Emptiness - Swami Sarvapriyananda

foreign [Music] the subject that I selected for this talk is a little out of the way but it's connected to Santa Barbara I mean Santa Barbara is sort of responsible for it emptiness it's uh entirely to do with Buddhism and a particular brand of Buddhism Tibetan Buddhist philosophy why I came to this subject is the beautiful Bookshop that you see there well I hope you've visited it and if you haven't I strongly recommend it if you just want one a wonderfully wonderful selection curated selection I'm looking at the curator anyway curated selection of books on several aspects of spirituality and philosophy that's the go-to place um especially Buddhism it's a lovely collection and I I think half my collection on Buddhism is from here from Tibetan Buddhism from from this Bookshop and you just want to go sit quietly get in some good vibes or meditate that's a very good place to go to actually my interest in this subject started quite some time back when I became a monk that was about how many 30 years ago now so as a novice monk I in our training center in our main Monastery in India on the bank of the Ganges I came across the name nagarjuna for the first time I came across his works the mulama I came across the terms emptiness it's the English translation of the Sanskrit shunyata means emptiness the void and I was fascinated and who wouldn't be it sounds it sounds cool as Americans would say but what does it mean and that started a long journey over nearly three decades where I wanted to understand it in terms of advaita vedanta which is the sub which is the philosophy that I am familiar with which is the philosophy that we have here in the vedanta society um which was the philosophy that I was learning as a young monk in the monastery there it seemed this concept of emptiness seemed in some ways eerily you know it felt familiar and it felt very different also so so it was very very fascinating I kept on studying reading by myself sort of getting reading whatever I could get my hands on I remember one of the early books which really influenced me was the central philosophy of Buddhism by TRV Murthy he was a very well-known professor of Indian philosophy which took this nagarjuna's philosophy as being the central philosophy of Buddhism and nagarjuna's philosophy starts off with the famous Silence of the Buddha it seems that the Buddha whenever he's asked these final ultimate questions of philosophy you know is there a self or there's no self what happens after uh after you attain Nirvana you know you attend Nirvana so what happens after that when the Buddha's body will go away so where does the Buddha go then things like that there were some I think 14 questions they're all philosophical questions and the Buddha kept quiet and when he was asked that is there some reality after death and the Buddha said have I said that and the monk who asked said oh so there's nothing after that have I said that but then it has to be one of the two it has to be that something continues or something does not continue after death or after an Enlightenment whatever after Nirvana and then the all the other teachers teach this either this or that what do you you teach and the Buddha said what the tatagata teaches is you know he said that supposing the person was hit by an arrow and if you go to help him and the person says wait wait before you help me help me tell me what material the arrow is made of who's the one who shot the arrow what cast does that person belong to what would you say to this person you you'd think that this person is crazy that the the monk replied I think he's mad he would die before you you answer these questions you know first he needs help and the Buddha replied precisely the tatagata teaches that there is suffering there is a cause of suffering there is a solution to suffering freedom from suffering called Nirvana and there's a way of reaching it but that left those philosophical questions unanswered now why did he not answer those questions and nagarjuna takes up or if not nagarjun at least he takes it up and says see one reason could be maybe Buddha didn't know he was kind of dumb no that couldn't be because he had studied all the available philosophies at that time and gone out and practiced and sought out the most revered masters of his time and studied with them and practiced with them so it's it's impossible that he did not know the variety of answers on offer at that time the second thing could be that it was not practical that's how most people take it it's in Practical spirituality you have to first you know practice and become enlightened there's no use going into those philosophical wrangles it's hair splitting it's not edifying spiritually or ethically morally edifying so don't go into all that that could be and many people think that's that was the point that the Buddha was making with his silence but there could be a third alternative a third alternative is maybe silence is the right answer to these questions and so nagarjuna's philosophy of emptiness is based on that that if you could give a philosophical answer it would be wrong it would be ultimately contradictory it would be um it would lead to absurdity if you follow it through it would be self-contradictory it would fall apart upon examination that doesn't mean that there is no ultimate truth but it could be that the ultimate truth is beyond language it could be that the ultimate truth is beyond conception Beyond conceptualizing maybe that's what the Buddha was aiming at and nagarjuna's whole development of Buddhist philosophy he came about 500 years after the Buddha so nearly two thousand years ago is based on this premise seems to be like that so emptiness now it didn't make I mean I I studied and kept on reading but it really didn't come together for me it it wasn't all that clear to me it seemed it's very important in Buddhism the term emptiness has been used by the Buddha himself and every Buddhist philosopher and teacher since till till today so you can imagine there is a lot of literature on nothing emptiness if I'm joking Emptiness is not nothing but still if you take it as nothing they have said a lot about nothing and it's very you can see it's very subtle it's deeply argued it's not always very consistent so what does it all mean what what use is it and how does it help us in our spiritual life and finally from my perspective I'm not a Buddhist I'm not a Tibetan Buddhist or a Buddhist of any any shade or coloring but from my perspective as a vedantist how would it relate to me how would it relate to advaita vedanta specifically and to Hinduism in general so these are the big issues big questions we're going to delve into in the next 45 minutes it's a long long period to cover 2 000 years what helped um again was a few years ago I took two courses at the Harvard Divinity School one under Professor Jay Garfield he was teaching indo-tibetan