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19860405GRJHNLSAS 2

Selflessness or emptiness

I mentioned to you how the self enters in, and how it functions, how it exists. Self definitely has to be existing. Though you may say you’re self-less, self has to be existing. If the self does not exist, I do not exist. If I do not exist, you do not exist. And that is not right. I am sure you do exist. I am sure you are listening and I am ninety percent sure I am talking, unless I have gone mad. So I do exist and that is why I can talk and you are listening. So, you are existing and I am existing. And if you and I exist how can we be selfless? That question we have to deal with.

Selflessness is a very important point and no doubt has a very important position in the Buddhist philosophy. It is a very important subject and very difficult to understand. So I want you to pay quite good attention.

Why is it necessary to know selflessness? Tsongkhapa has mentioned… Tsongkhapa is a great Tibetan master of the fourteenth century. From the eleventh century onwards there has not been any great master in Tibet besides Tsongkhapa. I am not saying that Tsongkhapa was a great master because I am following the Gelugpa tradition that Tsongkhapa founded. I am not making sectarian propaganda, but he is! His works and particularly his presentations of emptiness, have really been proved to be great work.

What happens when you cannot present emptiness properly? When people cannot present the emptiness properly, they say: ‘O yah, it is empty, so there is nothing’. Then they will say: ‘Yes, but it means everything’. And then after some time, it becomes: ‘Neither it exists nor does it not exist’. After some time it becomes something wonderful to feel, but difficult to speak about. Then it becomes very difficult and the point you finally come to is: having no point at all. That is because you were not able to establish the emptiness properly.

Once you are be able to establish the emptiness, it is not difficult. If you put your focus in the proper direction, it is not at all difficult; it is very easy, very clear. The only thing is to focus in the right direction. Otherwise you be neither here nor there, then what is it? Sometimes they try to make beauty out of this ‘neither exists nor not exists’. There is not such a thing that neither exists nor not exists. If you exist you exist. If you don’t exist, you don’t exist. How can it be both? This is common sense, really. So therefore it has become very important to know about emptiness properly.

Selflessness is nothing but emptiness. The moment I am saying ‘emptiness’, don’t think of empty. Think of full. Emptiness is full. Totally full! But the fullness is empty, again. Okay, keep that in mind. Knowing the emptiness is necessary. Why? Tsongkhapa has said:

If you do not have the wisdom

Realizing the way things are,

Even though you have developed the thought

Definitely to leave cyclic existence [renunciation]

And the altruistic aspiration to highest enlightenment,

The root of cyclic existence cannot be cut.

Therefore make efforts at means

Of realizing dependent arising.

Je Tsongkhapa, The Three Principles of the Path vs. 9

He said: ‘If you do not understand the emptiness properly and if you do not get the wisdom properly, no matter how much you devote yourself to the renunciation or the altruistic mind, you will never, never, never be able to cut the root of samsara; therefore...’ And he did not continue by: ‘try to understand the emptiness’, but ‘therefore try to understand the dependent arising’. He didn’t say not to try to understand, but he did not emphasize to understand emptiness. He emphasized to know the dependent arising.

Buddha chose to call the logic of dependent arising the king-logic to the understanding of emptiness. Through proper, sensible, logical reasoning you gain understanding. Out of the hundreds of different logical ways Buddha chose the logic of dependent arising as the king-logic to understand emptiness. A sort of master-key it is.

Tsongkhapa emphasized that in order to cut the root of samsara, it is necessary to know emptiness and because of that you try to understand the dependent arise. So, he does not make us look into the empty side, but into the fullness-side. When you understand the fullness-side it becomes easy to understand the ‘empty’ side. If you look for the empty on the empty side alone, you won’t understand it at all and that way people get difficulties. The right angle to look into emptiness, is dependent-arising; looking from the fullness-side into the empty, not from the empty-side into the fullness. This is the first point that should be clear.

Emptiness is also called perfect view or shunyata. As long as you have not developed this emptiness, not only you have not cut the root of samsara, but out of the five paths, you only will be able to master the first path; you won’t be able to go beyond that. There are five paths in mahayana and even in hinayana. If you do not look for the emptiness in the proper way, you are unable to cover the second path and beyond.

I have only quoted Tsongkhapa, I did not quote from he sutras. If don’t quote from the sutras, people may think this is only the Gelugpa viewpoint. In order to make clear that is not the case, I quote from the sutra called King of the meditative stabilizations, the Samadhiraja sutra. In there is mentioned clearly:

If the yogi does not destroy the self and the fearful look,

then no delusions can be cut and it will be just only an ordinary sitting.

