As we launch into another expedition into the 30 verses, I'm somewhat aware that there's some danger of getting up into our heads a lot. And it's good to remember... process of study occasionally so that you can keep in touch with what's happening to you and guide yourself somewhat through the experience. Buddhist insight, a Buddhist awakening, is sometimes talked about in terms of three levels. The first level is called insight due to hearing.

[01:01]

The next level is insight due to reflection or thinking. And the third is insight due to being. And usually when you're learning something, some teaching, if you start at the most superficial layer, which is the insight hearing which also means insight from seeing in other words insights which come to you in the process of taking information in from the external environment like hearing a verbal teaching or reading a book and discussions verbal discussions about the meaning of the teaching of course you're thinking at that level But you're thinking in terms of the information outside yourself, clarifying the teaching, clarifying the words, getting things straight. And to a great extent, that's a level that happens in a class.

[02:06]

Then the next level is after you get, hopefully, all the information in correctly, in a sense, you chew up these words. by reflecting these words on words you have inside you, so to speak, that you've already worked with before. And plus, new experiences are then reflected on this teaching, which you have had some insight from at the superficial verbal level. you may be able to, at that first level, you may be able to experience the insight when it occurs. There is a feeling of being confused and suddenly sometimes you have this feeling at the verbal level of what you're hearing, what you're talking about, suddenly things go, boom, you get something. And then sometimes after you take it in and work with yourself too, inside yourself, you sometimes get this, boom,

[03:12]

in terms of thinking it over yourself. And then there's a deeper level of being where you get that bong too. But there, and that's the complete story of insight. Once that happens, then your being can then bring stuff up through your thinking and through your words and your speech. The teaching then can come back out through the same levels outside, and you can convey it in terms of your own being, your own thinking, your own words. Well, it's kind of like... Let's say we had a class on dancing. And you sat in the class and heard all the words about dancing and learned them all and discussed them and got them all straight and had insight at that level. And then you actually thought about what you'd learned. thought about it, thought about it, and thought about it, when you couldn't think about it anymore, when there's only one thing left to do, and that is dance.

[04:20]

That would be to teach understanding dancing in terms of just dancing. So again, understanding just sitting, it's finally when you practice just sitting. we actually need quite a bit of teaching to understand what just sitting is, in fact. Because our ordinary being is not... Our ordinary being is afflicted by misunderstandings and various kinds of attachments to ideas of self and elements. And these attachments make it... virtually impossible for us to enjoy what just sitting is. So we already have all these ideas about what just sitting is, which we hold on to.

[05:22]

We have all these ideas about what self is, which we hold on to, and this makes it impossible for us to do the practice. So we're getting these medicines in through our ears and our eyes, which hopefully will eventually trickle down and root out the root of these afflictions, which is belief in the existence of things, and root out the misunderstandings of what dependent co-arising is. So these are little messages which are being taken in and handled at these three levels, and hopefully these messages will get down to the deepest levels so that we can just actually be ourselves. unobstructed by all our ideas of what we are and other people are. But the first layer is one where there's quite a bit of thinking. And as meditators, in one sense, you're nauseated by that phase sometimes.

[06:25]

But in order to... And you want to go back to the state of just sort of being and sitting. But in order for your sitting to really be completely pure, you kind of have to purify it. You need some help from Buddha, and his help comes through words. His words have to be taken in and dropped down there to give up all your ideas of what your being is, even though being is totally immersed in ideas of being. it is also free of all ideas of being. So, as Dogen says, words and phrases are discriminating consciousness, and words and phrases release discriminating consciousness. Yes. The being is like, like Mariah, in thinking, doesn't compare to consciousness.

[07:36]

Well, maybe so. You don't think? I don't think so. What do you think about that? I'd rather not comment on that right now, if you don't mind. Right? Speaking of Eight Consciousnesses, I wrote these down on the boards, Eight Consciousnesses, or this kind of system, because in fact that is a presentation which, you know, this big fat book here, it's organized around this Eight Consciousness system. And Elias is considered to be the eighth.

