Donna Quesada. Buddhism: Emptiness. (Intro Who Am I?) 1/5 — Transcript

Full transcript

1. 0:00because I just wanted to show you a
2. 0:03picture so that you have an image in
3. 0:04your mind of Tik nahan he's a Vietnamese
4. 0:08Buddhist monk in his 80s
5. 0:10now and he was exiled from his native
6. 0:14Vietnam for more than 40 years and
7. 0:16that's why he went and founded his
8. 0:19Monastery in France called Plum Village
9. 0:22he also founded a monastery here in
10. 0:24California I visited both and there is
11. 0:28one more on the East Coast which I not
12. 0:30visited but he's still a peace activist
13. 0:33and an author writes in French English
14. 0:36and
15. 0:37Vietnamese and um has dedicated his life
16. 0:41to working to peace in fact here's an
17. 0:43interesting bit of information for you
18. 0:46another one of my favorite people Martin
19. 0:48Luther King Jr nominated him for the
20. 0:50Nobel Peace Prize that was I believe
21. 0:5367 I have to double check I think it was
22. 0:5767 and uh he's still teaching and he's
23. 1:00still but he's a simple monk he lives
24. 1:02most of it most of the time in France
25. 1:04and I'm going to be talking about him a
26. 1:06little bit today but I didn't just want
27. 1:08it to be a name you know that went went
28. 1:11sort of floating by your head I wanted
29. 1:13you to have an image I wanted you to
30. 1:14visualize something when you hear his
31. 1:16name to really have a better idea of who
32. 1:19he
33. 1:20was and so with that said I want to talk
34. 1:25about emptiness
35. 1:26today and as you know we've concluded
36. 1:29our section on Hinduism and we're now
37. 1:31talking about Buddhism and the ordinary
38. 1:34place where most people start is with
39. 1:36the four noble truths but I don't want
40. 1:38to start there I want to start with
41. 1:40emptiness it is possibly the most
42. 1:44philosophically difficult place to start
43. 1:46but I want to start there anyway because
44. 1:48I don't think it has to be
45. 1:49philosophically difficult I think it's
46. 1:51largely misunderstood and I want to talk
47. 1:54about it in a way that makes it less
48. 1:58weird or less confusing
49. 2:02how many of you have heard of that word
50. 2:03emptiness in conjunction with Buddhist
51. 2:07studies a few of
52. 2:10you and I'm just curious what comes to
53. 2:13your mind when you think of the word
54. 2:17emptiness not being present not being
55. 2:21present oh that's
56. 2:22interesting go ahead um the idea of like
57. 2:26trying to like empty your mind and not
58. 2:28of anything
59. 2:32okay the idea of trying to empty your
60. 2:34mind but it's difficult to do so you're
61. 2:36thinking about the practice of
62. 2:38meditation okay and you're thinking of
63. 2:41that it means something like not being
64. 2:43present that's interesting kind of
65. 2:44opposite to what Billy said yeah so like
66. 2:49um yeah I kind of like just not um not
67. 2:54being present in the moment like just
68. 2:57just just
69. 3:01it's an okay place to start go ahead
70. 3:04freedom freedom when you don't have
71. 3:06anything you have nothing to lose you
72. 3:07were not dependent on anything to not be
73. 3:10depend that's interesting he says that
74. 3:12to not be dependent on anything
75. 3:14something like political Freedom comes
76. 3:16to
77. 3:17mind okay so we've got some work to do
78. 3:20today
79. 3:21because if I could say something and you
80. 3:24know for the sake of peing your interest
81. 3:27say it's kind of opposite to that in a
82. 3:29way because it has everything to do with
83. 3:32dependence but not in the way you might
84. 3:34suspect you see Buddhism really starts
85. 3:36even before the four noble truths
86. 3:38Buddhist philosophy starts with what
87. 3:41your uh writing what the the author of
88. 3:44the text calls the three marks of
89. 3:46existence or in some books the three
