Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 45-minute session, Ven Margaret McAndrew examines how the misconception of true existence pervades even direct sense perception—and how seeing through it dissolves self-cherishing. Working through stanzas 64–66 of The Wheel of Sharp Weapons, she explores emptiness (Śūnyatā) as the lack of independent existence. Using concrete examples like seeing red and the dream Lamborghini, she shows how all perception is mixed with the false sense that things exist solidly and from their own side. She explains why intellectual understanding of emptiness alone isn’t sufficient; practitioners need supporting practices like love and compassion. The final stanzas warn against placing false hope in worldly contacts and friends, teaching that real help comes from good karma. Pitched at practitioners with some background but still new to these teachings.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 31 SW 1999 06 10.mp3
UUID: e4f56751-4800-4081-96cf-2c23820f307a
Teacher: Ven Margaret McAndrew
Collection: The Wheel of Sharp Weapons (Ven Margaret McAndrew)
Date: 1999-06-10
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.3 minutes
Words: ~5,223
So actually I’m sorry I got a bit distracted but if somebody is better at hopping up onto their feet than me, maybe somebody could hand these around. Actually you only need four of them and I printed fifteen. But they might be needed next week. Alright, I should have my book. Thanks.
So, last week, when I was preparing, I found that my notes from Geshe Ngawang Dargyey seemed to have come to an end. And fortunately, I had also the notes from Geshe Tashi Tsering’s and they had a huge gap in them but fortunately they just start where Geshe Ngawang Dargyey’s notes seem to have got lost. And so I’ve still got a commentary but it will be from Geshe Tashi Tsering now, not from Geshe Ngawang Dargyey. So I think the reason why my notes from Geshe Tashi Tsering have big gaps in them is because I was writing with my left hand at that stage and I wasn’t good at it. I seemed to have got into the swing of it a bit.
It’s one of these things, the more you do it, the more it seems to come together. Anyway, we’ve been going through all these verses and we’re actually quite well into the book now. We’re getting towards the end of the book. And I’m planning to try to move on through these stanzas and hopefully get as much as possible done by the end of this month because we’re going to be starting on something else next month. So we went through the verses describing the results of our negative actions and now we’re going through the verses that just look in more detail at our negative actions that we do day by day and we’re asking Yamāntaka to help us to overcome these actions.
So some of these verses we might think have more relevance to past conditions in India or to Tibet. You already know this text actually came from India in the first place, from ancient India, from the Yogi Dharmarakshita and was brought to Tibet by Atisha. So then it was an important text for the Dharma practitioners of many centuries. So some of these stanzas might seem to be more relevant to monks or hermits. We need to check all these stanzas because some of them are still just as relevant to us nowadays as they were at the time they were written.
They’re all aimed at helping us to cultivate concern, cherishing others, and to overcome self-cherishing. And this is something that’s really important, really worthwhile, as the longs keep on telling us. Whether we want happiness for ourselves or whether we want a better society or whether we want to achieve happiness for all beings, we need to overcome self-cherishing. And the very powerful way to overcome self-cherishing is, first of all, on the basis of the graduated path teachings, Mahāyāna Lojong thought training practices, which are the powerful opponent of self-cherishing. We’re also, as we go along, asking the wrathful deity Yamāntaka to help us by trampling on self-cherishing.
So Yamāntaka really means our own inner wisdom. Were you here before for any of these? You were here? No, you haven’t been. Yes.
Right. Okay. So you might find some things a bit new but don’t expect to pick everything up right away and it’ll come bit by bit. Well, next month I’ll be going through some more basic teachings. But essentially at this particular evening, Thursday evening, I’m talking mainly to a group of people who have had some background but they’re still all still fairly new.
New. Once I start on the next round of talks, it’ll be quite good actually to come along on Thursday nights. We also have elementary things. And then there’s Khensar Rinpoche’s teachings on Tuesday. He’s working through a graduated path text in a lot of detail.
