Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Over four hours, Ven Jampa Ignyen investigates emptiness and selflessness through rigorous philosophical reasoning as the direct antidote to self-deception and emotional affliction. Drawing on Pabongka Dechen Nyingpo’s commentary on the three principal aspects of the path, he systematically presents four Buddhist philosophical schools—each refining the understanding of selflessness, culminating in the Mādhyamika view that refutes inherent existence. The teaching unfolds through five types of valid reasoning that prove emptiness, applied to concrete examples: a chariot, a car, a brass bowl. He shows how objects that appear as solid, independent things lack any inherent existence when subjected to logical analysis. The reasoning is demanding and technical; the benefit lies not in immediate understanding but in familiarizing the mind with valid reasoning, gradually weakening the deep habit of grasping at true existence. For practitioners ready to engage sustained philosophical analysis.
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File: 2012 11 31 01 – JampaIgnyenSelDeception031112.mp3
UUID: 15040d62-7264-40ba-acb2-525251607866
Teacher: Ven Jampa Ignyen
Collection: Mind & Cognition (Ven Jampa Ignyen)
Date: 2012-11-31
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 247.1 minutes
Words: ~22,382
So our course is on emptiness, basically. What was the name of the course? Stepping out of self deception. Right. This is a big job, but highly beneficial for us to do.
Right so we’re going to look at some of the issues surrounding emptiness. How we might begin an approach to the whole issue of emptiness, talk around some of the issues, and we will use a couple of texts just as a guide. One of them is this text by Pabongka Dechen Nyingpo, called Destroying the Net of Illusion. So that is a commentary to Tsongkhapa’s three principal aspects of the path. So that is a very clear, wonderful presentation of emptiness.
Also we will use another commentary on the sevenfold reasoning. So pretty much we’ll use those texts as a basis and see how we go. Now I was just thinking in the beginning could probably do just a little bit of meditation just to focus our minds and so forth. So first we’ll just do a bit of breathing meditation. Breathing meditation is really a wonderful opportunity just to check on the mind itself.
We’re really developing introspection mindfulness and introspection at the same time. So what we’re doing is focusing on the breath. So what we’re using is our sense awareness, mainly our body consciousness. A body consciousness is aware of breathing. It’s really aware of the fact the lungs are filling up and we’re breathing in and we’re exhaling.
And there’s many different ways that we can be aware of the breath. One is like through the nose. And we can be aware there of the contact of the the air against the inside of the nose. Another one is being aware of the chest, stomach, as the lungs fill in as we inhale and then as we exhale. Really this is a type of mindfulness of the body itself the first of the four types of mindfulness.
At the same time we’re using introspection. So the introspection is just keeping an eye on the meditation itself. The we’re actually watching the breath as we breathe in and out. So we need those two together in the practice of breathing meditation. So another thing that we’re doing is that we’re just relaxing the mind Allowing the mind just to put down all the objects that it picks up through habit during the day, during the night, and we’re just allowing the mind to relax.
So we’ll just practice this for about five minutes. Right. So we’re looking at emptiness. And emptiness, of course, is a difficult topic. It’s something that is very subtle, obscured from us, hard to penetrate but something that is of wonderful benefit it’s like a medicine.
It’s like a resolution. Something that in the end if we can gain an understanding of it will benefit us immensely. In fact, without it, we can’t really progress very far along the spiritual path. Now I’m just going to start with some with this text of destroying the net of illusion with by Pabongka. And as we go, if there’s any issues, please raise them at any time, anything that’s unclear.
Fact, Pabongka is actually very clear. And it gives a bit of a it’s a wonderful text. It just simply gives the reasons for initially why we need to begin the meditation, meditating on emptiness and so forth, puts it into context and so on for us. So Pabongka Rinpoche then starts with the verse from the three principal aspects of the path. And he says, if we do not possess the wisdom comprehending the mode of abidance of things, that is the way things exist, Even if we may become familiar with renunciation and bodhicitta, we are unable to sever the root of existence.
Therefore, we should strive in the means of comprehending dependent arising. So in brief, if we don’t understand how things exist, even though we have great compassion, even though we renounce the world, even though we wander off into the mountains, live in a cave for ten years, twenty years, thirty years, practicing very diligently, still we’re not going to progress very far. We need to understand dependent arising. We need to understand just the mode of abidance of ourselves and other beings around us. So this is of course extremely it’s an important point to begin with.
As he he goes on to mention, if we do not possess the wisdom comprehending the view of profound reality or the mode of abidance of ultimate truth, however much we strive in other practices, we will be unable to sever the grasping at a self. So one of the main issues for us is this grasping at itself that we have either on an of an innate level or on a level that we develop ourselves or we impute and so forth. So understanding the reality of the world around us, ultimate truth enables us to begin to deal with this issue of self grasping or grasping at a self. So grasping at a self again is an extremely subtle type of awareness that we have. This sense of I.
Not understanding how things exist, we impute I to them. Not understanding what the I is imputed to or how the I is imputed, how we think of the I, in other words, is a profound has a a profound effect upon us. Not understanding it, affirming the sense of I that we have, does prevent us from in a sense understanding transcendent reality. So this is something that we have to gradually come to an understanding of. It’s not something we’re immediately going to understand.
But in order to understand it we need to gradually put the conditions together so that downstream maybe not in this life, maybe not even in our next life, but downstream, we will be able to develop the understanding of emptiness. So the understanding of emptiness is impermanent. It’s a result of something. So understanding selflessness or emptiness comes about through in the present beginning to put together all the conditions that will support that realization. Now present, there are factors here.
Pabongka Rinpoche is talking about renunciation and bodhicitta as well. We need those two things, and there the expression of the path itself, the extensive path. But the wisdom element also needs to be applied. The wisdom element here is the wisdom understanding selflessness. So that we need to gradually establish.
Developing a wisdom that understands the profound reality depends on putting together over a long period just supportive correct view. We need actually to develop the view of things as they are. Now developing this view in a sense you know we think that perhaps it should already we already have it. In fact we tend to think that the way we look at the world is pretty much how the world is. But our current view of the world is a mixture of many things.
Many different observations accepting what other people say, our own conclusions about things and so forth. And a lot of these are not an accurate assessment. They’re misconceptions. If we had the correct view of the world as it actually is we would have no afflictive emotions. So the very fact that we have afflictive emotions that arise unpredictably and continue to arise is an indication that we haven’t fully understood the world around us and we haven’t understood ourselves at the center of this world, the center of the universe that we inhabit.
So developing that sort of correct view takes a long time. What we’re not trying to do in this process is impose a particular view on what’s there. What we’re trying to do is actually unpack the views that we already have. Developing correct views in a sense. It’s beginning the process of looking how we view the world and beginning to peel them back.
Unpack the inaccurate misconceptions. So this takes a long time because it’s hard for us to see that we have a misconception about how the world is. True? So in this process what we’re doing is progressively trying to step back and just look, observe. Is that correct?
Is this correct? Because when we see something is invalid or Oh it’s not actually like that then we give it up. But until we actually see that it’s a false way of looking at things or, you know, it’s the object of that sort of conception doesn’t exist or, you know, I really got it wrong here or I’m, you know, didn’t get that correct. Didn’t get that right. I’m looking at this the wrong way.
So until the in a sense the penny drops and we see it it’s in stark reality to us, Oh that’s the wrong way of looking at this. Then we don’t give up our views or the way we look at the world. So what Pabongka Rinpoche is suggesting here is that we need wisdom. We need wisdom to progress as individuals. Now that wisdom has many different types but the one that’s being spoken about here is wisdom understanding things as they are.
In a sense, he’s talking about that which actually exists in the way it appears to exist. Which is emptiness itself. Emptiness in Sanskrit means sunya. In Tibetan it’s tongpa nyid. Sunya or means Sunya is zero in Sanskrit.
That’s what it really refers to zero. So zero ness in a way. Or another way of looking at it is openness. It’s just that things have potential. So this is the type of view that Pabongka is suggesting that we develop.
But again, developing this sort of view takes a long time. It’s not as if and in developing this sort of view, it’s a challenge to us. Often it puts us outside of our comfort zone a little bit. Why does it put it outside our comfort zone? Because we’re looking at the very nature of the eye itself.
At times we think, oh, you know, what would I do if there were no I if everything was selfless? What would become of me in all of that in the big picture? Actually it’s said that having a little bit of trepidation is a very good thing because it means that we’re actually beginning to look at this fundamental issue. Anyway, Pabongka Rinpoche here is talking about developing profound view and as he says: If you lack profound view though you may obtain the great vehicle path of accumulation, though you may even actual enter an actual path, a spiritual path, you will not progress very far. You’ll be unable to obtain the stages beyond the path of accumulation, he’s saying.
Path of accumulation is the very beginning of the path when we start to accumulate merit. But even though we might get to that very early part of the spiritual path without developing correct view, we won’t be able to go beyond that because we’re we don’t have the essential element of the correct view. And even if one is not on the great vehicle path, even on the individual vehicle path because there are two vehicles. There’s the great vehicle and the individual vehicle. What a vehicle is here it’s the type of awareness that able to carry or support or convey beings to the state of liberation.
So that type of awareness is regarded as a vehicle. It’s called a vehicle. Like a ship or something like that. Maybe a I don’t know an Airbus or a car or a motorbike or a bicycle. But the type of awareness that’s able to carry us to liberation can be either small or big.
If it’s just a one person vehicle like a push bike or a motorbike, then it’s called a small vehicle because it’s a even as a vehicle, it only takes one one person. Great vehicle takes potentially every being in the universe. So great. So one zero one has a small vehicle or a great vehicle. It will only get in a sense, will only get on the start of the path.
Like it’s a bicycle we ride along and then we enter the maybe there’s a little archway, you know, this is the path liberation and we get maybe thirty or forty meters down the path. We can’t go any further without the correct view. Yeah! It’s a vast vehicle that carries every sentient being along with it. That vast vehicle carrying every sentient being along with it is really the mind of great compassion that a being can develop.
That includes it doesn’t exclude anyone includes everyone in the universe. But even that, we enter the path that definitely leads to liberation but we’ll only get a certain way down the path because we don’t have wisdom. So therefore, as Pabongka says, we need to develop this sword of wisdom. But even if one it can be developed that sword of wisdom can be developed before one enters the path or after one enters the path. There are some who enter the path without that wisdom and then they have to develop that wisdom.
And there are those who are really sharp facultied. They are able to develop that sword of wisdom even before they enter the path. Then for them that entering the path is easy because they see they see what the path is and how we need to progress along it. So therefore if one possesses that the correct view one is able to progress beyond the path of accumulation to the path of preparation and then to the profound state of the path of seeing. So as Pabongka says, if you comprehend the profound view, you are able to obtain the paths and grounds of the great vehicle path of preparation which is distinguished as the cause the very cause of freedom and omniscience.
The path of preparation once we’ve attained that, then really we’re close to attaining irreversibility on the path. In fact, once one attains the path of accumulation on the great vehicle, one attains a certain type of bodhicitta called earth like bodhicitta. bodhicitta is the the mind aspiring to attain enlightenment for the sake of all sentient beings. And one has a that mind is called earth like at the very beginning of the path because it’s the foundation of the spiritual path like the earth is. And the second level is gold like.
And gold like is given that name because there one cannot fall back. One cannot lose the path from that stage on. The earth like level it’s still possible to for the path to decline. But once one enters the gold light, it’s really from that level where one attains wisdom as well. So it’s that wisdom that prevents one from losing the path.
So Pabongka is here saying that we need that sort of a wisdom in the beginning. We need to think about it and acquire the causes and conditions that allow us to gradually develop it. So it’s a type of wisdom. It’s one of the five object-ascertaining mental factors. Wisdom.
