Transforming the Mind of Delusion 

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I think this is the last scheduled class for this series, is that right?
It's like a little bow tie.
In summary, we've been studying the mind of delusion.
And in a way, we've been studying the minds of delusion.
Because there's two basic kinds of minds of delusion.
There's the unconscious mind of delusion and conscious mind of delusion.
There's an unconscious awareness, an awareness that's unconscious, that's vaguely, barely conscious, subliminal.
And there's an active consciousness, which is aware of specific objects.
We've been studying how these co-arise. We've been studying their causation.
Some people would say that the basic teaching of the Enlightened Ones is the teaching of causation.
And as we study the teaching of causation, we realize the teaching of the ultimate truth.
We become ready for the teaching of ultimate truth. We become ready to realize ultimate truth.
There's a teaching about how the deluded mind arises,
and there's a teaching of how the deluded mind is transformed,
and how we can be free of the mind of delusion.
We're studying the source of unwholesome, harmful states of mind.
And we're studying also those unwholesome, destructive states of mind,
and how the source for harmful states of mind, for states of suffering,
for states of active awareness of suffering,
that the source of this is the results of these active states.
And the source which supports these active states of suffering
is constantly being transformed by these active states of suffering,
and the way we practice with them.
And teachings have been given to these active states of suffering,
to these active afflictive processes.
Teachings come into the world which is created by the mind of delusion.
Teachings enter the world of the mind of delusion,
the world created by the mind of delusion.
And these teachings come from the realization,
from the understanding and transformation of the mind of delusion.
The teachings are not outside or inside the world created by delusion.
Somehow, the understanding of the mind of delusion,
and the liberation from it,
have the ability to enter and awaken deluded beings to the teaching
which encourages them to study the mind of affliction,
the mind of destructiveness.
Last week I was emphasizing, and at the beginning too,
some exercises, some exercises for entering into
the process of creation of the mind, the.
And proposing that entering into this game of creation
is where understanding is living,
and where transformation and freedom,
where liberating transformations are living.
They're living in the creative process.
Tonight I just want to briefly mention a translation of Nietzsche,
which goes something like,
To play the game of creation, a sacred yes is necessary.
To play the game of creation, a sacred yes is necessary.
I don't know what the original German was.
He said this in Oslo Sprach Darthusstra.
Moment by moment, according to this teaching, we need to say yes.
When Sukershi was, sometimes I heard him talk about
receiving the teachings for bodhisattvas,
receiving the bodhisattva teachings,
receiving the bodhisattva precepts,
I think he said something like,
It's necessary to say yes.
He's not like saying, I'm forcing you to receive these precepts.
It's just that when the teacher says,
Will you receive these precepts?
Will you receive these teachings?
It's necessary to say yes.
You don't have to say,
Well, maybe I will, or I would,
but I'm not sure I can practice them.
I don't want to say yes,
I'll receive something that I can't follow through on, and so on.
That's okay to say those things,
but they're not necessary.
You don't have to say them.
You have to say yes, though.
It's necessary to say yes.
And I think, I kind of remember him saying,
You've got to be like a child.
Like, you want to go to the park? Yes.
Want to walk the Buddha Way? Yes.
Want to save all sentient beings? Yes.
This is not a cynical response to the moment.
This is kind of a childlike response.
Not childish.
The moments that we experience, generally speaking,
they're childish moments.
They're childish, they're foolish,
deluded moments.
But we need to say yes,
we need to say yes to them.
In order to what?
In order to enter into the dependent co-arising of them.
We need to say yes to the teachings about them.
You want to hear some teachings about dependent co-arising?
And then, when you hear them,
you want to practice them?
Yes.
Do you want to enter the realm where they're actually living?
Maybe.
I think Nietzsche also says something like,
The child's innocence is forgetting,
is starting right now, for the first time.
I remember when I first came to Zen Center,
there was, I think, a neurologist or a neuroscience man
over at UC Medical Center in San Francisco.
And he came to Zen Center and he did some tests
on some meditators.
And I heard, as a result of these tests,
one of the tests is they put the wires up
to see what kind of response is in the mind
of the meditator when they ring a bell.
And then they also do the same tests with non-meditators,
or not very good meditators.
So, one of the results I heard was that
when you ring a bell in a person who's not meditating,
you get a response, maybe measured in ten units of response.
And you ring it again, and you get nine, maybe.
You ring it again, and you get eight.
And you keep ringing it, and pretty soon the bell goes off.
There's almost no response, you know, neurologically.
But the meditator, you ring it, you get a ten.
You ring it, you get a ten.
You ring it, you get a ten.
You ring it, you get a ten.
In other words, they don't just say,
oh, well, I heard that before.
I mean, they, being their nervous system,
doesn't say, well, yeah, that's that again.
And yet they're calm.
The other person might be calm, too,
but the meditator is calm, but also alert and responsive,
like a child,
who can do things over and over and over and over and over.
There was, on YouTube recently,
one of the things was a child laughing hysterically
to paper being torn.
