Presentation of the Buddha's Teaching in a Conceptual Form. And here's a book, which I called your box, of the Abhidharma Kosha. And the way I see this book now is that it's a presentation of the familiar conceptual Abhidharma, by somebody who's already become a practitioner and a convert to Mahayana. However, in that person, the person who is considered to be the real founder, the primary founder of the Mahayana Abhidharma movement, is his older brother, 20 years older, named Asanga. particularly Vasubandha, grows up highly educated in the early Abhidharma system, is converted to the Mahayana, and together with his older brother, becoming a student of his older brother, he shares with his older brother the Mahayana Abhidharma.

[01:22]

However, in this case, this very hard book called the Abhidharma Kosha, which is the 600 verses, is the Abhidharma Kosha, and then you are a commentary of the 600 verses. So together we have the Abhidharma Kosha and the Abhidharma Kosha Bhasha, which you wrote. The way I see this now is that this patch is an adjustment of every... without directly presenting the later avidharma teaching. So Vasubandhan's brother presented Mahayana avidharma, but also Vasubandhan went back to the earlier avidharma and adjusted it somewhat to accord with the later avidharma. So the avidharma-niskorasekha is

[02:28]

a critical adjustment of the earlier teaching of Abhidharma. But still, it gives a nice . So it gives a very wonderful and highly used presentation of the early Abhidharma system. At the beginning of this text, he says, in the second verse, he says, he asks the question, what is the avidharma? And the verse in response is, avidharma is pure prajna, and it's sweet, or accompaniment. Avidharma is and it's accompaniment. The other mental factors that accompany it. And then he says, What's the reason for presenting this work?

[03:33]

And the reason for presenting this work? Why is this work called ? So means treasury or storehouse or container. So it's called Abhidharma storehouse or Abhidharma treasury because it is One way of looking at it is from which the abhidharma comes, or it is the abhidharma which is the teaching which comes from the treasury. So what you see is the treasury that the abhidharma comes from, or it's the abhidharma that comes from the treasury. That's why it's called kosha, or treasury. And he says, what is wisdom? Wisdom is the discernment of dharmas. Wisdom is the discernment of dharmas.

[04:47]

And then he says, what are the dharmas? of which the Abhidharma teaches discernment. And I mentioned last week that this early teaching of the Buddha and this Abhidharma presentation that is a minute analysis of experience into elements of analysis are called dharmas. So I mentioned that the first way of analyzing experience into elements, into dharmas, was a moral one. So here, and I mentioned one of the moral ones is whether you analyze your experience into elements that would be considered to be conducive to practice or conducive to liberation. These would be called the skillful elements. Another analysis would be to see if your analysis would lead you to find that your experience was composed of unskillful .

[05:59]

And another possible result of analysis would be that you wouldn't be sure whether the elements of your analysis were conducive to freedom or not. That would be indeterminate, morally indeterminate. Another analysis is to analyze your experience and see if the elements are without flows. And without flows means that they're associated with gain and loss, with increase and decrease. Whether your experience is in that way of seeing things as being in loss, then you would see your experience, you would put your experience over into the category of saying that the elements that you're aware of fall into the category of without flows. Now, if you looked at your experience and you found that there was no association with gain and loss, existence and non-existence, that kind of thing, then you would see that the experience, the elements of the experience were without outflows.

[07:17]

First, in this book, the first analysis is The dharmas, the first discernment is dharmas are impure or pure. That's the first discernment. So impure means in relationship to defilements or defilement. And the other one would be not in relationship to all flow and defilements. So one is saa. And the other is So this is the first and this is the first sermon. And let's see.

[08:23]

And then it says, this is a complete teaching of all diamonds. All the elements fall into one of these two categories. And then it says, well, what are the impure diamonds? And it says that the impure diamonds are the conditioned dharmas, with the exception of the path. With the exception of the path, all conditioned dharmas are defiled. Why is this? They are impure because the defilements adhere to them. And last week, you guys said that looking at your experience in terms of the five aggregates, the five aggregates include all experience.

[09:34]

That's not correct. The five aggregates include all conditioned phenomena. They don't include all phenomena. They include all conditioned phenomena. And all conditioned phenomena are associated with defilement or outlooks, except the path, or truth of the path. Truth of phenomena is conditioned phenomena, but the pattern of the conditioned phenomena is such that there's no . Otherwise, all conditioned phenomena are associated . Did you say earlier that that the extrapolation of what you just said is like the path or condition, but not that the deliberation.

[10:44]

Because you said earlier that there was either actions which received deliberation or those that did not. Therefore. the actions of the path weren't necessarily those that rise to liberation. Right. They would also be what we call the analysis in terms of sāsarvā and āsarvā with outflows and without outflows is one analysis. The other analysis would be kūśala, akūśaya. This is another moral analysis of experience. So the path would be . However, things could be and also be . The path will be . The path will be skillful and conducive to enlightenment.

