So this is called... I named this class Mahayana Abhidharma, which can be abbreviated My Abhidharma. And I... I feel like I should mention that this is a Zen center. And a long time ago, in a sense, more than 30 years ago, I was over at Berkeley visiting graduate seminars on Abhidharma. And some of the graduate students said to me, what's a Zen priest doing taking classes on Abhidharma? People don't usually think that Zen people study Abhidharma, and they don't.

[01:06]

So, in a sense, I feel I should note that Abhidharma is not usually studied in Zen centers in China or America. Zen is sometimes said to be a special transmission outside or beyond scriptures even. And Abhidharma is a kind of commentarial tradition on the Buddhist scriptures, on the Buddhist scriptural teachings. So certainly a transmission outside the scriptures and maybe even more so a transmission outside the commentaries. And I think there's a lot of truth in that, that it's a special transmission beyond or outside the scriptures, which I think is very much in accord with the original story of the Buddha in India.

[02:30]

So the Buddha, Shakyamuni Buddha in India, was moving around or meeting people. And sometimes in meeting with people, he would talk to them. Sometimes he would just meet them face to face without saying too much. But according to the stories, which later... Buddha in meeting people face to face was the occasion for people to hear the true Dharma. And it wasn't exactly that what the Buddha was saying was the true Dharma. The Buddha was speaking the Dharma, but the Dharma that he was speaking was not necessarily in the words he was speaking. Of course, there were spaces, there were rests in the music of his speaking.

[03:43]

He would speak and then there would be a space often when he inhaled, and then he would speak again. So there was this speaking he was doing, and while he was speaking, was also, while he was speaking, there was also Dharma speaking at the same time. But this Dharma was not in the words he was speaking, and yet the words he was speaking was what people could remember he said. So they wrote down what he said. But his originals talking to people and meeting them was the venue or the milieu in which the Dharma was transmitted face-to-face. There were no scriptures at that time, so of course his teaching to the people was beyond the teaching.

[04:46]

He was before the teachings in that case. And yet according to the stories told of those meetings, people heard the Dharma when they were meeting with the Buddha. Sometimes they heard the Dharma while the Buddha was talking. Sometimes they heard the Dharma when the Buddha was not talking. But it was the hearing of the Dharma that was the important thing, because when they heard the Dharma, then the Buddha arose in them and they understood what the Buddha understood. So Zen is, in some sense, a tradition which is trying to remember the original way that the Buddha interacted with her face to face. And yet, one of the things the Buddha was doing was actually giving the people he was talking to theories.

[06:05]

He was giving them theories. And he was giving them two kinds of theories. He was giving them philosophical theories and psychological theories. And while they were listening to these theories, and the people he met were people who, like us, can understand theories, can understand conceptual because they had conceptual cognition with which to receive these conceptual teachings the Buddha gave. While they were listening to these theories, they entered into the practice And entering into the practice with the Buddha, they heard the Dharma and became successors in the tradition so that they also, although not Buddhas, they could understand the Buddha Dharma and they then could meet people face to face and talk to people.

[07:15]

And while talking to people, people could hear the Dharma. And the Buddha, actually, there's a story that when the Buddha heard the true Dharma and realized Buddhahood, it did not occur to him in the early days that he would help other people hear the Dharma, partly because he knew how difficult it was for him to hear the Dharma because of long-standing habitual tendencies of his mind. So he thought there wouldn't be much point in telling people because he looked at people so addicted to their thinking that they wouldn't be able to hear him. And there's a story that a divine being came to him and told him that there were some people who would be able to understand.

[08:17]

So the story is the Buddha thought, Oh yeah? Just let me check. So then he took a look at the world and he saw some people were able to hear the Dharma. He saw a few people that would be able to. And then he had people and they had a little talk and they said they'd like to hear what he found out and he told them and one of them got it in the first talk. And then there were five of them. There were five of them, but one of them got it. One of them was ready. The other four were... Within a few weeks, they were ready. Again, by having talks with the Buddha, meeting face to face, hearing various kinds of philosophical and psychological teachings, they came to a place where they could hear the Dharma too.

[09:21]

But the Buddha was not able to teach everybody that he met in such a way that they could hear the Dharma during the first meeting that they had even with the Buddha. So part of what I'm raising here is there be meetings in our lifetime such that we can meet the Buddha or the Buddha's face somehow. How can we meet Buddha's face and in that meeting be able to hear the true Dharma? so that this special transmission outside the scriptures can be realized. So there's this scripture called the Abhitamsaka scripture and the Flower Dormant scripture.

[11:12]

And in there, in one of the most more popular chapters of that very large scripture, it says that the Buddha in awakening surveyed the people and saw that all living beings fully possess Buddha's wisdom. But because of... wrong views and attachment, or you could say attachment to wrong views, they don't realize it. Okay? So Buddha saw everybody fully possesses the wisdom of the Buddha, but because of conceptual cognitions, because of certain views, those views, we don't realize that we fully possess Buddha's wisdom. And two responses to this situation, which I might mention to you.

