Earlier, during this session, I said that I might disclose to you or reveal to you, reveal and disclose something about what goes on inwardly for me in the process of raising the Dharma flag. Actually, I have a Dharma flag in my house, and I don't raise it because I think people will get too upset. They'll say, what's that Dharma flag doing flying over his house? Anyway, someday I'll probably put it out. I almost put it out on Buddha's birthday, but I was too busy. Anyway, so part of what I was doing was trying to bring out teachings about samadhi this year, and some teachings about samadhi are about samadhi

[01:03]

in the sense of, well, in the sense of what we call samadhi number two, which is the jhana, or the dhyana practices, basically calming practices. And then, during the first practice period, I laid out this picture of those types, and then there's other kind of jhanas, I mean other kind of samadhis, which are conjoined with wisdom. So the jhanas, just in terms of concentration, are not Buddhist or Hindu or Christian or Jewish or Islam. They're just yogic states of concentration, and it's part of the Buddhist tradition. These samadhis, these concentration states, are part of the Buddhist tradition, but they're also part of other traditions. Certainly, the Hindu tradition is very strong on it, but if you look at our traditions, you'll see signs of them, not quite as developed or systematized, but they're there. The other kind of ... but the Buddhist samadhis are samadhis that are

[02:06]

illuminated by Buddhist wisdom, the wisdom which sees the Buddhist truths, the truths that Buddha taught, the truths of selflessness, of course, are the most important, also the truths of impermanence. So this last, this practice period, I've been trying to unfold the wisdom practices, which would eventually be conjoined with the concentration practices, giving rise to the two main types of Buddhist samadhis, the one being the samadhis which are illuminated by the wisdom which understands the selflessness of the person, and the other one illuminated by the wisdom which understands the selflessness of the person, and also understands the selflessness of everything. And in both these Buddhist samadhis, they aren't just

[03:07]

illuminated by wisdom which understands the selflessness, in other words, they're not just wisdom which understands ultimate truth, they're also wisdom which are illuminated by understanding conventional truth. So really, those second two, the samadhi three and four, are samadhis which are illuminated by conventional wisdom and ultimate wisdom, or wisdom which sees the ultimate truth and wisdom which sees conventional truth. Both of them are illuminating that samadhi. Some samadhis that some yogis get into, and they get very deep into samadhi, but they're not illuminated, they don't understand conventional or ultimate truth. So anyway, I was trying to introduce these wisdom practices, wisdom studies, during the practice period, but I didn't finish. And some of the people got me almost to promise that I would introduce these teachings on the four schools, so then the session started

[04:08]

and I hadn't done it yet, so everybody got exposed to this stuff. And so part of what goes on for me is that I have to experience that this was, for some people, quite enjoyable, exciting, inspiring, and interesting, other people rather disturbing, and they really wished I would stop. And now today I can say, soon I will stop. And you can go back to practicing samadhi number two without me bothering you. And samadhi number two is, you know, it's a wonderful practice and it's part of what we do in seshins, usually here. But I know that even if during talks I'm talking about wisdom practices, they start to seep over into your non-lecture times, and so the issue of samadhi number three keeps knocking

[05:12]

on the door of samadhi number two, and you say, get away, get away! I want to work on samadhi number two some more. So it's been kind of difficult for some people, and part of what I'm experiencing is that that's been difficult for you, and I'm sorry that it's been difficult. But, you know, I was kind of like caught. These people come in to practice samadhi number two, and these people say, please teach us what we need to do to enter samadhi three and four, and I say, okay, where do I go? I go here and do what I did, and I'm sorry if it's been difficult. May I continue? I actually, you know, was kind of, what do you call it, going to attempt that, and on the way down here I said to him, what's that expression? The best laid plans of mice and men often go where? Astray. Astray, awry, to flower. Anyway, I had this plan, I had

[06:21]

a dream, but it didn't happen. But what happened was wonderful, it's just kind of difficult in a way. So this is kind of the difficulties I go through in trying to figure out what I should say. And I'm talking, I can tell people are going to go, oh, God, what's he talking about? I don't understand a word he's saying. Oh, stop, you know. Sorry. But anyway, all through the practice period, that's what was happening too. I was introducing these wisdom teachings, and some very nice people were coming to me and saying, I don't understand anything you're saying. So then I would go back and try to like try it again and again and again. So it slowed things down a little bit. And I'm not complaining, but it does slow it down when people tell me they don't understand. So I feel like I should go over it. And some other people are saying, speed up. And anyway, so it's kind of like, that's the way it is. I mean, you can't have all the students at the same place of development. So some are

[07:25]

kind of like, oh, not that again. Other ones are going, is that the same thing I didn't understand last time? Somebody told me this morning, you got to dumb it down, you got to dumb it down. It came to my attention at some point, I don't know how many years ago it was, but a long time ago, somebody pointed out to me that if you look at the face of a yogi, a Buddhist yogi, especially a Bodhisattva yogi, if you look at their face, you'll notice that their eyes are kind of different. Usually, one eye is looking sort of straight ahead and the other eye is looking down. Now, the Buddhas, usually they have

[08:38]

both eyes looking sort of mildly down, in a restful downward direction, but sort of at the same angle. But the Bodhisattvas, you know, tend to be like, one's looking straight out very intensely and the other one's kind of like cool down. And there's a picture on the back of one of the editions of Dogen's writings called Moon in a Dew Drop, has a picture of Dogen, and one time I was with one of the members of our community, he said, one of his eyes seems to be looking at like Nirvana and the other eye seems to be looking at a hamburger. So one understanding is that the eye that's looking down, you know, is looking at samadhi, and the eye that's looking straight ahead is wisdom. This one eye is penetrating into what's being known, and the other one is like looking inwardly, withdrawing

[09:44]

from the object, and looking at the nature of mind. One's calming and one's penetrating. And so when you meet the teacher, if you think that's what the eyes mean, you wish they would cover one of the eyes. Another meaning of it would be that one is directed to samadhi and the other one is directed to compassion. So it's also a possible interpretation of these two eyes. But if you look at that picture of Suzuki Roshi on the back of Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, like that, one eye is kind of like looking out, kind of going, hi! And the other one's kind of going, hmm. The other one's kind of like, I'm not looking at anything. And so anyway, the one eye, the samadhi eye, looking down, the samadhi practice, in a sense,

[10:52]

the way I understand it is that it's basically that you're giving up conceptuality, letting it go. You're giving up discursive thought, running around manipulating concepts. So instructions for samadhi are instructions given to conceptual cognition. They're given to the conceptual consciousness. Does that make sense? Because they're given instructions with concepts, with words, to our conceptual consciousness, to tell our conceptual consciousness to let it be released. So Bodhidharma says, don't get involved with objects. That means, hello, conceptual consciousness? Yes. Don't get involved with those concepts. So getting involved

