Emptiness

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...

We have been looking at methods for integrating the various aspects of our lives. We’ve seen that in order to deal with the various things in our lives and in order to follow the spiritual path in a more whole-hearted way, it’s very important to have a clear idea of all 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...

Training in Higher Discriminating Awareness  Removing the Obscurations to Liberation and Enlightenment The discussion of training in higher discriminating awareness starts with the second half of verse 41:  (41b) However, if you have failed to apply yourself to far-reaching...

The Determination to Be Free, the First of the Three Principal Aspects of the Path   In Buddhism, we speak of three principal aspects of the path: the determination to be free, usually translated as “renunciation,” a vast enlightening aim of bodhichitta, and a profound,...

Going Beyond a Settled Mind: Vipashyana Once you have gained a stilled and settled state of mind of shamatha, one that is held with great flexibility of mind and exhilaration and ecstasy, just to have this by itself, this single-pointedness of a stilled and settled state of...

Assertions and Refutations of Self-Established Existence The next verse states: (IX.5) Functional phenomena are seen by the (common) world and conceptualized to be absolutely existent, and not like an illusion. It’s in this regard that there’s dispute between the yogis and the...

The next level of determination to be free is renunciation of clinging to self-established existence and having our main interest instead be in voidness, emptiness. What a Buddha Perceives To understand this, let me explain a little bit about what a Buddha actually perceives...

The Great Compassion of Bodhichitta When we think of the most kind and compassionate Buddha Shakyamuni, we think of his great qualities and his amazing deeds, and specifically of all the teachings he gave purely to benefit all others. Among all these teachings, when we think...

The Relation between the Object of Refutation in Voidness and the Ease of Understanding Voidness as Dependent Arising Tsenshap Serkong Rinpoche II: [In the context of cognition of conventional truth] because there are cognizing minds (shes-pa), that’s why there are objects...