Buddhism the philosophy of nagarjuna and his followers as it was developed in India and later on in Tibet about six seven hundred years of development in India and about seven or eight hundred seven hundred years of development in Tibet teaching a course on that and I was lucky enough to join that course it really helped me enrich my understanding of of nothing on emptiness and there was another course in Emerson Hall the philosophy department at Harvard by Professor parimal patil where he was teaching classical Indian Buddhism classical Indian Buddhist philosophy so all the Buddhist philosophy which was done in India in Sanskrit so period of approximately A Thousand Years starting about nearly 400 500 years after the Buddha when major philosophical activity started to be done in Sanskrit in Buddhism and ending with the destruction of the nalanda university and all of that so those two courses helped but still I didn't get a clear idea about this emptiness the big picture didn't quite emerge I mean I had a lot of information now a lot of information and I had read many many books thanks to Professor Garfield especially he is known for his super dense readings and so every week you have to read 300 or 400 pages and you can imagine it was fascinating and also very difficult because these texts what a journey they had traveled from ancient India from this great monasteries Monastery universities of nalanda written nearly 2000 years ago in India several hundred years in India development in India then they migrated to Tibet these texts they were taken by monks to Tibet and they were translated from Sanskrit to Tibetan and the Tibetans worked on it they commented on it developed it for six seven eight hundred years more and then um Harvard University in the 23rd to 21st century originally in a Sanskrit philosophical Sanskrit to philosophical Tibetan to almost incomprehensible English and you have to read 300 pages of that every week so I had a lot of information but still was not very clear um until until very recently a book came to my hands it's called Progressive stages of meditation on emptiness it sounds a little Bland but it's a really remarkable little book not so well known but it's by Tibetan master Kenpo sultrim Gyan so rinpoche I heard from Tibetan Buddhist scholar and practitioner here in the United States Andrew holczyk who's a friend he told me that the Rin purchase is in his last days now he is a vote to pass but he has left Behind These Treasures especially this one this little book Progressive stages of meditation and emptiness and when I read that for the first time it all came together for me what is emptiness what is meant by emptiness what is the deeper and deeper understanding of emptiness and how do you apply it in your spiritual life so what he has said in that book I'm just going to present before you I'm going to summarize it's a little book but it's very dense so I'm going to summarize this for us here that's going to be the subject the agenda for this evening nothing just nothing there's no interest it's just emptiness um so what their inputia has done is in this book he takes up the concept of emptiness as it is found as it is developed in Buddha's philosophy over the ages and divides it into five stages so five stages is very methodical um the first in each stage he tells us what is the understanding of emptiness and how do you meditate upon it and what benefit you get up get from it and then goes deeper and deeper until he reaches what he considers to be the final stage now before I launch into this just uh flag I like to flag this this is his where his take on it and remember he is a Tibetan uh Buddhist monk so there are many many shades many many sects of Buddhism very clearly and reasonably there would be many others who might not agree with this stake but it helped me and you will see it's a pretty elegant way of tying together a huge amount of philosophy of nearly 2000 years you know so so just having keeping that in the background it's not the final word I'm not claiming it is I'm sure the input himself doesn't claim It's the final word but I found it very very helpful and especially from our perspective as non-dualists are breathings as Hindus also all right here goes here What's the phrase here goes nothing that's so good peculiarly apt the first stage according to the rinpoche is what he calls the shravaka stage the shravaka stage it's an entry into the concept of non-dualism um we might be more familiar with this as terawada Buddhism the Buddhism which you see prevalent in Sri Lanka in Southeast Asia different uh it's quite widespread and it's a vast philosophy in itself very rich and their conception of emptiness is this it can be described as emptiness of self what is it what it says is that we think we exist that I am a self here I am embodied as a self I am this person and I exist somehow in this body and mind and the understanding in general actually throughout Buddhism is that this is a root cause of all our problems I am this limited being apart from others and I exist independently by myself and I must take care of I me myself all nice things must come to this why because I am this here I am somewhere here and everything must be made to you know gratify me people and places and food and you know gadgets and activities and everything for for me and that seems to be um axiomatic we don't even question it of course I want to be happy and who is this I they don't question it so the theravar didn't launch upon this questioning and what they're going to end up is this what we consider as the most important thing is empty there's if you search for it you won't find it the most important thing in our lives whether we might be too shy to admit it that I me myself am the most important thing but we behave we think that way we behave that way self and if you search for it you won't find anything that's the emptiness of self how so and just by the way SRI ramakrishna there is a very interesting little book the teachings of Sri ramakrishna in English it's translated as the words of the master SRI Rama Krishna upadesh in Bengali it was collected by Swami brahmananda um a disciple of Sri ramakrishna the first president of our order so whom Shri ramakrishna considered his spiritual son he was not one for writing books or giving lectures but he did write this book and it's a complete a compilation of sudama krishna's teachings selected curated by Swami brahmananda and the very first teaching number one if you search for who am I he says if you find out who you are you'll find God I'm paraphrasing if you find out who you are you'll find God so the next thing is to find out who you are and then he says if you search for who am I you won't find anything I'm Translating that and then he goes on to say something more if he had stopped here he would have been a Buddhist or or a shravaka Buddhist he goes on to say a little more you know