There. So here, wisdom on the nature of reality itself. And as Pabongka Rinpoche also then continues to say, just as just having the correct mundane view that karma or causation and its result are definite is of no benefit, yet in the end it reaches this view comprehending selflessness. We need to develop all sorts of wisdom. We need the wisdom that understands the definite, non deceptive nature of our actions.
Positive actions give a positive result, negative actions give a negative result, and so on. That in itself is not the correct view of emptiness. But it acts as a basis upon which gradually the view of emptiness will arise. So it’s it’s needed. Anyway, here, Pabongka Rinpoche goes on to a number of different ideas about what the way to purify the mind is and that some are sought for instance that we don’t necessarily need the mind understanding emptiness to purify the mind at its deepest level.
We can simply develop high states of meditation. And if we develop high states of meditation and progress from this level to the form realm, to the heavens of the form realm, where only divine beings live. And the conditions are wonderful. The conditions not even the word suffering exists. Dissatisfaction, pain, ache, and so on.
All of those words are not in the vocabulary there. No one experiences a negative feeling an unpleasant feeling. Now some say that actually attaining that level through purifying the mind in meditation. So in meditation, one enters meditation over months and years, overcoming all the faults of the mind such as laziness, forgetfulness, laxity, excitation, and so forth. All the issues that we have at present with our current mind overcomes those into a state of abiding single pointed concentration, then develops the bliss of pliancy.
The bliss of pliancy, which is both on a mental and a physical level, then enters the absorptions. One has access to these states, these divine levels. And some say that that itself is sufficient. That if we enter that type of meditation, then one has overcome all the afflictive emotions. By itself, Pabongka Rinpoche is saying here, insufficient because it’s impermanent.
Because even if we attain these divine levels and we’ve attained them in past lives because they arise through contaminated causes and conditions In the end, they end and we are reborn, you know, in the lower realms and so forth. Pabongka Rinpoche here is just talking about other other assertions. Now this is also important for us because in our culture and our you know, from within our culture and our worldview, issues of liberation, enlightenment and so forth are not that often discussed or they’re not central issues on people’s agendas. Even to talk about such issues you know is more uncommon than common And there are many people that have the idea that such states probably don’t exist at all. That, you know, there is no for instance, future life, there is no liberation.
There is no enlightenment. It’s just this life. Be happy with it. Don’t, you know, rock the boat. Don’t come up with fancy ideas about what might be better just to, you know, not talk about it at all because it’s unproven.
It’s not scientific. So these are issues that we have to deal with in our own culture. And there is a tendency for us to think in that same way. That Oh, this thing about liberation, enlightenment it’s a bit over the top. It’s a bit out there.
It’s a lot you know, it’s if it did exist, it’s a far away from us. It’s very distant from us. You Maybe we shouldn’t worry about too much. We’ll find out in the end and so on. So there’s many views in our society and we’re aware of them.
That’s good. We need to be aware of them. Now Pabongka Rinpoche here is talking about other beings that views from other sects or other philosophical schools who say that, oh this is liberation. If you get to this high level of meditation that itself is liberation. Now this is a view that we don’t find very much in our culture, in our society.
What we tend to find is, oh don’t worry about it, you know. It’s all speculation and if it exists, science will prove it. And if it doesn’t exist, you know, science won’t prove it. But it’s not something that science has taken on board. You know, it’s a you know, it’s something that they should try and prove one way or the other.
In reality science should be focused on this issue. Because it’s far more important than the issues of this life. Really because our future lives are much longer than this one life. So the whole issue of whether we continue beyond this life is really the central issue isn’t it? To the extent we challenge our own society’s views on these issues.
But that’s that’s a good thing because this issue is so important. Yes, please. Yep. I think it will. Yeah.
And I think there’s a whole I agree. There’s a whole cross section of scientists and many that are are Buddhist or Christian or hold a particular religious view on this issue as well. But I think it will become because science is investigating the nature of the brain, you know, and how the brain functions and what, therefore, awareness is and how we can apply the natural sciences to understanding the function of the brain and therefore what the mind is doing, that more and more they will bring up the issue of what the mind is and be confronted by this. Now at present, do realize that there are a number of things they can’t explain. Now whether in fact they they’re not sure just how to actually approach it because it is it’s a little bit outside of their, the realm of the natural sciences or the physical sciences.
I agree. Think to at least understand that. To understand where the issues are and that okay we’re not dealing, we’re not tackling those issues is a very good thing. But for us we need to take on board these issues. You know, for our purpose, for our well-being.
Our well-being in the present depends on us taking on those issues. There’s no way that we can really be happy unless we start to work out the issue of enlightenment in the present. Again it reminds me once in Sera when I was a monk there that one year when we were studying Abhidharma, we would have to go to see the abbot and the abbot would give advice on our current studies. We went and in fact, the abbot was away that particular year, and so we had to go to to the ex-abbot, Geshe Lechten, Kensur Lechten, who was always very he’s a very interesting, very strong personality, very conservative, very traditional. And we get there and we all prostrate and we’re all on the floor and prostrating and crouched down.
And the ex-abbot leans forward and says and what are you studying? And in the class there was a class leader called a kyobun and he says oh we’re studying Abhidhamma. What chapter of Abhidhamma? Three or I think or chapter something like that which was on the nature of the universe. He was going on and he was saying: Oh yeah, this is a very good you study this.
Yeah this is a wonderful topic. And then he said: But you also should remember that science is not the path to liberation. And so truly he was saying. Now when he said that, I was really, oh, that’s a I don’t know if I agree with that statement. And I’m thinking, oh, maybe I’ll disagree.
Maybe I’ll say something, which would have been highly, you know, improper if I got up in you know, because formally, you have to be, you know, very respectful of the ex sabbat, and you can’t challenge, you know, formally, you know, in that sort of a scenario. But I was thinking I was almost on the stage of saying something. And I said, no, I’ll put it down. He obviously doesn’t understand science. And then I started to think about it later science is not the path to liberation.
Well actually, yes, science is not really focused on that area. At present it’s not focused on that area. I thought, yeah, there is some wisdom to what he’s saying. You know, in a sense in the West, you know, we tend to think, oh, science is going to answer all these questions for us. But science will only begin to answer these questions if it’s actually focused on this area.
It’s not the sort of thing you’re going to stumble across, you know, if you’re studying, you know, whatever, you know, like the structure of the brain or you’re going to discover it if you’re looking at cosmology. These are not necessarily the areas where you’re going to discover the actual path to liberation. Although we probably have some doubts about this as well, you know. Maybe science will stumble across it somewhere, you know. It looks far enough into outer space it might come across another civilization that are going to come up with the answers for us.
It has many views but they range from either the brain is the mind right through to a dualistic dualism which asserts that they are substantially different. But those right? Or in fact the far extreme is that there is only mind. So you have really probably three positions. The mind the brain is the mind is the brain, the physical brain.
The mind and the brain are different in substance. Or the brain is the mind itself. Or everything is mind. Right? Like, there’s philosophies philosophers like Berkeley asserted this in the past.
But probably at present, the tendency is right back here. It’s either the the mind is the brain or pretty much the mind is an epiphenomenon of the brain, which means that it it pretty much reduces to the brain anyway. So most probably the majority of scientists tend to hold that view. But there are some that are in the middle. There are some tending to the other extreme, the idealist extreme that the everything is just mind.
Everything is the substance of the mind or everything is mind. When you go into when you talk to scientists about it, actually, for scientists, you can’t really talk much about the mind or or feelings and things like that because they can’t be scientifically established. Right? Has to be objectively. You can’t actually see the mind through a microscope.
You can’t isolate it within the brain and say, well, there’s consciousness there and the rest of it is, you know, the neurons. If you start to talk about feelings as being something other than, you know, the neurophysiological activity of the brain then, you know, the science is not there at present to support that area or that sort of an assertion. Right. Oh, yeah. Right.
Right. Right. In layman’s terms but to say that is a I mean that’s a big leap to say that the soul goes back to the universe. It depends on what they mean by soul. Yeah but I mean what does that mean you know?
One thing I do find often with science as well that they’re they realize that there is an area that they can’t explain, but the terminology is quite inaccurate or it’s quite under undeveloped, and they’ll revert back to like, the soul goes back to the universe, a statement like that, which is means what? Means the soul continues or it dissolves into the universe or This is an essential issue because it’s talking about do we does the individual continue in future? That’s really in a sense our main issue. No. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. So it’s a pity because then that tends to weaken what they’re saying because, you know, if they were to say at that point, well we’re not too sure what this means. There is a physical state, you know, within the brain that seems to I don’t know it’s a physical state that perhaps is indicative of something that may lay beyond it. Right?
Or just what inference can be made of that is a little bit unclear. See that’s still quite away from the Buddhist idea here where which is saying that there’s consciousness that is non physical abiding within the body already. It wasn’t as you know, that’s what continues and that’s come from a past life and we inherited in this life. This physical body is like just a support of that. It’s the main part of us is the consciousness which is substantially distinct from the physical basis.
That’s the important issue and when we die all that’s happening is that the physical basis of that consciousness ceases to support consciousness. And so the consciousness separates from it and then continues and becomes enters the intermediate state and takes rebirth and so forth. That’s where science prison is really undeveloped in this area. But it in a way, it’s not the fault of science. It’s more like the philosophy that’s informing science, which is very materialistic.
The philosophy itself is quite materialistic. One of the reasons for that is that philosophy has more or less been thrown out with religion from the time of Descartes, two centuries ago, when science really took the center, the central I don’t know became this central means by which we investigate the universe and ourselves. So the physical sciences using physical means to investigate. Anyway! It’s good that we, I think, haven’t, you know, look at these cultural issues as well for where we come from.
But Pabongka himself is writing this. He lived in the previous cent like in the nineteenth century. And he is setting forth, you know, quite a traditional perspective that is both common to India and Tibet on the spiritual path. And so he raises these issues about, you know, some say that liberation is when we get to these higher meditative states in and of themselves. Whereas for us in our culture, we’re still we’re not at a point in a sense of even speculating on that being liberation because the issue of liberation itself is barely on the agenda.
It’s there, but it’s not, you know, like a central topic. Anyway. So we’re looking we’re looking at the issue of developing understanding of reality as it is. Developing an understanding of reality is really focusing primarily on the individual. Developing wisdom about the mode of abidance of the person, the I.
So that sword of wisdom can arise gradually through the application of valid awareness. So valid awareness here meaning developing awareness that is correct and non deceptive, incontrovertible, factual, conforming to the facts as they are. So that sort of awareness that factual, focused on the person, has the ability to sever self grasping, which is the root of saṃsāra. As Sūtra states, if you individually analyze the selflessness of phenomena, and if you meditate on that which has been analyzed, that is the cause of the result of obtaining nirvana. Any other cause will not act as the basis of that.
So nirvana itself arises through initially analyzing the selflessness of what exists and then meditating on that over a long period. And in meditating on that, one attains nirvana. There is no other cause to nirvana. So this comes from a particular sūtra. To obtain emancipation you must abandon self grasping from the root.
To abandon that, you must meditate on the path of selflessness that directly excludes the mode of grasping or the mode of grasping of the sense of self that we have. Right. So this is quite a a traditional presentation where Pabongka is going back to Sūtra and looking at these issues from the point of view of the sense of I that we have, the sense of I in the present, and recommending that we just simply sit down and investigate the eye. In fact, was a there’s a quite a well known Indian who lived in South India, passed away in the early fifties of the previous century, called Ramana Maharshi. And one of his main main teachings was just investigating the self.
