Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. An extended guided forgiveness meditation opens this session — distinctive for a series on Madhyamaka philosophy — with Ven Jampa Gendun walking participants through three directions: forgiving themselves for past failings, asking forgiveness of others they have harmed, and releasing resentment toward those who wronged them. In this two-hour talk he then turns to the Prāsaṇgika view that phenomena carry no self-defining nature whatsoever, using a pen dismantled part by part to show that “the pen” cannot be found in any of its components, and a story of a Tibetan geshe left speechless when asked what a table really is. He draws on physicist Niels Bohr and philosopher Nelson Goodman to argue that language and conceptuality construct our shared reality, and closes with audience discussion on emptiness as openness rather than blank negation.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 31 3PA 2008 12 01.mp3
UUID: a44b0a6e-6400-4edc-b50c-eaa403bbd661
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Three Principle Aspects of the Path 2008-2009 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 2008-12-01
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 123.5 minutes
Words: ~10,720
Is that better? Okay, good. Okay, there’s some sheets there. Some half sheets that you like. Can make use of these in the course of our meditation on forgiveness.
It’s just, you know, phrases that we can use as signpost for our minds in the course of working with the development of this attitude of forgiveness. I guess it’s necessary to talk a little bit about forgiveness, what it is and maybe what it isn’t. Forgiveness does not mean we forget. Forgiveness doesn’t mean that it’s okay now. You know, it’s business as usual.
Forgiveness is not a misguided attempt to say, to suppress or ignore the pain that we feel, the hurt that we still feel around what happened. It does try to understand, you know, all the conditions, both far and near, which brought about the difficulties which we’ve come to experience in relationship, maybe to ourselves or with other people, the difficulties and how they arose. And things may still have to be set right. Know, though we might forgive, we can still understand that maybe the two of us shouldn’t be connected in the same ways that we were in the past. Or that maybe it involves saying, Never again am I going to allow this to happen to me again.
So forgiving is not forgetting. It’s not trying to voluntarily develop amnesia. Forgiving is letting go of the hostility, the resentment that we feel, letting go of the grudge, the wish to retaliate. You know, who does that hurt? You know, the Buddha likened this to holding a hot coal in your hand as as a way of getting back at somebody.
Unless you let go of that hot coal, you’re only burning yourself. So, you know, so what we’re trying to do is not put this person out of our heart. We’re trying to lessen the sense of hostility or grudge or anger, the wanting to hurt back. Forgiveness means giving up hope that the past could have been any different than it was. The hope for a better past and moving on.
It means moving on. Yeah? If we were to be free, we have to learn how to forgive. You know, forgiving has many parts. There’s feelings of being misunderstood or feelings of being treated unfairly or that we were used in some way or another.
So, you know, you to find it’s like sometimes this hostility that we feel, this grudge that we feel, it’s like a lump in our heart. And it’s like a mass, a single unit, and we have to begin to develop some inroads into breaking up this solidity of this mass of hostility and resentment that we feel. So we have to search for some point of access, some point of view in which you can begin to sincerely forgive in order to break up and dismantle this rock of grudge, resentment that we feel that’s lodged in our heart, that’s weighing down on our heart, that’s blocking our heart. There’s always some way we can you know, you don’t begin with the most difficult person perhaps or in a difficult manner. Forgiveness, you know, forgiveness can’t be hurried and we have to acknowledge how we actually feel.
Have to it’s part of forgiveness, I think also, and it’s probably a big area that we maybe have to deal with, is forgiving ourselves as well. I think that we’re much harder ourselves than we are aware of. Sometimes we’re harder on ourselves than we would ever be on others. You know, we have to forgive ourselves for the hurt that we’ve caused ourselves. You know, maybe we’ve made some poor choices in the course of our life in one way or another, or maybe we’ve let ourselves down in some way or another, or maybe sometimes feelings for others, we are in fact angry at ourselves.
For maybe we didn’t stand up for ourselves or we didn’t stand up for someone that we love. We let them down. And therefore, this anger toward this other person is masking the anger that we feel toward ourselves. That maybe we simply didn’t have the tools, the skills to be able to handle the situation. We didn’t have the presence of mind to be able to deal with, you know, what happened skillfully.
And we feel bad about ourselves. We’re angry with ourselves. And we have to begin to forgive ourselves. So in all of these cases, you know, whatever we have to forgive, we have to let go and move on. So again, just to emphasize the point, we’re not trying to overlook, we’re not trying to repress, we’re trying to dismantle this feeling of hostility of grudge, which only hurts ourselves.
It’s like twisting a knife in your own heart. The past is as it was. We have to give up the hope that it could have been otherwise. It wasn’t. And we can’t do anything about the past.
But one thing we can do about the past is how it affects our present and therefore our future. So we have to learn how to let go of the hurt, the wish to get back. It only hurts ourselves. It’s time we stopped hurting ourselves. So we’re going to make use of these phrases.
And there are three ways we’re going to look at forgiveness from three different points of view. And in terms of forgiving ourselves for these times, as I mentioned, that we’ve let ourselves down, that we didn’t have the skill to deal with the situation properly, that we didn’t stand up for ourselves or someone that we love or that we didn’t have the presence of mind to whatever. All the ways that we somehow let ourselves down, we feel bad about ourselves We’re angry with ourselves. We have to learn how to forgive ourselves. So we begin with forgiveness for ourselves.
But we also have to forgive others, you know, the harm that we’ve caused others. And then we stop trying to rationalize that what we did was somehow justifiable. Or we try to We somehow tried to think they deserved it or that it was useful. Acknowledging the ways that we have hurt, you know, out of our out of our fear, and that’s why we hurt. Our anger, our confusion, one way or another, and asking forgiveness, if you can do that.
And then the third type of forgiveness is asking is forgiving others for what they’ve done to us. Again, out of fear, out of pain, out of their own confusion, and just letting go. So what I’ve given you in these sheets of paper are just some phrases that you can make use of. But these are just suggestions. And it’s useful even if you don’t feel the feelings behind the forgiveness.
