When we recite this vow for arousing the mind, excuse me, this verse for arousing the vow to practice the Bodhisattva way, I'm often struck by it. This morning I was struck by it. There was just a beginning where it says, we vow with all sentient beings from this life on through our countless lives to hear the true Dharma. And this may not be true for any of you, but I get the impression that some Zen students think you practice and you go and you sit in meditation and then you sit in meditation and then you, you know, you accomplish the way. That's true, however, there's a thing missing there and that is this thing about hearing

[01:09]

the true Dharma. It's actually not just that you sit, but that you hear the true Dharma and you sit, or you sit and you hear the true Dharma and then you sit and then you hear the true Dharma. So in the beginning of the Samadhi chant that we do at noon service, it says, from the first time you meet a master, just wholeheartedly sit and thus drop away body and mind. So you meet the teacher, listen to the Dharma, and then sit and drop away body and mind, and then after sitting and dropping away body and mind, you listen to the true Dharma, and then sit and drop away body and mind, and then listen to the true Dharma and then sit and drop away body and mind. So it isn't just, Zen practice isn't just sitting and dropping away body and mind, it's listening to the Dharma, the true Dharma, sitting and dropping away body and mind, and

[02:10]

and then listening to the true Dharma some more, and sitting and dropping body and mind. In other words, you don't practice all by yourself, you're practicing with the teaching of the Buddha, and the Buddha did the same. And then it goes on, this vow goes on to say, upon hearing it, no doubt will arise in us, that seems a bit extreme, but I think some doubt will arise, but then you're supposed to work on that doubt by talking to the source of what you're doubting. You consult the scripture that you're doubting, you consult the teacher that you're doubting, not the teacher, but you consult the teacher about the Dharma that the teacher is saying to you, and you discuss it until you resolve your doubt. So it says, upon hearing it, no doubt will arise, in other words, you work to the point

[03:13]

where you can hear it, having worked through your doubt, so you can really let it in. And then it says, no lack in faith, in confidence, confidence in this teaching, and then it says, upon meeting it, we will renounce worldly affairs and maintain the Buddha Dharma. So after hearing it, clarifying doubts, having confidence, now that you've really heard it, and then you just sit and wholeheartedly drop away body and mind. I add that in, and it says, upon doing so, renounce all worldly affairs and maintain the Buddha Dharma. You'll maintain it, you'll take care of it, which means you share it, which means you recite it for yourself and for others and teach it and practice it with everybody, that's

[04:14]

what maintaining it is, and then in doing so, the great earth and all living beings together will attain the Buddha way. So it's not just that you sit and drop away body and mind, you sit and drop away body and mind, and then maintain the Buddha Dharma, which you have heard, and then maintain the Buddha Dharma, the great earth and all living beings together will attain the Buddha way. That's the vow of the Bodhisattva. And to recontextualize again, I'm devoted this year to studying Samadhi and the Buddhist tradition, and Buddhism grew out of a Samadhi tradition, practicing meditation, practicing

[05:21]

concentration, and then the Buddha, who was a Samadhi expert, a Samadhi adept, finally came to the time when he, coming out of his Samadhi, he started to see the truths. He started to see truths, for example he saw the Four Noble Truths, and he saw the Two Fold Truths, and seeing these truths and understanding these truths in Samadhi, he became the Buddha, and he said that before he understood these truths, he was not fully enlightened, but after he understood these truths, he was fully enlightened. Then this fully enlightened person, when he started teaching, the students listened, and

[06:33]

when the scholars looked at what he said, when the philologists and the linguists looked at what he said, they said, they see, well the first thing he talked about was truths. The first way he expressed himself was about truths. In other words, the first way he was talking about, the first way he was relating to people from this enlightened place was to offer them truths which they could know. In other words, he was presenting himself like a philosopher, teaching people how to be wise, first of all. Now he was a Yogi expert in Samadhi who had realized these truths, and his first students pretty much were Yogis, so he didn't mention the Yoga practice of Samadhi, he just went right to the truth practice, the wisdom practice. And he didn't exactly put it this way at

[07:44]

the beginning, but anyway he said there's the truth of suffering and there's the truth of origin of suffering. And then all the schools, all the different varieties of teachings of wisdom schools that followed from the Buddha in the years after Buddha died, all those schools agree to a certain extent on the truth of suffering and on the origin of suffering. They all agree that ignorance in its subtlest form, in its subtlest and deepest form, is the root of all misery. So Buddha said that suffering has an origin, has a source, and

[08:44]

then he said what the source was, and he also said the source is ignorance. But it's not just ignorance, it's the deepest ignorance that's the source. As I mentioned yesterday, there's layers of coarser and coarser ignorance built up from the fundamental ignorance. Once you're ignorant at the deepest level, you can elaborate that ignorance nicely. I gave example like you can have strange views of national groups or races or animals or plants, you can have ignorant views of many things, but they're based on the fundamental, on the deepest one. If you remove the superficial ones, that improves your relationship with whatever you had an ignorant view of. But until you remove the deepest one, you're always

[09:46]

afflicted by that deep ignorance. So the deepest one is the root of all the misery that follows. And ignorance is a psychological phenomenon. Ignorance is a misconception, it's a misunderstanding, it's ignoring the truth and looking at something in a misconstrued, erroneous way. So it's a psychological phenomenon. So then Buddha, after introducing truths, then moves on to introduce psychological phenomena and psychological practices. So the issue of wisdom and seeing the truths, coming to be able to see the truths like the Buddha did, is presented in psychological terms. And one of the ways to present things in psychological terms is in terms of the

[10:54]

consciousnesses and objects of consciousnesses, or subjects and objects. And then we have these various schools of wisdom, and the first school is called the Vaibhashika school. I talked about it a little yesterday, and I mentioned that in the first school called the Vaibhashika, they say that we need to learn how to meditate on what's

[11:58]

happening in order to see the non-existence of what they consider to be the subtlest kind of ignorance. And some of them say that the subtlest kind of ignorance is a view of a partless, permanent and independent self. But most of them say that a more subtle version of ignorance is the conception or the belief in the image, the image and the belief in the image of a self that substantially exists. So, that's the Vaibhashika school, and that's the Vaibhashika school.

