I hope you enjoy this class this morning. It's a story of the origins of consciousness, self, karma, and the universe. So starting with the circular approach, we have the world of the world. Karma. Where did the world come from? Where did the Buddhist teachings? Karma. Well, rather, the world dependently chorizes with karma. And karma dependently chorizes with the world. Abhidham Kosha gives this teaching, you know, first it describes all the different kinds of experiences that living beings can have with the world.

[01:09]

And then the next chapter is about karma. It says, where does this world come from? It says it comes from karma. And in the Mahayana Sutras, like the Aptamsaka Sutra, it's a nice chapter on the formation of the world. It says, where do all the worlds come from? They come from karma and aspiration. of living beings in the world consciousness. So the conception of this talk was formed in preparation for a talk I gave in Monterey a while ago, where I had a little panel with a physicist and the topic of the panel, of the discussion, was consciousness. So I studied a little bit, I studied a long time, but a little bit, about modern philosophy of mind and research on the relationship between brain and consciousness and things like that.

[02:23]

But my presentation was basically... my understanding of the Buddhist story of the birth of consciousness, which I'll give you today. And I also got in telling you, like I said, after I gave my story of the birth of consciousness, I gave the story of the birth of self, and although I was very light about it in that group, the birth of the world, Because for the people who came to talk, it seemed like the easy way was to start with the physical world and then to go to consciousness. Because that's what most modern science thinks now is that you have physicality and then consciousness arises out of biological physicality. So I started from that point of view. I didn't tell them that it was a circle. that the physicality comes from karma, which comes from consciousness.

[03:28]

At the end, I told him, after I went through it, I said, and then karma creates the world. Nobody seemed to want to talk to me about that. I think it's on the tape. Did you hear it on the tape? Charlie, did you hear it? Did I say that at the end? I just briefly mentioned, and then this creates the world. What? So, but I'll start at the point where we have, let's say, I'm going to start at the point where we have physicality. and go from there. But also I wanted to say that in the process of studying the scientists' discussions of the brain, its relationship to consciousness, I was reading one scientist who's also a physicist, who's also a mathematician, and he was talking about consciousness, and he said...

[04:44]

How do you put it? Well, he said, oh, I'm not going to define precisely what consciousness is. The reason why I'm not going to do that is because I feel now is not a good time to do that. The reason why I feel now is not a good time to do that is because I don't know what consciousness is. I don't know. I know. He said, so how come I'm talking about consciousness if I don't know what it is? And I can't define it precisely. He said, for mathematicians, it's not a problem to talk about things that we don't know what they are. We can talk quite a bit about things we don't know what they are. All we need to do is talk about whatever is connected or related to them. By talking about their relationships, we can discuss the thing. And, he didn't say this, but eventually find out what it is through its relationships. This is in Buddhist, actually. We don't necessarily, the things don't have inherent existence. So we can define it if we want to, but we're defining something and we don't know what it is.

[05:51]

But another approach is, talk about what it's related to, and by studying what it's related to, we discover what it is. We can discover what it is, even though it's not something we can get a hold of as inherently existing. And I also introduced my talk to the people there by saying that, you know, in Buddhism, in Buddhadharma, we don't know what anything is. Because the only thing we have any evidence for are things that are dependent co-arisings. We don't have any evidence for things that are something. We do have evidence for things that are dependent core horizons. We talk about those. So just like the scientists, just like the mathematician, we talk about relationships and discover what reality is. And I also talked about, as a perspective, that

[06:54]

you know, whatever we think. You study physics a little bit. If you study physics a little bit, you think you understand physics. When you study physics more, you realize something's missing. And same in Buddhadharma. When the Buddhadharma does not fill your body and mind, you think, oh, I understand Buddhadharma. I understand the truth of the Buddha. When the Buddha Dharma fills you completely, you realize something's missing. Something's missing, something missing in your understanding, and something missing in all things. What's missing in all things is inherent existence. They don't have it. And what's missing in your understanding is, it's limited. But if we understand these limitations, if we understand, for example, the lack of eternal existence, namely emptiness, if we understand the limits of our perspective, we can accord, we can come into accord with Buddhadharma if we understand that.

[08:08]

Matter of fact, we are in accord with Buddhadharma. It's filling us when we understand our limitations. So, that's kind of a background of story, okay? So here's the story. Let's say the story actually is like prior to, you know, I'm not talking about like, you know, a world, I'm not talking about a world like where you're like a person or where you're a divine being or where you're an animal spirit or you're a hell dweller or something like that. I'm not talking about that kind of world. I'm not talking about the world where there's like California and Texas and, you know, Cadillacs and stuff like that. I'm just talking about a world where there's physicality. Okay? Physicality.

[09:11]

And it turns out that the worlds I want to talk about with this physicality, I'm talking about the ones where your physicality comes in five dimensions. Okay? Well, actually, ten. Five dimensions of gross materiality and five dimensions of subtle materiality. That's what I'm talking about. And the gross materiality, again, is not like California and apples, but electromagnetic radiation, Thermal radiation. Temperature. Temperature in a physical form as it touches physical objects.

[10:11]

Textures. Solidity. Something solid that can hold temperature and texture. Smells. Gases. and mechanical waves, electromagnetic waves, mechanical waves, gaseous material, liquid or chemical material, and more solid kinds of material. Well, the first one is, you know, electromagnetic radiation, which, you know, of a certain wavelength we call light, or colors. And mechanical waves of a certain wavelength we call sounds.

[11:15]

And then certain gases are smells. We can smell certain gases. And certain chemicals are tastes. We have tastes for certain chemicals and certain textures. Certain physical phenomena we can experience touch. And then the five subtle forms of materiality are what are called, are the kinds of materiality that are living tissue, it's materiality in living tissue or non-living tissue that's very responsive to these gross forms of materiality. But this responsiveness is what's meant by the materiality, not necessarily, for example, something you can touch, but the responsiveness in certain things that you can touch.

[12:45]

So in the physical world, there are certain parts of the physical world which are very responsive to these five kinds of physicality. And some of the most responsive areas in the physical world to these five kinds of gross materiality are in living tissue. But some non-living tissue also is quite responsive to these gross materialities. Certain non-living tissue responds very actively to chemicals, right? Like Litten's paper responds to different colors in relationship to acid and base and so on. OK. But also, living tissue responds to acid and base also. David? This is the way I can find the position How do you define it?

