I wanted to say a little bit about what kind of discursive thought is appropriate to One kind of discursive thought that's appropriate to wisdom meditation is to think about how to go to a retreat. But strictly speaking, it's not appropriate, generally speaking, to wisdom practice, to think about going to a wisdom retreat. The basic thing is that the kind of discursive thought

[01:07]

that's appropriate to wisdom is a type of discursive thought that doesn't disturb tranquility. Repetition? I didn't hear the difference between those two. I thought I did and then I'm not sure. Well, like, you know, if you haven't... If you haven't yet discovered the type of discursive thought that is strictly in accord with wisdom meditation, you may happen to, with your kind of a non-wisdom appropriate discursive thought, plan to go to a retreat to learn how to practice that way. But that type of planning in mind isn't generally, isn't always going to be in accord with the type of meditation which is conducive to wisdom. But you may have to, you know, do a little unskillful discursive thought in order to get to a place where you're going to learn how to do the skillful discursive thought.

[02:19]

So, in a sense, wisdom is highly skillful discursive thought in its early phases. In its later phases, it is not discursive. Wisdom is not discursive in its final stages, but the early part of wisdom training, wisdom meditation, is discursive. But it's not any old kind of discursive, it's a type of discursive which doesn't disturb tranquility. So saying it doesn't disturb tranquility means that it's occurring within some tranquility. The type of discursive thought which is appropriate to wisdom is discursive thought which occurs within tranquility. If your mind is not sufficiently tranquil and you try to do discursive thought, it won't be... If your mind is not tranquil, then if you do discursive thought based on that, it won't necessarily make you

[03:31]

more upset, but it might. So, that's why we recommend practicing tranquility, training in tranquility, so that you'll know a little bit about what tranquility is about. And then if you're tranquil, And you can tell when you get upset. Because you can see, oh, my tranquility is disturbed. I'm in a state of turmoil. So the training in tranquility is to give up discursive thought for a little while. and continuously giving up discursive thought.

[04:33]

Give up wandering thought. Give up running around in the mind. And to continuously give it up comes to fruit as a tranquil state. Once you're in the tranquil state, you can give up, you can let go of the training in giving up discursive thought, and then you can start using discursive thought again in the service of developing insight. However, as you start to practice studying the teachings and applying them to phenomena, if as you do that you become quite agitated and excited, that type of application of discursive thought is probably not skillful enough. It would be a good idea probably to give it up and go back to practicing tranquility. And again, when you feel tranquil, then try again, somewhat differently, and see if you can think discursively without disturbing your tranquility.

[05:48]

If you can't, just give up the tranquility, give up the discursive thought, even the discursive thought directed towards the teaching, give it up, and go back, calm down again. So by going back and forth, after a while you find a way to think. that doesn't disturb your tranquility much at all. A little bit may undermine it a little bit. As a matter of fact, sometimes when you're practicing tranquility, if you slip into what we call a sinking mind, sometimes when you're practicing tranquility you get quite calm and you get over-collected. Over-collected? Not over-concentrated, but over-collected. It's kind of an inward collection. like for example, collecting yourself on giving up descriptive thought, you might get overly collected on giving up descriptive thought, and you can get kind of a little bit heavy. Even though you're successful at getting kind of concentrated, you're over-concentrated in that sense.

[06:52]

Sometimes used as an expression, when people are generally speaking, their minds are a little bit overly centrifugal. Centrifugal means flying away from the center. So part of training in concentration is to train your mind to be centripetal, which means to walk towards the center instead of flying away from the center. But sometimes people walk successfully to the center and then they walk too much into the center and they start sinking So at that time discursive thought is one of the ways to slightly lighten up your concentration practice so you come back to sort of like being awake and calm. Balancing between things alert and calm, alert and calm. One of the ways to balance the alerts, keep yourself alert while you're calm, is just think discursively a little bit, like think how nice it would be to be a true bodhisattva.

[07:58]

Now you're calm and concentrated, but not sleepy. So, but then it could be more... you might get a little bit... you might get too excited, too agitated, and then you could just stop it for a while. Even if it's, generally speaking, well-intended towards studying wisdom. So a number of you are learning to do this balancing thing. And we all need to be in a state of tranquility. And nobody's tranquility prior to complete Buddhahood never takes a dip. So everybody has to sort of occasionally drop discursive thought for a little while. Oh, okay, oh yeah.

[09:04]

Tranquility. And you can continue to practice training in tranquility even when you're in tranquility. So if you train in tranquility by giving up discursive thought and you feel calm, you can continue to give up discursive thought and you'll probably feel calmer. And you can feel calmer and calmer, but it doesn't mean calmer and calmer and sleepier and sleepier, but sometimes just more and more deeply calm, or more deeply flexible, or more deeply buoyant, and deeper and deeper, without getting sleepy. By continuing to train in tranquility, within tranquility. The Buddha did that. But you can also, when you're tranquil, stop doing the tranquility training and just be tranquil, and then start practicing the insight work. And then again, when you start practicing and you feel somewhat agitated, disturbed, stop it, give up discursive thought, and continue to give up discursive thought and

[10:21]

the tranquility will be part of our practice. And some people will be doing that most of the time. Some of you will be doing that most of the time, because you don't feel calm enough yet to take on this discursive thought about disturbing your calm. And then, outside of the zendo, when it's pretty hard actually to give up discursive thought, all the time when you're a sinus endo because of talk and work and so on. Then actually you can plan to go to a retreat and stuff like that and answer the telephone and talk to people. But you can also learn some basic teachings which will be useful to you in wisdom work later. So we have this class, and not everybody in this class is necessarily in a state of deep tranquility. You may not feel that agitated, but it's clear. But anyway, you can absorb information which will help you in your discursive thought when it's time to use it in meditation.

