Emptiness Meditation

Emptiness Meditation

Mindfulness of Ultimate Reality
Date of Advice:
September 2021
Date Posted:
August 2024

Rinpoche advised the importance of emptiness meditation in this letter for a student who asked about retreat and practice.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche at Lawudo, Solu Khumbu, Nepal, 1978. Photo: Peter Iseli.

My most dear, most kind, most precious, wish-fulfilling one,
Concerning the obstacles to retreat, there’s one incense puja called Riwo sang chö. That’s the Nyingma incense puja, of which there are copies in English, but I don’t think our Sangha know about it. Is there a geshe or lama in the area or nearby that you know of who could do this? The incense you use must have a scented smell, not kaka. Well, you never know, for some the smell of kaka is the best.

Also Drugchuma, this is the sixty-four offerings to Kalarupa. You can ask one monk to do this for you and make appropriate offerings. Tell the monk I am requesting that he does it slowly and well, and to think of Kalarupa as His Holiness the Dalai Lama.

Regarding advice for your retreat, first thing in the morning do my morning practice, How to Make My Lives Wish-Fulfilling: The Method to Transform a Suffering Life into Happiness. This changes the kaka life and transforms it into gold. Your life transforms into a wish-granting jewel and the cause of enlightenment, by generating bodhicitta. This should be done every morning when you open your eyes. Do this first when you wake up in the morning.

Also read the Diamond Cutter Sutra twice before the retreat. Before that, there are several mantras to increase the [merit]. These mantras are in my morning prayers [Method to Transform]; they should be there. There are several mantras to increase the merit by so many hundred millions. So do those things, then it becomes many numbers.

Regarding your question about study: studying Madhyamaka is the best thing you’re doing. The best thing is to study with Geshe Namdak, because he is a Western person who knows Western life and how to explain [Dharma].

What you said about gold is correct, and not just gold, but a wish-granting jewel. Without realizing emptiness, there’s no way to be free from the oceans of samsaric suffering; there’s no way to eliminate the root of samsara, the ignorance holding “I” as truly existent, real. Also, without realizing emptiness, even with bodhicitta, we can’t cease the subtle obscurations. So it’s done by realizing emptiness directly.

Just having bodhicitta alone we can’t cease [the subtle obscurations] directly, so it’s really incredibly important [to realize emptiness]. There is no money to value it, we can’t even value it with money. For three countless great eons, if we collect one billion dollars each hour, there’s no [comparison].

To realize the meditation on emptiness, we need to really have the correct understanding, the Prasangika view, that everything—I, action, object, samsara, nirvana, happiness and problems, enlightenment and hell—exists in mere name. Nothing exists from its own side, even the size of an atom. Everything exists in mere name; everything exists merely labeled by the mind. Everything exists from the mind, merely labeled.

In the Svatantrika Madhyamaka view, they accept “labeled” but they can’t accept merely labelled. For them it’s following nihilism. But in the Prasangika everything exists in mere name; nothing exists from its own side; everything exists in mere name. So don’t follow nihilism and don’t follow eternalism. Emptiness and dependent arising are unified, existing. If anything exists, it has to be empty from its own side; anything that is empty, from its own side it has to exist in mere name.

This is the most unbelievable, unbelievable shock, because we haven’t realized it since beginningless rebirths and it didn’t get developed. Only in this life, we are most unbelievably fortunate even to hear the teachings, the Prasangika view, and we have the opportunity to think and to realize emptiness. Not only that, we can see that those who have realized emptiness are few, almost nothing.

All those who are suffering in the six realms—there is unbelievable suffering of the hell beings, hungry ghosts, animals, human beings, suras and asuras; the oceans of suffering in each realm. And not only now, but they also experienced this suffering from beginningless rebirths—wow, wow, wow, wow—by believing the I is real, existing from its own side.

So action, object, everything that I said before, we think things exist from there, from their own side, but there’s nothing there, they exist only from the mind. Nothing is there [from its own side]; nothing is there. So what you need to think in the early morning when you do the motivation, is [meditate] on bodhicitta and emptiness, beginning with emptiness.

For the rest of the day, while you are eating or making pipi and kaka, or while you’re washing, or while you’re walking or jogging, whatever you’re doing, remember this practice, this mindfulness. Even if you haven’t realized [emptiness], try as much as possible.

