Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 93-minute teaching, Venerable Thubten Dondrub presents the Mahāyāna path to enlightenment, grounding the entire journey in bodhicitta—the aspiration to achieve enlightenment for the sake of all sentient beings. He explains the progression through generosity, morality, patience, perseverance, concentration, and the six perfections, showing how each practice naturally supports the next. The heart of the session addresses the Buddha’s core insight into the nature of reality: ignorance obscures our minds, causing us to perceive all things and ourselves as truly or inherently existing, when in fact everything arises dependently on causes, conditions, parts, and mind. Dondrub uses vivid examples—flowers, letters, rope mistaken for snake, actors and filmmaking—to illustrate how perception shapes experience. He argues that wisdom, a direct perception of emptiness, is the only antidote to ignorance and the root cause of suffering. The talk concludes with a reminder that understanding emptiness is not abstract philosophy but essential for genuine liberation and happiness. Suited to both newcomers and practitioners already working with Buddhist philosophy.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 2013 09 24 DB Presenting the Path Week 7 240913.mp3
UUID: ee83a039-295f-4dcd-a38e-582c36aa44c8
Teacher: Ven Thubten Dondrub
Collection: DB Presenting the Path (Ven Thubten Dondrub)
Date: 2013-09-24
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 92.9 minutes
Words: ~9,595
To talk on presenting the path. So the path we’re referring to is the Mahāyāna path to enlightenment. So these teachings are set out to inspire us, to encourage us, to follow the path that leads away from suffering so that we can achieve not after this death, just a good rebirth but we can work to become completely not only completely free of cyclic existence for ourselves but we can realize the full potential of our mind and achieve enlightenment so that we can help every sentient being get good rebirths, become free of cyclic existence and realize their own Buddha nature and achieve enlightenment. And why we’re encouraged to do this, to work for enlightenment is because we are connected with all sentient beings. They’ve been immensely kind in every way.
Life after life we’re totally dependent on them. We are just part of one family really. But all these kind mother sentient beings like oneself are in cyclic existence but unlike oneself at the moment they are experiencing far more suffering than ourselves with far less ability at the moment to do anything about it. And in their confusion, trying to be free of suffering, most sentient beings, most of the time are in reality creating the cause to keep themselves trapped in cyclic existence and therefore experience over and over again every kind of suffering and confusion, fear and worry. So by thinking about these things deeply we can develop this incredibly courageous and compassionate thought to or determination to achieve enlightenment.
Because recognizing it only as an enlightened being free of all faults having every good quality fully developed am I in a position to be of perfect benefit to others and therefore able to perfectly repay their kindness. So please think about these things in order to try and generate as much as possible what my teacher Lama Zopa Rinpoche calls the effortful bodhicitta. It’s not the spontaneous one but the effortful bodhicitta. If you’d like to do so at the same time join in the traditional prayer of refuge in bodhicitta. Which was composed by the great Indian master, Atisha.
And as we say this prayer, to make it more meaningful, more effective, we think of Buddha in front of us as our possible source of inspiration, refuge and guidance. And at the same time trying to have a sense of all these kind suffering mother sentient beings surrounding us, starting with our mother of this life on our left, our father on our right, then the rest of our immediate family, all our friends. Well, not just our immediate family, the rest of all our family, all our friends and helpers behind us, enemies in front, and then if we can opening our hearts and minds to an awareness and concern for all the other beings of cyclic existence. Thinking that no matter what I need to use this precious human rebirth that I’ve now found and all future lives to achieve enlightenment for others sake. So to do that I have to follow the path.
To follow the path successfully I need to understand the path. So this is why I’ll study this presentation of the path to enlightenment. I go for refuge until I am enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma and the Supreme Assembly. By the merits I create by practicing Dharma. May I become a Buddha in order to benefit all sentient beings.
So then if you find it helpful, the Buddha being pleased with your motivation and showing this by now coming to the crown of one’s head. When directly above our crown we imagine the Buddha turns facing the same direction as our self and then dissolves into blissful golden light. So that that light can then pour down into us blessing our mind. So then just briefly we can recite together the Buddha’s mantra as we do so imagining oh sorry Can you undissolve the Buddha? We will keep the Buddha on the crown of our head.
He can come back, he can do all sorts of things with the Buddha. Just firstly we will recite the mantra of the Buddha. And as we do so imagining white light pouring from the Buddha into us, purifying our mind of all suffering, all its causes, all confusion, all agitation, all obstacles to being able to understand the path to enlightenment. All obstacles to be able to follow the path to enlightenment. So now imagine that the Buddha happily dissolves into blissful golden light and that light then pours down into us blessing our mind to be able to gain all the understanding of the path, blessing our mind to be able to follow the path and achieve the result of enlightenment.
So then we can briefly do the nine round breathing exercise as a way to reinforce that positive state of mind. Enabling the mind to become a little bit calmer, clearer, more concentrated so that we can use that mind to listen to and think about the Buddha’s teachings tonight. Okay. Thank you very much. So what I’d like to talk about tonight is a little bit about what are called the six perfections.
Then a little bit about the part of the actual path to enlightenment and then just a little bit of very brief introduction to the tantric path to enlightenment. So someone who generates bodhicitta on the basis of having been able to generate spontaneous bodhicitta which is the authentic lasting one. Effortful bodhicitta one can generate in the mind which can last a little while. If one puts a lot of effort into thinking about the causes then one can for a short time have some kind of approximation to bodhicitta in one’s mind. By training the mind again and again one can eventually generate the spontaneous bodhicitta which has two aspects.
