(9.153) When examined in this way, who lives in this world
And who is it who will die?
What will happen in the future and what happened in the past?
Who are our friends and who are our relatives?

This is one of Shantideva’s most famous verses. Geshe-la quoted it often in his teachings on emptiness at various spring and summer festivals. With these very simple questions, we are able to completely pull the plug on the vast majority of the delusions that arise in daily life. It is definitely worth memorizing this verse and using it like a mantra whenever we find ourselves worried or stressed about daily life. Or when we find ourselves obsessing over certain possibilities, thinking we cannot be happy unless those things come to pass. Indeed, I would say if we were to only memorize one verse out of the entirety of Chapter 9, it would be this verse. It is in effect our practice during the meditation break.  We should recite this verse again and again while contemplating deeply upon its meaning as it relates to are delusions arising at any given moment.

In the beginning, when we apply wisdom to overcome our delusions it will not have much power compared to some of our vast path teachings, such as love and compassion. If we are impatient for results, we can easily and quickly give up on using wisdom to try to overcome our delusions. This is a big mistake. Wisdom gains its power overtime following an exponential curve. During the COVID crises, we all saw the many graphs about exponential growth of case number.  For a very long time the number of cases remained very low and it seemed as if there was not much going on, but it was growing in an exponential way. Then at some point the curve starts to go up quite quickly and exponential growth takes off almost like a rocket. It is exactly the same with our using wisdom realizing emptiness to overcome our delusions. In the beginning it does not seem to be doing much, but as we gain more familiarity the power of these ways of thinking grows exponentially within our mind and after a period of time it starts to become the most powerful tool we have in our spiritual toolbox. By investing our time early in applying these reasons again and again, we will later enjoy a rich reward and be able to radically chop the root of any delusion that arises.

This verse is the doorway to such experience. The more we train in it, the more power it will gain within our mind, until later in the future we will be able to overcome almost any delusion we have simply by reciting this first while contemplating on its meaning. I pray that everyone reading this post makes the firm decision to take the time to memorize this first and to gain experience with it in their daily life until eventually it becomes a universal panacea able to overcome all of their delusions.

Well, who lives in this world, who are our friends and who are our relatives?  There is no one there, there is just an appearance of somebody being there.  When we check, we will find nothing more than a mere appearance, like a hologram or an illusion.  The only difference between the illusory woman and the real woman is it is a different type of illusion arising from different causes and conditions.  But their status of being illusions is the same.

We are so concerned with what has happened, is happening and will happen to us.  Because our self-cherishing makes us think we are important, we think what happens to us is very important, so we are naturally quite concerned.  Almost all of our problems arise from this.  But what has happened to us in the past?  Nothing.  What is happening to us now?  Nothing.  What will happen to us in the future?  Nothing.

Just because nothing is happening does not mean we don’t still need to respond correctly.  Everything is a reflection of our mind, so if we respond incorrectly the appearances will grow worse and we could lose our understanding of emptiness, and then we will perceive ourselves as having big problems.  If we respond correctly to whatever arises, then the appearances will gradually improve until eventually we construct the pure land.  We also do not deny the function of objects within the world of appearances.  So we do have to be concerned with what happens.  But because we know that these appearances are coming from our mind, we realize if we want to change the appearances, we need to change our mind.