LTF 35: First Distorted View of True Paths: No Path to Liberation; Voidness

We are up to the last set of four, the four distorted ways of embracing true pathway minds. True pathway minds, you remember, are the minds that have non-conceptual cognition of the sixteen aspects – not just the conventional truth of them but also their deepest truth, either in terms of there being no impossible “me” (the person who has these types of mind) that is involved with any of them or in terms of the voidness of these minds, depending on whether we are looking at it from a Hinayana or a Mahayana point of view. 

The first distorted view is: 

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

That is quite a difficult topic to work with. Do we really believe that there is a state of mind that we could develop that would actually lead to liberation? This ties in with a topic that we were speaking about last week, which is whether liberation is possible. If we have dealt with this question and have an idea of what liberation is, what it actually means, would the understanding of the sixteen aspects (and let’s take it in a Mahayana sense – namely, the voidness involved with all of these aspects) lead to liberation? 

Remember, we had a huge discussion in the Shantideva class about how Shantideva refutes very strongly the Hinayana understanding (not only the Hinayana understanding but also the non-Prasangika understanding) – that gaining an understanding of the lack of an impossible “me” and the sixteen aspects, like impermanence, would be sufficient for gaining liberation. Remember, Shantideva insisted that you have to have the full understanding of voidness as defined in Prasangika in order to gain even liberation, let alone enlightenment. Leaving that entire discussion aside, then, do you think that there is a mind that will lead to liberation? 

What eliminates the mistaken view that there is no pathway mind leading to liberation is the discriminating awareness of the first aspect of the true pathway minds, which is that the non-conceptual discriminating awareness of the lack of an impossible soul is a pathway mind leading to liberation. That eliminates this mistaken view. 

In order to really understand this (and, actually, all of these four points deal with the same issue from one side or another), and if we take the Prasangika understanding of the lack of an impossible soul – that of the full voidness of “me” and of all phenomena – does that have the power to get rid of ignorance.? That’s really the issue that we have to understand with the last of these four. Can the pathway mind get rid of ignorance such that it never recurs? Well, how do we become convinced of that? How do we understand that?

Two Definitions of Ignorance: Anti-Knowing and Misknowing

Here, we have to go to the definition of unawareness, or ignorance (ma-rig-pa, Skt. avidyā). As I’ve often said, I don’t really like the word “ignorance.” “Ignorance” sounds as though it’s talking about being stupid. But it’s not referring to our level of intelligence. 

Now, there are two definitions of unawareness, or ignorance. One definition, which we find in the abhidharma texts (so, in both Vasubandhu’s and Asanga’s versions of Abhidharma), is that it is the mental factor that stupefies the mind, preventing it from knowing the sixteen aspects of the four noble truths. It is not simply not knowing them; it makes a mental block to knowing them. So, “anti-knowing” is the appropriate translation. 

The other definition of it in Dharmakirti’s text on logic and ways of knowing is that we know things in an inverted way, in an opposite way – so, “misknowing.” Specifically, it is grasping at the aggregates as being “me” or “mine.” Prasangika takes it to mean grasping for truly established existence. So, either we have a mental block to knowing correctly, or in addition, we know incorrectly, basically. However, it’s not just that we know incorrectly; it’s that we know in the exact opposite way. So, rather than thinking that things lack truly established existence or solid existence, we think they have that. That would be the opposite way. 

In terms of knowing correctly, we can, of course, get shades of knowing correctly – namely, a little bit correctly, like with the assertions of the lower tenet systems. They don’t completely refute the object to be refuted regarding the selflessness of persons: they under-refute it. So, they are a little bit correct, but not fully correct. But a little bit correct is not enough. This is what Shantideva was talking about. A little bit correct is not sufficient for getting rid of misknowing completely. It has to be completely correct to lead to liberation. This is an issue that one would have to really explore: do you need the full understanding to gain liberation, or is half the understanding sufficient? 

Now, remember, this was the big issue of debate between the Prasangikas and everybody else. Everybody else was saying that just understanding the lack of an impossible “me” was sufficient. They said that the voidness of a “me,” meaning that there is no “me” that is self-sufficiently knowable, was sufficient for gaining liberation and that you didn’t have to know the voidness of all phenomena, which is that nothing has truly established existence from its own side. You didn’t have to know that to gain liberation. You only needed to know that to gain enlightenment. 

Well, this starts to become a difficult question, doesn’t it? A very difficult question because each of the schools works with these sixteen. So, each of the schools would have to say that their understanding of the sixteen is correct.  

The Two Obscurations, Emotional and Cognitive

Well, now we start to get very complicated. I am sorry. What do you need to gain liberation? What do you have to overcome? You have to overcome the obscurations that prevent liberation – the emotional obscurations. There are two sets of obscurations: the emotional obscurations and the cognitive obscurations. The emotional ones prevent liberation. These are the disturbing emotions and attitudes and their tendencies.

Participant: So, you need full understanding to gain liberation.

Dr Berzin: Well, that’s what Prasangika says – that you need full understanding to gain liberation. 

Participant: It will not work otherwise.

Dr Berzin: Otherwise, it won’t work. This is what Prasangika, the most sophisticated school, says. The others don’t. This gets very complicated. I’m very sorry that it gets so complicated. 

The cognitive obscurations prevent omniscience, prevent becoming a Buddha. 

In other words, if you have the tendencies for the disturbing emotions, that will cause the disturbing emotions to come up again and again – but only sometimes: you are not angry all the time. So, that is going to produce suffering, and it’s going to activate karma. So, this prevents liberation. 

Remember, we’re talking about what true suffering is. True suffering is the uncontrollable recurring of samsara – that whole mechanism. The true origin is what makes more throwing karma and also what activates it. That’s what we are talking about here. So, the emotional obscurations, these disturbing emotions and attitudes and their tendencies, prevent liberation.

The cognitive obscurations… Unfortunately, each of the Indian schools of philosophy defines the emotional obscurations and the cognitive obscurations differently. But according to the Prasangikas, there are the disturbing emotions and their tendencies on the one side, and on the other side, there are the cognitive obscurations, which would be the habits of these disturbing emotions. Included in disturbing emotions here is the ignorance – specifically, for Prasangika, misknowing – of reality, of how things exist. That’s included. (I don’t know how to explain all of this without it becoming ridiculously complicated, because it is.) 

