Buddhist Hour
Script No. 445
Broadcast live on 3MDR 97.1FM
9 PM to 10 PM
On Friday 15 September 2006 CE 2550 Buddhist Era

This script is entitled:

"Lifetimes of Learning "
Class 12 - Exploring the Perfection of Wisdom, Part 4

Tonight we will continue the fourth Perfection, which is the Perfection of Wisdom. In specific, we'll discuss the Teachings found in the Buddha's Prajnaparamita Sutras , the body of texts conveying the Perfection of Wisdom.

The Perfection of Wisdom, as opposed to conventional wisdom, concerns the direct recognition of what is real, realisation of the Dhamma; the law of cause and effect or kamma, selflessness and emptiness.

When we hear about things like selflessness or emptiness for the first time, there is this paradox that these things are said to be the way things really are, the way things are in absolute reality, yet the words themselves don't seem to reflect how we experience or perceive the world for ourselves.

As we saw last week, words like selflessness often refer to very profound statements of the way things are in absolute reality. We do not see things as they are because our mind adds something to what we perceive which distorts our understanding. Just to use a simple example of what is meant by "adds something to what we perceive" we will examine the area of our likes and dislikes.

They say in the sales profession "you have seven seconds to success". What this statement is referring to is when we meet a person for the first time there is a process of judgement going on by the other person who is coming to a decision about whether they like you or not. Apparently the process takes on average about seven seconds until the conclusion is reached by the other person. In sales they say how you look and what you say in the first seven seconds from meeting someone for the first time is the key to whether you can go on and sell your idea or product to that other person.

Not only do we apply this judging process to a person we are meeting for the first time, we also apply it to what we are hearing, seeing, smelling, tasting and touching. "I like the smell of cigars", "I don't like that kind of music", "that dress is too bright", "I like the new model Ford" and so on. We add these things on to what we are perceiving. These are our personal biases and preferences but, at the very moment we add these preferences we overwrite the real nature of the thing we are perceiving. If you like, as soon as our minds contact the object we are looking at we change it. This is not limited to adding a like or dislike, we also add labels, memories, or views and opinions to the reality we are looking at. Each of these in some way changes our vision of the way it really is. What we see is the way we think it is.

If we don't like some object we see it as inherently distasteful or obnoxious. We can't get past this personal impression of that thing, even though others may discern likeable qualities in that object, for us it has, what seems to be, inherent unpleasantness or disagreeable-ness.

But, if the other person is looking at the same thing and finds it pleasant, that object can't be both things at once itself. And it can't be inherently pleasant or else everybody could only see it as being pleasant. And it can't be inherently pleasant and unpleasant at the same time either. What is happening is that we are looking at the world the way we think it is. We are looking at our own projection and that's all we are seeing. This process is subtle and pervasive.

The illustration we have been discussing above is one to do with the emptiness of objects which are outside ourselves. It seems like when we look at objects outside ourselves they appear to have independent self-existing qualities of their own, yet by analysis we can start to see that's not actually how it really is. These objects are empty of any independently arising, self-existing qualities of their own. Otherwise we would all be forced to see the objects the same way.

So although it appears that the things we see outside ourselves make us feel good if we like them, or negatively if we don't, we can't say its those things causing us to feel that way. If walking in the rain really could cause us to feel unhappy then everybody who ever walked in the rain would automatically feel unhappy.

If we say "Oh, I feel sad today. I am sad". Why we feel sad about things or events in our lives is not really because of some independently existing nature of those things around us in our external world. So what is causing us to be sad then? From a Buddhist point of view, it is our kamma which is forcing our experience of sadness. Fundamentally it is because of some occasion in the past when we made causes, which are fruiting at the moment causing us to experience sadness.

The mind does not have any inherent condition or inclination to produce sadness itself - the sadness is not a feeling which the mind produces just because of chemical conditions or because we are just like that or because we have some inherent nature to be like that. The way we feel, good or bad, is because of our emptiness. Our minds change, our feelings change, our body changes not only within one life, but from life to life because we have no inherent, independently existing self nature locking us into a fixed position.

A CD player can be used as an analogy. Like all analogies it has limitations to how far it is useful. We know the music that we are hearing from the CD player does not mean the CD player is making that sound from itself, from its own side. It only reproduces sound from a CD recording that was made at some past time and place. The CD player has no nature itself that produces certain sounds, personal sounds and not others. It is empty of this characteristic of playing music from its own side - therefore it can play any type of music at all depending on the recording on the CD only.

When we put on a particular CD we are forced to hear the music that was pre-recorded on that particular CD. It's the same with our feelings of being sad. When this particular kamma fruits we are forced to feel sadness in our mind. Our mind does not have a nature that only produces particular feelings. It does not produce independently existing sadness, nor does it have the nature of being sad just from its own side. It’s like the CD player which plays the pre-recorded sadness melody which, comes from the past causes we recorded in our past times.