sudama Krishna says if you investigate what am I am I the hands or the feet or the blood or the flesh or the bones and you find there is nothing here that corresponds to I you will never end up with an Essence if you search for I no essence you will no find no essential thing here in this body mind which will correspond to I which we have instinctly we feel that we do exist no you won't find anything of course if you stop there he would have been a perfect shavaka Buddhist there about Buddhist but then he of course being a Hindu he goes one step forward and he says what remains is the self pure Consciousness is so that's we'll set that aside but it's curious what the shravaka the theravada Buddhist says is exactly what SRI ramakrishna starts I mean the swan brahmananda at least starts his book on SRI ramakrishna's teachings with this teaching so how do they do how do they say this what they the Buddhists say is look at yourself what we consider to be ourselves this bundle of body mind this personality and if you analyze this if you take a close look at this you will find there are five components here five components which is the famous Pancha skandha five Aggregates of Buddhism this is again something common to all Buddhist schools the five Aggregates what are the five Aggregates first of all the body the material body the technical name for that is the rupascanda the form basically then the second one would be the feelings Sensations which we have now right now you have you feel good I don't feel good or you feel sort of mixed and neutral so vedana whether the aggregate aggregate or heap of feelings Sensations Pleasant unpleasant neutral third is what is called samskar ascanda a mass of tendency see we are all different what makes us different we have different personalities different Tendencies different personality types so these Tendencies which are stored up in our subconscious you know likes and dislikes dispositions all of these in Sanskrit they are called samskaras This is a common idea in many Indian philosophies so in um this is called samskara then the fourth one would be what is known as the sanghya skanda would be all the mass of perceptions and thoughts so seeing hearing smelling tasting touching also thinking your mind itself is treated as a sense a sort of you know quote unquote Sixth Sense so thinking imagining all of that all our internal first person experiences which we are having all of that is one pillar or one aggregate called the sangeas and finally we are all aware we're all aware awareness itself so we have a continuous you know flashes of awareness we are aware sometimes more sometimes less so this awareness which we all experience all the time this is called the vigyan ascanda the aggregate of awareness so your five things five components the body the sensations the producible predispositions our Tendencies basically our character as it stands right now and then um perceptions and thoughts mental activity and perceptual activity and awareness all of these five taken together this is what is there right now this is all you can find if you search for it this is all you can find if you some of you are advaitians I think that reminds me of something the five sheets of the human personality you know the food the body the vital sheet the mind the intellect sheath and the causal sheet you'll be right it's pretty similar it's um it's just one way of analyzing this what is experienced in all of this where am I really not just the body because the body has changed so much it's a mass of Flesh and Blood and Bones like SRI ramakrishna says am I a born if you put it so bluntly we would say no no I'm not a bone am I a little bit of blood or a little bit of Flesh or no it's all that gooey icky sticky stuff which is inside am I any of that no we would say that's gross by the way all of our books translate the student Sanskrit as the gross body in English which is peculiarly apt it's it has a meaning in in American English nowadays gross means that kind of you know gross that kind of gross and it's gross pretty gross and and we we really don't identify with that if you if if you're pushed to it we would say no I'm not literally a bone or a bundle of Bones this is a song by the way I don't know somebody pointed on a favorite old American song it's called Dem Bones you should look it up in on YouTube and somebody showed me and I really liked it's a very vedantic song it just it's a skeleton it's a song about a skeleton living life you know that's just exactly it just sees each of us as a skeleton going through Like Them Bones um no we we refuse to say that I am those bones similarly and then many other arguments could be brought up you know from baby Hood to Childhood to teenage the body has undergone such tremendous changes up to old age and I am still I feel I'm the same person how can the tremendously changing body and I the unchanging person be the same how can changing and unchanging be the same it's contradictory and I feel I'm unchanging Common Sense tells me I'm the same person who was the that little baby the pictures which your mom insists on embarrassing you with and I was that kid in school and that young person even law interests you are the same person legally you are the same person and yet it can't literally be that body all right so it's not the body similar things apply for feelings and thoughts which are even more evanescent even they're they're at least the body is the Merit of being pretty solid and right here in your face but the mind and feelings they're so Smoky so events and so floating they're very important to us but they don't seem very substantial and if you look they are also very changing the the thoughts and emotions the ideas that we had as kids you know back in grade school and what you feel like right now um very different except for the kid who's in grade school right there so uh it's all very different and yet I feel I'm the same one who thought that all I wanted to ever do was to drive a car or that's why Vivekananda said he wanted to be a bus conductor or some a horse carriage driver or something like that so as a kid you wanted to do that I'm the same person thoughts have changed so much my wants my understanding of the world my knowledge everything has changed so much how can I be the thoughts how can I be the feelings which change moment to moment um perceptions continuously changing and even awareness you know it increases and decreases and there are flashes of this awareness and in deep sleep or in coma or anesthesia awareness disappears altogether so I am not any of these nor I am the I have a bundle of all of these we might insist a not so fast Swami I think I'm not any of these but I'm I'm surely the bundle of all of these I'm all of these together but that's not very logical you know that bundle is continuously changing and I don't feel I am changing as as this individual Body Mind are changing and