[11:47]

However, some things that are conducive to enlightenment are still associated with outflows. So they're impure. So even the dharmas which are conducive to liberation, for example, faith, diligence, concern for commitment to ethical discipline, and so on, these are the kinds of conditioned dharmas, those are examples of conditioned dharmas, which are conducive to liberation. However, these things aren't part of the truth of the path. They still have outflows. So for example, outflows means, or defilement means, that if you look at something like a color blue, or you hear the sound of something, or you see somebody's face, or you have a feeling of pain, or you think it's Tuesday, or Monday, or Halloween, any of these kinds of experiences that you see in terms of gain and loss.

[12:56]

In other words, you look at something and you see loss. So that way of seeing defiles it. In all dharmas, all conditioned phenomena, anything you can name of the conditioned type, will be defiled according to this text. Everything, all phenomena are defiled unless they are patterned together in what we call path. But the path partakes of the very same conditioned dharmas, all of which by themselves are each individually associated with, or seen as, things gain and loss. But the path is made of the same dharmas, but in an ecological or enlightened view, which puts them together so that there's no gain and loss in the picture. And so there's no offloads.

[14:05]

The unconditioned dharmas are, what are they? Let's see. What are the pure dharmas? What are the undefiled truths of the path? And the three unconditioned things are pure. So for example, space is an unconditioned dharma in this teaching, in this early teaching. Space is not susceptible to our flow. involved with space. The other two things that are unconditioned are two types of, you could say, two types of extinction or, in a sense, two types of nirvana. One type of nirvana is the type of nirvana which is called, in Sanskrit, prakisamkhya nirvana, or nirvana that's attained through effort, like the nirvana that the Buddha experienced under the bodhichitta.

[15:10]

That's a type of unconditioned thing. or uncompounded thing. The other type of is kind of the nirvana that every dharma actually possesses. It's the nirvanic nature of all things. It's the kind of nirvana or the kind of extinction that isn't due to somebody's effort or practice. So the unconditioned dharmas in this school, three, two kinds of nirvana, or extinction, and space. And then there's 72 in this school, conditioned dharmas. And all the conditioned dharmas give you. They all have all fuels. Except among the conditioned dharmas, the path doesn't have all of those.

[16:10]

So the path, it belongs under condition. It doesn't belong under uncondition, but it belongs with the uncondition because it is pure as space. Even though it's the composition of everything that our life is usually made of. But all the elements of an experience of the path come together in such a way that there's no gain or loss. There's no There's no flow. Like, for example, faith. It's a wholesome dharma, but you can have more or less of it. And you can see that you'll gain something from it or lose something from it. And you can think it's faith towards something. Whereas faith, in the context of the path, there's no gain or loss about it. And it's not going anyplace or coming from anyplace. dysfunction in the totality of the moment.

[17:14]

So, that's kind of... Do you have a question? I thought you said earlier today that there's nothing that's unconditioned. These are called the unconditioned. And a better translation in Sanskrit for this Is this a piece of chalk? The Sanskrit for this is samskrita. Samskrita means translated, could be translated as condition, but better translated as K, actually. The K. Oh, excuse me, samskrita. Is that right, Sanskrit? Made dharmas and the unmade dharmas are Sanskrit.

[18:24]

So the unmade dharmas arise depending on conditions composed Nirvana is not something that's composed of something. It is a phenomena which arises through practice among the impure dharmas. So uncompounded is really better. Uncompounded would be better, yeah. They're not unconditioned. What is that? It means, for example, the fact that things are at rest, the fact that the way you're at rest is the same. So there's no parts to the way you're at rest, the way you're at peace.

[19:27]

Nirvana means peace. The way you're at peace is the same way that she's at peace. And the peace that you are is characteristic of you. It doesn't have any part. Is that what you mean by totality of function or totality of function? The totality of function is more like the path. That would be the totality of the function of all the conditioned arts, all the made things, which are undefiled, the way they're all written. is actually nirvana. Excuse me, I'll take it back. The way they're actually working together is the path. To nirvana or... The path to nirvana. It's not nirvana itself because it's made of compounded things, whereas nirvana is made of compounded things. It's not composed. And space isn't composed. Two kinds of nirvana are not composed. For example, emptiness is also not composed.

[20:33]

It's the nature of everything, but it's not a composition. Parts are what are dependently called rises, depending on the things of which it is the ultimate nature. The path is built of things like perception, healing, and so on. The path is made of five skandhas or whatever. And each of these things, when they're not in the path configuration, each of them are impure. But when they're put together in the path, the path, the way the path, the truth of the path of things, the way things are, the way there's actually a path in the middle of all of our that truth, the path, is not, doesn't fall out of the world, does not gain any loss, doesn't fall into any kind of categories of existence and non-existence. It's impure. But, uh, okay, I'll, yes.

[21:36]

That is true. Pass includes right. Say again? That is true based on the pass including right to, so it makes a pass including all. Yes. All of those eight without any of, one of them is missing. All the what? Eight? Yeah, right. So if one of them was missing it. If one of the aspects of the path were off, it wouldn't be the path. Right. All eight would be there. Right view would be there. Right livelihood. So you're a person who has a livelihood. When your livelihood is right livelihood, then the conditioned dharmas, which are usually impure, then they're pure. Now, the conditioned dharmas aren't pure, but when they're in the pattern, but your livelihood, which is made of conditioned dharmas, doesn't have outflows. Which means to have a livelihood when you're trying to gain something is a livelihood without flows. So imagine a livelihood that wasn't about gaining anything or avoiding losing.

