RELG 253 Lecture Notes - Lecture 29: Arhat, Madhyamaka, Svabhava

• School: McGill University
• Department: Religious Studies
• Course: RELG 253
• Professor: Lisa M.Blake, Jingjing Li

Document Summary

All good things and experiences are there because of the ego and ego gratification. Happiness and sadness come from the same source; the ego. You are happy when something good happens because the ego desired it. You are unhappy when something bad happens because the ego desired something else. You are always making judgments; trying to define everything around us but these judgments are not inherent to the object. You take your own self and impose it on everything around you. Self-focused remarks not reflexive of reality, a subjective idea of reality. Attachment to the self and this subjective view produces suffering. You can end suffering by following a path following buddhist teachings. The eight-fold path; consists of eight elements to cultivate and maintain to keep an existence of enlightenment/free of suffering. The eight can be reduced to three, called the three learnings: morality (prajna), wisdom (sila), and concentration (samadhi: impermanence. All things are events ; people, objects, places etc.