[12:18]

One response is a response of a Zen teacher who said, well, since all of you are fundamentally complete in every respect, what point is there in engaging in any kind of practice that's not in accord with that? So, in one sense, the reason for practice is that you fully possess the wisdom of the Buddhas. The reason for practice is that you fully possess the wisdom of the Buddhas. The reason for practice is enlightenment. But since enlightenment is the reason for practice, be careful because practice isn't, in a sense, really necessary if you do practice to be enlightened.

[13:29]

Somehow you don't really have to do meditation. However, it's really good for you to meditate on the necessity of meditation. As a matter of fact, you should meditate on that day and night. You should meditate day and night on how you don't have to practice meditation because you're already complete. And the reason why you have to meditate day and night is because you have some fixed ideas which make you not believe that you're complete. say, to meditate on the lack of necessity of doing anything to make yourself more perfect than you are. That's one response. But it's still, and so you could say for that type of meditation, the reason for it is your enlightenment. But you could also say the reason for it is your attachment to wrong views.

[14:34]

Another approach, another way of looking at it is that, not saying anything much about that people are perfectly good except that they have false conceptual cognitions. They have false ideas, which they cling to. And because we cling to false cognitions, in particular, we cling to the false cognition that we exist independent of each other. We have that false conception. And that false conception is the reason the raison d'etre of Buddhist meditation is a false conception, a false cognition of knowing something because knowing things that don't exist, particularly knowing a self of your personhood that's independent of other beings, to cognize that is a source of cyclic misery and all kinds of cruelty.

[15:38]

So I want to study this false cognition with you, but I want to study it just to study false cognition, not the fact that this study is not the true Dharma, but hoping that in the study the true Dharma will be heard. And basically the two types of study I would like to do with you are philosophy and psychology. And the philosophy side is actually what is called epistemology. It's a kind of philosophy where you study the different ways that we know, the different ways that we know, the different ways that we cognize.

[16:46]

to learn the different ways that we cognize and to learn how we can evolve from the most, in some sense, the most innate ways of knowing to the most accurate and liberating ways of knowing. To learn these different ways as a preparation for studying them in such a way that they can evolve This is an approach to the mind of Buddha. And the other kind of approach, and we only have a few weeks to do this, but the other approach is a psychological approach where we study those same states of cognition which we've been studying, but we study them psychologically in the sense that we study how thinking or intention arises with states of cognition, how action based on intention arises from these cognitions.

[17:58]

Cognitions arise with mental factors which form patterns of intentionality and which are formed from patterns of intentionality and lead to patterns of intentionality, which is what we call karma. So the psychological side studies these states of cognition and the patterns of mental factors that arise with them, forming karmic patterns which form the cycle of bondage, which describe how bondage and suffering arise, and also how one can become liberated from these patterns of conduct. These two ways of looking at the mind the epistemological and the psychological, they work together. As you work on the psychological, you promote the epistemological shift from wrong to more and more correct ways of knowing. And as you proceed to more and more correct forms of cognition, you see more clearly the roots of the intentions which create karma, which tend to perpetuate bondage to patterns of delusion.

[19:15]

And the part I'd like to start with, then, is in some sense the most more foreign, I think, to Zen students, and that is the epistemological approach to mind. I said to someone recently, do you love being a Zen student? And I forgot what the person said, but later the person wrote me a note and said, he said something, you asked me if I love being a Zen student, but actually I think a Zen student loves it. So right now I don't ask you if you love being an epistemologist. And I don't even know this epistemologist who wants to be you.

[20:25]

But there is an epistemologist who wants to communicate with you. And that epistemologist we call Buddha. Buddha is an epistemologist. Buddha studies and understands cognition. Buddha's mind is basically the awakened mind, which is a cognition. It's a way of knowing. And it's a way of knowing which is precipitated from compassion in response to beings who do not yet have awakened cognition. It is a cognition free of any kind of conceptual clinging, which is precipitated in response to beings who do not have a cognition that's free of conceptual clinging. Would you say it more slowly, please?

[21:31]

Oh, precipitated like rain falling down? So you have this cognition free of all kinds of conceptual clinging, and especially free of clinging to the idea of being separate from anything. You have a mind which is free of all conceptual cognition, all conceptual images, but of course, most importantly, free of self. And this cognition when it relates to beings who do not understand that, out of compassion it precipitates, it rains down and manifests as rain, as Dharma rain, in the faces of the people who do not yet have this understanding. And it keeps falling on them and falling on them until they get so wet they understand. It never stops. They try to put up umbrellas, but eventually it rots them away.

[22:35]

So that epistemologist wants to be you, loves to be you. It had to be you. It had to be you. So there are many kinds of cognitions, in a way, or I should say there's many cognitions. Like right now in this room there's many cognitions, and now there's many more, and now there's many more, and now there's many more, and now there's many more. They just last for one moment, not for two.

[23:44]

You're having one now, it's gone. And those cognitions which we're having, according to the Buddha's teaching about the nature of cognitions, is basically two types to start with. One type is called direct perception. The other type is called indirect perception. One is called direct perception. The other one is called indirect cognition. One is called direct cognition and the other is called indirect cognition. One is called perception and the other one is called conception. And perception is knowing something without using some image to know it.

