The Tibetan contemplative Gen Lamrimpa trained in Buddhist philosophy and meditation under some of the greatest masters of the twentieth century. After spending twenty years in solitary retreat, he was requested by His Holiness the Dalai Lama to take a more active role as a teacher. Subsequently, he accepted an invitation to the West, where he gave the teachings presented here in response to a request for practical instructions on Madhyamaka insight meditation aimed at realizing emptiness.
In Realizing Emptiness, Gen Lamrimpa draws on his theoretical training as well as his solitary meditative experience to show how students can gain realization of ultimate reality. He explains in a practical and down-to-earth fashion how to analyze experience to fathom how it has been misperceived and misunderstood because of our many delusions and how to use Madhyamaka reasoning to experience theway in which all things exist as dependently related events. Those who wish to apply the Madhyamaka view to meditative practice and daily life will undoubtedly find this work to be of great practical value. The book closes with two chapters on Dzogchen and its relation to Madhyamaka.
How to Realize Emptiness, Gen Lamrimpa, Snow Lion Publications, Paperback, 2002, 136 Pages, $15.95
Gen Lamrimpa, born in Tibet in 1934, spent most of his life in
meditative retreat in Dharamsala, India. He also had a devoted student
base in the U.S. and authored one of the most popular books on shamatha
meditation - Calming the Mind.
Alan Wallace has authored, edited, or
translated more than thirty books on Tibetan Buddhism. An in-demand
international teacher, he lives in Santa Barbara, where he founded the
Santa Barbara Institute for Consciousness Studies.
Foreword 7 (2)
A Contented Mind: The Life of Gen Lamrimpa 9 (8)
Introduction 17 (14)
The Significance of Compassion and Insight 17 (4)
Suitable Teachers and Students for 21 (2)
Teachings on Emptiness
Provisional and Definitive Teachings within Buddhism 23
The Lineage of these Teachings 24
Scriptural Sources for these Teachings 28
How Phenomena Are Established as Being Conceptually Designated 31
The Fusion of Word-Based Ideas with Experience-Based Ideas 32
The Fusion of the Object with the Generic Idea of the Object 34
Conventional Agreement 41
Can We Establish Things without Referring 44
How One Grasps onto True Existence 47
Two Types of Ignorance 50
Three Ways of Apprehending an Object 54
The Ignorant View Concerning a Transitory Assembly 57
The Four Essential Points 61
The First Essential Point 61
The Attended Object and the Attributed Object 61
Conventional and Ultimate Analysis 67
The Second Essential Point 69
The Third Essential Point 71
Valid and Invalid Ways of Postulating the Self 73
Single and Multiple Phenomena 76
The Fourth Essential Point 77
Simple and Complex Negations 77
Review of the Meditation on Emptiness 78
Personal and Phenomenal Identitylessness 86
The Prasangika View of How Phenomena Exist 87
Three Criteria for Designating the Existence of Phenomena 88
How All Phenomena Appear Like Illusions 94
The Dependence of Phenomena 95
The Criteria for Realizing Emptiness 99
Appendix I: Dzogchen 105
Appendix II: Madhyamaka and Dzogchen 117
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