Video
Audio
"That which originates
dependently,
does not cease and does not
arise, is not annihilated
and is not permanent,
does not come and does not go
is not different
and not the same.
To the true teacher who
reveals this peace, the complete
pacification of constructs, to
the perfect Buddha I bow down."
So last session we thought about the relationship between dream and wake experience and illusion, hallucination and ordinary waking consciousness.
And then we were considering that along the lines of the reasoning in the MūlaMādhyamaka,
the thrust of the reasoning makes it difficult to maintain a difference between a sort of a real difference in terms of the reality of dream and wake time at the experience. And then we considered that this is a kind of understanding of things that seems difficult to handle and we considered also that it may be too difficult to handle in many contexts. And so our task was to think of what then to do to address this in a way that is fair to the, not just fair but that acknowledges what we find through reason and also these concerns that are also very genuine. So what did you each think is the way forward to address this conundrum? Like how can we acknowledge what we discover through the reasoning and at the same time acknowledge that this kind of insight seems in many regards difficult to accommodate and then what can we do that is helpful in both regards, both in terms of acknowledging the insight but also acknowledging the real problems that come with it? Not of course that only problems come with this. We know that this is supposed to be liberating insight. But what we were talking about last time was that it is also so profound and so all-encompassing that it can be overwhelming. And in particular when it's presented along lines such as this, that there's no ontological difference between hallucination and what I experience now.
So where I landed was that yes ontologically there's no difference and we've already established that the relative truth only reveals itself as compelling as long as we leave it unexamined as we discussed the other day. But also within this relative truth where everything is equally unreal we still make distinctions. I mean I make a distinction between my left hand and right hand in the same way I think it is completely valid to make a distinction between dreaming and waking reality and hallucinating and not hallucinating. I think it's just a helpful report of experience that helps human beings communicate and make sense of this relative reality which is of course unreal but nevertheless we always engage in kind of some activity of making sense of it all and why blur the lines? I mean, yes equally unreal but definitely different kind of ways of functioning and different causal capacities and I think we have no choice almost but to be aware of that and reflect it in our language and the way we think about it." Yeah. Thank you. So this issue is very much about, at the heart of this what they call the Prāsaṅgika and Svātantrika distinction in Mādhyamaka
because perhaps we could say that what you said now goes very well. Perhaps you can be Prāsaṅgika and Svātantrika regardless. Depends on what kind of version of Prāsaṅgika-Svātantrika we have. But otherwise perhaps we could say that many of the
of the concerns that are sort of characteristically Svātantrika concerns they go very much in the direction of what you were saying, that certainly we can understand that everything under analysis is equally real or equally unreal.
Which means then ultimately void but in terms of convention there's still something a lot of things that we can and should say and then there's an effort to distinguish the correct relative truth versus the false relative truth and examples of false relative truth is precisely this sort of stuff: hallucination, dream, and then there are the things that are not like that. So that is all good and it's very helpful to think in these terms no doubt about that in many ways and almost to the extent that many of us have to do that to operate in that way.
But it is also a slippery slope because of course it couldn't mean that a Mādhyamaka, someone who has Mādhyamaka insight is not capable of distinguishing things from one another that's certainly not no? But what kind of discernment would a Mādhyamaka have?
And when we say that there are some things that just are proper and right and others that aren't, what is it that somehow underpins that distinction? Very quickly it can become getting a situation where we get the whole framework that we started out criticizing in through the back door. That there seems to be a reality we can call it relative reality but it has all the features that we normally associate with reality something that is just there unquestionably and is in a certain way and we have to deal with that.
So that very much sounds like the beginning of samsara also. So that is a real profound challenge and I think we can see the whole Svātantrika-Prāsaṅgika discussion, which is so rich and elaborate and goes on for centuries in India and in Tibet as ways of getting at that issue, different ways of.. in that way there is no just relatively decent philosopher that we can't learn a lot from. Because what they will always present is a perspective on this issue which is the result of incredible consumption of scripture so there is a huge scriptural learning and then digestion of that in contemplation so that what emerges from that is something really rich and comprehensive. So to be able to choose between such rich and comprehensive perspectives which are still very different from each other that's very exciting it's like stepping into different worlds and seeing what world is it more useful to be in?
So that is something we can keep in mind of course, then when we say that despite the emptiness of everything there is still this and it has to be dealt with, how much does that entail in terms of the reality of this?
And also there are some who say,
or at least in certain contexts now you can find discourse which is really not very accommodating of those concerns.
So that could come across as totally irresponsible
to say that if there was anything that
were real even in terms of convention then anything at all would be possible. In other words that the very idea that there is something that is conventionally real means you have committed to any amount of absurdity. And so whatever you say from now on is just.. you're sort of turning the tables in this discussion because the person who says like that there's no distinction between dream and hallucination. It's impossible to say that either one is more or less real than the other. Someone who says like that will come across as very sort of wild and perhaps irresponsible. But then it can also be turned around and say if you say that there's something that has conventional reality then you have accepted something which is clearly absurd. So from now on whatever you say is… Forget about it.
Student: "I have a question and it's related to an example so I'll try to say it quickly. So there was this psychologist who developed one method of treatment of schizophrenia and that manifests in a way that there was a person that was schizophrenic and thought that he was Jesus and then everybody tried to convince him that he's not because he's not and he just kind of acted as if he was. And this psychologist, groundbreakingly, the way he started treating and developed this modality was that he came to the psychiatric clinic and sat down with this person and the first thing he says to him, "So you are a carpenter." And then that kind of was the beginning of something. So that's the anecdote. So my question is…" That's an interesting one, yeah? "Yeah, so my question related to that anecdote is that, or example is that like Jan was saying that to not, and you were saying to not get stuck and get into samsara again if you stick building up relative truth as a thing, you know, and saying this false relative and true relative, how do you keep true to the Prāsaṅgika way? Because what this psychologist is, is that he wasn't walking around telling people, "Oh, everything is equally real," but he used it with this individual because he said, "Your reality is equally real to mine. You are Jesus." Right?" Yeah. "So, yeah, my question is how do you then practice this Prāsaṅgika if you don't want to fall into making the concepts a thing again? Is that clear?" Yeah, definitely.
So… What to say? Perhaps the understanding that there is no difference, yeah, which is when it is a confident certainty in this, yeah, that it's not that you wonder whether dream and reality could, and this kind of reality could perhaps actually be substantially different, but for some reason you have seen that that's impossible, that there can't be a difference, then that is, you could say, understanding the view of Mādhyamaka, you know, in many ways. Just that understanding is an intellectual understanding, but comprehensive of the Mādhyamaka view, yeah? So then that is something very important, to have that kind of understanding because it's something that can then be, like once I know something to be the case, then because I know it to be the case, I can do many things that I otherwise wouldn't be able to, like if I know where to find the stove in the house, then I can make tea, cook a meal and so on, things that I really wouldn't be able to do if I didn't even know that I could look for a stove in the house. So a lot of practical opportunity comes with having understood things in general, no? So in the same way, understanding something as profound and vast as this, of course, will also have plenty of ramifications for what we can do and what we don't have to do also. So in many ways, like Chokyi Nyima Rinpoche was saying the other day, you know, this is the.. if you want to practice Mahāyāna, we need some understanding of Mind-Only and Mādhyamaka view to practice the Pāramitās. And if you want to practice Vajrayana also, like he was saying, without some sort of understanding of the view of Mind-Only, but preferably Mādhyamaka, then Vajrayana will just be children's play. So even that is a conceptual understanding, we can understand also and feel that it's a very significant conceptual understanding to have, no? And then we have also been saying that there are these two aspects of analytical meditation and the rest of the yogi. So that is certainly something that one will make use of, like take to heart, as they say, what one has understood and just try to sense and experience the world in a way that is in accord with that understanding, without assuming that my understanding of the world and the world are different, because actually there's no reason to think so. It's what we have understood is something that applies to the world, not to anything else, to the world, meaning the world, nirvana and the path, everything. So taking that understanding to heart and allowing for the possibility of these two being in deep tune with each other. And then of course there are so many means in the Dharma that we can use in that regard. It's almost like this is the point when the path really begins, like when you have this kind of view. So you can say it's a challenge, but it's also like the beginning of the whole Dharma path, which has so many things to use. But until we are at this point, it's a little bit like talking, it's like we're still sort of shopping, like looking at things in a window that we think, "Oh, that could be cool to have." "That one also looks nice, but not quite as good as the other." But even if we try to practice, it's always like as if we are looking at ourselves as practitioners and sort of watching a movie of ourselves performing as practitioners rather than being practitioners perhaps. So that's no longer necessary if one has this kind of understanding and just takes it to heart. And then of course to be able to connect with a Teacher who is totally at home in that wisdom perception is an amazing opportunity. And I think we can also connect much better with a Teacher on the basis of this kind of understanding because then we don't have to bring in so many ideas which are actually obstacles for that kind of situation. Doesn't mean that we have to be less careful about who we associate with and who we try to establish a connection with as a Teacher. On the contrary, because we can also understand how quickly things can happen in this, when the world is like this, there's a lot of potential for stuff to happen, good and bad. So if we connect with the wrong kind of Teacher, things can go very wrong very fast. Again, it's not surprising, it's something we have always heard. But now we can perhaps get a sense of why it is like that. If the world is the way we have understood now, then there's so much open opportunity.
So if instead we can find a community to be part of and Teachers who are able to share that insight and their own mastery of this kind of wisdom, not just as something that one understands and then tries to relate to as well as one can, but in a much more unimpeded fashion, then certainly there's a lot of potential for things to happen. Actually, it then makes sense that with Vajrayana practice and introduction to the nature of mind, that it's possible to attain full accomplishment in very little time. It makes good sense.
Laurent online, if you have a question.
Hello. When I try to see, I don't find a seer. I cannot find a seer. And so sometimes it's kind of some moment of subtle I can't say, but I see. But even there, I cannot find a seer. If I try to look intellectually and I don't find it. So I appreciate to keep to go further in this analysis. If I don't find a seer." Yeah, that I think.. "And to continue about dreaming. and I think the difference between dreaming and real life, daily life is yeah, just in the mind. You're not, there is not the element of in the daily life, but I think there is still the process that you are thinking, so producing karma both if you are dreaming or in the daily life. And brings also to me this question, but often, but Rinpoche was saying, "My view is as fast as the sky. My behavior, my conduct as fine as flour of," I don't know how you say it. But even for a realized master, relative truth is still important. Or is it, or isn't it? Some say so. When I discuss something, not, but yes, I still believe it's important when I see how they behave in their daily life, how Rinpoche is behaving as masters to create good tendrel for their next activity and then for their, they really behaved and are very careful. Also when we offer something to Rinpoche, he says, "Oh, this is very suspicious what you're offering me and it could be very good condition." And for me it's an important question because it brings also this notion of awareness in my daily life, how I'm aware of dependent origination and how I relate to it." So, yeah that's also like one of the really, really important aspects of being able to meet wisdom Teachers is that you can see exactly like you say, now you can try to watch what do they do, how are they, no? That is very illuminating of course and in many ways crucial I think.
So if, again, it's important to recognize that what we understand, what we understand about the nature of these things and these things themselves, not these things as they come across, as we know them, aren't two different things. So this emptiness that we discover, no matter how mind boggling it can become, seem, no matter how empty our concepts can come across, that emptiness is still the very nature of the concept. And that emptiness is still the very nature of whatever it is that we see, touch and so on. If it were, it clearly couldn't be different, no? That is one thing that our analysis has also shown very clearly, that those two could not be substantially different from each other. So in this way I think just thinking about it, we can understand that therefore all of these things take on an enhanced value because they are not, the manifestation right now is not limited and is not determined in the way that we're otherwise used to thinking. We are used to thinking that there are very, very strong restrictions in terms of what can and cannot happen in a given situation, no? But someone who has this view really integrated will be able to see through these limitations, no? That doesn't mean that we can do anything, no? Although presumably becoming increasingly aware of this will make things that otherwise seem like miracles just as ordinarily achievable as anything else that we do in our daily life, no? But it doesn't mean that I can think, "Oh, I can do anything" and then be less careful, no? It means empowerment perhaps, no? That we realize we can do much, much more than and achieve much, much more than we are used to thinking. But then it matters even more what we do, no, in the situation. So like when you say looking at masters and how careful they are and Padmasambhava saying, "well, my conduct is as fine and subtle as flour."