[24:46]

And that's direct perception, simply put. It's knowing. Pardon? It's to know something. It's a knowing of the existence of something without using an image as a media to grasp it. and conceptual cognition, you do use an image to grasp it. That's two basic types. In one case, in direct perception, you know impermanent things. Most things we know are impermanent things.

[25:55]

There are like what we call the lack of inherent existence or what we call emptiness. That's not an impermanent thing because that's the way all the impermanent things are. Permanent phenomena Those are the things which direct perception knows. Indirect cognition or conceptual cognition also knows impermanent things, but it knows them through the media or through the lens of images which are not really impermanent. They're like general images of things.

[27:02]

And the images through which you know things, you can use different images. Like some person you know, conceptually, you can use different images to know them from day to day. The image you use to know them is a general image which you can use again on another day. the image itself is not deteriorating moment by moment. It's a general characteristic. When you know impermanent things, which is the way almost everything is, It's not as general characteristics. You don't know its general characteristics. You know its particular fleeting characteristics. You know it as it's coming to be or as it's caused in this particular moment, and you actually know it in this unique moment, the way you're directly knowing it. Those are two basic ways of knowing.

[28:07]

Most people I've met, they think that they can actually directly perceive, for example, a color or a sound. Right, they can, and they do. As a matter of fact, they often perceive a color or perceive a sound directly and accurately. However, almost no one is aware of those perceptions. No one, I would say, one in a hundred, one in a thousand actually ascertain that they're having that cognition. Yet, throughout a day, we have ...humorable moments of direct perception of sensory phenomena. And throughout the day, most people do not ascertain any of them.

[29:31]

The image, the color or the sound appears to their consciousness, and they know it, but if you ask the person, they would not be able to tell you that they're having that cognition. For most of us, most of what we know through moment by moment, not even moment by moment, but second by second more like, which contains innumerable moments, what we know is actually a color. We know the color, but we know it through about the color. We know it through conceptual cognition. And in that case, we don't just know the blue or the red. The way we know it is, it's blue. That's blue. It's red. In other words, we're talking about it.

[30:37]

And we can talk about it. We, in a sense, recognize it. In a sense, most of our awareness of sensory data, where we actually ascertain the color or the sound, is a recognition not a direct cognition. Natural cognitions are re-cognitions. So what usually happens in the realm of sense experience is we have a relationship, our body has a relationship to other material. Our material body has a physical relationship with material bodies, some living and some not. So for example, I could have my body is related to your body and I can know your body. Electromagnetic radiation bounces off you.

[31:45]

I can ascertain your body visually. But, as I just said, most of those experiences I do not ascertain. I know I'm ascertaining. Or I know, but I'm not really attentive to the way I know you as a visible data. However, if I'm with you for a while, and I get several more chances to experience you through electromagnetic radiation, using electromagnetic radiation to make you into a visible experience for me, if I have quite a few of those and I build up a certain pitch of intensity, then I can have a direct mental perception which is strong enough to give rise to a conceptual cognition of the color. And that I will know.

[32:48]

as, for example, the color of your face, the color of your eyes, the color of your clothes. That's what most of us know about, that last thing in a big set of events leading up to something we're aware of. So now I could stop for a second, or I could give you a little bit more input. Shall I go on or should we stop? Shall I go on? I lost you a little bit at this very end. Could you elaborate a little bit? On the very end? So I'm proposing that if I look at you, if I were to see you for a moment, like for a moment, faster than a second. If you would appear to me and I would actually see you,

[33:50]

And there'd be ways that we could, like, now we have instruments where you can actually test to see that I actually, like, that, you know, light bounced off you over to me, stimulated my eyes, sent a message to my brain, and my brain went beep-boop in response to some you-as-a-visual phenomena for me. So if I just saw you, like, one of those moments, or I actually saw your face and saw some color about you, I'm saying that for most of us, for most of the time, we're not aware of those flashes. However, if I keep looking at you and get a whole bunch more of those, and I don't get distracted by other things, they can accumulate to see that I have a direct mental perception of of you as a visible data. And if that's strong enough, then I can have a conceptual cognition like, oh, that's Jackie, or Jackie's skin is or Jackie's sweater is brown.

[35:02]

That and that last thing would be what am I normally aware of. But isn't direct perception, when you see my sweater and it's brown, isn't that direct perception? when I see your sweater, and I see the color of your sweater, that is directly, originally, basically, that's direct perception, and I'm seeing the brown. That's direct perception. However, I and most people, most of the time, do not know that. I'm unaware of that. If you ask, like again, if I was looking, you know, and suddenly, For one second, one moment I looked at you flash and I saw that and somehow I looked away or you were taken away after that one moment. I would not know. Somebody said, did you see Jackie or did you see Jackie's sweater? I would not be able to say yes. Matter of fact, I probably wouldn't, you know, I probably would say no. just like they have these, you know, like they used to do.