So this child's there with an adult man
who rips some paper in front of the child,
and the child starts laughing.
And he rips some more, and the child laughs more,
and he rips some more, and the child laughs more,
and he's laughing, too.
He just keeps ripping the paper.
The child keeps being surprised.
It's like every time the paper gets ripped,
the child's just totally amazed
that the world can be pulled apart like that,
and just thinks it's very funny,
and just keeps laughing and laughing,
and doesn't stop laughing.
But for some reason or other, they stop the camera.
The child is observing the pentacle rising
and being surprised by it.
There's also probably pictures of ripping paper
and the child crying.
That can happen, too, of course.
Yes.
Because this is the last class,
for those of you who are going to be reading
the English translation of the Mahayana Sangraha,
the English translation of Embracing the Great Vehicle.
I just wanted to mention to you that there's,
in the first chapter,
there's quite a bit of, in a sense,
apologetic type of discussion,
where the bodhisattva who wrote this
is justifying the teaching,
because it's a new teaching.
Both trying to point out that the Buddha did teach this,
and also trying to point out the necessity
for the teaching of the storehouse unconscious mind.
Trying to point out that without this unconscious mind,
the actual process of delusion
and the actual process of getting into situations of suffering
would be impossible.
But also how worldly progress
and worldly degeneration would be impossible,
but also how liberation from the process
would be impossible without this storehouse consciousness.
He also points out that it is possible to become free
of this process of delusion
without receiving the teaching of the storehouse consciousness.
In other words, this storehouse consciousness can be transformed
even if you don't get the teaching about the storehouse consciousness.
But even though you haven't received the teaching
and you become free of the process by other teachings,
in fact, the way you become free
would not happen if there weren't the storehouse consciousness.
You might have some other story about how you became free
or how freedom was attained,
but he's suggesting that any story you tell
about how you become free as a sentient being
without this teaching is actually not correct.
But you can become free without hearing this teaching.
But in order to make a Buddha,
in order to become most helpful in this world,
he's suggesting we need this teaching
of the unconscious resultant mind,
the unconscious mind which is the result of all past karma,
of all of us.
We need that mind in order to realize Buddhahood
and also in order to do the work of realizing Buddhahood
because it's possible to attain a lesser liberation
and think that that's enough.
A lesser, amazing, wonderful state of freedom
and think it's enough unless you've heard this teaching
and then you realize that this teaching
was actually being enacted in your liberation
and that your liberation is not yet complete.
That in fact, this mind has not been completely transformed
and until it's completely transformed, you're not done.
You haven't done your job.
So he talks about the people who attain liberation
without this teaching and he says that
they still fulfill their basic commitment
and their basic commitment is to become personally liberated.
And once personally liberated, they are very helpful,
beneficent beings in the world,
but they think they're done and they're not Buddhas.
For those who wish to be bodhisattvas
and live for the welfare of all beings,
this teaching shows them why and how,
why they must become Buddha and how they can become Buddha.
Yes?
I'm wondering if I can take some metaphors here.
I thought that I remembered something
in His Holiness's translation of the Bodhicaryavatara
about how that conflict is actually incorrect.
The idea that the Arhat is incompletely liberated
is incorrect according to His Holiness.
And I'm just curious if there are other teachers who have...
For the sake of the recording, she read somewhere
that the idea that the Arhat is incompletely liberated is incorrect.
So I'm not saying that the Arhat is incompletely liberated.
The Saṃdhinirmocana Sūtra upon which this text is based,
it says that the liberation bodies of the Arhats
and the liberation bodies of the Buddha are the same.
Okay?
So it says in that Mahāyāna Sūtra
that the Arhats and the Pratyekabuddhas
have the same liberation body as the Buddhas
and the Buddhas do not have incomplete liberation bodies.
But the Buddhas have another body
which is called the Dharmakaya or Dharma body,
or body of truth.
And that body of truth is not the same body as their liberation body.
They have liberation bodies and this Buddha body,
the true Buddha body, they have that body too.
And that body is not the same body as this liberation body.
But it says that the liberation body of the hearers,
the Śrāvakas, is the same as the liberation body of the Buddhas.
They are completely liberated, but they're not Buddhas.
And Bodhisattvas wish to become Buddhas
because the Arhats all got to be Arhats
because of a Buddha or because of Buddhas.
So Bodhisattvas wish to make more Arhats
just like Buddhas do.
But Bodhisattvas also wish to help people
who are not interested in being Arhats,
who want to be Buddhas.
And that's a different process.
And that process requires this teaching according to a Sangha.
It doesn't say, I don't remember it saying in the sutra,
you must have the teaching of Ālaya-Vijñāna
in order to become a Buddha.
I don't remember saying that, but it is the sutra
that first most clearly introduces this teaching.
Now I'd like to tell you some really difficult thing
in the last class.
And what the thing is, is that there's two levels
of dependent co-arising within the storehouse consciousness.
So this text is saying that in the great vehicle
there is a teaching about dependent co-arising.
