Empathy and Emptiness

Session 1

Happiness and suffering are states of mind.

True causes of happiness never cause suffering.

If you repeat the experience of love you become more happy. It never causes suffering.

Mind is formless and is the only thing that perceives. That’s a good thing, because it means all our problems are within. And because they’re within, we can change them.

Understanding the mind helps to understand patience and love.

The mind is clear enough to perceive. Like a mirror or the lens of a camera.

Clarity means that it is empty like space, that can never possess form and is the basis for perceiving objects.

Clarity is only mind and is also the nature of mind. There is no conventional nature of mind other than clarity.

Perception is a unique thing. Mind is so clear, it perceives things. It also performs a function - it creates things.

Everyone has their individual experience of an external object and is valid for them.

Main problem with developing empathy is a sense of separation. Other people seem so different from us.

When we start meditating on the mind, we start with a generic image of the mind (process of conceptuality), and as we gain experience and become more familiar, eventually the image will disappear and we will see the mind directly.

Session 2

We can transform people who we find difficult into challenges which help us to practice patience.

What does our mind normally see? It sees things that are apparently independent of it / objectively existent / existing by way of its own characteristics. Everything in life feels real, solid, absolute. This is how we know things. But this is the opposite of emptiness. Emptiness is the way things really are, as opposed to the way that they appear.

By meditating on emptiness, we try to remove false appearance.

As the mind perceiving things as objectively existent becomes stronger, everything becomes more real. This is self-grasping.

If you get this and get rid of it, you stop suffering. The mind of self-grasping exists, the object doesn’t. If you take the object away, the self-grasping mind stops. So we try to stop the false mind within us that projects a reality that isn’t true.

Firstly need to identify the falsely appearing thing = object of negation. We have to consider how something could exist.

Session 3

All Buddha’s teachings have the flavour of emptiness.

The simplest method of developing love and empathy is to recognise their kindness.

1st negate the person we normally see, so we can relate to them being kind.

If someone harms us, we become unhappy, which is the principal cause of anger. Anger over time becomes resentment. Patience cures unhappiness, and thereby cures anger.

Things in the past affect us. If we become a better person because of it, and now look back and can see how it has made us happy, then how has it harmed us?

What is past? It is something that no longer exists. It has arisen and has ended. But we carry around these ideas of who we are and what has happened, we hold on to generic images, become angry and resentful. It doesn’t exist other than us. There’s nothing there. If we change who we are now, we change what it meant to us. We change the future of us.

When someone becomes enlightened, they were always enlightened.

Make so-called negative things positive. Because they don’t truly exist.

No one engaged in harmful actions out of wisdom. They harm and are cruel out of ignorance.

Need difficult people to burn away impure appearances.

There is no reason for the past to have any control over us any more than we allow it, because it doesn’t exist.

Does the past establish us, or do we establish the past? The only thing functioning is us now.

This is explained in the Lorig teachings.

What is a karmic cause? We can create potentials. Potentials are not causes. An experience is an effect. Once an effect is experienced, the cause no longer exists.

We can only establish causes when they no longer exist.

Everything good in our life has come from others.

Measure kindness on the level of benefit we receive. Not measuring it on intention, because we’ve already established that people have no control over their intention due to the presence of ignorance.

If we’re interested in spiritual development, we need patience. It’s the basis of renunciation. How do we develop patience? We need difficult people. For this reason they are kind.

It’s not that hard. It’s familiarity. It’s just a matter of time.

Session 4

Without others we are nothing.

What does it mean to be harmed?

Suffering is different - it’s a result of karma.

The harm we experience is directly proportional to the amount we cherish our self.

The suffering of others doesn’t harm us. But if we cherish them, their suffering becomes difficult to bear. The reality is, we’re all together. With a mind of love, we contemplate what other living beings are going through. This is real empathy.

There is great peace and contentment when we accept the world as it is. The idea that compassion is depressing or causes suffering is due to not accepting the world we live in. If you accept reality, then your compassion will bring the same peace and contentment that renunciation does. It will give you great direction.

Love and compassion are natural parts of the mind. Can’t force it. Just need to nurture and cultivate it. It’s uplifting when it’s based in true renunciation.

Meditate with the mind we have. Not with the mind we think we should have, otherwise it won’t move. E.g. aspiring bodhichitta is still an aspect of bodhichitta.

Receive blessings, and use imagination.

Need to realistically apply oneself.