April 13th, 2006, Serial No. 03300

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Is this the last class in this series? I wanted to begin by thanking you for keeping me so well informed when you weren't able to come to class. Quite a few people are not here tonight, but almost all of them, I think, told me about it beforehand. And two of them didn't, and you know who you are, wherever you are. Also, I wanted to tell people that I'm scheduled on various places. I've announced that I will be giving a talk at Greenwich this Sunday, but I won't be. I didn't remember that I was supposed to give a talk then. I bought tickets to go to L.A. for Grandparents' Day. I won't give you a talk at Green Gulch this Sunday. And I also want to tell you that on Monday there's a class starting at Green Gulch which will be in the same area of studying the nature of cognition and karma.

[01:22]

And also Donald suggested that I offer a class on karma here in the summer. So there's that class at Green Gulch, and then there's a class here in the summer on karma. And what else? Some other thing. Oh, do you want me to draw attention to you or not? Yes? How about you, Paul? Yes. Well, I'll be out of town, but somewhere in the Bay Area on Sunday, Tracy and Paul are going to be married. Can I say one thing about that? Sure. You can start now. Up there, I think in the same... While I wanted the attention drawn, I thought you'd be interested to know that when you came on the day, all this issue from the summit, you hardly could speak.

[02:36]

Literally, literally that was mouthing down on one view, writing the whole thing without saying a single word, it'd be great. Thank you for understanding. The instruction which I gave towards the beginning of the class from the Buddha of training the mind thus, in the seen, there will be just a seen, in the heard, there will be just a heard, in the smelled, just a smelled, in the tasted, just a tasted, in the touched, just a touched, and in the mentally cognized, justimentally cognized. That kind of instruction is not particularly theoretical. It's a cognitive, it's a conceptual instruction to conceptual cognition about how to curtail conceptual cognition and develop tranquility.

[03:50]

But this class actually has been not so much practice-oriented but rather theoretical. And so the first part of the class was teaching the theory of cognition, which is a kind of philosophy called epistemology. And in the last few classes, we're spending also theoretical, but the theory of the functions of mind, and particularly the theory of action. theory of karma. And some people feel that without the theory of cognition and the theory of karma, the path of the Buddha cannot be realized. Awakening depends on studying these theoretical matters and then finding ways to practice

[04:57]

related to the theory. It can't be all theory, but... So these are somewhat theoretical so that people understand what the practice is. And so we... I have some more of these. If anybody doesn't have these charts, I have some more here if anybody needs any. And so these charts are... The first part is charts of the sense organs and the sense fields. And then starting with the 12th of the 72 items, we have mind. And under that category of mind or citta is all the different types of cognition which we've been studying, all these different...

[06:04]

ways of knowing fall under that one heading there. So again, this type of knowing, this basic type of knowing is basically just knowing in a sense of knowing that something exists. It's the knowledge of an existence of something, the knowledge of the existence of the object. and as we've discussed sometimes people have a knowledge of the existence of an object that doesn't exist and that's called a wrong cognition but then moving from the cognition of or knowing things that don't exist then there's a gradual evolution of knowing to be more and more and more and more accurate ways of knowing what exists and how things exist. So the most wrong way of knowing how things exist is that something that doesn't exist, you don't know how it doesn't exist.

[07:11]

You think it does. That's way off. But then even things that do exist, that you know them, you have various levels of clarity about the way they actually exist. And the highest level is where you have the perfectly clear knowledge of something. And so under this chart, that's only one item in this chart. The majority of this chart is about various mental factors that accompany that basic knowing. So all these different types of knowing we've talked about, sense perception, sense cognitions, they are accompanied by mental factors. And the mental factors they're accompanied by on this chart. Sense perceptions, we only have sense perceptions, we don't have sense conceptions.

[08:12]

Sense perceptions are accompanied by things on this chart. These basic states of consciousness which know the existence of the world. They are accompanied by mental factors. There are no examples, as far as I know, of a cognition arising without coming up with mental factors. Mental cognition is of two types. What are the two types of mental cognition? Direct and conceptual. Direct and conceptual. Yeah, right. Direct and conceptual. Direct means perception, mental perception, and mental conception. Okay, those are the two types of mental. And those two also arise with mental factors.

[09:16]

So it's basically, you could say basically There's basically two kinds of cognitions, and one way you can say there's two kinds is there's sense cognitions and mind cognitions. Another way you can say it is that there's perceptual cognitions and conceptual cognitions. Okay? That's two different ways of splitting all states of cognition into two parts, two types. All these states of cognition arise with mental factors. Without the arising of mental factors, these cognitions, the knowing, wouldn't be able to function. It would be a knowing with no function. It turns out there is no knowing with no function. Even knowing something that doesn't exist arises with mental factors and has a function. And its function is suffering.

[10:21]

Suffering. And the clearest, the clearest, most accurate perceptions or cognitions also arise with mental factors. And they function too in a way that's called peace and freedom. So there's the main, you can say the main cognition is the basic cognition. The fundamental thing about cognition is that it knows. So the most basic mind or the main mind or the fundamental mind is the basic knowing. And then it arises with these mental factors. And the mental factors know also. And they know the object in different ways or they know different aspects of the object. So I just noted that these different types of cognition we talked, that we had that chart of 11 down and 7 across, those, like I said, 77 different types of cognition that we talked about.

