Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Ven Margaret McAndrew uses the search for the self as the gateway to understanding emptiness and liberation. In this 45-minute teaching, she guides listeners through identifying the false ‘I’—the hallucinated sense of an inherently existing, independent self—which Buddhist philosophy identifies as the root cause of all suffering. She covers both analytical and formless meditation approaches, using concrete examples like a chair to show how all phenomena, not just the self, lack inherent existence. She then walks through the Buddhist path: from initial study and analysis through analytical meditation combined with focused concentration, to direct, non-conceptual insight into emptiness. She explains how this breakthrough leads either to individual liberation or, for those on the Bodhisattva path, propels practitioners toward full Buddhahood. For those with foundational Buddhist knowledge.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 02 BH 1999 11 25.mp3
UUID: 28768015-f638-4559-a0c4-7aa7f7c5570c
Teacher: Ven Margaret McAndrew
Collection: Buddhahood (Ven Margaret McAndrew)
Date: 1999-11-25
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.3 minutes
Words: ~4,588
Overcome this sort of instinctive feeling about this substantially existing independent to an existing eye. Well, the consciousness. Good. The consciousness goes from one life to another and carries the imprints. Yeah.
So at that particular time, the gross body is at that time is for a moment and then the Bardo body immediately takes its place. Yes. Well, that actually might have been the Bardo body that was photographed because as soon soon as the consciousness leaves this body, it immediately takes the place of the body. Bardo body. Yes.
You have to get a little bit different kinds of body, such as a body of sleep and and But the it’s sort of instantaneously as soon as soon as we move through the clear light vision, then we take the Bardo body and the space from the dead body into the Bardo with the Bardo body. So that’s probably what what what rather than the subtle wind, it’s not beyond the conception that it would be possible to photograph a subtle body. Very interesting, all these things. On the other hand, these things are very much in their early days too, and who knows? You know?
Maybe somebody thought I could make a lot of money by photographing this whole coming out of the body and showing it to gullible people. You know? There’s always a possibility. I don’t know. I mean, not too many people would be too happy about it.
It’s interesting, yeah, it’s interesting though that when I do the transference of consciousness, Well, I was talking to somebody who was there when Lama Yeshe died. He died in the hospital, and the they were told by the hospital staff that they could leave Lama Yeshe in this room but only for a certain amount of time, and they then they wanted the room. So they would have preferred to have left in there untouched for three days, but they were told by the hospital they only had a, I can’t remember what it was, the other half a day or something like that, for example. And so this person asked Lama Yeshe or somebody asked Lama Yeshe if asked Lama Yeshe, I mean, if Lama Yeshe could be asked to finish his meditation before they had to disturb his body. And so Lama Zopa had them in their doing prayers and so on, doing Heruka practice and so on.
And then at a particular point he did the transference of consciousness practice and asked Lama Yeshe to please finish his meditation and to leave his body. And this man was in there at the time, and he saw Lama Yeshe’s head move, and he said, oh, I must be imagining it. And just at that moment, Lama Zopa said, oh, Lama Yeshe’s consciousness has just left his body. It was just a slight movement. It didn’t actually turn.
It was just just a slight movement. So he thought he must have been imagining that the body had been completely dead for hours as far as his body went. And and then there was this movement. So besides this, we can be thinking of how how we can practically try to understand these things and try to bring it into our daily life. And we can what’s the best way to apart from studying these different topics and trying to understand these logics, the What we can all start to do is to at least try to identify the false I, which is the object of our I-grasping, and to keep on looking for it.
If we keep on looking for it all the time, day by day, then start to more ability to separate the false eye from the conventional eye or the nominal I, and to be able to identify it more so that we when we can really identify that, it’s really fantastic. The lamas say it’s worthwhile spending a whole lifetime just learning to identify the false eye, the object of refutation, because this is time that’s well spent. And we can actually keep on doing this just by being being alert to it. And in particular, the time that we can look out for it the most easily is when we’re under the influence of our disturbing emotions, then this false eye comes up very strongly. So it’s very good then when we realize that we’re getting into the state of one of these disturbing emotions, for instance, when we’re angry, then the false eye, this sense of a truly existent eye rises up very, very strongly, and we think, how dare they do that to me?