[36:04]

They did this for a while in the movie theaters. They had the movies at the rate that, you know, flashing pictures at a certain rate. And at a certain rate when you flash pictures, it looks like normal movement. You know, if you have a person on a screen, it looks like the normal movement. But people are actually moving many more movements than a, is it 24 frames per second? People are actually moving more than 24 frames a second. It's just that that's all most people can see. So if you show people 24 frames a second, that's usually the way. If you show them 500 frames per second, it looks normal too. But they don't see the other 476. They just see 24 approximately of the 476. So showing them 24 or showing them 500 looks about the same because they see more than 24 a second. However, you could, you can't, you know, you could send them, in that 500, you could send them various other messages besides the pictures of the person moving.

[37:14]

But don't, you wouldn't send them like, in the 24 of the person moving, you wouldn't send them 24 of the same message, otherwise they probably would have some problems seeing the 24 of the person moving. but you could send them several of like, go buy popcorn. Popcorn, popcorn, or butter, or butter, salt, butter, pop. You could send those messages between the pictures that they're seeing, that they put together into normal movement, those 24, and the person would start to, you know, they start to kind of be more interested in popcorn. But they wouldn't know the reason was because they were actually being sad. Or even show them pictures of yellow stuff melting off of white stuff. They could get that. But they wouldn't know it. Now, some yogis in a state of concentration, they would see, you know, person's body, and then they would see a picture of popcorn. Person's body, popcorn.

[38:17]

And they would say... They would say, hello, something's wrong with your picture. You're doing ads in the middle of this. I didn't come to have ads between every single frame of this picture. So the yogis would start making lots of noise. And in fact, the yogis, but because I guess some other people had other ways of discovering this. Is that clear? We ordinarily do not see things faster than that. 24 frames a second, you see? We can see 24 frames in a second. We can do 24 frames a second. Did you know? That's how fast you can see. And if it's less than that, you can tell something's funny about the way that people are moving. You can easily see. You can see 24 frames a second. That you can do. but you can't do a number of frames that are actually happening, which are mostly white between the frames.

[39:26]

That's most of what's happening, and we do not get those. We're missing most of what's happening, but it is happening. We're taking it in, we're responding to it, it's registering on it, we do know it, We do not ascertain it. We do not register it. We're inattentive to most of what's going on visually, auditorily, tactily, tastily, and smellily, and also mentally. We're inattentive to most of what's going on, except in states of high concentration, in which case you do start to see, you're actually aware of more than 24 frames a second. most of what we're aware of is conceptual cognition. But the conceptual cognition is based on the actual object out there, if it's correct. And we'll talk about wrong conceptual cognitions, which are not based on anything.

[40:29]

They're based on... There's nothing that they're based on, so they're wrong. But most of our conceptual cognitions are based on direct perception. So shall I go on with direct perception a little bit? No? What do you want? That's my vote. What do you want to do? I just want to... Why don't you? Okay, fine. I don't want to... My vote is to outcast everyone else. So you don't want to and you also want to vote for... Yes. Yes. I wanted to ask if you would elaborate on... conceptual cognition as seeing things through the lens of things that are not really impermanent. How are they not really impermanent? Well, like, you know, the image by which I know you, although, you know, I can say I have a set of images, some of the images I reuse.

[41:35]

I don't really, you know, They're generic images that I use to know Cathy Early. The actual Cathy Early I'm knowing is not these general images. And Cathy Early is a person who comes in the room and sits down and, you know, each moment she's a different Cathy. Visually, in all these other realms, you're different and you've never been like that before. There's no generality about you ever, actually, basically. You're a unique thing every moment. But when I know you conceptually, I use some repertoire of images that work to recognize you. I just want to mention parenthetically autism as an example. Yes, go on. Yes, cognitions exist in one moment, right?

[42:36]

How do these repeat cognitions? What's the nature of the permanence since cognitions are permanent? The cognition isn't permanent. The image that I use in conceptual cognitions, those images are not impermanent. Like I have an image of Abraham Lincoln. Abraham Lincoln. And I've been using basically the same images of Abraham Lincoln since I was a kid. They haven't really changed much. I can get more, but once I got them, they're like set. They're images. And you have probably similar images of Abraham Lincoln that you've been using. I have images of the United States. They haven't really changed. You know, I've got Florida down here. The image, the generic image of the United States that I have is pretty much the same. And I've learned some new ones over the years. And I can, like, blow up certain sections like, you know, what do you call it? MapQuest. MapQuest, yeah. Or just, you know, Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan.

[43:39]

I can go into, like, and stuff like that. But basically those, each image is not really changing much. Is each perception of an image a cognition? We do not perceive the image. We do not perceive the image. We perceive the image. We perceive through the image. The way is like an organ in a way. When I look at you, I do not perceive the image I use to see you. I see you through the image. I do not see the image. They're like cataracts, yeah. Like when you're just saying your image of the United States. Yeah. You're not actually perceiving anything. Are you? Well, if I can look at a map. But if you didn't, if you just, in your mind's eye... Then I'm just perceiving the image.

