In the longer version of this Heart Sutra, Sariputra asks Avalokiteshvara how a male or female offspring of Buddha would cultivate the profound perfection of wisdom, and Avalokiteshvara says such a person would contemplate the five aggregates as being empty of inherent existence, empty of independent existence, empty of existing, independent of its conditions and mental imputation.

[01:10]

Or, not existing in such an independent way, not existing that way. And in this Sutra, we're just told that, it starts off by saying Avalokiteshvara was meditating on, or practicing the Prajnaparamita, and Avalokiteshvara saw that the five aggregates of a psychophysical person are empty, or lack inherent existence. So this Sutra doesn't say that we should contemplate the five aggregates as empty. We're just told Avalokiteshvara was practicing Prajnaparamita, and he saw that the five aggregates were empty. So, it doesn't say, but it seems reasonable that since he was practicing perfection of

[02:31]

wisdom and he saw that the five aggregates were empty, that's because he was looking at the five aggregates. So in other words, while practicing Prajnaparamita, the basis of your practice of Prajnaparamita is looking at the five aggregates, and actually that's just to know all the kinds of conventional phenomena that you can experience. So whatever they are, you're looking at them when you're practicing the perfection of wisdom. So the perfection of wisdom is based on paying attention to the conventional world. That's your basis, and then you step from there into considering that this conventional world lacks, each particular experience in this conventional world lacks existence, independent. And again, of course you all basically agree with that, but of course you all are innately

[03:35]

disagree with that. So, without any effort, you naturally look at conventional phenomena and think they do exist in this impossible way. Just naturally you imagine, and I imagine, that things exist in a way that they don't, and that they never can and never will. But we don't have to work at that. That's God-given. That's our birthright. That's creation-given. So meditation is to consider these things which we normally are looking at and actually considering them as existing independently to bring this teaching to bear, to all those things in an ongoing way. But commenting on this tradition, the teacher Nagarjuna says that before you actually receive

[04:45]

the teachings, which I just mentioned, in other words, the teachings that whatever you're looking at lacks inherent existence, you should be well-familiar, well-grounded in these conventional phenomena. You should be well-grounded in conventional phenomena, in technical terms means well-grounded in five aggregates. So five aggregates is technical, but it's just a way to clarify what we mean by conventional phenomena, conventional existence. So it just means physical things and mental things. And we should be well-grounded in that, in other words, paying attention to that stuff step-by-step, breath-by-breath, thought-by-thought, feeling-by-feeling, we should be grounded in that. And then when we're well-grounded we can listen to the teaching.

[05:46]

And whatever it is that we're dealing with here, it lacks inherent existence. And so we've discussed this before, and have you been able to practice that meditation somewhat, in the midst of your five aggregates coming and going? Or I should say, in the midst of the five aggregates coming and going. No, you haven't been doing that. Oh, Henry has. Good. How is it to practice that way? It's kind of cool. Kind of cool? And what aggregate is cool? What's that sense of... Any questions about how to practice that?

[06:50]

Yes. Yes. After last week I had a feeling I was a little confused. We talked a little bit about the material phenomenon of being empty, without mental imputation, being empty without mental imputation. The way I would put it is that material phenomena exist depending on mental imputation. And they do not exist independent of mental imputation. So they're empty of existing independent of mental imputation.

[07:53]

They're empty of that way of existing. They don't exist that way at all. And that's their emptiness, is that they don't exist apart from what they depend on. But is there anything there without the mental imputation? Is there something there that's empty of what we think is there, but something else is there? So that's... a lot of people, especially that's one of the nice things of starting with form, is that some people think that if you're experiencing a form, and it's something other than this thing which exists as a form, if it's not just your mental imputation, but exists in dependence on the mental imputation, if you took the mental imputation away, would there be something there? Right? So again, if you have this striker here, this hammer, this mallet, this drumstick,

[09:06]

if you have this, it exists for you and me in dependence on mental imputation. It exists actually as a mental imputation. There's nothing more than that for us. However, it's not just that, but it does depend on mental imputation. So, if we take away that mental apprehension, that mental grasping, would there still be a stick here? Okay? That's a good question, right? Is it? That's a big part of it. What more? Do you want to flesh it out more? Well, the way that I was thinking of it was, so if I did a chemical analysis of that drumstick and came up with a list of what constitutes it, and then I set it down, and someone else

[10:10]

came along and did a chemical analysis of it, then they might come up with the same thing. So, the pieces of it are the same, potentially, for this person and this person, not as a function of their mental imputation. Right. The parts of it are not the mental imputation. But the parts, without mental imputation, don't constitute an existing thing. Without mental imputation, it doesn't exist. So, the parts can be there, but it's not a drumstick until I come along. The parts can be there, but we don't have something which is the parts which exist as what the parts make up. We don't have that without mental imputation. So, in fact, we don't have the drumstick.

