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Day2 – 4 sessions

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01:05:10

Autoscroll:

chomden de jampé yang la chaktsal lo gang gi lodrö drib nyi trindral nyi tar namdak rabsalwé jinyé dön kün jizhin zik chir nyi kyi tukkar lekbam dzin gangdak sipé tsönrar marik mün tum dukngal gyi zirwé dro tsok kün la bu chik tar tsé yenlak drukchü yangden sung druk tar cher drok nyönmong nyi long lé kyi chak drok droldzé ching marik münsel dukngal nyugu jinyé chödzé raldri nam döné dak ching sa chü tar sön yönten lü dzok gyalsé tuwö ku chu trak chu dang chunyi gyen tré dak lö münsel jampé yang la dü om a ra pa tsa na dhih om a ra pa tsa na dhih om a ra pa tsa na dhih om a ra pa tsa na dhih om a ra pa tsa na dhih om a ra pa tsa na dhih
tseden khyé kyi khyen rab özer gyi dak lö timuk münpa rabsal né ka dang tenchö zhung luk tokpa yi lodrö pobpé nangwa tsal du sol gang tsé tawar döpa am chungzé driwar dö na yang gönpo jamyang khyé nyi ni gek mepar yang tongwar shok
okmin chökyi yingkyi phodrang né düsum sangyé kün gyi ngowo nyi rangsem chöku ngönsum tönzé pa tsawai lamai shapla sölwa dep
Alright, so we are looking at the five great logical arguments of the Middle Way, and among those five, we are still looking at the first one, which is known as the investigation of the cause, the Diamond Splinters. That's the name of that specific investigation.
Right, to recap what we have looked at yesterday, so we've been refuting the production from self, right, among the different modes of production, the production from self. So we investigate that, we have seen that the production from the self is not established, it's not logical, it's not feasible, because if the cause, which is itself, right, which is same as the result, if it's non-existent prior to the production of the effect, well, it can never produce anything. And if it's already existent, like the cause and effect already exist, then there is no need, the production would be pointless.
Likewise, when we look at the presentation of the cause, so what is the cause, what is the result or effect, we can see that we can never really say that they are exactly the same, right? That they are identical, share the same identity.
Because if we look at the identities of the given cause and effect, for example, what we mean by identity, the essence of the cause, the potential, the power of the cause, the shape of it, the color, the size, the different qualities, attributes of the cause, they are not the same as the essence, identity, power, shape, color, size of the result, produced by their cause.
At the time of the effect, we don't have any more the essence of the cause, the shape, the color, the power of the cause, it's not there anymore.
In that way, at the time of the effect, we already have to say that the cause is other than the effect, it's something different from the result.
And in that way, it becomes illogical to claim production from self, because at the time of the effect, we already see that the cause and effect are established as being different from each other, so the production of the self is not feasible.
In this way, the claims of some of the proponents of the production from self, those claims don't withstand logical analysis, right? So we can see that what they claim, this production from self, at the end is not logical, it is not established.
While others, by others here, we mean some followers of philosophical schools, proponents of some tenets, they claim that by the same identity of the cause and effect, they mean that at the time of the cause, there is already an effect, just not manifest yet. So it's already present there, in that way they claim that it's self-production, but what is specific feature of those kind of claims is that the result at the time of cause is not evident yet. That's all. But these kind of claims are also refuted by the middle way proponents. They are also not logical.
To claim that there is a self-production, meaning right, that the cause and result are the same, we would need to agree that they share the same substance, that they are, sorry, of the same substance. But that's also not tenable.
If they were of the same nature, of the same substance, then at the time of looking at the cause, we should be able to see the result right there, therein. And likewise, at the time of observing the result, we should be able also to observe the cause therein. But that's not the case.
However, our eye consciousness does not observe the evident present effect at the time of the cause. And likewise, at the time of the result, there is no cause anymore. It has ceased. At the time of the cause, the result is not there yet. So in that way, we cannot establish that they are of the same substance. Of this... To be of the same substance, it is to say that they are of the same essential nature. And to share the same nature, it means that it should be observable. So when we look at something, and if it shares the same nature with something else, we should see the both things right there. But that's not the case, right? When we look at the effect, the cause has already ceased. It's no more. It cannot be observed by our eye consciousness. Likewise, when we look at the cause, there is no effect there. And so to say that they are of the same essential nature, substantial nature, doesn't make any sense.
And this is not something that only the path of reasoning, of logical arguments, establish that difference between cause and result. Actually, it's quite a common sense. If you ask any common folk who is involved with some type of kind of agriculture, you will say, well, obviously, they're not the same, right? When I plant seed, it's not the same as the sprout. The sprout is not the same as the seed. So the otherness is quite established also in the worldly sense.
Well, so this kind of, let's say, ordinary farmer, and by ordinary we mean someone who is not involved with some kind of reasonings and logical arguments, uh, for that kind of an ordinary farmer, it's not that he or she understand that the cause has to cease in order to produce the result and effect, right? However, it's just a common sense that when he or she looks at the sprout, there is no seeds anymore. They are not observed, right? So it's pretty obvious, right? For this kind of un, uh, or say mmm... for this person that the cause and the effect, that is to say the seed and the sprout, are different from one another because one is absent and another is present, and when one is present, another is absent.
In this way it is said that the production from self is not tenable, that is to say that the cause and effect do not share the same essence, the same nature.
Then the second question arises. What about production from other? Right, okay, we agree that production from self is illogical, but then we might assume that obviously there is a production that occurs from something other right, than itself. So the causes produce subsequent results and so on and so on, so. How about that? Is that something that can be proven logically?
For some, for something to be claimed to be other, right, the two things basically to claim their otherness, the both things need to be present at the same time, simultaneously. Only then we can point and say this is different from this, that is different from that, right?
And so this kind of production from other, as I have explained yesterday, is also not acceptable in a way that the problem is that everything could be claimed to be other from its cause, right? Anything then could arise from anything.
Right, so basically what happens is that everything could be the cause for the result because they all are equally other than the, than the result.
To that the opponent usually answer that, well, it's not the case because actually the causes and results, they have an uncommon acting causal relationship between them, right? It's not just random things but there is a specific uncommon causal relationship.
Well, to claim that barley seed that specifically becomes a cause for barley sprout, right, that they share that uncommon causal relationship, both need to be present simultaneously so that they actually could be established as truly other from one another.
However, the cause and effect, or here actually we are speaking specifically about barley seed and barley sprout, they are never present at the same time with one another. They are not simultaneously present.
Generally, it is assumed that the cause needs to cease in order for the result to take place.
If cause hasn't ceased, the result could not be produced.
So there is this kind of continuity, um, or rather um, momentariness to it, sort of. The process happens moment by moment.
Only when the... Let's say there is this momentariness, right? So there is a first moment, second, third and so on, right? And this kind of continuity of barley sprout arising from its seed. So we say that the first moment has to cease in order to give space, opportunity for the second moment to arise. And likewise, the second moment has to cease and be no more so that the next, second, third moment could take place.
In that way, since they are never simultaneously present, how can we claim that one is actually something other than another, right? Sorry, that they are different from one another, that they have this kind of otherness between them. We can't ever claim that.
They are never together at the same time, because at the time of the seed, the sprout has not yet arisen. Right? And then at the time of the sprout, the seed has already ceased. So that's, that's just how things are. So one has to cease for another to take, to, to be produced. And so actually they are never there at the same time.
And so since they are never present simultaneously, how can we ever claim that they are truly other?
And so to then assert this kind of production from other, right? The other is not established in the first place, then how can we ever claim the production from other?
To say that, the result is different from its cause, right? To say it is different. We need to have cause there so that we can compare and claim that the result is different from the cause, right? And likewise, to say that the cause is truly different from its result, well, we need to have the result already present at the time of the cause so that we can then point our finger and say, well, you see, it's different from the cause.
In that way, the production from other can never be established in terms of its, you know, true existence. It can only be merely claimed as something that we can project and then label as such, but once analyzed, it falls apart. We can never really say that there is a true other production.
Also we say that at the time of the result, the cause is no more there, right? It has ceased. Ceased means it's absent, it's done, it's no more. If it's no more, then in other words, what we are claiming, we are claiming the production which is causeless from something that is no more there, so there's no cause, that becomes the production without a cause, which is an absurd consequence, right?
And on the other hand, if then we say, no, no, the cause is there, it has not ceased, right? It's there, so it's not the causeless production. Well, if it's there and it never ceased, then it can never have produced the result, because, well, if it's always there, truly existing cause... the next subsequent moment of the continuity of that cause can never take place, because for the next subsequent moment, the preceding one has to cease. That's how the production happens.
And we can never ever claim that there is a present result and not ceased cause at the same time, like they're both there.
Well, it's just like we will never claim that, us as an infant or a toddler is always there, also at the same time when we are already an adult, right?
And so when we speak of production from other, that other is not even established in the first place.
In that way the production from other is also refuted or it's not really something that's established through logic? Well, it's not logic.
Alright, this is in terms of logic and arguments. Let's put them aside for a moment and just think about common sense. How do we as ordinary folks think about production? Actually, we don't also accept production from other. If we really think what we believe, we believe in some kind of production from self.
For example, a worldly person, that is to say, not a philosopher, uh well, when that person plants a seed of a fruit, and then there's a fruit, that, well a tree that arises there, you know, it was a fruit. For that person, the seed that has been planted and that kind of fruit borne by the tree is, is, is, is of the same nature. It's the same, they will say, of course. Well, that seed that I have planted, they will say, pointing to the fruit.
They will never say, oh, this fruit is really truly different from the seed that I have planted earlier.
For example also thinking about this kind of worldly ways parents that have a child and let's say child is one year old the parents will claim this is my child coming from me. And even when a child has grown up they will still keep claiming that that child came from me and like there's no separation there really that's happening in the minds of the parents.
And they will not really claim that that little kid, well someone who used to be a little kid is different now from their more grown child, right? For them it's one and the same child.
And so in that way they don't claim the production from other, right? It's not something that they really even assume at all. They means all of us, ordinary folks.
Well others still keep persisting and claiming that the production from other really happens. You know, yes the cause ceases, the result is produced but however there's a short moment where they actually meet. Like you know, yes it's very quick that you know, causes ceases, the result is produced, it's kind of a very rapid process and somewhere in the middle it's kind of like... Well, the, the, they, they sort of... Well, while one ceases another is being produced, right?
We don't see that directly they claim but they do meet actually at some moment in the middle let's say.
And so, big question is really then, is being asked here. This kind of production from other, let's say cause produces a result. Does it happen while the two meet or while the cause and the effect do not meet?
Is the result being produced from a cause that's different than itself while there's a moment when they do meet?
Well if it's the case that actually the result is not being produced from the cause that's something different than itself, but rather the result is the production of the moment of the cause and result meeting, right? That becomes sort of the, the pivotal moment and the result takes place from that moment rather than from its cause.
And so then...
Right, so when we claim that they do meet there is the act of meeting between the cause and result. Do we ascribe this act of meeting to the cause? Like, oh it's the cause, or that's the act pertaining to the cause, or is that act of meeting pertaining to the result, the side of the result?
Because we can never really establish that act of meeting as something third in this interplay between the cause and result. Something that neither pertains to the cause, neither pertains to the result. The meeting between the cause and result is not the third sort of side, you know, the third alternative. It either belongs to the side of the cause or the kind of camp of the result.
This kind of opponents say well that moment of meeting it's like kind of when the cause is about to cease and the result is about to be produced, right? That's the kind of that moment, right there they say.
However, if you think about this, something about to be produced, means it's not there yet. That's the act that belongs to the future time, right? It's about to be produced somewhere in the future. About to cease, that's the act that belongs to the present, right there. About to cease, it's still there, right? And so in this way, something from the present, something from the future can never truly meet and operate to you know one another.
In this way, we can never really also logically prove the production that happens from cause and result meeting with one another.
Right, and apart from these two very, very subtle moments of the result about to be produced and the cause about to cease, these very subtle moments, apart from these two, there is no other subtle moment that we could entertain as some kind of potential place for the production, right? The cause, place from where production takes place. There is only these two.
So if we were to claim that the production from other happens when cause and result do meet somewhere in that subtle, very subtle moment, kind of right in the middle somewhere of production lane, that would be that moment, what we just described as this cause about to cease, the result about to be produced. Like apart from this, there is no even, there is no other more subtle moment, more tiny moment where they could ever meet. That's it. That's the one.
So there is only these two possibilities, well, it's one possibility of the production happening from the meeting, but the meeting happens in these two very subtle moments. Only these two. About to produce, the result about to be produced, the cause about to cease. However, these two moments, one takes place in the future, one in the present. And future and present, how can any meeting take place between two things, that one is yet to arise and another one is already there. Doesn't make any sense.
In this way we can never really truly establish the otherness between cause and the result.
So basically what we are saying that some claim, no, no, there is production from other, right? They are different from one another and they do meet, right? In that moment what happens, cause is about to cease, the result is about to be produced, it's extremely subtle moment right there, very, very, the tiniest moment of time, fraction of time, that's when production will come from that. But that, that, that moment is never there truly when they you know, they meet. One is about to be produced, not there yet. One is about to cease, right? So they can never really meet in that tiniest moment.
In the philosophical treatises, scriptures, the opponents of the middle way, they give an example for this kind of production of the cause and result that do meet somewhere in the middle, they say that it's basically the same as the movement of a pair of scales, right? When we, well, there's a pair of scales, when we put some you know thing that we're trying to weight on one side and some kind of weight of khenpo said kilo weight on another side and that's like the up and down movements of a pair of scale, that's their example for this kind of production.
But as we have seen, this kind of production has been refuted by the middle way opponents.
And so the time when we really talk about this kind of otherness between the cause and the result, when we claim that the seed has the power, has potential to produce its effect, its sprout, the sprout arises from the power of the seed, so we kind of claim that they're different, that's only our own mental projection. So it can only be established for as long as we just speak about it in some kind of uh, just in the realm of our own mental fantasies. Once we really look down at the seed and how it operates at the sprout, we can see that the true otherness can never be established through analysis.
We might then wonder, okay, the production from self is untenable, production from other is also untenable, how about production from both, from self and other? That's kind of a doubt that we might entertain.
This production from both is not tenable at all because both faults, faults that we have shown about production from self will pertain to this and also the faults that occur in the production from other will also belong to, pertain to this production. So basically it's not possible, there are more even problems with this.
Actually this kind of same, same, different, these are just the mere labels that we attribute, but in reality this is not something truly existent. Same, other, these notions are not truly existent.
And then we have the fourth alternative, production without cause. And this is also not feasible at all.
And the fault that occurs in this kind of production without cause is that, if things were to arise without any cause then there will be an absurd consequence that they would always need to arise without any interruption, or they would never be able to arise. So both alternatives are not really feasible.
Because when we look at a production we all say sometimes you know, when causes and conditions assemble, things are produced and sometimes when causes and conditions are not gathered, things don't arise, right? It's not the case that we claim that they are forever there, or they're never there, right? So we do kind of assert that there is the times when it exists and times when it doesn't exist.
You see, without production without cause, cause is never there, with no cause whatsoever, at all. Well, if it you know, never there, well, it means then, you know, will be this kind of either permanent existence, or permanent non-existence, right?
Alright... Oh sorry. We'll say, okay, permanent existence doesn't make sense, um, the cause is never there, so well, obviously there's no permanent existence, but how about non-existence, right? Kind of this result of no cause of non-existence.
But that contradicts our common sense, as we just have established. We in the world observe things arise when causes and conditions assemble. So this kind of complete, total, permanent non-existence doesn't make sense from just worldly point of view.
Think about uh, harvest, think about crops. Farmers they, in order to obtain crops, they work really hard. They, plough the fields, they plant the seeds, they then apply fertilizer and take care of the sprouts while they grow. There's a lot of hard work that goes into production of the crops. If they could arise without a cause, why to bother? There will be no need for all that hard work.
In this way, the middle-way proponents, the followers of the Mādhyamika school, they say that ultimately, in the way of how things truly are, there is not any truly existent production that takes place.
Because, if production were to take place, it must necessarily be a production by means of one of the following four extremes. Self, other, both, or neither. In other words, causeless, right? But these are all unreasonable. Production from self, from other, both, or from neither. Meaning without a cause. So in that way, there is no any production in the ultimate, on the ultimate level, once investigated, right? This kind of production cannot be observed. It's what we call then śūnyatā or emptiness.
No production, then.
But that, that is hard to swallow, no production, right? Something that our minds just can't wrap themselves around. Because well, we do see things appear, right?
That's why it is said that while things appear, they are emptiness.
In other words, we can say our minds are confused.
If the production were truly existent, had some kind of inherent nature, right? Then we can never be free from that production. We ca... There is never a way to abandon it, to be free of it.
Think about it. Something permanent, truly existent, can never, well can never be abandoned, can never be eliminated. Something that is not for example, something that is not firm and stable. That could be destroyed, but not the other way.
Think about this. Those who strive to obtain liberation. Kind of those who are interested in pursuing liberation from all the suffering, need to abandon saṃsāra, cyclic existence. However, if saṃsāra were to be truly existent, something that is not fake, something that is real, something that is you know, solid, it can never be abandoned. There is no way. It's only because saṃsāra and all the things pertaining to saṃsāra are not real. They are fake, illusion, they are not solid, not true. Only then, and that's why we can actually be free and obtain liberation. And underst... to understand that saṃsāra is not real and solid, we need to use this kind of logical arguments, these reasonings of the middle way.
Because for us, for our confused minds, saṃsāra is real. This world, this cyclic existence is true and real, right? Uh... There is production, there is cessation, all of those things are true and real.
And that's what we call a relative truth.
The classic treatises give examples for our confusion, um, such as like someone who has jaundice, or someone, for example, who has some kind of uh, um, eye problems, eye disease, and see falling hairs, like dots that move, right, the vision that's impaired, and there's some what treatises describe as hair, falling hair. And so because a person with this kind of disease does see this, you know, like hairs or some kind of have visions, we... for this person there is notions such as clean and dirty to you know, get rid of it. Like uh,
Yeah, the person then holds to the notions of clean, dirty.
And from the point of view of this person with the visual impairment, both sides are true and real, that is to say the objective side, that's the falling of dots of hairs that are being observed, and the mind that sees them is also something that's true and real.
But once he, the person is cured uh, from that kind of disease, then both uh, fall apart, like right? There's no object, there's no subject that holds any reality to them.
Just like that, for as long as we have this confused minds, there will be also appearances that are perceived as real and true, from the point of view of that confused mind. However, when the afflictions that obscure the mind are purified, the... an ultimate truth is seen as it is by means of the kind of primordial wisdom or timeless awareness, then that's real, the ultimate truth becomes something that's real, right?
Back to our example of this kind of a visual impairment, this disease, uh, so the person, due to this kind of sickness, has this kind of vision, sees the falling hairs, so this kind of moving dots in front of oneself, this person goes to a doctor who then listens carefully, maybe prescribes some medication, but also says, well, you know, as long as, well, medication is not working, well, I mean, it's not curing you completely, you're going to see this hair, but listen to me, this is not real, right? This is not really there. You don't need to pay so much attention and get all hung up about this falling hair or you know these dots, you don't need to try to clean it, you don't need to try to get rid of it, it's going to be there, but don't really worry about it too much, don't pay attention, and so then, listening to this kind of skilled doctor, the person's grasping, apprehension of this you know, hair, those dots will diminish, the grasping will diminish.
And slowly, slowly, by taking you know the medicine and over its course of this kind of treatment, eventually the hair will be no more seen.
Just like that, for us, due to our kind of confusion, our sickness of confusion, we do perceive all sorts of different phenomena, appearances, that we then grasp as being true and real.
So let's then connect the example and the meaning. So for us, due to our confusion, we apprehend all these kind of different appearances in our life as being true and real. And because of that grasping, that apprehension, we give rise to all sorts of different disturbing emotions, afflictive emotions. And because of those emotions, we act out, and we say that, then we accumulate karma, right? We act out. So then, meeting a skilled doctor here would be meeting a qualified, genuine teacher, who then instructs us that this is not real, those appearances are just the projection of our confused minds. They are not solid and real in the ultimate sense, and so then the teacher then prescribes us the kind of treatment, that's to say the Dharma practice, that we then slowly take up. But at the same time, while doing our practice, we already pay heed to the instructions of the teacher, skilled doctor, and we don't grasp, we don't take for granted, we don't write at the face value all these appearances. We don't grasp as strongly to them as being real. And so slowly the grasping already diminishes in the course of us doing the Dharma practice. And eventually, let's say while, just like the treatment uh, for the sickness eventually runs its course, likewise our Dharma practice will bear the fruit, that is, we will purify our minds completely of the disturbing emotions, afflictive emotions of karma, and thereby of suffering. Right? And in that way we will reverse those kind of confused appearances and get, well, in other words, we will be free from saṃsāra.
In short, when we apply reasonings, just like the ones that we talked about, right? Like logical arguments of the Middle Way, uh we... we apply to the point that our grasping to reality, uh, the phenomena diminishes, right? We don't buy into those kind of all these things, and we don't believe that they are true and real. And in other words, we start seeing them for what they really are. Fakes, projections, right? Not... Just a projection of our confused mind, not true, not real. So to... this is what we talked about. All of these reasonings are really aiming just to diminish our grasping, our beliefs in inherent existence of all phenomena.
That's why in the Mahāyāna, the great vehicle uh, teachings, we are constantly reminded that all phenomena are just like an illusion, a dream, because this is something we can really understand, like we can uh, um, we can take it to heart. And through that, we develop certainty, the certainty in, in, in the fact that things are not as they appear to be. And through that certainty, our grasping slowly, slowly is being reduced.
Because, well we don't really think that dreams and illusions are real, that they are solid, right? That they are something like a real thing, right? Because that's just completely illogical.
So really frankly speaking, all of what we study here is really to just do away with our grasping, with our apprehension.
Let's take a five minute break. sönam diyi thamché sikpa nyi thopné nyepai dranam phamjé né kyega nachi balap trukpa yi sipai tsolé drowa drölwar shok

