LTF 36: Last 3 Distorted Views of True Paths; the “Me” & Appearance-Making

We dealt with the first one, which is: 

[1] Holding that there is no such thing as a pathway mind leading to liberation. 

Now we are ready to look at these last three of these. 

The second of these distorted ways of embracing the four noble truths is: 

[2] Holding that the pathway mind of meditation on the lack of an impossible soul is inappropriate.

This is saying that meditating on there being no such thing as this impossible soul, this impossible “me,” is inappropriate or – to look at it in a broader sense, in the Mahayana sense – that meditating on voidness is inappropriate, that it is not appropriate for bringing about a true stopping of true suffering and true origins. 

These four aspects, actually, are quite related to each other. There’s not much of a different discussion with each of them. Each of them is just explained from a different point of view. 

It is the discriminating awareness of the second aspect of these true pathway minds that helps us to overcome this wrong view, which is to realize that the non-conceptual discriminating awareness of a lack of an impossible soul is an appropriate means for stopping true sufferings and true origins forever. So, it is appropriate.

Why Non-Conceptual Cognition of Voidness Is the Appropriate Means for Bringing about True Stoppings

In order to understand that this non-conceptual discriminating awareness is actually appropriate means that we have to understand what we said about the true origins of suffering – that they are the factors that produce more throwing karma and that activate throwing karma. They just perpetuate rebirth with these type of aggregates – a body and mind – that form the basis for the ups and downs of the suffering of suffering and the suffering of change (our ordinary happiness). And what is behind the things that activate throwing karma – craving (thirsting) and the obtainer attitudes – is grasping for an impossible soul, an impossible “me,” in terms of persons or, to take it on broader level, grasping for an impossible way of existing of all things, of all phenomena. 

So, when we understand that there is no such thing as these impossible ways of existing, which is the understanding of voidness, we see that that understanding is appropriate, that it fits what’s causing the problems. In other words, this correct view is the exact opposite of the incorrect one; they are mutually exclusive of each other. Either you believe that things exist in that impossible way, or you believe that that’s impossible, that they don’t exist in that way. Either the mind makes an appearance of these impossible ways of existing or the mind doesn’t. So, the mind that understands that there is no such thing and that doesn’t produce appearances of these impossible ways of existing is appropriate for bringing about a stopping of the exact opposite, incorrect understanding because they are mutually exclusive. You can’t have one if you have the other. Do you follow that?

Participant: I am lost.

Dr. Berzin: You’re lost. OK, tell me what you are lost about so I can explain it a little bit more clearly. 

Participant: I don’t know. I didn’t follow you. I was just…

Dr. Berzin: Spaced out. So, either you believe in an impossible way of existing, or you don’t believe in it. Either the mind makes an appearance of this impossible way or it doesn’t make an appearance of this impossible way. Those two are mutually exclusive. So, if you have a mind that understands that there is no such thing as this impossible way, that it doesn’t refer to anything real, and then the mind cuts it off (cuts it off with that understanding of voidness and with conviction based on logic) and doesn’t make that appearance – such a mind is appropriate for getting rid of the mind that both makes an appearance of what’s impossible and believes in it. So, the understanding of voidness is appropriate for achieving a true stopping of suffering and its causes. That’s the point.

Participant: But is there not a middle position where you’re convinced there is not such a thing as a self, or the soul, but still appearance arises?

Dr. Berzin: OK. So, isn’t there a middle thing – that you are convinced that there is no such thing, but still, the appearances arise? Well, yes. That’s exactly the situation why we have a difference between the total absorption on voidness and the subsequent attainment, or subsequent realization – these two phases. In other words, when you are totally absorbed, what does it mean to be totally absorbed? It means that you are just totally absorbed on “no such thing,” and then there is no appearance. That’s why it is so important to understand these negation phenomena – that when you meditate on “no such thing,” you focus on “no such thing.” What does it actually mean to focus on “no such thing”? You just become so absorbed in that, that, in a sense, initially, you just sort of ignore the appearances that are around you. Then as you focus on “no such thing” more and more, the appearances become less and less and less. As you become totally focused on “no such thing,” the mind stops making any appearance at all of what’s impossible; it’s just “no such thing.” 

But then, subsequent to that, when you are no longer totally absorbed on that voidness, when you are walking around or when you are meditating on something else or while you are still sitting there and are in the next phase of the meditation when you are no longer focused on “no such thing,” then, everything is like an illusion, it says. In other words, the mind still will make these appearances of impossible existence, but you don’t believe in it. So, that’s like an illusion – that things appear to be solid, but you know they’re not. That image in the mirror appears to be me, but I know that’s not me; that’s not my body. So, it’s like that.

Why this understanding is an appropriate way to get rid of the appearance of truly established existence completely is because, if you could stay focused on “no such thing” a hundred percent all the time, that appearance would never arise again. And it’s only if you can do this with the subtlest level of mind, the clear light mind, that at the same time, the mind can make appearances of things without projecting a solid line around them. But that’s only possible with the subtlest level of mind. In the sutra system, that only happens when you are a Buddha. 