It’s easier if you have some background but on the other hand you might want to try his teachings up and see how you go with them. He is quite a special person but he teaches through a translator, through an interpreter which makes it a bit more difficult. Would say it’s not that the interpreter is difficult to understand or anything like that. It’s just that some people find it a bit slow. So I think Yes.
Well, you’ve been going along to that already, haven’t you? No. Sorry. Oh, yes. I see what you mean, introductory course.
Yes, not the meditation, the one that follows. Yes, would be probably the best thing to go along to, to start off with. But then it might be good idea to come on Thursday too if you’re free to do that because I will be starting. I’ll be presenting each talk because it’s a topic but they will be following the general sort of structure of the graduated path going through from the preliminary topics through to the later topics. So, yes.
So anyway. Yes. Okay. So anyway, yes, what we’re talking about, it’s not that it’s so difficult but you might not be able to see how it all fits into context. But if you go along to a series of graduated path teachings then you’ll see the whole structure that we’re referring back to all the time.
So It always takes a while to get the big picture. So we’re up to stanza sixty four according to my understanding. And that might be on the old sheet. Top lid. Oh, sorry.
No, you’re right. I’ve got it here right in front of me actually. So it’s on the douchette. So anyway, would you like to read that Jane? Right.
So it’s Yamataka that we’re asking, of course, to trample on the self-cherishing attitude. Yamataka is the outward symbol of our own inner wisdom which we’re trying to cultivate through these trainings. Actually I was trying to come up with a few good questions tonight and I was expecting to present them to some of the old students who’ve been coming along for a while. Actually there’s only two of you here tonight so you’ll have to be on your toes. Yes, yes.
That’s right, yes. So anyway, this stanza always makes me a little bit afraid to talk about voidness because I really think it applies to me. So the great lamas always say that they don’t have much knowledge of the scriptures. Whereas if we’ve perhaps read one or two books then we think we know a lot and we make a big thing about it. So the great lamas really feel that they only know a fraction of what their knowledge could be.
I can remember once Khensur Rinpoche at Kopan was saying that he’d been studying Dharma for sixty years and he still didn’t know much. So really if we make much of a little bit of knowledge of the scriptures, just shows our ignorance. So the monks at the monastic colleges spend years and years debating, studying the various texts, memorizing them and debating them and gradually eliminating their wrong views, their mistaken understandings, gradually clearing away wrong conceptions. And this is all working towards a clear understanding of emptiness. The understanding of emptiness is a non affirming negation and it has to be reached by gradually eliminating a whole series of wrong conceptions.
So we’re not aware of our wrong conceptions at the moment. But in actual fact, our perception of everything is based on wrong conceptions, instinctive wrong conceptions. Not necessarily wrong conceptions that we’ve gained by anything that we’ve learned, but just wrong conceptions that we’ve held from the moment we popped out of our mother’s womb and even before that because it goes back to beginningless time. And we just have this continuing self perpetuating mistaken viewpoint about true existence. And the only way to overcome this wrong conception of true existence is by gradually clearing it away and by using this continual process of negating, identifying wrong conceptions, negating them.
So it requires a number of different approaches and a lot of different logics, lot of varied methods to gradually undermine our wrong conceptions which are very, very strong and self reinforcing. And so they’re never going to go away by themselves. It really takes quite a detailed sort of examination into the way we view things, looking from many, many different angles. Jeffrey Hopkins actually explained the process very well in his book on the Tantric Distinction. Even if you’re not thinking of doing tantric practice, it’s very interesting to read this book.
It’s actually divided into two sections. The first deals with the general path and the second deals in a general sort of way with the tantric practice. So even if you don’t feel interested in reading the tantric section, which is something often people say, Can I read this book because it’s about tantra? Well, are some books about tantra which it’s quite alright for anybody to read and that’s one of them. In actual fact, the first section on the general path is something that I think anybody could benefit from reading even if they don’t feel interested in the second part at this stage.
