LTF 43: The Automatically Arising Impossible Self; the 20 Deluded Outlooks

The Doctrinally Based Unawareness of How the “Me” Exists – The False “Me” Versus the Conventional “Me”

The confusion or unawareness that we have about reality is, for everyone but Prasangika, about how persons exist. When we talk about a person, we are talking about a living being with a mind that has a continuity. And that continuity has no beginning and no end, according to Buddhism. And according to what that person does, that person can take rebirth in any life form that has a mind – as a human, as an animal, a ghost, or whatever. So, that’s one thing – the confusion about how persons exist. Then the other thing is confusion about how everything in general exists, everything that we experience. 

Here, we are talking about how person exists because confusion about how we ourselves exist is, according to most of the Buddhist explanations and theories (although Prasangika goes even deeper) the source of all our disturbing emotions. Then the karmic actions that we do based on these disturbing emotions bring about the problems. So, it is very important to understand how we actually exist. 

In Buddhism, we speak about the conventional “me,” which does exist, and the false “me,” which our minds project onto the conventional “me” that does exist. This false “me” doesn’t exist at all. We have a concept of it that we project, but what we have to realize is that it doesn’t refer to anything real. Our minds, because of our strong habits of just not knowing, makes us appear to exist in impossible ways, and because we don’t know any better, we believe it. So, when we understand that this projection of what we call a “false ‘me’” does not refer to anything real and, over time, we become more accustomed to this understanding, we’ll eventually stop projecting it. First of all, though, we’ll stop believing in it. Then, second, we’ll stop projecting it. This is what we are talking about here.

The conventional “me” from a Buddhist point of view is, as I said, something that has continuity forever. We’re not denying that. It’s a belief that fits within the context of general Indian beliefs. So, self has no beginning, has no end, and bears the karmic consequences for what it does from lifetime to lifetime. In all the Indian schools, except for one, there’s always a belief in karma – that depending on what we do, we build up certain habits and tendencies that we continue to act out in the future. And this brings various problems, or worldly happiness, or whatever. So, that’s not in any way denied in Buddhism. That’s the conventional “me.” 

The conventional “me” is part of what makes up our experience. Our experience is made up of many, many things. To speak about it in very general terms, we can just say that we have a body. And on the basis of that body, we experience sights, smells, tastes, physical sensations, thoughts and these sorts of things. We have different types of consciousnesses with which we are aware of sights, sounds, and thoughts. We have various emotions. We have feeling different levels of happiness. We have so many other different things, like concentration, attention, and so on. And all these are constantly changing. These are referred to as the “aggregates,” the aggregate factors of our experience. 

Among these factors, according to Buddhism, is the conventional “me.” Conventional “me” is not some form of physical phenomenon. It’s not something solid, not something that we can see or anything like that. And it’s not a way of being aware of something, like anger or attention or understanding or anything like that. It is something that is in neither of those categories. Still, it is changing all the time The conventional “me” is actually something that is… we use the word “labeled,” or “imputed.” It can be labeled or imputed on a stream of continuity, like, for instance, an hour or a day. What is a day? A day is what is imputed on a continuity of twenty-four hours. A day doesn’t happen the first hour, the second hour or the last hour. We can’t actually point to a day. A day is a way of putting together that continuity of twenty-four hours. So, the conventional “me” is something like that. We have a continuity of moments of experience, moment to moment to moment, and a way we can put it all together is to refer to it as “me.” It’s not something separate. 

Now, as I say, because of our habits, our minds project all sorts of impossible things onto this conventional “me” and onto the basis for it, the body and mind and so on. We also have to distinguish different levels of what our minds project and what we believe in. What we do, then, is to refute or eliminate each of these different levels of what’s incorrect, what’s impossible, because by working in stages like that, we can get down to the most precise understanding. It’s not really an effective method to try to get rid of the whole thing, all those projections, all at once. 

The first thing that we have to get rid of are what are called the “doctrinally based incorrect views.” These are things that we have been taught. We’ve learned various theories about the self – usually, it’s referred to as the “soul,” the “atman.” Here, Buddha taught in terms of Indian schools of philosophy and religion. In the various Hindu schools, the various Jain schools, the various other schools of Indian philosophy, they speak about an atman – a “soul,” I think, is the best or easiest way of translating it. And if we had been taught something about how the soul exists – and if we believed it – then it would seem like that to us. So, first, we have to refute that. 

The Three Main Characteristics of the Doctrinally Based Impossible Self, or “Soul”

If we look at what are the common characteristics of this impossible “soul,” I’ll call it, then the common characteristics of it as asserted by these non-Buddhist Indian schools are that:

[1] It’s static. Static means that it doesn’t change from moment to moment. The non-Buddhist schools as well as Buddhism say it lasts forever. That’s not the problem here, and it’s not what’s in dispute. What’s in dispute is whether it changes from moment to moment, whether it is affected by anything, and whether it affects anything else. We would learn from the non-Buddhist schools that the self doesn’t affect anything, is not affected by anything, and is static and, so, never changes.

[2] The second quality of that type of self is that it is a monolith. The word is “one,” which means that it has no parts. An example would be that if we identify with our bodies, we think, “I am my body.” If it has no parts, what happens if you lose your arm? Is it still “me”? Is the arm part of “me,” or does “me” have no parts? You have a problem if we think that the “me” has no parts. So, that’s monolithic.

[3] The third quality of this impossible soul is that it is separate from the body and mind… or separable, which means that it can fly out of the body and mind at the time of death and fly into another body and mind (to put it in very simple terms). 

