The title of this series is Mahayana Abhidharma. And the D with a circle on it is Dharma. We had three classes this summer on this topic. And this time, we have a little more time to give a little background. So the background that I'd like to give is . So in the early days of the teaching, There was an historical event or historical person that lived in the world named Shakyamuni Buddha.

[01:12]

So actually, it seemed like this happened in history, that there was such a person. I could see his face and listen to his teaching. And he taught the truth. which, when understood, transforms us into a way that liberates us from the suffering that comes from being asleep to the truth. And one way that sometimes people typify the way that this person talks taught a minute analysis of experience, a minute analysis of the experience that humans have.

[02:14]

But also, if animals could analyze their experience, they would probably have the same analysis. So in the Buddha's teaching, there is lots and lots of analysis. He also told stories. gave metaphorical examples of things. But the metaphors were usually metaphors for an interpretation of the teaching. For example, I recently told you the story of the acrobats. And so that story is about these two acrobats and how they work together. And basically... the male acrobat was about to put the female acrobat up on top of his shoulders. She was going to climb up on top of him. A bamboo pole was going to be balanced on his head.

[03:16]

And he said to her, You take care of me. You watch out for me, and I'll watch out for you. And then we'll be able to do this... this acrobatic feat safely and everything will be fine. And she said, no master. She was the apprentice. She said, it's not correct. You take care of yourself and I'll take care of myself and then we'll be able to do this. And then the Buddha says, the apprenticed was correct. So first you take care of yourself, then you can take care of others. And how do you take care of yourself? And he said, you take care of yourself by practicing the four foundations of mindfulness, which I understand you're studying at Tesla Harvard during this practice period. Four foundations of mindfulness are practice broken up into four parts, and then each broken up into many parts.

[04:22]

And so it's a metaphor for how to First of all, you have to check into yourself and be mindful of yourself before you can care for others. To mention that this class is potentially going to offer a tremendous amount of information, more than a lot of other classes that you might have experienced. For example, I just told you about the four foundations of mindfulness. So, I could tell you more about them, but, you know, I could also tell you wherever you can read about them. I believe it's, um, yes, isn't it, um, Middle Link Sayings 122? That, uh, that, that scripture is the scripture on the four foundations of mindfulness if you want to find out about them.

[05:24]

And, um, but I just wanted to say to you that, uh, The teaching of the Abhidharma is there is instruction in there about how to practice tranquility and how to develop concentration. There is instruction like that in various Abhidharma texts where they present methods of tranquility. But Abhidharma meditation is primarily a wisdom meditation. And the Buddha's analysis of experience is basically a compassionate teaching to help people become wise. So usually that teaching would be offered, that analytic meditation on experience would be offered.

[06:27]

It would be offered to people who already had the ability to be quite tranquil and concentrated. So you don't necessarily have to drop out of this class if you're not yet at concentration practices. But I just want to say to you that, in some sense, for this class to work with you, for you, it will work really well if you're doing along with this class on a daily basis. Practice is to develop tranquility so that hopefully if you come to class, you're fairly calm when you come to the class. In the class, when you start to get agitated and excited, try to not get too involved in the discursive class offers. Try to relax and calm down. that sort of background basic practice that we won't be emphasizing so much.

[07:37]

But I need you to take care of that. If you're calm also, these teachings will sink into you. They'll sink into you, and they'll stick to you, kind of like. recently about her practice and it sounded to me like she was getting somewhat successful at concentration because when you get kind of concentrated the world gets kind of velcro-y and your mind gets kind of velcro-y in the sense that everything has lots of the surface you start to notice the surface texture and your mind can like really get a hold of things. Things can get a hold of your mind, so you can really learn much more easily. Things don't just slide by so much. OK, so one of the basic types of analysis

[08:48]

that was recommended and practiced was an analysis of experience, sort of what might be called on a moral basis. So the meditator would look at the state of body and mind that they were in and they would categorize it, for example, as to whether it was Let's see, how do we say whether it had outflows or not? So the mind could have or not outflows. Or B, having up-blows is impious.

[10:04]

In Sanskrit, the word for up-blows is sasrava. Sasrava means up-blows. And means with outflows. So that means have outflows. And not having outflows is . I'm sorry. It's not . So it's or . Sorry. So how do you... So this would be a meditation that someone could do, like look to see if they had any outflows?

[11:10]

So you've heard me talk a lot about like you're practicing and like you're going to the zendo and sitting or you're like washing dishes or you're like chanting service or you're studying... some teachings, or you're going to a class, these kinds of activities you might be doing, or making offerings. So then you would see, okay, that's what's happening now. Is there outflow or not? And the way you... So you check to see, am I trying to get anything out of this practice? Am I helping this person and expecting some reward? Am I washing his... Or am I washing dishes so people will think I'm making a contribution to the community? And they'll be nice to me?

[12:14]

Or they'll think I'm not such a bad guy? So if I noticed those kinds of things, that was towards my activity, it would be an outflow. So you can actually look and see, and then just meditate on that and just keep noting whether you're in a state of outflow or defiling your practice, getting out of it moment by moment. Or you may notice, seems like I'm just washing the dishes. Seems like I'm just washing lettuce. Seems like I'm just washing my face. I'm washing my face in a sense to wash it, but I'm not... I don't... Like a better face, I'm not hoping for a better face after it's washed. Just washing my face because I think it's a good thing to do. So that's an example of an analysis of your experience into without closing without.