[13:51]

I would say living tissue is the kind of tissue that will be able to give rise to consciousness. And if you want to show me some other living tissue that doesn't give rise to consciousness, we can talk about that later. For my story, anyway. That's a short answer, right? So... The basic story is that when this gross materiality starts interacting with the subtle materiality, that interaction between these different orders of materiality, that interaction is where consciousness is born. I think I used an example in the talk.

[14:57]

You take two different kinds of metal, put them next to each other, and then in close contact or almost glued together. And then as temperature changes, the one type of metal might expand more than the other. And the fact that the one expands more than the other can set up an electrical current. So the relationship between the two kinds of metals interacting differently sets up this thing called, sets up electrical current. The interaction between two kinds of physicality sets up consciousness. Yes? Uh-huh. Okay. For example... Both gross and subtle materiality are located.

[16:01]

And both gross and subtle materiality can be hit. The word that the Buddhists use for form for material is rupa, which comes from rupani, which means to hit. And the way that materiality can be hit is by the gross material. Materiality can be hit by Colors, sounds, smells, tangibles, tits. Now, these things can hit, the gross materiality can hit itself. Electromagnetic radiation can hit electromagnetic radiation. Electromagnetic radiation is, as it's material, it is hittable. It has location. Subtle rupa also has location, and it can be hit by these five gross forms. But, although it's located, it's not, you know, it's not actually, you know, it's not the gross form.

[17:18]

So, for example, the eye. The eye is located around the eyeball, but the eyeball is not the eye organ. If you take the eyeball away, you don't have the eye organ. Because the eye, the receptivity depends on the tissue called the eye. But you cannot see or touch the receptivity. Even though you can put your finger where it is, you cannot get a hold of the receptivity. It's too subtle. You can't get a hold of the fact that this tissue responds to light. But it is located and it responds to light at, for example, the retina. It doesn't respond to light the same way at the lens as it does to the... In a sense, the lens isn't responsive to light, okay?

[18:22]

Does that make sense, Steve? Hello? The lens doesn't respond to the light, it focuses it. The lens responds to light, funny lens. We have muscles to change the lens shape, so the lens can respond to physical maneuvers, but basically the lens isn't going to respond. The thing that responds is the retina, cones, and things like that. They respond energetically and vividly to the stimulation. But the response, it's a physical response, but you can't get a hold of the response. It's subtle. So we don't mean the eyeball. You can't get a hold of it. If you get a hold of the eyeball, you take it out, you remove the ability for that high level of receptivity. But the eyeball is not the receptivity. The receptivity is this responsiveness. It's kind of like another example that's used in the Abhidharma is like if you, what do you call it, if you clarify butter, you know, how you warm it up, it settles into ghee.

[19:34]

Is it ghee and whey? Ghee and whey. The ghee sits up on top of the whey. Is that right? You can see through the ghee to the whey. Is that right? Yeah. See? So if you look down at the butter, you don't really see the ghee. You see through the ghee to the whey. The organs are like that. You see through the organs in a sense, right? You can see it's through the organ that you see this other thing, but the organ also is interacting with the gross. And that interaction between these two kinds of materiality is the birth of consciousness. And I just think you just sit there for a little while with that. Say it again. The interface where the gross and subtle matter meet, that's the interface where consciousness arises.

[20:47]

And maybe if you've ever heard of ayatanas, you've heard of them? So, ever heard of the 12 sense basis? The ayatana means door of arrival. Door of arrival. Door of arrival of consciousness. A-Y-A-T-N-A-A. T-N-A. T-A-N-A. A-Y-A-T-A-N-A. Ayatana. Door of arrival. This is where consciousness arises. What are the ayatanas? Eye and light, ear and sound, nose and smell, tongue and taste, skin or touch sense and tangible, and mind organ and mind object.

[21:53]

This is where the six types of consciousness arise at these interfaces. So in basic Abhidharma meditation, there are three basic types of meditation. One on the skandhas, on the five aggregates, one on the twelve ayatanas, and one on the eighteen dhatas. Those are referred to in the heart citra. Form is not different from emptiness. The same is true of feelings, perceptions, impulses, and mental formations, or mental formations and consciousness. Those are the five skandas. Then they say, no eyes, no ears, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind, no color. That's the twelve eyotinus. And then no realm of eyes. Those are the 18 doctors. These are three basic meditations in Buddhism to enlighten us. Skandas is particularly to orient us from belief in self.

[22:55]

The ayatana is to free us from belief in consciousness. Dhatu is to free us from belief in space-time. But I'm emphasizing today the ayatanas because that's the meditation where you would look to see where consciousness arises. Okay, so Ramon and Mark. When you talk about consciousness, you could also say mind, right? No, not consciousness. I'm talking about vijnana, not mind. Mind, I think you should save, you keep in your back pocket for later. There could be mind bigger than consciousness. This is just consciousness. This is just a mind which knows objects. I'm talking now about the birth of sense consciousness. Talking about the birth of sense consciousness, which theoretically, according to my experience, non-human living beings could possess this kind of sense consciousness.

[24:06]

Sense consciousness. This is the arising of sense consciousness. Not mind, necessarily. However, mind is not related. You could have a bigger mind. which is related to sense consciousness and takes birth in sense consciousness. But this is consciousness which is responding to consciousness which arises in relationship to these two types of materiality would be responding to what kind of materiality? Huh? Gross, right, it responds to the gross. Does it respond to the subtle? No. The subtle materiality actually seems to separate consciousness from what it's responding to. That's part, that's a big part, that's an important part of this story.

[25:07]

What? Because it's responding to the grace. Pardon? He said the subtle is responding to the grace. Yes. But now I'm saying that consciousness which arises from that responsiveness, okay? Consciousness arises from the interaction between sub and dros rupa, I'm saying. Once consciousness arises, it's as though consciousness is separated from what it's aware of by the organs. You guys are on the verge of learning something it looks like. Maybe you have to do this over and over.