[13:24]

Now, as the grossness of ignorance increases, less and less people share the ignorance. So, for example, in certain parts of the world, people do not have certain kind of ignorant views of Italians. In other parts of the world, some people do and some people don't. So that's a kind of very gross kind of ignorance. But in most parts of the world, people do have a belief in a substantially existing self of a person. And actually, most people have a belief in a permanent, partless, independent self.

[14:41]

But if you got over the view of you, you know, you the person that you are, if you got over the view and the belief that you have a permanent, partless self to this person, or that this person has a permanent, partless, independent self, if you got over that, you would join a larger group of people, some of whom have also gotten over that view, who hold a more subtle view, a more subtle ignorance, and that is of a substantially existing self. And if you got over that view, then you would join an even larger group who have even a more subtle. So almost everybody, except very enlightened people, share the most subtle

[15:46]

form of ignorance, and smaller numbers of people share varieties of grosser ignorance. A little demographics of ignorance for you. And yesterday, I think Maya asked, well, what is a substantially existing self mean? And so, I don't know what I said in answer to her, but basically I deferred the conversation to today to look at what that would be. So now I try to address what that looks like, but before I go any further, I just want to say that basically what that is, is it actually to think that there's a self, that you, the person, has

[16:47]

a self that exists ultimately, that has an ultimate existence, which we don't, but we actually do think so. I'm wondering which way to go now. I think maybe I'll just, I'll say this once and come back to it, to give you the definition, a definition of a member of this first school

[17:56]

of Buddhist philosophy, called the Vaibhashika school. A member of this school is a person propounding the individual vehicle of the human mind, and the individual vehicle of who does not accept self-consciousness, and who truly, and who asserts the existence of external objects, or who asserts external objects as truly existent. That's the definition. So there's two points, well, three points, that they're interested

[19:04]

in individual liberation, they're interested in a path of wisdom which produces liberation for the yogi, second point is they do not accept self-consciousness, the third point is they assert that external objects truly are, are true, as being truly existent, are truly existent. Those are three points. And the third point is they assert that external objects are impermanent, and again, they still accept that all compounded things are impermanent, and that all phenomena are selfless. So it's in that context that they say this. And self-consciousness,

[20:12]

what self-consciousness means is that, they don't accept this, okay, but self-consciousness that they do not accept is that a mind can be aware of itself simultaneously with the awareness of its object. They don't accept that. And some people feel like maybe that's the case, like, they feel like, well, I'm looking at somebody's face, and simultaneously with being aware of that face, I can be aware of my mind knowing the face. They don't accept that. So you see what's being stated here is they have a view about subjects, and they

[21:13]

have a view about objects. They say objects, external objects, are truly existent. Now I'll come back to this, I'll come back to this again, by reading you the Abhidharmakosha, so this is the Abhidharmakosha, written by Vasubandhu, an Indian, sometimes called the Second Buddha, sometimes he's called the Doctor of Philosophy, the Buddhist Doctor of Philosophy,

[22:14]

I'm not, Buddhist Doctor of Psychology, wrote lots of books about Buddhist psychology. And so one story about him is he was originally of Aibashika, he was of this school that I'm talking about. Later he switched to the second school, the Satrantika, and then later he switched to the Yogacara. And that story of him depicts a kind of evolution of sophistication and understanding of what is the most subtle form of ignorance to be abandoned. And the chapter I was thinking of reading a little bit to you from is chapter 6, and this chapter is called The Path of the Saints. The saints are the people, it's a path of

[23:22]

those who become arhats, or become liberated, who attain nirvana. Who have nirvana as their goal. And who get there. And so it's a path to nirvana for the sake of the saint. Of course, once the saints get to nirvana, they're very nice to have around, and they're very kind to everybody, and they teach Dharma, and so they're not just for themselves, but their goal is primarily to attain this state. And this is the chapter which particularly describes that path. This chapter on the path of the saints, or the path and the saints, it follows the chapter on, which is the chapter on latent defilements. So in chapter 5, they talk about all the kind

[24:30]

of latent defilements in the mind. So then following this chapter, it says, homage to Buddha, and then it says, we have said, in the previous chapter, how the abandoning of the defilements receives the name perfect knowledge. And then it says, as for abandoning, and here comes the first verse, and this book, the way this Abhidharmakosha is constructed is that, suppose this is the story about it, is that, I don't know exactly what happened, but anyway, either Vasubandhu, he was a Vaibhashika and considered to be a very knowledgeable

[25:32]

Vaibhashika, so the leaders of the Vaibhashika school said, would you please write a little summary of our whole system? So the Mahabhibhasha is a very big book. Did you get that impression yesterday? That's the book which is the commentary on the biggest Abhidharma book. So it's like the biggest Abhidharma book of the seven Abhidharma books, then the scholars of 18 schools made commentaries on various teachings in this big Abhidharma book. So if you have various teachings, then comments of 18 schools are put in, then you go to the next teaching and the commentary of 18 schools is put in, so it's a huge book. I was actually kind of found it quite pleasing and interesting to hear that the Mahabhibhasha, this big book, the foundation of the Vaibhashika school was translated into Tibetan around 1950. However,

[26:48]

Tibetans have been studying this book, the Abhidharmakosha, since probably the 10th century. This book is a couple thousand pages in English, but it's very small compared with the Mahabhibhasha. So anyway, the Vaibhashikas asked Vastubandhu to write a commentary or a summary of this huge book and he wrote 600 verses, which is of a high level of condensation, and then he sent it to the headquarters of the school and they were astounded, they thought it was so beautiful, the way he encapsulated in poetic form so beautifully and so correctly their teaching. So that's called the Abhidharmakosha Kārikās. Kārikā means verses. It's a verse

