How to Realize Emptiness

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How to Realize Emptiness

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Descriptionངོ་སྤྲོད།

Realizing emptiness or grasping the true nature of reality lies at the heart of the Buddhist path. In this book, Gen Lamrimpa offers practical instruction on Madhyamaka, insight meditation aimed at realizing emptiness. Drawing on his theoretical training as well as his extensive meditative experience, he explains how to use Madhyamaka reasoning to experience the way in which all things exist as dependently related events.

Citation

Gen Lamrimpa. How to Realize Emptiness. Translated by B. Alan Wallace. Edited by Ellen Posman. Ithaca, NY: Snow Lion, 2010

Publisher Link

https://www.shambhala.com/how-to-realize-emptiness-2256.html

Table of contents

• Foreword7
• A Contented Mind: The Life of Gen Lamrimpa9
• 1. Introduction17
  • The Significance of Compassion and Insight17
  • Suitable Teachers and Students for Teachings on Emptiness21
  • Provisional and Definitive Teachings within Buddhism23
  • The Lineage of These Teachings24
  • Scriptural Sources for These Teachings28
• 2. How Phenomena Are Established as Being Conceptually Designated31
  • The Fusion of Word-Based Ideas with Experience-Based Ideas32
  • The Fusion of the Object with the Generic Idea of the Object34
  • Conventional Agreement41
  • Can We Establish Things without Referring to Them?44
• 3. How One Grasps onto True Existence47
  • Two Types of Ignorance50
  • Three Ways of Apprehending an Object54
  • The Ignorant View Concerning a Transitory Assembly57
• 4. The Four Essential Points61
  • The First Essential Point61
    • The Attended Object and the Attributed Object62
    • Conventional and Ultimate Analysis67
  • The Second Essential Point69
  • The Third Essential Point72
    • Valid and Invalid Ways of Postulating the Self73
    • Single and Multiple Phenomena76
  • The Fourth Essential Point77
    • Simple and Complex Negations78
    • Review of the Meditation on Emptiness79
    • Personal and Phenomenal Identitylessness86
• 5. The Prāsaṅgika View of How Phenomena Exist89
  • Three Criteria for Designating the Existence of Phenomena90
  • How All Phenomena Appear Like Illusions96
  • The Dependence of Phenomena97
  • The Criteria for Realizing Emptiness101
• Appendix I: Dzogchen107
• Appendix II: Madhyamaka and Dzogchen119

Interconnections

Works related to this item

Madhyamaka - Along with Yogācāra, it is one of the two major philosophical schools of Mahāyāna Buddhism. Founded by Nāgārjuna around the second century CE, it is rooted in the Prajñāpāramitā Sūtras, though its initial exposition was presented in Nāgārjuna's Mūlamadhyamakakārikā. Skt मध्यमक  Tib དབུ་མ་  Ch 中觀見  

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Śūnyatā - The state of being empty of an innate nature due to a lack of independently existing characteristics. Skt शून्यता  Tib སྟོང་པ་ཉིད་  Ch 空;空門  

Go to the page with the definition of 'emptiness'

Anumāna - Inference (Skt. anumāna; T. rjes dpag) is a way of knowing something indirectly, using logic and reasoning rather than direct experience. For example, if you see smoke rising from a distant mountain, you can infer that there is a fire there, even if you can't see the fire directly yourself. It's a key way to understand things that are hidden from our senses. It is used in the Buddhist tradition to gain insight into deeper levels of reality of self and phenomena. Skt अनुमान  Tib རྗེས་དཔག་  Ch 比量  

Go to the page with the definition of 'reasoning'

Dzogchen - Dzogchen is an advanced system of meditation techniques to reveal the innate state of perfection primarily, but not exclusively, espoused by the Nyingma Buddhist tradition and the Tibetan Bön tradition. Skt महासन्धि  Tib རྫོགས་ཆེན།  

Go to the page with the definition of 'Dzogchen'