Review of the Five Aggregates of Experience
We have been going through the text of the Heart Sutra, which is presenting in a condensed fashion the teachings on Prajnaparamita, the “far-reaching discriminating awareness of voidness.” Inspired by the Buddha, who is sitting in deep concentration, we have a question asked by Shariputra to Avalokiteshvara of how to conduct our behavior with far-reaching discriminating awareness of voidness. Avalokiteshvara explains that we need to deconstruct our everyday moment-to-moment experience as we are conducting our lives. There are various schemes that we can use to deconstruct our experience. One scheme, the most common scheme, is the five aggregate factors that make up each moment of our experience, but then there’s also the scheme of the twelve cognitive stimulators and the eighteen cognitive sources. We went through what all of these schemes are, all the parts of them, yesterday. What we learned from deconstructing to this level is that none of the parts or the causes that are involved in what we experience from moment to moment have a self-establishing nature.
If we’re looking at the parts that make up our experiences, these five aggregates, there are various objects of cognition, various sensors that are involved, and various types of consciousness. There’s distinguishing things within sense fields, there’s feeling some level of happiness, and then there’s all these other factors of attention, concentration, interest, and the positive and negative emotions. We see that all of these different factors that make up each moment of what we experience are changing all the time, and they are changing at different rates, and none of these factors remains static. They are all changing all the time, so that’s the first step in deconstructing the solidity of our experience.
We also saw that part of these aggregate factors is the conventional “me,” and this conventional “me” is not something that can exist separately from these aggregates. It’s not something that is static and that flies off into some other group of aggregates, but it’s something that is an imputation on the basis of these aggregates, almost in a way of organizing and putting them all together. In other words, if we want to refer to what’s happening, we could say, “Me, I’m experiencing all of this!”
However, even within this context of “me” being part of these aggregates as an imputation upon them, like age, this “me” is obviously changing from moment to moment because the basis for the imputation, the aggregates, is changing from moment to moment – again, like age. “Me” is not a static phenomenon like voidness that is also an imputation on all of this, but voidness is just a fact about how these things exist. “Me” is not a fact; it’s just a way of putting it together.
We have to see that among imputation phenomena on these aggregates, there are some things that are nonstatic, like “me,” or time, age – these sorts of things; and there are other things that remain static, like certain facts about how they exist and their voidness. The conventional “me,” as part of these aggregates, cannot be known without first and then simultaneously cognizing its basis. In other words, I can’t just hear “you” on the telephone. I have to hear a voice, and on the basis of the voice, I hear “you.” I can’t know the “you” separately, by itself. Also, when I hear you, I hear both you and the voice. Both appear explicitly and I know both.
With voidness, we also have to cognize the basis for voidness first and then both of them together. But when we cognize them together, only one can appear explicitly. We know the other implicitly, without it appearing. When form appears, it appears explicitly with an appearance of true existence. Voidness, the total absence of true existence, cannot appear at the same time. When form appears like this, its voidness can only be known implicitly. There is also another big difference from the way in which the conventional “me” is known. After first cognizing form as the basis for voidness, voidness can then be known explicitly, non-conceptually, without form being simultaneously known even implicitly.
These are important points for how we meditate on voidness. First, we need to cognize the basis for voidness, which are the five aggregates. That’s why Avalokiteshvara is pointing out that we have to know the five aggregates and recognize how they are appearing in an impossible way. Although we might be aware that they are changing all the time, nevertheless, they seem to be establishing themselves as if each little part is encapsulated in plastic. This object we see, this level of happiness, this emotion – it seems as though they are just little pieces that are fitting together like in a jigsaw puzzle, and each one is an individually wrapped piece.
It doesn’t appear to us that our encountering and cognizing this object is ripening from this type of karmic potential; the emotion that we’re feeling is coming from this sort of tendency that we’ve built up for that type of emotion, and the feeling a level of happiness is ripening from another type of karmic factor of destructive or constructive behavior. Each piece is ripening and coming from something else with an enormous number of causes and conditions behind it. As Tsongkhapa points out, we need to first clearly recognize the object to be refuted and then refute it.