Has anyone heard of him? Ramana? He’s a very interesting person. He was just grew up in this a town not far that far from Madras in a Brahmin family. And he had a normal school, what, school experience.
And he was not that good at school, but good at sport. Not particular interest in other topics. And he everything went okay until he was about seventeen years of age and then when he was seventeen he had that one night he suddenly had this great fear death overcoming. And he’d never really thought of death before. And suddenly, this deep fear of death arose.
And he was quite shocked by it and he thought, well, I’ve never never really thought of this before. What happens, you know, when you die? And he thought, I really should investigate. So he thought he’d lie down the floor and as if he were a corpse and then he just started to think, who dies? What happens when I die?
And as he thought this he developed a deeper and deeper level of meditation. Initially there was some fear arising in terms of what dies, what happens to me, you know, after death. And in that process he had this experience that he went deeply into this investigation of the nature of the eye and discovered this state apparently beyond death or a depth level that he wasn’t aware of that was outside of the process of death. And so then from then then on, his life changed and he’s lost all interest in going to school and he thought, that’s it. I’ve got to go off and meditate.
And so he decided after about a month that he couldn’t stay at home. He borrowed five rupees from his mom’s jar in the kitchen. And he heard about this mountain not far away called Tiruvannamalai. And he for some reason, he thought he had to go there. So he went there, and he just started meditating on the side of this mountain.
He just found a cave. He found a little temple, and he just wanted to, again, revive this experience that he’d had. So we ended up spending about two years on this mountain, and he’s more or less engaged in meditation for most of that time, quite absorbed in meditation. And he found this little temple, and he sat up at the back of the temple. And there’s a priest who used to look after the temple and noticed him there.
And he and then he noticed that he was sitting at the back, but he was leaning against the back wall, and all these ants were crawling up the back wall and crawling over him. And he thought, oh, that’s not very good. So he found a little stool that he could sit on and he put the legs of the stool in water so that the ants couldn’t get up. The pilgrims would come and they’d give him a little bit of food so he lived on the food. So this went on for about two years.
And then at the end of two years, he stopped meditating. You’ve you’ve read the story. Yeah. That’s a fascinating story, but it it occurs not just once. On numerous occasions, similar stories occur.
Anyway, for the rest of his life, he remained on that mountain. He passed away in the early nineteen fifty one, I think. And he didn’t touch very much. People would come, and the one thing that he would tell him was investigate who am I and or investigate the I, check up on who the I is. So this was his main instruction.
People would come and they’d get quite frustrated about, you know, please touch something, you know, give us some philosophy or give me this, give me that. And he would often not say anything. He’s also he would just remain silent. People would come and just look at him and he would just sit there. And then if he had to talk, would say meditate on the nature of the eye.
So in a breath, that’s a very profound teaching and it essentially is the practice that we’re involved in. We’re just investigating the nature of the eye. Looking at what the eye is. Where did I come from? Where does does the eye come from?
What is the I? So that in a sense is our essential reality. Just what this I is. So in a sense, this also brings with it this whole issue of emptiness and the whole issue of selflessness that gradually we must uncover. Okay.
Look. We’ll just stop there. We’ll have a break. We’ll have a tea break for about fifteen minutes. So we’re looking at Pabonka’s text and looking at the reasons that he’s giving for checking checking up on why we need to check up on the way things exist, on the reality of the world around us and we ourselves who live in that world.
And Pabongka Rinpoche is saying that unless we develop this sword of wisdom then we can’t progress on the path. We may be able to enter the beginning of the path but we won’t be able to progress far. So this whole issue for ourselves it is important and in a way it brings a whole philosophic dimension to our lives. Often we don’t look at our lives in a philosophic context or the context of wanting to know how things exist. But without this, without being able to penetrate to those levels then Pabongka is saying we really can’t move forward.
Now in a sense we already have ideas about how the world exists and how we exist in the world. Of course we do. We have this world view that we develop in this life and we have tendencies, propensities coming from past lives on how we look at the world around us. And often these are unstated. They’re just there.
They’re part of the background. They’re part of the fabric of our existence. So part of the job we have here is just stepping back a little bit and just noticing how we’re looking at things and predominantly how we’re looking at ourselves. Because from a Buddhist point of view it’s how we look at ourselves that allows all the afflictive emotions to arise. It’s this view of the self that we have that preconditions the emergence of the afflictive emotions.
It doesn’t seem that way to us often. It seems that these hatred, anger, resentment and so on seem to be part of the what? The valid fabric of our lives. They appear to be things that just are normal expressions or reactions to events that occur. And it doesn’t seem as if, wait a minute, this way that we react to our situation, to the world around us, and so on is really coming from a philosophic view.
It’s coming from a way that we’ve interpreted the we exist and the world exists. So we need to just bring that on board as well. Just keep that in mind that we need to investigate this. So okay, just reading a little bit ahead with Pabongka. He mentions that just as the king of geese extends his broad and white wings of reality and leading from the front of the flock of geese, he flies to the supreme further shore of the ocean through the strong force of of his wings and the winds that carry him.
Now what he means by this is that just the relative nature of things around us are like a geese extending broad wide wings and flying off into the the sky. And that geese is like a bodhisattva who’s leading the other geese and is able to fly to the extreme further shore of Samsāra to where the qualities of enlightenment and so forth exist due to the action of the winds of virtue. That’s a quite a colorful picture that that draws, but what he means by that is just as a bird possesses the two wings flies unobstructedly in the sky, you need both the method of bodhicitta and the wisdom of correct view, so the two wings. One of the method, one of wisdom to be able to fly to enlightenment. You need both the method of bodhicitta and the wisdom of the correct view of emptiness, where neither is lacking, to proceed to the other shore where the qualities of enlightenment are complete.
If you lack either of those then you can’t get there. In other words, method will not take you there itself by itself, and wisdom will not take you there by itself. We need compassion. We need wisdom both. Then he also goes on to say: However, if we wonder how we should meditate on the correct view then it is inappropriate to just do anything.
In other words, in developing correct view it’s not as if just anything we do is going to develop it. Pabongka suggests we must follow the discourses of an enlightened being which teach the definitive meaning. So we need to follow what an enlightened being has stated in order to ourselves develop an understanding of what correct view is. So in general from both the interpretive and definitive meanings that are expressed in such discourses, the definitive meaning is the final meaning can be accepted as it’s stated. And the interpretive meaning needs to be interpreted.
It can’t be just accepted as it is stated. So an interpretive discourse will teach conventional truth and a definitive discourse will teach ultimate truth. In other words, so Here we’re looking at just defining what type of teaching or discourse we’re looking at in order to develop correct view or the view of emptiness. So Pabongka here is going on into then listing some of the teachings. So he says that one looks at what the Buddha taught himself and the perfection of wisdom sutras is the essential body of work that we should investigate like the Heart Sūtra.
And then other works by later masters such as Nāgārjuna who taught the six collections of reasoning on the middle way view and so on. Those sorts of texts we can rely on and their commentaries also such as the commentaries by Buddhapālita and Āryadeva and so on. So here what is meant is that it’s hard to understand just by our own power, by our own strength, by our own devices what correct view is. So in order to really get an idea, get a seed idea about what we need to be thinking about it’s useful to go back to the discourses on the Buddha like Prajñāpāramitā. And then from there also look at the explanations of those discourses by later masters who had insight into the meaning of those discourses such as the works of Nāgārjuna and his main student Āryadeva and then later great commentators like Buddhapālita, Bhāvaviveka, like Candrakīrti, like Śāntideva and so forth.
So you’ve probably heard of these teachers. So in effect what we need to do is when we have a little bit of leisure, little bit of time to be able to read through these texts they’re hard to read. Often they’re written in verse form and the verse can be a little bit hard to penetrate. But because the subject matter is difficult the texts themselves tend to be a little bit difficult in the beginning to understand. But even though they’re difficult in the beginning we can generate an understanding by becoming familiar with them.
And the more we become familiar, the easier they become. Like for instance the the first verse of this great text by Nāgārjuna called the root of wisdom or the fundamental wisdom is Neither from self, from other, from both or neither, from any cause whatsoever, nothing ever arises. It’s actually very to penetrate to the meaning of that takes time. Now the the means by which we have of investigating the meaning is our conceptual mind. You know, it’s our thinking process, it’s our analysis, it’s our investigation, our examination of these issues.
And so we can bring up a verse like that and we can think about it and contemplate it over a period of time and gradually we’ll gain some understanding, you know, of the meaning of of that verse. So what is happening in this process really is that we’re looking at how we’re interpreting the various parts of the verse. Not from self, not from either. It’s talking about how a particular thing exists. Like this glass.
It doesn’t arise from itself, it doesn’t arise from anything else. It doesn’t arise from both and it doesn’t arise from neither. Now we may think, well wait a minute, the second one there arises from other. Doesn’t it arise from something else? That sounds like he’s going too far.
And what is meant by that verse is that it doesn’t arise from an inherently established other object. When we try and First in order to understand how this arises arises we have to look at its causes. We look therefore at the entire process by which it comes about. In doing that we begin to develop an understanding of what the object is itself. The fact of the object.
Because it’s the fact of knowing how this exists and what it actually is and the deeper levels levels of its mode of abidance that we eliminate misconceptions about it. In eliminating misconceptions about it we overcome all the afflictive emotions that arise relation to the object. What we’re using this as an example of is the person. What we need to actually identify and understand is I. And we use other objects like glass, like tables, like anything else that populates the world around us as examples by which we can come to an understanding of the eye.
So glass is useful. So that first verse of that text by Nāgārjuna talks precisely about the actual nature of the glass. In the end in that verse he says: It never arose. And when he says that, it sounds almost nihilistic. Neither from self nor from other nor from both nor from it from causelessness.
This entity at no stage ever arose from anything. Now in saying that, it sounds a little bit nihilistic and of course Nāgārjuna was accused of being nihilistic. But that wasn’t the purpose of putting these to teach in that way. The purpose of teaching in that way which is a tradition that comes from the Buddha was to actually understand the very essence of that glass or any other object. Okay, so that’s just an example.
As Candrakīrti said: If you veer from the path of the system of Master Nāgārjuna, there is no method of pacifying the afflictions. They decline from relative and ultimate truths, and through declining from those do not accomplish emancipation. In other words, from the Tibetan point of view, the Tibetans themselves follow Nāgārjuna because Nāgārjuna correctly interpreted the final meaning of what the Buddha taught. And so they tend not to veer from that. They don’t veer from the Tibetans themselves don’t veer from Nagajana’s presentation of emptiness.
And as Atisha said who lived in Tibet for a number of years: The student of Nāgārjuna is Candrakīrti. The advice of the lineage from them is to comprehend the truth of suchness. Therefore, in both sūtra and mantra there is no other method than this profound view. In general, in the Aryan land of India four tenet systems arose. Then at this stage Pabongka Rinpoche goes into the four tenet systems.
So if we had the time and the leisure then to go into the four tenet systems would also be a good thing. The Four Tenet systems is anyone aware of the four tenet systems? The four tenet systems are really divisions philosophic divisions that arose in India. And they basically classify the teachings of the Buddha into four different types depending on the interests of the student. Like there’s what’s called the Vaibhāṣika and the Sautrāntika, the Cittamātra and the Mādhyamika systems.
These arose really because of the predispositions of beings like ourselves. Some beings like a presentation from one perspective others like a presentation from another perspective. Some are very matter of fact others are more idealistic. It’s good that we understand our predispositions and what we’re attracted to. Because the Buddha’s teachings on the four noble truths can be presented from basically four different fundamentally different perspectives.
