This time we are going to begin with the teaching prayers. First there’s the prayer to pay homage to Guru Shakyamuni Buddha, the founder of the present Buddhadharma, and to Buddha, Dharma and Sangha, followed by Buddha’s advice; then the Heart Sutra, which is a most powerful practice to pacify obstacles; then the Lion-Face Dakini practice. The greatest obstacles are our defilements, negative karma and wrong concepts. Due to them, we also have outer obstacles, which don’t allow us to practice Dharma, which interfere with our practice of Dharma in the form of living beings and non-living things.

After that, we may do the short seven-limb prayer; the requesting prayer to the lineage lamas, to bless our mind and enable us to generate all the realizations from guru devotion up to enlightenment, the whole path of method and wisdom. We’ll then recite Foundation of All Good Qualities, the lamrim prayer requesting realizations.

[Rinpoche leads Praise to Shakyamuni Buddha from La ma tön pa chom dän dä…chhog tu dä pä chhag tshäl lo.]

Read the last three verses in Spanish.

[The group reads the following three verses in Spanish while Rinpoche completes the prayer in Tibetan:]

Do not commit any nonvirtuous actions,
Perform only perfect virtuous actions,
Subdue your mind thoroughly—
This is the teaching of the Buddha.

A star, a visual aberration, a flame of a lamp,
An illusion, a drop of dew or a bubble,
A dream, a flash of lightning, a cloud—
See conditioned things as such!

Through these merits may sentient beings
Attain the rank of all seeing, subdue the foe of faults,
And be delivered from samsara’s ocean,
Perturbed by the waves of aging, sickness and death.

[There is a long pause.]

The first verse signifies the four noble truths, a very important, fundamental subject in Buddhism. The Mahayana Paramitayana and the Mahayana Secret Mantra, or Vajrayana, teachings are based on that foundation.

The next verse says, at the end, “Look at all causative phenomena.” You have to remember at that time to look not just outside but at you yourself, your life, your body, your mind, your belongings, your family, and the people around you: friends, enemies and strangers. You have to begin with those causative phenomena; they’re the first things you have to remember. They exist in dependence upon causes and conditions. While permanent phenomena are not composed in dependence upon causes and conditions, impermanent phenomena are created by causes and conditions.

With “Look at all causative phenomena,” you must remember all these things: you yourself, your life, your body and mind, your possessions and the people around you: family members, friends, enemies and strangers. You can then elaborate to include forms, sounds, smells, tastes and tangible objects, similar to the subject of the Heart Sutra.

First it says here, “Look at it like a star.” It is not saying to look at everything as being like a star. It has an extremely profound meaning. You can meditate on the meaning of like a star for many hours, months and years—for a lifetime. You can meditate on it at the death time of this life, in the intermediate state and when you are again born in your mother’s womb. And when you come out, you can meditate like this. Anyway, this first one has an extremely profound meaning.

Since I have talked a little bit on emptiness during the last few days, you should be able to get a little bit of the idea. Since I have mentioned the subject already, I don’t need to go into it much at this time. While we didn’t do much analysis of the house and other things, we mainly analyzed the I in a simple way without going into the explanations in the texts. The I that we believe exists inside our body is very gross way of talking about the I. However, on these aggregates, there seems to be an I that is not merely labeled by mind, a real I in the sense of one existing from its own side, and we then believe it to be true, which is ignorance. Anyway, we did the analysis and discovered that that I is not there. You can’t find that I on the aggregates. We went through each of the five aggregates and found that none of the aggregates is that real I, and even the collection of those five is not that I. That real I exists nowhere on these aggregates. As I mentioned, from the top of the head down to the toes, you can’t find it anywhere. That’s the reality: it exists nowhere, which proves that it is totally nonexistent.

I also mentioned that the I that exists is the merely labeled I, but you can’t find even the merely labeled I on these aggregates. If you look for it, you can’t find it anywhere, from the top of the head down to the toes. But, of course, not being able to find that I on this base doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist. The merely imputed I exists. You can’t find it on this base, these aggregates, but it exists. So, where is it? Does the I exist on your nose? Right on top of your nose?

[A student says that it doesn’t.]

It doesn’t exist on top of your nose? That’s very strange. Why doesn’t the I exist on top of your nose?

Student: It’s not there. If you look for it, it’s not there.

Rinpoche: You mean look with a torch? Maybe you need to look with the Olympic torch?

So, where is the I? If the I doesn’t exist on top of your nose, it means it exists nowhere, right? If it doesn’t exist on top of your nose, it means it doesn’t exist, right? If you don’t it find here, how can you find it anywhere? Is it on your fingers? Is there some place we can find it?

Students: No.