So, it works like that. It’s not very easy to imagine what that would be like, but at least we can appreciate what’s going on and have some sort of logical conviction, at least, that the understanding of voidness would be an appropriate way to get rid of the cause of suffering and, therefore, suffering itself. 

What prevents liberation – to use the Prasangika system – is the belief that these appearances of what’s impossible actually correspond to reality. That’s what causes the suffering of samsara. That’s because, according to the Prasangika system, an arhat’s mind still makes appearances of truly established existence; it just doesn’t believe in them and, consequently, doesn’t experience any suffering. 

What prevents us from being able to benefit everybody like a Buddha is that our minds make things appear to exist in these impossible ways, as if they existed in boxes, disconnected from everything else. And even though we don’t believe that that’s the way things exist, nevertheless, those appearances limit our minds; they prevent our minds from seeing the interconnectedness of everything. It is important to see the interconnectedness of everything, particularly in terms of cause and effect. We would need to know what all the causes are for somebody being the way they are, for experiencing what they’re experiencing, for having the type of delusions that they have, and what the result would be from teaching them this or that, so that, as Buddhas, we can choose the best way to help them. Otherwise, it is very difficult to know what will be not only the immediate effect but the long-term effect of teaching them. Teaching something to somebody will affect not just that person but also everybody that that person interacts with as a result of what we’ve taught them. So, we would have to know what kind of influence they will have on other people as well. That’s a big responsibility. So, to be able to do that, we need to get our minds to stop making these appearances, these limiting appearances, which is why “sentient being” is literally someone with a “limited” mind. A Buddha is not a sentient being. Everybody else, including an arhat, is a sentient being. So, that’s the explanation.

Therefore, if we are convinced…. The whole point of all of this is to be convinced that gaining the non-conceptual cognition of voidness is the real antidote, the real pathway mind that will bring about this stopping. And it needs to be non-conceptual. The difference between a conceptual cognition of something – a conceptual focus on something and a non-conceptual focus – is whether or not there is a category as an intermediary between the consciousnesses and the object. In other words, are we thinking of voidness through the category of voidness? 

Thinking in Terms of Categories Necessarily Means Giving Rise to Appearances of True Existence

Categories can be words, like the word “voidness.” We have a concept of the word “voidness,” and that’s a conceptual category. The voidness of the table, the voidness of the book, the voidness of my body, the voidness of me are all examples that we would fit into this category “voidness.” So, we’re thinking of it in terms of a category. It can be a word, but it can also be a meaning of a word. We don’t actually have to say the word in our heads; it could just be the meaning. It could just be a mental picture of something. In other words, the category could be just a general category that represents voidness as a particular, individual thing. So, that’s conceptual. We shouldn’t limit our idea of what conceptual thinking is to just verbal thinking; it’s much more general than that. And, in fact, that’s the way we think all the time. We can’t think except in terms of categories. 

When we think in terms of categories, we automatically have an appearance of truly established existence, of this solid existence. So, even if we focus on voidness, on “no such thing,” that absence, that “no such thing,” becomes a category that then takes on an appearance of truly established existence – a truly existent blank, a truly existent nothing. Often it can be a mental image of darkness that represents voidness. That’s a category. The mental image appears to be a solidly existing nothing. 

This is very, very difficult – to go from a conceptual focus on voidness to a non-conceptual one, which is not through a category. In fact, it is hard to even imagine what that would be like. In the non-Gelugpa systems, they simply describe it as beyond words and beyond concepts.

Participant: You mean that the mind can’t think at all? Nothing?

Dr. Berzin: It’s not that you don’t think at all. You think of nothing. And when you think of nothing, that nothing seems to be a something. 

Participant: Is there anything in our current state of mind that we experience in a non-conceptual way?

Dr. Berzin: Yes. What we experience with sense consciousness – seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and feeling physical sensations – but only the first micro-second of that. After the first micro-second, the mind makes it into an object, into a thing, which you then identify with the category that it fits into – “table,” “chair,” “book,” or if you don’t know what it is, “thing.” So, it’s very, very difficult to identify this non-conceptual cognition. Extremely difficult. 

Participant: How about in sensory perception, something that you see, but you have no idea what it is, how far away it is, what color it is. You’re kind of completely lost as to what you’re seeing. You just open your eyes, and something is there, but you can’t identify it; you have no clue what it is.

Dr. Berzin: OK. So, what happens when you open your eyes and see that there is something there, but you can’t identify it; you have no clue what it is? That probably is still conceptual because it is a concept of something that I don’t know what it is. And then there is even a valid way of knowing, which is to know, “In order to know what it is, I have to have a better look. I see some blur down there, and I recognize, I know, that in order to know what it is, I’m going to have to go closer. To read that sign, I have to get closer.” So, that’s valid. That’s a category. “This is something; I don’t recognize what it is.” 

In other words, it is very, very quick. Now, it is possible in meditation to slow down enough so that you can notice that. In dzogchen meditation, for example, which is unbelievably difficult to do, you try to get to that micro instant to see what’s underlying it. But that’s unbelievably difficult. “I look at you, and I see a person, I see a body, I see a face.” That’s conceptual. 

