We are going through this letter that Tsongkhapa wrote in answer to a request that one of his students (and also a teacher and friend and a great meditator) has asked him to write. In response to this, Tsongkhapa gives a very wonderful description of many of the points in the practice of sutra/tantra that are really very essential for being able to do it in a practical way, not in a fantasized way that leads astray.
Reliance on a Qualified Spiritual Teacher
He starts out by pointing out that:
- We have the working basis of human rebirth with all the opportunities to be able to study the practice.
If we don’t take advantage of something like that, then it’s really a waste. The best way to take advantage of that is, obviously, to further ourselves towards liberation and enlightenment. To do that we need to follow sutra and tantra.
- We’ve met with the teachings.
You can’t actually achieve these goals without meeting the teachings.
- We are cared for by superb teachers.
That’s very rare to find authentic teachers, and they’re very important on the path, particularly in terms of giving us inspiration, not only guidance but inspiration in terms of achieving the goal.
- We also have the power of mind to discern between what’s to be adopted and rejected.
Even if we have precious human rebirth, even if we’ve met with the teachings, even if we’ve met with the teachers, if we just follow the teachings blindly and don’t actually use our intelligence and develop our intelligence (as well as our hearts, of course) to be able to use our own judgment — based on our own understanding of Dharma, of cause and effect, about what we actually need to do, what we actually need to avoid — then we’re never going to get anywhere. Just listening there like a zombie or just one of these devotees that “Yes, yes, lama, lama, whatever you say” is not really going to develop us. We might become somebody that’s very dependent on the teacher, and that’s not at all the point. The point is to rely in a healthy way on the teacher in order to develop ourselves to be able to help others.
We need to actually engage ourselves in the teachings, and for this we have to rely on guidance of someone who knows them and who can teach them. Tsongkhapa, out of all the various qualifications of such a teacher, mentions that the teacher has to know what actually the states of mind are we need to develop, what are the ones that we need to get rid of, not mix that up, not add anything, not leave anything out, and know the proper order of how to apply them.
That is very interesting, that Tsongkhapa points these out from among all the lists of — and there are many, many lists of qualifications of a teacher in terms of the motivation of the teacher, and the knowledge of the teacher, and patience, and all these other qualities. Particularly in terms of tantra, they have to know what they’re doing. But it’s interesting that Tsongkhapa… This is a letter of practical advice, and what is the most practical is that the teacher actually knows what they are doing, is not going to lead you astray. Of course, the teacher has to have the proper motivation and ethics, etc. But he’s writing here to somebody who is quite learned in the Dharma, is quite a serious practitioner who’s been in retreat for a very long time.
I think that this is very good advice if we ourselves are ever going to think to become a teacher. That in being a teacher, aside from all the lists of qualifications, we really have to be very clear as to what really will help others and know exactly what it is that you have to develop and what you have to get rid of. It’s very easy to put aside things that you don’t like in the Dharma. You’re supposed to develop this type of ethics or whatever, but we’re not so happy about that, so we sort of leave that aside, and that’s very important not to do. We need to, if we are ever going to guide anyone, know exactly what it is — and Tsongkhapa points this out a few paragraphs after that — according to the texts, what is it that you need to develop. What is it that you need to get rid of? Don’t add anything. Don’t leave anything out. Again, don’t make your own version of what things are.
Now, this doesn’t mean that you become a fundamentalist and just “Scripture and verse, it says this” and you don’t know how to adapt it to others. That’s why the third qualification that Tsongkhapa says is that the teacher knows how to apply it to each student and, in a sense, craft it in such a way that it works for each particular student — that requires a great deal of knowledge of people and what you’re doing — and to know the proper order of how you actually guide somebody, not just follow a set formula, which one could very easily do, but on the other hand not making something up.
How do you not make up something and yet be flexible enough to apply skillful means? Someone able to do that is not so easy to find. Tsongkhapa says that such a teacher has to have the experience of being guided that way himself or herself by a qualified teacher. If you have been guided by someone who also handcrafted it, in a sense, to suit you when you were with that teacher, and you saw how the teacher was able to craft the teachings in such a way that they taught one person like this, one person like that, then you have a sensitivity, you have a training, of how to actually teach and help others. Tsongkhapa points this out. It’s very practical. If you look at each point that Tsongkhapa has made from that point of view of “What is the advice here, and what are the implications of this advice?” then you can go much deeper into the meaning of the text.
He says the teacher has to have based the studies on the great classics. Basing teachings on the classics gives confidence in them, that you’re not just making something up. If somebody has a feeling of joining a tradition that has a long tradition, which has worked over centuries and centuries and millennia based on these texts, then they feel more secure, more confident, that “This has worked for others. Am I so much different from others?” To use the excuse that “We live now in modern times” is a very flimsy excuse, because everybody from their perspective lived in modern times. That is not a good reason to say, “It doesn’t suit me.”
The Motivating Mental Framework
As for how to actually begin the practice, we have to work on our minds, he says — develop your mind — and he quotes Nagarjuna and Aryadeva (Skt. Āryadeva) on this. This is what His Holiness the Dalai Lama is always, always emphasizing. What is the Dharma all about? It’s not about doing rituals, which one could think — “This is a teaching on tantra. The whole, main point of tantra is to do devotional rituals to some sort of deity and be far out and esoteric with ringing a bell and a drum, and all these sort of things” — but that’s not the point. The point is to develop our minds. (Mind in Buddhism, it’s not talking about the intellectual side exclusively; it’s talking about all aspects — the mind, the heart, the feelings, the emotions, the sensitivities, and so on.) This is what we have to focus on. If the Dharma isn’t used as a method to transform ourselves, to transform our minds, transform our personalities, then what is its use? Tsongkhapa emphasizes that, and he supports it by quotations (just as he said a few paragraphs before, that everything has to be based on scripture).
In terms of working on the mind, the main thing is the motivation, motivating mental framework — that’s a longer phrase, which means both the aim of what we are trying to achieve and the reason for achieving it, the emotion that drives us toward that, and what we plan to do when we have achieved that goal. For this we have the graded path, lam-rim, as an orderly stage that has worked for so many others and is perfectly rational and reasonable, that each step is built on the prior step in terms of expanding our motivation:
Initial Level
We need to, first of all, turn our attention from just being interested in things of this lifetime, making this lifetime more pleasant (although obviously we need to have some sort of circumstances to be able to practice), which means neither being too comfortable nor being too much in pain but being able to actually appreciate suffering and wanting to get out of it. Appreciating our precious human life: it’s not going to last for long; death can come at any time. Thinking in terms of rebirth (which is something that is always assumed that you understand, which is not something so easy to assume in the case of those who are not brought up with that cultural background), that we can be reborn in any form with a mind, either in a better situation or one of the worst situations. To ensure that we continue to be able to have precious human rebirth, continue to be able to work toward liberation and enlightenment, we need to put that safe direction in our life — Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha — and refrain from destructive behavior that would cause us to lose precious human life in the future, and act in constructive ways.