And in the earlier teachings
there was also a teaching of dependent co-arising.
Teaching of dependent co-arising again
seems to have been the central teaching
along with, perhaps you could say,
along with selflessness,
seemed to be the central constructive
or positive teaching of the Buddha.
One teaching is about the way things aren't.
The other teaching is about the way things appear to be
or how they come to appear and disappear.
So there is a teaching of dependent co-arising
in the early Buddhism and then in the great vehicle.
Now there is another teaching of dependent co-arising
and that is the teaching of dependent co-arising
within or about or including the teaching
of dependent co-arising.
It's talking about dependent co-arising
within the storehouse consciousness.
And Asanga, the author of this text,
says that the most profound and subtle teaching
of dependent co-arising is the one
within the storehouse consciousness,
is the one that includes
a clear articulation of an unconscious
as part of dependent co-arising.
And then he says there are two levels
of this dependent co-arising.
Two levels of the dependent co-arising
within the storehouse consciousness.
One kind is called the dependent co-arising
which distinguishes essences.
Or you could say, yeah, the dependent co-arising
in which essences are being distinguished.
The other kind of dependent co-arising,
the second kind which is kind of like the first kind
in the sense of historically it's the one
that people are most aware of,
but it's called the second kind in this book.
The second kind of dependent co-arising
is a dependent co-arising in terms of
discriminating pleasant and unpleasant.
So one kind of dependent co-arising
in the storehouse consciousness
is about distinguishing or
apportioning or distributing essences to things,
self-natures to things.
The other kind of dependent co-arising
is dependent co-arising which
distinguishes pleasant and unpleasant
or which apportions pleasant and unpleasant.
Just let me say a little bit more
and I'll give you examples.
Okay, so I've told you these two types.
Now, dependent co-arising that distinguishes essences
means that the arising of all things
is supported upon the container consciousness.
For it, the container consciousness
is the cause of distinguishing essences.
All things, that's the first type.
The second type is that which distinguishes
pleasant and unpleasant is the 12-fold
dependent co-arising,
for it distinguishes various different
causes for pleasant and unpleasant
in the good and evil destinies.
So the example for the second type,
starting with the second one,
which is the traditional one,
is that there's a 12-fold chain of causation
and it starts with affliction,
the basic affliction of ignorance,
and based on the basic affliction of ignorance,
beings act.
They're living in ignorance,
they're living in believing in a self
and because of that they suffer
and then that leads to action
and action then has a result of consciousness
and then follows
and that consciousness that results
from the action based on ignorance
is the storehouse consciousness.
And then based on the storehouse consciousness
all these active states of consciousness arise
and then several more phases are spoken of
in this process of dependent co-arising
now of the active states.
The next one's called name and form,
which is the psychophysical active consciousnesses.
And the next one comes,
is the six basic sense bases
and the next one that comes is contact
and the next one that comes is feeling.
So these are the four-part articulation
of the process by which the active consciousnesses
arise from consciousness.
Arise from what consciousness?
In this text now we say it's arising from alaya
because alaya is a resultant consciousness.
What does it result from?
It results from karma.
What kind of karma?
Karma which is coming from ignorance.
So it goes ignorance or affliction,
karma to do something about it
and the result in that karma is again active consciousness
but the first time it's mentioned
it's not articulated into the four different parts.
It's just saying action,
which means active consciousness.
It has a result which is called consciousness.
Based on that consciousness
now we have a more articulated version
of the active consciousnesses
and following them,
culminating in feeling.
What kind of feeling?
Pleasant and unpleasant and indeterminate.
So that's the story of the arising
of pleasant and unpleasant feelings
and then following these pleasant and unpleasant feelings
comes more affliction.
What kind of affliction?
Craving, clinging
and as a result of this karma of craving and clinging,
this afflictive process now,
we have becoming,
karma, more karma.
As a result of this karma,
we have birth
and then we have aging, old age,
sickness and death
and all other kinds of suffering
which are based on the results of karma
which are based on afflictive ignorance,
which are based on active karmic consciousness,
which is based on this unconscious alaya,
which is a result of previous karma,
which arise from ignorance.
So this twelvefold chain,
it starts out with an abbreviated version
of the whole cycle.
Affliction, action, result.
Affliction, action, result.
Ignorance, karma, consciousness.
What consciousness?
Alaya.
The active consciousnesses
are not the result of active consciousnesses.
The active consciousnesses in this model
are the result of the active consciousnesses.
That's part of what this teaching is about.
If you say that the active consciousnesses
are the result of the active consciousnesses,
it doesn't make sense.
Because the active consciousnesses, when they go away,
do not make a very good cause
for the arising of active consciousness.
But the alaya,
which is the result of active consciousness,
will be the result of active consciousness,
which is alaya,
will be in the next moment.
Not only the result of the last moment,
but the result of all the moments,
because it isn't just what you did in the last moment
that gives rise to the present moment,
as you may have noticed.
If you think,
I'm going to be nice to so-and-so in the next moment,
you aren't necessarily going to be nice,
especially if you were mean to so-and-so
millions of times before.