[11:34]

And this, what I'm doing right now, is discursive thought, which may be the type that's not making you too upset. I don't know. Did that upset you? Any questions about that? You can check that out with your practice leader. I mean, basically it's a judgment call because some people might want you to get super concentrated before you do it. Someone else might say, I think you're calm enough to try it. So it's kind of a judgment call. And if you don't have much sense of it yourself, you can also just But again, if you're not calm enough, you're a surfer, right?

[12:42]

So when you're surfing successfully, you're somewhat calm. You're somewhat concentrated. You're buoyant. You're flexible in your alert, but you're also fairly balanced. You're calm, actually. And then some other situation comes up, I don't know what, a more pesky wave or something, and you notice that you can't stay calm with it and you fall off the board. In that case it's quite clear, I wasn't able to be calm on this board, because when you're calm you can, you know, you have So it's kind of like, something similar to that, you can try that.

[13:44]

Another thing which was, I'm still not really comfortable about my response to this, but another instruction for practicing tranquility in this sutra is attending to the uninterrupted mind. The question was, is the uninterrupted mind a liar? No? That wasn't the question? The other part was that the mind is contemplated by any mind. Okay, or the mind is contemplated by any mind. Is that a liar? And in some ways, tougher the way we've been talking about the storehouse consciousness, you might think, well, isn't that the mind that's contemplated by any mind? In a sense, yes. But in another sense, no.

[14:48]

Because when the thinking mind, when the manas, which serves as an organ for the mind, which serves as an organ for the mind consciousness, Manas, which is, it's based on a laya, and it reflects on a laya, and it serves as an organ for mano, uh, mano vijnana. So Mono-Vijnana is more like the mind, you know, when we say any mind contemplating something, that's more like the Mono-Vijnana.

[16:00]

The mind that's contemplating. The mind that's like that mind which is contemplating by any mind. By any mind that's doing the contemplating, that's the Mono-Vijnana. So what's the Mono-Vijnana contemplating? in a way it's contemplating both of these. So what do we mean when we say a mind which is contemplated by any mind? In a way, I think that what it means is that we're contemplating the mind which is not being discursive. Because mind is always not discursive, even when it's discursive.

[17:07]

And when it's not discursive, of course, it's not discursive. But the fundamental awareness in any moment is not discursive. Basic consciousness is not discursive. Sense consciousness is not discursive. So, like, when the sense consciousness arises, in dependence on the physical sense organ and the sense field, it's not discursive. So, in mono-vijnana doctrine, thought is basically not discursive, although it can be associated with discursive thought. And a lie is not discursive. So all these minds are basically not discursive. So in that sense, there is a basic quality of mind which is always there, which is a non-discursive element. Discursiveness comes and goes, but is not always present, and that's why it can be given up.

[18:13]

You can try to give it up, which is good. trying to give up discursive thought or being willing to give up discursive thought is a factor which is conducive to developing tranquility. But the actual break from it for a while is possible because it doesn't have to always be there. So that quality of mind, the non-discursive quality of mind, is a quality of mind that's not conceptually elaborating on concepts. So one might be aware of a concept, but not conceptually elaborate on it. One may be aware of a concept like blue, concept quotes blue, unquote, but not conceptually elaborate on blue. And that would be a gesture towards tranquility, towards developing tranquility. So that non-discursive dimension of all states of consciousness, all states of mind, that's what I think is more appropriate, because you can't really look at Laya

[19:17]

You could say, well you're going to meditate on alaya, which of course you're always meditating on in a sense because it's always involved in what you're doing, because the organ of your awareness is reflecting on alaya. So, that's always happening, and I'm going to go over that again in a minute, but I don't think you're actually reflecting on alaya because you can't actually see alaya from your, I know, ordinary sense consciousness, you know, through the mind sense consciousness. You can't look directly at a lie, because a lie is unidentified. But through Manas, it becomes identified in an inactive way. But that's not what we're looking at now. That's part of what's going on, but that's not the thing we look at in In tranquility training, we look at this nice, basic, you might say, luminescence of mind, which is that mind always has the ability to clearly know what's going on, what the object is.

[20:37]

That's one type of way to give up discursive thought. Another way to give up discursive thought to think of another aspect of mind, which is that mind is basically always joyful. So you have to focus on that. By focusing on the joyfulness of mind, what you're really doing is giving up thinking about running around the room. You're giving up discursive thought, that's what's important. It's not the focusing, because you really can't focus on things very long anyway. But what you can do is consistently give up discursive thought. what calms us, and discursive thoughts, what agitates us. So that's my feeling about that, is that the Alaya, of course, is involved, but you're not really focusing on Alaya. Can I slide something in there? One second, please. Okay, now there's a bunch of questions, and I will take questions for about five minutes.

[21:42]

Not caught in my answer. Yes? When you say paying attention to the non-discursive aspect of mind, but it doesn't seem like, you said of all states of mind, but it doesn't seem like the non-discursive aspect of alaya, because you can't see that, it doesn't seem like the non-discursive aspect of manas, because it seems like it's in a way always discursive or reflected. So would it be the non-discursive aspect of the sixth consciousness? being observed by the Sixth Consciousness? No. Oh, I see. You think only the Sixth Consciousness can be discursive? Can be non-discursive and can be observed. It's like awareness of awareness. Well, there's a lot of people don't think that the, a lot of people don't think that, what is it called, it's possible for the mono-visionary doctor to be aware of mono-visionary doctor. There's some debate about that.

[22:44]

You're really meditating on the mind's potential to be non-discursive. You're just thinking about that. Another way to do it is, I'm just reading the sutra. Another way to do it is just forget about meditating on the mind's ability to be non-discursive and just give up discursive thought. That's another way to put it. So it's not focusing on any particular consciousness that way? It's not focusing on a particular consciousness as an ability or an inability to exist. If a laya couldn't be discursive, then you could focus on a lie's inability to be discursive. That makes more sense. You're focusing on the inability to be discursive. Or just the fact of not being discursive. You're focusing on the quality of mind, which is mind is basically not discursive. Discursive is an associated function to consciousness. Just to add on to what Al said, and going back to what you said, which is mind is always joyful, and to focus on it, but the minute I focus on it, I'm already discursive, aren't I?