[11:54]

with concepts is conceptuality, is working with conceptual consciousness. And working with conceptual consciousness is sometimes very good, but in samadhi, in training, in calming practices, we give up involvement with concept concepts. We stop elaborating them. And giving up involvement with conceptual objects, the conceptual cognition is calmed, subdued, and we actually achieve calm. Okay? Withdrawing from the objects, but it's withdrawing not from the objects of direct cognition, which we're not aware of, generally speaking. It's withdrawing from the objects of conceptual consciousness, which calms us and subdues

[12:57]

the conceptual consciousness. And when the conceptual consciousness is quite subdued, the direct perception, non-conceptual cognition, starts to be revealed. Now, the wisdom practices, the wisdom eye, there we don't put aside, we don't give up conceptuality. We actually use conceptuality. And we learn, we hear teachings about how to use it. And one of the type of teachings of how to use conceptuality is teachings about how to use conceptuality, to let go of conceptuality, to realize calm. But another kind of teaching

[13:58]

that comes through conceptual mode to conceptual consciousness is to teach conceptual consciousness how to practice wisdom. How to use conceptuality, if you excuse the expression, as a sword to cut through conceptuality. Particularly, to cut through the conceptions of permanence and inherent existence. Okay? So those are the two types. Now, so someone said to me, well, I understand, one of the things I learned in this practice period is that zazen is not enough. But I said, well, I think what you mean by zazen

[15:00]

is not enough, is Samadhi number two is not enough. Zazen doesn't, Dogen says, the zazen I speak of is not Samadhi number two. Did you read that in Fukan Zazengi? The zazen I speak of is not Samadhi number two. In other words, it's not just concentration, per se. Of course, it includes concentration, but wisdom is in it, too. It has to do with thinking, of a certain kind of thinking, of a certain kind of reflection, of a certain kind of intellectual activity. It's a kind of intellectual activity that transcends intellectual activity. It's thinking of not thinking. It's conceiving of not conceiving. It's going beyond thinking. It's going beyond conceptualization. That's the essential art of zazen. So he's saying there that wisdom is the essential art of Samadhi.

[16:02]

That wisdom practice, which thinks of not thinking, is the essential art that's practiced in the Samadhi. So when this person says zazen is not enough, I think I understand what he means. Samadhi number two is not enough, that's what he understood. So withdrawal from conceptual involvement into a state of non-conceptual trance, where conception has been suppressed, is not sufficient. So in states of Samadhi like that, the conception of permanence has been suppressed. The conception of self has been suppressed. The misconception of an inherently

[17:09]

existing person has been suppressed. And also the conception of impermanence has been suppressed. And the conception of selflessness has been suppressed. But we don't need to suppress the conception of selflessness. It's not a problem. Well, I shouldn't say nobody, but that usually doesn't need to be suppressed. It's that inherent, unavoidable conception of inherent existence that needs not just to be suppressed temporarily, it's temporarily suppressed, temporarily suppressed, temporarily suppressed in the Samadhi. And again, the conception of permanence or the conception of impermanence that's suppressed in Samadhi, the conception of impermanence is not the impermanence that direct perception

[18:09]

sees. It's not the impermanence that we really need to see. It's just a concept. But there is actual impermanence. And I think, what is it, does Nagarjuna say that seeing impermanence is the arising of Bodhi mind? Did he say that? The seeing impermanence is the arising of Bodhi mind. So to some extent, seeing impermanence in the gross sense sometimes is the arousing of Bodhi mind. So like we have stories of a number of really wonderful spiritual teachers, they saw gross impermanence at an impressionable age, like Dogen saw the incense smoke rising from his mother's body when he was seven. That was kind of like a gross impermanence, but it worked for him. The Bodhi mind came up. And a number of other great teachers lost

[19:15]

someone that they loved very much when they were young. Of course Buddha was seven days old when his mother died, right? But I think actually a lot of us have seen gross impermanence, but I think seeing subtle impermanence, that's when the Bodhi mind really starts working. So I also want to point out that in Samadhi, when the consciousness which misconceives, which sees the misconception of an inherently existing self, that's suppressed, but a lot of other kinds of conceptual consciousnesses are also now possible. They're also suppressed. And some of those other ones are not a problem. Like some of the other ones are what, you know, arrange for a dinner party, and train kids how to brush their teeth, and have scientific

[20:24]

breakthroughs in how to benefit beings, and make music, and poetry. These other kinds of conceptual cognition are very useful, and some of them also are about how to teach. They're also suppressed in the Samadhi temporarily. So it's good it's temporary. They can come back and be used. So I would say one may need to, I hesitate to say one must, one may need to begin using conceptual meditations to see and critically analyze and refute the conceptions, these misconceptions, especially the conception of a person inherently existing, or self-sufficiently existing, etc. Maybe we need to use conceptuality to do that.

[21:31]

So now I'd just like to, in the context of this lovely Buddhist school of wisdom called the Sautrantika, and this is the Sautrantika of the following reasoning type, the logical Sautrantikas, I'd like to, in the context of that teaching, which you may remember something about or not, talk a little bit about how to understand impermanence, how to realize direct yogic perception of subtle impermanence. And the same would apply if we wanted to do it with lack of inherent existence, emptiness.

[22:44]

So for example, in this system, a wall is a wall, a wall is a wall, a wall is a wall, etc. The object which we call a wall is what kind of a truth in this Sautrantika system? Huh? It's an ultimate truth. And is it an impermanent thing? Huh? It's impermanent, right? Yeah. Okay, and this ultimate truth we're talking about presents itself to what kind of consciousness? No. It presents itself to non-conceptual direct perception. Okay? Now the concept of the wall, that presents itself to conceptual cognition. So someone

[23:51]

like could be in this room, you know, I think I would say, we can understand, I'm talking about a wall or perhaps a floor. So a wall, someone who's sitting in front of a wall, the wall sometimes when light hits it, it stimulates the person so that their mind or eye consciousness arises and the eye consciousness actually is a consciousness of direct perception. So the way that the wall impacts the eye consciousness and the way, so the way the eye consciousness engages with the image of the wall, not the image of the wall but the object called the

[24:54]

wall and the way the consciousness knows it are the same. Simultaneously there is a conceptual consciousness which takes that same original wall but then apprehends it, it engages with the wall the same way an eye consciousness does. It's kind of like sitting right next to the eye consciousness, it engages the eye consciousness also, I mean it engages the object of the wall the same way but then it grasps or apprehends this wall by means of an image or concept of the wall. Does that sound familiar? Now, we have right now this like where most of us, the eye consciousness is functioning and we're seeing something and that direct perception is going on, however most of us do not know that. Therefore we do not have an actual sense of looking at a wall or a floor