So it does go very, very well into why we have these different logics, the reason for it, the purpose for all this, what looks like very, very elaborate philosophical stuff. So when we talk about emptiness, pretending to be knowledgeable when we’re not, then instead of undermining our self-cherishing, it’s only going to increase our self-cherishing. The little bit of knowledge that we have got then isn’t hitting its target. It’s just increasing our self-cherishing because we’re just using it in the wrong way. This making sense?
Of course, we do need to start studying emptiness. Does anybody want to tell us what emptiness means? Yes, yes, yes. Actually emptiness is the lack of this, something being there of its own side. Yes.
So the idea of true existence is something being there from its own side. And also that tends to lead to a sense of it being permanent. So the sense of permanence is not actually the lack of permanence is not actually the emptiness but it’s related. There is a relationship there. If we could see the lack of true existence, we wouldn’t also fall into the view of permanence.
Permanence is a paratheogrosa wrong view. We get rid of the view of permanence before we get rid of the view of true existence. But all of these things are mistaken views that have to be got out of the way before we can actually see the true mode of existence of things. So, is perception of a color such as red a mistaken thought? Do you think it’s mistaken?
Why do you think it’s mistaken? But I mean, just supposing that it’s under a good light. Okay, we’re not really here concerned with physics. We’re concerned with just what the eye sees. Okay, so sorry.
No, no, I was going say as long as you realize and then there’s a lot more to it than that. Yes. Suppose that you dream that you have a marvelous, expensive I don’t know, what’s the most desirable car to have nowadays? Lamborghini in your garage. And in actual fact you haven’t got a Lamrim but during the dream it really exists for you.
I mean you really think it exists. So does that you’re actually seeing it, know, you’re looking at it, maybe driving it. So does that Lamborghini really exist? Yes, this is really interesting, aren’t they? Yes.
Okay. No, I’m saying there’s a distinction between the chap who has a million dollars and does buy a Lamborghini and the chap who dreams he has one and then wakes up and finds he hasn’t. The difference is that you can take somebody for a ride in one and not in the other. You know what I mean? Now, said is it a mistaken thought?
Okay, we’re accepting that there is an actual perception of red. But is it a mistaken mind? Actually, I don’t really expect you to know the answer, but it’s interesting to sort of get everybody’s viewpoint on this. But I suppose I’d better go on and sort of tell you what the philosophical viewpoint is on these things. Essentially there’s a distinction between a mistaken mind and a wrong mind.
So for instance, if your eyes were not functioning well, if you had something wrong with your eyes and you looked at this red and you could only see a very, very dark shade like a brown or a very dark grey because your eyes were not clear, that would be a wrong perception. Because the general perception of this color is that it’s red. Somebody with well functioning eyes in a good light would see this as being red. So it is still a mistaken perception. The reason it’s mistaken is because it’s essentially mixed up with this sense of true existence.
So we see this red as being truly existent from its own side. So it’s a valid perception of red but it’s mixed up with the idea that this red truly exists. So red is a sense perception. So when we look at red, we have a direct perception. It’s not conceptual in the sense that we just see red.
We’re not having some sort of conception above red at that stage. We’re just seeing red. But it’s still mixed up with this conception of true existence. So our wrong conceptions are conceptual. So somebody asked about Buddha, about whether Buddhas have conceptions.
And the answer to that is that Buddhas don’t have conceptions. They only have perceptions. And their perceptions are faultless. They don’t have mistaken conceptual mind. They only have true perceptions.
But Buddhas have both ultimate and conventional perception. True perception. So we have this concept of true existence that gets mixed up even with our direct perception such as color. And of course we also have many other kinds of wrong conceptions. There are many different degrees of wrong mind.
Any sort of conceptual mind is mistaken in the sense that it is conceptual. And then of course we have wrong views, such things as thinking that it’s alright to do bad actions, we won’t have to experience bad karma. All these kinds of things are wrong views. So this is quite deluded. We’re not talking about that so much.