[44:40]

You would say you're perceiving the image. That's a cognition of an image. Okay. And I would also see that cognition of an image through an image. But I do not think that, in this case, I do not think that states, and I don't even think I'm looking at a map. But when you look at a map, a map is also, each map you look at is a different map. On this different page, different book. The book is changing, is deteriorating every moment It's constantly changing. And you can see, and some of you have had moments when you saw that, you actually saw the book changing moment by moment. There are times when you do see physical things, like a book or a rock, you see it, you see its impermanence. It's actually changing, not just theoretical. You have a theory which tells you and you actually see how it's changing.

[45:43]

it is actually changing much faster than 24 frames a second. It's like totally resonating with everything else. It's changing very fast. People, rocks, planets, all kinds of chemical things are all changing together constantly at a very high rate. Direct perception sees that. However, without great concentration, you do not register that and you do not ascertain that. Now, I would not say you do not recognize this because if you recognize it, that's what you usually do is you recognize a rock that's changing. But when you recognize it, you recognize it through an image and then you're looking at the rock through something that doesn't change. and miss a distorted view of the rock because the rock, which is changing, is mixed with an image that doesn't change.

[46:47]

So you look at the rock through an unchanging image. So the rock looks like it's not changing because it's mixed. But you're actually looking at the new fleeting rock. You're looking at it. and you know it's there on your right, let's say, but you're seeing it through these permanentizers. So you can't tell the difference between the image of permanent and the transitory rock. And that's why all conceptual cognitions are mistaken. But they're not totally wrong. For example, if you see and you have a concept, if you conceptually cognize, for example, you see your own body, you see your hand or something, and you conceptually cognize that your hand is getting older and changing, that's not wrong.

[47:54]

It is. But you're mistaken because you think that the way your hand's getting older, the way you know it through the image, of an old hand. And you confuse your image of the old hand with the actual constantly changing aging hand, which you are also, you have actually registered and know. If you see a rock before... Is direct perception before... Direct perception before words? Before the words and the labels. Yes. And... If you have, would you always, in direct perception, say it's a fresh moment, maybe it's not.

[48:54]

If it's just a fresh moment and you have a sense you don't have words, not really direct perception, at those moments, when something doesn't have words yet, it seems fresh, does it always... It doesn't seem fresh. It is fresh. Direct perception sees fresh stuff. That's why direct perception is wonderful. The wonderful thing about direct perception is it only sees fresh stuff. It never sees old stuff because nothing gets old. Actually, nothing actually has a chance to get old. Nothing. So people don't really get old. They just change into old people. But the old people, the nice thing is that the old people that we're changing into are fresh old people. That's why if you understand this teaching and get into it, you will be fresh till the moment, till you'll be fresh all the time.

[49:57]

Fresh, fresh, fresh, fresh, fresh. I am a fresher. And also, of course, young people, they think they're old young people. because they do not directly perceive how fresh they are every moment. They're fresh when they're six, they're fresh when they're ten, they're fresh when they're thirteen, they're fresh when they're seventeen. Actually, because we're impermanent. We don't last. We never have a chance to get stale. Direct perception knows that, knows that, knows that, knows that. And that is before we have a chance to talk about it. You, in direct perception, you have this change that's part of direct perception is the cognition of change of that object. You don't actually, without education you do not actually cognize

[50:59]

directly. You have to get educated through, conceptually educated, to be able to ascertain that this isn't just something fresh. You're actually seeing something fresh, but you don't think it's fresh. You know it's fresh, but you don't think about it. In direct cognitions, you do not really think about things. You know them directly. So you know impermanence. You know it at the same time you know freshness. You know it, but you do not ascertain it. You're seeing an impermanent thing, so you know impermanence, but you don't ascertain that you know impermanence. You're actually seeing fresh things and you're seeing freshly, but you do not understand impermanence. I guess I'm asking whether fresh and impermanent are the same. They're not the same. But fresh things are impermanent things.

[52:04]

And the only kind of things there are, are fresh things. And the only kind of things there are, are impermanent things, except for those special exceptions called, for example, the way everything always is, is the way things are, is that they're interdependent, separate from us. That is not impermanent. Things are always that way. But when you talk about colors, sounds, smells, tastes, tangibles, and mental cognitions, all those things are impermanent. And also conceptual cognitions are impermanent. All perceptions are impermanent. All the things they're knowing are impermanent. And also... But conceptual cognitions, although conceptual cognitions are impermanent, they know things that are... They know... Their knowledge is... confused with images of permanent things, a permanent lens and so on. This freshness and this impermanence, is it the end of suffering? Is it the end of suffering?

[53:06]

Understanding this freshness and understanding the impermanence and then understanding the selflessness of this impermanent fresh thing is the end of suffering. but we need to be educated in order to be able to ascertain impermanence and selflessness. Because we're seeing impermanent, selfless things all day long, but we don't ascertain it. So we need to ascertain more minutely and more freshly, but also ascertain certain things which require some education, which is Pardon? It means to comprehend and understand what's happening there. No, no. Example, again the example. I can flash a color to you and ask if you saw it and you might be able to say, I did not see it.

