Zen meditation. The Zen meditation that I offer here and other places is totally culminated enlightenment. It includes or it involves a calm, concentrated, flexible, alert body and mind. But it's not just such a calm, concentrated body and mind. It is the contemplation and realization of reality in a calm, concentrated body and mind.

[01:25]

So we start every evening with quiet sitting and in that sitting you're all welcome to enter into a deep, serene state of calm, alert mind. Whatever mind arises, welcome it and also give it away. Be gracious towards whatever arises. That includes letting it come and letting it go. Very simple, but sometimes we don't let it come graciously and sometimes we don't let it go graciously.

[02:40]

But you can start every evening by simply developing mental attention to that way of being with whatever comes up. I really enjoy doing it with the sound of trains. It's lovely for me to welcome them with all that they bring and send them on their way. So whatever comes, give it your full, compassionate attention and do not lean into it or away from it. Do not get involved with it even though you're completely present with it. This way of being with whatever happens comes to fruit as a state of concentration

[03:46]

in which we then can contemplate various teachings. And the contemplation of the teachings is a major function of enlightenment. Enlightenment is contemplating the teachings of enlightenment. Buddhas are contemplating the teachings of Buddhas. And there's boundless teachings of Buddhas and Buddhas contemplate boundless teachings of Buddhas. They do all this for the welfare of all beings and what I just said is a teaching. It's a teaching that everything Buddhas do is for the welfare of all beings.

[04:54]

Buddhas contemplate the teaching that what they're doing is for the welfare of all beings. This topic of transforming the mind of delusion, I don't know if it said after the title what the mind of delusion got transformed into, did it say? It got transformed into enlightenment. One of the things we can transform the deluded mind into is enlightenment. I'm claiming that we can transform the mind of delusion into the mind of enlightenment.

[06:05]

That we can transform delusion into wisdom. And the basic way of doing that is to study the mind of delusion, to study it, to learn about it. First of all, just welcome it and let it go and calm down with it. And then when you're calm with the mind of delusion, then you can start studying it. In that calm place you can study delusion in a way that you might be able to actually understand it and transform it, transform it and understand it. Once again, that's a basic proposal is that if we contemplate the mind of delusion in a certain way,

[07:22]

the mind of delusion will be transformed and become wisdom. If we do not contemplate the mind of delusion, most deluded minds do not actually contemplate the deluded mind, they just believe it's not a deluded mind. Most deluded minds think that their deluded mind is not deluded. Not all deluded minds think that they're not deluded. Probably a lot of people in this room right now have deluded minds that are not thinking that they don't have deluded minds. Somebody just nodded, like, yeah, I have a deluded mind, but I don't think it's not deluded. Who has deluded minds? The teaching of the Buddhas is that all non-Buddhas have deluded minds.

[08:28]

All non-Buddhas, all sentient beings have deluded minds and that's all they've got is deluded minds. Deluded minds is what they've got. And people with deluded minds can be enlightened while they still have deluded minds. And this process of enlightening and being enlightened about deluded minds can go through a gradual process of transformation until the deluded mind is completely transformed. And then we not only, after many enlightenments about the deluded mind, it becomes completely transformed into the mind of a Buddha

[09:39]

or into Buddha's mind, into the true body of Buddha. I have been warming up since the latter part of last year to start a new kind of cycle of teachings about this process of transformation, of delusion. And so, starting a few weeks ago, or maybe a couple months ago, I started this teaching cycle. So, this class is in that context.

[10:40]

For several years, I was giving classes here in Green Gulch, and Tassajara, and other places around the world about a sutra. A sutra which is one of the first texts which actually describes the process of transforming the mind of delusion. And this sutra is called in Sanskrit the Samdhinirmocana Sutra, which is often translated as elucidating or unraveling the deep intention of the Buddhas. And the Chinese translated the Samdhinirmocana into Chinese, and translating the Chinese translation into English,