[11:13]

Because the drumstick doesn't exist without the mental imputation. And is that almost not confusing? Almost. Yes? The last degree is the example of an apple, a person in another world. Yes. And all week I've been thinking, what about a person who might die, what about a starving child that sort of raises the ant in him and brings in a whole other sort of way of responding to this? Yes. But one can't be quite so cavalier in saying that, yes, it may be dependent upon mental imputation. This person suffered, but it's not necessarily a real, uncharitable thing for someone. So, without getting that invisible, how do we, as we work through, as beginners work

[12:17]

through this, how do we become grips with that? Well, I'm not saying this is how you become grips with it, but in terms of what comes to my mind in responding, I mentioned that this scripture implicitly teaches compassion also, but it doesn't say that when you hear the sound of a crying, if you hear the cries of suffering of a person, when you see a person who appears to be suffering, it doesn't say, practice generosity with this person. It doesn't say, practice patience with how you feel with this person. It doesn't say, practice the Bodhisattva precepts with this person. And Bodhisattva precepts are, you know, for example, embrace and sustain all beings. It doesn't say that explicitly in the sutra, but the sutra is implicitly suggesting that

[13:19]

if you see a suffering person, you would practice compassion in the form of being generous with them. Practicing, for example, embracing them, caring for them. And you would practice patience with the difficulty of working with them, with the pain there. You would be diligent in all these practices I just mentioned. And you would practice tranquility too, to help you have lots of energy to work in this way with people. However, the sutra is explicitly mentioning that in order to realize freedom yourself and help other people be free, not just like nurturing them and ministering to them and nursing them, not just that, but that too.

[14:20]

Those kinds of compassion are on the list. You know, nurturing beings, embracing them, getting close to them, taking good care of them, that's part of it. But in another word, we're also trying to actually liberate them, but we can't liberate them if we don't understand the process of liberation. And if we don't understand our actual relationship with them, and if they also are not liberated, somebody who is liberated needs to demonstrate the actual relationship which is, for example, one of non-duality, one of non-independent beings relating to each other. So, we need to practice wisdom, but the wisdom has to be practiced together with the compassion. That's what the sutra is implicitly saying, and one of the ways we talked about this implicitly saying that is, Buddha is sitting there, and these beings are asking about how to practice wisdom. Buddha is demonstrating his samadhi, he's demonstrating his giving, he's demonstrating

[15:26]

his embracing of these two bodhisattvas and getting these two bodhisattvas to talk so that we can hear it. He's demonstrating, actually ministering to us by giving these teachings of liberation, and he's showing us how to be liberated. So, if you run into a being who is suffering, you embrace them as they come to you in terms of the five aggregates, like if they run and jump on your lap, that's one way. If they stand in front of you, that's another way. If they turn their back to you, that's another way. If they roll on the floor, there are all these different kinds of physical ways you relate to them, see them, hear them, smell them, and so on. So, you're doing that stuff with them, but also while you're doing that, if you're ready, when you're ready and you feel grounded in that, then you bring these teachings to bear such that you can interact with them in a way where there's no seeking, grasping, greed,

[16:35]

hate, and delusion. Because without understanding of the relationship, there's some kind of greed in it, some kind of seeking in the relationship with other beings, because you don't understand the nature of the self. And that undermines the whole process, and even the compassion that you were doing before you started to do the wisdom, if the wisdom doesn't come to maturity, that whole compassion process can go flat. You can be really devoted to people, but if you don't understand your actual relationship, you can actually come to want to get rid of them, abandon the very beings that you're devoted to because you have the wrong attitude towards them. It's implicit, I mean, I've understood that the Four Foundations of Mahayana Buddhism says, putting away covetousness and greed for the world, is this a reference to that

[17:37]

too? If there is, does one understand this? Well, the Buddha can say, put away covetousness and, did you say greed for the world? Yeah. You can try to do that, just sort of like right off the bat. However, until you actually understand the Dharma, which is the Fourth Foundation of Mindfulness, until you understand it properly, although you're mindful of the teaching that we should give up covetousness and greed. Grief. Grief, covetousness and grief. There's still the conditions for that to be set up by lack of understanding. So these things come up and you keep confessing them and letting go of them, which is fine. But when we have wisdom, there's no covetousness anymore. So we don't have to let go of it or put it aside.

[18:39]

The conditions for it have been eliminated. They're not going to come up again. So you don't want to be cavalier about the teachings of emptiness. It's not appropriate. The teachings of emptiness are not for people who are cavalier about even their own suffering. So freedom from all suffering is part of what's proposed here. But that freedom comes to one who is practicing compassion for those who are suffering. Any other questions about how to practice?

[19:41]

I'm talking about sort of in our daily life practicing meditation on emptiness. So I find that the thought occasionally arises of emptiness. And I consider it, and then it goes away again. And then maybe it'll come later. But how do you, what is the continuity for it? What is your suggestion? Well, part of it is, the sutra says in some sense, this is what Avalokiteshvara was able to see. So probably Avalokiteshvara was looking at the five aggregates. But it doesn't say he was looking at the five aggregates and applying the teaching of emptiness to the five aggregates. It doesn't say that either. But since he was supposedly practicing the profound wisdom beyond wisdom while looking at the five aggregates,

[20:43]

he probably had heard the teaching that the five aggregates are empty. So that's one part of it, is you just listen to that teaching while you're looking at aggregates. You bring that teaching to mind? Yeah. And then there's more instruction about ... That just started off by saying, regard them as empty, but what does that mean? I think it says, doesn't it say, regard the five aggregates as empty? Isn't that what it says? Isn't that what the instruction was? In the earlier one? That they should regard or consider the five aggregates as empty? I don't know. Neither do I. But? Say it again? There are the five skandhas and those who cease in their own being as empty.