And you can really see this sense of a really substantial, really concrete feeling of eye. And when you look for it, you can’t find it and yet it’s so strong and powerful. And so this is a good time to look for it. And so we can, in this way, if we make use of our moments of irritation and anger to check up for the false eye in this way, not only are we distracting ourselves from acting out our anger, but we’re actually getting something useful out of it. So it’s beneficial.
So it’s said that one of the examples that’s given to help us to understand the difference between the false I and the conventional I. It’s conventional eyes like when we’re just walking around, perhaps we’re just going for a stroll, it’s a nice day, and we’re feeling pretty much at peace with ourselves and the world and so on, and we’re just strolling along, not thinking about anything much. And then that’s like the conventional eye. And then suddenly somebody comes along and says you’re a thief, and you’ll immediately have some sort of extremely strong emotional reaction, that’s the, the false I arising up. So, another way of meditating on emptiness is to leave all of this sort of analysis aside and to do a formless meditation on emptiness.
And so we’re also taught ways of doing that. And in in my practice, for example, we’re taught to meditate on emptiness emptiness by just doing a space like emptiness in which we just imagine the clear nature of the mind, like a clear sky. If we have wandering thoughts and those sorts, just like clouds that go across the sky, that just pass and go away again. And the real nature of the mind is the clarity, the mental clarity, which is underlying it or behind it all. And so we’re taught to just meditate on the clarity of the mind.
And one way to do this is to just think of going up onto a high mountain or a hilltop and think of what it’s like to be just up there surrounded by clear sky, and then just imagine yourself, just body, your sense of identity, everything just dissolving away into this space like emptiness, and just trying to hold that emptiness and clarity, and remain focused on that. So it’s very good to approach meditation in this way sometimes, and that can give you a real feeling for the practice. But we also have to do these analyses, otherwise we might end up just spacing out and blanking out without really gaining an understanding. So, I thought I might lead you through a meditation on searching for the eye, which comes from Lama Zopa Rinpoche. So maybe just focus your mind, take a few breaths, focusing on the breathing to bring the mind into focus.
Eye is merely imputed by the mind. However, when we do not analyse, it looks as if there is an I on these aggregates, on this association of body and mind. In other words, it looks as if there is a real I, a real self inside the body. Even the hand gestures we use have reasons behind them. Our gestures express something.
There is a reason why our hand goes to our chest when somebody calls our name. When we do not analyse, it looks as if there is a real I somewhere there inside our chest. When someone calls us, we point to our chest and ask Are you calling me? We don’t point to our nose. But when you search for it, you cannot find that real I, even in the chest, where you normally feel that it is.
So, if the real I exists, as soon as we start to analyse, its existence should become clearer. Just as a tower that we see on a mountain becomes clearer as we come nearer to it. However, as you start to analyse the eye, it immediately becomes unclear. And the more you analyse it, the more unclear it gets. So this is proof that it doesn’t exist.
We feel that there’s an eye somewhere inside our body, in a particular location, such as in the chest or the head. Or we might even believe that it exists above the aggregates, However, if you search from the top of your head down to your toes, you cannot find the eye anywhere. What appears to exist when we do not analyse cannot be found anywhere when we do analyse. This proves that it is a complete hallucination. That I that we believe exists in a particular location in the body or above the aggregates is a complete hallucination.
It cannot be found. That is the reality. The I that exists, the I that experiences happiness and suffering, works, meditates, practices Dharma, wants happiness and does not want suffering, is nothing other than what is merely imputed by the mind. This is all that the I is. The mind merely imputes that the I exists, and believes in that existence for the simple reason that the aggregates exist.
Even though this is the reality, it doesn’t appear to us in this way. What appears to us is completely contradictory to reality. The reality is that the I is completely empty of existence from its own side. It has no inherent existence. However, even though it doesn’t exist at all from its own side, the merely labelled I appears to exist from its own side because of our hallucinated mind.
The imprint left on our mind by our past ignorance projects the I as having inherent existence. It appears in this way because it is the projection of the imprint left on our mind by the past concept of true existence. When the eye appears to us in this way, and we then believe it to be true, at that time we are creating the ignorance that is the root of Samsāra, cyclic existence. Because our own mind created this ignorance, the root of suffering, we can also eliminate it and free ourselves from Samsāra. We can be completely free from the whole of Samsāra, from all suffering and its causes, from all the suffering realms.