So, it’s a static thing that has no parts and flies out of body and mind and goes into another body and mind. Nevertheless, like the Buddhist conventional “me,” it is a carrier of karma and lasts forever. 

Participant: Would a non-Buddhist school say that it has a cause?

Dr. Berzin: Not in the sense that it is created, no. The Indian schools all speak of beginningless souls. Even those that assert a creator god (and there are some that do identify it with Ishvara and some with Brahma) don’t say that it creates souls. 

How Does Buddhism Explain So-Called Out of Body Experiences?

Participant: You were just talking about it flying out of the body.

Dr. Berzin: Right.

Participant: Because once I had a book about close-death experiences. And actually, this is what they described in this book. If somebody was almost dead, they actually go out of their body and look at their body. So, what would Buddhism…

Dr. Berzin: This is a very good example. Karsten points out that there are many close-death experiences that have been reported by people of feeling as though the soul, or person, comes out of the body and looks back at the body. Well, again, this is exactly what we are talking about – that because of confusion, of unawareness, the mind makes it appear like that. But that’s not actually the case. We could speak about this as being a distortion of perception that occurs. Or maybe we could speak about it as having something to do with the energy of the body. But it is not that the soul, or self, is totally divorced from the body and mind and is looking back at it like that. 

Even from a Buddhist point of view, a conventional “me” (as discussed from the point of view of the highest class of tantra) always has as its basis the subtlest level of mind together with the subtlest life supporting energy. So, even if that leaves the body, the gross body, at the time of death or is in some sort of meditation practice and looks back, it still is not separate from a body and mind. It has a basis. 

Participant: So, actually, it’s just still inside the body.

Dr. Berzin: Well, in most cases. Actually, there is an article on my website on extra-bodily states that the old Serkong Rinpoche taught. There could be many reasons for this perception. One can be an imbalance of the winds in the body. Another can be something done through meditation. There are many, many different causes for that type of experience. But you can’t say that there is a soul, or “me,” that’s totally separate from any physical basis or any mental basis and that that “me” can look back at is basis. So, like that, it’s explained. 

What Is the Subtle Body?

Participant: Then the subtle body – why is it called the “subtle body”?

Dr. Berzin: What is the subtle body? This is a very difficult question. 

There are different levels of subtlety for both the mind and the body. Each level of body is the support for the corresponding level of mind or awareness.

We have the gross body. That would include the eyes and ears and these sorts of things. And what corresponds to that would be a sense awareness of seeing, hearing and so on. 

There is a subtler level that has to do with the mental level. This mental level, our usual mental level, which can be dreaming, imaging, thinking and these sorts of things, is more associated with a subtle energy system in the body (Buddhism doesn’t really speak about the brain; that’s more on the physical side). This subtle energy system is not something that we can actually see. Instead, it is what would be involved with feeling nervous or tension – a type of energy in the body. When our energies are very calm, the thoughts are very calm. When the energies are very nervous and running wild in the body, the thoughts are very confused and paranoid and can be a bit crazy. So, there is that level of physical body, which is more an energy level.

But then there is a subtlest level. The subtlest level is comprised of what’s called the “subtlest life-supporting energy” and the “subtlest mind.” This is what has continuity from lifetime to lifetime, including in between lives, and goes into enlightenment as well. The way that I usually try to describe that is with an analogy of a radio – that if the radio is on a station, it’s like being in a certain lifetime with a certain volume and so on that is playing. But the most fundamental level, which continues no matter what station the radio is on, is just the level of the radio being on. There is a certain amount of electricity, a certain amount of transmission or whatever, that just keeps the radio on.

Participant: Standby.

Dr. Berzin: Standby. Standby! Thank you. Very good. So, that would be similar to this subtlest level. This is what Buddhism says has no break. Ultimately, that would be the basis for labeling “me.” It’s not the same as me, but the “me” can be labeled on it. And that has no beginning and no end. 

Now, once we get rid of this idea that there is a soul that is not affected by anything (we have discussed this the last two classes), that doesn’t change, that doesn’t affect anything else, that always remains the same, that has no parts and can fly off to a different body, which is a concept that we had to learn because we wouldn’t automatically think like that – although we might automatically have the wrong concept that we never change (like I go to sleep at night, and when I get up in the morning, “here I am again,” this type of thing) or the concept that we have of ourselves of being eternally young or eternally this or that… Nevertheless, once we get rid of that false idea, then we have to work with a subtler level of the impossible soul. 

The Automatically Arising Unawareness of How the “Me” Exists – The Self-Sufficiently Knowable “Me”

The subtler level of the impossible soul is one that can be known self-sufficiently, can be known by itself without knowing a basis for it at the same time. This comes automatically: don’t have to learn this. Everybody has this, including the dog. 

What is the example of this? It would be like looking at ourselves in the mirror and thinking, “I’m seeing me. That’s me.” We don’t think, “I’m seeing a face, and on the basis of that face, there’s me.” We simply imagine, “I’m seeing me.” Or we hear somebody on the telephone and we think, “I am listening to Karsten. That’s Karsten.” It seems as though it’s just Karsten by itself, not a vibration of some carbon particles or who knows what in a metal or plastic thing that we are holding that is producing a sound that is similar to a sound that Karsten might make and that we call, on the basis of all that, “listening to Karsten.” It’s really quite weird, the telephone. Actually, it is perfect for a voidness meditation… an illusion. It really is an illusion. Like an illusion. 

