Just before I glanced at the clock, I thought, oh, so this is the mind only, what we were just doing. It's like, that's the study, study of the mind, you know. What is it? What's it doing? How do we actually study the mind? It's not a very easy thing to do. And therefore, we have help from the ancestors, you know, how we might go about that. So... Last week we finished looking at the first two aspects of this transformation of consciousness that Vasubandhu is talking about in his essay. So we're looking at the mind and how it does what it does and how impactful our own creations, the constructs of our own minds are and what we think of as the world. So this is the whole exercise that we're working on here is It's about the self and what it sees as the world, that relationship.

[01:11]

So there are two aspects in the transformation of our consciousness. The first one was the alaya, which is the storehouse of unconscious conditioning that we all carry along with us from before our birth, most likely, because we're already conditioned by the kind of species selection that's gone on from evolution and the fact that the earth was formed and all of those things we carry, we embody our history, the entire history of creation is embodied in each of us. And so we're carriers of all of the conditions that result in us sitting here right now being what we call alive. We are alive. So the alaya, the unconscious, the storehouse, the bag of conditioning is the first aspect in the transformation of consciousness. And the second aspect is the manas, lover that believes in itself.

[02:12]

and itself that it's in love with is the alaya. So it's a nice little internal system there. These two little characters are down there and are unconscious, one of them in love with the other, the other one is indifferent. It's just a bag of stuff. But Manas takes this for itself and the great protection and love for that bag of tricks, the alaya. So this evening we're looking at Vasu Bandhu's commentary on this third aspect. in the transformation of consciousness. And he calls that the perception of the six senses. So if you remember the diagram, we have a dotted line that's dividing unconscious from conscious, and below that line are the alaya, this big bag of stuff, and the manas, they're below the level of consciousness, and then above the level of consciousness where we're conscious are the six sense consciousnesses. And these are very familiar to us. We've known them.

[03:13]

We've used them all our lives. We still are doing that right now. We're engaging with our conscious life, what we're conscious of. In other words, what we call our experience. So I thought we could just take a few minutes right now and experience as we just did with our sitting. But this time, have this intention to pay attention to your six sense consciousnesses. And that would be your five sense organs, the ones you're most familiar with, your hearing, seeing, tasting, touching, and smelling, those five. And then add to that thinking. So thinking is considered a sense consciousness in Buddhism. It's another one of the ways that we perceive reality is by thinking. And what the six sense consciousness thinks about is what is being offered to it by the lover, by Manas. Manas is the thinker and Manas is what's offering up from the bag of unconscious material possibilities for us to think about.

[04:21]

So let's take a few minutes and just notice your six sense consciousnesses and what they're doing. So you can even make a little tour. of each one of them in turn. Let's just take a couple of minutes to make a tour of our experience based on these categories of six sense consciousnesses. Okay, so I will come back in about a minute. I wonder if anyone would like to share or a couple of people would like to share anything you noticed in these few seconds of time about your six sense consciousnesses.

[06:39]

What did you see? What appeared to you as experience? Hi, Jerry. Did you have an experience? Hi, Fu. Hi, everyone. As you were giving us directions, I was very aware that there was a dog barking. I thought, oh, there was a dog barking. As soon as she said, I'll be back in a moment, as if on cue, the dog stopped barking. Okay, now what do I do? I noticed... unconsciously, that I lowered my eyes as if to eliminate sight because it's so stimulating. Again, I didn't think any of this, it just happened. And then I began to hear some traffic.

[07:42]

I began to feel the full belly of tea that I drank just before we met, which I was not at all aware of until then. Yeah, those are the major experiences. Yeah. That's a lot for 40 seconds, isn't it? Especially when you said, I hadn't even noticed any of those. It's sort of like, that's kind of our day. We often go through the day with not picking up on too many of the sensory experiences beyond what we're thinking. And that's usually the one that's got all of our attention. And as you said, the visual is the most powerful. that'll oftentimes take, take over from whatever else is, is going on. Thank you. Yeah. Anyone else want to, Amr, it looks like you have your hand up there, please. Yeah. So, well, first of all, when I, before you mentioned the exercise, I had already been preoccupied with my guitar pedals and trying to figure out switching things around.

[08:52]

And so I was like, okay, this is for sure what I'm going to end up. at least in terms of this sense. But once you gave us the exercise, I was just consciously going around like, okay, I can taste a little bit of aftertaste of the pizza I just had and not really smelling a whole lot. I can hear these people playing pickleball out there. And then what I realized was my thinking was all around the exercise. I was conscious. I mean, that was the thinking. It's like, okay, let me... You know, what am I listening to? What am I smelling? So that's actually, I wasn't, it wasn't like Zazen where I'm just kind of sitting there and kind of taking it all in. It actually was a conscious exercise, so. Yeah, that's very good. That's really interesting. I noticed that the other day, Reb said to us something like, well, how is it to be reading the Flower Ornament Sutra? How is it affecting your meditation?

[09:54]

And as soon as he said that, I noticed that his question was crystallized into a question that had to do with my meditation, you know, and all of a sudden, I'm creating this whole thought about my meditation because of his question. And I thought, well, how interesting is that? So you had that same experience. So, well, you just told me to do something. And now that's what's creating a formation in my head. And that's happening all the time as well. You know, you're getting instructions, what some you like and some you don't, you know, from all around you. Yeah. Thank you. That's really good. Thank you. Yeah. Okay. Well, good. Thank you. So I think you all have some version of that, either some thinking that came to dominate or some sensory events that came to dominate. So this is what Vasubandhu, he also had six senses. And you know, his theory was basically about his own experience. as were all of these meditators, they were, they didn't have x ray machines and EEGs and all these things. They couldn't really do much beyond the level of, you know, touch, touching the skin and, and, and asking questions of themselves as they sat did a lot great deal of meditation.