[26:11]

Two kinds of materiality. They interact. Consciousness arises. Once consciousness arises in relationship to these two, then this subtle materiality which can interact with and be responsive to the growths, which is part of the way consciousness is born, then it's as though the subtle materiality kind of interposes itself between consciousness and what consciousness is aware of. It's like consciousness sees or is aware of what it's aware of through the organs. And in that way, the organ separates, the organ facilitates and separates at the same time. What would that be? Hmm? Animals would experience reality that way, right?

[27:15]

They have consciousness of receiving something. Maybe they just have consciousness that they perceive. Right? In this level of sense consciousness, this level of consciousness is not unique to humans yet. Animals have exactly the same kind that I'm talking about. This is not objective consciousness. You don't know this. Consciousness, there can be awareness without objective knowledge. And that is the level of awareness that sense consciousness operates on. First of all, I'll forecast this. What I'm showing you is how duality is born. I'm showing you how consciousness is born and also how dualistic consciousness is born.

[28:19]

So watch the sort of irony here. These two things make this third thing. This third thing arises from these two things. But then after it arises, then that by which it was born, then it moves into a relationship of separating itself from part of what it arose from. It's like, you know, if I have a mother and a father, actually this is kind of true, isn't it? If I have a mother and a father, I rise in dependence on my mother and father, on their interaction, from their difference, right? Then after I'm born, one of my parents, it becomes an obstacle between me and my other parent. And although I rose from both parents, I feel like I see one parent through the other, and the one that I see the other one through interferes with my relationship with the other one, even though I was born from both of them.

[29:23]

And then I even see one of them, by virtue of one of them that I was born from, I see the other one as not me. This is kind of anthropomorphizing this process. So A and B give rise to C, and C depends on A and B, but then A and B seem to be like, by virtue of the way B facilitates me seeing A, B also separates me from A, and I feel A is, in a sense, the consciousness seems to be a consciousness of something which is not it. even though it arose from it. And the very things that give rise to it are also the things which make it feel like it's separated from that which we were born from. So this is how it happens that we develop this thing called consciousness, this dualistic consciousness, which is actually born of interaction and feels cut off from what it was born from.

[30:26]

This is the kind of, this is like, in some sense, my kind of, what is, my apology to, you know, on your behalf, on the behalf of all living creatures, for how duality has to arise because of the way we're born. So, I don't know, all the people raise their hand and I can remember the order then. So, Mark was next, yeah. The mind and mind-object I haven't yet explained how mind-conscious arises, but at the arising of mind-consciousness, there will be another sense door, another door of the arrival of mind-consciousness. I will go through that. I will show you the story of the birth of mind-consciousness, and it will follow the same paradigm.

[31:34]

And maybe I should... I thought you were going to get this like that, and we're going to move right through, and I'd be already around this whole karma world thing by now. But anyway, maybe this is good that you're actually looking at this. But anyway, what you're looking at here is my description of a meditation on how to see the birth of consciousness. And the point of this meditation is to... free you from the subject-object dualism. That's the point of this kind of communication. I think if you said dualistic consciousness in the beginning, it might have been more clear to more people. But you were just saying consciousness. So people are, I think that might have created some confusion on what level of consciousness you were speaking. That's the only kind of consciousness we have. Well, you've got to think about mind.

[32:37]

Yeah, it's not consciousness. But, you know, then I might have got confusion later after I told you that that's the only kind you have. Okay, so let's see. Raise your hands again. So, let's see. Geez, I can't remember who's next. Maybe Tim. So... And there's this kind of gross materiality, which is kind of like the world outside the living thing. But there's this subtle materiality, which is kind of like the living thing. Yes. Since we're concentrating on the birth of consciousness, we're concentrating on the subtle materialities that are in living beings. There are many other kinds of subtle materiality. But since I'm talking about the birth of consciousness, I'm talking about the type that's in living beings. So the living being wants to, in fact, needs to survive, kind of like know or sense and process information about the world around it.

[33:46]

Well, you're jumping way ahead, though, about what it has to do. We're back at the stage of giving rise to birth of consciousness. Well, then, without being a hefty, then, I mean, it is the nature of living to do that. But you're already assuming you've already got consciousness arisen in your story. So I need to back up to just rooting pain needs to work. Yeah. You don't have consciousness yet. Because you've already got consciousness and I'm not going to show you the birth of consciousness. So, you know, and so you, what's the thing is that each of you do have consciousness already, but you've got to act, if you're going to do this meditation, you have to sort of forget that you've already got consciousness because you're going to use your consciousness to look at how it itself is born. So, I'm going to end up thinking maybe a little bit more like the psychologist and you'd be on the panel or whatever, but the living thing meets the world

[34:54]

What's going to happen in a rising of consciousness, in my mind, is some sort of information about the world, some sort of model of the world, is going to begin to be built or formed inside a living thing. It's going to have a representation of the world. Some number of photons is going to be kind of light or dark or yellow or red. I think that's right. And the world is the representation of the world that's going to be in the consciousness that arises from this interaction. I'll say it again. The world or the model or image or representation of the world is going to somehow arise in the consciousness of this creature which arises from this interaction. That model is going to be something about this interaction. So then the model of the world that you get in the consciousness which arises from this interaction is a dualistic model.

[35:57]

Well, in a sense, that's almost like putting dualistic in front of a model is almost a necessary thing. And this is kind of the point I want to make. The consciousness that arises is a representation of the world, but it's not the world. So it's important... Also, the world is not the world. This is just a part of the world that's giving rise to consciousness. Right, right. But even the representation is not that part. That's right, it's not. It's a shadow of it. That's right. It's a shadow of this interaction. And this interaction is not really the whole world either. But it's the part of the world. It's the way the world does something. It's the way materiality kind of studies itself. in materiality study or interacting with itself to give rise to this phenomenon called consciousness. Now, we haven't mentioned yet that materiality comes from consciousness. That's later. But for now, anyway, we're going to act as though we don't know that materiality comes from consciousness because living beings that give rise to the subtle material are conscious.