And then you thought,
I'm going to be nice from now on to so-and-so.
And then, bam, you're not.
That's because your wish to be nice,
although it does have effects
and does transform this consciousness,
it transforms it just a little.
And all the other times
when you didn't think about being kind,
they're also there,
along with this one or more times
when you thought of being kind.
So that's the dependent co-arising
in terms of distinguishing wholesome and unwholesome,
in terms of pleasant and unpleasant,
or agreeable and disagreeable,
and that goes along with these active karmic states.
The other kind,
and so now I'm presenting to you
to look at that twelvefold chain of causation,
which many of you have seen before,
but now look at it in terms of
first there's the basic affliction of ignorance
and the basic affliction of ignorance
is not according, again,
I'm talking about the second type of dependent co-arising
which is really similar to the ancient,
early Buddhist teaching of dependent co-arising,
but this time it's different
because we're saying this consciousness
which is called basic affliction of ignorance,
it's a type of consciousness which carries the ignorance,
but that basic affliction of ignorance
is not the storehouse consciousness.
It's not the storehouse consciousness.
As came up last week or the week before,
the storehouse consciousness
is karmically indeterminate
and the storehouse consciousness is undefiled.
However, it carries the results of all defiled states,
but it itself is undefiled.
Now we're starting, number one, defilement.
What defilement?
The defilement of ignorance,
the fundamental defilement, ignorance.
There's secondary defilements.
There's greed, hate, and delusion.
Greed and hate are also defilements.
Envy and jealousy and violence,
they're also defilements.
But the fundamental affliction is ignorance
and that's not a liar.
And based on that fundamental affliction,
action arises.
And based on that, the results of that
are based on that, the results of that is the alaya.
And then based on that is the active consciousnesses.
And then the active consciousnesses
lead to results which, again, lead to more affliction,
which lead to more karma,
which lead to more results and so on.
That's the one type of dependent co-arising.
The other type, however, is different.
The other type is the process by which,
based on past discriminations of self,
there's now a present attribution of self
to some object of active awareness.
And so the second type is not so much about these destinies,
these situations in which we're experiencing
positive and negative sensation
and where we're doing wholesome and unwholesome karma.
It's more talking about how the states arise from alaya
and how the states transform alaya
and how alaya supports the arising of states
and how in this process there is an attribution
of essences to things in this process.
But the dependent co-arising is more spoken of
in terms of how these two types of consciousness
are co-evolving and co-creating each other.
Now, as we said before, there's another type of consciousness
which is called manas.
There are two types of manas.
One is serving as the organ
for the arising of mind consciousness.
And also it serves as the immediate antecedent condition
for all the sense consciousnesses.
But there's a second kind of manas
which carries the ignorance.
And that second kind of manas coexists
with both these types of dependent co-arising.
So in one case, in a sense,
the defiling manas is the first link in the twelvefold chain.
And that first link in the twelvefold chain
isn't just there in the first link.
It's just in the first link.
All we're talking about is a consciousness
which is defiled by ignorance, that's all.
And the consciousness that's defiled by ignorance is,
the consciousness which really carries the ignorance is manas.
So in a sense, in the twelvefold chain of causation,
in this teaching here,
the first step is this defiled mind called manas.
The second step is active consciousness.
The third step is the result of active consciousness,
which will now be the support for the arising of more active consciousness.
In the first type of dependent co-arising,
going back to the first one,
this process by which these two types of consciousness,
the unconscious cognition and the conscious cognition,
the way they work together,
the manas is there too.
The manas is there too.
And it is defiling the active states.
But also, the alaya is supporting its life,
but the alaya is not defiled by it.
So the alaya can support an undefiled state.
And if we study the creative process
by which the unconscious gives rise to the conscious
and the conscious in the present,
or the unconscious,
or our past gives rise to our present active consciousness,
if we study this process by which that happens
and by which active consciousness transforms our past consciousness,
our past, which is the consciousness,
which is the result of all action,
this defiling mind will be abandoned.
And the process of attributing essences will cease.
If we study the process by which the unconscious and the conscious
are mutually causing each other,
study that process,
not really studying how they are being defiled
by this other consciousness,
just study the process by which they co-create each other,
the mind which carries the idea of independent self will be abandoned.
That mind which carries the independent self
will not be able to live.
In fact, the mind which carries
the fundamental ignorance and which defiles minds
does not live in the creative process
by which active consciousnesses arise
and influence the storehouse consciousness.
And the storehouse consciousness supports the active consciousness
and is influenced by them.
The actual causal relationship between these two types of consciousness,
the actual causality of it, the actual creativity of it,
there's no place for a self there.
But the thing that holds the self and suffers with the self
gets abandoned as we get more and more into the process of this creative process.
It gets, you could say, burned up.
But that's not the end of the creative process.