[13:17]

And it's like... It's a very basic and extremely important practice, and it's analytical. And it's taught from the way back at the beginning of the Buddhist teachings. Buddha taught that. And the Abhidharma noticed that the Buddha's taught that, pulled it out, and put it into analysis to do. Another one is what you might call wholesome or unwholesome. You've stayed in mind wholesome or unwholesome. Wholesome means skillful. Wholesome could also be translated as skillful. It's called kusa grass. It comes from the word for kusa grass. The Buddha recommended that the meditation seats be made of heaped up kusa grass, which was growing around where he was teaching.

[14:19]

to collect this grass and make it a pile and sit on it. But it was very sharp, sharp edges on the grass. So if you weren't careful, you'd cut your hands while you were collecting it. So to learn to collect it without cutting your hands was to become, be skillful. Kushala. And akushala means not skillful. So when you look at your state of mind, you see, is it a skillful state of mind? Is it a mind that's mindful? Or is it a mind that has ill will in it? And is it a mind that's enthusiastic about being diligent? Or is it a mind that's lazy, doesn't want to apply attention to the practice? This has to be another analysis. And so on. These are, in some sense, the most basic analysis, our moral ones.

[15:25]

But there's also analysis which aren't really like moral. They're just more having to do with, for example, whether your state of mind is wholesome or unwholesome. As outflows or not, still certain basic psychological functions go on in both cases. So another type of analysis is to analyze the kind of minds that are always present, the kind of phenomena that are always present in just a simple neutral functioning of the mind. And so, for example, we have the analysis of our experience into what's called five aggregates, five skandhas, which you hear about in the Heart Sutra at the beginning. So addressed to people who were analyzing their experience into five aggregates.

[16:27]

And in addition to the five aggregates, there's also what's called 12 sense bases. In addition to them, there are what's called the 18 elements. The basic teaching of the Buddha at the beginning was to teach people to analyze their experience into elements. Moral elements, psychological elements, philosophical elements. And of course, not of course, kind of of course, if you're able to look at what's happening and be able to analyze it, you're becoming more intimate and more knowledgeable about what's going on with you. For most people, that would be the case, unless you already know how to do this. And if you can actually get in touch with your experience in this analytic way, then you'd be ready to understand the teaching, that you'd be ready to test the teaching that in the field of these elements, there's no kind of container of these elements.

[17:55]

There's nothing that holds them all together. There's nothing in addition to them which is them. But most people think there is something in addition to their experience which is their experience. And most people think that contains their experience and holds it together. Most people think that the experience does belong to somebody. And that's the normal, deluded view that there's a self which owns the body and mind, or the self which embraces the body and mind. There's something which holds it all, or in the middle of all of our experience, there's some kind of substantial, real thing in there. It's not just an element of experience. But if you analyze your experience in these ways I just told you, five aggregates, they tell you exactly how to do it, but five aggregates, 12 sense bases, or 18 elements, if you analyze your experience, you'll find out that there's nothing, there's no further experience than these elements.

[19:14]

And none of these experiences are a container of the elements. The analysis completely accounts for what's going on, and there's nothing which no unity or overall category or inner core to all the elements that fully account for your experience. This type of meditation was then able to show people that what they thought was there And they were clinging to and worried about the self, tones the experience, or the experience, and so on. But it wasn't actually there. And this produces a level of liberation which was sufficient, apparently, to attain nirvana. And this is like the early teaching.

[20:18]

And the Abhidharma was particularly pulled out and systematized, these analytic teachings, and discussed the subtleties about them. just to give you a little taste of the overview, which I gave more examples of last summer. But in a later phase of the dharma, or not so much in a later phase of revelation of the dharma, or a later phase of noticing the dharma, it's hard to say which, there was A literature appeared in the world about 500 years after the Buddha died. A teaching appeared in the world of which the Heart Sutra is an important example.

[21:28]

A teaching that in emptiness, that all these elements of existence, all the elements in which you can analyze your existence into for your existence, all these elements actually don't actually ultimately exist. They don't exist means that they have no inherent nature, no of themselves. They only exist interdependently. And in this understanding, we actually can't find the elements of existence. And that's the second phase of the teaching. And that teaching was addressed to people with earlier teaching. So many people come to Zen now, or come to Mahayana Buddhism, and they hear the Heart Sutra. And they hear about the skandhas being empty, in particular the first skanda, which is formed being empty.

[22:33]

But they haven't yet been doing the practice of analyzing their experience into the five aggregates. The people that this sutra was addressed to, the people that this sutra was medicine for, the Heart Sutra, were people who actually had been studying these five aggregates and these twelve sense bases and these eighteen elements. And I said that thing about revelation and so on, because we don't exactly know if the Buddha taught the Heart Sutra. It says the Buddha taught the Heart Sutra through Avalokiteshvara. So this Buddha's meditation and then his bodhisattva, infinite compassion, is meditating on the five aggregates. and sees that they're empty of inherent existence, and then teaches his Heart Sutra.