Rinpoche: No? Does everybody agree that we can’t find it? We can’t find it on this base, the collection of the five aggregates that we have, inside the body or above the body. Does it exist inside the body?

Students: No.

Rinpoche: Everybody agrees? Yes.

Student: Might the I be in the mental continuum? If we can’t find the I on the mental continuum, how is it possible that the mental continuum goes from one life to another and still there is some I?

Rinpoche: Are you saying that the I doesn’t exist on the body but it does exist on the mind? It exists on feeling, it exists on discrimination, it exists on the compounding aggregates and it exists on the consciousness, but it doesn’t exist on form? It becomes like that, doesn’t it?

Student: No. If the I is not on the mental continuum, how is it possible that the I goes from one life to another life? Because the mental continuum goes from one life to another, the I must be there.

Rinpoche: The I is not on the mental continuum. You can’t find it on the mental continuum. If it were on the mental continuum, you would be able to find it. If you could find it, this would be totally opposite to the view of the Prasangika school. According to the Svatantrika Madhyamaka school, you can find the I on the aggregates; but according to the Prasangika school, you can’t find it. When you look for it, you can’t find it. You can’t find it on the body and you can’t find it on the mind. It’s the same.

If the I is there on the mental continuum and you can find it, it means that the I exists from its own side and is not merely imputed by mind. That becomes the conclusion: the I is not merely imputed by mind.

Not being able to find the I on the mental continuum doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist. It exists. Yes, there is a continuity of the I, the self, from life to life, just as there’s a continuity of the self during the twenty-four hours of today. In a similar way, there has been a continuity of the I since birth was taken in the mother’s womb. There was an I taking birth. Therefore, there was an I before birth was taken in the mother’s womb; there was an I about to take rebirth in the mother’s womb. There has been a continuity of the self during beginningless rebirths, and there will be a continuity up to enlightenment, and even after enlightenment. Because the continuity of consciousness never ceases, there is always continuity of the I, the self.

My question here is: Since you can’t find the I on the body and mind, where is it? This is a very good point to analyze. It’s a subtle way of checking.

Student: If there is a mental continuum and there is continuity of the I and that mental continuum is where the karmic imprints are, but at the same time everything is empty, and the I is also empty, doesn’t exist, what is that makes….

Rinpoche: The I being empty doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. I’ve said that quite a few times.

When your purse is empty of money, you can see that when you don’t find any money there. When your stomach is empty of food—no, we just had lunch…. When a mug is empty of water, you can see that when you don’t find any water in it.

Here, when we are meditating on the emptiness of the I and we say that the I is empty, we’re not meditating that the I doesn’t exist. This emptiness is not referring to the I being empty of I. You have to understand this. When you don’t understand the meaning of empty, it’s very easy to think this, which is exactly the same as saying the I doesn’t exist. If you think the I is empty of I, it’s like saying the I is not the I. It’s not like that at all.

First I would like to mention two things. When you see the body of a running cat, the mind is not cat and the body is not cat, and the association of those two is not cat. Before you see this running figure, the mind has no reason to label “cat running.” There’s no reason for the mind to choose that label. In order to label “cat running,” your eye sense has to see that particular phenomenon, the body with that particular shape and associated with a mind. If someone put batteries inside the body of a dead cat and had controls so that they could make it run, you wouldn’t call it a running cat (unless you didn’t understand and believed it to be a real live cat). If you saw a cat jumping but you knew that the body was operated by remote control like a toy airplane, you wouldn’t say that you saw a cat jumping. If you know there’s no mind, you won’t say that you’re seeing a cat jumping. You won’t label it “cat.” Even though there is a cat’s body, you won’t label it “cat” if you know there’s no mind.

Anyway, before seeing that cat running or jumping, you wouldn’t label “cat running” or “cat jumping,” because you have no reason to apply that label. You haven’t seen the particular phenomenon that receives the label “cat” or the function that receives the label “running” or “jumping.” Later you see the particular association of body and mind and particular shape that receives the label “cat.” So, the mind is not cat, the body is not cat, and the body and mind together are not cat. By seeing this particular shape that can receive the label “cat,” you then label it with the name “cat”; and by seeing it performing the function of running, you label “running.”

First you see that particular phenomenon that can receive the name “cat” and because it is performing the function of running, you merely impute “running cat.” After your mind imputes this, it then appears back to you, but, of course, for ordinary sentient beings it doesn’t appear back merely imputed by mind. That’s the reality, but it doesn’t appear in that way to us because our hallucinated mind is contaminated by the negative imprint left by past ignorance, the concept of true, or inherent, existence. Right after you have merely imputed “cat,” in the next moment the negative imprint covers that merely imputed cat with the mental fabrication of true existence, so that it has a truly existent appearance. That’s why when the cat appears back to you, it appears back in a totally wrong way as a real cat, in the sense of one existing from its own side, not merely imputed by mind.