[24:00]

There's a tiny bit of discursiveness in the training of the mind, you're training your attention, both tranquility and insight work, initially you're training your attention. you're bending your mind towards some object, towards an object of meditation. So it says, also in the beginning it says, what are the objects of meditation, at the beginning of chapter 8, and it says, you know, a non-conceptual object, a conceptual object, you know, the whole range of phenomenal experience and accomplishment of a goal, those are the objects of meditation. And what's the object of meditation on non-conceptual, and Samatha tranquility practice is meditating on a non-conceptual object. But of course you're meditating on, you're hearing a teaching about a non-conceptual object, so you're training your attention towards the concept of non-conceptual. Which means, and non-conceptual means you're training towards not looking at different objects, but being the same with every object, which is that you're not elaborating on every object, but there's still a little bit of descriptive thought

[25:12]

and applying your mind to that instruction. But once you apply your mind to that instruction, then you just... I'm forecasting, responding to Liz's question, you're being mindful, you're remembering not to elaborate conceptually on the concept. So in that way you're being non-conceptual with the object of awareness. and I'm using the word seeing without the I. So, the example that's often used is, the Buddha said, train your mind, train yourself thus, train your mind thus. In the seen there will be just the seen. In the heard there will be just the heard. And then he says, in the... No, there's another one, I think reflected. there will be just the reflected, and reflected is a technical shorthand for in the smelled, the touched, and the taste, did.

[26:18]

So in the smelled there will be just the smelled, in the tasted there will be just the tasted, and in the touched there will be just the touched. And then in the cognized, or the conceptualized, but actually all these are concepts, in the cognized there will be just the cognized. So you train your mind this way. And this is initially a tranquility practice, but it It comes to fruit, actually, as insight too, later. But anyway, that kind of way of being things. So that's, in a sense, a non-conceptual object, even though you're using concepts to receive the instruction and apply it. I said five minutes, so I'd like to stop now and come back to this for those people who want to ask more questions. I'd like to say a few other things before the questions. Is that all right? By the way, in that instruction where it said, where the Buddha says, turn yourself thus, in the scene, there will be just a scene.

[27:32]

Is Chakshu your I? Yeah. So maybe it should be in the rupa. So this is I, and this is like physical form. So I think the Buddha says, he says in the Rupa there will be, he doesn't actually, it's not actually this, but he uses a word which is almost this word is Napti. I'll show you the actual word. It says, in the Rupa there will just be Rupa. In other words, in the concept of Rupa there will just be the concept of Rupa. In the image of Rupa there will be just the image of Rupa. That's it. So it's a little bit of, again, a kind of like leaking there, the Buddha's kind of leaking

[28:40]

Yogachara teaching in this early instruction in the Pali Canon. Chakshu? Chakshu? Is there already Chakshu? Is it Chakshu or Jakshu? structure, that's I, and then the field for I is called Rupa. So, in one sense we have the situation of what we call the evolving consciousnesses, and the evolving consciousnesses are the five sense consciousnesses, like the eye consciousness and so on, and then the mind consciousness, those six evolving consciousnesses that arise and cease in the patterns described in Chapter 5.

[30:09]

And these arise, the conditions for their arising are Immediate antecedent condition, object condition, and dominant conditional. And of course, those conditions directly apply to the perceptual process of these evolving consciousnesses. There's also a Hathen Prajna, or the causal condition, But that just applies to the fact that, you know, the person's alive and the eye organ is, well, actually the eye organ functioning as the dominant, the eye organ being in good condition is one of the conditions, causal conditions, but the eye organ actually being in operable mode is the dominant condition. So it has those sorts of conditions. So for this to arise, for these evolving sense consciousnesses to arise,

[31:16]

It has to be an object, it has to be an organ operating, and it has to be an immediate antecedent condition. So some object is interacting with the... some physical sense phenomena is interacting with the tissue of the being, with the living tissue, and then you have the object condition, organ stimulated and responding, and you have an immediate antecedent cognition. So this is not the first cognition. There's no beginning to this thing. There's no beginning to consciousness in this model. So this arises. Let's just start with the sense consciousness, so sense consciousness arises, and then this sense consciousness gets filtered, is accompanied by, so I'm changing this from 6, sorry, to 5, this gets accompanied by mono, mono-vijnana, so it gets interpreted through

[32:48]

mental concepts. And then that experience gets laid down on a laya. And then it gets done, the impression, the formation, it's sometimes called a seed It comes, it then changes, alaya changes, by this impact of this, and then alaya is an impermanent dependent co-arising, and it also serves as a cause, and one of its causes is that it gives rise to another mono-pyjana doctor. So the potential for mind objects, matures, a mind arises, and then this mind arises, working on this seed, this predisposition, and this gives rise to another sense consciousness.

[34:12]

Now, adding to this picture is that in association The organ in association with these five sense consciousnesses are the I and so on. The organ in association with the mono is monus. So when sense data are interpreted by mind consciousness, the organ for the interpreting consciousness is also a defining consciousness. It's both an organ for the consciousness, but it also brings these you know, ideas of self, view of self, idea of self, view of self, love of self, esteem of self and delusion of self. I think self-ignorance, self-love, self-esteem and self-view. So that gets mixed in with mano and then gets planted back in alaya again. So then when mano arises again, it also arises with manas again.

[35:16]

So the defilements are laid down and then when they come out of the mind they get again infected and affect the sense consciousness and then the sense consciousness is again interpreted by mind consciousness which is infected by defiled consciousness. So regular thinking consciousness has to operate in dependence on defiling thinking consciousness. And the effects of that affect the overall consciousness of the being, the physically based part of the consciousness of the being, which comes to maturity as further thoughts, further thinking, which are further infected, which give rise then to our experience of the physical world under this impact. So our experience of the physical world also is mixed in with these things. And then that data, that experience, that is again reinterpreted by thinking which is influenced by this defiled thinking and that has consequences.