[23:37]

So we don't know. It actually happened at the time that Buddha Shakyamuni was alive, and people just didn't, you know, it didn't become popular, that teaching. Some people heard it, just a few. Just a few people thought and that they took care of these scriptures and transmitted them for 500 years before they actually wrote them down and appeared in the world. There's other possibilities, however, that later in the history of the people on this planet, the revelation of these scriptures appeared through some other dimension than the historical Buddha, which is part of what I also hope to discuss with you a little later. And then there's another wave that comes, another movie, another set of scriptures which appear, which kind of reconstitute the earlier Abhidharma teaching in the context of the understanding that all the elements of analysis don't have any inherent existence.

[24:59]

The third phase in the teaching And that's the phase that's called Mahayana Abhidharma. So, for example, here's a book called The Summary of the Great Vehicle, English translation, which at the end of this sutra, at the end of this sutra, the author, who is a sangha, says, among the collected scriptures of the great vehicle Abhidharma, This one is called The Summary of the Great Vehicle. So at the end of this text, he mentions to you that this is a Mahayana text. But this text, this Mahayana Abhidharma text, appeared in the world almost 900 years after the Buddha lived. And we have wonderful, wonderful things to find out about how this So I think I'll just say a little bit about the five aggregates just for you to get a feeling for analysis and how to play with that.

[26:19]

So the five aggregates are a form, feeling, and then now we're saying perception. formations, and consciousness. Those are the five aggregates in English. Sanskrit is rupa, redhana, samna, samskara, and vijnana. Tonight, I would suggest to you, just, you know, for analytic exercise and understanding that we call, that we translate the second, the third... Can I borrow your pen?

[27:44]

I misnumbered them. I didn't say them all. I wrote them down here wrong. We re-translate somnia, which is the name of the third aggregate, we translate it as conception. OK, so we have the one. First aggregate. Number two. Number three. Third aggregate. Number four. Third aggregate. And number five. Whoops. Fifth aggregate. So among the new people, do you know who it was? Anybody? Sat? What?

[28:45]

Consciousness. Consciousness, yeah. So, and the first one is called form. Like in Heart Sutra, form is emptiness, emptiness is form. Emptiness is not different from form, it's form. And form is basically, it's... five sense organs, five sense organs, and the five sense fields. And then in some schools, there's a sixth. So there's ten, in some schools, eleven, as the eleventh member of the form skandha. And that's called subtle rupa, or... It's not subtler, but take it back. It's sort of inarticulated or unmanifested form.

[29:54]

But the other ones are a little simpler. So we have the eye capacity, the eye field, the field of the eye, which is called colors or shifts. We have the ear capacity and the... sounds. We have the nose capacity, smells. We have the tongue capacity, taste. And we have capacity, or skin faculty, and the field of tangible things, or touches. Those are the 10. And when you have this sensitive material, like skin. And then you have something tangible, and the tangible interacts with the skin.

[30:58]

And skin is the of all the organs, because all the other organs are really modifications of skin. So tangibility is really the most fundamental aspect of sensation. And you can see it in a fertilized egg. It doesn't exactly have eyes and ears and nose and tongue, but if you touch it, it responds to being touched. And later, it gets modified into eyes and ears and nose and tongue, too. So we can be touched by what we call tangibles, like material that's, what do you call that kind of material that's, it's not those other categories, like solid things, you know, that have a thermal impact, solid things rather than electromagnetic radiation or gases.

[32:07]

Mechanical? Well, but also sound waves are too. But they're waves rather than just pressure. Just pressure on the ear doesn't usually make sound. It has to have a little beat to it. So it's kind of the grossest in a way, because it doesn't have to have a rhythm. The other ones have rhythm, or they're liquid, or they're gases. When these two things interact, there's the possibility that because this sensitivity goes with the living being, and living beings have consciousness, it's possible that now a consciousness will arise which will be aware of what's touching the skin. And so we have the arising of what's called touch consciousness, or, yeah, touch consciousness, or tangible consciousness.

[33:13]

which is consciousness of . So in that case, in that sensory experience of being touched, we have this skandha knowing part of the first skandha, or fifth skandha, arises with this If you use the expression bipolar, form aggregate. That make sense? And two poles are, one pole is, if both poles are material, one pole is the body in the sense of, in some sense it's embodied in the body. And the other pole is something touching the body. But the consciousness is not of the sensitivity.

[34:16]

Consciousness is not of the organ, of what the organ plays with. So we are not conscious. In sense experience, we are not consciously perceiving the capacity to see. We don't perceive. We perceive what stimulates the eye. And actually, we don't perceive that. We perceive what stimulates the eye bouncing off other things. We perceive the things that it's bouncing off. So this is a very basic element of where the consciousness is arising out of the physicality of the body. Again, it's not the body in the sense of, like, knees and hair follicles and muscles.

[35:18]

It's the body in the sense of the sensitivity of the knees, of the skin around the knees, and the skin inside the knees, inside and outside the knees, the ability to be sensitive to touch. That is the actual body in the Buddha Dharma. The body we usually call a body is a concept. It's not actually physical. The real body, that's the basis of our experience, is the sense organ. And we can directly perceive through that body other material things. So then there's an experience of materiality, a direct perception, unmediated, by conception. And I would say here, unmediated by number three, conception. So that's one kind of experience.

[36:34]

The other kind of experience is that arising based on together with this kind of experience of a consciousness arising with the sense organs operating with the sense being rising is another consciousness, in a sense, which arises depending on this previous one. And this previous one, plus it uses conception to interpret what the previous one knew. So then that's a case where consciousness concept of, for example, the knowledge or the perception of a touch.