this bundle is disparate and very you know composed of many different things which come and go how can I be that one constant self throughout my life in this ever changing little bundle so when we investigate we find nothing corresponds to the um to self this is called the shunyata The Emptiness of the self this body mind complex is empty of any Essence empty of any self isn't that terrible no the Buddhist insists that this is wonderful you are set free you're set free from all the narrowness all the grasping all the limited-ness of being a little um person forever set against a vast world and competing for existence competing for resources with everybody else set up against everybody else no you're free our anger our greed our lust our passion it all requires a base as a person as a self if it's empty inside who is there to be insulted who is there to suffer who is there to be anxious about and to be to be defended and Justified oh there's nobody there the house is empty some people are Disturbed at this and some people if you're a dentist and all you might be disturbed at this but some people love it it just it gives you a great sense of freedom and and Independence and it is a great spiritual benefit all right one way of understanding each of the five stages of emptiness understanding of emptiness is the dream example so in each stage I will refer back to our Dream example what do I mean by The Dream example just the way we dream and what we think about dreams so suppose in a dream you were visiting you know in the this beautiful Temple this ocean out there Santa Barbara on our right the hills at the back and this beautiful Temple here and then you woke up and you saw it was a dream you thought you were sitting and meditating here when you wake up you realize that the one who was sitting and meditating in the temple in the dream wasn't really me it appeared like that but it was empty there's nobody there this is what the the shravaka stage of the therawada stage wants to say you want to understand emptiness using our dreams when we wake up we admit it was a dream and the implication is that I the person in the dream was not really there there was no real person in the dream and so all the bad things that might have happened and sometimes lots of bad things happen a lot of anxiety dreams are there you you might be being chased by a tiger that's not so common in Santa Barbara but maybe there is a wildfire coming and you can't get out of the way um which is worse actually so and then when you wake up you realize that person who's anxious about the wildfire and trying to get out of the way trying to save himself or herself wasn't there was no person there that's the emptiness of the self right now the claim is in our waking stage also there's no person here always remember do this make a difference between conventional truth and ultimate truth ultimately there's no person here conventionally you can go on with your life if you have been going on with your life without a person a driverless Google car so you can continue riding that car also you know it's just it's like you're writing this cab and you thought there was a driver in The Upfront suddenly you realize it's a driverless Google car there's nobody driving but then the driving can go on there's no problem there at all okay so this is the uh the first stage and there is a whole process of meditation where you sit calm down and relax and what they call is summon the bodhichitta bodhichitta is a combination of wisdom and compassion you generate that and the desire to help all sentient beings go beyond suffering and then you meditate on the five individually on the fight scandals the five Aggregates pay attention to the body and see that I am nowhere here pay attention to the feelings and see that I am nowhere here pay attention to the thoughts perceptions our Tendencies some scars even the awareness which comes in goes I the thing I is nowhere here you know then why do I feed somebody might ask a question why do I feel I exist as a person then why at all the bundle has something to do with it you're right you are the entire bundle but the entire bundle generates an illusion of a separate independent self cut off from everything else a small self existing somewhere there like in a sense there's some essential self here it feels like that it's like if you take a flashlight and swing it around rapidly it'll look like a circle of light but there's no circle of light it's just a DOT of light going round and round fast similarly it's the activities of the body the mind the sensations the perceptions the thoughts awareness which generates the feeling of I here but there's no I as SRI ramakrishna himself says when you inquire you will find nothing no Essence to the whole thing it's quite dramatic and quite unhindu because as Hindus but also as Christians Muslims use we would always feel that there is a an immortal Soul we have a self it's a very radical way of thinking I mean quite different from the idea of there's somebody in here you know all right now comes the second stage these are deeper and deeper levels of understanding of nothing I mean emptiness and he is not criticizing the earlier earlier stages in the previous stages but they are foundational for understanding they're all correct they're foundational for understanding the more advanced and more subtle stages of emptiness so the second understanding comes from the second stage comes from a school called the mind only School mind only School the multiple names for this this is a very important School of Buddhist philosophy in Ancient India and also in Tibet mind only School before I go into this into the mind only school what we need to know something that happens in between we are moving from one phase of Buddhism to a huge new phase of Buddhism this is the transition from terawada to Mahayana foreign literally means the greater vehicle so this is the kind of Buddhism or the kinds of buddhisms which are popular across Tibet in China and Korea and Japan some parts of Southeast Asia and a lot of America and Santa Barbara Mahayana Buddhism and among the many differences by the way the mahayan is called the previous stage which we talked about the therawada the shravaka they call them hinayana but that's pejorative that's why we don't use that term hinayana means lesser vehicle the smaller vehicle we are the bigger vehicle the SUV and you are what I see Dan a Corolla no we don't do that so the Mahayana one of the major transitions was the goal of spiritual life what do you want in spiritual life and the therawada the first stage the goal was freedom from suffering that's what the Buddha said attain Liberation attain Nirvana and you're free from suffering and this was called arhat the person who has reached enlightenment and continues to live in this body for a while and when the body falls apart he's gone after death and that's it Liberation done he is