So all these meditation courses are called Zen Meditation. It's part of the Yoga Room's program. We have Zen Meditation. And so I propose to you many times, Zen Meditation is, you could say, Buddha's meditation, or middle way meditation or buddha way meditation also says meditation on the buddha way and so to learn the buddha way is to learn about consciousness And to learn about consciousness is to learn about the self which consciousness depends on.

[01:06]

And to learn about the self and the consciousness which depends on it, it also is good to learn about the mind and body, the body and mind which are the support for consciousness and self. So in the great vehicle teachings of, for example, the great teacher Asanga, he says that the great vehicle of the bodhisattva has a teaching of dependent core rising. And in particular, it teaches the dependent core rising of consciousness, the consciousness that depends on self, but it also teaches about this unconscious process, which is intimately related to body, which supports the conscious process.

[02:10]

So it teaches about mind, which has this dynamic and maybe like hybrid equality. In the early teachings, it looks like the early students of the Buddha did not understand that the Buddha was teaching sort of two dimensions of mind. An unconscious process mind, closely associated with the body, and a conscious process where there's a self. But the later teachers of the great vehicle of the Bodhisattva felt that the Buddha really was teaching this, but it wasn't unfolded in such a way that most people understood. That mind is a vast and inconceivably rich process, and that inconceivably rich process supports a relatively impoverished

[03:15]

state of mind called consciousness. However, the consciousness wasn't created by the unconscious process and the body for no reason. It was created because it's a great place to learn. And it's also the place where you can know something. The unconscious process doesn't really know anything. It's intimately supported by the body and manages the body's needs, but it doesn't really know that there's a body. And it doesn't need to, it does a really good job taking care of it. So somewhere along the line, consciousness was created by the unconscious. I got an email with some comment from one of our class members.

[04:22]

And I thought I might reach it. He says, I find myself participating in the following cycle. Something happens. I feel defensive. My mind produces a series of thoughts. I wanted to, and number one was something happens, I feel defensive. That's the second thing. The third thing is my mind produces a series of thoughts. I would say that's right that the mind produces a series of thoughts. That's right. But the mind that produces a series of thoughts is not the conscious mind. In our consciousness, we don't consciously produce our emotions and our perceptions of the emotions. So, something happens and if that something happens has an effect on the body,

[05:33]

There's a possibility that the unconscious cognitive processes will make up some images about what that's about, and the body and the cognitive processes then will perhaps not always produce a shadow version of that process in consciousness so we can know something about what happened. And then in that space, the unconscious processes may also produce defensiveness in the conscious process. So studying consciousness, we can hear somebody say things about consciousness and that hearing, first of all, touches our body, then our unconscious processes work with that sensation, that effect on the body in the unconscious process.

[06:50]

And they may, not always, but they often, many times, they make then a conscious appearance of somebody saying something to us about consciousness. So like right now, that's happening. I'm saying things, it's affecting your body, your unconscious cognitive processes are working with the effects on your body and I guess for some reason most of you probably are now the beneficiary or victim of a conscious version of what's going on in your unconscious process while, conventionally speaking, I'm talking. And now I'm saying that the process of consciousness or you could say the process of conscious experience is a particular path through a physical reality which is so unimaginably complex

[08:03]

and rich in information that it will always be hard to grasp it in the reduced, impoverished way that it will appear in our subjective experience in our consciousness. there will be a representation, not of some, of what's happening in our unconscious process. Not all of it. The unconscious process decides what gets to be up in consciousness in a given instance, which you could also call a given time, because also there's time in consciousness and there's not time in the unconscious. All this wonderful world appearing in consciousness is merely cognitive construction.

[09:27]

All that appears in consciousness is only conscious constructions. For example, conscious constructions of the world. the wonderful world that's appearing in consciousness is only a conscious construction. And you could say of the world, but actually it's a conscious construction of unconscious process. And unconscious process is a cognitive version of the body, which is affected by the world. So there is parts of the body which interpret the body which is affected by the world and those cognitive processes produce a conscious version of the world as it appears there.

[10:35]

And this wonderful world that we see, as wonderful as it is, as complicated as it is, as virtually infinite as it is, it is a small, reduced version of the actual living world. And it's not cut off from the actual living world. It's just a simplified version of it for the sake of service, good service. To what? To what supports it. What supports it? Cognitive process. What supports the cognitive process? The body. What supports the body? The whole universe. Consciousness is a servant of cognitive processes of the body, which dependently co-arises with the whole universe.

