▍Vajra, meaning unchangeable, strong, and being able to cut through everything.
The teaching today that we’re talking about is called The Diamond Sutra. First of all, why do we call it Diamond Sutra? So, the main meaning comes from what we call vajra. Vajra is like a diamond, which is unchangeable, very strong, and can cut through everything. The true nature in all of us is actually unchangeable. It’s beyond being born, getting old, getting sick, and dying. And our true nature is free from suffering.
What is our true nature if it’s like a diamond? It is emptiness.
▍Emptiness can cut through all suffering.
The Diamond Sutra’s main teaching is about emptiness, especially the emptiness of everything, meaning that it can cut through concept, ignorance, and suffering.
The only way for us to be free from suffering and samsara, is to obtain the wisdom of emptiness and to practise the wisdom of emptiness. Until then, suffering will continue. Even if you do charitable things and accumulate merit, that will only lead to you towards getting a good next life. Once the merit that you accumulate is used up, you will come back and be trapped in samsara again.
As the Diamond Sutra teaches, even generosity, moral ethics, patience, diligence, and samadhi meditation, should be practised in combination with the wisdom of emptiness. Without that, no matter how much we can accumulate in these five things we cannot really get rid of the roots of suffering and samsara.
In order to get rid of this suffering of samsara, we need the wisdom of the Diamond Sutra. So what is the wisdom of Diamond Sutra? It’s about emptiness.
▍Create a fake prison with our mind.
Why can we free ourselves from suffering if we practise the wisdom of emptiness? Because suffering does not actually exist; samsara does not exist. It’s just something we created with our mind, as though we have created our own prison, and put ourselves into it. And since we were the ones that created it, we can be free from it as well. If somebody else had created it for us, then it’s not easy to find a way to be free from it by ourselves. Another way to put it is that this prison is fake; there is no such prison. If the prison were real, then it would of course be difficult to get rid of it. Right now, from time to time, we may be going into this prison we created, right? But if we are aware that the prison is not real, then how could we be trapped in it in the first place?
▍If we do not practice the wisdom of emptiness, at most we are only changing to a better prison.
Therefore, the wisdom of knowing emptiness is the most powerful blessing, the biggest miracle and the strongest magic. The best mantra we know with the best power.
The Buddha said that real freedom comes from relying on the wisdom of emptiness. Until then, even if we pray to all the Buddhas and the Buddhas of ten directions, we will only get temporary release from this prison. There’s some blessing there, of course; but even if you have the best generosity, good discipline, patience, and generally make a lot of effort with all these virtues, including in achieving all the dhyanas in your meditation, in the end you may end up only having a better prison. You can move from the worst prison to a better one, but you are still in a prison.
So the Buddha didn’t say that all these practices are bad. Of course, the practice of refuge we just did and praying to all the Buddhas are good. And compassion, generosity, helping others, discipline, all these are wonderful. We need these practices. However, what Buddha said was: “The ultimate thing that can let us be totally free from the root of suffering, or root of samsara, is the wisdom of emptiness.”
▍After entering the path through bodhicitta, one should practice six paramitas.
The second subject is about how to practice the six paramitas. We begin the path of enlightenment through generating bodhicitta. Once we have entered the path, what is it that we need to practice? The Buddha says, the six paramitas are what should be practiced.
“If the bodhisattvas pay no mind to the form in their almsgiving, then the good fortune they receive will be beyond measuring.”
“Subhuti, what do I mean by this? The limits of the eastern sky—can they be measured?
“No, World-Honored One.”
“Subhuti, can the limits of the sky to the south, the west, the north, the sky in the four directions, or up or down一can they be measured?”
“No, World-Honored One.”
“Subhuti, when the bodhisattvas bestow alms without thinking about the form, then the good fortune they receive will in the same way be beyond measuring. Subhuti, the bodhisattvas have only to deal with attachment in the manner that I have taught them.” – Diamond Sutra
So all these sentences are about how to practice the six paramitas. Here the Diamond Sutra is addresses the matter we voted on before: “to think about sentient beings” and “do not think about sentient beings”. So here the Buddha discusses both of these.
How can we “think about beings” and “not think about beings”? As I mentioned before, the first important point here is to understand emptiness.
▍Emptiness is not just empty, through it phenomena manifest.
What is emptiness? Empty means to not have inherent existence. The nature is empty, just like dream, just like the moon’s reflection in the lake. However, “-ness” is not just empty; “-ness” means that everything can manifest and there is possibility. The phenomena appear and are not just empty. So the “-ness” means possibility, appearance, or all phenomena.