[08:38]

But I also can see the argument that what the 30 verses are doing is that they're presenting the story of the birth and death of cyclic existence and the arising of this belief in it. and the belief in, not the belief in psychic existence, but the belief in ideas of self and others which cause psychic existence, that these three transformations of consciousness are a way to talk about, or Vasubandha's way of talking about, what in early Buddhism was talked about in terms of six consciousnesses. Okay? Yes. I think I understand what you're saying is that in this point of view that you're just talking about, it's transformation of consciousness.

[09:49]

The transformation of what? This threefold transformation. Yes. Is what Italy Buddhism talks about as the sixth consciousness? No. As all six consciousness? As all six. So, but for some reason or other, which I can see some reason for it, instead of saying this threefold transformation of consciousness is a new and revised way of looking at what in early Buddhism was called the workings of the six consciousnesses, they sort of kind of tacked this new explanation on the end of the old explanation to make a system of eight. As I mentioned the other day, clearly it's a kind of, you know, clearly one understands that when you make manas into the seventh consciousness, it's not really like an additional consciousness, right?

[11:08]

Because manas is clearly the... organ, the bifurcating function of the mind. It's not like another consciousness. I don't think anybody really thought that. There's consciousness which has the potential to reflect part of itself back to itself. That's a function of consciousness. That's not another consciousness. But they decided, I think because of Alaya, they decided rather than to have six consciousnesses, and then alaya now added on, they wanted to add alaya on, so maybe they thought, well, I don't know why they did it. I guess because the seventh is so pivotal in setting up the way alaya works with the sixth consciousness. I don't know, anyway, I... I don't know why they did it that way, but they did it that way.

[12:09]

But I think another way to look at this whole picture is that the three transformations of consciousness really are accounting for the same... They're trying to explain... Their explanatory project is the same as that which was earlier done by the six. But there's new information in this threefold transformation that wasn't in the six. namely there's this subtle consciousness that's been pointed out, which wasn't mentioned in the description of the six, but which actually all the time was involved in the working of the six consciousnesses. And I think it's a good theory that the reason why, and which the Samdhi Nirmal Chandra Sutra seems to be saying, the reason why they didn't bring up this subtle consciousness in the first place was They thought people would take it as the Self. Now this subtle consciousness is being brought out by this sutra and by the Yogacara teachers, Vasubandhu, for example.

[13:27]

So we're getting exposed now to this new and subtle aspect of life. which we then have to be very careful not to make it into a self. But I think that it's really wonderful how subtle it is because this new and subtle aspect, which is called ādana, vijnana or citta or alaya-vijnana, that this new subtle consciousness is actually not really different from the sixth consciousness, which shows even more how subtle it is. Not really different than the sixth or all six? Than the sixth. Not really different than the sixth. I mean, it is different because the sixth consciousness

[14:29]

makes possible concepts of object and location. Right? And alaya doesn't have concepts of object and location. However, the thing about which there are concepts of objects and locations, those are in alaya. Alaya has them. It says at the beginning, alaya is possessed of you know, contact, feeling, sensation, all that stuff. That's the stuff about which the concepts of objects are made. So, that's, you know, there's this, there's two kinds of form, right? Which when they come in contact, consciousness is born at that contact point. Right? The two kinds of form are gross and subtle rupa. gross and subtle form.

[15:36]

The grossest forms are colors, sounds, smells, tastes, and tangibles. The subtle material things are the capacities to be sensitive to these, which we call the organs. Or in Sanskrit they're called indriya, which means sovereigns. And they're sovereign in the sense that they're sovereign because they determine the nature of the type of consciousness which will arise. But they're called subtle materiality. Why are they called subtle? For one reason, it's because you can't see an organ. If you look over here and look at my right over here, you see some colors, some blue and some black and white. This is my eyeball, or whatever you want to call it. But you can't see my eye organ. My eye organ is the physical sensitivity to electromagnetic radiation of a certain wavelength.

