This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to City Center, San Francisco Zen Center. My name is Kyoshin Wendy Lewis. And today I will be speaking about Buddhist teaching called Alaya Vijnana, the Buddhist storehouse consciousness. And I was thinking as I was, I just taught a class on this topic, And I was thinking that we often don't sort of present actual Buddhist teachings in our Dharma talks. I mean, they're in there somehow, but they're often sort of conversational. So we'll see how this goes, because I will be sort of talking about details.

[01:02]

But when I was studying Laya Vishnana in order to teach the class, it suddenly struck me how very... particularly it correlated with codependency theory. And so I looked into that because one of the things about these Buddhist teachings is that we often don't have, not all of us, most of us, at least in this room, probably don't have a cultural perspective on them. They're not part of our, you know, sort of, oh yeah, yeah, you know, like the story of the sort of Judaic and the Christian stories that are just part of our consciousness so that we don't even notice them. So we don't all have that about Buddhism. So how can I bring them into some sort of relevance? And that's what made the correlation with the codependency really strike me. So the two texts I used for the class, one was The Buddhist Unconscious, the Alayavijjana in the context of Indian Buddhist thought

[02:11]

and that's by William Waldron, and Codependence, Healing the Human Condition by Charles Whitfield. So in Buddhism, the human condition is summarized as suffering and the cause of suffering, which is identified as desire. And those are the first two of the Four Noble Truths, which traditionally is the first teaching that the Buddha gave. In codependency, suffering is based in addiction, and you can see how that correlates with desire, to substances, objects, and states of body and mind. So in a sense, both systems identify suffering as a need to control reality based in our preferences and desires. So these preferences are karmic, they're historical, and they're usually not based in how reality is unfolding right now.

[03:17]

I often find when I'm studying karma or teaching about karma, it activates all kinds of things in everyone's minds. But when you really look at what it is as a teaching, It's a way to evaluate the origins and consequences of our actions. So it's not a system of reward and punishment. You know, you can say good karma and bad karma, but it's not judgmental. It just means, oh, you know, I did this and this happened. Oh, great. And, of course, you don't even know if it was great, but it feels good, so that's nice. Or felt bad. And so how do you look at that? What are these consequences? And one description of this is, while the individual is enjoying the effects of their past, they are unaware of creating the conditions for a future life. It is clear that life, in the usual interpretation of the term, moves as a vicious circle continuously kept in motion by a drive of anxiety that it should do so.

[04:34]

You know, a lot of these Buddhist teachings sound like things are pretty awful. But it's really, you know, about how we live and how we respond. So codependence is the same thing, because this is how Charles Woodfield defines it. The most common of all addictions, the addiction to looking elsewhere. We believe that something outside of ourselves can give us happiness and fulfillment. The elsewhere may be people, places, things, behaviors, or experiences, and I think also spiritual kind of practices. Whatever it is, we may neglect our own selves for it. The payoff is usually a reduction in painful feelings or a temporary increase in joyful feelings. But this feeling or mood alteration is predicated principally on something or someone else.

[05:36]

The remedy sounds simple. We need a healthy balance of awareness of our inner life and our outer life. But that does not come automatically, especially in a world where nearly everyone is acting codependently most of the time. So his... in the theories of codependence, it's basically 95 to 100% of people are codependent. So in a way that's comforting because it means we're not wrong, we're not sort of getting things wrong, but we're all sort of acting and reacting in this sort of context of suffering and looking elsewhere. So this correlation of codependency and Alaya Vishnada, I don't intend this to mean that you should all go out and do 12-step work or adult child work or something like that.

[06:38]

But as I said at the beginning, what kind of perspective can we use to understand this kind of esoteric concept of Alaya Vishnada? So in early Buddhist teachings, the five skandhas, That's form, feeling, perceptions, formations, and consciousness. And those of you who come here for service know that we chant the Heart Sutra every day, and it's a list of all of these things. So if you hear that sutra, you'll hear about these. So the five skandhas are simply the basic aspects of what constitutes a human being. And they're the most basic. They're not active, they're just the potential. And they're the basis for how our karmic outline, as you could call it, perceives and responds to the arising of phenomena.