[37:07]

We don't know that yet. But we do. People who don't think that there's consciousness in tissue, and that tissue has to be part of it, conscious being, they can say, okay, let's see this interaction. And you're right that this interaction then gives a representation or a shadow of the interaction, somehow gets conveyed to the consciousness that arises. So consciousness arises, but it doesn't arise just purely by itself. It arises with mental factors which represent its origins. Does the shadow be conveyed to consciousness, or is the shadow consciousness? I think the shadow is consciousness, because to say it's conveyed to consciousness, and why is it there with consciousness there? And again, we're talking about consciousness. Well, if I say that consciousness is not what was conveyed to it, plus what it depends on, I say it's

[38:09]

You're saying, I heard you say, that you've got this consciousness rising from this interaction. And then there's a shadow of this interaction. No, I'm saying that the shadow of the world that is the result of the interaction is... Is the shadow of the world a shadow of the interaction or a shadow of something else? I guess it's a shadow of the interaction. Yeah, I think so. It's a shadow of the part of the world that gives rise to this consciousness. And you're saying, isn't the consciousness just that shadow of the world? OK, so it's really the shadow of the interaction. Yeah, OK. So isn't it just that shadow of the interaction? And I would say, not quite. OK, not quite. Because this thing also depends on these two things. Yeah. It's not just a shadow. We've got to have those things, too. So the consciousness is now kind of the shadow and the world and the living.

[39:13]

Yeah. You see, what we want, there's a tendency in all of us to make that consciousness into something. And to say, for example, it's the shadow of the interaction which gives rise to it. But it isn't that. Because then it would be that. And that would be the thing. It's actually all these relationships. So it's not just, the consciousness isn't just the interaction. It's something more, too. There's the interaction plus this new thing happened. But the new thing's not something separate from what gave rise to it. Right? So it depends on it. So the consciousness is kind of like the A and B, the gross and the subtle and, and they're leading. And they're leading. That's right. That's right. It's the gross, the subtle, and the meeting. But it's not just the grossness and the subtle meaning. It's something more called consciousness. Because you don't have gross subtle meaning and then not consciousness.

[40:14]

You have gross subtle meaning and consciousness. You don't have meaning and no gross and subtle. You don't have gross and subtle and no meaning. You have all of them at once and there isn't something in addition to that all really that's consciousness. It's all interdependent, you see. There really isn't anything, but that's how you find out what it really, what it, what you find the truth of the reality of the situation is by this interaction. So that's very good. This is, this is the pentacle arising, you see, and this is how you find out that right away, this is how you find out that right away, the emptiness of the 12-based sense basis is by this very little thing. Right away, you empty it. If you can actually experience this, you can achieve liberation right on that. This is case 21 of the book Transmission of the Light. So, one lineage of meditation, so there's two main branches of the teaching of suchness that I want you to become familiar with during this practice period.

[41:29]

One branch is the branch of this, in some sense, the branch that studies the origin of consciousness, the birth of consciousness and emptiness of consciousness grows in subtle rupa to that interaction. And that lineage is like Vasubandhu and It is the fourth ancestor, the fifth ancestor, and a guy named Tsongsa, who's in your reading list, who wrote this meditation text, and it also is early Dogenzenji, who copied that form of meditation for his first rendition of Uganza Zengi. So that's one lineage of the teaching of Sajnas. If you take that teaching of Buddha, you know, of let the herd be the herd, and you apply it to this interaction here where you see how it is, the suchness of the birth of consciousness, that lineage will lead you along these meditation practices which will basically talk like, if you study this, it vanishes.

[42:41]

If you study consciousness, it vanishes. If you study these mental factors, they vanish. This kind of study, in some sense, is the kind of study that's in the background and it gives you the explanation of how you actually empty the subject-object dualism. And there's a set of texts which you can look at which are following that lineage. The other lineage is higher in the evolutionary scale of the story. I haven't finished yet. And that is, it's more on the level of thinking and karma. And that's the lineage of Yaoshan, Madsi, and later Dogen. The second version of Fukan Zazangi adopts that level. So today, I'm emphasizing the kind of meditation that would help you understand the ancient roots of various meditation practices, which you may see if you read Buddhist texts, where they talk about, if you look at the consciousness, it vanishes. If you look at the mental phenomena or the emotion, it vanishes.

[43:46]

This is the background of that, and this is how you can understand this. Now comes the illusion of dualism. Is it the consciousness that begins to see itself as separate from the gross world, or is it the subtle materiality that is trying to elevate itself above the gross materiality in its relationship with consciousness? You know, you could tell that story. What happens here? You got the subtle, you got the organ right. got the organ the sensitive tissue in the living creature which can respond in this real groovy way to light and then you have and then because because those things are like interacting then you have the birth of consciousness and consciousness is like depends on also that contact okay now what

[45:02]

What Tim's saying is maybe then the receptive, the organ says, hey, I get to be closer to consciousness than you do. Because, you know, I'm more important than you. I'm real receptive. I'm more feminine. In response, you're all just over there being a definite cult. And in a way, you know, in Abhidharma, they kind of go along with that because they name the consciousness after the organ. And they call the organ... It's awkward. The organ gets to name the consciousness. They don't call it... No, the organ isn't a word. The organ gets to be close and be, you know, kind of a strict way. But the organ is just a vehicle. Consciousness can relate to materiality. And then, by that relationship, in a way, consciousness is separated from that which is aware of.

[46:05]

So there's an externality, a separation between consciousness and what it's aware of, even though it can't be there, except with the materiality that it's aware of. It wouldn't arise if that wasn't there, but also it wouldn't arise if the warning wasn't there. It's not aware of the warning because the warning gets to be so close. And also, structurally, even if the organ wasn't close, the organ, in fact, has to separate the thing from what it's aware of. But actually, you see, it's nonsense. Because it's really that they're very all close. They're all touching. And as a matter of fact, if it weren't for the organ to take the organ away, consciousness would just be collapsed into what it's aware of. Because there's really no difference. And actually, what is consciousness other than awareness of the thing that it's separating from?

[47:08]

Doesn't it also have this kind of shadow or impression or representation of its birth story? It does, but actually that's not consciousness. What that's called is mentality or mental factors. And that gives the color to the consciousness. Consciousness doesn't just come up like awareness. It comes up with awareness and my history. What history is most important? My birth. My parents. How they got together. So consciousness never comes up. Even the most primitive sense consciousness doesn't come up without a little history. So even the most primitive consciousness is interdependent. And it's nothing in addition to gross and subtle material, their contact, the dynamic between them, and their difference.