That also makes sense when we try to take to heart the understanding of emptiness that comes through this kind of study, no? So then the value of what we do is enhanced almost infinitely, no? Because there are no natural limitations, no? There are limitations, but they are just as they appear, nothing more, yes?
The moment I begin to say that there are limitations, it's because in reality such and such and such, then I'm no longer making sense, no? But I can still acknowledge and find it much more rewarding and compelling to make distinctions with respect to all of this. Does that make sense?
Oh dear, your call has dropped. Please try again. "Yes, thank you."
So is there one more comment? Or I can't see the screen now, but otherwise, oh, maybe coming here.
Otherwise let's continue in the text, right?
So there, and that's of course very much in line with what we were just talking about, it's assuming that there are objects of sight and that there is a faculty of seeing that we can think that there are things to hear. We have a faculty of hearing and so on, very intuitively comprehensible and relevant principles, which are then critiqued first by this simple statement in 2 that says, "Sight does indeed not see its own identity." Gyalpo-la, would you mind? Gyalpo, excuse me. Would you mind? "The sight does indeed not see its own identity," in Chapter Three stanza 2: "Sight does indeed not see its own identity. How can something that does not see itself see anything else either?" And yeah, that's what we looked at and tried to contemplate yesterday. If the sight, whether sight is the faculty of seeing or whether it's the seer as such, if it does not see itself, then it's almost as if then it doesn't register itself. And how to say that it is but capable of registering other things? And of course we also said that it doesn't help to say that, "Well, there is some sort of quality of noticing oneself," because while we may or may not like to say so in certain contexts, it couldn't really be the case that mind sees itself because then object and action become one. And that's just not in the way object and.. agent and object become one. And that's just not the way of agents and objects. So then in 3, someone objects and says, this doesn't follow at all. Well, in between the two stanzas someone objects and says this doesn't follow because take for example, fire, fire is something that burns many different things, but it doesn't have to burn itself in order to burn. It just burns other things. Then stanza 3 says, "A solid establishment of sight cannot be provided through the example of fire. With what was, has yet to be, and is being traversed, we have replied to that along with sight." So if we say that there's this thing called 'fire,' which is something that can burn other things without burning itself, then
we can look at the event of burning in the same way as we have looked at walking. And so we can say that where there has been burning, there is no burning now, where the burning is yet to occur, there is no burning either, aside from what has and has not burned, what present burning, there's no present burning to be identified. Or we can say about the agent and the action, that which burns does not burn, that which does not burn, does not burn, and apart from those two, you cannot have something that partially burns and partially doesn't burn. I forget how it's in the root versus. about the, we can go back and look in the chapter on walking when the agent is refuted. So in this case, it would mean that if we say "fire burns," then is the fire that burns is that fire first there and then begins to burn?
I want to say when a fire performs the act of burning fuel, then does it do so, the agent there, does it do so being already a burner or being already burning? In that case, it exists qualified as a burner before it begins to perform that action. So before fire begins to burn, it already burns, so then we have two acts of burning, one that makes fire fire and another that makes, that is the burning that fire then performs in that capacity. But if we say "No, there's just one act of burning," then in that case the burner, fire is not a burner because it exists even in the absence of burning. So that couldn't be the case with fire either. And if we say that the two are one and the same, then agent and action are indistinguishable, then the woodcutter and his cutting of wood would be indistinguishable, which of course is not the case either. And if we say that there is a burning that qualifies fire as fire and another that is then the action performed when it burns firewood, then we have two actions and then there would be two types of fire also. So we have that absurd consequence. So in other words, all what we understood about walking and the walker and the path, we can also apply here to the act of burning, to the action performed by burning. And also with seeing, which is so not just the example is problematic here, but seeing is just as much subject to the same problems as we found with walking, like where there has been seeing, there is none, where seeing is yet to occur, there is no seeing either aside from what was seen and has not been seen, there is no present seeing to be identified either. Let me just see if we can find.
We could take like stanza 8 in the second chapter: "One who goes does not go, one who does not go, nor does one who does not go. Other than goers and non-goers, what third party could be going?" So we could take that stanza and translate into a critique of seeing. So then we can say one who sees does not see, nor does one who does not see. So someone who sees does not engage in the act of seeing, because
someone who sees is already involved in that action. And if we say that someone who sees sees, then we are already talking about two different actions of seeing, and with that comes then the absurdity of having also two agents. So it's not someone who sees as something that sees: an eye or a person who sees that sees, and at the same time, how should it be possible for someone or something that doesn't see to see? Someone or something that doesn't see, like could be my finger is just as much a non-seer then as my eye. So then we should expect anything to have visual perception. So it's also not a non-seer that sees. And apart from something that sees and something that doesn't see, what kind of agent of seeing could there be? So all of the arguments that were raised in 2 can be used as a critique of the seer and the seen, or the burner and the burnt.
So that is in 3, and then in 4, there's a conclusion, "When nothing at all is seen, neither is the one that sees. Sight is what performs seeing, how could this be right?" So when there's nothing in this way to be seen, then in the absence of visual perceptions, there's no seer either. So this sort of declaration that there's the faculty of sight, which performs the act of seeing and so sees things, how could this in any way be relevant in terms of the way things are?
And then 5: "A sight does not see, yet non-sight does not see either. So then we can think... what is it that sees? If we say it's the eye that sees, the eye faculty, whatever that may be, or if we say it's consciousness that sees, or if we say that it's the self that sees.
Sorry? Okay. Whatever it is that we in that way think of as
the seer, is that seer intrinsically seeing? Is it intrinsically associated with the activity of seeing? In other words, is my eye intrinsically seeing? Is my consciousness intrinsically seeing? Is my self intrinsically seeing? Whatever it is with everything, of course, as the seer. Is it intrinsically so associated with seeing? And then if we say that, then there will have to be something that is that quality of seeing, which makes the eye, consciousness, myself, etc., intrinsically seer. And then all the different actions that we perform.
And in that case, yeah, then we have these problems that when then my eye faculty in its intrinsic capacity for seeing sees an object, then there's already a kind of seeing that has qualified my eye faculty as that which sees. And then now it performs an additional action. And if there are two additional actions performed, there has to be two different agents also. So now is there a second eye faculty? Probably not. And so sight does not see something that is intrinsically seeing, does not engage in acts of seeing, does not participate in activities of seeing. But how about something that is intrinsically not seeing? Obviously that doesn't engage in acts of seeing either in activities of visual perception. So yeah, sight does not see, yet non sight does not see either. And then it could be that we wanted to say that there's a, if we so far have been talking about the eye faculty and perhaps thinking in terms of physical eye faculty, then which according to the Vaibhāṣika is what perceives, it's the physical eye faculty. But it could also be that we went with a sort of Sautrāntika explanation that says that the eye is a tool for seeing, but it's not the actual seer. So the seer is something else, consciousness or the person. And that still doesn't really change the basic scenario, whether we say that the eye faculty is what sees or whether we say that that's just a tool, it's one of the things that are necessary for seeing, but it's not the seer as such that doesn't help because
all these points of critique that have been brought up until now, they are equally applicable to the seer or to the faculty.
So whether I say that my eye is my eye intrinsically a seer or am I intrinsically a seer, the problem is the same. Then, "Whether seeing is involved or not, there is nothing that sees. Without the one that sees, how could there be something seen and seeing?
So that's going further with this idea that there's a tool for seeing, there are some things that we need to see, but those are not the same as the actual event of being the seer of something.
And then if we say that in that case we can… Just a minute.
So we have the idea of the seer and the tool and we also want to say that there's a dependent relation between those, that somehow the seer becomes a seer but because of the tool and yet the seer is something different than the tool. This is also a very natural idea to have. Yeah?
Student: "I'm wondering what the problem is with the collapsing of agent and action. And action? "Yeah. We keep avoiding it as if it's something that then could be totally logically unsound but actually it seems that the potential of relaxing into that as a potential reality would be an aspect of this alternating between analytical meditation and resting meditation." But then it's not that we say there actually are agents and there actually are actions and they are the same. You could say therapeutically you are the running or something like that. Certainly, yeah. "What is wrong with that?" You are the breathing and so on. There's nothing wrong with that but we're not saying that in reality that's the story. You are the breathing. We're not saying that that's you and then that's the breathing. Just let me tell you. You are the same. That's not the… am I making sense? As a tool of course it can be useful. It can also not be useful depending on the context. But not as an account of the way things are. Like it clearly isn't true even in terms of ordinary convention. "It's clearly not true that we are just an amalgamation of our actions?
To me that's not that clear actually. Our actions. The agent and action cannot be the same and agent and action cannot be different. That's what the verse also said last time. It cannot be… because then I can talk about you and I can talk about your speaking. It's not that I can't make that distinction. At the same time I want to say that it's your speaking and so on. I can't say that your speaking is entirely different from you. But to totally collapse the two doesn't work. Although we can speak like that of course and also in poetry and so on it can be very powerful to say things in that way. You are your song.
So now we are looking at the idea that there is seeing, seer and then the tool of that, the kind of implement that we have to have in order to get that. And..
the seer, being a seer is also dependent on the tool. It's because I have an eye that I can see. So if my being a seer is dependent on the eye then do I depend on the eye as a seer or as a non-seer? Then we have the same difficulty again. How could I depend for seeing while being a non-seer, while being blind? How can I say that as a blind person I'm dependent on my eye? I'm not dependent on my eye because I'm blind. And if I'm already seeing then how can I say that I depend on my eye? I already see. So this framework where we say there's a seer and that seer is dependent on something like a faculty. It also falls apart. So "whether seeing is involved or not, there's nothing that sees." So seeing here refers to the faculty.
The faculty, you can also take it as the act. Simply the, not the act but the, what should we call it? Seeing. Yeah, well the act. The activity of seeing. Do I depend on that to be.. if I depend on that to become a seer, do I depend on, am I dependent in that capacity as a seer or am I dependent on seeing while not being someone who sees? And either option is meaningless.
"Without the one that sees, how could there be something seen and seeing?" So if there's then nothing that sees, then objects seen and an act of seeing don't make sense either. If we have failed in this way to find something that sees because whether we speak of something that is already a seer or something that still needs to see, then it could not depend on a faculty and so there would never arise an event of visual perception. If that's the case, then how could there be.. how could there be objects seen and activity of visual events? "As there's nothing to see and no sight, the four such as consciousness do not exist. How could appropriation and other such factors come into existence?" So now we begin to see the implications of this in a broader way. So if there's nothing to see and no sight, then the visual consciousness that arises in accompanying the perception of an object with the eye does not occur. And then if there is no consciousness, then there's no contact, no sensation and no craving. So those links of dependent origination don't occur either.
Then how could the appropriation or the grasping that holds existence together, how could it come into being if there are no events like that where an object is seen? And then finally, "Hearing, smell, taste, touch and cognition, the hearer, the heard and so forth. Know that all are explained through sight." So we have been looking at sight, but what we hear, what we smell, taste, touch and think of everything is in the exact same way.
So that is the Chapter Three in the Mūlamadhyamaka. And we'll stop here and begin tomorrow again with Chapter Four.