We have to train our mind in this, to change our mind, to [realize] this ultimate reality, rather than being habituated since beginningless rebirth in the non-existent I, the non-existent action, the non-existent object, where non-existent means the real one, existing from there. That’s what we have to realize is empty.

That’s why we study Madhyamaka; that’s why we take refuge and do everything to achieve enlightenment for sentient beings, to free the sentient beings from the oceans of samsaric suffering and bring them to enlightenment.

We have to realize emptiness. We have to change our mind, what we believe, from that into this, the mindfulness of the ultimate reality. So that should be one of the main meditations, besides bodhicitta.

Then there’s samsara, seeing that it’s always in the nature of suffering. Then based on impermanence and death, which is very important for us beginners. Impermanence, death can happen anytime, even when we go to the bathroom to make pipi, we’re not sure if we can come back.

As you know, maybe it was Kadampa geshe Ben Kungyal, or Geshe Khamlungpa, there was a thorn bush near the door of his house, and every time he went to the bathroom, his robe would get caught on the thorn bush. He thought about cutting it, but then he also thought, “This may be my last session and maybe I’ll die.” He thought he may die; he may not come back from the toilet or from the last session. So the thorn bush never got cut in his whole life; it was always left like that.

That’s the basis of renunciation for us, especially to meditate on that. That’s the basis of renunciation and the basis for us especially to meditate on that. Only then, the actions of body, speech, and mind have the possibility to become Dharma. Otherwise, our life is filled with worldly concern and attachment to this life, to be famous, to have a good reputation, for other people to praise us, for any disease to be cured, to have a long life, and so forth. Our life doesn’t become Dharma; if our actions are done with nonvirtue they don’t become holy Dharma, they become worldly dharma.

We can see why this is so difficult, because since beginningless rebirths we have become habituated in the wrong way, seeing the hallucination as real, and now we have to turn back and practice mindfulness. What we have been believing until now has been a hallucination, and what we’ve been thinking [is real] does not exist. The ultimate reality [is that phenomena] don’t exist, while merely labeled phenomena do exist. So we have to practice mindfulness that what we’ve been thinking is real does not exist. So we have to change the reality.

[In response to the student's question about doing retreat with their teacher:]

In the monasteries, the guru-buddha, the omniscient one, covers all existence. The subtle mind is everywhere, therefore the subtle wind is everywhere, the Buddha’s holy body is everywhere. The Buddha is everywhere, the guru is everywhere.

If you understand that the guru is the embodiment of all the buddhas’ holy action, working for every sentient being—numberless sentient beings, numberless hell beings, numberless hungry ghosts, numberless animals, numberless humans, numberless suras, numberless asuras, and numberless intermediate state beings—therefore it’s not only you.

Please recite the first stanza of Kyabje Pabongka’s Calling the Guru from Afar many times. That is the real meaning of guru.

So many people, especially many Westerners who have devotion to the guru, relate only to the physical body, not the mind. And there are those who have attachment just to the body, then they get angry when the guru passes away, because it looks like the guru left them. That verse is for those who have attachment. I have experience of that, that’s all.

Regarding what to practice for what’s left of this life. You met Dharma a long time ago, so you’re supposed to understand, but I think you’re thinking more precisely now about Dharma, holy Dharma.

Of course, in Madhyamaka, it’s said that the understanding of ultimate view and bodhicitta, the conventional thought of bodhicitta, the thought to achieve enlightenment in order to enlighten all the sentient beings, and free them from samsara, those two are like wings. If we have two wings we can go far, like an eagle, and we can cross the mountains. We can go very far and wherever we like.

So it’s like that with these two wings: absolute bodhicitta and conventional bodhicitta. With two wings we can cross samsara, [remove] the subtle obscurations and go to enlightenment. This is the basis of tantra. That’s my answer.

In this life we should have the aim to realize emptiness and bodhicitta, the basis of tantra. There are people who meditate only on the chakras, the winds and the drops, and do the yoga exercises, and they leave out bodhicitta, emptiness and renunciation. They don’t regard those things and kind of leave them out as something small, something lower, so then they can never achieve enlightenment.

I’m not sure, but without renunciation, even if we practice dzogchen, we cannot be free from samsara, not sure. If our actions do not become holy Dharma, by avoiding the worldly concerns, the attachment to this life, then our practice doesn’t even protect us from the lower realms. Our practice, what we do with our body, speech, and mind, becomes a cause of the lower realms.

