Because, as you know, according to Stavastava Adams, you can't change people. Because each dharma is a thing in itself. So if we change people, people would be confused. Of course we use masks, I suppose. Anyway... Okay, that's Chanda, and that's how... At the beginning... beginning to talk about how it relates to the other ones. Barsha, you already know, I guess, that the contact talks about the fact that these three objects of consciousness, the consciousness and the organ, can act as though they are touching. In other words, they can act in rapport. As if they were touching. They're not really touching, of course, because that doesn't make so much sense. Because in the case of physical things, they have a location and mind doesn't.

[01:05]

So there's a problem about saying that mind has a location in them because it was touching. And yet somehow they can relate. The magic of human karma. Next is prajna or mati. It's discernment of dharmas. And there's always some discernment of dharmas. And even when there isn't any, That's the discernment of dharmas. Namely, your discernment of dharmas is so weak that there isn't any. That's the level of discernment that's going on. Most people can discern with very little practice, can discern feelings, for example, versus... Most people can discern mental versus physical things. That's the first level of discernment that's practiced. The first thing, the first mindfulness practice to meditate is... mindfulness or meditation on the body. Mindfulness of the body.

[02:06]

And of course, according to Mahayana Buddhism, it's an illusory discrimination between body and mind, but still you can start by meditation on the body, which shows people can discriminate between body and mind quite early on. So how is this some discernment of dharmas? Then later, a lot of people can catch on to discernment of feelings. So almost everyone has some discernment. And through practice of meditations, you can develop sharper and sharper discernment. And when it's perfect, you have what's called pure prajna. You've mastered abhidharma. Yes? And what? Perception just catches the mark. Discernment knows all the dharmas. For example, discernment knows more than just the object of perception. Perception just catches the object of consciousness.

[03:08]

Perception gets the mark of the object of consciousness. Discernment knows more than just the object of consciousness. Discernment knows all the dharma's present when it's fully developed. Prajna knows the whole story. Discernment of dharmas, not the extraction or noting of the mark. Prajna also not only knows the mark of things, but knows the relationship among dharmas, because that's also part of what they are. The difference between prajna and perception is know any relationships?

[04:14]

Well, it does know the relationships, but it also knows more than one, it knows the whole field. See, because it's not, perception only can do one at a time. If only one object of perception in a given moment, that's the way the system works. But there's not one cognition in it, there's not one Dharma being cognized at the time, because mind cognizes the entire field. So cognition is not the same as perception. Thinking is bigger than perception. Thinking talks about the whole thing that's happening, the way the whole mind's working, that's Chaitana. So Prajna has a scope like... like the whole mind does. What?

[05:19]

Both. It concludes both. Prajna can discern conscious and unconscious simultaneously. For prajna, the line, the borderline between the conscious and the unconscious is just another event. Prajna sees, oh, the conscious goes out to here because that's what they call conscious. So that's these four dharmas, is what they call consciousness. And then there's other ones, what they call unconscious. But prajna, that discrimination is just another, it's these one, two, three, four, and a limitation, five, and a bunch of other stuff, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. the arising of the limitation of what's usually called perception is just another kind of event, another possible kind of thing that happens. When Prajna is acting, that could not be a self?

[06:32]

When Prajna is acting, Prajna sees that all the self just like all other dharmas, it is not trapped into being existent or non-existent. And therefore, you can't really grasp it. God just sees that although this thing seems to exist, you can't really get it. And also, you could say it doesn't exist, but even though it doesn't exist, you can pick it up and play with it. But non-existence is things are quite available even when they're supposedly non-existent. And when they're supposedly existent, if you try to get a hold of them, somehow, the closer you get, the more sure you are you can't get them. Prognosis sees that, because prognosis sees how the mind actually works. And the way it works is that things are ungraspable. If they're called a self. The self is ungraspable. I just actually switched over into Mahayana there for a second.

[07:34]

That, uh, The Mahayana Prajna sees you can't even get the dharmas. But the Hinayana Abhidharma sees that you can't get the self. It doesn't say there isn't one. And Prajna is the one, the aspect of mind that we denote for the fact when you actually see that by the nature of what makes up a self, as soon as you're about to grasp it, you realize that actually you're grasping Paiskandas. And you can't grasp Paiskandas. But if you think you can grasp five skandhas, then your prajna, your discernment is very weak. And actually, your discernment is not really pure at all. Because you think, yes, I can grasp five skandhas, and yes, I have got a self. Because the self is five skandhas being grasped. It's the idea that you can get a hold of five skandhas, that's a self. And that's a certain kind of discernment, but it's false discernment, it's the palpa. false discrimination.

[08:36]

But when you see it, you've got five scounders instead of a self, then where'd the self go? What's a self? Is it something in addition to five scounders? No. Is it one of the five scounders? Yes. So why do you say the self includes five since it goes in one of them? Self, it can be a perception. Self can be an impulse. to include the rest of them. But that goes among them, so really you can't get a hold of it. When you see that, the self, although it doesn't disappear, it's kind of like, what do you call those flip-flop designs, you know what I mean? Like these things. What do you get? Well... Not... It goes like this. These things... He's kind of gone. Can you put the first player in here?