01:05:09

Autoscroll:

Session 3 — Dependent Arising and Emptiness

Teacher:

Khenpo Pema Namgyal

Location:

Gomde Germany-Austria

Date: July 23, 2024

Description >>

In this session, Khenpo Pema Namgyal deepens the exploration of emptiness by examining the principle of dependent arising. He explains that phenomena do not exist independently, but arise through a network of causes, conditions, and conceptual designation. By analyzing how things depend on parts, causes, and the mind that labels them, the teachings begin to undermine the assumption that objects possess an intrinsic nature. This analysis helps reveal that what we take to be solid and independent is in fact relational and contingent. Through this reasoning, the session shows how dependent arising and emptiness are inseparable insights in the Madhyamaka tradition.

Video

Audio

42:44

Autoscroll:

If we go further, how can we feel non-existent phenomena? Or are our feelings also non-existent? Then what actually exists?
Until we haven't abandoned saṃsāra and our afflictions, feelings exist.
Just like in a dream, until we wake up, all those things that we experience, they do exist for as long as the dream lasts.
Then, well, what's there? Uh, once we are freed from all these confused experiences of happiness, pleasure and pain, what's there at the end? Well, once we are freed from these dualistic pleasure and pain experiences, We... what's there? We call it a great bliss.
And we call it a non-conceptual, primordial wakefulness that abides in the enlightened minds of all the Buddhas.
Well, we do speak, uh, giving these kind of examples, about the mind, yeah? But it's not only about our conceptual mind and the experiences that take place in the mind, it's really likewise about all the forms that we see, the sounds that we hear, the smells, the taste, the touch, right? And likewi... We call it five objects of sense pleasures. And likewise, the minds that experience them, the five or six mental consciousnesses, all of these objects, subjects, dualistic kind of framework will fall apart once we are freed from saṃsāra.
In short, you won't have any problems anymore, okay?
Our troubles really come from us having all these multitude different feelings and experiences. That will end.
Well, you see, we all kind of have these afflictions that fall into the side of either of us having all this lust, detachment, desire or aggression anger, aversion, right? This will be done, we will be done with that. Will be gone.
And when we come to realize the true nature of all phenomena, of our own minds, how they really truly are in the ultimate sense, we'll be freed from all these problems, troubles, pain.
There was a follow-up question, but I think the first one is answered. Can we walk the earth even when we leave saṃsāra? I think this was answered. And then the second question was, so basically, is time an illusion? I will translate both, right? Thank you.
Why do we claim that saṃsāra, cyclic existence, is that of, by nature is that of suffering? If we think, if we look at the presentation of the four noble truths, we have to see that it's through the power of karma and afflictive emotions, the truth of a origin, that you know that suffering arise.
Once we are freed from the origin of suffering, that is to say, no karma, well, first no afflictive emotions, then no karma, we... saṃsāra still arises. Sorry Khenpo.
Sorry, I will re-translate. It's not that saṃsāra exists. We do take birth in saṃsāra, even when we are freed from afflictions, kleśas and karma. But that birth is not the birth of suffering. There's no suffering involved in taking that kind of rebirth in saṃsāra. It's not due to, you know, it's not through the power of afflictions and karma.
We call that the enlightened activity then of the emanation body of the Buddha, of the enjoyment body, right? We call those like Nirmāṇakāya, Saṃbhogakāya, births.
That kind of a enlightened activity, is it really real from the perspective of the enlightened mind of the Buddha himself? No.
Because the, that kind of self-display from the you know self display from the point view of the Buddha's mind is known as Dharmakāya.
And the other two bodies, the four mentioned together, we call them the form body, Rūpakāya, right? So Nirmāṇakāya, Saṃbhogakāya, they do arise, but they eh, not arising from the kind of self-display of the Buddha's enlightened mind, that's only Dharmakāya. But they appear for the power of aspirations made by the sentient beings, and through their merit.
And that form body consists of the two enlightened bodies of the Buddha, performs all these different benefits for the sentient beings out of great compassion, right, but without any conceptuality whatsoever.
So speaking about this question about walking the earth, right, well, you are in saṃsāra when you take birth like that, but you know it's the birth of the form body of the Buddha, Nirmāṇakāya, Saṃbhogakāya, it appears, but all the activity is carried out by that, Rūpakāya, is done without any, any involvement of conceptual thought, discursive thought.
Of the sun or the moon shining brightly, and it's always the, well ok let's say sun it's always the case, however, whether the reflection of that sun appears on the surface of the body of the water in some vessel, that's, you know, put outside, depends how clean is the water, but how unstirred is the water, how, you know, how is it muddy or not. If it's completely pure and still, then we will see many fold reflections on the surface of the body of the water, but the sun is always there.
So from the Buddha's Dharmakāya's point of view, that dimension, well, that body of, of, of Dharmas, Dharmakāya, all the activities, sorry, maybe I'll restart, all the enlightened activities of the form body of the Buddha performed in this world, it's all done while being not separated from Dharmakāya, right, whatsoever. And it's done for the benefit of sentient beings in a manyfold different ways, depending on the faculties, predispositions, interests of sentient beings and their merit.
In this way, having realized no production, well, you can say, right, that there is no production, no origination whatsoever, in other words, having become a Buddha, an awakened one, right, for that being, from the point of view of that enlightened mind, that realized mind of that Buddha, there is no saṃsāra, there is no nirvana, there is no separation between those two. However, for the beings who still are in saṃsāra, there are all these manyfold appearances, right, experiences, and they need to be guided, they need to be helped, they need to be taught, they need to be freed from all of that. And so, kind of, the Buddha teaches the beings, according to their level, you know, being stuck in saṃsāra, but from one's own enlightened wisdom, there is no saṃsāra, there are no appearances of saṃsāra, there is no nirvana. One is already beyond those kind of dualistic frames of wor, mind.
Whether the Buddha has appeared, whether the Buddha has come or not come, the true nature of all phenomena is primordially so, right, it's just how things truly are.
The next, second question was, to remind everyone, is whether time is an illusion. Khenpo la says that from the Mahāyāna point of view, um, every phenomenon is an illusion. Everything is just a label. Right? It's just a label, a name we assign, but in and of itself, it's not truly existent. And everything is like that, including time.
If cause and effect can't exist simultaneously, how do you justify dynamic equilibrium’s in various systems such as chemical equilibrium? Maybe John Dunne will have to help me. I actually didn't hear. If the, if the cause and effect is not simultaneous, then what? How do you justify dynamic equilibrium? Well, for this one, you will need to explain what's dynamic equilibrium to, at least to me.
So in chemical systems you can have two chemicals that react together and that reaction results in the formation of products and these products also react together that results in the formation of those previous reactants and they both occur simultaneously so the cause and effect of the other exists perpetually so they can both cause and effect the other existence and it continues on indefinitely so the cause and effect is visible for both at the same time.
Anya, do you want me to try? Yes, please. Um, I can... yes. Or do you want to do it? No, I will just kind of tell Khenpo la that I'll say something and then you'll probably have to step in to help.
That's what I can say and then I guess that's all.
In the chemical system, are you actually producing separate compounds? They're chemically and physically distinct. So they're different identities, yeah? And they both exist at the same time. And they both cause the other to exist. But they become different identities as compounds, yeah? But they continuously form each other. Great. Changing, transforming your substrate. But the cause and effect is still observable at the same time. For your eyes? Yeah, you can still physically see it at the same time. And even potentially it can exist indefinitely and the cause and effect is visible the entire time.
Uh, So Connor, depending on how you understand causality, maybe just to clarify a little bit. So let's take a chemical system that's in dynamic equilibrium. Uh, let's say one reactant is producing another. Does it produce it in the same exact moment or does it produce it in the subsequent moment? They produce it, it exists at the same time. No, but, no but, I mean a reactant, like if you take a specific, we have two reactants. One produces the other. No, you have two reactants, they react together to form a product. So then react together to form reactants and they exist at the same time. So overall, there's no change in proportion to either side. But actually in the time course, in the time course, they're not producing each other at the same time. Well, they are, because there's no observable change in concentration. It's still the same number at each side that's still physically observable to change. Right, but. Are you looking at the average as the substance? Yeah, because in the... we should maybe talk about this later, because my understanding of that kind of dynamical system is that it's over a time course. No, because if you have, like say two liters of something, you'll have one liter of products and one liter of reactants. That will never change, but the reactions are constantly changing. So the cause and effect is continuously observable for both things at the same time, even though there's no change. So I think this question involves a discussion about what dynamical systems are, that is. So I'll say this basic thing. The liter's volume is actually changing. So what you're doing is you're abstract, you’re abstracting the measure of a liter from the system. So when you do that abstraction, you can say that's the same, but on this model, those actually are not the same. Those are conceptual abstractions. So I can tell you more about it later, because I think it will take too much to really get into it. So I, I don't, I think that's not a count, that's not a counter example. But I... We have to take it a long time.
...
So for generally, we say, there are parents, there are children, they're present at the same time, right? We have... But this what we discuss here is not like that. Yea? It's not about that kind of dynamic of saying, yeah, they are at the same time in the same room.
Well, the Buddhists claim that if cause and result do not change moment by moment, the moment is extremely the tiniest fraction of time. Like yea. There is no, nothing could take, there will be no effect, there will be no efficacy. Nothing can be produced.
We see right now some kind of continuity right? Long term, over the long term.
At the time when we observe the result, the cause has already changed, because everything changes moment by moment. It cannot remain the same, right? It, it... So it's already something is gone, it's different.
If substance remains completely immutable, um, then it cannot be causally efficacious, cannot do anything.
If it changes, you know, then, as to say, subsequent moment is not exactly the same as the preceding one, right? It's too... There is some change that took place.
So at the time of any given result, the cause has already changed into something else. It cannot have remained the same, same completely, right?
Right, so for, let's think about the substance, right? And then there is the kind of power dynamic of that substance, and for that dynamic to increase over time, right, it needs to grow. And the growth means something was small, becoming big, so there is already a change that's been enacted, right?
So let's see. To increase that, for something to increase over time, for any dynamic of the power of any given substance, then the previous preceding moment, when the power was less strong, it has to be gone, so to say, so that the next subsequent moment where the power grows can take place. Like for us to grow as right, as beings, like the previous moment when we are small, let's say, has to disappear. It can't remain on the side also being there, right? For us to become older, the previous moment is no more there. It's gone, you understand? So there is some kind of change in terms of the growth, and it only can take place when the previous moment changes, or it's gone, and gives space for the next moment to take place.
Right now we don't have uh, you know next to us also some copy of us when we were a kid present, because it kind of remained, right? It's no more. We can only look at the pictures and videos of us when we were kids, and that's all what remains. But th, that, us actually being small, that's gone, so that we can be now ourselves, like adults.
Likewise, okay, that's kind of over a long period of time, but if you think just about yesterday, our body of yesterday is not the same body that we have today. If we compare it, there's already big change.
The hair has grown, the nails, right, the facial hair, who have it, so.
Right, and this is again kind of on the big scale, but we are still, well we assert as Buddhists that even on the most subtle moments of time the same process, the same dynamics take place, that change occurs.
But to observe it directly, there's only one, one, one instance, one occasion.
We can count and say, well, there's previous, the sequent moment, one, two, three, four, five, to you know, thousands, but at any given moment, there's only one, right? One instance, one occasion. The rest are just numbers.
So out of those, let's say thousands, thousands of moments, if we pick one, there's only one. Like if we right now want to choose one, that's it, that's the one. I'm choosing another one, that's it. This is the only one I can choose, and the previous is already gone, and the next one has not a reason. At any given moment, I can only, only point to one. The rest is non-existent.
So here we're going into the John's territory, that is to say, Pramāṇa. Buddhist logic, epistemology, when we talk about either what the uh, the gentleman was speaking about, the general systems, right, he was talking about dynamics in terms of generality, but also we distinguish between particularities and generalities, and those two, and Khenpo la says it looks like what happens is what we call, it's a very technical terms in Pramāṇa, when we fuse the object, the preceding object, with its name, with its label. Like we call it something, but... right...
We fuse the object and its name in our minds and think it's one and the same, however, it's just the label, the object, we cannot really observe, according to this.
However, there is a purpose, of course, for you know why our minds are doing that, so that we can kind of function in this world, right? Pick up a cup, well we know it's a cup, but kind of, but we fuse.
In reality, there's no any specifically characterized phenomena eh, that are truly existent in terms of specificities, right?
In the... In the middle way system, we call it continuity.
For example, to understand what we mean by that, if we come to a little stream of water, and then we come the next day to it, we think, oh, that's the water I saw yesterday, right? Ah, here's the river, but it's already way gone, the water of yesterday is no more in front of us, right? It's constantly flowing.
So this is confusion that happens on the account of similarity, something appears to be similar to its preceding moments, and that's how we label it continuity only on the basis of this similarity.
Right, so it only appears like the river, the flow of the little stream of water to be the same, like kind of the mental image of it that we perceive seems to be exactly one and the same as the previous one, and the previous mental image and the previous one, because they're similar, but if we investigate in a very subtle, subtle moment, well, they're different, they're not the same, they're not one and the same.
Oh, actually, if we speak about philosophical tenants, Buddhist philosophical schools, they all have slightly different ideas about what's real and what's true, and there are those schools that actually, well, one school, that believe that the three times past, present, future are substantially existent.
So the substances already exist, the substances of the past are existent of the present, of the future, the only issue is that some of them become apparent and manifest, right, and some are kind of hidden and not manifest, but they're already truly there. So the non-Buddhist, some non-Buddhist claim that, and also there's a Buddhist school that asserts that, so.
And in that case, from the point of view of that school, causes and results will have to be present simultaneously, because all three times are present.
But here we're discussing the middle way school, and, and from their point of view, that's not tenable.
Eh, however, please carry on this discussion with John Dunne.
Because it's really important to discuss this kind of modern science, and Buddhist philosophy.
It's based on these kind of questions that we can really analyze, investigate and understand what impermanence truly means, at a very subtle level.
And Rinpoche always, when he talks about the four Dharma seals, he always emphasizes that there's not a single phenomenon that is permanent. Everything is constantly changing and fluctuates, moment by moment.
And by understanding impermanence, in other words, understanding that nothing remains the same for just two single subtle moments, right, never going to be the same, that points us to this truth of non-origination, non-production, what we're discussing here.
And this kind of discussion prompted by this question, also really could help us to see the true nature, that is to say emptiness. Like, really we can understand intellectually what is meant by emptiness when we understand the impermanence, this kind of... on a subtle level.
So really an important discussion to have.
Any other questions?
Let's see if there's any questions online, because it takes memory to...
OK, just in the case of meditation, and if I have the impression, OK, let's say I meditate on the father of Rinpoche, and there is some special energy, it is somehow to say there's some Dharmakāya, but there's also some special Rūpakāya form body. And like when I would meditate on Rinpoche, there's um, also Dharmakāya, but it's a special other form body. So um... yeah, I just read it like this, I don't know.
I'm not extremely clear about the question itself. I mean, if you, I don't know if you're a German speaker, and it's easier for you to ask in German, and then we will translate into English.
So, yeah. Why is it a form body?
I don't know if the question is, is it all right if I meditate like that? That my, that I concentrate on Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche, and I have an experience of Dharmakāya, but also it has a different energy, impression on me, because the Rūpakāya is different, than when I meditate on Chokyi Nyima Rinpoche there's also Dharmakāya, but then the Rūpakāya experience is different, because the person is different. OK.
For the beginners, like us in our practice of meditation, it's very hard for us not to rely on any kind of form, right? Some appearance, some form. Like in other words, like Rūpakāya, the form body of our root teacher, right? We meditate on that appearance of the root teacher, and then light emanates from the body of the root teacher, all this takes place, but at the end of the day, we kind of really, um... Dharmakāya is this non-conceptual qualities of wisdom, of the minds, the enlightened minds of the teachers, that that's what's meditated upon, the Dharmakāya.
One question from online before we stop, maybe? Just the last one. If not, we can answer tomorrow. Tomorrow, yeah. I would like to know that if nothing really is there, how the Buddhas can manifest here in the world, is there a cause and effect too? Like the sun, without any concept, always be shining.
In Uttarātāntra Śāstra, it is stated like that, the example of the sun, shining without any conceptuality on its part.
These kind of uh, two questions, we can discuss it more tomorrow.
One it pertains to the topic of guru yoga, the practice of guru yoga, another one of like the jewel ornament of liberation, the non-conceptual activity, the Buddhas.
Oh, in the page, yeah? Okay, page number nine.
sönam diyi thamché sikpa nyi thopné nyepai dranam phamjé né kyega nachi balap trukpa yi sipai tsolé drowa drölwar shok jangchup semchok rinpoché ma kyepa nam kyé gyurchik kyepa nyampa mepa yang gongné gongdu phelwar shok

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Session 4 — Examining Intrinsic Existence

Teacher:

Khenpo Pema Namgyal

Location:

Gomde Germany-Austria

Date: July 23, 2024

Description >>

In this session, Khenpo Pema Namgyal continues the investigation of emptiness by examining the idea of intrinsic existence. Drawing on classical Madhyamaka reasoning, he explores how philosophical analysis can reveal the contradictions that arise when we assume that things exist independently and from their own side. Through examples and dialogue, the session demonstrates how careful inquiry begins to loosen the deeply ingrained habit of treating phenomena as solid and self-contained. Dunne also emphasizes that these arguments are not meant as abstract intellectual exercises, but as tools for transforming how we perceive the world. By questioning the notion of intrinsic existence, the teachings guide students toward a deeper appreciation of dependent arising and the Middle Way beyond extremes.

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Audio

01:08:43

Autoscroll:

