2021 Tergar Asia Online Course｜Joy of Living 3 Session3 Excerpt
Speaker: Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche
Date: 26 Sep.,2021 pm3:00 (Hong Kong /Taiwan/Beijing time)
Translator: Laura Qiu
▍The world is like a “dream pizza”
When you fully recognize emptiness, you will get total freedom and liberation! But as long as our shared common shared is not gone, the samsaric show is still continuing, as in a dream.
Let us say you are hiking in the Himalaya mountains and you find that there’s no pizza up there, but you really want to eat pizza. One night you have a wonderful dream in which someone was making pizza, and he said, ’Hi, would you like some pizza?’ And you happily thanked him and take the pizza. In the dream it’s a hot, aromatic pizza, with the sizzling sound of a newly baked pizza. And then you were so happy.
The pizza in the dream was quite hot, and so you could not touch it with your hands. The smell was so nice, it seemed to have some weight and the pizza just looked perfect.
You were so happy and considered it so precious, so you began to do some special prayers and offering. When your eyes were closed, a big bird came and took your pizza. You felt so sad in the dream and when you woke up, you realised that your pillow was wet with tears.
Was that dream pizza real or not?
You can say it was real, and also that it was not real.
The pizza in the dream was real. You could see, you could hear the sizzling sound, you could have the tasty pizza. When you had the pizza in the dream, you felt so happy. When was taken by the bird, you felt so disappointed.
These events existed in the dream. But at the same time, it was also not existing. Because the dream-pizza didn’t have even a single atom of real pizza. Dream-pizza is not real, yet it is not nothing. These two are one, that is a good example of emptiness. Now all of us and the entire universe are like dream-pizza. We are not real, yet not nothing. That is the main meaning of the Heart Sutra: form is emptiness, emptiness is form.”
▍The key of freedom—recognizing this reality as only a dream
Let me ask you a question. If you meet a tiger in a dream, what is the best solution when you don’t have to wake up?
The right answer is to recognize that you are dreaming.
Recognize “dream as dream” is the most powerful solution, and key to freedom in the dream.
If you can recognize it’s a dream, the dream does not need to disappear. You can go on dreaming, waving your hand to the tiger, and he won’t eat you.
You can fly in the sky, walk on the ocean, or jump into the fire without getting burned. At the same time you don’t need to follow the dream rules, that is real freedom.
But at the same time, you can have your dream, still enjoy your dream.
That is the same meaning of emptiness, samsara is just like a dream. When you fully recognize samsara as emptiness, just like recognizing that you are in a dream, then you can be free from karma, free from subject and object. You are free from time, matter, yes, no, both, neither. You are free from all these boxes.
At the same time, we can still see, hear, just like in the dream, everything can appear, yet we are free from it.
▍Practice again and again, transformation will happen automatically.
Now you all understand emptiness. But are you free now? Liberated now?
Actually, no because the knowing of emptiness has to be transformed at three levels:
1. intellectual level;
2. experiential (or feeling) level; and
3. direct realization level.
From the intellectual level to the experiential level, and then to the direct realization level, you have to practice emptiness again and again, to analyze who am “I”?
My body is emptiness, my mind is emptiness, everything is emptiness. To recognize I am emptiness, and be with that.
If you can find the ‘I’, see it like a dream; if you cannot find it, just be with that.
You have to practice this again and again. Then transformation will happen automatically.
That’s the main practice. Even if we presently don’t have any direct realization, or even if we have some doubt, it’s ok. The Buddha said, “If someone had doubt about emptiness, even that doubt can become the cause of purifying negativity, bad karma, and become seed of liberation.” Now we all have some belief about emptiness therefore we already have the cause of liberation.