[22:39]

That would be a livelihood within the context of the path. And imagine speech, right speech, would be speech that had nothing to do with gain or loss. So it would be undefiled. It would be undefiled speech because it would be in context of the path. or as the path, there's no gain or loss involved. Can you imagine the gain or loss? It has no gain or loss involved. Can you imagine the image of gain and loss without gain and loss? Yeah. Yeah. So you can look at the images of it in the context of the path. So there is no actual gain and loss, as we can see in gain and loss. There is no actual gain and loss. There's only the conception to it. And this school would say, there is a conception of gain and loss. And that affects all the conditioned dharmas that are susceptible to that kind of outflow and way of seeing them.

[23:46]

Therefore, they're all impure. And matter of fact, they just tend to draw that to themselves. But when we constellate the periods of gain and loss around any of these dharmas, in the context of the path, it's an illusion. And so the whole situation, without changing any of dharmas, none of the gain and loss, none of the defilements can adhere anymore to the same dharmas which are ordinarily sort of like promoting the gain and loss and receiving the gain and loss ordinarily. But when you're in the pattern, it's an exception, a general rule that conditioned dharmas are associated with offloads, associated with defilement. My question I want to ask is, did Vassily Bondi revisit the atyarm in light of the Mahayana teachings, bring the question of the path, bring the teacher of the path to their teachings?

[24:56]

that I just said was there in the earlier teaching. But as my impression is that the nature of that particular Mahayana is very tempestuous. I might break up on that. I'm not sure just the nature, because it's... Bodhisattva, the rise of Bodhisattva. I make it so that this is an example of where he adjusted the earlier teaching in light of the later Mahayana Iberians. Yes? Did I understand it right? It's that the practice needs to apply the standards which are right, but how come... The path is made of five skandhas, did you say? Yes.

[26:01]

The path is conditioned dogmas, which are pure. So the five skandhas is an analysis of the path, yes. How come the path which is pure can be made of something pure? How? Because if it's conducive to liberation, then it's already pure, even though it has the attributes of what is a conditioned existence. The path is what gives rise to liberation. So even if something appears as a conditioned phenomenon, Its nature is that it's conducive to liberation, and that, even though you can't see it, it may be sightless. Okay? Is that all right?

[27:15]

No. So, if you have this experience, and... there's outflows adhering to it, then we have a situation where the normal situation, condition phenomena, seem to be associated with some kind of gain and loss. However, in the path, one sees that these outflows are not real. There's actually no gain or loss. So then the outflows lose their function. And the very same dharmas now have been purified of false. And that's why it's like dharmas are constellated in what we call path. There's no gain of philosophy about path. Well, that view is the ordinary conditioned view.

[28:16]

Like, why would you do something if there's no gain or loss? That's the ordinary view. ...conditioned way of seeing things, that you only would do something for gain, rather than just do it to do it. To do the practice without any sense of gain is what the path's like. When you finally are doing something just for itself, then you're... But it's hard for us to understand that, because ordinarily, the elements of our conditioned experience are associated with gain. So we can't figure out how you do anything without gain, because that's the way we see everything. So you only do things to gain something or to avoid losing something, or to lose something. You do something to lose weight, because you think you'll gain beauty or whatever. But it's personal. If you gain weight, you'll be more beautiful. That's the only way.

[29:21]

Not to gain anything is characteristic of the path. To do good, to do wholesome dharmas which are conducive to liberation, but with a gaining idea is defiling wholesomeness, defiling skillfulness. With the view of gain is not the path. To be skillful without any idea of gain, or free of ideas of gain, is the path. To be unskillful in this school, you wouldn't be unskillful with no gaining idea. Yes? Even if we practice with the idea of gain, that in itself is an illusion. That's right. To practice... Practice isn't already pure. Pardon? Practice isn't already pure, even if we think we're... Well, dharmas are actually already pure.

[30:27]

But we only realize that under the circumstances of the path. Only when the dharmas are in the path, or path, under the heading of the truth... Only in that situation is there realization of the purity of Godness. It's only then there's a realization of the illusory quality of gain and loss. But if they're not in that pattern, then there's an illusion of gain and loss, which is an illusion. But they are in that pattern of defunding. And there's no gain and loss in that pattern either, really. But we don't realize that. We're caught in the gain and loss, generally speaking, unless installation caught the pattern. And then it says the conditioned things are 5-fold. So again, the path is 5-fold.

[31:30]

and also just being in ordinary defiled state is fivefold. So if you're practicing the path, the conditioned dharmas involved in practicing the path are fivefold. Form, feeling or sensation, conception, mental formations of consciousness characterize a defiled situation. the compounded dharmas, conditioned dharmas, that are defiled, they become those five categories. But also, if you were practicing the path, they would also be five categories. When the five categories are impure, they are the upadana skandhas. So we call... We call them upadana skandhas, skandhas for categorizing the impure.