[11:54]

Each of those arises with mental factors. So one of the relationships between the main cognition and mental factors is that they arise together. And never one without the other. You don't have mental factors floating around without the basic knowing of the object. And vice versa. So it's one of the things they have in common if they arise together. Another thing they have in common is they have basically the same nature. So if the mind is a direct perception, if the basic cognition is a direct perception, then the mental factors will be direct perceptions. If the mind is a conceptual cognition, the mental factors will be conceptual cognitions. They have the same basic nature.

[12:57]

Anything they share? Well, actually, I'm going to ask you, have you ever had any other ideas about what else they might share or any other similarities between basic cognition and the mental factors? Any other ideas about what they might...how they might be similar or share? If it doesn't come quickly, I'll just go on. Oh, you didn't, that wasn't, that was just moving your hand? Or you moved it again? Okay, just don't move, otherwise I'll call on you. Okay, so another thing that they share, they're the same object. Same object. Another thing they share, they're the same duration. They rise together and cease together. So they lack the same amount of time. And what else? Um... This one, this says they have the same aspect.

[14:08]

I'm not clear how to explain the difference between that being the same aspect and the same object. Sorry. OK. So now I'd like to look at this chart. And if you look at the chart, this particular chart has under mental factors. It says mental faculties, by the way. That's not a very good translation. I think it's better to translate it as mental factors. And I could talk a long time about the problem of saying faculties. But the main thing that I think the problem with faculties it's a little bit too substantial it sounds a little bit too much like uh sense organ or something i think mental factors better so again these mental factors each have a specific function in dealing with a particular object a particular quality of the object

[15:19]

Yes. You want one of these? Sure. So, and in the first category, there's feeling, conception, will or volition, touch or contact, and wish. intellect, mindfulness, attention, decision, and concentration in this presentation. So these mental factors constitute the inherent makeup without which, as I mentioned before, cognition will not be able to function. And they also involve determining or ascertaining the individual aspects of the objective field. So I'd like to start with number 13 of this tonight, feeling.

[16:28]

Those of you who are familiar with what we call the five aggregates or the five skandhas, which I've spoken of in the Heart Sutra, so one of the basic models that Buddha taught about how to, or templates about how to look at experience was in terms of five aggregates. The first aggregate corresponds to what's under number one form. First aggregate includes physical data and the physical organs. That's the first aggregate. Second aggregate is feeling. Number 13, third aggregate is conception or idea, number 14. All that. And the fourth aggregate includes everything else on the chart except number 12. Number 12 is the fifth aggregate. So the way this is set up is that the one, well, three, three of the dhammas or three of the elements on this list constitute an entire aggregate, an entire skanda.

[17:46]

So those three are very important. One is feeling. Feeling is so important that it gets to be a whole aggregate. Another one is perception or conception, actually. gets to be a whole aggregate, and another one that gets to be a whole aggregate is mind. And then all the other ones fall under the fourth aggregate, which is called, in Sanskrit, samskara, or the mental formations aggregate. So all those mental factors or mental formations go in the fourth aggregate. And then the fifth aggregator is number 12, which is the basic cognition. So that, of course, is all-embracing and most fundamental.

[18:48]

So I'd like to look at feeling and why feeling is so important. Number five is number 12 on this. Number five is the basic cognition, the basic knowing, the basic awareness that something exists, that the object exists. But it doesn't get like, I know Bernard exists. That's the basic thing. But getting into the details, the detailed aspects of how he exists... that moves into the other mental formations. And so one's very important is the feeling that I have when I look at him. Another one is the conception I have of him, or the way I recognize him, the way I re-cognize him. So there's a basic cognition, and then there's a re-cognition of the basic cognition.

[19:51]

And then there's many, many other mental factors, all of which go under one heading, which is called in Sanskrit samskara, which means basically formations or dispositions. And so I will try to relate actually that whole mass of samskaras to the one element of feeling. So feeling is, which can also be called sensation, and also could be called experience in sanskrit it's called beta now feeling sensation or experience it is a distinct cognition which arises with every mind every mind has a feeling every every basic cognition has a feeling cognition with it all states of cognition have this feeling cognition

[20:57]

this feeling mental factor. And it is the distinct cognition that is an experience of either pleasure, pain, or neither pleasure or pain. Cognition. Every time the mind knows something, it also experiences that thing as, or it also has an experience of that thing, and that experience it has of the thing. the way it knows that thing, the way it knows is painful, pleasurable, or neutral. I like this statement that the feeling, the object of the feeling is not pain or pleasure.

[22:06]

The object of the feeling is the object of the cognition. The feeling is a feeling of pain about the object. There could also be a cognition of a painful feeling. The feeling is actually to experience the object as painful or pleasurable. And once again, feeling is an inherent quality of experience pleasant in every Every cognition. In sense cognition, direct perception of a color or a smell, there is a feeling there. The color of the smell will be experienced as painful. Did I say the color of the smell? The color or the smell will be experienced as painful, pleasurable, or neither.

[23:07]

Neutral. an idea or, you know, some other mental phenomena, there will be a feeling of pain, pleasure, and neutral arising with it. The general function of feeling is to fully experience the ripening effects of our previous actions Feeling is retribution. The way you feel, you don't intend to have pleasure. I mean, you do intend to have pleasure, but when you feel pleasure, it isn't because you intended that pleasure or you made that pleasure happen in that moment. Feeling comes to you.