And when it gets burned up,
shortly after getting burned up,
relatively shortly after getting burned up,
like in the story of the Buddha,
in the first teaching that he gave,
one of the people, he was teaching five people,
and one of the people in that conversation that he was having,
listening to him,
one of the people, just listening to him talk about causation,
in the first talk, which is just, you know,
if you write the talk down, it's only like two pages in English.
So by the time he finished that talk,
one of them had already abandoned this defiled manas.
He talked this guy, these four people, through the process
enough for one of them to enter it
and find a place where there's no defiling mind,
where there's no ignorance,
where there's no belief in self.
And then within a short time,
the other four also entered that place of creativity,
that teaching of causation, and became liberated.
And within about a month or so,
all of them had not only entered the place
and become liberated from this defilement,
but had exercised it all the way to the point of arhatship.
There's four stages,
and one of them entered the first stage of liberation in one talk.
All of them entered all five, four stages
within a month or so, according to the tradition.
Now, this is an example where they heard this other teaching
and they did not hear the teaching of the laya,
apparently, in that story.
So the teaching of the laya would go beyond this liberation state
and work in the form of transforming the entire laya,
which means working to transform the entire world,
the entire enclosure world that people live in.
The entire world that non-enlightened people live in,
that the bodhisattva keeps working on that world,
even if they themselves are free of this defiled manas.
And they would study these two types of dependent co-arising
in this enclosure.
Within the laya, the bodhisattvas are studying
both types of dependent co-arising.
They're studying the one by which you get into these states
of pleasant and unpleasant, wholesome and unwholesome,
and they're studying the process by which
the undefiled, neutral unconscious gives rise
to wholesome and unwholesome states.
But the emphasis here is not,
in the first type of dependent co-arising,
is not on the wholesomeness and unwholesomeness.
It's not on the destinies that you get into by this process.
It's on the process of attributing the essence
and to find the place in the process
where there isn't any.
And there isn't any, really,
in the fullness of the process.
But the other one's important, too,
because that's where people are really into
and stuck in their suffering.
So they also work in that realm.
So that's a big teaching I offer you,
and that's section 19, 20, 21, and 22 in chapter one.
But I decided to give that to you,
because if you read it without this,
it wouldn't be so clear as it is now.
Was there a hand raised?
Yes?
The way I understand it is,
can I just maybe put it in my own words?
Yes, definitely.
That process with the 12 links
is sort of like a logical,
cognitive, logical way of explaining
dependent co-arising.
Yes.
And the other one is more of like emotional,
of looking at your own emotional state
and that actually there's nothing in it.
See through the emotional state as empty.
That's how I understand the difference between the two.
And it's the same, essentially,
but it's just, in a nutshell,
the one about the essence is to see that there is no essence.
Is that correct?
The one about the essence is what?
The essence is to see through there is no essence.
There isn't any.
Right.
But again, here I'm emphasizing that
the way of seeing that is by to actually enter into
the creative process
by which our active consciousness is arising,
which again at the beginning I say,
in order to do that we have to say,
we have to give, in Nietzsche's word,
a sacred yes to these active states,
these active afflictive states of mind and body.
We have to say, yes, I'm going to study this.
Yes, I'm going to practice with this.
Yes, I'm going to practice with this.
And yes, I'm going to practice with this.
And yes, I'm going to practice with this.
And if you say maybe,
yes, I'm going to practice with maybe.
And if you say I'm not going to,
yes, I'm going to practice with I'm not going to.
No matter what comes,
we need to sort of say,
okay, I'm going to start over with this
and do the practice.
Yes, Elena?
Yes, Elena?
Pardon?
Are they part of the process of delusion?
Of evolution.
Yes, they are.
But apparently,
they do not understand language,
so this instruction,
apparently they cannot receive it directly.
They can only receive it indirectly
through the people who can hear it.
So, if we hear it
and we practice with it,
and we practice with it,
then our practice affects them.
But the teaching is primarily geared
for these linguistic beings,
which are humans.
And hopefully,
as we get better at this practice,
we will be able to prepare them
to someday be able to receive teachings.
Are there other things you'd like to bring up?
I'd like to bring up...
Also, I recommend, if you have any suggestions
on where to go from here,
I plan to continue
studying this text,
but
if you don't want me to do it in the yoga room
and you want me to do some other kinds of things
in the yoga room,
I'm happy to do that,
because I have other venues
to do this teaching,
but I'm going to keep going forward
in this text.
I'm very enthusiastic about it.
I'm like a little kid
about this text.
I just think it's...
I'm really impressed.
It really is offering some
wonderful new perspectives,
wonderful subtleties
on the Buddhist teaching.
This person, Asanga, who wrote it,
is...
especially in this first chapter,
he's quite logical in explaining
why it doesn't make sense
that things are going the way they're going
if you don't have this
storehouse consciousness involved
in your explanation.
If you just see the way the world works,
and the way people suffer,
and the way they get in trouble,
and the way some people get freed,
you would not be able to understand
how they get in trouble.
You would not be able to correctly understand
your explanation of how they get in trouble
and how they become free would not
hold water without this teaching,
he says.
And he's quite logical about it.