Now, there is a lot of disagreement here between the Gelugpa presentation and the non-Gelugpa presentation. Non-Gelugpa would say that you see only colored shapes. Then there is one person within that that says you see only pixels of light, of color. They would say that you don’t see a face, that a face is conceptual. Gelugpa would say that’s just too extreme, too radical; you have to say that you see a face. You can’t just say that you see patches of color, that there are just patches of colored shapes out there. You have to say there are faces, there are bodies. But, still, after a micro-second, you are seeing it in terms of a category. 

In other words, the question is, is there really a face out there, is there really a body out there? Or are there only colored shapes? A face, of course, is not just colored shapes. If I were blind and I touched your face, I would also think “face”; I’d also know “face.” So, a face is not just the visual information. It’s a construct from the different senses. So, from that point of view, the non-Gelugpas say that the object itself, which pervades over all the senses – the sense information – endures over time, is a mental construct. That’s because, after all, we only see one moment at a time. We don’t see five minutes of something; we only see one moment. So, it’s a construct that there is an object that endures over time. Gelugpa says that’s too radical; you’d have to say that there is an object. Otherwise, the world would become too fragmented, too schizophrenic. These are very difficult issues, actually.

Participant: We are so used to conceptual thinking, so that even when we think we know or understand about non-conceptual, we have a concept of non-conceptual.

Dr. Berzin: That’s right. That’s right. We are so used to conceptual thinking that if we talk about non-conceptual cognition, actually, we are talking about a concept of what non-conceptuality is. Yes. That’s why non-Gelugpa always uses the terminology “beyond words and beyond concepts.” Words and concepts imply that things fit in the box of that word. In the dictionary – in this box – there is this word, and it fits in that box. There are no boxes. The boxes are mental constructs. 

Participant: But how can we teach or get information… come closer?

Dr. Berzin: Well, that’s just the point – that you need these categories in order to communicate. Without them, you can’t communicate. Then it becomes a very interesting thing. I wish Jorge were here. He gave me a book about information theory in which it says that information is something, that it has a size shape and all of these sorts of things… weight. Those are physical properties of something. But then information is also a thing that communicates out. So, is it a construct? Is it in the object? I don’t know. We’ll have to wait till Jorge comes and discuss that a little bit further since that’s something that he studies. Is information just a mental construct? I don’t know. But we get all this information. This becomes a whole philosophical discussion. Is there an object sitting there that is sending out information, or do we just construct the object from the information? 

Participant: In a cell, there is this DNA or RNA. This is information. It gives information for the next cell to…

Dr. Berzin: Right. So, in a cell, there is DNA, and it gives information; it functions. But you can also say there are the atoms and the molecules – that’s one thing. And then there is the information of the pattern of DNA, of those molecules. So, it functions. But the information is not the same as the atoms. This is a very modern theory of information. It makes information into something. But how it actually works from a scientific point of view, I don’t know. But Buddhism has always said that speech is information, communication. So, from that information, you know the object, don’t you? Anyway, whether information is always in terms of categories or not, I don’t know.

Participant: But a cell doesn’t say, “Now there is this information, and I read it, and I [unclear].” It just functions.

Dr. Berzin: Well, it just functions. But if you analyze, in the cell, it’s not reading the information, and reading it out loud. Certainly not. But when we talk about communication and information, we’re talking about the transference from one thing to another. Information is transferred. Whether that’s through a category or not, I don’t know. This whole Buddhist analysis of conceptual and non-conceptual is something that I’ve never really explored on a physical level. I don’t know what that could be referring to. 

But if you recall, in tantra, there is a discussion of a body and a mind of a Buddha. And the body of a Buddha is a corpus; it’s a collection of many things. So, a Buddha can appear in many forms. There are the gross forms, coarse forms – that’s Nirmanakaya; and there are very subtle forms, which is Sambhogakaya. In tantra, Sambhogakaya is speech. In Kalachakra, it’s both speech and these subtle forms. So, that indicates that both Nirmanakaya and Sambhogakaya are included in Rupakaya (Form Bodies). So, already, from a Buddhist analysis, you would have to say that the material of something and the information of something are together on one side, as opposed to mental activity, which would be the mind of a Buddha on the other side. 

But categories, everybody would have to say, are mental constructs. So, you’d have to say that communication could be without categories. I think we’d have to say that – that there is non-conceptual communication. But I really wonder what that would be? If it’s a word, it’s conceptual. A word is obviously made up by somebody. A group of people took meaningless sounds and decided that this is a word and it represents a meaning. That’s how language came about. It’s completely artificial and constructed. 

Participant: What’s the importance of the mind?

Dr. Berzin: What’s the importance of the mind? The mind is, in Buddhism, not talking about some organ. Mind in Buddhism is talking about the mental activity of knowing things. That activity of knowing things actually involves making mental holograms of things. Now, is the mental hologram only conceptual? No. They wouldn’t say that it is. It’s clearly conceptual when, for instance, we hear and understand language. That’s clearly conceptual and clearly entails a mental hologram because we only hear one sound at a time; we don’t hear the whole sentence in one instant. So, somehow, that’s all retained in one big mental hologram, and you understand the meaning. It’s quite an extraordinary thing that happens – that we can understand language while only hearing one tiny sound each moment. The same thing in terms of seeing things, if we think of a Western analysis – pixels of light fire – and, somehow, we don’t just see dots of light, and we don’t just see color shapes: we see objects. That’s a mental construct. It’s a difficult point. 