[27:50]

form. So he wrote these 600 verses and that's the core of this text. Then as the story goes, they said, well now that you've condensed this huge commentary down to these very beautiful verses, would you write a commentary? But not as long as the one that you condensed. So then he wrote a commentary, which is something like, I don't know what, five times as long as the original text, but still not so long. So he sent them the commentary and his commentary they got very upset about because when they saw the commentary they realized his commentary refuted a lot of the stuff in the 600 verses. Not all of it, but a lot of it he refuted. So in the commentary, after the verse he would say, well the Vaibhashikas say this, but I disagree, and he would say what he thought. And his point of view of the way he thought is one of our main sources for what we call the Satrāntika school. So in this text you

[28:54]

can learn Vaibhashika from the verses and from what Vasubandhu says about the Vaibhashika and then you can hear the Satrāntika in terms of what he now has grown to think. So now we come to the first verse in the chapter 6 and he says, well what about abandoning these defilements? And he says, it has been said that the defilements are abandoned through seeing the truths and through meditation. So some of the defilements, when you see the truth, some of the defilements just drop away. However, other defilements must be brought into meditation after seeing the truths. So some defilements drop away as soon as you

[29:56]

see the truth and other defilements have to be brought into samadhi with seeing the truth and then they drop away. And then the next karaka says, and then there's a question, the question is, well is the path of seeing the truths or concerning the path of seeing the truths and the path of meditation, are those paths pure or impure? And the answer is, the path of seeing the truth is pure. The path of meditation is pure and impure. The path of meditation is impure prior to the path of seeing the truth. So the samadhi practice you do prior to seeing the truth is impure. That's samadhi number two. You're concentrated, you're in samadhi, but it's impure because you still have ignorance of

[30:59]

the nature of self. It's nice, it's a samadhi, and the afflictions are like cooled out, so you're at peace, I mean you're comfortable, but you still have these latent tendencies which arise from ignorance and which can lead to more trouble. Once you see the truth, a lot of the defilements drop away, and then when you start meditating again, your samadhi then is pure, because it's connected with right view. And then the combination of the right view and the samadhi then clear up all the other defilements. Okay? Is that alright? I mean, is that simple or hard? Okay. And then there's some question, I guess, about ... oh, so some defilements are abandoned

[32:10]

by seeing the truth and some are abandoned by meditation, and then it says, after the commentary says, we have said, quotes, through seeing the truth, what are the truths? And then it says, the next verse says, the Four Noble Truths have been mentioned, and they were mentioned earlier, and it tells you where they were mentioned. So I'll just tell you they were mentioned. And the way they refer to them is interesting, but I won't get into it right now, maybe later. Is that okay? We just skip over the Four Noble Truths for now? Just say that these Four Noble Truths were mentioned. Suffering, origin, cessation and path, those are the Four Noble Truths, they were mentioned earlier. That's part of the

[33:12]

way he summarized it. See, when asked questions like that, he said they were mentioned earlier, that makes it more condensed rather than bringing them all out again and telling you about them. And then the next verse says, their order ... oh, the next is a question which says, sort of, why are they in that order of suffering ... what's the next one? Origin, what's the next one? What's the next one? Why are they mentioned in that order? Do you know? That's

[34:16]

one answer. What do you think it says here? They're in that order because that's the order in which they're understood. First you understand suffering, then you understand its origin, or its root, then you understand the cessation, and then you understand the path. That's the order in which you comprehend them. That's why they're in that order. And now I'm going to skip a few karikas, not too many, just a few, and go up to karika verse number 4. That was 2, I skipped 3, okay? But 3 is pretty complicated, so I'm just going to go to 4 and just say, the Blessed One also mentioned, in addition to the Four Noble Truths, the Blessed One also mentioned the Two Truths. The Two Truths are Conventional Truth, Samvritti

[35:25]

Satya, and Ultimate Truth, Paramartha Satya. What are these Two Truths? And the verse says, now they're going to tell you what a Conventional Truth is, okay? According to this school, this is a Conventional Truth. A Conventional Truth, the idea of a jug, or a pot, the idea of a pot or a jug, ends when the jug is broken. The idea of a pot or a jug ends when the jug is broken. The idea of water ends when, in the mind, one analyzes the water. The jug and the water, and all that resemble them, exist conventionally. The rest exist ultimately.

[36:30]

Another translation is, a thing, or a jug, or a pot, or a jug, or a pot, or a jug, or a thing, which if broken, or mentally separated into others, or parts, is then no longer understood by the mind to be that thing, such as a pot or water is conventionally existent. Another translation would be, a Conventional Truth, a Conventional Truth is a phenomena which is such that if it were physically destroyed or mentally separated into parts, the consciousness apprehending it would be cancelled. Cancelled. So, going over that, so they said like a pot

[38:14]

or like water. Okay? So like, if there's an awareness of a pot, if there's a consciousness of a pot, okay, and you break the pot, that consciousness which was knowing the pot is cancelled. Follow that? You don't have that consciousness anymore. Now you have consciousness maybe broken, of shards. So that pot is what we call a Conventional Truth, or a Conventional Truth. It's a conventional existent, a conventional existent, and it's also a Conventional Truth. It appears to a certain kind of consciousness, a certain kind of consciousness sees it, and this kind of consciousness is called a worldly consciousness. But it does appear. It does

[39:24]

appear. Okay? But if you would physically break it and the consciousness which saw that would no longer be there when you physically broke it, then it would be a Conventional Truth. Or, it's like water. If you break water, then the consciousness which sees the water, right? Does that make sense? In other words, in those days they didn't know how to break water other than, you know, pour part of it out or spill it all over the floor. But still, if you spill the water on the floor, then you still see the water. The consciousness which sees the water hasn't been cancelled. Does that make sense? But if you mentally analyze the water into parts, like into H2O or something, into oxygen, hydrogen, or whatever, if you mentally analyze the water, the consciousness which knows the water is cancelled. Now of