[11:05]

And they also did a great deal of conversation among themselves, just like, like we're doing now. Like, well, what did you experience when you were sitting? Well, as soon as you asked me that question, I started to have some idea about it. So they began to make a lot of connections that were seen as universal. These were experiences that almost all of them could agree on. Yeah, yeah, let's put that one on the list of what it is to be human, what it is to be aware and awake, and hopefully to be a beneficial human, not a human that causes death. great harm because that's the whole point of these exercises is to work on what are called the afflictive emotions the emotions that we all have embodied at birth of greed hate and delusion and a lot of variations on greed hate and delusion which we can all name it's like a kind of organ with petals you know greed is over here and hate is over here and all the ways that we express those and we have many ways of being greedy and of being hateful and certainly

[12:08]

even more ways of being delusional. So this is what we're here to both confess to. I am such a thing. I am an organ of many parts. And I do have an impact. And I want to be conscious of that because I also have some for some reason, we seem to have also included in who we are, a kind of compassion for ourselves and for the world. You know, a kindness, a mammalian wish to nurture and protect living things. You know, where that comes from, I think that's also an inheritance of evolution, of the kind of species that we are. So what we're looking at this week starts with verse number 8. of the 30 verses, which I'm going to read right now. So verse number eight kind of reflects back for a second on what we've just been studying, the previous verses, and it starts by saying that manas, meaning manas, is the second transformation of consciousness. So I just said that, a lie is the first, manas is the second, and then it says that the third is the perception of the six senses, which are beneficial, harmful,

[13:17]

or neither so your senses can go either way they're not it's not predetermined how your senses are going to engage with the world when the world and the senses are conjoined as they are and every moment of conscious awareness is the conjoining of the object of awareness with the subject awareness you know two hands slapping subject object experience happens right there so these six sense senses that Vasubhanda is referring to are deeply and experientially familiar as you all just saw. I assume all of you saw that, how these are, this is, that's me seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching, and thinking. That certainly is me. It's kind of what Vasubhanda is saying is all of you because anything else you don't actually experience other than some idea you have about it, you know. So, So this is the ground of our experience, as Ben says in chapter eight of the book, that's also the basis for our life of practice, especially as practitioners of the Buddha's teaching, and in particular of the Eightfold Path.

[14:31]

And the path is the Noble Truth number four that the Buddha taught in his first sermon. And I think many of you know those already, I'll just mention them again. There's Right View, which is what this text is, it's offering us example of a right view there are many right views in the buddhist teaching there are many right views in all kinds of teachings you know astronomy astrology psychology physiology there's all kinds of right views but we're focusing now kind of in a narrow narrow channel of right view any relationship to what the buddha's insight and we have some faith that that insight is based on his awakening and we I want to know what that is. We'd like to have that for ourselves. I think that's if we're all honest about that. I'd like to have that experience for myself. So there's right view. Right intention. What are you here for? What are you up to? Right speech. How do you express your intentions and your view? And how do you conduct yourself? That's another one.

[15:33]

Conduct. Livelihood. How do you make a living? Right effort applies to all of them. right mindfulness, are you being mindful of what's happening, where you are what your six sense consciousnesses are up to. And concentration is the eighth of the Eightfold Path. So the six senses are also the basis for the practices of what's called the Mahayana training program or the Bodhisattva training program of the six Paramitas, which again, I hope many of you heard of or taken a class on or somebody's talked about them at some time and you're being around the Dharma camps. So the six perfections or the paramitas are, number one is generosity, giving, dana. Number two is ethics, sila, your commitment to an ethical life. And the bodhisattva precepts are under that category of ethics. Patience, trying to be ethical requires a great deal of patience.

[16:34]

with yourself and with other people you know wanting to do things without speaking falsely of others wanting to do things without harboring ill will and so on and so forth it takes quite a bit of effort so and patience so patience is number three effort is number four and then concentration focus samadhi calming yourself in order to discern what's actually happening if we're agitated or worried or angry, it's very hard to look at what's actually happening because there's too much movement going on. Our minds are all wound up, as we say. So we have to unwind our minds, we have to calm down. And meditation, or just sitting quietly, I don't, meditation puts some people off as a word, so don't meditate, but just sit quietly for a while in a quieted space where you can, whether out under a tree or wherever you are, Give yourself some time to sit quietly and to allow the calming to come, which does it will calm, you will calm if you just sit quietly for a while.

[17:40]

Quite naturally, our bodies want to calm, you know, the way our dogs circle around front of the fireplace for a while and then they lay down. You know, so that's the mind is a lot like that it goes around, [...] and then it calms down. And it's so calming the mind and discerning the real calm the mind. Samatha, tranquility, and then discern what's true, what's real, which is prajna, or vipassana, insight. So these are all well-trodden pathways that practitioners have followed for thousands of years, and in order to alleviate the suffering in the world that was there in their time, in their era. I mean, there's always been suffering, sad to say, throughout the history of the world, suffering has been one of the you know, truths, there is suffering. And so we are here and committed to alleviating suffering. That's our camp. That's the camp we're in, alleviators of suffering.

[18:42]

And so we're called on to do this in our very own troubling lifetimes among the humans here on planet Earth. So this verse includes the understanding that these six senses can be used for either beneficial, harmful, or neutral actions in the world, meaning that we need to choose. You know, we do have free will, so to speak, you know, at least as far as we can tell, we are choosing, we are free to choose how it is that we act in the world. And this main teaching about our six senses is how critical they are to our current interpretation of reality and interpretations which lead to feelings and then to action. So we've talked about that quite a few times. There's a sequence. You know, something happens. These are the universal factors we've talked about. We'll see them again up front. You know, there's a sensory event. I heard something. My attention turns toward that sensory event.