[11:37]

So consciousness actually serves the whole universe. This is a kind of a complicated message here, so please listen carefully. I don't say, I'm not saying that there is or isn't at this time, I don't say that there certainly is an external world. I don't say that. But I would say that even For some of those who do say, of course there's an external world. Some people say that. Some really brilliant people say that. And some people who are less brilliant than them also say it. Of course there's an external world. Some of them will then go on to say, of course the external world exists and the knowledge and action do causally connect us to it. Knowledge and action, where does the knowledge and action arise?

[12:44]

In consciousness. There's not knowledge and action in the body and in the cognitive unconscious. There's not knowledge and action there. Knowledge and action occurs in consciousness. Once again, I'm saying even some of those who would say, of course, the external world exists, some of those people say also that the knowledge and action do causally connect us to this external world. They say that. And that's actually, a lot of people think that, right? That our knowledge and actions connect us to the external world. like driving a car, if you know how. You know how and you act, it connects you to the car and the road and so on. Here's the part that only some of the people who think that the external world exists would say. But conscious experience of knowing and acting, of being connected, and of being connected is an exclusively internal affair.

[13:58]

So among the people who think the external world does exist, some also say, further, knowledge and action connect us to it, but all this knowledge and action and connection to the world is a totally internal affair. Yeah. Yeah. So our knowledge and the actions we take in relationship to what appears as the external world is knowledge and action in relationship to an inner version of the external world. And now here's one more step. which is the less common way of seeing this, which is more in line with the great vehicle teaching of mind, in which case I will replace external and internal with shared mind and unshared mind.

[15:27]

So in the great vehicle teaching of mind, the shared mind is what is ordinarily considered to be the external physical world. That's the shared mind, the common mind. And the unshared mind or the uncommon mind is the internal world, of the individual. So then we can say it again, of course the shared mind does exist. And knowledge and action do connect us to that shared mind which is the physical world. The physical world is a shared mind.

[16:32]

It's not a shared consciousness. We don't consciously know this shared mind. But it does exist and action and knowledge connect us to it. Our conscious mind connects us to our unconscious mind and it connects us to the shared part and it connects us to the unshared part. And the unshared part is the individual part of the mind which supports our consciousness. So our consciousness is supported by an unconscious process, our consciousness is supported by an unconscious process, part of the unconscious process is shared by all of us, and that's what is the physical world. The other part of the unconscious process is unshared, and that also supports our consciousness,

[17:38]

But that's the individual part of the cognitive unconscious. And the part that's unshared is our body, our sense organs, the way the world's, the way the common mind is affecting the uncommon mind gives rise to a particular type, a particular path of consciousness. But that particular path of consciousness is also supported by the shared mind. So we share an unconscious process, and that's the physical world. And there's an unshared physical process, which is our sense organs. We don't share that part, and both of them contribute to the creation of consciousness. So in consciousness, we have a shared, the world that appears in my consciousness has something to do with the world that appears in your consciousness.

[18:46]

And it has something to do with the world that appears in flies' consciousness and dogs' consciousness. Any being that has consciousness, the world that appears for them is related to the world that appears for me because we share the physical world with them. But my particular take on it comes from my particular body input, which is my unshared mind. And furthermore, in the realm of consciousness, where a world appears, the way the world appears will be similar for beings whose individual contribution comes from similar type of action. And the great action which we share with humans, for example, is the action and the knowledge of language.

[19:55]

So because of the action, the knowledge and action of language, the world that appears in my consciousness is quite similar, has a lot of similarity to the world that appears in your consciousness. And it's more similar to — our worlds are more similar to each other than the worlds that appear, for example, in a dog's consciousness, because they have different type of karma. But they share the physical world with us, Each dog has its own individual take. However, the karma of dogs being similar to each other, their world looks more similar. The way the world appears to them is more similar to the way it appears to them and not so similar to us. Like, for example, their world seems to be a world where the main thing that's going on is smells. They have, you know, big smell shows, big smell cities, big smell shopping centers.

[21:01]

And we have perfume industry and stuff too, right? But we also have the clothes industry and the car industry and etc. Because that's the kind of karma we're into. They're not so much into cars except for riding around to be able to smell things through the windows, which is why they want to stick their head out the window. So that's that. So I'm talking to you about consciousness in order to help you learn about the Buddha way. The Buddha way is not consciousness. Yes, Vivienne. I'm confused by the Virginia's description. There's so much diversity and disparity in the shared world. So not only the dogs are so different from humans,

[22:07]

Well, you can say completely different. That's fine. But if there's any possibility for communication, it's because there's some similarity. And being able to speak English is a really similar kind of karma for the two people that can speak it. And so, for example, I think I'm in a room. Do you have a completely different story about that? I think we're in the same room too. But I'm suggesting that beings that don't speak English, they wouldn't think necessarily they're in a room, not to mention the same room. So you and I could have completely different ideas about some things, but the fact that we could talk about it in English means we do similar things with our mind, with our conscious mind.