[11:49]

which I would say would be explicating or explaining or unraveling the deep intimacy in brackets of Buddha's teaching. So, that sutra is in the background of this teaching about transforming minds. But the sutra was a kind of revolutionary emergence in the world, and a number of things which it taught, it taught very briefly, almost like hinting at certain things. And following that sutra, a number of students of that sutra then tried to develop and reason from that sutra, from that scripture,

[12:49]

and bring out and develop some of the teachings of that sutra. And one of the great students of this sutra, who is also one of the great teachers in all of Buddhist history, is named Asanga. Asanga, a great practitioner of the great vehicle, a great enlightening being. And one of his, I don't know what to say, most amazing and wonderful works is a work called the Mahayana Samgraha. And this is the text which will be the source of these teachings on transforming the deluded mind into the Buddha. Mahayana Samgraha is usually translated

[13:57]

as the summary of Mahayana, or a summary of Mahayana. Mahayana Samgraha. Samgraha can be translated as summary, and Mahayana can be translated as the great vehicle, the great vehicle of the bodhisattvas, the great vehicle of those who vowed to devote their lives, their innumerable lives, they vowed to offer innumerable lives for the welfare of beings on the path of realizing Buddhahood for the welfare of all beings. This path for the welfare of all beings, this path of happiness and benefit and liberation for all beings is called the great vehicle. So this text is a summary of this great vehicle.

[15:05]

I also, looking at the Chinese translation of this Samgraha, Mahayana Samgraha, the Chinese chose a character which does mean kind of like to summarize or to gather or to collect, but it also means to embrace and sustain and nourish and guide. It also means to be sustained and embraced and guided. So I personally like to use the Chinese translation and call a Samgraha's work embracing the Mahayana, nourishing the Mahayana, caring for the Mahayana, rather than just summary. Part of caring for the Mahayana is to make summaries, detailed analytic summaries.

[16:09]

That's part of embracing the great vehicle. And what is being taught in this work on the great vehicle, what's being taught is basically the deluded mind and the enlightened mind. The beginning of the book is about the deluded mind, the basis of all deluded cognition, how it works. So it could also be called, instead of summary of Mahayana, it could be called summary of the mind, summary of the deluded mind and summary of how the deluded mind is transformed into the awakened mind.

[17:13]

It's not a very long book, but it's easy to spend many hours on a paragraph. So this teaching, this study will probably be going on for a while, even though the text isn't very long. It's possible that in this series of six classes we will be able to get kind of an overview and go into some detail about the first chapter. And there's ten chapters. There's some level of detail that is not possible to do in six sessions. Well, actually, there are certain parts where we can go into detail and spend the whole six sessions on certain parts of chapter one.

[18:17]

But I think we can get a good sense of what's being taught in chapter one. In six weeks. Six weeks. Six weeks. So, you don't need the book for this class, but you might need the book for the next ten years of studies. For this class, all you need is parts of chapter one and I'll give them to you. But you might want to get the book. And if you want to get the book, the book is published by an institute in, of all places,

[19:23]

Berkeley, the center of the enlightened universe. It used to be in India, but now it's in Berkeley. There's an institute here called the Numata Institute and they're translating the whole Chinese canon into English. It's been endowed by a Japanese man who went to Berkeley and then he went home and became a very successful businessman. And then he wanted to come back to the United States and start an institute to repay California for the excellent education he received at Berkeley. So now there's a very nice institute there which is endowed so that it can keep hiring translators for the next few hundred years. Because it will take a long time because there's thousands and thousands of texts in the Chinese canon.

[20:27]

And so this very important work, this Mahayana Sangraha, this embracing of the great vehicle has been translated into English by the institute. And they will sell it to us at what are called educational institutional rates. So if you wish to get the book, we can order many copies. They still have many copies, right? They did a new edition, right? Is there only one translation? Jackie says, is there only one translation. Well, for your information, just taking a step back to the sutra, the Samadhi Nirmachana Sutra, I studied the teachings

[21:29]

which came from the Samadhi Nirmachana Sutra. I studied teachings from that sutra, based on that sutra for 25 years or so until there was an English translation of the sutra. I just started to get some people to translate a French translation of it into English when someone gave me an English translation of the sutra. In 1995. And then by 2000, there were three English translations of the sutra. And by the way, a book is being published by Donald Moyer's Rodmel Press, and that book is based on talks I gave about the sutra. And the book's called The Third Turning of the Wheel. The Wisdom of the Samadhi Nirmachana. So now, with this,