And how in the world one gets focused non-conceptually on something – that is the key issue that the different schools of Buddhism, Indian Buddhism and Tibetan Buddhism, differ on. How do you get this non-conceptual cognition, and what in the world is it? Everybody agrees you have to have non-conceptual cognition because, otherwise, if it is conceptual, you’re always making appearances of things like they’re in a box – an object, a thing. For example, the category “apple” – if you didn’t have that category, every single piece of fruit that you saw would have to be a different thing, with a different name. But we have a general name, “apple,” for many, many pieces of fruit. That’s conceptual. It’s a concept; it’s a mental construct. If we didn’t have that, it would be very, very difficult, wouldn’t it? Very, very difficult. 

So, if a Buddha’s mind is exclusively non-conceptual, how in the world does a Buddha function? Does a Buddha know language? Well, yes. A Buddha uses language, but a Buddha knows that things don’t exist the way that language implies – little boxes of words that are in the dictionary somewhere. 

Participant: I have a rather exotic example, but maybe it’s just a story. There was a movie about the Native Americans that were on the beach when Columbus came in. But they couldn’t see the ships because they didn’t have the mental concept of such huge ships. So, the story went that the shaman, or the sorcerer, saw waves on the water, and after like meditating on the beach, he could see ships. Then he could tell the other people and could describe them to them. Then all the natives were able to see the ships in the water. 

Dr. Berzin: Obviously, Indians had canoes for rivers, but they couldn’t actually see the ship because they had no concept of such a thing. But does that mean that they didn’t see anything. It could be that they just saw colored shapes and didn’t know what they were. 

There are many Tibetans who, when they came from Tibet, found so many things in India that they had never seen before. When I went to live with the Tibetans, I saw things that I had seen before. So, you don’t what it is, but you see something. It’s not as though you don’t see it at all. Let’s say it’s, a computer – you see it as a grey box. So, you see it in a different category. You see it in the category of “I have no idea what this is. This is something that I don’t know what it is.” Are you saying that they didn’t see anything?

Participant: That’s what the movie implied.

Dr. Berzin: I would wonder. 

Participant: I am not sure if it is true. And the opinions are split.

Dr. Berzin: So, the opinions are split whether or not they actually visually saw something. I don’t know. If something is very small, then you don’t notice it. For instance, a satellite going across the sky might be so small and so fast that you don’t notice it; so, you don’t see it. Somebody has to point it out. Or look at the good example of the planets in the sky. You might not have any idea that that’s a planet; you might just think, “Look at all these dots in the sky. They are all stars.” But then somebody points out to you a certain one that moves in a different way from the others, and then you see it as a planet. Before you didn’t even notice it. But it was in your field of vision. 

Participant: So, there is no explanation in Buddhism for that?

Dr. Berzin: No explanation in Buddhism for not seeing it at all? Well, there is a difference between something being in your sense field and noticing, paying attention to it. So, the amount of attention that you pay to something could be minimal – barely there. It’s interesting some of the examples they give. For instance, you could go into a temple when some great lama is doing some ritual in the front. But if you don’t have the karma to see that lama, you won’t even see him.

Participant: Even if he is there?

Dr. Berzin: Even if he is there. That’s the example I have heard – that you need the karma to be able to see somebody. But does that mean that you just didn’t look in that direction when you were in the temple, that you were just looking at walls or something else and didn’t notice this person? Although when your eyes passed, was the image there? Or wasn’t the image there? I don’t know what that really means. For example, you’re standing on the side of the street waiting for some great dignitary to go by in a car. A whole bunch of cars go by, but you weren’t looking that moment, so you didn’t see him. It’s hard to say. We say in our ordinary language that when you’re not paying attention, when you’re not noticing something, you didn’t “see” it. Well, how technically true is that?

But this is relevant, actually, to when you are focusing on voidness. For example, your eyes can be open, you can have single-minded concentration… this is interesting. This I learned in India last time, when I was studying with Serkong Rinpoche’s teacher. He explained something that I had never really realized, which is that when you have single-minded concentration on one sense, that doesn’t mean that the other senses aren’t functioning. So, if you are focused single-pointedly on voidness… I don’t know about voidness, but if you are focused single-pointedly on a visualization, you could still see the wall around you, the people around you, the things around you; it’s just that you are not concentrating on them. You are not distracted by them. Your concentration and attention are totally on the visualization. 

Perfect concentration means no distraction. It doesn’t mean that you don’t hear something; you’re just not paying attention to it. So, it’s a factor of attention. But the senses still function. I don’t know how that works when you are totally absorbed on voidness. I think there is a difference between conceptual and non-conceptual. Non-conceptual – I think they’d have to say that things aren’t present. These are difficult topics, difficult points, because there will be differences of opinion from different masters. And I would imagine that that’s based on different people having different experiences. 

