Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 69-minute session, Ven Thubten Dondrub teaches the Mind Training commentary on the section of ultimate bodhicitta, focusing on the nature of ignorance and its role as the root of suffering. Opening with preparatory prayers and motivational practices, he then systematically unpacks Tsongkhapa’s core outline: that ignorance is the direct cause of cyclic existence and must be understood and eradicated through the wisdom of selflessness. Dondrub explains ignorance not as mere lack of knowledge but as an active distortion that grasps at false selfhood—both a self of persons and a self of phenomena. He distinguishes between the appearance of true existence and the grasping at that appearance, drawing on examples from daily life to illustrate how we instinctively believe in an independent, unchanging self despite direct contradictions. He emphasises that identifying the precise object of negation is the hardest work, but once achieved, the path to realisation moves quickly. Throughout, he stresses the necessity of qualified teachers, merit accumulation, and meditation practice alongside intellectual study. The teaching addresses serious practitioners already studying the Mind Training text and familiar with Buddhist philosophical terminology.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 2014 02 13 Mind Training 13.mp3 DISTORTED.mp3
UUID: f4e2e863-fed1-4170-a663-673daba84f7a
Teacher: Ven Thubten Dondrub
Collection: Mind Training (Ven Thubten Dondrub)
Date: 2014-02-13
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 69.4 minutes
Words: ~7,051
To empty space. Welcome to our specially heated Gompa. You know, Thursday night is our traditional night. Are going through this wonderful text called the Mind Training Like the Rays of the Sun’ composed by a direct disciple of Lama Tsongkhapa a commentary on Chekawa’s seven point mind training. So this text was a very favorite text of His Holiness the Dalai Lama.
He has taught it quite a few times I had the good fortune to receive teachings on it from his holiness and from Geshe-la when he was abbot of Nālānda monastery so we are now on the section dealing with ultimate bodhicitta So to make this time worthwhile, it’s good to prepare our mind by doing the traditional prayers. So ideally we would do this Heart Sūtra, but there’s not so much time. So we start with the lion faced dakini prayer on page five. I prostrate to the gathering of dakinis and the three chakras who abide in the holy yoga of fusing space, by your powers of clairvoyance and magic illumination, look after practitioners like a mother, her child. By the teachings of the three supreme jewels possessing the power of truth, may inner and outer hindrances be transformed.
May they be dispelled, pacified, may they be completely pacified, may all negative forces opposed to dharma be completely pacified, may the host of eighty thousand obstacles be pacified, may we be separated from problems and harmful conditions to dharma, may all enjoyments be in accord with the dharma, and may there be auspiciousness and perfect happiness here right now. Obeisance to my Guru and protector Mañjuśrī, who holds to his heart a scriptural text symbolic of his seeing all things as they are, whose understanding shines forth as the sun, unclouded by defilements or traces of ignorance, who teaches in sixty-four ways with the patient love of a father for his only child, all creatures caught in the prison of saṃsāra, confused in the darkness of their ignorance, overwhelmed by their suffering. You whose dragon thunder proclamation of the dharma arouses us from the stupor of our delusions and frees us from the iron chains of our karma, whose powerful sword of wisdom hews down suffering wherever its sprouts appear, clearing away the darkness of all ignorance. I bow to you, O Mañjuśrī, whose princely body is adorned with one hundred and twelve marks of a Buddha, who has completed the ten stages achieving the highest perfection of a bodhisattva, who has been pure from the beginning.
O Mañjuśrī, O loving one, with the brilliance of your wisdom, illuminate the darkness enclosing my mind. Enlighten my intelligence and wisdom so that I may gain insight into Buddha’s words and the texts that explain them. Then visualizing Śākyamūni Buddha in front of us as our source of refuge, inspiration, guidance thinking of Śākyamūni Buddha as the very embodiment of the Three Jewels of refuge and the source of all our teachers, perfect teachers of the past, present, future. We offer a mandala as a way to request the teachings, as a way to overcome our hindrances to understanding and practicing and as a way to accumulate merit that helps us to understand and practice and realize the teachings So if I had been clever, I would have been preparing as I said those words, but it takes time. So now particularly focusing on trying to have a sense of being surrounded by all sentient beings and have a sense of how they are only kind but only suffering.