But what we’re looking at here is the highest perspective, the Mādhyamika or the middle way point of view. Right. Maybe a little bit if we discuss this a little bit it will be useful. The four different systems really are covered in the three turnings of the wheel of Dharma. When the Buddha lived in India he turned the wheel of Dharma three different times.
Or more in fact. But there are three basic ones. The first one he turned the wheel of Dharma in Varanasi or in Saronath which is just outside Varanasi and that’s when he first taught the four noble truths. It’s called the turning of the wheel of dharma sūtra. And it was taught for beings who basically accept everything to be truly existent.
In other words, things exist in the way they appear to exist. But within that framework the four noble truths are taught. So the truth of suffering, the origin of suffering, the cessation of suffering and the path leading to the cessation of suffering were taught in the first turning of the wheel in a sense for those who accepted everything to be truly existent. Everything that exists in the universe is truly existent. Now for us we’re almost in that category.
Because we do tend to think that things are truly existent. They exist in the way they appear. True? I mean we think the table really exists in the way it appears to us. We think because the table appears to exist from in and of itself or from its own side.
Right? Really things do appear that way. They appear to be truly existent. As if they’re a factual state. They actually exist in the way they appear.
Right? And we tend to affirm that: Oh yeah, that glasses case really exists in that way. There are many who hold or are sympathetic or find themselves affirming that sort of a perspective. And for those beings the Buddha taught the first turning of the wheel. And really there are the two lower philosophic categories that exist there.
That is the Vaibhāṣika and the Sattrantika view. Then in the second turning of the wheel, a year later eighteen months later the Buddha went to Vulture’s Peak. And there on this lonely outcrop of rock which is only halfway up this mountain the Buddha this outcrop called Vulture’s Peak apparently because it looks like a group of vultures that are sitting there which is about forty kilometers north of Bodh Gaya and this is region where they’ve got these seven hills seven hills of Rajgaya and there’s an ancient city there called Rajgaya and the ruins are still there. You can see the walls that go back to the time of the Buddha. The Buddha was there not far from there on this mountain and he taught the perfection of wisdom sūtra.
When that was the second turning of the wheel and the second turning of the wheel teaches everything is like an illusion. There’s nothing truly existent. And so that was really for students of the highest level. The Mādhyamika, the middle way view level. And then about or many years after that he taught the third turning of the wheel which is the view of the mind only school.
The idealist school, which is the view that teaching the four truths, but from a point of view that everything is of the substance of the mind itself. It’s a type of idealism. So on each of the three turnings of the wheel, Buddha taught about the four noble truths, but he taught about it from a particular perspective. Either that everything truly exists in the first one, nothing truly exists in the second, and the third was really that some things truly exist and others don’t, which was the third, which was the mind only presentation. The reason why the Buddha taught in this way is because of the predispositions of beings that if if they’re not taught in that way a certain number of beings are gonna not have anything to do with it.
The main thing to be practiced is the four noble truths or in fact to discard the first two truths establish the second two truths. That’s the main thing the Buddha taught. And he wants beings to practice those but they will practice or not practice in dependence on their philosophic view. So the Buddha taught the four truths in three different ways. Now what we have here is the idea that the first and the third turning are non final.
In other words the lower views are non final views. They can be used as a basis for our practice but they’re not the final presentation of how things are. And the final presentation was the second turning of the wheel where the Buddha taught that nothing truly exists. Everything is like an illusion. Now coming to that understanding is a long way down the track for us.
It’s a because we’re really probably more you know, in the way we interact with the world around us, we’re more like the those of the first turning of the wheel or the third turning of the wheel. And we still tend to affirm things to be truly existent. They actually exist. We tend to think that they actually exist as they appear to us. Yep.
Yep. Yep. And a conventional level yes. Our illusory can also be referring to conventional truth but to understand objects to be illusory really means that one’s approaching the ultimate level. At present we don’t see these objects to be illusory.
You know we think: Ah no that’s a you know it truly exists as it appears to exist. It’s not an illusion. It’s not like a dream a dreamlike illusion. We tend to think oh no it’s actually there. It exists there in and of itself from its own side.
We tend to think this quite naturally it’s you know our way of interacting with these objects. But still when we investigate with reasoning we can begin to establish that these objects don’t actually exist in the way they appear. That they’re like an illusion. But understanding this division of the philosophic views is useful for us because it just gives us the ultimate view is a bit like standing on the top of a mountain and at present we like it out on a plane. And there’s a gradual process by which we take a path that leads you know around around the various levels of that mountain until we reach the peak.
That peak is like the ultimate view of the highest school but there are points along that mountain as we go off it where, you know, we can what? We develop a view that is consistent with the Buddha’s teachings but still not the highest view. In a sense that they’re views that enable us to practice, you know eliminating the truth of suffering and the origin of suffering and practicing the path and nirvana that is obtained through that path but they’re not the final ultimate view of the reality of the practice. Now for some you know they perhaps some can gain an understanding of the highest view without going through the lower views as well. But for the most part that’s extremely difficult for just you know to develop the correct view without understanding the lower views.
Now the lower views themselves there’s a vast amount written about them. And there’s a vast amount of information that is included within those presentations that is extremely useful and beneficial for us. So in a sense you know getting to that peak on the mountain does take a long time and we do need to take on board various instructions on how to practice that are presented in law schools. You know as we develop our understanding and progress to the higher modes of looking at things. Now just here, Pabongka is now Pabongka here quotes he goes on to say: In our own system now here he talks of some lower level views.
The Vaibhāṣika Vatsuputriya assert that there is a permanent single autonomous self that is the object of refutation. Other Vaibhāṣikas and the Sautrantikas assert that a self sufficient, substantially existent self is the object of refutation. The mind only Chittamatrans assert that the subject and object being established at distinct substances is the object of refutation. The Svatantrikas assert that the object being established in its uncommon mode of abidance and not merely being posited by the power of appearing to awareness that does not harm the awareness is the object of refutation. And the Prasangikas assert that the object being established from its own side and not being merely imputed there by conception is the object of refutation.
Okay, look I think it might be useful if we just go through that a little bit. I’ll just put it up on the board. We have these different now there’s one school of what are called vibashikas. Vaibhāṣikas — they call them the analyzers. Now from their particular point of view where they assert everything is truly existent, they assert that the wisdom we need to develop is the wisdom that understands that there is no permanent single self.
Now that’s the wisdom that leads to nirvana. So actually this is a very coarse level of self that they are trying to refute. But at present We ourselves probably affirm this sort of self. We haven’t understood selflessness on this level That there is no permanent single autonomous self. Now a subtler level is the the meaning the followers of Sūtra.
And I assert that there is no self sufficient substantially exist itself. So there two of the first turning of the wheel. Right. We’ll just leave it at that for a second. Right.
So when the Buddha taught the four noble truths in Varanasi he was mainly teaching for those who accepted everything to be truly existent but within that who had a predisposition to understanding the four truths, the four noble truths. And so he taught the four noble truths and the method of the path for these beings, the wisdom that they had to develop in the path to attain nirvana was the wisdom that understand there was no permanent single autonomous self or no self sufficient substantially existent self. Right, now even with that it’s not that clear necessarily what that means. So we need to develop that sort of a wisdom. Now there are no permanent.
At present we do tend to think that that coarse level of self exists. That in fact there is a fixed self. Permanent there really means fixed, unchanging. And like a single self. Like monolithic.
And then autonomous meaning it’s self powered. It is in a way independent. Now we do tend to think that there is such a self that exists within our mind body. True? So in a sense we grasp at that sort of self.
When I cut myself, when I think I’m bleeding, that eye that I’m focusing on is that sort of a self. There’s a permanent single autonomous self that’s bleeding. When I think: Oh, woe is me! I’m bleeding! You know, I’m thinking: Oh there’s this permanent self here.
And a single monolithic. And also that that self is autonomous, independent, not something that is an agent acts as an agent this sort of a thing and does things independently of self. Not as subtle as self sufficient but it is autonomous. Right. So that sort of a self we tend to affirm.
Now the subtler level of self is subtler a self sufficient substantially existent self. Now that sort of a self is not regarded as permanent but it’s something something that is able to kick start itself, originates in and of itself self sufficient and substantially existent meaning not merely imputed. Not merely something that’s designated as existing. It actually has a substance. It’s established by its own substance.
So we tend to grasp at those two types of self as being the self within our mind body continuum. When we wake up in the morning and think, I’d better get up, the thought I’d better get up is focusing on I. Now the I that that conception is focusing upon is what? It’s something that exists within our mind body continuum that is on a coarse level it’s permanent, single and autonomous. On a subtler level it’s self sufficient and substantially existent.
True? It’s hard for us to say because we just have the thought I and what is I? What is the I that I’m thinking about? We often don’t even it’s it’s self evident to us. It seems self evident to us but it’s not actually self evident at all because When we stop and try and think of what is that I?
What is the I that I’m thinking about? It’s not clear. It’s not. Anyway, so these two levels are regarded as some what? Assertions by the two lower levels of Buddhist view.
What I call the Vaibhāṣikas. Vaibhāṣika also there refers to those that follow the great treatise. So they have a quite a matter of fact and a sort of down to earth view of the world and they tend to see the self as being defined in those terms. Whereas the Sautrantikas have a somewhat subtler view. But both of them accept true existence.
The inherent existence. They accept true existence. Even these terms they don’t even bother. Because it’s self evident they don’t even bother talking about true existence. For them it’s just things exist as they are.
No further conversation ended into. It’s a bit like how we are. We don’t often go around talking about do things exist in the way they appear to exist? We just seem to think no, you know. We can talk about these things with everyone else and all of us agree in general that you know that’s a carpet, that’s a blackboard, that’s a chair and it exists how it appears to exist to us.
It’s not a True? Okay. Now those two Buddhist schools also have that sort of a view. Things exist in a way they appear to exist. We don’t even question that.
What we question is the nature of the I itself. And we have and those two schools seek to understand selflessness. And selflessness for them is there being no permanent single autonomous self. Or on a subtler level, there is no what? Self sufficient substantially existent self.
Now explaining these terms takes some time because really there those modes of abiding are imputed upon the I and it’s hard for us to find the eye or to really, you know, be able to hold the eye clearly. Clearly enough so that we can determine the nature of the eye. True? Okay look I’ll just briefly do the other the higher levels. Now this third is what are called the Chittamatran or in other words which means mind only.
Now these are Mind only school fascinating school. Now for them, they accept the practice of the four noble truths. Meaning eliminate the first two truths, establish the second two truths is the main practice of any being. A being has got to eliminate suffering and the causes of suffering. They have got to generate the path leading to liberation and they have to establish nirvana or cessation which is the very nature of the liberation itself.
Right? So all of they’re like these two same. Now for them What they seek to refute is they say that there is no Maybe we can just put it that way. There’s no subject and object that are distinct substances or that exist as distinct substances. Sounds a bit esoteric, doesn’t it?
So in other words, the Mind Only school want to practice the four noble truths. When they practice the four noble truths, they do it with a presumption that the final mode of abidance of everything is that everything is of the substance of the mind itself. So they’re really we were talking before about the three possibilities of the mind and the brain. Right? Like, the materialist view is that the mind is the brain.
So that’s really physicalism or materialism. And then you get the dualism in the middle whereas there is both brain and mind that are substantially distinct, different substance. And then there’s the idealist view in which states that really the brain is the mind. So this is more of that the idealist view. That everything is of the substance of the mind.
Now for many this seems counterintuitive, but some for some it’s that’s how it is. They’re really attracted to this view. Everything we look at is of the very substance of the mind. It’s mind substance like the table. It’s the substance of the mind itself.