Non-Conceptual Cognition of Voidness Can Be Validly Experienced and Described in Different Ways

It’s interesting, I had a discussion once with His Holiness about that. What His Holiness said was that different people can experience the same thing – let’s say, non-conceptual focus on voidness – differently and describe it differently. So, you’d have to say that all these different explanations that we find from the different schools and the different masters are based on equally valid experiences, even though those experiences will be slightly different. You can’t say that everybody experiences each level or each insight exactly the same. It’s an interesting point. Obviously, you have to differentiate between what’s valid and what’s not valid. But the point is that there can be many different valid ways of experiencing. 

Participant: Does it depend on the level of understanding?

Dr. Berzin: Not so much on the level of understanding but on the disposition, the background and these sorts of things of the person. In tantra, you would explain that there are different energy types (there’s not just one system of chakras and channels, for example, there are several). So, it would depend on which one is dominant in you in this particular lifetime. There are also people who are, as we say in the West, more right-brain or left-brain oriented. So, some people are more intellectual, and some people are more artistic. You can’t say that only one type can have non-conceptual cognition of voidness, but the way that they experience it could be quite different. 

Participant: What is in tantra? Is it a medical aspect of tantra?

Dr. Berzin: Is it a medical aspect? No. Tantra is a very extensive topic, and there are different classes of tantra. It’s only with the highest class of tantra that you work with the energy systems. Tantra is basically a system in which you work with the imagination. You imagine that you are already a Buddha – based on Buddha-nature – but knowing full well that you are not. You rehearse with visualizations and so on that you are benefiting others the way that a Buddha would do so. General tantra works like that. It works with all these visualizations, these various Buddha-figures. And all the faces and arms and so on represent different things that we put together – different insights, different qualities and so on. So, they’re representations. 

But then in the highest class of tantra, you work, within that framework, with the chakras, the channels, the energies. But it’s only on a very advanced level of practice that you work with them, which you do in order to get to the subtlest level of mind, which is known as the clear light mind. That’s because that clear light mind is what actually goes on from lifetime to lifetime and into Buddhahood, whereas our ordinary memories and concepts and things, we leave behind, like the body. So, that subtlest level continues moment to moment to moment. And that subtlest level is subtler than conceptual; so, it’s automatically non-conceptual. And it doesn’t make appearances of impossible ways of existing and doesn’t believe in them either. That doesn’t mean that it has understanding. It doesn’t have understanding necessarily. It has the potential to understand.

Participant: Is that what we call the “self”?

Dr. Berzin: No, the self is what can be labeled onto all of this. The self is neither physical nor a way of being aware of something (it’s not a mind), but it changes from moment to moment. It is something that can be imputed. How do we understand that? We can understand it, like… for instance, a habit, I think, is the same type of thing. 

What is a habit? Habit of drinking tea, habit of brushing your teeth…. What is a habit of brushing your teeth? Well, it’s not the actual physical act of brushing your teeth, and it’s not thinking to brush your teeth. But based on a series of similar events, you can impute, you can infer that there is a habit; you can label “habit” onto it. But a habit isn’t just a mental construct: it functions to cause us to act in similar ways. And it can change and so on. Similarly, there are moments of mental activity and doing things, and there is an individual sequence of that mental activity, based on cause and effect. So, a way of putting it together – like you would put together a habit – would be to label “me,” “a person,” “an individual” onto it. So, it’s that same type of phenomenon. But the person or individual doesn’t exist independently of all these moments of knowing and thinking, just as a habit doesn’t exist independently of instances of actually acting out a habit. It’s like a whole doesn’t exist separate from parts. 

Again, these are things that one has to think about quite deeply. OK, it would nice to get through this material. 

So, we have this second aspect that the mind understands that there is no such thing as a truly existent self, this impossible soul, and that understands that mediating on the voidness of such a self is an appropriate method for getting rid of suffering and its causes, whereas the wrong view would say that it’s an inappropriate method. So, it is appropriate; it will bring about a true stopping. If you don’t think it is appropriate, then you would apply a different method a, different antidote. So, you have to be convinced that the mind that understands voidness is the appropriate pathway for getting rid of the cause of suffering and suffering itself. 

The third one is: 

[3] Holding certain specific states of mental stability alone are pathway minds leading to liberation. 

I won’t go into all the details, but there are different levels of total concentration, depending on how absorbed one is. The more absorbed one’s consciousness is, certain things will no longer function, will no longer be present. So, you may no longer have a feeling of unhappiness. With deeper absorption, you might not even have any feeling of happiness; you might just have a totally neutral feeling. You also might not be able to distinguish things. 

So, there are all these different levels of absorption. These are known as the “dhyanas.” The incorrect view here is to think that gaining this level of absorption, this type of meditation trance is enough – that by itself alone, it will bring liberation, will bring about a true stopping. And it doesn’t. 

First of all, these dhyanas are not exclusively Buddhist. One can develop these states with other methods as well. You have them in Hinduism also. 

So, gaining these levels of absorption is not an appropriate opponent; it’s just a temporary vacation, as it were. When you arise from any of these states, you can’t sustain it forever (unlike the focus on voidness), and there is no understanding with it – just by itself. So, it doesn’t have the power to bring about a true stopping. That’s the third one. 