That we have to refute – that there is a “me” like that, one that can be known all by itself. Even if it is changing all the time, even if it has parts, and even if it doesn’t fly out of the body and mind, still, it seems like that. We have to get rid of that. Once we get rid of that, then we see what’s left. 

This is where we are up to now in the class. We covered these points in the last two classes. 

What we are left with is, “OK, I understand that there is a conventional ‘me’ and it has to do with mental labeling. It’s part of the aggregates – the body and mind, and so on. It is not separate; it doesn’t fly off. It changes all the time. It has parts; it is not a monolith. And it can’t be known by itself. OK, I understand that.” So, we think in terms of mental labeling.

Mental labeling, Buddhism describes as having three aspects: 

• There is a basis, like, for instance, we were speaking in terms of a day. What’s the basis for a day? It’s twenty-four hours. 
• There is the label, which is the word “day” or the concept “day.” 
• Then there is the actual day, which is what the word refers to. 

A day is not just a word; a day is not just a concept. There is such thing as a day. What is a day? A day isn’t the first hour; a day isn’t the second hour. What’s a day? All you can say is that a day is what that word “day” refers to on the basis of twenty-four hours. That’s all. 

How it seems to us is that there is something on the side of the basis – what’s called an “individual defining characteristic mark” (that’s a technical term) – that makes something an appropriate basis for labeling it. So, there is something special in this day that makes it this day and not another day. Or if we think in terms of the conventional “me,” we have this sequence of moments of continuity, individual continuity of moments of experience of body and mind, emotions and everything – that’s the word “me.” What’s “me”? “Me” isn’t just a word. It is what the word “me” refers to on the basis of all these things that are changing all the time. 

“But,” we think, “It seems like that. There must be something on the side of ‘me,’ on the side of the body and mind and so on, that makes me ‘me’ and not ‘you’ – something special, some defining characteristic. And it’s on that basis that we can label it correctly as ‘me,’ and not label it as the ‘table’ or label it as somebody else.” We all think like that. We have to find this, express this “uniqueness.” We are unique in the sense that we are individuals, but there is nothing findable inside us that makes me “me.” There may be a genetic code, there may be whatever, but that’s not “me.” If we write that genetic code on a blackboard or in a computer, would that be me? Well, we wouldn’t say that that’s “me.” 

But it’s funny. That gets back to the self-sufficiently knowable “me” – like you look at a picture of yourself and you say, “That’s me” – which is very strange if you analyze that. Anyway, this is what we have to ultimately get rid of – that belief that there is something special, that there is a findable defining characteristic that allows for a correct labeling. 

Correct labeling is based on several factors. What makes it valid is based on three criteria:

• First of all, there is a convention. For example, conventionally, I am called, or labelled “Alex.” Why? Because my parents gave me that name and everybody calls me that. So, there is a convention of being Alex. 
• That is not contradicted by a mind that validly sees the conventional truth. If somebody takes their glasses off and sees me as a blur, that doesn’t make me into a blur, and that would be contradicted when they put their glasses on and see who it is correctly. 
• Then it has to not be contradicted by a mind that sees the deepest truth correctly. If somebody says, “Well, a person can be known all by itself” – that’s contradicted by a mind that sees correctly how things exist. 

So, there doesn’t have to be something special on the side of the body and mind that makes me “me” and makes you “you.” Yet, we believe that there is something special, that there is some special, findable characteristic mark inside us that makes me “me.” So, what we want to do is to get rid of our belief in that even though our minds make us and everybody else appear like that. We want to first stop believing in it, which happens when we understand that there is no such thing. Then, the more we are used to this understanding, our minds will eventually stop projecting it. 

“No Such Thing” (Voidness) Bursting the Bubble of Our False Beliefs

The understanding that there is no such thing (we call that “no such thing”) is called “voidness,” or “emptiness,” in Buddhism. That means a total absence of something, of something impossible – an impossible way of existing. It’s totally absent. It’s devoid – no such thing. Never was, never will be… impossible. That’s what we have to focus on: “no such thing.” 

No such thing – no such thing as Father Christmas, Santa Claus. There’s somebody that’s dressed like Father Christmas, and I think that’s Father Christmas, but that’s not. That’s like an illusion. They just look like Father Christmas. They are not really Father Christmas because there is no such thing as Father Christmas. It’s like that. So, we have to burst the bubble of our false beliefs, our fantasies of what’s impossible. This is the essence of what we are trying to understand in Buddhism. 

Let’s take few moments to digest that and see if you have any question.

Are there any questions?

No Division of Mind into Conscious and Unconscious in Buddhism

Participant: I’d like to know about the conscious mind and the unconscious mind.

Dr. Berzin: That’s a division that we have in the Western analysis of the mind, or awareness. We don’t use those terms in Buddhism.  

The thing that makes it difficult is that there are many different uses of the word “unconscious,” even in the West. “This person had unconscious hostility” – that means that they weren’t aware of it. Now, that means that there wasn’t a mental factor of… in Buddhism we speak of many, many different mental factors. So, there is one mental factor that is called “alertness,” which is the factor of the mind that keeps a check on what’s going on and can ring the alarm if there is something that is out of order or not proper so that you can bring your attention back to what you want. So, in the case of unconscious hostility, that would be having very weak alertness while, let’s say, you’re speaking to somebody.

Then there is another level, which is when somebody falls unconscious or when they are unconscious during an operation. That has to do with whether or not the sensory consciousnesses are active or not so active. That’s something else.