[25:58]

and being able to see directly that the wall and the floor are changing moment by moment. That is actually being perceived when we see things but we're mostly involved in the concepts and concepts, even the concept of permanence is not actually, or even the concept of impermanence we do not see how that's changing moment by moment. So because we can't see that, the conceptual consciousness conceives of the wall as something that stays pretty much the same moment to moment, like these walls have been pretty much the same for quite a while here, although they used to be different, it used to be sheet metal but we've had the sheet rock up for quite a while and they seem to be pretty

[27:02]

much the same, and the floor also seems pretty much the same moment to moment, and when you see that kind of thing then you say, aha, I'm in conceptual consciousness here. Now, in order to realize direct perception of the impermanence of the wall, it may be necessary, or it is necessary, to form a conception, to form a conceptual understanding that the wall is changing moment by moment. So now you've heard, now in conceptual consciousness you have now heard the concept which could be the basis of a conceptual understanding. The concept you've heard is the wall you're looking at or the floor you're looking at is changing moment by moment. Now this concept would be the basis of a conceptual understanding

[28:12]

that that's so. If we just, and if you actually can continually meditate on this concept, you will gradually come to a very strong sense that the wall or the floor is changing. Moment by moment. You still are in conceptual consciousness with this sense, this very strong sense that it's changing. This is not the same as the direct perception which is actually seeing it right now. And then, once you come to this strong sense, this strong conviction that the floor or the wall is actually changing moment by moment, if you continue this way, you come to a fully valid conclusion of the impermanence of the

[29:29]

wall. So oftentimes they say you start with a suspicion, you start with a suspicion that the floor is changing. And you go from suspicion to certainty. And all this is conceptual cognition and all this is training. This kind of work is what we call the second kind of wisdom. The first kind of wisdom is wisdom based on learning. You hear about impermanence and then you hear about not just gross impermanence but subtle impermanence and you hear the instruction about how to reflect on that. And when you actually hear the instruction and you actually go and walk around or sit and reflect on the teaching that you should suspect or that you should cultivate a suspicion that this floor might be changing every moment, you think

[30:31]

about that and ponder that and analyze that more and more until actually you feel more and more confident. You can't quite see it directly but you feel more and more confident that this floor, this wall is changing moment by moment. This is all conceptual work. This is the second type of wisdom. But you also have done wisdom number one. This is wisdom number two. It comes to a fruit and by meditating in this way, eventually this subtle impermanence becomes realized deeper and deeper, [...] until you're really intimate with this conception of this moment by moment change. And then finally, okay, finally you realize

[31:37]

you're basically over it, you know, and then you give up the concept, you give up the conceptualization. And then finally you may come to a direct perception of what you are. Which you've understood. But without teaching ourselves conceptually, we don't seem to notice what we're already seeing perceptually. So this is samadhi. So based on learning, a wisdom arises, then based on the wisdom of learning, Abhidharmakosha says, at the beginning of the section introducing the three kinds of wisdom, it says, when she hears the teaching

[32:45]

upon which seeing the truth depends, she hears or hears their meaning, or then she does this, she hears the teaching upon which seeing the truth depends, she hears the meaning, having heard, she correctly reflects and ponders, having reflected, she gives herself up to the cultivation of meditation. With the wisdom arisen from hearing for its support, the wisdom arisen from reflection arises. With the wisdom arisen from reflection for its support, the wisdom arisen from samadhi arises. So then in samadhi, with your nice wisdom about impermanence as a base, in samadhi there arises a wisdom based on that samadhi. So you now see what you've understood in this

[33:51]

new context, and you have now samadhi illuminated by wisdom work. So, we have this little handout which maybe some of you might want to have too, it's some sections of the Mahayana Sutra called the Samadhi Nirmocana Sutra, which means untying the mysteries of thought, and it has sections in here on the Three Wisdoms, and then also the section on Abhidharma Kosha on the Three Wisdoms, and I pass this out during the practice period, but if some other people would like it, maybe you could put some out on the table of these readings. And also some people want to continue studying the schools and learn about Abhidharma, so we'll also put reading lists on Abhidharma out, and we're putting

[34:54]

together a reading list on the schools, if you want to start studying that stuff after the session. So that's that, okay? Now we also said that in the realm of direct perception, in non-conceptual cognition, when you meet another person, or when you think about yourself, you have a direct perception of the other person, and you see the other person, but you don't see a concept of the other person, you see the other person, you see the other person, you see them changing all the time, and you also see them in the full richness of their dependent co-arising. Which means you're seeing, what? An ultimate truth. You're seeing a person, you're seeing

[35:58]

an ultimate truth, because what you're seeing is this thing called a person, but you see all the particularities of the person, which means you see all the particularities which are the conditions for that person, and the particularities of that person are the five aggregates. And someone said, well, like Lin said, I don't know about the five aggregates, so someone said, well, you might say a little bit about the five aggregates. So in the realm of direct perception, you're actually seeing the five aggregates. Right now, you're seeing the five aggregates, and that's how you get to see a person. You're actually seeing five aggregates, and then because of those five aggregates, you get to see a person. And because you are experiencing five aggregates, you get to feel like you're a person. So you actually are seeing that, but the person that we see in a conceptual consciousness is a person whose five aggregates are stripped away. We just see the person. We don't see all the

[36:59]

rich contributions of the conditions which make a person. They're stripped away. We see this nice streamlined version of a person, which is very powerful and useful. I was just thinking, people sometimes talk about fuzzy thinking, and I think some of us sometimes are a little bit fuzzy thinking, or yuck. But sometimes I think fuzzy thinking is closer to direct perception, because it's like you think about people, and then there's all this fuzz around them. What's the fuzz? Well, it's the conditions that make the person the person. In direct perception, you don't see just this isolated, you see this very rich thing. It's just a mess, you know? A mess of causation. It's real life, you know? But it's fuzzy. And I also heard the example of like, you know, a lot of us now, if we go outside now today and we look out at the hills without our glasses on, and on a lovely day like this,

[38:00]

it's kind of fuzzy out there. That's actually sort of the way it is. It's actually fuzzy out there. And I went to my eye doctor a while ago, and he said, you know, he did a test of my eyes, and he said, you know, things are actually clearer out there than you can see. So then you put the glasses on, and you say, aha, it's clearer. But really what you did is you put these glasses on so that you can strip away all the fuzziness and all the relatedness of this world. And you feel good, because you can see these nice, powerful images like tree. Now forget about tree next door. Forget about mountains. Forget about me. Just tree, oh, it's so lovely. Take it away, it's kind of like, well, I don't know, what is that actually? Could be a tree, could be a gopher, you know? And the problem is that when you put the glasses on, and you can see these stripped down, cleared