[07:42]

And when you combine them together, particularly consciousness, you get the idea of identity. I, self, or an individual. So in the development of Buddhist teaching and doctrine and analysis and interpretation, they realize that the fifth skanda, consciousness, is much too complicated for just that one word or just that one term. So they divided it or extended it into eight levels of consciousness. The first five refer to sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell, and the consciousnesses of those. The sixth is conceptualization, where we start to develop some relationship with the input. The seventh is the I consciousness, the identity, and it includes greed, hate, and delusion.

[08:48]

And the eighth is this Alaya Vishniana consciousness. or storehouse consciousness. And what the alaya holds is the seeds of our new experience. So these are sown from past karma, or past actions, or past circumstances. And when the conditions are right, these seeds ripen, and they are sown, as you could say, and they grow and develop more seeds. So, why did they develop these eight consciousnesses? And what was the role that Alaya Vijayana was meant, what was the issue that Alaya Vijayana was meant to address? Well, it turns out there were two problems. One was that enlightenment is supposed to kind of erase mental defilement. And at the same time, though, you need at least a small amount of consciousness

[09:53]

or you can't survive in a body. So what was that small amount of consciousness that allowed someone to go through the enlightenment process and still be alive? So that was one of the problems they were trying to address. And the other one is one of my favorites, which is the backsliding arhat. So these are people who have been confirmed as being enlightened, liberated, And then they end up returning to their karmic activities and tendencies. So what happened? How could that be, if enlightenment burns out karma, how could there be something left that they would return to? So there's something that survives and continues, this alayavishyana, from a practice perspective, it's a tool for understanding our experience and for developing our character in the direction of freedom.

[11:13]

And that is through developing wisdom and compassion. That's what all these teachings are sort of geared towards. So to see Alaya Vishnana as a tool for this, when you think, you know, well, there is a cumulative aspect to consciousness. It includes our genetic heritage, family personality traits, habits of how our body seeks pleasure and avoids pain, and how these characteristics vary due to our accommodation with our experience. And in Buddhist teaching, this cumulative aspect is likened to a stream and to this collection of seeds. So what happens with a stream, the way it develops is rain comes, you know, and water goes down in a particular, flows in a particular way, and then that flowing develops a stream bed.

[12:21]

And so whenever it rains, or whenever there's water, it always goes the same way. So that's the stream analogy. And then the seeds grow, mature, and create new seeds as they are watered by repetition. So even if we're not actually in the same circumstances, we tend to see them in the same way. where we're sort of limited by this alaya vijjana set up. But what I find very helpful about these very basic teachings, such as the five skandhas, is that what they offer is that there's actually a possibility of a reverse direction. That you've got these five skandhas, all these things that are sort of develop out of them.

[13:23]

But you also, there's a possibility of unbinding all those causes and conditions. And Whitfield describes this in the codependent terminology. Rather than being simply an escape from reality, codependence is also a search. It starts out as a search for happiness and fulfillment outside ourself. After repeated frustration, it ultimately becomes a search for inner wholeness and completion. We simply shift our way of thinking. We change our mind about our mind. It sounds very Buddhist to me. So one of the teachings that is very important to... the development of Alaya Vijnana, is the 12-fold chain of dependent arising. And it, too, offers a format for deconstruction.

[14:25]

It seems to go from 1 to 12, but it also means you can go from 12 back to 1. Or, you know, as you're circling and circling, you know where you are. So you can think, how did I get here? How did I get here? Oh, here's the 12-fold chain unfolding again. So Waldron, describes this. The Buddha offered an understanding of the actions that perpetuate the repetitive patterns called samsara. Sentient beings are thought to consist of aggregations of ever-evolving physiological and psychological processes which arise and persist only as long as the causes and conditions that sustain them persist. Chief amongst these sustaining conditions are, paradoxically, their ignorance of these basic facts of life and the futile desires and activities to deny or overcome them through attempting to grasp onto something permanent, making actions informed by ignorance and desire the driving forces of cyclic existence.