[32:41]

Skanda means the aggregates of clinging. Chapter 6 of the Sabha Dhammakosha, the question is, what is the truth of suffering? The truth of suffering is panchas upadana skandha, the five aggregates of clinging. In this text. Did you get that? No? So, when you have a conditioned darkness, and they're impure, you can look at them as the five aggregates. When they're impure and they're five aggregates, they're called the aggregates of clean. And those five aggregates of clinging are the definition of suffering. What suffering is, it's these five aggregates, so it would be conception, it would be consciousness, it would be pain, it would be pleasure, it would be colors, it would be smell, anything that is conditioned on this.

[33:51]

In the situation where there's clinging or purity, that's what suffering is. All of our conditioned experience will be suffering unless the same experience, the same five aggregates, are pure. When they're pure, they're not suffering. And they're pure when the five aggregates are characterizing it. And then says, we have seen that there are five aggregates. So first, let's study the form. So then he goes through and studies the form aggregate. And I'll just briefly mention that the form aggregate is five sense organs and five sense, they say in here, five sense objects.

[34:57]

But I think there is a five sense fields. So eye, invisible data, ear and auditory data, nose and smells, tongue and taste, skin and touchables. Those are the elements of materiality. Plus in this go one more, which is a type of physicality which you can't see, which is invisible. But it arises physical in two senses, because it arises from physical postures and from physical speech. When you speak in a wholesome way or make physical postures in a wholesome way, or when you speak in an unwholesome way, unskillful way, or take postures in an unskillful way, the results of this type

[36:00]

is a kind of physical physicality. But it's a physicality which you can't see the way you can see a person's body. You can't hear the way you can hear speech. But there's a physical effect that can only be through mental cognition. which is the result, which is the physical result of physical actions, bodily and vocal actions. So these are the 11 elements in this school of material phenomena. So Dijñapti means, you know, you can see it, you know, it's kind of cognizable, like you can see my body posture. You can hear my voice. That's vijnapti. So it's vijnapti vocal activity is happening and vijnapti physical activity is happening. If my activity is not wholesome or unwholesome, then it doesn't produce this physical effect.

[37:05]

But it can be thought of as wholesome or unwholesome, but not neutral. Yeah, it might. But if my speech now is skillful, According to school, it has a physical effect. You can't see it or hear it or touch it or taste it or smell it, but it has a physical effect which shapes your mental life. So if the speaker says something skillful, of loud, which the speaker can hear and other people can hear, but it's skillful, it has a physical effect. There's a physical effect of the physical activity. But the physical effect cannot see with the physical organs. So, for example, if somebody... Like when you receive precepts, go through the ceremony of the precepts. So you think about the precepts during the ceremony. You think, okay, I'll practice these precepts, or I want to practice these precepts.

[38:10]

I commit to practice precepts. You think that. That has effects too, but the effects of that are not physical. But if you say, I vow to practice such and such a precept, that verbal action, if you say that sincerely and skillfully, that has a physical effect. which people can experience mentally. So you can feel sort of mentally, you can actually cognize that you actually have been transformed by saying that you're going to follow certain practices. And also doing physical mudras and so on during the ceremony, people can see and you can see, there's a physical effect, but they can't be seen. But somehow you can, in a certain way, you can know that somebody's body or your own body has been transformed by wholesome and unwholesome actions. So we also are more familiar maybe with that.

[39:12]

If you do unwholesome actions with your speech and with your body, that that will have, right? Like if you rob a bank, we know that there'll be some mental effects of that. Like if you're afraid of getting caught or something, right? That's more familiar, right? The mental effects of doing unskillful physical actions. Or the mental effects of speaking unskillfully. Right? That's also taught here. But this is saying that there's a physical effect of speaking unskillfully or speaking skillfully. But you can't see with your eyes or hear with your ears the physical effect. However, does affect the person, it shapes their mental life. It influences their mental life, and it influences their physical life. So that's a teaching here in this school.

[40:15]

There's a debate about whether there really is such a thing, but I'm just telling you that that's what they're teaching. Yes? Is it true that you, over time, like if somebody speaks in that way over time, You can actually see it, the physical mix of that. If you see it, it's not this type of thing. If you see it, then it's ordinary visual data. And you can see. Some of your practices, you can see it. But that's not our visionality group. That's what you can see. You can see it through skillful. You can see that they're whatever. They seem to be like something. But it looks like practice that can happen. But that's not our visionality group. The Abhijanapti group can only be seen through mental cognition. And you can cognize it in yourself, and you can also cognize it in other people. You can actually see other people's physical, moral nature.

[41:19]

But not with your eyes, but through mental cognition. So if you confess or repent, what happens to the physical of the unskillfulness? What happens to it? Is it still there, or does it disintegrate? It's an impermanent thing, and yet it gives rise to offspring. Indefinitely. Practice, for example, confession and repentance. Those are, and you do them physically, those create also this imperceptible physical result. So that gets woven in together with . So the thread of your physical, imperceptible physical life

[42:28]

gets woven together. The wholesome and unwholesome get woven together. So an unskillful action that's followed by repentance and confession gets related to the results of that skillful confession and repentance. But it doesn't eliminate the other one. It just puts it in the context of being surrounded by lots of other physicalities that are resulting from wholesome conduct. So, you know, get woven into this fabric of practice in that way. Yes? I'm not sure how to put this, but is that mental seeing of the physical, is it something like you experience a healing because someone has witnessed you? I mean, it's not that they've heard or seen, they've heard or seen you, their whole being and compassion.

