Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 107-minute teaching, Ven Thubten Dondrub introduces the Wisdom of Emptiness course with an exploration of why Buddhist practice requires understanding the nature of reality. He begins by laying out the Four Noble Truths—that ordinary existence bound by delusion and karma is inherently suffering, that ignorance about how we truly exist is the root cause, that cessation of suffering is possible, and that a spiritual path leads to liberation. Dondrub then explains how we habitually experience ourselves and objects as inherently, truly existing—solid, independent, separate from our mind—when in fact all phenomena arise dependently on causes, conditions, and the perceiving mind. This false perception fuels attachment, anger, and other disturbing thoughts that create suffering. The wisdom of emptiness is the mental consciousness that directly perceives how things actually exist, free of this illusion. Dondrub clarifies that emptiness means things lack inherent existence, not that they don’t exist at all, and emphasizes that direct realization of emptiness automatically dismantles the disturbing thoughts at the root of suffering. The session includes guided visualization of refuge and bodhicitta motivation, and closes with instructions on assigned readings and homework. Pitched at beginners as well as practitioners familiar with Buddhist foundations.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 2015 01 13 DB Wisdom of Emptiness Week 1 13012015.mp3
UUID: ba8d1833-8d90-44b4-b9eb-aca07cf4b011
Teacher: Ven Thubten Dondrub
Collection: DB Wisdom of Emptiness (Ven Thubten Dondrub)
Date: 2015-01-13
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 107.6 minutes
Words: ~12,645
So welcome everyone to is it working? Yes. Oh, yeah. Hello? Yes.
So welcome everyone to Buddha House and the first of these series of talks on the wisdom of emptiness. So particularly those people who are new who haven’t been here for the first time. So welcome and welcome back to those who’ve been coming regularly or semi regularly or something like that. So my name is I’ve been a monk for something like thirty seven years. And so what?
I’ve been asked to be the teacher of the center by well, approved to be the teacher of the center by my guru, Lama Zopa Rinpoche, who’s depicted in that photo over there. He’s the spiritual head of the worldwide organization called the FPMT, the Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahāyāna Tradition, and this center is one of the members of that organization. So for those people who have registered some time ago, hopefully, you’ve listened or read the introduction to the DB course. If not, please do so as soon as you can. Those people who have just registered for tonight and may decide to stay and continue the course, then you can apply to the office to get Peter will send out to everybody, including the people, the first timers, so they don’t have to apply. No. Okay. So everyone will get an mp3, isn’t it? Yeah. Of the introductory introductory talk, which just explains the background of this course and everything.
So it’s really good just to listen to that first to know what it’s all about. So I’ll avoid repeating that now. Except to say, because I can’t help it, especially this topic is probably one of the most intellectually difficult aspect of the Buddha’s teachings, the teachings on the nature of reality. And so if you’re not familiar with this at all and maybe there are some people here who’ve never really studied any Buddhist teachings. Is that yeah? Yes? Nothing? No? Okay. So of course, to really understand this module, it’s good if you studied other aspects of Buddhism as a background, but each of these modules is we try to present them with the assumption that people don’t know very much or nothing.
So you can do it without any background, but the more background one does have, it does help. But, anyway, this is quite an intellectually complex subject, but this is just an introduction to it. So, especially, don’t try to understand everything at once and don’t get upset if you can’t understand everything. It’s just good just to listen. And by repeating things, I repeat various things over and over again or introduce an idea and expand on it the next week and try and expand on it like that. So, hopefully, step by step, some things start to make sense. But don’t try and understand everything all at once. You know? If you can, that’s great. But if you can’t, that’s okay. No problem. But it is really important to try to give the whole course a chance, especially the first night. I’m always mumbling away not very clearly, so it takes me a while to get in my stride. So don’t judge the course by the first night. It usually gets better. Sometimes it might get worse, but usually it’s better, I think.
Anyway, one of the things that’s emphasized a great deal by all the lamas that I’ve studied with or had the opportunity to receive teachings from is that when we listen to the teachings for them to have the best effect on our mind, it’s really important that we try to listen with a really open mind, try to have a focused mind, but especially to have a really good motivation for listening, to get rid of any negative motivation or lack of motivation and really cultivate a very strong, clear, and genuine and positive or virtuous motivation. And in the Mahāyāna tradition that Tibetan Buddhism is an aspect of, the very best motivation that we possibly can have for listening to the teachings and trying to put them into practice is what is called bodhicitta.
So bodhicitta is the wish, the strong determination to achieve enlightenment, to realize the full potential of our mind, understanding that it’s only when we free our mind of all negativities and awaken all our positive qualities and achieve the enlightened state of Buddhahood that in that state, we ourselves become free of all suffering and achieve perfect happiness, peerless everlasting happiness, which is what deep down we and all sentient beings are seeking, whether we are conscious of it or not. All of us want to be happy. We don’t want any kind of suffering. Even the tiniest insect has this wish. No one wants suffering, even the tiniest bit of suffering, and everyone wants happiness, and everyone wants perfect lasting happiness. And so to achieve that, we have to achieve enlightenment. But the main reason to achieve enlightenment is not so much for our own sake, but for the benefit of others. And that mind wanting to be of perfect benefit to others arises from understanding more and more deeply that in reality, we are connected to every sentient being. We always have been. We always will be.
Without going into lots of details and boring the people who’ve heard this from me many times before, if you just think about what you ate for breakfast this morning or just one slice of bread you had this morning or today or a piece of cake or anything, to be able to enjoy that, just to have it depends on countless beings, human and nonhuman. Yeah? So we depend for just to survive, we depend on many many beings directly. And since those beings in turn depend on others, we depend indirectly on every living being. And since to have a piece of bread the wheat that produces it, that it comes from, just doesn’t arise in an instant. It depends on wheat existing before. You know, there was a crop before that, then a crop before that, and before that going back thousands of years, and all the people who produced it, etcetera, etcetera, and all the animals that helped produce it and all the insects in the soil, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. So we are connected just to survive with countless beings.
Then on top of that, every good experience we have, whether it’s an ordinary experience or some kind of spiritual experience, they can only arise depending on the kindness of others, their help, their support, their knowledge, either directly or indirectly. And maybe I shouldn’t give this example, but the fact that I can maybe say something about the Buddhadharma that hopefully will be beneficial is because I’ve heard it from many others, and they heard it from many others going back and back and back and back. And then you hear it, and then you can help spread it to other people. Yeah. So, you know, just all those good experiences I hope this is a good experience, by the way. So all those good experiences, ordinary and spiritual, arise depending directly and indirectly on all beings. And then on top of that, every good quality and skill that we develop, ordinary and spiritual, again, we can only develop them. We may have the potential for them, but the extent to which we can develop those potentials totally depends on others directly and indirectly. Yeah. So we have this huge debt not burden. That’s not the word. Debt. Good debt of kindness that we’ve received from all sentient beings. Not just in this life, but if you think from a Buddhist point of view, of course, we’ve always existed. We’ve had an infinite number of past lives where, again, we’ve depended on sentient beings.