Thinking in terms of future life, beyond this lifetime, that’s not an easy level to reach. You want to achieve that because you are terrified of the fact of how horrible it would be if you were reborn as a chicken or a worm or something even worse, and seeing that there’s a way to avoid that, and being confident that there is a way to avoid that. And working toward continuing to have precious human rebirths, better rebirths. What do we want to do with that? We want to be able to continue working toward liberation and enlightenment.
Intermediate Level
Then, on an intermediate level, we see that no matter what type of rebirth situation we’re in, it’s going to have problems and difficulties, and we want to get out of this uncontrollably recurring samsara (Skt. saṃsāra) — the disturbing emotions, the unawareness, etc., that is causing all of this. We develop renunciation to get out of it, determination to gain liberation, being convinced that it is possible, understanding what are the ways to get out of it in terms of ethical discipline, concentration, and discriminating awareness of voidness, reality, and working toward that so that when we gain liberation, then we can go even further toward enlightenment.
Advanced Level
Then thinking, on an advanced level, of everybody’s suffering, and how we’re totally interconnected with everybody else, and the kindness of others — they’ve been our mother. There are many methods for this, but we develop love (the wish for them to be happy) and compassion (not to suffer, to be free from their suffering), take responsibility to help them out of that, and not just on a superficial level but the exceptional resolve, the wish “I need to take responsibility to bring them to enlightenment.”
And to do that, then, bodhichitta (Skt. bodhicitta). We focus on our own enlightenment, which has not yet happened. The not-yet-happening of our enlightenment or the not-yet-happened enlightenment can be imputed further down on our mental continuum. We see that is possible to achieve, we understand what the methods are for achieving it, and we focus with the aim to achieve that, moved by the motivation that we want to help others, with love, compassion, and that the best way to do that is to achieve the enlightened state of a Buddha. To reach that we have to act on the basis of love and compassion and the far-reaching attitudes. We think in terms of all of that.
That’s very important for tantra. We’ve pointed this out, that for tantra practice we certainly need to turn our attention from things of this lifetime. We need to have renunciation. We’re willing to give up this type of ordinary body, this type of ordinary self-image, our ordinary way of perceiving things, which we’re going to change with first using the imagination in the generation stage and then actually working with the subtle energy-systems to transform everything about us and to build up the actual immediate causes for achieving the body and mind of a Buddha. That has to be done on the basis of ethics, concentration, understanding of voidness. And it has to be done with that wish to benefit others, because this is the way to benefit others. The way to benefit others is to achieve the state of a Buddha. This is how you achieve the state of a Buddha. All of this is necessary for tantra practice.
How to Meditate
We need to build these up through meditation. Tsongkhapa goes into a big discussion of how to meditate. We need to know:
- What are the things that each of these states of mind, these motivating mental frameworks, are based on?
- What are the stages for working up to it?
- What supports it? What’s detrimental, will harm achieving it?
- Once we achieve it, what are the benefits? What are we going to do with it? What are the things we get rid of?
- When you’re trying to develop it, what do you focus on?
- How does your mind relate to what you’re focusing on?
All these things help us to specify very well how we meditate, how you generate a state of mind. Otherwise, for many people, meditation just means relaxation, just sitting and being quiet, which, although it is beneficial, is not going to bring you liberation or enlightenment or even a better rebirth. We need to generate these motivations, generate them all the time — not just at the beginning of a session, not just throughout a session, but at all times.
The Ethical Self-Discipline of Keeping the Vows
Then Tsongkhapa emphasizes discipline as the most important thing for entering into tantra. It’s interesting how he emphasizes this so much. I think that part of it is from the historical situation that generally discipline, ethical discipline, and the situation of the monasteries was weakened at the time that he lived. But this is general advice that is necessary for all times.
We need to keep the ethical discipline of the various sets of vows. The foundation is one of the sets of vows, vows for individual liberation (pratimoksha vows), either as a lay person, a novice, or a fully ordained monk or nun. This is what you need to keep, what you need to refrain from, if you want to gain liberation. You’re not interested in gaining liberation? That’s something else. But to gain liberation, you need to overcome being under the influence of disturbing emotions, anger, dishonesty, greed, desire, these sorts of things, intoxication, deceiving (deceiving others, deceiving yourself).
All these things are tied up. You have to think: Why would taking the life of others — why would taking what was not given (stealing), why would lying (saying what was untrue), why would inappropriate sexual behavior, why would taking intoxicants — hinder my ability to gain liberation and, on a larger scale, hinder my ability to help others? If you don’t understand that, if you’re not convinced of that, then you’re just following some law that somebody — if you take these, you’re just following a law that somebody has written and “Oh, I don’t want to really do this, but that’s the law. If I don’t do it, I’m going to be punished.” This is a completely incorrect way of following Buddhist ethics.
Buddhist ethics has to be based on understanding. What did Tsongkhapa say in the very beginning? The intelligence to discriminate between what’s helpful, what’s harmful, what’s to be practiced, what’s to be gotten rid of. And not just because you’re a good lawyer — you’ve memorized the book that says what is to be followed and what’s to be gotten rid of and avoided — but because we fully understand and are fully convinced that if I lie, for example, I’m deceiving others. I am covering the truth. It means I don’t have very much respect for the truth. Truth can be bent. How does that relate to the truth of reality (how things exist)? Am I willing to compromise that? Compromise it. That means to say, “According to the teachings, it says things are not truly existent and don’t have any substance and are not solid, and so on, but that really doesn’t apply to money, that doesn’t really apply to this object of my sexual desire, and so on. I’m going to forget about it in that area.”
Or inappropriate sexual behavior. You have to overcome biology in order to gain liberation. I mean, we’re talking about getting over samsara, samsaric existence, on the basis of biology and the drives of biology, and the hormones, and all that sort of stuff. That’s pretty heavy, pretty serious. Where do you start? You start with limiting your sexual behavior. OK, if you’re not at the stage at which you’re not going to have any sexual behavior, then at least be able to limit it. Don’t just follow it like an animal if you are aiming for liberation. It’s a vow for individual liberation. If you’re not aiming for liberation from desire and biology, it doesn’t matter. Obviously, you don’t go around raping others and stuff like that, in terms of causing harm, just by general ethics. But this is ethics for individual liberation. That’s what it’s called. We have to understand that.
