06. Week 1 - Teaching 4
2025.07.29
This morning’s teaching was vast and profound. Directly or indirectly everything was in this teaching.
To improve our mind means we’re training in compassion and wisdom. Month by month, year by year, we improve. Geshe-la says:
We think: ‘I’m not going to waste my life. I’m going to train in compassion and wisdom.’
Become completely free.
In HTTYL, at the beginning of the chapter on emptiness… “…therefore I am free. Free from lower rebirth, free from samsaric rebirth, free from rebirth possessing self-cherishing. Free from rebirth with ordinary appearance and conception.” We need to think, I want this freedom. Freedom that my root guru has. Having only unmistaken appearances. With this freedom we can benefit each and every living being every day. We need to learn how to turn every appearance into a teaching. So rather than wasting our appearances, we need to think, how is this appearance teaching me? Whenever we are suffering we need to think that countless living beings experience much worse suffering than I do. May they be free.
Our suffering needs to remind us of the immeasurable suffering that others experience and we turn it into compassion.
We also need to train in wisdom, in particular the wisdom realising the true nature of things.
Some teachings that Geshe-la gave on the Heart Sutra itself:
In the sutra, The Great Mother, we recite the Essence of Wisdom Sutra.
This teaching comes from Buddha’s heart, but for everyone gathered there it appeared to come from Avalokiteshvara. The wisdom being of B Shakyamuni entered and remained at Avalokiteshvara’s heart and spoke this sutra through Avalokiteshvara.
Buddhas have several bodies. Wisdom being is a being, I, imputed upon the Truth Body of Buddha. Wisdom being has no colour, no shape, no form, but it the real Buddha. This is why Buddha is deathless, because his real body is Dharmakaya. E.g. a CD machine. Buddha’s wisdom being was like a CD, and Avalokiteshvara was like a CD machine. Geshe-la said, “Sometimes I can be a CD machine for the wisdom beings of Buddha and JTK. At those times I can be their emanations.” So the times when the wisdom beings are at your heart, you can be an emanation. We should know that emanations can be of 2 types - permanent, and temporary, appearing and disappearing from time to time.
What does ’the concentration of the countless aspects of phenomena called profound illumination’ mean? Geshe-la said:
I believe I have come here to clarify Buddhism for the people of the modern world, so that they understand the real meaning of Buddhadharma.
You need oral teachings to clarify the meaning. The concentration of the countless aspects of phenomena called profound illumination is a mind that is absorbed in the concentration of mere appearance of all phenomena. Aspects mean mere appearance. It means Buddha was meditating on the mere appearance of all phenomena. You must keep this and not forget it or the meaning will disappear. Buddha was therefore meditating on non-dual emptiness and appearance, meaning the union of the 2 truths directly and simultaneously. Only a Buddha has this capacity.
Why was Buddha meditating while he was teaching? Only Buddhas can remain in meditation while teaching. He did this to show his uncommon ability. We should know that the mere appearance of phenomena is the most important object of knowledge. If we don’t know this, then even if we understand the emptiness of all phenomena, our understanding of the emptiness of phenomena is not qualified. And we will fall into one of the 2 extremes, most likely the extreme that emptiness is nothing. Mere appearance and emptiness are the same. Our understanding is the middle way, free from extremes.
Form is empty, emptiness is form...
Form is empty - we can think practically, form refers to my body. The body that is hurt, harmed, that exists separate from the mind, is empty. This empty like space is our body. Everything is simply emptiness appearing.
If all the things we normally see do not exist, how do we experience samsara? And how do we attain nirvana? Buddha replies indirectly - how living beings wander in samsara, and how to attain nirvana. This is explained in the NHOW - 12 dependent related links. We experience samsara and attain nirvana as mere appearances. Samsara is the appearance of an impure mind (mistaken appearance), and nirvana is the experience of a pure mind (unmistaken appearance).
[A Short commentary to The Yoga of Great Mother Prajnaparamita (from the back of NHOW).]