It is the wish to the determination to free all sentient beings, help free all sentient beings of the causes of suffering, Help all sentient beings to achieve enlightenment, to realize their Buddha potential, to experience peerless everlasting happiness. That’s one aspect of bodhicitta. The other aspect is the determination to become a Buddha. Realizing that only as a Buddha can one achieve the first two goals of freeing sentient beings from suffering and so on. So someone who has generated bodhicitta spontaneous bodhicitta which is something that continues, becomes an integral part of the mind is Bodhisattva.
So a Bodhisattva has generated bodhicitta by firstly renouncing this life and using their energy to work for a good rebirth. On the basis of that they have realized that even just good rebirths and cyclic existence are still fraught. One doesn’t escape suffering. So someone who realizes that more and more deeply eventually determines to become free of cyclic existence and to eliminate the causes of cyclic existence which is ignorance. And on the basis of that one can then generate bodhicitta realizing it’s not good enough just to free myself from cyclic existence and leave all these beings who have been so immensely kind to me behind.
I have to achieve my full potential, become a Buddha so that I can repay the kindness of all mother sentient beings. So someone who has generated this spontaneous authentic determination to achieve enlightenment then takes the bodhisattva vows in order to preserve that bodhicitta in their mind and strengthen it, increase it. And in the Tibetan tradition we are encouraged at some point after taking refuge where we commit ourselves to follow the Buddha’s teachings. We can then take what are called the five lay precepts which is to avoid the commitment to avoid killing, stealing, sexual misconduct and lying and intoxicants. Then one can also, having decided how wonderful Mahāyāna teachings are one can take the bodhisattva vows as well.
Even before you know traditionally it was after one actually generated bodhicitta that you took the bodhisattva vows to preserve that mind. These days, and for a long time previously, the tradition is to take the bodhisattva vows first as a way to as a basis to be able to help generate authentic bodhicitta in the future. Alright, I hope that wasn’t too confusing. Anyway, so someone who is an actual bodhisattva, someone who’s generated bodhicitta, has the bodhisattva vows, Their main practice is what are called the six perfections. In Sanskrit the term is the six paramitas.
Paramita means something like gone beyond. Six gone beyonds which has been translated more as perfections. And these perfections are the practice of generosity, morality, patience, perseverance, concentration and wisdom. So someone who is following the Buddha any kind of Buddhist path engages in those practices. But a bodhisattva’s way of engaging them engaging in them is very special because they do it not just to benefit themselves, just to get out of saṃsāra, but to benefit all sentient beings.
And so one does it with the bodhicitta motivation, dedicating it to enlightenment, combining them with all the other perfections. And it’s only once one has generated bodhicitta and become a bodhisattva that one can actually perfect these practices. So these six perfections are set out in a psychological order. The first one is generosity. This is the easiest one to practice.
It’s the beginning one. The one we should focus on first. So the more we practice generosity and the perfection of generosity is about developing the mind that wants to give. The perfection of generosity isn’t accomplished by giving lots of stuff to other people, but it’s developing the mind that wants to give everything to everyone. Right?
So it itself is a state of mind. And so the more we practice generosity purely, totally, that leads us to be able to practice the second perfection or perfect the second practice, which is the practice of morality, of avoiding harming others, doing every every kind of positive action to virtuous action to benefit them. Doing everything to lead them to away from Samsāra to enlightenment. And the psycho just in a very simple way, I think the psychology is the more we practice generosity and see how this brings happiness to others, the more it becomes the more we develop the mind that wants to live a virtuous life, to live a life of moral discipline. Because the more we see, you know, we bring happiness to others, of course, the less we want to cause harm to them.
And therefore we will avoid negative actions and want to engage in more and more positive actions. And the more we do that and see its benefits, the more this leads to be able to practice and perfect the next of the paramita or perfections which is patience. Which is the opposite to the mind of anger because we recognize that anger brings the greatest harm to others. Under the control of anger we can you know, be of immense harm to others. So that’s completely contrary to the Bodhisattva wish to be of only benefit and be of perfect benefit to others.
And also we see that anger actually as well harms our self and therefore is a huge obstacle to following the Bodhisattva path. It’s not only just harming others, but our anger prevents us being a vast benefit to others. And so the more we practice patience this enables us to be able to engage more and more and perfect the next of the paramita which is the perfection, the paramita of perseverance. Which is defined as the mind that finds joy in engaging in virtue. So if we really the very worldly mind doesn’t enjoy engaging in virtue.
There are definitely people in this world, probably a growing number of people, who don’t admire being virtuous, don’t enjoy engaging in it, and think people who do are pathetic. You know, it’s really uncool to be virtuous, whereas it’s really wicked to be wicked. As that wonderful bumper sticker says, what is it? Good girls go to heaven, but bad girls go everywhere. That’s supposed to be funny and cool, but it’s really, when you think about it, quite sad.
But anyway, there’s some wonderful bumper stickers in the world. Really strange. Anyway, yeah, so if we really delight in doing virtuous things, if we really enjoy it, we will have a lot of energy to do virtuous things. That is practice the Dharma, practice the Buddha’s teachings. And of course the more we practice them, the more we engage in the Bodhisattva way of life, the more we will be able to progress along the path.
