Have the Real Intention to Help Others

By matt | Published: June 17, 2015

[From teaching on Essence of Wisdom: Stages of the Path, Part 4, by Lama Tashi Topgyal. Translated by Lama Yeshe Gyamtso.]

It’s not helpful to scold ourselves or blame ourselves for what we perceive as lack of success in actually benefiting others because giving into disappointment about that can cause us to lose our resolve to do what we can.

As long as we retain the intention to benefit others, in as much as and in any way we can, the opportunities to do so will continue to arise, and we need never worry about how much or how little we’re benefiting others because what determines whether or not we are effectively benefiting others is whether we have the intention to do so. If you have the real intention to help others, then one way or another, you will.

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Nature of Language No Different than the Nature of Mind

By matt | Published: June 12, 2015

[From a teaching on Essence of Wisdom: Stages of the Path, Part 2, by Lama Tashi Topgyal. Translated by Lama Yeshe Gyamtso.]

The character of language is the appearance of the character of the mind or the attributes of the mind, which fundamentally is the clear light, the cognition devoid of inherent existence. What in tantric terms is called the self-appearance of the cloud-like wheel of letters…[is] the appearance of one’s own cognition as understood language or written language.

What this means is when you are reading written letters,  you are actually reflecting back to yourself, or in your own experience,  the attributes of your own mind, which are brought to mind by the language or by the understood language or the letters. So therefore, the nature or character of language is no different than the nature or character of the mind itself.

In the text, Jamgon Lodro Thaye next quotes from the Guyagarba sutra. He says: “The nature of the mind is letters. Letters have no other nature or substantial existence.”

Letters are shapes that we use through learning to understand certain meanings. The understanding of meanings is fundamentally an attribute of the mind. Aside from the physical presence of letters on a page or a screen, your actual apprehension of meaning in them is fundamentally an attribute of your mind. So therefore, the letters have no existence. The meaning that we perceive, even the letters, has no existence outside of our agreed upon understanding or conventional agreed upon attribution of meaning to them.

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Dissolve the Attitude That Things Exist

By matt | Published: March 28, 2015

[From a teaching on The White Khechari by Lama Tashi Topgyal Translated by Lama Yeshe Gyamtso.]

Now in this practice [the White Khechari], as is in many of our practices, there’s the notion when we say the svabhava mantra that the things dissolve into emptiness as though they were substantially existent, and then they disappear, and then re-arise as something else. Of course, while we do say this – everything becomes empty, from emptiness arises whatever, and so forth — we don’t actually mean it that way.

It’s not that the things dissolve. It’s not that they were existent and then dissolve. What we are dissolving is our attitude that they exist. If the things really did exist substantially, we could not dissolve them by reciting a mantra. We dissolve our thought, however, of them existing substantially. For example, if I were to recite the svabhava mantra and so on in order to dissolve the table in front of me into emptiness, it’s not the case that the table now exists and then would dissolve and disappear. The table does not exist right now, while I perceive it. It never has exited, as is taught in the middle way school of reasoning. So, when we recite these mantras, in which it’s taught that things dissolve into emptiness, we are not trying to dissolve perceived physical reality, but to bring to mind the fact that the physical reality we perceive has no true existence from its own side.

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