When we focus on voidness, we first have to have the appearance of the five aggregates. It means we have to have deconstructed our experience already into five aggregates and then recognize that how it’s appearing is garbage – there’s nothing behind it. Its actual way of existing is not at all the way that it appears. There is no such thing as a referent thing that corresponds to how it is appearing; and then we focus just on voidness.
However, we can’t focus on “me” in that same way without simultaneously the basis for “me” appearing; that’s an important point, actually, also in meditation. It’s very easy to get into a rather unfortunate habit of disassociating ourselves from what we are meditating on. In other words, getting this feeling of “me” being the observer sitting back, in the back of our head, and watching all these aggregates changing all the time, and focusing on their voidness as if there’s a “me” separate from that. Just as this feeling is incorrect that there’s some “me” sitting inside that is living inside our body, living inside our aggregates, which is the boss that is manipulating and controlling them, likewise false is this feeling of a “me” that is the observer sitting back in our head and meditating on all of this, seeing all of this and observing it.
The problem here – I mean one of the problems – is the term “detachment.” We need to be detached. Well, what does detached actually mean? Does it mean a “me” separate from everything? No, it doesn’t mean that. It’s not as if there’s a “me” that could be separate from what it is experiencing and so it doesn’t feel anything. That’s pretty weird from a Buddhist point of view, although sometimes it feels like that, doesn’t it? All there is is experiencing – mental activities going on from moment to moment to moment. We can refer to it as “me,” and there can be a mental factor of detachment that is part of these aggregates, but there’s no separate “me,” either one that could leave the aggregates or one that stays inside the aggregates.
Just as we can analyze the parts of our everyday moment-to-moment experience, we can also analyze from the point of view of the cognitive stimulators, the cognitive sources. This is getting more into almost the causal thing, not so much causal, but as was asked and explained yesterday, cause means what things depend on, and so what does our cognition depend on? Well, from one point of view, we can say, there are cognitive objects and the cognitive sensors, and when we have a cognition, it’s not that we have these two separately. They’re part of the whole causal package. They have to interact with each other, and the cognition depends on that; our experience depends on that. When we talk about the cognitive sources, we’re just adding the consciousness as well into that, and they’re all interdependent, interrelated to each other. Again, we are deconstructing from another point of view what we experience from moment to moment.
Remember, when we analyze the aggregates, we have all these parts, so we might get the impression that they’re parts like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, but when we start to analyze from the point of view of the cognitive stimulators and the cognitive sources – in other words, cognitive objects, sensors and consciousness – nothing exists as a cognitive object independently of a cognitive sensor. It’s in relation to a sensor that something is an object, a cognitive object, and also in relation to a consciousness that it’s a cognitive object. It can’t be established as a cognitive object from its own side, by itself.
When we have these statements in the Heart Sutra of “no eye, no ear, no nose, etc.,” these aren’t just lists. They are there for a particular purpose. In a very condensed form, they are indicating types of meditation that we do that help us to understand and digest voidness more fully. None of these parts of our moment-to-moment experience are established from their own side, by something inside, by their own power, a “self-establishing nature,” it’s called. None of the causes has a self-establishing nature.
The Twelve Links of Dependent Arising
Then, Avalokiteshvara goes on to speak about the twelve links of dependent arising. The twelve links explain our samsaric existence – how it continues, what’s driving it, what’s perpetuating it. From that point of view as well, none of the components of these twelve links has a self-establishing nature. We have in the text:
No unawareness, no elimination of unawareness, up to no aging and death, no elimination of aging and death.