freed of suffering he or she is freed of suffering now the imayan is say that our goal should be not only that that's fine that's really great but the goal should be the the removal of suffering of not only this person but every person the removal of suffering of every sentient being the goal of life should not be our heart it should be Buddha the characteristic of a Buddha is he works the Buddha Works to remove the suffering of all sentient beings so it's not that I'll get Enlightenment first and uh so When We Were Young brahmacharis The Young novice monks are still I just remembered in the first few days very enthusiastic about doing this or that you know reading this book meditating this way doing this practice and that practice a senior monk looked at us and said a nice race you all have set up who will get God first uh so like that instead of doing that I might even spend lifetime after lifetime working for the removal of suffering of all sentient beings so this is the famous bodhisattva of how not only to attain Enlightenment and Liberation for myself but the greater vow is to attain Enlightenment and Liberation for all living beings strangely enough Swami Vivekananda he has echoed this sentiment he says in one place he says it may be that I shall see fit to give up this body but I shall not cease to work until he all beings realize that they are one with God so this is the Mahayana shift this is crucial to our investigation of emptiness why the criticism from the mind only School of the earlier understanding of emptiness is this you have understood The Emptiness of yourself but what about the universe you haven't said anything about the universe there's a whole world out there what is this universe and according to the therawada schools it's a vast word a massive whirling matter a flux of matter whirling changing continuously and that's it it's not important but what is it actually and so in the mind only school they will try they will show that not only is this body mind empty of self there's no self here self emptiness but also the emptiness of the universe again the dream example is good for to understand this in the dream example when you wake up you realize oh I wasn't actually at this at the temple that person there was no such person there the person is empty that person in the dream is empty but it wasn't the temple it wasn't the ocean it wasn't the sky or the Earth it was just my mind dreaming all of that stuff so all the things I saw in the dream the people the places the animals and plants and the events they were all empty but what were they actually the person in the dream and the Universe I saw in the dream they were all the dreaming mind my mind and don't look so impressed or puzzled it's just that and this just how we all all of us actually see dreams when we wake up from a dream what do we say oh it was a dream what does that mean I wasn't the person really there and there wasn't really there and there was no the places and the things which happened and the people in the dream none of it was there it was all dreamed up imagined in my mind I was taking a nap that's all that's what we think and so the rimpoche uses this dream example to show even the universe is empty how is this universe empty it seems the earlier guys were right there is a bundle of Body Mind Sensations and a physical universe and yes the self is empty but the universe is there now what the mind only school like the name says mind only remember what was there in a dream the mind that's all that there was and it dreamed up the dream world and the dream persons and all exactly the same thing is going on in the waking world according to the mind-only school this waking world you and all other people and we all of us and all of this right now not in the dream right now here it's in your mind it's in our minds they admit multiple minds but that's all even the bodies in the mind what about the brain that's also in the mind and the world that's in the mind how so what they do is they erase the difference between the mental and the physical they erase the difference between waking and dreaming there is the difference between baking and dreaming one great Buddhist Master dharmakiti he said the colored blue and the cognition of blue your experience of blue in the mind and the color blue they're indivisible there's no such thing as a color outside it's just your experience of blue if you want to erase the difference between dreaming and waking you'll have to work very hard because we are quite convinced waking is real and dreams are dreams and these people will ask us the mind only school will ask us why do you think the waking is more real than the dream we have multiple arguments I'll give you some then you'll get get a feel of how these people think their mind only School so we might argue for example why do I think this is real and my dreams are not not real because well naively let's say this is more vivid dreams are sort of you know Smoky not very clear the more you think about it the more hazy it appears I really have to work on my therapist's couch to bring up the materials from my dream and tell him what I'm I'm have been dreaming about but this is real this is so strong and real when when we snap out of a dream and wake up we feel that was um I experienced it was kind of vague and this is real the couch I'm lying down on and the room I'm sitting in this is really real so this is vivid and that was not vivid this is industrial grade reality you know and that was kind of some Smoky virtual reality or whatever and the mind only school will say um but in your dreams that was not the case in your dreams you never felt that this looks kind of dubious you know Smoky it must be a dream we never feel that generally we don't it seems we don't doubt it at all it seems perfectly all right it may seem crazy after you wake up things which happened in your dream but when you're dreaming it seems perfectly all right not only that they argue in this way this is my only School arguments um all right suppose take a case a person who has who is maybe suffering from Alzheimer's or Parkinson's and whose waking reality has come become kind of um shaky you know I don't remember things just what happened just now a lot of memories are faded and my eyes don't work too well my ears don't work too well I don't hear Too Well I don't see too well everything is Smoky everything is a little um dull and I can't hear understand what's going on my waking world has become pretty vague but you know my dreams are very sharp and clear in that case would you say the dream has become the waking and the waking is the new dream no you wouldn't say that you wouldn't say to the such a person oh so now this is your dream and that's your waking reality you wouldn't say that so vividness is no criteria for uh reality Waking Life Could Be vague and dreams could be sharp and clear that doesn't make them this real