[15:43]

And so in terms of survival and what Whitfield calls coping, we seek and cling to that which is pleasant, avoid and reject that which is unpleasant, and are kind of indifferent or uncertain about everything in between. We're not sure. So pratica, samudpada, or dependent arising, is depicted as a wheel of dharma or samsara. On the outside of this wheel is the 12-fold chain, and inside it are the six realms of existence or desire. The gods, the titans or asuras, the hungry ghosts, hell, animals, and humans. And all of these realms are marked by suffering. I was thinking about how, oh, we think there's some place like heavens. where everything will be okay, you know, where we can relax and enjoy. And there is.

[16:50]

I even had a dream once about it where you didn't have to eat in this heaven. You just, there were these little puffs that you would put in your mouth and they were so, they could be anything you wanted. You know, so, and I think, you know, that that is one of the realms of suffering because you can't stay there. And in fact, you know, the 12-fold chain works in all of those realms. So Waldron's simple description of dependent arising is, early Buddhist traditions depicted a reciprocal relationship between mind and actions. A relationship in which our past actions affect our present states of mind. Our present states of mind affect our present actions, and these present actions, in turn, affect future states of mind. Now, actually, this is very hopeful when you think about it a little more carefully, because, oh, you know, my present actions affect my present state of mind.

[18:00]

So what will I choose? So the 12-fold chain begins with ignorance. And ignorance is defined in terms of the Four Noble Truths, That is ignorance of suffering, the origin of suffering, the cessation of suffering, and the Eightfold Path. Very basic first teaching of Buddhism. And the cycle of samsara is conditioned on ignorance regarding the dissatisfactory nature of worldly existence itself. And this is based in the view of possessing a permanent abiding self. So ignorance of the Four Noble Truths and their functioning conditions the arising of mental or karmic formations or impulses through body, speech, and mind. And it's in between the first and second of the 12-fold chain that the Alaya Vijnana is active.

[19:07]

That's where when you're going from the first to the second, that's a live vishnana being activated. So ignorance to mental or karmic formations is when that's happening. And again, this isn't all bad news. So karmic formations condition the arising of consciousness or cognitive awareness. And this is consciousness in the sensory faculties, but it's also rebirth consciousness. where that descends into the fetus in the womb. Because this is all about how we move from one lifetime to another. So that is that one. And then consciousness conditions the arising of name and form, and this is the physiological and psychological aspects of human experience, which is the five skandhas. And then at this point, that there's a shift from past karma or history into what is going to unfold in that lifetime, or as in Buddhism, that next lifetime.

[20:21]

Then name and form conditions the arising of the six sense realms, eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, and mind, which you can understand that developing in a fetus, and that's the basis of perception. So when something arises in relation to any of those sixth sense realms, that's contact arising. Contact conditions the arising of feeling or sensation, pleasant, unpleasant, neutral. And now we're at eight. Feeling conditions the arising of craving or thirst, which can be in the form of desire, aversion, or indifference. And then craving conditions the arising of clinging or grasping, keeping things going. in the process of an endless succession of rebirth. And then clinging or grasping conditions the arising of becoming or the transition to a life or to another lifetime. And then becoming conditions the arising of birth or rebirth, and birth conditions the arising of old age and death.

[21:28]

So this is a, the 12-fold chain just keeps going. It can happen in a second. It can happen in an eternity. But each of the 12 factors is both a cause and an effect. So you don't rest in any of them. And this circular, repetitive process is what enlightenment is meant to interrupt or illuminate. And so enlightenment isn't the end of our conditioned, contingent existence. It's not, it's just, it's the cessation of being unconsciously caught in the circular, samsaric, repetitive existence.