[36:27]

So this is a process of development of illusion and the world of suffering. since nobody's hands are raised, so I'll just go on. And just say that, now Liz's question, how does mindfulness apply to any of these teachings, but for example, how does it apply here? So, I just want to say that there's this I think I'll just write it sort of in a kind of messy way up here. In Pali there's the Satipatthana Sutta and in Sanskrit it's called Smriti Upasthana.

[37:34]

And that, the Sanskrit, the Sanskrit etymology is, I don't know exactly, but the Pali etymology of this can be done in two ways. One way is sati-patana. and the other is satipatthana. If you read it, if you etymologize it as satipatthana, then it means, sati means mindfulness and patthana means base or foundation or source.

[38:44]

So then you would understand that the sutra is talking about the sources or the bases of the mindfulness, or the object of the mindfulness. So then the sutra teaches four objects of mindfulness. So that's one etymology. The other etymology would be the Itsati Upatana, and Upatana means like drawing near to, or drawing near to, or anyway, coming near to, something like that. So then, it would mean the approach to mindfulness, or how to be mindful. And I would agree that I think both etymologies are to use both etymologies as best.

[39:47]

In other words, that these four foundations are what you're focused, they're the objects of your mindfulness, they're what you're mindful about, or where you're mindful, but they're also how you're mindful. And these four are body, feelings, general states of consciousness and qualities of mind. And then the word mindfulness can mean memory, maybe its most basic meaning is memory, but it also means to remember or to recollect. So it basically means keeping your mind on the task in the context of meditation. So mindfulness in its basic meaning, in that basic meaning, is not so much its memory, but it's particularly memory of a meditation task, or memory of what kind of meditation you've decided to be devoted to at a particular point.

[41:06]

Sounds like continuous attention to the uninterrupted mind. Continuous attention to anything. It can be continuous attention to signs, too. So, continuous attention up to the mind is tranquility training, and so mindfulness can be... the first function of mindfulness might be developing tranquility, but mindfulness could also be towards things which involve discursive thought. But anyway, it's keeping your mind on some particular task, the ability to... to return to a particular point of reference. But in the Sakyapitana Sutra it says that in relationship to these four areas, the yogi is ardent, alert and mindful, not just

[42:13]

not just remembering the task, but also being hardened and alert. So, the Mindfulness Sutra involves this basic meaning of mindfulness, that's to remember what you're doing, what you're intending to do, but also being hardened, which means to be making effort, warmly making effort. Warmly? Yeah, warmly, with some warmth and some fervor. There's a fervor, or there's an effortful dimension, which mindfulness does not say anything about effort in itself. But mindfulness practice involves this kind of fervor, this kind of dedication. And it isn't just fervor, it also involves It also needs to involve, which mindfulness doesn't necessarily mention, it needs to involve some discernment.

[43:16]

Because it isn't just effort in general, it's effort towards what you're remembering. So it's an effort that has a discernment to connect to the mindfulness. Or the mindfulness, by remembering this rather than that, has discernment, and that discernment gets also associated or transferred over to the effort. So both the effort and the mindfulness have some wisdom in them. Even though initially they might be developing concentration. And there again there's a difference of opinion about whether mindfulness is used for concentration or just directly for developing wisdom. And the other thing is to be ardent. And ardent is to be practicing remembering your task And your task is to attend to certain objects, and you're fervent about that, and then also you're alert to the moment, you're alert to the object in the present.

[44:26]

You're not just saying, yeah, I'm meditating on my body. For which one? This one! This one right now. Not the one I used to have, not that nice one I had when I was young. Not the one I'm going to have in a few hours. Which we don't know exactly what that's going to be. We have, you know, good wishes and all that, but we don't know what it's going to be. We're not thinking about that one. We're working with this one right here. I'm alert to this body, to this body, to this body. is to remember the task and apply it right now. That's the alert part of mindfulness. So, these three words, mindful, we would apply those three, these different objects, and so in this study here,

[45:37]

We're talking about body, we're talking about feelings, we're talking about mind states, and we're talking about general consciousness states, and we're also talking about all kinds of mental states, and all these teachings about mental states. So we would actually be paying attention to these kinds of things in this study, and using mindfulness to both be established such that we could have basic experiences of body, feelings, and so on, and see how these teachings were applied, and be mindful about which teachings were applying to what.

[46:55]

Maybe that's enough. Probably enough. Is that enough? No. Is that enough before we have questions? What do you say, ma'am? OK. Ready? Questions? Could you please repeat this one more time? And maybe also with an example, because I got a little... No, I got very lost at the point where... it came back to the sense organs again. So there were dependencies, but Mano Vijnana, then from there arises another sense consciousness? So is this actually a sequence that, you know, sense consciousness arise out of this sequence here? It's just going round and round? And then where does Manas ... is Manas just kind of dipping in to that circle as it spins?

[48:10]

There's a ... I guess there's a ... I don't know for whatever it is, but maybe I could say a radical idealistic interpretation of the circle, and then a non ... either non-radical or non-idealistic interpretation of this. Okay? So, starting with the sense consciousness. The sense consciousness has these three conditions. One of the conditions is an object, the object condition. Another condition is a physical organ. So we have a physical organ, and when it interacts with a physical object, or physical phenomena, or when the organ and the physical organ lives in a universe that is physical events and it gets stimulated and responds to those physical events which are... a physical organ basically, yeah, mostly responds to physical events, doesn't so much respond to mental events

[49:26]

then we have the arising of the sense consciousness. Okay? So you could put the object condition out here, interacting with the organ, the dominant condition, which is the organ. Those two interact and give rise to one of these. But we also said that when these arise, mono arises too, right? The reflective part, the mind... The reflective part? No. No. Mono is the mind consciousness that arises with the sense consciousnesses. Is it the immediately antecedent one? Where's that one? Up above. Right here. This is mono vijnana dhatu, okay? This is mono vijnana dhatu. It's also a pravritti vijnana, but I'm breaking it up now to five sense consciousnesses which arise in relationship to an object condition interacting with a dominant condition.

