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Looking deeply at nonself, you see impermanence.
stone. It is not impermanence that makes us suffer.
What makes us suffer is wanting things to be permanent when they are not.
Impermanence is what makes transformation possible.
The Second Dharma Seal is nonself. Nothing
has a separate existence or a separate self. Everything has to inter-be with everything else.
“discriminative perception” (vikalpa),
practice until we can see that each person is us, that we are not separate from others.
Nirvana, the Third Dharma Seal, is the ground of being, the substance of all that is. A wave does not have to die in order to become water. Water is the substance of the wave.
Nirvana does not exist separate from impermanence and nonself.
impermanence, nonself, interbeing, and emptiness to discover the true nature of reality.
The koan, “What was your face before your parents were born?” is an invitation to look deeply, to identify ourselves in time and space.
Nirvana is a fan that helps us extinguish the fire of all our ideas, including ideas of permanence and self.
In Buddhism we talk about the Eight Concepts: birth, death, permanence, dissolution, coming, going, one, and many.
The practice to end attachment to these eight ideas is called the Eight ...
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Nirvana is not the absence of life. Drishtadharma nirvana means “nirvana in this very life.”
Nirvana teaches that we already are what we want to become.
We don’t have to run after anything anymore. We only need to return to ourselves and touch our true nature. When w...
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Sutra of Forty-Two Chapters, the
Buddha says, “My practice is non-action, non-practice, and non-realization.”4 It means that what we seek does not lie outside of ourselves.
These include the Two Relevances, the Four Standards of Truth, and the Four Reliances.
The Two Relevances require you to speak with skillfulness, tolerance, and care.
The Four Standards of Truth (siddhanta) are
another guide to help us understand the Buddha’s teachings. The First Standard is “the worldly.”
The Second Standard is “the person.”
When the Buddha taught, he was deeply aware of the particular assembly, and what he said was specifically addressed to them.
The Third Standard is “healing.”
When you speak to express healing, what you say will always be helpful.
The Fourth Standard is “the absolute.”
Four Reliances.
The First Reliance is that we should rely on the teaching and not the person. It
The Second Reliance is to rely only on discourses where the Buddha taught in terms of absolute truth and not on those whose means are relative truth.
The Third Reliance is that we should rely on the meaning and not on the words.
The Fourth Reliance is that we should rely on the insight of looking deeply (jñana) rather than on differentiation and discrimination (vijñana).
The Discourse on the White-Clad Disciple (Upasaka Sutra), Madhyama Agama 128, Anguttara Nikaya III, 211. See
The Three Dharma Seals1 are the keys we can use to enter the Three Doors of Liberation — emptiness (shunyata), signlessness (animitta), and aimlessness (apranihita).
sometimes called the Three Concentrations.3 When we enter these doors, we dwell in concentration and are liberated from fear, confusion, and sadness.
We are empty of a separate, independent self.
We cannot be by ourselves alone. We can only inter-be with everything
else in the cosmos. The practice is to nourish the insight into emptiness all day long. Wherever we go, we touch the nature of emptiness in everything we contact. We look deeply at the table, the blue sky, our friend, the mountain, the river, our anger, and our happiness and see that these are all empty of a separate self. When we touch these things deeply, we see the interbeing and interpenetrating nature of all ...
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Emptiness is the Middle Way between existent and nonexistent.
When we act based on nonself, our actions will be in accord with reality, and we will know what to do and what not to do. When we maintain awareness that we are all linked to each other, this is the Concentration on Emptiness (shunyata samadhi).
correct. True emptiness is called “wondrous being,” because it goes beyond existence and nonexistence.
The Second Door of Liberation is signlessness, animitta. “Sign” here means an appearance or the object of our perception.
Signs are instruments for our use, but they are not absolute truth, and they can mislead us.
“Wherever there is a sign, there is deception, illusion.”
Perceptions often tell us as much about the perceiver as the object of perception....
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Until we
can break through the signs, we cannot touch reality.
Nothing can be described in terms of just one sign. But without signs, we feel anxious. Our fear and attachment come from our being caught in signs.
