to the object and grasping after them, after we’ve assigned them. Yet they are not independent of phenomena for there must be a basis on which the imputation is made. So there is the basis of food and on that basis we assign various characteristics to that particular food. Desirability. It’s it’s deliciousness.
Here, Nāgārjuna shows us that the fundamental distortion in the cognitive process which sets in the samsaric cycle of the twelve limbs in motion. Twelve limbs, dependent origination. About I’m gonna talk about that briefly on Sunday night. And drags beings through the various realms of existence, you know, beginning with the basis of ignorance. We go through this mechanism by which we are forced to return again and again and cycle through these compulsive neurotic patterns being continually reborn with grasping for particular identities.
This phenomenon distortion is the tendency to take an extreme view toward phenomena. That is to overestimate their nature. We overestimate the nature of phenomena. This extreme view or overestimation is that phenomena are independent, self sufficient entities which bear their own characteristics independent of the perceiving subject subjective or external factors. Due to this extreme view, attachment or revulsion for objects is developed and peace is lost.
Once we see that the the the the part in which our own perceiving process is playing in the creation of objects, all desire is finished. It’s cut. And with or without desire, then there’s no attachment. There’s no hatred. The afflictive emotions can no longer arise and the mind remains at peace.
Emptiness is a very simple truth made complicated by the attempt to elucidate it in words and concepts which it can be pointed to only as direct experience. If a child awakens from a nightmare screaming that there was a monster in her room, we can only point around the room to convince her that there is no monster. We cannot point directly to the nonexistence of the monster. We cannot say, oh, look. There’s the nonexistence of the monster.
It’s strange, but we can’t do that. We we can we cannot point to one thing and say, oh, look. This is the nonexistent monster. Don’t be afraid. When the child is finally convinced that there is really no monster, she smiles and shows great relief in like manner.
We cannot point directly to the nonexistence of inherent existence simply because there is no inherent existence to point to. You know, it’s not something it’s not like we can have inherent existence and then put it under the rug and say, ah, there. It’s gone. It doesn’t exist anymore. We cannot point to the nonexistence and noninherent existence.
We can only search for inherent existence until we are convinced that there is none anywhere to be found. This is what you do with the little girl, is afraid of the monster. She has a conception, a false conception, but to her it’s very real, that there’s a monster in her room. And you take her around, you show her under the bed, there’s no monster there. You open the closet, there’s no monster there.
And finally, it dawns on her that she’s she’s looked every place possible where the monster could exist. If it existed, she should have been able to find it. She hasn’t found it. Therefore, it doesn’t exist. And all the fear which developed in dependence upon it, misconception, resolves into emptiness, no monster.
But it has to be there’s no other way. She has to be taken around the room and make this go through this process of searching for monster. Emptiness can be discovered and experienced when experience is analyzed to try to discover objects having inherent existence. Emptiness can be discovered and experienced when the experience is analyzed to try to discover objects that inherent existence. We we’re going to look for inherently existing objects.
But first, we we have to try to recognize what would an inherently existing object look like. And then we try to look for it just like that monster. Now once we identify what the monster looks like, then let’s see if it really exists. Then we begin to search for it. This begins with the recognition that everything one perceives is perceived as if it had herent existence.
Everything that we see, from beginning this time, we have become so habituated to inherent existence, even our sense consciousnesses are affected with the appearance of inherent existence. Even though things appear to our eye consciousness, to our ear consciousness, as if they inherently existed. Everything. That is as if it were a real substantial thing independent of the perceptual process. Having recognized that objects do in fact appear in this way, then according to Hopkins, an attempt is made to try find these objects, which so boldly appear to be self existent.
The mind becomes totally absorbed in trying to find an object among its parts, as a composite of its parts, as something separate from its parts, and so forth. If the search is done with keen interest, the significance of not being able to find the object will be earth shaking. So one of the main techniques employed, to arrive at this unfindability upon analysis is called the sevenfold reasoning.