But if we don’t have this enthusiasm, this perseverance, this joy in what is virtue, we won’t be able to do it. And we will with perseverance difficult things become enjoyable because we see they’re meaningful so we will enjoy meeting the challenge of doing different difficult things like meditating for long periods of time, going into retreat, not being able to eat lots of fancy food and have lots of entertaining distractions. We will enjoy studying the teachings and trying to understand even the very difficult teachings the nature of reality and so on. So by enjoying that, we will we will engage in the practices and through the power of familiarity, these practices will become easier and easier and we will get the benefits more and more. But if we don’t have perseverance, nothing happens.
So spiritual perseverance is quite different than worldly perseverance. We can, any person, worldly person can have a lot of perseverance to do ordinary worldly things like shop, go to parties, you know, make money. People have lots of energy to make money but they don’t have lots of energy to be virtuous. It’s a completely different mindset. But that’s the mindset we need to cultivate.
And so the more we have that, that leads to the next of the perfections paramita which is developing concentration. Because if we enjoy working with our mind and we enjoy learning to meditate and even if it’s difficult and painful etc etc. If we enjoy the challenge of dealing with the distractions in our mind we will be able to learn how to concentrate our mind more and more. And once we learn to concentrate our mind more and more, then when we develop what is called samadhi or single pointed concentration where the mind is able to stay effortlessly for extremely long periods on what is virtuous, then with that single pointed concentration our mind will be able to penetrate very quickly and easily into the meaning of the Buddha’s teachings. To develop our meditation practice, which is the key to following the path, we need concentration.
And once we’ve got that, we are able to hold our mind on the object and by doing that we are able to understand that object, whatever it is. Yeah? So if we meditate on loving kindness with a concentrated mind, we are able to awaken our potential for loving kindness much more than if we do it with an unconcentrated mind. If we meditate on compassion, patience with concentration we are able to develop these qualities more quickly and easily and retain them. Because one of the benefits of developing concentration is of course when you when one is able to single pointedly concentrate on something you are then able to effortlessly remember it.
You know, right now you all seem to be listening to me quite nicely. As far as I can tell. Paying attention. You’re sort of concentrating but when you walk out of this room, like tomorrow you will have forgotten most of what I’ve said. Because you’re not single we don’t have the ability to single point or concentrate on anything.
And so we can’t hold it in our mind. We can’t remember it because that’s what memory is. Remembering is recalling something that we’ve heard or seen, thought about. And if one sees something, thinks about something with a concentrated mind, it stays. We can bring it back completely easily.
But we can’t do that because we’re not concentrated. So once we’ve developed concentration we are then able to use that concentration on the most important topic of the Buddhadharma. The ultimately most important topic which is the nature of reality. Developing the understanding, the insight into how one actually exists, how all things exist because and develop the wisdom which is the actual antidote to ignorance. More about that.
Well, that’s coming up. So that leads in yeah so that leads into the sixth perfection paramita which is the paramita of wisdom. So wisdom doesn’t refer to knowing lots of things. Know usually in a generally these days we talk about wise people and that seems to imply someone who knows lots of stuff and has a lot of experience of life. But wisdom, being wise in a Buddhist context doesn’t necessarily imply knowing lots of stuff.
It is wisdom is referring to having a unmistaken direct insight into the nature of reality. How one actually exists. Knowing it. Not as an intellectual knowing but knowing as a direct unmistaken experience. Alright?
Not something intellectual. It is a it is not a conceptual knowing. It is a direct perception. Right now, yeah, a direct perception with our mental consciousness. For those people who attended the class on mind and its potential I talked about how we have the five sense consciousness the eye, ear, nose, tongue, body consciousness.
So they directly perceive their object. Our eye directly perceives shapes and colors. But our mental consciousness right now doesn’t directly perceive anything. I think. It can, it has the potential to, but right now it’s not.
Everything with our mental consciousness is known indirectly conceptually. But our mind has the potential to directly perceive things. Right now our mental consciousness can conceptually understand impermanence. Our mental consciousness has the potential to directly perceive it. Not just believe it, actually experience it directly.
That’s what the whole Buddhist path is about. Having direct perception of things. Not just intellectual understanding or faith and belief, but direct perception. Where you directly, unmistakenly know something. And you know you’re knowing it.
It’s complete, you know, I don’t know. So we need this direct perception of how we exist and how everything exists because right now we have a conceptual experience of how we exist and how everything else exists and that conceptual understanding is wrong and that’s why we suffer. This is what the Buddha discovered. Four noble truths. There is suffering, second noble truth.
There is a cause of suffering And that’s the cause is that ignorance. This ignorance that obscures our mind so that we experience ourself in a false way. We experience everything in a false way. And we and we’re also ignorant that that’s happening. We don’t know it’s happening.
We’re unaware of what’s happening. Those are the six perfections. So these are the whole basis of Buddhist practice. To get a good rebirth, the more we practice the six perfections we’ll get a good rebirth. To get out of Samsāra we need the six perfections, But especially to achieve enlightenment, we need to perfect the six perfections.
And that’s what a bodhisattva does. So this leads so now I’d like to Any questions? Comments? Don’t be shy. Either you are all very shy and polite, or you all understand everything perfectly.
Anyway, I think I don’t know. Sorry, I think that might have been being rude. I didn’t mean to be rude. I’m just trying to encourage you to ask questions. Yes.
Why why is it so bad? To understand why it’s so bad or what it is. Yeah, well that’s what I’m going to talk about for a while now. But again it’s something that what ignorance does and what it’s you know to understand how things exist one has to understand how they don’t exist which is how we’re experiencing things and one has to study this over and over again. This is, you know, it’s really yeah.