This is a very important point. The root of samsara is ignorance or – with a different name – self-holding, true holding, true acknowledging, or self-acknowledging. Nagarjuna has said:

No matter whatever other causes you apply, they will be unable to bring nirvana.

Nirvana is peace. It is one of the four Buddhist seals:

1. All products are impermanent.

2. All contaminated things are miserable.

3. All phenomena are empty and selfless.

4. Nirvana is peace.

Why is nirvana considered peace? It is free of the pains, the sufferings and the problems that we encounter in the circle of existence. Nirvana is a sort of separated ‘city’ at the other side of the chain. When is said: ‘No other cause can bring peace’ it means: no other cause will be able to cut the root of samsara, therefore it cannot lead you to nirvana. You get it? That’s it what Nagarjuna’s words mean. I am trying to present quotations of the sutra and of Nagarjuna in order to further proof Tsongkhapa’s view.

Then you may raise the question: ‘Okay, if the wisdom of the understanding of emptiness – and whatever wisdom-path – is the direct cause, you may not need any other work, such as accumulation of merit, purifications, working on the six paramitas, renunciation, or even bodhicitta, the altruistic mind’. You may think this way. That is again not true, they are also necessary. They may not be a direct opponent to the ignorance, but they are not to be ignored, because Nagarjuna further has said, (and these words are sometimes even used as dedication):

The Form Body of a Buddha

Arises from collected merit

The Body of Truth in brief,

Arises from collected wisdom.

Thus these two collections cause

Buddhahood to be attained,

So in brief always rely

Upon merit and wisdom

Nagarjuna, The Precious Garland, vs. 212-213

Why? Because at the level of total enlightenment you get two things: the embodiment of the accumulated merit, called rupakaya or form body, and the embodiment of the mind, the mental development, called dharmakaya or truth body. So, you need two things and you need both in order to reach your aim. The aim of Buddhist followers of the spiritual path is total enlightenment, at least from the mahayana point of view. If you are theravada followers, your aim is to reach to the arhat-level, which is peace or nirvana. Whether you cut the root of samsara and attain the arhat-level or you obtain the total enlightenment of buddhahood, it is necessary to have both. Nagarjuna’s disciple Chandrakirti has said:

If a bird wants to cross the huge ocean, fly to the other side,

it is necessary for him to have two wings.

Similarly for persons like us, to cross the ocean of samsara

and go into the total enlightenment level or nirvana,

it is necessary to have the two wings:

the wing of the relative and the wing of the absolute.

The wing of the relative means the relative part of activity and the wing of the absolute means the absolute part of activity. When I say absolute it means the ultimate. Ultimate means the wisdom, which means emptiness, shunyata. It is called absolute, it is called ultimate, the ultimate truth, or the nature of phenomena. So both are necessary. By having the one the other should not be ignored; it should be paid more attention to. This is the beauty of this path.

You know, when wrong understanding of emptiness comes in, you begin to ignore the relative part, so you don’t care what the society says, what society feels, what they do, everything you ignore and you become a funny one. That is because of wrong understanding of the truth. It will make you crazy on the relative level. True understanding can make you perfect, not crazy at the relative level. This is very important! Balancing is an important point. The moment you understand the truth properly, it automatically is balanced:

Emptiness is the nature of dependence; dependence is the nature of emptiness.

You have to understand both, they depend on and support each other. That’s why both become important in order to achieve our aim.

For you and me, in our level right now, to get a real good idea of what really absolute truth or emptiness is, is absolutely impossible without depending on a proper guide. From the Buddhist point of view Buddha’s teachings are followed. But the problem is: Buddha’s teachings carry two different teachings: direct teachings and indirect teachings. Indirect untrue teaching means: for some purposes or another Buddha says something else. That is why Buddha himself has emphasized to see which is the direct part and which is the indirect part of his teachings. That is very important.

A little Buddhist history to show the authenticity of the teachings

What happened in India. What happened when Buddha died? Today we have the Tibetan, the Sanskrit, the Chinese, the Mongolian and even the Japanese version of Buddha’s teachings. The Thai, Sri Lanka etc. do have a version of the Tripitaka. We Tibetans, the Chinese and the Mongols have what we call the Collected words of the Buddha, known as Kanjur. The teachings were not recorded during the Buddha’s lifetime. He did not write them down and they didn’t have tape-recorders those days. However a lot of people did have a photographic memory, maybe even better then our tape-recorders nowadays.