[19:46]

I think that's a bird out there on my deck, as a matter of fact. Sweet little bird singing a song. So then I have made up a story. about what that is, it could be a squeaking machine, I really don't know. But I think it's a bird. And I like the sound, you have a positive regard for that sound. And I'm saying it's a bird. And if I weren't here with all of you, I might go over to the window and take a picture of the bird. Right. So that's the sequence of sensory event, a feeling, an attention, sorry, so sensory event, attention turns to the sensory event, have a feeling about it, some emotional reaction to it. And then I come up with an idea about what it is in language. The sixth sense consciousness, very smart, picks up these old bag of languages in there. I've got the word bird in there somehow and putting together the songs of birds I've heard in the past with the word bird and all of a sudden here it comes, it pops up real fast.

[20:48]

Oh, I think that's a bird. So that's my story. And then I have an action. that comes from that story that I've just told myself. So that's all familiar. We've gone over that a few times, but this is the sequence that's very essential to our understanding of how to find liberation from our habits. You know, like the repeated habits of, I don't like birds. You know, why? Why don't you like birds? Well, that's not true. But there are things I don't like, and those are habits. And I want to find ways to break out of my habits. So Ben tells us if we pay close attention to our bodies, where all of our senses are functioning together, we can begin to see how when our breath is shallow, we might be afraid or we might be angry. Or how when our clear our body language is when we were with other people, you know, at times of both elation at your birthday party, your surprise party, you come in and all your friends are there singing happy birthday. Those times your face shows it.

[21:50]

your body shows it, or times of despair. You know, when things are not so good, you get bad news and so on. So we speak with our faces. We say a lot more than we even know with our gestures of our faces. I know some of you may have been watching, and you may be tennis fans. You know, I happen to live with a tennis fanatic, which I, over many years now, I have gotten rather fond of watching tennis myself. I don't know much about the history of it or the names or whatever, but it's pretty fun. And right now there's a tournament going on in France, the French Open. And so we just watched an incredibly exciting game. And along with that, I was really aware of how clear it was. It was a great example of watching the faces of these players as they either get a great shot or they miss. Very fast, they go from elation to despair, from elation to despair. And so does the audience. I mean, so do the fans. First, everybody's up and shouting, and then everybody's going, oh, no. Or half of them are, either way.

[22:51]

So we were very communicative. We tell our stories almost all the time, and it's good. We want to be able to read each other's stories. So paying attention to our own reactivity in the present is the best way to remain in the present, rather than sending our minds off on little errands to the past or to the future, which we do much of the time. If we stay with our bodies, with our sixth sense consciousness, and don't abandon them, abandon them don't leave them leave those other five senses to their own devices why the mind wanders off into stories about the future in the past well then we're in the present we're attending to the present we're using our our mental clarity and our our verbal talents to describe what's happening now where are you now how are you feeling now you know how's your how's your life now So these are all important things for us to practice doing because we're not very good at it.

[23:54]

We're very good at drifting off to other foreign, the distant shores of foreign lands, as Dogen says. So in chapter eight, the next six verses focus on mindfulness of our mental states as the principal means for overcoming the barrier of afflictive emotions, the main ones being greed, hate and delusion. So being aware of those states as opposed to figuring out who to blame for those states is a reversal of our usual human behavior. In early Buddhism it was clearly understood that discerning the arousal of our emotions and all of the variations on those emotions, as I mentioned, the organ of emotions. So in the positive side we have things like generosity and humility And carefulness and tranquility, these are all very positive emotions. And these are in the wholesome category. So being aware of wholesome emotions is really good.

[24:58]

That's encouraging to us. And it's encouraging when it's happening with other people. It's contagious. Positive regard is contagious. I noticed that here where I live. As we positively regard one another, there's a kind of upwelling of a sweetness in our community. Now on the other side, which is also here among us, there's anger, hypocrisy, envy, selfishness, you know, all of that's right there. And those are all the unwholesome categories that occur in our consciousness. So by being aware of these as they arise from our unconscious, we can engage consciously in the choices we make to lead us away from harmful actions and lead us toward beneficial actions. So this is really the whole point of all of this study, is to help us self-reflect, take responsibility for our own feelings and thoughts, not that it's our fault, it's not about being at fault, it's about noticing that that's how we're made.

[25:58]

We are made with all of these various manifestations of feelings and thoughts and so on, and we're really becoming students of ourselves. You know, study the Buddha way is to study the self, Dogen said. To study the self is to forget the self, you know, that thing that we don't even have in the first place. And to forget the self is to be awakened by all things. All things that are just coming at you all the time from all directions, you know, lamps and ducks and books and skeletons, that was skeletons over here. All things we awaken, we're awakened by all things when we forget the self, our self-centeredness. So this is what's being presented in verses nine through 16, which are up ahead. What we hear about first in verse number nine is a list of the mental factors that are associated with the perceptions of the six senses. And then we hear the names of various types of afflictions.

[26:59]

There's some primary afflictions, the big ones, greed, aid, delusion. And then there's secondary afflictions that we are being instructed to pace pay close attention to as we move around through the day. So I think part of the reason for that is the primary afflictions, greed, hate, and delusion, can really be disguised. You know, when I'm just having a little moment of envy, I might not think of that as hate. You know, I might think of that, oh, I'm just a little jealous of your new outfit or whatever it is, but I'm not going to necessarily give it the big hammer of, oh, that's hate. But envy, I can kind of see that. So some of these words refer to what are called the minor afflictions, but they're also sneaky. So that's one reason we name them is so that we can pick up on those subtle ways that we hate and the subtle ways that we are greedy, you know, and then not so subtle ways that we are delusional, which is Most of the time. So just owning that right up front is very helpful. I am a delusional being and that's primarily what I'm working with here is an awful lot of training in how to be delusional as a human being.

[28:09]

So what's radical about this teaching is that it's asking us to turn the light of our awareness around onto our own conscious experience. Our own feelings, thinking, speaking, acting in order to see how much we feel, speak, think, and act, and then think that that's being generated by the world in which we live rather than the other way around. I'm not making that. I'm not creating that problem. That problem's coming at me. It's coming from you. You did it to me. This is our human tendency is to kick the refrigerator when the ice cream melts. or to scream at the dog for running out the door. It's your fault, you rotten refrigerator. We're so quick to blame whatever it is that's making us unhappy or uncomfortable. It's our usual tendencies to believe that the error or the problem is coming from outside, from them and not from ourselves. It's kind of a mix.

