Emptiness

Chapters 13 to 16 Thirteen: The Meditations for Refuting (Truly Existent) Cognitive Sensors and Cognitive Objects (1) You do not see absolutely everything about a vase (all its sensory qualities and parts) at the time when you see (its) form. Who would state “(because) the...

How to Refute the Assertions of Lower Tenet Schools The way in which we should understand how the position of a higher school of tenets undermines or damages another lower school can be understood in terms of how Madhyamaka undermines and refutes the Chittamatra assertion in...

Introduction and Question about Concepts and Nonexistent Phenomena  We started going through the second half of the text, the chapters that deal with voidness, (specifically the topic is refuting or overcoming the incorrect views regarding voidness and the deepest nature...

Review of the Five Aggregates of Experience We have been going through the text of the Heart Sutra, which is presenting in a condensed fashion the teachings on Prajnaparamita, the “far-reaching discriminating awareness of voidness.” Inspired by the Buddha, who is sitting in...

We have been talking about the self or “me,” which is imputed onto the stream of continuity of our aggregate factors that make up each moment of our experience. That conventional “me” is what the word or concept of “me” refers to on the basis of these ever-changing aggregates...

Jealousy and other disturbing emotions are symptoms of a larger problem: our basic, fundamental ignorance of how phenomena actually exist. Here, we look more deeply at convention, categories, and how things exist, and how we can use an understanding of it all to overcome...

The Four-Point Analysis: Neither One nor Many We discussed voidness or emptiness in Buddhism, particularly in terms of the absence of a true identity for ourselves – the absence of an impossible false “me” – and we have talked a little bit about how to meditate. Now...

Conceptual Cognition of Space-like Voidness Needs to Induce Zestful Vigor Tsenshap Serkong Rinpoche II: Lama Tsongkhapa is saying that whatever Nyingma is saying is totally wrong. It is too early for us. Dr. Berzin: What do you mean by “too early for us”? Okay, now here it...

What Do We Know after Negating Something  We have been speaking about affirmations and negations, and we have seen that they’re very important. There are quite a few things that came up from yesterday and some questions that are still there. A negation is one in which...

Review We have been discussing yesterday how we develop relative bodhichitta – sometimes that’s called conventional bodhichitta. We make a differentiation between relative and deepest truth: In the Gelug tradition, when we speak about deepest...