How Things Exist: Teachings on Emptiness

By Lama Zopa Rinpoche

This book begins with a general talk by Lama Zopa Rinpoche on universal responsibility and compassion that is followed by four chapters detailing the Prasangika Madhyamaka view of emptiness, or ultimate reality, as taught in the Gelug tradition of Tibetan Buddhism, and how to meditate on it, according to the author’s personal experience.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche says:
"Sometimes you might think, 'What's the use of teachings on emptiness? How does this philosophy help me when I have problems in everyday life?' However, if you can think [about emptiness], it's the most powerful meditation to shatter the hallucinations. It's like an atomic bomb. Problems happen in your daily life because you believe the hallucinations to be real. The most powerful, immediate way to stop problems is to remember emptiness. You should especially remember emptiness when you are in situations where there's a danger of giving rise to strong anger or uncontrolled desire and creating heavy negative karma and causing great harm to others."

In this small book Lama Zopa Rinpoche covers an incredible amount of ground. He starts by emphasizing the importance of compassion and universal responsibility and how to make life meaningful, then gives a brief explanation of the nature of the enlightened mind and how we can attain it, and finally offers an amazing and extensive explanation of emptiness, the ultimate nature of reality, analyzing the way various phenomena exist and teaching how to meditate on emptiness. Within these teachings, Rinpoche also touches on several of the other main points of the path to enlightenment, such as bodhicitta, the three scopes and impermanence. But, in the end, this wonderfully practical book is a manifestation of Rinpoche's peerless wisdom realizing emptiness and a testament to the personal experience of this rare and precious teacher.

This title was published by the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive, a non-profit organization established to make the Buddhist teachings of Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche freely accessible in many ways, including on our website for instant reading, listening or downloading, and as printed and electronic books. Our website offers immediate access to thousands of pages of teachings and hundreds of audio recordings by some of the greatest lamas of our time. Our photo gallery and our ever-popular books are also freely accessible there. You can find out more about becoming a supporter of the Archive and see all we have to offer by visiting the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive website.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive
• Release date: Oct 27, 2010
• ISBN: 9781891868344

Lama Zopa Rinpoche

Lama Zopa Rinpoche was one of the most internationally renowned masters of Tibetan Buddhism, working and teaching ceaselessly on almost every continent. He was the spiritual director and cofounder of the Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition (FPMT), an international network of Buddhist projects, including monasteries in six countries and meditation centers in over thirty; health and nutrition clinics, and clinics specializing in the treatment of leprosy and polio; as well as hospices, schools, publishing activities, and prison outreach projects worldwide. He passed away in 2023.

Book preview

HOW THINGS EXIST

Teachings on Emptiness

Lama Zopa Rinpoche

Edited by Ailsa Cameron

May whoever sees, touches, reads, remembers, or talks or thinks about this book never be reborn in unfortunate circumstances, receive only rebirths in situations conducive to the perfect practice of Dharma, meet only perfectly qualified spiritual guides, quickly develop bodhicitta and immediately attain enlightenment for the sake of all sentient beings.

Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive • Boston

www.LamaYeshe.com

A non-profit charitable organization for the benefit of all sentient beings and an affiliate of the Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition

www.fpmt.org

Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive

PO Box 636, Lincoln, MA 01773, USA

Please do not reproduce any part of this book by any means whatsoever without our permission.

Copyright Lama Thubten Zopa Rinpoche 2008

Cover photograph John Berthold courtesy Wisdom Publications

Cover line art by Robert Beer

Interior photos of Rinpoche at Yucca Valley, CA, 1977, by Carol Royce-Wilder

Cover designed by Gopa&Ted2 Inc.

Ebook ISBN 978-1-891868-34-4

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LAMA YESHE WISDOM ARCHIVE

Bringing you the teachings of Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche

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Table of Contents

HOW THINGS EXIST

About the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive

Editor’s Preface

1. Universal Responsibility

The power of compassion

The mind is like a baby

Compassion is the very essence

Benefiting others

Universal responsibility in daily life

Making parties meaningful

2. How Things Exist

Motivation

The nature of the enlightened mind

Levels of happiness

Purifying the mind

How the mind exists

How a table exists

How Zopa exists

How the I exists

Oral transmissions

3. Lamrim and Meditation on Emptiness

Meditation on impermanence

Meditation on emptiness

Practicing the good heart

Levels of benefit

The three beings

How Chiu-Nan exists

Seeing a snake at dusk

How the I exists

The root of samsara

How to meditate on emptiness

Dedication

4. Different Ways of Looking at Things

Meditation on impermanence and emptiness

Looking at the hallucination

Like a dream

The I in space

Wrong conventional truth

5. Merely Labeled

Recognizing the object to be refuted

Recognizing the hallucination

Everything is merely labeled

Remembering emptiness in everyday life

Fear of losing the I

Everything comes from the mind

Produced by ignorance

Dedication

Notes

Appendix

Bibliography

Glossary

Publisher's Acknowledgements

Previously published by LYWA

About LYWA

About FPMT

About FPMT Online Learning Center

Other Teachings of Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche

What to do with Dharma Teachings

Dedication

About Lama Zopa Rinpoche

About Ailsa Cameron

Sign up for the LYWA e-letter

Browse all LYWA titles

Connect with LYWA

Editor’s Preface

This book is a collection of five talks given by Lama Zopa Rinpoche in New York in 1990. The first two talks [1] given at Columbia University on September 6 and 7, were public talks aimed at a general audience. In the first talk, Rinpoche focuses on the importance and power of compassion, with special emphasis on how each of us has universal responsibility, responsibility for the peace and happiness not just of the people and animals around us but of all living beings, who are just like us in wanting happiness and not wanting even the slightest suffering.