What happened is this. After Buddha died seven ‘Holders of the tradition’ came one after the other. And during that period they had the first council. It was held in the presence of people who had been with the Buddha during his lifetime. When they sat down, they started repeating whatever Buddha had said during that period. Mostly the Tripitaka and all other teachings have been recalled. So in any sutra you open today you will find: ‘Thus I have heard: Once the Enlightened Being was sitting in the place, or in somebody’s house, or on the road, or somewhere in the park, somewhere on the mountain or something. There were a number of people, this much bodhisattvas, this much bikshus and this much lay people. And then he said this, this, this..’ And then at the end it is said that when Buddha said this, everybody was very happy and respectful. In other words, the people quoted what Buddha had said. Those people were arhats. They had overcome their delusions, they had a special power, the power of non-forgetting, a photographic memory. So they repeated what Buddha had said and that way they were able to carry Buddha’s words on to the next generations.

During the second council the corrections came, mostly corrections of vinaya rules, because excuses had come up. Buddha had for example emphasized the monks not to eat in the afternoon. On those rules they had made some excuse, like if before you eat you breathe over the food you can eat it and if you turn two fingers three times round on the bread you can eat it. So the vinaya had become shabby. Seven-hundred arhats met together, these things were discussed, debated and finally proved to be wrong and were corrected. That was the second council.

The writing down only came at the third council, about four hundred years after the death of Buddha. During the period of Amithaba buddha – the buddha before Sakyamuni buddha – there was a king and that king had a funny dream: some monkeys played a trick and after that eighteen people came and fought over one piece of cloth; they kept on fighting, fighting and at the end everybody had one piece in hand and they went home. The king went to the Buddha Amithaba and said: ‘I had a funny dream, what could it mean? Maybe it is bad for my kingdom or maybe it is bad for my subjects, what is it?’ Buddha Amithaba said: ‘It is not about you, not about me, not about the teaching, it is looking into the future. On Sakyamuni Buddha’s teaching there will be a big debate and during that debate eighteen different views will come up, and finally all eighteen will be proved to be correct.’ That is what happened: eighteen different viewpoints have come up in the four hundred years after Buddha’s death. The eighteen different groups had their debate and finally all eighteen views were proved to be correct. The third council was attended by bodhisattvas, arhats and ordinary people, seventeen-thousand altogether. It was at this time that they began to get trouble with that memory of repetition of Buddha’s words. Everything that ever had been repeated, they started to write down. So, the writing actually started much later then that Buddha lived, but the time and the gap are not supposed to have influenced the writing at all.

However correct words and incorrect words appeared. Translations have been done from Sanskrit into Pali, from Pali into different languages and there were corrections and mistakes; there are bound to be. Therefore the Tibetans had a lot of work to find out what is right, what is wrong and all this. Big, big problems we went trough.

Buddha himself had mentioned that in order to correct and in order to make the clear distinction between direct and indirect meanings, the teachings were going to be clarified by Nagarjuna. Buddha himself has said:

Four-hundred years after I die person named Nagarjuna will come

and he will clarify what I said.

A person named Asanga will come after six hundred years

and he will further clarify my words.

Nagarjuna and Asanga have come and have presented the teachings in the proper way. Nagarjuna carried out only the wisdom part of it. And that was not easy. He had to go through a lot of trouble; he finally even had to go into the land of the nagas. He got certain books from there and then he was able to present the wisdom properly. Nagarjuna wrote six books on Uma, the Middle Way viewpoint.

Asanga carried out the method part of Buddha’s teachings. Asanga could not present the prajnaparamita points properly, so he had to depend on a retreat, in which he tried to meet Buddha Maitreya. After twelve years of solitary retreat he was able to talk to Maitreya and was able to see and clarify the difficult points. He wrote five books on that. Asanga chose to call it ‘Maitreya’s work’.

We rely on those sort of reliable works. The direct words of Buddha sometimes you can’t take literally. For example one of them tells that there was a king who has killed his father. He was very regretful and went to see Buddha. Buddha knew that if he would tell him: ‘Killing a man is bad, killing a father is far more bad and in addition to that your father is an arhat, and killing an arhat is even worse’, it was not going to help this fellow at all. So, when the king came and said: ‘I have done a tremendous amount of mistakes, Buddha forgive me, help me, because I killed my father and he is an arhat’, Buddha said :

Father and mother should be killed, what are you worrying for?