[48:16]

That gives rise to it. So now you've got a sense consciousness. And animals have this. However, there is not conscious awareness of an object, there's not yet objective knowledge, and there's not self yet. But this is, all living beings have this kind of consciousness, you could say. There's a class of living creatures that have this consciousness. How big it is, some debate, some Buddhist, ancient Buddhists say, plants didn't have that, we can talk about that later. Animals have that. They act like they have it. So this is the level of sense consciousness, the birth of sense consciousness, okay? And so there's lots of questions, lots of questions, and I just want to tell you before I answer any more questions that the next step is how do we go from sense consciousness to mind consciousness, okay? That's waiting. And I'll tell you then, the next step is, how do you go from mind consciousness to self-consciousness?

[49:21]

That's waiting. The next one is, how do you go to self-consciousness to karma? And how do you go to karma to the world? Where this whole thing started from, but we didn't tell the scientists then. So now, I don't know. Raise all the hands, and I'll remember the order. Since this is your last class, I think we should go through it. The last class in a while. I can just run through it once, and then you can ask questions on the ocean. Want to do that? Yeah. Yes. This next part's kind of like what we're just doing, but a little bit more subtle. It helps to be used. I can imagine this. This is a world where there's not, you know, it's just like colors and tissue, you know, and boom, sense consciousness arises.

[50:24]

Now you have sense consciousness, but as Tim has helped us realize, it isn't just sense consciousness, it's sense consciousness for the history. What is the history of? History of dependency on gross and subtle materiality, dependence on difference, and also dependence on separation in there. There's like a shadow or an impression of duality and separation and dependence. And contact. All those things are coming. Now, where does mind consciousness come? Look into the consciousness, the sense consciousness, okay? Look in there. What have you got? What's the main content so far we've found in there? That image or that representation or that afterglow or shadow of its history. What's its history? Different things coming together. What's its history? Something arose now and exists now

[51:26]

partly on the basis of the illusion of being separated from what it's born from, are separated from itself. Because we see that consciousness can't be anything other than, can never be cut off from its roots, which are gross and subtle materiality. So what the story in the consciousness, all consciousness has so far for content, is... This shadow of a delusion. A shadow of that a thing can be separated from itself. That's the main thing that's got in there. So far? Now, that shadow then, the consciousness then starts interacting with that shadow. And the shadow then creates this sense the shadow of the story of how mind consciousness is shaped, that becomes a new organ which interacts with this history.

[52:33]

And then consciousness itself splits itself into two. So consciousness then can look back at itself and feel separate from its own story. And then there's another consciousness arises called mind consciousness. So where the first story was gross and subtle rupa, and then sense consciousness arises, now you have the subtlety of the mind now is the sense that it can respond to itself and its history of duality. The mind that gets split in two by this capacity and can look at itself and see and feel separated from its own contents. The part of the mind that can split itself in two is the organ. Just like in the sense consciousness, the part of the scenario of consciousness that splits itself is the organ.

[53:37]

The part that's aware is the consciousness. And the thing that you're aware of in this case now is not colors and stuff, But these afterglows or shadows of sensory consciousness, which is afterglows also of sensory events. But they're no longer sensory events. They're now like shadows and concepts of these things. Now you have mind consciousness. And yet, mind-consciousness is now aware of itself as an object. It's been split into two. We're getting close to self. We have now given birth to here and there. Pure here and there. Not here and colors, or awareness and colors, or awareness of colors, but now The awareness is here and the color is there.

[54:41]

But it's not the color. It's a shadow of the color. It's a shadow of the sense consciousness which brings us the color. Now we have here and there. We have subject and object. We have self. Identity and others. And now, by the way, also, things are starting to get more and more screwed up. They were a little screwed up at the beginning, so the price of the birth of the sense consciousness was a kind of tension between the reality of the dependable arising of it and the illusion of separation within that which is totally interdependent. This is somewhat disturbing to the system. The consciousness, we sort of, we got consciousness, but with the price. The price is, something's off here. Now, based on what's off and based on the contradiction, now we get a higher level of contradiction than pain and conflict called mind consciousness.

[55:45]

And then out of that, all that wonder, we make a self. The self is born in a really screwed up, contradictory, unharmonious, discombobulated thing so that we're already in trouble. Now, then we got the self, The same thing happens for the self. It gets separated from the mind. It's separated from these abilities. And now the self is going to do something about this. And we have karma. And all the activities of the living being, whatever they were, the self now sets their mind. Whatever living being there was, whatever living tissue there was, it was acting, you know, all along. then consciousness arose with this living being, then mind consciousness arose, then self-consciousness arose, then karma arose, and then the self takes ownership of the activities of this living creature, takes ownership of the tendencies by which this living creature acts in certain ways, and then we have karma.

[56:53]

This karma then creates worlds which we haven't seen yet. Now no longer worlds of, like, red, yellow, blue, and salty and stuff. Now worlds of, you know, self and other, there was self and other, now that one, me and you, animals and plants, stars and moons, all that stuff. And then, after that happens, that leads to more, to a living creature, which then creates consciousness again and go around the cycle. So that's the cycle. I guess that's... Oh, and then one other aspect of it, you can handle this one more twist, and that is that it turns out that there isn't just one living being for some reason, which you can get into later.

[57:59]

There seems to be quite a few. Each living being, however, had its own consciousness, and each living being had its own consciousness in relationship to subtle rupa. So there's subtle rupas all over the place, right? But it's always located. There's subtle rupa here, there's subtle rupa there, and there's subtle rupa here. So wherever there's this subtle rupa in the surface of life, At that point, when that interacts with gross rupa, you have the birth of consciousness. But that consciousness, although consciousness isn't located, it's born from something that is located in a particular spot. So a particular consciousness arises in a particular area around a particular sense of a certain place of sensitive tissue. So that's one living being there, which can even develop a sense of self and do karma at that spot. Okay? That karma created by that self, which arose in this way, that karma then, the effect of that karma comes back to that system, comes back to that consciousness, comes back to that self.