We’re just talking about our ordinary, everyday view of things, of people, of ourselves, particularly ourselves, our own sense of self. It’s based on mistaken conception. So that’s important in this text because our self-cherishing arises out of this sense of true existence, of self-existence. And that leads to our self-cherishing. Yes?
No, it is red. That’s a valid perception. To see this as being red is a valid perception. But to see it as being something that exists from its own side without depending on anything else is a mistaken view. And our perception of red is just totally mixed up with that sense that it exists from its own side.
We don’t see it as depending on our eyes, we don’t see it as depending on the previous moment of its existence, we don’t see it as depending on a lot of other factors. We just see it as being there and somehow having some sort of solid, concrete independent existence. It’s very hard to identify how it is that we see things wrongly this way because it’s something we’re so used to that we can’t separate this wrong view from all our perceptions or from our conceptual thoughts. It’s just constantly going on. And we’ve always had it.
And we just have to gradually, that’s why, as I already mentioned, we have to use so many different logic, so many different methods, so many different ways of meditating to try to gradually get around to having a bit more of a sense of how it is that things don’t don’t have this concrete self existence that we just automatically feel they have. And this sense of concrete self existence is totally mistaken. Once you’ve got rid of it, it can never come back again because once you’ve actually seen the truth, then you won’t fall into error because the truth is stronger than the error. It’s like the striped rope in the snake example. Somebody sees a striped rope and they mistake it for a snake and so they get frightened and run away.
Once they’ve come back and checked and found out that it’s only a striped rope, then they’re not going to be frightened anymore. In the same way, we’re always being misled by this view of things of having this true existence and we don’t stop to question it. But once we do start question it through having these logics pointed out to us by the teachers of the tradition, then we gradually do start to come to a clearer awareness of how it really is. But this is a fairly advanced practice so the basic things that we have to start working with is things like working with karma, avoiding wrong actions, building up good actions, developing good heart and so on. But it’s also very good, even from the early stages, to look at this question of emptiness because the more we look at it, the more we’re creating a basis to go a little bit further.
So you don’t expect to understand the whole thing at once, but you’re just trying to, little by little, get a bit of a grip on it. So anyway, some people are very, very clever with the words. Some people will read a few books on emptiness and they become very glib and they think they understand and they’ll talk and of make a show of how much they know and so on. It hasn’t penetrated deeply. There’s other people who seem to have some sort of deeper understanding.
They might not even have so many words but they seem to have some intuitive understanding perhaps from previous lives. You can’t always tell how much a person knows just by their words. But somehow when people have an intuitive understanding and they do speak of these things, their words carry some sort of weight with it. But a lot of people find it very, very easy. There are some who find it very, very easy to talk about these things without really having a deep understanding.
And these are the kinds of people that this verse is directed at. Not unknown in the monasteries. Anyway, we have to understand these things. Grasping at true existence is the cause of all our problems. Emptiness or Śūnyatā means the lack of true existence.
And everything lacks true existence. Is emptiness truly existent? But do you think maybe nothing else exists except emptiness? Maybe nothing else truly exists except emptiness. We’re not talking about God here actually.
That’s from other religions. We sort of sidestep God and just talk about the mind and the nature of the mind. Because to talk about God becomes confusing because you can’t really make firm statements about God. Whereas if we examine our own minds, we can make clear statements about that. Actually not even emptiness itself has true existence.
There is even emptiness of emptiness. It’s important to remember too that emptiness of true existence doesn’t mean non existence. Things do exist. They just don’t exist the way we perceive them as existing when we’re operating from this mistaken view. So there is the striped rope, it’s not a snake but there’s still a striped rope there.
You can’t eliminate the striped rope. So, no, did I? No, I don’t think I just said that. I just said that not even emptiness has true existence. Yes.