We can be completely free from these defiled aggregates. This association of body and mind, which create the future Samsāra. The I is not appearing to us in accordance with reality but as something else which doesn’t exist, and we cling to that, believing it to be true. Having these wrong conceptions is the fundamental problem of life. This is the fundamental hallucination in life.
Here I’ve been talking just about the eye, one phenomenon amongst numberless phenomena. Like the eye, these numberless phenomena don’t appear to us in accordance with reality. They also appear to us as something else, which doesn’t exist. And we believe in that. So we have created a big hallucination.
Our world is one huge hallucination. This is the fundamental suffering of Samsāra. The fundamental root that creates the whole of Samsāra. Okay. Any questions about that?
So as Rinpoche mentioned in that meditation, it’s not just the self, but it’s all phenomena that are empty of inherent existence. So, sometimes it’s easy to understand how it works by thinking about something like a table. When you think of how the eye is labelled on the aggregates, think of how we label table onto something like this, or a chair for instance. Is the leg of the chair the chair? Or the back or the seat?
Okay, so if you get four legs and the back and the seat and throw them together in a pile, is that the chair? No? Okay. So they have to put together in a certain way. And then there has to be the function, doesn’t it?
It has to be possible to sit on it. So if you made the chair in such a way that for some reason it wasn’t fit to sit on, then it wouldn’t really be a chair, would it? So where’s the chair? At what point does it become a chair? When you put the label on it?
Okay, so if you think about it, there isn’t any sort of substances there about it, and yet we sort of think about chairs and things as if they have some sort of substantial existence. Something we can grasp at. Some sort of essence. It’s easier to see with the self. We’re told that when we start to meditate, we should meditate on the self first, because it’s easy to actually perceive it directly with the self.
But we can see how, in the same way, that we put these labels on external phenomena. We also put this same label on the I, that we label I on top of this collection of parts, which is the five aggregates. Yes. Well, yes. If you didn’t know what it was, then you would just call it a thing or a doodle.
Yes. I mean, there’s some sort of there’s some sort of sense of inherent existence, but it might not be labelled on the purpose of the thing. For instance, if you see something but you don’t know what it’s for, then you just see it as being a pile of wood or a pile of machinery or something like that, you know, but you still see some sort of thing there with an inherent existence, even though you might not understand its purpose. But for instance, you know, like the first people who in the jungle saw an aeroplane fly over thought it was some sort of giant bird or something, know, so they understood it wrongly. But there would have been some sort of sense of inherent existence of this thing that they saw flying over, and then later on when they were contacted by missionaries or somebody coming in on the ground level, then they learned what it was.
So, yes. So, anyway, we have to, essentially be concerned with with the with the self particularly. And then so Well, keep checking. See looking for your sense of self, with keeping in mind that it’s not the way we perceive it, and just trying to get a fix on it. Yes.
Well, anyway, yes, it is scary. They say that if you when people so anyway, yes, I’ll mention that when I get to it, think. So anyway, how can we understand the absence of inherent existence? How can we start to approach this business of trying to understand it? We have to study and analyse from different angles, as I already mentioned the Tenets discussion talks about.
This is quite a good explanation of why we need to use all these different logics and analyses and so on. So assuming that a person is able to study and come to an understanding of all of these things, for instance, the monks in the monasteries and so on, attain certainty through listening to the teachings, studying the texts, debating, questioning, having doubts and following up their doubts and so on. They come to a better understanding through this practice over the course of time. And when they’ve reached some degree of understanding, then they also have to meditate analytically on this understanding that’s been reached. And then having gained some more understanding through meditation, they continue with their studying and continue meditating.
So, first of all, having gained some understanding through studying and so on, have to meditate analytically, and then through analytical meditation having gained some sort of deeper insight, then focus on that with stabilizing meditation so as to imprint the this level of understanding. And this continues, this process just continues. Gradually the understanding is becoming deeper, but the person has to keep on until they have the full understanding, have to continually go back and go on with their studying. And we’re not concerned with asserting anything at all here with these tenets about emptiness. It’s concerned with negating false views.