Even though we’re in retreat, in the Himalayan mountains, and we don’t see people, animals or birds, or we don’t sleep, or don’t eat, but then our motivation is just to get power, to become famous, to have a long life, to be healthy, wow, wow, wow, that’s the life of worldly concern, so nothing becomes Dharma, holy Dharma, even if we recite mantras for the whole life.

Without realizing emptiness, without meditating on emptiness, everything becomes a cause of samsara. Even if we practice dzogchen or dzogrim, the chakras, winds, mind, the drops, without bodhicitta nothing becomes the cause of enlightenment; nothing becomes the cause to benefit every sentient being in order for them to achieve enlightenment.

Since you received the commentary of Tara, that’s great, so you can do more of the practice of Tara, the elaborate sadhana. Do more of that meditation. But you have to spend more time on bodhicitta and emptiness.

Even if you are with the enemy, friend or stranger, whatever you are doing, going to meetings or whatever, if other people complain about you or praise you, at that time think, “In reality that’s the ‘me’ that I’ve been believing in since beginningless rebirths, the real me, but there’s no real me. It’s totally opposite to that.”

So meditate that there’s no real me, there’s no real enemy, there’s no real friend, there’s no real stranger, there’s no real world, no real America, no real Shiné Land. This is what you think. When you go shopping, think there’s no real road, there’s no real car, there’s no real money, there’s no real shop, there’s no real material things, whatever you are buying, there’s no real shopkeeper, so everything that exists is what is merely labeled by the mind.

This is something we don’t think normally. We might even think things don’t exist. What we think [is real] doesn’t exist and what doesn’t exist we believe is real, totally opposite. This is what we’ve been doing since beginningless rebirths. Now you understand. This is what emptiness means, the meditation on emptiness.

This is a huge shock, so it totally changes our wrong belief from beginningless rebirths, believing what is wrong. But it changes now, right now, right now, this second. So we can live life with this new belief, that everything exists in mere name.

First start with oneself, thinking “There’s no real me.” If we’re able to think this over and over, if we meditate on this, then we won’t be reborn in the lower realms. We will not only be free from samsara and become enlightened, but [if we meditate on emptiness] in the right way, we won’t get reborn in the lower realms.

It’s so powerful, that however much negative karma we’ve created—even if we killed our father, mother or an arhat, caused blood to flow from a buddha, or caused disunity in the Sangha—even if we’ve done that, if we meditate on emptiness, then we won’t get reborn in the lower realms. It’s unbelievably powerful purification.

There’s so much benefit to meditating on emptiness. It’s unbelievable, unbelievable. You won’t believe it; you’ll be totally fainted forever. You’ll be eating only ice cream, not pizza, no hamburgers, no chicken, no fish, no pork. That’s all.

Thank you very much. You are most welcome to enlightenment.

Cittamani Tara is a very, very blessed practice, and it is said that all the Guhyasamaja importance is inside this, so it’s very, very important, really important. You are lucky to be able to meditate, very lucky. So be a lucky girl continuously, be a lucky girl. Haha! See you soon.

With much love and prayers ...

Meditate on Emptiness Every Day
Date of Advice:
January 2021
Date Posted:
March 2023

A student asked Rinpoche what practice they should do and for how long, in order to purify negativities on their mind stream. Rinpoche advised the importance of bodhicitta and said emptiness meditation is unbelievable purification. 

Lama Zopa Rinpoche visiting Chenrezig Institute, 1991. Photo by Thubten Yeshe.

My most dear, most kind, most precious, most wish-fulfilling one,
Thank you very much for your request. The most important thing in the morning, I tell students, is to do the morning motivation practice called The Method to Transform a Suffering Life into Happiness (Including Enlightenment). [Updated title: How to Make My Lives Wish-fulfilling.]

This is like kaka becoming gold. The worldly mind, the nonvirtuous mind, is transformed into virtue, changed to Dharma, and not only that, the self-cherishing mind, which has caused all the sufferings from beginningless rebirths up to now, and in the future causes suffering endlessly, the self-cherishing thought is transformed into bodhicitta, which is the root of the path to enlightenment and brings us all the happiness up to enlightenment. It brings all the temporal and ultimate happiness, liberation and enlightenment, to the sentient beings—the numberless hell beings, the numberless preta beings, the numberless animals, the numberless human beings, the numberless sura beings, the numberless asura beings and the numberless intermediate state beings. Therefore, it’s so important to do this morning practice.

