Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 144-minute session, Ven Jamyang teaches Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s foundational meditation on the emptiness of the inherently existing I. He shows systematically that the I is not the body, mind, or aggregates, but merely a label imputed upon them—recognizing this strikes at the root of all suffering. The meditation then unfolds into extended Q&A where practitioners probe the practical implications: how emptiness changes responses to criticism and harm; the relationship between karma, compassion, and self-defense; how intellectual understanding becomes embodied realization. The teacher emphasizes that confusion and not-knowing mark genuine progress toward deeper clarity. Pitched at practitioners with some grounding in Buddhist teachings who are ready to investigate emptiness directly.
File metadata (for organising)
File: session 8 meditation on emptiness.mp3
UUID: af78711d-52aa-4305-acb8-7ec181c66575
Teacher: Ven Jamyang
Collection: Presenting the Path (Ven Jamyang)
Date: 2009 (exact day not recorded)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 144.2 minutes
Words: ~7,924
You’ve had experiences in the path. I have real life experiences. Yeah. Where you say, well, this is you know, So we did something like Buddhism in daily life, Which has nothing to do with discovering Buddhism you mean? Just a place where you can come with your questions?
So I can do that for one time, you know, but I can’t do that. I’m just thinking, I think in two weeks time on a Saturday I have to be here in the morning and I have to be here in late afternoon. So we could do early afternoon a few hours, something like that. Have an idea there. Yeah, well, you get the answer.
Andrew is asking for a place where he can come with his questions about daily life, things that you meet in daily life and then what do you do with that? How do you apply the teachings? He’s very humble. He’s not he’s he’s quite clever. You have to stop thinking like that, Andrew.
Come on, open up. You might become. I think that’s a very good idea. And I think it would be good if it is an ongoing one. Not just one off, but an ongoing one.
But unfortunately, Jamyang is leaving. So I can’t do that. So I can say I can do that one time, but I can’t do that on an ongoing basis. You have to ask Lindy. Could could we not have something on the website?
Perhaps that we could ask questions. Is a forum on the website and if you if you go on the website you can log in somewhere. So when you do that for the first time You’re talking theory now. Is that right? I can’t log in.
Why And you can’t log in. Website is very difficult to use. It is very difficult to use. Just to log in, yeah yeah yeah. You can always, if you have questions, send them to [email protected] That’s an option.
Even if you’re into it? If you’re into it? Then I’ll change my address. I’ll give you another address. You’re gorgeous!
Definitely. That’s a good point. Yeah, of course. Are you Jeanine? Oh, thought you were chilling.
No. Where are you going? If you have sincere questions about a dharma and you feel I can’t answer that, please use me! You know, if there are too many I’ll tell you but You might have regretted what you’ve said. Well then I’ll be honest and I’ll say I can’t do this in the next week or something?
But I quite enjoy hearing your questions and you know and sometimes you give an answer and then two weeks later people come back and say I applied that and this happened. That’s my biggest joy you know. I’m quite happy to do that. So opening up a whole thing, I don’t know how that works on the Internet. We can go on Facebook.
I’m on Facebook and all join. We can go on Facebook and then everybody can read what everybody writes. Is that Is that how it works? Well you could actually. Facebook will say things like, Jung Young is having a cup of tea.
Who would notice? I’m trying to think. You do? Facebook and I play scrabble on it most of the time. But my friends and poly are in there, politicians that I know and all sorts of people.
But mainly my friends I knew when they were little around there. But you can actually use that and I think that’s really politicians are using it to gather more people, but also for disseminating information. I think Facebook’s quite powerful. And you could write something with an answer to you or you might answer me and say, oh I don’t know about that but then I’m not sure, maybe talk back to John Young. Yeah, I’ll go and have a look.
You had another idea? He might have done it with a blog than I think. Oh, Facebook. That’s a I don’t know what a blog is. A lot of questions get answered then.
You know, babe. Yep. Somebody try to show me how to set it up. I don’t know what a vlog is. Can’t tell.
Do very challenging. I work with it every day. I’ll I’ll I’ll look into that, and I’ll come with something before I leave. Okay? How we can communicate best.
Would you be interested in Buddha House Facebook? No. No. Not Buddha House Facebook. No.
No. That’s too yeah. Okay. You get all sorts of nuts and Oh, great. Yeah.