[43:32]

And that makes a difference? Once again? Well, if you say something, you know, they can hear and they can see you say it, hear you say it, but they aren't receiving it, like, as a full witnessing. You're compassionate. There's something, when you have an exchange and someone really witnesses what the whole saying is, My experience as a speaker is I feel healed from that. I feel like I've been witnessed. It changes me in how I listen to. So it's that same idea of the mental, some kind of physical energy that you can't see. There's an exchange that happens that an observer might not be able to take apart. you might not be able to take it apart, but you might also, without even taking it apart, yeah, but the observer may or may not be able to take that apart.

[44:35]

So, again, back to what I said before, we can have, like, skandha two, three, four, and then you have skandha five down here, okay? So, this is the, five is the consciousness, okay? Consciousness can and be aware of the physical . And that's called sense perception. And I also said last time that these five aggregates, generally speaking, arise together. So the third ,, which is conception, arises with which you know the physical situation. However, in what we call sense perception, direct sense perception, this concept doesn't intervene.

[45:35]

The knowing of the conscious awareness of data supported by the physical data of color, for example, supported by the eye order, the other physical data, gives rise to the consciousness which knows for example, in color. This consciousness arises together with the perception that it influences, but doesn't mediate. We don't see the color as the concept. Okay? Now, if we were looking at a person, and we're having some direct experience of it, And also we're looking at the person through the concept. Both would do both. So first it could be an experience of a person strong enough to engender another experience of the person in which we see the person through the third skanda of our image or conception of the person.

[46:40]

So we're experiencing the physicality of the person. We're experiencing the... conception of physical cognition. So we have direct perception strong enough to give rise to conceptual cognition. Now, this person could be a person who has been practicing skillfully a lot. They have a lot of this non-cognizable physical effect, lots of wholesome activity. And you couldn't see that in the way that you can see. You wouldn't know that in the way you'd know it in dependence on your eye working. How would you know? I reason. That's how you know it. You bring reason to bear that the way this... Actually, I take it back.

[47:48]

You could actually know this part of the person, because it's in this fourth aggregate where the avijjna-apati-rupa has an effect on the person. So you could actually know the person's emotional state. And in that way, you could know these uncognizable physicalities. But you would know them with the mental organ, not through mental consciousness, which is arising with the . It's arising with these three. And particularly, this one, it's arising with. It's looking at mental data. But it's mental data about a physical situation in a person. And that could be part of the reason for a person. That's part of the reason for this type of theory about physical actions, physical consequences of physical actions.

[48:52]

This is physical consequences of physical actions. This is not physical consequences of mental actions. There are mental consequences of physical actions, and there are mental consequences of physical actions. There are mental consequences of physical actions, and there are mental consequences of mental actions. And there are physical consequences of physical actions. But the physical consequences are not the kind that you know in connection with the eye organ. But you can know them directly in consequence with the mental organ, manas, which is the just deceased sense consciousness. So you can know that that's going on with the person. However, it's not so much that the person being that's what's healing you, but you being able to perceive it as healing. But it's true that you being able to perceive it would be rising in conjunction with this person being there. This person would be part of the situation where you can know that.

[49:58]

But another person wouldn't be able to know that because they aren't developed enough to have mental cognition of these mental data, of these imperceptible physical data. Are you ready for something different? Five aggregates. So I just want to say also just this basic idea is that independence on the eye, material organ, and color The fifth aggregate arises. This is a sense consciousness. And it arises with the third aggregate.

[51:12]

But the third aggregate is not intervening between those two. Between the conception is not intervening between the cognition of the color and the color. If the idea, for example, the idea of blue intervenes and color, which is the first aggregate, two parts of the first aggregate. This is the support part of the first aggregate. This is the object part of the first aggregate. If the third aggregate intervenes between the fifth aggregate and the first aggregate, then it's a conceptual cognition. If it doesn't intervene, but just is associated because it's always there, then it's a sense perception. All right?

[52:15]

This color is impermanent. Does that make sense? Colors are impermanent. Tastes are impermanent. Touches are impermanent. The color is impermanent. So it's impermanent and it's unique. The color has only happened once, never happened again. It's home, special, unique. physical manifestation on the planet. It's the only time it's ever going to happen. There it is. And we can know it through the support of the eye organ. And it's impermanent. And we know the impermanent thing, the impermanent cup. And we know it. We cognize it. OK? So we know the impermanent. But we don't know impermanence. Because impermanence is not a quality of colors.

[53:25]

Each color is uniquely impermanent. Each color is impermanent. Uniquely. And we know the unique impermanent color. Without any conceptual mediation. Only with conceptual associations. But we don't know impermanence, because impermanence is not a unique, impermanent thing. Impermanence is a general thing. And general things are what are or conceptions are general things, like, for example, conception blue, which applies to lots of different, unique, impermanent things. That make sense? So you can't know directly At first, when you first know impermanence, you know impermanence by looking at, for example, an impermanent thing. You first know impermanence by seeing the impermanent thing through the lens of the concept, the general concept, or the general permanence.