[50:45]

Sense data interacting with sense organs. And sense data means the kind of thing that sense organs respond to. Now the reality of these object conditions, of these physical things, and the reality of the actual nature of the dependent conditions, these phenomena, their actuality will be discussed for the rest of the Sutra. Right? But for now, whatever you know about object conditions and dominant conditions, They're interacting in some way, giving rise to a sense consciousness, but the sense consciousness also is accompanied by mind consciousness. And the immediate antecedent for the mind consciousness is the same as the immediate antecedent for the sense consciousness.

[51:50]

Sense consciousnesses also have immediate antecedent condition. That's right. and the median antecedent condition for a sense-consciousness is that there was a consciousness before the sense-consciousness. Not a sense-consciousness before the sense-consciousness, but a mind-consciousness... No, some kind of a... could be a sense-consciousness... But then that doesn't fit into this, the sense-consciousness doesn't fit into this. It doesn't fit into... it does, just watch. When a sense consciousness arises, it is always accompanied by a mind consciousness. Okay? But when mind consciousness arises, it isn't always accompanied by a sense consciousness. Okay? So here we have a sense consciousness arising with a mind consciousness. And the mind consciousness is accompanied by mind organ, and the mind organ

[52:52]

is also the immediate antecedent condition in this case. For the sense consciousness the immediate antecedent condition is not the organ, it's the previous cognition. For the mind organ to arise it also needs immediate antecedent condition. And its immediate antecedent condition is not just its immediate antecedent condition, it also serves the function of being its organ. And manas is the immediate antecedent condition. However, manas is also defiling. Any more questions about this part of the process? The hard part is coming up later. Could you use an example? Like of one particular sense consciousness? Yes, so you see blue. There's a consciousness called blue, some kind of electromagnetic radiation, the nature of which we're... the planet is struggling with now.

[54:03]

You know, what is color, actually? We know that color's not out there. There's no colors out there. Colors are something that happens when the electromagnetic radiation interacts with a sense organ and a consciousness arises and the consciousness sees color, or knows color, or rather the combination of these three is the knowing of color. The color is known but not brought into awareness, like you say we can have sense perception. It's known, it's known but we generally speaking would not call that conscious, we wouldn't be conscious of that. There is a consciousness, it's a sense consciousness, but direct sense perception is really, we barely know it, almost don't know it at all. Most people hardly know that level. And it's partly because it's accompanied by monovijnana dhatu, which knows the color as blue, and knowing it as, quotes, blue, unquote, in some sense dominates the knowing it as just

[55:18]

sense experience. So that's part of the reason why we barely know it, is that it's put in the shadow by the conceptual awareness of it. Is that clear? And the conceptual awareness is also affected by this coordination with its organ, which is also its organ and its condition, which brings with it these four defilements around self. So then the projection of essence is made upon the color and then we can conventionally designate it. So alaya is carrying the predispositions towards conventional designation. Manas accesses those predispositions. along with the self and brings the predispositions for its conventional designations to Manas.

[56:26]

So Manas at this place brings it to Mana-Vijnana doctrine. Manas brings the predispositions for conventional designations to the sense consciousness, the sense mind consciousness, so we can say it's blue. So now we've had an experience, a sense experience of blue. a mind consciousness experience of blue, which is infected by essence, and now we can even make conventional designation because of this wonderful infection, and pretty much we're done now. Along with the predispositions for conventional designations, lots of other predispositions came along too, from alive. So now we have a nice messy... For example, I don't like blue. Yeah, blue is my favorite color, not my favorite color. I don't like this particular blue. This blue is ugly and that one's not. And there are people who have this ability to see. That's an ugly blue, that's a gorgeous blue. That's a really ugly yellow, that's like a pukey, cock-a-yellow.

[57:30]

This is like a gorgeous, inspiring blue. And these are... We depend on these people. So then we have this kind of experience. The sense consciousness is an experience, it happens with this other experience, all that gets laid down on alaya, and alaya is transformed, and then we have the arising of another mind consciousness. And that's your question? That, the mind consciousness, it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with blue. We don't know what that next one will be, it's just there will be a next one. One way to say it is that it arises, but it arises influenced by a laya. It arises in dependence on a laya.

[58:33]

And one of the reasons why it arises in dependence on a laya is because it needs an immediate antecedent condition, which is also an organ for it. And that organ, its organ, depends on alaya. So for mind consciousness to arise, it depends on manas and alaya. And we've got manas and alaya. We just don't have any sense consciousness. Is this the image? This is going to be the image group. It's the only one I could come up with at this point. Would it look like, when you start having an association to the, like, there's blue, and along with modest comments, I mean, it's out there, and I don't like it, and then it lands in Amaya, and it's drifting from the association, and I don't like it because of blah, [...] blah? Or is that something more complex than that?

[59:37]

more complex than what? What you're showing, I'm not clear yet what the one that arises out of a laya, the form it takes. And I wondered if it was an associate, what we conventionally think of as an association. Well, let's think about this, shall we? We have a laya, right? Right. And what's a laya? A laya is like bringing to this moment, the birth of this moment, we have the arrival of the effects of past action. Right. Okay? Which is all this. So now, if a mono-vijnana doctrine is going to arise, okay, mono-vijnana doctrine does not have to always arise with sense consciousness. However, in this story you can see, in its ancient history, it did have some sense consciousness in the background, of course. But now we're going to have an example of a moment arises and what's arising now is a mind consciousness, because what went

[60:44]

But that's still sense, you know. It's like change of thinking. But that's still sense, right? It's sense. It's a sixth sense. It's a sixth sense, right. Right. Yeah. It's a sense consciousness, right. But this sense consciousness is going to arise in dependence on a laya, in dependence on a manas. And then, got that? So this manas is now in darkness arising, and it's actually just the ability to be aware of mental objects. And what mental objects can it be aware of? Those which it can get from a laya. And how about some predispositions coming along with it? Fine, we're going to get those, a laya. And also we've got manas in there, infecting it with this particular defiling agent of these four defilements from oneself. So you can make that Mano Vijnanadattu as complex as you want.