The cognitive obscurations are, according to Prasangika, the habits – the constant habits – of the disturbing emotions. These basically make the mind produce appearances of true existence, which means that they make the mind, cause the mind, to make things appear to be encapsulated in plastic, as if they had a solid line around them, just sitting right there, independently of their causes and conditions and the labels for them and all of that. They’re just sitting there, encapsulated like that. When the mind makes things appear like that, then, obviously, you can’t be omniscient. 

The problem is that we need to be omniscient in order to be able to help everybody reach liberation and enlightenment. In other words, we need to know what exactly to teach somebody in order to help them reach liberation and enlightenment, which means that we would need to know all the causes and conditions, all of their past lives, and everything that this person has done – so, all the factors that are affecting that person. We would need to know the whole situation. Then, we would need to know if we teach this person this or that, what the results will be and what the effects will be on that person and on everybody else that person interacts with forever until they reach liberation or enlightenment. So, that’s pretty big. That’s what omniscience is referring to. We’re not talking about knowing the telephone number of everybody in the universe; we are talking about cause and effect – what to teach and what the effects of what we teach will be. That’s why we really need to be Buddhas.

So, when our minds make things appear separated and isolated with lines around them, we don’t see everything that came before, and we can’t see what will follow. 

Now, because Prasangika includes the ignorance, or misknowing, of reality in the emotional obscurations, we need the full understanding of voidness to get rid of both sets of obscurations. But if, like the other schools, we only include the ignorance of how persons exist (which is a different type of ignorance, namely, anti-knowing) in the emotional obscurations and we include ignorance of reality in the cognitive obscurations – so, saying it’s not a disturbing emotion – then we get a whole different picture. That’s why the whole thing becomes complicated. Where do we include the ignorance of the reality of all things, the ignorance of the voidness of all things? 

I don’t know that we really want to go into this in such detail. We had spent many, many weeks on this in the Shantideva class, and I can see Mariana already shaking her head that she really doesn’t want to get back into this really complicated discussion.

But to just summarize in a few sentences, what Shantideva was saying was that understanding that there is no self-sufficiently knowable person (which is what the other schools say is sufficient to gain liberation) doesn’t get rid of the disturbing emotions that activate karmic aftermath. That was his basic point. He was using the example of what the other schools describe, which is that from the time an arhat achieves liberation until they die and achieve parinirvana, karmic aftermath still ripens. He is saying that this is self-contradictory because it means that there have to be some disturbing emotions still there to activate the karmic aftermath and cause it to ripen. As I said, this is a terribly complicated discussion. 

But what I think we need to appreciate here and what I have been stressing all along is what they say in the teachings, which is that from the time you achieve unlabored bodhichitta or unlabored renunciation (so, you have it automatically all the time; you don’t have to build it up) up until the time that you attain liberation or enlightenment, you’re going deeper and deeper and deeper into these sixteen aspects. So, one needs to appreciate how deep they are and how complex they are. Then you have some idea – “OK, this is what I need to work with! And it’s not going to be very easy to really understand it.” 

But this is an important point to understand – how the understanding of voidness can eliminate the causes for true suffering. How can it do that? And this is talking about the voidness of the sixteen aspects (remember, we can talk about the sixteen aspects in terms of their conventional truth or their deepest truth) – so, the voidness of the sixteen aspects themselves. The other schools are talking about the voidness of a person who understands these sixteen, but in Prasangika, we’re talking about the voidness of the sixteen themselves.. 

Voidness – Cutting Off the Appearance of and Belief in Impossible Ways of Existing

Now, what is voidness? Voidness is a total absence: no such thing. That’s very important to realize. If we take Tsongkhapa’s position, first, you have to identify what it is that you are negating, what’s impossible. Remember, we had this wonderful weekend on negation phenomena some years ago. In order to know “not an apple” – “this is not an apple” – you have to know “apple” first. Or “There are no such things as invaders from the fifth dimension” – you’d at least have to have some concept of invaders from the fifth dimension in order to know that there is no such thing. Although, you couldn’t actually know invaders from the fifth dimension in order to know there is no such thing. That’s a big argument, a criticism of Tsongkhapa’s – how can you talk about impossible existents and identify them because they don’t exist at all? There is the whole discussion, then, of how you know nonexistent things. This is another complicated thing. Anyway, I have a big article on that on my website, called The Appearance and Cognition of Nonexistent Phenomena. 

First, you have to at least have a concept of impossible existence, of how the mind makes things appear as if they had a solid existence. Then, with the non-conceptual understanding of voidness, you just cut that false appearance off completely. His Holiness always says, “It’s like the sword of Manjushri – just wham! – there is no such thing.” Then, you just stop projecting it with the non-conceptual understanding that there is no such thing. The example that I’ve often used is Santa Claus – there is no such thing. There is somebody with a false white beard and a red suit who looks like Santa Claus, but there is no such thing as Santa Claus; someone just looks like Santa Claus. Wham – no such thing! If we have that understanding of “no such thing,” and the mind not only completely cuts off any belief in it but also focuses on “no such thing” – no such thing as even an appearance of this impossible existence – then an appearance of impossible existence, solid true existence, let alone a belief in it could not arise at that time. 

So, you can’t have the two at the same time. Either you are cutting off completely… This gets to your question about partial correct understanding. If it’s partial, you are not cutting it off completely. We’re talking here about cutting it off completely. This is what Tsongkhapa criticizes in the other views – that it doesn’t cut off enough; it only cuts off some. “Under-refuting” is the term he uses. Then, of course, over-refuting would be to get rid of the conventional truth as well. So – “no such thing.”

The only time that you are really focused like that is when you have non-conceptual cognition of voidness. It’s a conceptual cognition if the mind still makes the appearance of voidness as if it had a big, solid line around it, in terms of the category “voidness.” 

Participant: With this cutting off, you have to stop the conventional truth? 

Dr Berzin: This is, again, a difficult issue. Do we stop with the conventional truth? You are not even concerned about the conventional truth. What you are cutting off is what is impossible. Then, after you have cut off what is impossible, when you come out of the absorption on “no such thing,” what’s left? What’s left is the conventional truth. So, what you are cutting off is impossible existence; you are not cutting off any existence at all. That’s over-refuting. So, you have to cut off neither too much nor too little. 

When you cut off impossible existence, what are you left with? Again, this is the whole issue. If you’ve only cut off some, when you arise from that cutting off, there is still some aspect of true existence, solid existence, left because you haven’t cut it off completely. But if you’ve cut it all off, then, when you arise from that absorption, there is no impossible existence left; there is just mere conventional existence. This is according to Prasangika. The others would say that what’s left over is self-established conventional existence. 