So an invitation to just settle your mind for a moment. Finding a position that is alert but relaxed.
Eric Solomon is leading you in practices and some of these practices are just about stabilizing the mind, what we call samatha. Many different ways to do that. One way is to invite the mind to an anchor for the attention, like the breath.
The mind wishes to jump on the train of thoughts. Just notice the thoughts, see them as thoughts, let go, invite the mind back to the anchor for the attention.
And now bringing to mind our motivation.
In the practice of the great vehicle, the motivation is to attain awakening for the sake of all beings.
Alright, let's begin. So here is a picture, this was taken last year, the day before we started. Michi took this picture. Not adjusted, maybe a little contrast, slight adjustment, but not color adjusted. Pretty amazing, huh? Double or triple rainbow? I don't know. So again, a precious place is Gomde. We were having a tea in the lounge and then someone came running and said, come outside! So it's really a wonderful place and I just want to encourage you again to, to make sure that Gomde continues to flourish. And we're, even though some of us are gathered here, I know there are a lot of people online as well. And hopefully you too will be supporters. And speaking of supporters, I want to also have a shout out to my Dharma friend and great supporter, Fran Oreck, who was online yesterday. I don't know if Fran's online today, but she asked a great question, which was, how would I explain the kind of things we were talking about to my first semester, first year university students? And the answer is, I wouldn't, no. The answer is that there, I mean, one way to say this, Fran, is that things are not the way they seem. That's it. Just things are not the way they appear. There's the way things appear and then there's the way things actually are. And a fundamental kind of claim in Buddhist thought and practice is that things, the way things appear to us, in fact, is not the way, as ordinary beings, is not the way they actually are. And there are various levels of confusion that we can have. We're going to be exploring sort of a first level and then we're going to try to move on to the Mādhyamaka level today. But we may not get there entirely until tomorrow, even though Khenpo la has already been teaching some stuff, has been teaching the Mādhyamaka. But I think it's very important for us to, in a sense, the invitation in that context then is an invitation to a kind of inquiry. Like, okay, is the way things seem to me, is that the way they really are? That's the kind of fundamental inquiry. And the intention here is not to, uh... you know, just fill you with more ideology, to tell you the way things really are. It's for you to figure out the way things really are, perhaps with some suggestions about how to do so. And one of the key features of this, that's really interesting, that will come up today, but I wanted to say something about it now, is what, why is it that we use reasoning so much? What is the role of reasoning or yukti in the context of figuring out the way things really are? And we'll explore that a bit today and continue to explore that. And I also want you to sort of think about that. Like, why, why, why do we do all this reasoning?
So, one way to think about this is actually that reasoning is what enables us to overcome doubt. And we're doing this all the time. We often have times when we probably should have doubt, but we don't. Right? And I'm sure you can examine many instances in your own life when you probably should have had a little doubt about what was going on, and it turns out other than you expected. But also in very mundane ways, we are constantly resolving our doubt. I think there's a very famous example of, a very simple example, you know, let's say it's a bit chilly out and we're in northern India and there's a famous flower whose name I always forget, and I'm forgetting it now, that from a distance looks like fire, actually, like a clump of flowers that look like a fire. And we're cold and we want to go and we want to, you know, feel warmth. Well, until we get close enough to actually test, and that itself, right, is already we're dealing with reasoning, like, well, that looks like fire, but I'm not sure. So I'm in a pla... I'm in a, I'm in a cognitive state of wanting to act in the world, but I'm unsure about whether my actions will be successful. So already I'm employing reasoning, like, well, if that's fire, maybe I can see if there's smoke coming from this fire. And of course, the final test will be when I get close enough to actually feel whether there's heat or a mirage. Likewise, if I see a mirage from afar, I need water. I think, is that water? Then I think about what I might know about mirages, what I might know about water. I try to examine my experience. So part of what that is telling us is that from the standpoint of our ordinary experience, reason plays a very special role that's actually caught up in, from the Buddhist standpoint, is actually caught up in causality. It has to do with the way in which inferential processes work in our minds. Causal inferential processes and how those causal inferential processes are connected to our concepts. Because as we will try to explore a little bit today, we're going to find out that our concepts actually are not about things out there in the world. Well, excuse me, they are about things out there in the world, but they don't refer to what they seem to refer to. So we're going to talk a little bit about that today, because that's actually going to be an important way of understanding the kind of philosophy that actually precedes Nāgārjuna's philosophy of emptiness. So yeah, think about it. What's reasoning? Why would reasoning be so important to us? Why is it so important in this context? Okay, let's talk a little bit about part of what we do more in a sort of Western academic context that can be helpful for us. John Makransky has written a great article about this, the sort of role of history or historicity culturally in Euro-American culture, that in some sense we really pay attention to history. And it can be very helpful for us to try to organize our understanding of Buddhist philosophy and practice by just thinking historically. So here I just want to point out sort of what I often do is these three periods. On the left-hand side there, that's actually the great temple at Bodh Gaya, where the Buddha is said to obtained awakening, the Mahabodhi temple. So there are three phases of Buddhism in South Asia, in what we would call modern-day India, roughly. And although the Buddha was actually born in modern-day Nepal in Lumbini, where Chokyi Nyima Rinpoche just built a new temple. Uh, so the first period we can call Nikāya Buddhism, where Nikāya refers to kind of collections of texts, bodies of texts. And I call this sort of middle period, 100 BCE to about 600 CE, as I call it Sanskritic Buddhism, where in the early period, vernacular languages or sort of semi-quasi-vernacular languages were in use for Buddhist texts. And then they started to use Sanskrit, which is more the lingua franca of that region, extending all the way into Afghanistan and all the way to Indonesia. People were using Sanskrit instead of local languages when they were communicating about scholarly things, as it were. And then the late South Asian period is what we can call syncretic Buddhism. And we're going to try to talk about all three of these periods to some extent, but the period which is key is this period from 100 BCE to 600. That's where Nāgārjuna, as you will soon see, is emerging. And we're going to talk, I'm going to focus on sort of the developments in this sort of sense, in Indian Buddhism, call it that, keep it simple, that lead to the type of philosophy and practice that we find then in Tibet, especially in this Mahāmudrā and Dzogchen traditions, or the sort of combined tradition that we call chak dzog. So sometimes you hear also these terms, Hīnayāna, lesser vehicle, Mahāyāna, great vehicle, you've heard me refer to that, and Vajrayāna, the Vajra vehicle. We'll talk a little bit more about them. Another term for so-called Hīnayāna is also the common vehicle, because a good way of thinking about what's happening in this early period is a kind of some very foundational practices and philosophical perspectives, literatures, ways of being, as it were, ethics, are being established in that period, and they carry through all the way through. So the kinds of monastic vows, for example, you find even in Tibet, are actually established in this early period, for the most part. So one of the things, of course, that is established in this early period is something you've heard already, I think it's familiar to all of you by now, which is this idea of the nobles' four truths. That there is suffering, there are many different kinds of suffering. We can have multiple lists. You know, I already mentioned George Dreyfus's great, great little quip, uh, his little joke, you know, Christians love God and Buddhists love lists. So nobody laughs because you're tired of that joke now. But, so the Four Noble Truths is obviously a list, and then there's the, you know, the kye ga na shi in Tibetan for suffering, you know, birth, old age, sickness and death, or the three kinds of suffering, suffering of suffering, suffering of change, suffering of conditioned existence. And it goes on, there's six sufferings, there's another list of three sufferings, and so on and so forth. Though, I think we kind of understand suffering, but a major way of thinking about suffering that's really going to be key here, is that idea of conditioned existence, like being trapped in your own conditioning. That's a key way of thinking about suffering, because even when you're not in pain, you're still trapped. And where does that come from? There's an origin, and the origin is... karma and kleśa, where kleśa means afflictive mental states, right? And then we're going to discover that there's a root one that's the most important. And then there's cessation, right, which is basically nirvana, and a path to cessation. And you can see, right, of course, one of these, when we talk about, like the key, in some ways, a really key one here is this claim that karma and kleśa are the origin. But also, what we find here is that this is based upon a kind of... what is often celebrated as one of the Buddha's most fundamental insights. And in 500 BCE, you know, this may seem like kind of simple to us now, but in 500 BCE, this very clear way of articulating the role of causality in the relief of suffering and attaining authentic happiness was groundbreaking. And so this is even sometimes referred to as a dhāraṇī, a kind of mantric-like statement or spell. ye dharmā hetuprabhavā hetuṃ teṣāṃ tathāgato hy avadat | teṣāṃ ca yo nirodha evaṃvādī mahāśramaṇaḥ || The Tathāgata, which is an epithet of the Buddha, has stated the cause of those things that have causes, and he has stated their cessation. Thus spoke the great ascetic, right? So, in this context, what is that really about? Well, it's about what we just saw, right? It's like the causes, karma and kleśa, and the cessation is nirvana, and implicit in this statement is also the way to get to that cessation, right? So, in some ways, this statement is actually a kind of another way of talking about the noble's truths. So, what is... so then if we ask, okay, at this first level, like in the common vehicle, we've already said that the key is about, uh is about personal identity. And I just want to review some of that using this diagram, which I often use to go through this, because one of the things that's very important to understand is that the Buddha is not... is in an environment in which the kind of inquiry he's engaged in is not just being done by him. There are many others in this period who are engaged in a similar kind of inquiry. And the inquiry really begins with dhukkha, which we can even just translate as dissatisfaction, when it's not obvious pain, mental or physical pain, and it's not where you're really feeling stuck on the hedonic treadmill that I spoke about the other day, where, you know, for a while it feels good, and then it stops feeling good, and you need more and more and more, and it just doesn't keep working, as our psychologists would say, the hedonic treadmill. But rather that maybe just that sense of like, wow, I'm kind of stuck in my own conditioning. So the problem, that is the problem, right? Fundamentally, this dhukkha, this dissatisfaction, what's it caused by? No matter what I try to get, or what I try to avoid, this kind of activity in the world, grasping and rejecting, getting and avoiding, no matter how much I do it, it doesn't seem to eliminate my suffering and make me happy. Why? Because I think that the stuff I'm trying to get, and the stuff I'm trying to avoid, is somehow involved with my happiness. Right? And why am I doing that? Because I think that those things, like in some fashion or another, are going to satisfy who I truly am. I'm associating my true identity, or Self, and notice the capital S, Self, with these conditioned things of the world. And why am I doing that? Because I'm confused about the nature of the Self. So I think the other day I said, you know, if I think I'm an automobile, and I pull into a gas station, a petrol station, and I, you know, grab the pump and like, that's just not going to really work, is it? Right? Well, it'll have certain effects, but it's unlikely to lead to happiness and the relief of suffering. I'm confused about who I am, and therefore I'm confused about what's going to make me happy. Right? That confusion about my true nature. Like... And again, we're assuming that I have some kind of true, absolute nature, like an essential identity, who I really am. Okay? And how do I solve this problem? I find out, I look for who I really am. So all of this, actually, basic kind of pattern, is very similar across multiple different ancient Indian philosophical, spiritual systems. Okay? You find that across multiple different systems. So you're looking for the real Self, but what the Buddha finds is something very different than what everyone else finds. Like a typical way to express... Whoops, we got a parenthesis out of order there but... What's typical for everyone else is they find some kind of transcendental capital S Self, which is this Sanskrit word, Ātman. And one version of this associates Ātman with Brahman, which can be a non-theistic kind of underlying essential reality, or it can be turned into a god, actually. Right? So and we sometimes you may have heard like Tat Tvam Asi, a famous statement from the Upaniṣads, like, you, that, art, thou. Right? This is you. That's who you really are. You are God, or you are the fundamental essence of reality. That's your true nature. And Buddha's answer to this is, uh... I don't know what you guys found, but I didn't find anything. Right? There's no self like that. That's his answer. And we're going to come back and look a little bit more about that, but that's the key. So this is that sort of radically dif... this is what makes Buddhism radically different from the beginning. Is that unlike other traditions, which still, like, say, the way you need to be happy is you have to figure out what your true nature is, but unlike these other traditions, the Buddha's answer is the kind of true nature that we think we must have. Unchanging, absolute, the experiencer of experiences, the feeler of feelings, the thinker of thinkings, the one who's doing the actions, the agent of activities, that that kind of, you know, somebody in charge, somewhere in there, that that kind of self, unchanging absolute self, does not exist. Right? Some people will even translate this as a soul. That kind of soul or self doesn't exist and actually can't exist. It's impossible for it to exist. And hence, I think of it as being like a squircle, although my friend Paula Wilds pointed out that actually people do use the word squircle to refer to an elliptical thing in design, but I'm still going to use that word to mean an actual square circle. Like, you can't have a squircle, just like you can't have a married bachelor. Right? Well, you know, people object. They say, well, you know, if he's fooling around, maybe he is kind of like a bachelor. So I like square circle because it's clearly logically impossible. OK, so all of this is then comes, emerges in early Buddhism, in the common vehicle, where there's a certain kind of model of consciousness. And when you get done with the details, there are going to be some variations, but these basic ideas work fine. So basically, consciousness flows through time as discrete moments, and each moment is causally producing the next moment. See how important causality is there? And the idea is that since each moment is producing the next moment, each moment is causally conditioning the next moment, right? And that causal conditioning can come in the form of our karmic intentions, our beliefs, our emotions, our expectations, and so on. So this is that, you can say that conditioning, this is when we're starting to point to that very subtlest form of suffering, like just being caught in that conditioning. So the kind of conditioning that is most relevant for us here is ignorance. OK? So I want you to follow, and this is again a little anachronistic, and kind of we're sort of ignoring certain details, but I think as a basic heuristic model, this works fine. So let's say in one moment we have a perception, like you see this. And then in the next moment, there's an interpretation of that perception. And when you have that interpretation of that perception, all of this is occurring within the context