[54:41]

So you know impermanence through knowing some impermanent thing, mediated by the concept of permanence, correctly applied to an impermanent thing, but misconstrued as the idea of permanence. Correctly applied, but misconstrued. So when you first know impermanence, you know it in a false way. because you know it as the concept of impermanence rather than the actual impermanence, the actual permanent thing. But we can't get at the impermanence of colors because colors don't have impermanence. Because impermanence is not a unique characteristic of a color. It's a characteristic of all colors. But no color has a general characteristic.

[55:44]

Because colors are real, live, living, impermanent things. General characteristics are, in a sense, permanent. Impermanence is more or less eternal. Because it's just an idea. So your first act, this is like not just hearing about impermanence. You've already heard about it. I'm talking about when you actually see correctly that something, you see the impermanence of something. And what you see the impermanence of, if it's correct, you see the impermanence of an impermanent thing. So it's through this cognition via conception that you first would know the impermanence of a color. impermanent color. And the same, of course, the big topic in addition to that is that all colors are empty of any idea of the color.

[56:53]

Including the idea that the color is impermanent. The idea of impermanent is not in the impermanent colors. And that's the emptiness of the color. The idea of the impermanence of the color and the idea of the blue of the blue is not in the blue. That's the emptiness. But you're actually looking at that impermanence of concept of blue and the blue. You're looking at it all the time whenever you look at blue. But you can't understand that. That could be the concept of emptiness of the thing. So that's one of the points. What was that last thing you said? I want to get to that point. No. The phrase before it.

[57:59]

I'll say that. Think about the emptiness. How did you throw away emptiness? I was just saying that the colors of all diamonds are empty. Right? So anything you're looking at, you're looking at something that's empty. Empty of what? Empty of anybody's idea of what it is. For example, when you look at blue, the blue is empty of the idea of what's blue. It's empty of that. Even though it's correct to put the idea of blue into the blue. The idea of blue is part of the emptiness of blue. And also, blue is impermanent. It's an impermanent phenomenon. But it's empty of the idea of impermanence. It's empty of that. There's no idea of impermanence in an impermanent phenomenon. But impermanent is completely free of anybody's idea of impermanence.

[59:04]

And also, impermanent things are walking around empty and they're completely free of anybody's idea of empty or emptiness. And you can see directly impermanent empty things. You're seeing them all the time. However, you don't know them. You don't know that they're empty. You don't know that they're impermanent. You have to get them being just like you don't know they're blue. You don't know that they're blue. You need the concept of blue to know they're blue. You need the concept of impermanence to know they're impermanent. You need the concept of empty to know that they're empty. However, the concept of emptiness, that's the answer to emptiness. But you have to get at it in that way. And this is a picture of how that works.

[60:06]

Yes? Okay. So, there's a skanda of 30 verses back there. The 30 verses is... Mahayana avidharma, written by the same person who wrote this. But that's not the early avidharma adjusted by the later avidharma. That's just straight Mahayana avidharma. So anyway, in this text, after they start to introduce the five aggregates, And then finish the five aggregates. And at the end of teaching the five aggregates, which comes to verse 14, Vasubandha says, the same, excuse me, at the end of, not the end of teaching five aggregates, the end of teaching the first aggregate.

[61:18]

So you introduce the five aggregates. fairly detailed presentation, first aggregate, form aggregate, tells you about it for about 10 verses with several pages of commentary. Then at the end of the presentation of the form aggregate, he organs and objects, or organs in the field, are regarded as 10 iotinins and 10 doxins. I was just hoping you could throw in two and four just in that, you know, like I hate blue. Just two and four, second and fourth scanda just in that picture. In this picture? Second. So here we have feeling in fourth. So how are they working in this experience? Yeah, just for example. Okay, so first of all, So we have one, two, one, two, three, one, two, three, four, five.

[62:32]

And I broke one in two parts. One is part of the organs. In this case, what's happened is we have now a color has happened here, has arisen. And the color has arisen in such a way that an eye organ has become stimulated, and the color and the eye organ are so active and so energetic that the person who had previously been conscious now experiences the arising of a consciousness in response to this eye organ working with this color. So now we have for this person a sense perception. When this consciousness arises through the intense activity These other aggregates arise with it. So a feeling arises with it, and the feeling will be... Again, feeling, it's a feeling-experience of a sensation.

[63:33]

And so it could be positive, negative, or neutral feeling of this consciousness. However, in this case, the person will not, this feeling will not be the object of this awareness. This awareness will not actually cognize the feeling as its object. Its object is the color. The feeling still colors the moment. So you can know that you feel pain when you see blue. You do. Or you feel pleasure when you see blue. Even though you don't cognize that moment that you cognize in blue, you do feel wake up. The pain, and we can find this out. In other words, we can find out the person's pain even when the person's aware of a cult. And the person also themselves can verify this later because although they didn't know that they were in pain, they see a picture of themselves when they saw the blue and they see, oh, I was in pain when I saw the blue, but I didn't know I was in pain.