[40:38]

course, this can be applied to a person. If you see a person, most people see persons, and I said before we have this naive realism that we see a person, we exaggerate the person into like, we got a person, okay? Got a person? We go zap! We have this kind of like thing, we go zap! And we make the person into like this whole thing. We make this person into this like substantial unit. We make it into a product. And we say this is a whole thing. And then it looks kind of permanent too. It looks like it's like sitting there like, and you can hold it like, read, read, read, read. But if the person gets broken sufficiently, you can't see the person anymore. And if you had a view of the self of the person, as the

[41:39]

whole of the person, you wouldn't be able to keep seeing that self. And therefore, that kind of wholeness of the person is a conventional truth. There is that image, that wholeness of the person, and it does really exist according to this school. It does really appear there, but it doesn't substantially exist, because if you would break it, or if you would analyze it in your mind, the consciousness which sees the person is canceled. You don't see it anymore. Like I think of little kids, and one of my psychology professors told me one

[42:39]

time he was going to a Halloween party or a costume party, and he put on his mustache and a funny hat, and he walked into his kid's room to say goodnight, and the kid totally freaked, because the kid couldn't put Humpty Dumpty back together again. The consciousness which knew Daddy was canceled. He couldn't figure out how to do that thing again. The reifying abilities of the child were frustrated, therefore no Daddy, no substantial Daddy, no really existing Daddy, just some kind of like, whoa, whoa. And should I make this into like a new man, some other man who looks like this, who's all whole, but then I don't have Daddy, or should I…so that's the kind of thing we do. So that's a conventional truth.

[43:44]

When you break it down, an ultimate truth or an ultimate existent is that when you break something apart, when it's physically broken or mentally analyzed, the consciousness which knows it is not canceled. That's an ultimate truth. So from this early presentation of the two truths, they're presented not as two kinds of truth, but as two kinds of objects, and the objects are defined in terms of subjects. Namely, these kinds of objects, when broken or analyzed, will cancel the consciousness which knows them, and these kinds of objects, when broken or analyzed, will not cancel the object. Those are ultimate and conventional truths. And these are the truths which when you see, when you see both of them, not just

[44:51]

one, but when you see both, you attain perfect knowledge, according to this school. This is wisdom, is to see these two truths. It's not just to see the ultimate one, it's not just to see, okay, I'm looking at this person and when this person is broken, I'm looking at this person, but the way I look at this person is such that when this person is broken, what I'm looking at doesn't get broken. Matter of fact, the way I see this person holds up to analysis, and the way to see a person that holds up to analysis is to not make the person too real, because if you make them too real, they won't hold up to analysis. But if you

[45:55]

make them a little bit, just a little bit real, like conventionally real, that you expect not to hold up to analysis. So what would be the way the person would be that you would see them that would hold up to analysis? Impermanent would be good, yeah, but not selfless. If you saw the person as selfless, then when the person got analyzed, you'd still be able to see the selflessness of the person. The knowing of the person wouldn't be changed when you took away the wholeness, or the permanence, or the independence. And seeing that is being free of ignorance, but you can't just see the ultimate truth, you have to also see the conventional truths. Namely, you have to be able to see that when you see a pot, and that

[47:05]

the consciousness which knows the pot will be broken when the pot is broken. You need to understand that when you see pots anymore, you need to understand that, and you need to be able to tell, when you're looking at the pot, that this is a conventional truth. If you can't understand that, which is actually not that difficult to understand, but it's, well I shouldn't say it's not that difficult, but anyway, if you can see the pot and understand that this pot will not hold up to analysis, you're seeing a conventional truth. But even if you don't understand that, the pot still is a conventional truth, you just haven't understood it yet. So actually some people actually think pots are ultimate truths, and that people are ultimate truths, that the self is an ultimate truth. But if you can see that a pot is a conventional truth, then you're ready to see an ultimate truth. In other words, you're ready to see something about what's in front of you that holds up

[48:12]

to analysis. And in this system, the examples of ultimate truths are, one of them is space, and another one, this is really a kind of a big difficult thing to mention to you, but another one is physical matter in the form of atoms. They're ultimate truths in this system. But also, the five aggregates are ultimate truths. So, for example, if you take a smell and break it up into parts, you still have the smell. If you take a color and break

[49:17]

it up into parts, you still have a color, and so on. So actually the five aggregates are things that, according to this system, will stand up to analysis. The ultimate truth is what, when you look at, you get freed of the ignorance of exaggerating the reality of a phenomenon. Bob had his hand raised, but I just want to read the next karaka, and it says, the truths have been mentioned, now we must explain how they are seen. Consequently, beginning from the beginning, we would say that these truths

[50:20]

are seen from hearing, reflection, and the perception of the reality of the phenomenon. Meditation. Those three levels of wisdom. That's how these truths are seen. Whoever desires to see the truths should first of all keep the precepts. Then you read or listen to the teachings, upon which the seeing can be seen. And then you can see the truth of the truths depend. Or you hear their meaning. Having heard, then you correctly reflect and analyze. Having reflected, then you give yourself up to cultivation of meditation. With the prajna, arisen from the teaching or hearing, for its support there arises a

[51:30]

wisdom, arisen from reflection or reasoning, and with this for its support there arises a wisdom, arisen from meditation. And then it goes into what are the characteristics of these three kinds of wisdom. But to understand this first level of wisdom, the wisdom of hearing, probably there needs to be a little bit more information about the truth that we're going to try to be able to see. We maybe need to hear some more and discuss some more so we have the first level of wisdom about these truths. And then after we have the first level of wisdom about these truths, which I have a feeling has not yet arisen here all over the place, maybe a few it's arisen, but maybe not universally, then we could take that, based on that wisdom, we could develop the wisdom of reasoning,