[16:39]

You can't see that. What you can see is some colors over here, but they're the same as the colors you see on my forehead or on the wall. This form of materiality, this physical sensitivity to light, is very subtle. It's compared to clarified butter. If you take butter, and you heat it up, it separates out into the top clear stuff and the bottom stuff, right? It's like you can see through the top stuff into the bottom stuff. You can see it, but you almost can't see it. That's a comparison to the subtle form and the gross form. In the same way, alaya is very subtle, and when you look through alaya, you can't look through a laya. But in a sense, if you look through a laya, you can look through a laya and see. I'll put it the other way. If you had the sixth consciousness, which is the apprehension of the concept of objects, the mind consciousness, if you put a laya on top of it, you could see right through a laya to that thing.

[17:46]

A laya wouldn't obstruct it. Because the contents or the elements in association with the mental... with the mind consciousness, those things are also an alaya. It's just that these things that are alaya now have concepts of object and location apprehended or acquired. So they're very similar, except that when there's no longer an apprehension or a grasping of the concepts of object and location, when that function drops away, The things which are apprehended through concepts are still there. It's not like they disappear. They're still there. They're just no longer being apprehended as concepts. So you see how subtle laya is? And this shows all the more how ineffable it is and how subtle, that it continues all the time.

[18:51]

I mean, not continues, but it keeps being reborn moment after moment. There's no interruption in it. It's always flowing. But it's also in this very subtle relationship with the mind element. So, the mind element consciousness, the mano-vijnana-dhatu. So that's kind of an introduction. And so maybe we could look at the text now and see what happens. Yeah? I'm talking about organ. Is it related or connected to some physical organ, like maybe a gland, a clenching gland, or . I think actually that the organs in the body have a definite relationship to sense organs, yes.

[19:57]

The glands? Yeah, I think so. But the basic function of the sense organs, from the Buddhist point of view, in terms of understanding perception in a liberating way. The basic function of organs is to separate awareness from the field of objects. So in the Abhidharma Kosha it says something like, how does it put it? I can't remember. But anyway, the point is that the consciousness of colors, the consciousness of visual things, is so much like the field of its objects that if it wasn't for the organ, they're basically the same. There's a field of awareness that we have, and then there's the actual physical things out there.

[21:06]

They're so similar that without the organ interposing, they just sort of collapse into each other and form what we call non-existence. So the organ kind of sets up this interface and creates life. Or, again, gross and material matter contact each other, and then consciousness is born at that time, and the organ sort of separates the consciousness from the rest of the physical universe, and that makes possible life. Yeah. The same thing you said about the organ, and how it... Exactly the same. ...is cheating people's lives, and it's a concept. No, it doesn't turn them into concepts. The mind consciousness turns them into concepts. Mind consciousness is called, what is it, ashraya-vijnapti.

[22:08]

Ashraya means the field, right? Ashraya and vijnapti. So the ability of mind to convert objects into concepts, to apprehend objects into concepts, that's the sixth consciousness. at the mind consciousness. It's manas that splits the field of material into two parts. One part is now going to be the object which could be converted into a concept and therefore known. The other part is everything else. But you just said that the concepts, the ideas, notions, that they were already apprehended as objects. And it's hard to imagine that as being a function different from this reflection.

[23:19]

All these things happen together. We're discriminating aspects of a process that gives rise to this belief in self and elements. So it's hard to imagine, but a lie can be by itself. It is possible for a lie to exist alone. Okay? So what's that like when a liar... So let's look at a liar some more. Try to tune into a liar. That might help. Okay? A liar has all this stuff, right? Yes? I have a question on a liar I was going to ask. Yeah. And it goes back to when you were talking about what I heard you say, things go through the sixth consciousness, are they impressed on the stored in the alaya? Things that go through the sixth consciousness are stored in alaya? Well, this is what... No, it's like the sixth consciousness, actually what the sixth consciousness is, it's not... Actually, the sixth consciousness in this system, in this presentation that Vasubandhu is making,