Everybody thinks that they have the correct view, so how do you know who is correct? This is what Shantideva very brilliantly comes up with. He says, “Does it eliminate suffering? Is there anymore rebirth after that? Is there anymore craving after that?” And he said, “Yes, there is craving left if you’ve cut off incompletely.” So, that’s really the test here. 

Why is understanding stronger than not understanding? Understanding gets rid of suffering, which is the whole point here. Not understanding and misknowing just produces more suffering. Understanding is validated by reason and gets rid of suffering. By that observation, both logically (validated by reason) and from our own experience that we don’t have suffering anymore, the understanding is stronger. On the other hand, ignorance, misknowing how things exist, is not validated by logic – it’s illogical – and, by our own experience, we can recognize that with misknowing, we have suffering. We continue to have rebirth; we continue to activate karma and build up more karma.

So, it is with this way of reasoning that one starts to understand this point and gets rid of the misconception that there is no such thing as a pathway mind leading to liberation. A bit much, isn’t it? 

Participant: I just want to know about that word “cognitive emotion.”

Dr Berzin: OK, cognitive obscurations and emotional obscurations… 

Participant: The conscious mind?

Dr Berzin: No, “cognitive” means how you perceive things, and “obscuration” is something that obscures the mind. The analogy that they use is a clear mirror: it can reflect everything, but it’s obscured by clouds that pass. Some of the clouds are the disturbing emotions (not the positive emotions like love, compassion, and patience, but the disturbing ones, which include ignorance) and attitudes. So, it’s not just emotions. For “emotions,” or “disturbing emotions,” we don’t have a word that covers all the ones that are included here, such as naivety, anger, greed, mental states like indecisive wavering (being unsure), etc. All these things are included here, as well as attitudes, such as “I’m the greatest” type of thing.

“Cognitive” refers to what we know. So, cognitive obscurations obscure our being able to know all the causes for things and all the results that come from those causes. They obscure our way of knowing these things so that we are not able to know them. It’s a little bit like (remember, I have used this analogy before) a periscope in a submarine – that because of our aggregates (basically the hardware of our body), it’s like looking through a periscope in a submarine; we can only have a very limited view. We can only look out of the holes in front of our head, our eyes, so we can’t see what’s behind us. And our brains can’t really comprehend all the unbelievable, countless things that are interconnected and interacting with each other. 

That’s why a sentient being (sems-can) is basically someone with a limited mind. A Buddha is not a sentient being. There is also another term, an “embodied being,” which means someone with a limited body. Buddhas don’t have limited bodies, either. So, Buddhas don’t have limited hardware. That is part of the whole problem. Not only do we have the emotional garbage that makes us continue to have this limited hardware, which is suffering, but we have the limited hardware, itself, as well. With that, we can’t really help everybody because we have to go to sleep, we have to get old, we get sick and have to die. So, it’s very limited what we can do with this type of body.

Omniscience – Is It Possible to Know Everything? How Much Does the Mind of a Buddha Really Know?

Participant: Where can one get… be sure that this is possible? 

Dr Berzin: How can one be sure that this is possible? That’s exactly…

Participant: To know all the…

Dr Berzin: Everything.

Participant: Ursachen und Zukunft.

Dr Berzin: Right. How can we know that it is possible to know everything, to know the interconnectedness of everything? These are the points that we contemplate all the way up to liberation and enlightenment – how it is really possible – and why one of these forces that we are talking about is confident belief. The confident belief that “this is so” will get deeper and deeper the more we understand. 

I think the first point that you have to become convinced of is that everything is interrelated and interconnected. I think, from a scientific point of view, that one would certainly have to agree that everything that happens now is affected by everything that happened before. Then, there’s the whole theory of chaos – you know, a butterfly waves its wings and this affects the weather of the whole planet; this type of image. So, if you think logically, you could come to the conclusion that everything is interconnected. Then the question is: can all of that be known? But those are two questions.

Participant: Also, it is not a linear thing – Ursache und Wirkung – because there are many, many factors.

Dr Berzin: Right, cause and effect is not linear. This is what makes it so incredibly complex. The image that’s used in the Mahayana sutras is the net of Brahma. The net of Brahma is this net in which, at every cross thread of the net, there’s a mirror, and every mirror reflects every other mirror. That’s the image that’s used to describe how everything is totally interconnected and has been affected by everything else. So, it’s not linear at all.

Participant: Is it like a kind of Hinduism? 

Dr Berzin: It’s used in Hinduism as well.

Participant: So, this is the mirror of Brahma?

Dr Berzin: This is the net of Brahma. The Net of Brahma (Brahmajvala) is the name of the sutra, actually. Brahmajvala Sutra. 

Participant: Was this example also in early Buddhism?

Dr Berzin: I don’t know. It’s certainly a Mahayana sutra. I don’t know that it’s a Theravada sutra.

Participant: Yeah, from Buddha Shakyamuni…

Dr Berzin: We had this discussion in the Shantideva course. In the Hinayana schools – there are eighteen of them, and they all differ in what they believe – there was a question about the omniscience of a Buddha. They certainly said that there isn’t much difference between an arhat and a Buddha in terms of their being free from the disturbing emotions – that in this respect, they are the same. A Buddha, though, has the ability to help everybody; an arhat doesn’t. So, a Buddha knows more than an arhat. Then, the question is: what is the omniscience of a Buddha? Everybody agrees that a Buddha is omniscient and…

Participant: I don’t know if there is a difference here in saying he knows more or he knows everything.

Dr Berzin: Well, no. The difference is whether Buddhas know everything at the same time or whether they could know anything at any time but don’t have everything going on in their minds all the time. That’s the difference. Then, there is also the issue of whether a Buddha only know what will liberate others or whether a Buddha knows everything. You’d have to say, from a Mahayana point of view, that a Buddha would have to know everything, including the joke that I always say about knowing everybody’s telephone number. But then, why a Buddha would have to know everybody’s telephone number is a good question.

Participant: Because it could help somebody.

Dr Berzin: Because it could help somebody if they want to call. That’s one point. But why would that be part of what a Buddha knows? 

Participant: Because it’s part of knowledge.

Dr Berzin: Because it’s part of knowledge, because it’s cause and effect. You get a telephone number when you apply for the telephone number. So, because a Buddha knows all the previous karmic things that you have done, a Buddha would also know when you applied for a telephone number and what telephone number you got – to use a silly example. Then there are, of course, all the discussions – whether a Buddha knows the theory of relativity, whether a Buddha know the laws of physics and how to build airplanes, and all these sorts of things. I don’t know. They always say that the most important thing is that a Buddha knows how to liberate everybody.