And the fourth one is: 

[4] Holding that there is no such thing as a pathway mind that can bring about the non-recurrence of suffering. 

By the way, what gets rid of the third wrong view is the non-conceptual discriminating awareness of the lack of an impossible soul – that this is the means for the actualization of the state of an arya, the state of liberation. So, when you understand that the understanding of voidness is non-conceptual and that the non-conceptual focus on voidness is the actual state that brings you true stoppings with the attainment of the state of an arya and liberation, then you understand that these deep states of concentration are not enough.

This last one, thinking that there is nothing that can bring about the non-recurrence of suffering, is countered by the understanding that the non-conceptual discriminating awareness of the lack of an impossible soul – in other words, the non-conceptual understanding of voidness – is the means for the definite removal forever of true sufferings and true origins. 

That is, I think, one of the greatest misunderstandings that we can have, most common misunderstandings that we can have – that “OK, the understanding of voidness could get rid of this suffering and the causes for suffering, but they’re going to come back again. How could they be gone forever? How could the understanding of voidness get rid of suffering and its causes so that they don’t recur?” However, when there is no basis for something, when the root is no longer there, the thing can’t grow anymore. 

What Is the Mechanism by which a True Stopping of only a Portion of the Obscurations Comes about?

Now, this, I must confess, is not an easy thing to understand. Not at all an easy thing to understand. As a Buddha, you are focused on voidness all the time, forever. In that case, you can understand that these various things can’t recur. But how do we understand (and I must say I don’t have an answer) the fact that you achieve various true stoppings? In other words, you get a true stopping, or true cessation, only of different portions of these obscurations and true causes. For instance, when you first get non-conceptual cognition of voidness, the seeing pathway of mind (the path of seeing), you get rid of the doctrinally based disturbing emotions. 

There are two types of disturbing emotions: doctrinally based and automatically arising. With the doctrinally based, we are talking about a doctrinal system, which would be the non-Buddhist Indian systems that teach that there is such a thing as an atman that is partless, separate from the aggregates, never-changing and so on. You can get disturbing emotions based on that – anger with anybody who disagrees and attachment to this type of view and arrogance and all these sorts of things. So, it says that when you get the non-conceptual cognition of voidness for the first time, you get rid of the disturbing emotions that are doctrinally based. And they’ll never recur, even though you don’t have the understanding of voidness all the time. 

Now, you still haven’t gotten rid of the automatically arising disturbing emotions that even a dog would have. You take the bone away from the dog, and because the dog is very attached, the dog gets angry. So, that automatically arises; it’s not based on teaching some sort of philosophical system to the dog. 

How do we get a stopping forever such that it never comes back again, this doctrinally based thing? I don’t know. Anybody have any suggestions, any ideas? How would it work? 

Participant: Because you are convinced?

Dr. Berzin: Right, so we are convinced. This, I think, is a good point – that we are convinced based on logic. But it’s not just logic; that’s conceptual. Here, we are convinced based on a non-conceptual cognition. We are so convinced that this is false, the propaganda from this doctrine, that we would never believe it again. And it would only be if we believed in it that we would get angry, like when somebody disagreed with us. So, getting rid of the doctrinally based unawareness, confusion and so on is just a matter of being totally, totally convinced. Maybe that’s the mechanism, whereas the automatically arising disturbing emotions, even if we are convinced, will automatically continue to arise. 

Is it like that? Or is it just a matter of familiarity? By “familiarity,” I mean what you’re doing on what’s usually translated as the “path of meditation,” the accustoming pathway of mind: you just repeat over and over again this meditation so that it sinks in deeper and deeper and starts to get rid of the automatically arising disturbing emotions. I must say, I don’t really understand whether it’s totally based on being convinced… or how it works. It’s easy to understand if you say that you’re totally focused on voidness all the time. 

Participant: Can’t it be from experience, maybe?

Dr. Berzin: Does it come from experience? Well, that’s just it. From experience, you become convinced that it is so. Either that or… I don’t know. In Abhisamayalankara, which is a text that talks about these stages of the path in incredible detail, it speaks about total absorption, subsequent attainment, and then what’s neither, which can be when you are meditating on something else. But I am wondering. Once you understand, once you get the non-conceptual cognition of voidness…. I mean, you’re totally focused on voidness, total absorption on voidness. OK, that’s one thing. But the realization that everything is like an illusion – is that something that you have all the time after that, whether you are meditating on something else or actually focusing on everything being like an illusion? 

This is an interesting question. If you have the realization that everything is like an illusion all the time, like you have bodhichitta all the time (so, basically, you don’t have to be conscious of it; it’s just there), then I can understand how you can have a true stopping – that it wouldn’t recur. It would feel as though there is a “me”’ that is separate from the body and mind, but you’d know that’s ridiculous, that it’s like an illusion. Maybe it’s like that. I don’t know. We’d have to really think about it. And as I’ve said over and over again, these sixteen points are what you meditate on all the way up to liberation. So, obviously, they are not easy to understand. But these are the things that you work with.