[52:34]

the wisdom which comes from checking out what we understood with other scriptures that we've read and heard, and also by reasoning. I was talking to someone and I realized that one way to do this second type of wisdom is to have kind of like your own version of doksan, you know, doksan in your head. Have a conversation with a teacher in your head over what you learned from the teacher, or have a conversation with Buddha over what you heard from the Buddhist scripture. If you hear a teaching and you understand it, or if you hear a teaching and you didn't understand it, then you asked questions of the teacher and then the teacher gave you an answer and then you understood. And then there was another point that you didn't quite understand and you brought it up and asked the teacher and the teacher gave you an answer, and then you understood. You have the first level of insight, right? First level of wisdom. But then to be able to walk away from the teacher and go walk in the hills

[53:39]

and recreate that conversation in your head, you have a deeper understanding. Plus, maybe to ask some new questions that you didn't think of to ask the teacher and then to have the teacher in your head answer the questions. And then, after you get the answer from the teacher in your head, to go back and to go look in the sutras to see if the teacher asked the right question and if you gave the right answer, or to go back and ask the teacher, �In my head you asked me this question and I gave this answer. Would you have asked me a question like that?� The teacher says, �No, but that would have been good if I wish I had. And this is my answer, what do you say?� And the teacher says, �Good.� But to be able to carry that conversation on in your head, to have the thing going on in your head is like the reflective kind of analysis. So you say to yourself, �Have you analyzed this thoroughly enough?� And you say, �Yes.� And you go back and ask the teacher, �I said yes, what do you say?� The teacher says, �No, you should do more. You didn't go far

[54:43]

enough.� Or then you might say, and then you do some other kind of analysis and say, �I think I went all the way.� And you go ask the teacher and you say, �I think I went all the way, what do you say?� The teacher says, �You did.� So you go back and forth actually between the two probably, but you need to be able to actually have the teacher inside you and be able to talk to it to develop this thing. So Buddhist disciples, in order to develop Buddhist wisdom, actually listen to the Buddhist teaching and talk to teachers who know the Buddhist teaching and go back and forth until they have an understanding of Buddhist teaching through the other. Then you actually can inwardly carry on and develop the craft of the teaching in your own mind. And this is of course much deeper. And then you join that with the Samadhi. Then your understanding on the first two levels becomes a basis for the third level, when you join that understanding with your concentration practice. So that's what it says here in the first part of the

[55:50]

Abhidharmakosha, Chapter 6, on the path. And that took much longer than I thought. And did you have a question, Bob? One of the schools says, maintaining that there is no self that is permanent, heartless, and independent. And it's kind of like the example that you were giving about you can just address that question in terms of this permanent, heartlessness. You can break it into pieces, and it doesn't have a heartlessness about it. And I have a number of questions that I kind of boil them down into two. And one is, what about the question of independence? How is the self independent? And then the second question is, this relates to the self

[57:01]

as a person. Could I relate to that first part right there? He said, how is the jug independent, did you say? The jug is, well, first of all, the jug is not independent, and the person is not independent, doesn't have an independent self, but a lot of us do think we have a person that has an independent self. We have that idea. We have that conception. And there's neurological reasons for that, and evolutionary reasons for that, I would say. But anyway, we have this misconception, and it's innate. You know, most of us have it. So we feel, most of us, or a lot of us feel, that we're independent of other people, that we're not in relationship to them, we don't need them, and so on. We don't depend on them. We feel like that. Maybe not all the time, but I would say, sometimes, even

[58:03]

when you don't feel it, deep down, you really do think it. Because a lot of people have been educated about interdependence and all that, so they know it's unreasonable to feel independent, but they're simultaneously holding this idea of independent self in the darkness in their mind, that they really do feel like they're independent. They have that view, and that view of independence, when you hold that view, that's a root for feeling anxious. Because if you're independent, all the others are a threat. Now, of course, if you think about it, well, if I was really independent, they wouldn't be able to touch me. But, you know, that view has not really been brought up, because if you bring it out, and you see that it doesn't make sense that you would be anxious if you really were independent, and gave it up, then you wouldn't be anxious. So how are we not independent? Do you want

[59:05]

to know how we're not independent? Because the idea of self depends on the five aggregates, for example. You can't have a self that's independent of the five aggregates. But you can have an idea of a self that's independent of the five aggregates. Does that make sense? Did you follow that part? I would be looking for some sort of ... the simile of the jug is very helpful for me, because I can see how if you break it into parts, then it loses its identity as a self. It's not so much that the jug loses its identity, it's that the thing that knows it is cancelled. Is there a comparable simile that addresses the issue of independence? A comparable simile for the issue of independence? Pardon?

[60:07]

How about the fact that we need to eat? Yeah. Yeah, that might do it. Does that do it? What is the state of the pot? Yeah. Well, somehow I feel like before we ... you said the pot's clear, but I just wanted to see how you understood the pot. The pot is what we call ... this school says the pot truly exists, but doesn't substantially exist. It doesn't have a substantial existence, but it truly exists. In other words, it really is established as a pot. Now when you break the pot, you say you lose that pot, right? But that's not the point. The point is that the consciousness that knows it is eliminated, because the consciousness actually is part

[61:18]

of the reason why the pot's not independent. So there has to be a consciousness that knows something. Yeah, but actually, I switched schools. I shouldn't have done that. I should give a different reason. Anyway, so how is the pot not independent? Well, one of the ways it's not independent is that when it breaks, the consciousness

[62:20]

which knew it is cancelled. But the breaking of the pot cancels the consciousness. And when you think the pot's independent, you don't recognize that that pot and the consciousness which knows it are interdependent, and if you would break that pot, you would lose the consciousness that knew it. If you think it's independent, you wouldn't be thinking that, you wouldn't be feeling that way. And if you had an idea of self as a whole kind of thing, and you broke it into parts, if you thought it was independent, you wouldn't think that breaking the pot, you would lose the consciousness of it. If you knew that the consciousness depended on that wholeness, that idea of wholeness, then you realize that this kind of wholeness thing is not independent. It's not an independent wholeness. But the funny thing, did you not quite get that?