So last session we thought about the relationship between dream and wake experience and illusion, hallucination and ordinary waking consciousness.
And then we were considering that along the lines of the reasoning in the MūlaMādhyamaka,
the thrust of the reasoning makes it difficult to maintain a difference between a sort of a real difference in terms of the reality of dream and wake time at the experience. And then we considered that this is a kind of understanding of things that seems difficult to handle and we considered also that it may be too difficult to handle in many contexts. And so our task was to think of what then to do to address this in a way that is fair to the, not just fair but that acknowledges what we find through reason and also these concerns that are also very genuine. So what did you each think is the way forward to address this conundrum? Like how can we acknowledge what we discover through the reasoning and at the same time acknowledge that this kind of insight seems in many regards difficult to accommodate and then what can we do that is helpful in both regards, both in terms of acknowledging the insight but also acknowledging the real problems that come with it? Not of course that only problems come with this. We know that this is supposed to be liberating insight. But what we were talking about last time was that it is also so profound and so all-encompassing that it can be overwhelming. And in particular when it's presented along lines such as this, that there's no ontological difference between hallucination and what I experience now.
So where I landed was that yes ontologically there's no difference and we've already established that the relative truth only reveals itself as compelling as long as we leave it unexamined as we discussed the other day. But also within this relative truth where everything is equally unreal we still make distinctions. I mean I make a distinction between my left hand and right hand in the same way I think it is completely valid to make a distinction between dreaming and waking reality and hallucinating and not hallucinating. I think it's just a helpful report of experience that helps human beings communicate and make sense of this relative reality which is of course unreal but nevertheless we always engage in kind of some activity of making sense of it all and why blur the lines? I mean, yes equally unreal but definitely different kind of ways of functioning and different causal capacities and I think we have no choice almost but to be aware of that and reflect it in our language and the way we think about it." Yeah. Thank you. So this issue is very much about, at the heart of this what they call the Prāsaṅgika and Svātantrika distinction in Mādhyamaka
because perhaps we could say that what you said now goes very well. Perhaps you can be Prāsaṅgika and Svātantrika regardless. Depends on what kind of version of Prāsaṅgika-Svātantrika we have. But otherwise perhaps we could say that many of the
of the concerns that are sort of characteristically Svātantrika concerns they go very much in the direction of what you were saying, that certainly we can understand that everything under analysis is equally real or equally unreal.
Which means then ultimately void but in terms of convention there's still something a lot of things that we can and should say and then there's an effort to distinguish the correct relative truth versus the false relative truth and examples of false relative truth is precisely this sort of stuff: hallucination, dream, and then there are the things that are not like that. So that is all good and it's very helpful to think in these terms no doubt about that in many ways and almost to the extent that many of us have to do that to operate in that way.
But it is also a slippery slope because of course it couldn't mean that a Mādhyamaka, someone who has Mādhyamaka insight is not capable of distinguishing things from one another that's certainly not no? But what kind of discernment would a Mādhyamaka have?
And when we say that there are some things that just are proper and right and others that aren't, what is it that somehow underpins that distinction? Very quickly it can become getting a situation where we get the whole framework that we started out criticizing in through the back door. That there seems to be a reality we can call it relative reality but it has all the features that we normally associate with reality something that is just there unquestionably and is in a certain way and we have to deal with that.
So that very much sounds like the beginning of samsara also. So that is a real profound challenge and I think we can see the whole Svātantrika-Prāsaṅgika discussion, which is so rich and elaborate and goes on for centuries in India and in Tibet as ways of getting at that issue, different ways of.. in that way there is no just relatively decent philosopher that we can't learn a lot from. Because what they will always present is a perspective on this issue which is the result of incredible consumption of scripture so there is a huge scriptural learning and then digestion of that in contemplation so that what emerges from that is something really rich and comprehensive. So to be able to choose between such rich and comprehensive perspectives which are still very different from each other that's very exciting it's like stepping into different worlds and seeing what world is it more useful to be in?
So that is something we can keep in mind of course, then when we say that despite the emptiness of everything there is still this and it has to be dealt with, how much does that entail in terms of the reality of this?
And also there are some who say,
or at least in certain contexts now you can find discourse which is really not very accommodating of those concerns.
So that could come across as totally irresponsible
to say that if there was anything that
were real even in terms of convention then anything at all would be possible. In other words that the very idea that there is something that is conventionally real means you have committed to any amount of absurdity. And so whatever you say from now on is just.. you're sort of turning the tables in this discussion because the person who says like that there's no distinction between dream and hallucination. It's impossible to say that either one is more or less real than the other. Someone who says like that will come across as very sort of wild and perhaps irresponsible. But then it can also be turned around and say if you say that there's something that has conventional reality then you have accepted something which is clearly absurd. So from now on whatever you say is… Forget about it.
Student: "I have a question and it's related to an example so I'll try to say it quickly. So there was this psychologist who developed one method of treatment of schizophrenia and that manifests in a way that there was a person that was schizophrenic and thought that he was Jesus and then everybody tried to convince him that he's not because he's not and he just kind of acted as if he was. And this psychologist, groundbreakingly, the way he started treating and developed this modality was that he came to the psychiatric clinic and sat down with this person and the first thing he says to him, "So you are a carpenter." And then that kind of was the beginning of something. So that's the anecdote. So my question is…" That's an interesting one, yeah? "Yeah, so my question related to that anecdote is that, or example is that like Jan was saying that to not, and you were saying to not get stuck and get into samsara again if you stick building up relative truth as a thing, you know, and saying this false relative and true relative, how do you keep true to the Prāsaṅgika way? Because what this psychologist is, is that he wasn't walking around telling people, "Oh, everything is equally real," but he used it with this individual because he said, "Your reality is equally real to mine. You are Jesus." Right?" Yeah. "So, yeah, my question is how do you then practice this Prāsaṅgika if you don't want to fall into making the concepts a thing again? Is that clear?" Yeah, definitely.
So… What to say? Perhaps the understanding that there is no difference, yeah, which is when it is a confident certainty in this, yeah, that it's not that you wonder whether dream and reality could, and this kind of reality could perhaps actually be substantially different, but for some reason you have seen that that's impossible, that there can't be a difference, then that is, you could say, understanding the view of Mādhyamaka, you know, in many ways. Just that understanding is an intellectual understanding, but comprehensive of the Mādhyamaka view, yeah? So then that is something very important, to have that kind of understanding because it's something that can then be, like once I know something to be the case, then because I know it to be the case, I can do many things that I otherwise wouldn't be able to, like if I know where to find the stove in the house, then I can make tea, cook a meal and so on, things that I really wouldn't be able to do if I didn't even know that I could look for a stove in the house. So a lot of practical opportunity comes with having understood things in general, no? So in the same way, understanding something as profound and vast as this, of course, will also have plenty of ramifications for what we can do and what we don't have to do also. So in many ways, like Chokyi Nyima Rinpoche was saying the other day, you know, this is the.. if you want to practice Mahāyāna, we need some understanding of Mind-Only and Mādhyamaka view to practice the Pāramitās. And if you want to practice Vajrayana also, like he was saying, without some sort of understanding of the view of Mind-Only, but preferably Mādhyamaka, then Vajrayana will just be children's play. So even that is a conceptual understanding, we can understand also and feel that it's a very significant conceptual understanding to have, no? And then we have also been saying that there are these two aspects of analytical meditation and the rest of the yogi. So that is certainly something that one will make use of, like take to heart, as they say, what one has understood and just try to sense and experience the world in a way that is in accord with that understanding, without assuming that my understanding of the world and the world are different, because actually there's no reason to think so. It's what we have understood is something that applies to the world, not to anything else, to the world, meaning the world, nirvana and the path, everything. So taking that understanding to heart and allowing for the possibility of these two being in deep tune with each other. And then of course there are so many means in the Dharma that we can use in that regard. It's almost like this is the point when the path really begins, like when you have this kind of view. So you can say it's a challenge, but it's also like the beginning of the whole Dharma path, which has so many things to use. But until we are at this point, it's a little bit like talking, it's like we're still sort of shopping, like looking at things in a window that we think, "Oh, that could be cool to have." "That one also looks nice, but not quite as good as the other." But even if we try to practice, it's always like as if we are looking at ourselves as practitioners and sort of watching a movie of ourselves performing as practitioners rather than being practitioners perhaps. So that's no longer necessary if one has this kind of understanding and just takes it to heart. And then of course to be able to connect with a Teacher who is totally at home in that wisdom perception is an amazing opportunity. And I think we can also connect much better with a Teacher on the basis of this kind of understanding because then we don't have to bring in so many ideas which are actually obstacles for that kind of situation. Doesn't mean that we have to be less careful about who we associate with and who we try to establish a connection with as a Teacher. On the contrary, because we can also understand how quickly things can happen in this, when the world is like this, there's a lot of potential for stuff to happen, good and bad. So if we connect with the wrong kind of Teacher, things can go very wrong very fast. Again, it's not surprising, it's something we have always heard. But now we can perhaps get a sense of why it is like that. If the world is the way we have understood now, then there's so much open opportunity.
So if instead we can find a community to be part of and Teachers who are able to share that insight and their own mastery of this kind of wisdom, not just as something that one understands and then tries to relate to as well as one can, but in a much more unimpeded fashion, then certainly there's a lot of potential for things to happen. Actually, it then makes sense that with Vajrayana practice and introduction to the nature of mind, that it's possible to attain full accomplishment in very little time. It makes good sense.
Laurent online, if you have a question.
Hello. When I try to see, I don't find a seer. I cannot find a seer. And so sometimes it's kind of some moment of subtle I can't say, but I see. But even there, I cannot find a seer. If I try to look intellectually and I don't find it. So I appreciate to keep to go further in this analysis. If I don't find a seer." Yeah, that I think.. "And to continue about dreaming. and I think the difference between dreaming and real life, daily life is yeah, just in the mind. You're not, there is not the element of in the daily life, but I think there is still the process that you are thinking, so producing karma both if you are dreaming or in the daily life. And brings also to me this question, but often, but Rinpoche was saying, "My view is as fast as the sky. My behavior, my conduct as fine as flour of," I don't know how you say it. But even for a realized master, relative truth is still important. Or is it, or isn't it? Some say so. When I discuss something, not, but yes, I still believe it's important when I see how they behave in their daily life, how Rinpoche is behaving as masters to create good tendrel for their next activity and then for their, they really behaved and are very careful. Also when we offer something to Rinpoche, he says, "Oh, this is very suspicious what you're offering me and it could be very good condition." And for me it's an important question because it brings also this notion of awareness in my daily life, how I'm aware of dependent origination and how I relate to it." So, yeah that's also like one of the really, really important aspects of being able to meet wisdom Teachers is that you can see exactly like you say, now you can try to watch what do they do, how are they, no? That is very illuminating of course and in many ways crucial I think.
So if, again, it's important to recognize that what we understand, what we understand about the nature of these things and these things themselves, not these things as they come across, as we know them, aren't two different things. So this emptiness that we discover, no matter how mind boggling it can become, seem, no matter how empty our concepts can come across, that emptiness is still the very nature of the concept. And that emptiness is still the very nature of whatever it is that we see, touch and so on. If it were, it clearly couldn't be different, no? That is one thing that our analysis has also shown very clearly, that those two could not be substantially different from each other. So in this way I think just thinking about it, we can understand that therefore all of these things take on an enhanced value because they are not, the manifestation right now is not limited and is not determined in the way that we're otherwise used to thinking. We are used to thinking that there are very, very strong restrictions in terms of what can and cannot happen in a given situation, no? But someone who has this view really integrated will be able to see through these limitations, no? That doesn't mean that we can do anything, no? Although presumably becoming increasingly aware of this will make things that otherwise seem like miracles just as ordinarily achievable as anything else that we do in our daily life, no? But it doesn't mean that I can think, "Oh, I can do anything" and then be less careful, no? It means empowerment perhaps, no? That we realize we can do much, much more than and achieve much, much more than we are used to thinking. But then it matters even more what we do, no, in the situation. So like when you say looking at masters and how careful they are and Padmasambhava saying, "well, my conduct is as fine and subtle as flour."
