LPA54: The Two Truths in the Various Tibetan Traditions

Tsongkhapa says that we all have the qualifications to follow the path — we have precious human rebirth, met with the teachings, we have teachers, and we have intelligence — and so to engage ourselves with the teachings, we have to rely on a properly qualified teacher (and he gives the qualifications). 

Then in order to start our practice, we need to work on our minds, specifically work on our motivation, the mental framework — what we’re aiming for and why, what are the emotions behind that. The best way of doing that is in terms of a graded level, and Tsongkhapa goes through the three levels of the lam-rim, the graded stages of motivation. 

Then for entering into tantra it’s very important that we take as our… Then — I’m sorry — in order to develop these motivations, we need to meditate, build them up as beneficial habits. Tsongkhapa goes through all the instructions on how to meditate.

Then once we have the proper motivation, the other thing that we need is to have discipline, ethical discipline. Tsongkhapa mentions about the pratimoksha vows for individual liberation as a monk or a nun or at least as a layperson, the bodhisattva vows, and the tantric vows. He emphasizes the necessity of some level of pratimoksha vows for tantra and even for the bodhisattva vows themselves. Then in terms of taking an empowerment, what is very important with that is again taking the vows and keeping the vows. 

Once we have received the proper empowerments, then — specifically in terms of the highest class of tantra, anuttarayoga — we have the practice of the generation stage and complete stage. Tsongkhapa emphasizes doing them in the proper order and the necessity for that. Then in terms of the generation stage, Tsongkhapa emphasizes the practices of visualization, and he explains how to do that very thoroughly. For the complete stage, Tsongkhapa just mentions briefly that it has to do with working with the energy-channels, energy-winds, and creative energy-drops. 

Then he goes into a big discussion of voidness. The main point that he makes to start the discussion is that the view of voidness and teachings, etc., that apply in the highest class of tantra — first of all, on the complete stage it’s the same as on the generation stage, and in tantra it’s the same as in sutra. Although he doesn’t mention it here, he also emphasizes, elsewhere, that to achieve liberation from samsara even as a shravaka or a pratyekabuddha, somebody not following the Mahayana path, that the same understanding of voidness is necessary. 

Then he goes into the discussion of voidness, which is where we are at. For that he also mentions that we need to study according to the texts, follow lines of reasoning. There are some persons that from previous lifetimes might have built up strong habits of voidness so that they don’t need to train so much, but for most of us that’s not the case.

Where we are up to is this paragraph. We’ve gone through most of it — we’re up to actually the last sentence of it — but in order to give the context, let me read the whole paragraph again:

When we seek (our understanding of voidness) by training like this in (studying and thinking about) scriptural quotations and lines of reasoning, there are two ways in which such an understanding can be generated: a deviant and a non-deviant one. Of these, the first might be (as follows).

Suppose we had analyzed from the viewpoint of many lines of reasoning the arising, ceasing and so forth of phenomena. When (we had done so), the entire presentation of conventional truth had fallen apart (for us) and thereby we could not find (any way of) taking anything as being (conventionally) “this”. (Thus, we felt there was nothing conventionally true or real.) 

This was referring to the whole discussion of the voidness of cause and effect, particularly in the context of the twelve links of dependent arising, speaking in terms of basically the suffering, and the cause of suffering, and the possibility to cease it or end it forever, and the causal pathways of mind that will bring that about. If we felt that when we read in the Prajnaparamita Sutras and teachings that “There is no arising. There is no ceasing,” and so forth, we came to a false conclusion that nothing actually existed, that samsara doesn’t really exist, and therefore there’s nothing conventionally this or that.

Tsongkhapa goes on:

Because (of that), we might come (to the wrong conclusion) that all bondages and liberations (from uncontrollably recurring samsaric existence) are in fact like all bondages and liberations of children of barren women. 

That’s just what I said.

Then we would go on (to wrongly imagine) that the occurrence of happiness and suffering from constructive and destructive actions was in fact no different than the arising of horns from a rabbit’s head. 

We would then, if we misunderstood voidness, we would think that there was no cause and effect, and so doing destructive things wouldn’t lead to further samsaric existence and constructive things wouldn’t contribute to our liberation.

Now the line that we’re up to:

Thereby, we would come to a (completely false) understanding that all of conventional truth is distorted conventional truth and that all conceptual cognitions are distorted cognitions that are deceived about their conceptualized objects.

This is a line that needs quite a bit of explanation. How shall we begin? 

First of all, Tsongkhapa’s understanding of the conventional truth (kun-rdzob bden-pa, superficial truth) and deepest truth (don-dam bden-pa) about things is in terms of two different aspects of mind, or of a cognition, which are focusing on two aspects of any phenomenon:

• One is their conventional truth, which has to do with their appearance of what they are, etc. 
• Then the deepest truth is how they exist. 

There are two aspects of the mind that deal with that in any particular cognition. In terms of that, Tsongkhapa says that when we talk about the conventional truth, the appearance of things, there are two levels of that as well. There is the level or aspect… Level probably is not the correct word here; an aspect is a much better word in this whole discussion. So, there’s: 

• The aspect of an appearance of something.  
• An aspect of how it actually exists.

The aspect of appearance has to do with two things — an appearance is the conventional truth, or relative truth, of something — and that is:

• The appearance of what it is, and 
• The appearance of how it exists.

The appearance of how it exists is different from how it actually exists. We have these terms, the manner of appearing (snang-tshul) and the manner of abiding (gnas-tshul). The manner of appearing is how it appears, and the manner of abiding, or existing, is how it actually exists. This is what’s very important with Tsongkhapa, what’s so unique about Tsongkhapa and the Gelug tradition that follows his assertions, is that regarding the appearance of what something is, that could be either accurate or inaccurate; and regarding the appearance of how something exists, that could also be either accurate or inaccurate. He differentiates these two. 

