Emptiness

Background to the Text This weekend I’m going to be speaking about The Heart Sutra. Actually, with a longer title, it’s The Essence of Far-Reaching Discriminating Awareness, the Vanquishing Lady Surpassing All. When we talk about far-reaching discriminating awareness – and...

Introductory Verses and Verse 1 Setting the Motivation First of all, we need to have very good motivation for studying about the behavior of bodhisattvas. When we have a strong motivation, it is interesting how our minds work. If I were to say, “Let’s all go to the Dalai...

Sources of the Text I’d like to explain a very important text in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition called The Seven Point Mind Training by a great master from the Kadam tradition, Geshe Chekawa. This teaching is primarily based on the practice of changing the viewpoint of self...

Introduction to Voidness (Emptiness) Voidness, or emptiness, is an extremely important and central topic in the Buddhist teachings. What it means is an absence; something is absent, not there. What is absent is an impossible way of existing, something that has never existed at...

Brief Introduction to Nalanda Monastery Today we are here at Nalanda Monastery in France. In ancient India there was also a Nalanda Monastery, or Shri Nalanda in Sanskrit, meaning the great all-around perfect Nalanda Monastery. Many great masters studied and taught there,...

[Clarifications by Dr. Berzin are included within square brackets.] Homage Homage to my Gurus. The author, the Third Karmapa, was an extremely learned master who wrote many profound texts that became the core of the Karma Kagyu teachings. Rangjung Dorje (Self-arisen Vajra) was...

I’ve been asked this weekend to speak about the topic of voidness, which is of course an advanced topic and a topic which is not terribly easy to understand. And in order to understand it, we need to be very well prepared. If we’re not prepared – in other words, if we don’t...

Introduction Today, I’m here to teach on the Three Principal Aspects of the Path, a concise text written by Lama Tsongkhapa. What I’ll share is not my own knowledge, but rather what has been taught to me by my own precious teachers. I do not have any realizations myself, but...

This weekend I’ve been asked to speak about self-voidness and other-voidness, what is called in Tibetan rangtong (rang-stong) and zhentong (gzhan-stong; shentong). This is a very advanced, very complicated and very important topic. Therefore, it requires a great deal of...

Voidness (emptiness) ̱̱is a very difficult topic, but a very essential topic. In order to approach it, we need to see where it fits into the general presentation of the Buddhist teachings. As we all know, Buddha taught his understanding, his realization in terms of what is...