That also makes sense when we try to take to heart the understanding of emptiness that comes through this kind of study, no? So then the value of what we do is enhanced almost infinitely, no? Because there are no natural limitations, no? There are limitations, but they are just as they appear, nothing more, yes?
The moment I begin to say that there are limitations, it's because in reality such and such and such, then I'm no longer making sense, no? But I can still acknowledge and find it much more rewarding and compelling to make distinctions with respect to all of this. Does that make sense?
Oh dear, your call has dropped. Please try again. "Yes, thank you."
So is there one more comment? Or I can't see the screen now, but otherwise, oh, maybe coming here.
Otherwise let's continue in the text, right?
So there, and that's of course very much in line with what we were just talking about, it's assuming that there are objects of sight and that there is a faculty of seeing that we can think that there are things to hear. We have a faculty of hearing and so on, very intuitively comprehensible and relevant principles, which are then critiqued first by this simple statement in 2 that says, "Sight does indeed not see its own identity." Gyalpo-la, would you mind? Gyalpo, excuse me. Would you mind? "The sight does indeed not see its own identity," in Chapter Three stanza 2: "Sight does indeed not see its own identity. How can something that does not see itself see anything else either?" And yeah, that's what we looked at and tried to contemplate yesterday. If the sight, whether sight is the faculty of seeing or whether it's the seer as such, if it does not see itself, then it's almost as if then it doesn't register itself. And how to say that it is but capable of registering other things? And of course we also said that it doesn't help to say that, "Well, there is some sort of quality of noticing oneself," because while we may or may not like to say so in certain contexts, it couldn't really be the case that mind sees itself because then object and action become one. And that's just not in the way object and.. agent and object become one. And that's just not the way of agents and objects. So then in 3, someone objects and says, this doesn't follow at all. Well, in between the two stanzas someone objects and says this doesn't follow because take for example, fire, fire is something that burns many different things, but it doesn't have to burn itself in order to burn. It just burns other things. Then stanza 3 says, "A solid establishment of sight cannot be provided through the example of fire. With what was, has yet to be, and is being traversed, we have replied to that along with sight." So if we say that there's this thing called 'fire,' which is something that can burn other things without burning itself, then
we can look at the event of burning in the same way as we have looked at walking. And so we can say that where there has been burning, there is no burning now, where the burning is yet to occur, there is no burning either, aside from what has and has not burned, what present burning, there's no present burning to be identified. Or we can say about the agent and the action, that which burns does not burn, that which does not burn, does not burn, and apart from those two, you cannot have something that partially burns and partially doesn't burn. I forget how it's in the root versus. about the, we can go back and look in the chapter on walking when the agent is refuted. So in this case, it would mean that if we say "fire burns," then is the fire that burns is that fire first there and then begins to burn?
I want to say when a fire performs the act of burning fuel, then does it do so, the agent there, does it do so being already a burner or being already burning? In that case, it exists qualified as a burner before it begins to perform that action. So before fire begins to burn, it already burns, so then we have two acts of burning, one that makes fire fire and another that makes, that is the burning that fire then performs in that capacity. But if we say "No, there's just one act of burning," then in that case the burner, fire is not a burner because it exists even in the absence of burning. So that couldn't be the case with fire either. And if we say that the two are one and the same, then agent and action are indistinguishable, then the woodcutter and his cutting of wood would be indistinguishable, which of course is not the case either. And if we say that there is a burning that qualifies fire as fire and another that is then the action performed when it burns firewood, then we have two actions and then there would be two types of fire also. So we have that absurd consequence. So in other words, all what we understood about walking and the walker and the path, we can also apply here to the act of burning, to the action performed by burning. And also with seeing, which is so not just the example is problematic here, but seeing is just as much subject to the same problems as we found with walking, like where there has been seeing, there is none, where seeing is yet to occur, there is no seeing either aside from what was seen and has not been seen, there is no present seeing to be identified either. Let me just see if we can find.
We could take like stanza 8 in the second chapter: "One who goes does not go, one who does not go, nor does one who does not go. Other than goers and non-goers, what third party could be going?" So we could take that stanza and translate into a critique of seeing. So then we can say one who sees does not see, nor does one who does not see. So someone who sees does not engage in the act of seeing, because
someone who sees is already involved in that action. And if we say that someone who sees sees, then we are already talking about two different actions of seeing, and with that comes then the absurdity of having also two agents. So it's not someone who sees as something that sees: an eye or a person who sees that sees, and at the same time, how should it be possible for someone or something that doesn't see to see? Someone or something that doesn't see, like could be my finger is just as much a non-seer then as my eye. So then we should expect anything to have visual perception. So it's also not a non-seer that sees. And apart from something that sees and something that doesn't see, what kind of agent of seeing could there be? So all of the arguments that were raised in 2 can be used as a critique of the seer and the seen, or the burner and the burnt.
So that is in 3, and then in 4, there's a conclusion, "When nothing at all is seen, neither is the one that sees. Sight is what performs seeing, how could this be right?" So when there's nothing in this way to be seen, then in the absence of visual perceptions, there's no seer either. So this sort of declaration that there's the faculty of sight, which performs the act of seeing and so sees things, how could this in any way be relevant in terms of the way things are?
And then 5: "A sight does not see, yet non-sight does not see either. So then we can think... what is it that sees? If we say it's the eye that sees, the eye faculty, whatever that may be, or if we say it's consciousness that sees, or if we say that it's the self that sees.
Sorry? Okay. Whatever it is that we in that way think of as
the seer, is that seer intrinsically seeing? Is it intrinsically associated with the activity of seeing? In other words, is my eye intrinsically seeing? Is my consciousness intrinsically seeing? Is my self intrinsically seeing? Whatever it is with everything, of course, as the seer. Is it intrinsically so associated with seeing? And then if we say that, then there will have to be something that is that quality of seeing, which makes the eye, consciousness, myself, etc., intrinsically seer. And then all the different actions that we perform.
And in that case, yeah, then we have these problems that when then my eye faculty in its intrinsic capacity for seeing sees an object, then there's already a kind of seeing that has qualified my eye faculty as that which sees. And then now it performs an additional action. And if there are two additional actions performed, there has to be two different agents also. So now is there a second eye faculty? Probably not. And so sight does not see something that is intrinsically seeing, does not engage in acts of seeing, does not participate in activities of seeing. But how about something that is intrinsically not seeing? Obviously that doesn't engage in acts of seeing either in activities of visual perception. So yeah, sight does not see, yet non sight does not see either. And then it could be that we wanted to say that there's a, if we so far have been talking about the eye faculty and perhaps thinking in terms of physical eye faculty, then which according to the Vaibhāṣika is what perceives, it's the physical eye faculty. But it could also be that we went with a sort of Sautrāntika explanation that says that the eye is a tool for seeing, but it's not the actual seer. So the seer is something else, consciousness or the person. And that still doesn't really change the basic scenario, whether we say that the eye faculty is what sees or whether we say that that's just a tool, it's one of the things that are necessary for seeing, but it's not the seer as such that doesn't help because
all these points of critique that have been brought up until now, they are equally applicable to the seer or to the faculty.
So whether I say that my eye is my eye intrinsically a seer or am I intrinsically a seer, the problem is the same. Then, "Whether seeing is involved or not, there is nothing that sees. Without the one that sees, how could there be something seen and seeing?
So that's going further with this idea that there's a tool for seeing, there are some things that we need to see, but those are not the same as the actual event of being the seer of something.
And then if we say that in that case we can… Just a minute.
So we have the idea of the seer and the tool and we also want to say that there's a dependent relation between those, that somehow the seer becomes a seer but because of the tool and yet the seer is something different than the tool. This is also a very natural idea to have. Yeah?
Student: "I'm wondering what the problem is with the collapsing of agent and action. And action? "Yeah. We keep avoiding it as if it's something that then could be totally logically unsound but actually it seems that the potential of relaxing into that as a potential reality would be an aspect of this alternating between analytical meditation and resting meditation." But then it's not that we say there actually are agents and there actually are actions and they are the same. You could say therapeutically you are the running or something like that. Certainly, yeah. "What is wrong with that?" You are the breathing and so on. There's nothing wrong with that but we're not saying that in reality that's the story. You are the breathing. We're not saying that that's you and then that's the breathing. Just let me tell you. You are the same. That's not the… am I making sense? As a tool of course it can be useful. It can also not be useful depending on the context. But not as an account of the way things are. Like it clearly isn't true even in terms of ordinary convention. "It's clearly not true that we are just an amalgamation of our actions?
To me that's not that clear actually. Our actions. The agent and action cannot be the same and agent and action cannot be different. That's what the verse also said last time. It cannot be… because then I can talk about you and I can talk about your speaking. It's not that I can't make that distinction. At the same time I want to say that it's your speaking and so on. I can't say that your speaking is entirely different from you. But to totally collapse the two doesn't work. Although we can speak like that of course and also in poetry and so on it can be very powerful to say things in that way. You are your song.
So now we are looking at the idea that there is seeing, seer and then the tool of that, the kind of implement that we have to have in order to get that. And..
the seer, being a seer is also dependent on the tool. It's because I have an eye that I can see. So if my being a seer is dependent on the eye then do I depend on the eye as a seer or as a non-seer? Then we have the same difficulty again. How could I depend for seeing while being a non-seer, while being blind? How can I say that as a blind person I'm dependent on my eye? I'm not dependent on my eye because I'm blind. And if I'm already seeing then how can I say that I depend on my eye? I already see. So this framework where we say there's a seer and that seer is dependent on something like a faculty. It also falls apart. So "whether seeing is involved or not, there's nothing that sees." So seeing here refers to the faculty.
The faculty, you can also take it as the act. Simply the, not the act but the, what should we call it? Seeing. Yeah, well the act. The activity of seeing. Do I depend on that to be.. if I depend on that to become a seer, do I depend on, am I dependent in that capacity as a seer or am I dependent on seeing while not being someone who sees? And either option is meaningless.
"Without the one that sees, how could there be something seen and seeing?" So if there's then nothing that sees, then objects seen and an act of seeing don't make sense either. If we have failed in this way to find something that sees because whether we speak of something that is already a seer or something that still needs to see, then it could not depend on a faculty and so there would never arise an event of visual perception. If that's the case, then how could there be.. how could there be objects seen and activity of visual events? "As there's nothing to see and no sight, the four such as consciousness do not exist. How could appropriation and other such factors come into existence?" So now we begin to see the implications of this in a broader way. So if there's nothing to see and no sight, then the visual consciousness that arises in accompanying the perception of an object with the eye does not occur. And then if there is no consciousness, then there's no contact, no sensation and no craving. So those links of dependent origination don't occur either.
Then how could the appropriation or the grasping that holds existence together, how could it come into being if there are no events like that where an object is seen? And then finally, "Hearing, smell, taste, touch and cognition, the hearer, the heard and so forth. Know that all are explained through sight." So we have been looking at sight, but what we hear, what we smell, taste, touch and think of everything is in the exact same way.
So that is the Chapter Three in the Mūlamadhyamaka. And we'll stop here and begin tomorrow again with Chapter Four.
"That which originates
dependently,
does not cease and does not
arise, is not annihilated
and is not permanent,
does not come and does not go
is not different
and not the same.
To the true teacher who
reveals this peace, the complete
pacification of constructs, to
the perfect Buddha I bow down."
So last session we thought about the relationship between dream and wake experience and illusion, hallucination and ordinary waking consciousness.