[39:13]

up images of what's going on out there, sharper images, you can't see, it's very difficult to see at the same time what it looked like without the glasses on. So the glasses on, when you put the glasses on, they obliterate the fuzziness. You can sort of remember it, but you don't want to, really. You just want to enjoy it. So the conceptual consciousness sees what kind of truths? What? Conventional truths. What were the other people saying besides conventional? What? You're seeing permanent things, and permanent things are conventional things, right? In the world of convention, we've got permanent stuff. We've got permanent houses, permanent people, permanent dresses. And if you change your permanent dress, you're supposed to go to post office, right? We have all these permanent things in the world of convention. We don't say, okay, let's play poker now, okay, and

[40:13]

then you start playing some new way. It's called cheating. No, you play, you know, there's an established permanent way about the way you play this game, right? That's the world of convention. But if somebody had direct perception of the poker game, they'd say, this thing's changing all the time. This is like a very fuzzy situation here. When you put the glasses on, that nice clear vision obscures what you see without the glasses. When you put the concept on, that obscures what you see without the concept on. And so conventional truth, the word for conventional truth, there's two words for it, but the main one that people usually choose is samvritti. And samvritti has three meanings, but one of the meanings of it is obscuring, or obscured, or concealing. So conventional truth, obscure, ultimate truth, or another way to put it is, sometimes they're called, not obscuring truth,

[41:22]

but truths for the obscured. So for people who have obscured consciousness, in other words, conceptual consciousness, which obscures direct perception, the things they see block the way they see things blocks being able to see direct perception. So concepts are wonderful and useful, but once you tune into them, you can't see the way the thing is before you like spiffed it up and made it more like useful, like you know, right to where to get a hold of the edges of it, you know, rather than, well, geez, I don't even know how to, I can't even grasp that thing. In direct perception, you can't grasp anything. You don't exactly know where exactly, it's not so clear exactly where it is other than its conditions, plus as soon as you reach for it, it's gone, it's changed. It's like you can't make a living

[42:26]

there. So the Satrantika system is very nice to have brought this wonderful teaching to us about these two kinds of consciousness and how they work together, but without discrediting either one. We need both. We need this one which obscures the other, and we need to see the one that's obscured in order to be free. But the one that obscures the one that sets us free is the one that teaches us how to become aware of the one that sets us free, which is actually right under our nose all the time, but that's not enough. We need to somehow train ourselves to be able to use it. Okay, so I haven't forgotten the thing about

[43:27]

the five skandhas. So basically the same way of meditating on impermanence can be done with the selflessness of the person. You start with a suspicion that this person can only be recognized in dependence on the five aggregates. You're being told, you're hearing a teaching that right now, by means of direct perception, you are seeing a person and you're also seeing the five aggregates the person is imputed onto. Actually seeing the five aggregates and you're seeing those aggregates pulsating and changing all the time. So you're seeing these five aggregates which are ultimate truths and you're seeing the person as an ultimate truth because that's also an impermanent thing that arises in dependence on those, and you

[44:30]

see all that in direct perception right now, but you don't know it. So we need to train ourselves to suspect that that teaching might be so, and then train ourselves to start to try to see these five aggregates in conceptual consciousness, and then see how people, see how persons are related to these five aggregates in conceptual consciousness, and study how persons are related to the five aggregates in conceptual consciousness until we become more and more sure that people are related to the five aggregates. And sometimes just see the five aggregates and see no person, and sometimes see a person and know five aggregates, and then meditate on whether the person is the same as the five aggregates or different from the five aggregates, or are we both the same and both different? Look at the relationships until you actually come to a conclusion about the actual relationship

[45:30]

between the person and the five aggregates, and you train yourself at this conceptually. So what are the five aggregates? The five aggregates are just the five different categories, and by the way, our mind deals with these things in categories, so we have categories. The categories are forms, materialities, feelings, which means mental phenomena, and these mental phenomena accompany every state of mind, just like samadhi and intelligence and mindfulness. Another one that accompanies all states is feeling, and feeling means that we're always evaluating what's going on, and we have basically three evaluations, positive, negative, and I can't tell which. And that mental factor is so important for forming a self that it gets to be an aggregate all by itself. The next aggregate is called perception, but I think it also should be called conception,

[46:35]

because in conceptual awareness, it's conception. And the next one is called mental formations, and mental formations includes 64 elements in the Vaisakha system, so it includes samadhi, intention, mindfulness, intelligence, contact between the sense organ, the sense field, and the consciousness, and so on. And then other things vary. Those are always present, and there's a variable number, 54 variables, like there can be faith or not faith, diligence or not diligence, laziness or not laziness, a sense of self-respect or not. A lot of other ones can be there. They all go in the next aggregate. And then the fifth aggregate is consciousness. So consciousness, so what is it? The same is true of feelings, perceptions, formations, and consciousness.

[47:39]

It's actually mental formations. The name of the skandha just means formations, samskara, but it means, actually if you look what's in there, they're mental formations, they're mental concomitants to the consciousness. And conceptual consciousness have mental concomitants, and direct perceptions have mental concomitants. So in the realm of conception, you can train yourself to start seeing, which means in some sense imagining, these aggregates, these five aggregates, and you can learn more about them by reading and taking abhidharma classes, which might become more popular in the future for a little while, until you start studying and get upset and quit. Anyway, those are the five aggregates. So by studying those, you learn more about those, and after a while, even though you can't see directly, through direct perception, you're seeing concepts of them, after a while,

[48:43]

even though you can't directly see the actual aggregates, which are impermanent, unless you've realized directly impermanence, what you can do is you can look at any experience you have and listen to anybody else's experience, and when they tell you the experience, you can see, well, how do the aggregates account for that experience? And you can conceptually work with any experience and see that whatever's happening can be accounted for by these actual categories, which are also conceptual categories. So then you see there's nothing but these five aggregates, because after you get more skillful at it, no matter what people say, you say, well, that's that one, that's that one, there's not a sixth aggregate, there's no other things. And then when people tell you, or you tell yourself, about a self, then you say, well, what is your experience of it? How does it feel? Describe it to me.