It’s so important to do this morning practice (The Method to Transform). It’s unbelievable. If we live our daily life with bodhicitta, then everything becomes the cause of enlightenment. Then whatever action we do with our body, speech and mind, even eating, going to the bathroom, even sleeping, everything becomes a cause of enlightenment, then it means we can benefit every sentient being and help them achieve enlightenment. It’s so important.

Your purification is the meditation on emptiness. These teachings may help:

Every day do meditation on emptiness; that is unbelievable purification. That makes us see the ultimate reality of the I and of things, how everything appears to our hallucinated mind as the real ones, existing from their own side or truly existent, so that’s a hallucination, but in reality, they are empty of that. 

There is the base I, for example. There is the base, but instead of that, there is this wrong projection, wrong belief, wrong appearance, hallucinated appearance of a real I, an independent I, truly existing from its own nature. This is false.

Then there is the wrong belief, the wrong projection, and from that concept the real I, real aggregates, real concepts, become the cause of suffering, and that is what creates our samsara—the oceans of suffering of hell beings, the oceans of suffering of preta beings, the oceans of suffering of animals, the oceans of suffering of human beings and the oceans of suffering of sura and asura beings. We have experienced this from beginningless rebirths, and if we still follow [the wrong belief] then we will experience all these sufferings without end.

So we can’t help ourselves and we can’t bring others to the ultimate happiness, liberation from samsara. We can’t help others become free from the oceans of suffering of samsara and we can’t bring ourselves and others to happiness, peerless enlightenment, the total cessation of obscurations and completion of realizations.

Realizing emptiness is necessary because ignorance is the root of suffering, of samsara, the root of our own oceans of samsaric sufferings. The ignorance holds the false I as real and holds the real I as false, and the real aggregates as false. It’s because of that, that we need to eliminate this. This is a most urgent thing. Without caring about that, there is no way to achieve enlightenment.

First we need to be free from samsara; first we need to eliminate this [ignorance], and the only way to do that is through realizing emptiness. So we are not only purifying all the negative karma; for that we also need to meditate on emptiness.

Please listen to my recent teachings: 2020 Teachings on Thought Transformation during the Time of COVID-19. These teachings are on the internet, and from the beginning there is much talk on emptiness, besides other subjects. I will be teaching more on bodhicitta and emptiness as these subjects are not yet finished.

You can also do the four-point analysis from the lamrim teachings on the subject of emptiness.

Read Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand from beginning to end mindfully. That itself becomes a meditation. Also read my advice on how to do this and how long to meditate on the lamrim.

Sometimes, a little bit, you can let me know what you are doing, whether you are doing skydiving or going in the ocean or practicing. You can let me know from time to time and I will try to help. Later, if you want preliminary practices, you can let me know, but please start with this.

You are most welcome to enlightenment. This is the happiest life, not only benefiting and freeing yourself, but by meditating on the graduated path to enlightenment, the lamrim, you can benefit and help numberless sentient beings—the numberless hell beings, the numberless preta beings, the numberless animals, the numberless human beings, the numberless sura and asura beings, everyone. You can free them from suffering and bring them to enlightenment; you are able to help them. This is the happiest life; the best, most happy life. This is the happiest life; you should know this.

With much love and prayers ...

A Verse for Meditation on Emptiness
Date of Advice:
October 2019
Date Posted:
February 2023

Rinpoche advised how to meditate on emptiness by reciting verses or quotations from the Buddha’s teachings while doing any kind of mundane activity.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche, 2010. Photo: Ven. Roger Kunsang.

From the Dhammapada:

CHHÖ KÜN MI LAM GYU MA DRA
DEN PÄI NGO WO CHI YANG ME
ME KYANG NANG WÄI NGÖ PO LA
NGÖN PAR ZHEN PA ME JE ANG

All phenomena are like a dream or an illusion.
A true essence does not exist whatsoever,
It doesn’t exist,
So don’t cling to appearing phenomena.