Somebody may disagree
with him and think his reasoning
is not too good, but he's definitely
reasoning in a very intense way.
But this person whose
reasoning
is a bodhisattva,
is a person who
just happened to be
very
enthusiastic
about studying the Buddha's teaching,
and he did study the Buddha's teaching,
but he felt
some lack in his understanding,
some lack in his practice.
And he felt, he somehow had a vision or something
that in order to
really enter the
deepest possible meaning
of the Buddha's teaching,
he had to meet
the future Buddha,
the next Buddha.
So this is a person who's living in India
or Southeast Asia
around the 3rd century,
or the 4th century I should say,
in the Common Era.
Really into Buddhist studies,
really enthusiastic,
and he gets
this idea he has to meet the future Buddha.
he was not, I don't think
he was yet, I don't know if he was
yet a practitioner
of the Mahayana, but whether it's Mahayana
or not,
in the Buddha's teaching the Buddha said the next Buddha
is going to be called
Maitreya, which means
it's related to the word Maitri
or Metta, it means loving
kindness. The next Buddha is going to be
called loving kindness.
After I die, Shakyamuni Buddha said,
the next time there's a Buddha
around here,
after this whole situation falls apart
and we start a whole new cycle,
the next Buddha is going to be called Maitreya.
And Sangha,
the author of this text,
heard about that,
believed in that, and felt like he needed to meet this
Bodhisattva.
This Bodhisattva who's kind of in the wings,
waiting for his turn
to be Buddha.
And he went, he gave up
his studies and his teaching, he was already
a noted
teacher of Buddhist doctrine,
and went into a cave
where he basically
prayed and invited this
Bodhisattva to come and meet him.
And he did so
for three years.
And after three years the Bodhisattva had not come
and he
said, okay, I give up.
And he was leaving his meditation area,
but something happened,
something amazing,
auspicious thing happened,
which made him feel like, okay, three more years.
And he did.
He practiced
various types of visualizations
and invitations,
tried to imagine all possible ways
to make this Bodhisattva willing to come
and be with him and help him
understand the teaching.
I think maybe
like the teachings, there were Mahayana
teachings at this time, like the
Prajnaparamita and the Lotus Sutra.
He didn't understand them
well enough, according to his own
humble opinion.
So he spent three more years and again
he gave up.
And again he was leaving his retreat
and again something
happened that made him
feel like he should go back
into the cave.
And he did
for three more years.
And then after nine years he also decided
to give up and he left.
And then again something happened
and he went back for
three more.
Then after twelve he again
decided to quit.
And he left.
And this time he ran into
a dog
lying on the road.
And the dog
was really
in ill
health and
it had sores all over it.
And maggots had moved
into the sores.
And I guess
he didn't know.
Back in those days they weren't as smart as
we are.
He didn't know that maggots clean the wounds.
They do.
He thought the maggots
were not doing very well.
They weren't helping the dog out.
So he decided he was going to clean the maggots
out of the dog's wounds.
But then as he started to do it he realized
he would hurt the maggots.
And he didn't want to hurt the maggots.
So he removed them with his tongue.
And as he was
removing them with the tongue
I believe something like
the dog started to
change.
And the dog changed into
this celestial
bodhisattva, the next Buddha.
And Maitreya said,
Why didn't you
come earlier?
And
Maitreya said,
I was always with you the whole time.
As soon as you
started to go to the cave I was
with you. But your compassion
was not sufficient for you to see me.
And Maitreya was happy to meet
Asanga.
And Asanga was
happy to meet Maitreya.
But Asanga couldn't believe that
Maitreya had been there the whole time
with him.
So
he's going to test,
he's going to bring Maitreya into
a town and show people
Maitreya to see if those people could see him.
So he took Maitreya
with him into the town
and said,
Look folks, look at Maitreya,
the future Buddha is here.
And everybody in town
thought he was crazy because all they saw
was this very sick dog over his shoulder.
And Maitreya said, See?
So then anyway,
this amazing creature
hung out with this amazing creature.
This dependently co-arisen
bodhisattva named Asanga
spent quite a bit of time
with this dependently co-arisen bodhisattva
called Maitreya.
They went to a study
place which is called
Tushita Heaven.
And there
Maitreya
gave Asanga various teachings.
And then Asanga came back
from that heavenly realm
and wrote them down
on the land of India.
And we have those texts
that he wrote.
Basically he was
the future Buddha's
amanuensis.
So he wrote them down
and we have them and
these are something we can study in the future.
For example, the Abhisamaya
Alankara is one of them.
And then Asanga started writing some texts on his own.
And when he had
difficulty, like when he was writing this text,
this is not
written by
the future Buddha, this is written by
the bodhisattva Asanga.
When he got to difficult
parts in here, he
would invite Maitreya
to come and help him.
So this is actually written by Asanga
with Maitreya's help.
So it's really quite a
nice opportunity
for us here.
So anyway,
I'm intending to keep
studying this.
Not just to sort of, what do you call it,
be bullheaded
about it.