Participant: If I remember correctly, in Christianity, they have the concept of the eye of flesh, the eye of mind, and the eye of the Godhead, or something like that, because there are three kinds of bodies. So, the idea is that if you know the Godhead – you know, like the highest truth – you wouldn’t necessarily have to know all the things related to the body.

Dr Berzin: You would not have to?

Participant: Yeah. You can realize the final truth, but on a conventional level, you still don’t even know the name of your neighbor or something. They don’t see that kind of contradiction.

Dr Berzin: Karsten is saying that in Christianity (mind you, I’m terribly uneducated about Christianity, I must admit), when you have the eye, or the knowledge, of God, or the Godhead, you don’t necessarily have the eye of the flesh – the knowledge of worldly things. So, you might not even know the name of your neighbor. I don’t know.

Mind Is the Mental Activity of Making Appearances Arise and Cognizing Them

To get back to Mariana’s question, can the mind be aware of everything, either one thing at a time, which would be the Hinayana view, or everything all at the same time, given that everything is interconnected? That gets to the nature of the mind and whether the mind is limited by… I think we could agree that the software of the human body is not capable of that. So, then we have to get into what the nature of the mind, individual mind, is. I think everything depends on that, Mariana. 

What’s the definition of “mind”? That’s where you start to analyze this. What do we mean by “mind” in Buddhism? Does anybody remember? We talked about it so much in the sensitivity course. Remember? Making appearances, mental holograms, arise and cognizing them – and only that: mere clarity and awareness. What is a mind? We are not talking about a thing in our heads that does this and that; we are talking about the mental activity itself. Mental activity (an individual mind), which goes on moment to moment to moment, makes mental holograms of things. And to make a mental hologram is equivalent to knowing it – either seeing it, hearing it, or thinking it. It’s not that, first, a thought arises, and then you think it. 

Participant: Still, you have the same question: is it possible that the hologram of everything arises?

Dr Berzin: Well, what would limit it? 

Participant: How could you prove that it is possible? 

Dr Berzin: How could you prove it? 

Participant: There should be one being…

Dr Berzin: I must say that this is a very difficult thing. Maybe you remember that in our discussion of the Indian schools of philosophy, we were speaking about what the impossible “me,” the impossible soul, or atman, is. One view of it, the gross or coarse level of it, is that an atman is static (not changing), has no parts, and is independent of a body and mind. Then, some schools say that the self has a mind, you know, is conscious; some say it isn’t. Some say the self is the size of the universe and has no parts (the whole atman is Brahma, that type of view), and others say that the soul, or atman, is just like a little spark of life. In all cases, it has no parts. 

So, the idea in Buddhism is that the self refers to the mind. The mind can be labeled a “self” because Buddhism would say that the mind takes, or knows, objects and also that the self knows objects. When we say that the mind sees the table, we also have to say that “I” see the table. So, Buddhism says both of them know things – in a sense. 

The Mind of a Buddha Knows and Pervades Everything

To say that the mind can know everything is the Buddhist variant of the idea that the self is the size of the universe. I must say that I find this a little bit difficult to deal with – that the mind of a Buddha knows everything. Because the mind of a Buddha knows everything, it pervades everything. So, in a sense, it becomes the size of the universe. And they say that where the mind is, the subtle energy-wind also is (this is in tantra, the energy of the tantra view), which explains why a Buddha can manifest everywhere simultaneously in countless numbers of bodies. If a mind is encompassing everything, then the energy-wind is encompassing everything. This is what they say. That’s the explanation. So, it seems to be very much an Indian way of thinking that the mind encompasses the whole universe. Whether we talk about the mind encompassing the universe or the atman encompassing the universe, it’s the same structure of thought. 

Participant: But then it comes from an idea that the mind is a sort of “thing.”

Dr Berzin: Well, it’s an activity, and there is an energy. The mind isn’t a thing. Mind is the activity with a physical basis. The physical basis, the energy-wind, is not the mind. When you talk about mind, you are talking about knowing; so, it’s an activity. There is a thing there, but the thing is the energy. It’s not the mind; it’s the energy of the mind. So, the energy of the mind can pervade the whole universe. 

This becomes really weird, I must say, because then you would also have to say that it’s not the same as the universe, of course, because you could have many Buddhas all of whose individual minds encompass the whole universe and whose energy pervades the whole universe. So, just because one Buddha’s energy pervades the whole universe doesn’t mean that there is no room for another Buddha’s energy to pervade the whole universe. 

Participant: Then, actually, one Buddha would be sufficient.

Dr Berzin: Then one Buddha would be sufficient, so that doesn’t make sense. 

Is mental activity limited to the body? Now it starts to become really weird, I must say. Because what about during the death…? Well, no, it’s not like that. I am thinking of death existence, the death period. At the time of clear light death, consciousness is still in the body. As soon as it leaves the body, it enters the bardo. It’s simultaneous. Leaving the clear light of death and attainment of bardo is simultaneous. It’s not that you leave the clear light of death and then you enter into the bardo. There is no in between thing there. What I was thinking is that, actually, there is always a limitation of some type of body or container. Otherwise, when you are dead, you would pervade the whole universe. 

Participant: Yes, and, also, the other way round. If a Buddha pervades everything, he also pervades this little wind energy continuum. So, that bardo being would be a Buddha immediately. 

Dr Berzin: So, you’re saying that if there weren’t a limiting container – even through the process of death – we would be Buddhas already as soon as the mind left the container, this body. But this is why I was saying – every Buddha pervades everything, but that doesn’t mean that every Buddha is equivalent to everything. If Buddha pervaded everything and was identical to everything, then Buddha would be me and you. 

Participant: Yes.

Dr Berzin: And this is false. 

Participant: How about Buddha-nature? 

Three Types of Buddha-Nature, the Factors That Make It Possible to Evolve and Become a Buddha

Dr Berzin: Buddha-nature is individual. There are three types of Buddha-nature: 

There is the abiding Buddha-nature, which is something that doesn’t change. That’s the voidness of every being, the voidness of the mind. According to the non-Gelugpa schools, you would also say that the conventional nature of the mind has an abiding nature: it always stays the same – this making holograms and knowing them (“mere clarity and awareness” is the jargon for that). So, the voidness of the mind is always the case. These are what make it possible to have the various Buddha-bodies. That’s what is responsible for the Svabhavakaya, the Nature Body of a Buddha, which is the voidness of a Buddha’s mind. That’s always the same.