Normally I recite this verse when I am doing sur practice for the people who have died. Sur is making offerings to Guru, Buddha, Dharma and Sangha, and to all kinds of sentient beings, all the landlords, but particularly for people who have died and haven't found rebirth yet, so they are born in the intermediate state. Sur is offering smell to them. It is food for them, the smell. It is not the smell of incense. It has to be food, like tsampa, barley [flour]. You burn tsampa and it has the smell of food. It has to be like that.

I recite this verse when I am doing sur. This is a teaching on emptiness for the spirits and the smell-eaters.

It is also very good to recite this verse when you go for a walk. You can repeat it as you are walking. Recite or remember it and at the same time you can do the meditation when you are walking. So then your walking becomes a remedy to samsara. It eradicates the root of samsara, the ignorance from where all the suffering came, from beginningless rebirths, now and that continues in the future. It is eradicating the root of samsara, ignorance.

It is unbelievable, so meaningful for your life. It is a very deep meditation. This kind of mindfulness of emptiness.

Also, you can do [this meditation]—looking at the hallucination as a hallucination—with that mindfulness while you are walking. Walking is just one example, but you can do it while you are making food, cooking in the kitchen, thinking that you are dreaming; you are in a dream making food. Look at it like a dream, like an illusion. While you are making food in the kitchen, while you are busy, you can meditate on emptiness, looking at it as a hallucination as it is a hallucination. While you are busy having meetings, while you are busy being a secretary, having a busy life, part of your mind is in meditation.

Or, merely labeled—merely labeled I, merely labeled action, merely labeled whatever you are doing, all that—practice meditation on emptiness.

Or, nothing exists, what appears as real, all this is nothing. Recite the verse above, or:

NGA CHHÖ CHÄN DEN PAR ME TE TEN DREL YIN PÄI CHHIR
The base is not truly existent because it is a dependent arising.

That is so good, fantastic, to think like this when you are walking. You can do meditation on this, “It has no true existence….” Then, after some time, think, “…because it is a dependent arising.”

You can do it over and over. You go and come back, then your life becomes most meaningful.

Instead of OM MANI PADME HUM, OM MANI PADME HUM, reciting mantras, you can recite these quotations of the Buddha, quotations of the Buddha's teachings, any of the words on emptiness that I mentioned.

Instead of a mantra, you can recite the Buddha’s quotations when you are walking, when you are driving a car [or doing any kind of mundane activity.] While you are cooking food you can do that so it reminds you of that meditation. So it is very good.

Also you can chant the verses. It is very good to chant them; it brings your mind in meditation.

Stable Awareness of Emptiness
Date of Advice:
January 2019
Date Posted:
February 2022

Rinpoche advised how to maintain awareness of emptiness in daily life, even when we go shopping or to the beach. Rinpoche explained that only the wisdom of subtle emptiness can eliminate ignorance, the root of all the delusions.

Mantra calligraphy by Lama Zopa Rinpoche.

You should use the verses I have translated on emptiness and relate that to you and me and your place, to Walmart and the whole world. There is no real one at all. The whole thing, what has been appearing to you, totally trusting that; that is totally a lie. We have been trained, habituated completely in that, and we live our life in that reality.

So when you go to Walmart, to the house and other places, go with that mindfulness in your mind. Keep your mind in that awareness for as long as you can. Try to do it for five minutes, ten minutes, fifteen minutes or twenty minutes, then half an hour, one hour. That is an unbelievable meditation, very deep meditation, the best. Otherwise, emptiness is only talk, talk, talk, then suddenly our life is gone.

You can write this down nicely on bigger paper and put it where you can see all the time.

Now the time is getting late. Death can come at any time. Hurry up. Live the whole life with this awareness.

Then after some time you will be living in this realization.

When you go to the department store, while you are going there, go with this awareness. You don’t have to buy something. For me, I try to do that, even if there is nothing to buy or I’m getting something very small, like marking pens, something like that. When I am in the shop trying to find something to buy, I do the meditation. Or when I go to the beach, I go with awareness of emptiness, or those three things I have mentioned before in my teachings, any of those.

This is so important and vital to realize this. I don’t know if there are many people meditating on emptiness, but this makes us realize it and to discover, to have strong faith in cause and effect, reincarnation, the existence of the four noble truths, hell and enlightenment, samsara and nirvana, happiness and the problems in everyday life that we are experiencing and other people are experiencing.