It’s very important for tantra practice. Tantra practice is going to require a tremendous amount of discipline. How about the discipline of seeing everything in terms of pure appearances and Buddha-figures and stuff like that all day long? That requires unbelievable discipline, to see things in a different way, to view ourselves in a different way. If we can’t control detrimental ways of behaving with our body and speech, how in the world are you going to be able to do that with your mind in terms of ways of thinking? Now we’re not just talking about avoiding mental wandering, avoiding flightiness of mind, avoiding dullness — that’s general; it’s in sutra as well (even non-Buddhists develop that) — but avoiding believing in appearances of truly established existence, avoiding even generating (or trying) these negative appearances.
Ethics. Very, very important.
Then bodhisattva vows, what to avoid that would prevent us from really being of greatest benefit to others. We have to appreciate that, appreciate the sensitivity behind that, if we really want to be able to help others. This is fantastic. We know what the pitfalls are, the things that are going to cause trouble, and then avoid them. That requires discipline.
We have those, and then the tantric vows, tantric vows in terms of what we need to avoid and what we need to do in order to further our practice. These are very, very important. You know, not get angry at your vajra brothers and sisters. You can say that “I’m joining a club, and we’re all brothers and sisters, and peace,” and this sort of thing. We’re not talking on that level. If you’re speaking in terms of “Hey, [we’ve] all been born into the mandala (Skt. maṇḍala) of the Buddha-figure with this teacher” — if not this mandala, another mandala, but this teacher — “We’ve all been generated in pure appearances. If you can’t have a pure appearance of those who are the fellow students of your teacher, who are you going to have a pure appearance of?” at least start there, and don’t get angry with them. Why would you get angry with them? You’d get angry with them if you’re seeing them in an ordinary appearance, in an ordinary way. We want to avoid that.
You have to see: How does that relate to tantra practice? How does that relate to my being able to benefit others? How does that relate to being able to reach enlightenment? Certainly the vow in terms of not discarding voidness, meditating on voidness, reminding yourself of it six times a day. Hey, you’re supposed to be mindful of it all the time, so at least six times a day, please.
This is very, very important advice, that vows, discipline, are very, very important, and Tsongkhapa goes on and on about it. And saying that the best is if we are a monk or a nun, a fully ordained monk or nun. Why? Because Tsongkhapa was a monk and he wanted everybody to be a monk? No. He wanted more people to join the monastery? No. Why? Because it’s helpful. Why is it helpful? You have to think about it. Why is it helpful? Does it mean that I need to become a monk or a nun? I don’t know. You have to think about that. He’s saying that the best foundation, easiest foundation, for becoming enlightened is as a monk or a nun. You’re aiming for individual liberation; you’re not impeded by other concerns.
Is it possible to achieve enlightenment as a householder? Yes. Is it easier to achieve it as a householder? No, it’s not. The householders who have been able to achieve enlightenment — were they ordinary householders, like the people next door? No. Did they lead very, very special lives as householders? Yes. It doesn’t mean householder just equals somebody who owns a house and has a mortgage and has a wife or a husband and kids. We have to see things in a larger perspective. If there are those who have achieved enlightenment as a householder, there was a reason for being a householder and not being a monk or a nun; there was a benefit to it. The reason was not because they got somebody pregnant, or they were forced by their family, or they were driven by desire and attachment. Some purpose behind being a householder.
If you are going to achieve liberation and enlightenment, everything that you are doing is aimed toward that. It would have to be seen by such a person in that light, that they decide to remain a householder and not become a monk or a nun. It would be more beneficial. It will enable them to make more progress on the path and to benefit others more in that particular lifetime. Don’t use the excuse of “Marpa was a householder. I don’t really want to leave my girlfriend or boyfriend.” You’re really using it as an excuse for your attachment. Sounds pretty harsh, but that’s the way it is.
Then Tsongkhapa says: to practice tantra, you need to take empowerment. Take empowerment. A real connection with a spiritual teacher. A spiritual teacher, somebody that inspires you, somebody that guides you, somebody that provides a living example of what you’re trying to achieve.
We get later on in the text, Tsongkhapa speaks so much about how, when we understand voidness, it has to be in terms of not negating cause and effect, in terms of not negating the conventional reality, conventional truth, that we need to see the two inseparably, that they support each other — voidness and cause and effect; conventional truth, relative truth; whatever you want to call it. Relative truth supports or proves voidness; otherwise, it couldn’t function. Having a spiritual teacher connects us very much to conventional truth, because here you see a human being — whether you see that human being as a Buddha-figure or not, that’s something else, but you are relating to a person. That person, if you’re going to follow Zen, will hit you over the head with a stick if you say that “Nothing exists, and voidness just means nihilism, and therefore I can do whatever I want.”
Relating to a spiritual teacher on a person-to-person level reinforces and forces you to keep on the ground. No matter how far you go in terms of your voidness meditation, it is always in connection with an affirmation of conventional truth, cause and effect. You act like an idiot, your teacher’s going to yell at you and call you an idiot if they are a proper teacher. If you act properly, teacher will not praise you, pat you on the head. Of course, you’re supposed to act properly. It’s not to please the teacher. That’s not the point. Keeps you grounded. Very, very important.
So, we have empowerment. The empowerment awakens, in a sense, the Buddha-nature, the potentials. That’s the purpose of the empowerment. And to make a formal ceremony, a formal time, where you formally take the vows. It has a greater impact if you sort of make it into an event rather than just sort of “like that,” nothing.
The Generation and Complete Stages of Anuttarayoga Tantra
Then we have to follow the two stages of practice — generation, complete stage of practice — of the highest class of tantra. That’s very important to do it in the proper order, Tsongkhapa emphasizes again and again, since obviously there were people who did not do it in the proper order and thought they could forget about the generation stage. You can’t forget about the generation stage, in which we work with the imagination and train yourself so that you build up the causes to actually be able to work with the subtle energy-systems with perfect concentration — and of course the understanding of voidness, bodhichitta, renunciation, etc. — so that we can manipulate that subtle energy-system to allow us to access the subtlest level of consciousness and, out of the subtlest energy of that, focus non-conceptually on voidness and generate what will be the immediate cause for the physical bodies of a Buddha. Tsongkhapa speaks about that and how to visualize and a great deal of discussion on that.