Because I want to.
I actually want to and if you study it
with me in some venue or other,
that will encourage me.
And your questions and comments
and
your experiences shared with me
encourage me to keep going.
So with your help I will continue
to go through this text.
And we've just done the first,
so far in this class, we've just done the first
five sections. Although I just
did jump to section
19, 20, 21 and 22.
Although I just covered section
19 and
I just did section 19 tonight.
And I also went to the end
last week and the week before.
There's a lot more material in this text,
the first chapter.
But it's basically, it's
encouragement to study the process,
the dependent
co-arising
of the afflictive
consciousnesses together with this
storehouse consciousness
which itself is not really afflicted.
It's not really defiled.
It's undefiled.
The results,
the results
of defiled activity
are undefiled.
When you go to
these destinies, I was surprised to hear
this when I was studying
teachings on these destinies.
When you go to the human realm,
this is one a lot of us are familiar with,
when you go to heaven,
when you go to
the animal realm,
when you go to hungry ghost realm,
when you go to hell,
the state of hell
is
undefiled neutral.
Hell is
undefiled.
It's suffering,
non-stop, no pleasure,
not even any neutral sensation.
It's non-stop pain.
It's non-stop alienation.
It's non-stop torment.
It's non-stop
destruction of life.
Life.
It's a kind of life that's
just really
it's the worst.
Sort of.
It's not really the worst.
I'll tell you about the worst later.
But it's the result.
Hell is
a resultant state.
And that resultant state of hell
is supported by
the storehouse consciousness.
But the resultant state of hell,
the destiny itself,
is not an active state.
The destiny is not an active state.
It is a world.
And the world is undefiled neutral.
And then in the world,
alaya supports the arising of
defiled active consciousness.
And defiled active consciousness
can be wholesome
or unwholesome.
But the result of wholesome
defiled action
is undefiled and neutral.
And the results
of wholesome action,
defiled wholesome action,
is undefiled neutral.
And the results of indeterminate
defiled action
is undefiled neutral.
And undefiled neutral results
support the arising
of more defiled states,
which can be
wholesome, unwholesome, and neutral.
Wholesome states,
defiled wholesome states,
have the results of undefiled neutral
container consciousness.
Defiled unwholesome states
have the results of undefiled neutral
container consciousness.
And that undefiled neutral state,
container consciousness, gives rise to more
defiled states. And then, once again,
if you're in this process,
at the center of this process,
at the middle of that process,
defilement gets burned away.
So we need to
say
yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes
to what's going on so we can enter
into
the process of purification.
In this
dependent co-arising
of
storehouse consciousness and active consciousness.
Storehouse consciousness,
active consciousness, storehouse consciousness.
Round and round.
So the first chapter is about
this process, encouraging
us to enter it. The second chapter is
distinguishing
the different characters of the things that arise
from this creative process.
The third chapter
is about how to enter into
the character of the things that arise from this
creative process, and so on.
But this first chapter
in some sense,
we always have to take care of this first chapter
in the practice.
We always have to be...
In other words, for the practice to really
work, we have to be involved in creation.
We have to be artists.
And then in that process, we can
bring in these other teachings,
gradually fold the other teachings
into the process. But what's going on,
what we've been talking about so far,
doesn't stop when you move into the
next chapter.
Yes?
Is the underlying
neutral? Is there
a world
created by results?
It's not created by results. The results
of karma.
Karma is wholesome, unwholesome,
and indeterminate, or neutral.
Three kinds of karma.
Until we have entered into and
understand the creative process of dependent
co-arising,
our states are defiled
by a belief
in self.
Until we understand this process,
our consciousnesses are more or less
defiled.
Even though we might not be greedy or angry,
we're still defiled
if we don't really understand
the insubstantiality of all
things. And these things
arose, in the first
type of dependent co-arising, these things arose
by attributing
essences to them.
That's how everything arises. Now we've got the
situation where things have arisen
by apportioning essences.
Now we need to enter into the creative process
and abandon the essence
attributing part of the process.
And the results
are
undefiled, neutral.
Results aren't really wholesome karma.
Results of wholesome karma
aren't wholesome karma.
They're the results of wholesome karma.
So
pain
is not itself
karmically
negative or positive.
It tends
to be the results
of unwholesome
karma. But it itself
is not unwholesome karma.
And it's not defiled
in itself as a result.
But
our actions
are
received as defiling
influence
of belief in the self.
Pardon?
Well, again,
defile, there's two kinds of defile.
There's three kinds
of defilement.
Or there's three kinds of affliction.
Just a second.
Yeah.
There's three kinds of
defilement.
I think I've been
I'll do some research on this,
but there's three kinds of defilement.
There's defilement
of
There's defilement
of ignorance,
there's defilement of karma,
and there's defilement of
maybe I should say
Yeah.
Let's say there's three kinds of defilement.
Defilement of
ignorance, defilement of action,
and defilement of result.
Another way to say it would be
Let's say it that way.
There's three kinds of defilement.
So defilement means
affliction.