This is speaking about the twelve links. There is no need for me to list them all, starting from unawareness, affecting impulses, consciousness, etc. This is a very sophisticated scheme for explaining the whole process of samsaric rebirth. It’s talking about how we build up the causes for samsaric rebirth from unawareness of how we exist, how we act in various ways that are influenced by and based on that unawareness and how that builds up various karmic potentials and tendencies. It then explains how these are transmitted from one lifetime to another, and how they are activated at the time of death and generate further samsaric rebirth. Then, the reversal sequence – when it says, “no elimination of unawareness, no elimination of aging and death,” aging and death are the twelfth of the links. If we get rid of the first link, it rids us of the second link, which depends on it. When we get rid of that second link, it rids us of the third, which depends on the second. In this way, although the twelve links don’t exactly form a linear succession, nevertheless, we get rid of the whole samsaric rebirth process.
We already saw, Avalokiteshvara pointed out earlier in the text, no arising, no stopping, so it isn’t as though samsara or suffering is some sort of truly existent thing, wrapped in plastic, that all of a sudden arises and then all of a sudden stops. How could it do that? If it’s being established by itself, by something within itself, then it couldn’t depend on any other condition to arise; it would have to be there all the time. It could never arise, and likewise, it could never cease, because it’s always just generating itself. It’s not based on anything else; it’s self-establishing, independent. If it was truly nothing and then truly something, as we said before, how could it go from being a truly nothing to being a truly something? With these twelve links, we go into a more subtle analysis of arising and ceasing. It’s not like a big package, here’s samsara, and then “blam,” it’s there! Then “boom,” it’s away! It’s not like that. It arises with a sequence of twelve links, and to get rid of it there’s also a sequence of twelve reversal links, the reversal sequence of the twelve links.
This helps us to understand how cause and effect are related here. If these links all rely upon the others, and they are all related in some type of causal sequence (although it’s a very complex causal sequence), then we have to understand that each of these links is not existing by itself, establishing itself. If we think of any two links, there is something that is being relied upon by something else, and there’s something else that is relying on it. So, something being relied upon and something that’s relying on it are only established in relation to each other. Something can’t be established by itself as a thing that is being relied on by something else. It’s only established as something that something else relies upon dependently by the force of the other thing that’s relying on it. That’s terribly complex English, I’m sorry.
It’s like, how can we have upper stories of a building independently of there being lower stories? Something can’t be an upper story of a building totally by itself, independently of there being lower stories. I think that makes it a little bit more understandable. So, lower stories are things that are being relied upon by the upper stories, and the upper stories are things that rely upon the lower stories, and they are only established in this reliance, or causal type of relationship, dependently on each other. They do not establish themselves in this relationship by themselves, by their own power.
This is very profound the more that we think about it. Something exists as a cause only dependently on there being a result. Nothing can be a cause just by itself, independently of there being a result. It’s established as a cause by the power of there being a result, even though the result doesn’t exist at the same time as the cause. Actually, I mean, that’s the way we get rid of samsara; it is by eliminating the possibility of there being a result of the karmic tendencies. The karmic tendencies have to be activated by various conditions – these are craving and certain types of what are called “obtainer attitudes” – but there’s no need to go into detail.
Certain disturbing emotions and attitudes are going to activate the karmic tendencies, and these are conditions. So, first we get rid of the unawareness that is the cause of these disturbing emotions that are the conditions for activating karmic tendencies. When there are no more conditions for activating a karmic tendency, that means there can never be a result of these karmic tendencies as a cause. If there can no longer be a result of the karmic tendency, then the karmic tendencies no longer exist as causes because they can only exist as a cause if there can be a result, and because they’re established as a cause dependently on a result.
Obviously, that needs a great deal of contemplation and digesting to understand and to work with it, but this is the way that we get rid of karma. It’s not as though we go into our mind and dig out this karmic tendency and throw it out the window. It’s a very sophisticated procedure, and it can only work on the basis of voidness, that none of these components, whether generating samsaric rebirth and suffering, or getting rid of it, exists by their own power independently of the whole process.