I think many of you joined my teaching on the Heart Sutra. The Heart Sutra says that the form/matter are empty or emptiness. Sometimes we use “emptiness” as having the same meaning as “empty”; sometimes it means “empty” and “-ness” together. But in this case, “the matter is empty” means the aspect of being just empty. But the “emptiness is matter” means emptiness is not just nothing, emptiness is matter actually, it has the meaning of both “empty” and “ness”. Therefore, emptiness and matter, these two are one. In the Heart Sutra it says that form is not different than emptiness; and emptiness is not different than form.
▍Is dream pizza real?
For example, it is like a dream. Maybe again I think dream pizza is a good example. Since there are many different parts of the world, and people are different and one example usually cannot be used for everybody. But I can use pizza as example.
I was in the Himalayan mountains for a few years, and sometimes it is not easy to find food there. So, if you like pizza and you go to hiking in the Himalayan mountains, you may miss pizza but there is no pizza there. And you really miss pizza. One day you have a nice dream in the mountains, and in the dream you can smell that someone was making pizza far away. And then you go out and look for that person, and that person says, “Hi, how are you?”, and you say “I’m very well, how about you?” And that person says, “Do you like to have pizza?”, and you say “Oh thank you very much!” And that person gives you a piece of very fresh, hot pizza, and your hand is burning even in the plate and you smell very nice smell. And then you cut a little bit of pizza and tasted it – it is a very tasty pizza.
And you think this is very precious so I will eat after a small ritual and prayer. You put the pizza on the stone and close your eyes and fold your hands together and pray. And while praying, one of the big birds from the Himalayan mountains comes, takes away your pizza and flies away. When you open your eyes, there is no pizza.
Okay now I will ask you one question, yes and no question. So that dream pizza, is it a real pizza or not?
Some 17% of you say “yes it’s real”, 83% say “it’s not real”. Actually, both are correct.
▍Dream is not real, yet it manifests, therefore it is a union of appearance-emptiness.
The dream pizza is not real of course. It’s a dream, right? But it is real in the dream. You can see, you can hear when the pizza is cooking, you can smell from far away, you can taste it, and you can touch it. So, it is an object of the five senses. And then when you get it, you feel very happy. When the bird takes it away, you feel sad. So, it has function, cause and result. Everything is real in the dream.
Yet it’s not a real pizza. The dream pizza does not have even one single atom of a real pizza. It is empty, it is not a real pizza and yet appears as pizza. These two are one here in the dream. It is a pizza, but at the same time, it is not a pizza.
So now I will ask a question, you can answer “1” if you think dream pizza is real, answer “2” if you think dream pizza is not real, and answer “3” if you think it is both. Which one would you choose?
There are 92% of you who say both, it exists and it does not exist.
So that is the meaning here in the Diamond Sutra.
▍Practice six paramitas with threefold purity (emptiness of subject, object and action), benefit becomes immeasurable.
Generosity and not generosity, they are one. Sentient being and not sentient being, they are one. You and not you, are one. Samsara and non-samsara, are one. Nirvana or non-nirvana are one, and the Buddha and non-Buddha, are one. If we practice in that way, the Buddha said, then everything becomes immeasurable. The benefit becomes immeasurable. The virtue becomes immeasurable and the blessings become immeasurable, just like boundless space.
When we say “paramita”, there are six paramitas, then what is the meaning of “para”? “Para” means “gone beyond”. “Paramita” means to go beyond the grasping of existence, so it is emptiness. When we give generosity with emptiness, the dream-like you giving dream-like whatever generosity to the dream-like all beings, then that generosity becomes paramita. In that moment, the absolute and relative become one.
Here in the text only generosity is mentioned. Actually, the same thing can apply to discipline, patience, effort, meditation and wisdom. The union of emptiness with the appearance applies to everything.
The union can also apply to drinking this water [Rinpoche holds up a cup]. So, dream-like you drink this dream-like water. Now in this way drinking water can accumulate virtue. Drinking water purifies negativity and bad karma.
Yesterday we practiced relative bodhicitta together and now I mention again and again to use emptiness as a reason to develop bodhicitta. Then in that moment what would happen? The relative bodhicitta and absolute bodhicitta become one.
So how to practice this?
▍Through emptiness to develop loving kindness compassion – for it will be boundless, unconditioned, and non-conceptual.
This practice is very important. If we really want to develop unconditional love and compassion, boundless love and compassion, or non-conceptual love and compassion, we need to practice love and compassion together with emptiness.