Then there is what is called the “evolving Buddha-traits.” These are the things that can evolve and transform into the other types of Buddha-bodies. On the sutra level, we speak about the two networks, the two collections, of positive force and deep awareness (or merit and wisdom). We can also speak of body, speech, and mind. We can also speak of subtlest energy. We can speak about all sorts of things in here – various qualities. Most of those are there with no beginning. Some can be developed newly, like bodhichitta. So, there are two kinds of Buddha qualities: those with no beginning and those that do have a beginning. These are part of Buddha-nature.

The third type of Buddha-nature is the fact that the mental continuum of other beings can be uplifted, can be affected by the enlightening influence of a Buddha. This is sometimes translated as the “blessings” of a Buddha. So, it can be stimulated, be influenced. That also makes it possible to evolve and to become a Buddha. 

So, the nature of the mind, either only the deepest nature or both the deepest and conventional natures – so, all the factors on the mental continuum that are either there already or that will arise anew that can transform into the bodies of a Buddha, including the fact that all these factors can be stimulated to grow, can be influenced – that’s Buddha-nature. So, you can say that everybody has Buddha–nature, but it’s not just one thing. Everybody has a nose, but my nose isn’t your nose. We all have noses. We all have Buddha-natures. My Buddha-nature isn’t your Buddha-nature. 

Participant: Is it possible that maybe everything is one in the beginning, so to say, and then it just gets split up, by whatever reason, into having some parts? And all these parts are not aware of each other; not aware of their connectedness.

Dr Berzin: Now he is giving the version that maybe in the beginning, we were all one and then fell apart, and we don’t know that we are all one. That’s a Hindu view, one of the Hindu views that would speak in terms of creation. In Buddhism there is no creation, so there is no beginning. There can be the beginning of a cycle, but there is no absolute beginning. It’s not that we all were enlightened once, and then Adam and Eve ate the apple, and since then we are all screwed: now we are in samsara. There is no story of falling out of a state of knowing, a state of knowledge, a state of bliss. Anti-knowing, misknowing and suffering have no beginning, just as the mind has no beginning. However, the mind will not have an end, whereas the suffering and samsara can have an end. And that’s the whole point of this. Can samsara have an end, and why can it have an end? It can because the state of mind can be changed, and you can develop a state of mind that’s the exact opposite of the misknowing; it just cuts off either not knowing or the incorrect way of knowing.

Prasangika really emphasizes that you need to cut off misknowing, not just anti-knowing. Anti-knowing is synonymous with closed-mindedness, moha in Sanskrit. Misknowing is a type of anti-knowing because, when you have an incorrect way of knowing reality, you are close-minded to the correct way of knowing. Therefore, when you cut off misknowing, you also cut off anti-knowing. But if you just cut off anti-knowing, you don’t necessarily get rid of misknowing. That’s why Prasangika prefers this definition of ignorance as misknowing. 

There is always an individuality of a mental continuum, of a mind – individuality of persons, individuality of Buddhas. “Individual,” though, doesn’t mean with a solid line around it, isolated from everything else. And what becomes even more difficult to understand is that within the whole understanding of voidness, there is nothing on the side of the object that makes it individual. Objects of awareness don’t possess their own little bar code or their own little number that, on the side of the thing, makes it individual. Yet, it’s an individual. You can’t find anything that makes it an individual by its own power. And just because… now it gets even more far-out. Just because everything is affected by everything else, doesn’t make everything equal. Everything is affected by everything else, but everything is not affected equally by everything else, by each individual part of everything else, is it? 

Participant: I have to think about it. Maybe I can say that the kind of effect of each relationship with different objects is different because, otherwise, it would mean that I’m like on the same level. Then, maybe, I’m like one with this mat, or something like that. Somehow, I’m also related with this mat, but it would be crazy to say… 

Dr Berzin: That’s exactly the point.  You’ve got it, Karsten – that I and this mat that I am sitting on are both the product of everything that has come before in history, in the evolution of the universe, but that doesn’t mean that I am equivalent to the mat, that I am identical to the mat. But both of us have been affected by everything that has come in the past. 

We’ve had an awful lot. Why don’t we take a moment to think about at least some of this. 

One thing I should mention here, though, is that, in our discussion of the four noble truths, the point is whether or not it is possible to gain liberation. That’s the real discussion of the four noble truths. You can present the four noble truths in terms of what prevents enlightenment and the causes for that and so on, and the suffering of being limited, of not being able to help everybody, and the cause for that being the mind, and everything being limited and so on (because even an arhat would be limited in that sense) and what you would need in order to get rid of that. But I do think that we need to differentiate between knowing whether liberation is possible and knowing whether enlightenment is possible.

Participant: But for liberation, you don’t need omniscience.

Dr Berzin: But Prasangika says that for liberation, you need the same understanding of voidness as you do for enlightenment. The difference is the strength of the mind that understands voidness – whether you have bodhichitta behind it or not. Without bodhichitta, with renunciation alone, you can gain liberation with the correct understanding of voidness. If you have bodhichitta as well, you would achieve liberation earlier, and you could go all the way to enlightenment. With renunciation by itself – with the force of that type of mind that’s understanding voidness – you can’t. In the highest class of tantra, they would say that you can get all the way like that up until the final stage of the tenth bhumi. But no matter what, you have to get to the subtlest clear light mind – the mind with bodhichitta, etc. – in order to actually  achieve enlightenment, to get rid of the last part of the final obscurations.

So, let’s think for a moment; let’s try to focus. Is liberation possible? Is it possible to get rid of the disturbing emotions, in other words, the causes, the true origins, of what activates karmic aftermath and perpetuates our samsara? 

Dealing with Anger – Unlike the Understanding of Voidness, Patience Provides Only a Temporary Stopping 

Let me give you something more specific to think about and to apply in your own understanding: How could you get rid of your anger? How could you get rid of your greed or your selfishness? Would the understanding of voidness stop that anger and greed? I think that’s the way to approach becoming convinced that there is a true pathway leading to liberation. If you were convinced that the understanding of voidness would stop your anger or greed and you also had some experience of applying that understanding, you could then understand that if you had that understanding all the time, the anger would never come back.

Participant: But there are also other Gegenmittel against anger.