and that false they are similar that way we might argue well that was not a good argument but how about this it's um permanent I always wake up into this life I wish it would be a different life each time but it isn't same problem same people same job same Financial situations same social media status I wake up to that every time and my dreams are different every time so the dreams are dreams and this is real but again you can see the same logic the mind only people will say if your dreams if you had the same dream every time and your Waking Life became pretty chaotic you know there was a movie a Hollywood movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind so this person has no memory something like that or story or something like that and so every experience was absolutely new so the waking word every time you woke up into this world it would feel like fresh and new and never seen anything like this before wow and suppose you had the same dream over and over again so the dream would become continuous and your Waking Life would become discontinuous would that make the Waking Life a dream and the dream life waking no it wouldn't in that case continuity is not an argument for making baking life real continuity is not an argument for reality then we might argue I can give you many such arguments but I'll give you one more and stop uh public many people ask this this is real because Swami we are all sharing this we are all experiencing this together we all will agree we are in this beautiful Temple we are in um you know in front in front of the Pacific Ocean and we are listening to a talk about nothingness and dreams and all that stuff we all agree to this but each person's dream is private and therefore that dream is a personal private thing in my head each person separate but here we are all common we are sharing this seems like a good good argument it isn't it's a very poor argument because again in the dream in your dreams maybe you're sitting and sharing a cup of coffee in a cafe with some friends and all your friend friends will see the same Cafe the same cup of coffee and the same surroundings nobody in your dream tells you you know and you enjoy your tea I can't see it because it's it's a dream you know I can't see anything you're seeing because it's your dream no they all share the same public reality in your dream so shared reality virtual reality for example could be a shared reality and yet it wouldn't be true that's why it's called virtual so for all these reasons the mind only school they really scare you you begin to see the difference between waking and dreaming beginning to disappear um so the whole world our waking world is also like a dream it's empty there are no we think there are there's a world outside that's empty it's empty of an external separate reality the person and the objects are all mined and therefore mind only and therefore when we meditate we use this you know to draw our attention from the external world because there's no external world it's all in the mind and also this person is also in the mind and then become the Mind down they analyze reality into three levels of reality they say the first level of reality which we have is what we take to be this common reality they call it parikalpita imaginary dream this what we are living in is a dream is a virtual reality you if you like the movie Matrix congratulations you are living in The Matrix and this is a profound old ancient School of Buddhist philosophy the mind only they seriously believe this and they practiced it um yeah it's also pretty similar to something called subjective idealism in Western philosophy there was um Barkley Bishop Barkley is Bartley named after Bishop Barkley Berkeley yep so Berkeley here right in near uh in in California not in California it's uh so he was a philosopher uh who got the same idea that it could be all in the mind we got it six or seven hundred years after these people who discussed it thread bear so emptiness of self emptiness of the world in what sense it's all mind now comes the third uh stage of of emptiness a deeper even deeper understanding this is the school of nagarjunan chandrakiti and a whole series of Tibetan Buddhists down to the present-day the lilama and all these all the monks the middle path and they are the Specialists The Emptiness people they are the specialists in emptiness one another name for the school is emptiness School foreign they are the main main person here is um nagarjuna and his disciple a follower after that Chandra kirti and some others and it really took on a life of its own in Tibet and it's the basis of Tibetan Buddhism the basis of Tibetan Buddhism today is a sort of a synthesis between the emptiness School the ancient Indian School of emptiness and also the mind only School kind of synthesis between the two this is the fundamental core philosophy of his Holiness the Dalai Lama and all the Tibetan Masters include including the author of this book which I'm using so what do they say they say you're right the self is empty and the universe you're right the universe is empty and the mind in which all of this is appearing ah that is empty too so what's real what's not empty no everything is empty it's in mind only no mind only is wrong there's no mind only that's also empty too because of time problems I'm going to give you the core argument and move on fast so there are two schools of The Emptiness School two sub schools called the swatantrika and the prasangika the difference is need not bother us here but I have to mention it because it's really huge in Tibet they went through about a 700 year of very intense debate fight including some actual combat to and debates to and finally the winner is the prasangika there is no real swatantrika school they're all emptiness people um anyway I will not go into the technicalities but it's important for them practically for us they are saying the same thing what they are saying is look at the crucial Point made by the mind only school it is in the mind all of these things are happening and if you ask what is the mind in the mind there's a person in the mind there's the universe but what is the Mind according to the mind only School the mind is each instant of cognitive cognition you're seeing color that's one instant of cognition you're seeing a person one incident of cognition you feel bad that one instant of cognition and we have a series of these incidents of cognition each succeeding the earlier one very fast and that's our life us I mean the Modern English phrase a stream of Consciousness captures it very well I mean it's something it means something else in literature but something very similar what these uh mind only school was saying all our life is a stream of consciousness moments of cognition they call it vigyanam vignana a flash of Consciousness a flasher like a flash of light each flash of light each flash of Consciousness has within it a