For all of us except for a Buddha, we certainly can distinguish between seeing — the classic example — a white snow mountain as white or a white snow mountain as yellow (because of jaundice). This can be verified as accurate or inaccurate in terms of convention, in terms of is it contradicted by a mind that validly sees conventional truth? (meaning here that it’s a white snow mountain), and it has to be not contradicted by a mind that validly sees or understands or perceives the deepest truth about something.

OK, we can’t say that white is established on the side of the snow mountain. In different light it could appear in different ways, etc. Like when the sun is going down, often white snow mountains will appear pink. But nevertheless, that would not be contradicted by a mind that validly sees conventional truth of what something is, how it appears — that didn’t come out correctly in English — what it appears to be, whether we’re talking about what it is or a quality of it. That could be accurate or inaccurate, the appearance of what it is.

Then in terms of the appearance of how it exists: For everyone except a Buddha, that would be an appearance of truly established existence. That’s distorted. It’s only to a Buddha or to someone in meditative total absorption on voidness… First of all, total absorption on voidness, unless it’s with the clear-light mind, there is no appearance of conventional truth. With the clear-light mind, even before [becoming] a Buddha, there can be an appearance of the two truths of something accurately. For any other level of mind other than the clear-light mind — if you can focus on the absence of truly established existence with a grosser level of mind, then you can’t have an appearance of non-truly established existence or of dependent arising, because with grosser levels of mind all it can do is make an appearance of truly established existence. Actually, a chart would help with this, but we don’t have that at the moment. But let’s try to understand this.

According to Tsongkhapa, with any grosser level of mind than the clear-light mind, whether it is a conceptual mind or a non-conceptual mind, there will be an appearance of truly established existence. OK? Tsongkhapa’s main point is that although a perception of conventional truth will have, for not a clear-light mind focused on voidness, although… let’s just say clear-light mind. Let’s not get into a technicality here. Although that will, from the point of view of the appearance of how something exists, be distorted, you can’t say in general that it’s a distorted mind, because it could be accurate in terms of the appearance of what something is. This is a very significant difference, distinguishing factor, of the Gelug tradition.

With such a mind that can only make an appearance of things truly existing, you can’t have, at the same time, an absence of true existence. That’s why you can’t have the two truths simultaneously with that type of mind. Because a clear-light mind doesn’t make an appearance of things existing truly, then it is possible, with proper training, to have an appearance of conventional truth (in terms of things not being truly established) plus an understanding of voidness (that there’s no such thing as truly established existence).

Anyway, clear-light mind — you could have two truths simultaneously, and the conventional truth would be accurate in terms of the appearance of what it is as well as the appearance of how it exists. Any other mind, grosser level, will be with an appearance of truly established existence. Unless it’s totally absorbed on voidness, it will be with an appearance of truly established existence, and it could be accurate or inaccurate about what something is, the appearance of what something is. 

Participant: I don’t know if that complicates things so much, but the clear-light mind has an accurate appearance of how things exist — is that still a conventional appearance in that case?

Dr. Berzin: Yes. This is why I said I didn’t want to get into the technicality. He said: If a clear-light mind has an appearance of how things exist which is accurate, then is that an appearance of a conventional truth of something? Yes, it is. According to Kedrub Norzang-gyatso, the tutor of the Second Dalai Lama, the clear-light mind makes an appearance — and he’s talking about the clear-light mind of death — the clear-light mind of death makes an appearance similar to an appearance of total absorption on voidness. But that doesn’t mean that it has a perception or cognition of the deepest truth. That’s conventional truth of how things appear. 

Then what about in terms of an appearance of what things are? And he says as well — but this is within the theories of Kalachakra — that you have devoid forms (stong-gzugs) appearing. Devoid (stong) here doesn’t mean that they are void of truly established existence; it means they’re devoid of being made of atoms, the smallest particles. They are like the display or play (rol-pa) of this clear-light mind, to use the terminology that we find in some of the tantras and particularly in dzogchen. But according to other tantras — they don’t assert these devoid forms. It would just be like the appearance of the false dawn, this very dark blue. It’s an appearance of an absence of truly established existence. We have that. Also, obviously it could also be without these devoid forms, but normally it would be, in terms of the Kalachakra explanation.

OK. Do you have that so far?

In terms of the two truths, in dzogchen it says that the two truths are according to the perception of things by rigpa (pure awareness) or perception of things by grosser levels of consciousness. This would fit into what we just explained. Without going into what they perceive but just the fact that with ordinary consciousness — not ordinary consciousness (that’s a technical term in Karma Kagyu mahamudra) — with grosser levels of consciousness… What do I call that? Limited awareness, limited consciousness. Sem (sems) as opposed to rigpa in Tibetan. According to that, it’s going to make an appearance of — I’m trying to think how they would say it in dzogchen — it would make an appearance that’s associated with disturbing emotions and grasping for true existence and stuff like that. Whether or not it has an appearance of — it wouldn’t have an understanding of voidness, put it that way, an understanding of its own nature. Now let’s not go too far in that direction of that explanation; it will just get more complicated. 

According to the Kagyu schools — they would say that the two truths are how things appear to a Buddha and how things appear to not a Buddha, to an ordinary being, a sentient being (a limited being, let’s say). Again, we have a very different way of formulating the two truths here.

Participant: One is not true.

Dr. Berzin: Right. Because one is not true. This is the way it appears to limited beings as not true, and this is what Tsongkhapa is criticizing here in this line.