[22:30]

you know, finishing the sutra, then I kind of was wondering, well, what about the Mahayana Sangraha? And then I find out it's translated. And now I find out that one of the great Japanese scholars of the 20th century, his name is Gajin Nagao, translated from various languages the Mahayana Sangraha into Japanese. And he also translated all the commentaries from Chinese, Tibetan, Sanskrit. into Japanese. So there's this huge work of translating this, embracing the Mahayana into Japanese, plus all the commentaries. And then several Western scholars

[23:36]

and one Japanese scholar have now translated all that into English. And the head of the project named Leslie Kawamura, who lives in Canada, recently died, and the manuscript's in his house. And so I'm trying to get in touch with the other translators to see if the people at the center of the enlightened universe can have a manuscript to study if it's not going to be published soon. If it's published, we'll of course get the book. So there is another translation in English, but it's not available yet. And there's a tremendous amount of commentary in English not available yet. In the meantime, we've got the text in English,

[24:42]

we've got the text in Chinese, we've got the text in Tibetan, and we have each other. And we have our concentrated minds and our interest in understanding our concentrated minds so that they can be transformed into Buddha's mind, right? So Zen meditation is one of the forms of Mahayana, or great vehicle meditation practice. In Zen, we study the deluded mind for the sake of realizing Buddhahood for the welfare of all beings. We don't just get concentrated

[25:48]

and sit blissfully in a state of concentration. We receive teachings about our mind and we use these teachings to study our mind so that we can understand and transform it. if you're ready, we can start with this embracing of the great vehicle. Are you ready? Yes. You can order the books by emailing rebassistant at sfcc.org

[26:48]

and we'll start ordering the books and we'll bring a truck over to the yoga room some night with the books. In the meantime, I have the first six sections for you. That you can have and take care of, if you like. Anybody want one? Okay. Thank you.

[28:12]

The Dharma is now coming to you. Pardon? You need some what? You need more? They're coming. Anybody has not received one yet? One over here. Has everyone received one now? Are there extras? There's a few people who are in the class who didn't come tonight. Okay, so this is the first chapter.

[30:02]

There's an introduction which I hope you'll allow me not to read to you at this time. If you really want to hear the introduction, it doesn't really have the teachings in it, but if you want to hear the introduction, let me know and I'll read it to you later. I'd like to start just by reading to you this first section, the first two sections. Starting with the first one. It is first explained that the support of the knowable is termed the container consciousness, ālaya-vijñāna. So ālaya, you know, like in Hīmā-ālaya, Hīmā-ālaya, Himalaya. So Hīmā is snow and ālaya is storehouse or abode.

[31:11]

It's the storehouse of the snow. So this is the storehouse consciousness. So the first thing that's being taught is that the support for the knowable is termed the container consciousness. This is taught in the sutra. Now Asanga is saying that there is a consciousness which supports everything that's known. It supports all of our normal conscious cognition. Everything we're normally aware of, it supports. This storehouse consciousness, however, is not conscious.

[32:14]

It is unconscious. It's a consciousness that's subliminal. It's a cognitive awareness that's unconscious, and it supports all conscious awareness. And then he says, where has the World Honored One, the Buddha, spoken of this consciousness? Where did he call it the container? In the basic verses that summarize the Abhidharma, Abhidharma means highest teaching or approach to the highest teaching or something like that. So in this Abhidharma literature, the Buddha said, from beginningless time,

[33:18]

there is a realm. It is the support of all things. Only if it exists do all the destinies exist and is there access to cessation. Only if it exists are all the different types of defiled consciousness possible. And only if it exists is there access to freedom, to nirvana, to peace, with all these things, with all these destinies that diluted consciousness leads to. And I might stop here and say that usually

