Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 31-minute teaching, Ven Jampa Ignyen explores why understanding the Sūtra School’s doctrine of selflessness is essential, even for students aimed at the Prāsaṇgika view. He works through the distinction between selflessness—the absence of a permanent, independent self in persons and objects—and emptiness, showing how the Sūtra School establishes a rigorous foundation that later philosophical schools build upon. He addresses whether objects, as well as persons, are selfless; discusses the gross and subtle levels of self to be refuted; and clarifies what Sūtra School teachers mean by ultimate versus relative truth. The talk includes extensive Q&A with students, emphasizing that conceptual understanding requires systematic study of words and meanings before meditation practice develops. Suited for practitioners with some background in Buddhist philosophy.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 09 M and C 2001 05 01.mp3
UUID: 3ad7ab22-febf-4846-af6e-2fa29a6b4bc6
Teacher: Ven Jampa Ignyen
Collection: Mind and Cognition 2001 Month 04-06 (Ven Jampa Ignyen)
Date: 2001-05-01
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 31.5 minutes
Words: ~3,357
Everyone’s familiar with what selfless means. Yeah. So it means the lack of a really a non existent type self. It’s the lack of the self that we conceive of, we can see ourselves to be, and that conception is a wrong conception. Okay.
So here, we accept the reality of self selflessness. But in fact, everything is selfless including ourselves, even non existent entities are selfless. So it’s the same as emptiness. No. It’s not.
Here in saying selfless, it means that everything which exists is without a self. Or in terms of emptiness, we’d say everyone is empty of an inherent self. So what’s the difference? Here we’re talking from a sūtra school point of view, and they don’t assert emptiness. They assert only selflessness.
So what would they mean by emptiness as opposed to selflessness? Well, they assert empty as one of the four attributes of the truth of suffering, that everything that is the truth of suffering is impermanent, associated with suffering, empty and selfless. So they do assert a type of empty state or a state free of a self, but that is not emptiness. For the sūtra school, that’s they don’t assert emptiness. They don’t assert emptiness because they assert that everything impermanent is truly existent.
So in this text, emptiness is not an issue. Selflessness is. Exactly. It’s just an equivalent term. Selfless.
From a Buddhist perspective, selfless and anything which exists or even doesn’t exist are copervasive. They’re equivalent. That’s all. Right. Everything is selfless.
And even the rabbit with horns is selfless, which doesn’t exist. That’s all it means. All that it in other words, what this last line he refers to is that whether it exists or it doesn’t exist, its generic image is the appearing object of the conception holding it. That’s all that’s being said. It’s nothing really profound in a sense.
We say in this sūtra school, when they say selfless, do they mean that what I think of as myself doesn’t exist in any of these objects? Or do they mean that the object doesn’t have its own self? What they mean is that a subtle or a gross level of self doesn’t exist in either myself or in any other object. Yeah. But when you say that, you mean yourself.
Myself. Yep. Yeah. Yourself doesn’t exist in No. No.
No. Not like that. No. No. Within myself, there I’m selfless on a subtle level and a gross level both.
Meaning, on a gross level it means that I don’t have a permanent single self powered self anywhere within my mind body continuum. Yeah. That’s a gross level. On a subtle level, it’s that I don’t have a self arisen, substantially existent self anywhere within my mind body continuum. And that sort of self neither exists in anything else in the universe either.
From from And neither it doesn’t exist. That type of self, the gross or the subtle doesn’t exist in this, in that, in this, in this, doesn’t exist in yourself, and so forth. I mean, to me, to my ear, that sounds like description of emptiness in terms of No. That’s that’s gross. From the point of view of the schools that assert selflessness oh, sorry, emptiness, that’s a gross level of selflessness.
That’s not emptiness. Especially from the prasangika point of Sorry? Is this just semantics? No. No.
It’s what it’s doing is drawing subtler and subtler levels of the ultimate mode of abidance of things, whether we’re talking about, say, a person or non persons. The reason why we need to understand the grosser levels and and from there the subtle levels is so that we eventually understand the presentation of the middle way school. But in order to get there, we have to have some idea of what the gross levels of self are and to be able to refute them. If we can’t refute the grosser levels of self Unless you know Sorry? Unless know you’re That’s right.
