The series is Mahayana Abhidharma, and D with a circle on it is Dharma. We had three classes this summer on this topic, and this time we have a little more time to give a little background, so the background that I'd like to give is what Abhidharma is. So, in the early days of the teaching, there was an historical event, or a historical person

[01:05]

that lived in the world named Shakyamuni Buddha, so actually, something like this happened in history, that there was such a person and he talked to people, they could see his face and listen to his teaching, and he taught the truth, which when understood, transforms us into an awakened being, and liberates us from the suffering that comes from being asleep to the truth. And one way that sometimes people typify the way that this person taught, was that he taught a minute analysis of experience, a minute analysis of the experience that humans

[02:10]

have, but also that animals could analyze their experience, they would probably do the same analysis. So, in the Buddha's teaching, there is lots and lots of analysis. He also told stories and metaphorical examples of things, but the metaphors were usually metaphors for an analytic presentation of the teaching. For example, I recently told you the story of the two acrobats and how they worked together. The male acrobat was about to put the female acrobat up on top of his shoulders, she was going to climb up on top of his head, and he said to her,

[03:14]

you take care of me, you watch out for me, and I'll watch out for you, and we'll be able to do this acrobatic feat safely, and it's going to be fine. She said, no master, she was the apprentice, she said, no master, you have it, it's not correct, you take care of yourself, and I'll take care of myself, and then we'll be able to do this. And the Buddha says, the apprentice was correct. So first you take care of yourself, then you can take care of others. And how do you take care of yourself? And he said, you take care of yourself by practicing the four foundations of mindfulness, which I understand was studied in the Tathagatagarbha during this practice period. The four foundations of mindfulness are practice broken up into four parts, and each one of those parts is broken up

[04:17]

into many parts. And so, it's a metaphor for how to, first of all you have to check into yourself and be mindful of yourself before you can care for others. Now, also I wanted to mention that this class is potentially going to offer a tremendous amount of information, more than a lot of other classes that you might have experienced. For example, I just told you about the four foundations of mindfulness. I can tell you more about them, but I can also tell you wherever you can read about them. I believe it's, yeah, I believe it's Middle England's famous 122, that scripture. The scripture on the four foundations of mindfulness, if you want to find out about it.

[05:20]

But I just wanted to say to you that the teaching of the Abhidharma, there is instruction in there about how to practice tranquility, how to develop concentration. There is instruction like that in various Abhidharma texts, where they present methods of tranquility. But Abhidharma meditation is primarily a wisdom meditation. And the Buddha's analysis of experience is basically, analysis of experience is a compassionate teaching to help people become wise. So, usually before that teaching would be offered, the analytic meditation experience would be offered to people who already had the ability to be quite tranquil and concentrated. So you don't necessarily have to drop out of this class if you're not yet very skillful at concentration practices.

[06:38]

But I just want to say to you that, in some sense, for this class to work with you, for you, it would work really well if you're doing along with this class, on a daily basis, practices to develop tranquility. So that hopefully, if you come to class, you're fairly calm when you come to the class. And when you begin the class and you start to get agitated and excited, it's often good to try to not get too involved in the discursive presentation that this class offers. Try to relax and calm down. That sort of background, basic practice, that we won't be emphasizing so much, but I need you to take care of that. If you're calm also, these teachings will sink into you. They'll sink into you and they'll stick to you.

[07:53]

Someone was telling me recently about her practice, and it sounded to me like she was somewhat successful at concentration, because when you get kind of concentrated, the world gets kind of velcro-y, and your mind gets kind of velcro-y. You start to notice that things have much more surface texture, and your mind can get a hold of things. Things can get a hold of your mind, so you can really learn much more easily. Things don't just slide by so much. Okay, so one of the basic types of analysis that was recommended and practiced was analysis of experience.

[09:00]

Sort of what I would call on a moral basis. So the meditator would look at the state of body and mind that they were in, and they would categorize it, for example, as to whether it had outflows or not. So, if you look, the mind could have or not outflows. Or being pure or impure. Having outflows is impure in Sanskrit, and the word for outflows is sasrava.

[10:05]

Sasrava means outflows. And sasrava means without flows. There is a sign for it that means to have outflows. And not having outflows is anasrava. Oh, I'm sorry. It's asrava. So, it's sasrava or anasrava. So, this would be a meditation that someone could do, to look to see if they had any outflows. So, you've heard me talk a lot about practicing, and like you're going to the Zen building sitting, or you're washing dishes, or you're like chanting in service, or you're studying, or you're teaching, or you're going to a class.

[11:29]

These kinds of activities you might be doing, or making offerings, and then you look and see, okay, that's what's happening now. Is there outflow or not? Am I trying to get anything out of this practice? Am I helping this person and expecting some reward? Am I washing dishes to become famous? Or am I washing dishes so people are thinking I'm making a contribution to the community, and they're not very nice to me, or they think I'm not such a bad guy? So, if I notice those kinds of things, that kind of attitude toward my activity would be an outflow. So, you can actually look and see, and then just be connected on that, and just keep learning whether you're in a state of outflow, or defiling your practice by trying to get something out of it, moment by moment.

[12:37]

Or you might notice, it seems like I'm just washing the dishes. It seems like I'm just washing lettuce. It seems like I'm just washing my face. I'm washing my face, in a sense, to wash it, but I'm not extinct. I don't think it's going to be like a better face, and I'm hoping for a better face after it's washed. I'm just washing my face because I think it's a good thing to do. So that's an example of an analysis of your experience into without flows and without. And it's like, I mean, a very basic and extremely important practice, and it's analytical. And it's taught from way back at the beginning of the Buddhist teaching, Buddha taught that, and the Abhidharma noticed that the Buddha taught that, and pulled it out as one of the types of analysis to do. Another one is what you might call wholesome or unwholesome. You stayed in my wholesome or unwholesome.

