Reality and Early Science Systems

Thirteen in a series. One of the obstacles to understanding reality is that your grasping is attached to your innate view that binds it to a compulsion to see it as real. It is then you will attempt to subjugate the analysis of ascertaining reality to your present understanding of your innate view as a demand for reality to be understood filtered through your innate view that you are not willing to give up.

There is no transitional view to the emptiness of true nature. We cannot present a semi-truth other than the words that I use and what you are experiencing while reading these words that explain the nature of what you have not yet understood. This also includes the movement of your mind and thinking about how you feel about the experience "Well, I would like, and then it must…no, it is not that, and then oh, well I cannot…."

This activity of perception stimulating mental and energetic structures acts as a transitional view toward your understanding the nature of all phenomena, but the defining factor for the correct view is that you either have it or you do not have it. There is no semi-correct view. You do not almost have the correct view. You either have it or you do not have it.

Once we begin serious study of the emptiness of true nature the nature of reality still remains beyond the grasp of the innate view during the study. You are either going to get it, or you do not have it. However, now you know that there is something called the correct view that exists beyond the confusion and that clarity is what you need to have in order to end suffering.


Students might correctly question here whether understandings that are transitional views are okay to stabilize energetically. The answer is yes, so that your energetic being on various levels has time to work with that and come into alignment with that understanding before you ask it to move again into further states of alignment toward a transformational event. For example, if we were given the task of moving a mountain, we would not try to drag the mountain by, say, getting the tractor out and trying to drag the mountain, but in fact we might even take the mountain apart bit by bit. That is what I might do, and then you would need to take the parts, and reassemble it in another location. However, if you really had to move the whole mountain at once, I would get a very, very big tractor, and I would move it very, very slowly. I might let the mountain rest in between movements, and like that is stabilization of energies to new ways of being.

Chandrakirti analysis to induce shunyata, point number Thirteen: Emptiness of all Phenomena: “The eighteen potentials, the six types of contact, and from those six, the six types of feelings; furthermore, all that is form and all that is not, the composite and the uncomposite, this comprises all phenomena”.

Early materialistic Hindu philosophy moving toward a more inner view of manifestation developed a system to describe the physical world and its interaction with the inner subtle manifestation of the person. This information is easy to find elsewhere so only a brief description is needed here for the benefit of the analysis. The eighteen elements include the twelve sense bases. The eighteen elements are six triads of elements where each triad is composed of a sense object, the external sense bases, a sense organ, the internal sense bases, and the associated sense organ consciousness moving in changing relationships with each other. In other words, the eighteen elements are made of up twelve sense bases and the six related sense consciousnesses that describe all possibilities.

This analytical point of view presented by Chandrakirti to gain understanding of reality is an early scientific tool even more sophisticated than contemporary science because it includes the inner perceptions as well as the outer world. The eighteen potentials, the six types of contact, all that is form and all that is not form, the composite and uncomposite (a new view), this comprises and describes all phenomena. Although these systems are complex and give a supramundane view to substitute for a less sophisticated view that it replaced, we should not take them as describing true reality, but as a description of a system. It is a method of seeing all things as comprised of the eighteen elements in a dynamic relationship with the various sense bases and the six contacts. The Buddha, Nagarjuna, Chandrakirti, and others, have refuted carefully these as descriptions of reality as empty and not the excellent basis for your grasping.

Another system developed and still used in Buddhism is twelve links of interdependent origination, another dynamic system using causes and conditions beyond human life span to describe the coming into being, growth, changes and decay of a living being. The description of the physical world is only used as it relate to the chain of becoming that is a description of suffering.

In regard to point thirteen of the analysis, someone might say, "Okay, so the phenomena in the form that they are appearing to me, such as a post or a cup, let us just say that I agree with you, Rinpoche that this is empty, just for argument's sake, but in fact there have been philosophers that have very carefully thought about these things and have stated that, of course the world is not what it appears to be! Do not be silly, Rinpoche. I have spent twelve years studying, and I am an adept in understanding the nature of reality based upon how it actually appears as an interaction of the eighteen elements in relation to the inner bases, so my system is correct to say that phenomena do not appears in the way that we think they do. They appear as objects and results of the eighteen elements. Reality is described as a combination of the eighteen elements.”

This would actually not address point thirteen as Chandrakirti here is only opening the discussion that will be addressed in point fourteen. Here we already have controversies whether the system is defining phenomena or going beyond that permission and leading others to rely on them as reality descriptions. I call these systems quantifiers. I might find it useful to know how long my nose is and count my fingers, but does that help me know my true nature? Many believe that if they only had time to enter into a course of study such as the eighteen potentials, they would be able to understand the nature of reality. This is uneducated faith toward what will not satisfy. For those who actually do enter study the adherents of various systems become convinced that their system is a superior one for discovering reality when it is only science describing phenomena. Another system is the plexes of the chakras or centers. Does the chakra system talk about the inherent nonexistence of the chakra system? Heavens no!

That is what scholars say, “If you only could understand the eighteen potentials, if I could take an hour or two of your time, Rinpoche, to discuss the eighteen potentials, I am sure that you would have a better grasp on the nature of reality, because the eighteen potentials is the system that will help you understand that." It is only a system, and not the excellent basis for your grasping.

Many people in spiritual process today believe that there is something about the nature of reality and truth that has something to do with the chakras and it does not!! This is a system created for methods for purification, and it is actually part of the present Buddhist training that you are receiving. That is not to be discarded. However, when you received the training regarding the chakras by some, you are given to believe that they actually exist in true reality in a way that is consonant with the system, when in fact it does not. It is better to view them as tools and not worship the system as being the excellent support for the grasping of your innate view. To be continued…