Emptiness

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...

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...

The Ceasing of Conceptual Fabrication: Nyingma Explanation Tsenshap Serkong Rinpoche II: So, now in the commentary, it looks like of the two conceptual fabrications, the first conceptual fabrication is the grasping for truly established existence [as is usually explained in...

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 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...

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...

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...

Recognizing Anything to Which Mind Gives Rise The Fourth Panchen Lama next explains how to cultivate seeing everything to be like illusion with the deep awareness we subsequently attain after we arise from total absorption on voidness. We cultivate this during our so-called...

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...