Dr Berzin: Right, there are other antidotes against anger – patience, for example. But then you have to examine what the difference is between getting rid of anger with patience and getting rid of it with the understanding of voidness. This is exactly what comes in some of these wrong views – thinking that things that give only temporary relief are the ultimate relief. So, that’s really the thing to think about here in order to become convinced that we need the understanding of voidness in order to gain liberation. Would patience be enough? 

Shantideva had this whole discussion about whether the understanding of impermanence would be enough. For example, you sit there and do some sort of meditation with a simplistic understanding of vipashyana – that the breath is impermanent, the feelings in the body are impermanent, and so on. Is that going to give you liberation? Shantideva said, “No way. It’s going to help, but it is not going to bring you to liberation.”

Participant: But also, he taught all the perfections.

Dr Berzin: But remember the first verse of the ninth chapter of Engaging in Bodhisattva Behavior (Bodhicaryavatara; sPyod-'jug) – that all of the previous far-reaching attitudes are intended as the means for leading up to the sixth, wisdom, or far-reaching discriminating awareness. All of that is intended to be the foundation for the sixth. 

Anyway, this is the thing to think about when we ask, “Is the understanding of voidness a pathway that actually will lead to liberation?” How would you deal with your anger, your jealousy, your insecurity, lack of self-confidence… whatever disturbing emotion it is that you might have? 

OK, what do you think? Karsten?

Participant: The way that I usually see it is that I look at how the problems I have are related with this strong ego and “me.” But it’s wrong ego, I think. If I get angry, often it’s just that I want to be better than someone else, or whatever. So, I think that if I apply voidness to this wrong ego, this ego would kind of become less and less or even, maybe finally vanish. I guess that many of my problems would then vanish too. From this point of view, if I reached this stage, I could look forward to even more subtle states – voidness of phenomena or whatever.

Dr Berzin: OK. So, Karsten is saying that if, when he gets angry, thinking, “Oh, I should be better. I should be this; I should be that” and getting upset, he understood that it was an ego trip in – thinking in terms of a big “me” – and if he realized that there was really no such thing as that “me,” this would eventually lessen the ego involvement, and then he could go further. 

Let me elaborate a little bit. Let’s say we are angry with somebody – just for a very simple thing like, “you didn’t call,” or “you came late,” or “you didn’t do this,” or “you didn’t do that,” or whatever it is. Then we are angry. Now, you could apply patience in so many of the different ways that Shantideva said – that “it’s my negative karma coming back to me,” and “it was my fault for depending on the other person,” and so on. There are all these different ways of developing patience that Shantideva outlined. But still, what is going on here? We are still thinking of a solid “me” and a solid “you.” “You didn’t come when you said you were going to come; you were late. You bastard. I’ve been stood up. But I’ll be patient with that because I know that, in the past, I must have done something like this.”Also, “Maybe they were late for some reason; maybe something else came up,” and so on, so, “I’ll be patient with that.” However, underlying that, we are thinking of a solid “me” being patient with a solid “you.” Aren’t we? So, we are still left with this view. 

Now, if we apply a non-Prasangika understanding of voidness of the self, then we think in terms of “who am I angry with?” and “who am I?” Well, “you are not some sort of permanent ‘you’ that has no parts and is separate from the body.” We wouldn’t even think like that. So, what is the more subtle impossible self of a person according to the non-Prasangikas? It is the self-sufficiently knowable “me.” 

Remember, when we say, “I see Dirk,” how can we say that we see Dirk without seeing his body? We can’t just see Dirk; we have to see Dirk labeled on a body. “I know Mariana” – how can I know Mariana? I know the name “Mariana.” I know the word “Mariana.” We can’t just know the person without a basis: – what they look like, what the sound of their voice is… “I heard Mariana on the phone.” Well, actually, we heard a voice on the phone. And on the basis of that voice, we heard Mariana. They say that this is enough for achieving liberation – to realize that. But is that enough? 

 “You didn’t come for dinner. You didn’t show up.” Now, of course, that “you” was not separate from the body, so your body didn’t show up. So, even though I realize that,  I still label, “you,” on that body: “You bastard – you didn’t show up.” Because there is some findable “you” that can be known on the basis of a body, mind, name, and these things, you are still left with that solid bastard who didn’t show up. “And poor me; I was stood up.” Even if you know that the person is only what can be labeled (the Svatantrika view) onto a set of aggregates, there is still something on the side of the aggregates that makes “you” findable, that makes you “you.” There is something on the side of my aggregates that makes me “me.” So, still, you have some object, some findable object, that you are going to get angry with. 

It’s really only the Prasangika view that cuts all of that off completely. There is nothing on the side of the person, of “you,” there is nothing on the side of me that you can find that could be the object of anger or the object of “poor me.” It’s only what can be labeled on these aggregates, which are constantly changing, and all the causes and circumstances that are involved. There is no findable object for your anger anymore. That’s what gets rid of the anger. Otherwise, it’s just, “OK, temporarily I am not angry. But still, there is something inside you that makes you such a rotten person who always comes late and never comes when you say that you’re going to come.” You still get angry afterwards because you are left with something solid and findable. 

Participant: To understand this non-conceptual cognition of voidness, does it mean that your anger doesn’t even arise? I mean, there’s no reason to be angry because there’s no solid person to be angry with.

Dr Berzin: He is saying that if you have the non-conceptual understanding of voidness, there is no reason to be angry, that the anger doesn’t arise. Let’s not get into conceptual and non-conceptual issue. Whether it is conceptual or non-conceptual, at that time of being absorbed on voidness, your anger cannot be present because there is no object of the anger. If it’s conceptual, it hasn’t really eliminated any level of the anger. With non-conceptual understanding, some level of anger will never come back, so you start to achieve a true stopping. Now, you have to become familiar with the non-conceptual understanding to pull out more and more of these roots. You only start to pull out some of them out when the understanding is non-conceptual. But even when it is conceptual, you are not angry at the time of absorption. You can’t be angry at that time because there is no object; you are just focusing on “there’s no such thing.” 

Identifying the (Angry) “Me” To Be Refuted

Participant: I think the first step is to know, which is very practical, that you are angry, that you’re upset. I think one point where it can really work with emptiness is just to stop and see, “Oh, OK. This is the angry ‘me.’” Identify it. Look for it. 

Dr Berzin: Right. This is exactly what Tsongkhapa said: the first step is to identify the “me” to be refuted.

Participant: But then you can’t do it with this angry “me.”

