Emptiness

In this module of Living in the Path, Lama Zopa Rinpoche gives detailed and very clear teachings on the extremely important subject of emptiness, the realization of which is necessary to achieve both liberation from samara and full enlightenment. 

In this module of Living in the Path, Lama Zopa Rinpoche gives extensive teachings on how the I that appears to us and that we believe in is a TOTAL hallucination. It includes a wonderful debate with the Kopan November course teacher on not finding the merely labeled I anywhere. Rinpoche skillfully concludes the debate by saying: 

It doesn’t exist on the aggregates, but it exists down below the aggregates. According to you, your merely labeled I exists on your dingwa, down below your aggregates. So your aggregates are sitting on your merely labeled I! 

In short, you are sitting on your merely labeled I. There is your dingwa, there is your merely labeled I, and then your aggregates are sitting on [your merely labeled I]. So you have a double cushion: one is your dingwa and one is your merely labeled I, and your aggregates are sitting on them! 

In this module of Living in the Path, Lama Zopa Rinpoche explains the meaning of an often recited verse: 

A star, a defective view, a flame,
An illusion, a drop of dew, a bubble,
A dream, a flash of lightning, a cloud:
See causative phenomena as such.

This verse, which comes toward the end of the Vajra Cutter Sutra, sets out nine analogies, five for impermanence and four for emptiness. In these teachings Rinpoche urges us to practice mindfulness in our daily lives of how we ourselves and all the objects of our attachment, anger, and ignorance are impermanent and empty of true existence.