Hello, I’m Cheng Qing. Welcome to Relief for Life: Forty Introductory Lectures on Buddhism.

I hope everyone had an enjoyable National Day holiday. By Buddhist logic, of course, enjoyment comes mainly from an easy and untroubled state of mind, not from letting crowded places make us irritable. This holiday I went against the flow and traveled to Yangzhou for the wedding of a younger relative. Many places were crowded and noisy—lively, if you like—but the conditions that take us somewhere, bring us together with family, and show us unfamiliar scenery often make the workings of dependent conditions seem wondrous. Without this wedding, I might never have visited many of those places in my entire life. Conditions intertwine us with the world. Even if some friction occurs, it is only a small wave or eddy in the river of life. There is no need for opposition or entanglement. Is letting it all pass not the best holiday frame of mind?

In the previous lecture, I briefly introduced the Eight Negations verse in Nāgārjuna’s Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way, and discussed Buddhism’s view of how the world comes into being: “non-arising,” or “neither arising nor ceasing.” It is worth noting that Buddhism regards non-arising as a truth glimpsed by the awakened, yet it runs counter to the deep assumptions of ordinary people.We ordinarily believe that every person, event, and thing is substantially real, and that laws and principles are no exception. This habitual subconscious assumption plainly conflicts with everyday experience, and that conflict is the root of our afflictions.

This deeply hidden cognitive habit is ignorance. Because it is normally difficult to observe, we need methods for cultivating the ability to watch the mind at work—what is called contemplative cultivation. In the Middle Way, Nāgārjuna uses precisely this subtle process of reasoning to refute, one by one, every kind of mistaken attachment. We will take two chapters as examples and briefly introduce this distinctive method of thought. Its purpose is to revealthe contradictions within our own cognition, thereby giving us deep confidence in the Buddha’s teaching that dependent origination is empty of inherent nature.

This material may be rather demanding. Please do not be discouraged if you cannot understand it completely for now. The aim here is only to give a rough sense of the character of Indian Buddhist philosophy; interested listeners can follow these clues into deeper study.