[24:32]

is not exactly a consciousness. In the threefold transformation of consciousness, the sixth consciousness is not exactly a consciousness in the sense of consciousness. Consciousness, vijnana, consciousness is just the act of being aware. Okay? So wouldn't the sixth consciousness is not aware any longer? Wait a second. I was going to let you talk, but then you did. And that was exactly what you shouldn't talk about. You said the sixth consciousness is aware, right? So what I'm saying is in these threefold transformations, really the sixth consciousness is not playing the role of being aware. It's not doing the awareness part, okay? In the threefold transformations of consciousness, by this presentation, in this presentation of threefold transformation, the sixth consciousness, or the mind consciousness, is not doing the job of the awareness part. It's doing the job.

[25:35]

What it mainly is doing is it's apprehending. It's emphasizing the apprehending ability, the grasping, the acquiring, the acquisition of potential of consciousness. That's what the third transformation, which is also called in other systems, is also called... Maybe we shouldn't talk about the other system, but anyway, it is called the sixth consciousness or mind consciousness. But when it's called mind consciousness, since there's no alaya mentioned, right, in that case, it also does the work of being aware. It's aware, and they don't mention, but it also is doing... the apprehending, and the mind organ is separate from it in that system. Okay? But in the sixth consciousness system, what is called mana-vijnana-dhatu, is the awareness and the apprehending. In the three-transformation system that Vasubandhu is presenting, we're putting the weight of apprehending over on the third transformation, which is the sixth consciousness.

[26:43]

My question is about Sanskrit word upati. Uh-huh. How does that, in relation to life and jnana, in the book it says something about it's the representation of consciousness of unknown objects. Yeah, upati, there's two upati. In the Samdhinirmocana Sutra, there's two upati. Upati is related to upadana. You know, upadana skandha? Upadana means grasping skandhas. What is the definition of suffering? Upadana pañcascanda. Grasping the five skandhas is the basic definition of suffering. Pañcascandhas is not suffering. Five skandhas is not suffering. It's the grasping of them. Alaya proceeds in conjunction with these two graspings. One grasping is towards these seeds, the vasana. The other grasping is to the body. How would you understand him saying that?

[27:51]

So what you just said is the seeds. Unknown? Unknown. Did you hear that? Unknown, unknown, unknown, unknown, grasping at unknown objects. That's the upadhi of the vasana, the seeds. Often the one asking the question can't hear the answer, right? But you just brought up another way of saying what it says in there. It's unidentified in terms of concepts of object and location. A lie it is, right? It means, but it doesn't say that, but all those things, all those things are there, you know? Contact, feeling, perception, all that stuff is there. All those, all that stuff is there. All the seeds are there. It's just that everything's unknown. But even though it's unknown, It grasps. It grasps objects but doesn't know them because what hasn't it got?

[28:56]

It's got the objects, but what hasn't it got? It ain't got the concept of the objects, but it's got the objects. Alaya is actually just the grasping of all those objects. I mean, not all of it, but that's part of it. So one way to see what alaya is, it's this massive grasping It's as infinite, practically, grasping. But what's a thing like that grasps infinite objects? It's a vast net, isn't it? It's a net that's connected to all these seeds. A network of all possible... What was it? Unknown what? Unknown objects. Unknown objects. Representations of consciousness of unknown objects. Yeah. And so it's just grasping all these things, but it doesn't know them. The reason why it doesn't know them is because it has no, what do you call it, at that level, it has no acquisition of the concept of the object.

[30:04]

Therefore, it can't know them. But it is aware of them. It is the grasping of them and the awareness of them. And also, alaya has one more grasping, That is a grass, a body. Those two. Would that be also places, the body? Places, yeah. Places, or locations, places? Locations, yeah. That's the way it seems. But in direct experience, In direct sensory experience, like with the color and so, you know, like when you're in deep dreamless sleep, the body's responding, but there's no knowing of it.