The Voidness of the Four Noble Truths
After presenting the voidness of the twelve links – in both the progressive sequence of how it generates samsaric rebirth and the reversal sequence of how one gets out – then Avalokiteshvara goes on to an even more basic level of causality here, in terms of samsara, by speaking of the four noble truths and that none of them have a self-establishing nature. He says:
Likewise, no suffering, cause, stopping, and pathway mind.
So, in terms of the four noble truths, first no suffering. We have various levels of suffering: suffering of suffering, which is gross pain and unhappiness; the suffering of change, which is our tainted happiness. Both of these are generated by karma, the unhappiness and pain by destructive behavior and the negative karmic force that comes from that; tainted happiness from constructive behavior and the positive karmic force that comes from that. Then, the all-pervasive suffering, which is explained with the twelve links: the whole perpetuation of the basis of these so-called “tainted aggregates,” tainted by unawareness, generated by unawareness, that are the basis with which we experience the first two types of suffering. The true causes of these sufferings that perpetuate samsara are summarized in the twelve links. We all have the various types of karmic tendencies, and they are activated by disturbing emotions. The disturbing emotions are based on unawareness, so we get down to unawareness. These first two truths of the four noble truths describe the progressive sequence of the twelve links of dependent arising, the true causes of samsaric rebirth, and then the suffering of samsaric rebirth, so true causes as the cause and true suffering as the result.
Now, stopping, true stopping – the third noble truth – is referring to the state of being parted forever from these various disturbing emotions and their habits. This is done in a progressive manner. First, we rid ourselves of some level of these disturbing emotions, and then we eventually rid ourselves of those that are doctrinally based – based on having been taught some system that gave us incorrect information, imprecise information. Then we rid ourselves of automatically arising disturbing emotions and unawareness, and eventually the habits of these. That state of our mental continuum being parted from these “obscurations,” they’re called the “true stopping,” “true cessation.” The disturbing emotions and unawareness are the emotional obscurations; the habits are the cognitive obscurations, since they make the appearance of truly established existence. With the disturbing emotions, we believe in that appearance, that it corresponds to something real, etc. These partings are forever, so they’re static. They never change. Once we’re free of them, we’re free.
That state of being unstained is not something that is created by anything. It’s not created by our meditation on voidness, but it has always been the case in terms of the pure nature of the mind. The nature of the mind is not stained by this unawareness or these disturbing emotions that come from it. Basically, we “uncover” this unstained nature of the mind (which never was tainted or stained by any of this stuff). Once we get rid of the causes that are obscuring this nature… Well, this nature was there all the time anyway, so it’s a static fact. What will bring about the attainment of this true stopping – what we do doesn’t bring about the stopping itself; the mind has always been free of this garbage – but what will bring about the attainment of the mind coming back to this, the “attainment of these true stoppings” is the way it’s phrased, will be a true pathway mind, so the non-conceptual cognition of voidness.
When we talk about the cause and result relationship of the second two noble truths, we’re talking about the true pathway mind; it’s not a path, it’s not something we can walk on, but it’s talking about the mental state, our understanding. This acts as a cause for the attainment of the third noble truth, not the third noble truth itself, so this is what’s described by the reversal sequence of the twelve links. Again, we have the voidness of cause and effect here with the four noble truths. In our everyday experience, we need to understand this. We deconstruct what’s happening, from the point of view of how we’re perpetuating our samsaric existence, with these five aggregates in terms of these twelve links. We can understand it in a more condensed form in terms of the first two noble truths. Then, we can see how to get out of it, also dependent on the reversal sequence of the twelve links and the second two noble truths. It all will work only because all of these are devoid of a self-establishing nature.
The Voidness of the Attainment of Enlightenment
If we speak in terms of a resultant state of a Buddha, there’s:
No deep awareness, no attainment, no non-attainment.
This is how Avalokiteshvara explains it. Deep awareness (ye-shes) is referring to the deep awareness of the two truths. Although we work with the truths one at a time through awareness of conventional truth, of deepest truth, voidness, consecutively up until the attainment of enlightenment; then with enlightenment we are able to get non-conceptual cognition of the two simultaneously, which means non-conceptual cognition of the voidness of the two simultaneously, and that, as well, is not established by itself, by its own power. We can’t have awareness without there being content, even if it’s deep awareness. It has to be awareness of something, not that the awareness and the object of awareness exist separately by themselves; they exist in relation to each other.