Unless you know what you’re refuting, you ascertain the object of refutation, determine what that is, you can’t refute. And if we can’t refute the gross level of self, then we can’t understand the gross level of selflessness. Of course, we want to understand emptiness, but what’s being said is that unless we understand the grosser levels of selflessness, we’re not gonna understand the subtler levels, which stands to reason. This glass? Yeah.
Yeah. That’s an ultimate truth. For for them what an ultimate truth is, it’s just something which functions. Ultimately capable of function is the definition of ultimate truth for a sūtra school practitioner. Ultimately, not capable of function is the definition of relative truth.
For them, truth is anything which is permanent because it’s ultimately not capable of function. Space can’t function, selflessness doesn’t function, generic images don’t function. So they’re just relative truth or or concealer truth is a better word. Truth for a concealer, truth for a mind which conceals the actual mode of abidance of an object. So for the sūtra school, this is an ultimate truth because it’s functioning.
They’re very practical, down to earth, pragmatic type of school. They’re great. No. That’s right. They they only serve the selflessness of persons.
But that selflessness of persons pervades everything. Say the beginning of that again. Yeah. It’s not being used by a Not being used by by a person who possesses a self. That’s right.
So it’s selfless. Yeah. Really, selflessness is only established in relation to the aggregates, to the mind body continuum. But and because objects are not the objects of usage by such a person, they’re also selfless. But also we can say that also self of person doesn’t exist in any of these objects anyway.
So that’s why So they don’t assert self selflessness of dharma or objects or phenomena. Right? Right. They only assert selflessness of the person. For them, objects truly exist.
So for that reason, they don’t assert selflessness of these external objects, which are not persons. They only assert selflessness of the person. Which means the object of the person truly exists? Oh, the mind body truly exists. Yeah. It’s almost all the parts that truly exist, but there’s no gross level of self or subtle level of self that exists within these truly existent elements of mind and body.
And that’s the term selflessness. But from the higher school’s point of view, it’s it’s approaching approaching selflessness. It’s approaching a type of emptiness, but it’s only approaching. It still has a fair way to go. Right.
Selflessness is has a further implication, of course. Selflessness then, you’re it’s a bit like emptiness. Everything which exists is empty of true existence, but not everything is emptiness. Everything which exists is selfless, but not everything which exists is selflessness. That’s really what is meant.
That’s That’s why it’s just put in this way. Yep. Yep. It’s not talking about the chair’s selflessness being on the chair.
selflessness in relation to The user. The user. Yeah. Absolutely. All objects are selfless.
In terms of the user. In terms of the utilizing agent. Where I was getting confused was thinking of selflessness in the same way, thinking of emptiness of the chair. No. That’s a higher idea by higher schools.
Yep. Here the self the chair itself is selfless because it doesn’t possess a self because it’s not a person. But that’s very easy to understand. Yes. And understanding that doesn’t mean that we understand selflessness.
But if we understand that in relation to a person, then we understand selflessness. When you say it’s not possessed by a user, you mean what exactly do you mean? No. An object is said to be selfless because it’s the utilized object of a being who is selfless. That’s all.
Because really for the sūtra school, a self can only be posited in terms of a person. That and that they refute. They don’t refute a self of dharma or a self of objects that are not persons. Anyway, this is quite a this is something that comes up in tenets. It might be it’s getting more into the philosophy.
But here, in this text actually, we’re more although selflessness does come up, we’re just viewing selflessness here as really the fact that the mind body continuum of a person is free of a self arisen, substantially existent self. That is a self which is substantially distinct from the aggregates itself or themselves. That we would normally call the soul from the Yeah. Or the I. Actually, it’s really the I.
Yeah. There is a substantially existent I separate from the mind body continuum, within the mind body continuum, which is controlling everything and so on. That type of I doesn’t exist, even though it appears to exist. We’re probably fully convinced that it does exist. Yeah.