That finally concludes our discussion of these sixteen aspects. So, we have true problems, true origins of them, true stoppings of them, and true pathway minds that bring about these true stoppings. Also, one has to understand that the pathway mind doesn’t come first and then as a result you get the true stopping. If you have the non-conceptual cognition of voidness, then you have a true stopping. 

Participant: These are really mysterious.

Dr. Berzin: These are very mysterious, yes. 

Participant: [In German]

Dr. Berzin: Is there an explanation, she says, based on experience? Have people actually experienced it and then described it? I would say yes. Buddha certainly experienced it and described it. And the great masters who wrote these texts describing it – one can only hope that they experienced it and were describing it based on their experience. That’s what I was saying before, which His Holiness had mentioned – that different masters obviously experienced it slightly differently. So, when you get different systems saying that at this stage you get rid of this and at that stage you get rid of that and they disagree with each other, you can’t say that one is wrong; you just have to say that they experienced it differently. 

Participant: Could, for instance, the Zen masters, when they attained satori – could that be valid?

Dr. Berzin: Well, then the question is, what about Zen masters when they experience various things like satori? Is that valid from their point of view? I don’t know. 

The point that comes to my mind with that is that if you really have a true understanding of voidness, you would understand cause and effect. And if you understood cause and effect, then you wouldn’t act in any abusive, destructive way. There are various masters, so-called masters, that claim that they’re this great teacher or that great teacher. But then there are scandals around them of sexual or power abuse of students. His Holiness said in one of these conferences with Western Buddhist teachers that that’s a clear indication that, actually, they didn’t have a correct realization; something was wrong with their meditation. If their meditation were correct, no way that they would act in any unethical manner. So, I think there are criteria to judge whether or not somebody really has a correct understanding. It should have an effect on the way they are, like never getting angry, never… these sorts of things. 

At this conference with Western Buddhist teachers, they brought up the argument of “crazy wisdom” and all these sorts of things and saying that unless you’re on the same level as the guru, you can’t really tell what is going on in the guru’s mind, and all of that. His Holiness said you still have to rely on conventional wisdom – because one of the bodhisattva vows is not to do anything that would cause others to lose faith in Buddhism. So, if you are acting in some sort of outrageous way and representing yourself as a great Buddhist teacher and causing people to think, “This Buddhism is ridiculous” – that’s breaking the bodhisattva vows. If you’re off as a hermit acting in some sort of weird way – that’s something else. But as a teacher, there is a certain responsibility there. 

OK, why don’t we take a few moments to reflect on what we have been discussing? 

Any questions before we go on?

Participant: [In German]

Dr. Berzin: So. there is nothing that establishes itself from its own side.

Participant: [In German]

Dr. Berzin: But when we look at the description of the Buddha, it seems as though it’s established from its own side? 

Participant: [In German] 

Buddhahood and True Stoppings Are Only Labels for What Has Been Accomplished; They Are Not Established as Such from Their Own Sides

Dr. Berzin: Well, you can’t say that a Buddha’s qualities are established from its own side because the attainment of them arose as a result of the practices that a Buddha did. 

Participant: But then the true stopping is the… [continues in German]

Dr. Berzin: So, when a true stopping is attained, it seems as though it is something that establishes itself from its own side? A true stopping doesn’t change; so, it’s a static phenomenon. The attainment of it is something that happens in time; so, that’s a nonstatic thing. The true stopping is static, and the attainment is nonstatic. 

But “establishes it from its own side” – you have to understand what that means. It’s difficult to explain it in better words. Is there something on the side…. I always try to use this image of colors because I think that’s easier to understand. In terms of a spectrum of light, there is nothing on the side of the light that establishes that it’s red or blue or any color because there are no clear lines that divide one color from another. You have all the various wavelengths, that’s true, but it’s a label that divides the spectrum into this color or that color. And every society does it slightly differently, and each individual does it differently. So, what is red is established only in terms of mental labeling, in terms of the concept “red.” The same is the case for a true stopping. 

What’s a true stopping? There is nothing there. There isn’t any stopping that is actually sitting there. It’s a description established by mental labeling on the basis of what’s happened with a Buddha. Can you find a true stopping sitting somewhere on a Buddha’s mind? No, It’s descriptive. But it’s not that it’s not referring to anything. It is referring to something, but it’s a way of describing it. From the side of objects, there are no categories and boxes – true stopping and true attainment and true this and true that. Does that make any sense? 

Participant: So schwer [continues in German]

Dr. Berzin: Yes, there is Buddhahood. But what is…

Participant: Die Buddhaschaft ist doch ganz etabliert.

Dr. Berzin: So, the Buddha…. Ah, now we are having a problem with language here. Buddhahood is accomplished. When we say “established,” we are talking about what makes it something. It’s accomplished. Buddhahood is accomplished. So, you can say Buddhahood is present, but Buddhahood itself can’t be found. That’s just a descriptive way of labeling what has been accomplished. 

[Participants discuss in German]

You have accomplished… Let’s say Reiner has accomplished getting a PhD.

Participant: Ein Doktorat.