[21:44]

Which is what this question is. Well, also, cease is a little different. I have a question about whether the way you do it is that, of course, seeing that they're empty would be great, but I think before you see that they're empty, you regard them or you consider them as empty. That's another way to translate it. Because you can't see that they're empty right off the bat. It says earlier that he surveyed them. That's Avalokiteshvara. So Avalokiteshvara actually saw them as. But I think to start the practice, you start considering that they are. Rather than actually being told you should immediately be able to see it, their emptiness. Or see that they're empty. But again, notice that in both what Avalokiteshvara saw and what you're either told to see or what you're told to consider,

[22:46]

you're told to consider that these things are empty. They are empty of inherent existence. Everything is empty of inherent existence. Everything that exists is empty of inherent existence. And things that don't exist, we don't have to talk about. Like, for example, inherent existence, we don't say that that's empty of inherent existence. Does that make sense? We don't say that because it doesn't exist. But then once you're basically going forward with considering everything as empty, then comes a section of the sutra where it talks about not empty, not considering everything as empty, but considering the relationship between everything that's empty and emptiness.

[23:48]

So, first of all, based on things that are empty, what are the things that are empty? Phenomena. Phenomena. What? Everything compounded. Everything compounded. Not just everything compounded. But everything compounded is empty, yes, but not just that. So, phenomena are empty. Anything else that's empty? Emptiness. Emptiness is a phenomena. Anything else besides emptiness is a phenomena. Emptiness is a phenomena. But emptiness is not compounded. So, compounded things that exist are empty, and uncompounded things are empty. All phenomena are empty of inherent existence, right? Is there anything else? Descondes. Descondes are all the phenomena in five categories. Anything else? Space. Huh? Space.

[24:50]

Space. Is that something else from all phenomena? No, it's not. It's phenomena. Oh, I thought it was nothing. No, it's not nothing. Space is a phenomena. Is space a compounded phenomena? No. What's compounded? Put together. What's uncompounded? Not put together, not made. So, space is not made. What are uncompounded phenomena? Pardon? What are uncompounded phenomena? Space. Emptiness and certain forms of freedom are uncompounded. Excuse me if that sounded cavalier. So, things that exist are called phenomena. So, I was asking anything else, but actually there wasn't anything else.

[25:57]

So, the one man who mentioned space, that was included in what Jane said. Namely, phenomena. But some phenomena are not compounded. By the way, I said this before, may I say it again, even though you don't know what it is? The Buddha said, did the Buddha say, did the Buddha say everything is empty? I mean, did the Buddha say that everything is empty? Did the Buddha say Sarva Dharma Shunya? Huh? What? I suspect so. He didn't. He didn't say that. Because he didn't speak Sanskrit. He didn't speak, he didn't say that in Sanskrit and he didn't say it in English. But, basically, have you heard, have you seen it written that the Buddha said all dharmas are empty?

[27:03]

Did the Buddha say that everything is impermanent? The Buddha did not say that. He didn't say it in Sanskrit or Pali or English or Chinese or Japanese. However, you said yes, didn't you? Why did you say yes? You said yes because you probably heard somebody say that, right? Even my teacher said that. Everything is impermanent. Not true that everything is impermanent. What did the Buddha say? The Buddha said everything that dependently co-arises or everything that arises independent on conditions, everything that's compounded is impermanent. But some things are not compounded, they're not impermanent. Not everything is impermanent. But the things that arise, that are composed, what goes up comes down. The things that are composed, they're impermanent.

[28:07]

So the mark of impermanence is not characteristic of space and emptiness. Selflessness is not. It is a phenomena. It dependently co-arises. But it's not a compositional thing. Back to our basic meditation, considering things as empty, which includes everything. All things are empty. But then we move on from there to also incorporate the further teachings, for example in the Heart Sutra, the next section. The next section which is basically going from form, is not different from emptiness. Form is emptiness, emptiness is form. Form is not different from emptiness, emptiness is not different from form. That section going up to all those things like, doesn't arise or cease, isn't defiled or pure, those things, that section,

[29:11]

is the next teaching you would bring to bear to these things. You're basically looking at them as empty. And now you can understand the relationship between these things, the emptiness, which is a little bit different. So this is a form, it's empty. This is a feeling, it's empty. This is a color, it's empty. But also, this color is emptiness. So, this has the quality of being empty, but it also has the quality of being emptiness. It is modified by the adjective empty, but it is also modified by the noun emptiness. It is actually, both are nouns, form, emptiness, are nouns. And they have a relationship. And the relationship is, that they're the same thing.

[30:15]

That's the next part of the sentence. They're the same thing. Could you say that that's because nouns don't exist? Could I say it's because nouns don't exist? Sure. It's because nouns don't exist. So the emptiness and that forms are empty are not different, but they're not the same. Say it again. And form being emptiness and form being empty are not different, but they're also not the same.