According to the non-Gelug schools — what everybody said was that conceptual cognition makes an appearance of truly established existence. All of them do. Tsongkhapa would agree with that. However, the other schools would say that non-conceptual cognition — as with seeing or hearing or smelling, etc. — that these do not make an appearance of truly established existence. Tsongkhapa was very radical in saying that they do. They say that they don’t. Now we have to understand cognition theory as asserted by these other schools in order to really understand this.

According to the other schools — and this is an explanation that makes a great deal of sense — when we perceive something through any of our senses, we just perceive the data of one sense, and we only perceive one moment at a time of that data. With eyes, we see colored shapes. Now, if you think of an apple, an apple is not just a — let’s say if it’s round, which it isn’t, but just for simplicity — a round red sphere (assuming that we can see in three dimensions) or a round circle (if we don’t have good depth perception). An apple is not just a red sphere, a red-colored shape. When we hear an apple, as when you bite out of an apple, there’s quite a distinctive sound. That sound is not an apple, and the smell is not an apple, and the taste is not an apple. With our senses we don’t actually perceive conventional objects. It is a mental construct — conceptual — that puts together not only over all the senses but also over time (because we only perceive one moment at a time, and then the next moment the previous moment doesn’t exist anymore). It’s only a conceptual mind that puts together spatially, over all the senses and over time, a conventional object. That’s a concept. I mean that’s an object of conceptual cognition.

When you talk about the conceptualized object (zhen-yul), which is the technical term in this line, the conceptual object is what your conceptual cognition refers to, and what it would refer to… No, it’s not what it refers to; it’s what would correspond to it. What would correspond to it? The term conceptualize is a way that I’m translating; literally the word is cling. What is it clinging on to (clinging on to an actual apple, for example)? They would say there is no such thing as an actual apple in terms of what this appearance in a conceptual mind would correspond to. Why? Because that appearance is of a truly existent object that truly exists as an apple. 

I think that needs more explanation. This is probably not so clear.

According to the non-Gelugpa schools — they do not make this differentiation between the appearance of what something is and the appearance of how it exists; it’s all just one appearance. Because the appearance in a conceptual mind is always an appearance of truly established existence, what that appearance would correspond to would be a truly existent apple. There are no such things. According to this view, all conceptual cognitions are distorted in that sense, and one could easily come to the conclusion here that conventional truth, in terms of what corresponds to the way that limited minds perceive the world, doesn’t exist at all. That’s a very easy misunderstanding that one could have from this position. 

Do you follow that? 

Because only to a Buddha do you have an appearance that is beyond these categories — to use their terminology — of truly existent, nonexistent, both, or neither, plus an understanding of voidness. For these non-Gelug schools, although there’s no appearance of truly established existence in sense perception, what you’re perceiving in sense perception are just colored shapes or sounds and there’s no understanding of voidness or anything like that with it.

In order to really appreciate and understand this critique here, one has to put together a lot of different factors. What Tsongkhapa would say is that “Sure, nothing corresponds (in terms of a truly existent object) to your conceptual thought.” However, Tsongkhapa says, and this is very radical, very different, that with sense perception, non-conceptual sense perception, we perceive not only, let’s say, through our eyes colored shapes, but we also perceive conventional objects. I think that Tsongkhapa says this and asserts it like that because it’s so easy to misunderstand the position that everybody held before that, which is that through your eyes you don’t see conventional objects (’jig-rten-la grags-pa) — commonsense objects  is the way that I translate it — you know, what to common sense is an apple or a chair. If you say that through your senses you don’t perceive commonsense objects and you, in a sense, deny the existence of commonsense objects — that this is only something truly existent which is constructed by a conceptual mind — then you would deny, in that sense, conventional truth. If you deny conventional truth, then as Tsongkhapa was saying earlier in this paragraph, you would deny cause and effect: you would deny that various causes build up samsara and that with various other causes you can get out of samsara.

Participant: But surely, they don’t go as far as reaching this conclusion, because otherwise they wouldn’t call it conventional truth.

Dr. Berzin: That’s right. As Jorge points out, they don’t go as far — the non-Gelug — in terms of saying that there is no such thing as conventional truth. Because they do… Put it this way: They don’t go as far as saying that their understanding of conventional truth is equivalent to nihilism. There is such a thing as conventional truth, but it’s false. You have many statements, even in earlier Indian texts, that say all of conventional truth is false. But Tsongkhapa clarifies it’s false in terms of how it appears to exist but it’s not false in terms of the accuracy of what something is.

This becomes a very, very interesting discussion. Because to the non-Gelugpas an appearance of… I mean, then the question is: What does a Buddha perceive? A Buddha doesn’t perceive either true existence or absence of true existence or both or neither. A Buddha’s able to perceive both what something is and how it exists. Now we get a very interesting question: What is a pure appearance that a Buddha perceives? You can say that a Buddha perceives the two truths simultaneously. From that non-Gelug point of view: in perceiving the two truths, does a Buddha perceive things how he or she perceives it and also perceives the way that it would appear to a limited mind? The problem with that is that then there’s a deceptive appearance to a Buddha’s mind. For a Buddha’s mind to know how things appear truly existent to others, does that mean that an appearance of true existence appears to a Buddha’s mind? If you say that it couldn’t appear to a Buddha’s mind, then we have some problems here.

