H.H. Dalai Lama

Dalai Lama Quote of the Week

The modes of thought in pride and in courageous thought are entirely different.

Depression caused by disintegration of the ego probably comes from not being able to posit a conventionally existent I. Still, when some understanding of emptiness develops, you have a different feeling of I than that to which you previously were accustomed. Our usual feeling is that the I is something solid, really independent, and very forceful. Such no longer remains, but at the same time there is a sense of a mere I that accumulates karma and performs actions. Such a sense of self is not at all a source of depression.

If you have difficulty positing a merely nominal I as well as merely nominal cause and effect of actions--if you get to the point where if you assert selflessness, you cannot posit dependent-arising--then it would be better to assert dependent-arising and give up selflessness. Indeed, there are many levels of understanding selflessness, and Buddha, out of great skillfulness in method, taught many different schools of tenets that posit coarser levels of selflessness for those temporarily unable to understand the more subtle levels. It is not the case that only if the most profound level is immediately accessible, it is suitable, and if it is not accessible, the whole endeavor should be thrown away. You have to proceed step by step with whatever accords with your level of mind. Between emptiness and dependent-arising, you should value dependent-arising more highly.

--from The Dalai Lama at Harvard: Lectures on the Buddhist Path to Peace by H.H. the Dalai Lama of Tibet, translated and edited by Jeffrey Hopkins, published by Snow Lion Publications