[29:11]

It's not one way or the other, but it certainly is a huge contribution being made from our side. that we oftentimes do not consider. I had a friend a long time ago when I lived in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. There were a lot of cowboys in Jackson Hole. It was a really wonderful place to live for a while. And one of my friends, kind of a cowboy, and he was a hunter. And one day I went over to his house and he had a toaster on the wall that was full of bullet holes. And I said, what is that? He said, well, the other morning I got up to make some toast, and the toaster didn't work, so I shot it. And he said, then I found out the electricity was out. So I thought it's a good idea to put it on the wall. I said, yeah, you got that right. So this is one of the ways that he reminded himself not what it means to jump to the wrong conclusions. So fortunately, those kinds of stories don't happen around here in Ansel Village. Nobody's got a gun that I'm aware of. But Wyoming's a little different.

[30:13]

So then as Ben says in Chapter 9 about these verses, they are all grounded in the practices of right mindfulness and right effort of the Eightfold Path. Practices that Vasubandhu was deeply familiar with from his many, many years as a student of the early Buddhist teachings of the Abhidharma. You've heard that word before. The Abhidharma is an incredible collection of systematization of the Buddhist sutras in trying to help understand in a systematic way or academic way what the Buddha taught. He taught a lot of stuff, but he did it in a very unsystematic way. He just went from town to town, village to village, walking barefoot, talking to people wherever he went, said a lot of things, much of which was remembered and memorized by his students. He soon had a little flock of students following him along. So there was a Sangha. The Buddha, the Dharma, the Sangha were moving around northern India, and as those things were being said, they were not systematic.

[31:15]

So many centuries went by, and the later scholarly monks put these systems into what's called the Abhidharma. And Vasubandhu was one of those scholarly monks, and he knew the system really, really well and helped to formulate it. In fact, he's the author of a book called the Abhidharma Kosha, which is a real explication of the Abhidharma. And it's incredibly well done and well-read and, I mean, well-written and very hard to read. I've tried. I have it. It's in four volumes sitting above my head here, just in case someday I decide to pull them off the shelf and try it again. They're quite dense and they are very scholarly, very dry. So these teachings of the Abhidharma are what came under scrutiny, both by Vasubandhu and by later scholars and monastics who had a real problem with some of these categories and making them into things that were understood to be real, that they really were these little entities like greed or like envy, and you could get rid of them.

[32:22]

and you know you can make them go away they were real so you can get rid of real things and you could bring in the real things of of kindness and compassion and goodness you just do this kind of board game of eliminating the junk and keeping the good stuff and that was one of the basic practices and then if as as the time went by there was some understanding of of the lack of inherent existence of these entities so that's where we get the emptiness teachings which came to flowering, the flourishing in the later centuries and became what's called the Mahayana Buddhist tradition. So there's still these two traditions still exist right now on earth today and they're in conversation and you know we're in conversation here we have both of those traditions here where I live now and it's a very interesting thing to do to look again at the tradition that I've been trained in and see where all the all of the great history of the Buddha Dharma owes its allegiance to these early teachings.

[33:25]

They're not just like, oh yeah, we cut that off and now we're off and doing this other thing. Not at all. And what's wonderful about Yogacara is it's really making that clear, that those early teachings and practices are foundational to how we can actually begin to understand the world and become those harmless beings that we'd really wish to be. So I have great gratitude to Vasubandhu and to the Yogacara tradition for sealing up that split that was taking place between the early teaching and the emptiness teachings. Think Nagarjuna, brilliant. And at the same time, the tendency toward nihilism was really strong among the emptiness. If I say empty, you think nothing. So that's the problem with the emptiness teaching. So this is all about, first of all, we study the conceptual world that we live in. language words feelings all that gooey stuff that we're made out of first we study it really well and deeply and that's what these first 15 verses are doing they're giving us stuff to look at that's basically endemic to to humanity so what i'm going to do now is to um oh oh yeah one more thing so these teachings as i said

[34:38]

these Abhiyama teachings had come under scrutiny by Vasubanda and many others as they turned toward the emptiness teachings. And then that's where this 30 verses is headed. So by the time we get to the end of the 30 verses, you'll be back in familiar territory. For those of you who have been studying in the Zen tradition, you'll be back in the territory of the emptiness teachings. So you'll see how both of these wonderful things, traditions, are present in these mere 30 verses of Really exquisite thinking by Vasubandhu. So what I'm going to do now is kind of read through these verses first and then ask for comments from you from whatever it is that is of interest or whatever you've heard that you'd like to talk about. So verse number nine says that it, meaning the perception of the six senses, is associated with three kinds of mental factors. There are universal mental factors. There are specific and beneficial mental factors.

[35:38]

As well as the afflictions, greed, aid, and delusion, and the secondary afflictions. We're going to hear a lot about those. And three sensations. Three sensations are positive, negative, and neutral. So this kind of sounds kind of... What are they talking about? Well, Ben goes through each of these in each of the chapters. Chapter 9, he talks about these more specifically. But they're really nothing different than what we've been saying of your experience. It's just giving some more names to these things. Unwholesome dharmas. Here's some names of unwholesome dharmas. Wholesome dharmas. Here's some names of unwholesome dharmas. So that's what's going on now. And also the same universal factors as... I just went through with us of sensory experience, attention, feeling, naming, perception, and then action. So those are universal. So verse number 10, the universal factors which are activated under all circumstances.

[36:41]

So no matter what you're doing, those universal factors are on duty. And as I just said, there's sense contact, attention sensation perception and volition the specific factors this again in verse 10 only arise under certain circumstances and this is a little that kind of technical abhi dharma thinking that vasubandhu trained in early so he's kind of including everything and the kitchen sink so these that arise in specific situations are kind of taken from the Abhidharma thinking. So I wouldn't worry about them too much. It's just another way of refining how things are going. In fact, there are times when aspiration is dominant, but other times it's not there at all. Or resolve, or memory, or concentration and intellection. So these are what are called specific factors arising under certain circumstances. Not to worry about. Number 11, verse number 11.