Then relating to emptiness, dependent arising, dependent in terms of emptiness, there is “I” because there is a base to be labeled I. The aggregates exist, so it goes on like that. But the I is extremely subtle; it is like it doesn’t exist, for my mind. Only the wisdom of subtle emptiness can eliminate the root of all the delusions and the eons of suffering of samsara, yours and mine, and that of numberless samsaric beings.

There are many learned ones who fell into nihilism or externalism. It is so difficult to realize the middle way, the subtle dependent arising. That’s why Lama Tsongkhapa highly praised Buddha Shakyamuni for revealing dependent arising to us sentient beings. The Buddha liberated numberless beings from samsara and is still liberating us now; that is his most unbelievable quality and kindness to us, skies of kindness. After that Lama Tsongkhapa put so much effort to explain this to us and wrote so many texts.

Now you understand we are so lucky to have met Lama Tsongkhapa’s teachings. Even if we did not get to study, at least we are able to have imprints by hearing from His Holiness the Dalai Lama and other great teachers, unbelievable teachers.

In regard to your question about [awareness of] emptiness not working when there are very strong delusions and emotions, that is because the mind is not stable in awareness, and you are not seeing the hallucination as a hallucination, or as merely labeled. You are not seeing that what appears as real is not there, it is empty [of inherent existence].

That realization may not be strong enough, or it may be nearly there, but then not stable. Because it is not stable, then what comes back is the object of ignorance, holding the merely labeled I as real, so then we are discriminating bad and good, ugliness and beauty, from their own side, then anger and attachment and other delusions arise. Then we are most unbelievably busy, creating negative karma. When we hold the object of our ignorance as the real I, that starts our samsara.

Emptiness Meditation While Walking
Date of Advice:
July 2018
Date Posted:
September 2020

Rinpoche gave this advice to a student about how to meditate on emptiness while walking.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche shops for flowers in Singapore, March 2016. Photo: Roger Kunsang.

My most dear one,
I was going to mention this to you before, but I forgot. One day here at Buddha Amitabha Pure Land I was walking outside with the Sangha. One day I went for longer walk with Roger, Tharchin, Tenzin and Sherab, so I tried to explain how to meditate on the lamrim while walking.

On the way down, I explained how to meditate by reflecting on the basis of the perfect human rebirth—how it is difficult to find again, and not only that, death is definite and the actual time of death can happen anytime. So, walking with that awareness—how many seconds are constantly going, running down—and practicing mindfulness of that. Our life is running so fast toward death, to the lower realms; if our karma is not purified we are running so fast to the hell realms, to suffer for eons.

Then when walking back to the house I explained about the false I, the object to be refuted according to Prasangika, as I mentioned in the meditation briefly before. So, when we walked back, to walk with mindfulness that the I who is walking is a hallucination. It appears as a real I walking along the road, but it is a hallucination.

Another meditation is that everything is merely labeled. This is more practice of mindfulness, looking at the hallucination as a hallucination.

I don’t know if the Sangha did this. I asked them afterwards and they said they did do that.

As I was walking up, I came to the understanding—this is because I normally don’t meditate—that there is no real I, action, object, and nothing of this retreat house, Buddha Amitabha Pure Land. It is not there and what appears is just the hallucination of ignorance. In reality, nothing is there. Of course that means the whole world, what people talk about on CNN and BBC, all the talk, bad and good, mostly bad, nothing is there.

So, basically like that. People study for thirty or forty years, but nothing is there in reality. People experience so many difficulties—for example, cancer or physical ill heath, one thing after another; and other things like suffering in the family, children who died or are sick; so many problems, so much worry; wanting to be more white so thinking of changing the skin [color]; or even if they are young, wanting to look younger—but in reality there’s nothing there. What is real, as it appears, nothing is there.

Of course, I should be seeing this all the time, but I don’t meditate. What happens is that ignorance projects the hallucination and that becomes our main life, not the reality.

This is what I wanted to say to you. Thank you very much.

With much love and prayers ...

The Object to Be Refuted
Date of Advice:
June 2018
Date Posted:
February 2020

A student wrote to Rinpoche about their experiences while meditating on emptiness. Rinpoche gave this advice about the subtle object to be refuted according to the Prasangika Madhyamaka view.