[59:21]

And the way it comes back, one of the ways it comes back, one of the main ways it comes back, is it comes back in the form of sense organs. Your sense organs are probably one of the main retributions from the karma which you have done. So your own sense organs are your own karmic retribution. Now, what about the rest of the world? The other part. The gross. The gross is not doesn't come in the same way. The gross comes not from individuals, but the sum total of the individuals. So, there's two worlds. One world is called the Sattva Loka. S-A-T-T-V-A L-O-K-A. Sattva Loka. And that's the world of living beings. That's the world of where you have these sense organs.

[60:26]

Another world which is called Pajama Loka. And that's called the container world. And that's the world of colors, smells, tangibles, sounds, and tastes. That world, which contains all the sattva world, that's the world which is a result of the sum total of the karma of all living beings from all time. The sattva-loka is a world where there's individual sets of sense organs and individual consciousnesses which are a result in lineages of individual karma. So karma is generated individually, but the sum total of it creates the physical world in the gross form, and the individual creates lineages of sense organs. And along with the sense organs comes lineages of consciousness. personal histories, about the birth of this particular sense consciousness, which we don't know the histories of sense consciousness, we don't consciously know them, but sense consciousnesses do have histories, which are then conveyed, regurgitated as concept to mind consciousness, and then in mind consciousness self arises and in karma arises, so we have karma history at the level of mind consciousness.

[61:53]

So we have karma history, and also sense consciousness history, and also our sense organs are the result of our karmic history. So it's one system there. And it's, you know, one of the wonders of the world is that there's five sense organs in a normal person, and there's five sense modalities, not six. No animal we know of has six. Some have less, some have much more elaborate versions of some of them, but there's only six. That's the container world. We all live in the five, sense gross, five gross sense modality, five gross materiality world. And inside that we have five sense organs, five sense consciousnesses. From those five sense consciousnesses arise mind consciousness. And mind consciousness arises from this reworking of the model of the sense consciousness.

[62:58]

Sense consciousness arises from the sense and physicality, the sense, subtle sense, subtle rupa of the sense organ interacting with the gross rupa, and that shadow of that inhabits or is impressed upon the sense consciousness, then that whole paradigm becomes the paradigm by which mind consciousness arises. Again, so you watch materiality interact with itself, gives rise to mind consciousness. Mind consciousness carries the story of the birth of the sense consciousness. And sense consciousness interacts with the self. And it gives rise to mind consciousness. And mind consciousness carries the story of its birth. And the story of its birth is a scenario of, again, now conceptually, self and others. This and that. Separation and separation of what? Separation from that which gives you birth.

[64:01]

Separation from that which you cannot exist without. Separate from that from you from which you are nothing in addition. So this is the basic contradiction of dualistic consciousness, and that's why non-dual consciousness is not someplace else, because the non-duality is implied by the duality. If you look at the duality, it's obviously telling the story of non-duality. Duality is saying this is not dual. We couldn't talk about duality without non-duality. That's why if you study at various points in this story, if you study this story, the whole thing collapses. So if you study at the level of the arising of the consciousness, the sense consciousness or the mind consciousness, if you study at that level, you realize the emptiness of the twelve ayatanas and the eighteen dhatus, the twelve doors of arrival and the eighteen elements. And that's the story of Basubandhu in the book The Transmission of Light.

[65:09]

Somebody says, you know, what's the Buddha? And he says, mind is Buddha. Our original mind is Buddha. And he says, what's the mind of Buddha? And he says, the emptiness of the 18 dhatus and the 12 sense doors. You can see, and he was awake, and the Vasubanthi student was awakened at that time. He was already, I guess, meditating on these. And he pointed to the interdependence of these processes of originations of consciousness. He was awakened when he saw their interdependence. So that's one way. The other level is, it's the one I've been emphasizing, which I think is easier to get into, is at the level of the process where you're meditating on karma. You become intimate with that process of karma and you realize emptiness of that story. In other words, non-action.

[66:13]

Or the intimacy of thinking, in other words, non-action. So that's kind of the whole story. It's a story, right? Now you want to try the questions? Got the whole picture. Peter? I'm trying to understand the difference, but there's a difference in relationship between this kind of arising of consciousness and the consciousness according to 18 Dattus? Is that the same thing as Gene Posit? No, that's 12 on that one. Oh, OK. Well, that is 12. Where you found what they call . The 12 links are particularly concentrating on the topic of rebirth. That's the emphasis there. So that's for meditation in the process of rebirth, to become liberated from the process of rebirth.

[67:16]

They're talking about it differently though. Yeah. When they talk about contact between the sense organ and the object. When they're talking about, in the 12 links, when they're talking about contact, the thing they're talking about is exactly the same thing as the contact between gross image, subtle material, gross material, subtle material, and consciousness. They're all in contact. That's the contact they're talking about. But in that case, what they're talking about by contact is not that contact is the sixth sixth element in the process of 12, that that's contact. But rather, contact is there all throughout that. In the earlier stages of the 12-fold chain of causation, where there's ignorance, where there's consciousness, where there's karmic formations, ignorance, karmic formations, consciousness, okay?

[68:18]

That story there is more of the story I'm telling now, but there's contact at every one of those stages. But they're emphasizing, in that case, contact when that particular function of mind is kind of a nickname for that phase in the process and development of Reaper. But there's contact throughout that thing. There's always contact, otherwise there's no conscious experience. Because contact means that consciousness is touching what it depends on. It has to continue happening. Contact has to continue happening for consciousness to be there. It can't just happen. That's right. And consciousness has to be there for contact to happen because consciousness isn't there. Contact doesn't count. It was an unsuccessful contact. Unsuccessful contacts are called no contact. When the sense organ and the sense object don't interrupt, don't touch, then they don't touch.

[69:19]

When they do touch, they do touch. Then there's contact. But this contact isn't just the contact between those two. It's the contact between the three. But of course, you know, they don't really touch in the sense because you can't have one step from the other. And the fact that they don't really touch, again, shows how the whole thing can't happen. Because what it depends on can't be there. Because it doesn't make any sense. That's why consciousness evaporates when you study this. Temporarily, don't worry. The whole thing collapses in interdependence. There's nothing standing up anymore. Because you can't see things anymore. Because when you see things, you lose track of their origins. And when you see origins, you lose track of the thing. But anyway, I'm still showing you a gateway to the origins.