[23:20]

And not only do we do similar things now by speaking English, but we have spoken English a lot in the past, to be able to speak English. And for a while, we were trying to learn English before we knew how to do it. Many moments of karmic consciousness, of this consciousness, there was somebody there who was trying to learn English before she knew the word English. But before he knew the word English, he was learning English. But my granddaughter's quite good at it, and she does not know the word English, as far as I know. But she does know, very powerfully she does know, I don't want it, and I did it, and help. And because she can do that, those kinds of karmic, she's starting to live more and more in the world that I'm living in. her world is forming around her karma. So it's still very different though, but it will become more and more similar as our karma becomes more and more similar.

[24:26]

And one of the most similar things we do, human beings, is language. And that allows a virtually infinite variety in that space of consciousness in a shared world, there's still lots of possibilities of tremendous, wonderful variety. And that variety is incomparably smaller than the variety of our actual life. What's your question? What's your point? we share quite a bit. Yeah. Yeah. Who are humans. You mean? Yeah.

[25:28]

And even though Spanish is different from English, still, if they learn Spanish, their world has a lot in common with us because of their action that occurs in their consciousness. But it still allows for Republicans and Democrats who may think that they completely disagree with each other, but they both think they're in a world, but still they might agree, yes, we are in a world where we completely disagree with each other. I see the world differently than you, but I'm in a world where I see things differently from you. And I really do see things differently, but I can agree that I do. And you think I do too. So there's some, we're kind of in the same world even though we have this individual take on it because of our individual body. And our individual karmic history is a little bit different from all other beings. But if we do a lot of things the same as other people, like language, and we have these conventions so we work out that we're using the language the same way,

[26:40]

and making the same discriminations, that's a tremendous amount of shared action. So that makes a tremendous amount of shared world. And then we can also hear teachings about how to relate to this world that's appearing in our minds. So I'm not sure if the look on your face means that you think I heard you or not. You're wondering about the privilege to be able to do this contemplation? This meditation on consciousness, I would suggest, is conducive to being aware that some people are not fortunate enough to be able to contemplate consciousness, and to care about that, and to wish, to have a wish in the space of studying consciousness

[28:03]

the space of consciousness where consciousness is being studied, that study leads to caring for people who are not yet ready to study and wishing, having a wish that they will learn how to study because study will liberate beings from this conscious realm. But some people are not yet able to hear the teachings And so they do not know how to study the consciousness. And if they don't know how to study the consciousness, they can't understand it, they can't learn it. And if they don't learn it, then they can't find the way of freedom. The way of freedom is not consciousness. The way of freedom is learned. It's something you learn. You train in such a way that you learn the path of peace and freedom and fearlessness and happiness. Who gets to learn that? The people who get to study consciousness.

[29:05]

Who gets to study consciousness? Well, fortunate people. But the more I study consciousness, that promotes me caring that those who have not yet studied will be able to study. And I'm sorry that they haven't started yet. But I understand that there's not time for them yet, too. Like, for example, again, this granddaughter is not yet ready to contemplate compassion. She really likes her mom, who's compassionate towards her, but she does not know that the reason why she likes her mom so much is because her mom's compassionate, and she does not wish to be compassionate to much of anybody else, but maybe a little bit about her. She's concerned about her mom, and her concern from her mom will maybe, through her mom's example, will gradually develop into compassion. and realizing that studying her consciousness would be compatible with compassion. Somebody has to teach.

[30:08]

Somebody who has the privilege to study has the privilege to teach. Somebody who has the privilege to learn about consciousness and not to mention to learn it thoroughly and become liberated from it now has the privilege to teach other people how However, some people are not mature enough. And that person understands this and vows to keep studying and keep teaching until that person, until all those people are ready, until they mature enough to hear the instructions which say, got consciousness, got suffering, Got self? Do you understand the self? Tell me about it. Want some feedback on your understanding? Yes. Well, here it is. Check out this, this, and this about what you thought you understood, and so on. So one of the great tensions, or you could say, or discomforts of awakened people is that some people are not yet ready to learn.