[54:15]

But we can have ways of testing you to see that you did see it. And also we could flash it many times and gradually you would know that you saw it, but usually when you know you see it is when you ascertain through conceptual cognition that you saw it. You kind of realize it, yeah. Yes? How direct perception can be before the conceptual imposition if all that there is is this instant? Because before, it seems to require some sort of time lapse between the direct and then the indirect perception. But if all that there is is this instant, then how can these be separated? If you don't

[55:15]

To ascertain a momentary flash, for example, of a color, if you're not able to ascertain that in that moment, then you would not be able to have a conceptual cognition of that. The way you'd have a conceptual cognition would be, is if you had a series of direct perceptions of something like a color, a series. And through a series, if it's that strong, that it's your karma with this thing, the causal situation is such that you're being presented with a series of these actually different objects that are in series. It's not the same object it was at the beginning because it's deteriorating moment by moment, but it's causally related. For example, this rock is causally related to that rock which was there not too long ago. but all these different rocks have a causal relationship there for you in your face, with light bouncing off them, stimulating you.

[56:26]

Okay? Is that pointing that? Then when that kind of thing happens, what sometimes can follow then is that you can have a direct mental perception of this, and that becomes the condition for a conceptual cognition of this color, And in fact, this color was just the previous moment of color. But you are ascertaining correctly that thing which no longer exists. But it did exist. And there's one school of Buddhism which understands it somewhat differently so that they have it simultaneous. Okay? Yes, Sarah? It actually sounds like the way people describe it, like LSD experience.

[57:32]

Yeah, it does sound like that. Is it similar? I'm not joking, I'm serious. No, I didn't think you were joking. The other people were laughing, but they didn't think you were joking. They just thought it was funny, because they're stoned. Is it a similar kind of thing you're describing? Is it the same thing you're describing? How do those relate? To tell you the truth, I'm not so clear about that. But a similar sense of things seems to be the case for people who have taken certain drugs. They have a similar sense of phenomena to people who actually can see things more rapidly.

[58:36]

They have a similar sense. And when they hear about the way yogis can see, it sounds similar to what they saw in that state. But whether they're actually able to see this or not, I'm not completely sure whether they're seeing the same as a yogi or if it sounds the same. I'm not sure of that. It does sound similar to some experiences people have with some drug experience. Yes? I'm having trouble seeing how there's this direct mental perception that's not conceptual. It seems like you said it's a series of direct perceptions of color. And then we can have, from that series, we can have a mental direct perception of the person. How could that not be conceptual?

[59:39]

How could it not be conceptual? Like there's an idea in there, if we're stringing things together to make something. there's five skandhas. There's five skandhas even in sense perception. So it's not that there's no, it's not that a moment of sense perception doesn't have conception available to it. It's just that it doesn't use the conception as the media through which it apprehends its object. So mental perceptions, direct perceptions, they also have conception available, but so do sense consciousnesses. But sense consciousnesses do not use an image to ascertain their object. But there are images, or there is an image faculty. There is an image cognition going on simultaneously.

[60:43]

It's just not as a media. And the same for mental, direct mental perception. It doesn't use the image to apprehend. It apprehends directly. What is apprehending directly is a mental image? He said, what is apprehending? What is apprehending? What is apprehended? What is apprehended? What is apprehended is the same object that the sense consciousness knows. That's what's apprehended. Same one. But the mental perception doesn't use the sense organ, doesn't use a physical sense organ to know what the physical sense organ interacts with. So physical sense organ interacts with sense data. They actually physically, they're physical. They physically interact. Magnetic radiation actually causes a chemical reaction or some kind of physical reaction in the tissue of the organ.

[61:49]

And through this interaction, through this interaction of... Now I'm telling you the cause of sense perception, okay? Sense perception has three main causal conditions. One is the object. the physical sense data. The other is the dominant condition. The object condition is the object, sense data. The dominant condition is the sense capacity, which is physical. And then it also has an immediate antecedent condition. The immediate antecedent condition is the state of cognition which just preceded this cognition. When you have a cognition and it goes away Then in the next moment, a sense data interacts with a sense of capacity, or a sense of receptivity, or a sense of sensitivity.

[62:52]

The combination of this dominant physical condition, the organ, with the physical data, and having previously a state of cognition, those three conditions give rise to a cognition. which is nothing other than those three conditions coming together. It's very important that we understand, and this will later feed into the understanding, we're not saying that the cognition is the thing that knows the object. The cognition is the knowing of the object. It's not that the cognition knows the object. The cognition is the knowing of the object which arises with the object and arises with an antecedent state of cognition. See the difference between saying the cognition knows and saying the cognition is the knowing? A knowing arises It's not that the knowing knows.

[63:59]

There's not a self in the cognition of a color. There's not a self in the cognition of a color which knows, which does the thing called knowing. There is just knowing of the color. And that knowing, then, what sense cognition knows can be known by a mental cognition which can co-exist with that sense perception. And that mental perception does not depend on the sense organ. That's why it's a mental perception. It knows the object. It knows this object in the same way. Exactly the same. It's not a knowing anymore. At that point, it knows. It's the same thing. In both cases, it's just there's a knowing of the object. It's not that the mental perception... No. The mental perception does not know. The mental perception is a knowing, but it's a different type of... Same thing, but it's a different type of knowing because it's a knowing that does not depend on a physical organ.