[13:45]

And wholesome could also be translated as skillful. It's called kushala. It comes from the word for kusagrass. The Buddha recommended that the meditation seats be made of heaped up kusagrass, which was rolling around where he was teaching. And so people would collect this grass and make it a pot and sit on it, but it was very sharp, sharp edges on the grass, so if you weren't careful you'd cut your hands while you were collecting it. So the learning to collect it without cutting your hands was to become skillful. Kushala. And akushala means not skillful. When you look at your state of mind, is it a skilled state of mind? Is it a mind that's mindful? Or is it a mind that has still willingness?

[14:51]

And is it a mind that's enthusiastic about being diligent? Or is it a mind that's lazy and doesn't want to apply attention to the practice? That would be another analysis. And so on. These are in some sense the most basic analysis, the moral ones. But there's also analysis which aren't really moral, they're just more having to do with, for example, whether your state of mind is wholesome or unwholesome, whether your state of mind has outflows or not, certain basic psychological functions go on in both cases. So another type of analysis is to analyze the kind of mind that's always present, the kind of phenomena that's always present in just a simple neutral functioning of the mind.

[15:53]

And so, for example, we have the analysis of our experience into what's called five aggregates. The five skandhas, which you hear about in the Heart Sutra at the beginning. So the Heart Sutra was addressed to people who were analyzing their experience into five aggregates. And in addition to five aggregates, there's also what's called twelve sense bases. In addition to them, there are what's called the eighteen elements. So again, the basic teaching of the Buddha at the beginning was to teach people to analyze their experience into elements. Moral elements, psychological elements, philosophical elements. And of course, if you're able to look at what's happening and be able to analyze it, you're becoming more intimate with your experience and more knowledgeable about what's going on with you.

[17:16]

For most people that would be the case. I'm not sure I would know how to do this. And if you can actually get in touch with your experience in this analytic way, then you'd be ready to test the teaching that in the field of these elements, there's no kind of container of these elements. There's nothing that can hold them all together, or owns them. There's nothing in addition to them which is them. But most people think there is something in addition to their experience which is their experience. Most people think that there is something which contains their experience and holds it together. Most people think that the experience does belong to somebody.

[18:19]

And that's the normal deluded view that there's a self which owns the body and mind, or the self which embraces the body and mind. The view that there's something which holds it all, or is in the middle of all of our experience. There's some kind of substantial real thing in there. That's not just an element of experience. But if you analyze your experience in these ways I just told you, like five aggregates. I don't know how to do it, but five aggregates, twelve chance bases, or eighteen elements. If you analyze your experience, you'll find out that there's no further experience than the element. And that none of these experiences are a container of the element. The analysis completely accounts for what's going on. And there's nothing which, no unity or overall category or inner core to all the elements that fully accounts for your experience.

[19:36]

This type of meditation was then able to show people that what they thought was there, and they were clinging to and worried about the self which owns the experience, or the self which is the core of the experience and so on, but it wasn't actually there. And this produces a level of liberation which was sufficient, apparently, to attain Nirvana. And this is like the early teaching of the Buddha. And the Abhidharma was particularly pulled out and systematized in analytic teaching and discussed the subtleties of Atman. Now, just to give you a little taste of the overview, we've got more examples of what I've summed up.

[20:44]

In a later phase of the Dharma, or not so much a later phase, but in a later phase of revelation of the Dharma, or a later phase of noticing the Dharma, there was a literature appeared in the world about 500 years after the Buddha died, a teaching appeared in the world of which the Heart Sutra is an important example, a teaching that, in emptiness, all these elements of existence, all the elements in which you can analyze your existence into and completely accomplish your existence, all these elements don't actually ultimately exist. They don't exist in that they have no inherent nature, no inherent existence of themselves.

[21:53]

They only exist independently. And in this understanding, we actually can find the elements of existence. And that's the second phase of the teaching. And that teaching was addressed to people who had been practicing the earlier teaching. Many people come to Zen now, or come to Mahayana Buddhism, and they hear the Heart Sutra, and they hear about the skandhas being emptied, in particular the first skandha which was formed in emptiness, but they haven't yet been doing the practice of analyzing their experience into the five aggregates. But the people that this sutra was addressed to, the people that this sutra was medicine for, the Heart Sutra, were people who actually had studied these five aggregates, and these twelve sense states, and these eight elements. And I say that thing about revelation and so on, because we don't exactly know that the Buddha taught the Heart Sutra.