Those are the details of how you see the cat. It is in this way that the cat appears to you and you then see the cat. That part is a total hallucination. That real cat, not merely imputed by mind, doesn’t exist; it never happened; and that real running, not merely imputed by mind, never happened. That cat running doesn’t exist at all. It’s not there at all.

Just because of the mere gathering of the consciousness and the body with that particular design, your mind just made up the label “cat,” because you have been taught by your parents or teachers that “cat” is the label for that particular phenomenon. Because you believe what you have been taught, your mind then makes up the label “cat” on seeing that particular base. Your mind just made up the label “cat” on seeing that particular phenomenon with the design that receives the name “cat.”

So, everything is like this. All the rest of phenomena, including I, action, object, are like this. The mind just makes up the label on the eye sense seeing the base, the ear sense hearing the base, the nose sense smelling the base, the tongue sense tasting the base or the sense of touch touching the base.

This is the reality. You see that particular phenomena, the association of body and mind that has that particular design and receives the label “cat,” and just apply that label. Your mind made up the label “cat” because somebody taught you that label and you believed what they taught you. By believing that, you make up the label “cat” and believe in it. That’s the reality. Then, on seeing that base, that particular design associated with a mind, running, because your mind just made up the label, you then believe that you saw a cat running. That’s it. There’s nothing more than that. This is the reality of how the cat exists. Just because you saw that, you believe that you saw a cat and that it was running. Your mind just now merely imputed and you believed in that. There’s nothing more than that.

Therefore, the cat exists. Because that phenomenon that has that name exists, cat exists. Even though it is merely labeled by your mind, cat exists. Cat exists, but it’s empty. It is not empty of cat, but it is empty of the real cat. This is the point that you have to understand. It is empty of the real cat, in the sense of one existing from its own side, existing by its nature, or being truly existent. It is empty of the not merely labeled cat. What the cat is is what is existing in mere name, merely imputed by mind. What you have to realize is that the cat is empty not of cat, but of something else, of some hallucination that doesn’t exist on the merely labeled cat. Something that is not there, something that doesn’t exist on the merely labeled cat, appears to your hallucinated mind and you believe it’s true. So, it’s empty of that. The cat is not empty of cat, but the cat is empty of the real cat that appears to you and you believe is one hundred percent true. The cat is empty of the real cat, in the sense of the cat existing from its own side, which is believed by your mind, by your ignorance, to be true. It is empty of the object of ignorance. The object of ignorance is the cat existing from its own side, not merely labeled by the mind. So, the cat is empty of the object of ignorance. You can see that cat is not empty of cat. If you don’t see that, if you’re not clear on this point, it will be difficult to meditate on emptiness because you won’t have a clear idea of what the cat is empty of. If you think cat is empty of cat, you have lost the base.

After seeing the aggregates with that particular design that receives the name “cat,” you then label “cat.” This shows that what you see is not cat; it’s the base to be labeled “cat.” When you see that base running, your mind merely imputes “cat” and “running” and you believe in that. That’s the running cat. That’s it.

Here you can now see that the cat is not empty of cat, but cat is empty of the real cat, meaning the one existing from its own side, not merely labeled by mind. The cat is empty of that. Cat exists but it’s empty. While the cat is existing, it’s empty, empty of the real cat, of the inherently existent cat. While the cat is empty of that, it is existing. There is total unification of those two. That is the Middle Way view, the Prasangika view. So, it’s the same with the I.

To our hallucinated mind it looks as if there’s an I, but one that is not merely imputed by mind, existing from its own side. But if you look for it, you can’t find it anywhere, neither on these aggregates nor anywhere else. It is totally nonexistent. In other words, to make it very simple, it means that the I that we have been believing in from this morning, from our birth in this body and from beginningless rebirths, this real I, not merely labeled by mind, is completely, totally nonexistent. In reality, it’s not there. It is totally nonexistent right there from where it is appearing. So, as I have mentioned in the past, this is my mudra for meditating on emptiness. From where it is appearing, it’s totally nonexistent there. [Rinpoche demonstrates his mudra.] There’s no mudra from the lineage, from great lamas—this is my own.

When we meditate, we can’t find that real I anywhere; it’s totally nonexistent. It’s the same with everything, from the aggregates down to the particles of the atoms and the split-seconds of consciousness. What appears is that all these are real, but there’s no such thing there. You can’t find them; they’re totally nonexistent.