[34:24]

the Sanskrit word that's being used here is, the root word is klesha. And klesha means defilement. It also means affliction. And the basic defilements, the basic afflictions, are greed, hate, and delusion. Or ignorance. Ignorance is the most basic affliction. Ignorance is the cause of our misery, along with greed and hate. But greed and hate always exist with ignorance. So those afflictions, especially ignorance, are present in all

[35:31]

states of consciousness except for beings who are no longer ignorant, who no longer, for example, believe in independent existence. So they actually can have states of consciousness which do not have that affliction. However, even in their states of consciousness, where they no longer believe in an independent self, their states of consciousness are also supported by this storehouse consciousness. So all the different destinies are based on this storehouse consciousness. And if we didn't have the storehouse consciousness,

[36:37]

we wouldn't be able to attain freedom, because it is by transforming the storehouse consciousness that freedom is attained. We can't have access to our unconscious storehouse consciousness. We can. We can't know it, but we can have access to it. We can transform it. And then again, in the Abhidharma Sutra, another verse says, the hidden ground upon which all things depend is the consciousness with all its seeds.

[37:39]

So the storehouse consciousness is all the seeds of all defiled mental states. It is the storehouse of all the seeds of all defiled mental states. But it actually is just all the seeds. It's not a storehouse in addition to all the seeds. It's not actually something in addition to all the things that support all deluded states of mind. It is just all the seeds of all deluded states of mind. Thus I call it container and have taught it to superior persons. So superior persons, you know,

[38:45]

Berkeley also is, you know, where you know, we don't have superior persons in Berkeley. Right? So it's difficult to say superior persons in Berkeley. So what do we mean by superior persons? I guess in this case what we mean is the ordinary people who would like to learn to be ordinary completely. The ordinary people, the ordinary deluded people who would like to understand their ordinary deluded minds. This is a teaching for them. It's not for ordinary people who want to be better than ordinary people. This teaching wouldn't be good for them.

[39:47]

For those people we have another program to try to talk them into being ordinary. Or at least to consider the possibility that they're not better than other people, and bigger and more important. So this is a teaching for bodhisattvas. This is a teaching for people who are living for the welfare of all beings. So a sangha calls them superior people. But they're not really superior. They don't think they're superior. I don't know why a sangha called them superior. Yes? A clarification question. If the storehouse is only all the seeds of the deluded state of mind, what's getting transformed there? Are the seeds getting transformed or is working on the seeds getting transformed?

[40:49]

The seeds are constantly being transformed whether there's practice involved or not. Every time, in every moment of awareness, all the seeds come up together with some number of particular active cognitions. And those active cognitions that come up with their support, which is all the seeds, and some seeds are particularly relevant to some states of active consciousness, but all the other seeds are there too. And when that consciousness, or when several consciousnesses come up with all the seeds, those consciousnesses simultaneously with the arising with their support, they perfume or permeate the ocean of seeds.

[41:59]

Every active state of consciousness transforms the storehouse consciousness simultaneous with their arising. And they cease together. And in the next moment, this storehouse consciousness, which has been transformed in the previous moment by the active consciousnesses which it's supported, arises to support more active consciousnesses, which it supports and which transform it. So it's always going through transformation. It's always evolving. But if the active consciousnesses are receiving no instruction from someplace to study the situation, to receive instruction about how to work with this active consciousness, then generally the contribution

[43:02]

of the active consciousness is to just make more seeds from more defiled states. So this teaching is coming to us so we can hear it, and when we hear it in our conscious, active consciousness, it is part of the dependent co-arising of those consciousnesses, and thereby this teaching gets into the alaya, into the storehouse, and transforms it now with seeds for enlightenment. And now there are seeds for enlightenment in among the seeds for deluded states. Ready for one more section? Why did the Buddha teach

[44:05]

that this consciousness is named container? Because the results of the defiled mental states of all sentient beings is concealed and stored up in all those mental states as their cause. Did you follow that? It's called the container because the results of all defiled mental states is the storehouse consciousness. The storehouse consciousness is also called the resultant. The storehouse consciousness is our living past. Yes?