[23:03]

It says the Buddha taught the Heart Sutra through Avalokiteshvara. So this Buddha is there, in meditation, and then this Bodhisattva of infinite compassion is meditating on the five aggregates, and sees that they're empty of inherent existence, and then teaches this Heart Sutra. So we don't know if that actually happened at the time that the Buddha Shakyamuni was alive, and that people just didn't... it didn't become popular, that teaching. Some people heard it, just a few, just a few people thought it was important, and that they took care of these scriptures and transmitted them for five hundred years before they actually wrote them down in the Puritan world. There's other possibilities, however, that later in the history of the people on this planet,

[24:07]

the revelation of these scriptures appeared to some other dimension than the historical Buddha, which is part of what I also hope to discuss with you a little later. And then there's another wave that comes, another million, four hundred years later, of another set of scriptures which appear, which kind of reconstitutes the earlier Abhidharma teaching, in the context of the understanding that all the elements of analysis don't have inherent existence. That's the third phase in teaching, and that's the phase that's called Mahayana Abhidharma. So, for example, here's a book called The Summary of the Great Vehicle, English translation, which, at the end of this treatise, the author, who is a Sangha,

[25:14]

says, among the collected scriptures of the great vehicle, Abhidharma, this one is called The Summary of the Great Vehicle. So at the end of this text, he mentions to you that this is a Mahayana Abhidharma text. But this text, this Mahayana Abhidharma text, appeared in the world almost nine hundred years after the Buddha lived. And we have wonderful things to find out about how this appeared in the world. So I think I'll just say a little bit about the five aggregates, just to give you a feeling for analysis, and how to play with that. So the five aggregates are form, feeling, and now we're saying perception,

[26:25]

formation, mental formation, and consciousness. Those are the five aggregates in English. In Sanskrit it's Rupa, Vedana, Samya, Samskara, and Vijnana. Tonight, I would suggest to you, just to do a little bit of analytic exercise, and understanding that we translate the second to the third aggregate.

[27:29]

And this one is the same. We re-translate Samya, which is the name of the third aggregate, and translate it as conception. Okay, so we have number one, first aggregate, number two, second aggregate, number three, third aggregate, number four, and number five, fifth aggregate. So, among you new people, do you remember what the fifth one was? Anybody? Huh? What?

[28:34]

Consciousness, yes. Vijnana. Vijnana. So, the first one is called form. Like in architecture, form is emptiness, emptiness is form. Form is not different from emptiness, emptiness is not different from form, it's form. And form, basically, is five sense organs, five sense organs, and the five sense fields. And in some schools there's a sixth, I mean there's an eleventh one. So there's ten, in some schools eleven. The eleventh member of the form scandal. And that's called subtle rupa. Not subtle rupa, it's sort of inarticulated or unmanifested form.

[29:42]

The other ones are a little simpler. So we have the eye capacity and the field of the eye, which is called colors or shapes. We have the ear capacity and the sounds. We have the nose capacity and smell. We have the tongue capacity and taste. And we have the skin capacity or skin faculty. And the field of tangible things or touches. Those are the ten. And when you have this material thing, this sensitive material, like skin. And then you have something tangible, and the tangible interacts with the skin.

[30:46]

And skin is the most basic, actually, of all the organs, because all the other organs are really modifications of skin. So tangibility is really the most fundamental aspect of sensation. And you can see it in a fertilized egg. It doesn't exactly have eyes and ears and nose and tongue. But if you touch it, you respond, you touch. And later, it gets modified into eyes and ears and nose and tongue, too. And it continues to do that. So we can be touched by tangibles, what we call tangibles. Material that's, what do you call that kind of material that's not just other categories? Like solid things. They have a thermal impact. Thermal, solid things, rather than electromagnetic radiation or gases.

[31:53]

Mechanical. But also, sound waves are, too. But they're waves, rather than just pressure. Just pressure on the ear doesn't usually make sound. It has to have a little beat to it. So sometimes it's kind of the grossest, in a way, because it doesn't have to have a rhythm. The other ones have rhythm, or they're liquid, or they're gases. But anyway, when these two things interact, there's the possibility that because this sensitivity goes with the living being, and living beings have consciousness, it's possible that now a consciousness will arise, which will be aware of what's touching the skin. And so we have the arising of what's called touch consciousness, or tangible consciousness, which is consciousness of touch.

[33:07]

So in that case, in that sensory experience of being touched, we have the fifth skanda knowing part of the first skanda. Or the fifth aggregate arising together with this, if you'll excuse the expression, bipolar form aggregate. Does that make sense? And two poles are, one pole is, if both poles are material, one pole is the body, in the sense of some sensitive part of the body, and the other pole is something touching the body. But the consciousness is not of the sensitivity, the consciousness is not of the organ, the consciousness is of what the organ plays with.

[34:08]

So we are not conscious, in the sense experience we are not consciously perceiving the capacity to see. We don't perceive the eye. We perceive what stimulates the eye. And actually we don't need to perceive that. We perceive what stimulates the eye bouncing off other things. We perceive the things that it's bouncing off. So this is a case where, this is a very basic element of where the consciousness is arising out of the physicality of the body, and again it's not the body in the sense of like knees and hair follicles and muscles. It's the body in the sense of the sensitivity of the knees and the skin around the knees and the skin inside the knees, inside and outside the knees, the ability to be sensitive to touch.

[35:18]

That is the actual body in the Buddhism. The body we usually call the body is a concept, it's not a physical. The real body, that's the basis of our experience, is the sense organ. And we can directly perceive through that body other material things. So then there's the experience of materiality, a direct perception, unmediated by conception. And I would say here, unmediated by, number three, conception. So that's one kind of experience. The other kind of experience is that arising, based on arising together with this kind of experience of a consciousness arising with the sense organs operating with the sense field,

[36:44]

arising with this, is another consciousness, in a sense, which arises depending on this previous one. Okay? And this previous one contributes to it, plus it uses conception to interpret what the previous one knew. So then that's a case where there's consciousness of a concept of, for example, the knowledge or the perception of a touch. And the example I just gave, there would be the direct experience, five directly relating to one, in one moment,

[37:52]

and that having the power to give rise to a conception of five as a direct perception, which is now known as the concept of that. And simultaneously with that will also be another direct perception of something else, but which will not be known, conceptually, but only directly. So, the first event is a direct perception, namely awareness of sensory experience. This is going on almost all the time. However, for most people, they are not consciously aware of this, in terms of they have no conscious recognition of being able to conventionally designate this.

