Logic

Introduction Today we’re going to discuss a very important topic: How do we develop bodhichitta for the first time? Is it free will, determinism, or something else? You see, if our motivation is to help all beings and in order to do that we need to become liberated and...

Buddha-Nature Factors We have beginningless unawareness, these two obscurations, and beginningless Buddha-nature, these two networks. On the basis level, because we’re building up positive force with unawareness, naivety, and so on, it just becomes a samsara-building...

Explanation of the Title With these points in mind, let us now turn to the text. The title of this classic is, in Sanskrit, Mahayana-uttaratantra Shastra and in Tibetan Theg-pa chen-po rgyud bla-ma'i bstan-bcos (An Indicative Composition on a Vast Vehicle of Mind, the...

Introduction We’ve been going through, in summary, the main points of the sixteen chapters of Aryadeva’s Four Hundred Verse Treatise. And we saw that the first eight chapters speak about how to rid ourselves of incorrect views concerning conventional truth. And now we’re ready...

Chapters 9 to 12 Nine: Indicating the Meditations for Refuting Static Functional Phenomena (1) All (functional phenomena) arise as a fact of being the result (of a collection of causes and circumstances). Therefore, there’s no such thing as a static (functional phenomenon...

Key Elements of Deepest Bodhichitta We have spoken about how to develop deepest bodhichitta, and we’ve seen that it is very important and helpful for being able to do the practice of tonglen, giving and taking. Now, we are ready to discuss the development of relative,...

Presenting Extreme Examples Somebody brought up a point during the break, that in many of my explanations I tend to go to extremes when giving examples from different points of view. This is a method that’s used in Buddhist analysis, especially Prasangika, which is to look at...

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...

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 of how...

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...