[64:40]

Other people know I was in pain. because they're recognizing my face, the image of my face. So you're actually feeling the pain, but it's not the object of recognition. However, it is coloring the whole experience. Similarly, the mental formations, we have various deprecations there. And people have all kinds of associated mental phenomena that arise when they feel pain, and also other mental phenomena and dispositions when they see blue. which may not just be the feeling stuff, but greed may arise when a certain blue arises, or confusion may arise, or diligence may arise. Some people, they see a certain color blue, they just suddenly become diligent because of predispositions. And some other people, when they see blue, they get kind of lazy when they see it. That's the force ganda affecting the state of practice. associated with this consciousness.

[65:42]

And the other one is this image. There's some image arising, or images arising. And the one image which I suggest to you arises almost always, the image that whatever is being cognized here by the consciousness, they're separate from the consciousness. So it's not that we're interpreting the color as the idea of a thing out there. We're interpreting the color as we're not even interpreting it yet. We're just experiencing this case. It's associated with this image being out there. That's a sense perception with these other things going on. This is a sense perception, a direct perception. And the other way of doing it would be that actually what you're looking at is of this, you're looking at the three of the one.

[66:43]

That would be a conceptual cognition, where you would actually be interpreting the color via the image of the color, or interpreting the tangible thing via the image of the tangible thing. And usually, this is what we're usually experiencing as a conscious life, is a conceptual version of of perceptual phenomena, or it could be a conceptual version. Conceptual version also possible. So you can go from this kind of cognition to another example of the same thing, where this is completely gone for a while. The first scum is there, but what you're looking at is the third scum. the third skanta of another moment, which is like this one. And the previous sense consciousness is the mental organ that the consciousness uses for its point of support.

[67:58]

Now I'm going to introduce something which is kind of a good topic, but just to give you a little bit more feeling for the . At the end of the section of introducing the first aggregate in this text, he says, OK, so I told you these five organs and these five objects. So these five organs and five objects which are the rupa aggregate, form an aggregate. The same organs and objects regarded, these 10 material elements can be regarded as 10 iotinous and 10 diodes. List the five aggregates. Start with form. It says form is empty.

[69:07]

It says all five aggregates are empty. And then it says form is emptiness. And again, all five aggregates, everything in the categories and elements, they're all empty. But then in the says, it doesn't say that he says that form is emptiness. But emptiness is a concept. the general phenomena which all forms correspond to. He doesn't say form is empty. Empty is form. He says form is emptiness, and emptiness is form. So shunya is empty. Shunyata is emptiness. So he says form is emptiness, emptiness is form, and so on. The same is true for the other five aggregates. And then he says, in this context, And then they go through and list the iotanas and the dotanas. So iotana means door of arrival or door of arising.

[70:14]

And so that's to look at your experience as the five, again, the five organs. and the five objects, those are ten iotanas. So those correspond, these ten iotanas correspond to ten rupa, ten first skandha elements. Okay? And the same ten dhatus correspond to the same thing. So there's the eye dhatu, ear dhatu, there's the eye iotana, ear iotana, and so on. Okay? And there's 12 dhatus. So 12 dhatus, there's going to be two more are the mind door of the rising and the mind objects. So this is called dharma-ayatana.

[71:17]

Excuse me, this is called dharma-ayatana. It's called mana-ayatana. So mana-ayapana corresponds to what, in terms of the skandhas? The fifth one. The fifth one, right. Mana-ayapana corresponds to the fifth aggregator. And then the other ayapana corresponds to what? in the skandhas. So you have the first, there's 12 iotanas. Ten of them are the same as the ten elements of the skandha, the first skandha. Tenfold root form skandha corresponds to ten.

[72:20]

There's two more iotanas. One iotana corresponds to The consciousness... Hmm? Sorry. Hmm? What are they? What are the others? One, two, four? Close. Five skandhas, okay. So, the five skandhas. These ten ayatanas correspond to the first skandha. Okay? These four correspond for Skanda. So this one corresponds... What does this correspond to? Two, three, and four. Two, three, and four. The other three. So this corresponds to one. This corresponds to five. This corresponds to five. But these five make up one. So this is all Rupa Skanda. This is the vision... And this is the second, third, and fourth skunt.

[73:26]

Except it's more than the second, third, and fourth skunt. It's something more. Mind itself. Now it's over here. Could it be like the just deceased sense? That's actually over here. The just deceased sense consciousness is also over here. Just questioning. So I'm just saying, now, he said, they're coming off talking about the first skandha, and Vasubandha says, the first skandha corresponds to five iotanas, and there'll be ten iotanas and ten dhatanas. So now I'm taking the next step, and I'm saying, so now I'm telling you there's twelve iotanas. One of the ayatanas is called mind ayatana, the mind door. And what does that correspond to in terms of aggregates?

[74:31]

It corresponds to the consciousness aggregate. The other one is the objects of the mind. That corresponds to the other three mental aggregates. Now, this consciousness can also know these objects, too. but they're already accounted for. So, in this second view, in some sense, the twelfth ayatana is called dharma-ayatana, which includes feelings, perceptions, and all kinds of mental formations. They can be known by this consciousness. Now, this consciousness is the only consciousness that's listed under the ayatanas. These mental objects, these physical objects, just like the skandha can know physical objects, right?