[31:18]

Okay. Maybe I'll call it more grasping. Yeah, you can use a lighter one if you want. Acquisition? Oh, no, we don't want to use that one now. Anyway, it hooks onto... Alaya hooks onto these two ways. It hooks onto a body, and it hooks onto these seeds. And also, it happens in situations where we're not thinking. And so there's a living creature, like a living human being, who's hooked into all these objects, who's not just associated with them, but there's awareness of a connection with them, but they're not known. So it's hard to understand a situation where you don't know anything, and yet there's awareness.

[32:22]

And what this awareness is, is not something other than these objects. When the object changes, the awareness changes. The seeds... These perfumings, which are seeds of future events and karmas, are not separate from this awareness and are not the same as the awareness, because seeds are not awareness. But you can't talk about the awareness separate from the seed. And the awareness is not an awareness that you are sitting there being an awareness. It's an awareness which is entirely determined by the seeds. or by these perfumings from past known experience. Yeah? No. As a result of having conceptual experience, conceptual knowledge, and acting in the world of conceptual knowledge, the effect of that

[33:34]

is a perfuming. Yeah, and that... I don't think there's any imprinting of laya. I would suggest this. This is just my suggestion at the moment, okay? And I'll change it if I think of something different. But I would suggest that while we're in deep sleep or in deep... thoughtless trance, at that time I don't think Alaya is getting any impressions. Now you could say, well, doesn't Alaya evolve in relationship to sensory experience, non-mediated by concept to sensory experience? Does it? I don't think so, but I don't know. So I would suggest that it's possible that Alaya does not evolve when the other two transformations are not working. but I really don't know about that.

[34:38]

But I'll suggest that there's two possibilities anyway. One is that when the other two transformations are not operating, there's no thinking, no karma, and I would suggest that maybe no perfuming going back into a lie. A lie is changing, but may not evolving. But the evolutionary process stops at that point. So that would lead me to say then that if you were asleep for a really long time... Huh? Yeah. If you were asleep for a really long time, there would be no evolution when you came out. In other words, if you went in as a schnook, you'd come out a schnook. If you went in as a great bodhisattva, you'd come out as a great bodhisattva. You wouldn't be any... Huh? Like Southern. Whereas, when in ordinary, in ordinary, functioning of a three-fold comp.

[35:40]

You don't, every moment, you don't go into one moment and come out the same person. You always trade in and become a new person all the time. You're always evolving with these three-fold things. And a lie is always evolving by what happens in the previous thing, perfumes it. So there's evolution when the three-three are working together. But when they're just two, when they're just one, it doesn't seem to be much evolution. That's why we don't recommend sleeping a tremendous amount in Buddhist practice. Especially sleeping in dreamless sleep. We need some of it. Yes? Now that's where it would change. The collective consciousness would change. That would evolve because other people are out there doing stuff and they're perfuming. So in that level you would be changing. Maybe that's how you would evolve. So that when you came out, you would be older, right? I don't know if we can just keep bopping on questions forever, or I can go back to the presentation.

[36:51]

Yes? Well, maybe this is a little less abstract than myself. It seems to me that sometimes, anyway, in the process of ordinary achieving, there's something like a sort of a... kind of a sensory impact where, like, signal that something has been encountered, but there's no recognition of what it is. Is there a way to tie that kind of experience into what you're talking about? Is that already too complicated? Well, are you talking about direct sensory experience? Anyone know how to tie that into the system? Well, I'm just saying it seems like there's an instant pause between encountering something and recognizing what it is. Yes. So with this encountering of something, that before it's recognized, tied to one of the terms you've been discussing. An ordinary waking consciousness.

[37:53]

The five sense consciousnesses operate that way. And they're operating that way all the time. They never operate without the sixth, except in these special states. The sixth is what makes them, a little bit later, able to be known. But before they're known, the six is still there operating. It's just not operating on them at that very moment. The six is also simultaneous with the lie, which is always there in the background. So a lie is there at the very time that this stuff's happening. So what's your question? Well, I did do a presentation, but it was a short one, and then now I got any questions. So, let's see, we could, let's see, what else is happening here?