[22:30]

And Whitfield says, If we choose to live through awareness and responsibility, we can then realize self-knowledge, growth, and serenity. This appears to occur in a never-ending cycle of wounding and recovery, regression and progression, involution and evolution. So, all of these teachings, the teachings of codependency and the teachings of Buddhism, are they apply our cognitive functioning to deconstruct our cognitive functioning itself, the habitual tendencies of it. And so these cognitive tools need other tools, and these are ethical considerations, meditation, contemplation, prayer, however you hold that, and guidance. We actually...

[23:36]

the functioning of guidance is for us to have the humility to actually do all this. Or even think of doing all of this. Or even think of thinking of it. You know, even if the guidance is coming from someone who you sort of project out as the Buddha. Not a person, but just a memory of who the Buddha is and what the teachings are. I mean, my favorite... One of my favorite things about the Buddhist teaching is when he's dying and he says, after I'm gone, the teachings will be your teacher. So you always have this opportunity for humility. And that's the path through self-justification to self-knowledge. And it can be painful, tedious, relentless, embarrassing, wonderful. It's lots of things. And as I said in the class when I was reading Whitfield's book, I went through the same process I always do when I read that kind of stuff.

[24:49]

I was like, oh, I don't want to do it, you know, resistance, aversion, and sorrow, anger, and surrender. So Because I'm familiar with that process, I actually continued. I thought, oh yes, I know what this is. I know how this works. I'm just gonna watch it unfold. And so that was the surrender part. I can do it. So most of that process is intuitive, and that means it's based in awareness, insight, and trust. And Whitfield describes this as experiential. And I think this is very accurate with Buddhist practice as well. My best guess is that about 90% of adult child recovery is experiential in the realm of personal experience that occurs in and from our inner life.

[25:50]

About 10% of healing and recovery is cognitive in the realms of our intellect and mental understanding. Much of the experiential can have cognitive dimensions and vice versa. Nonetheless, recovery must be experienced in the deepest fiber of our being. The behavioral part of recovery adds to and uses the experiential and the cognitive. So, The behavioral part that he mentions corresponds to three areas of practice in Buddhism, and that's ethics, meditation, and wisdom. So you need a context for doing all of this. And ethical tools or instructions are what addresses our karma. Again, I said in the class and when I teach the precepts, I always say this, the precepts just name the things we do all the time and says I vow not to.

[26:59]

And that's because they're developmental. It means, you know, how do I move from self-justification to self-knowledge? And so that's what that work is about, addressing our karma towards self-knowledge. So it's not about guilt or shame or pride or accomplishment. just to address the human condition that we find ourselves in. And it's interesting when you sort of examine this from the experiential level, you develop empathy for yourself and others. And then the next thing we tend to do is jump to self-justification again and say how empathetic I am. And so that's why this process is kind of You keep going through the 12-hole chain again and again. And that's why the cognitive piece is so important, because you always are deconstructing, deconstructing, because our tendency is to construct, to make more.

[28:05]

So... because Alaya Vijnana holds these seeds of our karmic tendencies, we are both bound by our karma and we express ourselves through it. A friend very generously funded me, I guess you could say, to get a DNA analysis. And I know that my background is fairly diverse, but when I say that, people automatically assume that there's some Anyway, race thing in there, but it's more, it's a little more complicated. So what I found out from the analysis is that my DNA history, on the one hand, starts in China and India, and on the other is in Scandinavia. So what brings those together? And I know that this is true for other people, this kind of background, but what

[29:19]

When I looked at this map, I saw there's this way that whoever is my ancestors came from India and China and went through Kazakhstan and Pakistan and the Middle East and up through Russia. and northern Russia and into Finland and Scandinavia, and also some of them started in Scandinavia and went in through Great Britain and Europe, and then they were also going through the Middle East and across the north edge of Africa and through Italy and Greece and Turkey and all these places. So I feel some of the echoes of that and the reverberations of it, and a lot of it in terms of which you might call skin color. It's not like, you know, because Middle East and Armenia and India, there's a lot of variety of skin color.

