Expert: Laurie McLauglin - 3/29/2011

Question
I am reading the book Seeing yourself as you really are and I read a response you gave a while back to a question on inherent existence.  While the idea and definition make perfect sense to me I am not sure how one goes about viewing object differently.  Is it just a matter of knowing that ignorance exists?  Can you recommend any activities or further reading to aid in the process?

Answer
Hello Renea -

Thank you for letting me answer your question.

Do you mean His Holiness' book "How to See Yourself As You Really Are" ? I was able to read an excerpt. I am glad and rejoice that you understand inherent existence on an intellectual level.

One of the reasons it took me so long to answer your question is that there are so many ways to give you an answer that I was not sure where to start. I am not sure I am wise enough to give you an answer that may help you.

All I can do is tell you what has helped me.

I do know that from what I have learned, in order to get the most out of ones dharma practice, there are three parts that should be all done equally; study, meditation and practice.

It appears that you have studied the texts well enough for you to get a good intellectual sense of what inherent existence is and I rejoice.

Now to really understand it, it seems that you might want to try meditation and then practice which is taking it off the meditation cushion and seeing if you can put into practice the concept of lack of inherent existence.

So for the first part, I would suggest spending time in a gompa (or wherever works for you) and meditating. I use the word gompa which is a Tibetan word because we translate it as meditation but its literal meaning is "to familiarize". So I would suggest that you familiarize yourself with the concepts of dependant arising and inherent existence and lack of inherent existence by using analytical meditations to meditate on these concepts.  Of course there are many meditations on emptiness and lack of inherent existence and I do not know which would be right for you.  

All I can do is say what worked for me.  There is a sutra called The Diamond Cutter Sutra. And there is commentary on this sutra called "Sunlight on the Path to Freedom". If you use the commentary as the subject of your analytical meditations then you hopefully will begin to familiarize yourself enough with these concepts that you will be able to view objects differently in your meditation sessions. It is kind of advanced but for some reason I resonated with it and hopefully you will too.

What I did was take a phrase dealing with inherent existence and emptiness and then I got into a meditative state using mindfulness meditation on my breath and once my mind was calm, I examined this phrase until I understood it in my heart, rather than just knowing it in my mind.  That is the best way I can describe it.

If you find that the commentary on the Diamond Cutter Sutra does no work for you then I would look around on the Internet to try to find some meditations on emptiness that do resonate with you and then meditate on those

Once you do that, then you can get off your meditation cushion and walk around and begin to practice being in the world and at the same time seeing it as lacking inherent existence. Once you understand it more than know it, you can practice trying to employ that understanding as you interact with the world and life in general.

Be patient as getting this kind of understanding if inherent existence, emptiness and dependent arising takes a fair amount of time as it seems counter intuitive at first and our egos might fight at the idea that things are empty.  We like to think of things as real and if things are empty and are not inherently existent as we think they are, then our egos will have nothing to hold on to and that scares our egos sometimes so much that we end up rejecting Buddhism and the concepts of Buddhism entirely.  So, take it slowly and just do what feels right.  Don't try to make yourself understand it if you are not ready.

Believe it or not, I would also recommend watching The Matrix as you study emptiness further and you will begin to see in scenes like the "I know Kung Fu" scene where Neo fights with Morpheus and asks him "Do you think that's air you're breathing?'

As for other things to read about inherent existence, anything that His Holiness writes is good. My favorite teacher that teaches things simply as they are is Venerable Robina who is an Australian nun who has been Buddhist for at least 20 years.  Here is the link for an audio teaching about emptiness that is a good way to start getting into the head of emptiness. http://www.archive.org/details/Tse_Chen_Ling_Robina_Courtin_Use_Your_Wisdom_2007...

Or you might try Geshe Michael Roach. Or, if you have a bit of money, then getting Tubten Pende's teaching on Emptiness, which is found in Module 12 of the Discovering Buddhism series which you can purchase from the FPMT Foundation Store is really wonderful. Tubten Pende is an American teacher with years of experience and has a really easy to understand teaching style and leads great meditations (at least I think so).

I hope some of this is helpful.  If you have any further or more specific questions about inherent existence and emptiness and dependent arising, I will be happy to try to answer them.