And while we remain in saṃsāra see, I’m already dropping these jargon words that maybe some of you know, some of you don’t. While we remain in this cycle of ordinary existence, taking rebirth again and again, we will depend on the kindness of others. And yet the sad thing is all of these beings are suffering like ourselves. We are suffering. We’re not perfectly happy. We experience all kinds of frustrations and problems and difficulties, fears, worries, physical and mental suffering. But compared to the vast majority of sentient beings, our suffering is not very much at all. But others have huge huge amounts. And on top of that, if one checks, one starts to look not only do they have more suffering, but they have less ability to do anything about it because of all sorts of reasons, less freedom to escape their suffering, to reduce it, to modify it, to transform it, even to make any sense of it. And in their confusion, the vast majority of sentient beings, in trying to become free of suffering, are actually creating the cause for more. They don’t know it. In fact, also, we’re in that category too sometimes, maybe far too often, thinking we’re creating the cause for happiness. In reality, we create the cause for suffering from the perspective of the Buddhas. But especially if we think about it from the point of view of what’s happening to others, that they’re so kind and yet they have so much suffering, then we can generate this thought that no matter what, I have to do something about that. I can’t just sit by and use this life just to entertain myself or just to get a good rebirth or just to get out of cyclic existence. I have to help them to become free of suffering and not just temporarily and partially, but to help everyone to be totally free of suffering forever in a way that their suffering will never come back because that’s the only way to repay the kindness that I’ve received from every sentient being. So that’s the thought of bodhicitta, that I will achieve enlightenment for the sake of others.
And that arises from also understanding that I have the potential within me to become a Buddha, and that understanding arises from developing faith in what is called the Triple Gem. The Buddha, believing that the Buddhas exist and that their teachings are perfect and reliable and unerring, and that there are the great followers of the Buddha, the Sangha, who are following that path away from suffering to liberation and enlightenment, and they can help us and inspire us. And so to achieve enlightenment, we have to eliminate the causes of suffering. And what that involves is developing the wisdom of emptiness, which is what this topic is about. So one can think I’m going to study this topic, the wisdom of emptiness, in order to prepare myself to be able to free my mind of all the causes of suffering so that then I can help every sentient being free their mind of suffering and achieve peerless everlasting happiness. Okay.
So there’s a traditional prayer that is said. So as a Buddhist monk at a Buddhist center giving some Buddhist teaching, I have to say this prayer. Otherwise, I get into trouble. Not really. That’s sort of a joke. But so if you’d like to join in, especially those people who have taken refuge, then it’s on page eleven of the student material or some people may not have that, but maybe you can join in. So traditionally, what we do, we say it twice in Tibetan for the sake of connecting with the tradition and one time for the sake of the meaning.
So as we say this prayer of refuge and bodhicitta to make it more effective, the tradition is we try and imagine or visualize the historical Buddha, Śākyamūni Buddha, in front of us, thinking of the Buddha as embodiment of all the Buddhas, all the Buddha’s teachings, the Dharma, and all the Sangha, the great practitioners of the teachings. And at the same time as we think of the Buddha appearing in front of us to remind us of our Buddha potential and to inspire us to realize our Buddha potential, we can think of ourselves surrounded by all sentient beings. Particularly, we try and think of our mother of this life on our left, our father on our right, and then behind us, we imagine the rest of our family, all our friends, all the people who we can think of who have helped us and been kind to us and looked after us in this life. And then in front of us, we put those people who dislike us or we may dislike or have harmed us in some way, and we put them there not to generate negative thoughts towards them, but to help us realize that these beings have been kind to me as well. Maybe not recently, but in past lives, they have been. In future lives, they will be again, and they are suffering beings like everyone else. So they deserve my compassion, not my aversion and anger and so on. So, particularly, we should try and think of that core group of people that we are most connected to in this life. But then as much as possible as well, we try and open our hearts and minds to an awareness and concern for all other living beings, at least the human beings of this world.
Du sum sangye. I go for refuge until I’m enlightened to the Buddha, Dharma, and the Supreme Assembly. By the merits I create through listening to the Dharma, may I become a Buddha in order to benefit all sentient beings.
So then what we can do is we can imagine that the Buddha in front of us is very pleased with our motivation and shows this by now approaching us. And when the Buddha’s directly above the crown of our head, we imagine that the Buddha then dissolves into blissful golden light. And then we imagine that that light pours down into us through the crown of our head, blessing our mind, blessing our mind to be able to understand the Buddha’s teachings of wisdom. So then just for a short time, we can do some simple breathing meditation, such as the nine round breathing exercise, if you are familiar with that one, just to help our mind become a little bit calmer, clearer, more concentrated so that we can use that level of mind to listen to and think about the Buddha’s teachings this evening. Okay. Thank you.
So maybe in the break time, there are two sheets maybe sheets over here that you can collect. One is the homework because people are encouraged to do some homework each week. And I mark it, or I look at it. I put ticks on it. There’s no passing or failing. It’s just to encourage people to rather than just come each week and listen to me, to really sort of think about what’s been said and try to integrate it into their life in some way if they feel any connection with what’s been said. So there’s the homework sheet, and there is also just an outline of the topics that I’ll be trying to cover each week.
So tonight, what I want to try and talk about is why do we need wisdom? What is it about and how we cultivate it in a general way. Not all the details of how to cultivate it. So that’s the main things to talk about tonight. So why do we need wisdom? Actually, all these three questions are mixed together. So why do we need it is related to the very first teaching the Buddha gave, which is the four noble truths or the four truths of noble beings.
And the first of those truths is that what the Buddha discovered and taught is that ordinary existence, which is what we have, which refers to having a mind that is under the control of delusion and karma ordinary existence, the Buddha discovered and taught is in its very nature suffering. That not only do we, as ordinary beings, experience suffering from time to time, but what the first noble truth says is that the very nature of our existence is bound up with suffering. It’s in a sense, it’s like it’s in our DNA. It’s the very nature of our existence to experience old age, sickness, death. These things are inescapable in saṃsāra while we have a mind controlled by delusion and karma. These are things that just happen. And as well as that, as well as old age, sickness, and death, which are all unwanted things, we experience all sorts of other kinds of dissatisfactions and sufferings over and over again. Yeah. Physical, mental problems. Everyone’s experiencing them, everybody in saṃsāra. They may not say so. They may not admit their suffering, but everyone is. They may not experience obvious physical or mental pain, but everyone is experiencing some kind of dissatisfaction, which is what the Sanskrit word that is translated as suffering implies. It doesn’t mean just obvious physical pain and mental pain, but this underlying sense of frustration and disappointment and dissatisfaction.
