09/09/2025
A Verse from the Dhammapada for Meditation on Emptiness
Dhammapada:
CHHÖ KÜN MI LAM GYU MA DRA
All existents are like a dream and an illusion.
DEN PÄI NGO WO CHI YANG ME
There is nothing that is truly existent.
ME KYANG NANG WÄ NGÖ PO LA
Nothing exists yet it appears. Therefore, NGÖN PAR ZHEN PA ME JE ANG
Don't cling so much to phenomena!
A Verse from the Dhammapada for Meditation on Emptiness
Dhammapada:
CHHÖ KÜN MI LAM GYU MA DRA
All existents are like a dream and an illusion.
DEN PÄI NGO WO CHI YANG ME
There is nothing that is truly existent.
ME KYANG NANG WÄ NGÖ PO LA
Nothing exists yet it appears. Therefore, NGÖN PAR ZHEN PA ME JE ANG
Don't cling so much to phenomena!
Normally when I do Sur practice for the people who have died. Sur is making offerings to Guru, Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha, and to all kinds of sentient beings, all the landlords, but the particular are to people who died and didn't find rebirth yet, so they are born in intermediate state.
Sur is offering smell to them. It is food for them, the smell. It is not the smell of incense. It has to be food, like tsampa, barley [flour]. Tsampa, you burn and it has the smell of food. It has to be like that.
I recite this verse when I am doing Sur. This is a teaching on emptiness for the spirits and the smell-eaters.
It is also very good to recite this verse when you go for a walk:
“All existents are like a dream and an illusion.
There is nothing that is truly existent.
Nothing exists yet it appears. Therefore,
Don't cling so much to phenomena!”
You repeat it as you are walking. You recite or remember it and at the same time you do the meditation when you are walking. So then your walking becomes a remedy to samsara. It eradicates the root of samsara, the ignorance from where all the suffering came, from beginningless rebirths, now, and that continues in the future. It is eradicating the root of samsara - ignorance.
It is unbelievable, so meaningful for your life. It is a very deep meditation. This kind of mindfulness in emptiness.
Also you can do looking at the hallucination as a hallucination, with that mindfulness, you do walking meditation. Walking is just one example, but you can do that while you are making food, cooking in the kitchen, thinking that you are dreaming, you are in a dream making food, looking at it like a dream, like an illusion. While you are making food in the kitchen, while you are busy, you can meditate on emptiness, looking at it as a hallucination as it is a hallucination.
While you are busy having meetings, while you are busy being a secretary, a busy life, but part of your mind is in meditation.
Or merely labeled—merely labeled I, merely labeled action, merely labeled whatever you are doing, all that, practicing meditation on emptiness.
Or nothing exists, what appeared real, all this is nothing. This verse or:
NGA CHHÖ CHÄN DEN PAR ME TE TEN DREL YIN PÄI CHHIR
The base is not truly existent because it is a dependent arising.
That is so good, fantastic, to think like this, when you are walking, you do meditation on this: “It has no true existence.”
Then, after some time: “Because it is a dependent arising.”
You do it over and over. You go and come back, then your life becomes most meaningful.
Instead of “OM MANI PADME HUM, OM MANI PADME HUM,” reciting mantras, you can recite these quotations of the Buddha, the Buddha's teachings' quotations, any of the words of emptiness that I mentioned.
You can recite them. Instead of a mantra, you can recite that when you are walking, when you are driving a car, when you are walking, anything. While you are cooking food, you can do that so it reminds you, it reminds you of that meditation. So it is very good.
Also you can chant verses. It is very good to chant them; it brings your mind in meditation.
Advice from Lama Zopa Rinpoche, Elista, Russia, 12 October 2019