[37:50]

And this is the example I just gave. There would be the direct experience by directly relating to one. in one moment, and that having the power to give rise to a conception of five as a is now known as a concept of that. And simultaneously with that will also be another direct perception of something else, but which will not be known. conceptually, but only directly. So the first event is a direct perception, namely awareness of sensory experience.

[38:57]

This is going on almost However, for most people, they are not consciously aware of this in terms of they have no conscious recognition of being able to conventionally designate this. They're actually responding to this, but they don't know about it. And this perception and have the strength to stimulate the arising of a concept which goes with another consciousness. And the concept will be a concept of previous perception. The perception was direct with no conceptual mediation, which the experience was not conceptualized. This one is conceptualized, but this one is engendered and supported by the previous one.

[39:59]

A conceptual one can also relate to another conceptual one. But this simple scenario I showed you is that there's a perception here, a direct perception that's not conceptual that can be the source based on the conceptual version of it. Simultaneous with that, there could be another. It could be another sensory consciousness arising from another sense data, which would be also coexisting with this second conceptual one, which then could be the basic conceptual cognition. So cognitions, number five, viscondric, can be basically of two types. It could be direct perception, and it can be Cognition can be of two types.

[41:03]

What about feeling? Feelings arise. In the first case, there's a feeling with this. Out of the feeling, in the case of experiencing A consciousness of, for example, color, or take this example of a touch. Experiencing a touch, like warm or rough, that direct perception, there would be a feeling with it. A mental factor coexisting with this consciousness, in this consciousness, or embraced by this consciousness, there would be a feeling. And there would also be various mental factors. Various workings of the mind would coexist with the feet of the touch. Other mental factors arise together with this consciousness.

[42:11]

Positive, negative, and neutral. It's judgment, yeah. Positive, negative, and neutral judgment. However, in this case, the first case I gave, the case where we're perceiving is not mental phenomena, but physical phenomena. However, these mental phenomena coexist. The mental phenomena of judgment, positive, negative, and neutral, coexist with consciousness. The mental phenomena of... There's conception. coexists with it, but is not mediating it. But the conceptions are there. And all kinds of mental formations which are aspects of mind which make possible the working of mind. For example, the fact that the mind chooses to pay attention to what's going on with the touch organ.

[43:16]

But the touch organ is stimulated strongly enough that the mind is the attention, is turned towards it. And that turning towards what's stimulating, the touch organ, that's a mental factor, which is called adverting attention. The attention gets turned towards the object of this organ rather than the object of some other organ. That's one of the mental factors that goes on. It sends perception. or direct perception or perceptual cognition. It goes on in that case. It also goes on with conceptual cognition. And that's one of the things that go from the floor skandha. Everything that goes on with that skandha is samadhi, in the sense that mind is focused, centered on the object of the consciousness. Everything that goes on is that the mind is shaped

[44:19]

by what it's paying attention to. And the other thing that goes on is that the mind, as a result of what it's looking at and the various mental factors that arise with it, the mind has a certain shape or a certain direction or intention. It seems to be going somewhere. And that shape of the consciousness is the mental factor of intention or volition. And that's the basic definition of action. the way the mind's shaped. So every mind has a shape. So every mind has intention. So even with no conceptual mediation of the knowing of the sense object has will, has feeling, has intention, and has various other mental factors going on. It could also have ill will. You could have ill will. Or you could have greed towards the touch.

[45:25]

We could have confusion about the touch. Those factors are not always there, but could be. And then that would also come from the fourth scum of those examples, in that those things will also shape the consciousness. And also we have a way of knowing which not only has a mental factor of cognition arising with it, but uses the mental factor to interpret what's happening. Because once you interpret what's happening, then you can know it in ways that you can't know it and you don't interpret it. And one of the main ways that you can interpret it, once you deal with things via concepts, is you can interpret them linguistically. Designations. However, we can go into problems with that.

[46:26]

But just so far, this is the basic analysis of the five aggregates. Just a simple example to start with. And this is a type of analysis which also Instead of a moral analysis, this is more of a psychological or an analysis of the process of cognition. It's kind of an epistemological analysis, which is not separate from morality. When you talked about mental formations giving rise to shaping consciousness, Mental formations is one of the shapes of consciousness. And so does the complex, the feelings. So I thought things arise together. They do. But if something gets shaped to something else, that means it comes in at an earlier time.

[47:29]

That's not the way I mean it. I mean that these things arise up together, like my fingers, my ten fingers coming up, And that makes a certain shape. If the ten fingers come up like this, like this, that makes a different shape. So these are coming up together in the moment, and they go down together. That's one of the principles of this analysis, is that these things arise together and cease together. When the mind comes up, the other four come down. except in certain special states of concentration where we're just dealing with the mental, the four mental skandhas. For most of our experience, all five come up, but depending on which ones come up, there will be a different shape. So these come up in shape like these. Those come up in a shape like this. So when consciousness arises with confusion and greed, it's a certain shape. And also, when certain images arise, there's certain predispositions towards certain images.

[48:35]

Like when some people see blue or see a man, certain predispositions can arise which are related to blue and man. Or if somebody else has another set of dispositions, so they have a different shape in relationship to the same kind of idea or mental object. So, how do these images that are already built in, you know, the consciousnesses of blue and art, each individual has to know what blue is, or what man is. How does those elements interact with this process? Doctor, do they, like, are they, like, a set of, a laboratory full of these elements in the mind, and then they start factoring in as these consciousnesses come up together?