[31:23]

Is that so? Yeah, I mean, form isn't the same as empty. It is the same as emptiness. It's the same as emptiness. How so? Hmm? How so? Well, when, when you let go of form, what happens to the emptiness? No emptiness. Hmm? No emptiness. Right. That's one way to do this. Okay. Is this kind of to caution you from, is this to caution us from creating an image of emptiness that we can't hold out there,

[32:30]

to, kind of make it real, or make it not real? Um, is this to caution you from, away from having an image of emptiness where, where emptiness is... It's kind of, um, indefatigably existing conception that can just, um, come into place, uh, in order to make real our mind, um, a part of our consciousness. That, I know it's worse than it is. Well, this is partly to tell us, uh, not to understand that emptiness does not exist apart from, uh, the phenomena that it characterizes. That's part of what it's about. But, we will have to, uh, you know, have some kind of, like, image of emptiness in order for it to exist for us. But, even, even with the image of it existing,

[33:34]

we can still misunderstand its relationship to other things which we have images about, and that exist for us. And we can think that emptiness was, could live separately from the things, from the things it's, it's the emptiness of. We might think that. This, the next part of the sutra is teaching us to understand that that's not so. Yes. Jane? Um, meditating on the aggregate, is it useful to identify what aggregate uh, any given moment of experience is? Is it helpful to do that? Um, a lot of people have found that helpful. To actually be aware of, you know, classify what you're experiencing in terms of aggregates.

[34:37]

Um, part of the, you could also, you don't have, you know, like when you see a color, you can just say, well, I see the color. But you could also say, you understand that you're looking at an aggregate, so that as you start to think this way, you gradually come to understand that if something doesn't follow these aggregates, it doesn't exist. And of course, the original way that that was used was that we imagine, our normal way of thinking is that when you have all the aggregates, that there's something in addition to all the aggregates. We have all the phenomena of a moment or our whole life or the whole universe, and we actually think there's something in addition to that. And putting it that way,

[35:41]

you look like you don't know what I'm talking about. Me and my aggregate? Hm? Me and my aggregate? Right. We think there is a me in addition to the aggregates. So, usually we don't necessarily, when we see something, we don't necessarily feel like, oh, I'm seeing the universe. [...] We don't usually talk that way. But you could. You could say, I'm seeing the universe. You could do it that way. Instead of using the Buddhist five aggregates, just say, I'm seeing the universe. In other words, I'm seeing the totality of experience at this given moment. And I think there's something in addition to that. And most people do. You think there's something on top of everything.

[36:45]

So, the aggregates are another way to do that. Just say, well, five aggregates equals the universe at a given moment. And people think there's something, just happens to be something in addition to that. And by coincidence, each person thinks that that thing that's in addition to it is them. And they don't think it's somebody else. They don't think there's the universe and plus two or three other people. Almost nobody does that. They think there's the universe plus one person, one self. Not one person, even. One self. And then they try to say, well, then that self kind of like owns the universe. But this person owns this person's experience. So there's this person's experience, which is true, there is this person's experience, but we think there's a person in addition to the experience. In other words, a person is in addition to five aggregates. Because we don't think a person is a feeling.

[37:50]

But when we have a feeling, we think that's a person. Or it's a self. Even though when you look at it and say, well, I didn't mean that. Sometimes people say, yes, they do. And then we can work with that. So, yeah, it is sometimes helpful to start. It has been helpful for lots of meditators over the centuries, over the millennia, to do this five aggregate way of seeing the universe. Because this thing about, well, there's a universe plus me. When you say the universe, the universe doesn't come in these five different packages. Well, you can look into each of the five packages of the universe and check to see if there was a self in any of those packages. Because the different parts of the universe weren't labeled. You have to look and say, well, a person's not a smell.

[38:51]

A person's not an idea. What I mean by a self is not just a consciousness. It's not a smell. It's not a sense. But you can kind of get that idea just without analyzing it, just so everything that's happening in a given moment, and you think there's something in addition to that. But also you can do it with any particular element that's happening. If you think that there's something in addition to the element, that the element's got a self on top of it, too. We think that, too. It's got an independent existence. So there the five aggregates won't work to analyze it. There we actually analyze the five aggregates and find out that we think that they have an independent existence. The first level of analysis is to see the five aggregates and see if you can find this person you think which is in addition to it. Then you look at the five aggregates and find out that you think there's an independent existence of the five aggregates and see if you can find that.

[39:52]

So then you have a different type of teaching for emptying the aggregates than you had for emptying the sense of a person which embraces all the aggregates. And it's good to be able to do both. But this sutra, rather than analyzing the lack of self of the five aggregates, of the person, it analyzes the lack of self of each individual aggregate that you're aware of. Or the element of each aggregate that you're aware of. I have one more question about that. The third aggregate, how do you... where do you catch that? The third aggregate? Well, it can either be a... Strictly speaking, I've been... For a while I've been centered partly due to

[40:55]

looking at the term, the actual Sanskrit word for that third aggregate is Samya. And Samya, in a way, it's usually translated as perception. I think sometimes it's even been translated as sensation. And it can also be translated, I felt, as conception. Samya. Sam means to sort of gather together, and nya means to know. So in a way, Samya is actually more like conception. But it could also refer to those moments of experience where this direct sense perception unmediated by conception. So it's a little bit complicated, what I just said. But, even if it's direct sense perception, there's still some conception going on, some mental apprehension. So perception is the way the mind actually,

[41:58]

we're talking about that today in the priest meeting, the way the mind actually mentally apprehends the signs of the phenomena to come up with and bring that sign into contact with consciousness. Consciousness knows, but perception actually like grasps the sign and brings it in contact with consciousness. So perception or conception they both have some merit, as in this translation, Samya, the third skanda. But awareness, the basic knowing, is the fifth skanda. And the perception is actually grasping, is the actual mental apprehension. And that is what is known by consciousness. Consciousness knows what perception has grasped by getting a hold of the sign. And the result of that grasping is what we know. And without that grasping,