[30:25]

So that's kind of how I experienced that. But there are these strange echoes, or I don't know if they're strange, they're just echoes. And one of them is that the area of Armenia brings up deep terror in me. I don't have any specific memories, but when I was growing up, I would always put my hand over that part of the map when I looked at the world map, and I have no idea. Like, what are these memories about? I have no idea. And then there's the other side where there's my memories or my associations or reverberations in parts of Europe, northern Germany for some reason, and parts of Great Britain have a lot of ease to them. So I always want to go to England, you know, because it doesn't matter what happens there. I just, my association with it and Wales. So in the midst of all this, how do I find an identity that I can actually describe as what I am or what I'm from or what my background is?

[31:34]

I can't. But nevertheless, these karmic aspects, how I look, what my, you know, way I see other people, is there. And that's still unfolding, even though I can't hold on to something that's specific. So, for me, you know, then to think of that as there's this Eliavich jhana where all that's, you know, it's kind of repository for all of that makes sense. And, you know, bits of it have their effect, and I, often I'm like, well, I don't know where that came from. And I don't mean it like I don't know, but how interesting. I'm, you know, this is just unfolding from whatever I am. So considering all that...

[32:35]

what our life is, the function of it is, and how we work with it and everything. Another thing I think we have to ask is whether we actually wish to be free of our suffering. I often think we enjoy our suffering. It says, this is me. And it provides us with our sense of ourself. And that's kind of comforting in some strange way, even if it's not that happy. So in order to actually do this, the recommendation is to hear and apply the Dharma or the teachings. So sometimes, you know, you don't always have to understand the teachings. You just hear them and let them sink in and they will do their work. That's what I believe. And this is what Waldron says.

[33:39]

The seeds of hearing the Dharma are infused into one's alaya vijjnana. These seeds are thereafter gradually nurtured through thorough reflection and constant cultivation so that eventually the impressions from the Dharma gradually increase and the other mundane seeds gradually decrease until finally the Alaya Vijnana and all of its mundane seeds are diminished in all aspects. So in a sense, we're applying the teachings to kind of nurture something to unfold. So he goes on. Alaya Vijnana supports the very processes that eliminate its contents. but also preserves the distinction between the antidote as cause and the revolved basis as result, without which any prolonged process of purification would be impossible.

[34:50]

It is capable of simultaneously supporting both the antidote and that to which the antidote is applied. And this goes back to Whitfield's comment about changing our mind about our mind. So the teaching of no self is actually good news because it means we're capable of transformation. The self is not permanent. It actually can evolve and transform. And in Buddhism this is called enlightenment or liberation and in codependency it's called healing or recovery. And of course it is fraught with the tendencies, it's meant to interrupt. It's always happening. One of the things I was struck by in Whitfield's book, and I just wanted to mention this, is that in Buddhism we don't often talk about how hard this is.

[35:59]

You know, we say, just sit, and you know, blah, blah, blah. And there's nothing wrong with that instruction. But I found this very helpful. Whitfield talks about difficulty and frustration. Frustration is actually part of the process of recovery. A key to getting free of the frustration is in tolerating its emotional pain long enough to explore and work through it. Recovery is not just an intellectual or rational process. It consists of excitement, discouragement, confusion, pain, and joy, with an overall pattern of personal growth. Recovery takes great courage. So I'm going to end with a poem that people who have done recovery work might recognize or not. It's called Autobiography in Five Short Chapters.

[37:01]

One, I walk down the street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I fall in. I am lost. I am hopeless. It isn't my fault. It takes forever to find a way out. Two, I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I pretend I don't see it. I fall in again. I can't believe I am in the same place. But it isn't my fault. It still takes a long time to get out. Three, I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I see it is there. I still fall in. It's a habit. My eyes are open. I know where I am. It is my fault. I get out immediately. Four, I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I walk around it. I walk down another street.

[38:04]

Thank you very much. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma talks are offered at no cost and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click May we fully enjoy the Dorma.

[38:35]

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