[37:42]

Here's the beneficial factors, the ones we should be proud of when they arise. So they are faith, conscience, humility, a lack of desire and greed, aversion, a lack of hate, and a lack of delusion. There's also energy. We've got some of the paramitas. Tranquility, carefulness, equanimity, and... non-violence. So this is our menu of wholesome factors, beneficial factors. And then verse number 12, we're turning to the menu of afflictions, and it's a much longer menu than the beneficial ones, you know, that's sad to say. So the afflictions are desire, aversion, hate, delusion, pride, wrong views, and doubt. The secondary afflictions are, and the list grows from here, anger, hatred, hypocrisy, malice, envy, selfishness.

[38:47]

So you can hear these keys on the organs being played, you know, familiar keys. Verse number 13 goes on with some more afflictions. There's deceitfulness, guile, arrogance, harmfulness, lack of conscience and humility, sluggishness, restlessness, a lack of faith, laziness, carelessness, forgetfulness, distraction, and unawareness. The list goes on. 14. Remorse, sleepiness, initial thought, and analysis can be either afflictive or not. So this is kind of the whole set. This is our set of cards that we're dealt as humans and that we're dealing with now as practitioners of awareness. So then number 15, verse 15, says that the five sense consciousnesses arise on the root consciousness. That's the alaya. So think of the ocean. They start to use this metaphor of the ocean.

[39:50]

So if the alaya is kind of like this watery bag of unconscious conditioning that we are, you know, embodies, part of our embodiment, then all of these sense consciousnesses are arising on that body of consciousness. oceanic awareness. It's like waves on the ocean. So basically, we are unified field theory, we are of the universe, we are creatures of and as the universe. That's what we are. I'm the universe speaking to the universe right now. Nice to see you all. And the way I do that is because I'm a wave on the ocean. And I'm waving at you, and you can all wave back, because we're all of one piece. We are all part of the universe, and how we manifest are these waves on the ocean. But we never leave the ocean. We're still made of the same substance. We are still of the substance of the ocean, of the cosmos. So they arise on the root consciousness, aliyah, together or separately, depending on conditions like waves arising on water.

[40:55]

So what they're saying here is that your sense organs don't necessarily all activate at once. Like Jerry was just sharing that, you know, I gave a suggestion for something to do, and then he noticed the dog. So, but the dog probably was barking before he noticed it. So we don't always, our sense organs are not always operating simultaneously. Sometimes you see and hear something, but you don't taste anything or smell anything. Or sometimes it's baking bread and you don't hear, you're not seeing or hearing, you're just smelling this amazing aroma. So our senses are kind of like the keys on the organ. They're operating not... all at once, but there's kind of sequences or depending on what's going on. So they're basically coming up, these waves on the ocean, they come up depending on conditions. So verse number 16, thought consciousness. So that last one, verse 15, was about the five sense consciousnesses. So those are the ones that we have most commonly been taught as children, hearing, seeing, tasting, smelling and touching.

[41:59]

And then number six, The unusual one for us Westerners is thought consciousness. This is number six. And this is always manifesting except unlike the others that are always on and ready to operate as occasions arise. Sometimes thought consciousness is not on, it's actually off. And it's off in the realm of no thought. which is something that can take place when you're meditating or any other time for that matter, when it sort of shuts off for a minute, you're kind of staring. And I know maybe some of you would have the experience staring at the in a fire when you're, you know, sit in the wintertime, you're just also you're staring at a fire and there's just the thought consciousness is shut off. You're just there with something, you know, Not thinking about it, you just have an experience of presence. So at those times, there's no thought consciousness. Another time is the thought-free meditation states.

[43:01]

So in long sitting practices, there are times when it just shuts off. It's such a relief. It's just, oh, thank God. Well, that would be an interruption. Saying, oh, thank God, would be an interruption of the absence of thought. But when it when it happens, it's a it's kind of considered to be the highest form of bliss. When there are none of these little rascals running around in your brain, you know, saying, you know, whatever it's doing in there. There are times of freedom from those thought, those thought monsters. And they're also when you're unconscious or in a coma, or you're being operated on thought consciousness is not functioning. And also in thought free sleep. And I don't know exactly about the neurology of that, if that's really an ever true thing, but it says so, that monks thought so, that there were times during sleep when there was no thinking, no dreaming was going on. So this verse, this last verse, number 16, marks the end of Vasubandha's explication of the eight consciousnesses model of the mind.

[44:10]

So we now have seen all of the parts of this consciousness model. We've seen all eight consciousnesses, Alaya, Manas, and the six sense consciousnesses for a total of eight. So now we've heard all of it. And this is about, this model is about, is not about a model of the world, but rather it's how we know the world, how we construct the world that we know. It's a constructivist. I was reading Waldron's book on Yogacara, which is a wonderful, wonderful book. If you haven't gotten it or haven't looked at it yet, it's just a deep dive into all this material, and he does a wonderful job of it. But he says that this is not idealism, where it's just thought. The world is just thought. There's nothing there except thinking. That's an idealist, and that's not something very popular among philosophers, not Buddhist philosophers or Western philosophers. Idealism is not the top of the list of things that people feel or get credit.

[45:15]

It's like, nah, we're not doing away with the world. But what the Yogacara is saying, it's not about idealism, it's about constructivist, that we are constructing the world by how we think, by how we've been taught. It's a construction. Like when I gave that instruction, it was very helpful, Amr, when you said, I made a suggestion and then you constructed something out of my suggestion. That's what this teaching is about. How we're constructing our ideas about the world, which we then project onto what's out there. We don't really know what's out there. Most of the time, we're not really considering what's out there. We're just walking through it. thinking about something else. But what's out there is when we do start to pay attention to it is a product of our imagination, of our construction. It's been constructed and then served up into conscious awareness as what we think it is. I think it's a... Anyway.