[45:06]

The seeds are the result, yeah. First, the defiled states have the result. They perfume or they permeate the alaya. So the alaya is the result of them, but then it becomes a seed for them. So the results of all defiled states are concealed and stored in all these seeds as their cause. The results of the defiled states are concealed and stored up in the mental states as their cause. So the storehouse consciousness is the result of mental states and the storehouse consciousness,

[46:13]

which is the result of the mental states, is hidden and stored in the mental states as their cause. So the result of mental states is the cause of mental states. Yes? Suki? It's both. Pardon? It is kind of analogous to the collective consciousness except that it's both individual and common. It's not exactly collective, it's more like common. It's shared. Is it like a mind stream that you get when you're born? Is it like a mind stream

[47:13]

that you get when you're born? The language of you or me taking this with me is, I can't say yes to that, that I'm taking this with me. But this is, this teaching of this container consciousness is offered to make sense of rebirth. But how it does that is another big discussion which will take many classes. But one of the reasons

[48:16]

that this teaching is offered is to point out a way that the consequences of what we do are transmitted to the future, in this life and across many lives. So this consciousness is a result of defiled consciousness and it's hidden in defiled consciousness as a cause. It's a result that's a cause. And then, furthermore, it is called a container consciousness inasmuch as all sentient beings clinging to an image of selfhood are themselves contained within the confines of this consciousness. So we are all, it is contained in all of our conscious states

[49:16]

and all of our conscious states are contained in it. It supports all of our conscious states, all of our conscious states transform it. It is the result and cause of all of our conscious states. And we, inasmuch as we have a self, we live within this consciousness. If you had an active consciousness that didn't have any self-delusion in it, then that consciousness would not be living in the alaya. But deluded consciousnesses live in this storehouse consciousness. Yes? It looks like in that prior statement there was some kind of implicit definition of active consciousness.

[50:19]

Okay, active consciousness, do you want to hear about that? Yes. Or do you have a definition you'd like to offer? Well, in this circuit that you're talking about, it seems that active consciousness holds a certain meaning. Yeah, so I probably should say something about active consciousness. Active consciousness means basically six kinds of consciousness. Five sense consciousnesses, which are named after the sense organ. Eye consciousness, ear consciousness, nose consciousness, tongue consciousness, and skin or body consciousness. And tongue consciousness? Did I say tongue? Did I say nose? Did I do five? And then mind consciousness. Those are the six active consciousnesses. And they have specific objects.

[51:26]

Like the eye consciousness can be aware of a color. Now, if it were possible to have more than one eye consciousness, there could be more than one color that each of them is aware of. But generally, the teaching is that the eye consciousness is aware of an individual color in a given moment. The ear consciousness, an individual sound in a given moment. In the earlier teachings, it looked like the Buddha was understood as teaching that in a given moment there was just one of these. But the sutra, the sutra revealing the deep meaning of the Buddha's teaching, in the sutra is taught that there can be five sense consciousnesses in a given moment. And

[52:30]

generally speaking, there is mind consciousness with, if there's only one sense consciousness, there's mind consciousness also with it. So this school is saying there can be six active consciousnesses in a given moment, arising together, all being supported by this unconscious storehouse consciousness. And they all then will transform it. It's the support for all of them if there's six, and all six would transform it. And this active consciousness is defiled as a consequence of past consciousnesses that have had ignorant views. So that plant seeds, so that alaya supports the arising of defiled, deluded, afflicted consciousness.

[53:32]

Is that enough for now? Or do you have more questions? You're wondering about the origin of self-clinging? It's part of ignorance. Self-clinging is part of ignorance, right. Or self-clinging arises as a consequence of the belief that there is a self. So once there's a belief there is a self, then generally speaking, there's clinging to it. But does this scripture, does this teaching offer a story about how that happened? Yes, it does. But not right here.

[54:35]

A little bit later it tells a story about how this conceit, this exaggeration of a self of an I am, how that came to be and how it keeps going. And this alaya is key in that. But it's later in the text so if you can wait, maybe you can't, but I'm going to try to wait. Yes? I was thinking about karmic mind and wondering if you would distinguish between this and karmic mind? No, same. Karmic consciousness is afflicted consciousness, is deluded consciousness. Karmic consciousness, deluded consciousness, defiled mental states, afflicted mental states, synonyms.