[61:47]

Matter of fact, we can now do this for a while. We can do Mano Vijnanadattu in association, of course, with Manas. But I think we can go right back into alaya here. We just go Mano Vijnanadattu together with Manas back into alaya. Mano Vijnanadattu arising out of alaya. I mean, come on, let's go back into a lie, you can do that. We know, that's part of our experience. This is like chains of thought, this could be chains of thinking, right? That could be chains of thinking, right. So you could have a blue coming in there, and then just think about blue for a while. You could go on a chain of thinking about Hawaii, and the ocean, and the blue skies, and the nice blue baby suits, and not blue skin, but maybe some blue skin, oh my god, you know, and so on. And then that can happen, but also, instead of going back directly to alaya from here, this mind condition, this mindset, this attitude, which is now dealing with the mind object, can come up here,

[62:52]

can be a condition, because Manas... These guys always have one of these guys. These sense consciousnesses always have the Manas with it, right? Mano with it, so they always have Manas with them. It's not usually mentioned, but Manas is there, because we can't have Mana Vijnanadattu without its organ, which is the, in some sense, the messenger from Alaya, bringing all the predispositions from human history or individual human history to the moment. Now, what can happen is you can either say you can bring Manas, you can say you bring Mano-Vijnana-Dhatu to the sense consciousnesses, or you can say, what's happened? The moments are risen. What do we have here? We have Alaya, we have Mano-Vijnana-Dhatu, we have Manas, Those are the transformations of consciousness which are the way we make up the idea of self and elements.

[64:19]

So they're coming up there. Now what about, can there be a sense consciousness too? Yes. And what are the conditions for sense consciousness? Dominant condition is a sense organ. So if Manas arises, Manas has no problem of having sense consciousness coexisting with So Manas is coming up here with my pal, my mom. And also, and my mom lives in a body with sense organs. Do you know who mom is? And so there's sense organs there. And here I am arising. It's time for me to rise. Conditions are ripe. Alaya is ready for me to emerge, here I am with my brother, Mamas, and all these predispositions. It's the dawn of another moment.

[65:25]

However, the body which my mom lives in is getting stimulated. It's getting so stimulated that a sense consciousness is arising with me. So I'm coming up here to the horizon and I've got my brother. Oregon here, my immediate antecedent older brother. I've got all these bad habits. It's a pure little thing. I'm not as fresh as, you know, whatever. I've got this old creepy brother. We're the same mother. But he's the one who brings all that stuff from mom and dumps it on me. Is this family system? And then I got these new siblings who aren't quite like me because they don't know about mind objects. But they're into like the body.

[66:26]

They're rising directly out of the body. They're my little sisters and my little brothers. They're innocent little babies, they don't know anything about mental concepts. They wear diapers. But I'm right there with them, so my set, which is influenced by this guy, which is influenced by all this background, my set touches them. What's your name? I'm Mano Vignanadottir. I have a mind consciousness. that needs Manas to be my organ and my antecedent condition. So now I'm arising with these things, so now Manas doesn't exactly lead to Manas and then the sense consciousness, but just we have another case of sense consciousness arising, but now here clearly you can see that it arises out of

[67:31]

the predispositions affecting the mind together with it. And in some sense this sense consciousness together with this Manas coming out of the alaya is basically the same situation as this sense consciousness here arising out of alaya getting connected to the sense consciousness. It's just that this is emphasizing how the Manas comes up, how the mind consciousness which accompanies sense consciousness arises out of alaya and this emphasizes how the sense consciousness goes with the mind consciousness back to alaya. But actually this combination of sense consciousness with mind consciousness and that combination of mind consciousness with sense consciousness is the same moment. It's just that this is emphasizing coming out of alaya and this is emphasizing going back to alaya. And this also shows that mind consciousness can arise out of a laya directly, but sense consciousnesses don't, in this picture.

[68:46]

But part of the question is, can sense consciousnesses arise directly out of a laya? In other words, can a laya be the object condition for a sense consciousness. Maybe in a hallucination. Well, that wouldn't be a sense consciousness. But would it really be? No. Well, alaya stores sense consciousness, right? It stores the effect of sense consciousness. And I guess a totally idealistic view would be that alaya is the storehouse for the object conditions. So the sense consciousnesses arise from a laya. We see mind consciousness arising here from a laya. And we're seeing, it says mind consciousness and in some sense more primarily the manas arises from a laya, the dependence on a laya.

[69:51]

So, the dependence on a laya, the manas arises, and the manavid and the mind consciousness arises in dependence on a laya. and Manas. So that arrow should go both ways then, the Manas and the Alaya, right? It should... Which arrow are you talking about? Yeah, right there, where you have the Mana Vijnana, which needs Manas and Alaya, so you have a line there. But shouldn't the arrow, instead of just going one direction, it's... Well, it's going in that direction. This is emphasizing that the effects of this get laid down on Alaya. This is, the other side is emphasizing that now Alaya's bulk the effect of experience and the cause of experience, so it's both. Okay? Now, if I'm blind, does the story end there, if I'm being shown the color blue and I'm blind, so there's no real active organ? We don't say that blind people see color blue.

