Buddhist Discussion Centre (Upwey)
Ltd.
Conventional Self, Dependently Designated Self - Part 2
John D. Hughes
Recorded
Teachings
Buddhist Discussion Centre
(Upwey) Ltd.
33 Brooking St
Upwey, Victoria
Australia
3158
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488
Phone: (03) 9754
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email: wbu@bdcu.org.au
Disclaimer
Teacher: John D. Hughes
Date of recording: 25/6/88
Transcribed by Frank Carter, Alec Sloman,
and Julian Bamford
Checked by Leanne Eames
CD Reference
25_06_88T4S2i
File Name: 25_06_88T4S2i_JDHtranscribe.rtf
5 Day Meditation Course
Recording Title: "Conventional Self, Dependently Designated Self"
So Tsong Khapa elucidates and illuminates certain quotations from other teachers. And the purpose of this is to develop omniscience.
If your mind is weak, it will be broken. If your mind is medium strong, it will be broken. If your mind is strong, it will be broken. The aim is to break completely the two components of the infinite kamma in the past, the me, me, me mind. Then, if there is no receptacle, nothing can go into it.
If I have a glass I can pour water into it, if I have a glass I could pour oceans of water. It will just fall through the air and run away. When you have a small receptacle called me, me, me, me, you can pour things into it. When it gets full your you’re satisfied. Then it leaks away. Your craving becomes "I want more."
Now if you have a very small vessel, because of the weak minds, you are very easily satisfied. You are saturated with the mental objects that you're given, and that Self gets smug. If you have medium, ... say like a 5-litre container, ... takes more, you get satisfied, and then it leaks away [and] you want more. If you have a bigger Self mind, say like a 10,000 000-gallon water tank, it takes more and then it gets saturated.
Now, which is the best time to smash a glass? Is the best time to smash a glass when the glass is empty, when the glass is half full, or when the glass is full? Which is the best time to smash the glass?
Student: When it’s empty (a students response)
Why when it’s empty? When it's empty, it is at the peak of its craving. When it’s full it’s saturated or satiated for a little while. Which would you defend, a mind with intense craving or a mind that’s satisfied, smug? Which would you defend the most?
Student: Empty.
Why? You're quite correct, you would defend it. Why?
Student: You're despairing
You'd be in despair. You would resist breaking the glass, you would’d say gimme, gimme, gimme, gimme, “I want water” or “I want sensation”. So there's a trick. Your resistance to smashing the glass, to smashing that mind, in this case we'll assume because of your kamma it’s easier to break when it’s satisfied. But you remember this, just because that is your reality, everyone has the results of wholesome or unwholesome kamma which makes our lives different. In your case, there is no right answer, it depends on the kamma of the being.
(to student) You're quite sure of your view, aren't you?
Student: Yes
Good. Then your self Self mind will be broken when it's perfectly smug and satisfied. (to another student) Now you gave me an answer. Are you sure of that?
Student: Yes
That is your kamma. When it is empty, and you're absolutely shredded and you're absolutely craving, you want the vehicle for the next lot of goodies to be smashed. Do you see? Therefore in this teaching, there is no specific "are you full up ready to be broken?” [or] “Are you empty ready to be broken"? The teaching is not like that. But it is equal for all beings. I want you to explain to them your position. That, that is the kammic perceptions of your best mind. You're on your best mind now, Gilda. B, because your mind is perfectly clear if you could only know it. So you have correct view of how you, with the different, you know everyone is different, how your kamma sees it like that. Explain your view.
Student: Well, I just saw, I think when the glass is empty your craving is at its peak.
At it's peak. Your dukkha is at it's maximum. You wi’ll fight and you will resist not to smash it. But when it’s full, when you're perfectly satisfied, you won't guard it as much. So that's for you.
(to another student) Tell me your view (to a second student).
Student: Well the mind at a point of despair, that's when I'm ready to break the glass and get something better.