When we talk about this resultant state and the deep awareness that characterizes this resultant state, it’s not as though there it is on the top of the building, the penthouse, and it’s existing by itself, and we have to get there. He says there’s no attainment. It’s not as though we have this truly existent climb, and then we’re there. It’s not like that. However, it’s not that there’s no non-attainment; it’s not that we haven’t attained anything. I mean, conventionally, there is an attainment. Another way of understanding “no non-attainment” is non-attainment would be the voidness of the attainment, and then the voidness of the voidness of non-attainment. This gets into the point that voidness itself is not some sort of fact that just establishes itself. It’s a fact about something, so there’s always a basis for voidness, as in what is it that is devoid of an impossible way of existing?
Avalokiteshvara continues:
Because it’s like that, Shariputra, through there being no attainment of bodhisattvas, he (or she) lives relying on far-reaching discriminating awareness, with no mental obscuration.
There’s no truly existent attainment that we’re working toward, and there’s no big, horrible monster – this mental obscuration – that is blocking enlightenment. If it existed by its own power, there would be no way of getting rid of it. A bodhisattva relies on this far-reaching discriminating awareness (in other words, living with this, applying this, etc.), and is able to get rid of mental obscuration because there’s no truly existent mental obscuration, and is able to attain enlightenment because there’s no truly existent attainment or truly existent thing to attain.
Then, the Sanskrit adds one phrase that is not in the Tibetan – “because of there being no mental obscuration,” so:
Because of there being no mental obscuration, there is no fear,
There’s no monster obscuration sitting there. Our mental continuum has some disturbing emotions and some unawareness, and habits and tendencies, etc., but because there’s nothing solidly sitting there, there’s nothing to be afraid of. When we talk about fear, fear is based on a sense of there’s this solid “me” that’s over here, independently of what we’re afraid of, we’re helpless, and there’s nothing that we can do. Then, we experience this fear. When we realize that these obscurations are there dependent on causes and conditions, and that if we change the causes and conditions and get rid of them, and there’s no mental obscurations, etc., then there’s nothing to be afraid of. It’s just a matter of doing it, and we gain the confidence that we are able to do it because we see that it is possible. There’s nothing substantially, what should we say, “preventing” our enlightenment.
Avalokiteshvara continues:
gone beyond what’s reversed,
What’s reversed is our ignorance, our unawareness, in which we understand how things exist in a reverse way, but the mental obscurations, the things that are preventing our enlightenment do not exist in this reversed way. The reversed way would be with truly established existence; the way of existence has gone beyond that. It’s not in this crazy way, this impossible way.
Avalokiteshvara continues:
thus nirvana release, complete to the end.
This is speaking about natural nirvana, which is the voidness of the mind itself, so the condition that allows for enlightenment is the voidness of the mind itself – none of these mental obscurations have truly established existence. The mind itself doesn’t have truly established existence. There’s nothing solidly there that we have to attain, etc. Also, it’s complete to the end, which means that there’s no focal support. We’ve been speaking about focal support; there’s not even the subtlest thing on the side of the mind, or the obscurations, or anything there, that is holding it up and allowing it to generate itself and establish itself by its own power.
Then Avalokiteshvara continues:
In fact, it’s by relying on far-reaching discriminating awareness that all Buddhas arrayed throughout the three times are full manifest Buddhas in peerless and perfect full Buddhahood.
Again, how do Buddhas become Buddhas? One attains that through relying on this far-reaching discriminating awareness, this understanding of voidness, backed by a bodhichitta motivation. It’s only by understanding the voidness of this causal sequence – of how there’s far-reaching discrimination, how this understanding of voidness opposes the unawareness – that the whole process can occur. Unawareness is saying that things exist in an impossible way. The understanding of voidness is saying that this is crazy, it doesn’t correspond to anything real – so this is the exact opposite of impossible, not impossible.