Another way of asserting that the two truths are inseparable is not in terms of being inseparable to one mind that is perceiving them. You can say they’re inseparable in the sense that to one type of mind it appears this way — to an enlightened mind, it appears this way; to an unenlightened mind, it appears that way. That’s inseparable, and that’s a way of asserting things, but then where is it established? Is it established on the side of the object that it will appear one way to one type of mind and one way to another kind of mind? That can’t be the case. This is one way of dealing with the whole issue of mental labeling and a different way of understanding mental labeling, that it’s not just labeling and designation: it also has to do with appearance of things, that it is something which is dependent on the mind.

This is a very, very complicated issue here that Tsongkhapa is saying in a very, very brief sentence, that: 

Thereby, we would come to a (completely false) understanding that all of conventional truth is distorted conventional truth

Right? Because it’s coming from a limited mind.

and that all conceptual cognitions are distorted cognitions that are deceived about their conceptualized objects.

Why? Because conceptualized objects, according to non-Gelug, include not just the appearance of what something is but also how it appears to exist. It seems as though, according to the other schools, non-Gelugpa schools, that there are such things as commonsense objects out there. Whereas in fact all that we perceive is the information from each of the senses, and a conceptual mind puts it together, and you can’t really say what’s out there. You know, there’s a little bit of a tendency toward the Chittamatra approach in these non-Gelug schools. This is the issue here, and it’s something that requires not only a great deal of background to be able to appreciate the complexity of this one simple sentence here but also requires a great deal of thought as to what the consequences of both sides of this discussion are, Tsongkhapa’s point of view and the non-Gelug point of view. 

The non-Gelug point of view is putting a great deal of emphasis on getting rid of conceptual thought, because from their point of view there’s no such thing as an accurate conceptual cognition. Why? Because every conceptual cognition has an appearance of truly established existence, and it doesn’t matter whether it is a conceptual cognition of a white snow mountain or a yellow snow mountain. Let’s take Tsongkhapa’s point of view and argue Tsongkhapa’s point of view: What would be the disadvantages of this type of view that all conceptual cognitions are garbage?

Participant: Because how do you build up your refuge from there?

Dr. Berzin: How do you build up refuge? How do you build up bodhichitta? Bodhichitta is focused on enlightenment. Unless you’re a Buddha, you can only have a conceptual cognition of enlightenment; you can only have some idea of what enlightenment is. 

Also, any type of inferential understanding based on logic and reasoning is conceptual. From Tsongkhapa’s point of view, if all that you’re aiming for is to be non-conceptual, then even when you achieve a non-conceptual state of mind in meditation, what in the world would that be? Do you just perceive colored shapes — you don’t perceive objects? What is that? This becomes a very complex problem. Conceptual thought associates things with categories — table, chair, etc. If you have a non-conceptual cognition of a chair, a commonsense object, as Tsongkhapa says that you do, do you know that it’s a chair? What do you know it as?

Participant: In a way, then, a newborn baby is almost a Buddha.

Dr. Berzin: Is a newborn baby almost a Buddha? That becomes a very interesting question.

Participant: Because it doesn’t have many concepts.

Dr. Berzin: It doesn’t have categories. It doesn’t have language. Although it does have categories; you can’t say that it doesn’t. Categories — we’re thinking of a category of mother. Every time it sees this woman, each moment that it sees this woman, it’s not as though they’re seeing a completely different person and don’t recognize this person. They put that together into the category of mother. There’s no word, but that’s a concept; that’s a category. You have to understand a category to be a much broader thing.

Participant: It has very few.

Dr. Berzin: It has very few. Right. 

Participant: I don’t know if he thinks “Mother.”

Dr. Berzin: It doesn’t matter what it thinks, but it recognizes… It gets into the whole category of distinguishing, recognizing. What is that? You have that mental factor of distinguishing (’du-shes), which is usually translated as recognition, but I think recognition has to be conceptual (in terms of our Western concept of recognition), but you have distinguishing in non-conceptual cognition. Is it just distinguishing a red shape, a red circle — a red round shape — from a red square shape, a yellow square shape? Aren’t those categories as well? It becomes very difficult.

Let me just finish this sentence (I didn’t finish my thought before): What is a pure appearance that a Buddha perceives according to the non-Gelug? If seeing commonsense objects, an apple, or a chair, is only what a limited conceptual mind would perceive, what in the world does a Buddha see? They get around this by saying that it is beyond concepts of this or that, and then they say you can only know it through experience, through meditation. Whereas others might say, “Isn’t that a bit of a” — the English colloquial word — “cop out for that, that you’re not really able to describe it. It doesn’t make sense, so you just say, ‘It’s beyond everything.’ That’s sort of a transcendental type of truth.” This is the problem with this non-Gelug position, that it tends to go into a transcendentalist type of thing, that “There’s some higher reality, and that’s more real than what we perceive as limited beings,” which then gets into a whole sort of stronger emphasis on devotion and so on.

Participant: I was thinking about the baby. The problem with the baby is that not all its senses are fully established. If we have a meditative state of mind, you try to use your senses. For the baby — the baby has no words, but that doesn’t mean if you meditate hard enough, it will be a babylike state of mind. I don’t think that.

Dr. Berzin: Right. Manuel is pointing out that infants, newborn infants, don’t have fully developed senses. I think this is true. I mean, Jorge, our biologist, would assert that.

Participant: They can’t focus.

Dr. Berzin: They can’t focus. Their eye consciousness is not fully developed.

Participant: The whole neurocognitive layers are completely underdeveloped.

Dr. Berzin: The neurocognitive layers of the brain are completely underdeveloped, and it’s not fair, Manuel is pointing out, to compare the type of perception that a newborn infant has with someone in meditation who has fully developed senses. It’s not that we are being advised to go back to the state of a newborn infant with undeveloped senses.