[31:22]

It's kind of a painful thing for them, but they're happy to have that pain because that pain reminds them that they want to help these people when these people are ready. And they don't rush these people to get ready so that their pain will go away. So one of the things about a teacher is a teacher has to be able to stand the pain of the students who don't want to learn yet. I mean, some people are so not wanting to learn that they hardly could be called students. But from the Buddha's point of view, everybody is a student. They just don't realize it yet. Some of them don't realize it. And the Buddha accepts that this great gift is being offered, but they don't yet ready, aren't ready. And what is the gift? The gift is study the self in consciousness. this will lead to freedom and peace and fearlessness. And compassion has to be involved in the study, and the study leads to making the compassion more and more effective

[32:30]

and more and more patient and careful and so on. So did I address your question? Yeah. It's a great privilege for me to be here in this class with you. It's a great privilege for you to be in this class, to hear these teachings. And one might say, how come I'm so fortunate? Why aren't other people? Well, I don't really know. I do want other people as soon as possible to start studying themselves, and I'd like to do whatever I can to help them start. And some of the things I can do, I already know. Studying myself will be a necessary thing. So I have my work to do. So it's not like I have nothing to do while they're waiting, not ready to receive a teaching. I'm getting myself better and better trained, I hope, so that when the opportunity comes, I'll be ready. I'll be doing what I want to teach. That's one of the differences between this tradition and some others is, you know, they say those that do can, those who can't teach.

[33:41]

In Buddhism it's not quite that way. Those who can also teach. Those who study the self can teach studying the self. It's not that those who can't study the self teach studying the self. Although some people who can do teach it. And the way they teach it is they show what kind of a person doesn't study himself. And that makes people want to start studying. Yes? Well, the truth is that the beings who are now involved have, on this earth, let's say, have come to a certain degree that these souls didn't exist. That's the reason for the fire burns and the water floods. Yeah. But the collective agreement comes to a great extent. The tightening down on the agreement comes to a great extent by talking about it.

[34:43]

Like you could say, I have a collective agreement with my granddaughter that this is a wall. It's not very clearly established yet because she hasn't yet said, this is a wall. And me say, yes, I agree. When our karma becomes more similar, the agreement on the wall will become better established. So the agreement comes by doing similar things together. And one of the similar things we can do is you can have a conversation. And so that's what's going on with children. You have conversations with them, and then you come to agreements, to a great extent by talking. like a baby can nurse on her mother, but there's not necessarily too much agreement there. But I'm saying that agreement comes

[36:00]

that agreement comes in the process of evolution. Devis do not agree that water's wet and fire burns. They don't agree with that. They agree with it after they start doing language karma. But they don't see it as an agreement. If the baby touches the hot water, they do have a reflex of taking the hand away usually. They don't usually go deeper into the water. They pull their hand away. They do that. But I don't see there's an agreement there. The agreement comes with, right?

[37:03]

We've been doing it for a while. The agreement comes with, hot, hot. And she says, hot. And then she blows on it. The agreement comes with karma. Or you can also take her hand away, but actually it's not so much that. It's like teaching her to be, it's showing her to be careful. with the glass and showing her to blow on it and showing her to sip on it and saying, hot. It's this conversation that karma is what creates the agreement. Taking the hand away from the hot thing is not exactly an agreement. It's just two different people having the same reflex. But to have an agreement, you have to have a conversation, I think. I mean, that's what's going on if we're talking to her. Hot and blowing on it and careful and Then we're starting to develop an agreement that both adult and child will take their hand away from something hot. But that isn't necessarily agreement. It's like, what do you call it, parallel play.

[38:06]

It's not really communication. They're not playing together. And that's part of what consciousness, human consciousness is for, is where we have language so we can actually make agreements. Where you can tell me what your aspirations are and so on. Where you can ask the questions you, like we have an agreement you can make these statements and make these proposals. We have an agreement about that. This is not a pre-verbal agreement we have that you can do that. Everything we see is an illusion. It is a conscious construction, but we don't agree on it until we have a conversation.

[39:13]

We don't agree on it until we do similar karma. The baby does not agree with the adult with the things that are appearing in their consciousness. And also, the things that are different are appearing because they haven't gone through certain agreement processes. It's not agreement. Like the baby thinks, mine, mine, mine, mine. It's not agreement. But that's what they think. And they say that. And then they get feedback on that, mine, mine, mine, mine. And then by that conversation, it comes to be agreement. Mine, yeah. Mine, no. And that's an illusion, too. This mine and not mine is an illusion.