[24:09]

It comes to you as a result of past action. Yes. The ripening effects of our previous action, of our previous karma. You said feeling is retribution? I said feeling is retribution. Now, there's a total experience of the moment, which you can say is the cognition is an experience. But the cognition is basically, it is the experience, but it is the knowing part of the experience. The fundamental main mind is the knowing of the object, which is this knowing of the object, which is constituting the ground or the overall container for the experience.

[25:11]

But the feeling is actually the experience of the object, and experiencing the object as painful, pleasurable, neutral, but what you're actually experiencing, you're actually experiencing the ripening of past karma. So the way, one of the main ways we experience the ripening of karma is as pain and pleasure. In other words, karma doesn't just ripen like, you know, like, well, you did something last Tuesday, or or you think this is the yoga room or something, it ripens as a feeling. It ripens as pain and pleasure and neutral sensation. That's the way it ripens. That's the basic way it ripens in terms of feeling. And there's always a little bit of ripening in every moment.

[26:14]

Yes? Yes. This feeling is like the embodied uh consequence of past action that's that's what you can say this feeling is it's like you you do something and as a consequence of what you've done there will be a body there will be an embodied experience of it which we call feeling Not just a mental concept?

[27:19]

Well, if the overall state of consciousness is a conceptual cognition, then the feeling will also be a conceptual cognition. However, the conceptual cognition is based on an actual object. Okay? And the feeling of pain, for example, you could have a conceptual cognition of pain But it would be based on an actual painful sensation. So that's part of the reason why people are maybe surprised to hear that there's a feeling in every moment because when you have your study of epistemology comes in handy now because if you're having a a direct perception that's inattentive of a color blue, for example, you don't ascertain that you're perceiving the blue even though you are.

[28:23]

At the same time, there's a mental factor that arises with that called feeling, and you have a painful feeling about the blue. However, since if you have a conceptual, a perceptual cognition of blue, and it's inattentive, you will have a conceptual, you will have perceptual cognition of feeling, of pain, and it will be inattentive. In other words, you won't know it. You won't be able to ascertain it. That's why people may be surprised that you have feelings all the time, because usually you don't ascertain it. If you were able to ascertain the color that you're seeing in direct perception, you would also be able to ascertain the feeling you had about the color. So I'm suggesting to you, according to this, that whenever you have a direct perception of a color, you have a feeling about it. and and you're feeling about it is not just a feeling about the color but you're feeling about it is actually that that the maturing of your past karma is maturing on you while you're looking at the color it's not really about the color the color is make you feel blue that was nice the color doesn't make you feel pain your past karma makes you feel blue

[29:40]

Your past karma maturing as you're feeling leads to you experiencing the blue as painful or experiencing the blue as pleasurable or experiencing blue with a neutral sensation that depends on the maturing of the past karma. And in direct perception you might not know it. If it's a conceptual cognition, like I see the green here. It's green. That's a conceptual cognition. That green is conceptual cognition. So the feeling about that would be a conceptual cognition too. And therefore I might know better that I feel good about that green if I did. Because we tend to be more aware of our conceptual cognitions. They're not so often inattentive. As a matter of fact, they're almost never inattentive. Even when you're mindless, when you actually experience it, you can often be pointed out to you that you did have that experience and you can remember it.

[30:43]

But if I had the direct perception of this green and it's inattentive, I would also be inattentive of the feeling I had about it. Does that make sense? You can try to clarify this. I'm kind of thinking, if you can experience Your feeling is, in other words, it's not just a mental concept. You let that in the body physically. All these things are embodied. But the body experiences happen in dependence on sense organs. And body experiences are about five things, and pain is not on the list.

[31:51]

So feelings don't come in red, blue, and so on, or touches, tastes, sounds, smells, and so on. That's not the way feelings come. Feelings come positive, negative, and neutral. You can have feelings about colors and about touches, but the feeling is actually, it doesn't have, its organ is not the sense organ. It's a good time to keep working this. If you have more questions. Yes, Elizabeth? Years ago, there was a science program on a physiological level that emotions were the actual way your body communicates chemically. So that's the same category, but it is a physiological

[32:57]

It's fine to make it physiological. Seeing in color is also going to be seen as a physiological thing. Electromagnetic radiation stimulates this area of your eye called the retina, creates a chemical reaction. The reaction creates electrical impulses that go to the brain, and they're interpreted as blue, let's say correctly. That's a chemical reaction leading to a chemical reaction, leading to electrical reaction, stimulating the brain, which gives rise to a cognition, an awareness of blue. And the cognition, there's some debates about, is the cognition just physical? But it's totally embodied. Okay? Okay? Now, it is also the case that there can be a physiological or chemical reaction in the brain which gives rise to a cognition of pain.

