We talked about how Buddha gave two types of teachings. Compassion and Wisdom. For the past 22 episodes, we have been discussing compassion teachings or some version of it. Although we still have 5 or 6 sessions to go for compassion teachings, I thought I would introduce part of wisdom teachings today. We will talk about what is known as inherent existence. It is a deep topic so we may take a couple of sessions discussing this. So what is inherent existence? If you think about most of us take the existence of all phenomena as inherent. What does that mean? Well, let’s talk about any object. A car, or a house, or clothes, or a computer, and so on. We think it exists and does not think twice about it. As a matter of fact, we think exists inherently and cling to it. This grasping or clinging is what brings the most suffering in our lives.
I know this sounds crazy. So let’s break it down. Any existence is either inherent or it is not. What is inherent existence? A phenomenon that exits from its own side is considered an inherent existence. In reality, there is no such thing. No phenomena exist from its own side. For anything to exist from its own side, either it is the same as its part or collection of its part. There is no other possibility. Let’s take an example. Here is a flower. I think we all agree that it is a flower. If you don’t agree, please raise your hand in your participants’ window – I want to make sure this is an interactive experiment. As long as we all agree it is a flower, we will continue. Now, Is this a flower (removed one petal and only showed one petal)? How about this (showed another petal)? How about now (one more petal)? How about this (showing stem)? So we all agree that none of the parts of the flower are flowers themselves. Let’s look at the collection of the parts. All of these parts if I gave you, you would not call it a flower. So there is no inherently existing flower. Well, then what is this thing we called flower. It is nothing but imputation. It is a flower because we called it a flower. It has no inherent existence. Another way to look at this is that it is a dependent existence. Let’s say a blind person walks in the room – don’t worry this is not a joke! There is a flower on the table. For the blind person, the flower does not exist because it is not in their experience.
Let’s look at this pen. Can you point to the pen? Where is the pen? Is it on your screen? Is it in my hand? You see this pen because your eye senses look at a picture of the pen, your brain interprets that as a pen. In other words, the pen is in your mind. Without your brain interpreting this object like a pen, the pen does not exist for you. In other words, it is a dependent existence.
So there are people who believe everything exists inherently meaning from their own side. As we just discussed that is just not the case. There are people who believe nothing exists at all. That is surely not the case since we are experiencing these phenomena. There is a middle way. That says that all phenomena are imputed or dependent on existence. Nothing exists inherently and all existence is imputed.
Let’s look at another example, we all have a car parked in the garage. Let’s find if the car exists inherently. For a car to exist inherently, it can either be found in its parts or it is a collection of its part. So let’s begin with its tires. If someone gave us four tires, we will certainly not call it a car. How about if someone gave us a bunch of bucket seats? Well, that is not a car. How about a door, or an engine, or brake pads? None of these parts is a car. If you take all the parts of the car put them on the ground, we won’t call it a car. So there is no inherently existing car. It is a car because we all decided to call it a car. In other words, it is an imputed existence.
Again, this is a deep subject. I would like to pick this up next week on the same topic. So we can investigate a little more to make sure that we are all on the same page as to inherent existence.