This becomes really quite a difficult issue on all levels. Do you actually see an apple? Or do you see both a colored sphere — a red sphere — and an apple? Or do you just see a colored sphere? 

Participant: Do the Gelugpas really state that in non-conceptual cognition you see an apple as an apple? Or do they say that you see an apple but without specifying?

Dr. Berzin: This is an interesting question. Does Gelugpa say that through the eye consciousness, do you see an apple as an apple? Or do you just see an apple? That means do you distinguish it as an apple. Do you apply a word to it? No. That would be conceptual. Do you apply a category to it? That would be conceptual also. Gelugpa does say that things have characteristic marks (mtshan-nyid). The characteristic marks don’t establish the existence of something by their own power or in conjunction with mental labeling; however, things do have characteristic features and characteristic marks.

Participant: As part of convention?

Dr. Berzin: As part of convention? As part of the conventional truth. If things didn’t have distinctive characteristic features or marks, then everything would be an undifferentiated soup and it’s just the mind that divides it into things. Tsongkhapa says this. The mental factor of distinguishing is distinguishing the defining characteristics of one thing from what it’s not, if you look at the definition. If you look in mahamudra and these sorts of texts, they’re always saying, “Meditate without concepts of something being this and not that.” 

It’s very, very difficult to really understand what non-conceptual cognition is, either in the Gelug or the non-Gelug systems. It ordinarily lasts only for one sixtieth of a fingersnap — by the Buddhist way of formulating how long it lasts — it lasts for just a microsecond, and then automatically kicks in with non-conceptual mental cognition for another tiny microsecond, and then conceptual cognition. To even say that you want to stay in a non-conceptual cognitive state, sense perception would be awfully difficult. And we shouldn’t think that a cow or a worm doesn’t have conceptual cognition. It does think in terms of categories: food, hot, cold, my barn, these sort of things. There are categories.

This issue brings up so many different factors here. But I think that if you look at the consequences of Tsongkhapa’s point of view, it seems to be a stronger affirmation of conventional truth than in the non-Gelug systems, and this is to counter the tendency toward nihilism that you could have in these other systems. 

Now, it’s interesting because both sides here are going to accuse each other of not only nihilism but positivism (or eternalism it’s usually called). Because, on the one hand, you could say that these non-Gelug systems — Tsongkhapa is saying there’s the danger that, from the point of view of conventional truth, it seems as though they’re denying everything, so it’s nihilism. But from the point of view of establishing deepest truth (what a Buddha perceives), when you say that it is beyond lack of true existence — beyond voidness and non-voidness, in a sense (the concept of other-voidness, gzhan-stong) — then you accuse them of just another way of saying positivism, true existence.

Similarly, the non-Gelug criticism of the Gelug is saying that “In your position you are really establishing clinging to truly established existence or truly established nonexistence in terms of your understanding of voidness” — that voidness is, again, this conceptual thing according to the non-Gelug point of view. You have to get beyond that concept of voidness.

Anyway, I can’t really claim that I understand all of this, let alone that I’m able to explain it clearly, but I wanted to just bring out some of the issues that are involved in this whole approach to this question. The consequence of this way, the non-Gelug point of view, is that in meditation all you have to do is get rid of conceptual thought, and so they want to get rid of all conceptual thought because it is focusing just on truly established existence. When you talk about: “What about bodhichitta then? Isn’t bodhichitta always conceptual?” Some of them will say that “Actually when you talk about bodhichitta, it’s more deepest bodhichitta.” There’s conventional bodhichitta and deepest bodhichitta. One is focusing on enlightenment. And the other is focusing on voidness, which for them is beyond words, beyond concepts, so that type of bodhichitta is OK (that’s non-conceptual).

There are different ways in which they get around this argument that bodhichitta can only be conventional. Well, conventional bodhichitta can only be conventional. Not that bodhichitta can only be conventional; it can only be cognized with conceptual thought, except for a Buddha. But that’s only talking about conventional bodhichitta (relative bodhichitta) not deepest bodhichitta, which is the understanding of voidness.

What I think one needs to understand from this whole discussion is that it’s very hard, in the process of trying to understand this material, to just take one piece of the presentation of one school or another school and try to understand it and debate it just in terms of one aspect. Like saying, “Meditation isn’t just ‘Get rid of conceptual thought,’” or the argument that it is just “Get rid of conceptual thought.” Because in order to really understand that debate, you have to understand what each side asserts conceptual thought to be and what aspect of it is valid. Are there valid aspects and invalid aspects? Are there different aspects of the mind that perceive different things? This is what I said in the very beginning. According to Gelug, it’s two aspects of one mind that perceive the two truths: there’s an aspect that can perceive the appearance of things, both of what it is and how it appears, and another one that could perceive actually how things exist. The other schools don’t make that type of differentiation exactly in that way. You could have a differentiation like that which is formulated in terms of inseparable samsara and nirvana, that the clear-light mind makes a samsaric appearance and a nirvanic appearance, depending on whether or not it’s associated with unawareness, or ignorance, and those are inseparable because they both come from clear-light mind. Or the Sakya way of saying that these are like two different quantum levels.

If you get down to it, you find that all these different schools are really talking about the same phenomenon — in terms of clear-light mind making appearances and so on — it’s just how do they understand it and how do they explain it and what are the consequences for that in terms of your meditation practice. And the consequences are quite different, quite different.

The Gelugpa school seems to be far more — you get the impression of it being more down to earth and practical, in a sense, than the others, perhaps because of its affirmation that you perceive conventional commonsense objects and that’s valid despite the fact that they appear truly existent.

Participant: What is this idea that the four schools of Buddhism integrate — that one of them is talking about the base, some of them are talking about the pathway, some of them are talking about the result?

