So, I mean, Ken Rinpoche is a great erudite scholar, teaching lama of the Sakyapa lineage, who is now, I think, his third visit to the United States, and who has been traveling around teaching many students how to develop the correct view of Buddhism and to develop their own meditation practice. And so Rinpoche has the great blessing and the ability to clarify any doubts we have on the path. So Venerable Rinpoche, we're so glad that you're here at the meditation center this morning, and we thank you for coming to give us a talk on emptiness and Yes, I know that. I don't know what to say. I don't know what to say.

[01:02]

I don't know what to say. [...] I don Nidra Shantideva Naichang Dzogchen Lohe, Kholo Simdze Domba Rinchen Dey, Jigme Dey, Kholo Naichang Dzogchen Lohe, Kholo Myoho Dzogchen Tendrel, Dey Yungchen, Tenla Yungchen, Dzogchen. Teren Deyala, Nga, [...] Nga So today I'm very happy to be here amongst all my dharma brothers and sisters, all my dharma friends and I would like to offer on this occasion in this Buddhist Dharma Center a brief discussion on the subject of emptiness and compassion.

[02:20]

So in Buddha Dharma what we must realize is what is called emptiness. And to be able to realize emptiness, we have to give rise to the attitude of bodhicitta, the bodhisattva ideal. And this is, particularly, is the mind steeped in compassion. And to give rise to compassion, first we must give rise to love. So to begin with in this discussion, I will speak about love. In my opinion, the most important thing in the world is to be able to communicate with people, to be able to communicate with people, to be able to communicate with people, to be able to communicate with people.

[03:26]

So, normally we are concerned with our own happiness of wishing for ourselves, we wish to be happy to have what we desire and so on. And the bodhicitta means that we transfer this self-cherishing to cherishing taking care of all others by just having the thought, may all beings be happy, may all beings have just what they want. And so we develop in this way an altruistic motivation. And so this The essence of this thought, may all beings be happy, is what is meant by love.

[04:42]

That is love itself, just that thought. The essence of this thought, may all beings be happy, is what is meant by love. That is love itself, just that thought. The essence of this thought, may all beings be happy, is what is meant by love. That is love itself, just that thought. It is said that if you do not know how to do it, you will not be able to do it. But if you do not know how to do it, you will not be able to do it. It is said that if you do not know how to do it, you will not be able to do it. So in order to be able to develop this love, then firstly we have to consider one particular sentient being, ideally one's own mother.

[05:50]

And just as we feel that we have this idea of gaining happiness and being happy, having pleasure for oneself, then we have to, by visualizing in front of us our own mother, we have to consider her welfare and think repeatedly again and again, may she be happy, may she not have any kind of suffering, may her happiness be totally perfect. And we develop that until it has become some kind of continuous thought that we have a continuous stream of love going out firstly to this one particular sentient being, our own mother. So, when I was young, I used to go to the temple with my friends. [...]

[06:53]

I used to go to the temple with my friends. [...] So once we have stabilized our continuous flow of love to this one individual, our own mother, then we begin to spread it out, and thinking, may the closer relatives of your family, may they become happy, may they have pleasure. And we increase the love, extending it out step by step to all sentient beings, until we have a continuous stream of love that we are feeling for all beings, even our enemies, especially those who normally we may respond to with irritation and anger and hatred. It's the same for all of us.

[08:00]

It's the same for all of us. [...] So, in the beginning of the Dalai Lama's life, there was no Dalai Tse Tzu. There [...] was no Dalai Tse Tzu. To begin with, we have to actually develop this stream of love within our minds. and it would be foolhardy to try to express this love in a physical way too soon, because we still have to overcome our ingrained habits of selfishness and miserliness and so on, and it would be very difficult for us just to give

[09:37]

vast amount of our belongings and so on as an act of love. And so our acts of love may become defiled by our ingrained habit of selfishness. And so that is why to begin with we have to train the mind and develop love step by step. First beginning with a degree of love and building upon it until we really feel this And as we develop in that way, we can express this love in altruistic actions that would not, at first, test too severely our ego clinging, so that our virtuous actions, say of generosity, would not be sullied with some kind of regret at having given. And so we practice the love and then practice adding on to that love actual altruistic action and we can build up the power of our altruistic action gradually without trying to leap into this too much at the beginning.