Okay. Let me look into that. Okay. A block might be good. Yeah.
Because you actually put that. Yep. Okay. Ask you can also get on to the FPMT? And ask questions.
That’s the two. FPMT. FPMT. FPMT? Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahāyāna Tradition.
Where do you ask questions there? Where do you ask the questions there? They’ve actually got a page on the website for questions and then you’ll get an answer back. About your practice? Yeah.
That question’s about practice, about Dharma. That’s great. That’s There is a search thing that there is they they actually say the question and the answer already. Uh-huh. That’s very I haven’t found that one.
That’s excellent. Mhmm. Yeah. Like, someone wrote in and and asked about some physical condition and the advice was given how to deal with that through practice. Is that on the FPMT website?
Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive. And there is the book Dear Lama Zopa Rinpoche and many people have asked questions to Lama Zopa and his answer is given there. So if you have a certain disease or people pass away or you have another problem, you can type the problem and then all the answers that he has given in particular situations come. So you can read through it and pick the one that you like most. And that book ‘Dear Lama Zopa’, the questions in there, the answers can apply to lots of different questions as Yes.
And there’s another website, I can’t think of the name at the moment. It’s not Lama Zopa and it’s not Lama Yeshe, it’s not FPMT. Ah! It’s it’s not Nālānda, it’s Wisdom Archive. It’s Wisdom Archive.
There’s another one. It’s very good, but it’s more for information about Buddhism. Buddha Net? It might be Buddha Net, I don’t know. Buddha Net is a big website on all different aspects of Buddhism.
Don’t know. Don’t know. I’ll up. Know by Wednesday. Okay.
Good. Good. We’ll look into that. Good suggestion, Andrew. Yeah.
Good. So we have forty five minutes left, forty I have about fourteen pages of meditation teachings. That’s all. I won’t be able to even read them very quickly. So I have one meditation on emptiness and one meditation on how to develop bodhicitta.
So are we gonna do this Hīnayāna path or the Mahāyāna path? That’s a loaded offer. No, shouldn’t say it like that. We can we can We can meditate on emptiness with the bodhicitta motivation. Then it becomes, you know, the cause for enlightenment.
We can also meditate on bodhicitta with the realization of emptiness. We can do both. I haven’t got a handle on emptiness yet. That’s why I want the emptiness. You want to have the emptiness?
Who wants to have the emptiness? That came up today most. You want to have the bodhicitta? bodhicitta, but that’s okay. We we we’ve got of lifetimes to do this.
Just not today. We do. What I can do yeah. My printer’s a little bit doesn’t do it properly anymore. Everything is falling apart.
It’s impermanence. It’s impermanence. But don’t be attached to it then. What? I don’t need to tell you a print.
It’s okay. Be in Sangha. I there’s a reason why it all stops working, I think. So what I can do is I can print it out here and then give it to you the next time on the on the Discovering Buddhism Day, the bodhicitta one. Mhmm.
But you will get that also, I think, when you talk about bodhicitta. There is a whole module on how to develop bodhicitta. So we go for the emptiness one. So this is a meditation from Lama Zopa Rinpoche. And what it is, it is is about how how the eye exists.
Let’s try. And then we’ll have some time to do the some questions or maybe one. So make sure that you sit comfortable. Try to adjust your motivation. And when we think about emptiness, how we investigate, it doesn’t really matter which object object we have.
We can do it with a table, with a tree, or we can do it with the eye. The eye that we cherish so much. All the analysis are exactly the same. But if we can realize the emptiness of inherent existence of the I, what we do is we actually destroy the root of Samsāra. So in that sense realizing the emptiness of inherently existing I is the most powerful meditation.
So we hold something for the eye, which is not the eye. And that which is the eye, we don’t recognize that as being the eye. So we we are seeing too much. We are seeing something that is actually not it. And realizing emptiness means that we realize that the I is not this, not that, not that.
The I is empty of being this, being that. That what we imputed too much onto the eye, we remove that. So we start doing that. So first of all, our body is not the eye. And our mind is also not the eye.
The body and the mind are both not the I because we can talk about my body and my mind. And also the association of body and mind, of five aggregates, are not the I. Although they are the base to be labeled ‘I’, they are not the ‘I’ itself, because we can say my aggregates’. So that means that the ‘I’, in our language, the ‘I’ is the possessor. And the body and the mind are the collection, are the possession.