Even to say the words can help invoke the feelings, can lead us to that place where we can let go. You know, I forgive. I forgive myself, or I ask for your forgiveness, or I forgive you. Okay? So we’re going to work through these three different objects of forgiveness.
Forgiving ourselves for the harm harm we’ve caused ourselves. Forgiving asking the forgiveness of others for the harm we’ve caused them. And, you know, actually imagining that if they were to if they were present and could could see your sincerity, if in fact you are sincere, that they would probably forgive you. And then finally forgiving others for the harm that they’ve caused us, whether intentionally or unintentionally. We’re all pretty misguided, aren’t we?
We all live in fear, we all have confusion. We all have to forgive every day of our life. It’s an ongoing process of forgiveness. So we’re to take a comfortable, firm posture. So we begin by relaxing the body.
Starting at the crown of the head, the scalp. Feeling the wrinkles in your forehead and your brow smoothing out. The pressure in and around your eyes diminishing. Muscles of the face softening, relaxing. The jaws relaxed.
Relaxed. And bringing awareness to the back of your neck and perhaps gently turning your head to each side a few times. Just very gently loosening, stretching the muscles of the back of neck. Relaxing the muscles of the throat. Bring your awareness to your upper back and shoulders and perhaps rotating your shoulders a few times.
Lifting them up towards your ears and just allowing it to drop comfortably to the sides. And with that, feeling some kind of burden or weight that we may have unknowingly been carrying around on our backs moving down through your body into the ground. And bring your awareness all the way down to your hands. Your hands are soft and loose. Relax in your lower arms.
And your upper arms. Chest is at ease. Relaxing throughout the heart area, the center of the chest. The lungs. And the central region of the back, Stomach.
And releasing the tension that we oftentimes hold in our stomach muscles, just allowing your belly to go soft. And throughout the abdominal cavity. Keeping your back straight to your trunk erect. Relax your lower back muscles. Your buttocks.
Through the upper legs. Lower legs. And finally, your feet. Just soft, loose. And bring your awareness to your body in general, just roughly scanning through the body, noticing any tightnesses, any tensions which might remain in the body, any areas of discomfort.
Discomfort, and focusing on those particular areas. Breathing down into tightness, breathing out from that tightness, and as you do so, feeling the tightness loosen. Breathing into the tension, and breathing back out from that tension, feeling it diminish. Breathing down all the way into the tightness and the tension, breathing out from the tension, the tightness all the way out through the nose. If there’s an area of discomfort, try to avoid it or struggle against its being there.
Breathing down into the discomfort surrounding it like a mother cradling her child, cradling the discomfort with the breath of kindness. Breath of kindness. Breathing out from that area, opening, softening, accepting. Breathing down into the tightness, the tension, the discomfort, and breathing out from those areas, the body becoming relaxed, at ease, breathing with the body. There is nowhere to go, nothing that needs to be thought of, no one to please.
It’s a chance to give up the struggle just for a few moments and just be nothing more than that. Just be your body. Just stay with your body. The breathing of the body, the sensations of the body. Just be your body.
Nothing more than that. Stay with the body. As simple as that. And then we’ll practice the breath exercise, breathing in normally, breathing out, extending exhalation, completely emptying the lungs. Breathing in comfortably, normally, again extending the exhalation, gently, completely emptying, relax.
And then bring your mind to the breath. The easy, gentle in and out flow of the natural breath. If it’s helpful, you can use the techniques of counting and naming. Bring your mind back to the breath. Bring your mind back.
What are you experiencing now? Now we’re going to meditate on forgiveness, and we’re going to begin with forgiving ourselves. Suggest that you call to mind in perhaps some specific instance when you feel you let yourself down, you’re not so happy with yourself. Maybe even you feel pretty hard on yourself. You made a big mistake and you don’t feel good about yourself.
And it’s necessary that we forgive ourselves. And we can make use of these phrases. You might want to read the entire phrase to yourself and then concentrate just simply, softly, repeating yourself the words, I forgive myself, I forgive myself, and see if they lead to the actual letting go feeling. Or you might read the entire phrase again. Just play with the phrase, gently repeating it to yourself, letting go of the hard feelings that you might be directed toward yourself.
We often are very confused. We live in fear. We make lots of mistakes. We have to be gentle with ourselves and forgive ourselves. If we can’t forgive ourselves, it’s going to be difficult to forgive anyone else.
Beginning with ourselves, remembering some incident. If we feel still bad about ourselves, and making use of this phrase. And we’ll do the second part of forgiveness, which is asking the forgiveness of others for the hurt that we’ve caused them. So again, calling to mind some specific instance where out of confusion or anger, your own fear and pain, you hurt somebody. And within that context of holding that in mind, asking for their forgiveness, you can read the entire phrase.
Forgiveness. You can read the entire phrase. And at the end, concentrate on simply repeating softly to yourself, I ask for your forgiveness. I ask for your forgiveness. And trying to feel as if you were forgiven at the end.
And then finally, the third part. Asking the forgiveness of another whom we’ve harmed. So again, calling, recalling some incident where you’ve harmed another. That someone has harmed you. And with an understanding that people act out of their own fears, out of their own confusion, just as you do.
Recalling that instance and holding that instance in mind and repeating and reading the phrase and emphasizing, just softly repeating to yourself, I forgive you. See if you can just let go of the hot coal. I forgive you. And then bring your mind back to the breath. Get in touch with your body, perhaps the pressure of your buttocks on the cushion, on the chair.
In a slow and relaxed manner, aware of your surrounding. We’re working through the four stages of coming to the final thought of the Buddha on the nature of reality. That all phenomena are merely imputed by conception, by language and conceptuality, by words and thought. That phenomena are empty of inherent existence, intrinsic existence, objective existence, existence from its own side, independent existence, lots of ways of saying the same thing, and trying to get sense and feeling for what that means. So we’re working at the fourth of these four stages, the Prāsaṇgika Madhyamaka school, and trying to understand what it means that all phenomena whatsoever, this table, this building, the mountains, myself, they you know, we’re not talking about whether they exist, but the way they exist.