We try and generate the bodhicitta motivation for being here and studying this text, wanting to overcome the self-cherishing thought that has dominated our minds since beginningless saṃsāra and replacing it with a mind cherishing others more than self, recognizing the immense kindness of sentient beings, and yet how they are all trapped helplessly in cyclic existence. So now that we’ve found the precious human rebirth, we have the optimum chance not only to make our lives really free of suffering and experience perfect happiness, but we have the optimum chance to help every sentient being to repay their kindness in a perfect way by helping them to become free of suffering and its causes helping them to achieve peerless, everlasting happiness. But to do that, we have to achieve enlightenment, and that involves cultivating the determination to achieve enlightenment and putting great effort into overcoming our ignorance by developing the wisdom that realizes the true nature of self and all phenomena. So for this reason, we will study this text which is about those topics of the conventional and ultimate bodhicitta. I go for refuge until I’m enlightened to the Buddha, Dharma, the supreme assembly.
By the merits I create by teaching the Dharma, may I become a Buddha in order to benefit all sentient beings? Thinking the Buddha is pleased with our motivation, we can imagine the Buddha now coming to the crown of our head, then dissolving into blissful golden light, and that light pouring down into us, blessing our mind. And then enhancing that positive state of mind by doing some breathing meditation, the nine round breathing exercise to develop a calmer, clearer, more concentrated mind so that we can use that level of mind to listen to and think about the Buddha’s teachings tonight. Okay. Thank you.
Right. So we’re a little bit further down in the text. We’re in the section yes. That’s it. So maybe we just go back just a tiny bit.
Yeah. Yeah. To that paragraph. So in that paragraph, it says, in accordance with the assertion that thought that assertion and the thought of the king of doctrine, Tsongkhapa, the founder of the Gelug tradition, emanation of the revered lord Mañjuśrī in whom the wisdom and compassion for all Buddhas of the three times is brought together as one. There are two main outlines recognizing what ignorance is and how it is the source of cyclic existence.
So that’s one outline. And secondly, showing that in order to eradicate ignorance, we need to determine the view of selflessness and also have a technique for doing so. So the first outline is recognizing what ignorance is. And as I tried to point out last week, in order to give us the courage and the energy, the enthusiasm to study these teachings, is really important to get some sense of how ignorance is the very source of our suffering. This is what the Buddha discovered.
If we’ve taken refuge in the Buddha, surely we should have confidence in what the Buddha taught, and the Buddha is saying the essence of the Buddha’s teachings are that our suffering has a cause, and the obvious direct cause of our suffering is the ripening of our negative karmic imprints. What is the cause of those negative imprints? The cause of those imprints is acting on our delusions and following our delusions, acting on them with our body, speech, and mind, we engage in negative actions, create negative imprints that ripen the suffering. What is the cause of our delusions? We all have delusions.
We all have day by day, week by week, month by month life, year by year. We’re all subject to experiencing afflicted desire, attachment, anger, pride, jealousy, and so on. We all have those. Why do we have them? Why do we have them?
So the Buddha says there is a cause for them, and the cause is ignorance. Yeah. That’s it. That is the cause. If there wasn’t ignorance, there wouldn’t be disturbing thoughts.
If there were no disturbing thoughts, there wouldn’t be negative actions. We wouldn’t engage in negative actions. We wouldn’t create negative imprints, and there wouldn’t be suffering. I mean, the delusions themselves are suffering if you check. You know, this is such an important thing to do in meditation, is to check one’s own disturbing thoughts, to be able to recognize them, to realize that afflicted desire is painful.
It is disturbing the mind. Attachment disturbs the mind. Anger disturbs the mind. Pride and jealousy, doubt, especially spiritual doubt, disturbs the mind. So the only result of that can be something disturbing, painful, suffering.
We really need to understand that and then see that the whole reason the disturbing thoughts are there is because of ignorance. There’s no other reason. Therefore, the only way we’re going to be free of every kind of suffering is to get rid of ignorance. And it’s only when we really see that that we’ll have that energy and be motivated to get rid of ignorance by studying these teachings, which are difficult. They are difficult to understand.