[34:04]

But it is chemically based. And the chemical basis of it, according to this, would be the maturing of past actions which can also be physical and chemical and all that. But these actions now come to fruit in the present as a chemical composition of the neurological, physiological situation, such that when the blue comes up, the person experiences pain. And this teaching is saying that the experience of pain will have to do with past karma. which I'm sort of leaning up to, which maybe I'll just go a little bit further, and you can still ask all these questions, but just get this out in the open. So there is a tendency among living beings, which you're probably quite familiar with, that when a pleasant sensation comes up, and I just said that a pleasant sensation is the maturing of past action,

[35:10]

But anyway, when a pleasant sensation comes up, if it ever came up where it wasn't a maturing, anyway, a pleasant sensation comes up and there tends to be a reaction to it called going towards it or trying to hold on to it. If a negative sensation comes up, there tends to be a response of trying to avoid it. You can see this in very simple organisms like amoebas or something. And our cells can't move around much, but they can do various kinds of openings and closings. So even in our own cells, there might be some demonstration of if they could sense that the cell could feel pain and pleasure, that it would respond in these two ways. And if the cell couldn't tell whether there's pain or pleasure, the cell might be kind of confused about what to do. I think you can tell that at the cognitive level, sometimes you're aware of a positive sensation and you want to hold it, want to repeat it, want to go towards it.

[36:22]

A negative sensation, you want to cut it off, get rid of it. A neutral sensation, you're kind of a little bit unclear about what to do. This response to the sensation has an effect. And the effect it has is called a conditioning or a samskara. That because of that kind of response, there's a kind of conditioning. Every time pain comes up and you do something in response to it or pleasure comes up to it and you respond to it, it conditions the whole mind. That conditioning then has effects. or rather, excuse me, the conditioning is an effect. That respond becomes, gives rise to an effect called a conditioning, the samskara. And the conditioning, again, we're not usually aware of.

[37:22]

The way we usually become aware of it is as number 15. We become aware of it through intention or volition. Once there's a certain kind of response to pain, the consequence of it is that the consciousness has been conditioned by that response. And that response then, that conditioning, comes up then later. And it comes up in the form of... Again, we are not necessarily aware when a pleasure comes up and we move towards it. We're not necessarily aware of what the consequence of that response is. We're not necessarily aware of how that moving towards it conditions us. But one of the ways you can be, you could be aware of it, but most people aren't.

[38:23]

But one of the ways you can be aware of it is to feel intention. Because when you feel intention, that's that feeling of when the pain comes up, you feel the intention to move towards it. Or the pleasure comes up, you feel the intention to move towards it. That intention is the basic definition of karma. And that karma then, again, has the results of conditioning us to intend that way again. So the response conditions us, creates the karma, and then the karma goes around and will make it more likely. The next time the pleasure comes up, we'll be likely also to try to hold on to it or repeat it. So in this way, goes round and round, and this is the basic mechanism, one of the basic mechanisms of going round and round. In other words, samsara, which means to go round and round. This is the basic thing, which is why feeling is both the experience of past karma and then the basis upon which you respond in such a way as to condition further karma.

[39:36]

So because of past karma you feel a certain way about things, and feeling a certain way about things is something that we really have a hard time not responding to. And part of the reason we have a hard time not responding to is because we're predisposed to respond to it in a certain way, which just again creates, continues the mechanism to go around. So that's why feeling is both the experience of the past and the thing upon which the past will be reenacted and cause a future which will make us predisposed to do a present the way we did in the past and so on. So this is how important feeling is in the creation of karma and bondage to this cycle. Where does suffering fit in? Where does it fit in? Well, I could go around, I could do this a couple more times and you start to feel nauseated.

[40:47]

If you pay attention to this, you can have a feeling of nauseation. However, there's also a little bit of feeling of waking up to the nature and the fundamental pattern of nauseation. If you're able to follow this scenario, you're probably in what we call the human realm. where pain is not so intense or frightening that you can't even pay attention to this story. But if you go over this story, you can see how it's not very comfortable that you're trapped into this pattern, that you're fed feelings which are the maturing of your past action. So part of the maturing of your past action is that you have to keep feeling things. And you feel them in these very important ways. Pain is very important to us. Pleasure is very important to us. And it feels important because we thought it was important in the past.

[41:53]

And because we thought it was important in the past and we did something about it, now we have to feel it again. Now that, but we're pretty supposed to do something about it. If you look at this, you can imagine how this would be kind of painful. and entrapping. We can go on from here, but basically this gives rise to greed, attachment, and hatred. When painful things come up, we start to develop hatred towards them. And then the hatred conditions us, and so feeling hatred in response to the pain, it conditions us to feel pain. And then now it conditions us to feel pain, but it conditions us to be angry at it again and to do something about it. And just feeling anger is not bad, but then to do something about it on top of feeling anger, the karma, the intention to enact

[43:03]

to want to do something about this thing we feel anger towards that has the consequence of trapping us into another moment of pain, another moment of habitual reaction to the pain, another moment of acting in habitual reaction to the emotional reaction to it, and then propelling us into that cycle again. This is suffering, basically. That's what it is. You can whomp it up higher. bringing fear and cruelty and all that stuff. But basically this is the basic, very basic one, the feeling one. And again, feeling is in every moment. However, in the realm of sense perception, our ability to hate and avoid and attach to and move around is turned way down. So it's mostly in the conceptual cognitions that we... that we really cause more trouble for ourselves. The mental, I should say, not just conceptual, but in the mental perception and mental conceptions.