[10:51]

In the past, when I went to Lodong, I used to go to the river to pray. [...] When I was young, I used to go to the temple to pray. When I was old, I used to go to the temple to pray. When I was young, I used to go to the temple to pray. So if we are able to develop this love in a very pure way so that it's a continuous stream within our mind and is extended to all sentient beings, and we're able to support that with acts of altruism within the world, then we have attained the limitless love. And so then we need to develop compassion, and the essence of compassion

[11:56]

itself is the thought, may all beings be freed from suffering, may there be no more suffering. And just that first thought of wishing that nobody would feel any pain is compassion. So, it is very important for us to keep this in mind. So once again we have to train the mind to develop this compassion, firstly by imagining this one being like our own mother and thinking, may she never have any pain, may she be free from any kind of suffering.

[13:11]

And thinking in this way, we develop it until we actually are experiencing compassion, and the very strong desire to do something to save our own mother from suffering and then we extend this compassion out to all beings and include all beings and this can be done by thinking of the actually what kind of suffering beings are feeling and feeling that suffering and seeing what it is like and seeing that beings who are deeply embroiled with their projections of hell realms and extreme intense kind of pain, then we see that pain and think how we, if only we were able to remove that pain from those beings. And so we develop, by considering the suffering of beings and increasing our compassion in this way,

[14:13]

We develop it until it's something that is very pure and like a ceaseless flow of compassion. So, it is very important to have a good relationship with your teacher. If you do not have a good relationship with your teacher, you will not be able to achieve your goal. So, that's what I'm trying to say. And so, likewise with the development of love, once we have this continuous stream of compassion where we are concerned just with removing the suffering of other beings, then we have to augment that with actual physical acts of altruism to really work to solve the suffering of beings.

[15:53]

So we may practice like taking care of somebody that is sick. or somebody that is hurt, and supplying medicine to the sick and so on, and actually performing altruistic action in this way. However, as a beginner, it's very difficult to act as an extremely compassionate being because we may be overcome with our own selfish instinct that distinguishes between clean and filthy. And so we may become disgusted with the suffering and sickness of another person and not be able to do that. So if we were to put ourselves in a situation where our own ego clinging would give rise to disgust at the sight of somebody who had some very foul kind of disease, then we would not be developing virtue and actually it would be the opposite.

[17:00]

So we have to test ourselves and develop the compassion step by step and if once we have the compassion and are able to express it in these kinds of altruistic ways to the point where we can hold the hand of somebody who has leprosy or who is suffering very greatly and not have any kind of hesitation about expressing our compassion then we have developed compassion perfectly within our mind and that is a test of that. So when we have established this welling up of love and compassion within our mind, then we can augment that further with using the visualization

[18:14]

of the practice that's called tonglen, or giving and taking. And in this practice, you develop the will and intention of thinking, may all the suffering and all the pain of all beings, may this ripen in me at this very moment. May I take it all from them unto myself. And as you think that you receive into yourself the suffering and pain of all beings, then you must recognize that receiving this suffering will undo your habitual tendency of ego clinging and free the mind from its fixation upon ego. And at the same time, whenever you experience the slightest pleasure or joy, then you dedicate that to all sentient beings. and imagine that you are giving away all of your pleasure, all of your joy, all of your happiness to all sentient beings, and transferring your own happiness for exchanging it for the suffering and pain of all sentient beings.

[19:38]

And based upon the development of love and compassion, we can become adept at this practice of tonglen. In the beginning, when I was a child, I was taught how to read and write. But when I grew up, [...] I was taught how to read and write. So however, no matter how much we develop this love and compassion and this practice of giving and taking, then it cannot It cannot result in the supreme bliss of complete liberation, of enlightenment itself, unless we combine this with the recognition that all phenomena is uncreated, is illusory, without any substantial existence.