[38:58]

They're actually responding to this, but they don't know about it. And this perception can have the strength to stimulate the arising of a concept, which goes with another consciousness, and the concept will be a concept of this previous perception. The perception was direct, with no conceptual mediation, which in experience was not conceptualized. This one is conceptualized, but this one is engendered and supported by the previous one, which wasn't conceptualized. Now, a conceptual one can also lead to another conceptual one, but this simple scenario I showed you is that there's a perception here, a direct perception that's not conceptual, that can be the source or the basis for a conceptual one of the conceptual version of it.

[40:06]

Simultaneously with that, there could be another sensory consciousness arising from another sense data, which would be also coexisting with this second conceptual one, which then could be the basis for another conceptual cognition. So, cognition, number five, Viscondra, can be basically of two types. It can be direct perception, and it can be conceptual cognition. Cognition can be of two types. What about feeling? Feelings arise in the first case, there's a feeling with this. However, the feeling might not be in the case of experiencing a consciousness of, for example, a color.

[41:11]

Let's take this example of a touch. Experiencing a touch, like warm or rough, that direct perception, there would be a feeling coexisting with it, a mental factor coexisting with this consciousness, in this consciousness, or embraced by this consciousness, there would be a feeling. And there would also be, second Viscondra, and there would also be various mental factors, various workings of the mind would coexist with the feet of cognition of the touch. Other mental factors arise together with this consciousness. How do you define feeling? Positive, negative, and neutral. Judgment? It's judgment, yeah. Positive, negative, and neutral judgment. However, in this case, the first case I gave is a case where what we're perceiving is not mental phenomena, but physical things.

[42:17]

However, these mental phenomena coexist, so the mental phenomena of judgment, positive, negative, and neutral, coexist with consciousness. The mental phenomena of conception coexist with it, but it's not mediating it. But the conceptions are there, and all kinds of mental formations, particularly the mental formations which are aspects of the mind which make possible the working of the mind. For example, the fact that the mind chooses to pay attention to what's going on with the touch organ. The touch organ is stimulated strongly enough so that the mind's attention is turned towards it, and that turning towards what's stimulating, the touch organ, that's a mental factor which is called averting attention. The attention gets turned towards this object of this organ rather than the object of some other organ.

[43:25]

That's one of the mental factors that goes on in sense perception, or direct perception, or perceptual cognition. It goes on in that case. It also goes on with conceptual cognition. That's one of the things that goes on in the fourth skanda. Another thing that goes on with that skanda is samadhi, in the sense that the mind is focused and centered on the object of the consciousness. Another thing that goes on is that the mind gets shaped by what it's paying attention to. Another thing that goes on is that the mind, as a result of what it's looking at and the various mental factors that arise with it, the mind has a certain shape or a certain direction or intention. It seems to be going somewhere or attending somewhere. And that shape of the consciousness is a mental factor of intention or volition, and that's the basic definition of action.

[44:31]

The way the mind is shaped. So every mind has a shape, so every mind has an intention. So even if sense perception, with no conceptual mediation of the knowing of the sense object, has willingness, has feeling, has intention, and has various other mental factors going on, you could also have ill will. You could have ill will toward the touch. Or you could have greed toward the touch. You could have confusion about the touch. Those factors are not always there, but could be. And then that would also come from the fourth skanda, those examples, and those things will also shape the consciousness. And then, also we have a way of knowing, which not only has the mental factor of cognition arising with it, but uses the mental factor, the third adjective, uses it to interpret what's happening.

[45:43]

Because once you interpret what's happening, then you can know it in ways that you can't know it when you don't interpret it. And one of the main ways that you can interpret it once you deal with things via concepts, is you can interpret them linguistically. You can make designations. However, we've been dealing with a problem with that. So far, this is the basic analysis of the five adjectives. A simple example to start with. And this is a type of analysis which also, instead of a moral analysis, this is more of a psychological analysis of the process of cognition. It's kind of an epistemological analysis. When you talked about mental formations giving rise to shapes of consciousness...

[46:48]

Mental formations is one of the shapes of consciousness, and so do the concepts and the feelings. So, I thought... If the ten fingers come up like this, or like this, that makes a different shape. So these are coming up together in the moment, and they go down together. That's one of the principles of this analysis, is that these things arise together and cease together. When the mind comes up, the other four come up. Except in certain special states of concentration, where we're just dealing with the mental, the four mental standards. But for most of our experience, all five come up. But depending on which ones come up, there will be a different shape. So if these come up, it's shaped like this. If those come up, it's shaped like that. So when consciousness arises with confusion and greed, there's a certain shape. And also, when certain images arise, there's certain predispositions towards certain images.

[47:55]

Like when some people see blue, or see a man, then certain predispositions can arise which are related to blue and man. Or somebody else has another set of predispositions, so they have a different shape in relationship to the same idea or logic. But they do arise together, and the shape is the concurrent shape. Yep. So how do these images that are already built in, you know, these consciousnesses of blue and art, each individual has their own idea of what blue is, or what man is. How do those elements interact with this process? Are they like a set up, a laboratory full of these elements within the mind,

[49:00]

and then they start factoring in as these consciousnesses come up together? Yeah, kind of like that. And this fourth one, different people have, at a given moment, one person will have different elements from this fourth category will arise for that person, in relationship to what's happening. But there's some also historical or comic connection between certain material objects and certain conceptual objects that activate certain predispositions. Because of certain predispositions, certain mental factors will arise, rather than others, given past history. So the predispositions are on that number four? Yes. Number four is, yeah, the predispositions, the inclinations, the biases, due to our past karma.