This you're not going to get something better, because you won't have an ego, you won't want anything better. Now let's get your self teed up so you can be quite clear on the process. We’re not going to stop the world because we can't. The outside Samsara. But we can stop and smash that mind that says gimme, gimme, gimme, gimme, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, meeeeeee. It's a revolting sound; meeeeee.
Tell me, there's two views, there can be any point between that depending on your kamma.
Frank, what do you reckon? Where are you at?
Student: Maybe not complete satiation, but up, well up.
Well up like 3/4, 7/8 something like that?. OK. Minnie, to which view do you kammically incline?.
Student: Mine's yeah, I'd say it was the empty.
You belong on the empty side. A little bit in there maybe. I won't ask Julie, she's already got it. Joan, which end of the spectrum are you kamically disposed to?
Student: Empty
Boris, you don't know yet.
Now comes the big sixty-four thousand dollar question. Who does the breaking? Who breaks the mind?
Student: We do.
No. That's a conditional Dhamma that would be to say we do. How can “I” break an “I”? You'd have to duplicate one to break one. No, not the teacher. Because the teacher ... , that would imply the teacher was a self. Who breaks the mind? That is a nonsense question. Please recognise it as such. If you puzzled “who breaks the glass”? That's the sort of thing that glass full of me, me, me, would ask. It is a nonsense question.
Do you understand that must be a nonsense question, or not? Do understand that Minnie? Do you understand that Gilda? Do you understand it's a nonsense question? Do you understand it's that's a nonsense question Jo?
Peter, ? no No you don't understand I know. Paul? You don't think so, ? you You don't understand. Jeffrey?
Student: The power is of the Buddha
Not true. The power of the Buddha but you can't define what you're are talking about. It’s just words.
Student: Isn't that wisdom?
Maybe, maybe not.
Student: Why isn't that ...........?.
Because, it is ..., remember this, that it... The glass is posited and it has no reality. So how can you break something that doesn't exist? I in reality. ? We are talking about reality. It is a fiction, that mind, it’s a lie, it’s a delusion. It has no reality, but you believe it has.
If something is unreal, if something is unreal, one view is it is unbroken. That is unreal. One view is it is broken, but an unreal object broken is still an unreal object. Bet you wish you’d studied logic Lynne? You aim now .. dialectic.
Do understand that Frank?
Student: No.
The object is unreal. Now, an unreal glass intact and an unreal glass broken, they are still unreal. So if you can go to a higher level of understanding, another level of Sunyata, there can be no, nothing that can break something that is unreal because it has no inherent existence. In other words because there is nothing there in reality to be broken.
So what you can do, you can make the mind see the glass is unreal. And when it does, it lets go the belief that there is a real glass there and when that's gone .. [phew] empty, Nothingness. It has the same affect effect as if it broke the glass, but it did it in reality by untangling the tangle.
Do you understand Frank?
Student: Yes.
Explain.
Student: It's, it’s not a question of, of breaking the glass, it’s a matter of that the mind has a misknowledge, if you like, a deluded view of the existence of something which in reality has no existence. It's like a posited thing, because of delusion, that's believed in, imagined, from the view of that mind, seemingly real. But ultimately not the case, not real. The only thing that needs to be broken is that delusion, and then the fact that there was no real glass is obvious. Now, Frank says, that what has to broken is the delusion. But a delusion is a delusion. A delusion is misknowledge. A delusion is afflictional misknowledge, “afflictional” meaning it causes you pain. It's a canka, like a sore.
If you went to a doctor, and you imagined you had a boil, say on the back of your hand. It was an imagined boil. When you were cured of the afflictional misknowledge that you have a boil on the back of your hand, by the doctor. D, did the doctor remove a boil to cure you, or not? Yes or No?
[Student: No]
Because there was no such thing there. The afflictional misknowledge similarly is a, that says there is something when there is nothing is like an imaginary mind imagining, as an object, a boil. The imaginary mind is unreal. And an imaginary mind can only hold in it imagined objects. Unreal. In other words, an afflictional mind is a mind that is unreal. H, having as its subject matter any unreal thing. Now we go back a bit.
