Namo tassa bhagavato rahato sama sambuddhassa Namo tassa bhagavato rahato sama sambuddhassa Namo tassa bhagavato rahato sama sambuddhassa As announced, we are going to talk about the Buddhist psychology or Abhidhamma. But as it is a very big subject, And during my stay here, I do not have sufficient texts so that my lectures will be only introduction to Abhigamma.

[01:23]

This is the higher teaching of the Buddha as appeared in Theravada Pali Canon. In the Thai arrangement of the scriptures, we have 12 volumes of this Adhidhamma. And this is a very difficult subject normally. It's not very easy to learn. But for those of you who have been practicing satsang for some time, I think it is easier to understand. But for those who haven't had any contact with meditation or satsang, it would be rather difficult to appreciate the teaching

[02:33]

So I think to begin with, I'd like to tell you the story as the source of Abhidhamma, or how it came to be. In the time of the Buddha, he had a very great challenge by those who are outside of his order, his community, or the teachers in his contemporary time, said that If the Buddha had some supernatural power, he should show himself in the public.

[03:49]

Otherwise, the people will not follow him. So all the followers, the disciples, all the enlightened disciples, who had supernatural power, didn't want the Buddha to do it himself, but they would like to do for him. And each one of them explained to the Buddha what they would do. The Buddha listened to all the disciples And then he said he appreciated the intention and the good wishes, but at that time it was essential for him to do it himself. Because if he didn't do it, those people would still have doubt and make propaganda that the Buddha didn't have

[05:02]

any supernatural power. So it will be dangerous to the teaching. And we can see the Buddha when he sees that something dangerous is going to happen to the teaching, then he will show himself. So that he performed what we call twin miracle real miracle by inventing artificial two artificial putas walking in the sky discussing about the Dharma and that gave a great surprise to those who are against him because they themselves didn't have power, such power to do.

[06:07]

So they all gave in to the Buddha so that the Buddha could continue his teaching in a very prosperous way. After doing that, He didn't come back to the human world, it was said. He went to the heaven to observe the land in the Ducitta heaven, the first class of the heaven, where his mother was living there as a deva, a shining being. And it was said that the Buddha gave sermons on Abhidhamma, the Buddhist psychology, for the first time to his mother.

[07:20]

And the idea or the Buddha's thought was that human beings would find it difficult to understand his teaching. So only the devas can understand it better. And also, he would like to repay his debt to his mother, who gave him milk and brought him up. And he said the best thing to repay the things the mother had done to him is to give sermons on this very difficult, profound subject of psychology and philosophy, which is the highest teaching of his.

[08:28]

So the Buddha felt very deep gratitude for his mother, and he did this. Well, he gave the sermons on Abhidhamma for three months. And when he came back after three months, he came down to the earth. And for the first time, he opened all the worlds, the world of heavens, the world of hell, and the world of human beings. So all the people and devas and suffering beings could see one another for the first time because of the Buddha opening the world and the world. So then he gave, he repeated all the sermons to his chief disciple Sariputta

[09:36]

Sariputta was a disciple of great wisdom. So he could understand what the Buddha means, or what the teaching means. So that we don't really have the direct teaching from the Buddha himself, but from Sariputta, who explained the Abhidhamma to other monks. And it was written down so that it forms the third collection of the Buddha's teaching. As you might have known that we have three collections, according to Pali Canon. The collection of Vinaya, or the Book of Discipline, It means the monastic rules for the monks and nuns and for the lay people.

[10:41]

And according to Thai arrangements, there are eight volumes of the book of this clip. And then the second collection is collection of the sutta or sutra in Sanskrit. There are discourses the Buddha gave to different people at different places and on different occasions. We have about 25 volumes of this collection, the largest one. And then the third collection is the collection of Abhidhamma. So this we call Tititaka in Pali. Three baskets. In the former Thai, they classified things by putting them in the baskets, in different baskets, in the Indian Thai, in the ancient Thai.

[11:56]

So that we have three baskets for collecting the teachings of Sakyamuni Buddha. This is the brief story about the Abhidhamma. So that if we would explain the meaning of the word Abhidhamma, means extra, higher. Dhamma is teaching. So extra or higher teaching. In the Vigdhamakha we talk about four things. Citta, mind or consciousness, Cetasika, the mental states or mental properties.

