How to See Yourself As You Really Are

by Dalai Lama XIV

I quite agree with a Western doctor who recently told me that those people who often use the words I, my, and me are at greater risk of having a heart attack. When, because of self-centeredness, your view is narrowed to yourself, even a small problem will seem unbearable.

Ignorance, by relying on appearances, superimposes onto persons and things a sense of concreteness that, in fact, is not there.

Ignorance would have us believe that these phenomena exist in some fundamental way. Through ignorance what we see around us seems to exist independently, without depending on other factors for its existence, but this is not the case. By giving people and things around us this exaggerated status, we are drawn into all sorts of overblown and ultimately hurtful emotions.

All counterproductive emotions are based on and depend upon ignorance of the true nature of persons and things.

Ignorance sees phenomena—which actually do not exist in and of themselves—as existing independent of thought.

some levels of mind which we normally identify as correct are actually exaggerations of the status of persons and things that create trouble for ourselves and others. Ignorance keeps us from seeing

Does exaggeration of the pleasantness of certain objects lead to lust? Does exaggeration of the unpleasantness of certain objects lead to hatred?

Many of our activities are like housekeeping in a dream.

This calls for using reason to explore the true nature of phenomena and then concentrate on what has been understood. This is the path leading to liberation and omniscience.

When you see that all troublesome emotions—and indeed all problems—arise from a basic misunderstanding, you will want to get rid of such ignorance.

The means to accomplish this is to reflect on reasoning that reveals the superimposition of a belief in inherent existence to be totally unfounded, and then to concentrate on the emptiness of inherent existence through meditation.

When afflictive emotions are removed, they can no longer motivate your actions (karma). Then your powerless birth and rebirth in cyclic existence driven by predispositions established by your actions (the other aspect of karma) are overcome, and liberation is attained. You need to contemplate this progression so that it is clear to you, and then unerringly seek the truth.

As Nagarjuna’s Precious Garland of Advice says: When there is long, there has to be short. They do not exist through their own nature. This relativity is why Buddhists say that all phenomena are dependent-arisings rather than independent-arisings.

If you want to be able to perceive the actual situation, you have to quit voluntarily submitting to afflictive emotions, because in each and every field, they obstruct perception of the facts.

Then consider the briefest moments in a continuum. If even the briefest of moments did not have a beginning, middle, and end, it could not join with other brief moments to become a continuum; it would be equally close to an earlier moment and to a later moment, in which case there would be no continuum at all.

Because there are no phenomena That are not dependent-arisings, There are no phenomena that are not Empty of inherent existence. —NAGARJUNA’S FUNDAMENTAL TREATISE ON THE MIDDLE CALLED “WISDOM”

Being dependent, it is empty of being under its own power.

It depends on certain causes; it depends upon its parts; and it depends upon thought. These are the three modes of dependent-arising.

Existing in dependence upon conceptuality is the most subtle meaning of dependent-arising. (Nowadays, physicists are discovering that phenomena do not exist objectively in and of themselves but exist in the context of involvement with an observer.)

The “I” definitely does exist, but when it exists yet cannot be found, we have to say that it arises in dependence upon thought.

The idea that persons and things do not exist is a denial of the obvious; it is foolish.