We can’t have the two simultaneously, obviously, so which one is stronger? When we believe in the impossible way – well, first of all, it’s not backed by logic, it’s not reasonable, and it just produces suffering. Whereas, when we understand that impossible is impossible – that there’s no such thing – then that is backed by logic, it gets rid of suffering, etc. This is stronger, but it’s not as though deep awareness is something solidly by itself and this unawareness is solidly by itself. All of these are dependent on causes and conditions, etc. One has to understand how, based on the understanding of voidness, the understanding of voidness itself can get rid of the unawareness. That’s not so easy.
An analogy that is often used is light and darkness. When we turn on the light in a dark room, is it that the light now comes into the room and the darkness sees it and is afraid of it, and then the darkness goes off somewhere? It’s not that the darkness goes and hides under the bed and waits until we turn the light off and then comes back out. The arising of the light and the ceasing of the darkness are simultaneous. Also, it’s not as though they are two solid things like two sides of a weighing scale where one goes up and the other goes down. One has to think about how light and darkness work, and that gives a little bit of an analogous clue as to how awareness gets rid of unawareness.
Great Mind-Protecting Mantra
Avalokiteshvara goes on.
Because it’s like that, far-reaching discriminating awareness is the great mind-protecting mantra, the mind-protecting mantra of great knowledge, the mind-protecting mantra that’s unsurpassed, the mind-protecting mantra equal to the unequaled, the mind-protecting mantra completely stilling all suffering.
The Sanskrit version has the word great, but the Tibetan omits it. When the word mantra is used here, it’s not used with any connotation of tantra practice, but rather it means something that protects the mind. That’s why I’ve translated it here as mind-protecting mantra. “Man,” the first syllable, is an abbreviation of manas, the Sanskrit word for mind, and “tra” comes from the root which means to protect (the name Tara is likewise derived from this verbal root). So, mantra means something that protects the mind. The understanding of voidness held by bodhichitta, far-reaching discriminating awareness, is the best thing; it’s the mantra, the great one, Mahayana, the great one that protects the mind from suffering. It’s the mind-protecting mantra of great knowledge. Great knowledge refers to the fact that it eliminates the three poisonous attitudes of longing or desire, anger or aversion, and naivety. It’s the mind-protecting mantra that is unsurpassed. There’s no better method for overcoming the extremes of samsara or nirvana. The extreme of samsara is staying in uncontrollably recurring rebirth over and over and over again, with all its suffering. And the extreme of nirvana is to stay in the state of apathy of being released from just our own suffering.
This comes back to one of the questions that was asked before. We see voidness, we understand voidness, does that automatically bring compassion? From one point of view, we could say that when we see the interdependence of everybody and of what we’re all experiencing, then to think just in terms of our own release, our own state of being free from suffering, well, it doesn’t exist by itself. We don’t exist in isolation from everybody else, so to just think of ourselves isolated from everybody else doesn’t make sense in terms of voidness. From that point of view, we can be led to compassion and thinking of others. Thus, the mind-protecting mantra equal to the unequaled, where the unequaled is the state of a Buddha, a fully enlightened Buddha, and it’s equal to that because it’s what will bring one to that state. Then, the mind-protecting mantra completely stilling all suffering – all suffering for now and all suffering for the future, because it eliminates all the causes for continuing samsaric rebirth.
The text goes on.
Because of its being not deceitful, it’s to be known as the truth.
Not deceitful means that it doesn’t deny conventional truth. If it denied conventional truth by saying nothing exists in an impossible way, if it denied that anything exists at all, that would be deceitful. That’s not the truth. The truth is that there are two truths about anything. There’s conventional truth in terms of what it is and how it appears, and there’s deepest truth, that it is devoid of existing in an impossible way.
Avalokiteshvara goes on.