of ignorance, actually. Because every moment of consciousness is going to be causally conditioned by ignorance. And ignorance, what is ignorance about? It's about our own personal identity. Why is that, why is that relevant to our interpretation of what we're seeing? Because our fundamental motivations are basically to find affordances, loosely speaking, to make ourselves happy, or to find pleasure, or at least to survive, and to avoid the unpleasant, to avoid dangers, to avoid suffering. For whom? For the self. Once again, as we said before. So when we interpret, the idea here is that as we're interpreting things in the world, we're interpreting them through that filter. Like, I want to be happy, I don't want to suffer. Who? Me. And I have a certain model of the me, I have a self-model that that's being interpreted through. So when I see something that I interpret, I'm interpreting it as, well, is it good for me? Is it bad for me? Or is it irrelevant? Which basically corresponds to, Is it good for me? I become attached to it, attracted to it. Is it bad for me? I become averse to it. Right? And then attachment has various manifestations, like lust and so on. Aversion has various manifestations, like anger and aggression. Or I just think, oh, who cares? And I ignore it. You know, I like the social version of the last one. I can uh... Dan Goleman told me some years ago, and I should look this study up, but there was apparently a study about how people work or how people interact in social contexts. And uh, the higher the status, the more likely they are to literally not see people. Because it's like, oh, there's another low status person. Like they don't even register that that low status person is at the party. And you say, oh, I was at that party. Oh, you were? I didn't see you. Right? You don't count, so I literally didn't see you. And some of you may also be familiar with this, if you've taken like Psychology 101 and the invisible gorilla. Who's seen that? Yeah, right? Everybody, just about, yes, so. What's called inattentional blindness. And there are, again, various versions of that. But the point being, we don't really register something. We don't go to that point of an interpretation that's going to produce an intention to act, unless it's relevant to us. Right? So that relevance to what are our goals? And the fundamental goals? We want more pleasure, more happiness, less pain, less suffering. And everything else is like, oh, who cares? Okay? In our ordinary state. So the intention to act that comes from that interpretation, that is karma. Okay? So that interpretation itself is being driven by, right? Our desires to get something or to avoid something, our attachment and aversion, all of it rooted in a self-model that is a distorted self-model. And so we intend to act, and when we intend to act, we have an action, and we may or may not actually engage in it. We might intend to act physically, like, God, I'd just like to punch that guy in the face. And I don't do that, fortunately. But I still have the imprint of that intention. So even if I don't physically act on an intention, that intention is still reinforcing this conditioning. Right? Since the interpretation is distorted by ignorance, by a faulty self-model, that means the intention is going to be to act, is based on a faulty interpretation, like, I think I'm a car, so I intend to go drink some gasoline. And I don't actually do that. Well, on occasion, no, I don't. And then the action ends in frustration. Why does the action end in frustration? Because I'm not a car. Or because I do not have a fixed, absolute, unchanging, controlling self. Right? But this imprint that always happens, regardless of whether I actually act, that imprint perpetuates the kleśas, especially ignorance itself. Sort of reinforces. Like, oh, it didn't work this time, I'm going to keep trying. Something else will work. Right? So we can think of it in this way, if we just step back and think about that model, how does this ignorance lie at the root? Because it's said that ignorance is the root kleśa, the root problem. First you feel that your true identity consists of this absolutized capit... capsalutized, capital S self, the Ātman, in Sanskrit, right? The way that was sort of generically referred to in various traditions. You try to make that self happy and free it from suffering. You mistakenly interpret objects as either causes of happiness or suffering for that kind of self, right? And you try to get those objects or try to avoid them, even though they can't do what you feel like they should do.
Okay? And the reason they can't do what you feel like they should do is it's like, you know, you are a squircle collector. You're trying to, like, find more square circles. And you think, maybe if I do this, I'll find a square circle, I'll do that, and it never works, because it can't work. Right? You know, the traditional metaphor is um... for this kind of impossible entities, one of them is the horns of a rabbit. But then inevitably, I've had more than one undergraduate student present me with what we in the United States call a jackalope, which is a rabbit with horns on it. It's like, look, you know, I don't think they have jackalopes in Europe, but we do. You can get t-shirts that have, on the one hand, they have Bigfoot, and the other side is a jackalope. So, yeah. Anyway. So, this kind of impossible entity, what kind of self is that? In eliminating the belief that the mind-body system is not the locus of a self, that's what we're talking about. We think that this mind-body system, somewhere in here, is this capital S Self. We're not... So, what we have to do, and this is, there's a very helpful term that comes from the 15th century Tibetan scholar-practitioner Tsongkhapa, the founder of the Gelugpa tradition. A very helpful term that he really popularized, used a lot, is this term, the gak ja nge song wa, recognizing what is to be negated. Like, we're going to look for something and then not finding of that thing, which should be in principle findable, our failure to find it is going to establish that it's not there. But we have to know what we're looking for. Right? That's very important. Like, what underlies, and the claim is, that this self-model, so this is a kind of abstraction, right? Like a philosophical abstraction. But that this philosophical abstraction is pointing to something that is much subtler than just, you know, kind of complicated philosophical thinking. It's the way we feel about our own identity. It's an innate self-model that we walk around with. A sense that, what kind of an identity is it? That somehow it doesn't change. Right? And again, when we reflect on this intellectually, you know, if I say, are you the same person as you? So here's a sound, you know, there's one sound, and then another sound, and then it's like, okay, are you the same person? From first snap to second snap? Huh? What? You know, does anyone feel like they're really a different person? You need a different name now, because... Right? No, we just have this as how we feel. Like, somehow we're the same, that there's somebody, you know, looking out from behind your eyes, who's the experiencer of experiences. You know, there's somebody in charge of these, what we call the aggregates, the constant mental and physical constituents, and that in some sense, it's kind of fully independent, autonomous. You know, like, it exists in and of itself. And that, again, it's who you really are. That last part is more the philosophical bit. Right? If we push you into it, then you start to say, yeah, that must be who I really am, that intuitive sense of self, of self-model. Okay? So that self-model is the cause of suffering, is the root cause of suffering. And this is what ignorance is. It's specifically a kind of error, and it's an error which thinks that somewhere in the psycho physical aggregates, in this mind-body system, somehow is, in a sense, the home of this self. Okay? And the way in early Buddhism we're going to proceed is we're going to look for it. We're going to use an analysis to try to find this self. And there are basically kind of two options. One option is that there's some element within your mind-body system, right, that is that self. The way that, you know, was it Descartes who thought that the pineal gland was the seed of the soul, I think? Right, like there's somewhere, like some thing in there, that's the self. Or that some combination of those things, or maybe all of those things together constitute the self. And that second one is especially important. Okay? So in order to do this, one of these key things is, there are going to be two things that we need to keep in mind about this. One of them is that to do this kind of research, we have to be systematic, because we're dealing with an extremely, this self model is deeply ingrained, and it's not going to go away if we're not systematic. So, you know, I sometimes like to refer to this as, you know, the problem of the blue monster, is one of the metaphors I like to use for this. You know, I think there's a blue monster living in my closet, and you know, Alexandra comes over and finds me like sitting there staring at the closet door, and I've put some, you know, some potato chips outside, and she said, what's wrong? I said, there's a blue monster in my closet, it's the shape of a square circle, and I'm so afraid, I'm trying to make it happy. And, you know, she says, it's okay, don't worry. Here, look, I'll open the door. No, no, it's okay. Then, you know, she opens the door and says, see? I said, oh, okay. And then she comes back the next day and there's like five bags of potato chips there, and, you know, it's like, what happened? We just didn't see it. It was hiding. So what do we have to do? We have to make a map of the closet, right? I think the closet is a blue monster home, so I've got to make a systematic map so I can thoroughly look. And I also have to establish that if blue monster is there, I should be able to perceive it. Right? So that also has this very important claim that it's perceptible. You can detect it. So likewise, we think that this mind-body system is the home, if you like, of this kind of absolutized self, capital S Self, Self or soul. And if we just kind of say, oh, where is it? Oh, I don't know, I can't find it, oh, well, then. That's not going to work. We have to be very systematic. So what early Buddhism does is it systematically presents a kind of map of the mind-body system. And there are different accounts about how many different, what they call elements there are. These elements are called dharmas. So that's a different use of that same word, dharma, like in the Three Jewels, Buddha, Dharma, Sangha. These are called dharmas, or elements. And we're going to use a process of looking for them. But to do that, we're also going to rely on a particular kind of concept. Now, I did upload, or I think has been uploaded for you, some verses from Nāgārjuna's text, Wisdom. And even though we're talking about early Buddhism, Nāgārjuna refers to this concept too, because this is a fundamental concept. Nāgārjuna is going to kind of take, he's going to object to certain aspects of this early position. But this aspect he's not going to object to, which is that there are two truths, and that this is a method that involves rationality. This is a method for us to engage in this search. What are we looking for? So how do I eliminate an error? If I think my closet is a blue monster home, what I need to do is see what's really there. I think that something which is not a blue monster home is a blue monster home, right? You know, if I think like, this is my wife, and you know, she never talks to me, and just seems to just sit there, right? Some people come along and they try to pick her up, it's like, get away. And it's like, okay, I think that something which is not my wife is my wife. So how do I eliminate that error? I see what it really is. How do I eliminate the error thinking that this mind-body system is the home of a capital S Self or soul? I look for it. I look for what's really there. I try to see what's really there. So that's the basic role of Buddhist philosophy. It's like seeing what is really there, yathābhūta darshana. What I'm looking for is what we call the ultimate reality. Okay, the ultimate reality. That's the highest truth, or reality. And we can also then, however, we can have things that we say are true or real for conventional purposes, but they're not ultimately real. So for example, I can even use the word person or even self in a way that is just a convenient designation, something convenient. But of course, we generally don't use it that way. So when we talk about this idea of the two truths, what we're looking for to see what's really there is we're trying to see the ultimate truth. And in this early period, the style of philosophy is called Abhidharma, or Abhidhamma in Pali. And there's going to be a basic kind of dividing line here between ultimate and conventional. Ultimately, real things do not withstand analysis. They're not vichāra utsaha. And what does analysis mean at this level? Analysis is reduction, okay? If a thing can be physically or conceptually broken down into constituents, then it's not ultimately real. But a thing that cannot be broken down is ultimately real. And we're going to review that here. So for early Buddhism, the common vehicle, these ultimately real entities are called dharmas. They're irreducible. They're irreducible mental or physical bits. And for our purposes, we'll also say there are some schools, that as Khenpo was talking about, that sort of suggests that somehow they exist in some fashion in both past, present and future. But we're going to stick to the model that says they only exist for one moment. So they're momentary, irreducible mental and physical stuff, elements of different types, okay? And the Abhidharma, as I said, presents this systematic typology. You could call it a sort of table of elements. Anything made of dharmas is conventionally real and that it accords with our linguistic conventions, okay? So for example, is this flower, just based on what you know now, we're going to review some of this, but is the flower on this model ultimately real or conventionally real?
Yes, conventionally real because I can sit here and take it apart. We don't even... You want to see me do that, don't you? You know, I could do that, but we also just conceptually can see part of the way we know that it can be broken down is it actually has spatial dimensions. Right? It has size, right? What's called sthūlatā. So the fact of it having a spatial extension like that already tells us, oh, okay, that can't be ultimately real. So hypothetically that means then what is ultimately real has to be bits in terms of physical stuff, has to be infinitesimally small bits of matter that lasts for only one instant. So on this view, you know, developed about 2,000 years ago, interestingly, what this consists of is actually a bunch of infinitesimally small particles, right, that are, you know, these are called paramāṇu or sometimes the atyanta paramāṇu and that lasts for just like a moment or boom, boom, boom, boom. It's just a bunch of fizzing infinitesimally small particles is what this actually is. Do you see that? It's a very important thing to keep in mind, and we'll come back to what you see is not the way it actually is, right? Now, of course, that's not so different from some kind of naive like high school physics account of what you're seeing, right? A high school, your high school physics teacher would not say that flowers are irreducible elements of the universe. At least I hope not. I'm sure education in Europe is better than the United States, right? So, right, it's clear? So, but we don't see that, do we? So the way things seem is not the way they are. That's also true of our mind, that on this account, we can actually break our mental experience down into different kinds of irreducible mental stuff, which are also called dharmas. That we can, and again, there are different kinds of lists. One of those lists involves the five aggregates. So there's the physical part of the five aggregates, which is form. And then there's a specific dharma, a mental dharma called vedanā, which means sensation. It's an individual-like atom, so to speak, but it's a mental atom. It's an irreducible mental function. And then there's also a mental function that's called saṃjñā, which is a kind of act of recognition. It's like object selection, nimitta-grahaṇa, grasping the sign, literally. So like selecting an object like that, right? And then there is also then a bundle of dharmas, which are put under the rubric of saṃskāra, which just means conditioning. And that's actually many. And that includes attachment, aversion, and all of their different kinds of permutations, and confusion or ignorance, and all of its different kinds of permutations. And there are complicated lists, but you can basically organize all of those different kinds of conditioning. They're all either basically different forms of attachment, different forms of aversion, or different forms of confusion, with a few that can go different directions, like doubt. You can have kind of youthful doubt, unafflicted doubt, or afflicted doubt, basically. Right? So that's our mind-body system it's just like the flower is just a bunch of, you know, constantly changing elements, interacting, so too the mind is just a bunch of elements interacting. Right? Or at least that's the map. And then the question is, okay, is one of those elements a good candidate for this intuitive sense of self that we have, our self-model? So before we go further, we're going to say the claim is going to be anything that is not even made of dharmas is not even conventionally real. So square circles are not even conventionally real, right? Because they don't exist at all. They're not made out of stuff. You can't... but, but a flower is conventionally real. So when I use the word flower correctly, it's referring to a bunch of atoms, different kinds of atoms, that are interacting in a particular way to function in the way that we speak of as a flower. Like it produces a certain kind of visual perception, for example, or maybe a certain kind of olfactory perception, a certain kind of smell. Right? Or it's capable of producing seeds. Right? So there would be different ways of kind of defining that concept, and then we'll use that concept, even though it suggests that there's just one thing there, what it really is, is that that concept is a way of a convenient designation or a prajñapti for us to refer to a bunch of different kinds of physical elements that are interacting. Okay? That's not the case with the self. At least not according to this analysis. The self, like a square circle, does not exist at all. It's not made out of more fundamental things. The kind of self we're looking for can't be found within this psycho physical bunch of constituents. So let's remember, actually let's go back for a second before we go forward any more. Uhh, so if you remember this, right?
