Calendar

"Realizing the Profound View" with Venerable Thubten Chodron
Saturday, August 17, 2024

Schedule:
10:30am – 12:00pm Pacific Time (1:30pm – 3:00pm ET ): Teaching
12:00pm – 2:00pm Pacific Time (3:00pm – 5:00pm ET): Break
2:00pm – 3:30pm Pacific Time (5:00pm – 6:30pm ET): Teaching

Realizing the Profound View by His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Venerable Thubten Chodron is the eighth volume in the Dalai Lama’s definitive and bestselling "Library of Wisdom and Compassion" series, and the second of three focusing on emptiness. This volume presents the analysis and meditations necessary to realize the ultimate nature of reality.

With attention to Nagarjuna’s five-point analysis, Candrakirti’s seven-point examination, and Pali sutras, the text leads us to investigate who or what is the person. Are we our body? Our mind? If we are not inherently either of them, how do we exist, and what carries the karma from one life to the next? As we explore these and other fascinating questions, we are skillfully guided along the path, avoiding the chasms of absolutism and nihilism, and introduced to dependent arising. We find that although all persons and phenomena lack an inherent essence, they do exist dependently. This nominally imputed mere “I” carries the karmic seeds. We discover that all phenomena exist by being merely designated by term and concept—they appear as like illusions, unfindable under ultimate analysis but functioning on the conventional level. Furthermore, we come to understand that emptiness dawns as the meaning of dependent arising, and dependent arising dawns as the meaning of emptiness. The ability to posit subtle dependent arisings in the face of realizing emptiness and to establish ultimate and conventional truths as non-contradictory brings us to the culmination of the correct view.

To join online, register here through Jewel Heart.
To attend in-person, register here through Sravasti Abbey.