So because of that, our body is not the I, our mind is not the I. None of the aggregates is the I. And even the whole group of aggregates also not the eye. But that doesn’t mean that there is no I. My I, your I, is in this Gompa.
And there is no other reason to believe this, except that the base, the aggregates, your body and mind, are now in this Gompa. If somebody would ask us, where are you? We would reply, I’m in Australia, in Adelaide, at Buddha House, in the Gompa. But the only reason why we would have for saying that, would be that our aggregates are here in Australia, in Adelaide, at Buddha House, in the Gompa. Our aggregates are our body and our mind.
And just because they are here, I believe I’m here in this Gompa. So the I that exists is nothing other than that which is merely imputed by the mind and dependence upon the aggregate. That’s all it is. So everywhere where the aggregates are, you can impute I. So everywhere where the aggregates are, you feel I am there.
But if we look at how the eye appears to us, from birth, from morning to night, that eye appears to us in a way that is completely contradictory to its reality. The I that exists is completely other than that which appears to us and which we apprehend. The I that does exist is not the I that appears to us and in which we believe. And this is exactly the same for all things that appear to us, like a cup or a table. Their reality is something other than that which normally appears to us and in which we normally believe.
The eye is completely empty of existing from its own side. There is no real eye in the sense of existing from its own side. No independent I. No unlabeled I. When somebody criticizes us, we normally think that they are really hurting this I.
And then it appears as real, existing from its own side. We then get angry with that person and want to harm them. When somebody praises us, we think that they are praising this real I, which is something real from its own side. We then become excited and attached to that person. We want to help them, but we do not want to help the other person who has criticized us.
In reality, this real eye is like something in a dream. It doesn’t exist. We are always concerned about this ‘I’ and worry that somebody might hurt it. My friend might leave me, or this person might hurt me. However, the object that appears to us and in which we believe, doesn’t exist.
That real I, that I existing from its own side, is a complete hallucination. It’s completely empty of being real. So if the I doesn’t exist like that, we have to think how the I does exist. We have to think of the reality of that ‘I’. And the ‘I’ exists as the dependent arising.
The eye is a dependent arising, merely imputed by the mind, in dependence upon the aggregates. So when the aggregates come together, the I arises in dependence on that. And if we are capable of seeing that, that would allow us to see that the eye is empty. When we practice awareness that the I is a dependent arising or that the I is empty, then when somebody criticizes us, it’s like somebody is criticizing us in a dream. There’s no subject to be harmed.
There’s no object, somebody giving harm. Even though such things appear, since they don’t exist, there is no point in getting angry or in having dissatisfied mind of desire. There is no point in having such, so much clinging, or anger, or ignorance. There is no point in having concept of true existence. The false concept that believes that there is an independent I, an unlabeled I, a truly existing I.
What is the I? The I is a dependent arising. It exists in dependence upon its base, the aggregates, and the mind that labels it. Therefore the I is empty of existing from its own side. If it would exist from its own side, it would exist as an I, independent of the label.
By realizing this ultimate nature of the I, we eliminate the wrong conception that the I, which is imputed, has an existence from its own side as it appears to have. This thought is a wrong concept. Because the objects in which it believes doesn’t exist. So if you would go to a show of a magician, and they would somehow create a beautiful man or woman, a beautiful man or woman would appear, you can hold them to be truly existing. But then if you discover that they were a mere illusion, you know that your previous belief was wrong.
The moment you can see that they are an illusion, the concept of that beautiful real man or woman is stopped. Similarly, by realizing the ultimate nature of the ‘I’ and by developing this wisdom, we eliminate the ignorance that believes in true existence. By eliminating this ignorance and the seed of this ignorance, we then eliminate all the other delusions that arise from it. Attachment, anger, the rest of the six root delusions, and the twenty secondary delusions as well. So all these disturbing thoughts and karma are terminated in that moment.
And since the true cause of suffering has been eradicated, all true suffering ceases. The hell sufferings of heat and cold, the hungry ghost sufferings of hunger and thirst, the animal sufferings of being foolish and being eaten by other animals, the human sufferings of rebirth, old age, sickness and death and all the deva sufferings. All the suffering caused by being under the control of delusion and karma ceases. So since there is no cause of suffering left within our consciousness, no ignorance or even a seed of it, it is impossible for suffering to arise again. And in this way we achieve the ultimate happiness of liberation.