If we do not mix with the emptiness meditation, then our loving kindness and compassion meditation becomes limited. You all know that sometimes when you develop love and compassion you also get pain. When your friend and family members are suffering, and you develop kindness, care, and compassion, then you get pain. And you feel stressed and depressed. So, you cannot really develop boundless loving kindness and compassion.
Then once we have pain and suffering, we cannot develop loving kindness and compassion, and we get stucked there. The grasping will limit your loving kindness and compassion.
So how to be free from this bondage? How can we go beyond? In order to go beyond we practice loving kindness compassion and emptiness together.
So now how to combine these two together?
▍Samsara is like holding a hammer and hit one’s head
As I mention before, actually there is no suffering. There is no samsara. We all create our own prisons and jail; it is like you are holding hammer in your hand, and hitting on your head. Then when you get pain, you complain, “Who is that? Where does this come from?” And again, the second time…”This is the second time, you know.” Actually, it is your own hand. Samsara, karma, and suffering, all these are illusions. Do you remember the dream pizza? If you have a problem, a nightmare, or you encounter landslides in the Himalayan mountains, or there is a tiger chasing after you in the forest in the dream, what is the best solution, as I have asked you before? Run? Sometimes the dream tiger is faster than you. Pray to the Buddha? Sometimes there are blessings but sometimes the Buddha does not hear you. I mean Buddha can hear you but sometimes he cannot change it right away because of our karma.
When I said Buddha cannot hear I am just making a joke. But the Buddha cannot change our own karma right away, right? So now what is the best solution?
▍Recognize dream and become master of your own dream
The best solution is to recognize “Ah it’s dream”. When you recognize that you are dreaming, you can tell the dream tiger “Hello, come, eat me.” The tiger cannot eat you. Now you are totally free and you are the master of your own dream – you can fly, walk into fire, and everything is free; the dream rules cannot bind you.
So, this is the same thing now: all these phenomena are just like the dream pizza, just like a dream. But the problem is that we do not recognize it as a dream. We continue to suffer. Dream tiger is always chasing after us. All these limitless beings in samsara do not recognize emptiness, and the mind is fixated on the reality which is true, and which exists. Time, matter, subject, object, karma, all these are prisons, and they bound us and cause suffering. Actually, this is meaningless. There is no suffering, there is no karma, but meaningless suffering continues in samsara. Oh dear! So then, emptiness and compassion become one.
▍Combine emptiness in practicing loving kindness compassion
Okay, now so we are going to practice this meditation together.
Please keep your spine loosely straight. First, feel your body and relax the muscles in the body. And as I mentioned before, to relax is okay, not to relax is also okay. What’s important is to be with whatever you experience in your body.
Now you might experience some pain or you might experience a little bit of happiness. But happiness is also changing.
You might experience your body; your body is trapped with time and particles.
And your mind is trapped in your body, and this mind in the body is very sensitive. It always looks for happiness.
It is easy for it to feel cold, easy to feel hot, easy to feel pain and there are lots of sufferings in the body. It is getting older every day. There is suffering.
Actually, it is always emptiness. And this suffering is not only for you, all the beings they also have this body and mind, and this mind and body continue to suffer. Just like the dream tiger chasing after us all the time.
May all beings be free from this ignorance. May all beings fully realize their true nature.
Okay, so now this compassion is what we call the best practice of compassion. This love is the best; this bodhicitta is the best.
▍For all practices to combine with emptiness, the benefits it brought will be limitless
And once you know how to combine the emptiness and loving kindness compassion together, you can apply this with generosity, offerings, ethics, patience, meditation, wisdom and everything you do in your life. And the benefits of all this will become immeasurable. This is the best accumulation of merit. Normally there are two accumulations: the accumulation of merit and the accumulation of wisdom. So now, when we meditate on loving kindness, compassion and emptiness together, emptiness accumulates wisdom while compassion accumulates merit. And these two accumulations come together at the same time.
1) How should we see this suffering as emptiness and is dream-like?
2) How can we transform the suffering that we all feel so real, for example, the sickness, pain, deaths, the lockdowns affecting life, work, and business into wisdom? Many thanks.
▍From the perspective of the union of the two truths to look at pandemic.
Rinpoche: So we need to work with the two levels: One at the relative level, the other at the ultimate level.
1. Relative Truth
From the relative level, this single, permanent, and independent “I” does not even exist.
Actually, everything is impermanent at the relative level. They consist of so many pieces and are interdependent. For this pandemic, it is also impermanent, changing, and have causes and conditions at the relative level. So, there are so many pieces. We have to understand multiplicity, right?