So just, even though we're not going to go through the details of or and then the fifth aggregate, by the way, is consciousness. And there are different kinds of consciousness. You can basically say there are six different kinds of consciousness for this purpose. There are five sensory consciousnesses and the mental consciousness. So let's consider these criteria for our intuitive sense of self. Is there anything in your mind-body system that's a good candidate?
My right big toe is the controller of my aggregates. And the perceiver of perceptions.
And it's permanent. I was born with a toe that size. No.
Usually we think of some kind of a mental thing. Is there a mental thing that's a good candidate?
What about consciousness? Why can't consciousness be the self? This kind of self.
Anybody?
Yeah, because it changes. Right? Right? And how does it, it's like, here look, changing, consciousness changing.
If it didn't change, then it's like you'd see the flower all the time. If there were, you might think, oh, maybe there is some unchanging, absolute consciousness. This is kind of, you know, a version of Sāṃkhya. There's some unchanging, absolute consciousness, or maybe even something beyond consciousness that all of this stuff kind of interacts with and it somehow, like, no, it's the knower, but it never changes. Would that make sense? No. For the same reason. Because even if you try to posit something like behind consciousness, you still have the problem that experience changes, and experience involves change, which means that this perceiver, the subject of experience, if there is one, has to change status. First it's a seer of a flower, then it's the seer of a clock, then it's the seer of, you know, fingers. It's got to change status in order to come into contact with different objects. So if somehow you had a self, a capital S Self, that was totally unchanging, it would be blind and deaf, and, you know, it couldn't do anything. So that's a pretty poor candidate for self, right? Nevertheless, you will find some versions of that, and there are going to be a couple of
couple of ways of thinking about this, and one of them is actually that there's another kind of candidate. And that other kind of candidate is there's a sort of self that is either... that is an absolute self that is somehow, you could say, either depended, on somehow present in, constituted by all of this stuff, like all of this stuff makes up one thing, which is the self, alright? Or, or in some way the self is like somehow owning those things without being constituted by them. But in either case that self is somehow distributed over all of this psycho physical stuff. Now that's maybe a slightly confusing way of thinking about it, so let's think of something, a simpler. Maybe we take the flower again. Okay, so this is a flower, and we're going to kind of ignore, everyone agree that's a flower, and we're going to sort of ignore for the moment all that stuff about atoms and everything, and just say, how many flowers am I holding? One flower. Not trying to trick you yet. Uh, so it is one flower, right? But it's made out of parts, correct? So that's this idea of a distributed entity. The whole is distributed over the parts, okay? Right? The whole is distributed over the parts, just like the glass. The glass has, let's say, a top, a bottom, and sides, you could say. It's got lots of, you know, whatever silicon atoms and other kinds of, you know, carbons that are making up that stuff that it's made out of. But you could just simply say it's top, bottom, and sides. The flower has, you know, I don't know, petals, what is that called, a corona, and a pistil, and a stem. Okay? And those are its parts. So there's one flower in many parts. We can also think of this, right, as it having a kind of shape or a form, maybe even like a mathematical form that we could use to specify what that one thing is. Right? Like we could have a mathematical function that would specify exactly what the shape of that, so there'd be one function and one way of characterizing this mathematically. Okay? Or you could talk about a system, where there'd be a system that we can characterize mathematically and there's one system with a mathematical characterization and there's a bunch of components in that system. Okay? So these are all instances of one thing existing over many things or in relation to many things or constituted by many things. Okay? So another way of doing this actually also is with concepts. So, this is a petal, and this is a petal, and this is a petal, and this is a petal. Is this petal exactly the, is this petal exactly the same as this petal? No, they're a little different, but they're both petals. So there's some kind of petalness. Something about them, right? So when we say petal, even though they're all a little different, somehow the word or concept petal is like there is a petalness that characterizes all of them. So this then moves into what we call a kind of platonic attitude, which we can also have about mathematical objects, where there's this one thing that has many expressions or instantiations. There's the petalness occurring in many petals. And those of you familiar with platonic styles of philosophy will say that, will know that actually that very often, and this is pretty characteristic of a lot of Western culture, that the one, like the ideal form of the petal, or the ideal form of the flower, if I had multiple flowers, I only had one flower today, if I had multiple flowers, it'd be a flower, flower, there's flowers over here, right? Flower, flower, flower, flower, flower. But the real true flower is not the individual physical flowers, but it's like the concept of the flower, the form of the flower, the ideal form of the flower, which, you know, in Plato's cave, some of you familiar with this idea that what we see are just the sort of shadows or reflections on the wall of the cave. We don't have direct access to that, like the pure form. We're just seeing, you know, when we get caught up with our sensory perceptions, we're just seeing the poor physical reflections of the ideal forms. And of course, when you do this, it's especially with mathematics in the context of science, where this becomes especially acute, like in some sense, the real thing is the mathematical characterization of whatever it is, like a system. And then the, you know, the imperfect permutations or presentations or measurable things of the system are just reflections of that ideal form. Okay? So the intuition generally for many, actually, and you might even say built into our cognitive system, and I'm being a little anachronistic because this is really more Dharmakīrti, who's coming later. But you can see this, you can see echoes of this in the earlier philosophy. Built into our cognitive system is kind of a tendency to think that when I say this is petal, this is petal, this is petal, this is petal, that my concept of petal, or my concept of flower, flower, flower, flower is actually out there in the world. So that the concept is referring to something that is repeated out there in the world. Like these individual entities, are each of them instantiating this one thing. Whether it's, so in terms of the flower as a whole or the vase as a whole, right? So we think of it as just one thing and all of the different parts are participating in that one whole. Or all of the different instantiations of a flower are participating in the ideal flower. Okay? So different ways of talking about these distributed entities. And again, our intuition generally is, and perhaps built into our system, is that, that this thing up here in some sense, that distributed entity is real. Not only is it real, maybe it's even the truly real thing, like Plato, or Platonic style of philosophy. But here's the thing in Buddhism, that thing is not real. It's not ultimately real. It's only conventionally real. It's something we fabricate, right? The real stuff is this ultimate irreducible mental and physical stuff. Right? Why is that real stuff? Why is that ultimate, why is that the ultimate stuff? Because we can causally interact with it. Okay? Can you causally interact with the idea of a flower? Can you smell the idea of a flower? Anyone able to do that here? Just checking. Right? You can have mental images and so on, but those are also not the ideal. They're just an image in your mind. What you can actually interact with is this causally, this causal thing, whether it's flower, flower, flower, all those things we're calling flowers, what we actually contact with is this stuff. Can I? How about the vase? So again, the vase is another example, and this is key, the vase is another example of a thing that's a distributed entity. So we might think that's just I'm holding one thing in my hand, right? So here's the typical kind of argument that's used here, is a reductive argument, and it's actually also going to be one of the Mādhyamika arguments that Khenpo hopefully will have time to get through. It's called the neither one nor many argument, or neither the same nor different argument. Okay? Tattvānyatvavicāra is one term for it in Sanskrit. And I just asked, so let's say it has, you know, like a lip, a throat, a side and a bottom. So let's just say, yeah, it's one thing, right? You agree that it's just one thing? It's a whole. W-H-O-L-E, a whole, with parts. So I'm going to say to you that the whole doesn't really exist. There is no one thing here. We conceptualize that, but it's not one thing. So one way to do that is to always ask about being same or different. So is the, so we have a whole, one thing. Is the whole, that's the vase, is it the same as the lip?
No. Is it the same as the side? No. Is it the same as the bottom? No. So I'm going to take the lip, the side and the bottom. I'm just going to put them over here. And I'm going to keep holding the whole.
Does that work?
It doesn't work, does it? If I say the whole is the same as the top, then only this is the vase and this is not. If I say the top and the bottom are the same, then the vase is only that high. If the vase is the same as the top and the vase is the same as the bottom, then the bottom and the top are the same. So the vase is, you know, that high. Right? Amen. Yes?
Yes, you can keep going. You can keep going. The top, right. So already saying top and bottom is already making holes. So until we get down to... So then what we do is we say, is the infinitesimally small part less momentary particle located at this point the same as the whole or different?
It's physically the same? Is the one down here, is the same? Is the one down here also the same? It's the same? So this point in space is the same as this point in space?
Ah, but quantum physics is not relevant here. This is a macro level object. Sorry, that doesn't work.
Okay.
So this is actually... This is a style of what's... This one, neither one nor many analysis is a kind of style of analysis that really goes back way back in Buddhism but also becomes very important all the way through in Mādhyamaka. And what we're demonstrating is that what our intuition like, oh, there's just one thing there. Actually, it seems like the way it appears, oh, it's one thing. That's actually a product of our visual system and our cognitive system glomming things together. There isn't actually one thing there when we do this analysis. In other words, when we engage with non-deviant reasoning, which I'll talk more about later. Now, one of the things as a little aside here, we were talking this morning about systems in equilibrium and causality. And the point here that this is making, is that when you have... Like if you have a system in equilibrium, some of them are causal, some of them it's like a little tough to say whether it's causal or not. But, you know, one kind of way of thinking about that is actually maybe an autonomous dynamical system like a living cell in which the functions of that... It's a kind of closed system in the sense that the functions of that cell that perpetuate it are all being produced within that cell. So that the different elements of the cell are producing the amino acids and so on that are necessary for the cell to continue its existence. And it's you know a living, living organisms still need to be open to their environment. Often that's called, thought of as being a kind of thermodynamic openness to the environment. But in terms of its own maintenance, it's a closed system. So that it's producing, like each element is producing what is needed for the other element, for the other element and so on. Right? But that causality is still happening in time. So elements are acting. So one way of thinking about this is like even with the vase, right? If we think about the vase, the vase is a bunch of atoms that are actually producing their own next moment.
Right? So boom, boom, boom, the boom, boom, they're changing and the conditions are right for them to continue to exist. But they're also interacting in a way that enable them to do things that they couldn't do on their own, like hold water or hold a flower. So one moment is the moments of this, you know, each atom is surrounded by a bunch of other atoms and they are interacting with a bunch of other atoms and those other atoms are acting as conditions for the atom to have a uh, uh, to have a capacity, a special capacity to, with the other atoms around it to like hold water. But we do not have to posit, we don't have to ontologize that system and make it into one thing. Okay? So this is actually where, on this account at least, ideas of kind of ontologized emergence or of systems as real things is rejected. So if a system seems to be in equilibrium, all of its elements, its dynamic equilibrium, all of its elements are changing. A very simple example of dynamic equilibrium is like you know a, a bottle of fizzy water of the you know low gases of carbonated water. So once you pour some of that out, there's going to be a time and eventually the carbon dioxide in the top in gas form is going to come into equilibrium with the carbon dioxide in the water and it's dissolved in the water and that takes a little while and then it's there and then it gets into a kind of equilibrium state. But that equilibrium, what's the same is an abstraction. All of the elements are changing but the sameness, like the sameness of volume, for example, is something that's an abstraction pulled away from. It's exactly an example of this, right? It's a whole... It's a whole abstracted away from its elements. Okay? So that's key, like systems, that doesn't mean that this is completely false. It just means that it's conventional. Okay? That we know, in a sense, when we characterize systems that we're characterizing them on the basis of things like functionality and that's useful for us but then we ontologize them and uh, that kind of ontologization actually, you especially see that with mathematics where like the mathematical characterization of a system is taken to be like a real thing. And one way to talk about that is a surreptitious substitution where the actual measurements that occur in the experience of a scientist which are the basis for the development of a mathematical model that those measurements are kind of ignored and the model itself replaces them as the real thing. And I know I'm speaking in somewhat abstract terms but I'm doing that just to give a plug to this really great book. So Connor, you have to read this book by my friends Adam Frank, Marcelo Glaser and Evan Thompson and I've collaborated... I've kind of done stuff with all three of these guys but especially collaborated in writing with Evan and Adam and I may do something together too other than play video games. But um so uh, uh... This is a really great book that actually addresses some of this and draws a little bit on Nāgārjuna, in fact. So I highly recommend that if you're interested in science or you're a scientist, uh, I highly recommend this book for understanding some of these types of issues that even early Buddhism, leave alone Nāgārjuna, even early Buddhism is really you know, undermining some of our ontologizing of our conceptual... of our conceptual... of our ways of making sense of the world. Okay, let's take a five minute break and we're going to come back and just start kind of Nāgārjuna but also do some, you know, some dialogue. Okay, five minute break. Short break, as Rinpoche would say. I can't quite do his 'short break'.