Dr. Berzin: OK. Jorge points out what Jamyang-kyentsey-wangpo Rinpoche wrote when he said that the Gelug tradition describes things more from the point of view of the basis, the Sakya from the path, and the Kagyu and Nyingma from the point of view of the result. Yeah, that’s another way of describing, in better detail, what I was saying, that they’re all talking about the same thing but describing it from different points of view. 

You can say from the basis point of view, “That’s how things appear to a samsaric mind.” Gelugpa is then making more of an affirmation of that appearance of things appearing to be truly existent, but that’s just how they appear to exist; nevertheless, that is an accurate thing and we have to deal with commonsense objects, and so that’s OK. You don’t want to freak people out too much by saying that there are no commonsense objects and that’s all only a mental construct.

I was going to go on to explain the others, but do you want to add something?

Participant: For a Buddha’s own cognitive needs, he doesn’t need to rely — everybody would agree with that — on concepts. He has already gotten rid of the appearances of true existence. There is no special significance for his own cognitive needs in the understanding of voidness, I would say. Whereas for us, of course, this aspect — there has to be an absence. 

Dr. Berzin: Right. Christian is saying that, from a Buddhist point of view, a Buddha doesn’t need to rely on words and concepts, etc., for his own purposes. For the purposes of others — you didn’t say this — but for the purposes of others, a Buddha has to communicate, so he needs to use language. Words themselves are just sounds, but when we talk about meanings of words, we’re talking about categories and objects that fit in categories. What was the other point? 

Participant: That even voidness is just basically an antidote to a problem that we, as ordinary beings, have, isn’t it?

Dr. Berzin: Well, that voidness is an antidote for the confusion and the problems that we as ordinary beings have and that a Buddha doesn’t need the understanding of voidness to eliminate the confusion — because a Buddha doesn’t have confusion — nevertheless the Buddha still has that understanding of voidness.

Participant: Sure, but it’s no big deal, in a sense.

Dr. Berzin: But it’s no big deal? But it is a big deal, because it is an accurate view of how things exist and what things are. But as I said, the problem is really: How do things appear to a Buddha? To say it’s beyond words and beyond concepts is true, in a sense, because they don’t appear as categories, but nevertheless a Buddha’s able to distinguish an apple from an orange. There are distinguishing features that distinguish an apple from an orange, and a cat from a dog, when we talk about distinguishing things. But does that mean that you know it as this and not that? Or are you just distinguishing one feature from another feature? I don’t know. I have no idea how things actually appear to a non-conceptual cognition, or how they appear to a Buddha, and what it means that commonsense objects appear to that sense cognition. 

Sense consciousness knows an apple, perceives an apple. I think they’d have to say that it perceives an apple: when you see a red sphere, you see an apple; you’re not just seeing a red sphere. Does it know it as an apple? I don’t know. It distinguishes the red sphere from an orange square. It distinguishes a red sphere from the background. Is there a line around the red sphere? No. Is there a line around it on the side of the red sphere that establishes it as a separate object from the background? No. 

These aren’t easy things to understand, by any means. But a Buddha has to rely on words and concepts and things in order to communicate, and that’s one of the aspects of an enlightened being — an enlightened being communicates — because their achievement of enlightenment is for the purpose of the others. If it were just for their own purposes, they’d only need to be liberated. To fulfill the purposes of others, you need to communicate. That’s what, from a tantra point of view, Sambhogakaya is all about, is communication.

Participant: I think when one, for instance, walks down the street, we perceive so many things, but we don’t label them, or we don’t make concepts about them. They’re just very filtered objects that we focus on, things which are necessary for our survival.

Dr. Berzin: OK. Now this is a very interesting point. She says: When we walk down the street, we don’t distinguish everything. There are hundreds and thousands of colored shapes and sounds and smells, and so on. We only deal with what we need, in a sense. 

If we speak in terms of the five types of deep awareness, mirror-like deep awareness (me-long lta-bu’i ye-shes) is referring to the fact that all that information comes in, in a sense. Then it’s a matter of focus and attention. In a field of vision, we don’t pay equal attention to everything in that field of vision. Even just looking straight in front of us now in this room — within that field of vision, I’m focusing on one person. In a sense, if I really, really paid attention, I would also be aware, with peripheral vision, of the people that I see really on the side. Would I be able to distinguish them well enough to be able to identify who they are? No, I wouldn’t, at least with my abilities, if it was a room that I hadn’t looked at before and knew who was sitting where. Presumably, as a Buddha you would have equal attention on everything, not just in your field of vision, but the field of vision would be unlimited, because a Buddha doesn’t function through limited sense organs, with this type of body.

Participant: That means the information comes in, but you conceptualize…

Dr. Berzin: Right. The information comes in, but we don’t necessarily distinguish everything in that field of vision, let alone pay attention to it. But those colored shapes are perceived, and do we see people? Are there other people in this room besides just the person that I’m focusing on? Yes. You could see, starting with the Chittamatra discussion of external objects, that this issue of the existence of external objects and how we understand them is not just taken care of with a refutation of the Chittamatra schools. It’s not so simple, not so simple at all.

Participant: Maybe it’s because we’re clinging too much to something. When we’re walking down the street, there are thousands or millions of things happening at the same time, but we’re just clinging to certain things, because we’re not able to — we’re just too limited.

Dr. Berzin: As Manuel says very well, we don’t cling to everything: we’re very limited. This is exactly what we mean by a limited mind. A sentient being is someone with a limited mind, and the limitation is because of the hardware; it’s not just because of unawareness. Our hardware is such that you can’t see what’s behind your head, for example.