[49:50]

Yeah, kind of like that. And this fourth one, different people have, at a given moment, one person, Different elements from this fourth category will arise for that person in relationship to what's happening, but there's some also historical or common connection between certain material objects and certain conceptual objects that because of certain predispositions, certain mental factors will arise rather than others given past history. So the predispositions are in that number four? Yes. And the number four is the predispositions, the inclinations due to our past karma. And, of course, it changes during one lifetime. You have different things coming up when you're two or five or seven or ten or thirteen.

[50:58]

Different things will arise in this fourth category together with consciousness at different points in your life depending on what high school you went to and so on. Okay? Any other questions? the two fives, these two types, literary perception and conceptual, are they, is that second five the next moment there? So it's not like two, are those really two fives, or is that a sequential? The five, this consciousness is not, this is a, the second five was a conceptual cognition. So it depends where it's arising on what's called the mental organ. So the first five has a physical organ.

[51:59]

The physical organ in my example was the organ of skin or touch. The second one will have what's called the mental organ, or what we call a big, important word in both early and later uptime teaching. It will have a mental organ. is called manas. The mental organ is not a physical organ. It's a mental organ. What is manas? What is the mental organ? It is the just deceased, or most immediately preceding. And sense consciousness can be physical sense, but also can be mental sense consciousness. So when we have conceptual cognitions, conceptual cognitions, of course, are perceiving mental objects. Sometimes, not always, but sometimes, mental object or concept, mental object of a concept, or, for example, a physical thing.

[53:10]

So in that way, and we interpret this physical thing, but it also could be another mental thing. We interpret it, and we think, actually, that the thing we're seeing is actually the concept. We're looking at the thing. You can look at mental things, even concepts, Look at predispositions. You can look at feelings, which are mental things, and you can look at them with direct perception, with direct mental perception. You can also look at them with indirect or conceptual cognition. Conceptual cognition, that means you would have a three to interpret three. If you were looking at a concept, if a concept arose in your mind, if it was a conceptual cognition, you would see the concept in terms of a concept of the concept.

[54:13]

And you would confuse the concept with the concept of the concept. Concept of a feeling. and you would think that the concept of the feeling was the feeling. Or you could have a concept, of course, of a touch, and you think that the concept of the touch was the touch. So one of the things about conceptual cognition is that it's mistaken, basically mistaken, because it apprehends things through an image, but it can't separate the image from the thing. The thing looks like the image, and you can't pull the image away and see what it looks like. So we tend to believe, we take, we apprehend it as the image. And the previous moment is the organ that this kind of cognition uses. Now, the previous moment's gone, but that sense consciousness which is gone is the

[55:19]

is the organ-like quality of mind, which makes possible the mind to know objects. It's very... kind of an amazing idea. Yes? Is that why you changed... you originally had called it Three Perceptions, you changed it to Kong? Because... When you said perception, it has to do with relativity. You might perceive something different than something else. But that's really what four is, right? It deals more with relativity and your karma and your past history. I don't understand what you said before. Well, perception, I might perceive something differently than something else. But your conception is... It doesn't... What is the difference between three and four, I guess, is what I'm asking. The difference is that in four, we actually don't list concepts in four.

[56:24]

Basically, three is an image. It's an image of something. It's a mental image. sense that we can interpret, for example, an experience, a cognition, a direct sense cognition of a color or a touch, we can interpret it by a concept of glue. So we do experience. And there's many ways to verify that we're driving a car, and we see this red light, and we stop. And we may not have even noticed red light. We may not have thought red light. But in fact, we start to color. Sometimes that happens. And there's other ways of telling that people are seeing certain things, even if they don't know they see them. But when we say it's red, then that's a conceptual cognition.

[57:33]

You can't see the color in direct perception and say it's red. We don't have that ability. First of all, I have to interpret it as, quote, red in order to say it's red or think it's red. And we do notice that kind of stuff, like it's red, she's good, he's tall, these kinds of things. You need conceptual cognition to come up with that kind of stuff, to think that way, and or . But the second type of cognition, number five, relating to number one, through number three is also related to number five through number three. That could be an endless cycle. That could continue on. It could continue on. However, this is another teaching which I hope to have time for.

[58:37]

But it's actually points that's being made in a later phase, not the early phase. is that the successive number fives based on this number five, this number five is original. It relates to a particular bodily in the universe. And you don't have repeats of this one. However, the second one is also not repeated, the first one. It's a fresh, different type of cognition of this process here. You just convert sense perception into a indirect conceptual cognition of that. However, the next conceptual cognition, which could also occur, will not really be considered a valid cognition. It'll just be a repeat.

[59:38]

It won't actually piece of information. But these two are actually actual, directly ways of knowing. The next way is you're not really knowing. You're just repeating a dwelling on it. But these are the two sources. And it's the Mahayana distinction is really developed and clarified. Earlier the Buddha taught this, but nobody seemed to have got it. So that would be part of what we'll hopefully get to in the last couple of classes. We actually did already get to it. Are these chains of five like the chains of thought? Are the chains of five like the chains of thought? Yeah, these fives that come one after another. Mm-hmm. Right. But the first one being direct perception. Well, the first direct perception, and the other ones, the first...