Then there is the unconscious in the sense of psychology. That is speaking of the individual unconscious. Or in Jungian psychology, they speak of a collective unconscious. That really is, from a Buddhist point of view, just speaking in terms of the mental continuum as a basis for habits and what, in the West, would be called “memories” and so on, which are described in Buddhism in the same way as habits are described. We think of… like a habit: smoking a cigarette – you smoke it once, twice… over many, many times. 

Now, what is a habit? Habit, again, is one of these things that can be imputed on a sequence of similar events. Now, each time that you smoke a cigarette, it’s not the same cigarette, and it’s not the same smoking. But those two things are similar to each other. On the basis of that, you say that there is a habit. It’s similar to experiencing meeting somebody. We experience thinking about meeting the person today, we think about it tomorrow, and we think about it the next time. So, we have again a sequence of similar events. Every time we think of the meeting, we’re not thinking the same thought. It’s not exactly the same: it’s similar. On the basis of that, we say that there is a “memory,” but actually, it’s a habit. “Habit” is a difficult word to translate, but in Buddhism, they use the same word for memory because it’s a very similar process. But there is no findable habit somewhere. It’s just that there’s a continuity of, we can say, the subtlest mind or… well, there are different explanations according to different Buddhist theories, but there is no findable habit, no findable imprint, no findable memory. 

The basis upon which we would impute memories or habits and so on, in the West, we’d call the “unconscious.” Memories are in your “unconscious”; habits are in your “unconscious.” Or on a collective level… well, in Buddhism we speak of “collective karma” and so on, but there is no collective mind anywhere in Buddhism. 

So, usually, in Buddhism, you can find an explanation for what is described in Western systems of psychology or philosophy, but it’s not described in the same way. There is no exact equivalence of terms that you could use to describe the same thing from different analytical systems. Buddhism describes the different aspects of the so-called unconscious in different ways.

Participant: And to do with our way of thinking, which I’m…

Dr. Berzin: Well, if you are talking about the unconscious in the Freudian sense, in the psychological sense – yes, it affects how we think. It affects our memories; it affects our experience of things. 

I mean, there are tendencies. In Buddhism, we speak about tendencies. In the West, we’d say that tendencies are in the unconscious. In Buddhism, we would say that a tendency is (again) an imputation based on a sequence of similar things. But a tendency isn’t… we can’t locate it. Now, we might say that there is a physical basis for it. The physical basis could be some sort of greased pathway in the neurons of the brain or something like that, but that’s just the physical basis. We wouldn’t say that that’s the tendency itself; it’s the physical basis for the tendency. And a tendency isn’t a pattern either. A tendency refers to how we describe what we actually do. It’s more of an abstraction. The “me” is like that as well, the conventional “me.” 

When we experience things, we experience it usually because of a tendency. This element becomes part of our experience, part of the conventional “me.” So, it feels as though “I am doing this.” And I am doing this; it’s not somebody else doing it. But it is just an imputation on the conventional “me.” “I’m acting out a habit” – well, the habit is part of “me,” but it is not something separate, and it is not something concrete. 

No Collective Unconscious in Buddhism. All Minds Are Interconnected, But They Are Not One

Participant: Could you say something more about there not being one, collective mind?

Dr. Berzin: In Buddhism, we say there is no one, collective unconsciousness. There is not a great, partless mind that we all have a little piece of. There are other schools of philosophy that do say that, like certain Hindu schools and certain Islamic schools as well. But Buddhism doesn’t say that. Where is it, for one? Where is it located? There is nothing like that. Buddhism always speaks of individual mental continuums. It is always individual. We are all individual persons. It’s a Hindu idea that all the streams go into the big ocean and that they all become one. It’s not a Buddhist way of looking at things. 

Buddhas themselves are individuals. Every Buddha may be omniscient and know everything, and their minds encompasses everything, but that doesn’t mean that they have the same mind. It’s like if you had a universal mirror, you could have many universal mirrors reflecting the whole universe. It doesn’t mean that there is only one universal mirror – if that image helps at all. 

Buddha Shakyamuni is not Buddha Maitreya. Different people may not have the karma to meet Buddha Shakyamuni  but may have the karma to meet Buddha Maitreya. If they were the same person – one – then you wouldn’t have that discussion of “well, we weren’t fortunate enough to meet Buddha Shakyamuni, but let’s pray that we’ll be able to meet Maitreya Buddha when he comes.”

Participant: But they are interconnected?

Dr. Berzin: They are interconnected, but they are not one. We all interact with each other. This is a very important point – that our individual mental continuums and our individual “me” all interact. If they existed as solid, static, unchanging entities – whether we speak about them as things that can be known by themselves or not doesn’t matter – if they existed as these solid entities (the example that I always use is as if they had a big line around them or they were encapsulated in plastic or they were like a ping-pong ball), they couldn’t interact with each other. But they do interact with other, which means they are not these solid ping-pong balls. We interact with each other. Our minds interact with each other. Everything interacts with each other. But that doesn’t make them an undifferentiated, big soup of one.

Participant: And all these different names of the Buddha…

Dr. Berzin: They are not like in Islam. They are not the different names of Allah – that they all have all the names of Allah. The Buddhas are different beings. They’re different, individual beings. They’re different Buddhas.

Participant: If you reach a certain understanding or certain qualities, aren’t you then like Buddha Shakyamuni?

