Meetings with Bill McMichael
The ‘Meditations on Emptiness’ series
Занятие 1
Class 1 (02.06.2026)
In this session we looked at how the validity of a logical statement is established in classical Buddhist logic.
A syllogism is comprised of three parts:
(a) the subject,
(b) the quality to be proven about the subject, and
(c) the reason why this quality is indeed true of the subject.
One traditional basic example goes like this:
(a) Take sound;
(b) it’s a changing thing,
(c) because it’s made.
The validity of a lsyllogism is established by determining whether three relationships hold between these elements:
1. Does the reason (c) apply to the subject (a) — that is, in this example, is sound something which is made?
2. Is it true that if something is made (c), then it must be changing (b)?
3. Is it true that if something is not changing (b), it cannot be made (c)?
The classic source for this definition is the first chapter of Master Dharmakirti’s work.
📿 The proof to meditate on this week:
“Take a person.
They are not something unchanging, indivisible, and autonomous;
because they change and exist due to other forces.
For example, they are like a water jug.”
Sit with this proof in meditation until our next meeting.
Meditation for Class 1 (audio recording):
Занятие 1
Class 2 (09.06.2026)
In this session, we discussed the Sutrist School on no-self.
[57]
How does this viewpoint work? When you entertain it, you are holding that the foundational self—the one you hold to be “me”—is something like the master of the parts of a person; and that these parts themselves are like its servants. You hold to these things as being “my body,” or “my feelings”: you believe that “all these parts of a person belong to my-self.” That is, you believe that “I have control over all these parts.”
[58]
Thus we can say that what it means to believe that the person is “substantial” is when you have this deluded idea of a master and a servant: you believe that—when the person appears to exist in a self-standing way, with a nature which is inconsistent with that of the person’s parts—then it must really be as it appears.
[59]
If you cancel this idea, then you arrive at another: that the person is just a label applied to the parts of a person. Because the word just here is meant to deny the idea of a self that is something separate from these parts.26
📿 Proof for meditation for this week:
[71]
The Same & Different Self-Standing Proof
Consider a self which seems to be self-standing.
It doesn’t exist as a self which is self-standing, and which has an essentially different nature from the body & mind, “essentially different nature from the body & mind,36
Because it is neither something which is self-standing and is one and the same as the body & mind; nor is it something which is self-standing and is different from the body & mind.
It is, for example, like the antlers of a rabbit.🐇
The Tibetan text of this proof:
DANG PO NI,RANG RKYA THUB PAR SNANG BA'I BDAG CHOS CAN,PHUNG PO DANG MTSAN NYID MI MTHUN PA'IRANG RKYA THUB PA'I BDAG TU MED DE,PHUNG PO DANG RANG RKYA THUB PA'IGCIG DANG RANG RKYA THUB PA'I THA DADGANG RUNG DU MA GRUB PA'I PHYIR,DPER NA, RI BONG GI RVA BZHINZHES PA NI, 'BREL ZLA MA DMIGS PA'I RTAGS SO,,
In meditation, go through this proof before our next meeting.
Meditation for Class 2 (audio recording):