Ignorance is mistaken with regard to the way things exist. Under that influence, we react with the various afflictive emotions of anger and jealousy and spite and attachment and so forth. Ignorance is at the root of all these afflictive emotions. Once the ignorance is removed from the mind, then the the mind abides in uninterrupted peace. That’s why they call them afflictive emotions because they are a type of mental pattern, complex thought pattern, which afflicts the natural of the mind.
They’re called afflictive emotions. And they’re all mistaken. They’re all wrong consciousnesses. Anger is a wrong consciousness. The way the object appears to anger, it does not exist.
The way the object appears to attachment, it doesn’t exist. They themselves and moreover, they’re all based upon ignorance, which misconceives the way phenomena exist. Once we understand the way things exist and that begins to enter into the perceptual process itself, then these wrong consciousnesses themselves cease and the mind no longer is disturbed. It remains in uninterrupted peace. So let’s try to begin.
So this is quite a journey we’re on here. Get some feeling. By all means, you know, as we go along, if I cause too much confusion, you know, I take responsibility for the messes that I make. But, you know, I try to clear them up as we go along. We can ask some questions or whatever.
But it’s we’re we’re working we’re trying let’s let’s try to let’s examine what it means to what it means to merely be imputed by language and conceptuality. Conception, conceptuality. We have conception or thought consciousness, which is a type of knowing which operates by means of mental images, ideas, models. You know, we we we understand an object or misunderstand the object by way of our idea about it. We we don’t eye consciousness knows the object directly. Conceptual consciousness knows the object by way of its idea about the object, by way of our mental image about the object, a model that we’ve constructed which we use to understand the object.
We see the object filtered through our ideas about it. Okay. So that’s what we mean by conceptuality. What what does conceptuality use? It uses ideas and models.
It uses language, symbols. So what we’re trying to get a sense of is the part our language and conceptuality is playing in bringing about our lived experience. What we come to know as the world about us. Our particular world version is very is dependent upon language and thought. What is the role that language and thought is playing in bringing about our lived experience, the way things what things are and the way they appear to exist.
The way they appear to exist for us right now, due to the force of ignorance, is that they appear cut off and at a distance. They appear independent of the perceptual process, independent of our own minds. Whatever qualities that we assign to them that we see, those qualities appear to adhere in the nature of the object itself. It might be an attractive quality, it might be a repulsive quality, but it seems to be in the nature of the object itself. So that quality being conceived of being in the nature of the quality of itself, we naturally react by trying to push away the object if is seen as having a repulsive nature, or we draw toward us if it seems to have attractive nature.
So our mind is, due to the way the objects appear to us, having some kind of intrinsic nature of repulsivity or attractiveness. It is naturally prone to the movements of attraction and aversion. The mind has already lost its peace. It no longer abides in stillness. It’s always involved in some reactive element in the way it’s relating with the world about it.
What part does our own does language and conceptual ity, our own thinking about the object play in this appearance? We’re saying that all phenomena are merely imputed by conception. And it’s difficult and this is counterintuitive. So it’s breaking down. Yeah.
Maybe we’ve never even thought about it, but when we it appears that things are simply out there. Right? I’m just a mirror. My mind is just a mirror. It’s passive.
It simply is reflecting what is preexistent out there. We’re we’re saying that’s not the case. That in fact the mind is plays a predominant role in bringing about what appears to be out there. Mind is a participatory universe. The mind is bringing into existence the very things that appear to it.
It’s that things don’t exist, but the way they exist is misleading to ourselves due to the force of ignorance. Okay. Let’s look at what we mean by you know, at the autonomy in middle way school, we’re were working through four stages, right? The third stage that we just looked at was called the Autonomy Middle Way school. Okay?
There we said that they said that we identify objects through the force of the object’s own defining characteristic. Water has the defining nature of being wet and fluid. By the force of that appearing to non defective awareness, a non mistaken awareness, we certify, Ah, there is water. So the water actually defines itself. The only part that we play, that our minds play in that process, is certifying it’s there.
We give it the stamp of approval, it exists. But it defines itself, we don’t define it. Phenomena are self defining. Okay? But at the consequence school, which is the final thought of the Buddha on the nature of reality, what we’re trying to get at is that objects do not define themselves.
That phenomena are not self defining. We define them. Our minds define them. They do not define themselves. Having recognized a certain object, we go on to say that it has the characteristics by means of which we identified it.
And this is what we’re trying to get what it means when we say that things are merely imputed. In other words, we’re imputed or designated or or labeled by conceptuality. Things were merely labeling flower, book. It’s not to say the book doesn’t exist. It does.
Because we can’t deny its existence. I can read the pages. We can see the book. But how does that book come into existence? It’s dependent upon language and conceptuality.
Ignorance holds that it doesn’t exist that way. When the great let me read a quote. So we’re going to work with this. We’re going to play with some examples, okay? When the great Tantric master, Sengzang Drugpa, was asked by the foremost Jangkya Rolpai Dorje, what is the difference of view between the Prāsaṇgika and the Svatāntrika?
Okay, these are the technical terms, right? Svatāntrika is the school we just looked at, at the third stage, which we called the Autonomy Middle Way school. In Sanskrit, it’s called Svatāntrika. The school we’re looking at now, which we’re calling the Consequentialist Middle Way School, is called Prāsaṇgika. Okay?
So these are two famous Tibetan masters. And he asked them, what’s the difference between the view of this third stage, the Svatāntrika, and his views of the fourth stage? And he pointed to a pillar. He could have as well pointed to a pot or whatever, a flower in his room and said, What is the difference in the way they’re viewing this flower, this pillar? He point to a pillar.
In the Svatāntrika system, this wooden thing standing alone is the pillar. So that thing out there is the pillar. This thing here sitting on the table is a flower. In the Prāsaṇgika system, and this is the system we’re presently studying, we’re looking at, that is the base I better read what it says. This is the basis of designation of the pillar.