[44:12]

This is the basic mudra, the basic circle of suffering, of bondage and suffering, that you can generate by looking at Feelings which are an experience of the maturation of past actions and then feelings as a basis for new habitual responses and new habitual reactions leading to further feelings which are very hard for us to not be reactive to. So the practice here, one of the fundamental practices is practice mindfulness of feelings. learn to be mindful of feelings rather than reactive to them so just once you hear this teaching you can really see how it would be good to just like watch your feelings put energy into mindfulness of them which is there anyway but emphasize that factor that's one of the factors on this list number 19 you actually are mindful of these things but your mindfulness can be weak if your mindfulness gets strong it tends to turn down the reactivity

[45:18]

The reactivity, in some sense, is generated by the consequences of 15, of the intention. And the intention is showing you the consequence of past reactivity. You can still see all this. You can see this all better if you're putting a lot of mindfulness on your feelings rather than just sort of abandoning yourself or yielding to the, not to the feeling, but yielding to the reactivity of the feelings. As you become more and more, as your mindfulness to the feelings gets stronger, your reactivity to them can actually decrease. However, the feelings will still keep maturing. The retribution of past karma will still keep happening to you. lot of consequences in the form of consequences in the form of pain but not just pain pleasure not just pleasure neutral so even if you're even if you are mindful really and have really strong mindfulness there's an ocean of past karma dumping a tendency to experience life in those ways

[46:49]

But you can say, fine, more opportunities to practice mindfulness of feeling. Right. And again, as you practice more mindfulness of feelings, various other types of wholesome dharmas occur, skillful dharmas occur, which are conducive to understanding this process. Understanding this process dismantles it. Feeling, yeah. Yeah. So that gives you a little bit more about feelings. Anything else you want to, any other questions about you want to ask now? It's actually feeling. It's not quite action. It's feeling and then reactivity in terms of, like, wanting more of it or, you know, attaching to it or trying to avoid it or confusion if the feeling is neither. Then that... leads to actually usually a more conscious thing, an intention to do something about it.

[47:54]

It makes me think of addiction. Yeah, this is addiction. But again, Buddha's first teaching was this, I found a middle way which avoids two types of addiction. And he said, you know, addiction to sense pleasure and addiction to self-mortification, but self-mortification in a way is anger. now so yeah the basic thing of these two types these two basically and then confusion in the middle way is like isn't just a confusion between the two yeah it's very very close to addiction sense pleasure you do set that's not the problem it's the being reactive to it that's the problem that's the addictive part that's the habitual part the reactivity to it the reactivity to the pleasure Kind of like, not just pleasure, but focusing on getting more of it or how to hold on to it.

[48:57]

Again, even while it's happening, not enjoying it very much because you're so much concerned with getting more of it. Sense pleasure without that addiction is actually just plain old pleasure for a moment. and also pain without the addiction of trying to avoid it. It's just pain. It's just like a perfectly normal function of mind, which is happening all the time, called the maturation of past karma in the form of tempting us with pain. What are you going to do about that? Well, I know what you're going to do about it. You're going to react to it. And then you're going to want to do something about it, and then we're going to have some more. Hey, that program's working really well. But we're addicted to that. Rather than living it, We mess with it. [...] Why do we mess with it? Because it is the result of past messing. Plus, since it's the result of past messing, it's the kind of thing that draws us into messing with it again. That's why that one dharma gets to be a whole aggregate, because it's so fundamental in forming attachment and aversion and self-clinging.

[50:08]

Yes? Can you say a little bit more about, say, you're involved in a whole food activity or meditation, and that creates a peaceful state, which you perceive as pleasurable. So the desire to repeat that would come up. So how would one deal with that and that kind of an activity? If one has a wholesome state of consciousness, the feeling that that consciousness is working with could be pain. like somebody has a disease, like the Buddha was sick. You could have a person who is feeling pain, and the feeling of pain is partly due, this is not the whole story, but this is one part of the cycle, this is one little picture.

[51:17]

The person's feeling pain about some object. Some people have cancer, but they're not in pain. Some people have cancer in their pain sometimes, and other times they're not in pain. Sometimes people have a sickness, but they have positive sensations, even though it seems like the sickness is continually kind of like reappearing. But they're having a lot of positive sensations and negative sensations. Or they don't have much of a disease. People say, oh, he's healthy. Doesn't have any diseases right now. Okay. But whether he's diagnosed with having one or more diseases or no diagnosis of any disease, still he can have a negative sensation. And if he's practicing wholesomely, he can still have negative sensations because negative sensations are the ripening of past karma. So past karma is ripening.

[52:19]

If you have a negative sensation about the color blue, I'm not about the color blue, but I experience the blue in a painful way. But I can practice wholesomely while I experience pain about the blue or pain about the person. I'm thinking, so you're doing this practice, and as you're doing this practice, though, generally more happiness more suffering it might it generally does bring wholesome activity generally does bring more more positive sensations it's true i think that's part of the way it works however those all almost all of those might be coming a long time for now maybe not even in this lifetime so it's possible that you'd be practicing very well and have almost no positive sensations It's possible.

[53:22]

Not very likely, though, but possible. Right. So when something positive comes through practice, we want to not try to repeat that. And that's where... You mean when a pain, when a pleasurable thing does come. Yeah, that was your original thing. But let's just stay with feeling, okay? Because there can be other positive things which you don't experience by a pleasureful feeling. There's other factors on here which aren't called pleasureful feeling, but which might be what you would call feeling very alive, which might make you feel like, I am extremely glad to be alive. I am so happy. I am so grateful, you know? And what were you having, a negative sensation? The feeling of gratitude might be actually sort of one of these mental factors under the category of general functions of good.