[55:35]

Alaya vijnana. Should we say that alaya vijnana is part of karmic consciousness? I guess I would say no. So karmic consciousness is part of alaya vijnana? I would say no. So this is a big deal in this teaching here. Can you repeat the question? Distinguishing between if there was a distinction between karmic mind and what we're talking about here. Karmic mind, karmic consciousness, defiled mental states, afflicted mental states, afflicted minds, these are synonyms. She asked, is alaya part of the karmic consciousness?

[56:36]

I said no. She said, are defiled states part of alaya? Is karmic consciousness part of alaya? I would say no. And there is a teaching that living beings, all they have is karmic consciousness. So according to this I would say no, they have something more than karmic consciousness. They have an unconscious that they don't know they have unless they've been tipped off which supports karmic consciousness. So I'm going to have two consciousnesses. One that's active karmic consciousness where we think we do stuff or don't do stuff. And again, me thinking that I do stuff is an afflicted point of view. But there are, that's karmic consciousness.

[57:37]

That's where karma is generated. Alaya doesn't generate karma. Alaya is the resultant. So there's affliction, ignorance. Alaya is not really ignorance. Alaya carries the results. Our unconscious, this unconscious mind carries the results of all actions that are defiled by ignorance. But the actions themselves are not actually ignorance. They're what we do when we're afflicted by ignorance. When we're ignorant we suffer and then we think we can do something about it. And the results of that activity is stored in our unconscious which supports the arising of another state of active karmic consciousness which is trying again to do something about this state of affliction. But the alaya itself

[58:38]

is not a karmic generator. It is the resultant. And it is a cause of karmic consciousness. But it's not karmic consciousness itself. So this unconscious mind is not karmic consciousness. So when we say that all sentient beings just have karmic consciousness, in the sense that that's all they know they have, everything they know they have is karmic consciousness. Everything you know you have, everything you think is going on, is delusion. But that isn't the whole story. That sense that you have of the world and yourself and your life is supported by the results of all your past actions, all your past minds. They all had consequences and all their consequences are available to support your present life. And the way we deal

[59:40]

with our present karmic consciousness transforms our past, which supports different karmic consciousnesses, which again can be treated differently. And our past then can be transformed so that our past becomes more and more supportive of further study of our karmic consciousness. So our past can be transformed and transformed and transformed and transformed until it's transformed into the Buddha mind. Yes? Questioner – The results of actions of all beings in the planet, let's say, constantly are constantly forming this storehouse that are part of me, right? Questioner – Oh, the results of all beings

[60:41]

and their actions are part of at a certain level? The results, this is, again, it looks like this class is going to jump around in this chapter quite a bit. a couple of people have brought things that are at the end of the chapter, but I will say briefly that the results of all the karmic consciousnesses of all sentient beings for all time, that is the physical world that we live in. What we think is our physical world that we live in, that we share, that is the results of all of our action. We're in it, yes. The world that we think we're in and that we agree we're in, that world that we share, that is the results

[61:42]

of all of our action. And that is the basic affliction. And that is not in what I've given you so far, but that is carried by another mind which is called defiled thinking. And that defiled thinking mind carries the ignorance along with these active consciousnesses. And Alaya supports that function too. Yes? Yes? No.

[62:53]

The seeds are... There's one way to talk about it. Alaya is all the perfumes. So speaking of Alaya as the sum total of all the perfumes or all the permeations of active consciousness, that's one way to talk about it. That's talking about it as a result. But it's also a cause. And when you talk about it as a cause, then it's all the seeds. So it's all the seeds for all states and as a result of all the states, it's the perfumes or the permeations. So it's all the permeations or it's all the seeds. Looking at it from the point of view of effect, it's permeation. Looking at it from the point of view of cause, it's seeds. It's both. Our unconscious is both. It carries the results and the results then can be causes. The final action