In far-reaching discriminating awareness, the mind-protecting mantra has been proclaimed. ‘Tadyatha, (om) gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi svaha. The actual nature: gone, gone, gone beyond, gone far-beyond, purified state, so be it.’
That’s the translation of the mantra. OM, by the way, is there in the Sanskrit. It seems to be omitted in the Tibetan, and so various Tibetan lineages and traditions will either have the OM or not have the OM. There are often small variances in mantras, so we shouldn’t be too surprised.
In far-reaching discriminating awareness, within the context of this understanding of voidness with bodhichitta, we have the whole procedure of how we become enlightened, and that is described by gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi. When we talk about a path to enlightenment, we’re talking about a pathway. I use this term “pathway minds;” it’s a terrible term to try to translate into other languages, but we’re not talking about a road that we walk on. We’re talking about different levels of mind that will act as a path that will eventually lead to enlightenment. There are stages, progressive stages, of levels of mind that we attain, and that’s classified in five stages, the five pathway minds. Tadyatha, it’s the actual nature, is referring to voidness; within the state of understanding voidness, we have to progress in this following way. OM is a syllable that is made of three parts – “a,” “u,” and “m” – and they signify body, speech and mind, so the understanding of voidness has to be integrated at all levels of ourselves.
Gate gate are these first two levels of pathway mind in which we’re not yet an arya; we’ve not yet attained non-conceptual cognition of voidness. The first of these “gate” is what I call the “building-up pathway mind.” It’s usually translated as the “path of accumulation.” We achieve this level of mind when we have unlabored bodhichitta (we’re talking about the Mahayana path here). When we have unlabored bodhichitta, we are able to have conventional bodhichitta without effort all the time, with our mind focused on our not-yet-attained enlightenment with the intention to achieve it in order to benefit others. This is supported by love and compassion, and the understanding that it’s possible to achieve it, and with an understanding of how to achieve it. It’s unlabored in the sense that we don’t have to go through the steps of meditation to build up to it: everybody’s been my mother, etc., but we just have it all the time as our deepest intention. We don’t even have to be conscious of it, so even when we are asleep, as Shantideva says, it builds up positive force because this is the whole direction of our life, it’s so fully integrated.
What are we building up with this pathway mind? We’re building up to have combined shamatha and vipashyana focused on voidness. “Shamatha” is a stilled and settled state of mind; it’s with perfect concentration, stilled of all distraction, all flightiness, all dullness, and settled on an object. In addition to that, perfect absorbed concentration has a sense of fitness, an exhilarating physical and mental sense of fitness that one is able to focus on anything for as long as we want. Vipashyana adds to shamatha, as we can’t have a state of vipashyana without having already shamatha; it adds to it a second sense of fitness, a sense of the mind being fit to be able to analyze and discriminate and discern and understand anything.
Now, even before attaining a building-up pathway mind, we could have achieved shamatha. We could have achieved even the combined state of shamatha and vipashyana focused on something other than voidness. Here, however, with the building-up pathway of mind, if we haven’t developed it before, we develop combined shamatha and vipashyana on voidness. If we’ve already developed this combined shamatha and vipashyana, now we’re practicing focusing it on voidness.
However, when we have achieved this combined shamatha and vipashyana focused on voidness, it will initially be with a conceptual cognition of voidness – so it’s through the category of voidness – and once we achieve that, then we have an “applying pathway mind.” It’s a mental state in which we apply that combined shamatha and vipashyana focused on voidness conceptually; we apply it over and over and over again until we actually attain a non-conceptual cognition of voidness with this combined shamatha and vipashyana. An applying pathway mind is usually translated as “path of preparation.”
When we have attained this non-conceptual joined shamatha and vipashyana focused on voidness, then we have a “seeing pathway of mind,” the so-called “path of seeing,” and with that, we become an arya, a so-called “noble being,” a highly realized being. We have “gone beyond,” we’ve gone beyond the state of being an ordinary being. With this seeing pathway mind, we get rid of the doctrinally-based unawareness and disturbing emotions. In other words, the confusion or unawareness that we learned from a non-Buddhist Indian system of philosophy, and the disturbing emotions that would be based on believing that we exist in the way that they assert.