[46:18]

So that's how this whole thing is set up. So each of these verses is offering us an opportunity to make an ongoing effort to be mindful and to be in the present, mindful of the present. And by controlling our minds, this is not a control exercise. It's by letting the mind know that we are aware. It's like a parent with its child. I'm here. I'm here. I'm not drifting away. We're kind of like watching, which is a very funny thing to say. But that's the idea. And that's an idea that was given to us in this kind of famous metaphor, Suzuki Roshi's teaching, where he talked about giving your cow a large pasture. You know, giving your cow a big pasture. He's talking about the mind. Give your cow, or bad zazen, give your cow a big pasture. But then he said, but then watch her. You know, don't just give her a big pasture and let her run. You know, watch her. You know, make sure she doesn't run off or trample in the neighbor's yard and so on and so forth.

[47:23]

So we're both responsible for the mind, but we're also really giving it a lot of space so that it doesn't feel like You know, you're after me or you're trying to control me. We don't want to run away from ourselves and our practice because our mind starts trying to hide from our explorations, you know. We're going to be very gentle with this cow. Really gentle. Let her know that we're her friend and that we're just here to study her and to keep her safe. So Ben says at the end of chapter 9, just to see and be aware of what's manifesting right now is itself... a seed that can grow into amazing and nourishing fruit. So this practice of turning the light onto ourselves, onto our own activities, of our own mental activities and physical activities, just that practice alone encourages that practice to happen. So the more you do something, it's like these tennis players, the more you practice your serve, the better it gets.

[48:25]

The more often you practice with turning your attention onto your mind, the more often you'll do it. And then it becomes something that's like, it's kind of a wholesome habit. Do you know where your mind is right now? Do you know what it's doing right now? Have you paid any attention to that little creature in a while, you know? To let it know you're there and that this is really your life's work is to figure this all out. So anyway, that's what we're doing here. That's as far as we've gone now. And then next week we'll go into the most exciting thing that you... Unless you've read ahead, you'll be surprised when you get hit by the next half of the 30 verses. So I'm not going to give it away now, but I thought I would ask you for whatever things you'd like to talk about as far as the first 15 verses and studying the mind. So this transformation of consciousness and its three aspects. Hello, Drew. Hi, Phu. Hi, everyone.

[49:25]

I'm sure you've seen the video or the movie Seven Samurai? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That one samurai who had mental illness, I just started thinking about him. When you're talking, it's something that's always been on my mind of, does the Abhidharma or Vasubandhu talk about mental illness? Well, I think they say we're all mental illness. Yeah, but my own personal stuff. I worked in mental health and there's personality disorders. There's stuff that doesn't seem to fit into greed, hate, and delusion that trick me up. It has to do with my upbringing. And I have never figured out a definition for personality. But it seems to have something to do with that and viewing the world that that's where all my issues are. Not that I'm not greedy, but it's not... It doesn't hit the nail on the head.

[50:31]

So say a little bit more about the nail you're wanting to hit. Not having a joyful mind. Yeah, yeah. Not being... happy, kind, funny, but an underlying something that negativity, I guess. I'm not sure. Something of that nature that for me and how I was raised and stuff. And it just doesn't seem to fit into these block categories of greed, hate, and delusion. And my experience of people in general, people with what you see would be high levels of attainment, like the samurai, that still have some mental illness, like Samadhi or Satori, doesn't seem to clear up certain that there's stuff you should deal with in therapy and stuff you should deal with in Buddhism.

[51:49]

And I've been trying to deal with stuff. For many, when I heard Thomas Merton say, one spiritual experience can cut through tons of miles of mental, emotional red tape. I said, okay, I'm getting out of therapy and going that way. And I don't think... Meditation is made for them. I can't. How's the wife and kids? You know, how's your relationship with your. Yeah, yeah, I hear you. Anyway, I totally hear you. I went into therapy for a very long time because I didn't think Zen was enough. I felt that my teacher did not want to hear about my childhood. Right. My therapist did. And it was very wonderful to get reparented because my therapist, for me, was like the good father. I had a good father, but he didn't talk. And so I got a good father who talked and who was able to talk to me as this child who was clueless about how to be a person in the world, how to be happy.

[52:59]

I mean, I wasn't happy. What's to be happy about? So I feel like that being in therapy was just this very excellent way of getting a new story going about, well, you were just a child. You expect so much of yourself, but you were just very small. And no one told you it was OK when that bad thing happened in third grade. Nobody said that you were just a kid. So you didn't have that kind of parenting that would result in a healthy plant. right? Like we all wished we hadn't gotten shaded by our parenting or ancestry, but I think most of us did. And then we leaned into the light, and we're still leaning into the light. And I think that's a good sign that we're leaning into the light. And I don't know that there's any kind of magic, I know there's not any kind of magical spell that can break the other bad spell. I don't think so. But I do think that

[54:00]

For me, reading the Dharma, being with the Dharma, has been extremely nourishing. And it helps me to remember to stay present because that stuff is often running away from what's actually happening right now into thoughts of yuck, just kind of getting caught into yucky thinking. So I do think I've learned to bring myself back to right now. What's happening right now? Oh, my feet are on the ground, and my hands are in the soap water, and I'm doing the dishes. And, you know, there's something very healthy for me about practicing to be in the present. But I, like you, I feel like therapy is a good complement, excellent complement to Zen, the Zen thing. Because I haven't seen Zen take care of all of the stuff that we all bring into it at all. And I don't think it can.

[55:02]

That's very helpful to hear that. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for sharing that, Drew. Really appreciate it. Before I go any further, Karina, could you put me on gallery so I can greet our guests, our friends? Very important. Hello, Chris, and Jerry, and Helene, and Amr, Carmina, and Marianne, and Drew, Jifu, Paul, and Kate, and Carol. No Paul, but Kate and Carol. Hi, Steve and Lisa. Nice to see you both. Millicent, and what have I done? I hit something. Leona? Did I get it right, Leona? I get it wrong every time, I think. Ilona. Ilona. Ilona. So it's an I-L. Ilona, thank you. Kakuan, nice to see you.