[43:02]

consciousness doesn't have it doesn't know anything, so there's no experience, there's nothing that exists without that. But it doesn't even take a position to say that there isn't anything, because, you know, we can't say that without mental apprehension. Speaking of formations, what's the conception? Where do you describe formations? The formations aggregate, again, the fourth aggregate, the phenomena, is an aggregate which literally means made. Samya. Excuse me, samskara. It means made. So the things in that category are things that are made, that are composed. And so a lot of things can go in there that are composed. For example,

[44:04]

samadhi, mindfulness. Feeling could go in there, but feeling is so important to get to be as calm as possible. Perception could go in there, but it's so important to describe it as well. Lack of faith. Any concept? Any concept or conclusion? All those things, when they are known, when we are aware of those functions of mind, those mental functions, when they exist, they exist in dependence on mental imputation. However, samadhi is different from, for example, contact between, there's also a phenomenon called the contact between sense organ, sense object, and sense consciousness.

[45:09]

That's another phenomenon, the way they contact each other. That's something which is in the fourth aggregate. It's another composed thing. Greed is another composed thing. Anger is another composed thing. Confusion is another composed thing. Philosophical views is another composed thing. Diligence, lack of diligence. Physical ease and flexibility is one. Mental ease and flexibility is one. Lack of mental ease is another one. So many different psychophysical phenomena that, one theory is that as the meditators started to analyze and get in touch with more and more of the complexity of mind, rather than make more and more skandhas, they just left it as five and let the fourth one grow. The first one has basically, in one system, ten subdivisions or

[46:11]

ten examples. And in our system it has eleven. And they're basically the sense, feels, colors, sounds, smells, tastes, and tangibles, and the organs which relate to them. That's the ten. Some people add another one. Some systems add another one. The next skandha has one mental function in it called feeling, which is the evaluation of the object that you're aware of. Including, you could also be aware of the object of feeling. It's an important mental function for it, that it gets to be a skandha by itself. It's a key function in the dependent co-arising of the idea and the misconception of itself. And the next one's also very important, because it's how you apprehend phenomena so that they would exist. The last one's very important, too.

[47:12]

Consciousness itself, basic awareness. And the middle one's of course very important, but there's 54 in one system. There's 54 elements in that one. And some of our systems even more. So they just kept putting everything new that they found in that one category, because the word samskara satisfies any composed thing you could put in there. So you won't find emptiness in that category. So you're asking, are there concepts? Well, when you know each one of those things, when you know any element, then you would know them through conceptual grasping. However, there's other concepts. For example, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12. Those are concepts which are not listed in the fourth aggregate. Blue, green, red, yellow, brown, those are not listed in the fourth aggregate. But when you know

[48:14]

blue, green, red, yellow, when you know them and they exist for you, there's some conceptual grasping going on. So they would go in the fourth aggregate? No. They would go in the first aggregate. But there would be mental... the perception skanda would be involved in the origination of the phenomena of a color. And there would be a feeling about that color. So, even at the level of seeing a color, a direct perception, there's conceptual grasping. However, there's not conceptual mediation. So in order to pull blue out of the universe and have it brought into your consciousness, your mind has to construe it, apprehend it, grasp it.

[49:16]

You have to... just like you actually can't get a hamburger into your cells. You can digest a hamburger, but in the digestion process for a while there you actually have a hamburger in your mouth. And then you have little chunks of hamburger in your throat and little chunks of hamburger floating around in your tummy. But you can't take a chunk of hamburger and put it into any cell of your body without causing cell distress. You have to destroy the hamburger, your digestive process. Same with tofu burger. You have to break it down and make it into proteins and sugars and water. Then it can go into your body and go into various little cells and say, hi, come on in.

[50:19]

Same with electromagnetic radiation. Certain forms of electromagnetic radiation never get apprehended by the mind. Now, we've heard of you. Now you've heard of gamma rays, right? And you've heard of x-rays, right? You've heard of them, right? But when we're talking about them now, you're apprehending them purely as words and images. You're not actually seeing. You're not actually having a sense, impression of gamma rays. But you are having a sense, impression of another kind of waves, electromagnetic radiation of a certain wavelength which is between 400 and 480 angstrom units. It's a certain little band of electromagnetic radiation. When that strikes your body, it stimulates your eye, a consciousness

[51:22]

arises. But in order for that color to exist, there has to be mental apprehension. And at that level is the level of direct perception, depending on mental apprehension. And this is direct perception. It does exist. This dependently arisen blue does exist. And then there can be conceptual mediation on top of that, where you say, it's blue. You say the word. However, before there's the word blue, there is actually the apprehension of a concept, but not conceptual mediation. But it's not really apprehension of concept. It is apprehending the phenomenon as being that concept that way the mind's grasping it. So that would be at the level of direct sense perception, it would be you're actually perceiving

[52:25]

the color. Then when you have the word blue, that isn't a physical phenomenon. So we have this wide variety of words, and they come to us by working with various other mental factors like vittarga and vichara. We apply ourselves to various images and words, come up with quotes blue. It's interesting because it made me think that blue came into your consciousness here as you digestify your eyes. Yeah, blue doesn't actually get into your consciousness. But it interacts with your body. And that