[70:53]

Correct, but I can feel color through a different sense. So you can feel light, maybe, through a different source? No, from the whole color therapy of vibrational works. Yeah, but I think it's in the skin, probably. You think it's not electromagnetic? Not necessarily through the retina, but you could... Yeah, yeah, that's what I said. I said, through light, which is electromagnetic, you can feel light through your skin. Like, what's his name? Not Vedmeda, what's the other Indian writer that writes for the New Yorker? Who, Vedmeda? No, no. Is it Vedmeda? Is Bed made of the bicycle guy? What's the other guy? Oh, um, the one who's out in Ohio? The nasty one. Yeah. Oh, near Paul? So Bed made him. So Bed made him blind and he learned to ride a bicycle. Through his cheeks. And he got him, you know. He wanted to ride a bicycle with his brother, and parents wouldn't give him a bicycle, so he built a bicycle from bicycle parts he found around the street.

[71:58]

And then he would follow his brothers to school. And he would drive, and he would have accidents. But he noticed at a certain point that just before he ran into something, he had this funny feeling in his cheek. And then he would turn the opposite way from that feeling, and he avoided the accident. and then he'd get another feeling in his cheek and he'd turn it away. He'd just keep turning away from that feeling and he actually was able to ride to school. It's not necessarily a physical cheek, it must be a space... I think it's a physical cheek. This close? Oh no, not touching like this. It's an ordinary way of touching, it's like this, but electromagnetic radiation also has an effect on your cheek. So, as we know, electromagnetic radiation You can turn the color of your skin into a different color, right? That's one response, is your skin changes color to electromagnetic radiation, but you can also feel it. You can feel infrared, it's warm, but you can feel other kinds of electromagnetic radiation.

[73:05]

He can feel it. His skin is through his skin. Of course, you could also do sonar, like bats do sonar. Bats can see, but their hearing is much better than their vision. So they send out beeps. and bounce off the stuff so they can ride to school. But they also can see. But if they couldn't see, they'd still probably be flying through the air with the greatest of ease. So you could do it that way. But that wouldn't be visual consciousness. So he wouldn't have visual consciousness. Visual consciousness depends on this dominant condition. So, if it's totally idealistic, maybe the object condition is alaya, comes from alaya, and the dominant condition is the tissue. I think the next person was Humboldt, maybe?

[74:06]

It seems that to tell the story that way transfers reified description. It seems that it reifies alaya to make it the source of sensory stimuli. If alaya is in danger of that, so can we, if we say that alaya is independently co-arisen at the moment has, like an electromagnetic radiation, is a source at the moment. Right, but then we're... the first way you told the story was that there's the impact of electromagnetic radiation and that... and then we have a functional response to that

[75:17]

As soon as you say that Alaya itself is the source of the stimulus, you know... No, not the source of the stimulus, it is the stimulus. It's that Alaya can stimulate the sensor, you see. How? Alaya stimulates the sensor as you said. That would make it idealistic that a lie can stimulate sense organs. It's not saying we don't have sense organs. Well, we already say that a lie can stimulate the sense organs, but then we say that's a hallucination or a... there's another name for it... Pardon? No, we say it's a hallucination, but I'm saying... Or a dream... No, I'm saying that there could be hallucinations and there also could be stimulations which are somehow in accord with the world.

[76:22]

That still would allow, that alive could be the condition for the arising of a, what do you call it, a hallucination, but also could be the condition for the arising of a valid sense perception. Would that be unusual? I think that creates a problem about defining That's what I'm saying. I think it involves reifying Alaya and saying that it then can contain the basis for sense stimulation. By saying that this is all self-contained, then I think we make a thing of it. Okay. Well, if you can't see any way to get out of that with Alaya being the object condition, then we'll let it sit there for a while, for you at least.

[77:24]

And I'll wonder about it. But I just wanted to say one more thing. You said that creates a problem about what is a valid cognition. But I think we already have the problem of what is a valid cognition, which we have not yet dealt with. That's another big thing on the horizon. And we could use, then, the methods of ascertaining what a valid cognition is and apply it to that. In that way we could tell the difference between hallucinations and a valid cognition. But it's possible that we would perhaps have a lie be the source for the object condition and it would work. Yes? One way to release the tension of this problem is to not say that it's the object condition, but that maybe a lie is the head. the vivifying condition, the condition of their main life, since that's one of the ways of looking at a life.

[78:32]

So therefore it's a condition for the sense consciousnesses, but it's not the object condition. We already have that. I don't know who's next, maybe John. I understand that people who have lost a limb have a feeling that the limb is still there. Yeah. That sounds like a function of alaya acting as a sense generator. Maybe. Maybe like that. But does it work? I don't know. Does it wear out? Because it's the phantom feeling, I think, for a while. But does it then wear off after? Not necessarily. No? We were asked about an impression becoming an object condition.

[79:40]

I was thinking of something like stinging nettle. I'm just curious, going back to our experience with something fresh, Does it matter even? Is there a difference between the mind works so fast you can touch something unpleasant, maybe what you're touching is your memory, or what's most active in your experience is your memory of something unpleasant, or even in the details of the scheme. Sometimes the way to transform difficulty is to go to go to the detail of it, you know, on the... all the layers of stuff. Say it again? One of the ways of what? One of the ways to, I think, be more present with typical is to try to stay with the... the unelaborated sensation.

[80:40]

And to think about how many... how quickly the elaborations come. Right. The elaborations or even the reiterations. you know, just the reproductions of it. So the later Yogacara people actually didn't feel much of a need to talk about lie anymore and they just concentrated on how do you establish whether something is a valid cognition or not. And valid cognitions are always the first experience of this nettle stink. It's not the succeeding ones after the first one. It's the fresh one. Now you can get stung again and again by a nettle seed. But each one you get stung by, there's a fresh one there. And that's the valid cognition. That's where we can test validity. In the memories of it, you can't really test it. But you can have a series of cognitions based on a valid cognition, but they're not valid anymore.