[50:00]

And of course, it changes during one lifetime. You have different things coming up when you're two, or five, or seven, or ten, or thirteen. Different things will arise in this fourth category, together with consciousness, at different points in your life, depending on what high school you went to, and so on. Okay, any other questions right now? Yes? The two fives, these two types, direct perception and conceptual, is that second five the next moment? So it's not like two, are those really two fives, or is that a sequential? The five, this consciousness, the second five was a conceptual cognition,

[51:06]

and it depends, for its arising, on what's called the mental organ. So the first five has a physical organ. The physical organ, in my example, was the organ of skin, touch. The second one will have what's called the mental organ, or what we call, I think an important word in both early and later Abhijana teaching. It will have a mental organ, but the mental organ is called manas, and the mental organ is not a physical organ, it's a mental organ. And what is manas? What is the mental organ? The mental organ is the just-deceased, or most immediately preceding, sense consciousness. And the sense consciousness can be physical sense, but also can be mental sense consciousness. So, when we have conceptual cognitions, conceptual cognitions, of course, are perceiving mental objects,

[52:14]

and we perceive a mental object sometimes, not always, but sometimes, a mental object or a concept, a mental object or a concept, or, for example, a physical thing. So, in that way, and we interpret this physical thing, but it also could be another mental thing, we interpret it through the concept, and we think, actually, that the thing we're seeing is actually the concept. We're looking at the thing, both could be a mental... You can look at mental things, even concepts. You can look at predispositions. You can look at feelings. These are mental things. And you can look at them with direct perception, with direct mental perception. You can also look at them with indirect or conceptual cognition. But when it's conceptual cognition, that means you would have a three to interpret three.

[53:20]

If you were looking at a concept, if a concept arose in your mind, if it was a conceptual cognition, you would see the concept in terms of a concept of a concept. And you would confuse the concept with the concept of the concept. Or you could have a concept of a feeling, and you would think that the concept of a feeling was the feeling. Or you could have a concept, of course, of a touch, and you'd think that the concept of the touch was the touch. So, one of the things about conceptual cognition is that it's mistaken, basically mistaken, because it apprehends things through an image, but it can't separate the image from the thing. The thing looks like an image, and you can't pull the image away and see what it looks like. So we tend to believe, and we take, we apprehend it as the image. And the previous moment is the organ that this kind of cognition uses.

[54:27]

Now, the previous moment's gone, but that sense consciousness which is gone is the way, is the organ-like quality of mind which makes possible the mind to know objects. It's very, kind of amazing idea. Isn't that why you changed, you originally had called it three perception, you changed it to conception? Yeah. Because when you said perception, it has to do with relativity, you might perceive something different than someone else, but that's really what four is, right? It deals more with relativity and your karma and your past history. What you said about four is right, but I didn't understand what you said before. Well, perception, I might perceive something differently than someone else, but your conception is, doesn't, what is the difference between three and four, I guess, is what I'm asking.

[55:30]

Well, one difference is that in four we actually don't list concepts anymore. This is, basically three is an image. It's an image of something, it's a mental image. And it represents that we can interpret, for example, an experience, a cognition, a direct sense cognition of a color or a touch, we can interpret it by a concept of blue. So we do experience, and there's many ways to verify, like we're driving a car and we see this red light and we stop. And we may not have even noticed the red light, we may not have thought red light, but in fact we stopped the car. Sometimes that happens.

[56:34]

And there's other ways of telling if people are seeing certain things, even if they don't know they see them. But when we say it's red, then that's a conceptual cognition. You can't see the color in direct perception and say it's red. You don't have that ability. You first of all have to interpret it as, quotes, red, in order to say it's red or think it's red. And we do notice that kind of stuff, like, it's red, she's good, he's tall, these kinds of things. You need conceptual cognition to come up with that kind of stuff. Think that way and or talk about it. But the second definition, number 5, relating to number 1 through number 3, is also relating to number 5 of the first case through number 3. And that could be an endless cycle that could continue on.

[57:41]

It could continue on, however, this is another teaching which I hope to have time to, but it's actually one of the points that's being made in the later phase, not the early phase, is that the successive number 5s based on this number 5, this number 5 is original. It relates to a particular bodily material event in the universe. You don't have repeats of this one. However, the second one is also not a repeat of the first one. It's a fresh, different type of cognition of this process here. Namely, if you just converted what was a direct sense perception into an indirect conceptual cognition of that. However, the next conceptual cognition, which could also occur, will not really be considered a valid cognition.

[58:47]

It'll just be a repeat. It won't actually be a new piece of information. But these two are actually direct ways of knowing The next way is you're not really knowing, you're just repeating a dwelling on it. But these are the two sources, and it's at the Mahayana level that this distinction is really developed and clarified. Earlier the Buddha taught this, but nobody seems to have got it. So that'll be part of what we'll hopefully get to in the last couple of classes. We actually did already get to it. Are these chains of five like your chains of thought? Are the chains of five like your chains of thought? Yeah, these fives that come one after another. With the first one being direct perception. With the first direct perception. In other words, the first indirect conceptual cognition.