[40:16]

It's a conscious construction only in the world. but it's kind of agreed on. This is my body, and I don't say this is my body. We'd have to have a complicated conversation for you to say, yes, this is your body too. Then we would agree, oh, I see what you mean by that. But the baby thinks that many things are theirs, which no one else thinks that. There's not much agreement. And it's possible that, you know, if it was a very powerful baby, everyone would agree, yeah, everything's yours. You know, if it was a little queen or something. Yeah, just, you know, let's just, let's go along. If she says everything in the world's hers, let's just go along with that. But then people say, no, that's not good for her. Let's have a conversation. Yeah. Before I did that, I had to agree or I had to accept the reality that the world where I lived in would appear as being real, solid.

[41:41]

But it doesn't look like that out there, you know. Well, it isn't real. The main space is tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, [...] I feel like you're using the word agreement like desire. Like you want to go someplace and you're saying you agree to go to that place.

[42:56]

No? You don't know where you're going, so I don't know how you could agree on where you're going, because you don't know where you're going when you're born. Well, see, it's kind of complicated because how can you... you're looking at the process from consciousness. And I don't think there's consciousness without a body. So that's where I kind of don't agree with you, is that I'm saying that consciousness has an unconscious process which supports it, and the unconscious process has a body. So consciousness is where we look at, we're having this discussion in consciousness. So we're looking sort of top down through consciousness to birth. But at birth, there isn't consciousness. There's mind, but it's not a conscious mind.

[44:03]

It's not a mind that makes decisions and where things appear. I will not have consciousness. However, there could be cognitive processes, but not cognitive processes that make any decisions or things appear. There's no world there. There's a predisposition, however, in this cognitive process for birth and for worlds and for language. But there is no birth, worlds, or language in the unconscious process. That's the teaching I'm inheriting and passing along now. You're welcome. Yeah. there's not much in Buddhist tradition to discuss the virtues of creating this kind of faulty thing called a self in consciousness.

[45:35]

However, there is a sense in the Mahayana that the, what do you call it, the nature of awakening is that it does want to go into consciousness in order to liberate consciousness. But it doesn't really talk about why life made consciousness. It doesn't point out, Buddhism doesn't extol so much the survival advantage of having consciousness. But it does say that the opportunity of human consciousness is really good because in human consciousness you can learn language and hear teachings which will liberate consciousness. And liberating consciousness is the point of Buddhism.

[46:37]

So it doesn't really go into the details of the biological advantage of having consciousness. Excuse me, it more talks about the liberatory advantages of having consciousness. but also it points out that if there wasn't consciousness, there would be no problems and no need for liberation. Consciousness is the problem, and we learn the solution to the problem in the problem space. It doesn't talk about so much the advantages, the wonderful advantages of having consciousness, which just happens to have some defects. But, you know, a lot of people who study consciousness are now really, you know, it's just an amazing phenomena, but it has all these problems. Because it wasn't created to make the consciousness happy. It was created to make the consciousness powerful, to make it a great problem solver and a great learner.

[47:42]

which it is. Human consciousness is such an amazing learning space. It's an amazing discovery space. The Buddha made discoveries in consciousness of how to liberate consciousness. But he didn't really talk about the wonderful advantages of having consciousness in the first place. But he did talk about how consciousness arose from body, cognitive process, interaction. He did talk about that, because he thought that would help people be liberated from the problem space. The problem space is the play space, is the learning space, is the workshop. The unconscious process is not really the learning space. But it supports the learning space, and the learning space transforms the support. Everything you learn transforms. When you learn a language, the unconscious process is transformed. When you learn a skill, the unconscious process is transformed and sponsors a new kind of consciousness with more skill and more wisdom, which then transforms the unconscious process.

[48:52]

In this way, the whole process turns into, eventually, perfect wisdom. which then continues to illuminate consciousnesses in such a way that they're stimulated to study and receive teachings about how to study. But we live in a world where consciousnesses have discovered good reasons for consciousness. So now we can hear these teachings, these discoveries of the advantages of consciousness for biological service organizations called human consciousnesses. Human consciousnesses are to serve biology, the biology of the body which the consciousness is associated with, and the other members of this, you know, very closely related genome. Yeah? You were talking about verbal language as sort of a currency of shared agreements or sensations.

[50:03]

Yeah. It's a currency and it's a currency of, it's primarily, most importantly, it's a currency of karma. Feelings, this language process, these are emotions. Learning language is emotions. And when you've got a self in the learning space, which is, I'm saying, necessary, then there's feelings about learning language. There's feelings about the emotions that are involved in learning language. Always. There's always a feeling there. The self and the feeling are right there with all the learning language. And once you've learned the language, the language comes up again as action processes, and there's feelings about everything you say.