[81:49]

because they can't be tested because they're derivative, even though they're correct, originally. The original one is correct and new. That's another mode of study of this school, which doesn't need the alaya, but the early stage, the founders, Vasubandhu and Asanga, are saying they really think this alaya is very helpful to They really think it's important to work with this. So we're giving this a chance here. Right? Yes? Yeah, I have two questions. One just came up with your word, reiteration, and it made me think of... It's memory. Yeah, okay. Yeah, it made me think of Mandelbrot sets and fractal geometry and wondered, like, the image of

[82:51]

It seems like some of this is just reiterating it. I'm just throwing it out there because it just popped into my mind. I don't know how it fits. The second one is, do gorillas have mamas, you think? Yeah, gorillas seem to have a well-developed mind. And you hurt my feelings, and I want that. They seem to be, from my limited experience of hearing about the way that they communicate, they seem to have a sense of self, pretty well developed, and now that they have sign language, they can tell us about it. Do you think they exist in the state of tranquility? Do you think they can? Yeah. Yeah, I think they do. Yeah. I don't know how deep it gets, The less discursive capacities you have, maybe the less upset you get.

[83:58]

But it looks like, from what they're doing with the sign language with the gorillas, it looks like they have quite a bit of discursive thing. But they have less, maybe. They're more direct. They seem more direct in their communications. Like, they see something and say, we want. No, that's mine. And then somebody else says, no, it's mine. And they say, well, can I have it? They seem innocent of a certain level of guilt that we have. Timon? You may have mentioned that in earlier times, but how is individuality achieved in the alaya? The question is, why don't I have access to your thoughts or whatever? Do the people have different alias? Is there one alio? What is the picture where the conventional separation is made so that different individuals don't have access to other people's storehouse?

[85:05]

Well, I think one of the places... Well, the individuality is that I think it is in the birth of the creature It isn't the past actions of everybody that give rise to a new life. It's the past actions of one person thinking that the way one person thought that he was an isolated person is the model for the kind of karmic process. The idea that I'm doing this by myself, this is, I'm the one who's thinking I'm doing it by myself. the same way, but you're thinking about different things, like right now you think you're listening to me, you don't think you're talking, and I think I'm talking. So if we think that we're doing this on our own, this is the karmic attitude which has consequences, and this karmic attitude of individual existence, individual person doing things, creating attachment, then the consequences come back to the point of attachment.

[86:12]

This is the process that develops these predispositions. which is in effect a birth. However, within the person is this predestination towards conventional designation, which we're working out with everybody. So we want to actually find, we have the predestination to find a way to talk to other people. So we have to reconstruct a society in order to become what we are. We have to develop a linguistic society in order to become a self, like what James was bringing up the other day. If we don't construct a society, we won't be able to stimulate our normal evolution, our normal maturation. But it's not that we're consulting the history of everybody's predispositions every moment. It's a certain predisposition.

[87:13]

Like, not all of us are predisposed to feel that we're a woman, or to feel that we're a man, or to feel that we're homosexual, or that we want to have, you know, sex change operation. Not all of us feel that. But for each person, they rely on the predisposition for being able to talk to other people through language. So we all have this need to make conventional designation, and in order to do conventional designation, the conventional designation thing, the social thing, we need to project essences on things in order to do that game. That's the price of this, of the creation of our world. However, again within alaya, in terms of yoga chara, they're saying that this alaya has the seeds for everything of the universe that we will experience. For our entire universe, the seeds of our entire range of experience will be from this alaya.

[88:14]

But that's not... that's my universe. And my universe overlaps with your universe a lot. we communicate back and forth and you can say things to me which will transform my universe. Maybe not the way you'd like to but every interaction you have changes my universe. So we have different Elias? We have different Elias which are the basis of our different universes. And our universes overlap a lot because one of the most powerful things in our universe is predisposition towards conventionally designating the universe. We all want to do that, and we want to do more than just saying something about the universe which nobody else understands. We want other people to understand, we want to understand what they're saying about the universe too.

[89:22]

We have a predisposition towards that. But the problem is, in order to play that game, we have to project self on the universe. So it's kind of a mess. But supposedly not impossibly un-clarifiable. Jane? When you talk about Geolia being able to stimulate consciousness, I just got lost there. Is that something that would be unusual, or is that kind of a normal process? Well, one possibility is that alaya is the object condition for sense consciousnesses. Can you give an example of the mind and environment? That the environment is alaya. That alaya is mind and environment. That's not comfortable. That's not comfortable? Could you give a specific example? Pardon?

[90:24]

Can you give a specific example? Abstractly. He would be saying that when the eye organ is stimulated by a color, by electromagnetic radiation, what is being stimulated by is a lye. A lye in the form of electromagnetic radiation. You're talking about in all cases? So you're talking about in all cases? Okay. That there isn't actually electromagnetic radiation out there separate from alaya. But it's not to say there's not electromagnetic radiation, and also we should be able to test to see if the way alaya is supplying electromagnetic radiation, if we can, you know, study it. But, again, there may be a danger here of, as Stuart says, making alaya substantial. I think that it's making alaya physical.

[91:25]

And I think that is what they're saying is a lie, it's physical. That this mind is a physical mind. It would make everything kind of... And if it's physical, it can have electromagnetic radiation. Or neurotransmitters. What about neutrality? Let's see, next person was... I think... I'm not sure. Anyway, let's just say Jerry. I was thinking about situations that require action for survival. For example, I'm walking on a railroad track. Yes. And I hear a noise behind me. Yes. I need to... I don't just want to feel that noise. I mean, it requires for survival for me to... hear noise, recognize, name the noise as trained, think about the fact that it's going to kill me, and jump off the track.

[92:33]

So, do I do that in a state of complete tranquility? And also, maybe if it seems like a different situation than the usual? Well, yeah. I mean, we're not always on a railroad track, that's right. But still... But there are many times

[92:51]

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