So with this wisdom we can then practice bodhicitta, the skillful method of the great vehicle. By practicing method and wisdom together we can engage in conduct of the six perfections and then achieve enlightenment. We can do this more quickly by practicing the skillful means of Tantra. By developing wisdom and practicing the skillful means of Tantra, we can achieve enlightenment in one lifetime. And if we practice together the special wisdom and highest yoga tantra, where method and wisdom are unified, we can achieve enlightenment not only in one lifetime, but in the brief lifetime of this degenerate age, in just a few years.
So the conclusion is that everything comes from the mind. The eye, the table, the cup and so forth. Everything comes from our own mind. Even our problems come from our own mind. You can also understand that the root of the whole Samsāra of all problems is the concept of true existence.
The concept of a truly existing I, of an I having existence from its own side, is the very root of all problems. In order to escape from suffering, we need to eliminate this root. And for this reason, we need to understand the emptiness, the ultimate nature of the eye. I’m telling you this is not easy. Buddha citta is harder.
Buddha citta. Buddha citta is intellectually easier, but in attitude much harder. Emptiness is intellectually harder but easier to realize they say. When you get it intellectually it’s easier to realize. It’s hard to practice.
Hard to practice because that makes sense to me. Soon as realise it, your life will never be the same. If something happened I just thought woah is that what it is? I don’t know. I don’t know either, but I just thought, oh, okay.
It’s made sense. Holding on to something. You know, if I believe this is a blue cup, The moment I see that this is a yellow cup, the blue cup is gone, will never come back. And I know that I made a mistake. So that is how emptiness works.
The moment you can see how it is, your wrong idea disappears. So what we are doing is that we have an object and we create all kinds of attributes about it, around it just like when you are in love, you know. You’re this fantastic beautiful person. Or when you’re angry, you create all this stuff around that person which is not really there. So in the same way with objects, because we hold onto true existence, we create create attributes that are not really there.
They don’t even exist. So just as your attachment makes that you see everything very beautiful. It’s like you put on the glasses. And it helps, you know, I’m so much happier since I have these glasses. The moment you start so we add attributes, attachment adds certain attributes, makes it more beautiful.
Angry adds the attributes of making it more ugly, more that you can reject it, that you don’t want it. Ignorance adds the attribute of being something in and of itself. So that there’s something there to defend? So that there’s something there that you then have to defend or justify or love? Yeah.
Whatever. Yeah. Yeah. And if you look at things, you know, before your mom told you that this was a glass, you saw something else than a glass. You didn’t see glass, you saw a thing.
When we look at it we cannot see that thing without glass. Removing the glass from this is very, very difficult, because we believe this is glass. How can I remove glass? This is glass. But glass is something that was not there before our mom told us that that was glass.
That’s not there in and of itself. So we learned that this is called glass and then we believe this is glass. But glass is just a name given to this. Glass is not here. Glass comes from the mind given to this.
They come together into existence, you know. I see this as the base to be called glass. So as soon as this base arises, the name arises, they arise together. But then I believe that the name is this. I don’t see that they are two separate things.
Are the So, wait a second. So they arise together, but this is not glass. It’s an illusion. It’s a imputed label. The label glass fits with this base.
We mix them. For us they appear as one thing. We do not realize that the label is coming from the mind and that the base is not glass in and of itself. These are just two things that meet. But this has nothing to do with glass.
It’s just a word that we agreed upon. It has that much to do that we agreed upon it to call this glass. I can’t call this an elephant. I need to call this glass because that is what we agree. But this is not the glass from its own side.
We all agree with our mind to call this glass. They come together, that’s dependent arising, that they come together into existence. Because they come together into existence it must mean that this is empty of being glass, of being inherently existing glass. The glass is not here. This is the glass but, you know?
True? Okay. What are the practical applications with the realization of emptiness? Practical, I mean, so we thought we have realized emptiness. So I realized emptiness?
What happens is that whatever happens you don’t take that that seriously anymore? Don’t personalize it but also you know if if somebody abuses you, you you just know that it doesn’t really exist like that. Mhmm. So it doesn’t hit you that deep. So you can’t react anymore the way you did before.
Mhmm. So you’re not emotionally involved? What about looking at it as karma? Say if someone does something to you, alright? Instead of looking at it as emptiness, you look at it as your karma being done something.
