Buddhist Analysis: Types of Phenomena

Introduction 

We are going to begin our discussion of Buddhist metaphysics. This is a large topic that covers an enormous amount of material, and all of this material is quite difficult; it is very complex, with many, many different items involved. However, I think the important principle for studying this is to remember that all of this is intended to serve as an analytical tool. 

As you perhaps already know, the whole Buddhist training is intended to help us gain liberation from suffering and unhappiness and its causes. Our suffering and problems arise because of our unawareness of reality – how we exist, how everything exists. Unawareness (ma-rig-pa) means either we just don’t know, or we know or understand incorrectly, and so we are very confused. The problem is that our mind makes things appear in all sorts of impossible ways, and we believe them to correspond to reality. 

One of the confusing appearances that our minds make is that things exist in a sort of solid, concrete type of way. For instance, we experience something, and we think, “Oh, there’s this horrible problem.” We make it into a big thing, and we get all upset about it. In colloquial English, we say, “We make a big deal out of everything.” What we need to do is to be able to deconstruct what appears to exist solidly and so horribly to us, and if we can deconstruct it, then we understand a little bit better its reality. The understanding of voidness (stong-pa-nyid, emptiness) is clearly the deepest way of deconstructing that these impossible ways of existing that our mind produces are not corresponding to anything real, but we can do less deep deconstructions, which also help. That’s because whatever we experience is going to consist of various parts, various causes, various conditions, and so on; there’s nothing solid about it at all. 

These metaphysical topics that we’ll be discussing are analytical tools to help us deconstruct what we’re experiencing and help us to overcome problems and difficulties we’re having. In the traditional Buddhist training, one works with this material for several years – not just five short lectures, but several years through the medium of debate. What I’d like to do is present this material in terms of a specific type of experience, troublesome experience, that we might be having, and show how these various topics that we’re talking about here – existent, nonexistent, static, functional, etc. – how we could apply them in analyzing and deconstructing this experience. 

The example that I’ve chosen – now this didn’t actually happen to me, but as a hypothetical experience – when I was coming here, when I was collecting my luggage at the airport, I took the wrong computer bag. The computer bag was sitting on the ground, and I took somebody else’s. I wasn’t really paying attention. Now I arrive here, and I’m really depressed. I think I’m a complete idiot, and I’m very angry with myself. I’m very unhappy. How would we deconstruct this situation (because obviously, I am suffering)? 

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