In order to have this disease, there are so many causes and conditions; and when we try to stop the disease, we should also work on the causes and conditions. For example, by wearing masks, cleaning the hand, having healthy immunity, good sleep, exercise, taking vitamin C and healthy food. We can work on these many causes and conditions to change the outcome.
Since it is impermanent, it consists of many pieces and it is also interdependent, so we see, one part of the world has this disease, soon it spreads out all over the world. We are all dependent on each other. Without interdependence, we cannot survive. Now we can see that. Even the entire world tries to cut this interdependence, it does not work right away. So from this relative level, we learn about impermanence, the many pieces of the covid situation, and interdependence.
2. Absolute Truth
Although from the perspective of relative truth, everything is interdependent, and we have to be very careful about all these causes and conditions. Even though they are linked together, from the ultimate level, we need to understand there is still an ultimate layer. Therefore, we do not need to be too worried and think that “this is no good and that is no good”. Then that is too tight.
t the absolute level everything is free and everything is emptiness. It is beyond sickness and beyond death. Nobody is going to die, nobody is going to be sick, and nobody is having sickness. So emptiness is totally free, and you can say emptiness is our true nature. Our true nature cannot be sick. Nobody can destroy this emptiness. So, this absolute level is totally open and free from the inside.
▍We have to be patient for the causes and conditions arise.
I have a story. I have a student whose family has a shoe factory. And the father was quite old, and his mind was too tight and had too much grasping. The business was also going downhill. They have 3000 workers and staff members, and the company almost went bankrupt. In the end, the father finally gave the factory to the son.
And then the son asked me, “What should I do? I have this big responsibility now: I have this shoe company and have to take responsibility for 3000 people. What should I do?”
And I told him there are causes and conditions in this relative world, everything arises because of causes and conditions. For example, in order to have a table, we have to have four legs. A table with three legs is quite unstable, two legs even worse, and a table cannot stand on one leg. For multiplicity – just like if you want to grow a flower – you will need to bring together the cause, which is the seed and the conditions: the earth, water, oxygen, fertilizers, and temperature.
So, I told him to think about these small pieces first, and then with an understanding of interdependence, link these pieces together.
Then we need time, patience is important! Result will not come right away. So, if we really look at this patience at the relative level, this is very powerful. This is much more powerful than just praying to Buddha. This is more powerful than just thinking “I need results”. It is more powerful than everything else. When we have patience to wait for the causes and conditions to take place, the results will arise eventually.
▍“Knowing One Liberates All” meditation is the meditation of emptiness!
Today we will do a meditation together. This is called the “Knowing one liberates all” meditation. So, there is just one solution that will answer and liberate everything.
Do you want to know this one solution that can fix everything? Let us do a “Yes and No” poll question. How many of you want to know this one solution for everything?
(Poll results) There are 97% of you who want to know this solution. I will tell you the solution. Actually, there are no solutions. It is because there are no solutions or “non-solution”, then there is solution.
So let us meditate on “no solutions”. What is “no solutions”? It is emptiness.
▍Emptiness: transforming problems into liberating wisdom
We will meditate on the problems or suffering that you are facing and use that as support for the “non-solution” meditation. Because of the pandemic, maybe some of you have lost your job, or lost your loved ones, or there are conflicts inside, or emotional problems: like feeling panic, depressed, lonely, hatred, desire, jealousy etc. Whatever problems are there, we can meditate on them, to use them for the “non-solution” meditation, or emptiness meditation.
And then all these will transform into wisdom, all these will become liberation.
▍“Emptiness Meditation” guidance and practice
Please keep your spine loosely straight, and then rest, relaxing your mind and body.
And yes, you have this body; this body is just like a dream body or simply like a reflection in the mirror.
Not just your body, but the feelings that are in the body, the gravity, the feeling of gravity, the feeling of hot and cold, the feeling of being relaxed or tight, all are emptiness too.
Now think of a problem, or negative emotions, maybe anger, fear, suffering, or losing somebody.
Don’t think about the big problem first because sometimes it’s difficult to meditate at the beginning with big problems.
Now ask yourself a question: Do these problems truly exist? Actually, no.
The anger is emptiness. “Me” is emptiness. The difficult person or the environment that is causing this anger is also emptiness. Just like a dream person who is angry at another dream person. Now anger becomes wisdom or what we call “mirror-like wisdom”.
And then rest your mind with the wisdom. If there is suffering, it has become liberation. If there is emotion, it has become wisdom.
Now rest your mind as it is.
If you know or have joined the Joy of Living, you can just rest in Open Awareness. If not, just rest your mind, be with whatever comes in your mind and just be with it.
Emptiness, not emptiness, doesn’t matter.
Just be.