[53:25]

interaction with your body gives rise to or works with the arising of the consciousness. So actually the sense organ in a sense separates the consciousness from the actual electromagnetic radiation. If you take away the organ the consciousness can't know the funny thing is consciousness can't know blue unless it's separated from the blue by another kind of physicality. So you have one kind of physicality which is this electromagnetic radiation, and this other kind of physicality which we call the eye or the organ, which includes the optic nerve and everything. That kind of physicality is between the radiation and the consciousness. But actually the three of them together are the experience of blue. However, in addition to that there has to be mental apprehension

[54:26]

to present to the consciousness is actually responding to it doesn't make an impression on the consciousness when this happens but in order for there to be perception there has to be this grasping of sign because we don't just perceive color, we perceive blue, green, and so on. So we get actually there's actually a grasping of a sign in there. Might that be a good way of saying there's no counting for taste because there has to be the same electromagnetic field, the same food. Once it hits the psychophysical entity, there's completely different reactions to the attraction and aversion that part of it is the same. They could love or hate the same thing. Is that stage of mental apprehension

[55:27]

separate from the outside? I feel that more what you're bringing up is the phenomena of feeling. That whenever you actually even in direct perception when you see a blue you have a feeling that it goes with that. You might be looking at blue you might feel in a given sequence of events you might have several blue experiences and feel good about all of them or good about half of them and bad about the other half. They'll alternate back and forth. You could have all kinds of different feeling patterns in association with all those colors. And in fact you do have feelings in association whenever you have a whenever you see a color or hear a sound there is a feeling associated with it. As a matter of fact one of the early ways of classifying sounds is actually classifying according to the feelings that arise. But they don't usually classify the

[56:30]

colors by the feelings you have with them but even though they didn't classify in that way still, whatever color you experience you do have a feeling about it. Right? If you're meditating if you're doing mindfulness of feelings and you're driving in a car or something and you're driving through some landscape sometimes you notice your feelings are coming and going even though the landscape isn't really justifying it. You know? Like it's really beautiful and you don't feel positive and then suddenly you feel positive. Just like boom! But it isn't that things got more beautiful. That often happens on Gringotts Road that you go through those changes. You know? Depending what direction you're going. Yeah, right. So you can watch your feelings change in relationship to the images to the colors you're seeing as you move up the road. So there's that.

[57:32]

And the mental apprehension also, the way the way the mental apprehension occurs that also varies according to the person to various kinds of predispositions we have. So, yeah, so some people see this a certain field and they apprehend other people apprehend different things. And then even when we apprehend so-called the same thing, at least literally the same thing by the same word we can have different feelings about it. Or you could even have the same feelings but have a bunch of different predispositions like a man and a woman could look at a woman and agree that they see a woman and both could have a positive sensation about seeing the woman but one of them might be very interested in the woman and the other one might not be interested at all. Even though they both have a positive sensation and agree on it, but one of them has

[58:36]

a strong pattern of predispositions regarding women so when it's a woman and it's positive they have various other emotions arise whereas the other one has a positive sensation too but they have different constellations of predispositions so that those feelings don't arise. Like one of them is not greedy at all and the other one is greedy for example. Or one of them is jealous and the other one is not jealous for example. A lot of men, when they see women don't get jealous when they see a beautiful woman they don't get jealous of her for being beautiful. They don't get envious of her beauty but a lot of women might get envious but some men do get envious of the way they attract women. They wish that they could get their makeup on like that. Depends on the person depends on your predispositions. So all this is going on and each one of these phenomena arise

[59:36]

in dependence on condition and mental imputation and getting into the details of it is part of understanding more clearly and more concretely and more compassionately that this feeling this predisposition this concept, these things these are arising depending on certain conditions without the conditions it wouldn't be this and there's mental imputation and that's why this thing lacks inherent existence. That way you're meditating you're giving a lot of compassionate attention to the details and you're practicing a certain kind of wisdom which is wisdom recognizing the conventionality of the thing. It's part of wisdom too but there has to be compassion too otherwise you wouldn't be able to pay attention. And then the Prajnaparamita comes in and says okay now also understand that all this will help you understand

[60:38]

that this thing lacks inherent existence. Then you won't be cavalier about this. You'd be less likely to be cavalier about it. I'd like to ask a question about space. You say that space is uncompounded and that seems to incline us saying that there are in fact five aggregates and something else in space. It seems that the five aggregates

[61:44]

account for all compounded phenomena. Yeah, right. I think the way that they chart is they have the uncompounded over here and the compounded over here and the uncompounded side they have in the early ones they have different kinds of freedom and space and then over here they have all the compounded phenomena. Is time compounded? Time is I think would be classified as a constant. And can space exist without the universe? Can space exist without the universe? No, because space doesn't exist. Space does also depend on horizon but there's no space without objects

[62:45]

that aren't impeded by it. So space is the fact that objects are not impeded that they have space to exist and objects don't interfere with the space. So there wouldn't be space without things that aren't impeded by it, namely physical things. It's still uncompounded. It's still uncompounded. Even though it's dependent upon it. It's uncompounded but it's dependent. Everything that exists is dependent but not everything that exists is compounded. Not everything that exists has parts. Freedom, for example, doesn't have parts. Emptiness doesn't have parts. Space doesn't have parts. Everything else has parts. I believe that. And anything that exists has a function. Space functions,