And the sutra there said:

If you destroy all the subjects, you will obtain enlightenment.

So if you kill your father and mother, are you going to obtain enlightenment? No, no. Buddha doesn’t mean the physical father and mother, he means the father of selfishness and the mother of ignorance. If you kill the father of selfishness and the mother of ignorance, then you obtain nirvana. That’s why you have to differentiate between indirect and direct words.

Buddha is such a nice gentleman, I believe. He is such a clever teacher. For whoever tried to talk to him, Buddha knew the way they could be helped best and talked according. That is why these direct and indirect trouble came. So he himself made clear: ‘Four-hundred years after I die Nagarjuna will come and he will correct and after six-hundred years Asanga will come and correct.’

Nagarjuna came and corrected. As a matter of fact Nagarjuna lived for nine-hundred years. That is unbelievable but it is commonly accepted, except for one view; that says there are two Nagarjuna’s, one four hundred years and the other one six hundred years after Buddha. They said one is the father and one is the son or something like that. Whatever maybe, whether there is one Nagarjuna or two Nagarjuna’s, it is Nagarjuna’s work. So we base on Nagarjuna’s viewpoint. Any Tibetan tradition, whether Nyingma, Kagyu, Sakya, or Gelugpa, they all follow Nagarjuna for the wisdom.

Among the many disciples of Nagarjuna one is called Buddhapalita. (I try to go back slightly to the Indian history in order to prove this to be correct.) He tried to present Nagarjuna’s words. Nagarjuna had made Buddha’s words very clear, but his presentation is very rich, very dense and very heavy. Even one word can have an explanation of one or two volumes. So Nagarjuna’s views were presented more clearly by Buddhapalita and Chandrakirti. Buddhapalita’’ commentary on Nagarjuna’s work is called Buddhapalita. (The author’s name is put on the book. He didn’t write another one, I think that is why).

Chandrakirti wrote two root-books and two commentaries. One root-book, Guide to the Middle Way deals with the meaning of Nagarjuna’s root-book Treatise on the Middle Way. The second root-book of Chandrakirti, Clear Words, commentary on (Nagarjuna’s) ‘Treatise on the Middle Way’, deals with the words of Nagarjuna’s work. These are the basic points and the reliable sources, accepted by all different scholar-saints. Also the yogis and practitioners who have gained spiritual developments, accept these as the authentic root. These are the authentic root-sources on the perfect viewpoint, all from the early Indian pandit period. So far about the authenticity of the teachings on the viewpoints and the importance of the early Indian masters and their works, which lead back to Buddha.

What happened in Tibet. Now the question of Tibet comes in. How did the viewpoints develop in Tibet? I’d like to do a little Gelugpa-propaganda on the viewpoints presented on shunyata, emptiness. Tsongkhapa’s viewpoints are the first and foremost among all traditions in Tibet. How? All Tibetan traditions follow the words of Nagarjuna, Buddhapalita and Chandrakirti, no doubt. However the presentation of the emptiness slightly differs.

Tsongkhapa came much later. He was born in 1357 and died in 1419. Tsongkhapa was searching for this perfect viewpoint and he had the outstanding masters of that period, lama Lodrag of the Kagyu tradition, who had a vision of Vajrapani almost man to man and lama Umapa of the Sakya tradition, who had a vision of Manjushri man to man. Even so, Tsongkhapa was not satisfied with the explanations given by the Tibetan scholars. He could not properly find what Buddha really had meant by ‘Form is emptiness, and emptiness is form’, the famous words you find in the Heart sutra

Shariputra, form is not different from emptiness.

Emptiness not different from form.

Form is the emptiness. Emptiness is the form.

Sensation, recognition, conceptualization, consciousness, also like this.

Shariputra, this is the original character of everything:

not born, not annihilated, not tainted, not pure;

does not increase, does not decrease.

Therefore in emptiness no form, no sensation, no recognition,

no conceptualization, no consciousness.

No eye, no ear, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind;

no color, no sound, no smell, no taste, no touch, no object of touch;

no eye, no world of eyes until we come to also no world of consciousness.

No ignorance, also no ending of ignorance,

all the way through to old age and death, also no ending of old age and death.

No suffering, no cause of suffering, no nirvana, no path, no wisdom,

also no attainment because no non-attainment.