[49:44]

And no matter what they come up with, it's one of those aggregates. So, you keep working on this until you're more and more convinced that no matter how the self appears to you, or how it feels, or what you think about it, no matter any way you can know it, or sense it, it's actually one of these five aggregates. But then when you see that it's one of the five aggregates, well, it doesn't make sense, because nobody thinks a self is one of the five aggregates. The self is actually, basically, all the five aggregates. That's what we think. But it isn't all the five aggregates, because nothing's all the five aggregates, because there's only five aggregates. There's not five aggregates plus a sixth one, which is all of them. Because actually, all of them, you can see, well, that's an idea of all of them, and that actually belongs in the third skanda, the third aggregates. So, anyway, you do this, you do this, until finally, after a while, you see five aggregates when you see a self, and when you see a self, you see five aggregates.

[50:45]

And there's a certain relationship, which is, and the relationship is one where, just like after you study a family for a while, when you see the mother, you see the baby. Every time you see the mother, you see the baby. When you're familiar with a mother and a baby, you study the mother, you study the baby, after a while, whenever you see the mother, you see the baby, whenever you see the baby, you see the mother, but you understand the relationship is not that the baby is the mother, or the mother is the baby, and it's also not that they're different, because you never have one without the other. So you start to see the actual relationship between a person and these aggregates, or a person and these psychophysical phenomena. The relationship is very subtle and interdependent, and you conceptually come to see that, and as you conceptually come to see that, you understand and you're convinced there isn't a self that's separate from the five aggregates or the same. You're convinced, and you have wisdom about that. However, it's the second type. And that second type all comes through, arguing with the books and the teachers and the students

[51:53]

until you're convinced. And the more you do it, the more convinced you are, and you start to actually, your conceptual world starts to look like that. You start to see five aggregates walking around. Just a minute. I won't forget you. Don't worry. And then after you have that kind of wisdom, because this is a Buddhist wisdom, we want to now unite that wisdom with our Samadhi, so then all along you've been hopefully practicing your Samadhi, so you didn't forget how. Samadhi number two. So you enter Samadhi number two, and based on wisdom number three, this time on the issue of a self of a person, based on the understanding of the selflessness of the person that you achieved in wisdom number two, you then enter Samadhi, and you achieve wisdom number three. And achieving wisdom number three in Samadhi gives you Samadhi number three. And I rest my case.

[52:53]

Now, Todd? Yeah, sensation's okay. Yeah, the Sanskrit word is vedana, and it can be translated as sensation or feeling, because I think we say we have painful feelings and pleasant feelings, and we have painful sensations and pleasant sensations. Right? So it's that kind of thing. It's that type of sensation. It's not a… We could also call… I like feelings better because we usually don't say I have a blue feeling. Well, actually, we do say that, don't we? We don't usually… And we even less often say I have a red feeling, but we sometimes do say we have red feelings. And sometimes we say we have green feelings, I guess, but we use it very seldom.

[53:55]

Green feeling is greed, right? Envy. Green feed is jealousy. Yeah, greed. Green is jealousy or envy. Red is anger. Blue is depressed. And yellow is afraid. White is like… White is scared. So maybe we do. Anyway, and sometimes we say… And we do sometimes say I have a sweet feeling, right? Or a bitter feeling. Or a sour feeling. Right? And sometimes we say we have a loud feeling or a quiet feeling. Right? So as you get into the less common colors, which you consider to be sensations, like a maroon, a maroon color, we don't very often say maroon feeling. So sensations… Actually, there is kind of interchangeability between them. But feeling…

[54:56]

The feeling that we're talking about here is not maroon feelings. It's just positive, negative and neutral. Those are the qualities that are meant by this. That's why I like feeling more myself more than sensation. The Chinese character… And I don't remember the etymology of Veda Na, the Sanskrit word. But the Chinese word… Chinese character they use for it means to receive. So it's the way you receive the situation. You receive it positive, negative or neutral. So anyway, that's that. Yes? And the other one is… My understanding of this kindness was that there was a sequence, that they were in a sequential order. The order that they're listed is the sequence in which… It is a sequence, yes. And if you read them backwards, that would be a different sequence. Well… No, that there was a reason that they were listed. Oh yeah, there is a reason. And so in the Abhidharmakosha, it tells you the reason.

[55:57]

Okay? What often… And it tells you 73 to 95 reasons, because there's 18 schools commenting on this. But anyway, one of the more common reasons for that order is that it's an order of subtlety. And for a lot of people, it's the order of learning about them. So most people have easier time. Most people are aware of their body. But some people, pretty intelligent people, you say, what feeling do you have? And they can't tell you. But they can tell you that they can have the body. Then the next thing about it is that… is that what we mean by body is not the gross body, the concept body, which has arms and legs. This is a conceptual body. Direct perception does not see, you know, the concept of a whole body. It doesn't see that. The whole body, actually, is a permanent kind of concept. What the direct perception sees is the pulsating of colors

[57:02]

and smells and tastes and tangibles and sounds. So you gradually learn how to recognize materiality. Then, next, you learn how to recognize feelings, then concepts or perceptions. So the order is sometimes said to be in the order of subtlety, from grosser to more subtle. That's one explanation. But it's not the order of their arising. They arise together. And it's not like one causes the next. They're simultaneous, but they're presented in a certain order for the purposes of everything else that's presented in this book, for us learning, training our conceptual consciousness for wisdom. Okay? And also the other ones, too, are arranged. They have... The Buddhists at that time, whatever you give them,

[58:02]

they all say, Why it's this way? Why it's that way? You know, they're very inquiring critters in those days, so they have questions about a lot of stuff. Yes? I was wondering if you could spend a moment to illustrate with an example. Say you encounter some object. How the individual five skandhas are... How you would describe what's going on with them individually. Say you... Someone gives you an apple. Yeah. So someone gives me an apple. And then, let's say we're at the phase of the apple-giving situation where it touches my hand. We're talking now, perhaps, about the feeling of the apple in my hand, the actual tactile sensation. But we could also be talking about the color, the way the apple appears to me in terms of color. Now, there's different schools on this. Some schools say that... What do they say?

[59:03]

That all... The conditions can be there for all the sense consciousnesses happening, or just one of them. So sometimes it can be just the touch of the apple without the color, I guess, right? I'm not looking at it. Somebody just lays an apple on your hand. So let's just take that one for starters. So this touch of the apple on the hand, or the placing of the apple on the hand, will give rise, in this example, let's say, to the contact of the tangible thing with the sensitive surface that can detect the tangibles. And from that arises a touch consciousness. And so then you're aware that something in your hand, you might not even know it's an apple yet, just might feel, like, smooth. But still, you're dealing with a concept smooth for this thing. Sensation? Or form? That's form? Hmm? Is that form? Which of the skandhas? The form part...