[13:04]

Rupa, the natural form and the natural energies or the qualities of the body. And Nibbana, the highest goal. So there are four things. And all are put into the detail, together with the ways and the means for achieving the goal in the teaching. Now, first of all, I think we should understand the meaning of mind. There are two words which are often used in the Pali tenor. or in the Theravada literature, citta and vijnana.

[14:07]

Citta is normally transmitted into mind, and vijnana is consciousness. In our English words, we find it difficult to give definition to mind and consciousness. People use mind in different meanings. People use consciousness in different meanings. Perhaps We can understand mind in the sense that it is the something which thinks, remembers, reasons and wills.

[15:12]

So the mind has the capacity or the function of thinking, remembering, understanding or knowing and willing. But in the Vedāma, they gave a very short meaning that the mind is that which thinks. But thinking in the sense of knowing, knowing the sub, the object, In this aspect, we can see also in the Dhammapada, when the Buddha talked about mind, you might have read some stanzas, some verses in the Dhammapada.

[16:17]

The first one is that the mind is forerunner of all conditioned things. Or perhaps in the Christian sense we can say, in the beginning was the mind. The beginning was the mind, not in the beginning was the world. The mind is the forerunner, the foregoer of all the conditioned things. Things are created by mind. Mind is pursuit. So mind is something very powerful in man. When man does not understand mind, he becomes the problem of himself.

[17:21]

So when we understand mind in this sense, we will see that... Myself, I like to explain mind in three ways. Mind is the knowing. Mind is the process of knowing. Knowing object, which is one of the meaning, which is the meaning of inabhidhamma. And mind as thinking, the capacity to think, not just to know, but to think about things, including imagination, speculation, or reasoning. And the third meaning of mind is something which has the nature of wonder.

[18:33]

The mind can produce wonderful things because it is wondrous. It has the nature of wonder. In this connection, the Buddha had a very interesting conversation with Mahavira's disciple named Upali. You know Mahavira was the founder of Jainism. The Jain China people observed the nakedness of the body. They don't wear anything, and they are wandering monks. The Mahavira was in the same time as the Buddha. In fact, he was only one year older than the Buddha.

[19:38]

And they went out to search for truth at the same time. But Mahavira spent about twelve years practicing self-mortification. He believed that by tormenting the body, one will achieve ultimate truth. So this kind of self-torture was practiced very strictly by Mahavira and his disciples. So they don't drink water if there is any insect or any animal. So they have to be very careful not to kill any living beings. And his teaching about the karma was different from the Buddha's teaching.

[20:47]

The Mahavira said that the physical action is most important than the mental action. That's why he emphasizes the physical exercises for mending the body. And Upali, who was a very wealthy man, the supporter of Mahavira and his disciples, One day he would like to see the Gautama Buddha, Sakyamuni, in order to discuss with him this matter of karma. In order to defeat the Gautama Buddha, because Upali was a very good five-speaker, he could defeat many scholars easily. So Mahavira was very happy that his disciple would like to defeat Gautama.

[22:00]

So he allowed him to go. And when he came to the Buddha and had discussion, he was convinced of the mental action as most important. through this conversation with Gautama Buddha. And then he asked the Buddha to accept him as his disciple. The Buddha said, no, we should not take such easy decision to change the teachers easily. The Buddha didn't accept. So he asked the Buddha three times. And then the Buddha said, okay, if you'd like to be my disciple, you could be, but you have to accept that you will not give up the support to the

[23:13]

Mahavira and his disciples. You should continue supporting him. So we can see now how tolerant the Buddha was, how open-minded he was. So he didn't have the idea of collecting disciples or followers. And this also says that tolerance is very essential in Buddhist practice. So after that, things became smoother, the relationship between Jainism and Buddhism. The Buddha convinced Upali of the mental action by saying that the mind with its power can produce wonderful things so that we can see the beauty of things or the

[24:38]

the arts, architectures, are produced by mind, human mind. But some other things which are beyond the superficial ordinary mind can also be produced by the deeper mind, the more powerful mind. So that this character of mind is quite essential. So that we have the three meanings, thinking, knowing, and having the nature of vanda. Then we come to consciousness. Now consciousness, when we say I am conscious, consciousness is always connected with the subject.