[54:27]

If you look under there, you see there's faith, energy, equanimity, self-respect. If you feel a kind of, I don't know what to call it, an enthusiasm. Well, the word enthusiasm is full of God. full of the divine you could be full of the divine uh feel uh you know having a great having the joy of being diligent and so on you could have all these wholesome factors and be having a big fat old pain okay now she's saying what about if you're having all this wholesome practice and you have a big fat pleasure Well, if you're practicing wholesomely, you're not so likely to think, because you've heard some teachings in association with your practice, you're not so likely to think that the pleasure is coming from the wholesome practice because you know that pleasure is coming from past action. And you could say, well, maybe it's coming from my wholesome practice earlier today.

[55:28]

Maybe. So your thing is, what about becoming attached while you're practicing wholesomely to positive sensations? Can it happen? The answer is, why, yes. Wholesome practice doesn't mean that when you're practicing wholesomely, you totally eliminate this tremendous background of conditioning vis-à-vis positive sensation. It doesn't mean that. It means that if you practice wholesomely a pretty long time, you will be able to eliminate the conditioning vis-à-vis positive sensation. Entirely is the proposal. Well, pointing out the other category of general functions of good that kind of cleared up. So general function, you can be practicing general function of good, you can be practicing all of them, and still a positive sensation could come up, and you could still be reactive to it in terms of past action or not.

[56:34]

And, of course, negative things can come up, and you can also be reactive to that or not. but you could also be not reactive to it in the moment. And then you would be fed later, for a long time you would keep getting fed feelings which are coming from past moments, innumerable past moments of reactivity which conditioned reactivity will keep feeding your feelings to test your practice of skillful means, of skillful ways in relationship to all these feelings that are coming to you. But when you're practicing wholesome dharmas, it's more like Yeah, well, feed me the feelings, you know, pass them to me. I'm accepting them. I'm here to accept feelings because I know they come with every moment, and I'm going to try to practice with them. Negative one, practice with it. Negative one, practice with it. Negative one, practice with it. Not even and also practice not getting bored with the same old story.

[57:36]

Negative, negative, negative, negative, negative. No, you know, I'm not just, oh, can I have a positive one, please? Or even positive, [...] positive. Even that's boring. Give me a negative one. No, that's not so skillful. You learn to practice dealing with what's given to you and more and more not being reactive. While there's this great force for you to be reactive, which is coming two ways. One, as feelings, which are very important, very powerful, coming. That's the result of past reactivity, plus that habit floating out there. too is coming along with the feeling the feeling comes with the habit you can just do the same old thing that'll be really easy there can be a wholesome response such that the habit doesn't kick in another feeling habits possible mindfulness and so on doesn't kick in but one of the problems with being successful over a long period of time of not being reactive

[58:42]

and practicing wholesomely with positive, negative, and neutral feelings is, you tend to get more and more intense experiences of pleasure, which are more and more tempting to be reactive towards. So, like that Humphrey Bogart movie, you know, this guy squeals on him, and he goes to prison, and when he gets out of prison, he goes to kill the guy. He goes to the guy's room, puts the gun up the guy's head, and the guy goes, yeah, go ahead. So he pressed, you know, just, save me a bullet, thanks. So he doesn't shoot him because he doesn't want to do the guy a favor, put him out of his misery. He'd take the karma of the murder because the guy didn't have to commit suicide. So what he does is he works behind the scenes and gets this guy a really good job. and a really swell partner. Whatever you think a swell partner was, he got her a swell partner.

[59:46]

And et cetera, et cetera. And the guy is like getting all this stuff and feeling really, really good, and then he comes back to get him. So if you really practice well, you're going to get really happy, and it's really going to be hard not to get attached to that. But that's more deeply getting into the subtleties of conditioning. At one point, things weren't so gross. You can go back to that place, and it'll be more difficult. Was there some other questions? Yes. Sarah? taking action if they're not reactive. In other words, some things do call for action. And one of the reasons we experience pain, for example, might be because somebody's hurting you. And so one of the reasons we have the experience is to help them to do something about it. And so I don't think, but maybe you are saying, never do anything about it.

[60:52]

But I try to figure out, how do you know when they're being reactive? And how do you know if you're appropriately thinking to actually get away from somebody or something that's hurting you? You know because you've been practicing mindfulness of feelings for a long time and you've gotten very concentrated and you can see the difference between a pain, which would be good to, like, you know, I don't know what, for example, don't move. Like, broken leg? Don't move. that's a reasonable thing to do. And you can see the difference between just doing a reasonable thing in relationship to a pain and that reactive pattern. If you've seen the reactive pattern quite a few times, you know what it looks like. And you know the difference between an action which is not based on past action,

[61:53]

and an action that is based on past action. Most actions are based on past actions, so you've got to learn that most of them are like that. And that there's a kind of activity that can emerge which is the activity which emerges from understanding that most activity is based on past action. And in that understanding, a new kind of activity emerges which is not based on past action, in other words, which is not karma. Well, there's activity which is karma-liberating or liberates us from karma. There's activity which is not intentional, which is not karmic. And then there's activity which is intentional, karmic, and locked into the habitual pattern. So by being mindful,

[62:56]

And sitting still, one can learn quite a bit about the process and learn that there's new ways to respond to positive, negative, and neutral sensation. New ways of responding, and particularly, first of all, the new way of responding of mindfulness almost as fast as the reactivity. or almost along with the reactivity, rather than just pain, reactivity, and then impulse to do something. Pain, reactivity, impulse to do something. So observing the usual thing will develop, again, in terms of going back now to the basic type of cognition, about its clarity and so on, there will be an evolution, there will be an epistemological evolution going along with this study of the karmic process, that your vision will get clearer about the process as you study karma more, as you see karma working more, as you see the reactivity working more, that will tend to make you clearer about this whole process.