It’s not made of atoms and molecules. It’s not mind but it’s of the substance of the mind. Right? So everything is of the substance of the mind itself. The mind itself is not made of atoms and molecules.
It’s not the brain. The mind is a different sort of energy. But that energy of the mind is the energy of everything. So that’s how things exist. That’s the reality about us.
So from that point of view as well, there is no extension. There’s no distant things that are way out there in space somewhere. It’s all just the mind, and the mind doesn’t have extension. Right? So there’s no, like, distance in a way.
Everything is just substance of the mind. Nothing’s distant. Nothing close. But everything merely appears within the sphere of the mind. Subject and object arise within the substance of the mind itself.
Subject being consciousness and object being the objects of that consciousness. They just arise in the substance of consciousness itself. With the appearance of, what, separation between the two. Anyone a mind only proponent here? Yeah, it’s a wonderful view especially to counter materialism.
It’s going to the other in a sense it goes to the other extreme. We have materialism and the other extreme is idealism. This is an example of idealism and that type of idealism helps to overcome the strong tendency we have to materialism. But for a mind only practitioner, they practice eliminating the truth of suffering and origin in a context of subject and object possessing the same substance or energy. Alright.
Okay. We’ll do a So that really is this third turning of the wheel. We do this of the wheel of dharma on the four truths. So there we have the Madhyamikan. Mādhyamika meaning middle way.
Actually there’s the author here has divided this up into two so we might do the two as well. So there’s a school called the autonomous school. They’re both Mādhyamika schools. And consequence. Okay.
So the autonomous here we can say that We have to be careful how we present this. There’s two parts to this. Object. Established in its uncommon mode of abidance Gosh. Sorry about that.
Oh, sorry. It was mealy. Sorry. Sorry? No this is part of the same one.
Sorry. The way that Pabongka is doing this is saying that there’s a combination of two things so I’m just listing them for this first one the autonomous. Yeah I think it’s Not merely being posited by the power of appearing to conception. Abidance. Let’s I hope that’s correct.
Basically that second one there many of the autonomous really assert two things. That the object exists from its own side, but it’s also imputed there by conception. It’s a combination of two things. What it’s refuting is really the opposite of that. So refuting that the object doesn’t exist from its own side and also refuting that it’s not imputed by conception.
In other words, what do you this Svatantrikas or the Madhyamikas in general are asserting that there is nothing true there is no perhaps we’ll just leave it at this. No true existence. There’s no true existence. So maybe we can just leave it at that. And we won’t go into too much detail about these last two.
So those are the four types of philosophic view that are presented by the four types of school and this last one also we’ll just we’ll just stop here too. This one here, natural existence, that’s the second turning. Second turning of the wheel the one that was done in Vulture’s Peak. Right! Okay we’ll just stop there.
There’s a bit of information there but I think that will just help to put it in into context the selflessness or emptiness that we’re investigating in this course. So just useful to have that as a some background information. Okay look we’ll just stop now I think according to the timetable Okay we’ve got lunch now And we’ll start up again in one hour’s time. So that’s about, by my watch, about twenty to two. Okay.
Great. How are you doing with that information is it? What it’s trying to do is give us a bit of a map by which to look at this process of understanding reality or understanding the deeper modes of abidance of things. So what this basically shows us is progressively more subtle ways of looking at our existence. So different levels of selflessness in a way.
Right, so this is yeah sure. Oh the Consequentialist school okay now just these last two here. They’re both Madhya Mika schools. They’re both middle way schools and they both assert that things don’t truly exist. Right?
So they both assert equally that things don’t exist in a way they appear to exist but still the autonomous school does assert that things inherently exist. Right? So they assert things are not truly existent but still within that things are inherently existent. What it means is that they assert that there’s nothing in the universe that actually exists in the way it appears except for emptiness itself. Emptiness appears to be empty of true existence and it IS empty of true existence.
Everything else appears to be truly existent when it isn’t. So they assert that really they assert the fact of non true existence. However, they say that even though this is not truly existent, still it inherently exists. Right? Meaning that although it doesn’t truly exist it doesn’t exist in the way it appears still it exists by its own nature, characteristics.
Right? They say that there is a very subtle level or mode of abidance of this object that exists abidance this exists from its own side back towards us. Right? So in other words they now what I’ve written down there is this two elements to their view. What it means is that for them it’s not it arises dependent on the imputing consciousness.
Right? So its measure of existing depends on the consciousness that’s imputing it but also from its side there’s a little bit there its inherent existence. So it’s a combination of two things. Right, so that’s the autonomous view. The consequence schools say that not only is it not truly existent it’s not inherently existent either.
So they’re not leaving any any little foothold. Nothing. They’re saying that it doesn’t even exist from its own sight. It doesn’t exist by its own characteristics. It’s not inherently established.
It’s merely imputed there by conception. Its measure of existing is being merely imputed. So that’s the final view. The consequence view. Now the other views of that such as the autonomous and the mind only and followers of Sūtra and so forth all think will tend to say that the consequent school are nihilists.
They just don’t leave anything there. They’ve gone too far. They’ve negated everything and the object can’t even exist like that. That if there is no inherent object there, if there’s no object from its own side established by its own characteristics then there’s no object. But the consequence school are saying: Well, no.
The way things exist are merely imputed there by conception. Yep those two together. They exist from its own side and also imputed there by conception. It’s a combination of two things. But the consequence school is just saying there’s one thing.
There’s nothing coming from the side of the object. It’s merely imputed. Everything. That’s the highest view. Yes.
Yeah. Yeah that that’s similar to the autonomous but the autonomous are saying but there’s also the autonomy there what that’s referring to is that the object is autonomous. That it has a certain level of existence from its side. But both both the consequence school and the autonomous school assert that the objects are imputed by conception But only the consequence says that they’re merely imputed there by conception. That there is no other element in the equation.
They’re merely imputed. So from that point of view we can see why the consequent school are regarded as asserting everything to be illusory like a dream. Okay well so that’s just a very simple sort of summation of these different levels of view that occur. So what we’re looking at here is basically coming to an understanding of the consequent school point of view. Right.
Now just Now here Pabongka goes on to say: When all phenomena of saṃsāra and nirvana are never seen to be deceptive regarding cause and result and any target object of observation is destroyed, that is the path that is the entry to the path pleasing to the Buddha’s. So what that means is that when the subject which is the empty basis cause and result and so on. Oh wait a minute that’s not so clear there. So in other words what it’s teaching there is that saṃsāra functions perfectly through causation through cause and effect. But within that there are ways of interpreting this process that are false.
When all of those false modes of interpreting the causation that we see are destroyed then one gains the the correct view, the path that is pleasing to the Buddha’s. So in other words, we need to step back and develop this correct way of interpreting what’s happening around instances of causation, cause and result and so forth. Once we begin to be able to interpret these correctly then we’re actually entering the way of enlightenment itself. Now I’m just thinking we might just have a look at this sheet that we’ve got. Now there is another one as well that I’ll probably hand out tomorrow.
Now this particular sheet is talking about the five different types of reasoning that we can use to establish emptiness. Now how we’re doing this is that we’re using the conceptual mind to give us a framework, to give us a foothold in this topic. And how do we generate a correct conception? How do we begin the process of generating a correct conception is through correct reasoning. So if there’s a reason a proper reason is set out then we can use that as a way of developing a correct conception.
Now these are five different types of correct reasoning that prove emptiness. Now as it says in the beginning of this particular sheet which has got the more writing on it. Sorry it doesn’t the pages are not numbered there. In Tibetan Buddhist logic there are five major reasons proving emptiness: the proof free of one or many, the proof of the vajra shard or the diamond shard. Proof denying generation through existing or not existing.
Proof denying generation through the four possibilities. And the proof of dependent origination or dependent arising. So in a way developing correct conception of emptiness is probably going to be established by using one of these five types of reason. Right, so we’ll just have a look at the first type. The proof free of one or many.
So this is a proof that analyzes the nature of phenomena and reveals the door of liberation of emptiness that is free of one and many. So what that means is that it’s establishing non true existence by a reason. Now the reason itself is a valid reason. Now the reason is take a sprout as the subject of the syllogism. It is not truly existent because it does not truly exist as one or many.
That might sound like a relatively straightforward statement. Does it sound logical? Okay, so this is the reasoning of one or many. Okay if we take a sprout a sprout doesn’t truly exist meaning it doesn’t exist in the way it appears. Why?
Because it does not truly exist as one thing and it doesn’t truly exist as many things. Right? Does anyone agree with that reasoning? Right now the way we would approach this is dividing that reason up into two. So it’s not truly existently one.
It is not truly existently many. So if we look at it first it is not truly existent as one entity. Right? Now we may think: Well, wait a minute. It is just one entity.
Right? But actually when we look at a sprout we notice that it’s composed of many different parts. Right? So there’s not just anything truly established there is a single thing. There are just many parts of that object.
So it’s not it’s not established as truly existently one because it has many parts. What is also implied here is if we say something is truly established as one then there absolutely is just one thing there. But everything we look at is composed of many different parts. Right? So it’s not that there’s just, you know, the one entity of the entity of the the sprout there.
It might have a stem and a couple of leaves. Okay. So we can see that it’s already composed of parts. Now it appears in a way to be monolithically single. There’s just one sort of entity there.
It appears to be it to exist in the way it appears to us. But appears to be just singly one. It appears to be truly just one monolithic thing. But when we investigate we know that it’s all composed of parts and there isn’t just one monolithic thing there if we can put it that way. True?
Sorry? What do you mean? The name like the The sprout. The sprout, it’s just referring to a single thing isn’t it? Right?
But sprout itself is not composed of just one thing. It’s not truly one. And if something can if anything being truly one can be what? Denied or refuted then truly existent many cannot survive because truly existent or truly many depends on there being truly one. Because truly many is just an accumulation of truly a lot of different truly established single things.
So if we can’t establish anything as truly one then truly one or truly many cannot neither can be established. So in a sense what this is doing is it’s just focusing us on this issue of a truly existent thing. And in a way it’s gonna sound a little bit like You know what is the issue here? Is there really an issue here? How could that affect us?
This way or that way? The benefit is that we begin to look at the issue and at present we probably have no doubt of it exists the way it appears to exist. That’s how it is. The sprout is a sprout and it appears to truly exist there. So what’s wrong with that?
Why are we trying to prove that it’s not truly existently there? That’s good. We get to that point we start questioning the status, the nature of that object. So this is the beginning of the process of investigating correct view. Yep.
It may not be. There’s many components to the shape there as well. Yeah like there’s little arcs here so on isn’t there? I mean we can divide it all up. There’s many elements of shape that go into making a bigger shape.
It’s not just a monolithic circle sphere. It’s like it’s composed of many things come together to establish it. True? Now we have a tendency to go to the monolithic to the true to the absolute but when we investigate we notice that oh wait a minute you know it’s that sort of truly established what? Aspect or truly established assertion there you know is probably is not quite as convincing as it should be.
Middle sphere okay but it is a sphere fine but it’s not it’s made of parts as well isn’t it? True? Well, mean even it’s got an eastern part and a western part, an upper part and a lower part. True? He does have fully convinced it.
Yeah. Oh no we can argue. The point about looking at these types of reasoning is to throw it out. We don’t you know if we think it doesn’t sound correct throw it out. But we the thing is that we are introducing ourselves to the question of our true existence.
And why are we doing that? Because comes up because the Madhyamikas say there is no such thing and we’re interested to see what they’re actually talking about. That’s all. Okay so here now this is regarded as a valid reason meaning that those words themselves have the power to invoke a correct conception of non true existence. Then if we contemplate this out long enough we will come to an understanding of non true existence just relying on those words because it said those words valid for more valid reason.