I’m not going to elaborate further. It’s the same with all the rest of the phenomena. Whatever exists is empty; it’s empty of the real one, in the sense of existing from its own side, not merely labeled by mind. Everything that exists is merely labeled by mind. Therefore, everything is empty of that which is not merely labeled by mind. You have to understand that. They’re the total opposite of each other.

Everything we look at—this building, the pillars, the ceiling, the floor, the lights, the flowers, the offering bowls—appears to be real, to exist from its own side, to be appearing from there, from its own side. Everything appears to be real, not merely labeled by mind, even though everything is merely imputed by our mind. All these are hallucinations. They are totally nonexistent, totally empty. There’s no such thing there—not even an atom of that exists.

Again, you have to understand that I’m not saying there’s no house or no water bowls. I’m not saying there’s no kitchen, no food. I’m not saying there’s no parents, no father and mother, no children.

Everything appears to you to be real and you believe it to be true, but everything is totally nonexistent, empty. This is how the buddhas’ omniscience and the arhats and higher bodhisattvas, who have the wisdom directly perceiving emptiness, see everything. For us, everything—including the meditator, the I, the body and mind, the aggregates, forms, sounds, smells, tastes and tangible objects—even though merely imputed by mind appears to be not merely imputed by mind, to be something real, which is a total hallucination. We’re living in a total hallucination. As I’ve now told you many times, we see everything as real because the negative imprint left by past ignorance decorates everything with this projection of inherent existence, which makes everything real. You have to understand what makes us see everything as real, as existing from its own side.

Now, the way buddhas’ omniscience sees everything is the total opposite to the way we see things and believe them to exist. They see all this as totally nonexistent; there’s no such thing, not even an atom of it. It’s all completely empty, totally empty. Not only the buddhas but even the higher bodhisattvas and arhats, the arya beings with the wisdom directly perceiving emptiness, see all this as totally empty.

So, like a star…. Just as you don’t see a star in the daytime, those with the wisdom directly perceiving emptiness see how everything that appears to you as something real and which you believe a hundred percent to be true is a total hallucination. They see all this is totally empty. So, “look at all the causative phenomena like a star” has that unbelievably deep meaning.

With like a star, you have to think of how they see you and everything else as being totally empty of the real ones that appear to you and in which you believe. You have to meditate on how they see everything, which is the reality. That becomes the antidote to the arising of attachment, anger and all the other delusions. It helps you to cease all the delusions and then achieve liberation.

Next rab rib, or defective sight, is used as an example. It refers to the defects of sight that cause you to see falling hairs and so forth. So, it means that when we look at causative phenomena, everything, including I, action, object, appears real to us, as something real existing from there, and we believe one hundred percent that this is true. That’s the foundation of suffering. All the problems come from that: anger, attachment, jealousy, pride and all the other emotional minds. But if you meditate in this way, it all disappears; there’s no basis for it, nothing. So, the meaning of this example is also related to the hallucination of true existence.

Kar me rab rib mar me dang…. All causative phenomena are dependent arisings, dependent on causes and conditions, just as a butterlamp depends on butter, a wick, people to make it and many other things. All causative phenomena, as I mentioned to you before, depend on so many causes and conditions, so this example is related to that. Understanding gross dependent arising helps you to realize impermanence, which helps you not to give rise to attachment, as well as anger and all the other delusions.

Next is gyu ma, an illusion. This is also related to the inherently existent appearance, the truly existent appearance. Everything appears to us to be something real, not merely labeled by mind, and we believe it to be true.

Then, zil pa chhu, water dew. All causative phenomena are like dew. Since dew on a plant can drop at any time, this example is to remind you of impermanence, that causative phenomena are impermanent in nature.

Next is bur, a bubble. Causative phenomena are like a bubble, which can be popped at any time. No matter how beautiful they look, they can be stopped, ceased, at any time.

Then, “look at causative phenomena like a dream.” Again, this is related to the truly existent appearance. All that appears to you as something real and which you totally believe to be true is like a dream, not true.

Next is like lightning. When there’s lightning, you see things very clearly then suddenly everything becomes dark. This shows impermanence. So, all these causative phenomena are like lightning, impermanent in nature.

Then, like a cloud. When you see clouds in the sky, they’re there one minute but the next minute when you look, they’re gone. Or while you’re looking at them, they change; they cannot stay the same. Causative phenomena change, decay, not only day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute and second by second, but even within a second. They don’t last.

So, this verse is Buddha’s very powerful advice as to how to cut the negative emotional thoughts, the delusions, which enables you to achieve liberation, and with bodhicitta, you also then achieve enlightenment.

“Jang chhub sem chhog rin po chhe….”

[The students offer a short mandala.]