On the Passing of Great Beings
Of late, a number of the great Tibetan older guard of teachers has passed, among whom are a couple I’ve had the honor of meeting and studying under/attending their teachings. These passings are reminders of the impermanence of phenomena and at the same time, the lessons of non-self/anatman/annata/བདག་མེད་, in a couple of ways. One is that all phenomena is composite, each phenomenon the result of patternings of causes and conditions. No substantial self obtains from the impermanent, ever-shifting and metamorphosing of conditioned existence. Every Buddhist teacher I know - Tibetan and otherwise - stresses the transient,་insubstantial nature of the self. That said, and this is a doctrine that falls under scrutiny for reasons of suggesting otherwise, there is posited and particularly emphasized in Tibetan Mahayana, persistently existing mindstreams. Now, any good madhyamika is going to say that even that mindstream is subject to impermanence and therefore, the positing of such is a ...