[63:27]

Well, there's two concepts that I'm struggling with. One is the one that Jim mentioned, which is physical dependence or independence, and the other is the dependence of a concept, a conceptual entity, upon some consciousness that knows that. You said that if the pot's broken, then that cancels the consciousness of that thought or that entity. And that bringing independence into that suggests that the thought is dependent on the consciousness that knows. That's a separate sort of issue from it. Did you say the thought is dependent on the consciousness? Are you differentiating between thought and consciousness here? So you have the thought of the pot, you want to have the thought of the pot? Or the self, the identity of the pot, the selfness of the pot.

[64:32]

The selfness of the pot. Well, the self of the pot is, let's say the self of the pot is considered to be partless, so you'd lose that one, right? And permanent, you'd lose that. And independent, you'd lose that too. And that was the one you're having trouble with. The independence I would suggest, you might be able to get it that you thought it was independent, because when you look at the pot, when you see a pot there, you don't necessarily think when you look at the pot, that pot looks like it's out there on its own. You don't necessarily notice though that you think it's out there on its own. But you do. I mean, a lot of people do. They think that pot is independent of me. Like I can go away, you know, and that won't have anything to do with the pot. Or the pot can go away and that won't have anything to do with me. We sort of feel that way, maybe. It looks like the pot is independent of the table that's sitting there.

[65:38]

Well, that too. That too. When you say that this school believes that the thing really exists... Well, truly exists, they say truly exists, but not all things truly exist. All things truly exist. In other words, a thing is something that performs a function. All things, like pots and people and houses, they truly exist. They really do exist. They're established for this school. But they're not necessarily substantially existent. Substantially existent means that they ultimately exist. That they're ultimate truths. In other words, if you would break them, the consciousness which knew them would not be broken, would not be lost. That's like... So, they say something truly exists when it can be established as a thing.

[66:41]

And for them, everything can be. Even past and future can be. But truly existent does not mean ultimately existent. Truly existent does not mean will stand up to analysis. And stand up to analysis also means that the consciousness which knows this object will be able to hold up, will not break down when you analyze it. So, a consciousness which knows a pot will be cancelled when the pot is broken. And a consciousness which knows water or a person will be cancelled when you mentally analyze the person. And so, the more subtle version, in some sense, is simpler to talk about. The subtler version of the belief in self, of the pot or the person, is that it substantially exists. Substantially exists means ultimately exists. Means that if you analyzed it, mentally or physically, the consciousness would hold up.

[67:47]

And some things, they say, will hold up. For example, cessations will hold up. And space will hold up. But also the skandhas will hold up. But a person, a self, will not hold up. Because whatever way you see the person there, whatever way it's appearing, when you actually look at, when you actually analyze it into the five aggregates, you don't see the person anymore. The consciousness which saw the person is lost. The consciousness which sensed the person is lost. But you do see still maybe a feeling or a smell or an idea. Those will hold up. To analysis in this school. Other schools, even those will not hold up to analysis. But when you look at a person or consider yourself and try to see what you've got there,

[68:55]

and you break yourself up into what makes yourself up, then you won't be able to see yourself anymore. In other words, the consciousness which knows it will be cancelled. But that doesn't mean there's no self. It just means the self is a conventional truth, like a pot. It's like a pot or it's like water that won't hold up to analysis. However, the things you analyze the pot into, they will hold up to analysis. The things you finally analyze the water into, that will hold up to analysis. And the thing you analyze the person into, that will hold up to analysis in this system. So those are ultimate truths. And when you're looking at those ultimate truths, then you're free of ignorance. Because ignorance is ignoring ultimate truth and looking at a conventional truth and putting too much reality into it.

[70:00]

And therefore, by distorting the reality of a conventional truth into an ultimate truth, that's the root of our suffering. But we have to know both conventional truths, like pots and people, and persons and selves. Selves are conventional truths too. We have to know these things and be able to see that they don't hold up to analysis and therefore do not grasp them as substantial. And then we can open up to see ultimate truths. And when looking at ultimate truths, we have just stopped being ignorant. And so we need to hear teachings about how to be able to see conventional truths and how to be able to see ultimate truths. And then we need to contemplate that and then see that. And then bring that seeing, that vision, into a calm place where we can bring, so it's no longer like thinking about the ultimate truth,

[71:06]

but realizing it, becoming it, being it. Yeah, this is going a lot slower than I thought it would. Yes? So, exaggerating reality, is that specifically just totally believing in a conventional truth? Well, it's exaggerating a conventional truth into an ultimate truth. Thinking that this is all that exists, that the little kid knows his dad. Say it louder. So thinking that the little kid and his dad write that story, that he thinks that his dad really exists.

[72:08]

Well, he sees his dad in a certain shape, and then he says, that's really what my dad's like. Like that, that's what my dad looks like, that's my dad. Then if you change the dad a little bit, since the other thing was really his dad, this thing's not his dad. So he's got troubles, you know, he lost his dad. But it's upsetting him because it looks a little like his dad, so it isn't just like a complete stranger coming in the room. But maybe it is like a complete stranger in the room, because sometimes kids are afraid of strangers. But if the kid could see the dad and say, well, this is the way my dad appears, but that's not ultimately the way my dad is, then if you break up the dad,

[73:11]

what does the kid see? The kid's consciousness isn't broken, because the kid was looking, not at the, what do you call it, the wholeness of the dad, but something about the dad that doesn't deteriorate when you analyze the dad. What would that be? In this school, what would it be? Hm? He would be the skandhas, the kid would be looking at the skandhas. And when the skandhas of the dad changed, they wouldn't lose the dad, just the skandhas would change. So you'd still have, basically, the consciousness would go on, not the consciousness would go on, but you could still see your dad. Because you didn't think of your dad as this whole thing, you saw your dad as this composed thing.

[74:19]

So you don't get upset, but little kids can't do that, of course, and adults have to learn how to do it. Yes? So is that instruction of baronoting, is to focus on what is in the school, ultimate truths? Just an idea, just a thought? Did you say what now, about baronoting? Baronoting, which I've heard is one of the instructions for Vipassana meditation, and just note, thought, sensation. Would that be a practice for focusing on what is understood to be the ultimate truth? That's a practice for working up to being able to see conventional ultimate truth, yes. So later in the Abhidharmakosha, a few verses on, it says, you know, well, what is this, how do we develop this wisdom?