Dr. Berzin: Yes, you are like Buddha Shakyamuni in the sense that you have the same qualities as the Buddha, but they are not identical. We both have noses, but my nose isn’t your nose (if we can use a silly example). So, both you as a Buddha and Shakyamuni as a Buddha have compassion; but your compassion is not Buddha Shakyamuni’s compassion. It could be the same level of intensity and the same scope – that it’s compassion for everybody – but it occurs on your mind-stream, and his compassion occurs on his mind-stream. We can both see Renata, but my seeing of Renata isn’t your seeing of Renata. It’s individual.

This is what Buddhism says. As I said, they are many other schools of philosophy, particularly in some of the Hindu schools, that say it’s all one, all Brahma, or whatever – universal mind. You also have that in some forms of Ismaili Islam. But Buddhism doesn’t say that.

Participant: So, there’s not one perception. There are different perceptions.

Dr. Berzin: We all have individual perceptions, yes. But they are all inter-related, of course. But it’s still individual.

Participant: And we remain individuals.

Dr. Berzin: And we remain individuals – but not as separate ping-pong balls that don’t interact with each other. Everything retains its individuality. Individuality doesn’t mean being isolated. And individuality also isn’t based on some findable thing inside that makes you individual; you just are individual. It’s when you believe that there is something special inside that makes you individual that then you get this whole concept of “I am special” or “this other person is the special one.” So, it’s an inflation. What Buddhism is trying to do is to deflate these inflations. 

Participant: How do you call that? I can’t think of that word in English. Is it the false “me”?

Dr. Berzin: Right.

Participant: [Inaudible]

Dr. Berzin: Right. If we had this understanding, it would eliminate the belief in a false “me.” That’s exactly what it is. 

When we believe in the false “me,” the solid “me” inside, that is, for instance, sitting at the control panel in our heads and taking in all the information from outside and pushing the buttons – you know, “What should I do now? OK, I’ll go over there, and I’ll say this to that person” – and then it presses the buttons and makes the body do it. We feel very insecure if we think like that. “Now I have to protect myself. I have to defend it. And I have to assert it. I have to find my individuality.” Then, with longing desire, we have to accumulate things in order to make that “me” secure. And with anger and hostility, we have to get things away from that “me” that we feel threaten it. And close-mindedness – “I have to put up the walls to protect me.” We get all our disturbing emotions. Then, based on that, we get these impulses that we act out – “I’m going to yell at you” or “I’m going to cling to you and make this demand: always be with me. Don’t ever leave me; I can’t live without you.” And then we get all your problems. 

How Do We Understand Non-Duality if We Are Individual?

Participant: Individual or collective, one or separate – how do you understand nonduality if you are individual?

Dr. Berzin: That’s a very good question. There are many different explanations of what “nondual” means. In one of the Buddhist schools of philosophy, a meaning of “nondual” is that when you see something… let’s say, I see you, Michaela. Now, the visual consciousness and the appearance that I see are nondual in the sense that they both come from one… it’s called the “seed of karma,” from one karmic tendency. They come from the same place; they don’t come from different places. For instance, when I see you, the appearance that I see is not the same as when Karsten sees you. If I took a photograph of you and he took a photograph of you and everybody in the room took a photograph of you, they would all look different, wouldn’t they? Are we all seeing the same thing? That’s actually a very difficult thing to prove. Actually, it is very difficult to prove that we are all in the same room. What each of us sees is different because we are all sitting in different places. 

That, actually, is a very weird thing to analyze – are we in the same room? I don’t know. But it’s obvious that the appearance (which is like a mental hologram) that I see is not coming from some different place. It’s not that it’s coming from your side, in a sense; it’s coming from my mind, from the perspective of where I am sitting. And it’s likewise for everybody else. So, that’s what “nondual” means. That doesn’t mean that the appearance is the same as the awareness of the appearance. One is a way of knowing; the other is a form of… an appearance. So, nondual doesn’t mean that they are identical, that they are the same thing. It means that they both come from the same place. They are not separate; you can’t separate them. “Nondual” means “not separate” from each other. In this sense; they’re not two separate things. That doesn’t mean that they are the same thing; it means they come together. Right? There is a difference between…

Participant: I can imagine things I couldn’t imagine five years ago. And I am not so sure of how things are.

Dr. Berzin: That’s good – not to be not sure of how things are because then you question. And that’s the whole point – to analyze and question – because the way that our minds make things appear is crazy. So, yes – very good that you are searching. 

The inside of the house and the outside of the house are nondual. They are not separate. You can’t have an outside of a house without an inside of the house. That doesn’t mean that the outside and the inside are the same thing; they come together. Can’t have one without the other. That’s what nondual means. 

There are other meanings of nondual in Buddhism as well. Another meaning of it is that there isn’t a second thing – meaning, this is the actual way in which things exist, and there isn’t a second way, a crazy way that our minds project. That’s another meaning of nondual. But never, in Buddhism, does nondual mean that two things are the same thing. “Not two” doesn’t mean “one.” 

Participant: I have more ideas! We try to figure out something and ask one question. Then, you have a second one.

Dr. Berzin: That’s right.

Participant: Sometimes, it’s difficult to get the real meaning.

Analyzing and Deconstructing the Appearances Our Minds Project

Dr. Berzin: From a Buddhist point of view, the method is not that you just ask a question and get the answer – that you then have the real meaning, and that’s it. You go home and – finished. The whole process is a process of developing ourselves. To develop ourselves, we have to think and analyze and, especially, question what the appearance of things is and whether that appearance is the reality. Somebody appears as though “Ooh, you appear as though you are a terrible person who doesn’t like me,” or “you appear as somebody who is madly in love with me and desires me.” The mind projects all this stuff. Somebody has a funny look on their face, and you think that they are upset with me, whereas maybe it’s just their stomach that’s upset, for example. So, our minds make things appear in all sorts of really strange ways. And we believe it. This is what we have to start to analyze and deconstruct: is this a projection, or is this reality? 