Syllogism. Sorry? Invoke the understanding conceptual understanding of non true existence. These words are said to be valid. It’s like with anything, you know, all of our conversation, our discussions, communications with others tends to hinge on valid words.
Right? So in order to develop an understanding of anything we need a level of validity. This is how we function and if what is supporting our ideas are invalid words or half truths or hearsay or and so on and so forth then we can never generate a correct conception in dependence on them. So this is why you know we look to developing an understanding of what valid speech is. One of our problems is that we have many ideas that have arisen in the past due to hearsay and so on and we don’t understand those conceptions to be misconceptions.
We think that they’re valid. They sort of come together we incorporate them in our what might be called a worldview of things as our interpreting our interpretation of the world around us. But those sorts of things we need to just be aware of and test them all the time. Test to see whether they’re valid or not. So anyway this first one is a proof of a sprout not being truly existent because it’s not truly existent as a single entity and it’s not truly existent as a multiple entity.
All right any other issues to do with that first reason? Well the reason itself is that it’s saying that if something were truly existent it would have to be a truly existent single entity or a truly existent multiple entity or many things. Right? There’s no other possibility. Right?
And it’s saying that the sprout is not truly existent because it’s not truly existent as one and it’s not truly existent as many. It’s a in one sense it’s not saying very much. Right? And the other sense is bringing up this essential issue about true existence. Right?
So half the benefit I think of this sort of syllogism is that it’s just raising the issue of true existence so that we look at it. And why? Because then we test to see whether things exist in the way they appear to exist or not. Why are we doing this? What’s of benefit there?
For instance, if we have an enemy, when the enemy abuses us and calls us stupid, right? We focus on that person we hold that person to be a monolithic truly existent person. Their words are truly existent and they’ve struck me who’s a truly existent person. Right? And caused me untold pain because of calling me stupid when I probably was stupid or am stupid whatever.
Right? All of this depends on conceiving like the words themselves to be truly existent. I, you know, that person saying: You are stupid! I take the words themselves to be truly existent. I take that person to be truly existent.
I take the state of being stupid to be truly existent and I take myself the target to be truly existent. So this process holds together because I hold things to be truly existent. I wouldn’t be offended if I understood that I was not truly existent. Now some people at that stage may think, well, wait a minute. Better that I’m truly existent and I at least I exist.
Whether people insult me or not, I can put up with that. Ah. It would be ironic if we’ve been offended, like, you know, countless times from beginningless time, and it’s all rather illusory. There was never a truly existent person or words or opponent or enemy to be, you know, at any stage. We’d be laboring through all of this for not much result.
So anyway this issue whether it truly exists or not is the important element there. Okay let’s have a look at another one: the proof of the vajra shard. This proof that analyzes cause and reveals the door of liberation of signlessness that is like a vajra or a diamond shard that destroys the rock of wrong conception of those who advocate true existence. So it’s called vajra shard because it begins to destroy the rock of wrong conception. Interestingly the wrong conception is regarded here as like a rock.
Like something that’s endured for a long time. That’s hard for us to dislodge and so on. The vajra shard. Take a sprout. We could use anything there.
Take a vase, take a chair, take a car, even take a person and so on. Okay here we’re using a sprout. Take a person oh sorry, take a sprout it is not truly existent because it does not truly exist oh sorry does not truly arise because it does not rise from self, from other, from both or without a cause. So that reasoning there comes from the first verse of the first chapter of Nāgārjuna’s text on the root of wisdom. Take a sprout it doesn’t truly arise because it does not arise from itself and it doesn’t arise from anything else, from another.
It doesn’t arise from both itself and some something other and it doesn’t arise without a cause. Right. So this was the one we were talking about before as well: not from self, from other. So again we’re looking at not it doesn’t truly arise. So a sprout doesn’t arise in a truly existent way.
In fact if it did it couldn’t arise in the first place. If the seed were truly existent the seed would be utterly fixed in and of itself and it could never do anything. Evolve into a sprout. The fact that the seed is not truly existent that we have a sprout arising from it. The fact that the sprout is not truly existent means that it will grow into a tree.
If the sprout were truly existent nothing would function. It would be fixed. Yeah that’s right it would be truly established in itself. It wouldn’t and if it were truly established in itself it couldn’t be acted upon by other things like causes and conditions. Okay, so it doesn’t truly arise because it doesn’t arise from itself.
In a way it’s almost as if we believe the first one. Something arises in and of itself. But that’s a view more commonly held by philosophic schools such as the Samkhya the early Samkhya school who had the idea that the result existed in an unmanifest form in the cause. Right? So that in a sense the tree exists in an unmanifest state in the seed.
So all one was doing was just manifesting that unmanifest state. Therefore if that did exist in that way then we would say that a thing arose from itself. The tree arose from itself because it’s there in an unmanifest state from the beginning, from the seed state. Does that sound half plausible that The potential is there but does that mean that the result exists in an unmanifest way at the time of its cause? We should debate this one out.
If we have an apple seed is there an apple tree there in an unmanifest state already? Why not? True. Is there anything of the tree in the seed? What about the genetic material?
So there is something of the tree already there in the seed? No. Is there anything of the tree that’s already there in the seed? Okay now the genetic material is — is that the genetic material of a seed or of the tree? Seed?
Yes, yes. I think we’d have to go that way. Anyone disagree with that? No it doesn’t? Right does that mean therefore the tree is there in an unmanifest state at the time of the scene?
So the result exists at the time of the course. It doesn’t true! True. Right. So is any part of the tree there existing at the time of its seed?
Right well this is a okay well that’s the first one there. Arising from that’s implied in this in the term arising from itself. It’s saying that at the time of the cause of that thing that thing exists in some way. There’s some sort of unmanifest reality of that object already pre existing in its cause. So that’s a difficult position to hold actually philosophically it is.
What do you mean specific? It is specific in that sense. But is the tree does it pre exist in its seed? That’d be hard otherwise you have to say, Well are there leaves and bark and branches in the seed? They’re not.
There’s no What’s the definition of a tree? Yeah, that’s pretty much how the Tibetans define it as well! A big thing with leaves, branches and so on doesn’t exist at the time of the seed does it? Thin? Okay so it’s not generated from itself.
It doesn’t arise from itself. And the second one here is other. Does it arise from other? Seed which is other? If you say the potential is there True, the genetic code is there but the tree isn’t there is it?
Now this second part the other does not arise from self, from other, from both or without a cause. That other there actually if we just in terms of the words that is true the sprout does arise from other but it doesn’t truly arise from another. So this particular I don’t know presentation is very It doesn’t truly arise because if in fact the other were truly existent the sprout would truly existent there would be no way that that other could influence the truly existent sprout. Right? If the sprout truly existed the seed which is other than the sprout and which in itself is truly existent could not give rise to the sprout.
That’s why it would be fixed fixed in and of itself truly established in and of itself. And so it couldn’t do much it couldn’t do much to produce anything and it couldn’t be acted upon by causes and conditions to give rise to a sprout. Sprout. So it does not arise from other. Does not truly arise it does not truly arise from itself another or from both or without a cause.
So it can’t arise without a cause. It can’t arise from both self and other because we’ve already dismissed it arising from itself and also we don’t accept it arises from other truly. Nominally it does arise from other but not truly, not in a true sense. So how are doing? Everyone’s very patient.
To actually go through this reasoning does take a bit of effort and it it’s a bit of a combination of: Does this make much difference? What’s the point here? Is there a real point? The reason that comes up is that we so strongly hold things to be truly existent. That it’s like well you know we the habit is so strong that it’s hard for us to even generate a doubt about it.
But part of the why we’re looking at this is to get some idea of the presentation of these five types of reasoning so that we can think about it a little bit later. Because ultimately in developing the correct view we need to deal with the issue of true existence. Now in a sense we’ve leaped across the no permanent self and so forth, the no self sufficient self, the no subject object as distinct substance. We’ve put that to one side and we’ve leapt right into the deep end with dealing with the issue of true existence. So that’s a bit of a leap.
That’s a big leap actually there. But that’s fine we can do it that way. All right we’ll just have a look at the next one. So the proof denying generation through existing or not existing. The proof denying generation through existing or not existing is a proof that analyzes results and reveals the door of liberation liberation of wishlessness that denies existent or nonexistent generation.
Take a sprout. It is not truly existent because it does not arise through existing, non existing, both existing and non existent, or neither existing or non existent existing at the time of the cause. Now there’s usually the four. This is the tetralema. These four possibilities.
Only the first two possibilities are actually possible. Right? We have four possibilities. That’s right: both, neither oh sorry arise through existing is the first possibility or not existing existing is the second possibility. Both or neither are added there just to demonstrate that every possibility is included here just in case some may think.
Right! So that same sprout is not truly existent because it does not arise through existing not existing both existing and not existing or neither existing or not existing at the time of the cause. Okay, now it’s some degree it’s similar to the former two but it is subtly different. But we don’t have time to go into all the issues of why it is a little bit different, why it’s listed separately. But it sprout doesn’t exist.
It’s not truly existent because it does not arise through existing at the time of its cause. And it does not not exist. It doesn’t arise through not existing at the time of its cause. So what is being looked at here again is the mode of existence. It doesn’t truly exist because it doesn’t truly exist at the time of its cause.
It doesn’t truly not exist at the time of its cause and neither nor both or both nor neither nor Those two last possibilities are also excluded. Okay so we’re a little bit we’re becoming more familiar with this the reasoning that’s given. True it doesn’t exist at the time of its cause and it doesn’t not exist truly at the time of its cause. I think that is probably sufficient there. Now we go over to the next one.
The proof denying generation through four possibilities. Take proof denying that a proof that analyzes both cause and result and denies generation through the four possibilities. Take a sprout it is not truly existent because a single ultimate cause does not produce a single does not produce a single or multiple results and multiple ultimate causes do not produce a single or multiple results. Okay. Now again that has some relation in a way with the previous causes previous reasons.
But again it’s it’s subtly different because it’s talking about the four possibilities. Right now that again is another reason that we can use and contemplate to establish that a sprout or any other impermanent entity here is not truly existent. So I thought we could agree with that reason as well. A single ultimate cause does not produce a single or multiple results. So in other words an ultimate here really referring to truly existent.
So truly existent cause does not produce a single or multiple results and a multiple ultimate cause does not produce a single or multiple results. Okay, without going into too much detail, The type of reasoning is somewhat similar. Now the fifth one: the proof of dependent origination or dependent arising. This is a proof of dependent origination that is the king of reasons establishing that all dharmas or all phenomena are not truly established. Take a sprout: it is not truly established because it is a dependent origination.
It is a dependent arising. So this is regarded as the king of reasons. The others in a way are a little bit more complex. The second one the vajra shard is also very important. The first one also is important.
They’re the probably the three most the three that are focused on more. But the principal one here is this one: take a sprout it is not truly established because it is a dependent arising. So just establishing something as a dependent arising is enough to establish that it’s not truly existent. Just the fact that something functions it should be sufficient to establish that it’s not truly established or it doesn’t exist in the way it appears to exist. Now we’re so used to affirming this appearance of things because things do naturally appear to be truly existent.
There’s almost a bias within sense consciousness that things existent entities appear to be truly existent to sense consciousness. Consciousness and we tend to affirm that. When we look around we tend to things appear as if they exist over there and they exist from their own side or they exist in the way they appear to exist. And in a way mental conception just takes up on that and affirms it all that it exists that way. It’s a very subtle process.