[09:54]

Do you know how you can make those? Can you make that thing go back and forth? even if I put it on. Self is like that. Forward around and back on, keep jumping back and forth. Self is like that. You can bring it out. It's supposed to be fully five scounders. But then also, if you look another way, it goes back into the five scounders. You can't tell which it is. To say that it's only the five scounders is kind of wrong, because the nature of that concept is that it can come up without five scounders. But then you turn another way, and it goes back in.

[11:07]

So to say that it's just the same, you know, in one sense, it's not an ordinary idea. It's an idea that has a strange quality. So immobilistic is correct in its sense. Because self, it has to be based on this idea of self-reference. Self-reference is a thing that's in the self, right? But it's changed. So the example is, we probably have two kinds of sets. We have regular sets and self-containing sets. So one set is a set of mushrooms. A set of mushrooms is not a mushroom. That's a regular set. But then there's also a set of sets. And the set of sets is one of the members of its set.

[12:09]

So then what's going on? So self is like that. Self is a set of sets. So it's included in itself. It's self-includes itself. It's self-swallowing, that's what they call it. So in terms of five skandhas, the set of five skandhas can be constructed in such a way that you have a set of five skandhas and it equals self, right? And self belongs in one of those sets. It's a perception or whatever. So it's outside and it's inside. It keeps flashing back and forth. To deny that it includes the other ones is false because that's a definition of self, is that it includes the other ones, it grasps the other ones. But then it follows itself, so it doesn't.

[13:16]

It's inside and outside at the same time, so how can you get hold of it? You can't really get in there and say, well, now I've got it just as a notion because it's a funny notion because it says, well, I really include all notions plus I include the other four skandas too. So let go of me. So that's the funny thing about set is that, I mean about a self, is that a self... Do you see? A self is a special kind of thing because a self is oftentimes considered to be including five skandhas. That's grasping skandhas, okay? But it... It doesn't really because it's a memory. But, and you could say, well, I just go into one of those skandhas where it belongs, for example, into the perception skanda, and then I can get a hold of it, right? So although I may not be able to find a self that includes all five skandhas, at least I can find a self that's inside, that's a little jewel inside the perceptual skanda.

[14:22]

But as soon as you grab it, you say, it's got to you, hands off. I'm not really belonging, you can't really get a hold of me because actually, I'm called self. I don't really belong in here because I actually include the rest of them. So although you put it in there, you have to keep pulling it out. So self is neither self-swallowing, a self-swallowing set, nor is it an ordinary set that belongs to its members, that has members which are different from it. That's why you can't grasp it. And perception, I mean, and Prajna sees this, understands that. When Prajna understands that, based on dharmas, seeing how dharmas works, that's called, you know, you see five skandhas are not empty, but five skandhas are not self.

[15:24]

In the next stage, you see that the dharmas themselves are all empty. Okay? Then that's the bodhisattva sees that, avalokiteshava sees that. Okay, then we just talked about prajna, sparsha, now smriti. And smriti is... Oh, by the way, I mentioned before, Vasubandhu, he makes a discrimination among these ten. He says that sparsha... Vedana... Chaitanya, Samya, and Manuskara, those five are in all minds.

[16:32]

And he says that the Chanda, Adimukti, Smriti, Prajna, and Samadhi, those are... in a sense, can be discriminated aside from the other universals under the category of object determining. So they're somewhat specialized within the universals in that they're all related to determining the object. Chanda, interest in the object. Adimukti, adverting to the object. Smriti, remembering the object. Simani, one-pointedness on the object. And prajna, discerning the object. So, in a sense, he says that these five are somewhat particular. Now, although they're particular, I don't think he said that they don't arise in every mind. But rather, their function is sort of particular, more particular.

[17:39]

And in particular, they seem to share this object-oriented function. Whereas the other ones are not so object-oriented. Sparsha, the first five, so we have ten universals, right? He's discriminating among these ten universals, the first five being really universal, and the second five being somewhat more particular. Did you not hear which ones they were? Okay, now snoruti is called mindfulness or memory. And once again, it's in all minds. In fact, all minds are mindful. All minds are mindful and all minds have samadhi. And that's the good thing about both samadhi and memory, is that you don't need to do anything to be mindful.

[18:54]

You're always mindful anyway. So what they do is the regular mindfulness, which you always inherit, and mindfulness, which is, you know, part of it yeah it depends on whether whether this mindfulness is just the random mindfulness which you always will inherit I don't know if I should call it random you can take that word random away but whether the whether it's the mindfulness which is always present or whether it's mindfulness which says it's mindful so there's a mindfulness which you have to have every moment and there's a mindfulness which clearly knows that it's that it's mindful What's the difference?

[19:58]

It may be that somehow the organization, you could say an organization man, organization person mindfulness versus the mindfulness which comes up in any mind, organized or disorganized. I think mindfulness, you could have three kinds. You could have mindfulness that everyone has every moment, but a lot of people think they're not mindful. If you're mindful of someone who says they are mindful, then you could have another mindfulness which is not associated with outflows. In other words, a mindfulness which is developed. But there's intermediate mindfulness of the beginning meditator. They're trying to remember.