[56:04]

Hello, Kathy. Jakuan, welcome. DB14 in the car, I see you. Welcome. And Michael, hello, Michael. And Senko. Hello, Meredith. Shozan. Adrian Brenner. Tom. Misha. Michelle. Melissa. Kosan and Justin. Welcome, everyone. Very good to have you all here. So I think the next hand was, was it Chris? Karina? Yes. Okay. Can you bring us up together? No, you don't have to. Okay, Chris, hi. Hi, Fu. Hi, everyone. Wonderful to see you. Wonderful to be here. I was intrigued by what you mentioned on thought consciousness, being always on, or not always on, being potentially off or on.

[57:10]

And that's something that I've found a fair amount of discouragement in. When I sit on a, you know, there are times when, I guess... The thought consciousness is either off and disengaged or I'm engaged. The thinking is muddy, it's dull, it's not really sharp or concentrated, in which case I find just patience and paying attention and building awareness on what's occurring helps. But I am curious, what is the recommendation for when I notice my thinking? consciousness is off and i'm just sitting in stillness both when it's um kind of a duller mind initially non-concentrated and and when it is more concentrated do you have any recommendations for that Well, there's lots of practices.

[58:13]

You know, you can find manuals of what to do, what to do with the mind, games to play with your mind at various times. I would say what's coming to my mind right now as a memory was a practice I did when I was at Green Gulch long ago. I think I must have been Tonto. I was sitting next to the altar back there in the corner. decided to plant a suggestion to my mind to look for, and I thought, don't look for a word, look for something, a visual object. So I said, I want to find, I want to see in my mind a cube. So I sat there for a long time, and I was just, whatever else was going on, I kept going, I'm waiting for the cube, waiting for the cube. And, and, and I have many, This is Sesshin, so not much else going on. So after many days of waiting for the cube, there was a moment when my mind was very calm, very quiet, and then there was this kind of vibration that I could see.

[59:21]

It was almost like the surface of the ocean was shimmering, you know, and up came this little tiny triangle, a little pyramid, and then it started coming up higher and higher, and it was my cube. And I thought, A couple of things. I thought, well, that's fun. I actually was able to conjure a cube. That was pretty fun. But the other thing I thought, which was even more important, was how powerful thoughts are. That I was able to see this object so clearly and so powerfully, I thought, thinking is very powerful. There was no cube. It was just like a part of my imaginarium. that that how it works is like I made a suggestion and I conjured up a cube but I was mostly struck by the power of that image and I thought you better be careful about what you think because your thoughts are extremely powerful and so you know I mean that's just one little piece of like many years of trying to sit quietly trying to do nothing and finally just sit

[60:36]

just sit just sit you know leave the cow alone she's got a big pasture she always comes back you know she's not really gonna run away and as long as we live you know the cow comes home time to get milked time to do something you know with with your mind so I think befriending the products of your imagination for me is the main activity is to not be put off by them or frightened by them or compelled by them, you know, just to be friendly. And I don't know that that that helps you, Chris, but that's what comes to mind right now. It helps me immensely. Thank you very much. I'm hearing two things in there. One is to be patient and, and just just sit with it and the other one is relates to suggestions and resolve and the practices that relate to that and programming of consciousness.

[61:40]

It seems like there's a lot to explore there and thank you very much. This was very, very helpful. Thank you. Good. Thanks for your question. Jerry. Hi, Jerry. There you are. I wanted to really deeply appreciate Drew's comments and your reflections on his comments. And they reminded me of a great teaching from my own longtime friend and teacher, John Wellwood, who was a clinical psychologist and a very longtime practitioner of Tibetan Buddhism. And he coined a phrase which is popular among the psychological community, and the phrase is spiritual bypassing. And he really pointed out that many of the people he was seeing in his clinical practice were meditators, long-time meditators, and they were not getting the kind of attention and acknowledgement

[62:55]

and ultimate relief from all that meditation. Or some of them thought they were, but they were fooling themselves. And that's where he came up with the term and really, because he is a clinical psychologist, encouraged people to go into therapy when they needed to, as you were saying. And that these two ways of practicing in the world are very powerful together. Yeah, yeah, thank you. I agree. I always recommend that to folks, you know, get a good therapist. That's the hard part. Finding the one who's actually, you know, works well with you is not not so easy. But I know they're there. And it's wonderful when you find someone. Yeah, in fact, another piece of Dharma in that regard is that the person the the connection is far more important than the training the person might bring, the practitioner might bring to the therapy.

[64:03]

Yeah. Yeah, I read somewhere that, you know, Freud had all these theories about what he was doing with people, but basically he was spending time with them. Yes. And that was very curative, you know, having that kind of limbic resonance with another human being, which is something we also do in Doksan, you sit face to face with someone, it's very powerful. you know, and certainly don't want to be face to face with someone who will do you harm. Because it really does penetrate into your inner world, you know, to have someone hopefully trusted person that mirrors you. And anyway, very important and sacred relationship. Thank you, Jerry. Amr. I had a request. I was wondering if Karina would like to pop her head on the screen so we could offer our gratitude. Hey, that's sweet of you.

[65:05]

Did you hear that, Karina? Uh-oh, she might do it. There she is. Zendo events. Thank you, Karina. You can stay on, you know. Oh, my hair. Well, yeah. Thank you, Amr. That was very sweet. All right, good people. I hope you all take care. And next week. We're going to jump off the diving board. And also, I'd like to invite you to think about, you know, we're not going to be too much longer with Ben's book because we're getting to the exciting climax fairly soon, probably in a few weeks. So think about, this was a request to study Yogachara that came from you. So you all have some exposure to various texts and thoughts and classes and so on.