[60:07]

The form part was twofold. The two parts of the form were the tangibility, the smoothness. That's a characteristic of the fifth type of first skandha. First skandha has eleven elements. And the eleven elements are colors, sounds, smells, touch, taste, and tangibles. They put tangible last, but actually tangible is the most fundamental sense. Fundamental... Not sense, fundamental... Tangible is our most fundamental material thing. And so the tangible... The tangible thing here is a smoothness, is a tangibility, a tangible thing. And then you have this sensitive surface called skin, our skin organ, and the tangible comes in contact with the thing that can be responsive to tangibility,

[61:07]

or tangibles. Those two are the material skandha, which I guess you can conceive of that, right? Right? I mean, can you? This isn't the actual sense perception, but this is in the realm of conceptual cognition, which we're trying to train ourselves in. This is feeling smoothness, touch, hand. And mindfulness is then practiced to be aware of that. And there's two kinds of mindfulness. One kind of mindfulness would be aware of this kind of conventionality, which is this tangible thing touching this skin thing. And these are now... In conceptual cognition, these are... I mean, yeah, these are conceptual cognitions, and so these are conventionalities, and they're permanent. They seem permanent. We know they're not, but they feel like it at the time. We don't feel them...

[62:08]

You put the apple in the hand, feel the smoothness, it seems to last. And the apple seems to last, and the skin seems to last. In conceptual cognition, that's the way it would be. So anyway, that's the first kanda. Pardon? The second type of mindfulness would not just be to be aware of the general characteristics, but to be aware of the specific characteristics. But to be aware of the specific characteristics, to be mindful of the specific characteristics, you'd have to be in touch with direct perception. So they teach mindfulness to learn how to see these two types of marks, but one of them will depend on having access to understanding direct perception, because that's where the second type of characteristic of things to be mindful of arises. Anyway, so now we have the first kanda, okay? Second skanda. Now, at the moment of being... of the... two kinds of materiality touching, in this example,

[63:13]

and again, we're just talking about the smoothness of the apple, or the coolness of the apple, touching the skin surface. Because of that contact there, there arises a skin consciousness, or a touch consciousness. Okay? And that consciousness is the fifth skanda. So conceptually, you actually may be able to see, oh, there's the fifth skanda, and the first skanda. And I understand I'm dealing with a conceptual version of these two, but I do have a kind of a sense... I mean, there is this tangible... there is this consciousness, and this does engage the conceptual consciousness, but the way the conceptual consciousness interprets this consciousness of this coolness is it interprets it through a concept of the consciousness of the coolness. And understanding that would also be part of your training.

[64:18]

But for now, anyway, you do have a sense, although it's a concept, although it's a spiffed-up, stripped-down version of this sensory event, you do have a sense of an awareness of the coolness of something, which I haven't yet looked at, but I'm suspecting now is an apple in my hand. So you've got two skandas being viewed in conceptual consciousness. Is that part okay so far? Okay, any questions about that? There could be. Yes? Well, the skanda is part of the perceiver, you know, the person and the apple. Apples don't have... Apples don't have five skandas, no. Because five skandas are... Apples don't have, like, feelings and so on. This is actually your experience of this event.

[65:20]

But when you look at other people, you can... That's one of the things you can... I don't know. I got to admit, I don't know. When you have a direct perception of a person, you see them in their vivid fuzziness and impermanence, and you see the true relationship between them and the five aggregates. Part of the reason why you see the five aggregates is because you understand their mind. Whereas when you're in conceptual consciousness, you just imagine that other people are like you and they have five aggregates, but you're not supposed to imagine that rocks have five aggregates, although it is okay, I think, to experiment with imagining that frogs have five aggregates. And certainly dogs. And cats. And apes. So... But that's your imagination. You can't actually see their five aggregates. You can't see their feelings, I don't think. Not conceptually. So you're mostly dealing with your experience of this apple,

[66:22]

not the apple's experience of your hand. We can get into that later. That's Abhi Abhidharma. Okay, so, in this case, of the example, the way I understood the way I understood Mick's example was, he said, someone gives you an apple, and I emphasized the contact between the apple, and not just the apple, but the smoothness and the tangibility of the apple, the tangibility of the apple, and the skin surface. Okay? Now we could also do the taste of the apple, or the sound of the apple, or the sight of the apple, but I'm just choosing that one for now, okay? So we've got this one dimension, this one consciousness. Other ones could have been arising, but we have one. So we have the first and the fifth skanda. And then someone might say, well, what about the third skanda? Or the second skanda, feeling. Okay? Now, at the time that there's an awareness

[67:23]

of the tangibility, at that time, the object of awareness is the touch, is the smoothness. Okay? That's what's known. But simultaneously, in another dimension, there is a feeling about this touch. A concomitant, a concomitant mental factor which feels good about this touch. But that factor, although it accompanies this other fifth skanda, this consciousness of this thing, that thing is not an object of awareness of this consciousness. It's a separate evaluation. But, of course, it's connected to this mind, so it colors it. So, in fact, if someone puts an apple in your hand and it's accompanied by a positive sensation, that feels differently than if someone puts an apple in your hand and you have a negative sensation. Okay? So that's the second. So you can, again, start experimenting, do conceptual mind experiments

[68:26]

in the conceptual realm for how the second, the feeling would work. Then the next one is, well, you can say, well, I think this is conceptual consciousness, so the third aggregate is concept smoothness. The actual touch is not smoothness. I mean, it's not the idea of smoothness. It's the stimulation that gives rise to the concept of smoothness. So now you have the third skanda. I thought you said that was the fifth skanda. Hmm? I thought you said that that concept was the fifth skanda. What concept? The smoothness of the apple. No. I didn't say that the smoothness of the apple was the fifth skanda. I said the fifth skanda arises from the contact between the apple and, again, the apple can contact a living being through more than one dimension. It can contact a living being through smoothness or coldness or hotness or roughness or wetness, but also it can contact through a fragrance

[69:27]

or sweetness or bitterness, like when they turn black. You ever taste that part? You look like you don't understand what I'm talking about. No, I got all of that. Okay. That's perceptual. Huh? That's a perceptual. These are ways that the app, that the phenomena of apple can be conveyed to a living being is through these five ways. It can be conveyed through light, through sound, through smell, through taste and touch, all five, and we could get all five of those from an apple. Okay? I just chose one of them. When one of them contacts a sensitive surface and they start playing with sufficient intensity, that contact gives rise to a consciousness. In this case, we chose a tangible consciousness. Tangible consciousness knows, not, doesn't, it knows that this, it knows, you're right, it knows the smoothness. It knows the smoothness.