We can get rough ideas when we may think we have a terrific idea of the teachings on emptiness and selflessness etc. But actually to really have a profound correct understanding of it takes a lot of time and effort. And it’s not just simply an intellectual exercise of listening to teachings or reading books. It’s certainly just not reading books on emptiness because one definitely needs qualified teachers to explain the meaning. But even if we’ve got perfect teachers and we have perfect devotion to them, that’s not enough.
We really do have to purify our mind and accumulate merit as well. Those are essential things. So it’s a lot of work, really, many lifetimes effort. So the only way to motivate ourselves is to realize more and more deeply that unless we get rid of our ignorance, we will always suffer. And in our suffering, we will harm others.
We will yeah. We will just continue to harm other sentient beings. So so what what so then it goes on. What is ignorance? Recognizing what ignorance is.
Ignorance, or a lack of basic awareness, is diametrically opposed to awareness. So what this is basically saying is that ignorance is not just a not knowing of the way things exist, of what of reality. It’s not a mere not knowing. It is, you know, a not a not knowing, a not understanding. Ignorance is a is a mental consciousness.
It doesn’t say there, but ignorance is a consciousness. It’s a it’s a mental consciousness that actually distorts the way things appear exist. It creates a distorted appearance of how things exist. It’s not not just not knowing things. It’s creating a false picture and grasping at it.
So it’s not merely other than awareness, here referring to like a direct understanding of the truth, reality, the way things exist, nor is it a mere negation of this awareness. It it is the opposing factor that directly contradicts awareness. And this awareness that is being mentioned itself should not be understood as just any sort of awareness, like the awareness of a cup of water or something, but as the discriminating intelligence that cognizes the meaning of selflessness. So ignorance actively prevents us from understanding selflessness the way things actually exist. That being the case, ignorance is that which exaggerates phenomena, conceiving them as being self existent.
Yeah. I can maybe leave that for the time being. Conceiving them as self existent. This involves two kinds of misconception of self, that of persons so that we ignorance creates the illusion that there is a self of persons and also a self of phenomena. So that’s actually a very strange expression, self of persons and especially a self of phenomena.
So we have to understand to at first, what what the word self is referring to. So we talk about, for example, in the American what is it? What’s it called? The American con constitution? The Bill of Rights.
The Bill of Rights. I think it starts off by saying something like, we take these truths to be self evident. Right? That such and such, you know, all people are born equal, blah blah blah. These truths are self evident.
So what does that mean, self evident? Self evident. It implies that something is that truth, that self evident truth, is it stands alone. It doesn’t require anything for us to know it’s true. It just is true from its own side.
It doesn’t need anything else. It is self evident. It is evident from its side. It doesn’t It’s standing there, obviously true. Doesn’t require any belief, justification, argumentation, support in any way.
It is self supportingly true. Yeah. This is this is what is implied by the term self. And we talk about myself myself, which is implying that there is something obviously really there which is me that doesn’t depend on anything it’s really there Supporting, not being supported by anything, it’s just there, obviously there, me. And the same with phenomena.
The the expression self or phenomena, always find very strange. A self of persons sort of makes sense because we talk about myself. People have a self, or we think they have a self. Myself. Each person really has this essential quality.
So to use the term in relation to phenomena is a bit peculiar, but it’s referring to the same thing that when we look at a phenomena, any phenomena, it seems to be obviously that thing. It doesn’t seem to require anything that to this is obviously a flower. This is obviously a cup of water. Right? That is true, but that’s not how we perceive things.
We’re talking about how a self is a wrong view, so I’m trying to explain the wrong view, not the right view. And there’s no point understanding the right view until we’ve understood the wrong view because, actually, you can’t really understand the right view until one’s understood the wrong view that we actually have. Because the understanding of the right view is just pure abstract intellect if we haven’t really understood what the wrong view is. Pity it’s a bit cooler if we would understand things better if it was cooler. Oh, should we cancel class and and just have an ice cream and talk about emptiness another time?
Sure. And oh, it’s really hot. Seems to be inherently existing hot. There is a self of hotness going on. It is very easy to say it is an illusion, can say it is empty but that doesn’t mean anything, that is just words.