01:08:42

Autoscroll:

Session 5 — Conceptual Imputation and the Appearance of Reality

Teacher:

John D. Dunne

Location:

Gomde Germany-Austria

Date: July 23, 2024

Description >>

In this session, John D. Dunne explores how conceptual imputation plays a central role in how phenomena appear to us. He explains that many of the objects we take to exist inherently are in fact designated through mental and linguistic processes. By examining how naming, categorization, and conceptual frameworks shape our experience, the teachings reveal how our perception of reality is constructed. This analysis helps loosen the tendency to assume that the world appears exactly as it truly exists. Through this inquiry, the session deepens the understanding that phenomena arise dependently and lack intrinsic essence.

Video

Audio

49:54

Autoscroll:

So, um... the, uh... So what, when... so what we've been talking about actually continues through, uh in, in Buddhism, so in that sense the common vehicle. Its focus, if we go back to this model, what we're trying to do is we're really like this... we have a problem, right? In the way we're interacting, in the way we're acting in the world. And it's unsuccessful. So the main target actually is the interpretation. So this is, in other words, and the interpretation is conceptual. So at this point, the main target of this type of analysis is conceptual. It's definitely dealing with a kind of intuitive self model that's flawed. But the way that self model is manifesting here is that it is uh, it is a, causing our conceptualizations to be unsuccessful. Okay? So we're really kind of trying to unpack, get clear about the flaws in our conceptualizations that are caused by that self model. And we're going to see eventually that this, even at this level, but especially for Nāgārjuna, there's also going to be distortions even at this level. You could say that there's a kind of intuitive aspect of that self model which emerges when you conceptualize, like this is a flower and that's a good thing. Oh, I want this. Right? Remember, so those who had Rinpoche's talk seminar last week, like, even just going, Oh, that's nice. That's already this kind of conceptualizat... Nice is, it's, you know, something nice for me. It's already karmic. Right? So already producing karmic conditioning. And, but when I go that's nice, that's a concept, that's an interpretation. And the idea here is that there is some kind of pre conceptual, right, experiential level that is then being interpreted through a faulty interpretive framework. And that interpretive framework is faulty because of the self model.
But it also, as we will see, ways in which we can talk about even the pre conceptual experience also being faulty.
And we'll get to that later. But I just want to say that we're going to get to that. But a lot of philosophy, you know, if we don't undo the false interpretations, if we don't really dig down into the way in which our conceptual model you know, and there are all kinds of conceptual models, there are linguistic conceptual models, there are mathematical conceptual models, all kinds of conceptual models, those are all, you know, models. Uh, and uh, And what their modeling is, on this kind of diagram, this schematic diagram, this is a map for this territory, the interpretation is using a conceptual map to try to understand this pre conceptual territory, so to speak. You understand? So you have your kind of pre conceptual territory is just your experience. And then you've got a map, which is a conceptual framework that you're using to make sense of that, so that you can, you know, get what you want and avoid what you don't want. Which is the baseline that's motivating your conceptualizations. So this is distinct from a kind of platonic position, which would be your conceptualizations are just picking out real things in the world. You know, when I say flower, I'm just kind of seeing that's a flower, that's a flower, this is a petal, that's a petal. I'm just, you know, picking out real categories in the world. The category flower, or, you know, flower, flower, flower flower, or petal, petal, petal petal, that those categories exist as real things in the world, and I'm just picking them out. Sort of passively, as if I, you know, I just do it, I don't know, automatically. But here, the idea is that those categories do not exist in the world, they have to be produced. And the reason they're produced is, we're trying to act in the world. We're trying to make sense of the world, we're trying to do things in the world. Right, and we could be doing something like trying to find water, or we could be doing something like, you know, running a quantum level experiment about entanglement. And so we have models that are regulating the experiences we're having while we're doing these things. And they can be very coarse models or very subtle models. But they're models about experience in the world, in the end. And they emerge from, those models emerge from experience in the world. Okay, so that's the kind of position that we have here, a little anachronistic in the way I'm talking about it in terms of the development of, of a Buddhist philosophy, but good enough, I think, for our purposes. So Nāgārjuna is also going to be doing the same thing. So this first level of distortion is that there's a self model that's a problem. And if you really work with that self model, you can actually end suffering. You can attain what's called the state of being an Arhat, you can attain nirvāṇa. All right. So strictly speaking, on this perspective, there is some disagreement about this, but I'm going to endorse the position that says, you don't have to really have a realization of Nāgārjuna's version of emptiness in order to become free from suffering and attain a kind of nirvāṇa that's the cessation of saṃsāra. So that's very important to know. Like, that's a very typical interpretation. There are some competing, some will say you have to have at least some realization of... some degree of realization of Nāgārjuna's notion of emptiness. But on this model, I'm saying, no, I'm following the interpretation that says you don't really need that in order to fix the self model, or really like get rid of that self model. The one that says there's an absolute controlling, permanent, a, a, self. You know the... The self that's in charge. But as we get into this second period, there's some very important things that happen historically. And the tradition says, as I mentioned before, that there were perspectives, there were sutras, teachings of the Buddha that have been kept secret. You know, western academics will say, well, they just somehow were produced in this period. And it doesn't really... I think for our purposes, we don't really need to come down on one side or another. What we do want to recognize, though, is that there's a change that happens. And I told you that story from the Vimalakīrti Nirdeśa Sūtra which is very popular in China. So I, here's a Chinese depiction of Vimalakīrti, the Bodhisattva. And part of the idea of Vimalakīrti is he's kind of in that sutra, there is this character Śāriputra, who's one of the Buddha's great disciples. And he acts as kind of like a straw man or a fall guy for Vimalakīrti, representing this very conservative attitude. And Vimalakīrti is not a monk, he's a lay person. You know he goes to, he teaches the dharma in brothels. Uh, he's in a, he eh... He goes to the bars and expresses his compassion. So he's in a different kind of category, right? What's this change that happens? Well, part of it is that I told you that story about how Śāriputra is at the beginning of the sutra, you know, in this place. And part of what's happening here is this idea of the buddhakṣetra, the Buddha realm, and that we are actually in the Buddha realm, this kind of realm in which the suffering of saṃsāra has been transformed. And Śāriputra says, you know, he's in quite, another celestial bodhisattva, sort of knows that Śāriputra is having doubts about this, and says, you know, what do you think? He says, well, I see this place is filled with cesspools and thorns and mountains and valleys, and this doesn't look like a beautiful Buddha realm to me. And then the Buddha touches his toe to the ground, remember that, and then suddenly, boof, there it is. And then he lifts his toe and it's gone. So what's the idea of that? Why is that necessary? What's going on here, if you think about it carefully, on the model we said, we've said that there are psycho physical elements that are ultimately real, right? We can reduce, we can't break them down further, we do that reductionist analysis, and there are infinitesimal small physical and mental bits of reality that are called dharmas. And these dharmas are ultimately real. And they are produced, they are saṃskṛta in Sanskrit, they are conditioned. Some people translate it as compounded, which is not great, I don't think, in this context. So they're causally conditioned, these dharmas. They're in a causal chain, they're actually in this kind of, just this same kind of causal chain, like the mental dharmas are in that causal chain, right? This causal chain of mental moments, I represent this as a single circle, but this mental moment is actually a whole bundle of different a, a, dharmas, mental dharmas, mental elements. So they're producing the next, and the next, and the next, and the next, right? So all of that stuff is flowing along causally, and that stuff is real. But also, that stuff is conditioned by ignorance. So if all of that stuff, and in fact the world, even the physical stuff, is conditioned by the karma of the beings in that world, and the karma has come from the kleśas, which come, which are rooted in the root kleśa, ignorance, that means all of the stuff of the world is, is already like fixed in its nature by that causal process. Each of them has what's called a svabhāva, that's going to be a very important term, and I'll put it up there soon, an essence. And so they are, so the nature, like if you plant an apple seed, you don't get a banana tree. Right? The... And the apple tree that comes from it produces apples that produce apple seeds. They don't produce Ferrari’s. Right? Wouldn't that be nice? Oh, look, I've got a Ferrari tree. No, it doesn't work that way. Not sure if it would be nice. But anyway, so very expensive upkeep. Uh, so... You know, what... with like, so this causal regularity, and things, nature is fixed by that causal regularity, which means, yes, you can stop the dysfunctional causal process that's producing suffering, but all of this stuff you have now, your aggregates, have already been produced by karma and kleśa. So when you attain cessation on this model, you attain a kind of cessation that's called nirvāṇa with a remainder.
Uh, nirupadhiśeṣa nirvāṇa, sorry, sorry, sopadhiśeṣa nirvāṇa, and then when you die, you attain a kind of final nirvāṇa that's called nirupadhiśeṣa nirvāṇa. So when you become, when you attain nirvāṇa, you're an Arhat, is the term for that, and you are in nirvāṇa, the causes of saṃsāra have stopped, or you're not producing new causes of saṃsāra, but the present causes of saṃsāra, in one word, so saṃsāra is the world of suffering, it literally means flowing together, it's the opposite of nirvāṇa, for now it's the opposite of nirvāṇa, the flowing together of what? Of these aggregates, right? This is saṃsāra. So once you eliminate the ignorance, which is that self model, you're no longer producing the causes for this to continue, but what causes are still remaining have to run out, the karma runs out, then you die, now you're in nirupadhiśeṣa nirvāṇa, nirvāṇa without a remainder. Which is the end point, right? So it's kind of like final nirvāṇa is you're a dead Arhat. It's a terrible thing to say, but in a way it's kind of what it is. Now, you know, this is famously one of the questions the Buddha refused to answer, like once the Arhat dies, then what? And the Buddha said, oh, look at the bird. He's like, I'm not going to answer that. And there are different interpretations of why, but one of them is, of course, like if you give an answer to that, people are not going to understand it, or they're going to ontologize it, or they're just going to, you know, turn it into some new problem.
So uh, this is famously one of the things he doesn't answer. But in the, in the uh, as we get into the next phase, right? And that story of Vimalakīrti, the point of that story of Vimalakīrti is that the elements that this earlier model say are fixed in their nature by that causal process, that they have a fixed identity or essence, a svabhāva, an own being or essence that comes from that causal process, apple seeds produce apple trees, produce apples, produce apple seeds, like that, that's not true. The stuff of the world is not fixed in its essence. Because as you found out from Khenpo, causality is not ultimately real.
Right? So how could it produce ultimately real things that are fixed in their character and their identities by causality? Which means that the world can be completely transformed, radical transformation. So this is gonna, so that's going to change a number of things. Right? One of the things it's going to change is like how we conceptualize what practice is about. So in the so-called Hīnayāna, maybe not the best term, the lesser vehicle, maybe common vehicle, the idol practitioner is actually a monk known as a Śrāvaka or listener. The goal is to become an Arhat, one who has obtained quiescent nirvāṇa. This is from the standpoint of Nāgārjuna's, of Mahāyāna, the great vehicle. Right? The kind of philosophy and practice that Nāgārjuna is doing. And because they wouldn't think of it as an escape, it's like, well, that's all there is. It's not like you can, you know, once you obtain cessation of saṃsāra, that's it. It's not like you can stay or stick around because it's over. And saṃsāra is all contaminated by ignorance. So, and you don't have that causes anymore. So you're out of here. Okay. But now in Mahāyāna, the idea of practitioner, whether a lay person or a monk, but now lay practice becomes a kind of more important. It also becomes a literary trope, a way of emphasizing the role of uh, this change where lay practitioners like Vimalakīrti is a lay person. You see that in the Mahāyāna literature. This person, the idea of practitioner is called a Bodhisattva. That's a term that you have in earlier Buddhism too. It means a being who is, literally means awakening being, a being who's on the path to full awakening or Buddhahood, who has bodhicitta or awakening mind, the intention to attain Buddhahood for the sake of all beings. And the goal is to become a Buddha, fully awakened one. But the kind of nirvāṇa here is not nirvāṇa as an escape. It's called unlocated nirvāṇa, apratiṣṭhita nirvāṇa, mi né pe nya ngen lé de pa in Tibetan, which is like in the Abhisamayālaṅkāra, the way this is articulated is the Buddha is not in saṃsāra because of wisdom. Wisdom has eliminated the causes of saṃsāra, the wisdom that sees the way things really are has eliminated what perpetuates saṃsāra. What perpetuates saṃsāra is clinging to that self, to the self model. The self model, that confused self model is what perpetuates saṃsāra. Like, you know, if I'm obsessed with collecting square circles, like as long as I'm obsessed with them, I'm just going to keep like, you know, every day I'm on the internet, where's my square circle? you know the packages never arrive, or they arrive they say their empty, you know it's like... Right? Okay, as long as I'm doing that, that keeps going. And we're constantly doing that, trying to make the unreal soul happy.
And so once that stops, right? Saṃsāra would stop. So wisdom keeps the Buddha out of saṃsāra. But compassion keeps the Buddha out of this quiescent nirvāṇa. Into that kind of nirvāṇa that's just an escape. All right. And then in art, you also see this, like early depictions, like from the Sanchi Stupa here on the left hand side, show the Buddha, the way they depict the Buddha is an empty throne, the empty seat under the Bodhi tree. This is the Bodhi tree. And there's some worshippers worshipping the seat. And this is the seat of the Buddha under the Bodhi tree. And it's empty. And then starting around the common era, like 100 or so, you get, I think this is from, well, this is preserved in Sarnath. Uh, I think it's from Vaiśālī. I can't actually remember where its from. I've seen it in person, actually. Uh, so this is the Buddha giving his first sermon, using the gesture called turning the wheel of dharma. And now he's back, like, oh, there he is in form, physical form. Right? So we also see that. And that's where Nāgārjuna comes in. But I'm going to stop now and we'll like get into Nāgārjuna more thoroughly because I want to give us at least 20-some-odd minutes to deal with questions and objections. And I'm sure you're all going to completely win all the debates here.
Um, Yea, isn't, isn't this idea of um, causality as unfeasible, incompatible with this model of infin, uh I don't know the word of infinitesimally, a small moments causing each other, or like one moment causing the next and causing the next? No. Next question? Okay, here's the thing. So this is... Is this the one? No. Okay. This is also in the verses I sent you. Okay. There's uh, in chapter 24 is about the Four Noble Truths. And it begins with a whole series of verses in which an objector says, Nāgārjuna, you're ruining everything. Because you're saying there's no causality. Therefore, like the Four Noble Truths, that doesn't work. Right? How is that possible? So Nāgārjuna, basically, Nāgārjuna's tactic, as we will see, we'll talk more about this tomorrow, but Nāgārjuna's tactic is to kind of go after all of the things that this early system is especially clinging to, like as reality, at least from his standpoint, from Nāgārjuna's standpoint. It's kind of like my mother in her kitchen, she had jars, you know, like honey, cookies, and she had one jar that said, cherished illusions right, and it's like, so he's going after all of the cherished illusions. And one of them is real, ultimately real causality. But as we will see, if we define an ultimately real thing as a thing that exists in and of itself, independently, then causality is impossible. The only way things can be, the only way causality can work. So if we say that an ultimately real thing is a thing with a fixed, absolute independent identity, then a fixed, absolute independent cause cannot actually go through a relational process such that it produces a fixed, absolute autonomous effect. Because if they're fully autonomous, there can't be a relation. Right? So actually, that concept of there being, that things, these elements have autonomous essences, or what are called svabhāva. And actually, like in the Abhidharmakośa, one of the texts that Nāgārjuna is maybe reacting to, but certainly the ideas he's reacting to. He's not reacting to the kośa, but he's reacting to the ideas that are articulated in that text. It says, like it defines, what's a dharma mean? It plays on this verb, dhārayati, dhṛ which means to hold something. So a dharma, which has that sound in it, is what holds dhārayati, its own essence, its own svabhāva, its own fixed independent identity. And Nāgārjuna says, if that's what you mean by a dharma, by, by this kind of irreducible element, then like causality is impossible. So we'll go through some of those verses tomorrow, but he's going to say, if emptiness doesn't make sense to you, nothing's going to make sense. Nothing is possible. All of this stuff is possible because it's empty. Empty of what? Not just like, empty doesn't mean totally non-existent. It means empty of this fixed identity. So he says, in chapter 24 verse 18, he says,... Yaḥ pratītya-samutpādaḥ śūnyatāṃ tāṃ pracakṣmahe We say that, that which is interdependent, excuse me, that which is emptiness... No, I've got it wrong. Yaḥ pratītya-samutpādaḥ śūnyatāṃ tāṃ pracakṣmahe That which is interdependent is empty. Emptiness means interdependence. They're like two sides of the same coin. So to not have a fixed identity is to be interdependent. The only kind of identity that things have is interdependent identities. And we'll come back to that later, because it is a very subtle and important topic, but I kind of, we kind of need to introduce a little bit more about what this idea of śūnyatā, emptiness, is. And we'll do that tomorrow. Or we'll do it now if people are, don't have more questions, but I think there are more questions. Yes?