Because even the happiness that we experience, and we all experience happiness from time to time, is just that. It’s experienced from time to time. It doesn’t last. None of the good experiences we have last, and we can’t make them last. Whatever enjoyment and happiness we experience in saṃsāra with a mind controlled by delusion and karma comes to an end irreversibly. There’s nothing we can do to make it last. So that’s unsatisfactory, unsatisfying, because we don’t want to experience happiness that comes to an end. Deep down, whether we know it or not, we want to experience happiness, peace, contentment, well-being, satisfaction that continues. It doesn’t decline. It continues forever. So when it doesn’t, that is frustrating. It is unsatisfying. So we all experience that even if we’re not conscious of it, but we’re all experiencing it. So very simply, that’s the first noble truth that there is suffering.
And then this question arises, no one wants suffering, but we’re all suffering. So why are we suffering? Why do we suffer? Why do we experience old age, sickness and death and all sorts of things that we don’t want and try intelligently to try to avoid suffering and solve problems, but it doesn’t work. Yeah. Things are invented to solve a problem, and they create another problem. And then you invent something to solve that problem, but that creates another problem. Check it out. You have a disease, they discover medicine to cure it. That medicine has side effects. Sometimes the side effects are worse than the disease that it was meant to cure. Anyway, check it out. That’s the first noble truth. Ordinary existence is just frustrating. It’s suffering. It’s a drag really deep down. Yeah. And no samsaric mind can solve it because every samsaric mind, no matter how brilliant, is obscured by delusion and karma. So something always goes wrong, always, always, sooner or later.
So why? Why does this happen? And the Buddha discovered the answer. Well, as Buddhists believe the Buddha discovered the answer. Second noble truth, there is a cause for our suffering. And this is what this course is about. The Buddha taught that the cause of our suffering lies within our mind, that in fact all experience comes from our mind. All happiness, all suffering comes from our mind. There are conditions in the external world for happiness and suffering, and we, as ordinary confused people, think those conditions are the actual cause of our suffering. You know, extremists blowing people up are the cause of suffering, but they’re not the cause of suffering, the Buddha said. They are the conditions for suffering. There is a root cause for suffering. You have to have the conditions, but you have to have the cause.
Sorry. I’m gonna do my tomato example already, but I invented this wonderful analogy. I think I did. But, anyway, if you want to grow a bush of tomatoes, a plant with lots of tomatoes on it, you need two major things. You need some tomato seeds, and you need some nice soil, which is fertile and moistened and has a certain amount of heat coming on it, which are the conditions. In other words, you need the seed and the conditions. You need both. But which one is most important? The conditions or the seed? The tomato seed or the conditions? One could argue they’re equally important, but I and the Buddha would argue that the seed is the most important because even if you’ve got a huge area with perfect conditions for growing tomatoes, it’s only where you put the seeds that the bush will grow. So no matter how good the conditions are, you’re not gonna get tomatoes. It’s only where you put the seed. Yeah. So there can be conditions for suffering. There can be conditions for happiness. But if the seed isn’t there, if the root cause isn’t there, it’s not gonna happen. If you’re in an airplane and it falls out of the sky, which they occasionally do, those are the conditions to die. But if you haven’t got the cause, if you haven’t created the cause to die, you don’t. Conditions are there, but if the root cause isn’t there, it doesn’t happen. That’s Buddha’s view. There has to be a cause. If our mind is experiencing something, our mind has to have created the cause. Because, you know, just as a tomato bush emerges from a tomato seed, the result emerges from the cause. The result is experienced by our mind, so the cause is emerging from our mind. That is one of the most fundamental Buddhist views. Alright. Everything is coming from our mind, good and bad.
You know, I’m giving this talk. One person is blah blah blah. So I don’t know how many people in the room, twenty or so people in the room. So whether this is a good talk or a bad talk or a so-so talk, interesting, boring, stupid, brilliant, depends on your mind, not me. Whether you benefit from this talk or not doesn’t depend on me. Well, maybe a little bit as a condition, but it depends on your mind. Some people like Buddhism. Some people hate it. Some people are indifferent to it. Some people think it’s brilliant. Some people think it’s stupid. Depends on their mind. The Buddha himself, you know, some people loved the Buddha. Some people hated the Buddha. Depends on people’s minds. It’s one of the most fundamental aspects of Buddha’s teachings. Everything depends on the mind. You change your mind, the world changes. Your world changes when one changes one’s mind.
Anyway, I’ve got off the subject a little bit. So what the Buddha is saying is the cause of our suffering depends on our mind, and it depends particularly on something which is obscuring our mind because what the Buddha discovered is that our mind, which is not the brain or a byproduct of the brain, mind is something quite different. At the moment, the level of mind that we are operating from now depends on the brain, but it is not the brain, and it is not a product of the brain. Our mind is something that is formless, nonphysical, insubstantial, and what the mind does is it knows and experiences. It is a process. The mind you could say is ongoing moment by moment, ongoing continuous giving rise to experience and knowing and feeling because every moment you experience something, there is a feeling, pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral.
Anyway, the Buddha discovered that the nature of our mind is pure and perfect. It’s utterly perfect, complete. It has this Buddha nature. It has the potential within our every sentient being’s mind is the potential for every good quality. Every sentient being has within them the potential of perfect wisdom, perfect love, compassion, generosity, kindness, concentration, patience, the whole lot. That is the very nature of our mind. But, unfortunately, that mind is obscured. And because the mind is obscured, we suffer and create the causes of more suffering. This is what the Buddha discovered.
And what particularly obscures the mind is what is called ignorance, this mental factor of ignorance, which just like when you wear colored glasses, you know, our eyes now have the ability, the potential to see things as they are, to see everything the correct color, etcetera. But if you put sort of yellow glass over your eyes, then everything appears yellow. You know? The eyeball doesn’t decide to do that. It has no choice. Everything turns yellow. So our mind is obscured by ignorance, and because of that, the mind is forced in a sense. It experiences everything in a false way. This is what our subject is about. Because of ignorance, we experience ourself in a false way, and we experience all phenomena. Everything that we’re experiencing right now, we’re experiencing in a false way. We’re not conscious of it. That’s why the Buddha appeared in the world to teach us this, to show us something that even the most brilliant person was never conscious of. Because we all basically because we all have this ignorance, we all are experiencing the same mistakes. So there’s no way, you know, if we check and if we ask, are you seeing this like this? And the other person will say, of course. So, of course, we think we’re experiencing everything correctly. It’s only someone who purifies their mind who realizes, oh, things aren’t like this. They aren’t the way they’re appearing. They exist in another way.