Process. But really the very fact that things are dependent arisings. And for the most part for us this means they are causally dependent. Their rise in dependence on their causes completely refutes the fact that they exist in the way they appear. Now some say that that reasoning actually establishes they exist in the way they appear.
Appear. The Chittamatrans for instance. But really when we investigate that reasoning there just the mere appreciation that things are dependent arising are enough to counter the assertion of their true existence. That the fact that they’re truly established. Okay, well that’s good.
We’ve just briefly went through those five types types of reasoning then it can be useful for us to just contemplate anything from this perspective. And when something comes like an enemy comes to mind we can even investigate their true existence. Is that person truly existent? Now generally we’re not going to go that way. Someone says something nasty to us you know we react instantly without thinking, without reflecting on the process, on the danger of the process.
And we tend to there’s an underlying ignorance or a particular type of afflictive view that interprets that being as being truly existent. Their words as truly existent. I am truly existent. And we then with that underlying wrong afflictive view we generate annoyance, resentment and so on. And there’s not much of an opportunity for us to step back from the process and just say: Wait a minute.
You know is that person truly existent? Am I truly existent? But if we can it’s of benefit. You know I’m not truly existent because I’m a dependent arising. Absolutely!
Often in fact that’s a very good point with these reasonings they take further reasoning in order to establish them. Well if we get to the point take a sprout it is not truly existent. Why? Because it does not arrive because it is let’s go is not truly established because it is a dependent arising. Why?
Why is it a dependent arising? Or how is it a dependent arising? Okay, true. What’s the definition of a dependent arising? Getting there What’s the established by its parts.
Now we should memorize that definition. That which is established by its parts is the definition of a dependent arising. So when we get to this stage in the analysis take this little brass bowl it is not truly existent because it’s a dependent arising. Why? It is a dependent arising because it is established by its parts.
Why? Then we have to keep going with this. Why is it established in dependence on its parts? It’s established in dependence upon its what? Upper parts and lower parts, outer parts and inner parts, scratched parts and unscratched parts.
And subtle parts. True? Hollow parts and solid parts. Imputation is always part of the process. Imputation here is we’re using imputation to understand.
We’re using imputation in the process of language always. Grasping a true existence is a type of imputation it’s imputing true existence to an object. It’s the conception that holds an object to be truly existent. It imputes the object to be truly existent. It attaches the label true existence to any object.
So true this object is established in dependence on its parts isn’t it? Everyone accept that? Anyone not fully convinced that it’s established in dependence on its parts? Okay which means that there’s not one subatomic no matter how far down you go it’s all dependent on its parts. You never come to an end of parts in that object in other words.
Because when you come to you know we can take you know this one atom of that brass ball. It is not truly established because it’s dependent on its parts and then you get to the subatomic level of that. Similarly it’s established in dependence on its parts. Parts go all the way down there’s no lower limit no upper limit no lower limit. So it’s a dependent arising.
Right. Now for us we have a very strong conception that that object is fixed and truly existent. So this topic of reasoning is not having much effect at present upon us. We have the strong habit we’ve had it for a long long time that that object appears in a particular way and it exists in precisely the way it appears. And even when we introduce this type of reasoning it’s a bit like water off a duck’s back.
It’s almost as if well so what? It’s still just a brass ball and that brass ball you know exists there and pretty much exists as it as it appears. We might not get to the point of verbalizing that internally. It’s more an innate way of grasping that object. But this type of reasoning can gradually filter down to the innate level.
So what in a sense we’re using? We’re using these guidelines as a way of getting to the fact of the object. In fact in the end if it does exist in the way it appears to exist then we need to know that. We need to be able to establish it. But if it doesn’t we also need to know that.
Everyone’s been very patient. Everyone yeah. Oh there should be an agreement, yeah. Greek logic is very similar which is what scientific method traces back to the logic of the Greeks. The Indian logic is highly developed like Greek logic.
Slightly it’s slightly different but at root you know there are fundamental correspondences between the two systems. Yep. Yep. Sure. Yeah.
Right. Yeah, well the basic approach to that is if there’s not truly one then many is impossible because many is only composed of you know multiple instances of one so that that’s the basic yeah. But that’s yeah yeah this needs yeah no there there will be. What this is also based on is the whole nature of conception itself and it’s trying to investigate how the process of the penny dropping if we could put it that way. Like so we might we might just have a break at this stage.
Yeah. We’ll have a break. I have you know, you do. I was just wondering. Do you remember what time it was?
Two thirty. Yeah. Oh, okay. Yeah. No.
We’ll just have a yeah. We’ll have fifteen minute break. Everyone have a break. Have a cup of tea. Right, so just throw ourselves into the deep end.
The seven forms of reasoning. So good to have a bit of an idea about these seven forms of reasoning. Now this follows on from the five types of reasoning establishing non true existence that we did in the previous session. So this is looking at the reasoning such as like a sprout. It follows it’s not truly established because it’s a dependent arising.
But it also has application to the other form other four types of reasoning as well. Is an old example that we’re using. So here explaining the sevenfold reasoning has two parts: formulating the example and applying the meaning. So formulating the example is looking at the text Madhyamakāvatāra which is like the text on the middle way Mādhyamika. Avatara meaning like a supplement, explanation of, entering this type of meaning, entering the middle way.
So now we’re looking at a chariot. So that text states: A chariot is not asserted to be other than its parts nor not other nor does it possess them nor does it depend on its parts. Okay now just keep in mind that statement there: nor do its parts depend on it nor is the mere assembly nor is it the mere assembly of its parts nor is it their shape. The person should be understood in just this way. Right.
So we’re just gonna have a slow look. We’re not going to finish this today. This hopefully we’ll have time to go through this over the rest of the sessions. So if you analyze the chariot in terms of the seven types of reason or the seven aspects of this reasoning such as not being one with nor distinct from its parts and so on you do not find a chariot. However, it is agreed that a chariot imputed in dependence on its parts can be authentically established by valid awareness and that is not harmed by authentic assessment and it is said that the self aggregates can also be established in just this way.
Okay so that initial statement there that there is a chariot. We’re not denying the existence of a chariot. A chariot does exist. But what we’re looking at is just how it exists. What is its mode of abidance?
So we’re using a particular type of analysis here This seven part analysis to do that. And what we’re trying to establish is the valid awareness of the chariot imputed in dependence on its parts. Now there are seven points that follow after that. The chariot is not the same as its parts. The chariot is not other than its parts.
The chariot does not depend on its parts. Its parts do not depend on the chariot. The chariot does not possess parts. The chariot is not merely not the mere assembly of its parts. The chariot is not the shape of its parts.
Okay. It doesn’t leave much left over for the chariot. But that’s the actual way the chariot exists. Right. So we can look firstly at the first point.
Take the first point: the chariot is not the same as its parts. Take a chariot. Here we can take a Ford Focus or we can take a know Holden Cruise or whatever. If we update the example a little bit take the family car sitting out there in the garage. It is not inherently one with its parts such as the axle, the wheels, the nails or the rivets and the bolts and so on because if it were one with those then errors would arise such as just as the parts are many so too the chariot or the car would be many.
And just as the chariot is one so to the parts would be one. And the function of the agent and action or the object would be the same, would be just one and so on. So if the chariot were the same as its parts then these faults would arise. Okay, now just to dwell on that for a little little while: Can we establish that the car is not the same as the parts of the car? We can, can’t we?
Okay and the obvious fault there is that the parts are many and the car is one. If they’re the same then either there’s just one part or there’s many cars. However on a on a deeper level we have a little bit of doubt about that: Is the car the same as the parts of the car? Because they’re so they are intimately related aren’t they? Okay any further issues with that?
That’s right. So for that reason the car is not just the parts. They’re not the same. The chariot is not the same as the parts. Okay.
Then the second one: The chariot is not other than its parts. So take the chariot. It is not inherently distinct from its parts because if it were other than its parts it would be distinct in nature. And if they were distinct in nature and coexistent they would necessarily be separate unrelated objects. Therefore like a horse and ox the chariot must be observed to be distinct from its parts, but it is not observed as that.
It is not inherently distinct from its parts Do we accept that? And the reason being it’s not inherently distinct because if were other than its parts it would be distinct in nature. There’d be some substance of the car separate from the parts of the car. Okay, if we take our car it’s made up of impermanent parts. Right?
Now that car that we have is it an object of eye awareness? When I see in the distance see it in the distance can we see our car with our eye awareness? So our car is an object of eye awareness. Well you say we can see it don’t we? I see the car.
Oh do we actually see the car when we look at it? But don’t we see the car? I mean if we see a car driving in we say Oh that’s Fred’s car or if Fred says later Oh did you see my car? And we say Yes I saw it. Are we lying?
And we say No, we saw the car. Is that a lie or is it correct? Factual, authentic, Valid speech? So we saw the car. So the car is an object of eye consciousness.
If we have any doubt about whether something is a car or not what of the five senses do we use to eliminate doubt about what it is? Often we don’t have much doubt about whether something’s a car or not. It might be a cardboard car for instance and it looks like a car from a distance but then when we get over closer we can see a bit of funny wrinkle on the surface and we can see oh it’s made of cardboard but we use eye consciousness to tell whether something’s a car or not. So the car is an object of eye consciousness. True?
Anyone disagree with that? What’s the definition of a car? Part of this process is also involved with understanding what a car is. A chariot is. Now we know we see something and we then impute it to be a car.
On what basis? Wheels and it moves people? It could be a bicycle. It could be a train. It could be a know a scooter.
What is the definition of a car? Okay True but in a sense there needs to be a set of defining characteristics of carness. We know what it is we look at something and we know instantly whether it’s a car or not but when we’re questioned as to what are those attributes that make up the car? It is not that easy to define but they’re there you know like it should have at least well probably three or or four wheels. Can it have more than four wheels?
Three wheels at least! Sorry? Spare? Okay. Six wheels?
Wheels? Now just for an ordinary car for us to label something as a car or three. Three wheels okay for a tri funny little old car. Okay and then it’s got doors and some types of doors boot steering wheel as well. That’s right it might not have doors but it it’s a conveyance it gets from A to B.
Right doesn’t necessarily have to have a windscreen. Like it could be like a jeep you know without you know just that would still be a car wouldn’t it? Or would it? Yeah. I Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Yep. That’s right. What we’ve got to identify what the coarse gross object is to begin with.
Be able to identify it. Car. Chariot. Yeah we often work backwards from that yeah from the negative negating what it isn’t. To put down a definition for a car because that’s what guides us.
Know when we look at something we really have a I don’t know a set of a definition really. We’re using, we’re applying and comparing that object with our understanding of what a car is and that understanding will have you know a verbal definition. Is a picture of a car a car? Right. An image of a car is not a car but to come up with a precise definition that fits every instance of a car is not that easy.
It’s a bit like the definition of a human being. What’s the definition of a human being? You know they we come in all shapes and sizes some with all limbs intact, some with you know no arms or legs, know some with you know the blind, deaf, dumb and so on. There’s many different The definition given in Tibetan is mi shes don go which means able to speak and understand meaning. Rigs su bcad pa they add two things to the end of by type and differentiated by type and those two terms are put in there so that they can include things that wouldn’t normally be included in the definition or exclude things that should be excluded.
Which in a way illustrates that it’s hard to make a definition of certain things. We could almost say the definition of a car would be something like something a powered vehicle with four wheels or something suitable by type to be a powered vehicle with four wheels or something like that. You know so that we have a way of including and excluding things from the definition according to circumstances. By type there means that by type it has humans it carries humans around in them or something like that you know you would Okay so the reason for doing this is that we know what a car is but we’re not that clear on what the definition of a car is but we’re applying it all the time because we’re identifying cars all the time. And we can see a car with our eye consciousness which means that car essentially is shape or color.