If we think the sadness is independently arising we are in ignorance about our capacity to make ourselves happy. If we know the emptiness of feelings we know we can stop the feeling of sadness absolutely by making different causes - by making causes for happy feeling to arise we are forcing ourselves to see ourselves as happy beings. We are forcing ourselves to be happy because feelings are empty of any inherent state or condition from their own side. Feelings can be pleasant feeling, or unpleasant feeling; weak, medium or strong, but feelings are empty of any of these from their own side. So absolutely we can say if you want to experience pleasant feeling, don't try to modify or change the bad feelings which are arising in the present. The script for those feelings arising is already written. Just like the music on the CD is already recorded. If you want a different experience, you make causes that will result in a different experience happening to you, and, if it is wise to do so, change the conditions you have which are triggering that sadness to arise.

Stop looking at the results and thinking "I feel sad". Start saying "Oh sadness is arising from past causes. I will make some new causes for pleasant feeling so I am forced to experience pleasant feeling. I will offer some flowers to my Mother, I will make someone happy, I will not think the sadness has an independent existence". It is that view that the sadness has independent self-arising that prevents us doing something about the sadness. That is the reason we get stuck in our different states of mind and feelings. We treat them as having independent self-existence rather than fleeting momentary events we are forced to experience by our past causes. If our experience arises dependent on causes, make new causes now to have better minds and you can't avoid getting better minds as a result.

So according to Venerable Palden Rinpoche, "Prajnaparamita" means:

Supreme knowledge, unique realisation, transcendental knowledge 'leading beyond' mundane knowing to a transcendent knowing. The realisation and the practice coming out of this knowledge leads us beyond to a higher state of consciousness called nirvana or the Buddha state. (Palden Sherab 1990) 1.

Geshe Thubten Loden writes:

There are many forms of ignorance but all arise from one root ignorance, the self-grasping ignorance, so called because it grasps at the object which it is viewing as being self-existent. (Loden 1993) 2.

So let us look at another aspect of this teaching of emptiness.

Geshe Michael Roach uses an example of how we view other people to illustrate the emptiness teachings.

Think about the people at your workplace who irritate you the most. They seem to have a quality or nature of being irritating, from their own side. 'Irritating-ness' seems to be emanating or flowing from them toward you.

Think about it though. Someone (perhaps another employee, perhaps someone in their family, a wife or a child) finds them very loving and lovable people. When they look at the same individuals, when they see them in the room even as you see them doing or saying the exact same things, they see something good.

Apparently there is no 'irritating-ness' flowing from these people to them - which very simply proves that this is not a quality within the people themselves. They have no such quality within themselves, or it would show itself to others; they are, rather, like blank screens, neutral, and different people see different things in them. This is very simple proof of emptiness, or hidden potential, and everything in the world is the same. (Roach) 3.

So, how is this possible, that two different people see the same person at the same time, yet they "see" something completely different in the person they are each looking at? If that person did have inherent "irritating-ness" flowing from them then both people would see the exact same thing at the same time. On the other hand, there's no way that person they are looking at is somehow both things at once. So where is each of the onlookers getting their view of the other person from? They are getting it from themselves or more precisely they are getting it from the kamma they have on their own side when they meet that other person. They are forced to see the other person in a particular way by their own kamma.

For example, if we had known that person in a previous life and they had done something to harm us and we developed hate towards them and made negative causes in connection with them those causes are why we meet them again in this life. We made kammic causes to contact them again in a future birth. When we meet them again this life the fruit of the past causes means we are forced to see them as someone having "irritating-ness" and we have an experience of them which forces us to continue to dislike them.

Yet we've produced all this from ourselves - none of our view of them is coming from them at all. There is this emptiness aspect that they are like an empty screen onto which we are projecting our own kammic images. They are empty of any independently arising existence not only in the sense of our projecting how they seem but also in the sense that we are only seeing them at all out of our own kammic causes. They appear in our world because we put them there by our past kammic thoughts, speech and actions.

Even if they hit us on the head, we put them there and we put them there exactly how they appear to us at that moment - whether they are smiling at us or hitting us. They have no independently arising existence which has nothing to do with us.

The very learned Geshe Kelsang Gyatso writes:

"If we are ordinary beings, all objects appear to us to exist inherently. Objects seem to be independent of other phenomena. The universe appears to consist of discrete objects that have an existence from their own side. These objects appear to exist in themselves as stars, planets, mountains, people and so forth, 'waiting' to be experienced by conscious beings. Normally it does not occur to us that we are involved in any way in the existence of these phenomena. Instead, each object appears to have an existence completely independent of us and all other objects." (Gyatso 1986) 4.