[25:45]

The consciousness is the knower, conceiver, thinker, feeler of the subject. To be conscious is to know. So that consciousness must have object because it becomes the subject itself. We can see now we are conscious of our body. We are conscious of the external things. We are conscious of the mind too, the mental activities. And in fact, the consciousness is the relation between subject and object.

[26:51]

If there is no relation between subject and object, there is no knowing in this orderly sense of the word. So that object is essential and Buddhism emphasizes object. Buddhism does not lay emphasis on the subject. We will go into detail later. That's why Buddhism is objective way of looking and perceiving things. But you will say that the subject, as we perceive in Buddhism, is not self-same, permanent entity, but a transitory state of consciousness. What we call subject.

[27:58]

This should be very clear. And we will say now, why do we have self-sameness or we have personal identity? Personal identity arises because of the constancy of relation between subject and object. The relation is constant, continuous. Like the river, we perceive the sameness of the river and the water. But according to the shape of the river, perhaps the river has the same shape. But its shape is also subject to change and decay. It is not permanent.

[29:02]

but it may change slowly. But surely the water, the water is never the same. You look at the water running. Running water is never the same for any moment. So we human beings are not the same for any consecutive moment. We are in the constant state of flux. But because of constancy of relation between subject and object, we have personal identity. That's why identity, personal identity is only image. This is not our true being. Or in other words, it's not our real self. if you right use the self in the sense of being.

[30:04]

So we must not be deluded or deceived by personal identity which is only self-image. But we will go into the detail of this later. We start with understanding the meaning of words for definition of the words. And then the question arises, what is the object? We will say that the object is something perceived by consciousness or by mind. But we will give the meaning here that object is a relating thing. Relating thing.

[31:05]

And subject is a related object. This object of consciousness is either the object of sense or the object of thought. You understand we have five physical senses. The eyes, the ear, the nose, the tongue, and the body, the touch. The consciousness can arise through the physical sense organs. And also it can arise through the object of thought. And the object of sense is called paripanjaramana.

[32:19]

So we have five objects according to the five physical senses. So the eye will have sight or light as its object. The ear will have sound. The nose will have smell. And the tongue will have taste. And the body will have touch. Now, talking about touch, This particularly refers to the qualities of the body. There are three elements in the body. Element of extension, element of heat or temperature, and element of motion or vibration. So what we see is only the

[33:21]

extension in the space, occupation of space. So we cannot really see anything apart from this extension. The house is not a house, just only something extended. Mountain is not mountain, right? Occupation in space And the temperature, heat, also is connected with our energy. Heat exists in everything, in every cell of the body. And the motion, motion forms, motion can create pressure.

[34:25]

in our body. All the elements are not working in harmony. So that we will say the extension is kind of localization. Localization. Or extension of locality. So object is not object. In this sense. We just feel the extension. Surely heat can be touched and motion can be touched. Like physical body, the motion of the wind, the motion of even the wind inside ourselves. But perhaps the sudden motion cannot be touched. by the rough body, but it can be touched by the bodily sensations, bodily consciousness.

[35:30]

And then now we talk about the object of thought. The object of thought refers to mind. So mind becomes the object. But it is regarded as subject in our ordinary language because we can say that mind is the consciousness of an object. Mind is the consciousness of an object. But it becomes an object of thought. Mind and mental properties And the sensitive and subtle qualities of the body, sensitive qualities, sensitive parts of the body become the object of consciousness, the object of thought. Or even the subtle qualities of the body which

[36:41]

have to be talked about later on. And the next one is Panyati. Name, idea, notion, concept. We have the word Panyati. Panyati is name or idea or notion or concept. These are the objects of thought. And Nibbana too. Now, Nibbāna, the ultimate truth, is the object of thought in the sense that it becomes the object of consciousness, transcendental consciousness, we will deal with later on. So when a person becomes enlightened, his consciousness is awareness of Nibbāna, or the body term Nibbāna. so that we can see so many things involved.

[37:50]

Then Buddhism talks about objects. And we then can go on to another object. It's called the karma object. This refers to different classes of consciousness roaming about in the world of desires. Together with the mental properties, and the qualities of the body, twenty-eight in number, the very small subtle qualities of the body. And then we have another object which is called mahā-kathā object, and this refers to the classes of higher consciousness. the consciousness roaming about in the world of form and in the formless world, which is produced by meditative states, meditative absorption, or jhāna.