[70:30]

But it, but the concept of smoothness is the third skanda. So the third skanda provides the concept by which the conceptual consciousness will interpret this actual smoothness this tactile smoothness as the idea smoothness. The samskara skanda? Yeah, I'm going to come to that. I haven't yet, you didn't miss anything. Here comes the fourth one, we did the fifth, right? And the reason why we did the fifth was because it's hard to miss it because it's sort of the reason for the whole discussion. Because if the fifth one doesn't arise we really couldn't talk about the other, the other three because they accompany the fifth. The fourth one, one of the elements in the fourth one is something I just mentioned earlier. What was that?

[71:32]

Well mindfulness, you could, yeah, mindfulness, but contact, one of the mental factors that's present in all states of consciousness according to these schools is contact. And what's the contact? The contact is the contact of this tangible with the sensitive, the surface which is sensitive to tangibles and the contact between them leads to the contact between them, between their contact and the consciousness. So that contact between those three is one of the elements in the fourth aggregate which again you can conceptually understand it was there. What is the fourth aggregate? It's a, it's called the mental formations and one of the mental formations is contact and what we mean by that is the contact between sense organs, sense object and consciousness because they arise together. Another one in the in the fourth aggregate is samadhi. Now you can,

[72:37]

again, you might have a sense, who knows, you might have this sense, here you are, they put the apple in your hand, boom, and you feel like whew, samadhi. You know? And other times you might feel like there's not much samadhi there but I understand that it's there, they said it's always there so I don't know where it is. So the elements in the in the fourth aggregate somehow the fourth aggregate there's a lot of things we know that we're supposed to be able to, we're being told, we're being taught that there's at least ten are there. So we conceptually work, we critically analyze, we do the craft of analyzing this experience until we come up with ten. And then we come up with some more too because they put usually more. So in this way we work with the experience of the apple being given to us and just the touch of the apple. Now you can also, it might be that you also at the same time of touching that you also see the apple and you can do the same thing with the eye and then

[73:38]

so that's that. Does that give you a feeling for it, Mick? Okay. Somebody's got their hand raised back there. I think it's Rin. Yes? Yeah? We're not talking about the apple's experience? Right. The part that you said about when you study this you begin to look at other people and you see the five aggregates. Because I think that the five aggregates are my experience when I'm sitting on a person. How is it that I can see that other person's experience? Well, one of the ways you can do it is you talk to people and then they tell you about their experience and then you hear them telling you their experience and you hear five aggregates. Okay?

[74:40]

Does that make sense? So everything they say somehow you feel like that's five aggregates. And actually and then they tell you about their self and then you ask them what they mean by that and they tell you about what their self is and you hear five aggregates. And then when they're not talking and you just see them and you see the look on their face you see the five aggregates. When I say then I mean after extensive study. So after a while you can see the other person's five aggregates too by understanding how your five aggregates work and understanding how when other people tell you about theirs how their five aggregates are too. So this is like this is like down the road a way that you can actually accurately see somebody else's five aggregates. In the meantime we suggest asking people what's going on with them and then seeing as you inquire about what's going on with them whether anything that they tell you about is not accounted for by these five aggregates.

[75:42]

So five aggregates are ways for people like us who have conceptual consciousness to train the conceptual consciousness in wisdom and to free the conceptual consciousness from its misconception of a self that's self-sufficient that doesn't depend on the five aggregates. Yes? Yeah. We used to I think in the early time at Zen Center I don't know I know why. Charlie help me with this. In Sanskrit the fourth skanda is called the samskara skanda. Okay, this is like Okay, now

[76:45]

we just happen to be now getting into I think you sort of need to know this because we're getting in the history of Abhidharma now. As they started to listen to Buddha's teachings and then started to analyze you know, his teachings and analyze their experience the yogis came up with these understanding of what these skandas are. Buddha mentioned the five skandas but little by little they started to understand better what should go in where. So in terms of grossness the fourth skanda is more subtle than the other ones and what goes in the fourth skanda are all things that are made it's called the samskara skanda. It means something that's made something that's put together that's the name of it. And this is kind of interesting you'll see the feelings skanda of course you're just going to put feelings in there. The conceptions skanda or the perceptions skanda you're going to put direct perceptions or conceptions

[77:46]

and also the material one is pretty simple. But what do you put in the fourth aggregate? The fourth aggregate as you watch some kind of archaeological studies of Buddhism as you watch the evolution of the Abhidharma system you see that the fourth skanda grew. At first there weren't very many things in there. As a matter of fact one of the main ones one of the most important ones in the fourth skanda one of the most important elements of the fourth skanda which is one of the omnipresent mental factors is volition or intention. Because that mental factor is the definition of karma and karma is so important. So actually you could do a you could start by kind of a streamlined version of the skandas okay which is very educational but streamlined

[78:48]

and the streamlined version would be materiality you know a body okay a sentient living body and that body then becomes touched by some kind of material event a light electromagnetic radiation or gas or a touch and then this body gives rise to a consciousness so in some sense the simplest version of of it is body and consciousness okay then the next the next one although we went to the most subtle right away the next skanda the next in terms of grossness is pain or pleasure so if you look at an animal and you stimulate it basically it seems like the basic response it has to the stimulation is pain or pleasure like avoidance or attraction okay so that's the second skanda the third skanda is some kind of

[79:48]

like way of presenting this information about the pain and pleasure or confusion between the two to the consciousness that's the third skanda okay and one more thing okay you got the body it's being touched you got a consciousness of that you got an evaluation of that you got a way of conceiving that evaluation sending it to consciousness now what more do we need for this animal what what reaction yeah to act reaction so the next thing you need is will so that's the next in some sense the most important element in the four skanda is what are you going to do about it now if it's pain we got to do something if it's pleasure you got to do something so that's a streamlined version of the five skandas some kind of impact a consciousness arises some kind of impact

[80:49]

between a material that's living and a material that that actually isn't like light we're saying light isn't alive and gases aren't alive that that interaction between inorganic and organic gives rise to this thing called consciousness then there's an evaluation somehow that this is painful or pleasureful or neutral and that evaluation then is encapsulated in a perception a direct perception and or a concept which is then feet fed to the consciousness and then there's an impulse and the and the Sanskrit word is samskara which means something put together that impulse is put together but also the word they use in Chinese for it is a word that means sort of like action or karma or impulse but it also can mean compounded or put together thing so so then as they developed

[81:49]

their understanding of other parts of the psychic world like samadhi mindfulness contact all the other mechanisms that they just noticed they put them all in the four skandhas because the four skandhas name things that are made and anything can go in there they even put things in there that aren't mental things like they put in like the the the phases that phenomena go through as they arise and cease are in the four skandhas so even things that aren't associated in mind get plopped into that skandha so therefore you can count for almost anything with these aggregates but the will or the intention of the organism is the overall pattern of all these different things is the overall pattern of the five skandhas is where it seems to be going and that used to be the name we used to use that name for that whole aggregate okay and then