[64:04]

And so you'll be developing clarity while at the same time developing wholesomeness. So you'll get clearer about the process as you practice meditation on the process, and your meditation on the process will get clearer as your cognitions get clearer, and they sort of pull each other along that way. Until finally, you can see that this is all, you know, I don't know, just conditioned. Just totally conditioning. And then you're free of it. That's the proposal of the amazing attainment. Yes? You mentioned direct yogic perception. Yes. Yes, direct yogic perception. But I don't know much about it. You don't know what? I don't quite understand what it is. It's similar to direct sense perception in that it's knowing some object.

[65:13]

It could be like a color or it could be like a painful sensation. It could know a feeling, for example. But, number one, it's not inattentive. It's a clear... It's this fresh, clear, irrefutable knowledge of the thing, and it's connected with its organ. Instead of being a mind organ or a sense organ, its organ is the union of insight and concentration. So it's a way of knowing which is valid, like we were talking about before. which means you clearly ascertain what it is. It's free of all conceptual mediation. And it's happening in a state where there's insight and there is tranquility. So it's a very... It's a state which, you know, sort of at the end of the line of evolution of this process.

[66:21]

It's not just a valid cognition, which it is. It's not just a cognition where you very clearly... irrefutably and freshly cognize something, whatever, can be anything. But it's also that you're in a state of tranquility and insight. So this is like more or less the Buddha mind. We're talking about that. Yes, Michel. I just thought, when you were speaking about the neutral, you said confusion. Confusion or dullness, yeah. Because if you don't react, you may become neutral. So when I have neutral, I'm not reacting. Well, the reaction to neutral is to become dull or sleepy. So like Zen students sitting in the Zendo, occasionally I've heard they have pleasurable sensations, you know, sometimes quite strong.

[67:25]

And they're sitting there and kind of like, this is nice, you know. The body feels like pleasure. They're having a bodily sensation and it's pleasurable. They're having a pleasurable feeling about it. Or they see a light, you know, which is not a bodily sensation, but it's not touch, it's light, and they have a positive sensation. Or they hear a sound and they have this feeling, it's a very positive feeling about the sound. So then they don't go to sleep usually at that moment. Kind of like, okay. And sometimes people say they like pain because when they have pain, they don't go to sleep either. But when they have kind of neutral sensations, Zen students have a hard time staying awake because neutral sensations are kind of confusing and dull and kind of like going to sleep, like going to sleep. So that is a reaction. It's a way of responding to neutrality is to get sleepy. in maybe in sleepiness you have a look at my people have some pleasure and this kind of boring thing here such a reaction that's response and people tend habitually to respond to neutral sensations with sleepiness dullness confusion in that way that can I can be again

[68:49]

The neutral sensation may tend to be the maturation of moments where you're kind of like your feelings were unclear and your intentions were kind of unclear and dull. And you wanted to do something but you didn't know what it was. But you just tried to do something and you're not sure if you did it. That gives you more neutral sensation. Because you're not like trying to keep all the neutral sensation to yourself. You're not trying to get rid of it or punish somebody for a neutral sensation. or attack somebody because you've got a neutral sensation. So there's very strong greed and hatred coming up with the neutral sensation. So then you get this kind of like neutral sensation as a result, which tends to make you want to do what you did last time or many times in response to it, namely not get too worked up one way or another. So that's another reactive pattern, which is also uncomfortable, but in kind of a dull way. or you don't really know, but you're kind of, and you're kind of afraid, but it's not really acute, you know, it's kind of chronic.

[70:04]

And you're so dull, you're dull, you know, kind of like, kind of like, yeah, well, I'm dull, but I'm not in a lot of pain, so I guess it's, maybe this is better than being in extreme pain. Yeah, it's it's it's a it's a strategy for dealing with some sorrow And then something to you like this is really no good. I mean now I'm getting and you get angry it was you know And now things are getting really bad, but at least I feel a little bit more life, you know Which is kind of positive anyway picture. This is reactivity. I I have the belief that I can engage in certain activities that will result in . Yes, right. . What comes from the past is the feeling that something will be pleasurable.

[71:13]

That's coming from the past. The idea that it will be pleasurable to eat an ice cream cone, but especially a certain brand that's really delicious but doesn't, and is low fat. You know, somehow they've made this ice cream that, you know, isn't good for your heart and also really delicious. as delicious as the most at time you know say think about anything now eating that would probably a pleasurable so you did to think that to think of what will be pleasure is conditioned by the past and even to while thinking about will be pleasurable having a positive sensation about that doesn't also maturing a past K and part of our nervous system is to think of things that we think would be pleasurable and also to think of things that we think would be painful and try to avoid those painful things and try to promote those pleasurable things.