This is not a flower. This is the basis of labeling a flower. This four corner square thing, wooden thing with four legs, is not a table. It is the basis for giving the name table, for labeling table, for designating table. Designating table.
Okay? This is not a table. As I said, it’s counterintuitive, isn’t it? It may sound absurd, but we’ll check it out some more. The great Geshe Rigdzin met another teacher by the name of Wangchen, who said to the Geshe, Which of the five books are you versed in?
In the Tibetan monastic educational system, there are five major areas that they study, five major texts, like Abhidharma, psychology and cosmology and psychology and There’s five major works. One of them is called Mādhyamika. Mādhyamika is the middle way school, which describes the ultimate nature of reality. The Geshe said, I have studied Mādhyamika most. And the person said, Then what is this in the Prāsaṇgika system?
And pointed his finger at the table in front of him. The Geshe said so a Geshe is someone who has like a doctorate of divinity in his studies, presented by the Tibetan government, it’s a Geshe he pointed to this and said, What is this in the Prāsaṇgika system? This is a table. And Wangchen said, it follows that it is not a table because it is the it is the basis of designation of the table, to which Rigdzin was left with no reply. These two stories definitely point to a critical issue concerning the view of the Prāsaṇgika and Svatāntrika.
Thus, one should know that the conception that this square piece of wood which stands in front of a table is the conception of true existence. So the Svatāntrika system, this Autonomy Middle Way school, I realize this is a bunch of terms here, so I won’t get too hum up in these different names. Third stage, the Prāsaṇgika Madhyamaka school, they point to this four corner wooden thing with a table, with legs, and say, This is a table. It’s in the nature of the table, and by its appearing to my unmistaken awareness, I certify, Ah, yeah, there’s a table. And way it exists.
The thing defines itself. What it is exists from its own side. The object determines what it is. I’m just certifying its existence. The intrinsic nature of a four cornered wooden thing with with legs is table.
That’s in the the intrinsic nature of that which is wet and fluid is water. That’s its intrinsic nature from its own side. You know, I’m gonna okay. It’s it’s in the very nature of the object itself. Yeah.
It it defines what it is. It just like, you know, if we if we if we if we if we take something this is very objective. If we take something more a little more less objective and more what we call subjective, it becomes a little more apparent in what we’re getting at here. Like beauty. Beauty.
Beauty exists, right? A table exists. Beauty exists. We’re talking about the way that table exists. We’re also talking about the way beauty exists.
We say that the table that the beauty is self defining. If the table is self defining, you know, exists from the side of the object, in the very nature of the object itself, then beauty does too, doesn’t it? Beauty is in the nature of the very object itself. It’s not a product of my thinking of itself. If it’s a product of my thinking of itself, then it’s not in the very nature of the object itself.
It’s coming from the side of the object. If beauty is in the eyes of the beholder, then how can it be in the very nature of the object? Which is it? You know, we have this we have this saying in the rest, don’t we? Beauty is in the eyes of beholder.
In that statement, there’s some acknowledgment of the part that our own conceptualization, our thinking of it so, plays in seeing things as beautiful in the very way beauty exists. But here, if being a table is in the very nature of the object itself, being beautiful must be in the very nature of the object itself. My mind’s not playing any role in bringing forth that beauty. My mind is just a mirror. That beauty exists and all I do is reflect that.
That’s all. That’s at the Svatāntrika or the Autonomy Middle Way School. That’s what I said at the Middle Way School. But here at this school, the Prāsaṇgika or Consequentialist Middle Way School holds that this four cornered wooden thing with four legs. If you take this to be a table, that is a conception of true existence.
That’s ignorance. That is a conception of intrinsic existence, of inherent existence, of objective existence, of self defining existence. Is ignorance, ignorance which conceives of intrinsic existence, of inherent existence. If you hold that this four corner square object with four legs is a table, that is ignorance. There is no what they’re saying that things do not define themselves.
There is no there is nothing from the side of the object which determines its nature, determines what the object is. The characteristic of a phenomena do not inhere in the phenomena phenomena itself, but are merely being imputed, designated. Phenomena exist, tables exist, flowers exist, but they’re merely being imputed. They do not inherently exist. So the Prāsaṇgika Madhyamaka school asserts that all phenomena are merely designated or imputed, labeled, just using different terms.
Labeled, imputed, designated. By what means are they being labeled? By means of language, by means means of thought, terms and conceptuality. That’s what’s doing the labeling. Language, you know, conceptuality makes use of language, terms, symbols.
Their existence, the existence of this table is dependent upon language, is dependent upon thought. Without language and thought, a table would not exist. They add but they add at this level, they say phenomena are merely imputed by language and conceptuality. The word merely, merely means that the object does not inherently exist. The flower does not inherently exist.
There is nothing from the side of the object which makes it what it is, which determines, you know, nothing whatsoever intrinsically exists or inherently exists. So let’s take a look. Let’s just take a little example. I think we’ve used this example before. A baby is born.
There’s a mind and body. The parents say, Well, what should we call the baby? Let’s call it John. Okay? So they think they use the term, they label the baby John, and subsequently they think of this baby as being John.
So John is what’s called a dependent arising. What does John’s existence depend upon? It depends upon causes and condition, you know, the sperm and ovum of the parents and so forth, and nutrition that was supplied by in the womb and so forth, by the mother and so forth. So those are the causes and conditions necessary. It depends upon its parts, for example, the mind and body.
And dependent upon language and conceptuality. It’s dependent upon the term John. It’s dependent upon being thought of as John. Now, John is not a name. John is a human being.
Names are sounds. John John is not a sound. He is a human being. Yeah? But his existence is dependent upon John’s existence is dependent on language and thought.
Without those, John would not exist. John is imputed, is labeled to the mind and body of the baby. And simultaneously, that baby’s mind becomes John’s mind. That baby’s body becomes John’s body. There was nothing about the object which determined that we had to call it John.