I was just wondering, how can we know if there is anything at all that is ultimately real or irreducible?
How can we know if there is anything like that if we can just reduce things forever, infinitely? If I say it is, then, then, then that's how you know.
Wouldn't that be terrible? If that's all you had to go on? Yeah, I know. I'm not sure it'd be nice, maybe for a very short time. Um... Uh, so that's an excellent question. Like, what are the criteria for us to kind of basically know what is real? And there's going to be um... You can say that we're going to... We'll probably come back to this later. But one criterion is definitely going to be, whether or not it withstands analysis. Remember that term? In other words the ultimate is what withstands analysis. Right? It's vichāra utsaha in Sanskrit. And there are different kinds of analysis. We're going to see that the early Buddhist analysis we already saw as reductionist. You can take holes and reduce them to something infinitesimally that has no, that is irreducible, like an infinitesimally small, part less, momentary uh, bit of matter. Uh.., But Nāgārjuna is going to do a relational analysis, where the kind of rationality that we use is going to be relational. Okay? And we'll see that more. Khenpo was doing that this morning, like you can't define a cause in absence of an effect. And if the effect doesn't exist at the time of the cause, then what are you defining the cause in relation to? You might as well define it in relation to a square circle. Right? There is no effect. So if this thing's nature is to be a cause, how can you define its nature as having causal nature if there's no effect? Or in, if its nature is to be the effect of something else, if the cause is already gone, how you can define its nature as a causal effect if you're defining it in terms of something that doesn't exist? It only exists as an abstraction in our mind, as part of our conceptual map. But if what it means for something to exist is to be, in some fashion,
causally efficacious, then things that don't exist at all, if that's part of what we're saying is our criterion for existence, then a thing that is in the past doesn't exist.
So if we're defining the present effect in relation to the past, in relation to a past cause, then that doesn't make sense. Because things in the past don't have effects. They're gone.
Like you can't perceive the breath that you took a moment ago. Right? You can infer it but that's this conceptual map.
Or, you know, let's say just time itself. One of the set of verses we're going to look at is time. So there's the present. How do we define the present?
It's what's under the Christmas tree. Sorry.
The present comes after the past and before the future. Correct! Do the past and future exist now in the present? No. So we're defining the present in relation to non-existent things. Right. Does that seem like a problem, possibly? Yeah. Yeah.
Of course if we want to say, oh, what is um... presented causally in experience, which seems to be causal, seems like it's causal, right? We can say that, oh, we can get to the point where we're so dissatisfied with that, that we will insist that past and future objects exist in some fashion, even though of course they're not ostensible. You can't point to them. But in other words, we'll say we'll prefer the map over the territory. We'll get to, that's what that kind of platonic attitude is. Is like we've become so uncomfortable with the way that the map falls apart that we actually will insist on the map being what's real, as opposed to what is presented, what we can actually measure.
Right? So, yes.
Any other questions?
Sorry. You spoke from Vimalakīrti. Yes. I have two questions. The first one, there are some different Tibetan ku, v, v for Vimala. Yeah. And... Sanskrit, actually. Yeah, do they have to do something with that Vimalakīrti? And second question... Okay. Maybe that's the question. Because the second one, there was some kuvi, who visited the father of Rinpoche. And... Some what I am sorry? There was one kuvi who visited the father of Rinpoche? Ku, v? Yeah, the kuvimala. The... So far as I know, he wrote it in his book.
It's kuvimala.
Ku stands for tulku. Oh, I see. And v for vima, vima Vimalamitra. Yeah. So, the vi in Sanskrit is called an upasarga. It's a prefix. And one of the ways it functions is to negate. So, mala in Tibetan is chima. That means, like, defilement, impurity. And so, v mala, or chime in Tibetan, is, uh, means free of impurity. Or pure. So, Vimalakīrti means one who is famous for being pure. And vimala mithra means the pure friend. So, they're just names. Yeah, just names. And last question, sorry, would be if everything is empty, then from this point of view, also this concept of reincarnation or rebirth would be empty. Correct, which means that it works. If it weren't empty, rebirth would be impossible.
If causality had to be ultimate, it would be impossible. That's going to be the key that we will discover. Any, Any other questions? With that, hopefully that will be clear by the end of tomorrow afternoon.
I hope so.
Two questions on... Okay, the first one is, if you could recommend any literature where the way you presented the model can be studied in more detail? I don't know what is meant by the model, but... Uh, yeah, I think...
Just trying to remember...
So there's a...
Oh, really? Sorry, okay, there we go. Thank you for letting me know that. Yes, so on the left-hand side is a book that is a translation of a text that a team of Tibetan scholars put together under the guidance of HH the Dalai Lama that draws on Indian sources like the sources I'm focusing on here about the mind. And then I co-translated this and then I wrote a series of essays for the six parts of this. And uh, some aspects of the model that we've been talking about are also articulated there, so that might be a good place to go. For that, I also have included... I've also, I think we've uploaded a couple of articles, one about Mādhyamika in India and Tibet and one about the four schools that I wrote that hopefully will be helpful. Of course, there are people, lots of people have written a lot of things and it, and you know probably some of them are much better than what I wrote, but I'm lazy, so I'm just giving you the stuff I wrote. But there are, I do cite some other things and there are lots, lots of good work on Mādhyamika, of course. There's not that much work, kind of precisely on like Buddhist cognitive systems, surprisingly, like sort of which really try to understand them rather than get into too many details, but really try to understand them as a model. There's not that much work on that yet, but... There's two more... Two more questions. I'll say them both and you'll decide how you want to answer. Is there a concept of dimension in these teachings? And then another question is, in this case there is not only one mind for all the Buddhas, right? All have the same nature but they are not the same Buddha. Same for us as beings, question mark? So, yeah, you can see my calendar again for a second, isn't that nice?
So, on this, because of this model,
so there's, you know, the old, so what's truly real here is not the one in the many, the flower-ness, the whole, the one thing that endures over time. That is not the real thing. The individual entities, moments and so on, they are the real things. The abstraction is an abstraction extracted out of experience. And when it's well-formed, it's useful because we can use it to do things. And it can be partially well-formed, like a lot of the time, for most of us probably, our concept of a vase does not include the idea that it's constantly changing in every moment. But still, it's good, it's close enough, like for purposes of holding a flower, we can ignore that, in our concept even though it's actually wrong. If the vase is not changing over time, like Brownian motion or whatever, you know, unless we think that the mathematical characterization of the vase is the real vase, which doesn't change, of course, but for most of us, probably don't think like that, you know. So our model of the vase is like, it doesn't change, then it's a problem, but it's not such a big problem in most contexts. Sometimes it becomes a big problem. But basically, that's a conventional construct. And, and one of the ideas here is, that's a map. And one of the basic ideas here is that we take our maps to be reality. Whether they're mathematical characterizations or whatever they are, we think they're the real thing, even though they're actually abstractions based upon our experience and the way our cognitive systems operate, human cognitive systems. Okay, so the concept of dimension, I'm not sure which concept that would mean, but that also, probably any way you would use that word, that's an abstraction that could be useful, depending. But where those abstractions become problematic is, again, when they're ontologized and they become the real thing and we think the map is the territory. Right? Whereas the map can never be the territory because it's incomplete. It has to be incomplete in order to be a map. There's this great uh, there's this great one paragraph story by Jorge Luis Borges called De la Exactitud en la Ciencia, concerning exactitude in science, and basically it says, you know I can't repeat it verbatim, but it basically says, once upon a time in the empire, the map makers became really focused on producing the best possible map, so eventually they succeeded, they produced a map that is the size of the territory.
Of course, it's not a map anymore, right? And then I think it ends by saying, when the map is slowly decaying out of the desert, you know people became bored of this or something, and now the map is slowly decaying everywhere, but you can see little bits of it out in the desert or something like that. Right, so that attitude, like the map is the real thing, which is built into our cognitive system, and just stepping back for a second, if evolutionarily, you know, Buddhists don't really talk about evolution so much, kind of do in some ways, but if we just think of evolution, and we say, okay, why would our cognitive system develop that way, it's actually really useful for survival if we take our cognitive maps, our conceptual maps, as reality. You know, like, for example, I can have a conceptual map that relates causes and effects, and I like to talk about, when I do this, I talk about the philosopher mouse, our ancient prehistoric ancestor, the ancient philosopher mouse, some ancient mammal, and, you know, the philosopher mouse, unfortunately, is not actually our ancestor because he died out, but... So the philosopher mouse has detected that there's a causal relationship between the roar of the saber-toothed tiger and the actual tiger that makes the roar. You know, and then one day, the mouse is, you know, foraging for food, and then here's the roar. He says, ah, that's the roar. And according to my conceptual model, the roar correlates with the tiger. Of course, that's only a model, but...
Whereas if the mouse thinks, oh, that's the tiger, the roar is not the tiger. But if, like, immediately the conceptual map, like, roar, tiger, ah! Then, like, yes, your conceptual map, and by the way, you know, there’s some famous, great famous work in the 60s and 70s on concept use by pigeons, where they taught pigeons how to recognize Charlie Brown. The cartoon character. There's no, that's not an evolution. Charlie Brown is neither a predator nor a food source for pigeons. But, like, yeah, they got really good. So that's concept use. And uh, so animals use concepts. And Buddhists would certainly say that's, you know, they use concepts. But this kind of meaning-making, sense-making of those conceptual models, it's, from an evolutionary standpoint, it's actually really useful, if those models kind of work, if they're reasonably successful in getting food and such and avoiding dangers, then it's good, in a sense, from an evolutionary standpoint, to survive in saṃsāra, it's really useful that you think the model is reality. It kind of is a cognitive shortcut. But, you know, we're not mice. And if all we want to do is just survive in saṃsāra, that's a pretty, like, you know, low-level aspiration. Maybe we can do better than that. So you could say that this feature of human cognition has become maladaptive. And really, in a way, I know I'm a little over, but in a way you could say that it is actually maladaptive, because what you find is that humans take their conceptual systems, and because they think the conceptual system is more real than, like, concrete experience in some fashion, what's actually happening, what's actually measurable, if you like, then they will die for the conceptual system and kill for the conceptual system. Right? They'll have notions of whatever it is, nationhood or, you know, various kinds of religious conceptual systems or whatever they might be, and they'll take those systems to be more important than what is concretely happening in the moment and will die for them. So actually that is pretty maladaptive, since humans can produce, as Rinpoche was saying the other day, some very powerful ways of killing people, killing each other and the rest of the planet.
So that is really, I think, that really seems pretty maladaptive at this point. But one of the challenges of this is that this tendency to take conceptual systems as real when it moves into social spaces is part of what has enabled us to create large-scale societies. I'm not talking about Buddhism now. This is like a very pretty common theory in sort of the cognitive revolution of humans and the socio-cultural evolution of humans is that part of what enables us to create, to live all together in groups larger than 150 or so, is that we have a shared reality that we've created through various cultural processes, many of them identified as connected to religion. And that's what enables us to all, even though you don't know every Austrian, this sort of shared sense of identity with Austrians means you can collaborate in all kinds of ways, like you know in commerce, when driving down the road, when getting on a plane or whatever. Whereas if, as the anthropologist Sarah Herdy once said in her book Mothers and Others,
if you took a hundred chimpanzees who don't know each other, you can take a hundred Austrians who don't know each other and get them to go on a plane very nicely. If you took a hundred chimpanzees who don't know each other and try to get them to get on a plane, there'd be blood everywhere.
Right, so this capacity to cooperate and collaborate emerges in part from us taking the... we think those social conceptual maps of our social identities are real. So when you say, oh, that's not really real, then there's this fear like it's all going to fall apart. But anyway, I'm rambling now. So... Uh, I think we're done. Wait, there was a second online question. What was the second question? Now there's a third one. Which book did you mention from Borges? Oh, it's just a story, a one paragraph story. One paragraph story? Sur la exactitud en la ciencia. Concerning exactitude in science. It might have a different name in English. Well, and the other question we'll probably keep for tomorrow. In case there is not only one mind for all the Buddhas. Oh, right, right, right, yeah. Uh, I think Khenpo is good for those questions. Like it's, you know, one part of this is that when we start to talk about Buddhas, the line between ultimate and conventional can get a little confusing and there are different models. So I think, you know, one of the things that was very interesting that Khenpo-la said today that is really extremely useful in the context of this material is the idea that there's something that is, in a sense, from the perspective of an enlightened being and there's that which is from the perspective of other beings. And, you know, from the standpoint of a Buddha, what seems to be happening from the standpoint of other beings is not what's happening from the standpoint of a Buddha. And there's not a contradiction in that, right? This has to do in part with the idea of, kind of in a sense, inhabiting multiple realities simultaneously in some fashion. But, uh... maybe it's a little late for this stuff. So I think we should probably stop now. And uh, thank you very much for your attention. I appreciate it. I hope it's been helpful today. And we will continue tomorrow. We'll get into... We'll actually talk about Nāgārjuna. Tomorrow we'll get into, we'll get into him and we'll get into... Now we'll get into details of the Mādhyamika system and we'll spend some time with the texts over the next couple of days and then move on to a kind of later permutation that becomes very important for Tibet that combines this system with another Mahāyāna philosophy. Okay. So thank you. Let's dedicate. sönam diyi thamché sikpa nyi thopné nyepai dranam phamjé né kyega nachi balap trukpa yi sipai tsolé drowa drölwar shok tönpa jiktem khamsu jönpa dang tenpa nyi ö shindu salwa dang tenzin phunu shindu tünpa yi tenpa yünring nepai tashi shok Thank you.

