Valid Cognition, Seattle 2002 ཚད་མ།

Review notes kindly provided by Hanna Severin:

Topic: Valid Cognition and the Middle Way
Nagarjuna, Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way, chapter 18
'An Examination of Self and Phenomena'
'Form is empty of the self of the individual and the self of phenomena.'
- 'If the self were the aggregates,
It would be something that arises and ceases.
If the self were something other than the aggregates,
It would not have the aggregates' characteristics.'

- 'If there is no "me" in the first place,
How could there be anything that belongs to me?
When "me" and "mine" are found to be peace,
Clinging to "me" and "mine" ceases.'

- 'The one who do not cling to "me" and "mine"
Do not exist either.
Those who do not cling to "me" and "mine" see accurately,
So they do not see a self.'

- 'When one stops thinking of the inner and outer aggregates
as being "me" and "mine"
All wrong views disappear,
And once they have disappeared, birth in the cycle of existence stops.
When karmic actions and mental afflictions cease, that is liberation.'

"The Ornament of the Mahayana Sutras"
'Knowing that all phenomena are illusory
and that birth in samsara is like visiting a beautiful garden,
whether wealthy or poor of kleshas and suffering the bodhisattvas are unafraid.'

from the sutra of the noble collection:
'Know the five skandhas are like an illusion,
don't separate the illusion from the skandhas,
free of thinking that anything is real
this is perfect wisdom conduct at its best'

'Like a dream, like an illusion, like a city of gandhavas,
that's how birth and that's how living, that's how dying are taught to be.'

Milarepa: An Authentic Portrait of the Middle Way,
The Three Kinds of Confidence,
No Birth, no Base, and Union