Then for the complete stage, he just mentions that it’s dealing with the energy winds, channels, and energy drops, creative drops.
Voidness
Then he emphasizes that the understanding of voidness is the same in generation and complete stage, sutra and tantra, and for liberation or enlightenment — it’s all the same. And then he goes into a lengthy discussion on voidness, which is what we’ve been discussing. In that discussion, he said that there may be some that are able to understand based on very little practice because of the great deal of practice in previous lifetimes, and so they just need to sort of quiet down, and everything becomes clear. But that’s not going to be the case for the vast, vast majority, and so we need to rely on lines of reasoning.
He mentions the line of reasoning being parted from being either one or many. No need to repeat that at this point. It’s basically: if there were truly existent things, truly established things, there’d have to be either one such thing or many such things. When we’re talking about a basis for labeling and what’s being labeled on it (what the label refers to), they have to be either the same or different if they are truly existent things. If they’re the same, then there can be no difference; if they’re different, they can’t be related to each other. We have that discussion. He doesn’t go into it in great detail, just mentions it.
The Correct View of Voidness
But what he does go into great detail is that — aside from saying that we have to base our understanding of voidness on the great texts and the lines of reasoning that come from that (particularly Nagarjuna and his followers) — he talks about the big problem of not understanding voidness correctly and how we need to avoid the extreme of nihilism, of thinking that voidness is negating everything. Because if we negate everything, that things are not conventionally established…
I’ll try this again: If everything lacks truly established existence from its own side, establishing it as this or that from its own side, but you can only establish that it’s this or that in relation to what words and names and concepts refer to — not that there’s anything concrete out there in a plastic coating that corresponds to words and concepts — then you might mistakenly think “Then there is no this or that. Everything is an undifferentiated soup” or “Nothing exists.” We can go to either misinterpretation of that. Then we would think that there’s no such thing as bondage — which means being caught in samsara and suffering — you just have to say, “Nobody exists. There’s no suffering,” and then you’re out of suffering. That’s absurd. Even though we read statements — “There is no suffering. There is no mind. There are no eyes, no ears, no nose,” this sort of thing — in the Heart Sutra, it doesn’t mean that literally there is no such thing even conventionally.
Mental Labeling
We have to be very careful to understand that we are not saying that things lack individuality. They do have individuality. Things do have characteristic features. A cat is not a dog. However, what establishes that something is cat or a dog — that’s mental labeling, a definition, and so on, that is constructed conceptually by a mind that then categorizes and puts all these creatures into that category. Conventionally, yes, you can say that this one is not like that, but they’re not established as a cat or a dog by the power of those features themselves on the side of these animals.
One has to be very careful here. We’re not talking about what creates cats and dogs, what makes this a cat and a dog by its own power. What does that mean, to make something a cat or a dog by its own power? Does it mean that it creates that animal, it creates that particular lifetime of that mental continuum, of that being? What does it mean?
Participant: What does labeling mean?
Dr. Berzin: Yeah, what does labeling mean? What does it mean to say that things are — that’s why I use this expression, which is a very literal way of translating the Tibetan and the Sanskrit — truly established (bden-par grub-pa)? What establishes it? Siddha is the Sanskrit word — drup (sgrub) — it’s when you actualize. It’s the same word that’s used in sadhana (sgrub-thabs), “to actualize.” It comes from the same root. To actualize. What actualizes it? What establishes it? What proves it? It’s the same word that’s used for proof. What proves it? Not what creates it.
It gets more into epistemology. How do you know that it’s a cat or a dog? The only thing that I can say about it is that:
- Everybody agrees that it’s a cat and a dog.
- We have this convention cat and dog.
- It’s not truly cat or truly dog from its own side.
It’s not contradicted by someone that sees it. That’s not the case. It’s just by the power of the word. That’s a lot of verbiage, what I just said, so you have to cut through — what does that really mean? What does it really mean? If there was no concept of cat or dog, would this be a cat or a dog?
Participant: The dog could still bite us.
Dr. Berzin: The dog could still bite us. Does it matter whether it’s a cat or a dog? I don’t know. Does it matter that this person is a man or a woman? Ah, now we get a little bit more sensitive. Does it matter whether this food is edible or poison?
Participant: Does it matter to whom?
Dr. Berzin: Does it matter to whom? Yes. Does it matter to whom? Will it have an effect? Does it produce that effect? Does it really matter what we call this animal? These are interesting questions.
Participant: It changes the way that you relate to it.
Dr. Berzin: It changes the way that you relate to it.
Participant: It allows you to communicate about it.
Dr. Berzin: It allows you to communicate about it, yes. We have conventions. We have conventions. Is it a cat or a dog? Even if nobody called it a cat or a dog, is it a cat or a dog?
Participant: It depends on how you mean that. If at that time nobody calls it that, yes, it’s still a cat or a dog. If nobody ever came up with the concept, then I think that the question is meaningless.
Dr. Berzin: Ah, you got the right answer. Bingo. That’s the right answer. If there were no such thing as the concept of cat or dog, the question is irrelevant — is it still a cat or a dog? — because if you’re saying, “Is it still a cat or a dog?” that means that there’s the concept cat or dog.
Participant: There is the reference.
Dr. Berzin: There’s the reference. That’s the answer. That’s the answer. If we are just asking any question about cat or dog, we are dealing with a word or a concept.
Participant: What does it mean that the question is irrelevant?
Dr. Berzin: The question is irrelevant because if there was no such thing as a concept of cat or dog, then you can’t ask the question “Is it still a cat or a dog?” because then there’s the concept cat or dog. How can you have cat or dog without there being a concept or a word cat or dog?
Participant: Then you’d have to say you don’t understand the question.
Dr. Berzin: Right. That’s right. The problem is you don’t understand the question. You don’t understand the implication of the question. You don’t understand the relationship between words or labels and concepts and what they refer to.
The Referent Object and Referent Thing
The terminology is difficult here. I make a difference in terminology because there’s two different words in Tibetan. Firstly, there’s a referent object (btags-chos). When I say cat or dog there’s nothing on the basis. Remember, we have the basis for labeling. You have all the parts of the body and the mind, and what it’s thinking, and what it’s feeling, and all these sorts of thing — the basis for labeling. You have the label cat or dog. And then you have the referent object, what the cat or dog is referring to. That’s not the same as any of the parts. It’s sort of something like an illusion in between (and don’t take that literally in between, please).
Participant: It’s a hologram?
Dr. Berzin: Not a hologram, but it’s just… It’s not the basis; it’s not the word. It might seem as though it is truly established, existent there, but all you can say is that it’s what the word refers to.
