His Holiness the Dalai Lama: Aryadeva points out to first understand the Buddha’s teaching on emptiness, Buddha’s teaching on no-self.
3. Day Two, Morning Session, July 11, 2008, Part one. Using Human Intelligence to Transform Our Minds. Perfection of Wisdom. Goals and Conditions for Learning. How to Guide Students. Understanding Emptiness as the Key. Chanting of Heart Sutra in Vietnamese.
Using Human Intelligence to Transform Our Minds
His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Now, I think in the beginning of the afternoon session, perhaps some questions may be useful.
So, Buddhadharma. Some scholars described, “Buddhism is not a religion but a science of mind.” I think it’s quite true, because in Buddhism, like any other non-theistic religion, the basic concept is law of causality—cause-and-effect, cause-and-effect, goes like that.
So the thing which we are very much concerned with, that is suffering, pain, and the joyful or pleasant, happy…
Thupten Jinpa: …happiness.
His Holiness: So the pains and pleasures, these things are feelings. So feelings means: part of our mind. So the causes of that (of course external factors are also there) but mainly within our own mind. So logically, in order to reduce suffering, pains, worry, sadness, fear: they ultimately depend upon our mental attitude.
So shaping in new ways our mind, just mere determination, or mere wish, to some extent it has some effect, but that cannot sort of affect us in a more profound way. So here I think conviction, firm conviction, that is something important. Continue reading »