It had no Johnness quality about it. If we’re going to name it correctly, we have to call it John. We have no choice. It had no self defining characteristic which determined it’s to be called John. Likewise, if we take a little more subjective subject, work with that, there’s nothing about a friend, you know, this is a friend.
There’s nothing about that object from its own side which defines it as a friend. It’s not intrinsically a friend. It’s not inherently a friend. On the basis of some characteristic, we name friend, and friend comes into existence. On the basis of other characteristics, we name enemy comes into existence.
And dependence upon some characteristics we name repulsive, that repulsive phenomena comes into existence and we react with aversion. And it depends upon other characteristics, we name attractive. And we react accordingly with attachment. So the friend, enemy, and stranger, they don’t exist from their own side. Simply on the basis of some characteristic, we label friend.
On the basis of some characteristic, a four cornered piece of wood with four legs, we label table. In dependence upon that, table comes into existence. In dependence upon some characteristic, we label friend. Friend comes into existence. There’s no difference in the way that the object depends upon conceptuality or conceiving of it and thinking of it as such.
But that’s not the way that we relate to the object due to the force of ignorance. Why? Because, you know, I keep coming back to this. When you see something beautiful, you think of it as beautiful. You see the beauty as coming from the very side of the object itself.
What do we want from okay. Let’s take sexual attachment. If I can use the example of a woman’s body. Yeah. The weak men’s body beater women’s body.
Just it’s not the body we want per se. It’s the bliss that the body offers to us, that potential. Okay. So we see that bliss abiding within the actual nature of the object itself. It has a blissful nature.
It has the potency to bring its bliss. If I can only come and contact it in a very specific way, I can experience its bliss. We see that its bliss giving quality is in the very nature of the object. It’s not as if it depends upon our mind thinking of it as such, having developed the conception that this is able to bring me bliss, that I’ve been trained by my my culture to think of it in this way, that this is beauty and this is bliss giving. It appears in the very nature of the object.
Therefore, if I can only maintain that contact, then I can experience that bliss. And moreover, it seems as if I can experience that bliss always, as long as I keep it mine. That seems to be the nature of the object itself. What would happen if we didn’t see the object that way? We began to see that beauty, the potential to bring happiness and so forth, was merely product of our culture, the way I’ve been culturated, the way that my mind’s been conditioned, the way that I simply see it, the way that we label it.
We label that as beautiful, we label that as ugly. Not that beauty beauty and ugly don’t exist. Beauty and ugly do exist. But we superimpose a level of existence upon them which they don’t possess. Know, the beauty is simply a social construct.
It is a conventionality. It is a cultural agreement that we’ve come to. This is beautiful, this is ugly. This is what you put on the kitchen table when you eat. This is what you put in the toilet.
And we’ve learned that. It’s not in the nature of the object itself. So we can partake of beauty, enjoy the object, but we don’t exaggerate a level of its ability to bring its bliss. We don’t go on to develop attachment and try to struggle to hold on to it. Recall physicist John Brimon’s speculation that nuclei and protons did not exist prior to the twentieth century since no one before nineteen hundred ever saw one.
Did protons exist before the nineteenth century? Before they you know, no one had ever I don’t know when they thought of protons. Let’s just let’s just say they thought about them in nineteen hundred. Okay? Did did they did they exist before the name proton?
I guess. Yeah. What existed? This phenomenon that didn’t have a name. But Was it a proton?
What’s the basis for a proton? For the label. It was the basis for the label, proton. In order to be the basis of a label proton, doesn’t proton have to exist? Anyway, departure from both scientific realism and instrumentalism.
He seems to suggest that atomic nuclei do not exist independently in the objective world, but neither are they purely conceptual constructs having no physical reality. Rather he implies that they are brought into existence by our conception of them. Note that the word, and this is interesting in English language, note that the term conception has been used in both senses of origination and of cognition. The word conception means one use of the word conception is to bring into existence, to conceive. Conceive something is to bring something into existence.
Conception also has this idea of thought. Our thoughts bring about existence. Physicist makes a similar point when he writes, Our existence contributes to causing particles to emerge from a reality which is an indivisible whole in a phenomenal reality extended in space and time. But, okay, so we’re working with this idea that phenomena do not determine what they are from their own side. They have no objective existence.
That they’re dependent upon the labeling process, being thought of as such. So the question begins to rise: If nothing objectively exists and an object what it is merely to its being called that, then we can call anything. We can think anything exists and that makes it so. You know, if we think hard enough, we can create pink elephants in this room. Why not?
Bohr, this is Niels Bohr, a physicist in the early part of the twentieth century. Bohr spoke a great deal about the language community in which physics exists and which physicists communicate and was very much aware of the degree to which our language creates our reality. According to Peterson, Bohr’s student and longtime collaborator, Bohr would say, What is it that we human beings ultimately depend on? We depend upon our words. We are suspended in language.
Peterson continues, When one said to him that it cannot be language which is fundamental, but it must be reality, which, so to speak, lies beneath language and in which language is a picture, he would reply, We are suspended in language in such a way that we cannot say what is up and what is down. The word reality is also a word, a word which we must learn to use correctly. Our world, our reality is one which has been communicated to us. You know, we learned this world at the feet of our mother at some time or other. This is a cat and this is a building.
This is your nose. And we began to bring this undifferentiated wholeness into distinct realities, the language, conceiving them as such. You know, the objects which make up our world and with all of their attributes are only imputed things determined by the force of popular convention. This is only a flower due to the force of popular convention. There’s nothing about it which makes it a flower from its own side.
There’s nothing about beauty which makes it beautiful from its own side. We know that, I mean, different cultures, same object can be repulsive in one culture, it can be attractive in another culture, the same object. If it was intrinsically what it was, if it was intrinsically beautiful, then everyone who had a valid consciousness should be able to think, Oh yeah, that’s beautiful. It’s obvious. But you share the same object.
You know, your friend can be my enemy. My enemy can be your friend. If by their very nature they were an enemy, then any valid consciousness would conceive of them as being an enemy. But we know that’s not the case. It is the context this world version which determines what we call truth and falsity.