Yes. Right. Yes. Yes. Because you can start when you start learning about it, start thinking, oh, this is the absolute truth.
This is it. You can start thinking to that as being what truly does exist. But it’s also lacking in true existence. Grasping at true existence is the cause of all our problems because it’s the underlying cause of self-cherishing. If we didn’t have this sense of true existence, then we wouldn’t have this sense of a truly existing self to be cherished.
If we understand how our self does exist, it exists as something which is actually existing, but not in this sense by which we mean truly existent. So there is a self, there is a conventional self, which is merely labeled on the five aggregates, on the body and mind. And this merely labeled self exists but it’s not an object for grasping. If we can understand that thoroughly, that cuts away this grasping to existence. And by removing that, it also removes the object that removes object for self-cherishing.
And as we’ve been learning during the previous part of this text, then if we remove grasping, our self-cherishing, then that is the cause of all our other problems. So removing our self-cherishing is getting rid of all our other problems as well. All the suffering which arises from our ignorance and clinging attachment and hatred. So if all we have to do is remove our sense of true existence, of grasping a true existence, why do we worry about these Mahāyāna thought trainings in things like being patient when somebody’s criticizing us or when we lose our possessions or so on? Why do we need to do these kinds of practices?
Why not just meditate on emptiness? That’s right. Yes. Why bother about other people when they all lack true existence anyway? Yes.
Also, why not just concentrate on meditating on emptiness rather than doing all these other thought training practices, developing love and compassion towards your enemy and this kind of thing. Yes. Well, but mean you break it down by meditating on emptiness anyway, don’t you? I mean you could it with Mahāyāna motivation. You could say I’m going to meditate on emptiness for the sake of all these sentient beings.
So in that case, why not just focus on meditating on emptiness with motivation, but why worry about all these thought training practices? Yes. I think, yes, you’re sort of getting at it. The main reason really is because we don’t have this Mahāyāna motivation at present very strongly. And we don’t have the ability to meditate on emptiness effectively.
It’s very difficult. We don’t even have intellectual understanding of emptiness. Even when we get that intellectual understanding, then we have to apply it in deep single pointed concentration. If you study the scriptures, you understand how many different stages you have to go through to gain this. It’s a very advanced practice.
And in order to gain that, we have to support our practice with a lot of merit. We have to do a lot of purification, a lot of accumulation of merit. We have to do a lot of mind training in order to cultivate our good qualities. We need to really start with because at present our bad qualities, our negative karma and so on are obstacles to our practice. We need to deal with these things and we need to cultivate positive mind.
And in particular we need to cultivate bodhicitta and the thought of working for others because this is such a powerful positive mind. That if we can cultivate love and compassion pretty strongly, this will be a tremendous boost to our Dharma energy. So that will really help us with these other practices. Also, as you mentioned, it helps to cut away our self-cherishing which is one of the big things that actually gets in the way of our realizing emptiness. I think you said that.
Who said that? You said it. Right. I was right the first time. Yes.
So the point is that if we could go away now and some people actually do seem to have a potential for doing that and they’re going and doing Zen meditation in a zendo somewhere. But for most of us, we can’t do that. And so we need to do all these other practices and to develop ourselves gradually in all these positive attitudes. Number sixty six. Sixty five. Sixty five..
Actually, didn’t get anybody to read that one out number. Oh, yes, I did. I’ve been on that one all the time, haven’t I? Number sixty five we’re up to. What’s your name?
Nick. Nick. Yes. That’s right. So, have to, yes, so anyway, with the last stanza, I missed one point there.
So we also have to make a real effort to gain the knowledge about emptiness and not just want to enjoy an empty reputation for having knowledge that we haven’t got. And so we asked Yamāntaka to trample on this self-centered concern that makes us do this kind of thing prevents us from getting on to our real practice. So then on to Stanza sixty five, I don’t know whether anybody here would feel that this applies to them. We don’t all have great networks of attendants around us and so on. But we all have friends and relatives that we think we can count on for certain kinds of help.