Well, the thing the thing about that too is that we often develop preconceptions about what the prasangikas are. And a lot of those preconceptions have to be undone because they’re just images, impressions we have that don’t necessarily represent what the prasangika themselves are asserting. Because what the prasangikas have asserted is really based on the work of the Sūtra School and Great Exposition School. In a sense, they’re commenting when when the Prāsaṇgika school or the Mādhyamika school, for instance, under Nāgārjuna, first or especially Nāgārjuna, when he first began to delineate the meaning of emptiness, he was doing that in an intellectual climate in India that was very much based on the views of the Sūtra School and the Great Exposition School in general. So really even to understand Nāgārjuna’s presentation requires a little bit of an understanding of the Sūtra School and the other Eighteen Schools, the Vaibhāṣika School.
In a way, also it’s a without having these as a basis, the prasangika, you know, would have difficulty in actually even formulating their view. Because the prasangika view is quite you know, it’s very, very subtle. And these earlier schools have really provided a basis into which their view can be contextualized. Then after Nāgārjuna came, then, you know, Asaṇga then established the view of the mind only school, which, you know, enabled some bridging of between this, the sūtra school and the Mādhyamika school to occur. To really carry forward what the sūtra school had had developed, you know, into a Madhyamikan view.
But the the mind only school were not quite Madhyamikas that were approaching that. And then later again, had Candrakīrti and so forth, set down the prasangika view. Differentiate the prasangika from the Svatāntrika. So a lot of what occurred in India occurred in a historical context of what preceded it. And much of what the Prāsaṇgika have stated, they’ve stated because of what went what preceded them, the intellectual ideas that were established before them.
And there were a number of things that they commented on and another many other things that they they they left or, you know, just adjusted in a minor way here and there, which really indicates the great debt in a way that we owe to the earlier schools who established the foundation. So here we’re dealing with one of the foundation schools, the sūtra school, the great Sūtra School. Although it it appears like, you know, we’re making a backward step, you know, we started off as a prasangika and now we’re going back to the, you know, these country hicks who, you know, had they always God, you know, they believe that? How could they believe that? But actually, what they’re saying is really quite profound.
And when, you know, when one is able to look in some depth into these issues, one sees just how useful and how helpful their views are. Especially because they often correspond, you know, to actually how we we think we function anyway. So getting an idea of Sūtra School is a great foundation for eventually understanding the Prāsaṇgika view. But not necessarily It’s not that we’re making a backward step and going back to the Sūtra School. We may actually be going forward into the Sūtra School.
Because really the practice of all of our well, that comprehension of the mind and how the mind functions and so forth is really based in in texts such as the Sūtra School. And even the Sūtra School is very much grounded in the previous schools, the Vaibhāṣika School, the Theravāda and so forth. And if one can investigate the Theravāda, there’s absolutely huge amount of material where they discuss the entire nature of the mind, the seventeen moments of of mind and how these seventeen moments express the continuity of the mind and so forth, it’s quite remarkable. Anyway. But admittedly, at times it appears very confusing to us.
But we do need some patience with this. And this type of text here, this text we can actually study many, many times over and we probably need to. And every time we come back and study it, there it will be easier to understand than the previous time. Because fundamental teaching is is just here in this text. And what we it just needs a little bit of adjustment in order to take it to the prasangika view.
But understanding that prasangika view is of the nature of the mind is just about impossible without understanding what the Sūtra School is saying. I mean, if we have any doubts about what conception is, then we really should investigate what the Sūtra School is saying, get a good idea of what the Sūtra School is saying about conception, and then based on that then begin to later on develop or study what the Prāsaṇgika School have to say. Oh, is. Absolutely. And we need to come back to them many times over and investigate them because it’s through understanding what conception is that we can begin to understand how we develop understanding of anything.
Does the text later on It To an extent, but if we really want to go into the nature of conception, we probably have to go into things like Pramānavārttika, the study of valid awareness by Dharmakīrti. And if possible, even to study his predecessor who was Dignāgā. Are they on the reading list? They’re not really on the reading list. It’s no.
But we go into a little bit in Lorig and probably sufficient for our purposes. But we do need to have some understanding of conception because we’re using conception all the time. Even now, all we’re using really is conception. We’re using our ear ear awareness. It’s comprehending the sounds.
Our conception is comprehending the meaning of the sounds. We need to understand how our conceptual awareness is able to do this. Because ultimately, all we seek is correct understanding to comprehend. In fact, all we’re doing in a sense is just eliminating our misconceptions, establishing how this is possible. So therefore, need to understand conception.