Through the power of familiarity. It it could be. It it may be glimpses of direct perception. You know, very brief glimpses so that, you understand something properly or you know something properly for a moment and then it’s obscured. But then you have some kind of sense of something being right or wrong.
Yeah. But when you have direct perception, there’s no vagueness. It’s you know, you there’s an absolute vivid there’s a total clarity about everything. So yeah. Okay.
So now I’m going to talk for about a half an hour if I’ve got time about the most profound subject in the universe. Universe. And I don’t even know what I’m talking about. This is gonna But anyway, there is a whole module on this topic, the wisdom of emptiness. So I encourage people to come along for that later on.
Probably we’ll get into that next year. Anyway, just again this is just an introduction remember this is just a brief introduction to the whole path which is enormous. So anyway, what the Buddha discovered is that the direct very simply, the very the direct cause of our suffering, any suffering we’re experiencing in any moment, one can say the direct cause of it is the ripening of negative imprints in our consciousness. Negative potentials in our consciousness that force our consciousness to experience things that bring the feeling of suffering. Right?
So why are these negative potentials in our mind? The Buddha discovered that the cause of those negative potentials is they are the result of engaging in negative actions of body, speech, and mind motivated by our delusions, our afflictions, the disturbing thoughts, the principal ones being there are many of them, but the principal ones being anger and afflicted desire attachment. Right? They’re the two. And there’s also pride and jealousy and and so on and doubts and whatever.
Then why do those disturbing thoughts exist in our mind? Why do we have them? Yeah. What is the cause of them? Is there a cause?
And the Buddha discovered there is a cause of them. They only exist. They what the Buddha discovered is that these disturbing thoughts which we have are not a true aspect of our mind. As I’ve tried to say many times, love, compassion, the six perfections, these are all true aspects of our mind. You cannot eliminate those things from the mind.
You can obscure them, repress them, but those qualities can never be eliminated from the mind because they are the mind itself. Alright? But although the disturbing thoughts are regularly present in our consciousness and controlling our life to a large extent, they what the Buddha discovered is that they are not a true aspect of our mind. They arise depending on causes and conditions. And the main cause of the actual root cause of all our disturbing thoughts is ignorance.
Now just to go back a little bit, for those people who maybe haven’t made it much of a commitment to the Buddhist teachings and the whole idea of karma and everything, which is true, it’s difficult to really understand and believe. But we can all admit whether we believe in future whether we believe in the Buddha’s teachings or not, whether we believe in future lives or not, that we have disturbing thoughts. We all have afflicted desire, attachment in the sense of a negative state. I’m not talking about nice feelings between mom and dad and your brothers and sisters and babies and things like that. We’re not talking about that.
We’re talking about this this particular negative mental state which has a Tibetan and Sanskrit term which we can only translate into English using the word attachment because it has that connotation of being stuck and something painful to separate from. It’s one aspect of the meaning of attachment as a negative state of mind and it goes with afflicted desire. So if you check these disturbing thoughts they’re called disturbing thoughts because they disturb the mind. They are actually painful. Anger is painful.
Fear, worry, pride, jealousy, desire, attachment are all painful states of mind. So while we have them, we will never have any kind of lasting happiness because they always get in the way. So they have no real benefit. Sorry, my understanding of scientific materialism. But they tend to argue everything has a everything exists because it has some kind of survival value and whatever.
But really, what’s the survival value of afflicted desire and attachment and pride and jealousy? It’s just painful. Yeah. It doesn’t help us, it hinders us. It limits us and causes immense suffering to others as well.
Our delusions act as a condition for great suffering for others. So what, you know, from a materialist point of view, what’s the point of having these? And the Buddha looked into this and saw that the cause, the only reason why we have these delusions which bring all the suffering in this world, but if you believe the Buddhist teachings generate these negative potentials that bring intense suffering into the future, throwing us into more samsaric rebirths, The only reason is because there is this other mental affliction disturbing thought obscuring our mind and it is called ignorance. And it causes, it forces the mind to experience, it does two things. It obscures the mind so that we experience our self and everything in a false way.
And the second thing is having created that false illusion, false appearance, that illusion, that ignorance forces the mind. Please don’t think, this my bad way of expressing things because that maybe sounds like this ignorance is like some being in the mind that is consciously doing that. It’s just because it’s there this is what happens. Just like if you have sunglasses you know everything looks a little bit green or yellow or whatever that you know the glasses don’t decide I’m going to do this to your eyesight. Right?
It’s just because that’s once ignorance is there, it it the the mind is forced to experience things in a false way, but believe that that false experience, that false appearance is absolutely true. So, okay, right? That’s one thing. Now, in our daily life, everything we experience, everything we see, smell, taste, touch, think about, we just naturally assume that what we are experiencing is true. It’s not a mistake.
It’s true that things are like that. Of course we do acknowledge that from time to time that we do make mistakes. Occasionally, we acknowledge that we make mistakes. That we thought this was a nice person, but they’re not a nice person. We thought this was this and it was that.
But these are, like, very strange mistakes we made. Normally, everything is right. Yeah? And and what we one of the things we are doing is that we are assuming that the way things appear to us matches the way they exist. Right?
We just assume that what appears agrees with actually how it is. Just like a little child watches a movie and assumes that that actor who appears to be Superman is Superman because they look like Superman. Yeah. And like we have on the altar somewhere oh, like this bunch over there. These flowers over there appear to be flowers, but they’re not.
Over there in the corner on the ground. They appear to be flowers but the appearance and the way they actually exist is different. Right? They are not flowers. They’re not made up of the stuff that flowers are made up of.