[65:07]

And the other one does, so that's why it's called a mental direct perception. And mental direct perceptions then... are the condition for the arising of mental cognition, mental conceptual cognition. So mental direct perception, mental conceptual cognition, and the conceptual cognition knows the same object but it knows it through an image. The mental perception also in most people the mental perception is not ascertained. So we don't ascertain the sense perceptions that are going on. We're just totally awash in them. Our life is very rich, actually. We're not aware of it. And we're also not aware of the mental perception, direct perception, that happens when there's a sufficient number of those But we are aware of the conceptual cognitions.

[66:13]

That's most of what we're aware of. Now sometimes we're not even aware of those. We're so spaced out. But we are aware of some of them. That's how we get into the room and so on. And get out of the room and tell what time it is. But you can also, that's most of the time, but you can also tell time by direct perception. You can know it is 844 in direct perception. Matter of fact, there was a lot of possible for me to conceptually know it was 844. But you actually know it's 844 by direct perception first. And then... It wouldn't have any meaning. That's the thing about... It has no meaning or dash, I wouldn't recognize it. I said the example of, did I say, what did I say? Not altruism, but autism. Okay? Not all autistic people, but some autistic people, if you show them like a person's face or a horse, they actually see, just like we do, they see the colors of

[67:29]

They see the way the horse actually appears as a visual data, and they can then put those colors down on a piece of paper. Even when they're little kids, they can do it. Because they actually see them. In other words, they see the way that things are actually appearing as a visual phenomena, and they can just put those colors on a piece of paper. But if you ask the kid, where did you draw? They don't They don't recognize what they drew, and you ask them what they were drawing, and they don't recognize that either, sometimes. There's different types of autism. Normal kid, you'll say, what is that? They say it's a horse, or whatever, and then they draw it, but the way they draw it is, they draw it, and it doesn't look like a horse. But you show it to them later, and you say, what is it? They say it's a horse. Because they're translating that visual data into images which they're not very skillful at, and then they're taking those images into paper which they're not very skillful at.

[68:42]

So to us, it doesn't look like much of a horse, but they accurately know that's a horse and this is a horse. And if you show them the picture that the autistic kid drew of the horse, they would be able to say that was a horse. But the autistic kid does not recognize what they drew. They don't recognize. You know, this is one type of autism that's very interesting in this regard. They see the way things are. We see the way things are, too, but it's too fast for us in direct perception. We do see accurately most of the time. Now, there are mistakes, and we'll get into that, but most of the time we see correctly. Most of our direct perceptions are correct, but almost none of them do we know in the sense of ascertain. Yes? And as I sit here... I feel that I experience direct perception.

[69:48]

I'm a little bit worried about saying that. Yeah, I can see why. But when I'm seeing it and hearing it, then I can say I'm not experiencing direct perception. So it feels a bit split to me. And maybe I can't say, maybe it's not wrong to say that there's an experience of direct perception that's different than, it's like it's different than That there is an experience of direct perception that's different from what you think it is. Because what you think about it is not it. And what I think about it is not it either.

[70:50]

But there is an ongoing, most of the time, direct perception life we have. Being quite concentrated, we do not ascertain it. Just like most people sit there and watch some movies and they do not see 24 frames up there with spaces between them. But if you are actually concentrated, you can see the 24 frames with the spaces between. You can see the fluttering and the jumping around in a situation where you're only given 24 frames of a person moving. Then they would be jumping around the way most people would see a slow movie, not a slow movie, but an old movie that didn't have 24 frames a second. Remember when they used to have 16? Then they were jumping around because most people can see faster than that. But we're kind of conditioned, most of us, to see about the same rate just because otherwise it's hard to go to high school.

[71:52]

Seeing and knowing, same thing. There's no seeing. You don't see. We wouldn't count it as seeing if you don't actually know the object. If you see an object, that means you know the object. No, you can know things other ways than seeing them, but if you see something, you must know it. The things you don't see are things that you don't know. There's lots of things to see that you don't know about, but when you see something, you know it. And you do see a lot of things on an ordinary day. However, you don't ascertain the extremely fleeting world that you're actually living in. When I say you don't ascertain that, however, you are living in a world where you are actually a person, a living being created by your interaction with these fleeting things.

[73:04]

And you are being made into a new person, a new knower each moment, a new knower, a fresh knower, a fresh knower who knows fresh things. You're constantly a new, fresh, living creature who knows things freshly. And the things you know are fresh. We're all fresh, fresh together all the time. And we need training in order to actually ascertain that. But even before you can ascertain it, you can learn that that's the way it is. And you can learn about what you're up to most of the time and know about most of the time. And you can start training yourself basically to see more and more accurately. and know and know more accurately, more and more correctly, more and more surely. Yes? Things through the concept, and I think you said I mean, concepts are permanent, but... Concepts are not permanent in the sense of they don't last.