[63:47]

freedom functions, and emptiness functions. Emptiness functions as the object of freedom. Freedom functions as the realization of nirvana, of peace. It also serves as a wonderful, what do you call it, skill means to encourage people to practice the Buddha way. But it's presented as uncompounded. I'm not quite sure about this. Are they uncompounded? How do they relate to the five skandhas? Are they just based on the three two freedoms? In terms of the skandhas, I think you can start with what you have there. Strictly speaking, I might have said tonight that the five skandhas include all phenomena

[64:49]

but it doesn't include all phenomena. However, the twelve ayatanas do include all phenomena. There's another analysis which is the twelve ayatanas which includes which means six sense organs and six sense domains. So the five sense organs are all ones that relate to the physical phenomena and the mind organ relates to mental phenomena. So mental phenomena would include things that can be known like for example space, emptiness and space, selflessness and freedom can be known. But they aren't really the five aggregates. But they are objects of consciousness. So the way that the and also I think, I guess also in the eighteen dhatus, the eighteen

[65:50]

elements, the realm called the Dharmadhatu in the Abhidharma system those things which are known by mind include selflessness and Nirvana. Selflessness and liberation are included in space. So the eighteen dhatus and the twelve ayatanas are the eighteen sense organs. The eye organ, the colors and eye consciousness is three. Then you go mind organ, mind consciousness and mind objects plus the last three. So those six pairs of three make up the eighteen and there are six pairs of two that make up the twelve. So those include everything. So in Skanda's strictly speaking do not include Nirvana, space and selflessness. Yes?

[66:59]

space permanent? Is Nirvana permanent? I don't know. I think it is permanent. It's freedom from time. Yes. It's freedom from birth and death. Yes. It's birthlessness and deathlessness. It is outside of time. So in that sense it's permanent. But all these kinds of permanences, none of them are like permanences in the sense of durations. But they're outside of duration. They're outside of duration. Duration, actually duration is although we don't speak of it as time but there's duration and all phenomena go through four phases and duration is one of the phases. Arising, duration, deterioration and cessation are

[68:00]

characteristics of all phenomena that arise in that season. Those are included in the fourth aggregate. Those characteristics of phenomena. They're not actually mental factors, they're just characteristics of phenomena. So Nirvana is in that sense permanent or eternal. It's outside of time and it's also in a sense the way it's presented actually I didn't really present it correctly because in the analysis of phenomena, actually Nirvana's been on the list, what's on the list is different kinds of cessation. There's two kinds of cessation. And the cessations are also permanent in the sense that they're just a cessation. So they're not impermanent. They're just a cessation. It's like again

[69:02]

if you just snuff out a candle it's just not snuffed out candle isn't really life. It's not impermanent. It doesn't last either. So it doesn't last and yet it's eternal and not impermanent. Like space. Did you have a hand raised? Yes. Yes. When we say that we see color we mean the color that we see which is not actually out there. So I think Buddhism can deal with what we're finding out in modern study of vision is that there aren't colors out there. So there really aren't blues out there.

[70:05]

But in early Buddhism they just say they talk as though there were colors out there but anyway it's really when there's physicality a certain kind of physicality the kind of physicality that hits the eye the kind of physicality that's very stimulating to a certain part of the body that kind of physicality when that touches there and consciousness arises we have the experience of color. The color's not out there. Which again when we look at this Zen students look at this Abhidharma stuff and they say wait a minute then that color is empty of inherent existence. So why are we learning about this? About all these dharmas? Because there really is no such thing as a color out there. There really is no such thing as a color out there or Mukugyo out there. There's no such thing. There's no such things out there. But there is a color

[71:12]

that arises in conjunction with electromagnetic radiation. That's not the color. We can analyze the electromagnetic radiation and the people who are analyzing it they're going to do all kinds of invitations and have all kinds of experiences but actually what they're analyzing is not a color. It's electromagnetic radiation. This wave in the sky is not a color. It's only a color when it touches a person, a human. It's still not a color unless something happens to the person unless it hits their eye rather than their elbow. And it still doesn't have a certain kind of it on it. And it still doesn't work unless they're alive and the consciousness arises. And the consciousness does not arise without these supports. And the consciousness of color that arises without these supports

[72:13]

is not called color in the system in this teaching. It's a dream of color. Like right now I'm dreaming of a blue sky. And I can actually see the blue sky but that's not actually blue. That's a dream of blue that I'm having right now. There's actually some white clouds drifting through the blue sky. That's not actually blue. Blue is dependent on the physical stimulation that it would end when you covered your eyes, for example. That blue would go away. But when the clouds came, that kind of blue would go away. There's that kind of blue. But the blue isn't out there. It's just that that kind of blue depends on that stimulation. And you can't imagine that kind of blue. And you can actually see the difference. Right now I can see the difference in why I'm dreaming of and the one that I get when I look at that sky. However, it's not out there. There's no independently existing

[73:16]

color aside from our mental apprehension. But our mental apprehension is not sufficient. Even though the existing thing is just the mental apprehension, the thing can't exist only on the basis of mental apprehension. We have to have conditions and mental apprehension. But what we see is just our mental apprehension. It's not conditions. And that's why the color is empty, the organ is empty, and the consciousness is empty. At the early level of presentation they weren't emptying all these little elements. They were just showing you that any experience you have depends on these things and you can't find a self or a person in that field. But now we're starting with not finding the self of any elements in the field. And that would be easier to transfer back to the person. When you dream of

[74:22]

blue, is it... Did anybody have their hand raised before you let him call on it? Because he just raised his hand just now. Was there any floating hands that were not attended to? Henry? When you dream of blue, could you not say that there is no perception of blue but there is consciousness of blue? In other words, the way I'm thinking, and I could be wrong about this, is that when you dream of blue and when you perceive blue, it's the same consciousness of blue but there's no perception of blue. You could say you're having a conceptual cognition, that's what I said, you're dreaming of blue. You're having a conceptual cognition of blue. You think your idea of blue... In your dream you think your idea of blue is blue. But now we think of our idea of a blue sky and we don't think that that's actually blue. We just realize that's just a concept of blue.

