Emptiness

Review  We have been speaking about self-voidness and other-voidness and, so far, we are restricting our discussion to the Gelug assertions, although Gelug does not use the terms self-voidness and other-voidness for its own assertions. Some non-Gelug masters, however, do...

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...

We’ve been speaking in depth about mental appearances or holograms that arise in both non-conceptual and conceptual cognition, and we’ve seen that it’s rather complex. Before we go any further, perhaps it might be a good thing to ask if you’ve understood at least something...

The Need for Having a Strong Foundation for Studying This Text After listening to teachings, in the end, don’t just make a mandala offering and go off and practice, not having understood anything. That is not the procedure. Whatever you haven’t understood, you should think...

The View of Voidness in the Four Buddhist Philosophical Tenets As for how to recognize the nature of the mind, the masters of the different traditions, Nyingma, Kagyu, Sakya, Gelugpa, have all discussed and presented various methods. But if you really get to the essence of...

Promise to Compose The text continues, As for the methods that can lead you to know, face to face, the actual (deepest) nature of mind, I shall now set out the guideline teachings of my root guru, Sanggye Yeshe, who (as his name literally means) is (the embodiment of) the...

Mahamudra Meditation on the Conventional Nature of Mind The mahamudra realization is never "Just live naturally like an animal. Just see and hear, and have no thoughts." That is not it at all. Furthermore, even if we are able, through the initial mahamudra methods, to...

Review  In our discussion of self-voidness in the context of the Gelug assertions, we saw that we can speak about impossible ways of existing with regard to persons and with regard to all phenomena. First, we focus on understanding that there is a self that is not to be...

Review We’ve been speaking about conventional objects, which are things that can be validly known as this or that: as a teacher, as a student, as a given activity such as learning or teaching, as a given object such as a table or a chair, and as an adjective as well, such as...

Developing Love and Compassion Even in the material world, we can’t put all of our efforts into one strong move and expect to get immediate results. Instead, we need to work progressively in stages. This is true in terms of working on our mind and working on our attitudes. To...