[60:39]

conceptual cognition. The first one is direct sense perception. The second one is indirect. Indirect conceptual cognition. And then it just goes into the chain. You could, yeah. You don't have to, but you could. And the succeeding things are kind of invalid. They're not actually accessing knowing. They're just reactivating the knowing which occurred before, which actually we're knowing. And in these two realms... This is where you actually do know something and have confidence, either through this means or this means about what you know. You can't develop confidence if you miss these earlier ones. And in terms of learning in such a way as to transform your understanding, we need to have these two types. These are the ways you actually can know something what we call irrefutably. If you miss these two types of sources of knowledge, the other ones are not actually sources of knowledge.

[61:52]

They're more like, what do you say? What's the word? And they're not the basis of actually being confident about what you saw and what you knew. Which were the first two that you were pointing at? The first two fives? And then the chain after that is no longer valid. Right. It's mistaken. Hmm? Mistaken. Mistaken, too. But it is a source of valid knowledge. It's just that it's mistaken, has its mistaken quality, because you mistake image for something. That's the basic mistake. Because sexual cognitions are mistaken in that way. But we still need to use them. They're still valid sources of knowledge the first time they happen. The second time, they're not a source of knowledge. You're not actually getting to know something you already know it. The next moment is not accessing knowledge.

[62:57]

It's just repeating what you already know. And all of a sudden, it doesn't feel the same. You won't be sure. People can talk you out of it. the second time, the succeeding times, even though the first one was invalid, and if you experienced it, irrefutable. But I'm getting a little ahead here, because it's so interesting. I have to stay with this for a little while, this basic analysis, and then see if you can, if you can, yes. So is it, any time you have a name for something, you're involved in three? First point of naming something? By the way, you're always involved in three, because the conception skandha is always accompanying your experience. You do have concepts. Even when you do it first moment of correct? Yes, right. There's still concept, but it's not the concept in direct...

[63:59]

This is not necessarily right what I'm about to tell you, but my understanding of it is that in my understanding, this is really important, which I'm about to tell you. It might be not right. So be careful. Even in direct sense perception, there is conception. There is concept. And the concept or concepts that occur there do influence this state. What arises with this state influences it. But the concept isn't mediating the cognition. But it affects it. Coming up with it, or? It definitely comes up with it, but it also influences it. And one of the concepts which we carry with us is the concept of belief. the idea that things appear out there on their own.

[65:05]

So even something that we don't mediate conceptually, we still are affected by thinking that it's separate from us. So that's a concept which accompanies. So even people, for example, or even adults, in the process of direct rejection, still not necessarily see the ultimate character of things. The ultimate character of things is that they are not... These colors are not out there on their own, separate from the... They're not. There are no colors out there in this world. There are no colors. And physicists are totally on board with that. Colors are something that happen in human minds. But colors don't just happen in human minds. Minds arise in relationship to physical data which stimulate bodies in a certain way.

[66:09]

But the thing that stimulates the body is not color. There's no colors out there. Colors are something that happens. So there are definitely no colors, but colors seem to be out there separate, even in direct perception. Even when you're not mediating the color with, it's blue. the perception of the blue is affected by this cognition, by this concept that things exist separate on their own. So there is conception, and it does arise during sense perception, but it isn't that we interpret what it is as the concept. Because we don't think, you know, when we say blue, we don't think the blue, what the blue is, is out thereness. You could see out thereness. That could be a concept of out thereness. And you could directly perceive that or conceptually compromise that.

[67:16]

So, is part of what you're saying the first moment when you have blue? is an indirect but valid perception. The first moment when you think it's blue, when you think it's blue, the first moment when you have that, assuming that it's blue, assuming that you think it's based on this particular thing, that first moment is an indirect valid perception, yes. Then you're going on from there possibly, it might be. The repeats are not valid. They're not actually cognitions of knowing something. But again, back here to the sense perception. Sense perception is pure in the sense that it's pure and it's not mediated by concepts of sense data. In that way, it's pure or direct. The person who's having this transcendent perception has to be educated in order not to believe that this thing which is directly perceived correctly is out there.

[68:26]

Not perceiving out there-ness, but it seems like this thing which you're correctly perceiving as blue, it seems like it's out there. That's false. But it's not conceptual mediation. It's intimate. image, the idea, the position of self that kind of underlies, that's in the mind of the person looking at us. So a child who is involved in direct self-perception, you still don't see emptiness without education. They must be taught a long process of education. And we must eventually be able to see, first of all, see conceptually. emptiness in this first wave so that we're actually irrefutably cognized that things aren't . And we actually see that. It's as certain as you saw a blue sky would be like that.

[69:31]

But not just any blue sky, but a blue sky the first time you saw a particular blue sky. Not general blue skies. or the first time you saw an idea of Blue Sky. Both of those would be irrefutable cognitions. That's the kind we need to refute the basic influence of the concept of self that's infecting all states of consciousness until its emptiness is directly cognized in this way and then that way. You first understand emptiness in this indirect way, And the first time you do it is a time that you actually here refutably understand that you are recognizing emptiness. Then you can move to directly perceiving it. The first time. Yes? So this perception of out-there-ness or this consciousness of out-there-ness, the concept that comes up with

[70:39]

experience, there's a duality in the form and the sense organ, right? Is that the duality? Is that that kind of... What's the relationship of the out-there-ness concept that we always have and the fact that there's actually something touching something? Two things. There's a duality. So there's separations of out-there-ness in that way. There isn't really a duality, but there's a bipolar-ness. The material world has . It has a gross pole and a subtle pole. The gross pole of the material world is things like electromagnetic radiation, mechanical waves, gases, temperature. That's the gross material world. And then the subtle material world is all the sensitive surfaces on living beings.