[82:51]

yeah I think you were next I'm wondering how it's beneficial within the context of for example a conversation I'd be having with someone to experiment assessing the aggregates of a person after asking them a question how it would be beneficial is it did that make sense so far yes how it would be beneficial for the other person if my ignorant flawed conceptual perception is deconstructing their their responses basically I mean I understand do you understand what popped in my mind first which is kind of like a segue to your answer to your question was in the early days of Zen center in the earliest days of Zen center people just came to Zen center

[83:52]

and meditated and went home or went you know and took more drugs and but as Zen center grew people like started to work for Zen center so they come to meditation and then they go home and then they take drugs and go to work and then later phase of Zen center they come to meditation and they wouldn't take drugs and then go to work and some of them work for Zen center so they would try to go to the office and continue their somewhat unsophisticated understanding of meditation so they'd like to follow they kept trying to follow their breathing while they're answering the telephone you know in the early days of Zen center we had people working in the office who were trying to follow their breath so they and they were having trouble following their breath anyway right so now they got the telephone to deal with too so they pick up the telephone and they say hello and the person says

[84:53]

is this Zen center and they go I lost count call back later so then we had to tell people working in the office don't try to follow your breathing while you're answering the telephone and then also people would say to Suzuki Roshi well should we follow our breathing when we're eating and he said it might make your stomach upset so maybe not especially you don't count your breathing while you're counting the number of chews you do because in those days a lot of people were macrobiotic and they were they were trying to chew their brown rice 50 times per bite so then they're counting 50 bites here and then 3 breaths there so you know they needed some help so fortunately we had a teacher and it all worked out so if you're trying to learn how to if you've learned

[85:54]

the Abhidharma teachings the Skanda teachings you're trying to actually apply them to a situation trying to apply the teaching to an actual situation and you're doing it with somebody that you're in interaction with you're probably good to tell them you're doing it so if I'm doing it with somebody usually they're coming to me and they're willing to talk about the 5 Skandas in terms of what's actually happening but some people say I don't want to talk about the 5 Skandas I just want to tell you what a jerk you are and I don't want you to analyze that I want you to hear me you know so you have to have a pretty wholesome situation in order to do that with somebody who's willing to actually like share with you the work of trying to understand conceptually what's going on in the conversation in terms of Buddhist teaching but some people may not be up for that so you probably shouldn't try to do it at the beginning without sharing it with them otherwise they're going to think you're very strange because you're going to keep you're going to be over there trying to inwardly trying to figure out what Skandas are going on they don't understand what this pause is about you know and then if you tell them

[86:58]

what you're doing and they don't know anything about Buddhism they think you're crazy you're weird even if you tell somebody you know you're talking to him and you go four you know but if you tell them you say is it okay if I count my breaths while I'm talking to you they may say well can you still listen to me and you say no and you say well then don't or if you say yes I can and you say actually you might say actually it will help me listen to you if I count my breaths and they might say okay try it so sometimes I say to people when they're talking to me I say I'm not looking at you but I can actually listen to you better when I'm not looking at you it's not that I'm not looking at you I'm not asleep but I just feel like right now I can hear you better if I don't look at you if you tell the person that then they're okay then they keep talking and sometimes you can hear better when you're just taking in the hearing rather than also the visual thing sometimes it's you want to do both but it's good to share it now when you're really skillful you can do this and you know

[87:59]

you're perfectly natural while you're doing all this advanced wisdom work you know on the spot what? Categorizing yeah you're categorizing and in fact anyway conceptually we are categorizing all the time this just brings it out in the front in a kind of wisdom way so again we're all conceptualizing left and right and some of our conceptualization is very good and it would be better if we understood it better and some of our conceptualization is really ignorant and it would be good if we got more skillful at other kinds of conceptualization to like cut through that stuff to challenge it to refute it say you know go sit down you know you can be here but you're not going to be you're not going to be like lecturing everybody else what's going on here so this ignorant sense of self is not going to take over the whole system and drive this you know music composition go sit down we'll take care of you later let me play some music now okay or let me do some analysis

[89:00]

of the skandhas and get back to you about how you relate to them okay so I think as you're learning this stuff and you're in interpersonal situations if you're going to continue you should get the person's support and or mutual cooperation you know that they can do it too and they can help each other and then you can see if they feel that how you accounted for what they said makes sense to them and if not you try another way and tell both of you it makes sense to both of you because eventually you're going to want to teach other people about this meditation too so it's good makes sense? okay let's see now it is getting a little late so how much longer do you want to go on with this? what's the word what's the feeling? don't stop don't stop don't stop okay I think I think Kathy and then Catherine and then and then Bob and Steve and Paul and Khoo and Jing yes Kathy? I wanted to ask

[90:03]

I had the idea that direct perceiving doesn't involve knowing direct perceiving doesn't involve knowing? there's knowing going on knowing but the knowing part is not is not the direct perception that's how they for example seeing a color you simply see it there is no conception that red is red okay that's right seeing a color there's no conception that red is red however that does not translate to no knowing perception is perceptual cognition it is cognition means knowing it is a perceptual a direct knowing perceptual cognition is direct knowing and conceptual cognition is indirect knowing in the sense that you know the thing via the concept the concept is intermediating what you know they're both they're both knowing

[91:03]

they're two styles of knowing okay I kind of wanted to revisit this question in in the observe in a person seeing a person as imputed on the five skandhas yeah what is the five skandhas are imputational or they're seen that's where you get these categories okay when you're learning about the five aggregates when you hear the words and so on and so forth and you start and you start to work with five aggregates you're working with concepts of them and these concepts are imputations on actual experience so working you're working with again so I'm trying to get definition of a conventionality is something that exists only by being imputed so when you're doing conceptual work you're doing

[92:04]

you're dealing totally with the imputations but by training ourselves skillfully with these imputations we can become free of them and you know and understand actually a way to directly perceive and also a way to refute some of the imputations some of the imputations are fallacious and totally ignorant some of the other imputations are quite useful and valid so we need to learn which are which and train ourselves using them in conceptual consciousness but direct perception once again is knowing it just as you say there's no word read being interposed or imputed on the actuality of electromagnetic radiation in the lower band of you know that those numbers of angstrom units okay you're welcome and then I think Catherine maybe well thanks for that

[93:16]

the only brief thing I can say at this time not the only the brief thing I can say is that what you've learned so far will be very helpful to you in understanding those schools I think it wouldn't go along with dumbing it down it'd be too much I think some people would like just it's too much I think I got it right here but I think it's too much all right bye-bye

[94:03]

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