Nice sharing.

Just a random thought for sharing..

Waking life and sleep dreams are both equally empty and illusory, but where dream objects are not conventionally valid with causal efficacy and functionality, waking life does.

For example if I borrowed money from someone in a dream and then I woke up, I do not need to return the money to the dream guy or lady because there is no functional purpose or causal efficacy to the dream money.

But in waking life, money, although a mere coventional imputation with no inherent reality to it, serves a function and has causal efficacy, this function and causal efficacy too is empty without real existence like a reflection but yet cannot be denied. In fact if you steal money from someone, it can cause suffering and death to a person, a family, or more.

This is why Buddhas and Bodhisattvas never enter cessation and endlessly return to help beings. Even though they understand there is no sentient beings to be saved, ultimately. Even if they attained Buddhahood or rainbow body, etc, they continue to help (illusory) beings, and their unending compassion and spontaneous actions to liberate sentient beings are never without consequences.

"Tsong- kha- pa was particularly concerned that most of the then prevailing Tibetan interpretations of Nagarjuna’s Madhyamaka philosophy misidentified the object of negation. In his view, these widely promulgated misunderstandings of Madhyamaka subvert ethical commitments by treating them—and all other conventions—as provisional in the sense that their validity or legitimacy is obviated by the profound truth of emptiness. Tsong- kha- pa holds that profound emptiness must be understood as complementing and fulfilling, rather than canceling out, the principles of moral action. His writings aim to inspire and—as a matter of historical fact—did inspire vigorous striving in active virtue.

Tsong- kha- pa insists that rational analysis is an indispensable tool in the spiritual life. In order to make cogent the compatibility of emptiness and ethics, Tsong- kha- pa had to show that the two truths, ultimate and conventional, do not contradict, undermine, or supersede one another."

~ Introduction to Emptiness, Guy Newland”

“The birth of certainty ~ Lama Tsongkhapa

The knowledge that appearances arise unfailingly in dependence,

And the knowledge that they are empty and beyond all assertions—

As long as these two appear to you as separate,

There can be no realization of the Buddha’s wisdom.

Yet when they arise at once, not each in turn but both together,

Then through merely seeing unfailing dependent origination

Certainty is born, and all modes of misapprehension fall apart—

That is when discernment of the view has reached perfection.

– Lama Tsongkhapa

“EMPTINESS DEVIATING TO THE BASIC NATURE

Timeless Deviation to the Nature of Knowables The meditation of inseparable phenomena and emptiness is called “emptiness endowed with the supreme aspect.” Not knowing how emptiness and interdependence abide in nonduality, you decide that emptiness is a nothingness that has never existed and that is not influenced at all by qualities or defects. Then you underestimate the cause and effect of virtue and vice, or else lapse exclusively into the nature of all things being originally pure, primordially free, and so forth. Bearing such emptiness, the relative level of interdependence is not mastered. In this respect, this is what is known as mahamudra: one’s basic nature is unoriginated and, since it is neither existent nor nonexistent, eternal nor nil, true nor false, nor any other such aspects, it has no existence whatsoever. Nonetheless, its unceasing radiance arises as the relative level of all kinds of interdependence, so it is known as emptiness having the core of interdependence and interdependence having the nature of emptiness. Therefore, emptiness does not stray to the nature of knowables. In the Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way it is said: Anything that doesn’t arise dependently Is a phenomenon that has no existence. Therefore anything that is not empty Is a phenomenon that has no existence. And as said in the Commentary on Bodhichitta: It is taught that the relative plane is emptiness, And emptiness alone is the relative plane.” – The Royal Seal of Mahamudra, Volume 2, Khamtrul Rinpoche

“A lot of talk on here lately about how lame relative reality is vs how awesome ultimate reality is.

Apparently an omniscient master is supposed to see how both the relative and the ultimate exist at the same time in a Union of Appearance and Emptiness.

It's because everything is dependently arisen that it can be seen as empty.

Not even the smallest speck exists by its own power.

Je Tsongkhapa said, "Since objects do not exist through their own nature, they are established as existing through the force of convention."

He was the biggest proponent of keeping vows and virtuous actions through all stages of sutra and tantra.

He also leveraged the relative by practicing millions of prostrations and offering mandalas.

He also practiced generation and completion stages of tantra while keeping his conduct spotless.

He held conduct in the highest regard in all of his texts on tantra such as his masterwork, A Lamp to Illuminate the Five Stages.” - Jason Parker, 2019

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Longchenpa on Nihilism

From Finding Rest in the Nature of Mind.

"Those who scorn the law of karmic cause and fruit

Are students of the nihilist view outside the Dharma.

They rely on the thought that all is void;

They fall in the extreme of nothingness

And go from higher to lower states.

They have embarked on an evil path

And from the evil destinies will have no freedom,

Casting happy states of being far away.

”The law of karmic cause and fruit,

Compassion and the gathering of merit -

All this is but provisional teaching fit for children:

Enlightenment will not be gained thereby.

Great yogis should remain without intentional action.

They should meditate upon reality that is like space.

Such is the definitive instruction.”

The view of those who speak like this

Of all views is the most nihilist:

They have embraced the lowest of all paths.

How strange is this!

They want a fruit but have annulled its cause.

If reality is but a space-like void,

What need is there to meditate?

And if it is not so, then even if one meditates

Such efforts are to no avail.

If meditation on mere voidness leads to liberation,

Even those with minds completely blank

Attain enlightenment!

But since those people have asserted meditation,

Cause and its result they thus establish!

Throw far away such faulty paths as these!

The true, authentic path asserts

The arising in dependence of both cause and fruit,

The natural union of skillful means and wisdom.

Through the causality of nonexistent but appearing acts,

Through meditation on the nonexistent but appearing path,

The fruit is gained, appearing and yet nonexistent;

And for the sake of nonexistent but appearing beings,

Enlightened acts, appearing and yet nonexistent, manifest.

Such is pure causality’s profound interdependence.

This is the essential pith

Of all the Sutra texts whose meaning is definitive

And indeed of all the tantras.

Through the joining of the two accumulations,

The generation and completion stages,

Perfect buddhahood is swiftly gained.

Thus all the causal processes

Whereby samsara is contrived should be abandoned,

And all acts that are the cause of liberation

Should be earnestly performed.

High position in samsara

And the final excellence of buddhahood

Will speedily be gained."

from Finding Rest in the Nature of Mind (Volume 1)

Also by Longchenpa:

"To reject practice by saying, ‘it is conceptual!’ is the path of fools. A tendency of the inexperienced and something to be avoided.”

- John Tan