The view of emptiness is not an assertion. It’s a non affirming negation. It doesn’t assert anything. It negates our mistaken viewpoints. Emptiness is a non affirming negation.
So an affirming negation is negation that, by implication, asserts something else. So the example of that is an area where there’s no mountain. That would be asserting a piece of land where there’s no mountain, that would be asserting a plane. When you assert emptiness of inherent existence, you’re not asserting anything. You’re just negating inherent existence, and that’s it.
So the the false views, are most of which were concerned with being innate and instinctive, are very hard to see through. Lama Tsongkhapa said, they come from our past lives. So it takes people a long time to because it goes against their instinct. For instance, it took people a long time to start to comprehend that the world wasn’t flat because we instinctively feel that it is flat because it looks that way. And even though we’ve been taught that it’s not that, most of the time we behave as though it is because it’s convenient for us and there’s no reason to really think of it as being in the round.
And but still the evidence kept on coming in that it was round until most people had to accept that it was round. So, in the same way, through having the evidence coming in all the time about our false view of the truly existent self, eventually the false view has to give way. So eventually, there’s this intellectual understanding. But at it doesn’t really fall into place. It’s just on the intellectual level.
But by analyzing and meditating more and more deeply, there comes a time when it all falls into place, that the person starts to see how it all works. And that’s a very powerful understanding, but it’s still on the intellectual level. But still it’s very very powerful because the person at this point really sees for the first time clearly how the false view operates, how the false view is a false view. And at that stage, then they can start to meditate more powerfully because they’ve got a very clear perception intellectually of the And although there’s still this appearance of the false I, they see very clearly. They have a very clear understanding of the whole setup. And so by continuing to meditate and analyze, they will eventually gain deeper and deeper insight.
And this goes along with the process of combining the meditation also with single pointed concentration, which we were talking about last week, the Samatha, the calm abiding meditation. So a meditator who has attained calm abiding and who has also attained a clear intellectual understanding of emptiness, will put these two together in his or her meditation. And it’s explained that when you first start to try to combine single point or calm abiding and meditation on emptiness, that it’s difficult to do this analytical meditation on emptiness and maintain the calm abiding. By the way, this intellectual understanding of emptiness doesn’t necessarily come when you’re meditating. There’s a lot of stories of how it’s attained when people are doing activities such as debating or even chopping wood.
Yes, yes, but these kinds of things, yes. So when somebody’s been thinking and analyzing often, when they’re on the point of realizing emptiness, I mean the analytical realization of emptiness is what we’re talking about here, then the actual realization can come quite suddenly, and it often seems to come when the person just receives some sort of little shock that jolts their mind out of its normal state for some reason. Probably. Yes. It’s probably a stream enterer, but I’m not too sure I’m not sure of that terminology because I haven’t really had the teachings according to those particular terms.
But the anyway, yes. So, anyway, this person goes on and meditates. Yes. So anyway, having gained this and so they have to alternate a bit. And whenever their meditation starts to lose its concentrated power, this analytical meditation, then they have to go back to just doing calm abiding meditation, like I was talking about last week, for instance, it might be on the image of Buddha.
So they do some analytical meditation, and then after a while their analytical meditation is detrimental to their calm abiding, so they have to go back and strengthen the calm abiding again. But gradually, analytical meditation becomes more and more powerful. The calm abiding is not lost. And when they’ve gained that ability So this person would be practicing in this way, assuming that they’ve already entered the first path through generating renunciation and bodhicitta, then they’re supposed to be practicing this way on the path of preparation, which is the or the path of accumulation, which is the first path. And then they go on and deepen this a bit until they’re able to maintain that calm abiding during their If they’ve passed in a meditation, their meditation on emptiness, analytical meditation on emptiness.
And at this point, this meditation becomes called Samādhi. So when they attain this, then they’re getting into the second path which is the path of preparation. So these paths are all divided up into stages. It’s quite complicated. But then eventually, through their meditation on emptiness becoming more and more powerful and gaining more and more insight into meditation.
Eventually they achieve the point where they gain direct insight into emptiness. Yes, so at this point they become Yes. Yes. So this is a really big development, and it’s very important. So this is the stage at which they become Ārya Sangha.