Is that okay? Everyone’s very much in agreement on these issues that’s good! So that’s what we’re looking at here with a chariot as well. We’re saying initially that the chariot is not the same as its parts. So the chariot there or the car there is what we’re imputing as a car.
What we’re imputing to be the car is not the same as its parts but at the same time it is not other than its parts. So we need to understand what the car is in order to understand what the parts of the car are. That’s straightforward. So if we look at that reasoning in section two we take the car it is not inherently distinct from its parts because if it were other than its parts it would be a distinct it would be distinct in nature from its parts and if they were distinct in nature and coexistent they would necessarily be separate unrelated objects. Okay so another thing is that the car is impermanent.
It’s an impermanent substance. Right? And the parts of the car are the impermanent substance that make up the car. Anyway we can’t When we point to the car we put our finger on the bonnet and we can feel the substance of the bonnet the iron the metal which is part of the substance of the car. So the car and the parts of the car are are what?
They’re not distinct in substance or nature here. Using distinct in nature means distinct in in substance. And if they were distinct in substance if there was a ka of one substance and the parts of another substance then they would coexist but they would be unrelated. Actually this This bring brings to mind what relationship means here. Do you accept that?
That if they were If it were other than its parts it would be distinct in nature distinct in substance from its parts and its parts and itself would be coexistent and separate unrelated objects. Yeah. The car and the parts of the car would be unrelated. That’s a hard question that one! It said there’s two types of relationship that are possible in the universe.
Only two types: causal relationship and intrinsic relationship. Now causal relationship is easy enough to understand. The result is related to the cause. Right? And that’s like a sort of relationship we’re very familiar with.
The tree is related to the seed of the tree. The son is related to the mother and so on. The result is related to the cause. Intrinsic relationship is when two things possess the same substance or nature. So there’s a relationship for instance between the rosary and the impermanence shape of the rosary because they’re of the same substance.
They have the same intrinsic nature. So the impermanence of this mala and the mala cannot be separated. Right? So they’re said to be intrinsically related. The impermanence of the mala and the mala are not the same are they?
Impermanence sorry the mala the rosary the rosary itself and the impermanence of the rosary are inseparable. We couldn’t have the rosary here and the impermanence of the rosary over here. True? Because they’re intrinsically related. What does it mean to be related?
Two things related or something say B is related to A if B is distinct from A and if A doesn’t exist B will necessarily not exist. There was B is related to A if B is distinct from A and if A doesn’t exist necessarily B will not exist. Therefore we can say that B is related to A. Now there are two types of relationship there either causal relationship Right? And then there’s the second one is intrinsic relationship.
So for instance, impermanence of the rosary is related to the rosary because if the rose they’re distinct? The impermanence of the rosary and the rosary are distinct. Aren’t they? They’re different. Because we can’t we can see the rosary with our eye consciousness but we can’t see the impermanence of the rosary with our eye consciousness.
So just looking at it from that way they’re distinct. And if the rosary doesn’t exist the impermanence of the rosary doesn’t exist. Now this is the sort of relationship that’s talked about here. If they were if the chariot or the car were other than its parts it would be distinct in nature from its parts and if they were distinct in nature coexistent they would necessarily be separate unrelated objects. Because here the parts of the car and the car are not causally related they can only be intrinsically related.
That’s the only possible type of relationship that occur could occur but they’re not intrinsically. If they were the car are other than its parts it would be distinct in nature and if they were distinct in nature and coexistent they would necessarily be separate unrelated objects. Therefore like a horse and an ox the chariot must be observed to be distinct from its parts but it is not observed as that. We can’t actually discern a chariot that is distinct from the parts of the chariot. We can’t observe a car that’s distinct in nature from the parts of a car.
So the chariot or the car is not other than its parts there’s no separate car from the parts of the car. As it says if they were distinct in nature and coexistent they would necessarily be separate unrelated objects but they’re not separate unrelated objects because they’re of the same nature. Right I think that that’s anyway just common sense there. The chariot is not the same as the parts but the chariot is not other than the parts. Alright number three: The chariot does not depend on its parts and its parts do not depend on the chariot.
Take the chariot Both positions that is that it inherently depends on its parts and its parts inherently depend on it are unacceptable. Both of those positions are unacceptable because if they were either, they must inherent be inherently distinct, but those positions have already been explained as unacceptable. They’re not inherently distinct because of the second reason. So the chariot does not depend on its parts in the sense that it doesn’t inherently depend on its parts. We can say that it does depend on its parts in a nominal sense but not inherently.
And vice versa. Right, does that sound okay after there? Anyone have any issue with the reasoning so far? I think the first one was alright. The chariot is not the same as its parts.
And the second one the chariot is not other than its parts. Okay and the chariot does not depend on its parts and the parts do not depend on the chariot follow from that but that means it doesn’t inherently depend. That word inherently there has a particular meaning. We can also mean truly depend. Can also interpret that to mean truly depend.
But we do know just nominally it does depend on its parts. I’m not sure if it’s how clear this is so far. It might not be that clear. So why are we doing this is really we’re investigating the whole idea of how things exist and so we’re using this example of just an everyday object and just to look at it in a bit of detail just to see if we can understand how it exists, its mode of abidance. So when we’re in bringing into the mix this level of investigation then we’re starting to talk about the very subtle levels of how this object exists how the car exists.
So for instance you when we’re outside and we see cars or you know we have no doubt that that’s a car. We have no doubt that the car exists but when we go into detail it starts to get harder and harder to be able to identify how it exists. It starts to feel as if the car is disappearing. We started off with a car and the more we look into it the less of a car we have. All right then we go on to the next one.
We’ll come back to these as well. But the fifth one: Take the chariot. So the chariot does not possess parts. The means by which a chariot inherently possesses its parts as for example Devadatta possesses an ox or Devadatta possesses an ear, Devadatta being the name of a person is unacceptable because according to the first means of possession they would be inherently distinct in nature. Can we just stop there?
The chariot does not possess parts in the same way that Devadatta possesses an ox. Right because Devadatta possessing an ox there’s really two things there: Devadatta and the ox. So it’s not that sort of a means of possessing parts. And according to the latter means of position they would be established as inherently one in nature such as Devadatta possessing an ear. So Devadatta possessing an ear is really where this is the mode of the car.
But neither are acceptable because both alternatives have already been refuted. So the chariot does not possess parts because it doesn’t possess parts in either of those two ways like possessing an ox or possessing an ear. In a way it’s talking about the car standing outside of the parts and possessing parts which it doesn’t do. There’s no chariot other than its parts. So that it could possess parts like a person possessing an ox or a person possessing an ear.
And the chariot is not the same as the parts. So in a sense that What we’re looking at here is the different relationships between the car and the parts of the car and trying to come up with just how the car exists in relation to its parts. So how are we doing with that fifth one? Is that okay? So perhaps there it’s a bit like the first one Devadatta possessing an ox really goes back to the second point.
The chariot is not other than its parts. Devadatta possessing an ear is a a chariot is not the same as its parts. He’s referring back to that point. Both alternatives have already been refuted. It’s not easy!
This type of analysis is not easy. How are we doing? We move on to the next bit? Okay we’ll go on we’ll just do one more and we’ll see The chariot is not the mere assembly of its parts. Now that almost seemed like a good possibility.
The assembly the car could be the assembly of those parts. Now take the chariot it is also unacceptable to posit it to be the mere assembly of its parts because in that case even the mere assembly of parts such as the wheels, the bolts and so on that are collected in one place but arranged with a slight separation and not although not incomplete would in consequence exist as a chariot. So yeah. It’s true. Yeah.
Right so here it’s really talking about the arrangement of the parts. Parts assembled in pretty much how they should be assembled but if there was a separation however slight Would it be a car? If it’s functioning but if it were assembled but not functioning Is a non functioning car a car? Yeah yeah yeah yeah Yes that’s right a car generally means implies that it’s functioning that it’s serving the purpose of the car. Like a watch or a clock is a clock that doesn’t work still a clock?
Yeah. Yeah. But is it can can we call it a clock? Like we’ve got a clock on the wall or we’ve one here. If it If it stops working, if I took the battery out, is it still a clock?
Yeah, we That would be similar I think. Yeah, I think that’s similar. In a way we’re trying to work out what the object is. In a way how many parts need to come together in order for it to be labeled as something? What its definition is?
How we recognize it as that? And for instance here if the if we think that the chariot is a chariot becomes a chariot through assembling the parts in a certain order. Well even just the mere assembly itself may not be sufficient to label something as a chariot. That’s something different. Yeah I think that’s sort of a praise, isn’t it?
That comes in in teamwork. You know, you get a team of of people that work in harmony as better than a team of champion or a group of champions or something. Anyway that’s a bit different. That’s more like a praise which is fine. So here what we’re just looking at is how things actually exist and just trying to take the example of the chariot.
Now the point also of this type of analysis is that it’s good as much as possible to take it very slowly because there’s so many implications at each stage of the reasoning that may not be obvious that, you know, what assumptions are being made at the first stage that only sort of come up a little bit later and one’s then got to go back to the first reasoning, the second leg of the reasoning, the third part of the reasoning, you know to look at those doubts and so forth. Now we’ve left through to number six and so we probably we get to a point here we’ve got probably one too many doubts now about the earlier parts of the reasoning and so we’re a bit slowed down by that which is fine. This type of reasoning is really quite profound and not obvious. And so it does take a little bit of time, you know, to work through. Even that first one the chariot, is not the same as its parts.
You know, elements to that that are many elements that are not that obvious. So for many types of analysis like this it just requires going backwards and forwards in the analysis. Go to this and you go back to that and then you come back to this. Because as Maitreya said: If it’s anything which is impermanent becomes easier through familiarity. So this seems extremely difficult at present.
It is difficult! It takes energy. The mind gets so far and then the mind runs out of it. The brain runs out of energy. It sort of gets to a point where Oh!
It’s like the car, you know, finally the battery going in the car. But if we have the opportunity then to go through this type of reasoning many times makes it easier. And that’s the point of the exercise so that it becomes easier and easier and we’re able able to discern these issues readily without too much effort. But in the beginning it’s hard work it takes a lot of energy put into it. So anyway we should just reflect on this the whole issue because everything that we deal with day in day out is in the same process of we label things chairs, tables, ourselves and we do it on the basis of understanding the definition, the defining characteristics of things and then seeing things with our sense awareness and then applying mental conception to giving a name to that object through knowing the meaning of the object or knowing the definition of the object.
But within that process we also have various types of conception that impute the nature of the existence of that object and that’s where potentially that supports or acts as a basis for the rise of emotions in relation to objects. So this is why we’re looking at this process. We’re trying to unpack it so we understand the emotions in relation to objects. And in order to understand the emotions we’re looking at this in a way it’s a deeper level of view interpreting the object. So when we start looking at the view that interprets the nature of the object then we’re looking at this sort of analysis of imputing the object to be something and then holding it to exist in the way it appears to exist.
This type of thing. Okay. Look. We we I think we’re, almost at four o’clock. Are we finishing at four today?
Probably we are. Yeah. Okay well we can just stop there for today. Everyone feet up, sit back, relax, rest the brain. We have to exercise the mind in this way.
Through doing this the mind becomes sharper. It’s like mental exercise. Although the mind itself it’s interesting the mind itself is not physical still we are using the brain. We are using the physical body as the supportive awareness. And in its supportive role the body gets tired.
So anyway if possible read through this section a little bit tonight and we will go again through these points tomorrow and just sort of just refresh our ideas in relation to these in the first session tomorrow. Okay just to finish off we’ll do a dedication.