So, anyway, the Buddha says, second noble truth, that there is a true cause of suffering, an actual cause of suffering, and that is ignorance, that we are experiencing ourself in a completely false way all the time, and we also at the same time experience everything in a false way. And it’s only because of that ignorance that we have all these disturbing thoughts. As a byproduct of ignorance, all sentient beings have a whole range of disturbing thoughts. The two main ones apart from ignorance are attachment, afflicted attachment attachment not meaning affection and, you know, how we use it in the ordinary language of liking people and feeling very strongly connected to someone. Attachment goes with afflicted desire, which is this craving for things and getting stuck, dependent on them, neurotically obsessed with them, thinking this thing, this person is going to make me happy, is going to bring me perfect, lasting happiness. So that disturbs the mind. It is suffering, and we act on it. We follow it, and we create the causes of more suffering. And because of that afflicted desire and attachment, we have anger. We get attached to things, and when we can’t get them, when we’re frustrated in getting them, or someone interferes with what we have and what we’re attached to, we get angry. We get angry because we can’t get what we want or how we want it, when we want it, or we get angry because people are threatening what we’ve got. And that is suffering. Anger is suffering. And following that anger, we create the causes of more suffering to ourself.
And then because of ignorance and afflicted desire and anger, we have all sorts of other delusions, disturbing thoughts, such as pride, jealousy, fears, doubts, various versions of anger like frustration and irritation and annoyance. And, yeah, agitation. Don’t mention that one. All those, you know, minor ones and also the extremer ones of intense hatred and sense of revenge and bitterness. Yeah. So because of and these all exist and only exist because of ignorance, because we’re experiencing things in a false way. And because of following our delusions, then we generate these karmic imprints, these negative imprints in our mind. And when the conditions come, just like when you’ve got the tomato seed when the conditions come, then the tomato bush or the seed sprouts and grows. When the conditions come, the karmic seeds in our mind ripen, and the only way they ripen is as suffering. And when the suffering comes, how do we react to it? We try to hide from it by desiring something. To avoid our suffering, we try and distract ourselves by desire. Oh, this is so wonderful. This will make me happy. Yeah. And if something frustrates that, we get angry again. And we get angry at being suffering, and we get angry with our suffering. Why should I suffer? What’s wrong with me? Why is this happening to me? We get very angry. And then, yeah. So saṃsāra keeps going.
Just very quickly oh, yeah. Third noble truth, fortunately, the good bit is there is a true cessation of suffering. Yeah. We can definitely stop all suffering by ceasing the causes. If we eliminate the cause, there’s no way suffering can occur. Alright? And how do we eliminate this suffering? By eliminating ignorance. And how do we eliminate ignorance? By developing the wisdom of emptiness. The wisdom that perceives things, ourself, experiences and perceives ourself and everything as they actually do exist. When we are experiencing ourselves as we actually exist and at the same time we are experiencing everything directly, unmistakenly, vividly as they are, there is no way we can develop disturbing thoughts of attachment, anger, pride, jealousy, fear, and worry. It’s just utterly impossible. And since they don’t develop, we don’t create negative actions, don’t create negative imprints. There is no suffering. It is impossible. And just like a garden full of weeds, when you get rid of the weeds, the garden can flourish. While the weeds are there, the garden, all the good stuff in the garden has no hope. But when we get rid of the disturbing thoughts from our mind, then all the positive potentials can flourish.
Fourth noble truth is that there is a path, a system, a graduated system of practice, a spiritual path that we can follow whereby we can develop and cultivate this wisdom and everything that goes with it to free ourselves from suffering and all its causes in such a way that those causes can never come back. Because there’s lots of things, you know, that cause suffering, and one can get rid of them, cured, but the disease comes back. Or you get rid of one disease and another one comes. But when one develops wisdom, the nature of this wisdom is that it eliminates the cause of the ignorance in such a way that this ignorance can never return. So we’re all suffering, and we don’t want it. So that’s why we need to develop this wisdom, to get rid of this suffering. Because from a Buddhist point of view, nothing else will stop our suffering.
Some people are attracted to I shouldn’t probably say this, but I will. Some people are attracted to Buddhism because they think unlike some other religions, there is nothing you have to believe. There’s no doctrine whatsoever. This is a bit misleading, to be quite honest, because the Buddha is saying, if you want to stop suffering, there is only one way. If you want to completely stop suffering forever, there’s only one way, and that is to get rid of ignorance because your ignorance is causing every kind of suffering, physical, mental, the whole lot. And when I first met Lama Zopa Rinpoche in nineteen seventy six, in one of the first teachings he mentioned that actually really stuck in my mind, he made the simple but very profound point. If you have ignorance in your mind, if you have delusion, if you have attachment and afflicted desire in your mind and anger in your mind, how do you expect to ever be happy? How can you possibly be happy if the mind has no control over ignorance, attachment, and anger? Those poisonous minds always undermine whatever happiness we achieve. They always destroy it. They always get in the way. We have some pleasure, some success, and then one gets attached to it, then the whole thing starts to be destroyed. Because if you look at the nature of attachment, there’s always some fear that goes with it, the fear of losing what one is attached to. So how can you be happy when you’re afraid and worried? We can’t be. It’s not possible. I don’t think so. Check it out. And because of attachment to things, there’s always the potential to be angry. So how can we be happy when there’s always the potential to be angry? It’s just impossible. So we need this wisdom. Yeah.
So what is this wisdom? Okay. What is this wisdom? Very just a very simple introduction tonight. I’ll probably get very confused, but what is this wisdom? Okay. This wisdom is a mental factor that is the exact antidote to ignorance. Ignorance creates a false appearance to the mind of how our self and everything exists. Whereas wisdom is that mental factor, that inborn potential of our mind to directly perceive things as they are. Well, actually, there are many kinds of wisdom. I’ll just go back a bit. In general, what is wisdom? Wisdom is that aspect of the mind that is able to distinguish what is correct from what is not correct, what is right from what is wrong, what is beneficial from what is not beneficial, what is meaningful from what is not meaningful, what is harmful from what is beneficial. So there’s that fundamental potential that every mind possesses, able to make that distinction of this is, you know, something good to do. This is harmful to do. This is beneficial for me to do. This is not beneficial for me to do. This is helpful. This is harmful. We all have that potential. Trouble is we don’t use it a lot or we could use it a lot more.
And so there is just a minute. Yeah. So there is that wisdom that functions at a conventional level in relation to what is called the conventional truth. There are things that conventionally are true and beneficial, and there are things that are conventionally false and harmful. Maybe this leads into another topic, which I maybe should just quickly address, especially for the newer people. In every religion, and this is certainly true in Buddhism, there’s a talk of what is right and wrong, virtuous and nonvirtuous, good and bad. So there is a certain view these days and philosophies that you really can’t talk about good and bad. These are just cultural differences that, you know, vary with cultures and vary even within a culture over time. What is good one day is considered bad the next day and vice versa. So these are just, you know, prejudices and something that one should get rid of. There’s nothing good, nothing bad, blah blah blah. But from a Buddhist point of view, this is not actually very clear thinking. There is a valid basis for talking about something being good, bad, virtuous, nonvirtuous, meaningful, meaningless, beneficial, or harmful. And this valid basis is also something universal that applies to all beings at all times in all places, and this basis is the mind because every sentient being has a mind.