We don’t believe that. We don’t experience that. We experience it as really hot. It isn’t really hot, but we are experiencing the fact that it is really hot. Now it is really dark.
I don’t think I can No, I am okay. Yep. Yep. Yep. So it goes on to say the object of these two are the objects of the mode of exaggeration projected onto persons and phenomena.
That is the self of persons and the self of phenomena. So the raw view of of the self is is the object is different in one one case we’re talking about the person in the other case we’re talking about everything which is not the person which is phenomena but the mistake is the same seeing a self in a person, that phenomena have a self that they really exist there from their own side. This is what ignorance does. So, also, just to go back a little bit, it’s helpful. It’s important to understand that so this exists this term self is also what is meant by true existence.
That things seem the person right now we we are experiencing I can never put have the use the right words but the person that does exist, we are experiencing that person. We’re not experiencing the person that validly exists arising depending on causes and conditions, parts in the labeling mind. We experience the person I, me as truly existing, as having a self, that this person has an essential quality, a truly existing quality. And we and everything is experienced that way as being truly existing. So one thing to try and understand is that the the appearance that is arising in our mind right now of true existence, that is not actually ignorance.
Everything to an ordinary deluded person is appearing right now as being truly existent. But that is not actually ignorance. So right now when we look at something whatever we see it appears to be truly existent. Everything we hear, smell, taste, touch, think about, inevitably it appears to be truly existent. But that isn’t ignorance.
What happens so that happens in one moment, in the first moment of experience, there things arise as being truly existent. But then what happens is that in the next moment, ignorance comes along and grasps, that believes in that appearance of true existence and grasps that it’s true. So that’s what ignorance is. There’s the appearance of true existence, and then there’s the believing and grasping at it. So the ignorance is the believing and grasping in true existence, not just the mere appearance of true existence.
So my teacher, Lama Zopa Rinpoche, makes the point that just the appearance or experiencing things as truly existent itself is not so much the problem. The problem is believing that appearance and grasping at it, and that’s what ignorance does. It believes that that appearance is is true, and we grasp at that. That’s why it’s also referred to as self grasping ignorance. And it’s also important to understand that although our sense consciousness true existence appears to the self sorry true existence appears to the sense consciousnesses to our eye consciousness, ear, nose, tongue, body consciousness.
Ignorance is a factor that occurs with the mental consciousness. So our eye consciousness sees a truly existing flower, but it’s then a mental consciousness, ignorance which is a type of mental consciousness comes along and then believes that appearance of the I consciousness is true and grasps at it. Ignorance only, one could say, affects the mental consciousness not the sense consciousnesses. The sense consciousnesses see, experience true existence, but they don’t grasp at it and hold it to be real. It’s the mental consciousness that does that.
Or the mental consciousness under the control of ignorance that does that. So that’s why it says for those people who were here last night, I was talking briefly about in the Sakya tradition they have this teaching which comes directly from Mañjuśrī called the parting from the four attachments, which is a four line teaching that Mañjuśrī directly spoke to Sachen Kunga Nyingpo and the last line of that teaching says If grasping arises you don’t have the view. So that means, like, for someone who has re has started to has some experience realization of emptiness, out of meditation, there is the appearance of true existence, but they don’t grasp at it. But for someone who is grasping, which is what we do, we have the appearance of true existence, but we also the problem is we grasp that that appearance is unquestionably true. So we don’t have the view.
We don’t have the understanding, the experience of the way things actually are, that they are empty of that true existence of having a self. So in addition, the most vital factor in determining selflessness, the lack of a self emptiness, the lack of this false appearance, is to ascertain the extent of the object of negation so that neither too little nor too much is negated. So this point, the object of negation, is really really important to understand that, as I think I mentioned last week, it’s not enough just to have an intellectual understanding of the wrong view not enough to have an intellectual understanding of the right view. We have to apply that intellectual understanding to be able to recognize our own wrong view of how we are actually experiencing ourselves. And that that wrong view of self which we have, which we don’t you know, we’re experiencing the person me in a particular way now.
We all talk about me. We believe there’s me. We’re trying to make me happy. Right? All the time.