[75:36]

And the sense consciousness arises The sense cognition arises in dependence on what? What does the sense cognition arise in? What is the support of a sense cognition? The organ. The organ is the point of support. The organ is the sense, the point of support. And the full causation is the point of support and the object. So the cognition of these five senses arises in dependence on one of those organs and its feel. That gives rise to a sense cognition. So the organ that the cognition uses is a physical organ. So it's a physical perception.

[76:38]

Getting clear now? Now, when the cognition knows these mental phenomena, these mental dogmas, these mental skandhas, in this case, all these skandhas are in one iota now. When it knows one of those, what's its point of support in this case? The justices sense consciousness. So, the sense consciousness is the consciousness that grows with the support of the physical. And it knows physical things directly with the physical support. Now, to know the mental dharmas, you can't use a physical support. It uses a mental support. It uses the mental organ. And the mental organ is just to see sense consciousness, which is... 11th iotinu, supported by one of these subtle iotinus called the organ side and the object side.

[77:53]

And just to cease one of those becomes a mental organ by which this consciousness knows what are those skanda elements in this doctor package. And that organ, by the way, is actually included under here, too. So this one is actually in parallel as they mentioned. And it's the organs. So you have these five organs and a sixth organ. So in this case, in this presentation of the same material, what you have is six organs and six objects. So instead of speaking of the fifth skanda as cognition, you actually speak of the fifth skanda first of all. Then you go over to the dattas. Same way, the dattas start with these five and these 10 material dattas, OK? But then there's 18 dattas.

[78:54]

So then you're going to have six sense cognitions, which arise supported by five physical points of support, organs, which are five dot twos, eye element, ear element, nose element, and so on. In conjunction with the color element, the smell element, the taste element, the sound element. So let's just say again, maybe color element, eye, and now you have eye dot two, eye consciousness dot two. That's one. That's one pair of three. And so on. Five times three, fifty, right? Eye, color, eye consciousness. Nose, smell, smell consciousness, or nose consciousness. Ear, sound, ear, ear consciousness.

[79:59]

Those are the five of these, with five, five, the five, the ten of these, excuse me. So here again, This ten is the rupascanda, split in two, five each, just like the ten elements of the rupascanda. And now we have five kinds of consciousness associated with it. Now these five all go into the rupascanda, and these five also go into this one ayatana. Three more are mind-consciousness, mind-organ, and mind-objects. So under mind-objects will be again the three mental skandhas, which is equivalent to this dharma-ayatana.

[81:08]

Same. So you have three instead of two. And what I said was, there's a difference between this mind-consciousness element, mind-consciousness element, mind-organ, mind-objects. Mind-objects are called dharma-dhatu, in this case. Mind-objects, first. But the dhatus and the atanas all dharmas. Skandhas are not all dharmas. The skandhas are just the compounded dharmas. The ayatanas and the dhatus are all dharmas. We'll be in the... I kind of want to erase this, but I'm going to erase this. So we have this last pair of the...

[82:12]

mind element, mind organ, and mind object. Mind object, mind object element. So in here we have three skandhas. Plus what? Plus the uncompounded dharmas. The same of the three skandhas plus the uncompounded dharmas. So things like space would be part of the dharmadhatu. Space is part of the dharmadhatu because space exists, but space can only be known conceptually.

[83:21]

But it can be known conceptually. You can actually cognize space. But it's a concept. So it's a mental concept, which now exists. So we say it does exist, but it's a fantasy. It's a fantasy of something that does exist as a fantasy. But also, you can know, you can cognize nirvana. It's . So . And so part of what this is, What has been taught here is different ways of seeing the field of experience, three basic different ways.

[84:30]

As you look in the Abhidharma Kosha, starting around Karaka 20 AB and 20 CD, you'll hear a serious discussion of reason, So Vasubandho asked, how come the Buddha taught these three different forms of analysis of experience? And you can read there the answer. And if you don't read there, I'll tell you the reason for teaching these three different ways of analyzing experience. But now it's past nine. And I would suggest to you that you, you know, I made this diagram, which I can't find. Well, maybe I just won't spend the rest of my life looking for it. Although, I think I've given it out to you in the past. If any of you can find it, I made a diagram showing five aggregates, 12 iodines, and 18 diodes and how they correspond.

[85:36]

Some of you probably have that in your pile of ophthalmos. Also, those of you who do not have it, you might try to make a chart where you Write the five agakas, write the 12 ayatums, write the 18 daktus, and show how they connect to each other, and show where they don't connect. See if you could write that out from what you heard now, and by looking at the Avadama Kosha. It's just a simple mapping of what the text teaches in the first chapter. And so that's a lot of information, right? And so maybe, I think maybe next week, it's a little bit more in this first chapter. And then we'll move it to the Mahayana. Okay? Thanks for staying awake. It's hot and run.

[86:37]

Difficult material. We are in tension, equally, and with everything in place. In the true paradise of God's way, in this time of rest.

[87:02]

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