Then, besides the referent object, there’s a word that I translate as referent thing (btags-don), which is what would correspond to it, sitting encapsulated in plastic. When we talk about voidness, what is absent is a referent thing, not a referent object.
Participant: I don’t get the point of what the referent object is.
Dr. Berzin: The referent object is a cat, a conventionally existent cat.
Participant: I mean, there’s the basis for the cat and there’s a label. What’s left? What can be the referent object?
Dr. Berzin: The cat itself. The cat is like an illusion because it seems to be a solidly existent thing all by itself, but it’s not: it is dependent on the label and the basis for labeling.
Participant: So, we have the label cat. Then we have all these parts of the cat. When I put all the parts of the cat together, then I have…
Dr. Berzin: A bunch of parts.
Participant: A bunch of parts.
Dr. Berzin: He’s saying (I’m just repeating for the recording): We have the label cat. We have all the parts of a cat — parts of a cat, that’s already a loaded term — we have all these parts. Then you put it together, and then what do you have? You have a collection of parts. Then what?
Participant: Where should it be between these two, between the parts and… There’s the concept and the parts. Where is the referent object? I don’t get this point.
Dr. Berzin: Where’s the referent object? The referent object can’t be found.
Participant: OK, the referent object is just an illusion.
Dr. Berzin: Is like a dream.
Participant: Like an illusion. OK.
Dr. Berzin: Like an illusion.
Participant: So a referent thing is a speculative findable referent object.
Dr. Berzin: Right. A referent thing would be a findable, concretely existing thing out there that we are… Like a blank cassette. Some philosophical systems will say it’s there like a blank cassette, and we are labeling onto it that it is a cat. Or that it is not a blank cassette: it really is a cat (it has the features of it, the characteristic features) and we’re just latching on to that so that our label fits. Two views.
Participant: Neither are correct.
Dr. Berzin: Neither are correct.
Participant: OK. The referent thing I understand, but still, what is the referent object?
Dr. Berzin: The referent object is what Tsongkhapa is going on and on and on about to not refute it. That is what conventionally exists.
Participant: Basically, it’s the thing that you set out analyzing.
Dr. Berzin: It’s the thing that you set out analyzing? It is the basis for what you analyze. What you analyze is the appearance of a referent thing that you project and superimpose onto the referent object. Did you follow that or is that too many words? Something like an illusion, and you project onto it that it’s a real thing. A dream, and you project onto it that it is a real person.
Participant: What’s the difference between the referent object and the basis for labeling?
Dr. Berzin: What’s the difference between the referent object and the basis for labeling? Ah. If they were both truly existent, they would be either one truly existent thing or totally unrelated two different things.
Participant: If one does not talk about it as a truly existent thing, but it’s not truly existent…
Dr. Berzin: As not truly existent things…
Participant: What is the difference between…
Dr. Berzin: What is the difference? It’s the difference between the hand and the body. That didn’t come out correctly. I’ll take that back. That’s not a good analogy.
What is the difference? Yeah, the basis for labeling itself is a referent object of… It’s not that there is a basis for labeling existing as a basis for labeling. You can only have a basis of labeling in relation to a label, in relation to an object of labeling; it doesn’t exist independently of a label and an object of labeling. What establishes it as a basis for labeling is labeling.
The Basis, the Label, and the Referent Object (the Three Spheres)
Now you have the three spheres: the basis, the label, and what the label refers to, if you want to interpret the three spheres that way — there are many ways of interpreting it (the person who does an action (1), the object of the action (2), and the action (3) is the usual way) — but all these things are interdependent. These two are not the same — this is what we have to understand — they’re neither the same nor totally different.
Participant: Which two things?
Dr. Berzin: The basis for labeling and the referent object of the label. If you think neither one nor many, then you have to go there. OK, neither one nor many is not only in terms of truly existent things being neither one nor many but also in terms of non-truly-established things. Now you start to get very, very subtle. Are they identical? What does identical mean?
Participant: They cannot be identical.
Dr. Berzin: They can’t be identical. Two things can’t be identical. Are they different? They’re different but not unrelated. Are they two related things encapsulated in plastic? No.
Participant: Isn’t the relation between the basis for labeling and the referent of the label… For example, the conventional basis of voidness and voidness. They are like two ways of looking at something, and it can’t be separate completely.
Dr. Berzin: Right. OK. That’s very good. Aren’t they like two ways of looking for something, a basis for voidness and the… On a basis for voidness, you can impute its voidness; you can also impute its conventional identity. Is there such a thing existing by itself as a basis for voidness and a basis for conventional identity? No. It is only a basis for voidness and a basis for a conventional identity in terms of the fact that it is valid that you have voidness and conventional identity imputed on it. Does somebody have to impute it? No. Neither you, nor me, nor God has to impute it in order for it to be so.
Participant: I wanted to check if I understand this. Maybe with an object, something without a mind, it’s easier, like the typical example with a table…
Dr. Berzin: OK, let’s use the table — without a mind. It’s an easier object, he says.
Participant: You have the label t-a-b-l-e.
Dr. Berzin: We have the label. Now you’re spelling it (t-a-b-l-e). Or we can have meaningless sounds that somebody — “TE AH BLLL” — that some cavemen put together and decided that it’s a word.
Participant: Then you have the basis. But the basis sounds to me like it’s physics, in a way. It’s physical stuff.
Dr. Berzin: The basis is what?
Participant: It’s physics.
Dr. Berzin: It’s physics.
Participant: It’s physical stuff.
Dr. Berzin: It’s physical stuff. But remember Shantideva’s analysis of the body, that the body is made up of limbs, and the limbs are made of fingers, and the fingers are made of parts of fingers, and atoms, and so on.
Participant: Fine. Then there’s an external, inherent, independent existence. But, in a way, you could say it’s — maybe my understanding is incorrect — you could still say that the basis is physics and maybe that the referent object is like a mental construct, which is also social, because you can share it, and you can…
Dr. Berzin: He’s saying the basis is physics and the referent is social, a mental construct which is shared. What do you mean, the basis is physics?
Participant: The basis for labeling is these atoms, this collection.
Participant: It’s real things.
What is the Basis for Nonmaterial Things, like Love and Honor?
Participant: You have objects which have no basis. If you say, for instance, honor or something, then you don’t have a [material] basis.
Participant: I mean for material products.