[38:57]

And the object is higher. Maha-kathā literally means great, gone. becoming large, becoming expensive. And then we have transcendental objects, which refer to different classes of transcendental consciousness. which is in the realm of enlightenment. There are 40 classes of this form of consciousness. Perhaps you don't need to care for the numbers. I just mention it mentally. So Nibbana is included in this transcendental object for the transcendental consciousness.

[40:03]

But this should not be mixed with transcendental meditation because we don't really know whether they go to transcendental consciousness. So we should understand the meaning of panjati a little bit more. There are two main meanings. First is that which makes known. And the second is that which is made known. So you can see that the things which makes known refer to the name and sign. The name and sign.

[41:08]

can tell us what it is. So it makes known. It makes the meaning known to us. So it makes the meaning known to us. And the second thing is the thing which is made known, that refers to the idea and notion But a very, very good word for Panyati inversion is concept. We use concept as the meaning of Panyati. So in short, we can say Panyati is the idea or notion of a thing denoted by and of its attributes, connoted by a term which is expressed in words or represented by a sign.

[42:30]

So words and signs can make us know the meaning or can make the meaning known to us, can convey the idea and notion to us. But we have to be careful too that word is only a symbol. Word is not the truth. Even the word truth is not the truth. Just the symbol of truth. That's why it's very essential for us to understand the inward content of the world. So in the Mahayana Sutra, I don't remember, it is said that don't get stuck in work like an elephant in the mud. You can see when an elephant gets stuck in the mud, it would find it very difficult to get out.

[43:35]

The same thing if we get stuck in words. We become completely confused. Then the word must be clear. We must understand the meaning. Every word we use, we must have the meaning. We must not use the words without having the clear meaning of it. And also we must not say, oh, this, this word. It must be this. Like talking about nirvana, you will say, oh yes, nirvana is this, according to its meaning, without seeing it. It's not enough. This is essential. Now you see the object of sense is always present. That's why in the Jungian psychology they talk about the four types of man.

[44:49]

One is sensation, another one is thinking, another one is intuition. and the other one is feeling sensation thinking intuition feeling so we say the sensation types of people will be able to live in reality because they are living in the present with they are living in contact with what is at the moment like we are in contact with the mountains with the river with anything we which we can sense and the thinking type is analytical mind so those who are thinking analyzing like a psychologist or psychotherapist Analysts, all these people are the thinking type. The Buddha was the thinking type, if you put it in the Jung's term, because the Buddha was the master of analysis.

[46:01]

But he didn't get stuck in words. And the intuition type is the people who can see or something very deeply. have some kind of knowing something in advance. Sometimes these people are very psychic. And normally they like ceremonies and rituals. The intuition type of people. And the feeling type has strong faith in anything. Too much faith without sufficient knowledge or understanding or wisdom. These people can be artists.

[47:08]

Be artists. All the poets are in this type of feeling people. And scientists are in the thinking type, thinking people. So that in order to be completely full man, all four must be fully developed. So man is the nucleus sitting in the middle. the center of the four. So the four are the functions of man. But he has to function in the harmonious way so that he will not go to any extreme. I think that is not too bad according to Jung. If we develop our feeling, our sensation, intuition and thinking in the right way,

[48:18]

What did I talk about? Coming to, or the feeling, the object of sense is always crescent. But nibbana, nirvana, and concept is out of time. It's called palikara-vimutta. out of time, akalika. So nirvana can find this out of time because it can be realized anytime, not at any specific time. It can happen any moment. And concept is out of time because concept is immediate mental impression. So mental impression is not something which can be put in, can be discovered in time.

[49:38]

It does not have the fixed time for it to happen. And now we should be clear about the Buddhist view of life according to the things we have explained here. We talk about two levels of our consciousness. The level of conscious consciousness. which is thought or thinking. And the level of unconscious consciousness, which is the stream of becoming. The stream of becoming. So now we can see that life is in the constant state of flux.

[50:48]

It can never stop. It's like the water, the water of life, if you like to say. So the water of life is flowing and running on according to the conditions so that the nature of impermanence, as we talked about last night, and suffering And the emptiness comes to be because of constancy of flow. So I like to talk about the sunyata, which is the main thing in all these aspects, and connect it with our practice. So when we understand that there is no abiding entity which controls life.