Dr. Berzin: A doctorate. So, Reiner has accomplished getting a doctorate. Right? But there is nothing that establishes… there’s not a doctorate sitting inside him, and that piece of paper isn’t the doctorate. But we can refer to the end product of all that education and writing and things as a doctorate. Somebody made up the word “doctorate” for all of that. You could have gone through that whole process and not called it a “doctorate.” A Buddha could have done everything and you don’t call it “Buddhahood.” Somebody came up with the word “Buddhahood” for it. That’s mental labeling – for the purpose of communicating, organizing. So, conventionally, we would say he accomplished a doctorate.

Participant: And it’s a valid…

Dr. Berzin: And it is valid on the basis of cause and effect of all the causes.

Participant: But you cannot find…

Dr. Berzin: But you can’t find the doctorate inside him. The doctorate is established by a convention of professors that decided that when you have done this much, we’ll call that a “doctorate.” It’s like being an adult. Some societies say that when you have accomplished living for eighteen years, you are an adult; others will say that when you are twenty-one, you are an adult. It’s convention. Others might say that when you are thirteen, you are an adult. It’s just established by convention. 

Participant: If there is an initiation rite, then you have passed…

Dr. Berzin: Yeah, you have passed an initiation rite…

Participant: And you’re an adult.

Dr. Berzin: And you’re an adult. 

So, mental labeling and voidness – there is nothing on the side of object that establishes it, that makes it. There is not some little thing sitting inside of Reiner that now makes him a doctorate. A paper on the wall doesn’t make him either. OK? Well, these are things that require a great deal of thinking and meditation. They’re not simple.

Participant: [In German]

Dr. Berzin: She is asking, from an absolute sense, whether there is a process that is constantly happening in Buddhism that, in a sense, generates the qualities and the wisdom and so on. 

First of all, when it comes to the conventional and the deepest levels (I don’t like the word “absolute”; it’s not that there is some transcendent realm), the deepest level is voidness. That’s it. It doesn’t exist in an impossible way. So, what’s functioning is the conventional level; how it exists is the deepest level. So, does all this functioning generate itself? No. It generates in terms of response to others. The whole point of Buddhahood is to help others. So, compassion and Buddha activity and all these things are in response to the needs of suffering sentient beings. That’s the whole purpose of Buddhahood. 

Participant: Ja. Aber das [inaudible] zum Beispiel.

Dr. Berzin: Right. So, the qualities of a Buddha don’t exist by themselves. They exist in relation to the others that a Buddha is helping. 

There is this term rang-byung in Tibetan, svayambhu in Sanskrit. It’s a difficult term to translate. “Self-arisen” is how it’s sometimes translated. What I think that is referring to is like when you put enough energy into a system, then automatically…. You see, people translated rang as “self,” but it also can be translated as “automatic.” So, if you put enough energy into water, for example, automatically, it changes into steam. So, you would use that same term like that. So, Buddhahood – you put in enough positive force, enough understanding, and enough practice, and then, all of a sudden, the system automatically transforms. Automatically, you get these true stoppings; automatically, you get all the qualities of Buddhahood functioning. I think it has that kind of connotation. 

Participant: But when the water loses the energy…

Dr. Berzin: Right. So, when the water loses the energy, it transforms back. That’s why this last point is so difficult – that can you achieve a true stopping and not fall back. This you have to be convinced of – that the understanding of voidness will bring about a true stopping that will be forever and that suffering will not recur. That was the last point that I was saying – it’s very difficult to understand. I can’t say that I understand it. I think you don’t fully understand it until you are an arhat. But if you think that you are going to fall back, then Buddhahood is just a vacation. 

But how does it happen that you don’t fall back? That’s a very difficult one. This is why (we’ll get to this when we sum up next time) the first of these forces is belief in fact. You have to be convinced that it is so. And how do you become convinced (we started to discuss that). Is it by logic, by actual experience? What really convinces you? That’s an interesting question. How do you become convinced? But that’s the first point. And that’s how Nagarjuna started this whole letter – with the emphasis on conviction. Now, if you translate that as faith, then you get a completely different picture here. We are not talking about faith… you know, “I believe. Hallelujah.”

Participant: Maybe we need some knowledge….

Dr. Berzin: Exactly. You need knowledge first in order to become convinced. 

Participant: Yeah, to get convinced.

Dr. Berzin: Right. Knowledge and thinking about it and then logic, experience, seeing other examples…

Participant: [Inaudible]

Dr. Berzin: All together, that’s right. But I think that we all know that if you struggled with the issue of rebirth… how do you really become convinced in rebirth? That’s hard to say that you are a hundred percent convinced. You could be pretty convinced.

Participant: Very much convinced.

Dr. Berzin: Very much convinced. But a hundred percent? Can you guarantee a hundred percent? I don’t know. That’s very difficult. 

Participant: A lot of Asian people have no problem at all. They are really convinced like this because they are brought up like this. And for them…

Dr. Berzin: Right. Asian people can become completely convinced. Western people – some of them can be completely convinced that God exists. People are completely convinced that atoms exist. How do you know that atoms exist? Some scientist said so. How do I know?

Participant: [In German]

Dr. Berzin: Right. So, if you have trust. Everything depends on trust, a valid source of information. Anyway, we’ll discuss this next time when we sum up this verse and go ahead.