From a Buddhist point of view, everything that we see is a projection of confusion. Everything seems to be isolated all by itself. You see an old person in a nursing home (a Pflegeheim). They are sitting in the wheelchair, dribbling, and a towel on their lap, not knowing anything, and you think they are always like that, that they are truly like that. It doesn’t appear to you this was once a young person with a family, a career and their whole life and so on. It looks as though they’re static, permanent, always the same – there they are, sitting in the wheelchair. Looks like that, and then we react according to that appearance. 

These are the things that we have to deconstruct because when we believe in these appearances, we get very uptight, very nervous, and we act in all sorts of very unpleasant ways.

Participant: Sometimes, you think this person is angry with me, and then the problem is that he’s really angry.

Dr. Berzin: Right. Sometimes you think this person is angry, and the person really is angry. That’s why you have to check the appearance. You check it. You don’t just immediately accept it. You check it. If they really are angry, there should be other indications as well. If you don’t really know, you ask. You compare it to previous experience with this person. You investigate: is this how they act when they are angry? 

Participant: So, then it is not a projection at this time.

Dr. Berzin: It may not be a projection. But it might be a projection that this person is always angry with me. They are not always angry with me; otherwise, they would have to be angry with me twenty-four hours a day from the moment they were born. They were not always angry with me. But it looks like that. “You always are late!” “You always are complaining!” “You always are this or that.” We give them a solid identity. They may in fact be angry with us, that’s true. But then you look to see: are you inflating it? And do you think that they are angry with me for no reason. What’s the reason why they are angry with me? That also. There could be a distortion of why they are angry. Are they angry with me because of something I did? Are they angry with me because of something that happened at the office or at home beforehand, so they’re just angry with whomever they see because of that? It doesn’t really have anything to do with what I did or me. You have to analyze. 

When we speak about appearances, Tsongkhapa, a great Tibetan Buddhist master, pointed out that there are different levels of appearances. There is conventional appearance, which is the ordinary appearance that we see. That can be, from one point of view, either accurate or inaccurate; yet, both of them can be distorted in the sense of making the conventional appearance to appear as something solid. In other words, it could be accurate that they are angry with me, or it could be inaccurate – that they are not angry with me. But in both cases, the mind would make the person appear like a ping-pong ball, a solid person – “you are angry with me,” whether that’s true or not. So, there are two levels of the validity of the appearance. Tsongkhapa made a big thing out of that. It wasn’t so clearly differentiated in earlier philosophical explanations. 

Karsten?

Participant: To makes the whole thing a bit more complicated…

Dr. Berzin: Thank you, thank you. Make it more complicated.

Voidness of Voidness – Voidness Itself Arises Dependently on Mental Labeling

Participant: Sometimes, you have used the term “emptiness of emptiness.” And emptiness of emptiness – does it mean dependent arising or the dependency of…

Dr. Berzin: Now he asks about the voidness of voidness, or the emptiness of emptiness, and whether that means dependent arising.

Voidness is an absence. Right? It’s an absence of solid existence, or impossible existence. And the voidness of voidness is talking about the absence of itself being some solid thing. It itself is not a solid thing. Voidness, that absence, is not a ping-pong ball. Even voidness itself arises dependently on mental labeling; it’s what the word “voidness” refers to.  

Let’s use an example. Though it is not exactly the same example as voidness (voidness is different type of absence), we can speak the absence of a person from school. We had this in America where I went to school. They took attendance. If you were absent a certain number of days and you didn’t have a letter from your parents saying why you were absent and having permission, you got into trouble. If you made a big, solid thing out of being absent, you’d be ascribing or projecting true existence, solid existence, onto this absence, whereas the absence itself is devoid of existing as some solid thing. 

Do you follow?

Participant: What the mind has to deal with!

Participant: Voidness is only a concept?

Dr. Berzin: Voidness isn’t only a concept. Voidness is what the concept of voidness refers to. 

Participant: Voidness of voidness is a thing that only a Buddha can understand.

Dr. Berzin: No, voidness of voidness isn’t something only a Buddha understands. But when you understand that, you’ve reached the final step that allows your understanding of voidness to go from a conceptual understanding to a non-conceptual one. So, an arya would understand that. If you have a concept of voidness and you make it into a “thing,” then you haven’t understood the voidness of voidness. If you don’t make that concept of voidness into a “thing,” then you can get the non-conceptual understanding… unless you make a concept of the voidness of the concept. Then it goes on forever. 

But Shantideva had a verse that deals with that – that once you have understood the voidness of all things and then the voidness of voidness, there is nothing else left. There is nothing else left for you to understand the voidness of. So, you have gotten rid of it. The way he said it (very nicely) was that, once you have understood the voidness of something and the voidness of nothing, then there is nothing left. Either something is a something, or it is a nothing. What else do you have to negate? 

Do We Need Words to Think?

Participant: Then there is no thinking at all.

Dr. Berzin: Then there is no conceptual thinking. It depends on your definition of “thinking.” Does thinking mean thinking with words? Or is it just referring to mental activity? There is certainly mental activity. Can you understand something without thinking? It gets very tricky because it’s very difficult to define thinking. 