And although we have unique separate minds, discrete minds, your mind is not my mind. Your mind is not part of my mind. We have separate minds, but all minds have the same nature, function in the same way. And there are things that harm the mind. In one way, you can’t harm the mind because it’s formless, but there are things that harm the mind in the sense that they awaken and agitate the disturbing thoughts and therefore bring suffering and confusion. And there are other ways of thinking and speaking and behaving that are a reflection of our Buddha nature, which therefore bring well-being and happiness. And since every sentient being wants happiness, every sentient being wants to be free of suffering, anything that is conducive to happiness is good, is virtuous. Things that are conducive to suffering, everyone acknowledges as bad and, therefore, non virtuous. And that doesn’t change. The way the mind works never changes. So what is bad for the mind one day is bad a million years later. What is good for the mind ten million years ago is good for the mind now and ten million years in the future.
So an aspect of the mind is able to distinguish that if we let it. Just simple things like better not to go through a red light. Bad for the body. Going through red lights potentially bad for the body, driving through red lights. There’s a little bit of wisdom, you know, to stop at the red light. That’s a type of wisdom. Very basic kind of wisdom. Or to, you know, stop eating after, you know, a certain amount or don’t eat that. You know? Or give up smoking. That’s being wise. I did that. One wise thing I’ve done, gave that up. Bad for you. Bad for the body, bad for the mind. You know, my wisdom finally worked that out. Took a while, but it got there. Yeah. So there’s this very basic thing, but then there is this very profound wisdom that is able to distinguish the way things actually exist from how they don’t.
Because right now, our ignorance is creating an illusion that things exist not things, me. Everything exists in a particular way, and that illusion is extremely convincing because we’re all falling for it right now. Yeah. And we’ve never and so we have this ignorance functioning all the time creating this illusion that we believe in. And because it’s so convincing, we have never ever doubted that what we experience is the truth. You know, we’ve all had experiences of making mistakes. We do it regularly about things, making bad judgments about people, misjudging people, all sorts of things, and then we realize, oh, that was wrong, and we’re a bit surprised. But then we blunder on and keep believing that everything we experience is right. If I’m experiencing it this way, it must be the truth. We don’t doubt that. Yeah? Even though there are many times we keep making mistakes at a gross level. But still, we’re always convinced that what I’m hearing, seeing, thinking, believing, smelling, tasting, touching, blah blah blah is right. Why? Because it appears right to me. That’s what’s appearing to my mind. It’s so real. So we never doubt, and so our ignorance goes on.
But what we can do is start questioning if we start listening to the Buddha’s teachings about reality. Of course, many beings over the history of the world have thought about how do things actually exist. Because, you know, all of us here are, I think, intelligent people, but most of the time, we don’t go around thinking about how do things actually exist. We just don’t bother. We just assume, oh, they’re out there like that, the way they appear, which is called in philosophy naive realism. Most of us, no matter how intelligent we are, are basically what are called naive realists. We just think that things are really the way they appear. Just like a little kid watching Superman on TV or on a movie thinks that is Superman. There’s this guy really flying in the sky with a cape. Because it looks like there’s a guy flying in the sky with a cape. And we look at things in a particular way and think that’s how they are, but they’re not.
And many people have been checking for a long time, writing philosophies. But most of those people, and some of them have come up with very profound understandings of reality that come very, very close to what the Buddha perceived. But it seems to me that I think for most of them, if not all of these people, these philosophers, it has just been simply a question of an intellectual curiosity. It’s never been connected with this fundamental issue of why we’re suffering. But this is one of the true insights of the Buddha that not only was he able to discover the way things actually exist, but he realized it’s the fact that we don’t experience things correctly that is the source of our suffering.
Philosophy, you know, when I went to university, I had an opportunity to study philosophy, but I thought, you know, why study such a dry academic? You know, who needs to know about all that sort of stuff? And I think that’s what many people think about philosophy. It’s just this very, very abstract, boring subject, you know, word games and stuff. And maybe this course will appear that way to some extent. But in Buddhism, discovering how we actually exist and how phenomena exist is not just an intellectual pursuit, and it is deeply, deeply, totally connected with the whole issue of why we’re suffering. It’s only because we experience things in a false way that we are suffering and create the causes of suffering. This is what the Buddha is telling us.
So just very briefly, the way things appear to us now is, in Buddhist terminology, is said to be things appear to us I always look at flowers when I do this. Got me into this habit. But it’s everything, including ourselves. Things appear to be what is said to be inherently existent or truly existent or existing from their own side or existing under their own power. So all these terms are more or less you know, I’ve lost the word. What’s the word? Synonymous, appearing from their own side under their own power, truly or inherently. So one of the challenges of this course is to try and understand what that means and to try and see if we can realize that that’s how I am experiencing myself and other things.
But, roughly, what it also means is that the way we experience things is that they appear out there for a start. They’re all out there. And what that means, of course, is they appear to be completely separate from me. They’re out there. You know, there’s this external world out there, and I’m wandering around in this external world. So it’s all out there. It doesn’t depend on me. And the way things appear to exist is they appear one of the terminologies, which can be quite confusing, is that they are said to be truly existing. Truly existing.
So for example just take for example, someone put this here is hopefully, it’s because they thought it was beautiful. And probably we all would agree that this is a kind of beautiful flower. Yeah? But we all have an idea of something being you know, people being beautiful, certain objects are beautiful. So when we look at a beautiful object such as a flower, it appears to be, and we use this expression, really beautiful. It’s really beautiful. Really beautiful. It’s real. The beauty is real. What does that mean? What does that mean? Don’t answer. I’m doing just rhetorical question here. Just in your mind, really beautiful. So if you try and analyze when we say that or, for example, if you eat something and you think, oh, this is really delicious. Really delicious. Yeah. So if you check, what it sort of implies is that this beautiful flower the beauty is real. It’s something really tangible. It’s something really sort of solid and concrete, and it’s there. It’s really there. It’s a fact that this is beautiful. It’s an absolute fact. It doesn’t really depend on me because it’s really beautiful. Yeah. It’s really beautiful. Beautiful. But is it really beautiful? Is it really beautiful?
