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Emptiness, tong pa nyi, shunyata—even if we don’t have the actual realization but we have correct understanding and do effortful meditation, just meditating on that is protecting ourselves, taking care of ourselves. That is taking care of ourselves. This is very, very, very, very, very important.
Taking care of ourselves, looking after ourselves, taking care of our mind, our life, is to end samsaric suffering which has no beginning. It has no beginning, but we can end it. Can you imagine? To end the oceans of suffering of samsara, to end that. So it helps for that.
Then there’s tantra, taking care of ourselves. I just explained what I thought. It’s even more transcendent—we abandon impure view and impure mind. We live our life in that [pure mind and pure view] with tantra; we work with that.
So I think we will do the meditation that was supposed to be done before, this morning.
A star, a defective view, a butter lamp flame,
An illusion, a dew drop, a water bubble,
A dream, lightning, a cloud:
See all causative phenomena like this.
I, action, object, all the phenomena—what exists is merely imputed by the mind. What exists is what is merely imputed by the mind, therefore, I, action, object, do not exist from their own side. No phenomena exists from its own side, everything is totally empty from its own side.
It’s like a star in the daytime—there’s a star, but it’s covered by sunlight. It exists but it is empty of existing from its own side, therefore it exists in mere name. Therefore, dependent arising and emptiness are unified. There’s a star even though we don’t see it because it’s covered by sunlight.
Everything is empty. As I mentioned this morning, it’s not nihilism; the emptiness here is not nihilism. Tong pa nyi means “emptiness only.” Ignorance leaves a negative imprint on the mind and projects [true existence.] Right after things are merely labeled by the mind in the first second, then in the next second that is projected onto merely labeled things. I, action, object, are merely labeled by the mind, then in the next second the negative imprint left by the ignorance projects true existence.
It’s like a magician, who by using substances or mantras hallucinates the audience, their senses, so the magician makes them see something which doesn’t exist. Something appears real and people believe that which doesn’t exist. The magician person can do that.
There’s emptiness, but it’s like the emptiness is covered, hidden. It’s covered by the hallucination. There’s a star there but due to the light of the sun, the brightness, we don’t see it. There’s the illusion of true existence, truly existent appearance, but it has never been there. I, action, object appear to exist from their own side, as truly existing. Things appear to exist by themselves and we actually one hundred percent believe in that.
We live our whole life, not only from this morning until night, not only from birth to death, not only that, but from beginningless rebirths up to now and also in the future, endlessly. Not sure when we will realize that everything—I action, object—is empty. Not sure when we’ll realize that everything is empty from its own side.
So karma is emptiness. Think everything is empty. I is empty; action is empty; object is empty; things do not exist from their own side, they are totally empty. Meditate a little bit on that.
Rab rib is the hallucinated view, the defective view. The example given in the text is that it’s like while we’re eating food, there appears to be hair dropping in the food. We have a vision like that. It’s not happening, but we are seeing it like that, rab rib and so forth. Maybe also it is sometimes due to defective eyes, then we see the wrong visions that are not happening in reality. This is rab rib.
Like that, the I, action, object, everything [appears to] exist, everything [appears] real. We think everything exists from its own side, we think everything appearing is real, but that’s wrong, it is totally a hallucination. They do not exist at all. That never happened from the beginning.
Excerpted from a teaching given by Lama Zopa Rinpoche at Istituto Lama Tzong Khapa, Pomaia, Italy, on June 28, 2014. Lightly edited by Sandra Smith. You can find the entire teaching here on our website.
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