But it doesn’t look like that. We just assume quickly, you know, that there are flowers over there because they look like flowers. And this is what we are doing with absolutely everything. Everything that we experience with what we see, smell, taste, touch, feel, think, We you know, it appears a particular way to us and we we don’t even think about it. Is so it is, you know, beginningless grasping that this that how things appear is exactly the way they exist.
But that is what the Buddha discovered is that it’s it’s not like that at all. Things are actually oneself and everything, absolutely everything is existing in a different way to which they appear. So what’s the difference? What is the difference? This is the big problem.
This is where it gets very very complicated and difficult. So the way things appear to us now controlled by ignorance is philosophically referred to as well it has various terms as true existence or inherent existence. The term true existence is actually very can be very confusing because true existence is actually it’s false. It’s not true. But it’s called true existence because we think it’s true, but it’s actually false.
Things appear truly or inherently existing whereas in reality we have a body, right? We have a mind. Anyway, it’s all agreed we’ve got a body. Not sure if we’ve got a mind. Scientific material says we don’t have a mind.
Buddhists say we have a mind. Buddha says we’ve got a mind. And then there’s something else we talk about, which is me. I. So.
I, me. So there’s me and there’s everything else. There’s other people and there’s all the whole phenomenal world. All of this appears to our mind to be truly or inherently existent, and the Buddha discovered that nothing is inherently existing. Nothing truly exists.
Things do exist, but they don’t inherently exist. They don’t truly exist. So the as Maggie brought up the question, the whole question is, What does this term inherent or true existence really mean? Because we’re experiencing it right now. When we look at these flowers, whether we know it or not, agree with it or not, they appear to be truly existing flowers.
When we experience ourself, we experience ourself as truly or inherently existing. So what does it mean? I’m not sure. I’ll try to explain. So for me one of the easiest ways to sort of start to get an idea of it is if we all agree, well you don’t have to, but hopefully we can agree that these flowers are nice.
They look nice. This is a pretty flower, attractive beautiful flower. Right? Kind of? More or less?
Something that we would normally label as attractive, think of as you know, so anyway we can take that as an example of something pleasant symbolizing something beautiful. Not neutral or ugly, but something beautiful. When we experience something as beautiful, why do we experience it as beautiful? This is just rhetoric. You know, don’t call out the answers.
Confuse me. You you can disagree with me in your mind, you know, and it’s difficult to explain, but why we think this is or whatever this symbolizes is beautiful is simply because it seems to be telling us I’m beautiful. It just is beautiful. Know, if we were especially before we met the Buddhadharma, if we were to ask ourselves or any ordinary person on the street who accepted that they’ve got a mind of any description and we asked how does the mind work? We would possibly say that our mind is like a mirror and it just reflects back what is there.
Our mind is like a mirror or a camera or a movie. It’s just something’s there and our mind sees it as it is. So why do we why do we experience this as beautiful? Oh, because it is. Yeah?
Why is something ugly? Because it is. Why is something good? Oh, because it is. Yeah?
Why why does this taste delicious? Because it is delicious. No big deal. I mean just check up whether you agree or not that there’s something some element of truth in that. What I’m trying to indicate by that is that what that implies is that this beauty of something doesn’t really depend on anything.
It’s just there from its own side. From its own side, it’s beautiful. It it exists as something beautiful under its own power, under its own steam. You know? Under its own it’s got its you know?
Yes. But the point the point well if that was true that this didn’t really depend on anything for its beauty, the way it seems to appear to us. Especially this is when we don’t think about things, when we don’t analyze, which we don’t do most of the time. You know, we just grasp at things as being good, bad, beautiful, ugly, right or wrong. We don’t analyze.
So in the in the in the moment it appears in a particular way. If if that if that was true, if that appearance matched the reality of the way it existed, then everyone would perceive, would experience this thing as beautiful. Everyone. If it truly, inherently existed the way it appears from its own side under its own power. Because if it existed under its own power from its own side that means, that implies, it doesn’t really depend on anything.
So it doesn’t depend on my way of thinking about it. It yeah? It’s just beautiful. I don’t have to think it’s beautiful. It just is.
So bingo, I experience it as beautiful. But if that was true, everyone would experience it as beautiful because it really wouldn’t depend on anything. It wouldn’t depend on their culture, their state of mind, anything. Is just really beautiful. But not everyone would agree that it’s really beautiful.
So, anyway, just as a way of introduction because it can’t take too long. What the Buddha discovered is that if you really investigate, nothing exists that way as just solely existing from its own side under its own power, not depending on anything. Everything actually exists. Oneself, all the natural world, everything that’s produced, the whole universe itself, everything depends on causes and conditions. It depends on parts and most important of all and most subtle of all everything, absolutely everything depends on the mind.
The only way this flower the beauty of this flower exists is depending on causes and conditions For example, one condition, one very gross condition, why does this flower appear beautiful? Is because we can see it. There’s a lot of light. But we don’t think about that. If we turned off the lights, we couldn’t see the flower.
It wouldn’t look very beautiful. We could remember it as beautiful, but we wouldn’t be able to experience it as so beautiful in the dark. So it actually depends on causes and conditions. It does. Yeah.
And I I mean, in in our culture these days, you know, magazines and photographers are all about photographing things so they look incredibly beautiful. Know? And we get sucked into it like fashion. Yeah? All these clothes, you know, they get a model who looks like this, and then they they photoshopped the model and and do all sorts of things with her, you know, and photograph it from, you know, at enormous expense with incredible lighting, about forty five people standing around this skinny girl, you know, doing stuff.