And then we were considering that along the lines of the reasoning in the MūlaMādhyamaka,
the thrust of the reasoning makes it difficult to maintain a difference between a sort of a real difference in terms of the reality of dream and wake time at the experience. And then we considered that this is a kind of understanding of things that seems difficult to handle and we considered also that it may be too difficult to handle in many contexts. And so our task was to think of what then to do to address this in a way that is fair to the, not just fair but that acknowledges what we find through reason and also these concerns that are also very genuine. So what did you each think is the way forward to address this conundrum? Like how can we acknowledge what we discover through the reasoning and at the same time acknowledge that this kind of insight seems in many regards difficult to accommodate and then what can we do that is helpful in both regards, both in terms of acknowledging the insight but also acknowledging the real problems that come with it? Not of course that only problems come with this. We know that this is supposed to be liberating insight. But what we were talking about last time was that it is also so profound and so all-encompassing that it can be overwhelming. And in particular when it's presented along lines such as this, that there's no ontological difference between hallucination and what I experience now.
So where I landed was that yes ontologically there's no difference and we've already established that the relative truth only reveals itself as compelling as long as we leave it unexamined as we discussed the other day. But also within this relative truth where everything is equally unreal we still make distinctions. I mean I make a distinction between my left hand and right hand in the same way I think it is completely valid to make a distinction between dreaming and waking reality and hallucinating and not hallucinating. I think it's just a helpful report of experience that helps human beings communicate and make sense of this relative reality which is of course unreal but nevertheless we always engage in kind of some activity of making sense of it all and why blur the lines? I mean, yes equally unreal but definitely different kind of ways of functioning and different causal capacities and I think we have no choice almost but to be aware of that and reflect it in our language and the way we think about it." Yeah. Thank you. So this issue is very much about, at the heart of this what they call the Prāsaṅgika and Svātantrika distinction in Mādhyamaka
because perhaps we could say that what you said now goes very well. Perhaps you can be Prāsaṅgika and Svātantrika regardless. Depends on what kind of version of Prāsaṅgika-Svātantrika we have. But otherwise perhaps we could say that many of the
of the concerns that are sort of characteristically Svātantrika concerns they go very much in the direction of what you were saying, that certainly we can understand that everything under analysis is equally real or equally unreal.
Which means then ultimately void but in terms of convention there's still something a lot of things that we can and should say and then there's an effort to distinguish the correct relative truth versus the false relative truth and examples of false relative truth is precisely this sort of stuff: hallucination, dream, and then there are the things that are not like that. So that is all good and it's very helpful to think in these terms no doubt about that in many ways and almost to the extent that many of us have to do that to operate in that way.
But it is also a slippery slope because of course it couldn't mean that a Mādhyamaka, someone who has Mādhyamaka insight is not capable of distinguishing things from one another that's certainly not no? But what kind of discernment would a Mādhyamaka have?
And when we say that there are some things that just are proper and right and others that aren't, what is it that somehow underpins that distinction? Very quickly it can become getting a situation where we get the whole framework that we started out criticizing in through the back door. That there seems to be a reality we can call it relative reality but it has all the features that we normally associate with reality something that is just there unquestionably and is in a certain way and we have to deal with that.
So that very much sounds like the beginning of samsara also. So that is a real profound challenge and I think we can see the whole Svātantrika-Prāsaṅgika discussion, which is so rich and elaborate and goes on for centuries in India and in Tibet as ways of getting at that issue, different ways of.. in that way there is no just relatively decent philosopher that we can't learn a lot from. Because what they will always present is a perspective on this issue which is the result of incredible consumption of scripture so there is a huge scriptural learning and then digestion of that in contemplation so that what emerges from that is something really rich and comprehensive. So to be able to choose between such rich and comprehensive perspectives which are still very different from each other that's very exciting it's like stepping into different worlds and seeing what world is it more useful to be in?
So that is something we can keep in mind of course, then when we say that despite the emptiness of everything there is still this and it has to be dealt with, how much does that entail in terms of the reality of this?
And also there are some who say,
or at least in certain contexts now you can find discourse which is really not very accommodating of those concerns.
So that could come across as totally irresponsible
to say that if there was anything that
were real even in terms of convention then anything at all would be possible. In other words that the very idea that there is something that is conventionally real means you have committed to any amount of absurdity. And so whatever you say from now on is just.. you're sort of turning the tables in this discussion because the person who says like that there's no distinction between dream and hallucination. It's impossible to say that either one is more or less real than the other. Someone who says like that will come across as very sort of wild and perhaps irresponsible. But then it can also be turned around and say if you say that there's something that has conventional reality then you have accepted something which is clearly absurd. So from now on whatever you say is… Forget about it.
Student: "I have a question and it's related to an example so I'll try to say it quickly. So there was this psychologist who developed one method of treatment of schizophrenia and that manifests in a way that there was a person that was schizophrenic and thought that he was Jesus and then everybody tried to convince him that he's not because he's not and he just kind of acted as if he was. And this psychologist, groundbreakingly, the way he started treating and developed this modality was that he came to the psychiatric clinic and sat down with this person and the first thing he says to him, "So you are a carpenter." And then that kind of was the beginning of something. So that's the anecdote. So my question is…" That's an interesting one, yeah? "Yeah, so my question related to that anecdote is that, or example is that like Jan was saying that to not, and you were saying to not get stuck and get into samsara again if you stick building up relative truth as a thing, you know, and saying this false relative and true relative, how do you keep true to the Prāsaṅgika way? Because what this psychologist is, is that he wasn't walking around telling people, "Oh, everything is equally real," but he used it with this individual because he said, "Your reality is equally real to mine. You are Jesus." Right?" Yeah. "So, yeah, my question is how do you then practice this Prāsaṅgika if you don't want to fall into making the concepts a thing again? Is that clear?" Yeah, definitely.
So… What to say? Perhaps the understanding that there is no difference, yeah, which is when it is a confident certainty in this, yeah, that it's not that you wonder whether dream and reality could, and this kind of reality could perhaps actually be substantially different, but for some reason you have seen that that's impossible, that there can't be a difference, then that is, you could say, understanding the view of Mādhyamaka, you know, in many ways. Just that understanding is an intellectual understanding, but comprehensive of the Mādhyamaka view, yeah? So then that is something very important, to have that kind of understanding because it's something that can then be, like once I know something to be the case, then because I know it to be the case, I can do many things that I otherwise wouldn't be able to, like if I know where to find the stove in the house, then I can make tea, cook a meal and so on, things that I really wouldn't be able to do if I didn't even know that I could look for a stove in the house. So a lot of practical opportunity comes with having understood things in general, no? So in the same way, understanding something as profound and vast as this, of course, will also have plenty of ramifications for what we can do and what we don't have to do also. So in many ways, like Chokyi Nyima Rinpoche was saying the other day, you know, this is the.. if you want to practice Mahāyāna, we need some understanding of Mind-Only and Mādhyamaka view to practice the Pāramitās. And if you want to practice Vajrayana also, like he was saying, without some sort of understanding of the view of Mind-Only, but preferably Mādhyamaka, then Vajrayana will just be children's play. So even that is a conceptual understanding, we can understand also and feel that it's a very significant conceptual understanding to have, no? And then we have also been saying that there are these two aspects of analytical meditation and the rest of the yogi. So that is certainly something that one will make use of, like take to heart, as they say, what one has understood and just try to sense and experience the world in a way that is in accord with that understanding, without assuming that my understanding of the world and the world are different, because actually there's no reason to think so. It's what we have understood is something that applies to the world, not to anything else, to the world, meaning the world, nirvana and the path, everything. So taking that understanding to heart and allowing for the possibility of these two being in deep tune with each other. And then of course there are so many means in the Dharma that we can use in that regard. It's almost like this is the point when the path really begins, like when you have this kind of view. So you can say it's a challenge, but it's also like the beginning of the whole Dharma path, which has so many things to use. But until we are at this point, it's a little bit like talking, it's like we're still sort of shopping, like looking at things in a window that we think, "Oh, that could be cool to have." "That one also looks nice, but not quite as good as the other." But even if we try to practice, it's always like as if we are looking at ourselves as practitioners and sort of watching a movie of ourselves performing as practitioners rather than being practitioners perhaps. So that's no longer necessary if one has this kind of understanding and just takes it to heart. And then of course to be able to connect with a Teacher who is totally at home in that wisdom perception is an amazing opportunity. And I think we can also connect much better with a Teacher on the basis of this kind of understanding because then we don't have to bring in so many ideas which are actually obstacles for that kind of situation. Doesn't mean that we have to be less careful about who we associate with and who we try to establish a connection with as a Teacher. On the contrary, because we can also understand how quickly things can happen in this, when the world is like this, there's a lot of potential for stuff to happen, good and bad. So if we connect with the wrong kind of Teacher, things can go very wrong very fast. Again, it's not surprising, it's something we have always heard. But now we can perhaps get a sense of why it is like that. If the world is the way we have understood now, then there's so much open opportunity.
So if instead we can find a community to be part of and Teachers who are able to share that insight and their own mastery of this kind of wisdom, not just as something that one understands and then tries to relate to as well as one can, but in a much more unimpeded fashion, then certainly there's a lot of potential for things to happen. Actually, it then makes sense that with Vajrayana practice and introduction to the nature of mind, that it's possible to attain full accomplishment in very little time. It makes good sense.
Laurent online, if you have a question.
Hello. When I try to see, I don't find a seer. I cannot find a seer. And so sometimes it's kind of some moment of subtle I can't say, but I see. But even there, I cannot find a seer. If I try to look intellectually and I don't find it. So I appreciate to keep to go further in this analysis. If I don't find a seer." Yeah, that I think.. "And to continue about dreaming. and I think the difference between dreaming and real life, daily life is yeah, just in the mind. You're not, there is not the element of in the daily life, but I think there is still the process that you are thinking, so producing karma both if you are dreaming or in the daily life. And brings also to me this question, but often, but Rinpoche was saying, "My view is as fast as the sky. My behavior, my conduct as fine as flour of," I don't know how you say it. But even for a realized master, relative truth is still important. Or is it, or isn't it? Some say so. When I discuss something, not, but yes, I still believe it's important when I see how they behave in their daily life, how Rinpoche is behaving as masters to create good tendrel for their next activity and then for their, they really behaved and are very careful. Also when we offer something to Rinpoche, he says, "Oh, this is very suspicious what you're offering me and it could be very good condition." And for me it's an important question because it brings also this notion of awareness in my daily life, how I'm aware of dependent origination and how I relate to it." So, yeah that's also like one of the really, really important aspects of being able to meet wisdom Teachers is that you can see exactly like you say, now you can try to watch what do they do, how are they, no? That is very illuminating of course and in many ways crucial I think.
So if, again, it's important to recognize that what we understand, what we understand about the nature of these things and these things themselves, not these things as they come across, as we know them, aren't two different things. So this emptiness that we discover, no matter how mind boggling it can become, seem, no matter how empty our concepts can come across, that emptiness is still the very nature of the concept. And that emptiness is still the very nature of whatever it is that we see, touch and so on. If it were, it clearly couldn't be different, no? That is one thing that our analysis has also shown very clearly, that those two could not be substantially different from each other. So in this way I think just thinking about it, we can understand that therefore all of these things take on an enhanced value because they are not, the manifestation right now is not limited and is not determined in the way that we're otherwise used to thinking. We are used to thinking that there are very, very strong restrictions in terms of what can and cannot happen in a given situation, no? But someone who has this view really integrated will be able to see through these limitations, no? That doesn't mean that we can do anything, no? Although presumably becoming increasingly aware of this will make things that otherwise seem like miracles just as ordinarily achievable as anything else that we do in our daily life, no? But it doesn't mean that I can think, "Oh, I can do anything" and then be less careful, no? It means empowerment perhaps, no? That we realize we can do much, much more than and achieve much, much more than we are used to thinking. But then it matters even more what we do, no, in the situation. So like when you say looking at masters and how careful they are and Padmasambhava saying, "well, my conduct is as fine and subtle as flour."