My most dear, most kind, most precious, wish-fulfilling one,
Thank you very much for your kind letter. I want to say something additional about emptiness.

It’s not just the first label that you have—the appearance—[like the car] is labeled on the base, the parts. [But to then think that the label and the base are intrinsic] is sort of a joke. That’s what you expressed regarding the car or whatever. You have to look at the base as the first label, the first level merely labeled by the mind. That base is then merely labeled on another base; then that base is labeled on another base; and so it goes on and on like that.

The body, for example, comes down to [limbs and so forth and then] to particles and atoms. According to the tenets of the four Buddhist philosophical schools, some do not accept truly existing particles whereas some accept there are fundamental particles.

[The Prasangika Madkyamaka view is that self and phenomena are] merely imputed. For example, the mind focuses on the base, the aggregates, and that same mind makes up the label “I,” which means the merely imputed I. That’s how the I exists. There is nothing even slightly more than that. If there were something slightly more than that, it would exist from its own side. Even though it wouldn’t exist completely from its own side, it would exist from its own side. That’s the subtle object to be refuted (Tib: gag cha), according to the Prasangika view.

The Svatantrika view is that the I exists from its own side [but it’s also labeled by the mind.]

The Prasangika view of emptiness is extremely subtle and it is the only way to realize emptiness. It is the only way to cease the root of samsara—the ignorance holding the I as real, as existing from its own side while it is not. The I is merely labeled by the mind, by that thought. There is nothing more than that. So we can see that from the label I on the aggregates, all the way down to the atoms and particles of atoms—all are merely imputed by the mind. Nothing more than that exists.

That is very good for meditation. That is very good for meditation. Meditate on that emptiness for as long as you can.

Next, look at everything in the world similarly, as merely labeled by the mind. Nothing exists from its own side. All phenomena in the whole world are empty, including your family, your house, everything. Meditate on that emptiness for as long as you can.

Then meditate on hell and enlightenment, after that samsara and nirvana, and after that the happiness and problems in your daily life. Meditate on the emptiness of each of these two things—hell and enlightenment, samsara and nirvana, happiness and problems—for as long as you can. Meditate on their emptiness.

There is one danger. Maybe it’s easy to say, but some people who haven’t done much study think that nothing exists. That would mean there is no I, no delusion, no karma, and no past or future lives. That means there is no Triple Gem or four noble truths. So it becomes like the Heart Sutra, if we believe in the literal teachings where it says “no, no, no”—no tongue, no ice-cream, no chocolate, no happiness, no pipi, no kaka.

Here you might think that things do not exist at all, but in this way you would be following nihilism. It is said in the teachings—I saw this in a commentary on the Four Hundred Stanzas, I think—that we create the negative karma of having killed 100 million people if we fall into nihilism, if we believe in that. So be careful.

This should help you to realize emptiness and understand how to think about emptiness. It should help. That is the main help to give you the realizations of how things exist. First you realize ultimate truth and secondly conventional truth—how things exist in mere name. How the name exists in mere name; how aggregates exist in mere name; how everything exists in mere name. The world exists in mere name; hell and enlightenment exists in mere name; samsara and nirvana exist in mere name; happiness and problems exist in mere name.

This is the most difficult thing to realize. Many learned meditators in Tibet have fallen into nihilism, have slipped into nihilism. I think maybe [this is like] Zen Buddhist philosophy, thinking that nothing exists, believing nothing exists, I don’t know. If we don’t exist, our hell doesn’t exist, then our enlightenment doesn’t exist, the four noble truths don’t exist, so it becomes very strange. I don’t know how Zen Buddhists reply to that.

It is extremely subtle, as I mentioned. The I exists in mere name, it functions in mere name. There is I because the base, the aggregates, exist in mere name. They exist but they exist in mere name, they function in mere name, so all the rest of phenomena are like this. They exist in mere name, they function in mere name. It is very subtle, that which exists in mere name.

There is the creator I [the subject], the action and the object. There is the creator I, there is the action of creating negative karma and there is the negative karma created. There is hell, there is I, there is actualizing the path and there is enlightenment. There is all this, but only in mere name.

 So you have to get more experience, then let me know. Meditate and let me know.

Please read some recent dictation I gave. [Now available from FPMT Foundation Store as a booklet Recognizing the False I.]

With much love and prayers ...

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