49:53

Autoscroll:

Session 6 — The Middle Way Beyond Extremes

Teacher:

John D. Dunne

Location:

Gomde Germany-Austria

Date: July 23, 2024

Description >>

In this session, John D. Dunne continues the exploration of Madhyamaka reasoning by examining how the Middle Way avoids the extremes of eternalism and nihilism. He explains that recognizing the emptiness of phenomena does not mean that nothing exists, but rather that things arise dependently without possessing intrinsic essence. Through philosophical analysis and discussion, the teachings clarify how emptiness and dependent arising must be understood together. This perspective helps prevent the misunderstanding that emptiness denies the reality of experience or the functioning of causes and conditions. The session reinforces the Middle Way as a subtle view that avoids both reifying phenomena and rejecting their conventional appearance.

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Buddhist Philosophical Text

Madyamaka in India & Tibet

Author: John D. Dunne

Languages: English

Description

This reader is provided for for the Course: Emptiness, Luminosity and Compassion

Buddhist Philosophical Text

Mahayana Philosophical Schools

Languages: English

Description

This reader is provided for for the Course: Emptiness, Luminosity and Compassion

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Day2 – 4 sessions

Session 3 — Dependent Arising and Emptiness

Session 4 — Examining Intrinsic Existence

Session 5 — Conceptual Imputation and the Appearance of Reality

Session 6 — The Middle Way Beyond Extremes

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