So when you say it’s really beautiful, it somehow has the feeling, the connotation that the beauty of this object doesn’t depend on anything because it just is beautiful. Doesn’t depend on anything. But for example, maybe you can check. Maybe you’ve had some experience or you know, maybe one day when you’re when we’re looking at this now in a very peaceful state of mind and the time to focus on it, one can look at it and think, oh, this is really beautiful. It’s really beautiful. But another day when the mind is really agitated, maybe really angry and upset or depressed, and you look at it, don’t like it. Yeah. It’s the same thing. But when the mind is really in a bad state, you don’t even see it. This really beautiful thing just doesn’t do anything for you. It didn’t change, but it’s no longer a beautiful thing. Of course, you know, one day you love someone. They’re the most wonderful person in the world. And then the next day, something different. They’re not so really beautiful, really desirable, really wonderful, which shows, in fact, that the way we experience this depends on our mind. In reality, it depends on the mind. Depends on our mind. This object has no ability from its side to make us experience it as beautiful, but it looks like it does. Why do I say it’s beautiful? Because it is. It appears to my mind to be beautiful. It’s like it’s telling me I’m beautiful. So I have to say it’s beautiful because it’s telling me. I’m forced to think it’s beautiful. It’s forcing me to, but in fact, it’s not. It’s the mind. Our mind is projecting something onto this.
Because, also, if you check, if you try and check your mind, when we look at this flower, and this is just a symbol for anything that we individually think of as beautiful or desirable and pleasant, when we look at this and think, oh, this is really beautiful. Deep down, we just naturally assume that everyone else thinks the same thing. They have to because it is really beautiful. If it’s really beautiful, everyone would think the same because it is really beautiful. And then if someone disagrees, we’re really shocked. We’re really surprised. How could you not think this is really beautiful? Because it’s really beautiful. Am I starting to sound crazy? Because this is meant to be kind of profound. So yeah. And it’s only because if you check, it’s only because this object and every object we see as beautiful and desirable appears from its side to possess this beauty, which we also associate with happiness. Right? Things which are good, beautiful, are happy. Happiness, desirable, associated with everything good. So oh, no. I think I’ve lost my point. Yeah.
Yeah. So, you know, when we’re experiencing something, believing it’s really good, really beautiful, the real source of happiness. There’s happiness, beauty, goodness in this thing. It’s only because we experience it that way that it’s out there separate from me, possessing this beauty, goodness, happiness that we can have craving for it. We crave this thing which is out there separate from me. There’s this duality. There’s this and me. The happiness I want happiness, and here it is. Here is the beauty. Here is the goodness. I crave it. So the mind gets agitated towards that. And because this object appears to make me happy, then the nature of desire is to exaggerate how good this thing is. Because it makes me happy, it is really good. How could it not be really good when it makes me really happy? You can’t tell me this is bad because it’s making me happy. How can something that’s making me happy be bad? It’s gotta be good. It’s gotta be really good, which makes it even the more desirable. And then we get attached. We crave it, grasp it, get it, and then we get attached for permanent happiness. So how can you let go of permanent happiness? Because if you let go of permanent happiness, you’re miserable. So one is attached and dependent. And because one’s attached and dependent, then you get angry with anyone who even looks at this. Don’t you dare look at my happiness. Don’t you dare think about my happiness. It’s mine. You’re a nasty person. You’re obviously a nasty person because you’re casting aspersions on my happiness. Yeah. And you’re a really nasty person. Yeah. And you appear to be really nasty because anyone threatening my happiness has to be really nasty, really really bad. It’s real. It’s true. It’s a fact. I don’t have to worry about it. It’s a fact. It’s real. You’re bad. I’m good. You’re bad.
And all the suffering in the world starts. Then you blow up people, kill them, do all sorts of stuff because you’re bad, and I’m good. And what I want is okay to do. So wisdom is not about knowing lots of things. It is this mental factor that is able to directly, unmistakenly perceive the way things actually exist, not how we think they do, how we project things onto them. Oh, it wasn’t meant to be a yeah. Break. Break. Oh, yeah. But just before we take a break, a question? Some questions? I can try and clarify.
What is that thing? Well, in Buddhism, there are what are called the two truths. There is the conventional truth and the ultimate truth. So conventionally, there are things that are beautiful. Conventionally, there are things that are good. There are conventionally things that are ugly and bad and harmful, etcetera, etcetera. So our mind has the ability to recognize things which are conventionally good, etcetera, etcetera, and beautiful and whatever. And that also depends on the culture we’re brought into and the time that we, you know, that we live in, etcetera, etcetera. What is beautiful at one time is not so beautiful, you know, and so on. Even in very short periods of time, you know, with fashions, you know, things change, and what we think is beautiful and, you know, really cool and groovy one year is considered awful two years later. But the mind has the ability to recognize those things. But with attachment and desire, then you know, conventionally, we can say this is beautiful according to our culture and so on. Some cultures don’t value flowers and all that, you know, for various reasons and whatever. Our culture does, and we go gaga over certain kinds. You know? Yeah. You know, for example, like, when was it in the seventeenth century or something where everyone went absolutely gaga about tulips and made a fortune about tulips, and then that all died away. Now, you know, now people just like tulips, but they don’t pay thousands of dollars for one or something, which they did at that point. Where am I going? Yeah. So there’s something conventionally attractive, but then attachment and desire takes over and exaggerates and goes berserk about it. And that’s the problem. Yeah. That’s part of it. Sure.
But the point is yeah. But, you know, you hear this piece of music and think this is good, and this person hears this piece of music and thinks it’s good. But both people are making the one mistake that each is thinking this is really good. This is actually good music, and that’s bad music. And this person’s thinking this is actually good music, and that’s bad music. And we’re both each is convinced that they are right. They’re right. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. At that conventional level, that is true. But at another level, at the ultimate truth, there is an actual way that things are existing, which we can discover. We don’t have to make it up. It’s not something depending on culture and so on and values. This is the point.
Yes. Yeah. Why we like certain things when we see them is some of it is conditioning in this life, culture and conditioning in this life, but the very interesting thing from Buddhist point of view is some of it is conditioning from past lives. It’s karma. Why are we attracted to particular people or particular things is not just. It can’t be explained just from this life. Okay. Thank you. We’ll take a short break.
About just in an introductory way about what this wisdom is because the rest of the course will be about that. So wisdom the wisdom of emptiness is this mental factor. It’s a mental consciousness which is directly perceiving reality, the way things exist as they are. So it’s the very opposite to ignorance, which is a mental factor that is experiencing things in a false way. It’s creating an appearance that is not there. The appearance is there, but the reality of that appearance is lacking. Just like in a desert, because of the heat in the desert, there can be the appearance of water. So the appearance of water is there. The appearance is existing, but there’s no water. Right? So the illusion is existing, but what that illusion is creating the appearance of water doesn’t exist in that case. Right? So in this case, this mental factor of ignorance is creating the illusion of what is called inherent existence or true existence. So that appearance, that illusion is there, and we’re experiencing it all the time, but it has no reality. What the appearance it’s creating is something completely false, and the way things are existing is something else.