The glass, the me, me, me container, is unreal. The objects it fills itself with are likewise unreal. So the mind is yet to see reality.
“(The Buddha) states that things are established by force of mental construction. In the question Question of Upali, quote "The various varied delights of blossoming flowers, the pleasure of the glitter of a golden palace, these (things) have no (intrinsic) function, . But are there on the strength of our constructs. ; The the whole cosmos is constructed by force of thought … "
“(Nargarjuna) states in his " Philosophical Sixty" , "The perfect Buddhas do declare misknowledge is the condition for the world; So so [why] would it not be wrong to say the world is a mental construct?’."
“And (Chandrakirti Chandrakirti) comments that "this means that the worlds are not objectively established, but are merely constructed by conceptual thought".
“(Again Aryadeva) states in his Four Hundred; , "Since there is nothing existence in desires except .....(check original tape) .....etc. without mental constructs, what intelligent person adheres to "‘true objects"’”, meaning unreal objects labeled as true, “and "‘constructs’”, labeled as true". And then it goes into the question about the imagined snake.
That glass containing a me, me, me, me, me mind, has another mind that produces unreal, misconstrued, misknowledges and feeds it into this unreal glass. So apart from breaking, by understanding that there is was nothing to break, there is was nothing to break, there is was nothing to break, there is was nothing to break, the "me" will be broken when it understands there is nothing to break.
The container screaming me, me, me, will be broken when you realise there is nothing to break. While you try to break an unreal me, me, me, mind by any device you do, you produce false minds, an infinite number of false minds, an infinite number of mental constructs attempting to destroy something that is unreal.
Therefore, if you practice like that, your misconceptions, your misinformation, multiplies. If you try to do that meditation, don't do it. You will only manufacture more misinformation, more misinformation and more misinformation. So that is not the path. I block that path.
“With regard to the innate egoistic theory view, which is a the self habit, in the introduction Introduction (Chandra) refutes (the position) that its object is the aggregates .…” That glass, unreal, which contains the me, me, me, has no objective existence of any sort. It is unreal. You can't just negate an unreal mind, because then you would have a not unreal mind, and unlike mathematical logic of the simple form, a not unreal mind, is not equal to an unreal mind.
You have to go into other mathematics to understand that. If you've done Boolean Algebra it will make sense to you.
Have you done Boolean Algebra?
No.
None of you have done Boolean Algebra?
No. Barbarians.
Have you done Boolean Algebra?
Barbarian.
Alright.
“In the "Dual Jewel Rosary" (Nargarjuna) also states in the same vein, "that ‘as long as there is the aggregate habil, so long will there be the "I" habit. That is, that egoistic views will not be reversed as long as the truth habit about the aggregates is not.
“In the introduction Introduction commentary Commentary, (Chandra) affirms that "‘delusion is misknowledge"’” and so on, "it is superficial" and so on. He states further "that “by force of the afflictive misknowledge included in the "‘existence member’". …
“He thus excepts accepts that misknowledge, which is the truth-habit about objects, is the same as afflictive misknowledge." "He thus excepts accepts that misknowledge which is the truth truth-habit about objects, is the same as afflictive misknowledge" .”
You say, you say "I want this". Under the delusion that the, what you want is truth truth-habit, you pull the unreal, your version of the truth truth-habit, into that glass me, me, me, and then you say “I've got the truth”. But it’s error, try again.
While “… while there are two systems of classification of phenomenal self habits either as afflictive or as cognitive obscurations, this system chooses the former way.
“There is a statement of the Holy Father and Son as in the "Emptiness Seventy" "joining together “of the reality in things born of conditions.” Taking things from Samsarasamsara", Samsara samsara is born of conditions remember, it is vipaka, "taking things born of conditions, taking things imagined from Samsarasamsara, taking things born of conditions, taking things born of your vipaka.