knower and a known object you don't know what and the known object and that's how our life is going on nowadays um emptiness people nagarjuna and his followers they are hyper logicians and they they are extremely good they wield the sword of logic and their goal is to cut through illusion that they wields the broom of logic their goal is to sweep away all Concepts nagarjuna says The Emptiness of all philosophies The Emptiness of all philosophies and if you see at this moment just a minute Mr nagarjuna what about your philosophy so is it empty or not empty if you say your philosophy is not empty then there's at least one philosophy which is not empty but if you say all philosophies are empty then your statement that all philosophies are empty is also empty right nagarjuna is a beautiful comeback to that he says if you say anything any philosophical position if you take I will show you that it's empty logically and they can show it but since I do not take any philosophical position you can't accuse me of the same fault if you ask me what's your philosophy then what do you do as a philosopher anything you say is wrong I'm going to show that to you SRI ramakrishna a person who is all inclusive and so harmonious in one place he says everybody thinks his watch is right you know siddam Krishna says that it's that reminded me of nagarjuna the emptiness of all philosophies and there's a saying that a person wearing two watches is never sure of the time before our internet age now everybody is on the same time here all right so what would be nagarjunas and The Emptiness people what would their response to the mind only people their response is this one of the instruments they have a whole they're very forensic they have a whole range of scary medical equipment logical medical equipment to cut things apart so it is one of the instruments they have they take it out and you can see all the other philosophers shaking in their boots or sandals is called the singular many they say any entity you take up like a hand take a hand or fist is it one or many is it a single thing or is it composed does it have parts and there's no no sort of alternative either thing is uncompounded single simple one or it looks one but it's many parts now if you examine this hand you will find it as parts and if you open it the fist it is five fingers and so on where's the fist it's not there anymore where is the fist apart from the fingers and the hand the apart from the parts where is the entity you're talking about it's not there it's disappeared it's empty so yeah yeah but the fingers are there but if you examine the fingers they also have pots all right but at least the fundamental the particles of material nature they have to exist the nagarjuna would say yes but are they single or many singular compounded if they have Parts if if each atom and the ancient Indians had people with atomic theory the first atomists in the world who said that the smallest particle in the universe is indivisible it cannot be divided into further parts supposing um the thing cannot be divided into further parts so it would have no parts at all it would have no up down left right whatever no sides to it it is no parts after all you say okay so what's the problem but with these partless particles how would you come into a build up a universe because you remember our geometry which we learned a DOT is something that has a point is something that has no length no breadth so if a party partless particle is there how would two partless particles join and where would they join because there's no part in which they can join and if two particles cannot join how would you farm a universe with these parts particles so single it can't be we say all right but atom has Parts you know all right and nagarjuna would say if it has Parts what is the atom apart from its parts nothing it's empty so then what is the reality we ask and they'd say it's emptiness all the way down Professor Garfield told me once that if you if you're reading these people if you feel that you're falling into a bottomless well you've got it right okay all right we leave The Emptiness people at this point we'll move on to the last stage the fifth stage fifth if you're keeping track the first the shravaka stage emptiness of self second the mind only philosophy which says emptiness of self and emptiness of the world it's all mind the third and the fourth are the madhyamaka emptiness schools both of which they say there's even the mind is empty why see apply the same same philosophy you said mind is an instant of cognition that instant has parts or no parts if it's an instant if it's an experience it needs at least a beginning and an experience and an end of that experience at least three moments right you're having experiences and you mind only people say these are flashes of Mind these flashes of Mind do they have parts do they have duration or not if they have if they are experiences there must be a beginning to that experience you all admit it and there must be at least one moment of experience and there must be a moment in which that experience comes to an end that's already three moments then what is this flash of existence apart from the three moments nothing empty so this is what they do to the mind only school take it apart now comes the final school which um rinpoche calls the shentong school and sort of the point of the whole talk this is an not a well-known School even among Tibetan Buddhists because most Tibetan Buddhists including the Dalai Lama and all the followers most of them especially the geluk monks they would stop with the prasan school that is the emptiness School the one variety of them teenage School this third the fifth one the shentong school the school of if you literally translate it it means other emptiness anyway what they say is you're all right but the first self-emptiness is right all is mine that's also good a deeper understanding is all these are Concepts and you have to cut them down and you're right they're all empty however when you reach this emptiness it's not nothing right if it was nothing how could it appear as samsara and how could it more importantly appear as Nirvana freedom and you yourself nagarjuna so if you if those have read nagarjuna nagarjuna says that we are not nihilists we are not saying that Ultimate Reality is nothing oh so it is something oh no we're not saying that either so that's where they are so these shentong people they catch you there they say that so you yourself admit it's not nothing and yes it's not something either it is that in which all the some things and the nothings appear and disappear all your samsara appears and when you recognize it for what it is then the same thing appears as Nirvana this emptiness according to the shentong school is a luminous emptiness is empty there is no there is no reality to anything external or internal but that Emptiness is irradiated with is all through