So this hunk of material, hunk of junk, looks just fantastic and you’ll spend three thousand bucks for it. Or like food food magazines, you know, and how they photograph it, the lighting, you know. They’re actually food experts. They’ve got a name who who do that, who are experts in just setting up food to be photographed so it looks, you know, they’ve never succeeded with McDonald’s by the way, but anyway, that doesn’t even look like food. But anyway, sorry.
Yes, so causes and conditions and it depends on parts and and it depends on the mind. But the point is and and also so things do depend that way actually in reality. The only way they can exist, everything if you check, this is this is what you have to experiment, check up, because there’s no homework, written homework this week because it’s the end of the course. But the homework for your rest of your life, because this is the most vital thing, because we are all suffering. Why are we suffering?
Is there any reason? Is there no reason? Is there a god making us suffer for some special reason? Or is the Buddhist answer true that we have a mind that is obscured? And it’s obscured by ignorance.
And so check that the Buddha said that in fact things, everything you can, everything that exists depends, it arises depending on causes, conditions, parts and the mind and that’s the only way things can exist. There’s no other way that something can actually exist. So you just check. Do things, anything you think of, does it depend on causes and conditions? Does it depend on parts?
And does it depend on your mind? And could it exist any other way? How could you ask yourself How could this how could I experience this as beautiful if it didn’t depend on my mind? Calling it, labeling it beautiful, thinking of it as beautiful? It can’t.
I always I should plan my I I I never have anything. Sorry. Pen. Pen. Pen.
Just very quickly. Can you all see that? It’s a letter a. Right? Everyone here in this room can recognize that.
Right? Three strokes. Oh. Anyway, imagine I did a few other strokes on this piece of paper, but it was actually Chinese, And I held it up. Would you be able to read it?
No. Why not? It’s just a few strokes of lines on the paper. Here’s a few strokes on the paper, and you you know what that is. Yeah?
It appears to our mind just naturally, of course, that’s an a. Of course, it’s an a. But why? Yeah. Well, it depends.
But when we don’t think about it, it just obviously is an a. It doesn’t seem to depend on anything. It’s just an a. There’s a real a really there on the piece of paper. But actually all there is is three lines.
And we have created our mind has made those three lines appear as unquestionably an a. But an A that seems to just really be there under its own power from its own side. If it was a real A, then we’d be able to read Chinese because there’s no difference. It’s just lines on a piece of paper. But the only way this can appear is as an A is depending on causes and conditions starting with some lady who I forgot standing in front of what was a blackboard in my days and doing this on the board and saying ah!
We all had to say ah! And then we say a, yeah, a, you know, a, it was a, but I can’t remember now. It’s a long time ago. Anyways, c a, tuh, cat, right? C a, tuh, cat.
Yes. Yeah. So starting with that, but even when the causes went back earlier because, you know, the mind had started to be trained a bit, pay attention, so it’s depending on all those things sitting still, being frightened of the teacher, and so therefore had to listen to and pay attention, depending on all those conditions and yeah, and the parts, the three lines, and the label, the actual word. There’s the label are, and my mind being able to associate that label with that. And depending on all that coming together, my mind creates the experience a.
And that’s the only way it can exist. But nothing appears like that to us. It appears to be out there separate from us. Good, bad, beautiful, ugly, right, wrong, this, that. And therefore we crave the good stuff.
We have the afflicted desire for the good stuff, aversion to the bad, indifference to the neutral. And only because of that, because it appears to be really good from its own side. Not because I’ve decided it is, depending on many causes and conditions, like my culture and blah blah blah blah blah. Many, many, many, many things. No.
It just seems to be really good, you know, real happiness. So I crave it. I get attached to it. If I experienced it as as it actually is, I wouldn’t have I could enjoy it, but I wouldn’t have craving for it. I wouldn’t have attachment.
I wouldn’t have aversion. It’s relative. Yeah. But it’s yeah. It arises dependently.
Everything is a dependent arising. So the easiest way so what that means is that everything when we understand dependent arising that things arise depending on many many factors, causes and conditions, parts, the labeling mind, we can start to understand that everything is actually empty of the way they appear now. Things exist. That is what emptiness refers to. It doesn’t refer to nothing.
Emptiness is referring to the fact that things exist in a way that is empty of this true existence, this inherent existence. Because what inherent and true existence implies is things are exist independently, separately out there from their own side under their own power. But if one understands that things actually exist dependently, then they can’t be independent. Therefore, that’s wrong. That appearance is wrong.
It’s false. It’s a complete illusion. Oh, there’s more to go. So anyway, this is the heart of the Buddha’s teachings, to understand the nature of reality by understanding that it is we experience ourself in a false way and and everything in a false way, and because of that ignorance there are delusions, and because there are delusions there is negative karma, negative imprints, and suffering. So if we want to stop suffering, we have to stop creating negative imprints.
That comes from firstly subduing the delusions, but ultimately eliminating them. And the only way to eliminate them is to eliminate their cause, which is ignorance. And the only way to eliminate ignorance is to realize the exact opposite to it. And that is wisdom. The wisdom that sees that everything experiences everything as being empty of inherent existence.
It’s it’s a little bit like there’s an old analogy that, it’s it is like we are asleep. We are sleeping. We are dreaming the dream of ignorance. So in a dream, when when a person goes to sleep and dreams, the dream appears completely real. It doesn’t appear as though this is a product of one’s mind.