[75:23]

And the answer is, by developing the foundations of mindfulness, which means mindfulness of body, mindfulness of feelings, mindfulness of consciousnesses, and mindfulness of Dharma. And what is Dharma? Dharma is skandhas, sense fields, elements, four noble truths, two truths, and you train yourself at looking at phenomena to develop your ability to be mindful, and then when you get pretty good at it, then you start looking at the truths. And what truths do you look at? Four noble truths, and for example, the two truths. So you develop your ability to just note what's happening, and then finally what's happening to you is that you're hearing Dharma instructions. You're hearing some Dharma instructions when you hear about the mindfulness practice and how to do it, and then you're hearing Dharma instructions when you hear which topics to pay attention to, but then the final, the most subtle instructions are the instructions in Dharma.

[76:26]

So then you're taught how to look at the aggregates. You're not taught about how to look at people. At the beginning you look at people, when you say to people, be aware of the body, what they think of as the gross body, but as you start watching the body more and more, you start to notice it's not really this gross body. It's like hearing and seeing, smelling and touching and tasting is actually what you're being aware of. You're not aware, actually, of the body. Like, you know, a five-foot-eight female weighing 110 pounds being a certain age, walking, you know. You actually start, as your mindfulness gets more and more clear, what you're actually working with, just like what the kid's actually working with, is like these images that you compose that are coming through the senses. Smell images, sound images, taste images, and so on. Then you move to feelings, which are a little bit more subtle.

[77:28]

Then you move to states of consciousness. Then you get into the real details of the experience. By training yourself, then you're ready to hear the teaching of the two truths. Then you're able to look at things and be told, Okay, now, bring this mindfulness to the... This is wisdom work. Bring this mindfulness to this phenomenon. Now analyze it. Does it hold up? If not, it's a conventional truth. Now look at this. Look at this person. Now analyze this person in Fiascondas. Does the person hold up? No. Does Fiascondas hold up in this school? Yes. Now you're looking at Fiascondas. You're looking at Fiascondas. You're looking at Fiascondas. You're not ignoring the Fiascondas. You're not ignoring the Fiascondas. You're not ignoring the Fiascondas. You're noting the Fiascondas. You're noting form, feelings, perceptions, mental formations, consciousness. That's what you're looking at now. Okay? You're not any longer looking at and holding on to the idea

[78:28]

that these five skandhas are a little package called a unitary, independent, substantially existing person. Now this is enough, according to this school, to achieve personal liberation, if you can see the five skandhas. When you meet a person, see five skandhas, not see a whole person, but when we see five skandhas, which we interpret as a person, or when we are sitting by ourselves, feeling five skandhas about ourselves and interpreting that as a person, we have just, you know, we have made a kind of idea about these five skandhas into something more real than just an idea of these five skandhas. We've taken something of the five skandhas and said that that thing is a signal that all these five skandhas are a whole unit. So we've made, in a sense, the parts of the pot into a pot. Our mind can do that. Now if you then take the pot apart, either mentally, mentally is the best way to do it,

[79:34]

you don't want to actually pull your feelings and your body apart physically, you don't want to pull the parts of your body, your eye and your ear apart, but mentally you see yourself broken into parts and you notice that that actually accounts for what's happening. Just like a broken pot accounts for what's happening. So then you see that your idea of a whole person was just a conventional thing that wouldn't hold up to analysis, but that truly exists, this idea of a whole person truly exists just like a pot does, it truly exists, it truly appears, it really seems like there's a self there. And whatever kind of self you've got, that's fine. But it's just a conventionality, and if you would analyze it, you wouldn't be able to find it anymore. The consciousness which knows it would be canceled. So the four foundations of mindfulness help you build up to a place where you can have

[80:35]

mindfulness of Dharma. So you start looking at Dharmas and there's no persons on the Dharma list, and there's no self on the Dharma list, but if you have a self, the way it goes on the Dharma list is, what would it be on the Dharma list? It would be one of the skandhas, it would have to be a form, it would have to be a sight, a sound, a smell, a touch, a taste, or a feeling, or a concept, or an emotion, or an idea, or a memory, these kinds of things we use to make a self. We put them together and we say, that's me, and then we hold that idea, but that's an idea, that's not a self, and if you would analyze that, you wouldn't be able to find the self you thought you had. But you don't have nothing, now you're looking at ultimate truths, you're looking at these skandhas, and they, at this level of analysis, they hold up, they don't disappear. When you break them into parts or analyze them, you still have them.

[81:36]

You break a feeling into parts, you still have a feeling. So they hold up, to some extent, at this level of analysis. There's a deeper level, which we may get to, where they won't even hold up, that's the level of the heart sutra, where you analyze the five skandhas then, and you see that they're conventionalities too, and you can't find them either. This is a more profound ultimate, or put it the other way, we still have a little bit of reification going on to the skandhas, there's still a little bit of naive realism hooking on to even the aggregates, but that level of naive realism, turns out, will not prevent you from being personally liberated. You can still have a little bit of naive realism and go to nirvana. But you see, it's a lot less than usual, because you're actually like, when you're standing

[82:44]

on the planet, and there's a sense of self, you don't see it just sitting there as a sense of self, you immediately understand the Dharma's flowing through you, which says, this sense of self, this sense of self, is it the same as the aggregates? You look? No. Is it different? No. You immediately don't find it. So you're kind of like, the consciousness which is apprehending the self keeps getting cancelled by your meditation. It appears, the phantom self appears, but it's a phantom self, it's like a magical creation, it's a bubble, and you go, pop, pop, pop, you, I mean, the wisdom just keeps popping the bubble of this image of the self, of this idea of the self, of the phantom self, and then you just see some phenomenal thing there, like a smell, or a touch, or an idea.

