Emptiness

Introduction to Voidness (Emptiness) Voidness, or emptiness, is an extremely important and central topic in the Buddhist teachings. What it means is an absence; something is absent, not there. What is absent is an impossible way of existing, something that has never existed at...

Introduction If we want to summarize the Buddhist teachings in one word that would describe what Buddha was trying to impart to us, I think that word would be “realism.” Realism means seeing clearly what is reality, and getting rid of our unawareness and confusion about that....

This weekend I’ve been asked to speak about self-voidness and other-voidness, what is called in Tibetan rangtong (rang-stong) and zhentong (gzhan-stong; shentong). This is a very advanced, very complicated and very important topic. Therefore, it requires a great deal of...

Introduction Today, I’m here to teach on the Three Principal Aspects of the Path, a concise text written by Lama Tsongkhapa. What I’ll share is not my own knowledge, but rather what has been taught to me by my own precious teachers. I do not have any realizations myself, but...

Cognition Theory: Cognition of Commonsense Objects Last session we looked at several unique points that Tsongkhapa made and contrasted some of them with the non-Gelug positions on them. Since the presentation I gave was quite sophisticated and advanced, I’d like to start this...

I have a stack of questions here in front of me. Let me try to answer some of them during the course of explaining what will happen today during the first day of the actual empowerment. Following the Visualizations One thing to keep in mind about what is going on here is...

Conceptual Fabrication – A Way of Being Aware or Conventional Objects Tsenshap Serkong Rinpoche II: All four Tibetan traditions share this verse (XVIII.5) of Nagarjuna in common: From the depletion of karmic impulses and disturbing emotions (there is) liberation. Karmic...

The next set of prayers are prayers not to be confused about the practice of the path. This is divided into two sections: Prayers to not be confused about the words concerning meditationPrayers to not be confused about the meaning of the words. Prayer Not To Be Confused about...

Far-Reaching Discriminating Awareness Yesterday we began our discussion of the Heart Sutra, and we saw that this sutra is presenting, in a very condensed form, the teachings on far-reaching discriminating awareness. Discriminating awareness, usually translated as “wisdom,” is...

The Tantra Tradition of Mahamudra The text continues, As for the actual basic methods, although there are many ways of asserting mahamudra, there are two when divided according to the sutras and tantras. On the basis of our efforts to eliminate obstacles and build up...