Dr Berzin: Right, so, you try to identify what this angry “me” is and “What is this feeling like?” in order to identify, “Hey, I am thinking in terms of a solid ‘me.’” 

Participant: Then you think, “Where is it? Where is it?”

Dr Berzin: So, you have this strong feeling in your gut, and then “where is it, where is it?” However, I wouldn’t localize the “me” because then you could get into one of these lesser views about the “me” – “Well, I can’t know the ‘me’ without knowing this feeling, so that feeling is me.” But you have that feeling of “me” in your gut. 

Participant: Yeah, but I think it’s very useful to try to do this because, otherwise, you are always blaming the other person: “I’m angry because” blah, blah, blah. So, you get completely on the wrong track because you think this other person’s doing something to the angry “me.” So, if you look for the angry “me,” at least it brings you in the right direction to look.

Dr Berzin: Right. Now, this brings up a very interesting point. You are saying that you need to look at the angry “me” – that this is very practical. OK. Now, is it sufficient to just identify and refute the angry “me”? I don’t think so. Why? Because then you think, “OK, that angry ‘me’ doesn’t exist, but you bastard over there – you exist.” So, I think you have to apply it universally – both to the person that you are angry with as well as to yourself. For me, personally, I find it is helpful to start with the other person. Deconstruct the other person first: “Well, there is no object for the anger,” and then deconstruct myself… if you’re talking on a practical level. 

From my experience, at least, that’s the way that I find it most helpful. Why? Because when you’re angry with somebody, the obsession that you have is thinking of the other person: “You didn’t do that. You did that. You, you, you.” So, first, deconstruct that. Then deconstruct “well, who am I? What is the ‘me’ that has been so angry about this?” Also, it’s not sufficient just to deconstruct the other person because then you are still left with the solid “me.” So, ultimately, you have to deconstruct the solid “me.” 

Participant: I think that is the more problematic thing. How much more honest we have to be.

Dr Berzin: Right, that is the more problematic thing. But I think you have to do both. The question is the order. Or could you do both at the same time? I don’t know. 

Participant: One gets rid completely…

Dr Berzin: Gets rid completely of what?

Participant: Of being angry – completely.

Dr Berzin: Right. Well, this is the whole point here: can you get rid of it completely so that it never comes again? If you had that focus on the understanding of voidness at all times, the anger could never arise. So, that’s what we are aiming for – to be able to have it all the time.

Participant: But if you are a company and there’s somebody who’s working there who comes in late every day – how do you deal with that?

Dr Berzin: You could accept it, or you could tell them to start a half hour earlier so they come on time, or you could fire them and get somebody else.

Participant: But then there is no patience inside.

Dr Berzin: The patience could, for instance, be involved with having to accept certain habits of others: “They are not inherently there and permanent. Yes, they could change. However, I know that this friend always comes late.” We won’t mention any names! So, there is a certain friend who always comes late, and it becomes a joke. Nobody gets angry; it’s just a joke. It’s absolutely hilariously funny when they come in late all the time. You don’t expect them to be on time, so you don’t get angry. 

Participant: But the thing is that when you have a company, you have to be careful. 

Dr Berzin: When you have a company, you have to be careful. Then you fire the person. 

Participant: Not to be angry but to get the right person for the job… 

Dr Berzin: Right. Then you fire the person. Patience doesn’t mean doing nothing. Patience means not getting angry. There’s no reason to get angry.

Participant: But sometimes you have to.

Differentiating Between Being Forceful and Being Angry

Dr Berzin: Sometimes you have to be very strict, but without being angry.

Participant: I don’t know, when you rear a child, you can’t say, “OK, you can go out. You can come home when you want,” because a child has no experience with life. Sometimes, you have to show that you are in charge. You have to get angry and say, “Here is the limit. You can’t go farther.”

Dr Berzin: Now, we have to be careful here. What you mention is perfectly true. With a child you have to set limits. If the child is staying out too late and doesn’t have the maturity to deal with that, you set limits. Do you have to get angry? No. You could be forceful. There is a difference between being forceful, speaking very strongly to the child, and being angry. There’s a very delicate difference between the two. So, then you have to look at the definition of anger. 

Participant: Still, if the child is still doing what you told him not to do, you have to get angry. 

Dr Berzin: No, you have to be forceful. You don’t have to get angry.

Participant: Ah, OK.

Dr Berzin: Anger is an exaggeration of the negative qualities of something – an exaggeration of “me” and “I have to get rid of that; I have to stop that.” It makes a big, solid thing out of what you are angry with and a big, solid thing out of “me” and holding onto that.  If you make a big, solid thing out of it, it gets out of control, and your mind becomes unclear. So, it’s a disturbing emotion. 

A disturbing emotion is defined as a state of mind that makes you lose your peace of mind and lose self-control. When you are angry, your mind isn’t clear, you don’t have peace of mind, and you lose self-control. You might hit the child; you might do all sort things. You might threaten the child with something that you wouldn’t ever possibly do. But that doesn’t have good consequences in terms of the child because then they won’t believe you. 

This is very difficult to train in. Very difficult. When I was studying martial arts, which I only did for two years, I used to teach meditation at the end of the classes because my friend was the martial arts teacher. In martial arts, you can train somebody like that – to be very forceful and strong with your energy but not get angry. We would do exercises like yell or punch – “HAH!” – like that, but without being angry, just using forceful energy while staying calm inside. That’s difficult.

Participant: That’s a good point because in physiotherapy, you need to show your feelings and to get angry. That is the point.

Dr Berzin: Well, I don’t know. What they say, of course, is that if you get into the habit of expressing your anger, then you always do that, and you never learn to overcome your anger. So, if you need to express it, it’s best to wait until the situation is not so explosive and you are not so upset. At that point, you can say to the other person, “Look, I really was upset. This really is unacceptable,” and so on, and speak in a more rational type of tone. Or if you really have to express the anger, punch a pillow or something like that. Don’t punch your child. Of course, it’s very difficult, especially with your children.

Participant: There are so many contradictions. When you read this book, you find this, and when you read that book, you find that. That’s why I’m asking about this because it is one of our human beliefs that we are always with this attachment. And to stop that it is not easy sometimes. 

Dr Berzin: She is saying that there are so many books and so many different methods…

Participant: In the hospital, when you see the patients, you have to show, to express, your feelings, and we have to accept the consequences. With anger, not everybody is able to understand. 