When I realize emptiness, I also think it’s my karma. I think even more that it is my karma. karma means that things come together due to causes and conditions. This being glass is karma. You’re abusing me is karma.
When I realise emptiness I can just allow that to happen. When I haven’t realised emptiness I think you’re attacking me and I’ll hit you back, you know, we have the fight. If I realize emptiness there is no me and know that the reason why you are angry is because my karma is to meet somebody who is really angry with me right now. I must have done that in the past to you. And I can see that all at the same time.
No reason to react. There is no I here that you can get angry at. It doesn’t exist. So I just let it happen. So you are providing me the conditions for my karma to ripen.
But that’s why I’m hitting you because you are the conditioned for giving me the ripening of my karma to hit you. Wouldn’t say it like that. I think it’s my karma to be hit. And my karma to hit you too. The ripening of the karma, the action of I must have a propensity to get angry.
Must have a propensity to get angry and then to hit. So then you see me and I provide condition. But it’s more that my karma is right, has ripened to being hit. As far as you’re concerned, but as far as I’m concerned Yeah, yeah, no listen. I know your question.
So my karma is ripening for being hit. Yes. You have the propensity to be angry. You are this time in the right place, right? You see something in me that you don’t like and you hit.
You don’t call that your karma is ripened to hit me. Oh the propensity is there. What you say is that what you actually do is you create new negative karma that is going to ripen for you in the future by being hit. Now that is if I’m hitting you then I’m providing a karma for the next future, the future life. But the propensity is there, but you provide me the condition to have the propensity to hit you.
Don’t say it like that. No, we don’t say it like that. Because the moment I hit you, that becomes the karma for the future life. karma normally means experience. It could be action.
It action. It is action. But if you say the action ripens or the karma ripens that means an experience arises. No, thought there are four forms of karma. One is the throwing karma, the second one is the action similar to the cause, and the third one is the experience similar to the So my action, which is similar to the cause from the previous cause is hitting you.
Now if I have the experience the similar to the cause then I will be hit instead of being Oh this is how you talk. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then But I’m not sure The could be hang on.
There are four types of Yeah, four types of karma. The cause is similar to the experience or the action is similar to the cause. So if the cause is hitting, then you could either be hit the next life or you would have the experience of being hit the next life. That’s If you hit somebody then in the next life you can experience it in two different ways or you can experience it in four ways but two of them are either you’re going to be hit or you have the tendency to hit. Most likely you have both.
No, it’s not. It can either be an action which is similar to the cause of I can hit you. That’s the action. But then if it is the experience, I will be hit. That’s the experience similar to the cause, which is hitting in the previous life.
But if you hit somebody, right, then what you do is you have a karmic seed that will lead at one stage that you’re going to be hit in the same way. But also hitting creates a tendency to hit more often. Yes, that’s for the previous life. About future life? Yes, also in this life.
You create habits. Because when we engage in something there may be a short relief of our suffering and we create a habit of reacting like that. So I’m not sure if I would I have never heard anybody saying so now you create the conditions or you provide me the conditions so that I hit you. You being here, alright, then I Yeah maybe She couldn’t hit you if you weren’t here. That’s true.
Yeah, that’s true. That’s the condition more than that. More than that, that means that I’m responsible, that it’s due to my, I say it like this, it’s due to my karma that you create the negative karma. This is what Lama Zopa says. Because I have the karma of being hit, she’s in that moment just there, so she hits me due to my karma.
She creates negative karma because of my karma. So I have to take care of her because due to me she creates lots of negative karma. I don’t get it. It is like that. She’s hit you, you then have to be caring back.
Caring, yeah care. I have to respond with compassion. What? Nothing must do with you. You have nothing to do with my karma.
It’s just you provide the condition for me hitting you. Shouldn’t blame yourself for your compassion. I’m not blaming you, but because I provided you with the conditions, you create more causes to be reborn in hell. How horrible is that? Because of the fact that So I can feel compassion for you.
But then let me feel because she made your karma ripen and now it’s dealt with? Yeah, I could feel that after I dealt with the pain, That’s where you try to head off to, know, that’s where you want to end up. So if she was going murder you, then really you should let her murder you. Yes, sorry to take it that far. Because that’s going to cause her bad karma to work itself through.