[51:55]

Life is controller. Life controls itself according to its conditions. So that the Buddhism does not think about or the Buddha does not talk about the creator of life. Life comes to be because of the conditions. When certain conditions are combined together, then life arises and falls on. And then Buddhism does not speak about the first cause of things. Because if we understand the law of cause and effect, then there is no first cause, there is no principle. If there is first cause, then the law of cause and effect does not exist. But in fact, the law of cause and effect exists and governs life of all beings.

[53:04]

So it should be clear that Buddhism is rather a scientific religion in a way. And it cannot be really said to be a religion in the sense of the relationship between man and supreme being because Buddhism does not talk about supreme being apart from man himself. So that this doctrine of sunyata or anatta in Pali is the denial of a permanent entity existing in man or outside of man. Man is his own creator. through his own karmic forces. And also that we can see, we look into ourselves.

[54:09]

As I talked in the beginning that our personal identity is only relation between subject and object, which is consciousness. So we don't have such personal identity apart from this image. But we have being, we can come to this real being, which is not the image, which is not the relation between subject and object. And that is the state of non-duality. So non-duality is the real state of being. When we come to the dualistic world, we see subject and object. The two, we see good and bad, we see right and wrong, man and woman. So all the dualistic things or concepts arise because of the relation between subject and object.

[55:16]

When we go beyond this relation, We come to not-duality. There is no man, there is no woman. There is no right, there is no wrong. So nothing can be said. That is always the middle way, what the Buddha talked about, the middle way. It means that we cannot say everything exists, or we cannot say nothing exists. So when you say everything exists, you have an extreme idea. Or when you say nothing exists, you have another extreme idea. So Buddhism would say that things come to be because of certain conditions. Without conditions, things disappear. So we don't say whether they exist or do not exist. And also now we observe ourselves.

[56:25]

Buddhism would say there is no thinker apart from thinking. The thinker is only image, the relation. But the thinking is the process. There is no feeler apart from feeling. There is no observer apart from observing, nor perceiver apart from perceiving. So Buddhism is very involved with the here and now. What is really happening now. Without creating image, then we will not be deceived or deluded by the image. Or then we will say that, is there anything like equal?

[57:37]

So in the true sense, in the ultimate sense, surely there is no equal. But according to consciousness, equal arises. the concept of ego arises. Now we say, what is the position of Buddhism in regard to this concept of ego? The Buddha made it clear in one of his discourses, which I could summarize to you, that what we call ego in the West has three meanings according to Buddhism. The first meaning is identification. Identifying with the names, with the forms, with the nation, with the race, with the color, with anything.

[58:46]

Identification of any form is the matter of ego. So when you identify yourself with the thinker, you are creating ego. When you identify yourself with the feeler, the ego comes to be. So there is no identification. And then we just see things as it is. Then everything is a process. Feeling is a process, thinking is a process, observing is a process. By this way, we will not make mistakes about identity. And then the second meaning of ego is possessiveness. And this implies attachment. When we say, this is my lamp, this is my paper, this is my sandal,

[59:50]

So if we put anything like mind before the objects, we have the idea of possessing, belonging to. And that is the sense of ego. That is ego. So that's why non-attachment is important. What we can possess certain things, which we don't really need, if we have non-attachment. We may have a house, we may have clothes, we may have something, but we don't really need it. We understand just only that they are essential for the needs of life, the needs for existence. But the mind is free because it is detached. Then the third meaning of ego is becoming.

[61:02]

This is a process of becoming, wanting to become. To become somebody who will have name and fame and honor. To become somebody powerful, somebody important. To become something. When we talk about the wanting to become enlightened, is that a matter of ego? Surely, if we want to become the Buddha, with a very strong desire, and we make a struggle, we are struggling to become then it is the ego's planning to become.

[62:06]

So that it will find it very difficult to become the Buddha. Because ego can never become the Buddha. To become the Buddha, desire must go. Desire must come to an end. But ego can never give up desire. So in the sense that ego must die away before Buddha appears to us. Enlightenment appears at the moment the ego is suspended and transformed. Sorry, that is why arriving at the enlightenment or sattori you come to this non-duality which is the ending of relation between subject and object.

[63:02]

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