Once we have achieved a true stopping of these doctrinally-based disturbing emotions, this portion of the emotional obscurations, then we work with an “accustoming pathway of mind.” This is often called the “path of meditation,” in which we now accustom ourselves to this non-conceptual cognition of voidness, so that we rid ourselves of the automatically-arising disturbing emotions – and that’s the rest of the emotional obscurations plus the habits of all of this, which are the cognitive obscurations – until we achieve enlightenment and that is bodhi.
We have parasamgate, so it’s gone far beyond; we’re going beyond just getting rid of the doctrinally-based unawareness until we achieve the purified state of enlightenment, the pathway mind needing no further training. Then svaha, so be it. May this happen, may we be able to do this. This is the way it is. All of this, this sentence, is preceded by in far-reaching discriminating awareness, so within the context of understanding voidness of what are called the “three circles that are involved” – the person who is meditating, what they’re meditating upon and the meditation. Understanding the voidness of all three of these, that these are dependently arising on each other, that is the way that one precedes through developing these five pathway minds.
Conclusion of the Text
Avalokiteshvara concludes his explanation. He says,
O Shariputra, a bodhisattva great-minded mahasattva needs to train like that (for behavior that’s) in profound and far-reaching discriminating awareness.
The Sanskrit adds for behavior that’s, so it emphasizes the behavior. For some reason, the Tibetan leaves that out, but the Sanskrit emphasizes the fact that this is how we conduct our life: in dealing with others, and so on, in terms of our understanding of voidness, profound and far-reaching.
Going on, the text says:
Then the Vanquishing Master Surpassing All arising from that absorbed concentration, gave his endorsement “excellent” to the bodhisattva great-minded mahasattva, the Arya Avalokiteshvara, “Excellent, excellent, my spiritual son with the family traits, it’s just like that. It’s just like that that he or she needs to conduct (his or her behavior) in profound and far-reaching discriminating awareness. It’s exactly as it’s been shown by you for the bodhisattvas, (arhats and Buddhas) to rejoice.”
The Vanquishing Master Surpassing All, that’s the Buddha. Arising from that absorbed concentration, remember he was absorbed with omniscient awareness on the two truths, all phenomena and their voidness. The Sanskrit version adds behavior and to rejoice. The fact that the Sanskrit adds arhats and Buddhas here implies that, even to achieve the liberation of an arhat, it’s necessary to have the same understanding of voidness. Buddha affirms that the way that Avalokiteshvara explained was correct.
Then the sutra concludes:
When the Vanquishing Master Surpassing All had pronounced those words, the venerable Son of Sharadvati and the bodhisattva great-minded mahasattva, the Arya Avalokiteshvara, and the pair of assemblies of those endowed with all, as well as the world – gods, humans, anti-gods, and gandharva heavenly musicians – rejoicing, sang praises of what had been declared by the Vanquishing Master Surpassing All.
The pair of assemblies – remember, we had both the lay bodhisattvas and the monastic assembly – the pair of assemblies of those endowed with all, so there we have all the Buddha-nature qualities. Everybody rejoiced in the positive force of this, rejoiced in the teaching of what is so helpful and correct, and so on. That even if we ourselves hadn’t given the teaching, we built up a tremendous amount of positive force. That’s indicated here, and that concludes the text.
That brings us to the end of our discourse, our meeting together. This is obviously a very, very profound and deep teaching. It’s very condensed, it condenses this enormous Prajnaparamita literature. It’s something that we need to study more and more, and not just study, but as is emphasized throughout the text, we need to integrate it into our daily behavior.
Dedication
We need to end with the dedication. Think whatever positive force, whatever understanding has built up from this discussion, may it go deeper and deeper and act as a cause for us and all beings to reach enlightenment for the benefit of all.