Is that what you’re saying? Well first of all if I have a choice between me being killed of me killing, it’s better if I’m going to be killed because that karma will then just a negative karma is finished. As when I kill her I will have negative karma for lifetimes, you know. So it’s better if I can stop reacting. That’s hard.
Unless I have clairvoyance and I can see that if I kill her, she would actually go, say for instance go to the hell and then the next life she gets enlightened. She purifies her karma so quickly that she gets enlightened and then she can help all sentient beings. But hell, I mean what the chance? Well I don’t know. I don’t know that.
But imagine that you would have that clear point, you know? But if she kills you, then your previous life, does that mean that you killed someone? Most likely her. That’s why she comes back to me. I was always scared for Dia and now I know why.
Because I killed her in her previous lives and I’m waiting for her to return that. But you protect yourself, against things like that. You don’t say, oh, you kill me, you know, give you enough If you have enough wisdom, if you have enough wisdom on bodhicitta, you really, you give very easily your life. If you do not have, you try to run away. That’s happened to me actually quite frankly.
I very interested. I’ve been letting him kill me. The kids. But what we normally do is we have a self-cherishing mind that fights. I’m not going to just lay down and go on.
Well that’s what we try to go. I know, that’s because the self-cherishing mind is so much in the way. But that’s what we try to stop these reactions that we have. But also is it kind to let him, can you? Isn’t it kinder to run away or talk him out of it?
If she can run away, she’ll run away. I’m saying him, it might be her. But yeah, it would be kinder to prevent it. Yes. If you’ve got that clairvoyance, you would know that answer.
I don’t have any clairvoyance. I don’t even get karma, but I can see them. But it’s like when we just follow the self-cherishing mind we do what Benita says, you know, you fight for your life and you get out of there. Well you protect yourself. I didn’t fight, no, no, no, I didn’t use words.
Sorry, you protect yourself. What you try to realise is that that I that you try to protect doesn’t exist in a way you perceive it. There is an ‘I’, killing is not the right thing, it is okay to run away, but many times what we do in order to protect we harm and that harm is actually something that harms us more than the other person so you want to try to stop that reaction you do If somebody tries to kill you and you want to prevent him or her from doing that, there’s nothing wrong with that. But if you get furious and out of that, so you try to stop that reaction inside and the more you can do that, the more accurate you can actually do whatever is needed in that situation because your wisdom is very clean, clear present and not your delusions. Because think as Buddhists you’d have another chance possibly, like another rebirth, whether it’s human or not.
Yeah, but if you can, you don’t let somebody kill Yeah, yeah. It’s self preservation. Yes. What you want to do is you want to die as peacefully as possible so that you have a good human rebirth and then just say, you know, that was just my karma, finished. One of my favourite poems is, I learned Tai Chi so that I can defend myself if someone attacks me in slow motion.
Good. Have we got time? Can I ask you something? It might be full of holes. I wrote it down after we finish meditating.
I think it’s going to embarrass But, yeah, I don’t know. Realising emptiness and practising Dharma, I wondered is that sort of an ultimate bodhicitta? Because if there’s no ‘I’, in this life it will be for other sentient beings. And the bit of mind stream that positively hang on, I should read it to you instead of wobbling. Any positive imprints on the mind stream spec will be of benefit to other sentient beings and then because I don’t exist, that’s this aggregate, that mind spec goes on to be used by another aggregate so it’s actually a gift or a burden to the next aggregate that uses it.
So it seems to me that if we do gain enlightenment and practice that’s bodhicitta of a high order because it’s not actually going to do us any good later on. Because we don’t exist. Because we know. But if you practice good, if you practice for the benefit of all sentient beings, so you practice bodhicitta but you haven’t realized emptiness yet, you call that relative bodhicitta. So that is what we are trying to do.
Then when you realize the emptiness of the eye, you, that moment you achieve ultimate bodhicitta. Okay, and I’m not there so I can’t grab that. Realising emptiness doesn’t mean there is no eye. How you say it is like there’s nobody home. No, don’t know that’s not how I mean it.
Alright. And as I said this might be fact wobbly but it might be See, what I think I’m hearing is that at the moment the person, if you like, that’s using this speck of mind stream that came together at mind moments, my aggregates came at conception, this bit of mind stream popped in because that’s the cosmic jigsaw where it happened, come into this life. If I make choices that are or whatever choices I make imprint on that speck of mind stream. When that speck leaves this aggregate, it goes on to find the next bit of the jigsaw. So anything I do to benefit that actually benefits while in this life it benefits all sentient beings and then it benefits whoever gets The next generation of aggregates, that’s the mind stream.