Dr. Berzin: For material things? But material things — like a table — you have a material basis. But I would question that as well. Come on, you more than anybody should know that, that atoms are made of little parts, and the parts and force fields, and you go deeper and deeper and deeper. Do we actually have strings there, from string theory, or what do we have? But then she’s pointing out that there are nonmaterial things, like honor.
Participant: Like love.
Dr. Berzin: Love, etc. What’s the basis?
Participant: You cannot hold this position that the basis is some physics.
Participant: Could one say its causes and conditions? Something assembles…
Dr. Berzin: Causes and conditions assemble honor?
Participant: Love. What is the basis for love? It’s nothing physical.
Participant: There are conditions. There has to be a mind that is generating that feeling.
Dr. Berzin: What is the basis for love? This is a very good example. What is the basis for love? There’s the definition, the wish for others — if we take Buddhist love — the wish for others to be happy and to have the causes for happiness. OK, that’s the definition. What’s the basis?
Participant: A mental continuum.
Dr. Berzin: Just a mental continuum? No, it has to be a way of being aware of something. A way of being aware of something implies a consciousness. It implies a mental continuum with that consciousness; it’s a mental factor that accompanies it. It implies an object, has to have an object, directed at something, or directed unaimed (that means sort of universally or without a specified object, you’re vague about it, but there’s some object). Each moment obviously we would say conventionally you feel something, and what I feel and what you feel could be quite different, and yet we have this defining characteristic.
Is this defining characteristic — where is it? Somebody made it up. There was a convention, wasn’t there, that we all have so many feelings, and everybody has their feelings, and how are we going to talk about it? If you didn’t have… Does the mother bird have love for the baby birds? Yeah. Does the mother bird have a name for it, a concept for it? Probably not. Does the mother bird feel love? Ah. We have defined it. Based on that, can we call just anything love? No.
Participant: The Buddhist idea of love and the Western idea are almost completely different.
Dr. Berzin: Right. The Buddhist idea and the Western ideas of love are completely different. Yes. But we’re just sticking to one definition — you want to call it maitri (Skt. maitrī)? You want to call it by a Sanskrit word? — whatever you want to call it, it doesn’t matter. It’s a very interesting point. There are defining characteristics. Then they can be given many different words in different languages. And even the defining characteristics, if you translate it into a different language, might come out sounding quite different.
Are there feelings? Yes, there are feelings, but they become very amorphous now, don’t they? Do you feel something? Whether I give it a name or not, I feel something. Is it love? You can only ask the question if you have the concept of love. Is it love if you didn’t have the concept love, if the concept love didn’t exist? How can you ask that question? That’s like saying, if there never were dinosaurs, “Are there dinosaurs?” It doesn’t make any sense.
What is love?
Participant: It’s a label for a feeling.
Dr. Berzin: It’s what a label refers to. It’s not the label.
Participant: But it’s probably not even the same feeling.
Dr. Berzin: It’s not the same feeling. Aha. Now we get into categories and individual things. Conceptual thought — which often is with words, but not exclusively with words — is dealing with categories, category of love. When I feel love and you feel love, is it the same thing? No. Are they two totally different things? No. How are they related? Are they two truly existent things that are related to each other? Remember our model from the Nyaya (Skt. Nyāya) school of these toy sets where you have two blocks connected with sticks and stuff — is it like that, that we have two truly existent things that are interdependent and related to each other? No. What is it like?
Now, you can say, “It’s beyond words, beyond concepts, beyond imagination.” Thank you very much. That doesn’t really help, does it? But it is beyond words — by definition it’s beyond words — it’s beyond imagination, it’s beyond concepts. Therefore, it is hard to imagine. You can’t imagine it. What are we talking about? Just because you can’t really imagine it… You could imagine some approximation, perhaps. What’s the closest approximation? Like an illusion. What else?
But this is Tsongkhapa’s point. Just because it’s so difficult doesn’t mean that there’s no such thing as conventional objects (conventional objects referring to referent objects, to words and concepts). However, there are no referent things — thingies — out there.
Dreams
Participant: In the same way, when we have a dream, we react to the dream, we think things about what we’re seeing, but it’s not there.
Dr. Berzin: Right. Like dreams, we think that it’s there, you react to it, but it’s not there. However, Shantideva makes a strong point that it is not the equivalent to dreams: it is like. Killing somebody when you are awake and killing somebody in a dream is not the same.
Participant: But who gives the proof, then, that it is not the same?
Dr. Berzin: Who gives the proof?
Participant: The police.
Dr. Berzin: The police. Thank you. Who gives the proof? How do you prove it? That becomes an interesting question. If a Zen master smacks you over the head with a stick while you are in a dream, does it still hurt?
Participant: It could hurt you so much that you wake up.
Dr. Berzin: It could hurt you so much that you wake up. That could be taken on both levels, of course. I don’t know if you were meaning to be cute by saying that.
Participant: The effect makes the difference.
Dr. Berzin: The effect makes the difference. The effect makes a difference. You will get a black and blue mark. You could get a black and blue mark in a dream, but that would go away. When you’re awake, the black and blue mark isn’t going to just…
Participant: You can only verify it in retrospect.
Dr. Berzin: You verify it by retrospect, by witnesses. There could be other people in your dreams seeing you being hit, and they will verify and say, “Boy, you were hit! That must have hurt.”
Participant: Sometimes I dream that I wake up out of a dream, and then I think “Oh, the dream is over.” Then, after a while, some really horrible things happen, and then I wake up from that dream.
Dr. Berzin: Right. Sometimes you have this experience — I’ve had the experience many times — of you dream within a dream. You wake up from one level of the dream, and you’re just in another level of a dream. That can be a metaphor for our ordinary life, of course. All right. he lovely saying of Zhuangzi, the Daoist philosopher of China: Once Zhuangzi dreamt that he was a butterfly, and then he didn’t know whether he was Zhuangzi dreaming that he was a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming he was Zhuangzi. Yes, it could be either.
Participant: Back to the question.
Dr. Berzin: Back to the question.
Participant: Both things would be destructive.
Dr. Berzin: Both things would be destructive. Right. Killing in a dream and killing awake are both destructive phenomena, destructive actions. They both lead to suffering. But because the basis is not complete for killing in a dream (in other words, you don’t generate suffering in the person that you kill in the dream), the karmic consequences will be much less. Doesn’t mean there will be no karmic consequences. If you’re killing in a dream, you’re generating anger and hostility, and so on.
Participant: It would be the same as if you’d thought about it, I would think.
Dr. Berzin: It would be the same as if you thought about it? Slightly different. Slightly different if you imagined it. You’d have to visualize just to intend to do it but not do it. There’s a different karmic situation. I don’t know technically whether you imagine and visualize it or you dream it, what would be the difference. Dreaming is nonconceptual; imagining is conceptual. There must be some difference there.