[59:54]

The first one is direct sense perception. The second one is indirect. Indirect conceptual cognition. And then it just goes into the chain. You could, yeah. You don't have to, but you could. Succeeding things are kind of invalid. They're not actually accessing knowing. They're just reactivating the knowing which occurred before. Which were actually worth knowing. And in these two realms, this is where you actually do know something and have confidence. Either through this means or this means. You actually have confidence about what you know. You can't develop confidence if you miss these earlier ones. And in terms of learning in such a way as to transform your understanding, we need to have these two types. These are the ways you actually can know something irrefutably. If you miss these two types of sources of knowledge,

[60:58]

the other ones are not actually sources of knowledge. They're more like, what would you say, they're artifacts of knowledge or something. They're not the basis of actually being confident about what you saw and what you knew. These were the first two that you were pointing at? The first two fives? And then the chain after that is no longer valid. Right. Mistaken. Well, actually, this one's mistaken too. But it is a source of valid knowledge. It's just that it's mistaken. It has this mistaken quality because you mistake an image for something. That's the basic mistake of them. Conceptual cognitions are mistaken in that way. But we still need to use them. And they're still valid sources of knowledge the first time they happen. The second time, they're not a source of knowledge. You're not actually getting to know something you already know.

[62:00]

The next one is not accessing knowledge. It's just repeating what you already know. And also, it doesn't feel the same. You won't be sure. People can talk you out of it. The second time. The succeeding times. Even though the first one was a valid. And if you experience it irrefutable, experience it. But I'm getting a little ahead here. Because it's so interesting. I have to stay with this for a little while. It's basic analysis. And then see if you can guess. So, anytime you have a name for something, you're involved in three? The first kind of naming something? By the way, you're always involved in three. Because the conception is always accompanying your experience. You do have concepts. Even when you're doing the first moment of the rest. Right. It's the concept.

[63:03]

But it's not the concept. This is not necessarily right what I'm about to tell you. But my understanding of it is that this is really important, which I'm about to tell you. It might be not right. So, be careful. Even in direct sense perception, there is conception. There is concept. And the concepts that occur there do influence this state. What arises with this state influences it. But in direct perception, the concept is mediating the cognition. But it affects it. Coming up with it? It definitely comes up with it, but it also influences it. And one of the concepts which we carry with us is the concept of belief.

[64:04]

The idea that things appear out there on their own. So, even something that we don't mediate conceptually, we still are affected by thinking that it's separate from us. So, that's the concept which accompanies it. So, even people who are like children, for example, or even adults, in the process of direct perception, still not necessarily seeing the ultimate character of things. The ultimate character of things is that these colors are not out there on their own, separate from the cognition. They're not. There are no colors out there in this world. There are no colors. Physicists are totally on board with that. Colors are something that happen in human minds. But colors don't just happen in human minds. They happen in human minds that arise in relationship to physical data which stimulate bodies in a certain way.

[65:14]

But the thing that stimulates the body is not a color. There's no colors out there. Colors are something that happens. So, there are definitely no colors out there separate, but colors seem to be out there separate, even in direct perception. Even when you're not mediating the color with its blue, the perception of the blue is affected by this cognition, by this concept, that things exist separate from each other, on their own. So there is conception, and it does arise with direct sense perception, but it isn't that we interpret what it is as the concept. Because we don't think, you know, when we see a balloon, we don't think what the balloon is, is really out-there-ness. Now, you could see out-there-ness. There could be a concept of out-there-ness. And you could directly perceive that, or conceptually cognize that.

[66:18]

So, is part of what you're saying, the first moment when you have blue is indirect, but valid perception? The first moment when you think it's blue? When you have blue, yes. When you think it's blue. The first moment when you have that, assuming that it is blue, assuming that it's in a particular state, and it's based on this particular thing, that first moment is a valid, indirect, valid perception, yes. But then you're going on from there, possibly you might be... The repeats of that are not valid. They're not actually experiences of... They're not cognitions of knowing something. But again, back here to the sense perception. Sense perception seems very pure, and it is pure, in the sense that it's pure, and it's not mediated by concepts of sense data. In that way, it's pure, or direct. However, the person who is having this direct sense perception has to be educated

[67:20]

in order not to believe that this thing which is directly perceived, correctly, is out-there. You're not perceiving out-thereness, but it seems like this thing, which you're correctly perceiving as blue, but it seems like it's out-there. And that's false. But it's not conceptual mediation. It's the influence of a concept, of an image, of an idea, of a position, of self. It's in the mind of the person looking at it. So a child who is involved in direct sense perception might develop the emptiness of that education. They might be taught through the long process of education. And we might eventually be able to see, first of all, see conceptually, emptiness. In this first way, so that we're actually irrefutably cognized

[68:21]

that things aren't out-there on their own. And you would actually see that. It's like, as certain as you saw a blue sky, it would be like that. But not just any blue sky, but a blue sky the first time you saw a particular blue sky. Not general blue skies. Or the first time you saw an ideal blue sky. Both of those would be irrefutable cognitions. That's the kind we need to refute the basic influence of the concept of self that's affecting all states of consciousness until its emptiness is refuted. I mean, its emptiness is directly cognized in this way and then that way. You first understand emptiness in this indirect way. And the first time you do it is a time you actually irrefutably understand that you are conceptually cognized in emptiness.

[69:23]

Then you can move to directly perceiving it. That's the first time. Yes? So, this perception of out-there-ness, or this consciousness of out-there-ness, the concept that comes up with each experience, there's a duality in the form and the sense form. Is that the duality? What's the relationship of the out-there-ness, the concept that we always have, and the fact that there's actually something touching something? Two things, there's a duality. There's a separation. Well, there isn't really a duality, but there's a bipolarness. The form aggregate material world has two poles. It has a gross pole and a subtle pole.