[74:16]

I don't mean that they last. I just mean that the image I use for Catherine and the image I use for Jackie and the image I use for Alan, I can reuse those same images over and over, but they don't last. I just use them over. The mind offers them again and again. And I can use different ones on different days or different ones in different moments. And I do use them in a moment. But they're basically kind of this, you know, like I can see you're blinking now as a different person that wasn't blinking and you're not. I can see you smiling as different from the person who was smiling. But I'm using generic things for smile and generic things generic things for skin. I'm using gazillions of generic things to ascertain your face, conceptually. Like we have, you know, things, this is a happy face, this is a frightened face, this is an angry face, you know, those kinds of things.

[75:18]

They're based on the, which is, you know, which is causally related to the images we come up with, but we use the image so we can talk about it. Yes, Phil? Yes, are we, you said we're perceiving more acutely or accurately, or are we just ascertaining more of those? Do the perceptions get any better or improve, more accurate or more... Most of our... We now recognize them and ascertain them as we improve, as we become educated. Do the perceptions get better? Yeah, direct perceptions. do we ascertain? They get better, basically. They get better, yeah. I mean, you go from a direct perception that you don't even know about, okay, which is fine. I mean, it's perfectly workable. We're using them all day long to get around, but we don't know, you know. We don't know how we get out of the building.

[76:19]

You know, the direct perceptions we use to go downstairs, we're not aware of them, generally speaking. There's gazillions and gazillions of direct perceptions to get down the stairs. We're aware of like maybe 200 conceptual cognitions to get down the stairs. But there's thousands of direct perceptions. Thousands. And we couldn't go without them, right? We couldn't go down there without them. Couldn't go down without them. Turn off the direct perceptions, the person would not be able to go down the stairs. Well, maybe somebody could have such an imagination that they could imagine, okay, I don't have any direct perceptions, so I will have to put my body in a shape that will work about the stairs. Which would be, I want people to carry me down the stairs. So people like that would have to be, either we'd have to like, here comes so-and-so, or they don't have any direct perception, so we have to like put padding on the stairs, or we have to carry them down the stairs. And you could figure that out. You could say, I'm in pain, you know, somehow I know I'm in pain.

[77:22]

I don't know why, how I know that, but I, you know, yeah, we... But you can go from inattentive, basically, to... to fresh and irrefutable direct perception. You can go from inattentive to that. And the way to go, however, is by using lots of conceptual cognitions. Because it's basically in conceptual cognitions that we train ourselves. Because it's conceptual cognitions about how to train our conceptual cognitions in such a way that we act in such a way that they get more and more wholesome. And the more wholesome they get, the more chance we have to be concentrated. The more concentrated we are, the more we open up to these more and more profound and accurate states of direct perception. To them, we have better and better conceptual cognitions.

[78:23]

The direct perceptions are going on through the whole time. We're not ascertaining them, but we're living on them. We have education. We educate our conceptual cognitions away from the terrible misconceptions to better and better and more and more wholesome. ...conceptual cognitions, which set up the possibility of direct, immediate, accurate, irrefutable direct cognitions after having indirect, irrefutable conceptual cognitions. But conceptual cognitions can eventually be fresh. even though they don't directly ascertain impermanence, they can be fresh in the sense that they really are fresh. They're new. But they're not directly perceiving fresh phenomena. And then that we can use as a basis to have direct perception without any conceptual mediation.

[79:30]

Because conceptual mediation is always slightly confused. we're mixing the image with what we know, even when we know really correctly and freshly. So I have this chart for you which you can look at between now and next week, which has on the top of the chart, working from the chart, working from the right-hand side of the chart, you have wrong cognitions. And this upper right-hand corner is basically the type of cognition which we call ignorance. As you move across the top of the page, you move to your upper left, and that's a type of cognition which we call direct vowed perception. and our direct perception.

[80:32]

And that is the type of cognition which is the awakened mind, which is a cognition which knows freshly what's going on without any conceptual mediation, free of conceptual mediation. And next to it is a fresh, correct knowing And that is also a valid cognition. The two on the left side are both valid cognitions. Going across the top line is an epistemological shift from the most problematic and unfortunate state to the most liberating type of cognition. And then going down are various other types of cognitions which we can relate to the different types.

[81:39]

So this chart is a summary of, one summary of Buddhist epistemology for you to study. And you can look at this, and as you study it, hopefully it'll start making more and more sense to you. So this is a conceptual recognition. On the backside is a little summary of perception and conception. So you can check this out. And also, if you'd like, there are reading lists someplace in the room. If you'd like a reading list, they're back on the table. Help yourself. Are they different than your previous one? About the previous one, which has wonderful books on it, but people say, could you give me a shorter one? So then I made a shorter one and they said, give me a longer one. So this is between the shorter and the longer. This only has about 15 things on it instead of many. So I think almost all the books on that list are on the reserve in this library.

[82:44]

And some of them are for sale in the bookstore. Which one do you recommend? Which one do I recommend? I... Top one? Top one. That's not direct perception. I just can't... I can't not say the Abhidhamma Kosha. But I can't say the Abhidhamma Kosha because it costs $275. We have two copies. And the City Center Library has it. And we can maybe scrounge up some more if you want. That's one. But that's really hard. So some of the other texts are even harder. And some of the other texts are easier. But all you need is this chart. This is enough, really. Thank you very much. May our attention be graced and praised.

[83:50]

Praise to you.

[83:52]

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