That also makes sense when we try to take to heart the understanding of emptiness that comes through this kind of study, no? So then the value of what we do is enhanced almost infinitely, no? Because there are no natural limitations, no? There are limitations, but they are just as they appear, nothing more, yes?
The moment I begin to say that there are limitations, it's because in reality such and such and such, then I'm no longer making sense, no? But I can still acknowledge and find it much more rewarding and compelling to make distinctions with respect to all of this. Does that make sense?
Oh dear, your call has dropped. Please try again. "Yes, thank you."
So is there one more comment? Or I can't see the screen now, but otherwise, oh, maybe coming here.
Otherwise let's continue in the text, right?
So there, and that's of course very much in line with what we were just talking about, it's assuming that there are objects of sight and that there is a faculty of seeing that we can think that there are things to hear. We have a faculty of hearing and so on, very intuitively comprehensible and relevant principles, which are then critiqued first by this simple statement in 2 that says, "Sight does indeed not see its own identity." Gyalpo-la, would you mind? Gyalpo, excuse me. Would you mind? "The sight does indeed not see its own identity," in Chapter Three stanza 2: "Sight does indeed not see its own identity. How can something that does not see itself see anything else either?" And yeah, that's what we looked at and tried to contemplate yesterday. If the sight, whether sight is the faculty of seeing or whether it's the seer as such, if it does not see itself, then it's almost as if then it doesn't register itself. And how to say that it is but capable of registering other things? And of course we also said that it doesn't help to say that, "Well, there is some sort of quality of noticing oneself," because while we may or may not like to say so in certain contexts, it couldn't really be the case that mind sees itself because then object and action become one. And that's just not in the way object and.. agent and object become one. And that's just not the way of agents and objects. So then in 3, someone objects and says, this doesn't follow at all. Well, in between the two stanzas someone objects and says this doesn't follow because take for example, fire, fire is something that burns many different things, but it doesn't have to burn itself in order to burn. It just burns other things. Then stanza 3 says, "A solid establishment of sight cannot be provided through the example of fire. With what was, has yet to be, and is being traversed, we have replied to that along with sight." So if we say that there's this thing called 'fire,' which is something that can burn other things without burning itself, then
we can look at the event of burning in the same way as we have looked at walking. And so we can say that where there has been burning, there is no burning now, where the burning is yet to occur, there is no burning either, aside from what has and has not burned, what present burning, there's no present burning to be identified. Or we can say about the agent and the action, that which burns does not burn, that which does not burn, does not burn, and apart from those two, you cannot have something that partially burns and partially doesn't burn. I forget how it's in the root versus. about the, we can go back and look in the chapter on walking when the agent is refuted. So in this case, it would mean that if we say "fire burns," then is the fire that burns is that fire first there and then begins to burn?
I want to say when a fire performs the act of burning fuel, then does it do so, the agent there, does it do so being already a burner or being already burning? In that case, it exists qualified as a burner before it begins to perform that action. So before fire begins to burn, it already burns, so then we have two acts of burning, one that makes fire fire and another that makes, that is the burning that fire then performs in that capacity. But if we say "No, there's just one act of burning," then in that case the burner, fire is not a burner because it exists even in the absence of burning. So that couldn't be the case with fire either. And if we say that the two are one and the same, then agent and action are indistinguishable, then the woodcutter and his cutting of wood would be indistinguishable, which of course is not the case either. And if we say that there is a burning that qualifies fire as fire and another that is then the action performed when it burns firewood, then we have two actions and then there would be two types of fire also. So we have that absurd consequence. So in other words, all what we understood about walking and the walker and the path, we can also apply here to the act of burning, to the action performed by burning. And also with seeing, which is so not just the example is problematic here, but seeing is just as much subject to the same problems as we found with walking, like where there has been seeing, there is none, where seeing is yet to occur, there is no seeing either aside from what was seen and has not been seen, there is no present seeing to be identified either. Let me just see if we can find.
We could take like stanza 8 in the second chapter: "One who goes does not go, one who does not go, nor does one who does not go. Other than goers and non-goers, what third party could be going?" So we could take that stanza and translate into a critique of seeing. So then we can say one who sees does not see, nor does one who does not see. So someone who sees does not engage in the act of seeing, because
someone who sees is already involved in that action. And if we say that someone who sees sees, then we are already talking about two different actions of seeing, and with that comes then the absurdity of having also two agents. So it's not someone who sees as something that sees: an eye or a person who sees that sees, and at the same time, how should it be possible for someone or something that doesn't see to see? Someone or something that doesn't see, like could be my finger is just as much a non-seer then as my eye. So then we should expect anything to have visual perception. So it's also not a non-seer that sees. And apart from something that sees and something that doesn't see, what kind of agent of seeing could there be? So all of the arguments that were raised in 2 can be used as a critique of the seer and the seen, or the burner and the burnt.
So that is in 3, and then in 4, there's a conclusion, "When nothing at all is seen, neither is the one that sees. Sight is what performs seeing, how could this be right?" So when there's nothing in this way to be seen, then in the absence of visual perceptions, there's no seer either. So this sort of declaration that there's the faculty of sight, which performs the act of seeing and so sees things, how could this in any way be relevant in terms of the way things are?
And then 5: "A sight does not see, yet non-sight does not see either. So then we can think... what is it that sees? If we say it's the eye that sees, the eye faculty, whatever that may be, or if we say it's consciousness that sees, or if we say that it's the self that sees.
Sorry? Okay. Whatever it is that we in that way think of as
the seer, is that seer intrinsically seeing? Is it intrinsically associated with the activity of seeing? In other words, is my eye intrinsically seeing? Is my consciousness intrinsically seeing? Is my self intrinsically seeing? Whatever it is with everything, of course, as the seer. Is it intrinsically so associated with seeing? And then if we say that, then there will have to be something that is that quality of seeing, which makes the eye, consciousness, myself, etc., intrinsically seer. And then all the different actions that we perform.
And in that case, yeah, then we have these problems that when then my eye faculty in its intrinsic capacity for seeing sees an object, then there's already a kind of seeing that has qualified my eye faculty as that which sees. And then now it performs an additional action. And if there are two additional actions performed, there has to be two different agents also. So now is there a second eye faculty? Probably not. And so sight does not see something that is intrinsically seeing, does not engage in acts of seeing, does not participate in activities of seeing. But how about something that is intrinsically not seeing? Obviously that doesn't engage in acts of seeing either in activities of visual perception. So yeah, sight does not see, yet non sight does not see either. And then it could be that we wanted to say that there's a, if we so far have been talking about the eye faculty and perhaps thinking in terms of physical eye faculty, then which according to the Vaibhāṣika is what perceives, it's the physical eye faculty. But it could also be that we went with a sort of Sautrāntika explanation that says that the eye is a tool for seeing, but it's not the actual seer. So the seer is something else, consciousness or the person. And that still doesn't really change the basic scenario, whether we say that the eye faculty is what sees or whether we say that that's just a tool, it's one of the things that are necessary for seeing, but it's not the seer as such that doesn't help because
all these points of critique that have been brought up until now, they are equally applicable to the seer or to the faculty.
So whether I say that my eye is my eye intrinsically a seer or am I intrinsically a seer, the problem is the same. Then, "Whether seeing is involved or not, there is nothing that sees. Without the one that sees, how could there be something seen and seeing?
So that's going further with this idea that there's a tool for seeing, there are some things that we need to see, but those are not the same as the actual event of being the seer of something.
And then if we say that in that case we can… Just a minute.
So we have the idea of the seer and the tool and we also want to say that there's a dependent relation between those, that somehow the seer becomes a seer but because of the tool and yet the seer is something different than the tool. This is also a very natural idea to have. Yeah?
Student: "I'm wondering what the problem is with the collapsing of agent and action. And action? "Yeah. We keep avoiding it as if it's something that then could be totally logically unsound but actually it seems that the potential of relaxing into that as a potential reality would be an aspect of this alternating between analytical meditation and resting meditation." But then it's not that we say there actually are agents and there actually are actions and they are the same. You could say therapeutically you are the running or something like that. Certainly, yeah. "What is wrong with that?" You are the breathing and so on. There's nothing wrong with that but we're not saying that in reality that's the story. You are the breathing. We're not saying that that's you and then that's the breathing. Just let me tell you. You are the same. That's not the… am I making sense? As a tool of course it can be useful. It can also not be useful depending on the context. But not as an account of the way things are. Like it clearly isn't true even in terms of ordinary convention. "It's clearly not true that we are just an amalgamation of our actions?
To me that's not that clear actually. Our actions. The agent and action cannot be the same and agent and action cannot be different. That's what the verse also said last time. It cannot be… because then I can talk about you and I can talk about your speaking. It's not that I can't make that distinction. At the same time I want to say that it's your speaking and so on. I can't say that your speaking is entirely different from you. But to totally collapse the two doesn't work. Although we can speak like that of course and also in poetry and so on it can be very powerful to say things in that way. You are your song.
So now we are looking at the idea that there is seeing, seer and then the tool of that, the kind of implement that we have to have in order to get that. And..
the seer, being a seer is also dependent on the tool. It's because I have an eye that I can see. So if my being a seer is dependent on the eye then do I depend on the eye as a seer or as a non-seer? Then we have the same difficulty again. How could I depend for seeing while being a non-seer, while being blind? How can I say that as a blind person I'm dependent on my eye? I'm not dependent on my eye because I'm blind. And if I'm already seeing then how can I say that I depend on my eye? I already see. So this framework where we say there's a seer and that seer is dependent on something like a faculty. It also falls apart. So "whether seeing is involved or not, there's nothing that sees." So seeing here refers to the faculty.
The faculty, you can also take it as the act. Simply the, not the act but the, what should we call it? Seeing. Yeah, well the act. The activity of seeing. Do I depend on that to be.. if I depend on that to become a seer, do I depend on, am I dependent in that capacity as a seer or am I dependent on seeing while not being someone who sees? And either option is meaningless.
"Without the one that sees, how could there be something seen and seeing?" So if there's then nothing that sees, then objects seen and an act of seeing don't make sense either. If we have failed in this way to find something that sees because whether we speak of something that is already a seer or something that still needs to see, then it could not depend on a faculty and so there would never arise an event of visual perception. If that's the case, then how could there be.. how could there be objects seen and activity of visual events? "As there's nothing to see and no sight, the four such as consciousness do not exist. How could appropriation and other such factors come into existence?" So now we begin to see the implications of this in a broader way. So if there's nothing to see and no sight, then the visual consciousness that arises in accompanying the perception of an object with the eye does not occur. And then if there is no consciousness, then there's no contact, no sensation and no craving. So those links of dependent origination don't occur either.
Then how could the appropriation or the grasping that holds existence together, how could it come into being if there are no events like that where an object is seen? And then finally, "Hearing, smell, taste, touch and cognition, the hearer, the heard and so forth. Know that all are explained through sight." So we have been looking at sight, but what we hear, what we smell, taste, touch and think of everything is in the exact same way.
So that is the Chapter Three in the Mūlamadhyamaka. And we'll stop here and begin tomorrow again with Chapter Four.
So last session we thought about the relationship between dream and wake experience and illusion, hallucination and ordinary waking consciousness.