But we we don’t actually and we can talk about, you know, I am this and I am that. We can talk about ourselves forever. But actually, when it comes to being able to say what this me really is, even though it’s appearing in one sense, we we we can’t identify it. We’re not able to say, this is me. We just believe, we grasp that me is really there.
There is a self existing person, me. So the but the argument is if there was this truly existing me, person, we should find it. If there’s an if there really is an elephant in this room, we could find it. And if you if you look very carefully and you can’t find an elephant in the room, you can say, it doesn’t exist. So One simple thing to understand is I think I will draw all this, it might be easier.
This explanation may get worse, it may not! There is a valid I, Right? And then there is what is called the false I. So the valid I, the person that validly does exist, is an I that arises depending on causes and conditions. Right?
Parts and the labeling mind, the labeling consciousness. That ‘I’ validly does exist. In fact everything the only things that validly exist persons, bodies, phenomena the only way they exist is depending on causes, conditions, parts and the labeling consciousness. That’s if they’re impermanent things. If they’re permanent, they don’t depend on causes and conditions, but they do depend on parts and the labeling consciousness.
There is the false I which is what we are experiencing now, grasping at now. So that false I, we are grasping that it doesn’t it’s not it’s something that doesn’t depend does not depend does not depend on anything. It doesn’t depend on causes and conditions. It doesn’t depend on parts. It doesn’t depend on consciousness.
It’s just really there. That’s what we believe we’re grasping at now whether we know it or not. You could say, oh, I’m not doing that. I’m not conscious of doing that. Well, we’re not conscious of doing it, but we are doing it deep down, instinctive.
And, for example, we we we can all admit that that sometimes I am good, sometimes I am bad, sometimes I am this, and sometimes I’m that, sometimes I’m happy, sometimes I’m sad, sometimes I’m clever, sometimes I’m stupid. Right? Sometimes we look in the mirror and think, oh, I’m not too bad looking. Sometimes we look in the mirror and think, yeah. Right?
So we have we are are at a superficial level, our view you know, we’re we’re prepared to admit I change and and and I’m different. But deep down, we’re grasping that there is a real me that doesn’t change. That’s the self, the real self. Or, like, you know, when we get angry and insult someone, you know, and then afterwards, when we’re not angry, we apologize and say, I’m really, really sorry. That wasn’t me.
That wasn’t me talking. Don’t know who it was. But because when when I say that, we feel there’s a real me who doesn’t get angry. There’s a superficial me that does, but not the real me. There’s a real a real me that has permanent characteristics.
Therefore, not depending on causes and conditions, not impermanent, not depending on parts, not depending on the labeling consciousness is just really, really there. We can’t identify precisely now because our mind is too agitated, but we believe it’s really there instinctively. Now the point I’m trying to make is with the false eye, there is there is the appearance of a truly existing I. Alright. There is the appearance.
So the thing is the the the there is the appearance of truly existing I, but there isn’t a truly existing I. Right? Simple example is that in the desert, due to conditions like now, is mirages arise which give the appearance of water. Right? There’s no water there at all, but due to the heat and other conditions, there is the appearance, the mirage, you know, that just that shimmering light gives the illusion, the appearance of water.
So there is the appearance of water, but there is no water. Oh, no. No. Oh, Leave that one. No.
That’s different. That’s different. In this case, it’s different. Yeah. There is the appearance of water because a rainbow is only an appearance.
You can say, oh, there’s a rainbow. You can’t find a rainbow, but there is a rainbow. I yeah. Let’s forget that example. Now you’ve just simple water desert.
Right? Mirage. There is the appearance of water, but there isn’t any water. In the same way, there right now, there is appearing to our consciousness or can the appearance of a truly existing I. But so we ignorance grasps that that appearance is actually an existing phenomenon.
It’s really, really there. But it’s not. It’s just an illusion. It’s just an appearance. And the same for everything.
Everything we see, there is the appearance of of a truly existing object. So the appearance of a truly existing object is there, but truly existing objects don’t exist at all. They are just illusions. Mirages exist, but mirages create the illusion of water which doesn’t exist. Alright?