and through Consciousness is awareness they give a beautiful example of the sky like that you know the vast Blue Sky it's empty Sky which also blazing blue or you know luminous sky and that is the reality that when not recognized as it is gives appears to all of us we all appear there as samsara when it is recognized as as it is the same thing appears as Nirvana now this emptiness and luminosity to me at least immediately it evoked sat and chit is-ness and awareness pure being and pure emptiness are obverse and reverse of the same same coin pure being and pure emptiness and the moment they add Luminosity Consciousness to it there you have I mean to me it speaks of at least the essence of advaita vedanta non-dual vedant existence awareness I'll leave you with just one more point oh the real their real Attack On The Emptiness people the hyper logicians these shentong people they turn they pull the carpet out from their feet under their feet they accuse The Emptiness people of the same fault which emptiness people accuse everybody else of that everybody they say everybody else is trapped in Concepts and we are here to remove to help you to cut down all illusion to take a broom of logic and sweep away all your Concepts they call it conceptual elaboration prapancha means conceptual elaboration for The Emptiness school now the shentong school comes in and says ah yes you do a good job my brother I agree with everything you say everything is empty however there is a little problem with your approach what is that you should tell me what is your your view I'm going to cut it down because I'm ready with this and the shentong school says precisely you are left with one last concept which you are blind to the concept of removing all Concepts and he points you back to nagarjuna's warning in the movie he says he says Emptiness is the medicine for all ills for all your conceptual ills confusions emptiness will destroy that and set you free however he wants if you take emptiness as the reality then there is no help for you he says emptiness will help everybody to set them free from suffering except the one who takes emptiness as the reality then for that person no no Escape is there and he gives the example this is own language as a snake mishandled if you catch a snake a poisonous snake by the wrong end you're in serious trouble and he says my friend The Emptiness Master you have caught your own emptiness by the wrong wrong end and I am here to set you free from your emptiness so you what your problem is you're so fond of your conceptual apparatus your sword of logic you're ready to cut down everything after you have cut down everything and attain the reality you're now about to cut down the reality it's a boat you've reached the other Shore I'm here to tell you let go of the boat you are still sitting in the boat and let go of the boat of your logic and see the reality enjoy it and you have attained Nirvana the dream example very beautiful in the mind-only school you realize you and the world are dreams the mind is reality in The Emptiness School you realize that the Mind cannot exist without the dream according to the emptiness school without the dream without waking is there a mind no mind also doesn't exist there he gives the example of two sheaves of hay leaning against each other if you remove one the other will fall if there is no waking no dreaming remove the waking and dreaming mind itself disappears he said what about deep sleep and all that that's all your back calculation there's nothing there now the the shentong school comes and says uses the same dream example and says once you have recognized that it's a dream there can be lucid dreaming so there can be a dream without knowing it's a dream you're trapped in samsara and there can be a lucid dreaming you know it's a dream and you can let the dream go on but you're free of it because you know it's a dream similarly what Nirvana is this goes on but you know what it is that luminous emptiness and you're free of it so this is five stages of Investigation into emptiness um can I take one more minute there's one thing I wanted to share here very beautiful The Emptiness people come back at the shentong school by the way the shintong school is not well known because it was suppressed in Tibet there's a journal Monastery where this was practiced and the books were there the monastery was destroyed the books were burnt um some of them still practice it but it was sort of absorbed back into the madhyamaka school it's in a few hundred years ago in ancient in medieval Tibet that's why it's not so well known but there are some some practitioners too um the last point I want to make here is the emptiness people ask these shentong that this final fifth stage all right I'm not saying you're wrong because I'm not going to say anything at all I'm not saying you're wrong but why say it my objection is to saying it and here's a beautiful answer by the shentong school why do you need to State inwards this highest truth of emptiness why five reasons they gave one is for those who are so self-deprecating that they feel that they can never attain Enlightenment you need to tell them your nature is the Buddha nature you are pure Consciousness this empty Luminosity is your nature right here right now they need to know this second there are those who are so proud that they think themselves enlightened and Superior to all others they need to be told this emptiness clear Luminosity is the nature of all beings all the Buddhas down to a little grasshopper everybody shares in this this reality whether they're enlightened or not Buddhists or not whether they're practicing or not the most worldly people the smallest of animals and creatures and the Buddha they all are equally this clear Luminosity that's why it needs to be told to prevent spiritual Pride third is that there are those who are struggle if you don't tell them the truth they will take this what is you called defilements bodily and mental definements to be the only reality we have endlessly struggling against it and never quite overcoming it fourth is the reason we need to tell it is for you emptiness guys otherwise you'll be stuck stuck in your Loop of logic in order to snap you out of it into the reality and the last reason is beautiful for compassion and service because we are all one clear luminosity and therefore there is compassion for all manifestations of this luminosity and into service here I find an amazing similarity between this shentong formulation of emptiness and Vivekananda this formulation of advaitha vedanta vedanta foreign [Music] not too bad I was three minutes over time

Channel: Santa Barbara Vedanta Temple

Views: 32,817

Keywords: Vedanta Society of Southern California, Santa Barbara Temple, Swami Arupeshananda, Near Death, transcendental, experience

Id: kuD9vNALLjs

Length: 65min 10sec (3910 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 22 2023