It’s interesting. I used to translate for many years for my teacher Serkong Rinpoche. Once I said to him, “When I translate for you, I don’t think. It just comes in my ears in Tibetan and goes out my mouth in English.” And he scolded me. He said, “Don’t be ridiculous. Of course, you’re thinking; you’re using your mind. It’s not like pouring water into your ear and then comes out of your mouth.” There is a mental process going on. You might not be repeating the words in your head verbally. So, it seems as though it is just coming in and going out, but there is understanding there. And it is even conceptual. “Conceptual” means with categories, thinking with categories. 

Deepest, or “Ultimate,” Truth Is Not a Transcendent Truth

Participant: I’m asking too much, maybe, but have you ever come across this saying from Nagarjuna in which he says, “If people who believe in my truth as the absolute, the last truth…” although this is not true?

Dr. Berzin: Did I ever hear the saying from Nagarjuna that “people who believe in my truth as the last truth…”

Participant: As the final truth.

Dr. Berzin: “My” truth, meaning Nagarjuna’s truth?

Participant: Yes. 

Dr. Berzin: As the final truth? 

Participant: This is also false thinking.

Dr. Berzin: I don’t recall an actual text in which he said that. But if you make a big thing, a solid thing, like a ping-pong ball out of the final truth, the ultimate, transcendent truth, then you haven’t understood. That’s a very important point – then there’s a big misconception. That’s why I don’t like the term “ultimate” truth. I call it the “deepest” truth about something. “Ultimate” truth sounds as though it’s some transcendent truth – voidness – up in the sky, totally unrelated to what we experience. It’s not like that. 

Participant: “Deepest” is better, I think.

Dr. Berzin: It is the deepest truth about something. But it is not separate from the truth about it. 

Participant: How can it be something like ultimate? There is no further…

Dr. Berzin: “Ultimate” can be used if it’s understood as “nothing further,” yes. And there is the term “ultimate.” 

Participant: [Inaudible]

Dr. Berzin: Right. Ultimately, what is the correct understanding? It’s this. So, there is that term. It’s a different term from what I am translating as “deepest.” But what I advise caution with is using the word “ultimate.” It gives the impression of “transcendent.” “Transcendent” is a problem here. 

OK. Shall we try the verse? I don’t know that I can explain this whole thing today. We might have to bring it further into next time. It is Verse 49:

[49] It has been said that forms are not the self, the self is not the possessor of forms, a self does not abide in forms, and forms do not abide in a self. Like that, understand that the remaining four aggregates are (also) devoid (of an impossible self).

This is a tough verse. This verse and the next verse are the two most difficult verses in the text, as I have warned you.

Now, when we believe in this impossible self, this impossible soul, this impossible “me,” this false “me,” what follows from that is that we give some sort of identity to that false “me.” The problem, here, is the relation between the “me” and the aggregates, the five aggregates. Remember, we just spoke about them simply as the body and the mind. But in each moment of our experience, there is (1) some form of physical phenomenon, (2) some type of consciousness, (3) feeling some level of happiness, (4) some distinguishing this from the background, (5) and then everything else, all the emotions, concentration and so on. So, we have these five groupings. 

So, what is the relation between the “me,” or the self, and the body and mind? Here, we are talking about forms, so we can think in terms of the body. So, either we think that that “me” is the same as the body or totally different from the body. Either they are the same ping-pong ball or they are two, separate ping-pong balls. 

The Twenty Deluded Outlooks Toward a Transitory Network

Now, when we speak about some of the disturbing mental factors, the disturbing attitudes, there is one disturbing attitude which is called a “deluded attitude,” or “deluded outlook,” actually. A “deluded outlook toward a transitory network” is the technical term. The “network” is referring to the aggregates: body, mind, feelings, emotions, etc. “Transitory” means they are changing all the time. 

Then we have a deluded outlook regarding what the relationship of the “me” with this is. There are twenty of these deluded outlooks, four with each of the five aggregates. So, of these four deluded outlooks, or deluded views (and in a sense, these four are being summarized in this verse), the first one is that: 

[1] “Me” and the body (if we are talking about the body) are one and the same thing; they are the same ping-pong ball. 

The other three have to do with the two being two separate ping-pong balls. So, if they’re two separate ping-pong balls, these wrong views would be that: 

[2] The self possesses the body. I’m the possessor of the body – I have a body, I have mind, I have a nose, I have… whatever. 

[3] The second one is that I – a separate “me” – am the controller of the body. “I can use this body,“ or “I can use my mind to figure anything out.” “I can use my good looks to win a partner.” So, we could use the body as a separate “me.” Not only do I possess it, I have it, I own it, but then I can use it or control it, make use of it.

[4] The third one is that I live inside my body. There is a “me” inside here somewhere – “I’m just going to go into myself; I’m going to withdraw. I shut my eyes, shut out the whole world, and there I am inside my head or inside my body.” 

These are the four deluded views that we have. We can have that with the body, we can have that with the mind, we can have that with the feelings, we can have that with whatever. Those are the twenty deluded outlooks. 

Here, Nagarjuna summarizes these. He said that “forms are not the self.” That’s the first view, the view that the two of them, the body and the “me,” are the same ping-pong ball, that they are one and the same thing. The next three views are that the two are different. So, “the self is not the possessor of forms” – there isn’t a “me” that owns this body: “this is mine.” Then “the self does not abide in forms” – it is not as though the self is some sort of resident inside the body that is going to fly out of the body. And “forms do not abide in a self” – the self isn’t like some sort of basis that the body and things sort of sit on and are dependent on. That’s another variation here. 