Oh, so what we the object of negation is referring to discovering this appearance of a non of an of a of a inherently a truly existing I. It’s one thing to understand what that’s referring to, but then understanding the teachings on that, we have to apply that in meditation and discover for ourselves that, oh, there’s this I that I believe really existent. Here’s the truly existing I. And that, unfortunately, is the most difficult thing to do in the Buddhadharma, one of the most difficult realizations to gain according to Pabongka Rinpoche. Pabongka Rinpoche says, one of the most difficult realizations to gain is that one’s all sentient beings have been one’s mother, that to actually realize that.
It’s very easy to say it, want to believe it, sort of understand the logic of it, but to actually realize, to have the continuous, uncontrived experience that everyone one thinks of is actually one’s mother, that is incredibly difficult to gain. And perceiving finding the object to be refuted is also really difficult. That’s why we because, you know, with that mind, there’s no way that mind can really identify it properly. Because there’s levels of ignorance, like it’s you know, there’s onion layers. Because, for example, sometimes, a a lot of the time, we identify, you know, one gross level of ignorance is we identify that I am my body.
We we we very strongly identify, you know, that I am my body. That’s why we are so caught up in our appearance, and we want to look beautiful and attractive and desirable and blah blah blah. And we look in the mirror and think, oh, there’s me. We think we’re looking at me. Oh, that’s me.
I look okay today. Or I’m looking old. But that’s not that’s not the, root ignorance. It’s a type of ignorance believing I am the body, but it’s not the actual ignorance that is the root of cyclic existence, the very subtle ignorance that gives rise to delusions, karma, suffering. So we have to find that very, very subtle wrong view of I, the object to be negated.
We have to negate it. We have to deny it. But and that doesn’t mean saying, oh, I I don’t yeah. Whatever wrong view I’ve got of myself, I it’s wrong. I don’t believe it.
You know, that that doesn’t work. We have to be able to identify the wrong view and then prove to ourselves that although there is the appearance, that appearance cannot correspond to reality. Alright? Because otherwise, while there is the appearance, that appearance is incredibly convincing, so we believe it and grasp at it. And that’s why we have to understand the the Buddha’s logic about dependent arising to undermine this belief.
It’s basically like anything. Can have a wrong well, for example, I don’t know if it’s a good example, but the people in North Korea now, they have been subject for fifty years or so to this unbelievable propaganda. So they believe the most insane things. They are living in this most horrific, you know, corrupt, you know, awful country ruled by these, you know, horrible kind mother sentient beings. And yet they they they they taught that, you know, to believe that, you know, the the the glorious leader is the most perfect, wonderful, sublime being in the entire universe, and their their entire happiness depends on this person.
They probably actually do believe that. I don’t know if you’ve read this wonderful book called what is it called? Wild Swans.
Wild Swans. Written by this Chinese woman about her mother her her mother and her grandmother in China. And she talks about when she was a child during the Cultural Revolution, when Mao was in power and there was the great leap forward and everything, they she sincerely believed, and she was an educated child. They were told that due to Mao Zedong and the great leap forward and everything else, the peasants in the countryside were growing cucumbers and things as big as a truck. They believed that.
They believed it. That they were cucumbers. And and back this is at the time when millions of Chinese were dying. You know? Millions of people died.
Well, a huge number died in Tibet because of it. I don’t know how many million people died in China during the great leap forward. At the time they were being told that the peasants, who were starving and dying, were growing cucumbers and pumpkins as big as trucks. And they believed it. Oh, so the point I’m trying to make is you take someone like that and then and they’re totally convinced, and then you slowly tell them that’s impossible.
You know? When they’re taken out of that environment and then you can say, no. There isn’t a cucumber as big as a truck. You know? Actually, everyone’s starving and dying.
And here’s you know? Look. Look at this. Look at that. That that.
This is impossible. And slowly, that person’s I-grasping that there is, you know, a cucumber big as a truck or the glorious leader is, you know, the same as Jesus Christ, that those ideas will lose their power. And at some point, you don’t believe in them, and what you are grasping at is true disappears. Or like in the famous analogy that most of you have heard about, the snake and the rope, where you see a striped snake striped rope, but because it’s dark and you’re moving quickly, you think you’re seeing a a snake. You actually your mind creates the illusion of a snake.