Yes, but what you want, the mind stream spec is where the ‘I’ is located. Where you identify with the ‘I’. So in your next life the mind stream goes and the ‘I’ is in there. What you feel is the ‘I’ is in there. It’s not that the ‘I’ stays behind and somebody else gets your mind stream.
The ‘I’ is in that mind stream. Connected to all the karma that you create. karma is created on the basis of your I, your perception of I. So that travels with you. So all the good that you’re doing now for the benefit of all sentient beings leaves imprints, leaves habits, propensities so that you can keep on benefiting all beings and you keep on doing that until you achieve, until you realize emptiness, where you achieve ultimate bodhicitta and then you keep on doing it and you refine it and you become more and more uncontaminated and becomes more subtle and it becomes more powerful and more skillful until you achieve enlightenment.
Last time we talked about that, when I said that the I goes with the speck of mind stream, you said no, that’s just, we impute that because we haven’t got Yeah, impute that. But as long as we believe in that, it appears as if it travels with that. Although it is an it doesn’t But it seems to me that those two things don’t make sense together. That if we don’t believe in it, nobody’s home. If we believe in it it’s just imputation.
It is just an imputation, but we believe it is more. And as long as we believe it is more it acts as if it is more. It functions as if it is more. So if I were doing negative actions and I realise the emptiness of that negative action and the emptiness of my eye, the result of that will be not really. But because I do not have that realization the karma will ripen in exactly the same way.
So as long as we believe in true existence it functions in a certain way. That is why cyclic existence functions in a certain way. We can predict things to happen, isn’t it? Because of the belief in the I, things do function in a certain way. As soon as you realize the emptiness, things start to function a very different way.
Already on the way to your realisation of emptiness suddenly you get control over things that you couldn’t control before. Start to think, I’m starting to think and then I realise I’m not thinking much at all. Do you know? It’s like the more I learn the less I know. Yes.
Yeah, exactly. So that’s a good realisation. Yeah, keep getting it. Yeah, it does seem to go beyond it. Oh, you go so beyond it.
Yeah. We have the cortex and then we have emotional limbic system, then we have stem, all the surviving we have the dharma has to go through all the layers, right? To all the levels of subtlety. In the beginning you have it here and you think: Oh yeah, that’s all nice, blah blah blah, but it’s all very intellectual. With you I have the feeling it is sinking down, which means that intellectually you’re going to get it differently.
Or even when it sinks down, suddenly it doesn’t work like that anymore in the way it seemed to work before. But you’re doing a good thing, just keep on going. Do not doubt what you’re doing. So you start here and then it sinks in and then it might Like becomes less certain, less clear. But do you become here more certain?
Yeah. So the experience is the reality, not your thoughts, not what you build up your This is just a construct that helps us to realize the true nature of all the other experiences. And the more we connect with that and the more we discriminate in that, the more this needs to shift, you know. And then you can feel confused and you can feel that’s all good, that’s part of the yeah, completely. Just let it all fall apart and no problem.
It’s a sign that you’re getting to another level. Because that was a conversation Sarah and I had sort of about an hour ago. I feel the same. I feel as though I’m known less and less. And I’m going further back that way than this way.
You But you look into your heart. It’s making a difference in my life. It is making a difference in my life. And you’d definitely react very different from how you reacted two years ago to things that happened in your life. And there was much more space before you react.
And in that space there was a lot of contemplation that you never did before that. And there was much more seeing that you couldn’t see before that. So your reaction is very different. Your reaction to that is very different. Yes, that’s true too.
This is a construct that is not real, that’s not true, you know. We create that. And actually that is our uncertainty. That’s the one I’ve always relied on again. We all do that, yeah.
But that has to go. That has to completely go because that’s all based on that truly existing I. And on the basis of that we create all this truth which are not real. The moment we start to feel reality in our body or in our experience or with our wisdom mind the constructs have to go. And then we think oh my god, know nothing.
Absolutely. My mind doesn’t work, I can’t think anymore, it doesn’t work, you know. I don’t know where that comes from but it doesn’t work up here. So don’t worry about that. You feel that too?