Very much what this text is about is just presenting a view of what conception is. And in order to do that, then it’s talking about mind in general and using sensory awareness as, you know, like an easily comprehended example of what awareness is, and then on that basis, presenting conception. Often we do. Yeah. Yep.
This is it’s very common, And so we need to differentiate that. As long as we’re aware anyway of how we’re using the terms, then we can use whatever we like. But Yeah. We need to be able to differentiate if we’re talking about the object or the conception holding that object. Because it’s really getting the word straight that is gonna be the measure of whether we can get to the meaning or not.
It’s only through the words that we’re gonna understand the meaning. The other option is that we just wait for someone to zap us with the understanding. Isn’t it on its own? I don’t think that really occurs. What are the three what do we have?
Wisdom derived from hearing, wisdom derived from contemplation, wisdom derived from meditation. Well, that’s easy. It’s through meditation. No. They can’t list the three.
First, hearing. Second, contemplation. Third, There’s no other order. Wisdom derived from meditation comes from wisdom derived from contemplation. Wisdom derived from contemplation comes from wisdom derived from hearing or study.
Because otherwise, what are you meditating on? Yep. There’s there’s really just those three. There’s also inborn wisdom coming from previous lives. That inborn wisdom is coming from wisdom derived from hearing, wisdom derived from contemplation.
It’s just what what’s residue, what’s there as we go through the death process and survive. Inborn wisdom. But that’s it. It’s coming from hearing and study. What do we mean by meditating on it?
Oh, that wisdom derived from meditation there really means path of preparation. That’s a really high form. What we mean by meditation is just contemplation actually. We meditate on something means we’re sitting there thinking about the meaning. So it’s really and by and how do we engage in that process?
We only can contemplate something once we’ve heard about it and we get the words straight. We have the words. We read the words. Yeah. That’s reasonable.
Okay. Now what’s the meaning behind the words? When we start to investigate the meaning behind the words, that’s when we’re engaged in contemplation. Once we’ve developed single pointed concentration, we have and we can join or calm abiding with or insight and comprehend the meaning that we’ve clarified through contemplation. That’s when we have wisdom derived from meditation at that stage.
Why I said it was because you said something about when we get to understand Absolutely. That’s study. Well, that’s why I said that I thought we did that through meditation. So I really I should have said it before. It was so if we hear the words or read the words and then we contemplate on it and then we meditate on it, do we actually have to understand exactly what the words mean exactly?
Because when we get that through our own contemplation? Well, that’s right. Through well, first we understand the words, then we seek to understanding the meaning behind the words. That’s done through contemplating. Right.
That’s what I’m saying. That’s right. Right. That’s right. And basically we’re engaged in that contemplation.
And that’s important because that will form a basis for our eventual development of wisdom derived from meditation of those things we’re contemplating. So Oh here, wisdom derived from meditation basically means the wisdom that is the union of calm abiding and insight focused on the object that one’s comprehended through contemplation. Is that something beyond what? What we do? Yeah.
Oh, absolutely. So what we’re basically engaged in is hearing and contemplation. Our meditation, we don’t even have we probably don’t have the second or third stage of the nine stages placement, which is like Sems ‘jog pa, mental placement is the first. Rgyun du ‘jog pa, continuous placement, Lan te ‘jog pa, patching placement, then continuous placement, then pacifying, and so forth. We probably have Well, we got the first.
We have, you know, like, some placement, but we have the ability to place our mind at least in the beginning on something. But we can test it. You know, we hold our mind on an object. How long does it stay there? Two seconds.
Yeah. So we’re probably not quite at the second stage yet. So the ninth stage is mental placement. But we do have a certain amount of concentration of Samādhi. It doesn’t last very long.
But until we have mental placement, until we have the nine stages, and then develop that into the access state of the form realm, and so forth anyway, until we develop this union of calm, abiding, insight, then we don’t have wisdom derived from meditation. That’s a long way away. Our meditation is really like a contemplation. But we call it meditation. Anyway, we should stop there.
Sorry. Yeah. Sorry. We’re becoming familiar.