And the way things actually exist is referred to in Buddhist philosophy, in the Sanskrit word, shunyata. I don’t know how to pronounce the word, shunyata, shunyata. And this term is translated into English as either emptiness or voidness. And so emptiness there are many misunderstandings that have developed from the very time that the Buddha taught this to the present time. And one of the major misunderstandings that has arisen and still exists is that voidness or emptiness means that nothing exists. Yeah. Everything, things just don’t exist at all. So this is absolute rubbish. The aim of Buddhist philosophy is not to practice for years and years to come to the conclusion that nothing exists. This is a completely wrong view. This is one of the extreme wrong views called nihilism. The extreme form of nihilism is saying that nothing exists at all, and another version of that is that there is only this life and nothing exists beyond this life, both of which, from a Buddhist point of view, are absolutely false.
So what voidness or emptiness is saying is that things are empty or lacking true existence. They are lacking inherent existence. It doesn’t things do exist, but they lack inherent existence. They lack true existence. They exist in another way. And so that other valid way they’re existing is referred to as emptiness or voidness. To make that clearer or less clear, there are things that conventionally do exist, and there are things that don’t exist at all. Right? So examples of things that don’t exist at all are like in our culture, we talk about Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, so they don’t actually exist. We talk about them. We have ideas and concepts of them, but they don’t exist at all. And in Buddhist philosophy, the traditional analogy, the example that is given of something that doesn’t exist is the horns of a rabbit. Yeah. So rabbits exist and horns exist, but there’s no such thing as a rabbit that has horns. So the horns of a rabbit are an example of something that sounds like it could exist, but it just doesn’t exist at all. It only exists as an idea, a concept. Right? So, actually, inherent existence, which is what we’re perceiving now, doesn’t exist at all.
So then there are things that do exist, conventionally exist, and there are things which are impermanent, and there are things which are permanent. So the number of things which are permanent, meaning and in Buddhism, permanent has a very specific meaning. It doesn’t mean lasting forever. Permanent means not changing moment by moment or static. Static. Static. Something static. Permanent in Buddhist concept, in Buddhist terminology, because there is a particular Sanskrit word that the only way we can translate in English is permanent. But it doesn’t mean lasting forever. It means not changing moment by moment. So there are very few things that are permanent, and I can never think of most of them. But, yes, one, you know, one of them is space, a particular kind of space. And yeah. But the vast majority of phenomena are impermanent, meaning they change moment by moment, meaning they depend on causes and conditions. Everything depends on causes and conditions, changes moment by moment. I think I got sidetracked there. Anyway, that is useful to know as we progress into the subject more and more. Yes.
So but the teachings on emptiness are not teachings on emptiness are not saying that things don’t exist at all. There are things that the vast majority of phenomena conventionally do exist, but they don’t inherently exist. They don’t exist from their own side under their own power inherently, truly. The way things and this is what we’ll investigate in the course. The way things do exist, the way they conventionally exist is that they arise dependently. Everything that does actually validly exist, ourself, phenomena, the things that do validly exist, the way they exist is said to be arising dependently. They arise depending on causes and conditions impermanent phenomena arise depending on causes and conditions. They depend on parts, and most importantly and subtly, they depend on our mind. Our mind, our consciousness. The things that are permanent, the permanent things that validly exist, they don’t depend on causes and conditions because something which is permanent doesn’t depend on causes and conditions. But they do depend on parts, and they depend on the mind. So everything that validly exists arises dependently.
But the way we’re experiencing ourself and everything right now, we don’t experience things as arising dependently. We don’t experience them and believe them to depend on causes and conditions, parts, and the mind. They just seem to be there from their own side. So this is the illusion that we have to destroy. Because while we have this grasping at inherent existence, we will have disturbing thoughts. And while we have disturbing thoughts, we will suffer because each of the disturbing thoughts is suffering, and it leads to more suffering. The very nature of attachment and desire, when it arises in our mind, the moment it arises, it disturbs the mind. And it is painful, and therefore, it leads to more pain, more suffering. Anger, the moment it arises in the mind, is painful, and it leads to more suffering. Pride, jealousy, the moment they arise, they are painful, and they can only lead to more suffering because the nature of the cause determines the nature of the effect. You plant a tomato seed, you’re going to get a tomato bush if you’re lucky. You’re not gonna get an apricot or a pomegranate. You’re only gonna get a tomato. So the disturbing thoughts, which are painful, their effect is painful. It’s more suffering. A virtuous cause, love, compassion, etcetera, they bring the result of happiness.
So it’s really important during this course to have this understanding when you read about or you hear me say or you hear other teachers talk about things not inherently existing or not truly existing. It’s not saying they don’t exist at all. It’s just saying they don’t exist in this false way in which they are appearing right now. They are existing, but they exist in another way than what we are experiencing. And while we experience things in this false way, we suffer. As soon as we’re able to directly perceive the way our self and phenomena really exist, there is freedom from suffering.
So, also, it’s maybe helpful to understand that this wisdom is a mental consciousness. For those who may have studied this before, when we talk about dividing the mind up into six the mind or consciousness into six aspects, six types of consciousness. There are what are called the five sense consciousnesses. So there’s the eye consciousness that knows and experiences shapes and colors. Then there’s the ear consciousness that knows and experiences sounds. There’s the nose consciousness that experiences different kinds of smells. There’s the taste consciousness that experiences different kinds of tastes, and I can never remember, you know, if I was a good monk, if I was a good student, I’d know. If you had a Geshe here, he’d rattle them all off, but there’s, I think, five or six different types of tastes. There’s sweet, sour, bitter, astringent, and I think one more. Acid? Acidic and sour. Did I mention sour? Sour. Sweet, sour, bitter, astringent. I’m not sure about that one. Anyway, you get the rough idea. There’s about five, six, maybe seven different kinds of taste, which is what our taste consciousness knows and experiences. Then there’s the body consciousness, which experiences tactile sensations such as rough, smooth, hot, cold, and maybe one or two others. Right? And so that’s the five sense consciousnesses.
And then there is the mental consciousness itself, which is the most important aspect of the mind because one of its functions is to put all that individual information from the five sense consciousnesses into, like, a seamless whole to create the appearance of this world. And then our mental consciousness, of course, thinks about that. You know, the eye consciousness sees shapes and colors, and then our mental consciousness says, that shape and color is a flower, and that’s a certain kind of flower. And I like that flower, and that’s my flower. Yeah. So it’s in the mental consciousness that all the disturbing thoughts arise.
