Emptiness

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....

Introduction  Concerning the life of Tsongkhapa, one of the most important points is what a great revolutionary Tsongkhapa was. Through all his tremendous efforts in meditation and preliminary practices building up positive force and so on, he gained a newer and deeper...

Background to the Text This weekend I’m going to be speaking about The Heart Sutra. Actually, with a longer title, it’s The Essence of Far-Reaching Discriminating Awareness, the Vanquishing Lady Surpassing All. When we talk about far-reaching discriminating awareness – and...

The Two Truths and the Four Noble Truths  Indian religions vary among those that (1) do or do not rely on cause and effect over previous lives, (2) do or do not aim at liberation and (3) do or do not rely on internal or external means to achieve it. There is also a...

Three Layers of Unawareness Voidness (stong-pa-nyid, Skt. śūnyatā; emptiness) is a total absence of impossible ways of existing: impossible means there is no such thing. Here, we are speaking specifically about the voidness of impossible ways in which the conventionally...

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...

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...

We were speaking about voidness (emptiness) and we saw that voidness is a negatingly known phenomenon, it’s a negation. We know it by negating something. If we put the word voidness into different terms, then we could say that it is an absence of something. There are many...

Question about Mediation of Disputes at Work When we try to apply this principle of looking at the validity of others’ points of view, particularly in a work situation when you’re a manager, sometimes we can be overwhelmed by the view of the workers and it’s hard to...

Review Yesterday, we began the Seven Point Mind Training by the Kadampa Geshe Chekawa, and we covered the first of the seven points: the preliminary teachings to rely upon. The second point, which we’ll explain today, is the actual training in bodhichitta.  The text...