How to meditate on insight

• Clarifying between mutually exclusive, contradictory, dichotomous
• Understanding same, different, same nature, different natures
• Conventional existence, conventional truths, ultimate existence, ultimate truths
• The relationships between objects
• The divisions and types of insight

143 Gomchen Lamrim: How to Meditate on Insight (download)

Contemplation points

1. What does it mean to be the same and different in this context? Use the example of having one and then multiple thermoses to help define these terms. Now make up some of your own examples.
2. What does it mean to be “one nature” with an object? Describe why veiled and ultimate truths are not one, but they are one nature. Are the seed and the sprout one? Are they one nature? Permanent and uncompounded? Make other examples to better investigate these terms.
3. Investigate the difference between truths and existents:
   • What does it mean to be conventionally or ultimately existent? What exists conventionally? Ultimately? Does emptiness exist conventionally or ultimately, and why?
   • By contrast, what does it mean to be a conventional or ultimate truth? Make examples of each kind of truth.
4. Why does an object’s not being able to bear ultimate analysis NOT mean that it is negated by that same reasoning? What is in the purview of ultimate analysis and why? Explain how the object and the ultimate nature of the object are one nature, but perceived by different cognizers.
5. What is meant by saying that emptiness is beyond comprehension? Why is thinking about emptiness conceptually an important part of realizing it?
6. Why is it that serenity and insight are often practiced separately? How do we combine these two to bring them into union?