The word for defilement
is klesha.
And there's a slightly different word
which is called samklesha,
which we could
translate as affliction.
I thought you said
pain is a defile.
Pain is a feeling.
Feelings in themselves
are not defile.
Defilement
would be
a constriction
of the pain.
It would be a suffering
in addition to the pain.
And the suffering in addition to pain
would be similar to the suffering
in addition to pleasure.
So when there's pleasure,
there's one kind of pain,
one kind of suffering.
When there's pain,
there's also suffering.
And when there's neutral sensation,
there's also suffering.
But the suffering in the case
of positive, negative,
and neutral sensation,
the suffering is basically
the same suffering.
When you're in pain,
you have the suffering of pain.
When you're in pleasure,
you have the suffering of pleasure.
When you're in pain,
you have the suffering of maybe
wishing that it would go away
or wishing that it wouldn't last.
When you have pleasure,
you have the suffering
of wishing it would last
or being afraid it would go away.
Or when it does go away, you suffer.
In neutral sensation,
you have the pain
of being a conditioned being
but believing that
you're not conditioned.
You're basically believing yourself
as being insulted by conditionality.
So that's painful.
So the discomfort
that goes with any feeling
comes from a defilement
that goes with any feeling.
So because we believe in a self,
all of our different feelings
are painful.
But the pain itself
is not the defilement.
As a matter of fact,
the pain is an indication
of the defilement.
The pain is an indication
that we do not really understand
pain, pleasure,
or neutral sensation.
And the way to understand
the nature of pain,
pleasure,
and neutral sensation
is by saying yes
to pain, pleasure,
and neutral sensation
and entering into the creative process
by which these results,
these feelings arise.
Pardon?
The basic defilement
is a belief in a self.
I can't use the word defilement
in what definition?
The definition of defilement.
Oh, the definition of defilement
is ignorance.
The basic type
of defilement
is ignorance.
And then there's other kinds
of defilement,
like hatred is a defilement,
and greed is a defilement,
and laziness is a defilement,
and lack of faith
is a defilement.
Selfishness is a defilement.
Envy is a defilement.
Jealousy is a defilement.
Lying is a defilement.
Violence is a defilement.
These are defilements.
The basic one is ignorance
or delusion.
And those ways of being
defile the living being.
They constrict and distort
and confine.
In that sense,
they're also afflictions.
They're the source of pain.
Does that make sense now?
All of our active states
are afflicted
as long as there's a belief
in self
coexisting with them.
The fact that we have
in the past
had these afflicted,
defiled states of mind
are supporting us
the arising of more now.
Yes.
Yes.
Sure.
Now and later.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
I was thinking about that also.
You asked what I'd like to teach.
I think I'd like to
hear more of
your interpretation
of the teachings.
Even those five sections
we haven't gone through line by line.
But I understand that it doesn't work
to go line by line in a situation like this.
I don't want you all to have your books
in front of you.
The books I tell you about
just so you know where I'm coming from.
Because I am going through this line by line
over and over, line by line,
over and over, line by line.
I'm doing that.
And this leads me to then be able to talk to you
without going through
line by line, because I've almost memorized
the text, so that
I don't have to read it line by line
in order to speak the text to you.
So, I'm not going to
go through line by line.
In any situation, there's one group
where there's two groups where I'm going through
line by line, but those are really small groups
and everybody's got the book.
So I am trying to not go through line by line.
But occasionally I tell you
a little quote here or there,
like I did tonight, I told you about those two types
of the pinnacle arising.
So I went through line by line,
but I just did four sentences.
So if you don't want to hear any,
if you'd like to hear none,
let me know.
Because I gave you a little bit
of the actual text,
but most of what I said was my
interpretation, my
understanding.
A lot of what I said is not in the text.
A lot of what I said about the text
is not in the text.
Just like a sangha is telling us
things which are not
in any sutra.
He is saying things
based on
wide study, he's saying things that he feels
make sense that aren't anywhere else.
And based on my study of this
and other texts, I'm telling you things
which aren't in this text.
But I hear what you're saying, and I actually
am trying to do that.
So like at Green Gulch, I gave a talk, too,
and people walked in who first-timed
Green Gulch, and I talked about this text.
But,
you know,
it doesn't work to go through
line by line.
I understand. Thank you.
It doesn't work to go through
line by line unless everybody's
got the book, basically.
Or unless we just do one line
and we say it over and over again
until everybody's memorized it.
And then we study that one line.
That would probably work also.
Well, thank you
for this night.
Many of you
have come back after
vacations and so on.
But this final
class is well attended, and I appreciate
you hanging in there to the end.
And if you have any further
requests or
instructions on
what you'd like me to teach here in Berkeley,
I'm welcome. I don't have to do this
text. I will be doing it
other places, but I could do more
of this. I could do
more teachings coming from
this text.
And if you'd like to have less on the text
and more on me,
who happens to be reading it,
we could
go that way.
The latest
kid
named Rab
who happens to study this
stuff.
Thank you very much.