In the second talk, in the process of giving the oral transmission of a prayer outlining the graduated path to enlightenment, Rinpoche describes the nature of the enlightened state, the different types of happiness we can bring others, the nature of the mind and how the mind exists through a process of labeling. Rinpoche then gives a detailed explanation of how a table exists. (In another teaching, Rinpoche explains that he uses the example of a table so many times in his teachings on emptiness because it is usually the object directly in front of him.) Rinpoche then comes to the explanation of how the I exists, the most important point to understand. To conclude the talk, Rinpoche finally gives the oral transmission of the prayer, as well as the oral transmissions of various mantras. As the talks were titled Transforming Problems, a subject he didn’t directly address, Rinpoche then refers the audience to relevant books on thought transformation.

The remaining three talks, [2] given at the Great Enlightenment Temple, in the Bronx, on September 8 and 9 and aimed at a more Buddhist audience, focus mainly on the subject of emptiness. The first talk, after a preliminary meditation on impermanence and emptiness, once again addresses the need for compassion, the types of happiness that can be experienced, and the paths to that happiness. For the rest of the talks, Rinpoche concentrates on emptiness, especially emphasizing how things exist through a process of labeling a base and identifying the ignorance that is the root of all our sufferings, the concept of true existence. Rinpoche uses many examples, including the temple and its atoms, to illustrate his point. Rinpoche also describes various simple meditations on emptiness, as well as how to implement the understanding of emptiness in everyday life, especially in situations where there is a danger of harming ourselves and others.

Rinpoche concludes both sets of talks by reiterating that everything, including our happiness and suffering, comes from our own mind. As Rinpoche says at the end of Chapter 2: The concept of a truly existent I, of an I having existence from its own side, is the very root of all problems, all suffering. In order to escape suffering, we need to eliminate this root, and for that reason we need to understand the emptiness, the ultimate nature, of the I. That is the essence of this talk. With simple immediate examples and a minimum of technical philosophical terms, Rinpoche explains very clearly how things—including, most importantly, the I—exist.

With thanks to Claire Atkins for her generous support, to Ven. Lhagsam for providing me with a room of my own, to Ven. Dekyong for her help with research, to the organizers of these talks, to Gareth Robinson and Segen Speer-Senner for transcribing the Columbia University talks and Nick Ribush, Wendy Cook and Jennifer Barlow for their editorial suggestions.

1. UNIVERSAL RESPONSIBILITY

First I would like to say thank you very much. I’m very happy to meet all of you, my brothers and sisters. At this time we are meeting each other to share something about our precious human qualities with respect to obtaining the real peace of mind and happiness that we need.

Because I haven’t studied properly, I don’t know much about Buddhism—what I know is like a drop of water from an ocean. But during this time that we have with each other, I’m happy to speak about and share the little that I have learned and tried to practice.

However, before the actual discourse, I’m going to recite the mantra of the kind, compassionate Shakyamuni Buddha.

[Rinpoche recites the Praise to Shakyamuni Buddha and Shakyamuni Buddha’s mantra, TADYATHA OM MUNÉ MUNÉ MAHA MUNAYE SVAHA.]

The power of compassion

All beings, from humans down to the tiniest creatures that can be seen only through a microscope, are exactly the same in wanting happiness and not wanting suffering, or problems. It doesn’t matter whether we are from the East, the West or another planet—we are exactly the same in this. It is for this reason that practice of the good heart, compassion, is the most important thing in our everyday life.

First of all, no matter how many friends we have—hundreds, or even thousands—if we don’t have a warm, kind heart, we’ll have no satisfaction or peace of mind in our everyday life. Since we need friends, we also need to develop our mind, especially our compassion. Compassion, which is the essence of the right path, brings the greatest benefit to all other beings and ourselves.

Without compassion, even if we find a friend, that friend can become our enemy. It depends on our attitude in everyday life, on whether our mind is compassionate in nature or self-centered, thinking about nothing but ourselves and our own happiness day and night.

If we have compassion, we have better, more harmonious relationships and more peace. With compassion, everyone becomes our friend. Wherever we go and whoever we live with, everyone becomes our friend. We find friends everywhere. If we have compassion, even someone who is normally cruel and selfish is kind to us. That’s a result of our compassion. It is a common experience that even someone who is normally mean to others is kind to a person who is warm-hearted, who is kind, loving, and compassionate, with much concern for others.

Take my teacher, Lama Yeshe, for example. Many people here knew or know about Lama Yeshe. Those of you who didn’t meet him might have heard about him. Lama Yeshe saw everyone as very kind.

From my observation, because of Lama’s own good heart, other people also became kind and good-hearted. The other person’s mind was also transformed or, in other words, blessed. Blessed means their mind was transformed from a negative attitude into a positive one, from a selfish, cruel mind into a kind mind.

Another example is the famous Italian saint, St. Francis of Assisi. I think