It’s just there. But actually, it’s all arising from one’s mind. And when you wake up, one realizes it was just a dream, just something my mind created. So when we develop wisdom, we wake up from the sleep of ignorance and realize all of this, what we’re experiencing now, is just created by ignorance. Everything arises can only arise depending on causes and conditions, parts, and especially our mind.
When we change our mind, the whole world changes. Because the the world is not something separate from us. It appears to be that way, but it isn’t. Because one thing to try to understand is that, if you take the analogy of a mirage in a desert, A mirage in the desert creates the illusion of water. Right?
So the water appears. If you’re in a desert, you know, there’s this mirage that creates the illusion of water. So the illusion exists, but the water doesn’t. So right now, our ignorance is creating the illusion of a truly existing me, a truly existing external world. That illusion exists.
The illusion exists but is not the reality. There is another simple analogy which I’ll just quickly you’ll hear all this again. Anyway I’ve covered the whole Dharma Bites module in thirty minutes about the snake and the rope. You can have a bit of rope on the ground in the dark and you can look at it in confusion especially if you’re walking quickly and that rope can appear to the mind as a snake. Right?
Depending on the rope being there and the darkness moving quickly depending on causes, conditions, parts, and the labeling mind, there is the ill the illusion of a snake which the mind, the confused mind, believes is a real snake. And you you you you you so fear arises because one sees a real snake. One believes one is seeing a real snake. But there isn’t a snake there at all. You can we can see one completely, totally, but there isn’t a snake there at all.
Not one one scale of a snake is there, but we see one. And what is equally, if not more interesting, what is there, we don’t see. There is a rope there, but we can’t see a rope. We cannot see the rope. We see a snake.
And while one is seeing a snake, you can’t see the rope. As soon as you see the the the rope, you can’t see a snake. So while ignorance is creating the illusion of inherent existence, we cannot experience things as they are. And so we suffer. We cannot experience ourself or anything as it is, so we suffer.
As soon as we experience everything as it is, we can’t see. The illusion of inherent existence is gone and we won’t suffer. That’s what the Buddha realized. And that’s what he came to this world to teach us. And this is the only way we’re going to free ourselves.
To free our mind from this ignorance, step by step. I don’t have enough time to talk about all the rest of the course. That’s okay. Another time. Some questions?
Oh, don’t put it like that. Oh, we are here. No. No. No.
No. Don’t. No. No. No.
Wait. Wait. The the difference between something appearing as empty as as appearing do you put it? Right now things are appearing as truly existent. When one experiences them as empty of true existence, the difference is very subtle.
When you right now, whether we know it or not, believe it or not, we are experiencing an inherently existing flower. Right? When someone who’s realized emptiness will still see this a flower, a pinky whatever flower. They don’t see like some diamond crystally thing. They see a flower but they see an empty one that is empty of inherent existence.
They see they experience it as something arising momentarily depending on causes, conditions, parts, their mind. Not as a concept, they experience that directly. And the point is, the point is, the point is that when we as as the way we experience it, this thing now is inherently existing, that that what that goes with is suffering. You know, we call this a pleasant experience. It doesn’t smell nice, but it it looks nice.
So we call that a kind of happiness. But that happiness is samsaric happiness, which is the suffering of change. That’s the most we can get out of this by experiencing it as inherently existing, the suffering of change. Someone who has realized the empty nature of this, this, that experience of just looking at it is blissful. It is pure bliss.
They touch it is also pure bliss. Smell it pure bliss. Eat it pure bliss. That’s the difference. Ignorance is suffering.
Empty the wisdom, the mind, the mind of the wisdom mind experiencing the empty nature of everything is bliss. So they say. I mean that’s the point of realizing it. And of course as we’re experiencing this as inherently existing, the most we get out of it is the suffering of change, but we also generate attachment and desire which is creating the causes for more suffering down the road. Whereas someone who’s realized emptiness, momentary experience is bliss And there’s no attachment.
There’s not no creating the cause of any kind of confusion, suffering, disappointment, regret, blah, you know, in the future. There’s just pure bliss. That’s the petals. Sorry? No, Nothing does.
We’ve only just started this topic. Yes. Yes. Yes. But one thing what there’s a big mistake is that there’s there is something here but not the way we believe.
It’s not really here but there is some see there sorry. Now you got me going. See there’s there’s many philosophical schools within Buddhism about the Buddhist teachings about the nature of reality. And one of them is called the Cittamātra school which translates into English as the mind only school. So they argue that there isn’t anything out there at all.
Everything is just a projection of our mind. But the philosophical school of Buddhism that the Tibetans follow, all the four schools of Tibetan Buddhism follow is called the Madhyamaka school, which also has subdivisions. But the Madhyamaka school argue that, yes, things do depend on the mind, but it’s not, this flower is not just purely dependent on my mind. It’s it’s not just it’s not just something created in my mind. The flower is created by my mind depending on causes and conditions and parts.
But when you analyze something you can’t find it as inherently existing by itself. Which does but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist at all. Because there are things that don’t exist at all like horns of a rabbit. The horns of a rabbit do not exist. Right?
Rabbits exist, horns exist, but a rabbit that grows horns and therefore the horns of a rabbit, these do not exist. There there’s a concept of the horns of a rabbit, but there are no such actual horns of a rabbit. So there are things that don’t Father Christmas doesn’t exist, the Easter Bunny doesn’t exist, so on. And then there are things that do exist. So oh, okay.