[70:25]

Because when you see the origins, you'll understand the things. You'll understand that things aren't things. And this is one of the branches of the teaching of suchness. The other one was, you've already got, this is an elaboration of what it means to let the thing be the thing. Let the herd just be the herd. You let the herd just be the herd, opens the door to see the herd. Well, the herd just being the herd means the herd depends on. Sound, sensory, and ear consciousness, and contact. That gets revealed to you when you let it be that way. And then when you see that and understand that, then you see, oh, in that situation, and it develops here and there and in between. You see that. And as you see more and more training, these collapse on each other and there's no here, there, and in between.

[71:31]

There's no place for the self to identify in this situation. So you look like you need to stand up. Is that right? I'm aware of the subtle. It's not possible. Except thinking about it, but that's not it. That's not the way it happens. You don't become aware of subtle. If you became aware of subtle, it wouldn't be subtle anymore. Because the thing about it is that it's serving its function, which you can't be aware of. Because its function is to make you aware of something else. Like, if I'm trying to make you aware of Rebecca, but all you see is me, I'm not doing my job. Hey, Linda, there's somebody I want you to meet. And you say, well, what about you, Reb? No, that's terrible. Didn't that happen around Thanksgiving time?

[72:33]

You know the story? It's a pilgrim story, right? No, it's that guy. It's that guy comes up to this woman and says, you know, I want you to meet this guy. And she says, what about you, John? What's that story? Speak for yourself. Speak for yourself, John. So if the organ comes over to you, the organ is supposed to be like facilitating your relationship with the object. right the organ comes over to you and says i my usual my usual thing is to you know facilitate your relationship with the object but actually i'd like you to like notice me because i've been working hard you know facilitating your relationship with the optical but i'm not getting much attention you say well fine i'll pay attention to you but then i'm not then i'm not subtle anymore i was so subtle before you didn't even notice my great work as soon as you notice me i become another object and somebody else has been doing the subtle work are bringing your attention to me. Somebody else is taking the function of it. So it's very elusive. As soon as you move it into the foreground and become aware of it, it becomes an object.

[73:34]

And something else sneaks in there and becomes a login. Marianne? So it seems like that's almost where our practice is. Our practice is being responsive to the world and not being conscious of what? We're just coming through in a what? In a no-self? We don't have to be aware of our no-self. It's the self you need to be aware of. You need to be aware of the door when it's shut, not when it's open. When it's open, there's not, you know, there's no much door to be aware of. Just walk through.

[74:36]

Yeah, we have to be aware of the, of what's, of what's separating us. And we are. And the more, the more balanced you are in your awareness of it, the more you realize how it independently core arises. And then it opens. Well, it's this... I think it's the... What do you call it? In some sense, what I hear in the back of your question is, is there something good about this problem?

[75:38]

Is there some kind of like, is there some really good thing about all this trouble we're going through to be conscious beings? Because being conscious beings seems to have a problem you're involved in, right? And I would say, yeah. I think there's something good about this. And the good thing about it is I think that... I told the story from the point of view that there already is some living tissue, right? And there already is some congealed materiality in the form of electromagnetic radiation or something, right? But the Buddhist picture is that that world that's there from which consciousness now can arise, that world from which consciousness arises... is a result of karma, which is an activity of a living being, particularly a living being that has self-consciousness.

[76:40]

So in that context, we have consciousness arising. Now, consciousness arising, one of the things it does by going to all this trouble is it makes the universe So the hard work here, this problem that we're experiencing, is how to handle the process of creation. In this sense, this troubled mind is the mind that creates the universe. And some people would say, even some physicists would say, that without this mind, there would be no physical universe. In modern physics, particularly quantum mechanics, there are no things. There are only probabilities, waves of probability, waves of possibility. That's all there really are. Without some troublemaker, a consciousness, a dualistic consciousness, without that, it's possible that there just would be waves of possibility infinitely.

[77:53]

But when waves of possibility interact with consciousness, consciousness congeals waves of activity into materiality. And then the other physical world, and then the physical world gives rise to further. So some people would say, which is first? But if you say the nature of reality is that if you have a world where there is anything, you have consciousness. And there can't be anything without consciousness. And yet consciousness arises from the material world. So the nature of reality is like that. That consciousness and the material world are interdependent. You can never have a physical world without consciousness. There's no floating around. congealed things. Possibilities will not congeal because if you look at the nature of the physical world, there's nothing in the probabilistic world of waves of possibilities that will congeal other waves of possibilities. Waves of possibilities will not make themselves into anything other than waves of possibilities.

[78:59]

There will just be indeterminate, unformed probabilistic potential until there's consciousness. So the wonderful thing about consciousness is we're doing the work of the universe. We're making the physical world appear and disappear by going to the trouble of having this kind of congealing of this and this are independent, and then we sort of think, well, actually, this is separate from that. That kind of mistake and the price we pay for it is the price of the universe. That's how the universe becomes self-conscious. Without the universe becoming self-conscious, it maybe doesn't take form. So that's one story of that. I think John and then Liz, or Liz and John, I don't know. They're sitting so close together. the areas called Strange Attractors.

[80:12]

And I think we have more relation to Strange Attractors and to say that we're doing karma is actually doing it. I think there was much... Strange Attractors. Tell me about the Strange Attractors. Strange Attractors are the areas in... Let's say I don't. Can you say this without somebody knowing about chaos theories? Because if you're saying this, they don't know what you're talking about, so it's inadmissible evidence unless you can sort of like bring this these things. There are events that happen in the quantum world, okay? But once they happen, okay, they're not waves of possibility anymore, okay? What I'm saying is whenever they look at anything in the quantum world and they examine it, they never find anything. All they find is waves of possibility. But there are events...