Participant: But it’s not necessary to know everything.

Dr. Berzin: It’s not necessary to know everything? If you want to benefit everybody, you have to know everybody and everything about them all at the same time, because everybody’s interconnected, remember. That’s not so easy. At our level, do we have to know everything? No, but the more that we know, the more helpful we can be to others.

Participant: But there’s really unnecessary information all around us.

Dr. Berzin: There’s unnecessary information all around us. Necessary for what? Do I have to know how many centimeters high this ceiling is, for example? No, unless I want to bring a giraffe into the room.

Participant: It’s unnecessary.

Dr. Berzin: Unnecessary. Is anything absolutely unnecessary or is it unnecessary just relative to fulfilling a certain purpose, a certain need? I think you’d have to say the latter.

Participant: Yes. Not necessary for survival.

Dr. Berzin: It’s not necessary for survival. Is Buddhism only about survival? No.

Participant: It’s not necessary for helping somebody for you to recognize all the rings in the wallpaper pattern or something.

Dr. Berzin: Right. It’s not necessary for helping somebody to be able to distinguish how many…

Participant: Or rings for a curtain.

Dr. Berzin: Rings there are in the curtain, and so on. No. If you want to go out and buy rings for the curtain, you have to know how many rings you need. This is another aspect, isn’t it, of discriminating awareness, to discriminate what is useful and what’s not useful. It’s not just what’s beneficial and not beneficial; it’s what’s relevant and what is not relevant and what is useful and not useful. That actually is a great skill that we need to develop, especially in terms of explaining something — shows my faults — to be able to explain just enough, what is needed and what would fit the other person’s level of comprehension, and to say just that much and nothing more and nothing less. This would come into one of the qualifications of a great teacher that Tsongkhapa was saying — not adding anything, not leaving anything out, knowing what should be taught and what you have to not teach or get rid of. 

Yes, there are certain things that are useful and not useful for a particular situation. I mean, we might think that as a Buddha you’d get a headache from having so much information and perceiving so many things.

Participant: I don’t see the purpose of perceiving everything.

Dr. Berzin: She doesn’t see the purpose of perceiving everything. Also, you have to think in terms of a Buddha. A Buddha is trying to help everybody simultaneously.

Participant: This is all too much.

Dr. Berzin: It’s too much. Now we come to the conclusion that it’s beyond words, beyond concepts, beyond imagination, beyond comprehension. Does that make it some sort of transcendental, ultimate truth up there in the sky? This is what I’m saying. One could have the objection to this view that the conventional is all garbage and the ultimate is just this transcendent thing that is beyond our imagination and therefore just believe in it.

Participant: It’s beyond imagination, so I can’t reach it — so there’s no point in it.

Dr. Berzin: If something is beyond imagination, beyond concepts — which means we can’t really think about it — do we therefore forget about it? Or can we still strive for something that is beyond our imagination? How can you strive for something if you have no concept of what you’re striving for? You could have a concept of something being beyond concepts. That starts to get pretty weird, doesn’t it? That’s like having a concept of voidness according to these other schools. To them, that’s equally weird. How can you have a concept of being without concepts? Yes. But, as I say, does that mean that you don’t strive for it? I don’t know.

Participant: I was asking myself what is more difficult: If we see some great practitioner who’s maybe in a cave, and there’s no cars, not many external influences — maybe some ants or some bears looking forward to eating them. On the other hand, you could be in traffic or in the city. Which is more disturbing? You know what I mean? Like impressions. You’ve got too much information; and they’ve got so little, but it’s also disturbing.

Dr. Berzin: Now Manuel is pointing out something different, which is also, I think, a very valid point, which is in terms of what’s disturbing. You seem to say that to perceive too much, like being in traffic and in the city, is disturbing; we need to somehow filter what we pay attention to.  Which is true. You need to filter. Anybody who walks into an American mega-giant supermarket which has ten thousand objects in it for you to buy — you have to focus and filter, otherwise you just can’t deal with it.

Participant: But then you say that a Buddha has to know all that?

Dr. Berzin: But a Buddha knows all hundred types of cereal that are available? The marketing manager would also know that, but let’s get back to Manuel’s point. Manuel’s point is that isn’t it equally disturbing, or can’t it theoretically be equally disturbing, to be in a sense-deprivation situation, like somebody in a cave. I mean, let’s take a dark retreat, where it’s really sense deprivation. Still, you have all your thoughts, and couldn’t that also be very disturbing? Or being in a cave and just worrying about ants or a bear coming and eating you or something like that.

What disturbs the mind — there’s a list of the causes for the conditions that give rise to disturbing emotions. It can be external conditions; it can be internal conditions; it could be too much of something or too little of something. It’s the same thing with people: either there are too many people in your life, so you have no time for yourself, or there’s nobody in your life and you’re completely lonely.

But I think this issue of what’s disturbing is something else other than… It’s a different issue from what do we actually need to perceive in order to survive. Obviously, you just need — it’s hard to say, hard to define — you need to perceive enough to be able to cross the street without being hit by a car.

Participant: My initial point was that you don’t make concepts of everything.

Dr. Berzin: We don’t make concepts of everything? But I think we do. This is under-identifying concepts. Let’s say you’re driving your car.

Participant: Bicycle.

Dr. Berzin: Bicycle (you don’t drive a car). But when you’re riding a bicycle in traffic with cars, although you don’t formulate in words what’s going on, you have a concept of how fast a car is traveling and that’s traveling too fast or slow enough so that I can go around it or I can turn. There are a lots of concepts that are there — the concept of which side of the road to ride on; the concept of with the red light, you need to stop; the concept that in order to continue going, you have to peddle; the concept that if you want to turn right, you have to move the handlebars in a certain direction. These are all concepts.