[21:00]

they're actually remembering their meditation object somehow. It has to do with intention. That's what he's saying has to do with adimoksha or adimukti. That you're remembering the meditation object. So it means somehow that you're mindful of something that you've chosen, of something you're intending to direct your attention to and to remember. Your mind is always directed to something, and yet it's as though you can direct it to something in particular. You can direct it to compassion. You can direct it to being one-pointed. Your mind is always one-pointed, but you can direct it to being one-pointed. So you direct it towards being what it is anyway. And you choose some expression or representation of the way it is anyway. For example, you can choose your breath.

[22:10]

You can choose a poem. You can choose a blue disc. You can choose universal compassion. You can choose the thought of enlightenment. And you're always choosing something to be mindful of and yet you can choose something in particular and keep choosing it again and again and again and again. You can choose something and be mindful of it forever. So a Buddha He's always, we say, his mindfulness is never interrupted. And actually, nobody's mindfulness is ever interrupted, and yet a Buddha's mindfulness is never interrupted. And so the difference is that a Buddha says, my mindfulness is never interrupted.

[23:24]

And the Buddha means it. So if you can say your mindfulness is never interrupted and sincerely say it, then you're a Buddha. Or actually, you're one of these great bodhisattvas that's discussed in the beginning of the... Pancha. These are highly developed bodhisattvas also can attain that uninterrupted mindfulness. It says their flashes of mindfulness are uninterrupted. Because again, mindfulness happens every moment. It's not a pedal point, it just goes... Again and again you're able to do it. And you choose what you're mindful of. Thought of enlightenment, basically, in Mahayana Buddhism, to constantly be mindful of the thought of enlightenment.

[24:35]

So, if you say that it's always, you're always there, then that's, maybe you need more than one factor to do that. And mindfulness itself doesn't actually carry the capacity to also know that it keeps doing that. So this mindfulness works in coordination with samadhi, with chanda, with harimukti, with samnya. Samnya, which marks in accordance with the mindfulness. So all of them are cooperating together to say, this mind is the mind of Buddha. Always has been, always will be. Trinity remembers to do that. He's mindful to do that. Manasakara is...

[25:46]

Again, sounds a lot like maybe, since it sounds like two other ones, it sounds like adimukti or adimoksha, and it also sounds like chanda, I mean, a cetana. It's a bending of the mind or applying the mind towards the object. But you can discriminate it from cetana, in that cetana is not just talking about the bending of the object towards the object, bending the mind towards the object, talking about a more general characteristic than just, like for example, let's say my hand is bending towards the object, but there's lots of other stuff going on. My mind is bending towards the object of the consciousness, but the resolution

[26:47]

of my activity for this moment may have very little to do with the fact that my mind is bent towards the object. So part of the shape and a very important part of the shape of consciousness is that the mind is bent towards the object. It's a very important shape in the whole picture. But the actual karma of the moment is much more than just that particular aspect, which once again underlines the fact that the external object or the internal object, the object of consciousness, is not the main point. Although the mind is bent towards the object, and if this object is something which is painful, the mind bends towards a painful object. What happens?

[27:51]

The karma of the moment is not totally determined by this bending towards this object. It's determined by all the other forces. In fact, although this is bending towards the object and the object is painful, because of other factors, they may not be angry about it at all. The mind may continue in a very kind, and equanimous mode, even though the mind is bent towards an obnoxious stimulus. So that's one way you can discriminate, bending the mind towards the object from the whole lay of the land. It's just one little bump, although it's an extremely important bump because for a lot of people, manaskara is very close what they do. For a lot of people, the mind bends towards the object and the perception is bent towards the object.

[29:02]

And they live in the perceptual world for manatakara bending. So for a lot of people, everything is bending towards the perceptual world. Their whole life is committed to the perceptual world. That's where all their energy goes. So if it's an obnoxious stimulus, It's almost the same as saying they're getting angry. Their ideas and their notions say the object is important, the object's the reason. So a lot of their other ideas and impulses line up with the object. They're externally oriented. So in that case, for such a person, Manaskara would be very close to delineating the line of Chaitanya. Manuskara would talk very much about kind of like the artery of the consciousness. And the rest of the body would very much follow where the mind is bent towards the object. But for a person who didn't organize their life that way and didn't see it that way, this would used to be a minor point, a minor vein in a whole mountain.

[30:08]

Is that clear? Yes? It says towards the object and so it's the perceptual realm. But what's getting bent towards the perceptual realm is not the perceptual realm. It's the perceptual realm and other stuff's getting bent towards it. What other stuff? Anyway, it's influencing other aspects of the mind. So it provides an opportunity by bending itself. Something gets banged with it, but not everything. But in some mind, as I say, almost everything comes along with it. One of these things I thought was that the equivalent of

[31:16]

I want you to bring it up next week to talk to me after class.

[31:27]

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