90. 3:48marks of reality which
91. 3:51are impermanence
92. 4:04anatman and
93. 4:10suffering so impermanence and anaton are
94. 4:13really just different angles on the same
95. 4:17observation of Life of this thing this
96. 4:21suchness this thing we can't put our
97. 4:23finger on impermanence is simply what
98. 4:26Buddha witnessed by sitting
99. 4:31it's what he experienced for himself in
100. 4:33his own meditations and he would urge
101. 4:35you to do the same and not to take his
102. 4:38word for
103. 4:39it that the universe is constantly in
104. 4:43motion constantly
105. 4:46moving it's in a process of
106. 4:49change at any moment everywhere you look
107. 4:52nothing stands still reality is
108. 4:55impermanent anatman is really just a
109. 4:58different way of pointing out the same
110. 5:01observation you've seen the word Atman
111. 5:04in the context of Hinduism what happens
112. 5:06when you stick an a at the beginning of
113. 5:08a
114. 5:09word it negates it it flips it to its
115. 5:13opposite something like that for when I
116. 5:15say
117. 5:18anatman and we know that Atman in the
118. 5:20Hindu context normally translated as
119. 5:23Soul points to this eternal Essence your
120. 5:28being Who You Are
121. 5:30are really that carries over from
122. 5:34existence to existence but anatman
123. 5:38suggests that there is no soul or no
124. 5:40self and this has been the most
125. 5:42perplexing thing about Buddhism people
126. 5:45say what what is this thing Buddha said
127. 5:48that I'm no self does he say that I'm
128. 5:50nothing that I have no soul and it's
129. 5:53troubling and so I want to my goal today
130. 5:56is to make it less troubling what is
131. 5:58really meant by anot
132. 6:00no self or no no soul sure does it mean
133. 6:03like your personality carries through on
134. 6:05your time not so much your soul
135. 6:08um yes and no it's that what it really
136. 6:12means is that that personality is
137. 6:14subject to the same flow that the
138. 6:16universe is subject
139. 6:21to but when we get hung up mistakenly on
140. 6:27the idea of a permanent identity it
141. 6:29leads to
142. 6:31suffering and that takes us into the
143. 6:33four noble truths which will take us
144. 6:35into next week and so I'll set that to
145. 6:38the side for
146. 6:40now because we'll see that these first
147. 6:44two kind of foundation points for
148. 6:48Buddhism will take us into the heart of
149. 6:52the philosophy of
150. 6:54emptiness the philosophical term and
151. 6:56it's kind of a mouthful of a uh it's an
152. 6:58academic term
153. 7:01is dependent
154. 7:03origination that's the philosophical way
155. 7:05of describing
156. 7:06emptiness and I want you to know it and
157. 7:08that's why I put it down it's just the
158. 7:11academic way of talking about
159. 7:14emptiness the other words we'll get
160. 7:18to to be clear to make sure that we're
161. 7:21connecting the dots all the while to
162. 7:24talk about impermanence is to talk about
163. 7:27the nature of the self which is also
164. 7:29changing
165. 7:30is to talk about emptiness we're not
166. 7:32talking about different things Emptiness
167. 7:34is just what you call that Universe of
168. 7:41change it starts by having us look more
169. 7:45deeply at the habitual way of looking at
170. 7:48the self the way we usually think about
171. 7:51ourselves we have a habit of looking at
172. 7:54ourselves in a certain way but there's a
173. 7:57tradition within Buddhism
174. 8:00and it starts with the question who am I
175. 8:03and some teachers would have their
176. 8:05disciples meditate on this question who
177. 8:07am I like in your readings there's a
178. 8:09little bit about that and it's kind of a
179. 8:11fun little portion to read through who
180. 8:13am
181. 8:14I we're always looking for an
182. 8:19answer but in this case it's the asking
183. 8:22of the question that turns the key