You know, there is no truth or falseness with respect to whether something does or does not exist standing apart from the frame of reference, standing apart from our linguistic community, these social conventions. It’s all a social construct. There are criteria for world making which we learn unconsciously, we come to know. We cannot deviate from that. Otherwise they put us away.
We are being coerced into the way that we have come to know the world and we adhere to that. There is no truthness or falsity corresponding to some reality which is independent of our thinking about it. In other words, there’s no neutral, objectively existent, self defining world out there standing apart from our own minds, own language, our own culture, the way we come to think about the world. Is a Harvard philosopher, Nelson Goodman, has developed a view of world making characteristics of words and symbols. He argues that all of the various worlds of scientists, artists, and ordinary men and women are but versions that can be judged right or wrong in terms of various internal characteristics or by comparison of versions with each other.
But they cannot be judged true by testing against any foundational real world because no such there is no such real world beyond our versions. There’s no underlying reality behind the mere appearances. He summarizes his view thus: Talk of unconstructed content or an unconceptualized given or a substratum without properties is self defeating. Imposes structure, conceptualizes, ascribes properties. Goodman continues, The many stuff, you know, where does this world come from?
If it’s simply a social construct, if it’s simply a product of language and conceptuality. How did how did it come about? Goodman continues, The many stuffs that worlds are made of are made along with the worlds. But made from what? Not from nothing after all, but from other worlds.
World making as we know it always starts from worlds already on hand. The making is a remaking. Anthropology and developmental psychology may study social and individual beginning, histories of such world making, that the search for a universal and necessary beginning is best left to theology. That we the world is what it is because we are what we are. Know, the Buddha said in the Dhammapada, the sayings of the Buddha, We are what we think.
All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts we make the world. Our world, it is our world because it is a mutual creation. This world that we’ve come to know arose from is undergoing continual recreation. You know, where did it come from?
It came from a previous world version. We’re being educated into a particular world version, what we call reality. And we pass this on. It’s being transmitted to us. This world is communicated that this is a table, this is a chair, this is a building, this is beautiful, this is ugly.
This is being transmitted and communicated to us by previous inhabitants of the world, social construct, the language community that we live in. The world and all the things, all the many things within it do not define themselves. They are conventionalities. They are agreements within a linguistic community. They are all empty of self nature.
We define them, and more moreover, they are open to collective redefinition. You know, we can we can we if the mind is awakened to this, then there is fundamental transformation at the deepest level of our being. There’s a spontaneous joy which arises from not being under the control of the tyranny of views. The tyranny of views. And we can involve ourselves in compassionate therapeutic therapeutic world making.
We can create a therapeutic world to bring about healing. So know, if things were inherently existent, if they were self defining existence, they would be fixed. They would be static. When we talk about emptiness, know, emptiness means a lack of, an absence, an absence of a fantasized way of existing. And these fantasized ways of existing are the many ways of existing that we just mentioned: objective existence, inherent existence, intrinsic existence.
This flower does not exist, inherently exist. The conception which holds that it inherently exists is holding to a fantasized way of existing and a hallucination. That’s ignorance. Phenomena are empty of that way existing. What would happen if this were inherently existent?
It would be fixed. It would be unchanging. It would have to be always that way because that’s its very nature. It’s intrinsic to the object itself. As long as it was that object, it would have to be that.
It would be immutable. The fact that things don’t inherently exist means that they’re open ended, they’re changeable. We can redefine them. The fact that our minds are not inherently existent means that our minds are transformable. Otherwise they’d be fixed in whatever nature they presently possess.
Themselves. So this word emptiness in Sanskrit is Śūnyatā. It’s the ultimate way things exist. Let’s talk about this four cornered square. That’s not square, rectangle with four legs.
This this thing. It appears to be a table, doesn’t it? I mean, that’s it. Yeah. Do people agree with that?
I mean, when somebody points to you, you say, What is this? What is this, anybody? It’s a table. That’s a table. So what is at the end of my finger?
Way I’m pointing. The table at the end of my finger? Some wood. Some Is it is okay. Is that the table?
That’s a pot. Let’s let’s take a do you think I have a pen that I can take apart? Pen? Pen. Is that can that be taken apart?
For me. Anybody that have a pen I can you don’t have to throw it. That’s a good pen. Has the very nature of being a good pen. So we say that’s a pin, right?
But then, you know, there’s a pin. But then if we say, Well, what’s at the end of my finger? What am I Is there a pin out there? And it appears to be existing from its own side. So if we were to perform an analysis of surgery, we say, Was that the pen?
Is that a pen? Is that a pen? I’m not going go any further with this. Is that plastic barrel? Is that a pen?
Plastic barrel? Is that a pen? Is it I tore off I took off the nib. Is that nib the pen? So okay then.
Okay. Put it back together. Oh, is is is mirror is the mirror collection of the parts? Is that a pen? So none of the parts of the pin, and the mere collection of the parts is not the pin.
But what happens when I put these parts together in a very specific manner? As if by magic, a pin appears. And so the the pin didn’t the pin wasn’t there before, was it? It wasn’t any of the parts? None of the parts of the pin?
The mere collection of the pen is not the pen. But now a pen appears to me. How does what what does that say about the object? What does that say about come on, here guys, help me out here. Doesn’t exist in the way that we think about it.
How do you think about it? Collection of parts. Pin is not the collection, a mere collection of its parts, is it? And happens when put these parts together in a specific manner? What happens?
In our mind, it becomes one thing that clicks a box. Yeah. We’re visually stimulated. There’s an object out there, and we associate it, and the mind thinks pin, and it projects that out there. Then is as if we didn’t project it out there.
It now appears to exist from its own side. So something stimulates it. There’s nothing about it which makes it we’ve learned something stimulates the thought pin. Just the shape. Sometimes you can see somebody’s crawling in your window and you just see a few fingers.