[72:24]

But also if you look at this situation, you will probably find, especially if you watch other people, it's easy to see. Like with my grandson, it's really easy to see. maybe i told you this story one time we were i was playing with them and he said i have an idea of something that will really be fun let's take all of these african animals you know giraffes and elephants and stuff let's put them in a big tub let's take them downstairs and put and fill it with water and put them all in the water so why that'll really be fun he said and i didn't say to him you know, it's not going to be as much fun as you think it's going to be. I didn't say that to him. And as we're going down the stairs and he's talking about, Granddaddy, this is going to be so much fun, you know, I can say, it's going to be very short-lived. I didn't say that. I just, you know, go along on his program. So we get downstairs and he puts all the animals in his tub and we pour the water in. But before we get the water in, he's already lost, totally, completely lost interest in it and moved on to something else which he thinks would be really fun.

[73:30]

He never even, I don't know if he had any fun at all doing that thing. But he barely got to what he wanted to do before he thought of something else to do. I don't know if it was the least bit pleasurable. But we generally think that that ice cream cone is going to taste really good. And when you actually taste it, it doesn't taste as good as you anticipated and felt motivated towards. And also negative things. are not usually as bad as we think they're going to be. But generally speaking, if you're a college student and you go to a football game and your team loses, you think you're going to feel bad and you usually do feel kind of bad right after the game. But a few minutes later while you're having pizza, you may have almost forgotten the feeling of pain. It's almost entirely gone. Your feeling tone and happiness is almost indistinguishable whether your team won or lost.

[74:35]

But you think your painful sensations are going to last longer than they do. You think your pleasurable sensations are going to last longer than they do. And you think that they're going to be more pleasant than they are or more painful than they are. That's the way we imagine and that we're conditioned to do that. And it's embodied. There's a physical way of being. that we're conditioned to feel this way about our actions. And we have to actually physically change ourselves, too, in this process. But anyway, like I said, he said it was going to really be fun, and I just thought, you know, I think he's overestimating the fun of this thing, but we'll see. And when you have the edge, generally speaking, it is a little bit fun. But sometimes it turns bad really quickly. And part of the reason for that, too, is the conditioning process wants you to go and condition something else.

[75:44]

Once it's got you hooked and you fell for it, it then pushes you to do another thing to feel the next feeling and to condition that. So you can't stay with the thing as long as you plan to. And oftentimes it switches from pleasure to pain Again, if you're mindful and you taste these things that you think are going to be good, sometimes you think it's going to be good and you taste it and it feels good for a second, but then you realize it's actually poison. Sometimes you realize that. But if you don't pay attention, you may not even notice that a painful sensation is coming because you have this idea this is supposed to be good and so on and so forth. So it's very important to be mindful of the actual feeling Because you will learn how untrustworthy these conditioning things are, that they're not reliable. They are painful and so on, but they're just due to conditioning.

[76:48]

They're not due to reality. Yes? Can mindfulness also be considered habitual reactivity to practice of previously practicable mindfulness in order to reduce their relativity? In fact, given where practicable mindfulness is conditioned and is the result of past practice, and therefore is the result of past karma, karma is a practice. I will think about that. But I'll think about it more beside my initial reaction, which is I don't think so, because mindfulness is not really being reactive. It's just paying attention to the thing. And it's not so much coming from past greed, hate, and delusion. I mean, the greed, hate, and delusion are part of what condition us to be interested in mindfulness.

[77:49]

But mindfulness is... more a general factor of the working of consciousness than it is a kind of reactivity to pain, pleasure, or neutral sensations. Mindfulness, yeah. But there could be some kind of causal process by which mindfulness tends to be a condition for further mindfulness. But mindfulness isn't reactive in the sense of creating a sense to want to do mindfulness. Mindfulness doesn't make you want to do mindfulness. I think when you want to do mindfulness, that's more reactive, when you think of mindfulness karmically. But that's not really mindfulness. That's more like an intention. So see the difference? It's kind of an important question. The impulse to do mindfulness is more coming from the conditionality of the past.

[78:51]

But mindfulness isn't the impulse to do mindfulness. It's being mindful. It's not an impulse. It's not really karma. However... It's almost like a muscle where you can't... Oh, I know how to use this micro-lift to look at my loathing. That could be... Yes. Yeah. The actual, once you get into that micro... Right. So, again, if you look at the chart, the beginning of the chart has basic functions of the mind, which can be operating in very high levels of consciousness. or low so mindfulness could be part of the uh habitual reactivity in the sense it would be infected by you know an impulse to practice mindfulness to get pleasure or something or over expectations of mindfulness that could effect that could be happening with the mindfulness so mindfulness could and occur in an unwholesome state of mind the mindfulness itself is not even positive

[79:55]

It's not, mindfulness itself isn't really skillful or unskillful. When it's in a skillful mind, it's just mindfulness. When it's unskillful mind, it's mindfulness to get something or avoid something. So you can bring this kind of study into any particular composition. And so we will, if all goes well, we will continue to study how the functions of mind work with karma to create the world, and then how we respond to the world to keep the world going, or we study the process, understand the process, and become free of the process through the study. Okay? So thank you very much for your heroic efforts in this difficult class. You're welcome.

[80:55]

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