[64:06]

or the action would result in a seed that at some point would come to fruition. So what you're saying is that that kind of one-to-one relationship isn't the model you're talking about. It's more that there's a perfume that's created and at some point that made with other perfumes created a seed. No. I would say there is a one-to-one between the perfuming and the seed but there's not a one-to-one between the action and what the seed will support because the seed is mixed with lots of other seeds plus there are also possibility of planting seeds which are not active defiled consciousness seeds but Dharma seeds. It isn't just that

[65:07]

you do something it goes into a lie and then it's going to come back up and support something like it. It doesn't necessarily work that way. The fact that it doesn't work like that allows transformation. Otherwise there would be no possibility of transforming it because evil things would go down there and they just come back up as evil. But it doesn't work like that. How it works is our study which it's really complicated but also quite worked out. Yes. I would actually suggest don't take it literally. Thank you. Because it's not a container

[66:08]

in addition to what it contains. It's the assembly it's the bringing together of all the consequences without something in addition to all the consequences. Or you could say another word is another word is the resultant. And the seeds are the perfumings are results. So it's all the results and as the results become the support for the arising of new states it's all the seeds.

[67:09]

And there's nothing in addition to that that it is. And your question why call it a container? Maybe that was just a mistake Buddha made. As we see ourselves as a self then the container is something in addition. Then we feel contained. But we're not. There actually isn't a container in which we feel in addition to all that's contained. There's just all that's contained or all that's assembled. It could also be called the assembly consciousness.

[68:13]

The great assembly of all karmic consequences. It can also be called the past. Or our past. Yes. So this kind of smells like epistemology. But it's very interesting because when I study epistemology and Western philosophy it's really all about things that the mind can grasp. But this seems more to be about a bigger way of knowing epistemology is what's knowable and this is sort of like what's knowable in a bigger sense. What's experienceable. Where our experiences come from. Is that sort of a real parallel? One second. Did you want to say something before I respond to him? No, I can wait. So if you talk about epistemology

[69:20]

as a discussion of the basis or the support of knowledge then this is an epistemological statement saying this is what supports ordinary conscious knowledge. But this itself isn't knowledge. This is a support of knowledge. This is the consequence of knowledge and the cause of knowledge. Knowledge comes because it's supported by this and knowledge comes from other things too. Because this thing is the result of past knowledges. So knowledge is based on past knowledges which this isn't exactly past knowledge. This is the result of past knowledge. Past knowledge is gone. Our past is gone. In the sense that everything we've thought is gone.

[70:21]

However, everything we've thought has consequence. All of our karmic actions have consequence. The karmic actions are gone but their consequences are right here. So that, in a sense, is our past. Our living past. Our influential past. Our supported past. That's supporting all these states. Everything we think is based on past action. And that doesn't mean that past action determines everything we think because somebody can say something to us which would completely change the way our present mind arises. But our present mind is based on our past minds but also it's influenced by teachings which are not necessarily

[71:24]

anything we thought of before. And they didn't come from karmic consciousness. They came from transformed karmic consciousness. Karmic consciousness did not think up these teachings. These teachings were given by transformed karmic consciousnesses. But even more than transformed karmic consciousness, these teachings did not come from the storehouse consciousness. They came from the transformed storehouse consciousness which received teachings from outside of it. So you don't need to bring this paper with you next week, but you certainly may. But I intend to continue this little introductory 8-6 sections next week and then leap to another part of

[72:28]

Chapter 1. Yes? I just wanted to offer something in regard to the container language. I was out in my garden doing some gardening and so I had the occasion to be dealing with some seeds. And not being a very good gardener, I looked up some of the conditions for germination of seeds and one of the conditions for the germination of a seed was to have a container. One of them was to rinse, one of them was warmth, one of them was space, and one of them was a container. The last was a period of no light. So in this case, the container is the other seeds. There's not something in addition to the seeds,

[73:30]

but all the seeds are in relationship to all the other seeds. In that sense, the seeds contain each other and influence each other. Our past influences our past. But also, the way we are practicing with our present consciousness simultaneously affects our past right now. Thank you very much. Thank you very much.

[74:17]

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