[51:05]

Everything you say, there's a feeling about it. and that feeling is closely associated with the self. I wouldn't say that the feeling comes from the shared consciousness. I would say that the shared consciousness, I didn't say consciousness, the shared mind, the shared unconscious, We don't share consciousnesses. We don't share consciousnesses. We share unconscious. And the way we share unconscious is the physical world. This is our unconscious shared mind. And the unshared unconscious is associated with this body, with the cognitive processes related to these self-sense organs.

[52:11]

None of you felt what that was like when I was touching this wall. And I had a consciousness arising from that. But also I have a consciousness arising from the physical world. So my consciousness and yours arises from the shared unconscious and the unshared unconscious. And there's feelings in the consciousness, but the feelings aren't really so much coming — well, you could say all feelings are coming from both types of unconscious process. But really the feelings are something that's kind of derived from the unconscious process, which are kind of evaluations of the unconscious process. And then when they're in consciousness, they're evaluations of all the karma that's going on, all the emotions. And so they're related to the unconscious process because every feeling transforms the unconscious process. Every emotion transforms the unconscious process. But there's not a particular emotion that's always there.

[53:12]

But there's always this feeling with any emotion. No, I don't think so. I would just say, try out saying no to that. That feelings are not, that the communication of the feelings is through emotion. Yeah, through action. Feelings are not really actions. They're more like perceptions of actions. Like feeling pain is not really an action. It's more like the way you feel when you see certain actions. or when certain actions, yeah, when you feel certain, it's the way you feel about certain actions, like somebody twisting you, or you twisting something, or you doing some action, you feel a certain way about it. But basically, however you feel, you do feel about all your actions. And you do feel about other people's actions.

[54:17]

You can't see their emotions, but you can see their emotions when their emotions are translated into postures and vocalizations. And you have feelings about other people's emotions, and you have feelings about yours. But feelings are not action patterns. Feelings are more like perceptions of action patterns. And they're always there, and they're more closely related to the self than the emotions. Some emotions can just disappear for months, but not feelings. So feelings, when you're studying yourself, are feelings a source of information? Feelings, you could say, are sources of information about how you're feeling, I mean, how you're perceiving, and also they are perceptions. So if you're aware of your feelings, you're aware of your perceptions about actions. There's other kinds of perceptions, however, besides feelings.

[55:20]

But feelings about actions are perceptions about actions. And feelings are closely related to self. They're more closely related. So as I maybe mentioned before, there's five aggregates of the human personality. There's the body, which is the body, which has two parts. One part, which is the shared part. The shared part of the body is the shared mind, which is the physical world. Colors, sounds, smells, tastes, intangibles, that's part of the body. The other part is the tissue that's sensitive to it. That's the body. The next thing is feelings. And feelings is the aggregate all into itself. The next one is perceptions. which one of type is feelings. And the next one is all the emotions. And then there's consciousness, which embraces it all.

[56:22]

And as I mentioned before, in one of the Buddhist texts, it says, why is feeling get to be all the, except for consciousness, feeling is the only one that only has one type of mental factor in it. Why does it get its own aggregate? And it's the answer is because it's so closely associated with self. Feelings are very important, but we don't really communicate them until we maybe make an emotion like you have a feeling, you have a perception of an action, and then you cry. So you're communicating a feeling you had about an action. Like somebody took your toy or took your mother and gave you a grandmother instead. And that's an action, or you do something. So either you see other people or yourself in action in this consciousness, and then you have feelings about that. And the feelings then can be turned into emotions which convey.

[57:25]

And you can also then speak English or Chinese to convey the emotion which is coming closely with the feeling. Yes? When you have a close relationship with something. Yes? What is a close relationship? Are you saying it's just a feeling? I wouldn't say it's a very close relationship. I would say a close relationship is where you have knowledge and action in relationship to it, not feelings. Some people have feelings about somebody and take no actions. It's not very close. When you have an emotional relationship with somebody, when you take a lot of actions, you have feelings about all of those. So the feelings are there, but the feelings are about the actions you take with respect to the book or the dog.

[58:33]

Yes? Are emotions non-physical actions? Are they non-physical? There's mental and physical action. And both types of action are cognitive. But one is a cognition which is physical, and the other is a cognition which is purely mental. So there's three kinds of action. And emotions can be mental and physical. So you can go, ha! Or you can just want to do that. Couldn't you split that into the physical action of making that sound and the emotion that correlates with it? You could, but I'm just saying, I'm teaching traditional Buddhism.

