We meet every Saturday to meditate, explore Buddhism and connect with each other. To stay up to date on weekly Young Melbourne Buddhist events, you can sign up to our mailing list here, find us on Facebook or email youngmelbournebuddhists@gmail.com

In this week’s class we will explore the Three Lakshanas, or “Marks of Conditioned Existence”. They are impermanence, insubstantiality and the unsatisfactoriness that arises when we deny the reality of the first two. While not explicitly laid out in this way in Chapter Three, Vessantara does weave the teaching into his sections on developing Wisdom. 

“The blue sky, as we saw, is a symbol for shunyata – ‘emptiness’ or ‘voidness’ – one of the most important terms in the whole of Buddhism. Insight into Reality is insight into shunyata, for shunyata is the ultimate nature of all things. All conditioned things are ‘empty’ or ‘void’ of any kind of fixed, unchanging essence. They are sky-like and ungraspable, like clouds. We may apply fixed concepts to them for practical purposes, for example, ‘I am John. That is my house.’ But ultimately, Reality defies our concepts and refuses to be limited by them. We cannot apply concepts to Reality, just as we cannot stick labels onto a flowing stream, or onto the sky. The universe is a dance, in ceaseless motion. Things arise out of Emptiness, given the right conditions, and when those conditions cease they disappear back into Emptiness. This day, this moment, this breath, see how they fly!”

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