Emptiness

Bodhisattva Vows For practicing the engaged state of bodhichitta and being best able to practice the six far-reaching attitudes, we need to take the bodhisattva vows. This involves refraining from committing the 18 root downfalls and the 46 faulty actions that transgress these...

A brief commentary on Tsongkhapa’s foundational text, providing an overview of renunciation, bodhichitta, and the correct view of voidness.

An overview of the Gelug presentation and some of its ramifications concerning the view of valid cognition.

Tsenshap Serkong Rinpoche provides a deep analysis of the first few verses of the ninth chapter, “Discriminating Awareness,” from “Engaging in Bodhisattva Behavior.”

Voidness, or emptiness, is the total absence of impossible ways of existing, such as self-established inherent existence, while mental labeling is how we account for the conventional existence of things as “this” or “that.”

This variable of pure and impure refers to both aspects of the mental hologram: what it is and how it appears to exist.

Creativity becomes more open when, with an understanding of emptiness, we avoid making it an ego-trip.

According to the Sautrantika tenet system, there are seven ways of knowing an object. To understand the seven in more detail, we first need to know what a way of knowing (“lorig” in Tibetan) is.

Aryadeva’s treatise discusses how to build up the positive potential for understanding voidness and how to gain correct cognition of the deepest truth.

The understanding of voidness does not negate the existence of the conventional “me.” We do exist, but not in the manner of a false “me.” As something imputed on a body and mind, yet unfindable inside them, our conventional “me” is like an illusion.