Emptiness

The Indian Buddhist tenet systems differ in their views of the voidness or total absence of impossible ways that establish the existence of something and in their views of what establishes its conventional existence.

Tsongkhapa was a revolutionary reformer who reinterpreted and clarified many of the key Buddhist teachings, especially concerning the assertions of the Prasangika tenet system concerning voidness, the two truths, the two obscurations and cognition theory.

To find and implement realistic ways to overcome suffering, we need to deconstruct false appearances and, thereby, see reality.

A question-and-answer session between Dr. Alexander Berzin and Tsenshap Serkong Rinpoche II on the Prasangika view of voidness according to the Gelugpa and Nyingma assertions.

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

The non-conceptual understanding of voidness will stop the tainted aggregates from uncontrollably recurring. 

With a correct understanding of voidness and dependent arising, we will avoid the two extremes of absolutism and nihilism, and then be best able to deal with the complexities of life.

Non-conceptual cognition of self-voidness (“rangtong” – the emptiness of self-established existence) with a mind of other-voidness (“zhentong” – the emptiness of grosser levels of mind) brings enlightenment.

We need to know the basis, the conventional “me,” that does exist – then the false “me” that we are projecting on it, and then the negation and total absence of that impossible “me.”

Svatantrika and Prasangika are two divisions of the Madhyamaka tenet system, but according to the Gelugpa presentation, Svatantrika asserts self-established (inherent) existence, while Prasangika refutes it.