[21:00]

And so we have to develop, combined with our love and compassion, the view of emptiness. At the same time that we take up the practice of the works of the Bodhisattva, of developing ourselves in the very great, profound, altruistic ways of the Bodhisattva, we at the same time have to develop the recognition of all appearance as being illusory, indescribable, as in its very nature, emptiness. In Dongma, there is a saying, that if you want to be a good person, you have to be a good person. If [...] you want to be a good person, you have to be a good person.

[22:02]

In the past, we used to go to the temple to pray, but now we go to the temple to pray in the morning. In the past, we used to go to the temple to pray, but now we go to the temple to pray in the morning. In the past, we used to go to the temple to pray, but now we go to the temple to pray in the morning. So how do we meditate on this emptiness? How do we develop this view of emptiness? Firstly, we have to recognize that whilst we're meditating upon love and compassion, then we have this conceptual references of the object of our compassion being all sentient beings.

[23:13]

And the subject, the one who is meditating, and the action, the actual meditation itself, the love and the compassion and so on. So we have this duality of subject, object and action. And whilst we are meditating then we have to perceive very clearly the truth that this idea of subject, object and action is illusory mental projection and there is nothing substantially real about any of these three divisions. So we recognize by seeing that first recognition of the illusory nature of subject, object and action that all appearance is mental projection and that all of the experiences of suffering and perplexity that sentient beings experience, this is their mind's own projection.

[24:15]

and that there's nothing substantially real about it. It's just like dreaming. And we see that about our own mind and about the minds of all sentient beings. And seeing that, the illusory nature of all phenomena as being mind projection, then we have to seek mind and look to see, well, what is this mind? Where is this mind? So we look very carefully to try to find the location of mind. see where it is residing, what shape it is, what color it is, what size it is, and look for the mind in this way. And by looking we will not find, but this looking and not finding is itself finding the nature of mind. So looking but not seeing is what is meant by seeing the true nature of mind, which is completely beyond the realm of descriptive characteristics. and that itself is the recognition of emptiness. So firstly, the way to approach this practice is that first we allow our view

[25:40]

awareness to settle very directly into this looking for mind. And we look for mind and find nothing and then relax in that non-finding. And this is the way that we develop the practice by first taking like very direct aim with our awareness and looking directly into mind's nature and then relaxing that view. And so we shouldn't as beginners try to grasp very tightly at some kind of thing so that we should see and then relax, see and then relax and do this repetitively developing it in our meditation. And so we look for mind in this way and see this empty nature that is beyond any kind of descriptive characteristics and then after a short time we once again develop love and compassion and return to that aspect of the meditation.

[27:12]

And so that as we meditate we have to be on the one hand developing love and compassion and on the other hand developing more and more profound view of the empty nature of mind, of all phenomena. And so the practice is to unify these two aspects of emptiness and clarity, which is mind's nature, and develop it in this way step by step. In the olden days, there was a ritual called Dewa Katsu. It was a ritual that was performed at the funeral of the deceased. Dewa Katsu was a ritual that was performed at the funeral of the deceased. It was a ritual that was performed at the funeral of the deceased. It was a ritual that was performed at the funeral of the deceased. So, in brief, the practice that definitely leads to complete Buddhahood is the practice of seeing all sentient beings

[28:13]

and wishing for all beings to be freed from suffering, to be filled with happiness and joy, and then at the same time to observe the nature of mind and all phenomena and perceive this emptiness. And we have to combine the two. So the practice could be called the inseparability of emptiness and compassion, or the inseparability of emptiness and clarity. whatever, and this is the path, the supreme path that definitely leads one to Buddhahood without any doubt. And so this concludes my brief talk upon emptiness, compassion, and I pray very strongly that all of you will develop this great motivation of bodhisattva and your minds be completely freed from any kind of ordinary type of mundane attitudes and just be filled with the perfectly pure motivation of bodhicitta with great compassion, great love and great understanding of this emptiness.

[29:48]

And if this should happen without any doubt, you will attain Buddhahood.

[29:52]

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