And then we were considering that along the lines of the reasoning in the MūlaMādhyamaka,
the thrust of the reasoning makes it difficult to maintain a difference between a sort of a real difference in terms of the reality of dream and wake time at the experience. And then we considered that this is a kind of understanding of things that seems difficult to handle and we considered also that it may be too difficult to handle in many contexts. And so our task was to think of what then to do to address this in a way that is fair to the, not just fair but that acknowledges what we find through reason and also these concerns that are also very genuine. So what did you each think is the way forward to address this conundrum? Like how can we acknowledge what we discover through the reasoning and at the same time acknowledge that this kind of insight seems in many regards difficult to accommodate and then what can we do that is helpful in both regards, both in terms of acknowledging the insight but also acknowledging the real problems that come with it? Not of course that only problems come with this. We know that this is supposed to be liberating insight. But what we were talking about last time was that it is also so profound and so all-encompassing that it can be overwhelming. And in particular when it's presented along lines such as this, that there's no ontological difference between hallucination and what I experience now.
So where I landed was that yes ontologically there's no difference and we've already established that the relative truth only reveals itself as compelling as long as we leave it unexamined as we discussed the other day. But also within this relative truth where everything is equally unreal we still make distinctions. I mean I make a distinction between my left hand and right hand in the same way I think it is completely valid to make a distinction between dreaming and waking reality and hallucinating and not hallucinating. I think it's just a helpful report of experience that helps human beings communicate and make sense of this relative reality which is of course unreal but nevertheless we always engage in kind of some activity of making sense of it all and why blur the lines? I mean, yes equally unreal but definitely different kind of ways of functioning and different causal capacities and I think we have no choice almost but to be aware of that and reflect it in our language and the way we think about it." Yeah. Thank you. So this issue is very much about, at the heart of this what they call the Prāsaṅgika and Svātantrika distinction in Mādhyamaka
because perhaps we could say that what you said now goes very well. Perhaps you can be Prāsaṅgika and Svātantrika regardless. Depends on what kind of version of Prāsaṅgika-Svātantrika we have. But otherwise perhaps we could say that many of the
of the concerns that are sort of characteristically Svātantrika concerns they go very much in the direction of what you were saying, that certainly we can understand that everything under analysis is equally real or equally unreal.
Which means then ultimately void but in terms of convention there's still something a lot of things that we can and should say and then there's an effort to distinguish the correct relative truth versus the false relative truth and examples of false relative truth is precisely this sort of stuff: hallucination, dream, and then there are the things that are not like that. So that is all good and it's very helpful to think in these terms no doubt about that in many ways and almost to the extent that many of us have to do that to operate in that way.
But it is also a slippery slope because of course it couldn't mean that a Mādhyamaka, someone who has Mādhyamaka insight is not capable of distinguishing things from one another that's certainly not no? But what kind of discernment would a Mādhyamaka have?
And when we say that there are some things that just are proper and right and others that aren't, what is it that somehow underpins that distinction? Very quickly it can become getting a situation where we get the whole framework that we started out criticizing in through the back door. That there seems to be a reality we can call it relative reality but it has all the features that we normally associate with reality something that is just there unquestionably and is in a certain way and we have to deal with that.
So that very much sounds like the beginning of samsara also. So that is a real profound challenge and I think we can see the whole Svātantrika-Prāsaṅgika discussion, which is so rich and elaborate and goes on for centuries in India and in Tibet as ways of getting at that issue, different ways of.. in that way there is no just relatively decent philosopher that we can't learn a lot from. Because what they will always present is a perspective on this issue which is the result of incredible consumption of scripture so there is a huge scriptural learning and then digestion of that in contemplation so that what emerges from that is something really rich and comprehensive. So to be able to choose between such rich and comprehensive perspectives which are still very different from each other that's very exciting it's like stepping into different worlds and seeing what world is it more useful to be in?
So that is something we can keep in mind of course, then when we say that despite the emptiness of everything there is still this and it has to be dealt with, how much does that entail in terms of the reality of this?
And also there are some who say,
or at least in certain contexts now you can find discourse which is really not very accommodating of those concerns.
So that could come across as totally irresponsible
to say that if there was anything that
were real even in terms of convention then anything at all would be possible. In other words that the very idea that there is something that is conventionally real means you have committed to any amount of absurdity. And so whatever you say from now on is just.. you're sort of turning the tables in this discussion because the person who says like that there's no distinction between dream and hallucination. It's impossible to say that either one is more or less real than the other. Someone who says like that will come across as very sort of wild and perhaps irresponsible. But then it can also be turned around and say if you say that there's something that has conventional reality then you have accepted something which is clearly absurd. So from now on whatever you say is… Forget about it.
Student: "I have a question and it's related to an example so I'll try to say it quickly. So there was this psychologist who developed one method of treatment of schizophrenia and that manifests in a way that there was a person that was schizophrenic and thought that he was Jesus and then everybody tried to convince him that he's not because he's not and he just kind of acted as if he was. And this psychologist, groundbreakingly, the way he started treating and developed this modality was that he came to the psychiatric clinic and sat down with this person and the first thing he says to him, "So you are a carpenter." And then that kind of was the beginning of something. So that's the anecdote. So my question is…" That's an interesting one, yeah? "Yeah, so my question related to that anecdote is that, or example is that like Jan was saying that to not, and you were saying to not get stuck and get into samsara again if you stick building up relative truth as a thing, you know, and saying this false relative and true relative, how do you keep true to the Prāsaṅgika way? Because what this psychologist is, is that he wasn't walking around telling people, "Oh, everything is equally real," but he used it with this individual because he said, "Your reality is equally real to mine. You are Jesus." Right?" Yeah. "So, yeah, my question is how do you then practice this Prāsaṅgika if you don't want to fall into making the concepts a thing again? Is that clear?" Yeah, definitely.
So… What to say? Perhaps the understanding that there is no difference, yeah, which is when it is a confident certainty in this, yeah, that it's not that you wonder whether dream and reality could, and this kind of reality could perhaps actually be substantially different, but for some reason you have seen that that's impossible, that there can't be a difference, then that is, you could say, understanding the view of Mādhyamaka, you know, in many ways. Just that understanding is an intellectual understanding, but comprehensive of the Mādhyamaka view, yeah? So then that is something very important, to have that kind of understanding because it's something that can then be, like once I know something to be the case, then because I know it to be the case, I can do many things that I otherwise wouldn't be able to, like if I know where to find the stove in the house, then I can make tea, cook a meal and so on, things that I really wouldn't be able to do if I didn't even know that I could look for a stove in the house. So a lot of practical opportunity comes with having understood things in general, no? So in the same way, understanding something as profound and vast as this, of course, will also have plenty of ramifications for what we can do and what we don't have to do also. So in many ways, like Chokyi Nyima Rinpoche was saying the other day, you know, this is the.. if you want to practice Mahāyāna, we need some understanding of Mind-Only and Mādhyamaka view to practice the Pāramitās. And if you want to practice Vajrayana also, like he was saying, without some sort of understanding of the view of Mind-Only, but preferably Mādhyamaka, then Vajrayana will just be children's play. So even that is a conceptual understanding, we can understand also and feel that it's a very significant conceptual understanding to have, no? And then we have also been saying that there are these two aspects of analytical meditation and the rest of the yogi. So that is certainly something that one will make use of, like take to heart, as they say, what one has understood and just try to sense and experience the world in a way that is in accord with that understanding, without assuming that my understanding of the world and the world are different, because actually there's no reason to think so. It's what we have understood is something that applies to the world, not to anything else, to the world, meaning the world, nirvana and the path, everything. So taking that understanding to heart and allowing for the possibility of these two being in deep tune with each other. And then of course there are so many means in the Dharma that we can use in that regard. It's almost like this is the point when the path really begins, like when you have this kind of view. So you can say it's a challenge, but it's also like the beginning of the whole Dharma path, which has so many things to use. But until we are at this point, it's a little bit like talking, it's like we're still sort of shopping, like looking at things in a window that we think, "Oh, that could be cool to have." "That one also looks nice, but not quite as good as the other." But even if we try to practice, it's always like as if we are looking at ourselves as practitioners and sort of watching a movie of ourselves performing as practitioners rather than being practitioners perhaps. So that's no longer necessary if one has this kind of understanding and just takes it to heart. And then of course to be able to connect with a Teacher who is totally at home in that wisdom perception is an amazing opportunity. And I think we can also connect much better with a Teacher on the basis of this kind of understanding because then we don't have to bring in so many ideas which are actually obstacles for that kind of situation. Doesn't mean that we have to be less careful about who we associate with and who we try to establish a connection with as a Teacher. On the contrary, because we can also understand how quickly things can happen in this, when the world is like this, there's a lot of potential for stuff to happen, good and bad. So if we connect with the wrong kind of Teacher, things can go very wrong very fast. Again, it's not surprising, it's something we have always heard. But now we can perhaps get a sense of why it is like that. If the world is the way we have understood now, then there's so much open opportunity.
So if instead we can find a community to be part of and Teachers who are able to share that insight and their own mastery of this kind of wisdom, not just as something that one understands and then tries to relate to as well as one can, but in a much more unimpeded fashion, then certainly there's a lot of potential for things to happen. Actually, it then makes sense that with Vajrayana practice and introduction to the nature of mind, that it's possible to attain full accomplishment in very little time. It makes good sense.
Laurent online, if you have a question.
Hello. When I try to see, I don't find a seer. I cannot find a seer. And so sometimes it's kind of some moment of subtle I can't say, but I see. But even there, I cannot find a seer. If I try to look intellectually and I don't find it. So I appreciate to keep to go further in this analysis. If I don't find a seer." Yeah, that I think.. "And to continue about dreaming. and I think the difference between dreaming and real life, daily life is yeah, just in the mind. You're not, there is not the element of in the daily life, but I think there is still the process that you are thinking, so producing karma both if you are dreaming or in the daily life. And brings also to me this question, but often, but Rinpoche was saying, "My view is as fast as the sky. My behavior, my conduct as fine as flour of," I don't know how you say it. But even for a realized master, relative truth is still important. Or is it, or isn't it? Some say so. When I discuss something, not, but yes, I still believe it's important when I see how they behave in their daily life, how Rinpoche is behaving as masters to create good tendrel for their next activity and then for their, they really behaved and are very careful. Also when we offer something to Rinpoche, he says, "Oh, this is very suspicious what you're offering me and it could be very good condition." And for me it's an important question because it brings also this notion of awareness in my daily life, how I'm aware of dependent origination and how I relate to it." So, yeah that's also like one of the really, really important aspects of being able to meet wisdom Teachers is that you can see exactly like you say, now you can try to watch what do they do, how are they, no? That is very illuminating of course and in many ways crucial I think.
So if, again, it's important to recognize that what we understand, what we understand about the nature of these things and these things themselves, not these things as they come across, as we know them, aren't two different things. So this emptiness that we discover, no matter how mind boggling it can become, seem, no matter how empty our concepts can come across, that emptiness is still the very nature of the concept. And that emptiness is still the very nature of whatever it is that we see, touch and so on. If it were, it clearly couldn't be different, no? That is one thing that our analysis has also shown very clearly, that those two could not be substantially different from each other. So in this way I think just thinking about it, we can understand that therefore all of these things take on an enhanced value because they are not, the manifestation right now is not limited and is not determined in the way that we're otherwise used to thinking. We are used to thinking that there are very, very strong restrictions in terms of what can and cannot happen in a given situation, no? But someone who has this view really integrated will be able to see through these limitations, no? That doesn't mean that we can do anything, no? Although presumably becoming increasingly aware of this will make things that otherwise seem like miracles just as ordinarily achievable as anything else that we do in our daily life, no? But it doesn't mean that I can think, "Oh, I can do anything" and then be less careful, no? It means empowerment perhaps, no? That we realize we can do much, much more than and achieve much, much more than we are used to thinking. But then it matters even more what we do, no, in the situation. So like when you say looking at masters and how careful they are and Padmasambhava saying, "well, my conduct is as fine and subtle as flour."