[71:43]

They're not actually dual. They're not dual, they're not dual, they're not dual, and they're not dual. The physical world only exists because of mental apprehension, which occurs in relationship to the sensitive tissue. There's not physical phenomena out there. There's not colors out there. Colors arise because they can interact with other kinds of materiality that give rise to consciousnesses. And the consciousnesses apprehend these objects, the objects. Everything is material? So it's all materiality? I don't think so, no, because mind is not material. But material phenomena depend on mind to exist. material phenomena do not exist without mental apprehension. They do not exist without mental apprehension. So there really is a duality between people.

[72:46]

So it's a dependency. There's no basis for duality. Duality has no basis. There's no basis for it. There are reasons for it. There are reasons for it, but not. It's totally baseless. Totally baseless. It doesn't exist at all. But there's reasons why this baseless concept of duality arises. I make a lot of decisions based on my gut feelings and intuition. Is that mistaken consciousness or is that direct perception? I think that intuition is closely related to direct perception, because direct perception is irrational.

[73:49]

It's not a rational function. And intuition, I also would say, is not rational. There's no reason by which you know certain things, but you know. It could be rational. If it's rational, then I would call it thinking. If it's rational, then I can explain to you why I know this thing. Like one time a friend of mine came to visit me over in Linda's office. And I was talking to her and I said, oh, how's your father? And she said, what do you mean? I said, isn't he in the hospital? She said, well, no. He's not in the hospital. He's at home. I just had this image of him being in a hospital.

[74:52]

And your mother there with him. She said, what? And she went and got on the telephone. She called her mother. I heard on the phone, you know, and she said, well, Mom, how's Dad? Shit. Shit. blah, blah, blah, you know. And she gets off the phone and runs out. And she's sort of thinking, well, there's like this, you know, black guy who knows this stuff, right? So I see him and he just sort of has this intuition that my father's in the hospital in Minneapolis. This is Lynn Davis's father. And so she was gone before she asked me, you know, how did I know that her father was And I didn't really know how I knew her father was in the hospital. But she thought it was an intuition. In other words, I have no rational basis by which... But later, I got in touch with the rational basis, which I wasn't in touch with before.

[75:55]

I'm not saying all things have rational basis, but this particular one was not an intuition. I remember that a few days, that day or so before, somebody called me from Minneapolis who just happened to be in the hospital when this guy came into the hospital. And I just happened to talk to her, and she said, I saw Mr. Davis in the hospital. So I said, oh. They're with him in the hallway. So I had this little picture. I had this picture of them in the hallway. But I didn't call my friend and say, you know, and I didn't call her and say, you know, your father's in the hospital. I didn't think it was my duty to inform her that her father was in the hospital because I thought her mother would tell her. I didn't even think of it. I just, this is just curious. ...going to the hospital. But when I saw her, I thought, oh, how's your father? And she said, fine, what do you mean? And I said, isn't he in the hospital? She didn't know anything about it. But she thought I had this to record. In this case, it wasn't an intuition, it was rational.

[77:01]

But at the time she said it, I didn't see it. She forgot about it. I'd forgotten about it. I didn't know where it came from, but it came through a rational... It was rationally set up in the first place as a rational explanation of how I knew, but the way it came was not rational. I didn't say, oh... And I just heard yesterday that her father was in the hospital and, you know, I lost that part. Are you saying that our intuition is based on that? Based on what? On... these inputs that have already pre-existed in a rational way? Not necessarily, because look at sense perception. You have a conscious being, and then somebody goes... And then sometimes, because it's a loud noise, it stimulates the ears, and the ears are stimulated strongly enough in some cases. Like today we're over in the... The priest meeting and they rang the bell for noon service and Rozzy just freaked out, you know, the dog Rozzy.

[78:07]

Even though the doors were shut and the bell was far away, just really the pain or whatever the sound was, really got to her. And so that's not exactly for, you know, it's kind of like... It wasn't so much... I mean, there's previous things about being a dog, you know, that your background, that you have ears that work, that's part of your background. But what loud sounds happen and all that, it's not really a rational process that we know about. We don't really think about how we're going to respond. So sense experience is kind of irrational, I would say. I would agree with Mr. Jung on that. So he says that sense perception and intuition are irrational, and feeling and thinking are rational. Again, feeling is coming from judgment. It's rational. Judgment as to what's positive and negative and neutral, it's mental judgment.

[79:10]

There's a reason why you're feeling that way. And different reasons will change how you judge things. All these sense perception, intuition, reasoning or thinking and feeling, they all have causal background. So they're all dependent on horizons. But for some reason, in some cases, you can't see the reason for it. It goes a certain way. It's beyond reasoning. Yes? Well, what you said, most of it depicts the dual sides of mind. Intuition comes from the limbic brain, whereas logic, reason, they can come from neural cortex. They are functions of two different parts of our brain. But as to feeling, I'm not sure.