[70:25]

The gross pole of the material world is things like electromagnetic radiation, mechanical waves, gases, temperature. That's the gross material world. And then the subtle material world is all the sensitive surfaces on living beings. They're not actually dual. They're not dual, they're not dual, they're not dual, and they're not dual. The physical world only exists because of mental apprehension, which occurs in relationship to sensitive tissues. There's not physical phenomena out there, like there's not colors out there. Colors arise because they interact with other kinds of materiality which give rise to consciousnesses. And the consciousnesses that apprehend these objects create the objects. Everything is material? That's all materiality? No, because mind is not material.

[71:30]

But material phenomena depend on mind to exist. Material phenomena do not exist without mental apprehension. Mental phenomena also do not exist without mental apprehension. So there isn't really a duality between them. There's a dependency. There's no basis for duality. Duality has no basis. There's no basis for it. There's reasons for it, reasons for it, but not basis. It's completely baseless. Totally baseless. Doesn't exist at all. But there's reasons why this baseless concept of duality arises. I make a lot of decisions based on my gut feeling and intuition. Is that a mistake in consciousness or is that direct perception?

[72:35]

I think that intuition is closely related to direct perception because direct perception is irrational. It's not a rational function. And intuition, I also would say, is not rational. There's no reason by which you know certain things. But you know. Could it be rational? If it's rational, then I wouldn't call it thinking. If it's rational, I can explain to you why I know this thing. Like, one time a friend of mine came to visit me over in Linda's office. Before it was Linda's office. And I was talking to her and I said, Oh, how do you bother? And she said, Um, what do you mean? And I said, Um, isn't he in the hospital? And she said,

[73:41]

Oh no, he's not in the hospital. He's at home. Hmm. I just got an image of him being in the hospital. And your mother is there with him. And she said, What? So she got on the telephone and she called her mother. And I heard on the phone, you know, and she said, Well mom, how's dad? Shit. Blah, blah, blah, you know. And she gets off the phone and runs out. Now she started thinking, well, this is my friend who's like this, you know, black guy who knows his stuff. I see him and he just sort of has this intuition that my father's in the hospital in Minneapolis. He's Lynn Davis' father. And, uh, So she was gone before she asked me, you know, how did I know that her father was in the hospital? And I didn't clearly know how I knew her father was in the hospital. But she thought it was an intuition.

[74:45]

In other words, I had no rational basis by which... But later, I got in touch with a rational basis, which I wasn't in touch with before. I'm not saying all things have rational basis, but this particular one was not an intuition. Because later I remembered that a few days, a day or so before, somebody called me from Minneapolis who just happened to be in the hospital when this guy came into the hospital. And I just happened to talk with her and she said, Mr. Davis was not, I saw Mr. Davis in the hospital. And I said, Oh. And his wife was there with him. In the hallway. I had a picture of them in the hallway. But I didn't call my friend and say, you know, I didn't call her and say, you know, your father's in the hospital. I didn't think it was my duty to inform her that her father was in the hospital because I thought her mother would tell her. I didn't even think of it. I was just scared of somebody going to the hospital. But when I saw her, I thought of, oh, how's your father? And she said, fine, what do you mean? I said, you know, it's me in the hospital.

[75:46]

She didn't know anything about it. But she thought I had this direct... In this case, it wasn't an intuition, it was rational. But at the time she said it, I didn't see it. You had forgotten about it? I had forgotten about it. I didn't know where it came from. But it came to a rational... It was rationally set up in the first place and a rational explanation of how I knew. But the way it came was not rational. I didn't say, oh, there's a man. And I just heard yesterday that her father was in the hospital. And, you know, I lost it. Are you saying that our intuition is based on that? Based on what? On the inputs that have already pre-existed in a rational way? Not necessarily, because look at sense perception. You have a conscious being. And then somebody goes... And then sometimes, because it's a loud noise, it stimulates the ears.

[76:50]

And the ears are stimulated strongly enough in some cases. Like today we were over at a priest meeting and they rang the bell for men's service. And Rodney just freaked out, you know? The dog, Rodney. Even though the doors were shut and the dog was far away, really the pain of whatever the sound was really got to her. And so that's not exactly... It's kind of like... It wasn't so much... I mean, there's previous things about being a dog. Your background is that you have ears that work. That's part of your background. But what loud sounds happen and all that, it's not really a rational process that we know about. We don't really think about how we're going to hear and how we're going to respond. So sense experience is kind of irrational, I would say. I would agree with Mr. Young on that. He says that sense perception and intuition are irrational. And feeling and thinking are rational.

[77:53]

But again, feeling is coming from judgment. It's rational. Judgment as to what's positive and negative and neutral. It's a mental judgment. There's reasons why you feel a reason for feeling that way. And different reasons will change how you judge things. However, judgment has all these... Sense perception, intuition, reasoning or thinking, and feeling. They all have a cause or background. They all depend on a horizon. But for some reason, in some cases, you can't see the reason for it. It goes a certain way. It's beyond reasoning. Yes? Well, what you said there, most of it comes from the neural signs of the mind. Intuition comes from the limbic range. Whereas logic and reasoning come from the neural cortex.