Participant: As far as I understand the Buddhist teachings of dreams in tantra, it’s that dreams for unliberated people are karmic patterns.
Dr. Berzin: Yeah. Dreams are karmic patterns. Yes, that’s obvious. That’s not just in tantra.
Participant: They come from your thoughts and your actions anyway. You are responsible for them.
Dr. Berzin: Right. They come from your thoughts and actions; you’re responsible for them. Of course, karmically you’re responsible for them. That’s not just exclusive to tantra; that’s general.
Question about the Terminology of the Three Spheres Applied to Mental Labeling
Participant: Again, a question about the relation between the basis for labeling and the referent of the label. You said that there’s an explanation of the three spheres that they’re in: the basis, the label, and what the label refers to. Is it always explained like that? The terminology suggests, which is of course a bit troublesome, that there is the basis for labeling, and you stick the label on it. But I find that a bit delicate.
Dr. Berzin: Right. He’s just pointing out that I mentioned that you could apply the terminology of the three spheres, the voidness of the three spheres, to the basis for labeling, the label, and the referent object of the label. It’s not usually referred to by the three spheres, but I’m just saying that it’s analogous to it, because the three are totally interdependent; they dependently arise together.
Participant: Is it explained somewhere like that?
Dr. Berzin: His Holiness I’ve heard explain… Not use the three spheres, but he explained very clearly (that’s where I’m getting this from) that you can’t have a basis of labeling without there being a mental label — it arises dependently on the basis — in his explanation of dependent arising, that they exist only in relation to each other. Although when you hear mental labeling, it sounds as though there is a blank cassette over there, a basis for labeling, and then some guy comes along, scratches his head, and thinks “Oh, I’ll call it a table,” and then bam! labels it a table, and then it becomes all of a sudden, a table. That’s out of a cartoon.
Participant: The dependency of those three spheres is voidness, right?
Dr. Berzin: The dependency of those three spheres is voidness. Yes. The two are two sides of the coin. That’s exactly what Tsongkhapa is emphasizing. Voidness means the interdependency of these three spheres. These three spheres are interdependent because they are void of existing encapsulated in plastic by themselves. They are devoid of existing encapsulated in plastic by themselves, therefore they dependently arise, they dependently arise with each other.
Participant about the Basis for Labeling
Participant: The description of these things — basis for labeling — aren’t they just basically a collection of things that sentient beings do? I mean, it’s a collection of what the sentient being’s mind does; it has basis for labeling.
Dr. Berzin: Isn’t our basis for labeling, you say, a collection of what various beings do? Well…
Participant: Or seem to do.
Dr. Berzin: Or seem to do. I’m not quite sure. I mean, do you go out and collect a thousand animals and then “Now I’ve collected them, and now I’m going to call them all dog”?
Participant: In other words, for a Buddha — they would use basis of labeling to communicate with the sentient beings.
Dr. Berzin: Right. Buddhas use basis of labeling and labels to communicate. Yes. You can’t communicate without words.
Participant: What they communicate is the referent object?
Dr. Berzin: What they communicate, the words that they… Now you get into a whole relation of words and meanings and do the words have referent objects to them. Yes. Buddhas are talking about conventional objects. Whether it’s a Buddha or whether it’s you and me, we’re talking about conventional…
Participant: Conventional object is synonymous with referent object.
Dr. Berzin: Right. Conventional object is synonymous with referent object. Referent things — “thingies,” with quotation marks around it — encapsulated in plastic, is what is to be refuted.
Participant: When you talk about the basis for labeling, then you don’t…
Dr. Berzin: When you talk about a basis for labeling, yeah?
Participant: Then you talk about the not-truly-existent basis.
Dr. Berzin: We’re talking about the not-truly-existent basis for labeling, yes. Because the basis for labeling is imputed on parts, and that’s imputed on parts, and those parts arise from causes and conditions, and blah blah blah — you can deconstruct forever.
Participant: The referent thing would be the truly existent…
Dr. Berzin: Referent thing would be a truly existent whatever — basis, object, whatever.
Participant: Which isn’t.
Participant: It doesn’t exist at all.
Dr. Berzin: Which isn’t, doesn’t exist at all. You could have the category truly existent things, but it is like a null set: there are no members of that set.
Participant: Like a unicorn.
Dr. Berzin: Like unicorn.
Participant: The category has a referent object, but the referent doesn’t exist — or how would you express that?
Dr. Berzin: The category does not have a referent object. It doesn’t have a… This is what the non-Gelugpa schools are always harping on, what they’re always emphasizing…
Participant: Yeah, but that’s weird.
Dr. Berzin: That you have a solid thing, an actual nonexistent thing, as if you could have a thing, a thing out there, that is nonexistent (namely, voidness). They say that you have to refute truly established things and truly-not-established things.
Participant: Probably they say that voidness as explained by Gelug is just another fabrication.
Dr. Berzin: Right. They say that voidness explained by a Gelugpa is a conceptual understanding, is a conceptual formulation of voidness, because it’s still with words and concepts, and therefore you are stuck in that there is some referent thing, voidness. Therefore, you have to go to what they call voidness beyond words, beyond concepts.
It’s like this. You have the tetralemma of nonexistent, not nonexistent, not both, not either. The Gelugpas say that’s sufficient. The non-Gelugpas will say, “All of that, that tetralemma — you have to go beyond that. Because if you say that that’s voidness, that is a concept. Now you have voidness, not voidness, both, neither, and you have to go yet another quantum step, another level, above that.”
Tsongkhapa comes back and says, “This is the third man argument, that you can go on… You know, like infinite rebirths.” It’s beyond imagination. Well, that’s a thing. It’s within the realm of imagination, beyond the realm of imagination, both, or neither, and it’s none of them, so let’s go to yet another level. You can go on ad infinitum like that. Tsongkhapa says, “Forget it! One level is enough.”
Both sides have a point here. You can certainly make a thingy out of voidness, a nothingness, and that reduces to nihilism.
Participant: Not to eternalism?
Dr. Berzin: To eternalism of nothing, the Big Nothing. Which is not so far-fetched. How about people who think “After I die, it’s just a nothing.”
Participant: Most people think that.
Dr. Berzin: Most people think that.
Participant: I am that nothing.
Dr. Berzin: “I am that nothing.” Then we identify with being a solidly existent me that now is identical to a nothing, and that is frightening as anything.
Participant: That’s considered a rational idea.