Or we might think we have influence somewhere, that we know somebody who will help us with something or other. We might, you know, place a lot of importance on our contacts or whatever. So there’s nothing wrong with having these kinds of friends and contacts and colleagues and influential friends and whatever. That’s not the problem. But we tend to place too much value on them and expect we tend to think that we have some sort of reliable source of help in these things.
And we count on it. And then it might happen that when the time comes that we need them, they let us down. This Then we get upset, then we feel disappointed and we feel hurt and we feel disillusioned with all these people. And this is the fault of our ego grasping. So the reason is we’ve been placing too much expectation on worldly objects.
So all of these things are worldly objects. We need to understand that where our real help comes from, where our good conditions and our happiness come from is from our good karma, essentially, from our right actions that we’ve done. And there’s no point in being too reliant on worldly objects, whatever they might be. And that we need to instead place our reliance on our Dharma practice and when these harmful worldly conditions come to us, instead of being upset, blaming other people, we realize that the fault really lies in ourselves from the wrong actions that we’ve done. And really the fault lies on our self-cherishing and on our ego grasping that’s made us do these things in the past.
So we’re distinguishing between our essential selves and our ego grasping, which is not really at all an essential part of ourselves. We’ve tended to think of our ego grasping as being an essential part of ourselves. We tend to see ourselves cherishing as being an essential part of ourselves and it’s not. So we need to learn to discriminate this ego grasping from our essential selves and instead of seeing it as being our friend and helper and an integral part of ourselves, we need to realize that it’s not any of these things and that it’s really our enemy and that we have to get rid of it. So then we ask Yamāntaka to come and squash it.
Do you think that? Yes. Well, I think we can apply it. Yes, it’s not just synonymous. It’s specifically, I think, possibly applied more to the times when more to the kinds of societies where influence was everything.
It wasn’t so much what you knew was who you knew and so on. These things do still apply in our society even though they’re perhaps not so strong. In Tibet in the old days and in a lot of traditional societies, was very, very important to have influential friends and contacts on your side. If you knew somebody in influential positions, you could get things done. Otherwise, you really couldn’t get anything done at all.
But I think it still applies that we do still rely on others in various ways. And I think it’s not saying that we can’t get help from others, but essentially we don’t want to put our hopes and expectations too much in these things because this is just placing a reliance on things that can’t be relied on. I think it’s a bit like Jesus telling people to lay up treasure in heaven and not where what is moths and rust can corrupt or something like that. But not your trust in princes, yes. Something like that, yes.
It’s not saying that I mean, from the practical point of view, of course, we need to work with other people to get things done. We need to get help from other people. We need to join in group efforts and so on. But there might come a time when somebody that you’ve been relying on doesn’t come up to scratch. And if you’re having too much expectation of other people, and this happens in families all the time.
Families is an extremely strong example of how we rely on each other and sometimes we feel that our family members have let us down and then we get very hurt and there’s conflicts in the family and we don’t forgive each other and it just leads to more suffering. And this really comes from our self-cherishing that we have placed these expectations on others, perhaps expectations that they had no idea of having ever placed on them. They might have had no idea that you did expect these things because we’re always projecting onto other family members. We all have our own individual set of projections about what we expect of other family members, what they can expect of us and so on. These can become very unrealistic and completely out of touch with what the other members of the family are thinking.
Then they lead to all sorts of hurt feelings and conflicts and so on when people are acting out of these projections. Also in our love relationships we have a tremendous set of expectations of what our love partner is going to mean in our lives and what they should be expected to do and when we get married what role our husband or wife is supposed to take in the marriage and all of these things. And if we recognize all these things as being projections from our side and if we at least recognize that some of these projections may not be soundly based, it’s going to help us to be a bit more realistic and at least to be prepared to negotiate a bit into not just sort of fall into annoyance because the other person doesn’t come up to our expectations.