That also makes sense when we try to take to heart the understanding of emptiness that comes through this kind of study, no? So then the value of what we do is enhanced almost infinitely, no? Because there are no natural limitations, no? There are limitations, but they are just as they appear, nothing more, yes?
The moment I begin to say that there are limitations, it's because in reality such and such and such, then I'm no longer making sense, no? But I can still acknowledge and find it much more rewarding and compelling to make distinctions with respect to all of this. Does that make sense?
Oh dear, your call has dropped. Please try again. "Yes, thank you."
So is there one more comment? Or I can't see the screen now, but otherwise, oh, maybe coming here.
Otherwise let's continue in the text, right?
So there, and that's of course very much in line with what we were just talking about, it's assuming that there are objects of sight and that there is a faculty of seeing that we can think that there are things to hear. We have a faculty of hearing and so on, very intuitively comprehensible and relevant principles, which are then critiqued first by this simple statement in 2 that says, "Sight does indeed not see its own identity." Gyalpo-la, would you mind? Gyalpo, excuse me. Would you mind? "The sight does indeed not see its own identity," in Chapter Three stanza 2: "Sight does indeed not see its own identity. How can something that does not see itself see anything else either?" And yeah, that's what we looked at and tried to contemplate yesterday. If the sight, whether sight is the faculty of seeing or whether it's the seer as such, if it does not see itself, then it's almost as if then it doesn't register itself. And how to say that it is but capable of registering other things? And of course we also said that it doesn't help to say that, "Well, there is some sort of quality of noticing oneself," because while we may or may not like to say so in certain contexts, it couldn't really be the case that mind sees itself because then object and action become one. And that's just not in the way object and.. agent and object become one. And that's just not the way of agents and objects. So then in 3, someone objects and says, this doesn't follow at all. Well, in between the two stanzas someone objects and says this doesn't follow because take for example, fire, fire is something that burns many different things, but it doesn't have to burn itself in order to burn. It just burns other things. Then stanza 3 says, "A solid establishment of sight cannot be provided through the example of fire. With what was, has yet to be, and is being traversed, we have replied to that along with sight." So if we say that there's this thing called 'fire,' which is something that can burn other things without burning itself, then
we can look at the event of burning in the same way as we have looked at walking. And so we can say that where there has been burning, there is no burning now, where the burning is yet to occur, there is no burning either, aside from what has and has not burned, what present burning, there's no present burning to be identified. Or we can say about the agent and the action, that which burns does not burn, that which does not burn, does not burn, and apart from those two, you cannot have something that partially burns and partially doesn't burn. I forget how it's in the root versus. about the, we can go back and look in the chapter on walking when the agent is refuted. So in this case, it would mean that if we say "fire burns," then is the fire that burns is that fire first there and then begins to burn?
I want to say when a fire performs the act of burning fuel, then does it do so, the agent there, does it do so being already a burner or being already burning? In that case, it exists qualified as a burner before it begins to perform that action. So before fire begins to burn, it already burns, so then we have two acts of burning, one that makes fire fire and another that makes, that is the burning that fire then performs in that capacity. But if we say "No, there's just one act of burning," then in that case the burner, fire is not a burner because it exists even in the absence of burning. So that couldn't be the case with fire either. And if we say that the two are one and the same, then agent and action are indistinguishable, then the woodcutter and his cutting of wood would be indistinguishable, which of course is not the case either. And if we say that there is a burning that qualifies fire as fire and another that is then the action performed when it burns firewood, then we have two actions and then there would be two types of fire also. So we have that absurd consequence. So in other words, all what we understood about walking and the walker and the path, we can also apply here to the act of burning, to the action performed by burning. And also with seeing, which is so not just the example is problematic here, but seeing is just as much subject to the same problems as we found with walking, like where there has been seeing, there is none, where seeing is yet to occur, there is no seeing either aside from what was seen and has not been seen, there is no present seeing to be identified either. Let me just see if we can find.
We could take like stanza 8 in the second chapter: "One who goes does not go, one who does not go, nor does one who does not go. Other than goers and non-goers, what third party could be going?" So we could take that stanza and translate into a critique of seeing. So then we can say one who sees does not see, nor does one who does not see. So someone who sees does not engage in the act of seeing, because
someone who sees is already involved in that action. And if we say that someone who sees sees, then we are already talking about two different actions of seeing, and with that comes then the absurdity of having also two agents. So it's not someone who sees as something that sees: an eye or a person who sees that sees, and at the same time, how should it be possible for someone or something that doesn't see to see? Someone or something that doesn't see, like could be my finger is just as much a non-seer then as my eye. So then we should expect anything to have visual perception. So it's also not a non-seer that sees. And apart from something that sees and something that doesn't see, what kind of agent of seeing could there be? So all of the arguments that were raised in 2 can be used as a critique of the seer and the seen, or the burner and the burnt.
So that is in 3, and then in 4, there's a conclusion, "When nothing at all is seen, neither is the one that sees. Sight is what performs seeing, how could this be right?" So when there's nothing in this way to be seen, then in the absence of visual perceptions, there's no seer either. So this sort of declaration that there's the faculty of sight, which performs the act of seeing and so sees things, how could this in any way be relevant in terms of the way things are?
And then 5: "A sight does not see, yet non-sight does not see either. So then we can think... what is it that sees? If we say it's the eye that sees, the eye faculty, whatever that may be, or if we say it's consciousness that sees, or if we say that it's the self that sees.
Sorry? Okay. Whatever it is that we in that way think of as
the seer, is that seer intrinsically seeing? Is it intrinsically associated with the activity of seeing? In other words, is my eye intrinsically seeing? Is my consciousness intrinsically seeing? Is my self intrinsically seeing? Whatever it is with everything, of course, as the seer. Is it intrinsically so associated with seeing? And then if we say that, then there will have to be something that is that quality of seeing, which makes the eye, consciousness, myself, etc., intrinsically seer. And then all the different actions that we perform.
And in that case, yeah, then we have these problems that when then my eye faculty in its intrinsic capacity for seeing sees an object, then there's already a kind of seeing that has qualified my eye faculty as that which sees. And then now it performs an additional action. And if there are two additional actions performed, there has to be two different agents also. So now is there a second eye faculty? Probably not. And so sight does not see something that is intrinsically seeing, does not engage in acts of seeing, does not participate in activities of seeing. But how about something that is intrinsically not seeing? Obviously that doesn't engage in acts of seeing either in activities of visual perception. So yeah, sight does not see, yet non sight does not see either. And then it could be that we wanted to say that there's a, if we so far have been talking about the eye faculty and perhaps thinking in terms of physical eye faculty, then which according to the Vaibhāṣika is what perceives, it's the physical eye faculty. But it could also be that we went with a sort of Sautrāntika explanation that says that the eye is a tool for seeing, but it's not the actual seer. So the seer is something else, consciousness or the person. And that still doesn't really change the basic scenario, whether we say that the eye faculty is what sees or whether we say that that's just a tool, it's one of the things that are necessary for seeing, but it's not the seer as such that doesn't help because
all these points of critique that have been brought up until now, they are equally applicable to the seer or to the faculty.
So whether I say that my eye is my eye intrinsically a seer or am I intrinsically a seer, the problem is the same. Then, "Whether seeing is involved or not, there is nothing that sees. Without the one that sees, how could there be something seen and seeing?
So that's going further with this idea that there's a tool for seeing, there are some things that we need to see, but those are not the same as the actual event of being the seer of something.
And then if we say that in that case we can… Just a minute.
So we have the idea of the seer and the tool and we also want to say that there's a dependent relation between those, that somehow the seer becomes a seer but because of the tool and yet the seer is something different than the tool. This is also a very natural idea to have. Yeah?
Student: "I'm wondering what the problem is with the collapsing of agent and action. And action? "Yeah. We keep avoiding it as if it's something that then could be totally logically unsound but actually it seems that the potential of relaxing into that as a potential reality would be an aspect of this alternating between analytical meditation and resting meditation." But then it's not that we say there actually are agents and there actually are actions and they are the same. You could say therapeutically you are the running or something like that. Certainly, yeah. "What is wrong with that?" You are the breathing and so on. There's nothing wrong with that but we're not saying that in reality that's the story. You are the breathing. We're not saying that that's you and then that's the breathing. Just let me tell you. You are the same. That's not the… am I making sense? As a tool of course it can be useful. It can also not be useful depending on the context. But not as an account of the way things are. Like it clearly isn't true even in terms of ordinary convention. "It's clearly not true that we are just an amalgamation of our actions?
To me that's not that clear actually. Our actions. The agent and action cannot be the same and agent and action cannot be different. That's what the verse also said last time. It cannot be… because then I can talk about you and I can talk about your speaking. It's not that I can't make that distinction. At the same time I want to say that it's your speaking and so on. I can't say that your speaking is entirely different from you. But to totally collapse the two doesn't work. Although we can speak like that of course and also in poetry and so on it can be very powerful to say things in that way. You are your song.
So now we are looking at the idea that there is seeing, seer and then the tool of that, the kind of implement that we have to have in order to get that. And..
the seer, being a seer is also dependent on the tool. It's because I have an eye that I can see. So if my being a seer is dependent on the eye then do I depend on the eye as a seer or as a non-seer? Then we have the same difficulty again. How could I depend for seeing while being a non-seer, while being blind? How can I say that as a blind person I'm dependent on my eye? I'm not dependent on my eye because I'm blind. And if I'm already seeing then how can I say that I depend on my eye? I already see. So this framework where we say there's a seer and that seer is dependent on something like a faculty. It also falls apart. So "whether seeing is involved or not, there's nothing that sees." So seeing here refers to the faculty.
The faculty, you can also take it as the act. Simply the, not the act but the, what should we call it? Seeing. Yeah, well the act. The activity of seeing. Do I depend on that to be.. if I depend on that to become a seer, do I depend on, am I dependent in that capacity as a seer or am I dependent on seeing while not being someone who sees? And either option is meaningless.
"Without the one that sees, how could there be something seen and seeing?" So if there's then nothing that sees, then objects seen and an act of seeing don't make sense either. If we have failed in this way to find something that sees because whether we speak of something that is already a seer or something that still needs to see, then it could not depend on a faculty and so there would never arise an event of visual perception. If that's the case, then how could there be.. how could there be objects seen and activity of visual events? "As there's nothing to see and no sight, the four such as consciousness do not exist. How could appropriation and other such factors come into existence?" So now we begin to see the implications of this in a broader way. So if there's nothing to see and no sight, then the visual consciousness that arises in accompanying the perception of an object with the eye does not occur. And then if there is no consciousness, then there's no contact, no sensation and no craving. So those links of dependent origination don't occur either.
Then how could the appropriation or the grasping that holds existence together, how could it come into being if there are no events like that where an object is seen? And then finally, "Hearing, smell, taste, touch and cognition, the hearer, the heard and so forth. Know that all are explained through sight." So we have been looking at sight, but what we hear, what we smell, taste, touch and think of everything is in the exact same way.
So that is the Chapter Three in the Mūlamadhyamaka. And we'll stop here and begin tomorrow again with Chapter Four.
17:26
Root of The Middle Way – Session 22
The Nature of Perception and Profound Wisdom
Teacher:
Location:
- Rangjung Yeshe Institute - Nepal
- Date: March 15, 2023
Description >>
Session 22 delves into the intricate relationship between dream and waking experiences, illusion, hallucination, and ordinary consciousness, challenging conventional distinctions within Mādhyamaka philosophy. The discussion questions the ontological differences between these states and emphasizes the need to reconcile this insight with practicality. Additionally, the lecture analyzes the nature of perception, challenging the distinction between the seer, the act of seeing, and the objects being seen. It highlights the interconnectedness and interdependence of these concepts and encourages a deeper examination of perception’s implications for understanding reality.