[75:24]

On other occasions we look at the sky, we have a sense perception which we call perception of blue and then we mediate that in the same way we're mediating basically the same way we're mediating the dream of blue. But we know the dream of blue is not based on the actual direct perception of blue. Of the sky. So there can be the dream of blue, there's a dream of blue, but that's not the same blue. So there can be... I can dream of Shaman but that's different from seeing Shaman. Right, only in the perceptual mode though. But in the conscious it's more the same, isn't it? In other words, when I... No, it's not the same. So, on the level of direct perception of seeing a person you actually... Like for example, I could see one of you and have a direct perception of you

[76:28]

and there's ways you could test me to see that I saw you. Or I could see you somehow. There'd be a way for you to let me see you for a very short time and I would be trained to make a certain response when I saw you. And I could see you, make the response but not know that I did it. In other words, not convert that experience of you into something I mediate conceptually. You didn't get that? No, I'm sorry. So let's... It's a lot more convenient than... Yeah. So let's say you're driving down the road and, you know, and you see a stop sign and you stop your car

[77:28]

but you did not say red light. But you didn't see it. And you can kind of tell yourself because you stopped. That isn't good enough, we can repeat it over and over until you feel like you can do a test on somebody and you can train them so that even some kind of very fast physical response can happen in them when they see certain colors and a different response will happen when they see other colors. And you can flash those colors and they can have the response and you can see they saw it because they had the response and you can do it over and over again until you feel the likelihood of them giving that response to that color which is what you're trained to do and not giving that response when some other color was there which is what they're trying to do that, you know, you can be pretty sure that they did see the color. However, it's possible that it happened so fast that the nervous system saw the color and made the response happen without the person ever saying the color, you know, mediating that conceptually and saying

[78:30]

red or blue. So you can see a person that way too, you can see them without mediating and the actual seeing process could have an effect on you and you could demonstrate that it was there even though you did not say you saw them. So let me go a little further. And so in a dream however you're conceptually mediating the person or the color but we're turning colors off and on and you're not doing any response to the colors. You're lying there in your dream state putting these red lights on and you're not making any response you're not responding to color and you might be dreaming of red a ton or you might not. And also if you're thinking of a person and the very person who you did not think of but you actually did see, you got a direct perception of them

[79:31]

and you responded to them and you didn't think of them then you can take away the person and think of the person without the direct perception. And you can see that that's a dream which is a different kind of dream that you go back now, look at the person have the direct perception and then conceptually mediate and say, I see the person. So then you have the direct perception followed by the conceptual mediation and you can feel the difference between that and when there's not the direct perception it's just the conceptual imagining, but then it's not mediation you're not mediating you're just imagining. So some things are just imagined some things are conceptual imagination imaginary mediation of something as a direct perception and some things are just direct perceptions. So a lot of what's going on during the day is direct perception and you never become conscious of it. A lot and a lot of

[80:33]

and everything that you become conscious of is either a direct perception or something that you know and you're just dreaming of. In other words it's not really a perception and you don't think it's happening you just think you're dreaming. Okay? That's my current understanding of this stuff. And I just wanted to share with you the dropout rate this class is very high and I I stooped myself by saying well you told us we'd be high. And so lots of people dropped out there were 75 people in class last week and now it's like 45, 30, 20 so we'll see what happens here next week. All day persistence. And Emmanuel? I had a

[81:34]

friend of mine in college just seemed to be an example of having direct perceptions without any mediation. Tired, studying a lot he drove almost 20 miles all he remembered was getting in his car and then pulling into the driveway and the whole trip he had no memory of it. At the moment it happened he pulled in the driveway and said oh my god how'd he get here? So it seems though he had that 20 miles of direct perception without any Yeah and I think sometimes you you might be driving with someone and talking with them and almost not aware of the road at all. Which is really not the best way to go about it. People do get from one place to the other without paying much attention to the road. Conceptually if you're highly engaged conceptually like if you're reciting a sutra

[82:35]

to somebody in a chair next to you while you're driving you might like you would be having direct perceptions that's how you stay on the road but you might not be conceptually aware of it at all. The whole trip. It's possible that can happen. But you would be doing the conceptual thing with all of those moments of direct perception of your voice and so on as you're reciting the scripture. That would be another place where you'd be having direct perceptions of the sound of the words of the sound of the words and so on. But there would be a tremendous amount of conceptual mediation going on. But it would all be sucked up into that and none left over for you to be conceptually aware of how you're driving down the road. So that can happen. Well, we don't know. You might have been dreaming of something and just forgot the dream.

[83:36]

We don't know. I mean, I don't know. I'm just a person who can breathe and trade every being and place with the true merit of Buddha's way. Beings are numberless. I vow to save them. Delusions are inexhaustible. I vow to end them. Dharma gates are boundless. I vow to enter them. Buddha's way is unsurpassable. I vow to be kind.

[84:35]

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