[80:11]

Feeling is a subjective awareness that emotion comes from our limbic brain. It's not from neural cortex. But in this case, when they say feeling, they mean the judgment of positive, negative, and neutral. And you could apply that in the limbic system. So what is the definition of feeling? I think it's a little bit different. For example, yeah, the feelings you have about your... the people you live with, you know, versus the people you don't? What kinds of things? More the limbic system, right? So my definition of physics is that subjective wins with motion. Right.

[81:14]

But whether it's judged positive, negative, or neutral... It's not judgemental at all. It's not judgmental at all. It is... It's not just what? It's not just judgmental. Not judgmental, yeah. So I'm saying... I'm saying that this feeling... This feeling is judgmental. It's a judgment. Then you go through your process. Yeah. This feeling is positive and negative. It is a judgment. Judgment is also... It's not... What do you call it? It's not a... It's not a voluntary judgment. It's involuntary depending on... It is... predispositions. So some people will, because of their background, will interpret something as negative. So that's an interesting point. Number three is a judgment faculty. And the judgment... Huh? Oh, excuse me. Number two is a judgment faculty. It's a mental faculty of judgment.

[82:15]

And you could judge the field. So what Feelings would be more these kinds of things over here, number four. Emotions. Emotions, yeah. The emotions are, the variety of emotions would be categorized in number four. And then you have feelings or judgments about, if those became objects, and you could be, like diligence. faith, lack of faith, ill-will, attachment, all those things. If they were objects of your awareness, you could have feelings about them and judge them positively, negatively, or neutral. So, yeah. And sometimes they also translate feeling as sensation, but I think that confuses it with sense perception. And they also sometimes translate just as experience, in the sense that the way you experience whatever mental or physical thing you're... has positive, negative, and neutral.

[83:23]

And so that's different, right? Positive, negative, neutral. And what you're saying is feeling. So it's a special... It's hard to translate this word... this word data now. Feeling is the way we did it, but maybe... Sensation? I don't like sensation. Oh my gosh. Babi Dharma analysis, pretty much. And so, next time I think I might be ready to... Oh, let me just say some things about if you want to study... This is a book called the Abhidharma Kosha. And the first chapter of this book talks about these categories of skandhas, the aggregates, the twelve sense bases, and particularly talks about the dhatus, 18 dhatus.

[84:39]

That's an analysis I didn't talk about tonight. of breaking things up into six sense fields, which is the five I just mentioned, plus mental data, and the six sense organs, which is the five sense organs plus the mind organ, which is the physical sense consciousness and the mental sense consciousness. Those are 18. And in this chapter, this first chapter is called the Dattus, because this chapter, the form of analysis which Bandhu really loves is the analysis of phenomena into Dattus. So maybe, I don't know, maybe I should study the Dattus with you next time, since he's so big on Dattus. And I have to say about this book that this is a It's very important in the history of the Buddhadharma.

[85:46]

Particularly, it wasn't so important, I think, it wasn't so important in India, but very important in East Asia and Tibet, this book. This book's written by Vasubandhu, who is, in our vision, he's a master of Abhidharma, of the Mahayana type. But he also is a master of Mahayana in the earlier type. this book, Abhidharma in the earlier type. And what he did in this book is he went back through the Abhidharma of the earlier type and adjusted it slightly to accord with some of the Abhidharma of the later type without introducing the new innovations of the Mahayana Abhidharma into the book. So he is the brother of the great Asanga who is the real The real, in history, the real, the most important person to create this Mahayana Abhidharma is his older brother, 20 years older.

[86:49]

And he became a student of his brother in Mahayana, but he was also, along the side, just happened to be an expert on early... So then he wrote this book called the Abhidharma Kosha, where he adjusts the earlier teaching of the Abhidharma. to incorporate the Mahayana Abhidharma, his brother's teaching, into making this book. So this isn't exactly the early Abhidharma, the way the early Abhidharma was taught, but it is really the early Abhidharma in the sense of perfectly straightforward conventional presentation of, for example, the analysis of Dattus. And he comes at this analysis from all different angles to illuminate of these elements of existence. And, yeah. So we have one copy of this in the library now.

[87:51]

So who's going to be librarian for that set? And we also have a copy of the bookstore. And we also have a copy of the bookstore. And you wanted me to read my book, Translates. Oh, yeah. So this is an important book, and if you have a chance to look at this, and you might want to actually perhaps have study groups where you read it together, particularly the sections on the tattoos, to see what happens to your consciousness as you contemplate the analysis in terms of the tattoos. And I wanted to mention... No, I won't mention that. Next week I'll mention more about this. The other thing I wanted to mention is that in this world, there's a book, a French translation of this. And if anybody wants to translate the French translation, this is the translation, actually, which is a little bit different, I think, from the French.

[88:57]

The French are part of the French. I have the French and I will give it to you to translate. Okay, do you see me? You want to do that? Okay, I'll give it to you. So I think actually it would be good next time, this week we looked at the Skandas a little bit. And if you have more questions on the scan, next time you can bring them up. But I think I'd like to actually show you the analysis in terms of the dot tools, the 18 dot tools, and see how that works. And you might just see if you can start to see if you can see how your experience is compiled with these five aggregates. See if you can actually your experience in these terms. May our attention be extended to every being and place.

[90:05]

May the true merit of death...

[90:12]

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