There’s just a rope there. But your mind, on the basis of of a rope, which looks sort of like a snake, the mind creates the illusion of a snake, but then believes that illusion is not an illusion but a real snake. And but then you can someone if if you trust that person, if you believe in them, that person can then explain, you didn’t see a snake. Oh, yes, I did. Yes, I did.
No, you didn’t. Then you can give the reasons why. And slowly, you know, one can let go of that belief that you saw a snake. Unfortunately, it’s much more difficult to let go of the belief in true existence because we’ve been believing it during beginningless time. That belief, that grasping, never started.
It never started. It is called the self grasping ignorance is called the the the one we’re trying to get rid of, the the the creates this this appearance, the object to be negated. That is called innate ignorance. Innate. There’s different kinds of ignorance.
There’s intellectual ignorance, wrong views, following wrong philosophies. We have our own ideas about who we are. And then there are very sophisticated philosophical views about how existence, which from a Buddhist point of view are wrong. But these aren’t the cause of saṃsāra. The cause of saṃsāra is this very subtle, innate ignorance, inborn.
It’s not something we learn from our culture or our parents or anything. We are born with it. Even more, you know, in the womb we have it. And every sentient being has it. Cockroaches have it.
No. No. No. This is the very root cause of cyclic existence. It has obscured the mind all the time.
It’s always been there. And if we don’t do anything about it, it will stay there. It is like a self perpetuating mechanism in a sense. Ignorance breeds more ignorance. I’ll while I’m while this has arisen in my mind, I’ll just make this point again.
I think I’ve mentioned it before. Some people find this very difficult to accept. But it’s also important to understand that this ignorance never started. And I think it’s there is some logic to show that it could never have started. That’s why one can see that actually every sentient being has it all the time.
A baby doesn’t acquire it at some time. A baby, the moment they’re born, has it because when they were in the womb, they had it, and they had it in their previous life going back and back into beginningless time. Because the point is, if ignorance started, if it started, there was a point in time when it started, that means that before then we weren’t ignorant, which would mean we were at the very least an arhat, if not a Buddha. And so we were an arhat, happy an arhat, and then suddenly, bingo, we suddenly become ignorant and deluded and suffering. That is impossible because the very nature of an arhat’s mind is that they are directly perceiving reality.
And the point about that experience is the very nature the the the the fully authentic form of it, not some weird, creepy form, mistaken form of it that some people think they’ve you know? I’ve like, I’ve I think I’ve mentioned before, I’ve met people who believe thought they’d realized emptiness. You know? Not not really. But when one has directly realized it, and this is the whole point of realizing it, once one’s fully realized the nature of oneself and phenomena, it is impossible for one to then start experiencing things in a false way again.
Ignorance once ignorance is fully eliminated, there are stages. You don’t suddenly get rid of ignorance. It takes there are stages. But once one’s completed that and ignorance is fully eliminated, the very nature of that realization means it cannot come back. Once one is completely seeing, experiencing reality as it is, that experience blocks the possibility of becoming ignorant.
But what about? My friend. Someone who has fully realized emptiness would never experience trauma because trauma is the result of some negative action due to delusion, meaning you’ve you’ve got ignorance. Apart from that, trauma is experienced by the brain, which of course affects the gross mind but doesn’t affect for someone who’s fully realized emptiness, it wouldn’t affect that realization of emptiness, which is experienced at a much more subtle level of mind. Okay.
Good. Thousands don’t. Right. Okay. Yeah.
So ignorance has always been there, and it’s not something that just human beings experience. It it it you know, every sentient being well, you know, the definition of an sentient being is someone whose mind, whether they’re in an animal body, hell body, whatever body, god body, mind is obscured by ignorance. So anyway, although recognizing the object to be negated is one of the most difficult things to do, that’s why we need the perfect Guru, purify the mind, accumulate merit, study the teachings, devote one needs to develop single pointed concentration to do that and all these things. But once one is able to identify the object to be refuted, then achieving realization is very quick. Because yeah.
