Grasping for Impossible Existence

Brief Review of the History of Mind Training Texts We have been discussing the Wheel of Sharp Weapons, by Dharmarakshita, which is included in the collection of mind training texts and seems to be the forerunner of them. Dharmarakshita was one of Atisha’s teachers and Atisha...

Review of the Four Noble Truths and Voidness We've been speaking about the importance of understanding the four noble truths: true suffering, true origins or causes, true stopping, true pathway-mind that will lead to that stopping, Although we didn’t list them or explain...

Review We have been speaking about incorrect consideration, and if we think in terms of incorrect consideration of “me,” a person, or a self, whether it’s with respect to ourselves or others, what’s incorrect here is to consider that there is a “me” that’s separate from a body...

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...

Brief Review of the Initial Level of Motivation The teachings for someone of an initial level motivation have five main points to meditate upon: awareness of the preciousness of the fully endowed human body and the difficulty of obtaining it, death, impermanence and the...

Negation Phenomena Now we’re ready to go onto the second point of the four-point analysis, and this is becoming convinced of the logic that refutes that there is such a thing as these different levels of impossible “me.” The logic for this derives from the definition of a...

 Review Understanding Voidness We have been speaking about voidness, or emptiness, in general. We’ve seen that it refers to an absence of impossible ways of existing. There are impossible ways of existing that refer only to persons or individuals, and then there are impossible...

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 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 Five Trainings from Developing Pledged Aspiring Bodhichitta The text continues: (8) Even if I have developed merely this resolve, if I lack the habit of the three types of ethical self-discipline, I will be unable to attain a (supreme) purified state. Seeing this well, I...