[59:36]

But I just want to start with that, that the Buddha taught three types of action. And again, we talked about this last time, that when he said action, he meant the overall shape of the consciousness. And within the overall shape of consciousness, there could be a number of emotions. So in the consciousness all those emotions are purely mental. Okay? So you could have several action programs in the consciousness. Like you could wish to be compassionate. You could wish to tell somebody that you really are upset of what they just did. You could wish to hurt them. But those three kind of conflict with each other. So, if the feeling of compassion was really strong, then the wish to hurt them and the being upset might actually be subdued to some extent, not be very strong, because the compassion might come with patience and being careful and being generous.

[60:47]

So even though you have these somewhat conflicting emotions vis-à-vis the compassion, which is an emotion, compassion, I'm suggesting in this teaching, compassion is an action in consciousness. It's a conscious action. It's a conscious emotion. And there could be other ones there too. If the sum total of the consciousness was such that the compassion dominated, then we would say that the action of that consciousness, the karma, was compassionate. Then the next type of karma that could be is that the speech, I care for you and I want to tell you that I had a hard time with what you just did, but I'm only telling you that because I want you to know me and I want to promote our relationship. And I was upset and actually there was a little impulse to hurt you, but I'm, you know, they didn't, it's not really functioning.

[61:51]

So this is also karma, this conversation. And it's also an expression of emotion, it is an emotion. And then I could also do various bodily postures and facial expressions, which you might feel were in accord with my words. Or you might say, you know, the look on your face doesn't look like, you said you're feeling compassionate, but your facial expressions sound like it's, don't accord with that so much. And I might be able to say, you know, you're right. I can feel that. And that would, so through your speech and your postures, you can actually feel. helps you understand the source. So again, the Buddha taught, the mental emotions composing the mental karma is the source. The posture is the substance, and the speech is the essence of karma. So within a given moment of consciousness, there can be a number of of action patterns, a number of emotions.

[62:55]

And with each moment, when one or more of the emotions are perceived, that's one feeling with that. And that's also part of the overall karma of the moment. And there's a self. So there's the component action patterns in the consciousness, which are the emotions. There's the perceptions, one of which is feeling, and there's the overall consciousness, and there's a sense of self in there. And all of that, in a given moment, is the karma, which is the thing that's going to have the general transformative effect on the unconscious processes, which will sponsor the next moment of karma. Does that make sense? Any questions about that? I hear you. Yeah. And if you want to see... Huh? What? It doesn't make sense. Yeah, well... I don't want to take too long.

[63:56]

Okay. Well, if you don't want to take too long, do you want to try to take the right amount? Yes. Maybe we'll start with one question. Okay. I'm looking for a reason to call emotions actions or any way in which that's helpful. And the only way I spotted so far is that we can then speak of karma in terms of the karma related to an emotion. Other than that, it seems to me that the understanding I had of emotions eight days ago was that emotion was an aspect of an action or of an intentional state. And that's how I always see them. I would speak of the emotion of the action. That was an angry pat on the back.

[64:56]

That was a friendly pat on the back. So to call them actions, I don't see any help there except that maybe then we can throw them in with karma and speak of the karma of them. It sounds like you have not... It sounds like we think of action as the postural type of action, like the pat. You see, that is an action. And the Buddha says, yes, that is an action in the sense of karma, if the action was intentional. Yes. Okay. If somebody hits my hand and it pats you on the back, that doesn't count as karma for me. But if I actually intended to pat you, you can see that as an action. Sounds like. Intentional actions. Yeah. Okay. So it seems like you're having trouble seeing that the intention to move the arm was an action. Sounds like you have trouble seeing that.

[65:58]

Yes. Yeah, so that's just something you're having trouble learning. That's the basic definition of the Buddhist definition of action, of karma, is intention. So, for example, if you have a compassionate emotion, that compassionate emotion which has a compassionate feeling with it, the Buddha's saying that if that dominates the consciousness, that's an action. And you're having trouble seeing that. It's just like you're in a learning process here with that. The Buddha agrees with you that the posture, this postural thing, that that is physical karma. And your words are physical karma-like. Thank you very much. I wish to say thank you in a very grateful way. Maybe you can see that as an action too. What I would say in my previous understanding is that even intentions that you don't act on have karma. But those are the mental ones.

[67:01]

And that's what I'm saying. So now you see that as an action? I would say that intentions have karma, not actions. I would say it because... Wait a second, wait a second. Wait a second, you said intentions have karma. Yes. The definition of karma is intention. Okay. So what are you saying is different than that? Emotions, I don't think emotions are intentional. They're not intentional in the sense that you intend to feel something, to have an emotion. Yeah, I think they're a component of intention. I think they're a component of intention. They're a component of intention, I agree. However, if you had a simple example where you felt contempt, okay, Now, you have a feeling contempt. We say feeling contempt, but contempt is an action.