You say, oh, you just see a finger, say, oh, there’s a man coming in through the window. Just that little in dependence upon that little part there, it stimulates the thought man. Yeah. It’s something stimulates the mind. The mind reacts by imputing, labeling, designating designating pen.
And as mentioned, in Piaget’s According to this child psychologist Jean Piaget, a child first constructs a concept related to the world then projects it out onto 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, phenomena that we perceive in the external world appear to exist independently of our perceptions and conceptions. So, you know, the child learns, you know, this is a pin. So, you know, later on something stimulates that thought pen with regard to this particular object.
He labels it, projects the pin, but then it is as if it is no longer a projection. As if the pin existed it was never projected. It existed as if it were a pin in its own right, existing from its own side. There’s nothing none of the it doesn’t determine what it is. There’s we’ve been taught that this is called a pin.
A pin performs such and such a function. Recalling a pin, it must perform that function. Because that’s what pins do. Pins perform a specific function. There’s nothing from from its own side which makes it that.
It stimulates our mind with regard to it to think pin. This stimulates our mind to think enemy. This stimulates our mind to think friend. This stimulates our mind to think beauty. This stimulates our mind to think ugliness.
We then we then project that outside, externalize it, and as if it’s in the very nature of the object itself. And we react with attachment and aversion quite naturally. Things are empty of that way of existing. Existing. This didn’t define itself.
Beauty does not define itself. Ugliness does not define itself. The table doesn’t define itself. But what’s interesting, if we were to go if we were to carry this further and we say this four corner rectangle with four legs is not the table. It is the basis of designated table.
This is these parts are the basis of designated pin. This four corner rectangle with four legs is the basis for designated table. The okay. Let go a bit further. The four cornered rectangle with four legs is not the four cornered rectangle with four legs.
It is the It is not itself. That which is in front of me is the basis for designating the four cornered rectangle with four legs. That thing which is in front of me is what I’m designating as four cornered rectangle with four legs. Well, what about the thing in front of me? The thing in front of me is not the thing in front of me.
It’s the basis for it. What is the basis for the thing in front of me? Gets gets very mysterious. Things still appear even though when we search for them we can’t find them. Things appear to exist out there, solid, concrete, substantial.
When we for them, we can’t find them. But nonetheless, they appear. And they perform the various functions that we designate to them. Tables hold up glasses of water and so forth. That’s what tables do.
But the table doesn’t exist independent of my mind. It appears, able form of function, but it’s dependent upon my mind. Its existence is dependent upon my mind. Things appear, but they do not ultimately exist. They only conventionally exist.
Things are empty of inherent existence or self defining existence. This word empty, I don’t know. Maybe want a question? Want to talk about this before we go any questions or comments? Is it the same as impermanence?
I mean you can take the four things apart because it’s not permanent. So that is a characteristic of the table, yeah. But its final, nature is its emptiness. When we analyze a phenomenon, what is and we come to a final way that exists. It’s the deepest way.
You know, we can we can we can analyze objects from many different points of view according and we will find what it is that we want in accordance with what we’re looking for. You know, if you want, you know, you might analyze this in terms terms of the species of wood it’s made from, the way it was constructed, whether how old it is, antique or not. You might analyze it from the point of view of it’s made up of atoms and molecules and so forth. Here we’re analyzing not how does that what is the way that table exists? What if we analyze, we come to understand that it doesn’t exist from its own side.
It’s dependent upon language and conceptuality. Conceptuality. It’s empty of existing from its own side. This word emptiness means absence, doesn’t it? The word Śūnyatā has been variously translated as empty, void, nothing or open.
And the suffix ta means void, empty and so forth. Ta means is translated as ness. Therefore the straightforward of Śūnyatā’s would be emptiness, voidness, nothingness or openness. However, one must always be careful, very careful when trying to understand a term such as this. The word empty and nothing and especially void all convey the impression of blank.
Empty and void contrast 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 or objects or perceptions. Such a human being 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, of mental fabrication or projection. Shinyata 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.
The world is what is free of the conceptual overlays that we’re continually projecting upon it. And what is the most fundamental of which, of these overlays, is the conception of inherent existence. All phenomena are empty of inherent existence. I am empty of inherent existence. This table is empty of inherent existence.
Beauty, friend, enemy, stranger, this building. I don’t know if we’re communicating here. Don’t know. We’re going to work more on this. We’re trying to overcome the natural tendency which is which we have due to the influence of ignorance to relate with things as if however we see them is in the very nature of the object itself.
So, Jampa, this is about seeing the truth, how the truth really is. Is that what you’re teaching us here tonight? How about the truth, the truth. Even truth doesn’t inherently exist. I find it interesting you can say that you can experience things without concepts, but that’s a concept.
That’s also we we can’t escape language. We can’t So non non conceptuality is a concept. It’s it’s impossible. I mean, to to comprehend with the mind. It just has to Yeah.
You just have to You can be. Just get rid of the mind. Mhmm. Goodness. It’s meditation, I suppose.
You can be. Like He said I I didn’t read the rest part of this, but it has to do with Kierkegaard used to express his existential anxiety by saying that he found himself with seventy thousand leagues of water under him, and to this poor would rejoin with a twinkle in his eye, it is much worse. We are suspended over the bottom of this pit, caught in our own words. There is no reality without even the word reality is just dependent upon language as a word. We can’t talk.
We can’t. There’s nothing other than if going to say anything, have to use a word. Or to know anything, we have The concept that you were alluding to, there with the voidness and the emptiness, but the other word you mentioned was open. And openness really brings this whole concept of emptiness alive to me because what it shows me is, okay, what can I do with this understanding of emptiness? I can let everything be open to a different interpretation.
I can only conceive or work with concepts, therefore if I see emptiness as openness, then I won’t be stuck in that closed thing. That’s positive side of emptiness, is that things are dynamic, open ended, open to redefinition. They can change because they’re empty. Things inherently existed, they would be fixed, unchangeable. Everything in the world is open ended.