They have this direct insight, this direct non intellectual, non conceptual understanding of emptiness. They see it directly. That’s why it’s called the path of seeing. It’s achieved in this deep meditative equipoise. So at this stage, actually see the ultimate truth non conceptually.
Before this, they haven’t perceived it non conceptually. They’ve been working through conception. Even this negation of false conception is still conception. Although it’s a negation, it’s not an assertion, it’s a negation, but it’s still on the conceptual level. They’ve understood things well on the conceptual level, but they haven’t gained this direct, this breakthrough into this direct insight.
But at this stage, they achieved the direct breakthrough, so it’s very important. So then from there on, just have to keep on working. And there a number of different ways they keep on going through. So at this point, when they gain this direct insight also, at this point, then there’s still a lot of work to be done. From this point onwards, there begins to be achieved through cessation.
So the person’s actually cutting at the root of saṃsāra. They’re eliminating the disturbing emotions completely along with the seed, so that there’s no so the coarser disturbing emotions are being eradicated completely. And as this process continues, the eradication becomes greater and greater and there’s no going back. Once these true cessations are achieved, then there is no going backwards. They can’t ever come back again.
So that’s the difference. Sorry? Yes, yes. Yes. So that’s the difference between, for instance, trying to overcome anger with thought training and so on.
Know, thought training can be very effective to overcome anger and other disturbing emotions. Emotions. But until you can actually achieve direct insight into emptiness, there’s always the possibility of these things coming back again. So that’s why it has to be that’s why we have to go for it. So anyway, so for the Hīnayāna practitioner, then this eventually leads to liberation so that the person who achieves the cessation of disturbing emotions and is liberated from cyclic existence, saṃsāra, becomes an arhat.
And for the Mahāyāna practitioner, then they continue past this point under the force of bodhicitta. So they reach a point where they’re no longer under the control of disturbing emotions and karma, but instead of that they have bodhicitta. So they have to keep on coming back and taking rebirth, but it’s no problem for them. They’re very happy to do that. So they keep on working towards Buddhahood, and what they have to get rid of now is the subtle obscurations.
So the Bodhisattva has to keep on passing through these remaining paths, and also when they reach the path of seeing, they also enter the ten grounds. So the Hīnayāna practitioner doesn’t have ten grounds, but the bodhisattva has ten bodhisattva grounds to go through. And eventually they complete the process and completely achieve enlightenment. Enlightenment. So what they’re removing is the obscurations to omniscience, so they achieve omniscient mind.
But excuse me. So I haven’t got much time to talk about Buddhahood, so I’ll have to go through Buddhahood very, very quickly. So there’s many, many qualities about Buddhahood. We looked at some of them when we were looking at in the small scope section, when we were looking at refuge. So particularly, looked there at the qualities of Buddha’s body, speech and mind separately at each of those.
And also we saw that Buddhas have the quality of wisdom, compassion and power, which are very important qualities from our point of view. If Buddha is to perfectly guide us, then Buddhas have to have these qualities. So wisdom, omniscience, Buddhas understand perfectly emptiness, the ultimate truth, which is what liberates. And also, they understand perfectly the karma of sentient beings, the mind of sentient beings. They understand all conventional phenomena, which means they understand, among other things, perfectly how our minds operate individually and how to individually guide each one of us, our individual needs when it comes to training.
Also, compassion means their perfect compassion means that towards every single sentient being, Buddha have perfect compassion, and therefore, if we’re willing to be helped, then they’re willing always willing to help every single one of us. They don’t discriminate. Also, because they have these perfect powers, then they can teach us in whatever way our karma enables us to be contacted. So Buddhas are able to manifest in all sorts of different forms. We think of Buddhas as being like Śākyamūni Buddha, having the various marks and signs and so on of the emanation body of Buddha.
But in fact Buddhas are always we don’t have the karma in our lifetime to see Buddha like that. But as depicted in statues and thangkas, we don’t actually see him in his living body like that. But Buddhas are always manifesting in all sorts of forms that we don’t recognize. And we can be sure that whenever we can be helped in this way, the Buddhas are helping us. So one of the