What we see and how we see it are all coming from our side. If we had different kamma from the past, we would now be forced by that kamma to see the world according to that kamma, like a dog sees the world for example. If we had the kamma to be a dog this life, we would be a dog. We would be running around somewhere and barking at the noises in the night because we were forced to see the world like that. And we would believe just as we do now, that how we saw the world was not coming from us but it was how the world actually was.

We can use the example of a pen. When someone holds up a pen, your mind becomes aware, "That is a pen." Without any critical thinking, a whole package of information arises in your mind about what the pen does, what it's for and so on.

Lets say, for instance, that a being who by their kamma was born as a dog comes into the room. It sees this person holding a pen, maybe waving it back and forth a bit. It becomes very excited! Why is that? It's because the puppy isn't seeing a "pen" at all, but instead it's seeing a chewable object.

This simple observation is the entry point for understanding Prajnaparamita. If this cylinder in front of you is a "pen" in and of itself then how come dogs aren't seeing it as a pen? How is it possible that two different beings see the same object and think of it in completely different ways? It's because the "pen" is empty of any inherent "pen-ness". The whole package of information that arises in your mind when you see a pen isn't in the pen at all. If it were, then a puppy, upon seeing this self-existent pen, would think, "that is a pen which has ink in it and if I wanted to I could write something." However, puppies don't think this at all. They think, "Mmm! Something nice to chew on!"

Professor Jeffrey Hopkins offers this definition of emptiness:

"Phenomena are empty of a certain mode of existence called 'inherent existence', 'objective existence', or 'natural existence'. This 'inherent existence' is not a concept superimposed by philosophical systems but refers to our ordinary sense of the way that things exist - as if they concretely exist in and of themselves, covering their parts." (Hopkins 1983) 5.

So if you get this, what it means is that things aren't fixed. Nothing is fixed. Things that appear to us aren't themselves any particular independent things - everything is in our world because our kammic causes put it there. If we made the cause to grow to eight foot high there will come a time when the conditions in the world have people who grow eight foot high and we will be one of them.

Buddhist texts explain that there are certain ages when human beings live for up to 30,000 years, there are other ages when human beings lifecycles last for 10 years. Humans born at that time are fully mature by the age of two or three and women have babies from the age of about four.

"The world is mind wrought", taught the Buddha. I remember when talking with the Founder of the Buddhist Discussion Centre (Upwey) Ltd, our Teacher Mr John Hughes. Sometimes he would ask me something like "what do you want?" I would say something like, "I want to get a brighter mind". He would answer "Offer light to Buddha", or I would say "I want to understand the Buddha Dhamma", he would say "Offer Dhamma to others", I would say "I need more energy", he would say "make me a cup of tea".

If we have not enough energy it is because we haven't made enough causes in the first place to have enough energy. Not enough happiness, not enough spare time, not enough …(insert anything you want to name here)… because of not enough causes made yet for those things to come. Emptiness means we can have enough of anything we want and enough to give away to others - provided we make the causes.

He would often ask when I dropped in to the Centre "How many flower offerings did you make today?" There are ten kammic benefits from offering flowers all of which we want.

The teachings on emptiness enable much more than just getting things we want. Next week we will see how using this knowledge of emptiness as part of our practice enables us to create much better causes to be well and happy and how the correct understanding of emptiness will force us to see ourselves as fully enlightened beings.

It is said that every instruction the Buddha ever gave was for the purpose of leading beings to Prajnaparamita, the Perfection of Wisdom.

1) Venerable Khenpo Palden Sherab Rinpoche, Paperback. Prajnaparamita: The Six Perfections. Ed. Joan Kaye, Ph.D. 2nd Edition. P.O. Box 1830, Boca Raton, Florida 33429: Sky Dancer Press, 1990; Sky Dancer Press, 1991.

2) Geshe Acharya Thubten Loden, Hardback. Path to Enlightenment in Tibetan Buddhism. 1425 Mickleham Road, Yuroke 3063, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia: Tushita Publications, 1993.

3) Geshe Michael Roach, Paperback. The Diamond Cutter: The Buddha on Strategies for Managing Your Business and Your Life. Doubleday Publictions, 2000.

4) Geshe Kelsang Gyatso, Paperback. Heart of Wisdom: A Commentary to the Heart Sutra. 15 Bendemeer Road, London SW15 1JX: Tharpa Publications, 1986.

5) Jeffrey Hopkins, Hardback. Meditation on Emptiness. PO Box 4BJ, London W1. Wisdom Publications, 1983.

6) Carter, A., Carter, F., Sloman, A. 2006. Exploring the Perfection of Wisdom Part 5. Volume 15 of the series "Lifetimes of Learning". Published by the Buddhist Discussion Centre (Upwey) Ltd. 33 Brooking Street, Upwey, Victoria 3158.

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