So, again, just another thing. Each of our six consciousnesses perceives these things in a false way as inherently existing. When our ear consciousness hears a sound, it hears the sound as inherently existing. And sounds don’t inherently exist. Nothing inherently exists, actually. They appear to, but they don’t. But we hear an inherently existing sound. We see inherently existing shapes and colors. We smell inherently existing smells. We taste inherently existing tastes. We experience inherently existing tactile sensations. And the mental consciousness also experiences everything as inherently existent. But the one difference is so ignorance just to go back a bit. Ignorance does two things. It creates this false appearance as inherently existing. That’s one thing. But on top of that, what it does is it then grasps that that false appearance is real, is true. That’s why another term for ignorance is self grasping. Self grasping. Self grasping ignorance. Right?
So the five sense consciousnesses, they experience things as inherently existing, but they don’t grasp that they’re inherently existing. It’s only the mental consciousness that does that. It creates the illusion that things are inherently existing and grasps that that’s real. And my teacher, Lama Zopa Rinpoche, who from my own personal experience, but maybe I’m biased, gives the greatest teachings on emptiness. He’s truly a master, most amazing teachings on emptiness. I think he has you know? Anyway. So Rinpoche, my teacher, makes the point that so ignorance is the problem, but he says the real problem is not so much that we experience things as inherently existing. The real problem is that we grasp that that’s true. So what we have to try and do is reduce that grasping, to develop that mindfulness in our daily life that when we whatever we’re experiencing, not to grasp it so that this is so concretely that way. Because we can’t get rid of the appearance yet. That takes a lot of time and work. But what we can do even now is train to have some mindfulness that what we’re experiencing is not necessarily true. Yeah.
Because if you think so much of our suffering and problems in our life, in our relationships with people, which give us most of our suffering, probably of various kinds, is that when something arises and we grasp that that’s it. That’s the truth. That is real. So what we need to develop, what is really helpful in our life is to create some spaciousness in our mind, some calmness and clarity. As one of my other main teachers, Lama Yeshe, who started the whole business, who’s depicted in that picture where is it? Just there, is it? Who’s this amazing being, he used to say about having being clean, clear. Clean, clear, my dear, he used to say. Just be clean, clear, my dear. Having a clean, clear mind. Some space in the mind where one just doesn’t automatically grasp that this is it’s like this. This is it. This is like this. This is like that. Just some space, some clarity. To sort of stand back a little bit and just relax and check out how things are and not to blindly believe what we’re experiencing is a hundred percent true. That can be incredibly helpful in our life because things change. Things change. As I said, the vast majority of things in the world are impermanent. They have arisen depending on causes and conditions. They change moment by moment irreversibly.
And if you check our mind and we all our minds basically work the same, you know, when we grasp onto something either with attachment or we grasp it with anger and aversion, what that does is it makes that thing, that person, that thing, that situation just that much more concrete. Yeah. You know, the mind sort of shrinks onto that thing. Yeah. And it becomes so real and so solid. Solid. And then we’re trapped into that belief, that situation. Whereas in reality, nothing is like that. Nothing is like that.
So in one of the articles, just a short article by Lama Yeshe that’s in the homework, Lama Yeshe talks a lot about nonduality. So this is one of his favorite terms. So in reality, this is just another term for emptiness. Very briefly, because the way we experience things now, we experience things in a dualistic way. There is me, and then there’s everything out there. There’s this very experience of me and other. We grasp very strongly at me, and therefore, there’s everything else which is other. And everything is really inherently other. It’s really really completely out there separate from me, unconnected to me. So this is the dualistic experience. Whereas in reality, everything can be experienced as nondual, which doesn’t mean that everything is me, that a tree and I are the same thing. But in experiencing things with emptiness, there isn’t this incredible separation between things, this heavy sense of me, the observer, and what is observed. This much more nondual experience. Yeah.
This is something we’ll talk briefly about in the course. Oh, done it. Run out of time. Just quickly. One of the things that one can develop and is important to develop is what is called single pointed concentration, which is the ability to focus the mind on whatever we want to concentrate it on and keep the mind there so that our mind doesn’t move from that object. It doesn’t get distracted in any way. We have that potential to have this state called Samādhi in Sanskrit or single pointed concentration or calm abiding where the mind just stays on the object effortlessly. And what happens I have not I do not have this experience, but what apparently happens when one develops single pointed concentration is a certain degree of nonduality where there’s a sense that your mind is so focused on that object that there’s very little sense of self observing the object. You just have this complete experience of that object. So that’s a lower level, it’s a type of nonduality, a gross type of nonduality. But in the experience of emptiness where you are directly perceiving things as they are, it’s even a more profound experience.
Anyway, I’ve gotta stop here. There’s more I wanted to talk about. Yeah. Actually, there was a lot more, but that’s a start. I hope that wasn’t too confusing. I hope I said something intelligent that will encourage you to come back next week. Just one thing. In the homework, there are three articles I’m asking people to read. They’re all very short, but the way I’ve listed them in the homework is not in the order that they appear in the student material. But I would ask you to please read them in the order I’ve put because it makes more sense to read them in that order than the order they are in the book. Don’t ask me why they’re in that order in the book. That’s because of people in America. But, you know, yes. Right. But I think if you read it in that order, please, it makes a little bit more sense. And, also, don’t worry if you can’t understand everything in the article. It’s just an introduction. We’re just starting. Okay.
So, please, if you’re doing the course, please make sure you take a copy of each of those, the homework and the just the outline of the course. So I meant to leave more is it one question one moment before we finish? Yes. Yes.
From what do they dependently arise? Well, things arise from causes and conditions, and they arise from parts, and they arise from your mind. No. No. No. No. When people talk about, you know, things arising from energy, I mean, that’s what you could call the mind. The mind is the energy of the world. The mind Lama Yeshe used to say the mind, the energy of the mind is like an atomic bomb. If we could only release but a good atomic bomb, you know, not a destructive you know, the mind has unbelievable endless energy, which can be very destructive, but also our mind has this incredible endless energy of love and wisdom and compassion, etcetera, etcetera. So just like the nature of fire is hot and burning, the nature of the mind is that it has energy. It is energy. You could say, I think. I don’t think you can just talk about energy as this separate thing. Yeah? That’s what I’m trying to say. Okay? Okay.
So just very quickly, in the tradition, we were encouraged to develop a good motivation for listening to the teachings at the beginning. And at the end, we can rejoice that we’ve put some positive imprints and hopefully developed some understanding in our mind and put some positive imprints in our mind so then we can dedicate these positive imprints that when they ripen, they don’t ripen as a tomato bush, but they ripen to bring us every kind of happiness and so on and the state of enlightenment so that we can help all sentient beings. So there’s a traditional prayer that if you would like to join in, it’s on page eleven. We’ll just do it in English. The two prayers.
Due to the merits of these virtuous actions, may I quickly attain the state of a Guru Buddha and lead all living beings without exception into that enlightened state. May the precious bodhicitta, not yet born, arise and grow. May that born have no decline but increase forevermore.