[39:01]

Okay, so you've got the threefold transformations of consciousness. You have unidentified in terms of objects and locations. Okay, any questions about that? Okay. And always possesses activities such as contact, attention, feeling, perception, and volition. And in Abhidharma, you know, regular, even the Sarvastivadan and Satrantika Abhidharma, which Kulipa Han is always criticizing of getting metaphysical, they have exactly the same story. Okay? This is not different. In other words, in every state of consciousness, it says there are these universal dharmas. There's five universal dharmas. In some systems, they say ten. They're present in every moment. Even in deep, dreamless sleep. There is contact, feeling, volition, attention, in the deepest trance, in the deepest sleep.

[40:03]

Volition. Volition, yeah. Volition means the pattern of that given field of consciousness at that moment, the apparent direction or lack of direction that's there. Every moment has that pattern. Every moment has some organizational pattern. That's always present, every moment. That's present with the laya. And in other abhidharma systems that don't yet bring up a laya, they also say the same thing. That's cetana. And the other point here is that all these dharmas, these universal dharmas are there. The only thing that's not there is identification Object and location. So the big thing that's missing is identification. There's no identification in alaya. And as you know, the word identification is related to identity. And identity is related to I. Or self.

[41:08]

What kind of perception? What kind of perception? I guess I would say it's not really perception. But you also can't say it's not perception because then you would have identified it. So that state, when you go into a trance, it's like that state. And then when we turn off, when you turn off the... the acquisition of the concept of the object, when that's turned off, you get into a state which is neither perception nor non-perception. You can't really make it non-perception, because all the stuff is there that's ordinarily there in perception, implicit in no identification. And basically, that situation, again, is a non-evolutionary situation I propose, except as you're evolving with all sentient beings.

[42:15]

And non-evolutionary means also not causing any more trouble. Whatever amount of trouble you're into now, you've still got it. And you're not getting into it anymore, except, as I say, along with everybody else who's getting into trouble. You could come out and there's a war going on. When you went in, there was peace, and you got a problem, right? Does that make sense? Is that what I'm proposing? And I'm basically suggesting to you that the major work of evolution... for living creatures is in the realm of perception. That we get in trouble in the realm of perception and we're liberated in the realm of perception. Discriminating consciousness, the realm of perception is through our perceptions we get into trouble and through working with our perceptions and revolutionizing or reversing the way we see our perceptions that we obtain, you know, positive evolutionary trust. Okay. The word volition usually means will.

[43:21]

Yeah, you can say will too. So I don't quite get how something that's undefined has a will. With different words. I believe a Sanskrit word here is, oh God. Blindness. Where are we? Also, in the next verse it says that this activity, volition, this will, is initial. Oh, that, yeah. That's what I was looking for, that word. I mean, is that what's that in three or four? Upeksha... Upeksha Veda Naya? There it is, folks. Okay. So unidentified in this first one, the will is not unidentified.

[44:28]

All right? The will is undefined and neutral. I'm taking time to answer this because... It does pay to study many years or something. You were talking to me this morning about something, or was it? I forgot what it was, but they said, do you mean you have to study that for maybe 10 years or something? Oh, you have to go in your room and be by yourself and study that for 10 years? And I said, yeah, more like 20 or 25. Anyway, the way this works is that what we're talking about here in terms of undefined and neutral is a karmic category. And so we're now up in Karkapur.

[45:30]

Maybe we can skip to that. Is that all right? Yeah, we're up in Karkapur. So in that context, in the context of a laya, The neutral feeling is uninterrupted, so alaya is characterized by neutral feeling. Now, there are more than... There's more feelings in alaya than neutral feelings. But... Those neutral feelings are seeds. I mean, those other feelings, like negative feelings and positive feelings, are seeds for positive feelings and neutral feelings. Apparently, they aren't functioning in a lie. A lie is a neutral feeling. And it is not defined. And the term here is avyakriti.

[46:18]

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