[66:08]

So why don't you all consider some possibilities for us to study in the future. We've done Zen My Beginner's Mind, we've done the Transmission of Light, now we've done the Yogacara. So there are lots of possibilities and I am more than happy to study anything you like with you. Okay, so you're welcome to unmute and say good night and good luck. I hope you all saw it. Did any of you see the play? my sister saw it actually last week did you know that george clooney wrote that play for the film that happened and he was one of the the people in the film years back of good night and good luck when i saw that i got oh my god what what an amazing thing that he's directed it as well yeah incredible i'm very grateful to him and his his kindness this was the first time he was uh on broadway so he was actually

[67:10]

quite nervous about it. Well, he shouldn't be. Well, I think he's got it that it's really appreciated the fact that CNN put it on live stream for everybody is like never happened before. You know, it's a tremendous amount of respect from the world. So well, at least from part of the world. Anyway, good night and good luck. So if you'd like to say good night good luck everyone good luck everyone thank you good night everybody thank you all thank you thanks karina thank you thank you very nice thank you good to see all of you always always good bye bye ladies bye women bye there's paul paul you came back All right, Karina. He was here all the time, hiding behind the couch? No, I was over in the other chair, just off the camera.

[68:13]

Oh, okay. All right. But I've been here. Riveted. Riveted. Riveted. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's so nice to have you down the hall. Did you hear the explanation of where the good night and good luck came from? No. No. Where? It was during the Blitz. that they would say to one another, good night and good luck that you survive overnight. Oh my goodness. Hi, Jacqueline. Hi, Jacqueline. You're muted. He was special. Did you watch everyone? There you are. Just a second, Paul. Hi, Jacqueline. Hi, are we supposed to read up to 16? Because I read up to 9 before. Yeah, why don't you read on, yeah, read on through the 9, 10, 11. I think when we get up to this next, let's see, what's the next one where he starts talking about... I'd say... I'd say good night.

[69:21]

Oh, good night, you guys. Good night. Bye. Yeah, I think I would read two. I'm flipping through here. Yeah, because I got to nine. But I haven't read 10 yet. And then you started talking about 12 and the rest. Yeah, why don't you go up to 15 if you have time to do that. That would be good. And then I'll catch you. And bring your... Karina, can you turn off your... That's right, I've got mine on too, sorry. Yeah. There you go. Because I had written down, read chapter eight, but I read chapter eight and nine for tonight, and I thought, oh, did I miss an assignment? No, you didn't. I didn't give it. I was not properly giving you all.

[70:22]

Because when I realized... how much it was all one thought. You know, the afflictions were just a list. Then I just said, oh, we'll just put them all together. Okay. So, yeah. Because I'm going to have a lot of time on my hands in the next four weeks. So, yeah. Is that a good thing? I guess. I'm having partial knee replacement. Ouch. What? Good and ouch. We just have a friend who went through that. Well, things are ouch now. I'm hoping afterwards it'll be less ouch. Yeah, yeah. Apparently it goes really well for folks. For partial, yeah. So I'm looking, I'm actually anxious and looking forward to it. But the thing that makes me most anxious is not going under the knife. It's having four weeks of me with me.

[71:23]

And I was bummed I couldn't go on retreat because it's, it's a lot of time away from both of my jobs. But then I thought, well, I could actually see the four weeks at, I mean, I, you know, have to stay home as retreat. Yes. Yes. Yes. And, you know, reading some of this stuff is a really nice way to keep reminding yourself. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I'm on a nourishing retreat here with the Buddha Dharma. So I'm going to read that and our for my Zendo, our summer ongoing read is a series of lectures that our Abbot Emeritus gave years ago, 10 lectures on the Heart Sutra. Nice, nice. That's a great compliment to the Yogacharya. Those are the two schools.

[72:28]

So you got the emptiness school and the mindfulness only school. That's a completely wonderful team of teachers. Who was your emeritus, if I may ask? Who was your teacher emeritus? Ankyo O'Hara. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So did you study with Angel Williams? No, she was before my time. Oh, okay. Okay. I'm glad we know her out west here. We've spent time together and stuff. No, she was very before my time. But yeah, I have two jobs. I'm not going to work either of them. And it's like, oh, I have all this time with me and me. I think about time a lot anyway. One of my jobs is I'm a watchmaker. Wow, real watches.

[73:28]

Yeah, take them apart, put them back together again, or tell people, yo, it's dead, buy another one. Dude, that's a Rolex. Sorry. Actually, that's who I work for. Rolex? Yeah. Wow. So you can, you clean them up and you put them all back together? I spent 16 years breaking them down, putting them together, replacing parts, you know, recasing it, getting it back to people. Now I'm on the other side seeing how they come in before they get to the watchmaker in the shop. Wow. Wow. And my second job is I am a, I'm one of two Buddhist chaplains at New York Presbyterian. Great. Oh, what a great combination. It is. And some patients are like, you're a watchmaker. I knew they were lying to me.

[74:30]

I'm dying. I don't have much time. It's like, no, no, no, stop. No, you have a lot of time. I can prove it and I can fix it for you. Oh, I'm going to use that when I get back to work. Yeah. Well, thanks for sharing that. I'm so glad to meet you and have really enjoyed your coming and appreciate your asking. Thank you. I just really wanted to make sure that I was up on my reading. Yeah. And I'm slowly starting to get it. Yeah. It takes a while, but it's really nourishing once you begin to get the hang of it because it's practice. It's like, oh, you mean my mind? You mean the mind of the watchmaker? Uh-huh. Exactly. That and the Heart Sutra. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I should be in pretty good shape in four weeks. Yeah, well, good luck with your surgery. I hope it's as pain-free as possible and that your walking becomes really good and comfortable again.

[75:32]

Oh, yeah. I'm hoping to see everybody next week. Great, great. Yes, really, best wishes from the Zendo events. And thank you for your hard work and dedication and joy. You're always upbeat in your responses, and I appreciate it. Bye, you guys. Thank you.

[76:07]

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