Dr Berzin: She is speaking about therapeutic situations and how there are many different psychological approaches for expressing your anger and learning to be able to express your feelings. Buddhism is not saying to suppress anger; nor is it saying to express your anger. What it’s saying is to get rid of the cause so that anger will never arise. It’s like pulling the plug out from underneath it. That’s what you want to achieve. When you are really angry, at that time, it’s not easy to apply these opponents because the energy of the emotion is overwhelming. But even then, as Shantideva says, it’s better  to say, “Look, I am very angry. I am very upset with what you did. Go to your room, and we’ll speak about it in the morning,” rather than yelling and screaming and carrying on when the child comes home late, for example.

Participant: I can’t say that to my child. I was just asking because it is something you learn from outside – that it’s like that – and you learn that it is different in Buddhism. I know from experience it is not good to be angry. It’s separation. For me, it is separation to be angry. But sometimes,  it’s not easy to stop.

Dr Berzin: This is absolutely true. She says that she knows from her experience in raising children that anger just causes separation. It certainly causes resentment on the side of the person that you are angry with. But it is not easy at all to stop getting angry. Absolutely, Buddhism never said it was easy. What Buddhism is offering is a course of training so that your anger will arise less and less, so that when it arises, the energy behind it will be weaker and won’t last so long. And eventually it won’t arise at all. 

What we are examining here is what you could potentially develop. Is there a type of mind that would cause the disturbing emotions never to come again? That’s what we’re discussing here. Is there such a mind? If there is such a mind and such an understanding, then we develop confidence in that and enthusiasm to actually try to develop it. That’s what these forces in the Verse 45 are talking about: (1) belief in fact – belief that it’s true, that it is possible to achieve this; (2) joyful perseverance – you’re really going to work hard to try to develop this; (3) mindfulness – you remember it all the time; (4) absorbed concentration – you stay focused on it so that you don’t get angry; (5) lastly, the discriminating awareness with which you understand, “well, I don’t exist like this. You don’t exist like this; you exist like that.” So, with these five forces, or powers, aimed at this type of understanding, you can prevent the anger from ever arising again. 

Of course, this doesn’t mean that you don’t deal with the conventional reality. That’s what we are saying: don’t refute too much. The conventional reality is that the child needs discipline; the child needs to maybe even be punished. But you do it without anger. You certainly don’t hate the child. So, if you don’t hate the child, you can also not be angry. “This is unacceptable what you have done, the way that you are behaving,” and so on. Then, if they don’t respond to you when you are being very calm about it, then maybe you have to speak more strongly. Then, you do it like a good martial artist – using that strength, but inside staying calm. That’s not easy because you are dealing with the energy, and the energy inside is not so easy to keep calm. 

That’s why in tantra, in the highest class of tantra, you start working with the energy as well. If you can somehow control and calm down the energy inside while also imagining flames going out from you and so on, that helps. But that’s even more difficult. 

Anyway, that brings us to the end of the class. Let’s take a moment to just absorb a little bit what we have speaking about, and then we’ll end.

Additional Approaches for Understanding the Voidness of “Me”

Let me just add something her, another thought in terms of Mariana’s question. It says very clearly in the text that the order of understanding voidness is that, first, you understand the voidness of the self and, then, of all phenomena, which would include other people. However, at the time of actually applying it, first, you think of the voidness of all phenomena, which means the voidness of your aggregates – what you are experiencing now – and then the voidness of the “me.” So, there are the aggregates, what I am experiencing now – “You bastard!” blah, blah, blah, the anger, and so on – and then there is the voidness of the “me” that is labeled on that. Then, there is the voidness of the voidness of the “me” that is labeled on that. That’s the sequence in actual practice. That’s what it says in the text. So, it’s easier to understand the voidness of the “me.” But first, you start with what the “me” is experiencing – the voidness of that – and then the voidness of the “me” that’s experiencing it. 

[Pause]

One more thought on that. You can also do a Sakya type of Chittamatra approach, which is to see both the appearance of the person that you are angry with and the appearance of “me” (you who are getting angry) as coming from the same seed of karma in the mind – that it’s because of this previously built-up karmic tendency that the mind makes that appearance of “you bastard” and “poor me,” as one scenario. And then, you apply the understanding of the voidness of the mind that is producing that and the voidness of the “me” in terms of that. So, that’s another approach.

Participant: I was thinking about this approach – that it’s an occasion to get the object of refutation very strongly. So, you can use being angry or whatever to have a clear understanding of “oh, yeah, that’s the ‘me’ to be refuted!”

Dr Berzin: Oh, yes. That’s very true. And Tsongkhapa says that as well – that when you get emotionally upset, that’s the time when you can recognize the object to be refuted the strongest.

Participant: Really, you see that’s the thing I have to really to look at.

Dr Berzin: Yes, absolutely.

Participant: So, that makes a positive thing out of it.

Dr Berzin: Well, yes, you can make a positive thing out of it in the sense that “I have learned something from it; I’ve learned to be able identify a little bit more clearly what I need to refute.”

Participant: Then to really do it.

Dr Berzin: Then to really do it. Of course.

Participant: I think to use being in a way to meditate on emptiness.

Dr Berzin: Right, she says we can use being angry to meditate on emptiness. I think so, particularly in retrospect, when we look back at it – “Yes, that was the problem.” At the time of actually being angry, just to say, “Yes, that’s what I have to refute”… it’s true, but then you have to refute it.

Participant: Yeah, yeah. But at least then it’s very clear, the object is really clear, so you have a…

Dr Berzin: Right, the object is clear.

Participant: Also, in a way, it takes the energy out of being angry. But it only works when you really have, at that moment, the time to reflect.

Dr Berzin: Right. So, this is a very difficult aspect – that it only works when you actually have the time when you are actually angry to be able to… 

Participant: If you are in a confrontation...

Dr Berzin: If you are in a confrontation with another person, you don’t have the time to really reflect, unless you have meditated so much before and familiarized yourself with it so much that you are able to instantly bring it to mind. That’s called mindfulness – that you’re able to hold on (the mental glue) and recall your understanding very, very quickly. That comes from the practice of concentration. Remembering to bring your mind back to the object trains you for when you become angry to remember to bring your mind back to the understanding of voidness. Shantideva says that you train, first, in terms of your conduct – that when you find that your body is doing something stupid, you stop and bring your mind back to the discipline. Remember all those verses in Shantideva’s text, like when you are meaninglessly picking grass and doing all sorts of stupid things, to just remain like a block of wood. That’s mindfulness. 

OK. So, thank you. Until next week.