There are many wrong concepts that we can have about the relationship between the “me” and the body. Either we think they’re the same thing, or we think they’re different things. And there are many variations of what we think the difference is. 

So, in the twenty deluded views, the different possibilities would be that: 

• I possess the body; I own it. 

This could be in two variations like “I have a hand,” or “I have a chicken.” Well, there is a difference between “I have a hand” and “I have a chicken” because the hand we consider part of me and the chicken isn’t part me. So, there are two types of possessing something. 

There are people who feel rather alienated from their bodies. “Ooh, my feet are so ugly. I have feet, but it’s like having a chicken.” For other people, it’s, “I don’t like my feet,” or “I don’t like my nose. I have this big nose; so, I have to have it operated on and shaped differently.” Or it could be that we think it is actually part of me – “Ahh, this is my hair!” this type of thing. “My look… the look.” It’s really funny.

So, in these twenty deluded views, the ones that we have for the separate “me” and body are: 

• The possessor of the body 
• The controller or user of the body 
• The inhabitant of the body 

Here, in the text, we have the possessor of the body that lives in the body and that the body somehow rests on, like (the example that they use is) the ground and a tree growing out of. 

In Nagarjuna’s Root Verses on Madhyamaka, he gives five possibilities: 

• That they are the same thing 
• That they’re different things
• That the self relies on the aggregates – I have a body and a mind, and based on that, I rely on it in order to exist; I depend on it
• Or that the “me” is something that the body relies on in order to operate and so on; it has to rely on sort of like the electricity in the “me” or something like that
• Or that the “me” possesses the body 

In Chandrakirti’s commentary on Nagarjuna’s Root Verses, he adds two wrong views. One is that: 

• The self, or “me,” is the collection of all these parts. 

The example that he uses is a cart. We can think of a car instead. If we put all the pieces of a car on the floor, is that the car? We are not just the collection of all our parts – that if we put all the parts there on the floor, that’s “me.” So, we’re not the collection either. 

The last one that Chandrakirti gives is that: 

• The self, or “me,” is not the shape or the pattern of the aggregates over time – like when we are functioning or something. For example, I’m the genome or the genetic code of the body – the shape, the structure. 

We are not that either. 

“Neither One nor Many”

These are all the different possibilities that are analyzed in the different texts. They basically just come down to what is one of the basic lines of reasoning for refuting the false “me,” which is “neither one nor many“ – that “me” and the body either are one and the same thing, or they are two, totally separate things (so, one ping-pong ball or two ping-pong balls). And that neither of them is like ping-pong balls. 

The example that I use is that you have a closed room, and you think that there are cockroaches in it. Then either there has to be one cockroach in it or many cockroaches. There are only two possibilities. If you look and see that there isn’t one cockroach, and you look again and see that there aren’t many cockroaches, the only conclusion that you can come to is that there are no cockroaches in the room.

Participant: There could be half a cockroach. 

Dr. Berzin: There could be half a cockroach? How there can be half a “me”? Half a cockroach is half a cockroach; it is not a cockroach. Don’t take the examples too literally. 

Participant: That confuses me because there cannot… 

Dr. Berzin: There’s a leg of a cockroach… Come on. Just try to understand the general concept of neither one nor many.

Participant: For me, logically, it seems a possibility.

Dr. Berzin: There is either one line drawn on the paper or many lines drawn on the paper. Even if it is half a line, it’s still a line. Ta da! And if there isn’t one line or many lines on the paper, there are no lines on the paper. 

OK. So that is the topic of this verse, which is speaking about the “me” and also, in this case, the body. Our whole discussion of the false “me” would apply here, whether we are talking about a “me” that doesn’t change, that has no parts, and that can fly off, or we are talking about a “me” that can be known by itself or a “me” that is based on something special inside us, inside our bodies. None of these are either the same ping-pong ball as the body or two, completely different ping-pong balls. 

Then we go through ways of thinking to realize that the “me” can’t be any of these four possibilities: 

• Forms are not the self – the body isn’t “me”; I’m not the body. 
• “Me” is not the possessor of the body. 
• “Me” doesn’t abide in the body, doesn’t live inside the body. 
• The body doesn’t live on top of a self (like a person sitting on a rug) as it’s support. 

That brings us to the end of the class. Next time, we’ll go through the arguments that they have to disprove these four. Then we can go on with the next verse. The next verse talks about the analysis of the aggregates themselves – where they come from, where the body comes from. After that, the text becomes much easier again. It’s these two verses that are complicated. 

Any questions? Let’s take a few moments to digest what we have been speaking about. 

OK. So, please try to think about all of this. 

• Is there a “me” that lives inside my body? 
• Is there a “me” that pushes the buttons, that controls it? 
• Is there a “me” that owns this body – I have a body? 
• Is there a “me” that’s somehow attached to the body like a mirror attached to a car – it’s sort of stuck there, and there I am; I’m associated with this body? 
• Is there a “me” that the body is supported on – that based on there being a “me” in it, it activates this body like Frankenstein creates a monster, and then you put the “me” inside, and, all of a sudden, it opens its eyes and starts to talk? 

What actually is the relation of the “me” to the body? Am I the same as the body with no parts? Well then, if I lose my hand, am I still me? They can’t be one and the same; they can’t be identical. If I have somebody’s heart put in me, am I no longer me? These are interesting questions to think about. What makes me me? If I am in a coma, is that still me?  

Thank you.