Heart Sutra, English by Allen Ginsberg

He asked a lot of different questions to his master lama Umapa, who decided to put Tsongkhapa’s questions to Manjushri. Though Tsongkhapa is believed to be and is the manifestation of Manjushri, he was born as an ordinary human being and functioning as an ordinary human being. He didn’t have the right to talk to Manjushri straightaway. So he put those questions through lama Umapa to Manjushri. And after some time lama Umapa started acting like a messenger. Whatever Tsongkhapa said he passed on to Manjushri and what Manjushri replied he passed on to Tsongkhapa. After some time he didn’t know what the question was and he even didn’t know what the answer is, he didn’t know what he was talking about. Then Manjushri suggested Tsongkhapa should go in retreat rather than be doing these sort of things. Then lama Umapa said to Manjushri: ‘Excuse me, but don’t let him go into solitary retreat, because he has thousands of followers and he is giving them teachings and helping them.’ Manjushri insisted. Then lama Umapa asked: ‘How long?’ and Manjushri said: ‘As long as he needs it, could be ten years. So, they all kept on begging Manjushri: ‘Please, don’t let him go.’ Finally Manjushri had to put a little more pressure and asked lama Umapa: ‘Do you think you know better than me?’ So finally he had to give up and Tsongkhapa went into retreat.

After a few years Tsongkhapa started having visions himself, but he was somehow very careful. When Tsongkhapa went into retreat he had only eight people with him, selected by Manjushri through lama Umapa. They had no food, they had to depend on leaves and seeds of trees, and they had to live on juniper seeds for a long time. Tsongkhapa started having a vision of the thirty-five buddhas on the other side of the mountain and he decided to ignore them totally, because he was not sure whether it was a real good vision or an evil manifestation. That it also could be. So Tsongkhapa didn’t pay attention to the vision, neither hoped nor doubted, but ignored them. He kept on ignoring the thirty-five buddhas totally. Then he got visions of Manjushri, Avalokiteshvara, etc. They came closer and closer, up to quite near, up to man to man and even started talking to Tsongkhapa. Tsongkhapa refused to acknowledge them, totally. Even Manjushri he totally refused. Persons like us – leave aside a vision – if we get a slightly different dream, how much noise we will make! But Tsongkhapa totally refused. And Manjushri kept on telling Tsongkhapa: ‘I sent you to retreat, I did this, you sent that message through lama Umapa, I gave this answer, that answer’, and even then Tsongkhapa kept on totally ignoring. He wanted to make sure. So he had some difficult questions. A few of them, I think, first he thought of putting to Manjushri and later he did not. He thought that if it is the real Manjushri, lama Umapa will let him know. So he kept on ignoring totally. Finally Manjushri got fed up, had to go back to lama Umapa and said: ‘Please tell this fellow up there this is a real true vision, he shouldn’t worry about it.’ So till he got the message from lama Umapa, he ignored the visions totally.

After that, in the visions Tsongkhapa had man to man contact. Like we talk to each other he talked to Manjushri, the embodiment of all wisdom of the enlightened beings. He needed more than anybody else Manjushri for this perfect view. So he came to talking and questioning and finally he wrote the short text of the Three Principals of the Path, which is totally based on Manjushri’s words, and particularly on this viewpoint.

So – as I told you – most important from the beginning is not to emphasize to understand the emptiness, but to emphasize to understand dependent arising. These are Manjushri’s techniques.

That way Tsongkhapa got a clear understanding of what emptiness is, what Buddha meant by ‘Form is emptiness, emptiness is form’ and ‘There is no nose, no tongue, no ear..., all this. When he began to understand it, he wrote a book called Tang gyi, The Essence of True Eloquence, which means clarifying the direct and indirect teachings. In that he said :

I understood it properly,

because of the true kindness of Manjushri.

Now I explain it with a good heart.

The Essence of True Eloquence, prologue

This is how Tsongkhapa worked hard to get this perfect viewpoint. His presentations of the perfect view are slightly different from those of the other traditions. If we do not follow the viewpoint of Nagarjuna, we cannot get anywhere. Chandrakirti has said :

Those who have been beyond Nagarjuna’s presentation cannot find liberation at all. Because when they present the absolute part of it, they lose the relative art; when they present the relative they lose the absolute. And if you cannot present the absolute and relative both together, how can you present the perfect view? No way. When you go beyond that, you cannot establish liberation at all.

In an earlier part of his life Tsongkhapa wrote The golden rosary of eloquence. When he wrote that, a number of Tibetan scholars jumped on him, particularly the great Tagtsang Lotzawa and Bodong Panchen Choglae Namgyal, a very famous Kagyu master at that time. A great scholar.