[78:58]

They are functions of two different parts of our brain. But as to feeling, I'm not sure. Feeling is a subjective awareness of an emotion. An emotion comes from our limbic range. It's not from the neural cortex. So... In this case, when they say feeling, they mean the judgment of positive, negative and neutral. And you could apply that judgment to things in the limbic system. So what is the definition of feeling? I think it's a little bit different. For example, the feelings you have about the people you live with versus the people you don't. These kinds of things. More the limbic system. So my definition of feeling is the subjective awareness of an emotion.

[80:05]

But whether it's judged positive, negative or neutral... It's not a general thought. It's not judgmental at all. So I'm saying that this feeling is judgmental. It's a judgment. This feeling is positive, negative, neutral. It is a judgment. And the judgment is also... It's not a voluntary judgment. It's involuntary depending on these predispositions. So some people, because of their background, will interpret something as positive and somebody else will interpret it as negative. So that's an interesting point. Number three is a judgment faculty. And the judgment... Excuse me. Number two is a judgment faculty. It's a mental faculty of judgment. And you can judge the feelings.

[81:12]

So the feelings would be more... These kinds of things over here, number four. Emotions. Emotions, yes. The variety of emotions would be categorized in number four. And then you'd have feelings or judgments about... If those became objects that you were aware of, then they could be. Diligence. Faith. Lack of faith. Ill will. Attachment. All those things. If they were objects of your awareness, you could have feelings about them and judge them positively, negatively, or neutrally. So yeah. This is the Buddhist... And sometimes they also translate feeling as sensation, but I think that confuses it with sense perception. And they also sometimes translate it just as experience. In the sense that the way you experience whatever mental or physical thing you're experiencing,

[82:12]

as positive, negative, or neutral. So that's... That's different, right? Positive, negative, neutral. What you're saying is feeling. So it's a special... It's hard to translate this word... This word beta now. Feeling is the way we did it, but maybe... Ah, sensation, I don't like sensation. Oh my gosh. This is the early kind of Adhidharma analysis, pretty much. And... And so... Next time I think I might be ready to... Oh, let me just say some things about... If you want to study... This is a book called the Abhidharmakosha. And the first chapter of this book talks about these categories of Skanda,

[83:21]

the aggregates, the twelve sense states, but particularly it talks about the dhatus, the eighteen dhatus. And that's an analysis I didn't talk about tonight. Of breaking things up into six sense fields, which is the five I just mentioned plus mental data, and the six sense organs, which is the five sense organs plus the mind organ, and six sense consciousnesses, which is the physical sense consciousnesses and the mental sense consciousnesses. Those are eighteen. And in this chapter, this first chapter, it's called the dhatus, because this chapter is the form of analysis which the author Vasubandhu really loves, is the analysis of phenomena into dhatus. Maybe, I don't know, maybe I should study the dhatus with you next time,

[84:23]

since you're so big on dhatus. And I can say about this book that this is a very interesting book, very important in the history of the Abhidharmakosha, particularly, it wasn't so important in India, but very important in East Asia and Tibet. This book is written by Vasubandhu, who is, in our lineation, he's the master of Abhidharma of the Mahayana type, but he also is a master of Mahayana in the earlier type. In this book, Abhidharma in the earlier type. And what he did in this book is he went back through the Abhidharma of the earlier type and adjusted it slightly to accord with some of the Abhidharma of the later type, without introducing the new innovations of the Mahayana Abhidharma into the book. So he is the brother of the great Asanga,

[85:26]

who is the real, in history, the most important person to create this Mahayana Abhidharma, and he is his older brother, 20 years older. And he became a student of his brother in Mahayana, but he is also, along the side, just happened to be an expert on earlier Abhidharma too. So then he wrote this book called the Abhidharmakosha, where he adjusts the earlier teaching of the Abhidharma to incorporate the Mahayana Abhidharma, his brother's teaching, into making this book. So this isn't exactly the early Abhidharma, the way the early Abhidharma is taught, but it is the early Abhidharma in the sense of perfectly straightforward, conventional presentation of, for example, the analysis of doctrines. And he comes at this analysis from all different angles to illuminate the nature of these elements of existence.

[86:31]

So, we have one copy of this in the library now. Actually, Shoho is going to be the librarian for that, and we also have copies in the book store for sale. We also have copies in the book store for sale. You wanted me to remind you, to see if anyone could translate. Oh yeah, so this is an important book, and if you have a chance to look at this, you might want to actually perhaps have study groups where you read it together, read the book together, particularly the sections on the doctrines, to see what happens to your consciousness as you contemplate the analysis in terms of the doctrines. And I wanted to mention... No, I won't mention that. Next week I'll mention more about this. The other thing I wanted to mention is that in this world there's a book, a French translation of this,

[87:36]

and if anybody wants to translate the French translation... This is a translation, actually, which is a little bit different, I think, from the French. And if anybody wants to translate the French, or part of the French, I have the French, and I will give it to you to translate. Okay, do you see me? You want to do that? Okay, I'll give it to you. So I think actually it would be good next time, this week we looked at the Skanda a little bit, and if you have more questions on the Skanda next time you can bring them up, but I think I'd like to actually show you the analysis in terms of the doctrine, if you adopt it, and see how it works. And you might just see if you can start... See if you can see how your experience is comprised of these five items. See if you can actually accomplish your experience in these terms. May our intention fully extend

[88:47]

To every being and place With the true heritage of Buddha's way Meanings are numberless I vow to say them Visions are inexhaustible I vow to end them Dharma gates are boundless I vow to enter them Buddha's way is unsurpassable I vow to become So this is an extensive book, it's like we don't have lots of content.

[89:37]

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