Dr. Berzin: That’s considered a rational idea. Right. Whether I am one with the universe or one with nothing, there’s still a me.
Participant: That’s the funny part.
Dr. Berzin: That’s funny, isn’t it? It’s important not to look at this whole discussion in a way that is dissociated from the way that we actually view things and believe things. How do you apply this? We were talking about love, which is a very good example to deconstruct. However, I think it can be equally helpful, if not more helpful, to deconstruct suffering. What is suffering? “Oh, I had such a terrible day.”
Participant: There’s a wrong concept.
Dr. Berzin: That’s a concept. Did you have a terrible day? What was the terrible day? What is the definition of a terrible day? Did it occur every moment, or were there some moments when it wasn’t so terrible? What is a terrible day? Does that mean that you say, “No! It wasn’t a terrible day.” Maybe it was a terrible day. Is it conventionally valid? Yes. Everybody else would say you had a terrible day. Your dog died and all sorts of things happened that day. That was a terrible day. But we make a big thing out of it.
How does this help us? It teaches us on a practical level: don’t make a big deal out of anything.
The Understanding of Voidness Reaffirms Ethical Discipline and the Practices of Sutra and Tantra
Participant: You can’t have attachment if you understand it’s void.
Dr. Berzin: You can’t have attachment if you understand voidness. That’s right. Attachment, anger — all the disturbing emotions are based on belief in truly established existence. Then I have to get this in order to make me secure or happy, or I have to get rid of this in order to get rid of pain or unhappiness.
Participant: What you said earlier about ethical discipline: You would have ethical discipline if you understood voidness. You wouldn’t be greedy.
Dr. Berzin: Right. If you had… Ah, that’s a very good point. If you understood voidness, you would have ethical discipline because you would… Ethical discipline. There are three types of ethical discipline:
[1] You would have the first kind, which is to avoid destructive behavior, because destructive behavior is based on disturbing emotions.
[2] You would engage in constructive things.
Why would you engage in constructive things?
Participant: Because you know the end result.
Dr. Berzin: Because you understood cause and effect and that you would want to achieve the result, but without attachment to it and making a thingy out of it.
[3] And the ethical discipline to help others because you see the interrelatedness of everybody, interdependence of everybody.
Voidness would help with all three types of ethical discipline, not just the discipline involved with vows to avoid negative behavior, destructive behavior.
Participant: Ethics comes from seeing the way reality is.
Dr. Berzin: Ethics comes from seeing the way reality is — in terms of voidness, not in terms of “Here are laws carved in stone, and I’ve seen the reality of the laws written on stone, and therefore I will follow.”
Participant: A lot of people think you’re following laws.
Dr. Berzin: Right. Ethics in Buddhism is not based on obedience to laws.
Anyway, that brings us to the end of the class. We haven’t actually gone further in the text, but I think that it’s important to get a better foundation in understanding of this whole issue — voidness, dependent arising, etc. — and see that it is practical advice for sutra and tantra. Why is it practical advice for sutra and tantra? Sutra and tantra is explaining the whole path of practices. If you thought voidness meant nihilism, why in the world would you have to practice anything? What you are saying, that the understanding of voidness reaffirms ethical discipline — it also reaffirms actually doing the practices of sutra and tantra, and meditating, and following cause and effect, the steps in the proper order. You have to bring it all back to the main theme.
Confidence in the Four Noble Truths
Participant: If you accept that you’re deluded by not seeing voidness, then you would do these practices.
Dr. Berzin: If you accept that you are deluded because of not seeing voidness, then you would do the practice. OK. That goes way, way back to the beginning, which is confidence, understanding and confidence, in the four noble truths:
- Recognizing suffering, true suffering. What really is the suffering situation?
- What really is the cause of it?
- Is it really possible to stop it? Is there such a thing?
- And is there really a way to cause it to stop?
If you don’t have that as your basis, what in the world are you doing with Buddhist practice?
Real confidence in the four noble truths is not an easy thing to attain. We’ve discussed this, and it was very difficult to really describe what does it mean that I really believe that this is true. What does it mean to say that? What does it mean to feel that? It’s not sort of “Halleluiah! Now I believe.”
Participant: This term belief is terrible.
Dr. Berzin: The term belief is terrible.
Participant: In German it’s even worse.
Dr. Berzin: Right. In German it’s even worse. Glaube. Again, it’s a word. Does it refer to something? Do we want to talk about something else, and can we give a different word to it? Is there something — confidence, belief, whatever. Is there a basis for labeling this?
Participant: Of course.
Dr. Berzin: Of course, there’s a basis. What is it? What’s the difference between the basis and the referent object of confidence or belief? Aha. Now you start to apply all of this.
What comes up to my mind, which maybe is irrelevant, is rectification of names (zhengming). This is a very important concept in Confucian thinking — Confucius, Kongzi in Chinese — that a father should be a father, and a son should be a son, and a ruler is a ruler, and subject a subject, and everything accords to what their name is.
Participant: What is it in German?
Dr. Berzin: What’s rectification in German? I don’t know. Rectification. Make the name and the referent fit, and then everything will be in order. Gültig machen or something.
Participant: Like putting it straight.
Dr. Berzin: Putting it straight. That implies that there is the basis, and you just have to find the right word for it. And if the word has a definition, then you have to find something, a basis, that has that defining characteristic, and then you put it together. Sounds very Svatantrika (Skt. Svātantrika), doesn’t it? It’s not like that.
Could we call it anything? As long as there’s a convention. But conventions have to be reasonable, not just something that somebody crazy made up. But then you get very difficult difficulties there: If a group of crazy people decides on a convention, is it valid? Is it valid for them? Who is it valid for? Then you get into the whole discussion of: For hungry ghosts it’s pus, and for humans it’s water, and for gods it’s nectar. All three are valid. Is it anything from its own side? No.
Participant: That’s the world we live in. Crazy people have decided what the conventions are.
Dr. Berzin: Right. That’s the world we live in. Crazy people have decided these are the conventions. That’s a Milarepa saying, isn’t it? The world thinks that Milarepa’s crazy, but I think the world is crazy. We have that.
You have these teachings on voidness and dependent-arising and labeling. Then you need to apply it. Apply it and analyze different things. See how it applies. See how when I don’t understand it, it causes me problems. Trace the true cause of problems — the second noble truth — what’s the cause, what’s the confusion here? OK?
Let’s end with a dedication. We think that whatever understanding has come from this, whatever positive force, may it go deeper and deeper and act as a cause to reach enlightenment for the benefit of all.