I mean, this, of course, is assuming one’s already developed a strong, correct understanding of emptiness, because you you have to have that to be able to identify the object to be refuted anyway. But once one’s identified the object to be refuted, then, all the hard work of studying the teachings about emptiness starts to quickly bear fruit. But, anyway, we can start training our mind to do these things. And and one one thing we can take home from all of this is is to try and practice the awareness that what is appearing to my mind now, although it seems so true and real, isn’t, or it ain’t necessarily so. That is incredibly helpful in our life because so much confusion and argument and problems between us occurs because we grasp that what is appearing to my mind is absolutely a hundred percent true.
We we don’t question normally in our emotional life, and especially when we are really emotional. The more emotional we are, the less we question and the less we’re able to question what is appearing to our mind. We we in that very agitated emotional state, we very quickly grasp that this is how it is. And, you know, nature of our delusion is we are controlled by appearances, we grasp that this is how it is, and this is how it always has been and always will be. And that’s a disaster.
So just trying to understand emptiness a little bit, how everything arises depending on causes and conditions, parts, and especially it arises depending on my mind and how I conceive things. Yeah? It’s how I conceive things. So having awareness of that, we we can try not to grasp at things so strongly as we normally do. And in in the teachings in one of the sutras, I don’t I don’t remember.
I don’t think I even know. Sorry. I should be honest what sūtra it is. But in one of the sutras, it says something along the lines that to even doubt saṃsāra for a moment, in other words, to even doubt for one moment that things are the way they appear, to to have a real doubt, you know, starts to undermine saṃsāra, starts to destroy it. Everything starts to crumble the moment one really starts to doubt that, oh, maybe things aren’t like this.
Maybe they do exist in another way. Because remember, we’re not saying things don’t exist. Emptiness is not saying things don’t exist. The teachings on emptiness are saying things don’t exist the way we’re experiencing them now with this crazy mind. But things do exist.
Oh yes, yes, it’s still a cup, empty of inherent existence. Yes, it’s impermanent. It has parts. It depends on the labeling consciousness. Yeah.
Not changing. Yeah. Or inborn, it’s there all yeah. It’s been arising all the time. But, fortunately, we can get rid of it because it doesn’t inherently exist.
If it inherent you know, ignorance creates the illusion of inherent existence. But if that illusion was true, if, know, ignorance would be inherently existent, and if it was inherently existent it wouldn’t depend on causes and conditions, parts and the labeling consciousness and one wouldn’t be able to change it. Rapidly moving along. So in ascertaining the extent of the object of negation oh, hold on. The most vital factor in determining selflessness is to ascertain the extent of the object of negation so that neither too little nor too much is negated.
So this is really one of the key points and this is why in the Buddhist teachings about the nature of reality are said to be the middle view because it’s a middle view that is free of the extremes of negating too much and or not negating enough. It’s like if one has a disease such as a cancer or something, the doctor negates too much, takes out more than the whole cancer and takes out if you’ve got cancer of the liver, he not only takes out the cancer but all your liver and a few other things attached to it. It’s maybe not very helpful. You may die. Right?
But on the other hand, the doctor may take out some of the cancer but not all of it. So that doesn’t solve the problem either. One has to be able to identify exactly the object to be negated. So the big danger in negating too much is the common belief that these teachings are saying that nothing exists. So that’s negating too much.
Whereas the other danger is sort of not negating enough, believing that some things really exist from their own side while the mind is grasping that, oh, maybe this doesn’t inherently exist and that doesn’t inherently exist, but this really truly exists. Even if the mind is grasping at even just one little thing, one is truly existing, we have ignorance. And while we have ignorance, we will have delusions, karma, and suffering. So we have to, you know, really be very careful in following the middle way so that we we don’t negate too much, deny too much, and we also have to avoid the extreme of not negating enough. Yeah.
So it’s it’s the middle way. So it’s not a middle way between the two extremes. It’s not some sort of halfway, a a bit of this extreme and a bit of that extreme. It’s not like that, but it’s a middle way in the sense that it has nothing of that wrong view and nothing of that wrong view. It is a middle way free of those two extremes.
When when do we break? Yeah. I’m so dizzy. It’s okay. But it is.
So we’ll take a middle way break now. Unless there is a question before the break. Maybe think of some questions after the break. Thank you very much. Tea break.