It’s sinking. But know that I have changed and everybody says I have too, but the more I read, the more confused I become. I think I’ve got something and there’s something else that will happen. No, haven’t done it at all. So the teacher at Geshe-la said, he would confuse us all the time.
And every time when you would think, oh yeah, got it? He would ask you a question and you think, oh, no idea. I thought I had it, but it’s gone. And then he he’d say, Confused? Great.
You need to be confused before the wisdom can come. If you have it all straight, what can you learn? You create confusion and then you sort it out. And then it becomes clear and then you create confusion and then you sort it out. And you keep on doing that until it is so clear, laid out that no confusion can come anymore.
Till that time wisdom wisdom is not perfected and we keep on you be grateful for the confusions, you know? Because these are opportunities. Because I remember at times what it was like with this something I called absolute certainty and how frightened I was at the mere defence of that, of having to let go of Your certainty. Intellectual or something, I’ve got it altogether thing. And I remember that’s I’m sure it’s still there, but I remember how frightened I was because I couldn’t let anything sink any lower.
So that It’s very rigid also, isn’t it? It’s rigid. Very rigid. You can only think in this way, and everything that goes around it you can’t deal with and you have to reject. Yeah, that’s right.
So there’s something about that, like that thing that Pema Chödrön says about things come together and they fall apart again. And they come together and guess what? I get my act together. It doesn’t stay together. No.
It falls again and again and again. Yeah. And the more the more we go through that, the more we learn to fall and stay in it and see what is happening. That’s the thing. It’s where our minds are when we do the falling apart.
Yeah. Good. Everybody alright? Cool. Cool?
Cool or cool? Cool. Shall we dedicate the merits? Put the Put on on it. The lock on it.
The on it. Yeah, I actually should get out of the bottle. You want to do the dedication with the prayer book? I actually have the feeling I want to go to Lama Zopa and get some of his prayers. Can I do that?
So is for teaching long time at night. And then you have to be very careful that you don’t think, please stop. I wanna go to sleep. And then he finally says, oh, yeah. I think we should stop now.
And you feel, yes. And then he starts doing the dedication. And then an hour later, it’s like, oh no, one more. And how closely in his footsteps are you walking? No, no, no.
I’ll find a few. Because he has I’ve never heard a lama doing that. Does anyone ever fall asleep when he’s teaching? Oh yeah, regularly, yeah. We had a retreat here in Adelaide actually five years ago and there were quite some Sangha and it was the first time that I had a retreat like that with Lama Zopa.
And you would just see something and you would hold them and put them back up. And he would stop in the middle of the night and then say, this looks like after second world war, everybody. You think, oh my god, what kind of you must he have? And I had it in France, he would come in, he would start talking two words, and I was, you know, didn’t matter if he came at nine or ten or at the moment he started talking, I fell asleep. It was like quite embarrassing, but it’s just some karma.
The way Lama Zopa dedicates is that he doesn’t want to forget one single thing. So that everything that you need in order to get enlightened that you dedicate for that. So I’ll just get a few. Due to the merits accumulated over the three times by myself and all the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, which means that we can dedicate any merits ever created in the past, in the present moment and even in the future by anybody. We can dedicate that merit because the merit is empty from its own side.
And then we can use that merit so that I, who is also empty from its own sight, can achieve the state of enlightenment, which is empty from its own side, I lead all sentient beings who are empty from their own sight to that state as quickly as possible, by myself alone. Whatever suffering or happy life I experience, may be only of the greatest benefit to others, causing them to achieve enlightenment as quickly as possible. Because of all the merits of the three times created by me and all the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas and other sentient beings, may there be no wars, famines, disease, quarreling, fighting or unhappy minds. May there be great prosperity and may everything needed be easily obtained. May all the human beings in the world be guided by spiritual leaders teaching only Dharma.
And may everyone enjoy the happiness of the Dharma. Due to all the merits accumulated in the three times by myself and others, may those beings who merely see, hear, remember, touch or talk to Me, be freed in that very second from all their sufferings, and abide in happiness forever. Thank you for coming Thank you. I’m doing the work. Please fill in the form.
You can also bring that in the next class on Wednesday if you want. I’ll see if I print a few of these meditation teachings. I would like to give you all, but I’ll see how far I get. I have to print this properly. Yeah.
One week? I’ll do it next week somewhere. And if you wanna come and do some copying.