THE EMPTINESS OF OUR MIND

In Training the Mind in Seven Points, after outlining how to engage in analytical meditation on the emptiness of inher- ent existence of outer phenomena such as our body, Geshe Chekhawa continues by saying that we should then analyze our own mind to understand how it lacks inherent existence. Our mind is not an independent entity, but an ever-changing continuum that depends upon many factors, such as its previous moments, its objects, and the inner energy winds upon which our minds are mounted. Like everything else, our mind is imputed upon a collection of many factors and therefore lacks inherent existence. A primary mind, or consciousness, for example, has five parts or ‘mental factors’: feeling, discrimination, intention, contact and attention. Neither the individual mental factors nor the collection of these mental factors is the primary mind itself, because they are mental factors and therefore parts of the primary mind. However, there is no primary mind that is separate from these mental factors. A primary mind is merely imputed upon the mental factors that are its basis of imputation, and therefore it does not exist from its own side. Having identified the nature of our primary mind, which is an empty like space that perceives or understands objects, we then search for it within its parts – feeling, discrimination, intention, contact and attention – until finally we realize its unfindability. This unfindability is its ultimate nature, or emptiness.