Just to and of the things that exist there are two kinds of things that exist: permanent things and impermanent things. Most phenomena that exist are impermanent. So they depend on causes and conditions, parts and the labeling mind. There are some things that are permanent such as space that is permanent. That doesn’t depend on causes and conditions but it does depend on parts and the mind.
So everything is a dependent arising. Everything arises dependently. So things do things that do exist they yeah they depend on the mind but not just on the mind. But they can’t exist without the mind. Yes.
And quarks and things like that. Yes. Yes. Same time. Yes.
Yes. Quantum physicists discovered that in the twenties before all that stuff. Yeah, they discovered that actually the way atoms behave depends on the way you look at them, on the observer, Which means they don’t truly exist. But you can also think about things like beauty in general. We can all agree that beauty exists.
But then when you try and investigate it, what is it? And how does it exist? But it does exist. And there are things that are long, and there are things that are short. But what’s a long thing?
What’s a short thing? They exist. There are tall people. How tall do you have to be to be tall? As soon as you start to investigate, everything starts to become more and more nebulous.
If you don’t investigate and think, it’s very solid and concrete. Well, what we usually say because it’s easy because virtually everything in our world is impermanent. Something depending on causes and conditions is impermanent. But there are things that exist not depending on causes and conditions such as space. So they’re permanent.
Also, just to confuse you, emptiness which is the ultimate nature of reality, of things, is permanent. So for example, just just to end on a confusing note, now I’ll try and make it clear, this cup, this glass is impermanent. Right? It it came into existence depending on causes and conditions. So it’s impermanent, changing moment by moment.
So that’s the conventional nature of this phenomena. It’s impermanent. But the ultimate nature of this phenomena is that it’s empty. This cup is empty of inherent existence. The emptiness of the cup or the glass is permanent.
That doesn’t change moment by moment. This glass is always empty and it’s the same emptiness all the time. But when this glass is broken the emptiness of the cup, the glass doesn’t exist anymore because the glass doesn’t exist. So although the emptiness of this glass is permanent, it doesn’t last forever. You have to think about it.
Made sense. Permanent. That doesn’t depend on causes and conditions. No. No.
Can I go home? But emptiness doesn’t truly exist. Emptiness is empty. So emptiness the emptiness of the cup To talk about the emptiness of a cup you have to or a glass, sorry. To talk about the emptiness of glass that does depend on a glass.
You can’t talk about the emptiness of a glass that doesn’t exist. Right? So the emptiness of a glass is dependent on a glass. But that emptiness of the glass doesn’t depend on causes and conditions. That’s just the very nature of the way this thing exists.
It’s empty of inherent existence. So that doesn’t change in any way. Emptiness is always emptiness and there’s not less and more emptiness or different kinds of emptiness, there’s just emptiness of things. What about it? The emptiness of that glass.
But just quickly, sorry to bore you, relation to the self we have a body and mind and me and we grasp that there is a me that is truly inherently existing because that truly inherently existing I that we grasp at is an I that doesn’t really depend on the body and mind. We, deep down, instinctively without thinking of it, our ignorance creates the illusion that there is a real me that doesn’t depend on a body and mind. And you and and the me the proof of this is the way that ninety nine point nine nine percent of human beings on this planet live. Is everyone on this planet, every human being on this planet is trying to be happy. And how are ninety nine point nine percent of human beings on this planet trying to be happy?
Or how they are trying to be happy by having stuff. Money and the stuff that it buys. But the I that exists, not the truly existing I, the I that does exist oh, anyway, what now? I’m a follower. So they’re not trying to make the mind happy.
They’re not working with the mind to be happy. But the I that validly exists, that is a dependently arising I, That’s the only I that exists. That I arises depending on the body and the mind and particularly the mind. So if the mind is like that, I am unhappy, I am disturbed, I am suffering, I am not my mind. The I, the person, is not the mind but it arises depending on the mind.
So if the mind is disturbed, I am disturbed. If the mind is calm and peaceful, because the I is not something separate from the mind but dependent on it, I am calm and peaceful. There’s no way to be happy if the mind isn’t happy. But we think, I’ll be okay if I have enough money, if I have enough stuff, if I meet the right person. That’s not gonna make us happy.
That’s not going to change the state of the mind in a good way. It’s directly working on the mind. The only thing that will calm our mind is directly working on the mind. And and similarly, you know, we think we’ll be happy and so we eat lots and get, like me, fat. And then we get sick and die of this and that.
Oh, because I will be okay even if I don’t take care of my body. And I can smoke three hundred cigarettes a day, but I I won’t get cancer. I won’t get sick. And like I said last week, think, I can drive like a lunatic on the road but I won’t have an accident. I I can take I can shoot up, you know, cocaine and heroin all day long, but I I won’t become an addict.
That’s the belief in an inherently existing me. Separate, true, I’m real, not depending what I do with the body, nothing to do with my mind. I really exist. That I doesn’t exist at all. It is a fantasy.
It’s the it’s the illusion. It’s the mirage in the desert. And the I that does exist is starving. We don’t we’re not looking after it. We’re not taking care of it because we don’t take care of our mind.
Check up, really check up because this is Some of these teachings can sound very abstract and academic and super intellectual and really just, you know, this university philosophy stuff, mind games. But it’s not. It’s really about this most vital thing. If we want to be free of suffering we have to understand who we are, how we exist, how everything exists, to cut through these illusions. And we’ve met the precious human rebirth the optimum chance to do it or to start to do it.
Ten minute break, deep break.