It’s not that we can make anything anything. There are but, you know, but then we this is getting into another there are, you know, as I mentioned, there are criteria of what rules for world making. But, you know, in our way of thinking, like it’s said that for a Buddha, a universe is poetically we say a universe in a grain of sand. And it’s a very poetic notion, isn’t it? But for the Buddha, it’s a reality.
You know? That he’s not bound by these by our particular rules of world making, in which universe and atoms are completely contradictory, this dualistic way that we have of seeing black or white, red or yellow, short and long. He’s not what we call epistemology. We talked about that word. The rules by which we follow to make sense of our experience.
We have certain rules. The rules aren’t very clear. You know, you didn’t study them in school. And we aren’t consciously aware of these rules, but we follow them nonetheless. We follow the same rules, and so we come to know a table.
This is water. Water is something you drink. You can water flowers with water. Know, things like that. Is the way we’ve constructed this reality using various rules, trying to make sense of our experience.
So it’s not arbitrary, but it is open to redefinition if we see the underlying rules which we’re following, and we can use those rules to our advantage. We aren’t bound by them. But that’s another story, maybe. So your point, I think, is really well taken, that we have a sense that this is the way things are, that I’m this way. I mean, it’s even psychological.
And it’s difficult for us to change. It’s difficult for us to even imagine ourselves being any other way. But the idea of emptiness is that this is simply that the way that we see ourselves now is simply it’s just being a product of our present conception of ourselves. There’s nothing about ourselves which is that which we now conceive of ourselves. There’s nothing from its own side which makes us what we are, and how I conceive of myself.
You know, it’s completely open to redefinition. It’s transformable. The situation is workable. According to our imagination, we can make things of them what we will. So I think the idea of, in a positive sense, the word emptiness, as you mentioned, is the opposite.
And when you think of it in terms of it, it’s openness, dynamic, changeable. They aren’t fixed. This is what the idea of we used this term last week, attribute a concrete status to things which they don’t possess. They’re fixed. We overestimate how substantial, in fact, they are.
They’re mere appearances. There’s nothing behind them. It’s pretty mysterious. But anyway, you have to kind of live with that. We want to have a concrete world out there to hold on to, but it’s not quite as concrete as we would like to feel it is.
There are appearances. Things function, but there’s nothing behind those appearances. There’s no underlying reality. It is it is it’s a social construct. It is what it is because we are what we are, and we’re making this world continually.
And we’re communicating this world through our children, and they’ll communicate this world. It’s a lineage of reality. There other lineages. Fish sees this as a place to live. See it as something to drink, a mosquito place to lay its eggs.
We talked about the fact that a hungry ghosts would see it as pus and blood, a hell being as molten lead, a god as nectar. They’re all using different criteria in which they how they label and how that functions, this seemingly same objective object. They have a different language community, don’t they? We’re not hell beings. We don’t see it as molten lead.
If we were hell beings, we would be communicated that particular mentality which sees this as molten lead, and it would be molten lead for us. It would function as molten lead. It would burn us. If we were gods, we would be communicated that particular way of relating with this fluid, and it would function to bring us bliss. And it would bring us bliss.
But there’s nothing objective from its own side which makes it blissful, which makes it painful. Anyway, we’re going to talk more about this, and we’re going to talk about how to meditate on this, the different reason ings and analysis we can make use of. We’re trying to break down our tendency to reify, to draw big black lines around each and every object. Each object is independent, and we break up the ecology into chunks because that’s the way we think about them. The world is reflective of the way we think about it, but that’s not it, you know, that’s not its deeper that’s not its actual nature.
That’s simply under the influence of ignorance. The boundaries that we create between ourselves and various objects and things are much more permeable, much more subtle than we than we normally conceive of them. They’re just mere appearances. You, self, other. It’s just a way of talking, like high and low, short and long.
Without self, there’s no other. Without other, there’s no self. It’s just a way of talking, isn’t it? But we but you’re over there. But I could you’re way over there.
Independent, cut off from me. Others are over there. Doesn’t it and then then how am I going to relate with this this independent reality? I’ve set up kind of a struggle for myself. If we see the interdependence interdependence of all things, we are an integral part of this interdependence, but we’re a part of a greater whole, then some of the very struggle has gone out.
It’s no longer me versus the world. I am an integral part of the whole process. So it’s kind of a radical transformation of how we be in this world and how we relate to the world about us. Anyway, we’ll talk more about it. This is the pin for your basic designation.
This the pin. Can dedicate the positive energy we’ve created together. So positive energy, that’s just, it’s merely imputed, designated. We dedicate an illusory merit to illusory Buddhahood for the sake of all illusory sentient beings. But it all works.
But there’s nothing more than that. But it all works. It all hangs together in the end. But there’s nothing more than that. May all beings everywhere plagued by suffering of body and mind attain an ocean of happiness and joy by virtue of my merits.
May no living creatures suffer, commit evil, or fall ill. May no one be afraid or belittled with a mind weighed down by depression. May the blind see forms and deaf hear sounds. May those whose bodies are worn with toil be restored on finding repose. May the naked find clothing, the hungry find food.
May the thirsty find water and delicious drink. May the poor find wealth, those weak with sorrow find joy. May the forlorn find hope, constant happiness and prosperity. May there be timely rains and bountiful harvest. May all medicines be effective and wholesome prayers bear fruit.
May all who are sick and ill quickly be freed from their ailments. Whatever diseases there are in the world, may they never occur again. May the frightened cease to be afraid and those bound be freed. May the powerless find power, and may people think of benefiting each other. For as long as space remains, for as long as sentient beings remain, until then may I too remain to dispel the miseries of the world.
Through these skillful actions, may I quickly become an awakened spiritual master and lead each and every living being to that awakened realm. May the supreme jewel, the awakened heart, may that which has risen rise and grow, and may that which has arisen never diminish, but increase more and more. In the land circled by snow mountains, you are the source of all happiness and well-being. Powerful Chenrezig, Tenzin Gyatso, please remain in the cyclic existence. Thank you.
If you’d like to grab a cup of tea and have a discussion, otherwise, good night.