Participant: Yes, but there are also things which you perceive with the senses — the shops I pass by. I don’t think I have concepts about these shops when I drive by.

Dr. Berzin: OK. You don’t have concepts about the shops. You don’t recognize, you don’t distinguish, that it’s…

Participant: I see the shops.

Dr. Berzin: You see the shops, but you don’t pursue any thoughts about them.

Participant: Yeah. I don’t think that I have, in this moment, concepts of the shops.

Dr. Berzin: You think in those moments you don’t have concepts of the shops.

Participant: I don’t have the concept “I’ve passed the supermarket now.”

Dr. Berzin: You don’t have a thing that “Now I pass the supermarket” or “Now I pass a clothing store” but you have a concept that you are on a street and there are buildings there. This is talking about what distinguishing characteristics are you perceiving. You are aware that you are on a street with shops on it and not riding your bicycle through the woods. You can distinguish that you are on a city street from being in the woods. There is a distinguishing characteristic, that you are on a street, you are on a road, and there are buildings on the side. You might not pay attention to what kind of buildings, let alone what kind of shops they are, let alone what’s in the window, but there are some distinguishing characteristics that allow you to function within the sense field that your eyes are perceiving.

Participant: Yeah. I filter some of the information.

Dr. Berzin: You filter. Now this gets into the whole thing of distinguishing, distinguishing characteristics of things.

Participant: But there are millions of impressions which are there.

Dr. Berzin: Right. There are millions of impressions. That becomes an interesting thing. Are all these distinguishing factors on the side of the object? What does it mean? Are they on the side of the object and you’re not perceiving them? Or are they all projected from your mind (if you don’t project them, then it’s just an undifferentiated soup around you)? 

Participant: Yes.

Dr. Berzin: It is? An undifferentiated soup. There are no conventional shops there.

Participant: In that moment, there is a soup, and I have only a little of the information.

Dr. Berzin: In that moment, it’s a soup. Is that an accurate perception? No, it’s not accurate. 

Participant: I don’t know what you mean by accurate perception.

Dr. Berzin: If somebody else came along and looked at it, or you stopped your bicycle and turned and looked at it, would it still be a soup, an undifferentiated soup?

Participant: No. Then it’s the shop.

Dr. Berzin: Then it would be shops. Did you create them as shops?

Participant: No.

Dr. Berzin: No, you didn’t create them. Were they existing on their own as shops independent of your labeling them as shops and seeing them as shops? 

Participant: I don’t see the connection with the former thing I said.

Dr. Berzin: You don’t see the connection with the former thing of what you said? The point is: When we talk about distinguishing things and paying attention to things, it leads to the whole discussion of what we were talking about before. Are there any such things as conventional commonsense objects? Or are they only what concepts would conceptualize, and it’s all distorted (which is what Tsongkhapa is pointing out is an incorrect conclusion from an incorrect understanding of voidness)? Are there conventional objects, commonsense objects? Do they exist in the Chittamatra sense of external objects? How does that connect with mental labeling? How does that connect with distinguishing features? How does it connect with our perception? These are the issues that are underlying all of this. What is so-called reality? Those are some of the most difficult questions of all. 

I mean, you’re totally correct. In order to function, you can’t pay attention to everything, and you can’t distinguish everything. And the appearance to us is an appearance of a soup as you drive past or bicycle past. That’s the appearance.

Participant: I just wanted to say that, in that moment, I don’t conceptualize everything.

Dr. Berzin: Right. You don’t conceptualize everything. 

Participant: It’s a lot of soup.

Dr. Berzin: You don’t conceptualize everything. But is that an accurate perception when you’re perceiving the soup? 

Participant: That’s not the point.

Dr. Berzin: It is the point here.

Participant: It’s accurate that there are buildings around you on the street. That’s all you need to know?

Dr. Berzin: Right. This is what I was saying before. It’s accurate that I’m on a street and there are buildings, and I’d better stay in the middle of the street, otherwise I’m going to smack into the buildings. That concept is there.

Participant: Sometimes. Yes.

Dr. Berzin: Sometimes. Yes. If you don’t have an accident and smack into the buildings. 

Participant: Or a car.

Dr. Berzin: Or a car. You might not pay attention to what color the car is and what make the car is, but you certainly have a concept that “I’d better steer clear so I don’t smack into the car.”

Participant: Yeah. I don’t have the concept “There’s a car.”

Dr. Berzin: Right. You don’t have a concept “There is a car” — it could be a truck; it could be a van — but there is a concept of there being an object.

Participant: Yeah. Something.

Dr. Berzin: Something. Right.

This is a subtle point that’s made in Sautrantika and some of these other schools, that when we talk about defining characteristics, we’re not just talking about the defining characteristics that make something an apple as opposed to an orange, or a cat as opposed to a dog. There are also the defining characteristics that make something into a validly knowable object (shes-bya). What makes that into a validly knowable object? Is it a line around it, the simple way that I’ve been always discussing it? What makes it just an object? That gets into: Out there, are there only colored shapes? Or are there actual commonsense apples and oranges?

These are topics that require a great deal of reflection and contemplation. Let’s leave it there — I don’t want to labor this point (this is one of the more difficult sentences in Tsongkhapa’s discussion) — then next time we’ll go on after it rather than continue, unless you really want to. OK?

Let’s end with a dedication. We think whatever understanding, whatever positive force has come from this, may it go deeper and deeper and act as a cause to reach enlightenment for the benefit of all.