[68:05]

Compassion is an action. And if compassion is very strong, then it becomes the intention of the moment. It becomes a definition of the moment of karma, which can be then posturally expressed or verbally expressed. Those are three ways. But the first one, the source, is the conscious, cognitive, pattern of action in the form of compassion or contempt. So if I'm just feeling compassionate, but it wasn't intentional. Now, wait a second. You said you're just feeling compassionate. So again, Sarah, you don't just feel compassion. You perceive the action of compassion. And then you say you feel compassion. You feel the emotion. But the emotion is not a feeling. This conversation is, by the way, good news, this is learning the Buddha way.

[69:09]

We're learning the Buddha way to learn the consciousness. And the way to learn the consciousness is by conversation. He did not agree with me a few weeks ago, last week, Little by little, he may eventually completely agree with me, but it's going to be by conversation, not because he intentionally came into this class to agree with me, to have this agreement, which we haven't reached yet. We have not yet reached agreement. I am in perfect agreement with what I'm trying to teach, but I also agree that you don't yet agree with me. But the people are going, mm-hmm, around you when you say stuff. They're getting it a little ahead of you. You're serving them, you know? in this learning process. Your examples are helping them learn this. It's an unusual idea that we say feel emotions and we do feel emotions, but the feeling of an emotion is the perception of the emotion.

[70:13]

It's not the emotion. Feeling compassion is not wishing to help people is not a feeling in this vocabulary. Wanting to help people, caring for people, wanting to be kind, wanting to be generous, wanting to be patient, these are emotions. They're actions. They're cognitive actions. They're patterns of cognition. And they have feelings with them when they're perceived. But if they're not perceived, there's no feeling of them. You can have emotions where there's no feeling because there's no perception of it. Yes. Yes. So in a moment of consciousness, the karma is the overall pattern of all the emotions. One or more of the emotions are perceived, so there's feelings about some of them. But it's possible to have a very powerful emotion and not perceive it. and have no feeling about it, and for that emotion to be the most influential action pattern in the moment of consciousness.

[71:19]

That can happen. But that's not the end of the story, you know, because we'll get more opportunities because there could be a very influential action pattern, a less influential action pattern with a perception of it, which is the feeling. And the feeling is very important because it's closely related to the self. But this action over here might have a great influence positively or negatively, which if it's positive, the effect of this action which was not perceived and which there was no feeling about, if it's a skillful action, unperceived, it transforms the unconscious process to promote more study. So you don't have to have a feeling about every good thing you do. Can it mention an emotion that's not... Having an emotion and not feeling it, that's... What's an example of a situation where a person has... A lot of people are... A lot of... Well... So do you count feelings that people aren't aware of?

[72:25]

You want to count those? Yeah, you can feel it and not be aware of it when you look back and see that. No, but at the time... Yeah. Yeah, what? Yeah, what? That they have a perception? You don't have to be aware of the feeling. Yeah. You just feel like, oh, intense all day, now I realize it. No. I thought you said you couldn't imagine an emotion without a feeling. An emotion that's not felt. That's it. You have an emotion. Yeah, so I'm suggesting that you consider the possibility for your study that we could have several emotions and that you wouldn't perceive them all. In other words, that you could have a moment of consciousness with a bunch of emotions and not all the emotions are perceived. In other words, you don't have emotions about all your different, you don't have feelings about all your emotions, and the part of the reason you don't have that is because you did not perceive all your emotions. I'm proposing that that is possible in human consciousness, that we have a variety of emotions

[73:30]

actions, and we're not perceiving them all. So we don't have feelings about all the actions that are going on. I'm proposing that as a possibility. But if you can show me that, no, every time you have a variety of emotions, you also have perceptions of them all, I'd like to hear about it. I'd like to hear how you find that out. But I think we do have a sense that we do perceive some of our emotions, and that we have feelings. We could say, and that we have feelings about. But I'm saying that is the feeling. When you do perceive your actions, your cognitive actions, when you do have feelings, you feel good about it, you feel bad about it, you feel confused about it, you feel in accord with it, you have feelings about it. Anyway, this is learning. This is learning consciousness. And this is the great work of learning about it is the great work of liberating, which is the Buddha way.

[74:42]

So I really appreciate you all and your study. Thank you very much.

[74:52]

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