[83:49]

So, and this is liberation from the heavy-duty ignorance that you had before, and the heavy-duty afflictions of greed, hate, and delusion that arise from that ignorance, and then the karma which you do in reaction to that greed, hate, and delusion, all this stuff is cancelled. Yeah? How many irreducible elements in this system? Irreducible? 75. Yeah, 75. Yes? What does this have to do with, like, aversion to pain, like painful legs, right? Excuse me, I just want to say, he said irreducible elements, but irreducible elements does not mean ultimately existent. No. Hmm? There is a debate about, you know, which of these elements is ultimately existent.

[85:25]

They don't actually go through each one and say, which one is a conventional truth and which one is an ultimate truth, in this Vyavasika system, but what would I say, I would say that, I'm not sure what to say right now about which, whether they're all ultimate truths, whether all 75 dharmas and whether all five skandhas are ultimate truths. Hmm? I thought that's what distinguished this particular system as ultimate truth, because they were not reducible, those elements. Well they do say that, for example, they do say that the atoms that you reduce the physical phenomena to, that those are ultimate truths, but I don't know if they say that, for example, I think Vasubandhu does say that color is an ultimate truth, because if you cut up colors,

[86:31]

cut up the colors, analyze the colors, you still have the colors. So he says, so the principle, by applying the principle, they don't actually go through and tell you, but by applying the principle of how you can tell an ultimate and a conventional truth, then you can, for your own self, verify what you think they would say were the ultimate truths and the conventional truths. Anyway, conventional truths must be understood in order to understand ultimate truths. You have to understand what it's like to look at something to be able to analyze it and watch the consciousness that knows it be canceled in order to then know what it's like to look at something, analyze it and see the consciousness not canceled. Then you know you've got an ultimate and then you focus on the ultimate and then you realize that you're becoming free of this reifying, reality exaggeration process that we go through. So you're saying, what has it got to do with what? Like pain? Physical pain?

[87:35]

What did it have to do with physical pain? Yeah, like what's the relationship between looking at something and that? Okay, so physical pain, alright? So as I've talked to many of you about it, physical pain still hurts, okay? You don't lose your ability to feel pain if you twist your ankle or something, but the way you experience that is if you've understood and become free of what? Free of what? What do you get to be free of? You get to be free of naive realism, which gets applied to you, perhaps, the person who's got this sprained ankle, okay? Let's say, let's apply it to the person. So this person is free of the naive realization, a naive realism about self that they've got.

[88:39]

So they sprain their ankle and they feel the pain in the ankle, but that's it. You just have pain in your ankle. You don't worry about whether people will like you with your sprained ankle. You don't worry about whether you're going to like, whether, you know, you don't worry about it. You just deal with the pain and you deal with it with your level of skill of dealing with sprained ankles. In other words, you're free of misery when you understand yourself accurately. So even when you have a sprained ankle or whatever, or pain in your knees, you do the best you can under those circumstances. Like on Sunday, we ask this girl, you know, what's wisdom? And she says, like making good decisions. Something like that, being smart. So when you have wisdom, you're smart. When you have pain, you're smart. So you know you should not be in this session.

[89:40]

And you leave. Right? Or you know when it's a good idea to go into rest posture. Because you can see what's going on. And what's going on is, first of all, you spend some time noticing your own tendency to, you know, reify things, to make them more real than they are. For example, you even noticed your tendency to think that this pain is permanent. Some people get into that. Like this pain is the same pain as it was the moment before. And it's probably going to go on. So thinking that pain is permanent is like really horrifying, right? And thinking that pleasure is permanent is horrifying too. Why? Because it keeps getting assaulted. So you project permanence onto phenomena, you get in trouble.

[90:47]

You project too much reality onto pain, you get in trouble. You put too much reality onto the self of a person who's got the pain, and then you don't just have pain, you have pain. And you're miserable about it. Like I often say to people, you know, when I broke my leg, that was painful. And the pain was helpful because if I hadn't got that pain, I would have got up and walked away from there. And the way I would have gotten up and walked away is that I would have forced myself to stand up and then I would have stood on my leg and guess what would have happened then? You know, various bone swords would have come through my thigh out into the world. Hello. But I kind of wanted to get up because I kind of wanted this to not be a big deal, so I wanted to move. And I tried to move, I tried to move a tiny bit, and just somehow my body would not let me move at all.

[91:52]

My body just said, no, you can't even move a tiny bit. But that was like, OK, how about except that you can't move? So I said, OK, I can't move. I don't know what I've got here, but I know I can't move. And it kind of hurts. Now, there was a little bit of, you know, there was a little bit of stuff going on, like, hmm, I wonder if I'll be able to give that talk tonight that's scheduled. Well, if not, maybe I won't be able to give the talk tonight because it looks like I'm going to the hospital, but maybe tomorrow night's talk I could give. This is more like, it makes it more miserable. But still, it wasn't so bad. And then they tried to pick me up,

[92:55]

and they didn't try to, they actually said, we're going to move you now. So I couldn't move, but they could move me. They said, we're going to move you now, and this is going to hurt, and there's nothing that can be done about it. So they moved me and it hurt. But still, you know, it's kind of like, I wasn't really that miserable. The place where I was on the verge of getting miserable was at a certain point when the pain wasn't so bad anymore, actually, when I was in the hospital, and they had me on a little bit of traction before the operation. When my mind started to think about the handlebars of the bicycle and the wheel and which way it was tilted, and my mind just kind of thought, what if I just hadn't turned it that way? What if instead of going that way, I just kept it straight?

[93:59]

If that one little moment, if I just hadn't turned it there, and when my mind went there, it goes there. Why does it go there? I say it goes there because of this exaggerated sense of me. That's what drives my mind. There's something about me in there, maybe, that makes me uncomfortable, more than just the discomfort of the accident. There's another kind of discomfort there. There's a discomfort about me. I did something, and I was responsible. And if I could have done things differently, that there was an agent there, you know, who like... And there was an agent there, so we don't say there wasn't... There was some agent there, but what was that agent? If I make it too big, if [...] I make it too big, So, let's get started.

[94:55]

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