[81:17]

But again, those areas of concentrations are also probabilistic things about whether they appear or not. If you're saying that there actually is an area where there's more or less different possibilities, there's still just possibilities. But part of what happens in the quantum world is this circle of water thing. That's where the circle of water, I think, is relevant. Because if you look at the quantum world, the quantum world doesn't make sense unless there's something outside of it. Because a lot of the basic rules of physics don't hold in the quantum world. Like since maybe your example, you know? Yeah, well, there's no determinism. There's no determinism, right. There's no determinism. But there are things that happen in the quantum world which do not... Like this one that I think is really interesting is this thing about where you send out two identical photons from the same source and they go far apart from each other. They communicate simultaneously, which is impossible, even by theory of relativity.

[82:26]

You can't have two things that are separated that are communicating faster than the speed of light. But what happens to one happens to the other. They're in communication simultaneously. This doesn't make sense. But it does make sense if there's something outside of time and space. And according to Buddhism, there is something outside of time and space. What is it? Reality. Reality is outside of time and space. It's not bounded by time and space. The mind of Buddha is outside of time and space. It's not bounded by time and space. But does it have some relationship to time and space? Yes. What's the relationship? Time and space can look at it. Time and space can take a picture of it.

[83:27]

And how do you create the world of time and space? By karma. That's how Buddhism says you create the world of time and space. But if you look at the world of time and space carefully, you get the quantum world, and in the quantum world, You don't have any things anymore. But you have phenomena which are very strange according to usual laws of physics. But in some ways, you can account for them if you realize the world is the result of karma, not the result just of physicality. Liz? Pardon? When I say give births, I don't mean like physicality causes sense consciousness. I mean that sense consciousness arises in dependence on physicality. It's not like physicality has within it the power to create. That's why another thing that differs in Buddhism is that this process is not saying that this causes that, but rather that depending on

[84:37]

Two types of physicality, consciousness arises. So if you want to see the birth of consciousness, look at this situation. You won't see, if you look carefully, that consciousness is caused by these because they must be there when consciousness exists. Consciousness doesn't exist after these, so there's an interdependence, not a causation. you see that so if you can see the birth of sense consciousness if you can see the creation of sense consciousness you will understand reality because in that birth of that thing you will see you will see the birth of something that does not exist by itself it's very important for us to actually see something that doesn't exist by itself of course you couldn't see if it didn't exist So we need to witness that things that don't actually exist are produced. We need to witness this. And if you can watch the birth of sense consciousness, you'll see that because you see, oh, look, something just came up, which is nothing other than what gave rise to it.

[85:45]

Wow. This is realizing the emptiness of sense consciousness, but it's also realizing the emptiness of sense organ and sense doctrine and contact and history The question was, I'll change the language. So I'm curious about the last one about lightning and light. So I would just say lightning. If you study lightning, in the work that found lightning consciousness of lightning, it's where lightning can arise. in the work of anything. But this is one particular place where the Buddha drew our attention, is the birth of consciousness. Enlightenment can occur in that particular act of creation.

[86:47]

And that's a particularly important place to focus, to test, because some people look at the birth of other situations. other kinds of things they've watched the birth of, but it doesn't necessarily uproot their belief in some other scenarios which are causing them pain. So our particular virtue is that we're conscious. But that's also the place where we have problems. So there's other ways which we dependently co-arise, like our fingernails dependently co-arise and so on, but to understand the dependent co-arising of consciousness is to understand the dependent co-arising of self and other. And that's very important for us to understand and become liberated from so we can feel comfortable doing our job, our job in this world, our job to be the consciousness that to be part of the consciousness of the universe, that's our job, it's nice if it can be a little bit more comfortable. And it will be more comfortable if we can understand how we come to get this job.

[87:53]

In other words, if we can be enlightened as to how the mind of dualism and the mind of delusion arises, if we can understand this delusion process and basically know that what we're working with is this little delusion process, That's already a big improvement in our situation. We don't have to worry. We are doing our job pretty well. I mean, basically all of us are doing a job. But we could do it better. We could be happier. If we understood how we're doing our job, we'd do it better. In other words, if we could understand... how we're given our job, how we receive our assignment. We could be there when we get our assignment. Okay, now, here's your consciousness, here's your self, and now you can do karma. You can watch yourself receiving it. That's what it says, self-receiving and self-employing samadhi.

[88:56]

That samadhi of the Buddha is you're awake when you receive yourself and you're awake when you get your self-employment. You receive yourself and you receive your ability to do karma. You witnessed that. Self-receiving, got myself, now I got my employment. Got myself, now I got my karma. You receive, you're aware of that. We're doing that anyway. So that's not the problem. We're doing that. But we're uncomfortable to the extent that we don't know what we're doing. And we're comfortable and enlightened to the extent that we can watch ourselves, receive ourselves. We can watch the receiving of the self and the employing of the self. Receiving the self and employing the self. Witnessing and acting. Gurdjieff had this theory that the reason why the population of the Earth is increasing is because not only do we have to do the self-consciousness thing, but we also have to be aware of it to some extent.

[90:07]

And since people are generally less aware of what they're doing these days, we have to have more people to do the planet's job of awareness. So the population is just going to keep increasing unless our average awareness starts coming up. That it turns into a sun, wouldn't it? That it turns into a sun? Would win. I thought that was like a follow-up. When enough consciousness comes, the planet planetarily evolves into a star. Maybe it is. I didn't read that part. Steve? I want to... How compatible we found this kind of circular problem of nemesis that seemed to be with what seems to be the scientific, the predominant scientific point, or the dominant western point of a linear creation linear cosmogony, evolution, getting modified on some kind of cyclical, could it be seen radically different?

[91:11]

They almost seem like a kind of polarity, you know, kind of really extreme polarity. I am, you know, I am here living my life out of whatever amount of compatibility I've found so far. This is compatibility to the extent that I've found it so far. Me. See it? When I look at it, I find it very useful. When I look at evolution theory and all that, I find it very helpful. I find it very helpful for me to get on my karma horse.

[92:14]

To me, I have not run into any science so far that I studied that has not helped me do my meditation practice according to Buddhist teaching. I see a contradiction, but as I say, my life is my ongoing resolution of that conflict. I'm feeding on science. I'm meeting with scientists. I'm talking to them. I'm seeing to what extent I can talk from what my understanding and my understanding of what is teaching. I'm seeing what kind of dialogue.

[92:59]

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